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Chapter 19 - The Nemeton

Did the goddess herself, when she wore the aspect of an ancient crone, feel this miserable? Did her bladder leak and her knees tremble? Pierrette was grateful that she had decided—or had the face in the mirroring bowl convinced her?—that it was unnecessary for her to be blind as well as old. Her eyesight, though everything seemed dull and colorless now, was still sharp. Young Bellagos's features were perfectly clear.

He was a handsome man, tall and blond, obviously more Celtic than Ligurian, and he would have impressed Pierrette even without his Greek-style breastplate, his mail, his long sword, and bronze-appliqued iron helmet, though he would have been more handsome without that suspicious scowl.

His expression intensified when Kraton pushed in after him. "I told Aurinia I would listen—but I will still turn you all over to the dryadeae if you are considering treason," he said.

"You know where I stand," Kraton said. "If peace with the Greeks and Romans, and profitable trade, is treason, then you'd best go. Say hello to the dryadeae for me."

"It's too late for peace now," Bellagos growled. "The Romans are already here."

"It's never too late," Kraton replied. "But I'm not here to argue with you—about that. Listen to what the veleda has to say . . . and then decide."

Bellagos raised an eyebrow at Pierrette. "I'm listening."

"When was the last time you sallied in force against Calvinus's troops?" she asked abruptly. "Yesterday? The day before?"

"If you're asking . . . you already know. A month. Even more than that."

"That makes you angry, doesn't it? What do the dryadeae say about the delay? Or Teutomalos?"

"They say `wait.' They say we're not ready yet—but it's not so. The Romans are mostly infantry, with half our strength, and their horsemen are pitiful. We could ride them down and trample them without even drawing our swords."

"I believe you," Pierrette responded. "So why don't you do it? What's holding you back?"

"I told you. Teutomalos and . . ."

"That's who. I meant why."

His shoulders sagged. "I don't know. If we wait, the Romans may bring up reinforcements. Even elephants. Our horses won't stand against those."

"Don't you want to know?"

"Of course I do."

"Fine then," she said in her best grandmotherly manner. "It's settled. Now take me to the nemeton. I'll explain what I need from you on the way."

His scowl deepened. "I never said . . ."

"Come now. You want to know. They won't tell you, but I can find out—and then you can decide what you think is right."

He nodded reluctantly. Whenever the legends about "centaurs" said, she reflected, dryly amused, they couldn't all have been witty. Bellagos surely wasn't. He couldn't fight his way out of a—verbal—broken pot. "Take my arm," she commanded. "Aurinia—did you find me a walking stick?" With an apologetic grimace, Aurinia handed her a twisted root. Decent wood was hard to come by. The Romans weren't letting wagons of supplies in and out of Entremont.

"You must pretend I'm your grandmother," she told Bellagos as they walked slowly westward on the Traders Way, through the almost-empty foreign quarter. "My husband died fighting the Roman Flaccus last year, and I am convinced that his head was retrieved, and is in the sanctuary. I have given you no peace about it, and now you're taking me there, to find out for myself. Maybe while we're there, we can find you some answers, too."

* * *

"Hey Bela—is that your new girlfriend? Whose nursery did you rob?"

"Shut up, Seganos. She's my grandmother. We're going to the holy place."

"Pray for Teutomalos to send a sally against the Romans, will you? I can't stand much more sitting around."

"I always pray for that. Grandma just wants to see if Grandpa's up there . . . among the others."

The guard Seganos looked around himself uncomfortably, and motioned Bellagos closer. "Look, kentor, you watch your step—and you too, old one. There are far too many strangers up there, you know?"

"Strange priests, you mean?" Pierrette's voice sounded as old she looked.

"That too," Seganos said. "But I mean . . . if your husband is there, I hope he can find a friend among all the . . . new faces." He turned away, as if he had never spoken.

"You know what he means, Bellagos?" Pierrette asked as they pressed on into the precinct of the high city locals called akropoli. Just within the walls of the original fortified settlement, the road widened into a triangular forum or agora, the main marketplace. They turned left to avoid it, even though there was little activity. With a siege on, however desultory it was, people tended to keep what they had against future needs.

Bellagos had not answered her. Pierrette persevered: "He meant the heads, didn't he? The dryadeae are collecting strangers' heads, not just our own, or Romans'?"

"That's only a rumor. What would they want with those?"

"Whatever it is, it won't be good for us, I fear. Are we almost there? These old feet . . ." Indeed, Pierrette's feet hurt. And her back. Even her head ached. Back home, a spell like the one she had used would have made people assume she was old, if they didn't look too closely. Here and now, though, she only hoped the spell wouldn't get any more real—she didn't want to die of old age and exhaustion before they reached their immediate goal.

"It's right ahead . . . Grandma. Turn left now. It's the tallest three-story building. There." The nemeton towered above the other edifices along the street. Its two upper levels were timber infilled with mud bricks. They were supported on square stone columns in front, so the entire ground floor was open to the street. Pierrette was dismayed. Where, then, were they hiding the heads she had been so sure were there?

There were several big, blocky sculptures of armed warriors standing in the shaded recesses of the sanctuary. At the rear was a block of stone made to look like four human heads stacked on top of each other. Pierrette—having grown used to seeing the lifelike Imperial Roman statues that were still around in her day . . . that wouldn't be carved for many centuries, in this one . . . thought them all stiff and crude.

"Do you see . . . ah . . . anyone you know?" Bellagos asked as they approached the portal, whose carved niches held at least a few heads. Pierrette shuddered inwardly. No, these were honored dead, men of Entremont. She could feel it—though strangely, their emanations were pale and weak, as if their bond here were attenuated, almost gone. She forced herself to examine them closely, as if one might be her imaginary husband. They were all black with age, desiccated. If she touched one, it might crumble—and the fantôme linked to it, already straining against its weakening bonds, would go free.

"No," she said, turning away, resisting the temptation to help the fantôme along. . . . "He's not here. Find a priest. I'll ask him."

"There don't seem to be any here."

Just then they heard a moan, like someone dying. Bellagos jerked, startled. Then: "Up there. Someone opened a door." He pointed to a wooden staircase at the back of the nemeton, in the deepest shadow. A white-robed man was descending, like a ghost in the gloom—except for the incongruous empty basket swinging from one hand.

"What do you want?" the new arrival asked, throwing back his hood. Like Ambioros at Heraclea, his physique and bearing made him seem more like a warrior than a priest—and he was very young.

"Velocatos!" exclaimed Pierrette's companion. "I'm Bellagos, now kentor of the Winter Horse. You know who I am. I lived right down the street, until we were about ten. Remember?"

"I didn't ask who you were. I ask what you're doing here. You . . . and her." He eyed Pierrette with open distaste. Did she really look that ugly, as well as old?

"Grandma's looking for . . . her husband. She thinks he's here."

"She can't have him, if he is," the dryade Velocatos snapped. "We need every . . ." Then he caught himself—but not in time. "We need every head we can get," he had been about to say. Pierrette was now sure she was on the right track.

"I don't want to take . . . his fantôme," she said, trying to look bereaved. "I just have to know. Is he here? Cambo. His name is Cambo."

"How can I tell? I never knew him." And fantômes, his cynical expression implied, have no lungs; they have no breath to speak or identify themselves.

"He's here! I know he is. I can feel it! Let me see him!"

"Impossible! No one is allowed upstairs." Again, Pierrette spotted his slip. This was no dryade who had passed a Great Year in study, who had learned restraint. He was young, callow, and had not yet learned to hedge everything with cryptic words. So the fantômes' heads were . . . up those stairs.

Again, the upstairs door's wooden hinges creaked noisily. "Velocatos—what's keeping you? We need that water now, not tomorrow . . . but who's this?"

Velocatos explained. The portly newcomer eyed Pierrette—who kept her eyes down—not to seem humble before this older dryade, but because she recognized him. Sabinos, from Heraclea. She had thought him burned to death in the cedar-oil conflagration there. When he stepped fully into the light from outside, she saw the pink, tight-stretched skin of the left side of his face, and the hideous, toothless grimace that the flames had left him—the burns he had suffered when she swept the lamp from the table.

She took a deep, rasping breath, and forced herself to speak. "Don't tell me I can't see him! I'm not too old to climb stairs—or the youngsters can carry me! Cambo is my husband. He belongs here now, but he's still my . . ."

"You can look!" Sabinos spat, to shut her up. "But no word of what you see must escape your lips—ever. Will you swear to that? And you too, warrior?"

"I don't want to see anything," Bellagos muttered, totally intimidated by the mutilated dryade. "I'll just help her up the stairs, and wait."

Before, Pierrette had thought Sabinos the weakest and least effective of Heraclea's priests, but now . . . the fires that had scarred him had burned away not only flesh, but his humanity. He was hardly a man, more a cold, soulless fantôme, a walking corpse animated by no human compassion. "My fault," she murmured under her breath. "I made him what he is. . . ."

"Come," he said, jerking his head toward the stair. Then, to Bellagos: "You'll see things anyway. There are two upper floors, two staircases to help her up." He shrugged. "You're a soldier. It won't hurt you to . . . to meet some of your future companions in arms."

It was not hard for Pierrette to make a job of getting up that initial flight: the treads were not deep enough for her feet and her flimsy walking stick together, or wide enough for Bellagos to climb beside her. Ascending, the scent of cedar oil became a cloying reek. Pierrette had not smelled it before—it rose with the warm air, but by the time she finished the climb, and passed through the door, the air was almost overwhelmingly pungent.

The entire floor was one room, dimly lit by three small, high windows on the street side. The walls were entirely obscured by shelves, shelves packed with dark, ovate objects, featureless in the gloom. They could have been clay pots . . . but they were not. They were heads. Not a hundred, or even five hundred, but . . . even with mathematical skills hundreds of years advanced beyond this age, even able to multiply quickly using Arabic numerals instead of clumsy Roman ones, Pierrette was hard-pressed to estimate their number—the room was about sixty Roman feet by not quite twenty, and there were eight shelves, each a foot or so high . . . a thousand, maybe fifteen hundred human heads!

Pierrette's horror grew as she began to sort out details. These heads, unlike Heraclea's, did not stare down at her with eyes painted on their sewn-shut lids. These, Pierrette realized in a burst of understanding, were not ritual objects, or revered ones. No one cared whether they were able to "see," or whether they looked lifelike. This was no temple—it was . . . a warehouse, and its grisly contents were treated like merchandise.

No, she thought, not even that. The space behind her eyes filled with a vision from the Black Time, when vast rooms hummed with the spurious life of soulless machines—this was like that: the preserved heads were . . . utilitarian. They were components, no more revered than the individual stones in a wall. But what great, hideous edifice were the dryade architects planning to build? What nightmarish project was under way here?

"Well, old woman?" Sabinos asked impatiently. "Are you not going to look for your husband?" His hands swept around, his gesture encompassing all the shelves.

"There are so many! I don't know where to begin!"

"Begin here," Sabinos snapped, thumping the nearest shelf. "You'd best waste no time. There are hundreds more upstairs, in the workshop."

Pierrette's head spun, and not just from the fumes. She didn't need to examine each head. There was no husband to find, and she had seen what she had come for—only she didn't know what it meant.

"Workshop?" She grasped Sabinos's arm and peered up at him with rheumy eyes. "More heads? New ones?"

"Yes," he replied. "Perhaps . . . you should see them first. Was your husband . . . has he been missing long?"

"He went to keep the marching Romans from trampling our grain. He never came back."

"A few weeks, then. He might still be . . . soaking. Yes. Soldier"—he addressed Bellagos—"help her up the stairs. You both must be out of here before dusk. No lamps are permitted here." Pierrette knew why: the dryades weren't taking any chances of another Heraclea.

As Bellagos helped her up the second flight of stairs, she considered the possibility the dryades' precaution brought to mind: she could start a fire here. She did not need a burning oil lamp wick. The tips of her fingers tingled as she considered that . . . but no: even were she an agile girl, she could not move quickly enough to get away, if a fire started. And even if there were windows on the third floor, the risk of injury would be great if she jumped.

There were no windows. Light poured in through three large openings in the roof. A ladder extended through one of them. The air here was clear: the fumes could escape. There were no ranked shelves, only row after row of pots brimming with cedary-smelling oil.

"So many!" she wailed. "I'll never find him here!"

"You'd better try. As I said, at dusk . . ."

"He's not here! I'd feel him if he were. Bellagos! Help me down. I want to go home."

"Are you sure, Grandma?"

"Yes—be sure," Sabinos echoed. "You won't be allowed back in again. This time, I made an exception for your age and bereavement, but . . ."

"I won't come back—Cambo isn't here. He's somewhere else. The Romans must have taken him. I'll have to ask them. Bellagos—take me to the Romans' camp."

"Grandma, we're at war with them! You can't go there."

"Surely if you ask nicely . . ."

"Come! You're overtired. This cedar oil is not allowing you to think clearly."

"Perhaps you're right," she said with a sigh. "Help me down those horrid stairs. I saw a wine shop on the way here. Yes. A cup of cool wine will set my poor old head to rights. Do you have a coin or two for the tavern master?"

"I do."

Pierrette had less trouble descending the stairs. Was the spell wearing off? Anxiously, she drew her shawl over her hair. If Sabinos recognized her . . .

* * *

"Now what game are you playing, `Grandma?' " Bellagos snarled. "Your head is no more addled than mine. `Take me to the Romans,' indeed!"

"The dryade Sabinos won't give a befuddled old hag another thought. But here—the wine shop, remember? I am thirsty." She drew him to a bench against the wall, in a welcoming shadow. "I wonder if there's any of the Massilians' red wine left?"

"I'll ask."

"Well-watered, mind you. Being old is miserable enough, without being drunk also."

He peered curiously at her. "You're strange. Sometimes you don't sound old at all. . . ."

"When Aurinia's gold hair turns white, there will still be a young girl somewhere inside, behind the wrinkles of age. Never forget that—and your marriage will prosper."

"Marriage?" He drew back. "I haven't even asked her . . ."

"I am a veleda, remember? And when you return with the wine, I'll have a prophecy for you—and for Aurinia."

"I'll be right back."

* * *

"Now . . . the prophecy." He sat, then turned toward her on the bench.

Pierrette sipped her wine. It was deliciously cool, with just the slightest fruity hint of fresh grapes. "Do you understand," she asked, "what we saw in the nemeton? Did you sense something terribly wrong, there?"

"The heads. They aren't our own heroes, or even enemy dead. Some had white hair, and I'm sure at least a few were women. Whatever the dryadeae are doing isn't right. And there are so many heads . . ."

"Exactly. I think that is why they're stalling. Their plans call for even more fantômes. . . ." She paused, as if pondering a fresh insight, then turned and locked eyes with him. "Have there been any . . . disappearances? People who went to market, and never returned home?"

"You're crazy! They would not . . ." But his eyes were bleak. "People sometimes get distressed, cooped up like this. They sneak out past the Roman cordon . . . but surely you can't think the dryadeae . . ."

"You yourself said there were women's heads there. Think it through. How many notable women-warriors do you know—personally? And how many have disappeared?"

"I've only known . . . known of . . . a few. Most women are dangerous when their homes and families are threatened, but few become warriors. Defense, not offense. And as for taking their heads, that would be . . . would be . . ."

"Untraditional? Wrong?"

"It would be very wrong."

"Even if their purpose was purely defensive?"

"I can't imagine it."

"Nor can I. I think we can safely assume that the fantômes those heads bind are not defenders, but . . . something else. I wonder what the gods think, with their sanctuary full of strangers? They must be angry."

"Does that have something to do with your prophecy?"

She sighed. "A kentor named Bellagos will flee this city even as the Romans burn it," she said. "Behind him on his horse will be his golden-haired lover. All the other survivors will be enslaved."

"Me flee? I would never flee a battle!"

"But if the battle is already lost? Would you want to see Aurinia a slave in Rome, drawing water for some senator's herb garden—then going to his bed?"

"No! That can't be!"

"Then you must spirit her away. Wait until you know the battle is lost, and the Romans are in the streets, if you must, but then you must flee."

"Who will have us? The Allobroges?"

"You must go further. All the way up the Rhodanus, then westward to the farthest end of the land, in the country of the Venetii. There, on the horizon, beyond where the tides rise as high as city walls and rush so fast that they destroy every ship that braves them, lies the isle of the Gallicenae."

"The Isle of the Dead? No! Are you saying . . ."

"Hear me now. Just north of Land's End lie the ruins of Phoenician Ys, at the head of a wide bay. You must find a boat there, and put to sea just before the end of a spring tide. It will carry you beyond the reach of the goddesses of the dead, into a sea of mists and confusion . . ."

Pierrette's mind retreated to that far place, to those mists, whence she had flown on a blanket made of clouds, wrapped in a shawl of silvery moonbeams . . . but that had been a vision, or only a dream. Was there really an island out there, beyond the known lands, beyond even Sein Island, where the dryades buried their own dead?

Was it fair to send Bellagos—and Aurinia—chasing a dream not even their own? Again, she retreated into her memories. There, seated on a high seat next to Minho, the sorcerer-king, she had looked over the throngs who gathered to see her. Was there a golden head among all the dark Minoan ones?

In her visions, those Fortunate Isles were the ancient seat of a lost empire that later men called Atlantis, islands plucked from a volcanic eruption that had shaken the ancient Mediterranean world. King Minho had saved his people, the best and kindest, the artists, artisans, singers, and dancers, the mapmakers and workers in gold. When the belching flames cleared, the poisonous smoke blew away, and the molten rocks hardened, all that was left of Thera Island was a desolate, semicircular crag.

Guided by the volcano's pillar of smoke by day, of fire by night, the Hebrews had departed Egypt, and had begun their sojourn in the Sinai wilderness.

Forty years later, when again the earth trembled and Thera's writhing set the sea into turmoil, the Hebrew Joshua commanded his trumpeters to blow their horns, and the shaken walls of Jericho fell.

Theseus's Athenians rose up in arms against the last Minos, king of Atlantean Crete, and burned his labyrinthine palace, destroying the great golden bull mask he wore, and slaying the man who wore it.

But Minho, that king's great-uncle, long departed with all his chosen people, felt none of the shaking and breathed none of the deadly fumes, for Minho was gone, borne away by the greatest spell ever uttered by mortal lips and tongue.

For a while, the Fortunate Isles were seen off the coast of Iberia, where a great city rose in the delta of River Baetis—Tartessos, that the Hebrew books called Tarshish, and thought lay at the end of the world. Tartessos, where Herakles stole the red cattle of Geryon. But, at last, the Isles drifted away, borne off by Minho's spell, and now they lay (or so Pierrette believed) where she commanded Bellagos to seek them.

* * *

"Veleda? Are you not well?" Bellagos had watched with horror as the old woman's eyes rolled up until only the whites showed. Her hands had trembled like poplar leaves in the Mistral wind, and her ancient knees knocked as if she were having a fit.

"A vision," she said. "Did I frighten you?" She smiled. "I saw what I wanted to see, and now I am sure. You must find the Fortunate Isles, and when you do, you must tell King Minho . . . to save a seat for me, beside him."

Yes, there had been a golden-haired girl there, and a strong young kentor for her to lean on and . . . and a blond-haired boy child, clinging to his father's leg. "Your son will be as golden as his mother," she said. "And you must name him . . . Kraton, for I have spoken with him, and he told me his name."

Bellagos stared wide-eyed. Pierrette clutched her cup, and downed the rest of her watered wine in one gulp. "Now," she sighed, "we have work to do. Is your dwelling nearby?"

"It's only a short walk, if you're able."

"Good. We'll wait there until dark. But—is there a street behind the nemeton?" He nodded. "Show it to me."

Four houses joined by common walls backed up against the sanctuary. "Convenient," Pierrette murmured.

"What is?"

"These outside staircases. See? Someone could walk up that one, by the first house, climb that ladder to the second one, and pull the ladder up to use it to get on the roof of the nemeton."

"You want me to go up there?" Looking at Pierrette as if she were mad was becoming a habit.

"No. I'll go. Perhaps I can overhear something useful, tonight."

"You?" Bellagos snorted. "You are mad. Those stairs . . . that ladder?"

Pierrette shrugged off his incredulity. "Let's go to your house. Seeing me climb a ladder will be the least of your surprises."

 

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