There was a degree of disarray in the army. Achichoros had had his own ‘vision’, and decided to ride north, along the coast, and cross into the eastern lands, in the footsteps of Alessandros, where he believed there were easier spoils than at Delphi. He had taken several thousand men and their families, to Bolgios’s fury. Brennos had been philosophical about the action. He was aware that he still had forces enough to press through the narrow pass and further down into Aetolia.
Gebrinagoth and Gutthas had gone with Achichoros, however; and Rubobostes was also becoming restless, I was told. The sweep of Achichoros’s break-away army would take it close to his own land, and he was unhappy with this development, imagining that they would not hesitate to forage and pillage the country of his birth.
He sought me out, looking uncomfortable and depressed, and hot in his black, bearskin cloak, though he refused to remove it. We shared some wine. He told me he would have to take Ruvio, but would ensure strong horses to carry Argo’s heart in wood.
‘Although I’d agreed to sail with Jason only as far as my own land,’ he said, ‘I would have stayed longer. I would like to see him happy. But these armies are more interested in pillage than in the sacred dead…’ he glanced at me carefully, ‘as I imagine you already know…’
I told him that I did, and he went on, ‘And my land has been burned once too often in the last few generations. I will have to persuade Achichorus to keep looking east, and not to the north and east.’
‘You’ll need a lot of Gordion knots to hold them back.’
Rubobostes grinned. ‘I can fashion them faster than a man can empty a flagon of wine.’ He passed me the flagon. I tipped it to my mouth and drank deeply. I couldn’t finish it all, but when I dropped my head and wiped my mouth he was holding a small, exquisite knot towards me, made from a leather lace.
‘To remember me by, although something tells me that my small path and your large one will cross again.’
‘I hope so.’
He rose to his feet, bid me farewell and walked back towards the ranks of men massing behind the standard of Achichorus.
The argonauts were dispersing faster than summer rain. But Tairon and Elkavar remained intrigued by what the oracle at Delphi might reveal, though neither had any intention of contributing to the looting of the place. These two men, hardly able to exchange a word, were so alike in their strange talents with ways-under and labyrinths that they might almost have been siblings. Their minds worked in the same way. Looks, gestures, glances and the odd shared phrase were more than enough to have them laugh at some shared cryptic joke.
The Cymbrii were fired by thoughts of their ancestors. Talking to one of Brennos’s captains, they had heard the whole saga of the invasion of their tribal lands, and the looting of their dead. Whatever Brennos’s true motives for this assault on Greek Land, he had inspired outrage and ancestor-revenge in a great proportion of his army. Gwyrion remembered stories from his childhood that echoed and reflected everything that Brennos had claimed, that day by the Daan. In truth, these men’s lands had been pillaged, and the memory of that event—three hundred years in their past—was still a source of anger and pain in their family homes; it might be no more than story, now, but it was story that struck at the heart itself. They were very keen to strike at Greeklanders.
* * *
At some time, during one of the nights that followed, Elkavar murmured, ‘Do you think you might have misjudged her?’
‘Who?’
‘Who? Frost Lady’s favourite! Who else? Anu’s kiss, Merlin, the child is raw; and infatuated with you. In case you hadn’t noticed. That’s a child’s sulk, there on her face, not an adult’s connivance. May the Good God whisper some sense to you. You’re a hard man, a cold man, an empty man. You’re as dead as that corpse you summoned underground, the one that took us to Arkamon. You don’t deserve the warmth of your own blood. No wonder flies never bite you. If your heart had feet, it would be halfway back to the Daan by now, running, glad to have given you good riddance.’
‘Do you mean to give offence?’
‘On this occasion, yes. I do.’
‘Then consider offence taken. Now go to sleep.’
Elkavar was angry, though. I could tell from his breathing in the starlit night.
‘You are no more capable of taking offence,’ he muttered after a while, ‘than you are capable of feeling loss. Such simple touches of the human hand have been worn away by wind and rain. You truly are a dead man, walking this world with the mask of a smile and the mask of pain and the mask of laughter. I don’t like sleeping close to dead men. They have a smell about them. So why I choose to stay close to you I cannot answer. Maybe for the glimpse of a single drop of water from your eye. We call them tears, where I come from. To you, they’re probably an ingredient for some potion or other…’
He went on in this vein for some time, then fell quiet. But a while later added, ‘Will you think about what I just said? About the girl?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it for days,’ I told him.
‘I wonder if that’s true,’ Elkavar said sourly, pulling his simple cloak about his shoulders as he embraced sleep. ‘If it is, then I’m glad for you. A little touch of human … at last…’
* * *
Sleep? Impossible. I rode in the dead of night to the sea, to stand by the starlit ocean, letting the restless surge of the waves sweep around my feet. A warm, still sea, glowing from within.
At dawn, a bird came flying from the ocean, its wingbeat slow and steady, its direction purposeful. I soon recognised the creature as a swan. It came out of the glow of the rising sun, silent and sinister, flying so close to me that its wing-tip struck my head, knocking me down. It veered in flight, recovered, and rose over the low cliffs, heading inland. The bird seemed ill.
Elkavar rose from behind a rock, tugging his clothing back into place. I had not been aware of him following me.
‘Good morning,’ he called cheerfully, then glanced in the direction of the swan. ‘You know—I think she’s trying to tell you something.’
I asked him irritably what he meant and he shrugged.
‘She’s going home, Merlin. I imagine she wants to say goodbye.’
His words struck me more deeply than I would have expected. The forlorn look on Niiv’s face last night seemed less a posture, now. She had craved my understanding and I had blocked her through fear of the wild, juvenile use of her inherited talent.
The Mistress of the North had a lot to answer for, giving such strength to Niiv without controlling the child’s use of the charm she now found, playfully, at her fingertips.
I followed the flight of the swan for half a day, and finally found Niiv, settled in a grove of almond trees, by a shallow pool among the ruins of a farm. It was hot and silent. She was singing to herself as she plucked feathers from the swan, which lay across her lap, limp-necked and dead. She had put wing feathers in her fair hair; they stuck out at odd angles. She was wearing the bright skirt she had taken from Pohjola; her small breasts and shoulders were bare and gleaming with perspiration.
Around her: the shells of almonds and the downy feathers of her swan. ‘He flew a long way from the north for me,’ she said as I dismounted. She stroked the dead bird’s neck. ‘He flew so hard. He flew so far. I know, I know. You don’t have to tell me. I shouldn’t use my charm before I know its limitations.’
She had summoned the swan with the intention of riding it home. Poor swan. Poor Niiv. The bird had been flying for days. She must have wanted to go home so badly.
Now that I looked at her I could see the damage she had done to herself. Her eyes were bruised with fatigue, lines beginning to stripe the skin. Her mouth was pinched. Her neck was narrow and lined. There was a touch of water in her gaze, not tears, not the swell of sadness, but the moisture of effort and age. Her hands shook slightly as she pulled the white feathers from the bloody skin of the valiant bird.
Her appearance disturbed me. I went to the pool,
stooped to drink water, and stared down at the pale reflection of a man who was similarly ageing. My own appearance shocked me. For the first time I saw the change happening, and yet … and yet I was more concerned for the girl.
I went back to her, pulled the feathers from her hair, took the corpse of the swan and threw it away. She slapped me hard but made no move to reclaim the dead creature.
‘Niiv … you must slow down. You’ll be dead in a year if you don’t.’
‘Dead of what?’ she whispered angrily. ‘What can kill me? I am protected by the Northland Lady. And Mielikki has her own eyes on my well-being.’
What a fool she was! I could have laughed, agreed, and left her there and then to die in agony, old bones crumbling in young flesh. But I couldn’t do it. (Niiv was not the only fool!)
‘Mielikki is away from her world,’ I insisted, ‘and guarding Argo. Argo is a spirit in a ship, and your guardian has her hands full. The Northland’s Lady gave you talent in charm, enchantment, but no talent in wisdom. You are killing yourself by using what she gave you so fast. Too fast.’
She spat in my face, looked sorry for what she had done and reached to wipe the mess away from my beard. But then she grabbed the discarded wing feathers of the swan and arranged them in the pattern of a fan, stroking them, a strange act of defiance.
‘Leave me alone. You don’t care for me. If I’ve aged it’s from helping you. Or trying to. You’ve discarded me. Leave me alone.’
Once more I almost laughed; then I felt despair. What to say to this silly child?
‘You will never work your charm on me,’ I said. ‘If you can understand that, you can start to be free. I believe you when you say that you meant no harm by flying with me through time. I do believe you.’
‘It’s true. Why did it take you so long?’
‘Because you frighten me.’
‘I frighten you?’ Her laugh was almost sinister, her eyes like ice as they met my own. ‘You terrify me, Merlin. I gave you a small part of myself. I made a mistake. Now I live in fear of what may be brooding behind that corpse-white face of yours!’
I couldn’t tell whether she was innocent, and honest, or playing games. Terrified of me? It made no sense. I’d treated her to no more than anger and rejection for what I’d seen as her trickery.
One at a time, she stitched the swan’s feathers back into her hair, an act that was both deliberate and ridiculous, a mime, a distortion of her features that pretended to have some significance.
‘You frighten me,’ I said again, softly. ‘Because I’m frightened for you. You yourself. The damage that you’re doing. Niiv, when you flew through time, only a little time, those few days into the past to see the gathering by the Daan, you wasted a year of your short life. For me, the effort was far less costly. You’re not in the least like me, though I don’t deny your talents. But you must nurture those talents as you would tend a rose. You can clip a bloom, but you must never harvest the whole flower.’
She stood up and screamed at me. ‘Roses? Roses? You talk to me of roses? While I talk to you of Time? I saw you, Merlin, why don’t you accept that I’ve seen you? I saw the man you will become!’
‘And killed yourself in the seeing!’
She ran her hands over her slim body. ‘Do I look dead to you?’
‘You’re dying!’
She was still defiant. ‘Then I’ll die knowing that you will become so powerful! I’ve seen that power!’
‘Don’t tell me!’
I ran at her and put a hand over her mouth, but she struggled away, determined to speak to me of that flight of fantasy, that nightmare flight into the future. One of her hands stayed linked with mine, even though the other fought me. Her eyes were furious. Her mouth a grimace of triumph.
‘I don’t wish to know,’ I repeated desperately, and she calmed, then mellowed, the fierceness gone from her face to be replaced by confusion.
We sat down together, hands together, and she seemed suddenly aware of her naked breasts, drawing her discarded cloak around her shoulders. ‘I know I shouldn’t have done it,’ she said. She played with a swan’s feather in her left hand, though her right hand kept a grip on my own. ‘Oh, Merlin, I know I did the wrong thing. But didn’t I tell you I knew that? I did try to tell you that I’d been foolhardy. You were so angry. So frightened … I hadn’t realised how frightened you were. And the last thing I ever wanted to do was frighten you.’
She stuck a feather in my hair, laughing as she put it into place, then rearranged it. Her breath was soft but sour on my mouth. She whispered, ‘Feathers suit you. But you know that. In your long life, you’ve worn more feathers than could cloak a flock of gulls. Haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And danced to thunder.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed.
‘There will be thunder and feathers in your future, though the forest will be more your cloak in times to come. Don’t you want to know what I saw? Is there any harm in telling you? The act is done. The vision is in my mind. I can’t put the rose back on its stem, Merlin. I can’t put what I know back in Time’s cauldron…’
‘Then you’d better tell me.’
She was delighted, clapping her hands together as at last she shared her vision.
‘You are as tightly weaved together with Urtha as the threads in this cloth skirt I’m wearing. Tightly knit! He will die, you live on. But one of the sons of the sons of his son will be the reason for your life, and the death of everything you love. His name is Arthur. Oh, Merlin, you will reach such heights of power! Your land is a forest. You live in its centre. When you move, the forest flows around you like a cloak.’
Did she notice my start of shock as she described that scene? Could she truly have seen such a thing? That echo of Sciamath? She babbled on, unaware: ‘A great man, a great king, sits within great walls of earth and wood, turrets that touch the clouds, a fortress built on cliffs of shining rock. The king fears you. The forest flows around that fortress like an army, and Merlin, older, wiser, whiter, is at its heart.’ She sat back, eyes glowing, hands clasped to her chest. She added, ‘And a small shadow runs with the Lord of the Forest. That shadow … not me, of course!’
She said the last with a laugh, throwing herself upon me, forcing me down, her tongue licking at my lips, trying to force my mouth open. Her breath was stale, her hands urgent and probing, lifting her skirts to bare her thighs, tugging at my britches to open my belly to her rampant embrace.
She pulled back, disappointed, pouting in that playful way of hers. ‘I’ve felt you hard, on that spirit ship from Argo. You did nothing. Now you’re soft. You can’t do anything.’
‘And soft it remains.’
She rolled away from me, sitting up, huddled. ‘I told you what I saw. Could that shadow in the forest be me?’
‘That shadow in the forest could never be you,’ I told her as I stood. ‘Not even if you lived across five generations. The oldest you can expect to reach, even great age—withered, toothless, sightless—still would never take you to a time when the forests follow in my footsteps!’
‘Then I’ll stay here. Until I die. I like this place. This is my special grove. I like the nuts. And there are olives over there, and the water is sweet, and I can call bees for honey and small birds for the cooking pot. This is where I will stay. This is my Swan Place. When you need me … and you will need me … this is where you must come to find me.’
She watched me angrily and in silence as I untethered my horse. I gave her a last glance and a half-smile, then cantered down the slope towards the valley that led back to the sea. But Niiv wasn’t finished. Not quite yet.
‘Did you kill my ancestor? Meerga? Was that true?’
She was standing on an outcrop of rock, the dead swan clutched in her left hand like a toy.
‘Yes,’ I shouted up to her. ‘But by accident. I didn’t mean to. Truthfully, it was an accident.’
‘What accident?’
Why not tell her? She had half
guessed already. She would only help kill herself more by trying to find the truth through enchantment.
‘She was full of our child, Niiv. We both knew the child would be dangerous. We had gone out on the lake to deliver it and drown it in Enaaki’s water. But your ancestor died in the act of delivery, and for reasons I will never understand, I couldn’t kill the new-born. I brought the girl back with me. I left her with your people.’
‘So then: we are related!’ She cast the dead bird away from her.
‘Yes. We are. Alas. And you: your half-child. Do you still carry it?’
‘Oh yes,’ she taunted, though the taunt fell short of its mark. ‘But it’s very small. And very patient! You will have need of me, Merlin. There are exciting times to come.’
Not if I had anything to do with it, I thought as I rode grimly down the valley, only once looking back to see a dark tree on the hill, its branches raised above its head, waving side to side as if in a wild wind.
Goodbye, Niiv. For the moment.
But still she had the last word, her voice drifting to me down the defile as I rode back to Brennos, a voice carrying a message that would haunt me.
‘I didn’t tell you everything I saw, Merlin … not everything I saw…’
* * *
The earth began to shake again. Men on horse and foot, oxcarts and rattling chariots covered the hills, cut noisily through the river, some even following the coast, a double defile of laughing warriors, riding through the dawn swell of the gleaming sea.
In two days, we had reached Thermopylae.
* * *
The land had been rising steeply for some time, the valleys narrowing and heavy with tall cedar and pine, a heady swathe of green that deadened sound and made passage difficult. A pristine azure sky was almost blinding to look at. Tumbling streams covered dangerously slippery rocks, and horses struggled and stumbled, slowing the column. Brennos’s army was dispersed widely through these hills, and if the Greeklanders were waiting for us here, they would have been able to cut us to shreds.
The Hadassah Covenant Page 32