Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) (48 page)

‘Then only the shaman remains.’

‘Will it attack like the rest?’

‘It needs life. It will kill for blood.’ He looked around urgently. Tallis stood by him. The smell was overpowering as the winter green decayed faster around them.

‘Where’s Wynne-Jones?’

Scathach said, ‘He took his horse and returned south. He said he couldn’t live without his journal …’

Tallis was furious. ‘You let him go?’

‘He
went
,’ Scathach said bluntly. ‘There was nothing I could do. These creatures probably killed him a day ago …’

A day ago? But she had only been on the mountain for two hours, three at the most. What did he mean? When she asked him he seemed astonished by the question.

‘You’ve been up there for two days. I’ve been
very
patient!’

‘Two days!’

Her shock seemed to mollify him. ‘A lot longer than you promised. And now it’s my turn. I
have
to go to the field. My father has made everything clear to me. The Jaguthin are there; my friends … my whole life. I must meet them again, fight with them, be re-joined with them. That way I can be liberated from them, receive my freedom.’

‘And what will you do then?’

‘Return to your world. Continue my father’s work.’

But you’ll die, she thought sadly. You’ll die beneath an oak. You’ll be burned on a pyre. There is only one freedom to be gained by travelling to Bavduin. The freedom of violent death.

Tallis was dizzy with the pace of events. Wynne-Jones had begun the return journey to the land of the Tuthanach. But she wasn’t ready for him to leave! Now that she had found the place of Harry’s entry into Lavondyss, she wanted the old man with her. She wanted his advice, his insight … even his help! And how would he cross the marsh? He had no talent for opening the thresholds, the hollowings …

‘He’ll die. He’ll never make it home. Not without help.’

She glanced at Swimmer of Lakes. Had the horse really understood her promise, she wondered? If it had, if such magic worked in this realm, then Swimmer was the old man’s only hope of returning. And if he returned safely to the Tuthanach, then he might survive the boy Tig long enough for Tallis to return and question him after whatever journey she might soon take, through the highest room of the fortress, through the cave: in Harry’s footsteps.

She told Scathach what she would do. ‘If he has this horse he has a chance. But don’t leave me. Don’t go up the cliff until I return. I want to come with you to Bavduin. I want to be there when you find the others.’

‘Then
hurry
,’ the man said. ‘I’ve waited two days for you. The others will be looking for me. We must enter the battle together. I
can’t
let them down.’

‘Wait for me’, she urged. ‘And watch for the Daurog shaman. He was young. He’ll be dangerous.’

‘I can look after myself,’ Scathach said grimly, and nodded to the twitching corpse of the Scarag leader, still dangling from the lance.

Tallis mounted Swimmer of Lakes and returned to the south, kicking the horse, challenging it, urging it to run faster through the night, back towards the swirling zones of seasons.

She found Wynne-Jones resting in the overhang of a rocky outcrop, exhausted, wretched, starving. She caught a bird, plucked and cooked it, fed the meat to him in slivers. She made a broth from the bones, using roots that flourished in the summer season, and after a while he had recouped some of his strength. But he would not be dissuaded from his task. He would not come north again.

‘What point is there in finding the site of my son’s death? I know it’s coming. I don’t want to see it. You have your own journey to make, I have my own death to avoid. But I would sooner have my journal and fight against Tig than die, frozen, wolfmeat, without anything to remind me of the pure
pleasure
I’ve had during my life. And those accounts are important to me.’

‘Tig will have burned them,’ Tallis said. ‘He burned your rajathuks.’

‘Yes. He will have burned some of the parchment sheets. But I’ve been in the wood for many years and there is a lot more to read than what I keep in the shaman’s lodge. Those few pages will have gone, but the bulk of it is hidden. Only Morthen knew where … dear Morthen …’

He looked sad. ‘If you find her, bring her back to me …’

‘I’ll try. And I’ll bring you Scathach too.’

‘How can you? You have already seen his fate.’

Tallis smiled. ‘A wild rider, a woman, was reaching to tug him from the pyre. She seemed to love him. Perhaps he wasn’t dead as yet. But as you said to me in the lodge, he will be reborn after his death as a warrior. So it’s a question of recognizing him …’

Wynne-Jones’s hand closed round her wrist. ‘I wish you luck. I hope you get there. I hope you find Harry.’

‘I’ve found him. I found his pistol. He was there, in the castle. That
is
the way to Lavondyss. There is a cave there. All I need to do is find how to open the threshold through that cave.’

Wynne-Jones smiled wanly, scarred face warm. She did not fail to apprehend the knowing gaze in his good eye. ‘What is it?’

‘As you follow him through the first forest,’ he said, ‘Remember this, if you can … keep asking yourself the question: why did he
fail
to return. What trapped him? Don’t make the same mistake. Don’t follow too fast. Keep watching for signs of winter, of wood, of birds. Somewhere in all the confusion of image and story which you have carried with you is the reason for Harry’s
failure
to return.’ He settled back. ‘I wish I could help you more. I can’t. But I am certain that the mistake he made is somehow lodged in your stories. You must enter Lavondyss as a child, not a woman. Watch and hear with a child’s senses. You may see the mistake he made, and manage to avoid it …’

‘Thank you for the advice,’ Tallis said. ‘My gift to you, in return, is my horse.’

‘But I have a horse.’

‘My horse swims lakes.’

‘Ah. That could be useful indeed.’

‘She’s yours. Treat her kindly.’

‘Look after my son. Look for my daughter. Don’t grieve.’

‘If I can work events right, I shall rescue Harry
and
save Scathach. I shall have it all ways.’

‘I like your determination,’ Wynne-Jones said with an affectionate squeeze of her arm. ‘I was pessimistic before. I thought you were doomed to fail. Now I’m not so sure.
You are creating faster than the realm is destroying. You created stories. You caused change. Perhaps you
do
have the magic in your winter songs and odd chants to achieve a satisfactory end to your journey.’

Tallis kissed his cold, thin lips, stroked a finger over the savage mementos of Tig’s attack upon him.

‘Ride well, old man.’

‘I will. And you – don’t forget. Let the child ride
with
you.’

‘I shall.’

In her heart, Tallis had known that Scathach would not wait for her, but it still came as a shock to find that he had betrayed his word to her. The fire had been dead for more than a day. She kicked the ashes and howled her anger and her grief. ‘You should have waited! I could have saved you!’

Through Skogen she could see nothing but shadows of a summer that had once flourished in this gorge. Through Morndun she saw writhing spirits and running ghosts that drifted back into the trees as her haunting gaze fell upon them and they became aware of being watched. The dead were everywhere around, bleeding into the cold water, waiting to begin their own journeys.

She could see no sign of the man she loved.

He had hunted the woods on her behalf, though. The quarters of a small animal were wrapped in a leather sack and tied to a tree’s branch. She snatched the food down, threw it across the river shore, but on second thoughts rescued the precious meat and tied it to the slim horse that was now her steed.

The animal, restless, cold and hungry, responded to her sudden soothing. It stamped a foot and snorted briskly. Tallis fed it a meagre handful of the oats she carried. It was thin, fading fast like all horses in this bitter
land. She might get a few days riding from it, but it could not survive for long.

On the steep path to the fortress the fires still burned. Tallis watched them, then let her gaze wander along the stark crags and jutting masonry walls. Holly-jack had fled there, and perhaps still hid, terrified, in the cold and draughty rooms. Harry’s ghost called to her from the stone skull of the castle. Images of that winter, and of the summer wood, taunted her … called her … The way to Lavondyss was a short climb away, and all she needed was to resign herself to the journey, to abandon Scathach.

But she couldn’t. She had seen a woman ride from the dark woods, screaming her grief, her clay-streaked hair streaming; the woman had ridden around the pyre. And then – and the memory was fleeting, but it had grown over the years – then she had
reached
to the boy …

What had she been about to do? Rescue Scathach from the fire?

A woman who loved him … a woman who had followed him … long hair and face coloured with white clay. Tallis had not made Moondream at that time – the mask to allow her to see the woman in the land – but she intuitively knew who she had seen, how she had reached through her vision to this very day, perhaps, in her own future. She had haunted herself all her life. If she had had her Moondream mask she might have seen it more, she might have distinguished between Harry’s presence in her childhood life, and her own …

Let the child ride with you. Watch and hear with a child’s senses
.

She reached into her saddlebag and drew out a small cloth containing white clay which she had taken from Wynne-Jones’s lodge and which she had used in the making of Moondream. It had hardened slightly and she moistened it with icy water, kneading it until it shed a
film of white liquid. This clay exudate she smeared across her face and streaked into her hair.

Just a little, now. She would add to the clay as she journeyed. In the act of decoration there was both a love ritual and a death ritual. She climbed into the saddle of her restless horse and kicked it up the path, towards the fortress and beyond.

(iii)

Soon the forest closed around her, so dense and dark in places that even as the new day broke she imagined herself still to be in a midnight realm. The character and nature of the wood changed with every furlong’s riding, and the traces and butchery of battle with it. In the woods of oak she passed glades where cowled men chanted over carved wooden heads or walked about the piled armour of dead warriors. She saw oval shields, with boars and stags brilliantly gilded upon the slashed leather, broken swords, highly coloured cloaks and small chariots of wicker, broken or burned, in each of which crouched the naked form of its dead rider. There were heads hanging from branches in these places, which gleamed as if oiled. The chanting of the priests seemed to summon wings, though as Tallis skirted these Celtic shrines she could see nothing; and only heard the raucous pleasure of the crow goddess.

A ragged legion passed by her as she huddled in a thicket of thorn and holly, her hand gently covering the muzzle of her horse. She watched amazed as the broken ranks filed past in utter silence, silence save for the dull rattle of equipment. She recognized the warriors as Roman, but had no knowledge of the arms they bore, nor of the type of uniform which would distinguish one legion
from another. Their dull helmets seemed to be fashioned from iron; their cloaks were long and red; some carried shields, huge ovals with prominent bosses and the shape of an eagle painted upon them. Horsemen rode among the infantry, and waggons clattered through the forest, butting against trees, being forced through marshy ground and over fallen trunks. What mind had created
this
mythago, she wondered in astonishment.

As she rode further into the changing forest, she found the remnants of their defeat …

The woods were almost black; sheer trunks of pine and fir, some of huge dimension, crowded on the land, towered high above and blocked out light; they reduced the world to silence, and the depths of fallen needles below her feet made every movement quiet; even the snorting of her horse sounded dull, sucked into the black wood. Tallis became frightened. She could see fires occasionally, but when she approached them she found men strapped to stakes, burning. There was movement around her. Horses galloped too fast for sense through the black forest; she caught glimpses of their riders, tall men, yellow haired, their helmets crested with crescent moons, or spikes, or down-curved horns. Their speech, when they cried out, was guttural.

The forest opened into a large clearing and she gagged as she saw the slaughter within. Heads were piled in the centre of the place. Around them, in a sun’s corona, severed legs and arms. The torsos of the dead were impaled on trees, a circle of greying flesh, mockingly decorated with tattered cloaks and kirtles. Shields were propped against the boles of the pines; broken spears rested by them and helmets, the dull iron helms of the lost legion, had been nailed to the bark.

Four thin, wooden gods watched the rotting dead, each made of twisted lengths of birch-branch, no thicker than
an arm but twice Tallis’s height. Roman hair had been plaited to make hair for these gods. A skull topped each pole. Pairs of hands had been nailed down their lengths; and in the centre of each watching wood were the shrivelled greying sorrows of severed sex. Blood, blackening now, was the paint on the birchwood gods.

Huge carrion birds gorged on the flesh. They rose in panic as Tallis blundered into the shrine, but settled again, crying loudly, too bloated to fly far.

Tallis moved swiftly through this place of forest shrines, and after a while the nature of the wood changed again. She struggled through holly thickets, forced through dense stands of winter blackthorn, still shrouded in dead leaf. Towering mossy oaks led her to the edge of the wood, and soon she could smell the smoke of a fire, and sense the open field ahead. There was none of the clashing of iron, or stamping of horse that she had come to associate with both skirmish and battle, only an odd silence, save for the distant and familiar sound of a storm wind, and the voice of a flock of birds, coming closer …