The Language of Stones

by Robert Carter

  ‘And the sister-stones that came with them? What happened to them?’

  ‘The word for them in the true tongue is amhrainegh, which means “wonderful”. Once the battlestones were set in place the sister-stones could be returned. And they were. To these, their barrows, in the Blessed Isle and the isles of Albanay and elsewhere. Here they have remained as a source of comfort and wonder for all the world.’

  ‘But I don’t see,’ Will said. ‘Surely harm was spread all over the Realm when the battlestones were left here. How could that have worked as a protection?’

  ‘It is true that each battlestone contains purest harm, but in the same way that a killing edge may be set into a handle and becomes a tool or a protection, so a battlestone – when directed by the lorc – serves in the same fashion. Remember that the places where the battlestones were buried were chosen with great care. They were always special places. For many dozens of centuries the stones protected themselves by repaying malice with malice. “Malice to him who malice thinks”. Have you never heard that saying?’

  Will shrugged. ‘No.’

  ‘It is today the motto of a certain order of knights, but it is a sentiment more ancient than any of them knows. The battlestones drove anyone who came maliciously into these isles towards insanity and self-destruction. Those who came in a spirit of honest friendship were not troubled by these terrible sentinels. Brea established the Realm unopposed by them. And later, when the Children of Nemeth came fleeing persecution and sorcery in the East, they came to these shores and found succour also without rousing the battlestones.’

  ‘But Lord Strange told me the Nemethians were chased out of the Realm by one of the kings of the old days.’

  ‘John le Strange’s view of history is shallow and serves his own view of the world. In truth the Nemethians were received unscathed by the battlestones. They lived peaceably in the Land of the Lakes for many years until they fell out with the tyrant, Memprax, after which they wisely decided to depart for the Blessed Isle. I know, for I conducted them there myself. But whatever befell the Nemethians, there was many another peaceable folk welcomed here – folk who set down roots and fully mixed their blood and so helped to invigorate the Realm in the best way. So long as the newcomers did not try to keep themselves haughtily apart, they were welcomed and never once was the lorc inflamed by their coming. Never once in all the reigns of the Brean kings down to the time of Caswalan was there an awakening of the lorc, for there was no threat to the land.

  ‘And so in a thousand years and more since King Brea reigned, the battlestones were all but forgotten. There grew up among the people a legend about certain stones hewn by the fae from the Pillars of the Earth and brought out from a place now deep under the sea. But that was an idea believed in only by those given to fancies, for in those days only the druida knew the truth about the lorc, and only the highest of the druida were vouchsafed the full secret.’

  Will gazed out at the endless sea and at the glory of sunlight that played through a cloud, turning the waters silver. He asked, ‘How was it that King Brea was able to come and proclaim the Realm? Did the battlestones not try to destroy him too?’

  ‘Why should they? When Brea came to the Isle of Albion there were no men there. The First Men had long since vanished and the land had fallen under the sway of monsters. But then Brea and his people came, and since giants are hugely strong but not especially clever, Brea inherited the land of Albion and the lorc made no demur at that.’

  Gwydion spoke then of King Brea and the warriors aboard his seven ships who landed at Dartness and declared the Realm. He told how Canutax, a bold captain in Brea’s host, had brought down the giant, Godmer, whose chin was seventeen feet above the ground, how Debon slew Coulin, and Corinax bore down the mighty Albion.

  ‘At last, the giants were scattered and their line failed. In the end, Magog and Gogmagog were all that remained of them. These chieftains were taken captive and brought to Brea’s oaken palace, the White Hall in Trinovant, there to do service as porters. That was many reigns ago, a thousand years and more before the coming of the Slavers.’

  ‘Well what about them?’Will said, rapt. ‘Surely the lorc should have thrown the Slavers back into the sea.’

  ‘It happened like this, that one of the contending sorcerers in the distant East grew greater than all the rest. He began to put out searching fingers westward, to grasp and to conquer, one by one, the lands of the Gadel, and to bring them all into slavery. This, Iuliu, by then the mightiest and most ambitious general of the Slaver empire—’

  ‘Ah! Iuliu the Seer!’ Will interrupted.

  ‘Iuliu the Seer, who—’

  ‘—who was troubled by terrible night visions.’

  ‘Quite so. Iuliu ordered to the Isles a fleet of many-oared ships. On board was an army that landed in great force and marched inland. They fought a fierce battle on the banks of the Iesis against an army led by Caswalan and his brother, but soon afterwards, prompted by the—’

  ‘Now come the terrible night visions…’

  Gwydion raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you going to tell the story, or should I?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Soon afterwards, prompted by the power of the lorc, a dismal spectre came to disturb the Slaver-general’s dreams. Mightily did it convince him that the invulnerability of his army was but a clever illusion, and the next day he took his steel-clad troops out of the Isles again.

  ‘No Slavers came here after Iuliu left. Not for nigh on a hundred years, for none dared try to face down the protection they knew was buried in these Isles. But then it happened that the foulest renegade who ever lived, a man named Gruech, brought calamity upon the Isles.

  ‘Gruech was one of the druida. He had taken the vows and had read much that was in the Black Book, but he fell into weak and desperate ways. He sailed his coracle across the Narrow Seas into Galle – which was the old name for Nestria and Breize – and so carried a great secret out of the Isles to be sold for a pittance of silver. Thus it was that the sorcerers and Slavers of the East found out how to disrupt the lorc by laying out roads of stone across the land. When their steel-clad army came again they knew what magic of their own to employ that they might quickly subdue the Realm and make it their own.

  ‘Straight away they went about their unwise work. Attacking and burning down the great fortified hill towns, pinching off the power of the earth streams, breaking the bones of the land, tearing out her beating heart! Risings there were, of course, and rebellions aplenty. War flared, the brave Queen of the East fought the invader back as fiercely as only a woman can. I can see her now – tall and terrible to look upon and gifted with a leader’s voice and mien. Her two grown daughters stood to left and right of her the day she roused her army to march upon Caer Malydion. Her bright red hair flew like a cloak about her shoulders and she wore the golden Torc of Sovereignty, and when she raised her spear aloft such spirit was kindled in the hearts of all who set eyes on her!’

  Gwydion fell silent and it seemed to Will that a tear was bedewing the wizard’s eye. ‘What happened to the brave Queen of the East?’

  ‘In the end, the Slavers killed her with poison. They had brought the secret of how to grip these isles, and grip them they did, ever tighter in a fist of steel. Every season that passed their eagle claws would sink a little deeper into the land, tearing up rib and knuckle, tearing away chalk and flint, until they had built stone fortresses for themselves, and connected together every quarter of the land.

  ‘They told lies and made maggots of the people, Willand! Killed the honourable, drove out the strong, enslaved whoever they caught. They burned the sacred groves in acts of barbarous cruelty. They dwelt not in homes of living wood, but as dead men dwell, in tombs of quarried stone. Soon, high-walled city began to talk with high-walled city. Stone roads were sent like knives, cutting straight across the land, severing the pathways of the lorc, polluting and weakening its flow. Those roads are as looking-glasses, or as dams, turning back t
he earth power that runs up against them. They fractured the spirit of the land into tiny pieces. They even raised a great wall across the Isle from coast to coast – that was done to hold back the mighty magic that dwells in Albanay. These roads, these walls and other works of naked stone, they made the battlestones rage in lonely impotence, isolated and forlorn, each stone no longer part of the knitted web of power that was able to keep watch and ward over the sacred land, but now a tainted flow stored up in so many solitary kernels of malevolent fury.

  ‘And so you see, Willand, the Realm that had once been protected by the battlestones came wholly under the sway of a sorcerer’s empire, until the Old Ways were at length practised only in the West in the places where the sister-stones lay buried in their barrows, and cast a kindness over the land that the Slaver sorcerers could not penetrate. And trapped under the sway of the Slavers the folk of the line of Brea were beaten down unless they took themselves away to hidden places. Thus was the wisdom of the druida talked of eventually as half-truths and then let to rot away.’

  ‘What happened to the Slavers in the end?’ Will asked spreading his fingers in the thriving turf. He had sat on one buttock too long and his leg had gone numb.

  ‘Like all things built upon sorcery, the Slaver empire was devoured by its own child.’

  Will narrowed his eyes. ‘Who was that?’

  ‘The slavery of the body was in the end conquered by the slavery of the mind. When the Slavers brought their armies here they had not yet been bedazzled by the blinding light that overcame them in later times. It was a blinding they were powerless to resist for all their soldierly might.’

  Will thought about that as he tried to rub the life back into his left leg. ‘You mean the Fellowship, don’t you? The Sightless Ones.’

  Gwydion closed his eyes, remembering. ‘It may surprise you to know that the Fellowship began as a small group of well-meaning spirits gathered about a single far-seeing man. A rebel he was, a fighter against Slaver tyranny, and his people infected by a terrible belief that would in the end make them the most hated of races. But, as with so many rebellions, this leader was ruined by the weaknesses of others. Jealousy, hatred and fear, Willand. Those are the three great enemies of men. Do not forget their names, for they are within us all and they are what confound our best intentions. The original Fellowship was a fragile flower. It did not long survive its contact with Slaver sorcery in the Tortured Lands. Its leader was hanged upon a tree and his following dispersed. Some fell silent out of fear. Others out of hatred took his name in vain. But the worst of them were driven mad by jealousy. They twisted all that their leader had taught them, until it was the very opposite of what he had intended. This new Fellowship became a secret society, one that dwelt in the shadows and gloried in its own persecution, for the surest way to enlist fools is to make them believe they are threatened, and every now and then to send one of them out to die a glorious death.

  ‘Yet all the while the Elders of the Fellowship were gaining a taste for Slaver wealth and Slaver luxury and Slaver power. In place of the charity and poverty their first leader had espoused, they preferred gold. And so the Fellowship began to attract to itself exactly the wrong kind of man, and in time these full-fed princes bloated fat. They grew as parasites grow, inside the Slavers’ great city. And by the time they burst out of their host, they had found a new way to own the world. It is called the Great Lie. It works, not by shackling bodies in iron, but by forging invisible chains that grip the minds of men.’

  Will shuddered. ‘How do they do that?’

  Gwydion lifted his hand and tightened it into a fist. ‘The Great Lie uses the victim’s own natural hopes and fears to enslave him. Now you see why the tide of Slaver power ebbed just as the Sightless Ones were gaining their stranglehold over the Empire. When the Sightless Ones devised their improved method of slavery, it was bound to supplant the old. Here in the Realm, the regime of Slaver days was broken – their towers tottered, their cities crumbled, their palace roofs fell. The new invaders who came from across the seas lived in the Old Way, and in time, all that the Slavers had done returned broken into the damp earth.’

  ‘Except the roads.’

  ‘Except the roads. Those have outlasted all the rest, but even the work of giants decays, Willand.’ Gwydion shifted, drew in a great breath and fell silent. By now the sun had slipped lower, sculpting the wizard’s face as if it was stone. At length he stirred. ‘Since the Slavers left, the Realm has been invaded many times. Dozens of armies landed, year upon year, until the greatest conqueror of all made the Realm his own and began a fresh wave of stone building. But Gillan the Conqueror built castles, not roads. And now the Slaver roads are a thousand years old and are fast being broken up.’

  Will suddenly saw the point at last. ‘So the land is no longer quartered and the battlestones are no longer alone in their malice. That’s why the lorc is awakening!’

  The wizard nodded gravely. ‘I believe that sparks have begun to pass along the limbs of the sleeping giant once more. He is twitching. Whispers are travelling anew along the lorc, and for the first time in half a thousand years one battlestone has begun to sense another and thereby to rediscover its purpose.’

  ‘But what does that mean?’Will said, turning over. ‘Surely only that the Realm will become safe from invasion again?’

  ‘It is as I have already told you.’ Gwydion sighed deeply. ‘The lorc is now tainted. The flow has been fatally warped. It has been turned brackish and is malign with poisons. We cannot dismantle every castle that stands in the Realm. We cannot return every stone to its quarry. Think of the many years in which invaders have been mingling in these isles. Which folk now have hearts warmed purely by native blood? Now everyone is descended from an invader! And so everyone will be touched by the insanity that will be inspired by the battlestones.’

  Will felt a spot of rain on his face. There were grey clouds above now, though the sun was shining gold far over the sea. ‘Is that really going to happen? Are we all going to be driven mad when the lorc wakes up?’

  ‘It has already started. Do you not yet see how foolish decisions plague us? How lords flap their mouths endlessly, yet do nothing to solve the real problems that beset the Realm? No one knows what to do for the best, and worse, no one seems to care. Oh, the battlestones are certainly talking one to another! And to stop them now seems an impossible task.’

  Gwydion got up and walked slowly down the slope of the barrow. Will watched him gaze into the West. For the first time he saw how great was the problem, and how high the price of failure.

  But what has any of it got to do with me? he thought unhappily. I’m not a lord. I can’t do anything. I’m just a wizard’s lad – apprentice and bag-carrier. As Gwydion himself said, ‘The fault’s not yours’.

  He left the wizard to his dismal contemplation of the sunset, and rubbed at his leg until the pins and needles went away. Then he took himself off, making a half turn around the barrow. To his surprise he found that it had an entrance. There were stone walls and stone posts and a stone lintel making a low doorway. There seemed no harm in going inside and so he ducked under the lintel and shuffled forward into the darkness within.

  At first it was hard to see anything. There was a dank smell and he could feel hard-packed earth underfoot. Slowly his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom and he saw he was in a round chamber with walls made of stacked, unmortared stone. There in the centre stood a great rough-hewn plinth. It was squarish, though a lot taller than it was broad and a little broader than it was deep. He reached out to touch it and felt something pleasant pass through his fingers. He wanted to hug the stone tight, for it seemed as if it could heal hurts and give a mighty comfort to anyone of troubled mind.

  Then Will found himself shading his eyes because a narrow beam of light had somehow found its way into the barrow and was now falling square on the stone. His eyes were drawn to the stone and he saw something that made him shout out loud.

  ‘Master Gwydio
n! Master Gwydion, come quick!’

  A moment later the wizard entered the chamber, staff in hand, ready to face whatever peril Will had found. ‘I am here!’

  ‘It’s the stone, Master Gwydion! Look at it!’

  And there, revealed by the light of an equinox sunset, were dozens of markings. They ran along the edges, and the stone itself was glowing with a dull light that seemed to rise and fall, as if it was breathing, or perhaps drinking in the sunlight.

  Gwydion’s eyes opened wide with delight, ‘It has drawn you here after all! Or you have found it. Then, this is a sister-stone and maybe all is not yet lost!’

  ‘But those ridges and furrows! What are they? They just came up in the stone’s edges while I watched, like…like whip weals.’

  The wizard examined the marks. ‘They are called ogham. It is an inscription. I should have known!’

  ‘You mean a kind of writing? Can you read it?’

  Will touched the stone again and felt a power coiling and uncoiling within. He drew away his hand again quickly, then he felt something rubbing itself against the back of his legs and he turned. There was a beautiful white cat looking up at him with big golden eyes. Its tail was up as it wound itself about Will’s shins.

  ‘Pangur Ban!’ he called out. He picked the cat up and held him. ‘How did you get here all the way across the sea from Wychwoode?’ He cradled the cat, then let him ride his shoulder. ‘Look, Master Gwydion! He’s called Pangur Ban.’

  Gwydion tore himself away from his study of the stone, enough to say distractedly, ‘Oh, I know him well enough. He travels much and always seeks good company, though the Blessed Isle is much more to his taste than the Wychwoode ever was. But look at the stone! The inscription seems to be in the form of a question: Si ni ach menh fa ainlugh? It means loosely, “But whose light am I?” Or perhaps, “Am I the brilliance of the Lord of Light?’”