Part 11 (1/2)

”This is intolerable!” fumed ibn Saul. ”I must accompany Piers. Who paid for this trip? Am I to miss everything?”

”Unless you're invited, you'd better shut up,” said the boatman. ”They get nasty when they're mad.”

”Piers!” shouted ibn Saul. ”Make sure you demand they invite me ash.o.r.e.”

Pierrette climbed over the rail. The water was only ankle deep, the boat solidly aground. She waded to the torchbearer, who nodded somberly and said only, ”Follow me.” Pierrette obeyed. Her guide strode purposefully through the almost-total darkness, as if every turning of the path, every root crossing it, were well known to her. The flatness of the island helped. Pierrette noted no ascent as they moved inland. The island, she realized, was as low as it looked from afar, with not a single hill or crag. When the winter storms came, did the waves wash over its entirety? Did such annual baths in brine explain the scruffynature of the trees and bushes, the apparent lack of clearings that might be construed as cultivated plots?

Ahead were shadows darker than their surroundings. They resolved themselves into buildings, all dark, with one exception. The warm light of oil lamps spilled from a single wide doorway at ground level.

Moving shadows showed that the chamber was already occupied. ”Come,” said the cowled one. ”The Nine have gathered, and await you.”

The Nine? TheGallicenae ? Pierrette did not know what to expect-the nine red-haired Gallic G.o.ddesses of legend, with the voices of sirens, who lured unwary sailors onto the reefs and shoals, or nine old, embittered priestesses of a dying or dead cult? She kept her eyes upon the illuminated doorway as she approached, so the light would not blind her when she stepped through it.

Back at the sh.o.r.e, the boat now lay fully on its keel and the turn of its bilge, its mast angled lamely. It had not been at all difficult for the donkey Gustave to chew through the leather lead that secured him in the bow. He had enjoyed the salty taste, much like sea purslane. He had not been fed since the previous morning and, as no one but Pierrette ever did so, he had no reason-if indeed donkeys had reason or reasons-to believe that would change. Only a little distance away were bushes and scrubby trees that would provide succulent browsing. Besides, there was an annoying itch between his shoulders, as if his pelt was crusted with mud or salty seaweed, and there was no room to roll about to rid himself of it.

Cautiously, he ascended the sloping planks, and stepped over the rail into the water. Just as his hind hooves were aswirl to the fetlocks, Lovi noticed him. ”Hey! Where do you think you're going?” he cried.

He lunged for the trailing tether, but it was wet with saliva, and slid through his fingers.

He was about to vault over the rail after Gustave, but ibn Saul restrained him. ”He'll follow Piers,” the scholar said. ”We've been bidden to remain aboard, and I don't wish to test the limited hospitality we've been offered. The cowled woman made no mention of donkeys, though.”

”What's that on his back?” asked Gregorius.

”I don't see anything,” Lovi replied. By then, Gustave was already ash.o.r.e, making for the shadows of the low trees.

The Nine stood in a half circle, all robed and cowled, and the light from the sconces along the walls did not-quite-illuminate their faces. ”Welcome, daughter of our Mother,” said one. Pierrette thought the voice came from the most central figure, but she could not be sure. Nonetheless, she addressed that one.

”Thank you . . . sister.” What else call someone who had addressed her so? Someone who was not fooled by her boy's clothing.

”We have watched you for some time,” said a voice-another one, somewhere to the left. ”We have awaited you.”

Watched her? Awaited her? ”I don't understand. What am I to you? And how have you watched me?”

”You may be our last hope,” said someone near the left, ”though we do not know what you must do, because the Isles you seek are not open to our sight. Whether you obey the G.o.ddess, or your own heart . . .”

”How do you know about that? I haven't told anyone . . .” ”We have seen you here and there-at Rhoda.n.u.s's mouth, as a child, and in Aquae s.e.xtiae Calvinorum, when it was only a Roman camp, and most recently, in the palace of Moridunnon.”

”The Otherworld!”

”Of course. In the land-beyond, glimpsed in a crystal serpent's egg, in a bronze mirror, or the still waters of a pool . . . Twice now, you have saved us from the darkness that gathers, that would overwhelm us.”

What did she mean? Pierrette did not have time to ask, when another spoke: ”The black spirits gather together ash.o.r.e-water holds them back, but some have gotten here, once upon a floating log, another time hidden in a fisherman's craft. Each time, one of us died.”

But Pierrette still counted nine: four to the right, four left, and the first one who had spoken, in the middle. One of the cowled figures must have noticed her eyes moving from one side to the other, counting. ”Let's not toy with our guest, sisters,” said the one on the far left. ”She has not come all this way to see the show we put on for ordinary visitors.” With that, she tossed back her cowl, and revealed . . . nothing. She had no face, no head, and no hair. ”I was the first to die.” The words came from the proper place, but Pierrette saw only a shapeless robe hanging as if upon something solid, but unseen.

”Then is this the Otherworld? I was not aware that I had pa.s.sed through to it.”

”Who can tell?” said another, removing her cowl to reveal an ageless face, smooth, but not young, framed by pale hair neither gray nor blond. ”Here we exist between the lands of man and the boundless sea, between the spirits of the air and the unfathomable deep. Here, the dead speak, and we the living, often as not, are silent.”

Her bitter tone prompted Pierrette's next question: ”It has not always been so, has it? Can you say what is behind the change?” The answer to that question had come to her even as she voiced it, but did these women, living or dead, know what it was?

They did not. The rightmost, who had red hair and an old woman's sharp bones, but the smooth, freckled skin of a girl, shook her head. ”It came slowly, as mortals measure things. A generation, a single lifetime, no more. Though our ancient records hint that the changes began slowly, they have only now gathered enough momentum to be readily observed.”

”What do you know of . . . of the Fortunate Isles?” That question might seem a non sequitur but, as Pierrette came only now to realize, it pointed toward an answer to another question, one so formidable she might not dare ask it.

”They are a myth,” said red-hair. ”There is no evidence for their existence.”

”But didn't you-one of you-just say . . .”

”I said that they aren't open to our sight. I say now there is no evidence. I did not say, first, 'They exist,'

and then 'They don't.' My speaking is exact, but your hearing wants refining.”

Pierrette might have chuckled, had the setting been less serious. Evidence. She sounded just like ibn Saul, or like Anselm, criticizing his pupil's methodology, urging always that she examine her a.s.sumptions, lest error creep in unannounced. ”They are said to lie not far from here, behind a bank of fog,” shepressed, ”or just below the horizon. Surely you have had visitors-storm-driven or s.h.i.+pwrecked-who made claim to having set foot on them, or to have seen them from afar.”

Another woman laughed sourly. ”Many that have comehere believed they had arrivedthere ,” she said, tossing back blond braids from a face far too severe for such a girlish coiffure. ”We give them a day and a night in the Otherworld, and send them on thinking they've glimpsed their heart's desire, and found it wanting.”

Pierrette thought of Moridunnon and his evanescent realm, and believed she understood: once having been deceived, and having seen as well the bleak reality, such men would depart with divided hearts, believing that the Fortunate Isles existed only within the spells of the druidesses, not in the harsh world of storm-driven s.h.i.+ps with ice on the rigging and cold filth slopping back and forth below the decks.

She sighed. ”I must return to my companions,” she said. ”Soon the tide will turn, and our boat will again be afloat.”

”But no-stay. We have not yet shown you our realm. Who knows: when you are done with your seeking, when you become disillusioned with the world outside, you may wish to return here-once you see what we offer you.”

”I've seen enough. Will you show me towering mountains on this flat island? I've seen your houses, where the ground floors are unoccupied because the storm waters wash over them. I've seen your salt-loving scrub forests. Will you show me tall maples and beeches, and springs gus.h.i.+ng sweet water?”

She turned her back on the Nine.

But where the broad portal had been was now a wall of unbroken stone. Pierrette voiced a spell for the clearing of a deception, but the unwavering wall remained. She whirled around angrily. ”Am I a prisoner?”

”You are a guest. Now come. The way in is not always the way out. Besides, we are not the only ones who live here, and many others clamor to meet you. You must speak with them, if only a few words on your way back to your boat.” She gestured at a bronze-bound door that now stood open, where no door had been. It was a small, low doorway, but as Pierrette approached it, it seemed to expand, and by the time she pa.s.sed through into clear, cool moonlight, it was as grand as a city gate.

Moonlight shone on dew-polished cobbles, on fine bronze balconies and roofs of silver slate. Pears hung rich and ripe like golden teardrops from lush branches tied against polished marble walls.

The donkey Gustave had lost his mistress's trail at the doorway to the well-lit building, which stank of smoke, lamp oil, and people. A fringe of sweet, soft gra.s.s grew where street cobbles met walls, and he followed it around the building, nibbling as he went, occasionally reaching back over his shoulders to nip at the uncomfortable clinging sensation that still plagued him, which now seemed to be centered on the back of his neck, where he could not reach it.

Though it was night, there were people in the street-men in calf-length togas, women wearing blue skirts and crimson shawls. Gold glittered everywhere-the horned or flared torques around men's necks, the women's necklaces and armbands, and upon one man's head, great golden antlers that seemed to spring from his skull, for he wore no leather cap to support them. ”Come,” said her guide. ”This way.” The street opened on a broad market square, whose centerpiece was an artesian fountain, raised three steps above the cobbles, where a dozen men and women, perhaps a score, sat, stood, or squatted in animated discussion. As they approached, heads turned and conversations ceased, but not before Pierrette had heard s.n.a.t.c.hes of what they were saying.

”Your premise is flawed, Cadmos,” a scholarly elder said, shaking his head. ”You a.s.sume the synchronicity of the Great Year with Lugh's waxing and waning, when in fact the shadows on his face appear every eleven years, not nineteen.” Pierrette wanted to push into the discussion, to interject that the Minoans had claimed the sun was a sphere, and sunspots appeared at regular times in its eleven-year rotation.

Nearby, two women sat face-to-face, and Pierrette overheard one say, ”The elements are indeed four, but fire is only a shadow of true light. Combustion requires matter to burn, while the sun does not, so . . .”

Pierrette wanted to add that combustion also required air, and thus that fire could not really be considered elemental at all.