The Language of Stones

by Robert Carter

  He took a step closer, fearless now, empowered, sure. He bared his forearms, leaned in against the stone. Then deliberately placed his hands on the slab, and gave the challenge that here was one who would wrestle with that which misused the power of the earth – whatever the cost to himself.

  The stone glowed in answer, but it was a dull cherryred glow, a feeble echo of the crimson brilliance that had once radiated from it. And when he lifted his hands, a pale, golden fire sprang from them. Flames licked across the surface of the slab, then died.

  Back came the red glow, and he tried again. This time he braced himself against the stone and pushed down with both hands. For an enduring moment his body rocked and the lightning of his eyes was able to probe deep inside the Doomstone.

  He saw all the horrors that were made there, how it drew in what the lorc supplied, how it misused the power of the earth, infecting men’s minds, putting fear and hatred into them. And he saw too what was happening outside and all across Verlamion – murderous soldiers pouring up into the town, the royal army making their stand around the curfew tower, and above it all a great fire-duel spilling flame and fury across the sky…

  Will sought the world again, and as he opened his eyes he saw the stone pulse like a blown cinder. The sarcophagus chamber was filled with heat and stench and a thin, white, choking haze. Two red patches glowed on the slab where his palms had touched it. Both his hands were black and numb.

  But just as he thought he had found the key, a voice spoke to him, and what it said was so exquisitely aimed it hit him like an axe between the eyes.

  ‘I know where you come from…’

  Sweat began to pour from his face. Where it dripped onto the stone it danced madly and fried up into steam. The demon that had troubled his mind ever since Gwydion came into the Vale reared up before him, and with it a howling gale of fears.

  ‘I know who you really are…’

  ‘Liar!’

  ‘Leave me be, and you will learn the truth too…’

  He staggered back. Doubt cut the ground from under him. All his suspicions came alive and the stone fed greedily on them. The crimson glow surged, forcing him another step back, and then his mind wavered, distracted by the wailing of the Fellows above, by the sound of an iron grille being opened.

  ‘You’re a liar!’ he shouted again. But he knew well enough that the wound the Doomstone had found in him was deep. It was what had driven the dreams of many a dark night, the helpless nightmares in which he imagined Death to be his father. He thought he had cut that terror out of his flesh long ago. ‘Fearmonger! I command you to silence!’

  Angrily, he leaned forward and placed hands and forehead hard against the fiercely-glowing slab. This was the crucial test, the thing he had suffered everything for. Yet it felt wrong. In the end the Doomstone had knocked him off balance, undermined his confidence, sullied his sacrifice.

  Then something rattled onto the surface of the stone. It was the leaping fish, the talisman Breona had given him at his leaving. She was not his mother, he knew that, but she had cared for him and loved him as well as any mother could, and he had taken the token of that love in the same spirit. He kissed it now, broke the cord and laid it flat upon the Doomstone.

  The spinning whine rose up, raved, raged at him. The stone strove to reply. A bloody light blasted from it, more sullen and deadly now than it had been before, but he would not let it move him. He would not. He. Would. Not!

  And when the vivid shock came to him of a portcullis running down and cutting him in two, he was ready to turn the malice back upon itself.

  ‘You’re the one that’s broken,’ he told the stone steadily. ‘For I bring with me a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. I have come to fulfil the prophecy of the Child of Destiny, and now one shall be made two! So be it!’

  And as he spoke the last words a great shock passed through his arms and chest and his world collapsed down to a pinpoint. There was a tremendous bang and he felt his body being hurled through the air and his mind dissolving. And then – nothingness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ALL IS WON, YET ALL IS LOST

  When he came to, he was lying on his back, staring up at a drifting pattern of grey that floated above him. At first, he could make no sense of it, but then he remembered the masses of harm that Gwydion had drawn from the battlestone at the Giant’s Ring and it seemed to him that he must now be at the Doomstone’s mercy.

  He could do nothing to save himself. Everything seemed to exist at the end of a very long tunnel. All his strength had left him, and he felt as helpless as a baby. Surely this swirling, menacing shape must coalesce into demonic form and destroy him. But, if so, why was it waiting so long?

  This is going to hurt, he thought. But no harm came to him, and so he opened his eyes again. As his vision cleared and he returned a little more to his senses, he saw that the swirling, twisting grey mass was nothing more than smoke lacing the air.

  He tried to sit up, to waft it away, but it was more than he could do, for all his limbs were leaden and refused his commands. The smoke was thick. It caught at the back of his throat, made him cough. That made him realize how much his ribs hurt, and to understand just how weak he had become. His hands felt as if they had been burned to charcoal…

  Sleep beckoned. He lay back and was beginning to drift away when his mind fastened on a strange sound coming from above. My ears, he thought. They’re ringing like a blacksmith’s anvil, and I’ve only just noticed it. He wished the noise would go away and leave him in peace. But it would not. Nor would the idea that he was still in danger. He shook his head and slowly the sound above began to resolve itself into screaming voices.

  The Sightless Ones!

  Suddenly, he remembered where he was. Those screaming voices were in the chapter house above him. His eyes were closing, but he knew that if he fell asleep now the Fellows would find him and make soap and candles out of him. This dreary, smoke-filled cellar would be the last thing his eyes would ever see…and that could not be right.

  He watched the smoke rising up through the leper-holes in the shrine for a moment, before trying for the second time to sit up. Then he forced himself to approach the glaring world of pain that waited for him.

  The cellar was utterly changed. He had been flung halfway across it to the furthest corner near the steps. Where a brilliant crimson glow had been before, now there were faint bars of light shafting down through the smoke, sculpting the walls into improbable shapes. And there was the culprit – the great slab of the Doomstone, cracked clean in two.

  Its blemished grey surface was dark and inert now, and Will knew for the first time that he was the one who had broken it. Hope lifted him up. It was time to get out of this place. To leave the tomb! To find life again!

  He drew a deep breath and forced himself to rise, first to his knees and then to his feet. Then he began to climb the stone stair. When he reached the top he pushed up the iron grating and emerged into the shrine chamber amid a cloud of acrid smoke. Brilliant sunshine now cleansed the space where tall black windows had once blocked out the light. The cold, dead-white effigy of Swythen seemed almost transparent now that it was flooded with warm rays. The Elders were wandering around it in confusion, casting up their red hands against the painful sunbeams and crying out.

  Suddenly Will could breathe again. Escaping the tomb seemed to let the strength flood back into him. But the Fellows beyond the shrine had not fared so well. The cracking of the Doomstone had left them bereft and without order to their thoughts. They twisted and turned about as if in agony. They sought shadows like maggots caught in the sun’s glare. Some ran shrieking in circles. Many lay on the ground, clustering together with their hands pressed over each other’s eyes and mouths. Will found his way out of the shrine cage and struggled through the madness towards the great oaken doors. He fell out into the yard below the shattered windows, and when he looked back he saw great plumes of smoke pouring out, forming into a gigantic mus
hroom that rose high above his head, a column twisting and thinning now in the breeze.

  The big cedar in the yard was wholly bare now. He ran under it, across a pavement scattered with countless needles and glittering black shards that had been blasted from the windows. Then he climbed onto the roof of an out-house and vaulted the wall into some adjoining gardens. An ancient black cat sat near a fountain. It regarded him warily, but stood its ground. The May sun was shining down, radiant and warm. He could hear no birdsong, but neither were there any streams of fire spoiling the clear blue of the sky. Despite everything, his thoughts ran first to Willow and the dangerous part she had elected to play in the battle. He was glad he had freed her from the stone’s embrace, and hoped he had not left things too late.

  When he jumped the fence into a side alley and ran on, the fresh air in his lungs felt like cool water on a parched throat. But when he came out into the main street, he was hit by the dreadful hush that had fallen over everything. It was as if thousands of sleepwalkers had suddenly awakened at the same moment and found themselves to be murderers. All fighting had ceased. Weapons had fallen from hands, and faces were slackened in bewilderment, pallid, unshaven, thirsty. Many men were staring up at the great many-legged cloud that curled and twisted above the town. It seemed for a moment to billow into a threatening thunderhead, but it was only the smoke from the chapter house caught in an updraught and it was now melting away.

  As the cold shadow it cast over Verlamion lifted, Will ran back up into the town. He was making for the place where the king’s standard flew. There he found all was in confusion. Above him the top of the curfew tower was fire-blackened and the door at the bottom had been broken down.

  ‘Master Gwydion!’ he shouted, knowing that one battle at least might not yet be wholly done.

  He leapt over the shattered door, raced up the hundred narrow steps that spiralled to the tower top. All the while he feared he might be met on the stair by Maskull’s fiery wrath. But when he reached the first landing unharmed he took heart and dashed onward again.

  At the second landing the innards of a great engine of time loomed out of the darkness, a thing made of black iron with a huge bell attached – it had stopped dead on the point of noon.

  Will’s caution stopped him again, but still Maskull’s purple fire failed to come flooding down upon him, and he ignored his inner warnings. He glimpsed daylight and pressed on, remembering what Gwydion had said about Maskull’s strength being great, but not great enough to beat them when they stood together.

  When he came bursting out onto the roof, everything was warm and fire-blackened and sooty. And there stood the menacing figure of Maskull.

  ‘Master Gwyd—’ he began.

  But Gwydion was not here.

  The sorcerer turned. ‘You!’ he snarled. ‘The apprentice boy! I should have known!’

  ‘By the sun and moon! What have you done with Master Gwydion?’ Will launched himself at the sorcerer, but his body froze in mid-leap, caught, enmeshed helplessly in a magical snare.

  The sorcerer spun, gestured disdainfully. ‘I made you, I can just as easily unmake you.’

  ‘Nooooo!’

  Will saw the sorcerer’s hands splay in readiness to stab fire through him. But then the great blue-white diamond at his breast flashed a fire of its own. A beam of paler blue seemed to explode upon it in a halo of brilliance.

  Suddenly Will was in motion again, and colliding hard against the parapet. He twisted around, leapt to his feet ready to attack the sorcerer again.

  But Maskull had vanished.

  Will gasped, went to each of the four walls in turn and looked over. The heat of battle lingered in the stone and in the iron railings. When he checked the eight-sided stair-house set into the corner of the tower, he saw that it too had been blackened and much of the lead melted from its pointed roof. But what could have happened to the sorcerer? Where the corners of tower and roof met there had been eight stone gargoyles. Now there were only four. Could it be that the others had been brought to life so that Maskull could make good his escape?

  What did it matter if Maskull was gone?

  Will staggered, grateful now to be alive. His only thoughts were to find Willow and Gwydion. He shielded his eyes from the sun and looked out over the town. Thousands of soldiers from both sides filled the marketplace. It would be impossible to find anyone in such a crush. Even so, he hurried down the stair and leapt into the road. His feet led him to a street where many of the wounded had been brought to be tended. Willow was not among them. In another place, outside the biggest of the alehouses, many more dead lay where they had fallen.

  It seemed there was a mist rising from the bodies, a strange miasma that hung in the air for a while and then wafted into nothingness. He backed away, wanting more than ever now to find Willow – only not here.

  There was a pitiful squealing. He turned to see Lord Strange kneeling abjectly under guard, protesting his innocence and begging to be taken before Duke Richard to make his excuses. When Will turned away he saw the house into which the queen had hurried with King Hal. An immense idea came to him. Inside were piles of cured hides and animal pelts. It was a tanner’s shop, though the tanner had long ago made himself scarce.

  As Will entered he sensed a confirming presence, then he saw the shop was scattered with pieces of armour that had been cast aside like shells after a crayfish supper. And there lay on the floor a bright sallet onto which a golden circlet crown was fixed.

  He turned, looked about, but the queen and all the rest of the courtly party had fled to save their lives once the battle had turned against them. In their haste they had abandoned the king.

  Will pulled back a pile of sheepskins and a figure cowered away from him. King Hal crept further under the table. His eyes were wide and there was blood where an arrow had grazed one of his cheeks.

  ‘Fear not, your grace,’ Will said, beckoning him to come out. ‘The battle is over. It is time to show yourself to your people.’

  ‘We are wounded…’ the king said, blinking.

  The wound was little more than a scratch. Will picked up the king’s helmet, lifted the crown from it and tried to place it on his brow, but it was a battle crown made large enough to adorn a helmet, and it fell down about the king’s neck.

  ‘You must come out,’ Will said firmly. ‘For I have need of a king. There is someone I must find, and though my voice is by no means as soft as yours, your grace, mine won’t carry nearly so far.’

  Though King Hal had not yet seen thirty-five summers, nevertheless he moved like an old man. Perhaps it was gruelling lifelong fear that made him bent-backed and uncertain, perhaps only the strangeness of having been left alone for the first time. At any rate, Will saw how the crown dismayed him, and he reached forward to take it from around his neck. But crown or no crown, when Will led the king outside, all who saw him knew him immediately and were amazed. The rumour of his presence spread like fire in a haystack. Soldiers began to fall to their knees across the whole market square. Then Gwydion was revealed among them, and he came to the fore, seeming taller and stronger than Will had remembered him. His beard was singed and his hands sooty, but he was unharmed and striding through those who knelt before King Hal.

  Will ran to him and hugged him. ‘We did it, Master Gwydion! We did it!’

  The wizard seized him by the shoulders and looked into his eyes. ‘You did it, Willand. You, and you alone.’

  ‘I’ve fulfilled the prophecy of the Child of Destiny at last! I have made one into two right well and cracked that Doomstone clear across the middle!’

  At that the wizard looked at him quizzically, then said, ‘Willand, I am prouder of you at this moment than you will ever know.’

  But Will was not listening. ‘Master Gwydion, please – I have to find Willow. She’s here somewhere! I thought that if I could find the king then he could put out word for her—’

  The wizard took his arm. ‘And I will help you, but as we go you must tell
me what happened, for the power of the lorc seemed to fall dead on the stroke of noon. It was as if someone had stilled its heart.’

  Will told all that he could, but at last his glance strayed up to the curfew tower and he said, ‘What I still don’t understand is what happened to Maskull.’

  ‘He is gone.’

  ‘Do you mean he’s dead?’

  ‘Merely gone away. I have sent him far from here upon a vanishing-spell.’

  ‘But you said you hadn’t prepared a vanishing-spell. Last night, when we were being chased by the harm, you said—’

  ‘I said I had been unable to prepare a vanishing-spell to ensure our safety. I also told you some time ago that only one vanishing-spell may be prepared at one time. The reason I could not prepare one to rescue us was because I already had one woven and ready to trigger.’

  ‘And the trigger was carried by Maskull? You mean he was foolish enough to take something from you?’ he said, recalling the bird’s skull that Gwydion had once worn about his neck, and the cliffs to which it had vanished them.

  ‘Indirectly.’ Gwydion smiled a broad smile. ‘He was wearing it as he stood upon the tower. Do you remember the diamond that came from Leir’s swan cloak?’

  ‘The Star of Annuin? Then it was important after all!’

  The wizard’s arch smile changed to one of satisfaction. ‘You see, my aim with the diamond was not so much to bribe the queen, nor even to gain a protectorship for Richard, as to bring the queen into ostentatious possession of it. I know Maskull of old. And I reckoned on his desire to have that stone for himself. He did not disappoint me. He coveted it, yet he never guessed what it was, nor, more importantly, where it had come from.’