Celtika (21 page)

‘Merlin … Is it in your power to take me over there? What would it cost you? I’ll be for ever in your debt.’

I was about to remind him that he was already in my debt, for the dream-journey at his fort, but I said nothing. His suggestion had frozen my blood; even the suggestion that he was about to
make
the suggestion had frozen my blood. I couldn’t cross this river, though the reason for the denial wasn’t clear at that moment.

The three matrons called softly to the children. Munda and Kymon returned to the forest, their curiosity unsatisfied, but almost at once alert to other childish interests. I heard their laughter as they chased a hare that had suddenly exploded from its cover on the open ground, bounding ahead of them into the trees.

Urtha was gloomy.

Ambaros suggested that we should now return to the caves, but Urtha said he would stay overnight—it was a fine evening, the sky clear, a pale three-quarter moon hanging in the blue—and I settled down to keep him company. Ullanna slipped away to hunt, while Ambaros constructed a simple shelter and built a fire ready for whatever she might bring back.

The day turned as dismal as Urtha’s mood, storm clouds sweeping across the sky, darkening the land. There was no sound of thunder and no sign of the storm, but that grey gloom over Ghostland flickered with lightning for a while and the ground shook, as if to the passing of riders. I sat with Ambaros at the river’s edge, sensing an approach from across the water but unable to glimpse more deeply into the realm.

Ambaros was uneasy. He carried a small horse-head amulet, a bone carving of Epona, and he rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, whispering to himself. Almost involuntarily, I did the same with the small ivory charm that Niiv had once given me.

The edge of the wood, where we had earlier seen the children, suddenly dissolved into the shapes of armoured men. They walked towards us, javelins and oval shields held loosely, short cloaks buckled at the shoulder. They were insubstantial and eerie, fifteen in all, one emerging at the rear—riding in a small chariot drawn by two ghost-white horses. This one rode the chariot to the water’s edge, turned it to display its right flank (not a challenge, then) and peered at me.

I was shocked. I recognised him at once. The shock passed away into confusion and I peered more closely. There was no doubt about it, this was the same dark-bearded, dark-eyed warrior whose consultation with the oracle in Makedonia I had eavesdropped. I was staring at Orgetorix. Jason’s son.

But this wasn’t possible. Everything told me that Orgetorix was with Brennos. That had been his destination after consulting the oracle. Was it possible he had been ambushed and killed, and now rode in Ghostland? But he was a Greeklander, not
keltoi,
despite adoption. Acheron, Elysia, those were his destinations if Time chose to take his breath away. How could he have changed his path to the land of his death?

Or then again, was he dead at all? It was hard to tell. The Shadow Realm denied my efforts to enter it with charm, filling me with a dread of trying and a sense of disaster when I tentatively probed it.

This place did not want me near it. It was making it clear that I was not welcome. That too startled me. As I thumbed the
sedja
Niiv had given me, I felt a voice whisper:
you are still a small, small thing. You can’t always have what you want.

Ambaros was breathing steadily, peering hard across the river.

‘Can you see them too?’ I asked him.

‘They are part of the force that raided and destroyed the fort,’ the old warrior whispered hoarsely. ‘I recognise several of them. They are the Shadows of Heroes, and yet they killed without warning. I can’t understand why. But I can understand why they’re in Ghostland. They’re searching for Urtha’s children. That
must
be the reason.’

His sudden glance at me was anguished and afraid. Urtha himself was unaware of the visitors. He was among the trees, lost in his own thoughts. ‘How will we save them?’ Ambaros asked finally.

I had no answer for him.

‘They are not all the Shadows of Heroes,’ I said. ‘The man in the chariot is both a Greeklander and a dead man. I saw him alive nearly half a year ago. He must have been killed in that time. He’s a ghost.’

Ambaros was puzzled, then told me something that again made me reel with confusion. ‘No ghost, Merlin. He grew like the others. When I was Urtha’s age I saw him as a boy. He was training in that same chariot. It has an odd decoration on its battle side. I constantly glimpsed him, growing into a youth, then a man. He has a brother in Ghostland. I’ve not seen him, though, for years. We called them “brother wraiths”. Neither was part of the raid on Urtha’s fort.’

Then this was
not
Orgetorix. The man’s spirit could not have been in Alba’s heart for twenty years, while the body roamed in Makedonia and Greek Land. Could it?

No, this apparition (still staring back at me) was
not
the same young man who had questioned the oracle about his father. It was the simplest explanation. But when he wheeled the chariot around, turning a full circle before whipping the reins and setting the horses galloping silently along the river’s edge, so I saw the emblem painted on its battle flank: the head of Medusa! The same icon that had been on Orgetorix’s shield as he had waited, grimly, in the shade of the olive trees in the village.

I itched to know, but I would need to be across the river and the river wouldn’t let me cross. Or would it?

Taking a chance, I summoned the spirit of the swift, and looped and darted across the river towards Ghostland, turned back twice by its protective elemental forces before triumphantly flitting through to veer and swoop about the eerie band.

I brushed at Orgetorix with my wing, and he turned in surprise, following me with his eyes, his mind open for just a moment …

What turbulence! What turmoil!

This was no human mind; it was a screaming gathering of shades and wraiths, a jumble of memory, fragments of conversation, screeching and echoing like the forlorn hope of a dying man.

‘Who are you?’ Orgetorix asked, sensing my skulking presence within the darting bird. ‘Kinos? Is that you? Still playing tricks? Where are you, brother? Where are you hiding?’ There was an urgency in that whispered voice that matched the despair in the searching eyes.

And then the mind closed down, smashed into darkness, closed off in fury, like a blow that deadens all the senses. And I fled from the scene. Someone had driven me away.

But nothing could take away that brief, illuminating, terrifying glimpse of the spectral nature of what lay inside Orgetorix in Ghostland. All the memories of a life were there, from childhood to youth, from youth to manhood, from playing games to hunting games, to combat and the grief at the loss of a friend. But those images were collapsing into ruin, much as a dream dissolves into nonsense on waking, though in this case more slowly and with the confusion of a sudden flight of gulls, screeching, swirling, blinding in their panic. And only one strong thought remained coherent at the centre of this noise: where is my brother? Where is he hiding? Why has he drifted away from me?

I realised I had touched no human mind at all. But perhaps (I remember thinking at the time) perhaps that was not so unusual for an inhabitant of the Otherworld.

*   *   *

By twilight, the storm-skies had cleared. I had told no one of my encounter with the shade of Orgetorix. I was still quite shaken by the encounter.

Ullanna returned to the camp, carrying a sad-looking, white-feathered bird hanging from a noose and a plump fish still on the arrow. She looked disappointed, but simply shrugged as she began to prepare this meagre feast. ‘I’m losing my touch. Too much time on that cramped ship, not enough on horseback.’

She had raised a knife, ready to behead the bird, but stopped in the action, staring at the river. ‘Istarta’s breath, what’s this?’

Out of the twilight came a sleek, brightly decorated barge, gliding round the bend in the river as if by magic, her small sail half furled, catching the slight breeze, hull leaning gently in the water. She tacked towards us. The small figure of Niiv sat within her, resting her arm on the tiller, holding a single rope, staring ahead as if she were in a dream. Then she saw our fire. She dropped the tiller and waved to us. The barge rocked in the current, faltered, then seemed to anchor. No oars struck, no true wind blew. This small boat had come here by her own power, Niiv called softly, ‘Merlin! Come aboard. This little boat has something to say to you.’

I waded into the river, all fear gone, and Niiv helped me into the barge. At once I recognised Argo, but Argo from the time of the stone sanctuaries, when elegant boats like this had carried the bodies of the noble dead, by night, by torchlight, along the winding forest rivers to the towering circles which lay at those forests’ hearts. Argo had shed a ghost, to come and find us.

Niiv was now crouched in the fore of the craft, the forbidden place. When I joined her I was startled to see how grey she looked, as if ice had taken on her skin.

‘Mielikki has been watching you. And watching Urtha. She will take you across to his children, but only the two of you. Fetch him.’

I called for the chieftain. He threw off his short cloak and stepped down the bank to the river, wading out to the barge and hauling himself aboard. He was curious and cautious as he crept into the narrow space where I crouched with Niiv. Niiv withdrew. I silenced Urtha’s questions. The boat rocked and shifted in the water, slipping away from one land and crossing to the other. She grounded in the mud, but before I could stand to peer over the side, the forest opened up before us in the boat itself.

Urtha and I stepped into the Spirit of the Ship, walking into the heat and sunlight of a world that did not belong to us. Mielikki stood there in her summer clothes, her face veiled in grey against the biting insects that swarmed around her. A lynx sprawled playfully at her feet, half an eye on us as we walked towards the waiting woman. Mosquitoes plagued us. The land was restless and hot, the woodland disturbed by the grazing of reindeer.

‘This is my place,’ Mielikki said from behind the dark veil. ‘The threshold place. I keep it as I like it. Walk on and you will have entered the land of your own shadows, and your children are there, Urtha.’

She was young. Her eyes gleamed from behind the thin veil. This was not the sinister crone who watched over the deck of Argo.

She added, ‘And there is something for you too, Merlin, though I can’t see it clearly enough to say whether you’ll want to remember it.’

I didn’t like her words, but curiosity was a tempting Fury in my head. I could hear, distantly, both the playful laughter of children and the cruel chatter of crows. Mielikki had allowed Urtha into the Spirit of the Ship, a gesture of kindness. But knowing what I knew about this birch-barked elemental I was suspicious, though I hid my concern from the warlord himself.

‘How long can we stay?’ I asked her.

‘As long as you like. It will make no difference to the others.’

‘Then we’d better not stay too long.’

‘From the whispers I can hear, you’ve stayed too long already.’

Mielikki, I thought, smiled at me from behind the veil. Insects fussed with the sweat on my skin, and the scent of pine resin added to the heavy stillness of this summer gate. I dismissed Mielikki’s words as a tease. I was certainly aware that Urtha and I were entering a place where the days and nights might be lifetimes in our own world—which is to say the world of Ambaros and the mysterious Great Quest—lifetimes; or perhaps … just moments. Though it would make more of a difference to Urtha than to me.

Urtha was impatient. He thanked Argo’s protecting spirit and before I could counsel caution he had run ahead of me. I pursued him, passing from the insect-blighted summer forest of the Pohjolan protectress to the wilting summer greenwood of Urtha’s land. A few minutes later we rushed from the trees into a clearing, where a group of children were playing an elaborate circle game, holding hands and dancing to right, then left. Four of their number stood in the middle waving cloth-headed sticks, the white material painted with eyes and grinning mouths.

Urtha’s son, Kymon, was in the middle. His daughter was among the circling throng. The game went on for a while, then suddenly Munda was summoned from the ring. She joined her brother, who seemed annoyed with her, then suddenly saw her father standing in the shadows. Kymon and Munda screamed with delight and came running to us. The game was over, the other children dispersed, ignoring us completely. The surrounding forest seemed to swallow them up.

Munda flung herself against her father, crying now. Urtha picked her up and swung her round, planting kiss after kiss upon her forehead and braided hair. The boy jumped on to his father’s waist and hung there until Urtha’s firm hand shifted him higher. In a gesture somewhere between anger and delight, Kymon thumped his father’s back until calmed by the man. I watched with a strange moment of envy as Urtha sat down with his children and talked to them of his adventures, listening in turn to their own excited chatter. I saw nothing in bright-eyed Kymon to suggest the unlovable brat of Urtha’s Pohjolan description. Perhaps he had only been monstrous in the company of his brother, and there would have been nothing unnatural in that.

I’d thought that Urtha was closed to everything except his children and I started to wander back into the forest, but the man called out, ‘Where are you going?’

‘To have a look around. That’s all. Take your time.’

‘Don’t go too far,’ Urtha commanded. ‘We’re here by indulgence, not by invitation…’

Quite so, I thought. To Urtha and his kin, this ghostly realm was a place of legend, loss and fear; he would have grown up with stories of the Land of the Shadows of Heroes; he would be balancing his dread of the place with his delight in contacting his surviving family for a while.

As for myself, there was again that nagging feeling of familiarity. The shape of the high hills beyond this woodland, the way the crags cut starkly against the clouds, the echoing sound of falling water, the murmur of wind in the branches, the sense of peace and the pricking of danger combined.