He was increasingly attentive to the borders of his realm, as was his Scythian wife, Ullanna, a descendant of the great Atalanta.
Ullanna and her own retinue were hunting to the north, across the river from the evergroves.
A long night passed; then at dawn a horn sounded from the walls. Distantly, through the early mist, a group of riders came trotting slowly across the plain from the south, leading pack ponies draped with the tethered forms of two deer, and the carcases of three dark-skinned pigs.
As his comrades dispersed to other tasks, Urtha was joined by two armed and shield-bearing riders who accompanied him as he rode towards the double gates of his royal enclosure. Catching my eye and frowning as he passed, he beckoned me to follow him into the warmth of his shield-lined house.
In the three winters that had numbed the land, Urtha had changed very little, though his beard was quite grey, now, and his face horribly scarred where he had taken the glancing blow of an axe during a skirmish with a band of dhiiv arrigi, exiled, vengeful warriors, outcasts from the tribal lands, who existed like lice upon the skin of the world. Their numbers were growing. The blow had missed his left eye, however, and his eyes were as keen and knowing as ever.
We entered the main part of the lodge, where a good log fire burned, and light streamed from the open roof. “For all your skills with enchantment, Merlin, I can always tell when there’s something troubling you,” he said as he discarded cloak and sword belt and sprawled out in his stout, oaken chair, staring at me. “More omens?”
“The strangest yet,” I agreed, and he leaned forward as I took a seat on one of the benches that lined the hall.
When I had finished my account, he scratched the stubble on his chin. Leaning back again—a weary man—he reached for his beaker, draining the contents in a single gulp. “When I was growing up,” he mused, staring at nothing, “the hostels were part of the adventure of storytelling. In this very hall I sat with other boys and listened to the Speaker for the Past tell witty and wonderful tales of the land since the first fortress was built here. All very thrilling. But I never gave the hostels much thought after that. Something to scare your children with. The ways across to the Shadow Hero Land are by certain fords across the winding river, but even then, no one went near the winding river. Not, at least, until you came into my life. And you say that Speaker for Kings doesn’t understand the significance?”
“No.”
“And the Speaker for the Past?”
“Lost in the groves, engaged in training his successor.”
“But Cathabach thinks they signal a greater danger than we can imagine.”
“He seems to think so.”
Urtha nodded sagely, though it was clear that he was hiding a complete and utter incomprehension. “We must certainly strengthen the fortress, and the defences to the west. We need dove-watchers within sight of the hostels.…”
He meant signallers, doves being the new way of signalling to Taurovinda, as they always flew home to their small cages.
“I will need to discuss support in arms from Vortingoros. The High King of the Coritani will exact a high price in oxen and favours in arms. But I think I can persuade him to take more in horses after any event that might occur. We are not underburdened with horses!”
His sudden gaze on me was bright and fierce. “I will need you and Cathabach … Manandoun as well, and perhaps your lively lover—”
“Niiv?”
“Why not. She’s reaping your knowledge while you sleep.” His grin was taunting. “She’ll soon be as wise as you!”
I smiled, but it was a bitter gesture. Yes, Niiv was still trying to extract my powers of enchantment. It was in her nature. Who—born the daughter of a northern “magic man,” as she had been—would not seek to enhance experience by using the illusion of curiosity to cover a dedicated determination to scour the signs and symbols of power from one who carried them on his bones? If Urtha thought that Niiv was being successful, it was only because I had not revealed to him, or to any other, that I was constantly displacing the girl’s focus and thoughts to less viable areas of the strength in enchantment that I carried within me.
I let her nowhere near the ten charms.
“If you insist,” I added. “But she has a habit of getting in the way, rather than helping.”
“Well then: I’ll leave that to you. But you must investigate what is happening at the fords on Nantosuelta.” He gave me a long, hard look. “Yes, I think I’d trust your vision even more than that of Cathabach, wise though he is. In the meantime, I’ll get ‘battle-arm and the strong shield’ from Vortingoros.”
He sighed. He was indeed tired. He was at a turning point in his life between hungering for the fight and longing for the peace. “Omens to the right … omens to the left,” he murmured. “What in the name of the gods are we riding into, Merlin?”
“Whatever we are riding into, whatever is riding against us, it would be a good idea, I think, to make an offering to the Thunderer. Get him on your side before he is persuaded to help the enemy.”
He waved his hand. “Taranis? I don’t deal with gods. That’s for the priests in their flesh-stinking groves.”
“I would freshen the groves, if I were you, and make a point of being there.”
He scowled. “That means taking heads. I’ve taken enough in my time. The pleasure has become a chore.”
“Time for Kymon, then. Time for a great test for your son.”
For a moment, as he stared at me, eyes blazing, I thought he would kill me for the suggestion, but in fact, the expression was one of delight.
“Yes!” he said, slapping the arms of his chair. “I should have thought of that myself. Time for Kymon’s great test! Two wildfowl with one slingshot. The boy becomes a man, and we gather both gods and the forces of Vortingoros to us in the same action. Well suggested, Merlin. Not even Manandoun, my wise council, would have thought of suggesting that. What a moment that will be for him. For us all. I’ll talk to the lad later.” Then he paused, face darkening. “Now, I suppose, I should go and speak with my disobedient daughter.”
His whole demeanour suggested that he would find this a harder task than anything he had undertaken in the last few days.
Chapter Five
The Wren on the Rafter
Wrens, tiny birds, highly revered, had the capacity to flit back to their own territory if removed to a distance. They reappeared suddenly, without visible signs of having flown. They were held in high regard by druid and High Woman alike. They had been a favourite form of travel and watching for far longer, however. When I was a boy, one of my first lessons had been in the possession and control of the spirit of the wren.
A wren now bobbed onto the rafters of the long hall where the High Women gathered, and where Munda had gone to wait with them until her father had returned from his latest skirmish against the dhiiv arrigi, a large band of whom had been seen riding from the south, towards the river. He was tired and dirty, but he had gone straight to the hall.
All the women but Rianata had left. Munda’s mother, Aylamunda, would in ordinary circumstances have been here as well, but Aylamunda was dead and travelling below her mound. Ullanna, despite being bonded to the king, had been forbidden from entering the women’s hall. Ullanna—huntress and bright spirit—was never to be seen complaining about the fact.
Urtha was sitting down on a grey wolf-skin, facing Munda, who knelt on a similar rug, her hands clasped in her lap. She was both worried and moody, waiting for her father to get comfortable. I could imagine what he was thinking as he eased himself into position.
His right lower leg was now tucked under his left thigh. His left leg was extended towards the girl, crooked slightly across her. Leaning forward, his right elbow rested on the knee of his right leg. His left arm reached behind him as support.
This was one of the Three Positions of Friendly Encounter: the one for family and friends. The other two were, first, for enemies who might plead a good case to k
eep their heads; and second, for animals that might be possessed by one of the Dead and wished to be heard concerning their treatment at the hands of the druids.
Urtha had never had to adopt the difficult posture of this last, and was privately very relieved about the fact. He had confided to me that in any case he had no idea what he would do under the circumstances.
The Three Positions were alternatively known as The Positions Designed to Kill a King through Discomfort. It was a joke to anyone who had never had to adopt them. The joke did not amuse Urtha.
“I was told today,” father said to daughter, “that you have achieved the feat of saddle-spinning.”
“Yes. It took me several tries. But I managed.”
Saddle-spinning was where, retreating at the gallop from an enemy, you turned round in the saddle, threw a spear or unleashed slingshot, before turning again to the front, the whole feat to be in a single movement without pause.
“I used to be able to do it. Now I find it hard enough to look back, let alone spin back. I get a pain in my joints. I suppose I’m getting older than I feel.”
Silence.
“Well. Today,” said the father, “I came back from the Forest of Singing Caves. I chased off seven vultures that had been hiding there. Desperate men. Vengeful outcasts. Seven escaped. Seven did not. They fought furiously.”
Still silence. Urtha shifted uncomfortably.
“I’ve brought you a small gift. Nothing that you can touch, or eat, or see. But yours nevertheless.”
The girl looked up. “Tell me?”
Urtha warmed to his subject. “While we were moving very quietly through a bright, open expanse of wood, we came to a wide glade. Two horses were there, a mother and her foal. The mother was a strange dappled russet and grey. I’d never seen colour like it. The foal was russet, with a black mane and a splash of white at his throat. He was lame in one of his hind legs, and very distressed. The mare circled him furiously, watching us constantly, flaring and snorting. I swear by Taraun that she was trying to grow bull’s horns in order to charge us.”
Munda watched her father in silence, wide-eyed.
Urtha said, “I left them there, of course. I believe the place is an old shrine. But I found a piece of beech bark and marked on the smooth side the symbols for Succellos riana nemata.…”
Munda smiled, nodding her head. “The grove of the healing horse…”
“I don’t know if you will ever find it. But if you do, I think it will be a place of healing for more than horses. A place of protection, too. That is my small gift to you.”
Again silence. Urtha broke it after a moment: “What two gessa were placed upon you in your eighth year?”
Munda was momentarily startled, then said, “That I must never swim in the Winding One to the west, even if I see my brother, or any friend, drowning and crying for help. And that if I see a hound in distress, whether lame or starving, or boar-savaged, I must cease whatever I’m doing to come to its aid.”
“More or less,” Urtha acknowledged. The High Woman shook her head, smiling faintly. There was always more to these rules than was implied in the simple words that described them.
“Do you know why these bindings were placed on you?”
Munda nodded soberly. “I was rescued from raiders by your hound, Maglerd, and taken to safety across the river. Kymon was rescued, too. My brother Urien was killed and dismembered by the raiders, and the hound that tried to protect him was slaughtered alongside him. I was protected just across the river, and my grandfather came and took me back, but it was a gift from the Matronae, the Mothers of the Dead, that saved my life. I entered the Otherworld before my time, and I am forbidden from entering it again until it is truly my time.”
“Well remembered. So now you must explain to me: Why did you choose to ignore the geis?”
Silence. Father and daughter engaged each other in a long moment of visual inquisition. Finally Munda lowered her head. “I was curious. I felt drawn to the doors of the hostel. When I entered, I became afraid. By then, I had stepped across the bridge to the place itself. It is in the middle of the winding river.”
“What drew you? Why were you curious?”
“A dream voice. Singing. I remembered the happy times under the protection of the Mothers, when I was being hidden on the other side of the river. When our fortress was being attacked that time. I thought they were calling me. I wanted to go there. I felt as if I belonged there. And for a while I thought I was wrong. The hostel was a vile place, and the faces that looked at me, and the smells, and the sounds, that laughter … it was a bad place. I was terrified and fled. But I fled from what was strange, and beyond my experience. My brother was more afraid than me. When we were back in our own land, I realised that I’d had nothing to fear.”
The wren on the rafter took careful note of all of this.
Silence.
Urtha then said, “How I wish your mother was here. She would be proud of you.”
“Proud of me?”
“Proud of your courage. You have had an unpleasant experience. But who knows? Perhaps a valuable one. You think you have made a great mistake, and here you are, mournful and woebegotten. But why? You have had a moment of inspiration, of encouragement, not of warning. And you haven’t broken your geis.”
She looked perplexed. Urtha shrugged, awkwardly from his position of friendly encounter. “A geis cannot be half broken. I’ll have to ask Cathabach about this, but I’m sure I’m right. Fully broken, yes, but not half. Not like a golden crescent moon, a lunula that can be cut in half, like the half of a lunula that hangs around your neck, the other half on your brother’s.”
Munda reached to touch the amulet on its leather tie. The sun-metal gleamed in the light. The fragment, cut from an amulet older than time, was her prized possession, a gift from her father, half of an emblem that had been part of this family since the time of Durandond. It was her tie to her brother. It was a precious thing, a connection between Urtha’s surviving children, which the king himself hoped would always keep his family united.
“When I cut that piece of gold in two,” he said quietly, “I was both breaking and making a bond between the two of you. Halving gold is easy. Halving a taboo is not. And that is my decision. The hostel was in the middle of the river, you said. Halfway across. Well, halfway is neither here nor there, if you follow my judgement, daughter. You have broken nothing.”
Munda flung herself upon her father, wailing with delight. Urtha collapsed backwards, looked up at the High Woman, who merely shrugged. She should have had her say, but there hardly seemed a point in it.
“Get off me, girl! You’re too heavy.”
Munda stood and made a sign of respect to the sprawled king, then turned and ran gleefully from the women’s lodge.
The wren on the rafters noticed that High Woman Rianata was involved in helping Urtha back to his feet.
Chapter Six
The Unborn King
It was a relief to realise that Urtha hadn’t believed a word his daughter had told him. He loved the girl, of course, and was aware that her account was influenced by darker forces. He had spared her. He was aware that she had been possessed.
He at once consulted with his commanders, and with the Speakers, on how best to divide his own forces to address what he discerned as the growing threat from across the river. It was agreed that herdsmen should be constantly on standby to bring in the cattle and horses in the event of a raid, and many of the smiths, tanners, and potters should fall into that role if necessary. Meanwhile, the production of long oval shields, covered with thick bull’s hide, would be increased, as would the production of short stabbing spears, crudely made to be disposable. Stone workers would be set to practising the timeless skill of fashioning long, thin flint blades, often more effective than iron, though iron could have a terrible effect on the more ancient of the Dead.
Urtha himself would take a retinue to Vortingoros of the Coritani and hire a hundred swift-shields. T
he Parisianii in the north would be more difficult to persuade, but since their territory was farther from the edge of Ghostland, they might cooperate, though they would exact a heavy price in compensation. To the south, the mercenary bands of the dhiiv arrigi would be sure to add an extra danger to whatever might come across the winding Nantosuelta.
The Speakers would attend to the more mystical defences, the wood figures and carved columns, the straw-and-bone animals and masked trees that would form a barrier against certain of the Dead. It was the Unborn who were most troublesome when it came to such elements of repulsion: many of them didn’t recognise the protection for what it was and rode straight through. But the Unborn were usually less hostile than their ancestors, and it was necessary to count upon that small fact.
It was my lot to ride to the river, accompanied by Niiv, a personal guard of four men, and Ullanna, with her own squad of youthful riders-at-arms as protection. I was glad of her company. Her personally trained retinue, drawn from the women of Taurovinda, were a match for any of Urtha’s uthiin.
* * *
Nantosuelta flowed out of the west, out of the deep woods, flowing away from the permanent glow of the setting sun. She wound through rocky valleys and hazy marshes, through crowded forests and steep, wooded hills; occasionally, along her sinuous length, could be found the stone remains of buildings and timeworn statues. Several tributaries joined her from the shadow realm, waters that foamed red as they mixed with the main stream of the sacred river. Where Nantosuelta rose was a mystery, hidden in the Realm of the Shadow Heroes.