They cleared out the loose earth around the stone, working grimly as syzygy approached. They dug deeper around and under it, then bound it in rope and hitched thick cords to Bessie’s harness. Gwydion applied much soothing magic to the wounded earth, stopping every now and then to mutter and dance and sing out in the true tongue. Even so, Will felt the power in the stone stir and test the bonds that were being set around it. In his mind’s eye he saw a great boar confined in a rickety pen, wanting only to gather sufficient rage to begin to break out.
Gwydion wanted to pull the stone upright. His idea was to lower it onto beams laid on the heap of soil, from where it could be hauled up onto the bed of the cart. Will saw that was wrong. He could sense the brooding malice waiting to burst free. Lifting it up would crack the stone’s fragile temper. He said so, but Gwydion dismissed his warning and sent him away to steady the horse.
‘There Bessie,’ Will said in her ear. The animal was terrified, and only his close attention prevented her from bolting. ‘He’s a wizard, and he thinks he knows everything.’
‘I heard that.’
‘Good.’
But in a curious way, settling the horse made Will less fearful too. He mentioned it to Gwydion. ‘It’s as the Wise Woman told me,’ he said. ‘Caring for another’s worries makes you forget your own.’
The wizard nodded in the half-darkness. Once again his voice sounded burdened with a tiresome need to discuss the obvious. ‘That is why they call her “Wise Woman”.’
‘I know that,’ Will said waspishly. Then, ‘I’m…sorry.’
‘I accept your apology.’
Will made a face back in the darkness.
‘Willand…you’re doing very well. Hold on.’
He forced himself to reply with humility. ‘Thank you, Master Gwydion. I will.’
At last they drew the stone up and Gwydion danced light, fantastic steps around it, calling forth powers to enfold and mute the stone. Will’s eyes blazed as the land around began to glow in eerie green, but the stone remained stubbornly dark, a nothingness cut out against the sky. Will crouched under it, re-tying a rope that had come loose. For a moment the stone seemed about to topple upon him. He cried out in panic, scrambled out from the hole and ran like a rabbit. When he sat down in the dry grass he was a long way away from the lign. He felt cold sweat slicking his skin, sharp salt pricking at the corners of his eyes. He felt like sobbing, and was greatly ashamed of his cowardice. He watched the wizard working on alone and thought over what Gwydion had said about not needing him.
‘I’ll show you you’re wrong about me,’ he muttered, then drove himself back to help.
He stood next to Gwydion, helping silently, patiently, until the moon, sailing high now, began to cut across the mid-line of the sky. Then Gwydion danced and spoke subtle words, and ogham rose for a moment like gooseflesh in the battlestone’s surface. Gwydion circled the stone, menacing it, reading the marks and tracing out the strokes with his finger to be sure of their meaning among the shadows. Then the marks weakened and vanished, and they carefully laid the stone down again on two timbers taken from one of the ruined houses.
Will chocked the waggon’s wheels, then reeved the block and tied the end of the rope to Bessie’s harness. The cob’s strength easily drew the stone up the shallow ramp. He heard the stone complaining against the wood, and while Bessie pulled steadily under Gwydion’s whispered encouragements, Will fed three old rake handles under the stone to act as rollers, managing everything with great care until the battlestone tipped safely onto the bed of the cart.
Then Will became aware of a trembling in his legs and a pain in his spine. He felt suddenly like a man who was standing at the middle of a rope slung over a mighty river that was roaring in spate.
‘What is it?’ Gwydion asked.
‘My knees are wobbling,’ he said, sitting down suddenly. ‘I can feel something rushing along the lign.’
The wizard circled and sang and said at last, ‘I think a dam must have been broken.’
Will began to feel better. The stone seemed to lose much of its terrible hold on his mind now that it had been lifted. It was as if its connection with the lorc had been severed and its capacity for malice undercut, but Gwydion said this was probably just another feint on the stone’s part. ‘It wants us to believe its power is diminished, but it is not. I have applied temporary binding-spells, but they will not endure long. We must move it as quickly as these poor axles will allow. We should go now if Bessie can find her way in the dark.’
‘Where to?’
‘I have a suitable place in mind.’
‘Why don’t we take it to the sea and throw it in? It would never be found there.’
‘What? And have a hundred shipwrecks at the place it was left? And a thousand poor mariners sunk and drowned in the bottom of the sea? Such would be the result of that plan, I fear.’
‘Then where are we taking it? If it can’t be buried under the land or thrown into the sea?’
‘We must imprison it,’ Gwydion said. He got up beside Will and urged the horse on. When Will asked what the ogham had said, Gwydion gave the translation at once:
‘King and Queen with Dragon Stone.
Bewitched by the Moon, in Darkness alone.
In Northern Field shall Wake no more.
Son and Father, Killed by War.’
And after a thoughtful pause he added the cross-reading.
‘Northern King’s Bewitched Son,
Queen of the Moon in her Father’s Field.
Dragon of Darkness, Awaken and slay!
Lonely Stone take War away!’
They rumbled on towards an unseen track, sailing now on an ocean of moon-frosted mist, and Will shivered.
‘What does it mean?’
‘I do not know.’
‘But we did a good job tonight, didn’t we, Master Gwydion? You and me?’
‘That, Willand, remains to be seen.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
ALONG THE BANKS OF THE NEANE
By late afternoon on the following day the land to the south had become a broad plain, rich, filled with pasture meadows and dotted with hamlets. To the north there was the great dark swathe of the Forest of Roking with its tangled oaks. Through this prospect the River Neane wound like a serpent towards the east as Will and Gwydion sat high on the four-wheeled waggon and watched Bessie patiently draw her baleful load onward.
The Dragon Stone lay in the back of the cart, hidden by a covering of sacks. Will did not want to look at it: his eyes ran instead along the track towards the town which they were skirting. It seemed to him an immense collection of houses, like Sarum, the distant city he recalled seeing on the way to Clarendon. This place was a blue-grey sprawl of buildings, and around the centre of it rose a towered wall, while over all hung a haze of autumn smoke. The town stood on a rise that overlooked a reed marsh where the River Neane seemed to lose its way. As with Sarum, there were many towers and sharp spires sticking up above the thatches, but this time there was no Great Spire to dominate all.
As they came closer still, he saw many mills and began to smell the tanneries along the river. A great traffic of trade there was within the walls and crossing the bridges.
‘What is this city?’ he asked.
‘It is not a city, it is a town.’
Will frowned. ‘What’s the difference?’
‘A city is only so called if it holds a royal charter and tithe warrants. This town is called by the locals “Corde”, or in full Cordewan. It is famous for the making of shoes.’
Will knew that a man who made shoes was called a ‘cordwainer’, so that made sense, but it did not improve his feelings for the place. He shivered and said, ‘I don’t like it here. Is there a…plague?’
Gwydion glanced at him curiously. ‘Why do you say that?’
Will screwed up his face. ‘I can smell it.’
Gwydion weighed his remark. ‘How do you know how plague smells?There is nothing unusual in the ai
r here. Corde has always been a place of good aspect, and the folk who live in the town are known for their helpfulness to strangers.’
And now Will came to think about it the smell was just the tang that came from the oak-bark pits and tanneries. He forced himself to look again at the town and the mystery deepened for there was nothing, after all, that was unpleasant about it, and he could not say why such a powerful dislike had come over him.
Of course! It’s the Dragon Stone, he thought. It’s getting into my blood. I mustn’t let it.
Soon fields began to spread away to the south, and Will closed his eyes and began to nod into sleep, but such a powerful sense of riot came to him that he started awake again. When he looked out over the fields he saw a crowd of people streaming out over the land. At first they seemed like a wretched crowd, but as he looked he saw they were no more than harvest stooks of grain.
But then he seemed to start awake a second time, and he knew that they could not be wheatsheaves. These were meadows, and what he had taken for stooks were standing stones. There were hundreds of them, carved into fantastical shapes.
‘What are those?’ he murmured, pointing them out to Gwydion.
‘They are the Hardingstones. I should congratulate you, Willand. You have just felt a premonition, and genuine premonitions are rare. Perhaps being so close to a naked battlestone has woken something more in you.’ And when Will looked to him questioningly, the wizard said, ‘I saw you shiver – it was as if someone was standing on your grave.’
‘My grave? I don’t understand you.’
‘A figure of speech. As for the Hardingstones, I will tell you they are tombstones – Cordewan lost many folk in the days of the Great Plague. Many fled in fear to the Cloister of Delamprey. In centuries past it was a royal manor house, but the Sightless Ones gradually took it over. The tombstones of Delamprey are not set to mark graves in the usual way, they are the petrified flesh of those who most feared the plague’s coming.’
Will stared at them, queasily fascinated and unsure if he could see human forms in the shapes or not. ‘Do you mean the people were turned to stone by the Sightless Ones?’
‘I do.’
‘But I didn’t know they used magic.’
‘They abuse it. They dabble in a kind of sorcery.’
He glanced at the stones again. ‘Can’t you turn them back?’
‘When they came here to be turned to stone of their own free will?’
A thrill of revulsion passed through him. ‘But why would anyone do that?’
‘Because false promises were made to them. Folk who are in the grip of the fear of death will do strange things. Those who came here cast off their shoes and waded barefoot across the river. They gave themselves to the Sightless Ones of Delamprey rather than be taken by the plague. It is said they still wait to be restored to life by a great healer, but he has not yet come, nor will he until three times three dozen and one years have passed.’
As Will watched the ghastly fields and the cloister beyond, something seemed to kick inside his head. It felt as if the battlestone they were carrying was sliding from its bed. He steadied himself, like one who comes awake and feels himself to be falling.
‘What is it?’ Gwydion asked, putting out an arm to steady him.
‘Nothing,’Will murmured, realizing he had fallen asleep. He had been dreaming. He asked, ‘Master Gwydion, what did you mean by “premonition”?’
Gwydion chuckled. ‘You have a strong imagination, lad. I never mentioned premonitions.’ And then he laughed again, out loud, as if amused at some joke, while Will struggled to understand.
‘But you did! Didn’t you?’
‘Did I? Or did you dream it?’
He scowled. ‘Don’t joke about it, Master Gwydion.’
The wizard laughed. ‘It seems you have little taste for philosophy. Go back to sleep. Or if you are already asleep, maybe you should wake up.’
After another moment of wondering Will looked back. There were the sad stones, hundreds of them laid out in rows, as if keeping a long-remembered vigil. ‘Can you do nothing for them?’ he asked.
‘For the Hardingstones?’ Gwydion flapped the traces and made an encouraging noise to Bessie. ‘They are stones now, weathered and worn these hundred years and more. What would you have me do with them?’
The shades of night began to fall, and the star they seemed to be following put on a mantle of blue light for them. Gwydion pulled the waggon to a halt and listened out. Then Will too heard the faint peal of bells that rolled out of the south. Another added its voice nearby, then one that was more distinct rang out to the south-east, and then a clangour began in the town of Cordewan itself. In moments there was a wash of complicated, clashing rhythms. Gwydion listened closely to it until full darkness had fallen and the sound seemed to sweep away to the north again as the town fell silent.
‘What was that?’ Will asked. He had heard bells rung before but only to summon village folk or to mark the time of day. This was certainly not like that. A deluge of noise had swept over the land like summer rain, then disappeared as fast as it had come.
Gwydion said. ‘The last time that happened was more than thirty years ago. The curfew towers are passing special news from one to another. They are sending it up the spine of the country as fast as may be.’
Will’s mouth opened, fearing a calamity. ‘It’s the rumour of war.’
‘Not so, lad.’
‘Is it an invasion, then?’
‘If it was that then there would be beacons fired also.’
‘What, then? Could you read the message the bells carried?’
Gwydion gee-ed Bessie up and the big solid timber wheels started to roll forward again. ‘This was a royal matter.’
‘The king is…dead?’ Will guessed, and was suddenly consumed by the implications.
‘Quite the opposite,’ Gwydion said, and just as Will began to fear the wizard would say no more he added, ‘King Hal now has himself an heir.’
All next day they headed towards Geddenhoe Chase, a tract of unruly land where beast and bird were bred for the hunt. Will thought a lot about the arrival of the heir and the shimmering, hooded figure that he had seen at Queen Mag’s shoulder.
He now realized an unpleasant thought had been lingering at the back of his mind for some time – that the apparition of Death had meant the queen or her baby would die in childbirth. But now here had come the joyous news, with no mention of any tragedy. But then Will recalled what Dimmet had said about King Hal not being the child’s father, and he saw that that must entail dire consequences for the Realm – though what those consequences might be he was not yet able to foresee.
His thoughts left him feeling cold. He pulled his cloak tighter about him, and asked, ‘What’s to be done with the stone?’
Gwydion was ready for the question. ‘According to the Black Book it seems that the power of a battlestone may be broken in three ways. The best course would be to take it back into the presence of its sister-stone – the one with which it was originally paired. The stones need only be set a hand’s width from one another for their spirits of bliss and bale to flow back into balance.’
‘Do the battlestone and its sister not have to touch?’Will asked.
‘I think not. For then there would be too quick a flow, a violent disintegration, and the substance of both stones would be turned to dust along with much that was nearby. If it was let free, the spirit of harm would have nowhere to reside. I do not yet know what would happen in such a case. But the finding out of this riddle must soon become my quest.’
‘You don’t sound as if you know too much about what to do with it now you have it in your power.’
‘But it is not in my power. Far from it.’ The wizard sighed. ‘My knowledge of the battlestones is in fragments, and all that I say to you about it must be regarded as uncertain. I believe that if the spirits were allowed to drift between the stones in a slow and controlled way, then two ordinary stones would be
yielded once more. But there is no time to scour Cambray and Albanay and the Blessed Isle to discover every sister-stone that may be hidden there for they reveal themselves only at certain times of the year. I suspect the whereabouts of certain sister-stones, but in no case except one do I know it for certain. Nor, even if I did, would I know the battlestone to which each sister was linked.’
Sunlight dappled the road ahead and the forest trees were alive with birds. Will’s thoughts felt equally hard to gather. ‘You said there were three ways to deal with a battlestone. What’s the second?’
‘To drain the harm from it magically. That is a skill that may have been known of old, but one that is now long forgotten and must therefore be rediscovered. I have consulted many wise heads who live in the remoter parts of these isles, and I have tried to piece together how such a draining might once have been done, though it was never attempted upon a stone of the lorc. I fear that it would be most dangerous, for the harm that dwells within the battlestones is so pure that it would have to be brought into the world a little at a time and each tiny poison drop fully dispersed before the next was drawn out.’
‘Would it be easy to make a mistake?’
Gwydion resettled his staff by his side. ‘Draining a battlestone would be too dangerous. If it was done rashly and the harm were to get the upper hand, well then it might release itself all in a rush and there would be a disaster.’
Will shifted to look at the shape that crouched in the back of the cart. ‘What sort of disaster?’
‘If all the harm in this battlestone were to be released in a single hand clap?’ Gwydion shook his head. ‘In that case, I am sure that all my powers could not prevent it from coalescing. The stone at our back weighs many hundredweight, yet it might have only a few ounces worth of the spirit of bliss. If even half the harm it contains was let loose and not properly dispersed that would be enough to torment the Realm beyond endurance.’
Will chewed his lip. ‘And what’s the third way?’
‘The third way is the one that is being forced upon me. Since I cannot ship the Dragon Stone alone into the Blessed Isle, I must store it safely against the time when I might fetch its sister-stone here to stand beside it.’
The Language of Stones Page 22
