The Giants' Dance

by Robert Carter

  ‘Not…quite.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘We need someone to get close to Richard of Ebor.’

  ‘Close?’

  Lord Dudlea drew a breath. ‘Close enough to slip a knife between his ribs.’

  Will let the astounding moment run through him. ‘By that, I guess you would have me kill Richard of Ebor.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And why should I agree to that, when it would mean certain death for me?’

  Dudlea put his fingertips together. ‘In truth, it will be the death of you if you refuse.’

  Will bristled. ‘You threaten me, my lord!’

  Dudlea gave a world-weary laugh. ‘What you do not know is that I was a prisoner at Ludford in the weeks before the castle fell. There was no emissary of the Blessed Isle imprisoned in the dungeon there, for I was housed there myself. Therefore, what you told Duke Henry about yourself cannot possibly be true. I don’t know who you are, or what your game is, but you are certainly a liar and a fraud, and I know from long experience that men who are that can generally be persuaded to do the bidding of others.’

  ‘You’re talking of blackmail.’

  ‘Yes. And your choice may be simply put – do this hazardous thing for Duke Henry and succeed, and you will be rewarded richly. Try his cause, and fail, and your wife will at least outlive you. But refuse him, and you both will die painful deaths.’

  Will’s blood flowed cold in his veins. He reminded himself that Dudlea was only doing the dirty work of another. He made sure his face gave no clue and said, ‘I have heard your offer.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I will think on it.’

  ‘Do.’ Lord Dudlea sat back, a tight smile on his lips now. ‘But do not think overlong, Maceugh, for affairs are now beginning to move again. Duke Henry cannot afford to wait long for an answer.’

  Will turned, bringing the interview to an end. At the door, he nodded the slightest of bows and withdrew. He knew that finally he had been put in the dragon’s mouth, and already he could feel the dreadful jaws closing on him.

  The Great Hall of Castle Corben was ablaze with candlelight. Servants loaded the long feasting tables with a spread of meat and drink fit to honour those who had gathered. There were many nobles present – two dukes, six earls, a dozen barons, a hundred knights, all with their ladies. Many had come in haste to the royal summons, to show fealty to their king and his beautiful queen, for this was a banquet none dared miss.

  Willow had listened closely to the gossip that circulated among the queen’s ladies-in-waiting. She had learned that a mysterious ‘advisor’ had told the queen that she must take every opportunity to show her closeness to her husband, and that the fifteenth anniversary of the royal marriage would provide the perfect setting for an important announcement.

  But before the announcement must come the feast. Jarred, the queen’s conjuror, danced a parody of magic in the hall. The conjuror always painted his face for his performances, making it unnaturally pale, reddening his lips and rimming his eyes in black. It was also his habit to stick a little silver moon on one cheek and a little golden sun on the other. He blew coloured fires and made doves fly up from his hands above the laughing revellers. As the hall waited for the king to arrive festive music played. There was juggling and tumbling by a troupe of acrobats and dwarfs, and lastly a poor bear trained to dance, or at least to move its limbs to the orders of a fearful wretch with a whip.

  Will suspected that it had been brought in as a joke, scorn aimed at Earl Warrewyk’s heraldic badge, which was a muzzled bear. He was sorely tempted to bend his skills in favour of the animal’s plight, to utter a spell that would break the muzzle from the bear’s collar and send the beast bounding free towards the high table, but he remembered Gwydion’s warning that he must not do magic unless he was also willing to risk his disguise. The time for that was not yet come. To Will’s eyes, the Great Hall was a landscape of shifting quicksands that might easily swallow him. Not to have turned up tonight would have roused everyone’s suspicions, but sitting here among so many enemies had already made him uncomfortable, and the arrival of Maskull had made him sweat.

  Now trumpets blared and the conjuror, Jarred, danced a semblance of magic before them all as they prepared to feast and to drink. Will paid the entertainments scant heed – poor Jarred, who wanted only to be admired, though everyone had seen his tired tricks a dozen times. He little suspected there was one moving invisibly among his audience tonight who could have burned him to a black skeleton with no more than a fierce glance.

  Maskull was known to be at court, though he had chosen to remain unseen by everyone save the queen. But Will had the knack of seeing him too. The sorcerer threaded his way through the feast like a black viper as the queen made her entry on the king’s arm. All saw how she turned her head this way and that as she walked, and many surely counted her movements as haughty watchfulness, though she was in truth listening to what Maskull told her. The king himself, mute, wan of face and seemingly bewildered beside her, tried to shut out the voices in his head. He carried a daffodil in his thin fingers, and the badge of the white swan had been pinned on his breast. He seemed remote and unworldly, living deep within himself now, in an inner dungeon that was the only refuge of his spirit.

  At high table, King Hal took his place beside the queen. And, on the other side of her, Duke Henry sulked, severe in his lordly fur-trimmed velvets. Rich, heavily pleated robes hid an undershirt of mail that he always wore against the unlooked-for dagger. The queen’s allies had been foregathering so there were many seated at high table whom Will did not recognize, but there were also many whom he did. Beyond the king sat Lord Strange, tossing his long head and grunting temperamentally. His grey lady ate little – she sat insipid and unsmiling at his side. And there, Baron Clifton, whose wild stare showed the damage that had been inflicted upon his mind by the Blow Stone. The last guest Will’s gaze fell upon was Lord Dudlea, watchful and calculating, and accompanied now by his wife, a woman who was reputed to be his shrewdest advisor.

  As the Maceugh sat down beside his own wife he may have seemed serenely untroubled, but the matter that Lord Dudlea had put to him was still turning inside his head. The plan to hamper Richard of Ebor’s return was allconsuming. Dudlea had already said he would not wait long for the Maceugh’s answer, but there were things that must be thought through before Will could make any move. What, for instance, if the deadly plan had not come from Duke Henry? There was only Dudlea’s word that it was so. True, the plan carried the odour of Henry of Mells about it – it was simple and violent and against all the rules of chivalry, but that was hardly proof that it was Henry’s idea.

  Had it perhaps come from Maskull? Much else that stank of treachery did. This plan was simple, and meant to be final, but it seemed unlikely to be the sorcerer’s doing, for, surely, if Duke Richard died in exile, the Ebor claim to the throne would vanish and the war would cease. According to Gwydion, that was the last thing Maskull wanted, because the war was the chief means by which he was steering the fate of the world along its collision course.

  Then, might the plan have come from the queen? Or even from Dudlea himself? The first seemed more likely, but it was hard to tell. Either one might think that killing Duke Richard offered the best hope of putting an end to the war, but that was to ignore the part played by the battlestones. While those troublesome nuggets of malice remained there could be no peace. And so perhaps all attempts to kill Duke Richard were already doomed to fail.

  Will glanced at his wife. She ate sparingly, taking only a token of the food that was set before her. Her gladness over receiving news of Bethe had already turned into a pressing desire to see her daughter again. He could feel the torment she was suffering, and his admiration for her doubled again – she would not agree to leave the court without him, not even now that her own life had come under threat.

  The sacrifices we make for you, Gwydion, Will thought bleakly. If Morann had brought better
news – or worse even – then we’d know where we stood.

  Morann had, in the end, done little to help him make up his mind. All day Will had been tempted to gallop out from Castle Corben on an errand of his own: Nothing magical, just a day’s ride to try to find the nearest lign, to make a start getting onto the track of the next stone. Sometimes, when the moon’s phase was fat and gibbous, when it rode the ecliptic like a great misshapen pearl set in a silver ring, he could sense the lorc calling to him. When the flows were strong he could feel something a few leagues to the east. It seemed like the Tanne lign – the lign of the oak – the same one on which they had found the Plaguestone. And on nights of exceptional clarity there were hints and echoes of other stones further away to north and south. But the one that lay almost due east was the strongest.

  A tongue of flame flashed out as Jarred ate fire and then spewed it forth again like a dragon. He stepped and strutted for the feasting lords. Silken scarves appeared from ears and mouths, playing cards and coins flew and vanished, wine was poured from empty vessels. How Jarred delighted in the applause and bewilderment of those who watched. Will saw the oddness of the man, the need that had driven him to become master of a hundred petty illusions and sleights of hand that Gwydion said held true magic to ridicule. And while Jarred diverted the crowd, Maskull preyed upon it. The harm-doer walked the hall unseen, sliding lightly from place to place, listening to private talk, to those who had taken too much wine, hearing what passed in confidence between the dangerous Lord Dudlea and his bright-eyed lady, now whispering secrets to the queen, whose nostrils flared and whose black eyes flashed at what was reported.

  Willow put her mouth close to Will’s ear. ‘There’s a new rumour among the ladies.’

  Will noted the sorcerer lingering near Lord Strange, and nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘Go on.’

  ‘They’re saying that this time Maskull has returned to court and brought a creature with him.’

  He turned. ‘A creature?’

  ‘They are all terrified of it.’

  ‘Of it…or the idea of it?’

  ‘I think it’s real enough.’ Willow’s smile broadened, making it seem to anyone who watched that what she was saying was amusing and trivial. But even her gaiety attracted dark glances. Unlike most of the ladies present, her hair was uncovered and fell in glossy auburn locks, following the style of the Blessed Isle. Will saw envy in the eyes of many, and most especially in those attired according to the code of modesty recommended by the Sightless Ones. The knife-eyed women with whom the queen chose to surround herself were plain and mousy, and all of them delighted far too much in destructive gossip.

  ‘So far as I can tell, no one has yet seen the creature,’ Willow said, dabbing at the corner of her mouth. ‘But there’s supposed to be a reason for that.’

  Will frowned. ‘There would have to be.’

  ‘They’re saying Maskull has brought something so hideous that the very sight of it turns people to stone. Is that possible?’

  Will took a sip of wine. ‘It’s not impossible. Our absent friend has in the past spoken to me of a creature hatched from a cock’s egg by a toad that has the power to kill by its glance alone.’

  ‘Do you think Maskull’s brought a cockatrice here?’

  ‘I doubt that. He is a subtler mover than that.’

  Will’s glance now took in the web of shifting alliances that tied the court together. He was aware of the eyes that regarded him with interest. Which of them knows about the plot to kill Duke Richard? he wondered. Which of them knows that I’ve been approached?

  His skin prickled as the sorcerer came closer. Maskull was hard to see, a creature of all appearances and none. His lithe movements caused Will to shudder as others were made to shudder by the movements of a spider.

  Though he was not present in plain sight, Will could see that his suit was of midnight black set with silver signs. He wore spurs like a knight, yet he moved as soundlessly as a sneak-thief. Will’s mind dug deeper into the sorcerer’s face, sensing another duplicity there. It recoiled from the ghastly death’s-head that shimmered beneath the fair and youthful appearance which Maskull kept on show for the queen’s eyes.

  Will deliberately looked elsewhere – to where the queen and Duke Henry spoke to one another like lovers. Beside them, pale, sad Hal stared mournfully into the middle distance. Will saw the full shame of the king – the footman who stood by and dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a cloth, while under the table the queen touched the thigh of the young duke so that he leaned in on her ardently. Yet while the mother of Henry’s half-brother encouraged Henry’s desires, her glance also flirted with his two foremost rivals. And all this was played out while poor, halfmad Hal gazed on.

  As the sorcerer came within a dozen paces Will made a special effort to look through him. It was hard to do. Maskull’s eyes were black vents that led into another world. Not dead, nor yet like the glassy jewels of the violently insane, but eyes with a strange, compelling quality whose glance was unavoidable. Maskull moved away, and Will relaxed, only then realizing the assault he had been under. He squeezed Willow’s hand, glad that she could see nothing of Maskull, but then he looked casually back and found with a shock that he was staring directly at the sorcerer.

  He looked away again quickly, but he had been charmed and maybe caught too. Maskull was now on the other side of the hall, but he danced quickly around the room, moving like a black flame. Will’s eyes steadfastly did not follow. He turned again to Willow who was the safest of havens, but she was not looking his way. He dared not touch her for fear his gesture would be misunderstood as his calling attention to some inexplicable oddity he had seen shimmering in the air. He dared not mark his talent that way and said something jestful to a knight who sat nearby. The man laughed and Will laughed back, hoping that his braying would break the spell, or mask his fear. But, no. Maskull turned as if into the attack. He roared soundlessly into Will’s face, forcing a flinch.

  But Will rose to his feet and with a smile walked directly at Maskull who danced nimbly away, avoiding contact by the smallest of fractions. Will did not turn aside. Instead he stepped to the window and closed it, saying calmly, ‘Is it just me? Or is there a cold draught in here?’

  When Maskull broke off his inspection and whirled away, Will felt a weakness in his knees and was glad to sit down again. Then Jarred swept away the danger by leaping up onto a table top and shrieking, then diving off into…what?

  Into nothingness it seemed.

  He vanished. In a black flash. Gone. Through a hoop into nowhere. Not even a wisp of smoke remained.

  Those who saw it happen grabbed their neighbours and pointed to where the conjuror had disappeared. Astonishment was on many faces. ‘Did you see that? Did you see what Jarred just did?’ And, as if the queen’s conjuror was still there to receive it, they yelled their applause and stamped their fists into the table tops and waited for him to reappear to take his bow, which he did a moment later high on the gallery that overlooked the far end of the hall.

  Minstrels took their places. There was much movement in the hall. Only half those present were seated now.

  ‘Let the music begin!’ Jarred called down to them all, spreading his arms wide.

  ‘That was real magic,’ Will murmured as the music struck up.

  ‘I thought so,’ Willow answered, pulling him behind a pillar. ‘I wonder where Jarred learned a trick like that.’

  ‘I can guess. But if he learned it from Maskull, he’ll live to regret it.’

  The moment Will looked away, his eyes ran into Maskull again. He turned suddenly, making it seem as if he had forgotten something. Then he swooped on one of the fruit dishes and took an apple. He lounged beside another pillar and began to pare the skin from it with his knife as Maskull’s attention focused on him. After a long moment the sorcerer’s eyes slid away. Will’s heart beat faster, then faster again as he realized the queen herself had moved to the other side of the pillar. He had never bef
ore been so close to her. He could smell her perfume – lilies. He heard Maskull speaking insistently. Like his eyes, his voice was at once intense and seductive. He spoke at length and Will heard it all.

  ‘…once I was known as a maker of weapons, but now I have fashioned a thing of rare beauty. It is a device of greater power than any that has yet been made. It shall be my gift to you.’

  The queen looked to her advisor with a steely eye. Her fist tightened and she said softly, ‘Final victory!’

  Will inched a little further round the pillar. Queen Mag’s face was rapturous, her eyes upcast towards Maskull’s own, her lips barely moving as she spoke. ‘I will not – cannot – rest until Ebor and all his spawn are dead.’

  ‘You shall be asked to make no peace until that is done.’

  The queen smiled. ‘I have already promised Henry of Mells the quill I shall use to sign the peace. I have told him it is to be dipped in Ebor’s blood!’

  Maskull’s voice changed. Malice rippled through it, so that it almost matched the queen’s own. ‘You see? Events are unfolding as I have always told you they would. Even the most painstaking of balances may be thrown down. And remember this great truth: “In all things it is more difficult to build up than to tear down.” That is why we shall win. The very nature of the world works in our favour!’

  Then Duke Henry came to speak with the queen, his eyes suspicious to find her alone yet in such an exultant mood. He wore a querulous expression. ‘When will you tell them?’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘When?’ he repeated sulkily, unaware that Maskull was observing him from a distance of less than one pace. ‘I must know.’

  ‘Henry, your impatience is showing.’

  ‘It’s past Hal’s bed time. He’s blubbering. He must have been at the wine again—’ Then, with sudden venom, ‘You! What are you doing there?’

  Will stiffened.

  ‘I asked you a question, Islander!’

  ‘We are all here at the queen’s command.’ Will felt Maskull’s adamant gaze fall upon him.