‘Run!’ Will shouted, and readied himself to fend off further blows, but everything had fallen strangely quiet. Three of the men had begun looking at one another as if the attack had all been a joke, the others behaved as if they could not understand what had come over them. The one that had borne Will down was being helped up. Will ran up and tore the club from him, then swung it but the blow swerved wide of the man’s chest.
One of the other men laughed. ‘Look at him!’
‘You think it’s funny, do you?’ he shouted, outraged.
‘Now, then,’ the bridgeman murmured backing away. ‘Pack that up, youngster. There’s no need for that.’
‘Master Gwydion, run!’ Will tried to swing the club again, but this time it slipped from his fingers. The wizard came up and looked over the nearest of the men with close interest. ‘Well, if that was not the sorriest fight I’ve seen in a long time,’ he said, plucking at the white bear on the man’s chest. The stitching gave way easily. ‘I thought as much.’
Will’s fear dissolved, but he was shaking and sweating from his efforts. ‘I’ve a good mind to knock them all down while I can!’
‘Hush!’ the wizard said, his eyes roaming with interest over the bridgeman. ‘Tell me, if you do not serve the white bear, then whose man are you?’
‘I’m my Lord of Mells’ man, sir.’
‘And you were sent out to look for the Crowmaster and his young friend?’
‘We’ve been waiting for him here these three days, since report came to us he’d been seen upon Foxcote Hill and was like to try the crossing here sooner or later.’
‘You were charged to waylay him?’
‘Aye. He’s a warlock who’s lost his powers. He has to be found and killed.’
‘So says Duke Edgar?’
‘That was his order.’
‘Do you not fear the Crowmaster, then?’
‘Some. But we has charms.’
‘Let me see yours.’
The bridgeman opened his shirt and showed the sign of a ram’s head tattooed on the man’s left breast. Under it was the legend, ‘ecipsuA .nretarF.’
‘Under the guidance of the Fellowship,’ Gwydion muttered.
He touched the man lightly upon the forehead so that he forgot about everything for a while.
‘You have a disorder of the blood,’ Gwydion whispered in his ear. ‘Take dandelion root. And if you know Good Sister Knit-bone ask her kindly if she will spare you some of her best plantain. The boils will go away in five days.’
‘You have a strange way with folk on bridges,’ Will said, dusting himself off as they crossed over the Stoore. ‘What did you do to them?’
‘Nothing so very serious. They will recover what wits they possess before dark.’
‘I thought I was nearly done for.’
‘It is not an attack by Duke Edgar’s bully boys that so greatly concerns me, it is that they were able to find us – if they can do that then so can others.’
As they marched onward, Will could not stop turning the attack over in his mind. It had unsettled him, and he began to see shapes and dangers lurking in every shadow. What Gwydion had said was true: if they had been seen going over Foxcote Hill, then spies must have been out there watching them. How many times had they passed within view of the many spires of the Sightless Ones? More often than he could remember, and the Sightless Ones had hirelings among the common people – hirelings whose eyes had not been plucked from their heads. Next time an attack came, it would be worse, for Duke Edgar was no small power in the Realm. As the queen’s ally he could use the king’s name to get anything he wanted. Perhaps Gwydion had already been declared an outlaw and a general bounty placed upon his head. But worse even than that was the thought that if the duke had found them, then it should be no great matter for Maskull to do the same.
At last they came to open country and Gwydion called Will to look out as he had often done across a broad run of land.
‘There is much I do not yet understand about you,’ the wizard said as they halted by a hazel tree. ‘Some things do not fit with you, and now I must try to find out why. I have told you there are strong places and weak places in the earth, yet you seem to have no clear sense of them, no aptitude. Why not?’
Will shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Master Gwydion. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.’
‘The finding of the flows is called “scrying”. Watch what I do.’ The wizard put his hands together and knelt down at the base of the tree, muttering and whispering. Then he took a fresh wand from it, stripped and split it halfway down and held it out ahead of him in the same inside-out sort of grip that Will had seen him use before. He seemed to be reading the movements of the wand as he walked.
‘What are you feeling for?’
‘Flows. I am feeling my way along a green lane. There are streams of power in the earth, stagnant pools, sinks and springs, all these flows lie beneath our feet. You ought to be able to feel them too.’
‘When you say “flows”, do you mean those great channels the fae made to move earth power to the battlestones?’
‘Not the ligns – the lorc is an artifice that lies deep underground. I speak now only about the natural flows that pattern the surface of the land. When these flows are like running streams they make a place healthy, a place where folk like to linger. But when the flows are sluggish, folk want to hurry past.’
‘Can all people feel them?’ Will asked, feeling suddenly left out.
‘Of course.’
‘Then why can’t I?’
‘Perhaps you do, after a fashion. I have watched your moods change as you go along. I saw you recognize the great upwelling that pours from the land by the White Horse and again as we came by the Calendar of Figgesburgh, which is the earth ring that stands above Sarum. I watched your heart leap as you passed by that place. But your grasp of the land is quite different to that which moves in the bones of growers and herdsmen. It seems there is some interfering talent in you, one that is not in other folk. At present, I can say no more than that.’
Will felt even more uneasy as he set off again after the wizard. He thought of the verse they had read on the sister-stone, and remembered the benign power that had tingled in his fingers. He hated feeling different and wanted more than anything just to be like everyone else. He was suddenly filled with a feeling of futility. ‘We’re never going to be able to find the City of Light,’ he muttered. ‘Never!’
‘I have high hopes still,’ Gwydion said evenly, playing the hazel wand over the ground once more.
‘I am here returned home. But my wicked brother, whose name is Dragon Stone, dwells yet beneath the City of Light.’ He shook his head, no closer to solving the mystery. ‘What is that supposed to mean? We’re never going to find a battlestone, Master Gwydion.’
The wizard turned to him, weighing his words. ‘Twice in twenty paces you have uttered a counsel of despair, and yet this land is of fair to middling aspect. I wonder why? Is there something about this place that bothers you especially?’
Will looked around him, and then inwardly at the hollowness in his heart. ‘I…I just think it’s like looking for a needle in a hayloft, as we say in the Vale.’
‘Do not give up hope yet.’
‘But the Realm is so big! And there’s just the two of us, and we have so little time and you drag your heels all the while, Master Gwydion! You do, you know.’
‘All the more reason for us to tread softly. More haste is less speed, as the rede says.’
Will tutted. ‘What a poor pair of stone hunters we make. I don’t know where we are, and you don’t know where we’re supposed to be going.’
The land they began to pass through now was heartland, as rich and as fat as any that Will had yet seen. The folk they met on the road from time to time spoke with a burr that reminded him very much of the Vale, and he wondered how close he was now to home. He dearly wanted to ask if they might go by way of the Vale. It would be wonderful to ca
ll in at Nether Norton, to see his mother and father again and to tell of his adventures, though he was sure they would have a hard time believing the least of what had happened to him. The pang he felt when he thought of home was painful, and made all the more painful by knowing that Gwydion had set the Vale under a magical cloak and that he would never be able to find his way home, unless the wizard showed him how.
‘I never thought the Realm was so huge,’ he said as they crested another rise and saw the land rolling away endlessly to north and east yet again.
‘It takes many days to walk from one coast to the other. Tell me, have you never heard of the Great Book of the Realm?’
‘Do you mean the Black Book?’
‘The Sgraiet na Taire? Oh, not that. The Black Book is lost, though it was once a parchment scroll, and far more ancient than the book of which I presently speak. The Great Book of the Realm is not yet even five hundred years old. It is bound in red leather and sits in the king’s palace at Trinovant. It lists all the towns and villages and hamlets, and records what wealth might be had from each of them. It is there so the Elders of the Sightless Ones know what to demand in tithes of each place. There are many thousands of villages in the Realm, and in my time I have visited each and every one many times over. I try to visit every place at least once in a generation.’
Will whistled softly. ‘No wonder you’re known wherever you go.’
The wizard stopped and leaned on his staff. Then he pointed into the distance towards a ridge of land. ‘See there, Willand. I believe our quarry must be close now, for that hill not far away was of old a great burgh. Today it is called simply Burgh Hill and nothing stands upon it, but long ago it was the fortress city of Lugh. The Gadelish warriors who issued from that fortress joined with the Queen of the East and together they came within a whisker of throwing the invading armies of the Slaver empire back into the sea. But, by then, the power of the lorc was already broken and the men of Lugh’s city were finally overawed and destroyed.’
‘I don’t see how that helps—’
‘Lugh was also called “Lord of Light”.’
‘Oh.’ Will threw up his hands in frustration. ‘Yes, but even if you’re right about Burgh Hill being the City of Light, even if a battlestone is somewhere in this district, how shall we find a single buried stone in such a wide spread of land? It could take months and months. Years even.’
The wizard turned a maddeningly unreadable gaze on the land. ‘At times of greatest flow I have sometimes fancied that I might sense the lorc myself.’
‘I think that’s no more than dangerous wishfulness, Master Gwydion.’
Soon they had come to the fringes of Badby Chase. Will looked out across the fields and saw by the margin of the woods a line of about a dozen figures walking along a path. He screwed up his eyes and saw they were wearing tall, masked headdresses and long grey robes. Each was following along with a hand placed on the shoulder of the man in front.
‘Sightless Ones,’ he whispered, sure of it.
Gwydion steered him under the shade of an oak. ‘The Fellows come out from their chapter houses more often in autumn, when the full brightness of the sun has begun to diminish.’
‘But they can’t see us…or can they?’
‘Not if we take care.’
They crept quietly round the brow of the hill and saw what place they had almost stumbled upon. There was a small chapter house, complete with attendant acreage worked by hirelings. There was also a garden lying inside a low wall, and three or four men could be seen watering rows of plants, while two more attended to one of the many bee hives. Robed figures were nowhere to be seen, except one who stood sentry at the gate.
At that moment, the line of Fellows reached the door and their leader halted. He seemed to gauge the moment, then led his line indoors. The feet of those that followed were at first unable to decide left from right, for as they came to the threshold they seemed to want to go the wrong way.
‘They are recent recruits, new to the Fellowship,’ Gwydion said. ‘They are as yet unused to finding their way about.’
Their helpless obedience made Will grimace. But the Fellows had soon passed from view, and Gwydion led him down from the hill on the far side towards Badby Chase. Tall oaks were close to the track and sent thick branches snaking overhead, making a tunnel of autumn colours.
As Will followed he thought again of the figure wrapped in a black mantle, hooded and cowled, the one he had seen standing by the king and queen.
‘I saw someone who looked much like a Fellow at Clarendon Lodge, but he was dressed in black.’
Gwydion looked sidelong at him, yet he seemed preoccupied. ‘Black, you say? Black…I do not recollect any Fellow of the Dark Order being present at Clarendon. Nor could that be so.’
‘But I did see a man in black.’ He sighed and trotted after. ‘Tell me, Master Gwydion, is there really an Old Father Time? They shouted that at you at Clarendon.’
‘There is an Old Father Time. Though I am not he.’
Will grinned at that and fell silent for a while as they passed deeper into the woods, but then he asked suddenly, ‘Does the figure of Death really appear whenever some great personage is going to die?’
‘What makes you ask such a thing?’
‘I was just thinking.’
‘The answer is: it is rare for anyone to see Death, and rarer still to see him attending another. Nor does his appearance herald only the fall of the great. Some hold that those who see his form will themselves soon be visited.’
Will felt a shiver run through his flesh, and when it had passed an uneasiness remained with him. He looked at the dark woods of Badby Chase, and saw too late that there was movement all around.
‘Master Gwydion!’
‘Stand you there!’
Will was jerked out of his daydream by the challenge that came from behind them. Gwydion halted.
‘Show us your hands, or you’ll die!’
Three men appeared ahead of them, and others carrying pitchforks and hammers came out of the bushes. At least four figures hung back in the shadows, bowstrings pulled taut to their lips.
Outlaws! Will thought. A deadening fear unfolded inside him as he saw the deadly arrowheads pointed at him. His hand crept past the bag and the silver-bound horn that lay within, but the crane bag was shut and he knew that one hasty move might cost his heart a skewering. He did as Gwydion had already done and raised his hands, suspicious now that they had been caught by Duke Edgar’s men.
A woman of middling age was led forward by two younger women. She raved and her eyes rolled. She seemed to Will to be hopelessly mad.
‘Is he the one?’ a hollow-faced man asked her.
‘Look! He has a different lad with him now!’
Gwydion waited for the older woman to answer, but she merely gurgled and tossed her head.
‘It was him,’ one of the young women urged. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’
The men brandished their weapons, grim-faced yet unsure what to do as the mad woman still gave no answer.
‘We have urgent business,’ Gwydion murmured. ‘Tell us why you will not let us pass.’
‘Keep quiet!’
‘Bring them!’ the other young woman shouted.
‘Where’s my Wale?’ another cried. ‘What have you done with him?’
One of the men stepped forward and reached out roughly to Gwydion, but the wizard stayed him. ‘I will come with you willingly,’ he said. ‘You may put up your weapons.’
‘No one will touch you if you’re innocent,’ one of the men said. He was trying to see that the situation did not get out of hand, but Will could see that matters were poised on a knife-edge.
Another of the men was white-lipped with rage. ‘And if you’re not innocent, you’ll soon not be caring about anything! Do you hear me?’
As Will hurried alongside he whispered, ‘Master Gwydion, who are these people?’
‘Steady, Willand. They are just the good folk of
Preston Mantles.’
He lowered his voice, very scared now. ‘Good folk? But they’re waylaying us.’
‘It would be a calamity for all concerned,’ Gwydion said quietly, ‘if I refused to be brought into their village.’
Will looked around at the men who led them through scrubby woods. They were in real agitation, and Will saw that some were guarding them from the rest. He whispered, ‘You’re going to let them take us wherever they want? What about—?’
‘They will not touch you. The folk of Preston Mantles are honest. But they are also in distress. I cannot ignore their pain.’
They continued along a track that was scattered with fallen leaves, going deeper into the dark woods. When they reached the hamlet, white and brown yard-fowl scattered before them. They were taken to the house of a man and woman who stared ahead and did not greet them.
‘Tell me, what is amiss?’ Gwydion asked.
Instantly, his words had a calming effect, but one of the dirty-faced women who had come to the roadside scowled at Gwydion and threw a handful of earth at him. ‘Listen to him! What’s amiss he says!’
The man who had challenged them on the road stepped forward, his eyes narrowed. ‘Their son went missing three days ago. What do you know about that, stranger?’
Gwydion ignored him and turned instead to the anguished man. ‘How old is your son?’
The father blinked. The pupils of his eyes were like pin pricks. ‘Thirteen years. And a half.’
‘He’s a good lad!’ the mother shrieked. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying.
Gwydion laid a hand on her head and muttered some hard-to-hear words.
‘His name is Waylan,’ the woman said, looking up. ‘We call him Wale.’
‘Tell me what happened,’ Gwydion said.
‘Just upped and vanished,’ the husband muttered. ‘We’ve hunted high and low for him, but we can’t find him. He’s a good lad. He wouldn’t have just gone off. Not by himself.’
‘Think now,’ Gwydion told them. ‘Did any stranger come by here beforehand?’
All those who were gathered at the door tried to recall if a stranger had passed through the village, but they said that nobody had come to Preston Mantles in over a week. Then the compulsion in Gwydion’s voice rose irresistibly. ‘I ask you: did any stranger come by here?’
The Language of Stones Page 18
