The Language of Stones

by Robert Carter

  ‘You have done excellent work, Will,’ Gwydion muttered. ‘You have felt the despair that lies in the ground here, but you have taken enough for one day. Go over there. If you do, the bad thoughts will go away and you will begin to feel better.’

  But Will felt only dizziness and a cold fear creeping over him as he stood up again. He watched Gwydion pick up the wand and begin grimly scrying the ground near the well. Suddenly the wizard seemed to be a loathsome graverobber, sniffing for prey.

  ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ he shrieked, angry that things should have come to this. ‘I have no business in this place! I’m going home!’

  ‘It is not pleasant, but it is necessary,’ Gwydion told him. ‘Get off the lign. Go and stand over by the trees. You would do well to climb up into their branches until you feel a little more in your right mind.’

  Will’s head felt as if it was ready to burst. He staggered to and fro, but stubbornly refused to do what the wizard asked. ‘I hate you! Do you hear me?’

  ‘Be of good courage, Willand. And examine that which you are presently feeling with care. Understand the way the influence seeps into your mind. You must not give in to it, but learn how to fight it! The Dragon Stone is defending itself, as we knew it would.’

  Will’s feet took him unwillingly out into the tussocky meadow. There he came somewhat to his senses. He went over to the trees. They were whitebeams. They still had their leaves but were clothed in red berries. He climbed up and perched among them in the steep, uncomfortable branches, and as he did so he began to feel the character of his thoughts change. Within moments he was ashamed that he had ever doubted the wizard.

  Gwydion was right after all, he thought, marvelling at how much better he had begun to feel. What a foul place this is! No wonder everyone left!

  He watched the wizard move among the ruins. The green lane was no more than a dozen paces across in the village, but it broadened as it emerged, soon growing twice as wide.

  ‘Stay there!’ Gwydion called, raising his staff. ‘This is the place. I am sure of it.’

  As Will watched, the wizard knelt down and began to cut away the turf as if he was preparing a fire pit. Then he stacked the sods and began to scrape up the soil.

  I must help him, Will thought. He jumped down and ran towards the place where Gwydion was digging.

  ‘I told you to stay where you were,’ Gwydion growled. His face was haggard and a sneer was twisting his mouth.

  ‘But I feel better now.’

  ‘That, I fear, may be a temporary condition. If you must come, then try to remember the way the fearful thinking sneaked over you. You must stand guard against it, for the battlestone knows we have come for it.’

  ‘How deep is it buried?’

  ‘It cannot be more than a little way below the surface.’

  He watched the wizard scoring the compact soil with his ritual blade. ‘Maybe we should go back to the Plough and fetch spades. We’ll never get it out this way.’

  ‘It will not be necessary to fetch spades.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Will said, realizing the source of his sudden faintheartedness. ‘My mistake.’

  Gwydion kept scraping and digging, and though raked by a dozen fears Will helped him. The noonday sun clouded over and it began to look as if it would rain. Will threw the thought away and told himself with all the optimism he could gather that it would not rain, and that even if it did they would keep working. He pulled a handful of soil out of the hole each time Gwydion broke enough loose. After a while their pit had reached a depth of half a fathom.

  ‘Why don’t you magic it out?’ Will said at last, wiping the sweat off his forehead.

  ‘Why do you have to ask such foolish questions?’

  ‘Don’t call me a fool!’ he cried, springing to his feet. But just as quickly he bent down to the task again and forced himself to apologize. ‘Forgive me, Master Gwydion. Forgive me. I am a fool. I let it get to me again.’

  ‘It is you who should forgive me,’ Gwydion said, though his words sounded tight and insincere. ‘What I meant to say was this: it will be best if no magic is conducted near the battlestone, except that which may tend to suppress or contain malign power. A holding-spell will have to be applied to the stone, I think, but a binding-spell should only be applied when the stone has been brought out of the ground.’

  ‘But how can we move it? If it’s anything like its sister it’ll be a couple of hundredweight or more. Far too heavy for us to lift without magic.’

  Gwydion stopped digging and peered at Will from under his bushy eyebrows. Will got the point almost straight away. ‘Sorry,’ he said again. ‘Of course we’ll get the stone out. We’ll cross each bridge as we come to it.’

  ‘Well done, Will. Laugh and you will win through. But this time you are correct: we may be able to lift it, but we will not be able to carry it far. Let us go back to Eiton and ask Dimmet for a horse and cart.’ He stood up and patted the dirt off his hands. ‘First, though, we should make absolutely sure this is the Dragon Stone and not some decoy set down to mislead us.’

  ‘Now who’s being got at?’ he asked wryly.

  Gwydion sat up. ‘Do you think so? Well, perhaps you are right. I am being a little premature.’

  They returned to their digging and Will felt hunger stirring in his stomach. He thought it must be another attack of weakness brought on by the stone as it searched for a fresh way to deflect him, but then he realized that the sun was sinking. The afternoon had worn away and they had not eaten since the eggs and bacon he had finished off at breakfast.

  Gwydion was apt to forget about meals. He ate very little, and when he did it was vegetables or fruit or bread or oatmeal gruel. He drank ale and cider and sometimes wine, but neither flesh nor fish ever passed his lips, and it seemed that whenever the wizard ate he did so to put others at their ease rather than to satisfy any appetite of his own. Will had wondered at that, for he had never heard of anyone who purposely went without the pleasure of meat. But just as he was about to suggest they break their fast Gwydion’s knife struck something hard and a tremor ran through the ground.

  ‘We have it!’ the wizard said grimly. ‘Stand back.’

  As Will watched, Gwydion danced three times sunwise about the grave. He cleaned the soil from the stone and they saw that the battlestone was similar in size to its sister-stone and of much the same appearance. It lay on its back like a coffin with only the lid showing. But there were no marks on it.

  The sight of the stone discomfited Will and he could not help the shudder that passed along his spine. ‘What now?’

  ‘Undo all that we have done.’ Gwydion began to scatter the exposed stone with handfuls of soil. ‘We must put it back to bed. Then you can have your supper.’

  They arrived back at the inn well before sunset. The wizard found a water trough and cleaned off his hands and the broad blade of his knife, then enclosed the precious star-iron in its sheath, before putting the cord around his neck and hiding it once more inside his robe.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Will whispered.

  ‘I must read the inscription as soon as possible.’

  ‘But there wasn’t any inscription.’

  ‘If I am right, then there soon will be. The moon will rise somewhat before sunset. It is almost at the full. I shall whisper such words to the stone that it will have no choice but to betray itself. Where are you going?’

  Will had strayed halfway through the door into the parlour. ‘You said I could have supper—’

  ‘We cannot afford to leave a stone such as that unguarded for long!’

  ‘Oh, Master Gwydion, it’s been buried for all these centuries. What harm will—’

  ‘But we have unearthed it! Ask Dimmet to give you something for the ride back.’

  Just then, Duffred, Dimmet’s lad, came out of the stable and Gwydion went over to ask if he could take the bay cob for a few days along with the four-wheeled waggon and the block and tackle used to lift barr
els out of the cellar.

  Duffred scratched his chin. ‘Take Bessie? I’ll have to see what my old dad says about that.’

  When Duffred fetched Dimmet out, he looked unhappy. He kept sucking his teeth and saying, ‘It’ll throw things out.’ But after another quiet word with the wizard he finally nodded his head and the cob was put in harness, and some sacks and spare ropes and a pick were thrown in the back of the waggon too.

  ‘At one time this old dray were a tithe waggon,’ Dimmet told them. ‘You might get funny looks off of some folk at this season of the year whilst riding upon it. Don’t let the red hands catch you!’

  Will’s stomach tightened to hear Dimmet use those words so openly. He looked around. Gwydion had said that the Sightless Ones regarded the term ‘red hands’ as insulting, that their spies reported all such utterances among the churls. By this means, they cowed the common folk and forced a semblance of respect upon them.

  ‘What we really want is a mason’s hoist,’ Gwydion said, looking in the corners of the old stable. ‘But I daresay we shall be able to make do without one if we must.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re up to, Master Gwydion,’ Dimmet said, ‘and I’m sure I don’t want to know neither. But I’d deem it a favour if you’d bring Bessie back to me as soon as you can and in good fettle. She’s a good, strong mare. Best as we ever had, and I’d hate for to lose her.’

  ‘You shall have horse and waggon back with my thanks,’ the wizard said, seizing the brewer’s hand. ‘May your barrels never leak, my friend!’

  ‘They won’t now!’

  Will just had time to draw himself a cup of water and tear off a hunk of bread to chew before they began their ride back towards the stone. He asked, ‘You said there were greater and lesser stones. Which kind is this?’

  ‘We would do well to assume it is one of the greater sort.’

  Will felt a flash of excitement. ‘Do you really think it’s one of those that call men to battle? How many are there?’

  Gwydion did not turn to look at him. ‘There may be as few as seven, or as many as seven times seven, or any magical number in between. The lorc is certainly coming back to life, but the song it plays is plucked upon strings tuned by sorcery so that its once-lovely music has been made into a clashing din.’ He flapped the traces and clicked his tongue encouragingly at the horse. ‘We must hurry, for although this stone has lain in the earth for many centuries, it has not been exposed to moonlight for almost as long, and tonight is syzygy.’

  ‘Sizzy-what?’

  ‘Syzygy. When the moon culminates in the south at midnight it will pass across the prime meridian. Because the moon is exactly at the full this means that the sun will also stand upon the same line, though it is in the part of the sky that is presently below the ground.’

  Will looked up. He had no idea there was a part of the sky below the ground and he could not imagine it. ‘How can it be below the ground if it’s sky?’

  ‘It must be below the ground if the sun is in it and yet we have night.’

  ‘I’m sorry I asked.’

  Gwydion glanced at him. ‘The part of the sky below the earth is where the sun and moon and all the stars go when they set, do you see? Syzygy is much like when an eclipse happens – only in one plane instead of two, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The effect is the important thing. It is much like a high tide. Today the flow in the lign is strong. It will continue to increase until midnight. And since the stone already feels itself to be under threat it will serve us to lift it before then.’

  Will’s head swam as he tried to follow the twists of Gwydion’s explanation, but he understood one thing – no matter how much they might dread it, the stone had to be got out before midnight.

  He asked, ‘Does the evil rise as the flow increases?’

  ‘It is beginning to annoy me that you persist in using that word, Willand. It means so many things that it means hardly anything at all. It is only a sign of loose thinking.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Remember: the lign is not the cause of what happened in Nadderstone. It is merely a channel. The battlestone itself is the source of harm. One of the reasons I put you in the Vale was the nearness to the Tops and to what you call the Giant’s Ring. It is the broken doom-ring of a long-forgotten folk, but I have often suspected that a lign runs somewhere near it. A form of protection seems to emanate from the ring itself. Why else would shepherds have, for uncounted generations, driven their flocks many leagues out of their way across the Tops just to touch the King’s Stone?’

  Will recalled Tilwin’s improbable tales, but they seemed thin fare compared to what Gwydion was now telling him.

  ‘Tilwin once said that shepherds always broke off a piece of the King’s Stone as a good luck charm.’

  Gwydion frowned. ‘He has been far freer with his lorc than I might have hoped.’

  ‘You mean he shouldn’t have told me about the Giant’s Ring? Why not?’

  ‘Because it puts ideas in your head, ideas your imagination will no doubt embroider upon. What you call the Giant’s Ring is a place of solitude, a place where three dreams were buried. It is a perfect circle of eighty-and-some ancient stones. Only forty paces or so across, yet it is a centre of enormous power. I do not know if it serves the lorc, but it stands close by the tomb of Orba, Queen of the Summer Moon. Long ago, in an age before that in which King Brea lived, Orba was the wife of Finglas, first king of the Ordu. He came from a lake-strewn country far to the north. This much we are told in the Revelations of Cherin, the childseer, who was fifty-third king of the line of Brea.

  ‘The tomb of Finglas, which also stood near the Giant’s Ring, was torn and robbed in later days by the black dragon, Fumi. There is nothing left of his tomb now save patterns in the ground. But Fumi left the tomb of Orba untouched. If you go there you will see the five stones of the fair Moon Queen’s resting chamber. They are standing yet, though her mound and all its riches have long since perished.’

  ‘Are we going there, when we’ve dug up the stone and broken it?’ Will asked, suddenly bright with hope. ‘Are we? Oh, please! Can I visit my…can I visit Eldmar and Breona?’

  Gwydion faced him patiently. ‘Willand, it is not your task to break the battlestones.’

  ‘But I’m helping you, aren’t I? I’m not an encumbrance like you told Lord Strange I would be.’

  ‘I must admit that your talent has helped to find the Dragon Stone, but great hazards attend this task, and your safety is at least as important to me as dealing with the stones.’

  ‘Oh, how can that be? I’m just one person, and the stones will kill thousands if you let them.’

  ‘But you are the Child of Destiny.’

  Will folded his arms stubbornly. ‘Anyway, you can’t send me away. You won’t be able to find another battlestone if you can’t feel the ligns. You need me now.’

  ‘Do I indeed? I have done far more than you to locate this stone, Willand.’

  ‘No, you didn’t! I found the sister-stone just in time, and I—’

  ‘That is as may be. But did I not tell you that the stones have knowledge of one another, and that they may be made to reveal one another by magic? I will wrestle with the Dragon Stone and draw from it a verse much like the one that appeared in its sister-stone. That will be my clue to finding the other stones. As for you, I have thought deeply on what must become of you. You said yourself that the best place for hiding trees was a forest. I have a very good forest in mind.’

  Will sat in the slowly descending darkness as the cob’s hooves clip-clopped along the track and the landscape rolled by. He felt crestfallen and empty. He tried to console himself that one day he would see Eldmar and Breona again and that when all the dangers were done with he would know who his real parents were. He wanted to be thankful and pleased that there was one such as Gwydion who had taken so much trouble with him, but he felt neither thankful nor pleased.

  ‘So, you are going o
ff again.’

  ‘By old New Year’s Day you will be free of this cantankerous old wizard’s company. It is an apt time for you to be making a new beginning. You must be prepared for what is to come.’

  A hard knot of resentment formed in Will’s belly then. ‘But I don’t want to be prepared, and I don’t want to be any old Child of Destiny. I want to stay with you and go a-roving after the stones!’

  ‘Willand, listen to me! You are as yet greatly ignorant of the world. For the moment you must let wiser heads prevail and do as you are told.’

  The words pricked painfully at his pride, and he fell into a reticent mood as the waggon trundled up and over the ridge. He stared at the gloomy buildings that belonged to the Sightless Ones, their chapter house with its high walls and tower. It was all still now and silent as if the occupants were attending to some ghastly devotion. Nothing stirred. Darkness had fallen almost completely.

  As they crested the rise Bessie began to pull with less effort. Will looked into the east and watched a fat, yellow moon lift itself painfully above the eastern horizon, and before the yellowness had turned to silver they were back among the ruins of Nadderstone.

  If it had been hard to keep good cheer near the stone while the sun was shining, now it was almost impossible. Gwydion would not allow lanterns, and the glow of the sky had faded, to be replaced by the starlight twinkling sluggishly above. A mist had seeped up from the ground, a boneless presence in ghostly white. As they came to the disturbed ground Will’s gorge rose and he almost vomited. But he breathed deep and got a grip on himself and forced the feelings away.