Celtika (31 page)

I watched from across the brook, and she emerged from the overhang, a small girl, skin-clothed, wild-haired, armed with a sling, which was loaded with a smooth oval pebble. As I started to rise from where I was crouching in the undergrowth, she slung the stone and ran. The stone struck my shoulder painfully. I followed after her for a while as she darted from glade to hollow, over rock and under fallen tree, scampering from thicket to muddy stream, always ahead of me.

This was no game. There was no laughter, no taunting, no sense of pleasure.

After a while I gave up the ghost and let the child in the land return to me through my dream.

*   *   *

It was night and there was a man standing in the broken door of the house, looking round. Startled, I gave myself away and the man’s head turned to see me in the moonlight. I managed to throw back the sacking and draw my iron sword, struggling to stand.

‘So there you are,’ Elkavar said. ‘Put it away. Scaithach’s smile! but you’re a hard man to find. Fortunately, you haven’t washed for a while.’

He tugged on a leather leash and Maglerd appeared, barking twice at me in recognition and welcome.

Hound-nosed again.

‘I’m glad to see you, Elkavar. But why have you been trying to find me?’

‘Because I’ve understood a little of what and who you are, and who you’re looking for, and I’ve found something I think you should see.’

*   *   *

What I had failed to discern, perhaps because she knew how to blind me to her traces, Elkavar had discovered by instinct and that Hibernian-born talent of his for finding the ways-under, even though on his own admission he was equally adept at getting lost once the ways-under had been located.

He had nosed out a narrow passage in what appeared to be an outcrop of rock from a small hill which rose deep in the wood. Indeed, from the moment we had beached the ship, he had been convinced there was a way-under somewhere close.

‘I have a feeling for these things,’ he reminded me. ‘Though I have no sense of direction, as you know.’

He had tried and failed to find it. Then tried again; and found it. As soon as I saw it, I recognised the mound where I had encountered Fierce Eyes in hound form.

It was soon clear that this hill was old, and made by human hand, though the narrow mouth was roughly hewn.

It led down into the earth, quite steeply at first. Elkavar was very satisfied. ‘The
brughs
of my own land are of superior workmanship, but then the people who lived in my land in the days of the Danaans were the most skilled in the world at shaping the face of a stone.’

I know,
I thought to myself.
I remember.

The passage wound intricately for a while and then divided, beyond an arching gate of petrified oak, between human earth and the spirit land. It didn’t reach far into the underworld, we discovered. The light there was gloomy on a heavy, silent lake, full of frogs, haven of silent wading birds, a place that stank of marsh gas. Occasionally, dead water splashed dully against slippery rocks as some creature surfaced or prowled at the edge.

I saw no ghosts and decided that this was an abandoned place, a blind road to the underworld.

‘There’s nothing here,’ I said, disappointed.

‘Is that right?’ he teased.

I looked again, then urged him to tell me more.

‘Well, for a start, lakes like this, lakes like the one where we met, in the Northland, they change as you walk around them. If you’re not looking for it you don’t see it. That great lake in Pohjola is one of the gathering places for these ways-under, as perhaps you knew.’

I’d suspected exactly that, especially when Elkavar himself had appeared. It probably explained why so many dream-journeys, so many talisman-hunts, could arrive there. But that great ice-lake had seemed very different from this stinking pond below the small mound by the Daan.

‘If you continue round the shore,’ the Hibernian continued, ‘there’s a wild wood, and a clear path through it. And someone has been there recently. They’ve tried to hide the way from other eyes. I sat there and smelled the air coming back through the wood. I think it goes south. Sometimes it smells scented, like those herbs we love from the southern seas. Sometimes there’s just a hint of blood…’

‘Blood?’ My heart raced. I watched Elkavar carefully. ‘Blood and what else?’

‘A smell. Like burning.’

‘Fierce Eyes! So that’s where she’s gone! She must have nosed out the path while I was flying in time with Niiv hanging on my neck. Elkavar, you’re a hero.’

‘No hero,’ he said modestly. ‘I was born with the ability to find these passages. Though as I’ve said before, I can as easily get lost in them. But that and singing are about the only things I’m good at. I’ll wait for you here.’

I had just started to walk on, round the dark lake, when a thought occurred to me. ‘How quickly can you learn a tune?’

‘As quickly as you can sing it,’ he replied with confidence. He had clambered up one of the grim, grey rocks, where the dark gnarled trunks of winter thorn reached out to the starless vault. The lake swelled gently, but as I sang the song I wanted him to play on his pipes, so its surface erupted, shedding black forms on the wing, which circled for a few moments, a cloud of activity that finally settled back with a soft splashing to return the lake to silence.

Elkavar laughed, ‘If you can do that, think what I can do…’

He blew up the bag for the pipes and squeezed it firmly; the drone set the lake alive again, but again it settled, and remained so as he thumbed the pipes and produced the melancholy tune to a song that I had once heard a mother singing softly to her children, as they drifted into sleep, rocked in her arms.

‘What were the words again?’

I told him, and he sang them gently, the pipes mellow and warm, almost sad.

I am the exile,

returning, returning,

to the Hollow Hills,

to the Shining Ones,

I am the exile

who is walking home.

The lake shuddered. The gloom seemed to deepen across the water and the trees trembled, as if a storm was coming. A cold breeze blew against me. But everything in this eerie place was silent, then.

Elkavar intuited my feelings and sang again. The notes and the words seemed to drift as if sleepwalking, across the edge of the lake to the dark gap in the trees where Fierce Eyes had gone.

Silence again, save for the lapping of lake water on the shore and the gentle breathing of the wood.

And suddenly she was there, a tall, dark figure in the darkness, veiled in the night, standing like a statue at the mouth of the path, watching me.

I walked towards her. The Invocation, sung by the Hibernian, had called her back from her journey, turned her round almost certainly out of curiosity, of fond but hurtful memory. And I was quite certain, now, who watched me from behind the veil.

I stood before her, close enough to reach out and touch her, not close enough to kiss. She kept me at that distance. I could see her face behind the veil, year-worn, far more than year-worn, but beautiful, not part of this world, untouchable, and like me, lost in time yet bound to it.

Medea!
Daughter of Aeëtes. Priestess of the Ram. Of
none
of this! Because she was older than this by uncountable generations. She and I were part of the same heart, that ancient, ever-beating heart.

‘Who
are
you?’ she breathed. ‘Who
are
you, to know my secret song? You sail with
Rotten
bones…’

I had believed Medea dead. The oracle at Arkamon had told her son she gave too much to hide you. ‘She died in great pain.’

Of course she did. I saw it now. She died for seven centuries. I’d been blinded by my own refusal to use the talents I possessed. The oracle had spoken the truth—a guarded truth.

Medea hadn’t died. Medea had lived through time. Medea had walked the Path, and I hadn’t recognised her when our own paths had crossed. I hadn’t recognised the girl who’d been my childhood friend.

‘I was nicknamed Merlin,’ I said, hardly able to summon the words. ‘As children, we swam in a pool by a waterfall. You took pleasure in shooting fruit-tipped arrows at me. We had ten guardians; they still watch us, waiting for us to come of age, though I don’t know why.’

She studied me carefully from behind the veil. I sensed her mind as the buzzing of insects—frightened, confused, intrigued, unwilling to accommodate the truth that was on the way.

‘I was called Antiokus when Jason first recruited men for Argo and sailed to sack your sanctuary at Colchis. I was on Argo. I was in the palace when you mimed the murders of your children.’

With a scream of horrified recognition—breath reeking of blood and burning leaves—Medea tore away the veil and stared at me. She half believed, because she half knew the truth.

But the look of recognition and sudden comprehension quickly passed, and anger took its place, deepening the tracks of tears and pain around her eyes, hardening the sculpture of her brow and mouth.

‘What
is
this?’ she hissed at me. ‘What trick? He will never see his sons! Tell him that. I’ve worked too hard to hide them. He will never see his sons! They are the only thing in my life that matters to me. They are growing strong. I’m proud of them.’

‘He’s close. He’ll find Thesokorus.’

‘Will he? I stopped him on Alba. I raised the dead on Alba. I helped
waste
the land to keep you back. And I can stop him here. I poisoned his mind on that ship. And I
can
stop him here.’

She could not take her eyes from mine. I could hardly cope with the implications of what she was saying. I thought of the huge bull that had plunged from those wicker giants. The touch of Medea’s hand. And that frightening presence, that canny raven’s presence, in the giants’ heads as we had bobbed on the water, finding our courage. She had been that close. How much of that wasteland had been this woman’s doing, I wondered?

I could not take my eyes from hers. The blur of grey images, the rotting accumulation of so many centuries, was beginning to sharpen: for us both. She shook her head, remembering. Memory was a flood, rushing back, cold and fresh. It hurt to watch her. She had been in Ghostland with me, not knowing who I was, what we had been in the long past, even as I was recoiling from Fierce Eyes, not understanding Fierce Eyes at all. I longed for her again, or perhaps for the childhood we had shared.

She cut to the quick, speaking softly, deliberately, breaking the spell.

‘This trick will not work. You are a clever man, Antiokus, a friend of that rotten man. But I see through the trick. You are
not
like me. I was always
one alone.
The others were false memories. I walked the Path alone. And Merlin … Merlin was just a gentle dream!’

Why, then, were her lips trembling? Why was she cold? Because, of course, she too was beginning to understand.

‘I thought the same,’ I said. ‘I thought I was one alone; with only gentle dreams to make me feel there were others like me.’

‘No!’ she snarled. ‘This is a cruel deception. Somehow, you’ve picked my memory like a crow. But Rottenbones will
never
feel the touch of my children. I’ve waited too long to be with them again. Hecada! Hecada!’ she howled suddenly. ‘How is he here? How can he be here? The earth itself seems to turn against me!’

And with that wild and wailing cry, that angry moment of desperation, she turned and ran, swallowed by the path and shadows.

But the sound of her running suddenly stopped. I was still standing, staring after her, conscious of darkness, the stench of the pool, and the distant drone of Elkavar’s pipes as he quietly practised. I couldn’t see her, but she had come back, and called out to me.

‘How many guardians?’

‘Ten.’

‘Tell me a name.’

‘Cunhaval. The hound that runs through the forest.’

‘Too easy to guess. Tell me another.’

‘Sinisalo. The child in the land. Like you and me.’

‘And another.’

‘Skogen. The shadow of unseen forests.’

There was silence; then once more the sound of running.

I went to follow, but again her voice came back, almost plaintive. ‘Leave me. Leave me, Merlin! Please. I can do you harm.’

And I realised she had reached far deeper into her bones than I had. She had used more charm. She was far stronger in charm, and that was dangerous.

*   *   *

She was gone. I went back to Elkavar, who was waiting for me where the rocks met the water in this grey and silent underworld, his pipes slung casually over his shoulder, his face a mask of curiosity and mischief.

‘Well, that didn’t last long,’ he commented. ‘I hope it wasn’t something I sang. I can take criticism…’

‘You sang perfectly,’ I assured him.

‘Thank you. I thought so too. But I’d thought you might have had more to say to each other. You’ve clearly shared a past together.’

‘We have,’ I admitted, off my guard. ‘Far more than you can imagine. We’ve both been caught by surprise.’

Elkavar sighed as if he understood exactly what I meant. Then he shook his head as if he understood exactly how I felt. Then he offered me advice. ‘I’d compliment you on your way with women, Merlin. But I’m afraid there’s nothing to compliment. You didn’t take the upper hand. You let her get away too quickly.’

‘What you’ve seen here is not the end of it.’

‘You’re going after her? Good man! The way she looked at you, it was obvious you’ve once been lovers. That flame can be rekindled. And I’ll write the song! What was her name?’

‘Elkavar…’ I started to say, but discovered I had no words to either reprimand, disabuse or compliment him. If he had seen something, with his talents for exploring the ways-under, then who was I to doubt his intuition? My past was a series of moments, vivid experiences in a void of walking the Path. Most of my life was as obscure to me as a landscape on a misty day; sensed but not seen; coming into vision only when approached closely.