Ancient Echoes (39 page)

‘This place is perfect,’ he seemed to say. ‘I can build on the ruins; make a city again. This place is perfect.’

‘You should know. You built it in the first place.’

He stared at me, then shook his head, and the first inkling of what had happened to the tundra-dancer insinuated its unwelcome presence into my mind.

‘Don’t you remember building the harbour? Throwing up new walls around the tower? Taming horses to carry you inland, to forage for the best trees to build the great ships?’

‘I remember the city,’ he said. He looked darkly at the lake. ‘It came out of the water and consumed everything that was here. I will never forget how it looked, a stone beast with a stone mouth and a stone heart, eating its way through the forest and the hill, leaving everything dead and broken. Maybe it even ate the
maelstrom
. It took the sanctuaries, it took the temple, it took the trees where the armour of my friends was hung in honour … I remember that. I remember it clearly. But
this place was here before me. You and I came ashore, you tended my wounds. It was here then … all we need do is salvage a ship … prepare for the crossing …’

He glanced at the lake, where the hulks and stumps of masts broke the surface, the playground of waterbirds. ‘Have you ever salvaged a ship?’ he asked with a thin, hopeful smile.

‘Nothing as big as those.’

‘Hmm. Well, we’ll manage somehow. Now then!’

He turned abruptly to the forest and flung a piece of driftwood, smiling as the clatter in the branches set up the sound of howling.

‘Greenface!’ he announced, and his look was one of curiosity. ‘Did you find her?’

‘I’ve found her twice so far. This is my third attempt.’

He was surprised. ‘You’ve been back? I didn’t see you!’

‘I couldn’t find you.’

‘But I was here. I’ve been here since you left …’

‘I couldn’t find you.’
Although I saw you
…

‘How strange.’

He brightened suddenly. ‘Elusive?’ He meant Ahk’Nemet.

‘Slippery.’

‘Like a fish,’ he mimed.

‘Indeed. But I think she’s waiting for me. It’s just a question of knowing where. The last time I saw her, she was close to the maelstrom, by a gate shaped like a Bull’s face. The Watching Place.’

‘I’ve dreamed of it,’ he said, scratching at the projection of a stub of ivy from his cheek. ‘I’ve dreamed of it many times. I’ve dreamed of the Bull. A huge creature. It neither descends into the Eye, nor emerges from it. It walks the edge of the whirling pool … It’s stronger than the earth, I think.’

‘Did you dream it? Or have you seen it?’

‘I’d know if I’d seen it. How long do you think you’ve been gone?’ he asked with a laugh.

‘I don’t know. How long?’

‘Not that long. A few months …’

A
few months!
He
was
deluded.

‘You left me here, wounded. I’ve had very little opportunity to do anything other than think, and plan, and dream … But you’re back, as you said you’d be. I’ll help you find Greenface; you’ll help me cross the lake. I shall resurrect Ethne from the hell of fish, gum and oil that embalms her. She belongs here, now. Here, with me …’

Embalms
her? Had he truly said that? Or was this only my interpretation of his gesture and signal that meant no more than
entraps,
as in: take her away from the family who are holding her?

‘What will you do with her, when you fetch her?’ I asked tentatively, and he went dreamy, then excited, pointing to the hill behind us. Take her deep into the land. Find a place to spend our lives together. Dance with each child born. Avoid the ice at all costs, live only in the warmth!’

Dear God – he thought she was still alive! He had forgotten that his beloved Ethne had died years ago, and that he had buried her and built a tomb to her that now echoed with wind and wings.

I felt so sad for him. For a while I sat at the edge of the woods, watching him about his business, and my heart broke for him, since he was living in a state of such hope and such anticipation.

I went hunting, unsuccessfully as it transpired, seeking my own company, in a quandary as to what to do. At dusk, as I slipped down the hill towards the gleaming lake, I saw him standing knee-deep in the water, staring out across the distance towards the dark tomb. He was naked, his hands hanging limply by his sides. He remained motionless for nearly half an hour and I stayed quite still, crouched in cover, waiting to see what happened.

I believed, and was proved right, that he had begun to have an inkling of the truth about Ethne; that the past, drawn from
him perhaps during sleep, was now seeping back, unwelcome days and nights, dark images obscuring the brief light that had set his face aglow on my return.

After a time he walked back to the shore, to the tower. I followed him as he pushed through the undergrowth, through gaps in the walls, a shadowy figure passing between the trees, soon discernible only by his rustling progress towards a deeper part of the ruined castle.

When I found him, he was asleep, wrapped in a tumble of ivy that spilled over a low wall and onto a carved stone bench. In the fading evening light, I realized that I was in a garden; small statues of children, carved in a blue-tinged granite, stood at the four corners of what had once been a deep pool. The fountain in the centre was shaped like the sturgeon from the lake that I had seen caught, a lifetime ago. Once, this garden had been covered with a roof of branches, open to the light, but casting shade in places; the wood was broken, rotting, overgrown with swelling, puffy fungus. But the blooms of flowers were still heavy with scent, and I could tell, just, that they were brightly coloured. They were closing to the night, but some of the trumpets were of enormous size.

I couldn’t wake William, though I tried, concerned for him sleeping in the open and with nothing but leaves for a covering. ‘Don’t leave me,’ I said to him, thinking that he might sink more deeply into sleep, and remain there.

Getting cold, I went back to the tower and for want of a better resting place curled up on his pallet, pushing aside the dangling vegetation, some fronds still dripping sap from the cut ends. The drops touched my skin like tears, and though I was tempted to move, I stayed where I was, thinking of William.

How long he had slept here I couldn’t tell, but a long time, many years. As he had slept, the shadows had been drawn from him by the nurturing garden, which had spread from its small centre to encompass the tower. Now those shadows played briefly in my own dreaming mind, an echo of another’s past, a
heritage of war and anguish that would have to re-inhabit the fine-bearded man at some point, but perhaps not yet.

Such powerful dreams.

First, the anguish as he finally realized I was not coming back. He had waited on the shore for weeks, slowly healing, each wound a constant reminder of his feelings for Ethne, denied to him by the span of the lake. At dawn his crude defences were shattered by monsters. He starved for a while, then made a lucky strike, feeding on hipparion meat for several days before the flies discouraged him.

He was desolate, lonely, and frightened; the fear grew into rage; he stormed the hill, prowled the edge of the Eye, carved my name and called to me. I had never grasped the extent to which he had depended upon my help.

I had left him, and he soon decided that I was dead. He built a monument to me, a crude carving in wood. He blistered his fingers holding the knives with which he shaped the hard oak. When the icon was finished he took it up to the maelstrom and left it there, its blind eyes staring at the heart of the storm.

This memory had been taken from him, leaving him relieved to see me, as if only days had past.

I dreamed on: the lake crossing with a fleet of ships, low and sleek, rowed by a hundred men; hunters, mercenaries, knights, horsemen, raiders and rievers, all eager for battle.

I woke in the middle of the mayhem. The strong walls of the fishing city were broken down, the slaughter was complete, though Two Cuts escaped, badly wounded, into the forest. Ethne and her sisters were rescued, and as I passed back into sleep, trying to abandon the stink of guts and the sound of shrieking men, so I experienced the love that William and Ethne had known for several years …

And their children, twins, two boys of fair complexion, one thoughtful, one devil-may-care, both of them William’s pride and joy.

And then the horror: of waking to Two Cuts’ half-masked face, the dull bone that covered his eyes and nose giving him the look of a fish, the smile below unmistakable. He held the twins by their hair, two naked, limp bodies, red life still spurting from their throats where Two Cuts had brought grotesque meaning to his name.

Ethne was gone. The fort blazed. Out on the lake, the dark ships waited as Two Cuts’ warriors abandoned the destruction, their quest achieved, the woman returned.

In the dream, William screamed, ‘I killed you. I saw you killed!’

The spear sliced through him.

He was too quick for the hunter-fisher, though, and for a moment the face behind the fish-skull mask looked startled. Then Two Cuts was running for the shore, for the ships, William behind him, the spear raised although his body racked with pain from the wound.

Fire-shadow made the shore a confusion of movement. The air stank with burning. Ethne had slipped her captors and was running for the forest. As Two Cuts stumbled in the muddy water, screaming to his warriors, William killed him, a single strike to the back with the spear, a second strike to the neck, severing the masked head from its armoured corpse.

By dawn, the ships of the raiders had slipped away, dispersing across the lake, travelling further into the mountains, abandoning the fishing city for ever, now that Two Cuts lay mutilated in the mud.

Again I woke, but again, the sap dreams sent me back into William’s memory …

Ethne, a pale-faced, beautiful figure, for ever to be found wandering naked and smiling along the lake, a primal creature among the brontotheria and hippari, bathing with them, drinking with them, chasing birds, fishing for the golden-scaled chubb and silver bream with a skill and a speed that was astonishing.

William made statues of the children and placed them in a
garden, with statues of himself and Ethne making up the square around a fountain. Ethne loved the place. She slept here, danced here, bathed in the spring that one of William’s discoveries in the hills – an architect, a dreamer, a man wandering the Deep aimlessly – had directed to the granite sturgeon whose jaws spouted the fresh and cleansing water.

Ethne roamed the castle. And after a while she began to sail across the lake, to the ruins of her city.

Since she always returned, William let her go; he was still lost in grief, for his twins and for the woman he had loved, who was now just a ghost in his fortress. She travelled with the builder, the man who could tame spring water, and he knew where to acquire a gleaming stone, black and hard.

Obsidian!

He woke one morning to the feeling of a kiss, but on opening his eyes he saw nothing but the room, the bed, the murals of Ethne and her sons that had been painted on the ivory walls of the tower.

He ran to the garden, then to the harbour. Her boat was gone. She had sailed, he learned, the night before, crossing the lake in darkness with the stone-shaper.

Intuitively, he knew that this was her final passage.

He followed her across the water, disembarking where her small vessel lay hauled up on the shore. The small, black monument had been built where once she had lived in her father’s house. It was a stone coffin, crystal topped, shaped by the man who stood behind it, leaning on his staff, watching the distraught figure who stumbled to the mausoleum, to hold the stone, to kiss the glass that covered the gentle, peaceful body of his wife.

Ethne had built her own, small tomb. She had lain on her side, wrists tied, legs tied, the poison taking her to her father’s world. The stone-shaper had done the rest.

‘It’s what she wanted. To lie in peace, close to her mother’s ashes.’

‘But I want more. Build a hall to hold the coffin. You’ll have
all the labour you need, all the ships you need for the stone.’

‘What would she think of what you’re doing? She wanted something close to the heart.’

‘Build it like I say. Build it so the roof is on the sky itself!’

‘It’s not what she would have wanted.’

‘She’s gone. She’s in the world of lakes and forests. And it’s what I want that matters now. When I come here, I want space to scream and hear the echo. Do what I tell you!’

And while the mausoleum was
built, William
stayed by the tomb, wrapped in furs against the cold when the winter blizzarded and silenced the whole land; draped in the same red ochre as his dead Ethne when summer made the land wilt with heat. He ate sparingly, slept a great deal, never walked outside the confines of the
hall,
standing and staring at the open sky, where the fragile scaffolding held the great blocks of polished stone as they were winched and eased into place.

His life was one of the sounds of carving, chipping, shouting,
laughing,
screams and music.
The
monument was built in a single cycle of seasons, and William sailed home again.

There was one more memory in the sap, but it was hazy, elusive. I began to wake, my awareness starting to wrestle with the sheer scale of the building that William had ordered, thinking in terms of pyramids, and the workforce, and the work hours involved, questioning how he had found labour on such a scale …

But the drip of sweet tears closed my eyes again …

A memory that had not been taken fully from him, now shaped and shimmered on the lake.

The Bull-Gate of Glanum, horns rising from the lake, the tower streaming water as it came above the surface. It moved through the dawn mist, ploughed through the harbour, into the mud, stone screaming as it cut the fortress right across, devouring the heart of the city. It threw down the statues that decorated Ethne’s garden and engulfed the place where William had made a shrine to the lost dancers of his own land. Earth falling from its walls, the limbs of trees cracking from the trunks
that grew from between the massive stones, Glanum entered the mountain, shaking the land as it turned towards the Eye …