‘The Song came, a glorious song, eternal, all-encompassing … It sang at the oasis where Gl’Thaan Em began to grow. Both Land and Time, and all that had lived on that Land and in that Time, were marked and memorized so that their empowering spirit would not be lost–’
‘By sacrifice. By the brutal mating of human with animal.’
‘I have seen the world from the inside out, Jack. I can see what sacrifice became – the illusion of living-on in the shadow of invented Gods. But at Gl’Thaan Em, the dead were the gates by which the remembered life of the earth could continue to walk the valleys and the lakesides and the high hills. This was the deed the Song shaped us to perform. You make a judgement of right or wrong, of horrific, of brutal. But GI’Thaan Em was built for a purpose that would have been wonderful – and that purpose was not fulfilled. Like any child abandoned, it has simply been doing what it needed to find its own way home!’
‘And all to preserve the memory of extinct animals. To what end, Garth? To what end? We can dig up their bones, we can know them by their bones! To what end?’
‘To an end that was in the hearts and minds of a people now remote to you, a people who had lived with ghosts, and couldn’t bear to give them up.’
Exasperated, Jack shook his head, saying, ‘And now? What now?’
Garth shrugged, glanced at the silent, brooding figure of Baalgor. ‘And now it’s almost over. Harikk can’t be far. And then GI’Thaan Em will dive one more time – and surface again somewhere in the world, and in the past, where it will complete its purpose.’
‘But not at Jericho.’
John Garth shook his head. ‘It doesn’t seem so. Memory of GI’Thaan Em haunted the people there until they invented reasons for the very sacrifice that you find so abhorrent. And with what relish the art was practised! I saw Ur in its heyday, a feast of death, ritual of astonishing beauty, incredible ruthlessness, a city like a mausoleum!’
‘So where will you go?’
‘I don’t know. In my own time on this earth, before you were born, I looked for the final site of Glanum on every continent, a site ten thousand years old or more, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe it’s below the ice of Antarctica; more likely hidden in a mountain valley. All I have ever found, until Exburgh, was the occasional echo. So where we finish up will be as much a surprise to me as it will be to the explorer who one day finds our ruins!’
He glanced at Baalgor and I sensed impatience. Below my feet, the city shifted, a ship caught in strange winds, ready to cast off, to plough deep seas.
‘Nemet …’ I said again, and felt suddenly very frightened, very small. ‘Let her go, Mister Garth. She has come to mean half the world to me.’
And Natalie the other half, I thought, but didn’t say.
I was watching him through the half-face of Harikk. And suddenly I realized that through the eye of the scorched sister, Garth was smiling! Even though to my own, naked eye his face was hard and bruised, a man without compassion. Harikk was revealing to me the gleam of love in the heart of the Rememberer.
He moved past me and I stood my ground, shaking with an emotion I suppose was partly fear and partly hope.
‘Go to the gate,’ he said. ‘Wait there. When you feel the city start to dive, go out. Go out no matter what! But wait there until that moment. Wait and watch.’
‘Will you give her back to me?’
‘Wait. And watch!’ He marched away. For a while I stood my ground.
By the time he and Baalgor had disappeared from view, the white walls of Glanum were rising towards a summer sky.
39
One of the Brontotheria had blundered into the corral during the dawn hours, smashing the wooden fencing and freeing the wild hippari. The new animals were a bigger species than those he had caught with William, in another lifetime, and Jack was furious as he rode along the lake shore, assessing the best way to gather the kicking creatures back into the pens.
Nemet had circled round behind. He could see her, a dark shape on a dark horse, coming carefully through the trees, ready to turn the herd back if it began to stampede.
For the moment, the equines kicked and played in the lake water, snapping at the small birds that buzzed them, trying to land and peck at parasites.
At his signal, Nemet made her run, galloping down the shore, startling the creatures which began to bolt. But they turned away from the lake when Jack charged them, holding his long, red-flagged lance to the side.
Most of the hippari blundered back into the labyrinthine corral, and Jack hauled the gate closed, aware that Nemet was pursuing the three, ginger-maned misfits, the three largest of the herd, the three proudest.
There was a hailing cry from the harbour and Jack turned. For a second he thought it might be William Finebeard, and his heart skipped a beat; but it was not his lost friend who was summoning him. There remained no sign of William and Ethne only of the mausoleum, the tomb broken, the contents gone.
It was his daughter Natalie who walked towards him, waving, a white shape against the white tower of ivory.
He called to Nemet, ‘Can you manage now?’
‘Yes. If we lose them we lose them. I’m fine.’
He rode through the lake water to his daughter, dismounted and hugged her.
‘You’d forgotten. Hadn’t you!’
It was a reprimand.
‘The school play. Yes. I’m sorry. We’ve had some trouble with the big brontos. Nearly lost the new herd.’
‘I guessed something was up. That’s why I came to fetch you.’
She looked hungrily at the corralled animals, her eyes wide with the pleasure of what she saw. He knew what she was thinking and laughed, before wrapping his arms around her, calling to be drawn back from the Deep.
He surfaced on the frame, swung his legs off and stretched, plucking the sensors from the skin of his chest and scalp. Natalie stood before him, dressed in summer clothes, shoes polished, hair combed and ribboned. Angela was punching in the termination codes at the console.
She glanced at Jack and smiled briefly. ‘I’ve got to pick up Steve. We’ll see you there.’
‘I only need a couple of minutes. Just to freshen up.’
‘I’ll go with Daddy,’ Natalie said, and Angela shrugged. ‘Okay. But don’t be late.’
When Angela had gone, Natalie asked, ‘What are you going to do with the horses?’
‘Tame them, of course. Cut off their sharp little toes, then trade them.’
For anything but fish gum and icons, he added silently.
‘Nemet said she doesn’t like cutting off their toes.’
‘Nemet has a five-inch scar on her leg which reminds her of the good sense in the … painless … operation.’
‘Can I stay with you longer next time? I really like it by the lake. I’d like to help you look for William. Do you really think he’s still alive?’
‘I’m sure of it. He left me a picture: of “Greenface”. And everything suggests that Ethne came back to him … The only thing that puzzles me is how.’
‘And I’d like to ride one of the hipparions,’ Natalie was persisting. ‘With Harry.’
He leaned down and kissed the fresh-faced girl. ‘Harry’s too young yet. He’s like his father … tall for his age, but very clumsy.’
‘You’re not clumsy!’
‘You didn’t see me rounding up the horses yesterday! Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, you can come and visit any time you like. You know how much I love you. And I will spend more time with you at home, just as soon as I’ve got the ranch working smoothly, back in the Deep. And then you can come and ride whatever you like. You can even ride a Brontotherium, if you want. But you’ll have to ask Mummy. And Steve. They call the shots now. They have control of the inner eye.’
‘I know,’ Natalie said mischievously. ‘She’s always keeping her eye on you. Through the Midact-VR-Interact. Steve calls it MERV.’
‘Does he indeed.’
‘But that’s silly. It should
be MIVRI’
‘Not everyone has your perfect spelling. Off you go, now. Get your coat.’
As Natalie left the Midax room, at the top of the house, Jack went over to the console, irritated more by the fact that he’d had no previous knowledge of Merv than by Angela spying on his life with Ahk’Nemet.
Not knowing how to access the ‘VR-Interact’, as Natalie had called it, he used a red marker-pen to scrawl a simple message on the screen of his ex-wife’s lap-top AppleMac.
‘Mind your own bloody business! Keep your eyes to yourself!’
Author’s Note
Glanum: Travellers to Provence, in particular to the region of St Remy, will know the ruins of the town of Glanum. The visible remains are essentially Roman, but the site had long been used as a sanctuary. The local museum contains the headless torso of a statue of CERNUNNOS, the Lord of Animals of the early Celts, discovered during excavation. The fragment is wrongly labelled ‘seated warrior’.
RH
12th June 1995
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Also By Robert Holdstock
Mythago Wood
1. Mythago Wood (1984)
2. Lavondyss (1988)
3. The Bone Forest (1991)
4. The Hollowing (1992)
5. Merlin's Wood (1994)
6. Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn (1997)
7. Avilion (2008)
The Merlin Codex
1. Celtika (2001)
2. The Iron Grail (2002)
3. The Broken Kings (2006)
Novels
Eye Among the Blind (1976)
Earthwind (1977)
Necromancer (1978)
Where Time Winds Blow (1981)
The Emerald Forest (1985)
Ancient Echoes (1986)
The Fetch (1991)
Night Hunter (writing as Robert Faulcon)
The Stalking (1983)
The Talisman (1983)
The Ghost Dance (1983)
The Shrine (1984)
The Hexing (1984)
The Labyrinth (1987)
Raven (as Richard Kirk, with Angus Wells)
Swordsmistress of Chaos (1978)
A Time of Ghosts (1978)
The Frozen God (1978)
Lords of the Shadows (1979)
A Time of Dying (1979)
Writing As Robert Black
Legend of the Werewolf (1976)
The Satanists (1977)
Berserker Trilogy (writing as Chris Carlsen)
1. Shadow of the Wolf (1977)
2. The Bull Chief (1977)
3. The Horned Warrior (1979)
Collections
In the Valley of the Statues: And Other Stories (1982)
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Thierry J., whose enthusiasm for, and analysis of my fictional ‘hidden states of mind’ is always welcome and on this occasion was invaluable. And thanks to Patsy, Jane and Howard for their encouragement during the writing, and Chris and Garry for so often ‘lending me their ears’.
Robert Holdstock (1948 – 2009)
Robert Paul Holdstock was born in a remote corner of Kent, sharing his childhood years between the bleak Romney Marsh and the dense woodlands of the Kentish heartlands. He received an MSc in medical zoology and spent several years in the early 1970s in medical research before becoming a full-time writer in 1976. His first published story appeared in the New Worlds magazine in 1968 and for the early part of his career he wrote science fiction. However, it is with fantasy that he is most closely associated.
1984 saw the publication of Mythago Wood, winner of the BSFA and World Fantasy Awards for Best Novel, and widely regarded as one of the key texts of modern fantasy. It and the subsequent ‘mythago’ novels (including Lavondyss, which won the BSFA Award for Best Novel in 1988) cemented his reputation as the definitive portrayer of the wild wood. His interest in Celtic and Nordic mythology was a consistent theme throughout his fantasy and is most prominently reflected in the acclaimed Merlin Codex trilogy, consisting of Celtika, The Iron Grail and The Broken Kings, published between 2001 and 2007.
Among many other works, Holdstock co-wrote Tour of the Universe with Malcolm Edwards, for which rights were sold for a space shuttle simulation ride at the CN Tower in Toronto, and The Emerald Forest, based on John Boorman’s film of the same name. His story, ‘The Ragthorn’, written with friend and fellow author Garry Kilworth, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella and the BSFA Award for Short Fiction.
Robert Holdstock died in November 2009, just four months after the publication of Avilion, the long-awaited, and sadly final, return to Ryhope Wood.
www.robertholdstock.com
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Robert Holdstock 1996
All rights reserved.
The right of Robert Holdstock to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 08839 9
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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Ancient Echoes Page 37
