The Broken Kings: Book Three of The Merlin Codex

by Robert Holdstock

Munda caught sight of me and made a beckoning gesture; then she and her brother rode quietly along the hidden path across the wild plain, to the evergroves, by the nearest curve of the river Nantosuelta.

  I followed them and found them arguing. There was a fierce debate. Kymon was looking browbeaten and angry. The girl sparkled, her face glowing both with the heat of the dispute and the heat of the ride.

  As I approached between the stones, between the low mounds that covered the dead, I took a moment to watch them from a distance. Kymon paced, a little king, in his hunting colours, short cloak, and tight bronze crown-band. He was not yet allowed to wear a torque, but about his thickening neck he wore a small symbol of Taranis, “Thunder of the Land,” on a bull-leather thread.

  He was growing up fast. He could hardly have been ten years old. Ten in years, yet fifteen in posture and manner. He still wore his hair loose, and had painted small twirls of red on the ends of his lips, to signify the moustache that would soon be his to grow and wear with pride. He loved to hunt, to race, and was adept at the games, maybe not the finest player of ball or board in the fortress, but a young man to be remarked upon.

  He was extremely serious. He had inherited much from his father, Urtha, but not that quiet man’s sense of humour.

  The girl, too, was older than her years. She was not yet—as the High Women so charmingly put it—“in the flow of the moon.” It wouldn’t be long. She copied the clothing and hairstyle of her stepmother, the Scythian huntress Ullanna who had become Urtha’s wife after the death of his beloved Aylamunda. The hairstyle necessitated three long tails, tied at the tips, the central tail being longer than the others. She shaved her temples high and streaked them with ochre. She wore a loose shirt, tied at the waist, a colourful patchwork affair, and calf-length britches, split to the knee. When she shared a meal with her father and stepmother, she wore a pale green dress, more suitable for the girl who would become a High Woman in the family.

  Munda was determined to learn everything about the lore and history of the fortress. But she was first forced to learn five of the champion’s feats before she reached a certain age. In the same way, Kymon was required to learn five of the tasks of Farsight. He was no natural scholar, but had found he could memorise tracts of poetry, and the lineage of kings. He was less successful when it came to medicinal lore; and he refused to dance; he had turned to me for assistance in understanding the deeper movements of the earth itself, the spirit tracks that lie below us and can sometimes be encountered.

  Munda’s first achievement was to steer a chariot and run along its short yoke, calling to the horses to stay running in a straight line. That was a good feat. She had learned spear-play and shield-play. Lately, she had been acquiring the skill of the hunt. And it was from a boar hunt that the band—uthiin entourage and king’s children—had been returning in the wild way. Kymon had a small pig tied to his horse; Munda, a brace of wild fowl, presumably snared as she failed to chase down the other beast. It didn’t matter. These were just the special tasks imposed upon the children of the warlord, and when she did, eventually, manage to turn her pig at bay, and had speared it, she would probably never think of the act again, exactly as Kymon, once he had recited the lines of the epic of the Cornovidi during the time it took for a midwinter moon to move across the night sky, would probably forget every stanza and every declamation that had been forced upon him.

  When Kymon spotted me, he raised a fist before him, eyes blazing. “Merlin! This is a bad encounter. I feel it.”

  “It is not bad at all!” Munda riposted, her hands outstretched. She met my gaze. “The hostels are returning. Why should that be bad? We’ve waited more generations than my grandfather’s to feel the heat from their fires and learn from the men passing through them.”

  “It’s wrong! It’s dangerous,” the youth insisted. He was almost spitting. “It’s the Hostel at the Ford of the Red Shield Riders, Merlin. Ask anyone. That hostel only lets the dead through to our world. Ask anyone. If the dead are coming … we are not yet strong enough.”

  “The dead are not coming,” insisted Munda. She watched me, seeking acknowledgement, perhaps, and was not pleased to see how I frowned. But I didn’t know much about the hostels.

  Kymon shouted, “There is a man there who does not belong in this land. He’s waiting. He calls himself King of Killers.…”

  For the first time I was shocked. The boy saw it and seemed triumphant, a small smile on his face. His sister shook her head dismissively. “There are always ghosts when the hostels surface. We’re taught this. Anyway, it’s only one hostel.…”

  “Two!” I said quietly, and she seemed startled.

  I told them about the Hostel of the Overwhelming Gift.

  “I told you so,” Kymon whispered, more to himself. He gave his sister what the druids called “the grim look.” “I told you. I told you.”

  “How do you know this man was called King of Killers?” I asked them softly.

  There were tears in the girl’s eyes as she looked up at me. Kymon stared at me, too, for the first time, perhaps, a little alarmed himself.

  “He’s a son of Jason,” Munda said in a whisper. “Jason! Your wild friend. But he’s only the shadow of the son. And he’s waiting.”

  “Waiting?”

  She shivered. “For the blood-bone-brother who can release him.”

  “How do you know this?” I asked, knowing full well why she had become suddenly so distressed.

  She crossed her arms over her chest, looked down.

  “I went inside,” she said in a tiny voice. “I broke taboo. I went inside.” She looked up tearfully. “Merlin, it’s not a dreadful place. Not at all. But I should not have gone inside. I’m sorry. What do I tell my father?”

  Her anguish was scorned by her brother, but by look only, not words. That was unfair. If she had broken taboo, then as a king’s daughter she would be obliged to pay tribute of some kind, and sometimes the paying of tribute was a very great hardship.

  But what had she meant by “the blood-bone-brother”?

  I asked Kymon in a whisper what he understood by that expression. He scratched his hairless chin as he stared at me, thoughtful. “I suppose,” he said, “the shadow is the shadow of a man who is still alive.”

  “Yes. I believe you’re right.”

  Thesokorus! Jason’s eldest son, a young man displaced in time, who had taken the name Orgetorix, “King of Killers” (sometimes: “King among Killers”) and who had tried to kill his own father under the menacing influence of his mother, Medea. The ghost of Thesokorus! Was the flesh-and-blood son himself in the land? If so, it could only mean that he was searching for his father, Jason.

  There was more than a storm of heavenly proportions gathering around these westernmost lands of the Cornovidi. Something darker was about to break loose.

  I consoled Munda by promising that I would speak to Urtha in her behalf, and accept the burden of any reprisal. The girl seemed astonished at the offer and I reminded her that I was an outsider in the fortress, a man who walked a different path to her and to her kin, and that Urtha was deeply in my debt for saving his life on numerous occasions.

  Kymon snorted disparagingly. “On one occasion! Don’t brag. One occasion only. I’ve heard my father talk of your time with him.”

  “One occasion still lends itself to a favour, to a kingly favour. Don’t you agree?”

  He shrugged, nodding grudgingly.

  “What’s the matter with you, lad? Why are you behaving as if you’ve been wolf-bitten?”

  His look was sharp, angry. The wolf-bite had struck him in his pride. His words were as sharp as his look. “My name is Kymon. I’m the king’s son! You should remember that! The manner of your question is not appropriate.”

  “Yes, you are. You are indeed the king’s son. And I’m the king’s friend.”

  “No friend of a king is closer than a king’s son. The manner of your question is not appropriate.”

  His glare was fu
rious. He was hiding more than just a childish need to be addressed as a man. I was curious. I would have taken a quick look into that aura of ferocity, to see the demons that harassed him, but I wanted to grow along with this fretting, fierce-tempered youth. One day he would lead the Cornovidi; and one day, when he was older than me, he would probably have need to call on me: Merlin; Antiokus; the man of a hundred names; the unchanging man in his life, and a greater friend to him than his closest foster brother.

  If my long experience was anything to go by, he would soon find that to be the son of a king would make him no friend of his father!

  “I’ve asked you a simple question,” I said quietly. “What is the matter between us?”

  He gave me the “hound’s eye”: narrowed, menacing. “I don’t trust you. That is the matter between us. That is all of it. My father ages; you don’t. My sister turns to you when she should be turning to my father. I find that a strange turn of events. In short, I repeat: I don’t trust you. You are compromising us.”

  Munda stared at me. Her brother’s words had shocked her into a colder state of mind. She watched me cautiously. How easily a brother could influence a sister!

  I was not compromising anyone, but I was not certain of my place in these young adventurers’ hearts. I took the only option available, short of using charm and thus truly betraying my relationship with them, and answered, “You have always known I come from a different time, a different world. How is it that you had the wits to understand that as children, yet now, as youths, you deny your own memory?”

  “I have heard the older men speak about you,” the proud boy declaimed. “You could do wonderful things for our family and our clan. Yet you refuse to use the ten charms because it weakens you. You put yourself above the needs of others.”

  It was true. He was absolutely right.

  I had never denied the fact that I harboured my skills carefully—the use of enchantment, of what he called the ten charms, is the only way that I seem to age—and I rationed my talents very carefully indeed. But I was disturbed that “older men were speaking of me.” It suggested a growing resentment. Even that was curious, however, since for a very long time now there had been nothing but contentment in the fortress, nothing but the normal round of trophy-raiding, cattle-raiding, horse-rearing, competition, hunting, and the Three Delights of the Feast: the making of “laughter, love, and the young.” Also known as the Three Exhausting Desires.

  I would ask Urtha about this, but the question would be raised in due course, not at once.

  I was intrigued by this sudden rising of the hostels. I had questions to ask. And the druid Cathabach, Urtha’s close friend and Speaker for Kings, would be certain to have an understanding of what was happening. He would have answers.

  Cathabach had been born to the priesthood, but had renounced his courses of learning and training after an incident in his youth—he never spoke about it—and become a member of Urtha’s elite warrior entourage, the uthiin. As a champion, he was among the best. But after nineteen years he had cut through the marks on his body that showed his champion’s status. He had taken up the hazel staff and the cloak-of-dreams. He had become an oak man, not so much a priest as a visionary and a rememberer. He was now in an intimate, moon-driven relationship with the High Woman Rianata, though they were forbidden from allowing their offspring to survive at birth, should a birth occur.

  Cathabach guarded the orchard that lay at the heart of Taurovinda. Protected by a high fence of thorn and clay, it contained the burial shafts of kings and queens, the relics of the first builders of Taurovinda, as well as a multitude of sour-apple trees, hawthorn and hazel scrub and thickets of tiny oaks, their trunks and branches laden with bright green moss. Two men were appointed gardeners of this area, both mute. Cathabach lived just inside the enclosure, in a small shelter, but was frequently to be found standing, staring at the sky, just outside the gate.

  He carried a short, highly polished, well-honed sword, the instrument of sacrifice and vengeance, and he was strong and determined enough to use it. Even if Urtha himself tried to enter the orchard, he would use it. Cathabach was entitled to kill even a king, should he attempt to enter the sanctuary grove outside of the allowed days or nights.

  And he would kill me, too. (He would fail, of course.) But he and I had a certain understanding; nothing more than sharing the experience of being reckless in our younger days (though my own younger days had lasted several millennia), and the simple pleasure of being able to talk about a greater, wider world of nature and secret than our noble compatriots who inhabited the hill fort so briefly, causing havoc and hilarity with their mayfly spirits.

  Cathabach was a friend of the mind as well as of the heart.

  I found him, surly as ever, leaning on his staff. He was waiting for me, watching me without expression. As I entered the outer enclosure, he stepped back into the orchard, inviting me to follow him. As soon as I was inside the grove, he closed the heavy gate. The apples were in blossom; the ground was a carpet of flowers. The long briars of the berry bushes were all tied into shapes, waiting for the fruit to form. The gnarly oaks spread wide canopies, making shade and shelter in the thickets. It was a wood for crouching, but we descended into a dell, away from the sun, and in doing so came to the small hut that was Cathabach’s resting place. No wider than a tall man, no higher than the same, it contained a circular wooden bench, was hung with wolf-skins and the desiccated remains of crows. It had no hearth, no fire. It was empty of convenience. It was the sitting place of a man who came here for no other purpose than to rest after his thoughts, after the telling of the ritual of the kings, after all the ceremonies that the Speaker for Kings was required to conduct.

  It smelled of the man’s sweat, and the unmistakable odour of animal fat that had been burned, though not in the hut; it was burned fat that he had used on his body.

  It was a home from home: my wanderer’s cave, only slightly less spartan.

  “I’m aware that the hostels are rising again,” he said without preamble. “Tell me what the king’s children have experienced. And those other two idiots.”

  I told him everything I knew.

  When he had thought for a while, he told me about the hostels.

  “When I was training, during those eighteen years I learned that there are many rivers, such as Nantosuelta, that carve the land between men and the dead. We think of Nantosuelta as the greatest, but there is no great and no small: all the rivers are connected through what you’ve told me you call a ‘hollowing.’”

  I had told him a great deal about my life walking the Path around the world.

  “The ways under. Yes. I move through them all the time. The rivers flowing there are very strange, mostly very dangerous. But I’d never encountered tales of the hostels before coming to Alba.”

  He seemed surprised by that, frowning and thinking hard for a moment before continuing, “According to the Declamations of Wisdom, which we learn in the groves, every one of those rivers has five hostels, though they are dedicated in different and incomprehensible ways according to the people who live along their eastern banks. One part of the Declamation suggests that each hostel hides the heart of a broken king. Some of them are welcoming, some not. All of them are full of rooms, some full of traps, all of them potentially deadly. Most of the rooms are empty, or appear to be. Others open into one of the Seven Wildernesses.”

  “And the Dead have their own hostels. And the Unborn theirs. And they rise at the fords where these ghosts cross the river. Is that right?”

  “Yes. Ours are the Hostel of the Overwhelming Gift; the Hostel of the Red Shield Riders; the Hostel of the Bier of Spears; the Hostel of the Miscast Spear; and the Chariot Hostel of Balor.”

  “The Dead and the Unborn cross between worlds when there are no hostels present. So what does this rising mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And which are the dangerous ones?”

  “Balor and Red Riders, certainly. An
d one of the others. But if I remember correctly: all hostels can be compromised. Something greater is happening than the raid of a few summers ago.”

  The raid of a few summers ago. The forces of the Otherworld had scoured Taurovinda and possessed it in its entirety: killed the king’s wife and youngest son; sent the king’s other son and daughter into hiding; destroyed the land, and occupied Taurovinda until forcibly removed by young Kymon and his father, with just a little help from an underworld bull … and a young-old traveller of the Path around the world.

  If that had been just a raid, what was brewing now?

  Cathabach’s concern and ignorance of potential events showed in his creased face. I noticed he was stroking one of the purple tattoos that adorned his body: it was the one over his throat, which showed two salmon leaping. The salmon: spirit of Wisdom.

  Cathabach—absent of wisdom at the moment—was unthinkingly summoning the spirit of an older memory.

  Chapter Four

  Battle Arm and the Strong Shield

  Not for the first time, either here in Taurovinda or in the past, I found myself at the centre of events, both searching and diplomatic. Munda had led her grey colt quietly through the gates and retired to the women’s quarters, to wait in silent vigil until her father summoned her after I had spoken to him. Kymon was still somewhere by the river, exercising his right as the king’s son to prowl the evergroves (his ancestors were buried there, after all) and—when I took a quick look at him through the eyes of a wren, hopping from branch to branch of a willow—I saw him staring moodily at the flow of Nantosuelta. Fish were shoaling, taking insects; dusk was falling, and the riverside was alive with feeding. The young man was feeding only on his angry thoughts, however.

  Urtha himself, and his uthiin, were still somewhere to the south, hunting the thick forests for deer, wild pigs—even wild horses, which sometimes could be found in the glades. They would certainly be looking for meat, but as likely were also taking the chance to assess the strength of the clans that lived beyond the woods. There had been too many reports of small bands of armed hunters being seen along the banks of the several rivers that flowed south from Urtha’s stronghold.