A Quantum Mythology (9 page)

She started to tell Fachtna of great and terrible deeds. She used the bards’ tongue and spared him nothing. She told him of the betrayal on the Crown of Andraste. There were tears in his eyes when she described what had become of Teardrop. He tried to mask his disgust at the killings of the kneelers, and the boy the Corpse People had taken prisoner. Half the time she didn’t even realise that her cheeks were wet with her own tears.

How did this happen?
Britha demanded of herself. Now more than ever, so far from home and among such strange people, now was not the time to show weakness.

She had eaten well, though she was embarrassed by memories of gluttony. The
uisge beatha
was good, but not as good as what she had grown up with, it was too smooth, too easy to drink. She was also secretly pleased that their ale was not as good as her heather ale.

She found herself sitting around a fire with the people from the village and the surrounding area, down by the cliff-lined bay. They spoke a language she recognised, and of which she knew some words. All of them were intimidatingly tall and beautiful, not unlike Fachtna. Whether Fachtna was a
rhi
or just a landed warrior, Britha wasn’t exactly sure. His people showed him respect, but he had a very informal relationship with them. In this he reminded her of Cruibne MaqqCirig, though that informality could only be taken so far. Britha had watched Cruibne break the teeth and split the skull of more than one young warrior who had pushed his luck too far.

Even the common folk here had access to some kind of magics. They had all learned her language with just a moment’s concentration, as she had when Cliodna’s blessings and the darker blessings of Crom had mixed in her blood. They made her welcome. Fachtna made her welcome. They even showed respect to her as a
ban draoi
, though in that she detected something false.

Fachtna had put on a
blaidth
, though even in the darkness that fell as one of the giant’s wings obscured the Forge, Britha did not feel much of a chill. Fachtna, at the insistence of his people, played some kind of complicated, long-necked, stringed instrument. She liked the sound of it, and was even more surprised when she liked the sound of his voice, though he was no bard. He sang songs in their language. Most of them sounded a little sad to Britha. They made her think of home.

She had no idea how she had come to be lying by the dying fire in Fachtna’s arms. Trying not to think about Cliodna. Trying harder not to think of Bress.

It’s because he is the only familiar thing so far from home
, she thought, then:
That is not a good enough reason.

‘You said the giant is called Forge?’ Britha asked, looking up at the obscured red glow of the huge sun and the figure of the spear-carrying giant fixed in front of it.

‘No, the sun is called the Forge. The giant is Lug, one of the Lloigor. He came from before everything was created and he changed the Forge.’

‘That does not make sense,’ Britha said, nestling deeper into Fachtna’s arms. ‘How can he come from before everything was created?’

Fachtna shrugged. ‘The
drui
tell us these things. The Lloigor came from somewhere before everything. The place they came from is not there any more.’

Britha considered this. ‘I have heard stories of lands that once were, that had been taken by the ocean,’ she said. Fachtna shrugged non-committally. ‘You call this place
Ubh Blaosc
?’ He nodded. ‘What does that mean?’

‘The Egg Shell.’

‘If this is a shell, what is beyond it?’ Britha asked. Fachtna glanced down at her. He looked impressed. Britha found herself feeling irritated again, as if she was being patronised.

‘The night,’ he replied.

‘We are in the sky.’

‘We are in a different sky.’

‘Then how did I get here?’

‘A bridge.’

She shook her head. It was too confusing, even assuming Fachtna was telling the truth, though if he wasn’t he had suddenly become a very good liar.

Britha looked around the fire. Many of the villagers had gone home and only a few other couples lingered around the dying embers. She was intrigued that one of the couples consisted of two men. She had never been able to differentiate between her attraction for women and men, but most tribes had frowned upon men who liked men, or women who liked women.

‘Our people are from your world, you know?’ Fachtna said. ‘The Lloigor brought us here a long time ago. First us, and then the Croatan, and their slaves from the Roanoke settlement.’

She looked up at him, his face orange in the glow of the dying fire. ‘They commanded great magic then, your gods?’

Fachtna nodded. ‘They were gone when we arrived here, but they had changed us.’

Britha gave this some more thought. ‘How old are you?’

Fachtna laughed. ‘Older than you, younger than many.’

She pushed herself up and looked at him, angry more with herself than him. ‘You only ever give me half an answer. You act like you don’t think I would understand.’
And you were happy lying in his arms
, she admonished herself.

‘And how old are you?’ he asked lightly.

‘That’s not the point!’ she said in exasperation, and then his lips were on hers. It was just too easy to reciprocate. He had not asked her permission but it was not the rough wooing of the arrogant warrior she had first met as she’d made her way south. With his arms wrapped around her, suddenly she was aware of her hand on his leg, her other hand in his hair. She felt herself responding, wanting.

Then she remembered Teardrop teasing Fachtna about bedding many mortal women. She remembered him rutting in a ditch with Tangwen. She remembered Cliodna. She remembered Bress.

Then she remembered running Cliodna through with a spear.

Britha’s disgust with herself fuelled her anger as she shoved him away. She assumed the hurt expression on his face was just an act. She stood up, unsure where she might go, where she could sleep. This angered her further and she almost kicked Fachtna, thinking that he had assumed she would share his cot with him.

It took her a moment to register the gasps of surprise from the other side of the fire. She spun around and then staggered back, almost tripping over the log they had been leaning against.

She must have just emerged from the treeline. She wore the brown robes of a
dryw
and carried a staff, a sickle hanging from her belt along with several pouches. The
dryw
’s entire head was hidden by a horse’s skull. Britha knew the meaning of the horse’s skull. This was the
Lain Bhan
, the White Mare. This was death, night and the desolation of winter. As she was about to flee, she felt a hand on her leg.

‘It’s not what you think,’ Fachtna told her gently. She looked around the fire. The other couples had reacted with surprise but not fear. That didn’t prevent a cold feeling from running through her when the
Lain Bhan
pointed at her, and then beckoned.

The grove was almost too idyllic for Britha. A small waterfall ran over rocks that bordered one edge of the small clearing. The waterfall fed a pool, which in turn fed a stream of clear, cold, fresh water. The oaks leaned in overhead, but the nature of the wing-shrouded night under the Forge meant that it never appeared to get completely dark. It was more of a perpetual twilight.

After leading Fachtna and a very uncomfortable Britha through the woods to the grove, the woman had taken off the horse skull. Like all the inhabitants of the Otherworld she was tall and well made, though she was older than most of the people Britha had seen so far. Still handsome, her face was heavily lined and her hair white but she looked energetic. Something in her eyes and the set of her features suggested shrewdness and a penetrating intelligence to Britha. She had introduced herself as Grainne.

Another
dryw
was waiting for them in the grove. He was even older than Grainne and his skin looked like cracked leather. His hair was long and silver, as was his trimmed and shaped goatee, and his eyes a vibrant green. He sat on the fern-covered altar stone, leaning on his hands, swinging his legs forward.

‘It is a ritual of life,’ Britha said sceptically, glancing over at Fachtna. He was stripped to the waist again, drinking from a small clay bowl that Grainne had given him. ‘Not for sealing an alliance, and I have not said yes.’

She was more than a little uncomfortable with what they were suggesting, though she knew they would not suggest it without good cause. She was not precious regarding such things but this did not sit right.

She was also uncomfortable because although these people might not be kneelers, they had a relationship with their gods, and she did not fully understand that relationship. The Pecht, her people, had learned generations before her not to trust the gods.

‘It is up to you,’ Sainrith, the male
dryw
said. ‘But what we are talking about is more than a simple alliance. We must be joined against Crom Dhubh and Bress.’

‘I cannot speak for my people.’
If any of them still live
.

‘But what would you advise them to do?’

‘That you have been fair and true allies this far, but that you are powerful and too much is unknown. I would advise them to be cautious,’ Britha said evenly.

Sainrith raised an eyebrow. ‘That is good advice,’ he admitted.

‘What is done can be undone,’ Grainne said as she anointed Fachtna with oil. It was exactly the sort of thing some
dryw
said that annoyed her.

‘How will you have made his cock not have been in my cunt?’ Britha enquired.

The other woman considered Britha’s words. ‘Agreed – that was a foolish thing to say.’

‘And those are … powerful … Could you stop anointing him, please? I haven’t said yes,’ Britha said irritably. Grainne put down the bowl and the brush, and turned to Britha. ‘It’s powerful binding magics, and whether I trust you or not, I don’t know enough about the ritual.’

‘Bonds can be undone, is what I think Grainne was trying to say,’ Sainrith said.

‘Yes, but why burden myself if I don’t need to?’ Britha asked.

‘Because it will make us stronger against Crom,’ Sainrith said.

Why is everyone so eager for me to lie with Fachtna?
Britha wondered. She could sense something behind it.

‘Does Tansy grow here?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Grainne told her. ‘And we have more efficient methods, if need be.’

‘I will not bear his or anyone else’s child,’ she said evenly.

‘We’re not asking you to—’ Grainne started.

‘With respect, could you leave us?’ Britha said.

‘This is a sacred—’ Grainne started, but Sainrith raised his hands and motioned for quiet. He stood up and the two of them left the grove without another word spoken. Britha watched them go before turning to face Fachtna.

‘We can leave here now. I’ll find you a place to stay, not with me. Don’t do this because you feel obligated to. Only do this if you want to,’ he said before she had a chance to say anything.

And she did want to, she knew she did. She had to force herself to look him in the eyes and not at his body.

‘And if it’s not right?’ she asked.

‘Are you beholden to anyone?’

Bress.
The thought was a betrayal, not least of Cliodna’s memory.

‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘Who are you?’

He moved to her, slowly, carefully, as if he was expecting her to bolt. A hand reached up to caress the side of her face. She couldn’t see a lie in his features, but she didn’t trust her own judgement. She felt so much younger. She wanted him. She never had before.

She could use the working, the ritual, as an excuse.

7

Micronesia, 6 Weeks Ago

Lodup was double-checking the diving gear. It was more a nervous tick than a requirement. He had checked it before he loaded it, and then again as he packed it into crates, but salvage diving tended to encourage caution.

His right arm was a sleeve of horizontal lines, tattoos forming complicated patterns on his nut-brown skin, and
Pelipel
tattoos crept out of his shorts and down his legs. Stripped to the waist, even in his mid-thirties he had managed to keep his body in the wiry, toned shape that had come so easily to him in his youth on Mwoakilloa and Pohnpei, and later in the US Navy, though he had to work harder at it then.

Early autumn, the trade winds had just started blowing. The port’s floodlights and the lights on the container cranes overhead made the Pacific night as bright as a sodium-arc day. The glare reflected off the puddles created by the evening rains. It was humid, but then it was always humid.

The noise of the footsteps sounded out of place, and Lodup glanced behind him to see an odd figure approaching. She looked like she was dressed to go to one of the punk bars or nightclubs he’d seen when he was stationed in San Diego. Her hair was a spiked black Mohican that had wilted in the humidity and the shaved sides of her head were tattooed. Her ears were pierced multiple times, and her nose and one eyebrow also had rings in them. She wore sunglasses despite the lateness of the hour, and her skin looked pale to the point of unhealthy under the harsh lighting.

She was wearing what looked like a black leather corset or bodice, Lodup wasn’t sure which, a black, flared miniskirt, fishnets and motorcycle boots. The short jacket over her bodice reminded Lodup of pictures he’d seen of European soldiers in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. More interesting was the fact that the jacket appeared to be poorly concealing some kind of shoulder rig for a pistol. She had a heavy-looking kit bag slung over one shoulder, though its weight didn’t seem to be giving her any problems.

‘Are you Lodup Satakano?’ she asked as she reached him. Her accent was thick, and he was pretty sure she was from England. She was definitely armed – he could see the butt of a pistol sticking out of a shoulder holster, and below that the hilt of a knife, its blade sheathed upside down next to the pistol in the same holster.

‘That depends,’ he replied cautiously. Almost unconsciously, his hand moved closer to the dive knife strapped to his ankle. She followed his eyes and opened her jacket. There was another pistol and knife hanging under her right shoulder.

‘It’s all right, love,’ she said. ‘These aren’t for you. This is.’

She tossed the kitbag at his feet. Lodup looked at the bag suspiciously.

‘It’s full of eels,’ the woman said, lighting a cigarette. Lodup was beginning to think that under the make-up she was a lot younger than he’d initially thought. Late teens, perhaps, he decided.

‘I don’t want anything to do with anyone as heavily armed as you.’

‘I’ve already said I’m not going to shoot you and I’m lovely when you get to know me. You really need to look in the bag.’

‘Will you go away if I do?’

‘I suspect you won’t want me to.’

Lodup reached for the bag and pulled it towards him. Slowly and carefully he unzipped the bag, looked inside, then zipped it up again and slid it back towards the odd woman.

The bag was full of stacks of hundred dollar bills. Full to the brim.

‘That’s a hundred thousand dollars,’ she said. ‘It’s completely legal.’

‘So why’s it in a bag?’

‘I wanted to make an impression.’

‘What’s it for?’

‘Just to come to a job interview. Whatever happens, you keep that. You get the job, there’ll be a lot more than that on the table.’

Lodup nodded towards the salvage ship behind him. ‘I’ve already got a berth.’

The woman laughed. ‘Fine, give me the money back. There’s other salvage divers in the Pacific.’

‘This is a salvage dive?’ Lodup asked. The woman just nodded. ‘Difficult to believe it’s legitimate.’

The punk woman was starting to look bored. ‘Do you want the money or not?’

Lodup glanced down at the kitbag again. He could do all sorts of things with that money. No more contract work, refit a small craft for salvage.

‘Can I take it that I’m leaving the bag with you?’ she asked. Lodup was still staring at it as the woman turned and started walking away. ‘Be at the Naval Air Station at Agana tomorrow at six, or zero-six-hundred, whatever you ex-Navy types call it.’ Lodup stared after her. ‘My name’s Grace, by the way,’ she shouted over her shoulder.

A thousand miles of staring out over the blue of the Pacific interspersed with islands and atolls. From the air, the atolls looked like they were waiting to be swept away by the ocean, and the shadows of reefs and sandbanks just under the water were predatory, somehow. The clouds above formed endless, mountainous continents in the sky, rendering the Pacific a sea in a hollow Earth.

Lodup had flown from Guam back to his home on Pohnpei many times before but he still wasn’t bored by the Pacific’s beauty, though the ocean had tried very hard to kill him on more than one occasion.

Grace had been waiting for him aboard the Grumman C-2 Greyhound Navy transport plane they took from Naval Air Station Agana. She was friendly enough but not inclined to discuss the job interview or tell him much about herself. She stank of alcohol and looked very tired. She quickly lapsed into a deep sleep, leaving him to stare out of the cabin windows at all the blue as he played games of wild speculation.

Some three hours later, Lodup found himself looking at a mountainous canopy of green sloping down into flatter jungle-covered land, interspersed by small hamlets and a few larger towns. The plane descended into Pohnpei International Airport on Takatik Island. The huge, jungle-covered rock overlooking the single runway was a welcome sight. It meant he was home.

Grace ignored customs and led him to an old battered Land Rover parked in the cargo area of the airport. She drove him over the Deketik Causeway that crossed the harbour and into the town of Kolonia.

Grace thrashed the ancient Jeep along streets lined with low corrugated-roofed buildings and down to the water near one of the jetties where a small boat was moored. Lodup thought he recognised the man at the engine. He was local, and Lodup was pretty sure he worked for the Village Hotel.

Grace gestured down into the boat.

‘This is getting pretty tiresome,’ Lodup told her as he went to throw his bag into the boat, but Grace stopped him.

‘I’ll take your bag.’

‘You’re not coming?’

‘I’ll see you later,’ she said as she shouldered his bag and headed back to the Land Rover.

The boat’s pilot was called Billy. Lodup chatted with him a bit but the rest of the time he just enjoyed the journey as they made their way east around the island. From the sea it was easy to ignore the odd house here and there, or glimpses of the road that ran around the island, and see only the green of the jungle.

They sped past tiny islands with unspoiled white beaches, and the water inside the protective ring of reefs was calm, as usual. Lodup was pretty sure he knew where they were going. He wondered why foreigners wanted to bring locals to Nan Madol to impress them. He’d been there many times before.

The water surrounding the ruined city was choppy. It took a number of attempts, but Billy expertly piloted the boat through the entrance and into the network of canals that ran between the ruins. Lodup climbed out of the boat and onto the narrow grass-covered path by one of the massive cornerstones on the artificial islet of Nan Dowas. He’d been taught that this islet was the main temple area of the Saudeleur Dynasty. Founded by the sorcerous twins Olisihpa and Olosohpa, the eel-worshipping Saudeleur elite had thought themselves gods. When their demands on the common people had become too hard to bear, Isokelekel, a hero from the isle of Kosrae to the east, had overthrown them.

Even ruined, crumbling, overgrown by the encroaching jungle from Temwen Island and subject to slow erosion by the ocean, the artificial islets – built on a reef and separated by tidal canals – still looked magnificent. Lodup walked down the narrow path next to walls made of basalt blocks mined on the mainland. The blocks were interspersed with layers of basalt ‘logs’. He followed the walls around until he came to the temple complex’s rubble-strewn entrance. Inside, trees and undergrowth grew through walls and stone debris.

‘Do you know how they got the stones here?’ a voice asked. Cultured, undoubtedly European but, either because of the excellent English or despite it, Lodup could not quite place where in Europe the accent came from. He turned to face the speaker.

‘Did you ask permission to come here?’ Lodup said. It was unusual that none of the locals, the custodians of the site, were in evidence. The blond-haired man wore sandals, khaki shorts, a cream short-sleeved shirt, sunglasses and a straw hat. By no means massive, he nevertheless looked well built, lean. Lodup was surprised he hadn’t heard the man approach.

‘I did. Shall we?’ He gestured into the interior of Nan Dowas. Lodup was wary. Everything about this was odd, but it occurred to Lodup that if they wished him harm there were much less resource-intensive ways of doing it. The man turned and walked into the temple complex, running his hand over the basalt blocks as he did so.

‘The logs between the blocks weigh as much as eight hundred pounds on their own, and they are the lightest of the stones here. Some of the cornerstones could weigh up to fifty tonnes—’

‘I know this. I grew up here. Grace works for you?’

The man glanced back at him but continued walking past the interior walls towards a small, rectangular, cave-like structure in the centre of the overgrown complex.

‘I work with her, and you didn’t answer my question.’

‘Hard work and native ingenuity, or is that just for the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans?’

‘Arguably different circumstances.’

‘I’ve found that if people really want things, they normally find a way. Who are you?’

‘My name is Malcolm du Bois. You were named for the Strong Man?’

‘Am I supposed to be impressed that you know Mwoakilloan legends?’

‘No.’ The man thought for a moment. ‘It’s too easy for me to come by such information. Your mother was a wise woman?’

‘Most women where I come from are pretty wise,’ Lodup said in exasperation. The blond man stared at him, and all Lodup could see was his reflection in the sunglasses. Du Bois turned away and started to walk around the stone structure.

‘What if I told you that the basalt was impregnated with superconductors that allowed for a levitation effect by manipulating the Earth’s – admittedly weak – magnetic field, and that the crystalline matrix of the stone has been engineered to act as a huge and complex computer?’

‘Then I would remind you that telling stories during the day hastens the night. I know the legends. Olisihpa and Olosohpa levitated the stones here using black magic, and with the aid of a dragon—’

‘Not magic, science.’

‘The elders used to tell us that if we saw the shadow of the manta over us as we dived, it meant death. The manta would wrap itself around us and drain our blood. Are you telling me that’s true as well?’

‘I don’t know. It’s certainly possible.’

‘What are you, some rich madman?’

‘Do you believe my story?’

‘Next you’re going to tell me that Lidakika the octopus created Pohnpei rather than a volcanic eruption. Or offer to take me to
Kanamwayso,
perhaps
. What is this? A test to see if the islander who grew up without electricity is an ignorant, superstitious fool?’

‘Kanamwayso, the City of the Gods. Perhaps you’re closer than you think.
Wasahn mehla wasa koaros.
’

Lodup stared at him for a moment. He was starting to get angry.

‘Everywhere is a place for death, so a real man should not worry and should act without fear. Do you really think I am afraid?’

‘I think if you had any ideas about the origins of this place that would be considered esoteric, then you’d keep them to yourself.’

‘I think this place was built with the blood, sweat and tears of thousands of people. I think it was done using winches, and rafts, and possibly other techniques since lost to us.’ He patted one of the rocks. ‘I think if there were any kind of computer matrix in the basalt, then one of the scientific or archaeological investigations would have found something, and I think I’ve heard all the conspiracy theories. So what I’d say is: show me.’

‘That, Mr Satakano, is a good answer. May I buy you dinner?’

‘What, you’re not going to make all the rocks fly around?’

Du Bois appeared to be giving the sarcastic question some thought. ‘No, that would be ridiculous. I’m not a magician.’

Lodup was losing patience with the other man. It was clear he was an eccentric – and very rich – nutcase. Though his influence with the Navy was troublesome. Lodup wasn’t sure he was prepared to take money from the delusional. On the other hand, it was a lot of money.

‘Do you know what “Pohnpei” means?’ du Bois asked.

‘You do know I grew up here, right?’ Lodup demanded. Du Bois just nodded. ‘It means “upon a stone altar”.’

‘I have a tremendous appetite but I can never eat much in the tropics. Still, I’m very fond of the Tattooed Irishman’s omelettes.’

‘I think we’re wasting each other’s time.’

‘Let’s assume that’s the case. Then by letting me waste a little more you will have a good meal to add to the hundred thousand dollars and the trip home for your wasted time.’

Lodup reluctantly agreed.

The Village was a holiday resort in the jungle comprised of wooden huts built on stilts on the side of a hill, among the palm trees, overlooking the Pacific. The veranda, also on stilts, was attached to the
Tattooed Irishman Bar and Restaurant by a short wooden bridge at treetop height.