The Broken Kings

by Robert Holdstock

  I could hear, distantly, the raucous laughter of resting men, and the cheerful teasing of youths. If there was a scent of cooking on the air, the wind was denying me that pleasure.

  One of Urtha’s uthiin intercepted me, recognised me, and led me to the camp. Urtha came out to greet me. “Merlin! Casting a moon shadow, I see. I hope that’s a good omen. Come into my fortress!”

  I ducked below the skins of the tent. Several men sat there, some of whom I recognised. The rough ground was strewn with blankets. Urtha passed me a clay flagon of cold wine, his expression curious.

  “From the North? What have you been up to, old friend?”

  “From the North?”

  “Yes. I left you at Taurovinda, but here you are, riding from the North.”

  “Well, I move fast when I move. I’ve been trying to talk to Argo. She’s in the land, and she’s a very disturbed ship.”

  The men in the king’s enclosure looked on, uncomprehending, and Urtha waved me quiet. “Later, then. We’ll talk about this later. In the meantime, I’ve roused this rabble into support … here they are … the champions of my good friend Vortingoros, though the king himself must stay and guard his own land.”

  I was briefly introduced to the top men of the Coritani, and then Urtha told me of his encounter in that kingdom.

  Most important: he had brought nearly a hundred good fighters with him.

  “Men against the Shadows of Heroes?”

  “It has worked before. What else can I fall back on?”

  He whispered the words. I understood why. Everything he did, every act, every deed, every challenge to the Otherworld that bordered his land was made with defiance. Determination and desire could often be stronger than iron and chariot.

  His account of the wooden effigies, their return to life or their forlorn and final walk to the river, was intriguing, however. Once again, small thoughts, fragments and abandoned memories, niggled at the hidden nests of my experience.

  A more intriguing story was to come.

  Hearing that I was in the camp, Kymon left the small shelter that he shared with the seven youths of the Coritani, and came to his father’s tent. In fact, he didn’t come alone. A gangly, pallid young man came with him, a boy whose face showed the scars of anticipated triumph, a gaze that was hungry, a mouth that disdained. But when he saw me, he frowned, and settled quietly at the edge of the covered ground, sitting cross-legged and patient.

  Kymon greeted me, tilting his head to show the raw scar on his chin.

  “I have my chin-cut!” he said. “That boy there gave it to me. I gave it in return. His name is Colcu, and I have come to an arrangement with him concerning leadership and honour.”

  “Good for you. I haven’t understood a word you’ve just said.”

  Kymon was briefly aware of his father’s quiet laugh, but he was too full of himself to care. He gave me a detailed account of his combat with Colcu, and the winning of the chin-cut. I noticed Colcu shake his head on two occasions, and clench his fist several times. Kymon’s account was not so true as the full moon, then. But Colcu, for whatever reason, was allowing the story to be told at his own expense.

  He and Kymon had come to a “champions’” agreement, that for two seasons Colcu would be master of the group of fifteen youths, five of them Cornovidi, ten of them Coritani. And then for two seasons, Kymon would command. After that they would contest the leadership. This agreement was as uneasy as a heifer faced with the bull for the first time, but it was clearly working, the terms agreed, the terms accepted, terms to be borne, even with discomfort.

  I was introduced to Colcu, then, and I found that I liked him. I had a strong feeling that he and Kymon, opposites in many ways, would one day become strong in alliance, strong in friendship. These meagre years, their shallow age, were a challenge to their experience, and they bristled with each other. And yet everything was in place for a future of unity and power.

  Only the Shadow Realm stood between them now, a fact that they acknowledged without fully understanding it. Kymon had been torn from his heartland in his own childhood, and remembered the pain of the tribulation. Colcu, unburdened with such memory, nevertheless seemed inclined to accept his companion’s experience as having been real, and was committed.

  Colcu and Kymon, and the other youths, had formed themselves into a band similar in concept to Urtha’s uthiin. They called themselves kryptoii.

  “Is that a Greekland name?”

  Kymon frowned, but Colcu smiled. “Older than Greek Land,” he said. “I’ve heard of it, and dreamed of it; dreams flow freely in this Island, did you know that?”

  “No.”

  The freckled youth smiled again and nodded in a conspiratorial way. “But they do. This is an island of dreams. They fly from all over, but where can they fly farther? There is nothing but the setting sun beyond Ghostland. I’ve heard of cliffs and a raging sea, and islands that appear and disappear. But so what? This is the edge of the world, and dreams can fly no farther than birds. We are living in a dreaming pool, and words and lives come here and stop here, and there are some of us who can catch them, and I caught a dream, a boy’s dream, from an older land than Greek Land, and he said he was kryptoii.”

  Colcu was speaking as if in a dream, or as if someone were speaking through him.

  “And what did he mean by kryptoii?”

  “Good question. I think he meant: concealer. I think he meant: I know yet I don’t reveal. I think he meant: I contain a secret.

  “In the dream,” he went on, “I saw a nut, still intact, but there was no food inside the nut, just something waiting to be known. The wood of the nut must age and grow brittle, and then the secret will emerge. Now there,” he said with a confident grin, “is everything that is a boy for you!”

  “Nuts waiting to age?”

  “Ready to reveal all when they mature.”

  “Then why not call yourself ‘the nuts’?”

  The men laughed, but the boy remained focused and intense. “Odd words, odd language, old languages … You should know about this, from what Kymon tells me. They ring better in the telling. In the poet’s telling. Old words. Older meanings.”

  “Kryptoii? Yes. It rings well.”

  Kymon said, “We are bound, now. Bound by an unknown truth, and an unknown outcome.” He looked towards his father. Urtha was watching his son with great interest.

  The boy pulled the gold half lunula from inside his shirt.

  “This binds me to you, and to the fortress. Never forget that, Father.”

  “How could I ever forget it? Munda has the other half.”

  “Yes,” Kymon said with a frown. “I hope she values it.”

  Taking a chance, breaking through this moment of revelation and union: between father and son, between brother and foster-brother—that being the relationship between Colcu and Kymon that I believed was occurring—I reached to lift the half moon symbol where it hung from the boy’s neck. Urtha had cut this ancient decorative disc into two unequal halves. I had never really looked at it before. I had seen so many such chest ornaments. But Kymon’s protective gesture towards it, and the sudden glint of firelight on the beaten, battered gold, made me intrigued.

  Here was a test of trust: Would the boy let the enchanter examine his inheritance?

  “I’d like to look more closely,” I said. “Take it off for me.”

  Kymon glanced at his father, then looked down at the frail gold. In a moment, hardly pausing to think, he had unhooked the amulet and passed it to me. I was pleased. The tie of trust still existed.

  Here in my hands, now, was a quarter-moon in gold, a winter symbol, cast in sun metal, beaten out with the patterns of stars, the cluster of seven, the sun in partial eclipse, the moon shown in some phases, the strike of light that was the falling of sky fire. Munda’s half would contain other aspects of the sky, of course. It had not occurred to me before, but this old disc, this heirloom, handed down across the generations, had been fashioned with a sk
ill and message that might have meaning.

  I felt, at that moment in the river course, in the wild night, in that quiet evening before the storm that was just about to break, I felt like an open hearth: the doorway at which all visitors come knocking.

  Everything was gathering, more than just storm. There was a prickle in the air. What was it Colcu had said? Odd words; old language.

  The old and the odd. The secret about to break. A truth about to be revealed. And yet I couldn’t see it.

  The fires burned; wildfowl sizzled. Sour wine slaked tired throats; old jokes still raised a laugh. Old men dreamed of youthful triumphs. Youths dreamed of triumphs yet to come, triumphs that would be remembered with tired wine and sour minds.

  We had gathered. We were caught. The trap was set.

  And even as I began to become concerned, so Kymon began to whisper to me of his strangest encounter, the encounter with the boar man, with Urskumug, with the oldest animal.

  “… I stopped it killing Colcu; I stabbed it. I thought I was a dead man, the beast was so huge. But it stood up, wrenched the spear from its chest, and threw it down. It was like a man who has been surprised and doesn’t know what to do next. It said, ‘That was a good throw.’ Then it leaned down and said, ‘There is something extraordinary in this blighted land. Something at large. Oldest animals waking up. Old ghosts, too. Be careful.’ Then it walked off.”

  “Were you frightened?”

  “For a moment,” Kymon conceded. “But then: no. Not at all. The boar was my friend. It seemed confused by being out that night. As confused as I was at fighting a boar in the shape of a man.”

  “Part of being kryptoii, perhaps.”

  The thought was too large for him. He and his new band of proto-champions had created the word more as a game than with any serious intent. But the name had come from somewhere; the name shaped the boy and his friends, not the other way round, and I wondered if the man-boar was linked to that shaping.

  Kymon shrugged as he answered my question. “Perhaps. Yes. Should I try to understand further? Can you help me? Could you look for me?”

  “Look for you? You mean, look to see what really happened?”

  He nodded. “Well?”

  “If I look to see what truly happened, I would see you, tussling with a creature from the old earth, rolling down a bank, stabbing, thrusting, cowering … and then surviving. And listening to a foul-breathed observation from a creature from your nightmares. Everything, in other words, that you experienced yourself.”

  Kymon watched me closely as he digested this, then asked quietly, “But it said it was in the world without a reason. You could look for the reason.”

  “And get hauled into the underworld by my hair and beard! There are ways of looking in the land that can be of advantage. That’s my skill. To look into the wrong realm can be as dangerous for me as for you or your father. So no: I shan’t enquire too closely as to the reasons for Urskumug rearing his tusked and tousled head.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kymon said with a shrug. “I won the skirmish. And the beast indicated that it respected my actions. I’m not afraid of Urskumug now. I was just asking.…”

  Kymon left me. Which other of the Oldest Animals was rising, I wondered? First the hostels, now these. Who or what was calling them?

  Urtha wanted to talk, matters relating to his wife and daughter, whom he had not seen for some time now. There was discussion of strategy, the deployment of the scant forces of men, chariots and champions when the forces of the Shadows of Heroes crossed Nantosuelta, at the fords, coming against Taurovinda.

  I listened. I was detached. I could feel the jaws of the trap around me, the bite closing. Nothing was right, and Kymon’s strange and affectionate encounter with Urskumug was simply setting the seal on the simplest of facts:

  The Otherworld had tricked us, misdirected our vision, caught us unawares.

  I went outside the cold enclosure and stood, staring at the moon above the bare ridge. A figure suddenly stepped into view there, leading a horse, a man dwarfed by the silver gleam. He called, “Merlin. Get out of the river. Get out now! All of you. The river is in full flood. You have moments only. Run!”

  “Jason?” I called, recognising the haunted voice. The cloaked figure raised an arm to the south, then again that urgent instruction: “You are in its path. Get to high ground!”

  The earth below me shook. I looked south, through the night, and saw the clouds swirling in an unnatural way. The scent of fresh water was suddenly strong. Urtha had heard the shouting, and now I added my own alarm:

  “Get the horses. Leave everything else and ride up through the trees.”

  “What’s happening?”

  As if in answer, the flooding river, still hidden by trees and scant distance, broke against boulders. I saw the spray of the wave as it rose and fell. The roar of the flood suddenly boomed like a groan from the underworld.

  The whole camp was alive now. Horses panicked and scattered. Men and boys fled in all directions, some scampering towards the figure on the ridge, others back towards the land of the Coritani. Jason, I noticed, began to descend to the dry bed.

  There was no time to engage my talents in enchantment. Besides, what might I do? Block the river? Possible, but unlikely. Almost without thinking, however, I had thrown my farsight to the rolling waters and grasped the essential truth: Nantosuelta had once flowed here, and was flowing here again! When this dry, abandoned tributary was flooded anew, and had connected with the main river to the sea, Urtha’s kingdom would be cut off, as it had been isolated once before.

  Cathabach had told me this years before. I had forgotten.

  The Otherworld was not attacking Taurovinda with men; it was changing the shape of the land itself!

  I ran east, scrambling through the rocks, struggling up the wooded slope, aware of Urtha and his son close by, of Kymon calling for Colcu, his vanquisher and now his fellow rider, of horses whinnying and slipping, hauled to safety by grunting men, fighting with harnessing in one hand and holding arms and shields in the other.

  And to the west, a few men running in the wrong direction, crying out in fear, lost and confused.

  The river surged into view then, glowing like a beast, curling up and around the trees and boulders, embracing the old course, consuming it, drowning it, reclaiming it.

  I see it dark.… I see it drowning.…

  I see the night surge of the dead.…

  Munda’s prophetic words called to me as if in a dream. A girl controlled by her small vision had seen an event that had eluded me only because I had failed to think to search for it.

  I heard Kymon shout out in alarm and anguish. The tall boy, the freckled and arrogant youth Colcu, had lost his footing, grabbing at the branch of a tree but losing the grip. A surging wave had struck him and turned his path to mud. He flailed, turned on his back, slid towards the river. A second curving limb of Nantosuelta reached up and wound around him, thrusting him into the foam as the water roared past below us.

  To my horror then, and certainly to his father’s, Kymon deliberately threw himself down the slope after the nephew of Vortingoros. He had wound a length of harness around his waist, for his own use, and I saw him unravel the leather as the flood took him and drove him below the surface.

  “The little fool!” Urtha cried out. One of his uthiin, a burly man called Bollullos, thrust the king back and began the descent in pursuit of the two boys, but I caught Bollullos’s arm and shook my head.

  I had summoned a small piece of charm, swimming fishlike through these enchanted waters, and seen Kymon and Colcu embraced in the moment of drowning: a moment only, because both lads were kicking strongly, grasping the harness. They surfaced, out of sight in the darkness, forced hard against an oak that had been half-wrenched from its bed, but was still clinging fast to the earth.

  They were breathing, alive, and full of the furious will to survive.

  Their chins, recently cut, bled into the water as
the wounds broke.

  “Which way?” I heard Colcu gasp.

  “Back to your own land,” Kymon spluttered. “There’s something wrong in mine.”

  They remained stuck there as the Winding One tried to force their frail carcasses from the failing tree.

  Then oak of a different cut came into sight. She shone with life. She listed, waterlogged and swamped, but afloat still, greater in strength than this raging, carving stream, moving against the flood, passing the boys. Turning in the river, she bore in upon the stranded youths, patterned hull looming above them, crushing against them. Kymon flailed in the water, grasped the saturated rigging that was dangling from the deck. Colcu did the same. As the oak tree released its grip upon the earth and tumbled into the river, so Argo straightened, bearing her burden of young spirits. She moved by her own magic to the eastern bank, coming hard ashore and trembling as a third surge of Nantosuelta struck at her with icy fury, a roaring and foaming attack on the small ship that failed to dislodge Argo from her berth.

  Kymon had never smelled so sweet, I imagined. The oil and lime in his hair was stripped away. Even the dye on his skin, which could last for seasons, was scoured from him.

  I noticed that he glanced at Colcu. And the two boys laughed: in amazement and relief. They had a sense of danger but no thoughts of death. Such luxurious ignorance—two lives already marked by the pain of loss, cut by pride, but not yet shaped by the harsh howl of years.

  The river took them, took the ship, spinning her, sweeping her away. Her soft glow, the watching eyes on her prow—sly and knowing, no longer sad—slid into the distance, tumbling in the rushing water. But she was equal to Ghostland’s unexpected and furious grip and quickly turned her keel to ride the flood.

  I abandoned my presence in the river to find Urtha struck with fear and tears.

  “Argo has them safely!” I reassured him.

  “The ship is lost.”

  “No. Not lost. Never lost.”

  “In those waters? She’ll be swamped.”

  “Not Argo. She has sailed in wilder waters than these.”