Free The Broken Kings: Book Three of The Merlin Codex by Robert Holdstock Page A

wonder?”
    We were silent for a while, each huddled in our own way, each remembering. The mood seemed to have softened. Medea’s sharp words brought back a passionate past, and the land where we had shared it, if only briefly.
    I said something that would have best been left unspoken. “There was a time when I would have dragged you from the burial mound itself. For a final act of love.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes. Perhaps nothing has changed.”
    “Then I’ll be sure to be cremated!” Her laugh was a crow’s laugh. “You can make my shape in ashes on your bed.”
    “You’re cruel.”
    Her sigh was of despair, as she cradled her head in her hands. “Oh, not that again! No, Merlin. Not cruel. I’m tired.” And she looked it as she suddenly gazed at me. “That’s what living does to you. It’s you, Merlin, who are dead. Not me. And you’ve been dead a long time. Since you were a boy, in fact. No snow-rose, squeezing you with her clever hands, putting the morning and evening sap into you so that she can sap it out at her whim, no clinging ice -whore can change the fact that you died when you made that silly little boat—”
    “What silly little boat?”
    “You called it Voyager. You set it to float along the river where we grew up, when we were children. You said that it would come back because all rivers came back to their source. Don’t you remember? You must remember, Merlin. Even the Dead have memories. That little boat meant everything to you. When you let it float away … your heart went with it. The rest of us practised our skills, learned our lessons, played our games, passed the tests, and went on our way according to what was written inside us. But you: oh, Merlin, do try to remember. You yourself floated away with that silly little boat. You are the only one of us who never grasped at the chances we’d been given.”
    I remembered Voyager as if in a dream. It had taken me a long time to build it. One day the model ship had slipped away from me, caught by a current in the river, lost forever into the forest wilderness among the mountains. What did Medea know that I had forgotten?
    I saw her more clearly now. She crouched before me, an ageing woman, hair grey, cheeks drawn, fierce-eyed, certainly, and strong in aroma and presence. She knelt before me as if subservient, but this was no position of humility or begging; I sat shivering and uncertain, aroused and dry-mouthed. She had me in a gaze that was both willing me to be gentle, and willing me to be strong.
    “Do you want me, Merlin? Do you want me as you used to want me? Or have you forgotten how you used to want me?”
    “I’ve forgotten,” I said bluntly—and noticed the quick frown of disappointment on her face, quick as the beat of a wing, but noticeable nonetheless. How quickly her mood could change. “But I’ve not forgotten that we’ve played this out before.”
    “Played out? Are we back to toys?”
    “Played out this seduction. You’ve done this to me before. A hundred times.”
    “A hundred times,” she echoed, shrinking back into the fleece. “A hundred times before. You remember all one hundred, I suppose.”
    “I know that you’ve tricked me before.”
    “You’re so easy to trick. It’s hard to resist you. But there’s more to a trick than just the trick. That’s the tease. After the tease comes the pleasure. You seem to have remembered the tricks and not the passion. What an odd man you are, Merlin. You are as old as me, despite your youthful looks. But you are as old as time. As fruit, we are ripe and sweet. In fact, we’re so damned old, we should be rotting on the vine. But you are still sour. Youth has kept you sour. And that puzzles me. I remember when you were young, and you were as sweet as honeyed fish. You said the same to me. And you should know. I’ve never tasted myself in the way you tasted me. But you have grown so bitter.”
    “I would have expected no more from you.”
    “No more than