The Giants’ Dance

A clear view to the west opened up. There the sky was smudged by cloud, and far away a great plume had risen up through the layers, its top blown sideways by high winds, its underside lit amethyst and white.

‘Look,’ Will cried. ‘It’s a lightning storm on the Wolds!’

‘Did you ever see such lightning as that?’ When Gwydion turned a silent play of light smote the distant Wolds, making crags of his face. ‘And the rumble that shook down your pretty flower pots? Was that thunder?’

‘It seemed to come from far away.’

Gwydion gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘You want to think the danger is far away and so none of your concern. But remember that the earth is one. Magic connects all who walk upon it. Faraway trouble is trouble all the same. Do not try to find comfort in what you see now, for the further away it is the bigger it must be.’

Will felt the wizard’s words cut him. They accused him of a way of thinking that ran powerfully against the redes and laws of magic.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said humbly. ‘That was selfish.’

‘Liarix Finglas,’ Gwydion muttered, moving on. He slid fingers over the stone, savouring the name in the true tongue. ‘In the lesser words of latter days, “the King’s Stone”. And nowadays the herding men who come by here call it “the Shepherd’s Delight”. How quaint! For to them it is no more than a lump from which lucky charms may be chipped. Oh, how the Ages have declined! What a sorry inheritance the mighty days of yore have bequeathed! We are living in the old age of the world, Willand. And things are determined to turn against us!’

He heard the bitterness in the wizard’s words. ‘Surely you don’t believe that.’

The wizard’s face was difficult to read as he turned to Will again. ‘I believe that at this moment, you and your fellow villagers are very lucky to be alive.’

A chill ran through him. ‘Why do you say that?’

The wizard offered only a dismissive gesture, and Will took his arm in a firmer grip. ‘Gwydion, I asked you a question!’

The wizard scowled and pulled his arm away. ‘And, as you see, I am avoiding answering you.’

‘But why? This isn’t how it was with us.’

‘Why?’ Gwydion put back his head and stared at the sky. ‘Because I am afraid.’

A fresh pang of fear swam through Will’s belly and surfaced in his mind. This was worse than anything he could have expected. Yet the fear freshened his thinking, awakened him further to the danger. He felt intensely alert as he looked around. Up on the Tops the sky was large. It stretched all the way from east to west, from north to south. He felt suddenly very vulnerable.

With a sinking heart he looked around for the place where they had unearthed the battlestone and found its grave, a shallow depression now partly filled and overgrown, but the burned-out stone was nowhere to be seen.

‘You’re not as kindly as I remembered you,’ he told Gwydion.

‘Memories are seldom accurate. And you too have changed. Do not forget that.’

‘Even so, you’re less amiable. Sharper tongued.’

‘If you find me so, that is because you see more these days. You are no longer the trusting innocent.’

‘I was never that.’

The wizard gazed up and down an avenue of earthlight that stretched, spear-straight across the land. To Will’s eye it was greenish, elfin and fey. But it was a light that he knew well, though very bright for lign-light, brighter than he had ever seen it. It passed close by the circle of standing stones.

‘That shimmering path is called Eburos,’ Gwydion told him. ‘It is the lign of the yew tree. Look upon it, Willand, and remember what you see, for according to the Black Book this is the greatest of the nine ligns that make up the lorc. Its brightness surprises you, I see. But perhaps it should not, for tonight is Lughnasad, and very close after the new moon. All crossquarter days are magical but now is the start of Iucer, the time when the edges of this world blur with those of the Realm Below – Lughnasad upon a new moon is a time when even lowland swine rooting in the forest floor may see the lign glowing strongly in the earth. “Trea lathan iucer sean vailan…” Three days of magic in the earth, as the old saying goes. Even I can see it tonight.’

Will nodded. ‘The lorc is once more growing in power.’

Gwydion met his eye. ‘I feared you would say that.’

Frustration erupted sourly inside Will. ‘But how can that be? I destroyed the Doomstone at Verlamion. The heart of the lorc was broken!’

‘But was the Doomstone destroyed?’

‘Do you doubt that I told you the truth?’

There was silence.

‘The battle stopped, didn’t it?’ Will said.

The wizard inclined his head a fraction. ‘The battle did not continue.’

‘I only know what I saw, Gwydion. The Doomstone was cracked clean across. It must have been destroyed, for it fell silent and all the Sightless Ones in the chapter house lost their minds.’

To that the wizard made no reply other than to give a doubtful grunt. Then he raised his staff towards the livid glow. They walked the lign together across the crest of the Tops. Earth power tingled in Will’s fingers and toes as he walked. They soon came to what looked from a distance like a ring of silent, unmoving figures. He looked at the perfect circle of eighty or so stones, the ring that was forty paces across. The shadows cast by each stone groped out across the uneven land. He felt as if he was intruding and said so.

‘You know,’ Gwydion said in a distant voice, ‘the druida used to come here unfailingly at the spring equinox – and then again in the autumn of each year. Ah, what processions we had when the world was young! They brought their white horses, all marked red upon the forehead like so many unhorned unicorns. Here they made their signs two days before the new moon and sat down to drink milk and mead and witness the waxing of the power of the lorc. They were great days, Willand. Great days…’

They entered the Ring respectfully, going in by the proper entrance, bowing to the four directions before approaching the centre and sitting down. The stones of the Ring were small, no taller than children, hunched, misshapen, brooding. The greatest of them stood to the north. When Will had come here four years ago he had made no obeisance, asked no formal permission, but when he had touched the chief stone there had been a welcome all the same. He had been privileged to feel the rich and undiminished power that lay dormant here. Before Maskull’s sorcery had ambushed him he had felt an enormous store of power, something as vast as a mountain buried deep in the earth, and its summit was the Ring. That sense was still here, a muted but deeply comfortable emanation, a power that spilled endlessly from the Navel of the World. Will understood very well why the stone-wise druida had come here twice a year without fail.

He waited for Gwydion to decide what to do, and meanwhile he watched the distant glow in the west until it guttered low and they were bathed in darkness. Breaths of wind ruffled the lush grass. Overhead high veils of cloud were sweeping in. They were not thick enough to hide the stars, but they made them twinkle violently, and that seemed to Will a sign of ill omen.

He pulled his cloak tighter about him and was about to speak when he felt a presence lurking nearby. As he turned, a wild-haired figure broke from cover. Then a blood-freezing scream split the silence. The figure dashed towards them, and came to within a pace of Gwydion’s back. An arm jerked upward, and Will saw a blade flash against the sky.

‘Gwydion!’ he cried.

But the wizard did not move.

Will was aware only of soft words being uttered as he dived low at the figure and carried it to the ground, pinning it. Will’s strength slowly forced the blade from the fist that had wielded it. He was hit, then hit again, in the face, but the blows lacked power and he held his grip long enough to apply an immobilizing spell, which put the attacker’s limbs in struggle against one another.

‘Take care not to hurt her, Will. She cannot help herself.’

He shook the pain from his head and staggered to his feet. The furiously writhing body repulsed him. Strangled gasps came from the assailant as he picked up the blade.

‘Who is she?’ He wiped his mouth where one of the woman’s blows had drawn a little blood. ‘It’s lucky you heard her coming. I had no idea.’

‘I did not hear her so much as feel the approach of her magic.’

‘That’s a trick I wish you’d teach me.’

Gwydion grunted. ‘It was never easy to kill an Ogdoad wizard. And quite hard to take one by surprise.’

Will shook his head again and brushed back his braids. Then he turned the blade over in his fingers. It was broad and double-edged and had a heavy, black handle. ‘This knife is an evil weapon,’ he said, passing the blade to Gwydion.

The wizard would not take it. ‘It is not evil.’

‘No?’

‘Nor is it a weapon. Or even a knife. Did I teach you to think that way?’

‘It looks like a dagger to me,’ he muttered. ‘And it would’ve made a mess of you.’

‘Look again. It is made of obsidian, the same black glass which the Sightless Ones use in the windows of their chapter houses. It is a sacred object, one used in ritual and not to be lightly profaned with blood.’

‘Well, the blood it was intended to spill was yours.’

‘It has more in common with this.’ Gwydion drew the blade of star-iron from the sheath that always hung on a cord about his neck. He held it up. ‘An “iscian”, called by some “athame”, though strictly speaking athamen may be used only by women. It is not a dagger but a compass used to scribe the circle that becomes the border between two worlds. It is the season of Iucer, and tonight this Sister has travelled here by magic. I do not know why she has chosen to meddle far above her knowledge, but look what it has done to her.’

Will turned to where the woman still kicked and struggled as arm fought arm and leg fought leg.

‘Release her, now. But be mindful of the powers that flow here.’

Will rebuckled his belt over his shirt and straightened his pouch. He felt his heart hammering as he danced out the counterspell. At length the woman’s body collapsed into the grass, as if her bones had been turned to blood. Though slender, she was of middle age, with long hair, silvered in streaks now. Twenty years ago it would have been dark and she would have been a handsome woman.

‘Speak to me now!’ Gwydion commanded, and made a sign above her head.

The Sister shrieked and writhed, but then her voice became one of malice.

‘Slaughter great,

Slaughter small!

All slaughter now,

No Slaughter at all!’

‘Peace!’ Gwydion said, and made a second sign over her.

Instantly she fell quiet, and seemed to sleep comfortably.

‘Who is she?’ Will asked.

‘She comes from one of the hamlets near…that.’ Gwydion gestured towards the last glimmerings of lilac fire in the west. ‘She invoked a spell of great magic to bring herself here. She should not have done that, nor would she have unless her life had been threatened. By rights she should not even have known how to use such magic, but curiosity is a powerful urge in some of the Sisters of the Wise. This time it has saved her life, though we shall soon see if it was worth the saving.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The spell was ill-wrought. It has touched her mind with madness. That is, I hope, the only reason she tried to fall upon me as she did.’

Will examined the blade critically. ‘I didn’t know it was the practice of Sisters to go abroad with their athamen upon them.’

‘Ordinarily, they do not. Take care to keep that one from her, Will. I recognize it for what it is, and I believe that unless you keep it away from her she will try to kill herself with it when she wakes.’

CHAPTER TWO LITTLE SLAUGHTER

Gwydion slowly unwound the strands of magic that had afflicted the woman. Will marvelled at the wizard’s calm composure as he laid her down inside the circle and danced the harm from her. He laid charms upon her head, made signs above her body with his staff, and finally he drew a glistening adder from her mouth. He laid it down to vanish into the night.

Afterwards Will found himself drawn to watch the simmering lights. The corner of his lip tingled, and a lump had started to come up where the witch’s flailing fist had marked him.

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.

‘Do?’ Gwydion stirred. ‘Perhaps you should decide what’s best.’

‘You’re the wizard.’

‘But it was you who summoned me.’

‘Yes, well I thought you ought to know about…that. It seemed to me to be Maskull’s doing.’

‘You are right. It is.’

Will was about to ask the wizard how he could be so sure, but then he remembered how seldom Gwydion was wholly open with the truth, and how closely he shepherded his wisdom. Of course a wizard needed to, for he was a guardian and therefore must be adept at manipulation. It was the entire purpose of the Ogdoad to steer fate in order to keep the world going along on the true path, and so many times during the long history of the Realm members of the wizardly council had intervened at crucial moments. Gwydion knew about cause and effect and the motivation of folk, and he had lived for such a time that long consequences were plain to his eyes. Will understood very well that there were some things Gwydion could afford to divulge and others that he must certainly not, but it did not hurt any the less to think that certain of the wizard’s secrets probably concerned his own origins.

He felt discomfort run through him while the Wise Woman twitched and muttered in dream at their backs and all three waited for the dawn to come. At last, the east grew grey with filtered light.

‘She’ll be worried,’ he said, meaning Willow. ‘I’ll bet she hasn’t slept a wink.’

Gwydion stared at him for a moment and then broke off the look. ‘Why not wait until the sun is truly up?’ he said. ‘You will find it easier to decide by the full light of day. The spell that cloaks the Vale is of necessity a powerful one. It is unlikely that even you would succeed in finding your way home in this half light.’

‘Decide? About what?’

‘About what you should do.’

Will sighed. He had heard Gwydion speak this way before, and he wondered where it was leading.

In the grey of that cold hour before sunrise the dew was penetrating. Thin mists rolled in the valleys that clefted the Tops, and as the stars went out one by one, he went over to the elder tree. He would not approach it too closely for fear that it might swallow him up again. Instead, he kicked his toes at the edge of the hole from which the battlestone had been taken. It was like the gap from which a rotten tooth had been pulled, but the pain and the stench had almost been washed from the ground.

‘Gwydion, where’s the stump gone?’

‘Stump?’

‘The big piece of battlestone that was left.’

‘I took it away.’

He inclined his head, surprised. ‘Why would you do that?’

‘I wanted to give it to my friend Cormac.’

‘It’s a strange gift for a friend.’

‘Strange, perhaps, but useful certainly. Cormac is Lord of the Clan MacCarthach. He is a lord of the Blessed Isle, and a great builder of castles. Once drained, the battlestones are changed from deadly to mildly benign. Once the harm is gone there remains a small residue of kindness that works much as a charm does. I believe the stone will sit well once it is mortared into the ramparts of Cormac’s castle of An Blarna.’

‘What power will it confer, there? Invulnerability?’

‘Ha! Not that. Cormac will have to look to his own security as ever he did. But now he will be able to defend himself with the gift of diplomacy, for it seems that this particular stump gives those who touch it a fine way with words.’

‘Then you yourself must have slept seven nights upon it, I’d say.’

Gwydion laughed. ‘Did I never tell you that mockery is a very childish skill? I will have you know that many is the night since last we met when I have wished myself upon a bed that was as soft as a castle parapet.’

‘I’m wishing myself abed at this very moment.’ Will stretched again and yawned. ‘As sorry as I am for your poor old spine, it’s time I rested mine. I really should be going home.’

At this Gwydion looked silently away, and Will knew the wizard had more to say for himself. They sat until the skylarks began singing, until the eastern sky had turned a fragile blue above the pale mists of a summer dawn. Long, low streamers of cloud hovered close by the eastern horizon, as pink as the boiled flesh of a salmon. They turned slowly to fiery gold as the sun rose to burn off night mists that still clung to the land.

‘Did you ever find the Black Book?’ Will asked, meaning the ancient scroll that Gwydion had often spoken about, the one that told of the history of the battlestones.

The wizard stiffened. ‘I did not, and perhaps I never will. But I have not been idle. I have learned something of what the Black Book might once have contained. There are here and there snippets to be found, lines taken from fragments, copies of copies, translations made from memory long after the Black Book was lost. My gleanings have been meagre; still they have given me some much-needed clues regarding how best to set about the perilous task of draining a battlestone.’

‘Surely you don’t think—’

‘My first attempt was foolhardy. I am aware of that now. But if I had been wiser sooner, then I should not have done as I did. And where would that have left us?’

Will grunted. ‘All decisions must be made on the basis of imperfect knowledge, I suppose.’

The wizard’s chin jutted. ‘I will say that now I believe I have almost learned enough to try again.’

There was a noise then, and Will turned. ‘Look! The Sister. She stirs.’

They went to attend the Wise Woman as she came out of sleep. First her eyes opened and rolled in her head, then she struggled weakly and spoke like one in a fever. Gwydion lifted her head and made her drink from a small leather bottle. Then he said firmly, ‘Where are you from, Sister?’

‘My home is at Fossewyke, Master,’ she said in the voice of a young girl.

‘That is by Little Slaughter, is it not?’

Her eyes roamed, but then she said, ‘Yes, Master. It is in the vale of the Eyne Brook.’

‘Well, get you home now without delay. Do not eat or drink again until night falls. By which time you will be wholly yourself again. Do you promise to do as I bid you?’

‘Yes, Master.’

Will hid the sheathed blade away from her as Gwydion pointed a warning finger in her face. ‘To thine own self be true – now promise me that also.’

‘I promise, Master.’

‘Go now! Prosper under the sky, and do not be tempted to meddle again with crafts that lie beyond your scope.’

And with that the Sister rose to her feet and skipped away as briskly as a lamb, leaving Will in awe of the power that lay in Gwydion’s words.

‘Is she in her right mind again?’ he asked doubtfully.

‘Not yet. But by sundown she will be, save for a strong cider headache. And that might teach her to go more slowly in high matters. I did not chastise her further, for she must have acted in fear to save her life. By rights great magic such as she used should have killed her, but it did not, and that is a discrepancy which troubles me.’

‘Discrepancy?’ Will asked, his heart sinking. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Come, Willand, I have a favour to ask of you.’

He followed, going towards the lign and out along it to the west until Gwydion said:

‘Slaughter great,

Slaughter small!

All slaughter now,

No Slaughter at all!

‘Do you know what that means?’

Will shook his head. ‘Should I?’

‘It is the answer to the lights that burned last night over the Wolds.’

‘How could that be an answer?’

Gwydion sat down on the ground. ‘I will tell you, but first you must tell me again what happened to the Doomstone of Verlamion, the same which you think you destroyed – but cannot say how.’

Will sat down too. He thought back to the desperate moment when he had struggled against the Doomstone. He told all he could remember of what had taken place in the cellar under the great chapter house of the Sightless Ones. The Doomstone had been none other than the slab that covered the Founder’s sarcophagus.

‘In the end I used this to break it,’ he said, hooking a finger inside the neck of his shirt.

He had meant to draw out his fish talisman and show it to Gwydion, but it was not there. He patted his chest in puzzlement, then remembered how the day before he had washed his hair and replaited his braids ready for the Lammas celebrations. He had hung the fish on a nail and had forgotten to put it back on. It was only the figure of a fish, no bigger than his thumb, carved in green and with a red eye, but he missed it.

‘No matter,’ he said regretfully. ‘It’s probably not important.’

Gwydion’s grey eyes watched him. ‘The power of magic is often made greater by tokens. Much strength may be drawn upon in time of peril if a true belief lies within your heart. You knew what to do without being taught. I have said it many times, Willand, you are the Child of Destiny. The Black Book has said so.’

He chewed his lip, a heavy weight burdening him. ‘I don’t know where I come from, and that scares me, Gwydion.’

The wizard touched him with a kindly hand. ‘Willand, I must interfere as lightly as possible where you are concerned. I know little enough about the part you are to play, except a pitiful portion revealed by the seers of old. Believe me when I say that I am hiding nothing from you that it would serve you to know.’

He sighed and hugged his knees. ‘I’ve been having the same nightmare over and over lately. An idea comes to me in shallow sleep – that Maskull is my father.’

Gwydion shook his head. ‘The Doomstone traded in fear and lies. The planting of deceits in men’s minds is the way all such stones make a defence of themselves.’

‘Then how do you explain what Maskull himself said when I faced him on top of the curfew tower? That was something else I can’t forget. He said, “I made you, I can just as easily unmake you.” I’ve wondered too many times what he meant by it.’

Gwydion said gently, ‘Maskull is not your father. Be assured of that.’

‘Then why did he say what he did?’

‘Try to forget about it.’

The wizard got up and walked away. Will wanted to leap up, to go after him and badger him on the matter, but Gwydion’s certainty made him pause, made him remember that a wizard’s secrets must be respected.

‘If you say so.’

As he watched his long morning shadow stretching before him, a keen hunger gnawed at his spirit. After a while, he shivered and got up. A cool westerly breeze had sprung up and he felt an ache in his bones that he thought must be coming from the dampness of the grass. The power flowing from the Giant’s Ring was subsiding as the sun rose higher, but still he could feel the echoes coursing in darkness beneath his bare feet. He looked inside himself for an answer, then went to talk with Gwydion about the power that moved in the earth.

‘Can’t you find a way to stop the empowering of the lorc?’ he asked. ‘Why not halt the flow right here at its source? That way the battlestones would never awaken.’

Gwydion shook his head. ‘What you suggest is impossible.’

‘But why? You said the Giant’s Ring controls the earth flow like a sluice controls a millstream. I can feel the influence surging under here. It’s huge.’

‘So it is, but I could not control it any more than I could dam a raging river torrent with my bare hands. And in any case, it would do no good. Any attempt to block the flow would wreak havoc – blocking the millrace would surely stop the mill-wheel turning, but it would also raise the millpond to overflowing and eventually it would burst the dam. To interfere with the lorc directly would risk disrupting all the earth flows that sustain us. In the end it would turn the Realm into a wasteland.’