Avilion (Mythago Wood 7) (37 page)

‘May we see through the window?’ Aelfrith asked. He was standing at his full height, and though his hair was turning to the colour of new-forged iron he was not intimidated by the strange man who led him. ‘I would, my lord, like to see what you have seen.’

‘The ghosts?’

Aelfrith shrugged. ‘Whatever you have seen. Ghosts or enemies. We follow you. We need to know the task.’

Christian walked up to him, glancing at Peredur. ‘You think I’m weak?’

Aelfrith didn’t flinch. ‘No. I think you’re haunted. Your own words, not mine.’

‘Am I weak? Peredur?’

‘Haunted,’ Peredur replied calmly, aware that Christian had not looked at him as he had addressed him. ‘We are all haunted.’

‘Will you stand by me when the killing time comes? That is all the truthful answer that I need. Will you both stand by me?’

Aelfrith answered without a pause. ‘I will always stand by you.’

Christian looked now at young Peredur. ‘And you?’

Peredur slipped his sword from its scabbard and let it fall. With a look as cold as the ice-flows of the north he answered: ‘I am not the man you think I am. I do not follow. I do not serve. I fight, yes. Sword and shield. But the truth lies there on the stairs. Return the blade or use it.’

For a moment Christian was uncertain. Then he reached down and picked up the weapon by its tip, passing it back to Peredur. ‘I don’t trust you completely, but I think I know you. You are not natural, not even here. You are, as you rightly say, more than the man I think you are. But what is that, I wonder?’

‘I am one of nine eagles,’ Peredur answered easily, and with a grim smile. ‘I am one of nine stags. I am one of nine men lost in the forest, guarding a child. I am one voice among nine. I am all of the life that went before me. I am nothing in this form but the father of a woman who was stolen from her life twice in her life, but came back. As you are lost, so am I. As you are raw, so am I. Nature has claimed us. The nature of that nature differs, but we are of the same family of wanderers.’

‘Nature. Yes,’ Christian said, with a frown. Peredur’s strange declamation had almost startled him. ‘I believe you’re right. Nothing will prevent you from protecting your own.’

‘Nothing will stop you from killing what you fear,’ Peredur replied.

‘Then should I kill you because I fear you?’

‘If you fear me, then kill me. In this life I live to protect. I am a shield man. What sort of man slashes his shield in half when running into battle?’

Christian considered this as Aelfrith fidgeted. ‘Perhaps a man who is torn in two?’

Peredur said sharply, ‘Perhaps a man torn between two worlds. A man changed. That is what you are, is it not? A changed man? You crossed the edge, inwards, and change happened. You left only a memory behind.’

Christian was silent for a long while. Then he walked past Peredur, back down the steps. His passing whisper was the words, ‘Who are you, I wonder?’

 

Peredur stepped up to the window and looked through it. What he saw was the spread of Legion, putting out the night fires, gathering their baggage, feeding and saddling what horses they had and moving the wagons and chariots into position to attach them to the beasts that would drag them as they advanced.

But at its centre, and in the distance, a woman with short-cropped auburn hair was walking towards a lake, where an older woman, cloaked and hooded, arms crossed over her chest, was waiting for her.

Peredur’s heart unexpectedly raced as he realised what was going to happen now that Christian had seen this scene.

He turned to follow the others down the steps of the tower.

Aelfrith’s sword blow narrowly missed him because he saw it coming. The older man had not expected, perhaps, that Peredur would spend so little time at the window. But the following blow with the flat of his blade was furious and skull-cracking. As Peredur tumbled down the stone steps, Aelfrith chased after him. Christian’s earlier words had been cautious, but his mistrust had been total; he trusted Aelfrith, however, perhaps alone among his retinue.

Dazed and bruised, Peredur had no choice but to accept the deep, thrusting blow from the burly man, though he was lithe enough to twist so that it cut into his body’s edge. He immediately rolled into a ball and again fell and tumbled down the steps to the next landing.

Aelfrith cried out. He had slipped on Peredur’s blood and came down in a similar fall. The two men embraced without meaning to, Aelfrith’s face startled and grazed, a mask of sudden fear.

Peredur killed him instantly with a knife strike.

It took him some time to disentangle his body from the other man’s heavy limbs.

Outside, the courtyard was alive with activity, yet no one else had been in the tower to look at the strange scenes from the windows. Though they would most likely have fled before helping. Peredur went to the nearest cart and asked for water, but was turned away by the rough-faced man who was loading it with the help of his family. The wound in Peredur’s side was hurting, but he was holding it closed. His fear was that he would collapse into a death dream. His head was singing but without melody or harmony, a screech of pain and noise; and his eyesight was beginning to blur. He was becoming confused.

He stumbled over the great roots at the base of the fortress, falling heavily. The last thing he knew was that he was lying on an enormous face, not so much carved in the root as living in it. The eyes of this giant blinked awake, then closed again, just as Peredur’s eyes began to close and his hand ceased to grip the wound in his side.

Through the haze of vision he was aware of four men running towards him, long cloaks flying. He had no strength left to defend himself. He went away into darkness.

 

When the light came back, Peredur flinched at the face so close to his own. Then he recognised the dark-eyed, thin-bearded man who had been dancing with Yssobel. He knew the man was Greek, but couldn’t remember his name. Peredur’s body felt comfortable and the wound had been strapped. There was strength in his limbs again. Around him, noise and chaos.

He was helped to his feet by this man and one of the others from the group.

‘Yssobel,’ the man said, and pointed deep into Legion. ‘Gui wenneth. Hurry!’

Then he picked up his helmet, shield and leather pack and indicated that he would not be coming.

A cavalry group in bright colours came galloping by. Horns were being sounded, drums beaten. Everything was getting set to move. In a place where all of time combined there wasn’t much time. Peredur nodded to the Greek and retraced his steps across the expanse of Legion to where he knew Guiwenneth had made her own small camp.

The Lake

Yssobel had come out of the earth dream with a cry and a struggle for air. She had seen her mother. She knew where to go.

She tore herself free from the dryad tree. Her skin was ripped through her thin clothing and her hair was torn. She stumbled for a moment, aware that she was surrounded by movement and noise, and that the land was shifting. From what she had learned about Legion, she was aware that it was preparing to move through time.

Everywhere the rattle of armour being piled onto carts, the laughter that comes with a fresh task, the dogs that howl; the children making mayhem, or crying. The thunder of hooves. The rattle of chariots and the soothing voices of men, calming the nervous horses.

The female dryad was standing close by, holding Yssobel’s armour. In the language common between her and Yssobel’s green side, she whispered, ‘I’m sorry for your wounds.’

Yssobel shook her head. It’s of no matter. The slender woman turned away, as if ashamed. Yssobel called, ‘Thank you. All this will be gone soon.’

‘Good,’ the tree nymph said. Her eyes glistened with sap. She returned to her own place, leaning back into the trunk, and became as the tree she guarded, disturbed for only a moment as she touched a strange stain.

Yssobel’s blood was still on the bark.

Yssobel checked her wounds quickly, licked the more persistently bleeding ones and then smeared mud onto them. She was more grazed than torn. It did not occur to her to look around for Odysseus. She had seen the lake and seen her mother and she was determined to fight her way through this heaving riot of army to find her.

She put on the armour. Then she heard her name called.

Cloaked and ready to travel, Odysseus stood before her, the Athenians grouped behind him. His horsehair-plumed helmet was hanging by its strap from his right hand.

‘These men lost their families in wars between cities. They like the idea of fighting new challenges on strange beaches. So do I. We have joined forces for the moment.’

‘I’ll miss you,’ Yssobel said wanly. ‘I’ll miss Serpent Pass.’

Though, truthfully, she had long since come to terms with the loss of her friend from the cave in the deep hills.

He nodded. ‘It was by exploring further up that pass which had come to the river that brought me to the island where you found me. There is so much connection in this world. I’m sure our paths will cross again.’

‘I hope so.’

They did not approach each other. Yssobel raised her hand and Odysseus bowed his head.

As she weaved her way through the confusion, she was approached, laughed at, challenged for her cropped hair, followed; mocked. She could feel the sense of the words: a woman who wears her hair around her waist!

Yssobel ignored it all. As once before, she had scented the freshness of a lake. She pushed through the forest, following her instincts. Campfires were being extinguished, skins rolled up, iron, bronze and stone being checked, honed, polished, all depending on the ghost who carried it.

Noise and mayhem: but ahead of her, the laughter of children swimming, their last dip in the pool, perhaps, before they were required to rejoin the baggage train.

The lake lay beyond a screen of drooping willows and was reached by a narrow path where two women crouched on their haunches, observing with hostility anyone who approached. Further away, sprawled on their sides, were two lightly armed men whose expression suggested they were not content. They watched as Yssobel walked past them, one of them sitting up and frowning as if he recognised her.

The two women guarding the path stood and quickly barred the way. They were dressed in short black tunics over loose highly patterned trousers. Their expressions were fierce. They carried short bows, each with an arrow notched, ready for a quick and easy strike. Their dark hair was shaved high above the right ear and they wore ear guards, suggesting the way in which they used their small but effective weapons.

But they too seemed to recognise Yssobel.

‘I’ve come to find my mother,’ she said.

Whether they understood or not, they nodded, glancing at the belt of auburn hair, one of them even half smiling as they let her through the willows and along the path.

Guiwenneth was emerging from the lake as her daughter approached. She was wringing the water from her hair as she caught sight of Yssobel and for a moment was startled. Then she gave a shout of what sounded like despair. She walked to where her clothes were strewn on the bank and tugged them on. This was a small lake, and its cheerful human content was being hauled out, with reluctance, by mothers of all ages.

‘Why did you follow me?’ Guiwenneth asked in a whisper, frowning. ‘I told you not to.’ There were tears in her eyes, and a touch of anger in her look.

‘Why did you go?’ Yssobel retorted, taken aback, unable to prevent the anger in her own voice. This was a different Guiwenneth to the one she had seen reflected in the Palace of Green Porcelain, and yet she was most certainly the same woman. ‘Why did you leave the villa?’

Guiwenneth, her face like pale stone, walked past her daughter without a word. Yssobel watched her return along the path to where the army was preparing for the move. Then she followed as quickly as she could. She saw the two armed men stand and accompany her mother, each of them glancing back at Yssobel and shaking their heads in warning.

Guiwenneth’s small camp was hidden and sheltered well, pitched between three trees, covered with a broad square of canvas. It was a short walk from the lake’s edge. Four horses were tethered nearby, blanketed, saddled, bridled, ready for the ride.

The woman herself sat in the gloom of her own cover, and her own fear.

When she sensed Yssobel approaching, she rose and whispered again, ‘Why did you follow me?’

‘Because I love you,’ Yssobel said. ‘And I couldn’t understand why you left. I’m free to make my own choices. I choose to hold on to what I have. I don’t know how we’ll do it, but we can return from this place.’

Arms crossed, the older woman stared defiantly up at her daughter. ‘You never understood! You never listened. You never felt for me, for what he’d done to me. You broke my heart!’

Yssobel wanted so much just to take her mother in her arms. They faced each other, separated by a confusion of anger, joined by memories of their years together in the villa.

‘When I first saw him—’ Yssobel began.

‘You saw him?’ Guiwenneth was suddenly hard-featured again.

‘When I sensed him! When I was young. When Steven took me to the head of the valley. You know this!’

‘What about it?’ her mother asked.

‘Gwin . . . he seemed so lost, so lonely.’

‘Your father?’

‘No. Christian. The resurrected man.’

It was the wrong thing to say. She should have known it. Guiwenneth went into a silent fury. She stood and came up to Yssobel, reached out and took her daughter’s cheek in her fingers, green eyes sparkling with tears of frustration, almost snarling as she said, ‘He was not lost, you young fool. He was playing the game he plays so well. To look sad, to seem weak, to look for sympathy. “Find your prey and catch it.” And rape it! You were duped! Your fascination was a haunting - in his hunting ground. If he’s close, I’ll kill him. If you try to stop me ...’