Ancient Echoes

by Robert Holdstock

  A set of tracks, clearly human, led towards me, then away again towards the winter forest and the gorge. This same person had rifled my pack as I slept, but from the compression of the snow around me it seemed they had stayed for a while, hauling me into shelter, waiting for my emergence from the transition.

  Perhaps impatient, or simply cold, they had eventually departed. I tried to see signals in the snow-spoor of my love-lorn and vigorous friend William Finebeard, but the fact is I was more inclined to see Greenface in the trail, and whether by some lingering smell, or subtle sign, I was convinced she had been here, searched me, and was now close by, perhaps in some place where the winter was abating.

  The great bulls, the thrusting, leering statues that guarded the entrance to one of the temples, now were looming skeletons, their bones carved from black marble, though with horns of gleaming ivory. The hollow skulls stared down at me, the cavities and sockets in the carved faces giving an illusion of curiosity.

  This dreamlike state hardened slightly, becoming lucid, yet still unreal. I was half in the Hinterland, half in the process of arriving, but I could hear and smell the winter, and was aware of the approach of horses from the gully.

  I stood in my shelter and watched the riders wade carefully through the silent wood, entering the hushed piazza, fanning out to form an arc between the church and the temples opposite. I counted fifteen, heavily cloaked, their mounts culled from the prehistoric horses that had browsed along the lake-edge in that time, days or years past, when I had first been here. The animals were swathed in coarse blankets, muzzles gleaming with guards of copperish metal.

  A horn-blast startled me. One of the riders was standing in his rope stirrups, the metal horn held against chafed lips. The sound was a sustained low note rapidly ascending, like a ship’s siren, repeated three times, then three times more.

  The horsemen shuffled, mounts restless in the cold, all swathed in the frost from their lungs. They were clearly uncomfortable in this place, and those four or five riders who quickly dismounted and waded into the ruins, searching, were disgruntled and irritable at the task.

  The leader eventually called my name, a cry taken up by the others, a summoning muffled by the winter but loud enough to carry to the higher cliffs.

  William? Was that William Finebeard who shouted and called for me? I walked towards him, aware that I was a ghost in this ghostly place, and as I approached I was convinced that this man, bearded and advanced in years, was not my lost friend.

  Nevertheless, I moved before him, calling out, and two of his companions were aware of me, trying to restrain their restless, skinny equines, prodding spears at my shape as they turned in the deep snow, shouting in alarm.

  Half the troop scattered at once, beating their screaming horses back to the gully and the waterfall. The others stared at me, not responding when I spoke to them. They could see but they couldn’t hear. Eventually, they, as well, gave up the ghost, turning and riding away, although the leader – who had seemed unable to engage with my incorporeal presence – pointed vaguely to the church, bellowed my name several times more, coupled with that of ‘William’, before following his men.

  In the church I found a crudely painted wooden plaque, slung from one of the columns. It was marked with the icon that I associated with my friend, the simple, snaking corner of a maze, a quadrant of the Winter Dance, and included the representation of the paisley pattern, with which William had associated me after the fiasco of the swimming shorts. A vertical list of symbols, ten in all, could mean nothing else but the number of times he had revisited the Hinterland, or sent his colleagues here, to search me out.

  Ten visits … ten years? And perhaps visits from a William whom I would not recognize, for this Hinterland was different, now, familiar in many ways, but changed, from flesh to bone, an empty place, soulless, a version of the Temple City in which I had first arrived.

  I re-packed the canvas bag, then slung it across my back, alarmed by its weight. After wading through the snow, away from the Hinterland, I slipped and slid across the icy ledges of the frozen waterfall before finding the treacherous track down through the wooded slopes. From here I could see the distant lake, still visible despite the haze of winter mist, where I hoped to find the village again, and perhaps some way of crossing the water to join forces with the fair-bearded youth whom I had abandoned in another time.

  It was a freezing and difficult journey to the lake, and I spent three days travelling, sheltering where I could, conserving my supplies. Eventually, I hauled myself from the treeline and smiled at the sheen of ice before me. The white surface was broken in places, exposing the blue gleam of water, and I knew I had found the lake.

  Half a day later, close to dusk, my hopes of a warm fire, warm food, the comfort of people who might have forgiven me for my friendship with William, were dashed.

  How much time had passed was hard to tell, but at some point, years ago, the fishing village had been fortified, a massive line of defences against the land on one side, the lake on the other. And at some time after that, the city had been besieged and sacked. The great walls were broken; the charring of fire was in evidence everywhere. If the grisly remains of humans lay scattered about the fallen stones, the snow had mercifully covered them.

  A harbour had been built as well, crude stone piled between thick uprights of cut trees. In the wide, deep haven, the hulks of burned ships lay, broken and ice-endowed, prows high, sterns in the mud. Like fallen marquees, the once-colourful sails lay caught in the frost. These ships had been lean and sleek, long-boats, I imagined, but they had been destroyed as they lay quiet in their berths. They were useless.

  Inside the walls of the fortified town there was sufficient shelter to make a camp, and I chose the ruins of a house whose tree timbers had survived the destruction. It was only after I had lit the fire, and was busy tying hides and the remains of blankets to the frame, that I noticed the icons and carvings on the poles, and realized where I was. This was the chieftain’s house, that same house where William had silently courted the eldest daughter, and the young Thimuth’s lust for me had been sternly rebuked by the watching parents.

  Dire-wolves prowled the ruins during the night, and I kept the fire blazing and my back firmly to a tall wall, a sharpened pole between my knees as I sat, watching the hungry creatures. There were three, perhaps four, one of them a huge ‘alpha’ male with fur so stiff with its own preening that its ruff took on the appearance of quills. This monster kept a watchful eye on the fire whilst its mates scratched and tore at the hard earth, resurrecting the stinking limbs of the dead where they had been summarily buried.

  And so of course I couldn’t sleep, even though my instinct told me that these creatures would not attack.

  At dawn I was simply too exhausted to stay awake, and several hours later opened my eyes to find snow drifting across the scene of last night’s grave-digging, and the lake as silent and beautiful as any lake in Finland. Freezing, I soon started the fire again, and changed from damp clothes to fresh ones.

  For the rest of the day I hunted the winter forest without success, sought for any means at all to follow William’s raiders across the lake to the ice-tower shore, and finally, at dusk, came back to raise fire again, to further weatherproof my shelter, to prowl among the ashes of the dead, trying to imagine what might have happened here. With the light going I went to the lake’s edge and skipped shards of stone across the frozen surface, the sound ringing hollow in the bitter frost.

  And it was at that moment, unguarded and lost in thought, that the sensation of a city appeared to me, a brief moment in which, with the ice shaking, ghostly towers rose above the lake, a broken wall, an open gate surmounted by the familiar horns of a bull. It was intangible, insubstantial, and I experienced it more by a dream awareness than by sight, but the city moved around me, hovering in the winter air, for all the world as if it were watching me, or listening. I saw at once that this was the same ghost city that had burst from the eart
h on the Mallon Hills, many years ago. It was Glanum!

  I turned around, called for John Garth, felt uncannily as if someone had touched my cheek; but then the sensation was gone, the ghost towers slipping back into the ice. I was left with my focus on the far ridge, where earlier I had hunted small game and proved myself adept only at striking bark.

  There was a small fire burning there, a ruddy glow in the forest’s gloom. As I watched and listened, I heard the sound of the small horses, and of men laughing.

  There were three of them, and in the morning they rode slowly along the shore, peering up at the ruins, almost cursorily kicking through the traces. Of course, when they found my shelter they searched it and dismantled it, but since by then I was securely hidden back along their trail, they failed to find me.

  I don’t believe, however, that it was me they were searching for. There was an anger and a frustration in their actions which did not concur with their search for me in the Hinterland.

  I found a good place to hide, close to a mound of snow, by some dense brushwood. I was alarmed when the three riders came back towards me, dismounted, stripped their equines of blankets and trappings and blew a shrill horn blast. And immediately I was glad that I hadn’t burrowed, for extra shelter, into the mound of snow, for it erupted with a great blast of stinking warmth and a huge man, heavily furred, luxuriously bearded, sprang up, throwing back the crude wicker frame in which he had been lurking. He stretched and farted, tossed out a sword, a throwing axe and a spear, then kicked away the rest of the snow, roaring good-humoured abuse at his companions.

  There were a few minutes of drinking from a leather gourd, then the horses were driven away, back into the frozen forest. Being tamed, they soon stopped, bewildered and alone, caught between the cry of the wild and the certainty of feed from their erstwhile masters.

  As soon as the guardian had relieved his painful joints and satisfied his waiting appetites, the brushwood, which I had seen but not considered, was cleared from around the black-tarred hull of a small boat. After throwing their equipment and the harnessing into the hollow shell, they dragged and hauled this vessel to the ice, where it slid and slithered towards the water, the four men trying to keep control, laughing as it twisted in their grasp, possessed of a life of its own.

  At the edge of the ice, they flung themselves aboard. The boat plunged into the icy waters and they struck around them with poles, then used simple oars to paddle away from this alien land.

  I watched them enviously, but suddenly they started to cry out, and I felt a certain horror too as I saw the vessel list, then start to sink. They had thrown themselves overboard at once, but this winter was too strong and the water like the bony grip of death. They could not get further than the edge of the ice, against which they clawed and grasped, but across which they could not crawl. Like that ice in the heart of the betrayed, this simple edge, this slender gate, was a barrier that could not be passed.

  It was not possible to listen to their shrieks without feeling impelled to help. I slipped across the frozen lake carrying a coil of rope and flung it to the nearest man. It failed to reach him, though he grabbed for it, stretched for it with a determination that made his wan face suddenly flush. Below my feet, the ice moved and a crack appeared. I backed away to safety, releasing the rope, which glided, snakelike, into the wretched man’s grasp at last.

  As he vanished below the grey surface, silent and resigned to death, so he tied the rope around his neck. His impassive gaze was on me to the last.

  The four equines were huddled miserably in the lee of one of the broken walls, their breath frosting thickly, two of them pawing at the hard ground. I found more rope in the ruined town and gently persuaded the creatures to let me tether them loosely and lead them to a more sheltered place. But I had nothing with which to feed them, and I would have to release them to their own devices before too long.

  I spent the day hunting again, and collecting what pathetic and inadequate fodder I could – no more than some straw from what had once been a bed, and the pale emerald leaves of an evergreen, whose bark was a series of jagged points, a primitive tree which might easily have poisoned the horses, but which in fact seemed to perk the creatures up as they chewed the slender vegetation.

  As the light began to go at the end of my second day here I decided to abandon this visit to the Deep and return to the Hinterland, and by calling, to surface again in my own world. But as I huddled by the fire, behind the palisade of sharpened branches, I saw a figure move steadily across the lake, walking carefully on the ice. It was a bulky shape, dark and broad, and whoever it was carried a long spear in each hand with which it steadied its movements. The moon was behind clouds, but the lake-water glittered. The figure crouched as close to the edge of the shoreline ice as it dared, peering to the far coast. It must surely have seen me earlier; the fire was bright, the noise of burning wood loud.

  I prepared for the worst, and when at last the human shape came slowly back to the land, picking up a leather bag and walking cautiously into the ruins, certainly aware of me, I rose defensively to confront the stranger.

  By the faint light of the fire, dark eyes in a green face watched me from within the heavy cowl of fur.

  She came to the defences and shrugged off the heavy winter skin, shivering as the cold air hit her, but quickly coming to the fire, unafraid of me, her weapons left beyond the fence.

  ‘You were in my dreams again,’ she whispered. ‘So I’ve been expecting you. But I’m not following him. I’m not coming with you. You’ve found me, we can talk, but I’m not following him. I need to go back.’

  ‘You’ve been in my dreams too,’ I said. ‘I didn’t expect to find you in this sort of winter, though.’

  ‘I’ve been here for years. When the winter changes, it’s like cloud shadow running through the valleys. The spring comes faster than a man can run. Everything melts, everything is mud, drowning mud where the valleys are deep and the hills shift or the rivers rise and spread. Then the trees blossom and bloom, and the heat comes and the earth bakes. It will happen at any time. Then you can have your boat and cross the lake again, if that’s what you want. The bitumen caulking can be replaced easily enough, the gaps in the hull patched.’

  She cast me a look, a half smile, and I realized that she was telling me she had sabotaged the horsemen’s vessel. I whispered, ‘So that’s why it sank so fast.’

  ‘I didn’t expect it to sink so close to the shore. If they’d come onto the ice, I’d have killed them. They’ve been hunting me for sport while they’ve been looking for you. They’ve run me almost to ground too many times. I simply shortened the odds against it happening again.’ She smiled, her dark eyes shining. ‘But at least you have a boat.’

  And Greenface had food! Earthy flavoured mushrooms, which she had gathered in autumn and carefully dried; highly spiced strips of fowl; dry, hard cakes of unleavened bread; and fat, sharp-tasting olives.

  ‘You have to know where to look. There are traders everywhere. Gather what you can, where you can – if you have something to trade, this edge of the world is not an unpleasant place to exist.’

  This edge of the world?

  ‘This is the edge of the world,’ she repeated, when I asked her what she meant. ‘What more can I tell you?’

  ‘Tell me about your life. Tell me where you come from.’

  ‘I was born in a valley, below forested hills, in a camp that moved with the seasons between those hills and rivers, between fresh springs and the walls of great sanctuaries. The land was hot and lush; the creatures of the forests were terrifying; the creatures of the river were huge and menacing. As a child, with my brothers and sisters, I swam in dangerous waters. My father took me in his boat, up the river, past many of the wooden and stone figures that protected the land from those who sailed the water. He traded and talked, using words that were meaningless to me, but which he had learned through his life by courage and with dedication. I often dream of him. He was such a tall
man, his beard in ringlets, his hair tied around the crown with a circlet of polished blue stones, his hands so strong and dark, each finger with a leather ring, his belly hard and scarred, his legs tattooed to show his knowledge of the lands to north and south.

  ‘I helped him sail the boat, sitting on the cargo, tugging at the deep sail while he leaned against the tiller, shouting at me, always angry, always making me work a little harder. But when the voyage was finished, the trade completed, he would dress in his loose tunic, black and yellow, and let his hair free, and open the leather gourd of fragrant wine. We would let the current take us, slipping down the river below the stars, drinking and laughing, eating figs and olives, invoking moon and river to give us safe, sweet passage. I would curl on his belly in the night, wrapped around him, safe in his broad arms, fulfilled by his love, satisfied by his food and kisses. How could I have known what he planned for me? I listened to the strange tongues he spoke, and saw the hungry glances of the men he spoke to, but I never dreamed that he would send me to the sanctuary of beasts. I never dreamed it. He betrayed me. He betrayed us all.’

  She caught herself in melancholy reminiscence and straightened up, spitting on the fire, which hissed spectacularly. Her speech had been slow and soft, her gaze all the time upon the flames. Now she reached for an olive and chewed it quickly, silent again.

  ‘Is that why you’re running? Is that why you’re pursued? Because you disobeyed your father?’

  She was quiet for a moment, then said, ‘No. By that time, I was already marked. Only I didn’t know it. And not just me …’

  ‘Baalgor too?’

  ‘Baalgor … and others. Seven in all. After the terrible deed we all scattered to the stars, some to the north, some to the south. Baalgor and I stayed close – he was my brother – the others I think running alone. I imagine they perished quickly. The lands we entered were those of demons, put up to snare us. A man alone would have had no chance. The two of us managed to keep the hunters at a distance until we came to the edge of the world, and realized we could run no further. Then we started to look for the Gate, but by the time we had found it …’