Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn

by Robert Holdstock

  From the cover of the underbrush we watched Issabeau and Someone son of Somebody swim lazily together, he on his back, she across his belly and between his legs, arms outstretched to propel them forward. They circled the pool slowly, whispering together, their pale bodies almost translucent above and below the water.

  Guiwenneth tossed a small stone into the middle of the pool. Issabeau and Someone glanced towards us, then returned to their leisurely swim, eyes only for each other, laughing together.

  ‘Come away,’ I said, suddenly embarrassed. ‘This is none of our business.’

  ‘I knew it would happen,’ Guiwenneth said as we walked hand in hand through the wood, back towards the Keep. ‘There is something that connects them. I could tell that from the moment they were recruited to the Forlorn Hope. Anyone could tell it who had half an eye for love.’

  ‘I thought she was with the Saracen,’ I said. ‘They were together when I first met them.’

  ‘No. They shared a similar magic. They were powerful together. But Abandagora had no heart for love.’

  Her voice was strange and I looked at Guiwenneth as we walked.

  ‘Had no heart for love?’

  ‘Has no heart at all, now,’ she said quickly. ‘Eletherion took it in that same skirmish when he took the life of Manandoun.’

  Sixteen

  And so I began my long march with Legion, a journey of many weeks, many months – I find it hard to be more precise than that. The column, as it progressed, shifted so often through time, and into so many different seasons, that even day and night became meaningless. And Kylhuk worked me hard at the various stations throughout the marching garrison, sending me on many night watches and occasionally on wild rides outside the forest wall.

  He kept me close to Guiwenneth, however, and I was grateful for that. Her company was a comfort and a delight, and the mischievous sense of humour a great relief among this army of mostly dour and silent adventurers.

  Only on two occasions did I come close to disaster. The first was one summer’s day, when we finally discovered Cerithon’s hamper.

  Kylhuk had abandoned that particular task the moment he realised it was just part of Uspathadyn’s trick to make him search for Mabon. But there had always been a grumble of opinion that the hamper should still be sought since it promised such a feast, and very often the food in Legion was worse than ‘dog’s paw and baked fur’, as Issabeau so delicately put it. (She liked fine food, it was clear, and it was always very difficult sitting near her at mealtimes since she spent the time sighing with despair and sulking heavily as she contemplated whatever was on offer.)

  So when the Forlorn Hope brought back the fattest child I have ever seen, a boy so rotund that he could have been rolled into camp like a beer barrel, his skin covered with rashes, stings and spots, a child who stank of honey and whose mouth and fingers were so sticky with the same that no matter how hard we tried we could not remove the dead leaves and grass from his hands, there was a sudden air of excitement among Legion’s uncouth hordes. The word had gone round that this boy had been ‘feeding at the hamper’.

  ‘There is a slight problem,’ said the Carthaginian woman, Dido, who had been given charge of the boy.

  ‘And what problem is that?’ Kylhuk asked irritably.

  ‘The hamper is protected by a force of nature.’

  ‘Then it will find itself assaulted by a force of Kylhuk!’ said the grizzled man with a grin at me.

  ‘The force consists of flying stingers.’

  ‘So does mine!’

  Without further discussion, our small band rode through the forest wall for a first look, the sound of appetites being whetted ringing in our ears. But as we left Legion a new sound struck us: the hum of bees, a buzz that rose in volume along with the black cloud that we could see flowing towards us as we entered the true wood.

  The swarm was on us in a moment, wasps, bees and giant hornets, smashing into our faces, crawling through our hair, pouring through the gaps in our clothing to sting and die, or sting and sting again.

  ‘Get the bee-boy!’ Kylhuk shrieked in pain, using his cloak to sweep the air around him. ‘Find him! Bring him! The bee-boy!’

  Guiwenneth returned quickly to safety, her flowing hair seething with these flying stingers. The rest of us flung ourselves to the ground, covered our heads and bodies and rolled as best we could to squash the invading insects. How long this agony lasted I can’t remember: it seemed for ever.

  Then, suddenly, the swarm detached from us and the horses became calmer. The air was still electric with the buzzing of a billion wings.

  The bee-boy had come, I realised, a tiny lad from prehistoric Crete, a country which had been famous for its honey from a time long before even the jarag had stalked his Mesolithic shores. In his kilt and loose shirt, the bee-boy was running in a zigzagging, circling dance, imitating the bees that he sought to control. Soon, the black swarm rose into a funnel, a whirlpool of wind and motion, widening around the dancing boy. We flung ourselves close to him, finding merciful shelter in the stillness at the eye of this storm, and the boy led us to a distant mound of seething black and yellow.

  As we approached this restless hill we stepped among seated groups of children, all of them as bloated as the boy who had been brought to the camp, all of them encased in glistening honey, all of them red raw with stings. As the bee-boy danced up to the mound, the crawling mass of insects rose in a single movement to join the swirling vortex around us. Beneath the thick and sluggish flow of honey the vague shape of a wicker hamper could be seen. As the honey rose and spread like lava, so it carried flat, round loaves of bread, which lay encrusted all around, a landscape of crystalline, stone wheels.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Kylhuk irritably. ‘And not a haunch of meat in sight.’

  Gwyr talked to one of the children and came back to us, chuckling and shaking his head.

  ‘Uspathadyn tried to play a second fine trick on you.’

  ‘Did he, indeed?’

  ‘Indeed he did. It seems that Cerithon was not a king at all, but a royal child.’

  ‘I can hardly bear to listen further.’

  ‘One day this child distracted two bears from their attack on an old man, who turned out to be Merlin.’

  ‘I might have known it.’

  ‘Merlin granted Cerithon a wish and the boy, being a greedy lad, asked for an ever-filling picnic hamper. And Merlin asked what he would like in the hamper. And Cerithon said, “Nothing more than bread and honey!” Which is what he got.’

  ‘Children!’ Kylhuk muttered, severely disgruntled. I expect he was thinking of his reception when he returned to Legion.

  ‘Cerithon himself lies in the centre of the hamper,’ Gwyr went on. ‘Long dead, and preserved in the honey he so coveted.’

  ‘Good,’ said Kylhuk. ‘It’s where he deserves to be.’

  ‘These children are visiting from their dreams, from many lands, since the story of the hamper is one of their great delights.’

  Kylhuk looked around him thoughtfully. Then he reflected out loud that because these dream-visitors looked so much like pigs themselves, and were already fattened, perhaps we might pacify the hungry mouths of Legion by—?

  He stopped in this reflection when he realised we were all looking at him in horror.

  A few weeks after I had joined the column, Kylhuk attached me to a knight called Escrivaune, armoured as his squire, carrying his shield (a black gryphon), battle spears and axe. Sir Escrivaune had assumed the appearance of a questing knight called Mordalac and was returning to a castle called Brezonfleche where Mordalac’s fair lady waited for him. Escrivaune, on Mordalac’s behalf, had killed the son of a giant who was terrorizing the castle, and now carried the giant’s gold-embroidered sword belt, an item of clothing so heavy it needed two pack-horses to transport it.

  The belt itself was of no use to Kylhuk, but the terms agreed with the cowardly knight included a fourth of Mordalac’s dowry, and a hundred head of cattl
e, which Mordalac had promised from his own estates.

  Unfortunately for Sir Mordalac, he had become drunk after Escrivaune’s triumph in his place and indiscreetly revealed that he had no estates of his own and was simply a ‘chancer’, living by the lie, the worst sort of trickster since their guile was usually so successful.

  Furious at the deceit, Kylhuk had challenged the knight and the challenge had been haughtily accepted. I counselled against such a combat – full metal jacket against a torque around the neck? – and Kylhuk squeezed my nose between thumb and forefinger, shaking his head.

  ‘What do you know about it? Stay out of my business!’

  He then stripped naked but for his blue battle kirtle and the bronze necklet, selected a narrow, leaf-shaped bronze sword only twenty-four inches long, and stood in the middle of a clearing, arms crossed, sword resting lightly on his left shoulder.

  Mordalac, mailed and helmeted, had ridden down on Kylhuk with a pennanted lance, but at the last moment Kylhuk glanced at the horse which shied with fright and threw its rider.

  Kylhuk helped Mordalac to his feet and gave him time to draw his sword, a four-foot long, half-foot wide, double-edged steel weapon of tremendous weight.

  Nevertheless, Mordalac swung it with such speed that Kylhuk yelped with shock and had to dance quickly to one side. He had to leap four feet vertically as the sword sliced horizontally in a continuation of the first movement, then duck almost double as the blade flashed back in a blur.

  ‘You’re better than I thought,’ Kylhuk said as again the broadsword swept through the air like a Samurai’s blade, skinning him, shaving his beard, pricking the end of his nose.

  ‘By the hands of that woman! You’ve been trained well!’

  The silent knight came grimly forward, cutting swiftly. Kylhuk somersaulted over the blade and howled like a hound when a return blow bit deeply into his right buttock. Hand up his kilt to hold the wound closed, he danced backwards, the bronze sword held limply before him.

  ‘Even your horse is well trained!’ he shouted in astonishment. ‘Here he comes!’

  The knight drew back, glanced round (his horse was standing silently at the edge of the clearing) then looked back, staggering slightly before leaning heavily on his sword.

  Kylhuk stood quietly before him, arms folded, the bloodstained leaf-blade resting on his shoulder again.

  ‘In case you’re not aware of it,’ he said, ‘I’ve just cut your throat.’

  Sir Mordalac swayed twice then fell forward with a rattling of chain mail and a throaty gurgling of blood.

  Kylhuk knelt on one knee beside him. ‘Though I called you coward, you were a finer fighter than I’d realised, and the next few painful days in the saddle will keep me constantly reminded of the fact. Perhaps there were unspoken reasons why you asked Escrivaune to double for you. It’s my loss, I know, to have killed you, Mordalac. The truth is, I could never have trusted you.’

  Then, clutching his bloody backside, he left the arena, returning the sword to its owner who made an immediate gift of it to Kylhuk.

  Kylhuk accepted gratefully.

  But a certain deal had been struck with Mordalac to do with the Lady of Castle Brezonfleche, and Kylhuk being the man he was felt obliged to honour that Cherished Lady’s request. Mordalac had been a chancer, but she would survive a broken heart better if she felt her suitor had died nobly, for a noble cause, rather than ignominiously because he was a cheat.

  It was a weakness in Kylhuk that he cared for this sort of chivalry, the sort that existed to diminish the hurt in people, rather than to celebrate the honour expressed to them. Which is why he had formed the Marrying Men, a band of stalwarts combined into knight and shape-changer, brute force and magic, to which I had just been assigned.

  I had wanted Issabeau as our shapechanger, but Kylhuk had sent her to another part of Legion, to learn more about Mabon. The jarag would have done just as well for that, but Kylhuk had other plans for him too. So Sir Escrivaune and I rode through time and the forest to the Castle Brezonfleche in the protective company of that same ethereal woman who had greeted me on my first encounter with Legion, a silent figure, timeless, exquisite, somehow more elemental than human. She went ahead of us with instructions to leave a strip of rag, tied to a tree, on the path that led to the gorge where the castle had been built.

  White cloth for safe progress; green for danger.

  The castle seemed almost to be growing out of the depths of the gorge, tall, thin towers reaching from the dense forest below, rising high against the craggy, tree-strewn cliffs, their grey-weathered walls pierced by tiny windows. Flocks of crows circled the grey-slate, conical turrets. Mist hung halfway down, clouds too tired to rise higher. From far below came the sound of wind and the creaking of wooden gates and stretched ropes. Occasionally, as we listened hard, we could hear the sounds of dogs and horses.

  ‘It looks safe enough to me,’ said Escrivaune unconvincingly. ‘It’s a steep path down, though.’

  We dismounted and led the horses. Half-way down, winding around the chasm towards the distant bridge across the river, we encountered a green rag tied to a tree, its edge cut by a knife in a significant pattern.

  Escrivaune sniffed hard. ‘Have you noticed?’

  ‘Have I noticed what?’

  ‘No wood smoke. No fires. No welcome.’

  I looked at the green rag, at the discreet cuts that had been made in it. I struggled to remember my lessons in cypher from Kylhuk’s sorcerers, and realised that I had become bewildered rather than enlightened during those long, concentrated sessions. But I was fairly confident as I articulated aloud each of the shapes of the jagged divides in the simple cloth, and summarised finally that the cuts implied: ‘All not as seems.’

  ‘All is not as it seems,’ Escrivaune repeated, then looked at me quizzically. ‘Meaning what, exactly?’

  ‘Things are different to the way we look at them,’ I hazarded, adding, ‘—don’t trust your eyes. I’ll not trust mine. Trickery is afoot. Beware!’

  He scratched his jaw, tugged on the bridle of his charger, stared into the space between us and the magnificent and imposing stone turrets. ‘Trickery?’

  ‘Trickery!’

  ‘Eyes untrustworthy …’

  ‘Don’t trust your eyes.’

  ‘Beware, you say.’

  ‘Be very aware. Trickery. Danger. It’s all here.’ I waved the green cloth.

  ‘Seems safe enough to me,’ said Escrivaune.

  ‘They’d want you to think that.’

  He glanced at me blankly. ‘Who would want me to think that?’

  ‘The people doing the tricking. The inhabitants of the castle.’ I waved the cut, green cloth again, but Escrivaune simply frowned as he surveyed the castle.

  ‘But I can see nothing wrong. Only the absence of wood smoke from the fires you might expect to be burning in this season. They must be a hardy lot … I hope they have a fire for us …’

  ‘Where’s our guide?’ I asked nervously, and as if in answer to a prayer she appeared, suddenly, startlingly, misty and wan of race, stepping between trees.

  Sir Escrivaune took the green rag from my hand and waved it. ‘How dangerous is it?’

  She said, ‘I can’t tell. But I can tell you this. That half the castle is overgrown with red and yellow briar-rose. The other half is rotting below black ivy. It is a desperate place. Its corridors are alive with snakes. Dogs are howling from the ivy towers. I can see dead women’s faces in the towers of rose. There is the stink of corpses, the stench of moon’s blood, the sweat of fear, the bristling tension of treachery.’

  ‘It might be wise to be on our guard, then,’ Escrivaune said thoughtfully.

  I looked at the castle and saw only the stone, the wood, the windows, the drifting mist and circling carrion birds … and felt such a sense of ruination and desertion that I was inclined to think this was an abandoned place, all human life long since departed, only wist-hounds, scald-crows and rats left to sc
our and haunt its passages and chambers.

  ‘Which part is in the rose?’ Sir Escrivaune asked.

  ‘The main hall. And by the entrance gate, by the bridge over the river.’

  He looked at me. ‘We’ll make the transaction there. Don’t be tempted into the inner court.’

  ‘I’ll be sure not to,’ I said, but since I could see nothing of the flower and ivy that was enveloping the castle, it was hard to know where safety ended and danger began.

  Escrivaune was in control, a proud knight, proudly displaying. He was an older man, quite grizzled, but still lean and lithe and full of passion, with all the charm and power that goes with age and experience, though sadly lacking in common sense. His beard was cut like Mordalac’s and dyed black and he had been treated with simple cosmetics to give him the look of the knight for whom he would substitute. Magic – the ‘altering of looks’ – was all very well, but it was an extravagant use of resources when dyes and dress and imitation could accomplish the same end! And anyway, Sir Escrivaune would not be expected to sleep with the Cherished Lady for more than a week, and in his own words, ‘She’ll not have time to take breath in that week! As long as my back holds out! So I don’t expect to be tested on my nature or my honour!’

  ‘You don’t think she’ll want to wait for a wedding, then …’

  His quick glance in my direction suggested that he was not happy with my observation. But he said nothing.

  ‘And her father?’ I persevered.

  ‘What about her father?’ he grumbled as we slipped and slid down the steep, wet track, descending the valley walls.

  ‘I imagine he’ll want to entertain you. To talk to you. To learn your intentions. Is he going to be happy with your immediate and no-doubt vigorous – congress – with his daughter?’

  ‘Congress?’

  ‘Intercourse!’

  ‘Conversation?’

  ‘Lovemaking!’

  ‘Sweet words? I only have a week!’