The Broken Kings

by Robert Holdstock

  Shaper returned to his chamber, his small shaping chamber close to the main cavern, and placed the disc on the polished stone surface where he worked. The phosphorescent light from the walls made the surface shine. The carved symbols in the walls of the chamber were reflected in shades of pink and green from the stone. The dark disc and its latest news drew him steadily downwards, downwards into its mysteries.

  It was then that he heard the soft echo of footsteps, deeper in the mountain, and at once realised that his cavern had been entered and was being searched.

  How could anyone have passed his guardians to get so close? What was happening? He had been taken by surprise for the second time in a day!

  He ran softly to the entrance to the cavern. Five men were prowling through the mechanisms, swords bared, shields lowered, their hard faces etched with curiosity as they studied the strange forms around them. One, the tallest and most authoritative, was spinning the rack of discs and laughing as they made their low sounds.

  These were five of the seven he had seen that morning. Not hunters at all. Adventurers. And now he realised what it was about them that distinguished them from the local people.

  From the curious way they braided their hair, from the swords and round patterned shields they carried, they were Greeklanders.

  * * *

  They had patrolled the base of the mountain for the better part of the day, adopting the movements and postures of hunters, each in turn taking the opportunity to glance up at the cave, to assess the approach and the dangers that had been laid for them.

  The path to the cave mouth was complex; Jason would have expected nothing more from the shaper of mazes. Lynceus with his sharper eyes constructed a mental map of the convoluted approach. The measure of the dangers awaiting them became obvious soon enough, when two bronze-and-cedar-wood hounds, snarling and fierce, pounded into the group, intent on savaging the intruders.

  Flame-hardened Iophestos knew about metals. He had been apprenticed in the forges of Haephestus before following a dream-call to join the Argonauts on the Quest of the Fleece. Whilst working at the forges, Haephestus’s favourite apprentice had collapsed in the heat and spilled molten bronze onto his stomach. Iophestos had scooped the deadly metal from the boy, flung it into the flames, before opening one of the water sluices, cooling the wounds on the boy and on his own hands.

  As thanks, Haephestus had made Iophestos’s hands capable of melting bronze by touch alone. The leather-skinned man now flung himself at each beast in turn and fused the gaping muzzles.

  After that it was easy to twist a sword through the wooden skin of each hound to the sapwood heart.

  Other terrors awaited the Argonauts as they ascended the mountain, but these men had vanquished the so-called harpies, those stinking reptilian flying creatures that had tormented poor, blind Phineus, thus earning the Argonauts the final directions in their Quest for the Fleece; they had defeated the army of the Dead that had sprung from King Aeetes’s “dragon’s teeth,” as they had fled from Colchis, Medea and the fleece in their possession; they had outsung the singing heads in the groves of the Hercynians, cut down the Teutonean Ig’Drasalith before those monsters could uproot, in the forests at the source of the river Daan; to these men, then, the devices of the “shaping man” seemed simple and crude, though not without a certain charm.

  Imagination had gone into their making. But they were no match for Jason and his half-human retinue, though they had delivered mortal wounds to Acastus and Meleager.

  “Just like old times,” Jason had breathed, with a smile, as he and his crew reached the rim of the cave.

  Now they prowled the Shaper’s realm, bemused and amused by the towering figures and strange mechanisms that filled the cavern. Some of these forms were designed for flying, some for walking. Shaped wood and hammered bronze abounded, but there were eyes made of many facets of crystal, in faces that had more in common with dragonflies than hounds. And half limbs, and whole limbs, and the heat from fires contained within bulbous cauldrons, narrowed at the top.

  The discs fascinated Jason. As he spun them around, they made a sound, deep and mellow, like a voice heard in a distant dream. There were racks of them. They were suspended in such a way that to spin one spun them all, and an eerie and unharmonious sound emerged for a few moments until they were still again. But in those few moments, when the cavern filled with the vibrant moaning, the mechanisms that surrounded them seemed to shudder, as if struggling for life.

  “Haephestus’s hammer! What are these things?” Tisaminas breathed nervously.

  Jason was thoughtful, examining several of the bronze plates in turn. “I don’t know. There are figures marked on them; some I recognise: men, a man walking, helmets, crests, ships, towers, constellations of stars. Others make my vision spin. I’ve never seen anything like them.”

  “They are voices from a world beyond dreams.”

  Jason turned, startled, as the words were whispered in his ear. Tisaminas and the others, too, had swung round, blades singing from sheaths, shields held before them defensively.

  “Who’s there?” Jason demanded. There was a long silence. Then the same quiet voice, speaking in clipped syllables: “The collector of those voices. You have had a rare privilege, whoever you are. You have listened to the song of a world that exists, unseen and unknown, between the earth and the heavens.”

  “Where are you?” Jason asked. “Let me see you.” His words echoed in the cavern. The Argonauts had formed a defensive circle, now, eyes lifted to the vaults, scanning every dark cranny in the rock. Again, that long, uncomfortable silence.

  “Who are you?” the voice came at last, harder now. “What are you? What are you doing here? What have you done with my creatures?”

  “What creatures?”

  “My guardians. My dogs. My hawks.”

  “They attacked us. We slaughtered them. They gave us no chance.”

  “Liar! They gave you every chance! They took a great deal of time to shape. They would have stalked you but left you alone, if you had stayed on the marked paths, on the tracks, hunting wild game. But you are not here to hunt.”

  Oh yes we are! Jason thought grimly.

  “We have company,” said Idas, pointing into the mountain, and with a rattle of arms the Argonauts turned to face the apparition.

  He was tall and lean, long-haired and hollow-cheeked. His long tunic was a vibrant mix of those colours that were always associated with this island: sea-blues, in vibrant hues, and the green of emerald, the reds of blood and sunrise. His eyes, though, were grey and hard, his brow furrowed as he scoured the features of the men opposed to him. Thin-lipped, exuding confidence and barely restrained anger, he stepped closer.

  “There is a creature on this island,” he enunciated carefully, “shaped like a woman. Dreadful. A dreadful creature. Born from the mire of the forest, mistress of all that is wild, and old, and dedicated to the dead clay below our feet. She can summon snakes and doves with a single breath. It’s one of her confusing tricks. She does what she can to destroy everything that I shape. She fails. She regards me as an abomination on the land. For my part, I try to winkle her from her stench-ridden womb in the earth. I fail in turn. We are doomed to fail, she and I. Against each other. But where she has failed, you have succeeded. You have undone whole years of work. Those hounds were precious to me. They served me. There was no need—no need at all—to have killed them. Do you even know what I’m talking about? I doubt it. Who are you? What do you want? Answer me quickly. I have hounds to shape again.”

  “My name is Jason. Son of Aeson. Servant of Athena. From Greek Land. These are some of my crew, my small army of comrades.”

  Shaper stepped closer, peering hard at the man before him. “I recognised you as Greeklanders. I didn’t recognise you as Jason. I’ve heard of you. The reasons escape me.”

  “And I’ve heard of you. Daidalos. That is your name, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I don’t recognise the way you pronounc
e it, but yes.”

  There was something about Shaper’s manner, his expression. He seemed both excited and concerned, his hard stare drawing Jason closer.

  “Why have you come here? Why have you been so determined to find me?”

  “To invite you back to Greek Land. To meet someone who has heard of you and admires you. She wishes to discuss enchantment and invention with you, matters that are beyond this simple man’s comprehension.”

  Shaper searched for the truth. “An invitation from armed men,” he said sourly.

  “Just as well we were armed,” Jason reminded him. He sheathed his sword and placed his shield on the floor. The other Argonauts did likewise.

  “Why do I know you? Why do I know you?” the gaunt figure repeated. It had become apparent to Jason that the image of Daidalos was confined within a mirror, though from where the reflection came it was impossible to tell.

  “He led us on the quest for the fleece of the Ram, the golden skin,” Idas announced proudly. “The story is already dispersing on the four winds, sung by poets, even echoed by gods.”

  Idas’s words were still echoing in the high chamber when the discs began to turn, some fast, some more slowly. The cavern was filled with mournful sound, which began to rise in volume until it was unbearable.

  The image of Shaper had gone. The man had seemed to frown, then step back into the shadows.

  Three of his Argonauts picked up their shields and withdrew quickly, running back to the entrance to this cave system. But Jason and Tisaminas stood their ground, armed again, nervously watching the mechanisms that towered over them. When Tisaminas suggested a rapid withdrawal, Jason shook his head. “Stay with me. There has to be a way into this mountain.”

  * * *

  Once again Argo shifted the scene as she dreamed, as she remembered, as she spoke to me through those dreams, showing me events that were causing her pain. How had she seen Jason and his men approaching the Shaping Chamber on the mountainside? Perhaps she had fed off Jason’s own sleepy memories as they had returned from Crete to Iolkus, the hold of the ship filled with goats, wine, booty, and a screaming, angry man.

  That man—that Shaper—had moved through the tangle of passages and shafts that he had created, and now watched Argo on the beach. To the north lay Greek Land. Behind him, the shuffling movement of a man whose determination seemed to have helped him avoid all the traps that were set in the labyrinth.

  Shaper was afraid of Jason. But now that he could see the ship on the shore, he began to relax his guard. He knew this ship. This ship was an ally and an old friend. Now he remembered more of the story he had heard, of that quest for the golden skin of the sacred ram. Jason had sailed on a ship he had rebuilt using oak from the sanctuary to Zeus at Dodona. The goddess Athena had lent her voice and eyes to the old ship.

  But to Shaper, the earlier vessel was as clear to his eyes as was the memory of his own possession of her, those few years when he himself had been her captain, and she had taken him on voyages through the night and through the underworld that he would never forget; and which had drawn his talents out to the full.

  He had known of her as Endaiae, which in the coarse tongue of this island meant, “the fearless guide.” He had stripped the screeching hag from her figurehead, after Queller had possessed her when she’d been wrecked on Queller’s shores. He had put in place a gentler guide. He had entered her spirit and built things within her that gave her greater strength, greater foreknowledge, and something she had longed for:

  He had opened her wooden memory to the earliest of times. He had turned her vague dreams into palpable memory. He had resurrected the ship after the millennia in which she had wandered the oceans and rivers, always at the whim of her captains, not all of whom had proved as worthy as she had needed.

  Their time together had been short, but it had been a turning point in his life. He had been able to tap sources of knowledge long forgotten. He had found a freedom from the oppression of the labyrinth. He had had a brief taste of those wonders that only his sons were destined to experience, the one more than the other (poor Icarus—lost, with all the possessions his father had given him); that other—Raptor—even now experiencing worlds beyond all knowing.

  He drew back from the shore now and found his way to the Shaping Chamber at Dictaea. He used the discs there to send a sound of summoning to his pursuers, and in due course Jason edged cautiously into the arena, his sharp-eyed, canny colleague behind him, both men ready for the fight.

  “Armed again? Always armed!”

  “I smell the ocean,” Jason said. “We’ve chased you for no more time than it takes to chase a horse into the hurdle. These tunnels are twisted.”

  “They are. Twisted is the very word for it. And you’re right. The ocean is here, and so is your ship. I know your ship now. I called her Endaiae. I’ve forgotten how you named her. Athena?”

  “Argo.”

  “Yes. Of course. Of course. Argo: for the master shipwright—Argos was it?—who carved and hammered Dodonian oak into her keel. He stripped out half her past and replaced it with the most powerful of Greek Land magic. She is an oracle herself now. Yes. Of course.”

  Jason was curious. He had sheathed his sword. The man with Jason—Tisaminas, was it? He had heard the name as Jason had approached—was also unarmed, eyeing the shaping chamber with great intensity. The old signs and time-maps were of most interest to him, but this might have been because they drew him, wolf to the light, much as Shaper himself had been drawn when first he had found them. This other man asked carefully, “You knew Argo? You sailed her?”

  “I rescued her,” Shaper said quietly. “She was not so magnificent then; she was sea-wrecked, sea-shattered, her paint dulled, her eyes dimmed, her sail tattered. Her decks were rotten, she was a rotting ship, her dreams now a desperate memory, her spirit bored through, like her hull, with neglect and weather. There was old wood in her, strong wood—someone had once built her with love—but the new was patchy. Careless. She had been trapped in the west of this land, possessed by Queller—the dreadful female entity—and used by her, because of something she contains.”

  “That space through time. That threshold to other worlds.”

  “Ah. You know about it.”

  “The Spirit of the Ship.”

  “The Spirit of the Ship,” Shaper echoed. “Like any threshold that has been neglected, I helped clean it up. I threw down everything that was foul, all the dark guardians that had been placed across the Spirit. Queller’s monstrous creations. I made the ship clean again. I brought back the wildwood. I brought back an older beauty. I even glimpsed her birth.”

  “Her birth?” Tisaminas queried. “A ship can be born?”

  “A ship can be built.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “A boy built the ship. Your Argo is that ship, grown older, made older, made more profound by many captains, many creators, many carpenters. Argo is old, now, and no doubt will always get older. But how fresh is her heart, I wonder?”

  “Fresh enough,” Jason said. “I had no idea that she’d had such a history. I’d welcome you aboard, Daidalos. Come aboard as a friend and as a guest. Go aboard alone, if you wish. Renew the acquaintance.”

  Shaper stepped back a little. Everything in this Greeklander’s face, in his eyes, was sincere. Still his companion looked around him, enthralled and overtly curious.

  Jason’s hands were bare, the fingers spread. He was talking about how much the old ship would love to see the old man again.

  “Her mast will burst with roses when she sees you.”

  How much he wanted to step back into her spirit. He had planted something there, hidden a device that he knew would bring her long sea life, and would take her to seas unknown. But the device had been crude, fashioned quickly, fashioned with passion and raw power; it had not been tested. Was it still in her heart?

  He longed to find out.

  But this Jason …

  His face, his eyes, belied t
he hunter in his chest. The wolf in his belly. The cat in his legs. The hawk in his cold, calculating psyche.

  This was not a man to be trusted.

  Then Jason reached to a pouch at his belt and drew out a small metal shape, a piece of bronze, bloomed with the green patina of decaying copper. Without taking his gaze from Shaper’s he said, “I’ve brought you a gift. It’s a very small thing. It may be worthless. But it’s yours if you would like it. I can see that it’s a map, and a map of this island, but the symbols mean nothing to me.”

  Shaper took the bronze. His heart pumped fast; his head felt as light as a feather. As he stared at the metal, he remembered Raptor, his lovely son Raptor. The boy had stood on the edge of a cliff, testing the new wings, using his arms to haul the struts and wires, making the great device, sewn into his body, flex and bend, catching the wind, holding the wind, stretching with the power of the breeze, then drooping and releasing the wind to its normal travel, relaxing the boy.

  In his hands he held the map his father had given him, thumbs stroking the metal, reminding himself as a blind man reads the marks in clay, how to return to earth if the fire in the Middle Realm should blight his vision.

  “Where did you find this?” Shaper asked quietly.

  “It fell to earth,” Jason said, “near Colchis, beyond the Symplegades. It was one of many objects gathered and brought to my home city of Iolkos. In Greek Land.”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “I recognise it as a map, of this country. And that it’s made of bronze. That apart, I only know that the friend who wishes to meet you thought it might be of interest to you.”

  Shaper clutched the map. He used the waxed cloth he always carried to cut through the patina of corrosion, enough to see his original markings. Yes, this was Raptor’s guide. No question about it.