‘There was a storm, and below the storm, birds, swirling like the birds that came from Oyzin. It was a frightening sight, and I was frightened by it. One warrior was sprawled beneath the tree, this tree. I called to him. He was badly wounded. I told him my name and he called back the name by which I came to know him. I felt so sorry for him, and he was a heart-friend. I couldn’t bear to see his body looted so I made a spell to stop the birds. I frightened the old women. They fled. But they returned with a man, a druid or someone like that. His power was greater than mine …’
‘And what happened?’
Tallis shrugged. ‘They turned out to be his friends. They came and fetched him away and I was too late to stop them.’
She could still see the flames on the pyre, by the wood at the bottom of the hill, and the woman rider, and her cry, and her hair, clay-painted and as bright as the flame. But she couldn’t tell Scathach that it was him she had seen, his fate she had witnessed.
Scathach was ahead of her, however; perhaps she had betrayed the truth in every gesture, every moment of hesitation. ‘What was the friend’s name?’ he asked.
Tallis felt her heart race as she whispered. ‘Scathach. Your name …’
He nodded grimly. ‘My mother’s name for me. In the language of the Amborioscantii, “scathach” means “he who hears the voice”. When I was born a prophecy was made about me, that I would become “Dur scatha achen”. It is a common prophecy. It means “the boy who will listen to the voice of the oak”. I had always supposed this meant I would grow up to be strong, like the tree. A warrior. Strong against the storm,’ he added and Tallis glanced up at her old friend, the silent tree, the place of vision. Scathach went on, ‘But perhaps it has always meant something more. While I lay in a dream, your voice reached me from the oak tree. And you had a vision of that dream …’
What was he saying. That he believed their minds had touched through the spirit realm of dreams? He didn’t seem to have grasped that it was his death she had seen. And yet … perhaps he was right.
He was saying, ‘Someone seems to have made sure of our meeting. But who connected us through the vision? Which lost soul, I wonder? Which “fate”?’
‘The gaberlungi?’ Tallis hazarded.
Scathach wasn’t sure. ‘They’re mythagos. They have come from your own memories …’
‘Or my grandfather’s,’ Tallis said softly, thinking that the women had been known to the land from before her birth. ‘What about the carrion eaters? Could they have made the connection between us?’
‘No,’ Scathach said. ‘They only came through today …’ Of course! ‘And anyway, they’re here because of this …’ He slapped the hard bark of the oak. ‘When you made Bird Spirit Land in this world … you made it in another. Many others! Tallis, you are young and unformed in many ways, but you have a mind more powerful than I could have imagined. Your skills have reached beyond the wood, beyond the years. You have done something that I believed only certain shamans could do; you have manipulated forest in your world and created changes in the forests of many other ages. If used carefully it is a skill that gives access to many times, many ages, many hidden places. The Jaguthin, the questing band of knights, have been using those hollowings in legend since the first stories were told. Each is at the mercy of time and the dream, using the magic of people such as yourself to complete the cycle of their own legend. When you create a hollowing you call from past and future times, and the shaman should control the calling.’ He stroked the bird face on Strong against the Storm. ‘But you have called without control. You have released without safeguard.’
Tallis realized that the young man was shaking. When she took his hand she felt how cold was his flesh, how he trembled.
And she was thinking of the story of the Bone Forest, and Ash, who could rub two twigs together and add bone and send the fleet-footed hunter to a strange wood, where the hunting was magic.
I am Ash, she thought. I am Ash.
Scathach was saying, ‘I remember my father talking of Bird Spirit Land. A terrible place. A place of winter and slow dying, a place where a great battle was fought. A place that traps souls. The dark side of Lavondyss. When you create it, so it calls to the angry spirits of twenty thousand years. That’s why the Oyzin came, and the carrion eaters. And more will be emerging from the wood. Bird Spirit Land is an angry place. Poor Gyonval … part of the cycle of tales of the Jaguthin contains their Seven Moon Rides; in one of them, a knight destroys a giant, who is disguised as a bird. I had not expected him to be summoned to his fate so fast. There are usually signs of the calling …’
He was suddenly nervous, glancing out across the night lands, then up into the sky, sniffing the air, listening to the murmur of the wind. ‘There is so little time,’ he said. ‘We must get back beyond the edge of the wood before dawn. We must find your animal guide …’
He took Tallis’s hand again and ran with her, back towards the broken road that led into Ryhope Wood. Tallis, breathless, managed to gasp out, ‘Who is your father?’
‘I’m afraid he’s cold bones, now,’ Scathach said. ‘I’ve been gone a long time and the years run differently in the wood. But if he’s still alive then he can tell us much. He can explain things to you far more clearly than I can. He has lived in the wood, at the very edge of Lavondyss, for many years. He understands the way of ghosts, the way of shaman, the way of the dream …’
‘But who is he? He was from this world, you said.’
‘You read about him in the Book. He’s my reason for being here. He sent me on an errand. But I’m afraid I’ve failed him …’
‘WJ …’ Tallis said. Scathach had stopped by the wood’s edge, staring back to the place where Gyonval had destroyed the apparition of the Oyzin. He seemed tense, alert for movement.
‘My father’s great companion was Huxley. The man who inhabited the Shrine. Huxley died here, in this forbidden world, shot by an arrow that had been fired ten thousand years before. But my father entered the wood, came close to the heartwoods and became Wyn-rajathuk. He found peace, and magic …’
Wyn-rajathuk.
Tallis recognized part of the word from the encounter with the carrion eaters that morning. The child had shouted the strange syllables at her, as if in fear … or recognition. Rajathuk.
And Wyn?
Wynne-Jones, of course, Huxley’s colleague, the little man who had helped Huxley work out the primal nature of the wood and the existence of the mythago life forms which inhabited it.
Wynne-Jones the scientist. And Scathach was this man’s half-human, half-mythago son, born of flesh and of wood, born of science and of legend: a woman, daughter of a fabled chieftain, who herself had been called away to fulfil the terms of her own forgotten story.
Tallis wanted to reach out and hug the young man, her Stag Youth. For no reason that she could fathom she felt sad and affectionate towards him. But he suddenly cried aloud, a sound of delight, and ran through the long grass to where a man was leading a limping horse up the rise of Find Me Again Field.
Gyonval had survived his encounter with the Oyzin.
(iv)
The Jaguthin were mythical hunters, Scathach whispered to Tallis, later during the night as they crouched around a small fire in a clearing. There were many mythago forms of the same legend, reaching back to a time which was quite unknown and unfamiliar to the people of Wynne-Jones’s own world, England – Scathach’s forbidden land. Those first forms of the Jaguthin had been seekers rather than warriors. They had been selected by lot among the clans of the first hunter-gatherers to trek across the winter land in the wake of what had been known as an ‘Ice Age’. They had gone in search of valleys, plateaux, forests and game herds; their quests had been simple and practical, to help the clan families find peace and warmth and food in a world that seemed determined to obliterate them.
In his life in the wildwood, Scathach had encountered later forms of the twelve: there were always twelve, a number that contained a lost se
cret, or perhaps a lost significance. Twelve riders formed the Jaguthin, but though they rode together they were solitary souls, caught and tugged by the tidal wind of fate. Their summoning could come at any time, and the voice was the voice of the Earth, and the form of the calling was the form of a Woman. She was the Jagad. When she crooked her finger, one of the Jaguthin would venture through the ages. He would never return. He would become the forgotten stuff of legend.
The three riders who were Scathach’s friends were all that remained of such an heroic band. Scathach was the ‘outsider’ who always featured strongly in the myth. Tonight it had seemed that Gyonval had been sacrificed as well, but the Jagad had not summoned him and his deed of valiance had not taken him from the time of his companions.
In later times there were other forms of the Jaguthin. Some of these were wild and weird, tall, fur-clad men with horned heads, or with tree branches to disguise their true nature. (One of these was Thorn, the tree as which Scathach had disguised himself while in this land of his ‘first flesh,’ and a tree, along with oak, for which Tallis felt a special affinity.) Wynne-Jones had told stories of Arthur, and a round table, of knights clad in a form of armour that gleamed like the moon on water and which could resist the swiftest of arrows. These were the last form of the Jaguthin, no longer known by the ancient name. Scathach had glimpsed them briefly in his life, but they were shadowy, insubstantial. For the most part, when he encountered the band of questing hunters they were of an earlier form, more savage, seeking places and totem objects that were beyond his comprehension.
Nevertheless, they would be important to Tallis.
‘If only I had listened to my father more …’ Scathach muttered darkly. ‘He had understood so much! But as I said, there is one aspect of the Jaguthin cycle that always has an “outsider”, a supernatural figure which has knowledge and skills beyond the Jaguthin’s own. Such entities in the wood leave their mark in the fashioning and altering of legend. If Harry came into the wood, then you may well find him involved with the Jaguthin in one of their forms. He may have been real to you, Tallis … but to us he would have been from a strange and wonderful “Otherworld”.’
In the firelight, Scathach’s smile was very knowing, now. ‘Whatever happens to me when we pass into the deep wood, that is something you should do to find your brother: listen and watch for stories of the Jaguthin.’
His laugh was sudden, bitter. ‘You see? Already I am fulfilling my role in the tale. I am the creature from the forbidden world who has come back to his father’s land and finds it has shut him out. I belong in no realm at all. Gyonval is very moved by this. Curundoloc thinks I should be sacrificed. Gwyllos has agreed to accompany me to the place of my death. All of these reactions from my rider friends are part of legend. You will find this out. You will search on your own, but everything you do, and everything people do with you, or for you, or to you, all is part of their myth. They cannot help themselves. As my mother could not resist the call to continue her legend. She spent time with an outsider, with a spirit from the forbidden world. She gave birth to that spirit’s child. Then the Earth called to her, and she moved away …’
‘To do what?’
‘To do a terrible and wonderful thing,’ Scathach said sadly. ‘To bring to an end a cycle of tales that would leave you breathless to hear them.’
‘Tell me …’
‘Another time,’ he said firmly. ‘First we have to find your animal guide. There must be one. There must have been an animal that seemed to be watching you –’
‘Broken Boy,’ Tallis agreed. It had occurred to her almost immediately the subject of the gurla had been raised in her room, a few hours before. ‘The only thing is: it was here, in the land, for years before my birth.’
‘A horse?’ Scathach asked.
‘A stag.’
‘It was waiting for you,’ Scathach said confidently. ‘It was sent to wait. You probably sent it yourself.’
‘How can that be possible?’
‘I’ve tried to explain,’ the man said. ‘The years, the months … in the wood they become meaningless. It was the one thing my father warned me of before I left. Different parts of the wood live their years at different speeds. A confusion of seasons.’
‘I must find a winter. Harry is there, and I just know that I can find him.’
Scathach’s smile was reassuring. ‘Of course. And I’ll do all I can to help you.’
‘But I can’t just leave my home!’ Tallis said loudly, and she felt a sudden panic. Curundoloc stirred where he slept, below thick hides, then returned to slumber. Tallis was remembering her father’s words. We couldn’t bear to lose you, not after losing Harry.
She had spent years trying to get her parents to believe her, to understand her, and for the first time – this same night, before the land had given birth to stones and birds – they had agreed to come and see the things that were haunting her.
If she left now she would betray them.
If she left now, she would break their hearts …
Scathach watched her by the dimming light of the fire. He was gentle. ‘How long could you afford to be away?’
‘I don’t understand …’
‘Could you come with me for a day?’
She didn’t even think about it. ‘Of course.’
‘Two days?’
‘Seven days,’ she said. ‘They would worry. But if I let them know that it would be a week only, they won’t go mad in that time. If I’m back in a week …’
Scathach leaned forward and raised a finger. ‘At the edge of the wood, before it becomes too deep, you can have a month in the realm while only a week passes. My father was quite certain of this –’
Tallis remembered Huxley’s journal, its references to Wynne-Jones’s absences.
‘One month to listen, to ask, to see, to hear,’ Scathach went on. ‘One month to get clues as to where Harry might be trapped. You’ll go away for four weeks, back in only seven days. And you’ll go in and come out using your own skills. The benefit to me is that I will be able to travel back to my home using those same skills. What do you say?’
‘We’ll need Broken Boy. I have to mark him …’
‘He’ll come,’ Scathach said with great confidence.
Tallis nodded, then smiled. ‘I agree,’ she said.
‘Then get some sleep. Tomorrow’s journey will be particularly difficult.’
She had seen Broken Boy at dusk on several occasions, and at dawn on two, but never in the bright or dark hours between. So she took Scathach’s advice and wrapped herself up in a coarse woollen blanket, curling up by the glowing embers of the fire and drifting off to sleep.
It was a welcome rest. She was exhausted and confused, and in her dreams she passed like a ghost through a dense forest and came to float at the edge of a wide gorge, staring at the strange castle which grew from the wooded cliffs a mile away, across the steep and terrifying drop. But when, in this dream, she turned to face the wood again the trees had somehow slipped away and a great driving wall of snow and ice was curling down towards her, a tidal wave of winter. Several human figures ran before it, escaping for their lives.
As they passed her she could smell the death upon them. There was a child among them, carrying a wooden totem, but it was a small statue not at all like the vast, rotting totem in the ruined house. He cried out rajathuk! The snow overwhelmed them. They floundered and screamed and Tallis screamed too, trying to rise above the swirling ice, grasping the cold, dead branches of the trees, clawing her way to the light as this liquid winter tried to drown her.
As she struggled against the running tide she saw a cave, and the cave mouth widened. A booming roar began to deafen her …
It was the roar of an animal, stepping closer …
It sounded again and she knew it, recognized it. It was a friend, shaking her as she drowned, shaking her half-awake …
Wake up … wake up …
She opened her eyes, then, but a part o
f her slept on. The fire was glowing, its sweet smoke strong in the night air. From where she lay, wrapped in Scathach’s blanket, Tallis could see the crouched woman. The images of dream tumbled; the fire flickered and changed. Awake, yet asleep … Tallis journeyed in a realm somewhere between the two states of mind, where the mythagos stalked her, where the gaberlungi women could reach her easily.
Hush, said White Mask. Old hand on young brow, stroking the soft skin in the summer night. Tallis’s mind flowed like a swift and gleaming river, the water a torrent of words, the banks that slid behind her filled with the images of legend: creatures, and figures, and high places of stone, and strange lands …
Hush, said White Mask.
And as she slept, half awake, Tallis felt a story slip into her flowing mind, impressing itself upon her, impressing her with its simplicity, its starkness, its age … It was a story from the beginning, from the source; there was magic in the source. There was music there, in the wind, in the slap of loose hides against wooden frames, in the striking of stone against stone.
And music, too, in the cries of the hunters, as they faced death in this terrible age of ice and dimly glimpsed beasts, moving south over frozen rivers, seeking a place where there would be food again, and warmth …
There is old memory in snow.
The land remembers.
We came through the storm at the end of the failed hunt.
Asha was old, frozen, pitiful.
We placed her in the womb of the snow.
We blew our spirit breath upon her pale skin.
She sang of the hunts of her own life.
She sang of the fires in the great shelters.
She sang of the fires that had burned without end.
Young Arak held a bone knife.