Whitemantle

Whitemantle

Book Three of the Language Of Stones

Robert Carter

For Andrew Ritchie – the Brompton man – who gave me back my fitness.

‘I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, in order to keep it out of as many things as possible.’

Sean O’Casey

The Plough and the Stars

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Epigraph

PROLOGUE

PART ONE THE ENCHANTED CHAIR

CHAPTER ONE DOUBLE DEPETRIFICATION

CHAPTER TWO TRINOVANT

CHAPTER THREE THE BIER OF ETERNITY

CHAPTER FOUR THE VANE

CHAPTER FIVE ‘KILL! KILL!’

CHAPTER SIX ONCE A FELLOW…

CHAPTER SEVEN LEIR’S LEGACY

CHAPTER EIGHT MAGOG AND GOGMAGOG

PART TWO THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT BE KING

CHAPTER NINE THE LAMB HYTHE YALE

CHAPTER TEN THE WINDOWLESS CHAMBER

CHAPTER ELEVEN PROMISES AND PIECRUSTS

CHAPTER TWELVE THE KING OF PENTACLES

CHAPTER FOURTEEN PROPHECIES, LIBELS AND DREAMS

PART THREE ON THE SEVENTH DAY

CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE FAST-FLOWING STREAM

CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE SLEEPLESS FIELD

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN MUCKLE GATE

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN THE DOOMSTONE OF THE WEST

PART FOUR THE END OF ALL THINGS

CHAPTER NINETEEN THE IRON TREE

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE SUNS

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE THE SECOND DUEL

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO THE STONE THAT WAS HEALED

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE EDWARD

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR A BROKEN LAND

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE WHITE SNOW, RED RIVER

EPILOGUE

AUTHOR’S HISTORICAL NOTE

About the Author

By Robert Carter

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

THE STORY SO FAR

Whitemantle is the third novel in the Language of Stones cycle. The first two, called The Language of Stones, and The Giants’ Dance, recount the story of Willand, an ordinary boy who stands on the threshold of manhood. On the day that Will turns thirteen, the wizard Gwydion takes him away from home and explains certain extraordinary prophecies that concern the third and final coming of an ancient hero-king called Arthur. Gwydion suggests that Will himself is that predicted incarnation, but Will does not want to believe it.

However, as Will’s adventures progress dark forces are seen to be at work, chiefly embodied in the person of Maskull, a ruthless sorcerer and Gwydion’s arch-enemy, and the Sightless Ones, a sinister order of tax collectors who squeeze the common people and try to persuade them to believe in the mind-enslaving ‘Great Lie’. Gwydion is at pains to hide Will’s true identity from the world, and so the boy is lodged in secret, first with the fearsome hog-headed Lord Strange, then with the family of Duke Richard of Ebor, where he is educated in lordly ways. Will also comes to learn ‘the redes’ – the rules that govern magic – and he meets a girl named Willow who becomes his friend. He is also befriended by the House of Ebor’s venerable herbalist, Wortmaster Gort, and he stands up to Edward, the Duke of Ebor’s wilful heir, eventually winning his respect.

But while Will is learning, the Realm is slipping into war, for the present king is descended from a usurper, and there are many who believe he is not the rightful king. In fact, King Hal is being controlled by his beautiful but greedy queen, Mag, and her violent ally, Duke Edgar of Mells. Set against their party is the House of Ebor and its allies, who believe that Duke Richard must be recognized as sovereign. Duke Richard himself is content to wait until the sickly Hal dies, for the latter has no heir, but when the queen falls unexpectedly pregnant, rumours begin to circulate that the child has been fathered by the Duke of Mells as part of a scheme to keep Richard from his just deserts. The gauntlet of conflict is thrown down.

Meanwhile Will, who is now fifteen, has begun to see that, whatever dukes and earls may think, the world is actually maintained by magic, and the real reason the Realm is sliding into war is a magical one. Gwydion tells him of something called ‘the lore’, an ancient network of nine ‘ligns’, or earth streams, extending throughout the Isles, which carries power to an array of standing stones. Each of these ‘battlestones’ contains great harm and has the power, when awoken, to draw men to battle. Gwydion also explains that he and Maskull are the last remaining members of a wizardly council of nine whose task it once was to direct the progress of the world along the true path. But as Age succeeded Age and magic gradually left the world their numbers shrank, until there are now only two wizards left. At last, Maskull has revealed himself as ‘the betrayer’. He has turned to sorcery and is now directing the future along a path of his own choosing – but it is a path that will lead to a final Age of slavery and war.

Will and Gwydion set out to thwart Maskull by finding and uprooting the deadly battlestones. Will shows an extraordinary sensitivity to the lorc, and after many heroic struggles he locates the controlling ‘Doomstone’ in the town of Verlamion. There a bloody battle is halted when Will uses a talisman, a green stone fish he has had since birth, to crack the stone, while Gwydion fights a magical duel against Maskull. When Will confronts Maskull the sorcerer tells him, ‘I made you, I can unmake you just as easily,’ but then disappears as Gwydion lands a vanishing spell on him and transports him down into the Realm Below. In the end, the king and Duke Richard are reconciled. Will is rewarded and returns home with the greatest prize of all – Willow. But his origins, and his ultimate destiny, remain shrouded in mystery.

The second novel, The Giants’ Dance, takes up the tale more than four years later. Will and Willow are now nineteen and living at Nether Norton, Will’s home village, with their baby daughter, Bethe. One summer’s night Will sees the skies begin to blaze with a lurid purple light. Immediately he summons the wizard.

Will has recognized the purple light as that of Maskull’s magic, and when they investigate they find the village of Little Slaughter has been smashed to powder. In the ruins Will finds a little fish carved in red stone, the counterpart to his own talisman. Gwydion says that Maskull, who has escaped from the Realm Below, has directed a shooting star down onto the village. He asks for Will’s help once again.

Soon they meet with loremaster Morann who reports a rumour that the Doomstone Will once cracked has now repaired itself. But as they struggle to discover the whereabouts of the other battlestones and so hold back the tides of war, Will becomes the target of a killer, and realizes that Willow and Bethe have been brought into jeopardy also. After the battle they have all been dreading takes place at Blow Heath, Will finds himself in Ludford Casde, where Willow brings him his green talisman. Meanwhile, the political situation has continued to bend to the lorc. Edgar, Duke of Mells, who died at Verlamion, has passed his tide to his son, Henry. The latter now schemes with Queen Mag to end the agreement that saw King Hal rule with the Duke of Ebor as his ‘Lord Protector’. While the queen’s forces besiege Duke Richard at Ludford, Will becomes greatly affected by the lorc. He tries to find the battlestone that is located there, but is afflicted by madness, and a second attempt is made on his life by the dark-robed assassin who visited him once before. When Will admits to Gwydion that the red fish talisman he found at Little Slaughter has gone, the wizard says that the village was destroyed because Will’s would-be killer once lived there. He is called Chlu, ‘the Dark Child’, and the village was obliterated to make Gwydion believe Chlu was no more, whereas in reality he had become Maskull’s agent.

Will tries to understand the significance of Chlu and what he desires, but answers concerning him are few. Now Ludford is overrun and the Ebor forces flee over the seas. Gwydion magically disguises both Will and Willow so that they may masquerade as an emissary of the Blessed Isle and his wife. They attach themselves to the royal court, but they are ensnared by the wiles of Lord Dudlea who wants Will to arrange the murder of Richard of Ebor before he too can return into the Realm. Maskull is behind this demand and when his plan fails he punishes Lord Dudlea by turning his wife and son to stone.

Nothing is seen of Gwydion for many months and Will fears for him. Then news comes that an army loyal to the House of Ebor, and commanded by Edward, Duke Richard’s heir, has landed and is marching north. As The Giants’ Dance reaches its conclusion, Will battles Chlu face to face and drives him off from one of the battlestones, but in doing so he loses his main weapon against the battlestones – the red and green fish talismans fuse together and become a real, live fish, which escapes. However, there is better news when Will finds that Gwydion is being held in the queen’s dungeon at Delamprey. He works hard to free him, and also to redeem himself by thwarting the battlestone that lies buried there. He discovers that one reason Maskull has been so keen to see the war proceed is because he knows a way to tap malign power from the battlestones and use it for his own ends. He has even employed some of this power to make sorcerous manacles which have impaired Gwydion’s ability to do magic.

Seeing no other way, Will promises Lord Dudlea that if his forces will betray the queen and allow Edward an easy victory, then Gwydion will undo the spell that has made statues of Dudlea’s wife and son. Dudlea agrees, and in consequence the battle of Delamprey is soon over. Unfortunately, though King Hal falls into Duke Richard’s hands, the queen makes good her escape: this means that the war will go on.

Once Gwydion has the manacles stricken from his wrists, he tells Will all he knows about the Dark Child – Chlu and Will are twins. Chlu’s name is, in the old tongue of the west, ‘Llyw’, and according to prophecy Will must never pronounce that name in a spell or he will be no more. Gwydion goes on to reveal that almost twenty years ago, he surprised Maskull while he was conducting magical experiments on two baby boys. He rescued them and took them in secret to two separate villages, to lessen the chances of them being found. These places Gwydion then magically hid from prying eyes. Since discovering Chlu’s whereabouts, Maskull has been using him as a means of locating Will. The sorcerer knows he must destroy Will because Will stands between him and the future he is trying to bring about. Will is to become the third incarnation of Arthur, and once that is allowed to happen, Maskull will fail.

Will is angry that Gwydion has delayed telling all that he knows for so long for fear of affecting the outcome of the prophecies and appalled at the responsibility that now faces him. It is up to him to act, and to act heroically, but how can he become King Arthur, as Gwydion says he must? In addition, the wizard warns that the harm they have been drawing out from the battlestones in an attempt to prevent the fighting has not been destroyed, merely dispersed. Like a poisonous smoke, it is filling the world and bringing down the very future that Maskull so desires. And so, as the second book of the Language of Stones cycle ends, Will sees that he must solve the riddle of his own nature, the riddle that will rescue his world.

PART ONE THE ENCHANTED CHAIR

CHAPTER ONE DOUBLE DEPETRIFICATION

It was a mild summer night in July and the sun’s dying beams cast shadows from the elms. To the wise man the trees told of storm and strife and contentions in the upper airs, but down here in the evening glade neither breath of wind nor drop of rain threatened, for a strange peace enfolded all.

Four men dressed in the livery colours of Lord Dudlea sat quietly in the clearing – a waggoner, the waggoner’s lad, and two servants. They were warming themselves and spooning down chicken stew, but although they enjoyed the gentle cheer of their master’s camp fire, still a dull fore-boding shadowed their minds. The sleeping infant that had been left among them was the only one untroubled by the magic that lay heavy on the air, and each of the four knew that before the night was done weird deeds would be accomplished in the lordly tent that stood nearby. They knew it because the great wizard, Gwydion, had told them it would be so.

Only one of them had any idea of what was in the wooden crates they had brought with them, or why a wizard should be here with their lord in a forest clearing at dead of night.

Inside the tent that stood thirty paces away the mood had now become brittle. Lord Dudlea waited impatiently as Gwydion refreshed himself, drawing power from the meadow. Candlelight flickered as Willand carefully lifted the lid from one of the wooden caskets and began to tease out the straw packing and bare the stone cold flesh within. When Gwydion returned he asked Dudlea to sit alongside Willow on the far side of the tent then turned to look with close interest upon the fine-veined marble of the lady’s cheek.

‘This spell has been well worked,’ Gwydion said at last. ‘I have never seen detail like it.’

Will saw how stone eyelashes and other wisps of hair had been shattered under the first and least careful of the handlings that had brought her here. A sprinkling of fine-spun stone was to be seen in the folds of the statue’s wrappings as the last coverings came off.

It was an incredible transformation, a perfect statue of Lord Dudlea’s wife, but no mortal sculptor had made it. This was malicious work, that of a potent sorcerer.

As Gwydion reached a hand under the figure’s head, Dudlea stood up and said, ‘Please, let me—’

‘Sit down,’ the wizard told him shortly.

‘But if you’re going to lift her, I’ll call my—’

‘It’s not necessary,’ Will said, looking up.

Gwydion’s tone became compassionate. ‘Leave your men be. They are keeping true to their word, and on that much hangs. I asked them not to spy on us, come what may.’

‘Come what may?’ Dudlea blinked in alarm, and Gwydion laid a calming hand on his shoulder that made him draw in a long draught of air.

‘Take courage, John Sefton! You must be strong, for hope is one of our most important magical resources.’

Dudlea nodded and backed away. At Gwydion’s signal, Willow tied the tent’s flap firmly closed. Her daughter, Bethe, was sleeping by the camp fire, wrapped tight in a blanket. She and Will had been reunited with her only yesterday after a torturous separation. She had fared well in the care of the Duchess of Ebor, and as soon as Duchess Cicely had set foot in the Realm following her husband’s victory she had made every effort to return the child to her mother as quickly as possible. Still, Willow’s feelings had not yet fully settled. Will knew that was a concern to the wizard. He had tried to smooth their worries before the spell-working was begun. Any source of disturbance was best anticipated and dealt with ahead of time, for emotional auras would spark and fizz in bright display during magical transformations.

Will leaned over the nest of straw, checking the lady’s perfect visionless eyes informed by a glint of surprise, the knuckles, the fingers, so expressive in their attitude, gripping the stiffened folds of her robe.

‘She’s quite undamaged,’ he told Dudlea, touching the man’s spirit. ‘The delicacy of her face is scarcely blemished. Look how its waxy shine remains unscuffed. Nothing so much as a fingernail has been broken.’

John Sefton, Lord Dudlea, King’s Commissioner of Array and sometime commander of ten thousand men, broke down and wept. At Gwydion’s summons he came forward and his jaw flexed and his knuckles turned as white as his wife’s on the edge of what he feared might yet become her coffin. His tears fell upon her, but if he had imagined that tears alone would wake her, then he now discovered otherwise.

‘Open the second,’ Gwydion murmured.

The face of the lord remained bloodless as Will prised open the crate that contained the boy. The waggoner had been well paid and charged with two duties. But speed and care did not ride easily together over the Realm’s badly rutted roads, and the cart had bumped and bounced over thirty leagues to bring it to this place of particularly good aspect. The boy, too, was perfectly captured in stone. He lay mute in the finest alabaster, ten years old and innocent. Just like his mother, he was covered in fine spicules of stone. A little detail had eroded here and there, but he seemed to be undamaged.

At Will’s prompting, Dudlea came to gaze upon his son, and again he wept with relief. How different the man was now to the Lord Dudlea who had bare weeks ago tried to force Will into carrying out a murder. It was a satisfying change, a true redemption perhaps.

Gwydion’s voice rose, at once soft and sonorous, and gave the command, ‘Come to me, John Sefton.’

At that the lord went meekly. Without being asked, he knelt before Gwydion as an earl might kneel before his sovereign. Gwydion laid a hand on his shoulder, saying, ‘I want you to understand what I am attempting. It is done neither for your sake nor out of charity towards your kin. No offer that you could make would ever be sufficient to pay for this service, and it is to your credit that you did not sink to the proffering of silver or gold to me. This is to be a corrective. It is a private matter between wizard and sorcerer, and also the rescuing of a promise made by another to restore your wife and son to you.’ His eyes flickered to Will and back. ‘Fortunately for you, I happen to owe that person a favour. It is wise to power some spells on gratitude whenever possible.’

‘Thank you, thank you. I’m as grateful as any man could be,’ Lord Dudlea babbled, and it was plain to Will that he considered himself fortunate indeed. He had clearly remembered Will’s warning to him not to offer payment or reward and not to disrespect the wizard.

Gwydion’s face darkened. ‘However, when the promise was made, the promiser did not know whether there was a spell to reverse what had been done to your kin. He did not know if it was even possible. And in that falseness of promise resides my present difficulty, for lies do poison magic. They weaken it.’

‘I understand,’ Lord Dudlea said eagerly. Though he did not understand much at all, and his eyes were fever bright. ‘I can vouch that Master Willand’s word was given in true hope, at least – hope that a greater good would be born of it.’

‘That, alas, is not nearly enough. For magic springs from moral strength. In the true tongue the name of magic means ‘keeping the word’. Such stuff may not be coldly traded, for in that case the results will not be as expected. And those whose hopes are pinned upon debased magic are doomed to be disappointed.’

‘Then, if only for pity’s sake…’

‘Pity, you say? How that word has been warped over the years! Pity is properly what we feel for those who have given themselves over to weakness and so harmed others. What you mean is not pity, but fellow feeling. Do I have fellow feeling for you, John Sefton? Do I have enough? That is what you want to know.’

The lord stared back as if already stricken. ‘Do you?’

‘The question you are asking now is: have you merited it?’ He shook his head, apparently amused, and turned back to the crate. ‘I must not try to remove the spell directly, for that is now all but impossible. However, I may attempt the laying on of a counter-spell.’

Dudlea swallowed hard. ‘Do whatever you think, Master Gwydion. Only, I beg you, please do not fail them. I love my wife. I cannot live without her. And my boy is both son and heir to me.’

The wizard inclined his head. ‘You have a quick mind, John Sefton, and how uplifting it is to hear a squalid politicker such as you speak from the heart at last. Is it not time that you put on the mantle of statesman and set aside your childish plots? You are not yet become another Lord Strange. You may still choose dignity. So cease your peddling of lies and threats, keep the promise of your ancestors, even as I shall keep Willand’s promise tonight. And remember that men of privilege are but stewards of this Realm. You should not fail it in its hour of need.’

The lord had hung his head but as Gwydion finished he looked up boldly and met the wizard’s eye. ‘I’ve behaved like a fool, Crowmaster. I told myself that desperate times called for desperate measures, but I see now that I was only being weak. I will take your advice as my watchword.’

‘See that you do. What passes here tonight is not to be spoken about. And, since true magic depends upon truth of spirit, what you pledge to me here and now will take effect in the flesh of your wife and son. If you break your bonden word to me, the counter-spell will be undone and your kin will slowly – painfully – return to stone. Do you understand this warning that I give to you?’

Dudlea closed his eyes. ‘I do.’

‘Then return to me your solemn word that what you witness here tonight will remain with you alone unto death.’

‘I do so promise.’

Gwydion gathered himself. He stood gaunt and twisted as a winter oak as he drew the earth power inside him for a long moment. Words of the true tongue issued from his mouth. Cunning words coiled like ivy, blossomed like honey-suckle, gave fruit like the vine. Then he stepped around the crates, gathering up a charm of woven paces and waving hands, dancing out in gestures and speaking a spell of great magic that began to fall upon the two effigies.

A crackle of blue light passed over woman and child as they lay side by side. Will seized Lord Dudlea’s arm when he started forward, knowing he must not let the lord interfere once that blue glow had enveloped them.

A noise that was not a noise grew loud in their heads. And slowly, as Gwydion danced and drew down the power, shadows flew and the tent filled with the tang of lightning-struck air. Their skins prickled and their hair stood up, and slowly in those two strange beds of straw the cold whiteness of marble became tinted as living flesh is tinted, and the wax of death began to give way to the bloom of life.

Will felt the unbearable tension of great magic. He closed his mind against it, but it tore at him as a storm tears at a hovel. Willow, tougher by far, hung onto the lord’s flailing arms, holding him back as his wife and son rose up from their coffins like spectres. Lord Dudlea called out. His eyes bulged in helpless horror as a weird light played blue in his wife’s eyes. Something moved the boy’s lips, then jolted them again as the figures floated free above the ground. But just as Will began to think they could not hold the lord any longer, a shuddering racked both woman and boy and they fell down as if in a faint. Yet now they were moist and soft and alive, and as the noise and light vanished away they began to breathe again.

‘Oh, joy!’ Lord Dudlea called out as he attended his kin. He reached up to touch the wizard’s robe. ‘Thank you, Master Gwydion! With all my heart I thank you!’

Will opened the tent and stepped out as soon as he could. Willow went with the wizard to join those by the fire whom Gwydion said must now have their minds set at ease. They left Lord Dudlea to his family, and Will stood alone under the moon and stars, trembling, a mass of glorious emotions coursing through him. The power that flowed at Gwydion’s direction was truly awesome, and Will reminded himself that it was not every day the dead came to life again.