The Broken Kings

by Robert Holdstock

  Colcu was a powerful, subduing presence. Though Kymon had not been in fear of this older boy in the combat ring, he was anxious now. There was a sudden deadness in Colcu, the insensate staring of a beast. Kymon chose to respond as he imagined his father would respond to such a challenge. “Friends now,” he said in an even tone. “That is certainly the case. In the future? I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “That is an acceptable answer,” Colcu said quietly. And in the formal way.

  Chapter Eleven

  Oestranna’s Child

  At the same time that Kymon was encountering the man-boar, his sister, Munda, was undergoing a transformation of her own.

  Her own new blood on her hands, a strange fury of excitement glowing from her, she escaped from the women’s lodge and ran to the high wall of the fortress, climbed the ladder, and stood there, staring out towards the west. She was wearing only the woman’s robe that had been given to her—her first, not to be her last. The two women who had been guarding her ran behind, but were too slow to catch the fleet-footed child. Though they summoned her back, Munda ignored them. She was in a state of despair, it seemed.

  The moon was low, a three-quarter moon. The west was dark, Ghostland seemingly asleep, though everyone in Taurovinda knew better.

  The two guardians were intercepted by the High Woman, Rianata, also known as the Thoughtful Woman. “Leave her alone.”

  “She is in our charge.”

  “Leave her alone,” Rianata insisted. “She has the light of foresight. It will either stay with her or slip away. This is either a dying or a growing time for the king’s daughter.”

  Munda screamed and wailed from the wall:

  “I see it dark,

  “I see it drowning.

  “I see it moonless and with winter eyes.

  “I see the night-surge of the dead.

  “My brother opposes this gathering of old land, old life.”

  Then, with an almost childish tone of voice, she called, “But I can still see! I can still see!”

  She had spread her arms wide, as if welcoming everything she could envision in the darkness.

  She cried out then; with pain, with fear. After a time she came down from the ramparts and huddled into Rianata’s maternal embrace.

  “My brother will destroy us,” she whispered. “He will act to stop them coming. I must stop him acting. Somehow I must stop him.”

  She saw me, then, standing in the shadows, and brightened up. She ran to me and hugged me around the waist. Almost at once she realised the state she was in and stepped back sheepishly, holding her bloody hands out as if they were dead rats.

  “I’m Oestranna’s child, now. I’ll be like this for a long time.”

  “Yes. You will.”

  “Life will form in me. Raw, rough life.”

  “It will.”

  “But I can still see, Merlin,” she whispered delightedly. “Most of the women thought the sight would have gone. The farsight. The light itself. Even Rianata. Will I have it forever, I wonder?”

  “Come with me,” I suggested. “To the well. You can clean your hands there and I’ll show you something.”

  The three women who guarded the well looked up as we approached. Their initial outrage at the uninvited intrusion subsided as they saw my companion. They each sat by a torch, which illuminated both their pale faces and the deeper gleam of the water. Niiv was not with them—up to her own form of mischief, no doubt.

  When Munda was clean, which is to say, as clean as decorum and company would allow, I made her look down at the shimmering surface. “What can you see there? In the deep.”

  She peered hard, but shook her head. “Nothing. What is there to be seen?” Then she added, glancing up at me, “What can you see?”

  “An old friend,” I told her. “Quite a few things, in fact, not just the old friend. There’s a world down there, an amazing place, spreading out through the streams below the land, all leading to and from the Winding One. Your dear Nantosuelta.”

  Again, Munda stared hard, leaning out so far across the stone wall around the well that there was a murmur of warning from one of the three.

  “Nothing,” the girl repeated in frustration. “What point are you making, beyond that you’ve got the eyes of both a hawk and a fish?” The three women laughed at that.

  “When she first looked down, Niiv, who has a great many strengths in charm and enchantment, could see a great deal, too. Not so much as me, but a great deal. Now she can’t, not unless she expends a great deal of her energy.”

  “You’re saying it will fade, then. The sight will fade.”

  “I’m saying that it might. It might not. I’m saying that it is a talent to be used wisely, a gift and a commodity not to be squandered. Act as if it might cease at any moment! In the time that I’ve been in Alba, I’ve learned that it is rare for there to be two women with the imbas forasnai. As has been happening to me for a very long time, the gift wanes with usage.”

  Munda looked at me with mischief in her eyes. “Everybody says you’re very mean with your gifts.”

  “Been saying so for centuries.”

  “You could make my father High King of High Kings if you wanted to.”

  “I couldn’t. That’s the truth. And even if I could, I wouldn’t. And Urtha wouldn’t want it either. Don’t listen to the teasing talk of Urtha’s uthiin. They’re bigger mischief makers than Niiv. Or you, for that matter.”

  Then she asked me quickly, “Who’s the old friend down there?” The question was so sudden, I hadn’t expected it, and I had answered before considering the wisdom of answering. “Argo.”

  “Argo? That beautiful ship?” The thought delighted her. Once more she searched the deep well for a sign of the mast, the deck, the oars, anything, but drew back disappointed. “What exactly can she be doing down there, I wonder?”

  I led the girl away from the careful listening of the three women at the well. Munda went on quietly, “Right down there? Immediately below us?”

  “No. Hiding somewhere along the waterways. She’s angry and upset about something. I think she’s gathering her wits about her—as much as a ship can gather her wits.”

  The girl slapped her hands together three times, thinking hard. “To sail back all this way, just to hide. She has a secret. A bad secret.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “Are you going to tell my father?”

  “I’ll have to, now that I’ve blurted it out in front of those women. But not until I’ve found Argo herself, and asked her some questions.”

  “I’ll keep quiet, too. On my sight!” she added with a mischievous smile.

  “Thank you.”

  * * *

  Transformation was in the air, a potent presence, invisible, intangible but unmistakable. Its source was not confined to the west. The whole of Taurovinda was enveloped by it, and yet all remained normal in the fortress. At dawn, dogs and cockerels made their sounds. The furnaces started to puff and wheeze, the hammering of iron ringing through the hill at first light, unearthly bells, striking in disordered fashion.

  Around the hill, the plain shifted and heaved, stretched away from the fort, then narrowed again. Or was that just an illusion of the growing light of dawn? The dark forest to the east seemed closer than was usual, but as the sun brightened and the green began to show, it could be seen to be in its rightful place.

  I had spent the night in the eastern watchtower, brooding over Munda’s words:

  My brother will destroy us.

  What had she meant by that? What had she seen?

  I see it dark, I see it drowning.

  My brother is opposed to this.

  He will act to stop them. I must stop him acting.

  I could not fathom those words, and no insight could allow me to experience what she had experienced. That she argued with her brother was undeniable. That they were moving along different paths was quite obvious. But why destroy?

  When the two o
f them had returned, frantic and bemused, from the far west after their encounter at the Hostel of the Red Shield Riders, it had been Munda who declared that Ghostland was not threatening her father’s country. Kymon had been angry, fearful of the risk. But he had helped to drive them back once, and he would do it again. That much was clear from his posturing. Taurovinda was his and his alone to inherit. He was arrogant, proud, and at great risk to himself, of course, but the attitude was there, if not the strength in terms of numbers of defenders. He had no intention of destroying his stronghold.

  I was distracted by the sound of riders below, and the call to open the eastern gate. Looking down I saw Munda and two spearmen for guards, riding out of the fortress. She must have known I was in the tower since she glanced up and gave me a half smile.

  She, too, was transformed. Her hair was braided in the complex way that I had seen worn by her late mother, Aylamunda, when I had helped bring the shade of that great woman back from the underworld, a long time ago now. And the girl wore her mother’s riding clothes, shortened and tightened to fit the smaller, thinner frame: trousers and split-sided tunic of bright green, richly embroidered at the edges, and a short dark-red cloak, pinned at shoulder and waist. Her guards carried a clutch of short spears, and their oval shields were slung on their backs. They were looking unhappy, exchanging anxious glances as they followed Munda down the road, through the lower gate and out onto the plain. Here, they turned along the hidden track, towards the evergroves.

  What was going on?

  I was tempted to send a hawk to sit on her shoulder and peck at her thoughts, but instead I slipped and slid down the tower’s ladder and made my way through the clusters of houses to the centre of the hill, where the orchards, sanctuaries, and the sacred well were concealed behind their high walls. Just as I started to skirt to the north, so Rianata came running round to the south, saw me, and shouted across the distance.

  “Merlin! The girl has gone moon-sick. She’s endangering her life!”

  Rianata told me that Munda planned to enter the evergroves and bathe in the river. “She said she dreamed the need to do it. A ‘water-whisper’ will tell her how to defend Taurovinda against her brother. What does this mean, Merlin? What has got into her?”

  “Your guess? As good as my guess.”

  Though this was not strictly true. Water whisper?

  Water whisperer, more likely.

  * * *

  Cathabach, the Speaker for Kings, was not pleased when I found him and told him that the king’s daughter was again about to break taboo.

  “The little fool!”

  He fetched his cloak and a staff of twisted rowan, made fiercer with thin blades of flint at its striking end. There were many times when Cathabach eschewed metal for the incorruptibility of stone. Our horses were brought to us and we rode in pursuit of the reckless girl, intending to stop her. But we were too late. We met the horsemen who had accompanied her at the edge of the groves. Forbidden to enter, they found themselves unable to stop Munda. She had ridden into the trees and disappeared behind the lines of deeply incised grey stones that rose within the woodland. They were anxious and upset, but Cathabach ignored them.

  “Wait for us,” I said, and they dismounted, watching as I followed the druid.

  To enter the evergroves was to pass from the harsh, wind-bitten reality of the present into a sanctuary that almost shimmered with past and future. For someone like me, attuned to Time should I allow myself to stop and listen, the voices of the long-gone and the long-to-come echoed and wailed, distant cries, faint chatter, the laughter and pain of many ages, blowing through this place of stones and silent thorns and oaks, many of which had been growing here, unchanging, elemental despite their solid appearance, for many millennia.

  I loved the evergroves. I was used to such sanctuaries, touching, as they did, the reaches of both kronos and kthon, Time and the Deep. They were indeed my “touching” places, and one day it would be through just such a wooded circle as this that I would reexplore my origins.

  For the moment, though, I heard briefly a familiar and comforting song from the more ancient of my days and passed on to the river, where, too late, we tried to stop Munda from entering Nantosuelta, the river that flowed from Ghostland, and in whose waters she would be in danger.

  She had cast off her clothes and was swimming like a fish, darting down into the depths, almost singing with delight as she surfaced, eyes closed, head thrown back.

  I called to her to come ashore.

  “Oh, Merlin, Merlin!” she called back. “If you could only hear what I can hear!”

  “Come ashore!”

  She plunged again, kicking deeply, disappearing for a breathtakingly long time. When she reappeared, it was so far upriver, towards Ghostland, that Cathabach and I were astonished. She must have swum like an eel to go such a distance. The flow brought her back to us, a pale form, floating gently in the middle of the stream.

  “Come ashore!” I urged again.

  “There is no threat from them, Merlin. We have been mistaken. She assures me we are mistaken. We have misunderstood everything about the hostels and what is happening there. Something wonderful is about to happen, Merlin. Something bright. The future is so bright.”

  She was certainly being seduced. But by whom?

  Before I could call for a third time, Munda had again plunged down. Cathabach and I watched anxiously upriver, but the girl had swum to the bank behind us, crept to her clothes, and dressed. She was teasing us, laughing as she caught us by surprise, standing, hair dripping with river water, smiling as she squeezed it from her braids, breathing hard.

  “Will you punish me, Cathabach?”

  “This place is forbidden to you, unless access is granted, and only a Speaker can grant it.”

  “I know. I entered the evergroves with you when Taurovinda was in the hands of the Dead.”

  “I remember,” the Speaker for Kings said. “You and your brother rode to the gates and challenged the occupying force. You nearly died for your efforts. You were reckless then; you are reckless now.”

  “Reckless then, reckless now, but successful on both occasions. You are my father’s friend, Cathabach. You must persuade him that we have been wrong about the Dead and the Unborn. They are looking for nothing other than to be our allies in the land, to share the land, not to possess it.”

  I exchanged a glance with Cathabach. The look said it all. Possession? It’s the girl that is possessed.

  A voice had whispered to her, changed her, occupied her reason and twisted her vision. Though the Unborn, those waiting to cross the river into new life, were neither friend nor enemy, nothing that the country of the Cornovidi had experienced in the last many generations suggested anything other than that the Dead were most emphatically at war with their human neighbours.

  Munda smiled thinly as she saw our expressions. “Merlin,” she said quietly. “You and I should talk about this. You know so much. But you don’t know everything.”

  It was a confident, authoritative suggestion, and she turned from us quickly and left the evergroves.

  * * *

  Transformation. In the air.

  It was a cold embrace, a sinister caress. I was not alone in feeling it. The hounds and horses were agitated and unhappy. The children in Taurovinda, who earlier had fought and frolicked in their own simple festival of flowers and masks, were subdued now. They kept to their houses; the younger ones cried frequently. The joy had gone from them, and was replaced by apprehension.

  The otherworldly storm clouds returned; the wind was cool and restless. At dusk, the sun slid into the Realm of the Shadows of Heroes, holding still for a while, a fire without flame, glowing and glowering.

  Munda declined the invitation to wait until her father’s return before facing the Speakers. A Council of Speakers was convened the following day, in the shrine sanctuary of Nodons, inside the central orchard of Taurovinda. It was the first time Munda had stepped inside the high wicker wal
ls around the plantation, and she was apprehensive and alert, but quite determined. She was clad in a simple dress and short plain cloak, a braided belt around her waist, and her precious golden relic—moon sign in sun metal—round her neck.

  The shrine of Nodons was a simple thatched building, stone-walled, with wide windows. There was no altar. What few sacrifices were made here were placed in a covered pit before the niches where the images of the gods were placed, to rot down or to give off the charred odours of their burning.

  Four niches in the wall were aligned next to that of the bearded Nodons himself, who peered out through narrowed, sinister eyes at the assembly in the small space. To his right was the wooden figure of Nantosuelta, her hands clutching the small house with which she was associated, her hair carved to represent the river. She seemed benign. On Nodons’s left was Nantosuelta’s consort Sucellus, a brooding figure, shaped roughly from oak, holding a mallet and a small bowl, the blood bowl from which he could draw life or return it. He was known as the Good Striker. Only Nantosuelta was decked with flowers, small purple columbine around her neck, twisted ivy around her body to symbolise waterweed.

  As I sat in the shadows of the sanctuary, I noticed that the small house she held was very like the hostels that had appeared along the river; it made sense to me: Nantosuelta was part of both worlds, a “watcher” of hearth and home, and gateway to the land of spectres.

  Was it this goddess, this spirit who had been whispering to Munda?

  The girl underwent a brief interrogation by the three Speakers, a protocol called by an old name and which meant “the justice of the law of taboo.” It was a tedious process, reflective of many such inquisitions where those who mediate between the world of flesh and the world beyond use their frail insight, sometimes their sharp and luminous dreaming, to establish a truth. Each Speaker had a small wicker cage before him containing a wren. As the girl spoke, so the men watched the darting, hopping movements of the birds. Munda spoke easily and without fear. It surprised me slightly to learn that she had felt compelled to pass through the evergroves by the presence, in her sleep, of her grandmother, Riamunda, buried within the stones. A silver owl with hazel wings had called to her, the spectre of the woman. Munda had taken the presence of the night bird as a sign that all was well, and that she was safe.