The Broken Kings: Book Three of The Merlin Codex (20 page)

“Where am I?” Segomos asked.

“Dead. Dead and lost.”

“I’d thought as much. I dream of living, but I never leave the dream. I was in a hot place, fighting furiously. It was a good day, a savage encounter. I was one of thousands. We were facing a gorge, with the sea to our left. The Hot Gates. I remember thinking: These are the Hot Gates … but the sea is to our left. I remember the sea swell, the salt air, the gull shadow, the fine, fierce, forcing march forward, the full-on attack, the fistfighting, shield-pushing, the dismembering progress, the blood smell, the glazed-eyed look that signals triumph, the grip that weakens, the blood-splattering moan of fear-filled final fury, and then … the swallowing feel, the crushed feel, lung-bursting, the pain-loaded numbing, dream-drifting, the drift into darkness.”

Again the wooden eyes took in my gaze. “But why am I lost?”

“I can’t answer that. You died in Greek Land. Others died there and have come home. For some reason you didn’t.”

“I’d hardly known about the place before I went there.”

“You were not alone in that.”

“But where am I? Where is my heart?”

There was a sudden moment of despair in the wooden voice. The trapped spirit of the man who had gone to raid the oracle at Delphi was struggling to retrieve a memory that other gods than his had decided to retain. He would never know his fate. He was caught in the tidal zone, neither open sea nor on land. He would founder there forever, drawn down by the mud of the nothing-place.

“Help me understand,” the crouched warrior whispered. “Can you help me understand?”

“I will get you back if I can. Not alive, not for your family … but back … back to the proper crossing place to the Realm of the Shadows of Heroes. To do so, you must come with me now, come aboard Argo.”

“I will never live again,” Segomos said mournfully.

“No. That time for you is gone. A Greeklander’s sword saw to that; and a Greekland priest who dragged you from the
Morrigan
’s crow-gathering and
Bathaab’
s bone-scouring to service his own shrine.”

I knew enough of Greek Land to know that this was most likely the case. The remains of Segomos were probably encased in marble. His hide would have been tanned and worn as priest’s clothing.

“We’ll bring you back. I promise. And you will cross Nantosuelta to the Island of your choice. Everyone you love will join you there, not all at once, but in time.”

“Did they come with us? Soul-gatherer, bone-scavenger? Was the Moirigan there? The scald? The screech? Were they there?”

“They were there. They did their best.”

“Then why was I left behind?”

“I don’t know,” I repeated patiently. “Help me if you will, and I’ll help you back.”

The shard of Segomos’s mind that remained changed from mournful to puzzled. Help you? he seemed to be asking. How can I help you?

It was a question I couldn’t answer. Argo seemed to think he was important. Perhaps Segomos would not be able to help at all. But I wanted him with us when we arrived at the Shaper’s Island.

Segomos rose to his feet. The sound was like a tree bending slowly in the wind. He cast aside his shield and spear. I led him to Argo. We threw down a ramp for him, and when he was on board he went to a secure place in the prow, away from the glowering effigy of Mielikki, crouched down, curled up, his arms crossed over his chest, head bowed towards the glowering face at the stern. He became a part of the hull, though he gleamed, an echo of invention, where Argo was dull with wear and stained with salt and bitumen.

It was time to leave Alba again, time to embrace the wider world. We were underprovisioned and undercrewed, but the river would be with us until the sea, and then we would use the strong winds that played along the coast and recruit along the way when we reached the milder, gentler climate of the south. Our only fear was attack by mercenaries, ship-pillagers who lay in wait in deep coves, watching for traders.

But we would have the small Greeklander ship for company, and her crew were keen-eyed and knew the dangerous routes. The earlier mistrust had been banished after the trade, and we would sail with her and her four companion vessels, waiting, we now learned, at the mouth of the channel, back to the Southern Sea, where they would make harbour to take on fish and oil and oranges. Trading networks were complex; they always had been; I had never bothered to give them much thought.

We would be a small fleet, then, and there was protection in numbers.

But it was time to leave Alba: and I was sad at the thought, because I was certain that I would never return here. Though Niiv was with me, she was burning out like the fiery ember she was. Medea was behind me, no doubt planning her own next move, now that one of her sons was dead, and the other lost in a Ghostland of his own. If our paths were to cross again—something I deeply wished for—I hoped it would be after Niiv had gone. The girl had already lost her fury and stood beside me, quiet and concentrating, watching as the river slipped behind us, saying her own farewell to Taurovinda and the life she had known there.

She would not be coming back, I was sure. She was only on loan from the Northlands. The goddess that protected Argo also protected her own impetuous child; and though Mielikki gazed at us with snow-cold fury, she was a kind mother, and Niiv was her child. When this was over, Argo would be seeking a new protector; and I would be looking for a new lover.

When this was over!
How easily the words come now, so long after events, so long after the resolution. I tell of those events by looking back, and I record by remembering how it was, how we felt, the fear and the sadness, the anticipation, the hope and the confusion that had gathered around this small band from two large kingdoms who were being threatened by their own past and future, the living spirits of ancestor and descendant who had gathered at their frontiers, blood-thrilling and land-gathering, and all under an influence they could never hope to comprehend, and for reasons that they could never have known in a hundred generations.

I didn’t know those reasons either. I wasn’t prepared to scan the future. I had an inkling that a great challenge was ahead of us, and that resolution was possible, or devastation inevitable. Either would free me from the bind to Alba.

When this was over!

When
what
was over? We were to start seeking answers in a place that Argo knew well, an island that I, for my part, remembered vaguely, and where—for reasons that Argo denied me—Jason could not be permitted to go, not in any fully sentient state. She was taking him there as a ghost.

We were all in a web, a maze. Finding the thread that would lead us out would be our challenge.

Meanwhile, I was not alone in my sadness at leaving the greater island of Alba. Urtha and his son stood, arms around each other, faces set grim, watching their neighbour’s land pass into the distance, swallowed by every lazy bend in the river and the woodland that gathered at every curve, branches reflected in the water, as still as the hearts aboard the ship. Father and son, no doubt, were thinking of two women who remained beyond that now-threatening hinterland of bronze hounds and ghost-swarming hostels.

Ullanna and Munda.

Two women with very different sympathies to the circumstances that had overtaken them.

PART THREE

KRYPTAEA

Chapter Fifteen

Awakening

Rubobostes the Dacian was on the steering oar, braced against the storm. He seemed immovable, even as Argo listed violently and juddered as massive waves swept across her deck. Jason, cloaked, hooded, and haunted, stood at the rail, holding a lantern, signalling to the Greeklander vessels, keeping in touch by a code that he had contrived with them as soon as we had reached the open sea. Tairon—the exile from the very island to which our sea path now took us—clung to the rising prow, soaked by the bow-waves that flushed our poor ship, seeking a way through the mountainous waters. Tairon was an expert on labyrinths, and this ocean, south of Alba, close to Gaul, was a maze more complex than the tombs that burrowed below the great white-crystal pyramids of Egypt.

These three old Argonauts had at last begun to wake from the dream. Yet though they went about their business, they were still uncommunicative; they recognised me, but not in the human way, as if we regarded each other as reflections in a dark mirror. Argo was not yet ready to give them a full release from the silence she had imposed upon them. Their voices were functional only.

In the late afternoon, in storm-darkened weather, one of the Greeklander traders began to take on water, listing heavily, signalling her distress. The coast in the gloomy distance was high and craggy, no obvious haven or cove. Her companion vessels were some way ahead of us. The storm had caught us by surprise, and in the wrong part of the ocean.

Jason shouted, “She’s asking for help. For four of her crew to come aboard Argo, and as much cargo as we can manage.”

“How many crew on board?” Urtha shouted across the noise of the sea.

Jason called back, “Four that are important, he says! And fourteen pairs of hands at the oars.”

Urtha struggled towards me, slipping on the wet planking. “Four pairs of those hands should see us at full capacity, if I remember the last voyage well enough. But who is to decide, Merlin? Who is captain on Argo?”

“Hardly the time to discuss rank, Lord Urtha,” I replied. He frowned at my use of the formality. “Jason will be captain when Argo wills it. Not until then. For the moment, you must take command. I agree with you. Four or six can be saved—from the galley!—and no cargo.”

“I agree.”

Rubobostes leaned his great bulk on the steering oar. Bollullos and Caiwan stood ready to grapple the trader. Argo leaned and lurched towards the other vessel. Four fat and sea-swept faces watched us anxiously. Each of those men carried a large pack, tied to his back.

Bollullos flung ropes and the four grasped the ends, leaping into the heaving ocean and beginning to drag themselves towards us. The waves broke over them, but they clung on desperately. Behind them, saturated faces watched us from the deck in despair.

Bollullos let go of the ropes. Four white, screaming faces rapidly disappeared astern.

We sea-shifted as close as was safe to the trader, which was now beginning to list dangerously, sea swamped, the mast threatening to strike our own ship. The oarsmen jumped—where else could they go? We heaved seven of them aboard. The rest foundered along with their ship, sucked down with its cargo of clay jars, its skins, its horse—our traded horse, poor creature—and its plums in spiced wine.

Niiv took my arm as the craft disappeared below the waves. “I don’t know what gods live down below, but they’ll be feasting well tonight.”

The storm abated towards dawn and we caught up with the other merchantmen. We were all ragged from the rough ocean and at first light made for a shallow haven to effect repairs. We were still some way from the cliffs of the Iberian peninsula, and found a sandy bay, backed by reedy marshes. There was a good supply of wildfowl here, slow and easily brought down by slingshot, but no fresh water and no sign of a village.

Three of the seven souls we had saved returned to the small convoy from Greek Land. The other four remained on Argo, glad to use their muscle for an adventure a little more inspiring than bartering figs for pigs.

We sailed on.

Two of the trading ships left us at Gades, on the Iberian coast, the others catching the wind to follow the peninsula as far as the Gates of Herakles. Here, they, too, left us, one to scour the bays of Numida, the other cutting south and east across the ocean to Carthago. We anchored with our companion in the Iberian bay of Erradura, a small town that stank from the stone vats of rotting fish, a delicacy in many lands and highly prized, but which also supplied us with aromatic fruits and preserved meats. There were several Cymbrii here, exiles from their tribal lands in Alba, excellent storytellers. We passed a pleasant day in this gentle company.

Argo then passed the Isles of Balearis, and was rowed powerfully to the harbour at Massil and the marshes of the Rhone delta before making a crossing in open sea to the primitive island of Korsa, and the tomb-lined harbour of Lystrana, with its half-drowned skeletal ships and black-cowled guardians. It was here, where once he had sailed on the quest of the fleece, that the full light of reason rekindled in Jason’s eyes, and in Rubobostes’s, too, who came awake with a huge yawn and then—when he saw me—a huge grin.

Tairon was busy tidying himself, checking the ragged nature of his beard, examining the salt-encrusted skin of his arms and legs. He was a thin, fastidious man, but a man with great ability.

I suspected that Tairon had been in a higher state of alertness for some time, but he gave nothing away.

Jason strode about the ship, inspecting the supplies, the state of the oars, the sail, the damage to the mast. He cast a quizzical glance over all the new Argonauts, nodding politely. He seemed impressed by Bollullos, perhaps recognising strength and determination, two useful assets. He seemed bemused by the five youths, though of course he recognised Kymon. He playfully tried to tip Niiv over the side—she was not amused—then came over to me, tugging at his lank beard, eyes bright, teeth stained as he grinned at me.

“You keep a sloppy ship, Merlin.”

“We’ve made it halfway to Crete, sloppy or otherwise.”

“Ah!” Jason looked at the surrounding white cliffs, then grasped where we were. “Korsa! I recognise the place. We harboured here with the fleece, with the Colchean witch, had to fight off the Lysistarians. Gruesome creatures; brained two of my crew with clubs the size of a bull’s backside and dropped rocks on us from the foreland. No sign of them now, thank Hades. When did we arrive here?”

“Not long ago. You
have
been in a dream.”

“Yes,” he said with a grim glance at the figurehead of Mielikki. “Something went wrong, soon after we left Alba the last time. Argo’s mood changed. She held us prisoner. I’m not even aware of where she took us, but it was dark, and cold, and she made us row like madmen, and then suddenly we shipped oars, hunkered down, and that was that. I knew I was sleeping, but I couldn’t rouse myself. But here I am. And Rubo and Tairon, too! Is that all of us? What happened to the rest?”