Did a shadow of antlers rise athwart the stars? Did hoofs gallop? A wolf howled. Not for years had men heard wolves this near their city.
Tera butchered the sacrifice quickly and roughly, and cast the meat in the cauldron, while Nemeta cursed the Gods of Ys and summoned the Old Folk from their dolmens. They did not cook the food long before they forced down as much of it as they were able. Afterward they ate the holy toadstools, rolled themselves in blankets by the waning fire, and invoked sleep. It thundered upon them.
—Stars glimmered yet in the west, but had fled the pallor of the east. Hoarfrost crusted every blade of grass. Ice had formed on the stiffened blood around guts, hide, half-stripped bones. It made a skin over the stew in the kettle. Dust drifted on a dawn breeze from the ash underneath.
The women huddled close in their coverings, as if a wraith of heat lingered for them. They shook with weariness. Breath smoked at each hoarse word.
“So we know,” Tera said. “Dahut brought my Maeloch onto the rocks, and herself bore him below. She rammed Brennilis with a craft she’d robbed from some fishers she drew to Ys for this, and herself bore Evirion below. Everyone aboard was lost save for Riwal. Him she ferried ashore. We know not why that was.”
“And we know,” Nemeta joined in, “that she bore Rufinus below, but her vengefulness was unquenchable and so she led the Scoti to Audiarna. We know of other wreck and ruin she has wrought among humble folk whom nobody mourned but those that loved them. We know the evil of her can only end with herself; for the Gods of Ys have made her Their revenge on the world.”
“But how can we seek her out?”
“We cannot. The One God gives her leave to be. We know not why. By His might alone may her sea take her back to it forever.”
Tera shuddered. “Are her powers that great?”
“She swims untiring,” said Nemeta’s toneless chant, “but she cannot long endure sun, nor be on land more than a very little span. Where she goes, she commands the wind, though she breathes no longer. She lures, enchants, dazzles, terrifies. Nonetheless men have wrenched themselves from her call, and to it a saint would be deaf. With a single prayer he could destroy her.”
“She will ken him from afar, and flee.”
“She is of the moon. Ever its fullness draws her back to Ys, where she died, that she may drink its light upon that bay. By a gibbous moon she sought out Rufinus on the bridge and led the Scoti to Audiarna, but afterward she left them and returned home, that she might swim in its fullness among the ruins of Ys. There and then can someone find her.”
“But still she will know him, and escape into Ocean.”
Nemeta slumped before the ashes. Exhaustion dragged down her voice. “More I cannot say. Nor did the Horned One have more to give your dreams, did He? Let us go indoors and seek mortal sleep.”
Tera rose. “And what next will you do, lonely dear?” she asked. “Me, I’ll trudge back to the farm, but you?”
“I will seek Bishop Corentinus,” Nemeta answered. “I will tell him what we have learned, and beg his forgiveness, and Christ’s, and Christ’s help against yonder thing.”
XXV
1
The day before solstice hung still and murky. Breath misted, but there was no real sense of cold, nor of wetness, and noises all seemed hushed. The rivers glided iron-dark under earthen walls of Confluentes where summer’s grass was gone sere, and, mingled together, on past Aquilo toward the sea. Folk in the streets and shops went about their work unwontedly subdued, though none could have said why. It was as if the world lay waiting.
Suddenly, far down the Venetorum road, against bare brown fields and skeleton trees, color burst forth. Red-bordered gold with black emblem, the wolf banner flew at the head of a mounted troop. Behind it, cloaks billowed rainbow-colored; tunics and breeks proclaimed clans by their interwoven hues; metal winked, helmets, mailcoats, spearheads that rose and fell and rose again to the rocking rhythm of the horses. Hoofs thudded. Even the baggage mules were eager. A horn sang, a shout lifted, for the men of Gradlon saw home before them.
Sentinels of the city cried answer and winded trumpets of their own. News washed like a wave between the turrets. Men, women, children dropped whatever they were at and swarmed forth. Their cheers defied the sullen sky. “He comes! The King is back!”—not the Duke, as he named himself, but the King, as they did.
Ever louder through hoofbeats, creak of leather, jangle of iron, whoops out of throats, the sound of his cities reached Gratillonius. His vision strained forward. How well he knew each battlement, each timber in the portal and stone in the bridge. Behind them reached the ways he had laid out, the buildings he had watched grow, the people for whom he had been riding, hearthfires and hope. O Verania! What was Marcus up to, how much bigger was Maria?
Ahead laired trouble, toil, much anger, some heartbreak. You didn’t get away from any of those, this side of Heaven. But he felt ready to meet them. Eastward he left a good job of work, alliances firmly forged. In doing it he had shored up the spirit within himself. Today was the day when he would again embrace Verania.
For an instant Dahilis flitted through his awareness. He thought she smiled and waved. A farewell? She was gone. He signalled his trumpeter to sound gallop. Favonius surged.
His hoofs thundered on the bridge. Gratillonius glanced left. Several boats were moored at the wharf, a couple of them large enough to be called small ships, but mostly the piers were winter-empty.
Brennilis was not there.
The shock made him rein in with needless force. Favonius neighed angrily, reared, went on at a skittish walk. Turbulence erupted as the troopers filed off to cross. Everybody was impatient. Hurrahs gusted from the open gate.
Had the weather proven too fierce around Britannia? It had continued benign on the mainland. Only yesterday, Gratillonius had with a breastful of anxiety inquired of the villagers near whom he camped, and heard that it had also been mild hereabouts. Misfortune? Pirates would scarcely have been out so late in the year; if any were, they’d scarcely attack a craft as redoubtable as Brennilis. Evirion would be wary of ambushes ashore. The Britons might reject Gratillonius’s offer at once, unlikely though that seemed, but they wouldn’t harm the bearer, would they?
He rode through the gate. Guardsmen fenced Principal Way with their pikeshafts, holding back the crowd on either side. The street was clear for him—and there, where it crossed Market Way, on which their house stood, there waited Verania in the middle of the intersection. She carried Maria in her arms. Marcus hopped and shouted on her right. Tall on her left, his cloak a splash of springtime green, was Salomon. Across the yards between, Gratillonius knew them. He must hold Favonius in. He might trample them if he went too fast. Another minute.
Bishop Corentinus stepped out of Apostolic Way and stopped. “Whoa!” Barely, Gratillonius halted.
The man afoot must look up at the man on horseback, yet somehow it was as if their eyes met on a level: for all at once the walls, the tumult, everything receded from Gratillonius and they two were alone in a strange place. Corentinus wore sandals on his bare feet and a coarse black robe over his rawboned height. He had thrown a cloak across his shoulders and put a wide-brimmed hat on his head. Hair and beard were more white than gray. His right hand gripped a staff, his left was upraised, palm outward, a command to stop. It was eerie how Gratillonius came to think of the Germanic God Wotan the Wanderer, Who leads the dead away.
“Hail,” he said. Seeing this confrontation, the people fell piecemeal silent, until they stood staring under the low dark sky.
“Welcome back,” replied Corentinus with never a smile. “Did you succeed in your mission?”
“I did, but—”
“That is well; for much here is ill. Listen. You can see for yourself that your family is hale. I’m sorry to bar you from them, but there are tidings I think you’d best have first,—” Sternness fell from voice and craggy face. “—old friend. It needn’t take long, then you can rejoin them. Will you foll
ow me now?”
Gratillonius sat hearing the pulse in his head. It felt like a while and a while before he said, “As you will,” and turned about to give the troop into charge of his deputy.
Likewise he gave the reins of Favonius, and dismounted. As he left with the bishop, he looked toward Verania. She waved at him, as his memory of Dahilis had waved.
—Corentinus had moved from Aquilo to a house newly erected beside the cathedral in Confluentes. It was a good-sized building and decently, if austerely, furnished, for he received men of importance, on matters temporal as well as spiritual, and his flock would have him do so in such manner as to reflect credit on their community. At the rear, however, he had had made a room that was his alone, for prayer, meditation, and sleep. It was a mere cell, its window a single uncovered slit. The dirt floor held one stool and a straw pallet with a thin blanket. Walls and ceiling were bare plaster. Above the bed hung a small, roughly whittled wooden cross which holy Martinus had blessed. A clay lamp on a shelf burned the poorest sort of fat. Today it flickered alight because else men would have been like moles. Dankness and chill were gathered as thick as the gloom.
“Here we’ll talk,” Corentinus said, “for I may hope a faintest breath of sanctity is present, and what we have to speak of is terrible.”
—Gratillonius sat hunched on the stool and regarded the guttering yellow flame. Corentinus loomed above him. In a few words, the tale came out.
“Oh, no,” Gratillonius whispered. “No, no.”
“So it is, my son.”
Gratillonius twisted his neck around and peered upward. He saw only the hair, the beard, a glint of eyes. “Nemeta, how is she?”
“Sorrowful but in health.”
“I must go to her. Is she still out at the pastures? What have you done about, about her sin? Do you think she’s lost?”
Corentinus shook his head. “No. She’s a valiant lass. I’ve never seen more bravery than was in her when she came to confess to me. She thought she might well be damned, and was ready to take that, if the Church would receive her child.” A knobbly hand reached down to squeeze the shoulder beneath. “She did what she did largely for you, Gratillonius.”
Unshed tears can fill the gullet. “Wha-what did you do?”
“I told her to sin no more. And yet—she acted less in fear or hatred than out of love. That was why she could not wholly repent.” A rusty chuckle. “I asked her if she was sorry she could not, and this she agreed to. So then and there I baptized her.”
Gratillonius caught hold of the hand that clasped him, and pressed it hard.
“I’ll provide for her, of course,” he said when he was able. “She can’t stay on alone in that wretched shack.”
“She dares not come into town at all any more, now that she carries Evirion’s child,” said Corentinus harshly. “And Verania wonders whether your children and she are safe, even within the walls. She will no longer let them out, no, not to the manor house where they’ve had pleasure, certainly not across the bridge and down along the river to see their grandmother. Dwellers on the coast live in fright, worse than any barbarians ever brought them, for barbarians are at least human and—do not stalk the shores in winter.”
As he listened, a tide rose in Gratillonius. He heard it roar, he felt himself drowning in it. “Dahut,” he called across the wild waters, “Dahut.”
“You cannot keep hiding from this,” the relentless voice marched on above him. “We must destroy that hell-creature or perish in trying.”
Gratillonius sprang up. “We can’t!” he yelled. “There is no way!” He struck his fist against the wall. Plaster cracked apart and fell. The cross shivered.
“There is, with God’s help,” said Corentinus at his back. “Nemeta staked her soul to discover it.”
Gratillonius leaned head on arm and shut his eyes.
The bishop’s tone gentled a little. “She did not see this herself, and best we keep the secret between us. I did not either, at first, nor is it entirely clear to me yet. We’ve a fouled line to untangle, you and I, and afterward a hard course to steer. It may well end in wreck for us too.”
Somehow the warning put a measure of strength back in Gratillonius. He turned from the wall.
“Good man, oh, good man,” murmured Corentinus. “I need your counsel. Can you give it? Afterward I’ll let you go home.”
Gratillonius forced a nod.
“I haven’t told you quite everything about poor mad Riwal,” said the other. “He was carrying something when the shepherd found him, and wouldn’t let slip of it. As I tried to speak with him later, he mouthed broken words about Dahut, the White One, bringing him ashore. Well, I’ve told you that. I thought, as I imagine you do, she did this—for Nemeta’s vision declared it was true she did—in refined cruelty. She’d leave no doubt that she, and nothing mortal or natural, had sunken the ship and murdered the crew. But then I looked at the thing in his hand, and the peasant who’d brought him in explained about it. When I asked, he gave it to me, no, forced it on me. ‘For Gradlon,’ he babbled, ‘for Gradlon.’ I still don’t understand. But here it is.”
He stooped with an aged man’s stiffness and from beneath the blanket fetched a small object which he proffered. Gratillonius took it and held it near the lamp to see. Rotten wood was damp and spongy between his fingers. Decayed, worm-eaten, battered, the thing had scant form left. And yet he knew it. Suddenly he was cold down into his bones, sea-bottom cold.
“It doesn’t seem like a cult object or a magical tool, does it?” he heard across immensities. “Almost a toy.”
“That’s what it is,” he heard inside his skull. “A horse figure I made for her when she was a little girl.”
“Why on—earth—would she send it to you? A taunt? A challenge?”
“I think not,” said Gratillonius from somewhere outside himself. “My daughter was always glad of my gifts. She was so proud that her Papa could make them. This one was her special favorite. I think she’s calling me.”
2
Snow began to fall as the couple neared the top of Mons Ferruginus. It dropped through windless quiet in flakes tiny but teeming. Beyond a few yards there soon was white blindness. Ground vanished beneath it and the bare boughs of trees and shrubs bore a new flowering. A measure of warmth had stolen into the air.
Gratillonius halted on the trail. “We may as well go back,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Verania replied. “You wanted so much a view over your country.”
He glanced down at her. She looked up from within her snow-dusted cowl. The cloak happened to be black, and winter always paled her fair skin, so lips and hazel eyes and a stray brown lock bore all the colors he saw in a world of gray and white.
“Did I say that?” he asked.
“No, not really. But I could tell.”
“You notice more than you let on.”
She shook her head. “I only pay attention—to you, my dearest.”
“Ah, well,” he sighed, “I’ve plenty memories from here.” With a grave smile: “Besides, what I most wanted was to get off alone with you.”
She came to him and laid her cheek against his breast. For a moment they held each other, then started homeward, hand in hand. The trail being narrow, often one of them must go off it into brush which scratched and crackled unnaturally loud; but neither let go.
“Anyhow,” Gratillonius said, “now I’ll have more time with the children before we tuck them in.”
“They’re lucky,” she answered. “My father was like you in this, if little else. It’s a rare kind.”
“Aw,” he mumbled.
Her grip tightened. Abruptly her voice grew shrill. “Come back to us!”
He stopped again. Her delicate features worked until she could stiffen them. Tears glinted on the lashes. “Of course I will,” he promised.
“How do I know?” The words tumbled forth. “You haven’t told me anything except that you’re leaving already.”
It tore
away the visor he had lowered against her. “I haven’t dared,” he rasped. “Nobody. Nor can I speak till afterward.”
“You are going—”
“To deal with a certain menace. It won’t take long.”
“Unless you’re the one who dies.”
He shrugged.
“It could be worse than death,” she said frantically. “Gradlon, that evil is not of this world.”
“You notice too much,” he snapped.
She looked from him, and back at him, shuddered within the cloak, finally said low, “And I think about it.”
He tugged at her hand. “Come,” he proposed. They went on downhill through the snowfall.
When he thought she had calmed a bit, he said, “You’ve always been wise for your age, Verania. Have you the wisdom now to keep silence?”
She nodded.
Her fingers, which had gone icy, seemed pace by pace to thaw in his. At last she gave him a smile.
The snowfall thickened.
“Strange,” he said slowly. “All at once I remember. Today is the Birthday of Mithras.”
Alarm touched her tone. “You don’t follow that God any longer!”
“Certainly not. But it seems to me somehow as though this, everything that matters to me, it began that selfsame day, five-and-twenty years ago. I stood guard on the Wall … And soon, one way or another, it will end.”
“It won’t!” she cried. “Not for you!” Her face lifted toward hidden heaven. Snow struck it, melted, ran down in rain. “Holy Maria, Mother of God,” she appealed, “we’ve only had four years.”
In a way he did not understand but that was like a smith quenching a newly forged sword, it hardened his will for that to which he had plighted himself.
3
Midwinter nights fell early and dwelt late in Armorica, day hardly more than a glimmer between them, but this one was ice-clear. Stars thronged the dark, so bright that he could see colors in some, blue like steel, yellow like brass, red like rust. Their brilliance was also in the Milky Way, which to Ys had been the River of Tiamat, primordial Serpent of Chaos, but which elsewhere was the bridge by which the dead leave our world. Snow on the ground caught the light from above, glowed and glittered. It was a crust frozen hard, crunching underhoof; the earth beneath it boomed. Gratillonius rode easily across a vast unreal sweep of hills above the whitened valley. He was aware of the cold around him but did not feel it; he went as if in a dream.
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