Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) (55 page)

The pain had ceased, but her head still felt light. She lay among the furs of her bed, face half-turned towards the glancing light from the small window of her hut. There was a strong wind outside, and she could smell snow. She hoped the coming storm would not be too ferocious. Year by year the mound of earth and stone that covered Scathach had been worn away. Soon there would be nothing left to go and kick. She visited Scathach every day. She kicked the earth.
You should have waited longer. I needed you more
.

He had been too old. His journey into Lavondyss had been too demanding. It had taken too much from him. But those several years had been good ones, even though she’d been the eyes for both of them.

Was that the sound of horses? She struggled to sit, but failed. The wind blew the hides that covered the window. The young woman who tended the fire, and nursed the old-woman-who-was-oracle, glanced up, but was too lazy to come and help. Everyone knew that Tallis was dying. Everyone knew that the oracle was dying. Everyone was afraid.

Thank God the pain had gone away.

She lay back again, stared at the ceiling. She was hungry, yet not hungry; she was anxious to walk to the shrine cave, yet content to lie here. She wanted to talk, but needed silence.

It was odd to be dying.

Horses? It
was
the sound of horses. Distantly. They
were struggling up the path. She could hear the drum. They always beat the drum for new arrivals.

The young woman who was her lazy nurse began to sing. It was a familiar lament. It brought back memories of Ryhope. Tallis cried without tears, laughed without smiling, called without sound. This was familiar indeed, but she was too weak to go and smell the air.

She had thought a great deal about Ryhope recently, memories pressing forward as if sensing her imminent death and urgent to be a part of the journey to come. She had thought especially about her father, saddened again, all these years on, by the image of him, his forlorn, hopeless figure, standing in the stream and clutching Moondream, that shard of his daughter’s life. And she had thought fondly of her mother, too, though she had realized something recently that made it almost painful to think of her mother’s silent sadness, the deep loss that must have haunted the woman through all the years that Tallis had been alive with her.

Two blue ribbons, tied around the antler shard, hidden in the treasure trunk – blue ribbons for her dead sons
.

Two boy children (born in wartime!) who had not survived, remembered in strips of their own christening robes, blue edging tied around the lace of Tallis’s dress.

Tallis was the youngest child – her story, of the King and his three sons, the youngest sent wildly into the Otherworld, was a reflection of her own life, known to her without her truly knowing.

She closed her eyes, but soon opened them again as she heard the boy, the child, the pest. His name was Kyrdu. She liked him, but he was always asking questions. She would be glad when he was older. He called ‘Grandmother Tallis. Grandmother!’

He burst in through the hides on the door, letting cold air gust across the floor and blow the flames. He
approached Tallis cautiously, rose above her, peering down. His face was full of concern. He had been unhappy at the old woman’s decline. He had tried to share her pain, but he could not use the right magic.

He tugged at her shoulder as she lay there.

‘I’m awake,’ she said. ‘What is it you want?’

‘Riders coming,’ he whispered anxiously. ‘They’re still in the canyon. Five of them.’

They had sounded closer. Her ears had remained keen after all these years. She smiled at Kyrdu. Pain lanced her chest, squeezing tears from her eyes. The boy cradled her head, looking concerned.

‘It might be Harry,’ he said brightly. ‘It might be Harry at last.’

‘How many riders have passed through the shrine?’ Tallis whispered to him. ‘How many each year?’

‘Lots.’

‘How many have been Harry?’

‘None.’

‘Exactly. I found Harry ages back, when I was just a girl. I found him in spirit. I’ve told
you
the story and you alone, but I didn’t expect …’ she coughed violently, and again Kyrdu cradled her, helplessly watching her. ‘I didn’t expect,’ she went on breathlessly, ‘that you would plague me with your
sightings
, and your
keenness
. You drive me mad. Go away. I’m feeling strange.’

‘There’s something else,’ he said as he laid her back. He brushed aside the hair from her eyes. He looked so like his father as he watched her.

‘What now?’

‘Your cave. Your shrine … the oracle …’

‘What about it?’

‘A girl’s voice. It called out. I looked hard, but I couldn’t see anything. But there was a girl’s voice in
there. And a funny smell. It smelled sweet. And hot. Like a hot wind …’

Tallis watched him. Her heart raced so hard that the pain came back, and with it the dizziness and the feeling of being sick. She reached out and touched the young boy’s hand. He had known winter all his life, and would know no other season. But Tallis knew what he had experienced, and she tried to smile through the shaking of her face, and the sudden sense of finishing …

‘Summer,’ she said. ‘You smelled summer. I remember that summer well …’

It was Harry. It
was
Harry. He was coming. And the voice in the shrine cave was hers – herself as a child, listening to this very moment in the ferocious winter. Perhaps, after all, there was a way back, back to home …

Her body strove to rise, but she failed. She drove the boy away. She sent the woman away. She lay on her bed and shook, and sweated, and tried to
think
the pain away. Her head felt like exploding. There was something rising in her throat and she swallowed it back. The furs were warm, but a wetter warmth slipped from her, upsetting her. Her chest seemed to rattle. She could hear the drum, the whicker of horses. She clutched at the furs, tried to keep the cold out. She stared at the roof of the hut. She counted the rushes, the slats. She tried to see each detail of the roof.

Hurry
.

Pain and the fluttering of wings.

Hurry!

Breath bubbling in her throat. A darkening … was it night? The light seemed to slip away. She couldn’t feel her hands. Her feet were numb. Were these birds in the roof? Is that why everything seemed to spin?

HARRY! HARRY!

‘I’m here. I’m here by you …’

He had entered without her realizing it. She could feel warm wind on her face. His hands took hers, raised them to his lips, kissed them. Her vision was suddenly clear. He was handsome, as she had known he would be. There was no burn-scar on his face. He was armoured for war and long rides, leather-clad, fur cloaked, his hair tied back with an iron ring. He smiled broadly, his fair eyes sparkling. He was so young!

‘Harry …’

‘Tallis. You look so lovely.’

‘I’m an old woman.’

‘You’re no such thing.’ He leaned and kissed her lips. ‘It’s taken me a long time to find you.’

‘I was supposed to rescue
you
.’

He laughed. ‘Well. That’s the way it goes. It’s my turn now. I have to get you home.’

‘Home is a long way,’ she said.

Not that far. Can you walk?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Come on. Get up. There’s no point in not trying.’

She felt the furs taken from her body. She had expected to be embarrassed by the smell of her incontinence, but her legs were suddenly strong and the air was scented with snow. She took Harry’s hand and he pulled her to her feet. He led her outside, laughing. Thick snow covered the land. They ran through it, Harry leading, tugging her along. Her old legs felt strong again. She felt the wind on her face.

‘Come on. Come
on
,’ called Harry. ‘Home isn’t that far
away
.’

‘You’re running too fast,’ she cried, knee deep in the snow. They pranced through the snow like horses, laughing as they stumbled. They ran up the rise of land, to the
woods at the top. There was warm air there, and bright trees, in full leaf.

‘
Wait!
’ Tallis cried irritably. Then laughing. ‘I can’t keep up. Your legs are longer than mine.’

Her brother tugged her, swung her round, holding her by both hands. She swung so fast she felt her feet leave the ground. She giggled. It always terrified her when he did this, but only because she imagined he would let her go. He never let her go.

Strong against the Storm was on the hill. They ran towards it and again he lifted her, swinging her high and planting her firmly on the lowest branch. He stood below her, grinning.

She sat carefully, afraid of unbalancing. ‘Take me down.’

‘I don’t think I will,’ he teased.

‘Harry? Please help me down.’

He cocked his head. She remembered the way he had always looked.

‘Look behind you …’

She turned on the branch. She was staring through dark woods, towards open land. She saw a man’s figure standing out on that open land. All she could see of him was his silhouette. It disturbed her. The man was standing on the rise of ground, immediately beyond a barbed-wire fence. His body was bent to one side as he peered into the impenetrable gloom of the wood. Tallis watched him, sensing his concern … and the sadness. His whole posture was that of a saddened, ageing man. Motionless. Watching. Peering anxiously into a realm denied him by the fear in his heart.

Her father.

‘Tallis?’ he called.

Without a word she jumped down from the branch of
the tree and stepped forward into the light, emerging from the tree line and stepping through the wire.

James Keeton straightened up, a look of relief upon his face. ‘We were worried about you. We thought we’d lost you.’

‘No, Daddy. I’m quite safe.’

‘Well. Thank God for that.’

She went up to him and held his hand. He led her home.

The freezing wind could not dampen the fire. They burned her on a fine pyre, opposite the shrine cave where her masks hung, twisting slowly in the sheltered place. The boy Kyrdu wailed. He was inconsolable. When his mother shouted at him he simply ran, he hid. But he came back and crouched near to the place where the masks dangled. He had always liked Sinisalo. It was a child’s mask. It was from the child’s lips that he had heard the voice of the girl.

He gave her no thought, now. Grandmother Tallis burned on the wood. The smoke that rose from her found wings and flew away. The lament followed her. The sad song, chanted by the woman who had nursed her, drifted high into the winter sky. Like the smoke, it seemed to curl and turn, streaming to the west, to the place where Grandmother Tallis had always said her
real
home lay. The drum was beaten.

The riders were growing restless. Four of them stayed on horseback, leaning easily over their saddles, waiting for their leader to finish with his grief.

He was tall, that one. He had command. He was old and wore not just the cloak of the hunter, but the weapons of the warrior and the skin-paint of the shaman. He was all things. Now he was distraught.

Kyrdu watched him through his own tears. The big man passed around the pyre. Fire made his face gleam.

Suddenly he shouted out her name, giving vent to all his grief. ‘Tallis! Tallis!’

The horses reared and backed away, their riders struggling for control. His voice was filled with sadness, filled with desperation. And longing.

And love too.

‘Tallis!’ he cried again, a lingering cry …

And from Sinisalo came the girl’s eerie voice, whispering in the strange language of the old woman on the pyre. ‘Harry. Harry. I’m here. I’m with you.’

Kyrdu forgot his tears. He watched the dead wood of the mask. It clattered against its neighbours, blown by the gusting wind. Its eyes were guileless. Its mouth was pure. Sweet smells, and warmth, came from it.

The man on the ledge had not heard the voice from the mask calling to him. He had given in to grief, thrown back his head in bitter self-recrimination. ‘I’ve lost you. I’ve lost you. And now I’ve lost everything!’

‘No,’ whispered the ghost in Sinisalo, and Kyrdu shivered as he heard the magic words. ‘I’m here. I’ll come to you, Harry. Wait for me. Wait for me …’

There was a way to another land through the shrine cave, a way to the land of Grandmother Tallis’s birth; that warm land. Kyrdu watched the mask, remembered Tallis’s tales and tricks. There was a
hollowing
there. His father had once spoken to the old woman about it. Grandmother Tallis had laughed. You
will
go there, she had said. You will go through the shrine to a strange house. You will go with your wife and your son, Kyrdu. The house will be ruined. You will all be very frightened. You will see a
rajathuk
there, a small girl, terrified. But you will not recognize it. Only Kyrdu will be able to see
the woman in the terrified face of the young girl, as she runs for the light and for her own father.

Kyrdu knew that his mother longed to journey out of this terrible, icy place. Perhaps he could use the masks to find the magic for such a journey. Grandmother Tallis had always said that there was power in the child. Perhaps she
had meant
him.

The riders had gone, clattering up the path to the castle and the woods beyond. But long after the pyre had burned to ash the boy was still crouched within the shrine cave, following with his gaze the trail of the drifting smoke, out across the forest, to the distance, to the setting sun, to the unknown regions of the west.

He wondered how to journey there.