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." She lookedlong and hard at him.Had his face always been lined with the fine wrinkles ofage and exposure? Had his violet eyes always been so deep, so wise and.so old?"Oh, Guihen! Did all really happen? And were you really young then?""Since we last said good-bye and you went inside the fane, I have watched theRoman Empire grow, and then die.When the Christian priests came, and pointedaccusing fingers at every holy well, every ancient tree driven with a thousandnails, sacred to this god or that, I watched the magic in the world fade away,because they deemed it evil, and theirs was the power to decide.I fled to theCamargue, the vast reed sea at the mouth of river Rhodanus, because I was nolonger a Ligure boy, but a magical being, and only there could I survive."But when it was time as you told me it would be I left my safe haven, and Ifound you where you said you would be.You were a little girl then, lost andalone.I watched over you, while you grew, and your belief sustained me in aworld grown hostile to my kind."When you wanted to go to the keep atop the red rocks, I barred your way,until you were old enough to withstand what Anselm might teach you.I knewthis, because you had told me, long ago, when first you emerged from the fane.Page 191 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlI am myself, and I remember all those long, empty years before you were born.Were they real? Am I?"file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Douglas,%20L%20Warren%20-.l%20Of%20Tears%20(chunky%20HTML)/0671319973__33.htm (2 of 6)2-1-2007 14:13:22- Chapter 33He shrugged."Come.Let's go home.Everyone is wondering where you have beenlately.A few things may be different, not exactly as you remember them, butpeople don't change much.They're always curious.""What shall I tell them?""If you tell them the truth, they won't believe it, and will probably create amyth of their own, more fantastic than truth.If you give them a lie.""I'll not explain, then.I'll just smile, and say that the winds off the Plainof Stones are cool even on hot days, and Rhodanus is broad and wide, and thatthe new hostelry Cerdos is building for the monks ofSaint Cassien will be bigger than the old one and surely more comfortable.Andall those things are true."* * *Day or night, the perpetual noonday sun shone in the windows of Anselm's keep,but in the libraryPierrette only allowed a narrow shaft of golden Provençal light past thedrapes, because she had had enough of fading ink, even if the cause was onlyexcess sunlight.She unfurled a scroll of Diodorus Siculus on the smooth-worn table, andsettled onto the same bench her small buttocks had polished when she was achild.She no longer felt like a child.She had experienced passion her own,and Alkides's, and Calvinus's though she was still virgin (enough, that is, tosatisfy the requirements of sorcery).Now as she unrolled the scroll, she noted that the ink at the end was no lessdark than at the beginning.She skimmed familiar passages near the end, and much to her relief foundnothing changed.Other books were similarly untouched: Augustine had writtenThe City Of God when he had written it in her original history, and Caesar'sDe Bello Gallico occupied the exact moment as before.And yes, Marius hadordered his fossa, his canal, dug in 104 B.C., and had bested the Teutons in 102 B.C.Only when she turned back another two decades did she find changes: Calvinushad stormed Entremont in 124, not 127.He had then proceeded to take Heracleaand a dozen other oppida, all the way to theRhodanus, thus permanently breaking the power of the Salyen League.Thegeneral who succeeded him, hearing that Teutomalos had been given safe haven,used that pretext to wage war, and to annex many rich lands for Roma.She setthe scroll aside.With increasing trepidation, she arose, and approached the shelf where fortyvolumes ofPolybius bound volumes, with wood-and-leather covers, not scrolls resided
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