The Iron Grail

by Robert Holdstock

  Here we go, I thought to myself. From sublime truth to ridiculous fantasy.

  ‘We went into a second day,’ Urtha continued. ‘This time we used heavy-bladed swords with ivory hilts and small, light shields of ash covered with goatskin and decorated with silver herons. I was like a salmon, leaping from the water, leaping over his head, striking down at him while he prodded at me like a child poking at apples on a high tree. I made the twenty leaps of Gryffe! One breath and twenty jumps over that screaming man’s armoured head, and with each leap I shaved his beard. You would have been proud of me!

  ‘Nevertheless, the dog was a difficult foe; he was always a strong man. We went into the third day. The choice of weapons was his. Do you know what he chose?’

  ‘The two spears that fly back to your hands!’ Kymon shouted, forgetting, in his excitement, what I had already told him. ‘And the singing shields with the sharp scalloped edges that can be thrown like discs.’

  Urtha shook his head, his face registering an echo of the astonishment he had felt at the time.

  ‘He chose “that which the river can give us”. No weapons at all, but rocks, water and the strength of our arms!’

  Kymon remembered, now, and clapped his hands together as he listened.

  ‘A small man’s weight in muscle and bone had been cut from each of us,’ Urtha said grimly. ‘And so we were not at our best. But we wrestled like the famous champion Ferdia at the Ford of the Cheating Blow. I performed the Feat of the Seven Falls, tossing that bastard over my head seven times in the instant it takes an owl to swoop and take a mouse.’

  Kymon turned quickly to look at me, his eyes filled with passion and excitement. ‘You didn’t tell me this part, Merlin!’

  I raised my palms apologetically. ‘Must have slipped my mind.’

  Urtha lifted his arms for dramatic effect. The roaring fire cast light and shadows on his face. His own eyes glowed. Even Munda was leaning forward expectantly.

  ‘But do you know what was happening further up the river? A band of knights, riding with Brennos, encountered an army of Makedonians, fearsome fighters, heavily armoured, their ears cut off so that they couldn’t hear the screams of their friends as they died, their eyes blinkered like a temperamental pony’s so that they could see no more than the man ahead of them in battle, their neck muscles twisted, tied and knotted so that they would be unable to turn and run. There was a great slaughter. The dead came down the river, still clutching their spears and slashing swords; shields floated past with the severed hands still attached. Heads with their teeth chattering and their eyes rolling, begging for help.

  ‘My back was to this sudden wealth of armoury. Cunomaglos—may his eyes never fail, that the crow may constantly feed on them!—that bastard dog snatched a spear and did this to me!’

  He parted his shirt and showed the scar of the terrible wound. ‘He pushed the blade through my father’s treasured breastplate…’

  Now he pulled a golden lunula from his small sack; the gold halfmoon was pierced in its centre. ‘A hundred generations have passed this treasure from father to son. It saved my life. When I finally ride away, it will be through this small gate to Avawn, in the realm of the Shadow Heroes.’

  He poked his finger through the gash, then continued.

  ‘I struck back at the dog. Was it friendly spear or enemy spear I used? I have no idea. The blade sank into his neck. Cunomaglos sank into the water. Maglerd jumped upon the body and held it down until it flowed out to the sea. Then that fine hound dragged the whole corpse back from the ocean and nestled it in the rocks, licking the weed and brine from its face to clean it up. I was too weak to do anything myself, but friend Manandoun did the worthy deed, and has allowed me to bring you this special gift…’

  He reached again to the leather sack and pulled out a small skin bag. Kymon clapped his hands in anticipation. Munda covered her mouth with her hands. Manandoun was grinning with amusement as he watched his friend’s son.

  ‘This is for you,’ Urtha said. ‘My thanks for what you tried to do, out on the Plain of the Battle Crow.’

  The smell of decay and sweet oil wafted through the air. Urtha was holding the grisly head of Cunomaglos, its hair and beard lank with the drenching fluids. The eyes half stared at the boy. The mouth gaped and dribbled as if in despair.

  Kymon said anxiously, ‘You honoured him?’

  Heads preserved in this way were generally to be respected.

  ‘I didn’t honour him,’ Urtha said grimly. ‘I collected him. I’ve denied him the road. This bastard will live in darkness for all eternity. Find a stone-hole and wedge him in, face down. Seal the hole with clay and mud. I want to know he’ll be screaming in a thousand times a thousand years, as you and I hunt the forests of the Beautiful Island.’

  He returned the trophy to its bag, tied it and tossed it to the waiting boy, who caught it, shook it angrily, then punched it fiercely.

  ‘I like this gift!’ he proclaimed to the rest of us. ‘And I know just where to bury it.’

  Urtha then looked at Munda. He reached into his bag for the final item, producing a small straw doll, clothed in red dress and with a small patterned shawl, pinned at the shoulder with a tiny, gleaming silver brooch. ‘I found this in a deserted town, in the foothills of snow-capped mountains. I thought of you when I saw it, but I see now that you’re older than the games it can play.’

  ‘I’d like the doll,’ Munda said. ‘I have several of them already.’ Her father gave it to her. But she was clearly disappointed and Urtha noticed the fact. He hesitated only a moment before picking up the pierced, golden lunula and placing it on the ground before him. ‘I’m going to give you each a better gift. This was my father’s as you know; there was a time when a hundred names could have been attached to it. The men who remembered those names are dead, now.’

  The druid, Speaker for Kings, coughed pointedly at that, but Urtha ignored him.

  ‘It saved me from being separated from the two of you. Now I’ll make it hold you together…’

  And before anyone could say a word he had drawn his polished, wide-bladed sword from its chevron-patterned sheath where it lay on the floor beside him, and hacked the lunula in two with a single blow, splitting it through the hole that had been made by Cunomaglos’s spear.

  ‘There! Half each. Take whichever half you want.’

  ‘The left side,’ Munda said quickly. ‘The dark of the moon side.’

  Kymon picked up the left side of the precious object and passed it to the girl.

  ‘I like this gift better than the first,’ he said. ‘I’ll pin my half on to my shield. Its brightness will confuse my enemy. What about you, sister?’

  ‘I’ll dream about it before I do anything with it,’ the girl said with quiet confidence.

  Urtha watched them with pride. He said one thing more, before moving on to other matters. ‘After I’m gone, remember: the two halves belong together. They may be separated now, but no matter what happens, they must be joined together before you place my cold flesh in the final hill.’

  ‘I will build that tomb right here, where we sit!’ Kymon announced, to his father’s amusement. ‘But not for years yet, I hope.’

  ‘I hope so too.’

  * * *

  The celebration and reunion lasted late into the night, more sober than might have been expected, because of the lack of either wine or the sweetened, strong drink that kings and their retinues favoured, but no less riotous for all that. Around the bright fire, among the tombs of their ancestors, the misery and mystery of the second wasteland was briefly put aside.

  Tomorrow, preparations would be made to mark the funeral of Urtha’s queen, Aylamunda. With her body having been dragged away during the sacking of Taurovinda, carrion-lost and rotten in the forest, there would be long and detailed discussion concerning the manner in which she might be suitably honoured.

  The sound of a girl’s singing drew me from shallow sleep the following dawn. It was Munda, of cours
e. She had not been to sleep at all. She had spent the night sitting in the tight curve of the river, holding the fragment of her father’s lunula, catching moon and starlight and whispering to herself. Now she was singing about swans.

  A light mist hung in the trees and over the river, which flowed almost silently past. Munda looked up at my approach, though she kept singing in that thin, reedy voice. As I stooped to splash water in my face, she stopped the song, watching me.

  ‘The swans are coming. Can you hear them, Merlin? They’re coming along the river from the sea. Can you hear them?’

  ‘Not yet. Can you?’

  ‘A strange wing beat,’ she said, and looked away to the east.

  The birds emerged from the mist, twenty or thirty of them, flying low and silently but for the rhythmic sighing of air, the wings rising and falling as if in a slow dream as they passed up the river and over our heads, the long necks craning down as they peered at us before they disappeared.

  One came back, black feathers cresting the white wings, eyes golden bright; it beat past me just above the water, then rose, picked up speed and flew back towards the east.

  ‘She was watching you,’ Munda said, her voice slightly hoarse, perhaps because she was tired, perhaps because she was surprised. Her innocent face was bright with that sudden understanding as she stared up at me.

  I had been noticed. I had been found.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Morndun

  The return of the king had been celebrated. Now Urtha began the ritual mourning for his lost wife, Aylamunda. He used powdered chalk to whiten his beard, face and arms and began the ritual of the Three Noble Strains: a day to lament her in song; a day to celebrate her memory with song and laughter; and a day to call for a guide from the Otherworld, to find her spirit and take it safely and asleep to the appropriate realm of Shadow Hero Land.

  Ullanna understood very clearly that it would be wrong for her—Urtha’s new love—to remain in this sanctuary of the ancestors at this time, and she took provisions and a strong, grey pony and, accompanied by the Cymbrii in their speedy, flashy chariot, crossed the river to the north, and went to find stray cattle and pigs. Kymon and Munda wore the white of lament with their father, and spent the day among the round stones and cairns of the evergroves, walking the track from the river that wound through the groves three times before passing on, unseen for the moment, across the Plain of MaegCatha to the Bull Gate of Taurovinda.

  They were joined for this tearful time by one of the High Women, Rianata, and the old priest, the Speaker for the Past, in his cloak of white bull’s hide and his collar of blue and white feathers.

  Urtha asked if I would like to join them, but the skin-and-feather man looked disapproving. I seemed to have known his type all my life. A man of prodigious memory, deep insight and complex thinking, and a vigorous defender of tradition, he would have a small ability to see through the veil of Time, but darkly. Even Niiv would have been more perspicacious. These rough priests had been born with little, and achieved their dream-sight by dedication and training rather than innate ability.

  Still, in this rough land their crude methods would probably be sufficient to arouse the sleeping spirits, and make them ready to accept another among them. I decided to keep my distance, though Urtha urged me not to stray too far.

  Aylamunda was lost, not just her body—dragged away during the sacking of the fort—but her ghost. She was wandering. And such wandering, to the Celts, was a terrible thing. She would have to be called back, and deciding the means to do this would involve a great deal of discussion.

  That discussion dominated the second day, though not before broken-breasted Ambaros had stood, holding strongly on to a spear, and delivered a fond testimonial to his daughter. His legs would barely support him; his face was drawn and ashen, the flesh shrinking on his skull. I watched him with sympathy. I realised, now, that he was keeping himself alive for the moment of his daughter’s funeral. No event that might come later mattered so much as the ending of her wandering.

  Cathabach, the once-priest, found me later by the river’s edge. Perhaps he had come at Urtha’s behest, perhaps on his own initiative, I don’t know. His hair was tied in an elaborate topknot and he had marked his face and arms with protective blue symbols.

  ‘Could you fly and find her?’ he asked me bluntly. ‘It’s a big request; it may be beyond your ability. This is the sort of death that we find very difficult to honour properly. Aylamunda may be watching us from that glade over there, or she may be halfway round the world below, confused and frightened. Bringing her home will not be easy. Not for this small tribe.’

  He looked at me carefully. He had nothing to hide and he knew it.

  ‘Tomorrow, we must call for her guide. Knowing where in the darkness she is wandering would help greatly.’

  ‘What a wilderness this is,’ I commented, and the warrior laughed, understanding exactly what I meant: that everyone was lost!

  ‘My own feeling,’ he said after a moment, ‘is that she is following Tauraun, the white bull with the red ears and the eyes of Taranis the Thunderer marked in brown on its flanks. The Donn. The Roaring Bull, whose stamping of the earth threw up the great fortress itself. But that’s just a feeling. I’m still in taboo when it comes to knowing.’

  Now I understood the sound of bull-roaring I had heard when I had first returned to the deserted stronghold. The ancient spirit of the hill was awakening in response to the changes in its occupation. There was a great deal of Time locked away below the orchard groves and ramshackle houses inside the ruined enclosure.

  I told Cathabach that it would be pointless flying as a hawk, running as a hound, or swimming as the salmon in search of Aylamunda. I would have to travel in the ghostly form of Morndun. The action was difficult to do and costly to an enchanter’s health. This enchanter, at least. I had used the ghost in Greek Land, not long ago, and the deep scars of that journey still ached.

  Cathabach said he understood. ‘Ten masks with ten charms,’ he said, referring to my talents in enchantment. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yes. I make no secret of it.’

  ‘Ghosts and creatures, and the moon, and Sorrow, and Memory, and there is one for the child in the land, and one to see the shadows of forgotten forests. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes. All of them.’

  ‘Memory would interest me; and to see forgotten forests, that too. We must talk about this another time.’ He tugged his rough beard as he looked at me, curious about the masks, curious about my origins. ‘Are there no other masks through which you might see the dead queen?’

  Moondream, I thought to myself. Perhaps Moondream, the facility to see the woman in the land. But I had never used it to look for a ghost, merely to summon and invoke the feminine presence in the earth.

  ‘It will have to be Morndun,’ I told Cathabach. ‘I’m willing to try. But I’ll have to wait until night. And I’ll need help.’

  ‘To make the mask?’

  ‘The mask is in the mind. It’s a long time since I carved tree bark for my living. I need someone to watch me.’

  He touched a finger to his brow, a gesture of thanks. ‘If you need company, I’ll be glad to join you. Within a year I’ll cast off the geis and start training in dreamwalking again.’

  I told him that I welcomed his offer. I added that he would learn nothing from what might occur, since he would see nothing but my motionless body. But there was a certain comfort in knowing that my undefended carcass, its mind absent, would be under the constant surveillance of a friend.

  * * *

  We were hailed by the watch at the gate. It was late afternoon and the light was going, the sky a rolling swirl of storm clouds, the wind becoming fierce. Urtha remained inside, but Manandoun and several others picked up their spears and ran quickly to the palisade.

  The grass of the plain rippled in the wind. The high ramparts of the fortress were dark, the streaming banners of the invader like threshing snakes on their po
les, brightly coloured, designed like hideous grinning animals. Two men walked towards us, one of them bent under the weight of a pack, the other striding ahead, tall staff in hand. I could see the flash of his eyes. Both strangers seemed grey: grizzle-bearded, grey-haired, grey-cloaked.

  Then I recognised them as the Wolf-heads who had earlier passed through the valley of the exiles.

  Twenty paces from the gate they dropped to their haunches, watching us nervously, and asked for food and shelter. Manandoun shrugged, allowed them to enter. They came into the camp, looking around, and made for the nearest fire.

  When the moon was high, adding an edge of silver to the clouds above us, I walked downriver with Cathabach, to the end of the evergroves, and took a small boat across the water. On the other side of Nantosuelta, beyond the landing, was a broad area of silent marsh, crowded with thickets of willow, alder and hornbeam, and mossy banks enclosing reed-fringed pools, some of them deep, some shallow, all dangerous.

  This was the Pressing Down place, the place of sacred execution, and Cathabach was reluctant to enter it, though he had done so once in his life, to participate in the ceremonial despatch of a young prince, an abandoned hostage from the Videlici who gave his life in exchange for the fertile marriage of a noble couple within Urtha’s clan.

  A raised walkway led out into the thickets, above the saturated and reedy earth. There were platforms hidden in the gloom, each with its votive idol, each above a wet pool, where the final rites had been practised before the gruesome slaughter of the chosen victim. The marshes were still screaming with those who had been staked out, face down, pinned into the mud and slowly drowned, some for the return of the sun, some to pacify the howling spirits of encroaching winter; some because they had broken one of their geisa, their birth taboos.

  ‘Why here?’ Cathabach whispered uncomfortably, rubbing his fingers over one of the images on his right forearm.