The Iron Grail

by Robert Holdstock

  ‘I trust no men but you and Manandoun to guard the hill. You are both experienced men. Manandoun has insight and resolve. You have vision and determination. If you stay here, then this is one old man who’ll not worry about his home.’

  ‘Very well,’ Kymon agreed. ‘But next time there is an expedition, I expect to be taken along.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Urtha. ‘Now go and make a plan for defending what will one day be your own citadel.’

  Ullanna was to remain as well. This had been negotiated with Argo—she had called me to her—who was prepared, as I’d suggested, to protect the king but no other from the ‘mortal’ world.

  Cathabach was required to stay behind for the same reasons, though his position, now, would in any event have required him to do so.

  Argo had further promised, however, that our small crew would be sufficient to search for Munda and Jason’s son.

  Niiv had finished instructing on the method of turning Argo into a sledge. The ship sat upright on the ice, braced by the thin trunks of trees felled for the purpose, draped with the harnessing that would be attached to Ruvio. Argo seemed placid, almost amused. Ice formed on her hull, stretching stiffly from the shields below her rails.

  She seemed to call: come on then, let’s get this done with.

  Supernatural though she was, she perhaps had no idea of the strange journey that awaited her, awaited us all.

  Supplies were loaded aboard; Cathabach marvelled at the edge of the winter world that Argo had created. ‘If she decides to stop playing the game and the ice melts, the ship will founder with all that strapped-on wood.’

  His caution was understandable, but Niiv grinned and reassured him. ‘She will make us take the strain for a while. Her intention is not to drown us. You can watch our progress in that well of deep water.’

  Some time in the next day or so I was summoned to take my place on the ship. Ruvio stamped and snorted. The frozen river stretched out of sight ahead of us. Shivering men and women sat on the benches, cloak-wrapped and gaunt. Farewells had been brief and few—but there had been tears in Ullanna’s eyes on two different occasions. Atalanta was very aware of the sky and the woodland, and the steep-sided fortress. She was absorbing the sights and sounds of this world, remembering for her dreams, with the hunger of a starving child.

  Rubobostes, who was used to taking command of the steering oar at the stern, now stood at the bridle of his wonderful horse. At the signal from Jason he urged the beast forward, and after a few moments of straining and heavy breathing the animal got the measure of Argo; the ship lurched, skidded slightly, then began to slide. Niiv cheered loudly. On the shore, the gathered horsemen followed us for a while, before striking off across more amenable terrain, to wait for us at the Ford of the Last Farewell. They would not be able to enter the Otherworld, and they knew it. But Urtha wanted them with him at that point in case the Heroes had learned of the expedition, and had sent their own army to face us.

  * * *

  The river and forest froze ahead of us for as far as the eye could see, melting behind us in an eerie transformation from stark white to lush, drooping green. We were drawn into bleak winter, snow falling constantly, the ice below us creaking and threatening to break. Two arrow flights away, behind us, summer bloomed, waving us goodbye.

  Ruvio slipped and struggled as he took the strain, but was soon into his stride, and Argo travelled fast across the ice. When the breeze shifted, Jason order the sail unfurled; it caught the wind, the ship skidded for a moment, and then continued on its journey in the fashion of a chariot racing through water, great sprays of ice and snow slicing into the winter trees that crowded the river, knocking herons from their feet and sending dark birds circling skywards in shock. Mielikki seemed to grin from her position in the stern, enjoying the game.

  Ruvio, released from the burden of hauling, galloped beside us, the sweat from his flanks and the breath from his nostrils forming a shimmering, misty cloak around him.

  Less than two days later we were approaching the final curve in Nantosuelta before the Ford of the Last Farewell. And at this point, Argo and Mielikki decided that the game was over. Argo was rested; the point had been made (that though she was not always at a captain’s beck and call, she would keep a promise). The winter melted away, along with the ice, but slowly, giving the argonauts time to swing over the sides of the ship and untie the wooden rollers that had converted the hull into a sledge. She sank into the river, lurching alarmingly, and Ruvio swam to the shore, released from his harness.

  It was an altogether different ship that now glided peacefully and silently round the curving stream, until the tall stones that guarded the ford came into view, and the shallow banks, and the inlet on the far side, with its rocky gully leading into the hinterland.

  The stream that flowed through the gully was narrow. I had expected that Argo would wait until nightfall, then make us all fall comatose while she negotiated the impossible waterway with the aid of a little ancient magic. She had done this before, on our way to Greek Land. But I was wrong. She sent Hylas to the place of exiles, on her whispered and private instruction. He returned later, depressed and weary, and took his place silently.

  Argo moved on into shallower water, below denser canopy, dazzled by sunlight, drifting in silence. The argonauts sat quietly at their benches, heads turned to watch the way ahead, all curious as to where Argo would take the turn into the world of the Dead.

  After a while I was summoned to Mielikki. Crouched at the threshold of the Spirit of the Ship, she confided: the kolossoi are not where I concealed them. Someone has taken them. If they had been there, Hylas would have heard the cries of his own.

  We approached the Ford of the Miscast Spear. The structures on each side of the river were in ruins, the bridge that had been spanning the water collapsed into a series of untidy wooden columns. The retreat of the Dead and the Unborn from Taurovinda had been very thorough, it seemed.

  Close by, a river flowed into Nantosuelta from the west, pouring sluggishly through high gravel banks, capped with sheer cliffs of thorn-cloaked limestone. There was a small cheer, almost an ironic gesture from the argonauts, as the ship nosed round, leaving the Winding One and encouraging her crew to take up their oars and begin the journey inwards.

  To the steady beat of the drum we rowed into an echoing ravine, so narrow at the top that on occasion the branches of the trees at its edge closed off the sky. The water was icy and translucent; below us, sparkling granite boulders formed its bed. Each strike of the oars seemed to reverberate from the sheer rock walls that contained us. Stones slipped and tumbled into the stream. The sun flashed down at us, turning gloom to moments of startling and luxuriant green.

  It surprised me that I could react so strongly to this beauty. I had seen such gorges a thousand times before. I was becoming ‘human’, I suspected. Argo’s warning to me was coming true. My strength with charm was diminishing as we entered his Otherworld.

  Rubobostes held the oar. I beat the drum. Ruvio nestled in the shallow hold, breathing hard, perhaps missing his harem, now abandoned behind us, since there was no path below these overarching walls.

  Niiv stood at the prow, as ever, searching the way ahead. Jason and Urtha, side by side in the stern, each resting an arm on the figurehead of the Northland Lady, were impassive, though the very nature of their statue-like demeanour suggested the anxiety they felt. I watched Urtha carefully. He alone among us might be vulnerable to the warp and shift of time in the Otherworld.

  When Argo rounded a bend in the river and began to approach two tall, craggy rocks, rising from the water like jagged shards of bone, Jason screamed the order to back oar, back oar! Memory of the clashing rocks, when we had journeyed to Colchis, was vivid. Ships destroyed, smashed to splinters by the restless pounding of the unnatural pinnacles. We had used a dove, at that time, to test whether the rocks were awake or asleep. On this voyage we had no such willing bird, and I could not summon one, even though I tried. This c
ame as no surprise to me, though it was of concern. From the moment we had entered the ravine my abilities in charm had begun to wane.

  Now Hylas rose from his bench, casting off his cloak. He had always been a good swimmer. Though his face was grey, he had a bright look to him; he plunged over the side of the ship and swam strongly upstream. When he had passed through the rocks he turned and waved, then drifted back towards us, floating on his back, face to the dappled sky catching the shafting light. He seemed at peace, and for a moment I thought he might have died, rejoicing in a moment of freedom from the curse of life to slip back into his grave. But he suddenly rose in the water, swimming to keep position, his face alarmed. He beckoned us towards him urgently.

  Jason shouted at me to sound the strike. The oars rose and dipped; I beat the drum hard and fast and Argo began to plough the river. Everyone aboard, even those not rowing, screamed as the oars were shipped and the vessel raced between the rocks, cracking against one of them, scraping the river bed with a noise like breaking wooden beams, though the granite boulders did not manage to pierce the hull.

  A line was thrown for Hylas and he was hauled aboard. The rowers took Argo out of the shallows between the rocks and someone cheered, but was then silent.

  Hylas was pointing back the way we had come. Jason was breathing heavily. He was not alone in being able to read the words that had been carved on the smooth face of each of the pinnacles.

  ‘Symbols,’ Niiv said unnecessarily. ‘There are symbols carved there.’

  Deeply and massively engraved, stained with orange lichen, greened with ferny growth from the winter-cracked stone, the two messages, one on each rock, were chiselled in a language that Jason had once spoken: on the right hand stone was the inscription: IT IS NOT AS IT SEEMS. On the left we could read: WHAT WE ARE IN ETERNITY SHAPES OUR LIVES.

  When the crew had been informed of the cryptic meaning behind the epigrams, Rubobostes observed, ‘This is just a gut feeling, but I suspect that if it’s true that things are not as they seem, then we are in for a few tricks.’

  ‘Well done,’ Jason replied, and Rubobostes glanced at me with a glowering look that asked: was that sarcasm?

  I was more intrigued by the other carving. I was in the company of Six-in-their-Shrouds whose life in eternity was very much shaping their life in the past. But the words meant more than this, I was sure. That they were in Jason’s language was highly suggestive; indeed, significant.

  As Rubobostes was aware, sometimes a strong feeling nags in the gut.

  Atalanta called, ‘A storm is coming!’

  The sky darkened and the river began to pattern with waves as the wind gusted increasingly strongly from the west. The air chilled and we returned to our stations, taking Argo deeper into Ghostland.

  Soon the high ravine dropped away and the river widened, flowing through heavily forested hills. Then the land seemed to dissolve into colourful fields and tight woods, and though rain drummed on the turf, and cloud chased cloud across the greensward, we could see that this was the beginning of a place of idyll. Horses pranced and cantered in small herds, and their manes and flanks were shaved and shaped to designate ownership. Only their owners were absent. As the ship struck onwards we saw, too, the misty heights of citadels and strongholds. Wood smoke, the scents of cooking, the aroma of stews and roasts, wafted past us, but not even Niiv, with her far sight and her tricky nature, could see the homes from which these delights emanated.

  We were in Ghostland, and were probably being watched; but there was no reason why we should be able to see the watchers.

  We pulled to the shore as a dusk of intense beauty settled on the land; where the sun descended beyond distant peaks, the sky burned, literally burned, flames rising in languid strands from the edge of the disc, tongues of fire, Atalanta called them. They seemed to shed stars, which rose and settled above us.

  During the night that followed we heard riders and horns, the baying of hounds and the clash of arms, but could see nothing but the vaguest of shadows, and those only glimpsed from the edge of vision. But at dawn the first of two strange incidents occurred, events that should have signalled the nature of change in the Realm of the Shadows of Heroes.

  Rubobostes shook me awake. The argonauts were all rising from their blankets, peering across the creek at the forest edge. ‘Something coming this way,’ the big man hissed. It was unlike Rubobostes to show fear, but nervous alarm creased every part of his bearded face.

  For a moment I heard only the rumble of thunder; but it was not thunder.

  A flock of strange deer burst frantically from the woods, led by four stags of great age and size. Forty or fifty of the slender animals, their coats a brilliant scarlet, their rumps turquoise, their feet white, bounded into the water, leaping through the stream towards us, dividing to pass Argo, drawn up on the bank. Gracefully, taking strides that seemed impossibly long, they passed behind us. Other creatures were hot on their tails: foxes the size of hounds, hounds like ponies, and swirling flights of bright-eyed, richly coloured birds, some passing over us so closely that their wing-tips struck us.

  This had happened in instants, this sudden burst of fear-filled life. And as the last of the flock—ravens, green-winged and red-beaked—left the woods, so a gleaming maw opened and snapped, catching the tail feathers of a straggler and drawing it back out of sight.

  Copper sheen brightened the woodland edge; two narrow eyes blinked from behind shuttered lids; fire flickered briefly from some part of the creature’s gigantic body, and metal creaked for a moment as it turned, taking its pitifully small catch back into cover.

  ‘What in the name of all the gods was that?’ Jason asked loudly, looking, as usual, in my direction. ‘Anyone’s gods will do. That was a vision from Hades.’

  Urtha said, ‘No such creature should be walking Ghostland. The scarlet deer we know about, and the other creatures; we have seen them from the Ford of the Last Farewell. But not the hunter. It belongs elsewhere. It must have strayed here.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jason concurred, repeating, ‘from Hades.’

  ‘From someone’s Hades,’ I suggested.

  If we had been lulled into a sense of calm idyll, as we had rowed, now our skin crawled and our muscles tensed; the stroke was fast, the drum almost unnecessary. Argo slipped to the water and we rowed to the haze-shrouded hills beyond which the sun had descended with such a spectacular display of fire, aware that the air was suddenly fragrant with the smells of the sea.

  ‘An ocean!’ Niiv suddenly called from the prow. ‘I see islands!’

  ‘An ocean? Here?’ Urtha demanded.

  As he rose from his bench, the rhythm of the oars was broken and Argo lurched violently. The warlord stumbled to where Niiv lay sprawled in her black cloak, tethered to the rails. He peered into the distance, then noticed the swoop and swirl of seagulls far ahead, their skirling screams just audible. ‘We’ve come too far west,’ he shouted. ‘This sea leads nowhere; it’s the grey void. The islands that grow there are unreachable by boat, everyone knows that for a fact. Even Maeldun, the greatest of the seafarers of antiquity, failed. Only his song came back, and only part of his song at that!’

  Jason called to his co-captain. ‘Settle down. If that’s a void, then what are the mountains we can see? This is an inland ocean. I know all about inland oceans!’

  ‘Those mountains could be clouds!’

  ‘Those mountains are where we’re heading,’ Jason retorted with authority. ‘If they turn out to be clouds, it doesn’t matter—we’ll be flying on wings of charm before tomorrow’s dusk. Don’t you agree, Niiv?’

  The girl shuddered, but nodded her head. ‘We don’t want to go there; all my instincts tell me so. But Jason is right. This ocean is a true part of the world within the world. The mountains are at Ocean’s End. The other sea, the grey void, lies further west.’

  Just as the river had widened, now it narrowed again, between rust-coloured cliffs and shores that were rich with stunted, sharp-leaved oak
s and grey-trunked trees with dark fruits that twisted from the ground as if effort had been made to pull them up like weeds and failed, but left them bent and weary.

  Jason was at home at once: the gnarly growths were olives; the trees gathered heat and stillness; shimmered in stillness; indeed, the air here was scented with the warmth of southern seas. The more grim of the argonauts among us brightened, recognising the mellow fragrance and sharp tangs of herbs and fruits unknown in the grass-and-greenwood-rich landscape surrounding Taurovinda.

  This was the second strangeness pointing the finger at what would be waiting for us. If Jason was aware of it, he kept his own counsel, not even favouring me with a knowing glance, though he must have guessed that I had seen the same signs.

  We had rowed upstream for several days; now the current began to pull us and the oars were employed to guide us carefully, to slow us where the river rushed into the ocean. Gulls followed in our wake. A school of dolphins decided to chase Argo as she followed her new coast. They breached the surface in chattering delight, playful and inquisitive. They were as black and gleaming as obsidian, with stripes of scarlet and cream on their flanks, the colours of rowan, the ‘quickening’ tree; their eyes, so watchful and intelligent, were ringed with turquoise and pale green. These were no creatures of the natural world.

  Perhaps they thought we were what Ullanna would call ‘after-lifers’, and on our way to our chosen island—it was their function in the south to accompany the dead in such a way—and when they realised that at least two of our company were trying to harpoon them they broke from their friendly task, still chattering as they dispersed, but angry at the insult, quick to find safer waters.

  ‘It’s as well we didn’t kill any of them,’ Jason shouted. ‘To do so would have brought bad luck to us. They are sacred creatures.’

  From the corner of my eye I noticed Rubobostes hurriedly cutting a taut line at the stern, afterwards behaving as if nothing had happened.