by Mike Ashley
The reliable source, of course, was the local enchanter, adept at illusion, a woman of great strength, sly look, and an adept at finding uses for the useless, such as the leaves of oak, which seem to me to have no power at all. I forget the woman’s name (she inhabited a sea cave, or so she said). And of course, the nature of the child at birth and the so-called first word, were an illusion, part of her own ruse to gain more authority in the fortress of the King.
Gorlodubnus, as witless in certain ways as my own dear Uverian, had fallen for it, spear, shield and leather britches.
Nevertheless, Grainne’s beauty, as I say, was not in dispute, nor her own prowess on the straw-filled palliasse, and I could well understand Uverian’s lustful longing; my failure as any sort of adviser was in not explaining to him that it was all in the anticipation; that the reality would be a swiftly swivelling focus of his wretched single eye towards some other young and unattainable beauty, immediately after the conquest.
The great test of a true enchanter is to know when to predict well, when to predict nothing (looking suitably humble at the failure of vision rather than amused at the vision one has experienced), when to advise because one can support that advice. When to keep quiet!
I kept quiet.
Gorlodubnus had built a vast stone maze in the centre of his cliff-top stronghold. At the heart of the maze was a garden, a house, and a temple, all of them exquisitely appointed, all of them to service the needs and pleasures of Grainne, his Queen.3 Only children were allowed into the maze, and only a few of them found their way to the garden, and to the company of the Queen herself.
Any adult man found inside the stone walls was strapped to his horse and sent galloping across the forested hills, his head tied to the horse’s rump. Any woman found inside, without Grainne’s express approval, discovered the perils of flight from the top of the sea cliff.
It was this very natural protectiveness that Uverian was determined to subvert, by penetrating the maze in the body of a child and seducing the fair Grainne in disguise.
All of what I have told you had occurred in the privacy of Uverian’s private room in the long hall, his knights having been sent away out of the sight of eyes, if not the sound of ears. Hungry now, Uverian called for simple food, and four of his men came in, crouching around the Bacchus table, watching me suspiciously, talking quietly about horses, raids, the collapse of the stronghold’s walls where rain had weakened the earth, the reported sight of the great god Llug at dawn, sailing down the nearby river, golden-helmeted and distant-visioned.
If the latter experience had in fact been true, then it would suggest a second charmer in the region. I had detected no such presence, but then I had been dancing, and by dancing had closed the world around me.
Nevertheless . . . a vision of Llug, Uverian’s discovery of me through the veil of forest darkness . . . if another charmer was around, and was helping the Bastard Dragon, then several things could be explained: but not necessarily his reasons for needing me and not the other!
Who was spying on me?
The food, when it came, was in a wide copper bowl filled to overflowing with the roasted cuts of fowl, swan and pig. The aroma was as haunting as any I had experienced and I, like the knights, scrabbled for the richest meat, chewing down to the succulence close to the hot bones, sucking the marrow then teasing the dogs – also allowed to enter the room – by waving the scraps at them.
These dogs were typical of Uverian’s possessions, doing nothing until they were told, bolting scraps thrown to them, but never daring to approach the Bacchus table and the diminishing dish of bloody flesh.
All the while the Chief Dragon watched me, even when he wiped the fat from his beard, even when he cracked the bone. Eventually he sat back and called for drink. His two daughters brought elegant clay flagons for the knights and their father, a tall copper flask of honeyed ale, and an exquisite glass cup for me.
“Pick it up,” Uverian commanded and I did so without hesitation. Two layers of fine, crystalline glass enclosed scenes, inscribed on the inside of the glass itself, of strange animals, dancing women, and the enjoyment of Avilion, or however the world of Bright Shadows – the otherworld – was envisioned by foreign Kings. It was a world contained within the very translucency of the cup and I drank the sweet ale from it with heightened pleasure.
“What do you think of the glass?”
“Radiant,” I said. “Remarkable.”
“Clever bastards, those Romans. Could you make such a cup?”
He was always trying it on! He wanted me to say yes, then he would test me, either by asking for such a cup to be made anew, or by suggesting that I was insulting something that had been given to him by the gods. I knew instinctively that this was a cup from some trader, and was originally part of the spoils from a skirmish against an elegant settlement of the forgotten Roman people. I also knew that I could echo this cup in no more than a day, but that is all I could do. A piece of beauty, like this, was the work of a craftsman, and an enchanter is no craftsman of that ilk. We can copy, mimic, give short life in illusion; but in no way could I summon such beauty without foreknowing it.
“Could I make such a cup? I wouldn’t want to. I’m glad enough of the one already made.”
Uverian looked disgruntled by my simple answer.
“It came from Verulamium.4 It was dug out of the ashes of the fire by a dog, a great red-furred dog, which carried it from the east to these hills and left it at the gates of the fort. Who do you think was in that dog. Eh?”
I could think of several answers to this question: The great god Llug – marking Uverian as someone special. Uverian himself – flattery; Grainne, the answer I suspected he wanted. I said teasingly, “From before Rome, a hero, a man of great courage, red of hair, who touched the shores of this land more than twenty of your father’s lifetimes ago—” (what a satisfying frown on the Bastard Dragon’s face as he tried to work out the figure!) “—and marked the site of a great stronghold, possibly this one.”
Uverian and his knights leaned towards me, gape-mouthed, grease-stained, wide-eyed, eager to hear account of their favourite subject, the forgotten hero, the hidden land.
“Do you have a name for this man?”
“Not yet. Give me time.”
Time to think a bit, to work out a good story.
“The cup is yours, you young-old man.” Said with sincerity and just a hint of sarcasm.
Astonished – the glass was of great value, a very rare possession – I could only say, “Thank you. I shall treasure it.”
“Now come and sit beside me.”
I moved around the knights and sat awkwardly beside the marrowbone chair. As I reached for more mead, it was Uverian himself who refilled the cup for me, and I drank the sweet brew, aware of the cool, smooth glass and the echoes of the past that imbued the inner world of dancers and strange beasts, caught between the crystal layers.
Eventually the knights lay down, ludicrously in the Roman style, stretched around the Bacchus table, and fell gently into the sleep of war, hands caressing the horn-carved heroes on their iron knives, their faces, behind the beards, like children; children dreaming of midwinter fire.
“Can you make me what I need? A handsome boy child, sturdy, vital, innocent enough to enter the maze, witty enough to find the key to the maze, to get to the heart of the stone wall and its precious secret, eloquent enough to strip the lady, to tumble on the straw with her, to kick leg with her, press belly to belly, to turn her over, backside up; to lick the salt from her. Can you do it? Can you do it?”
I looked up at Uverian and saw that his doubts now fed his lust, desperation brewing a heady mix of anxiousness and guilelessness. I spoke without hesitation.
“No.”
“No?” he roared.
“No.”
“I don’t accept no.”
“No is all I offer.”
“You can offer more than that. Give me back the cup.”
“The cup i
s mine. Take it back at your peril.”
“Horse’s breath! The cup is worth a champion’s head.”
“I know. And it’s mine. You gave it to me. I can’t do what you ask, not under the terms you impose upon the deed.”
“So the no is not wholehearted . . . ?”
“It’s a qualified no. Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Qualified by what?”
“By the nature of your intentions. By what you want to achieve. I can make the child, but the child cannot make the Queen. Do you have no idea at all how fornication is practised?”
He rightly slapped my face, but I held the glass before me, licking its cool surface, reminding him with my impertinence of the red-haired hero who had carried the cup in antiquity. (An idea was beginning to form to embellish my account.) He frowned, curious, irritated, then pacified.
“I know everything about fornication.”
“I’m sure you do.”
He stared at me hard. He was wondering if he was missing something. I laughed and said lightly, “Truly! You do! You know everything you need to know.”
And before he had time to think on those words, I added, “But an infantasm cannot do the bidding you request.”
“Then give me another idea.”
I outlined to him, then, what I believed quite truly was the perfect way for Uverian, Dragon Lord of the Ordovices, to enter the stronghold and the stone maze of Gorlodubnus, Seagull Shit and weed-brained lord of Castle Tintagel, husband of Grainne, owner of sea, cliff and rank moorland in the western extremities of a vile and valueless country so steeped in lore and mist and hazard, that not even the forgotten Romans had bothered to march its hunt-trails.
But if he wanted to go there, I could get him there.
“I will form you. The effect will last long enough for your long ride in, your long ride there! Your long ride out. I will make you look like the Seagull Bastard himself.”
“Who?”
“Gorlodubnus.”
“Gorlodubnus?”
“Exactly. Set up a raid on his eastern border. While he’s away fighting, you enter the maze.”
Uverian was staring at me, a man watching a moron, head shaking. I felt a prickle of discomfort. He clearly was about to explode, but I pressed on.
“You appear as Gorlobdubnus, but it seems you have been wounded. And so, you have returned from the skirmish. You perform the dance of healing on the naked, nubile Grainne.” I winked at him. He stared at me blankly. “You shred straw mattresses; you crack roof poles. You tear wool blankets. You muddy your backs until you are both the colour of earth.” (I knew the Bastard Dragon’s taste for romping in the dirt.) “Then you leave, and no one will be the wiser. It’s foolproof.”
His hands gripped my throat, shook the fool; his teeth (well kept, I thought, as they ground and gnashed in my eyesight) bit back the words I should always have remembered.
“She! Doesn’t! Like! Her! Bastard! Husband!”
With my various lives gathering in my vision as death began to throw them out, urging me to use charm to escape the murderous grasp, I tried to think of some way to convince the Irate Dragon that actually Grainne liked her husband very much indeed, so much, in fact, that when he was away she had certain of the younger knights dress in his clothes, talk in his voice, and come and pay attention to her, kicking legs, shredding straw mattresses etc.
How could one man, one warlord, one magnificent fighter, a strategist of immense cunning, the inheritor of Roman wisdom, the practitioner of a Rule of Law so carefully conceived, so considerate in its aims, that all who lived within a horn’s call, or a fire’s call of his fort, respected and felt safe under the raised hand, sword and shield of its perpetrator (even bowing to the leather britches as he rode by on horseback, hence his affectionate nickname) . . . how could this great man be possessed of such ignorance in the way of love?
If all he wished was to mount the mare, if he desired no more than simple gratification, then he need do no more than imitate the enemy. Good Mabon! how many times had he imitated the enemy on the field of slaughter, tricking them into submission and thus bringing them to the moment of single combat, lopping head and leaving with bloody, bearded honour gaping from his spear point?
Imitate the enemy!
But he wouldn’t hear of it.
“Infantasm!” he bellowed. “If nothing else, I’ll at least get to see her. You can put sight in such a creation. Can’t you? I’ll be able to see, to touch, to rest in her arms . . .”
“If she touches you. Yes.”
“Llug’s Balls! Do it, then. Tell me what you need for the magic. I have to see her.”
Wearily, I took my glass treasure and went away to think.
It’s so very hard working with great men.
I shall spare the full details of the fabrication.
Like cooking over an open fire, the use of magic depends very much on inspiration, chance, and experimenting with ingredients for an unusual end effect.
In other words, I can’t now remember precisely what I did.
Uverian had built a stone and wood lodge for me, well away from the forges and tanneries, and away from the sound of children. It was comfortable enough, with curtains to soften the cold of the stone walls, a rush-mat floor, covered with rugs, and a table shaped from the local, blue-tinged stone that he knew spoke to my senses. Food came by the dishful, despite my insistence that I needed to fast. Two of his horsethugs had been deputized to be my running hounds and do my slightest bidding, and they fetched me the creatures, plants, clays and bones that I needed, never showing disgruntlement until they had left my presence, at which point they exploded with oath and obscenity, cursing Uverian’s as yet undug grave for being made to fetch vegetables for a crazy youth!
For the infantasm itself I drew on the memory of a boy from the Labyrinth that had once sprawled below an island in the southern sea.5 I had visited the place twice, first in the long-long-gone, when the earth itself was still being burrowed to shape the maze, then later when a king had constructed a megalithic tomb to contain the subterranean passageways. Here, he had imprisoned a man-bull, claimed by his enemies to be his son. The Labyrinth was cunningly hidden in the centre of the island. False echoes – imitations of the maze – were built in the north and south of the land, though only that in the north remains now.
To run the infantasm through the maze that protected Grainne, I had to give it the instinct to seek beyond the shadows, to make sight into smell and heat into touch. And thus the boy took shape, a dear thing as he grew, his skin tanned, his eyes dark, his hair a mass of tight black curls. He was cheeky, this one, always slipping out of the lodge to play with the other children; because he was a stranger to them, he often got into fights, but his bruises healed as fast as he grew, which was as fast as a spring flower. To give him the wit he needed I sacrificed wit of my own, and felt increasingly angry at my complacent acceptance of Uverian’s command.
When the child of time could have passed easily for a grown boy, though not yet a man, I sent him to sleep, then summoned Uverian to give his blood, his skin, his kiss, his tears . . . other things . . . to the charming vehicle of his passion.
“She’ll adore him,” Uverian announced, staring down at the lad as he staunched the blood from his arm. “You look very thin,” he added, staring at me in genuine concern.
“It’s a hard business,” I said. “I warned you. There is a lot of my own spirit in this boy as well as yours, as well as Time’s.”
And I want it back.
“How long will he live?”
“As many years as I give him,” I murmured, and a shiver passed through me, not because of the lie involved – I had limited control over the lifespan of any illusion or fabrication – but because the boy was so beautiful, and would have to be killed so brutally. The more life I gave the infantasm, the less life would remain to me. I had no intention of letting Minoxus, as we had named him, see out a full cy
cle of seasons, but I could anticipate all too easily the sorrow of returning him to the earth.
It was time to go, and we crossed the water to a landing place in the territory of the Durotriges, who were insular and unwelcoming, but more inclined to help us on our way than challenge us. By sailing to this sandy bay we had saved fourteen days or more riding round the wide inlet of the sea into the land of Albion. Now we faced a ride of similar duration to the west, through forested valley and over stinking moorland, ancient territory that would welcome us with all the enthusiasm of a cygnet welcoming the eagle.
Before too long we were lost, and though all four of Uverian’s retinue scoured the animal tracks and hunter’s trails for a way through the tanglewood, we eventually gathered near grey rocks, in an unnatural clearing, completely adrift in the forest.
Minoxus rode suddenly through the greenwood, laughing at us, calling to us, and we followed him round the twisting trails, watching his small form bent to the side of his horse as he studied the ground, brushed at low branches, and eventually brought us to the open road, where the impressions of chariot wheels, and the broader wheels of carts, told us that this was a thoroughfare to the west and east.
How easily my maze-reader had read the labyrinth of the forest. Could I have done it myself? Perhaps. But with Minoxus carrying a part of my spirit, and part of Uverian’s, a brief life in full, abundant vibrancy, it seemed easier to let the natural talents of the youth guide us to safety.
“I feel I know this forest,” the boy said to me as we crouched, comfortable, around the fire that night. “I can see the patterns. I see how the tracks of hare, pig and deer mix and mingle. I see how there are ways in and ways out of every thicket. The tracks themselves are full of signs of who has been here, where they’ve come from. I feel at home here.”