Whitemantle

Perhaps it was just a trick of the light or the position of the sun, but Will had the impression that the king winked at him. And it was easy to imagine that a dozen gargoyles made faces and rude gestures as they passed below, showing that even here the traditional humour of the masons’ guild had not been forgotten. And though Gwydion insisted there was much dark magic still waiting to be swept away, there was much here also that seemed benign.

They went straight up to the small, comfortable apartments that the royal chamberlain had grudgingly afforded them – through an arch, up some stone stairs and along a cool passageway onto which three doors opened. By the time they came to their own door, Will had decided he must speak urgently to Gwydion of the strange Fellow who had stepped forward to save his life.

But no sooner was Will’s decision made than it was dashed aside, for as their own door opened they found a surprise waiting for them.

‘Now then! Ha-har! And look who’s here to greet you!’

‘Oh!’ Willow cried out. ‘It can’t be!’

‘Wortmaster?’ Will said, equally delighted. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Where else should I be? Hey? Answer me that! I’m come down with the rest of my Lord of Ebor’s people. And just lately I have been as busy as a bee in June! Ha-har! Look at you!’

Gort opened his arms in a wide embrace and hugged them left and right, until Bethe started up such a howling at being pressed into the face of so bewhiskered a monster that Gort was driven into retreat.

‘There, there, kitten! Oh, she doesn’t know me…’ Gort said, dabbing a fond finger at Bethe’s nose. ‘Do you, hey, little poppy-kin?’

‘Aye, and maybe she knows you too well, Wartmonster,’ Will said, grinning.

‘Oh, Will! How can you say such a thing?’ Willow patted Bethe’s back until she drew breath. Then Willow began to grin and coo in the way that mothers do to disconcerted babes everywhere.

‘That child has lusty lungs,’ Gort said, poking a finger in his ear.

‘She’s tired.’

‘Maybe she’d like a nice piece of cheese. I’ve fetched down a fine Cordewan Crumbly for you.’

‘Not for Bethe, I don’t think. But I’ll take some of it gladly. Here, have a chair, and tell us your latest news.’

They all sat down. Bethe’s storm of tears dried up and soon she was at Gort’s knee and smiling up at him as he cut pieces of Cordewan Crumbly.

‘Did I tell you the young victor of Delamprey has brought the stump away with him?’ the Wortmaster said.

‘The battlestone?’ Will asked with sudden interest. ‘We thought he might do that.’

‘Hmmm, well he has. It came south in Edward’s own baggage train. It’s being heavily guarded.’

Will got up and began to walk about. ‘You’re going to have to speak to Edward, Master Gwydion. How will we ever be able to decipher the stone if we can’t get to see it?’

Gort waved a hand towards the window. ‘It’s sitting down there in Albanay Yard, Master Gwydion, but they won’t let me near. Me, or anyone.’

‘Edward will quickly tire of it.’ The wizard tossed his head in dismissal. ‘But Wortmaster, surely you have news of greater import than this?’

‘Oh, I’ve been much abroad since last we met, Master Gwydion, and busier still since the king was taken – going here and there, sowing appleseeds and bringing to mind things once said by Semias.’ He grinned and looked out from under the overgrowth of his eyebrows. He cast a meaningful glance at the wizard. ‘I did as you wanted.’

‘Then you have brought it…’ the wizard said, as if hardly daring to believe. His eyes roamed to every corner of the room, but evidently did not find what they were searching for. ‘Well? Where is it?’

‘I have it. I have it indeed. It is here somewhere,’ Gort said distractedly. ‘And I have something else too!’

Gwydion’s expression grew suddenly suspicious. ‘What else? Wortmaster Gort, what else?’ He wagged a finger. ‘I hope you have not gone beyond my request and made a tomb robber of yourself.’

‘Pooh!’ Gort took the comment like a slap, and said to no one in particular, ‘Did you ever hear such a charge? And me a right stout and dependable spirit when it comes to the doing of favours for people, hey?’

Gwydion closed his eyes, and a look of sorely-tried patience came over him. ‘Wortmaster, what have you done with the staff?’

‘Have no fear. It’s been well looked after. There now! You can’t see it because it’s packed up small in your old crane bag! Appleseeds, appleseeds, appleseeds…’

Will and Willow exchanged uncertain glances as Gort bent down and began to rummage in a small bag that suddenly appeared from under the skirts of his robe. Will recognized it from his first days travelling with the wizard. When the Wortmaster straightened up he had in his hand a gnarled stick of wood. It was a full fathom in length and it gleamed and sparkled. Under ordinary circumstances it could not possibly have come out of a bag so small, but Will knew the crane bag was no ordinary scrip.

‘Master Gwydion, is that your staff?’ Will asked doubtfully. Then he turned to the Wortmaster. ‘Have you remade it, Gort? It seems different.’

Gort shuffled and shrugged. ‘Not I. Making staffs? I’m not suited to that kind of work. Oh, not me!’

‘No one is these days,’ Gwydion said, taking the staff and looking it over closely. ‘This is not mine, Willand. Mine was broken, and no power in the world can remake it.’

‘Then whose is this?’

Gwydion’s eyes looked far away and he seemed to be seeing the ghosts of a distant time when the world was yet young. ‘This is quite a piece of work. It once belonged to Maglin whose self-sacrifice is famous – he who was Phantarch after Celenost failed and went into the Far North.’

‘Maglin?’ Will said uncertainly, hardly knowing why he felt dismay at the name. ‘The second phantarch? Wasn’t it Maglin who presided over the Ogdoad during…the Age of Giants?’

‘Maglin’s rule was sorely troubled,’ Gwydion said, ‘for it was his lot to steer the Isle of Albion through turbulent waters. In Maglin’s time we of the Ogdoad were much taken up with the healing of the world after a great mishap befell. We repaired the fabric – plugged a hole you might say, through which all the magic had been draining. We seven guardians stood our ground, and Maglin was our champion. There was a furious fight, and though in the end we succeeded, it was a costly victory. Maglin himself closed up the hole, but he had to give too much of himself. You may judge the bitterness of his fate for yourself, for though he was phantarch for a thousand years, yet in all that time no men dared come into these Isles.’

Gort shook his head at the memory. ‘During Maglin’s phantarchship the last of the First Men died, you see? Only wyrms and giants thrived here after that.’

‘Until King Brea came?’ Willow asked.

‘Until King Brea came.’

Will looked at the staff with new eyes. ‘So is this the Staff of Justice, then?’ he asked in amazement. ‘The third of the Four Hallows of the Realm?’

Gwydion was quick to undo that idea. ‘Oh, this is not the hallowed staff. This is just an old wizard’s helpmeet. But well-fashioned and supple enough still, I hope, to do daring deeds when put into the right hands. I asked the Wortmaster to bring it out from a place that you know well, Willand.’

‘A place that I know well?’

‘You mean the Vale?’ Willow asked.

‘Not the Vale!’ Gort laughed.

Puzzled, Will turned to Gort, but the Wortmaster merely stooped and reached into the crane bag to lift out another article, this time a cloak of white feathers. ‘Appleseeds, appleseeds, appleseeds…ha-har!’

And Will instantly knew the cloak for what it was. ‘That’s the kind that wizards once used to wear. It’s a swan cloak. Maglin’s staff must have come from the tomb of King Leir!’

‘Ah-ha…Right you are!’ Gort danced the cloak by the shoulders so that the sheen on the feathers became otherworldly. ‘This is the White Mande, the cloak that was once draped over that great king’s dead body by Semias.’

‘Leir’s cloak,’ Will breathed, recalling the moment he had discovered the lost tomb. Wonderful things had been arrayed around that vault, but they all belonged to a dead man. He turned to Gwydion. ‘You told me that the cloak was brought out of the Realm Below long ago by Arthur, and whoso-ever wore it would become invisible.’

Gwydion shook his head. ‘These, I believe, were my words. “He who wears Leir’s mantle shall remain unseen by mortal eye.”’

‘Well, isn’t that the same thing?’

‘My meaning at the time was that Leir’s tomb was fated to remain undisturbed by lesser men, until such time as it should be found by one who is greater than Leir. However, you are right that a swan cloak will cause anyone who wears it to fade from view unless that person is a true king.’

Will slowly understood the implications and he began to redden in the face. Then Gort threw the cloak neatly about Will’s shoulders and stood back. ‘It fits! It fits!’

Will tried to shrug it off. ‘Oh, Wortmaster, what are you doing? Of course it fits – it’s a cloak.’

‘Fit for a king, I’d say,’ Gort insisted.

‘Master Gwydion, you’ve put him up to this nonsense.’

But the wizard merely drifted into the shadows as the shimmering feathers settled around Will, sheathing him in glory.

‘Please, Wortmaster,’ he said unhappily. ‘Take it off me. I daren’t wear such a fine thing.’

But Gort would not take it off him. Will looked down at the empty clasp of gold and silver, the setting that had once held a great blue-white diamond called the Star of Annuin, and he could not help but think that the world was rushing headlong towards an unthinkable chasm, and that a great weight would soon fall upon his inadequate shoulders.

CHAPTER EIGHT MAGOG AND GOGMAGOG

Three days passed, and the wizard came and went, busying himself in the seeking out of tokens. Much had been hidden away in the palace by Maskull. Three dried toads were found nailed to the rafters of the royal bedchamber. Maskull’s magical traps still tied up parts of Trinovant in a spider web, nor could Gwydion’s dancing unweave it all. He had made many libations at key points, shaping counter-spells at crossroads and leaving sigils under stairs. Yet too often the working required the moon to be at the full, or a vial of royal blood that was hardly to be had. Still, the wizard erected a cordon around the palace in the form of a single flaxen thread, and within its circuit he made scatterings of ash. Various woods were needed to cleanse and restore the White Hall, and so he had hung swags of holly and twisted dried mistletoe over door lintels, and sent Gort out to the royal forests beyond Hammersmyth to fetch back a boatload of oak, ash and elm.

One thunderstruck evening he had ranged up and down like a demon, flinging open shutters to light and air to admit the purifying blast of the west wind. That cool messenger of the middle airs had swept out the stink of incense and guttered the votive candles placed in so many corners by the Sightless Ones. Gwydion had found slips of paper containing malign formulae, seed pods, withered berries, dead flowers, knots of hair and knuckle bones, old cod-heads, the mummified body of a black cat with the halter still tight about its neck. But nothing had worked to remove the last lingering stench of dismal fortune that hung about the palace.

In cellars as dank as dungeons he had found the carefully arranged shards of a broken mirror, things stolen, things lost, things entombed under stone flags. Equerries and under-chamberlains were disturbed from their beds at midnight. High palace officials were roused up in the misty dawn as the wizard came in bearing in his hands the bones of a long-dead prince, to mutter and dance and run his new-found wand over chest and chimney-breast alike. And finally, in a tower occupied by no one at all, Gwydion had felt his way forward with remorseless care, for in a solitary cell at the top of a stair Maskull had kept his workshop of vile creation.

The sorcerer’s chamber was not without subtle defences. Magic was set, ready to snare the unwary. Walls that were not walls, seemingly thin air that was. And so Gwydion halted his attack. He let his investigation flow around the problem, then proceeded crabwise. At last, he went at it like the village worthy who goes to the local well, draws out on the end of long tongs the wriggling, spitting young of a water drake and dashes out its brains against a rock. A huge wasps’ nest was smoked out and taken down from the roof space, and when the wizard broke it open he found it to contain a human skull. Inside that was a dripping honeycomb that Gwydion sealed in a great jar.

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