The Giants' Dance

by Robert Carter

  At last Willow sat back. ‘We can argue all night about what it says, but the real question is what does it mean?’

  He shrugged. ‘Shall we have a go at the cross-reading?’

  It was even more difficult. But though the last vestiges of magical disguise had departed from them, Willow could still hear the far echoes of another tongue in her head, a mystical tongue it was and ancient, one spoken in Lerisay and the other isles that took the brunt of storms roaring and raging in from the Western Deeps. They were the isles where the Maceugh’s wife had beachcombed as a little girl.

  ‘So, what do we think?’ Will said at length, drawing their guesses together.

  Willow read it out,

  ‘Soon shall there be no graves,

  In the dead place of the shoes.

  A field of statues yawns awake,

  Some say that death walks widely.’

  ‘That can’t be right.’

  They heard the horse whinny. Will put on a grubby weaver’s cap of tight-fitting linen, the sort the Harleston men wore under their straw hats, and went outside. A profound darkness had fallen on the settlement. The night was mistily starlit and, though the ground underfoot was still wet with meltwater, the warmth of a summer night had returned. Overhead the star pattern called the Anvil dominated the south-eastern sky. Below it the lign, which an hour ago had been so bright, had now faded almost to nothing.

  Willow joined him. ‘What’re you looking at?’

  ‘He’s skulking out there somewhere,’ he said. ‘But he won’t come near us tonight, not if he knows what’s good for him.’

  ‘It’s very strange. He came to kill you, but he’s ended up helping you.’

  ‘Ironies like that often happen where magic’s involved. I’m sorry we let him get away. There’s much he could have been made to tell.’

  Willow touched his chin. ‘I’m sorry, Will, but when I saw his face – your face, I mean – I couldn’t hold on to him. Was it some kind of magical defence do you think? A trick to make me let go of him?’

  ‘It must be. That night at the Plough I couldn’t remember his face. And whenever Maskull sent him to walk abroad, it was with his face hidden. I want to know what kind of spell it is that drives him so hard to find me.’

  ‘A powerful one. It has to be Maskull’s doing.’

  ‘But perhaps it’s not a spell. There’s no taint that I can taste.’

  ‘Then why does Chlu want so much to kill you?’

  ‘I meant to find that out…’

  She lowered her head, too ready to take the blame. ‘I’m sorry…’

  ‘Oh, that wasn’t your fault. You’re the one that saved the day.’ The horse stamped again and tried to pull away from the hitching post. ‘Hush now. What’s the matter with you, Dobbin?’ he said gently, but she would not settle.

  Willow’s hand tugged her husband’s arm. ‘Shhhh! Did you hear…?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It sounded a long way off. I don’t know what it was, but I’ve heard it before.’

  As they listened, a thin cry trailed across the sky. It seemed at once alien and fearsomely familiar. The horse whinnied again and Will blew on the animal’s muzzle and gentled her for a long time before she became calm again.

  ‘Was it the Morrigain?’ Willow asked. ‘Is she abroad tonight, warning of deaths that are to come?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, not wanting to worry her with his darkest thoughts. ‘It’s gone now. The best thing we can do is try to gather our strength for tomorrow.’

  He walked a circle and checked the earth with his scrying sense. The stink of bad aspect had faded from the ground. He had a good feeling about the place now, and knew they would be safe tonight, though he wondered how long it would be before Chlu launched another attack.

  When Willow went indoors, Will took his chance to assay the earth streams for a moment longer. He had felt the lorc directing its power urgently southward. Now that feeling was confirmed. Gwydion had made a mistake in leaving the stones undisturbed for so long. The four years of Maskull’s exile had been a real opportunity, and Gwydion had squandered it.

  You should have asked for my help, he told the wizard silently. I would have come. I would have found them all. But you chose caution. You hoped things would turn out all right on their own, and now the Doomstone has gathered its strength again.

  But then an even more uncomfortable thought struck him, and he wondered if he had the courage to face it squarely.

  ‘Then again, maybe I’m to blame,’ he said. ‘Maybe the magic that guides the fate of the world needed me to make an offer, rather than wait to be asked. Oh, where are you, Gwydion, when a man needs his most important questions answered?’

  He went inside and barred the door.

  Willow adjusted the sleeves of the shirt that hung next to the grate. The fire was dull red and ashy now, but a single rushlight was burning on the table nearby with a smoky flame that turned Willow’s hair to gold.

  ‘You’re very beautiful,’ he told her.

  She touched the fish talisman that hung around his neck, looked up at him. She clutched her knees to her chest and warmed her toes, but when he leaned close she turned and kissed him, and they lay together and made love until the rushlight flame sputtered out.

  ‘I love you,’ she said in the darkness.

  ‘And I love you too. And I always will.’

  The next day he roused Willow before sunrise. The night had been untroubled, and there had been no sign of Chlu or the linen weavers. Out by the lake, a pair of mallard ducks had appeared, and there seemed no ill result caused by the harm that had escaped the Harle Stone.

  Will made up a bundle of smoked ham and apples, took a water bottle from one of the weavers’ sheds and paused to dance a spell of protection and cast words of thanks over the dwelling that had afforded them their rest. It was risky, but it felt right, and if that slight magic drew Chlu down on them, then so much the better.

  He went out to sling their meagre pack behind the horse’s saddle, and called Willow.

  ‘You never do these up tight enough,’ she chided as she checked the horse’s girth strap.

  ‘I don’t like to hurt the beast.’

  She rolled her eyes and tutted. ‘I heard you whisper your bargain in the mare’s ear –“You carry us without complaint and I’ll not dig my heels in your ribs.” Now what sort of a horseman says that, Willand?’

  He grinned. ‘A poor one.’

  ‘So,’ she said, putting hands on hips. ‘Where shall we ride to?’

  ‘Where we’ve been told we shouldn’t.’

  ‘You mean to Corde-whatever-it-is?’

  ‘Cordewan.’ He stroked the horse’s neck solemnly. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit too close?’

  He shrugged. ‘Why? Some battlestones are quite near one another, others stand far off.’

  ‘But there’s got to be a pattern to the way they’re laid out, hasn’t there?’

  He looked hard at her, wondering why the same thought had never occurred to him. ‘Fighting the lorc is certainly like fighting a many-headed monster, but if there is a pattern to its array, I can’t see it. Still, I’ll bet you a bag of gold to a buttercup that the next battlestone is buried at Delamprey.’

  ‘Why? Because of the verse?’

  He nodded. ‘Partly. And partly what the carriers said – that Delamprey was near a place called Hardingstones. Listen to the verse: “Now in a field of death…” What’s a field of death, do you suppose?’

  She sighed. ‘A battlefield?’

  ‘Maybe. Or a cemetery. Then, “Barefoot statues shall walk, the graves shall yawn wide, and the plague-dead shall talk.”’

  She looked back blankly. ‘I don’t see the meaning of that at all. But it’s a fair bet the battle will take place somewhere near Cordewan, if only because Maskull sent the king’s victuallers to Delamprey, and all the nobility loyal to the king has been ordered to muster there.’

>   ‘I wonder why he chose Delamprey, when the Harle Stone was active. Do you think the lorc knew what would happen? Or Maskull – did he know?’

  She shook her head. ‘You’re reading too much into it. Delamprey’s near the Great North Road. Maybe they were planning to assemble and then march north to meet Duke Richard’s army.’ She rubbed her arms as if against a chill. ‘I hope Morann’s all right. Do you think the battle will come today?’

  His eyes followed the skyline. ‘The lorc is waxing. I remember how things felt on the day of Blow Heath. I think the battle will take place today, but it might come tomorrow or even the day after. I believe the reason Maskull went to Delamprey is because the battlestone’s buried there.’

  She blinked at the idea. ‘Do you think he’s found it?’

  ‘He must have. You know that Foderingham is only seven or eight leagues to the north-east of here. One night, years ago, when I was lodging there but before you came, I had a dream that woke me up. I saw Death in the castle grounds as plain as day. I was scared. I thought he was searching for me. But I now know it was not Death I saw at all, it was Maskull – and what he was searching for was not me, but the Dragon Stone. He’s like Gwydion. He doesn’t have the talent in him to find the battlestones by himself. He needs someone like me to help him.’

  ‘Someone like you?’ She looked at him suddenly, but said nothing more.

  He stared at the shrunken, darkened stump that stood crookedly in the pond. The sun glinted on the jagged edge where the top half had been cloven free by Chlu. Gwydion had said long ago that the breaking of a battlestone by violence risked unforeseeable – but certainly terrible – consequences. Yet here was a second stone that had been cracked in two, and no great catastrophe had come to pass. Perhaps such harm as had escaped would come together and fall like poison rain over the next battle.

  Fears welled up, and this time he chose to speak them aloud. ‘When Gwydion and I first found the Dragon Stone, we took it to Foderingham,’ he said. ‘We followed the road that led by the town of Cordewan. We passed a meadow of grass along by the River Neane. There were many standing stones, hundreds of them, all grouped together, like so many people waiting for something awful to happen. I had what Gwydion called a premonition. It was an unpleasant feeling that came just as we passed by – a vision of the plague. I remember Gwydion remarking that I shivered, “as if someone had walked on my grave”. Yes, those were his words. I asked him about the field and what was in it. He said they were tombstones, but unlike any tombstones that I might see elsewhere.’

  ‘What do you think he meant by that?’

  ‘When the Great Plague came to Cordewan in the olden days it killed many folk. When some saw the signs of the pestilence starting on their bodies they fled to the College of Delamprey. There a bargain was struck with the Sightless Ones. So great was their fear that they begged the red hands to use such sorcery as they commanded to turn them to stone and so preserve their lives.’

  ‘They preferred to give themselves over to sorcery rather than die a natural death?’ she asked, revolted by the idea.

  ‘So Gwydion said. Then the red hands gave it out that those who were turned to stone must wait three times three dozen and one years, until a healer would come to bring them back to life. That’s a hundred and nine years.’

  ‘And how many years have passed since the Great Plague?’

  ‘Let me reckon it back,’ he said, counting the reigns of five kings off on his fingers, before looking up at her. ‘It’s…it’s now a hundred and eleven years since the mortality came to Cordewan.’

  ‘Then it doesn’t fit,’ she said. ‘The Hardingstones should have been healed two years ago.’

  ‘Not unless they’ve already been healed.’

  ‘But that carrier said they were near Delamprey. He wouldn’t have said that if they had gone two years ago.’

  ‘Something’s wrong. Or someone’s been meddling. Maskull, or the red hands maybe.’

  ‘Will?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Remind me what you made of the alternate reading of the verse.’

  He thought for a moment, then began to stumble over the lines afresh,

  ‘Soon shall there be no graves,

  In the dead place of the shoes.

  A field of statues yawns awake,

  Some say that death walks widely.’

  ‘“The dead place of the shoes”,’ Willow repeated. ‘That doesn’t sound right. Are you sure that’s what it means?’

  Will puzzled over it in silence for a while, then he said, ‘Cordewan gets its name from its main trade, which is making shoes. A lot of cordwainers and leather tanners live there. Maybe the verse might be better this way,

  ‘Soon no more the plague pits,

  Shall hold the dead of Corde.

  A field of statues shall awake,

  And death shall walk abroad.’

  She nodded approvingly. ‘That sounds much better. It’s a neater verse anyway. Though I don’t know how much good will come of fathoming its meaning.’

  ‘I really think we ought to head for Delamprey as fast as we can.’

  She embraced him. ‘We’d better take care not to be seen. We don’t know where Chlu went, but he can’t be far away. If the court have taken the straight road they must have arrived already. We’re no longer in disguise, and there’ll be plenty among Lord Strange’s retinue who could remember us from Ludford before the castle fell.’

  Will tied the strings of his weaver’s cap and mounted up, wanting only to ride on and leave Harleston to those who lived in it. He leaned forward, ready to pull Willow up behind him, but she took her hand away from his and said, ‘Do you think it’d be all right to fill our water flask from the pond?’

  He nodded. ‘We should. We have some thirsty work ahead.’

  She bent to fill the flask, but then paused as if she had seen something in the mud by the pond’s edge.

  ‘What is it?’ Will said, looking down from the horse.

  ‘Oh, Will! Look! It’s just like your talisman. Only it’s…red.’

  Will jumped down and took it from her, staring at it in amazement. ‘By the moon and stars! It’s the red fish, the token I found at Little Slaughter! The one I think Chlu stole from my belongings at Ludford just before you arrived. However did it come here?’

  ‘He must have dropped it.’

  ‘I don’t believe it…Willow, something strange is happening here.’ Will looked around and drew Morann’s blade from his belt, suspecting a trap, but for all that he tried he could feel nothing of Chlu’s presence.

  ‘What’s the meaning of it?’ Willow asked sharply, disliking the red fish and reacting against the weirdness of the moment.

  He studied the fish for a while longer, then brought his own talisman out of his shirt and compared them. Each was no bigger than his thumb. They were both graven with three triangles nested within one another. The two fish were identical in all respects except colour. ‘It seems as if they were meant to fit together mouth to tail.’

  He brought them together in that arrangement, but as he did so he felt a sudden pressure in his fingers. It was as if the two fish wanted to be connected. Then there was a sudden jolt and a flash of blinding light, and there in his hands was a real fish, a big, silver-grey salmon! It threshed and wriggled from his grasp, and leapt into the retting pond.

  Will stared in awe as it swam quickly from the shallows and was gone.

  Willow looked down at the water, dumbstruck. ‘Oh, Will!’

  ‘My talisman…’ he said faintly. ‘How am I going to break the next battlestone without my talisman?’

  By the time they reached the River Neane they had still not recovered from the shock of the calamity, but Will knew there was nothing else for it but to go on. He saw men labouring and others foraging the land around. They were soldiers. Earthworks were being hastily thrown up on the far bank of the river and in the grounds of the old cloister of Delamprey. There was no doubt that this was a place being prepared for
battle.

  Will found a sandy mound smothered in burrows. It had been a thriving warren, but there were ferret tracks in the soil that spoke of a recent slaughter of coneys, killed to feed the army. Nearby stood a grove of ash trees. That was as near to Delamprey as Will dared go. He decided to leave the horse tethered in a glade and hope that it was close enough to the chapter house to have been already scavenged for game.

  As for the battlestone, Will could feel nothing of its presence, except an eerie silence and perhaps the creeping sense of impending doom.

  ‘I’ll have to scry for it,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll never get near. And if you did, how can you drain it without your talisman?’

  ‘Maybe I can’t, but I might be able to find out what Maskull’s up to.’

  ‘Be careful, Will.’

  He smiled at her and cautiously opened his mind. Nothing. The absence of feeling was worrying. Even at this distance from the cloister he could see that a battle would have to take place here soon. As he passed a critical eye over the preparations, a persistent vision leapt at him – that of Maskull smugly believing he had chosen the time and place of battle. In reality, Will knew, the battlestone was doing the choosing.

  Several thousand men were grimly going about the task of preparing the ground. They had secured both flanks and heaped up defences between. They had fortified the cloister itself too. It was old, little more than a royal manor house with a couple of large enclosed yards and a tall tower built of the local brownstone, though now an ornate iron weather vane surmounted it. Will recalled Gwydion’s remarks, that it had indeed once been a royal house, but that over the centuries its lands had been granted away piecemeal to the Fellowship and eventually it had been taken over almost entirely by them. First they had made it into a cloister college. Now, from what Will could make out, it seemed to have become a sequestering hall, a place where the inconvenient womenfolk of lordly households could be sent to live if they incurred their masters’ displeasure.

  ‘You must go on from here alone,’ Willow said, echoing his own thoughts. ‘Two spies are better than one. I’ll go over to the earthworks and see what I can find out about the king.’