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Chapter 18 - Growing Old

At last Pierrette was getting some answers to her questions—her magic would indeed be stronger here, if she could figure out how to use it. It was Guihen who, in her own time, had observed that the difference between a masc—a country witch—and a sorceress was the way they used spells. A masc knew one, or a few, and used them precisely as she'd learned them, each one like a simple refrain played on a bone flute.

A sorceress used spells like a Gallic band played music—drums a rhythmic background for pipes, harps, and voices, each incantation only a part of the whole. The sorceress created her magical symphonies as she needed them, from the volumes of simpler spells, incantations, potions, and rituals she knew.

In this age, the dryades had the advantage: they knew what applications of power worked, and how. Pierrette might be a stronger, more intuitive practitioner, but intuition needed sound understanding to work on. The spells she had examined and tested yesterday gave her a feel for the magic of this age and place, but they were small spells. She did not dare try greater ones here. The dryades would surely sense them, and would catch her unprepared. She had to avoid a direct confrontation. There had to be another way.

There was much she had to find out. How far along were the dryades in their creation of fantômes? With ten years to have recovered from the destruction at Heraclea, she would have thought everything would have been done and over by now. . . . "I have to talk to Kraton," she told Guihen.

* * *

Heraclea, Kraton told her, had been a greater blow to Teutomalos's designs than Pierrette could have hoped. When the nemeton burned, the dryades lost much prestige, and the Greek contingent in the town gained proportionately. The Herakleon, the Greek masons' temple, still stood, and the god of the Greeks had gained many converts within the great city walls Herakles's adherents had built.

With the burning of the preserved heads, an unrealized pall had been lifted from Heraclea, said Kraton. The sunlight seemed to shine more brightly now, the air to be fresher, without the taint no one had consciously noticed before. The winter rains tasted purer, even after months in the cisterns, and no green scum grew on the water. Several wondrous harvests had followed, and though the dryades Ortagion, Sinatros, and Ambioros had tried to take credit for those, they had had little success.

Cunotar had not returned, and without his malign influence, his travels between the towns of the Salyen league promoting Teutomalos's hideous plan, those efforts had foundered—until recently.

None of that, Pierrette suspected, was part of the history she had learned, but she did not think it had any place in the Gallic history that underlay the "future" she had walked into, while trying to get to Aquae Sextiae that first time, either. Had her intervention at Heraclea created yet another potential sequence of events, a third "future"?

Pierrette's head swam with confused, conflicting possibilities—one history where Roma had laid the foundations for its empire by defeating the Salyens in 127 B.C.; another in which the decisive battles were postponed until 124 B.C., and which Roma lost; and a third, in which the destruction of Heraclea's nemeton and the burning of the fantômes had set back the Gauls' timetable by some critical degree, so that now, in this "now," the future was undecided, the battle yet unfought. . . .

"Tell me more," she demanded of Kraton. "I need to know the exact sequence of events of the last decade."

Kraton sighed, and began. "The Roman Scipio, called `Aemilianus,' took Numantia, the last Carthaginian stronghold in Iberia, in 619, I believe."—Pierette mentally translated the Roman date into a more familiar format: 133 years before the beginning of the Christian age—"With Carthage defeated for once and for all, Roma had time and resources to pay attention to her friends elsewhere—like Massilia.

"At that time, our soldiers—Salyens—had surrounded Massilia, but its natural defenses—the ridges and rough terrain—were not suitable for fighting from horseback Celtic fashion, or for chariots. And Massilia was still able to supply itself from the sea, which the Romans have controlled for thirty years, since Quintus Opimus destroyed our port at Aegytna.

"The Massiliotes sent an embassy to Rome last year, and the Romans responded by dispatching the consul Flavius Flaccus with legions from Placentia. At Genova they took ship for Nicaea, near the mouth of the Argentia River. They could not defeat the Salyen forces holding this city, but neither could we prevail, so we treated with them.

"But late last year, a strange unknown dryade from the west visited Teutomalos, and urged rebellion. Now this year, the Roman Calvinus and his legions surround us. What else can I tell you?"

"It's enough," said Pierrette. Now it was clear. In her history, Massilia had asked Roma for help in 133 B.C., and Fulvius Flaccus had landed his troops along the Rhodanus, not the Argentia. He had taken Heraclea, then Arelate. But she had changed that: Heraclea was no immediate threat to Massilia in the new, third history, and Salyen pressure on Massilia thus did not become critical until 125 B.C. Not only was Massilia's petition delayed, and thus Roma's military response, but that response was entirely different. Only their siege of Entremont remained, because the city was the key to all Gaul.

Now Calvinus was encamped before Entremont, three years late, and the outcome of the divided futures still hung in the balance.

"I have to find out what the dryadeae are doing," she told Kraton and Guihen. "They must have a plan to defeat the Romans." She did not know who had the advantage, or which way the battle—when it came—would go.

"They have brought the heads of many men here," Kraton said. "Their intention must be the same as you told me it was before, at Heraclea."

"I can't help but suspect there's more to it than that," she replied uneasily. "At Heraclea, the fantômes were mostly for defense. They were to stay, when the warriors went forth against the Massilians, and keep the town safe. The conquest of Massilia itself would have been fought by the living. But that isn't enough, now. The Romans have a foothold here in Transalpine Gaul, and merely surviving this siege isn't enough of a victory. The dryadeae must have a better plan than that."

"They haven't confided it to me," Kraton said bitterly. Once, he had practically ruled this town. Now he merely existed here, on sufferance.

"You must show me everything you can," Pierrette said. "Or, perhaps, Aurinia can do it. If I dress as an old, blind woman, could she lead me through the streets? Through the high city?"

"On what pretense? You'd have to get past soldiers at the Old City walls. And if they see that you're not an old woman . . ."

"Let me worry about that part," Pierrette said. "Just think of a way to get me in."

Aurinia spoke. "I have a . . . friend . . . in the high city," she said. The way she said "friend" caused her father to raise an eyebrow. Gallic women were entirely emancipated, equals of their men in everything but sheer physical bulk and strength, but still, fathers felt protective of daughters. "Bellagos," Aurinia said. "He's kentor of the Winter Horse." Pierrette could not conceal her surprise.

"Do you know him, veleda?" Aurinia asked. "How can that be?"

"In my era," Pierrette replied, "he's a legend." Belugorix, the tale went, was chief among the centaurs, those half-man, half-horse creatures who had taught mankind the skills of logic and discourse—and the use of horses in battle. Belugorix, who with his human lover on his back, fled the death of his adopted nation, in search of the Blessed Isle and eternal peace. Some say they found it. Pierrette's head swirled. Here, again, the stuff of myth and reality entwined. Kentor, centaur, and centurion. "Kentor. Does he command a hundred horsemen, then?"

"One hundred twenty, now," Aurinia said—proudly, it seemed. Indeed, Kraton might want to speak more intimately with his daughter. "Fifty warriors and their mounts arrived from Arelate last week, and twenty chose to put themselves under his command."

The exact numbers, Pierrette reflected, didn't matter. A centurion of Roma no longer commanded a hundred men, any more than a "hunno" of Attila's horde had—or would. But was Aurinia's Bellagos the source of the legend? And if so, what did that portend? How would the legend play out in the present reality—if it was not only a meaningless scrap of memory from her own lost history, already out of joint with this one?

"What is your idea?" she demanded of Aurinia. Now she knew she had to meet this kentor, this incipient legend.

"Everyone knows he sent for his family to join him within the safety of these walls—but they never came. Because his father's land was directly in the Romans' path of march here, he's sure they were all killed. But if one of them were to show up—his sister, perhaps, since I can't imagine you as old or blind . . ."

"Don't be too sure of that," Pierrette said softly. "But go on . . ."

"I can speak with him. He spends each morning with the horses, which are corralled just inside the north portal, ready for sallies against the Romans."

* * *

They walked Aurinia home, then Pierrette and Guihen returned to her small house. The Ligure carried a bundle of clothing that Aurinia's mother had produced—under protest. "I only kept these for rags," she had said. "They're moth-eaten, and hopelessly old-fashioned. My mother stopped wearing them years ago."

"They'll be perfect," Pierrette assured her. "Just the thing for an old farm wife, a refugee who arrived with nothing." She only smiled at their skepticism that she, young and vibrant, could successfully masquerade as an old woman, even with the traditional veil across her face. But they, she reflected, had not spent timeless hours and days beside the sacred pool, with the oldest woman of all. . . .

* * ** * *

Pierrette cinched the gray woolen skirt with a belt whose leather was dry and cracked, whose bronze belt-hooks had turned green. She drew the ancient mantle—once red-and-yellow plaid, but faded to brown-and-tan—about her shoulders.

Aurinia had promised to bring her sweetheart to Kraton's house before dawn, still hours away, but Pierrette had not been able to sleep. Now the sounds of her movement in the rear room had awakened Guihen. Not wishing to disturb her, he kept to his bed, and watched her through the connecting doorway.

Her plan would never work, he decided. Even in old clothes, she was young, pretty, black-haired, and far too graceful. He watched as she glided out into the courtyard. What was she saying? The words she intoned were in no language he had ever heard before. She reached toward the night sky, and from Guihen's perspective, her fingers seemed to pluck a wisp of silvery cloud from the moon's veil. She lowered her hand, and trailed slender fingers through her ebon tresses . . . and the silvery light stayed behind, clinging to the strands. Again and again she combed through her hair, until most of it sparkled with moonglow, and little black remained.

She reentered the room, and peered down into a bowl of water on the table. "Oh, that won't do," the Ligure heard her murmur—in Latin, which he almost understood. Then: "Silver jingles, music fades, like clouds across the moon's face . . ." They were pretty nonsense words that made no sense to him, until he saw the moonlight fade from her hair, leaving it leaden gray, dull as any crone's. When she dipped her fingers in olive oil and again drew them through her hair, it clung and straggled with all the ugliness of uncaring, unkindly age.

Again, she leaned over the bowl of water. Guihen, now overcome by curiosity, quietly slipped from his bed and stood behind her wordlessly, and peered over her shoulder. She gave no sign that she even noticed him. Her next words were in yet another tongue—Old Ligurian, or something enough like it that he thought of his own great-grandmother, the last person he had heard speaking it. Pierrette was saying something about holy pools and bowls of water, and as her breath rippled the liquid's surface, Guihen saw her reflection shimmer and break into uncountable tiny ripples, tiny wrinkles, like the skin of . . .

He gasped, as the face now peering up from the bowl looked out at him, blue eyes faded to slaty gray, graceful arched nose now a sharpened beak, a tiny mole become a fat carbuncle astride one thinned, flaring nostril. He staggered back. Pierrette lifted her head and turned toward him. "Now will you lie awake thinking of me?" she asked him, in tones that might have been girlish and flirtatious—if her voice had not been harsh as a bronze spoon clanking against a cracked clay pot. She was old. No, not just old . . . ancient. Even the scent of her was musty, with a sick tang of stale urine and . . .

She staggered slightly, wincing and clutching the edge of the table. "The pain!" she hissed. "I didn't know how much pain the old really endure . . . help me to the bed, boy." Automatically, unthinkingly, Guihen took her arm—her skinny, fragile arm, all fleshless bones—and guided her through the doorway to her bed. He eased her down, until she was seated, holding herself upright with elbows on bony jutting knees. "Oh, Guihen!" she murmured, tears running down her raddled, creviced cheeks. "I never understood when my father complained of his backaches, of twinges in his joints, and of cramps in his bowels. I thought him just crotchety, and looking for sympathy. But now—not just one ache, here"—she patted the jagged corner of her jaw—"but here, and here"—she touched one shoulder, and then the back of her neck.

"Are you truly old, Lady?" he asked. "I don't think you are—because the old have time to enure themselves to such pain. My great-grandmother said that each new ache became an old friend, that as long as something hurt, she knew that part of her had not yet died."

"My stepmother, Granna, said something like that too," Pierrette said. "She said that as long as the new pains did not arrive too fast on the heels of the ones before, so she had time to come to love them, life remained worth living . . ." She sighed—a wheeze, really. "I won't have to pretend, when I hobble up the street to the nemeton. . . ."

"The sanctuary? You're going there?"

"Where else? I must find out what the dryadeae are doing."

"I don't know what Bellagos will think about that, even if Aurinia can sweet-talk him into taking you through the high town gate with him."

"He'll have reason enough to do what I wish," Pierrette said—confidently, Guihen thought, though the quaver in her old voice made him unsure of it.

 

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