The Language of Stones

by Robert Carter

  And so the long summer and autumn passed, in lessons and hunting and sparring and tilting. It was interesting for Will to see how the wearing of armour changed the way folk looked at him. The mirror shine of steel was meant to turn arrowheads, but it just as easily turned the heads of the girls who came to sell eggs in the outer bailey. The glint of steel made the jacks straighten their backs as he passed. Wearing costly armour made a lad feel like a lord, and despite himself Will started to enjoy that feeling. It made him brusque of manner at times and a little swaggering in his walk, and though he was not aware of it, others noticed him changing.

  But for all the changes, Will never lost sight of his true self. And whenever the girls in the outer bailey turned to look at him, he could not help but imagine how Willow would look at him if she was here. But never once did he have the arrogance to wear armour or carry a weapon when he went down to see his friend the Wortmaster. One day, in the mellow month of October, one of Huntmaster Tweddle’s beaters came into Gort’s shed while Will was with him. The beater had taken a gash from a boar’s tusk, and Gort made a drawing poultice to take the poison out of the wound. Will watched the way Gort scraped the blue patches from mouldy bread and bound it hard against the man’s calf with dock leaves, common mallow and wood sorrel.

  ‘In healing,’ Gort said when the wounded man had hobbled away, ‘you must remember that the life force has a flow of its own. Magical cures heal unnatural breaks in the flow – as with that man’s wound.’

  ‘What’s that in the jar?’

  ‘Best graveyard basil.’ Gort narrowed his eyes. ‘Basil thrives best on the entrails of dead men, don’t you know that?’

  Will looked around the untidy shelves with burgeoning interest. He peered up at a great globe of blown glass that contained the heavy liquid metal Gort called ‘quicksilver’. It showed the whole room as if in a looking-glass, only strangely warped and turned back on itself.

  ‘If you can change the flow of the life force, Wortmaster, does that mean you can make a man live forever?’

  ‘Whoooh! Who in his right mind would want to do that?’ Gort was quietly horrified at the idea.

  Will flicked a glass tube with his fingernail and made it ring. ‘Most folk would like it, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s because most folk don’t know what it’s like to outlive their proper span. When the life force rightly fails, when a man’s time has come, then meddling with it is against the grain of Nature, against that-which-is-meant-to-be. It’s contrary to all oaths and vows that I’ve taken. I’ll not do that kind of meddling.’

  ‘But what about yourself?’Will asked, unimpressed. ‘And how old’s Master Gwydion?’

  ‘He’s as old as the hills, and then some more. But then he is a wizard, and you wouldn’t want to wish wizardhood on yourself.’

  ‘What about you, then? You’re not a wizard.’

  ‘I’m not a wizard. Oh, no no no.’ Gort smacked his lips and looked at the doorway. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘But you’re as old as the hills too. How is it that you loremasters can make yourself live so long, but you won’t give the potion out to others?’

  ‘Potion, he says!’ Gort returned his attention to the bundle of bittersweet from which he had been stripping the red berries. ‘I’ve lived many lifetimes, but you can be sure I’ve paid the price for it.’

  ‘You look fine to me. And anything’s better than being dead.’

  Gort grunted. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I suppose you must do it by upsetting the balance,’Will said loftily. ‘I heard Master Gwydion speak of it more than once.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the balance. It’s a long while since last I heard that term used. I have no dealings with great matters such as that. I know only that upsetting the balance always costs more than it’s worth, and except in very special circumstances it shouldn’t be attempted. You’ll only ever see me take from the green world that which the green world freely gives.’

  ‘And only as much as you need,’ Will said. He stared around the interior of the shed, which was filled with all kinds of oddments that served no obvious purpose except to satisfy the Wortmaster’s curiosity. ‘I suppose you need all this stuff? What do you want it for?’

  ‘This and that. You never know when something might come in handy. All loremasters have a powerful need to know, Will. It comes with the job, but it’s a curse as well as a kindness, I can tell you. Clinsor even cut off a piece of himself to gain knowledge, do you know that?’

  ‘Clinsor? You mean Maskull?’ Will said with sudden interest. ‘What knowledge was he after? And what did he cut off?’

  Gort shook his head.

  ‘Oh, tell me, Wortmaster!’

  ‘It wasn’t his little finger, I’ll say that much! I can’t speak for Maskull, but all other magical practitioners have big scruples over our dealings. We dislike waste, and we abhor greed. No loremaster would ever gather more of a herb than he could use. Nor would he take so much of it that the plant was caused to fail in the place where it was found growing.’

  ‘What about poisons?’ Will said peering into an earthen jug that contained a rotting greenish liquid. ‘And fireworks. Tell me about them.’

  ‘Oh, my, how you’re growing. I hope Master Gwydion’s right about you. In these sad days there are only two things every youngster wants to know about magic: poisons and explosions. When it comes to explosions, Will, I know nothing at all.’

  ‘But poisons, you must know lots about them!’

  ‘About poisons – being a healer, I probably know all there is to know. Everything from adder venom to zzzzzzzt… hornet stings. Though for poisons of great potency the worts win every time: aconite, baneberry, bloodroot, toadstools of ten dozen different kinds, bryony, hellebore, dwale…there are thousands, hundreds of thousands, of wort poisons.’ He cleared his throat and sat up with a surprised look on his face. ‘But no Wortmaster would ever deal in them, of course, except to use them to make people better, d’you see?’

  ‘Poisons can heal?’

  ‘Oh, yes! Didn’t you know? It’s a principle of magical healing that a very tiny bit of something nasty often turns out to be very nice…if I may put it that way. Walk with me and I’ll show you.’

  Gort led him out into the fields and on a long ramble to a distant wood. He told him how herbal infusions helped digestion in many different ways, and how even deep wounds could be made to heal with a fine fungus poultice. ‘Even a passing knowledge of wortlore is as useful to a land traveller as a lodestone is to a mariner – any loremaster can lie face down in a meadow and know exactly where he is in the Realm to within half a league.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Simply by listening to the accent of the birdsong, by smelling the soil and by spying out the tiny flowers and mosses that carpet the ground. Did you never see Master Gwydion tasting waters or rubbing a bit of soil between his finger and thumb? But tree lore, Will – ahhhh! That is the most wizardly of the virtues connected with the green world. Many trees are ancient, and many are old friends to wizards. Do you know that all trees talk when the wind blows through their branches?’

  Will folded his arms. ‘Do they?’

  ‘Have you never listened to their conversations? Each of the thirty-three ancient kinds of tree has its own sound. The elder tree makes the sound rrrh – written down of old as five straight cuts on a stone’s edge, like this.’ Gort made the lines across his outstretched finger. ‘Whereas the alder has the sound ffffff – two straight cuts the other way. That’s why leaves are left by loremasters at the roadside: they’re spellwarnings – messages that only other loremasters can read.’

  Will thought of the ogham marks on the Dragon Stone, and of the leaves Gwydion had so often arranged on the ground. ‘I once saw Master Gwydion putting out wreaths like that as we passed out of Severed Neck Woods. And again when we came back from the Blessed Isle. I think he used them to leave messages for Tilwin the Tinker.’

  ‘Tilwin the Tinker, you say?’ Gort
paced around the clearing. ‘More than likely he did.’

  ‘Do you know Tilwin?’ Will brightened. ‘Does he ever come to Foderingham?’

  Gort got down on hands and knees, distracted by the delicate bells of a group of pale toadstools that grew by a fallen log. ‘I’ve heard the name spoken, of course.’

  ‘He’s very learned in matters of gems. And he grinds knives. He’s probably a loremaster too.’

  ‘Oh, my…’ Gort stopped by a graceful willow tree that dipped its weeping fronds in the Neane’s waters. ‘A bitter juice distilled from the bark of this tree will take away headaches and pains in the chest.’

  ‘I knew a girl called Willow,’ Will said. ‘She once gave me a headache and a pain in the chest. But it was an odd kind of pain. And I got it when I wasn’t with her.’

  ‘Has it gone now? The odd pain?’

  ‘Not when I think of her. It comes back. I can feel it here, in the pit of my stomach. I’d like her to be with us now. You’d like her. You’d like her a lot.’

  ‘I suppose she’s pretty.’

  ‘Oh, yes. But I don’t know when I’ll get to see her again. Master Gwydion will have to come back first.’ He sighed and looked out of the glade along the lane that led back towards the castle. ‘Do you think the thistles blooming on the keep mound are anything to do with the Dragon Stone? Do you think it’s a portent of war?’

  Gort shuddered. ‘I don’t know about such things as portents. Oh, my, no. Master Gwydion should never have brought that thing here. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since it came.’

  ‘Do you feel it too?’ Will asked. ‘I have horrible nightmares some nights. And I saw a figure walking in the garden a little while ago, and then in the Great Hall. I think it was…Death.’

  Gort blinked like an owl. ‘Death, you say? Oh, my!’

  ‘I thought that at first, but now I don’t see how it could have been, because nobody’s dying, or at least they haven’t yet.’ He walked under one of the trees and shivered, feeling its eerie starkness.

  ‘Take care, Will! The elder is a witch tree, for her bones are pithy and hollow, and many an elder has been found to imprison a lost spirit.’

  Will folded his arms. ‘Wortmaster, tell me straight: did Master Gwydion ask you to teach me about plants and birds and such for a reason? Is he coming back? Does he want me to be his apprentice, or not? Does he want me to become a loremaster, because if he doesn’t—’

  Gort tutted. ‘So many questions. Master Gwydion said nothing at all about me teaching you. It’s just as plain as a pikestaff to me that you’re ready to know a thing or two.’

  Will swatted at a fly. It seemed that Gort was not telling the whole truth. ‘What did you mean when you said back there that you hoped Master Gwydion was right about me?’

  ‘Oh, did I say that?’

  ‘Yes, you did. What did he say about me? He kept calling me a Child of Destiny. What does he mean by that?’

  Gort blinked at him. ‘You are what you are, Will. You have the talent, just like one of the First Men. You can’t escape that.’

  ‘But what exactly is this talent that I’m supposed to have?’

  Gort grunted. ‘It shows in lots of different ways…You’re sensitive. You keep seeing things – that alone bespeaks a talent. I once watched you think two dozen arrows into a target one after the other without any training or practice. How did you do that? I bet you can’t tell me, hey? Bet you didn’t even know you were doing it, hey?’

  Will laughed. ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘Ho! You may laugh it off, but I know you were. What’s more, you did it to put Edward in his place, which was wrong-headed of you, and a misuse. But there’s another side to it – you wouldn’t think your arrows into killing a deer for Tweddle – that kind of fellow-feeling for flesh and blood comes from your talent too. Look at the way you saved Osric!’

  ‘Osric? You mean that fat rabbit?’

  Gort grinned and wagged a finger. ‘Oh, no, Will. You can’t tell me I don’t know a spellcast when I see one. I watched it happen. And it was beautiful. Precise, wonderfully timely, and you didn’t hurt that stupid hound at all.’

  Will screwed up his face. ‘Wortmaster, I did no such thing!’

  ‘They say it takes one to know one, but that’s not quite right.’ Gort sighed then, and his voice seemed suddenly far away. ‘You’re more different than you know. Some quite knowledgeable folk can’t cast spells at all. They just seem to go to pieces when they try.’

  Will suddenly felt the timidness in Gort’s heart and knew what had stopped him from becoming a wizard.

  Gort nodded sadly. ‘It’s why I could never progress. Everything else was fine, but when it came to casting spells I just couldn’t do it. In great magic I’m about as much use as a swordsman who can’t bring himself to cut.’

  On their way back to the castle, Gort told Will more than he wanted to know about corn cockles and ragged robin and the plant called treacle mustard that was good for gout. As they passed under the shadow of Foderingham’s walls once more Will said, ‘Master Gwydion said there was a prophecy about me, something about “one being made two”. What do you think it meant?’

  Gort threw up his hands. ‘Prophecies? Who knows about them? I expect some are not worth the stone they’re graven on. But when the trumpet of ancestral voices pours its spirit into the bitter urn of all flesh, then watch out!’

  Gort gave a confused sigh and Will had to laugh. ‘Oh, Wortmaster, what’s to become of me?’

  ‘I don’t know the answer to that, Will, really I don’t. But you know what I wish?’

  ‘What do you wish, Wortmaster?’

  ‘I wish that I’d tried just a little bit harder to find my way through the nettle patch of magic. I was never as good as Master Gwydion, of course, but I think I might have gone further than some of the others, and a lot further than I did. But I gave in to my fears, you see.’ A long silence stretched out, then Gort cheered himself up. ‘Still, if “hads” and “coulds” were pies and puds we’d none of us go hungry, heh?’

  Autumn came and the swallows which had screamed and swooped in May gathered to fly away to a hot land that Gort said lay on the very southern rim of the world. The leaves browned and fell. The equinox passed unmarked, except that wild weather came to sing the dirge of the dying year. Will remembered dimly how in years gone by the wind had rattled the thatch of home and he shed a tear, for that life seemed far, far away now.

  As the darkness and cold of November began to close its grip on the land, the penitent Fellows came in procession in identical hooded robes to the castle to start one of their fasts. Thirteen of them were meant to stand still in a line all day long, and the trial was meant to continue until all of their number either died or demonstrated ‘the Miracle of Sustenance’. But this ferocious austerity claimed no one. Will realized that it was secretly broken each noon and midnight when the Fellows embraced and twirled round together and so changed places one with another in a dance that was meant to deceive the eye.

  After Sowain, fragile hoar-frosts came. Foderingham’s walls loomed and the intrigues of those who were enclosed within began to deepen. One cold night Will and Edward whispered together in the half-darkness, and Edward spoke about Duke Richard’s hopes of restoring the throne to what he called ‘proper blood’.

  ‘That’s all been ruined by the birth of the queen’s bastard,’ Edward said. ‘Had it not been for that, when Old Hal died like he probably will soon the crown would have fallen back onto the head of the rightful king. But this has changed everything. Now when Hal dies we’ll have another child-king instead of a good, strong, capable leader, and that’ll be a disaster for the Realm.’

  ‘If Hal dies soon.’

  ‘He will.’

  ‘Do you mean…war?’

  Edward laughed shortly, but made no immediate reply. Will could not recall ever having heard the word ‘usurper’ openly spoken at Foderingham. Nor did anyone ever mention the right of Duke Richar
d to be king. To have spoken such a thing aloud would have been an act of high treason, and high treason, Will knew, was at least a beheading offence.

  ‘Of course, war. War is a rightful king’s last resort, the only thing that prevents him from being crushed by his enemies. They want to force my father to trial, but they dare not push him too tightly into a corner, for they know he will raise arms against them, and they do not want to risk an open fight.’

  ‘Does your father want war?’

  ‘My father would not easily lose a war, but the law is another matter. He is far better born than the king, but such are the jealousies of a royal court that if it came to a trial things would go badly for him. If the queen and her friends could persuade the lords to convict him of high treason, then they’d use “attainder” and the “corruption of blood” to snuff out the line of Ebor forever.’

  ‘What’s attainder?’

  Edward sighed so that the light of their single candle writhed. ‘A law. It means that lands and titles held by any lord who’s executed for high treason can’t be inherited. Everything would go straight to the Crown as forfeit.’

  ‘I see.’ Will whispered. ‘So, if your father was beheaded for treason you’d never become Duke of Ebor? And you’d lose this castle.’

  ‘We’d lose all our castles. And all our lands and titles. Everything.’

  Will nodded in the gloom. ‘Then your father has to be very careful. And everyone else too, I imagine.’

  Edward looked at him, gauging him from the shadows. His voice was low but full of passion. ‘We must all be vigilant. Even here. Every castle has traitors and spies. At Foderingham we know there are paid eyes and ears, vermin in every corner.’

  ‘Master Gwydion says that even the best cloth may sometimes have a moth in it.’

  ‘The Crowmaster is one of the few men beyond our own kinsmen that my father dares to trust. Now – since I’ve trusted you, perhaps you’ll trust me, and tell me what was that great stone you brought here?’