The Iron Grail (21 page)

Her expression darkened for a moment, before she added in a distant whisper, ‘But I see it grey, I see it running…’

She would not elaborate on the cold image.

The day had grown bright; the wind was strong but fresh. The air was fragrant with charring wood from the busy forges and the smouldering herbs from the fortress orchard grove, now being concealed again behind high wicker walls. The sound of drumming and singing drifted from the same direction. A shaft was being dug ready to take the trunk of a tree and the cleaned bones of a sacrificed horse. Since there had been no captives taken in the battle, their shades having dissolved into night and their dead unusable according to Cathabach, who knew about these things, a horse would have to be offered. It was a white and grey mare. She was already bridled and braided, and some of the children were decorating her with flowers and grasses under the watchful eyes of two mothers.

Several other horses had been culled, those with broken limbs and deep wounds, and their flesh removed, to be prepared as food.

By the well, the High Women had managed to summon something in human shape that shimmered and shifted in the air. They were busy rubbing the petals of yellow meadow flowers between their palms and holding their hands towards this elemental emanation from the earth. They were testing the efficacy of the old invocations, and the reliability of the source of water. They seemed pleased with what they were seeing. A manifestation of Nodons, god of healing, I was told discreetly by Manandoun.

There was the murmur of joy in the air.

All was returning to normal in Taurovinda.

*   *   *

Munda’s revelations weighed heavily on me for the rest of the day. I began to feel stifled in Taurovinda, trapped by the high walls, the bustle of people and animals and the choking smells. From the western ramparts I could look out across the marshes and forest to the distant hills that bordered the Land of the Shadows of Heroes, and I could feel the cool, fresh wind that blew from those hidden valleys.

There was someone there I badly needed to see again; and a mystery I would have to solve if I was to escape the bond I now felt to Urtha.

Where was Argo’s spirit boat? I called for her and she answered. She was lying in a shallow creek, some way away upriver. Hidden by tall reeds and drooping willows, she had been sleeping quietly, waiting for the moment when either Argo would come and find her, or I loosened my tie with her, allowing her to slip out of Alba, across the grey sea, to find the mother ship herself.

Now she nudged from the reeds, turned into the current (I saw this in my mind’s eye, just briefly, before I withdrew from the contact) and began to make her way to the stone sanctuary by Nantosuelta, where we had camped before the battle. She would take a little while to get here.

At dusk, the host of the Coritani settled down at two long tables, to talk, eat and drink, two fierce fires burning between the benches. In the king’s house, Urtha and the survivors of his own clan invited the chiefs of the Coritani and myself to sprawl and eat, and listen to stories for a while, mostly of the quest to Delphi, until the Speaker for the Past stepped into the centre of the ring and proceeded to rededicate the royal lodge to its rightful owner.

This process took until the high of the night, an interminable incantation of tribal history, clan raids, cattle raids, strange births, falling stars, wild warriors, cunning women who had ruled in the past, foolish men who given away all that their fathers had gained.

I was impressed with the phenomenal feat of memory shown by this clip-bearded, cropped-haired man of fifty years or so. His eyes never left the limbless tree that rose at the centre of the house, though he walked around it several times during his long description of the past generations of Taurovinda. Once in a while he struck the tree with a bone blade. At one point he urinated against the trunk, to the sound of rhythmic hand clapping from the gathered host. All part of the renewal process, apparently.

Then the Speaker for Kings listed the dynasty that had preceded Urtha, from his grandfather, a man called Mordiergos, down to Durandond, the founder of this stronghold in Alba. Then, at seven generations, the name was that of a woman—Margomarnat—and then women’s names went far back, High Queens of the fallen citadel on the other side of the sea. The final names might have been from a time before Jason had been born in Greek Land. Each was mentioned in terms of her children, her girlhood, her first feat as ruler of the people, and the warlock who served her. The recital went on for ever, it seemed, but no one who listened seemed in the slightest bored.

When he too was finished, with the fire still burning high, several of the men around me began to brag about their deeds, laughing and sneering at each other, throwing dirt and scraps of food to signal their disbelief.

I’d seen this too often before and left them to it, bade Urtha a good night, and found shelter where I could sit and think and summon my strength.

I had intended to leave at first light, but the druid known as Speaker for the Land began to call from above the Bull Gate. He was waving a staff of hazel rods, twisted together, a
collcrac
, and making a sound like a crow in between calls in a language that I suspected was an ancient dialect of Urtha’s own tongue, now obscure to all but these men of memory.

It seemed the time was now propitious to bring in the bodies and limbs of the dead of our two hosts, from this attack and from Kymon’s failed assault. The gates were opened and twenty men rode down to the plain. Urtha called for me to come and help, bringing me a horse. I clambered into its rough saddle and followed. ‘We bring in what we can,’ he called to me. ‘Do you have the stomach for it, Merlin?’

I laughed sourly. I had once watched Medea chop her brother into pieces whilst the boy screamed, casting the fragments into the sea to delay her father, a man raging at what he believed to be her abduction by Jason.

Yes, I imagined I had the stomach for it.

The crows had already gathered again. Urtha’s great hounds chased them off, leaping among the slow-flying carrion eaters and bringing them down, shaking their feathers and their lives across the field. I gathered up swords and shields, a few fragments of limbs. Urtha pulled the decaying body of Munremur across the withers of his own mount and returned slowly and sombrely to the
nemeton
at his stronghold’s heart. There, the wicker gates were pulled open by the druids and the bodies carried in, laid out on benches. The limbs of the newly dead were stiff, but would relax before long.

When all the dead were inside the grove, the wicker gates were closed again. Before the rampart gates were shut and sealed, I had slipped down the road to the plain, following the ceremonial way back to the river. I had made the briefest farewell to Ambaros, who was very understanding. But Urtha was dismayed by my disappearance and rode out from the fort, thundering down the safe track, yelping and shouting my name like some newly blooded youth. I ran ahead of him, faster and faster. He had a small javelin held high above his head. Had the man gone mad?

Bursting through the underbrush that bordered the river, frantically searching the stream for my small boat, Urtha circled round ahead of me, bare-chested, hair hanging free, galloping through the shallows and riding into the tree line. The javelin thudded into the trunk next to me, quivering, the grey feathers tied in a plume around its shaft shaking like a frightened bird.

‘You were a guest in my house. And you leave without telling me?’

I had offended Urtha’s sense of courtesy. I suppose I should have known.

‘I need to leave. I told Ambaros. I didn’t leave without a word of goodbye.’

He was not pacified. ‘Yes. Ambaros told me. But Kymon and Munda are deeply fond of you, the girl in particular. When they find out, they’ll be distraught. You should have spoken to them.’

‘I spoke to Munda yesterday,’ I told him. ‘Your daughter is growing strong. She has the Light of Foresight. She began to develop it in Ghostland, and I intend to find how and why. That’s why I’m leaving.’

He seemed genuinely disappointed and I reassured him that he had not seen the last of me.

‘But I’ve only just found you again!’ he complained bitterly. His hand rested on the pommel of his sword as he sat, staring down at me. ‘I trust you more than those men of oak. I trusted you from the moment you stepped into my tent, away in the Northland. And what am I to tell the Coritanian host? They’re eager to get back to their own fortress in case Ghostland attacks it next. I’ve assured them that you’re the greatest man of oak I’ve ever known, the wisest Speaker for the Future. It’s one of the reasons they are staying to assist at Taurovinda.’

‘Then you lied to them.’

‘I thought you
were
staying.’

‘I’m no man of oak. I’m a man of the Path. I’ve forgotten a thousand times more than your druids can remember, prodigious though their memory is.’

‘You’re going the wrong way for the Shadowlands,’ he insisted.

‘I have a small boat to take me there.’

He laughed. ‘The river is flowing to the sea. Ghostland is upstream. And you’re not that good an oarsman, as I remember from Argo.’

‘This boat has a mind of its own,’ I said and he frowned.

Urtha had challenged me. Now he shrugged, kicking his war-horse towards me, reaching out a hand to say goodbye as he passed, his eyes hard again.

‘Well, take care of yourself across in that place. I’m certain they haven’t finished with us. This is just the beginning.’

‘Indeed. Stay on your guard,’ I agreed with him. He was certainly right about the danger from Ghostland.

‘And the javelin is for you. The feathers were shed by one of the carrion eaters that fed on the enemy. I made it myself. It has a king’s blessing! You’ll know what to do or not to do with it, I expect.’

*   *   *

I had to wait for her until dusk, but I should have foreseen that. She slid through the water towards me, bathed in moonlight, rocking as she cut effortlessly against the current, the river sparkling silver where it broke against her prow.

I waded out to her and hauled myself inside, nestling down on the fur rugs, drawing them around my shoulders. I clutched the spear, thinking about Urtha, his simple, noble gestures, wondering if he might indeed have invested the simple weapon with any meaning by tying on the feathers from the otherworldly ravens.

In this way I entered a dreamless condition, the detached state of thought that a ship like Argo, or this little offspring, will always demand if she is to sail against nature. I was aware of the stars and spent the time making a careful study of how some of them had moved in all the millennia I had studied them. Some moved speedily; some seemed to fade and come strong again, like the glaring moon. Most seemed to move as slowly as a boulder inches down a river, a change of celestial position scarcely visible unless seen at intervals of several hundred years.

There was wonder and intrigue in that roof of fire, but I doubted that even if I sacrificed my life I could reach as far as to touch one. The moon, perhaps, but the risk was great. Who could guess what elemental forces guarded her face from the probing fingers of the men who recorded her, and acted in conjunction with her moods.

The boat rocked and was still, tipping slightly towards the land.

‘We’re there,’ she whispered. ‘I’m tired. I’ll slip downstream to rest until you call. This is where you met the Mother. The Ford of the Last Farewell. This is where I crossed with your children. But I fear the others have been taken. I sense only desertion and damage.’

I watched while she slipped away. A thin mist hung over the river. On the far bank, several deer were grazing. A flight of cranes beat their way towards me, passing overhead, flying from the land of the living to the land of the dead as if without concern. I made a mental note of that, then turned to follow them.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Moondream

The spirit of Argo had seen truly. When I came to the enclosed valley with its high rock walls, its woods and meadows where the children of royalty from Urtha’s world had once been hidden, I found only desertion and the signs of struggle. The place had been abandoned many years ago. Time had worked a different trick on this sad communal home.

The brittle white bones of a horse, still with shreds of leather on its carcass, suggested that the attack had not been totally one-sided. Ragged strips of clothing, caught on branches and rotting below the overhanging rocks, were a grim suggestion that the conflict had been violent.

How long after I had taken Kymon and Munda and their friend Atanta to safety, I wondered, had this deed been done? However recently, Time had warped to shift the event backwards in the cycle of the years.

I was sad but not surprised. A small terrain of woods, meadows and crags, separated from the world of fortresses but not fully enveloped by the Otherworld which loomed large to the west, this hinterland was both a refuge and a dangerously unknown region. In this, it was like hinterlands everywhere around the Path. The children of kings had found safety here for a while, no doubt because of the protective presence of the timeless
modronae
, who had weaved their simple spell of isolation around their charges for many centuries. That the weave would one day be torn was inevitable. The hinterland was a place of crossings. It was no-man’s land but vulnerable.

It was also all-time land, as I had discovered previously. Hidden in its forests and winding gorges were connections, through caves, pools or stone sanctuaries, to all the hinterlands of the world; they overlapped. I could as easily enter the misty fringes of Tartarus or Tuonela from the edge of Ghostland as I could come to these woods from those distant borders of distant underworlds. Those regions were timeless too. I had been born in such a place and, in one sense, that birthplace existed everywhere. It certainly had a presence here, somewhere near. I had been close to it before, and I was certain that Medea, too, would have visited that old pool and waterfall, and the bristling woodland that contained it; the place where she and I had grown up in the long, long gone.