The Broken Kings: Book Three of The Merlin Codex (49 page)

I was not surprised. The dying are always greedy for life; why should things change later in the event? Not even the natural can control
that
unnatural aspiration.

I looked down at the girl. “Talk to me. About what just happened.”

“I went swimming again. After you’d left. The river whispered to me. I’ve often been swimming in the Winding One, despite the
geis
on me not to. She often whispers to me.”

“And what did she whisper?”

“She is protective to the dead and to the living. She is the barrier. She is the edge of two worlds. My father’s kingdom is now and always will be vulnerable, because it is half between each world, and a man like Shaper, a stranger, a dead man brought from a different world, can have a great effect on how she flows. But at the end of it all, she won’t contemplate extending her boundaries. Her task is to
protect
life on the other side. It was wrong to try and cross her. The man called Shaper would never have succeeded. She’d never have let him succeed.”

She was shivering. I gave her my deerskin coat. “Where’s your brother?”

“With my father. With my mother. Tidying things up at home. Niiv is missing you, by the way. It’s quiet now, but they are making preparations for war against the invader. Sending out the signal for recruitment. And finding our cattle, scattered everywhere. Finding our horses. Calling council to discuss the new Speakers. My father is considering a campaign to the north to recruit fresh warriors.”

“I thought he was tired of fighting.”

“He is, but he mustn’t show it. And a king without hostages of importance is not a strong king. He must have royal hostages to bargain with if he’s to have mercenaries, and horses.”

I would have laughed out loud, but didn’t. “You begin to speak like the daughter of a king.”

“And learn!” she agreed, still shivering from the river. Then she nodded towards Shaper. “What about him? When do we kill him? How? I want my lunula back, preferably blood-ripe.”

“The lunula is his. It always was.”

“Why?” she asked, irritated.

“A little piece of his life, in bronze, is hidden inside it. It was stolen from him. As were his daughters. All save one. Wait for me.”

I started to walk towards Daidalos, and then a thought occurred to me and I glanced back at Munda. “I’m pleased you think of Ullanna as your mother.”

Munda smiled and nodded.

“And learn,” she repeated softly.

*   *   *

I couldn’t bring myself to touch him. I walked past him, but genuinely felt a moment’s pause, a moment’s sadness. His eyes, when he turned to look at me, were filled with dismay and loss. He held the two halves of the simple ornament as if they had betrayed him.

Perhaps they had.

I whispered to Argo; she whispered back. I told her what I was going to do. There would come a time, recently as I write, when I would question why I did what I did next. It took so many years from me. It took so much life from me. It changed me.

I went aboard Argo, found the Spirit of the Ship, crossed the threshold, greeted Mielikki and her lynx (in summer form) and sat down.

I summoned one of the ten masks, the ten tutors from my childhood, the ten ways of moving through and summoning the world. I had had enough of Morndun,
Death moves through the world,
and Skogen,
Shadow of unseen forests.
I had summoned the memory of Moondream,
Woman in the world,
and Cunhaval, the
Seeking Hound.
These were far more powerful interactions with the charm that was instilled within me than just shape-shifting and occupying wrens.

Now I wanted Sinisalo.
The child in the land.

Mielikki moved away. The air was summery, the wild grass tall, flowers abundant. Even here, in this memory of childhood when the masks had spoken to me, teaching me, even here I could feel the slight movement of Argo, my boat, on the water that flowed between two kingdoms. I summoned the past.

—Where are you, Sinisalo?

After silence for a while, I called again.

—Sinisalo?

—I’m here. You’ve been a long time walking your path. Do you have any plans to finish and come home? All the others are home. All eight of them. We’ve just welcomed your sister.

—How was she?

—Sad. But that will pass. She did her time in her own way. The only lazy one is you. The boy who wouldn’t bother to tie his laces. The boy who liked life too much to use his great powers of charm, enchantment, manipulation, call it what you will. You have a lot left to give. So I suppose we shall be a long time waiting for you.

Sinisalo was cheeky. A small white face, a smiling child’s face, a flop of unruly copper-coloured hair, watching and listening with a child’s intensity.

But this was no child, not really. Just the representation of the child in the land.

—What do you want me to tell you? the child asked.

—How many years will be taken from me in exchange for a year for Daidalos’s dead daughter.

—The honey child?

—The child killed and preserved in a crystal jar of honey, yes. Killed by a creature of the wild. Dragged here by me. To be found at this moment in the hull of this ship.

—How many years can you spare?

I told Sinisalo.

—For that she can have … ten. Is that enough?

—I can’t afford much more. That will have to do.

—Well, then. We’ll see you sooner than we were expecting.

Sinisalo laughed sweetly, waved good-bye, seemed to disappear into the long, wild grass and pink and purple flowers.

*   *   *

“I don’t know her name,” I said to Daidalos as he stood in Argo’s stern, staring at the girl, “but you have her for a while, and I suggest you disentangle her from the wings.”

Yes, though I forget her name, now, he cried
out
her name, and she cried out to him, and in the shadow of the Hostel of the Shields, on the quiet river, they embraced. I noticed how his hands stroked the clumsy wings and their awful struts and straps, the tendons that linked a child to a man’s madness, a daughter to a father’s misplaced love; perhaps, at the end of it, just a tie that needed to be broken.

And they had ten years to enjoy that separation. Together.

Gods, I felt old, now. Even Daidalos noticed it.

“Why did you do this? It’s taken a lot from you.”

“Go home. On Argo. She’ll take you. I have a path to walk, but before I can do that, I have the rest of a life to live here! And I’d like to live it without the Dead howling at my backside.”

“Why did you do this?” he asked again.

I didn’t answer him as I left the ship. I glanced back only to see the gleam of life and joy in the child, her happy bewilderment at where she now found herself as she emerged from what terrible dream I cannot bear to think.

It might have turned out differently if it hadn’t been for remembering that small piece of oak, shaped into that small piece of man, kissed by a child and set adrift after near disaster on that old river by the child who had wished it captaincy and long life.

The river took the old ship in her bright new form, Jason’s Argo, passing away from me, taking Daidalos and his daughter home on wings of Ocean.

But before she slipped away, she whispered to me.

I didn’t know who Shaper was until he called to me from Ghostland. Everything I had done, all the betrayal, surfaced again. Thank you for helping me.

“I hadn’t known you were feeling such pain.”

You couldn’t have known. I kept it from you. Before you came back to Taurovinda. But every time you were on board, I felt courage. I needed you to see what had happened. I needed your strength.

“It’s over now. Nothing to concern you but storm seas. And finding a crew to help you with the winds.”

Yes. It’s over now. But you will sail in me again. You belong in me more than Jason, or any of the others. But we will all gather for the Deep.

Across the river, men were gathering in the night, torches burning fiercely, shouts and questions and confusion as bad a din as the shield-din of earlier.

A small hand suddenly took mine. Munda looked at me curiously. “You look a lot older in the moonlight. You’re not ill?”

“Not ill.”

“Good. Because there’s a man on the other side of this hostel with two white horses, a sparkling chariot, and a brother. And he says that taking us to Taurovinda will cost you nothing. His father said so. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but it’s time to go.”

I laughed quietly as I followed her to where Conan and Gwyrion were arguing about who should hold the reins, because they needed to drive fast, since their father—from whom they’d stolen one too many chariots, but who was for the moment rather pleased with them, though was irascible and erratic of mood—was likely to find some excuse to imprison them again at the next phase of the moon, which was very close to arriving.

And indeed, they drove as fast as a falling star, and we all arrived bruised.

The death of vengeance is the most beautiful death of all.

—Anonymous

I am a part of all that I have met.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”

CODA

Niiv had been with the women at the well, chattering and laughing. She had spent most of the day there, something she had not done for some time.

At dusk I was taking a breath of air, outside the King’s hall, where a council was being held. They were discussing cattle, the Coritani, and the construction of a new sanctuary at the place where, a few years ago, the Hostel of the Shields had finally crumbled into the stone-strewn riverbed, exposed again as the river had retreated, as the Winding One had wound back to old courses.

Niiv called out and came running up to me. She pecked me on the cheek, squeezed my hand. She was elfin-eyed and as mischievous as ever, and had clearly enjoyed her day at the well.

“I’m suddenly very tired,” she said. “I can’t think why. I’m going to ride down to our lodge in the evergroves.”

“I shan’t be long after you. This meeting is very tedious.”

She found her grey pony and rode through the east gate, down across the plain to the sanctuary of trees and mounds, where we had built our small home.

I returned to the meeting, sitting close to the door, feeling the welcome warmth of the central fire. Winter was in the air, the first sharp signs and scents of it. A brisk touch on the cheeks, a swirl of darkening cloud, moving from the north.

Kymon was on his feet, addressing an issue agitatedly and strongly. He was a tall, rugged man, now, his grey cloak pinned at his midriff, the fire making a golden sheen of the sweat on his chest. His right arm was horribly scarred from a raid, as was his cheek, the white scar cutting through his full moustache. Urtha sat, listening with an air of impatience, as his son took him to task on some matter of protocol.

Colcu, King of the Coritani and a guest at this council, sat with his legs spread, his arms crossed and his face fierce, listening to his friend, unhappy with what he was hearing, but respecting the courtesy of the Hall.

Recently, relations between Kymon, Urtha, and Colcu had become strained; over what issue? I could never tell. Horses, hostages, hunting. Always something.

After a moment Urtha caught my eye and frowned. I shook my head slightly, raised a hand, and he nodded, giving me a grim, sad smile before staring down at the ground as I left the hall again for the chill evening.

“Merlin!”

One of the women at the well was beckoning to me. She was carrying a small bag and when I reached her she passed it to me nervously. “Niiv left this behind. I don’t know if she meant to.”

“I’ll take it to her. Good night.”

It took a moment before I remembered what it was: the small sack that Niiv had been carrying when she had clambered, screaming abuse, onto Argo, as we had departed for Crete. There was an object in it, something she had guarded very carefully at all times, except when she had run with the swarming crowds of Tairon’s town.

When the woman had disappeared behind the trees, back to the water grove, I opened the bag and took the object out. I was sure Niiv had meant me to look at it. At least, that’s how I rationalised my invasion of her property.

It was a piece of grey slate, not metal as I’d thought, on which she had scratched words using her own language. It came as a small shock to realise that she had made these markings, expressed the thought, at a time of great hazard. She had been preparing for the worst during that voyage, and this had been then, and was now, a promise to me:

I have put aside enough of my life to find you again in times to come. I long for that future time. Please be sure you recognise me when our paths next cross. All of this for an affection I felt for you from the moment we skated on the ice, in my own country, in the shadow of my father’s death. My Merlin. Your Niiv.

I placed the bag gently in the corner, trying not to disturb her as I entered our home. But when I crept into the bed, Niiv was still awake, lying on her side, away from me. She turned to look at me. Her eyes were wide and happy, bright with life and affection, her smile warm. “Tell me something.”

“Anything,” I assured her as I pulled the furs over us, shivering with the cold.

“Did you truly come to love me?”

The form of her question startled me, saddened me. I couldn’t speak for a moment. But then I kissed the tip of her nose, held her close, feeling the way she pressed her back against my body, curling into me. I brushed my lips on hers as she gazed at me. “I love you. You know I do.”

Now her lips touched mine, a teasing kiss. “I asked you: Did you
truly
love me?”

Again, it took me a moment to find the words. I spoke softly. “You irritated me at first. You even scared me on occasion. You know this. We’ve talked about this before. But things have been different for a long time. You must know that, too. I love you very much.”

She sighed, smiled at me once more before turning her head away, to rest on the pillow. “I believe you do. I believe you did. You loved me. This is not the end, then. We will have a future together. I’m so glad of that.”