They hastened to the meeting and when they entered the Round House, Will was dismayed to find the duke’s chamber already packed. All the senior officers of the castle were here, every knight and nobleman, the duke’s chamberlain, his seneschal, as well as Earl Sarum and his most trusted lieutenants. Edward was here, but the Elder of the Sightless Ones whom Will had seen earlier was not. The duke himself sat on a great carved seat that was raised up three steps. There were lions’ heads with flowing manes carved on the armrests. Around the circular chamber, twelve carved faces – women’s heads set with crowns – stared down. They were the Twelve Austere Queens whom Will knew from history. Their images appeared in all courts of government in the Realm and were meant to guide the consciences of those who sat in judgment upon others. Then Will’s eye fastened on something resting by the duke’s seat, an ivory rod. With a start, he realized that it was an item he had seen once before, a piece of unicorn horn that Edward had shown him. Duke Richard, he now saw, used it as a pointer when he sat in council.
The duke looked every inch the rightful king. He said, ‘Master Gwydion, welcome to you.’
The wizard opened his arms in a gesture of friendship. Will did not know if he should bow. He saw Edward look his way, but there was no acknowledgment in the glance.
‘I thank you, Richard of Ebor,’ Gwydion replied with formal dignity.
‘You have asked to speak with me about my stone. You will pardon me if I insist that such a talk be conducted before my friends and all my people.’
Gwydion’s hand slid down his staff, and he leaned its head against his shoulder. ‘I did not request any secrecy, for I come to speak about the true cause of the disaster at Blow Heath.’
There was a tense shuffling at that, and the duke smiled. Earl Sarum, at his elbow, did not. ‘True causes, Master Gwydion? Disaster? A strange choice of words. You speak as if the bravery of my staunch ally, Lord Sarum, was not responsible. Do you not agree then that it was he who brought us our great triumph against overwhelming odds?’
The chamber fell utterly silent now.
Gwydion stirred. ‘The colour of the warrior blood that flows in your heart has never been in doubt, Friend Richard, nor the bravery of your kinsmen or servants. They were surely the masters in the late battle. But I ask you: what profit is gained by the death of so many innocents?’
‘Innocents, he says!’ Lord Sarum scoffed. ‘Who, in this life, is that?’
The wizard’s eyes glittered with a cool fire. ‘My friend, near three thousand simple men of this land lie dead upon a noisome field not a dozen leagues from here. It was no quarrel of theirs that laid them low, but an intractable dispute raging between their lords.’
‘Then it was their quarrel,’ the duke put in.
‘Aye,’ Earl Sarum added, ‘and by far the greater number of the dead were our enemy! Ten to one at the least, or I am a blind man!’
Gwydion waited for the mutters of assent to echo away. ‘How many times have I repeated this rede to you, Richard? “It is always possible to avoid war, and war is always best avoided.”’
‘A fine sentiment, Master Gwydion, but the injustice that has been heaped upon me is plain for all to see!’ Duke Richard stabbed an angry finger. ‘Queen Mag has ever sought to play me like a fish upon a line. She has baited me these past four years. Behind every gesture of friendship there has been some malicious scheme, behind every smile some poisonous whisper. She has enchanted the Great Council with false promises and lies, so that now half the lords of this land are up in arms against me. I am denied my appointed office by these enemies. I am driven across the Realm by men who seek to imprison me, to dispossess me, to impeach me on false charges, and all so that they may have what is mine!’ He banged the arm of his chair. ‘The she-wolf wants me dead! Do not forget to mention this, Master Gwydion, when you speak of true causes!’
Those who listened clapped their hands and stamped their feet, and gave voice to their approval.
Gwydion bore it all and waited for silence. Then he said, ‘All that is undeniable, my friend, and I have no argument to set against you. But the true cause of war lies deeper than individual greed or jealousy. It is harder to understand than power or wealth. It is less clear to the eye than the disputes between rightful king and pretender or usurper.’
Richard’s eyes narrowed. ‘Then say your piece and be done with it.’
Gwydion gave a gesture Will had seen so often before. It seemed to say that here was a lone wise voice struggling to be heard in a madhouse. ‘I have warned before about certain malicious stones. I have told how they must be found if the Realm is ever to be at peace with itself. The stump that was brought here is one such that has been discharged in battle, but, Friend Richard, you must not think of it as your stone.’
The silence bore down on them all.
‘Master Gwydion, the stone is graven with the mark of my signet. It has come to me as a gift from my kinsman, who won it in battle. Therefore, it seems to me whatever magic it contains can fairly be called mine.’
‘How many times must I tell you, Richard? Magic is selfless. It cannot be possessed, and it must not be abused. Though the stone was indeed taken by Friend Sarum, it was not his to give.’
‘Then, to whom does it belong?’ The duke’s stare was unblinking. ‘Is it yours, Master Gwydion?’
‘Mine?’
‘The Old Crow stole it!’ a voice called from the back.
When Will looked, he saw that it was Lord Dudlea who had spoken. He was no longer imprisoned in his cell, but stood haggard, in a stained shirt, loaded with chains and under close guard by two of Lord Sarum’s henchmen. Will realized that he had been brought here for a purpose.
‘Bring the prisoner forward!’ the duke said. ‘Let him speak.’
‘He stole it from the house of John, Baron Clifton.’
‘Is this true?’ the duke asked.
Gwydion tried to wave the point away. ‘The battlestone has lain buried at Aston Oddingley for thousands of years. Baron Clifton knew nothing of it, though it was what drove him and all his forebears insane. My main point is this—’
But Will saw one of the duke’s yellow-clad advisors whisper. The duke’s fist clenched on his unicorn-horn rod, and he cut in on the wizard. ‘But if you admit you dug the stone up on Clifton land, then the case is clear, Master Gwydion. As landowner, Baron Clifton was the owner.’ He smiled for the benefit of those who hung on his words. ‘Mad Clifton is my sworn and notorious enemy – his men joined battle against my allies – therefore whatever else may be said, I cannot be accused of partiality. However, this means the stone is now become a rightful spoil of war. It was in turn gifted to me through lawful means, therefore I deem it to be mine and see no reason why I should not use it as I see fit.’
There were cries of assent. Gwydion nodded ruefully, conceding the decision, but then he said, ‘Friend Richard, deeming does not make matters so. Whatever you may say, the stump is not yours to be milked like a cow, or used to give false hopes of invulnerability to your people. If you persist in such a course, then trouble will surely befall you.’
That sounded like a curse, and breaths were sucked in at its pronouncement. The hum of voices echoed in the chamber, and the duke seemed swayed for a moment as he deliberated further upon the matter.
Gwydion said softly, ‘Bring it in, Richard. It should be set up in my lodging—’
Sarum exploded. ‘He wants to have it for himself!’
Gwydion’s voice rose louder. ‘Give it to me for one turn of the moon, while I squeeze from it the secret it holds. I can make it give a clue as to where the next stone lies. Surely you would like to know where the next battle will be fought?’
But the Blow Stone has already yielded up its verse clue, Will thought, jolted by the wizard’s words. What’s Gwydion’s game?
The duke bit on a knuckle and made his decision. ‘Have the stone brought to this chamber where the eyes of the Twelve Austere Queens may rest upon it. In this place, Master Gwydion,
and not in any dark den, you may enquire of the stone as you will. That is all.’
Lord Sarum flashed the duke a hard glance, but he did not speak out against the decision. Gwydion excused himself, and strode from the chamber. Will turned and followed close behind. The wizard, as usual, had quietly got exactly what he wanted.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MOTHER BRIG
At Gwydion’s command Will spent the next few days looking for the Ludford Stone. Some days he went with Gort, but mostly he walked alone in the hope that his senses would clear. But there was something going on that played against his talent and frustrated his best efforts.
When he went to the Round House he saw that the emblem of the duke’s personal signet was still clearly graven in the stone’s surface – a four-leafed sign surmounting three long-stemmed pike flowers. When he asked, he was told that no art of the wizard’s, or of the Wortmaster’s, had been able to shift it.
‘But don’t we already know the Blow Stone’s verse?’ he asked.
‘Do we?’ Gwydion replied archly. ‘I have drawn no verse from it. What we read was given to us by the stone itself, offered when it was in its harmful prime. Do you think we should trust such a gift?’
Will pursed his lips, then said slowly, ‘Then you think it was given out to mislead us?’
Gwydion’s look was shrewd and careful. ‘That is a possibility. On the other hand, the stone may have told true. Do not forget the rede: “Harm often comes of an unwisely told truth.” We uprooted the stone and took it far from its proper place. There is still time for a predictive verse, no matter in what spirit it was originally offered, to be made real by events.’
Will thought about that until his head ached. ‘Just tell me why you didn’t tell Duke Richard about the verse.’
‘I may tell him. In time. If and when the need arises. But for the moment I can think of no better way to keep what remains of the Blow Stone from being offered up as a source of false hope to the people than to work on it here.’
‘What about when we rode here?’ he said. ‘You didn’t prevent the soldiers from touching the stump then. I wanted to turn them away, but you said there’d be no harm in it.’
‘Well, then – you were right and I was wrong.’ Gwydion’s eyes were calm and his look unresisting. This was purest guile, and Will knew it.
‘Oh, don’t treat me like a child!’
‘Then don’t behave like one. And think before you speak. There is a great difference between comforting men who have lately fought in a battle and deliberately preying upon townspeople’s credulity. The whole Realm is tumbling headlong into an abyss. Rather than question me you would do better to go out and scry for the next stone.’
Humbled, and with nothing more to say, Will went outside and did as he knew he should, leaving the wizard to his arcane labours.
As the days passed, Will settled into the rhythms of castle life. At the fifth chime of the morning, the guard was changed and smoke began to issue from the bakehouse chimney. At the seventh chime, the morning meal was served. At the eleventh hour, merchants were admitted to the outer ward. At the noonday bell, a troupe of Fellows were let in to the inner ward to kneel at their little shrine, to wash and wail for an hour at the spigot by the Round House. Folk came and folk went, and there seemed a neverending stream of lordly business. Will saw Edward many times, but always from afar. It seemed that many of the duke’s routine tasks had now fallen to his elder son. Edward shouldered them with a serious demeanour and was always surrounded by at least a dozen men to whom he must listen or issue orders. Will wanted to approach him but, as Jackhald had said, they had grown apart.
Another man to be seen increasingly in the castle grounds was Lord Dudlea. At first, Will was surprised to see him at liberty. Two guards watched over him as he worked down by the sheep pens. He was dirty and dishevelled, but the chains had been taken from his wrists and neck, if only to allow him to shovel ordure. When he met Will’s eye there was a look of such malice in his own that Will recoiled.
The intensity of that look caused Will to wonder if he had not misinterpreted it. Perhaps what he had really seen was a mixture of misery and disgust. Will wondered too about Lord Sarum’s sons, and whether a deal of exchange had yet been offered. But the next day, momentous news came that drove all other thoughts out of Will’s mind – a royal army had been spied heading up from the south.
Gort said that meant a siege must now follow, and Will agreed.
‘It was bound to happen sooner or later,’ he told Gwydion. ‘The next stone is surely here at Ludford. And that means the next battle will be here too – unless I can find it.’
‘An inescapable conclusion,’ Gwydion said.
‘Oh, yes! You must do your best, Willand,’ Gort agreed. ‘Everything now depends on you.’
And so for three more days Will wandered unhappily from the Durnhelm brewhouses to the Linney, out of the Broad Gate and all along the banks of the Theam, and from Galfride’s Tower to the Portal, but to no avail. Thousands of men laboured in sun and rain, digging entrenchments, scouring the land for food, emptying village granaries, herding great numbers of oxen, sheep and geese into the town and filling the outer ward with materials. Stockmen wove willow hurdles and put up a maze of animal pens in the market square. Nearby houses were turned into grain stores or filled with fodder. The air around the castle became filled with the stink of dung, and the sound of much lowing and bleating and honking. Inside the keep, Will found a sinister traffic as men brought out of store quantities of rusty-headed arrows and sorcerer’s powder ready to greet the enemy.
As the moon’s last quarter neared, Will was ever more troubled by fears. They clouded his mind hourly, but he combated them by fixing his thoughts immovably on Willow and Bethe. Even so, there were real worries – had Morann delivered them home without mishap? Was the Vale really safe from the devastation that had been visited upon Little Slaughter? And even if everyone at home was out of harm’s way, how long would it be before he saw them again?
‘Is Morann coming?’ he asked the wizard. ‘Does he even know where we are?’
‘He will have read the marks I left for him, marks that only a loremaster can read. Never fear, he will come if we should stand in need of him.’
But Will did fear – time was running out. He looked up now at the unkind sky. Over the last few days of grey, damp weather, soldiers had been sharpening stakes and heaping higher the muddy outer defences, lines they would have to man when the queen’s army finally came for its revenge.
He stretched, tired after three nights of broken sleep. The brightness of the moon had joined with the whirling in his brain to keep him from rest. And last night he had heard a strange, chilling wail coming from the direction of Cullee Hill. It had been a sound so unearthly that he had got up from his bed and gone over to the window. He had waited a long time, standing naked in that cold draught, thinking that if another battle began it would be his fault, but the Morrigain cry, if that was what it was, had not come again.
Now, angrily resolved to find the Ludford Stone, he climbed another earth bank and vaulted over a half-made log barricade before plunging down into a filthy ditch and scrambling up the far side. Here he tried again. But still the hazel wand felt as good as dead in his hands. He snapped it in two and threw the pieces down. Then instantly regretted his childishness, because now he would have to find a hazel tree and the only ones near grew down by the river.
As the rain came again he sat near the end of the earthworks, under a soldier’s canvas shelter, squatting on an upturned pail, watching big clear drops of water falling down from the sagging canvas above. Time and again he went over the Blow Stone’s verse, and tried to find some way to learn for sure if it was true or false.
Beside Lugh’s ford and the risen tower,
By his word alone, a false king
Shall drive his enemy the waters over,
And the Lord of the West shall come home.
Surely the mean
ing was clear enough, but perhaps he only thought that because the stone already had him hard in its grip. He looked around, feeling too thick-headed and stupid to puzzle any longer over the subtleties that must lie in words. A hundred fears had rushed into that space in his mind that he must keep open and empty.
Cold, wet fingers went to his pouch to fetch out the piece of cheese he had put there, and maybe one or two of the hazelnuts, but something was wrong.
The red fish…
It was missing.
I can’t just have dropped it, he thought, looking around, alarmed by the loss. I can’t have. Can I?
He stood up, checked his pouch again. Nothing. He retraced his steps across the Linney as best he could – nothing. All the way back to the town he searched the ground. Still nothing.
‘What have you done with it?’ he demanded of himself, unable to remember when he had last seen it. ‘You’ve managed to lose it, you fool!’
When the anger drained away he felt empty and exhausted, because there was no chance of finding it now. No chance of comparing it with the green fish that Willow had been asked to bring…
Suddenly he felt very alone. A wretched, self-pitying fear overcame him. The rain had stopped so he trudged back to the town walls and went in through the Feather Gate. A beautiful white cat was washing its paws in a sheltered corner. The cat looked at him and seemed to smile.
‘Pangur Ban?’ Will said in wonderment, his heart lifting. ‘Pangur Ban, can it be you?’
In answer, the white cat stretched daintily and turned back on himself so that his tail curled and brushed against a rough wooden post. Pangur Ban had come to him three times before. Once in Wychwoode, once in the Blessed Isle, and the last time was just after Maskull had defeated Gwydion at the Giant’s Ring. He was so blemishless and so beautiful that Will knew he could be no earthly creature.
‘Pangur Ban! Where are you leading me?’
The cat paused and seemed to understand him. Will followed, up through the goose market. Pangur Ban padded lightly ahead, rubbed his face against the corner of a merchant’s house, and stared momentarily at Will with big, golden eyes. When Will looked again to see where he might have gone there was only an old beggarwoman dressed in rags.
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