Whitemantle

by Robert Carter

  ‘You are alive, are you not? And in your right mind?’

  ‘Just about.’

  ‘Well, then. The stone has made all the difference.’

  Will took the point grudgingly. ‘The flow’s too strong for it here. The lorc is putting everything into one last effort.’

  ‘Raw malice is running fast in the channels of the lorc,’ Gwydion explained, unperturbed. ‘But what kindness there is in the Stone of Scions is bound tight, just as the malice of a battlestone is kept within its bounds until the moment of release. However there is always seepage, as we have found. I confess, I had hoped that the kindness might leak a little more easily than it has.’

  Will spat and wiped the sweat from his face. ‘I’m alive, as you say. But I won’t cross another lign. Not willingly.’

  ‘Let us hope you will not have to.’

  He met Gwydion’s eye, knowing he must now make an important admission. ‘Chlu is close by. I can feel him.’

  That jolted the wizard, though he tried not to show it. ‘Is he alone?’

  Will spread his hands. ‘How should I know?’

  ‘How far away is he?’

  ‘A league. Maybe.’ He gestured vaguely towards the south. ‘Now that we’re between hazel and holly it’s hard to tell.’

  ‘We should go south.’

  Will’s brow furrowed. ‘Why should we make it easy for him?’

  ‘It does not surprise me that Chlu is here. You must meet with him one last time. It will be better if the initiative is with you from the beginning.’

  Will thought back to the inconclusive combats on the Spire and on Cullee Hill. He wondered if there was anything in prophecy that made a third meeting inevitable, but he did not ask. It seemed more sensible to spend his thoughts second guessing what new ploy Chlu might try on him in the final battle.

  ‘You speak of Chlu,’ Will said after a while, ‘but I suspect you’re more interested in who’s in his company.’

  ‘Quite right. I must establish Maskull’s whereabouts. And I must do it as soon as I can. We have little time.’

  That night, rather than stopping to rest, they went on through the deepening darkness, watching the bloated moon push its way above the eastern horizon. Before midnight they came to the village of Fenton. It had been stripped of all its men and abandoned by its other inhabitants. Will knew that if they had listened to their Wise Woman, they would be hiding like animals in the wild woods until the soldiers went away. But if the Fellowship was strong hereabouts they might have been herded into one of the walled precincts that adjoined a chapter house. Whatever their fate, they had left an eerie feeling of loss behind them.

  The cart pulled into a yard hedged in by a field of tree stumps – an orchard hewn down for firewood. The ground was littered with twigs that snapped under the cartwheels. At the wizard’s request, Will dared to open his mind a little. Fire dragons writhed in the sky, but there were black bubbles in the glare, and he gasped, ‘Chlu! He’s over there…’

  ‘How far now?’

  ‘Half a league.’

  ‘Which way?’

  Will made an effort to be more precise. ‘West. Over there.’

  The wizard stroked his beard. ‘Not far away in that direction lies Scarthingwell 337. It is a signal tower maintained by the Fellowship. I should go there to discover what I can.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  ‘Always. Wait here. If I fail to return by dawn, drive the cart towards the battlestone and do what must be done.’

  ‘I will.’

  It was grim advice. As Gwydion walked off into the gloom, Will fought the urge to huddle close to the Stone of Scions. He wondered if this was the way the world was supposed to end. He understood very well the reason Gwydion had gone alone – he could hardly approach Chlu himself without alerting him, but the wizard might just pass unseen. Still, Gwydion’s departure did little to set Will’s mind at ease.

  As the moon rose higher in the south the sister-stone eased his fears, prompting the thought that Gwydion would not have left him without saying a proper goodbye if he had had serious doubts about coming back. Even when the hours stretched out and the moon began to slide down into the south-west, Will’s faith did not fail him. Eventually, stiff and cold, he got down from the cart and began to walk around the abandoned village. The sense of loss was palpable here. There had been deaths and violent acts done against the innocent.

  Always darkest before the dawn…

  The thought-echo trailed away as movement caught his eye. A fox, grinning in the darkness. It stared at him with an insolent look, then loped off. A cold breeze sighed in the trees and raised the hairs on Will’s neck. He found it easy to imagine all manner of enemies lurking in the shadows.

  Go back to the cart, he told himself silently. But just as he turned he saw a darker shape slide into the blackness of a doorway, and he knew that he was not alone.

  How long had he been watched? His blood froze in his veins. It’s only Gwydion, he told himself. Who else could it be?

  The impulse to call out the wizard’s name was strong, but he resisted. What if it was not Gwydion?

  A pang of impatience assailed him, but he forced himself to control it. He rounded a corner then crept out of sight, moving quickly to a new vantage point that covered the cart and also the door of the hovel where he had seen the dark shape vanish. There he waited, his heart thumping and his restraint draining by degrees. He did not want to give away his position, but something held him back from investigating. He wondered how far his decisions were falling prey to the influence of the ligns. Whenever he had strayed far from the stone he had had to struggle against the flow, and it was not possible to tell what part of his courage was falsely inspired and what part stemmed from his own strength.

  Against his better judgement he decided to wait and keep an eye on the cart. Time passed. His bones started to ache and his curiosity began to embroider the darkness. If it was not Gwydion, then who else could it be? One of the folk who had lived here? Their Wise Woman perhaps?

  Maybe.

  Then he began to worry about what might have happened to Gwydion…

  By now the moon had sunk into low cloud and the first smudges of grey were lighting the eastern sky. He wanted to open his mind a fraction. That risked showing himself to Chlu, but he needed to feel out the figure in the hovel, to establish malign intent or the absence of it.

  Once again he went against his urges and decided to think the matter through one more time. Who was inside the hovel? It could not be Chlu, for Chlu’s presence would have left him in no doubt. But what if it was Maskull? A grim smile crept across his face as he watched the doorway. If it was, then the sorcerer had made a huge miscalculation…

  Without magic, Maskull was vulnerable. He could be surprised and captured, maybe even killed. This was Will’s big chance, and the look on Gwydion’s face when he returned would be almost too wonderful!

  He had almost readied himself to make a dash for the doorway, when a noise off to his left made him turn. It was a small stone, tossed his way by Gwydion. The wizard’s left hand was raised, his right held Maglin’s staff. His look was urgent and silently questioning.

  Will pressed a finger to his lips and then pointed to the hovel. The wizard’s gestures said: do nothing, say nothing. Then Gwydion put his head back and made an unearthly noise. They waited motionless for a few moments, then Gwydion made the noise again, a high, edgy bark, and waited patiently until the vixen came to him.

  He bent to stroke her head, then she trotted away and put her snout into the doorway that Will had been watching. After a moment’s sniffing, she returned to Gwydion who stroked her head again and sent her away with his thanks. As he set off towards the doorway, he motioned Will to follow. ‘She said the man who was hiding here last night was frightened. Foxes smell fear very keenly. He left by the back way shortly after he arrived.’

  Will relaxed, feeling more than a little foolish to have been overawed by a phantom and
wasted a fine chance.

  ‘It’s good to see you haven’t lost your touch with animals.’

  ‘Sadly, that is not magic. Merely long experience with the wild world.’

  Will walked about the hovel. He could not detect the faintest whiff of corrupt magic, but his opinion was unwavering. ‘It was Maskull, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘What was he doing here?’

  ‘Chlu sent him to kill you.’

  ‘Kill me? Are you joking?’

  ‘I found them at the signal tower and heard them quarrelling about it. You will be gratified to know that Maskull was against the idea.’

  Will grunted with sour amusement. ‘That’s a change, Chlu sending his master upon a mission.’

  ‘Maskull is no longer Chlu’s master. I listened long enough to discover that. The betrayer is now himself betrayed. Maskull walks in weeds, a shadow of his former self, in fouler odour at Queen Mag’s court than am I in the halls of the House of Ebor. Apparently, there has been a marked decline in the queen’s looks just lately.’

  ‘Hal’ Will cried with sudden realization. ‘He’s been maintaining her with his magic which doesn’t work any more so she’s thrown him out!’

  ‘Indeed she has. She is no longer quite the beauty she was. She blames him for all her other reverses too.’

  Will laughed. ‘It was in my mind to kick Maskull’s feet out from under him just now.’

  ‘I thought you had more sense than that.’

  ‘What? When he’s defenceless? I could have trussed him up and hung him from the rafters for you.’

  ‘Maskull looks like an old rag, for ragged he goes now and in thrall to his young creation. What a crushing end to one who had such lofty ambitions…but he carries a long knife and he would have put it through you as if you were a mince pie had you decided to tangle with him.’

  ‘I think I can look after myself.’

  ‘You would have come off worse against Maskull. He has perfected his crafts over many a long century, and though he has lost his magic, he has not been left wholly bereft of venom. If he had thought he could surprise you last night, then he would have done so. And you would be dead now. As soon as he realized he had been spotted, he made himself scarce.’

  Will picked up a note of regret in the wizard’s voice and he understood the ambivalence of Gwydion’s mood. They had both expected blood and thunder at the downfall of so gigantic an adversary, but Maskull taking orders and creeping away silently with his mission unfulfilled? This really was the world turned upside down.

  Truly, Will thought, running a finger round his collar, today marks the end of an Age and this can be no other than the eve of the last battle.

  ‘What excuse do you think he’ll spin to Chlu for having failed to kill me?’

  ‘He will think of something plausible. He always does.’

  ‘I think he knows he can’t kill me. He tried on Awakenfield Bridge, but it’s not my fate to be killed by him.’

  ‘A dangerous assumption at the best of times. If you knew what your fate was we would have no more trouble.’ The wizard returned to the cart, but before he looked in the back he asked, ‘What about the stone?’

  ‘Maskull didn’t go near the cart.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but one of the reasons Chlu sent him here was to find out what was coming their way. Chlu feels the Stone of Scions just as you feel the battlestones. That is the main reason he did not care to leave the comfort of the holly lign himself. He took refuge in a signal tower that stands upon it. He lured out, then murdered, the signaller, and all night long he has enjoyed his own company while his pet sorcerer did his bidding.’

  Drawing closer to the stone made Will feel suddenly better. He turned, his mind comprehending a strange symmetry in the night’s events, but objecting even so, for the two stories were different – one involved a sorcerer sent out under compulsion to spy, the other concerned a wizard who went to collect information, willingly risking himself to help a comrade.

  ‘Shall we go after them? Now, when they least expect it?’

  Gwydion looked at him unreadably. ‘That is for you to decide.’

  Will drew a deep draught of morning air and put an arm around the wizard’s shoulders. ‘I will decide, but your advice is dear to me, Master Gwydion. Tell me what you think we should do.’

  ‘It seems to me that as well as our common goal we each have our own tasks to accomplish. My guess is that Maskull has returned to Chlu with some tall tale of his night’s heroic doings—’

  Will climbed up onto the cart. ‘A spider lying to a hornet.’

  ‘Indeed.’ The wizard’s sudden lightness of mood was good to see. ‘But you can be sure that Maskull is far from finished, not while his window on the new world is still open.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the window…’ Will had forgotten about that. ‘Is it still open? Surely it must have faded away and been lost to him by now, along with all his other magic.’

  ‘Not the window, for that was accomplished through fae magic. Maskull needed to use his own magic and, we may suppose, some of the power tapped from one of the battlestones, to gain access to fae spells. But the magic of the window itself, once made, is as durable as you are.’

  ‘So Maskull can work no more fae magic, but whatever he’s created already, having used that magic, will linger longest. Right up until the moment when the worlds collide?’

  ‘I believe so. And so it must be, for that window is now Maskull’s only protection from Chlu’s magic.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Maskull has convinced Chlu that he must jump through the window. Chlu certainly seems to believe that it is the only way he will be able to enter the world to come.’

  Will stared into the east, where the sunrise was painting the sky with blood. ‘You mean, you think Maskull hasn’t told Chlu that the other world is arriving here anyway?’

  ‘What would it serve him to tell Chlu the truth? No doubt he has presented Chlu with some complication or another, the half-story that manipulates him best. Whatever else he may have been led to believe, Chlu is certainly acting as if he requires the window to gain access to the other world. But here is something to consider: do we know for certain that the other world is going to arrive? Hmmm?’

  ‘Well…that’s what we’ve been working to prevent.’

  ‘Correct. Remember that Chlu hopes for the other world, just as we fear it. For him, that world offers the chance of endless dominance, the overlordship his heart yearns for. We can suppose that Maskull has filled Chlu’s mind with brilliant visions of how it will be in that world to come, the world that will be his if only he can crush the final obstacle before the last moment arrives.’

  ‘Us.’

  ‘You.’ The wizard pointed a finger at him. ‘No one knows for certain what will happen in that final moment. Remember that in this world a preponderance of belief is what tips the scales of reality. It is how extraordinary outcomes can be made, how, ultimately, all magic is done.’

  Will frowned, grasping the implications. ‘I think I see…’

  ‘Believe harder, Will. That is my counsel to you. You seem not to think it likely, but you may yet become Arthur, and we may yet win the day. And what would Chlu do then?’

  Gwydion’s reasoning was flawless as ever, but Will could not drive away the suspicion that he had been somehow outmanoeuvred. He scratched his head. ‘So what do you think Maskull’s done with the window?’

  The wizard smiled. ‘Fortunately I do not have to guess about that. When Chlu sent him away from the signal tower, I followed him. I knew where he would go. It was the first opportunity he had had to check the window.’

  ‘He led you to it?’ Will asked, astonished.

  ‘He wanted to see if it was still safe. I knew he would do it, for I have known him a very long time and we were not always adversaries. The window is a bolt-hole, in case his plans go awry. For himself if not for Chlu.’

  ‘Didn’t he have any id
ea that you were following him?’

  ‘None at all. He was too busy making sure that Chlu had remained at the signal tower. He was very careful about that, but the magical protections upon which he once relied to warn him of my presence are gone, whereas my own natural stealth was there to serve me as usual. In the event, I tracked him quite easily to his goal. I saw him open the window when the moon was high. He stood in the draught and looked in on a red sunrise while snowflakes from the other world blew out around him. Then he closed it again and left.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I waited until he had gone. Then I approached the window myself. It is a strange thing to look into the other world. I saw grey daylight. Their time is presently running a few hours ahead of ours.’

  ‘Or perhaps behind,’ Will said.

  Gwydion smiled indulgently, and lifted the reins. ‘Fortunately, I looked for the position of the moon. They are still some hours ahead of us, although they are slowing down. Do you remember when first you poked your head into the other world? Back then they were months ahead of us. I suspect that the moment when their time coincides with ours will be the moment of collision.

  ‘Well? Shall we go and do what must be done?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  WHITE SNOW, RED RIVER

  All along the western horizon now the land was burning like a cremation. As they drove the cart towards the battlestone, Will saw a towering column of flame jet abruptly into the sky, and the lign suddenly calmed itself. He understood that the stone was replete, that it had supped its fill and was now preparing to vomit out its harm over the surrounding fields of death.

  The hamlet of Sackstone huddled by a small stream, surrounded by strips of worked land. All around it, vast columns of footmen, three or four thousand strong, were assembling. They had come up from the south and were forming into three great fighting battalions. This was Edward’s army – it had forced the crossing of the Eye and advanced up to Sackstone overnight. There were woods beyond the hamlet to the north-west and a road that ran along the meandering waters, but to the north-east a great shield of open land bulged gently for half a league so that whatever enemy deployments there might be on the far side, they were hidden and would remain so almost until the armies clashed. The simmering holly lign ran right over the bulge, slicing it in two.