Elidyr, the green-haired monster, stood in the maelstrom and stared back at us, the weed writhing like snakes. I shouted out, ‘Where is Gwyr? We need him, Elidyr! We need our Interpreter!’
After a terrible moment of silence, the boatman grumbled words that were incoherent against the noise of the swirling pool.
Then he shouted, ‘Gwyr!’ and raised his arms. The lank shape of the Interpreter of Tongues was drawn from the water, draped across Elidyr’s palm like a rag doll. A moment later Elidyr stepped through the wild water – he could not have been touching the bottom of the whirlpool! – and emerged onto the bank, the weeds drawing back into his body just as once the flowers and fruits of the forest had drawn back into his supernatural skin.
Elidyr turned the Interpreter upside down, holding him by his legs. Soon, Gwyr vomited water and twitched with consciousness. And soon he, like the rest of us, was sitting huddled round a growing fire, Elidyr back in the shadows of the wood watching us. His favourite place, it seemed.
When I was warm and dry I went over to the boatman, who frowned uncomfortably as I approached. He was crouching but still looking down at me through the deep ridges of his eyebrows, his jaw working beneath the heavy beard.
‘I thought I was a dead man at that moment. Thank you for my life.’
He nodded quickly, then looked away.
‘Have you been with us all the time, Elidyr? Are you following us? Why not stay with us?’
‘Go away,’ he grunted, then reached out and prodded me away from him as easily and indifferently as I might shift a cat that was snuggling too closely against me on a sofa.
Thank God for Gwyr! As the rest of us had succumbed to whatever spell had been cast about us, the Interpreter of Tongues had managed to stay in touch with the hidden sounds and sights of the world around him. Even from his own dreamtime, his function – to see the hidden meaning in words and sounds – had enabled him to surface suddenly and see the danger. Without that moment of vision the maelstrom would have taken us suddenly and devastatingly. I suspected that not even Elidyr could have saved us.
Kylhuk agreed with me. But for Gwyr, he said darkly, we would have been swept below the arching, giant roots of the tree, and would have been lost. Others before us had managed to break the spell, there was evidence around us to testify to that fact, but it was clear that even those had often fallen foul of the defences of this massive prison.
Stunned, disorientated, shivering in the shadow of the towering oak, we looked around at the desperate place on which Elidyr had ‘beached’ us. Ten or so others of the Legion had survived the drowning and dragged themselves to where they could smell the fire.
We were camped, now, among the sad and rotting hulls of ships, some extending above the water, some broken on the banks or among the trees of the forest’s edge. There were bones of men as well, and of animals, some of them grotesque, many of gigantic size. This whole place was a graveyard and the roots of the tree had reached to encompass the remnants.
And it was not just ships and creatures that had fallen foul of Mabon’s prison. A city had once stood here. As the light grew brighter, Kylhuk pointed to its gates, its turrets, its once-proud walls, all of them now absorbed into the gnarled, black bark of the tree, sucked upwards as the tree had grown, broken into its components, but still recognizable.
We had come ashore in the corrupted remains of its harbour. The bridge to the land was still visible, impressed within the high-arching roots that spanned the double flow of the river.
At the tree, the Long Person divided; or rather, her two branches, flowing below the roots, joined, forming the whirlpool, to continue through the land to a long-forgotten ocean.
‘Are those the Gates?’ I asked Kylhuk in a whisper, glancing back as he stood behind me. His hand was a gentle pressure on my shoulder, his breath sharp and stale after the dream dance.
‘The Gates? Ivory and Horn? No. That isn’t how the Cleverthreads wove them for me. But the two branches of the river have flowed through them.’
‘Bringing the truth and the lie,’ I repeated, remembering our earlier conversation. I could see no difference between the two branches of the river, and no sign on the huge arches of wood and stone that might distinguish their origins, ‘Which comes from which?’
Kylhuk’s hand gripped my flesh painfully and when I looked round at him again he was grinning at me, his eyes twinkling.
‘Why, Christian! That’s for you to find out!’
‘Because I’m slathan … I should have known it.’
‘By the rough love in Olwen’s Hands, I’m sure you will succeed! I have that much confidence in you. Besides, you are hardly alone. I selected your companions carefully. And I notice that we are all here, all but Abandagora, and you can replace him adequately.’
‘The Forlorn Hope?’
‘Tried and tested in the fire, like Annanawn, my father’s sword. I despaired only once, when I truly thought they – and you – had been destroyed by Kyrdu’s bastards. But my slathan surfaced in the wilderness, as my dream had told me he would, and brought them back. And here you all are. Not Forlorn. Not dead. But alive! Determined!’
I looked quickly around me, at the activity, the shelters being built, the boats of past adventurers being looted for fuel, crude shields being hacked and shaped, idols and propitiatory structures being erected. I could see Guiwenneth among them, and Someone scraping the whiskers from his cheeks with a small bronze dagger as he stared up at the tree and its glowing, running figures.
Kylhuk broke through my distraction. ‘What’s on your mind, Christian?’
‘Only that I have no idea what you expect of me, or what I’m to do.’
‘Your task is to find your mother. Isn’t it? Isn’t that why you came here?
I couldn’t read him. His voice was gentle, his icy gaze almost soft. The smile through his beard was neither triumphant, nor sarcastic It might almost have been encouraging.
But I didn’t trust him!
‘I saw her dead and dancing by the neck,’ I murmured, and Kylhuk reached out to squeeze my arm.
‘You saw what you were told to see, Christian. You were just a boy at the time. Now you’re a man. What you saw is in the past. This is the present. And tomorrow is the future.’
I would have laughed at the simplicity, but his eyes were alive with energy and triumph. ‘In the future,’ he went on, ‘dreams remain undreamed! Don’t you see, Christian? If a dream is waiting to be dreamed, we can choose to shape it. There were men and women on the boat of shields, and in my Legion, who do such things all the time, only they don’t know how to use their skills to the best effect – which is why,’ he added quietly, ‘they’re all so scrawny, scruffy and obsessed with wild, familiar spirits!’
I saw what I was told to see?
‘What did you mean by that?’ I asked Kylhuk, whose attention was beginning to wander as the need for raising defences became more urgent. ‘What did you mean that I saw what I was told to see? Who told me? What did I see? Are you saying my mother didn’t die?’
‘Mabon will show you.’ Then he laughed out loud, and added, ‘Just as soon as we can tease him out of the tree! Relax, slathan. Something wonderful is about to happen to you.’
And he walked away, as cryptic as ever – he had never explained the full meaning of ‘slathan’ to me – as dismissive as ever, a man drawn to the task, this final task, the rescue of Mabon from his tree.
Odd, though, the way he had said, ‘tease him out’.
As if, despite our best efforts, Mabon himself might be reluctant to come.
Twenty
Where was Eletherion in all of this; and his brothers, the other Sons of Kyrdu? The question was asked repeatedly of Kylhuk, who simply answered, ‘I imagine they are close by.’
It was oddly circumspect behaviour for a man who had recently seemed so confident, so aware of things in the future. And I guessed, before Guiwenneth suggested the same thing to me, that his true talent for fa
r-sight and that uncanny sense of all-knowing had come from the Dolorous Voice and the Cleverthreads, none of whom were with us now.
Perhaps Kylhuk was on his own for the first time in a long time, although he had his Forlorn Hope at his side, the small band he had nurtured and guarded with his warriors’ lives. He had sent all other survivors from the boat back down the river to set up camp and wait for his call.
But Eletherion was on our minds, and despite Kylhuk’s almost violent objection, now that we were down to seven, Someone and myself scouted into the forest for a mile or so, while Guiwenneth went back along the river with Issabeau and Jarag who, his body daubed with moss and lichen from the damp rocks, crept as far towards the first rise of the towering tree as he dared, sniffing the air and tasting great handfuls of river mud, river water and the earth from the higher bank.
Strange things were happening, I discovered later, but for the moment I only noted the oddities in behaviour. I had passed through several forest glades, taking the sinister side (as Issabeau called it) while Someone took the other, and was waiting for my companion in a shaft of welcome sunlight when a towering, upright boar ran at me from the edge of the glade, and through the edge of my vision.
I swung round to protect myself against the jutting tusks and gaping muzzle of the charging beast, and found the Proud Celt standing there, breathless and hot as he quickly dropped to his haunches, recovering from his run.
He looked up at me and smiled, then frowned as he saw my shocked expression.
‘Is something wrong?’
‘I don’t know. You took me by surprise … Is something hunting you?’
‘This forest is alive with ghosts. They are from the prison, I’m sure of it. Kylhuk warned me that we might encounter them.’ He looked round nervously. ‘I feel strange,’ he went on. ‘My skin itches. I want to scratch against the bark of a good old tree. I can smell things below the ground, and they’re making me hungry! I suspect that Mabon has sent his own defences into the wilderness. Can you feel them around you too?’
I couldn’t, but didn’t say so. Instead I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, turned where I stood, trying to experience the presences that had alarmed my friend, wondering again whether Mabon was trapped or hiding, or both. When I opened my eyes I was startled by the brightness of the sun through the summer foliage. And as I turned away from the glaring light, the boar was rising beside me, leaning towards me!
Again I stepped back, looked directly at the beast and saw only Someone, son of the Defeated King, reaching towards me anxiously.
‘You seem disturbed,’ he whispered.
‘I keep seeing the image of a wild boar. On its hindlegs. Very big, very menacing. But when I look at it, the boar vanishes …’
I decided to say no more than that, to leave Someone temporarily in the dark about the apparitions associated with his own welcome features.
The Celt tugged at his beard, pale eyes glowing with agreement. ‘Yes! I sense it too. Mabon is certainly aware of us – legend has it that he hunts boar in the form of that same creature! – he is probably watching us. Come on, we must turn back. If Eletherion is here, he’s biding his time!’
The sky was darkening towards night and the massive trunk burned with the faces and shapes of the lost. Guiwenneth and Issabeau stood with their arms around each other, staring up at the mélange of movement, occasionally crying out as they recognised some beast or a figure from their own legend, sometimes startled as a face formed and leered at them, a boyish physiognomy, with flaring fire as its hair and a mouth that grinned then went hard; this apparition was fleeting and very rare.
Standing naked between two torches, close to the first swell of root, his hair caked in mud and his body still plastered with moss, Jarag stared silently at the same blaze of masks. He had been like this for several hours, now, and Kylhuk sat close by, watching him, wrapped in a heavy cloak, sword across his lap, as motionless as the prehistoric man.
This was the second strangeness. Someone by now was very disturbed and very remote from me, standing by the edge of the river, staring back at the tree-line, a deep furrow between his eyes.
I picked a little food from the spit over the dying fire and huddled down between the spread roots of a thicket, only to move quickly away as the roots kicked at me. It was Elidyr, disguised and silent, and he glowered at me from the foliage.
‘Go away.’
‘Sorry. Didn’t see you there.’
I crawled to a less intrusive haven. But even here I was suddenly prodded in the back, which startled me so that I choked on my first mouthful of supper. Turning, I saw that Gwyr was sitting behind me, swathed in a horse blanket he had rescued from the river. He grinned at me through his trimmed beard.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked him.
‘Keeping out of the way. Elidyr is lurking in the woods and I don’t like the way he looks at me.’
‘Elidyr is ten feet away,’ I whispered, cocking my head to the left. Gwyr glanced nervously into the gloom, then scowled and turned back to contemplate Someone, by the river.
‘What’s he doing?’ asked. ‘Do you have any idea?’
Someone was standing with his back to the river, ankle deep in the wiry grass that grew from the muddy edge. He was in trousers, bronze cuirass strapped to his breast, a gleaming torque around his neck, arms folded. His eyes were open. Issabeau, in her catskin cloak, her hair tied in a flowing ponytail, stood near to him, watching him carefully, but not moving.
‘We have always looked after each other,’ Gwyr said. ‘Now more than ever we must be aware of what is happening in our group. Issabeau is guarding Someone. Kylhuk guards Jarag. You must pay attention to Guiwenneth.’
‘Who guards you?’
He laughed forlornly. ‘My task is almost done, if not done completely.’
‘Interpreting.’
‘Certainly. And keeping my eyes open. Once the Oldest Animals have been summoned, if the jarag can speak to them, then all I’ll be good for is to fight against the Sons of Kyrdu, if they’ve survived the maelstrom, if they’re still around.’
The way Gwyr spoke confirmed that everything was happening according to a plan of Kylhuk’s devising. His own role was almost finished. Someone and Jarag seemed to be coming into their own. Issabeau and Guiwenneth were still behaving in an ordinary way, as was I.
‘But what does Kylhuk intend for me?’ I breathed the words, watching the huddled man as he gazed steadily at the naked shaman.
I hadn’t expected. Gwyr to hear me, but he whispered, ‘Be on your guard. From everything I see and hear, you are the key to Mabon, though I don’t know how.’
The same words, more or less, that he had spoken to me many months ago, when we had first ridden through the wildwood together.
‘Look. He’s here!’
Gwyr’s words directed me to Someone. A dark shadow flickered around the tall Celt. The man’s face dissolved into an evil muzzle, torchlight on jutting tusks and a raised spine of quill-like grey hairs on his head. The face of the boar was fleeting. The man wailed and writhed where he stood, eyes bulging. Again the boar inhabited him, its pizzle curling from the poor man’s groin, lashing like a coiled whip. Then gone again.
Issabeau was clapping her hands delightedly. Kylhuk was standing, tensed and ready for something. The jarag was racing back and forth along the river’s edge, stooping, grabbing, touching and reaching his face to the heavens to howl or bark.
‘What the hell is going on?’
Gwyr said, ‘Kylhuk said this would happen. Mabon has been nosing for us, sniffing us out, testing us. But for some reason he can’t fathom Someone. The Celt has upset him. Kylhuk knew this in advance, but I have no idea why it should be.’
I did, though.
And I told Gwyr, ‘It’s part of his geisa … or one of his geisas. I’d never heard of geisas until I met your forlorn band.’
‘A geisa?’
‘Yes. He can confuse sorcerers until his true name is k
nown.’
That particular talent, though, was not from Someone’s own story but from the mediaeval romance of Issabeau and the Sea-Cave Boy.
‘Having been unnamed before his royal father was killed,’ I hazarded, ‘when he is close to a sorcerer he must make himself available for their inspection, though he will confuse them in the process.’
Gwyr nodded as if everything was now clear. ‘That sounds right. It’s very much the sort of imposition that would be placed around the neck of a king under the circumstances you mention, being unnamed at the time of his father’s death. It had never occurred to me before now that Someone, with his wild hair, is invisible to sorcerers. How useful … How very useful.’
So Kylhuk had used the Celt to draw Mabon, son of the Mother, to the edge of his prison stronghold, where he had reached out to probe and peruse the Forlorn Hope and found a man he couldn’t recognise or fathom, inhabiting the Celt in his boar-shape as he tried to break the man’s identity, failing in the task but revealing himself.
Mabon was both prisoner and ruler of his domain.
From everything that was happening by the river, both Gwyr and I agreed that Mabon’s stronghold was weakened and vulnerable, and that we would soon be passing from the wildwood into the shouldering Tree of Faces, closer to the enigmatic hunter who was the object of our quest.
I needed to know what would be expected of me!
But before I could articulate this sudden, angry thought to Gwyr, Kylhuk had shouted, ‘Slathan! Show yourself. Now! They are rising all around us!’