The Language of Stones

by Robert Carter

‘Hoy!’ one of the soldiers shouted. Three of them got up, pushed forward their iron hats and moved towards Gwydion. Their chief carried with him an axe with a long handle. He said, ‘And where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘To see the king, of course,’ Gwydion told him.

  ‘Get back there!’

  Two of the three soldiers made to lay hands on what appeared to them to be an old man too bewildered to obey instructions. ‘Stay back behind the hur—’

  Then their chief came forward. He pulled the others away and bowed an abject apology. ‘I’m sorry, your grace. They didn’t recognize you. Let Duke Edgar and his kin pass!’

  ‘Come along, Henry,’ Gwydion muttered.

  ‘Henry?’ Will repeated, looking around, but then he darted after the wizard as he went through the gates. ‘Who’s Henry?’

  ‘You are. How does it feel to be taken for the young Earl of Morteigne and Desart?’

  Will looked at himself but could see no change. The soldiers looked at one another. One of them shook his head while the other tried to argue with his chief.

  Will glanced round. There rose a hooting and jeering from the crowd of petitioners.

  ‘But that’s not his grace!’ the soldier insisted. ‘That’s a beggar!’

  His chief turned away angrily, saying from the corner of his mouth, ‘Can’t you see, it’s meant to be a disguise…’

  A second set of guards came into view by the inner doors, two mailed and helmeted men, wearing royal tabards of quartered red and blue and embroidered with golden lions and silver flowers. A third man was seated at a high desk. He wore black hose and jerkin and had sharp, watchful eyes and hair cut and shaped like a black mushroom. Will disliked him on sight.

  Gwydion began to twist and turn along the passageway, like a man beginning a dance or preparing to throw a heavy weight ahead of him. Though nothing was thrown that Will could see, something appeared to hit the man square in the face, so that he almost fell off his stool, but then straightened.

  ‘Good evening, your grace,’ he said smoothly. ‘The gathering awaits.’

  ‘Thank you, chamberlain,’ Gwydion said, in a voice that was not his own. He whispered words to the guards and made signs above their foreheads so they swept their helmaxes aside and opened the doors for him. Will stumbled as he went past them, but they just looked straight through him. He snapped his fingers under the nose of one of them, but the man did not notice.

  As Will entered, what he saw made him gasp: the hall was fifty paces long by at least half that in width, and lit by half a thousand blazing candles. It was the biggest room he had ever seen, and by far the brightest. The roof above was supported by ornate beams between which many flags hung, all in bright colours and all bearing lordly devices. The floor was made of squares of pure black and pure white stone and the painted walls had been plastered to a smooth flatness and pierced by tall, dark windows. Between the windows were arrays of trophies, mostly deer skulls, complete with antlers, or huge boars’ heads that made Will think of Lord Strange. But this hall outdid the tower of Wychwoode in every way. Two long, finely-wrought elmwood tables set with all manner of mouthwatering foods ran the length of it, each of them seating more than a hundred well-dressed folk, and capping those tables was a third high table, more ornate than the others and raised above them. The high table was set with eight seats, whose backs grew taller towards the middle, where Will supposed, the king and queen sat.

  And there was a deal of noise too. Everyone was talking and a band of minstrels was playing music, while a man in sparkling robes of many colours juggled fire in his hands. Will watched him making great boasts and amazing the watchers with the shapes he made in the air.

  ‘Careful you do not catch fire, Jarred,’ Gwydion told him. ‘They say illusionists burn very well!’

  The moment the juggler saw who had entered, he let out a yelp and his leaping flames all dropped to the ground in a smoky heap.

  Then the music ceased.

  Gwydion’s arrival hushed the echoing din, and when the guarded doors banged shut, a profound silence fell. Will felt his palms dampen, and everything that Gwydion had told him about self-serving lords came together.

  All eyes were now on the wizard. On the top table a man sitting on one of the two tallest chairs, a big man in blue and white robes, got to his feet. ‘Who dares enter the royal presence uninvited?’ he demanded, angrily.

  At first Will took the man for the king, but then he realized that he could not be, for here was a thick-set man with short, greying hair, a fighter’s neck and heavy, black eyebrows. He had limbs that a lifetime of sword practice and riding at the hunt had kept powerful. His hawk nose and hooded eyes gave him a cruel and self-possessed air that was at odds with all that Will had been told about the king. And this man was aged forty-and-some years, which was ten years older than King Hal should be, for the present year was the thirty-first of King Hal’s reign, and he had become king while still a babe in arms.

  ‘You know me well enough, Edgar de Bowforde,’ Gwydion cried, throwing up his arms, ‘though it is not my part to answer to you, nor any of your people. Even so, I will tell you, and all who dare to ask, that I am come here at your king’s command, for he did bid me appear before him whenever I deemed an appearance necessary.’

  All the while as Gwydion’s fiery words rang in the rafters, Will’s gaze ran between Duke Edgar and the incredible woman who sat beside him in the other of the two tallest chairs. Will saw right away that she must be Queen Mag. She was slim and gowned in brilliant crimson, and her headdress was elaborate with what looked to Will like horns sweeping up from the sides of her head and overdraped with the finest of crimson veils. Her hands were ringed and covered in jewels, and her death-white face was set off by a pair of blood-red lips and eyes that were as black as night. If she was beautiful, then it was the kind of beauty that made women proud and caused men to obey. When she spoke her voice was honeyed with amusement. ‘Then come in if you please, Old Crow, and eat with us.’

  Edgar gnashed his teeth at that, but then the queen picked up a chicken leg and tossed it down onto the floor.

  ‘No doubt, you’re here again to beg at my husband’s table.’

  There was uproarious laughter all around, but it faded somewhat as Gwydion bent down to pick up the morsel. He called a greyhound out from under one of the tables, and began to feed it flakes of flesh while stroking its head. ‘Listen to me carefully, Mag, for I shall speak neither loud nor long to you. You should know that, whether you like it or not – whether you believe it or not – privilege always brings with it responsibility. We shall soon see what it has brought to you and your friends.’

  Will saw a dangerous-looking youth sit up beside Duke Edgar. He knew this must be Henry, the Earl of Morteigne and Desart, of whom Gwydion had spoken earlier. Henry also wore blue and white, and the badge of a golden portcullis glittered on the breasts of both father and son. Henry was about seventeen, and the way he played with his long-pointed knife sent a shiver down Will’s spine.

  But the wizard had by now turned to one who sat on the far side of the queen. ‘The last time I appeared before you, Friend Hal, I warned that your realm was in jeopardy. It is still so.’

  The vacant-faced man to whom Gwydion spoke would not meet the wizard’s eye. This is a weakling indeed, Will thought. Narrow of face he was, tall and thin as a sapling, pale and beardless, and plainer of dress than any in the hall. Grey and bloodless he seemed, frightened and wishing he was elsewhere.

  Gwydion turned this way and that, pointing with his staff to where lords whispered behind their hands. ‘I see you, Thomas, Lord Clifton! And Dudlea! And Scales! And you, Lord Ordlea! So many worthy peers of the Realm. So many that you cannot be gathered merely for the pleasures of the hunt. What are you plotting, I wonder? And I ask you fairly: what have you done to ensure the king’s peace since last I came among you?’

  Will’s eyes were stuck fast on Queen Mag. She was beautiful, but she was fearsom
e also. Whether it was through terror of her or a loathing for the place he could not tell, but a sickness began to well up in the pit of his stomach. The smell of the banquet became repulsive to him, and now the hall started to shimmer and ripple like the surface of a pond into which a pebble had been dropped. It seemed to him that the hall must be webbed about by tense forces, magics and countermagics, static and invisible, contending in the air all around. If ever there was a dangerous place, he thought, this is it. Master Gwydion surely cannot have it in his mind to leave me with such folk as these.

  He felt the hairs on his neck rising and a peculiar drone started in his ears as if in warning. He looked about himself warily, and strange words came into his mind like a minstrel song:

  A ravening wolf,

  A greedy hog,

  A crafty fox,

  And a shameless dog.

  What it meant he could not say, nor where it had come from, unless it was his own ideas concerning those gathered at the tables. His senses seemed somehow to be magnified, his thoughts jerky and disjointed. He felt he could see and hear everything with great clarity, and yet Gwydion’s voice seemed to echo far away. It was, he supposed, the onset of great magic and a special dread stole over him.

  He fought down the panic, but the faces of the revellers had already begun to take on a gross and beastly appearance. Their mouths became like the muzzles of wolves as they laughed aloud or ripped at the flesh of the banquet. They would not listen to the exalted visitor who had come before them. Instead they tried to sport with him. Their jeers became snarls, and their faces warty and horrible. Their manners were gross, they brayed like beasts, and their glee was cruel. And above it all sat poor, pale King Hal, remote within himself, a defenceless white hart at bay among so many tearers of flesh. And there, at his back a strange shimmering, like the wind rippling across summer waters – only these ripples were in the air.

  Suddenly the disturbance settled and Will saw a figure hooded in black appear. The figure was suddenly standing there where no one had been before, at the shoulder of the king and queen. Will wanted to call out, to warn Gwydion, but he dared do nothing. A bead of sweat started to run at his temple. He tore his eyes away and awoke suddenly to the terrible stillness in the hall. Gwydion stood with his arms cast wide, his staff glowing with a pale blue light.

  ‘Friend Hal, your subjects are forgetting their manners,’ the wizard warned the king softly. ‘I deserve better than this, for I have come urgently to lay before you a weighty matter which touches you all. May I not speak of it and be decently heard?’

  The king gave no answer, but managed a feeble sign with his hand.

  ‘I thank you.’ Gwydion bowed with great dignity in acknowledgement, then he began. ‘I have come concerning certain signs that speak of approaching war. There will be a slaughter of innocents such as this land has never before seen. The stars above do speak of it. Blood shall flow in torrents until the very rivers of the Realm shall run red. Brother shall do murder unto brother, father shall war against son! All men shall wish themselves dead and freed from the bondage that suffering brings! All this will come to pass unless a remedy can be found.’

  As Gwydion’s calamitous portents rang out, Will’s eyes remained fast on the figure that stood between the king and queen. It was a ghastly form, dressed and hooded in a black habit, its face – if face there was – hidden in deepest shadow. Will shook in terror, wondering if this could be one of the Sightless Ones. He looked away and back, trying to dispel his fear. The figure’s power to haunt him was stubborn. But suddenly, Gwydion’s voice recaptured Will’s attention.

  ‘There is a deadly canker in the land! I say to you that unless men of conscience stand up for what is right there will be a terrible price to pay in blood. The Realm is sliding, and by degrees this slide will become a rush. Only the true king of this realm has the power to give me what I need if I am to protect his people—’

  ‘Ha! It is as your queen has told you, sire!’ Duke Edgar shouted out. ‘This crow who calls himself “wizard” is nought but a beggar come to have what he can of us. Begone, Old Crow! His grace knows your tricks! He will no longer be gulled by your ghost tales and fairy stories!’

  Gwydion stood straighter. ‘A most useful rede of magic I have for you, Friend Edgar. If you would one day be a greater man than you presently are, you should make this your watchword: “I shall lack before the poor man lacks”. Naked greed is but one reason why you are a lesser man, lesser even than the poor folk who wait patiently at your king’s gate. If you do not change your ways you will be struck down and die a violent death, but I would rather that you made your peace with this world.’

  ‘Fearmongering carries the penalty of death, Old Crow, though your words have lost the power they once had to terrify!’

  ‘I did not come here to bandy words with you, Edgar. But I do most diligently desire to save your king and his people from a conflict that will in the end cut the bloodline of every nobleman here!’

  ‘Seize the doomsayer!’

  But Gwydion gathered himself dangerously and no man dared make a move toward him. ‘Pity the one who lays angry hands upon an Ogdoad wizard! Tread softly, Edgar de Bowforde, for I call you to silence!’

  It seemed to Will then that the blue light which still glowed in the head of Gwydion’s staff flared up and strove to reach out like a pale ray towards the duke, but the hooded figure who stood by the queen sent forth some contrary power to surround the light and keep it at bay.

  ‘I will not be silent!’ the duke roared. ‘You see? He has no magical power against those who stand up to him! He dares tell me to tread softly, but he is nothing more than an old conjurer! An interfering busybody from a forgotten age! A madman, yet one with enough wit to try to wheedle silver from any fool prepared to indulge him! Get you home to your cave in the West, Old Crow! Tend your herbs and mix up your potions there, for we’ll have none of your witchcraft!’

  Braying laughter thundered through the hall, but Gwydion paid it no heed and instead fixed his eyes fast upon the king.

  ‘Friend Hal, how is it that I bring you this timely warning, yet you have nothing to say to me? How is it that you are called king of this realm? Have you no shame? Look how your nobles sit at table gorging on roast swan and haunches of venison, swilling down your finest wines. Do you not hear how they are laughing at you? Where is their respect for the ancient ways? Why, if you are king, do you allow these insults from worthless men? And why do you fear to admit the sick who cluster at your gate? Is it that you are so far corrupted that you care not even for justice? Or is it that those close to you fear to admit such persons into your presence lest they test the healing power of kingly touch?’

  ‘Enough!’ Duke Edgar bellowed. He leapt to his feet in fury, threw his flagon of wine at Gwydion’s head. The jug missed its mark, but the ruby liquid flew through the air and spattered the shoulder of the wizard’s cloak.

  ‘Where are your charms and protections now, Old Crow?’

  ‘Have a care, Friend Edgar, for I am no motley conjurer like Jarred.’

  ‘I care not what you are. Go from here before I take my dagger and slit your scrawny gizzard!’

  Will flinched as the blade was drawn. He willed Gwydion to cast a thunderbolt at the duke before it was too late, but no thunderbolt came. Instead Gwydion’s wrath flared out. ‘Edgar de Bowforde! I lay this prophecy upon your head: beware castles on pain of death!’

  A gasp of rage escaped the duke, for he thought it a curse aimed squarely at his ambitions. He leapt up onto the table and jumped down before Gwydion, menacing him.

  ‘Your time is past! Your magic will not work here! The druid world you come from has long since failed, and the powers you once kept have faded from the world. You are the last of your kind, and soon we shall be troubled no more. And now you have tried our patience enough. Get out, Old Father Time, and take the beggar-child with you!’

  The air shook with cruel laughter and shouts of, ‘Out, Crow, ou
t! Out! Out! Old Father Time!’

  Jarred jumped up onto a table and blazed up a swaggering show of juggled fire to mock the wizard’s powers. Gwydion gathered his dignity, clenched his staff and prepared to leave the hall.

  The guards flung the doors wide and were about to drive the unwanted visitors out at spear-point when a piercing shriek split the air. It came from the high table. Even the duke turned, and every eye went to the queen. She had risen from her seat and was staring down with horror at her husband.

  All triumph ceased among the onlookers as the king’s head lolled against his shoulder. His face had turned ash grey, his eyes bulged and a single trickle of blood rolled down from nostril to lip. Suddenly, as they watched, his mouth began to twitch.

  ‘Help me…’

  And then his limbs began to jerk.

  Queen Mag, her eyes wide, screamed again. ‘Do something! For mercy’s sake, somebody do something!’

  ‘Upon whom do you call?’ Gwydion demanded. ‘For I alone can help him here.’

  ‘Do not let him back!’ Duke Edgar shouted. ‘This is one of his own enchantments, a spell he has set upon the king!’

  Gwydion’s voice remained soft. ‘The harm at work here is none of my doing. This is a cup of deception, spiced and tempered to King Hal’s bane.’

  The duke raised his dagger to strike. Will was about to spring forward when he felt a grip close on his arm and an irresistible force wrenched him away. The duke’s son had come up behind, seized him and now held his throat at dagger-point.

  ‘Stay your hand from murder, Edgar!’ Gwydion cried. ‘And you, Henry! Or your king will die – that much is a certainty.’

  The duke hesitated, knowing where all his hopes rested. ‘Hear what treacherous threats he uses!’

  ‘You fool!’ the queen shouted and her eyes flashed fire. ‘Don’t you understand? It doesn’t matter what the Old Crow says. We need his leechcraft!’

  Reluctantly, Duke Edgar let his dagger arm fall. He ordered his son to stand off. Will was released, then kicked down so that he went sprawling. Gwydion ignored him and moved instead to the king’s aid. He cleared the banquet from the board and asked for Hal to be laid flat on the table. Then he bent to listen for a heartbeat.