The Giants' Dance

by Robert Carter

  The crescent moon was setting when Will finally escaped to take his supper. Dimmet, who was counting a stack of silver pennies, said Will deserved the best room in the inn, which was up a set of stairs jealously guarded by Bolt, the Plough’s big black dog.

  ‘That’s it!’ Will announced. ‘No more! You’d better tell them to go away, Dimmet. Because I am not seeing anyone else.’

  ‘There’s always tomorrow.’

  ‘Not tomorrow. Not ever!’

  He went to bed very tired, but he could not rest easy, for though none of the casts had been great in power or extent, the exercise of so many spells still sparked in all the channels of his body.

  As he lay restlessly, a thousand faces appeared to him – all the poor folk who had passed under his hands, all the wounds and worries, all the ailments and afflictions.

  Surely, he thought as he turned onto his side, I couldn’t have advertised myself more widely if I’d shouted my name out from the rooftops.

  The next day he woke early. He was still tired, and quite ravenous, but when he opened the shutters he saw a swelling crowd was already gathered below. They waited in hope, though they had been told that there would be no more healing. Those who had arrived since dawn were reluctant to believe what those who had waited all night were telling them. And so the crowd had continued to grow.

  As Will sat at breakfast he debated what he would say. When he peeped through a crack in the shutters he saw that several hawkers had come hoping to profit from the crowd. There was even a juggler in red and yellow walking up and down with a chair balanced on his chin.

  ‘You’ll have to be strong with them today,’ Dimmet said, a gleam in his eye.

  ‘I’m not going out there. Tell them I’ve gone.’

  ‘Tell them yourself.’

  Will’s fists clenched. ‘Dimmet!’

  Dimmet was about to go out to make the announcement that Will was shortly to address them all when there came the drumming of a horse’s hooves.

  ‘Master! Master!’ someone cried at the back door. ‘Come quick!’

  That sounded too urgent to ignore, and Will decided to go into the yard. He pushed his way through the onlookers and was met by a man sitting astride a dun pony who begged him to come along the Nadderstone road with him.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Is someone injured?’

  ‘It’s up on the tower!’ he cried. ‘Come quick!’

  ‘What’s on the tower? What tower?’

  ‘They caught a goggly in a trap up by the old chapter house!’

  ‘A goggly?’

  A great gust of surprise swept through those who were listening at the gate as they all caught their breath at once.

  ‘They wants to kill it! You got to come quick!’

  That sounded sinister, though Will had no idea what a goggly was. Still, it was his opportunity to escape and he seized it. ‘Stand back!’ he said, waving an uncompromising arm at the crowd.

  There were groans for fear that he would leave them. Some gave tongue to angry shouts and began to press in around him, but he leapt up behind the rider and thrust out his oak staff. He cried out as he had once heard Gwydion cry out, ‘Give way, there! Hinder me who dares!’

  The crowd was struck dumb by that. Dimmet and Duffred and their helpers began to push people back from the gate. A way parted and allowed the pony to canter away. A moment later they had left Eiton village far behind, and Will clung on as they passed into open country.

  They followed the road that Will had taken the day before along the broad valley and past the ruined chapter house. But when they came up the ridge where the tower stood he saw that it was abandoned no more. A knot of folk were gathered at its foot, and they were looking up at the mottled brown stone. Many had armed themselves with sticks and were shouting angry oaths at the tower. They broke off when they saw their messenger had returned with the wizard.

  As Will got down from the horse he saw one of the young men begin throwing stones up at the tower.

  ‘Hoy!’ he shouted, and made the lad turn. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Trying to wallop that there goggly.’

  When Will shaded his eyes and looked up he saw they were trying to dislodge the gargoyle.

  ‘It’s naught but a carven image!’

  ‘Nooo! ‘tis a goggly! Look, it moves!’

  Will stared at their red faces and began to suspect they had been put under an enchantment. But then the creature actually did move.

  ‘See, Master! Now then! What kind of a carving is that?’

  Will’s eyes narrowed. It was a live animal trapped high up in a corner of the wall. One of the ugliest creatures he had ever seen. Its every movement lifted the hairs in Will’s flesh, as the sight of a spider did in some. The creature was brown-grey and mottled, batlike yet baby-faced at the same time, and there was something elfin about it. It had wings and a tail and four thin limbs, and was about the size of a three-year-old child, though it was built much slighter and in strange proportions. Whenever it moved the folk below gasped and hooted. And when the bold lad made to pitch another stone up at it Will stayed him with a question.

  ‘Who found it?’

  One of the men spoke up. ‘My brother seen it up there around dawn when we come up from Morton Ashley to check on the snares.’

  ‘Snares?’ Will asked sharply. ‘Shame on you. There’s a deal of suffering in snares, you know that.’

  ‘Well, fetch it down then so’s we can kill it!’ the man said.

  ‘Is that what you brought me out here for?’ Will demanded.

  ‘Look!’

  The thing moved again, crouched in a corner, then scuttled at speed across a sheer wall, clinging to the vertical surface and the overhang of the parapet with long, clawlike nails. Will saw that something was clamped to its ankle and it trailed a long, rusty chain that seemed to be attached to the masonry of the tower.

  Stones were let fly at it and fists shaken.

  ‘Naaw! Naaaw!’ it cried, and a shower of grit flaked down into their eyes from its struggles.

  ‘Stop that!’ Will cried with all the authority he could muster. ‘You must try to calm yourselves!’

  ‘At night them gogglies fly out from caverns and drink the milk of our animals,’ a woman said, hate shining in her eyes. ‘And they steal babies from out their cradles!’

  ‘And they shuns the light,’ another told him. ‘But ‘tis said they can sit out even in the noonday sun and not budge once they’ve tasted of the flesh of a child!’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘’Tis true! That’s why they hide out on towers and the like. Pose as gargles in the daytime, they do. Until folk discovers them and drives them away. Pitch a rock at it, Erngar!’

  ‘I said no throwing!’ Will pointed his staff at the man and he dropped the rock. ‘Or I shall not help you.’

  A memory stirred as he caught the latest movement. He was reminded of a candle-blackened roof and hideous faces and winged creatures just like this one. What he had at first taken for carvings had clustered high up among the roof beams of the great chapter house of Verlamion, looking down on him with hungry eyes.

  ‘Goggly child-stealer!’ a fat woman shouted up at it, wrathfully shaking her fist.

  Just then, Duffred came up on a horse. ‘What’s to do here?’ he asked.

  Once he had dismounted Will drew him aside out of earshot of the others. ‘What is that thing?’ he asked shading his eyes.

  ‘Don’t rightly know. But you want to be careful, the folk at Morton Ashley and right down as far as Helmsgrave say these creatures steal newborn babes,’ Duffred murmured.

  ‘So I’ve discovered.’

  The Nadderstone man who had brought Will here joined them, and so did his wife. ‘Gogglies come from a land under the ground.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Will asked, a sudden anxiety seizing him.

  The man looked back challengingly. ‘Every seven years them gogglies must pay
a tithe to the infernal king who lives down below. But it’s a living tithe. They must give over one of their own young – unless they can find a manchild to offer instead.’

  ‘That’s why they’re always prowling for our young ones,’ the woman said, picking up a stone.

  Duffred said quietly, ‘I don’t know if it’s the truth, but it’s what they believe. They all do. When this chapter house was still lived in, the folk hereabouts would bring their children here to have a mark put on their heads – the Rite of Unction they called it. It was supposed to be a protection against these…things.’

  Will folded his arms. ‘And was it paid for?’

  ‘Aye. A gold piece taken from the village coffer.’

  He snorted. ‘Gwydion says the Sightless Ones love gold above all else. And that the Elders of the Fellowship delight most in taking it piecemeal from the needy and the credulous.’

  ‘But is that not a fair exchange?’ Duffred asked. ‘A piece of gold for a charm against evil?’

  ‘Evil!’ Will gave Duffred a hard look. ‘That is a meaningless word, an idea invented by power-hungry men to enslave folk’s minds. And how many times must it be said: true magic is never to be bought or sold. Don’t you see? The red hands were just squeezing these folk, frightening them into bringing their babes here. Doubtless so they could be registered with a magical mark, one that helps to make recruits of them in later life. Gwydion says the Sightless Ones believe in something very dangerous.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘It’s called the Great Lie.’

  Duffred looked unsure and gave the cloister a thoughtful glance. ‘So you’re saying the goggly ain’t a child-stealer after all?’

  ‘I hardly think so. Look at it, Duff. It’s terrified!’ Will thought of the vent in the cellar under the chapter house and smelled again the strange air that had issued from below.

  As he walked towards the tower, one of the skin-like wings flapped pathetically and he knew the creature was in pain.

  ‘I’m going up there,’ he said, rolling up his sleeves.

  ‘You can’t do that!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s said they got a poison bite on them!’

  ‘I’ll bet that’s a lot of nonsense too!’

  Inside the tower a few floorboards were still clinging to the beams and three broken and rotting staircases led precariously from one level to the next. Will had to be helped up to the first floor, but then he climbed alone, walking with arms outstretched along the beams, testing his footing with care as he went. Birds had nested here and the rain of several winters had made the walls mossy. When he reached the top he saw marks that showed how the roof of the tower had been deliberately broken with axes and hammers. He looked down from what seemed now to be a dizzying height, and began to edge out along the bare parapet. At last he came to the place where the iron chain was wedged tight in a crevice of the stonework. One of the creature’s ankles was shut in an iron trap, and the ring on the chain that dangled from the trap was fixed through a staple in the masonry.

  He wiped the sweat from his eyes and tried not to look down. The sooner he did what he had come to do the better it would be. But when the creature found that he had come close to it, it began to screech. It had big eyes, a broad muzzle and a wide mouth with many needlelike teeth. Its grey fur was threadbare, and its lips were bloodied, which gave it an even more monstrous appearance.

  ‘Naaw! Naaaw!’ it cried, and tried again to escape, but it could not bite through the chain, nor was it strong enough to pull the ring free, no matter how it tugged.

  ‘Stop flapping, you foolish beast. There, now,’ he murmured, trying to gentle it. ‘Can’t you see you’re only hurting yourself?’

  ‘Naaw! Naaaw!’ the thing cried back.

  Balancing on top of the parapet was difficult. The masons who had built the tower had made castellations on top, perhaps so that princely armies marching by would believe it was part of a great fortification and so leave it alone. Will sat astride the battlement and inched along the wall. His left leg overhung a sheer drop every bit as far down as the ground beneath the curfew tower at Verlamion. When he came to the iron ring he found it was made fast, and was too strong to break.

  He thought about using a spell, but he had no knowledge of the creature’s true name, nor could he say how magic would work upon it. There’s no alternative but to speak calmly to it, he thought, and to try, bit by bit, to tempt it in.

  ‘Naaaw!’ it screamed when he put his hand on the chain.

  There was no trust in the fragile creature. It pulled against his efforts, obstinately hurting itself, and he worried that he might break its leg if he were to pull too hard. It was already in pain, for the rusty teeth of the trap had bitten deep.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ he asked, leaning out as far as he could. ‘You poor little thing. Are you hungry? I wish I’d brought a sausage or two for you. That might have tempted you down, eh? And by the looks of you you’re parched too. I’ve never seen such a depth of mistrust in any beast. Where did you learn that? Now, if I can only reach out and…’

  But when he stretched out his hand towards the trap the creature flapped in a renewed frenzy. It flew at him, and scratched him with its slender claws.

  ‘Steady…I’m not going to hurt you,’ he muttered, drawing away.

  His outstretched fingers trembled as he tried to reach the trap, and perhaps turn it over a little to see how the mechanism worked and how the iron teeth might be parted, but the creature took fright once more. Terror flashed in its eyes. It hissed and lunged, and then sank its teeth into his hand.

  A sharp pain shot through him. He stifled a yell, but then the creature pulled back, jerking furiously on the chain in another vain effort to pull itself free. Its claws began to scrabble horribly against the stone, and then it flattened itself on the wall. It shut its eyes and made a horrible face, freezing in an outstretched pose in a last senseless effort to deceive the hunter by playing the gargoyle.

  ‘Come on! Let’s be sensible now,’ Will said. ‘We both know you’re not a stone carving.’

  He hung on to the chain even though he felt the fingers of his other hand sliding. Fear of falling froze him, put a rod of steel in his arm. He summoned the power to ignore pain and the strength of three men to slowly drag himself back. His braids brushed his cheek, and as he came upright he found he was shaking.

  ‘I’m only here to help you, you stupid creature,’ he said. There was blood on his fingers where the ingrate had bitten him. Drops of blood pooled at the wound and began to run in red lines down his arm as he watched. Blood dripped from his elbow into the void below.

  He was dimly aware of upturned faces as Duffred and the other folk watched him. He hoped Duffred’s claim about a poison bite was empty.

  ‘Those folks down there think I’m either very brave,’ he told the frozen creature, ‘or very foolish. I’m not sure myself which it is. What do you think?’

  But the beast was not listening.

  ‘Magician, heal thyself!’ he said, and laughed at the irony. So much healing had come from his hands just lately, yet he could do nothing for himself.

  ‘That’s how magic works, I’m afraid,’ he said, looking hard at the beast. Then he realized that nothing his magic could do was likely to be worse than the injuries he would end up with by fighting the creature’s stubbornness headon.

  There was nothing for it but to use a spell of great magic. He resettled himself on the wall like a man astride a horse. He put his hands together and summoned up his inner calm. After all the practice of yesterday a magical state of mind came to him easily and he felt the tingling in his skin begin to rise in waves. Then he fixed his attention on the chain.

  He began to blow on it. Hot breath, hotter as it left his lips, hotter still as it played on the iron chain link. Soon the rusted iron began to glow a deep cherry red. The red intensified until it was glowing yellow and then white. Will put two fingers through
the link and opened it easily.

  When magic snaps, best beware the afterclap!

  Will recalled the rede only just in time as the effort of the spell broke back against him. It was like a fall from a great height. Darkness closed in on him very suddenly. For a moment he was in a faint, then his thoughts seemed to move outside his head, and he was looking down at an unconscious fool who sat astride a battlement with two pieces of chain clasped in unfeeling hands.

  But as the chain swung free the creature’s eyes opened. It sensed freedom and came to life, scuttling first halfway across the wall. Then it launched itself into the air.

  It fell for a moment in a great flat-bellied curve, weighed down by the trap and chain that dangled from its leg. But the rush of air under its wings bore it upward, and it flapped in a desperate arc over the trees and disappeared.

  Will saw everything haloed in blue light. He battled to bring his mind once more into focus. Stupidly he looked at the patterns of the ground far below but could make no sense of them. But then he felt a trickle of spittle run wetly from the side of his mouth. He felt his teeth grating on the stone and a great sickness welled up in his belly.

  A moment passed before he understood his precariousness. Another moment before he began to wonder just how long he had been slumped on the wall. He heard Duffred calling to him. Then the life started to flow back into his limbs again, and he breathed a deep draught of air that made him realize just how close a fool had come to killing himself.

  CHAPTER SIX

  AN UNWELCOME GUEST

  Bright sunshine was shafting through an open window and sparrows were chasing one another noisily through the eaves when Will came to again. He found himself stiff in every joint, and his left hand was tied up tightly in a cloth strip.

  Bolt began to bark and came up to him with a wagging tail when he tried to turn over. Then Duffred appeared and said, ‘How are you feeling this fine morning? – what’s left of it, anyway.’