The Iron Grail (33 page)

‘Why is it that every time I need you I can’t find you?’ the chieftain thundered at me. Rubobostes held him back, gently and persuasively, otherwise—from the red heat in the man’s eyes—Urtha, I believe, would have struck me. He shrugged the big Dacian away, shook his head, gathered his garment about his flesh.

‘Go after her, Merlin. For the Good God’s sake, go after her. They were dead after all, those two Wolf-heads, and they’ve gone like the wolves they are.’

How long had I been below the hill?

I asked quickly, ‘When did this happen?’

‘Too long ago! They outran us. Wolves are swifter than horses, but you can summon the wolf and catch them. I know you can.’

‘This is a device to have us desert the fort,’ Manandoun urged, but his words were ignored.

A second group of riders came galloping in through the Riannon Gate, weary and dishevelled, one of them waving his hand as if to say: no luck.

I saw Niiv lurking in the shadows; she was beckoning to me. Urtha raged at me, but his words faded from my consciousness. Rubobostes was saying something, and Ullanna watched me through hooded eyes, her lips moving, her words lost to me. I looked back at the tiresome girl.

What do you want?

I can help. I know what happened. I looked into their heads.

Of course you did, I thought with no satisfaction; too curious by half, Niiv had sacrificed more days of her life to try to understand a situation that still, as far as I was concerned, was confusing. I had the beginning of an idea of what had occurred, but the girl was now useful.

Urtha was outraged as I walked away, but I sent calming signals. I couldn’t see Jason or his other argonauts. This eastern sector of Taurovinda was seething with Urtha’s anxiety at the loss of his daughter.

I stepped into the shadow of a house where Niiv sat, knees drawn up, hands clasped around them, eyes bright below the dark, dyed hair.

‘They were Urtha’s own druids,’ she said. ‘They look very different, now. Do you remember when Urtha was searching for the shield of future time? In my own land?’

I remembered very clearly: a frozen lake, a snow-shrouded land, winter woods and endless night. We had huddled in an inadequate tent, Urtha, his
uthiin
retinue, and his two druids, the men who had sent him on the quest for the shield of Diadara on the basis of their interpretation of his dreams. The shield in which he could see the future of his kingdom.

Fed up and furious with them, persuaded that the shield, if it existed at all, was hidden elsewhere, he had banished them to the wolf-haunted forest. He had not expected them to survive the journey home. The land was fierce, their talents as soothsayers and priests severely limited.

He had reckoned without
fortuna
, as capricious a spirit of men’s fates as any of the Three of Awful Boding. The elemental often attached itself to famous men on distant quests. In Greek Land it was known as
tukhea
, ‘the chancer’, and could well have been haunting those woods around the lake since Jason had sunk there, with Argo wrapped around him as his coffin.
Tukhea
may have been aboard as well.

That, in fact, made a great deal of sense: a lonely elemental, displaced from its own land, at long last finding not just the vehicle of its escape from the forest—there would have been many opportunities to attach to the human traffic through the area—but the correct occasion: abandoned men, lost men, men in a precarious situation; men who would now need to take their chances!

Niiv was glowing, her mouth glistening, her hands shaking as she reached to take me by the arms and tell me what she’d seen, a child bursting with pride at knowing a terrible truth, eager to gossip.

‘They walked south for days, after Urtha sent them from his quarters by the lake. Their fingers turned black with the cold. Their skin cracked like thin sheets of ice. They cursed Urtha and Cathabach, scratched the marks of their
red doom
—that’s what they called it,
red doom
—scratched those strange signs on trees and rocks, and drew them in snow fields. They were
very
angry. But the snow was being disturbed by the tracks of someone else, they could see this. They were being followed. They offered … bits…’ she grimaced as she recalled what she’d seen, ‘bits of their bodies. For help. It was horrible to watch. But the spirit that followed them helped them home. It showed them a way under!’

‘What way under?’ I asked her impulsively.

‘I don’t know what you call them, but you used one once to reach Greek Land. Ways through the underworld. Ways through to the Otherworld. Ways to pass across lands without being seen. Ways home.’

She had a triumphant look about her. I could almost hear the cauldron bubbling, the words screaming to be heard: you and I together, Merlin. What a force we’d be. Your age and knowledge, my youthfulness and energy, a couple in love who could shape mountains: make forests flow around us like cloaks of green.

Her triumphant look, however, was because though she had told me the truth, she had disguised it, and did not expect me to guess it. She was teasing me again. But it was so apparent, now.

The druids, guided by the elemental
fortuna
, had found their way home, but risen to the earth again in Ghostland! And that would have been a very difficult circumstance for them, to say the least.

‘So they came up in the Otherworld,’ I mused.

She frowned, outraged. ‘I didn’t say that! Why do you say that? Have you been looking inside me? You always tell me not to
do
that!’

I was surprised by her outburst. ‘You mentioned the Otherworld. Ghostland is close.
Fortuna
is a tricky elemental. Just the sort of trick it would play.’

‘
Fortuna
?’

‘
Tukhea
, then.’

‘How do you
know
?’ she wailed, eyes wide, angry. ‘You’ve been looking inside me!’

‘It had to be a chancer from Greek Land. An elemental. There are five I know of from Greek Land but only
tukhea
sits on a man’s shoulders and walks with him through the world. The others just lurk, waiting in caves and woods and such. They dish out luck the way these High Kings dish out slices of a cooked pig’s haunch.’

‘Reluctantly.’

‘Not at all. Randomly, perhaps. But also when appropriate.’

‘You know too much.’

‘I’m old. And experienced. Your own words.’

‘I never
used
such words,’ she objected furiously and correctly; I had only been imagining the workings of her mind.

But she added, ‘It’s true, though. You know too much. There are no surprises left for you.’

‘There certainly are. You were a surprise.’

‘Yes,’ she said cannily. ‘Because I was born as something different from what I became. Yes. I can understand why you are cautious of me.

‘Mielikki, your guardian, would not be pleased to hear you revealing your birthmarks quite so easily.’

‘My birthmarks?’ Your secrets.

‘No. I won’t. You have secrets from me; I’ll have secrets from you.’

‘That’s another birthmark. Shown to me as easily as if you’d lifted your skirts and beckoned to me. Say nothing, Niiv. Be like Manandoun. Wise counsel is best kept with open eyes and closed mouth.’

‘That sort of saying is as old as the hills.’

‘Older than mountains. And I don’t argue with mountains when I’m in a hurry to go somewhere.’

‘So you don’t want to know what happened here.’

‘I do. I do very much. What you now know affects others. Niiv: you need to protect yourself from yourself, but if you can’t help prying, then there’s no point in hiding the truth.’

She crossed her arms, staring at me coldly, rocking back on her haunches; thinking hard. ‘Is that one of your own birthmarks?’

‘Yes it is,’ I lied. ‘A little given for a little taken.’

‘You think I’m naive. You think I have no judgement.’

‘I think you’re naive. I think your judgement is forming. Slowly. I think you’re dangerous. That last
is
a birthmark. Now: what happened to Munda? Quickly. I have to find a wolf and go out hunting, when all I really want to do is sit and think.’

*   *   *

Though the Wolf-heads had transformed into the fleet animals that had become their
fedishi
(chosen shapes) after death, since they were carrying Munda, flesh and crimson blood, white bone and grey Pallor, they could not travel fast though they had certainly travelled faster than the hounds that Urtha had set on their trail.

I had a good chance of intercepting them before they reached Nantosuelta; they would, I imagined, make for the Ford of the Miscast Spear; that of the Last Farewell would deny them a crossing. A third ford in the area, that of the famous Overwhelming Gift, would also have denied them, since they were anything but heroes.

I summoned the wolf again; and armed with what Niiv had gone on to tell me, I ran in the hope of rescuing Munda.

*   *   *

I caught up with them in the forest, not far from the river, but far enough to force them to confront the chase, turning to stand their ground. The girl was huddled below the broken bough of an oak. The two wolves slavered and snarled at me, legs braced apart, forming a defensive line on the far side of the small, overgrown glade. I challenged them at once:
I should have recognised you earlier. It’s to my shame that I didn’t. Give the girl back. Urtha has suffered enough losses
.

They bayed; laughter.
He sent us on a long trail in a wilderness of ice. It’s not in our hearts to forgive him for that.

Then attack the man, not his daughter.

If we were attacking the man, what better way to do it than to steal his child?

You made the long journey home. You must have learned a great deal.

We made a long journey
, the wolf replied.
It did not bring us home
.

I was about to continue the argument when, to my astonishment, Munda made a gesture of impatience, throwing a large stone at one of the wolves. For a heartbeat I thought she was urging me to stop talking and reach for her. But her words gave the lie to that naive judgement.

‘Hurry,’ she shouted. ‘Get rid of it! We have to cross before my father gets here and catches us. Hurry!’

The Wolf-heads drew back a little as I lurched forward, shocked by the girl’s words. I realised then that she hadn’t recognised me. Of course! From her point of view her two companions were merely being stalked by a wolf.

One of them said to me,
Little Dreamer wants to play with her again. Her brother doesn’t want to play. He sent us to fetch her, and the girl is travelling willingly. She will come to no harm, not for the rest of her life; a very long life in the palace that Little Dreamer has built.

Again, there was a sense of wry humour in the words.

A moment later one of the Wolf-heads leapt at me, and in the moment of the struggle, as we thrashed in the long grass, the other had bolted to the girl, who flung herself on its back, hair flying, clinging to the unkempt but sleek animal as it loped away, and they were gone.

When I travel as the wolf, or any other animal, I am a shadow inside the beast; I had claws and jaws and found the strength to rip my assailant. The
fedishi
faded as he died; he was the older of the two druids, as I’d suspected, but he gave me a look through his beard that suggested he was at peace. Then I realised that he had bitten through a ligament in my arm. The look on his maw was one of triumph. In the fury of the encounter I had not felt the wound.

Munda was now beyond me. In a short while she would cross back to Ghostland, believing that she belonged there and was welcome there, a dreadful misapprehension.

How was I to break this news to Urtha? I thought long and hard as I limped home, shedding the wolf when I came to the marshes, west of the dark hill, tying a strip of the softened bark of a white willow, around the wounded arm.

What could I now say to the man?

*   *   *

Urtha was waiting for me in his hall, in a grim but less distressed mood. Kymon and Ullanna were doing their best to comfort him; his retinue sat around the room in half battle-harness, talking quietly.

He could tell at once that I’d failed. He’d also sent his best riders on the fastest horses, but clearly, he surmised, their chase would also be fruitless.

I told him truthfully what the Wolf-heads had told me, that she was going to play with the boy, Little Dreamer; that she would be safe. I didn’t mention her strange words: hurry, before my father catches us. I didn’t believe it was the girl talking. I judged that to repeat the instruction would only hurt the chieftain more.

‘And what of Argo? Will she help us cross? Cathabach has told me you’ve been to ask her.’

‘She’s thinking about it,’ I replied carefully. ‘She’s a weary ship, and weary of Jason.’

He said nothing for a moment, then sighed, resolve hardening. ‘Well, then we must find another way to get into Ghostland.’

*   *   *

One of the women from the well was waiting outside the king’s enclosure, cloak wrapped around her, hood drawn over her head. Cathabach wanted to see me urgently, she told me. He was in the orchard.

I found the man waiting in his cloak of feathers, standing in his arched and thatched bower at the heart of the
nemeton
. The argonauts who sheltered in the apple grove were not in sight, already in dusk’s shadows.

I told him what Munda had revealed to me. He seemed surprised but not shocked. He asked me what Argo’s response had been to my request. My answer made him sigh.

‘It would have been hard enough persuading Urtha out of his foolish idea of a raid into Ghostland. Now it will be impossible. But for Urtha it
will
be impossible…’

His hesitation suggested he required a response and I agreed with him. ‘Impossible for him unless he has protection.’

‘But not impossible for him to go there?’