‘But Gillan was ambitious and overweening and his knowledge of occult powers was great. He had brought a great army here, promising riches to all who would fight alongside him. And now, in victory, he was true to his word. He built, first in wood, but later in stone. This was a land of many parts, all of which Gillan accounted carefully in his “Great Book of the Realm”, which every king since has kept.
‘Gillan made a crown for himself, dispossessed the thanes and eorls of the Northling folk, and gave the Realm piece by piece into the keeping of his friends. Those who had ruled formerly were made Gillan’s slaves in one way or another. The eorls and thanes were made into overseers and the churlish folk put to the hard labour of heaping up the earth to make mounds and moats for Gillan’s lieutenants to raise their towers upon. Thus, in harshness and in cruelty did these new barons seize a grip on the land which they had lately won. In time, they fashioned all the great castles and bastions that stand today, and the sons of their sons dwell in them even now.’
‘At least there’s been a sort of peace for the last few hundred years,’ Will said.
‘Peace?’ Gwydion said sharply. ‘I would not call it that. The power of the lorc has been warped too much. There has been bloodshed of some kind in every generation. Always a new war has come – sometimes in the North, sometimes in the West – and between times there have been sundry risings of the common folk against the tyranny of their masters. But there has been no true peace such as once reigned in these Isles.’
‘And all this without the battlestones.’
‘Quite so. The battlestones are still in the ground. And each one remains a hub of darkness from which misfortune leaches. And that is why the coming war will be nastier than all the fights that have been before. Matters are now worse than in the days of the Slaver legions, for the heirs of the Conqueror have built no new stone roads to keep the nowcorrupted flows of the lorc in check. They have let the Slaver wall decay in the North so that the poison is spread even into Albanay, and they have allowed the Great Dyke of King Offa in the West to be filled and flattened, so tainting Cambray. The highways of the Slaver empire are now falling fast into their final decay, though they have outlasted the great boast of their makers, which was: “A thousand years!” Now there are gaps here and holes there, for never in all that time has any real repair been made to them. The looking-glasses are cracking, Willand. The dams are holed. You saw the Akemain, the road that cuts through Wychwoode. Lengths have sunk under mud or been swept away by flood, torn up by the roots of trees or undermined on purpose and taken away in carts to make the fillings for castle walls.’
‘Now I see what you were talking about,’ Will said, feeling that his understanding had been suddenly broadened.
Gwydion smiled and poked a twig among the ashes of the fire. ‘Rest assured that you have a lot more yet to learn.’
Will said, ‘I have one last question. If Maskull was an Ogdoad wizard like you, then how has he remained ignorant of the lorc all this time?’
‘He is not ignorant of it, and we must hope that he knows no more about it than I do. The wizards of the Ogdoad learned much about the world, but we did not come to know everything, nor in the latter Ages did we necessarily share what we knew with one another. There was a good reason for this.’
Will rubbed his nose. ‘You mean, the betrayer who was among you?’
‘We did not know who he was – not even, it seems, the traitor himself. We knew only that he never left us as the ages declined, and therefore as we diminished in number his share of influence grew ever the greater. When I discovered Gruech’s treacheries, which I did after finding fragments of the Black Book in his possession, I told Semias about it, but not Maskull.’
‘Why?’
‘Because by that time it had become clear to me that Maskull must be the betrayer – for Semias was Phantarch, and therefore fated to go into the Far North in time. That left only Maskull.’
‘But didn’t Semias try to help you against Maskull?’
Gwydion sighed. ‘How could he? How could he choose between us?’
‘Hmmm.’ Will watched the lights of the grove shifting for a while, but then he got up and helped Gwydion prepare to move on. ‘Master Gwydion, why did we not scry for the stone that you said lies near Ludford?’
‘Because it is far more urgent that we find another stone, the one to which the Dragon Stone points.’
‘What do you mean by “points”?’
And Gwydion said, ‘While you were at Foderingham I travelled far, and consulted with many knowledgeable folk, but I heard little concerning the lorc, and what I did glean was usually far-fetched. Even so, some tales had, I think, seeds of truth in them. In the same way there are verses tying each sister-stone to its brother, so also are the battlestones tied one to the next by their inscriptions. That is why they carry two distinct readings. It may be a relic of some magical mechanism. A safeguard perhaps. A way to dismantle the array. I do not know. But each stone we find will lead us to others so long as we have the wit to understand what the clues mean. Furthermore, I believe there is a set sequence in which the stones are meant to awaken.’
‘Do you know which is meant to be the first?’
Gwydion stroked his beard ruefully. ‘It would seem to be the one called the Doomstone. But even that is not wholly certain.’
‘Do you know how many there are?’
‘There may be nine, or there may be nineteen.’ The wizard sighed, and decided to say it plainly. ‘If I were given to gambling I would stake my wager on thirty-nine.’
‘Thirty-nine?’ Will shut his eyes and opened them again.
‘Thrice thirteen. It is as likely a number as any, and far more likely than some.’
Will blew out a heavy breath. ‘One for each of the earldoms of the Realm? That many, do you think?’
‘Let us not burden ourselves with numbers. But I was right to think there are two kinds of battlestone, the greater and the lesser, and that only the greater stones call battle down. What then, you may ask, do the lesser ones do? Nothing in themselves, it seems. They are merely guidestones, but it is my surmise that these lesser stones must be present for the lorc to draw earth power and effectively direct the harm.’
‘That’ll make our task all the harder,’ Will said. ‘Because we might discover lesser stones when we’re looking for the greater kind.’
‘More than likely. But do not gallop too far ahead. To discover just one more battlestone would be a fine thing. Our task appears daunting. First we must go where the Dragon Stone points, then find the next stone, then the next after that, and so on until we arrive at the Doomstone.’
‘But if there are as many battlestones as you said, then the search could take years!’
‘I do not see any other way. At least, by then you will be properly grown up and will have come fully into your powers.’
‘By then, the war will be over and done with!’
‘Come here then, and let me try to instruct you again in how to open your mind.’
As the spring days continued to lengthen and the noonday sun rose ever higher, Gwydion tried to teach Will the knack of opening his mind. ‘Our senses are limited. No man sees, hears or feels the world in all its glory. You must learn to let fall the barriers you have built up against knowing the world as it truly is.’
‘But how, Master Gwydion?’
‘First consider the difference between seeing and watching, or that between hearing and listening, and you will begin to grasp what your mind must do. You have been through enough lessons to know what it means to concentrate. The first step in opening your mind is almost the opposite of that.’
But Will found it harder in practice than Gwydion had made it seem. Though they scried the land to north and south and to east and west, it was all to no avail, until one afternoon they came by the hamlet of Aston Oddingley.
For most of a wet, spring morning Gwydion had been steering them away from the farms and manors they saw, and n
ow he drew Will off the road and into hiding while they took their lunch.
‘As you know, some places welcome my arrival,’ the wizard explained as they made themselves scarce. ‘Others do not. The landowner here is Baron Clifton, whom you may remember from Clarendon. He wore his colours of six gold rings upon red and his badge was the red wyvern.’
Will nodded. ‘A clipped black beard and a sly scowl?’
‘Then you do remember him.’
‘I guess we’re unwelcome here, then.’
‘You guess well. He has warned his people against me, so it would be unsafe for us to pass undisguised among them, or even to show ourselves to any of the local folk. The only succour we would receive now would be hard words and harder steel.’
They rested under a hedge that Gwydion had covered with his cloak, sitting by a small, smokeless fire of twigs, warming themselves as a fine rain fell. Minute drops misted the surface of Will’s woollen coat like tiny diamonds. The rain showed no sign of letting up as the sky shredded itself in slants of grey. Will made an effort to ‘feel the moment’ just as Gwydion had taught him, and when he did he found there was an unspeakable beauty to what his usual mind had dismissed as no more than grey and miserable.
‘So,’ Gwydion said, a twinkle in his eye. ‘You still have not told me how you enjoyed life at Foderingham.’
Will laughed. ‘It was no hardship compared to living in hedges.’
‘I had hoped that castle life would teach you some harder lessons.’
‘I learned how to hunt wild boar and how to stalk a hemule – which I later found out to my disappointment is nothing more than a roe deer in its third year. They showed me the different sorts of hounds that verderers keep, and the way to use hawks to catch fat pigeons, what vervels and jesses are, how to tell different hawks apart, and that the first point of hawking is to hold fast…oh, and plenty more besides.’
‘Was there no fighting?’
‘When I’d been living at Foderingham for a few months, they began to teach me how to use a sword and buckler, and then a long sword called a hand-and-a-half. How to swing the blade in attack and to parry in defence. I told them I preferred the quarterstaff, but Edward always laughed at me for that. He used to call me Willy Wag-staff, so I gave it up.’
‘Then he is a fool and so are you. The well-wielded stave is the most effective of all weapons,’ Gwydion said, patting his own staff. ‘Though few noblemen know its secrets.’
‘I told Sir John you never carried metal about you, except a little blade of star-iron. He called that wilful stupidity. He made me recite the names of all the different pieces of armour so I knew them by heart, and then he had me learn how to put them all on in the right order. I had to wear mail and steel until they felt as easy upon me as a silk shirt. Then he taught me how to ride to arms and how to tilt at a quintain, which is not a poem of five lines as once I thought, but a brutish wooden thing that turns about as you pass and tries to knock you off your horse.’
When Will fell silent Gwydion asked, ‘And did you enjoy those lessons?’
‘It was exciting, but—’ he shrugged again ‘—it was always about killing. Killing animals, or killing birds or killing people, or trying not to get killed yourself. I know that so much of a lord’s life has to be about death, even about killing – but it seems to me they hardly think about anything else. They’re so proud, Master Gwydion, and yet so frightened inside. I’ve seen a kestrel fall upon a mouse and tear it to pieces often enough, but somehow what a kestrel does is different for it’s done out of hunger or for its young’s sake. When men kill they kill out of hatred…or…or…’
Gwydion’s eyes rested, smiling, on the western horizon. ‘The seven failings arise out of the three weaknesses. Hatred is one of those weaknesses. And that gets into men mostly through lies. Lies told to the young and supped with mother’s milk, or later when weak men have learned how to believe whatever they want. That is how they fall for the Great Lie that the Fellowship peddles. With few exceptions it is only jealousy, hatred or fear that makes folk hurt or kill one another. These three, magic tells us, are to be avoided by the wise man at all costs.’
‘Jealousy, hatred and fear – like those stirred up by the lies that seep out of the battlestones.’
Gwydion nodded. ‘Quite so. I am pleased that you seem to have sloughed off most of the dead layers of hide that grew over you while you were at Foderingham.’
Yet Will saw in that another opportunity to unburden himself. ‘So you see, Master Gwydion, why you must be wrong about me. I can’t be the third incarnation of Arthur because I don’t have the makings of a warrior-king.’
‘That is by the bye. In Arthur’s first incarnation he was an adventurer, in his second a warrior-king. Who knows how he will return in his third and final form? Perhaps it is as a stubborn young ass.’
‘My point exactly!’ he said revelling in the idea. ‘There’d be no point in him coming back as a nobody. Especially one like me. He wouldn’t do that, would he? Because how would that help him in saving the Realm?’ He laughed and lay back, closing his eyes. Then he let himself slide into that state of mind he had been trying to cultivate for days.
Almost at once he sat bolt upright. ‘By the moon and stars, Master Gwydion!’
‘What is it, lad?’
‘There’s…there’s a stone near here.’
Gwydion looked at him closely. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I felt something. Just then, when I tried to open my mind. It felt as if I was sleepwalking in a mist and the ground beneath me was rocky and sharp, then down came the mist…’
‘Show me the quarter in which the stone lies.’
‘I…I can’t rightly say.’Will closed his eyes, put out his arms and began to spin slowly back and forth like a scarecrow in the wind. When he opened his eyes again he said, ‘Master Gwydion, what happens if the place where a battlestone is buried has been built upon? How would we be able to raise it if the owner didn’t allow us entry?’
‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Because I fear that this battlestone lies down there, under the manor of Lord Clifton.’
Gwydion seized him. ‘Do you know that for sure?’
‘It’s…just a feeling.’
Gwydion stood behind him and asked, ‘Is this stone greater or lesser in power than the Dragon Stone?’
Will answered straight away. ‘Lesser. Lesser than the Dragon Stone, but only a little less. Perhaps one eighth part less.’
The wizard’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head, marvelling. ‘Can you be that exact?’
Will closed his eyes for a moment and felt for the stone. ‘It’s as exact as seeing who’s the taller of two men. I can tell it’s quite a small stone – small in weight and size, I mean. As tall as a child of four years and as far around as a man might just about clasp his arms. As for weight, I could, I think, just about lift it up by myself, though I couldn’t raise it far.’
The wizard began to pace back and forth excitedly. ‘How can you know this, when the stone is buried and two furlongs away?’
‘I don’t know, but the lign is showing up very strongly. Maybe it’s the sun and moon. I’ve never felt anything so clearly. Maybe it’s to do with where I happened to choose to rest. We’re on a lign here.’
‘Remarkable.’ Gwydion began prodding the ground, shaking his head. After a while he called Will along after him, but not in the direction that led towards the manor. ‘Come, Willand, we must be on our way.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I think that, after all, we should not approach this stone, even though it may be one of the greater sort.’
Will was amazed at the wizard’s decision. ‘Not approach it? After all these weeks we’ve spent trying to find one?’
‘We must return here at a later season, of course,’ Gwydion said, beckoning Will onward again. ‘But from what you have already told me this cannot be the particular stone for which we seek.’
‘How do
you know that for certain?’
‘I do not. Certainties are hard to find where battlestones are concerned. But the Doomstone must be greater in power than the Dragon Stone, and the Black Book says of it that “the last which was planted shall foremost be in slaughter”. I have taken this to mean that the first great battle will rage in the place where the Doomstone now dwells. We must seek for it elsewhere.’
‘But this one’s powerful enough, and probably no guide-stone,’ Will protested. ‘A battle will be fought here eventually.’
‘This stone may not grow troublesome for years yet, and much may pass in half a year that might make the eventual solution easier. I would rather use the time while the lign remains strong to try to follow it.’
Will glanced back towards the manor and a sharp pain made him clutch his arm and call out.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing, Master Gwydion. Just a cramp.’ But it was not cramp and he knew it. He rubbed at his arm and the agony seemed to run to earth and leave him. When it did he shuddered. As he caught up with the wizard he said, ‘I know one thing: if I was Duke Edgar I’d rather fetch an army here to fight than take it to many another place.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because there’s no castle here, and you yourself once told him to beware castles on pain of death.’
Gwydion nodded, then smiled. ‘So I did, Willand. So I did. And you’re right – that is another clue for us to think on.’
The Language of Stones Page 37