The Broken Kings

by Robert Holdstock

  Talienze! So that had been his function.… Possessed by Shaper without his awareness.

  “—I knew, then, that I had the same range of strengths, but only in a very small measure.”

  “He would not have been able to bring back new discs. Your stolen spirit, Talienze. You know that in your heart—or in the space where your heart should be. You know the fact.”

  There was silence again. “Raptor is still in the Middle Realm.”

  “There’s no Middle Realm. It exists only because you desire it to. You created it just as you created the discs, flying down to your mountainside, with their gibberish and those facts among the markings that you longed to know and have confirmed.”

  Something struck one of the shields, sending it crashing to the floor and spinning even as the striking object itself spun around it. A second flying disc passed so close to me that I had to bend with a swiftness that my body hated. I was feeling old. This one also struck a shield, fell at my feet and I picked it up. It was hot and inscribed with patterns and symbols.

  I could feel Shaper’s confusion, as tangible as sweat.

  “You see?” he said uncertainly. “Even here the boy can reach me.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because the origin of those discs was not from me.”

  “No. It was from me.”

  It was not an easy charm, not so easy as animal possession, because it involved metal. But it could be done, and Daidalos had been doing it for years—years in the past, that is. That was a strong talent.

  “The mistake you made,” I said to him quietly, “was not that you strove too hard for the impossible, but that you failed to realise that you were born too soon.

  “When you were desperate to explore a place that may or may not exist, and sent your sons and daughters to their deaths, you betrayed your own mind. You started to draw on the unnatural. The unnatural exists, but it exists to keep the natural under control. The moment you sent Raptor to your fabled Middle Realm, you were lost. Only the unnatural could have got him there. You betrayed your intellect.

  “You forgot, or you denied, that you were a man born too soon to see his dreams come true.”

  “All of us can face that particular reality.”

  “I agree.”

  “Some of us fight against it.”

  “To what end?”

  “The triumph that comes with glimpsing the unknown.”

  “A life, the lives of all you love, are worth a glimpse?”

  “You tell me. You’re the man who walks with all of Time as his lover, hanging on to her every word, soothing her and stroking her. A boat gently drifting. Argo was your cradle and your shroud. I went beyond the boundaries!”

  “You failed.”

  “I tried! I sent my life to the boundaries. Two beautiful sons, three beautiful daughters ready to follow them. I sacrificed life for understanding. Isn’t that the whole reason that we are given the power of imagination?”

  “Imagination is to be used to envision. You used it to create false understanding. You dreamed beyond the boundaries. Many of us do. Nothing wrong with that. How much we’d like to achieve an understanding of the incomprehensible. We have to accept that all we can put in place is a small part of future time, a small addition, a little help for the time when you don’t have to stitch wings into sons to make them fly.

  “You shaped your own world of dreams for yourself, Daidalos. You are an adept at shaping, there’s no denying it.”

  “You shaped me first. Yours was the life spark.”

  “You used it well. Until Crete.”

  “I’ve used it again to bring this river back to her ancient bed.”

  “But she won’t let you cross over.”

  “She will. Just as soon as I’ve found the other half of this.” Again, the flash of gold. “Argo has told me that it lies close to the other side of the river, where the king’s son dropped it.”

  Now he showed himself again, a shadow, passing swiftly to the riverside door of the hostel. I followed him, but found he had vanished again, though I could sense his watching, eager presence.

  And something was happening to Nantosuelta.

  Between hostel and farther bank, the river was slowing! What had been a raging flow, scouring at the banks and the overhanging foliage, was now calming in the rising moonlight. And as the flow ebbed, so she gradually exposed the gentle slopes that led to the stone-strewn bed itself.

  How the army thundered! They surged forward, leading horses. Shield-din and voice-din sounded furious and rhythmic in the fresh night air, the blood-roar of gathering courage. Torches made a wall of fire on our side. Torches made a stream of retreat from the other.

  The bronze hounds bayed. Talosoi moved down the very edge of the water, dropping to their familiar crouch and watching and waiting.

  Argo had slipped her moorings, slipped away, prow towards us. There was a gleam in the water below her, a sun sparkle in the pale moon. A figure slithered across her side, eel-like, small and slight, dived down, surfaced, holding the lunula. The figure came aboard again lithely and Argo returned.

  The din continued. The rain of stones continued. Slingshot was returned from the scant forces of Vortingoros’s defensive army, but from behind us, no sign of Urtha or Pendragon, or the others.

  Now Daidalos appeared, a slinking form in his greying rags of clothing. He went down to the mooring place. The talosoi, those that I could see, some ten among forty, turned to watch him. The figure slipped out of Argo like an eel from its mud shelter, lithe, swift, and sure, and as she passed Daidalos, she tossed the golden fragment towards him; he caught it; Munda ran from him, ran to me, threw herself into my arms.

  “I had to do it. Trust me!”

  Daidalos held high his “heart and breath,” then looped a cord through each piece and slung them round his neck.

  Nantosuelta was now a low, slow-flowing river, through which the hordes of the Dead began to wade at chest height, leading horse, dragging chariot, each formation preceded by a squad of spearmen, lightly armed and clothed, shields held before them to repel the stone shot.

  The river was clogged with men and animals.

  And then the river surged!

  For the second time that I had witnessed, a bole of water, a great wave of destruction, poured along the course, flowing powerfully up the confining hills, throwing boulders and trees before it, coming towards us at such pace, faster than Conan’s chariot, faster than young dogs chasing a flight of game birds, it was on us in a moment. It had brought with it the great trees of another forest. Their broken trunks crushed the hostels, the talosoi, scoured the bank of the river itself. Both sides suffered. The army of the Dead was swept away still howling, away to the north. Even as ranks of them arrived to see the chaos, they seemed incapable of turning back. They lunged forward, plunged, sank, drowned, and screamed their way back to a new darkness.

  I had a feeling that the river would later turn in its flow and take them west, to where they belonged, rather than to the sea.

  I cowered in the Hostel of Shields, Munda wrapped in my arms, as if I could have protected her from any of the danger at that moment. Daidalos stood in stunned astonishment at the river-entrance, watching the destruction of his final dream.

  Argo stayed at berth, protected by some older charm, her painted eyes staring at her two once-captains. She rose on the surge, but was not dislodged by it, even when a massive tree, torn from four hundred years of life, branch-whipped the area, a lost life flailing in anger as it was borne away from its rooting place.

  Only the Hostel of Shields and its inhabitants, and Argo, survived the deluge. On our side, that is. As fast as it had come it had ceased, and the river calmed again. Munda and I stood up and stared towards where the storm had raged. The backs and skulls and raised arms of the talosoi were, for me, a grim reminder of the approach, so long ago, to Ak’Gnossos on Crete.

  Daidalos was standing, staring down at the broken lunula around h
is neck. He had imagined that this last of the five parts he had fashioned, through amazing skill and great insight, to protect his body through time, would have been the way to open the passage home, for himself and his army of forlorn mercenaries, the unquiet inhabitants of the world where there should only have been tranquillity and pleasure.

  I was not surprised. The dying are always greedy for life; why should things change later in the event? Not even the natural can control that unnatural aspiration.

  I looked down at the girl. “Talk to me. About what just happened.”

  “I went swimming again. After you’d left. The river whispered to me. I’ve often been swimming in the Winding One, despite the geis on me not to. She often whispers to me.”

  “And what did she whisper?”

  “She is protective to the dead and to the living. She is the barrier. She is the edge of two worlds. My father’s kingdom is now and always will be vulnerable, because it is half between each world, and a man like Shaper, a stranger, a dead man brought from a different world, can have a great effect on how she flows. But at the end of it all, she won’t contemplate extending her boundaries. Her task is to protect life on the other side. It was wrong to try and cross her. The man called Shaper would never have succeeded. She’d never have let him succeed.”

  She was shivering. I gave her my deerskin coat. “Where’s your brother?”

  “With my father. With my mother. Tidying things up at home. Niiv is missing you, by the way. It’s quiet now, but they are making preparations for war against the invader. Sending out the signal for recruitment. And finding our cattle, scattered everywhere. Finding our horses. Calling council to discuss the new Speakers. My father is considering a campaign to the north to recruit fresh warriors.”

  “I thought he was tired of fighting.”

  “He is, but he mustn’t show it. And a king without hostages of importance is not a strong king. He must have royal hostages to bargain with if he’s to have mercenaries, and horses.”

  I would have laughed out loud, but didn’t. “You begin to speak like the daughter of a king.”

  “And learn!” she agreed, still shivering from the river. Then she nodded towards Shaper. “What about him? When do we kill him? How? I want my lunula back, preferably blood-ripe.”

  “The lunula is his. It always was.”

  “Why?” she asked, irritated.

  “A little piece of his life, in bronze, is hidden inside it. It was stolen from him. As were his daughters. All save one. Wait for me.”

  I started to walk towards Daidalos, and then a thought occurred to me and I glanced back at Munda. “I’m pleased you think of Ullanna as your mother.”

  Munda smiled and nodded.

  “And learn,” she repeated softly.

  * * *

  I couldn’t bring myself to touch him. I walked past him, but genuinely felt a moment’s pause, a moment’s sadness. His eyes, when he turned to look at me, were filled with dismay and loss. He held the two halves of the simple ornament as if they had betrayed him.

  Perhaps they had.

  I whispered to Argo; she whispered back. I told her what I was going to do. There would come a time, recently as I write, when I would question why I did what I did next. It took so many years from me. It took so much life from me. It changed me.

  I went aboard Argo, found the Spirit of the Ship, crossed the threshold, greeted Mielikki and her lynx (in summer form) and sat down.

  I summoned one of the ten masks, the ten tutors from my childhood, the ten ways of moving through and summoning the world. I had had enough of Morndun, Death moves through the world, and Skogen, Shadow of unseen forests. I had summoned the memory of Moondream, Woman in the world, and Cunhaval, the Seeking Hound. These were far more powerful interactions with the charm that was instilled within me than just shape-shifting and occupying wrens.

  Now I wanted Sinisalo. The child in the land.

  Mielikki moved away. The air was summery, the wild grass tall, flowers abundant. Even here, in this memory of childhood when the masks had spoken to me, teaching me, even here I could feel the slight movement of Argo, my boat, on the water that flowed between two kingdoms. I summoned the past.

  —Where are you, Sinisalo?

  After silence for a while, I called again.

  —Sinisalo?

  —I’m here. You’ve been a long time walking your path. Do you have any plans to finish and come home? All the others are home. All eight of them. We’ve just welcomed your sister.

  —How was she?

  —Sad. But that will pass. She did her time in her own way. The only lazy one is you. The boy who wouldn’t bother to tie his laces. The boy who liked life too much to use his great powers of charm, enchantment, manipulation, call it what you will. You have a lot left to give. So I suppose we shall be a long time waiting for you.

  Sinisalo was cheeky. A small white face, a smiling child’s face, a flop of unruly copper-coloured hair, watching and listening with a child’s intensity.

  But this was no child, not really. Just the representation of the child in the land.

  —What do you want me to tell you? the child asked.

  —How many years will be taken from me in exchange for a year for Daidalos’s dead daughter.

  —The honey child?

  —The child killed and preserved in a crystal jar of honey, yes. Killed by a creature of the wild. Dragged here by me. To be found at this moment in the hull of this ship.

  —How many years can you spare?

  I told Sinisalo.

  —For that she can have … ten. Is that enough?

  —I can’t afford much more. That will have to do.

  —Well, then. We’ll see you sooner than we were expecting.

  Sinisalo laughed sweetly, waved good-bye, seemed to disappear into the long, wild grass and pink and purple flowers.

  * * *

  “I don’t know her name,” I said to Daidalos as he stood in Argo’s stern, staring at the girl, “but you have her for a while, and I suggest you disentangle her from the wings.”

  Yes, though I forget her name, now, he cried out her name, and she cried out to him, and in the shadow of the Hostel of the Shields, on the quiet river, they embraced. I noticed how his hands stroked the clumsy wings and their awful struts and straps, the tendons that linked a child to a man’s madness, a daughter to a father’s misplaced love; perhaps, at the end of it, just a tie that needed to be broken.

  And they had ten years to enjoy that separation. Together.

  Gods, I felt old, now. Even Daidalos noticed it.

  “Why did you do this? It’s taken a lot from you.”

  “Go home. On Argo. She’ll take you. I have a path to walk, but before I can do that, I have the rest of a life to live here! And I’d like to live it without the Dead howling at my backside.”

  “Why did you do this?” he asked again.

  I didn’t answer him as I left the ship. I glanced back only to see the gleam of life and joy in the child, her happy bewilderment at where she now found herself as she emerged from what terrible dream I cannot bear to think.

  It might have turned out differently if it hadn’t been for remembering that small piece of oak, shaped into that small piece of man, kissed by a child and set adrift after near disaster on that old river by the child who had wished it captaincy and long life.

  The river took the old ship in her bright new form, Jason’s Argo, passing away from me, taking Daidalos and his daughter home on wings of Ocean.

  But before she slipped away, she whispered to me.

  I didn’t know who Shaper was until he called to me from Ghostland. Everything I had done, all the betrayal, surfaced again. Thank you for helping me.

  “I hadn’t known you were feeling such pain.”

  You couldn’t have known. I kept it from you. Before you came back to Taurovinda. But every time you were on board, I felt courage. I needed you to see what had happened. I needed your strength.
r />   “It’s over now. Nothing to concern you but storm seas. And finding a crew to help you with the winds.”

  Yes. It’s over now. But you will sail in me again. You belong in me more than Jason, or any of the others. But we will all gather for the Deep.

  Across the river, men were gathering in the night, torches burning fiercely, shouts and questions and confusion as bad a din as the shield-din of earlier.

  A small hand suddenly took mine. Munda looked at me curiously. “You look a lot older in the moonlight. You’re not ill?”

  “Not ill.”

  “Good. Because there’s a man on the other side of this hostel with two white horses, a sparkling chariot, and a brother. And he says that taking us to Taurovinda will cost you nothing. His father said so. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but it’s time to go.”

  I laughed quietly as I followed her to where Conan and Gwyrion were arguing about who should hold the reins, because they needed to drive fast, since their father—from whom they’d stolen one too many chariots, but who was for the moment rather pleased with them, though was irascible and erratic of mood—was likely to find some excuse to imprison them again at the next phase of the moon, which was very close to arriving.

  And indeed, they drove as fast as a falling star, and we all arrived bruised.

  The death of vengeance is the most beautiful death of all.

  —Anonymous

  I am a part of all that I have met.

  —Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”

  CODA

  Niiv had been with the women at the well, chattering and laughing. She had spent most of the day there, something she had not done for some time.

  At dusk I was taking a breath of air, outside the King’s hall, where a council was being held. They were discussing cattle, the Coritani, and the construction of a new sanctuary at the place where, a few years ago, the Hostel of the Shields had finally crumbled into the stone-strewn riverbed, exposed again as the river had retreated, as the Winding One had wound back to old courses.