Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) (14 page)

One day, when she heard horses, she tried to follow their movement but soon gave up. More of Scathach’s story, which she now called Old Forbidden Place, began to crystallize. He was not just a lost son, his tale had been lost too, forgotten by the tongues and minds that had preserved so much else of legend. She struggled to make sense of the thoughts, the sensory excitement, the glimpses of a strange land and a mound-covered fortress, the wild sounds of the cycle of adventure that was the Tale of Old Forbidden Place.

She stopped going to school. This made her parents angry, but she had no time for them, now. Sometimes she was aware that her mother was crying. Sometimes she would wake from sleep to find her mother sitting in the room, watching her from the darkness. This all made her feel sad, but she crushed the feeling; she had no time for it; whatever the Hollower was doing to her she had to be receptive to
everything
. But she could not fail to be aware of the arguments. Her behaviour had precipitated a crisis in the house. When she heard her parents talking about Strong against the Storm she listened intently through the
door. Margaret Keeton wanted to cut the tree down. But James said no. If they did that they might lock Tallis in this summer madness for ever. They had lost Harry … he couldn’t cope with losing Tallis too.

Summer madness. What madness could they mean? She listened more. There was talk about ‘dreamstate’ and ‘fantasy’ and ‘hallucination’. No mention of what she was doing for Scathach. No mention of her fear that the carrion eaters would attack him as he lay unconscious. She scowled, closed her ears to the gabble of the adults. Was it madness to try to understand how to protect the wounded man? Was it madness to make her charms and spells? She had the books, the story books of wizards and witches, and the magic ways. In all of them she had read that
belief
was the greatest ingredient of any spell and now she focused her young mind on
believing
in her ability to keep the crows at bay. It didn’t matter
what
she did, there would be power in all her acts, all her words, all her talismans.

Almost at once she knew how to make her ninth mask. Cut from the bark of a young wych elm, fallen in one of the hedges, it was painted first white, then with azure blue around the eyes to give a look of innocence. This was
Sinisalo
, and made her think of shimmering blue forests; but its secret name was
seeing the child in the land
.

In Stretley meadow, between the fallen ogham stones, she found other stones, small, hand-sized rocks that were smooth to the touch. She gathered as many of these as she could carry, then returned for more, piling them up below the oak. When the stones had been cleaned she fetched brushes and paints from the house and took a few of the pebbles up to Morndun Ridge, where she sat on the earthwork bank, facing Ryhope Wood, trying to imagine the black sea of forest that had once existed here.

She painted the Killing Eye on some of the stones, the sign of the Bird of Prey on others, the crosses, circles and spirals of olden times on still more. She scoured the books in her collection, and on the family shelves, for suitable charms. She copied the blind faces of the victims of Druids, the lifeless stone heads of Celtic times, and sensed at once the energy of otherwordly life imbued within them. She created her tenth mask, dead from the front, but so alive from behind. It was called
Morndun
, which made her look with puzzled eyes at the earthworks on the hill. Its second name, a secret one to her, was
the first journey of a ghost into an unknown region
.

Finally she painted
Leaf Man
and
Leaf Mother
, each on separate stones. She painted them in green, and then added red eyes, red blood for her own blood, the common bond with Scathach.

She tied strings around Leaf Man and Leaf Mother and climbed to her branch. It was not something she felt wise in doing. She had not been here for eight weeks. She had decided not to look at Scathach until the first day of the autumn term. If he lived only when she looked at him then she would have to stretch his life out over several years.

She was powerfully taken with the idea of her stone faces, however, and wanted them to protect her young man. So she edged forward from summer into the early winter of the forbidden place. She peered down at the sleeping warrior.

He was just as he had been those few weeks before. Nothing had changed. She smiled at him, called to him, then lowered the guardian stones from the branch. She lost sight of them, and then they appeared again. She could see how the string from her branch vanished, appearing in thin air a few feet to the south, but this illusion didn’t bother her. The two leaf faces dangled
above Scathach’s body, turning slowly this way and that. She tied them to the branch, secured the knots, and leaned down to call to him once more –

And that was when she saw them.

She had been almost too anxious to look at the distant, dark clouds. But she glanced that way, across the river and the dark woods and saw how the black shapes of the birds were more numerous, now. But it was not the birds that made her cry out, it was the carrion eaters who were crossing the river and beginning to prowl around the land at the bottom of the hill, where in Tallis’s world Knowe Field bordered Hunter’s Brook.

There were four of them, stooped, old figures, dressed in black rags. Tallis knew at once that they were women, but beyond that she could see no details, except that their hair was long and grey beneath the dark shawls. They were not the whisperers, not the masked women from the edgewoods. One of them pushed a cart, a ramshackle structure on two huge, solid wheels.

Their voices, their shrill exclamations and laughter, carried across the field of slaughter where they had come to loot the dead.

Tallis called urgently to Scathach. He didn’t stir. The strip of white nightdress fluttered in his fingers. A stronger wind was blowing in that other place, the beginning of the storm. Tallis suddenly felt frantic. She had two of the small stones in her pocket and she dropped them on Scathach’s unconscious form. She aimed for his legs but as the stones vanished they reappeared above his chest, knocked off target during their transition between the two worlds. Tallis gasped as she saw them strike, but they rolled harmless off the warrior’s body. Scathach remained unmoving.

Tallis leaned down again to watch the scavenging
women. The wind had caught their loose black clothing and it flapped about their bodies like bat wings as they worked. But it was what they were doing that made Tallis shudder. They were stripping and dismembering the dead. They stretched the corpses and removed jackets, belts, breeches and boots. One of them worked on the naked torsos with a knife that flashed dully whilst the oldest and most hag-like used a long, curved blade and attended to the necks. When the women moved to another place the blind heads swayed and banged against the wood and the sad mouths gaped in silent protest.

The women’s cart was heavy with the flesh of the dead. Two of them pushed it, now. There were three dead men in the middle of the hill and then – yes, Tallis was sure of it – then they would see Scathach below the oak.

She crawled back along the branch until the season changed. Her heart was thundering, her head heavy with confusion. What to do?
What
to do? She needed to know more. She knew how primitive these people were, therefore she could find appropriate defences – in time! And she could make time. She could sustain Scathach’s life simply by not watching him. But that was not possible. She was too concerned. What if the cessation of time in his world did not continue? What if,
even now
, the hags were closing in on him to pick over his body, crowing as they trundled their rattling cart towards the succulent prey?

She scrambled back to winter. She could hear the laughter of the women before she even parted the leaves to see better. Metal rattled, wheels creaked, and the storm wind brought ancient smells of blood and smoke from the darkening field where the battle had been.

It was cold in that place. The distant trees swayed as the winter began to strip their branches. The smoke from
the fires streamed chaotically in the glowering heavens. And Tallis realized that the hags had seen Scathach.

They ignored the bloody corpses in the middle of the field and dragged their squeaking cart towards the oak. The wind made their hoods billow and Tallis saw their ash-grey faces, the tight skin on the bones, the open mouths just black hollows from which emerged their predatory cries.

They stopped. They had seen the stone heads – Leaf Man and Leaf Mother – hanging above the body which they had come to loot. Perhaps they could see how the heads dangled from thin air. The creaking of the wheels ceased. The grim heads lolled as the cart’s handles were dropped and the women came cautiously forward.

They looked at the stones. They looked at Scathach. Then the oldest brandished her butchering blade and stepped forward.

‘
No!
’ screamed Tallis from the branches of Strong against the Storm. ‘Get away!’

The old women were stunned. They looked up, backed off, then stopped. Then the oldest took two steps towards the oak.

‘Go back!’ screeched Tallis. ‘Leave him! He’s mine. He’s mine!’

This oldest woman seemed to look right at Tallis, but the focus in her pale, watery eyes never hardened. She looked through Tallis, and to the side, and above her …

‘He’s mine! Go away!’ the girl screamed.

And the situation dawned on the women at last. There was no one in the tree, no
human
. They cried out, backing quickly away, arms crossed in front of their faces, the fingers of the right hand shaped like horns, those on the left indicating the eye. They spoke a confusion of words, then picked up the cart and swung it round,
hauling it away across the field towards the storm and the forest where the fires burned.

Tallis laughed to see them go. Her laughter haunted the old women who began to run faster. She had won! She had driven them away! Scathach would be safe with her now.

But her triumph was short-lived.

She lay contentedly on the branch for a few minutes, watching the storm encroach, feeling the wind rise, seeing the hill become shadowy and grey. Still Scathach lay without moving, but she let him sleep. In the morning he would wake with the winter sun, she was sure of that. The crows would not get him now.

It was dusk, and from the direction of the woods light flickered. As she stared in that direction she saw several torches. Her heart jumped. Dark shapes were crossing the river. The torches flared more brightly. She could hear voices.

It was the women again. They still hauled their cart, but now it was piled high with what looked like wood … and a long stone. Behind them came a man. He was swathed in a long grey cloak, made of fur. He carried a tall staff. As he came closer, Tallis could see that his moustache was long, as was his grey hair, but he had no beard. His feet were bare. And there were not four women this time, but five. The newcomer wore an odd and frightening black veil across her face, but was otherwise as raggedly dressed as her companions.

‘Go away …’ Tallis whispered, feeling despair, then anger surface again. ‘Go away!’ she commanded more loudly, and the sombre procession slowed for a moment before continuing to advance.

Before they had reached the area of the haunted oak, Tallis stopped time again. She gathered several of the
painted stones, selecting only those with eyes and circles on them.

In Scathach’s world again, the fire from the torches streamed violently in the wind. The dark storm-clouds moved swiftly across the field and Tallis could smell rain in the air. She could hear thunder.

The women rammed the torches in the ground, forming a half circle around the oak. They stood there, ragged clothes whipping about their angry bodies. They screeched in a single voice, the sound an eerie and terrifying ululation. They watched the oak branch where Tallis crouched and they made their magic signs with their hands and arms. The woman with the veiled face whispered to the man, then stepped back a little. The old man stepped forward. He raised his staff and struck at the Leaf heads above Scathach’s body. The action was sudden and violent and Tallis responded with a scream of her own and a stone thrown viciously at his head. The stone struck him on the shoulder. He roared words of pain and anger into the tree, then stooped to pick up the talisman. Almost immediately he dropped it, frightened by it, but the veiled woman scurried forward to claim it, turning it over in her fingers; Tallis thought she heard the woman laugh, and this frightened her.

So she screeched, ‘He’s mine!’ And threw a second stone at one of the torches. The women continued to wail, the oldest brandishing her long, dull knife. ‘Leave him alone!’ Tallis screamed. ‘Don’t cut him. Don’t hurt him!’

The old man was furious. He waved his staff and made strange patterns in the air with his left hand. He pointed to the sleeping form of Scathach then slapped his chest. He said something; the words were simple, urgent.

Tallis threw an eye-stone at him and it struck him on the brow, sending him staggering back. When he had
recovered from the blow he unloaded other torches from the cart and lit each one, ramming them into the soft ground to increase the circle of fire around the tree. Tallis watched. The darkness grew deeper; the flames made the pale faces of the hags glow.

When Tallis scrambled down from the tree for more eye and circle stones she realized that dusk was approaching in her own world. She carried more stones from the base of Strong against the Storm, into its heart.

She passed again from peaceful dusk to storm-blown night. The crackle of the torches was loud and the screeching of the hags sounded like wild animals howling with pain. When she looked down into the forbidding world she could see that the old man and two of the women were pushing the tall, grey stone from the cart. They could hardly manage it. They succeeded in getting it upright, where it balanced, held by the women. The veiled woman placed her hands upon it for a second, then said something to the old man, who struck it with his staff then walked around it, crying out in his strange tongue. Each time he passed between Tallis and the stone he struck the smooth grey surface.