Mythago Wood

by Robert Holdstock

  Sorthalan, through his human medium, had told us of his own legend. That marked, more than anything, the power of the man. And yet his powers were limited; he could not achieve what Kushar had achieved. And he, too, seemed to be waiting for me, as the shamiga, as the Knight, and as the Saxon family had been waiting.

  ‘Why is he glad that I’ve come?’ I asked. Now it was Frampton’s turn to mouth the silent words, and a moment later he said aloud,

  ‘The Outlander must be destroyed. It’s an alien thing. It is destroying the woodland.’

  ‘You seem powerful enough to destroy any man,’ I said. Sorthalan smiled and shook his head, answering in his cockney way.

  ‘The legend is clear. It’s the Kin who kills the Outlander – or is killed. Only the Kin.’

  The legend was clear? At last, then, the words had been spoken to confirm my growing suspicion. I had become a part of legend myself. Christian and his brother, the Outlander and his Kin, working through roles laid down by myth, perhaps from the beginnings of time.

  ‘You’ve been waiting for me,’ I said.

  ‘The realm has been waiting,’ Sorthalan said. ‘I wasn’t sure that you were the Kin, but I saw what effect the oak leaf had upon you. I began to will it to be.’

  ‘I’ve been expected.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To fulfil my part of a legend.’

  ‘To do what must be done. To remove the alien from the realm. To take his life. To stop the destruction.’

  ‘Can one simple man be so powerful?’

  Sorthalan laughed, though his mouthpiece remained solemn, saying, ‘The Outlander is not simple, and is not a simple man. He doesn’t belong – ’

  ‘Nor do I – ’

  ‘But you are the Kin. You’re the bright side of the alien. It’s the dark that destroys. He has come so far since the guardian was lured to the edge.’

  ‘Which guardian?’

  ‘The Urshucum. The Urshuca were the oldest of the Outlanders, but they grew close to the earth. The Urshucum you have seen had always guarded the pass to the valley of the flame-talkers, but it was called to the edge. There is a great magic beyond these forests. A voice called. The guardian went, and the heart of the realm was exposed. The Outlander is eating at that heart. Only the Kin can stop him.’

  ‘Or be killed by him.’

  Sorthalan made no comment at that. His piercing grey eyes regarded me narrowly, as if still searching for signs that I was the man to fulfil the myth role.

  I said, ‘But how can the Urshucum have always guarded these – ’ what had he referred to? – ‘flame-talkers. My father created the Urshucum. From here,’ I tapped my head. ‘From his mind. As you have just created this man.’

  Spud Frampton made no response that would have indicated his understanding of my cruel words. He watched me sadly, then spoke as the necromancer directed him. ‘Your father merely summoned the guardian. All that is in the realm has always been here. The Urshucum was summoned to the edge of the realm and changed as Sion had changed it before.’

  This meant nothing to me.

  ‘Who was Sion?’

  ‘A great Lord. A shaman. Lord of Power. He controlled the seasons so that Spring followed Summer, then Summer followed Spring. He could give men the power to fly like kestrels. His voice was so loud that it reached the heavens.’

  ‘And he changed the Urshuca?’

  ‘There were ten minor Lords,’ Sorthalan said. ‘They were afraid of Sion’s spreading power so they came against him. But they were defeated. Sion used magic to transform them into beasts of the wood. He sent them into exile, to a land where the longest winter was just ending. That land was this place, which once had been buried by ice. The ice melted, and the forests returned, and the Urshuca became the guardians of that forest. Sion had given them the power of near immortality. Like trees, the Urshuca grew but did not wither. Each went to a river, or a land valley, and built his castle to guard the way into the newly growing greenwood. They became close to the earth, and were friends of those who came to settle and hunt and live from the land.’

  I asked the obvious question. ‘If the Urshuca were friends of man, why is this one so violent? It’s hunting my brother; it would kill me without thinking if it could catch me.’

  Sorthalan nodded, and Frampton’s lips hardly moved as the words of his creator emerged.

  ‘A people came who had flame-talkers with them. The flame-talkers could control fire. They could make fire jump from the sky. They could point their fingers to the east and the flame would spread to the east. They could spit upon the fire and it would become a glowing ember. The flame-talkers came and began to burn the forests. The Urshuca opposed them violently.’

  The communication stopped for a minute or so as Sorthalan rose to his feet, turned from us, and urinated impressively into the night.

  ‘There were men controlling the fire that night when Christian came,’ Keeton whispered. I had not forgotten them. I had called them Neoliths. They seemed the most primitive of Christian’s entourage, but apparently they had a mind control over fire and flame itself.

  I could well imagine the simple historical basis from which legends of the Urscumug and the flame-talkers had sprung. The vision I had was of a time when the last Ice Age was rapidly declining. The ice had advanced as far as the English Midlands. Over the centuries, as it withdrew, the climate had been cold, the land in the valleys marshy and treacherous, the slopes bare and frozen. The pines had arrived, a sparse fir forest, foreshadowing the great Bavarian forests of our own time. Then the first of the deciduous trees had begun to take root, the elms, the thorns, the hazels, followed by the limes, oaks and ashes, pushing the evergreen forest northwards, creating the dense greenwood cover that partially survived to this day.

  In the dark, empty spaces below the canopy, boars, bears and wolves had run, deer had grazed the glades and glens, emerging occasionally on to the high ridges, where the forest thinned and the bramble and thorn formed bright spinneys.

  But human animals had come back to the greenwood, advancing north into the cold. And they had begun to clear the forest. They had used fire. What a skill it must have been to set a fire, control it, and clear the site for a settlement. And what a greater skill it must have been to have resisted the re-encroachment of the forest.

  There would have been a bitter struggle for survival. The wood was desperate and determined to keep its mastery of the land. Man and his fire had been determined that it should not. The beasts of that primal woodland had become dark forces, dark Gods; the wood itself would have been seen to be sentient, creating ghosts and banshees to send against the puny human invader. Stories of the Urscumug, the forest guardian, had become associated with the fear of strangers, new invaders, speaking other languages, bringing other skills.

  The Outsiders.

  And later, the men who had used fire had become almost deified as ‘flame-talkers’.

  ‘What is the end of the legend of the Outsider?’ I asked Sorthalan as he sat down again. He shrugged, a very modern gesture, and drew his heavy cloak around his shoulders, tying the rough cords at the front. He seemed tired.

  ‘Each Outlander is different,’ he said. ‘The Kinsman will come against him. The outcome cannot be known. It’s not the certainty of success that makes us welcome your presence in the realm. It’s the hope of success. Without you, the realm will wither like a cut flower.’

  ‘Tell me about the girl, then,’ I said. Sorthalan was clearly very tired. Keeton too was restless and yawning. Only the infantryman seemed alert and awake, but his gaze was fixed at some point in the distance, and there was nothing behind his eyes except the controlling presence of the shaman.

  ‘Which girl?’

  ‘Guiwenneth.’

  Sorthalan shrugged again and shook his head. ‘The name is meaningless.’

  What had Kushar called her? I checked my notes.

  Again, Sorthalan shook his head.

  ‘The girl created from love
out of hate,’ I suggested, and this time the necromancer understood.

  He leaned towards me and rested his hand on my knee, saying something aloud in his language, and staring at me quizzically. As if remembering himself, he inclined his head slightly towards the vacant infantryman, whose gaze sharpened.

  ‘The girl is with the Outlander.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, and added, ‘That’s my reason for pursuing him. I want her back.’

  ‘The girl is happy with him.’

  ‘She is not.’

  ‘The girl belongs to him.’

  ‘I don’t accept that. He stole her from me – ’

  Sorthalan reacted with startled surprise. I went on. ‘He stole her from me and I’m going to take her back.’

  ‘She has no life outside the realm,’ Sorthalan said.

  ‘I believe she does. A life with me. She chose that life, and Christian acted against her choice. I don’t intend to own her, or possess her. I just love her. And she loves me, of that I’m sure.’ I leaned closer. ‘Do you know her story?’

  Sorthalan turned away, thinking deeply, evidently disturbed by my revelations.

  I persisted: ‘She was raised by the friends of her father. She was trained in the way of the woods and magic, and trained with weapons too. Am I right? She was kept until she was a woman, guarded by the Night Hunt. She fell in love for the first time and the Night Hunt brought her back to the land of her father, to the valley where he was buried. This much I know. The ghost of her father linked her with the Horned God. This much I know. But what happened then? What happened to the one who loved her?’

  It happened, then, that she fell in love with the son of a chief who was determined to have her. The words of the diary were strong and clear in my mind. But was this version too recent for Sorthalan to recognize the details?

  Suddenly Sorthalan turned sharply on me, and his eyes blazed; through his beard he seemed to be smiling. He was excited, and very positively so. ‘Nothing has happened until it happens,’ he said through Frampton. ‘I had not understood the presence of the girl. Now I do. The task is easier, Kinsman!’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because of what she is,’ said Sorthalan. ‘She has been subdued by the Outlander, but now she is beyond the river. She will not stay with him. She will find the power to escape – ’

  ‘And return to the edge of the wood!’

  ‘No,’ said Sorthalan, shaking his head as Frampton articulated the sound. ‘She will go to the valley. She will go to the white stone, to the place where her father is buried. She will know that it is her only hope for release.’

  ‘But she won’t know how to get there!’ My father’s journal had referred to Guiwenneth’s ‘sadness’ that she could not find the valley which breathed.

  ‘She will run to the fire,’ Sorthalan said. ‘The valley leads to the place where the fire burns. Trust me, Kinsman. Once beyond the river she is closer to her father than she has ever been. She will find the way. You must be there to meet her – and to confront her pursuer!’

  ‘But what happened after that confrontation? The stories must say … !’

  Sorthalan laughed and grasped me by the shoulders, shaking me. ‘In years to come they will say everything. At the moment the story is unfinished.’

  I stood there stupidly. Harry Keeton was shaking his head in a sort of disbelief. Then Sorthalan thought of something else. His gaze went past me and he released me from his powerful grip. Frampton said on his behalf, ‘The three who are following will have to be abandoned.’

  ‘The three who are following?’

  ‘The Outlander gathered a band of men as he devastated the realm. The Kinsman too. But if the girl goes to the valley, there is a better way for you to meet her, and the three must be abandoned for a while.’

  He stepped past me and called into the darkness. Keeton rose to his feet, apprehensive and puzzled. Sorthalan spoke words in his own language and the elementals gathered about us, forming a shimmering bright veil.

  Three figures stepped from the obscurity of night into the glow of the elementals. They walked uncertainly. First came the cavalier, then the Knight. Behind them, his sword and shield held loosely at his side, came the cadaverous form of the man from the stone grave. He kept apart from the other two, a ghastly myth creature, born more from horror than hope.

  ‘You will meet them again, at another time,’ Sorthalan said to me. I kept thinking that I hadn’t even heard them coming down the cliff! But the sensation of being followed was borne out as a genuine awareness and not an irrational fear.

  Whatever passed between the shaman and the warriors, the three men who might have accompanied me in another tale stepped back into the stygian wood and vanished from my sight.

  The consciousness of Billy Frampton returned briefly to the mythago form that sat with us. The infantryman’s eyes lit up a little and he smiled. ‘We should get some kip, mates. It’s going to be a long hike tomorrow, back to the lines. Bit of shut-eye, do us the power of good.’

  ‘Will you be able to guide us inwards?’ Keeton asked his alter-image. ‘Can you lead us to the valley of the white stone?’

  Frampton looked utterly blank. ‘Blimey, mate. What’s all that about? I’ll be bleedin’ glad just to get back to a trench and a nice plate of bully …’

  As he spoke the words he frowned, shivered, and glanced around. That cascade of uncertainty returned to his features, and he began to tremble violently. ‘This ain’t right … ’ he whispered, looking from one to the other of us.

  ‘What isn’t right?’ I asked.

  ‘This whole place. I think I’m dreaming. I can’t hear gunfire. I don’t feel right.’ He rubbed his fingers on his cheeks and chin, like a frozen man rubbing circulation back into his flesh. ‘This just ain’t right,’ he repeated, and looked up into the night sky, at the breeze-blown foliage. I thought tears glistened in his eyes. He smiled. ‘Maybe I’ll pinch meself. Maybe I’m dreaming. I’ll wake up in a little while. That’s it. I’ll wake up and everything will be right again.’

  And with that he tugged at Sorthalan’s cloak and curled up by the shaman, like a child, sleeping.

  For my part, I managed to sleep a little too. So did Keeton, I think. We were woken abruptly, some time before dawn. The riverside was beginning to become visible with the approaching day.

  What had woken us was a sudden, distant shot.

  Sorthalan, hugged in his cloak, was watching us through narrowed, dew-touched eyes. He remained expressionless. There was no sign of Billy Frampton.

  ‘A shot,’ Keeton said.

  ‘Yes. I heard it.’

  ‘My pistol …’

  We looked back towards the place where the Hawks had attacked us, then shrugged off our simple coverings. Chilled and aching from the hard ground, we ran together along the river shore.

  Keeton saw it, and shouted to me. We stood by the tree and stared at his pistol, which was hooked on to a thin branch. Touching it gently, Keeton sniffed the barrel and confirmed that it had just been fired.

  ‘He must have fixed it like that so that it wouldn’t follow him into the river,’ Keeton said. We turned and stared at the flowing waters, but there was no sign of blood or of the infantryman himself.

  ‘He knew,’ Keeton said. ‘He knew what he was. He knew that he had no real life. He ended it in the only honourable way.’

  Maybe I’m dreaming. That’s it. I’ll wake up and everything will be right again.

  I don’t really know why, but for a while I felt inordinately sad, and rather irrationally angry with Sorthalan, who seemed to me to have created a human being simply to be used and expended. The truth of the matter, of course, was that Billy Frampton had been no more real than the ghosts which hovered in the foliage around our camp.

  The Valley

  There was little time available for brooding over Frampton’s death, however. When we got back to the camp, Sorthalan had already rolled up the hides from the camp, and was aboard the
small boat, making preparations to sail.

  I picked up my haversack and spear and waved to the boatman, finding it hard to smile.

  But a hand pushed me forward from behind, and I stumbled towards the river. Keeton had likewise been propelled towards the boat, and Sorthalan shouted a word at us, indicating that we should jump aboard.

  Around us, the elementals were like a perpetual breeze, and the touch of fingers on my face and neck was both disturbing and comforting. Sorthalan extended a hand to help us board, and we hunkered down in the midships, on the rough seats. Symbols and faces had been painted and carved, or simply scratched, all around the inner hull – the marks, perhaps, of the families who had originally sailed with the first boatman. At the prow, peering towards us, was the grimacing face of a bear, its eyes peculiarly slanted, two stubby horns suggesting more of an amalgamation of deity-figures than the simple bear itself.

  Suddenly the sail flapped noisily and unfurled. Sorthalan walked about the boat, tethering the rigging. The vessel rocked once, then spun out into the river, turned about, and went with the flow. The sail billowed and stretched, the ropes creaked and snapped, and the boat listed sharply. Sorthalan stood at the long rudder, his cloak wrapped about him, his gaze fixed now on the deepening gorge ahead of us. A fine spray cut from the water’s surface and cooled our skins. The sun was low and the shadow of the high cliffs was still cast darkly across the surging river. The elementals flowed through the trees, and across the waters ahead of us, making the water ripple with an eerie light.

  At Sorthalan’s instruction, Keeton and I took positions at various rigging stations. We soon learned how to tug and loosen the sail to take full advantage of the dawn winds. The river curved and meandered through the chasm. We skipped over the waters, surging ahead faster than a man could run.

  It grew colder, and I was glad of my oilskin. The landscape around us began to show signs of seasonal change, a darkening of the foliage, then a thinning. It became a cold, late autumnal forest, in a bleak, seemingly endless gorge. The cliff tops were so far above us that few details could be seen, though squinting against the bright sky on several occasions I saw movement up there. Occasionally, great boulders fell heavily and noisily into the river behind us, causing the boat to rock violently. Sorthalan just grinned and shrugged.