Saint Antony's Fire Page 12

  Owain looked bewildered, and more than a little crestfallen.

  "So," Winslow ventured, "perhaps only minutes have passed in our world while we've been here."

  "Very good, Thomas," Walsingham murmured approvingly.

  "But this is absurd!" stormed Dee. "Not even the Greeks ever indulged in such incredible speculations! Nowhere in the writings of the ancients is there anything to suggest that—"

  "Perhaps I can clarify matters."

  The new voice silenced them all. Its English held none of the repellant, serpentlike hiss that the Grella imparted to human languages. Indeed, it had a not-unpleasant musical quality. But it was not a human voice.

  More of the magical fireless torches were emerging from the shadows, revealing a new group of Eilonwë. At their head was one who, unlike all the others they had seen, was unmistakably old. His hair was snow-white, and his brown face bore a network of fine wrinkles which made it look even more alien. And his movements lacked the more-than-human fluidity of the other Eilonwë.

  Virginia Dare stood up and went to him, speaking urgently in the Eilonwë tongue. He gave a silvery laugh. "Out of courtesy to our new arrivals of your nation, let us speak in English, Alanthru . . . I mean, Virginia. And please introduce me."

  She turned, and spoke with a formality beyond her years. "Your Majesty, this is Riahn tr'Aliel, the leader of the Eilonwë of this region. Almost alone among his race, he has learned English."

  "I have always been fascinated by languages," the elderly Eilonwë explained in his fluent but indescribably accented English. "And your tongue posed a unique challenge, being totally unrelated to any I had ever encountered."

  Winslow sensed a stirring of interest—and fellow-feeling—in Walsingham and Dee, each of whom could plausibly claim to be England's foremost living linguist. And in any company but theirs the Queen would have been considered extraordinarily multilingual. Winslow himself could barbarously mispronounce a number of French phrases, but the only foreign language in which he was really conversant was Spanish. It had its uses in his line of work. Academic language masters would have blanched at those uses.

  "But Virginia," Riahn continued, "did I understand you to say Your Majesty? Or did my limited experience of your language mislead me?"

  "No, it did not," said Walsingham before Virginia Dare could answer. His office of Principal Secretary settled over him like an invisible cloak. "You are in the presence of Elizabeth, by grace of God Queen of England, Wales, Ireland and France, and Defender of the Faith."

  "As little as I may look it at the moment," said the Queen with the irresistibly charming smile she could bring to bear when she chose. "And I rejoice to greet a fellow sovereign."

  "Oh, no, Your Majesty," Riahn demurred. "I am no hereditary monarch, such as Virginia's parents and the others of the generation that knew England described to me. I am . . . But it's all rather complicated, and it's the least of the things I need to explain to you. So let us hurry to a place where I can explain them at leisure. It is night outside, and this tunnel emerges a goodly distance from the scene of your earlier fight, where the Grella have converged."

  "And," Winslow remarked, knowing he was presuming beyond his station, "we can't stay in here forever."

  The Queen's eyes met those of her Principal Secretary. Walsingham, after the barest hesitation, nodded. The Queen turned back to Riahn. "Very well, Sir Riahn. You may lead the way."

  They continued along the tunnel for some distance before emerging into a cloudless night, under the stars and a three-quarter moon whose silvery light made the overgrown ruins seem even more haunted. The Eilonwë led the way, flitting through the night with silent grace, with Riahn at the head, for all his evident years. It was as though they fled through Arcadian groves in the company of elves.

  Shakespeare must have felt it. As they ran, Winslow heard him murmuring with more than his usual intensity. "Over hill, over dale, through bush, through briar, over park, over pale, through flood, through fire, I do wander everywhere swifter than the moon's sphere." He gave a more than usually emphatic and self-satisfied nod.

  Abruptly, they arrived at the foot of a curving, graceful sweep of what had been an impressive stairway of cracked alabasterlike white stone, leading up to the moss-hung façade of what must have been a truly monumental example of the architectural style they had seen before: elliptical roofs supported on shallow arches. All was crumbling into ruin now, but the moonlight and the encroaching vegetation had worked a kind of magic, transforming a derelict structure into an enchanted place of shadow and starlight.

  Appearances were deceiving. Once they entered, it became apparent that the building had been converted to covert use, with drably functional partitions dividing its cavernous interior into rooms and corridors, transformed into a kind of day by the Eilonwë's fireless light. Some of the sailors and soldiers muttered uneasily, but Virginia Dare obviously took it in stride and they couldn't show fear before a girl who had none.

  The enslaved Eilonwë, still moving with a strange lack of either cooperation or real resistance, were led away. The rest of them proceeded to a large central chamber furnished with low tables and couches, where people, Eilonwë and human alike, greeted Riahn. John White stepped forward as though in a dream and confronted a man who looked to be in his fifties.

  "Ambrose Viccars? Is it truly you?"

  "Master White!" Viccars smiled in his gray beard, deepening the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. "Yes, it's me. I'm one of the last of the elders left. Word was sent ahead that you had come here, and that Her Majesty is with you." White confirmed it, and Viccars went to one knee, while Winslow wondered just how word had been "sent ahead."

  Viccars introduced a few others whom White knew . . . or had known, nineteen of their years before. "My own dear Elizabeth is long dead," he said with the fatalism they'd previously observed in Virginia Dare. "She and our son Ambrose Junior—you remember him, don't you?—were killed by the Grella."

  "I'm sorry," said White, grasping him by the shoulder.

  "We'd had two other children since coming here. The older, a boy, is a fighter now."

  "Aye," Virginia Dare interjected. "He's avenged his mother and his older brother many times over, as I can testify."

  John Dee cleared his throat loudly. "Yes. Well, unless my memory is at fault, Riahn, you promised an explanation of certain matters. Like the fact that Master Viccars, and Mistress Dare, and all the other English among you have lived nineteen years in a single year."

  It was as though Dee had broken a dam. They had all been holding their questions inside, for there were simply too many questions to deal with. But now they all came flooding out, and afterwards Winslow could never remember who had asked which one.

  "How did the colonists come to be here?"

  "How did we come to be here?"

  "How did the Gray Monks come into our world?

  "What are the Gray Monks?"

  "What are you?"

  "What is this place?"

  "What . . . ?

  "How . . . ?"

  "Why . . . ?"

  Riahn raised a silencing hand. "I know this is all very difficult for you. And it is difficult for me to explain in your language. First, let me ask you something. How did your . . . journey here seem?"

  They all turned to Dee, who described the fading-out of the landscape of Croatoan, the infinite void, the reappearance of the world—or, at any rate, of a world. By the time he was done, Viccars and the other former colonists were nodding.

  "Yes," said Riahn with a nod of his own. "It confirms our conclusions about your race." He took a deep breath. "You must understand that there are many worlds. I'm not speaking of the other planets of space—"

  "The other planets?" Dee queried. "So you are saying that Copernicus is right after all? That the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the universe, and the Earth is but one planet revolving around it?"

  "Ah . . . that is a matter which we must take up at another ti
me. I am speaking of worlds which do not lie elsewhere in space but which exist parallel to each other, in more dimensions that the four we know—"

  "Four? But Euclid clearly states that there are three."

  "Please! You must let me finish without interruptions."

  "Possess your soul in patience, Dr. Dee," commanded the Queen. "I would hear this out."

  "These parallel realities, as we must call them," Riahn resumed, "are similar in many ways—especially in astronomical matters. For example, you doubtless noticed the moon tonight. It is the same size to which you are accustomed, and takes as long to complete a revolution around the Earth. You will find that the year is also the same. You may also have noticed that the constellations are familiar. And you have surely noticed that you weigh the same as ever."

  "Well of course—!" Dee began before remembering the Queen's ban of silence.

  "There are differences, however. Geography, for example. You will see what I mean when I show you a map of this Earth. Likewise, living things differ—as, for example, the differences between you and us, or between both of us and the Grella. But the single most important difference is that time passes at different rates in different realities. Of this, you have seen the proof." Riahn gestured at Virginia Dare. "And," he added hastily as the Queen began to open her mouth, "please do not ask me the why of any of this. We understand that no more than you do. Perhaps the Grella understand it, for they have learned how to pass from one reality to another.

  "At certain locations, the fabric of reality is in some manner weak. Long ago, the Grella, on whatever world to which they are native, discovered that by a brutally powerful application of energy at one of these points it is possible to . . . burst through into another reality."

  "We English have good reason to know of their powers of sorcery," the Queen nodded grimly.

  "If I understand you correctly, then you are wrong. This is not, uh, sorcery, but rather an application of the . . . well, the mechanic arts, in which the Grella are far more advanced than we—which, if I may say so without giving offense, means they are very far in advance of you. As far as we know, they are the only race ever to discover how to . . . tear the fabric between realities. Since making that discovery, they have been spreading like a plague from one world to the next. After subjugating a world, they use their arts to search it for another of the 'weak points' of which I have spoken. Then they move on to devastate yet another world."

  "As they have devastated yours," said Winslow quietly, recalling what he had seen.

  "Indeed." Riahn's equanimity was almost chilling. "For thousands of years, we have lived as you see: fugitives lurking among the crumbling ruins of our own ancient civilization, able at best to strike back occasionally. But during that time, we have gradually gained some of the knowledge of the Grella—such as what I am telling you now. One of the things we have learned is that almost two thousand years ago, shortly after completing their conquest of our world, a Grella exploration craft was lost—presumably as a result of finding one of the 'weak points,' forcing its way through it and, for some reason, being unable to return. The Grella here in our world have never found that point again.

  "Then, nineteen years ago, the English inexplicably appeared here. They told us that your world has become afflicted by the beings you call the 'Gray Monks.' "

  "The Grella!" Dee exclaimed. "So that's it! This craft of theirs—a flying craft like the one we have seen—emerged into our world at Croatoan Island and suffered an accident, reaching the Spanish lands to the south before crashing. Only . . . you said this happened two thousand years ago."

  "Two thousand years ago here," Walsingham said suddenly. He closed his eyes, and the turning gears of his brain were almost audible. "That would be about a century ago in our world. In other words, about a quarter-century before Ponce de León landed in Florida."

  "But what were they doing in Florida during that quarter-century?" Winslow wondered.

  "Quite probably they were dead," Riahn stated matter-of-factly, then continued into the stunned, uncomprehending silence. "They have . . . machines that can control the living body on a very basic level—a level you do not yet suspect exists, for it lies in the realm of the invisible. Among other things, it enables them to take control of the mind. The Spaniards must have somehow come under the control of these machines, then followed commands to restore the Grella to a kind of life. That, too, can be done." He stopped, suddenly noticing the looks on his listeners' faces.

  "Now I know why their bodies had to be burned," Winslow heard himself say.

  "No," said Walsingam in a strangled voice. "Resurrection from the dead? Them? No!"

  "But does it not explain a great deal?" Riahn asked gently. "We have been given to understand that the Grella have extended their influence over your world by taking control of a powerful religious organization—"

  "The church of Rome!" Walsingham spat. "What could be more natural? It is the embodiment of all that is corrupt—the Whore of Babylon! The Gray Monks found their natural home there, in the cesspit of the Vatican!"

  "I perceive that you are of a different persuasion," said Riahn urbanely. "And I would not presume to dispute your assessment of that Church's predispositions, of which you are in a better position to know than I. But even so, the mind control of which I speak must have expedited matters. Also, we have heard tales that the Grella's Spanish discoverer thought he had discovered the secret of renewed youth . . . but in the end wished he hadn't."

  "Ponce de León," Winslow breathed. They'd all heard the stories.

  "After enslaving his mind, it would have been typical of their sense of humor to give him such a 'reward.' For, as I have said, this renewed life is not true life. It lacks a certain indefinable essence—"

  "The soul?" Dee's query sent a chill up the spines of all the humans.

  "We have learned that term from your compatriots. It will do as well as any other. The same is even more true of the restoration of life to the already-dead Grella in your world. Indeed, it is our belief that this has been performed, not once but many times, on all the Grella now extant, leaving them the empty abominations they now are. They must have ceased to have offspring ages ago."

  "This mind-control evil of which you speak," Winslow began hesitantly. "We saw slaves of your people serving the Grella. Are they . . . ?"

  "Yes. Their lot is worse than slavery as you understand the word, for they cannot even wish to rebel or disobey. And after a time it culminates in a particularly ugly form of madness. We have . . . healing techniques to release them from their mental bondage. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't," Riahn finished fatalistically.

  "There's one thing you haven't explained," said Dee stubbornly. "If the Grella must use their devilish arts to force their way through the barrier between one 'alternate reality' and another, how is it that we English—first the colonists, and now us—simply blundered through it?"

  Riahn opened his mouth to speak, but could not seem to find the words. Then, after another false start, he turned to one of the low tables and took a sheet of paper and a kind of stylus. "I do not know if I can explain this in your language. It is difficult enough in my language. But let me try." He drew two circles. "Imagine that these represent your reality and ours, even though as I said before we are dealing with many dimensions, while the surface of this paper has only two." Dee nodded at the last part, as though Riahn had finally said something he could fully understand and agree with. Riahn, ignoring him, drew concentric dashed circles around each of the solid ones. "The area between the circles is the extradimensional void through which the gap between realities can be bridged. As I have explained, this can only be done at certain points." He drew an X-mark on the perimeter of each of the solid circles. "At these points, the Grella can tear the fabric of reality and force their way through." He drew a brutally solid line from one X-mark to the other. "In so doing, they weaken the 'fabric' at those points even more. Once they do so, you humans—for
reasons we cannot pretend to understand, for they involve some unique quality of your race—can pass through as you have done, simply by entering the affected area. First you enter a realm we call the 'Near Void.' " He indicated the zone immediately surrounding the solid circles, within the dashed circles. "Here, judging from your descriptions of your experience, you can observe the material world in a blurred, colorless way while being yourselves invisible to its denizens. But then you pass on into the 'Deep Void,' where time and space are meaningless."

  "The infinite emptiness in which we found ourselves adrift," Dee breathed.

  "Precisely. You are then drawn into the other reality's Near Void, and finally into that reality itself. This, as I say, seems to be a unique quality of you humans. At least the Grella seem to know nothing of it. Their 'brute force' approach evidently bursts directly into the Deep Void. We have no explanation for this difference."