Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) (13 page)

Finally, the image of a battle in black woods; the flickering movements of torches in the darkness; the cries
of dying men; bloody bones and broken armour slung in the bare branches of trees … a sinister, fleeting image of what might have happened just days before this pleasant and proud young prince had crawled into the bole of the oak, to find shelter, to find safety … to find Tallis …

Story … vision … and stranger sense, the sense of somehow having
been
to that ancient land. The air had chilled her, the smoke had choked her, the blood stench had sickened her. She had
been
there. She opened the
way
to Gaunt’s ‘fierce battle’. She had changed the landscape, bringing the old winter to her modern summer.

The Hollower was with her, she realized. All of this was for the purpose of showing her another facet of her power, her skill. Tallis: mask maker, mythago maker; her grandfather’s child.

But by midnight she was distressed. Because, for all the insight – whether right or wrong – she felt most strongly for the dying man.

She stood by her window, a frail shape in a thin nightgown. She stared across the night land to the silhouette of her tree. Tears came and she imagined she could hear her warrior crying too. She didn’t know his name and she desperately needed to call to him. She should try and help him. She should take him bandages, and food, and antiseptic ointments. She should jump from the tree into the field and comfort him, tend to his wounds.

Her warrior had crawled to Strong against the Storm; perhaps he had heard her as she had adventured with her cousin! He had called to her, and for help. And what had she done? Nothing. Made no sound; only watched him and wept!

Angry with herself she pulled on her plimsolls, then
crept downstairs into the garden. On impulse she tore a wide strip from the hem of her nightdress for use as a bandage. She thought about going back to the house for food and medicines, but changed her mind. By starlight she ran towards the Stretley Stones.

She had expected that night would have fallen in the forbidden place as well, but as she crawled along the branch she passed suddenly back from darkness into the winter daylight. Below her the young man was exactly as she had last seen him. The storm still a distance away. The fires were the same.

For a moment this confused Tallis. Then she realized that her warrior was staring up into the branches of Strong against the Storm. He was murmuring words that were too faint for her to hear.

‘What’s your name?’ Tallis called. And again, more loudly. ‘What’s your name? I’m Tallis.
Tallis
. I want to help you …’

At the sound of her voice the young man’s gaze hardened slightly. A frown touched his pale skin. Then he seemed to smile, just briefly, as if amused, and his eyes closed.

‘Tallis …’ he murmured.

‘What’s
your
name?’ the girl insisted from the tree.

All he said was, ‘Tallis …’ And then a desperate cry of strange words, words which fled through the branches of Strong against the Storm, meaningless, eloquent, elusive. Tallis threw down the strip of gown; her bandage for the young man’s wound. For a second she lost sight of it, but then there it was, unfurled, fluttering down to the reclining man. He saw it fall. He reached for it, tears of joy in his eyes, his mouth, till now a grim slash of pain, becoming a wide smile of hope.

He clutched the rag and held it to his lips. He shook
violently and the blood on his body gleamed where the flow began again. ‘Tallis!’ he cried, and then shouted the word, ‘Scathach!’

He fell back, arm outstretched above his head, nightgown fragment fluttering in his fingers. Tallis watched in shock. His eyes remained open but a dullness appeared there instantly. The smile on his lips faded and he became utterly still. For a moment Tallis thought he had died, but then she thought she saw movement in his hand. He wouldn’t die. He couldn’t. She had saved him. Whoever he was, he had heard her voice. The Hollower had helped, of course; or perhaps Tallis’s own talent for
hollowing
. But he had heard the voice and perhaps imagined that she was a goddess, or a tree spirit. It had been a sign of hope for him and now he would live. He would live for her, for Tallis. He would stay by the tree. When he was well again he would build his house there, and perhaps climb the wide trunk of Strong against the Storm. Or perhaps …

Yes. She would climb down to
him
. When she was older. When the time was right to join the spirits of two worlds. She was not ready to climb down yet.

‘
Tallis!
’

The angry voice ripped through the moment of joy. She slipped on the branch, kept her balance, but the forbidden place had gone.

A torch shone brightly from the ground beyond the field where the Stretley Stones had fallen. When her name was called again she realized it was her father.

He knocked on the door of her room, then opened it. Tallis remained by the window, staring sullenly out across the dawn. She was wide awake, even though she had had no sleep. She was dressed in her dungarees, a white
blouse, gym shoes. She had refused to wash her face, content to let the tears remain, a reminder of her anger.

‘Tallis?’

‘Go away.’

He was gentle, now. He had been upset at midnight, and frightened too. Now, he explained to her, he was just anxious. There was something wrong with his daughter and that worried him. The way she was behaving was so unlike her. Whatever had upset her was very real to her. He had decided to do a little probing for the source of the concern.

‘Why were you in the tree? What were you doing there?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Tallis? Talk to me. I’m not angry any more.’

‘
I
am. You sent him away.’

‘Him? Who did I send away?’

She looked at her father, furious, her lips pinched, her eyes narrowed as if to challenge his stupidity. He smiled. He was unshaven and his greying hair, usually so neatly combed back, was unkempt. It gave him a wild look, an odd look. He was still in his pyjamas. Now he reached out, gently touching his daughter’s arm.

‘Help me understand, Tallis.
Who
was there?
Who
was in the tree?’

She looked back towards Stretley Stones meadow. She felt her tears again and a deeper longing than she had ever known. She wanted her warrior, wanted to be there, looking at him. In her young mind she had grasped a strange truth: that time, for her wounded hero, existed only when she was watching him. The storm was coming. With it would come the rain.

In a way which went deeper than simple consciousness she knew that when the storm came so her romance would be finished. It was as if a part of her knew the truth
behind the dulling of her young man’s eyes, and that cry, so final, so full of relief …

Yet she refused to acknowledge it. He was
not
dead. He would live again.

Something, though … something terrible …

She had been thinking of it all night, all the early hours during which she had stood here, staring out to where Strong against the Storm waited for her. She was afraid to go back. Afraid to look at him. Each minute which she spent with him was a minute more of his own life, and the storm would be a minute closer.

She was alarmed by that storm. She had seen the sombre shapes of carrion birds, circling closer, just below the clouds. It was no ordinary storm. It was a wind from hell and it was sweeping the land of her hero, gorging on the dead, the dying. She had read about such storms. She knew all the names of the hell crows, the scald crows, the scavengers, the ravens …

Her father was still speaking to her. Without looking at him she cut in abruptly. ‘What is written on the Stretley Men? On the stones?’

He seemed surprised by the question. ‘It makes very little sense. Didn’t I tell you that once?’

‘But there must be
something
. Other than the “wanderer” and the “bird”. Isn’t there
one
name?’

He thought hard for a moment, then nodded. ‘I think so. Several names. Odd sounding names. I’ve got them all written down somewhere, in a book on local history.’

Excitedly she said, ‘What are they? What are the names? Is one of them
Scathach?
’

His frown was almost of recognition, but then he shrugged. ‘I can’t remember. Where did
that
name come from, anyway?’

‘He’s there. His name is Scathach. He’s one of the old
people, only he’s just a young man. I’ve seen him. He’s beautiful. He’s like Gawain.’

‘Gawain?’

She ran to her bookshelves and pulled the leather-bound volume from among the piles of storybooks. She leafed quickly through the pages and placed it down upon the bed, open at the picture which reminded her of the man in the meadow. Her father stared at the figure for a moment; then he turned the pages, finding the letter which had been written by his own father, several years before. ‘This is your grandfather’s writing. Have you ever read it?’

Tallis wasn’t listening. She stared towards the meadow and her eyes were wide, her whole face radiant with pleasure. She was sure she knew his name, now. He had called it to her. And it was certainly one of the strange names on the stones. An odd name, but a lovely one to her ears.
Scathach
. Scathach and Tallis. Tallis and Scathach. Scathach and the Tree Spirit. Scathach’s stone, a monument to a great hero, a youngest son, left in the field where he had found life and love with a strange and slender young princess from another world.

She clapped her hands. She had to see him again. Then she remembered the storm and she felt afraid and helplessly young. She was not old enough to be of true assistance to him. Not yet. She must bide her time.

‘Tallis!
Who’s
in the tree?’

It was her turn to be gentle now and she brushed her fingers across her father’s face, trying to reassure him.

‘He’s not in the tree. He’s
below
the tree. Scathach. That’s his name. He’s very young, very handsome, and one day, a long time ago, he was a very great warrior. He was wounded in battle, but a tree spirit came to him and saved him.’

Frowning, her father said, ‘Take me to see him, Tallis …’

She shook her head, placing her finger on his lips. ‘I can’t do that, Daddy … I’m sorry. He’s mine. Scathach is mine. He belongs to me, now. That’s why the Hollower let me see him. It’s part of my training, don’t you see? The stories, the masks … I have to do what I’m told, and see what I see. I mustn’t resist. And I have to save Scathach before the storm comes. I’m sure that’s what my function is. Before the storm comes. Before the crows come. Don’t you understand?’

He brushed his hand through her hair and concern glistened in his eyes. ‘No, my darling,’ he said softly. ‘No, I don’t understand. Not yet.’ He hugged Tallis quickly. ‘But I will. I’m sure I will.’

He stood up from the bed and left the room. When he looked back, Tallis was facing the window again. She had her eyes closed. She was smiling. She was whispering.

The crows were coming. And the screech owls too, and the blood ravens. All the birds of prey. All the birds of hell. Coming to gorge upon the dead, to become fat with flesh. She had to stop them. She had to protect him. She had to find the spells to turn them back. She had to find their bones.

She cleared one of the walls in her room, taking down the bark masks that she had hung there, all except Falkenna, because the hawk was a hunter; she was a hunter; Scathach was a hunter; and through the hawk’s
eyes she might see the hated birds which preyed upon the dead.

Around Falkenna she painted crows and ravens, using water colours and charcoal. As each was finished so she blinded it with a knife, cutting deep slashes across the cold, piercing gazes. She made models of the birds, from straw, from paper, from clay. She buried these in Stretley Stones meadow, face down towards the bedrock. She marked each of these graves with the feathers of dead birds which she found in the hedgerows. She tied black feathers and strips of her white nightgown to each of the oaks that bordered Stretley Stones meadow. She made a daub of her own blood (squeezed from a graze on her knee) mixed with brook water and the sap of thistles and nettles. With this she painted the oaks around the field, painting birds whose bodies were split in two, painting arrows in the clouds, where the birds hid, and painting beaks that were broken.

Finally she painted the two masks on Strong against the Storm, one facing out from the meadow, one facing in. They were
triumph
masks, and they were both shaped like hawks.

In this way, then, she had turned the meadow into a cemetery for the consuming birds. Yet
still
she felt the crows circle closer. So she gathered the skulls and bones of birds wherever she could, plucking the feathers away from the maggoty corpses and stripping the flesh away with pincers. She kept the bones in a leather bag and each day ran around the meadow with them.

As summer heightened Tallis felt a growing need to see Scathach again, just once, just a glimpse of him to see her through to the new term at school, to give her strength to last until Christmas, closer to the New Year, closer to an age at which she might really help him.

She walked across the fields. She sat below Strong
against the Storm and read books. She loved to go into the hidden meadow and stretch out below the oak, arm above her head, body twisted just so, just as Scathach was even now lying there. He was staring up, as she stared up, and perhaps what he could see was what she was seeing – the tangle of leaves, the darker form of the branch. But there was no smiling face for Tallis, no tree spirit for her as there was for him.

She was aware, over the weeks, that the cowled women who haunted the woods were moving with increasing agitation through the concealing undergrowth. She scarcely bothered with them any more. The image of that young man, Scathach, grew to consume her. She forgot about Harry.