Whitemantle

Willow frowned. ‘Do you remember what Mother Brig once told Duke Richard at the Ewle revel at Ludford all those years ago? She warned him that he’d die if ever he dared lay his hand upon the enchanted chair. Could she have meant the throne of the Realm do you think?’

The wizard became circumspect. ‘We all die – eventually.’

‘But she said more than that,’ Willow insisted. ‘She said that Duke Richard would die in his first fight after he touched the chair.’

‘You have a surpassing excellent memory, my dear.’

‘It was a surpassing memorable night, Master Gwydion. But tell us – did Mother Brig really mean the throne of the Realm? And is what she foretells bound to come to pass?’

Gwydion looked down the passageway towards the stables. ‘Brighid makes many a claim regarding future happenings. Some are important, while others are not. It is the way with seers.’

‘But all she says does come to pass, one way or another,’ Will said, not letting Gwydion off the hook. ‘I believe she swore a destiny upon the duke.’

But the wizard was not to be drawn further on the matter of great prophecies. Instead he said, ‘You know, one thing has already come to pass as you foretold – Duke Richard has given the Delamprey battlestone to Edward.’

‘A gift of thanks to recognize his victory, I suppose.’

‘Indeed.’

Since the fight, the battlestone had shrunk down twice. The first time was just after pouring forth its stream of malice, when it had transformed itself into a nondescript plinth of brown ironstone incised with words that even Gwydion could not read. Later it had shrunk again, once Will had used the remaining powers of the stump to burn away the manacles from Gwydion’s wrists. That time, it had been as if the very substance of the stone had collapsed, and it had faded to grey.

‘What can Edward want with it, I wonder?’ Gwydion mused.

Willow said, ‘I suppose he’s fetching it to Trinovant in hopes that it’ll be a touchstone to his ambitions. But isn’t it now drained of the power even to confer boons?’

Will nodded. ‘If I know Edward, he’ll delight in it mostly because his father has given it to him. He’ll value it because his father values the stumps of Blow Heath and Ludford, and he’ll tell himself it has virtues even when it does not.’

‘In that, then, he will be like most men,’ Gwydion said regretfully.

‘But aren’t you going to claim it from him, Master Gwydion?’ Willow asked.

The wizard shrugged. ‘I might have to.’ Then he took a draught of ale.

‘Have you had any fresh thoughts on the inscription?’ Will asked. ‘Or are you still, ah – stumped?’

Gwydion raised an eyebrow. ‘If that was meant to be a joke it was not very funny. But since you ask, I am no further forward. The verse is not written in any tongue that I have ever met with.’

‘At Delamprey you said that that was Maskull’s doing.’

‘It is one of his nasty little snares. His arrogance shines through in all that he attempts.’

‘And he knows you well enough to be able to pose a problem that you cannot solve,’ Will said. ‘But that in itself could be a clue, don’t you think?’

The wizard gave him a look that told Will it was a mistake to teach grandmothers to suck eggs. ‘Maskull has done enough dirty work – I could not read the marks I found in the stone.’

‘Well perhaps it’s only the script that’s unknown to you,’ Will said, hoping his optimism would infect the wizard. ‘The language itself may be one that you know.’

Gwydion stroked his beard. ‘True. It might only be a cipher that I have to crack…’ He fell silent, but it was a silence unlike the dark ones that had overtaken him lately.

Willow had taken out a heavy bronze coin and she had begun spinning it on the table top. Will watched it whirl faster and faster as it settled down. He picked the coin up and spun it again, fascinated for the moment by its odd behaviour, at the rising sound it made before it came to a sudden dead stop. Is that what’s happening to us, to the war? he thought oddly. Getting faster and faster until suddenly everything stops on doomsday?

Knives and trenchers were laid before them, and with more ale came pie and cheese and warm bread. As they ate and drank, they talked of lesser matters, and when Willow excused herself and Bethe briefly from their company, Will took the opportunity to ask a rather more pressing question.

‘Chlu’s true name, Master Gwydion – pronounce it again for me.’

Gwydion flashed a glance at Willow’s departing figure. ‘And give you a knife to fall on?’

‘I think I must have that knife, whether it is safe or not.’

‘Very well then – Llyw.’

‘Thloo.’

‘That will not do at all. It is a difficult sound for those unused to the language of Cambray. But see – put the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth as if you are making a luh sound, then breath past it.’

‘Dzzllll…’

‘Do not voice the sound! Just breathe.’

‘Shlllew.’

‘Almost. Again.’

‘Llyw.’

The wizard smiled. ‘You see? The rede is correct: practice does make perfect. But take care how you use your new-found knowledge, for there is danger in it.’

By now Willow was coming back, so they made ready to go. Gwydion steered them away from the stables, out of the inn and then onto the high road, saying that he had arranged for their horses to be left at The Bell Without and now they must walk.

They had almost reached the moated bastions that flanked the triple arch of Eldersgate. The soaring stone structure, deftly wrought and set with dragons, seemed dour and unwelcoming. A group of travellers waited gloomily beside a barrier.

Will waved a hand in front of his face as he caught his first clue that this was no ordinary gateway – the smell took him back to the wyvern’s cage he had seen at Aston Oddingley. He now understood why Gwydion had left their horses at the inn. All travellers wishing to enter the City were made to dismount fifty paces before the Eldersgate. Stolid Midshires cart horses stamped their shaggy hooves as they approached the drawbridge. Even brave warhorses were unharnessed and led aside to be specially blinkered and let in by a side arch so they would catch no sight of the dragonets.

Will saw that this brought good trade to the gate-keepers and porters who dealt with the animals or worked in gangs to pull carts and wains in through the main arch. It gave them the opportunity to charge twopence a time for their labours, and Will smelled more than the stink of wyrm about it.

Once they were nodded through the barrier he glimpsed the two dragonets that were chained inside the middle arch. They were not great dragons, being only about the size of bulls, yet they seemed to be more dangerous than lions. They were flighdess wyrms, specially bred to their task, small-winged but powerfully clawed, with barbed tails and flickering red forked tongues. Their hides shone like quicksilver as the muscles beneath rippled. They snarled and trod back and forth fearsomely.

Willow clutched Bethe to her as she approached the gate. Gwydion walked beside her. ‘It is best not to look the wyrms in the eye,’ he said. ‘Such beasts as these have attended the gates since the time of King Ludd. They are supposed to safeguard the City against the entry of people of ill purpose, for it is said they can smell guilt in the sweat of a man like dogs can smell fear. But over the centuries their keepers have fallen into sorry disrepute. For a silver coin they will give an easy passage to any wayfarer who happens to rouse the guardian beasts to wrath – which you will see happens most often whenever a wealthy person arrives. Do you see that merchant in the blue hat? Watch how they winch the chains back so there is a wider way for him to pass. They drive the animals back with those white shields quartered in red.’

The keepers set up a loud banging on their shields, hitting them with red-painted truncheons shaped like short swords until the dragonets turned their heads aside.

‘The keepers seem careless of the danger,’ Willow said.

Gwydion surveyed the goings on in the gatehouse. ‘The colour red and the number four are held to be worrisome to the beasts. They are said to shy away from the good-hearted, but it is just the loud noise and how these rogues have trained them, for they are also the ones who give them their feed.’

Then, all of a sudden, Gwydion cast up the wing of his travelling cloak and ushered Willow and Bethe past the beasts. The nearer of the two dragonets was momentarily quieted, and Will saw in his black eyes a spirit more touched by sadness than rage. On an impulse, he put out his hand to the creature and felt its moist red tongue flicker with interest over his palm.

‘It wants for salt,’ he said, pitying it its life trapped in this acrid stall. ‘And it wishes for a run in the fields.’

‘Get on by!’ one of the keepers shouted. ‘No lingering! No loitering!’ He shoved Will through the door and spat insultingly when he saw he was not going to be offered any coin for his assistance.

‘Beggars coming through!’ the head keeper shouted. ‘Get you gone out of the City quickly again. We already have too much vagrancy here!’

‘And too little respect!’ Gwydion told him. ‘This outrageous preying upon travellers goes too far. I shall speak to the king about it!’

But seeing no staff in his hand, the keeper said, ‘Oh, my lord, so sorry! Come here and I’ll give you a kick, and you can pass that on with my compliments to his grace the king when next you see him!’ And he laughed them away with the usual welcome he kept for customers who made no donation.

‘Is everyone so rude and ruffianly here?’ Willow asked.

‘It is a game they play hereabouts.’ Gwydion gestured up at the tall dwellings that made a deep gorge of the street. ‘And is it any wonder they keep rough manners, when they must live piled one atop the other like bees in a hive? The lives of too many here are ruled by greed and false ideas about the getting of gold. You will soon see how it is.’

He hurried them on until they had passed inside the gates, and Will began to savour the curious character of the City. He reacted to it with an odd mixture of disgust and delight. The place was filled with people, yet it seemed dirty and dangerous. There seemed to be countless shining possibilities to be found at every turn, but no easy way for him to get at those possibilities without a purse full of silver. The great heap of buildings stretched as far as his eye could see in every direction. There were throngs of people, but not a tree or any splash of green. A tumbled roofscape blocked the view of the River Thamesis, which Gwydion said was also called Iesis. There was one landmark that could be plainly seen – a huge black steeple of sinister aspect that rose high above more humble rooftops and made Will’s spirits dip. The sight of the great Black Spire of Trinovant struck him with an immovable dread.

Gwydion followed his gaze. ‘No taller tower was ever made in the Realm. It stands six-score times the height of a man, and is guarded by special Fellows who dress in robes of grey and yellow. They are called Vigilants. You will see them, for we must go by that place. But first, we must go another way – not a pleasant way, for it is now the junction of two vile sewers. I knew them long ago as pretty brooks lined with willow trees. The Wall Brook drains the Moor Field. It meets with the Lang Bourne, and goes thence down into the Iesis and so carries with it all the refuse and offal and filth that the population of a city such as this cares to throw into it.’

As they walked on through the hot, close afternoon Gwydion remarked on the uneven and filthy state of the streets. ‘But you will see little of this unpleasantness about the mansions of the wealthy, for those whose task it should be to care for the City even-handedly have long since given themselves over to the far more agreeable business of supping at lordly tables, or else wrangling with one another for the privilege of doing so.’

‘I can see how the lords and those who serve them might live well here. But what of the rest? How do the poor live?’

‘As the poor always live. But here there is also a middle ground – every trade still has its guild, though their power is not as it was, and whenever things become too oppressive a great mob takes to the streets and there is a riot. Burning and looting happens more often than you might imagine. Why do you think there are no thatched roofs allowed here in Trinovant?’

Will was almost sorry he had asked. As they got deeper into the commercial heart of the City, the streets began to teem. He saw great flocks of sheep in the road, and stockmen herding cattle to the pens that stood near the shambles. He followed on in silence, watching as Gwydion stopped here and there at corners to search out strange marks that had been left chalked on posts or scratched into beams. They seemed to guide him like secret clues. Often he tasted the air for spell-working tell-tales and magical resonances. And when he found them he quietly danced, undoing the dismal tokens of bone and blood that his rival had hidden in so many nooks about the City.

‘They do much mischief,’ Gwydion said, holding up his latest find. It was a severed finger and a cockerel’s claw that had been bound together with a silken thread and put high up on a ledge. ‘This and others like it overlook many of the City’s crossroads. They power the spells that Maskull has trussed about the commerce of the streets. Six or seven of them will have to be rooted out if the stock market here is to flourish again!’

A pack of Fellows watched from a little way off. They slunk away from the wizard’s eye as he turned to face them, then dissolved among the crowds. Will was amazed to see so many Sightless Ones walking openly and almost at liberty within the City. They were always in groups of at least three, sometimes led by a sighted guide. Fellows from different chapter houses dressed in different coloured robes, and there seemed to be a certain coolness, or perhaps even rivalry, between them. Will was reminded that although called ‘Sightless Ones’, they possessed a strange, groping sense that served in place of vision, and the more he walked the City streets, the more he began to fear there were those among them who had already identified him as the defiler of Verlamion and were passing the news to a higher authority.

‘Come!’ Gwydion whispered sharply. ‘You do right to beware the Sightless Ones, Willand, for they do not forgive and they are surely hunting for you. But do not gawp so plainly at them. See how they tilt their heads at you! Mind you do not give your thoughts away so easily.’

Will did as he was told and guarded his face as the wizard took them past narrow alleys that stank ripely in the heat. There were many beggars and peddlers and barrow-men here. Gwydion said they would do well to get quickly across the Wartling, the main Slaver road that cut diagonally through the City. They passed down thronging lanes, and in time came to another market. There was much that Will had never seen before, and more for which he saw no good reason. The street sellers offered too many wares that were unneedful – dubious foods, badly made flutes, sweetmeats, vain hats, posies of wilting flowers, false charms, and little songbirds confined in tiny cages, too distraught to do anything but hop back and forth and chirrup warnings to one another.

Nor could Will’s own talent find silent rest. Threat and malign intent bubbled among the press of bodies, and there was such a cacophony of human weakness in the air that it pained him to feel it all. He was relieved when the wizard steered him away from the Cheap and down a lane towards the wide river where the brown-grey waters sparkled in the sun. Ships from beyond the seas rode at anchor, loading and unloading their cargoes at Queenhythe. There were the smells of faraway places here – salt and spice and spiritous liquors. Oddly, it made him feel homesick, though he could not say why.

‘In the days of the First Men a great burgh stood here,’ Gwydion told them. ‘It was known as Ludnaborg by the seafarers, and was the greatest and most famous of all the burghs in the Land of Albion. Then came the Desolation, when giants and dragons ruled here, but afterwards came Brea, out of a far land. A descendant of Abaris and son of Frey, he built the Wooden City after the style of Trihan, which was the place of his birth. And he called it “New Trihan” or in his own speech “Trinh Niobhan” and that was eleven hundred years before the founding of the Fellowship of the Sightless Ones.’

Will looked up at the unfinished buildings, and at the men who climbed over them like squirrels. New warehouses were being thrust ever higher, packed tight against one another. ‘When will this city be finished?’ he asked.

‘Finished?’ Gwydion laughed. ‘Never! Here they do not think about reaching perfection, only of staggering greedily onward, for in this city bigger is always held to be better, despite what the redes have to say on the topic.’

Will could not but marvel at the monstrous bridge of twenty-one piers that had been flung across the Iesis. A traffic of small boats and wherries shot under it where the water flowed rapidly in shadow, while above many houses stood crowded upon the span. There were fortified gates at each end that could be closed to prevent entry into the City, though Gwydion spoke of the many times that the bridge gates had been forced, such as when Jack the Carter had led fifty thousand Kennetmen in revolt against the king and then given the order to kill all the lawyers.

‘Not all revolts are to be discouraged, then,’ Willow said wryly.

And Gwydion laughed. ‘Sometimes a good bonfire serves to cleanse the body politic.’

Beyond the bridge to the east a great castle brooded on the northern shore, revealed now by the sweep of the river. Soaring lime-white walls stood out bold and square above the waters, and Will knew that this must be the White Tower, the main fortress which the Conqueror had built to control the City almost four hundred years before.

A strange feeling began to course through Will’s body, making him feel faint.

‘Will you take us to Tower Hill?’ he asked, pointing to the great keep.

Gwydion’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Do you think I should?’

‘I…’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘We cannot go there, for the White Tower remains under siege both by land and by water.’

‘Under siege?’ Willow said, surprised. ‘Who’s attacking it?’

‘Men wearing the Earl of Sarum’s livery. A body of them stayed while the rest of his host marched north to Delamprey. Friend Sarum has begun calling himself the military governor of Trinovant if you please!’

Willow sniffed. ‘But I thought Duke Richard’s allies were welcomed into the City by the Lord Mayor and his Aldermen.’

‘They were. And the White Tower was the bolt-hole into which all the king’s supporters jumped for safety. They’re still there and dare not come out.’

‘They’ll have to when the king himself orders it.’ Willow resettled Bethe on her hip. ‘Don’t they know that he’s coming here?’

Gwydion offered a vinegary smile. ‘I expect they do. My own best guess is that Richard and Hal will arrive in three days’ time, which is why I must get on with my work—’

‘What does the mystical head of Bran say about the matter?’ Will asked suddenly.

The question came out of the blue. Gwydion halted and squinted at Will. ‘Again?’

‘I asked you about Bran, Master Merlyn!’ Will’s voice was deep and otherworldly. ‘Or does his head lie elsewhere these days?’

Gwydion continued to look hard at Will as he made his reply. ‘Bran’s head remains buried within the grounds of the White Tower. It is still attended by thirteen ravens, just as I promised you, Sire.’

Will, pale-faced and uncertain now, put a hand to his head. ‘I…I don’t feel…’

And it seemed suddenly that he was falling.

When he opened his eyes again he found it hard to breathe. He struggled, but quickly realized that Willow was holding a cloth to his nose, which was bleeding.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘You banged your head.’

‘I must have…fainted.’

‘What do you remember about Bran?’ Gwydion asked as Will stood up.

‘Who?’

‘Bran. He was the twenty-eighth king of the blood of Brea, a great king who with his brother, Beli, took armies across the Narrow Seas and led them against the rising power of sorcery in the East. The brothers sacked the great city of Tibor, and later Bran took his men under the earth. That was the last time any mortal king ever attempted to journey into the Realm Below. It is a place from which few have ever returned. The feat was achieved only once – by a far greater adventurer than King Bran. That man’s name was—’

‘Arthur…’

‘Indeed. Arthur.’

Will felt as if he had been reminded of things that he had once known but had later forgotten. ‘Bran’s name signifies “raven”. He was…the son of Dunval the Lawmaker…who was himself the first king to wear a golden diadem as the sign of kingship in these Isles. Dunval’s two sons were Beli and Bran, and his daughter was Branwen the Fair. And Bran married the daughter of Isinglas – but I can’t recall her name.’

‘Esmer.’

‘Yes! Esmer. Esmer…’ Will looked up. ‘Gwydion, did I know these folk in my former life?’

Gwydion laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘You did not. They lived in a time that lay between your first and second comings. Perhaps you know their names for another reason – for they are part of the histories that I taught to young Wart.’

Will closed his eyes, and put his face in his hands for a moment. When he took them away again he began to sing.

‘Then made Great Dunval his sacred laws,

Which some men say

Were unto him revealed in vision—’

He paused. ‘But why should I bring King Bran to mind now, Master Gwydion? Of all the histories you must have taught me in a previous life, why this one?’

‘I cannot say for certain. Do you not remember what happened at Bran’s last battle at Gerlshome when he was wounded by a poisoned spear? That wound caused him such great agony that his head was cut off by his brother as an act of mercy. Bran’s bodyguards bore his head to the White Tower, and all the way it spoke to them, telling where it must be buried—’

‘It was to protect the Realm against invasion,’ Will continued. ‘The head was set to face the Narrow Seas. But after many years Great Arthur dug it up again, so that he would henceforth be the sole guardian of the Realm.’

Gwydion nodded. ‘I found the head shut up in a golden box after Arthur’s death. It was I who re-interred it at a place then called the White Mound. Oh, the head was quite clear about where it wanted to rest, and enough of its protective power lingered on for the Conqueror to fear it considerably five hundred years after. He built the White Tower over the very place where I buried it.’

Will looked suddenly to the wizard. ‘Gwydion, the White Tower lies upon a lign! I’ll wager my life on it. Bran’s head became a part of the lorc! That’s how it spoke to Arthur during his second coming.’

‘Well, we cannot go to the White Tower now. Nor can we go across the river. Over the bridge lies the Cittie Bastion of Warke. There the Grand High Warden, Isnar, keeps his winter hearth. It is a main counting house wherein the Elders of the Fellowship keep a great stock of gold. They have many rituals concerning the accounting of it. Come along, Will – a thousand hollow eyes stare out from that place. It is best not to spend too long looking back at it, for its golden glimmer ensnares many.’

But Will did not take his gaze away from those blank walls across the water until the morbid feelings that emanated from the place made him turn about – and then he saw the Spire again. Its gigantic presence shocked him now. It seemed to have followed him and grown huger in the hazy sky. Its dark surface was a mass of strange ornament, pillared and fluted, with arches and niches and buttresses and every kind of conceit carved in stone.