Part 6 (1/2)

”Alone? Even if you came with me, it is a long row upstream, and I have no coin of my own for a boat or for sustenance. No, I will stay on. Perhaps, if there is substance to ibn Saul's Fortunate Isles, we will find refuge there.”

They did not linger at Fleury. The city of Cenab.u.m was less than a day's drifting downstream, and Cenab.u.m had withstood Attila the Hun, and would not fall to mere Vikings, who were surely lesser warriors than had been the Scourge of G.o.d. There, in this city, the records and doc.u.ments of six hundred years-of Romans, Visigoths, and Franks-remained intact. There, if anywhere, ibn Saul might find accounts of merchants who had encountered those mysterious Isles he sought, or who had at least sighted their high, black crags from afar, rising from a mist that confused them and confounded their strivings to draw nearer.

The great gates of the city were closed for the night when they arrived. Seeing the flicker and glow of campfires on the far sh.o.r.e, beneath the ruins of a fort at the head of the stone bridge across the Liger, they rowed over. They set up camp amid other travellers, and shared a fire with a wool merchant, because they were too late to gather wood for one of their own.

Pierrette felt uneasy there. The tumbled building stones were stained not only with soot, but also with blood. Was it the blood of Gallic defenders, or of the Vikings who had destroyed the fort? She felt faint, and her head swirled with strange imagery: she perceived ghostly images of men wearing strange armor that was neither Roman nor Gaulish, Visigothic nor Frankish. Was this a vision of a battle recently fought, and could those be Nors.e.m.e.n? But no, beneath those helmets were smooth-shaven or well-trimmed faces, and hair finely brushed and coiffed. Who, then, were they? She was dizzy, as if she had eaten mushrooms and nightshade, and was about to enter the Otherworld, but she had eaten neither, and had not uttered a spell.

Men both on foot and on horses swirled around her, as if she were not there. Somehow, none jostled her, as if she was made of mist, or they were. High overhead loomed walls that she had not seen when they had crossed the river. There had not even been enough rubble on the sh.o.r.e to account for such walls.

This, then, was no vision of the past, but of something that had never been. But according to everything Pierrette had learned, that was impossible! In the most ancient ages, Time had been a wheel that turned, bearing the observer inexorably into the future. Spells allowed powerful magicians to resist the turning of the wheel, to return to earlier times, merely by staying where they were. But no spell existed that gave even the greatest of them wings to fly faster than the turning wheel, and thus to visit, or even to envision, what lay ahead.

But Time was a Wheel, its rim a circle, and any point could be reached by staying in one place while the wheel turned and, beyond the furthest past, lay . . . the future. Thus spells likeMondradd in Mon had allowed the future to be seen.

But the Wheel of Time was broken, long ago. The sorcerer whose spell had broken it was long forgotten, but the devastation remained. In the most remote past lay eons of empty desolation, that could not be crossed, because it consumed all magic, all brightness, all life. And in the future lay . . . the Black Time, equally desolate, equally dead, where loomed only the dull husks of towering machines in which allthe magic and wonder of the world were trapped.

Pierrette was afraid. If what she was seeing could not be, then was this a delusion? If so . . . was everything? Either this was the future, pa.s.sing before her eyes like mist, or it was insanity. If the great walls of the fortress she could see had fallen in the past, the tumbled stones would remain. If those walls had not yet been built, then she was seeing the future, and that could not be.

A battle horn brayed. On Pierrette's left, scores of men lifted tall, spindly ladders, and flung them against the walls. She heard a high, clear voice urging men to climb. She turned, and for the first time noticed the owner of that voice-a figure astride a war-horse, armed and armored, bearing a pennant and wearing no helm. Despite the armor, that commander of men was no bigger than Pierrette, and she was convinced it was not a man but . . . a girl. A girl, leading men to war, urging them to scale the fortress's walls?

For a moment, Pierrette felt relieved. This vision must be the past, because only ancient Scythians or Gauls had allowed their queens to bear arms, to lead them in battle. But no, never had Gauls worn armor like that, and the girl-general's words were almost recognizable, a melange of Latin and another tongue, perhaps Frankish.

Dust swirled around Pierrette, but she could not feel its grit, nor smell it. The dust, like the horses, soldiers, and walls, was in some Otherworld she could see, but not touch or feel. Again, she heard that clear voice, but this time it ended abruptly in a cry of pain and dismay-and the bold rider fell backwards from her mount, a thick bolt protruding high on her chest, by her shoulder.

Pierrette felt herself moved-not walking, but drifting, as if she were dust borne on air churned by rearing horses and running men. Nearer she came, until she hovered over the wounded commander, and heard her begging someone to break off the arrow and push it through her flesh.

”You will bleed to death, Jehanne,” protested a gruff soldier, his words coa.r.s.ely accented and strange.

”If G.o.d wills it, I will not,” said the maid-for indeed she was a girl. But who was she? And where, or when, was this?

Pierrette watched the soldier remove the arrow. The girl arose shakily, a crumpled cloth bound over her wound. Two men helped her mount her horse. A third handed her the banner she had dropped, and from the ranks arose a cry: ”For G.o.d, Francia, and Jehanne la Pucelle!” The a.s.sault on the walls gathered new force, and even as Pierrette watched, a banner like the one that girl bore rose atop the wall, and black smoke arose from fires within . . .

Chapter 11 - Darkness from.

the Land Pierrette got to her feet, shaken, but saw around her only the fallen stones of a lesser fortress, grownover with woodbine. There, beyond, was ibn Saul's canvas pavilion and their fat boat, and across the river the Roman walls of the city of Cenab.u.m, which the Franks called Orleans.

”Are you well, little witch?” asked Yan Oors, who had come upon her when she was still lost in her vision.

”Oh, Yan. I'm glad you're here. You've known me since I was a small child. Tell me now: have I been mad all this time, thinking I'd deciphered the nature of magics-those of the past that work no more, and those pitiful few spells of the present that have not been destroyed by the great religions, or by the likes of Master ibn Saul?”

”If you are mad, then I am a figment of your madness-and I consider myself real. I suppose you could be imagining that I am speaking to you, but couldI ? I think you must a.s.sume that what you perceive is real, and then freely infer everything that stems from that a.s.sumption.”

Pierrette nodded. ”I must, mustn't I? But then I must throw out other principles I have depended on, because . . . Oh, how can I do that?”

”Explain it to me. Even if I don't understand, sometimes explaining things makes them clearer for the explainer.”

”I'll try. A vision came upon me here, though I uttered no spell to call it forth. It was an overwhelming seeing, a terrible scene of a battle that may someday be.” She described everything she remembered of the vision. Then: ”You see? If I saw the future, then I must discard the a.s.sumption that the Wheel of Time is broken, or else that those few spells that allow their worker to travel upon the Wheel, in mind or in body, all point into the past, and never the future.”

”If the sprite Guihen were here, he might have another conclusion,” said Yan Oors. ”You once used the spell called 'Mondradd in Mon' to go back to an age where he was a youth, and there prophesied a future he could not see, but which you knew would come to pa.s.s. In that past, you knew the future-and did you not conclude that all oracles must be as you were then: minds from future times, prophets in ours, able to 'see' our future because it was really their own present?”

”But I am not from a future time. I am from . . . now.”

”Yet you neither strode upon that future ground on your own feet, nor viewed it from the eyes of a magpie, as you have done before. You yourself said you drifted like dust on the wind, bodiless. Perhaps you were but a dream in another mind, and thus you circ.u.mvented the rules you have gleaned from other experiences.”

”That is not elegant, Yan Oors. It presupposes someone in some far future, to whom the events I witnessed are in the past. It presupposes that the spellMondradd in Mon , or something like it, is known, will still be known, and . . . it is all too perplexing.”

”Then let it be so, for now. You did not begin your seeking, as a little girl, with full understanding-are you perhaps growing impatient at the 'old age' of eighteen?”

”I am not yet eighteen, and you know it!” she said, chuckling, realizing the truth of what he said.

”Then wait until your birthday, at least, to worry that you are mad, just because you do not understand everything.” ”I will,” she promised. Her girlish smile endured a moment longer, then faded. ”What of the dark shapes you saw, all travelling westward? Have you seen more of them?”

”I have been sleeping on the boat, guarding it. I think that like magic, unnatural things do not easily abide moving water. But even now, standing ash.o.r.e, I sense them without seeing them. They are still about.”

”I wonder what they could be?” Pierrette mused. In truth, she was not sure she wanted to know.

Early the next morning the scholar ibn Saul left the camp. About noon, he returned from the city of Cenab.u.m, wearing a sour face. ”All the city's archives are now buried in secret places, walled in with old stones, to hide them should the Vikings ever breach the walls. There is nothing for us there.” He barked commands at Lovi, Gregorius, and Yan Oors, who dismantled his tent and stowed it aboard the boat. By mid-afternoon, they were many miles downstream.

At Sodobrium they spent one night in the shadow of a stone church. ”We're lucky this place is unburned,”

said Lovi. ”Perhaps these brothers are more holy than those of Fleury, and have thus been spared the Vikings' scourge.” The priests and monks were eager for news, and plied the party with fine wines surely intended for sacramental use, which Pierrette did not think was especially pious of them. Eating little from their table, she excused herself early and went in search of Yan Oors, who refused to tread Christian sanctified ground.

Outside, in the little street of half-timbered houses surrounding the church, she saw for herself what the gaunt one had described: a shadow, like a stain upon the dirt street, but no object stood between it and the waning sunlight. It was a shadow, but it hovered above the dirt, as if stuck in it, and straining to be free. Pierrette drew back from a whiff of corruption like old blood spilled, or a dead rat. The shadow was intent upon its own struggle. In absolute silence, it writhed and twisted, now connected to the ground only by a tenuous thread.

Her thoughts receded to another place, another church, where she had seen something all too similar: her sister Marie lay on a stretcher of cloaks and poles, struggling in the grip of the demon that possessed her.

Around her huddled Father Otho, Sister Agathe, Anselm, her father Gilles, the castellan Reikhard, and Marah, Queen of the Gypsies. The same low, westerly sun sent tenuous fingers of golden light among the church's columns, light that was absorbed by the darkness emerging from Marie's mouth, her ears, her very pores, darkness that strained against the ligature of virgin's hair that constrained it, that drew it forth . . . Marie's demon had fought to remain within her, while this smoky apparition strained to break free-but otherwise they were all too similar, and Pierrette trembled now with the fear and revulsion she had felt then.

With a soundless gasp, the shadow broke free. It spun around as if seeking its bearings, then scurried off, hugging the walls of houses, tracing the niches of doorways like the shadow of a bird flying down the street-yet there was no bird.

Then it was gone, leaving behind only a sense of its avid craving, it's mindless urge for . . . for whatever it craved. It had gone west, like the ones Yan Oors described. West, into the setting sun. But why? And had it been a demon? It had been so small, so . . . unformed. Marie's demon had a.s.sumed one shape, then another, in its struggle: it had fought Reikhard as an ancient warrior, confronted Anselm as an eagle, battered Gilles like a storm at sea. No, what Pierrette had just seen was no powerful demon, shaped by the evil in men, and in Marie herself. It was tiny and weak, shapeless and mindless, but . . . it was stillevil. Of that much Pierrette was sure.

She made her way to the boat, where Yan Oors stood solitary watch. ”I saw that of which you spoke,”

she said, leaning on the wale. ”It broke free of a foul stain in the dirt, as if it had taken form there. It went westward just as you said.” Yan Oors nodded, having nothing to add. ”Why westward?” Pierrette asked, not expecting an answer. ”What evil draws them? What are they seeking? The Nors.e.m.e.n come from the west. They pillage, rape, and burn. Are the apparitions only seeking their like? Are they formless demons, newborn in filth and corruption, seeking amenable hosts? If so, then are the Nors.e.m.e.n who plague this country truly infested with evil?”

”I suppose any explanation will do,” rumbled the gaunt one, ”for want of a better.”