Part 17 (1/2)

Minho's palace-black, white, vermilion, and scarlet, gleaming with highlights of polished bronze and gold-was the sole monument, the unique glory, the crowning beauty of this kingdom. Of course there were no temples to a dozen or a hundred G.o.ds, no monumental tombs of generations of emperors. There were no hippodromes, amphitheaters, or arenas where men and animals provided mincing dramas, deadly races, or blood sport. This was not Roma in its latter days, or even Ma.s.salia in the present. This was Minho's perfect kingdom, and all such imitations and imperfections had been banished from it long ago, when even Roma was an undreamed millennium in the future.

”Is there a more lovely prospect, anywhere?” Minho had arrived unnoticed. Now he stood beside her at the bal.u.s.trade, his gaze sweeping the intricate vista of islands, channels, roads, and bridges.

”I've seen nothing to equal it,” Pierrette replied. ”The panegyrists of Greece and Rome did not describe anything as lovely.” She turned. ”I'm glad you're here. I have so many things I must ask you . . .”

”Is that all?” He mimicked disappointment with a stylized moue. ”I am, you know, more than just a walking library.”

”Of course you are. You are the greatest sorcerer of all time, and you have dust on your kilt.” She brushed a cobweb away. Light and linty, it floated over the bal.u.s.trade, was caught by an updraft, and drifted fitfully out of sight into the sun's eye.

”Dust!” He laughed as if in self-deprecation. ”Of all the evils I banished when I wrested this land from fiery death, the one I forgot was . . . dust.”

”Evil? I wouldn't consider so small a flaw evil. It is an annoyance at worst, when I'm in the aftermost cart of a dozen on the road, or when I lift a long-undisturbed volume from a shelf, and I sneeze.” She felt an undefined tension. Evil? She imagined a film of dust on a polished table, and from it arising a darker shadow, that slipped over the edge and crept away-westward, or a bit north or south of that, depending on just what city she imagined the table to exist in.

”What of dung?” she essayed. ”When a donkey defiles your cobblestones, what do you do?” She felt apang of guilt. What of Gustave, left alone? But he was resourceful. He wouldn't starve on this island rich with greenery.

”Again you're baiting me! Would you believe that I don't know? Perhaps it dries and blows away, or people collect it and spread it on their fields.”

”When you cast your great spell, didn't you have to consider such details, at least once?”

”You call it a great spell. That hardly means it must be complex or c.u.mbersome. It was an elegant spell, only a few simple words, and everything you see before you proceeded from that. Such a spell needs no detail, because it is art, not mechanics. One does not build a spell like an edifice, laying one lump atop another. One creates it, a child of mind and spirit.” Pierrette was inwardly dismayed, but did not let it show. Minho's high-flown words were like the air atop a mountain, offering little sustenance. Spells were not inspiration and spirit. Every last aspect of a spell was inherent in its premise, and followed logically from it.

Pierrette's heart sank in her chest. She felt no closer to the answers she had sought since first she realized as a child new to Anselm's tutelage that all magic proceeded from sets of initial postulates, and were thenceforth as subject to logic as were theorems of geometry.

In fact, her introduction to geometric theorems had provided the initial insight into the dilemma that had, by many circuitous byways, led her to this moment and this place: when people's beliefs changed, ancient postulates s.h.i.+fted their meanings, and a spell that had once given warm fire resulted instead in a cool, brilliant Christian light-or a sullen crimson glow with the stench of oily death. ”I am fire,” said an ancient G.o.d. ”I give warmth and light, yet I sometimes rage unchained and destroy everything I touch.” A later G.o.d, in earthly manifestation, said, ”I am the Light and the Life . . .” and a postulate, a single line at the beginning of Pierrette's fire-making spell, was changed.

Minho's mellow voice recalled her from her racing thoughts. ”Where did you go? I felt you depart.”

”I'm sorry. Your words transported me. Show me your great spell. Let me study it and understand what makes great-and elegant-magic.”

Once again he laughed indulgently. Again Pierrette reflected how different this experience was, in the flesh, from her visions. Once Minho's indulgent tone had seemed affectionate, doting. Here and now, Pierrette resented it, because it was condescending. ”Dare I write it down, for you to peruse at your leisure? It exists here alone.” He touched his forehead. ”Every day, I must revise it in subtle ways, as I have done since your Christianity arose, and the old G.o.ds began to die.” His mercurial face became charged with anger and frustration. ”I have become a tinkerer, a musician ever tuning his lyre and never playing it! If only Anselm had been up to his task, and had quenched that religion's first spark!”

”It wasn't his fault,” Pierrette objected, ever loyal to her mentor. ”He brought you the Hermit, who first spread Jesus' words among the gentiles, and you subverted him. Is he still here, somewhere, living perhaps in luxury, ever regretting that he had abandoned his Cause?”

”He is here, but Anselm failed to subvert the one who arose in his stead: the one born Saul of Tarsus, who wrapped his master's simple precepts in chains of mystery, symbols, and Greek logic-with magic almost as strong as mine. Now the Christian emblem itself sickens me; I have forbidden it, in all its forms.

But how can I prevent two twigs from falling upon the ground, one over the other? How can I order two shadows not to make a cross on a sun-washed wall?” Almost as strong? thought Pierrette, though she did not dare say it aloud. The Christian domain had now spread to the furthest known lands, and every crossroads shrine now bore a crucifix or a Chi-Rho sign scratched in a stone. Every ancient sacred pool but one was now a Christian font, and the holiness of one saint or another emanated from its waters-usurpers, to be sure, who often partook of the aspects of the earlier G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses that they had supplanted, but firmly in control of the sacred places and the people who visited them. Almost? The religion of Saint Paul grew, now spreading among the Saxon tribes and-as she had seen, on that remote skerry only a few days' sail away-among the Nors.e.m.e.n, the most savage pagans of all.

The Hermit was still here. Like his successor, Saul of Tarsus, he was a weaver of words and concepts that shaped the very fabric of reality. Was he, perhaps, a key already thrust into the lock, but not yet turned? A key to the destruction of Minho's kingdom not by violence or competing magics, but by . . . conversion? Somehow, she felt, she must get free of the king and his palace, and must find the Hermit.

That thought led to others: she must find poor Gustave, too, before some woodcutter or mason caught him and put him to work carrying bundles of f.a.gots or heavy stones. Gustave was spoiled, stubborn, and independent, and she could not endure imagining him bruised and beaten by a harsh new master who did not tolerate his ways.

There were other reasons to find a way out of Minho's direct purview also. Just as the Hermit might provide a way for her to obey the letter of the G.o.ddess's command without supporting the spirit of it, there might be other solutions as well, ones she could not imagine until she knew more, and they presented themselves.

But she was not finished here, not yet. . . . ”Hatiphas said you were down in your archives, working.

Will you show me? May I watch you work?”

”No one has gone where I go. Do I dare show you my most secret retreat?”

”Did you call me here to condescend and deny? Though I was attracted to you as the subject of my childhood fantasies, I hardly know Minho the man, and Minho the sorcerer not at all. Could I stay here and marry you, without becoming jealous of your other mistress, hidden away, never knowing her?”

He sighed. ”I must blindfold you.”

”You trust me so little?”

”I would trust my wife, my queen, with all my secrets.”

It was Pierrette's turn to sigh. ”Then I will endure momentary blindness. As for the future, I cannot see it.

It must unwind in its own time.”

Minho clapped, and Hatiphas appeared almost instantly. Had he heard all they had said? Hearing his master's desire, he then rushed off, returning moments later with a strip of jet-black, heavy silk. Minho gently-and carefully, and snugly-wrapped Pierrette's eyes. Not a glimmer of light got through.

”Come,” the king said, placing her hand on his forearm as if she were a crippled crone. He led her inside the palace-the changing echoes of his sandals and hers told her that. First came a short pa.s.sageway, then a long one where the returning sound of footsteps was ever so slightly delayed. At each intersection (and perhaps other times as well) the king put hands on her shoulders and turned her several times, todisorient her. Still, some sense not blocked by the blindfold allowed her to believe they had gone in the direction of Minho's quarters, and when she heard the sigh of a heavy door opening on well-oiled hinges, she believed it was his own chamber they entered. But she could not be sure.

He muttered soft words, too softly for Pierrette to understand, but the cadence of his speech seemed oddly familiar to her, as if she should recognize what he had said. ”What was that?” she asked. There was, abruptly, a chill in the air, as if a cloud obscured the sun or a cellar door was opened, releasing the dampness.

”It was nothing,” he said offhandedly. ”Stand here a moment. I must . . .” She heard the dull sound of something heavy being pulled or pushed across the floor tiles. ”Now step carefully,” he said. ”A staircase lies ahead.”

”Down or up?”

”Why, down.”

Pierrette cautiously extended one foot, and did not place her weight upon it until it was firmly planted on the first tread. With one hand again on Minho's arm, she felt rough stone brush her shoulder, and she understood that the stairway was narrow, or the king would have moved over to give her more room.

She counted each step as they descended, and when they reached the end of them, memorized the number. The rough, irregular floor underfoot now felt like plain stone, not tile, and grit rasped under her soles. Again, Minho spun her around, then led her forward. In places the floor was slick, in others gritty, like the drying stone of a tide-washed sea cave.

Again, Minho bade her stand alone. She heard a rasp and swish as of heavy cloth being shaken out. She smelled the oily odor of a just-snuffed lamp wick. But why would Minho put out a lamp? Entering a room, it was more usual to light lamps, not extinguish them. She tracked his footfalls back and forth several times, and at last felt his hands behind her head, loosening the blindfold.

She blinked. One dim lamp flickered on a worn table. A single backless stool stood close by. Something large and round-topped stood beside the table, draped in dark cloth. Was that what Minho had covered with cloth, to hide it? If so, she wanted to see it. All she could tell was that it resembled a round-bottomed pot, upended and resting on its rim.

The single lamp's glow only illuminated the near wall. She then understood Minho's actions: had more lamps been lit, she would have seen farther, and might have observed . . . she did not know what, except that there were things the king did not want her to see. What she did see were banks of shelves packed with round objects-the ends of hundreds of scrolls, most without wooden shafts or handles, or tags to identify them. ”This is it?” she asked, dismayed. What was so special about this ugly, gloomy place? But there was something . . . it was a diffuse, tingling sensation not exactly unfamiliar. What was it? When had she felt it before?

It was the aura of magical power. She had felt something like it in Moridunnon's lair, and on other occasions as well: in a Gallic fane where a hot spring bubbled up from bedrock crevices into a pool, and . . . with the G.o.ddessMa . Was it Minho's power she felt? Then why wouldn't she have sensed it before? No, it was the power not of a person, even of a great sorcerer, but of this place itself. This place, and specifically . . . there.

The ancient rough-hewn stones were almost outside the lamp's range. A moment or two earlier, before her eyes had adapted, they had been so. Now she sidled toward them. She placed both palms on thewaist-high rim of what appeared to be an ancient well. Of course. This cavern was not only a magical place. Like the grove outside Citharista, it was also a sacred one-or once it had been. Minho had not created this place. At most, he had rediscovered it. No Minoan had hewn those ancient stones. No metal tools had ground them like that, irregular, but fitting seamlessly. They were far older than metalworking.

They enclosed a basin just large enough for a small person to bathe in, had that been their purpose. But they were neither a Roman bath built over a sacred spring, nor a natural pool. She could not see far into the well, but she sensed that it went down, and down.

”Come away from there!” Minho had noticed her leaning over the well. ”Be careful. That hole is deep-and dangerous.”

”Where does it go?” She did not move away, but continued to peer downward. A waft of warm air brushed her face. Its acrid odor made the inside of her nose tingle, and reminded her of a forge, of glowing charcoal and hot metal.

”Come.” Minho grasped her arm, firmly enough to hurt. ”It's nothing important. Just a hole.” She would learn nothing more from him, so she allowed herself to be guided away from the well. She knew enough.

It was very deep, threading its way into the very roots of this island. And the heat, the odor? Was that a relic, a remnant of the ancient volcano that had-in the world of Time-destroyed everything of the Minoan kingdom except what Minho's spell had saved? Did molten rock still seethe at the core of his realm?