The Iron Grail

by Robert Holdstock

  A helmet-masked statue of Pallas Athena, protector of cities, stood in a niche at the side of the room, cool eyes regarding the wide table on which a model of the island was displayed, the palace central, on its hill, the five wide beaches that surrounded it, in their inlets, covered with model ships and tents, and small wooden figures representing the besieging armies. Only one beach was ‘alive’ at this moment, the rest were untidy and abandoned. I noticed that a small model of Argo was set out at sea from one of these abandoned shores.

  Life-sized, motionless bronze figures in full armour stooped to stare at the map of the city. Proud Kinos, helmet still held below his left arm, walked around the group, introducing them as if they were alive. ‘This is Aeneas, a very reckless man, but he is destined for great things. This is Pandarus, and this Polydamus. Here Paris, a wily general, and a good shot with a bow. You’ll recognise Hector. When Hector’s blood is up, there’s no stopping him. Gentlemen: Antiokus, a wanderer, an enchanter, my father’s friend, an adventurer and a guest in my house.’

  The perfect brazen forms, these echoes of Trojan champions, rippled with the yellow light from the shafting, illusory walls. Their eyes, narrow and thoughtful, remained on the game strategy spread out before them.

  Kinos waved a hand towards the goddess. ‘Pallas Athena. She watches over all of this. She protects cities and armies. No matter how I try to make her face, she is always masked! But watch her eyes, Antiokus. She watches and listens. This is my war room. This is where I planned the invasion of a part of Ghostland that had been stolen from us in the past. This is where I united the Dead and the Unborn into an army that could pass across to the living world.’

  He was waiting for a word from me, some expression of wonder or approving disbelief. But I had no time for games. ‘Why,’ I asked him, ‘have you, an Achaean, a Greeklander, made effigies of the Trojans as your commanders? These men were your enemies!’

  He seemed confused by the question. ‘It’s how we used to play the siege, my brother and I, as children. You above all should remember! You often took part. I was wild-speared Hector, or watchful Paris—Thesokorus played hot-tempered Achilles, or wily Odysseus. The fourth courtyard of our palace was turned into Troy, and sometimes it fell and sometimes it prevailed. Everything was drawn from my father’s wonderful stories. And we played the siege game under my mother’s watchful eye. That’s how we got our names, Antiokus. My brother was reckless—“always jumping over the bull”. I was thoughtful; my dreaming could be my constant companion as I waited for the war to begin.’

  And then he had found his own war, a true war: the reclamation of the shadow fortress of Taurovinda, isolated from Ghostland when the winding river had changed its course.

  ‘Yes,’ he said when I suggested this to him. ‘It was something I discovered that the Dead of this place wanted. They are furious and frustrated at the loss of their land. It had—has—a special significance for them. I don’t understand this Otherworld. The Dead wanted their territory back; I had reckoned without the Unborn. To them, Taurovinda is a place of kings in the world of the living. They see it as their inheritance. They soon deserted me. At the siege, if you remember. That ship—Argo, unmistakable! She sang to me, songs of the past. I was shocked and melancholy. I had to leave the battle. And she talked to the leaders of the Unborn. She gave them the resolve to turn against us. And now, they wait for me, down below.’

  His moment’s melancholy quickly passed. He brightened, pointed to the active beach. ‘I’ll show you. Come with me. The best room is yet to come,’ he added in an alluring tone of voice.

  We marched along a passage which reminded me of the approach to Medea’s private sanctuary, where she had taken her children and pretended to kill them. It takes a great deal to overawe me, but the bronze, barred gates he had created, a perfect replica of those which separated the sanctuary from the corridor, were astonishing. They stretched high above us, shining in the sunlight from the openings in the roof. The intricate details of animals and fighting men, ships at sea and chariots charging, flowed as if alive, just as in his ‘war room’. The gates opened at his approach and we stepped out over an arching ramp, made of the same highly polished marble, carved with steps to help us keep our grip, and just as well. The space over which this ramp passed was depthless, a great plunging chasm, glinting with light even in unfathomable deep. Booming and moaning sounds rose ponderously from the void. After a moment I realised that it was the distant, rumbling echo of the sea.

  Kinos marched over the bridge, helmet tucked under his arm, his backward glances to me full of pride and pleasure at my astonishment and curiosity.

  ‘This was here before I came,’ he said as he walked, pointing to the shaft. ‘I built the palace around it. Stronger hands than mine brought this bridge and the void into existence. Gods, I expect. This is a work of great power. It helped me build the palace. Below us is a sea, but no sea you can ever imagine. I’ve seen it once, reflected in a shield in a deep sanctuary. And there are places where it speaks through the earth. The creatures that swim in it are monstrous. Or wonderful?’ He glanced back again. ‘I suppose it depends on how you look at them.’

  The boy who could dream for all of Greek Land.

  I remembered Jason’s words, angrily spoken when he challenged me in the dark, dank confines of Taurovinda, in Urtha’s royal house.

  Kinos had certainly been busy with that skill.

  And yet he had made nothing.

  Ahead of us now rose a second set of gates, not bronze this time, but iron, encrusted with rust. They stood open for us and inside Kinos showed me the shrine and the tomb he had created for his parents.

  Two effigies, hand in hand, loomed over us, looking down to where we stood: Jason and Medea, benign of face, dressed for comfort not war, the Colchean enchantress shown without the heavy veils and robes that had usually adorned her, but in a simple dress, draped with herbs and a necklace of the small dishes she used to measure out her powders. Jason was as Kinos would have remembered him from his childhood: still youthful in face and eye, lightly bearded, strong-limbed, a circlet holding back his hair.

  They were also made of iron. As with the gates, corrosion was spreading like dried blood across the once bright sheen. I remembered how blood had drenched Medea when she had mimed the slaughter of her sons. There had been such hatred in that act, not for the boys but for the helpless man who had watched, barred by the gates to the sanctuary.

  Kinos had given the effigies of his parents the happiness that had been denied them by his father’s betrayal. The rust on the figures spoke volumes: the corruption of love; the corrosion of hope.

  But Kinos said, ‘I like this metal. Iron. I discovered it here. It’s stronger than bronze. This tarnishing, the colour change, seems to bring them alive.’

  Indeed. He had been right. Perhaps it was how you looked at things. This was his iron grail.

  Not three islands, then, but one—wicker, stone and iron. An island of three brothers—Munda’s dream—but all the same man. The tangled web of Time was a powerful snare in this Otherworld.

  He stood proudly before the statues, staring up at them. ‘I miss them so much, Antiokus. You can have no idea. I am happy here; and sad at the same time. Sometimes when I stand here I feel encouraged; sometimes I feel despair. The statues are the two sides of a door, and when they open, and I walk beyond them,’ he looked at me warningly, repeating, ‘when they open and I walk beyond them, I am a different man. I have to be. Be on your guard, Antiokus. A warped man waits on the wide beach below, where the fighting is furious.’

  He reached up to touch the statue of Medea. ‘Here at least I can find a little peace. I remember running through the palace with my mother, a game I thought, a game of pursuit, my father chasing us with other men, my first taste of training for the field of battle, for the life of adventure that lay ahead. I had heard my father’s stories. I couldn’t wait. And suddenly, I woke one morning to find myself a stranger in this strange land.
All I had was memory. All I could do was dream those stories. I was sustained by them. I still am. That man, Jason, will find me. There will be reconciliation and renewal. Will my brother be with him? I have no way of telling. My mother? Though it sounds strange, Antiokus, I feel she has been watching over me all these years. Sometimes I wake to find tears on my cheeks, too fresh to be my own.’

  He turned back to me, helmet held under his left arm, right hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword. He hesitated for a moment, then said quietly: ‘Yes, I am truly loved and guarded; my fragile life is not discarded; eternity shapes the way we breathe; eternity shapes the way we leave…’

  Though he spoke the words, watching me with glistening eyes, I recognised the song. Medea’s mourning song; I had often heard it, though I had never been privy to the various deaths which were being mourned, inside her walls, inside the private part of the palace she had shared with Jason until his betrayal of her.

  But Kinos was not speaking the words as a funeral dirge. To him they were the straw of life and hope to which he clung. His toys were not enough.

  I missed Taurovinda very much at that moment, the muddy, bustling, noisy town behind its high walls, where life and pleasure, anger and procreation continued apace, despite the despoliation and desolation that had dealt it such a blow. Here was a citadel of pristine beauty, exquisite stone, shining halls, vast and empty save for toys, toys made from a mind, and for a man, made desolate by solitude.

  The stuff of dreams.

  How could Medea, the boy’s protecting mother, have let her son come to be so mad?

  * * *

  ‘I have one thing more for you,’ Kinos said at last. His spirits had lifted, he held the helmet by its straps, altogether more relaxed. When he smiled, he bore a striking resemblance to his father, though Jason at his age had not had a face so patterned with half-healed wounds.

  He led the way to the side of the sanctuary, pushing open a small iron door and inviting me to precede him into the pleasant water garden beyond. The garden was long, lined by olives and pines. A narrow stream of azure blue flowed slowly from a temple at the far end to a shallow fall where we stood; it was tranquil and clean, bright as blue crystal. The water splashed gently.

  A model ship, no longer than my sword, was being rowed towards us, following the sluggish flow of the ornamental lake. Kinos led me to a small mooring place on the marble edge of the water and the ship turned to approach us. Six tiny figures, fashioned in bronze, heaved on the oars.

  The ship was Argo; everything about it told me so, from the look in the bow-eyes to the smiling figurehead of Athena, rising high on its stern.

  The metal argonauts shipped oars as the vessel nosed to the intricately modelled quayside, and one of them—a perfect image of Tisaminas—leapt to the ‘shore’. He tethered the vessel. The other five figures threw down a ramp and scurried to dry land. I recognised them all. Hylas even waved at me. Atalanta fussed with her minute bow.

  Kinos said, ‘You’ll need to carry them securely. Take out your sword and hide them in the sheath. You’ll need to carry the sword anyway, when we go beyond the iron shrine.’

  I did as he suggested. I knew what he was giving me. The six bronze kolossoi hauled themselves up the leather stitching and slid down into the oiled and tarnished gloom where the blade had rested.

  ‘The kolossoi are inside them,’ Little Dreamer added. ‘I made the armour out of bronze because it appealed to me, and because it will help protect them as they find their owners on the beach. If they’ve survived.’

  By ‘armour’, he meant the figurines themselves.

  ‘Where did you find them? The kolossoi?’

  ‘The girl brought them. The chieftain’s daughter. I didn’t know what they were, at first. Kolossoi are very strange; each one is different. They had been hidden by Argo, that proud old ship, in the place of the exiles. They told me themselves. I used to play there with the chieftain’s children. I could wrestle Kymon into the ground. I was very fond of Munda. But the women who watched over the children chased me away when they saw me. I was a different sort of exile.’

  ‘I saw the Father Calling Place you made with each of them. Little caves with little dreams.’

  ‘The girl went back there when I sent for her. She was only half aware of what was happening to her—a game, she thought. I made her think it was a game. She went back to the place of exiles and found the kolossoi. She picked them up without knowing what they were and brought them here.’

  ‘Where is Munda now?’

  His look was hard; his look was disappointed. ‘Asleep,’ he said, looking down at me. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I rose to my feet, tilting the scabbard of my sword carefully. ‘Asleep?’

  ‘You were close enough to hear her breathing. I remember how you stole the small dolls she’d made, those manikins. Wicker and straw. On the side of this island where you first came ashore alone. I liked to see her make them. I liked to watch her play. That’s why I sent for her, to keep me company.’

  ‘And now she sleeps.’

  ‘Until she wakes. Among the briar rose. I was sorry for what I’d done. I had no business stealing the child. But I was lonely. I wanted someone to play with. Don’t forget: I was very young, and very lost.’

  The way he spoke, stiffly, only occasionally meeting my gaze, suggested this was something he needed to talk about, in search, perhaps, of absolution. ‘When two strange men, in the cloaks of wolves, appeared on the island, claiming to know Kymon and Munda, I showed them how to cross the river. I sent them to fetch the girl. I was too young to know better, Antiokus. They said they’d seen my father, but that’s not possible.’

  ‘Your father. Jason. He’s on the beach at this very moment. You know so much. You surely know that!’

  ‘That is not my father on the beach,’ Kinos replied coldly. ‘He is not the one. My father would never have played with life and lives like that man on the beach. That man on the beach steals lives. You have six lives in your scabbard. Return them.’

  The anger in his voice allowed no argument. He was so quick to deny the possibility of truth. It was as if he couldn’t even bear to think of his father being close. Perhaps the man on the ship did not fit the memory of the man. Perhaps memory was all that mattered.

  I asked quietly, ‘And Munda?’

  ‘The girl? As I said, you were close enough to hear her breathing. Close enough to hear her breathing.’

  And with that he walked away, back to the iron shrine, his last and most desperate place of calling, waving a hand to me, summoning me to follow.

  He closed the small door. We again faced the rusting iron statues of his parents. And again he said, ‘When we go through, go away from me. Please, Antiokus. You were a friend to me when I was a child—I loved to have your company. To lose you in the way I did was also very difficult. It has been wonderful to find you again. Goodbye, Antiokus. Don’t judge me only by my dreams.’

  The iron figures split apart. Sunlight spilled from a cloudless sky. A chariot thundered up to the exit and Kinos climbed into the car. Below us, on the wide beach, a battle was raging.

  The air was full of screaming.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  And yet to yield

  On the narrow plain below the steep slopes of the citadel, bordering the silver gleam of the ocean, two armies were drawn up facing each other, chariots, horsemen, men on foot, all striking their shields with their swords, all restless below the billowing banners caught in the strong wind from the sea. The horses were nervous, the charioteers struggling to hold position. I could see at once that Kinos drove down among the forces of the Dead. The attacking army—five hundred strong, I estimated—was a legion of the Unborn.

  The clamour rose as Kinos was driven along the ranks, his sword held high, his hair streaming from below his gleaming helmet.

  He was Hector. This was his Troy. He had created the great siege from the stories his father had told him. He was living a dream
in the world of the Dead. He was truly mad.

  I had hardly had time to take in the vision below me when the Dead began their attacking run, chariots to the fore, horsemen spreading out to the flanks, squadrons of spearmen marching in columns behind. The Unborn, spread out, remained on their ground, ready to receive the charge. I could see tall men in rich armour, riding huge horses. I recognised Pendragon as one of them, but a moment later the flash of gold distracted me.

  As the two armies met with the din of metal on metal and that sustained gull-scream of fury, so a golden-sided chariot was whipped up the winding path to the ramparts, a young man bent low over the reins, urging the white horses to take the slope, his companion, stripped to the waist, hair streaming, holding firmly to the rails, a short spear held defensively. He was staring up at the ramparts, and when he saw me he grinned, raising the spear in salute.

  The Cymbrii! The sons of the great god Llew, Conan and Gwyrion. I had thought them long since strangled and deposited in the cold earth by their angry father. But here they were, approaching me.

  Conan drew on the reins so hard that Gwyrion was thrown from the car, and for a moment he was furious with his brother. The horses steamed in the bright air, the dust settling around them. This chariot was magnificent, gold leaf on the wicker sides, and iron rims on the perfect wheels.

  ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ Conan exclaimed as he saw my admiring glances.

  ‘Your father’s?’

  The two youths burst out laughing, Gwyrion dabbing at his bleeding nose with his finger. ‘By the time he notices it’s missing, we’ll have it back. He sleeps so much these days, he’s hardly aware of the world around him.’

  ‘I thought he was going to punish you!’

  ‘He did,’ said Conan. ‘But the twenty years is up. When he let us out, it was as if Time had stood still. Have we aged?’