“Still, it may not matter, about our assignment,” Hélis said. “Things are changing yet again, in the way that Meret foresaw. The armies coming to attack us, to bring the end of the troubadours, and much else.”
“Her book did not say that the attackers would be so brutal, though. So barbaric,” Azelaïs said.
That’s because they weren’t, as far as Meret knew, Ann thought. We changed it. Wait a minute. Her book?
“She wrote things down for you, in a book?” she asked. “Can we see it?”
“No,” Hélis said. “Only our sisters in Cor can be trusted with her book.”
“Then why not make them our sisters?” Giraude said, speaking for the first time. “They knew the password. And we have already shared the ceremony of the apples.”
Azelaïs looked at them. “Would you like that? To join our gathering? I should tell you first that there are great responsibilities here—it is not all secrets and apples.”
“I’d love to,” Ann said. “But unfortunately we have to leave soon, to go traveling with our master.”
“They can still join,” Giraude said. “At whatever new place they come to. And in the meantime we can show them Mara’s book.”
Did they really have that many sisters, all over the known world, that Giraude could be confident they could find a gathering wherever they went? “Very well,” Azelaïs said.
She rose. For the first time the women’s attention was on something beside Ann and Franny, and Ann fumbled for a pocket and tucked the key inside it. Azelaïs went over to the statue and touched a spot beneath it, and a panel rotated outward, like the door in the wall. Then she bent and took out a huge heavy book, about two inches thick.
It was old, Ann saw, but it did not go as far back as Kaphtoran times: it was written on parchment, not papyrus. They must have copied it again and again through the years, women bent over the pages, working by lamplight …
Azelaïs opened the leather cover to the front page. The title was in Kaphtoran, what the linguists had called Linear A; Ann had never thought to see that writing again. “The Book of Kore,” it said, and underneath that the same thing in the dialect of Languedoc. It was decorated in bright colors with Cretan designs, fish and octopuses swimming through water, reeds growing at the edge.
“Look,” Azelaïs said, whispering reverently.
She flipped through the pages, stopping at a drawing of a city. Enormous buildings loomed up in the background, a combination of the skyscrapers Ann was used to and the structures she had seen in Kaphtor, room piled on room, ziggurating into the air. They were painted in pastel colors, pink and turquoise and butter yellow.
Something stood in front of the buildings, a strange mix of chariot and automobile. “People will ride through vast cities in conveyances like this one, which moves by itself,” Azelaïs said. “And it will be called after the Goddess, car. Like Kore.”
Ann tried not to laugh. She didn’t think that was where the word came from.
“You smile,” Azelaïs said. “But all the world speaks the name of the Goddess. Here.” She turned to another page, finding her way through the book easily. “Here is a list of the towns and cities named after her. Listen. ‘Khartoum, Karnak, Carthage, Corinth …’ And Carcassonne, of course. That is why we are here, in this city—we try to build our temples in these places. And that is where”—she looked up at both of them, her face grave—“this is where you will find our gatherings, when you are ready to become one of us.”
Azelaïs showed them page after page. Drawings snaked around the words; some of them had the fluidity of Kaphtor, but there was also art from other times, Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine. She hurried through the book, not letting Ann read too much of it, but she caught phrases here and there: “He will be killed then, and it would be good to leave this place before the fighting begins …” “Despite being a woman, Queen Mary will cling to a life-denying version of her religion. The sisters in Kore must do these things to bring Elizabeth to the throne …” “The sisters in Kore must work to elect these candidates …”
The next page showed a snake with its tail in its mouth. Within its circle were a few lines in elaborate calligraphy. “The Goddess, by whatever name you call Her, works in harmony with the cycles of the world. She is Mistress of the birth and death and rebirth of seasons, of the waxing and waning moon. And the women and men that we fight see time as a straight line, always moving forward toward some bright future. In this way they seek to cut themselves off from half of the eternal mysteries, from earth and night and death.”
Azelaïs looked at Ann and Franny and then closed the book. She had wanted them to read that, Ann realized. The other woman stood and returned the book to its place.
Ann stood as well. “Thanks for your hospitality, but we have to get back now,” she said. “Our friends must be worried about us.”
Horses clopped past them, out in the street. “It is unsafe for you to go outside, I think,” Azelaïs said. “We will have to keep you here with us, until the fighting is over.”
“No one rang the church bells today,” Hélis said. “What time do you think it is?”
“Time for supper, of course,” Azelaïs said, and the others laughed.
There were more cupboards ranged around the room, Ann saw now, with doors that opened normally. Azelaïs and Hélis stood and took out bread and cheese and dried beef and wine, and set them on platters on the floor. After they had eaten they got down straw pallets and some blankets, blew out the candles, and prepared to go to sleep.
“What about Charles?” Franny whispered to Ann, lying on the floor next to her. “Won’t he wonder where we are?”
“The hell with him,” Ann said. “He sent Jerry to spy on us, after all.”
“Well, but he wanted to know if you were a member of Core. And you are, aren’t you?”
Ann said nothing for a while. “I think I am, actually. Look what the company did here—they got the army to attack Carcassonne, to kill hundreds of people who didn’t have to die. Thousands, maybe. And Core—the sisters of Kore—all they want is for women to be equal to men.” She paused again. “You aren’t going to tell Charles, are you?”
“No,” Franny said.
Ann slept badly, waking several times during the night to hear shouts or screams or horses neighing. When she woke at dawn, though, everything was silent—an uneasy silence, the sound of a city battered into submission.
Soon the other women got up as well, and they had a breakfast of bread and oranges. Hélis ventured outside, coming back to tell them that the streets were empty. “Folks said the soldiers are all in the castle now,” she said. “Keeping watch on their prisoners. And most of the people are hiding—they remember what happened in Béziers.”
“Do they know how the army got into the city?” Azelaïs asked.
Hélis nodded. “They had friends inside, traitors who opened the gates for them. So they never needed to break down the walls.”
“Well,” Azelaïs said to Ann and Franny. “It might be safe for you to go back now. Could you help us with something first, though? We need to move your friend’s body. Someone might stumble upon it otherwise, and want to know what goes on inside this house.”
Jerry—she’d forgotten about him again, damn it. And they needed to move him for another reason; the company might find him with one of their cameras and wonder what he was doing there.
“Of course,” she said.
Azelaïs opened the secret door and they went out into the next room. Jerry lay on his stomach; he’d been stabbed in the back, and his clothes were soaked a deep red with blood. He smelled terrible, and she realized with horror that he’d loosened his bowels as he died.
Hélis opened the front door carefully and peered into the street. “All right,” she said, coming back to them.
Together the four of them lifted Jerry’s body and took it outside. What is it about me, Ann wondered, that people keep dying on my assignments? Am I some kind of jinx, a Typho
id Mary of the timelines? Anachronistic Ann?
“Where were you headed?” Azelaïs asked. “It might be a good idea to leave him there.”
“The market square,” Franny said.
The square turned out to be only a few streets away; they’d gotten more confused than Ann had realized, the day before. They looked around for soldiers and then set Jerry down in the street.
“Goddess show you your path,” Azelaïs said. “I hope you find your sisters in Kore, wherever it is you are going.”
“Thank you.”
“And keep yourselves safe,” Hélis said. “This new commander, Simon de Montfort—who knows what he plans to do? He might kill everyone here, the way he did in Béziers.”
“There’s a prophecy about him, one Mara might not have written down,” Ann said, thinking to encourage them. “It’s said that he will die at the hands of women and children.”
“No, I never heard that. Thank you.”
Azelaïs moved to hug her. She had always hated being hugged, hated anyone breaking through her defenses, but she found to her surprise that she held onto the other woman for a long time. Another mother figure, she thought, but she couldn’t summon up the sarcasm she would have liked.
Azelaïs hugged Franny and they said goodbye. Then she and Franny hurried through the deserted streets to the castle. They heard the sound of marching feet only once, and they hid in an empty house until the soldiers went past.
They said very little. Ann was thinking about the sisters of Kore, and she supposed Franny was as well. Apples, books, knives, statues … Suddenly she laughed.
“Quiet!” Franny said. “Do you want to get us killed? What’s so funny, anyway?”
“That thing with the apple, that Meret taught them. It’s about the core, the core of the apple. It’s a pun, and it took twenty-five hundred years for someone to get it.”
CHARLES WAS WAITING FOR them down the road from the castle. “Where were you?” he asked.
“Never mind that,” Ann said. “We got the key.”
She took it out of her pocket. Charles snatched it away from her. “Did you see Jerry?” he asked.
“He’s dead. Crusaders killed him.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. We saw his body.”
“Where?”
“Near the market square.”
Charles nodded and began manipulating the circles of the key. Wasn’t he worried that someone would see them disappear? But they were in danger of their lives now, and that had to outweigh any caution Charles might have.
Once again the colors around them blurred, her stomach clenched, bright lights stabbed her eyes … and then they were on the platform, the sound of applause ebbing and flowing around them like ocean waves.
“Congratulations!” someone said. “We felt a huge time-quake here.”
“We’ll have to check the data, of course,” another voice said, “but so far it seems zany successful. How do you feel?”
Charles started to say something, but Ann spoke over him. “Not so successful,” she said. “Jerry died.”
“Did he?” someone else said. She looked out at the technicians but everything still seemed fuzzy; she couldn’t make out who was talking. Or was she crying?
“Don’t worry—we’ll look into it,” a woman said.
Look into it? What the hell? Jerry would still be dead.
They were taken to the infirmary, poked and prodded and asked questions, given food and drink. Ann wanted to crawl into one of the beds and sleep for weeks, but men and women kept waking her up, shining lights into her eyes, insisting that she walk around a bit.
Even sleep didn’t help, though. She had terrible dreams, nightmares in which they went out into the room where Jerry lay and found nothing, or saw Jerry struggling toward them, a sword in his back, his eyes beseeching. And when she woke she would have to take a moment to remember that he was dead, and she would feel a sorrow so powerful that it would seem like the first time.
Should she have disobeyed Azelaïs, brought him inside where he could be safe? But how? She would have had to overcome two women, both of them wearing knives …
“We’re going to have to debrief you soon,” someone was saying. She forced herself to wake up, to pay attention. “Do you think you’ll feel ready tomorrow?”
She didn’t, but she wanted to be out of the infirmary and back home, where it would be easier to concentrate. The program she had set up, to crack the password on the drive Meret had given her, had to have finished by now. Maybe she would find some information there, something that could help her.
And she needed help, she knew; she needed to decide what to do next. When she closed her eyes she saw the clash between the crusaders and Trencavel’s army, saw the viscount’s men fall, the fear and pain on their faces as they died. What kind of people would cause that to happen?
“All right,” she said. “Yeah, I think so.”
A woman came for her the next day. Someone had laid out the clothes she had worn before she left, cleaned and folded, and she put them on slowly, feeling like an invalid. Then the woman led her out of the infirmary and toward the elevator.
A man was coming toward them, down the corridor. Jerry! No, it couldn’t be, Jerry was dead. But it was him, a thin man with white-blond hair … “Hello, Ann,” he said.
Her vision closed down. Everything went very small, shot through with dark flashes. She struggled to stay conscious. Her minder hurried her away, around a corner and into an empty room.
“Sit down,” she said. Ann sat, her mind a blank. “Put your head between your knees. There, good. Breathe.”
Ann kept her head down until she felt stronger, then looked up at the other woman. “You weren’t supposed to see that yet,” the minder said. “We needed to prepare you first. I’ll have to report someone for that, whoever the idiot was who let him wander around.”
“How—” Ann said.
“How? Time travel, of course. We went back and took him home before he could be killed.”
Her mind seemed to turn inside out, showing her the reverse of what she knew to be true. She saw—she remembered—two timelines, both of them equally valid. In one, Jerry stood outside the secret room and pleaded with her to let him inside. In the other he had been returned, and safe.
When did they take him? Was it before Jerry had followed her into the house or after? How much did Jerry, this Jerry, know about Core?
She couldn’t ask the woman, of course, couldn’t arouse her suspicions with questions like that. She would have to talk to Jerry later, try to sound him out.
“Are you ready to go on now?” her minder asked.
She was, but she wanted to deny her, deny the company. “No,” she said. “I still feel weak. I think I’m sick.”
The woman looked unhappy, and Ann felt a spiteful pleasure. “All right, then,” the woman said. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
WHEN SHE CAME INTO the room the next day she saw that Da Silva was waiting to debrief her. She felt happy to see her, and then a wariness, a reminder to be on her guard. Da Silva, she knew, was very good at coaxing out information.
“So what happened after we left?” Ann asked, before they could exchange pleasantries. “Did Simon de Montfort kill everyone again?”
“Not everyone, no,” Da Silva said. “More than he killed in the previous history, though.”
Ann thought of all the people she had met in Carcassonne—Maheut, the viscount’s cousin, and the kitchen girl who had served them, and the cobbler, and even Peire Raimon and the other troubadours. And what about the sisters of Kore—had they remained safe in their hidden sanctuary? Who had survived, and who had been put to the sword?
“Why, though? Why did the company want all those people dead?”
“Well, the wars dragged on for forty years in the earlier history, and even after that the southerners kept rebelling. The Trencavel family even got Béziers and Carcassonne back for a while. And the
Cathars were finally only wiped out a hundred and fifty years later. It turned out to be better to have a decisive win there, once and for all.”
“But why?” She hadn’t thought that much of the civilization of the south, but now that it was gone she remembered all the things she had liked about it—the mix of cultures, the beautiful songs, the fact that women could have a position of importance as a Perfect, or even as a troubadour. She even admired the strange way they dealt with their arranged marriages; at least no one seemed to get hurt, and they were able to enjoy themselves.
“I don’t work on the fifth floor, so I don’t know all the ins and outs of it,” Da Silva said. “They’re the ones who track all the repercussions down through the timelines, and they thought this was the best solution.”
“It’s just—these people don’t seem like someone we’d want as allies. I mean, that puts us on the side of the guy who said, ‘Kill them all—God will know his own.’”
“He didn’t actually say that. The man who wrote the chronicle invented—”
“Well, so what? They still killed everyone.”
Did the modelers ever feel guilty about what they did, all the deaths they caused? “What happened to Simon de Montfort in this timeline?” she asked.
Da Silva looked surprised. “I’m not sure,” she said. Ann faced her, saying nothing. “Do you really want to know?”
Ann nodded. Da Silva went to a computer on a nearby desk and booted it up. “Well, he lived longer,” she said, reading from the screen. “He wasn’t killed in battle. He kept his titles, and put down more rebellions, and died of old age.”
Maybe that had been the purpose of all their efforts then, to see to it that Montfort didn’t die in battle. It seemed the worst kind of outcome to Ann: the commander alive and terrorizing the countryside, killing anyone who stood in his way. And it also meant that the prophecy she had given the sisters of Kore wasn’t true after all. So much for encouraging them.
Weighing Shadows Page 23
