A Quantum Mythology

by Gavin G. Smith

  15

  Ancient Britain

  Everything sickened with life. It was the opposite of what they thought they wanted. It was a corruption of the order of the gods. Things moved that shouldn’t move. Creature merged and fused with creature in a perversion and a mockery of the hated gods of birth and life. It was as if the principles of the male magic of iron and the forge had fused with the principles of the female magic of birth and life. Even as they made it back to the Plain of the Dead, Ysgawyn knew that his dreams of ruling part of Annwn, the land of the dead, had been shattered. He had prayed and sacrificed for a quiet, chill place, a kingdom of fear where his will was paramount. That dream was over, because even here on the plain, in the borderlands between the two worlds of the living and the dead, the sickness of fecund, unrestrained life still threatened.

  They had ridden hard, fleeing the monstrosities emerging from the sea between the three islands. Riding west back to their mound homes. Even the horses blessed by Crom Dhubh, those he had turned into white, Otherworldly steeds with red eyes, were pressed to their limits. Their flanks were soaked with salt sweat, panting for breath when they risked slowing their gallop.

  Some of the weaker ones had succumbed to the sickness of life, and their skins had started to slough off as they sank into their mounts, fusing with them. Others developed screaming mouths in their flesh or vestigial limbs. Where possible, the other members of the tribe killed them and left them where they fell. No burial, no ritual, no words said.

  ‘We need to rest,’ Gwynn said. He was one of the seven remaining warriors from the original warband. Ysgawyn was beyond speech. He simply nodded and slipped down from his horse. His knees came close to buckling, but he managed to stagger back to his feet.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Brys, the only remaining greybeard. He had been a close friend of Gwydion’s, before their old warmaster was killed during the battle on the causeway. Ysgawyn closed his eyes. He did not want to look. This was home, that was enough. He could bear no more. The sacrificers could wall them in their tombs, inscribe wards sacred to Arawn on the stone and leave him there, for all he cared.

  ‘People,’ Gwynn said, and even as tired as the young warrior was, Ysgawyn could hear the surprise in his voice.

  His head nodded forward tiredly as he forced himself to look at the plain. The full moon cast long shadows of the figures lurching towards them, emaciated to the point of skeletal.

  ‘Unless they have something very compelling to say, kill them,’ Ysgawyn managed, slurring only slightly. He heard the satisfying noise of iron sliding from leather. He drew his own sword, though he barely felt strong enough to hold it. He forced himself to walk to where his men stood. He counted about thirty of the emaciated shadows staggering across the plain towards them.

  ‘Ysgawyn,’ Brys said quietly. The rhi turned to look at the greybeard. The big, once powerfully built man looked gaunt and haggard. Worse, he looked afraid. ‘I think one of them just came out of a mound.’

  Ysgawyn turned back to the figures lurching towards them, suspicion mounting with fear.

  ‘If they have trespassed, they must fall. Gwynn – a casting spear.’

  Gwynn was the youngest among them and still had the strength to throw one of the light casting spears. It caught the closest figure in the ribs. The sound that echoed across the plain was wrong. It did not sound like a spearhead sinking into flesh. All eyes turned to Ysgawyn. Ysgawyn closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He opened his eyes and slowly, tiredly, took his limed, leather-covered oak shield from his saddle before walking out onto the plain ahead of his watching men. He made his way towards the closest one with a vigour and an air of courage he did not feel.

  ‘Do you trespass in these borderlands because you wish to travel to Annwn?’ he managed to demand. ‘Know that you will do so as our slaves.’

  There was no answer. For the first time, the quiet of the plain bothered Ysgawyn. He moved closer to the figure. There was movement, some kind of slithering around the man’s legs, and pale metal glinted in the moonlight. The skeletal form was wearing arm and neck torcs and its eyes were black holes. Its desiccated skin was limed in the style of the Corpse People. It reached out a bony hand for Ysgawyn. The rhi of the Corpse People was appalled to see something move around the arm and push under the cracking skin, fattening up the limb before returning the arm to more normal proportions. Ysgawyn realised there was also movement in the thing’s rib cage. It looked like hanging, bloody, soil-covered fruit, more rudimentary than the internal organs he had seen before in the split-open battle wounded and the dead. As the figure moved, it had to pull at its leg to separate it from the earth, yanking dirt up with each step. The dirt flowed like liquid as it climbed the thing’s leg.

  Ysgawyn swallowed hard. Dead skin fell from the thing’s face like snow, but not before he recognised the figure reaching for him. He did not soil himself because he had eaten so little, but he did piss himself as his long-dead father reached out for him. He swung wildly with his sword. He heard dry bones crack. It did not feel like he had hit flesh.

  ‘Run! Run!’ he screamed.

  Tangwen was younger, but not much younger. She was still a hunter for her tribe, but her face didn’t hurt all the time, or make her want to weep when she caught its reflection in the water. She was sitting in the crystal cave on the ground, looking up at Father on his wooden chair.

  They kept Father secret, and his magics hid him from insane gods. She was, however, only slightly aware of how unnatural many other tribes would find his serpentine appearance.

  Here, on the floor, was a good place. This was where he told stories of long ago and places far away. He said that the land was vast, and round like an apple, and filled with many wondrous people, creatures and things. They knew he made these stories up to amuse the children. What he spoke of simply wasn’t possible, even with the mightiest of magics, but she had always liked the stories anyway.

  She was not, however, here for stories.

  ‘Daughter, I am so sorry, what I do this night is wrong. I swore I would never invade the mind of one of your people, but this is too important.’

  ‘There is nothing I would hide from you,’ she said. Too late she thought of her weakness, her hesitation at the wicker man. She thought about the boy that Britha had killed. The one they rescued from the Corpse People. She turned away from Father. She felt the familiar, gentle touch of cold, dry, scaled, clawed hands against the skin of her face. Then they faded. She looked up and saw him shimmer. The cave started to disappear, but then it returned.

  ‘It’s all right, child. I do not judge. I sing the mindsong to the blood we share as you sleep, but the magics are weak. We do not have long.’

  ‘We are coming back. I have people with me. More than died fighting the Lochlannach, but some will return to their own tribes—’

  ‘No, you must not return here,’ Father told her. She could hear the hiss in his words now. She heard it rarely, and it had always frightened her. It meant he was agitated, and she was used to him being the calm centre of her tribe’s life.

  I have to return, she thought. Being told not to come home made her want to weep so much. She missed the marshes and the swamps, her close family and her larger family. She had done enough. She wanted to go home.

  ‘The family are leaving, going west across the sea to Gaul. The Muileartach’s womb has burst and spilled out poisoned life fathered by the Dark Man. We cannot stand against this. We must run. Ynys Prydain is lost.’

  ‘We can fight this—’ Tangwen began, though war with the monstrous things she had witnessed was the last thing she wanted. She just wanted to rest.

  ‘We do not have the magics,’ Father said sadly.

  ‘But we fought the Lochlannach, and we beat them!’

  ‘Your friends – Britha, Fachtna, Teardrop – they could fight this poisoned tide, but they are too few—’
/>   ‘And they are gone,’ she said sadly.

  ‘Their weapons?’

  ‘Gone. But you have their magics, we have drunk of your blood, soaked our arrowheads and speartips in it.’

  ‘They had the blood of the Muileartach, and the magics of the Ubh Blaosc, though I do not know that name. I am weak by comparison. Some of your blood on your weapons might help, but it would need to be replenished so often that it would never be enough.’

  ‘I heal quickly!’

  ‘Because of that same blood. You would heal more slowly if you were to do this.’

  ‘Do I need a ritual? The help of the dryw?’ she asked, thinking back to the ritual Teardrop had performed on the Crown of Andraste when she thought Britha and Fachtna were dead.

  ‘No, daughter. No ritual. The magic is in the blood. Just think on what you want it to do before you cut yourself.’

  ‘There must be other magics powerful enough.’

  She saw him hesitate. She could tell he was trying to hide something from her. For all that people said of serpents, Father had always been a bad liar.

  ‘Please,’ she said.

  ‘Only the Lochlannach have magics powerful enough.’

  She felt her heart sink. ‘Kush’s axe?’

  ‘He is but one man,’ he finally said. ‘There is no hope for this land. Take your people north and then make for the coast. Go to Gaul and meet your family there.’

  She realised what was wrong with what he had said.

  ‘And you will travel with them?’ she demanded, feeling the tears come, knowing the answer.

  ‘I cannot leave this place—’

  ‘I will come back for you—’

  ‘No! I forbid it!’ Suddenly Father looked over his shoulder. A moment of fear, which he forced down, and turned back to look at her. Bending in close, cradling her head in his arms.

  Over his serpentine form she could see something indistinct, a shimmering dark shape she couldn’t quite make out, and which made her sick to look at it.

  ‘Tangwen! Tangwen! They are close now.’ The voice came from so far away.

  ‘You have to go now,’ Father told her. She wanted to look at him one last time but she couldn’t take her eyes off the dark shape in the crystal cave. She felt something dirty and corrupt squirm in the back of her mind, like the thoughts she knew she shouldn’t have, but which came unbidden anyway.

  ‘Enough!’ Half-hiss, half-shout. She shrank away. She had never seen Father angry before. He stood and turned on the thing behind him.

  Tangwen found herself reaching for her spear, looking up at Anharad.

  ‘I have broken the mindsong. She is nothing to you,’ Father said.

  ‘Her blood is weak,’ Crom Dhubh said, from where he stood in the crystal cave that existed in the mindsong. The Dark Man had pushed his way into it.

  ‘You failed,’ Father told him.

  ‘Tell me, do you know me? Did we walk the same streets?’

  ‘You can have me if you leave my children be,’ Father said, visibly afraid.

  ‘I don’t want you. I probably won’t even be that amused when our poisoned children find you and drag you from your hole so that you can hear the sleeping gods.’

  Father stared at him, the fear slowly draining away. ‘You are a petty, spiteful creature.’

  Crom Dhubh considered this. ‘I just don’t lie to myself. The first lesson we all learn is pain.’ Suddenly the Dark Man looked directly up at him. ‘Did you feel that?’

  And he had. Something had moved deep in the earth. Part of the network of ancient gates had been activated. A bridge from another place.

  Tangwen had made the spear by securely tying the knife she’d taken from the Isle of Madness to a stout branch she’d found. Still tired, she carried it as she followed Anharad. They had rested for the night on a rise looking down over a densely wooded valley. After escaping from the Isle of Madness, they had travelled for days. Tangwen had no idea where they were, but somehow the thirty or so survivors from the wicker man were looking to her for leadership. She didn’t want the responsibility. She didn’t want their hopes pinned on her.

  They had passed a number of settlements, most of them abandoned fortified farms, sometimes villages of roundhouses where the richness of the land could support them. They had only seen one fort, built on a low hill not much higher than the surrounding countryside. All the settlements had been abandoned and some of them raided, presumably by the Corpse People.

  Tangwen had not felt any guilt whatsoever about looting these places for food and clothing. There was little in the way of weapons left behind.

  They were in the territory of the Atrebates at the moment. She assumed they had sent scouts south when the Corpse People raided. The scouts would have returned with news of the plague of monstrous things that had crawled from the sea. What was bothering Tangwen was that the Atrebates, and indeed many of the inhabitants of Ynys Prydain, were not a cowardly or timid people. She was surprised they had run. But she was also relieved. She believed Father – there was no fighting the madness at her back.

  The thirty or so survivors with them were either strong, clever or simply very lucky. She could not think about how many had died because it made her sick. Other than her and Kush, there were no other real warriors. The boy, Mabon, was learning to be a warrior when he was taken, and Anharad, his grandmother, had been schooled in the use of sword and shield when she was younger. Many of the others had been spear-carriers at one time or another, landsmen and -women pressed into service to support their tribes’ warriors during times of conflict. They were from many different tribes, though mostly coastal ones like her own Catuvellauni; the Cantiaci; the Trinovantes, old enemies of her people; the fearsome Iceni who lived directly to the north of her people’s lands; the Corielatavi; the Parisi; the Brigantes. Then stranger people from further north of whom she had only ever heard stories. The Goddodin and others who spoke a language so different from her own that she barely understood them, though they looked and sounded a little like Britha. Most of them were young, because it was the young who had been strong enough to survive. There were only a few children other than Mabon. Two of them, a boy and a girl, were with their mother, a fierce Corielatavi woman who, even now, kept her children strictly disciplined. Tangwen was of the opinion that was why they were still alive. The other child was a silent, terrified-looking northern girl. She was on her own and spoke little. Tangwen and Anharad were taking turns keeping an eye on her.

  Tangwen tried to ignore how tired she felt, the weariness and the ache in her bones, the pain from the ruined side of her face. She followed Anharad to the edge of the rise and looked down on the woods in the bowl-shaped valley. The tree canopy was thick and just starting to turn from green to brown as the days became shorter, colder and wetter. As Tangwen watched, she saw it – it looked like the canopy was moving. As if it had come to life.

  ‘It’s moving faster,’ Anharad said. Tangwen glanced over at the older woman. The Trinovantes noblewoman looked haggard and tired, but despite her age – she had seen close to fifty winters – she’d managed to keep pace with the rest.

  ‘Get them up,’ Tangwen said.

  She knew what was happening down below in the valley because she’d seen it close up. The abominations from Andraste’s poisoned womb were creating more of themselves. They corrupted animals, made trees move and brought rocks to horrible life. The Parisi with them – a timid, nervous but powerful man called Twrch who had some training as a dryw because he had been learning how to work metal – had suggested that somehow the things spread seeds that made life. Anything not brought to life was consumed by the monstrous horde. All they left behind them was a plain of muddy grey waste.

  ‘What of Essyllt?’ Anharad asked.

  Tangwen tried not to sigh out loud. The young woman, one of the Brigantes from far to the north, had com
plained of pain in her leg and then collapsed screaming, except the screaming hadn’t been coming from her mouth. When they unwrapped the rags around her leg, they found a hideous growth. The flesh of her thigh had reshaped itself into a mouth, and in that mouth were other growths that Tangwen did not understand. It was the mouth that screamed, and that was all it did. They gagged the mouth as best they could, and two of her own tribe had made a litter on which to carry her. They had done so uncomplaining, but Tangwen could see the resentment building in them.

  Others had developed strange growths – patches of fur or bark, extra toes, fingers and even tails emerging from strange places. Tangwen wasn’t sure if it was a sickness caused by the seeds Twrch had talked about or some other form of magic. Not that it mattered, as she had no way of countering it. Unless they started turning on the group, those affected stayed with them. Though some had asked for them to be cast out.

  Tangwen made her way over to Essyllt’s litter as Anharad set about getting the others up and ready to move. Mabon fell in next to her. The boy still hadn’t said anything, not even to his grandmother, but he acted as if he was someone of rank in his bearing alone.

  The young Brigante woman was lying on her litter, moaning in pain. The mouth on her leg still had a rag stuffed in it, and there was something obscene about the way it was trying to chew its way through the fabric. Tangwen glanced up at the two men tasked with dragging and carrying the litter. They had done so valiantly, Tangwen had to concede, but they were close to exhaustion. Neither of them would meet Tangwen’s eyes.

  ‘What?’ Tangwen demanded. Neither man answered immediately. She had been told their names many times, but she couldn’t remember them now.

  ‘She is close to death,’ one of them said.

  ‘You’re a dryw, are you? You know this?’ Tangwen asked. He did not answer. ‘You mean you don’t want to carry her any more?’