The Language of Stones

by Robert Carter

  He moved round the stone and examined the next side, pronouncing one word at a time, ‘Tegh brathir ainmer na. Which might mean something like, “The name of my brother is Home”.’

  Will wrinkled his nose at that. ‘It doesn’t make much sense, does it?’

  ‘It is written in a very old ogham, not the later oghams of the revival. This inscription was wrought by one who knew well the language of stones. Tilla angid carreic na duna. “Here in the morbid stone city”.’ Gwydion moved further round. ‘Aittreib muan nadir si a buan. “Has my dragon returned to dwell.” But we do not know the order of the lines. Or for certain where the verse begins or ends.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Of course it matters. Let us suppose it begins with the sunlit side then proceeds sunwise around the stone as it should. And ogham, I might say, is always read from bottom to top.’

  Gwydion stroked his beard and spoke the whole verse:

  ‘Si ni ach menh fa ainlugh?

  Tegh brathir ainmer na.

  Tilla angid carreic na duna,

  Aittreib muan nadir si a buan.

  ‘But whose light am I?

  The name of my brother is “Home”.

  Here in the morbid stone city.

  Has my dragon returned to dwell.’

  He mused. ‘Perhaps not “morbid”, perhaps it is “malicious”.’

  ‘I told you it didn’t make any sense.’

  ‘Look!’ Gwydion growled. ‘The sunlight is now almost halfway across the face of the stone. If I do not find the key to it soon the chance will be lost for at least another year – and that almost certainly means for ever.’

  Will stepped back from the stone, chastened. He watched as the wizard’s long fingers played over the pillar, checking the translation again. Then he watched the square of light track across the carved face as the sunbeam moved. When it reached the edge of the stone it slid slowly but irresistibly onto the far wall. Gwydion moved round the stone as the light faded from it. When the last tiny glimmer left the stone, the ogham vanished. Gwydion stood up straight and said, ‘Come here…’

  Will moved in closer, awed. ‘What?’

  ‘Look at the stone, Willand. Tell me what you see?’

  ‘I don’t see anything, Master Gwydion.’

  ‘But you will. In time, you will see such a thing again, and you will read it, for you are he, and I mean to teach you the language of stones!’

  Something about the wizard’s fierce triumph scared him, though Gwydion’s mood now was the mirror of his earlier despair.

  ‘Are you all right, Master Gwydion?’

  ‘Oh, this is an art I have learned and forgotten and learned again. Did you see how the marks were set along every upright edge? They were like that because they carry two meanings. The first was there to be read plainly: he who stands opposite each corner in turn may read the meaning and be satisfied. But there is a second meaning which is not to be read so easily. It may only be followed by one who walks sunwise around the stone. It jumps from edge to edge, then up to the next row. That is an old druid trick, and one they may have learned from such stones as these!’

  ‘Then this truly is a sister-stone?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘How would I know?’Will tried to take a turn about the stone but Gwydion put out an arm and stopped him.

  ‘Sunwise, Willand. The way you are going is called “widdershins”. It is disrespectful. You must always walk sunwise about a standing stone, you must always turn to your right hand.’

  Will looked at the stone wonderingly as the last of the sunlight died in the chamber. ‘So, what does the other reading say?’

  In the gloomy confines Gwydion’s voice was deep and resonant, yet the true tongue sounded in Will’s ears like harpstrings.

  ‘Si ni tegh tilla aittreb,

  Ach menh brathir angid muan,

  Fa ainmer carreic na nadir si,

  Ainlugh na duna a buan.

  ‘In the plain speech of today we have:

  ‘I am Here returned Home,

  But my Wicked Brother,

  Whose Name is “Dragon Stone”,

  Dwells yet beneath the City of Light’.

  They left the barrow and stood under a sky that had turned to the colour of embers. Gwydion planted his feet in the grass and tasted the air again to test the weather.

  ‘City of Light!’ he cried. ‘I know that name. The wind is backing somewhat. Maybe fortune favours us, after all, for it will soon be set fair for a crossing. Come, my excellent young friend, we have a ship to find!’ And with that he went striding away.

  ‘Wait!’Will cried. ‘What about Pangur Ban?’

  But the cat was nowhere to be seen. Will was suddenly unsure if he had dreamed him. By now Gwydion was almost gone from sight too.

  ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Wait for me!’

  CHAPTER TEN

  LEIR’S TREASURE

  Their ‘ship’ turned out to be no more than a cockleshell. They found her in the port of Cauve, and she was given to Gwydion for a song by one of the masters who suspected a sinking spell had been cast over his vessel. Unlike the big trader ships that were tied up at the mole, Gwydion’s boat was no more than a narrow basket with two benches set across and oiled hides stretched under and over. There was a sapling tied like a whipstaff, and pulled back taut for a mast, and a bellying sail of canvas.

  At first Will was afraid to go in her. He found it hard to believe that such a vessel could succeed without magical aid. Sometimes water slopped over the low sides and into the bottom, and it became Will’s job to bale. Gwydion said little and did nothing but stare ahead and work the steering oar from time to time. Nor was it the most comfortable way to go upon the sea, yet it skimmed along, and Will was astonished to find how the little boat conquered the great grey waves with ease.

  He had thought that it would be in the nature of large stretches of water to lie flat like the pool at Grendon Mill, or like the sea he had seen from the clifftops, but it turned out that when seen close to the sea was anything but flat. It was made of great hills of water that in a moment became valleys. The rolling of the waves made his stomach turn at first, but he soon got over that, and found that so long as he was able to fix his eyes on the distant skyline his belly would be stopped from complaining.

  Once he cupped his hand like a dipper and lifted a handful to quench his thirst, but quickly spat it out again.

  ‘Urgh! It tastes of salt!’

  ‘Indeed it does,’ Gwydion chuckled. ‘Did I not warn you of that? You will not see me drinking of it, for I have sailed with Manannan, son of the Sea.’

  The wizard drew the boat first close in to the rocky coast, then he steered far out across the ocean’s deep, so they almost – but not quite – lost sight of land. Out there in the watery wastes there were sometimes dark shapes down below, a giant fish as big as a man, a monster perhaps. And there were other wonders that made Will smile, things almost as transparent as the water they lived in, round they were, with bodies of jelly that pulsed and throbbed upon the waves and trailed long ribbons beneath.

  Will drowsed at times, but Gwydion’s head never dropped. They had bread, cheese and fruit with them for their journey, and on the first day even a piece of smoked fish that Gwydion would not eat, and a skin of fresh milk. Will saw two sunsets behind and two sunrises ahead before the last of the land disappeared into the final sunset and they found themselves alone on a black sea overspread by a sky of jewels.

  Will pointed out the star pattern he knew as the Plough low in the northern sky. Gwydion called it Liag, and said that was a fae name because to them it had looked like a water ladle. He showed Will how to steer by the Pole Star, which was a star that lay near the Plough, and how to keep a steady course as the boat bucked and splashed under them and the stars wheeled serenely overhead. No sooner had the sun gone down in the west than a bright star rose up in the east ahead of them. Gwydion said it was a good omen, for the star was king of the
sky wanderers, known in the true tongue as Riannana Lugh, or Lugh’s Star.

  When Will asked about the song the wizard had sung to gain the boat, Gwydion sang it in full, an ancient song of the sea, but his words were not of summer’s joy, rather he sang of the hard watches that the ocean rovers of old endured at winter’s night upon the deeps, of places in the Far North that were hard and grey and ever as cold as ice:

  ‘Hearken to this truth I tell you,

  Lost, we sailed the stark salt wave.

  ‘Dealing days of bitter hardship,

  Steering straight, our lives to save.

  ‘Strange the seas and mischance many,

  So far the fathoms, so deep the swell.

  ‘Of frosty, fearsome waters travelled,

  No landsman, haven-safe, can tell…’

  And so it went on, and Will’s mind’s eye saw a great wave sweep a warrior from his ship, saw men in the bleak watches of the night chipping frozen spume from the planks, from rigging ropes grown thicker than a man’s leg, chipping with unfeeling fingers until the dawn came, chipping without cease so the weight of ice would not turn the ship under. On and on the wizardly words rolled, like the wind, like the sea. They made a song of deeds done in a far place, in a time that long ago had passed out of mortal ken, but deeds that should ever be remembered by those who came after.

  ‘You will go there one day, I think, Willand,’ Gwydion said when the song was done. ‘One day, a long time from now, you will travel into the Far North, to the place where stands the icy mountain that is called the Baerberg.’

  ‘Are you making another prophecy?’ Will asked, unsure if he was happy to be the subject of such a forecast.

  ‘Some might see it as such, though I would not, for this has not the strength of definite promise about it. It is but a fair likelihood in my estimation.’

  On the morning of the fifth day, Will noticed that the sea had changed colour. He was pleased to see a green coast coming up to the north. There were cliffs and pale strands and purple hills behind – the magical land of Cambray, Gwydion said. And in the other direction lay an island far distant and soon passed, an isle the wizard said was named Inysh Lughnasad. There was a misty coast beyond it.

  ‘Why is the sea brown now?’ he asked.

  ‘Because the water we are in is not so much a sea as the mouth of a huge river – the Great River of the West. Cambray lies to the west of it. That is a most favoured land!’

  Soon the coast began to enclose them from both sides, and an inrushing brown tide picked them up. It bore them headlong into the estuary, and they rode a magical wave that Gwydion said was no magic of his but a natural memorial to Severine, granddaughter of King Brea, who was drowned nearby.

  They beached the boat at high tide, and as soon as Will stepped ashore he knew for certain that he was back in the Realm. There was something about the way the air tasted, something about the way the ground felt under his feet. They breakfasted on blackberries that grew above the mudflats. Will boiled a pail of mussels too. Then he took a long-needed sleep until the waters turned again and they were able to ride another surge of water up along the broad reaches of the muddy river, which Gwydion now called ‘Severine’s Flood’.

  When he asked about Severine and how she had drowned, Gwydion said it was a sad tale. ‘I told you how King Brea conquered the giants and how Magog and Gogmagog were brought to Trinovant to serve as porters. After that, Brea took to him Inogen, daughter of Pendrax. She bore him three sons, Loegrin, Alban and Cambaer. When the Realm passed to Loegrin, he took to him Gwendolin, daughter of Corinax, yet King Loegrin lay with the Lady Estril, and this was his undoing for Gwendolin warred jealously upon him and killed him. And in this very place, below the city of Caer Gloustre, Gwendolin drowned both Estril and her daughter Severine, so that, even to this day, the men of Cambray call the Great River “Severine’s Flood” and give good respect to the swans, which you may know are the creatures that guard the mysteries of all rivers.’

  ‘Swans? Why?’

  ‘They are the mystic guardians of all rivers.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Will said.

  ‘Then you do not know much.’

  Will looked down the track ahead. ‘I suppose that now we’re back in the Realm we’ll have to be careful and start watching out for trouble again.’

  Gwydion cast him a sharp glance. ‘I expect you are right.’

  ‘Your enemy will be on the lookout for us, won’t he?’

  ‘From now on we must take even greater care not to attract his attention.’

  ‘What does he look like, Master Gwydion? It would help if I knew how to recognize him.’

  The wizard shook his head, his manner once more grim. ‘In truth, these days he has the look of a death’s-head about him. But you would not be able to recognize him if you looked for that, for he goes abroad most often in handsome disguise.’

  ‘Handsome?’Will undid the crane bag and drew out his silver horn. He polished it again with his sleeve. ‘If he comes, shall I blow upon this?’

  ‘I think you should not blow upon that without reading it first.’

  Will looked closely at the words carved around the rim. ‘But I can’t read what it says. These letters are not in any shape that I was taught.’

  Gwydion took it and looked closely at the inscription. ‘This is written in the true tongue,

  ‘Ca iaillea nar oine baiguel ran,

  Ar seotimne meoir narla an,

  Aln ta’beir aron diel gan.’

  ‘I’m none the wiser for that, Master Gwydion.’

  ‘Let me show you: Here – iaille, a moment of time. And here, baigullar, which is not quite a verb, might mean to imperil, or a need. Then we have seotiem, a gust of wind, and morhne, me, myself, but only when talking of the me which is to come. And this word ta’beir means to carry upon your own shoulders, or ownership in coming time, or perhaps the colour of a possession or the way in which you carry something you like—’

  Will sighed and took the horn back. ‘If that’s the true tongue, then I’ll never begin to understand it.’

  ‘—and ediell is haste, of which you have too much.’ Gwydion raised his eyebrows. ‘We say, fa nah aron diel for “make haste” or “go speedily”. But if you want the meaning plainly, then,

  ‘Should you stand in time of need,

  Blow me, and you shall have…speed.’

  Will put the horn away, satisfied. ‘Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? That’s easy enough – whenever we’ve need of haste, I’ll blow the horn.’ The next day the wizard surrendered the boat to a merchant he met along the riverbank. Though a piece of silver was offered for it Gwydion would take nothing more than half a dozen crab apples from under the merchant’s tree and the promise of a future favour. He engaged the man in lengthy conversation which Will did not overhear, then they set off across country on foot, travelling always south by east.

  ‘Where are we going now, Master Gwydion? Not back to Clarendon, I hope.’

  ‘The bee knows, lad.’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean? If the bee knows, he’s not telling.’

  ‘The virtue of wayfaring is not always just to get somewhere. It is to gather enough nectar for a man’s thoughts to feed upon. That is how the best honey is made. But if it will satisfy you better to know, we are going to find the City of Light.’

  But the answer did not satisfy Will, and perhaps it was not meant to. He was prickled enough by it to ask another question, this time about something that had been bothering him.

  ‘Would it not have helped us to have taken what that merchant offered for the boat?’

  ‘Do you mean silver coin? I do not carry smelted-earth about with me.’

  ‘What harm can a little silver do? And anyway, I could carry it for you.’

  ‘Could you, now? What is the harm in silver?’The wizard tossed him a crab apple. ‘Here! I was given leave to gather these. Eat if you are hungry.’

  Will loo
ked at the wizened apple, bit into it and made a face. ‘It’s sour. I don’t want it.’

  Gwydion grunted. ‘Nothing is sour but that which we take to be so. And do not confuse wants with desires. A song given to a friend paid for that boat. It was given away on a friendly promise likewise. The man who has friends is always richer than the one who has silver.’

  ‘Tell me why you don’t carry metal with you. What’s wrong with smelting it from the earth? No birds or animals die to make silver or iron.’

  ‘It is not true that I carry no metal at all, for I always wear this.’ Gwydion drew a short-bladed knife from inside his gown. He pulled off the canvas sheath and Will saw how the polished iron gleamed with an unusual pattern like straw scattered across a threshing room floor. ‘It is most precious, for it is true star-born iron. It comes from the days when iron was rarer than gold, stronger than anything that was known, prized, handed down from father to son, and always named. In those days men had not yet been taught the sorcerers’ secret of how to squeeze the liquid essence of iron out of stones. The only iron was that which fell to earth from the skies inside shooting stars. All the greatest tools of wizardry were once made of star-iron like this.’

  ‘It’s a nice knife.’

  ‘It is not a knife, Willand. It is a ritual blade. There is a great deal of difference.’

  ‘I still think you should have taken some coin for the boat.’

  ‘Are you suffering?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then be content, and let your feet take you where they will.’

  It was not long before they entered a pleasant wood, and soon happened upon a glade and in it lay a sinister pond in which it seemed that nothing lived. The sight of it sent a murmur of fear through Will and he stepped back from its edge. Gwydion seemed to sense what was amiss also. The water was perfectly clear but the bottom was as black as charcoal. A shaft of sunlight penetrated into its depths, and in a far corner, where the breeze had blown across its surface, a fine web of scum floated. Will thought he saw the silverywhite bellies of fish dead among it. Instead of pond water alive with many green twitching things, this water was barren. Moreover, it seemed that everything had been killed at a stroke. Gwydion prodded the mud at the edge of the water and examined the scorch marks on the trunks of a stand of sad-looking pine trees. ‘Maskull,’ he muttered at last, his grip tightening on his staff. ‘This is certainly his work!’