Brida

The people in the crowd stared at the man standing on the wall. They were not so sure now that they wanted to escape and thus suffer for all eternity.

"The Cathar Church is the true Church," the priest went on. "Thanks to Jesus Christ and to the Holy Spirit, we have achieved communion with God. We do not need to be reincarnated. We do not need to return to the kingdom of the Other God."

Loni noticed that three priests bearing Bibles had stepped forward.

"The consolamentum will now be distributed to those who wish to die with us. Down below, the fire awaits. It will be a horrible death, involving terrible suffering. It will be a slow death, and the pain of the flames burning your flesh will be unlike any you have experienced before. However, not all of you will have that honor, only the true Cathars. The others will be condemned to live."

Two women shyly went up to the priests who were holding the Bibles. An adolescent boy wrenched himself free from his mother's arms and joined them.

Four mercenaries approached Talbo.

"We want to receive the Sacrament, sir. We want to be baptized."

"This is how the Tradition survives," said the Voices. "Because people are willing to die for an idea."

Loni waited to hear Talbo's decision. The mercenaries had fought all their lives purely for money, until they met these people prepared to fight only for what they deemed to be right.

Talbo finally nodded his as

sent, even though it meant losing some of his best men.

"Let's go," said Loni. "Let's go over to the walls. They said that anyone who wants to can leave."

"It's better that we rest, Loni."

"You're going to die," whispered the Voices again.

"I want to see the Pyrenees. I want to see the valley one more time, Talbo. You know that I'm going to die."

Yes, he knew. He was a man accustomed to battlefields and he could tell when a wound would prove to be the death of one of his soldiers. Loni's wound had been open for three days, poisoning her blood. Those whose wounds did not heal might last two days or two weeks, but never longer than that.

And Loni was close to death. Her fever had passed. Talbo knew that this, too, was a bad sign. As long as the foot hurt and the fever burned, that meant the organism was still fighting. Now the struggle was over, and it was only a matter of time.

"You're not afraid," said the Voices. No, Loni wasn't afraid. Even as a child, she had known that death was merely another beginning. At that time, the Voices had been her great companions. They had faces, bodies, and gestures visible only to her. They were people who came from different worlds; they talked to her and never let her feel lonely. She'd had a very interesting childhood, playing with the other children but using her invisible friends to shift objects around and make strange noises that startled her companions. Her mother was glad that they lived in a Cathar country--"if the Catholics were here, you'd be burned alive," she used to say. The Cathars paid no attention to such things; they believed that the good were good, the bad were bad, and that no force in the Universe could change this.

Then the French arrived, saying that there was no Cathar country, and since the age of eight, all she had known was war.

The war had brought her one very good thing: her husband, hired in some distant land by the Cathar priests, who never themselves took up arms. But it brought something bad, too: the fear of being burned alive, because the Catholics were moving ever closer to her village. She began to feel afraid of her invisible friends, and they gradually disappeared from her life. However, the Voices remained. They continued to tell her what was going to happen and how she should behave, but she didn't want their friendship, because they always knew too much. Then one Voice taught her the trick of thinking about that ancient tree, and she hadn't heard the Voices at all since the last crusade against the Cathars had begun, and the French Catholics had continued to win battle after battle.

Today, though, she didn't have the strength to think about the tree. The Voices were back, and she didn't mind. On the contrary, she needed them. They would show her the path once she was dead.

"Don't worry about me, Talbo. I'm not afraid of dying," she said.

They reached the top of the wall. A cold, relentless wind was blowing, and Talbo drew his cloak more tightly about him. Loni didn't feel the cold anymore. She could see the lights of a town on the horizon, and the lights of the encampment at the foot of the mountain. All along the valley bottom bonfires were lit. The French soldiers were awaiting the final decision.

The notes from a flute wafted up from below, along with the sound of voices singing.

"It's the soldiers," said Talbo. "They know they could die at any moment, and that's why, for them, life is one long celebration."

Loni felt suddenly furious with life. The Voices were telling her that Talbo would meet other women, have children, and grow rich on what he plundered from cities. "But he will never love anyone as he has loved you, because you are part of him forever," said the Voices.

Loni and Talbo, their arms about each other, remained for a while gazing down on the landscape below, listening to the soldiers singing. Loni sensed that the mountain had been the setting of other wars in the past, a past so remote that not even the Voices could remember it.

"We are eternal, Talbo. That's what the Voices used to tell me in the days when I could see their bodies and faces."

Talbo knew about his wife's Gift, but she had not mentioned it for a long time. Perhaps it was the effect of the fever.

"And yet no one life is the same as any other life. It might be that we will never meet again, and I need you to know that I've loved you all my life. I loved you even before I met you. You're part of me.