Avilion (Mythago Wood 7)

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

Also by Robert Holdstock

THE MERLIN CODEX
The Iron Grail
Celtika
The Broken Kings

 

MYTHAGO CYCLE
Mythago Wood
Lavondyss
The Hollowing
Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn
Avilion

 

Ancient Echoes
Merlin’s Wood
The Fetch

 
 
 

 
Avilion

 

 
ROBERT HOLDSTOCK

 
 
Orion

A Gollancz ebook

 
Copyright © Robert Holdstock 2009

 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.

 

 
First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Gollancz
An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group
Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company

 

 
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

eISBN : 978 0 5750 8826 9

 
ISBN 978 0575 08301 1 (Trade Paperback)

 

 
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

 
www.robertholdstock.com
www.orionbooks.co.uk

This ebook produced by Jouve, France

To Sarah.
Twenty-five years on from Mythago Wood, you are still
cariath ganuch trymllyd bwstfil

But now farewell, I am going a long way
With these thou seest - if indeed I go
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) -
To the island-valley of Avilion;
... Where I will heal me of my grievous wound

 

From ‘The Passing of Arthur’:
from Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson

 

 

The ghost is as the man
ibid

Echo: Mythago Wood

Ryhope Wood is as ancient as the Ice Age, primal, undisturbed for twelve thousand years; and it is semi-sentient. As small as Ryhope Wood seems, it contains a vast world. Within its apparently impenetrable boundaries, legendary figures and landscape come alive, born from the collective memory of those who live in its proximity.

In 1948, Steven Huxley returned to England from France, to his home, Oak Lodge, at the edge of this remote patch of woodland.

His older brother Christian was waiting for him there. Their father, George, had disappeared into the wild two years before.

George Huxley had discovered the secret of Ryhope Wood. He had called the ancient ghosts that lived there mythagos: the images of the myth.

One of these figures of legend was the Celtic Princess, Guiwenneth of the Green. George and Christian Huxley had become entranced by this beautiful and feisty echo of the Iron Age, this ‘image of a myth’, after she had emerged from the edge. They had fought over her, but had lost her.

Soon after Steven’s return, his brother also disappeared into the wildwood, trailing his father and searching for the woman he desired.

But Guiwenneth of the Green re-emerged for Steven - and their love was sudden, genuine, and profound. Sadly, it was a short-lived love at the edge of the wood.

Christian, aged by many years and remorseless in his search (Time is strange in Mythago Wood), returned with armed men and took his prize, leaving his brother for dead.

Yet Steven survived, and he and Christian met again at the very heart of Mythago Wood, and in a bitter winter. Steven exacted revenge. Christian was dead. But so was Guiwenneth, cut down by one of Christian’s mercenaries. She was taken to Avilion, also known as Lavondyss.

Steven held faith in her return, however, waiting at the top of the valley known as imarn uklyss: ‘where the girl came back through the fire’.

He was rewarded - old love was reignited, and two children were the consequence, named Jack and Yssobel, both of them half human and half mythago.

What follows now is a story of Blood and the Green.

And of Resurrection.

PROLOGUE:

Yssobel

The stone stood stark against the moon, towering over Yssobel as she stared at the monument from the edge of the wide glade with tears in her eyes. The journey here had been long, far longer than she had expected. There had been times when she had despaired of ever finding the true trail to this place. But she was here now. She had found it at last.

Pale light illuminated the stone’s flanks, showing by shadow the old script carved there, a different tale on each side, four in all, four echoes of the life of a great man, and a great king.

The monolith whispered to her, greeted her. As she walked towards it in the night, it seemed to lean slightly, as if to embrace her, the illusion of welcome.

I’ve found you, she thought in triumph, and then gave voice to the words. ‘I’ve found you!’

Yes, she was sure of it. This was Peredur’s Stone, the marker of the man’s grave. This was where her mother had died and been taken to Lavondyss; this was close to where her mother had returned, renewed and vibrant with life. This was the place of ending and beginning.

Yssobel reached the stone. The smells of night and earth enveloped her. She touched the first of the cold sides, feeling the smooth carvings in the rough-hewn rock. She traced the patterns, her mind a dance of recognition as the images blossomed in her imagination.

Peredur and the Nine Eagles. She smiled as she recognised a part of the legend that was her mother’s. It was a story with which she was very familiar.

Walking round, setting loose her tumble of hair as she did so, she embraced the second flank.

Peredur and the Song of the Islands of the Lost. This was strange. She didn’t recognise it, though she recognised the song. Her mother, Guiwenneth, had often sung it. But for all that she had learned and dreamed about Peredur, she had never heard of his link with this tale, these islands. She moved away from it.

At the third face, her heart started to race a little: Peredur and the Shield of Diadora. This, she knew about: the shield that reflected the past, and if viewed carefully could show a glimpse, at the edge of its inner, polished centre, a hint of what might come. It had been one of Peredur’s prized possessions.

Yssobel stood for a long time in front of the fourth flank, that side of the tall stone that lay in moon shadow. Here she sang quietly, words composed whilst on her journey. When that small celebration was done, she whispered a chant of promise to her mother and promise to her father. She blew a kiss to her brother Jack, who would, no doubt, be following his own path, somewhere else in the land. She missed him. Then, with a smile, she reached to feel the carvings, tracing them as she had done with the others, reading the marks and spirals, her fingers so expert that they could have read them in complete darkness. But she frowned again as she traced:

Peredur and Yssobel.

‘That can’t be right,’ she said to the stone. ‘I don’t belong to your time. This isn’t the rune that I dreamed. I dreamed of you at The Crossing Place of Ghosts.’

But perhaps this was one of the changes that could occur in this world, she thought to herself. Perhaps this signified that Peredur would look after her on her journey inwards. It was a comforting thought.

A dark bird, perched on top of the monument, suddenly stretched its wings and drifted silently away, across the clearing and into the forest edge. Yssobel saw it, but was not made apprehensive by it.

She had been so engrossed in her inspection of the stone that she failed to hear the stealthy approach from behind. The first she knew of it was when her tumble of hair was yanked gently but firmly. Stifling her cry of surprise, mind and limbs suddenly sharpened, she drew her long-bladed Greek knife in a blur of speed and swung round ready to strike. She immediately relaxed and laughed.

The face that watched her was benign; it blinked, sighed, and the horse turned away. I’m here too. And it’s late.

The moon lowered, the glade darkened. Now Peredur’s Stone was a shadow against stars. Yssobel lay in her small shelter, wrapped in a long sheepskin, and stared and thought and remembered. She had fed her horse; the packhorse she had brought with her towards the heart of the wood had perished on the way, not from the exhaustion of carrying her supplies but from predation by the creatures that stalked the valley down which she had ridden. She was glad that Rona, her favourite - a small mare, with a long black and white mane, her flanks grey - had made it this far.

Peredur and Yssobel. She hadn’t expected that.

But she had dreamed long, long ago that the rune-marks would be there, the patterns, the codes that signified the tales; and when she had told her mother, her mother had cocked her head, stared at the child of five summers, smiled, and said nothing. A look that signified she was thinking very differently.

The sun rose and Yssobel rose too, prepared herself and the horse for the day, then walked to where the sun was casting the Stone’s shadow. She looked along that shadow towards the leaning trunk of a broken oak - blown down by a storm wind, no doubt.

That is where I go. That is where I go to find him.

She led Rona to the narrow space below the tree, led the way through to find a narrow track that widened to a grassy trail. It might almost have been a road. The road was in a hollow. Tree-lined earthen banks rose on each side. She was puzzled; this wasn’t right. She swung herself onto Rona’s back and cantered forward, watching and listening, and she had travelled a long way, lost in her own thoughts, before she thought to slow down and rest the mare.

There should have been fire here, marking the way through. She had seen fire in her dreams, and her father’s account of this place was that a wall of fire guarded the deepest of the lands in Ryhope Wood. But there was just the forest trail, and the sense that human hands had built the way. The world had changed. The wood had changed its mind.

Yssobel rode for most of the day and was about to rest when she caught the scent of a lake. The wind had freshened. The smell of the fresh water was clear and sharp and clean. Intrigued, she pressed forward.

The wind shifted and she stopped suddenly. Faintly, then more loudly, she could hear the din and clatter of battle. She kicked the mare on and the trail began to curve. The horse was straining slightly. She could smell the lake as well, and was thirsty. Yssobel hauled her back. The battle was very close now, and its sounds made her stomach clench and her senses sharpen. The beat of shields, the ringstrike of iron, the wailing departure of men, the screaming triumph of killers, the noisy protesting of horses ridden through the fury, these signs of vicious struggle waxed and waned on the air.

Yssobel’s copper hair billowed out like a cloak behind her as the wind strengthened, bringing with it the sharp tang of blood, and she took a moment to gather it and knot it to the side, using a silver ring. She was about to kick forward again when a horse burst through the undergrowth above the bank and stumbled its way down and across the track. A man lay slumped on its back, arms dangling, features obscured by a small helmet that covered half his face, which now was red from a strike. As the horse leapt up the opposite bank, so he fell heavily to the ground, rolling back to the road. For a moment gleaming eyes watched Yssobel, a hand moved towards her. Then brightness became blur.