Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) by Robert Holdstock Read Free Book Online Page B

drifting through the open door from the kitchen, where a woman worked on the pine table. The French windows were swinging free; she could hear voices. Two men sat around the desk, examining the relics of the past they explored through their own minds. They were writing in a thick book, scratching out the words …
    A young man walked by the garden fence, fresh-faced, tanned from the sun.
    Then the sun paled and a biting wind chilled her. Snow piled high; black clouds swirled above her. The snow drove at her remorselessly, freezing her to her bones –
    Through the storm a figure walked towards her. It wasbulky, like a bear. As it came into vision she could see that it was a man, heavily clad in furs. Icicles hung from the white animal’s teeth that decorated his chest. His eyes glittered like ice, peering at her from the blackness of hair and beard.
    He crouched. He raised his two hands, holding a stone club. The stone was smooth and black, brightly polished. The man was crying. Tallis watched him in anguish. No sound came from him – the wind and the snow made no sound –
    Then he opened his mouth, threw back his head and screamed deafeningly.
    The scream was in the form of a name. Tallis’s name. It was loud, haunting and harrowing and Tallis at once emerged from her daydreaming, the perspiration breaking from her face, her heart racing.
    The clearing was as before, one side in deep shadow, the other bright with sun. Distantly her name was being called, an urgent sound.
    She walked back the way she had come, glancing into the ruined study where the oak tree filled a room whose cases, cabinets and shelves were shattered by time and weather. She noticed the desk again. She thought of the dream image of the two men writing. Had her grandfather whispered to her about a journal? Was there a journal to be found? Would it mention Harry?
    She retraced her steps to the edge of the wood. At the last moment, as she walked through the darkness, she saw a man’s figure, standing out on the open land. All she could see of him was his silhouette. It disturbed her. The man was standing on the rise of ground, immediately beyond the barbed-wire fence. His body was bent to one side as he peered into the impenetrable gloom of Ryhope Wood. Tallis watched him, sensing the concern … and the sadness. His whole posture was that of a saddened,ageing man. Motionless. Watching. Peering anxiously into a realm denied him by the fear in his heart. Her father.
    ‘Tallis?’
    Without a word she stepped forward into the light, emerging from the tree line and stepping through the wire.
    James Keeton straightened up, a look of relief on his face. ‘We were worried about you. We thought we’d lost you.’
    ‘No, Daddy. I’m quite safe.’
    ‘Well. Thank God for that.’
    She went up to him and held his hand. She glanced back at the wood, where a whole different world was waiting in silence for the visitors who would come to marvel at its strangeness.
    ‘There’s a house in there,’ she whispered to her father.
    ‘Well … we’ll leave it for the moment. I don’t suppose you saw any sign of life?’
    Tallis smiled, then shook her head.
    ‘Come and eat something,’ her father said.
    That same afternoon she made her first doll, compelled to do so, but not questioning from where that compulsion might have come.
    She had found a piece of hawthorn, twelve inches long, quite thin; she stripped off the bark and rounded one of its ends using a knife which she’d borrowed from Gaunt’s workshop. It took some effort. The wood was unseasoned, but still very hard. When she tried to carve the eyes she found that even making simple patterns was strenuous activity. The end result was recognizably anthropomorphic, but only just. Nevertheless Tallis felt proud of her Thorn King, and placed him on top of her dressing table. She stared at him, but he didn’t meananything. She had tried to copy the hideous pole in the garden-glade, but she had come nowhere