The Iron Grail (2 page)

‘Your gift to her could be as easy as rejoining your path. Go away from this land. There will be other times for you and Medea.’

‘Where is she? Is she here now?’ I asked the Three, but they answered only, ‘In Ghostland. Stay away from her. She must protect herself from the Warped Man, Dealing Death.’

And with that final statement, the encounter was concluded.

I had no doubt that the ‘warped man’ was Jason, the man who had betrayed Medea seven centuries ago, and who, now that they were both in the same time again, sought to obliterate her from memory.

After such an intervention by either Nornir or Fates, it was considered polite to host a feast, initiate games and allow for uninhibited sexual encounter. The thought sent a chill through me as I stood in the breezy house. Nothing in me was aroused by these clotting corpses and it was a relief to find that they, too—reading my expression, no doubt—thought the idea untenable. Their strangled laughter mocked me. A moment later, the crows spread their wings, jumped towards me and chased me from the king’s house.

But I sat for a long while at the edge of the untended orchard, among the cairn-covered sacred shafts into the hill, thinking of what had been said, in particular what had been said concerning Argo. Argo was the means by which I had come here, to misty, mysterious Alba, hiding out and licking my wounds. She had once been Jason’s ship, and had become Jason’s grave; then she had been Jason’s resurrection and his new life. She had done much the same for me, though in a different manner.

As the day advanced, and the sky darkened towards a storm, I thought back over seven hundred years, searching for a memory—any memory—that would make sense of the foreboding words from the grim trio.

I remembered at once a terrible dawn in the harbour town of Iolkos, in Greek Land, where everything had begun …

CHAPTER TWO

The Blood Pact

News of the murder passed from house to house and street to street throughout the city, spreading from the palace on the hill, through the markets and suburbs until it reached the harbour, with its silent fleets and stinking quays, where gulls screeched and nets rotted in the hot sun.

‘Glauce is dead! Jason’s lover is dead. His betrayed wife Medea has killed the princess! A witch spell from the barbarian north. Glauce is burned to ash and bone!’

*   *   *

Nine of Jason’s argonauts had stayed in Iolkos, after the quest for the Bloody Ram’s fleece and the abduction of its guardian, Medea. As each heard the news he gathered his armour and weapons and ran through the narrow alleys, calling for the man who had been the captain of Argo, most ancient of ships, strangest of ships, and taken her to the ends of the world.

One of them, faithful, practical Tisaminas, knowing of my skills, first came to find me. I was one of the nine, and known as Antiokus at that time.

I had been making ready to leave this warm, sweet part of the world, to venture on the Path again. Seven years with Jason had finally taken its toll, though I would be sad to leave the adventurer. His lust for life appealed to me, as did his mercenary tendencies, always pushing forward, always looking for something new, ever searching for spoils and charm in all senses of that word. We were the same side of the shield, he and I, at that time at least. The other side of the shield is laziness and complacency—to conquer part of the unknown, as he had done, too often leads to the disabling condition of believing you are invincible; timeless.

Time, and the consequences of conceit, were catching up with Jason; but I still loved the man.

Tisaminas entered my room, unannounced, in a panic, his eyes wild. ‘Glauce has been slain. By Medea! And she’s taken the boys to her palace. Jason’s sons. She intends to murder them too. She intends to destroy everything that is hers by Jason. Even us! Battle-harness and sword, Antiokus. Jason needs us.’

I had not seen this coming. I had not been blind to the growing agony and fury in the enchantress from Colchis since Jason’s irresponsible courtship of the king’s daughter became a cause of great gossip, hatred and considerable diplomatic adjustment; I had been blind to the certain consequences.

Following Jason’s desertion of her, Medea had withdrawn behind the cool, high walls of her stark, green-and-black-marbled palace. She had closed the heavy bronze doors. The smoke from the roof holes was heady, colourful and suspicious. Only the sound of horns and cymbals told clearly of her anguish. But for six full months she had done nothing but mourn, while her two children by Jason—Kinos and Thesokorus—had played innocently in the gardens of both father’s and mother’s houses.

This murder came as a shock. Half-armed and half-dressed, I staggered after lithe Tisaminas, seeking Theseus. The hero, one of the original argonauts, was visiting his old friends. It would be essential to draw him to the fight as well. He had a vital way with the sword, and could help with the labyrinthine corridors of Medea’s palace. We met Anthos and Argastus in the olive market. They were armoured, sharp-eyed, not quite sure what was happening around them. Then Jason himself, in the company of Anteon and Hephastos and the others, caught up with us. The red-eyed, taut-cheeked man, his face stained with tears, his hair lank, led the way up the hill to the copper-green gates that protected Medea herself.

Here for a moment he paused, wild eyes surveying the palace façade. I could smell his fear and his sweat. Medea’s guards were lined up on the nearer side of a blazing wall of fire. They carried long-bladed spears and curved shields marked with the head of Medusa. Their gleaming ram’s-skull masks, like crescent moons, half bright, half in darkness, were all the more sinister for the urgency of the situation. They seemed to laugh at us. Ten archers crouched behind them. From the palace beyond came the wilderness-screaming of women and the relentless, deep, three-beat rhythm of skin drums.

Jason grabbed my arm in sudden anger. ‘Why didn’t you see this? Antiokus! Blood of the gods, you can see Time itself! For an age on either side of this living moment. Why didn’t you see what this dire-hearted witch would do?’

Did he think I had betrayed him? I had been too busy enjoying the pleasures of flesh and wine. But when I looked at him now I realised that he was capable of losing even simple reason in his anger. His head looked fit to burst with anguish and outrage.

‘I wasn’t looking,’ I confessed uneasily. ‘I should have been looking…’

Jason stared at me for a moment, then used his knife to scrape the dried tears from his cheeks, taking his gaze away from me. The passion and lust he had once felt for Medea had shrivelled years ago, at exactly the same time as his elder son, Thesokorus, had uttered his first words. The boy was known as the ‘little bull leaper’. By his third spring the child had learned to hold himself vertical on the horns of the stone bull in Jason and Medea’s courtyard. How he loved the boy! And he loved Kinos too, the ‘little dreamer’; Kinos, whose childish visions were full of haunting, memorable charm, insights and part-sights into the future.

This family, with all their skills, born and gods-given, could have reshaped the heavens. They could have moved stars. They could have shaped events—had the Fates dining at their table, discussing terms.

But Medea’s haunting, earthy charm had faded from the bowels of the cold-hearted man.

Even so, his passion for the pristine, prim and vacuous Glauce had seemed unlikely and out of character. He had loved the woman, I was certain, but naively, for her innocence rather than for her challenge. He was hurting deeply, but not because of Glauce’s extinction; all he could think of, now, was that Medea had his sons.

And his sons were precious to him.

‘She won’t kill them,’ he muttered as the fires roared and the guards stood, brazen, solid, facing us, waiting for our attack. ‘Will she? She wouldn’t dare! Hera’s heart, Antiokus! They’re from her own womb. She wouldn’t dare put the blade to them…?’

Tisaminas was eager to get to the fight. He slapped his sword three times against his shield, then once against his right thigh, deliberately grazing the skin.

‘There is not a moment to lose, Jason! We must not think too much before we run at these ram-helmeted blade-fodder!’

‘I know! I
know
all that!’ Jason shouted at him. ‘Get the boys away from her. Spare nothing and no one until you have the boys in your arms. Cut the witch to shreds if you must, but get those children from her amber-rattling clutches!’

Again he looked at me closely, pain-filled eyes as watery and bloodshot as an old man’s.

‘Will she? Will she kill them?’

‘She is older than you think,’ I said to him. ‘Her heart is made of different sinew from yours. Her blood is a different hue of red when it spills from her veins. Her song of summoning brings shadows from a deeper clay below our feet.’

‘That much I know. That much I found out during the nights after I brought her back from her sanctuary in Colchis.

‘Mighty Zeus, strike her down,’ he whispered then. ‘Protecting Hera, blind the snake-sharp eyes. Strike my left arm from my shoulder if you must, but strike the woman down before she can harm my sons…’

With this last cry he drew his blade, struck his shield five times and with a roar of rage led the charge at the moon-masked guard.

We pushed and cleaved our way towards the palace. Argastus took an arrow in the throat, killing him instantly, but his grey shade fairly howled from his body, curling around the killer, blinding the Colchean. I was on the archer in a moment. In the shock of this shadowy assistance, all the archers quickly died beneath our swords, though Theseus went down wounded. Those men had been the main danger, and Jason left Anteon and Haphestos to finish the job in the gardens, leading Tisaminas, myself and the others to the flaming wall which Medea had caused to spring from the ground.

She stood, now, behind the fire, taunting her husband with eerie chants and laughter. She was a tall, sinister shape in a black robe that rattled with metal leaves, bone amulets and polished amber blades. Only her eyes were visible above the black veil across her face, below the fringe of gold thread that hung from her headdress.

A flaming ball was suddenly flung towards us, spitting fat as it burned. The charred flowers in its hair still held their shape. Jason screamed and held his shield before his face, as if he could deny the gruesome trophy. Then he leapt the wall of Colchean fire, pursuing the shrieking woman.

Tisaminas was pale with fear as we followed. We fought our way into the palace, and raced along the echoing, green-marbled corridors. Suddenly Medea was running ahead of us, Kinos and Thesokorus held by the hands. The boys were laughing as they ran, but their laughter was not natural. They acted as if this was all a game, but they were confused and nervous.

By trickery and confusion, Medea led us like goats to the slaughter.

She had fled to the Bull Sanctuary, not her own temple of the Ram, and as Jason led us towards the bronze-barred gate, now closed and locked by the desperate woman, so we realised our mistake.

Behind us, across the narrow passage, a stone slab fell and trapped us. Ahead of us, the towering horned effigy, before which Medea stood triumphant, split in two, revealing itself as a doorway. There, outside, was the road to the north. A cart and six horsemen were waiting, the animals impatient and frightened as their riders struggled to control them. I recognised the armoured charioteer as Cretantes, Medea’s confidant and adviser from her homeland.

The boys struggled in her grasp, howling. Perhaps they were suddenly aware that this was not a game at all, and that in their mother’s arms they faced a more terrible fate than in their father’s, though she had led them to expect otherwise.

Jason flung himself against the bars of the sanctuary, begging the black-shrouded woman to release the screaming boys.

‘Too late. Too late!’ she cried from behind her black veil. ‘
My
blood can’t save them from the ravages of
your
blood. You betrayed the ones you love, Jason. You betrayed us brutally with that woman!’

‘You burned her alive!’

‘Yes. And now you will freeze in
eternity
! In
gloom
! Not even your heart and the hearts of your argonauts will be sufficient meat for the dark feast of despair that lies ahead of you. Nothing will change in you, Jason. Nothing can! You are a warped man. You deal in death. If I could cut your flesh out of the boys, if I could do that and still let them live, then that is what I’d do. But I can’t. So say goodbye to your sons!’

Jason’s howl of pain was vulpine. He shouted, ‘Antiokus! Use your magic!’

‘I can’t!’ I cried. ‘Nothing is there! This is a tomb, Jason. My talent is paralysed…’

He had no time for my confusion, my excuses. He flung his long sword at the woman but the throw went wide, the blade embedding itself in the god-bull’s cedar pizzle.

And at that moment, Medea did the terrible deed, moving so fast I saw only the merest glint of light on the blade with which she cut the throats of the twins. She turned away from us, covering their bodies with her robes, stooping to her work with manic vigour as Jason howled again. She wrapped and tied the heads in strips of her veil, tossing them to Cretantes, who put them in pouches slung from his waist. Then Medea dragged the bodies to the horses. They were flung into the cart and covered with blankets.

A moment later, the troop had gone, leaving dust swirling into the sanctuary, with the smell and sight of innocent blood two cruel Furies taunting the argonauts, trapped in Medea’s lair.

Jason slumped to his knees, fingers still gripping the gate. He had battered himself unconscious against the bars of the temple; his eyes and face were bruised, his mouth raw. One of our companions was pushing against the stone door behind us, trying to find the lever that would release us from the trap. I felt helpless: all power in magic had drained from me from the moment I entered the palace, an impotence which astonished and confused me, and I assumed had occurred because Medea had used her own sorcery to ‘numb’ me ready for the moment of the deaths.