I looked at Alison. ‘I remember thinking this place ought to reflect a more up-to-date Europe. I should
have kept my trap shut. It does now, all right – bloodied, wounded, shell-shocked …’
She took my hand and squeezed it, not quite hard enough to bring on gangrene. ‘Europe recovered; so will they. I think right now they’ll be more uncertain than anything else. They need to know that the cost was worth it, that a victory’s been won.’
‘Well, we’re bringing them back the Graal and the Spear.’
She gave an exasperated chuckle. ‘No, idiot! You know that’s not what I mean. They need more. Not just things as they were, or the cost would be too high! They need a new ideal to look to, some kind of assurance that the old weakness and stagnation are gone, that all the awful things won’t just come rushing back again. More than just another day dawning, even a bright one. This place needs … healing, Steve.’
‘But what makes me the one to do it? I hardly know it, I—’
‘You felt at home, though, didn’t you? Right from the start. Because you were meant for it, destined for it. Don’t you see? That was what Le Stryge must have meant about your bloodline, why he knew you’d be able to touch the Spear safely. All those centuries it’s been working down to you. I’m amazed I didn’t see it earlier. From your name, even!’
‘Not you too! Look, just what is this about my name? Stephen, what’s with Stephen?’
She laughed, softly. ‘Quite a lot. I could get to like it. No, Steve! Your surname! You still don’t see, do you? I suppose you never even read the legends you’re inheriting, of the Wounded Land, that must find healing. And its ruler, the Fisher King.’
‘Aye, so it was foretold us,’ said Mall, her strong voice riding the tide of the bells below. ‘The Fisher King, himself maimed, no more than half a man, should himself find healing, and so make whole the Wounded Land once more. So it is fulfilled today.’ She shook her head. ‘And I stand amazed I live to see’t made manifest.’
‘Goes double for me!’ chipped in Jyp cheerfully. ‘Say, think you can swing us a couple of front-row duckets for the coronation? Anyone know where I can borrow a stovepipe hat?’
‘The
what?’
Alison grinned. ‘Not a coronation, exactly; the Graal King wears no crown. Only the mantle.’
I groaned. I knew what those bells heralded; I could almost feel the weight of that heavy gold weave
bearing me down, of ages of dusty responsibility settling on my back. ‘I hope they shake the moths out, at least.’
‘There won’t be any! That thing’s ancient. They say it was made for Charlemagne.’
Him again! ‘For shoulders broader than mine, I’ll bet – in every sense.’
‘Yeah, give the poor guy a break!’ grinned Jyp. ‘After all, what’s he been all his life but a businessman? It’ll be hard having to give that up.’
‘I’m not going to,’ I said, and was startled to see just how alarmed every face in that cockpit became. ‘I mean, not all at once! I’ve got a life in the Core as well; I don’t want to just vanish. I’ll keep on with it, keep up the expansion of C-Tran, develop some other projects; maybe even go into politics as I always planned to. In the EC, maybe; after all, the Graal looks to the whole of Europe. And now people are finally getting fed up with trying to unite it by war and conquest and religion and ideology, maybe it’s time to let trade have a go. So fine, I’ll be your king here as well, the way destiny and just about everyone else and his dog seems determined to make me. But I’m damn well going to do it the way this destiny seems to have shaped for me. I’ll be a merchant king, like Christian the Fourth of Denmark; and see what I can do to feed the body of the state as well as heal its soul. Okay, it may not be as glorious an empire as Charlemagne’s, or the Romans, or whoever. But with any luck it’ll cost a lot fewer lives, and last a damn sight longer. Until maybe this time people can get it right for themselves!’
There was amazement on their faces; but there was also a growing excitement, like a light growing stronger and clearer. What I saw in Alison’s face confirmed it. ‘Is that anything like—’
‘Yes. Oh, yes. If you knew how, how bloody
proud
of you I feel. But there’s more, isn’t there? Much more.’
I took both her hands in mine, and kissed
them. ‘There’s that, for a start.’
‘Steve! Everybody’s
looking
– oh, you don’t distract me that easily. You know what I meant.’
‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘Much more. But I can’t tell you, not now.’
She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter. I know you’ll tell me one day.’
‘Mean to be around, do you?’
She gave an elaborate shrug. ‘I’m sworn to the Graal, remember?’
‘Feel like dividing your loyalties a bit?’
‘No,’ she said. And then, in a surprisingly small voice, ‘There is no division between the Graal and the King. And the rites are very much the—’
‘Ah!’ I said, and grabbed her. It was round about then, or a little while later, that the ground staff cottoned on to our mooring ropes, and the whole ship lurched lightly. Alison being as tall as I am, I was forced to shift my handhold well below the usual centre of gravity; at least that was my story. I hadn’t realized how close we were to the ground. Close enough for Mall and Jyp, with malice aforethought, to fling open the door.
‘But that’s how a new king should be shown to his people,’ protested Jyp. ‘Gettin’ a grip on his responsibilities.’
‘Remind me to find out whether there’s a vacancy for a court fool,’ I said acidly, but I was too happy to be annoyed. Too happy, even, to be weighed down any longer by what I couldn’t tell Alison.
More? Much, much more. Only a short time back I’d felt torn between Core and Spiral, reluctant to quit the one for the other. Had it been some foreboding of just how thoroughly the Spiral was going to claim me, of the vast stretch of existence laid out before me, like a pilgrim’s road?
Of one day, if the promise was true, going beyond even this place, this existence, of voyaging outwards and ever outwards towards those eerie outer reaches of the Spiral, towards those realms where the illusions and the follies of things material fall away, and absolutes are approached – and then to return, transfigured, to that first unimaginable beginning.
A voyage so long, and so bitterly hard, that it didn’t matter that I knew it would succeed; for nothing less, no promise or guidance, could sustain me on the way. The prospect terrified and exalted me; but I knew now that at least I wouldn’t be treading it alone. From last to first I’d have friends, comrades, companions, close to me, always close and growing closer, until at last we would, in some way unimaginable, merge and become part of one another, components of a greater whole. Such a being, that if it somehow managed to regain human form, would talk with a voice familiar and yet unfamiliar, echoing
with the vagrant identities it never wholly lost. One of them, at least, I was sure of now.
I stepped down to the cobbled square, blinking slightly in the fullness of early day. I balanced the Spear carefully across the chalice, and, hoping it wouldn’t revert to stone just yet, I raised it high above my head. The whole island seemed to shake under the thunder of a cheering people. Alison sprang down, and together, with the rest of our party falling in behind, we strode slowly towards the great doors of the Graal Hall – slowly, because ritual and reverent respect came naturally, with such an awesome power in my grasp. The doors swung open as we approached – and if I had anything to say about it they’d stay that way more often.
As always in the realm of the Sangraal the sky had a deeper blue of its own, the white clouds seemed brighter, billowing up in ramparts and turrets behind the towers of the Hall. Alison’s cheeks were glowing, her eyes afire; and looking at her, borne along on the tide of that rejoicing, I felt I could overtop the towers at a leap, go soaring over those haughty castles of cloud at will. My isolation was over, my loneliness and my lack of purpose at an end. I had been the Wounded Land, also. For, in closing its wounds, I’d healed my own, and my last emptiness
was filled.
I’d heal others yet.
Like
Chase the Morning
and
The Gates of Noon
, this
book is set some years in the future, and no reference to present-day individuals or organizations is intended. In the interests of classical scholarship I should point out that on page 127, despite his linguistic abilities, Stephen Fisher evidently just can’t understand the heavy Ithacan accent.
MSR
If you've enjoyed this book and would like to read more great SF, you'll find literally thousands of classic Science Fiction & Fantasy titles through the SF Gateway.
For the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy …
For the most comprehensive collection of classic SF on the internet …
Visit the SF Gateway.
The Winter of the World
1.
The Anvil of Ice
(1986)
2.
The Forge in the Forest
(1987)
3.
The Hammer of the Sun
(1988)
4.
The Castle of the Winds
(1998)
5.
The Singer and the Sea
(1999)
6.
Shadow of the Seer
(2001)
Spiral
1.
Chase the Morning
(1990)
2.
The Gates of Noon
(1992)
3.
Cloud Castles
(1993)
4.
Maxie’s Demon
(1997)
Other Novels
Run to the Stars
(1982)
The Ice King
(1986) (with Allan J. Scott)
A Spell of Empire
(1992) (with Allan J. Scott)
The Lord of Middle Air
(1994)
For Maggie Noach and Ellen Levine
–
ten years on!
Michael Scott Rohan (1951 – )
Michael Scott Rohan, born in Edinburgh in 1951, writes both fantasy and science fiction. Whilst studying law at Oxford, Rohan joined the SF group and met the president, Allan J Scott, who started him writing for the group’s semi-professional magazine
SFinx
alongside names such as Robert Holdstock and Ian Watson. His first novel,
Run to the Stars
, was published in 1983 and he collaborated with Allan J Scott on
The Hammer and the Cross
, a non-fiction account of how Christianity arrived in Viking lands. Rohan is best known for his acclaimed
The Winter of the World
sequence, an epic fantasy set in and ice-bound world.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Michael Scott Rohan 1993
All rights reserved.
The right of Michael Scott Rohan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2013 by Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 09230 3
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.