“Will they be friendlier to people who approach them on foot?” Jakob asked.
“My concerns exactly,” Aziz said. “I know a place, about two days by horse up the coastline, where these people have a small village. Ibrim and I can get horses from our friends, and be back here with word about the Vascones by the end of the week.”
“A good plan,” Gwellyn said. “Except I’ll make the trip with you instead of Ibrim.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea—” Aziz began.
“I don’t care what you think,” Gwellyn snapped. “My gems paid for this voyage, my thoughts are the ones that count.”
“Of course,” Aziz said, patiently, “but let me explain. This whole area is still very unstable—Islam doesn’t quite control it all as yet. There are lots of little skirmishes going on all over the place. Let’s say something happened to me up the coast. You might well be at risk—forgive me, a Tocharian, with no connections to anyone from anyplace around here.”
“At risk from whom?” Gwellyn demanded. “You mean from some zealot follower of Islam who thought I was the enemy?”
Jakob put his hand on Gwellyn’s shoulder. “He’s right,” he said quietly. “You could easily be mistaken for a remnant of Vandal or Visigoth. But you’re right too. You’re both right in your own ways. So I’ll go instead of you. I know how to talk to Mohammetans.” He smiled serenely.
Aziz exhaled derisively, and shook his head. “Please, you’re too old to ride hard two full days and then back again on horse.”
“Is that so?” Jakob flushed. “I could ride you into the ground any day—”
“I’ll go,” Paschos said. “I’ll go with Aziz. We Greeks have had plenty of experience communicating with zealous followers of all kinds. Is that acceptable?”
Aziz looked at Ibrim. “Yes,” they finally said.
“Yes,” Jakob relented.
“No,” Gwellyn insisted. Everyone stared at him. He grunted his assent, at last.
“Look at the bright side,” Ibrim said. “We can sample the hospitality of this village while Aziz and Paschos are gone.”
Which they did. Jakob’s coins, of which they still had a few, bought them fine fruity wines and delicious fish and herbs. Gwellyn’s charm, of which he seemed to have more than ever as he approached his 18th birthday, brought him a woman with fiery dark eyes and pitch-black hair.
He enjoyed himself immensely with her. But he still saw Lilee when he closed his eyes…
Paschos returned four days later.
He didn’t have to say a word.
He showed them the flute.
“THEY CALL THEMSELVES Euskaldunak,” Paschos said to Gwellyn as the two rode horses on the shore with Ibrim and Jakob. They proceeded at an easy pace.
Ibrim had somehow come up with the four mounts. It was clear now to Gwellyn—and he assumed Jakob and Paschos as well—that Islam would do anything it could to strengthen its hold on this area, including gaining whatever possible knowledge of some of the strange people who inhabited various valleys between the mountains and the sea. Gwellyn shrugged inside: If that helped his search for the singers, then so be it, as Jakob might say. The success or failure of Islam in this area was no concern of his.
“Euskaldunak,” Gwellyn replied. “Doesn’t seem too far a stretch from Vascones—Euska, Vasco—so perhaps your Strabo was talking about the same people.”
Paschos smiled. “You have the makings not only of a good zoologist, but a linguist. The real question, of course, is not whether these are the people Strabo talks about, but the people Aristotle describes.”
“In that lost manuscript?”
The smile deepened. “Yes. We should be there soon. Unfortunately, there was no one in the village really knowledgeable enough in—in their pictures—to tell us what we wanted to know. But they promised to have such a man available to talk to us, upon our return.”
“What do you suppose they mean by pictures?”
“I don’t know,” Paschos mused. “Recall what Aristotle says about them—if these are the same people—they have no words for abstractions. By that he must mean, no words for that which is not physically present—”
“No words for the past or future?”
“Yes, and no words for generalities like truth and beauty,” Paschos said. “So to describe them, these people would need something more than words. Perhaps that’s what they mean by pictures…something deeper than what we mean…”
“How did you understand what they were saying—if their language is unique?” Gwellyn asked.
“Aziz speaks a bit of their language—”
Gwellyn frowned.
“—but some of them speak some peculiar variant of Latin as well. Peculiar, but I can make most of it out. Likely you will too.”
“Good.” They rode on a bit further. “You think the pictures are a codex of some sort?” Gwellyn asked.
“Perhaps,” Paschos said. “All I know is that these people place some very special importance on them, and the pictures have some connection to the flute.”
GWELLYN KNEW THAT the Vascones were not themselves the singers. Paschos had made it clear that they were physically not much different from people like Paschos and Gwellyn, and conversed in speech not song. But Gwellyn still held some secret hope that somehow Paschos was wrong, and the Vascones would in fact look like the man whose bones he and his brother had crushed and burned by that river in their homeland so long ago.
When he finally saw the Vascones in the flesh, five days later, he sighed. Paschos of course had not been wrong. Gwellyn would have to settle for second best: perhaps these strange people had some first-hand knowledge of the singers and their whereabouts.
The Vascones were almost as good as their word: a guide took Gwellyn and his party to the “man” who knew about the “pictures” right after dinner. Except the man’s name was Mitxeleta, a woman with grey hair and keen eyes the same color, who looked to be about forty. Aziz dropped the smile he had been sporting since his reunion with Gwellyn and the others.
“I thought you said he was a man,” Aziz said testily to the guide, in the dialect of Latin that some of the Vascones spoke.
The guide shrugged.
“Something was no doubt lost in the translation,” Paschos said, clearly enjoying Aziz’s discomfort at seeking profound counsel from a woman.
“Don’t be so rigid,” Ibrim said softly to Aziz in Arabic. “Different places require different rules.”
“No,” Aziz replied in the same tongue. “Not when we are participating in the places. In that case, Islam requires the different places to operate by Islamic rules, otherwise Islam means nothing!”
Ibrim shook his head slowly.
The others looked as if they did not comprehend the conversation, though only the Vascones were not pretending.
Paschos began talking to the woman in her Latin.
Aziz grunted. “I guess for now we can proceed with this,” he said to Ibrim in Arabic, “wrong as it is. I don’t expect to reform the world with a single stroke.”
“…the flute and the pictures go together,” Mitxeleta was saying.
“Can you tell us how?” Paschos asked.
“They speak to us,” she replied.
“How?” Paschos pressed.
“Not with words,” she replied. “The flute tells us whether the story should be happy or sad. The pictures tell us the story.”
“Could we see the pictures?” Paschos asked. “Tomorrow morning perhaps? Or are they better seen in the evening?”
“It does not matter when they are seen. We bring the light. What matters is someone who knows how to prepare the light. And someone who can play the flute.”
“Can you prepare the light?” Paschos asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you play the flute?”
Her face reddened. “It is forbidden—”
“I’m sorry,” Paschos said. “I didn’t know.”
Mitxeleta continued. �
��It is forbidden for a woman to play the flute.”
“Rules,” Ibrim said again quietly in Arabic. “The whole world is bound by rules…”
“Forgive me,” Paschos said again to Mitxeleta. “Who could play the flute then?”
Mitxeleta pointed to the guide. “He can. If you ask him nicely.” She smiled.
The guide smiled in return, and nodded to Paschos and the others. “Certainly,” he said. “I would be honored to play it.”
“Could I just ask one question?” Gwellyn asked.
“Of course,” Paschos said.
Gwellyn addressed Mitxeleta. “Could you tell me what connection these pictures have to the people we call the singers?”
“We call them by a different name, but they are no doubt the same people, based on what I have been told of your descriptions,” she said.
“Yes?” Gwellyn urged. “And their relation to the pictures—did the singers make the pictures?”
“No,” Mitxeleta replied. “The singers are the pictures—the pictures are their story. And, in a way, our story as well.”
“I’m not sure I understand—” Gwellyn began.
“When could we see these wondrous pictures?” Paschos interjected.
“Right now,” Mitxeleta replied. “They are less than an hour’s walk from here. And I have the makings of the light already prepared.”
THE GROUP TRUDGED along an upward path in full moonlight. Mitxeleta carried three small lamps, each of which gave off a slightly different flickering light. The guide carried the flute.
“I wonder why she doesn’t wait until we get to the pictures to light the lamps,” Gwellyn mused.
“She says the lamps come on of their own accord,” Paschos replied, “every evening as the sun sets. They are lit by insects.”
“Ah yes,” Jakob said. “I’ve seen them fly with their pinpoints of fire in many a twilight.”
“Yet she said she prepared the light,” Gwellyn said. “How can light be controlled with insects?”
“I don’t know,” Paschos said. “I heard that the flickering has to be in just the right pattern for the pictures to emerge.”
“Amazing that these people are willing to go to such trouble for us when they hardly know us,” Gwellyn muttered.
“Perhaps it’s no trouble for them—maybe to them it’s a pleasure,” Jakob said.
“I took care of all the arrangements before you arrived,” Aziz said, testily. “They have been well compensated.”
Mitxeleta signaled a halt by a group of low, leafy shrubs. She pushed them aside, bent over, and disappeared inside them.
The guide gestured everyone else to follow, and did the same.
Gwellyn was the last. He had to get down on his hands and knees to proceed through the bushes, but when he got to the other side, he was able to recover most of his height.
He glanced around and saw he and the others were apparently on the inside of an ugly, splotchy-looking cave. The lamps seemed to be flickering more keenly now, or maybe it was just that they had the dark to themselves, with no competition from moonlight.
“Come.” Mitxeleta pointed to a corner of the cave, which looked like it had an opening into something else. Her grey eyes gleamed in the lamplight.
As they approached the opening, a group of moths suddenly roused themselves, and flew out of the first entrance.
“Perhaps they are sending someone a message,” Paschos said, only half joking.
The opening led to a second cave, which was much like the first, except Gwellyn noticed the dried excrement of some kind of animal.
This, in turn, led to a third cave, with a similar opening.
The fourth cave, which they all had to crawl into, but in which they were able to stand totally erect once inside, was the prize.
“My God,” Jakob gasped.
The walls and ceiling of the cavern were alive with three-dimensional overlapping paintings of bison, horses, reindeer, and other animals Gwellyn could not identify. They came in and out of vision in the flickering lamplight, in orange, yellow, red, blue-black…
“Like Heron’s wheels of life,” Paschos murmured. “I saw them once, in what was left of Alexandria… Individual pictures presented so quickly that they trick the eye into believing the images within are in motion…”
Gwellyn became aware of someone, Mitxeleta, pulling at his sleeve. “Sit there,” she said, and pointed to a spot on the far side of the cave. “From there the story becomes clear.”
Gwellyn and the others moved to that spot. Mitxeleta urged them again to sit. They did. Gwellyn noticed that Aziz did so very uncomfortably.
Mitxeleta did something to her lamps.
The guide sat motionless, flute in hand, near the front of the cave.
The flickering seemed to change—was somehow faster, and slower, at the same time. Its intensity seemed to fluctuate too, throbbing whiter, softer, brighter, lower in a pattern that meshed in some way with the alternating speeds…
“Now look,” Mitxeleta said. “First there, then there, then there.” She pointed to a far wall, then the ceiling, then a wall closer to them.
The animals seemed to move slowly on the far wall. They looked like bison. Now they moved more quickly, running over one another, starting to stampede over a cliff…
Some thing, some form, was chasing them…
A flute was playing…an unfamiliar melody, spare, deep, powerful…
Gwellyn’s breath caught in his throat.
The form chasing the bison was a singer…a single singer… Gwellyn could recognize the eyes in that head anywhere…
The singer carried a flute in one hand. He seemed to look at them. He put the flute to his lips and more unfamiliar melody emerged. He walked in flickers to the ceiling…
There he joined others of his kind, some clearly women and some children, as they sat by a blue-black river… They ate meat… Horses grazed in the back…reindeer poked in and out of a forest…and now in a stab of pulsing light the reindeer bolted away, across the river…the horses ran…some new form emerged from the forest…
Gwellyn realized with a start that the melody coming from the flute had changed… He stole a quick look at Jakob, who was staring at the ceiling, transfixed… The melody was the one they had heard in Barbaricon…
The new form from the forest was human, a man such as Gwellyn, Paschos, Ibrim, the Vascones, except differently clothed. He carried a knife in his hand… The singer’s people smiled at the man, who repaid the smile by thrusting his knife into one of their children… The other singers wailed—or perhaps it was the flute. One of them—not the first singer—jumped on the man and his knife. Both bled orange-red on the ceiling, and died there. The other singers walked slowly, sadly on to the nearest wall…
Now images of brightly colored butterflies, some orange, some blue, suddenly appeared and flew off the near wall. The singers caught some of them in their bare, gentle hands—
Mitxeleta made a sharp noise, that sounded sacred and anguished to Gwellyn’s ears…
The flute continued its Barbaricon melody…
And now every reindeer, every horse, every other shape on the near wall—except the few singers—changed into men with knives. They approached the singers, each of whom stood up, with just a flute in one hand, a butterfly in the other. They put the flutes and butterflies into their mouths, as the men with the knives slashed at them…
And the wall dissolved into a wash of orange-red…and the images grew fainter…until just one clear image remained…
The original singer, now at the very edge of the closest wall, who looked out at Gwellyn with an intensity he had never seen coming out of anyone’s eyes… Gwellyn couldn’t tell if the emotion was hate or love…
The flute screeched.
Another sharp sound emerged—this one from Ibrim, or Aziz.
The lights went out.
The cave was dark and silent, for a moment.
Then the flickering lamplight came on aga
in, in a different pattern.
“Would you like to see again?” Mitxeleta asked.
Gwellyn was about to say yes, please, but Jakob grabbed his arm, and pointed to Aziz.
His neck and arms were coated in blood.
He stood up, fell over, hands clutching at his throat for air. He was dead before anyone could utter another word.
JAKOB CAME TO Paschos very early the next morning.
Paschos put down his writing implement.
“We should talk now about last night,” Jakob said.
“Yes.” Paschos motioned Jakob to sit. “Can I get you some refreshment? Have you eaten?”
“Yes, I had a wonderful bread before,” Jakob said, and cleared his throat. He leaned over and spoke in his loud rasping whisper, even though no one else was in the dwelling. “I know my history—I know why you might have hatred for Aziz and Ibrim.”
Paschos looked at Jakob, said nothing.
“Carthage was destroyed completely by Hasan in 698,” Jakob continued. “Many died at Islamic hands, and brutally. They were not Carthaginians, Phoenicians, or Romans, those who died—they were your people, from Byzantium. Ioannes the Patrician was defending the city when it was besieged by Hasan.”
“So?”
“So? I saw how you wince every time Aziz and Ibrim chortle about Islamic conquests. I know my history. Was someone in your family killed when Hasan took the city? Is that it? It would give you ample reason to want to kill them!”
Paschos shook his head.
“Look,” Jakob whispered more insistently. “I don’t blame you. I’m sure I would feel the same, in your circumstances. But there’s more at stake here than your historical or personal grievances…already the Vascones are refusing to show us anything more. They’re talking of making sure no one ever sets loose those murderous demons in the caves again—”
“You really know nothing about me, and what I’m capable of, old man.” Paschos was white with anger. He calmed himself. “I apologize,” he said, sincerely. “Your age has nothing to do with your error.”
“Forget about apologies,” Jakob said. “None are needed, not to me. But tell me about my error regarding you—I want to learn.”
The Silk Code Page 10