Kitabı oku: «The Language of Stones»
The Language of Stones
Robert Carter
This book is dedicated to Britain’s greatest living Welshman – Terry Jones.
‘First there were nine,
Then nine became seven,
And seven became five.
Now, as sure as the Ages decline,
Three are no more,
But one is alive.’
The Black Book of Tara
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Epigraph
PART ONE A BOY, A MAN
CHAPTER ONE OUT OF THE VALE
CHAPTER TWO INTO THE REALM
CHAPTER THREE TO THE TOWER OF LORD STRANGE
CHAPTER FOUR A LITTLE LEARNING
CHAPTER FIVE THE MARISH HAG
PART TWO THE POWERS OF THE EARTH
CHAPTER SIX A NEST OF SECRETS
CHAPTER SEVEN LAMMASTIDE
CHAPTER EIGHT CLARENDON
CHAPTER NINE A BARROW ON THE BLESSED ISLE
CHAPTER TEN LEIR’S TREASURE
CHAPTER ELEVEN THE STONE OF CAER LUGDUNUM
CHAPTER TWELVE ALONG THE BANKS OF THE NEANE
PART THREE THE DUKE OF EBOR’S PLEASURE
CHAPTER FOURTEEN A WINTER OF DISCONTENT
CHAPTER FIFTEEN AGAINST BETTER JUDGMENT
CHAPTER SIXTEEN COLD COMFORT IN THE WEST
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN IN THE HALL OF KING LUDD
PART FOUR WILL’S TEST
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN THE PLAGUESTONE
CHAPTER NINETEEN AT THE NAVEL OF THE WORLD
CHAPTER TWENTY THE NIGHT RIDE TO HOOE
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE SKIES OF FIRE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO THE SARCOPHAGUS OF VERLAMION
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE ALL IS WON, YET ALL IS LOST
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR THE GREEN MAN
AUTHOR’S NOTE
APPENDIX I ON THE AGES OF THE WORLD
APPENDIX II
Preview
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
PART ONE A BOY, A MAN
CHAPTER ONE OUT OF THE VALE
Willand son of Eldmar turned his gaze away from the Tops and ran down towards the village. The sun was warm today, the sky cloudless and the grass soft and thriving underfoot. His long hair streamed freely in the sun like golden wheat as he ran past a cluster of thatched cottages and came at last to the Green Man.
‘Is Tilwin here yet?’ he asked, hoping the knife-grinder was already slaking his thirst. But Baldgood the alehouse keeper shook his head. There was no sign of Tilwin, nor of his grinding wheel, so Will went out and sat on the grass.
Sunshine blazed on the white linen of his shirt. It was a fine spot just here. Daisies and dandelions had come out all over the green, as if it had known to put on its summer best. Every year it was fine and sunny at Cuckootide. There was racing to the Tarry Stone, kicking at the campball, and all the other sports. And afterwards there would be the bonfire. Songs would be sung and there would be dances and games and contests with the quarterstaff before the drinking of dragon soup. It would be the same this year as it had always been, and next year it would be the same again and on and on forever.
In the Vale they called today Cuckootide, the day the May Pole was put up and all the world came out onto the green to have a good time. But Will knew he could not have a good time – not until he had talked with Tilwin. He looked up at the round-shouldered hills they called the Tops and felt the longing again. It had been getting stronger, and today it felt like an invisible cord trying to pull his heart right out of his chest. That was why he had to speak with Tilwin. It had to be Tilwin, because only he would understand.
‘Hey-ho, Will!’
He knew that voice at once – whiskery Leoftan, the smith. His two thick braids hung like tarred rope side by side at his left cheek. He wore a belted shirt of white linen like Will’s own and a cap of red wool.
‘Your dad’ll be putting in your braids soon enough now, eh?’
Will shrugged. ‘It’s a hard week to turn thirteen, the week after May Day.’
Leoftan put down his armful of wooden tent-pegs. ‘Aye, you’ll have to wait near another year before you can run in the men’s race.’
Will scrubbed his fingers through his fair hair and stole another glance at the Tops. ‘Have you ever wondered what it’s like up there, Luffy?’
The smith stood up, gave him a distracted look. ‘What’s that you say?’
‘I was just thinking.’ He nodded towards the Tops. ‘One day I’d like to go up and see what’s there. Haven’t you ever thought what Nether Norton would look like with the whole Vale laid out down below?’
‘Huh?’
The moment stretched out awkwardly, but Will could not let it go. Once he had seen a small figure riding on a white horse far away where the earth met the sky. In the spring there were sheep – thousands of them – driven along by black dogs, and sometimes by men too. He had seen them many times, but whenever he had spoken of it to the others they had fallen quiet, and Gunwold the Swineherd had smirked, as if he had said something that ought not to have been said.
‘Well, Luffy? Haven’t you ever wanted to go up onto the Tops?’
Leoftan’s face lost its good humour. ‘What do you want to go talking like that for? They say there’s an ill wind up there.’
‘Is that what they say? An ill wind? And who are they who say that, Luffy? And how do they know? I wish – I wish—’
Just then Baldulf came up. He was fourteen, a fleshy, self-assured youth, and there was Wybda the Gossip and two or three others with him. ‘You want to be careful what you go a-wishing for, Willand,’ Wybda said. ‘They say that what fools and kings wishes for most often comes true.’
Will gazed back, undaunted. ‘I’m not a king or a fool. I just want to go up there and see for myself. What’s wrong with that?’
Wybda carried her embroidery with her. She plied her needle all the time, but still her pigs turned out too round and her flowers too squat. ‘Don’t you know the fae folk’ll eat you up?’
‘What do you know about the fae folk?’
Baldulf swished a willow wand at the grass near him. ‘She’s right. Nobody’s got any business up on the Tops.’
Gunwold grinned his lop-sided grin. ‘Yah, everybody knows that, Willand.’
They all began to move off and Leoftan said, ‘Aren’t you going over to watch the men’s race?’
‘Maybe later.’
He let them go. He did not know why, but just lately their company made him feel uncomfortable. He wondered if it was something to do with becoming a man. Maybe that was what made him feel so strange.
‘There’s a trackway up over the Tops,’ a gritty voice said in his ear.
He started, and when he looked round he saw Tilwin. ‘You made me jump.’
Tilwin gave a knowing grin. ‘I’ve made a lot of people jump in my time, Willand, but what I say is the truth. They’ve sent flocks along that trackway every summer for five thousand years and more. Now what do you think about that?’
Tilwin never said too much, but he knew plenty. He was not yet of middling age, and for some reason he wore his dark hair unbraided. He came once in a blue moon to fetch necessaries up from Middle Norton and beyond. Twice yearly he took the carts down to hand over the tithe, the village tax, to the Sightless Ones. Tilwin could put a sharper edge on a blade than anyone, and he was the only person Will knew who had ever been out of the Vale.
‘Who are the men who send the flocks through?’
‘Shepherds. They come this way because of the ring.’
‘What ring?’ Will’s eyes moved to the smooth emerald on Tilwin’s finger, but the knife-grinder laughed.
‘Ah, not that sort of a ring. Don’t you know there were giants in the land in the days of yore? There’s a Giant’s Ring away up on those Tops. A circle of standing stones. It’s a place of great magic.’
A shiver passed down Will’s spine. He could feel the tightness forming inside him again. Maybe it was the Giant’s Ring that was calling to him.
‘Magic…you say?’
‘Earth magic. Close by the Giant’s Ring stands Liarix Finglas, called the King’s Stone. Every shepherd who’s passed this way for fifty generations has chipped a piece off that King’s Stone until it’s now crooked as a giant’s thumb.’
‘Truly?’
‘Oh, you may believe it is so.’
‘Why do the shepherds do it?’
‘For a lucky keepsake, what do you think?’
Will did not know what he thought. The talk had set his mind on fire. ‘Fetch me a piece of it, will you, when next you go up there?’
‘Oh, and it’s a piece of the King’s Stone you want now, is it?’ Tilwin had a strange way of speaking, and a strange, deep way of looking at a person at times. ‘Ah, but you’re lucky enough in yourself, I think, Willand. Lucky enough for the meanwhile, let’s say that.’
The strange feeling welled up and squeezed his heart again. His eyes ran along the Tops, looking for a sign, but there was none. And when he looked around again Tilwin had vanished. For a moment it seemed that the knife-grinder had never been there at all.
Will wandered down and stood under the painted sign of the Green Man. It was a merry face – one of the fae folk – green as a leaf and all overgrown with ivy. The sign was bedecked now with white Cuckootide hawthorn blossom.
Cuthwal was inside, playing his fiddle, but there was no sign of Eldmar, his father, so Will wandered away, sat down on the grass for a while and watched folk coming up from way down the Vale. Then it was time for the boys’ race and there was cheering as half a dozen lads sprinted across the green and tried to be first to lay a hand on the Tarry Stone.
But Will did not feel like cheering anybody on. Leoftan had mentioned an ill wind, and an ill wind had sprung up – or at least a cold one – and not just over the Tops either. Iron-grey clouds had begun to boil up and gather darkly in the west. At first no one among the villagers seemed to notice, but then as the sun went in, one or two of them started to look skyward, and soon the bunting began to flap and the crowns of the tall beeches in Pannage Woods started to sway and roar. Folk began to feel a sudden chill touch them. It looked suddenly as if it would rain.
The music stopped and folk set to helping one another clear the stalls and tables away. They muttered that this was unheard of, because the last time the May Pole dance had been washed out was beyond living memory. Will had just finished lending a hand when a cry went up. He turned and saw old Frithwold coming up the track, shaking his fists as he ran.
‘Jack o’ Lantern!’ he wheezed as he reached the Green Man. ‘May Death cut me down if I tell a lie! Jack o’ Lantern’s down in the lanes!’
‘Now, sit down and catch your thoughts, Frith,’ Bregowina, the brewster’s wife, said coolly. ‘There ain’t no warlocks round here.’
‘Sit down be blowed! It be Jack o’ Lantern in the lanes over by Bloody Meadow, I tell you!’
Baldgood peered past his barrels. ‘You’ve had too much of them cider dregs, Frith.’
‘Noooo! It was Jack o’ Lantern, as I live and breathe!’
They settled him down, and the clearing away carried on until all the doors were put back on their hinges and everything was closed up tight. There was no doubting Frithwold believed what he was saying – he was grey in the face and more upset than Will had ever seen him. Groups ofValesmen were muttering to one another, scythes in hand, glancing fearfully down the track. He turned to Baldgood and asked, ‘Who’s Jack o’ Lantern?’
‘You won’t recall him,’ Baldgood said, troubled.
‘Tell me.’
‘He’s a visitor who comes to these parts from time to time. And not such a welcome one neither. You’d’ve been just a babe in arms when last he came this way, or not even born maybe.’
Cuthwal leaned across. ‘We don’t none of us like the looks of him. And we never did.’
Will looked down the lane and saw nothing unusual. ‘Why not?’
‘Because he’s a crow, and up to no good.’
‘Don’t you fear now, Will,’ Baldgood said. ‘There’s a hue and cry gone up after him. Our stout lads’ll drive him off! Now you best get back home.’
Will looked out across the green. Inky clouds filled the sky now. It was almost as dark as night. Then it began to pelt with rain. The May Pole looked forlorn as it swayed with its ribbons streaming out. The wind had got up fiercely and was trying to tear down what was left of the bunting. Bregowina, unruffled as ever, lit candles, and her sons barred the doors. They had just finished when Gifold One-Tooth and both his sons started banging, wanting to be let in. The way they held their pitchforks showed they expected trouble, but nobody had told them what sort.
‘What does Jack o’ Lantern look like?’ Will asked, but nobody answered him.
He folded his arms. No fire burned in the hearth and the only light in the parlour now was from two candles that burned with a quavering, smoky flame. It was a light that did not penetrate far. ‘I’ve never seen a crow. Is that the same as a warlock?’
‘None of them knows much about what Jack o’ Lantern looks like, Will.’
He turned at the voice that came from the back of the room. At the table in the corner shadows sat Tilwin. He had found a place where nobody had noticed him. His hat was in front of him on the table, and he was thumbing the edge of a long, thin knife. He said, ‘The only man in Nether Norton who ever challenged Jack o’ Lantern face to face was Evergern the Potter, and he’s been dead these ten years.’
‘What are you doing, skulking back there?’ Gifold demanded, as if he was speaking to a ghost.
‘Minding my own business, Gif. Like you should be doing.’ Tilwin leaned forward and turned his gaze on the rest of them. ‘I slipped in quiet, so I did, while you were all running about down the way like fowls with their heads stricken off. I could have marched an army in here for all you’d have known about it.’
‘You’re a strange customer, and no mistake,’ Baldgood said.
‘That I may be, but let me tell you something about your Jack o’ Lantern – in this part of the Vale you call him by that name and say he’s a crow. Others further down call him “Merlyn”, or “Master Merlyn” to be correct about it, though that isn’t his true name. Down by Great Norton they say he’s “Erilar” and claim he’s a warlock. While over at Bruern they put the name “Finnygus” on him and fetch their horses to him to benefit from his leechcraft. But none of them knows who he is, for Jack casts a weirder light than any lantern ever I saw.’ Tilwin leaned further forward until the candlelight caught in his blue eyes. ‘He runs deep does our friend Jack. Deep as the Kyle of Stratha. Nor does he suffer fools easily. So if he’s got business in this place, I’d let him finish it without hindrance – if I were you.’
There was silence. Like everyone else, Will listened and held his peace. He didn’t understand much of what had been said, but the thrill of excitement at Tilwin’s words made the hairs rise up on the back of his neck.
‘Now that’s enough of that kind of talk,’ Baldgood muttered, bustling out from behind his counter. ‘Willand! Now, I thought I told you to get on home?’
Will went to the door but after what Tilwin had said home seemed a long way to go in the pitch dark. In truth it was no more than a furlong – a couple of hundred paces – but it was still raining hard. He poked his head outside. Water was trickling down the track. Where only a short while before there had been dry dust, now there was a stream. He jumped out into the night and set off at a run until the light from the alehouse gave out. Then he stubbed his toe painfully on a flint and almost fell. After that he groped his way along by the side of the green. His shirt was soaked. Every village door was closed and every shutter barred tight.
So much for welcoming the summer in, he thought as he felt twigs snapping in the grass under his feet. His outstretched hands met the deeply grooved bark of the Old Oak. He paused, listening. Overhead, leaves were rattling in the downpour, and there was something eerie about the sound, as if the tree was talking to itself.
He shook the water out of his eyes and peered into the dark to where a faint bar of yellow light escaped under a door. Home. He stumbled towards it, and soon his fingers felt a familiar latch.
The light guttered in the draught as he came in, then steadied. He saw Breona and Eldmar, his mother and father, standing together by the unlit hearth, and there, seated before them, was a stranger.
The figure was wrapped in a mouse-brown cloak with a hood that shadowed his face. Will’s heart beat against his ribs. He was about to speak when his father told him sternly: ‘Go up to bed, Willand.’
‘But Father—’
‘Will! Do as I tell you!’
Eldmar had never barked at him like that before. He looked from face to face, scared now. He wanted to go to his mother’s side, but his father was not to be argued with, and Will obeyed. He felt his knees give slightly as he climbed the ladder into the rafters, and dived straight to his nest in the loft. There he lay on the bag of straw that served as his bed. It was warm and smoky up here under the eaves. His wet hair stuck to his forehead and his shirt was clammy on his back as his hand sought out the comfort of a stout wooden threshing flail. He moved as quietly as he could to the edge of the loft where he could watch and listen, telling himself that if anything happened he would pull back the hurdles, jump down and set about the stranger.
But if this was Jack o’ Lantern, he was nothing like the warlock the men had spoken about. By his knee there rested a staff a full fathom in length, fashioned from a kind of wood that had a marvellous sheen to it. The stranger himself had a pale, careworn face, with a long nose and longer beard. The hair of his beard might once have been the colour of corn or copper, but it had faded to badger shades of grey. He was swathed in a wayfarer’s cloak that was made of shreds, and at times seemed almost colourless in the flickering tallow light. Beneath his hood he wore a skullcap, but under the hem of his belted gown his long legs were without hose and his feet unshod. There were many cords about his neck, and among the amulets and charms that rattled at his chest, a bird’s skull.
‘It is said that eavesdroppers will often pick up things they do not like to hear,’ the stranger said. His voice was quiet, yet it carried. It was touched with a strangeness that made Will think of faraway places.
‘Why can’t you leave us alone?‘Will’s mother whispered.
‘Because promises were made. You know why I am here. I must have him.’
At that, Will felt an icy fist clutch him. His world suddenly lurched and refused to right itself. He heard his father say, ‘But those promises were made thirteen years ago!’
‘What does the passage of time signify when a promise is made?’
‘We’ve grown to love him as you said we should!’
‘A promise is eternal. Have you forgotten how matters stood when you made it? You and your good wife were childless, denied the joys that parents know. How dearly you wished for a baby boy of your own. And then one night, on the third day past Cuckootide, I came to you with a three-day-old babe and your misery was at an end.’
‘You can’t take him back!’ Will’s mother shrieked.
The stranger made suddenly as if to rise. Will’s parents took a step back as his grip tightened on the flail. ‘He is no longer a boy. A child you wanted, and a child I brought. But now the child is become a man – a man – and I must have this son of Beltane as we agreed. I said there would be an errand for him, and so there is.’
A dark gulf of silence stood between them for a moment, then the stranger spoke subtle words and Eldmar and Breona hung their heads and made no further argument.
Up in his loft Will found himself numbed to the marrow of his bones. He began to tremble. Whether it was from shock or fear or the working of evil magic he could not tell. As the stranger rose, Will’s grip tightened on the threshing flail, but when he looked again there was nothing in his hand but a wooden spoon, and the flail was nowhere to be seen.
‘Call the lad down,’ the stranger suggested. ‘Tell him he has no need to fear me.’
Eldmar called, and Will came down the ladder as if his arms and legs had minds of their own. He felt his father’s hands on his shoulders, but his father’s face betrayed only heartsickness. ‘Forgive me if you can, Willand,’ he said simply. ‘I should have had the courage to tell you sooner.’
‘Tell me what?’ Will asked, blinking. ‘I won’t go with him. He’s a warlock, and I won’t go with him!’
‘You must, son.’ Eldmar’s face remained grim. ‘Thirteen years ago we gave our word. We swore to keep the manner of your coming to us a secret. We swore because we so wanted a boy of our own. Each year that passed sons came to others, but never to us. You seemed like our blessing.’
Will drew a hollow breath. ‘You…should have told me.’
‘We were sworn to tell no one,’ Breona wailed. ‘Even so we meant to tell you, Will. But first you were too young. Then, you were such a well-liked boy that we couldn’t find the proper time to upset our happy home. It would have broken our hearts, do you see?’
Eldmar hung his head and Breona held out her hand. There were tears in her eyes. ‘Say you forgive us for what we did, Willand.’
Will wiped away his own tears. ‘There’s nothing to forgive. You’re the best father and mother any boy could have.’
‘Please,’ Breona said, turning back to the stranger. ‘Can’t you give us just a little more time? Let him stay for one more day, as a mercy to us!’
‘It would be no mercy,’ the stranger said. ‘Of that I am quite sure, for he may be the Child of Destiny, the one whose name appears in the Black Book.’
At that, Breona’s eyes flared. She would have thrown herself on the stranger had Eldmar not caught her in his arms. ‘He’s my Willand, and nobody else!’
Will found himself unable to move. The stranger reached out to touch man and wife, speaking words and making a sign above both their foreheads. ‘Do not punish yourselves,’ he commanded. ‘You are blameless. You have done all that was asked of you.’
Eldmar’s eyes drooped, and his wife’s hands hung loose at her sides. Then Breona shook her head as if she had just come awake. She hugged Will, her eyes full of tenderness now. ‘You must put on a dry shirt, son. I’ll fetch out your best jerkin and give you a bundle of sweetcakes for your journey.’
But Will drew back in fear. ‘What have you done to them?’ he cried.
‘Be calm, Willand. They remember nothing of their former fears. They have been comforted.’
‘You’ve bewitched them!’
‘I have applied an incantation. There is no harm in it.’
Will tried to launch himself at the visitor, but Eldmar caught him in strong arms and said, ‘Willand, be easy! I made a promise, but it’s you who must redeem it. That’s often the way with sons and fathers.’
Breona kissed him again and went to the linen chest. From it she took a parting gift, an ornament the size of his thumb made of smooth, greenish stone. It was carved in the form of a leaping salmon, and engraved with a figure and some words. Words were beyond Will’s plain learning to read, though the figure was three triangles placed one within another. Its meaning – if it had one – was not clear.
‘It was inside your blanket when you were brought to us,’ Breona said. ‘It’s only right that it should go with you now. Wear it as a charm, for a mother’s love goes with it. And, like the salmon, may you return to us again some day.’
Her eyes sparkled when she smiled at him, and he threw his arms around her neck. ‘You’ll always be my mother. Always!’
Eldmar said, ‘I have nothing to give you, but I will do one thing before you go. Sit down.’
When Will sat down on the three-legged stool, Eldmar caught up a handful of his hair. His big, blunt fingers carefully teased out the strands. They twisted and pulled and twisted again, working expertly until two braids were done.
‘There,’ his father said as he stood up. ‘Now you’re a man.’
CHAPTER TWO INTO THE REALM
They climbed up towards the Tops through the pouring rain, and Will told himself that he had made a fool’s wish come true after all. He did not know how or why his feet followed one another, but after a while they felt the tread-worn track peter out and long grass begin. The stranger was leading him onward through Nethershaw Woods. There were thousands of bluebells clothing the ground hereabouts, but blind darkness pressed in all around, and he saw nothing. The air was alive with deep green smells, but apart from the sound of rain, the night was quiet. Creatures of fur and feather had drawn deep inside their holes and hollows, and nothing stirred.
It was as if the journey was happening to someone else. His new, manly braids felt strange as they swung against his wet cheek. He put a hand to them and began to think of his parents again, and that filled his eyes with tears. He stumbled in the darkness and the stranger said, ‘Tread softly, Willand, for we have far to go tonight.’
The steady climb brought them out onto open land. It was curious how slow the raindrops seemed to fall here, and how filled with echoes was their noise. Underfoot the going was as gentle as a sheep-cropped meadow. Will had never climbed so high before, nor walked so far or so fast in the dark. The stranger did not lean on his staff as an old man should, he wielded it. His long legs strode out as if he could see the night world around him as clearly as any cat.
A hundred questions about the stranger whirled in Will’s head. Perhaps he’s a sorcerer, he thought, dread welling up. It’s plain he’s got the power about him, and he spoke an incantation onto my…
His thoughts turned away from Breona and Eldmar. The pang in his belly felt like fear, and underneath it there lurked a dark and dreadful question – if Eldmar and Breona are not my real parents, then who are?
There must be a spell on me now, he told himself, or why else are my legs being forced to follow him?
Will tried to resist, but he could not. In the back of his mind, shapeless fears writhed.
‘What’s the matter now?’ the stranger said, turning.
He wanted to ask the dreadful question, but instead he stammered, ‘Are…are we going to the Giant’s Ring?’
The stranger loomed in the darkness. ‘What do you know about the Giant’s Ring?’
‘N…Nothing.’
‘Then why do you fear it? Are you drawn by its power? Tell me!’ The stranger gripped his arm. ‘What do you know about the Ring?’
‘Only that there’s a stone near it that shepherds say is lucky.’
The stranger’s tone softened, and he laughed unexpectedly. ‘Forgive me if I frightened you, Willand. We are not going to the Giant’s Ring. Nor was that ever a place where folk were ritually slain, or beheaded, or buried alive – as no doubt you have been led to believe.’
Will’s heart hammered at the strange answer, but already some of his fear had begun to turn to obstinacy. They went on, crested a shallow rise, and headed over the brow into lands that drained westward. Moments later they skirted the sleeping hamlet of what could only be Over Norton, a fabled place spoken of rarely by Valesmen. A hound barked in the distance, a deep-throated, echoing sound that was full of longing.
At last, Will staggered to a halt. He shielded his eyes from the rain, peering back the way they had come. They had reached another track, this time on level ground, that ran right across the Tops.
The stranger turned. ‘What now?’
‘I’m…scared.’
He flinched away as the stranger reached out and touched his shoulder, but the words that came this time were plain enough. ‘I will not say there is no reason for you to be scared. This is the most dangerous night of your short life. But I will do everything in my power to protect you.’
Something seemed to burst in Will’s chest and he blurted out, ‘Well, if you’re so wise, why don’t you just magic us to wherever it is we’re supposed to be going?’
The stranger paused and regarded him for a long moment before saying, ‘Because magic must always be used sparingly, and never without considering gains against losses. Magic must be requested, never summoned, respected, never treated with disdain. It must be asked for openly and honestly. Listen to me, Willand! I am trying very hard to deliver you to a place of safety. But we may not reach it if you decide to defy me. And the danger will be the more, the more you resist.’
The stranger seemed suddenly older than old, a man used to talking high talk, giving important words to important people, not a man who was used to coaxing frightened lads into following him through the night. Will stared at the ground sullenly. ‘Aren’t there…aren’t there giants up here?’
The other laughed softly. ‘Giants? Now who could have put that notion into your head? Ah, let me guess. That would have been Tilwin, the well-travelled man.’
Will’s mouth fell open. ‘Then – you do know Tilwin!’
‘I know a great many folk. Did Tilwin say he knew me?’
It was more than a question and Will gave no answer. He gritted his teeth, still fighting the urge that moved his legs forward. ‘You still haven’t told me where we’re going.’
‘The less you know about that the better, until we are a good deal closer to it.’
‘Is it far?’
‘Four more leagues tonight, three as the rook flies, then we shall come to a place of sanctuary.’ The voice mellowed. ‘Try to be easy in your mind, Willand. There will come a day when you are no longer afraid of giants – but we shall have to work hard to make sure you live that long.’
The stranger’s voice was as vivid as lightning – at once exciting, comforting and terrifying. Oh, yes, he must be a great sorcerer, Will thought. For who but a great sorcerer could use words like that? But four leagues! Four leagues was a very long way. In the Vale a single league was a trip from Nether Norton to Pannage then away to Overmast and back again. To go four leagues in one journey seemed unimaginable.
But I’m not going. I’ll test his magic long before that, he told himself stubbornly. I’ll bide my time. I’ll wait until he’s wrapped up in his big thoughts, and then I’ll fall behind little by little and make a run for it. He won’t be able to find me, because I won’t go straight home. No! I’ll wait till first light, then run down to Overmast and hide in Ingulph’s Oak. He’ll never find me there.
But a firm grip took him by the collar and hauled him onward. ‘Please try to keep up. Have I not already made clear to you the dangers?’
Will tried to pull away from the grip. ‘You’re trying to enchant me with your sorcerer’s whisper-words.’
‘Oh, a sorcerer, am I?’
‘It’s magic you’ve put on me. I can feel it working in my legs!’
‘And what do you know about magic? Your village has not even the benefit of a wise woman.’
‘I know sorcerers are evil!’
The stranger made no immediate reply, but then he sighed and his breath steamed in the moist air. ‘Do not speak to me of evil, for you do not know what that is. Be assured, your life and the lives of ten thousand others may depend on your obedience to me tonight. Now come along willingly or I shall have to take measures.’
Will refused to believe a word of it, but he could do nothing except pace onward through the gloom and wait for his chance. At length he said, ‘In the village they say you’re a crow called Jack o’ Lantern.’
‘Jack is as good a name as any. Noblemen have long used the word “crow” to mean wanderers such as I, but the folk of Nether Norton do not know the difference between a crow and a craft-saw.’
That was no help. ‘But it’s not your real name.’
‘I have a true name, but that may not be learned by others.’
‘Why not?’
The stranger’s eyebrow arched impressively. ‘Because if it became known to my enemy, it would put me in his power.’
‘Do you have many enemies?’
‘Only one.’
Will thought that was a very guarded answer. ‘What’s he called?’
‘At times he uses the name “Clinsor” at others “Maskull”. But those are not his true names any more than Gwydion is mine.’
Will seized on the slip. ‘Is that what I should call you?’
The sorcerer laughed. ‘Sharp! Let me put your mind at rest. I have been known by many names – Erilar, Finegas, Tanabure, Merlyn, Laeloken, Bresil, Tiernnadrui – but you should call me by the name the present lords of this realm use when they speak of me. Call me Master Gwydion.’
‘Master Gwydion,’ Will repeated, satisfied. He said portentously, ‘Gwydion the Sorcerer!’
‘Do not make such jests.’ The plea was made quietly, but Will heard in it a solemn warning.
‘Why not? You perform magic. You don’t deny that. So you’re a sorcerer.’
Gwydion put his face close to Will’s own. ‘Try to remember that words are important. They have precise meanings. I do not perform magic, Willand. Magic is never performed. It is not the stuff of conjuring shows, it is what links the world together. And you must never call me “enchanter”, “warlock” or “magician” – those words are easily misunderstood by folk of little learning. They cause trouble.’
Will stumbled over a coney burrow and almost fell. ‘I wish this rain would stop! I can’t see a thing!’
Gwydion grunted. ‘Wishes! Every spell of magic I expend tonight must be heavily veiled, but perhaps we might go by faelight for a while without any greater risk of being noticed.’
The sorcerer muttered hard-to-hear words, then he took hold of Willand’s head and used his thumbs to wipe the water from his face. All at once Will became lightheaded, and it seemed as if there was a glow in the wet grass around him, a glow like mist caught in a spider’s web, like a dusting of green moonlight over a soft land. Then he realized he had not opened his eyes. He gasped in wonder, still more than a little fearful of what was happening to him.
‘Am I dreaming?’ he asked as the rain began to slacken. A few moments more and it had stopped altogether. But not in the usual way. Each drop was now hanging in the air as if it had forgotten how to fall. He felt the drops collide with his face as he moved through them, like magic dew. Then, quite suddenly the drops began to fall again, but very slowly.
Up above, the clouds began to clear away. They revealed a host of bright, green stars. He heard the comforting call of a barn owl, and through the air it came, silent and huge and white and incredibly slow, as if swimming through the rain-washed air. It shattered the drops in its path and passed so close to him that he could have reached out to touch it. He saw every detail of each wonderful feather on its wings before it vanished. The sight of it astonished him, then all at once they were going along again, and it was as if they had walked out from the region of bewitched rain in a dream, because now the ground was stony and broken and dry as dust. The foot of the sorcerer’s staff was beating a rhythmic toc-toc-toc on what seemed to be a trackway. Will wandered towards it through the still faintly glowing land, while his mind bubbled and fizzed. Another enchantment had been laid on him, he knew that much. And was that not another very good reason to mistrust this dangerous man?
And yet – what if he was telling the truth about that greater danger?
‘Who’s Beltane?’ he asked at last. ‘What did you mean when you said “this son of Beltane”? Is Beltane my real father?’
Gwydion grunted, seemingly amused by the question. A crescent moon had begun to rise, low and large and ruddy in the east. ‘How much you have to learn. Beltane is not a person, it is a day. It lies between the equinox of spring and the solstice of summer. Beltane is what you in the Vale call Cuckootide, and what others call “May Day”. It’s a special day, the day that gave you birth.’
‘Who are my real parents?’ He said it almost without thinking, and like a painful thorn it was suddenly out. ‘Please tell me.’
‘Willand, I cannot tell you.’
‘But you must!’
‘I cannot because I do not know.’
‘I don’t believe you!’
‘I would not lie about it.’
But Will could not let it go. ‘Where did you find me, then? Tell me that.’
It seemed Gwydion would give no answer, but then he said, ‘When I found you, you were only a day or two old.’
‘But where did you find me? Who was there?’
The stranger halted. ‘No one was there. Willand – you had been left to die.’
The shock of that answer flowed through his heart like icy water. He let the sorcerer turn away and walk on, while his mind wandered numbly. Who would leave a little baby to die? What reason could there possibly have been? What was wrong with me?
The stranger came back, made a sign over Will’s forehead and muttered powerful words until the numbness dissolved and he was hardly able to recall the questions that had so troubled him. After that, the journey was like floating through the silent night. He watched the moon rise ever higher in the south-east. Gradually it lost its rosy glow and began to shine chalk white in a clear and star-spangled sky. For some time now a grey light had been seeping in from the east, and when Will next closed his eyes he found that the faelight had left him.
He marvelled at the low, flat skyline: there was so much more sky on the Tops than ever there had been in the Vale. Land stretched as far as the eye could see. It made a man feel like standing straighter and breathing deeper. He looked ahead. Far away the rich brown soil had been tilled and planted. Nearer by there was a shallow ridge and a slope. To the south the land dropped down into a broad valley, and on the far side it rose again in forest. The dawn was coming faster now, a power that would soon send unstoppable rays searching over the land. Already the glimmers revealed tussocky chases beside the trackway, pale stone clothed in a thin flesh of loam and cloaked in green. There were patches of woodland here too, and plenty of folds hereabouts where someone who wanted to make a run for it might choose to hide…
That idea brought his scattered thoughts up sharply. He had almost forgotten about escaping. He had walked all night, yet he was neither hungry nor tired. But things were changing. The faelight was gone and now the sensation in his legs had almost drained away too. His braids swung encouragingly at his cheek, and he put a hand to them. The Realm was indeed a bigger and stranger place than ever he had thought.
I won’t be able to find my way back if we go much further, he thought. I’ll have to make my break now, before it’s too late! But carefully, he warned himself. This Master Gwydion may have done me no harm as yet, but he’s a lot more dangerous than he tries to seem. Still, I’ll bet he can’t run as fast as me, nor aim his night-magic so well in full daylight. I’ll bide my time then – off! With a bit of luck his hood will stay up and he won’t even see me go.
He glanced to left and right. The old, straight track as it ran over the Tops was broken. It rose and fell no more than the height of a man in a thousand paces now, and it kept to high ground where the skin of the land was pulled tightest over its bones. There were sheep droppings among the grass, and coney burrows too. Grey stones outcropped here and there along the trackway, and Will hung back as far as he dared, wondering if these old stones might not be the remains of giants’ houses set beside the ancient road. Tilwin had once said that beyond the Vale there were houses and castles built of stone, wondrous ruins that had lasted since the days of the First Men…
Thinking no more about it, Will tore suddenly away and ran down the slope. Once out of sight he went as fast as he could, jinking over the tussocks like a hare, looking once, twice, over his shoulder to check that the sorcerer had not missed him. Only when he was sure did he dive down behind a hillock and lie pressed hard against the ground.
From here he could see where the track wound onward, and soon he spied a tiny, dark figure continuing along the track in the distance, wrapped up in his cloak and seemingly deep in thought. Will exulted. He’ll never find me now, he told himself, lying on his back among the moss until he had got his breath back. His clothes were still damp from the rain and he began to feel a certain weariness seeping into his joints, but none of that mattered. He was free. He would lie low until the sorcerer had gone. Then he would find a way home.
He thought of opening the bundle of sweetcakes that was lodged inside his jerkin, but decided against it. He might have greater need of them before the day was done. But thinking about the sweetcakes made him remember his mother and a lonely feeling crept over him. She’s not my mother, he thought. Though I don’t know how a real mother could have loved me any better.
He took out the fish-shaped talisman and turned it over in his fingers. He could not read what was written on it, yet still its touch comforted him. His feelings towards Breona and Eldmar had not changed, but now there were gaping questions where once there had been certainties.
A male blackbird looking for breakfast turned one wary yellow-rimmed eye on him and began clucking at him as if he was a cat. Will told it to hush, but the bird fled in noisy distress, and he wondered if the sorcerer was alert enough to have noticed it. Then the ground began to tremble and tear. He turned to look behind him and saw a huge grey-green shape that had begun to rise up from what he had thought was a small hill. The hill looked like a man’s back, but the shoulders were as broad as a barn door and the skin filthy and warty like a toad’s. Dread seized him and held him in its grip. He tried to yell, but the air was already filled with groans.
The creature was getting to its feet. It rose up from its hollow in the ground like a boulder being forced from its bed, and it carried on rising until it was as tall as the May Pole. Two immense legs were each as far around as an oak. And the body was built in proportion, with two heavily muscled arms. But it was the hairless head that was most terrifying – ugly and gross-featured, with a wide mouth filled with uneven, soil-brown teeth, a bone-hooded brow and bulbous, penetrating eyes.
Terror swarmed through Will. He could neither stand nor run, only stare until every self-preserving thought was blotted from his mind. But as the monster turned on him, he yelped and scrambled to get away. His arms and legs would not work fast enough, but then the monster’s eyes fixed hard on him. It let out a deep-roaring bellow and began to step forward. Each of its footfalls shook the land. It came so close that he could smell the earthy stink of its breath and feel the closeness of its hands.
Somehow Will ran clear of those flailing arms. He bolted along the trackway, never pausing to look back, certain that if the monster caught him it would eat him alive. His braids banged against his ear as he ran. When at last he did look over his shoulder, he saw that a great stone had been wrenched up from the ground. It was hurled through the air, bounced and blundered past him like a great wooden ball pitched at a skittle. Finally, it came to rest at the very place where a little while ago he had schemed to make his escape.
When Will saw the distant figure of the sorcerer by the brow of the next hill, he flew to him. The old man was continuing in the same way, his staff beating a steady toc-toc-toc over the stones. Will’s heart was bursting, his lungs gasping for air as he shouted his warning.
‘Master Gwydion! Master Gwydion!’ His hands grasped at the sorcerer’s much-patched cloak as he tried to get his words out. ‘A gi – a gi—! A giant coming!’
The sorcerer stopped, put a hand on Will’s head and smiled. ‘Alba will not harm you so long as you do nothing to harm that which he holds dear.’
‘He – he’s trying to kill me!’
‘Then stay close to me, for I am his friend. One day you will be glad that the flesh of this land is his flesh. But come now. The new day is brightening and we have yet to reach the Evenlode Bridge.’
Gwydion walked on, unconcerned. But the terror was still fresh in Will. He felt it rattling inside him as he plucked up the courage to look back again. There was nothing to see now, nothing except what might be the long shadow of an outcrop thrown across the track by the golden light of the newly-risen sun. As for the great boulder that had been hurled after him, it was there – a lone standing stone that looked as if it had been sitting by the side of the track for fifty generations.
It was a trick! Will told himself with sudden outrage. Just an evil sorcerer’s trick! And I believed it!
But a bigger part of him was not so easily persuaded that it had been a trick, and so he hurried to catch up.
CHAPTER THREE TO THE TOWER OF LORD STRANGE
By now it was late morning, yet they had seen no other person along their path. Folk must be dwelling close by, Will thought, for someone must work these fields, and once or twice I’ve seen the thatch of houses in the distance. Maybe we’re going the quiet way on purpose.
After walking down off the Tops and some way into the broad valley that lay ahead, Will halted. ‘I can’t take another step,’ he croaked.
The sorcerer seemed uncomfortable that they should stop here. He gave Will a hard look. ‘We will rest. But not in this place.’ Then he did a strange thing: he drew a little stick from his sleeve and twisted it over the ground, walking back and forth as if testing for something until they had gone a few hundred paces further on.
When he saw Will watching him, he said, ‘Do not be afraid, it is only scrying. Do you see how the hazel wand moves? It helps me feel out the power that flows in the land.’
Will stared back mutely, and the sorcerer carried on. The place he eventually chose for them to rest was an oblong enclosure of cropped grass about as big as Nether Norton’s green. It was surrounded by a grassy earth bank a little higher than a man’s head. Weathered standing stones guarded its four corners, sticking up like four grey teeth. Will had no idea who might have laboured to build such a place, or why, for as a sheep pen it would have been very poor. But as he let the feel of it seep into his bones he had the idea that this was ancient ground and very much to be respected. It did feel good to sit here as the swallows looped and swooped high overhead, but he also sensed an echo of distant doings – dark events – that seemed to run through the land.
Gwydion watched him closely. ‘Long ago, Willand, this was a famous stronghold. Here it was that, eighty generations ago, Memprax the Tyrant conspired with his brother, Malin, to gain the Realm. And when the Realm was won Memprax murdered Malin in his bed, and thereafter ruled as a despot. I remember it all as if it was yesteryear.’
Will looked at the sorcerer with astonishment, for who but an immortal could remember events that had taken place eighty generations ago? The thought made him uneasy. He took out and opened his bundle of sweetcakes, chose the smaller one for himself and offered the other.
‘That was kindly done,’ Gwydion said. ‘And in return you shall have this.’ He picked up a pebble, and offered it.
‘What is it?’
‘As you see, a pebble. But a very fine pebble. Or do you think otherwise?’
‘Are you laughing at me?’
‘Laughing? Why should you say that? This is your reward. You will find that you are able to spend it like a silver shilling, for those who value coins will see it as such.’
‘You are laughing at me. Or you’re mad.’
The sorcerer shrugged. ‘If you think so, then throw it away.’
But Will decided to put the pebble in his pouch.
The sun had begun to warm the day and Gwydion pulled back his hood, revealing a high-browed head set with a close-fitting cap of grey linen that covered long, unbraided hair. His face was also long and his dark eyes deeply set under thick brows. It was a kindly face. He wore the beard of an old man, but it still seemed impossible to place a certain age upon him.
After finishing his sweetcake, the sorcerer took out his hazel wand and went back to scrying the ground around the stones. Despite all that had happened, Will could not now think too badly of him. In the sunshine, he seemed to be no more than a pitiful old man – one weighed down with too many cares. Perhaps he had been telling the truth all along. And perhaps it might not be such a bad life to be apprenticed to a sorcerer for a while.
When Gwydion noticed he was being watched, he beckoned Will to him. ‘I’m reading the stone.’
‘You really are mad.’
‘And you really must be careful.’
‘Reading it how?’
‘With my fingers. I want to see if it is a battlestone.’ He walked carefully around the stone, touching its surface with his fingertips. ‘Are you any the wiser?’
‘What’s a battlestone?’
Gwydion straightened, then a wry smile broke out across his face. ‘Perhaps there is no harm in telling you. I want to know if this is one of the stones that are bringing war to the Realm.’
Will screwed up his face, but said nothing.
‘Oh, you are not alone in your disbelief! All standing stones are powerful and precious things. They were put in place long ago by the fae or else by wise men who knew something of the fae’s skills. Only fools have ever tried to move them since.’
Will looked at the stone critically. It was a large, weathered grey rock, much taller than it was broad, and quite unremarkable. He put his hands on it and found the surface nicely sun-warmed.
Gwydion smiled. ‘Most stones bring benefits to the land – like the Tarry Stone which keeps your village green so lush and makes the sheep who graze there very glad, but some stones are not so helpful. The worst of them were made long ago with the aim of inciting men to war. That is why they are called battlestones.’
‘Is this one?’
Gwydion sighed. ‘In truth, I cannot easily tell what is a battlestone and what is not. It has become my wearisome task to try to find them, but so far I have failed.’
‘Failed?’
‘I lack the particular skill for it. The fae knew well how to protect the lorc from prying.’ He patted the stone he had been examining. ‘But at least this one may be discounted, for it carries the sign that tells me its purpose is harmless.’
‘A sign? Where? Let me see.’
The sorcerer cast him an amused glance. ‘Do you think you would be able to see it?’
Will digested Gwydion’s words in silence, then he said, ‘What’s a lorc?’
‘The lorc? It is a web of earth power that runs through the land. The battlestones are fed by it, and—’
He stopped abruptly, and Will became aware that the skylarks high above had ceased their warbling song. A powerful sense of danger settled over him as Gwydion looked sharply around him.
‘Did you feel that?’
‘What?’
But the sorcerer only shook his head and listened again. ‘Come!’ he said, heading swiftly away. ‘We must take our leave of this place. By my shadow, look at the time! We should have crossed the Evenlode Bridge and passed into the Wychwoode by now!’
As he hurried on, Will’s sense of danger mounted. The sorcerer behaved as if something truly dreadful was following hard on their heels, but he could neither see nor hear any sign of pursuit. At last, they entered the shade of a wooded valley bottom, and Will’s fears began to fall away again. The waters of the Evenlode flowed over stones and glimmered under fronds of beech and oak and elm. A stone wall snaked out of sight across the river and led down to a well-used stone bridge. A woman seemed to be standing some way along the far bank next to a willow tree. She was beautiful, tall and veiled in white, yet sad. It seemed she had been crying. She watched him approach then stretched out a hand to him longingly, but the sorcerer called gruffly to him not to dawdle, and when he looked again the woman was gone.
As they followed the path up into the woodland green, he asked who she was and why she had been weeping. But Gwydion looked askance at him and said only, ‘By that willow tree? I saw no one there.’
Will stopped and looked back again, but even the shaft of sunlight in which the woman had seemed to stand had faded. He knew he had seen her, though now he could not say how real she had been.
Gwydion had raised his staff and was exclaiming, ‘Behold the great Forest of Wychwoode! Rejoice, Willand, for now you will be safe for a little while at least.’
They travelled deeper into the forest along whispering runnels, among towering trees where sunshine flecked the green gloom with gold. Will heard the clatter of a woodpecker far away in the distance. Cuckoos and cowschotts and other woodland birds flittered among the trees. After a while, he said, ‘Master Gwydion, how is it you’ve got memories that go back eighty generations? Are you immortal?’
‘I have lived long and seen much, but that does not make me immortal. No one is that. I was born as other men were born. My first home was Druidale, on the Ellan Vannin, which some now call the Island of Manx – though that was long ago. I can be hurt as other men are hurt – by accident or by malice – though it is quite hard to catch unawares one who has lived so long in the world. I do not grow old as other men grow old, and many magical defences protect me from different kinds of murderous harm, but one day I will cease to be just as all men cease to be. As for what I am, there is no proper word for that in these latter days. I am both guardian and pathfinder. Once I might have been called “phantarch”, but you may call me a wizard.’
‘Aren’t wizards the same as sorcerers, then? Or is one good and the other evil?’
‘There are many fools who would have you believe it. But be careful of such words, for believers in good and evil cannot understand true magic.’
‘Believers?’ Will said, frowning. ‘Do you mean there might be no such thing as good or evil? But how could that be?’
But Gwydion said only, ‘For the present you would do well to forget all you have ever learned of light and dark, for the true nature of the world is not as you suppose.’
Will looked about. ‘So am I to live with you here in this wood, and learn magic?’
Gwydion seemed puzzled by his question, but then he laughed and clapped Will on the shoulder. ‘See there, we are nearing the tower of Lord Strange. He will settle some of your endless questions.’
As Will followed, he wondered who Lord Strange might be. He had never seen a lord, for no lord had ever bothered to tramp through Quaggy Marsh down by Middle Norton. No one except Tilwin ever visited the upper reaches of the Vale. Even so, Will had heard tell of lordly ways, about their finery, about how they feasted in stone-built castles and rode snow-white horses, and most of all about how they wore shining armour and wielded swords in battle. Lords had sounded at once a fine and a fearsome lot.
As for Gwydion, he did not look as though he did any of those things. He dressed simply, like a wayfarer, not in robes of velvet or cloth-of-gold, but in plain wool and linen. And he went barefoot like a man who could not afford himself a pair of shoes. There was no metal about him, nor anything that came from the killing of an animal – no fur, no leather and no bone – except for the bird’s skull charm that he wore around his neck.
‘Why do you wear that?’ he asked, pointing to it as they came over a mossy bank and headed down towards a forest glade.
The wizard looked sidelong at him. ‘This? It is an ornament…and a safeguard.’
‘Against what?’
‘The unexpected.’ He intercepted Will’s finger as he tried to touch it. ‘Be careful! It is a trigger that sets off a very powerful piece of magic. It works much as a crossbow works upon a bolt. If the spell were invoked, I would become the bolt.’
Will did not understand. It was only a bird’s skull. But there was no time to dwell on the matter, for just then Will saw a fallow deer hind. He touched the wizard’s sleeve and pointed her out. She was watching them nervously from beyond a stand of birch trees, but as soon as she knew she had been discovered she leapt away.
Will saw the marks of her cloven hooves in the damp earth, but there were others that were bigger and uncloven. Gwydion examined some droppings then a half-smile appeared on his face. ‘These are rare fumets indeed,’ he said. ‘Unicorn dung! It is most odd. They are not often to be found so far south. Something is amiss here.’
The forest deepened around them and the undergrowth thickened, but just as it seemed their path would be blocked the ground began to fall away into a clearing. There stood a double tower of dressed stone which rose to many times the height of a man. Will marvelled at it, though it seemed a dismal place. It was old and round and green with moss. Its top was battlemented and set with pointed roofs and several small, high windows. Below the tower there was a square moat.
Will’s fears returned as they approached the gate. When they reached the bridge a frightening figure came out to bar their way. He was a man, but he was wearing a bonnet of iron and a coat that jangled with countless interlinked iron rings. His body was covered with a red surcoat that displayed the likeness of two silvery hounds. Will had never seen cloth so bright. It was as red as blood.
‘Who comes to the dwelling of Lord Strange?’
Gwydion spread his hands. ‘Tell your master there is a friend at his gate. One who brings tidings of wind and water and of war to come.’
‘Wait here for your answer.’
When the man had disappeared, Gwydion said, ‘The warden of the forest is named John le Strange. This is his lodge. His own domains are in the North where many men follow him, but King Hal has made him warden here. The king hunts rarely and has never come to this place, but Wychwoode is a royal forest and must be kept as such. You will soon see why Lord Strange has been appointed to a place where few eyes can linger upon him.’
‘Is he…ugly?’
Gwydion looked up to the top of the tower. ‘He was once the handsomest of men, but his appearance has been changed. He wears a ring of gold in his nose. That is his wedding ring which he is loath to cut and cannot otherwise remove. Take care not to stare at him.’
Will’s fears surged. ‘Why not?’
‘Because first impressions count for a lot. You do not want to be thought rude.’
Will swallowed hard. ‘Master Gwydion, why have you brought me here?’
‘To learn, Willand. To learn.’
The man returned. This time he lifted up the front part of his iron hat and bade them enter. Will followed as Gwydion crossed the threshold and entered the hall. There, attended by his people, Lord Strange came out to greet them both. He was a big man with a chest like a barrel, but what was terrifying about him, and what made Will reel back in horror, was the fact that his head was more than a little like that of a wild boar.
Will managed to steady himself. He rubbed at his eyes, but the sight persisted. The lord’s face sprouted grey bristles and his lower jaw foamed where two yellow teeth jutted. His nose was snout-like and did indeed carry a golden ring. Below the neck, though, he had the normal figure of a man and was attired in fine red robes.
To stop himself staring at the hog-headed lord, Will looked instead at the lady who came to stand by his side. She was a long-faced woman, tall and thin, and her hair was swept back inside a veiled hat which was the same grey as her long belted gown of embroidered velvet. The gown was tight to her form at bodice and sleeve, and at her neck was an ornament of silver set with pale stones. She seemed not to care that her husband was a monster.
‘You are welcome to Wychwoode, Crowmaster,’ Lord Strange said. ‘Have you succeeded in your quest?’
‘I thank you for your welcome,’ Gwydion replied. ‘And as for my quest, we must talk urgently, you and I. But first, I shall beg a favour on behalf of my young companion. He has walked throughout the night and is both weary and footsore. He may fall down soon where he stands if he is not afforded a corner in which to lay his poor head.’
Will felt the shock of the lord’s appearance still tingling through him as he entered the tower. After a little while a man and a woman appeared and asked him to follow them up a curving stair of finely mortared stone that was lit by bright rays of dappled sunlight. After a turn or two, the stair opened onto a broad gallery, supported by many carved pillars. Will had never been in such a place, and it filled him with awe. ‘I suppose you must be Lord Strange’s kin,’ he said, offering his hand to the man as soon as he turned. ‘My name’s Willand.’
The attendants looked blankly at him. ‘Sir, we are my lord’s servants. We do his lordship’s bidding.’
Neither the man nor the woman would smile or speak further to him, and their coldness set him on edge. He could see no reason for their unfriendliness. They were dressed in costly stuff, though the style and cut were lacking in dignity. The man’s hair was cut to shoulder length, but he wore no braids. The woman’s hair was hidden inside a plain headcloth. They showed him into a gorgeously painted chamber that looked as if it belonged to the lord himself.
He looked around in wonderment. ‘Are we to go in there? What a place it is, hey!’
But the woman only looked away and lowered her gaze. ‘My lord bids you to take refreshment, and sleep if you will.’
‘And food and drink too!’ He could hardly believe it. ‘I thank you, but tell me—’ he lowered his voice and said with a grin ‘—how did Old Nittywhiskers come by that hog’s head of his?’
At once a look of horror came over both the servants’ faces, and instead of answering him they made as if to leave.
‘Wait,’ Will said, as an idea came to him. ‘Here. I have something for you.’
He fished the pebble that Gwydion had given him out of his pouch, and gave it to the maidservant. She stared at it in amazement, so that Will could not tell if she was happy at getting a shilling or bewildered at having been offered a pebble. But then the serving man said, ‘Thank you, sir!’ And the way he said it removed all doubt.
The servants backed away, thanking him again and closing the door after themselves. Will laughed out loud. He saw a plate of food and a goblet of small beer. He fell on it with good appetite, then he climbed up onto the great bed, wiped his mouth on his sleeve and stared up at the ceiling.
It seemed for a moment that a thousand new sights and sounds whirled inside his head, dizzying him, then sleep whispered in his ear and he knew no more.
He awoke in darkness. For a moment he wondered where he could be, but then a dozen memories came flooding back and his belly turned over. He got up and went to the tall, narrow window of lead and horn that opened onto the tree tops of the forest. The night was balmy and dry. No moon lit the whispering trees, but there was glow enough from the castle to show ghostly beech trunks standing motionless in the still air. He could smell the stagnant water of the moat down below, and from somewhere far away there came a strange heartbeat, a low but insistent sound that echoed with a regular thump-thump-thump through the forest.
Wychwoode seemed to be a solemn place, not at all what Will had imagined when the wizard had spoken of a place of safety. He ducked back inside the window and went to try the door. It was of thick oak and set with clever craftsmanship into stonework that was as solid as any outcrop of the earth. At first, the door would not open, and he wondered if he had been made a prisoner, but then he found the heavy iron latch ring, lifted it, and the door swung easily and noiselessly.
Outside, a pillared gallery gave onto the great hall below. It was decorated with woven hangings that showed hunting scenes and a painted frieze of hounds and woodcutters. A huge stone-hooded fireplace was set in the far wall, its grate empty. The remains of a meal were scattered across a large table, set with many wooden trenchers and bowls which had yet to be cleared away. Two dozen candles, each as thick as a man’s arm, burned brightly on a pair of iron stands and threw back the shadows. Gwydion sat in the lord’s own high-backed chair at the top of the table, while Lord Strange and his lady sat on each side and listened to him.
‘I have read the portents,’ Gwydion was saying. ‘And if I had in my pouch a thousand silver crowns and if there was at my command a company of nine dozen men, still that would not be enough to avert the disaster that is surely coming.’
Lord Strange leaned forward in his chair, his moist snout twitching at the mention of silver. ‘If war is coming as you say then all our hopes walk alongside you, Crowmaster.’
Gwydion put out his hand and said, ‘That is why I urge you to come with me to the court at Trinovant. So far, I have worked in secret, but the time of uncertainties is at an end, and the day is fast approaching when I must bring unwelcome tidings to those who surround the king.’
‘Alas for my affliction!’ Lord Strange looked away, so that the ring in his nose glittered and the candlelight danced on his blond eyelashes. ‘For who will be persuaded by one who carries on him the head of a hog? The queen cannot stomach to stay in the same room as me. She calls me “King Bladud of the Swine” and mocks me. Therefore you would do better to seek the favour of the court without me.’
Gwydion let a long silence stretch out before he spoke again. ‘I feared you would answer me thus, Friend John. Listen to me: I tell you there is nothing left to a man in your position save to attend to your duties as honestly and as generously as you may. I say to you that you must not look to others to find the remedy to your ailment, you must seek for it in diligence and prudent action. Give rather than take.’
‘You make much of your advice, Crowmaster, and yet you seem to me to speak in riddles.’
‘If I do, then perhaps it is because there is no straighter way to speak to you at present.’ Gwydion spread his hands. ‘Nor do I wish to trouble you with the detail of my own task, but I must make some explanation so you understand something of the import of this news that I bear. Just as water flows upon the earth in streams and in rivers, so there are also flows of power within the earth.’
Lord Strange grunted. ‘Power, you say?’
‘Just as some places are wetter and drier, so accordingly there are places where there is an abundance of earth power, and other places that suffer from a lack of it.’
The lord’s wife looked bored by this. ‘Crowmaster, we know this much for we have seen you scry the ground with your hazel wand.’
‘Oh, those patterns are wholly natural, and long have I studied them. The Realm is tattooed from end to end with subtle flows that any willing person may learn to feel. They spiral and coil underfoot, always rising and falling as the moon and sun run their several ways. Farmers read the land by them, and use such knowledge to ensure their crops will thrive. A fast flow of power makes for a place of good aspect, whereas a sluggish flow diminishes the life force of all that grows in the ground or goes upon it. This is well known.’
The Hogshead gave a great yawn. ‘We will take your word for it, Crowmaster. For we know nothing of such matters and care for them less.’
The wizard leaned forward and his manner became as wily as a conspirator’s. ‘But, Friend John, this is not the power of which I now speak. Consider this: just as there are natural rivers upon which men ride to trade their goods, yet also men will oftentimes cut artificial canals so they may reach places where no natural river runs. And so it once was with the great flows of earth power, for long ago, during the days of the First Men and before the fae retired into the Realm Below, a thing called the lorc was made.’
‘Lorc? We have never heard this word before,’ Lord Strange scratched at his chin. ‘What does it signify?’
The wizard shook his head. ‘No one in these latter days has any knowledge of it. Even we wizards of the Ogdoad supposed it to have been broken by the Slavers some fifty generations ago. Yet according to fragments of the Black Book of Tara which I have lately found in the Blessed Isle, there is reason to believe otherwise. Think of the lorc as channels, built by the fae and set deep in the earth. These channels – or “ligns” to give them their proper name – are nine in number and cross the Realm in different directions. They were made to draw and direct flows of earth power from one end of the Isle to the other.’
‘And their purpose?’ the lord’s wife asked.
‘Lady, your shrewdness brings me neatly to my point – their purpose was – and is – to feed certain standing stones which are known as “battlestones”. Once primed they are able to incite men to war.’
Lord Strange frowned at this. ‘And you now wish to find these battlestones?’
‘Quite so. But whereas I can easily scry the natural flows that lie in the ground, I cannot feel the ligns that were made by the fae, for their artifice was ever beyond that of men to comprehend, and in this case has been well hidden from us. I do not know how many battlestones there may be, but since I have become aware of their purpose my hope is to find at least some of them, if I can, by indirect means.’
The lord and his lady exchanged a wordless glance, then Lord Strange said, ‘It is your wish to render these battlestones harmless?’
‘It may yet be possible to lessen the slaughter that approaches. But time is already short, and I cannot accomplish my task alone. Men and horses and silver have I none – in short, I must beg for the king’s permission and hope for the aid of his court.’
The silence grew heavy. Then Lord Strange said bluntly, ‘As I have already explained, I cannot help you at court. I hope you have not come here to ask me for silver, Crowmaster, for I have little enough—’
The wizard held up his hand. ‘Have no fear, I will not ask you for silver, Friend John. But it will help me immeasurably if you would agree to look after the young apprentice lad.’
Will almost fell off his perch.
The wizard went on. ‘You see, I was obliged to save his life. It is a tiresome tale with which I will not burden you, save to say that for a while I had hopes of using him as my bag-carrier, but so far he has proven himself to be more of an encumbrance. I dare not allow myself to be weighed down by him any longer.’
‘You would have us keep the boy for you?’ the lord’s wife said.
‘He is a teasel-headed young churl, yet he may be turned to some use if he were to have some book learning knocked into him. Would you be so kind as to do that, my lady?’
She returned Gwydion’s gaze frostily. The lord growled, and it seemed to Will who watched in speechless horror that he would refuse, but then the wizard inclined his head persuasively and it seemed that an atmosphere of compliance came over the hall.
‘I would remind you that all such favours come around full circle in time.’
‘So you never tire of repeating, Crowmaster.’ The great, piggy head tossed. ‘However, I shall again do as you ask in the hope that one day—’
‘No!’Will shouted. ‘I won’t stay here! Not in this dismal place! I’m coming with you, Master Gwydion, or else I’ll go home! I’m not a teasel-head and you’re not giving me away!’
He bolted for the stair, but at a sign from the lord one of the guards stepped forward and grabbed him so that he was carried struggling into the hall.
‘You will be quiet!’ Gwydion commanded, and momentarily Will was robbed of his power of speech. Then the wizard bent close and whispered, ‘Wychwoode is a place of good aspect, Willand. You must stay here at least until Lammastide. A time of great danger follows your thirteenth birthday. It will last for six months—’
‘Six months?’ Will squealed. ‘Oh, take me with you, I beg you, Master Gwydion! Please!’
Gwydion leaned forward patiently once again and took his hands. ‘Listen to me, Willand. You were eavesdropping long enough to know that powerful forces are growing in the Realm, forces that will bring down a welter of blood upon the people unless they can be confounded. It is my duty to do what I can to prevent suffering. And it is your duty to do as I say.’
‘But I can’t live here! Please, don’t leave me!’
‘How soon your mind changes. Yesterday you were begging me not to take you away from home. Now, you are begging to come with me. What will you want tomorrow, I wonder? I will come for you at Lammastide.’
Some of the fire went out of him. ‘But that’s still all summer long, Master Gwydion. I can’t—’
But the wizard turned about in a whirl of steps and called out subtle words so that all other motion in the hall ceased. He drew a deep breath and spoke very privately to Will. ‘For thirteen years you lived as a happy child. You had a loving home and not a care to trouble you. You must thank me for that, for your peace was of my devising. But now there is a threat against your life, a threat that mere keeping spells cannot hold at bay.’ He raised a finger to Will’s lips. ‘Be mindful of your situation. I know you are not a teasel-head – that was said for Lord Strange’s benefit. The Wychwoode is the only safe place to spend this most critical season of your life. Do not go beyond its bounds. I will return for you before Lammastide – you have had my word on that. Now, will you promise to obey me in this matter or am I to wash my hands of you?’
And the look on the wizard’s face was so grave that Will found himself nodding and making a promise that he hated even before the spell had begun to pall.
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