Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) by Robert Holdstock

Author:Robert Holdstock [Holdstock, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780575119048
Publisher: Gateway
Published: 2012-11-30T06:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

In the Unknown Region

… all is a blank before us,

All waits undream’d of in that region, that inaccessible land.

Walt Whitman

[BIRD SPIRIT LAND]

The Mortuary House

There was new memory coming to the land; there was change. It had been present for weeks. It was affecting everything: the forest, the river, the spirit glades with their giant wooden statues, the mortuary house on the hill … It was even affecting the people, the Tuthanach, the Neolithic clan which inhabited this part of the forest realm.

At first, the old man known to the clan as Wyn-rajathuk thought the changes must have been of his own doing, a last ripple of genesis from those primitive areas of his mind still tied to the primeval wood. But this was not possible, he soon realized. He was at peace, now, his unconscious long since emptied of its ancient dreams. He had been at peace for many years.

No; this subtle, eerie change was from another source.

He went into the spirit glades, walked among the giant idols and studied each grim face, listened to the voices. He followed a hunting trail through the choking woodland and eventually emerged on to the thorn-littered slope of a low hill. Through the dense scrub of red-berried trees he could just see the wall of chalky earth which had been erected about the hill’s summit; a tight hedge of blackthorn had spread to cover this as well. He picked his way through the snagging underbrush, pushing aside the tearing branches, until he faced the crumbling entrance gate, whose wooden columns had slipped, letting down the earth and rubble.

He had to scramble into the grassy space of the enclosure.

Yesterday, the gate had been clear, the path through the thorns wide and easy.

He climbed the earth wall and turned to gaze to the north. The sun was low over the forest, everything in ruddy shadow, misty distance. The canopy was a dark sea, stretching endlessly to every horizon. The wind that blew from the heart-of-the-wood had turned chill; there was a smell of winter in the air, a blurring of the seasons.

Wyn returned to the bottom of the enclosure and walked around the semi-circle of tall, carved statues that guarded the way to the mortuary house itself. There were ten of them, and their faces were disturbing to look at; their ancient eyes followed him as he moved around the circle.

Eventually he stopped and smiled grimly. The face of one of the statues had changed, as had its shape. There were small branches growing from the dead wood. New life in the silent totem, bursting from the black rot of the bark.

He should have known. Of course! He should have realized. After all, he was not just Wyn-rajathuk: Wyn-voice-from-the-earth. He was the outsider. He was a scientist. He was the only man to have studied the living myth images of his own unconscious mind … here: in the wood, in the forest of the mythagos.

He entertained this moment of arrogance with ironic self-dismissal, because

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