The Broken Kings: Book Three of The Merlin Codex (26 page)

Tairon had watched this, and listened to the sounds, in silence. Now he started to walk quickly, pointing up the street, to a house painted green and blue and decorated with the images of octopi and nymphlike sea sirens.

“That’s my mother’s house. I was born there. It has a large garden, and a deep cellar. My father was confined there for the season after my birth. The whole place is bigger than it seems. My family are—were—wealthy in wool and hives.”

Niiv was astonished. “Your father was confined after your birth? Why?”

I tried to silence the girl, but Tairon was in an understanding mood. “All creatures, when born, are the gifts of Lady of Wild Creatures. She dictates their time; she dictates their numbers; she attaches life-force, or death-force, according to her whim. Whenever a male child is born, we placate Lady of Wild Creatures by confining the father for a season. He is gardened and fed, fed and gardened by Lady’s servants. Three are assigned to a house where the male child is born.”

“You can garden a man?” Niiv asked.

Tairon and I stared at the girl. Tairon said, “For the seeds. For Lady.”

Niiv looked between us then smiled nervously. “Oh yes. I see.”

There was no time to indulge her. Tairon had walked to the shuttered door and was touching the wood with his fingers, shaping words in the air, finally touching two hands to his heart, then opening the door and peering into the interior. He beckoned me to follow.

The outer door led into a cool receiving area, a light-well filling the space, which was furnished with empty pots and a small shrine with the clay figure of a goddess, her arms raised up, each hand clutching a serpent. Lady of the Threshold.

A tall wooden door, more screen than door, opened into a courtyard lush with greenery, stifling and still. Two women in vibrant red-and-blue-patterned skirts; short, black open jackets drawn tightly around rouged breasts; and high hats coiled about with strings of shells rose from where they were sitting and came towards us. One was younger than the other, but one was certainly the mother and the other the daughter. “This is the house of Artemenesia.”

“I am Artemenesia’s son,” Tairon replied.

“Impossible,” the older woman stated strongly. “Tairon entered the labyrinth at Canaeente and was drawn away forever. He was twelve years old. If he had survived, he would have returned through the earth mouth at Diktaea within the year. He is long lost, long dead. Drawn far away.” She appraised Tairon with suspicion in her hard-set face. The younger woman seemed nervous.

“He was,” Tairon responded, “drawn far away. Everything you say is true. Something has drawn me back. Is my mother willing to receive me?”

There was a brief glance between the women, an uncomfortable and insecure look. Then the younger one said, “Your mother is with the honey children.”

Tairon seemed to sag a little. After a long moment he asked, “Am I too late?”

Again, there seemed to be confusion between the two assistants to Artemenesia. The younger woman was dispatched across the courtyard, running to the cloisters and disappearing into the shadows.

Tairon was all gloom.

“Is she dead?” I asked him.

“It seems so. I am just too late. And the strange thing is: I didn’t even know I had the opportunity to be here. Someone is laughing at me, Merlin.”

His dejection was profound, but he braced up and looked about him, remembering this old home of his. A small bird, some sort of finch, was hopping about on a fig tree. I harnessed it quickly and flew it into the far chamber, where Artemenesia was with her honey children.

What a strange sight greeted my small bird eyes!

Artemenesia, very old and naked, lay spread-eagled on a bed of lamb’s wool. Her body was opened in many places, small cuts with cane tubes pressed into them. The children were filling the carcases with honey. They were all boys, tiny lads with blue hair and oddly swollen heads. Their limbs were as thin as sticks, and they scrambled around, scooping liquid honey from clay jars, a bustle of activity in the name of preservation.

Artemenesia shifted slightly, sighed softly. The younger lady was whispering to her. The children seemed irritated by the woman’s intrusion. There were ten children, but their faces were drawn and skull-like, I noticed, though the eyes were bright.

They were very argumentative. They all kept dipping fingers into the honey and eating it. Sugar gave them the rage and the active limbs to make the room spin dizzily with their constant fussing at the old woman’s body.

When Artemenesia slowly sat up, these honey killers scattered, complaining loudly, “Not finished. Not finished.”

“Finish later,” the woman said.

Honey oozed from her wounds.

She was cloaked, covered, made ready to receive her son.

The finch hopped away. No one had noticed me.

Niiv was made to stay in the courtyard. Tairon and I were ushered into a small, fresh receiving room. There were three small couches, some fragrant flowers, a dish of sparkling water, a single window through which the sunlight illuminated the image of Lady of Wild Creatures, constructed out of mosaic tiles on the floor, and coloured green.

Artemenesia sat hunched on one of the couches. Tairon and I occupied the others.

The woman stared at her son for a long time, then asked, “If you are Tairon, then you’ll know who caught the apple.”

“My sister. It fell out of nowhere. She ate it at once. That was the last we saw of her.”

“Which branch broke?”

“The third. It was too small for the small weight of the boy who lay on it.”

“Who caught the boy?”

“You caught the boy. The branch cut your cheek. That cut, the cut I can see below your ear.”

Artemenesia sighed and shook her head, never taking her gaze from the man. “Tairon,” she whispered, repeating the name. And after a while, “What made you stay away so long?”

“I took a wrong turning,” he said sadly, looking down and sighing. “When the rock closed behind me, I was terrified. But fear made me learn the maze. I found exits to the world, and entrances for the return. Eventually I found a way home.”

“Tairon,” the old woman whispered again. “At least I have the pleasure of seeing you for a few moments before Lady leads me into the hills, to the forest, and turns me free and wild.”

There was something very heavy, very difficult in the air. I realised suddenly it was the feeling of repressed tears. Mother and son watched each other with affection, but from a distance. Tairon’s lips quivered, his brow furrowed, but he remained steady.

“I’ve caught you in time to stop you dying. You can get rid of those embalmers.”

Artemenesia shook her head. “I wish that were true, Tairon. I’m sorry. You’ve come a few minutes too late. But for as long as you’re here, we can talk.” She looked at me, searched my face with her gaze, then seemed to recognise me.

“This is Merlin,” Tairon said quietly. “He wanders, he’s wise, he has a gift with spells, enchantment, charm; he even understands labyrinths. Or so he tells me.”

“I see you, but I don’t see you,” the woman said. “You’re dead. Yet alive. I see you as bones, not flesh. But you have a nice smile. Is my son happy?”

For a moment her words had taken me surprise. Tairon seemed to be unaware of what had passed between Artemenesia and myself. I grasped it at once, of course, well … just as soon as I’d glimpsed the fact that she was in fact dead, and still in that short shadow time between death and parting, when the breath has not yet gone stale.

“This moment will mean a lot to him,” I said. Tairon glanced at me, frowning. I ignored him. Artemenesia smiled. I went on, “As he said, he took a wrong turning. He has found himself among friends, new friends. His life is as dangerous as it is fulfilling. When he comes back to his home, he will be a stranger. But—”

“All strangers can settle,” the woman finished for me, as she saw me hesitating. “I was a stranger here once. I know about strangers. I know about the struggle to make the land embrace you. Tairon will settle. I hope you’ll help him.”

I had to be honest with the dead woman. “I’ll help until I have to leave, which won’t be long. There is something waiting for me in the years to come. I’m not allowed to know what.…”

“Are you curious about it?”

“I’m terrified at times.”

“You deny it.”

“I have to. If I embraced it, Tairon would pass through my life in the blink of an eye.”

“I’ve heard of people like you. I never believed you existed. You are a trail-walker. You circle the world and shed lives like skins.”

“Yes. How do you recognise me?”

“One of you walked through this land and left a skin behind. That was a long time ago. But the story is remembered. My son will ask me a question now. And I will answer it. I will tell him what I know, and he can explain to you later.”

I understood what she was hinting.

“You want me to go.”

“I would ask that you go. I have only a few heartbeats left with which to remember, a few heartbeats to give Tairon a memory that will sustain him. Lady of Wild Creatures is at the head of the valley, and she is impatient. Everything that has happened here is to do with her, and her anger. But still, I can’t deny her. Wild Creature Lady thinks she has gained the island. The war has been difficult and destructive. You cannot see it, but you can surely sense it, smell it, hear it. These have been dreadful and terrifying years. The Daidalon is gone. Stolen. It was taken by pirates. Tairon is here because he has been sent—or rather,
brought
here.”

“By whom?”

“By one who wishes the truth to be known.”

“And how do you know all this?”

She laughed. “I have a foot in both worlds. Don’t you? It is a brief moment of enlightened vision. A vision of magic.”

*   *   *

Tairon’s mother was in what the Greeklanders called the
ephemera.
This was the transition from life to death, a short period of time, a day, perhaps two, when she was shifting between this world and the deep valley that descended to the branching caverns of Hades, to the sanctuary of Poseidon, where she would be required to undertake the tests of time: to choose which world she entered next, or to be chosen against her will.

The
ephemera
was her time of practise, her time of preparation. The body was dead, but her life, her shade, could transit instantly across the gleam of the eyes, as long as the eyes were open.

Tairon would soon have become aware of this, but he had at least caught that dying flicker of life. I was pleased for him.

Meanwhile, I went to the outer courtyard to find Niiv. The two servant women were sitting there, peeling oranges, and looked up at me with little interest as I approached them. “Where’s the girl?” I asked.

The younger woman frowned. “She went back to the street. She was curious to see the festival. She said it would be all right.”

The way they smiled at each other—knowing, sneering—compounded my sudden anxiety for the foolish Northlander. Niiv—as all of us, save Tairon—was a stranger in this city close to the Chamber of Discs. To stay together was safe; to separate, to wander alone through the labyrinthine streets, was a stupid risk to take.

Chapter Twenty

Dream Hunt

I ran for the street, hauling back the door and stepping out into the fierce sunshine. The older woman had scurried behind me, pushing the door closed again, shutting me out.

Almost at once a crowd surged around the corner, pressing me back against the house.

They were children of all ages, garlanded with flowers, grey-green herbs, and leaves, all dressed in pale green or bright yellow tunics, the boys with their faces painted an azure blue, the girls painted scarlet red. They flowed past me as a turbulent stream, shrill and insensate. Then there came a cry from behind them, and the whole crowd turned as one, with all the sudden speed of a shifting shoal of fish, and began to run back along the street. Then a horn sounded from elsewhere and again they turned as one, retracing their steps, streaming past me once more, a single mind, a single purpose, a stampede of celebration.

And in the middle of them I saw suddenly an unpainted face, but a familiar shock of hair. Niiv was small, and many of the children were taller than she, but her features were as bright and as recognisable as a comet in the heavens. I plunged into the running throng, fought my way through the heave of small bodies as they crushed in their haste, wheeling round into a narrower street, following the horn call.

I managed to grab Niiv by the shoulder. She turned in alarm and fury. Her eyes were intense with ecstasy. She stared at me, not knowing me, caught up in the madness. I held on to her, despite her struggles and screams, and eventually the last of the shoal had passed. The street was silent.

Her eyes focused. The trance lifted. She came gently into my arms and rested her face against my chest.

“That was so strange. Merlin! So strange.”

“What have you done?” I whispered. “What have you let yourself do this time?”

“Strange! Strange!” she repeated, holding me in a lover’s embrace, embracing my gaze with hers. She tried to kiss me. I drew back. Her grip hardened; then her hand reached for my cheek, tugging my face closer. She was feral and panting; cat-breath was strong on her lips and tongue, and she shuddered for a moment, finding the kiss she desired, for that moment, that stunning, urgent moment—before I flung her against the wall of the house.

She growled now, slipping down to her haunches, disappointed and angry, watching me with eyes that might have said:
I’ll have you,
or might have said,
How dare you!

Again I rescued her, lifting her gently to her feet. “Tell me about strange. What was strange?”

Softer then, she turned into my grasp, head on my breast. “The woman,” she said. “The quelling woman.”

The name made me uncomfortable. In the word she used came a feeling I was used to. Her word reminded me of the feeling of the woman who had possessed the cave at Akirotiri, when we had first found harbour on the island, a few days ago.