Will recalled Mag’s extraordinary talents. He now saw how wide of the mark Lord Warrewyk’s assumptions had been. To Warrewyk, Mag was no more than the exiled wife of a captured king, a defeated power, a pauper hoping to work her wiles in a faraway court. But Will knew how formidable she would be in her plight, and with Maskull at her side she would be quite impossible to refuse.
Will nodded, suddenly aware of what effect the inflammatory news from Trinovant must already have had all across the north. The likelihood was that Mag had promised to give away the long-disputed border territory of Tweedale – ‘Berrick and its castle to you, my lord Regent, as soon as I am queen again.’ Yes! And if she had gulled the Weirds of Albanay too, then…
Will felt the ghastly stirrings of the lorc and his stomach turned over. ‘Where’s your father headed? Tell me, Edmund!’
But Edmund’s knee trembled against his horse’s flank, and his impatient party began to move off past the North Turret and into the road.
‘Why wouldn’t Edmund tell you?’ Willow asked as she flung clothes into a basket.
‘Because he’d given his word to his father.’
‘It doesn’t matter. We’re going to find out soon enough. Half the traders of Trinovant will be alongside the duke’s baggage train by the end of the first day’s march.’
‘I agree. We can afford a day’s delay, but no more. We can hardly lose them. And if we follow on horseback, we can hardly fail to catch them.’ He rubbed the back of his hand across his face. ‘But to what end? The duke won’t brook any more interference from Master Gwydion, so what can we do?’
‘Doesn’t he see that an Ogdoad wizard is the only one who can save him now?’
‘No, he doesn’t see mat.’ Will took his wife’s hand. ‘And is it true any more? The world is changing fast and the duke believes in magic even less than he used to. Where’s Lotan?’
‘Out in his new finery.’
‘Doing what?’
‘He says he feels naked without a sword.’
‘By the moon and stars! No sooner does he get his flesh back than he wants to start chopping other people up! Is there any hope for mankind?’
‘Don’t blame Lotan. It’s our world that’s turning grey.’
Will dug his fingers in his hair and swept it back from his face. ‘If the world is turning bad, then maybe not believing in magic is the only thing that will save the duke. Maybe he’s doing the right thing in adjusting piecemeal to this terrible new world that’s coming.’
Hope and strength faded from her face. ‘So…where does that leave the likes of us?’
‘For the moment we’re going to have to tail an army.’ He began to make for the gates.
The journey was no more than half a league, though the weather was against them. They arrived at the place where the Ebor army had lived for months and found there only the filthy remains of a camp. Skinny dogs and beggars raked over the ground, scavenging whatever they could, but what soldiers left behind, even when in a hurry to leave, was scant reward for those who braved the raw wind and driving rain.
The nearest alehouses were called the Lord Ordlea’s Arms and the Hogshead in the Pound, mirthfully renamed, no doubt, to ridicule the enemy in a way that soldiers would appreciate. In the first they found the innkeeper lamenting his loss of trade. In the second they picked up a confirming rumour that the queen’s host had already marched south across the border into Umberland with an Albanay army raised in expectation of plunder.
Among its many companies – or so it was said by those whose art it was to spin a tale in exchange for a drink – there lumbered wild-men and ogres from the haunted oak woods of Birnam. Once in Umberland, Queen Mag was said to have been joined by the Lords of the Pierce clan who commanded great numbers of men. And giants had come down from the misty crags of the Mountains of Umber to add their weight to the rampaging mob.
‘Giants?’ Willow asked, as they came away. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
‘That’s just Cheap-side chatter,’ Will said, looking up and down the dismal winter road as if for a better clue as to where the duke might have gone.
‘Surely we’ll find them on the Great North Road.’ Willow picked her way across a sea of mud. ‘They’ll be heading for Verlamion, or I’m a fool.’
For a second time Will surveyed the filth and destruction that had been left behind in May Fair Fields. He felt for the power that surged in the land, but the nearest lign passed too far away for his toes to pick up any sensation.
‘North…maybe you’re right, after all,’ he said doubtfully.
‘Do you think otherwise?’
‘Hmm. Don’t forget that the armies are being attracted to the next battlestone like flakes of iron to a lodestone. But is that battle necessarily going to be against Queen Mag?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Something has been working powerful trouble between Edward and his father during their time at the White Hall. I must find Master Gwydion. You go back to the palace and gather up Lotan. I’ll meet you both there at noon. I have a promise to keep.’
But it was not until mid-afternoon that Gort came in, and he brought Gwydion with him. The Wortmaster said he had arranged an urgent gathering, and Will might be surprised at who came to it. In return, Will whispered to Gort that he should brace himself for a bucketful of trouble.
‘A rift between father and son, you say?’ the wizard remarked, having listened with only slight interest to Will’s suspicions.
‘There must be some harmful token,’ Will said. ‘A carrier of Maskull’s mischief still hidden inside the palace walls, something you’ve missed.’
‘That is most unlikely. But what do you say of this undeniable curiosity?’ Gwydion held up a strange fruit in triumph.
Will was surprised. ‘What’s that?’
‘Something the like of which has never been seen here before. This morning I spoke with a Bristowe sea captain who claims to have set foot upon the isle of Hy Brasil. He brought this and other things back as proof.’
Will turned it over, unhappy at Gwydion’s way of leaving aside that which seemed most important and looking instead at trifles. ‘Fascinating. But this has no bearing on what I’m trying to tell you.’
‘Oh, but you’re quite wrong about that,’ Gort said excitedly. ‘The mariner speaks of many flowers and trees of unknown form.’ He took the fruit like a sacred offering. ‘Is this not marvelbus?’
‘Wortmaster…’ Will put a hand briefly to his head then shook it in a gesture of perplexity and frustration.
Gwydion laid an arm across Will’s shoulders. ‘A whole New World is out there in the Western Deeps, Willand. Whoever thought that our own world would end thus? Certainly not I.’
‘Master Gwydion, please listen to me!’
But the wizard still paid him no heed. Today he seemed paler and greyer and somehow less substantial than Will had ever known him, but it was the lack of focus to his thoughts that worried Will most. The wizard drew something from a fold of his robe and laid it on Gort’s untidy table. ‘You know what this is, Willand.’
It was the white rod that belonged to the duke, the one he carried as if it were a rod of office.
‘How did you get that?’ Will said, amazed. ‘I can’t believe the duke left without his unicorn wand.’
‘Unicorn? Oh, not so,’ Gort muttered, still engrossed in the foreign fruit. ‘That’s corpse-whale ivory.’
Will looked at the wand again. ‘Not unicorn? But I’ve always thought—’
‘Few people now remember unicorns,’ Gwydion said. ‘Ask whoever you like, most will claim such beasts as that never were. And why? Because there is no longer any proof. Their every trace has vanished.’
‘But…that was a unicorn’s horn once.’
‘Was it? It looks to me as if it was always a corpse-whale’s tooth.’
Will sat down heavily. ‘And what, may I ask, is a corpse-whale?’
‘A denizen of the deep.’ Gwydio
n sat back and steepled his fingers. ‘Called by those in the Far North “narwhal”. The he-narwhal has but two teeth in his head. The leftmost grows out twisting widdershins about itself until it is longer than a man is tall.’
Will scoffed. ‘Such a fish as that? It’s surely ridiculous nonsense!’
‘I speak the truth! And it is not a fish, but a creature that breathes the air like you or I. Often a broken end like that one is found on some icy northern beach and brought south, where it is inevitably taken for a unicorn’s horn by the credulous.’
‘I don’t believe that for a moment!’
‘You had better.’ Gwydion stared at him strangely. ‘For it is the only kind of unicorn horn this world shall know soon. And the only kind of truth. That pretty yale you saw – did you ever think that perhaps you had been honoured with the last ever look at such a noble beast?’
‘The last ever? You mean—’
Gort cut in. ‘Did you not know that a yale was washed up at low tide below Southfolk Steps yesterday?’
‘Dead?’
‘As a doornail.’ Gwydion sighed. ‘I would wager a king’s ransom that it was the last of its kind.’
‘Oh, no…’
‘This is how far the world has come in just a few short months. Our world is saying goodbye to us. Can’t you hear it?’
Will swallowed hard. ‘This is like some horrible dream.’
Gwydion snapped his fingers. ‘Then you must wake up!’
Just then there came a knock at the door that made Will jump like a guilty man. He opened it, and Willow ushered Lotan into the room.
‘You see – now our friend has truly escaped the Fellowship,’ she said triumphantly.
But the wizard hardly regarded Lotan. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Willow, you have done what you were always going to do. I knew you would do it, for wilfulness is in your nature.’
She braced herself, ready for the confrontation that was to come, but the wizard merely turned away.
‘Aren’t you angry?’ Will asked.
Gwydion sighed deeply, and his voice, when it came, was unruffled. ‘The time is past when a show of anger on my part could achieve anything. Willow will have to accept the consequences of her actions when the time comes. And there will be consequences, you can be sure of that.’
The wizard’s soft words struck more alarm in them than any loud remonstration could have done. But then there came the sound of footsteps in the passage outside. Heads turned, Lotan’s hand tightened on his sword scabbard, and the door flew open.
‘Morann!’ Will cried, relieved.
‘Aye, large as life.’
‘And twice as nasty.’
Morann grinned. His hat was gone and a recently healed scar lined his cheek. Wrapped in his travelling cloak of earth colours he looked like a living part of the moorland that he loved. Ever since Will had first known him there had seemed to be an air of adventure about him, but never more so than now.
‘Well, don’t just stand there with the door open!’ Gort cried. ‘Bring him in, hey?’
The greetings were elaborate. Everyone clasped one another dearly and much was spoken in the true tongue that passed Will’s meagre understanding. For a while it was possible to believe that the heyday of loremasters and wizards had not passed away, but at last Morann’s smile faded and he grew serious.
‘I come with news concerning events in the north.’
‘We already know about it,’ Will said. ‘Duke Richard’s army left this morning.’
‘Indeed. But do you know why? The queen is marching upon the brave city of Ebor.’
‘Ebor?’ Gwydion and Gort exclaimed together.
‘She has lately named it as the new capital city of the Realm. She said it will become so once she has captured it, and remain so until Trinovant is retaken.’
‘Has it fallen?’ Gwydion asked.
‘By now Ebor’s walls may have been breached, I can’t say. And ten thousand pities upon that place if they have, for the queen’s host is a fearsome thing indeed, and her anger boundless!’
‘That was quick,’ Willow said. ‘She can only just have heard about her son being dispossessed.’
‘The queen’s armies were on the move long before that. This is the revenge she has been planning since the day of Delamprey Field.’
Gwydion’s hands clenched as if he had reached a grand conclusion. ‘ “Ebor shall overlook Ebor before the year is out” – I think we too must go into the north.’
‘For what reason?’ Will asked sharply. ‘We can’t do anything about the next stone even if we find it, and we surely daren’t try to prevent the next battle for fear of dropping the world even faster into Maskull’s hands.’
‘True,’ Morann said. ‘We daren’t.’
Gwydion dismissed their objections with a wave of his hand. ‘This concerns neither stone nor battle, but Maskull himself. I have examined his chamber in detail and it seems to me that I may have found a way forward. Though it could be a dangerous one.’
‘The entire Realm is in danger…’ Morann murmured. ‘Maskull has filled the hearts of the noble warriors of Albanay with greed. They’re marching through the Northern Shires laying waste to everything in their path. Every hearth and home south of Dunhelm is being torn apart even as we speak. And there’s worse – hill trolls are in their midst. Wart-faced ogres and wild-men have come down from the mountains and high moors. They’re flocking to the queen’s banner.’
‘Then the rumours we heard were near the mark…’ Willow said. She looked to Will, who frowned back equally concerned.
‘Hill trolls…’ Lotan murmured. He had been sitting quietly with his sword laying across his knees, staring into the fire. ‘They are not so difficult to kill.’
‘I have something for you, Morann,’ Will said suddenly. He drew the loremaster into the adjoining room and lowered his voice. ‘Master Gwydion’s power is hardly recovered yet, and we don’t know if it ever will. He’s changed since the time he spent in Maskull’s fetters. He’s in no fit state to take on his old enemy and…’
‘And?’
‘Whatever weapons might have been fashioned out of the harm Maskull tapped from the Delamprey battlestone, Master Gwydion mustn’t be tempted to use them.’
‘You speak mainly of Master Gwydion, but this is no longer his fight. A crucial moment is at hand, Willand. It’s a moment that will decide the future. You must seize it manfully.’
He swallowed. ‘I…I mean to. Though I wonder if one such as I can ever become a king in a world where there is no magic.’
Morann’s eyes gleamed guilelessly. ‘There is still magic enough for that. Fae magic is the oldest and will be the last to leave the world. King Arthur will come again. Put aside your fears, Willand. You must not lose faith in yourself.’
Will felt the strength flowing into him from Morann’s simple words. He went to the table, lifted up a pouch and began to unwrap the leather thongs. Then he drew out a knife that glinted green. ‘Yours, I believe.’
Morann’s delight was plain to see. He met Will’s eye as he took the blade. It was the knife that had been sharpened on the Whetstone of Tudwal, the blade that Chlu had stolen, the one that had later saved Will’s life.
‘Aye, that’s mine right enough. And I didn’t think I’d clap eyes on it again. How did you come by it?’
‘I’ll tell you that once you’ve told me how it was taken from you.’
‘I think you already have a good idea about that.’
‘I think maybe I do.’
Morann scratched at his stubbled chin. ‘When I came to Castle Corben all those months ago I told you I’d been asked to go into the Blessed Isle.’
Will nodded. ‘And I asked you to put the word about that you’d been sent to kill Duke Richard.’
‘And I did as you asked. But that course must have been against Maskull’s plans, for when I left you I headed north towards Caster to find a ship, and on the way I was waylaid. Now, no one easily waylays
me, but…’
‘Chlu found a way.’
‘He did.’ Morann smiled ruefully at the memory, turning the blade over. ‘He’s a strong one, and he had the advantage on me, you see. And that’s because at first I thought he was your good self.’
Will grunted. ‘That was a sorry mistake to make.’
‘Well, it was dark. And in a certain light he does have the outline of you and the same timbre of voice. There was a slight altercation, you might say. He took my knife from me and then killed me with it. Or so he thought.’
Will laughed. ‘You too, eh? That old blade is as worthless as they come. Did it ever cut anything?’
‘Oh, now. I won’t have that. The magic upon it causes it to cut only when it should. I’m grateful that it chose not to cut me, for that twin of yours plunged it hard into me above a dozen times before he ran off into the night.’
‘Then I’m not surprised he thought he’d done for you.’
‘Well, I guess that’s what he’s told his master.’
When they returned to the others, Morann showed everyone the magic blade. ‘Do you see how things still come full circle, Master Gwydion? If this is not proof of how magic clings on even now, then I’m the Queen of Elmet – which I’m not. So this old world is not wholly done for just yet!’
‘The question,’ Gwydion said ominously, ‘is how are we to prevent the collision of worlds?’
Morann sat down and put his elbows on the table and waited for Will to speak up, but he did not.
‘Well, if no one else wishes to offer a solution,’ the wizard said. ‘It seems to me that I have no choice but to try to vanquish Maskull once and for all.’
‘He’s wrought magical weapons with which to destroy you, Master Gwydion,’ Willow said. ‘I think you ought to be trying to kill him.’
‘Aye, it would be a fight to the death,’ Morann said. ‘Unless anyone can think of a way he may be constrained.’
No sooner were the loremaster’s words out than Gwydion reached inside his robes and threw onto the table a piece of metal. It was heavy and maliciously wrought, the large fetter that Will had seen in Maskull’s chamber. ‘This is, I believe, an original – a first attempt which he then refined into the bracelets used to capture me.’
Whitemantle Page 21
