Marck could not have been said to wake. Rather, he became aware; of the dim light diffusing through the high chamber, the brighter grey of the single window-slit, stark as cut lead. The air of the room was cold, and still.
He turned his head, listening. The silence seemed to suggest by its completeness the immensity of the sleeping land. No bird, no voice. No snore. The grey light, he knew, lay across heath and tillage, forest and sea; across the Great Plain with its crests of wind-carved trees, across the marshes far to the north where the unknown country stretched out for ever. His mind, free-ranging, saw the villages huddled beneath their thatch, hill-tops crowned with their ramparts. On each a stockade, pale gate houses criss-crossed with timbering; crowning each a Tower, ragged in the early light. Gaunt-eyed, and still. Utterly still.
Increasingly it seemed his life was lived in these dawn watches. Almost it was as if his days, the activity, the petty irritations that filled them, were in reality brief as dreams, meaningless interruptions of a vigil that was in itself endless. He wondered at this vigil; and at the Fate that, creeping by still degrees, had placed him so apart from life. Once, surely, there had been wine and warmth, laughter and good company. When had these things ceased to be?
As ever, there was no answer. It seemed he had grown to silence, like an ageing tree.
There were many dreams. Once - not he, surely, but another - had sat in Midsea palaces, at the feet of learned men. There also had been women, veiled, swaying creatures with the eyes of deer; and a fire in the blood, long cold, that marred his studies of the wheeling stars. He remembered these women, like creatures from another world; and the palaces, their towers bright in sunlight, topped by domes like sharp-tipped onions, red and yellow and green. The dry voices scraped, down the years; while his hands made the dots and squirls, the runes and flowing curves, that are the Midsea tongue.
The dream was interrupted by another. This echoed with battle noise, the thunder of siege trains, the roar of flames. Altred was overlord when his father’s death called Marck from his studies, back to a troubled land; Altred who took his brother’s wife, and split a new-found kingdom to its roots. In that great war the Crab Shield followed the gonfalon of Atha, from the Marshes to the eastern fens, Southguard to the Great Black Rock where remnants of the Horsemen lingered out their lives in wind-scorched keeps. Towns burned, ringed by the lesser spots of siege fires; battles were fought on parching plains, amid reddened winter wheat. Finally, in a river valley hemmed by endless woods, the last great siege was laid; and Altred died, his life the price of peace.
And there were the Towers on their hills, the great Hall Marck’s father raised in a chalk gap next the sea; quietness, and armour hanging dusty on the walls, the martens nesting under the high eaves.
Yet the war-sounds still clamoured in his dreams; so to buy his rest Marck wrote the tale of battles, the Shields that had gathered to Altred and to the House of the White Horse. Those who had lived, and those who had died. Later--and this was an unheard-of-thing--scribes were summoned to copy out the work. Few enough there were, in all the White Island; but the word spread, first to the Land of Rocks, later to the Middle Sea itself. So the clerks came flocking, to sit in lines in the Great Hall of Marck’s Tower while the royal writing-master strode forward and back, intoning the story that had come to him. A scroll was sent to Atha King, in his palace by the narrow sea; and Atha, delighted, heaped honours on the scholar of the Gate. Fine horses came to Southguard; hunting dogs, a brace of white sea-eagles and a purse of gold. Marck, moved by such royal favour, redoubled his efforts. His fame grew; so that minstrels and wandering sages took to calling at his Hall, in hope of refreshment and reward. They were seldom disappointed; and the King found new material constantly to hand. He traced the wanderings of the Horse Warriors from their Midsea home, penning the epics the minstrels carried in their heads. The
Horsemen too brought with them Gods and ghosts, peopling the Mound on which Marck’s Tower was raised; the Mound that was blood and flesh and standing stones, bones of old folk from the start of time. Magic obsessed him; trolls and Marsh monsters, reed-women haunting the noonday pools and red-eared phantom hares. Behind them all, discernible yet, stalked a vast golden shade. From his Tower the King looked out on a bulging hill of chalk; at certain times, in summer evenings and at dawn, lines might be discerned on its surface. Sometimes one saw an upraised club, sometimes the head and shoulders of a great Man; the marks a God himself might make, rusting on the grass. Marck, in learned argument, dismissed the fables that were told; yet still from time to time the hill drew his curious gaze. Chalk carvings were unknown to his Sealand forbears; he produced a monograph on the subject nonetheless, verifying by experiment the ease with which the green skin of grass might be stripped away. Atha, sensing the means for a fresh demonstration of his power, ordered that his Mark be inscribed on all his boundaries, wherever suitable subsoil could be found; so white horses, and sometimes red and brown, once more came to inhabit the land.
It was at this point that a strange malaise gripped Marck, born of the laughter of a carter’s child. The shout, vibrant and innocent, came winging up to the Tower one bright day, sending him mumbling from his work to stare into a mirror, pull at the straggling hair the years had turned to grey. The child’s voice pierced him; he knew that he was old, and the Tower rooms were chill, and his audience was a jester with cap and bells. The days of joy were done; now he saw the passing of the seasons, snow and fresh spring, the world turning its strange circles under moon and sun. He was oppressed by futility; his food was soured, and his rest destroyed.
He had begun his greatest project, a history of the conquests and journeyings of all the Sealand tribes. Once the tales would have joined beneath his fingers to make patterns undreamed of; now, the work was stale. Days and nights he spent in sightless staring, a pen in his fingers, the pages spread before him. He took to riding, sometimes at curious hours; a shabby, restless King in breeches and homespun, muttering and dull-eyed. Those of his subjects who met with him bowed the knee, wondering and a little fearful; but Marck was unaware. He brooded by high woods, in lightning flash and summer rain; smelled the wet earth, uncaring.
In time, the sickness passed. A fragment of the former joy returned, buoyed by returning skill; but the shadow that had swept down that bright day was never wholly lifted. Scholars came to the Southguard, some with gifts, some from the Middle Sea itself. Marck received them courteously, as of old, delighting in learned talk; but constantly his eyes and mind would wander. It was at this time that Usk began his wheedling; and strange thoughts flickered in the mind of the King.
The sky was brighter now; and sleep had fled, for yet another day. Marck pushed back his blankets, felt the washing of cold against his skin. A drain, ill-smelling, projected from the wall; he used it, sighing. Over his breechcloth he hung a knee-length riding tunic; he buckled the heavy leather belt, and stamped into his boots. He took down his thickest woollen cloak, and eased open the chamber door.
The guards on duty at the gatehouse clashed to attention, grounding their spears on the turf. A Serjeant, still bleary with sleep, began bawling for an escort; but the King stilled him with an upraised hand. ‘Leave me,’ he said simply. ‘I ride but a little way; none will molest me.’
The other eyed him dubiously; but he was used by now to his master’s queerish habits. The gates creaked back; and Marck passed through with a muffled stamping of hooves, the champ and jangle of the charger’s bit.
At the foot of the Mound a village had grown up over the years. He paced silently before the white-walled dwellings with their roofs of heavy thatch. Once a dog yapped briefly; a child wailed, and was quieted. Beyond the sleeping houses a steepening way led to a little brook, arched over by tall trees. Mist moved round the belly of the horse; the water-scent was powerful and cold. Beyond the brook the path once more began to rise, climbing the shoulder of the flanking hill. Marck urged his mount, impatiently. When at length he reined, the Tower was small with distance. Below him the mist stretched out like a sea, hiding the real sea beyond. Over its surface ran ripples and fading flashes of light, now here, now gone; and the whole, he saw, was in stealthy, steady motion, flowing inland to the great chalk pass. The sight arrested him. It was as if he, and he alone, had glimpsed a Mystery; the ancient, inscrutable life of the hills themselves.
He rode on, engrossed with the fancy; and feeling too the rise of an excitement he had thought stilled for ever. Once before, in another lifetime, he had ridden thus. Then as now, the chill air lanced at face and arms; then as now some Presence, older than the wandering lanterns, older it seemed than the ghosts that thronged the Southguard, moved before him. The hills stretched westward, shadowy still, humped rampart-like against the sea. The hidden waves seethed to his left; the track rose, fell and rose again. He clicked to the horse, shaking the broad rein, feeling the creature’s swaying, hearing the creak of harness, the snort of breath. He knew himself at one with the land, the land that itself was awake and watchful. The spirit, the very essence of the place breathed out some message in a tongue as powerful as it was strange; and he saw, or sensed, all the folk who had known the hills since time began. The Giants, still unforgotten, with their glistening engines; after them the growers of corn, the spinners of wool, the makers of butter and beer. The Horsemen, spreading like a stain; and the New Men, the Sealanders, threshing the water in their many-legged ships. Last of all his own folk, Altred Brothercutter and Atha whom he loved, who set him on his own great chair and placed the sword across his knees, the ring of ancient yellow on his head. All this there was and more, much more; a tale that, could it but be told, would be the greatest in the world.
The slope he climbed was easing. Before him glowed a cloud of light; he panted, driving in his heels. The warhorse scrambled the last yard to the crest; and King Marck blinked, rubbing dazzled eyes.
He had come miles; much farther than he had intended. He stood now on a broad, smooth ridge of chalk. To his left, a marker rose above a tall cairn of stones; the sun, mounting the sea’s rim, touched the rough iron with gold. The shadow of the Crab was flung across the mist; the land to westward was a haze of brightness, in which shapes of fancy moved.
He dismounted, walking to the cairn. The horse, left to itself, wandered a pace or two, dropped its head to crop the close-knit grass. Marck drew the cloak more tightly, laid his head against the great piled stones and closed his eyes. Somewhere a sea bird called; the light, refracted by the mist, burned at his lids. In more prosaic mood, he might have said he slept; but certainly the strangest vision came to him.
It seemed the spirit of the place, the Thing that had plagued him on the way, once more returned. Her limbs, he saw, were the creamy brown of tide-washed sand. Her hair shone rich and dark as jet; her eyes, deep pools, reflected headlands and seas. She towered, all-encompassing; yet the hands she placed in his were slight and warm as the hands of the carter’s child. He wondered how such things might be; and she laughed, knowing his thought.
‘I am she you sought’
she said. ‘
I am the land and sea, snow on far hills; summer mist, the hot bright grain. I am the reed-pool woman, sun on green water...’
Warmth coursed through him then, the blood raced in his veins. He would have risen, joyful and light; but the Spirit laughed, pressing a finger to his lips. She spoke much, of many things, and later showed him Mysteries; cities and towers beyond imagining, great roads that thronged with folk, ships of floating iron. For mere too she had lived, in the time of the Giants; and worn bright short clothes and laughed, and served men beer in a room of amber light where a stone fish swam in a case of priceless glass. And once she lay on a hillside, and wore a kilt of doeskin and a necklace of coral and jet. She who died in silk and flames was born again a Princess of the West; while Dragons fought, and the magic ships roared, and Gods and cities fell and rose.
‘And once,’
she said.
‘I lay in a house with round white towers. I walked in a deep green marsh, and wonderful things were done. These things you shall do, for a need; for a King must wed his land. Once I was Mata. Then I was the Reborn. Now my name is. . .’
But Marck, rousing with a great start, already knew.
At times during the long ride back, he sang snatches of song. At others fear and guilt came on him, so that he wrung his hands. He addressed arguments to the rocks, colloquies to the wheeling gulls. Once, hands to his temples, he cried, ‘It is not fitting ...’ Then the warmth her touch had brought once more flooded him. Riding a green stretch of turf, his mind was eased; crossing a tumbled scree he roared that a King could feel no desire. He pulled at his hair and beard, plucked his sleeves; then he laughed again and said, ‘Thoma is my man, and will perform my offices.’ He also wept; but by the time his Tower once more came into sight, gleaming in the early sun, he was calm again. The hooves of his horse rang hollow on the outer bridge; as the Serjeant ran to grip the rein, he raised his head. He said, ‘It will be for my people.’
‘And that,’ said Thoma heavily, ‘is the tale of it. Or as near as man may judge. So Scatha take all smooth-tongued schemers, all wearers of motley, all dabblers in matters of high estate; and above all Usk, who I verily believe has turned our good King’s head with his prattle. Were there such times, in memory? Once, in faith, we were content enough; now we must wear ...
ahh ..
. fineries that chafe the skin, constrict our persons to the shape of . . . village wenchels, on the word of some Godforsworn tailor, whom the Nightrunners may as willingly keep.’ He wrenched at the collar of his tunic, and groaned with relief. ‘As for the rest,’ he said, ‘we must take what comfort remains ...’ He swigged deeply from a pot-bellied flagon, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.