Lavondyss

by Robert Holdstock

  He had been too old. His journey into Lavondyss had been too demanding. It had taken too much from him. But those several years had been good ones, even though she’d been the eyes for both of them.

  Was that the sound of horses? She struggled to sit, but failed. The wind blew the hides that covered the window. The young woman who tended the fire, and nursed the old-woman-who-was-oracle, glanced up, but was too lazy to come and help. Everyone knew that Tallis was dying. Everyone knew that the oracle was dying. Everyone was afraid.

  Thank God the pain had gone away.

  She lay back again, stared at the ceiling. She was hungry, yet not hungry; she was anxious to walk to the shrine cave, yet content to lie here. She wanted to talk, but needed silence.

  It was odd to be dying.

  Horses? It was the sound of horses. Distantly. They were struggling up the path. She could hear the drum. They always beat the drum for new arrivals.

  The young woman who was her lazy nurse began to sing. It was a familiar lament. It brought back memories of Ryhope. Tallis cried without tears, laughed without smiling, called without sound. This was familiar indeed, but she was too weak to go and smell the air.

  She had thought a great deal about Ryhope recently, memories pressing forward as if sensing her imminent death and urgent to be a part of the journey to come. She had thought especially about her father, saddened again, all these years on, by the image of him, his forlorn, hopeless figure, standing in the stream and clutching Moondream, that shard of his daughter’s life. And she had thought fondly of her mother, too, though she had realized something recently that made it almost painful to think of her mother’s silent sadness, the deep loss that must have haunted the woman through all the years that Tallis had been alive with her.

  Two blue ribbons, tied around the antler shard, hidden in the treasure trunk – blue ribbons for her dead sons.

  Two boy children (born in wartime!) who had not survived, remembered in strips of their own christening robes, blue edging tied around the lace of Tallis’s dress.

  Tallis was the youngest child – her story, of the King and his three sons, the youngest sent wildly into the Otherworld, was a reflection of her own life, known to her without her truly knowing.

  She closed her eyes, but soon opened them again as she heard the boy, the child, the pest. His name was Kyrdu. She liked him, but he was always asking questions. She would be glad when he was older. He called ‘Grandmother Tallis. Grandmother!’

  He burst in through the hides on the door, letting cold air gust across the floor and blow the flames. He approached Tallis cautiously, rose above her, peering down. His face was full of concern. He had been unhappy at the old woman’s decline. He had tried to share her pain, but he could not use the right magic.

  He tugged at her shoulder as she lay there.

  ‘I’m awake,’ she said. ‘What is it you want?’

  ‘Riders coming,’ he whispered anxiously. ‘They’re still in the canyon. Five of them.’

  They had sounded closer. Her ears had remained keen after all these years. She smiled at Kyrdu. Pain lanced her chest, squeezing tears from her eyes. The boy cradled her head, looking concerned.

  ‘It might be Harry,’ he said brightly. ‘It might be Harry at last.’

  ‘How many riders have passed through the shrine?’ Tallis whispered to him. ‘How many each year?’

  ‘Lots.’

  ‘How many have been Harry?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Exactly. I found Harry ages back, when I was just a girl. I found him in spirit. I’ve told you the story and you alone, but I didn’t expect …’ she coughed violently, and again Kyrdu cradled her, helplessly watching her. ‘I didn’t expect,’ she went on breathlessly, ‘that you would plague me with your sightings, and your keenness. You drive me mad. Go away. I’m feeling strange.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ he said as he laid her back. He brushed aside the hair from her eyes. He looked so like his father as he watched her.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Your cave. Your shrine … the oracle …’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘A girl’s voice. It called out. I looked hard, but I couldn’t see anything. But there was a girl’s voice in there. And a funny smell. It smelled sweet. And hot. Like a hot wind …’

  Tallis watched him. Her heart raced so hard that the pain came back, and with it the dizziness and the feeling of being sick. She reached out and touched the young boy’s hand. He had known winter all his life, and would know no other season. But Tallis knew what he had experienced, and she tried to smile through the shaking of her face, and the sudden sense of finishing …

  ‘Summer,’ she said. ‘You smelled summer. I remember that summer well …’

  It was Harry. It was Harry. He was coming. And the voice in the shrine cave was hers – herself as a child, listening to this very moment in the ferocious winter. Perhaps, after all, there was a way back, back to home …

  Her body strove to rise, but she failed. She drove the boy away. She sent the woman away. She lay on her bed and shook, and sweated, and tried to think the pain away. Her head felt like exploding. There was something rising in her throat and she swallowed it back. The furs were warm, but a wetter warmth slipped from her, upsetting her. Her chest seemed to rattle. She could hear the drum, the whicker of horses. She clutched at the furs, tried to keep the cold out. She stared at the roof of the hut. She counted the rushes, the slats. She tried to see each detail of the roof.

  Hurry.

  Pain and the fluttering of wings.

  Hurry!

  Breath bubbling in her throat. A darkening … was it night? The light seemed to slip away. She couldn’t feel her hands. Her feet were numb. Were these birds in the roof? Is that why everything seemed to spin?

  HARRY! HARRY!

  ‘I’m here. I’m here by you …’

  He had entered without her realizing it. She could feel warm wind on her face. His hands took hers, raised them to his lips, kissed them. Her vision was suddenly clear. He was handsome, as she had known he would be. There was no burn-scar on his face. He was armoured for war and long rides, leather-clad, fur cloaked, his hair tied back with an iron ring. He smiled broadly, his fair eyes sparkling. He was so young!

  ‘Harry …’

  ‘Tallis. You look so lovely.’

  ‘I’m an old woman.’

  ‘You’re no such thing.’ He leaned and kissed her lips. ‘It’s taken me a long time to find you.’

  ‘I was supposed to rescue you.’

  He laughed. ‘Well. That’s the way it goes. It’s my turn now. I have to get you home.’

  ‘Home is a long way,’ she said.

  Not that far. Can you walk?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Come on. Get up. There’s no point in not trying.’

  She felt the furs taken from her body. She had expected to be embarrassed by the smell of her incontinence, but her legs were suddenly strong and the air was scented with snow. She took Harry’s hand and he pulled her to her feet. He led her outside, laughing. Thick snow covered the land. They ran through it, Harry leading, tugging her along. Her old legs felt strong again. She felt the wind on her face.

  ‘Come on. Come on,’ called Harry. ‘Home isn’t that far away.’

  ‘You’re running too fast,’ she cried, knee deep in the snow. They pranced through the snow like horses, laughing as they stumbled. They ran up the rise of land, to the woods at the top. There was warm air there, and bright trees, in full leaf.

  ‘Wait!’ Tallis cried irritably. Then laughing. ‘I can’t keep up. Your legs are longer than mine.’

  Her brother tugged her, swung her round, holding her by both hands. She swung so fast she felt her feet leave the ground. She giggled. It always terrified her when he did this, but only because she imagined he would let her go. He never let her go.

  Strong against the Storm was on the hill. They ran towards it and again he lif
ted her, swinging her high and planting her firmly on the lowest branch. He stood below her, grinning.

  She sat carefully, afraid of unbalancing. ‘Take me down.’

  ‘I don’t think I will,’ he teased.

  ‘Harry? Please help me down.’

  He cocked his head. She remembered the way he had always looked.

  ‘Look behind you …’

  She turned on the branch. She was staring through dark woods, towards open land. She saw a man’s figure standing out on that open land. All she could see of him was his silhouette. It disturbed her. The man was standing on the rise of ground, immediately beyond a barbed-wire fence. His body was bent to one side as he peered into the impenetrable gloom of the wood. Tallis watched him, sensing his concern … and the sadness. His whole posture was that of a saddened, ageing man. Motionless. Watching. Peering anxiously into a realm denied him by the fear in his heart.

  Her father.

  ‘Tallis?’ he called.

  Without a word she jumped down from the branch of the tree and stepped forward into the light, emerging from the tree line and stepping through the wire.

  James Keeton straightened up, a look of relief upon his face. ‘We were worried about you. We thought we’d lost you.’

  ‘No, Daddy. I’m quite safe.’

  ‘Well. Thank God for that.’

  She went up to him and held his hand. He led her home.

  The freezing wind could not dampen the fire. They burned her on a fine pyre, opposite the shrine cave where her masks hung, twisting slowly in the sheltered place. The boy Kyrdu wailed. He was inconsolable. When his mother shouted at him he simply ran, he hid. But he came back and crouched near to the place where the masks dangled. He had always liked Sinisalo. It was a child’s mask. It was from the child’s lips that he had heard the voice of the girl.

  He gave her no thought, now. Grandmother Tallis burned on the wood. The smoke that rose from her found wings and flew away. The lament followed her. The sad song, chanted by the woman who had nursed her, drifted high into the winter sky. Like the smoke, it seemed to curl and turn, streaming to the west, to the place where Grandmother Tallis had always said her real home lay. The drum was beaten.

  The riders were growing restless. Four of them stayed on horseback, leaning easily over their saddles, waiting for their leader to finish with his grief.

  He was tall, that one. He had command. He was old and wore not just the cloak of the hunter, but the weapons of the warrior and the skin-paint of the shaman. He was all things. Now he was distraught.

  Kyrdu watched him through his own tears. The big man passed around the pyre. Fire made his face gleam.

  Suddenly he shouted out her name, giving vent to all his grief. ‘Tallis! Tallis!’

  The horses reared and backed away, their riders struggling for control. His voice was filled with sadness, filled with desperation. And longing.

  And love too.

  ‘Tallis!’ he cried again, a lingering cry …

  And from Sinisalo came the girl’s eerie voice, whispering in the strange language of the old woman on the pyre. ‘Harry. Harry. I’m here. I’m with you.’

  Kyrdu forgot his tears. He watched the dead wood of the mask. It clattered against its neighbours, blown by the gusting wind. Its eyes were guileless. Its mouth was pure. Sweet smells, and warmth, came from it.

  The man on the ledge had not heard the voice from the mask calling to him. He had given in to grief, thrown back his head in bitter self-recrimination. ‘I’ve lost you. I’ve lost you. And now I’ve lost everything!’

  ‘No,’ whispered the ghost in Sinisalo, and Kyrdu shivered as he heard the magic words. ‘I’m here. I’ll come to you, Harry. Wait for me. Wait for me …’

  There was a way to another land through the shrine cave, a way to the land of Grandmother Tallis’s birth; that warm land. Kyrdu watched the mask, remembered Tallis’s tales and tricks. There was a hollowing there. His father had once spoken to the old woman about it. Grandmother Tallis had laughed. You will go there, she had said. You will go through the shrine to a strange house. You will go with your wife and your son, Kyrdu. The house will be ruined. You will all be very frightened. You will see a rajathuk there, a small girl, terrified. But you will not recognize it. Only Kyrdu will be able to see the woman in the terrified face of the young girl, as she runs for the light and for her own father.

  Kyrdu knew that his mother longed to journey out of this terrible, icy place. Perhaps he could use the masks to find the magic for such a journey. Grandmother Tallis had always said that there was power in the child. Perhaps she had meant him.

  The riders had gone, clattering up the path to the castle and the woods beyond. But long after the pyre had burned to ash the boy was still crouched within the shrine cave, following with his gaze the trail of the drifting smoke, out across the forest, to the distance, to the setting sun, to the unknown regions of the west.

  He wondered how to journey there.

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  Also By Robert Holdstock

  Mythago Wood

  1. Mythago Wood (1984)

  2. Lavondyss (1988)

  3. The Bone Forest (1991)

  4. The Hollowing (1992)

  5. Merlin’s Wood (1994)

  6. Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn (1997)

  7. Avilion (2008)

  The Merlin Codex

  1. Celtika (2001)

  2. The Iron Grail (2002)

  3. The Broken Kings (2006)

  Novels

  Eye Among the Blind (1976)

  Earthwind (1977)

  Necromancer (1978)

  Where Time Winds Blow (1981)

  The Emerald Forest (1985)

  Ancient Echoes (1986)

  The Fetch (1991)

  Night Hunter (writing as Robert Faulcon)

  The Stalking (1983)

  The Talisman (1983)

  The Ghost Dance (1983)

  The Shrine (1984)

  The Hexing (1984)

  The Labyrinth (1987)

  Raven (as Richard Kirk, with Angus Wells)

  Swordsmistress of Chaos (1978)

  A Time of Ghosts (1978)

  The Frozen God (1978)

  Lords of the Shadows (1979)

  A Time of Dying (1979)

  Writing As Robert Black

  Legend of the Werewolf (1976)

  The Satanists (1977)

  Berserker Trilogy (writing as Chris Carlsen)

  1. Shadow of the Wolf (1977)

  2. The Bull Chief (1977)

  3. The Horned Warrior (1979)

  Collections

  In the Valley of the Statues: And Other Stories (1982)

  Dedication

  For George, Dorothy, Douglas,

  Mercy and Rita –

  fine storytellers all!

  You are not far away.

  Robert Holdstock (1948 – 2009)

  Robert Paul Holdstock was born in a remote corner of Kent, sharing his childhood years between the bleak Romney Marsh and the dense woodlands of the Kentish heartlands. He received an MSc in medical zoology and spent several years in the early 1970s in medical research before becoming a full-time writer in 1976. His first published story appeared in the New Worlds magazine in 1968 and for the early part of his career he wrote science fiction. However, it is with fantasy that he is most closely associated.

  1984 saw the publication of Mythago Wood, winner of the BSFA and World Fantasy Awards for Best Novel, and widely regarded as one of the key texts of modern fantasy. It and the subsequent ‘mythago’ novels (including Lavondyss, which won the BSFA Award for Best Novel in 1988) cemented
his reputation as the definitive portrayer of the wild wood. His interest in Celtic and Nordic mythology was a consistent theme throughout his fantasy and is most prominently reflected in the acclaimed Merlin Codex trilogy, consisting of Celtika, The Iron Grail and The Broken Kings, published between 2001 and 2007.

  Among many other works, Holdstock co-wrote Tour of the Universe with Malcolm Edwards, for which rights were sold for a space shuttle simulation ride at the CN Tower in Toronto, and The Emerald Forest, based on John Boorman’s film of the same name. His story, ‘The Ragthorn’, written with friend and fellow author Garry Kilworth, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella and the BSFA Award for Short Fiction.

  Robert Holdstock died in November 2009, just four months after the publication of Avilion, the long-awaited, and sadly final, return to Ryhope Wood.

  www.robertholdstock.com

  Copyright

  A Gollancz eBook

  Copyright © Robert Holdstock 1988

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Robert Holdstock to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2012 by

  Gollancz

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 0 575 11904 8

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real

  persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.