Ancient Echoes (40 page)

I woke to the single, immediate thought:

Glanum was close and coming closer. It was circling this place, as if hunting an elusive prey. Greenface? Instinct told me differently.

It was seeking
me
. It knew I was here.

In the morning, I found the garden deserted, and though I called for William there was no answer. But I found the small hull of a boat hauled from the reeds beyond the harbour onto the higher bank, the mud around churned where the man had laboured in the dawn.

He was beginning his preparations to cross the water again.

Then at about midday the sound of equine protestations announced William’s arrival from the hills. He was on foot, dressed in protective leather shirt and trousers, running towards the castle leading two of the hippari on short ropes. The creatures’ hindquarters bucked and swayed as they ran awkwardly, and I realized that each had their hind-legs bound together at the hoof, allowing them to move, but frustrating their scythe-like, defensive kick.

He led them up to me, a breathless, grinning man, sweat pouring from his face.

‘Watch!’ he said, then turned and used his fist to hammer each of them solidly and stunningly on the muzzle. The beasts went down, eyes open, flanks heaving, totally subdued. The hunter drew his stone knife and went round each hipparion, severing the vestigial toes close to the hoof. Where the cuts oozed blood he spat on the wounds, rubbed them, then caked a little mud on the surface.

He tied the horses together by the neck and left them lying there, one of them, the larger, making faint sounds, somewhere between a whinny and a laugh, not at all happy, however.

‘Leave them there for a few hours. They’ll handle like old friends.’

‘You’ve done this before,’ I said and he frowned.

‘Have I? Only in my dreams, then. It came naturally to me, a sort of instinct. Here, these are lucky.’

He passed me the sixteen stubs, some of them razor edged, some blunt and heavy. Was I supposed to make a necklace of them? An amulet?

William laughed, held up his arms and I realized that the sleeves of his shirt were stiffened from wrist to elbow with hipparion toes, a crude form of chain mail. To demonstrate their effectiveness he used his heavy knife to strike heavily at his own limb. The blade was turned aside harmlessly.

It had not occurred to him to question how the bones had come onto his sleeves if he had never tamed the creatures save in his dreams. He was a living contradiction, but I no longer felt inclined to confront him about it.

‘Thank you. I’m sure they’ll be very useful.’

I had assumed that he had acquired and (hopefully) tamed these creatures so that we would have one each to ride into the hills. But his unease at dusk, as he prepared grilled fish, giant periwinkles and a heavy cake made from wild grains and nuts, was more than obvious. When I politely refused the massive, tongue-like curls of the fresh-water molluscs, he was insistent that I ate them. ‘For stamina. For the long ride!’ he told me. I managed one and was nearly sick. A second, large though it was (it was impossible to bite into the half-cooked mass) sailed beyond the wall as I blew it from my mouth when William was away, urinating. Desperation had strengthened my lungs.

In the morning, one of the equines had been loaded with my pack, with poles to erect skins for a tent, and with strips of drying, salted, suspicious looking food.

He held the other hipparion by its bone bit, stroking the striped muzzle, watching me with his shining blue eyes.

‘Is this goodbye, then?’ I asked him, and he handed me the crude reins.

‘I think so. I’ve thought hard about it, and perhaps your path takes you away from me, now. I have a boat to build, a lake to
cross, a heart to rescue. You have a Bull to find, a city to find, something I can’t understand to resolve.’

‘I have to find the woman,’ I said with a shrug. ‘Greenface. Beyond that, I have no idea what life holds.’

‘She’s close,’ he said. ‘The bull is close. The end is close.’

They were strange meanings, but they echoed my own feelings that I was at the centre, now, of a diminishing circle, that everything in this world of
mine
was coming together, coming to
me
, as if the wandering Midax spirit was at last taking charge of its own heaven and hell.

There remained a problem, and I pointed across the lake to the distant shadow of the mausoleum.

‘Who built the black tower?’

He didn’t look to where I pointed, simply tugged my ear and smiled. ‘Things will have changed. I know that.’

‘But
what
do you know? William … more time has passed than–’

He silenced me with a finger to my lips, a hand raised, palm towards me: quiet!

‘I will find what is there for me to find. But Ethne belongs here, with me; I’ll die unless I get her back.’

Did he know that she was dead? Were we talking at cross purposes? What should I say?

I said simply, ‘Time has taken a terrible toll on the eldest daughter.’

But all he did was laugh!

‘Jack,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Jack: I’ve fought and killed creatures as high as that ivory tower; I’ve battled against harpoon hunters and left them for the
lakescrow
to feed on.’ He grinned meaningfully as he watched me. ‘Do you think I can’t make war upon that bloody tyrant
Time
?’

The image behind his words and gestures had a strange resonance, a familiar feel, and I remembered school, the Sonnets
(‘make war upon this bloody tyrant Time’)
and I looked at William, saw myself again, saw the echo, the shadow of my childhood, embodied here in rose-torn, fine-haired beauty.

Though he probably knew he would find Ethne dead, nothing, it seemed, would dampen Finebeard’s optimism. And I took a great strength from that. It seemed to affirm my own quest. I felt hopeful of finding Ahk’Nemet, and hopeful of releasing Natalie from Greyface’s ghoulish grip.

And in any case: once out of sight, he would be out of my frame of reference, a cat allowed to play! In William’s world, once I was no longer fixing it by observing it, perhaps Ethne
was
only sleeping after all.

And a kiss from his lips would indeed bring her out of the dark hall and onto the bright lake again, loving and laughing, and fishing in the Deep …

While in suburban Exburgh, I ate breakfast and went to work!

At the top of the hill, leading my pack-hipparion awkwardly through the crowded woodland, I blew three shrill blasts on the bone pipe.

From the shore came three imitations of the
lakescrow,
the carrion eater that plagued the water’s edge. And then my name, bellowed three times and followed by the cry of Greenface!

And a laugh so suggestive that I will never forget it, loud enough to wake the dead.

‘Goodbye, you rogue,’ I whispered. ‘And magic to your kissing!’

All my life I had been haunted by the Bull, but I had never felt endangered by it. It had threatened strangers in my dreams, and I had merely watched and witnessed.

It hunted me, now, and I ran before it, terrified, senses heightened, aware of the slightest shadow, the smallest path, the most concealing tree. The small horses had long-since been killed, one by the effort of the journey, the other by the predators which roamed the forest.

I had reached the edge of the maelstrom on the second day, sheltering from the rain and wind as a black storm raged across the swirling land. There was no sign of Greenface and I began the journey round the Eye, towards distant forests which, in the light-streaked gloom of the tempest, might have been the giant cedars that seemed to mark a place where she felt at home. I sought shelters of stone, the fragments of strong buildings, but the only walls I found were dissolving into mud and rotting wood; there was something older about the ghosts now spewing from the whirling pool of earth – all shadow of the mediaeval gone, replaced by crude and prehistoric dwellings.

When the rain cleared I entered deep forest, emerging occasionally on to the precipice that fell away to the deeps and divided the world of the shore from the maelstrom. Here, I lost the pack hipparion. It was ill, rather than overladen, struggling to breathe, and as I removed its burden it laughed in that odd way of the creatures and bolted towards the edge, plummeting instantly to its doom. Shortly after, I found the ruins of the Watching Place, the arch remaining full, but the decorated façade scarred by wind, rain and time, a dead place through which I passed and around which I found no recent trace of
Ahk’Nemet. But she had made the place into a shrine, I thought: the broken walls of a wooden room revealed the smashed statue of a stooping man, the face sheared away, the arms broken. I kicked through the undergrowth and eventually found the features that had been destroyed; I stared at my own anguished face in stone, the hard, cold legacy of my previous visit. Who had smashed the idol, I wondered, and guessed that more of William’s mercenaries had once passed this way.

The Watching Place, a dead place? So it had seemed. But as I walked on, leading the second hipparion by the reins, so for the first time the earth shuddered in a less familiar way, like a beast stamping the ground. I turned in alarm.

The watery sun was behind the Watching Place. I thought I saw raised horns in silhouette, and though they seemed to move slightly, I imagined the whole effect was simply an illusion in the shifting light. Minutes later, the gate had disappeared from view as I hurried on.

I soon became aware of a strong, cooling wind blowing from behind me and of an odd restlessness in the forest and in the air. The hipparion became agitated, started to scream and buck against the restraining rope that was tied between its teeth. There was no calming the beast and I held it strongly as I stripped off the pack. Before I could disentangle the dried fish, it ripped away from me and ran ahead. The earth was shuddering dramatically and I began to follow the creature, glancing back, searching the trees and the skyline …

The bull’s head rose suddenly and the bellow was deafening. It was higher than the trees, the horns scything the sky. Huge eyes stared at me. The red body shook, the saplings snapped as it stepped forward, shaking the foliage as it began to move towards me.

I ran for my life, half tempted to discard the pack, but clinging onto it with all my strength. I could feel the heavy breathing of the monster, and my memory threw up dreams of Greenface running just like this, the swaying bovine crashing through the trees behind her.

Abruptly, the woodland opened out into a steep defile, and I slipped on the slope and skidded in the mud, tumbling and rolling, aware that the monstrous shape had arrived above me, the head leaning out into space, the eyes watching as the muzzle gaped and moisture dripped.

I stumbled to my feet and followed the course of the stream and when hours had passed I huddled, pack to my chest, below a fallen trunk. It rained again and I was miserable. I hardly slept. At dawn I moved on, lost now, passing through a gorge that widened out, but rose more steeply on either side. The river deepened, grew faster. I felt watched at all points.

Soon I found the savaged remains of the frightened horse. Something, probably a smilodont, perhaps several, had killed it and dragged it into the fork of a tree, where half of it had been consumed, the other half still draped in tattered gore, the eyes open and watching me with a mournful gaze.

I began to recognize where I was; I had been here before, daydreaming in France, nearly losing Natalie by drowning. The day warmed, the sun brightened, the river wound away ahead of me, carrying spring blossom that was falling from wild cherry and rose in the forest, blown by the soft breeze. I cut through the woods and soon heard the sound of laughter and voices, and on approaching the river saw the four girls again, with their ring of flowers. It was strange to stand for the second time and watch them at their game. I looked around to see if some spirit echo of myself lurked here as well, some intrusion from my dreaming mind of
long
ago, but there was just the dappled light, the rustling leaves.

The girls fled suddenly, screaming, as the mastodons broke cover and thundered to the water, first drinking, then wading towards the village, where cooking fires scented the air with their aromatic smoke.

When I had watched this scene before, a shadow had darted past me, ill-defined and unrevealed, perhaps Greyface, perhaps the woman. I waited for that same figure now, but this time she rose from the cover of tall grass among the scrubby trees,
between the heavy wood and the river. She was watching me. Her face was the face of her sisters, green-lined, taut and beautiful, her hair braided and tied to the shoulder of her cloak, which was parted to reveal the glitter of cowrie-shell and brilliant lapis-lazuli that laced her tunic.

I broke cover and walked to her, aware that she carried a fistful of thin lances, a blow-pipe and wore a girdle of bone-blades. She seemed unmoved to see me, and waited unmoving as I approached.

‘Nemet?’

She said nothing. The wind tugged her cloak, ruffled the grass. ‘Nemet?’

I realized suddenly that her gaze was not on me at all but on the woodland behind me. Her breathing was shallow, almost resigned. I turned to follow her stare, but there was nothing to be seen, or at least … nothing as yet.

‘Nemet?’

‘Jack,’ she whispered, and slowly turned to me. The lances fell from her hands and her fingers caressed my cheeks. She stepped into my arms and pressed her moist, sweet mouth against my own, breathing deeply as she kissed me as if drinking me.

‘I missed you,’ she said as she drew away. ‘You became stone; your life was drawn from me, suddenly. I couldn’t bear to see the statue, the face was so sad, so twisted in despair. Eventually, I smashed it. Perhaps somewhere you felt me end the pain for you.’

Had I? I couldn’t remember.

‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘I’ve missed you too. But I’ve failed again with Baalgor. He’s just as hostile, just as determined that you should come to him.’

Amazingly, she smiled, then shook her head. ‘I was frightened,’ she said. ‘I was alone, Baalgor had gone. I thought we would be separated for ever. But Baalgor was like a goat on the end of a tether. The goat wanders away from the sleeping shepherd, far away, grazing and cropping, out of sight,
downwind, almost lost But the shepherd wakes, and slowly draws in the rope, and the goat is brought home again. It had thought itself free, but it was never free, and like the braying goat he is, my brother-husband is returning to me, because Glanum is drawing him home.’