The Broken Kings: Book Three of The Merlin Codex (16 page)

I had made a living telling the truth by foresight, and been skinned on many occasions when my physical reaction had been slower than my wit, escaping wrath. But those five boys, visiting me in my home “close to home,” the small cave and clearing where I often relaxed and recuperated after walking the Path for two or three generations … they had vanished from memory as swiftly as their chariots had carried them home to disaster.

But I had always remembered Durandond. A broken king? I would have to find out more about him.

It was clear to me that I had engaged with the shuddering ship as much as she would allow for the moment. I reminded her, through her protectress, that Urtha and his son were returning from the eastern tribal lands of the Coritani. A final, charged response came through from my old friend.

Keep them there! Don’t let them return. Abandon the fortress.

I didn’t hesitate. Though I wished to ask a hundred questions, I drew back from this hinterland, this summer threshold within the ship. I waded back through the rain-rotting bilges, climbed up to the oar-deck and over the side, slipping back into the reedy mud and stepping to the firm earth of the bank.

Argo watched me forlornly. It was late in the day, growing dark, the air heavy with moisture. The river, farther away, rippled with movement, nothing more than ducks.

I called for Jason and was answered by the wind rustling the reeds. As I came closer to the woods, I called again. Argo was behind me now, and hidden in the shadows. Had her crew somehow crept back on board the listless ship?

A sudden movement caught my eye, and Jason appeared. He was still standing like a living corpse—lank, blank, sallow of countenance, and incurious—even though his gaze was on mine. Behind him I could see Rubobostes, the Dacian. I wanted so much to see those scowling features break into his famous laugh. But he was inanimate of mood, just alive in the flesh.

A further surprise followed: stepping towards me, lean and dark, his eyes bright, was the Cretan Tairon, another of Jason’s second crew of Argonauts, from the time of the raid on Delphi.

Tairon was a hunter of labyrinths. He had been born on Crete, the very home of labyrinths. He was strange in ways that made me believe he was older than his age. He, like Jason and the others, had the same air of detachment from reality about him; he was distant in mind, though clearly present in physical form. It was just … those eyes! He was closer to waking than the others.

I had seen it before, of course. There is a brightness that suggests awareness, even in a corpse. There is a sparkle that tells of “watching.” Though Tairon was asleep, like the rest of the crew, there was a spirit within him that was motivating him to contact me.

I said to him, “I thought you’d gone home after the adventure at Delphi.”

“So did I,” the bright-eyed man answered solemnly.

“Then why are you here?”

“I became lost again. Argo found me. Argo asked me back. I can help in the events that need to be accomplished.”

He was silent for a moment, frowning as he stared at me, as if trying to remember something. Then he continued: “I can advise on the events that were once accomplished.”

“Events?”

“Argo’s past is a maze equal to any maze. I think that’s why she wants me here. A terrible event occurred to her. Don’t ask me what it was. I don’t know, though I have a suspicion. When I wake, you will have to remind me of this conversation. A small part of me remembers you, Merlin. I’m glad to see you. I’d thought time would have swept you into the future.”

“I’ve found a rock. I’m hanging on.”

“Cling fast. I’ll see you shortly.”

The spirit flew from his gaze then, and he became as blank as Jason and the others. They stood there, these several sorry figures, ragged and hollow, waiting for me to leave.

I left.

*   *   *

I got my bearings and paced back towards the forest. The horses were not tethered where I had left them. It seemed I had lost my horses. But my skills permitted me access to the animal world, and I could fly, swim, prowl, or gallop with a creature of my choice.

I found one of the animals by flying to it as a crow. I turned the beast around with swooping aggression. It came back to me, harness drooping, mouth moist at the bit, eyes shameful.

I forgave it at once.

Whilst flying, however, I had seen Urtha, his retinue, and many others making their way back towards his tribal lands. They were following the trails to the dry river that separated Coritani from Cornovidi, to the two huge boulders known as the Stones of the Single Leap. So I knew where to go to intercept him. As soon as the horse was rested and fed, I would make haste to meet him.

Chapter Thirteen

Kryptoii

I kept to higher ground whenever I could, using a little insight to locate old and hidden tracks when the forest deepened. In two days I knew I was close to Urtha. I was also aware of being followed at a distance.

Suspecting it was Jason who was shadowing me, perhaps on the horse I’d lost, I sent a winged spy to catch a glance. But as bird and pursuer encountered each other, so the woodland drew around the rider like a cloak, embracing and swallowing the figure, hiding him completely. The action was so sudden, it caught me by surprise, an alarming twisting of nature that I associated with those who possessed shape-changing talents rather than grizzled ex-mariners. Whoever pursued me, then, was someone more like me, but they approached from north and west, where Argo lay brooding.

I put the puzzle from my mind. Argo’s words—
stop them going back
—were restless in my head. That sense of impending transformation was everywhere, and there were too many oddities and uncertainties in this otherwise ordinary world of sparring and warring tribes for me to embrace at this time.

I was weary. I was forced to acknowledge the fact to myself. The call of the Path was becoming stronger. It would soon be time to move on my way, to pick up that old track again, to journey out of one world and into a new, a stranger one, a step back into the broader and deeper Time that governed my existence.

I was reluctant to embrace that call.

Niiv was in my blood now; thoughts of her, and feelings of comfort with her, were preoccupying forces. And there was Medea, too, that memory of love in my childhood. If I were to abandon Alba, I might abandon this renewed, if painful, encounter with the woman who had once been so important in my life.

I rode on, confused and harried by uncertainty, not resting for my own sake, only for that of the animal.

I caught up with Urtha within a day or so, at dusk. I was riding with the half moon behind me, coming from Coritanian territory into Urtha’s own land. Crossing a bare ridge, freed for a moment from the wildwood, I saw the spread of fires below me. Urtha had camped for the night in the dried river course that separated the two kingdoms. The fires burned between boulders and ragged trees, and tents were slung everywhere, twenty or more, in a wide circle around a broader enclosure, which I took to be that of the king and his retinue.

I could hear, distantly, the raucous laughter of resting men, and the cheerful teasing of youths. If there was a scent of cooking on the air, the wind was denying me that pleasure.

One of Urtha’s
uthiin
intercepted me, recognised me, and led me to the camp. Urtha came out to greet me. “Merlin! Casting a moon shadow, I see. I hope that’s a good omen. Come into my fortress!”

I ducked below the skins of the tent. Several men sat there, some of whom I recognised. The rough ground was strewn with blankets. Urtha passed me a clay flagon of cold wine, his expression curious.

“From the North? What have you been up to, old friend?”

“From the North?”

“Yes. I left you at Taurovinda, but here you are, riding from the North.”

“Well, I move fast when I move. I’ve been trying to talk to Argo. She’s in the land, and she’s a very disturbed ship.”

The men in the king’s enclosure looked on, uncomprehending, and Urtha waved me quiet. “Later, then. We’ll talk about this later. In the meantime, I’ve roused this rabble into support … here they are … the champions of my good friend Vortingoros, though the king himself must stay and guard his own land.”

I was briefly introduced to the top men of the Coritani, and then Urtha told me of his encounter in that kingdom.

Most important: he had brought nearly a hundred good fighters with him.

“Men against the Shadows of Heroes?”

“It has worked before. What else can I fall back on?”

He whispered the words. I understood why. Everything he did, every act, every deed, every challenge to the Otherworld that bordered his land was made with defiance. Determination and desire could often be stronger than iron and chariot.

His account of the wooden effigies, their return to life or their forlorn and final walk to the river, was intriguing, however. Once again, small thoughts, fragments and abandoned memories, niggled at the hidden nests of my experience.

A more intriguing story was to come.

Hearing that I was in the camp, Kymon left the small shelter that he shared with the seven youths of the Coritani, and came to his father’s tent. In fact, he didn’t come alone. A gangly, pallid young man came with him, a boy whose face showed the scars of anticipated triumph, a gaze that was hungry, a mouth that disdained. But when he saw me, he frowned, and settled quietly at the edge of the covered ground, sitting cross-legged and patient.

Kymon greeted me, tilting his head to show the raw scar on his chin.

“I have my chin-cut!” he said. “That boy there gave it to me. I gave it in return. His name is Colcu, and I have come to an arrangement with him concerning leadership and honour.”

“Good for you. I haven’t understood a word you’ve just said.”

Kymon was briefly aware of his father’s quiet laugh, but he was too full of himself to care. He gave me a detailed account of his combat with Colcu, and the winning of the chin-cut. I noticed Colcu shake his head on two occasions, and clench his fist several times. Kymon’s account was not so true as the full moon, then. But Colcu, for whatever reason, was allowing the story to be told at his own expense.

He and Kymon had come to a “champions’” agreement, that for two seasons Colcu would be master of the group of fifteen youths, five of them Cornovidi, ten of them Coritani. And then for two seasons, Kymon would command. After that they would contest the leadership. This agreement was as uneasy as a heifer faced with the bull for the first time, but it was clearly working, the terms agreed, the terms accepted, terms to be borne, even with discomfort.

I was introduced to Colcu, then, and I found that I liked him. I had a strong feeling that he and Kymon, opposites in many ways, would one day become strong in alliance, strong in friendship. These meagre years, their shallow age, were a challenge to their experience, and they bristled with each other. And yet everything was in place for a future of unity and power.

Only the Shadow Realm stood between them now, a fact that they acknowledged without fully understanding it. Kymon had been torn from his heartland in his own childhood, and remembered the pain of the tribulation. Colcu, unburdened with such memory, nevertheless seemed inclined to accept his companion’s experience as having been real, and was committed.

Colcu and Kymon, and the other youths, had formed themselves into a band similar in concept to Urtha’s
uthiin
. They called themselves
kryptoii
.

“Is that a Greekland name?”

Kymon frowned, but Colcu smiled. “Older than Greek Land,” he said. “I’ve heard of it, and dreamed of it; dreams flow freely in this Island, did you know that?”

“No.”

The freckled youth smiled again and nodded in a conspiratorial way. “But they do. This is an island of dreams. They fly from all over, but where can they fly farther? There is nothing but the setting sun beyond Ghostland. I’ve heard of cliffs and a raging sea, and islands that appear and disappear. But so what? This is the edge of the world, and dreams can fly no farther than birds. We are living in a dreaming pool, and words and lives come here and stop here, and there are some of us who can catch them, and I caught a dream, a boy’s dream, from an older land than Greek Land, and he said he was
kryptoii
.”

Colcu was speaking as if in a dream, or as if someone were speaking through him.

“And what did he mean by
kryptoii
?”

“Good question. I think he meant:
concealer
. I think he meant:
I know yet I don’t reveal
. I think he meant:
I contain a secret
.

“In the dream,” he went on, “I saw a nut, still intact, but there was no food inside the nut, just something waiting to be known. The wood of the nut must age and grow brittle, and then the secret will emerge. Now there,” he said with a confident grin, “is everything that is a boy for you!”

“Nuts waiting to age?”

“Ready to reveal all when they mature.”

“Then why not call yourself ‘the nuts’?”

The men laughed, but the boy remained focused and intense. “Odd words, odd language, old languages … You should know about this, from what Kymon tells me. They ring better in the telling. In the poet’s telling. Old words. Older meanings.”

“
Kryptoii
? Yes. It rings well.”

Kymon said, “We are bound, now. Bound by an unknown truth, and an unknown outcome.” He looked towards his father. Urtha was watching his son with great interest.

The boy pulled the gold half lunula from inside his shirt.

“This binds me to you, and to the fortress. Never forget that, Father.”

“How could I ever forget it? Munda has the other half.”

“Yes,” Kymon said with a frown. “I hope she values it.”

Taking a chance, breaking through this moment of revelation and union: between father and son, between brother and foster-brother—that being the relationship between Colcu and Kymon that I believed was occurring—I reached to lift the half moon symbol where it hung from the boy’s neck. Urtha had cut this ancient decorative disc into two unequal halves. I had never really looked at it before. I had seen so many such chest ornaments. But Kymon’s protective gesture towards it, and the sudden glint of firelight on the beaten, battered gold, made me intrigued.