Whitemantle

by Robert Carter

  Blood dripped from Will’s hand. He fumbled in his pouch and found the tiny shard of stone, scraped the last of it away with his knife and sprinkled the grit into both sides of the wound. Then he found a dirty rag and began to bind up the crook of his thumb. As he did so, the realization of where he had come to struck him like a hammer blow.

  ‘Of course…’

  He went outside again. That roof was what had thrown him. The whole structure had been designed to burn. It had to be ready to fire at any time, and how else could the weather be kept off the kindling but by a roof? As for the bales, the light of a fire would be visible by night, but by day a beacon would need to throw up quantities of thick smoke…

  This must be Cullee Hill, he thought. And the watchers – wherever they are – must be Edward’s men!

  He turned into the teeth of the wind and went to overlook the western prospect. But he was puzzled to find there was no Ludford down on the plain to confirm his guess, no Cambray mountains beyond.

  The watchers must have a look-out, he decided, probably a hut on the eastern side and a little down from the summit where there would be shelter from rain and the prevailing wind. They would want to look towards Trinovant and to the chain of beacons that relayed by prior arrangement great decisions made at the White Hall.

  He drew his cloak tighter about him. Prevailing wind? That should be a westerly. But surely this wind was coming out of the east…

  He shook his head again, trying once more to shake off the oddness of his thoughts. Blood had soaked the rag wrapping his right hand and pain had begun to throb there. His jaw was burning too, but the discomfort was muted and he could feel the magic of Gort’s grit already beginning to work in all his flesh.

  When he rounded the ridge he saw distant mountains rising in limitless shades of blue, and down on the colourless winter plain below, a castle and a town…

  ‘That can’t be!’ he cried, staring, looking back over his shoulder and staring again. ‘Ludford?’

  But Ludford was to the west of Cullee Hill, not east of it. Even so, there could be no doubting what lay below. He could make out the distinctive roofs of the castle and the square mass of the keep. He looked at his hands again, and slowly it began to dawn on him why his mind was so befuddled.

  East was west, and west was east, reversed like the letters he had once read in a lady’s looking-glass.

  But how could that be? And where had he come to?

  ‘Bad magic!’ he cried. ‘Rough and badly wrought! By all that’s best and beautiful, what is this place?’

  As he scrambled back across the ridge he realized he was not alone. He caught a flash of crimson light above him, then he sensed movement on the crest. When he stepped back, he saw his twin appear out of thin air.

  Chlu was facing in the other direction, but Will could see that his hand was bound up where the metal spur of the tent pole had speared him. And when Chlu turned to look about himself, Will saw that there was blood on his chin. Chlu cast something aside, and Will knew it was another piece of blackstone from the summit, the trigger he had used for the vanishing spell he had laid on himself.

  Will dived down like a hunted animal, wondering what else of the destructive arts Maskull had taught to this most superficial of scholars. He brought himself up sharp. Whatever else was true, the rules had changed now, it seemed. Chlu’s previous attacks had been furious, but they had not been magical. Something – fear perhaps – had prevented him from using magic against his twin. It was almost as though Maskull had issued a warning against it. But if he had, why?

  Will clung to the turf, dug his fingers into the stony soil, his mind still in shock and rushing over the possibilities.

  And why has he brought me here? he thought. If he was going to ambush me with a vanishing spell, why not tip the bolt with the claw of a wyrm from far Xanadu? Or better still a sea shell? Why not send me to the bottom of the Western Deeps?

  His eyes locked on the black form. Chlu came to a halt and threw back his head. He was still some paces from the beacon, but the flames that came screaming from his hands lit the structure and consumed it with fire. Chlu delighted like a mad ogre, blasting the waiting timbers with brilliant orange, releasing flames in which demonic shapes twisted and tumbled before expiring in black billows.

  Chlu staggered back. So great was the pressure of the fire streams that he ejected, he had to brace his feet against the force. So intense was the heat, that he was soon forced to break off, shielding his face as he retreated.

  The beacon blazed up strongly, as if the fire had been set in a hearth and blown bright by a blacksmith’s bellows. As Will watched, two of the roof posts charred through and the roof collapsed, sending a great column of smoke and sparks skyward. Flames leapt five or six times the height of a man into the air. Then, his task done, Chlu turned and began to walk straight towards his twin.

  The sheep that had been patiently munching the miserly hill pasture startled and scattered. Will managed to scramble down the bank. The slope ended abruptly below him where the rocky outcrop dropped onto a flat ledge. The fall was no more than the height of a man, down onto a track. Beyond that the hillside rolled gently away again. He took one last look back, then jumped.

  The fire’s meant for Edward, he thought. A signal to start the battle. And now Chlu’s work is done, he’s coming for me.

  Once under the overhanging wall Will pressed himself hard against the rock. He opened his mind and tried to maintain the icy concentration needed to draw strength from the mountain. Here the power was fresh as an upland stream, cool and nourishing to his spirit in that it was unsullied by the crisscrossing ligns that passed on the plain below, but it was also thin and threadbare, a meal of light and air. Even so, he drank, grateful for even a short measure of bliss and the encouragement that came with it.

  Above him Chlu was only ten paces away now. Will stepped out from the wall of rock and raised his hands as if to fling fire at his twin.

  ‘No further!’

  Chlu put his hands on his hips and looked down. His brazen manner was what fools mistook for confidence, but wise men recognized as vainglory. ‘Ah, there you are, little brother.’

  ‘Stay where you are!’

  ‘Or what? You’ll speak my name and destroy me?’ Again that cruel smile. ‘And yourself too, I suppose?’

  ‘Never doubt that I’d do it, Llyw.’

  Will pronounced the name with precision, but his twin ridiculed him. ‘My true name won’t help you this time – even if you knew how to say it. Lord Maskull has told me what would happen if you tried. A spell so made would break back on you, and you would die too!’

  ‘Fear won’t stop me when the time comes.’

  The Dark Child looked at him strangely as if he had formulated an idea beyond comprehension. ‘You say that now, but in the event…’

  The wind howled, carrying Chlu’s words away. He danced back from the outcrop. It must have been an illusion, but he seemed to spin, faster and faster, until he had drilled himself down into the earth. Then the whole mass of rock below tore away and began to rumble down. It drove Will before it like some fearsome siege engine breaking open a castle wall. A weight of stones and soil cascaded onto him, but he raised a shield of green light that turned the danger as it fell upon him.

  Chlu rode the landslide of earth rubble forward, bursting fire from the gorse bushes below as he came. The ground shuddered with detonations.

  Will found his feet, danced again and clapped his hands above his head. The clouds above turned slate grey.

  Then – nothing.

  ‘No more clever tricks?’ Chlu pouted. ‘Are you out of arrows, little brother? No matter. You’ll have no need of them where you’re going. Don’t you realize yet that you’ve been doomed by your master’s scheme?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The trap Gwydion Stormcrow devised to send Lord Maskull to the Baerberg seems to have caught a far less able magician – you! Now I’ve got you where
I want you.’

  Will whispered and clapped his hands again, harder now. He tore off the rag that bound the swollen ball of his thumb and clapped a third time. The clouds boiled, sickly, dark and heavy-bellied, but still no dousing rain came as Will had wanted. His appeal to the clouds had failed.

  Chlu laughed, stood tall and raised up his hands like vipers’ heads. Without thinking, Will countered. Twin thunderbolts flew in opposition. They burst against one another in green and red. Where the flames met midway between them, a great disc of fire spiralled out. The heat from it seared Will’s face. He roared in reply until he could roar no more, and just as his fire gave out, so did Chlu’s.

  Smoke rose from Will’s singed cloak. His hands had turned soot-black. He dived behind a burning bush, once more taking cover. Then, delayed by its fall from the middle airs, the rain he had summoned came down. It had met the wind on its way and had become dense and driving. It did what Will had meant it to do, which was to put out the fires and quench the combat.

  Fighting fire with fire is foolish, he reminded himself. Always use water…

  For a while, the rain blinded both of them with its intensity. But the deluge was short-lived, and as Will found fresh cover, red beams began to hunt him out. They tore up the hill all around. And there was rage behind those deadly rays – unsubtle, impatient, ill-directed rage.

  But if Chlu lacked magical style, he made up for it with raw power. What Maskull had taught him was deadly enough. The beams were powerful, sufficient to burst steam from wet moss and send the sheep bolting. Will went to ground, but he gasped as the lethal light flashed ever nearer to the place where he had chosen to hide.

  He’ll hunt me out, he thought. In the end he’ll find me. He can do no other, for until he does away with me I’ll remain a threat to him.

  His heart hammered against his ribs. He could feel it beating against the right side of his breastbone…

  He had enough self-possession to realize what must have happened. The slapdash magic of the vanishing spell had left them both turned about. Something in the spell had been wrongly cast. Chlu had managed to mix up left and right.

  As he crabbed round the slope, he began to see how that faulty magic had worked on him. He understood now why he had felt disorientated – this was not some strange looking-glass world he had come to. The reason things seemed to be the wrong way round was because he himself had been changed. Not only had his body been reversed, but also his brain and all its workings, so it was the outside world that looked wrong.

  And Chlu? he wondered. Surely he had been affected in the same way too.

  Another red beam slashed, burning a path through a patch of bracken, flashing across his aching eyes. Will danced away and summoned fork lightning suddenly from the angry sky. He struck it at Chlu, who leapt aside, and in revenge sent twin fire balls to blast the knoll behind which Will had fled.

  And so the deadly dance continued, repeating the pattern time and again. Will hid, but Chlu found him. Will fought Chlu off and attacked, then it was Chlu’s turn to run. The fight ranged the summit of Cullee Hill, filling the air with deafening bursts as they hurled flame at one another’s heads and called down hail and vapours in turn from the air. But it was happening now as it had happened on the Spire: every blow drew a parry, every counterblow was anticipated. Neither could gain the advantage, and in the end both tired and were forced to withdraw to gather strength for a new effort.

  Will’s body trembled with fatigue as he came down from the top of the hill. He felt drunk with effort. His eyes popped with phantom lights where a scarlet beam had momentarily caught his vision. He was drained. Neither could he any longer draw power enough for great magic, and so soon they would have to start on a fray of fists and fury.

  By now the beacon had all but burned itself out, and Will realized that if he was seeing east as west, then time must have jumped forward rather than back. It was no longer morning but afternoon. The sun was setting, not rising, and the battle at Morte’s Crossing must therefore already have started. It might even have finished. He teetered on the fragile edge of laughter, seeing suddenly that all his efforts had come to naught. And if that’s so, then I have nothing better to do than finish my own business up here, he thought.

  He felt that his only protection would be to kill Chlu, despite what that meant. How could he do that? It would require less courage to hack off his own arm. It was hopeless. He dragged himself away, fighting off the weakness that was closing in on him. But the magic would no longer come. He was weak. Nor could he draw further refreshment in this high place until it was itself replenished, for the power here was as thin as the wind.

  He cursed his flesh and told himself he should have been better prepared. He could easily have nipped the problem in the bud if he had come to his decision sooner. If only he had had the ruthlessness to believe that getting in the first blow was the right thing to do, then he could have blasted Chlu while his back was turned, while he was busy lighting the beacon.

  But it was nonsense. It would not have worked. Because something would have prevented it. Something always did.

  What was the point of even trying? He knew now, as certainly as anyone could know anything, that his goal could not be achieved. Whatever the magic that ruled the unnatural link between them, it would tolerate neither a victory nor a defeat.

  That much had become obvious, though he had not understood it before. The question was, would Chlu come to the same realization?

  Will stumbled and almost fell. He was broken, but he still had the strength to get down off Cullee Hill even if that meant crawling away while Chlu crawled after. Will told himself that he may have been half-blinded, but he could still see that hindsight offered a clear but dangerously distorted view. ‘Put your faith in yourself and the unalterable truths of the world,’ he muttered. ‘Listen to no lies and you won’t go far wrong.’

  Gwydion had once told him that. But with the world changing so fast, what could be regarded as an unalterable truth now?

  He wiped the black from his hands, saw how the wound under his thumb had knit into a livid scar. So great had the flux of magic been that it had knotted the broken flesh. He laughed wryly, knowing that Chlu, wherever he was, would be doing much the same.

  However can I beat such an opponent? he wondered. Maybe it’s not possible. And if that’s so, then isn’t that my protection? Maybe I should show myself, walk towards him. If I did, wouldn’t that force him to do the same?

  As he pushed his way through the bushes, the gorse jags scratched at him. Gorse, he thought. The only plant that has thorns on its thorns. I should shove Chlu into one of these patches and he’d never get out. I must come down off this bare mountain. My proper place is with Willow and the others…

  But then he saw he had made a mistake in coming this way, for ahead lay an unexpected interruption in the hill. When he came to the brink he saw that a great hole, flat-bottomed, steep-walled and shaped like a horseshoe, had been quarried out of the living rock. He wasted no time trying to scale it or even to look down into it, for its walls were sheer. He made his way as quickly as he could along the rim until he came to the bottom. The walls rose up impressively to left and right, but ahead was a sight that was altogether more astonishing.

  It was a work of long ago, a monument of heroic size, and made perhaps by the servants of giants who had ruled in an Age when greater magic was in the world. The fear that suddenly welled in Will’s guts was that the figure that commanded this great throne room was yet alive. But the giant who sat in the chair was unmoving and made of cold stone. A king of the Second Age of the world, he seemed. A monarch from a time when only giants and dragons had made the Isles of Albion their home. But there was something about this relic that spoke more of men than monsters.

  ‘The Giant’s Chair,’ he breathed, recalling now the other name that was used for Cullee Hill. ‘So that’s why…’

  But this giant was unlike Magog or Gogmagog. Nor was he kin to the ogres
and moorland trolls of the north. Not even Alba bore him much resemblance. Years of wind and weathering had worn his features down, rusted his iron crown into dark streaks that stained his noble face. But the passage of time had not taken away the smallest part of this great king’s majesty. The giant-king possessed the throne on which he sat.

  Will approached until the legs of the statue rose like columns to either side of him. They made an entrance, a black square opening into the base of the throne. What massive doors had once graced this tomb Will could not imagine, for there were only holes where the hinges had been torn away. This was a resting place long ago robbed of its hoard. One clue yet remained – above the lintel, in reversed ogham, carved deep and reading in the language of stones, the single word:

  RUHTRA

  But there was no time to stand and stare, for ahead, already waiting for him in the shadows, was Chlu. In his hand was a large stone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE STONE THAT WAS HEALED

  Will, fearless now, came and stood in the entrance of the tomb before his other half. He looked silently at the face that had so often disturbed his sleep and terrified his dreams. Not so now. Pale and grey that face seemed, and lacking in life. Will saw fascination there too, and knew that Chlu also saw otherness mirrored. It was like looking at all that oneself was not. This was the way they connected.

  ‘We’re not brothers,’ Will said.

  ‘We never were.’ Chlu stared at him pitilessly. His fingers closed around the stone like a claw, turning it into a club. ‘For all that you wanted to believe it.’

  ‘No longer. Betrayal runs too deep in you for any trust that I might want to hazard.’