“What happened to it?” asked Ardhu. “Is it still here?”
An-fortas shook his head weakly. “When I first was wounded I tried to do magic on myself, even bathing the gash with water mixed with special potions in the cup itself. Nothing worked, and one day in anger, I hurled the cup across my hut and dented both handle and base. I know not how tales of my rash anger spread beyond the East, but a Moon-turn later nine maidens, a sacred number, came riding hence on ponies, beautiful girls… no, priestesses, from the isle of Ibherna. They looked on me with pity but also anger, when they took the cup and saw its damage. It was the metalworkers of that green isle who had wrought it, at my behest, and they told me it had been bathed in the sacred basin that was the Cauldron of Rebirth of their chief-god, Dag. Now, they told me, it must go back to be repaired and re-consecrated… and that with my unhealed wound I was no longer a king and no longer worthy to hold it.” Tears of despair leaked from the corners of his dimming eyes. “I fear they were right. Once they had left, my kingdom was laid waste utterly, the plagues coming and the sand rising in great storms to cover all, and I have become the ruined creature that you see.”
Bohrs was scratching his beard. “This holy cup…” he said. “If we were to fetch it back for you, fixed and made holy again, could that help? Is that what you think?”
An-fortas sighed. “I do not now think there is any help for me in this world. But there is more to this world than me.”
He glanced at Ardhu. “You have been a good lord of men,” he said. “All know the name of Ardhu Pendraec. But goodness is not enough. Dark times are coming to us all. The Wasteland is like a growth; it is a blight on Prydn, but beyond that it is also a death of hope… and that in turn makes man’s mind a Wasteland as surely as a field that gives forth no corn.”
“I do not understand,” said Ardhu. “I am not a shaman like the Merlin. What I know is what is bought by sword or by trade.”
“Know this…” said An-fortas, “the King is the Land, the Land is the King. When the land is empty of seed it must be filled anew in order for living things to grow—the corn, the barley, and the little apples on the trees. If the old King cannot plant the seed and make it come to fruition, he must feed the soil with the very essence of his life.”
A silence fell over the men in the chieftain’s hut. “He is raving,” murmured Hwalchmai, shaking his head. “His long illness has addled his mind.”
“Find the cup.” An-fortas’s voice sank to a whisper. “Maybe it is the one thing that will save Prydn from the Wasteland. Maybe the glory of the Quest will save a king from the perils of encroaching age…” He took another heaving breath, his lungs rattling. “Do not try to heal me further. I must fight my fate no more. Carry me back to the Holy Circle on the strand and let me go to my Gods with dignity. Would that I had heard them calling me home years ago when first I was wounded, and heeded that call.”
“No…” Pelahan the Fisher King’s voice was a low groan of misery. “Father… do not ask this… not yet. I have brought them hence to save you…”
“It is his wish,” said Ardhu darkly. “And if he speaks truth, then it should have been done long ago. But by the Eye Goddess, I wish the Merlin or some other shaman was here to oversee this act.”
The warriors of Ardhu carried the Maimed King back down towards the sea. Behind them the pines rustled, their needles smelling fresh and alive. All around the salt marshes gleamed under the light of a huge Moon that cast a light-trail across the swell of the sea. The Moon’s face was tinted oddly red, darker than a harvest moon. Their passing feet crunched on pebbles and then brushed through shifting sands.
Soon they saw the funereal timber circle, the Milky Way of Nud Cloudmaker a misty, boiling streak overhead—his enchanted cloak in which he snared the spirits of men to pass on to his son, Hwynn the White, lord of the Underworld, for judgement before they were sent West.
Ardhu and Hwalchmai gently manoeuvred An-fortas through the entrance to the shrine and laid him back on the natural platform formed by the upside-down tree. Its huge coiled roots thrust up into the night, embracing the limp and failing body of the old man. He stared up at the sky, eyes losing their focus, glazing as they looked into otherness and eternity.
Ardhu’s breath emerged a ragged fog before his lips and he loosed his dagger Carnwennan from its sheath. “If I must, I will do this thing as King of Prydn.” He rubbed at his thigh, suddenly aching as it often did on chill nights such as this—his thigh, wounded long ago by the tusks of the Boar T’orc, the ravager of Prydn sent to plague him by his sister Morigau. But he was healed, well healed… and not so old or so frail… not yet…
Unexpectedly, Gal’havad came up beside him; his pale face awash with a faint sheen of sweat, his forest-green eyes burning with strange passion. “Father, I will do it, if that would please you more.”
Ardhu shook his head violently. “You are too young for such dealings, which are the territory of priest and shaman! I must stand in, as called for, for I am King.”
“I will be King after you,” argued Gal’havad, “and I am touched by the spirits—the Merlin himself said so and you have noted it yourself. A few days ago I sent a traitor to his death and the torments that will await him in the Unworld; now, showing great mercy, I will send this good chief to the Plain of Honey, as he wishes and as the Great Ones wish.”
Ardhu stared at his son—the shining face, the dark red hair like a burnished shield in the dimness, the white cowl of Nud’s starry mantle above his slender shoulders. “Do as you will, my son. You are accounted a Man of the Tribe, and you have your own special wisdom… more, in some things than I, or so it would seem.”
Gal’havad drew Kos’garak from his belt. Starlight glinted on the three golden rivets holding the hilt in place. Three times he circled the failing Maimed King, the fallen giant lying on the upturned stump in the centre of the funerary wooden ring. Beyond the shrine the waves went thump, thump, thump, beating watery fists against the shore, a solemn drumbeat in the night.
Then he bent over the Maimed King and solemnly cut one wrist with his knife. A thread of redness slid from the gaping cut and trickled into the damp soil at the foot of the trunk. He then proceeded to the other arm and opened the second vein, allowing more blood to feed the earth, the hungry earth that was withering and dying without a whole and hale king to reign over it. The Maimed King did not move, seeming not to feel the cuts, the beginning of his life slipping away.
Gal’havad moved the dagger upwards, letting it rest for a moment beneath the white bearded chin. He hesitated a moment, face taut with the enormity of what he had chosen to do, and then with a sharp and brutal motion, he drew it across the Maimed King’s throat, instantly severing the great vein of life. The air went red with spray, and the old man gave one great gasp as his spirit fled upward into the sky, vanishing into the star-spangled cloak of Nud.
Gal’havad sheathed his dagger and knelt down in the sandy soils, heaving with sobs, suddenly overcome by the enormity of the sacrifice. Ardhu went to his side and tried to raise him, but he felt heavy, limp, and the pain that sometimes needled Ardhu’s leg shot through him, making him unable to lift him further.
Pelahan appeared at the entrance of the wooden ring; no tears for his father marred his ruined face, but his eyes were without light, black and hopeless. He was the one to wrench Gal’havad to his feet, gaze into his face and shake him lightly to bring him to himself. “Look at me, boy. You did what I could not… you did what had to be done, what should have been done long ago, and I thank you.”
Gal’havad turned and brought out his small stone chalice, glittering faintly in the gloom. Gently he filled it with the blood of the fallen king, the holy blood that fed the Land. “By the power within this font of life, I swear I will find the golden cup of King An-fortas,” he said quietly,” though I may fare to the end of the world and die in the attempt.”
“Make no vows of such a nature” Ardhu said sharply, eyes narrowing. “Do n
ot forget who you are…”
But Gal’havad’s green eyes were stubborn. He said nothing, but stood with the blood running over his fingers.
“We will bury him, now, in a place no one shall ever find him, giving him back to the earth that it might grow strong again with his sacrifice,” said Pelahan. “Will you help me one more time in this, King of the West?”
Ardhu nodded, his face grey and weary. “This one more thing… yes. Then I must be away for Kham-El-Ard, to talk with Merlin and Mhor-gan and see what counsel they can give about the blight on Prydn and on this cup of gold that An-fortas spoke of.”
Pelahan stood aside and Per-Adur and Hwalchmai climbed into the ring, making gestures against evil when they saw the dead king lying on the tree stump, the blank surfaces of his eyes reflecting the stars and his blood, now a dark viscous stream, puddling on the ground beneath him.
“It is time to bury my father,” said Pelahan. “He will not lie here, though our Ancestors and elders did. His is a different death, his flesh not given to the birds and beings of the air, but to the earth and the marsh, the dark wet places that breed new life.”
Ardhu’s men lifted the body of An-fortas for the last time and carried it forth on its final journey. His corpse was heavy, stone-like, on their shoulders. They bore him far inland, into a land of marshy pools where terns nested and green tongues of heatless flame flittered over the bog, the malevolent souls of Ancestral ghosts.
A jetty of woven withies thrust out into the marsh at its deepest point, the remnants of an old track like that found crossing the fens of Afallan in the West. A rotted stump of an old idol sat at the end of the jetty, its head split so that one could not tell if it was meant to be a male or female deity… and the body gave no indication, for it was a hermaphrodite, with pendulous wooden breasts and a detachable phallus.
Pelahan walked slowly to the end of the withy pier and beckoned the others forward. He took the body of the Maimed King from them and shut his eyes with gentle fingers. Removing his own deerskin cloak he wrapped An-fortas in it, hiding face and hands and feet, and pinned it fast with his own crutch-headed cloak-pin. He murmured words none could hear, nor wanted to for they were words of new king to the old, of a contrite son to a father had he failed. He then raised the body to a kneeling position on the edge of the jetty and let it fall.
With a thick, slurping splash it hit the murky water. Nesting birds whirred up, affrighted, squawking their anger and terror into the gloom. The wrapped bundle bobbed for a moment on the swell, then spiralled down into Otherness, bubbles bursting as it passed into forever.
Overhead the first glow of dawn touched the sky, red as the blood of An-fortas’s final wound.
Red as the blood that still marred Gal’havad’s garments and skin, patterning his face like morbid tattooing.
Ardhu glanced wearily toward the morning star, Light-of-Day, just rising in the Eastern sky, a pure white flame. It was the only pure thing he had seen for days. All else seemed rotten, putrescent.
“Come,” he said, his voice hoarse, ragged. “Let us collect our horses and set out upon the long road home. And may we never return here to the place, unless its fate is changed and its eternal winter turns to spring.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE RITUAL SHAFT
Mist swirled around the Stones of Khor Ghor, exhaled from the ground by spirits of the ancient dead. Above, a reddish, mottled moon was shining amidst a circle of feeble stars. Slowly the Merlin hobbled toward the great ancestral monument, his weary feet dragging as he limped up the Avenue. He leaned heavily on his staff, stopping every now and then and scowling. How he hated the growing frailty of his body! His acolytes had tended him well in Deroweth but they told him he needed to rest, that in his last trance, when he had fallen amid the Stones, a malicious spirit had elf-shot him in the temple, causing his left side to freeze. Whether he would ever recover completely was unknown; many men died from such venomous shot, and those that survived were often left blighted, their faces and limbs forever frozen, words slurring in their throats.
But he was not like other men. He was the Merlin, shaman and High Priest of Khor Ghor! He would not lie abed and be spoon-fed slop by women! He would resume his position until the gods of the Everlasting Sky saw fit to smite him down forever. No, he could not die yet and go to the long house of his Ancestors, not while he felt there was wrong afoot in the lands of his people. Not when he sensed the realm he had struggled to build, with Ardhu as his chosen instrument of power, was shaking, shuddering at its foundation. Destruction and desolation dwelt in the East, where Ardhu was now, but day by day more reports came from West and South and North… crops failures, feuds over land, disease that caused abandonment of settlements. Some messengers came seeking the advice of the Merlin or the war-lords of Ardhu’s court, but more often these days the displaced, the starving came to Kham-El-Ard, walking on blistered bare feet, clad in naught but the rude skins of beasts as if they were men from a thousand years ago or more. Their sunken cheeks were as sharp as those of skulls, and hollow eyes looked accusingly at the frail, bent figure of the Merlin, as if saying, “You promised more. We had more. But it could not last… the dream has died.”
“The dream will not die!” Merlin cried out, to himself, to the ghosts and otherworldly beings that floated in the field between the Dance-of-Ancestors and the great Spirit-Path that divided the Lands of the Living from the Domain of the Dead.
He was nearly at the Stone of Summer, circled by its ring-ditch; beyond its vast bulk, the henge bank was a chalky blur in the moonlight. The Three Watchers, Guardians of the Door, rose like twisted fingers to beckon him into the heart of the Great Sanctuary, cave of the Sun, Womb of Time, and entrance to the worlds of the Unseen.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw something move, flitting amid the Stones. Breath hissing between his teeth, he drew the honed flint dagger he always carried at his waist. And then laughed… for between the Stones hopped a large grey-brown hare, one of the sacred beasts of She-Who-Guards, whose faceless plaque towered on the Western Trilithon. It loped away into the coiling mists, vanishing over the hump of the bank.
He followed the animal’s passage with his eyes and suddenly his laughter curdled in his throat. He caught movement again near the northernmost of the Four Stations. This time, it was no animal.
He was certain it was not a guard sent from Deroweth; he had seen the warrior-priests traversing the Great Plain as he had crossed from the Spirit-Path to the Sacred Avenue. It also looked too slight to be a grown male… maybe a boy… or a woman.
His eyes narrowed and his thin fingers gripped his dagger hilt. There was one woman he hated—and feared—above all, the woman who was Ardhu’s sister, mother of the bastard Mordraed. She of all women would not fear to come here by night, treating with her dark spirits of chaos and death, her hands skimming through spoil on the bank, seeking bone fragments and tiny ear-bones for her spells and brews. How he wished he could have found a way to dispose of her, without starting a blood-war with her kin. He had whispered fell words to the wind, cast evil curses in the direction of her hovel in the river valley, but like old roots grown tough she did not sicken and die but became harder, tougher. True, her behaviour had been exemplary since Ardhu took in her sons, but Merlin knew she was not the kind to bury her hatreds or give up fighting for what she believed was rightfully hers…
He stalked toward the short, squat station stone, his dagger glinting in the pallid light, ready. He had little strength, but by the gods, he would do his best to stop the she-bitch if indeed it was her.
The figure turned and a hood was thrown back. For a moment, seeing wild black hair and dark eyes, Merlin thought it was indeed Morigau, but he quickly recognised the gentler cast of the features of Mhor-gan, Ardhu’s younger sister, one of the Ladies of the Lake.
“By Great Bhel, Mhor-gan, I nearly struck you with my sacred dagger,” he said harshly. “I thought you were Morigau.”
Her black brows ros
e. “And what made you think of my wayward sister?”
“Because I know too well that she is not sitting in her hut weaving and making pots like normal women! I cannot read her mind, but I know her thoughts are dark. She did not come to Kham-El-Ard just for the protection of her sons, for whom she cares little.”
“She cares for one,” said Mhor-gan carefully.
Merlin sighed. “Yes, Mordraed… the child of Ardhu’s folly. ‘Man of Judgement’ is what his name means… I can only guess why Morigau named him so.”
“They say he is very skilled at arms,” said Mhor-gan, “and that, if the other men concur, Ardhu will allow him into his warband by the Winter Solstice, if not before. He is also… friends… with Gal’havad.”
Merlin’s face twisted, his eyes pained. “Yes, I have seen how Mordraed has availed himself of young Amhar’s good nature. What can I say to make them part? What, even as high priest, can I do? Ardhu once spoke of killing all brats born in the month of Bhel-fires when he knew Morigau was carrying his seed, but it was I who cautioned him against such a rash act. Now I do not know if I was wrong.”
“The boy has done no evil… yet,” said Mhor-gan. “And may not; it would be unfair to judge him for the shadows that lay upon his birth.”
“As you say… but I am still troubled. And I deem you are too, for why else would you wander here alone after Moonrise?”
Mhor-gan pulled her cloak tightly about her and stared at the sky. Her breath was a fog around her pale lips. “Yes, you are correct, Merlin. I am troubled. I have hardly slept in weeks; my dreams are evil and unsettling. So I came to pray for guidance at the Stones… and now that you are here, I shall also seek counsel with wise Merlin. I knew in my heart you would be at Khor Ghor tonight… and that you have felt my unease too.”
Moon Lord: The Fall of King Arthur - The Ruin of Stonehenge Page 13
