L. Warren Douglas - The Veil of Years 2 - Veil of Tears
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- Prologue
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 mad Mistral 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 bulky bracae—ridiculous baggy trousers, bound at the ankles.
"The veleda 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, waterproof sagus. She tossed the heavy mantle across a brass-bound chest.
Calvinus stared, at a loss for words. The veleda—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
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- Prologue
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."
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- Prologue
"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. . . .
Back | Next
Contents
Framed
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- Chapter 1
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 alike Ma. Though inscribed in
no Pantheon, her name is remembered in mater, mother, in mare, which is sea, in
mammae, women's breasts, and above all, in Man, born of Ma.
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
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- Chapter 1
* * *
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 goddess Ma 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. . . .
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- Chapter 1
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's this 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?' " snapped Ma. "It will be."
"Why are you showing me?"
"Once before, you stayed the advance," said Ma. "You must do it again."
"The demon is gone," the girl protested.
"But the Black Time still comes," replied Ma. "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."
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- Chapter 1
"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?"
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- Chapter 1
"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.
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