Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle)

by Robert Holdstock

‘I know all this,’ Morthen murmured.

  ‘Well there you are. All things seek their place in the world. Seek. Find. Quest. Seek the path home. Seek the way to the first home of all. Adventuring … stories evolve to explore the idea of exploring the underworld. Those travellers are legends themselves. They are mythagos. They are dreams … and they are behaving in the manner of the dream according to the memory of the dreamer. They can’t do anything else. The man who passed this way before, the man who created your people, the man who created the marsh, he left behind a life that performs according to the way he remembered it. The sons of Kiridu could not have spared the boatman, because in legend they didn’t spare him. What they get up to between times is up to them, but when the pattern of legend tugs at them, they are helpless. They are called. Only the man who passed this way before … and me … only the two of us are free of the calling. We are not of the dreamstuff. We are alive. We are from the real world. We make the world around us. We fill the forest with creatures. Our forgotten ancestry materializes before our eyes, and we are helpless to stop it …’

  Morthen watched her father carefully. She was restless. There was a long way to go before they reached home. Wyn knew exactly what she was thinking, since she had described the sensation to him. His words were making sweet sounds in her head, and were creating ideas and images despite the fact that he often spoke of things beyond her understanding. But slowly she was becoming frightened. His words were spirits, and the spirits could not rest in her head, they were uncomfortable. They made her heart race faster.

  When Wyn had been silent for a while she asked, ‘Did that man-who-passed-this-way-before ever reach Lavondyss?’

  Wyn-rajathuk smiled. ‘That’s what I’m wondering. It has only just occurred to me to ask the question …’

  His daughter sat down on the rotting trunk, leaned forward and braced her chin on her hands. ‘I wonder who he was.’

  ‘A man destined to journey,’ her father said. ‘A man who was marked. A man seeking triumph. Any and all of these things. He could have taken the identity from any of the myriad ages that had preceded his birth. He could have disguised himself in the feathered cloak of a thousand legends. But in his heart, he was from outside. From the forbidden place. When an outsider enters the wood, change runs through the canopy like fire. The wood sucks at the mind, it sucks out the dreams –’

  ‘Like Tig. Sucking the ghosts in the bones.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose so. But as it draws on the mind so it loses something of itself. It has to, because it is fusing to generate myth: like a spark and a quick breath, the two thing unite in flame. Flames means change. That’s what we have witnessed today, when we saw the totems changed, and the mortuary house so run down, and the hill covered with blackthorn. Someone from my world is close to us and the wood is leaning towards him, tense and nervous, bristling with power. Can you see it? Can you feel it?’

  ‘No. Only the skogen.’

  ‘It’s the same thing.’ He watched her carefully, wondering what she could be stretched to understand. She was bright. She grasped concepts with remarkable facility. He said, ‘The skogen is making contact with us because it is thinking about us. That means it almost certainly knows us. Strictly, I should say it knows me. It is making an unconscious link across a great distance, and the link is showing itself in an …’

  He hesitated. The girl’s eyes were wide, knowing, demonstrating the thrill she felt at being taken so much into her father’s secret world. He was using more words from his language of power – English – than he had ever used before, and was carefully translating them for her.

  But he would lose her now.

  ‘The link is showing itself in an alteration in the mythogenic landscape …’

  ‘Huh?’

  He laughed. ‘A foreigner is coming. The animal spirits in the wood are restless. They foresee great change.’

  ‘Well why didn’t you say so?’

  They spent their second night in the forest, hungry, now, to the point of irritation. By the time they reached the territory of the Tuthanach, towards the afternoon of the following day, Wyn-rajathuk could see further signs of the change, further evidence that a skogen was approaching. Looking up the wooded hill he could see that the earth bank around the mortuary house was slightly lower. The shape of his hut, in its separated compound, had subtly changed.

  Looking back towards the wood he saw wind-broken oaks, higher than the canopy, their branches like black limbs and horns.

  These giant trees had not been in evidence a few days before.

  Morthen went into the hut to prepare food – a fish which she had caught, garlic bulbs which Wyn had gathered, and of course there was an ample supply of ground wheat for biscuits. Wyn-rajathuk walked up the hill to the mortuary house and entered the decaying enclosure. The blank, dead-eyed skogen was taller, now. The new life on its vast trunk was more extensive, a tangle of leaf and twig growing out from the key points on the carved pole. When he reached to pluck one of the leaves the ground trembled. The mouth of the skogen seemed to have turned down slightly. The deep axe-cut which had fashioned that mouth – black for so long – now had a white edge to it, like freshly-hewn bark.

  ‘Are you calling him? Or is he calling you? I wonder. I wonder where the power originates …’

  The tree was silent.

  Wyn-rajathuk turned and stood against the wood, hoping for its embrace, finding it cold. He looked up at the half circle of carved trunks. The eyes would not meet his.

  He almost dreaded entering the mortuary house, to see if the bones of the dead had changed; but he did, and for a moment could see no sign of disturbance. Then he eyes grew accustomed to the darkness.

  The boy had been back to the cruig-morn. The evidence was clear. He had scooped bone from some of the cremation urns. He had disturbed the drying bones by the entrance. He had not touched the remains of the woman he had once seemed content to call ‘mother’. The jackals had worried at the flesh of the newer corpses, but it would seem that Tig had driven them off. There was blood on the floor, and a stone knife.

  Wyn-rajathuk searched the lodge, then returned to the outside, standing in front of the entrance, his staff in his hands. Behind him birds entered and left the place of decay, but he waited now for the movement he knew would come from another direction.

  Soon he realized that Tig had crept into the mortuary enclosure unseen. The boy’s clothing could be glimpsed as he lurked behind the rajathuk which the Tuthanach – as people before them – called Morndun.

  When he peered around the totem tree, Wyn-rajathuk banged his staff on the stone lintel of the mortuary house, to signify that he had seen the child. Tig immediately stepped into view, his arms full of bones.

  Angrily, the old man said, ‘You came back to the place of the dead, even though I forbade you to do so.’

  ‘I’m bringing back the bone,’ Tig said nervously. He had tied his long hair into a spiky top-knot, bound with a white fur strip. His forearms were covered with scratches; these might have been wounds caused by the dense blackthorn scrub, but Wyn-rajathuk was more inclined to believe that they had been self-inflicted.

  ‘Have you sucked them dry?’ he asked the boy.

  Tig grinned, shuffled forward a pace or two. ‘The child was too little. You were right. There was nothing there. But I have sucked the ghost of five men, now. There is a lot of memory in the bone.’

  ‘Have you eaten enough for one day?’

  ‘For one day, yes.’ The boy hesitated, elfin face pinched with uncertainty, sharp eyes restless. ‘Shall I bring back the dead?’

  ‘Bring them here.’

  Wyn-rajathuk took the bones from the trembling boy. Now that Tig was full, now that he had exercised his odd, incomprehensible shaman rite, he was just a child again, aglow with whatever he had consumed … or imagined he had consumed. He had scratched spirals and diamond shapes on the bones, shallow marks reminiscent of the marks that the craftsmen of the Tuthanach used in th
e decoration of stone, wood and clothing.

  ‘Come inside …’

  Tig followed eagerly into the foetid gloom of the mortuary house. Wyn-rajathuk returned the bone shards to their positions; Tig knew where each had come from. That done they returned to the stone passage leading from the outside world. They crouched down, boy facing man across the incoming light.

  ‘Do you intend to eat every ghost in this place?’

  ‘Every ghost,’ Tig agreed. ‘It will take a long time.’

  ‘Who told you to eat ghosts? Have you been talking to someone in the wood?’

  Puzzled, Tig shook his head. ‘It’s just something I have to do,’ he said blankly, and Wyn-rajathuk smiled, knowing that that answer was the only answer possible.

  ‘Eating ghosts’ was a part of the forgotten story that was Ennik-tig-en’cruig (a name which meant ‘Tig never-touch-woman, never-touch-earth’). It didn’t have to mean anything to Wyn. It had meant an enormous amount to the people of 4000 B.C. who had first developed the legend of the boy who ate spirits.

  ‘If you are found inside the bone lodge by any of the Tuthanach they will kill you. Do you know that? Children are forbidden here. They will drown you.’

  ‘Of course. That’s why I’ve been hiding.’

  Without really thinking about it, Wyn-rajathuk had come to accept the inevitability of Tig’s presence here; there was no way to prevent this development in the small mythago’s life …

  ‘It is too dangerous for you to keep coming and going. You had better live in cruig-morn until you have eaten everything. If you can bear the stink, that is, and survive the jackals. But if a new burial comes you must be sure to leave the place and not return for two days. Is that clear?’

  Delighted, Tig nodded agreement.

  Wyn asked him, ‘Do you know what will happen to you when you have finished here?’

  The boy shook his head. The man smiled and said, ‘But I do. I know all about you, Tig. As mythagos go you’re quite a common presence in the wood. I’ve seen you before. I’ve glimpsed you. I’ve heard about you. I know your story from birth until death, although I don’t pretend to understand what it is you do, why you do it, and how you became legend. But I know what you will cause to change in the Tuthanach … and what one of them will finally do to you.’

  Tig was wide-eyed, but he clearly did not understand beyond the sense of being threatened. ‘Have you heard all this from your rotting trees?’ he asked grimly. ‘From their cracking voices?’

  ‘No. I’ve heard it all from the voice of my own past. I created you. Did you know that? You were a legend in my time, a forgotten story; but you were still there, still in my dreams, and the wood took that dream and shaped you from it. Part of that dream is that the boy will bring new magic to the people. He will overthrow the totems of the old clan. He will overthrow the man who guards the dead. Another part of the story is that the boy will eat the bird-feather man’s head. I don’t intend to stay around until that happens.’

  ‘Your totems are already dead,’ Tig whispered. ‘I’ve listened to them, but they have no voice. Your bird feathers no longer fly. But I would like to eat your head, to see your strange dreams …’

  ‘Finish the mortuary feast first,’ Wyn-rajathuk said with a shiver.

  Tig crawled away into the darkness, between wooden pillars and the tall stones. Soon, all Wyn-rajathuk could see were his eyes, slanted, bright, frighteningly intense.

  Morthen had caught a pike, using a bone hook and a great deal of nerve. She returned with it to the shaman’s small, cluttered lodge, outside the earth enclosure of the village, and on her father’s instruction cut the fish in half. She wrapped the head end in a pouch of fox skin to present to the old women in the long-house. The tail was for themselves and Morthen stewed it with berries, watching as Wyn-rajathuk made copious black marks on one of the sheets of parchment which he kept hidden in a stone locker at the back of the house.

  After they had eaten, Wyn pulled his bird-spirit cloak around his shoulders and tied the cord at the front. He picked up his staff and laid it across his knees. Morthen watched him anxiously, eyes bright. Wyn was certain that she sensed the parting which was to come. He had noticed that she was wearing her ‘Sunday Best,’ the little ritual headdress which she saved for the spring fires and the summer hunts. It was a webbing of gut, laced through the colourful shells of land snails. It had taken her a week to make and covered her head and neck like a prayer veil.

  ‘Have I ever explained the staff to you?’ he asked the girl. She looked at the single row of coloured feathers that had been tied down the length of the wood, then shook her head. In the last few weeks her father had begun to trust her so much with the secrets of his life. She was at once excited and saddened, saddened because she could think of only one reason why he would want to start to instruct her before she spent her years with the women in the water lodge, learning from them, learning their wisdom.

  Wyn pointed to the two black feathers at the bottom of the row.

  ‘The feathers of a coot,’ he said. ‘They are black because they are the two years that I was alone and lost in the wood. Then, as I stumbled through the wild, I came across the tribe known in legend as the Amborioscantii. They were the people who first worked magic with bright stone ore. They bury their dead in ash urns, much bigger than the urns of the Tuthanach. They ride wild horses. They make knives out of the bright stone. It is heated in fire and runs like muddy water. It becomes hard again and is shaped and sharpened, like you might sharpen a wolf’s bone to make a point.’

  ‘You’ve told me this silly story already,’ Morthen said, smearing her finger round the clay pot where the fish had been stewed and licking the result. ‘The stone which runs like hot water; only it wasn’t like muddy water when you told it before. You said it was the colour of an oak leaf in autumn. A bright colour from a bright stone. You called it metal.’

  ‘You’ve remembered very well. I’ve clearly lost my poetic touch. Part of the later legend of the Tuthanach, your own people, is that they will be the first people to steal the secret of this strange substance, and give it an earthly name. It’s an early version of the magic forge story, a sub-section of legend that is unutterably boring to someone like me … but your version will pass out of consciousness three thousand years before Christ.’

  He caught his daughter’s patient impatience. His translation of certain concepts was clearly leaving a lot to be desired, and making his story meaningless to the girl. He frowned, struggling to remember: ‘Have I told you about Christ?’

  ‘Ghost - born - man - walking - on - water - telling - stories - dead-on-tree. Yes. You’ve told me about him. Show me more feathers.’

  ‘Very well. After a time with the Amborioscantii I married Elethandian, a wonderful and tragic woman about whom I could tell you five fabulous stories, and about whom my own world has remembered –’ he smiled sadly – ‘nothing. By Elethandian I had a son. My first. Her third. She had been married to a hunter, but that’s another story. My son was called Scathach. This feather here, the red feather, marks the year of his birth. The feather is from an eagle which was sitting in an oak tree; it was the first thing I saw when Scathach opened his mouth and brought his voice to the world. I named him for the oak, not the eagle. You see? Some things never change. We always name for the moment of birth. Like Morthen –’

  In the language of the Tuthanach, morthen was ‘the sudden flight of birds’.

  ‘What if you’d seen a wolf being strangled?’ she asked. It was an old Tuthanach joke and Wyn acknowledged it with a generous smile.

  ‘When you are born you change the world,’ he said simply. ‘I’ve always thought it an elegant custom that the naming of a child should be for the first changing thing that the parents see …’

  He glanced at his daughter. ‘In my ghost world, we pick names out of books. Many people have the same name.’

  Morthen thought that sounded very confusing.

  Wyn returned h
is attention to the staff. ‘These twelve white feathers mark my twelve years with the Amborioscantii, and my twelve years with Scathach. The black feather here shows the year he rode away, to find out whether his true heart lay in the world beyond the forest. Like you, he was half of the flesh, half of the wood …’

  Anxiety made him hesitate. Morthen watched him, but she did not carry the same questing fire in her eyes that he had seen in Scathach. Perhaps his daughter would stay in the realm. Perhaps she would never need to know to which of the two worlds she belonged …

  ‘These feathers,’ he went on, ‘are my time with the Tuthanach. That grey feather, there, is your birth; a crane’s feather. All in all, twenty-four feathers. Twenty-four years. That makes me seventy-four years of age … but for fifty of those I lived in the ghost land, the shadow world …’

  ‘Your ghost daughter was called Anne,’ Morthen said brightly. ‘The land was called Oxford. You see? I remembered!’

  Wyn looked at the dying fire. ‘I miss her. I think about her often. Poor Anne … so unhappy in so many ways. I wonder what happened to her?’

  ‘Perhaps she met Scathach. Perhaps he managed to find her.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Morthen reached out and touched the red and grey feathers which marked Scathach’s birth and her own. ‘But where is Tig? No feather for Tig?’

  ‘This feather for Tig,’ Wyn-rajathuk said, and touched a feather two years removed from Morthen’s own. It was white, like all the others.

  ‘That isn’t a birth feather.’

  ‘Tig had no mother, only the forest. He came from a forest more ancient than the forest in which you hunt. It’s the forest I told you about yesterday. The forest is here …’ He tapped his head. ‘It is exceptionally old; it looks like a net; it vibrates like wind-blown beech; it speaks; it sings. It is like lightning. You’ve seen lightning, haven’t you? Striking down to the wood – but here, in this wood,’ slapping his head, ‘the fire strikes all the time, it is full of fire. That fire reaches out and strikes the wood around us, and the wood smoulders and bones form, and the flesh smoulders and the spirit forms, and in this way Tig was born. He rose from the damp clay and the rot of the leaf litter … but he came from the forest in his father’s head.’