The Broken Kings: Book Three of The Merlin Codex (46 page)

Now the sun, beginning its descent to the west, framed a figure, and again, bronze shone dully from its face and from its hands.

Chapter Thirty-four

Edge of the World

I was halfway across the devastated land that had been Urtha’s realm, halfway to the river, walking among the ruins, when I finally heard the distant song, Argo’s song of summoning. She was mournful. She was urgent. The song was a cry, a memory of her first building, of the bone pipes and stone whistles that we had used to signal across the distances when I had been a child, and when nature, and things created out of nature, had moved and shifted to the simple tunes we had created.

I was resting in the remains of a village that Ghostland had scoured of life, slumped quite comfortably on the stone hearth of a lodge, behind a screen of fallen thatch, indulging in the remnants of memories of the fled, flayed, and dead. The shouts and echoes of those shouts were strong. The fields and enclosures were open graves for crows. The invasion force had not treated the people of the villages and farms kindly. They had made images of them, hanging them from trees, grotesque offerings to the carrion hordes.

They would not be the honoured dead.

And yet among this horror, there was beauty. The world of the Shadows of Heroes had flowed into this land, and to cross one ridge that smelled and looked like Crete—rough terrain and strong, vibrant vegetation—was to descend towards an island, hazy in sunlight, its surrounding waters moving in patterns as if with a life of their own, neither waves against the shore, nor ripples, more the chaos of unseen movement below the surface, creating refractions and reflections that were absorbing to watch.

Distantly, the armies of the Dead were camped in their groves and valleys, waiting for the next shift east. I could have chosen to run among them as hound or deer, or flown as crow or hawk, but I had chosen to cover the ground by way of the chariot of gold, gift of Nodens, great god of the Sun, uncle to the two wild sparks who for me, and for this time, represented everything that was urgent and reckless. They were strong and death-defying, attributes that can only, truly, be mined like precious ore from the young of the world.

It was Conan who carried me. He curled up in his chariot, dozing lightly. He had been appalled at what he had seen as we had made our journey.

I was glad, too, that we had left Niiv behind; and Kymon and Munda. It would fall to the children to pick up the pieces when things were finally resolved. And there would be horror enough for them at that time.

Argo’s summoning song drifted on shifting air. This is how I remembered it from the mountains of my birth. The valleys carried the song, but the sound was broken by the breeze; it came in code; so the verses were repeated, and gradually the whole melody could be pieced together.

As a hound follows the scent trail, a wolf the blood trail, so I followed the song trail. I became increasingly aware of the urgency behind the haunting tune, of how Argo was communicating sadness to disguise the fact of danger.

Soon Conan reined in the horses, turned the chariot side-on, and peered to the east. We were just crossing a ridge. It was dawn, and the sun was glowing ahead of us, brightening the sky but plunging the land into a final shadow. The horses were nervous, as was the Sun Prince.

“We’re almost there,” he said, “but we have to make our way through a legion. The good islands are behind us, I’m sorry to say.”

He tied his long hair into the tight knot on the top of his crown that signalled battle-readiness. With his knife, he scraped the scruffy beard from his cheeks and chin, leaving only the hair on his upper lip. Blood oozed from the clumsy shave, but clearly this was intentional, as he wiped it with both hands, pressed it to his face, then went round to the horses, making them smell the raw iron of his life. They bucked and bayed, but he spoke quiet words and they soon calmed.

It was a weary look he cast as he passed by, returning to the chariot. His features, lean and strong, were beginning to be marked by unexpected age and unwelcome experience. I noticed that his lips were dry and cracked, though everything else about him spoke of athleticism and the readiness for combat.

“My brother is out there, somewhere in that mass of death. I’ll have to find him; and if you spot him, tell me; but don’t worry, I’ll deliver you first. To your ship. There is a little of Mercury in me that must be obeyed,” he said with a grin. “The message must get through!”

As the sun lifted and the shadows dispersed, I saw the hordes. They filled the eastern horizon for as far as the eye could see: tent-cities, enclosures, fields of practice, fields of games, the whole view was of a waiting army, restless, feeding, furious, a frustrated and festering mix of the great, the good, the desperate, and the savage of many times and many lands.

“They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Conan looked at me curiously. “What do you mean?”

“They inhabit a world where the past is a memory, and activity is a dream. Their existence should be splendid, and spent in the game of life, not the pursuit of death. They don’t belong here, pressing against the edge of the world, iron-handed, bloodlusting, like a curse waiting to be cast.”

Conan thought about what I’d said. He agreed. “Like water, draining into a well. A force attracts them. A downward force. They’ve been drawn here, but are helpless.”

“Water from the well,” I mused.

Conan was in full lyrical flow. “The tears of children and old men. Shed without understanding. Uncontrolled.”

“Helpless.”

Conan drew his burnished sword, passed it to me, carved bone-and-leather grip first. “Take this. You might need it.”

“I won’t need it.”

He stared at me for a moment, laughed. “What a confident man you are. And not even the son of nature. No relation to a god. Merlin. Antiokus. I must try to remember you. Merlin. Like the bird. Do you have wings?”

“That’s not overly demanding enchantment. I can arrange for it.”

“I believe you can. Here. You can have the scabbard as well, if you’re afraid of cutting your fingers.” He offered me the patterned sheath for his sun-gilded blade.

“I told you. I won’t need it.”

“Confident.” He was approving.

“Old. Unwise,” I corrected. “In fact, more a creature of nature than even a son of the Sun. Let’s go to the edge of the world, Conan. An old friend is waiting for me.”

He gave me a curious look then shook his head. “You’re a strange man. I would enjoy walking in your dreams.”

He whipped the horses then, and we were off again.

I might, myself, have opted for a slow, gentle, discreet approach, but Conan suddenly uttered a high-pitched cry, leaned forward, striking the rumps of his steeds furiously with the reins, urging them to a run that seemed impossible even for young horses. I held on firmly, if not for my life, certainly for saving the bruises that would accompany any fall from the chariot.

The Dead became interested in us. As we ploughed through their lines, so bands of them rode down upon us, some armoured heavily, some lightly, some with spears, some carrying no weapons at all, even standing on their horses as they inspected us at the gallop.

A train of chariots appeared around us, wild-haired drivers laughing as they tried to outpace us. Fifty or more, I counted, and they were competing as much against each other as against the son of Llew.

He outran them easily, and they dropped behind, crying a chant that made him smile. They were complimenting him.

We rode past fires and tents. Occasionally arrows hissed about us, some striking the car’s flanks, a few lodging in the horses, which seemed unbothered by the stone points.

Through woodland, onto meadow, through a dip in the land, along a river, a tributary flowing into Nantosuelta, the Dead stood to inspect us, chased us, fell back, shouted at us and were soon lost against Conan’s wild run.

They were a blur of colour, a field of faces, a fading howl of curiosity.

When at last we came to the line of bronze, he slowed slightly. The eastern horizon was brilliant with the sheen of Shaper’s inventive mind. There were hundreds of giant men, all crouched on one knee, weapons and shields held before them, the metal forms an echo of the oak men who had risen in the land of the Coritani, the land they now watched and coveted. As we approached their ranks, so those ahead of us stirred, rising to their feet and turning slowly to watch us as we came towards them.

They moved to bar our way.

Conan, shouting above the roar of wind in our faces, asked, “Did you say you could summon wings?”

“Yes.”

“Well, watch this!”

He called to Nodens, invoked his uncle in a howl of challenge and compliment, a mixture of curse and respectfulness. He was grinning as he shouted.

Nodens seemed to hear, and not to mind.

The two chariot horses became two among a hundred, all white, spreading out ahead of us, held by harnessing that radiated from the chariot as a web of rippling silk. The chariot appeared to swell. It took on a blaze of light, a sun-glow that was astonishing even to a well-travelled, time-travelled man like me. Did it rise from the ground? I don’t know. It consumed the space ahead of us. It set the land alight with its blaze of gold. The bronze warriors drew back, bowing low, crouching to avoid the fire.

We flowed through them, gliding effortlessly. They watched us pass into the distance, their strange, dead eyes continuing to hold a gaze that might have been surprise.

“Now do you understand why my brother and I steal chariots?” Conan asked with a mischievous smirk.

“I’m glad your uncle was in a good mood.”

With the metal car and the horses back to normal, the charm removed, we raced towards the river. A hostel loomed ahead of us, a dark hall with several doors cut out of the rough wood. No beauty here, not on this side. Conan drew the sweating animals to a halt. He was as exhausted himself.

“I get confused about the hostels,” he explained.

“Why is that?”

“They can be so easily manipulated.” He gripped my arm and smiled his farewell. “This is where I leave you. I have to find Gwyrion. I can smell the river, so you don’t have far to walk.”

“Thank you for the ride.”

“I hope it works out for your friend, the king. Urtha. A fine man. The descendant of a fine man.” Conan winked at me. “My father and my uncle go back a long way. They knew Durandond very well. And all the others; all those sons of broken kings. They couldn’t save the kings from their excesses, but they tried their best. My father rules in the west, my uncle across the sea channel in the east. That creature, the Shaper, has upset them. I think you can count on my father, should you need to.”

He had gone. I entered the hostel and passed through its corridors without difficulty. The place seemed as dead as the men and women who sat moodily in the rooms and galleries. They watched me through vacant eyes, once-heroes who had been drawn into a new and unwelcome game. I gained the impression they were uncertain as to which way they were travelling.

Perhaps the instinct I had shared with Conan had been correct. Though behind the hostels, the life of the Dead still seemed full of the joy of death, here at the edge of the world there was fear of the unknown!

Beyond the hostel the land brightened, the air smelled sweet again, a memory of Greek Land, the fragrance of a more romantic past. Argo was moored there, distantly and below me. She watched me from her bow-eye. I saw the single tear that had been painted in blue, just that hint of emotion in the steady gaze that had always been carved and illuminated on her hull.

But the echo of Akirotiri was sinister. I realised that my view of the harbour was from the cave where Queller had watched us in our journey between worlds. I could see the Winding One through the illusion, the old river and the forest that bordered her. And beyond her, a land now coveted by a force of the Dead impelled to this invasion by a creature out of the past.

I made my way to Argo, allowing the illusion to keep me on the downward track, to the stinking quayside, to Daidalos’s place of safety.

Argo breathed softly—no song of summoning now, no song of welcome, no whisper of greeting, just a silent warning. I climbed the ladder slung from her hull, stepped into Daidalos’s reconstruction of my ancient little boat, my boyhood dream. He had fitted her out well for sea-passage, yes, but not so well that she could have made the sort of ocean voyage that Jason would later undertake. This was a smaller ship, designed for a smaller crew, for coastal journeys. But there was somehow more magic in her.

Was the Spirit of the Ship still there? Of course it was. That part of Argo had not altered, no matter how many times she had been rebuilt. It simply changed with the change of her captain.

I went aboard and, after a moment’s hesitation, stepped through into the world that Daidalos had made.

I entered the labyrinth.

*   *   *

It was not Daidalos who prowled those dark corridors, of course. It was the memory of the man: the
shaping,
the sentience that had drawn itself together because of the skill in science and enchantment of that ancient inventor. Its thoughts were loud echoes in the passages. Its needs, its fears, its anger, its urgency, all were flights of mind-song. I was reminded again of the echoes of Queller, the fading manifestation of Lady of the Wild Creatures who could not move, during the dying of her light on Crete, without shedding anguish.

I followed the thought-trail deeper into the complex. Perspective shifted, disorientation occurred, but Shaper could not disguise the soft breath of his own anticipation. He drew back from me, unseen, as I stepped forward. When the walls crowded in, or the passage became so low that even a crouch was painful, the “sense” of his watching presence was somehow magnified.

He comes closer.
…

The creature’s curiosity was a stink in the confined airways. The entity did not understand me. It knew humans, ghosts, and shades. It did not comprehend the young-old man who worked his way towards the confrontation. It was not hard to hear those fragments of its thinking.