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Chapter 16 - An Experiment

Anselm had not faded away. He was delighted with the parcel from ibn Saul—an account of the Wendish folk of the far northern seacoasts. The Frankish king was concerned with Wendish expansion, and had financed the scholar's voyage to the Viking Sea.

Pierrette eagerly read of ibn Saul's voyage. One passage in particular entranced her. She did not know, on the first reading or the second, how important the knowledge it contained would be.

* * *

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* * *

The Wendish Women's Rite

I hid with the village men at the edge of the clearing. The priest stood on the rock. It was the dark of the twelfth moon. Women danced naked round the standing stone. "Run through water," cried the priest. He dipped a balsam branch in a blue-painted wooden bowl, and sprinkled water on them.
"Run through fire," he shrieked. He blew on a coal in a brass pot, igniting bark from the paper tree, and cast it among dry boughs. Three times around the stone the women leaped crackling flames. My companions claimed the smoke shaped itself as a fat woman stirring a pot with a stick. I myself saw only smoke.
"Run through blood," the priest next commanded. He sprinkled running women's hair with blood from a young goat. He mixed ash, water, and blood with secret elements from a leather sack, and marked their breasts with circles. He drew waxing crescent moons around their navels, and broken crosses upon their knees.
"Now flee," the priest cried, and the women ran toward the woods—and us. The great standing stone was no harder or more erect than were we men, as we awaited them.
We snatched them and threw them upon the ground. Such was our ardor—and theirs—that no man's seed was left unmixed with another's in any woman's womb.
That was in my first year among the Wends. I departed when the river was free of ice. Of the swollen bellies among the women, two or three at least would bear sons with fine noses and large ears not unlike my own.
The "magic" of the rite requires no recourse to the supernatural. From midwinter to midsummer those women had lived apart in a large hut made from elm bark. In such proximity, the moon worked upon all as if one. When one shed dark blood, so did the others. When the priest chose the night for the rite, he did not study the sun and the length of days, but the moon—and chose that time when all the women were most ready to conceive. Only then did he mount the stone with his bowls, branches, and goat's blood.
We men, after long abstinence, were preternaturally aroused by naked flesh long denied us. Did the shaman know that the mixing of seed in those eager wombs might have efficacious effect, when no man's seed, weak or strong, could be separated from another's? Did he know that it is most vigorous after long abstention, or that the fortress womb defends best against seed it knows well, and is most easily invaded by the soldiers of a foreign king?
I told my princely sponsor that the Wends' burgeoning population resulted not from magic but from the manipulation of natural processes, and could not be reversed by magical means. "You will have to fight them," I told my patron.
Years later, when my observations were put to parchment, when copies had been sent to sages from Constantinople to Gades, I returned to the country of the Wends.
At the portage where Baltic and Euxine rivers meet, I again met the priest of the Women's Rite, and traded Black Sea gold for smoked deer meat. He was not happy to see me, for in the years after my departure, the Rite's efficacy declined, and few infants were born. Now he was priest no longer, instead supplying smoked meat for the long Varangian ships that ply the Dnieper, the great river to the Euxine Sea.
I protested that I had done no magic; Christian beliefs, the cult of the Virgin, had caused his women to forsake strict observance of the rite. Happily, my gold outweighed old grudges, and I proceeded northward unmolested and well supplied.

* * *

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* * *

Pierrette's hand trembled. In ibn Saul's pragmatic account was one more answer to her burning questions. "Your friend Muhammad is a powerful sorcerer, Master Anselm," she said. "Imagine! He destroyed the fertility of the entire Wendish tribe."

Anselm looked up, confused. "What are you talking about? He's a scholar, not a sorcerer."

"He's an intuitive sorcerer. He doesn't know it, but this manuscript is a well-organized spell. Its postulates, logical development, and conclusion devastated the poor Wends. No woods-priest's magic could stand against it."

"Nonsense! There's no magic in a simple account of what he observed."

Pierrette grinned broadly. "But it isn't simple, and his incantation is no mere account. Master, consider this: Ibn Saul's unspoken first postulate, is that he is—just as you said—a simple observer. Rephrasing that . . . `What I can see is the truth, and what I cannot is false.' That's his first magical statement.

"That said, he describes the rite itself.

"Then he cites natural phenomena for its success. He postulates that synchronicity of the women's cycles made them ready to conceive, then that the mixing of seed allowed strong to supplant weak, and finally, that the womb has no defense against unfamiliar seed. That is ibn Saul's magic!"

Was the girl unhinged? Anselm saw no relationship between spells and ibn Saul's statements. "It would be self-defeating," he said. "Every such `spell' he uttered or wrote would reduce the magics in the world, until at last . . . there would be . . ." His words tapered off as he realized what he had been about to surmise.

"There would be only one magic left!" Pierrette finished the statement. "One single magic based entirely upon what can be observed and parsed by logic as rigid as a geometric theorem. And doesn't that most elegantly explain your own diminishing abilities?"

The mage was pale. "There's no hope, is there? It's not fair. Even Minho couldn't prevail against such spells, but his isolation protects him. I'm caught, because the geas my master put on me was to complete a task, and I failed. Minho doesn't exist in this world of passing time, so no scholar can find him to debunk him. I have no such advantage."

"If I could find Minho," Pierrette mused, "I could ask him to free you. He can't be without compassion. But . . . would you want to live a few years as an ordinary man, and then to die?"

"If he gave me back my youth—or at least my manly vigor, and enough years to enjoy a wife, and a child or two . . ."

"I'll do what I can, Master," she said, saddened by his wistful bitterness.

He shook his head. "I won't hold my breath and turn blue while I wait."

"Where there is understanding, there is hope, Master. Some magics still work. Though no spell can survive rational explanation, the world is large, and skeptics are few."

"But powerful," he countered. "Sorcerers guard their secrets. Men like ibn Saul hire scribes to copy their . . . their spells . . . and publish them. They sow the seeds of my destruction."

"You mustn't give up hope. I've just begun to understand the principles underlying our vocation."

"That's a grand task, child," the mage said quietly, sadly, "and there's so little time."

"Time, Master? Time is an ally, not an enemy, for how can the skeptics weigh or measure it?"

"There are sandglasses, and water clocks . . ."

"How imperfect they are," she rejoined. "The glass in the library runs slowly when I memorize boring declensions, and fast when I read of heroes and generals, or the romantic verse of . . . No, Master. Time will be the last magic to fall to the pen of the observer."

"Here it's held at bay," he agreed, "unlike its swift passage outside this place."

"You see? You say it passes swiftly outside, but it doesn't. When I leave here, I haven't aged an hour, though I eat and sleep many times. To you, the centuries outside have flickered by in days. Time is the oldest magic, and the least rational."

"Then what do you propose?"

"I don't wish to say. There's one more experiment. As for ibn Saul, he's only one man, and there are few others. Many centuries will pass before the effects of their scribblings become widely apparent."

* * *

Pierrette's experiment needed only a white feather, a willow leaf, and half a mussel shell with a pearly interior. The spell was a simple calling and required, she hoped, no more than material similitudes, and a place to perform it, a place she remembered well.

The campsite in the high forest looked as it had that wan morning long past. Had she ever really been five years old, and innocent? Inconstant time! She was how old? Thirteen? Fifteen? How many ageless months and years had she pored over books and scrolls? Was she a crone, in a body preternaturally young?

She kindled fire, taking pleasure from the way her simple spell worked. She built the flames high with dry pine branches, then added oak for the embers it made. She placed leaf, feather, and opalescent shell across the fire from where she sat.

Only one element was missing: Marie had been here before. Now she was in Massalia, scarred by her encounter with . . . but she must not dwell on that, or the one who answered her call might be someone she did not wish to meet again.

Guihen . . . She stroked the feather, calling in a soft voice across sixty thousand Roman paces between this place and the mouth of River Rhodanus. The Camargue, channels and hummocks, tasselled rushes where salt sea and mountain creek intergraded in a balance that shifted with the seasons, with ebb of tide and springtime spate.

Her mind strayed to the boundaries that constrained magical realms. Bleak heights were simple places where few things grew and only birds frequented. Rivers might be boundaries, or might have some different quality. The sea must have a magical nature all its own. The Camargue was land and water too. Was it a boundary or—neither sea, river, nor shore—a place where all spells were unconstrained?

Guihen . . . She glanced across the fire.

"You've learned well, child," said the sprite in the old Ligurian tongue. His white tunic shifted between gold and red amber in the dying fire's light. "Your voice was a wind that bent reeds and rushes, and rippled quiet pools. Look at you. Despite your silly garb, you're the image of your mother."

"You haven't changed, Master Guihen," Pierrette responded, "though perhaps my `great wind' has bent your ears a bit." She giggled, feeling about five years old. That startled Guihen's hen, whose disturbed clucking sounded like soft laughter. Guihen stroked the bird gently.

"It is good that you still laugh, child," said Guihen. "There's little laughter where I have been."

"Why is that?"

"The vast Camargue becomes lonely. One by one old friends fade, and their empty houses sink into the morass. Saint Giles's doe wanders alone—the old hermit was Christian, so I doubt he's been consumed, but others aren't so lucky . . ."

Pierrette had the feeling that she should know that tale. The sprite had brought other concerns to the fore, and she decided to leave the story of the Christian saint and the doe for another time.

"Consumed, you said?" If the Eater of Gods stalked the Camargue, where the old ones were safe from Christian dissolution . . . there might not be time to learn what she must. Would she—again—be forced to confront him unprepared?

"I haven't seen the stalker. If I had, I wouldn't be here." Pierrette envisioned Guihen's eyes no longer moon-pale, tinged violet, but lit with hot, red flames. She gasped, then stared into his face to assure herself that his eyes were as they always had been.

"We must strengthen you against such an onslaught," she said. "You, and your friend with the iron staff—and my master Anselm, too."

"Strengthen us? How? The tide of mystical wondrousness ebbs, and the world becomes hard and logical. Salt mills, churches, roads, and canals ring the watery plain, and we who survive become constrained."

"You must break out of your confinement," Pierrette said thoughtfully, thinking of what she had learned from Muhammad ibn Saul and the Wendish priest. "Bishops in Arelate and Lugdunum may come from Rome, Ravenna, and far Constantinople, but only Per Otho preaches in Citharista, and old grannies still tell tales and gather herbs."

"What's that have to do with me?"

"You must re-create yourself in the world beyond the Camargue," she stated. "You must no longer hide while people tell tales that mold you into an orphaned Christian boy."

"What's that matter? I am what I am."

"No, sprite, you are not," she said emphatically. "You are what they believe you to be. That or—as you fade away—you'll be nothing at all. You must do as I say."

"You're right," Guihen said, no longer cajoling a precocious child. "I don't understand. Perhaps you're right about this other thing as well. Perhaps it's time to taste the fruit of the seed I planted, when I saved you from the angry gens."

Pierrette nodded. "There's a woman who lives outside Citharista's fallen wall," she said. "Her baby wails all night, and doesn't eat. You must make him laugh—and then he'll sleep. When his eyes close, leave this feather stuck to his forehead with honey."

"Is that all?"

"Oh, no. You'll be busy indeed. There's milk to be soured, and yarn to be tangled; there's a lost boy to be found, and returned to his parents' doorstep with a feather in his hand and a little song in his head. There are pranks to be played, and good deeds to be done . . ."

Pierrette's list was long.

"By the time I do all that," Guihen protested, "I'll have faded away."

"By the time you are half done, you'll no longer fade. That . . . or you'll have drawn the attention of one whom we both fear . . ."

"I'll be careful! None but little children will see my face."

"That's wise. Now go—and we shall see if I'm right."

* * *

On the way down from the forest, Pierrette felt cold, as if no heart beat within her chest, no warm blood pulsed in her veins. This experiment was no small manipulation of light or fire, no affliction of boils on a lecher's groin. She now tinkered not only with the very existence of poor Guihen, but with the lives of innocent folk, for her own ends and edification.

Was she wrong? Should she have constrained Guihen—who seemed to take pleasure in perverse prankishness—to do only good deeds among the gens? But no. The Christian boy-hero Guihen—the diluted, approved version—might do that, but it would only further attenuate the poor sprite. Prankishness and quirks were as much a part of the ancient Ligurian spirit that motivated him as his ungainly ears. Without them, he would not be Guihen.

She had touched upon another truth of magic and the nature of the world, but months would pass before she thought of it again, and years before she fully understood.

She made fists of her fingers, but the cold was inside her. Ice in her veins merely reflected the state of her mind: a manipulative mind that would risk good and evil, guilty and innocent alike, in furtherance of her sorcerous education.

* * *

There were three soldiers in her battle, and Guihen was only one. She had no tokens to call John of the Bears, only a place, and a process. The place was the trail to the Eagle's Beak, where Starved John had turned her away as an unready child. The process? That was no more than mounting the path, looking for two pairs of greenish, luminous stars—his faded companions. As she climbed, she called his name, and looked up at the narrow band of stars.

There! A pair of lime-tinged stars glimmered behind a veil of sea-blown fog. "Yan Oors! I see your bear. Where is its mate?" Two more dull stars resolved themselves on the opposite side of the trail . . . and starless blackness filled the place where the trail broke out on the stony crest. Yet no words answered hers, and when she looked closely, faint stars appeared on the other side of the looming shadow.

"Oh, poor John," she murmured sadly. "Are you so diminished that the light of a distant star pierces your vitals?" Was the gaunt one that far gone? But she felt no pity, only purpose—and she was not to be thwarted. Whatever wisp remained of the Celt god, embodiment of the terror men felt when they invaded the hostile wood, she would use it. She might yet stave off his complete dissolution.

"Hear me, Yan Oors," she commanded. "Hear me, and do as I say . . ." As with Guihen, she gave him tasks to perform. A shepherd must awaken in terror, finding his sheep scattered and his fire trampled out. He must find the outline of a bear's foot pressed in his fire's ashes. Was that too much for a faded wraith?

Could a certain young boy—slipping from his bed and out of his father's hut to urinate—be frightened by eyes that glowed green, too widely spaced for foxes' eyes?

No affirmation rewarded her as she listed the tasks she wanted done, but the paired stars continued to glow, and the shadow still blocked the outlet to the crest.

Finished, she sighed breathily. "Good luck," she wished the dark spirit. "May we meet face-to-face, when all is accomplished." The blot obscuring the stars disappeared, and when she looked for the eyes of the bears, she saw only the twinkle of ordinary luminaries.

"And now," she sighed, again scrambling upward, "for the most difficult of my recruits . . . my master, Anselm."

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