The Broken Kings: Book Three of The Merlin Codex (6 page)

Munda flung herself upon her father, wailing with delight. Urtha collapsed backwards, looked up at the High Woman, who merely shrugged. She should have had her say, but there hardly seemed a point in it.

“Get off me, girl! You’re too heavy.”

Munda stood and made a sign of respect to the sprawled king, then turned and ran gleefully from the women’s lodge.

The wren on the rafters noticed that High Woman Rianata was involved in helping Urtha back to his feet.

Chapter Six

The Unborn King

It was a relief to realise that Urtha hadn’t believed a word his daughter had told him. He loved the girl, of course, and was aware that her account was influenced by darker forces. He had spared her. He was aware that she had been possessed.

He at once consulted with his commanders, and with the Speakers, on how best to divide his own forces to address what he discerned as the growing threat from across the river. It was agreed that herdsmen should be constantly on standby to bring in the cattle and horses in the event of a raid, and many of the smiths, tanners, and potters should fall into that role if necessary. Meanwhile, the production of long oval shields, covered with thick bull’s hide, would be increased, as would the production of short stabbing spears, crudely made to be disposable. Stone workers would be set to practising the timeless skill of fashioning long, thin flint blades, often more effective than iron, though iron could have a terrible effect on the more ancient of the Dead.

Urtha himself would take a retinue to Vortingoros of the Coritani and hire a hundred swift-shields. The Parisianii in the north would be more difficult to persuade, but since their territory was farther from the edge of Ghostland, they might cooperate, though they would exact a heavy price in compensation. To the south, the mercenary bands of the
dhiiv arrigi
would be sure to add an extra danger to whatever might come across the winding Nantosuelta.

The Speakers would attend to the more mystical defences, the wood figures and carved columns, the straw-and-bone animals and masked trees that would form a barrier against certain of the Dead. It was the Unborn who were most troublesome when it came to such elements of repulsion: many of them didn’t recognise the protection for what it was and rode straight through. But the Unborn were usually less hostile than their ancestors, and it was necessary to count upon that small fact.

It was my lot to ride to the river, accompanied by Niiv, a personal guard of four men, and Ullanna, with her own squad of youthful riders-at-arms as protection. I was glad of her company. Her personally trained retinue, drawn from the women of Taurovinda, were a match for any of Urtha’s
uthiin.

*   *   *

Nantosuelta flowed out of the west, out of the deep woods, flowing away from the permanent glow of the setting sun. She wound through rocky valleys and hazy marshes, through crowded forests and steep, wooded hills; occasionally, along her sinuous length, could be found the stone remains of buildings and timeworn statues. Several tributaries joined her from the shadow realm, waters that foamed red as they mixed with the main stream of the sacred river. Where Nantosuelta rose was a mystery, hidden in the Realm of the Shadow Heroes.

When she finally disappeared, at the northern extreme of Urtha’s tribal kingdom, it was into the forest known as “the trackless wood of visions,” to a hidden fall that could be heard, as it roared to unseen rocks, but not seen. When she reappeared, she was running east to the distant sea, now fully in the realm of the Cornovidi. She passed the evergroves, still magical, but no longer impenetrable, though her waters were still dangerous to enter. She bounded the land of the Coritani, embracing the kingdom, protecting it and nourishing it, and she was as much the spiritual strength of that nation as she was of Urtha’s. Her banks there were heavy with the shrines and sanctuaries of past people, past encounters with the gods.

The five fords that crossed the river were all in the west, however, and at each of them now stood a hostel, its doors open, seemingly inviting.

I went first to the Hostel at the Ford of the Overwhelming Gift.

Ullanna at once pulled back, as frightened as her mare. Despite its name, the hostel was a grim place, fashioned of oak, a great heavy lintel above the low door. The pillars that stood to each side of the entrance were carved into the grimacing features of goats, standing on their hind legs, heads locked together at the horns, seemingly impaling the image of a woman’s scowling face. A rickety walkway reached from the nearer bank to the muddy island on which the eerie building had risen. Broken swords hung from the eaves, clattering in the brisk breeze. The roof was high, made of poles, unthatched. Smoke drifted from the gaps between these crudely fashioned struts.

A deep howling noise came from the open door. It set the horses to a nervous disposition and managed even to raise the hairs on the back of my own neck.

Niiv huddled in the saddle, hood drawn low over her face, keeping close to me.

On the bridge watching us was a tall man in a dark red cloak, fair hair hanging to his shoulders. His face was clean-shaven. He was young, bright-eyed, carried no weapon, but held the reins of a powerful black horse.

I recognised the ghostly form of Pendragon. He was a ghost who haunted my dreams. He was a man, as yet unborn, who had visited my life on several occasions, though only fleetingly.

He beckoned to me and I dismounted, entrusting the reins to Niiv. As I stepped across the narrow bridge, keeping my balance carefully, Pendragon turned, tethered his own steed, and ducked to enter the moaning inn.

I followed him.

The moment I stooped through the door into the hostel, I felt the disorientating effect of Ghostland. The narrow corridor seemed to widen and stretch away from me a vast distance. The moaning resolved into the low din of voices, the unearthly sound of laughter. The inn seemed to rock below my feet. The air was heavy with woodsmoke and the smells of roasting meats. The resonating sounds of metal on metal, like the beating of the vast bronze bells I had heard in the east, became recognisable as the striking of iron blades. There was feasting and competition at work in this hostel.

Rooms opened on both sides of the corridor. Pendragon had disappeared into the belly of the inn.

I searched the rooms.

In the first room I saw seven men in plaid cloaks, seated moodily and watching me. Each had balanced a broad-bladed axe across his knees. A copper cauldron was settled over a smouldering fire between them, and I could see the wood and bone hafts of weapons rising above the lip. They scowled at me as I peered into their chamber.

In another room I saw four much-scarred-faced men, naked to the waist, their chests marked in green dye with the features of wolves. Each had a silver torque around his neck and a circlet of boar’s tusks around his head, tying back fair hair. They seemed afraid and confused, watching me with a curious expression, but making no move to beckon me to join them. They were seated around a large chequered board, across which were scattered small figures carved from bone and dark wood. Each in turn moved a figure with the point of his sword. There seemed to be no reason, no rule to the game, but at each move the others cried out in despair, angrily watching for the next prod of the blade.

In a third room there was a great open fire, and the carcass of a small ox being slowly turned on a spit by an old man, who turned his toothless face towards me, revealing that his eyes were as empty as his mouth. He grinned and nodded as he sensed me standing there. Two young men, wearing plaid kilts and bone breastplates, were leaping across the roasting animal from opposite directions, and clashing short swords as they somersaulted in midair. The action was not a fight, merely a game, and their bare arms were spotted red from the spitting fat.
There is something disturbingly familiar about this,
I remember thinking.

In a fourth room, more of a hall than a room, I found Pendragon again, and his small retinue, and here I ceased my exploration of the hostel.

This was a wide hall, with benches and tables and a host of men of all types, some bearing weapons, some not, some cloaked, some not, some with cropped hair, others with the high horse-tail style, others with their heads half shaved here, a quarter shaved there, and such a tapestry of tattoos in such a palette of colours that it was hard to distinguish man from pattern. The noise was a din; the throng was at ease. There were clay jars of wine, and wooden barrels of honeyed ale at each table, and the men ladled the liquor into horns or cups and were very drunk. Six or seven heavily cloaked figures carried wide trays of pink-roasted pig joints and spitted fowl.

Only Pendragon and his four men were sober and without food at their table.

I sat with them, but having ridden for some time was hungry and thirsty, so availed myself of flesh and wine, a sour brew with a strong aftertaste of pine resin: a Greekland fermentation, I was sure. Even the Dead, it seemed, sent to the south for their pleasures.

“Drink that and you might stay here forever,” Pendragon growled at me.

“I’ve been to Ghostland before and escaped,” I replied. “And I’ve been to Greekland taverns and wondered if I’d ever see the next day, let alone the end of the world.”

“Eat that, and the underworld pigs will claim you for your own,” murmured one of his companions as I tooth-stripped a cut of loin.

“I’ve eaten in a thousand forbidden places,” I retorted. “Nothing can hold me, except the need for more.”

“You expect to see the end of the world?” asked a second man. He was young, lightly bearded. He seemed genuinely curious about me, as did a third man, seated next to him, who might have been his twin.

“My world has ended a thousand times,” I told him enigmatically. “A broken heart, a broken hope, a broken joy. But if you yourself have the same capacity for forgetting as I can summon, then thank whichever god protects you. Memory lost is a life begun again.”

“That’s a sour and very sorry way to live,” said the fourth of Pendragon’s retinue critically, an older man, his eyes bloodshot, his breathing laboured. “But who am I to say a word against you? I haven’t yet lived. My time is to come. I just hope it comes soon.”

I asked him his name. Like Pendragon, he had only heard his name in dreams. Morndryd. The name sent a shiver through me. I was puzzled why he should appear in full mature years, rather than youthful like the rest of his band. But this was a curiosity to which, at the moment, I had no time to devote.

Hunger and thirst satisfied, I asked Pendragon about the hostel, and the men I had seen in the other rooms.

“There are seven in one, very unhappy men—”

“Unhappy indeed. And for good reason. They are seven cousins, all sons of a king and his brothers who will resist an armed invasion from the east. The eastern army will be a formidable threat, legions of men equipped with weapons beyond imagining. In order to set an example, they will slaughter those seven men when they are still
children.
The reason they brood and are angry is because they are aware, in their dreams, that they will never become the men whose bodies they inhabit as they wait for life.”

“And who are the four men playing at the chequer-board?”

“They are the four sons of Bricriu, who will possess their own land within two generations. They are compulsive gamblers. They have fallen foul of a druid, also waiting for his birth, who might have foretold their fate, and he has set them the task that you see: to play the game nineteen times nineteen times nineteen moon cycles. The result of the last game will declare their future, but they have lost count. To play too many games, or too few, will be devastating for them.”

“That’s a complicated number of moons.”

“Indeed.”

“And who are the combatants leaping across the roasting ox?”

Pendragon shrugged. “They are a mystery to me. To everyone here. They don’t seem to belong. They are possessed by the youthful spirit of a different age. The leaping is compulsive. When they are exhausted, they sleep for several days; they then feed voraciously on the ox. When the carcass is stripped, a new ox is put on the spit and the leaping begins again. They carry a secret; that at least is my suspicion. But not even they are aware from where that secret originates.”

I didn’t tell him that their activity seemed very familiar to
me.
They were bull-leaping, but in a place where such a practice did not belong.

Then I told Pendragon that I had heard he was waiting for me. I asked him what he expected of me. His answer surprised me. I had not expected so depressed a response. He spoke in the formal way, as if he were a Speaker for the Future, rather than a king in waiting.

“We are aware, we who will one day ride, roam, and rule the land, that we are in a place of waiting. We are all aware that our dreams mean nothing. We have never been born; we are simply the spirits of life and lives that will one day occupy this territory, the forests and plains, the gorges, valleys, the sea channels, the rivers, that high hill with its ancient escarpments, its fallen walls ready to reconstruct.

“And we will build on the dead, and on what the dead have left behind.

“We are shadows without history. We live among shadows which brood, breed, and bewail the unfairness of their ancestors. We are hostages, we Unborn, in the Realm of Revenge. To you, those of you who live with your druid tales of how wonderful the world after death will be, be aware, there is nothing comforting about the land of ghosts. Life is as brutal after death as it is before. I do not say to you that the pleasures of forgotten life no longer exist. They do. But when both Dead and yet-to-be-born are ageless, there is no compassion. We have no change in life, no aging, no testing-ground on which to develop the satisfaction and fulfilment that leads to eventual calm, to that moment which we envy—as we watch the world beyond the river—that moment of passing-on. The moment of sublime release.

“The short life of a man, ending his days of hunting, leads to the long life of the ghost, endlessly hunting.”