The Broken Kings

by Robert Holdstock

  He seemed calmed by the words, but only briefly. A strange light illuminated his face, reflecting from eyes that were widening with astonishment.

  I have often had cause to doubt my insight, but never more than at that moment, then, when the final stages of the invasion from Ghostland were made manifest to those who had escaped to the wooded eastern hill and safety.

  As Nantosuelta, coursing through her ancient bed, cut the land of the Cornovidi from the mortal world, so the edge of that land became the edge of the Realm of the Shadows of Heroes. The forest loomed large, thickening and strengthening, becoming darker and more entangling. Then light began to shimmer and shine from the glades and narrow gullies that led deeper. Creatures howled and bayed, taunting calls. The evening sky was dark with crows, streaming flocks that split and circled as hawks stooped and hovered, not preying on others of their kind, but watching the frantic, daunted host that was now in retreat. They were the sharp eyes of those who were overwhelming Urtha’s land.

  And still the river rose! It was a living creature, breaking through the wooded slopes, snapping at our heels, driving us farther into the forest on the eastern hill. Eventually it calmed, flowing strongly, silver in the moon, deceptively beautiful.

  Then the sun seemed to rise in the west. The forests were woven with fire. A mournful gale howled at us, carrying the distant sounds of myriad human voices, a tiny clamour of triumph, growing ever louder, under-sung by the thunder of horses and chariots. The fire and the forest were shaped before us; one of the hostels took form there, light spilling from its double doors. The Hostel of the Red Shield Riders. To right and left as our eyes scoured the river, the otherworldly inns were appearing, grotesquely carved with the leering faces of creatures out of Avernus’s scowling underworld dreams. It was as if they had come to watch us.

  I dreaded what would emerge from the gaping doors of the hostel across the river from where we clung to the hill, stunned by transformation. Urtha was murmuring words that at first I found hard to discern, but then heard more clearly than I wished:

  “Munda … Munda … she’s gone. Great God, don’t take her. Not Munda. Not my little world…”

  Bollullos was bullish, and had gathered ten of the uthiin and several of the Coritoni. They crowded towards the king, swords unsheathed but held with tangs pointed towards the earth.

  “We have ropes, Urtha. We can haul ourselves across this muddy brook—” He waved his blade cockily at the wide river. “—and take that place, take it with force. There is no point in just sitting here enjoying the view!”

  “Do you have any idea at all what is happening?” I shouted at the king’s champion, attempting to warn him of the danger.

  “None whatsoever!” was his response. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “That river is the Winding One, as you call it. She has broken through the old dams that were once raised to block her, and she’s claiming back part of the world that belongs to the Shadow Realm. You cannot cross her. Only the Dead can cross her.”

  “Only the Dead?”

  “Only the Dead.”

  “Then I’ll die trying!” Bollullos riposted loudly, dismissing me as the charlatan he no doubt considered me to be.

  Not all men trusted the wisdom of druids. Bollullos was one of those men who trusted only their own common sense and awareness of their physical limitations. And like all such men, he acted on neither.

  “Hide the blade,” Urtha said to him grimly, an instruction to sheath his weapon.

  The champion glared at him. “I’ll follow the king, or stand to protect the king; but the king must act!”

  The words of the angry, battle-hardened uthiin were a stark and pointed reminder of events when Urtha’s children had been far younger, and the fortress of Taurovinda had fallen, albeit for a few seasons only. Bollullos had used those words then, a kick to the flanks to break through Urtha’s mourning for his wife of the time and gather his wits for battle.

  Urtha grabbed a handful of leaf mould from the ground where he stood, clenched it hard as he peered across the river. “The act will happen when this nightmare is finished. I will want you by my side, Bollullos. These dead leaves will scatter over corpses as we take the land back.”

  He might have said more, there might have been further protest, but the edge of the Otherworld now began to blaze with daylight, a false dawn, a western dawn, eerily bright skies over the hills and forests around Taurovinda, though we who watched were still in the night.

  This was impressive enchantment!

  Into the new light, rising above the forested slopes, came the shapes of giants. Their leashed hounds bayed wildly. Each man held five of the bronze beasts. Each man—three times the height of Bollullos—was cast from bronze himself. I counted twenty of these talosoi, these guardians from an older age. They were century-worn and combat-broken. They had seen many fights. They bled green copper from deep wounds in their armoured bodies. Their faces were masked behind helmets that were shaped from images of the spirits of the damned, shedding their nightmares before dying and giving up their horrors to whoever had created these dreadful machines.

  On the ridge of the hill they stood tall, holding back the feral, heat-forged hounds. How they longed to cross Nantosuelta and wreak havoc among us.

  “I know these creatures,” a familiar voice behind me whispered.

  “So do I,” I replied.

  Jason’s breathing was heavy; his breath was foul. I glanced at him and saw a stronger light in the vacancy of his eyes, though he was still dishevelled and waxy-skinned, almost as if dead. His gaze was fixed on the other side of the river.

  “They don’t belong here.”

  “No. They don’t.”

  Urtha glanced at him, then stared at me for a moment, frowning. “You know them from where?”

  “From a land in the southern seas. An island. They walked around the edge of that island, guardians, destroying the ships of invaders, or mercenaries—like Jason here—punishing traitors, carving caves into the walls of deep gorges, a spirit land for fleeing gods. Zeus himself was reborn there, after one of his early deaths. The island was a hiding place for all manner of strange visitors: the mountains are riddled with labyrinths. And the talosoi are not earth-born but man-made. Which is to say: a man made them. An inventor. A Shaper…”

  “Though he himself is not of this world or any world we know,” Jason breathed behind me. “Daidalos. His name was Daidalos. I remember something about him. But Daidalos is long gone. Long dead. What brings his monsters here?”

  “Has the world gone to the moon?” Urtha suddenly hissed. He was angry. His face was flushed. Behind him, Bollullos and two others were watching me with furious gaze. “My son is lost!” the king went on. “My daughter is over there. Over there! My wife is over there! And my closest advisor is talking in a dying druid’s riddles. Inventors? Long dead? Machines? What does it all mean?”

  It was Jason who replied to Urtha’s question. “Vengeance,” he breathed softly. “The consequences of piracy. The consequences of enchantment. A long wait for vengeance.”

  Though his words baffled the king, they sent a shudder of recognition through my own, slowly wakening mind. Echoes of the past began to sound; and yet … not strongly enough that they seemed a part of my own past (much of which was hidden from me). His words reminded me of something I had heard, perhaps, some story told to me, an encounter with legend, rather than with the fact behind the legend.

  I wanted to know more, but Jason was still only half under Psyche’s wakening care. He still roamed the dream.

  “In the pitying name of the Quick Forest Father!” Urtha suddenly cried. He was pointing at the hostel, and the bright maw of its doors, the openings below the reaching limbs of the carved beasts, their rearing forms held apart by the tall masked woman.

  A girl was standing there, a small shape, fair hair streaming, arms at her sides, plain robe billowing in the wind. Her face was twisted into a smile of triumph
. Her eyes glowed with fire and pleasure. Round her neck her fragment of the golden lunula shimmered. It was so bright that I saw a reflection of it in the river itself.

  Slowly she raised her hands, as if to say, You see?

  She called out loudly, “They have taken back what was theirs. Everything is returned to its natural state. My brother has lost the battle for the land. Father! Father! Come back to us. You can cross safely. You have nothing to be afraid of.”

  Bollullos declared, “You see? Come on!”

  Urtha drew his sword—a swift movement with his right hand tugging the blade from the sheath on his right hip—and flung the weapon at the ground in front of the other man, where it stuck, barring the uthiin’s way forward. It would have been unthinkable for the warrior to disobey that order.

  “We have everything to be afraid of,” Urtha insisted. Then he settled to a crouching position and stared forlornly at the smiling girl as she stood on the threshold of the land of the Dead and the Unborn, part of a world that she should not have embraced for many years, and yet in which she now seemed to belong.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Argonauts

  We did a count of those of us who had escaped to the east. More than half of us had run in the wrong direction, and now languished alive in the new land of the Dead. This included many of the youthful kryptoii that Colcu had brought with him and ten of the fifty Coritani horsemen that Vortingoros had allowed Urtha. And of Urtha’s uthiin, only Bollullos, Morvodumnos, and an exile from the North, Caiwain, remained. The other five had run for their land and were now lost to us.

  Argo’s call was a mournful drone in my head, but Urtha insisted that we regroup away from sight of the hostel. The talosoi had withdrawn, though the bronze hounds bayed in the distance. The doors to the hostel were closed, claiming Munda with them. An unnatural peace had encompassed the far side of the river, though still the earth rumbled with war-wagons and the gathering of forces.

  The Coritani had had enough of events, even though they had done nothing. All but a hooded and cloaked horseman withdrew, going home, finding horses where they could, leaving us most of their supplies, riding or running back to their stronghold. Four of the boys went, too. And when they had gone, the hooded man revealed himself.

  He was gaunt and pale, his head shaved, his eyes green and bright. He caught my glance and smiled thinly, nodding slightly, a greeting as pale as his features.

  “You?” said Urtha.

  “The king released me to be of help to you,” said this man.

  “I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “Talienze. But I’m no champion. Not with weapons. Which isn’t to say I can’t add a good throw of the spear or fire an accurate arrow.”

  “You’re the druid,” Urtha muttered.

  “Speaker for the Past,” corrected Talienze. “We make the distinction.”

  “Then I’m glad to have you. My own Speakers are on the other side of the river. Including the best, Speaker for Kings.”

  “Cathabach. Yes. I know him. When we were training, after I’d been brought here, we talked in the groves.”

  “Which groves?” Urtha asked.

  “The evergroves of your territory. The whispergroves of the Coritani. Other groves in other places. We were allowed there. We met frequently. I was younger. He was intrigued by my skills, but only because of their difference.”

  “I hope you’ll be able to meet him again,” Urtha said pointedly, then turned to me. “I’m at a loss, Merlin. What do we do? I’ll listen to all advice, including the brash bull’s.”

  I supposed by that he meant Bollullos. Urtha was drawn and tired. He seemed more of an old man than the fighting king I knew him to be. Talienze watched me carefully. The man had a similar gift of enchantment as Niiv. He could protect himself, frustrate the “easy look”; he had a little more control over nature than Cathabach, but this was not the time to probe too deeply.

  Jason’s living ghost stood nearby, waiting for full resurrection. The boys chattered and shouted, nervous and ignorant, lost without Colcu, uncertain of their fate, yet not prepared to abandon the adventure on which they had embarked. Colcu was alive; this was a fact I knew. But they would not have believed me, not words alone. They needed to see their friend. And soon they would.

  Everything had to do with Argo. This thought had grown and matured in me, had nagged and nipped at me, had prompted memory in me, had engaged me with recollections of our first years together. My simple ship was now telling me, as Argo no doubt intended, that she needed my help. I had been her first captain. She had controlled her world as she had grown. Her eyes had seen the worlds of Ocean and the rising springs of rivers. The eyes on her deck—the men, rough-cut and rowing for their lives—had experienced wonders. But now the ship needed me, though the nature of that need was elusive.

  “What do we do?” Urtha said again. He had probably asked the question several times as I had crouched there, staring wistfully into the past.

  “Find the ship. Board the ship. Repair the ship. Sail the ship. Talk to the ship.”

  “Argo?”

  “Well, yes. Unless you know another ship?”

  Urtha looked at me despairingly. “She can’t have survived that flood.”

  “She did. And so did Kymon. And his friend. She has been swept away, but not out of reach. Don’t you agree?” I addressed this last remark to the gaunt enchanter.

  Talienze cocked his head and shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

  I couldn’t work him out. He didn’t belong. But the very fact that he was here, among us, among the survivors of the flood, that very fact suggested to me—I was confused, I’ll admit it, but grasping at straws myself—it suggested that he should come along. I thought this because it seemed to me that he knew more than he was letting on.

  Argo herself might answer my doubts.

  * * *

  Our sorry little band now headed north, keeping out of sight of Nantosuelta, following the ridges, moving to where the river had a more friendly prospect, flowing into the sea that separated Alba from the broader lands beyond. I led the way. We had five horses and used them to carry what weaponry and supplies had been dragged from the camp before the Winding One had rushed in to claim back her ancient path.

  We numbered fourteen, and five of these were boys. And of the other nine, three were walking as if in a dream, lagging behind, but not unwelcomingly so. I visited each of them—Jason, Tairon, Rubobostes—and whispered gentle words. They were sleepers, walking, and soon their eyes would open.

  Argo called to me and we found her soon enough, moored in a shallow creek, disguised with rushes and willow fronds. Colcu stood at her stern, his arm resting lightly on the figure of Mielikki, perhaps unaware as yet of the angry nature of the Northlands Lady. Kymon was on the bank, kneeling before a small crude wooden figure, a roughly hewn depiction of a girl—his sister, I intuited—which was encircled by glowing ashes. Several shards of broken iron had been hammered into the effigy’s breast.

  As our group of men and boys emerged through the trees, he stood up and shouted a greeting to his father. He looked a little guilty for a moment, glancing at the figurine, but then found a new resolve.

  “She won’t take the land!” he declared.

  Urtha walked down to the shrine and kicked out the fire, then flung the statuette into the water. “You little fool. Don’t tear the family open before we’ve had a chance to weave it back together.”

  “She won’t take the fort,” Kymon whispered, his voice, his manner almost feral. He was challenging the older man, and the two exchanged a dangerous look.

  “No she won’t,” Urtha said. “The question is: Does she really want to?”

  “She’s on the other side of the river.”

  “So is my wife! So are the Speakers! So is my closest friend! So are a legion of Dead and Unborn. And shapers we can’t know about. Don’t let your anger rule your wits, you little fool.”

  “Don’t let a daughter st
eal yours!” Kymon responded furiously. Urtha struck him. The boy accepted and considered the blow, but his gaze never left the older man’s.

  “Someone is speaking through you,” Urtha murmured, and his son laughed.

  “Yes!” he challenged again. “I hear the voice of my grandfather. I hear the voice of his father before him! The voice of his father. As far back as the voice of Durandond himself! Don’t you?”

  Urtha could not resist the laugh of appreciation. “If that’s so, then it’s admirable. I’m glad to find you alive. We could do with Durandond’s advice.”

  Kymon touched the cheek where his father’s hand had struck him. His gaze was hard, probing. “I’m glad to find myself alive as well. But then, I have a lot to live for. I have the ship to thank for it.”

  Then he looked at me with a frown. “When I crawled onto her deck, I felt safe. But the ship feels angry. I know Argo has feelings, like a man or woman has feelings. But I was surprised by the fury. I just thought you should know.”

  I acknowledged the words.

  Angry? She had been in despair before. Had something changed?

  I had noticed also that Colcu and Talienze were in quiet discussion, the Speaker holding on to the youth’s hand as Colcu leaned down to hear the man’s words. They exchanged finger signals and chin touches, and drew apart.

  A warning was shouted—by Bollullos, I believe. There was danger approaching from the direction of Taurovinda. Indeed, we could hear the controlled growling of the Shaper’s hounds. Somewhere beyond the ridge, the new guardians of the edge of the Otherworld were creeping towards us.

  Argo whispered to me to get everyone aboard. She fought at her moorings, twisting in the creek, a vessel alive with impatience. Colcu was thrown off balance, complaining loudly, but when I informed Urtha he issued orders at once. Men and boys scurried to the muddy shore, pushing through the reed beds, throwing their belongings over the deck rail and hauling themselves into Argo’s clutches. Bollullos tethered the horses to the stern. They would have to swim behind us until we could find a place to let them step into the hull. Urtha and I untied the mooring ropes and were the last to scramble into the small ship. It seemed half the mud of this quiet backwater came with us.