The Iron Grail Read Online Free PDF Page A

much more than whispers on the wind of time.
    *   *   *
    When we had laid the Mother in her shallow grave I went to the reed-fringed river and called for the small barge that had carried me back to Alba. She was a spirit echo of Argo herself, a shadow from Argo’s past, loaned to me by the ship and her guardian goddess to help me escape from Greek Land.
    She slipped from hiding, among drooping willow fronds on the far side of Nantosuelta, and nosed towards the shallows by the groves. Ambaros was astonished, but silently so, standing behind me, his hand absently scratching at his cheek.
    The little boat was filled with furs and woollens, her prow painted yellow and carved with the features of a swan. The purple-painted glyphs that fringed the hull like a frieze suggested she had come from the island known as Krete, from a time before the sudden drowning of that land and its people, a millennium or so ago. She was just one part of the Spirit of Argo, sufficient to have brought me here by river, stream and under the world to avoid the sea crossing.
    Now I offered her the chance to leave me, to return to Argo.
    ‘I’ll stay,’ her small voice whispered in my head. I thanked her. I would be riding with Ambaros to the edge of Ghostland. Would she meet me there? I might still have need of her.
    She agreed.
    So Ambaros and I left the river’s edge, left the groves and rode away from Taurovinda, to the west, to the gorges, and to the Ford of the Last Farewell, where the Dead crossed on their way to the Otherworld.
    I expected him to ask me further news about his son-in-law, but he was discreet, as was the custom, explaining that, ‘News of a king, brought in the king’s absence, must first be given to the king’s eldest son, that’s the way we do things here. If there is no son, then the news is given to his wife; if no wife, only then to the parents.’ He hesitated for a moment, then glanced at me as we rode side by side. ‘But I dearly needed to know if Urtha had survived his quest. I broke taboo.’
    ‘As I said, he survived, he triumphed, though he took a savage wound. He’s coming home slowly.’
    Ambaros raised his hand. ‘And as I said, that’s enough to put my heart at peace. Thank you. The rest is for Kymon, if you find him, and after that I’ll hear the full story. But now: what of Jason? Your resurrected Greeklander friend looking for his time-lost grown up sons. Did he succeed as well?’
    We exchanged a glance and he smiled when he saw my questioning look. How had he known about Jason’s new lease of life? It should have been obvious.
    ‘Urtha told me what you’d done for Jason the last time you were here: bringing that ship to the surface of a lake with his body still on board. And about his sons being still alive after seven hundred years, after their mother summoned Cronos and hid them in the future.’ He grinned broadly, shaking his head. ‘Merlin, I’ve told some high tales and broad sagas in my time, I’ve bragged with the best of them at Beltane and winter feasts, and talked of my deeds, on several occasions, for all the night. But this story leaves me breathless.’
    It had left me breathless too, when I had finally summoned an image of what had truly occurred in the palace in Iolkos, seven centuries ago.
    One nick to the throat of each boy, drawing blood as a powerful drug was passed into the flesh. The boys collapsed in moments. Pig’s blood shocked our senses as it seemed to spurt from their necks. Medea stooped over their bodies and from beneath her skirts pulled heads made of wax and horsehair, wrapping them in strips of her veil. She threw them to Cretantes, beyond the open door, then summoned her strength and dragged her sleeping sons to the horses, throwing them into the cart, letting us see only their trailing legs.
    So fast, so clever, so persuasive! A brilliant trick to which I had been blinded. She fled into exile, and though Jason searched the land from coast to coast and