INFANTASM

ROBERT HOLDSTOCK

It takes time and a great deal of concentration to fabricate even a single infantasm. It is always necessary to draw on time in the long-gone, and often essential to reach as far into the long-to-come as is possible, depending on the imaginary talents one wishes to give the child. It is not a process, then, that I initiate lightly, and when the Chief Dragon rounded me up from my forest dance and stated bluntly that he wished to talk to me about infantasm, I was more alarmed at the prospect of the magic he might require than irritated by the way his ruffians prodded me at spear-point back to the great fort.

When the winding forest track left the tangle of wood behind and joined the old Roman road, I abandoned all thought of escape and trudged the smoothed stone between the snorting horses of my captors, huddled in my wool cape, aware that Uverian, as he pompously called himself (in reflection of the forgotten Legions, whose weapons he and his mercenaries still used) was watching me smugly as he rode behind me.

Now that we were on the open path, I concerned myself quickly with how in the name of Mabon – locally, a powerful and perceptive deity to the ignorant fools who served, for bellyfuls of bread, meat and mead, the needs of the Chief Dragon – how in That One’s name Uverian had found me. I was certain that I had closed the forest around my shrine. I was certain that my dancing had been silent in this time, although the forest music, the thunder of the drums, might have echoed a thousand years behind me (or perhaps ahead of me?). But silent now, my grove quite scentless. Senseless! And yet the Dragon Bastard had spotted me, as an eagle spots the sudden tension of a leveret in its form and swoops to take the helpless hare.

After abandoning my self-rebuke, I explained at great length to the amused and determined man on his sleek, roan mare that infantasm was not a magic that could be simply summoned. I shall not concern you here with my argument, which mainly explained in as much tedious detail as I could summon from truth and lie the process of drawing the bones from the wood, the flesh from the wormy soil where a body lies undergoing decay, the skin from leaves, the bloom from flowers, the blood from water where a wounded man has bathed, the bowels and other internals from animals killed with stone – hares for their essence and spirit, of course, polecats for durability, boars for aggression, birds for many other things.

“Whatever you need you shall have,” Uverian said sharply. “Now stop talking. My head is ringing with your whining.”

Good! My head was ringing with apprehension.

For what purpose, foul or cunning, could he wish the making of a child from another time?

Instants after I had passed through the three gates of his fortress, my legs aching from the steepness of the winding road that led between the defensive walls, I was besieged by the infirm. Some of these had unhealed wounds, or breaks in bone, or the aches and pains of age, all curable if I so chose; but most were infirm of spirit. These ever-hopefuls, longing for marriage, for visions of the great God Llug (or lesser Mabon, Brigga and all the rest), or for successful quests for lost talismans (as if they’d be effective when found!), or for strength to their sword-arms against the raiders, reivers and neighbours who took arms against them, these were a blight to my life, a bane to my magic.

They had all been told I would be fetched from the forest – a realization that further insulted my talent at disguise – and had gathered to line the road to the Dragon Bastard’s house, where the three shields of the clan hung in silent, mocking tribute to me (I had helped the man in the three deeds that had earned him the shields, but the shields reflected only the deeds of the man!)

Uverian’s knights (I hardly dignify them with the name, but at least they were on horseback, and knew how to ride) pushed the crowds back to the inside walls of the fort and their ragged houses, where forges, bakeries and tanneries burned, crisped and stank the outer town. In the centre, among the tree shrines and stone sanctuaries, and next to the oak-branch cage that covered the well, Uverian’s house was a long, smokeless hall, divided several times by heavy woollen curtains, dyed in the colours of forgotten Rome.

He had clawed up with his own hands the mosaic tiles of a Roman house, four days’ ride east of this fortification, and reassembled the horned face of that Roman deity on the hard floor in front of his chair. The chair was made from the marrowbones of elk, an odd allusion to a long-forgotten Warlord dynasty – all priests, warriors, skystones in circles and green-edge bronze – that I suspect I might have mentioned inadvertently to him:¹ in any case, he had created and adopted the foul chair, with its marrowbone frame, its carved oak panels and duck-feather cushion, and rested there now, legs spread, britches loosened to ease his saddle bruising, belly hard and scarred and hideously gaping from his untied leather shirt.

“I didn’t expect you to be so popular,” he said quietly, scratching his ragged beard, not a happy man, but watching me with interest rather than with the beetling scowl that usually meant he would soon get drunk and violent.

His reference to my popularity was meant to be pointed, but in fact I had been surprised myself.

The last time I had occupied this wind-swept, hilltop hell-hole I had failed to predict the attack by Gorlodubnus, the Bastard Blackwolf of the Dumnonii,² who occupied land in the southern part of Albion, and whose precocious child-bride, Grainne, so haunted Uverian’s lustful dreams.

Although the slaughter had been restricted to the death of two champions from each side, my failure had led me to expect to be arrow-shot rather than welcomed should I ever have returned.

(What fools! To think that prediction is guaranteed. Otherwise, why would the world ever progress in any way other than round about and round about, all things singing, all things known? What fools!)

However, now that I was welcomed outside, at least, there would be wealth to be made in my short stay, since there’s nothing quite like a charm, an insight and a breath of promise to bring out the hidden silver from these mountain idiots, and the vibrant, willing flesh of those idiots’ strong-limbed daughters.

I had gone short of many pleasures in the last few years; it was time to catch up.

And then, as I sat smugly (but expressionless) on the rough matting, facing the shattered mosaic of Bacchus and the slumped, indulgent form of the Chief Dragon, I remembered what I was here for. My heart shifted position and the movement was heavy.

Infantasms.

So hard to create!

“Didn’t you once tell me,” Uverian said quietly, “that in your youth you fashioned a girl, pretty as a lark’s song, blushing pink as an apple, from the gathered petals of flowers?”

I nodded casually; was the fool confusing the flower girl with an infantasm? I hadn’t created her myself, in fact, but had gathered the flowers for an older man, a charmer of little, though creative, talent, who had made the creature. This was so long ago that the sound of metal striking metal hadn’t yet begun to disturb the sleep of those who lived upon the land. Stone weapons are much duller, and very effective. I had often used flowers to create mannikins – for amusement – and gave them names and stories for each part of the world I was visiting, but such creatures have nothing but blushes and instincts, no mind to speak of. Rather like the child-thing Grainne, really.

“Could you make me a lithe, lucky and lovable boy in the same way? Out of flowers, or twigs, or anything? You name it, you shall have it to work with.”

“It would have no wits.”

“Why would it have no wits?”

“Because it would have no life. It would be vital, not vibrant. It would sing, but like the wind rather than the lark. There would be no purpose to it. Why do you want such a thing?”

My objection was based not so much on the possible relief of his having confused two magical traditions and would in fact ask me to perform a trick so easy that I could teach you here and now, should I wish, but rather that he would strip my skin when he realized his mistake (something I’ve seen him do to warlords stronger by far than him, and to enchanters every bit the equal of me. Men such as Uverian can turn charm against the user, making enchanters helpless, even though they have no talent for charm themselves).

“I don’t understand why it would have no wits. You have told me before that these children of time can live for years, and even mate and give rise to bastards.”

I sighed and in irritation reached out and lifted two tiles from the mosaic, tossing them at the sprawling fool, who slapped the stone away and began to roar and rise from his chair.

I remained quite still, staring up, and when gaze met gaze he calmed a lot, sank back, sat down and scowled at his damaged treasure.

“You’re just a boy,” he said grimly. “I ought to skin you from neck to groin.”

“I’m older than you by ten thousand times your father’s life-time,” I said to him, as I had often said to him before. He had once tried to work out the actual number of seasons this monstrous age involved, but had given up. Ten thousand was a favourite number of Uverian’s, though essentially meaningless. He could cope with a hundred – he owned that many horses – and four times a hundred was easy too, since he could visualize four squadrons of a hundred men on four hilltops waiting to descend in attack upon the enemy in the valley. But after that, his numeracy was shrouded in a fug of enormity. Ten thousand was to him all of time itself, all of the stars, and all of the number of blades of grass.

That I looked like a wisp-bearded youth annoyed him, since he knew this was simply my guise. I do believe he would have preferred – and been more respectful to – an old man, bent-backed and grey-haired, hazel-staffed and charm-tattooed. But an enchanter lives in the body he chooses, and is restricted like all men by the ability and energy of the flesh that is chosen, and therefore the relative importance of the acts of feasting, running and making love will dictate the choice of body.

I would always sacrifice the illusion of sagacity for the reality of virility!

“What exactly do you wish this child to achieve?” I asked with transparent frustration, and clear, controlled impatience.

“I need it to sneak through Gorlodubnus’s reeking legs and enter the stone maze at Tintagel fort.”

I had thought as much, though I had repressed the notion in the slim hope that I was wrong. Uverian, of course, would be the mind inside the child! The small hands that stroked the girl would be Uverian’s own sword-calloused leatherfingers.

“You want the child to come close to Queen Grainne, wife of Gorlodubnus.”

“Closer than close,” he said, leaning forward with a wild, lascivious look. “As close as two heaving bodies, groin-locked, writhing, fused together by the sweat of—”

“Yes, yes! I think I understand what you have in mind. So you wish the child to be quite . . . grown, then. Very capable in certain areas.”

Clearly, the problem of the prowess of this infantasm hadn’t occurred to the Chief Dragon in his wild dreams of conquest of the child bride. He frowned and shook his head. “A boy several years younger than her. It must be that. How else will he gain entry?”

“But don’t you think that a boy several years younger than her, even a boy of her own age, would be very disappointing compared to . . . say . . . just for the sake of argument, you understand . . . Gorlodubnus, her husband?”

“She can’t stand the sight of him!”

“What?’’

Not what I had heard . . . !

“She can’t stand the sight of him,” he repeated with self-certainty, and I smiled reassuringly.

There could be no question about the beauty of Gorlodubnus’s young queen. I had heard from a reliable source that she was born with an arm’s length of golden hair around a face already serene and aware, and the shadow of a torque around her throat. Her breasts even then were perfectly formed, and within an hour of her birth she had uttered the name of the man she wished to marry: Gorlodubnus.

The reliable source, of course, was the local enchanter, adept at illusion, a woman of great strength, sly look, and an adept at finding uses for the useless, such as the leaves of oak, which seem to me to have no power at all. I forget the woman’s name (she inhabited a sea cave, or so she said). And of course, the nature of the child at birth and the so-called first word, were an illusion, part of her own ruse to gain more authority in the fortress of the King.

Gorlodubnus, as witless in certain ways as my own dear Uverian, had fallen for it, spear, shield and leather britches.

Nevertheless, Grainne’s beauty, as I say, was not in dispute, nor her own prowess on the straw-filled palliasse, and I could well understand Uverian’s lustful longing; my failure as any sort of adviser was in not explaining to him that it was all in the anticipation; that the reality would be a swiftly swivelling focus of his wretched single eye towards some other young and unattainable beauty, immediately after the conquest.

The great test of a true enchanter is to know when to predict well, when to predict nothing (looking suitably humble at the failure of vision rather than amused at the vision one has experienced), when to advise because one can support that advice. When to keep quiet!

I kept quiet.

Gorlodubnus had built a vast stone maze in the centre of his cliff-top stronghold. At the heart of the maze was a garden, a house, and a temple, all of them exquisitely appointed, all of them to service the needs and pleasures of Grainne, his Queen.³ Only children were allowed into the maze, and only a few of them found their way to the garden, and to the company of the Queen herself.

Any adult man found inside the stone walls was strapped to his horse and sent galloping across the forested hills, his head tied to the horse’s rump. Any woman found inside, without Grainne’s express approval, discovered the perils of flight from the top of the sea cliff.

It was this very natural protectiveness that Uverian was determined to subvert, by penetrating the maze in the body of a child and seducing the fair Grainne in disguise.

All of what I have told you had occurred in the privacy of Uverian’s private room in the long hall, his knights having been sent away out of the sight of eyes, if not the sound of ears. Hungry now, Uverian called for simple food, and four of his men came in, crouching around the Bacchus table, watching me suspiciously, talking quietly about horses, raids, the collapse of the stronghold’s walls where rain had weakened the earth, the reported sight of the great god Llug at dawn, sailing down the nearby river, golden-helmeted and distant-visioned.

If the latter experience had in fact been true, then it would suggest a second charmer in the region. I had detected no such presence, but then I had been dancing, and by dancing had closed the world around me.

Nevertheless . . . a vision of Llug, Uverian’s discovery of me through the veil of forest darkness . . . if another charmer was around, and was helping the Bastard Dragon, then several things could be explained: but not necessarily his reasons for needing me and not the other!

Who was spying on me?

The food, when it came, was in a wide copper bowl filled to overflowing with the roasted cuts of fowl, swan and pig. The aroma was as haunting as any I had experienced and I, like the knights, scrabbled for the richest meat, chewing down to the succulence close to the hot bones, sucking the marrow then teasing the dogs – also allowed to enter the room – by waving the scraps at them.

These dogs were typical of Uverian’s possessions, doing nothing until they were told, bolting scraps thrown to them, but never daring to approach the Bacchus table and the diminishing dish of bloody flesh.

All the while the Chief Dragon watched me, even when he wiped the fat from his beard, even when he cracked the bone. Eventually he sat back and called for drink. His two daughters brought elegant clay flagons for the knights and their father, a tall copper flask of honeyed ale, and an exquisite glass cup for me.

“Pick it up,” Uverian commanded and I did so without hesitation. Two layers of fine, crystalline glass enclosed scenes, inscribed on the inside of the glass itself, of strange animals, dancing women, and the enjoyment of Avilion, or however the world of Bright Shadows – the otherworld – was envisioned by foreign Kings. It was a world contained within the very translucency of the cup and I drank the sweet ale from it with heightened pleasure.

“What do you think of the glass?”

“Radiant,” I said. “Remarkable.”

“Clever bastards, those Romans. Could you make such a cup?”

He was always trying it on! He wanted me to say yes, then he would test me, either by asking for such a cup to be made anew, or by suggesting that I was insulting something that had been given to him by the gods. I knew instinctively that this was a cup from some trader, and was originally part of the spoils from a skirmish against an elegant settlement of the forgotten Roman people. I also knew that I could echo this cup in no more than a day, but that is all I could do. A piece of beauty, like this, was the work of a craftsman, and an enchanter is no craftsman of that ilk. We can copy, mimic, give short life in illusion; but in no way could I summon such beauty without foreknowing it.

“Could I make such a cup? I wouldn’t want to. I’m glad enough of the one already made.”

Uverian looked disgruntled by my simple answer.

“It came from Verulamium.⁴ It was dug out of the ashes of the fire by a dog, a great red-furred dog, which carried it from the east to these hills and left it at the gates of the fort. Who do you think was in that dog. Eh?”

I could think of several answers to this question: The great god Llug – marking Uverian as someone special. Uverian himself – flattery; Grainne, the answer I suspected he wanted. I said teasingly, “From before Rome, a hero, a man of great courage, red of hair, who touched the shores of this land more than twenty of your father’s lifetimes ago—” (what a satisfying frown on the Bastard Dragon’s face as he tried to work out the figure!) “—and marked the site of a great stronghold, possibly this one.”

Uverian and his knights leaned towards me, gape-mouthed, grease-stained, wide-eyed, eager to hear account of their favourite subject, the forgotten hero, the hidden land.

“Do you have a name for this man?”

“Not yet. Give me time.”

Time to think a bit, to work out a good story.

“The cup is yours, you young-old man.” Said with sincerity and just a hint of sarcasm.

Astonished – the glass was of great value, a very rare possession – I could only say, “Thank you. I shall treasure it.”

“Now come and sit beside me.”

I moved around the knights and sat awkwardly beside the marrowbone chair. As I reached for more mead, it was Uverian himself who refilled the cup for me, and I drank the sweet brew, aware of the cool, smooth glass and the echoes of the past that imbued the inner world of dancers and strange beasts, caught between the crystal layers.

Eventually the knights lay down, ludicrously in the Roman style, stretched around the Bacchus table, and fell gently into the sleep of war, hands caressing the horn-carved heroes on their iron knives, their faces, behind the beards, like children; children dreaming of midwinter fire.

“Can you make me what I need? A handsome boy child, sturdy, vital, innocent enough to enter the maze, witty enough to find the key to the maze, to get to the heart of the stone wall and its precious secret, eloquent enough to strip the lady, to tumble on the straw with her, to kick leg with her, press belly to belly, to turn her over, backside up; to lick the salt from her. Can you do it? Can you do it?”

I looked up at Uverian and saw that his doubts now fed his lust, desperation brewing a heady mix of anxiousness and guilelessness. I spoke without hesitation.

“No.”

“No?” he roared.

“No.”

“I don’t accept no.”

“No is all I offer.”

“You can offer more than that. Give me back the cup.”

“The cup is mine. Take it back at your peril.”

“Horse’s breath! The cup is worth a champion’s head.”

“I know. And it’s mine. You gave it to me. I can’t do what you ask, not under the terms you impose upon the deed.”

“So the no is not wholehearted . . . ?”

“It’s a qualified no. Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Qualified by what?”

“By the nature of your intentions. By what you want to achieve. I can make the child, but the child cannot make the Queen. Do you have no idea at all how fornication is practised?”

He rightly slapped my face, but I held the glass before me, licking its cool surface, reminding him with my impertinence of the red-haired hero who had carried the cup in antiquity. (An idea was beginning to form to embellish my account.) He frowned, curious, irritated, then pacified.

“I know everything about fornication.”

“I’m sure you do.”

He stared at me hard. He was wondering if he was missing something. I laughed and said lightly, “Truly! You do! You know everything you need to know.”

And before he had time to think on those words, I added, “But an infantasm cannot do the bidding you request.”

“Then give me another idea.”

I outlined to him, then, what I believed quite truly was the perfect way for Uverian, Dragon Lord of the Ordovices, to enter the stronghold and the stone maze of Gorlodubnus, Seagull Shit and weed-brained lord of Castle Tintagel, husband of Grainne, owner of sea, cliff and rank moorland in the western extremities of a vile and valueless country so steeped in lore and mist and hazard, that not even the forgotten Romans had bothered to march its hunt-trails.

But if he wanted to go there, I could get him there.

“I will form you. The effect will last long enough for your long ride in, your long ride there! Your long ride out. I will make you look like the Seagull Bastard himself.”

“Who?”

“Gorlodubnus.”

“Gorlodubnus?”

“Exactly. Set up a raid on his eastern border. While he’s away fighting, you enter the maze.”

Uverian was staring at me, a man watching a moron, head shaking. I felt a prickle of discomfort. He clearly was about to explode, but I pressed on.

“You appear as Gorlobdubnus, but it seems you have been wounded. And so, you have returned from the skirmish. You perform the dance of healing on the naked, nubile Grainne.” I winked at him. He stared at me blankly. “You shred straw mattresses; you crack roof poles. You tear wool blankets. You muddy your backs until you are both the colour of earth.” (I knew the Bastard Dragon’s taste for romping in the dirt.) “Then you leave, and no one will be the wiser. It’s foolproof.”

His hands gripped my throat, shook the fool; his teeth (well kept, I thought, as they ground and gnashed in my eyesight) bit back the words I should always have remembered.

“She! Doesn’t! Like! Her! Bastard! Husband!”

With my various lives gathering in my vision as death began to throw them out, urging me to use charm to escape the murderous grasp, I tried to think of some way to convince the Irate Dragon that actually Grainne liked her husband very much indeed, so much, in fact, that when he was away she had certain of the younger knights dress in his clothes, talk in his voice, and come and pay attention to her, kicking legs, shredding straw mattresses etc.

How could one man, one warlord, one magnificent fighter, a strategist of immense cunning, the inheritor of Roman wisdom, the practitioner of a Rule of Law so carefully conceived, so considerate in its aims, that all who lived within a horn’s call, or a fire’s call of his fort, respected and felt safe under the raised hand, sword and shield of its perpetrator (even bowing to the leather britches as he rode by on horseback, hence his affectionate nickname) . . . how could this great man be possessed of such ignorance in the way of love?

If all he wished was to mount the mare, if he desired no more than simple gratification, then he need do no more than imitate the enemy. Good Mabon! how many times had he imitated the enemy on the field of slaughter, tricking them into submission and thus bringing them to the moment of single combat, lopping head and leaving with bloody, bearded honour gaping from his spear point?

Imitate the enemy!

But he wouldn’t hear of it.

“Infantasm!” he bellowed. “If nothing else, I’ll at least get to see her. You can put sight in such a creation. Can’t you? I’ll be able to see, to touch, to rest in her arms . . .”

“If she touches you. Yes.”

“Llug’s Balls! Do it, then. Tell me what you need for the magic. I have to see her.”

Wearily, I took my glass treasure and went away to think.

It’s so very hard working with great men.

I shall spare the full details of the fabrication.

Like cooking over an open fire, the use of magic depends very much on inspiration, chance, and experimenting with ingredients for an unusual end effect.

In other words, I can’t now remember precisely what I did.

Uverian had built a stone and wood lodge for me, well away from the forges and tanneries, and away from the sound of children. It was comfortable enough, with curtains to soften the cold of the stone walls, a rush-mat floor, covered with rugs, and a table shaped from the local, blue-tinged stone that he knew spoke to my senses. Food came by the dishful, despite my insistence that I needed to fast. Two of his horsethugs had been deputized to be my running hounds and do my slightest bidding, and they fetched me the creatures, plants, clays and bones that I needed, never showing disgruntlement until they had left my presence, at which point they exploded with oath and obscenity, cursing Uverian’s as yet undug grave for being made to fetch vegetables for a crazy youth!

For the infantasm itself I drew on the memory of a boy from the Labyrinth that had once sprawled below an island in the southern sea.⁵ I had visited the place twice, first in the long-long-gone, when the earth itself was still being burrowed to shape the maze, then later when a king had constructed a megalithic tomb to contain the subterranean passageways. Here, he had imprisoned a man-bull, claimed by his enemies to be his son. The Labyrinth was cunningly hidden in the centre of the island. False echoes – imitations of the maze – were built in the north and south of the land, though only that in the north remains now.

To run the infantasm through the maze that protected Grainne, I had to give it the instinct to seek beyond the shadows, to make sight into smell and heat into touch. And thus the boy took shape, a dear thing as he grew, his skin tanned, his eyes dark, his hair a mass of tight black curls. He was cheeky, this one, always slipping out of the lodge to play with the other children; because he was a stranger to them, he often got into fights, but his bruises healed as fast as he grew, which was as fast as a spring flower. To give him the wit he needed I sacrificed wit of my own, and felt increasingly angry at my complacent acceptance of Uverian’s command.

When the child of time could have passed easily for a grown boy, though not yet a man, I sent him to sleep, then summoned Uverian to give his blood, his skin, his kiss, his tears . . . other things . . . to the charming vehicle of his passion.

“She’ll adore him,” Uverian announced, staring down at the lad as he staunched the blood from his arm. “You look very thin,” he added, staring at me in genuine concern.

“It’s a hard business,” I said. “I warned you. There is a lot of my own spirit in this boy as well as yours, as well as Time’s.”

And I want it back.

“How long will he live?”

“As many years as I give him,” I murmured, and a shiver passed through me, not because of the lie involved – I had limited control over the lifespan of any illusion or fabrication – but because the boy was so beautiful, and would have to be killed so brutally. The more life I gave the infantasm, the less life would remain to me. I had no intention of letting Minoxus, as we had named him, see out a full cycle of seasons, but I could anticipate all too easily the sorrow of returning him to the earth.

It was time to go, and we crossed the water to a landing place in the territory of the Durotriges, who were insular and unwelcoming, but more inclined to help us on our way than challenge us. By sailing to this sandy bay we had saved fourteen days or more riding round the wide inlet of the sea into the land of Albion. Now we faced a ride of similar duration to the west, through forested valley and over stinking moorland, ancient territory that would welcome us with all the enthusiasm of a cygnet welcoming the eagle.

Before too long we were lost, and though all four of Uverian’s retinue scoured the animal tracks and hunter’s trails for a way through the tanglewood, we eventually gathered near grey rocks, in an unnatural clearing, completely adrift in the forest.

Minoxus rode suddenly through the greenwood, laughing at us, calling to us, and we followed him round the twisting trails, watching his small form bent to the side of his horse as he studied the ground, brushed at low branches, and eventually brought us to the open road, where the impressions of chariot wheels, and the broader wheels of carts, told us that this was a thoroughfare to the west and east.

How easily my maze-reader had read the labyrinth of the forest. Could I have done it myself? Perhaps. But with Minoxus carrying a part of my spirit, and part of Uverian’s, a brief life in full, abundant vibrancy, it seemed easier to let the natural talents of the youth guide us to safety.

“I feel I know this forest,” the boy said to me as we crouched, comfortable, around the fire that night. “I can see the patterns. I see how the tracks of hare, pig and deer mix and mingle. I see how there are ways in and ways out of every thicket. The tracks themselves are full of signs of who has been here, where they’ve come from. I feel at home here.”

“You should do,” I said to him quietly. He snuggled closer to me, stretching his toes before the fire to warm them as the night deepened and the dew began to form. “You were born to follow hidden paths, to enter forbidden realms.”

“Are we all born for something or the other?” he asked. “I mean . . . is there always something in our birth that marks our life? Could I have been born to chase hares? Or to carry stones from the quarry?”

I remembered that one of his friends from the fort was already, at a tender age, being taught to cut, split and fashion stone, his father’s occupation. The other, with whom Minoxus had been extremely close, was a hare-chaser, a witless child, let loose on the sacred beasts since he knew no better. For the short while they had been friends, the two of them had talked in nonsense language, and made pacts, signs and promises, using hands, gestures and the marking of earth.

Hare-chaser had been distraught when Minoxus had left the stronghold. I could still see his scrawny shape, standing on the hill over the valley, one hand raised, a living statue desperate at his loss, following our small group out of sight. I had thought Minoxus unaware of the boy, but there were tears in his eyes and he kept looking back, surreptitiously, from below his cowl.

“Of course. We are always born with an end in sight. But there are no rules that say we can’t bend the years to our own design.”

“I want to run mazes,” he said. “I dream of them. Mazes in grass, in wood, in stone. I dreamt last night of a maze stretching from here to the Moon. White horses galloped round the paths and I was running with them, following them as they galloped. But the dream turned bad, because a bull came up behind me. That’s when I woke up.”

I stroked the boy’s hair and sang him to sleep. As he hovered between this world and the other I quickly glanced at the noisy part of his mind, and saw a bull like none I have ever seen, save in the sanctuary on that distant island. Hideous, wide-horned, malevolent. It was waiting to be released at the moment of the boy’s death, though whether in celebration or in vengeance I could not say.

I was angry with myself for forgetting how much of the long-gone is dragged to the infantasm during its creation; my earlier words to Uverian – concerning witlessness and lifelessness – were arrogant, and substantially wrong. It is impossible to mould a creature without pressing memory, and therefore true life, into the clay.

A day or so later we had come into the shadow of the cliff fortress, and Uverian disguised himself crudely as an old knight, battle-worn, foreign, and unthreatening, in search of a bed, some food and conversation before his joyous journey to Avilion, the beautiful Isle. I came in as the wild man I was, the boy a waif we had encountered nearby and brought to the fort for protection. Minoxus was led away by one of the guards, to the safe-keeping of the nursery, though he was a tall boy, on the edge of manhood, and would probably be looked after in one of the bigger houses, close to the War Chief’s hold.

Uverian was billeted with a knight of his own supposed age, a man so lost in the reverie and uncertainty of reality caused by drink that he fell upon my companion gratefully, with stories, recollections, wistful reminiscences, and at no time seemed suspicious of the irritation, arrogance and regal bearing that Uverian was hard-pressed to conceal.

I, of course, slept with the chained hounds, though the accommodation was straw-lined, weatherproofed and more comfortable by far than my own forest dwelling. I was given food by one of the ironworkers, who sat with me in the heat of his dying fire, a long day’s work completed. His wife laughed all the time as she talked, despite the constant squabbling of their three children. When the ironworker went to sit with the other men of his neighbourhood, around a brazier, talking and drinking from clay flagons, I was summarily dismissed by the wife and set loose to prowl the paths between the sheds and houses of the fort.

I soon found the stone maze and walked around its inward-leaning walls, head low, avoiding lingering as this might have aroused the suspicion of the four guards, each standing beside a flaming torch. There were temples, chariot-housings and stables close to the maze, and I lurked in the deeper of the shadows until, at last! Gorlodubnus swaggered from the nearby hall, shirt undone below his kingly cloak, preening his moustaches, staggering slightly from drink and food. He entered the labyrinth, to follow the spiral path to his fair Grainne.

He was there for a short while, then returned to the hall, and now I went in search of Minoxus, calling him from his slumber in the corner of the nursery. “Of you go. Into the maze.”

And as soon as I had seen him walk to the guard and be waved into the winding passage, I sought Uverian, and this time put the Dragon into the slumber that would unite him with the boy. From the moment Uverian’s eyes were closed, he was running the maze in the form of Minoxus; and at length, entering the sanctum of the Queen he loved.

As I waited, I could tell from the laughter of the sleeping man, the cooing, chortling, hand-waving gestures of delight, that all was going well. His host slept deeply in his own bed and murmured in his own world, and I cast a scant glance at him – and was shocked!

For the first time since I had come to the fort I realized that this was Gawain! He was aged, now, although his exploits were still recounted along the length and breadth of the crow’s flight across the land. He was maudlin and mead-crazed, but still so strong in all his limbs, and so proud in his face! I had once fought alongside this man, and he was one of the few of the noble breed who had had genuine vision of the land as it had once been fit for heroes, and who had declaimed that the times to come should again be times of the nobility of iron.

He had made no great fuss about the gods, and no great fuss about his wounds. He was an honourable and delightful man, and he had saved my life at the time of that battle, and then slipped away into a mist that was redolent with the stench of swordbane.

How could such a knight have come to this? I felt sad and kissed him on his withered lips. I whispered a certain promise, to help him in a certain way, although that promise, my deed of thanks to Gawain, is for another story.

Soon, Uverian was belly down and demonstrating the familiar Dance of Spring. I could have attached a rope to his belt, slung it over a beam, attached it to a wooden paddle and used the motion of his body to churn milk to cheese.

I was soon weary of watching and listening to the simple game he played. At dawn he was still going strong – remarkable for a man his age, although it occurred to me that he might be dead, by now, with only the energy of the infantasm keeping the corpse in rhythm – and I went outside to greet the day, particularly avoiding the crowing cock (since I saw Uverian’s grinning jowls in everything from its swollen cock’s-comb, gaping beak and loose, red wattle!).

I couldn’t avoid the Dragon Bastard, of course, and he was soon breathlessly embracing me, promising me bronze so pure – he knew how much I valued it – that not even the forgotten Roman could have fashioned it in less than a full turning of the moon. Whatever I wanted I would have. Someone, somewhere would make it. He’d see to it.

Oh, and by the way: “I like Minoxus! He’s a young man after my own heart! He’s going back tonight. Grainne can’t wait! Nor can I . . . It felt so real.”

I left the fort, hid in the woods, survived on the memory of the long gone, shedding water, shedding weight, thinning, hardening, becoming ready for the deed that would return Minoxus to the litter of the forest, and my broken wit to my breaking heart.

I was confused. The image of the cheeky boy, of his brown eyes, his grin, his trickery, kept him so much alive in me that I weakened on two occasions, joined him in sleep, journeyed in his dreams as he curled against the soft feather pillow of the Queen’s bed.

Uverian was there, the beast, raging at the edges of the flesh, but pacified by action, subdued by intercourse, prowling in the shadows as Minoxus himself consumed the scents and sounds of the hidden palace, felt the down-like touch of the woman, responded to her tears, her fears, her kisses and her confidences. In Minoxus she had found an unexpected lover (little realizing the potency of the Dragon behind the youthful energy of the boy) and an unexpected friend. Raised on a diet of Gorlodubnus, only now was she aware of the extent of her imprisonment. I had misjudged her, maligned her; only through Minoxus’s eyes and ears could the full extent of this wretched woman’s condition be revealed, to contrast with the slaggard gossip of those knights who rode between the strongholds, and whose lies could win them favour and their meat and drink.

I had been such a fool!

It had certainly been my intention to kill the boy. Now, though, I was torn between killing him and nurturing him. If I could keep him close to me, I could keep my wits about me. Literally! It would be imperative to hold him close, and to make him understand the nature of his being. But for the first time in my life – and it had been a long life to say the least – I felt the presence of a companion who could enrich me as much as I could enrich him, a boy who could grow, learn and live a full life until a death in the normal course of things. I had denied myself children from the moment of my birth. (Certainly! The possibility was there as I opened my eyes for the first time! I had other things in mind . . .). Uverian, for all his transgressions, had at least served me well by encouraging me to bring to life the son of the Labyrinth.

I listened to the talk between the Queen and the boy I would take with me into the forest.

I should have paid more heed to the scratching, fuming shadow of the king.

“Get up, you young-old fool.”

I stirred from the saturated earth, stared up at the shadowy form of the man above me.

“Who are you?”

“Open your eyes, you trickster.”

It was Uverian; his voice was hoarse, as if he had been shouting, or maybe crying.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Minoxus needs you. He’s dying. Quickly: to the fort!”

Bemused, my youthful body betraying my older mind, I staggered from the glade, staff dragging behind me, pushing the lank hair from my eyes. I ran towards the winding road that led between the massive walls of earth and wood, but stopped at the sound of a horse and a man’s laughter behind me.

Turning, I saw Uverian with the boy in his arms, mounted on a tall stallion, cloak wrapped tightly. The king was smiling.

I shouted: “Give him to me. You have no right to him.”

“Take him from me if you can. The boy is mine, now. Grainne was fun, but with this young bear I can conquer nations. You created well, you young-old man.”

“He’ll die. You must let me have him.”

“He’ll outlive me. Great Llug, your power is quite amazing! There’s something from all corners of the earth in this young bear! Minoxus no more. He’s Artorius from now! I’ll cherish him, and raise him, and one day he’ll ride in honour, carrying the emblem of our clan. Thankyou for that.”

“Give him back!” I cried. Minoxus looked calm, indifferent, watching me through those dark eyes, his mouth moist. There was something hungry about him. He was finding life, feeding on the life of the Dragon who twisted and turned on the snorting horse, then turned away and rode away, back to the forest and the gloom beyond.

“This will turn out badly,” I whispered to the boy.

“Worse than you think,” the answer came, “when Grainne gives birth.”

Beyond the walls, behind me, a woman was screaming.

Not for the first time in my life I wondered what I had started!