The Iron Grail

by Robert Holdstock

  At the far end of this uncomfortable gorge, Kinos looked back, clearly relieved that we had left the path behind.

  ‘They are quite alone, and some escape to the edge of the world, but they are always drawn back to me.’

  ‘What are they?’ I asked him, remembering the snapping jaws, taking a carrion bird, as we had first sailed through Ghostland.

  ‘Wild friends,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t really know what I was doing when I had them made. I needed friends. But this I must show you. Look here—’

  And he led us a little further, leading the horse by the reins.

  We had come out of the wood to face a high, rock wall, stretching away to left and right. The rock was carved in horizontal striations, like the planking of a ship’s hull.

  With a start of surprise, I realised that that was exactly what it was.

  Kinos touched an appreciative hand to Niiv’s damp cheek, tugging at a lock of her hair, then turned to me, indicating the high wall. ‘Do you see what it is?’

  ‘A ship?’

  ‘My father’s ship! Just as I remember it from the harbour; the great ship, the ship of the fleece, the ship of the argonauts! Come inside, Antiokus. Come inside and remember. This is what I have made for my father.’

  The structure was enormous. As we approached, it seemed to grow in length and height. Enormous eyes had been carved on the bow; decorated round shields ran along below the rail. The images were vaguely recognisable: Hydra, Cyclops, helmets, riders, lizards, whales … all were eerily unreal. Yet recognisable.

  Kinos tethered his horse, then led us to the doorway into the stone hull. We entered what, in Argo out at sea, was the Spirit of the Ship, the hidden place where fragments of all the old ships that lay at Argo’s heart were fitted into the keel. I don’t know if Kinos knew of this ancient connection, but this part of his gigantic model was rich with engraved vessels, a fleet of ships carved as if sailing to battle, fish leaping beside them, seabirds circling above their decks.

  Stone men sat at benches. Each was the height of a tree. They were fashioned from white stone. Though they were shown holding the leather grips of their oars, no oars penetrated the hull. It was as if we walked through a temple of great gods as we passed between the two ranks of straining, struggling men, towards the figurehead looming from the stern, and the towering figure of a man at the steering oar, braced against the heave of the tide, stubble-chinned face set grim.

  There was no mistaking Jason in those features. Nor, in the narrow, calculating eyes of the beautiful face carved as figurehead, was there any mistaking Medea.

  Kinos raised his arms to indicate the argonauts. ‘I sculpted them as I remembered them, though many had left before I met them, so I used other men’s faces. But look, there is Tisaminas, there Antigos. The one with the harp is Orpheus. That one, with the lion skin, is Heracles. I heard all the stories from my father. I heard all the names. I knew of all the argonauts, even though I didn’t meet them all. Do you see that crouching man? That’s Phineus. He was the best part of the story. He betrayed the gods. They blinded him and tormented him, but he never gave up hope. He knew he would be rescued. His salvation lay in the hands of men, not gods. Though my father left him behind, in a happier state, I’ve included him on board. There, then. Do you think he’ll be pleased when he sees it?’

  ‘You could find out, if you wish. Your father is in the bay, on his new ship.’

  Kinos shook his head, rubbing his hands together. He was suddenly tense and distressed. ‘That is not my father. I was warned to be wary of tricks. A shade of my father stalks me, to do me harm. My true father is coming closer. I will recognise him when I see him. As long as that man stays in the bay, I shan’t harm him.’

  Before I could respond, Niiv whispered to me, ‘I can see Atalanta; and Hylas … but where are you?’

  Her simple observation took my mind off what Kinos—if indeed this young man was the true son of Jason—was saying.

  It was true. No towering stone figure of Jason’s last recruit—myself—sat on the benches. I walked back between the two rows of figures, staring up at each oarsman’s face, feeling a chill as old friends seemed to wink at me, to strain through their megalithic forms to turn and greet me.

  There was no Antiokus. No Merlin. No enchanter. But one of the benches was empty.

  Kinos was watching me, expectantly and perhaps a little anxious. I called to him, ‘You’ve left a space for me, but not filled it.’

  ‘I did fill it,’ he called back. ‘I promise you. I made you very carefully. You were the best of the statues; you were the only one looking forward, all the rest look down, if you notice.’

  ‘What happened?’

  He came up to me, speaking more softly, looking concerned. ‘One day, the statue just got up and walked away. I followed it for a while, but you take long strides, Antiokus. I could see you above the tree tops, but you had walked through the woods before I could catch you. I don’t know where you went, but I missed you sitting there. I had meant to make memories only; but I made you as a living thing. I didn’t mean to. I think you must be a god in disguise. You work magic. You never grow old.’

  But I always walk away.

  He slapped me on the shoulder, then, grinning. ‘I’ll make a new model of you, if it would cheer you up. That’s a clouded face if ever I saw one. Save clouds for the sky. I have never seen eyes like yours! So beautiful…’

  This last was addressed to Niiv, I’m glad to say.

  ‘Like the sea itself,’ he added.

  Niiv was surprised and upset. As the young man looked at her with interest, she slapped his face. ‘You are just a shadow!’ she exclaimed, turning to run from the stone ship. ‘Just a shadow. Not a man at all.’

  Startled, Kinos rubbed his cheek. ‘She said such welcome things to me on the path to this monument. What did I say that was wrong?’

  ‘Nothing wrong. I believe she just saw through you. It was something of a shock.’

  He was puzzled. ‘Then I have something to learn. Am I insubstantial?’

  The question, with its two possible meanings, took me by surprise. Was Little Dreamer playing games with me?

  ‘Not insubstantial … Kinos. Just too young. She was looking for someone older.’

  ‘I am older. But this is when I was happiest,’ he said sharply, softening the tone as he added, ‘This is the time in my life when everything began to come clear. What had been stories, told by my father and mother, now became real to me. Instead of mere names, his friends became people. Instead of being old men remembered, I could almost speak to them, hear their own stories, feel their pain, their joy. Everything they had been, and everything they had seen, became clear to me. I realised that the best of life is life that has gone before, its memories, its secrets. That is the secret of life! I can think of no other life worth living. That’s when I truly started to build, Antiokus. And I want you to see it. Sail on; sail on with the man who pretends to be my father. All of you, go ashore when you see an island with a palace of green marble rising from the plain beyond its wide beach. Be wary, though. The city is under siege.’

  He ran past me and was already mounted up by the time I reached the doorway. He kicked the horse and chased after Niiv, but the girl had fled, frightened by her own glimpse of the true Little Dreamer on this part of the island. I could see her far away below, running to the bay. Kinos, arms folded, stood on a promontory watching her in disappointment, the wind from the sea blowing against him but not moving him, as if he were one of his own childish statues.

  * * *

  Once they were in the deep haven, they furled the sail and stowed it within the sea-crusted ship and lowered the mast by the forestays, bringing it to rest in the crutch. Then with oars they went on and backed her into the shallows, threw the anchor-stone from the bow, tied her up from the stern on the beach, and stepped out themselves on the shore of the sea.

  The words of a storyteller I had once met during my travels began to speak
to me, images from a lost time, words from a charismatic man. And I was not surprised.

  The beach was dense with painted ships, war-galleys all, drawn up by the stern, crowded so closely together it was hard to see a way to pass them. Their eyes watched us as the living eyes of so many sleek-hulled creatures. The plain beyond was alive with tents and fires, and the gleam of weapons and armour, stacked carefully, ready for use.

  A citadel of green and shining beauty rose beyond the plain, sprawled across the top of a broad hill, defended by concentric circles of white walls and looming towers. Banners of every colour blew out from the turrets across the dark, rocky slopes with their shimmering tangles of silver-green olive and oak.

  I noticed five gates through the walls, the same as at Taurovinda.

  As Argo drifted on the swell, running slowly along the line of the beach, we searched for the army that had debouched from these galleys, but there was no sign of human life, either in its living form or its shade.

  The small crew at once debated where that army might be hiding.

  ‘In the tents,’ was Rubobostes’ uncertain suggestion.

  ‘In the ships, below the benches,’ Urtha proposed.

  ‘In shallow sand holes,’ Hylas offered. ‘They’re easy to dig.’

  ‘Inside the city already,’ Jason grunted. ‘Hiding in the shadows. Waiting to strike.’

  ‘Or in a trophy ship,’ Tisaminas contributed. ‘This reminds me of the siege of Troy. Odysseus and others entered the city concealed inside a trophy ship, hanging by straps inside a double hull.’

  ‘It was a horse,’ Elkavar snapped at him. ‘A giant wooden horse. I sing songs about it. I should know.’

  Everybody laughed, to the man’s irritation.

  ‘A story told for children,’ I whispered to him. ‘The ship was dedicated to Poseidon, sea-thunderer, sea horse, god of the stampeding waves. But it was a cleverly constructed, up-turned ship.’

  He laughed dismissively. ‘Really? I prefer the horse. Besides, “horse” is easier to rhyme than “trophy ship”.’

  ‘On a more practical note,’ Atalanta said, ‘those ships mean a lot of men. This terrain cannot hide a lot of men. They must be somewhere. Hidden in the ships might well be the answer.’

  But the ships were empty, creaking hulks, many of them waterlogged, stinking of brine and pitch, their oars and masts coated with the white shit of seabirds.

  While Jason threw down the sea anchor, Rubobostes tethered Argo to the shore, swimming between two galleys, crawling in the narrow space where their hulls scraped together in the shifting sea, knocking in the post with his fist. We all went ashore then, armed and wary. Those of us without shields took them from the stacks; I took a spear that was shorter than my height; Niiv selected one that was twice her height, and though she struggled with its weight, she clung on to it.

  ‘I like its distance,’ she explained when I criticised her choice. I presume she meant the distance between herself and the killing end. ‘If I have to make it fly, I’ll make it fly.’

  We moved towards the hill and the palace of green marble. At one point, when I stood in awe, staring up at the massive ramparts, Jason caught up with me and stood beside me. If I was aware of him, it didn’t seem to matter. I remember only that I murmured words from that same old tale-teller, who had wonderfully described the siege and sacking of Troy, an event from before Jason’s time. The city was known by several names; Troy was fashionable.

  ‘Now which of the gods, my trickster, has again been plotting with you?’

  I had Kinos on my mind; and Medea. But it was Jason who heard my whisper.

  The old warrior’s hand clutched my shoulder; ever-youthful eyes gleamed through the face-guard of his purloined helmet.

  ‘I’ve been thinking the same thought myself. Though concerning you. But I believe the trickster in you has been left behind.’ He’d realised I’d lost my magic.

  ‘Yes. I’ll get it back. For the moment all that matters is what lies beyond these walls.’

  ‘My son,’ he said, staring up the slope of the hill. ‘This must be the place.’

  Medea, I thought to myself, though without my own ‘trickster’ I was no longer sure of anything. But I was glad of that moment of reconciliation in Jason’s touch.

  All the argonauts but Tisaminas had come ashore. Tisaminas stayed with the ship at his own suggestion. He had intuited Argo’s impatience to return home and thought that if it least one of us stayed within her hollow hull she would not slip her moorings.

  My own feeling was that with Niiv ashore, the Northland Lady would stay true to us. She couldn’t leave without the charmed girl from her own country.

  The rest of us now came close to the first of the gates, intending to begin the steady climb to whatever lay above us. At that moment came the sound of baying hounds. We fell back, looking for cover, as a pack of bronze dogs came bounding through the gate, forming a snarling barking line before us. I counted twenty, each as high as a man’s waist. When their bodies touched, the metal rang; when they moved, they groaned and creaked like rusting hinges. Behind them, a bronze stallion cantered into view, riderless, reins dangling.

  It looked at me and pawed the ground, then turned side on.

  I walked towards the horse. When Jason tried to follow, four of the hounds leapt forward and threatened to tear him apart. He backed away hastily. But the dogs allowed me to pass through their rank, and I swung over the cold metal back of this strange beast.

  Hanging on to the cold flanks of the neck, I was cantered through each of the gates in the outer walls and into the palace grounds. I had time to glimpse the spiralling towers and rich façades of temples and halls before the mechanical creature stopped so abruptly that I was flung forward, crashing to the ground below its steaming nostrils. It looked down at me with unblinking but sympathetic eyes.

  My groin ached and my heels were bruised where I had gripped the steed, trying to slow it down.

  ‘Welcome, Antiokus,’ came a familiar voice, speaking slowly and gently. A man’s shadow stooped over me and a rough hand hauled me to my feet. Armoured, dark eyes watching from that same Greekland helmet, a thin smile breaking through the dense growth of beard that swathed the face. The grip on my arm could have snapped the bone. I could see battle wounds on the face, streaks of grey in the beard, a cut across the nose; the helmet was dented. The arm that supported me, partly sheathed in leather, had several times been cut through to the bone, the wounds roughly healed and ugly.

  ‘Why did the girl run from me? That time, all those years ago. Why did she run?’

  As he asked the question, he removed the helmet, saying, ‘I’m glad to see you again. You were a good friend of my father’s.’

  Time was up to no good, here. In three days I had seen Kinos as young, youth and now warrior. But all of the apparitions had seemed to have lived the intervening years. Looking at Little Dreamer, hardened, scarred, and still so vulnerable, I was unsure whether to believe that this was the true man, or just another shadow.

  Was an even older Kinos waiting? Or was another hand at work on these Otherworldly islands, sowing the seeds of confusion, as the poet had put it?

  ‘Why did she run?’ Kinos asked again. ‘She was so lovely. I suppose I was too bold. When she sneered at you, when you introduced her as a friend of yours, I assumed that she wanted to be anything but. You had plans for her, but she was keeping you at a distance. Perhaps I was wrong…’

  Oh yes. Very wrong.

  What could I say? In a strange world, surrounded by all the trappings of madness, without my wits, uncertain of Medea’s location, anxious for my friends on the beach, I fumbled for the right thing to say. I remembered the old maxim that if in doubt, keep it simple. I had sailed too many seas to be afraid of drowning in cliché.

  ‘You were too bold,’ I tried to persuade him. ‘She was too young.’

  ‘You’re a liar,’ he said with a grin. ‘But then, so am I. So are dreams. Come and see what
I’ve dreamed for my father, when he finally comes to join me on the great adventure!’

  He clapped his hands and the metal horse shook its head, turned and cantered across the wide plaza. Two of the hounds came scampering in, wailing, wounded, anxious for affection from their creator, receiving only a harsh command. They whimpered and fled out of sight. They seemed to be bleeding. I imagined the argonauts were fighting hard to get through that bestial barricade of biting bronze.

  He led me across the courtyard towards the massive doors of the towering palace. Everything about it echoed Medea’s palace in Iolkos, except its scale and its uniformity of colour. The doors were carved with the plants and animals that Medea had found useful for her own particular enchantments.

  Inside, the hall was vast and airy, and utterly empty. Our footsteps echoed as we crossed the space. We went down corridors; Kinos showed off the rooms laid out to left and right, just as they had been in his Iolkon home.

  ‘The baths, there.’

  There were baths big enough to take a squadron of knights, but no decoration.

  ‘The sleeping chamber. My room; my brother’s room. My father’s chamber; this is where the musicians entertained us…’

  All vast, all echoing, all empty of anything except the sound of our passage through them. He seemed so proud of the creation, constantly glancing at me to see if I was impressed. He even said, ‘I put my heart into this place. I grew up here. This is where my heart is, Antiokus. I know I was just a child when I lived here, in Iolkos, but I never forgot its beauty.’

  I felt very sad for him.

  There were two chambers that were full of life and death, however. The first was what he called his ‘war room’, a dimly illuminated chamber whose walls moved with phosphorescent images of ships and armies.