The walk took hours, or so it seemed.
No Mabon greeted me to say goodbye; no Eletherion screamed silently from his rock. The presence of the shrouded dead was visible literally as shadow, the movement of shape and memory on the walls on either side of me, and I dared not look too hard in case, inadvertently, I glimpsed my passenger with the edge of vision, and dispatched her back to eternity.
Silently and steadily I led her from the world of the dead.
Anambioros was waiting for me as he had promised he would, spear at the ready, his sword exposed and resting on its sheath in case any of Eletherion’s brothers should make a bid for their own freedom, like bats flying from their roost.
He stood up as I emerged, grinning broadly. And then his face dropped in astonishment as he saw who was following me out of Hell.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked blearily. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Is she free of the cave’s mouth? Has she emerged from the shadows?’
‘Yes,’ said Anambioros, and I took the chance and turned to look at Issabeau, who stood there, blinking against the light, as young, as husky, as raven-haired as when I had first met her.
‘Go and kiss him,’ I whispered. ‘I think he needs it.’
‘By the Good Christ, I thought I was dreaming,’ she said, and I laughed, though my heart was breaking. I had wanted to amend her thanks to: By the Good Christian!
It was enough to see the two of them in each other’s arms, re-united in love and purpose.
Later, Anambioros found me in the stone house. Kylhuk had long gone, returning to his Legion, pursuing his own fortunes. I had made a fire, polished the tarnished cooking equipment that Mabon had left who knew how long ago, and made a broth of vegetables and wild pig, speared at great effort with the Celt’s own weapons, while he and Issabeau were lost in their Delightful Realm.
‘My father was a king among men,’ he said, ‘and so am I. But I am a man with a true king for a friend, and I will never ask you why you saved the life of Issabeau and not one of the two people who mattered to you most. Christian, I will not die until I have saved your own life once! This is my promise to you. It is a geisa that I am willing upon myself, and the price is all the others, which I hereby abandon, send back, deny and part with. If I am ever asked to explain my actions, I will claim the friendship of a man of courage – and offer my own life as forfeit.’
‘Thank you,’ I said quietly. ‘How many lives do you have, Anambioros? You seem to conjure them put of the air.’
‘I do, don’t I?’ he replied. ‘I seem to have the lives of a cat. And I have a cat in my life! Thank you again for that. My heart goes out to you in your loss; may good memory be a great comfort to you.’
‘Gentle words, my Guiwenneth’s words too, and I will cling to them gladly.’
He leaned down and kissed my cheek and chin.
‘By the way. Elidyr has come for you. He says he can wait until you’re ready, but not to leave it too long. He’s by the river. I shall miss you, Christian. But I will make your name famous!’
And with that he left me, returning to his own world, leaving me to mine.
CODA
I have been in the Path of Stone and the Wood of Thorns,
For somebody hid hatred and hope and desire and fear
Under my feet that they follow you night and day.
from W.B. Yeats, He Mourns for the Change …
Coda
We must all eventually awake from the dream, unless we have been stolen from our passage through the wood of thorns, from the path of scones. While I dreamed in my boat, Kylhuk passed by, together with his Legion, many on horseback, most on foot, some in chariots, some in wagons. They overtook my slow boat on the winding river, moving by on each side, each face peering down at me, smiling, bidding me farewell, blowing me kisses.
The last to pass were the woman, Raven, and the Fenlander.
Raven said wryly, ‘You might have made more of me, but your mind was elsewhere.’
I didn’t understand her words. She had already cantered on ahead.
The Fenlander said, ‘Our time has not yet begun, Christian. I look forward to it!’
I remembered the vision through my mother’s eyes, of myself as a fat, scarred warrior-chief, cruelly killing my brother Steven. The Fenlander had been there, my right-arm man, my friend …
‘I don’t,’ I whispered. ‘I don’t look forward to it. Not at all …’
He grinned, held his masked helmet high, then rode on.
And so they had gone, and slowly the earth ceased to shake with the passage of that army. The boat drifted on.
Did my father pass me as I dreamed? I heard the growling of a boar and a dark shape leaned low, one dusk, an animal’s face painted white below lank, black hair.
‘It is not finished yet …’ this apparition breathed. ‘When you come back, I shall be waiting for you.’
‘I looked for you,’ I whispered.
‘Not very hard.’
‘I followed in your footsteps. I came into Ryhope Wood along the Hogback Ridge, but I couldn’t find you.’
‘I hid from you,’ my father said.
‘Hid from me? Why?’
‘You had other things than your father on your mind.’
‘It’s true. I had Guiwenneth on my mind. And now I’ve let her go.’
The man leaned down towards me, but behind the savage, snarling mask of chalk, the eyes were sad and gentle. Almost like Elidyr’s, I thought …
‘Yes. You did. And now, like me, you will pursue a dream. We pursue the same dream, Chris. That dream will become your life. You don’t know it yet. And that is why I will be waiting for you. When you return.’
He drew away, growling and grumbling, towering over my supine form, following the boat for a while almost protectively, until quite suddenly he turned away from me and was gone from my vision.
The boat rocked. If Elidyr pulled it, he was invisible. I saw only the moving of branches against the clouds and the changing colours of the heavens.
The journey seemed endless, a journey without hunger or sleep, without pain or pleasure, a journey through winter and summer, a gentle passage along a narrow stream, through an age of forests.
Eventually I succumbed to sleep, made drowsy by some hidden charm but delighting in the anticipation of oblivion.
And this morning, when I opened my eyes and saw the spring sky above me as I lay in that shallow boat, I realised that my long journey from the heart of the forest was over.
I had come home again.
If only for a while.
Afterword
ROBERT HOLDSTOCK
Gate Of Ivory, Gate Of Horn brings the Cycle full circle. In Mythago Wood, Christian, one of the two sons of the scientist and explorer George Huxley, becomes lost in the wood in more ways than one, and ends up a brutal and almost unrecognisable version of his more youthful self, with extreme consequences for his brother Steven.
I had always wondered what event or events might have caused that terrible transformation, and in part at least, Gate Of Ivory attempts to answer the question. The book is set at the same time as Mythago Wood. In one section, it takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the nature of the ‘hero’ ethic. In the main, it deals with truth and lies: truth from the Gate of Horn, lies from the Gate of Ivory, and Christian’s attempt to distinguish between them.
In the end, I didn’t take the story as far as originally intended. A deeper and more exotic tale of love and frustration took over, that of Christian, Issabeau and Someone Son of Somebody. (The latter, by the way, is a real character from one of the Welsh myths.)
Christian’s fierce and tragic tale remains to be written.
Rob Holdstock
London, May 2007
(Extracted from the Afterword of The Mythago Cycle Vol. II)
THE MYTHAGO CYCLE
MYTHAGO WOOD
LAVONDYSS
THE BONE FOREST
THE HOLLOWING
GATE OF IVORY, GATE OF HORN
AVILION
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Also by Robert Holdstock
Mythago Wood
1. Mythago Wood (1984)
2. Lavondyss (1988)
3. The Bone Forest (1991)
4. The Hollowing (1992)
5. Merlin's Wood (1994)
6. Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn (1997)
7. Avilion (2009)
The Merlin Codex
1. Celtika (2001)
2. The Iron Grail (2002)
3. The Broken Kings (2006)
Novels
Eye Among the Blind (1976)
Earthwind (1977)
Necromancer (1978)
Where Time Winds Blow (1981)
The Emerald Forest (1985)
Ancient Echoes (1986)
The Fetch (1991)
Night Hunter (writing as Robert Faulcon)
The Stalking (1983)
The Talisman (1983)
The Ghost Dance (1983)
The Shrine (1984)
The Hexing (1984)
The Labyrinth (1987)
Raven (writing as Richard Kirk, with Angus Wells)
Swordsmistress of Chaos (1978)
A Time of Ghosts (1978)
The Frozen God (1978)
Lords of the Shadows (1979)
A Time of Dying (1979)
Writing as Robert Black
Legend of the Werewolf (1976)
The Satanists (1977)
Berserker Trilogy (writing as Chris Carlsen)
1. Shadow of the Wolf (1977)
2. The Bull Chief (1977)
3. The Horned Warrior (1979)
Collections
In the Valley of the Statues: And Other Stories (1982)
Acknowledgements
This latest visit to Mythago Wood was made all the more enjoyable for an encounter at the 1996 International Association for Fantasy in the Arts (and a near death experience in a convertible) with Chip Sullivan (rafters ring!), Roger Schlobin (wassail!), Brian Aldiss, Donald Morse, Bill Senior, Gary Wolfe and DD, Usch Kiausch, Alanna Bondar (thanks for the permission to quote!), Ellen Datlow, Beth Gwinn, two Clutes, one Shippey … I’ll be back! My special thanks to Jenni Smith, Jim Rickards and Jane Johnson who helped very much during later, difficult times. And Kirsti Bambridge for Grail talks, Graham Joyce for a little ‘Greek Correction,’ and the Library of Avalon in Glastonbury for just being there! And as ever, to the Badminton group, and Sarah, Chris and Fi, Garry and Annette: a fine band of players.
Embedded in this novel is the strange and surreal tale of Kylhuk and Olwen, from The Mabinogion, which certainly contains references to pre-Celtic myths, long lost. For those who might be interested, I have used the Everyman edition of The Mabinogion, translated by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones, and the Penguin Classics edition, translated by Jeffrey Gantz, which I slightly prefer. Also, the Oxford paperback of The Cattle Raid of Cooley (Cuailgne) (a.k.a. The Tain) translated by Thomas Kinsella. C. W. Sullivan’s Welsh Celtic Myth in Modern Fantasy (Greenwood Press) was an inspiration! Barry Cunliffe’s The Celtic World (Constable), and Anne Ross’s Pagan Celtic Britain (Cardinal, but long since out of print) have always been source books of enormous importance, and no less so this time. And as ever, when in doubt: Asterix to the rescue!
Dedication
For Annie,
our glimmering girl
Robert Holdstock (1948 – 2009)
Robert Paul Holdstock was born in a remote corner of Kent, sharing his childhood years between the bleak Romney Marsh and the dense woodlands of the Kentish heartlands. He received an MSc in medical zoology and spent several years in the early 1970s in medical research before becoming a full-time writer in 1976. His first published story appeared in the New Worlds magazine in 1968 and for the early part of his career he wrote science fiction. However, it is with fantasy that he is most closely associated.
1984 saw the publication of Mythago Wood, winner of the BSFA and World Fantasy Awards for Best Novel, and widely regarded as one of the key texts of modern fantasy. It and the subsequent ‘mythago’ novels (including Lavondyss, which won the BSFA Award for Best Novel in 1988) cemented his reputation as the definitive portrayer of the wild wood. His interest in Celtic and Nordic mythology was a consistent theme throughout his fantasy and is most prominently reflected in the acclaimed Merlin Codex trilogy, consisting of Celtika, The Iron Grail and The Broken Kings, published between 2001 and 2007.
Among many other works, Holdstock co-wrote Tour of the Universe with Malcolm Edwards, for which rights were sold for a space shuttle simulation ride at the CN Tower in Toronto, and The Emerald Forest, based on John Boorman’s film of the same name. His story, ‘The Ragthorn’, written with friend and fellow author Garry Kilworth, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella and the BSFA Award for Short Fiction.
Robert Holdstock died in November 2009, just four months after the publication of Avilion, the long-awaited, and sadly final, return to Ryhope Wood.
www.robertholdstock.com
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Robert Holdstock 1997
All rights reserved.
The right of Robert Holdstock to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11906 2
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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