The Iron Grail

by Robert Holdstock

  ‘Only the girl. Niiv.’

  ‘No. Beyond her.’

  I could hear the sound of men running. Hylas came skidding into the war room, momentarily astonished by what he saw, breathless, then shouting, ‘Antiokus! They’re killing each other. Come and stop them!’ He could only have been talking about Jason and Kinos.

  ‘They don’t recognise each other,’ I said to Medea, trying to plead with her to make the fog fall from their eyes.

  ‘I know,’ is all she said, closing her arms across her chest, dropping her head slightly, though her gaze remained on mine.

  I left her there and followed Hylas. I could hear the ring of metal on metal, the screaming of two men, their words two chants of denial, repeated endlessly. The empty palace was filled beyond echoing with the sounds of fury and despair. As we ran, we became lost. The thunder of rage came at us from every corridor, grim elemental sound that turned us this way and that until we had to stop, exhausted, confused and helpless as the bright world shrank around us.

  When I finally found my way to the bridge over the void, the encounter was almost at its end. Kinos, naked save for his helmet, chest-plate and greaves, fighting in the fashion of the Greeklanders of old, took a blow from Jason that knocked him back to the edge of the bridge.

  Both men were striped with crimson.

  Jason seemed almost startled that his blade had struck so easily. A hank of hair, lank and grey and bloodied, cut from his temple, dangled obscenely from his cloak, fibres caught in the weft. The near side of his face was darkly crusted. The up-draught from the void made his black cloak flow about his shaking figure. He was leaning towards his son, sword held defensively, but his naked hand reaching for the tarnished man.

  Kinos looked at me. Through his pain he shouted, ‘I’m confused. Antiokus! I’m confused. Help me understand. Is this my father? If he is, why don’t I recognise him? Not that it matters any more.’

  ‘Take his hand!’ I shouted back. ‘Don’t fall!’

  ‘Is he the one? Why don’t I recognise him?’

  ‘Hold on, Kinos. You built the Father Calling Place. You built so many of them. You forgot only that your father would age. He is the one. Take his hand! Don’t fall!’

  The dying man stared at his father, then pulled off his helmet, let it drop away. ‘I waited so long. I began to forget the sound of your laughter. I began to despair. But I see now that you are that man, the man I called for. Why do my eyes open just as they are doomed to close?’

  ‘Close them,’ Jason said coldly, even though his free hand still reached towards the tottering younger man. ‘You are not my son. I would know Kinos, I would know him at any age.’

  Kinos laughed and looked at me. He let his sword drop into the void. ‘There you have it. Don’t you see, Antiokus? I’ve already fallen. You don’t understand. And when all’s said and done, all I’m doing is going home…’

  He blew a sad kiss to his father and tipped himself backwards. He was silent as he descended into the booming depths. The gleam of his breastplate flashed for a long time, but eventually the dark sea below claimed him.

  ‘It’s ended,’ a voice behind me whispered. I glanced round to see Medea shrinking back, burying herself below the veils of her clothing.

  The fight had gone out of Jason, just as it seemed to have deserted Medea. The two of them regarded each other at a distance, but there was no anger, no hate, no hostility in that long gaze; perhaps just weariness and regret.

  ‘Antiokus,’ Jason said to me quietly. He pointed his sword into the chasm. ‘If the gods are not blinding me for their own purposes, I will say it again: that was not Kinos.’

  ‘Then who was it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Medea said, ‘It was the small part of Kinos that I took to keep his brother company. A little shadow, that grew like the man. I called him back, but I let him live for a while.’

  Jason stepped across the bridge, dark face vile with blood, his eyes wet. ‘Then where is Kinos himself?’

  Medea didn’t move as Jason approached, but she shouted, ‘No further!’ The man stopped. Niiv clutched my arm nervously, resisting the temptation to chatter at this difficult moment.

  ‘If I take you to him, will you leave this place to its memories? Will you go away peacefully? I am prepared to be kind to you, Jason. But you must go away afterwards; you must leave me alone afterwards.’

  ‘I agree,’ the old Greeklander whispered. He sheathed his sword, instructed me to do the same. Only the sound of small voices, urgently warning me from the scabbard, stopped me slaughtering the kolossoi. I slipped my own bronze blade through my belt.

  ‘Then follow me,’ Medea said. ‘I’ll take you to where your dream comes true.’

  She ran ahead of us, veils flowing, bone and bronze rattling on the long chains around her waist. She took us into a darker part of the palace, down wide stairs and through labyrinthine passages; there was a feeling of life, here; and death. The walls writhed with animals, painted in luxuriant blues and greens. The scents of incense and burning herbs constantly greeted us. This was the living part of the dead palace: Medea’s lair.

  At its end was the mortuary room. She stood facing us from its far side, pressed against the black marble wall. Kinos lay on the wooden bier in the centre of the place, his arms by his sides, his armour polished, his hair lovingly braided; flowers were scattered on his breast; his greaves were made of woven grass. The smell of cinnamon was strong, and other oily, musky odours, the stink of preservation.

  Jason stepped up to the bier and stared down at the pale, sweet face. There were no scars on this one, though he was a man, much older than the youthful Kinos who had built the stone ship and its monstrous crew.

  Medea spoke quietly. ‘After he built the palace he went into a war rage. He created siege after siege on the beaches, on the narrow plains around the hill. The Dead of this realm flocked to him; the Unborn were frightened of him. To die before you are born affects the future very much. He played his games with the champions of a thousand ages. I dread to think of the destruction he has caused in future Time.’

  ‘How did he die?’ Jason asked. The man was shaking where he stood, his head lowered, his eyes fixed on the waxy skin of the poor boy.

  ‘He died in battle,’ Medea answered. ‘He created wars for his own amusement. It was always a risk. He was killed in one of the first of the violent encounters.’

  ‘And the other Kinos, the one who has been attacking me ever since I came her…?’

  ‘A small ghost that I made to help his brother, the young Bull Leaper.’

  ‘Thesokorus … I found out he hates me too.’ There was unexpected defeatism in Jason’s voice.

  ‘Thesokorus is still alive,’ I whispered to him, intending to imply that there would be another chance for him. Medea heard the whisper and laughed.

  ‘Lost and wandering,’ she added. ‘I stole his brother from him. I brought back the ghost. This place, this palace, draws on a source of deep enchantment. It was easy to give the small ghost a full life; illusion, but comfortable illusion. But he was always doomed to die at his father’s hand.’

  Jason bent down to the corpse and lifted it in his arms, embracing memory, hugging the past, but saying goodbye, speaking so softly that I have no words from father to son to record.

  Then he let Kinos lie down again and stepped back from the bier.

  Did he glance at Medea? Behind her veil her eyes glistened. But at which one of us was she staring? When Jason turned back to me his face was hard. ‘The past is gone,’ he said. ‘There’s nowhere to go but forward. I see that now. How do we find Argo?’

  ‘Argo will find us herself.’

  ‘Nowhere else to go,’ he added sadly, and with a curious expression on his face.

  He left the room. When I looked back at Medea she was slipping into the shadows, to some dark corner of the palace, along another passage, leading away from the echoing tomb that Kinos had built on top of the old hi
ll.

  ‘Goodbye, Fierce Eyes. Goodbye, Medea,’ I whispered after her shade.

  And I heard a whisper in reply: I also died when my son died. I waited so long. Don’t pity me, Merlin! But understand me. You of all people.

  She and I were not yet finished, I was certain of it. But if she stayed hidden in this keltoi Ghostland, finding her again would be hard in the extreme. Able to watch me, despite her weakened state, she would always have the advantage.

  * * *

  Tisaminas found us as we made our way from the palace, retracing my earlier steps towards the beach where the deserted ships from another siege lay rotting. The man was breathless. ‘It’s all ended. The battle is ended. The two armies are dispersing in ships. None of us can make any sense of it, but the others have gone to the landing place.’

  ‘That’s our destination too,’ Jason said, slapping the older man on the shoulder. Tisaminas seemed startled by this sudden display of comradeship.

  The bronze dogs lay quiet as we passed them; they were at the inner gate, alive, growling deeply, but immobile. On the beach we found the man called Pendragon, and seven others. Their cloaks, in shades of green, red and purple, were tied at the shoulder; their helmets slung from their belts; their battered faces smiling through their beards as we approached.

  ‘You’ll need a few more hands to row your strange ship. Here we are!’

  ‘Welcome,’ Urtha shouted. ‘What’s your destination?’

  ‘Back to the river. We feel more comfortable back at the river.’

  ‘We need to make a stop along the way, but you’re welcome aboard, all of you.’

  Pendragon introduced his burly companion. ‘We believe we will all be kings. We have all dreamed our names. Maudraud here thinks he’ll be the best of us, but he likes his food too much!’

  Maudraud scowled as the others laughed, but he was enjoying the tease. He had slate-grey eyes and a wild smile. I noticed that his hands were shaking, the one on his sword, the other holding a fold of his cloak.

  As to this group of men, I will write about them another time, since it was my fortune and qualified pleasure to become involved with them again. They were not all from the same future; some of the men who swam to Argo and found themselves a place at the benches were each other’s fathers and grandfathers. In this timeless place, where the map was still unfurled, it didn’t matter.

  We rowed back to the beach where the child Kinos had shown himself.

  I led Urtha and Jason to the low cave where Kinos had drawn the images and made the models that had sustained him in his first years of isolation. Jason stayed there, crouched and hunched, holding the small, straw figure of Phineus. I had lost the other figures during the confusion on the wide beach below the palace.

  ‘She is close enough for us to hear her breathing,’ I said to Urtha as we surveyed the tangle of wood and briar around us.

  ‘This is rose briar,’ the king said knowingly. ‘It’s the sort of tangle where we children are sent to sleep for Nemetona, goddess of the groves. We make a drink from the hips, a year later. Blood rose and young dreams to keep the groves vibrant.’ He looked at me with a frown. ‘There is sleeping and sleeping…’

  ‘Yes. I understand. You search that way, I’ll enter here.’

  We parted company, hacking through the tangled woodland. And after what seemed an age of strangulation in the grasping thorn, grazed and cut and breathless with the humid air, I heard Urtha’s delighted cry from somewhere close to me. When we emerged, Jason was waiting for us, his eyes vacant, his mind elsewhere, until he saw us and smiled with genuine pleasure as he beheld the murmuring girl, still in her rough cloak, curled tightly in her father’s arms. The half lunula dangled at her neck.

  In her right hand she was holding the small elf-shot, the arrowhead that her friend Atanta had given her on crossing the river. As if at peace, now, no longer in need of protection, her fingers unfurled. Urtha took the sharp stone point and tucked it in his belt.

  Jason reached out to Munda, stroking her brow and tumble of hair. ‘The secret of life,’ he said quietly.

  ‘One of the secrets of life,’ Urtha replied. ‘An important one, but there are others.’

  ‘Yes. I think that’s right. Well done. I’m pleased for you.’

  Urtha kissed the tip of his daughter’s nose, looking at her as if for the first time. ‘Thank you. But these next few years will be very interesting.’

  We exchanged a glance, he and I. ‘Will you be around to see them?’ he added.

  ‘I imagine I will. There is so much that I don’t yet understand. I seem to belong here; but I feel I’ve arrived too early.’

  ‘Stop it, Merlin. I’m exhausted enough without your wily thoughts. And I’m hungry. And Jason, you have a decision to make when we get back on board your ship.’

  But Jason simply bowed to the king. ‘I’ve already made it. I made it the moment I saw the body of my son. When we cross back over that river, what’s it called…?’

  ‘Nantosuelta.’

  ‘Yes. When we cross Nantosuelta I’ll be gone from here, and from you. The decision is made; all I need to do is find the kolossoi of my friends … those that have survived.’

  ‘They have all survived.’

  ‘Atalanta is close to dying. By the time I find the kolossoi, she will have faded.’

  I was able to tell him that the kolossoi were ‘home’. It was the first thing I had done on returning to Argo. The small, metal-clad elementals had reunited with their owners. At any moment the argonauts could have faded and gone to their own, ancient homes, leaving one spirit world for another. But they would all row with Argo until the Winding One was crossed, and Jason was finally free of the Warped Man, Dealing Death.

  All except Atalanta. She would not survive the next few hours. But as she had lain in the Spirit of the Ship, as Argo’s guest, she had confided to me that her daughter was already born. ‘She is three years old. She will miss me very much. But perhaps I am alive in Ullanna.’

  ‘Urtha is certainly alive in Ullanna.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she had said, then gripped me tightly. ‘I have a little “light of foresight” of my own, Merlin. Her children by Urtha and Urtha’s children by Aylamunda will not be the happiest of families. Only you know this, only you can understand this. There will one day be two Speakers for Kings. Their stories will reflect division and hardship. As my father told me: there will be hardship and a long sigh before the land heals. He was talking about an older time, my time, a long way from here. But his words echo from eternity, Merlin. Stay around the fortress.’ She laughed at some hidden thought. ‘You are a fine healer, and tolerant of sighing.’

  ‘I wish I could heal you.’

  ‘Well you can’t. And that’s that, as those keltoi kings are fond of saying. But take this, and keep it safe. If it ever seems to be whispering to you, pay attention!’

  She had slipped the small bronze casing of her kolossoi into my hand. It was just a toy, a charming thing, a little bit of memory after the body had been reunited with its stolen spirit and been drawn back to the grave. But I was glad to have it.

  When she died, we wrapped her in Jason’s cloak. We made a brief memorial for her on the far side of Nantosuelta, close to the Ford of the Last Farewell, a low mound over a shallow grave, the body covered with stone. For the first time I noticed how many low mounds were scattered, as if randomly, around this crossing place to the Otherworld.

  I was the last to leave the graveside. Unlike the others, I had been aware of the sound of voices singing, the distant wail of trumpets, the beating of drums. Echoes from the past. At this moment, seven hundred years before, Atalanta was being put into her tomb as well. But her daughter, tearful at that moment, no doubt, had a full and wonderful life ahead of her.

  * * *

  The great fortress of Taurovinda, its causewayed heights rising steeply from the Plain of MaegCatha, bloody playground of the Battle Crow, seemed to burn with fires of welcome
. Torches in the dusk were waved as signals, and riders came loping across the plain, following the ceremonial way, now marked with new trees and new stones. Manandoun led the party, Ullanna and Kymon close behind, and they spread out through the evergroves, dismounting and running to the river’s edge, where Argo was moored.

  We had to jump from the ship and walk ashore.

  Kymon ran into the water to greet his sister, and the welcoming tussle sent them both sprawling in the shallows. Urtha waded past them, ignoring them completely, his focus on Ullanna; the woman’s smile became sad as Urtha whispered the news of her ancestor’s fate.

  It was only as I was squeezing water from my trousers that I realised Jason and Rubobostes had not followed us; nor indeed had the five of grim demeanour. Jason and the big Dacian leaned on the deck rail, watching the activities ashore. Rubobostes waved a hand in salute to me. It was not like the man to ignore the certainty of a good roast and strong drink.

  ‘We’re going on!’ Jason called. ‘I’ve had enough of this country, though I imply no disrespect for the king and his castle.’

  Niiv, standing beside me—she always seemed to be following in my shadow!—whispered, ‘Mielikki wants to talk to you.’

  I immediately waded back to Argo and climbed the rope ladder to the deck, dropping down to the Spirit of the Ship, Jason following, hunkering down beside me.

  Summer air gusted from another place, and the Northland Lady, young and lean, beckoned me to the shade of the pine tree where she sat, her sleepy lynx at her side.

  ‘Argo is leaving,’ she said. ‘Will you come with her? Or stay here for a while? She can take you back to your path, or to Greek Land, whichever you wish.’

  To Greek Land? I’d thought Argo was tired; Mielikki homesick. She should be sailing north. I put this thought to her.

  ‘She is tired, and I am homesick,’ the goddess agreed. ‘But she has softened her heart to Jason. And there are the other five who must be returned to their own land before they can go back to the tomb. Rubobostes will come with us, and in due course slip away to his own country. Elkavar and Niiv are staying behind. I shall miss her for the while, but I have something to ask you.’