L.Warren Douglas - The Veil of Years

The Veil of Years

Table of Contents

Prologue - Roman Year 630 (124 B.C.)

Part One - Veni

Chapter 1 - The Goddess of the Pool

Chapter 2 - Ancient Ghosts

Chapter 3 - The Episkopos's Ultimatum

Part Two - Vidi

Chapter 4 - Changing Times

Chapter 5 - The Real Story

Chapter 6 - The Avatar

Chapter 7 - The Road to Hell

Chapter 8 - The Dryades

Chapter 9 - An Ancient God

Chapter 10 - Sacrifices

Chapter 11 - The Plain of Stones

Chapter 12 - The Herdsman

Chapter 13 - Lovers

Part Three - Vocavi

Chapter 14 - A New Destination

Chapter 15 - Parting the Veil of Years

Chapter 16 - A Familiar Face

Chapter 17 - Changing Magics

Chapter 18 - Growing Old

Chapter 19 - The Nemeton

Chapter 20 - A Talking Head

Chapter 21 - Irreconcilable Differences

Chapter 22 - The Consul

Chapter 23 - The Historian

Chapter 24 - Fortuna's Legions

Chapter 25 - New Gods and Old

Chapter 26 - Love and War

Part Four - Vinci

Chapter 27 - Battle

Chapter 28 - Victory and Defeat

Chapter 29 - The Spoils

Chapter 30 - Partings

Chapter 31 - The Scholar's Consternation

Chapter 32 - Old Friends

Chapter 33 - Coming Home

Epilogue

Afterword

Supplemental Bibliography

MAPS

The Veil of Years

L. Warren Douglas

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-31997-3

Cover art by Gary Ruddell

First printing, July 2001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Douglas, L. Warren.

The veil of years / L. Warren Douglas.

p. cm.

"A Baen Books original"—T.p. verso.

ISBN 0-671-31997-3

1. Romans—France—Provence—Fiction. 2. Provence (France)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3554.O82627 V45 2001

813'.54—dc211 2001025826

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

For Sue E. Folkringa, my wife, my friend and companion on all the trails and byways of Provence, and

wherever else the endless quest may lead us.

Acknowledgments

Dave Feintuch and Leo Frankowski, for reading and criticizing the manuscript and making suggestions.

Alain et Nathalie, Hotel Cardinal, 24 Rue Cardinale, Aix-en-Provence, France, pour une chambre

jolie et confortable, et un gai "bonjour" chaque matin.

The French people for the preservation of so many antiquities among which we may, on certain magical

occasions, part the Veil of Years.

Sue, as always, for everything. Celeste Anne and Emma Sue, of course, just for being warm and furry.

Baen Books by L. Warren Douglas

Simply Human

The Sacred Pool

The Veil of Years

The Isle Beyond Time(upcoming)

Prologue - Roman Year 630

(124 B.C.)

The Roman consul Caius Sextius Calvinus wrapped a woolen blanket around his legs and feet. The

fabric of his tent drummed with the beat of half-frozen rain, and beads of moisture formed where a

careless aide had brushed the fabric. He should have brought a good leather tent, like the ordinary

legionnaires used.

The madMistral wind drove ice-rimmed puddles into the tent where fabric met rocky ground. So this

was fair, sunny Gaul? Calvinus felt like a fool, an old fool, wrapped in a blanket. But it was beneath the

dignity of a Roman general to wear bulkybracae —ridiculous baggy trousers, bound at the ankles.

"Theveleda is outside, Consul," a centurion rumbled.

"Bid her enter." In this weather, even a crazy Gaulish hag shouldn't have to stand outside for the sake of

his Roman dignity.

The centurion pushed the tent flap aside. His words—and the seeress's reply—were whipped away on

the battering wind. Calvinus made as if busy with a dispatch he had been trying to write—until the ink had

clotted with the cold. To complete his disgruntlement, the oil lamp on his table blew out when the flap

was thrust aside. Thus his visitor was no more than a bulky shadow in the dim light that penetrated the

wet fabric of the tent.

"Here," she said, stretching forth an arm. From her fingertips, a tiny bright flame leaped to the smoking

wick. Again, the warm glow of burning oil illuminated Calvinus's hands, and the crone's veiled face.

"How did you do that?" Startled by the trick, he failed to remark that the single word the woman had

uttered had not been in a voice cracked with age—nor had those briefly illuminated fingers been an

ancient harridan's claws.

"How? Do you have a Great Year to learn my trade?" A Great Year was the druids' nineteen-year

cycle, that reconciled the lunar and solar periods. "You have no time at all."

Now those young, strong fingers reached to loosen her woolen scarf, to toss back the close-knit fabric

of her fine, waterproofsagus . She tossed the heavy mantle across a brass-bound chest.

Calvinus stared, at a loss for words. Theveleda —the druid seeress—was a girl. Her glossy black hair

was piled atop her head in curls that a rich senator's wife would have envied. Her pale blue garment was

draped Greek fashion, but was belted with pale leather encrusted in gold.

Despite his goose bumps and the indignity of his blanketed legs, Calvinus was all too aware of his

maleness. This was no big, gruff Celtic camp follower, and no starved old woman. Blue eyes the color of

summer skies appraised him dispassionately. Small, well-formed breasts pushed against soft blue fabric,

their nipples as proud as if just fondled—but that was chill, not arousal.

Aware that he had lost not only his dignity, but all of the initiative in this unfortunate meeting, the Roman

gestured at the cloak-draped chest. "Will you sit?"

A smile dimpled her pretty—no, lovely—face. She slid gracefully to the impromptu seat, her legs turned

slightly to the side, accenting the smooth curvature of thighs and hips.

"Centurion Varro said you have a message from the Gauls' chief. What is it?" No degree of gruffness, he

discovered, could regain him his lost poise.

"Your centurion misunderstood. King Teutomalos has nothing to say to you. He intends to outwait you,

then send your headless body to Roma. Your head he'll hold for ransom—its weight in gold. Or he'll

drive a bronze spike through it, from ear to ear, to hold it in a niche by his door."

Had anyone else said that—under any other circumstances—Calvinus would have had him flogged, or

he would have leaped up, groping for his short sword. As it was, he merely crumpled his goose-quill. The

woman's tone had been matter-of-fact, even regretful, not challenging or insulting. He was clear on that,

because her command of Latin was as good as his own, despite the sweet lilt of her unfamiliar accent.

"Then whom do you speak for?" he grated.

"For myself—and for a hundred Roman generations to come, whose fate hinges upon the outcome of

this siege. You must not wait. Attack now, before it's too late."

"Another legion is on its way. And the Massalian Greeks are levying more troops. By summer

Teutomalos will be starving, and I'll overwhelm his pitiful fort."

"By springtime his power will be so great that all the legions that ever were, led by the Scipios

themselves, could not prevail. Your reinforcements are not coming, and Massilia is a city of merchants,

not soldiers. You are alone. Attack now, and prevail. Wait . . . and Roma itself will crumble, and be

forgotten in a hundred years."

The woman—the girl—had gone too far. "Who are you? What filthy druid magic is this? What mad

Gaulish god whispers in your ear?"

"If I tell you, will you really listen? It's a long story, and a strange one. You may think me mad—and

continue to wait, until it's too late."

"I'll listen," he said. "But not here. My soldiers have been repairing the roof of a snug farmhouse with a

hearth and a dry floor. Varro! Are my new quarters ready yet?"

They were ready—or near enough. Seeress and general soon retired there and, in considerably more

comfortable circumstances, she began a tale that was long indeed. . . .

Part One - Veni

Provence: a land of harsh contrasts and lovelinesses. Its clear sunlight is tangible, with taste and scent.

The master wind that blows down great Rhodanus' valley has a soul, a personality, and a name:Mistral .

It blows the miasmas and fevers of the low land away out to sea.

Wind and River are the heart and spirit of the land, and the people are its blood, ebbing and flowing to

the beat of Celtic drums, swords against Roman shields, and hoofbeats of Franks and Moors. The pulse

of the land is never still. Tribes long forgotten blend their blood with such fresh infusions, each in turn

diluted, but never lost.

This is a story of the land, of a woman descended on her mother's side from folk who neither plowed nor

sowed, but took what the Goddess gave, and drank from her breasts, the sacred pools of the land. They

called Goddess and land alikeMa . Though inscribed in no Pantheon, her name is remembered inmater ,

mother, inmare , which is sea, inmammae , women's breasts, and above all, in Man, born ofMa .

This is not a Christian tale, though there are Christians in it. It is not about God who created us, but the

scapegoat we created to blame for what God allows us to do, that we should not. Such a demon can be

created in the minds of men, but once loosed it cannot be driven back.

Now Darkness looms at the end of time. All that is good will be locked in an ebon box. Evil will lie like

gray ash across the land, like leaden clouds across a sunless sky. Yet the Black Time will not come as

long as there is magic in the world, nor until the last rules have been written down.

Otho, Bishop of Nemausus

The Sorceress's Tale

Chapter 1 - The Goddess of the Pool

Centuries later, long after the fall of Rome

* * *

Shadows and sunbeams mingled, a quilt of colors stirred by a breeze from the stony heights. Ferns

nodded over moist emerald moss. Pretty red and white mushrooms were rings of tiny dancing girls

wearing their feast-day best. In high branches of maple and beech, songbirds twittered and magpies

laughed. In a sun-bleached land such a grove, nestled within a deep valley a hundred steps wide, was a

magical place.

Stones rattled on the trail, and for a moment the songbirds were silent. The breeze abated as if to hear

what had disturbed the afternoon. Was it a deer, come to drink from the pool?

She was not a deer, though she moved with deerlike grace—a girl of fifteen summers, hair black as

moonless night, without Roman curls or Celtic color. She held the hem of her skirt in one hand. Entering

the cool, moist shade, she wiped sweat from her brow. Her eyes, beneath dark, arching brows, were as

blue as the sky at zenith. Her elfin face was modeled on the small folk who built no houses and grew no

crops.

She settled by the clear pool. From the folds of her skirt she took a dried yellow-and-blue flower,

rubbed it into powder, and formed it into a pill. Cupping water, she washed it down.

She plucked a red mushroom from a troupe of tiny dancers. Grimacing at its bitterness, she took another

sip from the pool, then settled back amid rustling beech and maple leaves, and closed her eyes. The

dappling, shifting sunlight smoothed all expression from her features, and she drowsed. . . .

* * *

Hearing the agitated rustle of dry leaves, Pierrette opened her eyes. A familiar face stared down at

her—her own face, as it might be in twenty or fifty years.

"You've been avoiding me!" the older woman snapped.

"I've been busy," Pierrette protested, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "In a month, I'll have what I seek."

"Pfah! You'll remain with your nose in a book until you have answered every question." The woman

spun away. The sound of her motion was the crackling of dry twigs, the rustling of leaves. "Anselm's

magic is deceitful. Just because the sun never sets within his fortress's walls, time itself has not stopped.

The Black Time advances from the Beginning, and falls back from the End. Will you ask what I require,

or must I force it on you like medicine?"

Pierrette sighed. The goddessMa swirled the waters of the pool. Eddies danced, and the depths grew

dark. The glittering ripples were silvery stars in a moonless sky. But no, they were not stars. . . .

Cold, hard lights festooned towers of rusty iron, twinkling as greasy smoke swirled about them.

Half-obscured by dark engines of unknowable function, great orange flames guttered and flickered atop

a black iron sconce taller than the tallest tree.

In the foreground, as if Pierrette were standing ankle-deep in dead and stinking water, the bloated

corpse of a small creature bobbed. No flies swarmed. Nothing lived there, not even maggots. The land

itself was dead, without leaf or blade to cover its nakedness.

"Is that the Christians' Hell?" Pierrette shuddered.

"It'sthis world—not now, but soon—where River Arcus empties into the lagoon."

"No!" Pierrette gasped. She remembered a crisp breeze filling a sail, a boat's prow cutting the azure

water of that lagoon. The Arcus's channels were overhung with willows and elders. "That can't be!"

" `Can't?' " snappedMa . "Itwill be."

"Why are you showing me?"

"Once before, you stayed the advance," saidMa . "You must do it again."

"The demon is gone," the girl protested.

"But the Black Time still comes," repliedMa . "Will you bestir yourself?"

"What must I do?"

"I have foreseen you in a temple with druids in white robes. Beyond the city's walls were the towers you

just saw."

Pierrette shifted uneasily. It sounded unpleasantly familiar. "Is the town on a hill surrounded by salt pans

red as blood? Are its walls thick and smooth, in the Greek fashion?"

"You know it, then."

"It's Ugium." She had pushed her visions of Ugium into a dark room, and had closed the door. "The

temple doorway is festooned with warriors' heads. I'm not ready. I wouldn't know what to do."

"You're as ready as you can be,"Ma replied. "And you'll know."

"When I'm a true sorceress, I'll go."

"Don't wait for perfection,"Ma grated, turning her back. "This is an imperfect world." Then she was

gone, and Pierrette saw only a drift of dry leaves—yellow, russet, and brown, like the patches on the

goddess's dress. * * *

Cletus scrambled over broken limestone, his sweat evaporating in the dry air, cooling him so he could

maintain his fierce pace. Eight-year-old legs pumped steadily uphill. He had to find the sorceress!

Gilles the fisherman had come into harbor under full sail. Seeing Cletus fishing, he shouted "Boy! A

Saracen ship beyond the fog! Fetch my daughter Pierrette. Hurry!"

Gilles set off up the red, crumbling rocks of the Eagle's Beak, to alert the mage Anselm. It was anyone's

guess who would reach his objective first—the old man on the steep, short trail, the able boy with the

longer route ahead . . . or the Saracen vessel edging through the fog.

Cletus shouted to those he passed in the streets. "Warn the knight Reikhard! A Saracen is offshore!" He

did not stop running. He prayed he would find Pierrette in time—and that all his friends would see him

with her.

"There are the Mussulmen!" he would say. The sorceress would cast fire. Muslim sailors would scream

and burn. He imagined Pierrette saying, "Cletus, my champion; wade forth and slay them." He, tall as a

tree, would pick up the ship, emptying men, swords, and ill-gotten treasures.

He had to find Pierrette before Gilles reached Anselm's door, or his chance to be a hero would be stolen

by the old magician.

A mile beyond the town he saw her descending the trail. "Pierrette, come!" he gasped. "Saracens!"

She looked over the coast, far below. "How far out are they?"

"Still in the fog."

"Will you help me, Cletus?"

He puffed his heaving chest out. "Whatever you wish." He envisioned himself carrying her down the

valley in great strides.

"Run to my father's house. Get the big book with the red leather cover, and meet me at the wharf. Are

you tired?"

"Me? I'm not even out of breath—but I'll run faster still if you make me tall."

She chuckled despite her black mood, and waved a hand. "There. I've made you agile as a goat." She

gave him a push. The boy indeed ran with the gangly grace of a sure-footed goat—but the only magic

was his desire to impress Pierrette, the prettiest girl in the town. Yet he would rather have been a giant

than a goat. * * *

Cletus arrived at the wharf shortly after Pierrette, clutching a heavy volume against his bony chest. "Will

you find a spell to turn the Mussulmen into toads?"

"Be quiet, Cletus. I'm looking for something. Ah! Here it is." She spread the pages wide.

"A spell?"

"Not a spell. Be silent."

Shifting from foot to foot as if he had to pee, Cletus obeyed.

It was an observation from ibn Saul's treatise on Moorish navigation. The Saracen captain would

depend on a knotted line and a sandglass to measure sailing distance, and upon the line's straightness in

the water for confidence that he had not deviated from his course. Above all, he would depend upon his

memory of the coastline.

"Give me your fishing line," she commanded Cletus.

She began tying knots in it, one every foot or so.

"You'll ruin it!"

"If the Saracens sell you as a slave, you'll have no time for fishing."

Pierrette tied a splinter to the end of the line. "I need the red box from my father's boat." Cletus

scrambled for it, then Pierrette withdrew a sandglass. Working its cork free, she poured a third of the

sand into the box. Replacing the cork, she turned the glass, and watched sand trickle through its

constricted waist.

"Fog bemuses," she murmured, too softly for gathering townsmen to hear. None came close; she was

useful to them, but sorceresses had no friends.

"Sun confuses," she said. "Log and knotted cord confound."

She tossed the cord-and-splinter "log" into the water.

"Daydreams range, and coastlines change, and trickling sand forgotten falls."

Pierrette turned to the boy. "I need you to look for the ship, and tell me what it does, Cletus. Can you

climb that tall pine?"

"If you make me as tall as the tree, instead . . ."

"If I turn you into a squirrel . . ."

"I need no magic to climb trees!" he hissed, backing away. "You'll see how well I climb."

She chuckled softly—but none of the stone-facedgentes found humor in her words or Cletus's

consternation. Sorceresses were not ever funny.

"I see it!" Cletus shouted, from high within the pine's gracefully spreading parasol.

* * *

The captain of the rakish vessel tugged at his beard. He eyed the ribbon pennant atop the single mast.

"You're sure you've maintained course?"

The sailor swore upon his hope of Paradise, the beard of Muhammad, and a list of saintly ancestors. He

had paid out the cord and counted the passage of knots with every turn of the twenty-eight-minute glass.

The line had streamed straight astern.

The captain read the sun's height from the butt of his fist resting on the horizon, to the endmost knuckle

of his thumb. They should be east of Massalia—but where were the red rock scarps of the Eagle's

Beak? The Saracen knew the coasts from Jebel Tarik to Massalia to Constantinople, from Smyrna to

Alexandria to Ceuta. Had buffeting winds addled his brain, or the sun cooked it? For the first time since

his beard had sprouted . . . he was lost.

"Wear about and follow the coast eastward," he said softly. "Call me when you sight familiar land.

"It's over," he told himself as he descended to his cabin. Never again would men sail with him; they

would know his failure.

Wearing—changing tacks by turning downwind and hauling the huge sail around before the mast to the

new lee side—was not left to subordinates. Though the mate was pleased to do it himself, it did not take

long to register that the change was more than a promotion.

The captain remained below for seven turns of his large sandglass, until he heard the lookout's cry. He

recognized the islands ringing Olmia bay, just where they should be if he were indeed exactly seven turns

east of the Eagle's Beak. "I am going mad," he muttered to himself, a broken man.

L.Warren Douglas - The Veil of Years

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