Ancient Echoes

by Robert Holdstock

  Then at dusk of the third day among the icon hunters, riders came into the stronghold, exhausted and dishevelled, their primitive horses steaming and screaming in an odd evocation of the more familiar ‘whinny’.

  I soon gathered that William was lost. He had ridden too close to the Eye, and though the band sent to fetch him back could see him, he was beyond their reach, and seemingly unaware of the danger he was now facing.

  For a while the fort reacted with a sort of mindless shock, an aimless sequence of gatherings, discussions, silences and shaking of heads. I gained the impression that to go where William had inadvertently journeyed was the same as being dead, and the only thing stopping the mourning process was the fact that his soul could still be seen. And indeed, when the wild riders came to me, crouching before me in the Mongol fashion, elbows on knees, hands together between them, the discussion became more earnest than any yet.

  They were looking to me, now, to understand how to guide William from the great distance that separated him, and Ethne and the others, from the enchanted world of the lake, the herds of hippari, and the prospect of adventure in wild realms.

  ‘I can’t do it without a guide,’ I said. ‘I need a guide myself. As soon as I’ve found her, I’ll return.’

  I went to the sheltered hide, frustrated to find it still empty. ‘For Christ’s Sake!’ I bellowed to the hills. ‘Don’t abandon me now!’

  I passed the night by the water, listening to the movement of creatures beyond imagining, wary always of the giant beasts that came so swiftly to the lake’s edge to drink.

  And at dawn, just as I was drifting between sleep and wakefulness, the lobe of my ear was tugged, startling me.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ Nemet said, her eyes sparkling, her breath moist on my face as she stared at me, searching my expression, perhaps for signs of betrayal. ‘That fish!’

  For a moment I was puzzled. ‘That fish? What fish?’

  ‘With honey. You left it for me. Wonderful!’

  ‘Oh, that fish! I know. It’s been red carpet treatment since I told them who I was.’

  ‘Red carpet?’

  ‘They’ve honoured me. I’m their chieftain’s lost friend.’

  ‘Honour you. Hunt me like a beast of prey.’

  ‘Not all of them. I think you can trust them. I need you, now. I have to go to the Eye. William is trapped there, and his hunters think I can help. Will you come with me? You seem to know your way around this edge of the world.’

  Nemet grimaced, then shrugged. ‘I don’t. Not really. I know the way back to the city. You mustn’t put too much faith in me … Jack.’

  It was the first time she had called me by name, and whilst I was pleased to hear the sound of my name on her tongue, she clearly was adjusting to a great change in her relationship with me. She repeated, ‘Jack. Jack. Strange name for a strange dream-man.’

  ‘It’s a nickname for John. It’s one of the oldest names known. It’s probably no more than an early sound, one of several designed to distinguish between individuals. It’s simple … like me … It needs direction … like me. Help me? Nemet?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Please!’

  ‘I don’t trust the people in the sanctuary …’ she meant the stronghold. She was staring along the shore, frowning.

  ‘They won’t hurt you if you’re with me. They need me, now. I just don’t know what to do. It’s not that I’m afraid of the Eye … I just don’t understand it.’

  ‘And you think I do?’

  ‘More so than me. Your own sanctuary lies there. You led me a merry chase last time I was in this edge of the world. Nothing seems to surprise you.’

  ‘Everything surprises me. I was born to expect that. Surprise keeps me moving. Perhaps that’s the difference between us. Surprise takes you …’ she suddenly laughed. ‘By surprise. It stops you dead.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes,’ she repeated softly, thinking hard. And then she smiled, placed her hands on my face and leaned forward to kiss me. ‘If I come with you – keep your friend’s hired assassins away from me.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Good. But I make no promises. I want to go home, Jack. I want to finish with the torment. I’ll come with you as far as I can, but please don’t try and keep me.’

  ‘Of course I’ll try and keep you!’

  Again, she smiled; again she kissed me. ‘I know. So I’ll say goodbye to you now. That way … when I leave you I can do so without guilt. Goodbye Jack.’

  ‘I’ll follow you to the heart of the world.’

  She laughed out loud, standing and gathering her belongings together. Then she said something that astonished me with its insight. ‘You are the heart of the world. There’s nowhere else for you to go.’

  27

  I should have foreseen the outcome of the perilous journey to the Eye of the land.

  I had been seduced by Ahk’Nemet’s closeness and intimacy, and I had not truly believed her warning words. It seemed unlikely, as we ascended the wooded mountain slopes, rise upon rise, deep into the mist, that she would try and escape before we had accomplished our mission. And perhaps I was right to think that, though I had forgotten one simple precept of human life: we don’t always act in the way we mean. Deeper drives are often at work.

  Burdened by charms, the horses heavy with religious icons, we followed Perendour and his band of four along the mountain trails. These mercenaries had a lazy way of riding, slouched in the crude saddles, rein-free arm dangling, heads drooping as if asleep. They were resting as they rode, but were nevertheless alert to every movement in the forest, erupting into a sudden gallop as a small creature unwarily gave itself away, surrounding the beast and using spears to dispatch it with brutal, gleeful finality. Fresh pig and colourful, surprised-looking birds were soon added to the loads on the two packhorses.

  This was not the same route to the whirlpool of woods and ruins that I had glimpsed before, but soon the earth began to shake at times, deep tremors that startled the animals and discomforted their riders. The mountains were dangerous here, with slippages of grey rock, crashing trees, and the fragile, crumbling ruins of ancient buildings. Everything seemed to be on the move, but there was not, as yet, any of that sense of the world slipping-by that I had encountered in my previous pursuit of Greenface.

  That changed as soon as we crested the last and most difficult of the ridges, winding our way through a gloomy wood of pines and birch, and finally emerging onto the lip of the Eye. Here, stretching away from us into the vast distance and descending into the depths, the rotating spiral of the earth could be seen.

  ‘Now we ride,’ said Perendour irritably, and kicked his steaming equine to make it trot along the precarious path.

  I soon discovered that we had come along the wrong trail, and that we had a great deal of distance to make up. We rode, therefore, almost non-stop for the rest of the day as it was experienced here, resting only for the sake of the horses, when they threatened to drop with exhaustion. Away went the unnecessary supplies, the fresh meat included; the pack animals were now swapped around among us, extra backs for the burden of human weight.

  Without tents, it was a miserable night; without sleep, kept awake by fear, it was a nightmare. The world creaked, rumbled and shifted as we huddled around a blazing fire, watching shadows in the dark. The hippari screamed, gnawing and struggling at their tethers, struggling for freedom. They would only be calmed by constant attention. By moonlight, we watched a castle wall ascend the slope. Regurgitated from the Eye, it rose above us over the hours, dark towers silent and leaning precariously as the land spewed it out. We crouched below the crumbling battlements helpless, like creatures fixed by light, unmoving, trusting to fate. It passed safely by us and later crashed into the forest, the sound of its falling sending birds screeching into the grey dawn skies.

  Weary, but glad of the new day, we packed up and continued round the maelstrom, following broken roads and crude tracks whe
re possible, searching in the fragments of habitation where we found them, looking for the oracle where William had last been seen.

  At last Perendour called out, and we mounted up and followed him away from the ridge, towards the marble façade that had been built against a cliff. Bright in the sun, the carved stone was blinding. The forest had grown through the building, branches drooping from the angled windows, ivy entwining with the dancing figures of humans and grotesque animals that wreathed the arch across the entrance.

  Nemet was affected by the ruin, cautious and anxious. ‘I know this place. I’ve played here so many times as a child.’

  ‘Here? Exactly here?

  ‘Somewhere like this …’ she murmured, but was unsure. She added in a whisper, ‘It’s followed me too. This is the place.’

  I looked more closely at the carvings. The human figures of both sexes were dressed in either short kilts or shapeless robes; the women were shown with their hair in tight, waist-length ringlets, the men with beards and ‘fans’ of hair across their crowns. There were no weapons in sight, but the beasts were more fabulous than realistic, and small chariots abounded. There were ships, high prowed, high keeled, and stacks of what looked like amphorae and the skins of animals.

  Over all of this, dominating the empty entrance, was a pair of watching eyes, a stone carving that communicated great authority, with just a hint of humour where the lids narrowed above the unshaped nose. It was a knowing look by all our judgements, and the stare seemed to follow us about.

  What had at first seemed Grecian, at closer inspection was far, far older.

  Perendour was prodding at the undergrowth blocking the entrance, looking for a way inside. I suddenly realized that Ahk’Nemet had become agitated.

  ‘Don’t go in!’ she cried in genuine terror. She had begun to back away, wide-eyed and frightened, staring up at the façade of the temple.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Don’t go in. Stop him going inside! It’s the Watching Place. I remember, now – my father pursued me here …’

  ‘You said you’d played here as a child …’

  ‘I did. So did my brother. Stop him.’

  Even as Nemet shouted this order, causing Perendour to hesitate in his movement through the undergrowth, the woman had run for her horse, flinging herself over its back before squirming round to grip the flanks with her legs. She kicked, smacked and bullied the poor creature into a jerking gallop that carried the two of them along the edge of the forest.

  Unmoved by the strange woman’s warning, Perendour had vanished into the overgrown temple. He called out; there was the sound of crashing about. He whistled, then laughed, and his companions turned to me and laughed also, raising their hands in that universal gesture that means simply: why all the fuss?

  Their casual attitude was, not quite literally, the spur to my giving chase to Nemet. She was not a good rider, and though she seemed to race ahead of me when she heard my approach, at the edge of the cliff itself, she soon turned into the forest, ducking and weaving below the branches, finally flinging herself from the crude saddle and dangling from a bough. She hung there, stretched out and magnificent, her head slightly thrown back as she breathed softly.

  I rode up to her and round her, then dismounted to stand below her, meeting her tearful gaze. I put my arms around her legs, my face against her belly, and she released the branch and came slowly into my embrace.

  Her mouth was suddenly on my own, pressed hard, her tongue a deep and passionate presence, then a flickering, tasting tease across my lips. Her eyes remained closed all the time, her hands gripping my hair, pulling my face against her own, a wet, erotic, wonderful union of kisses.

  She was still crying.

  ‘Please don’t run from me,’ I whispered when the kiss broke. Her gaze was suddenly questioning.

  ‘Then come back with me. Come back to the sanctuary.’

  ‘I can’t. I don’t belong here. Besides …’

  ‘I know. You have a wife, and a daughter, and Baalgor threatens your happiness. Are you thinking of her now?’

  ‘Angela? Yes.’

  ‘Do you think she’s watching you?’

  ‘She’s a long way away.’

  ‘But she knows. Don’t you think she knows?’

  Her words were not a tease, not a challenge; they might have come from my own mind, my own guilt at this encounter with flesh and face and the furious potential of a passionate union that was firing me and making me dizzy. The woman in my arms refused to unwind from me, her legs about me, her arms round my neck, her mouth touching me moistly, my eyes, my brow, my cheeks, my lips.

  ‘Is this wrong?’ she asked, and I answered quite truthfully that I didn’t know. This woman was not real, although she was full, firm and fabulous in my intimate embrace. My fingers touched her and she arched her back, her warm breath sweet as she enjoyed the probing caress.

  I didn’t know if it was wrong. But the thought of Angela monitoring this overpowering foreplay made me shake. How could she see? Was a machine flickering? Was Steve sitting there, reeling off acronyms?

  Subject entering phase of Pre-Sex Ecstasy; PSE growing! Limbic system activity increasing; physical arousal of Midax subject very obvious … reflection of VE (Virtual-Excitement) in the Deep Midax State.

  This beautiful, tearful eastern woman had come from my past, from my dreams; I had entered the dream to find her; I had become that song of myself so celebrated by the poet. How could it be wrong to celebrate a love that was contained within my very soul?

  The forest was quite still as I set Ahk’Nemet down on her feet, then kissed her before kneeling before her and undressing her, running my mouth over the smooth skin of her belly, breathing her strong, moist scent as she held my head against her and gently stroked my hair. She lay below me, then, her eyes closed, her mouth half open, her breath shaped almost inaudibly into words of affirmation, her hands pressing me deeper, restraining me when I gave in to an urgency that was too animal for this strong yet seemingly slight and sensuous creature.

  We moved together gently for what seemed like hours, and when she felt I was reaching my climax she took my hands and pressed them to her breasts, then again took my face in her slim fingers and drew me close for a hungry kiss as our bodies shuddered and sighed with pleasure.

  ‘Beautiful,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes. Beautiful.’

  ‘Stay inside me. I can still feel the fire.’

  ‘I had no plans to move at all …’

  But shortly after, one of the hippari raced past, snorting and afraid, its trappings flailing as it panicked, panicking our own two horses, shattering the blissful intimacy.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ Nemet said unnecessarily, tugging on her clothes. ‘Let’s get away from here. The Watching Place is too dangerous.’

  ‘I can’t just leave them.’

  She almost spat at me, eyes bright with fury … or perhaps fear. ‘Of course you can! Your friend isn’t far. You don’t need those men!’

  Quite why I felt drawn back to the Watching Place I have no idea; a sense of duty? That would have been strange, since duty held no particular value for me; friendship, yes, but Nemet was quite right that it made more sense to ride away, to seek William alone. And yet I couldn’t.

  She was exasperated and angry, suddenly cold when minutes before she had been caressing me so warmly.

  We rode quickly back to the shrine and found Perendour’s comrades in a state of agitation and indecision. Clearly, I imagined, something terrible had occurred to their man inside the temple walls; the horse had panicked because of the sudden shrieking of its master, hidden beyond the stone façade. None of the other knights had dared go into the ruins to discover the truth behind their fear that Perendour had been violently done to death.

  In fact, the hipparion had bolted when a rock fall had frightened it. And the agitation was because of what Perendour had found, away from the Watching Place.

  He was crouched on
a rocky outcrop, staring across the valley at the circulating swirl of the maelstrom.

  He glanced round as I rode up, then beckoned to me. Nemet hissed her irritation and kicked her horse towards the oracle. I dismounted and ran quickly to where the man was waiting. He pointed into the distance and after a moment taken to re-adjust to the strange landscape before me, I focused upon the small encampment.

  ‘William!’

  If at first I whispered his name, I soon shouted it, but Perendour tugged me down again, shaking his head. Indeed, my bellowed cry had failed to disturb the tableau of figures on the moving earth. So close, yet so far, my friend from the previous incarnation had not heard the sound of my voice.

  And so I could do nothing but watch, and stare, and hunger.

  From this distance, William looked no older than when I’d last seen him, a fresh-faced youthfulness, framed in the wispy blonde of his beard. I could see he was laughing, kicking his horse into a gallop, cloak streaming as he was followed by the dark-haired girl from the farther shore.

  She herself had transformed. There was something wild about her; I could imagine the sound of her shouting, of her laughter. She kicked at her steed, leaning forward across its neck, determined to win the race. Their companions, two cloaked men, trotted easily behind them.

  The scamper across the land ended, the riders wheeled about, leaned towards each other and kissed.

  Then William turned his eyes towards the pinnacle where I stood, and shaded his eyes, peering hard.

  For a moment my blood raced. He’d seen us! But then I realized that his gaze had shifted. He was scanning the land as he saw it, but my own physical presence was not in evidence. The girl rode up beside him and leaned an arm on his shoulder. She was so pale of face, but perhaps that whiteness was simply a contrast with the extravagant colours of her tunic and trousers, gleaming peacock blues and greens. I couldn’t see her scars, but her beauty was apparent, and her contentment with my friend was physically manifest.

  Suddenly she had wrestled William from the back of his horse, and tumbled with him to the ground, laughing. Their companions discreetly turned and rode to a sheltered site. William and Ethne ran towards me, ducking down behind an out-crop, where the ground was grassy and fairly level. For a while it was hard to equate this carefree, playful young man with the ruthless attack on the fishing town, and the abduction – hardly against her will, it seemed – of the eldest of the chief’s daughters.