Part 20 (1/2)

How had it been for young Kraton, when his family finally achieved these sh.o.r.es? Had Aurinia set him to play with other children-children like Neheresta, perhaps, already ancient except in body-who had made of him their novelty, their toy? Or had he just become bored with the pa.s.sage of years, then centuries, during which his body remained impotent and manhood never arrived? Now she looked upon the travesty, the monstrosity, she had unwittingly created, and . . . her last meal-olives, an apple, and gruel she had made of steeped, uncooked grains-rose in her throat, and spewed over the grinning Kraton.

He continued to grin, wiped his face with an extended finger, and asked, ”What is this? What new thing have you done?” Then, as he examined his finger, it began to change. First, it faded to the unhealthy hue of sour milk, then darkened through chestnut to ashy black. As Kraton stared, uncomprehending, his flesh turned to powder and crumbled away. A twig of black bone remained.

Pierrette saw-as he did not-that his nose and his cheekbones were also changing, darkening, and soon Kraton also realized that what he had seen happen to his finger was occurring everywhere that Pierrette's vomitus had come to rest. But he seemed to feel no pain-or else pain, like everything else, was so prosaic, so boring that it no longer moved him. He smiled, even as his ravaged face began to crumble. ”When at first I cried that my little dogcart was no longer fun to ride in, Mother said 'Pray to the G.o.ddess, that someday you will again find pleasure in something new.' I have not prayed for a long time, and you were a long time coming . . .” His lips were now stiff and brittle, and Pierrette had to lean quite close, in order to hear his last words: ” . . . but you heard me . . .” He crumbled to the gleaming pavement, that had never before been soiled.

”I am not the G.o.ddess,” she whispered. ”I am less than her fingernails, or the breath from her mouth, but I now know she heard you. Fare well in your new adventure, child. You have long lived in the beginning, and now find the end. Perhaps in the Otherworld you'll live out the middle, which I denied you.”

Someone jarred her shoulder and pushed her aside. Another figure, blurred by her tears, came between her and the darkening heap on the s.h.i.+ning tiles. In no time at all Pierrette was edged away as the occupants of Kraton's house crowded around his remains to witness, for the first time, something entirely new. She fled, retracing her route, and did not stop running until she topped the ridge. Then she wipedher eyes on her skirt, and watched the villa roof collapse inward in a cloud of black dust. A vagrant breeze plucked at the roiling ma.s.s, and scattered it eastward across the island's spine.

She heard no one approach her vantage, so when something soft, warm and velvety nudged the back of her neck, she leaped up. ”Gustave!” she squealed. The donkey, cautiously a.s.suming her sudden move as rejection, skittered away, then turned his back on her as if insulted-but nonetheless rolled one large, brown eye in her direction, on principle. When she knelt and encircled his neck with her arms, kissed his forehead and scratched his ears, he relented slightly, and his nuzzling almost pushed her over.

”How did you find me?” she asked. Of course, he might not have told her, even if he had suddenly acquired the gift of speech. Donkeys had few advantages over people-else they would hold reins and ride, and people would bear donkeys' burdens for them-so those few tricks of their equine trade were best left unmentioned.

Even without halter or lead (Gustave had rid himself of those early on) she had no difficulty getting him to follow her to the boat, or to climb awkwardly aboard, where he stood expectantly by the sternmost thwart, beneath which were his bags of tender, sweet, and flavorful grain.

By the time Pierrette reached her boat-several hours after the terrible events of the day, or so it felt-a vast swath of ashy darkness lay across several hills and fields. By the time she had raised sail and pushed off, it seemed no larger. In truth it was not, for there had not been much evil in her even by King Minho's severe definition, except the blind pride she had exhibited when she instructed Bellagos to seek not a mythic death, but a long life, in the Fortunate Isles.

Part Four - A New Day

Pierette's Journal

Now I have most of the answers I need to decide, and to act. I cannot discover the others except through the consequences of my action. The clues were there all along. Minho pulled his kingdom out of the stream of time, but not (entirely) from the realm of causality, of consequence, and as long as the Isles remain accessible from and to the mundane realm, they cannot be entirely free of its constraints. Thus Minho's strict prohibitions against change, innovation, and above all, consumption, are not results of his spell-they are the spell, or are at least an essential axiom within it.

I only require to discover just what those constraints are. What are the bonds Minho has been afraid to break, that keep his kingdom from drifting entirely away, but also threaten to pull it back to its point of origin, and its destruction-at the very moment it was saved. This much I now understand: every change, as when I ate the baker's bread or defecated beneath a bush, has weakened Minho's spell. How has he dared allow me the freedom of his kingdom? Surely he has felt the ripples and snags I have caused in the fabric of his creation. There can be only one conclusion: that while I have been dawdling about, temporizing, unable to decide, he has been working to make final and complete the separation of his kingdom-while I am still in it.

Once entirely outside the frame of reality that encompa.s.ses both worlds I know and have experienced, Minho's spell will be unrestrained by consequences: consumption and change, defecation and innovation, will not affect it. Minho's power will be absolute, and mine, based in an Otherworld no longer accessible to me, will be gone. I will be bride or slave, at his wish, but the consequence to me will be as nothing when weighed against the suffering the world has endured, and will forever endure.

The terrible initial spell that caused the Black Time did not truly break the Wheel. It weakened it, and made the route from past to future along its rim impa.s.sible, but the Wheel of Time is not broken. It has stretched. Just as the universe expands to fill the ken of questing eyes and hearts, so time stretches backward and forward to the limits of speculation, for the circle unbroken is not, as the ancients had it, infinitely recursive, a constraint upon time, but is infinite.

I surmised that the event that caused the Black Time would not be found within its devastation, but I underestimated the stretching of the wheel. No primitive shaman of the hunter Aam's era uttered that spell, for Aam's remote past did not yet exist. The originator of that cold and final h.e.l.l is here, in these so-called Fortunate Isles, and his name is . . . Minho.

Chapter 32 - The Fall of the.

Kingdom Pierrette carefully wrapped her journal in oiled cloth and returned it to her small watertight chest. She was a day short of her exile's end, but there was nothing left for her to see. The central island lay ahead, and she was approaching it opposite her original landing place. Was there somewhere she could go ash.o.r.e unseen?

She could not dismiss that last sight of Kraton's island, that vision of black despair. Horrified, she realized that she had seen it before, repeatedly, beginning the first time she had eaten a red amanita mushroom and a pinch of nightshade beside the sacred pool. It was the Black Time, the end of the world and the beginning, which she had long foreseen. Like the universe in Minho's water-sphere, it was a microcosm, a miniature, but not a false beginning or end. Viewing it, she at last understood the full enormity of Minho's crime.

He was the sorcerer whose spell had warped and distorted the ever-turning Wheel of Time. He was the usurper who had taken goodness from the world and h.o.a.rded it, upsetting the balance and giving rise to the Eater of G.o.ds-whose advantage was ever so slight, but which made him unstoppable. Minho's magic, his overweening pride and self-importance, had caused the distortion of all magics, had destroyed the pristine beauty of the sacred groves, the elusive beauty of nymphs and dryads, the wisdom of centaurs and small sylvan G.o.dlets. His twin was not the only greedy one. Just as Minos had sucked the material wealth of his kingdom, so Minho had done with the awe and wonder, the mysteries, the elusive joy of discovery. Love him? Pierrette was surprised, upon reflection, to realize that her feeling for him fell short of outright hatred. Now the puzzle was solved. She knew what she must do, to obey the G.o.ddessMa , and she felt no qualms about doing it. No qualms at all.

Once again wearing her rough-and-simple boy's clothing, Pierrette steered her boat close along the sh.o.r.e of the palace island. There had to be a sea entrance to Minho's archives, because in the bard's tale the king had rested the miniature simulacrum of his land in a tidal pool. There were many niches in the rock, with overhangs that blocked the bright moonlight. The darknesses looked like the entrances of caves, but on close inspection, all turned out to be only shadows.

The night was half gone. Pierrette had no time to waste. She had hoped to find another entrance, because she had no idea what kind of reception she would get at the palace, a day early. With a sigh of resignation, she tugged on the steering oar and, shortly, felt her boat's prow grind against rock beneath an overhang that would conceal it from sight except from the sea. ”Stay aboard and wait for me,” she commanded Gustave. Then she began the long climb to the palace. There was no obvious trail, so she tramped over the lovely blossoms that turned their tiny white faces toward the moon. It was a long climb.

She was out of breath when she reached the top.

Edging around to the portico and the entrance, she pushed on the great door, which swung wide on silent hinges. Only then did she hear the clipping of hard hooves on the tiles. Gustave had not obeyed.

She sighed. ”Very well then, you may come with me, but if you leave t.u.r.ds on the carpets or eat the lace from the draperies, blame only yourself if someone beats you.” No one was about. She made her way toward Minho's chambers; the secret stairway to his archives would not be anywhere distant or inconvenient for him. She listened at the door. There was no sound-but then, she hadn't expected there to be: surely, fastidious Minho's great spell precluded such prosaic and annoying trivia as snores. She couldn't imagine him snoring as her father did, or ibn Saul.

That door also opened easily. A single lamp glowed warmly upon the wall. Minho's great bed, with a coverlet of white fur, was empty. Truly, the task he had set himself must be an arduous one, if he found no time to sleep at night. She examined the walls for any hint of a crack or a protrusion that might hide a secret latch, but she found nothing. She pulled back a rug, hoping to find a trapdoor in the floor, but saw only smooth, unbroken tiles.

At the far end of the chamber was another door. Heavy bronze brackets were mounted to its casing, and a thick oaken bar stood next to it, but it, too, opened easily at her touch. She gasped, amazed. This was no man's room; the white marble walls were streaked with palest rose, like a hint of sunrise on a clear morning. The translucent floor was shot with glimmering gold. Pierrette suspected it was not marble, but hard, fine quartzite-and that the gold was real.

Looking for a second exit from the room, Pierrette found another chamber, hung with women's clothing in the Cretan style-skirts and dresses designed to leave the b.r.e.a.s.t.s bare, and sheer capes that would neither warm nor conceal. Pierrette, in her leather trousers, felt like an invader in that place.

The bed, centerpiece of the frilly chamber, was large enough for several people to sleep comfortably-or for two to frolic in. Curtains of sheerest diaphane were drawn back from a window . . . but no, it was not a window at all! It was hard, flat, and painted with a scene of sheep grazing on a hillside of impossible pink flowers. Though this room was not at all to her taste (which was simple), she knew that it was intended for her. It was more than a bedroom; with its false window, it was a prison. She was sure that the clothing in the small room-nothing she would dream of wearing-would all fit her to perfection.

She heard a noise from beyond the door. The skin on her arms and back tightened, and gooseb.u.mpsformed. Now that she understood what the room was, she was afraid that she might be caught in it.

Someone could shut the door and place the bar in its cradles. Her fear of discovery was drowned in her terror of being trapped. She exited into Minho's own room.

The noisemaker was Hatiphas. ”You again! You aren't supposed to return until dawn. What are you doing here? Snooping? What are you looking for?” Thankfully, Gustave was not within his line of vision.

”Where is Minho? Where is his secret door?”

”If I knew, would I tell you? The king is engaged upon a vital task. Why would I allow you to disturb him? You, of all people?”

”Why not me? Is it because his task concerns me? Is it because I've given him sixteen days to prepare himself to confront me? Let Minho decide for himself. Where?”

Hatiphas laughed snidely. ”Look all you wish. You cannot get there from here. You will not find him until he is ready to be found-until he is ready to put you in your proper place, which is . . . there.” He nodded toward the pink-and-white prison, then departed.

Pierrette looked around herself. The entrance to Minho's secret place had to be here, in the palace, in Minho's own suite. The fibrous, linty dust on his kilt, that day on the balcony, would not still have clung to him if he had traveled any great distance outside where there had been a breeze. Dust. Lint-laden dust.

Pierrette threw back the coverlet on Minho's great bed. Had the sc.r.a.ping sound she had heard, blindfolded, been the noise of the bed being pulled aside? On her knees and elbows, she peered underneath. Was there a faint shadow on the tiles, there? There was plenty of dust.

She tried to push the huge bed aside. It would not budge. Disheartened, she looked toward the door.

Hatiphasknew where the secret entrance was. Would anyone else know? A servant? The dust under the bed was not so thick that it had never been swept. But who would have swept it? Not Minho himself.

The image of a delicate, youthful face arose before her eyes: Neheresta would know. With all her years, she would know everyone in the palace and, likely, whose ch.o.r.e it was to tidy the king's chamber.

Where would she be? Pierrette reviewed what she knew of the palace. She did not think there was an understory beneath her feet. Where would servants live?

The levels of the palace were successively lower, following the slope. Surely the kitchens were adjacent to the large hall, and the cooks' rooms not much further away. The quarters for domestics would also be close to their work. She looked both ways down the hall outside Minho's door. One led past the room where she had slept, and the hallway seemed to continue for a long distance. The corridor to her right was shorter, turning a corner only a few doors past where she stood. That way: ordinary residents could expect to wait for a servant to trudge the long hall, bringing an extra pillow, but it would not do for Minho to have to wait for anything. The domestics quarters would be close at hand.

Just around the corner, dozens of small, unimpressive wooden doors lined the hallway. She had no time to examine each room. She shrugged. What did she care whom she disturbed? ”Neheresta!” she cried out. ”Neheresta!” From several doorways she heard grumbles and the tossing of bedclothes. Some distance down the hall, she saw the ancient girl emerge.

”What is it? Why are you calling me?” Neheresta, Pierrette observed, did not look well. Her hair was tangled, her hands trembled, and . . . were those the marks of a whip, on her shoulders? She offered no explanation, so Pierrette did not pursue that. ”Neheresta, you must help me. I must find Minho. Who here knows the way to his hidden archives?”