The Bone Forest (Ryhope Wood)

by Robert Holdstock

  They ran along the boar track, passing the thicket with hardly a glance, though they could hear the animal in there, snuffling sleepily. Without thinking they burst into Old Stone Hollow, where the small wooden temple had been built. Caylen stopped, catching his breath in surprise. His intention had been to go to the river, and unthinkingly he had come here. Fergus had just followed blindly, not really wanting to leave his friend, not wanting to think too hard about what was happening.

  It was quite dark, but the moon, a fairly full crescent shining through the thin, wind-blown clouds, gave light enough to show what the stranger had made of his shrine. He had built it high, and wide, and he had built it all about the stone in the centre of the glade. A wide open doorway led to the interior. Inside, on the floor, Caylen could see a small tallow candle burning, its yellow flame hardly enough to show him anything of the interior. The wood of the shrine was fresh hewn, and expertly chopped into thick and lasting planks; it was bright, not yet dulled either by pitch or rain. Nor, yet, was it carved, though it would surely be represented with the symbols of the gods before the stranger was finished.

  Caylen, feeling now that he had little to lose by any action, boldly stepped up to the shrine, and with Fergus following nervously behind, ducked and stepped inside.

  The stone rose from the ground; the floor was still rough grass and the remnants of thorn and nettle. It smelled rich and earthy inside, though near to the door there was the pleasant tang of fresh cut wood, and near to the stone the musty smell of a tomb, the rock and all the grey dust that clung to it exuding an odour that was unmistakable.

  On the stone rested a spear, and Caylen picked up the candle so he could see it better. This, he was quite sure, was what had been in the protective hides. A spear, a precious weapon, which the horn-helmeted man had carried from his land of kings, hiding it from his pursuers, rescuing it, no doubt, from those who would abuse whatever power it contained.

  Unhesitatingly, Caylen picked it up and hefted it; nearly a man’s height in length, it was carved from some dark wood, but lightweight, and the shaft was inscribed with rings and patterns from the very tip of it, to where the wide, leaf-shaped blade was fastened to the wood. The blade was iron, grooved and serrated, and on each side of the central rib there had been scratched an eye. It was the spear not of a warrior, for no warrior’s spear could be so small, but of a child, a child’s weapon, as deadly as any flung on the field of battle; the spear of a prince.

  A hand reached past Caylen and took the weapon from him. He started with shock, gasped and turned to find himself looking up at the heavy features of the stranger, who stood with Fergus gripped firmly in his other hand, the palm stifling any sound his friend would have made.

  Caylen tried to run, but the man used the spear to block his path. Then he let go of Fergus and smiled at them both, raised finger to lip and gently placed the spear back on the stone. He dropped to a crouch, now looking up at Caylen, who was a tall lad. His wild eyes were bright in the candle flame, his teeth gleaming white, his breath sweet as if he had been eating berries. His hands on their arms were strong, gentle. He looked from one to the other, but mostly he looked at Caylen. “Come,” he said. “Tell. Come, tell,” and as he spoke he rose, picked up the spear, and led the way from the shrine. Caylen hesitated only a second before following, and Fergus (with one compulsive grip of Caylen’s hand, the squeeze of reassurance from one who is mortally afraid) also went after the stranger, out into the moonlit night, and into the forest.

  They walked at first, Caylen keeping pace well along the overgrown animal trackways and through the bramble thickets. Fergus straggled a little, but every time they passed through a clearing in the forest he raced after Caylen and caught up, tugging once on Caylen’s shirt to let him know that he was there again. The horned man, his helmet gleaming in the moonlight, paced on, and Caylen sensed he walked faster and faster, his cloak billowing behind him, catching on branches and rose thorns, but always tearing free. Suddenly the man made a sound, like a bird cry, but deep and long. He raised his arms, still walking, and then said a single word, “Follow,” before he began to run.

  Caylen ran too, and Fergus after, and they both watched as the horned man leapt high, then crouched low, twisting and turning as he ran until he became a source of crashing, stumbling, shrieking darkness, his helmet, the metal of his belt and necklet, flashing and glinting in the stray silvery light. His cloak swirled about his body, at times a wing, at other times a flowing robe of darkness, and always he ran, the forest loud with the sound of his noisy progress, and with the laughing and shrieking of the boys who followed.

  Caylen joined the spirit of the wild dance, leaping and twisting himself, and staggering as he landed, struggling to keep his balance. He struck branches and tree trunks, and waved his hands through bracken and fern, and through the tight clumps of flower-covered moss; he felt everything in the forest, letting its night dew soak his clothes and his skin. The horned man jumped higher, touching branches more than twice his height above the ground, and at times, as he ran, Caylen thought he was actually walking through the air. He seemed to leap into the forest sky, and run through the very foliage, before gently landing and spinning around, his arms outstretched, his body whirling in the gloom.

  At length, breathless, they came to the river, and Caylen realised that this was the illusory river that guarded his private haven. The man had led their merry dance in a wide and perfect circle. They were nearly back to the glade, but here he stopped, and reached to brush water across his perspiring face.

  Caylen could almost hear the rushing of the waters, but the sound was on the edge of a waking dream, a distant sound, unreal, unrealised. He looked at Fergus and Fergus smiled brightly, not speaking the words but almost saying that he would still wade across with Caylen the next time Caylen went.

  The stranger had torn a strip of bark from a tree and now he pushed his dagger twice through the wood and made two holes for eyes. This woody mask he held against his face, peering at the boys through the slits. He spoke to them, then, in their own tongue, in perfect language, his voice thrilling them with its texture of sound, soft yet deep, a woodland sound, a wild sound. While he was speaking he kept the mask of bark to obscure his lips from them.

  “Like you, she was young, full of the wonder of life. A girl of looks so fair that she caught every heart, was sought by every king in our king-ridden lands. Her name was Rianna. She was not the daughter of a king, but she was a princess, and it was a king who guarded her when his own soldiers razed her village and killed her kinfolk. A compassionate king, who looked at her, the tender child, and never again raised his army against the land. He built a great stone fort, a great city, and shaped a great people. Rianna was the queen of that people, not in rank, but in heart. No man or woman could tear their gaze away from young Rianna. She was a child born to be a queen, a queen born to be a goddess.

  “But the great land, and the great king, fell to a dark host from the north, men without feeling, men of war. They swept through the hills and took the stone fort, putting to the sword all who were noble born. They chased families into the hills and marshes, subjugated every town that had known this time of peace. This is the way in our land, and it was the king who was wrong, to be unprepared and unwilling for battle. And yet, none of his people condemned him, even though he had betrayed them. One thing kept hope alive. Rianna. Rianna had escaped the butchery, and the conquest, for on the eve of the invasion a man had come out of the night, out of the earth itself, and taken this girl from the fort. He fled with her to safety. She took only her clothes and her childish spear, the weapon fashioned to mark her adoption to the royal line.

  “This is how it ended for her: in a valley, mist-obscured and deep, where not even animals ventured for fear of the emptiness of the place, there went Rianna, carried by the man of earth, that clay man who had come from the grave to take her beyond the savagery of the northern host. But another went there, one of that dark host who knew to
o well the danger of the girl should she return a queen and draw the people to her. He found her, and before her guardian could act he turned her own spear against her, twisted the blade in her heart to ensure the deed was properly done. But the earth one, before she died, had magicked her spirit to the very blade of the spear. Here she lives, and while she lives so the people of her land live in hope. Here is that spear. Here is Rianna. I have brought her to these lands, for safety, to erect a shrine to her, to protect her for the years while the storm passes in our country.”

  The horn-helmeted man ceased to speak, and he moved the mask from his face. Caylen saw the tears there, and watched in silence as he raised the blade of the spear to his lips and kissed it, kissed the iron that had once tasted so bitter with the blood of his young queen. He looked towards the river, then raised the mask again. “This place I saw in a dream. There are other places like it, concealed, guarded. Powerful places. But this is the one that was shown to me.”

  Caylen watched him, curiously disturbed. In the same way that when he stared at the rapids he saw only the calm waters that were the truth of the river, so, as the man had spoken, the flowery, sad words of the story had fallen away. Caylen had been aware of the flowing, rather pleasant tongue that was the stranger’s natural language; he had been aware, too, of starker, less romantic images: a cold, bleak stone fort, a desolate, windswept land, a bloody battle, a complacent warlord, gruesome slaughter, an escape into the night for a screaming, terrified girl, a mercenary sent to kill her, and achieving that end swiftly and brutally.

  Time had passed more swiftly than the reason could accommodate, and Caylen was startled as he heard the first chorus of forest birds, marking their awareness of the dawn. Turning, where he sat, he saw the glow of light in the east, above the trees, above the water. Fergus was sleeping, and Caylen grinned as he saw this. The horned man seemed to smile as well, and Caylen turned to him.

  “Then you claim to be a magician, a man with dark powers, who uses them for good purpose …”

  The stranger inclined his head. From behind the mask he said, “Dark powers? Not I. None save the power to run without stopping.”

  “But why did you come to save her, why ride from the earth? Who were you that you felt the need to save her, to bring her to safety?”

  The horn-helmeted man laughed, but the laugh was bitter, not amused. “You have misunderstood me, young Caylen. I was the man who followed them. I was the man who killed her.’’

  Five men came, like braying hounds, down from the ridgeway and through the glades of the forest until they found the village, following the spoor of the man they pursued. They talked for an hour with Caswallon, but the village was weak in arm when compared to such seasoned soldiers as these. Caswallon spoke firmly with one of the strangers who had a smattering of the village tongue; at no time did he bend to any whim of theirs, but from the outset it was clear that he would not hinder them in their quest. Each of these men was sturdily built, and heavily bearded; long hair, bound back with green linen, was ungreased and fair; they carried round shields on their backs, made of alder and beaten leather, rimmed and studded with iron; they carried fighting spears and throwing darts, and each wore a sword so richly decked and turned with gold and silver on the pommel that there could be no question of their nobility, and their warrior status.

  Caylen saw them as he walked, unsuspecting, from the woods. Even as he turned to run back to the Old Stone Hollow, and the shrine of Rianna, so Caswallon was pointing the way to the glade, and the chase was on.

  The guardian of the shrine heard Caylen coming towards him, through the thickets, along the old boar trail. The boar had gone two nights previously, foraging in some other part of the forest, perhaps tired of the activity in the vicinity. When Caylen burst from the trees, breathless, screaming, the man already had the spear, and was fleeing towards the river.

  The horned man stumbled, and Caylen caught up with him. As he helped the man to his feet the sound of the pursuers was loud, close; they seemed to know every twist, every turn that their prey had taken. They had followed him across two lands and an ocean, and they had not put a step wrong.

  The man staggered to his feet, but his leg was twisted. Wild-eyed, fearful for more than his own life, he thrust the spear at Caylen, pressed it on him, and said to him to run swiftly and cross the illusory river. “It will be safe there, safe with you. Guard her, Caylen. Guard little Rianna, as I have guarded her since I took her life.”

  Caylen turned and fled, the man staggering after him, but slow, now, and crying with the pain.

  Caylen found the river. Clutching the spear he ran through the shallows, emerging cold and wet on the other side. He could hear the sound of children, approaching along the far bank, but all he could see for the moment was his friend Fergus, racing towards him, tears in his eyes.

  Then the horned man came through the trees, cried loud and fell to his knees, his face racked with pain, yet smiling. For a moment he stared at Caylen, met the boy’s gaze and raised his arm towards him. “Rianna,” he cried, and again, and again, until a fair-haired man stepped up behind him and dealt him a blow with his sword that cut through the bone and sinew of his neck. The sound of Rianna’s name died on his lips, spilled to the wind as his dark blood spilled to the earth.

  Caylen ran away from the river, towards the woods, and felt the prickle of fear, fear of the unknown, fear of the magic force that worked here to keep this place of hill and woodland guarded from mortal man. He squatted then, the spear held across his lap, his hand resting lightly on the vibrant, cold metal blade. The hunters prowled up and down the water’s edge, but none ventured to try and cross; all were taken by that vital fear, induced not just by the violent waters, but by the wall of magic that was dazzling their senses.

  They called to him in their strange, flowing tongue, and sometimes they were begging him, and sometimes they were threatening him. Domnorix and four of the village boys were crouched some yards away, afraid to come closer to the strangers. Only Fergus stood with them, watching Caylen through wide, fear-filled eyes.

  Caylen clutched the spear tighter. He was safe here, and so was the memory of Rianna, and he would never go home, never in all his life. He would stay here and hide her, and he knew that when the time was right some man of earth would come for her, to take her home.

  But how could he have forgotten Fergus? Fergus, who had been his friend through the weeks of hatred and the months of pain; the young boy who had counted his friendship with Caylen so high that he had determined to break through his fear of magic, and follow Caylen across the river. “Wait for me!” he cried, and Caylen came to his feet in shock, and with a great cry of, “No, go back! No, Fergus, not now, not now!” he raced to the water’s edge, the spear gripped tightly in his right hand.

  “I’m coming with you,” shouted Fergus, confusion painting panic on his face. He was ankle deep in water. “I said I would come with you, and I shall. I’m not afraid, Caylen, I’m truly not. I shall cross the river and we’ll run together, just like we always said.”

  He came deeper, and the river rose against him. There were tears in his eyes, and the fear on his face grew visibly as he went towards the rapids. Behind him the men who had killed the stranger watched in silence, fearful for the boy’s life, yet puzzled as to the courage of the lad, a courage that made him risk his life in the foulest waters they had ever seen.

  “Oh Fergus, no … you must listen to me. Go back, please! Don’t follow me, don’t give me away … go back!”

  But the boy came on, fear overwhelming reason, courage and the pursuit of honour blinding him to Caylen’s panic, deafening him to the terrible words of his lifelong friend.

  And Caylen saw that soon every man on the bank would know the illusion for what it was, and then there would be no haven for the boy, no place of refuge for the ghost of a girl that might one day spirit the life back into a people as distant and as alien from Caylen as were his own people.

  And yet t
o stop him, to stop him … such a decision, such a tearing of heart and mind, to sacrifice his friend for the sake of freedom. And even then it was not resolved. For how could Caylen save himself except by using that same spear which was a symbol of peace, of compassion, everything that might make a nation great in greater times than these?

  Even as he thought this, the stark images of the stranger’s story became vivid again—the killing, the running, the cold-blooded murder of an hysterical girl by a man paid to do the deed, a man whom remorse, some awareness of the beauty he had killed, had changed from mercenary to guardian. He had run with the spear, creating in his own mind the legend of a supernatural presence in the blade. But there had been no magic, Caylen realised. The spear, a cold, dead weapon, was all that remained of her. It was the horn-helmeted man himself who threatened those who pursued him, a man with a memory that needed obliteration. He was dead now, and the weapon was just a weapon. Whether it was destroyed or not, whatever memory of Rianna remained in that far-off land would be the same. This spear, or another, what mattered were the words that spoke the legend.

  Old enough to grasp this simple truth, Caylen was too young to realize that the illusion of hope was best served by less complex symbols. He flung the spear back to the far shore and watched as the strangers destroyed it. By the time Fergus had waded to the nearer shore, face aglow with triumph, the strangers were gone.

  Caylen turned from his friend and walked quietly away from the river.

  Time of the Tree

  Tundra

  All the signs are that the long winter is coming to an end. The great expanse of tundra, with its strange bluish hue, still shimmers and shivers in the biting winds of early morning. Yet to the south, below the swollen hill with its deep lake, Omphalos, there are signs of green. I am certain that a fresh and vibrant grassland is beginning to spread across the land. From my fixed point of observation it is hard to see so far to the south, but sometimes the cold and stinking winter wind, the stench of the foetid tundra, is replaced by the scent of new meadow and flowers.