Willow burst into tears. Will hugged her to him and thought of Bethe. Then he clasped the wizard’s hand in his own. ‘I pledge you this much, Master Gwydion, that together we shall bring this great fight to its final conclusion very soon. And we shall not fail!’
When they stepped outside they found that the sun had set. Stars spangled the great, misty dome of the sky, and the butterflies that had covered the black tent were gone.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Nowhere in The Giants’ Dance is mention made of Britain or Ireland or any other familiar country, for these are places in our world. But the world in which Will lived is not wholly imaginary and a correspondence does exist between places and events in Will’s world and those in our own.
‘The Tews’ in Oxfordshire would be the right place to go to find traces of the Vale. The Cotswolds, hills not far to the east, have a couple of villages with ‘Slaughter’ in their name, and by them runs the Roman road that has become in part the A429, but was once the mighty Foss Way.
Visitors to Moreton-in-Marsh will be able to find a ‘Four-shire Stone’ nearby. And where the upper parts of the River Cherwell run there are villages called Eydon and Adstone, and between them at Canons Ashby there was once a priory.
Modern-day stone hunters have three villages with Tysoe in their name to choose from. If they were to set out from Stratford-upon-Avon and travel a dozen miles due west, then trend north of east through the wilds of Worcestershire (where there are villages that bear such curious names as Flyford Flavell, North Piddle and Upton Snodsbury), they would eventually arrive at the Worcester and Birmingham Canal and, not far from Junction 6 of the M5 motorway, they would find Oddingley.
The meandering cart ride that Will and Gwydion take with the Aston Oddingley stone goes north, in our terms, through modern Droitwich. There is a River Saltwarpe there, and the elms mentioned were perhaps those that gave the name to Elmbridge before they vanished.
There are hills near Clent, a Hagley Wood, and near it, Wychbury Hill. Fiveways is a junction on the A451 north of Kidderminster. From Stourbridge, modern road travellers might skirt the great West Midlands conurbation going north along the A491, A449 and finally peeling off northwesterly along the A41. Across Shropshire our travellers would go – Gwydion’s aim was ‘the city of Caistre on the Gut of Dee’ – but before they could reach Cheshire their car engine would likely overheat at a place called Loggerheads, not far to the east of Market Drayton…In our world a famous battle was fought there, at a place forever after remembered as Blore Heath.
From there to Wenlock Edge is a journey south of thirty miles, and thence to the favourite town of Ludlow perhaps a dozen more.
The next stage of Will’s story takes him to where ‘three waters join’, the Findon Brook, the Sow and the Afon, names perhaps half familiar to the students of Warwick University, whose campus is sited only a mile or two from a similar confluence.
There was once a famous tree, in what is now Coventry’s Broadgate, which gave its name to that fine city. And although it has long since been torn down, there was once a Coventry Castle too. Later, that city became justly famous for its big cats, but they were never pards of the kind that Will would have recognized.
When Will and Willow flee from Castle Corben they pass by the Towers of Time at a place called Rucke, which was situated along the valley of the River Afon. It may be left to the reader to make whatever connections they want here, but if there was a Mulart lign in our world it would pass a mile or so to the east of Yelvertoft, a mile or so to the west of Ravensthorpe, and directly through a Northamptonshire village called Harelstone, close by the estate of Althorpe, where Princess Diana now lies buried.
Where the Mulart lign crosses with Indonen, the lign of the ash tree, we find in our world the Abbey of Delapre which has survived into our era in a much altered form as the Northamptonshire Record Office. It was around this spot that the Wars of the Roses were brought to a new pitch of fury in July, 1459 when Cardinal Coppini, an inept papal legate, excommunicated Henry VI and a battle royal ensued. The Hardingstones of Will’s world (which were also mentioned in The Language of Stones) are commemorated in our world by a Northampton suburb.
APPENDIX I
THE OGDOAD
The Ogdoad came together during the first Age, the Age of Trees. There were nine guardians, but as magic left the world, so the Ages declined. Thus, at the ending of each Age, the Phantarch and the foremost of his deputies departed into the Far North, leaving the lesser deputy to become the new Phantarch.
Age of Trees CELENOST (Phantarch) Brynach (his deputy)
Age of Giants MAGLIN Urias
Age of Iron ESRAS Morfesa
Age of Slavery and War SEMIAS
Age of Dispute Gwydion and Maskull
APPENDIX II
THE LORC
There were nine ligns spoken of in the Black Book, but they are unequal. The weakest flow is in Heligan, whereas Eburos, the strongest, has almost twice its flow. This list shows the ligns in order of their power and shows the trees with which they are associated.
1. Eburos Yew
2. Mulart Elder
3. Bethe Birch
4. Indonen Ash
5. Caorthan Rowan
6. Tanne Oak
7. Celin Holly
8. Collen Hazel
9. Heligan Willow
All battlestones stand on at least one lign. The ligns, which are always straight, cross at 24 points around the Realm. There is always a stone where the ligns cross, but not all stones standing on the lorc are battlestones.
APPENDIX III
THE LORC IN OUR WORLD
The places in Will’s world where the stones of the lorc are sited all have, of course, equivalent places in our world. Those who want to find these places and perhaps plot them on a map should start by looking for the places where the main battles of the Wars of the Roses were fought.
A further clue to how the ligns of the lorc connect these places is given by the device that appears on the side of Will’s fish talisman – three triangles drawn within one another.
Readers with access to the Internet (or perhaps a GPS receiver) and Ordnance Survey maps might like to have slightly more detailed information. The approximate OS grid references given below show to within half a mile where the stones of the lorc would stand if we were in Will’s world.
Of these grid references, the first points to the Giant’s Ring, the next eighteen point to all the major battlestones, and the final eighteen to the lesser guidestones.
SP3030
TQ2693, SO4364, TL1307, SO9444, SP7261, SE3418, SK3803, SP5755, SE4840, SO5074, SP9672, SP4951, SP4192, SK9813, SP6669, S09156, NU0423, NY9562, SP1635, SJ9755, TQ1698, SP5522, SJ6793, SS9280, SE5448, SK2194, TL0576, SP2941, ST3198, ND1546, NJ2658, TL2402, SP5332, NU0207, NY9241, S04675
If you type these map references into an Internet OS grid map webpage, such as the ones found at:
www.streetmap.co.uk
or
www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/getamap you will see the approximate location. Try it, you might find you’re living on top of a battlestone.
THE STORY CONTINUES IN
WHITEMANTLE
due for publication in May 2006
About the Author
The Giants’ Dance
Robert Carter was born exactly five hundred years after the first battle of the Wars of the Roses. He was brought up in the Midlands and later on the shores of the Irish Sea where his forebears hail from. He was variously educated in Britain, Australia and the United States, then worked for some years in the Middle East and remote parts of Africa. He travelled widely in the East before joining the BBC in London in 1982. His interests have included astronomy, pole-arm fighting, canals, collecting armour, steam engines, composing music and enjoying the English countryside, and he has always maintained a keen interest in history. Today he lives in a ‘village’ that only sounds rural – Shepherd’s Bush.
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By Robert Carter
The Language of Stones
The Giants’ Dance
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2005
Copyright © Robert Carter 2005
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