Avilion

by Robert Holdstock

  The gateway to the courtyard was an oval slash, like a deep wound in bark. Faces were carved around the slit, but they were ugly, some skull-like, some clearly daurog, the summer form of what Steven called the green man, some intensely un-human.

  Yssobel had brought no defences against the daurog, should they appear, but she could make them easily enough in this place.

  ‘We’re here too soon,’ Odysseus observed unnecessarily. ‘Which encourages me to ask the question: how do we know they’re coming? Perhaps they’ve already been. Perhaps they will be here a long time from now.’

  ‘They’re coming,’ Yssobel said quietly, looking up and round at the massive structure. ‘I’m the focus. I’m the crossing place. Narine and Uzana called themselves Collectors. I knew the moment I saw my mother in the shield that I’m a Caller.’

  Odysseus shrugged, half in agreement. Yssobel smiled at him. ‘While we wait, I’m going to see what can be seen.’

  She climbed a tower. She was exhausted by the time she reached the first of the four windows. But when she looked out she saw a view that took the rest of her breath away, a stunning landscape of mountains, rising sheer, snow-capped, with beautiful, ornate buildings covering their faces, clinging to the rock, delicately shaped elegance against the harsh, rugged stone. She stared at it for a long time, letting her red side absorb its power and majesty.

  From the second window she saw a sight that shocked and startled her. A woman was being transformed into a tree, her mouth open in a silent scream as branches grew from her, and her body grew within the forest around. She aged as rapidly as a meteor passes across the sky, then broke and fell. Snow was suddenly coating the land, and a man with a stone axe cut a chunk of the fallen tree and carved it, forcing it into the ground beside his crude leather tent.

  Yssobel was disturbed by the sight, with the violent way in which the woman had been transformed. It all suggested a time very much in the past. It had nothing to do with her own dreams.

  She moved to the third window.

  She was looking out over a bleak land, at the edge of a bleak and cold sea. A great hall had been built there, with smaller buildings around it. The hall was magnificently decorated and vibrantly painted along its walls. Shields hung from the eaves and hundreds of swifts flew between them as if in a game.

  From the fourth window she saw Amurngoth, many of them. They were walking in their ungainly way through the underworld, along a passageway illuminated by the torches they carried. As they passed her point of view, so she saw Jack, holding the hand of the boy she had seen earlier.

  She called to him, but this time he didn’t hear. Perhaps he was Jack for the moment, with his Haunter side subdued.

  As he passed she blew him a kiss, then returned to where Odysseus was waiting, seated on the steps that led up to the main entrance of the Sylvan Fortress.

  ‘Did you see anything?’

  ‘Nothing I could understand - except that I saw my brother.’

  Odysseus nodded. ‘That’s twice, then. Is he close?’

  ‘I don’t know. Space shifts, and time shifts. He looked a lot older and more beaten than when I last saw him. I think he’s been on a journey.’

  Legion was culled from all of time, selected from armies across the world. It was an army of the dead, formed in antiquity to service those who could summon it. The summoning usually came from a king’s request at an oracle, or from the horn call, or from the shaman or druid who was confined within a besieged fortress.

  Legion had been moving backwards in time, and towards the land of the Gauls, to a place called Alesia, summoned to help the men and women held there under siege by an army from Rome.

  They had answered the call and were close to their task - to take the Roman army from behind - when Christian heard the whispered voice that frightened him.

  And turned the army round.

  Ghostlike, they moved through earth, but they made a noise, a din, a racket, of dogs and cattle, and the squeaking of un-oiled wheels; and songs, a cacophony of sound as the marching songs of so many worlds combined in harsh dissonance.

  Christian was at the army’s head, on horseback, leading the way. He was following a whisper trail, the whisper of the woman who had called to him.

  As they covered earth, so they rose in time.

  Disorientation suddenly occurred. The land ahead of the army stretched and twisted, almost seeming to part. Beyond them lay a star-studded darkness, as if they’d reached the edge of a cliff and were looking straight ahead at the night sky. Several of his commanders were edgy, implying that they had come the wrong way.

  ‘No! This is a boundary to another world. I once passed through a boundary to the same world, only at that time it was through a wall of fire.’

  ‘What other world?’ asked one of his men.

  ‘I know it as Lavondyss. The place where the spirits of men are not tied to the seasons. Meaning tied neither to life nor death. It is a form of Avilion: the place of healing and resurrection. ’ He was speaking softly, as if in a dream. Then suddenly he came awake: ‘We’ll press on.’

  The army moved. It walked and rode and drove through space, through a void where there seemed to be no ground underfoot but which was firm to the step. Soon the stars faded and a forested landscape emerged, a wildwood of immense span and age.

  Christian tasted the air, closed his eyes as he rode, listened for that ghostly whisper. If he heard it, he didn’t know it, but for some unknown reason he shifted the direction of his army towards an unseen, unknowable goal.

  Night fell and Yssobel walked out of the fortress into the cool damp of the forest. The massive dryads were emerging from the roots of the foundations and moving into darkness. She could hear their crashing progress for some time as they hunted for their prey, searched for whatever night encounter they wished to find.

  The tall, slender forms were gathering in circles of thirteen and singing in birdsong, a beautiful sound. Yssobel watched them from hiding. Soon, the birds came and settled on the shoulders and outstretched arms of these strange creatures. The red side of the woman observed with curiosity; the green side listened, then walked out of hiding and approached them. Startled for a moment, they admitted her to the circle. Soft hands held hard. Two small birds settled on Yssobel’s shoulders. The talking between the dryads was fast. She followed its source with ease, as each mind expressed its thoughts.

  Danger is coming. We will be broken. We will be fire-stuff. We will be cut. We will be broken by anger. We must protect our trees. I have lived in mine four hundred leaf-falls. I will die if I cannot drink the sap that rises at leaf-burst. All of us will die. Birds, be vigilant. Beak, claw and bird-screech will be needed. This stranger among us is no threat. She is not like us. She is less than us, but some of us.

  It went on like this.

  Danger was coming! The tree guardians were in chattering, frightened mood. And they had sensed the arrival of the army.

  A different voice broke through the anxious exchanges of the dryads.

  ‘Yssi? Yssobel? Is that you again?’

  For a moment she didn’t recognise the distorted voice. ‘Jack?’

  ‘Haunter. Are you green or red?’

  ‘Green. Very green.’

  ‘Stay that way. I almost know where you are. I’ll follow the earth call. Are you in danger yet?’

  ‘Not yet. But danger is coming.’

  ‘Yssi! I reached the edge of the world.’

  ‘I know. I saw you from a place of strange magic. It looked a beautiful land. And you were talking to two boys.’

  ‘You saw that? Strange magic is the word for it. That was when I’d just arrived. I have one of those two boys with me. I hope to get him home. Are you safe?’

  ‘No. I didn’t expect to be.’

  ‘Are you . . .’ But his voice became faint, and the babble of the dryads was again very loud.

  Yssobel stepped out of the circle, fell to her knees and burst into tears. She suddenly felt ve
ry lost, very alone. She suddenly missed the life in the villa.

  Then hands were on her shoulders, comforting her, and she looked up at Odysseus, the dark ringlets of his hair brushing against her cheeks. His eyes were kind, questioning. Without a word, she stood and led him back into the cold hall behind the courtyard, and to the skins they used to keep themselves warm.

  Yssobel was touched awake, the gentle brush of a finger on her cheek. It was before dawn and the air was damp and rank with the odour of musty stone and rotting vegetation. She opened her eyes and sat up, heart pounding, as she met the gaze of two dryads who were crouching over her.

  One was male, one female. The touch was not of hard bark but soft, like flesh. Their eyes were very wide, their stare constant. Odysseus slept on, face down, arms stretched out by his sides.

  The green in her engaged with the fear of these slender and beautiful wood nymphs.

  The female touching Yssobel was thinking the green-thought that Yssobel understood. ‘There is danger approaching from deep in the earth. It is a monstrous thing. It consumes all that is on the upper world. It is already at the edge of the forest and coming this way, though it moves slowly. You have time to flee, to escape to the high ground where there is nothing to consume, nothing to burn. We are lost. We cannot move. Our death is certain. But you can go.’

  Yssobel asked: ‘What is this beast made of?’

  ‘As many of your own kind as there are leaves on my summer branches. But you are not like this hateful monster. I would give you shelter. But soon there will be no shelter, only fire.’

  The male touched Yssobel. ‘I believe you have a reason to stay,’ he said, and Yssobel sensed his understanding.

  ‘I do.’

  He seemed almost sorrowful. ‘You will be split by lightning, and by the stone and the metal axe.’

  As he murmured, she could feel the anguish he felt, a pain passed on through the generations of his kind as they faced fire and the axe-blow. In their darker moods, dryads would ensnare human life and draw it inside them, feeding off its vigour, especially in times of winter. But they were more far more vulnerable than their occasional prey. This dryad was concerned. ‘The tree that is in you has no protection against such sudden death,’ he whispered. ‘We protect the tree in which we were born, and in which we sleep. But this encroaching beast will be too powerful for us. You should flee now.’

  ‘Thank you. But I’m staying.’

  His eyes were wide, unblinking. ‘Then you have little time. To prepare.’

  The male dryad looked up and around. The hall still displayed the carvings and rusting shields and shreds of banners that had once made this a place of noble gathering. ‘This did not belong here,’ he said. ‘It grew from the rock, like mould, like tree fern. It was white and filled with human beauty and display. It was full of wonder. Full of song. But it did not belong here. We took it back. That wonder remains within us, sleeping. Below. We visit it often just to look at it. We preserved it, ready for a time when we would send it back. Now all that was and is here will be destroyed.’

  They rose to their feet and walked from the hall. Yssobel shook Odysseus awake. He grumbled, turning to look at her. ‘What is it?’

  ‘They’re coming,’ was all she said, and at once the Greek was alive and active, and strapping on his leather armour.

  Odysseus was tired. He had worried through the night, trying to think of a strategy to hide Yssobel from the resurrected man when he arrived, to keep her safe. When she had referred to herself as a ‘Caller’, he thought she meant she was calling to her mother. But as she climbed the tower, leaving him to his thoughts, he realised she was calling to this man Christian. And every instinct suggested that Christian was a wild and angry creature.

  The cunning that Odysseus had been informed he possessed eluded him. His only thought was that if the army coming out of Time was going to surface through the earth, then Yssobel should surface with it, not confront it.

  He had prepared an earth grave for her in the courtyard of the fortress, a shallow grave in which she would lie in the direction of the approach. When he showed her what he’d done she stared at the long narrow pit, then looked at the man and laughed out loud.

  ‘Are you mad?’

  He seemed taken aback. ‘Not yet, I hope. But perhaps,’ he agreed, ‘not a good idea.’

  And so they waited. The long day was very still; the woodland was silent. The air itself seemed motionless, stifling. And then the air was drawn away from them, a strange gusting blow that made Yssobel shiver and the woodland become animated. When this strange and eerie moment had passed, there was stillness again, before the sudden eruption in the sky of birds, great clouds of them, flying not in circles but in a formation, as if fleeing. And animals also fled below the birds, making no sound save for the beat of their flight upon the earth.

  And the earth began to shake. There was a deep sound like drumming, but muffled. It grew louder. Then a strange whisper, a thousand ghostly voices whispering. The distant sounds of horns, the creak of wheels, the rattle of harnesses, all growing louder and more coherent until quite suddenly—

  Heavily built men on great warhorses reared up through the courtyard, throwing off mud, struggling to find their ground, ghostly yet very tangible. The horses almost screamed and the men shouted, urging them up, up.

  Yssobel fled through the gate of the fortress, Odysseus in quick pursuit. They leapt for cover among the giant roots and stared in dismay at the scene unfolding before them as the whole forest became a rising ground for this immense army. The forest filled with human activity. A cohort of Romans marched out of the earth, shields and helmets slung behind them, their eating and drinking utensils clattering as they moved. Nearby came riders on elegant black horses, the men clad in brightly coloured jackets and trousers, with strange curved helmets over their trim faces.

  The din was deafening. There was movement for as far as Yssobel could see through the forest.

  In the castle root behind which she crouched, the giant tree-being shifted and groaned. She saw its eyes as it turned to look at her. It was confused and seemed frightened. It groaned again as a racing group of yelping, youthful Gauls rode on their ponies across the roots, playing a game, it seemed. They hurtled over Yssobel, not seeing her.

  For hours this army rose and passed by, though many groups settled and started to make fires. Trees were lopped and Yssobel glimpsed many of the slender tree-forms running for their lives. Some were noticed, but so rich and varied was this Legion that they might have been a part of it.

  All the while, Yssobel searched among those that she could see for her mother, but without success. Guiwenneth might have been at the far edge of this army for all she knew.

  The task would be long and hard unless she could find a way to speak to her through her green side.

  A large band of black-skirted Greeks passed by, noticed Odysseus and Yssobel and stopped, curious. Odysseus at once rose and went to greet them and be greeted. Conversation was animated for a while, and the Greeks cautiously circled the man who would one day be a hero. Then laughter erupted and one of the band, the oldest-looking, took Odysseus by the wrist and slapped him on the arm. Weapons were placed down and the area marked for their camp for the night, or for however many nights they would stay here.

  As groups and cohorts moved on, many settled, and soon after nightfall the forest was alive with fires and the smells of cooking.

  Yssobel crept back to the strange entrance to the Sylvan Fortress and went inside. The courtyard was ablaze with fires and crowded with what seemed to be the nobles and leaders, low kings and champions; all of this she assumed from the array of banners and decorative shields that had been erected on poles, or hung from windows. There was light inside the hall, and in the towers. Horses were tethered at one end. Five tents of different style had been put up.

  When she went to return to her huddling place she found Odysseus standing behind her. ‘Tie back your hair. You’re very conspi
cuous,’ he said. ‘Then come and join us. They’re intrigued by you, but you’re not in danger from them.’

  She did as he’d suggested and then followed him to the group, which didn’t rise to welcome her. But all nodded greeting. She sat down next to her friend.

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Athenians. The dialect is difficult, but I believe that’s what they are. They are all brothers and cousins, the survivors of a family defeated in battle somewhere in the north of the land. Though there is something about them that suggests they are not survivors at all. The army was heading towards a summoning, moving up through Time to break siege-works surrounding a great hill, when they were suddenly drawn round to return the way they’d come, still rising through the centuries.’

  ‘How do they know? How can they tell?’

  He spoke to them, and the oldest of them replied. His speech was an echo of that of Odysseus, but thicker. Odysseus was clearly having difficulty understanding, but he said, ‘To rise is to feel age; to sink is to feel a touch of youth. They have been back as far as a time when there were no metal weapons and sometimes so far forward that the world they glimpsed in passing was incomprehensible to them.’ He turned to Yssobel. ‘The army has been led by different men; they contest the leadership. In the time these Athenians have been with Legion, the leader was first a man called Culloch - something like that. But a close compatriot of Culloch’s, who had been a great friend before leaving Legion, returned suddenly and killed him, taking over.’

  ‘And that man’s name?’

  ‘The dialect is difficult. But there is no mistaking the name “Christian”.’

  Odysseus was watching Yssobel, his eyes full of concern; he could have such a narrow gaze, a hard look, but now he was watching his friend, gauging her reaction to a truth that she had already suspected. The Athenian was still talking, his companions, propped on their elbows, watching Yssobel.

  ‘He says Christian is a violent and unpredictable man. He is hated. But he comes from outside the army. He says that there is something more foreign than the stars about him. He breathes different air. He knows the future.’