Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) (39 page)

Only Scathach’s restraining grasp had stopped Tallis following Gyonval into the wood, to try to bring him back. She had been silent, resisting Scathach powerfully but uttering no sound.

‘He’s gone,’ he had whispered. ‘We’ve lost him …’

My loss is greater than you realize, Tallis had thought bitterly; but that is a knowledge I shall spare you.

Now, in the long-house, she realized that Scathach had been fully aware of the special pain she felt.

‘I was sad to lose them,’ Scathach said. ‘Three of them, Gyonval, Gwyllos and Curundoloc were still with me when I reached the forbidden world and found the shrine in ruins.’

‘Oak Lodge,’ Wynne-Jones breathed, and repeated the name as if savouring the sound of a place he had once known well. ‘A ruin you say. Not inhabited, then …’

‘It was overgrown by forest. The trees had entered every part of it. The wood will never let it go, now. But I found the journal. I read it as you asked, but rain had made the magic blur. The symbols were hard to interpret. It was very confusing.’

‘Was there any reference to my departure … into the wood?’

Scathach nodded. ‘Yes. It was written that you had discovered the oolerinnen. You became obsessed with the opening of gates into the heart of the forest. It was written that one day you returned smelling of snow and very ill from winter. A week later you returned to that place of winter and never returned.’

There was a moment’s silence. Wynne-Jones’s breathing slowed. He was staring vacantly across the lodge; Tallis leaned forward slightly to watch him, but he didn’t see her.

‘I passed through,’ he murmured. ‘It took me very much by surprise. It was in the oak-thorn zone, near to the horse-shrine. We had explored the area very thoroughly. We had mapped the energy of the ley-matrix. Oak and thorn always made powerful generative zones, and oak-thorn is a prime genesis zone for mythagos of a very primitive origin. Many of them were more animal than human. The oolerinnen must have set a trap for me. I passed through and I could not get back …’

Again Scathach hushed the man, raising a beaker to his lips so that he could sip cool water. Wynne-Jones sighed and his hand, gripping his son’s wrist, fluttered like a flightless bird, then found a new, more reassuring perch upon the stronger limb.

‘And Huxley himself? What of my friend George? What of the old magician himself?’

‘His wife was dead. He created the mythago of a girl and fell in love. His eldest son came home from a great war in another land …’

‘What was she called? The girl …’

‘Guiwenneth.’

‘Where was she from?’

Scathach dipped his head in thought for a moment. ‘A wildwood princess of the Britons. I think that’s what I read.’

Wynne-Jones shuddered; Tallis thought he was coughing with pain, but he was laughing.

‘The quietest man I knew … engenders the fieriest of women … Vindogenita herself … Guinevere …’ he rasped with amusement for a moment longer, then relaxed.

‘As far as I can tell,’ Scathach said, ‘father and son contested the love of the girl –’

‘How predictable.’

‘And that’s all. No resolution. No final passage. I cannot tell you what occurred after.’

There was silence for a while, only the old man’s breathing breaking the stillness with its catching, painful rhythm. Then he asked, ‘And what of you? How far were you able to travel from the edge of the world?’

‘A full day on foot,’ Scathach answered. ‘Then a terrible pain began in my head; and dizziness and a feeling of fear. The world seemed dark even in daylight. I could see the shadows of trees on a land that was as
bare as naked rock, and there were ghosts behind the trees, taunting me. I had to return to the area of the shrine. But I spent a year in that shadowland. I disguised myself in the clothes of the people. I worked on a farm. I helped to build one of their houses. I was paid in coinage. I asked about you, and about Huxley, but I found nothing. Then, when I returned to the shrine – to Oak Lodge – I realized that the Keeton girl had been making contact with me.’

‘Later,’ the old man said. ‘Later … tell me of Anne … my daughter Anne. Did you manage to see her?’

‘I used a telephone. I spoke to her from a great distance. She was still living in Oxford, as you mentioned. It was easy to find the way to call her. I told her my name, who I was, and that you were old, but in good health, and had journeyed very far into the wood. I told her of my mother Elethandian, your wife, and I would have told her more but she began to scream at me. She called me a liar. She was very angry. She said that I was a fraud. She said the police would come to take me into the stockade like the cruel and wild animal I was. I told her of the dead snake that you and she had found once, and which had been your special secret. How else could I have known about it unless I was your son? But she stopped speaking. She went away without leaving a message for you.’

Scathach gently rubbed his father’s wrist. ‘I’m sorry. I truly am.’

The news had deflated the old man. He sighed with disappointment and lay carefully back on the straw pallet. ‘Never mind …’ he whispered, and closed his eyes. Soon he was sleeping.

Tallis stayed with Scathach for a while but found the atmosphere in the long-house increasingly uncomfortable; it was smoky, and her lungs became choked. It was
cold, too, an icy wind sneaking in through the thatch and through gaps in the mud wall. There was the smell of bitter herbs and of Wynne-Jones’s incontinence, and soon the idea of the crisp outside world became attractive again.

If Scathach had wanted her to stay she would have stayed, but he remained distant, not responding to Tallis’s touch. He slumped, then turned slightly, staring through the gloom of the house towards the north, as if he could see through the walls, through the wood, to that place of battle, that cold place, which lay northwards and to which he and Tallis – as everything that passed this way – seemed to be moving.

Morthen slipped into the lodge, circling Tallis warily and keeping her eyes averted. She seemed nervous at first, then almost resentful of the older woman’s presence. Tallis resolved to remain for a while, but turned her gaze away. The girl whispered to her brother.

‘There are
tamers
in the valley. They’ve cleared a trapping ground, half a day’s tracking to the south. There are only a few of them, but they have several horses.’

‘Tamers?’ Scathach asked indifferently. ‘What are tamers?’

‘Tamers of horses,’ Morthen said excitedly. ‘Their weapons are poor. Their stone points are very crude and we can cut their nets easily. They’re big men, but stupid, covered with clay streaks on their bodies. We should subdue them easily.’

‘You’re just a girl,’ Scathach murmured, and Morthen looked shocked. Her brother was less than interested in her information, but Morthen seemed determined to win his favour. ‘All I will do is cut the tethers. First-hog-of-summer and others of the hunters will do the raiding. I’ll bring you back a horse. I’ll name it for you.’

‘Thank you. Be careful.’

Morthen reached out and rested her hand on her brother’s face. ‘I will soon be older,’ she murmured. Tallis grew aware of the girl’s angry gaze towards her, then Morthen had slipped away, leaving a swirl of grey smoke where her body had passed by the hearth.

Tallis left too. She already had her travelling companion, Swimmer of Lakes, and if she thought of the wild horses in the valley at all it was simply to wonder about the legend of the tamers: to subdue the spirit of the wild animal; to be permitted to ride upon its back; yes, magic would have been necessary in early thought, and cult legends certainly would have grown around the hunters who snared the fast, proud creatures.

She returned to the mortuary house. Tig was nowhere to be seen. The fire had been kicked over, though, the ash distributed around the floor. From the earth bank outside she looked north; soon she saw the bulkily-furred figures of Morthen and three of the hunters; they followed the edge of the wood, round to the south, and were soon lost to sight.

But to the north: there was just greyness, a swirling mist; and perhaps the hint of mountains and winter beyond. It was hard to see detail; the canopy of the forest grew black and shapeless, only the shuddering elms reaching gigantically above the sea of foliage. She heard her name again, and again she emerged as if from a dream and found that time had passed. When she looked down the hill she saw Scathach making his way slowly towards her, through the dense thorns. He carried Wynne-Jones on his back; the old man beat at the thorns with his stick, one arm held tightly around his son’s neck. They came into the enclosure. Wynne-Jones rammed his stick into the ground then eased himself down from his mount. He slung his cloak of feathers over the staff and Scathach helped him to sit down in the slight shelter that
this garment offered. He was facing the rajathuks. His good eye glittered as he stared at them. But Tallis, as she came down the bank, could see that he was frightened. His white beard was ragged. A blue line had been daubed across his forehead and round his short white hair.

Scathach had entered the mortuary house. He came out again. ‘No sign of Tig.’

‘Keep watch for him,’ Wynne-Jones said sharply, anxiously. ‘He can’t be far away …’ Then he turned to smile grimly at Tallis, adding quietly but audibly, ‘And I don’t want that little killer anywhere in slingshot range. He’s too accurate.’

Man and woman exchanged long, searching stares. ‘Tallis … you are Tallis …’

‘Yes.’

‘You spoke to me in my sleep. You told me tales and adventures. You asked me questions.’

‘Yes. Can you remember that?’

‘As if in a dream,’ he replied, then beckoned her over. She went to him, crouching down on the cold earth. When he took her hands she felt the tension in him; he was shaking. The shadow of Tig masked him more than the ferocious wound that had blinded his left eye and decorated his cheeks with scars. Wynne-Jones ignored her worried look and continued to touch her, cradling her face in his hands and touching her lips with his fingers.

‘How old were you when the wood took you?’

‘Thirteen,’ Tallis said. ‘But the wood didn’t take me. I went in with Scathach. I didn’t intend to stay very long.’

The old man found that amusing, but he said, ‘Can you remember much about England? About your life? About the world?’

She said that she could. ‘I’ll tell you what I know, though I was a bit of a reclusive child …’

‘Later,’ he said. ‘I’ll hear about it later. First there is
something I must show you, something to encourage you. Then I need to think about all the strangeness that happened to you as a child; my firstborn son has already told me something of your life, and of the questions you have for me.’

His words made Tallis look sadly towards the mortuary house, a last shiver of loss making her huddle into her furs.

‘Are you all right?’ Wyn asked, his voice concerned and kindly.

‘A few hours ago I burned the remains of my own first born,’ Tallis said.

‘Ah …’

After a while Wyn asked, ‘How long did the child live?’

‘A season or two. A few months.’ Tallis smiled. ‘I still try to remember the old way of measuring time.’

‘How many children … how many altogether?’

‘Three. The others were never properly born.’

‘Were they my son’s?’ Wynne-Jones asked.

‘Yes,’ Tallis said quickly, but she couldn’t help dropping her gaze as she told the partial lie, and when she looked back Wynne-Jones was not smiling.

Suddenly he reached out and tugged a small, black feather from the fringe of his cloak. The cold wind blew his cropped white hair and made him shiver violently, but he resisted Tallis’s attempt to tug the cloak around his shoulders, instead pushing the feather into her hand.

‘Rites and rituals in late Neolithic Europe,’ he said with a wry grin. ‘A black feather to show my sorrow. Tomorrow you should bring it to the shaman’s lodge and we’ll burn it with bird fat, honey and a strip of the dried skin of a wolf. In a hollowed stone, of course, and you must scratch your body-mark upon the stone so that I can decorate it later.’ He was almost laughing, his eye narrowing with humour, the look in it one of knowingness, a
shared joke between people from an advanced culture. ‘It will help the spirit of the boy to travel on. Or so they believe.’

Tallis shrugged. ‘Perhaps it will, though. Things do seem to work in this world. Magic things. Psychic things.’

‘That’s very true. And it still frightens me. It frightens me how a child can be made of flesh and blood but decay to wood. What biological process is at work? Scathach and Morthen are the only two children of mine who survived out of a great number. Oddly, I realize that that means there is
more
of the wood in them than flesh. My son found it almost impossible to leave the edgewoods and explore the farmland around Ryhope …’

‘I know.’

‘And I’m afraid your own fate was sealed from the moment you entered the forest with him. Once he had been to the forbidden place – for him, England – and once he had succeeded in returning, he would have been taken by a tide, a powerful current drawing him back to the heartwoods. You are only allowed one journey into hell … He could not have returned you to England no matter how hard he had tried.’

Tallis nodded grimly. ‘I had expected to explore the wood for a month. I have been lost here for eight years.’

‘Be prepared to be lost here for the rest of your life.’

‘I won’t ever accept that,’ Tallis said sharply. ‘I shall get home somehow.’

‘You will never get home. Accept that now.’

‘I will find my brother. I
will
get home. I accept nothing else.’

‘Ah yes …’ Wynne-Jones said, a fleeting smile on his lips. ‘Your brother. Help me up. I want to show you something.’

He was unsteady on his feet, leaning heavily on Tallis.
He used his stick and pointed up at the grim-featured totem-poles.

‘You recognize them of course.’

Tallis stared at the wood, experiencing the feeling of familiarity. She shivered, uncomfortably close to an understanding. ‘Yes and no,’ she said. ‘They remind me of my masks.’