Whitemantle

by Robert Carter

  That message too had been about illness and graves and awakening. But as Will opened his mind to it a little more he began to recall yet another verse.

  ‘King and Queen with Dragon Stone.

  Bewitched by the Moon, in Darkness alone.

  In Northern Field shall Wake no more.

  Son and Father, Killed by War.’

  That one had appeared on the Dragon Stone. The last time Will had read it was moments before the malign power trapped inside had lashed out and overwhelmed Edmund.

  The puzzle stayed with Will as they rode up through Isling Forest, where well-to-do young men came to hunt on rest days like these. He saw children wrestling, leaping and playing at ball upon Fensburgh Hill, and much sliding on the frozen ponds of Finchlea. Will wanted to veer off and take a quicker way across the fields, but at the wizard’s urging, they stuck to the main road. By the time they reached Whetstone, three leagues north of the City walls the sun was fully up and the road thawing, and Will had begun to taste the particular flavour of the hazel lign. Then at Baronet Hadlea, where they halted to water the horses, he recognized the bitter foulness of the elder lign emerging from a rise. It lay beneath the taste of the hazel and corrupted it, a taint he knew from Delamprey and from Verlamion before that. Will sickened suddenly, and the moment he slid down from his horse he knew this for a place where a battlestone of great power lay.

  ‘What is it?’ Willow asked, coming to him while the others looked on anxiously from a distance. ‘You’re as pale as a cheese.’

  ‘Tell Master Gwydion,’ he said, his throat so constricted that his voice seemed strangled. He waved a hand vaguely to the north. ‘It’s here…’

  And then he fell down and his head banged hard, and he lay groaning.

  ‘Quickly! Get him off the ground!’ Gwydion ordered.

  Judging by the look of concern on Willow’s face I must be a sight to see, the calm, disembodied part of Will thought. He knew his face must be twisted up like one suffering the racks of a dread disease, but there was a disconnection between his mind and his leaden body, so that it would not do as he told it.

  ‘Come on, Green-gills,’ Morann told him gently. ‘Let’s get you back on your horse.’

  Spirit and body joined again with a clap. He retched then vomited as Morann and Lotan lifted him. And they all stood poised, waiting to see if he would slide off his horse again.

  ‘I don’t like it here,’ he said, spitting untidily as he came to. ‘Elder, hazel and yew – all of them flowing into one another. The place stinks of…death!’

  ‘I won’t tell you what you stink of,’ Morann said, his humour stoutly intact, but he was worried. He had never seen Will’s talent react so strongly.

  Willow handed Will a cloth and he wiped the mud from his face.

  ‘A premonition?’ Gort whispered to the wizard, but it was loud enough for Will to catch.

  ‘No!’ he cried out to the pair of them. ‘Let that not be so!’ And the cloth fluttered from his hand, was caught by the wind and flew up into a stark, leafless bush.

  As they rode on, the stomach cramps and dizziness began to leave him, but he could not yet marshal his thoughts as he wished. His spine seemed to have turned to gristle and he had difficulty keeping his saddle. They stopped and tied his ankles together, passing a rope along his horse’s girth strap. Gort laid healing hands upon him and gave him a draught of something that overpowered his senses and made him wipe his mouth often.

  ‘Have a care. We don’t know what he’s seeing,’ Lotan said, lifting up one of Will’s eyelids. ‘I think we must try to get him out of harm’s way.’

  ‘How can we?’ Gwydion demanded harshly. ‘How, when we cannot see the ligns that are doing this to him?’

  ‘Don’t you know where they run?’

  ‘What business is it of yours what I know?’

  For the next hour, Will swam in and out of shallow consciousness, and the horror of the vision that played in his head ebbed and flowed. He seemed now to be enfolded in thick fog, now seeing ghost armies marching out of a misty morning, men-at-arms and knights in harness, banners held on high, swords drawn, chanting as they advanced upon the enemy. And then he saw himself locked in among the men of the first rank of an unsteady rabble, armoured only in a leather coat and an ill-fitting iron bonnet. He had a billhook in his hand, and he was being thrust forward, too fast, by the pressure of men behind him. He was their shield, and the speed with which they forced him towards the enemy was frightening. It was as if they wanted the clash to be done and over as quickly as possible, as if they knew they had no choice but to try their hand against death and wanted to find out if they had won or lost. But Will only wished they would stop. He wanted it all to stop – for everyone to stand still and drop their weapons and shout out, ‘I won’t do what you tell me!’

  But the gap between Will and the men they called the enemy was narrowing with every step. The clash was coming closer and closer, and now he could see the horror in the faces of the enemy. Now their bills and poleaxes were lowered and they began stabbing and chopping furiously and there were screams and he saw flesh cleaved open, steaming obscenely in the cold morning air. Then as he fended off blows, there came a deafening clatter, and his helmet brow was shoved down so that its hard rim split open the bridge of his nose. The lines of men closed, smashed together, and his arms were shoved back, pinned, and the shaft of another man’s poleaxe dug into his neck and prayers to Almighty God filled the air around him.

  The irresistible pressure at his back had forced him chest to chest with a terrified man whose face was splashed with blood but whose right hand had found enough space in that tightly packed crush to stab him full in the belly with a dirty little knife. Then the pain came, and the understanding that his body was being ripped open, inch by inch, butchered by a man screaming insanely in his face. There was not even the decency of death to blind him, and nothing he could do but look into the man’s eyes and beg him not to tear the wound open any further for fear that his dear guts would spill out on the ground and be trampled into the mud. But the man just screamed into his face…

  Abruptly, the horror shut off as he felt a blow against his cheek. One blue eye and one brown examined him closely. Then a deep, stolid voice ordered him to be quiet and to listen to the birdsong. It was such a strong voice that he trusted it instantly and was glad to have it tell him what to do in this new nightmare world.

  ‘It is not real,’ the voice said. ‘The battle you are fighting is not real. Do you understand me?’

  Will clapped a hand to the pit of his stomach and his eyes stood out in amazement He knew there had been a miracle, for somehow the irreversible had been undone. Somehow the clock had been turned back, and he was more grateful than he could say. He never wanted to see horror like that again.

  Though the road meandered along the Collen lign, Will knew they were moving away from the fork at Wrotham Common where the ground had so foully betrayed him. All afternoon he fought against the lorc, and he fought alone, for his friends were powerless to aid him.

  ‘It was near the obelisk,’ Gort said. ‘That’s when his pain was at its height.’

  ‘Obelisk?’ Willow asked. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The grey pillar set back from the road. Did you not see it? Square in form, yet narrowing as it rose. And pointed at the top.’

  ‘Perhaps she means the word, Wortmaster,’ Gwydion said. ‘We have never heard you use that word before. Where did you learn it?’

  Gort scratched at his beard. ‘I…I’ve always known it.’

  ‘Have you indeed?’

  Will’s glance fell upon the wizard as the latter said, ‘More than one strange word has been used within my hearing just lately.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ Will joked. But his attempt at levity fell on stony ground. He said, ‘You know, when I spoke with Edward he kept using a particular word as a sort of curse. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but I think I do now.’


  ‘What was the word?’ Gwydion asked.

  ‘Damned.’ Will held his gaze. ‘I know it means…sent to Hell.’

  ‘Quite so. But where is Hell? Do you know that yet?’

  He shook his head wonderingly. ‘No. But I think there’s a monster called “Almighty God” who lives there. Where are they coming from, Master Gwydion? These new words, these terrible ideas?’

  ‘Where do you think?’

  ‘From the other world, I suppose. Because we’re already changing, fitting in with it.’

  ‘Correct. The closer we approach, the more like it we become. If left alone it will become an inevitable process. Soon there will be no stopping it.’

  When next they halted, Will sought his own company, but though he had made it plain that he wished to be left alone for the time being Lotan came and sat close by him. The big man said nothing, being himself deep in thought, but all the while his fingers were playing with a gold coin, spinning it time and again on the flat top of a stool, catching it as it fell, or watching as it spun faster and finally came to a dead stop.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ Will asked, abandoning his own thoughts.

  Lotan looked up in surprise. ‘This is not what you think.’

  ‘Not…money?’

  ‘It is not a coin. In the Fellowship we called them “eallub”. You see these two holes? That’s where the stitch goes. One of these is sewn inside every Fellow’s robe on the day he loses his eyes.’

  Will took it and examined it with grim fascination. On one side was inscribed a radiant heart and the legend, ‘ecipsuA.nretarF.’ which he knew meant, ‘Under the guidance of the Fellowship.’ On the other side was ‘satinretarF dA tE bA’, meaning, ‘From and To the Fellowship.’

  ‘I had no idea that Fellows carried gold pieces about with them.’

  ‘One more secret. And kept for reasons you can easily understand. When a man’s eyes are taken, this lessens the pain. That’s why you must have it.’

  Will’s gaze flickered to Lotan’s. ‘I…can’t do that.’

  But Lotan held it out to him and Will received it reluctantly.

  It was a vastly personal possession – how could Lotan give away an item of such significance? And whether Will liked the gesture or not, the token had been made by the Sightless Ones. That fact alone was enough to cause him to think again.

  He tried to give it back. ‘Lotan, I mustn’t.’

  ‘Please. It might help.’

  Lotan made no move to take back the button, and as Will weighed it in his palm he wondered how he could avoid giving offence. When he closed his eyes he could feel no magic in the metal. And when he looked at it again, he saw that it was more than just a stamped and worn disc of pure gold – it was a gift, made compassionately, by a friend.

  ‘Well, then I thank you for it.’ He smiled and put it in his pouch. ‘Best keep it hidden though – I don’t think Master Gwydion would understand.’

  As they rode on over Dancer’s Hill and crossed the Mymms Brook, the road turned north-west. There was no doubt that a large army had come this way, and Lotan surveyed the road knowingly. ‘Maybe ten thousand went through here yesterday.’

  ‘Aye, and in two separate passings, one coming after the other.’ Morann stared at the ground. ‘Edward first, then three hours later his father.’

  ‘How can you tell that?’ Lotan asked, amazed.

  Morann winked at him. ‘I asked the brewster at the inn back there.’

  When the light began to die they took themselves far from the road and made camp in a quiet hollow that sheltered them from the west wind. All the land roundabout had been scavenged clean by the troops who had passed through the day before, but they eventually found enough dry kindling to make a small, smoking fire, and soon the smell of bacon fat was in the air.

  ‘I can see the lorc!’ Will shouted out, shattering the calm. He was tortured now by the vastness of the power he could sense flowing through the veins of the land.

  ‘Tell us what you see,’ the wizard cried, holding him fast.

  ‘It’s on fire, Master Gwydion! Five ligns all passing within a league or two! Three go through the Doomstone at Verlamion, three through the monster that I felt back there. And there are two more stones each standing where two ligns cross. The lorc is in full spate! This is the final battle, Master Gwydion! It must be! We’re too late!’

  He tried again to force his panicking mind shut, but feared now that he was too weak to do it.

  ‘Shhh!’ Willow calmed him and gave him fresh milk to drink from a leather bottle. He gulped until it ran down his cheeks and Gort took it away from him. His mouth burned, but the Wortmaster made him wait for an infusion of sweet herbs, and all the while he suffered, feeling that he was trapped, boxed in by a demon forest of holly and hazel, of rowan, yew and elder. Branches were plucking at him, thorns digging in, roots growing through his flesh, until he was eaten alive.

  But through all that nightmare vision, a diamond-clear point still shone in his mind, hard and lucid, like the Star of Annuin. That, he knew, was his own fortress of self-possession, an inviolate watcher of the world that never let go, never willingly abandoned him to danger. It warned him that a horrifying experience could tear down a man’s mind whether or not that experience was real – for the horror certainly was. It told him that he must try one more time to close his mind to the lorc, or risk madness.

  ‘Not too much medicine, now,’ Gwydion told Gort. ‘He must return to clear-mindedness.’

  ‘He’s suffering great pain, Master Gwydion.’

  ‘Then I shall speak softly to him and divert his mind.’

  The wizard came to his side and began to speak soothingly as he had done in years gone by, telling a tale that Will’s mind easily latched onto.

  ‘A great army once gathered near here, Willand, at the place that is now called Wetamsted. Four thousand chariots mustered upon Nomansland Common as soon as news of the Slaver invasion was heard. Those were the days when Caswalan was king, and it fell to him and his brother Neni to face the might that was come…’

  Will’s thoughts slipped away from the world once more and the picture of ancient days and the swirl of wizardly words was lost in a dark void, until…

  ‘…and so you see how the power of the lorc saved the Realm in those dark days. There is no question of it, for Iuliu was very great in war, and though brave Neni fell, still Caswalan had the victory. And afterwards, Iuliu took his steel-clad warriors back to their ships, and Caswalan withdrew to his great hall at Ayot and there took a blessing upon the Lulling Stone.’

  Slowly Will returned to his right mind, and presently he looked around and asked in a puzzled voice, ‘Where are we?’

  Gwydion told him, ‘In a tent, and camped a league to the east of Verlamion. We have crossed the Colne Brook. I thought it best to take you as far away as possible from the places where we know the ligns run.’

  ‘Where’s Morann?’

  ‘He has gone with Lotan to find something out for me.’

  ‘Where?’ he asked, alarmed.

  ‘Verlamion.’

  ‘Oh, not to the chapter house?’ he cried. ‘The shrine’s guarded by Sightless Ones. This time they are ready and greatly roused up!’

  ‘Do you think we are all insane?’ The wizard chuckled.

  He subsided. ‘Where have they gone, then?’

  ‘Ask them when they return if you must know their precise movements.’

  ‘The stone that was broken,’ Will muttered through chapped lips, ‘is now healed.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘The Doomstone of Verlamion – it has repaired itself. Such power, such ancient power…and back there, the stone Gort called ola…olbal—’

  ‘Obelisk.’

  ‘Obelisk – that has a greater power even than the Doomstone.’

  Gwydion clicked his tongue. ‘Greater? How can that be?’

  ‘Because it also stands on three ligns. That must be the reason. The stone
s have powers that are in proportion to the strength of the ligns that feed them.’

  ‘But…a second doomstone there? That does not fit our pattern.’

  ‘Then our pattern must be wrong!’

  ‘Calmly, Will,’ Gort said, attending most solicitously now.

  Will nodded at the Wortmaster, acknowledging his own rudeness, yet he remained fervent. ‘Don’t you see, Master Gwydion? Our world has always been one where things go in the direction that the sum of our beliefs sends them. If we do not believe in the isle of Hy Brasil, then there is no Hy Brasil. But once the idea of Hy Brasil becomes a reality, and once people begin to believe in the place, then the discovery of the actual Hy Brasil cannot be far off. This is what allows magic to work, what permits us to influence the world by means other than the purely physical. I’ve come to see how it’s all to do with willpower and belief.’

  ‘These things are well known…’ The wizard nodded, but he said nothing more. And even if he had, Will would not have been deterred from going on because now he could hardly stop himself.

  ‘Yes, that’s it! That’s why there’s no magic in the coming world – because in the coming world if the facts don’t fit the ideas, then it’s the ideas that have to change, because the facts can’t. It’s a hard world that’s coming. A hard world where the facts are fixed…’

  ‘There now,’ Willow cooed. She tried to soothe his raving, dabbing his brow with a wetted scarf. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be all better by tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m better now! I’ve never been saner. Listen to me! I have the answer!’

  But no one listened to another word from him, because a twig snapping in the darkness made them all look into the void beyond the reach of the fire. The hairs on the back of Will’s neck stood up as Gwydion’s hand groped for his staff. Then a shape appeared. A hooded figure in grey and black, immensely sinister, shot bolts of fear into them. It loomed for a moment that swelled unbearably just as a moment of torture swells to seem like an hour. But then the set of Gwydion’s arms relaxed and he sat down.

  ‘Welcome back,’ he said.