The Language of Stones

by Robert Carter

  He looked at his hands and forearms held up against the dusk sky. They were broader, a man’s hands and arms – arms that had often scried the land, hands that, if Gort were to be believed, had more than once projected great magic. Will recalled the curious book of spells he had once played with, and that memory sapped away some of his lightness of spirit. Then he remembered the terrible moment he had seen the yew tree of Preston Mantles split open, and the skeleton of young Wale flashed before his eyes, sending a thrill of horror through him.

  ‘Why am I thinking all this?’ he asked, suddenly wary. ‘It’s the battlestone. It must be closer than I thought.’

  He tried to get control of himself. Even so, a cold dread continued to creep over his mind, and he shivered. It feels as if somebody just stepped on my grave, he thought. That’s what Gwydion says when someone shivers for no good reason.

  The moon had not yet come to first quarter and there was something unusual about the way the earth stream was rising in the hollows of his bones. Its strength surprised him. He looked around for Gwydion to tell him that something seemed to be going amiss, but the wizard had gone in search of water herbs and had wandered down into a fold in the land where the Sware Brook ran.

  A faint feeling of despair floated upon the air, a mustiness, unmistakable like a characteristic but half-forgotten reek…

  What was it?

  He had noticed it at Clarendon, faintly at Preston Mantles, then again at the dead pond. Now he knew what he had smelled at Foderingham in the middle of the night, and once more as they entered Ludford…

  It was not Death he had smelled – it was Maskull.

  He jumped up, looking round, alert and on his guard. But there was nothing to see. He pulled his cloak tighter about him, then directed his thoughts inwardly and tried to open his mind to see if he could detect the reek. But it was gone.

  Slowly he relaxed. He had imagined it. It was another phantom inspired by the nearness of the battlestone. But the impact of the revelation remained and the idea continued to tingle bleakly through him like shock. Does Gwydion have any idea how close his enemy came to finding me? And how often?

  The feeling that overcame me in the Great Hall at Ludford was enormously powerful – so powerful that I wanted to kill, or to die! Could that have been Maskull’s doing too? Could there be a clever game being played by him? One that Gwydion knows nothing about?

  He looked up at the sky. It was at least an hour after sunset now, and there was a lingering light in the west, but an undue darkness lay upon the moon’s yellow crescent. He took a few steps towards it, then halted. The land still did not feel good under his feet. He went back to the small fire and sat down to warm himself, but as the slender moon sank ever towards the skyline he began to feel the insistence of the lign. It ran close by, there under the dark mass of a wood to the south, visible now to his eyes as a faint greenish glow. He turned his back on the fire, allowing his sight to adjust to the faintness.

  There was no wind. Instead, a deep silence lay over the land like a blanket, and Louvan, the milky-pale tether of the sky, blazed overhead, echoing the faintness of the lign. Will could smell stinkhorns in the nearby wood, strange fungi that burst out of witch’s eggs. They filled the woods wherever they were found with the smell of rotten meat, drawing flies to them in the day and black beetles by night. It must have been their cold scent that he had mistaken for the presence of the sorcerer.

  On the far side of the copse he could see the lign emerging. According to Gwydion, the lign they might expect to find here was Eburos, the lign of the yew tree, the greatest of the nine green lanes to have been flung across the Isles. He walked a few paces towards it, groping over uneven ground, then he saw against the skyline what looked like a group of people, and a little way from them stood a tall, angular stone.

  He wanted to shout out ‘Master Gwydion!’ but his words strangled away in a whisper. He stumbled towards the tall stone, seeing how the pale-glowing lign passed very near to it. When he looked back neither Gwydion nor the little fire that he had lit were to be seen. This was the very crest of the Tops, the highest land for many leagues in any direction. He saw now that what he had taken for figures was a collection of standing stones.

  So this, after all, was the Giant’s Ring. But it was not as he had imagined it. Instead of a circle of huge, oblong slabs many times the height of a man, these stones were small, hunched and shapeless, like a group of beggars standing at the round table of their beggar-king. But there was no table, just a circle of grass forty or fifty paces across. By starlight and the eerie glow of the lign, he could just make out the chief stone, the largest of them, standing to the north. He approached boldly and, as if he had been invited, laid both hands upon its gnarled and pock-marked surface.

  He did not know why he had done so, it just felt like the respectful thing to do. He felt no fear or sickness as he had while approaching the battlestones. Strangely, the lign did not pass through the circle as he had supposed it would, but ran instead some way to the north, nearer to where the King’s Stone brooded. The touch of the stone was cold on his palms. Its surface was rough, covered with dry, scaly growths and deeply pitted as if eaten into by stonedevouring worms. It seemed to him vastly ancient and connected to some enormous mystical structure that brooded under the ground.

  Had Gwydion been close by he would have called out to tell him what he had found, to say that although the feeling was strong it was unlike the horrible feelings he had felt before. The Giant’s Ring felt sweet and warm and caring, as if it truly was the navel of the world!

  But Gwydion was not in sight and Will did not break his silence. Instead he walked into the middle of the Ring and put out his arms, turning about so that the sky and all the stars whirled about above his head. Then he noticed the flickering in the earth. He steadied himself, a little dizzy now, planting his feet more firmly for balance in the turf. The ground was pulsing with an almost imperceptible lilaccoloured light. He saw sparkles here and there in the stones. Bands of purple were revealed in the earth under his feet, making a great spiral pattern, and there were faint tremors shaking the ground. Then a great spike of blue light flashed from the top of the Liarix, reaching like a blade upward into the sky.

  ‘Whoaah!’ Will cried as the tremors grew and almost threw him off his feet. He lifted his eyes and saw overhead what looked like a purple shooting star, only this was coming down straight on top of him, faster and faster and—

  There was a whooshing that grew quickly into a deafening roar. Then the purple light from above struck and he felt himself blown into dust.

  The next thing he knew he had been raised high in the air above the Giant’s Ring and was looking down on a carpet of spreading light. Colours and patterns blasted out from the ground. A repetitive humming, a four-fold thumping music, seemed to come from all around. He saw the blue glow on the Liarix and the green lign stretching far to east and west and running by the dark hollow he knew must be the Vale. But all this was gone in an instant from his mind, for the pain hit him and he heard himself screaming out. He began writhing and turning helplessly in the air like a hanged man, his flesh burning in a mass of purple flame.

  He screamed, but his agony rose higher. It seemed to last forever as he hung there, twisting, roasting in a demonic flame. His braids crackled, thrashed against his cheek like burning serpents. He flailed his arms and screamed again, but then he was hurled violently from the flame and slammed down into the ground with bone-snapping force. He rolled over and over in the damp turf, just grateful that the fire had stopped and that he was still alive.

  He could smell wet earth and the pork-stench of singed hair. He was outside the Giant’s Ring now, lying in the dark where he had fallen. The immense, head-filling music had gone, and only his own gasps resounded in his ears. But still the flickering purple played all around, eerie and grotesque and indomitable.

  And Gwydion was there. He stood tall, glowing within a faint blue aura, sparks sputtering from
the silver-white brilliance at the end of his staff. He had brought Will down alive, and bones unbroken, but now he was himself being tested.

  A figure stepped out from behind the King’s Stone and faced the wizard. He gleamed and spangled in brilliant purple light. He was a sorcerer, young and handsome, elegant and self-assured. He wore no mantle, but weeds of midnight black set about with silver signs. His hands were gloved and his iron-shod feet bespurred like a knight’s. He also held a staff, except his seemed to Will to be a rod of iron, for when he struck it against the Liarix it rang, and the ray that swept from it burned an eye-searing violet line across the night.

  He swept his cloak from where it lay on the ground to reveal the fallen battlestone. It was half buried and glowed dull red as the sorcerer stepped up onto it.

  ‘Is this what you seek, my brother?’

  His face, when he spoke, shimmered, turned momentarily to a death’s-head. Gwydion made no reply. Will watched from the darkness, utterly unable to turn away. Even in his pain and confusion he felt the intense power that resided within the one who wielded the cruel, purple light.

  A violet ray leapt out from the sorcerer’s staff, but before it could reach Gwydion it burst as if against a wall, spreading out like dragon’s breath into a sheet of orange flame.

  Will dived down in terror and hid his face as a great gust of scorching air passed over him. It sucked all the breath from his lungs, then roared on. He expected the ray to lance out and finish him. He wanted to rise up like a hare and bolt into the darkness. But an immoveable instinct kept him pressed hard to the earth. He had to call up all his courage just to open his eyes.

  The sorcerer walked along the rise of a weathered barrow. ‘Much have I travelled, since last we met, Gwydion,’ he called out. His voice was deep and affecting. ‘Much have I tried, and much have I tested the powers of this world. You should have walked with me, or walked with Semias when your time came.’

  Two blue thunderbolts hurtled from Gwydion’s hands, but were dashed to pieces before they could cross half the distance. Then the violet fire blazed up like anger, roaring all around the sorcerer, enfolding him harmlessly in cold flame.

  ‘Do you hear me, Gwydion? Semias was wrong. In the end he was no more than a dreamer who thought the world could remain as it always had been. His meddling brought us to this.’

  ‘You were always the meddler, not he!’

  ‘I was interested to learn. That is why I grew more powerful than Semias. All the power of the Ogdoad resides in me now. Look at the flame, Gwydion! It does not hurt me. It cannot, for I have bathed in the Spring of Celamon!’

  Gwydion’s blue aura was burning less brightly now. ‘You were always the more foolhardy, Maskull. You are greatly skilled, of that there is no question. But to what use have you put your skills? There is in you, and ever was, the fatal defect.’

  Will marvelled at the wizard’s courage, yet here was one who had lived through all the ages, and who was now facing his most formidable foe.

  The flame that engulfed the sorcerer stopped and he raised his arms. ‘You may say what you will, for you are mine now.’

  ‘Vainglory, Maskull! The worst of the failings is stamped right through you! I see that now. Selfishness always writhed in your heart like a maggot, but even that could have been cut out had it not been for your overweening pride!’

  The sorcerer laughed. ‘Listen to yourself! You dare speak of failings! What is this but envy? You can know nothing of what passes in a mind greater than your own. How could you?’

  ‘Great thinker you may be, but what good is a thinker who knows nothing of compassion?’

  ‘Again you presume to judge me! Measure your own arrogance before you lay blame upon others!’

  ‘Oh, it is plain enough where the arrogance lies, Maskull! You think the world can be as you want it to be, that it should be so, that it must become so for its own good.’

  The purple light flared again. ‘You were ever a coward, Gwydion. You and Gortamnibrax together! What a pretty pair of cravens you make! You are scared to change. You have never tried to understand the true nature of what must be. And you have not the faintest idea what the true path means!’

  Gwydion raised his staff in accusation. ‘If only you had once been able to see yourself as Semias eventually came to see you. That is all it would have taken. We knew how your pride drove you to hide your faults from the rest of us. But instead of asking for our help as you were sworn to do, you secretly went your own way. Semias, in his profound wisdom, understood your hidden heart.’

  ‘But he did nothing to stop me. You are as weak as Semias was, and just as ignorant. There is a whole new world out there, one greater than ours, and I have found it. Long ago I anchored our two destinies together, set us on a collision path, and we have been drawing steadily closer through all the ages of this world. This was ever my plan, Gwydion, ever my ambition, to bring two worlds together…’

  Pain pulsed in Will’s face and hands. He could not properly focus his mind on what Maskull was saying, but neither could he turn away, for the sorcerer’s voice rose now, sharp and ice clear.

  ‘There will be war, just as I have planned it! War! And with it there will come change! There must be change, Gwydion, for the two worlds to collide. Only afterwards can there be peace. But then there will dawn a true peace, an endless peace, a peace such as neither this world nor the other has known.’

  ‘It will be the peace of the grave! You are deceived by your own insane dreams, Maskull. You must listen to me, while there is still time.’

  The sorcerer spat back. ‘It’s over, Gwydion! Soon we shall stand at the crossroads. And when we do we must take the right track. We must, or else our world will circle endlessly forever in the same rut.’

  The great violet flame roared out again, to be stopped again just a few paces short of the place where the wizard stood.

  ‘Maskull, when the loremakers become lorebreakers, then there is no lore!’

  Will crouched lower, shocked to his very core by the hideous exchange. Maskull’s every thought seemed turned to the furtherance of a vast and unknowable plan. ‘Don’t let him win, Master Gwydion,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t let him kill you…’

  ‘You are a tiresome fellow, Gwydion. The Ogdoad is no more, and you yourself are failing. You should have taken the Long Walk north with Semias when you could. You have clung on too long to the Old Ways, but a new world is coming, and that is why the power is deserting you.’

  A new purple flame blasted out, this time with much greater vigour than before. It dissolved just short of Gwydion, and set fire to a small hawthorn bush from which flames licked and crackled. Maskull’s voice rang out again, ‘As the blade is forged in fire, so must the future be reborn in the pain of war! It is time for the Old Ways to die! Prepare yourself, for your last moment in earthly form is upon you!’

  And with that there lashed forth a storm of purple flame that enveloped the wizard. It wrapped his stark figure in a blast of white heat. A roaring fire raged around him. Smoke rose up. Grass burned. Gwydion had resisted as well and as long as he could, but Maskull had triumphed.

  Fear gripped Will by the heart and by the guts and he believed there was nothing he could do. He saw the wizard sink down to his knees at last in the centre of the patch of smoking grass. He was burning. Flames flared then died all around him. Then Maskull prepared himself for a final blow. He raised a semblance of Gwydion out of the black, smoking skeleton, up from the ground and cast it into the gnarled grasp of an elder tree.

  The wizard’s form was impressed upon the tree, trunk upon trunk, arms against branches, limbs caught, melting and melding now so that skin became bark and the figure of the wizard faded from mortal view.

  Will could not tear his eyes away from the ghastly sight as the tree consumed the flesh of his friend. Thoughts of the yew tree at Preston Mantles assailed him. Tears coursed down his face as he tried to hold back the horror that was bursting inside him.

 
Maskull staggered, dizzied it seemed by the tremendous effort he had made. A visible weakness overcame him, though he mastered it, and finally he stumbled wearily down from the barrow until he stood before the tree. In a voice slurred with exhaustion, he said, ‘In the end it was the simplest of traps that caught you. I knew you would never be able to resist the urge to save your apprentice. What a fool you were to take a boy into your service at such a time, for the last thing you needed was a hostage to fortune. The Ogdoad is finished. Loremasters are done with. The new world is almost here and we will have no need of any of you. I must leave now, for I have a war to watch over, so fare thee well, Gwydion Elder-tree! Stand sentinel, and keep vigil over my victory stone. And when the armies come as they must to this place may they cut you down with their war-axes and feed you piece by piece into their camp fires…’

  Will was lost to terror. He could do no more than push his face into the earth in an effort to stifle his sobs. Any moment now, he knew, a gust of violet-white heat would come to sear the flesh from his bones, but he hardly cared, for Gwydion was gone, and the fight was over, and nothing mattered any more.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE NIGHT RIDE TO HOOE

  At last the moon set and the pale light that showed the track of the lign began to fade. For some time purple flames danced like King Elmond’s fire above the tips of the stones, but then all guttered low and the night returned to its customary darkness.

  Will lay in the dew-damp grass, shivering, feeling nothing but the hollowness that echoed inside him. His clothes stank of smoke, and the burning in his face and hands sank bone deep. Strange, he thought, how fate had delivered him back home in the end. There was not far to go now. If he could only find the Vale, then Breona would fuss over him and cover his burns with a cool compress and soothe his hands with goose grease, and inside a week the skin would start to heal and all his cares would fade away. He would be an ordinary lad again, living an ordinary life, in an ordinary place, and everything would be as it should have been – as it would have been had not this desperate duty come upon him.