Celtika (44 page)

Elkavar asked if he had seen any sign of Jason, and the Cretan nodded, taking off his green-plumed helmet and pointing along the path close to which we crouched, to where it ran deeper into the valley.

‘I think I saw him. He’s wearing
keltoi
armour again. He was fighting two Greeklanders.’

*   *   *

Two dying hoplites, crawling into shelter, suggested where Jason might have gone. We ran quickly to a row of white columns which marked an entry into the mountain and found the man. He was standing, sword in hand, gaze fixed on the faraway, across the valley. He was wistful, perhaps sad. He was indeed wearing the colourful clothes of one of Brennos’s army who had failed in the quest. A third Greeklander lay curled at his feet, shaking slightly as the spirit was drawn away from him. Jason himself was bleeding from a cut to the arm, and Elkavar used a short length of leather to bind the wound. I kept at a discreet distance.

‘I don’t know what my son looks like,’ he whispered absently, then glanced at Elkavar, narrow-eyed and fierce. ‘Does he look like me, I wonder? But then, what do I look like? I have no idea of my face. I leave that pleasure for those who can’t avoid it. You must help me search for him, Elkavar. He’s somewhere on that hill. I feel it strongly.’ He laughed, though without humour. ‘I’m anxious. Can you imagine that? After all this time: to be so close to my son … and I’m anxious. What if he doesn’t recognise me? What if he’s inherited his mother’s anger? You must stay close. You were there when that betraying sorcerer talked to him. You’ll recognise him. He’ll talk to you. And you can perform the reintroduction. It may take him some time to believe who I am.’

‘Merlin is here,’ Elkavar said softly.

Jason cursed, glanced at me furiously, the sword pointing to my head. ‘I will never understand! What games are you playing? Stay away from me. Nowhere near me! I no longer know who you are.’

The valley had become quiet, the long morning of fury finished. The sound of horses galloping back to the main army was still a rumble in the ground. Light caught the armour of the invaders as they ran back, carrying whatever they had found. The white tunics and bright horse-hair plumes of the dead Greeklanders scattered the hills. Cries of greeting, hailing and newly discovered trophy echoed briefly, the answering calls like distant music.

Delphi was almost silent.

And it was against this sudden stillness that I saw Orgetorix.

He was with another man, also dressed in the patchwork leather armour of the Hyperborean Celts. The two men slipped from the deep cover of rocks, across the valley, and ran lightly up the winding road to the complex of marbled buildings that contained and masked the oracle itself.

‘There!’ I shouted. ‘Orgetorix. And one other.’

For a moment, Jason stood as still as one of the shattered statues, staring across the distance at the remote figures, drawing in every detail as if this might be his only glimpse of the young man who had crossed Time and yet was again almost in his grasp. Then he barked an order to Elkavar and Tairon and ran down the rugged and thorny hillside. If he was aware that I followed, he made no comment at that moment. He was blocking me from his mind.

‘I knew he’d be here!’ Jason shouted as we waded across the river, and with Tairon leading—he was the swiftest of us—ascended the cobbled road to the gates and courtyards that in turn opened to the barren cleft in the mountain’s face. Here, the stench of sulphurous gas was strong; it gusted from the slit of the cave like a gorgon’s breath. Indeed, perhaps remembering Perseus’s account of Medusa, Jason picked up a discarded, round shield, kissed it and raised it to cover the lower part of his face.

Jason led the way into the cave. With Tairon, I listened for the sound of movement other than his, but there was only the kiss of the sour breath of the hill. Tairon seemed as puzzled as was I, but he had already briefly explored this system of dimly lit passages and led us to where the coiled statue of the Python guarded the way deeper.

We went deeper, and for a while the loudest sound was Jason’s laboured, excited breathing.

A sudden movement in the unlit gloom of a tunnel to the left of us startled us all. A torch flared brilliantly and Jason growled in his throat as a woman stepped towards him, breasts and belly bared, eyes shining above a black veil, hair tied in long, sparkling ringlets.

Something in the way she moved, perhaps, or the glimmer in her eyes, but an echo of memory, at least, blew sudden insight and horror into Jason’s mind.

In that moment he half knew, half sensed who it was who came towards him, and recoiled at the thought, taking an involuntary step backwards, shaking his head. I heard him murmur, ‘No. Oh no … Not here…’

And then he cried out like a wounded animal, a wail of pain and fury as Medea tore away her veil to expose pale, ageing features, her cruel grim smile.

Without looking round at me, Jason stabbed his sword towards me, shouting, ‘You knew! You must have done.’

Once again I had no answer for him. I suspect my tongue was tied again, as it had been tied all that time ago in Iolkos; and as my eyes had been confused at Thermopylae.

Medea was in her element, relishing the stunned and shaking man before her. ‘Go back, Jason,’ she shouted in a hollow voice, made all the more ringing by the cavernous system of passages. ‘There is nothing for you here. All that you see is mine, still mine to love. You will
never
claim your sons.’

‘Try to stop me!’ Jason roared, but at that moment the two young men stepped from behind her. Jason gasped, hesitated in his step, then half lifted his hand towards them. The flame from the torch cast a flickering, eerie light on their solemn faces. All I could think was: Kinos? Here? This was not right. My stomach tightened in nervous anticipation. I called quickly to Orgetorix. He should have recognised me, but he was silent: blank.

Then Medea turned and ran, extinguishing the light, the two young warriors pacing effortlessly beside her into the darkness.

Elkavar grabbed one of the fluttering, poorly charged torches that smouldered nearby. And in an echo of that dreadful pursuit through the palace in Iolkos, I ran again with Jason to save his sons from their mother.

She led us deep into the mountain, racing through the branching passages as if these were a natural home to her. Her laughter echoed and taunted. And her voice was an agony of insult:

‘You should have stayed in the lake for all the good this chase will do you. I made a promise, Jason, that you would never touch your sons again.’ There was a moment’s silence. ‘But you can have their ghosts,’ she finished eerily.

She was suddenly there, framed in the darkness of the corridor, the torch again alight, held high into the narrow cleft above her head. Orgetorix and his brother stepped in front of her, each face a mask of hatred.

‘Go to daddy,’ Medea said, and this time her laugh was furtive, almost sad. Flame streamed after her as she ran further into the labyrinth, leaving the two young men.

Jason said, ‘There’s something wrong. What is it, Merlin? Use a little of your magic to tell me…’

‘I can’t,’ I whispered, almost in despair. My thoughts swirled and blurred as I tried to summon a little enchantment. But Medea knew how to cast the net that blocked my charm.

‘Of course you can,’ Jason murmured with a sneer. The words hurt. The next words struck me like a hammer. ‘But then, why should you? You and she are cut from the same heart. Too long in the lake. The gods blinded me to your deceit.’

‘No!’ I whispered. ‘No deceit. I swear.’

My own words rang hollow. I had not told him what I knew. But why? Why had I kept quiet about Medea?
It’s for the best. For the best,
I remembered telling myself.

A second later, his sons took two more steps towards us and Jason, despite his confusion, involuntarily moved to greet them. Then, like snakeskins, the gleam of illusion fell away to reveal Medea’s trickery. The two dead Greeklanders, faces fish-belly white and gaping, stood for a moment or two more, then crumpled in their own gore, the last breaths whining from crushed lungs.

Jason sank slowly to his knees, fists clenched, eyes closed, the scream of disappointment that was so near to his mouth suppressed by pure will. Blood came from his lips; and then words, softly spoken, ‘O gods, damn her! Damn her for ever! Father Zeus, burn her bones inside her; Lord Hades, hang her with her own bowels!’

He fell forward, then seemed to come to his senses. I heard him mutter, ‘Apollo! Mielikki! Argo! Let me see him. Just for a few minutes. Then I promise the lake can have me back. Mielikki. Mielikki … if you have influence in the heavens, speak for me now. The lake can take me I back…’

He had begun to draw into himself, to hunch down like a dying man.

I stepped towards him, wanting to reach a comforting arm, but I drew back, afraid to touch him.

Still ‘blind’, I couldn’t see the source of what happened next.

Jason seemed to hear a voice. He stood up, clutched sword and shield tightly, leaned forward into the darkness and began to breathe heavily, as if in anticipation. A heartbeat later the tunnel of rock closed around him a mouth consuming a piece of meat. A gust of sour air made me turn my face away. Elkavar and Tairon had their arms across their mouths, staring perplexed at the place where Jason had disappeared.

The tunnel was normal again, though we could hear the echoing sound of a man running.

Elkavar turned to me. ‘Should we follow?’

There would be little point. The Apollonian spirit of Delphi had aided Jason. It would have no reason to aid us as well.

But Tairon was a ‘walker-in-labyrinths’. He met my gaze, perhaps thinking just what I was thinking—that he might pursue Jason far enough to discover where, among the many outlets of this oracle, the resurrected Greeklander might emerge.

‘Wait for me outside,’ the Cretan said briskly, taking up his sword. He turned from us and ran quietly into the darkness.

*   *   *

It was not long before Tairon came staggering from the mountain, breathless from the acrid fumes and with running. His lean features poured with sweat and he squeezed perspiration out of his lank, black hair.

I waited patiently until he had recovered, and was disappointed when he shook his head.

‘I failed. I’d hoped to emerge with him at the other end, but I lost him, though I could hear him running. The only thing I noticed were the smells of honey and the breeze that blows in an oak forest. There’s a special odour to it. But that could be anywhere … couldn’t it?’

He looked at me, then smiled as he saw the expression on my face.

Tairon’s words were a revelation—a blind man had suddenly seen the light.

Orgetorix was not here in Delphi. He was at the Oak Temple: Dodona! The sanctuary sacred to Zeus, where young Jason had travelled and begged for a branch of the sacred tree to build into the keel of Argo. Afterwards, his wish granted, that shrine had become Jason’s spiritual home. He would be as attached to it as any child to its mother. I doubted if he even knew it, but I had known it, when I had sailed with him, long years ago. The oak that had been crafted so carefully into the ship had claimed her captain as its son. There were a thousand spirits wandering inside Argo, and Jason was one of them.

A fact Medea knew too well. She was leading him there, not
away
from her son, but
to
the confused and lost young man.

She had confounded me, and blighted my vision; she had poisoned her son’s mind to his father, and performed feats of enchantment that were stripping the years from her faster than a hunter can paunch the entrails from a deer.

She had tried to keep her son from his father; now she was certainly bringing them together. That she had done this was as clear to me as Elkavar’s shining, ready, uncomprehending face. What better way to rid herself of Jason, than to have his own son kill him?

‘He’s at Dodona!’ I said to Elkavar, and the Hibernian replied, ‘That means as much to me as that he’s on the moon. But whatever it means, just tell me when, and when not, to sing.’

‘Sing to your heart’s content,’ I said to him. ‘I have to go separately from you, now. Jason is in danger. I can’t afford to get lost again by going through the underworld, though you and Tairon may fare better. But for the moment at least, this is goodbye.’

‘Not for too long, I hope,’ the Hibernian murmured with a frown. ‘I was beginning to get used to you. And you are my best chance of getting back to my own country.’

‘I’m capable of becoming as lost as you, I assure you.’

‘And where exactly are you going now?’ Tairon asked curiously.

‘To find Argo and ask to sail in her again.’

*   *   *

Gwyrion was camped alone, a small fire burning, his weapons around him. He seemed nervous, too small a guard for so precious a burden. The ragged lump of Argo was in its cart, below the skins. The pale-featured figurehead lay exposed, face to the sky as if resting. The Cymbrian watched me through tired eyes as I approached him.

‘She’s not happy,’ he said to me in a dark voice. ‘It’s all I can do to pacify her. Jason must take her back soon to the north. This is not going right.’

I agreed with him, then climbed into the cart, uncovered the heart of ancient wood and crouched before it.

‘Mielikki. Argo. Spirit of the Ship! I need to go to Dodona, where part of you still lives…’

For a while there was cold silence, then the Spirit of Argo flowed out and embraced me. I was crouching among grey, hot rocks, yellow gorse and the gnarled trunks of olives. Mielikki was there, young and bright-faced, sitting in her summer guise a little way from me. She was unveiled, her fair hair tied in a topknot, her dress no more than a thin tunic. She sat cross-legged below a vast, spreading oak; beyond her, the hills were hazy with heat, green with bushes and woods, scented with herbs.

‘This place frightens me,’ she said. ‘I am not used to such warmth. Do you recognise it, Merlin? This is where a part of the ship came from, lifetimes ago. This tree. Isn’t she beautiful? So old, so old … you can see the scar where Jason cut her limb to make his ship.’