A Different Kingdom(112)

He groaned. 'Oh, Christ!'

And then, from somewhere close by, music. A tabor beating, someone accompanying on a mandolin, and the golden notes of a harp. Beautiful, tugging music that wrenched at his heart, and then faded away like an echo of silver bells, at once merry and elegiac. He had heard it before somewhere.

Walls rearing up in sunshine, white as chalk. There were battlements and flapping flags, and men in bright armour mounted on huge horses. There was a bridge spanning a glittering river with girls splashing and diving, sleek as salmon.

A picture barely viewed before it was gone. Why did he feel he had been here before?

His voice fell into a trough of silence when he called Cat's name again, the echo soaked up by the surrounding stone. Why had he expected to meet her here anyway?

Because he had sensed her. She had accompanied him all the way from the trees.

She was here.

His sight flickered. He was at the end of his strength. He sank to his knees on the hard ground.

The Horseman rode out of the shadows his steed's hoofs clumping softly on cobbles. He seemed huge beyond belief, towering up amongst the stars with the moon haloing his head and his hood full of impenetrable shadow.

Michael's heart lurched Sickly for a moment. He had been mistaken. Cat had not called him here. It had been some trick of the Horseman's. And now his soul was forfeit.

But he felt no fear. In the extremity of his pain and exhaustion there was a certain clearness, an icy logic to his brain. The worst had already been done to him. He no longer cared.

Grimacing with pain, he hauled himself to his feet.

'What the hell are you?' he muttered.

As if in answer the Horseman reached up and threw back his hood. Michael gaped.

There was nothing human there. The head looked like an overgrown stump of dark wood wound around with shoots of honeysuckle as though they were a necklace. Gleaming holly dung like hair mixed with mistletoe and dog rose. What might have been eyes were formed by red rowan berries, and a circlet of blackthorn coiled above them like a crown.

'I am the Wildwood' the Horseman said softly, and his voice was like the rush of the great trees in a breeze. It had no depth, as though his chest were not airtight, but was some wide, leafy space.

'Cat,' Michael whispered. 'Where is she?'

Here, Michael. The words flitted past him like a wind-driven leaf.

We're all here, Michael.

He realized that the voice was coming from the Horseman. 'What have you done with her—with Rose? What the hell do you want?'

'You.'

Michael backed away, trembling. 'No.'

Without any sense of transition, it was Cat who was seated on the horse before him. Her scars were gone and her hair was shining in the flood of moonlight.

'It's me, Michael. I'm part of the wood, as I always was. I'm not any different—but I'm not afraid any more.'

'He. got you, Cat. He got you at last. It was my fault. I'm sorry.'

She seemed irritated.

'You don't understand, do you?' But her face faded away, and he was looking at the mossy features of the Horseman again. The Green Knight.

'I am the Wildwood,' the figure said again. 'And I am anything you want me to be. What you see is what you wish to see. Root and branch, my sap is the same as that of every tree nourished by this earth.'

And then it was Nennian who was astride the motionless horse, his broad face smiling slightly.

'You have changed, Woodsman. The world you live in now is not fit for you. You belong to the wood even as I do.'

'He took your soul,' Michael croaked.

The priest continued to smile, shaking his head gently. 'Still you understand nothing.' And he was gone.

'What about Rose? What happened to her? Is she here too?'

'She died in your world, but yes, she is here. She had a daughter who belonged to the wood.'

Cat. Michael had guessed as much over the years. She was his cousin.

'Let me see Rose.'

'She is dead.'

'So was Nennian.'

'The priest was a part of the wood, part of this world. Hence he will never truly die.'

'So the quest was futile from the start. There was no way I could free Rose.' He was bitter, bitter and humiliated. All that suffering had been for nothing. He had thrown away his time in this world, maybe Cat's too.

The Horseman did not answer.

The cold was eating into Michael like a canker and the blood in his wounds had frozen into crystals, black as coal in the moonlight. He did not think he had much time left.

'Why am I here? You brought me, didn't you?'

The leafy head inclined slightly. His horse nosed at the white ground. Rime was forming around its muzzle but it seemed oblivious to the cold. Michael's face was becoming a mask of ice where his breath condensed around his mouth and nose. It cracked every time he spoke. He was very tired.

'When you die here, you will be mine,' the depthless voice said. 'You will belong wholly to the wood.'

It was the Wildwood speaking to him, Michael realized. The castle was a mere ruin, a peg to hang a legend upon. And the Horseman was merely a cipher. The wood was the key, the centre of everything, the heart of this world. Its god. Poor Nennian had wanted to confront the Horseman, not realizing that he was only the embodiment of the wood's will. He did not steal souls ~ they were lost to the Wildwood. Nennian's had been lost also.