Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn

by Robert Holdstock

  This sounded like Ireland, where everything in those days, and even now, was larger than life, from its generosity to the battle antics of its warriors. This Someone himself, I gathered, was an unnamed and banished Lordly. One from early Celtic lands east of the Rhône, in modern-day Germany, his homeland perhaps below one of the great cities that had so recently been devastated by war.

  There was indeed something regal about the man’s appearance. Even the hacked and scruffy leather of his jerkin, I now saw, was studded not simply but with the bright iron heads of mythical animals. The short knife he carried was wide-bladed and leaf-shaped, more ceremonial than offensive. (His sword was very offensive indeed; I had watched him clean and hone it.) And the way he wore his beard and hair, those elaborate coils above his scalp, shaped and made secure with grease, certainly suggested an attention to appearance that went beyond the traditional Celtic warrior’s vanity.

  I had not suspected it, but there was a slight ulterior motive to Someone’s first, friendly contact, the warmth he gave me. Gwyr said, ‘He wonders if you know him; if anything about him is familiar? It may help him.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ I said, but nothing about the man’s look inspired me with any sense of recognition.

  Someone spoke briefly about his birth, using Gwyr as translator.

  ‘As far as I am aware, my father was summoned to combat before he could name me. The combat was by chariot, and along the eastern edge of the river that divided our land. The dispute was about the stealing of a bull and five cows that were being taken to honour Taranis. It was the beginning of the winter and when the snow came in that place, one in every three of us would die of cold and hunger. This was an important sacrifice, and my father had intercepted it – the white and black bull was a very famous creature, well regarded and envied among our clans – and made the offering himself. He had no time for the other king, who was his brother-in-law, but that didn’t matter. A challenge was issued and had to be acknowledged.

  ‘So – as I was told later – the two kings arrived at the river to fight first with spear and then with sword. They rode up and down the sides of the bank, shouting insults at each other until the horses were tired. Then they threw off their cloaks and prepared to hurl spears at each other across the water as a preliminary to the main combat.

  ‘Unfortunately, my father was killed outright by Grumloch’s first throw.

  ‘All that saved my life, when Grumloch came to take possession of the fort, was the fact that I hadn’t been named, otherwise I would have been killed along with the selected five knights who were used in place of the animal offering. We were taken to a lake in the forest and out onto the water in small boats. The five knights were stripped, tied, bled from the throat, skull-cracked then tipped into the lake. I was left in a coracle with a wet nurse, forbidden ever to return to the fort.

  ‘When I was weaned, the woman left me in one of the glades dedicated to Sucellus. She never told me my father’s name, only that he had known which name to give me, though the secret had died with him. She placed me in a hollow between the feet of the great wooden idol, where it was warm and protected from rain and wind. At night, the great gods roared at each other across the forest, and Sucellus strode around the glade, beating at branches. But he, like all of them, was tied to this place.

  ‘Every so often, masked people came and sacrificed or left offerings at the feet of the idol, I ate whatever was left and Sucellus never complained. Only later did it occur to me that because I had no name the god could not see me.’

  He stopped speaking and looked at me expectantly, almost hopefully. I think I grimaced and shrugged. Grumloch? Not a name to ring the bells of romance and chivalry.

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ I had to say. Truthfully, if I could help with a name I would, but I know only of Perceval, Kay, Bedevere and Bors, Gawain and Galahad, the knights of Arthur and Guinevere, of Camelot, of Merlin, Morgan and Vivien, all of them introduced to me in stories by my mother when I was a child.’

  As I recounted my limited listing of Malory’s heroes I watched Someone for any sign of recognition, but he simply shrugged, sighed, bade me goodbye and went back to where Issabeau was still engaging with the woodland in her strange way.

  Whatever was then said, within a few minutes Issabeau had cried out in what may have been despair, but which was certainly a voice of fear, and run into the gloaming. Someone took off his leather jacket and flung it to the ground angrily, then stomped away in the opposite direction to the distraught woman, swearing volubly, and slapping his left hand against his left buttock. Gwyr seemed to be as bemused as I was by what we were watching. Then he called for Guiwenneth, but without success. The Saracen was agitating to move on, and had been held back only by the antics of Issabeau, but now Gwyr came over to me and said, ‘We shall have to start walking towards Legion. It’s quite close now, but it’s well protected and we must be ready for encounters with its defenders.’

  ‘We can’t go without Guiwenneth or Jarag …’ I said. And indeed, where was Elidyr, the mournful guide?

  The jarag,’ Gwyr said, using that form of the name for the first time, ‘is beyond my knowing. His magic is too strange, his life seems inviolable, and he has become the rock on which this unit of Forlorn Hope has stood; so I doubt if he is lost; he sprouts from the earth like a new shrub, full and green just when you think the earth is barren. Guiwenneth is more vulnerable. We should look for her at the river.’

  We started to retrace our path to the water, but Gwyr turned back. ‘You should stay here, I think. I can always follow later if she returns and you then feel the need to move on.’

  And so he had gone.

  I stood in this firelit place, utterly confused by the random and seemingly pointless movement of this small band of travellers. My heart longed to see Guiwenneth again, but my head was full of apprehension now, with Gwyr’s departure, since he was my voice in this wilderness of incomprehensible sign and song.

  A light touch on my shoulder from behind startled me. I turned quickly where I sat and saw Issabeau’s doleful face, staring down at me from its frame of luxuriant night-black hair. She was holding a small branch of white-thorn, stripped and trimmed so that only a single thorn remained, like an elongated nail at the end of a withered arm. She kept this pointed at me as she walked round and sat down demurely, arranging her skirts around her, pulling her cloak across her breast. With the wooden arm of thorn between us on the ground, her liquid eyes almost unblinking as she gazed at mine, she began to murmur words. I heard ‘Merlayne’ and ‘Vivyane’ and asked her to repeat what she had said. There was something indefinably familiar about her words; I was on the edge of understanding, it seemed, and these noticeable names had helped me focus on the tongue, and I heard that it was a dialect of French; and Issabeau was a name that came from the time of Chivalry, eleventh-century French, perhaps, or some variant local to the peninsula of Brittany, a land where so many legends were held in common with the legends of my own country.

  In a voice that was as deeply husky as it was sad, she whispered slowly, ‘Merlayne eztay mon mayder. Vivyane eztay mon covrz mord!’

  This last was said angrily, with her right hand extended towards me, gripped into a fist.

  ‘Merlin and Vivien,’ I said. ‘Are you part of their story?’

  She shook her head, not understanding, then went on, ‘Merlayne ez mord. Enabre, enterre, envie ettonmord pondon tomp ayteme! Moie, onfond treez d’onzhontrayz, de courz noy, de fay ett onzhondmond moivayze!

  ‘Zharm ett onzhondmond!’ she muttered furiously, staring at the branch she held. ‘Layze yeuze voie surlmon lay monzonge.’

  These sounds were run together, sharp and fluid, teasing my awareness, communicating nothing but her passing despair, a sadness that had suddenly surfaced in her. I would ask Gwyr about her as soon as I could.

  When Someone reappeared he was wet from the river, stripped to the waist, wringing water from his moustaches. He crouched by the fire, looked around,
glanced quizzically at Issabeau, then grunted, ‘Is Guiwenneth … here?’

  ‘Gwyr is looking for her. Gwyr … looking! Guiwenneth!’

  He understood.

  ‘Kylhuk.’ He stabbed a finger at the forest. ‘Men! Chariot! Warrior!’

  ‘I understand! Men and chariots and other warriors …’

  ‘Legion! This way is.’

  ‘I know. They’re coming to find us. I’m glad to be able to talk to you, Someone son of Somebody.’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘What language is Issabeau speaking? It’s later than your own, I think. Is it early French?’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  We weren’t quite as far along the path of understanding as I had hoped.

  But a while later, Gwyr returned, Guiwenneth and the jarag with him, the two absentees carrying fish and birds across their shoulders. Jarag grinned through his unkempt beard, twirling his snares around his finger, rattling his small, bone-tipped spears in the loose grip of his other hand. His horrible hound was panting with exhaustion, its head shaking from side to side as it recovered from what I intuited had been a triumphant hunt.

  I told Gwyr that Issabeau had been trying to speak to me, that she was mournful. He nodded wisely, spoke briefly with the woman, then told me, ‘Merlayne was her master; he taught her many ways of charm and enchantment; but Merlayne has been tricked by the black-hearted Vivyane, and is entombed in a tree in the earth. Issabeau has many talents in the way of magic, but there are times when her eyes see only lies, and this is because Vivyane’s dark magic is still attached to her. She was upset for a while when you mentioned Merlayne. She thought you were Vivyane’s spy. But now she knows better.’

  ‘What does she know?’

  ‘That you, like the rest of us, have heard of the two enchanters. They are widely talked about. The terrible things they did when they were together were more devastating to the countries they passed through than war and pillage.’

  I thought of Merlin, the white-bearded wizard, and his haunting presence in the corridors of white-walled Camelot, a benign figure, voice of advice to King Arthur. We were clearly not talking about the same old man from the stories I had heard.

  And I had no sooner processed this thought than the whole glade seemed to shift.

  The fire guttered, then flared high again. The trees had bent in a strange way, as if pressed upon by an unseen hand. The sensation in the earth was that of a mild tremor and I felt shifted sideways, though I had not moved in space, at least as far as I could see; but now, as stillness returned, there was a new electricity in the canopy and on the ground, a tension, as if creatures ran among us, hands touching, fingers pinching, tiny teeth nipping, not unlike the sensation with Elidyr, the night before. If a flock of curious carrion birds had invaded this glade, I could have understood the feeling; but there was no sign of the disturbance, simply the touch of it.

  It was enough for Gwyr.

  ‘Elementals,’ he said quickly. ‘They are damned and a nuisance, though in truth, they always precede Legion and are useful. We’ve been spotted.’

  ‘Is that good?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course. Eventually. But for the moment, we are unknown because it is assumed we are dead. So we must make ourselves known again, or be attacked.’ And he shouted to all around us: ‘Get your things! Issabeau, take a brand from the fire, then flatten the embers. Guiwenneth, start calling to Kylhuk. Saracen, sing to your sword. Jarag, go ahead of us and enter the shadow of the wood, tell us when that shadow changes …’

  Everyone in the glade except for Guiwenneth was staring at Gwyr blankly. He realised with some embarrassment that he had been barking orders in English, perhaps, because his head was still full of his latest Interpretation. He repeated the instructions – he was in charge then? I hadn’t known this – this time in the tongue they spoke in common, which was his own.

  Even as he issued orders, I could sense some small meaning in the words. Gwyr, then, had not just learned from me, but had implanted the seed of new language in my own under-educated language centres.

  As activity commenced, Guiwenneth came quickly over to me, brushing at my cheeks with quick fingers and smiling. ‘There were things I had to do,’ she said in careful English. ‘I have been with Gwyr. To know how to talk to you. To know you better. I’m glad to have you now – Christian’, she said, then repeated my name as if savouring it. ‘Do you remember me?’

  ‘Oh yes …’

  ‘It was – a long time ago. I was a girl. Very small. Manandoun was still my … guardian. I was so frightened. Remember? The horse reared and we fell into the corn. I felt … so strange … as if a cliff had struck me where there was no cliff, and hooks dragged at my limbs where there were no hooks … dragging me back to the wood …’

  ‘I remember you well,’ I said, and though I remembered also that Huxley had written how mythagos could never journey far beyond the edge of Ryhope, they simply died and decayed, I chose to keep this knowledge to myself. ‘I think I must have been waiting for you from that moment on. I was entranced by you, despite your chalked hair and white face. Remember?’

  She laughed as she agreed.

  ‘But I hadn’t realised how much I was thinking of you until you came back and called to me from the wood, with Gwyr blowing that strange bronze trumpet, the bull horn or whatever it was. There had been a war. I had been fighting in a foreign land. I’m glad you came when you came. And I’m glad to have followed you here, even if it’s cold and wet. And the food is grim.’

  She sighed, partly content with what I’d said, but partly through anguish, I thought. Indeed, there was a quick, strange look in her eyes that I couldn’t fathom. But she said, ‘This is not the best time to meet again. Though truthfully – I’m glad you followed me. If I had remained in the sanctuary … where you were sleeping that night …’ she sighed wistfully, then shook her head. ‘But I was afraid the Creature was there, and the Creature frightens me. I am glad I saw you. I am truly glad you followed me.’

  The sanctuary? She must have meant Oak Lodge, my home. Gwyr had used the same word. The Creature? Did she mean Huxley? My father? He hadn’t been there that night, but perhaps some scent, some shadow had remained.

  I said nothing. Indeed, I could have found no moment to say a word, for Guiwenneth had gone on brightly in her growing confidence with the English she had learned from Gwyr, ‘Once we are in Legion again, everything will be as it was. Kylhuk is intimidating.’ She shrugged. ‘But if you leave him alone, he will leave you alone. There will be a job for you … and we can be together. When this great task is finished, Legion will rest. Kylhuk has assured me …’

  ‘What task?’

  ‘No one knows. Kylhuk keeps it secret – except from Manandoun! He has sworn secrecy on his life. But Legion is first searching for the Long Person, and when we find her we will know. The great task will begin … Kylhuk has gathered Legion for this very purpose.’ She looked at me quickly. ‘And it is a very great task indeed, the hardest of all that Kylhuk has been set.’ She put a delicate finger to my lips. ‘Enough of that. Time to talk about it later. First, follow me, do exactly as I do. And don’t at any cost leave the Forlorn Hope. If you do, it will be worse for you than you can imagine.’

  ‘So I was told by Gwyr. I hear you. And I understand!’

  ‘Good. I’m glad you hear me. And understand. Follow me … Christian.’

  I was amused and delighted at the thrill my name seemed to give her; and by the mischievous look in her green eyes and on her mouth as she teased me.

  Another day passed, and another glade found and flattened, protected with a few sharpened branches, a fire started and grim food eaten. The hunt had been poor, and Jarag’s hound old and failing.

  We ate the dog.

  Elidyr settled at the edge of the camp, knees drawn up to his massive jaw, fingers fiddling with the coils of rope he still carried round his shoulders.

  I was uncomfortably aware that he
was watching me.

  As if touched by magic, the Forlorn Hope suddenly lay down on their blankets and drifted into sleep. The fire guttered and I stoked it, putting on a log to make it burn a little brighter, fighting against the drowsy influence of drink, silence and peace.

  The next thing I knew I was being called from a dream. I sat up, blinking through my tears, and again found Elidyr reaching for me, the same otherworldly glow all around us.

  ‘This way,’ he said. ‘Something for you to see. To understand.’

  Perhaps that was why he had turned back previously. He had felt too alienated from me without Gwyr’s mediating interpretation.

  And so we walked again, through a ghostwood that suddenly began to bloom. Since we had travelled several miles from the river during the day, and since this wood was identical to that of the previous night, I knew we had stepped out of the space and time of the Forlorn Hope.

  I couldn’t help laughing as again we underwent our floral transformation. The air was scented and sublime; the light was gorgeous, and we walked between its pools and shafts like manifestations out of Eden.

  Elidyr was not indecisive now. He led the way with a sureness of foot and a firmness of purpose. Once we had become flowered and fungused, the transformation was complete. When Elidyr stopped and crouched he became like a rotting trunk, vibrant with parasitic growth in full colour. I nearly tripped over him.

  ‘Sssh!’ he said, and pulled me down by the fern on my arms.

  I listened carefully, and heard the sound of a woman singing, and running water.

  Knee deep in iridescent bluebells, we stepped closer to the pool. On one side of it rose a cliff, and a thin waterfall tumbled through the trees that crowded its edge. The woman was dressed in black and was rinsing pots and pans at the water’s edge. Her red hair was combed but undecorated. Her feet were bare.