Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) Page 9

  As Tallis watched, so its features blurred, changed. It had been a vision; the vision faded and a real view of the great hart replaced it. Yes. This was Broken Boy. The cracked tine showed clearly against the grey sky; its antlers, perennial, unreal, were broad, but that abominable hugeness of a moment before had gone away and this was the strange beast, the undead stag, facing her down the hill. Watching her. And perhaps wondering whether it should charge and kick, or butt, or impale, or leave her for the innocent she was.

  Yet it could smell the sour smell of guts and blood, and its offspring was dead. Tallis knew that it knew. Her face blanched with fear. It looked beyond her, to the wooded stream. Perhaps it saw the ghost of its child. Perhaps it was waiting for the spoor of the killer. Perhaps it was waiting for the smell of the fire smoke, and the fire flesh, the flesh consumed, its ghost-born eaten by the hunter with the stag fur.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ Tallis whispered. ‘I had nothing to do with it. I love you, Broken Boy. I was named for you. I need to mark you. Before I can go for Harry, I need to mark you. But I don’t know how …’

  She stood up and walked towards the beast. It let her approach to within an arm’s length, then it threw back its head and roared. The sound made Tallis scream. She stepped back, tripped, and fell to the ground. Looking up, braced on her elbows, she watched Broken Boy pace, limping, down towards her, straddle her, tossing its head so that the black rags of skin, hanging from its antlers, flapped on the bone.

  The stink of its body was sickening; it was a corpse; it was dung; it was the wood; it was the underworld. The air was heavy with its stench and liquid dribbled from its maw as it looked down, snorting, sensing, thinking …

  Tallis lay below its legs and felt suddenly at peace. She relaxed her body, lay back on the earth, arms by her sides, staring up at the silhouette of the stag against the evening sky. Her body hummed with sensation. She thrilled in her chest, in her stomach. The stag’s saliva caressed her face. Its eyes gleamed as it blinked and stooped closer, to peer at this, its namesake, its fancy …

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ Tallis whispered again. ‘There is a hunter in the woods. Beware of him. He will kill your other ghost-born …’

  Such an odd expression. And yet, when she said the words, they sounded right, She might have had them in her mind for all of her life. Broken Boy’s ghost-born. Yes. His ghost-born. Mothered among the herds that roamed the Ryhope Estate; fathered from the underworld: but solid flesh and blood, and good to eat for the hunter who had come to the land.

  ‘I will find him and stop him,’ Tallis said as the stag loomed above, silent, watching …

  ‘I will kill him …’

  The stag raised its head. It looked towards the dark wood that was its true home, and Tallis reached out a hand to touch the mud-matted hide of its hoof. It raised its leg and shook off the touch, then backed away, an oddly ungainly motion.

  Tallis sat up, then stood. Her clothes were wet; the wetness on her face cooled as it dried. The smells in her nostrils became marked upon her. She adored them.

  Broken Boy turned and cantered awkwardly to the ridge above the field. Tallis watched its tall, sinuous body as it walked a few paces to the west, towards the fading sun. The broken tine was a gap on its great head and she thought guiltily of the fragment that lay at home, hidden in her parents’ chest of treasures, part of the remembered childhood of their own precious offspring.

  ‘I can’t replace it,’ Tallis called. ‘If it hasn’t grown back then it wasn’t meant to grow back. What can I do? I can’t stick it back on. It’s mine, now. The tine belongs to me. You can’t be angry. Please don’t be angry.’

  Broken Boy roared. The sound carried across the land. It drowned the sombre tone of the Shadoxhurst bell. It marked the end of the encounter.

  The stag walked out of sight across the hill.

  Tallis did not follow. Rather, she stood for a while, and only when darkness made the woods fade to black did she turn for home again.

  [FALKENNA]

  The Hollowing: Bird Spirit Land

  She had felt abandoned by her ghosts during the winter, but now, early in May, the red and white mask of the Hollower seemed always to be watching her from the hedges. The figure, swift and shadowy, dogged Tallis’s journeys about her land, but would never let the girl approach.

  Where it had been, however, the air always smelled of snow.

  Prompted by Gaunt’s words of the summer before, she finally made a mask which she called Moondream. She used old bark from a round of beechwood, and painted moon symbols on the face. For a while it didn’t feel right and over the weeks she worked on the wood, a touch here, a chip there, a line across the features: trying to let the true name emerge.

  One evening it came to her: to see the woman in the land. When she placed the mask against her face she sensed a strange and haunting presence – a ghost – like the ghost in the glade of Oak Lodge, when she had explored the ruins a few years ago.

  She now had eight masks. But the Hollower began to intrude its power, and the woman watched from the woods …

  The Hollower was the vision-maker and Tallis began to prepare for the vision that would come to her, sensing intuitively that such was the meaning behind the constant, watching presence. Nevertheless, the vision, when it came, took her utterly by surprise, not so much by its nature as by the profoundly disorientating effect it had upon her.

  She was running along the tree-line by Stretley Stones meadow, trying to hide from her cousin Simon with whom she was adventuring. Simon, at fifteen, was two years older than Tallis and was an inconstant companion. They usually adventured together – they hated the word ‘play’ – every fortnight, mostly on Sunday afternoons while their parents walked and talked around the farm. They went to the same school but kept very different company there.

  As Tallis edged around the large, gnarled ‘grandfather’ oak in the hedge, hoping to squeeze her thin frame into the bushes behind, she heard an intriguing and disturbing sound that made her skin prickle with cold. It had been a human cry, she was sure of that. It had seemed to come from beyond the tangle of briar and thorn, from the meadow, but had somehow filtered through the branches of the tree.

  She went immediately to the gate and looked into the thistle-littered meadow. It was a very peaceful place. It was full of stones. When the grass was long and the cow-parsley high, and the wind blew, the field seemed to flow like a sea-tide, waves of leaning pasture rippling across the hummocky ground.

  For a while Tallis could see no sign of life, but then, in the distance, in the dark hedge, the Hollower shifted, the sun catching the white and red clay of the mask.

  A memory came to her: a walk, with her father, a few years ago. They had come to the meadow. He had seemed sad. He had lingered by the tree which Tallis, in a future time, would seek to use as a hiding place. It had been here, at the tree’s base, that grandfather Owen had died, crouched, as if watching … eyes open, his face smiling. Facing the stone.

  Perhaps affected by the grief that was briefly resurrected in her father, Tallis had begun to imagine the presence of a sad ghost. The conversation was crystal clear in her mind as she looked back:

  ‘There’s a funny feeling here.’

  Her father frowned, rested a hand on her shoulder. ‘What do you mean? A funny feeling?’

  ‘Something unhappy. Someone crying. Someone very cold …’

  Perhaps he was trying to comfort her. ‘Don’t think about it,’ he said. ‘Your grandfather is happy, now.’

  He walked to one of the overgrown stones and tugged the grass and clover aside. He smoothed the crumbled grey surface. Along the straight edges were notches, still visible. ‘Do you know what this is, Tallis?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘It’s ogham. Old writing. The scratches make different letters, see? Groups of twos and threes, some at different angles. There are five stones like this in Stretley meadow.’

  ‘Who wrote on them?’

 
A lark was ascending, its song a delightful and momentary distraction. Tallis watched it fly high into the air. Her father watched it too, saying, ‘People of old. Long lost people. Gaunt says that a fierce battle was fought here, a long time ago.’ He glanced down at his daughter. ‘Maybe even Arthur’s last battle.’

  ‘Who’s Arthur?’

  ‘King Arthur!’ her father said, looking surprised. Tallis was always reading books of legend and folklore. She knew the Arthurian romances very well. She just hadn’t made the immediate connection when her father had been speaking.

  It wasn’t Arthur’s name on the ogham stones, however. Several of the words – which had been translated years ago – made no sense. The sound of them, her father told her, was unpleasant and seemed linked to no language, although one of them honoured ‘kin of the wanderer’, and another ‘spirit of the bird’.

  They had been left to nature, their enigmatic script covered by grey lichen and green pasture. Like bodies, they swelled the ground. They were known as the Stretley Men, the grey stones that gave the field its name.

  She returned to the sprawling oak and shinned up its rough trunk to the lower branches. Sitting here, in the heart of the tree, she could hear Simon calling to her as he hunted her. A moment later the strange cry came again, a chillingly mournful sound, almost final. There was another noise as well, a dull striking sound. The cry had been as haunting as the night cry of a badger, full of sadness, full of loss.

  Tallis immediately thought of Harry and her pulse began to quicken. Was it Harry on the other side of the tree? Was this his second contact?

  She squirmed out of the oak’s heart and along a branch, peering into the meadow below, searching for the source of the distress. She saw summer sunlight on long, lush grass, dappled with yellow and white flowers. There was no one to be seen, not even the Hollower. Tallis sniffed the air: no sign of winter. Still intrigued, though, she climbed higher into the branches. One of them leaned out over the meadow and she crawled carefully along it. Soon she was right over the field. She squirmed a foot further along and something strange happened. The light changed. It became darker. And the warmth in the summer air was suddenly chill. She could smell burning, but not the pleasant smell of woodsmoke. This was choking and unfamiliar.

  All her senses told her that she was suddenly in a land of early winter.

  The leaves below her were dense clusters, a sharp and vibrant summer green. She reached down and pulled the thin twigs aside and was able to see the field again.

  Her gasp of shock, her cry, was so loud that Simon, approaching, heard it clearly. He ran rapidly towards the tree and must have seen Tallis spread-eagled along the branch because he sent two apples – his hunting ammunition – hurtling into the foliage. The second fruit found its mark, striking her side a bruising blow.

  ‘You’re dead! You’re dead!’ the hunter cried in triumph.

  Tallis slithered back down to the heart and climbed from the tree. She dropped to the ground, her face ashen as she stared at her cousin. Simon’s smile faded and he began to look puzzled.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. When she said nothing he looked guilty. ‘Did the apple hurt you?’ He passed the apples towards her. ‘Throw one at me. I shan’t move, that’s a promise.’

  She shook her head. Her eyes were glistening and Simon shuffled uneasily, conscious that his cousin was crying but not at all certain that he understood why. ‘Is it the game? Shall we adventure up at the fortress?’

  ‘In the meadow,’ Tallis said softly. ‘He looks so sad.’

  ‘Who looks so sad?’

  ‘I thought it was Harry, but it isn’t …’

  Simon dropped the apples which he had carried from the shed and climbed up the grandfather oak. Tallis watched him as he edged along the same branch in which she had been hiding. He jumped into the meadow, kicked around among the long grass for a while, then ran round to the gate.

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ he called.

  ‘I know,’ she said quietly.

  She wondered where the Hollower was hiding.

  Tallis was upset for the rest of the day. She refused to adventure with Simon any more, and would not tell him what it was she had seen from the tree, so eventually he wandered off. Tallis hid in the oily gloom of one of the machine sheds for a while, when her father came looking for her to help with the clearing of nettles, then returned to Stretley Stones meadow.

  She swiftly climbed the grandfather oak, sitting in its heart for a moment, hoping that she would hear the secret name of the tree, but nothing came. No matter. She was certain that the name would speak to her before she returned to the land.

  She edged out along the branch until the light changed and the air grew cold, then reached down to part the leaves, snapping several twigs away so that her view was clear. Then she rested her head on her hands and lay there, staring into her other place at the young man below her and the terrible scene around him.

  She wanted to speak to him but the words caught in her throat. He was sprawled on his side, propped slightly on one arm, clearly in great pain. He was shaking slightly and when he turned his head Tallis could see the blood on his cheeks. He had about him a recognizable flush of youth, but he looked strong, he looked as if he had lived well. His hair was very yellow and very long, his beard fair and trimmed short. The pain-filled eyes that stared from the ashen face were as green as the oak leaves which filtered the light to him.

  On his chest, the blood from the wound had formed a spreading pattern where his hand had clutched and wrenched at the short blade which still impaled him.

  Tallis thought how knightly this young man was. His mouth was small, his nose very fine. He looked wild, mischievous, yet gentle. She could imagine him laughing, reminding her of Harry. But this was not Harry. He reminded her of the picture in her grandfather’s book of legend, the picture of Sir Gawain in the story where he fought the Green Knight. But Sir Gawain had been in bright metal armour and this warrior was dressed more like a scarecrow. His clothing was more like the picture of Peredur, the brave, wild, adventuring knight from Arthur’s court. He wore a loose brown tunic and a green and bloody sleeveless shirt. Around his arms and waist were bright yellow bindings. His trousers reached to just below his knees and were tight and coloured in brown and dull red squares. His boots were black and decorated with bits of tarnished metal.

  As he lay below her, shaking with pain, Tallis could see the short red cloak he wore, tied on each shoulder with a gleaming yellow brooch. Every so often the warrior touched the brooch on his left shoulder and closed his eyes, as if thinking hard about something or someone.

  She knew he was a warrior, partly because of the way he was dying and partly because of the simple, blood-raw sword that lay beside him. In the storybooks – and Tallis had by now read a great many of them – swords were always bright steel, and their hilts were worked about with gold filigree and topped with green jewels. This sword was dull iron, about the length of an arm, and was badly dented on its edge. The hilt was bound in dark leather. It was as plain as that.

  She craned her neck to see beyond the tree. She shuddered at what she saw, the shattered chariots, the scatter of men, the pennanted spears jutting from the ground and from the sprawled corpses. Fires burned. The field no longer existed, only open land, a wide river marking where the Hunter’s Brook flowed in Tallis’s world. There were dead men there, and black shapes moved among them. Beyond the river she could see smoke and other fires bordering the dense woods that stretched, beyond this place, for as far as she could see. It was a winter wood, earth-coloured now, crowded and grotesque, a swathe of forest on an untrodden land.

  And above that forest, a sky that was as black as night, sweeping towards the river, towards the scene of the slaughter. Below the storm, dark birds circled.

  Tallis knew immediately what the tree should be called, and she named it there and then: Strong against the Storm.

  She couldn’t sleep. It was a hot, humid night, utterly
still. Her window was open and she lay on the bed, staring at the stars. She wondered if her warrior was watching the same stars. The storm she had seen had not materialized, not in Tallis’s world. But perhaps where her warrior lay in such pain, already his fine hair was being drenched by the downpour. The fires were out. She imagined the field hissing to nature’s drowning, blood draining into grass, earth reaching up to enfold the dead and their weapons, and their cold spirits.

  Gaunt says that a fierce battle was fought here, a long time ago …

  Had the Hollower showed her how to envision that great battle, or rather, its aftermath? Tallis’s mind reeled with images, with story. She got up from the bed and looked out of the window. Was that a figure, lurking in the shadows by the fence? Was it White Mask, whose presence encouraged the tales and the imagined adventures to fill her head?

  A youngest son, youngest of three …

  The story that began to form was almost frightening to her. It consisted of a confusion of images. A castle – high-turreted, thick-walled – being filled with earth, a thousand men carrying the dark soil with which to block the corridors and the rooms. Fires burned about the land and two knights, armoured and fierce, rode around the castle, pennants streaming.

  An image of three young men, arguing with their father, and being banished from his hall.

  Images of castles in the land, some among oakwoods, some among elmwoods, some by winding rivers and steep hills. Images of hunting.

  An image of the youngest son, banished to a world created by the dreams of a witch. There, in a castle made of some strange stone, he lived a cold and miserable life, barred from return by the immensity of the gorge on whose northern wall the castle grew, a ragged stone palace rising from a ragged winter wood.

  Images of wild hunts, the creatures of the forest rising like giants against the moon; boars, the spines on their backs like jousting lances; stags with antlers made from the wind-shattered limbs of oaks, their bodies crushing the forest as they ran from the angry hunter …