The Broken Kings

by Robert Holdstock

  “This man’s sons had wings?”

  “Their father shaped them. He sent them to search for a realm beyond the earth. They were to be his eyes and ears to the life beyond the canopy of stars. So the story goes. And this map is that of the fallen son. And it shows where the entrances to the labyrinth can be found. And where the Cave of the Discs can be found. And when you find the Cave of the Discs, you are sure to find the ‘shaping man.’ He will have chambers there, workshops. So there you are.”

  Medea took Jason’s chin in her fingers and twisted his head this way and that, staring at him hard. “But Jason—I will still settle for sand and water,” she said softly. “A touch of your heart, a touch of an older life you’ve known.” She kissed him. The kiss was passionate. She drew back suddenly. Jason’s kiss had been cold. “Don’t leave so soon,” she begged. “Wait a while. There’s no hurry.” But she knew at once that her words were lost.

  Jason stroked the small plate of gold with his thumbs. His eyes shone. He was eager now. He could smell adventure.

  “I’ll have this copied onto a skin, a large skin,” he said. “The hide of an ox, so that I can read it without my head aching. You shall have your shaping man. With Argo, and my crew—even without reckless Herakles—I can bring this monster to your sanctuary. You shall have your wedding gift. I promise you.”

  Medea’s smile (I thought as I watched, a ghost-presence in this chamber) was enigmatic.

  * * *

  Athena drew a discreet veil over the bedchamber then, and with a flourish of her hand and a mischievous laugh said good-bye to me. She led the way at a scamper down the corridor. I followed the flowing green cloak. She turned the corner to the tall narrow doors that separated the marble palace from the scorching heat of the courtyard, but when I burst out into the light, she had gone. The shadow had gone.

  Just a shadow whisper remained.

  “You are still in Argo’s heart, Merlin. Now see how it was after the wedding promise was made. You don’t need me anymore. But Argo will guide you through the next few weeks.…”

  * * *

  Storm-lashed, but with her sail billowing before the following wind, Argo surged towards the dark mountains of Crete. Zeus himself seemed to be waiting to greet her, the sky black and rolling, rain sleeting, the jagged shape of the land visible only because of a golden glow, a break in the clouds.

  Jason and Tisaminas scoured the cliffs for a haven, and finally saw it.

  Down sail, down mast, and the oars were run out to slow the perilous approach as the ship heaved through the furious waves towards the cove, where the vaguest hint of colour suggested a strand against which they might beach.

  All eyes attentive to what lay below the spume-shrouded sea, Argo struck by rock and reef, the guardian goddess guided her nevertheless to the safety of the shore, and she was flung like sea-wrack against the strand, listing and throwing several of the Argonauts onto the shingle. By now the oars had been run in, and with a second surging wave the vessel was set more firmly on the land.

  Ropes were slung about the hull and the memory of lost, ever-adventuring Herakles invoked as twenty men hauled Argo above the tide line, then pinned her down, a leviathan cast from the depths, made sound and stable against the wind. Lashings were stretched from her mast, canvas slung over them to make a shelter against the storm. Jason gathered four large stones to make an altar, filled it with fire. Youthful Meleager, still burning for adventure, had forced his way inland against the gale and found a flock of goats, bringing down a kid with a weighted rope. Jason sacrificed the animal in thanks to Poseidon for the safe crossing. The meat was then stripped and spitted over a wood fire.

  Poseidon accepted the offering. By dawn the storm had abated. The clouds hurried to the east, and the sun warmed the beach and dried the sodden and ragged crew.

  With Argo propped up on banks of sand, Jason went back on board. Keen-eyed Lynceus had taken possession of the maps of Crete, drawn from the star-bronze, and unfurled one now. He scanned the hide as if he were a hawk, soaring over the hills and valleys.

  “Where have we beached?” Jason asked.

  “Somewhere here,” said Lynceus, indicating a long length of the northern coast.

  “Could you be more precise?”

  Lynceaus drew out a thin slate marker, scored off in units. He laid it this way and that upon the map and counted off numbers in his head. He did this for a long time.

  “Somewhere here,” he repeated, stabbing the map, indicating exactly the same long stretch of coast.

  Acastus chipped in. “There are three valleys leading to the interior, and they all meet at the same place, a city crushed between hills, with caves all around. One of them must be the Cave of Discs.”

  Jason nodded. “The Dyctean cave is close as well, and we should avoid that. It will be well-guarded, even if Old Man Thunder isn’t in residence.” He smiled to himself.

  Meleager said, stabbing at the hide, “Look … if those marks mean what I think they mean, there are shaping caves in every valley. There are shaping caves everywhere on this blighted island. He could be hiding in any one of them. Which one should we look for?”

  “He will be somewhere close to that city,” Jason stated bluntly. “Unless Medea’s auguries are wrong, we will find him there. She told me he’s old now, and rarely uses the caverns. And if he does flee into the hills, we can easily find the route by which he has escaped.”

  “How do you know this?” Idas asked irritably.

  “Medea told me.”

  “Medea told you. Medea told you.” Idas was in sneering mood. “How in the name of Thunder does she know?”

  “I trust her. She knows more than I know, and I don’t argue with dangerous women. I suggest you don’t argue with dangerous men.”

  Meleager piped up again, “The caves are all linked. According to Aeoleron, this shaping man can move from one end of the island to the other in a single step. Are you that fleet of foot, Jason?”

  Jason slammed his fist against the map, irritated and frustrated with this argument. He took a deep breath. “We’re here for piracy,” he said quietly. “Let’s get on with piracy. That’s what we’re here for. Let us do it. Don’t listen to the gossip of magicians, not even a good one like Aeoleron. And take no notice of how this island has spun its tales. Old Man Thunder—Zeus—was born here?” He looked mockingly wide-eyed at Meleager. “Truly? Do you believe that? When we sailed into the estuary of the Daan, with the Fleece, after our escape from Colchis, after we had rowed like fury across that great sea, we met the Istragians. Remember? They claimed that Zeus was born from black rock that had fallen from the heavens and had been kept in a copper vessel for twenty generations. It burst open and released the young god only after a peasant woman had been stretched across its rounded surface and raped by her brothers. How likely is that? How likely is anything when it comes to Old Man Thunder?” Jason was enjoying this mortal challenge to the god, staring at the new dawn, eyes gleaming, waiting for the gathering of dark clouds, for the moment of the angry strike.

  The clouds stayed away. Jason mocked the skies, then turned back to his crew. “No. This man, this Daidalos, likes his bronze and is proud of his discs. We’ll find him where the mystery is most profound.”

  “What exactly are the discs?” Meleager asked. “Are they dangerous?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care.” Jason peered hard at Meleager. “Dangerous? Since when did danger make you tremble?” He ignored Meleager’s protests, continuing, “The discs might be the cogs that spin the stars, for all that it matters to me. They can contain the knowledge of twenty thousand generations! For all that it matters to me. They can hold the details of our future lives, and the time and manner of our deaths … for all that it matters to me.” He patted the youth on the cheek. “I don’t understand discs. I leave it to others to understand discs. But Medea wants the mind that conceived them, and she needs the flesh that holds that mind. To play with in her own way. To cut up that mind l
ike a child cuts up a bird to see the creature’s beating heart. In her own way! And that’s what she’ll get. As a wedding gift. A disc-maker. A beating heart. And beyond that, apart from spoil and salvage…”

  There was a low cheer at the offer of spoil and salvage.

  Jason grinned. “That’s all that matters to me.”

  * * *

  Leaving five of his crew to guard Argo and the beach, Jason led the way inland, following a watercourse, looking for features in the surrounding hills that might indicate which part of the map they were following.

  They soon found it: a blood-drenched grove, the dismembered parts of animals scattered around, crow-scavenged but still raw enough to suggest a recent ceremonial.

  The tall stone effigy of Snake Lady rose from the central tangle of olive trunks. Her eyes were empty but all-seeing. Living snakes were coiled on her exposed granite breasts, lazy in the sun. The stone snakes in her hands were painted a vivid red and green and could have almost as easily been alive.

  This shrine was marked on Medea’s dream-wrought map. The Argonauts could now see the valley approaches that would lead them to the Cave of Discs.

  A day later they were standing on the ridge of a low hill, staring across the sprawl of a city, through which a bright river flowed. Hills rose beyond. The whole urban area was crowded and confusing. Tall, stepped buildings, faced in black stone, suggested temples. Otherwise, the city was a blaze of colour. There was a labyrinthine feel to the place, and below their feet, the earth grumbled in a rhythmic way that suggested the movement of mechanisms beyond their comprehension. If the Argonauts were unnerved by this, they didn’t show it. Hard eyes surveyed the scene.

  “A river. And navigable,” Idas pointed out grimly. “We could have saved ourselves the walk. My feet are blistered on those blasted rocks.” He held up his ruined sandals.

  “The river isn’t marked,” Jason said. “There must be a reason for it. This place is not meant for visitors.”

  “Maybe so. But send for Argo. I don’t want to walk all the way back.”

  Jason suddenly held up his hand. “Do you sense it?”

  “Sense what?” asked Tisaminas.

  “We’re being watched.”

  “From where?”

  “From somewhere—up there, on the mountainside. Well, well. Closer than we’d realised.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Shaper

  There was often movement on the tracks that wound around the base of his mountain, cutting though the woods and leading along the river, so the file of men moving purposefully below him did not alarm him.

  They were almost certainly hunters, though their tunics—dark red on black—were not the familiar colour of the hunting parties that scoured these hills and forests for the rich and complex game that could be stalked there. And something else about them was odd, yet he couldn’t see it. They carried spears and bows; and they were not looking up towards the false cave that hid the deeper cavern. They were minding their own business.

  To be on the safe side, though, he sent the high call to two of his guardian dogs. Their long, lean wooden backs rose above the undergrowth as they untwined themselves from their sleeping curl. Bronze muzzles turned briefly towards the cave, then lowered again as the two beasts began to slink towards the track, one ahead of the band, one to its rear. They would not attack unless the men left the path.

  Satisfied with this, Shaper turned his attention back to the task ahead.

  At the first streak of dawn, he had seen fire fall from the sky. It had descended to the west, flaming through the darkness, so straight for most of its fall that he had decided it was, indeed, only a shooting star. But then it had curved towards him, seemed to shake in the gloom as it approached the early morning light, before vanishing into the dawn shadow of the land.

  Raptor’s accuracy, casting these discs from wherever in the Middle Realm he had landed, was getting more accurate, but more risky. Whatever was happening up there, beyond vision, beyond comprehension, there was clearly a sense of urgency about these later falls.

  All around the island, the seabed was scattered with Raptor’s earliest attempts. The mountains in the far west still contained hundreds of the discs that Shaper had never been able to find. That was the country where Queller held power, though, and it was always hard to enter her brute-howling heartlands to recover the bronze plates.

  Now Shaper walked back through the mountain, through the winding passage that skirted the central cavern and emerged facing exactly towards the midwinter setting sun.

  He pulled his pack across his shoulders, selected a strong staff to support his descent, and a small cage of bees. Alerted to the task ahead, the small creatures began to stretch their wings. The cage rattled with the impact of their small bronze faces and their crystal-faceted eyes. Then they settled.

  When he reached the bottom of the mountain, Shaper released his scouts, and the bees buzzed away in a flicker of light and colour.

  He continued to walk due west.

  After a while, one of the bees returned, flew twice around his head before settling on the ground and beginning its curious, looping dance. After ten turns of the intricate pattern, Shaper knew where the disc had fallen. He changed his direction, and a while later could smell the burning of wood.

  He found the disc embedded in the trunk of an aspen. Blackened from its descent from the heavens, a brisk polish with a cloth soon began to reveal the spiral of images on each side of the thin plate.

  Shaper studied the figures and shapes for a long time. He recognised many of the forms, but there were new ones, too, and that meant more interpretation. More interpretation, yes, but therefore more knowledge of the Middle Realm.

  And perhaps this time he might find the one message he had been longing for, the few images that he might interpret as his own name, and a cartouche of shapes in which he might find a message more personal to him from the boy he had trained to fly, and had lost in the final, brilliant flight.

  He packed the disc carefully and turned back towards his mountain. One by one the bees found him and flew into their cage, settling quietly on the floor.

  It was now well after noon, the sky darkening with clouds scudding in from the north and west. The forest was restless. His mountain loomed ahead of him, apparently no more than a wooded, rocky façade, though his trained eyes could see the shadow pattern where the small entrances and exits to the cavernous complex inside breathed in the fresh air, breathed out the damp of the rocks within. Like gills on a fish, these narrow crevices could close to the passerby, or open when wishing to attract and consume an unwary animal.

  Animals!

  The skin on his nape began to prickle, and the hundreds of tiny bronze hairs he had inserted on his back sent warning signals through his body, the rippling pattern of the sensation alerting him to the south and east.

  Queller!

  He had allowed his guard to fall. He had ventured west alone and unprotected. But she had not dispatched her monsters as far to the east as this for a generation or more. He could just hear the rasping movement of snakes, her favourite form of terror. But others of her fury-fashioned creations were moving stealthily through the trees.

  He began to run. As he ran, he released the bees, all but one being sent to harass the approaching coils, jaws, and claws.

  That single bee he sent to alert the hounds, and at the same time he began the high call, the silent whistle of summoning, though he suspected he was too far away from his fortress.

  Running, then, he found new speed with the enhanced tendons and ligaments of his legs. He opened his heart and strengthened his spine. He closed off all unnecessary senses. The forest, streams, rocks, low cliffs, and tangles of thorns became smaller to him, and he wove his way through and over, heart pumping, sure-footed, head singing with the songs of distraction, a wailing mind-music that he laid behind him like a stunning, snaring trail: to confound and strike apprehension into Queller’s beasts.

&n
bsp; He began to feel his great age.

  Slumping down at a pool, he sucked in water to refresh and revive himself. As the surface calmed, he stared down at the sodden and lank grey hair that fell around his hollow, haunted face. His gaze was returned through eyes that were as bright as a child’s, but nothing other suggested anything else than time’s ruin. And then his face transformed into something simian, something blue, something out of nightmare: a fear-forged monstrosity, a nature’s child born from a twisted womb.

  A Queller thing.

  He was up at once and running again, but found himself scrambling up a steep incline, towards a ridge of granite. Too high! Too impenetrable!

  He need not have worried.

  Seven dark forms flew out across that ridge, the fading light catching on bronze and wood and the wet foam that streamed from their gaping mouths. His hounds had heard the call, heeded it, and now bounded into the tangle of cover, to howl and bay as they hunted and pursued the creatures that Queller had sent on this skirmish.

  Shaper caught his breath, then slumped down against a hard rock, fingering the new disc through its pouch, glancing up at the first star, low on the horizon, the evening star, already bright.

  The killing seemed to take an eternity, but soon five of his beasts came bounding back to him, torn, incised, scratched, covered in clinging ivy and snagging briar. They lay panting at his feet, staring at him hungrily for a while before busying themselves with tearing the thorns from their flesh, teasing the creeper from their bodies, jaw-working furiously to rid themselves of these natural pests.

  “Well done,” Shaper whispered to each of them. “You got rid of her hideous inventions. Well done. Hers are too old. My new ones are stronger. Well done, my beasts. My star-fashioned beasts.”

  Each in turn glanced at him affectionately before returning to its grooming.

  Later, Shaper returned to the cave, his guardians snuffling and snarling their way behind him, scavenging for a little wild food—a memory of the wild, a mere illusion of wildness in their wood-and-metal bodies—before they returned to their stations. Shaper had made them well. In their quiet moments, away from their duties, they dreamed of the life in whose image they had been constructed.