The Hadassah Covenant

by Robert Holdstock

  For a moment, Jason lost sight of the other man. Then, from back along the water, came the sound of a cry and tumbling stones. He left the horse and returned cautiously to the river, where it curved below the overshadowing oak of Dodona. He soon realised his quarry was also walking back, but on the opposite bank, keeping to the shadows, equally circumspect.

  Jason heard him whisper, questioningly, ‘Kinos? Kinos?’ and knew at once that his search was ended.

  A moment later they both came to my supine, soaking body, lying in the stream, helpless. For a moment Jason was startled as he looked down at me, then his gaze lifted to the young man across from him. Disappointment registered fleetingly on that young man’s face, then suspicion. The two of them regarded each other in silence.

  ‘I thought you might have been my brother,’ Thesokorus said, as if an explanation was needed. ‘I was told my brother was here. Are you with Brennos and the army?’

  Jason continued to stare for a moment more, then sighed, with relief and delight. He shook his head, half smiling through his dishevelled beard. He took the rough helmet from his head and cast it aside.

  ‘I thought I wouldn’t know you,’ he said softly, ‘from just looking at you. I saw your ghost, at Delphi, but the face meant nothing. But I recognise every gleam and glimmer in the face I see now. I would have known you at once. This man, Merlin, this poor wretch at our feet, described you to me once—’

  ‘Who are you?’ Thesokorus interrupted in an angry whisper, his hand resting on the ivory hilt of his sword. He could hardly take his eyes from the old man who stood across the narrow water.

  Jason kept his hands away from his body. His own sword was slung across his shoulders. ‘He described you in the most flattering terms. He said: your son is young; eager; handsome! He added that there was something about you that “doesn’t care”. He said you looked nothing like me. But I don’t know. I like your looks. I think this bastard was lying. I never bothered with mirrors. What do you think, little Bull Leaper? I can’t call you “Orgetorix”. Will you age to look like me?’

  ‘Bull Leaper?’

  Jason smiled carefully. The silence in the valley wrapped around the scene. The world was far away. ‘You only did it once. You were four years old. But you were wonderful. In the bull-ring at Iolkos, do you remember? It was a small bull; you were a small boy; but you grabbed those ribboned horns and flung yourself over the head of the beast, dancing on its back with a triumphant laugh before running for safety. I was so proud of you!’

  ‘No!’ Thesokorus shouted. He stripped off the leather jerkin and threw it to the ground, then unbuckled his sword belt, holding it ready to draw the blade and discard the scabbard. ‘I don’t know you. I don’t recognise you. This bastard has told you that story. He’s a trickster. I should have known when I first met him. My father is long dead, long dead and grinning from a coward’s grave.’

  Jason’s voice had an edge of unease in it. He was beginning to plead. This meeting was not going as he had expected; he had anticipated that persuasion would be the nature of the confrontation, not hostility. I had not forearmed him. ‘But I’m not dead,’ he stated carefully. ‘Look at me. Very much alive. I searched for you through time and over half the world. Thesokorus—’

  ‘No!’

  Jason’s words were enraging the younger man. Confusion boiled behind those dark, fierce eyes. Through time? Through time? I could hear him thinking, as if a part of him instinctively knew the truth. But the barrier of hate and emotional defence was too strong.

  ‘Thesokorus…’ Jason implored, almost angry himself, now, with his son’s recalcitrance. ‘We’ve been given a second chance. I am the man who caught you when you leapt from that bull. I know what your mother did to you. I know what I did to your mother. I was wrong. I was foolish. Do you have any idea how long I grieved for you and Kinos? I rode and sailed the world to bring you to the pyre! Year in, year out. I searched from Ithaca to Epidamnus; I sailed to every island. I crossed to Ilium and Ephesus. My search for your bodies was no less intense than if I’d thought I was searching for you both alive! I thought you were dead, Thesokorus. I saw your mother kill you. Don’t you remember the trick?’

  ‘This is the trick,’ the young man spat. ‘My mother hid me from my father because he would have killed me!’

  ‘Not true. Not true,’ Jason shouted. His voice was a cry of pain. Somewhere above us, I imagined I could hear Medea laughing. But it may have been the call of a ram, roaming wild in the thickets.

  ‘Why did you ask about me at the oracle, at Arkamon?’ Jason asked in a softer tone, a desperate attempt to get his son to relax his guard.

  The question again startled Thesokorus. ‘You know so much about me!’

  ‘Of course I do…’

  ‘But of course! This man here would have told you.’

  The response was fury born of anguish. ‘I’m Jason! I’m your father. I’ve waited a lifetime to find you. And now that I’ve found you, don’t you see? We can share the rest of my poor, short life together. We can search for Kinos. I have the beginning of an idea where he is. On my shield, this is the truth.’

  ‘Where do you imagine he is?’ Thesokorus asked coldly.

  ‘Between sea-swept walls,’ his father answered. ‘It’s what the oracle told you. Isn’t it?’

  Thesokorus sneered. ‘Oracles? A few days ago, on my way to Delphi, another oracle whispered to me that he was here. But all I found were these few men. Even the guards had deserted the place, though these fought well. It seems nothing is to be trusted.’

  Jason raised his hands in a gesture of peace. ‘Your mother shattered my world with two swift cuts. She stole my life. I can’t deny I had stopped loving her, but I was in turmoil about you and Kinos. I couldn’t think how to have you in my own life while leaving the two of you in hers. Thesokorus, I swear, again on my shield, that when I came to the palace that day, with the small band of men, it was to discuss arrangements with Medea that would have given you two boys the best of both worlds. But she thought differently and ran from me.’

  ‘You pursued us, swords drawn!’ Thesokorus snapped, outraged. ‘Murder in mind. You had murder in mind.’

  ‘She set her guards on us. She threw fire at us! She silenced our voices. I panicked. How could I have known that she’d planned to escape? Everything was ready for the act—knife, blood, chariot, ship. She had been waiting for me to come. She must have known I was coming in peace.’

  ‘No!’ Lies. More lies. I asked about you at Arkamon because I could never summon your name. But now I have it, and my hate for you is even greater. Yes, I see in your eyes that you are rottenbones! You are Jason! I’d thought you were long dead. But you haunted me, day and night. Now there is a chance to avenge my mother.’

  ‘No!’

  Jason’s desperate cry went unheeded. I heard the rasp of iron on whetstone, a sword drawn swiftly from the scabbard.

  ‘No! Not like this,’ Jason begged again. ‘I was in the underworld, neither alive nor dead. A ghost still living in the corpse. But Merlin saw you at Arkamon. He brought me back to the world to find you. I loved you. I despaired when I thought you were dead. Twenty years rotting on Argo, seven hundred years in hell. None of that matters. Now, nothing matters other than being in your world again. Time has been lost. We can’t reclaim it. The time is now. And we have to use our lives. To find Kinos. To hunt, to harvest, to confront the unknown. To build!’

  He fell silent, breathing hard, head shaking slightly as if suddenly exhausted.

  But his son was not in control of his senses or his actions. Though he had listened to his father, he had not responded in any way. Now he whispered, ‘This is the only life I have. This is the only world I know. Finding Kinos is the only thing that matters. Dead parents don’t feature.’

  Then only blood rage and grim vengeance were in his face. The muscles of his sword arm were flexed. The pulse at his neck was strong. His breathing was shallow.

  Jason saw the wa
rning signs and said quickly, ‘Thesokorus … not like this!’

  ‘Yes,’ Thesokorus said quietly and with finality. ‘Exactly like this.’

  He stepped over my sprawled body. No magic of Medea’s had paralysed me, nor silenced my voice. I had chosen this for myself. I had made myself vulnerable to Jason. By doing so, I had denied myself the chance to help him.

  In a flash of bright iron, Thesokorus struck his father a cruel and vicious blow. Jason blocked the strike with his own sword, staggering back under its power, and for a few moments the air rang with the noise of iron on iron as Thesokorus tried to find the wrist and hack away his father’s hand.

  Thesokorus stumbled and Jason slashed at him, but it was a half-hearted strike, easily deflected. They closed together, crouched low in the Greeklander style, struggled in silence for a moment, then pulled apart. Jason’s breathing was laboured. Thesokorus stood calmly, staring at his father, blade half raised.

  Jason lowered his sword, defencelessly. He couldn’t speak, but his eyes—narrowed, searching, sad—said it all. An end to this.

  In that moment of lowered guard, King of Killers took two quick steps and pushed his blade into his father’s belly.

  I saw the old man, my old friend, sink to his knees, then fall sideways, clutching at his flesh. The young Greeklander stood over him, the bloody blade shaking in his grasp. I waited for him to finish the other man, but he simply stood and stared.

  How quick and brutal this had been, compared to the lengthy combat that had seen Urtha triumph over Cunomaglos.

  Jason’s gaze met mine.

  ‘You betrayed me, Merlin. You let me think she was dead. You knew she was in the world. You could have told me. You could have prevented this.’

  I willed strength back into my limbs and sat up, leaning on my left hand. ‘I loved her long before you loved her, Jason. The pity of it is, I don’t remember. I only feel. We were torn apart. We were made to forget each other.’

  ‘You compound your betrayal,’ Jason rasped. ‘That lie compounds it all. You hollow man!’

  Now Thesokorus was staring at me, a deep frown on his face. He came towards me and used the point of his gore-stained sword to raise my chin. The sweat ran from his torso on to my face.

  ‘Who is in the world?’ he asked quietly. The tone was strange. He half suspected.

  ‘Your mother,’ I told him. He searched my eyes, otherwise expressionless, listening. I said, ‘She’s up on the ridge there, near the oak. She’s watching you even now. Jason is right: he has told you the truth. She has poisoned your mind against him. Your hate for your father is her hate, not your own. It’s not too late to put things right.’

  Though from the pallor on Jason’s face, and the spread of blood on his belly, my words were probably optimistic.

  Thesokorus, still standing menacingly above me, sword edge firmly held against my jaw, looked up at the hill for a long time. Was he hoping to see her? Or trying to decide whether to believe me?

  Again his gaze questioned me. ‘Is she there?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  He frowned. ‘That can’t be right. The oracle at Arkamon told me my mother was dead.’

  ‘The oracle at Arkamon was your mother. It’s where she went to hide after escaping from Iolkos. It’s where she waited for the two of you to come back to her, you and Kinos.’

  The point of the blade pricked my skin. I could smell sweat and the acrid scent of fear from Thesokorus, though to look at him you would have seen no sign of anything other than calm control.

  ‘How do you know? How can you be sure?’ he asked after a moment.

  ‘I’ve scratched my bones a little,’ I replied.

  He shook his head, not understanding the reference, and for a moment I thought he would push the blade into my gullet. But he let the sword droop.

  It occurred to me, then, that Medea—certainly watching—had taken her poison from the young man’s mind. She had given Thesokorus back his freedom. Perhaps it had been intended as a gesture of remorse. But in doing so, she had dispatched him to the abyss.

  ‘I came to this place to find a brother I’d believed to be alive,’ he said wearily. ‘Instead I find a father and a mother I’d thought dead. I kill the father. And the mother watches me from the trees, like a bird of prey. An anonymous man tells me that all I thought I knew is false. Even my actions.’ He studied me for a moment. ‘This is the sort of thing we Greeklanders write about in plays. But playing time is finished. This is all too much.’

  He stepped away from his father, looked down, then cast the sword aside, staring at his hands as if they were filthy. ‘Too much. Too much.’

  ‘Thesokorus!’ Jason cried weakly as his son picked up his cloak and jacket and strode away through the trees to where his horse was tethered.

  Only a sudden gust of cold, sour wind greeted his call.

  ‘It could have been different,’ Jason murmured in agony. Gore was spreading further across his body, but he raised himself unsteadily, then seemed to find new strength.

  His look at me was evil. His mouth was twisted in a grimace of pain and disgust. ‘I won’t forgive you, Merlin. Kill me now with that magic of yours, or hide from me. My son might almost have killed me, I don’t know yet. He’s certainly taken the wind out of me.’

  I tried to summon the right words to persuade him to think again. But he groaned, gasped, then sat up straight.

  ‘Stare at me all you wish,’ he said with poison in his voice. ‘Remember the gore. One day it will visit itself on your own guts!’

  He heaved himself to his feet, shaking and unsteady. ‘There is no Ullanna to take me home by cart, loving me. I have no bondsmen, riding in protection. Dogs? My dogs wait to chew my marrowbones…’

  He staggered away from me. He found a broken spear and used it to lean on, his back to me as he cursed me in a final gasp of invective, adding, ‘After I’ve found Little Dreamer, I’ll find you again. Merlin! Dread the dawn when you wake to see me smiling down on you! Dread that dawn. Old man!’

  He suddenly reached down, groaning with the effort, and picked up his son’s wide-bladed sword where it had been discarded. He looked at it for a moment, at his own blood on the iron, then, with a roar, flung it at me. I moved just in time, and the bone grip struck against my shoulder.

  Shaking his head, Jason limped away, towards the grove where his white horse was tethered by the stream. But he had not gone very far before he sank to his knees, head dropping, using his last strength, holding the shaft, to keep his body from keeling over.

  * * *

  I was running. I ran like a guilty child, up the hill to the ridge, to the oak of Dodona, which towered untouched, yet to be shaken by the approaching Celtic army.

  There was no sign of Medea, but youthful Mielikki was waiting for me, tears in her eyes. She reached a hand for me. I started to weep, for the memory of childhood and the young woman who had become Medea, though not before we had shared love, a love I now longed to remember. And I wept for Jason, for the loss of a friend, that man, dying by the stream, crouching, clutching his side as he waited to see if his shade would rise and walk into Persephone’s silent realm.

  The Forest Lady embraced me gently. I leaned against her, helpless and in despair. If Niiv had stepped out of the shadow of the tree and tried to steal from me at that moment, she could have done so with ease.

  ‘Nothing has turned out right,’ I whispered, unashamedly sorry for myself. ‘I don’t know where to go next. I’ve lost the Path.’

  ‘Fierce Eyes has softened towards you. That was unexpected.’

  ‘Yes. But what have I lost? I’ve lost so much.’

  ‘You can’t know that. Not yet. Not until everything is finished.’

  For a moment her words confused me. But I thought of Urtha, slowly returning to his own land, a country blighted by desertion and haunted by an army of angry dead. And of Kinos, hidden somewhere in that same land, perhaps searching for Thesokorus as the King of Killers
had searched for him. And Medea would certainly fall back to protect her offspring from Jason, if the man recovered from his wound and journeyed again to the realm between the sea-swept walls.

  Forest Lady was right. It was not yet finished.

  She soothed me. The wind blew through the oak, and the scent of honey from the hives was sweet on the air. Somewhere, not too far away, the earth was shaking as horsemen cantered blindly towards us.

  ‘It’s time you went home for a while,’ the Lady who held me whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ I said to her, clinging to that hope, that dream, with all my heart. ‘Take me home.’ I thought of Ghostland, and the memory was warm. ‘Take me to Alba.’

  She seemed surprised. ‘To Urtha’s land? To the wasteland?’

  ‘This is wasteland,’ I remember saying bitterly. ‘Alba is as good a home as any.’

  ‘Then that’s where Argo will take you,’ Mielikki whispered. ‘We will both come with you. I can wait for the north. I don’t mind waiting. Argo will take you home.’

  She took my hand and led me back to the river. There was no sign of Jason. We sat on the rocks and waited for dusk. And with the passing of the light, the river began to deepen. The hills seemed to rise to enfold us until only a narrow band of stars could be seen above.

  We stood and stepped into the water. And the small, beautiful ship drifted out of the darkness towards us, a spirit from Argo, pale by the starlight. She nudged me gently as she passed and I hauled myself aboard, settling down among the skins and blankets and untying the laces of my boots.

  Free for a while, to breathe and dream.

  Afterword

  On this wistful note, the first extended narrative text of the Merlin Codex ends.

  The continuation of the story deals with Merlin’s return to Alba, hiding at the edge of ‘Ghostland’, haunted by Niiv’s stolen vision of the future as well as the certainty that Jason, if he has survived the wound, will return to the island, to search for his second son, Kinos, Little Dreamer. As he tries to understand both the nature of the wasteland that has blighted Urtha’s world, and the reason for the savage attack from the Land of the Shadows of Heroes, Merlin makes it clear quite quickly that he is in no doubt that Little Dreamer has much to do with the dark story unfolding between the ‘sea-swept walls’ of Alba.