The Iron Grail

by Robert Holdstock

  Although I write many centuries later, I remember distinctly entertaining that particular train of thought as Medea led me back to the riverside and caves of our childhood. And she herself, what role for her? At the time I remember thinking that she was the spirit of Sinisalo, that eternal child that protects children.

  She had dedicated her life, after Jason, to just that effort, after all.

  We came to the river. The caves in the cliffs were protected from the elements by thick skins slung from holes painstakingly drilled through the overhanging rock. I could smell cooking, and the putrid odour of hides being tanned. I heard distant laughter, the angry shouting of a woman, the squealing of a piglet, the syncopated beat of several skin drums. All of these were the haunting sounds of the past, recreated from memory, almost real but elusive.

  Laughing, excited, she led the way from cave to cave. ‘Oh, Merlin, this is just as I remember it! Look! Here’s where the animals were skinned and paunched. Here’s where that old man carved the shapes on bone and antler, all the amulets we took away with us!’

  She plunged into one cave, squealing with fondly remembered recognition. ‘My dolls! My dolls!’

  I followed her into the gloom. Furs and skins had been fixed to the cold walls of the cavernous space; the floor was deep with rushes and straw, furs on the top for sitting. A pile of bearskins marked her bed; there were four beds in the area, and three small wooden dolls, funny painted faces, arms made from thin, flexible withies, were sitting on the pillow.

  Medea picked up each of them and kissed it, then placed it down again. She muttered words over them, moving her body so that I couldn’t see exactly what she was doing to these scruffy little puppets.

  ‘You slept there,’ she said, pointing to the deepest part of the cave.

  I’d already seen the pile of grasses, the goat’s-skin cover, the bare rock wall sloping over the bed, the faint red marks of imaginary creatures that I’d finger-painted over the years, practising the summoning art. How strange those animals looked, how unreal. Had I managed to summon such beasts, the valley would have been in greater danger than from a stampede of wild horses along the shallow river.

  This was a cold place, coldly recalled; there was the flesh of reality here, but the gnawing sense of dream. I was uncomfortable and left this reflection of my childhood home, following the woman who had been my friend and torment in those tender years.

  Medea and I sat by the water for a long time. She reached for my hand, held it tightly, tears in her eyes.

  ‘So long ago. How far we’ve come. How sad it is to be so far from home.’

  I found her sudden melancholy upsetting, perhaps because I didn’t share it.

  I said to her: ‘Until I came to this sea-girdled land, with Urtha and Jason, I had forgotten everything of this time in my life. When so many friends come and go in what seems to be the blink of an eye, there seems to be no point in living for anything but the next adventure.’

  ‘I thought the same,’ she said. ‘Until Colchis. When my path took me through Colchis, generations before it was the great city that you remember from the raid in Argo, I realised I had found a second home. Everything in the signs and in the spirit world told me that I would one day be happy there, and when the city grew, and when the king Aeëtes came of age, grew older than me, and adopted me as his daughter, for a while I was in paradise. I was Priestess of the Ram. I’d been the priestess of many things in my time. A python, a bull, an eagle. I knew what to do.’ She laughed. ‘I killed and burned a lot of rams. The stink of charred mutton still haunts me! Then Jason came and everything I had hoped for in a woman’s life happened in a brief, startling, wonderful few days. Have you ever felt love, Merlin?’

  ‘I’ve loved and indulged my way through ten thousand years. In and among the adventuring. I rather like it.’

  ‘True love, I mean.’

  ‘Only for you, you tell me; and even that seems far away.’

  Why did I lie?

  ‘Our love was designed,’ she said soothingly, kissing my hand as she spoke, still distracted by her memories. ‘We were made to love each other before we were parted from each other. Inasmuch as we live almost for ever, we are immortal. But mortal love? That man, that Jason. So different from the adventurers who sailed the seas and roamed the lands. He is touched by the gods, by something deeper than an ordinary human soul. So when I loved him, I loved him with fire. And when he betrayed me, I hated him with fury. I still do. He broke my heart. I could have killed him. I decided to steal his most precious loves: his sons. And I did it very well indeed, I think you’ll agree. But then, they were my most precious loves as well.’

  She seemed so calm as she talked about it. Previously, in the underworld, on our way to Greek Land, she had raged at me. Spite and spittle, like a viper’s venom, had blinded me as she’d condemned me for being Jason’s friend.

  This was a more reasonable Medea, a reflective and saddened woman.

  I took a chance and addressed the subject that divided us.

  ‘After all this time, isn’t it possible to forgive a man who, as we both agree, is both strong and weak, a mortal man? Even if he is a “warped man”? Why not let him find Little Dreamer? He will die shortly. Kinos will live on, but not for ever. You will outlive your sons. Your own future is as empty of children as Jason’s has been for seven hundred years.’

  Too late I remembered that Medea too had lived in isolation over seven centuries, and in greater pain than Jason.

  I braced myself for Fierce Eyes’ fury, but she rolled on to me, pressed a finger to my lips and whispered, ‘I’ll think about it. There’s time enough to think about it. For the moment, do you remember this?’

  I hadn’t. Struggling to release myself from her painful, pleasurable grip, we rolled into the water and came up spluttering and laughing.

  I loved this place. The sun filled the narrow gorge for most of the day. Flights of birds settled in the trees, on the water, and we snared them, creating ceremonies of sacrifice with each small carcass that we plucked and spitted, roasted over a small fire. We invented strange gods and stranger rituals. The world seemed unreal; the days were magic in that sense which indicates a state of existence almost unbelievable in its softness, its fruitfulness, its simple pleasures.

  Medea was adept at finding fruits, roots and herbs. I set lures for fish and hunted the woods. We explored the hidden parts of this hinterland, and sometimes climbed to the high cliffs and stared at the mist-laden mountains at the heart of the Realm of Shadow Heroes.

  There was an ocean there, Medea told me, and islands of every description, few of them habitable. How she knew this I didn’t ask.

  ‘And Little Dreamer is secreted away among them,’ I suggested.

  She looked at me with a half-smile. ‘Little Dreamer has built his own home. He turned out to be very good at building homes. It’s well defended, though he’s always vulnerable.’

  She would say no more to me on the subject.

  Those few days were idyllic. It had been a long time since I had laughed so much. The stews that Medea created were strange and wonderful. A little touch of this, a little taste of that. It hardly mattered. I saw only the young woman in the old flesh, felt forgotten pleasure in the renewed pursuit of satisfaction.

  All I failed in was the fishing. I could never lure one of the plump, silvery creatures that grazed so calmly at the surface on insects and weed. They would not jump into my trap.

  I could have made them do so, of course, but that would have been against the spirit of this reconciliation with my childhood friend; my lover; my new ally.

  One evening as we lay lazily by the river, she suddenly straddled my body, pressing her hands down on my shoulders. Her gaze was earnest.

  ‘If I promise to let Jason see his son … will you promise to keep the man as far away from me as is humanly possible? Merlinly possible?’ she added with a little laugh.

  The question puzzled me. ‘Of course. It’s not you he w
ants, it’s Kinos.’

  ‘He’d like my head on his spear.’

  ‘Mine too. But to see his son again, if that were possible…’

  ‘Everything is possible,’ she said cryptically. ‘But I must have assurances.’

  ‘To the extent that I can reassure you, then I reassure you! The man hasn’t long to live anyway. He must be fifty if he’s a day. I give him ten years at the most.’

  ‘He’s touched by the gods,’ Medea whispered, frowning. ‘I’d put nothing past his gods. Hera loved him. Bitch! If she’s still in the underworld, she can yank out his twine, stretch him for centuries.’

  ‘His gods played games with fate; they were tricky, always sparring among themselves. Heracles apart, I’ve never known them grant extra mortality to their children. “Children” is how they saw the people of Greek Land.’

  Medea laughed. ‘I know. I spent years among them remember?’

  She gave me a quick kiss, and with the words, ‘I could stay here a thousand years, but there are things to do,’ she stood and disappeared down the valley.

  I too could have stayed there a thousand years. This was sublimely lazy living. Back at Taurovinda, the tasks of rebuilding and regenerating the clan would be proceeding apace. Jason was still far away, struggling through the complex of rivers that wound through Alba, searching for the heartland where he believed his son to be hidden.

  There was certainly time to relax with Medea.

  Over the next few days, however, the rajathuks visited me in a disturbing way. I was hunting, for example, when the giant hound Cunhaval leapt upon me from the cover of an ash grove, pinning me to the ground, snarling as it tried to bite my throat. I was still carrying Urtha’s spear, and wedged the weapon between the animal’s jaws. It left deep bite marks. The eyes in the creature were insensate and red. I was terrified for a moment, but as I went to open up my charms, to despatch it with finality, it drew back, still growling. I used the spear to whack its haunches, but it followed me for the rest of the day, snarling at me from the cover of the wood.

  One midnight, I woke to find Falkenna on my chest, wings spread, curved beak pecking at my flesh. It flew up to the moon as I woke and struck at it, and Medea put soothing lotions on the gashes in my body.

  The encounter had been dreamlike, disturbing. Again, as with the hound, I felt I was being told something.

  Moondream came to me in my sleep. She was voluptuous, naked, her face half in moonglow, half in moondark, shining, tilted eyes watching me with concern.

  ‘Wake up, wake up,’ she whispered, leaning to kiss me. I reached for her, held her plump breasts, felt her tongue on my mouth. ‘Merlin, dear Merlin, it’s time to wake. Wake up now.’

  ‘Lie down on me.’

  ‘Wake up. Look around you. That’s all I have to say.’

  ‘Don’t go!’ I urged the dream spirit, but with a final embrace she returned to the river, sank down into the midnight water and drifted, half bright, half shadow, away to the east.

  The next day I asked Medea if she too had been visited and plagued by the rajathuks.

  ‘No,’ she said simply, then looked at me thoughtfully. She pushed me down where I sat, rolled on to me and said, ‘I have a question.’

  ‘Ask away.’

  ‘If I promise to let Jason see his son, will you promise to keep him as far away from me as is humanly possible?’

  The question took me by surprise. I remember wondering if she was drunk, or half asleep.

  ‘You know I will. I’ve already said I will. We’ve had this conversation before.’

  She reared up above me, looking startled. Her eyes hardened, then went vague. The grip of her hands on my shoulders weakened. I could see the sky through her pale face. She became insubstantial.

  Wake up! Wake up! Moondream’s ghostly words came back to haunt me.

  When I shook Medea from my lap, there was nothing to shake. The illusion dissipated like mist in hot summer air.

  I focused my inner sight and almost cried out with shock. There was no sunlight, only a dank day, a cool drizzle making the rocks glisten. The caves were gaping mouths; inside, nothing but the ledges that had been formed to take the sleepers. No dolls, no leather, no furs, nothing to enhance memory. The river was low, weed-covered and sluggish. The grass on its bank was flattened where a single body had lain and dreamed; there was no sign of a second shape.

  I had been alone. Tricked. Seduced into spending time in this backwoods. How much time, I wondered, and when I let my inner sight find out the truth I felt both foolish and incensed.

  A whole season! Twenty times as long as I’d believed I’d been here. In the meantime, Urtha would have been giving me up for dead or as a deserter, and Jason was coming closer, driven by desire, defying death.

  What Medea had been doing was anybody’s guess.

  I felt sick in my stomach and sick at heart. I ran back towards the river that separated Ghostland from Urtha’s realm. I couldn’t help thinking of cunning Odysseus, hero of the war against the Trojans, a man who’d worn his wits like armour yet who had been delayed from returning home by the beautiful Calypso, lulled into a false sense of ease and security, unaware of the rampant passage of time.

  How could I have let this happen? How, having once listened firsthand to that brave man’s tale of woe, could I have failed to remember his advice: to always strap on the battle-harness of wile and guile when facing an enemy who smiles and offers peace?

  And when—and this was the question that dogged me, snarling, like Cunhaval—when had the truth ended and the lie begun? Her compromise on Jason? Her passion for me? Our rediscovered fondness for each other? Trickey or truth? I’m sure I screamed out loud as I ran back towards Argo’s small spirit, waiting for me in the shade of willows at the water’s edge

  Medea!

  From loving her, I was now terrified of her. She had eaten me, chewed me up, laughing, no doubt, as she’d spat me out into the scummy river, a fool, seduced by need and memory.

  If I had seen her at that moment, Urtha’s spear would have flown through her breast with my throw and passed on down the valley.

  I fairly raced to the Winding One, Nantosuelta, calling for my little shade of Argo as I ran. A biting wind blew up, below looming grey clouds. There was rain in the air, and the skies wheeled with flocks of dark birds.

  Then her voice whispered to me: Stay back from the river. There is danger at the river. Stay back.

  Was this another trick? I kept running, weaving through the windlashed woodland. Again, her voice whispered: Be careful. Danger is closer than you think.

  I had to believe that this was no trick, but my friend urgently warning me off. I slowed my pace and cautiously approached the enclosed meadow where the children had played. The grass in the meadow had grown high. On the other side, the narrow defile that led towards the river was murmuring with the sound of voices.

  I drew back into the cover of a rock overhang. The voices grew louder, then abruptly fell silent. Whoever was approaching had seen the open space and stopped talking.

  A few moments later three figures emerged from the defile, spreading out swiftly and crouching down, half concealed below the high grass.

  ‘This is the place,’ a woman’s voice said, her accent strong. ‘This is the place I came to in my dream. But it’s abandoned. No one has been here for years.’

  ‘I don’t trust it,’ a man replied gruffly. ‘Rubobostes! Bring the others.’

  Five more figures slipped into the open, crouching down, light catching their blades and the decorations on their oval shields. Three were from among the group of grim demeanour that I had glimpsed as Argo had reached on the coast of Alba.

  Dark-haired, big-limbed Rubobostes towered above the grass, his rough eyes scouring the field for danger. I had assumed no mortal man could enter even the hinterland, so either I was wrong, or Rubobostes was indeed Otherworldly, a part of myth, as I had long suspected.

  ‘This is the place,’ the young
woman repeated. I sensed the way she probed the glade; she was suspicious; she sensed danger; but she could not identify the source of her concern.

  Ah, Niiv! So much to learn despite the fact that she had used her gifts for enchantment to excess and with relish.

  I had hidden myself from her the moment I’d recognised her, cowled and caped though she was, her hair now black, her face striped with disguising mud. She wouldn’t spot me, and it took very little effort to divert her attention.

  Jason, mortal man, touched by the gods, was another matter. He wasn’t looking for me; but his eyes saw beyond simple defences, even though he often failed to recognise what he was seeing. He was a warrior, a mercenary, and his wits were so sharp that he could outwit charm itself, as long as he didn’t think too hard about what he was doing. I might be transparent to him, though it would take him moments to recog-nise me.

  ‘There is nothing here. Just grass and memories,’ Niiv whispered to Jason.

  ‘Are you sure?’ the cautious man asked.

  ‘I hear echoes of a raid; I hear screams and sorrow; this all happened a long time ago.’

  Slowly, the argonauts rose to their feet, shields still to the fore, swords held behind their backs ready for a quick strike. Then they began to approach me, moving through the grass silently, spreading out in a line. Niiv seemed to be watching the sky. Jason seemed focused on my concealing rock. Rubobostes was frowning, glancing left and right, unnerved by something that not even I could see.

  They rose out of the grass like a sudden flight of birds, ten or so armoured men, all on horseback, the animals kicking the air as they struggled from their hiding places. They seemed to emerge from the earth itself. The argonauts shouted with one voice, raising shields, bringing swords to the front. Niiv fled back towards the defile. Rubobostes ran forward to stand side by side with Jason as the Ghostlanders rode down on their prey.

  Their helmets were high-crested, copper-tinged, the faces blank. The riders were all bare-armed, chests and backs protected with leather battle-harness, waist protected by brightly coloured tunic, shins with strips of leather as greaves. They carried thin, wide-bladed stabbing spears.