Whitemantle

by Robert Carter

  The next day was drier, but colder and full of the grey that attends a year’s end. Duke Richard’s army had followed a branch of the Great North Road as it turned westward at Scanton and passed along a stretch known to carriers and carters as Bridge Lane, for on its way it crossed many tributaries of the Umber. Unfortunately for Will the road also strayed across the Collen lign.

  He smelled it first like a gust of corruption, then the sickness descended on him as a fit. His limbs began to twitch and then jerk, moving in a way that was beyond his control. His friends galloped him across as quickly as they could, until he began to regain a little colour and revive.

  ‘It’s flowing north,’ he said, tears reddening his eyes. ‘Very strong.’

  Soon the character of the road changed, and the appearance of the land itself, for at Boar Tree there was a gate bearing a gilded crest that gave notice to all who travelled this way that they were entering the great Duchy of Ebor.

  There was to Will’s eyes a glitter to all things beyond the gate, as if a weird’s spell rested upon the place, but he could not be certain that it was not an aftershock running through him – that, or some foul glamour caused by the presence of both the Collen and Celin ligns, a power which now ran strongly to either hand.

  ‘Thus we depart the ancient kingdom of Axenholme,’ Gwydion said.

  ‘Is this then the Mezentian Gate?’ Will asked, vaguely remembering the fame of the place.

  ‘Alas, it is not,’ Gwydion said. ‘For that is at the port of Memison. That is a far grander gateway than this, a thing of lofty pillars and set with many fine statues. We will not go that way, for ahead of us lie two more leagues to the River Dunne, and there are four more to Castle Pomfret if ever we should go there. We will not do that today, however, but cut westward instead.’

  ‘Shouldn’t the way we choose depend on the one that Duke Richard has taken?’ Will asked.

  ‘We must go where my intuitions say we should,’ the wizard insisted. ‘There is no longer any doubt where Friend Richard is bound, and I would rather not go by Pomfret in whose dreadful dungeons Hal the Usurper did starve to death his rightful king!’

  Will agreed, but before they came to Duncaistre there was bad news. The old man whom Gwydion questioned knew little enough, but it seemed that the Duke of Mells had fallen upon the advance riders of Duke Richard’s army and there had been a skirmish.

  ‘A slaughter, they’re calling it. Some dozens of men slain, but more fled, and all from deadly giants.’

  ‘And the queen’s army?’ Lotan asked.

  The old man waved a shaky hand northward. ‘There be monsters holding the castle at Pomfret.’

  ‘And may the shame of the Usurper’s crime humble them all,’ Gwydion muttered.

  ‘We must take special care now,’ Lotan said. ‘For we do not want to meet Duke Henry’s armed bands while we are out in the open.’

  The wizard turned on him. ‘Is that so? Then you would have us waste more time finding a way around?’

  Will gritted his teeth at the wizard’s hostility and wondered what purpose he thought it served. They pressed on, and when next the two of them were out of earshot he said to Gwydion, ‘Why do you always have to belittle Lotan? What has he done to deserve it?’

  The wizard’s chin jutted. ‘I may ask you: what do you think of the nightmare Willow had last night?’

  ‘What nightmare?’

  ‘She told Gort of it. Did she not tell you?’

  That rankled. ‘No. And if she didn’t, maybe that’s because she doesn’t want to trouble me with trifles.’

  ‘It was no trifling matter. Her thoughts led her to a speculation that I have long had in my own mind.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Simply this: that Maskull’s magic may be allowing him to see all that passes before Lotan’s new eyes.’

  Will reined in his horse and drew back. He looked daggers at Gwydion, but he made no reply.

  Later, as Will followed on alone, the idea plagued him. Of course it was a foolish fancy, no more than a feeling of guilt playing on Willow’s sleeping mind. But Gwydion’s speculation was like a worm in the apple of his confidence. What if Will’s own intuitions about Lotan had been less than sound? What if his judgment had been confused by the new vigour that was rushing through the lorc? What if Maskull really had been apprised of everything they had said and done? What then?

  He tried again cautiously to open his mind, to send out feelers towards Chlu, to make contact without himself being detected. But as the door of his consciousness cracked open, the roaring beyond filled his head and made him pull back in confusion.

  As they turned across the Celin lign Will’s skin started to itch and then his joints began to creak with pain, and before his horse could go more than a few paces further on, a crippling agony spread through him.

  ‘By the moon and stars…help me!’

  Again they were forced to rush him onward a hundred paces, carrying him now groaning and slumped across his own packhorse. When they stopped to look at him, his face was patched with leprous red. Gort tore open his shirt and saw the marks on him, like weals raised on a back that has been freshly flogged.

  No sooner were the marks revealed than Gort began to pass his hands over the skin. Amazingly, the hurts began to vanish again almost as quickly as they had come, leaving behind only faint echoes of pain.

  Afterwards, Will’s memory of that moment was unclear, but it seemed to him that the Wortmaster had passed some healing implement over him to draw out the ailment.

  ‘How was it?’ Willow asked, pale herself now as he lay in her arms.

  ‘I saw three white leopards sitting under a juniper tree,’ he told her faintly. ‘Clear as day to me, they were.’

  ‘What was their meaning?’

  He looked at the knuckle of his middle finger where a small wound had opened, or reopened, for he had got the original cut from Edward half a dozen years ago.

  He laughed hoarsely. ‘I don’t know about meaning – Death, at a hazard.’

  ‘Death?’ Willow said, and with such desolation in her voice that it broke his heart.

  He squeezed her hand and lied. ‘But maybe not mine, after all. Hmm?’

  ‘And the flow?’ Gwydion asked like a splash of cold water. ‘What about that?’

  ‘It’s worse than before. We’re surely approaching the place where the next battle will be fought…The flow is a torrent now. You wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘Me? Why not? Why wouldn’t I believe it?’

  He shook his head tiredly. ‘Master Gwydion, it’s just an expression.’

  Willow hugged him. She was on the point of tears. ‘What are we to do with you? We can’t take you near a battlefield if it’ll make you ill like this.’

  Later that day, they laid up again, erecting their tents inside the remains of a ruined cottage for fear of being seen. Gort gave them all a herbal tonic to drink. It had the kindness of bistort root in it, he said, buckthorn bark and burdock too, and so was good for endurance. Gwydion brought in a pair of burbot from the river. Coneyfish, the Wortmaster said they were known as hereabouts. Their flesh was good to eat and their bones had a magic that made them much prized by Wise Women. The wizard paced and danced and muttered long into the night while Will drew what strength he could from stone-hard ground that had once been a vegetable garden.

  It was now that Gwydion decided to tell Will the plan upon which all their hopes depended, though to Will’s annoyance he waited until Lotan had excused himself from their company before speaking. His idea, he said, was simply to find the next stone before Maskull did.

  ‘He will come to drink of its malice and we shall be ready for him.’

  ‘Ready?’ Will asked. ‘I don’t see how we’re that.’

  ‘As you know, a certain something which was once in the duke’s possession fell to me, almost by chance.’ He opened his crane bag and drew out something small. ‘You remember the corpse-whale wand? I have cut three slivers
from it and made these.’

  Will took what was offered – three small white pieces of ivory. ‘They’re arrowheads.’

  The wizard nodded. ‘I intend to bind them to fletched shafts.’

  ‘I’ll shoot them into Maskull, when he comes,’ Willow said. ‘It’s quite simple.’

  ‘No…’ Will looked quickly from one to the other. ‘No! No, Master Gwydion. Tell me you’re jesting with me!’

  But Willow laid calming hands on him. ‘Will, it’s already been decided.’

  ‘Willow, it has not been decided! What are you thinking, Master Gwydion? She’d never get near enough to Maskull to hurt him. She—’

  The wizard got to his feet and lifted the cloak of shimmering white feathers out of his bag. ‘She could get close to him if she were to wear this.’

  Willow grasped her husband’s sleeve, enthused by the plan. ‘Don’t you see? A vanishing spell triggered by these arrowheads. We’d send him to the Baerberg and that would be the last we’d see of him because there’s no magic there and he’d not be able to get off the island again.’

  ‘Master Gwydion, you’re forgetting what you once told me; that Maskull has already been to the Baerberg! If he got off it once he can get off it again.’

  The wizard’s eyes softened in appeal. ‘He went there in a ship, Will. A ship! And it was the same ship that bore him away. He put those mariners under compulsion, for did you not hear what that adventurer said? No mariner goes to the Baerberg willingly. But if Maskull is sent there by magic he’ll have no way off. No more than a kitten has a way down when you put it up into a tree.’

  ‘No! You can’t do it. Put the cloak away, Master Gwydion. Maskull is no kitten, and I forbid it!’

  There was silence. Then Gwydion raised his eyebrows and said, ‘Well, then. I trust you have a better idea.’

  ‘Look, Will!’ Willow rose and took the cloak. As she draped her shoulders she began slowly to fade from view, until by a count of seven she had vanished completely.

  Will stared uneasily into the space where his wife had been standing. The sight of her turning ash-pale then greying into thin air was not one best calculated to encourage him, yet the wizard’s charge that he had no better plan was undeniable.

  It was now that Lotan chose to return. He halted by the door like a man stumbling in on a private argument. When they all stared at him, he looked from face to face uncomprehendingly.

  ‘What?’

  And when no one offered any reply he pursed his lips in vexation and sat down.

  Gort rushed in to fill the silence. ‘Did I ever tell you about the day one of the Foderingham cats had her first taste of snow? She tried to jump onto a snowdrift, poor little thing, and got the fright of her life! Up and down she went, springing hither and yon like jack-in-the-box!’

  Gwydion got up surreptitiously and left. When he returned, he was with Willow. By this time Lotan and Gort were in more measured conversation and the secret, it seemed, had been preserved.

  For his part, Will remained alone with his thoughts. He could see no virtue in angering himself further over what had just passed, so he tried to broaden his thoughts. But disappointment at Gwydion’s grand plan had stirred him up and was letting in all kinds of doubts. When he went out to stare into the darkness he could sense the ligns like taints on the wind, rumbles in the bones of his well-planted feet – Celin, lign of the holly to the east now, and further away to the west the birch lign called Bethe. They were converging towards the north, running strongly, and he knew there would be a great battlestone at that point. It was maybe half a dozen leagues away, and that fact gave some relief to his mind. They might be able to ride for a whole day before the sickness descended over him again.

  What would it be like this time? Doubtless a fresh terror made manifest in his flesh, some new god-awful affliction for him to bear…

  There was that little word again! A little word, but a gigantic, dangerous idea. That was the power the Sightless Ones believed in, the one Gwydion had called the Great Lie. Could it be that the Fellowship would turn out to be right in the end? Could it be that the new tomorrow that was coming would belong entirely to them?

  It surely seemed that way, for now there could be no grand heroic future such as Gwydion had once promised, no future in which Will was magically transformed into a great king. The very idea seemed absurd now, and he felt ashamed that he had ever allowed himself to believe in it.

  When he returned to the others he saw two drooping grey tents and Lotan alone as he preferred, in a hammock that had been slung between the masonry of the cottage and a tree trunk. A cape of waterproofed leather was thrown over him, and his sword lay down beside him. Those extraordinary eyes were closed now, and he seemed to be asleep, but he never truly slept, or if he did, it was so lightly that any hooting owl or any cracking twig his mind could not account for would stir him.

  That night Will saw dream visions again, only this time they were not of three white leopards sitting under a juniper tree. This time he saw Lotan. He was alone and stroking the breast of a white dove which he then released into the air.

  The next day and the day after, hail storms came, then icy rain with snow mixed in it. High winds tore down the last clinging oak leaves and roared in bare beech branches. When the winds abated, scavenging parties began to appear in the woods, riding with lances at the ready. They missed the hideaway Gwydion had wrapped in spells, but they left Will in no doubt that it was far too dangerous to travel onward for the moment.

  The place Gwydion had found for them was a cheerless one, deep among banks of impenetrable brambles. The bushes threw up bare, wintery coils to twice the height of a man, and Will found the wait in their thorny embrace all the more galling because they were now very close to their destination.

  When Gwydion went to spy out the land, Will climbed a tree and watched their dismal camp. Presently he saw Gort crouching down over five horn beakers that he had lined up. He poured measures of cordial such as he had given them all along to preserve their strength, but when he had done he looked to left and right then he added a white powder to the last of the beakers.

  After Gwydion’s return, Gort dispensed the drinks one at a time, and when he came to Will he said, ‘Drink it down. All in one, now.’

  Will took the beaker, but he would not let Gort take his hand away. ‘You drink it down!’

  Gort recoiled. ‘What? I’ve drunk mine already.’

  ‘Aye, but this one is different, is it not?’ And he roughly opened Gort’s purse to find a shard of stone there, one sharp as flint and shaped like a spearhead, yet powdery and half ground away at the base. He held it up angrily in Gort’s face. ‘What’s this?’

  Gort looked out from under his bushy brows, anxious lest their tussle be noticed. ‘Shhhh! Master Gwydion mustn’t know about it.’

  ‘Oh? And why’s that?’

  ‘It’s from the stump at Tickencote Oaks.’

  Will eyes widened. ‘You chipped it from the battlestone?’ He stared at the beaker as if it was a scorpion and made to throw it down, but Gort stopped him.

  ‘Easy now! I didn’t so much chip it. A piece sort of came away in my hand when I pushed the rest of it off a bridge.’

  ‘A bridge? Oh, this gets worse!’

  ‘Yes, into a river! Master Gwydion bade me bury the stone somewhere far from the road, but I thought—’

  ‘You thought you knew better than an Ogdoad wizard!’

  ‘I thought I’d tip it into the first hole I came to. Easier, hey? And I kept this little piece, stumps being beneficial and all. You’ve supped a goodly part of it down already.’

  ‘Gort, what have you done to me?’ Will grabbed him by the shirt. ‘Master Gwydion said the stone might not have been emptied of all its malice.’

  Gort blinked sheepishly. ‘Well, it looked to me like it had. I watched it vomiting out all its horrors. And afterwards it had a glow of kindness about it.’

  ‘That’s just a part of its deception
, you fool!’

  Gort drew himself up. ‘No, Will. I may be many things, but a fool I am not. There was a benefit of healing there. I felt it. And besides—’

  ‘Besides?’

  ‘Well…I passed that shard over you after you crossed the last lign. That’s what took the pain and all those welts away. ‘Twasn’t any skill of mine.’

  ‘You—’ Will recalled how the whip weals had rapidly faded away under Gort’s hands and how he had felt some instrument at work. ‘You did that?’

  ‘I had to find out. And you seemed to be in such agony, Will, it would hardly have left you any worse off if it hadn’t worked, hey?’

  Will growled, but he let go of the Wortmaster’s clothes. ‘You…’

  ‘You do feel a little better though, don’t you?’

  ‘What if I do?’

  ‘Apart from that nasty piggish temper. That’s a new thing.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry if you don’t like it.’

  He stared at the Wortmaster and saw his true intent. Then he looked at the cordial and the oily colours that moved on its surface. He could not decide whether to drink it or tip it out. Mistrust flared in him again and he dunked the still unhealed wound on the knuckle of his middle finger into the liquid.

  Nothing happened for a moment, but then the redness around the cut began to subside as he watched, and he knew that he had given the shard a true test.

  Gort poked him in the chest. ‘Ah-ha! You see? But it would have worked better with a little faith on your part.’

  That shamed Will, and he made his decision. ‘Maybe I do owe you an apology, Wortmaster. It looks like your judgment is sounder than that of an Ogdoad wizard after all.’

  ‘Oh, I wonder about that too,’ Gort muttered, knowing immediately what Will was implying. He glanced towards the place where Gwydion stood. ‘I wonder whether the dregs of malice that’re still in him from those bracelets don’t have something to do with the way he’s been behaving.’

  Will nodded. ‘Then why don’t you poison his brew as well as mine?’