13
As they drew nearer, a second structure seemed to rise from the crest of the hill within the circle of standing stones. Dwarfed by the giants that surrounded it was a pyramid of simple white marble, perhaps thirty feet on each side.
The pyramid was obviously newer that its stone guardians, but no less plain, as if the builder had considered the circle to be far more important and had not wished to detract from it.
A single door, a rectangular opening, faced the travelers from the base.
Jean scowled, feeling as though he were being mocked. To have come all this way and endured everything, only to find at the end of his quest a silly stone tent, was almost an insult.
Still, he and Opa were here, and the pyramid waited. At least it promised an end of some sort.
Without pausing, he passed beneath the stones and across the circle, until he and Opa reached the door.
As he crossed the threshold, the bright sunlight vanished and left the interior cloaked in shadow. He paused to let his eyes adjust to the change of light.
From the shadows ahead, a woman's voice called in English. "Please don't lurk in the doorway. Come in."
Surprised, Jean took another step forward. "I cannot see."
"Oh. Forgive me. I've been working and forgot."
Light bloomed, filling the interior of the pyramid with silvery brightness that glanced off the white walls, blinding him anew. He released his hold on Opa and lifted his hand to shade his eyes, dazzled. Beside him, Opa chirped like a bird in protest and clutched Jean's cloak.
"It's all right," said the woman. "Your eyes will adjust in a moment. Please come in."
Blinking in the brightness, Jean lowered his hand and found he could see perfectly well, for the light that filled every corner of the room was as soft and clear as moonlight, though much brighter. It came from two globes set in tall, silver stands on either side of what appeared to be an altar with an irregularly carved surface against the opposite wall.
A third light glittered and sparkled like a star on a winter's night from something on the altar itself, though Jean could not see what caused it. But he recognized the light that came from the globes; he remembered the knife the strange wanderer had set alight for Piotr's wife back in Yasenovo.
"Magic," he whispered.
"Indeed. A simple spell, but useful." The woman who stood before the altar turned to face him as she spoke, and the Moon and Star fled his thoughts.
She did not look as Jean had imagined a priestess would. This woman was younger than he had expected, and tall, her body hidden within a shapeless white robe like that of the man in the garden.
She seemed out of place inside the cool, white, stone walls. She should have stood in the sun, where her abundant golden curls and bronze complexion would be in their natural element.
A plain silver circlet held her hair from her face, but the metal could not cool its bright color or tame the wayward curls that fell around her shoulders and framed a face of unconventional, but quite astonishing, beauty. Her eyes were large, and as amber-gold as her hair. Perpetual laughter shone within their sunny depths.
"I beg your pardon," he said uncertainly, "but…are you the Priestess of Ohma?"
Her smile widened, bringing dimples to play on either side of it. "One of them, yes. I know; you were expecting an ancient crone, with warts. Sorry to disappoint you. If it's any consolation, I'm older than I look."
Opa tugged on Jean's cloak. "Is she the Priestess?" he asked in what he doubtless imagined was a whisper. "She's very pretty."
The Priestess of Ohma smiled down at the child and spoke in German. "Why, thank you, little one. And you are a very brave boy to come all this way to see me, and you so young." She returned her attention to Jean. "The boy does not speak the trade tongues yet?"
Jean shook his head. "I do not believe he speaks anything but German, but he seems to understand a great deal."
"Well, he must learn. Do you wish to continue in this language?"
He hesitated, glancing down at Opa, who had eyes only for the Priestess. There were things he would have been just as happy to discuss without Opa's participation, but perhaps it was as well to let him listen, rather than try and explain everything afterward. He looked back at the Priestess. "Yes, please," he said in German, "if it is no trouble."
She shrugged. "One language is much the same as another. But enough pleasantries; we have much to discuss, you and I." She spread her arms to indicate their surroundings. "Let me begin by saying welcome to the Temple of Ohma, which is also called the Temple of Triads. I am very glad you made it."
Emboldened, he took a few steps forward. "I must confess, this is not what I expected, especially after what I have seen just beyond these walls."
She nodded. "This is actually the Temple. The rest was added later by those who wished to honor Ohma and thought this simple structure lacked grandeur. Except for the Gates, of course. Those were built by the Fey, thousands of years ago.
"The pyramid was built by Ohma herself when she began her greatest work. She is buried here." She gestured at the altar, and as his gaze followed the movement, he saw that the irregularity he had noticed was the effigy of a woman lying on the top, something that glittered like starlight clasped in her folded hands.
He blinked as something the Priestess had said belatedly caught up with him. "The Gates?"
"Yes, that's what that structure outside is. The main Gate to the Outer lands, actually."
Jean's heart skipped a beat. "The Gate…the gate to my homeland?" He swallowed, fighting a sudden wave of dizziness. "Can you…can I…."
The Priestess held up a hand to forestall him. "Please, before you go any further along that road, there are many other things we need to talk about, Master Jean LeFleur."
He caught his breath, his thoughts tumbling over one another. "You know my name?"
"I've been expecting you. You've stirred up a great deal of interest. Well, not just you. I gather you came through with some others who've also been making life interesting."
"The Black Army," Jean said. "Do they yet live?"
She hesitated, and her smile faded. "Tisza fell not long after you left it. The only survivors were a handful of Outsiders who had been sent ahead to Yasenovo and the guards who escorted them. The Triumphant there made a rather sensational report about the whole business; I don't know all the details."
Jean felt an inexplicable pang of grief for the brave men and women who had held the little fort for so long. He dropped his gaze to the floor, remembering Uros's cheerful face, Frau Freimann's proud bearing, the unexpected kindness of the guard who had sent him off. He looked back up at the Priestess. "But I left only a few days ago."
"A few days to you." She gave him a measuring look. "You may have noticed that time moves differently here than you're accustomed to. While you've been on the road, much more time has passed in Tisza — or where Tisza used to be — than has passed for you."
"More time…."
"Hmmm. Let me see if I can explain this a bit more clearly." She paused, templing her fingers before her full mouth. "The Fey have shaped this land to suit their needs, since long before men came here in any number. We humans do not notice the layers of magic, but as we pass through, we create a disturbance, ripples, like the rings in a pool of water when you drop a stone in it. One result is that time passes differently for us in different parts of the land.
"Unless you know the secret of following the ley lines, time is subjective. You may be aware of traveling for only a few days, but from someone in Tisza's point of view, you've been on the road for weeks."
Jean shook his head, suddenly dizzy with confusion. He remembered Piotr's chatter on the folly of war. Perhaps he had been speaking sense after all. "I don't understand."
"There's no reason why you should, really." The Priestess made a dismissive gesture and began to pace restlessly, long strides, as though more accustomed to
trousers than robes.
He remembered a captive lioness, kept as an oddity by a nobleman. Like that creature, the woman seemed too large for the room that contained her.
"Nothing where you came from could possibly have prepared you for this," she said, her voice strengthening as if fueled by her movement. "Nevertheless, take my word for it.
"When the Fey separated Tir na n'Og from the rest of the world, they somehow separated it from the flow of time as well. The Mists themselves have a great deal to do with it, and I've never fully understood how they work. There are places within the Mists where time virtually stops. Stepping into one is like being frozen in time; only when you step out again does it resume, but at a pace much slower than anywhere else in Tir na n'Og. The Greater Fey live out there most of the time. It keeps them young."
She turned back to face him and gave a graceful shrug. "Personally, I find the Mists far too depressing to wish to spend any time there, but there's no accounting for taste."
"Tell me then," he said urgently, "tell me if my guess is correct. I remember stories, tales my mother would tell, that all mothers tell their children, and I have read books that speak of tales told in other lands as well, many of them alike. They spoke of the land of the faeries, of creatures that never existed, of monsters and heroes and battles that never happened in any history I can find, of a place where all those tales came true, a place where people never grew old. Is Tir na n'Og — this, then, is the land of which those tales speak?"
The Priestess nodded, watching his face. "Oh, yes. Think of the myths and legends of gods and demons, heroes and horrors you grew up with. Most of them are based in fact, part of the history of Tir na n'Og. Though they've doubtless become quite garbled with the telling."
She smiled again, a smile that lit the room like sunlight. "You should hear some of the stories told here about the Outer lands. You'd never recognize it."
Her smile faded as her face softened in sympathy. "It really isn't so hard to grasp, is it? Mankind and the Greater Fey are closely related — some say we were one people in the beginning — and once we all shared the same universe."
Words sprang from some hidden recess in Jean's memory and found their way to his tongue. "The Children of Eve, and the Children of Lilith. Man sprang from one, and a race of monsters from the other."
She gave a slightly impatient sigh. "Oh, really. We're not so different. Or we weren't in the beginning. Mankind chose to follow one road — I suppose you could call it the path of the mind — we love tinkering with our hands, we delight in the physical. We want to understand how the world works, and shape it to our design.
"The Fey chose magic, the path of the spirit, the immaterial. They love to shape reality, and see no point in consistency."
She held out her hands, palms up, as though weighing the two philosophies. "Over time, the two peoples drew farther and farther apart, and the differences became barriers. Fear and distrust grew on both sides. The Greater Fey had to create a place for themselves, a place apart, where they withdrew for longer and longer periods. But the inhabitants of both lands used to cross from one to the other frequently, if not always intentionally.
"Eventually, it came to be that mankind either worshipped the Fey as gods or reviled them as demons. For their part, the Fey mostly looked on their cousins as either pets, or—" she spread her fingers —"well, vermin." Dropping her hands to her sides, the Priestess grimaced. "That led to a great deal of ugliness all the way around."
Ugliness. Was that how she dismissed the suffering her unholy patrons had caused? What of his own suffering?
He was angry suddenly — angry with this smiling, cheerful woman with the merry face, with the mysterious beings she spoke of in such familiar terms, even with the plainness of the room in which he stood that had cost him such a struggle to reach. "Such as the Wild Hunt," he said, throwing it out like an accusation.
The Priestess answered him calmly, her gaze level. "Yes. It was a popular sport for centuries in both lands. Ohma put a stop to it."
"Ohma," Opa said, breaking his long silence. He let go of Jean's cloak and took a few steps toward the Priestess. "May we see Ohma, please?"
She smiled gently and shook her head. "I'm sorry, my dear. You can see where her earthly remains are laid, but she left long ago."
"I thought the Fey were immortal," Jean said, his voice chill. "That they stay young forever. Is mortality not the curse of man, placed on us in Eden?"
"She was only half-Fey, after all," the Priestess replied, unruffled by his hostility, "though I think that had little to do with it. The Fey are not immortal. They can die. They can be killed." She paused. "They do not age the same way humans do. Perhaps they are so tenuously tied to their physical forms that they don't wear them out as quickly. But I believe that's what happened to Ohma — she simply wore herself out. She wasn't particularly young when she started all this, you know."
Jean shook his head, still angry. "She wore herself out — did it cost her so much to enslave mankind in this land? Is it she who convinced these people of all nations that their place was to serve…your masters?" He gestured curtly at the plain room in which they stood. "What was the purpose of this — to seem humble and God-fearing?"
"She was," she asserted, untouched by his anger.
He hesitated, remembering his doubts on the ship. But his anger demanded other answers. "You would say so. But then, of course you would champion your masters. You serve them against your own kind."
"I do not serve the Fey," she said. "I serve Truth."
He had not expected such an answer. It gave him pause. "But do they not tell you what to say? And only what they wish you to know?"
"Of course. But I'm quite capable of finding out on my own what I wish to know."
Her eyes held his, level and calm, yet bright. They were warm and golden, like light shining through the windows of a house. Such eyes would pierce shadows, reveal any dark thing that hid from them. He realized with a sense of shock that he believed her. He did not know why, but somehow he knew she spoke the truth.
His anger ebbed, leaving him feeling slightly ashamed. He dropped his gaze to Opa and saw the child watching him, the little face tight with strain. He smiled reassurance and returned his attention to the Priestess. "If you do not serve the Fey, then why are you here?"
"Because this is where the tale unfolds."
"But were you chosen, as a Triad is chosen?"
She shook her golden head impatiently. "No. Triad members are Chosen by the individual Factions, for purposes of their own." She paused. "It is true that Triads exist because of Ohma. After all, she composed the Codes that draw men and women to that life, to make themselves fit for service. But her purpose was only to teach people to better themselves."
"Then, this Code of Ohma, what does it mean?"
Her face lit from within; a lamp, suddenly unshuttered. "Her life's work. Brilliant. She drew upon Fey and human customs, philosophies, and religious beliefs, and transformed them into a path for the faltering footsteps of mankind, to lead them to the best of themselves.
"She lived long enough to see her efforts bear fruit, as men began to adopt her teachings and her Fey kindred came to understand, if not always to share, her vision. Over time, the Code has become a way of life for humanity here, and the Fey see mankind in a new light because of it."
The Ferryman's voice echoed in his ears: you may become a thrall, but you don't have to die one.
The Priestess's zeal suddenly tired him. He shook his head, wondering why he had begun this absurd conversation. "Forgive me, Madame, but I did not come here to learn of the Code. I did not even come here to learn the purposes of the Fey, whatever they are. I came here to find answers. To find a way home." He looked at her again and swallowed. "Please. I only wish to go home now."
She looked at him in silence for a long moment. "Why do you think you are here? Not in
the Temple; I mean in Tir na n'Og."
He opened his mouth and closed it again, at a loss for words. "If I knew that, Madame, I would not need to ask you," he finally managed.
"How did you come to be here?"
He looked around, shrugging helplessly. "I was on my way to…to another holy place. I wished to rid myself of…of a great spiritual burden." He paused, remembering. "To understand it. I prayed to understand it. But I became lost in the Mists and found myself in the mountains outside Tisza."
She nodded. "Did you never stop to think that this may be what you prayed for?"
He stared at her, mouth agape. "Prayed…for this?"
"Tell me, do you think the Fey are evil?"
Bewildered by the change of subject, Jean could only stammer. "They make men serve them—"
"Do not the great lords of your land do the same?"
He stiffened. "That is different. Men may justly command the service of lesser men — that is God's will."
"Is it?" She turned away from him and walked toward the altar. Her voice rang from over her shoulders. "Yet the Codes teach reverence for life. They teach compassion for one's fellow beings, respect for one's peers and courtesy for one's inferiors. They teach courage, and the love of justice. And above all else, to cherish honor and virtue, in the self and in others."
"You are saying that all Fey live by this…this Code? If that is so, why then must Man live and die by the will of the Fey?"
She stopped before the altar and spoke without turning around. "Do you think your kings and lords are always just and right when they command their subjects to do their bidding?"
An image, too well remembered, sprang to his mind; the image of a woman in chains, flames searing the flesh from her bones. He shuddered. "Men have free will. Sometimes, they choose to do…that which is evil."
She turned around to face him again. "Do you think the Fey have less free will than Man? It's true that Ohma won a number of converts among her own people, and that the Greater Fey cherish a guiding philosophy on which the Codes are based. It's also true that, just as not all men are clear-sighted, wise, and benevolent, neither are all Fey. And it is true that some Fey may use their Chosen for a less than holy purpose. That some Factions see their Triads as their own private gladiators."
He frowned and shook his head. "But what has this to do with me?"
"We all fall short of perfection, often by choice. As you say, God gave us free will. Even the freedom to fail, if we so desire. Would you say, then, that we have the power to thwart God?"
He caught his breath. "No, of course not. God will always prevail. It is written."
"Then perhaps even our failures serve His purpose." She folded her arms and studied him. "So I believe it is with the Fey. The Fey need humankind, whether they all realize it or not. Just as we need them. We are all Children of God, and must one day be reunited. Ohma truly believed that, and so do I. The Codes are a tool to accomplish that."
A trickle of sweat dripped into his eyes and he wiped it away with his sleeve. His legs felt as though they were made of rope. He wondered if Opa was as tired. Would they never be allowed to rest? He glanced down and saw the child watching the Priestess with wide-eyed intensity. He looked back up at her. "Please explain what this has to do with me." As the words left his lips, a sudden chill of realization swept over him. "You…are you saying they brought me here?"
She shook her head. "I cannot say. I do know that everything that happens — everything, Jean LeFleur — happens for a purpose. Ultimately, that purpose is God's. But you have been watched ever since you arrived — that I do know."
His knees trembled, though he did not know whether from weariness or fear. "Then, perhaps you can tell me the why of that."
"Truthfully, it was partly because of something or someone who came through with you. I don't know more than that. I do know that because of it, all the Gates are closed. No more will be coming through."
He felt himself go cold. "The Gates — closed — but they can still be used?"
She shook her head, watching him. "No, Jean LeFleur. They have been closed. No one will be coming in. And no one will be going out."
The room spun around him. He heard his own voice as from a great distance. "No. I must go home!"
Her sigh reached him, a gentle sound in the cold whiteness. "Your home is gone. While you have been here, your world and time have gone on without you. Even if you could open the Gates there would be nothing left to go back to. Haven't you realized that yet?"
His knees thumped onto the icy floor, jarring him. He steadied himself with his hand, felt Opa's arms gripping his shoulders. He shook his head to clear it and looked up at her. "How long?"
She sighed again. "You must have stumbled into one of the time pockets within the Mists. Those men you met were from almost a century after your day, were they not? And there is no way to know how long they had been wandering before they met you.
"Who can say, truly, how much time has passed where you came from? If you were to go back now, you would not even know the land of your birth. The very language may have changed."
No. He could not move, could not breathe. Maman. Pappa. Ysabette, Josef, Charlot, Danielle, Luc-Aubin, Aline. No.
"The life you knew is gone, Jean. Accept it. Embrace your new life instead."
Rage flooded him, clearing his vision and drawing the golden woman into hard focus against the white backdrop. He drew himself upright, still on his knees, and held up the stump of his arm. "How can I?" he shouted. "With this I can embrace nothing. What have I left? What can I do?"
"You might have made a Cavalier, had you remained whole. You have the heart for it. But you are needed for other work." She stalked toward him, her eyes fixed on his. "Tir na n'Og needs a storyteller, a chronicler. One to record these times, now, while they happen. Because some day, we may need to know, to have a window to look back on this time and place."
She stopped and looked down at him. "Write, Jean LeFleur. Write the stories of our world so that our children will not forget who we were, where they came from. So that others may learn from us."
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out her voice, to hold in the scream that filled his head and threatened to tear his throat apart. He felt Opa's arms around him, holding him with all the strength in his small body.
"Uncle Jean?" The boy's voice was shrill with fear. "Uncle Jean?"
He had to reply. The boy had been through enough. He needed Jean to be strong for him. Jean drew a deep, shuddering breath. "I am…I am well." He opened his eyes and managed a stiff smile at the boy's pale face.
With a sense of dull surprise, he realized that the Priestess was gone, leaving the room somehow larger and colder than before.
He drew another breath; his insides steadied. Gone. Everything he had known was gone…a small voice inside him chanted a litany of his loss, and he strove to silence it, to see and hear only what was before him. He swallowed. "It seems our interview has ended. We will go now."
"Can't we see Ohma, Uncle Jean?" The boy's voice was soft and wistful. "We've come such a long way. Please?"
A hysterical laugh threatened to burst out of him, but Jean swallowed it down.
Why not? What was there left to do but look at the face of the woman who seemed to have drawn him here? His mouth pulled into a smile that felt cold on his face, and he nodded to try and soften it. "As you wish, my child. By all means, let us see Ohma."
He gripped Opa's thin shoulder to steady himself and climbed to his feet. The room remained stable around him, and he breathed deeply of the cool air to make sure it would remain so. Then, still bracing himself on the boy's shoulder, he walked slowly across the marble floor to the altar, and the effigy of the woman who lay there, light glittering from her folded hands.
As they drew closer, his attention focused on that bright, sparkling light. Wha
t was it the dead woman held? And what did it mean?
"What is it, Uncle Jean? That light in her hands?" Opa pointed and looked up at Jean.
"We shall see," he replied. They ascended the three steps to the altar and stopped beside it.
"I can't see," said Opa.
Jean glanced down at the boy, and for a moment a genuine smile softened his clenched mouth. "I do not suppose that those who built this thought that a Pilgrim as small as you would come to see it. If you promise to hold very still, I will pick you up so you can see."
The boy beamed his agreement. Jean breathed a silent prayer that he had the strength to honor his promise, then bent to gather the child up as best he could. Straightening with a grunt, he leaned against the altar for support. "Here," he wheezed, "put your feet on the edge."
The child obeyed, and with most of the boy's weight taken, Jean breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed enough to examine the sarcophagus before them. His breath caught.
The glimmering light came from a tapered gemstone like a crystal, so flawless it might have been clear ice, or winter air made solid between the stone fingers. Seen so closely, the light was not merely a reflection of the globes. The gem burned with its own, inner fire, as pure and clean as virtue itself. As though the soul of an angel rested within.
"Ooooooh," Opa breathed. Jean nodded, though the boy could not see him. What sort of woman was this Ohma, this woman who held such a gem even in death? His eyes drifted to the carved face and stopped.
"She was very pretty, wasn't she?" said Opa softly. Again, Jean nodded, forgetting the boy could not see. He had eyes only for the marble face before him. This could not be a sculpture. No man had created such a perfect semblance of reality, not since the time of the ancient Greeks. Perhaps not then.
He could not call her pretty. There was surely too much strength in that still, white face for mere prettiness. It was impossible to look at her and see only cold, dead stone. Life burned too brightly in that face to believe in her death; she looked as though she would burst from her stone cocoon at any moment, laughing with joy, burning away the chill of the marble with her inner fire and filling the whiteness with the colors of her passion.
Her eyes were closed, as though she slept, and Jean felt an almost reverent sense of relief. He knew, somehow, that if they opened, he would look into a mirror of his own soul from which no pretense could hide.
He had looked into such eyes once. He did not wish to again.
His journey from that terrible day in the square in Rouen had ended at last, here, in a white marble room in another world and time.
"Let us go, Opa," he whispered. Without waiting for the boy's reluctant nod, he lowered the child to the floor and, grasping the small, warm hand, headed for the door.
The sunlight, when he reached it, felt almost hot after the wintry coolness of the Temple, but he did not stop until they had once more passed beyond the standing stones. Then he released Opa and sank into the tall grass. "Stay here a moment, my child. I must rest."
"Yes, Uncle." The child sounded as subdued as Jean felt. Perhaps Jean was not the only one to feel the power of Ohma's spirit.
He lay back and closed his eyes, letting the sun soak into his weary body, seeping slowly into all the little, cold places inside.
God works in mysterious ways. I longed for redemption, for a Higher Purpose, and it seems I have found both.
"What's a higher purpose?" Opa asked.
Jean opened his eyes, surprised at having spoken aloud. He had not thought he had the energy. "It seems that Tir na n'Og shall have its Jean Froissart, and I am he. I suppose it is a great honor."
"Who is Jean Frwa…froiw…who?"
"A man I admired very much," Jean murmured. "A man I once wished to emulate. And so it seems I shall. Alsace is lost to me. The life and times of my world are all gone." His throat tightened; he fought back the tears that stung his eyes.
There would be time to mourn all he had lost, but not here, not now.
"So I shall write of Tir na n'Og and her people. 'So that others might learn,' she said." He sat up and looked at the boy, who returned his look with solemn curiosity. "My helmet brought us a little money, and I have one steel knife left. I have no other use for it. Let us go down into the city and sell it; it should bring us enough for lodgings, food, and supplies until I find other work. A lettered man can always find work."
A smile brighter than the Priestess's spread across Opa's face. "You mean, we'll live here and be a family?" The smile faltered uncertainly. "What will we do?"
Jean's lips surprised him with a sudden smile. How extraordinary. Had anyone asked him but a moment before, he would have said he would never smile again. "Why, we'll go out each day and listen to stories, Opa. We will visit the inns and taverns, the dockside and the shops. We will ask questions and let people tell us their stories. And I shall write them down."
His smile faded. "In time, if I am very clever and listen well, I will solve these riddles. And though it will be too late to help me, it may help some other lost stranger to escape the trap I could not."
"Let's go now!" Opa jumped to his feet and grasped Jean's hand to pull him up. "You can write the stories, Uncle Jean. But I'm going to tell them."
Jean smiled and let the boy lead him across the grass to the Temple's outer shell. And to whatever lay beyond.