Whitemantle

by Robert Carter

  But Edward did not show any shadow of reluctance. Fired by the passion of the day, and possessed of a bloody defiance that his father had never known, he swept to the throne and without hesitation took his place upon it.

  The enchanted chair bore him uncomplainingly, and so the deed was done.

  The hall erupted with cheers. Edward’s chief nobles came to flank him. His heralds had been sent on a special errand, and now they appeared with the Elders of the Fellowship all in train, bringing with them a treasure beyond all counting. A huge, iron-bound chest was opened to reveal the sacred symbols of sovereignty. Not quite the Hallows these, but four pieces of golden regalia that represented them. In place of wizardly wand and ancient blade were uncovered the sceptre and the grand sword of state. And now, standing for cup and pentacle, were taken out from wrappings of white samite the golden ampulla and the royal crown.

  Some strange memory stirred in Will, a recollection that made the glitter desert those modern baubles, for he could see in his mind’s eye the Hallows as they really were, resting together in glory and lighting up their vault in the Realm Below – the Sword of Might, called Branstock, the Staff of Justice that had once belonged to the first phantarch, the Cauldron of Plenty, and lastly, the brilliant Star of Annuin…

  And in that moment Will suddenly saw that what was being enacted below was more than just the installing of a nobleman as supreme leader. Here, for sure, was a son who was seizing the chance to revenge himself upon the killers of his father, but it was more than that, more even than the undoing of the usurper’s line. This was a necessary setting to rights, a moment of inevitability, when something clicked into place in the mechanism that drove the world. Will felt that change, and though he did not understand it, yet it was as if the world had been waiting for it to happen.

  Down below, the rightful king was claiming his own. There was no stopping the momentous rolling on of events. Grand Warden Isnar, as ever an astute political mover, addressed the assembled lords, judiciously declaring Hal to be an oath-breaker, and so to have forfeited all right to the throne. Then Edward himself spoke, telling how his claim was just under the law, and that any who opposed his will should speak up now or forever hold their peace.

  In the vast silence that followed, no one dared to gainsay Edward’s claim. He promised them all that he would be the strong king that the Realm had so long wanted – the king his own father had wished to be. Then he told them without equivocation that he would brook neither interference nor opposition to his will. He would rule and his word would be law.

  Now Gwydion came into the hall, and those who saw him fell back before him, for he escorted on his arm a veiled lady of uncertain years, and only when he reached the foot of the marble steps did the wizard choose to speak.

  ‘Friend Edward,’ he said, his voice low yet touched with the boldness of olden days. ‘I bring to you one who would give a blessing.’

  Edward came forward and put out a hand to cast aside the veil. And there was a gasp, for where he and his gathered lords had expected to see the dowager duchess, they saw something else. To all who watched she was only a crone. Yet Edward’s eye was differently deceived and lingered on the beggarwoman as if under an enchantment.

  ‘Who are you?’ he demanded of the young woman.

  ‘You know that,’ she replied demurely. ‘My name is Sovereignty. Love me well, Edward, for I am the consort of kings.’

  Up in his crow’s nest, Will saw the beautiful face that was revealed and a great confusion overcame him so that he nearly cried out loud.

  Gwydion raised his staff and said, ‘Know, Edward, that the time for vengeance is over, that a king must be compassionate towards his enemies.’

  And Edward walked back a pace or two as he considered. He put his fingers to his mouth fleetingly, and just as fleetingly disposed of the advice. ‘I promise you this: I shall not rest, Crowmaster. Not while a single one of my enemies lives.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A BROKEN LAND

  In the days that followed, Edward’s army swelled to forty thousand fighting men and the gloom that had settled over Gwydion grew deeper. Hammer rang on anvil throughout the City as each soldier was armed and prepared for the long march into the north.

  Will looked at his wife and child, hardly daring to face the reason he had asked them to come up here to be with him on the northern walls. Meanwhile, he half-listened to Gwydion’s grim estimates of Queen Mag’s renewed strength. She had retired with her captive husband to the city of Ebor and the levies of lords still loyal to Hal’s banner had also gathered in that city. Reports now had their number at twenty thousand. Added to that, fresh war bands were coming down from Albanay daily, men drawn by tales of rich pickings. Their number was maybe ten thousand. And lastly, according to Edward’s spies, the Duke of Umberland had scoured his border domain and come to Queen Mag’s aid with another ten thousand, along with a host of border reivers who owed no man allegiance, save their own kinsmen. It seemed that by the time the opponents clashed, the contending armies would be of equal size, and that, Will knew, was no coincidence.

  ‘Edward is almost ready to depart,’ Gwydion said, watching the stream of men pouring out to their muster places across Clerk’s Well Fields. ‘Armies such as these are quite beyond the imagination of the human mind. If all the men now under arms in the Realm were ordered to stand shoulder to shoulder, then the rank would stretch for more than ten leagues! The man at one end would have to march for a whole day without resting before he could meet with the man at the other. Such numbers of warriors, equally divided and determined against one another, must not be allowed to meet.’

  ‘The stone that’s calling them sits upon the holly lign,’ Will cautioned. ‘But we don’t yet know where.’

  ‘That lign runs all the way up into Albanay, you told me,’ Willow said.

  ‘So I believe, but the battle won’t be that far away. It must be fought south of Ebor – but how far south we cannot say. With fair fortune we might reach the stone a day or two before Edward arrives. But a cart on winter roads…’ As Will’s words trailed off, he shrugged.

  ‘And what happens when Lord Warrewyk’s foreriders catch up with us and want to take our horses away?’ Willow asked when the wizard moved out of earshot. ‘What shall we do then?’

  Will pursed his lips, knowing she had given him his chance to draw the fatal knife and stab her to the heart. ‘You’ve heard Master Gwydion. He says that this time it will be too dangerous for you to come along.’

  ‘Huh!’ She rolled her eyes. ‘As if all the other times were not!’

  He saw that her reaction was born of fear. She knew him too well, knew what he was about to do, despite what was being said. ‘Willow…’

  ‘So you and he go with the warriors, and I must stay among the wet-nurses and child-minders? I never agreed to that.’

  ‘Please…don’t make the parting more difficult than it needs to be.’ His eyes pleaded with her. ‘We must think of Bethe. What would she do without her mother?’

  ‘What will she do without her father?’

  That was like cold water dashed in his face. ‘If she can’t have both of us, she ought at least to have one of us.’

  She checked herself and looked away, knowing that he could afford to brook no argument this time. Harsh words spoken now would not persuade, they would only ruin their parting. She said miserably, ‘I thought we’d had all this out once before.’

  ‘Yes…but now it’s different.’ He looked at his wife lovingly, feeling no trace of self-pity, no fear, no anger – only regret that, for him, the end-time had come.

  ‘Oh, Will…’

  ‘Darling Willow,’ he said, taking her in his arms. ‘You must let me go.’

  He felt the wave of dread pass through her, because at last he had put it into words. She began to protest but he put a finger to her lips, showing her that his mind was made up.

  ‘I have to do this,’ he told her. ‘You know I do. It�
�s not my duty – it’s my fate. I cannot foreswear my nature. This is what I am, and what I’ve always been.’

  ‘Then you must go. And with my blessing!’ she said, trembling.

  ‘Brave girl.’ He held her tight as she cried. Then he knelt to pick up his daughter and hug her close to him also. ‘Stick close by Gort and Lady Cicely.’

  It was all he could think to say. He saw how fiercely she desired to help him, and he wished there was some way it could be done. But there was not. As he walked away he felt the desolation breaking Willow’s heart. He felt the child’s bewilderment too, then heard the shrieks as Bethe began howling for her daddy. His world dissolved before his eyes, no matter how hard he blinked away the tears. But he kept on walking, knowing that if he turned now all would be lost

  And even when he heard Willow shout, ‘I love you, Willand!’ he did not hesitate. The moment of separation had come and gone. He had used the knife and left his darling girl to bleed to death upon the City ramparts.

  Now there was only the task ahead.

  The journey up country would be cold and wet, but the cart had two strong horses and only two wheels to get stuck in the mud. The first day was the worst for Will. He had been increasingly worried by the vigorous movements of power in the land, and so Gwydion decided they should leave the City by its easternmost portal. After Aldermansgate they detoured a little way to the east so they would have to cross as few ligns as possible.

  But first there was a test. The great fortress of the White Tower sat on the hazel lign. The powerful doomstone at Baronet Hadlea also sat upon that lign, and it was barely more than three leagues to the north. While inside the City, the ramparts had shielded Will, but as they came through Poore Jury and then crossed the Eastmoat, Will began to hear the head of Bran singing to him. It put him into an odd state of mind.

  ‘Thirteen ravens shall be his guard,’ he muttered in the language of stones. ‘And Bran himself makes the fourteenth! Twice seven – how neat! Powerful magic, that, Master Merlyn…’

  ‘Arthur?’

  ‘Hmmm?’ Will said, roused suddenly to his true surroundings.

  Gwydion had taken him by the upper arm and was peering at him closely. ‘We are across it now, I think.’

  ‘Did I…fall asleep?’

  ‘You felt no pain, then?’

  ‘Pain?’ At that word the crushing despair he felt at having said goodbye to Willow came over him again. ‘Pain enough, but not from the lign.’

  Gwydion grinned and patted Will’s knee. ‘Good. Then I think we have our talisman.’

  Will knew he was referring to their load, the treasure that lay in the back of the cart. It was a clever stroke, one suggested some time ago by Loremaster Morann. It was their last and only hope.

  That day they crossed the elder, yew and rowan ligns, all within three leagues of Baronet Hadlea, and how the green lanes burned. There was no pain, but Will fell again into a free-running state of mind and saw three great rivers of fire flowing into the north. Their names were Mulart, Eburos and Caorthan.

  As night fell and they sought a hiding place, Gwydion tried to encourage Will by reminding him that the worst was now behind them and they would not have to cross any more ligns – save perhaps the hazel – all the way to Ebor.

  Each day that followed, a raw east wind blew in phantom flakes of snow. Will watched them vanish as they touched the damp ground and his thoughts turned ever and again to melancholy questions surrounding the impermanence of life. They rode on without fuss or fanfare through a land that had been stripped bare, eating what they had brought with them, and stayed for the most part under the covers of the cart or in lodgings of their own devising.

  Sometimes hail rattled down around them, but at other times the wind scoured the sky to blue and the increasing sun warmed them with moments of welcome encouragement. But the warmth was short-lived, and down came the rain again. They found the farmstead at Burghlea Martin deserted and Gwydion’s friend the pig farmer gone. Part of his roof was scorched where an attempt had been made to fire the thatch.

  ‘So the blessing you laid upon John Sisil’s house failed after all,’ Will said lugubriously. He turned as he stepped out the points of the chalk pentacle that could still be faintly seen on the cottage’s threshold stone.

  Gwydion looked around at the cleared field, which was still a stinking and sow-rutted morass. ‘A pig-man can always hide his stock in the woods. It would take more than a ravening army to do down Friend Sisil. Living so close to the Great North Road he has learned that a host that comes by once is likely to come by again.’

  When Gwydion bent to kindle a fire he found to his dismay that it would not catch. It was nothing to do with the dankness. Flame would not even flare up in his hands. It was pathetic to watch him whisper and gesture time and again to no effect. Finally he stood up and dusted his palms off against one another, saying, ‘Well, I must be more tired than I thought.’

  But Will’s powers had remained relatively unaffected by the universal decline. Now he had come away from the cart he felt the malice running in the earth and it undermined him like never before. ‘The people can’t hide in the woods forever,’ he said.

  ‘I think they will survive.’ Gwydion crossed the pentacle with a wave of his hand. He reached up into the eaves and worked loose a smooth piece of grey stone. Will saw that it was an elf-bolt, a charm hidden under the part-scorched rafters, and meant to ward off fire. ‘There is still a blessing on the baby’s head. And this old thing seems to have done its work too. A fine roof, this. It would have been a crime if it had fallen.’

  ‘Coincidence,’ Will said, looking around the dank, unlived-in cottage with its broken door.

  ‘Coincidence? Is that what you think?’

  ‘How could it be anything else? There’s to be no magic in the coming world. No protections. No charms.’

  ‘Quite so. But fortunately we are not there yet.’

  Will’s spirits slumped even lower. ‘I don’t know how you can justify optimism at a time like this.’

  ‘My optimism requires no justification. It is the understanding that virtue is sufficient in itself. And anyway, what is the alternative, hmmm?’

  ‘Gwydion, what shall I do?’ he breathed. ‘I can’t be Arthur. I can’t!’

  ‘Do not despair, Willand. It is always darkest before the dawn…’

  Will’s fists balled. He was so sick of hearing the wizard quote the redes at him, redes that these days sounded like no more than worn-out bywords, sayings devoid of all wisdom or power. He put his face in his hands and squeezed fingers into his eye sockets until the pressure hurt, then he whispered, ‘The future of the whole world depends on me and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!’

  ‘No one knows how the seers’ prophecies will play out in the end. I cannot say how the knots of fortune will untangle themselves—’

  ‘Then what good are you to me?’ he said, looking hard at the wizard. ‘Do you even know what day it is?’

  ‘Not your birthday…is it?’ Gwydion said, wide-eyed.

  ‘No. It’s what the Sightless Ones call the Twelfth Calend of April.’

  ‘The spring equinox.’ Gwydion’s chin jutted. ‘Well? I knew that.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you mention it to me earlier?’

  ‘Should I have?’

  Will turned away angrily. ‘You would have done if you’d remembered. And now you can’t even kindle fire in your hands. You really are just an old man who’s fading away, do you realize that?’

  ‘And you are a child who refuses properly to grow up!’

  Will put his hand to his chin suddenly and looked around, suspecting now the reason for his sudden gush of spite. To his eyes the world beyond the woods was all in flame.

  ‘It’s the flow in the holly lign…a wave. A great wave!’

  A bolt of power flared as it passed up into the north country. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled out across the land. It made him cower down and shield his face
from the sky.

  The wizard lifted him up, no longer minded to fence silly insults. ‘You can feel it? See it? Even here? When the lign must be two or three leagues to the west?’

  The rain came on harder. Will met the wizard’s eye. ‘I…I’ve walked too far away from the cart. That’s what it is.’

  Gwydion helped him back a little way. Then he gestured with his arms and seemed to pace the distance out in his mind as if making some calculation. ‘The power of protection might fall off not as the square, nor even as the cube, of the distance from the lign…’ He said it like a doctor observing with detachment as some deadly contagion consumed a sick man. ‘Fascinating for all that, though, this new world…’

  ‘Since we’re not going to get our hock of ham tonight,’ Will said wearily, ‘I think we’d better press on with your stump as fast as we can.’

  That was a remark that had something of a barb to it, the remnant of an argument they had had as soon as Gwydion had announced what they should do.

  ‘I’ll ride on ahead,’ Will had suggested.

  ‘It would be better if we went together,’ Gwydion had told him, lowering his eyes. ‘I will need your help on the journey north, for we must take with us the stump of an old battlestone, one that I think must have governed the battle that brave Neni fought against the Slavers. I cannot move the thing on my own.’

  But Will had known that was a lie. Even without his powers of great magic, he thought, Gwydion could take that stone the length of the Realm and back without my help. I know what’s really bothering him. He thinks that if I ride on ahead I’ll get myself into trouble. He doesn’t think I can be trusted…

  Now, as he climbed up onto the back of the cart, Will found that he could not even fathom the reasoning he had used to question his friend’s motives. How could I have ridden on ahead, he asked himself wonderingly, when my protection is here? It’s only the phases of the moon that are conspiring against me now.

  The wizard looked in on him. ‘We cannot risk losing you, my friend. For while you live there is hope.’