The Broken Kings: Book Three of The Merlin Codex (50 page)

She snuggled into me again, trying to catch my warmth. “You’re not going to leave me, are you? Not tonight.”

I closed my eyes and listened to her soft breathing. “No, Niiv. I’m not going to leave you.”

She shuffled and sighed, then settled. “Hold me tightly, Merlin. I need to sleep, now. I need your arms around me. I have to brave the dream.”

“What dream is that?”

“The Swan Dream. I have to dream of swans. They’re so beautiful. I love them. So did my father.”

I held her very tightly. I talked to her quietly. And quite soon she went to sleep.

My arms did not tire of holding her.

*   *   *

Came the dawn, came Urtha. He pulled back the deer-skins of the doorway and sharp winter light spilled into our small house. Urtha was a dark shadow in that frame of brightness. Brusque and brash, he was suddenly humbled when he saw the scene. He didn’t speak for a moment, then asked, “Am I disturbing you?”

“No. You’re not disturbing us.”

He looked at Niiv, then at me. “I can see from the dried tears that this has not been the easiest of nights.”

“A very long night.”

“Shall I wait outside?”

“No. No—please. Stay where you are. I’m ready to feel the day.”

I eased my arm from under Niiv and kissed her cool brow. I remembered again her scratched promise.

I have put aside enough of my life to find you again in times to come.

Yes, I thought. And you’ll be young and I’ll be old, and you’ll make my life a challenge again.

But there was pleasure in the thought, and joy, despite this silent moment of loss.

Her grey hair was spread over the goose-feather pillow. Her hollow cheeks seemed younger, now, all creases of concern and age in her old woman’s skin relaxed. “I told you not to squander your charm,” I whispered. “But I’m glad you don’t want to lose me.”

Urtha sighed from the doorway. “I suppose I’ll lose you, too, now. You’ll be walking that Path you’ve been missing for so long.”

I left the bed and pulled on my winter clothes. “I have no other choice. I’ll be on my way again.” They were hard words to say to a man who had become a great friend.

Urtha nodded, resigned to the inevitable. “I know,” he said quietly. “I’ve always known. The day always comes. By the way: someone’s back again. Our friend: Argo. She’s moored very close to here. Are you surprised?”

What could I say? His words made me feel melancholy, but for a moment only. I was moving on and there was a thrill in the thought of it. I was more than ready for change.

“No, I’m not surprised. I knew she would come. I’ve been feeling her presence for a few days now. I’m going with her, too.”

“Where?”

“North, of course. Where else? I have to take Niiv home to her father. Then I have to pick up the journey where I left off, when I met Niiv and Jason and you, three encounters that led to a good few years of change in my life.”

Urtha smiled at the memory. “I’ll miss you. Especially with winter coming, and this place confined within its walls.”

“You’ll find plenty to do. You always do.”

Beyond him, the light was winter-harsh, an odd sort of light. The light that comes from a heavy snowfall.

“Has it been snowing?” I asked. “That
will
make it a hard season.”

“Not snow, not yet,” Urtha said with a knowing shake of his head. “You have to see this to believe it. It happened overnight.”

He held back the skins for me and I stooped below his arm and stepped into the evergroves, looking with astonishment towards Taurovinda.

The land, for as far as the eye could see, in all directions, was white with swans.

Notes on the Text

The Codex:
The Merlin Codex is a set of writings, on parchment scrolls, found in several sealed, hollowed lengths of petrified wood in a cave in the Perigord region of France in 1948. They are fragmentary. They are two thousand years old. Other such containers may yet be discovered.

The Codex has been divided into three parts:
Celtika; The Iron Grail;
and this third volume,
The Broken Kings.

The three volumes represent different periods of writing over a very long span of years. The style changes; some details are not consistent.

Nevertheless, they are an insight into forgotten history and legend, written by a man who is legend himself, although we have come to much misrepresent and misinterpret him.

Merlin:
Known by many names, including Antiokus (see
Celtika
), Merlin itself was a boyhood nickname meaning, according to the text, “cannot tie his laces.”

The Oldest Animals/the Ten Masks:
There are several references to the Oldest Animals and the Ten Masks in the Merlin Codex. They are a Western European form of what the Australian indigenous people refer to as The Dreamtime. The Oldest Animals of Western Europe’s ancient mythology were the Owl, the Salmon, the Stag, the Bear, the Beaver, the Wild Boar, and the Wild Hound. The masks are Moondream, Lament, the Child in the Land, the Shadow of Forests, the Hollowing Man (able to access the Otherworld), Death (who walks in the underworld), the Storyteller, the Hound, the Salmon, and the Bird of Prey (see
Lavondyss
).

Crete:
I have used the modern form of the name for the island, rather than Minoa. The Egyptians of the Sixth Dynasty may have known the seafarers of Crete as
Ha-nebu
or “northerners”; another name was
Keftiu,
“those from the hinterland.” In the Old Testament, Crete is referred to as Caphtor.

Pohjola; Mielikki:
Pohjola is the ancient name for northern Finland, a place of enchantment and shamanism. Mielikki was a tree goddess, also known as Old Forest Lady, Northland’s Lady, Lady of Winter.

Morrigan, Badb:
goddesses of battle, often appearing as screech owls, hawks, or crows, hovering over the field of battle, ready to escort fallen warriors to their otherworldly life.

Imbas forasnai:
the “Light of Foresight.” This is referred to frequently in the Old Irish epic tales, in particular in
The Tain
or
The Cattle Raid.
It was a visionary attribute usually associated with young women.

Druid:
Literally: “oak man.” Druids were men (sometimes women) who were trained in memory, medicine, wisdom, poetry, and magic. They were called by various titles—rarely referred to as “druids”—and I have adopted Speaker for Kings, Land, and Past.

Talienze:
The Codex is unsatisfactory on the nature of the Speaker, Talienze, who was from Vortingoros’s kingdom, but had certainly been brought there, perhaps as a child hostage, or perhaps as a wandering man who chose to settle. It may be that part of the Codex is missing, or that the boys who described the abrupt end of the man (see text) gave an incomplete picture.

Pendragon:
This man is clearly the Arthur of later legend, as yet Unborn. His ease of movement between the Celtic Otherworld and the “real” world contrasts with the difficulty of such movement by the Dead. Merlin occasionally attempts to explain how these differences are controlled, what rules they obey, but his descriptions are confusing, referring to an older understanding of magic, and I have chosen to omit them.

Daidalos:
I have used the older form of the name, Daidalos, rather than the more familiar Daedalus, as this is how it appears in the Codex. The Dyctean cave referred to in the text is the cave on Crete where Zeus was born. It is not clear from the Codex whether Daidalos had adapted Zeus’s birthplace to a shaping chamber.

Honey children:
The Codex suggests that Daidalos had three daughters, but the fate of two of them is unclear. What is certain is that Lady of Wild Creatures—a form of the Earth or Mother Goddess—used the child, or children, for her own ends, perhaps “stealing back” the caves that Daidalos used as shaping chambers, but an account of their fate, if it was known, is missing from the Codex.

Argo:
When Jason refitted Argo, he used oak from a branch of the Dodonian oak, an oracle, a grove in central Greece dedicated to Hera, Zeus’s wife. Athena was Zeus’s daughter, though without a mother. Though Hera and Athena often argued (ferociously), they each took a turn, in Jason’s time, in protecting Argo.

Robert Holdstock

London, June 2006

Also by Robert Holdstock from Tom Doherty Associates

Celtika

The Iron Grail

Mythago Wood

Lavondyss

The Hollowing

By the same author

Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn

Ancient Echoes

The Fetch

Merlin’s Wood

Necromancer

Where Time Winds Blow

The Emerald Forest

(from the film by John Boorman)

www.robertholdstock.com

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE BROKEN KINGS: BOOK THREE OF THE MERLIN CODEX

Copyright © 2007 by Robert Holdstock

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Holdstock, Robert.

The broken kings / Robert Holdstock.—1st ed.

   p. cm. — (Book three of The Merlin codex)

“A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”

ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1109-2

ISBN-10: 0-7653-1109-7

1. Merlin (Legendary character)—Fiction. 2. Argonauts (Greek mythology)—Fiction. 3. Jason (Greek mythology)—Fiction. 4. Arthurian romances—Adaptations. 5. Wizards—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6058.O442B76  2007

823'.914—dc22

2007003803

First Edition: May 2007

eISBN 9781466840300

First eBook edition: February 2013