Whitemantle

The crowd that now filled the alley was fifty or sixty strong. As those at the back began to chant, ‘Show! Show! Show!’ the brown-robed senior gathered himself as if for a fight, and spoke as directly as his station would allow. ‘Can it be this lowly servant has not heard our friends a-calling? Let him show himself! Or must these same friends force him to uncover?’

‘Force?’ There was scorn in the reply. ‘Such an ugly word. Shall it be said that these friends are going to force a lowly Fellow who is doing his duty by the Iron Rule, who moves in zeal and commits nothing contrary to the holy principle that binds all members of the Happy Family? Force, is it?’

The Elder trembled with fury. He was not used to backing down. He cried, ‘How best to put an order such as this? Come now, friends: the lowly Fellow cannot kill us all! Now let him prove himself. Show, show, show!’

The chant started again, but Eudas stood unmoving in the face of it, until it died away. Then he said, ‘The lowly Fellow has stated his case: the beggar belongs to him. However—’

A moment passed. The chain continued to circle over-head, but then Eudas snapped his wrist and brought it snaking down into a dead heap beside him. With the next movement he put his hands to his hood and pulled it back onto his shoulders.

Those who stared gasped at what they saw. From where Will crouched he could not see what had caused the reaction, but there were many in the crowd who turned away, while the rest goggled in frank horror.

The Elder’s fingers reached out briefly, then he nodded, disappointed that the orbits of Fellow Eudas’ eyes were indeed vacant. The realization struck a dull note of fear in Will’s belly as he huddled lower against the foot of the chapter house door. Above him the brazen arm reached down as far as it could in a vain attempt to seize him.

‘Is it not wholly as the lowly one said?’ the big man asked in his quiet, deep voice. ‘Now, if the exalted ones please…he may be left to his work, and may peace attend all.’

‘There is peace only in Heaven,’ the brown-garbed one cried, making a sign in the air. ‘Perhaps this is something the lowly Fellow forgets!’

‘One may say he knows which of those gathered here upholds the Iron Rule, and which is trying to break it. How if someone should take report of what has passed to the Council of High Wardens? How if due consideration was made upon the facts?’

Will watched as heads were bowed in fear, but then a voice at the mouth of the alley shouted, ‘This way, everybody! The bone demon went down Fish Street!’

When the last of the crowd had bled away, the big man quickly pulled up his hood and hid the face that had so horrified the crowd. He stooped and picked up the chain, feeding it artfully inside his sleeve and across his shoulders. Will watched him, his mind still crawling with fears, certain that his best hope was to remain an old beggar for the time being.

But there was another danger to be handled now.

‘I thank you, sir. I thank you for my life,’ Will muttered, rising. He made humble nods, gathered his tattered coat about him, and began to make away, but the Fellow moved across his path.

‘If you really do want to thank me for your life,’ he said simply, ‘there is only one way to do it.’

‘No, no,’ Will said, trying again to slide past. ‘I’m truly grateful that you’ve helped me, but I’ve no wish to spend my latter days inside a chapter house. Kind though your offer undoubtedly is, I—’

‘Hear me out, friend.’

Will shivered with revulsion. ‘Oh, but the life would be hateful to me. In fact, it would be worse than the death from which you’ve just saved me.’

But Eudas placed a staying hand on Will’s breast. ‘I also have made that choice.’

That brought Will up sharp. ‘What did you say?’

‘I am trying to tell you that I have escaped the Fellowship.’

Astonishment made Will stare. ‘But how can that be? Once a Fellow, always a Fellow – isn’t that part of the Iron Rule? No one ever leaves the embrace of the Sightless Ones.’

‘I did.’

Will began to feel the integrity of his disguise running thin. Very slightly, the mottling of age on his hands had started to lighten…

Hands! Of course!

‘Let me see your hands,’ he told the Fellow.

‘You don’t believe me.’

‘Do you blame me for that?’

Straight away, Eudas unwrapped the dirty cloth strips that were bound over his hands. Will’s fast-improving eyesight could see that the knuckles were not as cracked and red as those of other Fellows, and the nails, always horn-hard and yellow, had begun to grow out normally.

Will dropped the hands, amazed. ‘You’ve stopped washing.’

The dark hood gave a single nod. ‘I have.’

‘You’ve abandoned the ritual!’

‘I have not washed in a month.’

‘But that’s impossible! The strength of mind that would be required to break free from such coils as the Fellowship winds around a man’s spirit…’

‘It has not been easy.’

Will knew it was time to put aside his astonishment and ask the crucial question. ‘But tell me, ex-Fellow Eudas, if you are not recruiting lost souls to your house, why did you risk yourself to help a worthless beggar?’

There came a growl from deep inside the big man’s chest, and his strangely accented words gave Will even more to think about. ‘There was little risk. If they had not gone away I would have killed them all. And if there is justice in the world, it will be you who helps the worthless beggar.’

CHAPTER SIX ONCE A FELLOW…

By now, Will’s suspicions were fully aroused. He peered hard at the hooded Fellow, trying with all his mind to penetrate the disguise. There was more to this man than met the eye.

‘You must forgive an old man,’ he said, sticking to his story. ‘I’m in no position to help anyone. Now, if you don’t mind—’

The big man seized him by the shoulders. ‘The worthless beggar I want you to help is…me.’

Will imagined that in a moment he would slap the Fellow playfully on the shoulder and say, ‘Come now, Master Gwydion, without your staff you are not so nimble in magic as once you were. Don’t you think I can see through your disguises as well as you see through mine?’ But that moment was not to be, for it seemed there was something even stranger than magic about this man.

‘Who are you?’

‘If you would know that, then listen and I will tell you.’

The big man sat down on the steps and began to lay out his life’s tale, and Will, unable to do otherwise, sat down beside him and listened.

‘I have always been lucky. My given name was Lotan, which in my native tongue means “the fortunate one”. I was born seven-times-seven years ago in a land far beyond the Narrow Seas, in a country that you call the Tortured Lands. One day, when I was still a child, all my family was murdered. It was my good fortune to be the only one who escaped alive.’

‘Good fortune indeed,’ Will murmured, though the irony of his remark went unappreciated.

‘Since then, I have roamed upon land and roved upon the sea. I have carried myself to all corners of the world. I have lived in many strange places, and in a few of them my luck has been sorely tested, but never was I bested in fight, and never was I made a slave. This does not mean that I have not done dark deeds, but sometimes a man is given no choice.

‘At last I tired of travel. I came into the port of Callas, and being somewhat skilled in the arts of war I decided to make my fortune as a mercenary soldier. I was accepted into the garrison by the captain there.’

Heavy chain links clinked inside Lotan’s robe as he finished.

‘It would have been a fool of a captain who turned you down,’ Will said, aware of the man’s powerful frame.

Lotan shrugged. ‘I am what I am.’

‘Lord Warrewyk. Is it not he who has been Captain of Callas these five years?’ Will said, unable to resist probing after loyalties.

The hood turned. ‘The time about which I speak was long before Earl Warrewyk’s day. I served three dukes who were captains before he – the Dukes of Gloustre then Southfolk, and latterly Duke Edgar of Mells, who was my last commander. That was six years ago.’

Will showed no reaction, but the information was sound. Duke Edgar had been killed at Verlamion – hacked to death by Lord Warrewyk’s men. Edgar had been a staunch supporter of the queen, and his cruel son was her chief supporter now.

The big man continued speaking, and soon Will heard a burr in his voice that spoke of fond recollections. ‘Strife and easy living were mine in equal measure during my time in Callas. I ate two good meals every day. I lived a manly life. I fought alongside men I trusted, men who trusted me. But the life of a man-at-arms is, at its end, always hard to bear, for a soldier feels more sharply than others the passing of his prime. As the first grey hairs grow he feels the aches begin in his flesh. There came a day when I began to think of retirement, of using what little gold I had gleaned to open an alehouse. I wanted no more than to pass my remaining days in quiet kind, but my plans were overtaken by greater events.

‘Five summers ago, in the last month of my service, war threatened, and I was sent with the bodyguard of my Lord of Mells to a new place. We took ship across the Narrow Seas and came into this Realm to prosecute war.’

‘Did you go to Verlamion?’

The hood stirred again. ‘You know of that place?’

‘I went there…once.’

‘It has a rich chapter house. But it was in the streets of the town that spreads around the chapter house that the battle was fought. In truth it was not much of a battle, but it was the one fight in which my luck failed me. Duke Edgar became trapped. His bodyguard were slain around him, and though I tried to protect him, I took for my troubles an axe blow – here. It cut through the steel brow-strap of my helm and robbed me of half my face. The blow was given to me by one of Lord Warrewyk’s men. It has been my ruination.’

Will winced, echoing the reaction of those who not long before had stared at Lotan and screwed up their faces at the sight of him.

‘When the battle at Verlamion was over, I was left for dead. But then a Wise Woman found me and bound up my head and stayed with me, thinking that I would soon die. She could not heal me beyond the laying on of gentle herbs, but even so I did not die for there was something about her ministering that lifted me up. Instead I lived on for three years, begging in the streets of Trinovant in a red cloud of torment. At last I could bear the suffering no more. I gave myself into the keeping of the Sightless Ones who, to have me, plucked out my eyes.’

Will heard the rumble of Lotan’s regret, and looked up at the blank walls of the chapter house, which for all their impressive size and strength seemed also inhuman and cold-hearted in their proportions.

‘At first, the losing of my eyes felt like a mercy, for all pain leaves a man who surrenders himself. Forgetfulness enfolds him like a blanket and for some that is a powerful comfort. But not for me. The longer I remained within the chapter house, the more doubts came to plague me. I was sure I had made the biggest mistake by going there, for though my head had been deeply cloven and now I was blinded also, still I remained whole in spirit. I have never been one who runs with a flock. My thoughts are my own. How could I surrender myself to that which I did not truly believe?’

Will’s brow creased as he tried to understand. ‘Surrender yourself? To what? To the service of the Fellowship?’

The big man seemed to struggle with the idea. ‘Not to the Fellowship exactly, but to that power which they would make all men bow down before.’

‘What’s that?’ Will asked, horrified. ‘A monster?’

‘It is an invisible power, one that all other Fellows swear they can feel in the world. But try as I might, I could never feel it. That is why I could not progress.’

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know. They have a name for it, but that name may not be spoken.’

‘I’ve often wondered what could be at the heart of the Fellowship,’ Will said, still unable to grasp what he was being told. ‘Do they mean a power of magic? I know the Sightless Ones use a form of sorcery, and I can tell you for a certainty that natural magic is real, but—’

‘Oh, it is not natural magic they revere, but something else. An ancient invention, a great piece of wickedness…it did not originate with the Fellowship – they have come about because of it. But they have used it ruthlessly.’

‘But what is it?’

A gurgling laugh escaped the big man. ‘Only an idea. But one so powerful that it has made slaves of all those who were rash enough to open their minds to it.’

And Will suddenly recalled what Gwydion had said about the Great Lie. That too was only an idea, but the wizard had said that it was immensely dangerous – an idea that, in a manner of speaking, had the power to turn other ideas to stone. It worked upon men, women and children, not by shackling their bodies as the Slavers had done, but by imprisoning their minds.

Lotan turned. ‘The axe that made me so terrible to look upon has left me good for little beyond the terrifying of mobs, or perhaps the begging of pennies from those who desire to buy a glimpse of horror, but I remain my own man. I can do no other.’

Will heard no self-pity in Lotan’s voice, rather a wry humour that spoke of inner strength. ‘Friend Lotan,’ he said, ‘you still haven’t told me why you chose to save an old beggarman from the mob.’

‘Because you decided to be kind to me.’

‘I?’ Will peered hard at the dark shadow that lay beneath Lotan’s hood. ‘How was I kind?’

‘You gave me an apple.’

Will froze. ‘That…was you?’

‘I sensed your magic, even then, and so I followed you. I have no eyes, but in consequence I can feel much that was once hidden from me. I was drawn towards the Spire when you went there. And when I heard the hue and cry, I came here to make your acquaintance. I have hunted down many a man before, though few throw off the sparks that you do. It was not difficult to direct you here.’

Will was astonished. ‘You knew about me all the time?’

‘I was here when you entered this yard. I witnessed your change of form. I knew what you were, and—’ he grasped Will’s wrist,’—I chose to help you.’

‘But…what do you want from me?’

‘I want you to help me.’

Lotan suddenly threw back his hood and showed his ruined face. Empty sockets yawned, and Will saw what work the axe-blade had done – livid flesh ran from ear to chin and his cheek was sunken where an entire upper row of teeth had been smashed away. ‘Please, I beg you, sorcerer – give me back my sight!’

The word sorcerer made Will recoil, but a spasm of sympathetic pain flashed through him.

‘I am no sorcerer,’ he said. ‘It’s true that I’m somewhat versed in magic, but—’

‘But you will not help me.’

‘I cannot. The restoring of your sight is a task far beyond any magic that I can work. Even the healing powers of a king could not—’

Lotan’s grip tightened on Will’s arm. ‘You transformed yourself! I felt you do it. I sensed it all from where I stood in the shadows. Nor was that any spell of seeming. You have powerful magic in you, powerful enough to shift shape, powerful enough to give me back my eyesight – if only you would decide to use it!’

‘You’re right—’Will said, pulling away, overawed by the bodily presence of the man.

‘I knew it!’

Will’s disguise was quickly reverting now, and he felt uncomfortably exposed. ‘What I mean is, you’re right that it’s no simple thing to make transformations. It takes powerful magic, but it’s a thousand times harder to unpick the spells of another – especially when the original change is one that was agreed upon freely. For that very reason, such magic as I am able to call upon cannot so much as remove a tattoo – not unless it was printed in the flesh by force.’

‘Please help me!’

‘Listen to me, Lotan! You gave yourself under oath to the Sighdess Ones. That was your given word. Such an oath is binding. It is not within the scope of my powers to reverse that change.’

The other slumped, like a great brazen statue being melted down in a crucible. ‘The gold I saved while I was a soldier, I buried it in a meadow near Verlamion before the battle. Even after all this time I could help you to find it—’

As Will shook his head more grey vanished into thin air. ‘Magic does not work through payment. The rede says, “Magic may be neither boughten nor sold.”’

‘Then I am going down into the fires of Hell…’

Lotan’s head collapsed into his hands and he rocked back and forth in silence. For a moment he seemed to be sobbing soundlessly, and Will considered the full misery into which this man had sunk. It was frightful.

What he had said to Lotan had hurt because, as the rede said, ‘Refusals disappoint, and great refusals disappoint greatly.’ And Will knew he would have to hurt Lotan even more.

Unable to wait any longer, Will stood up and began to unravel the transformation that had disguised him. He stepped out the gestures that helped the magic to unwind and restore him to his true condition and at last grew still.

‘You move with elegance,’ Lotan said emptily. ‘I could feel it. I think you must be a very handsome young man.’

Will knew he must check himself. In too short a space of time he had been placed under a tremendous obligation. His feelings had been slammed from pillar to post, and now he felt an overwhelming desire to do something that he might regret.

I can’t so easily walk away from a man who has just saved my skin, he thought. I can’t leave him in this alley and tell him there is no hope, when I know a man who might just be able to set everything to rights.

He tried not to think of Gwydion, but it was no good. The part of him that wanted to see the world become what it ought to be overflowed like a fountain. Of course, it was horribly wrong to presume upon a wizard’s powers – he had learned that lesson only too well at Delamprey. And it would be cruel to offer false hope to Lotan. But how could he just cut a man’s hopes adrift?

What shall I do? he asked himself. It would compromise Gwydion greatly if I were to tell any stranger that an Ogdoad wizard had entered Trinovant recently.

He scratched his head, but no better idea came into it. ‘There is a man I know who is far wiser than I. He may have some advice for you. Only advice, I say. But I will ask.’

‘I knew you would help me!’

Will felt a wave of gratitude break over him. ‘I make no promises,’ he cautioned. ‘And now I must go. Shall I look for you again in this place?’

‘Yes!’ Lotan’s empty eye sockets gazed towards the narrow patch of sky that opened above the alley. He threw himself to his knees and clasped his hands together in an attitude of such rapture that Will was embarrassed. ‘Have I your word of honour that you will come back?’

‘You may count that as a promise.’

‘I do not know why, young sorcerer,’ Lotan said fervently, ‘but I believe you.’

Will looked sharply around as Lotan seized his hand again. ‘You must not call me “sorcerer”, “enchanter”, “warlock” or “magician” – these words are easily misunderstood and lead to trouble. I’ll look for you again here about midnight, though I can’t say which midnight it will be.’

‘Then I will wait for you here every night.’

Will turned and looked down the alley. ‘Which way should I go if I’m to find the White Hall?’

Lotan drew back. ‘You have business at the royal palace?’

‘If I do, it’s my own business.’

‘Then you should avoid the Spire and go out of the City by the Luddsgate and along the roads they call the Fleete and the West Strande.’

‘You mean the White Hall lies outside the City?’

‘Didn’t you know? It’s on the north bank of the river, maybe half a league from here. To find it keep the warmth of the setting sun on your face, but always follow the stink of the river as it bends south. You will not mistake the place for the walls are high and the echoes carry there like the ghosts of the past.’

As Will emerged from the alley he found the small street deserted. The overhangs of the houses closed in above him, and in the quiet he was aware of cooking smells and the distant sounds of commerce on a busy street. The way out of the maze was easier to find than he expected.

On the main street there were crowds of people hurrying this way and that, occupied, but seldom speaking to one another. A few, Will saw, were born to indulgence, rich merchants who rode upon horses and had men to clear a way for them and their well-adorned ladies. But there were many others aimless and rat-like: cut-throats, pick-pockets, dirty-faced women, some wanton, some carrying babes-in-arms the better to further their trade in pity. He melted into the crowds, meeting very few inquiring looks but following his feelings as best he could. He took bearings from glimpses of the Spire and noted the colours of the robes the Fellows wore. Grey signified the chapter house of Farring-withoutthe-Wall, the Black Robes were Fellows of Hollbourne-bythe-Spire, but others robed in white were heading westward in large numbers, as if they were required to leave the City before the curfew bells tolled.

By following the White Robes Will soon came in sight of a gate and found it was the one they called the Luddsgate. There he supposed he would meet with more unhappy dragonets, but there was a paupers’ footway that led out, just a simple passage for those carrying no goods. It stank in the heat, but a different smell assailed him once outside, for the road ran across a stout bridge, and below it stretched brown mud banks between which the waters of a tributary ran. When Will looked down it towards the Iesis he was amazed to see that the level of the river had dropped right down. He hurried on, and soon he saw serjeants-at-law by the dozen sitting around the Inns at Linton Greene. They all wore gowns of dark green, and they had long, green-dyed feathers in their caps, which Will knew showed the number of their successes. Gwydion had told him how all lawyers had been compelled by a king of old to dress in this fashion in order that common men might know the greatest of villains on sight.

Will went on again, leaving behind the steeples of the Inns, then past the lordly houses of Arandel, Mells and Southfolk, until an almost unseen figure passed close by and crossed his path, pulling him suddenly into a doorway.

His aura flared green and he threw up a self-protective hand, but immediately he felt it seized and bent down hard in a grasp that forced him to his knees.

‘Agh!’

‘You fool!’

‘Master Gwydion!’

‘Shhh!’ The wizard’s eyes accused him. ‘Now that was a fool’s errand was it not?’

Will understood but was unrepentant. He shook himself out of the wizard’s now-relaxing grip. ‘You have your errands and I have mine. Were you watching when we fell? Did you see what happened to Chlu?’

‘I saw the pair of you lighting up the entire City with your rude magic.’

‘I didn’t do it on purpose. I was falling to my death.’

‘And every Fellow within a dozen leagues must have turned his head upward when you leapt off that vane.’

‘I didn’t leap, I fell.’

‘You should not have been up there in the first place.’

Will felt anger churning inside and stabbed a finger at the wizard. ‘Don’t you tell me what I should and should not be doing! I was following my feelings.’

‘Oh, dangerous man! It would be better for you if you got far away from the City now. The Fellows are very greatly roused up and most unhappy with you!’

‘I don’t care about them. And I’m not running away.’ He reached out and prevented Gwydion from turning aside. ‘I asked you if you saw Chlu fall. Did you?’

Gwydion’s face was granite as he looked down at the presumptuous hand on his sleeve. ‘Chlu came down on the far side of the Spire. I cannot say what happened to him.’