The Broken Kings: Book Three of The Merlin Codex (38 page)

“Not at all,” I replied.

“To practicalities: we all, here, have to return. But once there, we will fight to return the Shadow Realm to its proper boundaries. When my small retinue rides like fury back across Nantosuelta, we can take others with us, not many, but if you, Merlin, can spare a shade of charm to disguise them, then we can smuggle several of the king’s men into his own land.”

He stared at me again. “Are you game for that?”

“I can manage it,” I said, trying to think how I would do it.

“Good. On another matter: Boros, Gaiwan, and I ventured back while you were away. You’ve been away a long time—I don’t know if you realise that. The Realm is half-asleep. It’s a strange land beyond the hostels, but at the centre, your fortress—” He glanced across the tent at Urtha. “—it’s a prison. A place of isolation. It’s like an island. There is a man there called Cathabach, who knows you.”

“Cathabach is alive still?” Urtha shifted into a half crouch.

“He was when we met him. And so are your wife and daughter. They are hiding below the hill. He has a message for you: that Munda’s dream was from the Gate of Ivory. A false dream, I believe he meant. He said that and gave me three other messages; for you to ‘hear, ponder, understand, and respond to.’ Cathabach’s words, not mine.

“This is what he said:

“A crooked dream has raised the Dead.

“Vengeance and a longing for life drive their actions.

“The son of a broken king is responsible for the crooked dream.”

There was silence for a while; then Pendragon murmured something to the man on his right and his companions all stood and left the tent. As they left, so one of them touched me lightly on the shoulder, another signalling to Jason in the same way. We left the tent. Urtha remained behind.

When he emerged he was quite pale, concerned but not distressed. “That was a strange encounter,” is all he said. “Pendragon promises to remember me through stories. And through his choice of name. It seems he dreams of his time to come.”

“I know. I heard him say so.”

“You did. Meanwhile, I have to return to my fortress. Will you cloak me with charm, Merlin? Can you do that?”

“You know I can.”

“Good. And what do you make of Cathabach’s rhyme?”

We walked a short way from the tent, to a place where, through the woods, we could glimpse the far side of the river.

I wanted to tell Urtha that the form of the words were suspiciously like those of a dead man, speaking from after the moment of his death. They were not in a style of speaking that I would have associated with Cathabach. But they had the ring of truth to them.

“It’s about Durandond,” I said. “Durandond holds the key to this.”

“Durandond? He’s been dead for generations.”

“He’s now in the Otherworld. He’s in the Realm of the Shadows of Heroes. He was never there before. It hadn’t occurred to me until now, but when we went into Ghostland a few years ago, he wasn’t there. He was not among the Dead. He has always been below the hill, in the deep of Taurovinda.”

“The founding king holds the answers? Answers to what has happened?”

“I’m sure of it.”

We stared in silence at the crumbling façade of the hostel across the Winding One. It seemed to moan at us, almost beckoning us to risk, recklessly, a visit to its engorging depths.

“What do we do?” Urtha asked quietly. “I’m at a loss for a strategic plan of campaign.”

“You go back with Kymon and Pendragon. And as many of your
uthiin
as your descendant thinks is safe.”

“And you?”

“I’ll find Argo again. She hasn’t left us, not yet. She knows ways into the hill. Durandond will be there. And then we can find a way to take on Shaper. Or whatever it is that Shaper has created within your boundaries.”

Urtha shivered, shaking his head. He didn’t meet my eye. “You intend to raise Durandond from the dead, then.”

“I have no choice.”

“We call him the sleeping king.”

“I know. I’ve lived in Taurovinda for a long time. I know how you think of Durandond.”

“To disturb him has always been thought of as unwise. There are prophecies about it. The bards have poems about it. They hardly ever speak them.”

“It seems to me,” I pointed out, “that your sleeping king has already been rudely awakened.” I put my hand on his arm, and the frowning king paused in his slow walk through the camp. I said, “I never told you this, but I met Durandond when he was a reckless youth.”

Surprised, Urtha simply raised his eyebrows, waiting for explanation.

“Yes. He came to me for an insight into his future. I didn’t give it to him. Well, no more than that he would find a hill and make the hill his citadel. Which he did.”

Urtha smiled. “Taurovinda! But he came from a land of exiles. He came with a thousand champions, a thousand women, a thousand children, and a thousand wagons, piled high with the ancestors of his land. That’s what we learn. That’s all we know. Shafts were dug into the hill, and the ancestors and then Durandond himself were buried there. Cathabach’s sanctuary, the orchard, hides the entrances. Nothing must disturb them, or Taurovinda’s walls will slide out onto the plain, and the bones of the hill will be exposed. That’s what we learn. That’s what we know.”

Behind us, Bedavor called my name. He was standing by the tent, beckoning to me. Pendragon was leading his horse away from the river.

My last words to Urtha were, “You’ll soon know more.”

Bedavor had a horse for me as well, and I rode through the forest with Pendragon, his “sword-healer,” and four of his companions riding behind us, until we came to the edge of a shallow reed-fringed lake. At its centre, a tall heron perched on the prow of a small sunken boat. The wood looked rotten. The proud bird, suddenly aware of us, launched itself into a slow and sinuous flight, circling the mere before gliding into the clutches of the woods.

Pendragon was searching around on the ground. He picked up four small stones, passing two of them to me. There was the hint of a smile on his face. “Can you hit that wreck, do you think? Without using trickery, I mean.”

“I resent the implication that I would cheat.”

He laughed. “You’ll be no damned good to a king in the future unless you’re prepared to cheat, my friend. Watch this!”

He flung a stone. It caught the sunken boat on the prow. A second bird appeared from nowhere, flapping away in dismay. It must have been nesting out of sight. I flung one of the stones he’d given me. It curved to the left and missed by a man’s length.

“This way is interesting,” he said, and skipped the stone over the surface of the water. Five skips and it fell short.

I skipped my own stone. It struck the water seven times, then hit the boat just above the surface of the pool.

“Our lives in two throws of a stone.”

“I don’t understand,” I said as Pendragon grinned at me, searching my face, looking me up and down.

“Of course you do. I’ve had my dalliance with the land that will one day be mine. Now I shall go to sleep until called back through birth. A single throw. You will skip across the years, touching here, touching there, until one day you find me.”

“You seem very confident that we’re destined to meet in the future.”

He tapped his head. “Dreams. Have them all time. Seen you many times. That’s why I sought you out, several years ago, when you first came to Alba on that lovely ship.”

He looked gloomy for a moment, his gaze across the mere. The surface rippled with a breeze, and behind us the horses snorted restlessly. “One dream was more like a waking dream. Right here, right where we’re standing. It was misty and cold. We were moving east to wait for you. There was a band of mercenaries who had the same idea and we were keeping a close eye on them. Bedavor and the others were sleeping. It was towards dusk. Out of nowhere a small boat came suddenly gliding across the pool, turning away from me. Two women in the strangest dress I’ve ever seen, brightly coloured, flashing with blue stones and the gold of metal, were rowing steadily, their eyes on me. A third sat with her back to me. Her cloak was green and fringed with red. Her hair below the green cowl was the colour of bright red copper. She was singing: an eerie voice, but quite beautiful; and the song, though I didn’t understand the words, was haunting and thrilling at the same time. It set my skin crawling. As they vanished into the mist, she glanced over her shoulder, and then I noticed a man’s arm draped over the side of the craft, his fingers just touching the water. And they were gone.”

“You think this was a dream of your death,” I suggested.

“I’m certain of it.”

“Perhaps it was a dream of your transport from Ghostland to new life.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he murmured with a frown. “But such strange women. Where did they come from? Everything about them was wrong.” He glanced and me and smiled in a resigned sort of way. “Not the time or the place to ask such questions, I suppose.”

“Wise thinking.”

“Back to skipping stones,” Pendragon went on as we walked back to Bedavor. “You’ve skipped across the centuries, leaving ripples. But you haven’t hit the mark yet. You’ll make your mark with me. I know in my heart and in my deepest dreams that you and I will be busy, one day, minding each other’s business. So—” He gripped my arm strongly. “—keep a lot of what you call charm in reserve for me. You have a reputation for not squandering your abilities. In years to come, I don’t want you old and frail and easy prey to rogues and the wiles of women such as your delightful Niiv.”

“Too late for that,” I muttered under my breath.

If he heard me, he didn’t show it. As we swung ourselves into the saddle, turning for the ridge, the legion, and Nantosuelta, he said, “I can take Urtha, Kymon, one, perhaps two of his companions. The rest will have to take their chances with other returning bands. It’s not passing through the hostel that will be difficult; it will be protecting them on the other side.”

“Kymon comes with me,” I responded. I already had plans for Kymon. “Take Colcu?”

“Agreed. And Jason? What about Jason? While you’ve been away, a young man has been asking about him.” We broke into a hard canter, sensing the swift coming of night.

“How young a man?” I called. Pendragon’s cloak streamed behind him. His voice was harsh. Other thoughts were occupying him now.

“Travel-weary. Skirmish-marked. Killer of Kings, I think he said his name was. Or King of Killers. A Greeklander. An arrogant bastard. Could hardly understand a word he said.”

“Orgetorix?”

“Something that sounded like that. Yes,” he shouted back. “He’s come to kill Jason. Better warn Jason.”

Pendragon and his sword-healer were far ahead of me, and the sky was lowering.

And in the confusion that was the edge of Ghostland, Jason’s surviving son was prowling.

During the night, bands of Unborn returned to the Shadow Realm, noisily crossing the river and riding quickly through the open doors of the Hostels. The legion was ripped in two. But fires remained on the ridge, a determined army of men, women, and children who were prepared to risk their future lives to stop the expansion of the Shadow Realm into land that had been shaped by their ancestors, and was theirs to shape in generations to come.

At some point in that night, Pendragon and his retinue crossed as well. Urtha and Bollullos, Colcu and Morvodumnos rode among them. I had masked them with a simple charm drawn from Cunhaval, the spirit of the hound in the world. It was the best I could think of. To any watching eyes, it would have seemed as if Pendragon rode with his men and dogs. The illusion would have been easily penetrated, but these future champions rode with vital urgency.

Caiwain and Vortingoros’s men would come with me.

With Niiv clinging onto my arm (she was nervous, upset that I’d disappeared from the camp for so long), I went in search of Jason. The ridge was a confusion of bright fire, illumination from across the river, and total darkness. The surface of Nantosuelta gleamed like rippling gold.

Kymon followed us, silent and surly. I could tell he was eager to the point of frustration to return to his land, to find his sister. I had persuaded him that to journey on Argo would bring him closer to the girl and his stepmother. I hoped I was right.

I found Jason at the river’s edge, wrapped in a dark cloak, a pack of supplies slung over his shoulder. Rubobostes was crouching on the bank, holding a small shallow craft by a rope tether. A simple rowing boat, very primitive, its sides were painted with luminescent green and blue, fishes and trees caught in an intimate embrace, a narrow band of decoration that I instantly recognised as the sight of it opened memory.

This was Medea’s craft; the pattern—using powdered, night-glowing rocks she had found in the valley where we had grown up—was how she had decorated her own first boat, while all I had done with mine was to use chalk to scratch lines and spirals. Fierce Eyes had been disparagingly amused by my small talent in art.

Did Jason sense the source of this frail vessel? As I approached him, he turned to look at me, and confirmed that he did.

She had been standing among the trees, watching him. She had been wearing the robes of the Priestess of the Ram, but the head-veil was lowered now, exposing her face. She was holding two small, identical boats by tethers, restraining them against the tug of the river; but shortly after Jason had arrived at the far bank, she let one of them go. It slipped away, turning on the water, soon lost in the night save for that glimmer of phosphorescence. The other vessel, when she released it, came straight across to Jason and Rubobostes, as if charmed: which of course, it was.

Rubobostes had caught it by the trailing tether.

“She’s still watching me. I can feel it,” Jason said. His mood was bleak and uncertain. “What does she want? This is a lure, and I’m her prey. I’m sure of it.”

I said nothing. If I had expressed a view, it would have been that from personal experience nothing was ever predictable with Medea. The truth might have been the very opposite of his fear. And I remembered my last conversation with her, when she had seemed so mellow.