The Giants’ Dance

‘Many adventurers sailed with Great Arthur aboard the ship Prydwen. Bards, warriors and harpers – great men of old, they were! Among them, the famous Wordmaster Taliesin, who was one of seven who survived to tell the tale. He wrought a great poem about it called “The Breaking of the Dark”. Much went missing from the Black Book in the days when giants ruled the land of Albion, yet there was enough of it remaining for it to speak of a promise to be redeemed – a king shall come, a king whose forewarning sign shall be the drawing forth of a sword from a stone.’ And Morann sang again,

‘Child of magical union,

Hidden among hunters, weaned upon warriors.

Brave son of a poisoned father,

Sent to the city, tried at the tourney.

A king of tender years,

Sired by a sovereign, but made by Merlyn,

Drew he forth Branstock,

Great Arthur, the once and future king…’

The loremaster’s eyes softened, and he smiled. ‘So you see, Willand, you are not the only one to have been named in the Black Book. Master Gwydion is there too, when Master Merlyn was his name.’

Will tried to smile back. ‘It’s an uncomfortable feeling sometimes knowing that whatever path you choose, the outcome has long been decided.’

‘Don’t think that! Master Gwydion did not mean that when he said your life was hardly your own, only that you were mantled with duties and responsibilities that are heavier than those of most men. But your choices have always been free. It’s not the fulfilment of prophecies that matters, so much as the manner in which they are fulfilled. That’s where final outcomes are decided. Consider the next fragment of the Black Book in which we hear of Great Arthur’s passing, there by the lakeshore of Llyn Llydaw. He made another promise without fear or faltering, one that was to last a thousand years. The verses tell it thus:

‘The worth of my life, such that it be,

Has chained the future to a fateful turn.

When comes the final catastrophe,

Then, only then, shall I return!’

‘When rises the greatest need I shall come again…’ Will whispered in the true tongue.

‘Those were your words. And what turbulent times have we seen since the overrunning of the Realm by the Easterlings. Though none have been worse than those that are upon us now. I will say it straightly, this is the final catastrophe.’

‘The once and future king did not come to save us from the Conquest.’

‘Perhaps the arrival of Gillan might have seemed to warrant it, but in the end the Phantarch, Semias, reached an understanding with the Conqueror and we saw that his invasion was not the ending of the world such as we had feared. That was near four hundred years ago.’

‘How long is it since Arthur fought his last fight at Camlan?’

‘I think you already know the answer to that – near a thousand. So we come to you, Will, and the last pitiful fragments of the Black Book that Master Gwydion has cherished in a secret place down so many generations. This also seems to speak of a king, though no one can be certain. One who is “…a True King, born of Strife, born of Calamity, born at Beltane in the Twentieth Year, when the beams of Eluned are strongest at the ending of the world”.’

‘The ending of the world?’ Will felt the shock of the idea. ‘I was born in a twentieth year…’

‘Aye, in the twentieth year of the reign of King Hal. And on the night of the full moon. And it was said that you would deny yourself thrice, and so you did.’

‘And “One being made two”?’ Will said, looking up suddenly from the strange knife that lay upon the table. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It too seems to be a part of the prophecy.’ Morann looked away. ‘As also is the suggestion that “two shall be made one”.’

Will straightened. ‘Then it was written all along that the Doomstone would mend itself!’

‘That could be one interpretation.’

Morann reached out to take his blade but Will stayed his hand. ‘You said this had been sharpened on the Whetstone of Tudwal. So what if it was?’

‘Ah, well, you see, a blade so sharpened will deal only a lethal blow, or no blow at all.’

Will quickly put the knife down.

‘Morann, if you’re leaving tomorrow, may I ask a favour of you tonight? Could you go to Trinovant by way of Nether Norton? I don’t know of another messenger who could find his way into the Vale.’

‘You may consider it done.’

CHAPTER FIVE MAGICIAN, HEAL THYSELF!

When Will woke the next day at first light, he found that Morann had already left. He sat down at a small oak table and, while he waited for breakfast, took out the little red fish from his pouch. It was so like his own green fish that there could be no doubt that it had come from the same place. And as Gwydion always reminded him, a famous rede said there was no such thing as a coincidence. But what the meaning might be in the fish was far from clear. As he turned it over in his fingers he wondered why he had not shown it to Gwydion, or to Morann, who was surely the best person to give an opinion. He had just put it in his pouch and forgotten about it. Or had he?

Delicious smells wafted in from the kitchens and soon the Plough began to fill with Eiton’s harvesters. Will, who was sitting alone in the corner, saw how they first noticed him then touched their foreheads and shook him by the hand as they filed in.

‘Morning. Morning…’

Will breathed deep. He seemed to have lost his appetite, and took a little oatmeal. When he had finished it he took up the red fish and studied it again, while its beady little green eye studied him. It was so like his own talisman, yet the comfort he had always got from the green fish did not come from this one.

Now, as he looked up, he saw the harvesters holding out their sickles towards him.

‘Thank you, Master,’ the nearest of them said.

‘What?’

‘For your blessings upon our trade tools.’

He looked back at the man blankly, then he saw that his quarterstaff was propped up behind him and he realized with a bump what the men had taken him for.

They think I’m a wizard, he thought, smiling. A wizard! Would you believe it?

The men would not leave until he had touched each of their sickles in turn and muttered the name of it in the true tongue.

As the last of the harvesters left, a young mother came to him and asked to have a blessing laid on her child.

‘A blessing? Well, I don’t think I—’

‘Please. Just a good word for the babe, Master,’ she said. ‘To keep the horse flies off her while I ties up the corn stooks. See?’

‘You want me to put a good word on the baby?’ Will asked doubtfully. He looked across the room and saw Dimmet watching with folded arms. Will inclined his head, then shrugged. ‘Here. Give him to me. What’s his name?’

‘Rosy,’ said the child’s mother.

‘Oh, yes. Yes…of course.’

Will made a sign on the babe’s forehead, while muttering a spell of general protection against insects. He realized he couldn’t remember the true name for horse flies, so he protected her from wasps and creepy-crafties of all kinds, then he handed the child back.

‘She’ll be fine in the fields, but make sure she stays out of the sun, won’t you?’

‘Thank you, Master,’ the woman said and went away.

But no sooner had she gone than a toothless old woman appeared. She had with her a girl of five or six. When Will looked up the old woman said nothing, but the child smiled the most astonishing smile. She had no more teeth than the old woman, and was also cross-eyed.

‘Can I…help?’ Will said at last.

‘Begging your pardon, Master,’ the old woman said. ‘I brung the daughter’s daughter when I heard you was here.’

Will waited, but when nothing more came from the old woman except an expectant look, he said, ‘What I mean is…is there something I can do for you?’

He watched as the old woman shuffled and then said something to the child, pointing to Will’s staff. Straight away the child put her hands to her mouth and grinned shyly, then she darted forward to touch the staff.

‘Hoy! What’s this?’ Will asked. ‘What did you just tell her? That’s no wizard’s staff.’

The old woman looked suddenly cast down and began to beg piteously. ‘Is there nothing can be done for the poor little one, Master?’

‘What’s your name?’ Will asked the girl.

‘Thithwin.’

‘Thithwin. What a very nice name.’

‘It’s Siswin,’ said the old woman. ‘I’m africkened she’ll never get a husband looking like she do, Master.’

‘Surely it’s a mite early to be thinking of husbands for…ah, Siswin,’ Will said frowning. He was uncomfortable discussing the child’s looks in her hearing.

‘Ain’t there nothing at all can be done against plug ugliness, Master?’

‘Just…wait a moment.’

He thought back to his studies and knew there was something that could be done, if only it was to make the child believe that she was beautiful. According to the magic book Gwydion had given him that usually did the trick, for children had a way of growing into what they thought they wanted to be most of the time.

He took the girl’s shoulders in both hands, steadying her before him. Then he brushed back the hair from her face with his thumbs and put a pinch of salt on top of her head, after which he muttered a spell that was used to untangle knots.

‘Look at this finger with this eye, and that finger with that eye,’ he said holding up two fingers before her. Then he slowly moved his two fingers apart and muttered a ‘let it be’ spell.

‘You are a very pretty girl, do you know that?’ he said solemnly, and the girl nodded.

‘Now will you make my teeth grow, pleeth?’ she said.

‘Don’t worry about them. They’ll grow out in their own good time. They always do.’

Will waited for them to leave and allow him to finish his breakfast in peace, but they did not move.

‘And what about grandmammy? Will her teeth grow out ath well?’

Will spread his hands in regret. ‘Now that I can’t promise.’

‘Say “thank you” to the Master,’ the old woman said.

‘Thank you, Mathter.’

When they had gone Will finished his meal then, alerted by a buzz of voices, he got up to look along the passageway. There was a knot of people at the door of the inn, and all of them were marvelling at the improvement in the girl’s eyes. Dimmet was foremost among them, his voice booming.

Will spoke to Dimmet the moment he came in. ‘What did you tell them?’

‘Oh, ‘twern’t me. Word has just got about.’

‘What word?’

‘Why, that there’s a wizard in the district.’

Will tried to lower his voice. ‘But I’m not a wizard.’

‘You could have fooled me about that. That was as pretty a piece of healing as what ever I’ve seen. And I’ve seen a fair few healers in my time, genuine as well as the other sort.’

‘But that was just a little helper magic.’

‘Well, that’s it! Folks’ll walk for days to have a touch of magic. Don’t you know that? Many a time when Master Gwydion’s come here there’s been a crowd of folk started to gather outside. One time there was a line stretched halfway up to Lawn Hill. That’s why he don’t never stop in a place for too long.’ Dimmet grinned. ‘I expect he asked you to look after business for him for a day or two, did he? Save him the bother?’

‘What?’ Will said, aghast.

‘You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like, Willand, you know that!’ Dimmet winked. ‘I expect I can handle all the extra customers. And there’s generally a powerful thirst on folk who’ve walked a half dozen leagues or more on a summer’s day in search of a cure.’

Just then Duffred put his head in. ‘There’s a man out here says can he bring his cow in to see the wizard?’

‘No, he cannot!’ Dimmet said and marched off down the passageway.

‘Where’re you going?’ Will called after him. ‘Duffred, where’s your father gone?’

But Duffred only grinned and said, ‘He’s found a mare’s nest and he’s gone to laugh at the eggs. What do you think? You’d better come out here before they start breaking the door down.’

Will groaned, and resigned himself to a long day.

A clamour began as he came to the alehouse door.

‘One at a time!’ he said. ‘Please!’

Duffred and two of his father’s serving men came out and marshalled the folk into a line, saying that if they did not stand quietly and in good order the wizard would not see anybody.

‘What did you say that for?’ Will hissed as Duffred went back inside.

‘Eh?’

‘What did you call me a wizard for?’

‘Oh, they don’t know no different. Besides, you are a wizard to us.’ And Duffred went off whistling.

When noon came, Will hardly stopped to eat. He had not bothered to count but he supposed that over a hundred folk had gone away happier than when they had arrived. He helped them over everything from bunions and hens that refused to lay to pig-bitten fingers and a troublesome toothache. But no matter how hard he listened, or how many signs he placed on heads, still more folk presented themselves.

Throughout the afternoon it seemed that two hopefuls arrived for every one who went away, and as the heat of the day began to mount, Will began to wonder how many folk there were left in this part of the Realm. The promise he had made to Gwydion to lie low had somehow failed without any intention on his part, and that was worrying. If I keep on like this, he thought, someone nasty is bound to hear of me and be drawn here – if only to have a cure for their boils.

‘I don’t want to disappoint anyone,’ he told Dimmet at last as the innkeeper brought him out another tankard of cider. ‘They come here with such faith in me. But there’s got to be a limit. I’ll have to call it a day when the sun does the same.’

‘You’ll never get through this lot by sundown!’

‘I’ll have to. It’s necessary to transpose spells when they’re cast at night. And of that art I know very little.’

The end of the line was still a long way down the road, and only when Will refused to see another person did Dimmet send Duffred along to guard the end so that newly arriving folk could be sent away.

The crescent moon was setting when Will finally escaped to take his supper. Dimmet, who was counting a stack of silver pennies, said Will deserved the best room in the inn, which was up a set of stairs jealously guarded by Bolt, the Plough’s big black dog.

‘That’s it!’ Will announced. ‘No more! You’d better tell them to go away, Dimmet. Because I am not seeing anyone else.’

‘There’s always tomorrow.’

‘Not tomorrow. Not ever!’

He went to bed very tired, but he could not rest easy, for though none of the casts had been great in power or extent, the exercise of so many spells still sparked in all the channels of his body.

As he lay restlessly, a thousand faces appeared to him – all the poor folk who had passed under his hands, all the wounds and worries, all the ailments and afflictions.

Surely, he thought as he turned onto his side, I couldn’t have advertised myself more widely if I’d shouted my name out from the rooftops.

The next day he woke early. He was still tired, and quite ravenous, but when he opened the shutters he saw a swelling crowd was already gathered below. They waited in hope, though they had been told that there would be no more healing. Those who had arrived since dawn were reluctant to believe what those who had waited all night were telling them. And so the crowd had continued to grow.

As Will sat at breakfast he debated what he would say. When he peeped through a crack in the shutters he saw that several hawkers had come hoping to profit from the crowd. There was even a juggler in red and yellow walking up and down with a chair balanced on his chin.

‘You’ll have to be strong with them today,’ Dimmet said, a gleam in his eye.

‘I’m not going out there. Tell them I’ve gone.’

‘Tell them yourself.’

Will’s fists clenched. ‘Dimmet!’

Dimmet was about to go out to make the announcement that Will was shortly to address them all when there came the drumming of a horse’s hooves.

‘Master! Master!’ someone cried at the back door. ‘Come quick!’

That sounded too urgent to ignore, and Will decided to go into the yard. He pushed his way through the onlookers and was met by a man sitting astride a dun pony who begged him to come along the Nadderstone road with him.

‘What is it?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Is someone injured?’

‘It’s up on the tower!’ he cried. ‘Come quick!’

‘What’s on the tower? What tower?’

‘They caught a goggly in a trap up by the old chapter house!’

‘A goggly?’

A great gust of surprise swept through those who were listening at the gate as they all caught their breath at once.

‘They wants to kill it! You got to come quick!’

That sounded sinister, though Will had no idea what a goggly was. Still, it was his opportunity to escape and he seized it. ‘Stand back!’ he said, waving an uncompromising arm at the crowd.

There were groans for fear that he would leave them. Some gave tongue to angry shouts and began to press in around him, but he leapt up behind the rider and thrust out his oak staff. He cried out as he had once heard Gwydion cry out, ‘Give way, there! Hinder me who dares!’

The crowd was struck dumb by that. Dimmet and Duffred and their helpers began to push people back from the gate. A way parted and allowed the pony to canter away. A moment later they had left Eiton village far behind, and Will clung on as they passed into open country.

They followed the road that Will had taken the day before along the broad valley and past the ruined chapter house. But when they came up the ridge where the tower stood he saw that it was abandoned no more. A knot of folk were gathered at its foot, and they were looking up at the mottled brown stone. Many had armed themselves with sticks and were shouting angry oaths at the tower. They broke off when they saw their messenger had returned with the wizard.

As Will got down from the horse he saw one of the young men begin throwing stones up at the tower.

‘Hoy!’ he shouted, and made the lad turn. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Trying to wallop that there goggly.’

When Will shaded his eyes and looked up he saw they were trying to dislodge the gargoyle.

‘It’s naught but a carven image!’

‘Nooo! ‘tis a goggly! Look, it moves!’

Will stared at their red faces and began to suspect they had been put under an enchantment. But then the creature actually did move.

‘See, Master! Now then! What kind of a carving is that?’

Will’s eyes narrowed. It was a live animal trapped high up in a corner of the wall. One of the ugliest creatures he had ever seen. Its every movement lifted the hairs in Will’s flesh, as the sight of a spider did in some. The creature was brown-grey and mottled, batlike yet baby-faced at the same time, and there was something elfin about it. It had wings and a tail and four thin limbs, and was about the size of a three-year-old child, though it was built much slighter and in strange proportions. Whenever it moved the folk below gasped and hooted. And when the bold lad made to pitch another stone up at it Will stayed him with a question.

‘Who found it?’

One of the men spoke up. ‘My brother seen it up there around dawn when we come up from Morton Ashley to check on the snares.’

‘Snares?’ Will asked sharply. ‘Shame on you. There’s a deal of suffering in snares, you know that.’

‘Well, fetch it down then so’s we can kill it!’ the man said.

‘Is that what you brought me out here for?’ Will demanded.

‘Look!’

The thing moved again, crouched in a corner, then scuttled at speed across a sheer wall, clinging to the vertical surface and the overhang of the parapet with long, clawlike nails. Will saw that something was clamped to its ankle and it trailed a long, rusty chain that seemed to be attached to the masonry of the tower.

Stones were let fly at it and fists shaken.

‘Naaw! Naaaw!’ it cried, and a shower of grit flaked down into their eyes from its struggles.

‘Stop that!’ Will cried with all the authority he could muster. ‘You must try to calm yourselves!’

‘At night them gogglies fly out from caverns and drink the milk of our animals,’ a woman said, hate shining in her eyes. ‘And they steal babies from out their cradles!’

‘And they shuns the light,’ another told him. ‘But ‘tis said they can sit out even in the noonday sun and not budge once they’ve tasted of the flesh of a child!’

‘Nonsense.’

‘’Tis true! That’s why they hide out on towers and the like. Pose as gargles in the daytime, they do. Until folk discovers them and drives them away. Pitch a rock at it, Erngar!’

‘I said no throwing!’ Will pointed his staff at the man and he dropped the rock. ‘Or I shall not help you.’

A memory stirred as he caught the latest movement. He was reminded of a candle-blackened roof and hideous faces and winged creatures just like this one. What he had at first taken for carvings had clustered high up among the roof beams of the great chapter house of Verlamion, looking down on him with hungry eyes.

‘Goggly child-stealer!’ a fat woman shouted up at it, wrathfully shaking her fist.

Just then, Duffred came up on a horse. ‘What’s to do here?’ he asked.

Once he had dismounted Will drew him aside out of earshot of the others. ‘What is that thing?’ he asked shading his eyes.

‘Don’t rightly know. But you want to be careful, the folk at Morton Ashley and right down as far as Helmsgrave say these creatures steal newborn babes,’ Duffred murmured.

‘So I’ve discovered.’

The Nadderstone man who had brought Will here joined them, and so did his wife. ‘Gogglies come from a land under the ground.’

‘How do you know that?’ Will asked, a sudden anxiety seizing him.

The man looked back challengingly. ‘Every seven years them gogglies must pay a tithe to the infernal king who lives down below. But it’s a living tithe. They must give over one of their own young – unless they can find a manchild to offer instead.’

‘That’s why they’re always prowling for our young ones,’ the woman said, picking up a stone.

Duffred said quietly, ‘I don’t know if it’s the truth, but it’s what they believe. They all do. When this chapter house was still lived in, the folk hereabouts would bring their children here to have a mark put on their heads – the Rite of Unction they called it. It was supposed to be a protection against these…things.’

Will folded his arms. ‘And was it paid for?’

‘Aye. A gold piece taken from the village coffer.’

He snorted. ‘Gwydion says the Sightless Ones love gold above all else. And that the Elders of the Fellowship delight most in taking it piecemeal from the needy and the credulous.’

‘But is that not a fair exchange?’ Duffred asked. ‘A piece of gold for a charm against evil?’

‘Evil!’ Will gave Duffred a hard look. ‘That is a meaningless word, an idea invented by power-hungry men to enslave folk’s minds. And how many times must it be said: true magic is never to be bought or sold. Don’t you see? The red hands were just squeezing these folk, frightening them into bringing their babes here. Doubtless so they could be registered with a magical mark, one that helps to make recruits of them in later life. Gwydion says the Sightless Ones believe in something very dangerous.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘It’s called the Great Lie.’

Duffred looked unsure and gave the cloister a thoughtful glance. ‘So you’re saying the goggly ain’t a child-stealer after all?’

‘I hardly think so. Look at it, Duff. It’s terrified!’ Will thought of the vent in the cellar under the chapter house and smelled again the strange air that had issued from below.