Robert Holdstock - Lavondyss: Journey to an Unknown Region

LAVONDYSS

By

Robert Holdstock

ROBERT HOLDSTOCK

winner of the World Fantasy Award for MYTHAGO WOOD

"Beautifully written and conceivedSome books are hard to put down. I found MYTHAGO WOOD hard to shake off."

The New York Times

"That rare sequel that outstrips and illuminates its original Robert Holdstock is the Rolls Royce of the fantasy genre."

Lucius Shepard

"Pulsates with fresh imaginative energies that lift it well beyond the realm of the ordinary."

Toronto Sun

"A stunning foray into the world of legend and myth that has rarely been equaledRich and evocativeA true pleasure to read"

OtherRealms

"There is a landscape between history and dreams, a strange and primitive country that exists upon the edges of our waking world. Robert Holdstock knows that country well. His book LAVONDYSS is the map of it."

Paul Park, author of Sugar Rain

Other Fantasies by Robert Holdstock

Coming Soon from Avon Books

Mythago Wood

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AVON BOOKS

A division of

The Hearst Corporation

105 Madison Avenue

New York, New York 10016

Copyright 1988 by Robert Holdstock

Illustrations copyright 1988 by Alan Lee

Cover art by Thomas Canty

Published by arrangement with William Morrow and Company, Inc.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-31587

ISBN: 0-380-71184-2

All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Permissions Department, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 105 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

First Avon Books Printing: January 1991

AVON TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND IN OTHER COUNTRIES, MARCA REGISTRADA, HECHO EN U.S.A.

Printed in the U.S.A.

RA 10 987654321

For George, Dorothy, Douglas, Mercy and Ritafine storytellers all!

You are not far away.

Contents

PART ONE

Old Forbidden Place

A fire is burning in Bird Spirit Land.

My bones smolder. I must journey there.

Shaman dream chant, ca. 10,000 BC

GABERLUNGI

White Mask

The bright moon, hanging low over Barrow Hill, illuminated the snow-shrouded fields and made the winter land seem to glow with faint light. It was a lifeless, featureless place, and yet the shapes of the fields were clear, marked out by the moonshadow of the dark oak hedges that bordered them. Distantly, from that shadow round the meadow called The Stumps, the ghostly figure began to move again, following a hidden track over the rise of ground, then moving left, into tree cover. It stood there, just visible now to the old man who watched it from Stretley Farm; watching back. The cloak it wore was dark, the hood pulled low over its face. As it moved for the second time, coming closer to the farmhouse, it left the black wood behind. It was stooped, against the Christmas cold, perhaps. Where it walked it-left a deep furrow in the fresh snow.

Standing at the gate of the farm, waiting for the moment he knew, now, must surely come, Owen Keeton heard his grandchild begin to cry. He turned to the dark face of the house and listened. The sobbing was a brief disturbance; a dream perhaps. Then the infant girl was quiet again.

Keeton retraced his steps across the garden, stepped into the warm house and kicked the snow from his boots. He walked into the parlor, prodded the log fire with the metal poker until the flames roared again, then went to the window and peered out at the main road to Shadoxhurst, the nearest village to the farm. He could just hear, very distantly, the sound of carols. Glancing at the clock above the fire he realized that Christmas Day had begun ten minutes before.

At the parlor table he stared down at the book of folklore and legend that lay open there. The print was very fine, the pages thick and of good quality paper; the illustrations, in full color, were exquisite.. It was a book he loved, and he was giving it to his granddaughter as a present. The images of knights and heroes inspired him; the Welshness of the names and places made him nostalgic for the lost places and lost voices of his own youth in the mountains of Wales. The epic tales had filled his head with the sound of battle, war-cry and the rustle of tree and bird in the glades of haunted forests.

Now there was something else in the book, written in the white spaces around the print: a letter. His letter to the child.

He turned back to the beginning of that letter, where the chapter on Arthur of the Britons began. He scanned the words quickly:

The fire guttered and Keeton shivered despite it, and despite the heavy coat he wore. He stared at the wall, beyond which the snow-covered garden led to the fields, and that hooded figure, coming towards him. He felt a sudden urgent need to have done with this letter, to finalize it. It was a sort of panic. It gripped his heart and his stomach, and the hand that reached for the pen was shaking. The sound of the clock grew louder, but he resisted the urge to stare at it, to mark the passage of time, so little time, so few minutes

He had to finish writing the letter, and soon. He bent to the page and began to squeeze the words into the narrow margin:

He wrote on, turning the pages, filling the margins, linking his own words to the unconscious child with the words of fable, forming a link that would be of value to her, one day in her future.

When he had finished the letter he used his handkerchief to blot the ink then closed the book. He wrapped it in heavy brown paper and tied it with a length of string.

On the brown paper he wrote this simple message: For Tallis; for your fifth birthday. From Grandad Owen .