Where Time Winds Blow, page 29
Audwyn had noticed Faulcon’s sudden hesitation, the way his head had lifted to regard the distant cry, the narrowness of his eyes behind the wide, clear-glass goggles. “Is that where you are to go, then? To the mountains?”
They were at the edge of the wood, now, and in the breezy dusk the fields glowed orange and moved in colourful rhythm before the gentle winds. All but a few of the manchanged were finished with the day’s work, and stood in groups in the stubbly clearings, resting on their long-handled farm tools, or seated, arms around knees, staring into the setting sun and talking in quiet voices. They seemed unperturbed by the sporadic, but insistent, crying of the gulgaroth.
“The mountains,” Faulcon agreed as he focused hard, intent upon the white peaks and the dark slopes that now seemed almost a part of the sky. “Not to the tops, certainly. Not to the snow. But to a deep Galley that looks towards twin peaks. What is sleeping there is what I seek.” He looked round at Audwyn, who was noticeably uneasy. The man’s wide, staring eyes were rimmed with pink, and though he smiled, though he affected composure, Faulcon realized that the thought of a trek through the territories of the gulgaroth was deeply disturbing to him; or perhaps it was as simple as Audwyn having divined Faulcon’s purpose in coming to the village first, and despite the manchanged philosophy that they were all far greater than the circumstances that affected their lives, he was nervous at the prospect of going into the valleys. Faulcon watched him carefully, wondering what spark of memory, what hint of the past, might have been nagging at Audwyn, making him respond with a very human fear.
There was no time for subtle suggestion. “I need a guide, Audwyn.”
The manchanged smiled. “Of course. But you shall have two guides. Allissia must come.” He reached for his wife and put his arm around her waist. Allissia melted against the tall man, and her eyes too showed the passing concern, the moment of fear before the fact of acceptance.
“What a confusing man you are,” she said, and Faulcon frowned his question. She shrugged almost imperceptibly. “The last time you were here you were seeking the courage to walk into the depths of the rift valley. Now you seek guides to the high lands.”
“There is a connection,” said Faulcon. “I went to the valley. I went without hesitation. I went with others, and together we faced the time winds, and together we travelled into their realm.”
Audwyn and Allissia exchanged a startled glance. Audwyn shook his head, the transparent gesture of confusion, as he said, “You rode into time, on the wind? You went and you came back? How can that be?”
“I wasn’t wanted,” said Faulcon simply. “I suppose I was needed here. I was to have been a messenger, but I decided to keep my message to myself for a while. I wanted to see for myself where time’s tide has been leaving its debris.”
Audwyn looked back at the mountains. “The high land. Very well, we shall go and prepare to take you. The journey will be long and dangerous. It’s the gulgaroths’ time of seeking, and they are more vicious at this time of year.” Faulcon, perhaps Audwyn too, remembered that occasion nearly a year ago when their respective paths had crossed that of a seeking gulgaroth, and Audwyn had escaped death by mere seconds.
Allissia had stepped ahead of Audwyn in understanding what Faulcon was searching for. She said, “The place where time has left its debris … to seek what sleeps there. The timelost. Is that what you mean?”
“There are no timelost,” said Faulcon. “There are just those who are lost. And Lena is among them.”
“I don’t understand,” said Allissia. “You were far-flung into time like the others of the timelost, and you are back … Were they all brought back to this world and this time?”
“Allissia, there is no time but the present; there never was a wind that blew from past to future, only a wind that blew memory and desire, and those things on a scale beyond our understanding, almost. Concrete memories, and heartfelt passion, and a desperate attempt at communication with those that were seen as couriers. The lost were taken into the fabric of creatures that fill the valleys and the deep seas. I don’t know what was done to them, but they have been changed, more changed than you, much more. They were placed by the guardians of VanderZande’s World in a valley, in the high land; they have been cared for, out of the way, asleep. The guardians have recognized the nature of their couriers at last, and I think they have realized that we are useless to them as such. It has taken a long time for them to come to this understanding, but now I think there will be a stop to the taking of men into the winds.”
By their faces neither Audwyn nor Allissia could understand the flow of words from Faulcon. He smiled suddenly and began to walk back to the village, the manchanged following him closely.
Audwyn said, “I know the valley that looks towards twin peaks.”
“I know you do.” Faulcon glanced back; Audwyn was troubled, remembering something but not enough. When Faulcon said, “We must keep our eyes keen for lonely men,” Audwyn almost jumped, his face whitening in a quite startling fashion.
Allissia did not know. She said, merely, “If your Lena is going to be so changed … why do you wish to find her again? Why not leave her in peace?”
Because I can’t! Because I cannot control anything in my life, least of all my selfish concession to curiosity, even less my human need to complete the pattern, to see Lena again, to prove to myself that they really are what they say they are, these wind-creatures of Kamelios. Because without Lena I am a shadow; because with her, in whatever form she is, I can make a pretence of completeness; a part of my mind can rest again, the human part, the insecure part, the loving part.
“Because I am incomplete without her,” he said aloud. The woodland area was noticeably darker than when they had walked up this way; night winds shifted the spidery branches against the red sky above.
“Are you not complete within yourself?” murmured Allissia, and when Faulcon looked over his shoulder, staring pointedly at her hand, clasped in the larger fingers of her husband, she grinned. “But I’m still an individual. Without Audwyn, if I were totally alone, I would live on, I would survive. I am complete within myself.”
Faulcon shook his head, swinging down a steep bank by hanging onto the leaning trunk of a skagbark. He reached up to catch Allissia’s hands as she jumped down; Audwyn descended on his rump. “It would seem that way, I suppose,” said Faulcon. “Even as I followed Lena to VanderZande’s World, even as I became obsessed with finding her again, even as I drew the friendship of … someone else, another man, drew it into me like life itself, still I thought that I was an individual, indulging the social rituals. But I don’t think that now. When I hunted olgoi alone I felt not solitary but cut off, severed from some part of me that exists not in me but in you, in everyone. I’m a part of more than me, and Lena contains most of that which is outside of me. I’m incomplete without her. And I must find her.”
After duskfall Faulcon stood at the edge of the village, listening to the sounds of night, watching the distant lights close to the rift valley, and the darkened heights of the mountains to the south. In the village there was a celebration somewhere; he could hear the sound of a weird string instrument, accompanying the awful clash of untrained voices. A blacksmith was mending tools, the sound of hammer on heated metal muffled behind the closed doors of his forge, but still punctuating the music. Faulcon could smell the odour of the coals; lifting his mask for a stinging moment he smelled the sickly odour of skagbark, and the pungent aroma of cooked food.
It was very cold and he was glad of the extra clothing he had brought on this trip. When Audwyn finally stepped from the house and walked through the village towards him, the manchanged’s breath frosted. Faulcon watched him approach. Nothing had been said since their arrival back from the woodlands, and the high fields, but he had known that Audwyn would want to talk to him, quietly, privately.
“Your friend is very ill, I’m afraid.”
“Ben? He’ll get over it. Too much synthetic food is his problem.”
Audwyn made no response except to say that Leuwentok would be unfit to travel the following day.
Faulcon said, “It isn’t important. I think I’d prefer for just the two of us to go.”
“Agreed,” said Audwyn, and he tugged his coat tighter about his neck as a freezing wind suddenly sprung from the east. For a while nothing was said, Faulcon remaining quiet as the manchanged found the right moment to confirm the idea that must have been worrying at him. Above them, above the village, the moons were bright, Merlin the brightest of all, tugging at Faulcon’s attention, catching his eye every time he looked around.
At last Audwyn reached out and took Faulcon’s arm, leading him slowly into the lee of one of the houses, where the night was not quite so fierce. “What was my name?”
“Darak Iskaruul. I only had a few moments to scan the records; I saw your face and recognized you at once, but I had little time to read about you. As far as I can tell, all else that you remember of your time in Steel City is the same.”
Audwyn hunched a little; he was angry, Faulcon could see that, and he was allowing that anger its full expression. “The same, except for the manner of my leaving. I didn’t mind not knowing my name, but I don’t understand why a false memory was given to me.”
“But no one would have known where you came from. You were a wanderer, and someone suggested you had wandered up from the city, and that is what you remember. There was no deception, I’m sure of it.”
Again silence, and then, “When was I lost? I came here five years ago.”
“Then you must have slept for nearly a full year. Did you arrive here in the spring, can you remember? When Merlin was full?”
Audwyn nodded and Faulcon smiled slightly. “The moon has a strong effect on animal life … and on man. When Merlin is full, and the olgoi are chasing up into the hills to fulfil their role as carriers of life, at that same time a few of the sleepers wake up and wander through the high lands as lonely men, choking their lives away. A few survive. Your colonies a long time ago must have found them and helped them, not knowing where they had come from, no doubt assuming they had come up from the rift valley. Perhaps the manchanged thought they were doing the right thing, saving the lonely men’s lives, changing them, adapting them, allowing them to forget. Now it is done quite routinely. You remember quite a lot of your early life, but not the events that led you into a time wind. But you are beginning to remember something now; or am I wrong.”
Audwyn straightened and shook his head, his gaze beyond Faulcon, out across the night lands below the plateau. “No, you’re not wrong. I remember the valley where I slept. I remember it clearly … a bright light, like a fiersig, yes, a fiersig, hanging on the side of the valley. I passed through it and into the brilliant daylight, and saw the lights when I looked back. I remember choking and weeping and feeling as if I was going to die … And then a manchanged, a gatherer, covering my eyes and bathing them, and asking me where I’d come from, and would I like to become a part of their community, a part of this; and I can recall how welcome I found that suggestion, and how good it was to sleep in the Grey House, and to come closer to this world.” It was too cold to stand talking any longer and they began to walk back to the house, to the warm fire, to a long night’s rest. Audwyn said, “I had had no idea. Until you mentioned the valley looking towards two peaks I had remembered nothing. Allissia never knew. I think you’re right, Leo; no one here knows where the lonely men really come from.” He laughed gently. “It’s ironic; some of the timelost have been among men for years, and none of us ever realized it.”
In the house they found Leuwentok, wrapped in his bed roll and propped against the wall, white and uncomfortable, trying to conjure up a spell for sleep. Allissia was already preparing the packs for the long journey. She made no objection when Audwyn told her she would not be coming.
FINDING
It was not the valley that he remembered from his dream, but the clouds were low and the twin mountains hidden from view. It did not have the brightness, the freshness of the land he had experienced in his time of contact. It was drab and wet, the dark stones sombre and unpleasing, the plant life tangled and uncomfortable.
Yet Audwyn was quite confident that he knew where they were. Calmly, resisting Faulcon’s assertions that they ought to travel further round to the east, he led the way down the difficult hillside, between boulders that towered high over their scrambling figures, and eventually out into an open space where Faulcon could see more of the spread of the valley. Without a word Audwyn waited for Faulcon to see the fiersig, and grinned as he heard the rifter’s gasp of surprised delight.
Colours and shapes, almost static, hugging the earth below an overhang of rock: high on the far wall of the valley, a long climb away. There was a cave there, although its entrance could not be seen through the swirl of its guardian.
It was time for Faulcon to go on alone. Perhaps the creature in the great valley could have brought him here direct, but he had not wished that—he had needed Ben, and Audwyn, and Allissia, he had needed to draw something from them, to convey something to them; he had needed their company before he began the long wait for Lena. Now it was time for solitariness, time to lie down beside Lena’s sleeping form and wait for her to stir, and wake.
Audwyn began to pitch the tent. He would wait for a few days and then go home again. Faulcon felt sure he would not be going home alone.
Audwyn was a tiny shape in the lower distance when Faulcon turned for the last time and waved to him. If the manchanged responded, Faulcon was unable to see. The fiersig was brightness around him and above him, and as he stepped into its insubstantial form he was immersed in colour and tranquillity; he felt a gentle embrace and knew they were with him. Deeper, through a place of darkness, he could see floating human figures.
He stepped towards them.
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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)
Dedication
To Fellow Voyagers:
Chris, Garry, Chris, Chris and Andrew
T’ung Jên!
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.
