Part 19 (1/2)
Looking back, she wondered if the circle of devastation had grown larger. As she stared, she became conscious of movement at its edge, something dark, nebulous, shadowy and unclear, that crept along the boundary between green and black, consuming moss, leaves, and tender gra.s.s, leaving behind only dead, dry dust. She knew what it was. She had seen its like many times, more times than she wished to remember, but . . . this time it was not scurrying westward, seeking some distant goal. It had reached its destination: the destination its horrid fellow-shadows all sought, and it was . . . eating.
Horror-struck, Pierrette stared, but what she saw were images within her mind: a greasy shadow emerging from the mouth of a villager along with his infected tooth; another, wriggling free of a dead rat, a rabbit too long in the snare, a heap of dung in the road. She remembered Sena, another magical place, and a woman's dry bones crumbling away even as she watched, until nothing remained. They were all the small evils of the world, oozing free from the stink and corruption that engendered them, rus.h.i.+ng away toward their opposite, toward . . . the Fortunate Isles, the land where no evil was allowed. Now she had released just such a creature here, despite her precautions, and even alone it was striving to right the balance that Minho had upset two thousand and some years before.
She tugged on the sheet and secured it, braced the gaff, then adjusted the steering oar. Her little craft pushed ahead vigorously, its small bow wave chuckling like a cheery mountain rivulet, a contented sound.
But Pierrette was far from content. How much sweet, green gra.s.s, how much life and goodness, would the shadow consume before it was sated, or before it simply evaporated, nullified and canceled out by its opposite substance?
Should she sail back to warn Minho, so he could destroy the bridges and causeways that linked that island to the others, and thus save at least a portion of his kingdom? She shook her head. The small heap she had left behind that bush could not encompa.s.s the destruction of an entire city, and Minho had been quite clear: seventeen days. Only one had elapsed.
It was her fault. She was a plague carrier, a curse upon this lovely land, bringing death, and black destruction. These people were not concerned with the disposal of their wastes because there were none. Broken bronze was melted, and made into new tools. Broken bread was not eaten. Its aroma was savored, and then the tasteless stuff was crushed and baked again into fresh loaves. But she could not subsist upon the sweet, yeasty smell of bread. She craved its substance. She knew now that when she had eaten the flat, insipid fruit from Minho's table, the king had eaten none. What had he thought, watching her push slice after slice into her mouth, watching her throat ripple as she swallowed it? No wonder he had, despite his protestations, been eager to get rid of her even for a fortnight and a few more days.
She knew enough, now, to destroy this kingdom, to fulfill the G.o.ddess's command. A few s.h.i.+ps full ofugly little shadows gathered from the rocks of the Armorica coast would be enough-but could she do that? Even if she could get a s.h.i.+p past Minho's protective spells, spells he had let down to allow her pa.s.sage, could she bear to do it? Could she cause the very devastation she had just witnessed, on a grand scale encompa.s.sing not only gra.s.s, leaves, and moss but the smith whose bronze would not melt, the baker whose morsel she had eaten, and thousands upon thousands of others, all as innocent and inoffensive?
She eyed the rising sh.o.r.e of a smallish island connected by two soaring bridges to larger landma.s.ses of the outer and the middle rings. The gray-green foliage of lush old olive trees dotted its gra.s.sy slopes. No, she had not seen enough of this land to consider destroying it. That would be like burning a scroll unread, because the color of the ribbon that bound it offended her. She had to see it all for herself, and besides, though she now had one answer she did not have the other: how could shenot destroy the Fortunate Isles, but save them, and yet not disobey the one who had sent her? One solution was not enough. Just as the shadows of worldly evil nullified unworldly goodness, she needed not only the spell but also a counterspell. Now, she was no longer sure that seventeen days would be enough.
Pierrette pa.s.sed the following day and night at sea, but whether she did so from caution concerning what she had seen, or merely to have time to ponder the twists and turns of events, was not clear, even to her.
Then, by morning's slanting rays, as she rounded another small island, driven by an easy breeze astern, she observed a patch of bare, dark soil much like the one she had left behind on the city's margin. The wind and current did not favor a landing, or even a close approach, so she reluctantly sailed onward. It may have simply been newly turned soil, ready for sowing, she told herself. One couldn't discount that explanation, here where there was no fixed season for each agricultural activity.
Then, with the sun high overhead at noon, she spotted still another blackness. This time, she was able to ease her craft close in, though she could not moor among the blocky volcanic boulders that lined the sh.o.r.e, where there was neither beach nor quiet backwater.
Yes, she saw, it was much like the previous devastation, but with differences: tendrils of green ivy reached inward from the margin of destruction, and tiny seedlings had taken root where the breeze had blown them. How long ago had the causative event occurred? That depended on several things: the fertility of the bare soil, the heaviness of the morning dew (there had been no rain, in fact no clouds at all).
Could it have been only two or three days? She wondered this because, if her budding hypothesis had merit, only the impingement of someone from outside Minho's enchanted realm could have caused it, and she had never set foot on that island, or the one before. But perhaps Gustave had.
She envisioned her errant donkey wandering from island to island, keeping to thickets and ravines when people were about, crossing bridges and causeways at night (because Gustave was inherently cautious, and skeptical of all humans). Munching tender shoots here, succulent leaves there, and fat sunflower heads laden with oily seeds elsewhere, he would sooner or later find the need to lighten his internal burden, and . . .
She almost laughed. Would Minho be busier than ever, in the coming days, pulling scroll after scroll from his shelves as he searched for an adjunct to his great spell that specifically countered . . . donkey dung?
And Gustave? Did he find the luscious island vegetation all flat and insipid, as Minho's lovely sliced fruit had been to her? Would he eat less-and thus destroy less-because his meals had no savor, or would his sampling be ever more eclectic and more frequent, as each lovely scent led him along to one and another patch of disappointingly flavorless fodder?
Could she follow his dark, intermittent trail, and perhaps coax him back aboard her small vessel withgrain brought from the outside world, whose ordinary aroma might by now hold extraordinary promise, in his deprivation?
Elsewhere, in a curtained room where no lamps burned, a chamber illuminated only by the vermilion glow of a red-and-blue-veined gla.s.s bauble that resembled a tiny beating heart, the vizier Hatiphas and the druid Cunotar continued their conversation.
In yet another place, a secret chamber in the bowels of the great palace, but separate from it in a manner not clearly defined, King Minho labored at a task that had little to do with the preservation of his seminal spell (for he was no longer able to maintain it to his satisfaction, and his efforts were now directed toward a different solution, one he believed would prove final and complete, requiring no further tinkering, ever).
His success with that task would determine the ultimate fate of his kingdom-and, as well, the fate of his intended and long-antic.i.p.ated bride.
Chapter 30 - The.
Not-So-Fortunate Isles The days and nights that ensued on those islands and among them were for Pierrette a concatenation of events and encounters superficially different, but monotonously similar when viewed according to the principles they ill.u.s.trated. She observed an olive grower dumping baskets of shriveled olives beneath his trees, then watched him fill those baskets with plump, fragrant black fruit from the branches above. She followed him to a shed where he pressed some between flat stones, and she smelled the rich oil they produced. When he departed, carrying a clay amphora of old oil on his shoulder (to be poured out on the ground, she was sure, to feed the roots of the trees) she stole a handful of his fruits and ate them. For all their aroma, they were without savor, but they allayed her hunger and seemed to sustain her.
She caught no glimpse of the donkey Gustave, but she observed the evidence of his pa.s.sage: patches of bare soil, sometimes dotted with the stumps of saplings, mostly consumed, sometimes entirely dead, but often exhibiting traces of fresh growth. That was rea.s.suring to her. The dung of a single donkey, at least, was not so strongly defined as ”evil” in Minho's spell that its effects continued unchecked.
In her mind, Pierrette created a map of such places, and she attempted to rank them by their apparent age or freshness. This was made difficult because the meandering course of her travels did not take her back across old routes often, and she had few opportunities to observe the same spot twice or three times, to establish the stages and sequence of recovery of the vegetation, from tendril and seed-leaf, vinelet and sprig, to leafy vine and small bush or clump of gra.s.s.
With no fixed itinerary, she was free to experiment, to attempt to predict where, from the limited evidence, a fresher patch of devastation might mean she was hot upon her four-legged companion's trail.
Thus far, she had encountered rather more barren spots with ungerminated or freshly rooted seeds than chance might account for, but she had not attained success, which would be to find Gustave himself. As for her own private functions, she limited them to appointments with the wooden bucket beneath the center thwart of her boat, and emptied it only when she was well offsh.o.r.e, with equal distances of all-absorbing salt water in every direction. This she did more from the desire to leave the evidence of Gustave's pa.s.sing unmuddled than from any consideration for her royal host, whose labors were surely, she believed, made more difficult by such things.
On one island, she watched a weaver's husband unravel old, worn garments and untwist every thread. A flock of children then carded the wool, and spun it, and the weaver worked the new yarn on her loom into cloth ready for the tailor's cutting. While Pierrette watched, several people deposited old garments in a basket by the door then chose new ones displayed on tables. When she did the same, leaving her old, worn tunic and choosing another, no one paid particular attention to her. But a few minutes later, as she watched from across the street, the thread-picking husband found the tunic she had left, gasped, and turned it over and over in his hands. ”Wife!” he cried, ”What cloth is this?” Together they examined its crisscross Gallic plaid, the faded pattern of colors unlike anything the wife might weave. ”Take it to the Watcher,” said the wife. ”It is not right.”
”I dare not. The Watcher will think we made it, and we'll be punished.”
”Then unravel it, before someone comes, and sees it.” They dithered, unsure how to treat the nonconforming garment, and at last decided to bury it beneath the rest in the basket, and not think about that complex cloth, the contemplation of which they feared would drive them mad.
”Where is the Watcher?” she asked a peddler of bronze needles and pins, squatting with his polished wooden box of small, s.h.i.+ny wares.
”I have nothing of interest to him,” the peddler replied without addressing her question. ”My pins are all much alike, one to another, and all are proper pins, though hardly exceptional.”
”Where might I find the Watcher?” she asked a vendor of dried fish, who sat between two baskets of equal capacity. As it was early in the day (as she would realize later) the basket on his left was full of whole, flat fillets encrusted with salt, while the one on his right contained a scattering of cut, broken, and even soft, stewed morsels, but none chewed, none eaten.
”In the usual place,” was the reply. ”I have no need to go there. My fish are neither exceptionally odorous nor lacking in fishy aroma.” Then why, Pierrette wondered, had he averted his eyes, as if afraid.
Was everyone secretly terrified of King Minho and his unseen, perhaps immaterial, spies? Was his pleasure perhaps expressed less often than his pain? And did that signify an imbalance, even in this perfect realm between the substandard and the exceptional, and did fear of singular accomplishment in either direction incline everyone to conscientious mediocrity?
When she found the Watcher it was by accident, straying into a small square where three streets met.
There, between two parallel marble walls seemingly purpose-built, was a statue of Minho himself. But what a strange statue! Approached from the left, Minho smiled and held out both hands in the manner of one receiving a gift. From the opposite end of the walled pa.s.sage, which was hardly wider than the king's shoulders, his brow appeared furrowed, his nose wrinkled as if someone had eaten spicy food, then broken wind nearby. His eyes seemed narrowed in anger. His palms were raised as it to fend off something unpleasant.
Pierrette went back and forth between both viewing positions several times, but she could not tell if the statue turned, and changed expressions, every time she walked around to the other side, or if it had been carved with two faces, two welcoming arms and two that rejected. She tried to crawl through, betweenthe statue's legs, but could not fit. Peering up between its legs, she could see no evidence of a second face at the back of the head.
Did Minho peer from the statue's stone eyes, then reach out with an ephemeral hand to bless visitors from the east, or chastise approachers from the west? Or did each visitor's own convictions about the quality of his goods govern his choice of entrances, and did his predispositions themselves generate whatever feelings of pride, pleasure, dismay, or despair he experienced, without burdening the overworked king with trivial rewards and punishments?
In villages and ports across the islands, she would find other Watchers, all much the same, but would find no immediate clarification of their exact functioning.
One evening, Pierrette sat at the feet of a poet, in a tavern where men sniffed wine, but did not drink.
She did, but the wine tasted like pond water, and failed to raise her spirits at all. The others seemed to progress toward drunkenness as they sniffed and raised their cups. The tavern master collected goblets already sniffed, and poured their contents into a tun. When that vessel was filled, his strapping son took it away for aging, and brought another, fresh and cool from the cave.
The poet sang of glories past, of the ancient Sea Kings who mapped and explored, and circ.u.mnavigated the world. Of course Pierrette knew that the earth was a sphere, or nearly so. Anyone who had read the Ionian Greeks knew that, and understood the means of calculating its size. It was vast, and she felt it would be wasted if that sphere were mostly ocean. Lands surrounded the Middle Sea: surely the great ocean that lapped these island sh.o.r.es must also be ringed with undiscovered continents, however far away those lands might be. The irony of her thoughts was not lost on Pierrette. She had found the Fortunate Isles, the ultimate destination of explorers everywhere, and already her mind reached out for more distant unknown strands.
The climax of the poet's narration was the story of Minho himself. He had shared his mother's womb with a twin, whom his father named Minos after himself. It was the traditional appellation of the kings of Knossos and Thera. When the elder Minos stuck out his thumb, his little namesake had sucked it most greedily, and yowled his disapproval when it gave no milk. Little Minho, however, only eyed his father with his great, dark, baby eyes.
Only one son could become king, in his appointed time, and aggressive little Minos was the obvious candidate. But the doting father did not scant his gentler son. ”I will divide my kingdom,” he decided.
”Minos, who commands and demands, will be king, but not high priest, as is customary. Instead, sweet Minho will rule my spiritual realm.”
Thus it transpired. Minho, not required to learn the art of war, the science of control, the mathematics of taxation, instead studied the acc.u.mulated wisdom of the scholars, the natures of the G.o.ds, and, of course, magic. Chief among the tools of his trade was the Great Orb, which the poet called a ”water-sphere.” In its clear depths the universe existed in simulacrum, as clouds and shadows that sometimes coalesced into images, and at other times merely obscured. Because the poet described it as mounted on a bronze ring and three legs, Pierrette suspected it was not water but crystal or gla.s.s, like her little ”serpent's egg.”