The Language of Stones

by Robert Carter

  Will was amazed at the bird, and at the way it looked at Gwydion. It seemed to understand when he spoke.

  ‘Mar achoinni, cueir foras a-chuen Cormac-t…’

  Then the owl departed as quickly and as silently as it had come.

  ‘What did you say to it, Master Gwydion?’

  ‘I was making arrangements. When I have finished my work there will be no difficulty in moving the stone. I will send it safe over the seas into the keeping of my friend Cormac the Strong. He is lord of the Clan MacCarthach, builder and master of the stronghold of An Blarna. Don’t look so stricken, lad! If I am successful the husk of this monster will confer on him and his guests for ever afterwards not a plague but a special boon!’

  Will’s heart was beating like a drum. ‘You…you’re going to drain it, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am.’

  He half-turned to look over his shoulder towards the Vale. ‘But you said that was too dangerous!’

  Gwydion turned his face skyward. ‘It is our only chance. Two great armies are marching to war. Their first encounter is at hand. I am going to do what I must.’

  ‘You told me that to drain a battlestone would be slow, painstaking work. You said the harm had to be let out a drop at a time, and each drop dealt with piecemeal before the next could be allowed out.’ He crowded the wizard. ‘You said that if all the harm escaped at once it would—’

  ‘Then give me room to work! The Plaguestone taught me much that I did not know when we raised the Dragon Stone. I shall move with speed, but also with caution, for Maskull’s crude binding-spells will surely complicate my task.’

  Will’s eyes rolled. Gwydion’s plan struck horror through him, but what else was there? He let himself be turned aside as the wizard planted his feet in the earth and drew inside himself a second great draught of power. Then Gwydion began to dance, stepping out the complex bodily movements that gave form and strength to his incantations. At last he addressed the stone. His fingers crept over its surface as he began to interrogate it, searching out as far as he could the magical snares that had been laid for him.

  Will calmed his own tumbling thoughts then dared to open his mind. He felt the churning, evasive darkness contained within the stone. After a while he began to fear for the wizard, for Gwydion seemed to fall into a trance, and when he climbed out of the pit and wandered into the Giant’s Ring he began to mouth words in a language that Will did not know, speaking in a voice that was not his own.

  ‘…tireauq eroproc ni otcnufed mecov te,

  tinev ni sarbif erenluv enis setnats idigir sinomlup,

  salludem ataturcs otel sadileg…’

  At length he came back to himself and spoke again in simple fashion without opening his eyes. ‘I have had words with the Morrigain. She is the hag who portends war. She says she walks now in the East, and looks forward to her feast of flesh.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Will breathed.

  ‘It means that the armies are not heading this way after all.’ Gwydion’s face looked worn and grey in the werelight. ‘It means that we have been deceived – this stone is not the Doomstone.’

  Will felt the realization jolt him. ‘But it must be! It’s far more powerful than the Dragon Stone!’

  ‘It is not the Doomstone. You are confused by its nearness to the Ring and by the spells that Maskull has applied. We have been wrong-footed by my clever foe. Yet one detail still favours us – Maskull’s spells have been made cheaply tonight. I shall draw aside his night veil and reveal the clue beneath, for the verse is now our only hope of finding the real Doomstone in time.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better to wait until daylight?’

  Gwydion smiled a humourless smile. ‘The bloodbath is now less than half a night away.’

  ‘That soon?’

  ‘Do you not feel it?’

  He nodded grimly. ‘The lorc is brim-full.’

  ‘And the Doomstone, wherever it is, has been set awailing. It is calling men to their deaths even as we debate. The Morrigain has said that the next sunset will be stained red with blood. Stand back! For I must make a start, and in this you cannot help me.’

  Will sat by the elder tree. Thirty paces was not enough for safety, but it allowed Gwydion to gather calm undisturbed. Wanting comfort, Will looked for Pangur Ban, but the cat had wisely gone. Back on the shallow rise, on the far side of the Liarix, the weird light of Gwydion’s staff waxed brighter and spread a lustre over that sombre graveside as he laid out his materials. He blew powders from his pouch over the stone, then poured silvery drops from a phial.

  ‘Aircill u mas brethar,’ he told the stone gently. ‘Foscleig te criedhe mo!’

  The first mass of harm drawn from the stone glowed with a fearsome blackness. It sucked the wizard’s magelight into itself hungrily as it rose from the stone, then tightened into a spinning ball and hovered above the battlestone making the light of the staff turn drear and brown. Gwydion danced. He played the globe like a bee-charmer plays a swarm, singing out to it in different tongues and voices, his movements and gestures enmeshing it in spells, persuading it, containing it, while all the time he coaxed it ever higher above the stone. He steered the spinning mass with care, veering and backing his steps this way and that in front of the battlestone. Each time he withdrew a pace, the black globe fell, trying, or so it seemed, to re-establish itself upon the stone. But every time Gwydion moved in again to drive it upward. Though it circled and spat back at him, it could not find a way to pull itself down. He worked it further and further into the air and finally, when it was high above the ground and could be seen only by the way it crimped and dulled the starlight, Gwydion sent a burning bolt soaring against it.

  Brilliant blue fire shot straight to the heart of the globe, and penetrated it. It bellied out, growing hideously bigger for a moment. Will feared it had absorbed the bolt, but as it bloated it also grew greyer and thinner, so that finally it ruptured and blew itself to pieces.

  A shell of exploded substance rained down. As it passed through Will, he felt pains in his teeth and the joints of his bones. Pains gripped his stomach and head, coming to a terrifying peak, but then dying away to leave a profound weariness behind. He understood then that each battlestone has its own quality of harm. That each of them would be different, not like so many arrowheads and billhooks forged alike in Grendon Mill, but every one possessing a particular character.

  ‘So far, so good,’ Gwydion said. He examined the stone’s stubborn surface for marks. ‘Stay back! We have a long way to go yet.’

  But the wizard stood still and stared into space. Will called out anxiously, ‘What are you waiting for, Master Gwydion?’

  ‘I must replenish myself and find my centre. It is hard to remember humility when the words of great magic are forming in the mouth, for often they make a man feel as if all the world is his own to play with. In this lies the great pitfall for those who try to employ magic that is too powerful for them. Stay with me in spirit, Willand, and try to feel what I feel!’

  ‘I will, Master Gwydion!’

  He watched, patiently trying to maintain hope. Each release of harmful spirit from the stone must be wholly dispersed. But how many times would Gwydion have to repeat the drawing before the stone was forced to show its verse? And if, by some mischance, he underestimated the battlestone’s strength, or overrated his own?

  Will tried to push these corrosive thoughts away, knowing that through fellow feeling he must add his own strength to the wizard’s. He must become his fountain of hope. But still the stone was getting to a part of him, for he could not but wonder at the many hurts that must surely befall the world now that such a mass of malignity had been set loose. Would there now surface a rash of ills and losses, unexpected injuries and setbacks, unlooked-for infidelities and betrayals? According to Gwydion, that was how the world worked.

  But already, the wizard was dancing and applying his magic to the stone once more.

  ‘Nai dearmhaida, lirran, tar an gharbade sa
echearitan, arieas aragh e gundabhain!’

  The next gobbet keened like a banshee. It differed from the first, being larger and in shape more irregular. It was also faster moving, like a gigantic flock of starlings gathering to roost. The wizard had used a different, more powerful, spell to extract the harm, and it pulsed and moved in the air, reminding Will of the round jelly creatures he had seen floating in the ocean. He clenched his fists and stood up, wishing he could help, but knowing he must not interfere.

  A deadly struggle was developing above the stone. He saw shapes like fists and human faces forming in the cloud. Three times it gathered itself and lunged forward in an attempt to overbear and seize the one who tormented it, but each time Gwydion’s resolve held. And at last it was the wizard’s turn to inflict and to punish. He mouthed a great spell in the true tongue that found a weakness in his adversary. As the black motes gathered angrily above him, his magic squeezed them together and they began burning up as red as fire sparks. Most were confined by the spell, but some lunged down in violent bursts or swung out as if trying to claw the wizard away. But Gwydion had clothed himself in protections, and any mote that came too close burned out in a trail of orange fire. He stood fast until the vigour of the cloud was spent, then the second mass of harm blew asunder and was cast outward to the four winds.

  This time Will was thrown to the ground. He winced in pain and all the seams of his shirt tore in tatters, but then he jumped up and cheered at the smuts and cinders that floated down all around.

  ‘You did it, Master Gwydion!’

  ‘I told you to lie low!’ Gwydion snapped. His face had paled with the effort. He showed irritation that the skin of the stone had again refused to yield up its message. ‘This is sore and thirsty work,’ he called. ‘And now I must engage again!’

  Without pause he plunged back into the fight. The third draught of darkness pulled from the stone took on the indistinct shape of a great winged thing. It rose, terrible and threatening. It hovered over Gwydion, a beast woven of shadows, a carrion-feeder that stank of death. Will felt the gust of its wing beats and smelled the stench of all the fears that he had ever known. It roared and flapped like a rising phoenix, burning in dark flame, but despite its efforts it could not quite take to the air.

  Gwydion danced forward boldly and struck it with his staff. He overcame its menace and it slid apart into the grey smoke of nothingness, and when that smoke passed over Will he felt his stomach clench as if he had fallen into a chasm. He reeled and passed for a moment into unconsciousness.

  When he woke up he saw Gwydion staggering and ran to help him. The wizard was trembling. His body felt wiry and insubstantial, like a man who has not eaten for too long, his cheeks were sunken and his eyes rimmed red.

  He looked up at Will. ‘You should take greater care,’ he said wanly. ‘Your nose is bleeding.’

  ‘Stop now, Master Gwydion. Stop now, I beg you! At least rest a while.’

  ‘I cannot,’ the wizard said, taking his arm. ‘But I must tread with greater care. I should not have used my staff so quickly, for the stone is getting wiser to my ways. The last release almost gained earthly form, and woe betide us if that should happen!’

  ‘How many more times must you do it? Rest a while first. And drink.’

  Will offered him water. Gwydion looked up at the sky and emptied the flask over his head. It was now only a month short of the solstice, and the first purples of dawn were already beginning to creep along the rim of the sky. Soon long fingers of light would reach out of the east.

  ‘This stone is not yet half drained. Not until the night’s work is done, and wholly done, shall I rest!’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Will cried, pointing at the battlestone. ‘Look! Master Gwydion, what’s happening?’

  They approached the stone together, warily yet with grim fascination. Its surface was seething and bubbling like a cauldron of boiling blood.

  ‘I know you for false dissembling villainy!’ Gwydion cried, stepping quickly up to the stone. He entangled the emanation in a counter-spell. ‘At last! Now I can unbind the foul casts that Maskull has put in here. Until that is done we cannot trust the truth of any verse that we may stir out of the stone.’

  As he hauled the illusion out, it writhed and roared on the end of the wizard’s staff until it was extinguished with a flourish. What was left on the stone was a mass of halfbestial faces that screamed and pleaded for mercy as they too were drawn out. Gwydion paid them no heed as he destroyed them. When they had gone what remained was the stone’s true appearance. It was not smooth at all now, but deeply scored with ogham all along its exposed edges.

  ‘Feh fris!’ Gwydion shouted in delight. A flood of blue brilliance lit the craggy stone. ‘Now we’ll see what was hidden. Quickly. It must be raised and read.’

  Will jumped down, forced his fingers under the stone, heaved and strained, helping to lift it onto its end. Then Gwydion made him stand back and he circled to read out each of the faces in turn:

  ‘The Queen of the East shall Spill Blood,

  On the Slave Road, by Werlame’s Flood.

  The King, in his Kingdom, a Martyr shall Lie,

  And Never Gain the Victory.’

  ‘A worthy translation,’ the wizard told him, but then he turned, leaning on his staff as if deep in thought or fighting with some unspoken doubt. ‘I believe I now know where we shall find the Doomstone.’

  Will marvelled. ‘You’ve solved the verse? So soon?’

  Gwydion’s haggard face brightened in the magelight. ‘The meaning is unmistakable. When the Queen of the East rose up against the invaders of the Slaver empire her armies put three cities to the torch. One, and only one, stands upon a river named in honour of Werlame. It is even now called Verlamion by all save the Sightless Ones who have their own name for it.’

  ‘What do they call it?’ he asked.

  ‘Swythen. The red hands raised one of the greatest of their chapter houses upon Werlame’s hill because the first recruits in the Realm were gathered here. Swythen is the one they call “the Martyr”, for he was killed for his trouble by the Slavers and has lain entombed upon the hill for a thousand years.’

  ‘Does what this stone says have to come true at Verlamion? Must King Hal fall a martyr to his kingdom in that place?’

  Gwydion ran his fingers over the stone. ‘So we have been told by ancient magic. Whatever happens, King Hal is not fated to win the coming battle, it seems.’

  ‘But if King Hal is fated to lose, that means Duke Richard must win.’

  ‘So you might suppose.’

  Despite himself the prospect of a victory for the duke gave Will a secret feeling of satisfaction. If Gwydion had not returned to claim him he would more than likely have been riding to war now alongside Edward. He said, ‘So, now it’s our task to deprive Duke Richard of his victory, I suppose.’

  Gwydion met his eye like a mind-reader. ‘It is our task to prevent a bloody slaughter.’

  Will straightened. ‘How far is Verlamion?’

  But Gwydion made no answer. Instead, he began circling the stone, staff in hand, calling out the alternate reading:

  ‘When a Queen shall Enslave a King,

  Travel at Sunrise a Realm to Gain,

  Werlame’s Martyr shall Lose the Victory,

  And Lie where Blood Never Flows.’

  Will tried hard to commit the lines to memory, but even before he could consider their meaning, a great pore opened up on top of the stone and black slime began to vomit forth. Straight away Gwydion reached out with his staff and tried to cauterize the hole with blue fire, but no matter what spell he tried he could not shut the hole. The stench that came from it made Will gag and drove him back. Then a humming sound rose, filling his head until he felt as if he was being hit with a hammer.

  ‘I warned you that too much harm remained within the stone!’ Gwydion shouted as they staggered back. ‘Maskull’s magic must be emptying it! His last spell was not a binding-spell as I thought, but one d
esigned to release the harm in a rush! If you had not made me pause when you did – if I had kept on dancing out my own opening magic – it would have killed us both!’

  Will backed away, his eyes fast on the top of the stone. It bubbled and dripped now as if with molten tar, but this was no illusion, no trick of Maskull’s as before. This was all the harm left in the stone, fully half of all there had been, pure harm, emerging now uncontrolled.

  This time no unformed mass moved up into the air at Gwydion’s command, no shapeless thing quite unable to become itself that danced upon a spell: this was a fully-formed nightmare. It struggled forth, wriggling out into the world through a hole that now seemed much too small to give it birth, and a curse was already burning in the air around it:

  ‘Anaichte ishubaich na’t slaughe immer Werlamich,

  Biedh fordhagan argh fehdair fhuill!

  Bidthwe imada oig ishan guihnn!

  Caine goirfen Badhbi ta’gach peirte!

  ‘Bidh de tiudbha da lucht na Trinobhaend!

  Budh d’tiudban dau cuchtar nai!

  Buedh tiudhbha dorlin abusgh leaia!’

  ‘Run!’ Gwydion shouted.

  Will needed no second telling. He turned and bolted as the dread words boomed out over the fields. He could hardly follow the meaning, but he knew that the insane laughing voice spoke of blood and of death. At that moment, nothing could have persuaded Will to leave the wizard’s side and they fled together. Gwydion raised his arms and shouted spells and threw up a crackling lightning bolt, but that served only to excite pursuit. They made for the ruined tomb of Orba. Four great weathered stones were all that remained of it, huddled together, heaped in the field. By now the harm had grown to a size greater than the Liarix. And as Will watched, it changed its appearance, having the power to fascinate the eye. It did not look the same two blinks together, but grew more terrible each time.