The Iron Grail

by Robert Holdstock

  * * *

  I had to wait for her until dusk, but I should have foreseen that. She slid through the water towards me, bathed in moonlight, rocking as she cut effortlessly against the current, the river sparkling silver where it broke against her prow.

  I waded out to her and hauled myself inside, nestling down on the fur rugs, drawing them around my shoulders. I clutched the spear, thinking about Urtha, his simple, noble gestures, wondering if he might indeed have invested the simple weapon with any meaning by tying on the feathers from the otherworldly ravens.

  In this way I entered a dreamless condition, the detached state of thought that a ship like Argo, or this little offspring, will always demand if she is to sail against nature. I was aware of the stars and spent the time making a careful study of how some of them had moved in all the millennia I had studied them. Some moved speedily; some seemed to fade and come strong again, like the glaring moon. Most seemed to move as slowly as a boulder inches down a river, a change of celestial position scarcely visible unless seen at intervals of several hundred years.

  There was wonder and intrigue in that roof of fire, but I doubted that even if I sacrificed my life I could reach as far as to touch one. The moon, perhaps, but the risk was great. Who could guess what elemental forces guarded her face from the probing fingers of the men who recorded her, and acted in conjunction with her moods.

  The boat rocked and was still, tipping slightly towards the land.

  ‘We’re there,’ she whispered. ‘I’m tired. I’ll slip downstream to rest until you call. This is where you met the Mother. The Ford of the Last Farewell. This is where I crossed with your children. But I fear the others have been taken. I sense only desertion and damage.’

  I watched while she slipped away. A thin mist hung over the river. On the far bank, several deer were grazing. A flight of cranes beat their way towards me, passing overhead, flying from the land of the living to the land of the dead as if without concern. I made a mental note of that, then turned to follow them.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Moondream

  The spirit of Argo had seen truly. When I came to the enclosed valley with its high rock walls, its woods and meadows where the children of royalty from Urtha’s world had once been hidden, I found only desertion and the signs of struggle. The place had been abandoned many years ago. Time had worked a different trick on this sad communal home.

  The brittle white bones of a horse, still with shreds of leather on its carcass, suggested that the attack had not been totally one-sided. Ragged strips of clothing, caught on branches and rotting below the overhanging rocks, were a grim suggestion that the conflict had been violent.

  How long after I had taken Kymon and Munda and their friend Atanta to safety, I wondered, had this deed been done? However recently, Time had warped to shift the event backwards in the cycle of the years.

  I was sad but not surprised. A small terrain of woods, meadows and crags, separated from the world of fortresses but not fully enveloped by the Otherworld which loomed large to the west, this hinterland was both a refuge and a dangerously unknown region. In this, it was like hinterlands everywhere around the Path. The children of kings had found safety here for a while, no doubt because of the protective presence of the timeless modronae, who had weaved their simple spell of isolation around their charges for many centuries. That the weave would one day be torn was inevitable. The hinterland was a place of crossings. It was no-man’s land but vulnerable.

  It was also all-time land, as I had discovered previously. Hidden in its forests and winding gorges were connections, through caves, pools or stone sanctuaries, to all the hinterlands of the world; they overlapped. I could as easily enter the misty fringes of Tartarus or Tuonela from the edge of Ghostland as I could come to these woods from those distant borders of distant underworlds. Those regions were timeless too. I had been born in such a place and, in one sense, that birthplace existed everywhere. It certainly had a presence here, somewhere near. I had been close to it before, and I was certain that Medea, too, would have visited that old pool and waterfall, and the bristling woodland that contained it; the place where she and I had grown up in the long, long gone.

  I alerted my senses. A smell, a taste, sometimes a sound, can take you back to childhood in a very powerful way. I moved further away from the river, towards the shimmering mountains in the heart of the realm; sniffing the air for the scent of water.

  After a while I became aware that I was being stalked. The watcher was not behind me but ahead of me, drawing back from me as I approached.

  Emerging from woodland into a glade, a silvered hound loped across my path, turning to raise its hackles and growl in a threatening way before bounding off into the darkness.

  A falcon swooped on me, its wing striking the top of my head.

  Somewhere, a woman cried for her lost love.

  A child giggled, peering from the underbrush, sticking out its tongue, pelting me with acorns.

  Then suddenly the whole woodland seemed to shift and twist around me. I was on a track, caught in shafting sunlight. When I turned, the towering trees turned with me. I turned a full circle, and, like a strange cloak, the forest swirled about me and was still. When I walked, the forest followed.

  It was very quiet, then; my heart raced, my senses quickened. There was no birdsong, no furtive animal movement in the tangle of brush. Just silence. Again I walked forward and again the wood flowed with me. I was half man, half tree, blood and sap.

  And then, ahead of me, a spinney of thorn and hazel gathered itself like a robe around a human figure, and shifted away.

  I gave chase, running as best I could despite the dizzying effect of this distorting forest.

  That it was Medea hiding in the spinney I was certain. We were close to one of the places that echoed our birthland. These manifestations, of hound and falcon, the child, the lamenting woman, were echoes of the training in disguise and insight that had been our feats of learning as we had grown to full childhood, over many hundreds of years. Ten masks for ten powers, known as rajathuks. We were in the guise of Skogen, the shadow of forgotten forests.

  I wondered whether we were being watched, Medea and I, even as we played our game of chase, even as I tried to come close to a woman I had once loved, and then forgotten for a long, long time. Everything about the landscape I could see suggested we were back in the place of our birth, far south of the Ford of the Last Farewell.

  Medea sent a stag to buck against my bark, a giant creature, almost bronze in its strength and sheen, its antlers gouging me as it bucked and kicked and bruised me. Then she despatched hornets to swarm in my branches, agonising, distracting. She was trying to shake me off; but in her own inimitable, teasing way.

  She had been a precocious and irritating companion in my childhood, forever tricking me, forever playing jokes on me. It was part of her charm, in both senses of the word.

  Spine-backed boars, snarling and stinking, a whole family of them rushed into my roots and began to chew and paw the ground. Painful!

  That was when I heard her laughter, saw the flash of human eyes from the hazel foliage, and saw her melt away into the deeper woodland.

  Both fun and fear, then. I turned quickly. The sudden movement sent the swine spinning away, landing heavily on their sides, angry and confused. The runts yelped and scattered.

  I could smell water, now, and hear the susurration of the fall. I came to it all at once, a wide pool backed by a high cliff from which the crystal water tumbled noisily. There was an island in the middle of the pool and the spinney shivered and shook as it stood on that muddy rise of ground, shaking the water from its branches.

  I nestled down on the bank and waited for her to make her move.

  She sent a dove to nestle in my branches. ‘Stay away from me. Why are you following me? This place is all I have, now that Jason has discovered my elder son. Kinos is my life, now, and he lives, hidden, at its heart. He lives in constant fear of the Warped M
an, Dealing Death. I am trying to protect him. It’s a mother’s job. Why, if you loved me, do you try to destroy all that I have left?’

  I was angry that she would think I was trying to hurt her. I was frightened of her, certainly. She had used up her years in the development of skills that would certainly outweigh mine. She could have squashed me on the spot, I imagined.

  But in my mind’s eye I could see her, remember her. I could smell her freshness, her breath; I could remember her laughter, her love. And I remembered the dreadful time, those long years in the past, when she had been sent away from me. Such loneliness I would never know again. I had killed that ability—to feel alone and lost—as one of my first acts of charm.

  Even so, she haunted me again, and my heart was raging with memory and need.

  I summoned a skylark, enticed him into my branches, took over its tiny spirit and sent it back with my reply.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you. I want to find you again. I have a good friend in Urtha, the High King, back there in the fortress. Something in this land is threatening him. You can help me find what it is and stop it in its tracks.’

  I was being deceitful. I already had a good idea what that evil presence was.

  Medea answered with a crow. I’d guessed she would. The bird had killed the lark, carrying the savaged bird back to me and letting it drop.

  ‘Liar! Liar! You mean me harm. You are still indebted to Jason. You will help him in whatever he asks.’

  ‘Jason had a great influence on me,’ I replied through the same sharp-eyed bird. ‘He had a great effect on you as well. Jason is one of those few men who can make even enchanters dance to his tune. But Jason will kill me if he finds me. He hates me, now. I thought you knew that.’

  ‘Why does he hate you? You brought him back to life.’

  ‘I kept the fact of your presence in this new world from him. He’d had no idea you had waited through time to find your sons again. And I made it difficult for him to find Thesokorus, the Bull Leaper. When they met, Thesokorus tried to kill him, near Dodona, left him for dead. It was a great shock to Jason and he has taken the pain of that wound and turned it into hate for me. All he has left, now, is to find Kinos, the Little Dreamer.’

  ‘And so he’s coming here. Because you told him where Kinos was hiding. That’s your way of not hurting me?’

  ‘You told him yourself, Medea. When you came into the oracle at Arkamon, and saw Thesokorus for the first time in seven hundred years. You told your first boy where his brother could be found. “Between sea-swept walls; he rules in the world, but doesn’t know it.” Those were your words. I know, because I was listening to you from the shadows.’

  She was silent for a long time, then the crow flew back.

  ‘And so you told Jason.’

  ‘He was my friend. I helped him as best I could. Now I’m frightened of him. Powerful gods still keep their eyes on him. I don’t think I’m his match.’

  This time there was no reply. Dusk began to close around us. The crescent moon rose above the cliff top and the spill of water that rushed into the pool.

  The sound of the waterfall must have lulled me to sleep. I was tired anyway, from the journey and from the effort of maintaining the illusion of the rajathuk.

  When I woke, suddenly, wet hands on my face, she was next to me. Our little cloaks of forest had merged. To prying eyes we appeared as no more than a patch of tanglewood; but within the bosom of the copse, Medea stood before me, half in, half out of the thick trunk of hazel that commanded the spinney.

  Her eyes were dark and fierce. Fierce Eyes. As I remembered her.

  Her face, once sensuous, was now intriguing; her body, once voluptuous, now lean, still desirable. Hers was a beauty that had not faded with age or time. The tumble of her hair was more conspicuous for its rich copper than its swan.

  She eyed me up and down, as I stood, naked and aroused before her, still so young because I had rationed my charm and enchantment skills, keeping the marrow in my bones soft and succulent. But she could see through the flesh to the forlorn man behind the eyes.

  ‘You’ve missed so much, Merlin. You could have aged gracefully, and become very skilled, old in years and wise.’

  ‘Think how much talent I have left that I can exploit.’

  She laughed at me. ‘Like a tree struck by lightning: a sudden fire, bright as the sun, a glorious fire. And nothing remaining but a charred stump. That will be your fate. For all your plans to live for ever.’

  Is that what she thought motivated me? To live until the stars fell? To live until the moon was finally swallowed by the sun? To live until the earth gave vent to birds large enough to carry men to the vault of the heavens? All of these things would come to pass, but these were not my reasons for staying young, intriguing though it would be to witness such events.

  She suddenly stepped from the tree, a soft-fleshed dryad embracing me as I shivered naked before her. Her hands cupped me and stroked me, her thumb teasing me hard again as she brushed my lips with hers, watching me through half-opened eyes.

  ‘I remember this.’

  ‘I remember it too. Any moment now you’re going to—’

  She performed the deed and I yelped with surprise. Medea laughed, cocked her head, and looked down as she played with her old friend.

  ‘You stink,’ she said bluntly, detumescing words, instantly effective. ‘Let’s swim in the pool. We’re not alone, you know.’

  The whole woodland seemed to rustle with laughter. Yes, I’d thought we were not alone. But that didn’t matter, now. The eyes that watched us were tired with watching and waiting for our return from the Path. They would indulge us a while longer, I was sure of that.

  She took my hand and placed it on her breast, just briefly, a reminder of the past, and a reminder of her age. She was watching me for a reaction, but the touch of her—so long denied me—was more exciting than I could put into words. She was everything I had ever wanted. She was the thrill of it all, even after ten thousand years.

  She saw this and was pleased, and gripping the young-old man again firmly in her left hand she led me, running, to the pool, dragging me painfully into the cold water.

  We swam below the fall. It was deep there, deeper than I could dive in my normal guise. An enveloping blackness and a feeling of being pulled into the depths discouraged all exploration. This pool was a hollowing, one of those ways under and through the world, connecting all the hinterlands of the earth. We would have to be careful not to swim too far.

  Such considerations were of secondary importance for the moment. Two children played in the pool, darting below the surface like otters, wrestling and boxing in the deeps then hiding behind the fall or among the rocky coves around its inner edge. The laughter was bright. There is nothing quite as wonderful and hopeless as sex in cool water when the mood is playful and teasing. Nothing is achieved except for an enhanced and memorable intimacy of touch. It is one of the great, simple pleasures.

  On the bank, stretched out on our clothing, Medea opened her arms to me in more conventional manner. Our mouths were hungry for each other. Her fingers pinched and pulled, stroked and squeezed. The young-old man shook off the cold, armoured up as if for war, but went willingly to summer quarters.

  We swam again in the morning, after which Medea went in search of a honeycomb. She had a nose for such things, and returned successfully, and not pursued by angry bees. We could both suspend our hunger for long periods of time, but the treat was welcome. The sun was bright and the day warm and still.

  She was like a girl again.

  ‘This is the deepest I have been,’ she said. ‘From the top of the fall you can see a long way towards the mountains. Ghostland is vast.’

  We were still in the hinterland, still half in and half out of Time.

  She became excited at the thought of finding the small valley where we had lived. Its memory would be close to this pool, where we had so often swum, but the tracks through the woodland were tricky
here. When we had washed the sticky honey from our fingers and chins we set off through the trees, looking for the narrow, arched mouth of the chasm.

  Soon we heard the clattering of wood. An eerie breeze blew towards us.

  The masks were slung across the gap, weather-stained and rotten, but each still recognisable. The wind blew them together. They turned and twisted on their ties, light flashing through the empty eyes.

  We chanted their names together, Medea and I, as we had been taught to chant them in the days of learning.

  Falkenna, spirit of the falcon … Cunhaval, spirit of the hound … Moondream, memory of the woman in the land … Sinisalo, the child in the land.…

  At their centre dangled Hollower, ringed eyes and grinning mouth still green with the dye that had daubed the mask. He was the trickster who could take you through the hidden spaces of the earth. Or send you on your way to death. As Medea passed below this gate of masks, she touched a finger to her lips and touched the finger to the grinning mouth of Hollower.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ I asked her.

  ‘Best to keep him happy,’ she replied as if nothing could have been more obvious.

  I did the same, just for security’s sake, but it was not Hollower who caught my attention as I entered that narrow cleft in the rock, but the strange mask that related to the telling of stories, the memory in the land, the memory of people. I remembered that this teacher had been called Gaberlungi, though the name was strange. The druid in Urtha’s fortress known as Speaker for the Land was a recent reflection of this tradition, though far less mysterious than the shy and watchful Gaberlungi herself.

  I think I understand why the storyteller whispered to me as I passed. She was perhaps setting in motion the events that led me to write these words, these accounts. Of all those children who were sent to walk the Path, each was to fulfil a different function. Mine, I surmised briefly, was to leave a record that could transcend the telling of tales. This would be a record to be read.