The Hadassah Covenant

by Robert Holdstock

  ‘No closer,’ whispered Mielikki.

  ‘You blinded her uncle, you tried to kill the girl, you tried to kill us all. Is this what we can expect from Mielikki, Argo’s new protector?’

  ‘The man was blinded because he came too close,’ she whispered voice came back. ‘The girl belongs to me. Yes, I tried to kill you all; why would I want to leave my land? What are you all, if not just cold spirits from cold lands? Yes, I tried to kill you all. But you saved the girl. The girl belongs to me. So I have let you go. And I will tell you two things. I will have her back in my own groves, no matter what she wishes, though you can have her for a while. And she is dangerous. You have rescued your nemesis. And one more thing: I am at the edge of the world this ship contains, not within it, and someone deeper is aware of you, and wishes you dead. This for the girl’s life; the rest I will decide as we sail.’

  I asked her more, this Lady of the Forest, but she was silent behind her half-lidded eyes. It had been Mielikki herself who had raised the ice, not Niiv, not the lake spirits, but the goddess, reluctant to be taken from her own land. Only to save her servant, the capricious Niiv, had Mielikki relented, releasing Jason to his southward quest. We were on our way, but it was clear to me, now, that we were as much in danger from Argo as under her protection.

  And someone, hidden in the ship, wanted my death!

  I avoided Jason, choosing to sit down close to Urtha. He was muttering vile oaths as he heaved on the oar. He suggested that I helped him, and when I refused he swore at me. But I felt comfortable in his presence, and Argo struck across the lake to the steady rhythm of the drum. Soon, the lake narrowed, stark winter trees crowding over us, and we entered the mouth of the river, the beginning of our long journey south, to freezing seas and hostile coastlines and then to the Island of the Dead, to Alba.

  PART THREE

  In Ghostland

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Hollow Ship

  The ice storm, and the possibility that our ship’s guardian was less happy to be on board than perhaps we would have liked, soon passed from consideration. We navigated carefully along the winding rivers, gradually getting used to the weight and rhythm of the stroke and to those sudden, urgent needs to ship oars, when a fallen tree or jutting rock loomed out of the darkness.

  Tairon and Jason stood together at the prow of Argo, Tairon’s nascent skills in ‘walking-in-labyrinths’ helping us find our way to the main waters, and not get caught in a circular backflow. Elkavar complained loudly about blisters, the Volkas seemed at ease with the task, and the keltoi told outrageous tales of the ships they had rowed, sailed and stolen in the past. Jason kept an attentive eye on everything, especially the stroke, instructing and criticising quite freely, and I noticed that this irritated the Celtic king, Urtha, who did not like him. I heard him mutter to Cucallos that it seemed quite wrong for a man, until recently dead, to so presume the role of captain.

  But Manandoun counselled him wisely, and Urtha settled into his role on the bench, hauling on the oar. He also acted protectively towards Niiv, who was in great fear of Jason, and I took this careful kindness to be part of Urtha’s culture as much as his nature.

  Soon, Argo entered that part of the Northland which is more lake than land, and here we could set the sail and cut across the water at a greater, easier speed, Rubobostes on the steering oar when the wind was hard and Argo listed, the slimmer Tairon taking over when the breeze was gentle.

  It would not be long before we reached the cold sea, and turned towards the setting sun.

  * * *

  One night, when we were moored below drooping willows, resting, Elkavar nestled down beside me on the hard bench, and wished me good evening.

  ‘I don’t wish to intrude,’ he said, ‘but I was wondering if I might ask you a personal question. I certainly don’t want to offend you.’

  ‘There is no harm in a question,’ I reassured him. ‘And I’m slow to take offence.’

  ‘You see,’ he went on, his brow furrowed, ‘I’m not an experienced man, not at all well travelled. Except by accident, that is. Well, that’s true. So I suppose you could say I am well travelled … but without intending to be. I wasn’t paying much attention, and most of the time I’ve been more concerned with getting home than with asking questions about where I was. The underworld is a terrible place, especially for people like me who sort of stumble into it by, well … accident.’

  ‘And your question is?’ I prompted him.

  ‘In all these accidental journeys I’ve made, I’ve met a variety of people. By the Good Father himself, some of them dressed in a strange way. And the food! I draw the line at eating the eyes of any animal, except a small fish. Disgusting. But as I say, I’d not really taken much notice of these strange folk, because I suppose, strange as they were, silly hats, curved swords, eyeballs for breakfast, I still recognised them as being … well, sort of similar to me. If you get my drift.’ He looked at me sharply, then said, ‘But not you. I don’t recognise you at all. You’re wrong. You’re not right. You don’t belong here. Anywhere. You make my guts crawl, in the same way as when I see a spider hanging above me in my bed. You’re not taking offence, I hope.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You see, Merlin … it is Merlin, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Though Jason calls you Antiokus?’

  ‘That’s the name by which he knew me. I made the name up. I’ve been known by many names.’

  ‘I was going to say … the scuttlebutt on this ship is that you can defy Time itself. Is that right?’

  ‘Not defy it. I’m just careful with it.’

  Elkavar laughed approval. ‘Well, indeed! That’s a good thing to be. We should all be careful with our time, though for most of us that means using it wisely. The candle always burns, but more brightly when we’re young. You, though. Your candles seem to burn without burning down.’

  ‘They’re burning down, but more slowly than yours.’

  He laughed, as if in triumph. ‘You see? This is what I mean. You don’t belong here. You’re like a man from the stars. A different light has warmed your skin. Different water pisses out from you. I knew it the first moment I set my eyes on you. How old are you, exactly?’

  ‘Exactly? I’ve no idea.’

  ‘You’re not taking offence?’

  ‘I’m not taking offence. All I know is, that when I was a child the world was quieter, the woods more vast, and the chatter of men as occasional as the chatter of a magpie. It was a big world and the sound of the wind and of rain was the loudest sound of all. There were drums and flutes, but they made a gentle sound. Now there are drums and horns in every valley, and the air screeches with pipes played by windbags and madmen. No offence intended, by the way.’

  He shrugged. ‘My pipes don’t screech. And you always need a windbag. And I’m certainly a madman. But back to you … You’re very old, then.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you have magical skills.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘May I know them? That was my question, really. The question I’d hoped wouldn’t give you offence. What exactly can you do?’

  For a man whose guts clenched when he thought of me, Elkavar was certainly warm and close, a man at ease with the confrontation. He looked much the same age as me, though I think the twinkle in his eyes was a touch brighter. He seemed easily inclined to laughter and mischief, perhaps in equal measure with his inclination to song. Even as I sat on the bench, wondering what to tell him, he had offered to ‘compose a song about you in exchange. A good ballad. Completely flattering!’

  Since Jason knew my skills, and Niiv was aware of them, and since they would certainly come to be used on this voyage, I decided that there was no harm in letting him know the truth. The truth, of course, was that only a fraction of my talents were yet in use, and they were the obvious ones of ‘shifting’ and ‘travelling’.

  I told him that I could summon the spirits of hounds, birds, fish and
stags, and run with them through their own realms. I could look forward in time, but that was dangerous, especially if the vision involved myself. I could summon a corpse to glimpse the underworld, but that was to be avoided at all costs. I could break the lie from a trick, to expose the truth, as I had done for Jason, to let him see how Medea had confounded his senses and made him believe in the death of his sons.

  Elkavar was silent and thoughtful as Argo drifted on that gentle river below the bright, night clouds. Then he said, ‘Who taught you such things? Where do you go to learn such things?’

  ‘That,’ I told him truthfully, ‘I cannot answer. All my life I’ve walked a path, a road around the world, more or less circular. It passes through Gaul, and Greek Land and mountains to the east, and through the snow-wastes of winter and the mosquito-misery of summer of this country.’

  ‘Are you alone?’ he asked quickly, and with a frown.

  And what a strange question that was! I tried not to show how deeply those words had struck. Because in my dreams I dreamed of others, old friends, children who had played by the same pool, beneath the same willows, and chased the same small deer as me in that land so long gone it was no longer on my bones. But that was my dream, the comforting story in my sleeping mind.

  Was the question innocent? Looking at the dishevelled but bright-eyed Hibernian, lost in the world yet abundantly optimistic, I decided that it was.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Not now, of course. I have companions. You, for example. Elkavar, this is the second time I’ve pulled an oar on this ship. I’ve been a long time alive. A long time pulling rough-hewn oars. It is not a favourite way to spend my days.’

  He looked at his hands, the skin already blistered with the effort. ‘I couldn’t agree with you more. Rowing boats is harder than I’d thought. Well, with all those great strengths in enchantment, can you at least summon a wind to take us south, Merlin?’

  I told him that I couldn’t.

  ‘Much good you are, then,’ he said with a quick smile, then leaned forward in an attempt to sleep across the oar.

  Urtha suddenly whispered from behind me, ‘I heard all that. Our druids are not as potent.’

  ‘So I saw.’

  He hesitated for a moment and then asked, ‘Can you enter Otherworlds?’

  I knew to what he was referring. ‘Not easily. Most of them are closed against me.’

  ‘Not too powerful, then.’

  ‘It takes too much of a toll. I like being young. I like what youthfulness can add to life. I’m careful with my power.’

  Urtha seemed amused. ‘Would we all had that choice. But you know, in our land, when we die, it all starts again. Don’t fear age, Merlin.’ He laughed quietly. ‘Let me foster you!’

  * * *

  The journey of lakes south from the land of the Pohjoli was behind us; and the freezing sea, with its floating ice and sleek, dark pirate ships, was also behind us; and we were about to enter the land of ghosts.

  The land of Urtha’s birth had been known by many names, most of them referring to the rugged coastline or the treacherous estuaries of the great rivers that led into its interior, or to the whiteness of the towering cliffs which the sea had carved along its southern reaches. Five-river-land was how a trading people, the phoaniki, had known of this northerly and inhospitable island, though there were many more rivers than that. I had met one intrepid trader of that race who had sailed its circumference and whose tales confirmed the well-attested belief that the land went down into the sea on its farthest edge, and that the inhabitants of that part of the island moved between the realm of ocean and forest as if there was no boundary.

  Urtha called his realm Alba, and this was a familiar enough dialect name for what various peoples of the south called Albos, Albon, Hyperalbora and so on, invariably meaning ‘Whiteland’, though the name was not necessarily derived from the chalk cliffs so easily visible from the territory of the Nervii on the mainland itself. Long before Urtha’s time, Alba had been shrouded in mist for more than fifty generations, a cloying, brilliant cover of cloud that had made navigation around its coastal waters a nightmare. That endless, timeless mist had concealed great storms that pounded ceaselessly at the deeper forests and mountains. The island had been a rain-land of terrifying darkness, and there were accounts of ‘ancestor trees’ reaching high above the stormclouds, whose canopies were home to whole clans.

  It was at the end of the age of the huge stone sanctuaries, however, those massive circles in the wildwood, that the most enduring name for Alba arose: Ghostland. I had journeyed on by then, back on the Path after helping with the building, but I learned later that this Otherworldly land had suddenly risen in the heart of Alba, an enormous realm of forested hills and deep, twisting valleys, connected to the clan territories that surrounded it, such as Urtha’s, by mist-shrouded rivers and narrow passes.

  In Ghostland, the shades of the ancient dead ran, played, rode and hunted with the spirits of those yet to be born, bright elementals who always took adult form and dreamed of the adventures and fates to come in their own far futures. For this reason, Ghostland was also known as the Land of the Shadows of Heroes.

  Urtha’s stronghold was a few days’ ride to the east of this Otherworld.

  ‘I’ve seen it from a distance,’ he explained one day as we rested from rowing. ‘And I’ve seen some of the Shadow Heroes, when they come to the edge of their world, close to ours. They have their sides of the rivers, their edges of the forests, their own valleys, which we leave well alone. They ride mostly by night. Some are like my own uthiin, bound to one leader, bound by their own codes of ghostly honour. But they are drawn from strange places, and they are mostly unrecognisable, though my wife’s father, Ambaros, claims to have seen ancestor signs on some of them. We keep the border between their territory and ours as taboo. To cross the wrong river, take the wrong forest path, is to disappear as completely as a puff of smoke on a windy day, not even a footprint remaining. Though to be honest, it’s an almost impossible task to enter their realm. They come into ours, though.’

  Urtha made the crossed finger gesture that indicated both protection and danger.

  No such concerns occupied Urtha now as he stood at Argo’s prow, screaming greeting to the craggy cliffs of Alba. His uthiin rowed hard, the Germanii and the Volkas sang rowdily, the Cretan looked worried. Urtha could think of nothing but his wife and daughter—and his two fine sons (potential return had finally made his heart grow slightly fonder towards the boys he had described as ‘twin demons’). Jason stood with him, while Rubobostes held the tiller, and as Argo rocked on the rising swell of this grey, grim sea, so they discussed where along the island’s shores we had arrived. Gebrinagoth of the Germanii was helpful, having once rowed with a war party through the channel between island and mainland. He hadn’t stopped to raid, he assured Urtha nervously. It was agreed we were too far north. To reach the small river inlet that led to Urtha’s land would take two days, either rowing or sailing.

  In fact, we hoisted the sail, since the wind suddenly got up, a useful northerly, and there was a great sigh of pleasure as the oars were shipped. Argo listed heavily in the current, but rode her way quickly south, standing off from the shore to avoid the rocks. At times, figures lined the cliffs, and where we passed the beaches, long-haired, masked riders galloped in parallel with us. There was often a clamour of horns and drums, distinct warnings. When Argo dipped too close to land, slingshot showered towards us; during the night, torches burned on high or on the shoreline.

  Urtha was not happy with the omens, though he would not specify the nature of his concern. I had noticed, however, that many of the spear-shaking, horn-blowing guardians of this part of Alba were women, children and older men.

  Then, in the dark of the night, a while before the dawn, we saw a burning figure in the distance, in fact two great wooden effigies in the shape of men, which appeared to be wrestling with each other across the mouth of a narrow river. As they burned they showered fire
on to the water below. We could hear the screaming of animals, caught in these figures, being slowly consumed by the conflagration.

  ‘Is this a sacrifice?’ Jason asked.

  Urtha agreed that it probably was. ‘And a discouragement. Something has happened. Something has changed…’ He seemed very worried, very confused.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.

  ‘Because this is my river. My territory is a two-day haul along it. These people who live at the inlet are my allies at the moment. We trade cattle and horses and foster our sons. You’ll remember me telling you, Merlin. I’ve never known the local king, Vortingoros, to use cage-burning. Something has happened.’

  Jason dismissed Urtha’s immediate worries, demanding, ‘If that’s the way to get to where you live, to fetch these great knights of yours you’ve promised me, how do we pass below this burning bridge?’

  There was a long silence, then all eyes turned to me.

  Elkavar shouted genially from his bench, ‘I have an excellent suggestion. Let’s back-row and forget all about it.’

  Ullanna and Rubobostes cheered, and there was a ripple of laughter among the other argonauts.

  ‘Is there another river entrance?’ Jason asked. Urtha shook his head.

  ‘None that I would trust. Besides, I need to know what has happened here. Have you noticed the strange thing?’

  We all stared at the burning giants, their arms locked around each other’s shoulders, fire dripping from their wood and wicker frames as metal pours from the cauldron. I realised, then, what Urtha meant.

  There was no sign of Vortingoros or his elite; no horsemen, no chariots, no screaming women hoisting bloody spears, no raging druids calling down the fury of Taranas, no curious children waiting for the slaughter, no howling, foaming hounds.