Whitemantle

by Robert Carter

  ‘I understand,’ Lord Dudlea said eagerly. Though he did not understand much at all, and his eyes were fever bright. ‘I can vouch that Master Willand’s word was given in true hope, at least – hope that a greater good would be born of it.’

  ‘That, alas, is not nearly enough. For magic springs from moral strength. In the true tongue the name of magic means ‘keeping the word’. Such stuff may not be coldly traded, for in that case the results will not be as expected. And those whose hopes are pinned upon debased magic are doomed to be disappointed.’

  ‘Then, if only for pity’s sake…’

  ‘Pity, you say? How that word has been warped over the years! Pity is properly what we feel for those who have given themselves over to weakness and so harmed others. What you mean is not pity, but fellow feeling. Do I have fellow feeling for you, John Sefton? Do I have enough? That is what you want to know.’

  The lord stared back as if already stricken. ‘Do you?’

  ‘The question you are asking now is: have you merited it?’ He shook his head, apparently amused, and turned back to the crate. ‘I must not try to remove the spell directly, for that is now all but impossible. However, I may attempt the laying on of a counter-spell.’

  Dudlea swallowed hard. ‘Do whatever you think, Master Gwydion. Only, I beg you, please do not fail them. I love my wife. I cannot live without her. And my boy is both son and heir to me.’

  The wizard inclined his head. ‘You have a quick mind, John Sefton, and how uplifting it is to hear a squalid politicker such as you speak from the heart at last. Is it not time that you put on the mantle of statesman and set aside your childish plots? You are not yet become another Lord Strange. You may still choose dignity. So cease your peddling of lies and threats, keep the promise of your ancestors, even as I shall keep Willand’s promise tonight. And remember that men of privilege are but stewards of this Realm. You should not fail it in its hour of need.’

  The lord had hung his head but as Gwydion finished he looked up boldly and met the wizard’s eye. ‘I’ve behaved like a fool, Crowmaster. I told myself that desperate times called for desperate measures, but I see now that I was only being weak. I will take your advice as my watchword.’

  ‘See that you do. What passes here tonight is not to be spoken about. And, since true magic depends upon truth of spirit, what you pledge to me here and now will take effect in the flesh of your wife and son. If you break your bonden word to me, the counter-spell will be undone and your kin will slowly – painfully – return to stone. Do you understand this warning that I give to you?’

  Dudlea closed his eyes. ‘I do.’

  ‘Then return to me your solemn word that what you witness here tonight will remain with you alone unto death.’

  ‘I do so promise.’

  Gwydion gathered himself. He stood gaunt and twisted as a winter oak as he drew the earth power inside him for a long moment. Words of the true tongue issued from his mouth. Cunning words coiled like ivy, blossomed like honey-suckle, gave fruit like the vine. Then he stepped around the crates, gathering up a charm of woven paces and waving hands, dancing out in gestures and speaking a spell of great magic that began to fall upon the two effigies.

  A crackle of blue light passed over woman and child as they lay side by side. Will seized Lord Dudlea’s arm when he started forward, knowing he must not let the lord interfere once that blue glow had enveloped them.

  A noise that was not a noise grew loud in their heads. And slowly, as Gwydion danced and drew down the power, shadows flew and the tent filled with the tang of lightning-struck air. Their skins prickled and their hair stood up, and slowly in those two strange beds of straw the cold whiteness of marble became tinted as living flesh is tinted, and the wax of death began to give way to the bloom of life.

  Will felt the unbearable tension of great magic. He closed his mind against it, but it tore at him as a storm tears at a hovel. Willow, tougher by far, hung onto the lord’s flailing arms, holding him back as his wife and son rose up from their coffins like spectres. Lord Dudlea called out. His eyes bulged in helpless horror as a weird light played blue in his wife’s eyes. Something moved the boy’s lips, then jolted them again as the figures floated free above the ground. But just as Will began to think they could not hold the lord any longer, a shuddering racked both woman and boy and they fell down as if in a faint. Yet now they were moist and soft and alive, and as the noise and light vanished away they began to breathe again.

  ‘Oh, joy!’ Lord Dudlea called out as he attended his kin. He reached up to touch the wizard’s robe. ‘Thank you, Master Gwydion! With all my heart I thank you!’

  Will opened the tent and stepped out as soon as he could. Willow went with the wizard to join those by the fire whom Gwydion said must now have their minds set at ease. They left Lord Dudlea to his family, and Will stood alone under the moon and stars, trembling, a mass of glorious emotions coursing through him. The power that flowed at Gwydion’s direction was truly awesome, and Will reminded himself that it was not every day the dead came to life again.

  They parted company in the early morning.

  Lord Dudlea took Gwydion’s hand. With bowed head, he pledged himself. ‘I shall keep my word, Crowmaster. I shall wait for the army that now marches south towards Trinovant, and I shall offer service to Duke Richard of Ebor.’

  ‘Is that wise?’ Will asked. ‘You were his captive before you escaped. Then you joined the queen against him.’

  ‘It was the king’s court to which I fled, not the queen’s.’

  ‘Oh, indeed? Rumour has it that you tried to arrange the murder of Richard while he was still in the Blessed Isle.’

  The lord’s eyes opened wide and his wife looked to him as if she had been betrayed by a foolish act carried out in her absence. ‘That rumour is a lie.’

  Gwydion looked upon the lord pityingly and spread his hands. ‘A lie, John Sefton? We have not even taken our leave of this clearing and already you have betrayed your promise to me. Is it so hard to be true to your word?’

  ‘Forgive him, Master Gwydion,’ Lady Dudlea begged. ‘I have been his staff. Without a wife to oversee his policies things naturally go awry with him.’

  The wizard smiled. ‘It would be better if you let him be, lady. Grown men must learn to rely on their own consciences. It seems to me that the main question you now have before you is this: how will Lord Warrewyk receive you when next you meet? He murdered a great many of the queen’s friends after the battle.’

  Lord Dudlea met Gwydion’s eye. ‘However he looks upon us, I shall lay myself upon the king’s mercy. If that means pleading for the Duke of Ebor’s mercy too, then that I shall do also.’

  ‘Do you think he has the strength to do the right thing?’ Willow asked when they were out of sight.

  But Gwydion only smiled.

  The wizard took them south on unfrequented roads, ones that went the longer way around but avoided the great chapter house at Verlamion. For that Will was grateful. He disliked and feared the Sightless Ones – or ‘red hands’ as the common folk privately called them – and he knew that at Verlamion they would be as thick as wasps about a honey pot.

  The company spent the morning journeying through fruitful farm land. Will knew that if the weather kept dry for a month this part of the Realm would see a good harvest. But then, when the reaping and threshing was all done and the nights began to close in and leaves began spreading red-gold in the hedges, then out would come the Sighdess Ones with their tally sticks and counting frames to take away the best portion of the bounty from the churls who had grown it.

  At Aubrey End Will announced that he could feel the presence of a green lane. The flow of earth power was strong in the soil and Gwydion marked the place with his sigil in the bole of a tree. The lign tasted, Will said, like that of the elder, and Gwydion said that, unless he was very much mistaken, they would soon cross the lign of the rowan too, and this they did before they had gone another league.

  Will
looked along the lign and knew it for the same stream of dark power that flowed through Ludford, many leagues to the west. And when he looked eastward he knew they could be no more than a couple of leagues west of Verlamion. A shiver passed through him. Gwydion had said that the Elders of the great chapter house there would stop at nothing to bring to book the defiler who had cracked their Doomstone. Will had not cared that it had turned out to be none other than the lid that sealed the tomb of their revered Founder. He had only wanted to break the lorc’s stony heart that day, and he had saved many a life by his actions.

  They came to the banks of the River Gadden well before noon. It was here that Will felt yet another lign prickle his skin. This one was fainter and harder to follow, but it seemed to trend a little south of east, much as the rowan lign had. There was no doubt in Will’s mind that it was the yew lign, the same that passed close by the Vale.

  ‘Keep up!’ Gwydion called back, flicking the reins of his horse.

  ‘Master Gwydion, I can feel the Eburos lign.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Nothing – except I thought it was our task to find more battlestones.’

  ‘There is no time to tarry at present. We must reach Trinovant before nightfall!’

  ‘Then ride on ahead of us!’ Will told him. ‘We’ve a young child to consider. And this old nag’s already tired out.’

  The wizard waited for them to draw abreast. ‘I would rather you came along with me,’ he said with exaggerated patience. ‘This is not a safe time for anyone to be on the road. News of the battle has yet to reach these parts and there will be much uncertainty in men’s hearts.’

  Will saw that Gwydion’s impatience was unsettling his horse. It had soon taken him fifty paces ahead and was champing to get on further still.

  Willow watched the wizard with concern. ‘He’s getting grumpier by the hour,’ she whispered. ‘I hope he’s all right.’

  ‘He’s worried. And is it any wonder, when things have gone so far astray?’

  He partly meant their quest to rid the Realm of battlestones, but he was also thinking of the unspeakable bloodshed that had followed the fight at Delamprey. While a greater battle had been narrowly prevented, the murder of so many noble prisoners at Lord Warrewyk’s hands had blighted the victory. Will was sure that act had sown the seeds of revenge – seeds that must eventually be reaped as a yet bloodier harvest.

  So far as the battlestones were concerned, the loss of Will’s talisman had been an even greater blow, for it was the only real weapon they had ever possessed. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed that Gwydion was right – Maskull had finally gained the upper hand.

  ‘And you can cheer up, too!’ Willow said. ‘Things might have gone a lot worse for us. That loathsome woman – I won’t dignify her with the title of queen – is running away into the north with what’s left of her friends. Things look set for a change at last, and probably a change for the better.’

  ‘Maybe. But Master Gwydion once told me to remember that we’re peacemakers – we shouldn’t be feeling pleased that Duke Richard’s forces won at Delamprey, even though he’s been a better friend to us than his enemies ever have. The balance has been shifted again, and that’s the important thing.’

  Willow settled Bethe in a more comfortable position in front of her. ‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t feel happy for the duke. We lived among his household. You were even schooled with his sons. Duchess Cicely helped my father and me when she might have sent us back to face Lord Strange’s displeasure. And she looked after Bethe as if she was one of her own.’

  He sighed, trying to see how best to put it. ‘I’m not saying Duke Richard isn’t a good man at heart. He’s probably better than most, but he’s human like us all, and—’

  Willow grunted. ‘And what? When fighting against him is that she-wolf who cares nothing for nobody. Tell me where’s our loyalty supposed to lie?’

  ‘You just have to try to see things more broadly. That’s what Master Gwydion means.’

  ‘Oh, is that it?’

  Will sucked his teeth. He saw the way his infant daughter’s eyes swept across the land, drinking in everything they noticed, delighting in every bird and squirrel she saw. Her expressions were so much like her mother’s, and yet Willow said they were exactly like his own.

  ‘It’s got something to do with the way the past gets made out of the future,’ he said. ‘There’s the future where all is uncertain and yet to be fixed, and there’s the past, where all is done and cannot be undone. But where the future touches the past, there’s a thin line. That’s what we call the present. That’s where we live.’

  ‘I see,’ she said unconvincingly.

  ‘And the present’s the only part we can affect with our free will, don’t you see? Because what we choose to do in the present affects the way the future is turned into the past.’

  ‘Well, I know that,’ Willow said, unimpressed. ‘That much even Bethe knows, don’t you, sweet baby?’

  ‘But…but the point is, Master Gwydion says there’s only one “true path”, one track through time that’s the best of all possible destinies. If everybody did what was right by everybody else then the best possible world would come about as soon as blink.’

  ‘You mean like it does in the Vale when everyone argues and we all somehow come to a compromise in the end?’

  ‘Exactly! But you see not everybody can do right because there are powerful people out here and they’ve multiplied their strength so that now most people just take orders and don’t even think about what they’re doing. And then there’s Maskull, who’s done that more than anyone. And because he’s a sorcerer that means he understands the harm he’s doing, which is even worse.’

  Willow let it all sink in. She shook her head. ‘Then why is he doing it?’

  Will shrugged. ‘He’s a renegade, a cock who thinks the sun has risen to hear him crow. He’s broken his vows of guardianship and forgotten all about humility and kindness and all the things he always said he cared about. He wants to live forever and go on and on in charge of the world, and he thinks he might have found a way to make that happen.’

  ‘So that’s the path he’s leading us all towards.’

  ‘Yes. It’s one that will reward him alone. He’s started behaving as if he’s found a way to live forever and enjoy power forever. But to do that he needs to turn the future of the world far away from the true path. And Master Gwydion says that if we get pushed too far from the true path, then we’ll never be able to get back to it. Maskull will have won, and the world won’t ever be the same again.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘We won’t ever be able to get it back?’

  ‘No. If Maskull steers history along that terrible, false path, he’ll take us towards a world without magic – it’ll mean five hundred years of ceaseless war, and the end of the world that we know. Now you see what Master Gwydion’s really fighting for: he wants us to have the best of all possible worlds, or for us to come as close as we can to getting that. That’s why he wants us to follow the true path. It’s not all that complicated an idea in the end, but it’s hard to make it happen.’

  Willow offered no reply. There was just the sound of horses’ hooves clopping along the dusty track, the buzz of flies in the hot July air and a baby gurgling to herself at all that she saw and heard.

  After a while, Will said unhappily, ‘You know what? The batdestones are Maskull’s big chance. I’ve begun to see it all quite clearly now. Master Gwydion had everything going along nicely, but then the lorc awakened and the stones started the very war that Maskull needs to turn the destiny of the world to dust. While the stones stay in place they’re like rotten teeth in a jaw – there’ll be a lot of pain and suffering up and down the Realm, and that’s what Maskull needs if he’s going to work his designs. That’s why we have to root the stones out.’

  Once more Will felt a pang of guilt at the way he had lost his talisman. It seemed suddenly to be a gigantic setback. He thoug
ht again of the moment when he had broken the malice of the Blood Stone at Ludford, and he was more certain than ever that he could not have done it without the green fish.

  ‘You told me you thought Master Gwydion was losing his powers,’ Willow said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘But it didn’t look like he was weakening last night. Lady Dudlea and her son woke up like nothing heavier than a troubled night’s sleep had lain upon them.’

  Will’s gaze was fixed on the road ahead. ‘That’s true, but depetrification isn’t so difficult, and I helped him somewhat. Did you see how he milked it for all it was worth?’

  ‘Milked it? What do you mean?’

  ‘You must have noticed how he went as close as he could to trading without crossing the line. Trading magic for favours is against the redes. But he asked Lord Dudlea to change his ways while the fates of his wife and son were still in the balance. I’d call that pretty close to coercion.’

  ‘Oh, you’re reading too much into it.’

  Will grunted. ‘Am I? Master Gwydion’s not above a little chess playing, you know. Look how he works on you and me to get his bidding done – tempting us out here, making us follow him all over the place. You shouldn’t underestimate him, you know.’

  ‘He’s done no such thing, Will. It was you who summoned him. And it was my choice to come with you.’

  ‘Oh, he makes it seem that way, but the truth is he’s a dozen times wilier than any fox.’

  ‘Master Gwydion can’t help it if the Vale’s become too dangerous for us to go home to. I’m just happy we’ve got somewhere else.’ She paused. ‘We have got somewhere else…haven’t we?’

  Will sighed. ‘He told me he’s taking us to the royal palace – you can call that a home if you like, but I wouldn’t.’

  ‘The royal palace of the White Hall…’ Willow’s voice softened as she fussed with Bethe. ‘Just the place for King Arthur.’