The Language of Stones

by Robert Carter

  Will swallowed dryly. His head swam. ‘But I can’t come with you just like that. What about…Willow?’

  Gwydion’s eyes flickered. ‘You must make your choice.’

  ‘But don’t you see? Willow’s part of the true path, the destiny you’re always talking about. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that she just turned up at Foderingham. She must be part of the greater pattern. We’re meant to be together. Don’t you see that?’

  The wizard shook his head. ‘You speak of destiny as if you understand it, but you do not. One day you will grasp its coils and they will grasp you, but not for a while yet.’

  He stiffened. ‘Master Gwydion, I’m not coming with you this time.’

  ‘Are you certain about that?’ The wizard directed his glance upward.

  Will followed his glance, saw the iron-shod teeth of the portcullis hanging above him, and as he stepped smartly out from under them he felt his resolve waver. ‘But I can’t leave Willow…’

  The wizard’s words resumed their understanding tone. ‘With Edward showing such an interest in her?’

  Will bowed his head, feeling nothing but agony now. Duty warred with desire inside him. He had not promised himself to any wild goose chase this time. The desire he felt for Willow was real, and thwarting it was painful. ‘I’m sorry, Master Gwydion…I can’t come with you.’

  ‘So be it.’

  The wizard turned and walked away, looking to Will like nothing so much as a stubborn old man trudging through the winter white and bent on a fool’s mission.

  What am I supposed to do? he asked Gwydion silently. Wander around barefoot in the tracks of a madman?

  ‘May the frozen ground break asunder and swallow you up, Master Gwydion,’ he whispered bitterly. But it was no good. The more he watched the wizard’s back the more his decision rang hollow. By choosing selfishness he would allow fear and desire to shape his destiny instead of taking command of himself in the way he knew he ought.

  ‘If you truly believe it’ll save one life!’ he shouted.

  Gwydion stopped. He turned and let his staff fall and held out his hand so that he could clasp Will when he ran to him. There was nothing but gratitude now in the wizard’s face. ‘I knew I was right about you. We may triumph yet in our perilous quest, you and I, Willand!’

  But though he cried with the wizard’s joy, he also felt the pain of his own sacrifice.’You must give me a moment to be alone with Willow,’ he said, tearing off his shoes in readiness to go barefoot once more. ‘She deserves to know.’

  PART FOUR

  WILL’S TEST

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE PLAGUESTONE

  Winter slowly released the Realm from its icy claw as Will and Gwydion went in search of the battlestones. The crocuses came, opening saffron yellow, then the buds of the trees, swollen to bursting, began to unfold delicate green leaves, and it seemed to Will that the world lay before him like a land of dreams. In the afternoons the sun and rain together made sky-bows of brilliant iridescence that overspread their wanderings. The yelping of vixens made the nights eerie and the smell of fox laced the moist woods, but the rainy days lengthened and grew warmer, and soon the night frosts stopped altogether.

  Will put two braids in his hair once more, made himself a wayfarer’s staff out of an oak sapling and tried to feel pleased to be free of the world of heavy crowns and high castles. Here he was again, walking the land in the company of a wizard, and that was something very few folk ever got to do. Yet for all his enthusiasm, he had to admit that he had come to enjoy many of the comforts of the Duke of Ebor’s household, and one overriding regret continued to gnaw at him.

  Willow had accepted his decision with an understanding that made him want to hug her and never let her go. Instead they had exchanged a promise, he had clutched her to him in one last forlorn embrace, then she had watched him leave with tears in her eyes.

  He had turned back many times, had seen her waving from the walls until they passed out of sight. And there had been little to compare with how that had made his heart feel. Even the memory of it had the power to plunge him into a sighing mood.

  Now, after many sleepless nights setting his body against the cold, he had begun to learn how to mend his ragged feelings and to understand the power of wild ways. Gwydion showed him how to send a comforting warmth coursing through his flesh, so that even when a gale of sleet was blowing his body could roar with a dry heat within the tent of his cloak like an owl inside its jacket of feathers. Thawing the ice in his heart had been a harder matter though, and only passing time and training up his powers of forgetting were able to lessen the ache.

  One evening, when the light was dying, Will looked away from the fire and said, ‘I sometimes think about what happened at Preston Mantles. I feel bad about it, like it’s my fault.’

  There was no comfort in the wizard’s reply. ‘If Maskull could find you he would do the same to you. Or worse.’

  ‘Is there a worse?’ Fear turned his stomach over. ‘What does he want with me?’

  ‘Quite simply, you are blocking his progress.’

  ‘But how? What is he trying to do? I could understand if you told me he wanted to gain the overlordship of the world or something.’

  ‘In a way, he does.’

  ‘I think it’s about time you told me what would happen if Maskull won.’

  ‘You have been a long time in asking that question,’ Gwydion said, his eyes in complete darkness now. ‘And now that you have asked, I must answer you.’

  He shifted closer and propped himself on one arm against the crane bag. The fire kindled, spat and crackled and red sparks flew up. Will had the sense of a lull before a storm.

  ‘If Maskull triumphed, then all that is fine in the world would start to fade from it. The spirits of men and women would yearn for peace, but they would know only war, even unto the thirteenth generation. The inner spirits of men would be dimmed. In such a world no satisfactions could endure long. Neither love nor delight would be felt. There would be only impoverishment and fear.’

  It seemed too immense to comprehend. ‘But how could such things come about through the actions of one man, Master Gwydion? Even a sorcerer like Maskull who was once of the Ogdoad? How could he change everything like that? And why would anyone want to?’

  Gwydion’s form shifted, and for the first time Will thought the wizard appeared tired beyond endurance. ‘Once there were nine of us – eight guardians and one betrayer. Now the Ogdoad is no more, and I am all that is left. The end of another Age is coming. The times are soon to change again. And who can say what will follow in the after times? Remember, Willand: it is never beyond the power of a single convinced man, sorcerer or not, to degrade the lives of everyone in the world, if he is allowed to rise and do what he will and remain unopposed by those who have it in their power to stop him.’

  ‘Convinced man? Convinced about what?’ he asked, alarmed. ‘Convinced about what, Master Gwydion?’

  But the wizard had decided that he should say no more.

  The next day they dined in a manner fit for kings – fresh mutton given to them in the last village and truffles that Gwydion had found in a beechwood. Will took out the two succulent chops, and set them over the fire that Gwydion whispered up. It was not long before they were ready to eat.

  ‘But I feel guilty having both chops,’ he said when Gwydion refused his portion.

  ‘Guilty? Then eat only one. Or none at all.’

  ‘But that would be a waste, and wizards don’t like waste. Besides, I’m hungry.’

  ‘Then eat them both.’

  He deliberated for a moment, then tucked in. ‘Do you never eat meat, Master Gwydion?’

  ‘I have no need of flesh, fish or fowl.’

  Will chewed the meat from the bone. ‘It’s very good.’

  ‘So I see.’

  Will frowned and rubbed the grease from his chin onto his sleeve. ‘Is it that a wizard may not eat meat?’

  Gw
ydion sighed and sat back, his fingers motionless on his knee. ‘I do not eat meat because I have no need of it. And because I have no need of it, it is not to my taste. Do eagles pluck up grass stalks, or doves dine upon leg of lamb?’

  Gwydion told him then about ages past and the days he had spent in the wilderness that were long and cold and lonely. He spoke of rigours and toughness of mind. How sometimes a man’s body deceived him, desiring sleep when sleep would only kill him. ‘Such are the journeys in the Far North and over the high mountains where snow-ghosts swirl and a man may easily be caught by a sudden change in the weather. Many have been taken and lie frozen still in those high passes, their bodies trapped in ice that never melts.’

  Will shifted uneasily. ‘Why are you telling me about this? You, who chooses what he speaks about with great care.’

  ‘Because wisdom is often underlain by a tissue of small unregarded things. Perhaps in coming time it may be useful to you to know what lies in the Far North. And it may be that you can develop habits of mind that will help you.’

  ‘Habits of mind?’

  ‘Mental disciplines, let us call them, like opening your mind.’

  ‘How do you do that?’

  ‘In time I believe I can teach you how to do it.’

  Will wiped the last of the grease from his hands. ‘If you have no need of meat, then I shall have no need of it either.’

  Gwydion smiled. ‘Brave heart. Now it remains only for you to conquer your taste for it.’

  Will thought about that, then he scratched a hole and buried the bones, saying a short formula of thanks over them. It had been Gwydion’s habit to sing the Brean histories. He committed a part of each day to it – usually just after Will had eaten, when his scrying talent had waned into slothfulness. But no sooner had he begun today than Will interrupted him.

  ‘You’ve already told me about Hely and Ludd. Don’t you remember? It was just after you brought me away from Lord Strange’s tower.’

  ‘You wanted then to know about how the Slavers first came into the Isles. Shall I tell you now how they left?’

  Will brightened. ‘I was taught by Tutor Aspall that Caswalan was succeeded by his brother, Tervan, andTervan by his son, Cunobelin, who was eighty-first king of Brea’s line – which being nine times nine was a fortunate number, and—’

  ‘You were given much sound history,’ Gwydion cut him short. ‘But I am about to tell you much that Tutor Aspall could not teach about the Slavers, for I was there and he was not…’

  Will marvelled at the casualness of that remark. It set him wondering again why one of the names Gwydion had been known by was ‘Master Merlyn’. Merlyn was the wizard who had appeared in all the stories about Great Arthur, and not for the first time Will was inclined to ask himself if Master Merlyn and Master Gwydion might not have been one and the same person.

  But Gwydion was now telling of other histories, of a tumultuous time when the Slavers’ deadly grip on the Isles began to falter. Will tuned his mind to the flow of wisdom and bathed in it willingly.

  ‘…For many years the Brean kings became the Slavers’ willing puppets, ruling always in subservience to them until a great calamity befell Tibor and the Slaver armies were at last withdrawn. Nor could the Realm return to its former glory when the Slavers left, because by now the lorc had been broken. And so, in the years that followed the Slavers’ going, invasion followed invasion. Semias’s time as Phantarch was not an easy one, for though the Slavers had gone, they left behind them something far more destructive.’

  ‘The thing that broke them,’ Will ventured. ‘The Great Lie.’

  Gwydion nodded. ‘The Great Lie. In the latter days of the Slavers, blank-eyed men came from the East with but a single song on their lips. One of them was called Swythen, the first of the Sightless Ones to recruit in these isles. He, and those who came after, were a part of that vile fellowship of sorcery that had eaten the Slaver empire from within. It interposed itself between the people and their rulers and so gained power over the one and influence over the other. And it grew ever richer by driving folk toward insanity.’

  ‘How?’ Will breathed.

  ‘By telling them the Great Lie. Did I not already tell you that whereas Slaver soldiers enslaved the body with shackles and chains, these teachers of untruth imprisoned minds? The Fellowship built in mournful stone many desolate palaces, temples with roofs like skulls, wherein echoed a hatred of the Old Ways. They sought ever to dupe and delude folk away from true knowledge, and to rule them by the lashes of fear and falsehood.

  ‘When the empire of the Slavers devoured itself, new invaders came as a fresh torment to the now defenceless land. Northlings they were, fierce men, land-hungry hewers of trees and stealers of cattle, men who lived in a land where there grows a giant, brooding tree. Across the darkling seas they came in ships, each year a different tribe of them, every spring a new invasion. With swords and axes they came, and because each battlestone brooded now in solitary malice and could no longer do its work in concert with its brothers, these warlike invaders were victorious and satisfied their lust for blood without disturbance from the lorc. For many years, the rivers ran red. Famine and pestilence stole over the land, and in every place where once the writ of the Slaver empire had run, there now reigned the lawless Northling.

  ‘Thus was the blood of these isles mixed for half a thousand years. The hundredth king reigned at the start of those times, and his name was Uther. Do you recall that name?’

  Will was uncertain. ‘I don’t think I know it.’

  ‘Did not Tutor Aspall ever speak to you of Uther Pendragon? Or of his magical union with Ygerna? Or the one who was born of that union?’

  ‘No. Or if he did, he didn’t dwell overlong on it.’

  ‘The child was called Arthur,’ Gwydion said, looking hard at him.

  ‘Great Arthur…’ Will repeated enthralled.

  ‘None knew it at first, but this was his second coming, and one that had been long awaited, for Arthur had lived another life ages ago, in the days of the First Men when he sailed upon the ship Prydwen and brought out the spoils from Annuin. This latter coming, however, was his second incarnation, and I was ready to receive him.’

  ‘Then you are Master Merlyn,’ Will said, hardly daring to breathe it.

  ‘I was your advisor then, as I am your advisor now.’

  ‘My advisor?’Will felt as if all the blood had been drained from him. He took a deep breath to fill the hollowness that had grown inside. ‘You still might be wrong about me, Master Gwydion.’

  ‘I might, for in many ways I am fallible. But the prophecies of the Black Book have never been known to fail, and you fit them like a glove. You are the third incarnation that was prophesied, of that there is no doubt.’

  ‘But I’m no king! Look at me!’

  Gwydion looked and laughed. ‘Do you know, that is exactly what the Wart said to me.’

  ‘Who’s the Wart?’

  ‘Just a nickname. It was what I used to call Arthur when he was a child.’

  As the bracing winds of the month of March finally blew themselves out in refreshing April rains, they wandered into the south-west to survey the high moorlands, but found the lands there too clean and too sweet to help them in their task. Will was unable to find the least sign of a lign beyond a kick he felt in the village of Norton Fitzwarren. And even that, Gwydion said, might have come from the bones of a great dragon that were buried under the gardens there. At any rate, well before they came to the borders of the Dukedom of Corinow they turned their backs on the sunset and went away east and north instead into the Levels.

  Before they left the wetlands Gwydion pointed out the sacred Tor at Galastonburgh and it made Will shiver, for there brooding hard upon the top was the dark mass of a chapter house, and so terrible a thing as that he had not ever thought to see in so sacred a place.

  ‘Why does it pain me so to see that sight?’ he asked solemnly.

  ‘Because you are well used to s
eeing it how it was. You see what the Sightless Ones have done, how their promises to you were all of them broken.’

  After that, they went north along by the Vale of Malmesburgh, and rested two wet days in a barn in Hooke Lydiard while Gwydion sang more of the histories and then interpreted them until Will’s understanding of the context of his life was made good. On the third day the sun came out and they went on again. By midday a west wind had dried the ground considerably. Gwydion whispered up a fire and made them a warm meal, and Will ate gratefully.

  As he finished he stirred and stretched and said, ‘But you haven’t spoken of the times that lie between the leaving of the Slavers and the coming of Gillan the Conqueror. What happened in those days?’

  Gwydion let his his eyes settle again on Will’s own. ‘Half a thousand years and more lie between Great Arthur’s days and the Conquest, but little of that concerns us now. Suffice to say that in the bloody wars that followed the withdrawal of the Slavers, the lorc continued in its ruptured state and gave no protection to the land. The Realm was fractured into many small territories. More shipborne invaders came from across the sea, until they struggled one with another, and so more blood flowed. I had seen the Realm broken into parts before. It happened after the reigns of Ferrex and Porrex, the quarrelling sons of Gorboduc. Back then, the Realm was reunited under one strong king, King Pinner by name, but in the Northlings’ time the Six Kingdoms emerged from the fighting.’

  ‘Wesset, Marset, Umberland, Essalby, Kennet and Lindisay,’ Will recited, remembering well the lessons given by Tutor Aspall.

  ‘Indeed so! And it was my friend Semias’s greatest achievement to manage the diplomacy whereby the six were made one again. And later, when Gillan the Conqueror came here twelve generations of men ago, Semias made what compact he could with him, which was little enough, for Semias’s strength was by that time already failing, and his grip on affairs loosening. The Conqueror’s allies attacked in the North. There was a great fight at Stennford, and another at Senlack Ridge, when King Hardy was shot in the eye and fell under the hooves of Gillan’s horsemen. Still, much bloodshed was averted by Semias’s interventions, and the wilder excesses of Gillan’s harriers were discouraged. An agreement was made that if Gillan would be king and his nine score barons would deign to become tenants-in-chief of the Realm, then they should regard themselves not as owners, but as stewards whose duty was to care for what was a venerable land. And this was the pact that was solemnly sworn to.