The Iron Grail by Robert Holdstock Read Free Book Online

only way across from this hinterland. It’s well guarded by them. They are making the crossing easier.’
    I would investigate that ford at another time.
    The children clambered into the small boat and nestled down excitedly. Munda and Atanta held hands and sang a quiet song together, giggling at some private joke. I took my place in the stern and the little vessel nosed her way out through the reeds and cut across the river, towards the willow-fringed bank on the other side. When I glanced back, to wave to the young Mother, she had disappeared. Perhaps she was still standing there, but her cloak and cowl were camouflaged.
    A short while later, the boat nosed among the drooping branches and came to rest in the shallows. Kymon had already jumped into the water and was wading to the muddy shore. Munda, laughing, followed her brother, scrambling up the slope to the clearing. But Atanta?
    She stepped on to the land, shivering as if with a winter’s chill. The change in her was quite apparent: the hardening of her eyes, the set of her mouth, the tautness of her skin. A child in shape and size, she was ageing rapidly.
    Quickly, she took up her pack, and with a cry of sadness, and an anguished glance at her friend, she turned away from us and ran like the hound, away among the trees and out of sight. Munda called after her, then looked up at me, hurt and questioning. She seemed stunned. ‘Why did she run away?’
    ‘Let her go!’ Kymon said stiffly. The lad was standing straight and staring into his own land. After a moment his tone softened. ‘I expect she has other things on her mind. Sister, we have things to do, to get back to Taurovinda.’
    ‘But why did she run away?’ Munda asked again.
    What could I say to the startled and saddened girl? That Atanta even now was going through the torture of Time’s catching up with her. Isolated in the Otherworld for more than a few years, she was now grown to full womanhood. Those marks on her temples, the tattoo lines, were the markings of a kingdom to the south of here, I now remembered. Atanta had been a child exile from another clan, but a clan that still existed; she would now be going home to face the reality of how the desertion of the land had affected her own family.
    Both Kymon and Munda had grown and matured by a year, taller, heavier, leaner around the face. If it was less apparent in the girl, it was because the girl was younger than her brother. But Kymon showed the first signs of adulthood. The look in his eyes was iron bright, and very determined.
    Neither of them had seemed to notice the transition, the spurt of growth, though they both noticed that their clothes were shorter than before, something that briefly puzzled them.
    ‘We have to go back to our father’s house,’ he said again, with soft but firm encouragement. His glance at me was peculiar. He added, ‘Because our father is still alive … isn’t that so, Merlin?’
    ‘Alive when I saw him last,’ I reminded the boy, and Kymon nodded, accepting my caution.
    It was some time before Ambaros found us, with three of his entourage, all heavily armed, and spare horses, two of them suitable for the youngsters.
    Grandfather and grandchildren embraced, tearfully in Ambaros’s case. He couldn’t believe how tall the children had grown, how strong they looked. Again, I thought of Atanta, and of the pain she must be suffering, somewhere in the woodland.
    Ambaros came over to me. ‘Well done, Merlin. You’ve brought them safely back. By Brigg, that lad has the look of his father. He has the look of a king.’
    I agreed with the proud old man. Then Ambaros added, questioningly, ‘You, on the other hand, have the look of a man with something on his mind.’
    ‘One of the modronae told me where the Shadow host crosses the river. There’s just the one place. The Ford of the Miscast Spear.’
    Ambaros scratched his white beard, his eyes suddenly bright. He had intuited my own train of thought.
    ‘I’ve