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Part Three - Vocavi



Do even gods ask themselves "Why can I do this, and not that?" They might better retire to some quiet place amid books and scrolls containing the wisdom of the ages, and winnow through the chaff of theology and natural philosophy for their answers. One such answer, they might discover, is that they themselves are only images of men grown large, so what men can do, they can do more so, but what no man can do, they cannot.

Otho, Bishop of Nemausus

The Sorceress's Tale 

 

 

 

Chapter 14 - A New Destination

Pierrette's Journal


The Eater of Gods consumed Cernunnos when the Christian bishops declared him Satan's avatar, and he took for his own the magics of the small places—
the holy springs, caves, trees, and crossroads—when the priests declared them evil. The more things the ruling Church rejects as evil, the stronger its adversary becomes.
How ironic then, that the likes of Muhammad abd' Ullah ibn Saul, as skeptical of priests, popes, and saints as he is of pagan gods, demons, and the souls of rocks and trees, may be the morsels that most upset the Evil One's digestion. How can he consume them, who don't believe he exists, without ingesting a meal of self-doubt? The thought gives me a bit of comfort in this uncomfortable world.
Another comfort: I am now convinced that the spell Mondradd in Mon is indeed variable. When Ma first showed me the past, I was acutely aware of the thread that bound me to my sleeping body, still in the sacred grove. But each time I have used the spell that awareness has lessened, and now is entirely gone.
If I am right, that I am indeed physically present here in Massalia, in ibn Saul's house, in my own time, having travelled here in two different eras, then I must have been physically present in those times, and thus no unconscious body was left behind on the slope of Sainte Baume.
My conjecture is testable. I need only find the mason Cerdos, or Ferdiad, and ask what became of me . . . if I dare return to Saint Cassien's, if I win this match with the Eater of Gods. Or, if I make a distinctive mark in some secret place, in the distant past, a sign that will endure the years until this, my own time, and if I rediscover it, my physical presence in that past time will be proved, for a soul travelling outside its body can make no physical mark in a world that is, after all, as insubstantial as a dream.
As for the cause of the spell's "improvement," there are three candidates. Either the spell itself is now stronger, for reasons unclear, or the setbacks the Church—and its Adversary—have suffered have allowed a resurgence in the strengths of all ancient magics, which I can verify experimentally. Lastly, my own skill as a sorceress may have improved. Of course it might not be easy to distinguish between the latter two possibilities unless other wielders of ancient lore have also experienced improvements in their strengths. Yan Oors or Guihen?
Whatever the reason for the change, I am cautiously optimistic. And the "experiment" I will propose to Master ibn Saul may shed light on it.

* * *

The scholar Muhammad abd' Ullah ibn Saul was a friend of her master Anselm's. He would happily pay the galley crewman who dogged her heels in the narrow streets. But that raised a problem. Ibn Saul and his household knew her as Piers, a boy. Even so, the scholar had on one occasion hinted that—as Piers was as pretty as a girl—he would not be displeased to expand the nature of their acquaintance. But the galley's men knew her as a woman.

If she arrived on his doorstep as a woman, would that be less awkward or more? She instead had herself rowed to the south shore of the harbor and to another familiar, friendly doorway—the nunnery where her sister Marie lived. She often stayed there when their father Gilles brought his catch to Massalia to sell.

"Pierrette!" Sister Marthe hesitated before lifting the door's bar. Several of the nuns disapproved of her, because she was unbaptized and never attended Mass when she visited. They did not understand why Mother Sophia Maria was so friendly with her. "You won't be able to see Marie," Marthe said, sniffing disdainfully.

Pierrette grinned. "Is she in trouble again? What is it this time?" Marie was firm in her determination to adhere to her vows, but she had a mischievous streak.

"Mother can tell you, if she wants to. Come in." She frowned at the sailor. "You'll have to wait outside."

"I'll be back shortly," Pierrette told him. He was uncomfortable letting her out of his sight until he had coin in hand—but what choice was there?

"Child, come here," said Mother Sophia, spreading her arms wide. "You look so pretty, in that dress." Pierrette bathed in that warm, uncritical affection, so like—and unlike—what she had felt from . . . Alkides. Shortly later, the abbess sent Marthe with coin to pay the sailor. "Now let's talk. What have you been up to?"

"If I were Christian," Pierrette said when they were alone, "I think I would have much to confess. . . ."

* * *

Abbess Sophia Maria was a good Christian, but she was as much a child of Provence as was Pierrette. Old blood flowed in her veins, and she was no stranger to old ways and beliefs. Besides, she had long ago decided there was no great evil in the child.

Even the nature of Pierrette's magic, in this Christian city, lent itself to that conclusion, for magic changed, and here only Christian magic existed. From the Estaque hills to the northwest, the Etoile range on the northeast, and the rocky highlands on the east and southeast, it was all the same.

Here, Pierrette's fire-making spell evoked no flame, only a clear, pure white light. "Saint Mary's light," the abbess called it. Only clear Christian purpose could call it forth, and then only in the presence of some holy relic, like that rude crucifix a martyred saint had made in his prison cell. . . .

Mother Sophia requested the rich fish stew Pierrette loved, and they dined privately in her austere chamber. Unhesitatingly, Pierrette told her what brought her there.

"It's as I've told you all along," Mother Sophia said. "Whatever you think you are, you serve a Christian purpose. Were Rome never to exist, this would be a pagan land. If indeed you stem this pagan blight, you will have served the Church."

Pierrette was not so sure. Always before, she had perceived Christianity as the antithesis of magic, created by a good God whose alter ego collected and consumed all the old gods the church rejected. But she could not disagree that the Gaulish alternative, the world of fantômes enslaved by Teutomalos's evil empire, was far worse. And it seemed that the Eater of Gods must agree—that a Christian world, for all the forest sprites and small gods of springs, lakes, trees, and caves whom the church had fed him, was less satisfying. Pierrette's problem was that though she knew it, she could not understand why.

* * *

In the morning, well freshened—because Marie had maintained a solitary vigil, penance for her unmentioned transgression, and had not been able to keep Pierrette up all night talking—Pierrette set out around the harbor to the city gate. She was again dressed as a boy. By the time she arrived the vast market square, the old Roman forum, was already crowded. She pushed through to ibn Saul's quiet street.

Lovi, the scholar's Frankish apprentice, let her in—with his usual truculent, disapproving frown. He had never liked her. She suspected that was because his master liked her all too well. Was he simply jealous? She had never given him cause.

Ibn Saul was tall, with a beaky nose and hooded eyelids. Was he a Moor, a Jew, or something else? Ambiguity, he claimed, aided him in his travels among foreigners. "A chameleon," Pierrette had once called him. Now he seemed fluttery and excited. Several leather and canvas bags were stacked in his courtyard.

"Are you leaving soon?" Pierrette asked. "Where are you bound?"

"Gades," he replied. "I'm looking for the city of silver, the biblical Tarshish."

"Tartessos," she mused. "I've heard that it sank in the mud of the Baetis's delta. Are you going to dig for treasure?"

"Knowledge is treasure. I think the ancient city drifted away, and did not sink."

Then she understood what he was seeking. Cities did not "drift away"—but magical islands might, islands not bound to the bedrock beneath them. And behind all the tales of such mysterious drifting islands was one reality alone: the Fortunate Isles. King Minho's realm. But if the scholar found them, he would write about them. He would explain how they came to be, in some extraordinary—but entirely natural—cataclysm. His reasoned explanations would nullify the magic of Minho, because they would be a greater spell than his.

And if the Fortunate Isles became ordinary rocks imbedded in the ocean floor, then what of Minho, shorn of his ancient magic? What then of his promise to marry her? Scholars' successes gnawed at the very structure of her world, and brought the End closer, when no magic would be left.

"But what brings you here, all out of breath?" he asked. "What exciting news have you? Does Anselm thrive?"

Pierrette thought quickly. Could she use ibn Saul's skepticism for her own ends? Better still, could she distract him from his quest for the Isles with a promise of an even more fascinating challenge? "I have an experiment to propose," she said. "And a wager for you."

That piqued his curiosity. "Go on."

"If there is indeed more to our existence than can be observed and explained—if there are indeed paradoxes that only gods and magic can explain, then I will prove it to you. If you accept that, it's prize enough for me. If I can't show you such a thing—then I'll become your apprentice, and will exert all my efforts in helping you find the Fortunate Isles."

He smiled broadly. "One single experiment? You'll risk everything on it? What can it be?"

"I'll need access to your library, master. The experiment deals with the nature of time itself. I propose to use a spell to visit the long ago, and to change something that happened then. When I return, I'll bring proof—written in your own hand—of the change." She refused to say more, until she had consulted his sources. She had little fear that the creeping changes in her own history books, in the fading of Anselm's Virgil, would have spread within this bastion of skepticism and reason.

She chuckled quietly at that thought, which sent other ideas tumbling through her head. "May I have a sheet of vellum or parchment, Master ibn Saul? And the use of pens and ink? I brought none with me, and I haven't kept up the journal I promised Master Anselm I would write."

* * *

Ibn Saul's library rivaled Anselm's, and had an additional advantage: it was organized. Each scroll was catalogued by subject and author, and the shelves were neatly labeled. Pierrette had no trouble finding what she wanted. She explained her thesis to the scholar.

The siege of Entremont was the critical event. The Romans, at the request of their Massilian Greek allies, sent troops into Gaul. When Entremont fell, in her universe, the rest of the Gallic and Ligurian strongholds soon collapsed as well. With that event, Rome took the first step toward empire.

The land became Provincia, "the Province," and two decades later, when the Teutons and their allies invaded, Marius could defeat them, because he had home bases at Glanum and Aquae Sextiae. Rome's hold on Provence would be secure.

With that security, with almost unlimited resources for his legions, Julius Caesar could feasibly venture north from Provence into the "Three Gauls," and then across the channel to Britain.

One hundred and fifty years after the fall of Entremont, the saints, among them Magdalen, Lazarus, Martha, and Jesus' two elderly aunties, Mary Salome and Mary Jacoba—would come to Provence because, far from being a remote outpost of Rome, it was the new heart of the burgeoning empire, and the words of their teacher were aimed in every way at the heart, not the head. Their missions would bear fruit, and Provence would become a Christian land.

"Entremont fell in 127 B.C.," Pierrette said, pointing at the passage that confirmed it. Ibn Saul made a note of that on his vellum. That, though he didn't know it yet, was the essence of the experiment—he was to write every step of their way in his own distinctive hand, one copy for him, and one for Pierrette. Ibn Saul listed the critical events, and Pierrette confirmed their correctness:

* * *

134 B.C.: Heraclea's massive walls are completed by

the Greek architect Enakles.

133 B.C.: Massilia requests Roma's aid

132 B.C.: Fulvius Flaccus besieges Heraclea, and
subsequently captures it—and several lesser

oppida of the Gallo-Ligurian confederacy.

130 B.C.: Fulvius Flaccus is accorded a triumph in

Rome.

129 B.C.: C. Sextius Calvinus, at Massilia's request,

besieges Entremont, the surviving major

stronghold of the Gauls and Ligures.

127 B.C.: Entremont falls.

125 B.C.: Aquae Sextiae Salluviorum becomes the first

capital of the Roman Province.

104 B.C.: Marius has a canal dug from Arelate to the

sea.

102 B.C.: Marius defeats the Teutons at the foot of

Montagne Sainte Victoire.

55 B.C.: Julius Caesar secures the northlands as far

as the Rhine and Britain.

* * *

"Now that we have settled that, Master ibn Saul, will you take my copy? I'd like you to continue writing everything that we do, in your own words."

"May I ask why?"

"Because at some time hence, I'll want to show it to you. If I'm right, you'll have a difficult time believing what you wrote. Perhaps you might also write, in an obscure way no one else would understand, of some past event that only you know of. That way, when you read it, you'll know no other person could have written it."

"I confess bewilderment. Do you expect me to forget my own writings? I'm far from a doddering old man, you know."

"Write that also. Write your doubts about what I hope to do."

"And what—if I may ask—is that?"

"If indeed there is magic, and it is not just delusion as you believe . . . if indeed the spell I'll utter transports me to some past time where I'm able to change the course of events in some way, then you, here and now, will be part of the changed history that results. Only if you read of the other `history' that no longer exists—written in your own hand, and containing references only you could know—will you be able to believe what you read."

The scholar grinned. "I think I see where this is leading," he said, "but there's a flaw you haven't addressed: what if the changes wipe clean the slate? What if, in that world, I am no scholar but a shepherd—or if I am never born, because my parents never meet?"

"If I come back, and if the historic events we've listed are even substantially the same, that will mean I have thwarted whatever, or whoever, is trying to change the history you and I know, and I will have succeeded—even if I can't rub your nose in my victory."

* * *

Pierrette explained that she needed a place, a particular place, to speak the spell's words. It had to be near enough to Entremont that she could get there and back again even in a world long past, much different, and in the middle of a war. And it had to be unchanged in this time from the way it was then. Ibn Saul suggested several places, but Pierrette rejected them for one reason or another. Then his eyes brightened. "I have just the place!" he explained. "The baths of Aquae Sextiae. It's not a long trip, and if all this proves to be nonsense, as I suspect it will, I'll still be mostly packed and ready for my own expedition, with only a few weeks lost."

When Calvinus built his camp by the hot springs, in 128, he laid down streets and dug fortifications that included the springs within them. His battle-weary troops could thus enjoy the restoring water without leaving their safe haven. And in those days, ibn Saul explained, there had been a Gaulish fane over one spring, sacred to Madrona, the Mother.

"It's still there today," he said. "The Roman engineers incorporated it into their baths—a single room now, out of many, but in a more ancient style. If what you wish happens, you'll be able to walk into the bath in this time, and out the other side into another—not that I hold out much hope of that of course."

It was settled then. Again, Pierrette reflected, she would set out for the source of the fantômes, the city that was the center of their infestation—but this time in the company of a man whose unbelief in such ghosts was so ingrained that they might pass right through him without disturbing the fabric wrapped about his head, or the oily curls of his beard. At least she hoped so. Maybe this time she would actually reach her destination. . . .

 

 

 

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