Whitemantle

by Robert Carter

  He reached among the jumble of fodder sacks and travellers’ belongings and pulled aside the blanket that covered their precious load. There sat the unassuming block of stone that was at the centre of Gwydion’s plan. It was quite small – two hand spans long, by one-and-a-half wide, and one deep – a plain sandstone block about the size and shape of a village money chest. Set into the top were two iron staples that bore carrying rings and grooves so that the rings might lie flat. Will sat down on it as if it was a cushion, and when he did his courage burgeoned.

  The wizard smiled as he saw the comfort that the Stone of Scions – the magical stone that was wont to counterbalance the throne of the Realm – was conferring upon Will. ‘We have had our suspicions about its true nature for a long time, Morann and I. And yet now, looking at you, I am quite certain we were wrong.’

  ‘Wrong?’ Will stared. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This is not merely the stump of some long-abandoned battlestone, as we supposed.’

  Will looked up. ‘Then what?’

  ‘The Stone of Scions is a sister-stone.’

  Will felt waves of kindness flowing through him as he called to mind the notion that lay behind the battlestones – that all things were vessels containing equal measures of kindness and harm. But the battlestones had been made from pairs of ordinary stones by separating all harm into one and all kindness into the other. The stones with a double measure of harm had been deployed in the Realm, being set up on the lorc as a defence against invasion. But the double-kind sister-stones had been hidden in barrows in the Blessed Isle. There they had slumbered forgotten, infusing that fair land with their own mystic power.

  Or most of them had.

  Will felt silent encouragement flood him. He said, ‘You once told me that according to the Black Book there are three ways to deal with the power of a battlestone. We can drain the harm from it magically. We can bind it in magic and store it safely, or—’

  Gwydion took up the point. ‘Or the third way, and by far the best, is to stand it beside its original sister-stone and let the harm and kindness flow back into balance again. If I am right, and the Stone of Scions is a sister-stone that has found its way into the Realm, then we have at least a small chance that it might match the stone that is causing the coming battle.’

  Will shook his head. ‘One chance in forty, or there-abouts? That’s not a gamble I’d ordinarily care to make.’

  ‘These are not ordinary times. And we do not know what happens when a sister-stone is brought near a battlestone which is not its original partner.’

  Will disliked the sound of that even more. ‘What do you think happens?’

  Gwydion lifted his shoulders. ‘Maybe there occurs a similar exchange of spirit that largely restores the balance…’

  ‘And maybe there’ll be a gigantic disaster.’

  Gwydion deliberated, then said, ‘But there will be a gigantic disaster if we do nothing. So we might as well try something.’

  The horses’ hooves squelched through the mire as they approached the road. After a moment Will said, ‘Master Gwydion, did you take the Stone of Scions from under the throne before Edward had had a chance to sit on it?’

  The wizard arched an eyebrow. ‘Willand, what a nasty, suspicious mind you have.’

  ‘Just a stab in the dark.’ The urge to smile crept over him. ‘A king may only be declared in the presence of the stone, isn’t that right? So, does that mean Edward isn’t really king?’

  ‘You should have asked him what he thought of Brig if you wanted to know that,’ Gwydion said evenly. ‘But if you think you know what he saw, bear in mind that strange anomalies are thrown up when Ages change.’

  ‘Anomalies?’ Will muttered. ‘I think Edward saw Sovereignty. I think she pointed his way.’

  The wizard’s eyes remained fixed on the middle distance. ‘Whatever the case, Edward believes he is king, and those around him believe he is king, and that is what seems to matter most these days. But I think you know who is really king. And I would still be prepared to wager that you will yet find a way to become Arthur.’

  The rest of the journey passed without surprises. Will counted off the leagues and tried to disregard the wanton destruction he saw. So far he had recognized many places through which they had travelled on their last fruitless foray into the north. Now, though, because of the danger and the ruinous state of the roads, Gwydion said they would henceforth be obliged to go by less frequented ways.

  At half a dozen road-bars and bridges they submitted to search. They gave answer to armed keepers that their strange burden was no more than an innocent counterweight, which in some sense was true. But that did not excuse them from paying their toll, and as usual Gwydion had neglected to bring any coin. Once or twice they were allowed to cross despite their lack of silver, which good fortune Will put down to the stone. But at other times they were turned away by unmovable curmudgeons, and in those cases they went the long way around or found a willing ferryman who still remembered what men like Gwydion had been.

  At the Lyttleburgh crossing of the mighty Trennet they found that the bridge had been seized by a band of outlaws. These men were determined to extort what they could while their rule held, and Will finally lost patience. He climbed down from the cart to plead with them, was ridiculed for his pains, and ended up dashing their stubbornness away with the flat of his hand.

  ‘Well, that has ruined it and no mistake!’ Gwydion told him frostily as they rumbled past the slumbering men followed by dozens of other hapless travellers who now saw their opportunity.

  ‘Ruined what?’

  ‘You know very well what. That was a magical gesture. You’ve just told Chlu exactly where we are.’

  ‘Good. Let him know.’

  But as Will’s anger cooled, he saw that he had indeed been foolish. He wondered if some part of him might not have secretly angled to provoke just such a result. The fast ground they made along the road that led from the bridge made him feel good, but as their wheels bogged and their pace slowed again, Will felt his sanguine determination running into the mud.

  Riding hour after hour across these rain swept levels made Will feel grotesquely exposed. The cold spring wearied him, and he noticed how this year the world seemed reluctant to rise from the grips of winter. He felt a remorseless damp-cold seeping into his bones as they steered their cart along waterlogged lanes. As they crossed Axenholme by ancient ways, picking their path towards the Umber’s wintery marshes, a cold east wind swept Warping Moor and drove hard against the mists of Old Ghoul.

  All the villages hereabouts were either shuttered or ruined. There were few people abroad, either in the fields or upon the road, and where they were to be seen they lingered only until they saw that they had been spotted. Once or twice, Will saw children. He thought of his daughter and how she had cried to see him go. Then he imagined Willow, miserable among the gossiping wet-nurses and child-minders. He was forced to bite back hard on his feelings and sometimes it was too much. He longed to lie flat upon the comforting stone, but he endured, taking the reins while the wizard kept a wary eye on him.

  The day they entered the Duchy of Ebor a watery sun flooded the land with oblique light, adding a dull sheen to what lay beyond the famous Mezentian Gate. Will noted with sadness how the great archway was crumbling, with its lintel-piece fallen and its four huge stone pillars flaking away. All the kingly statues had been torn down and even the crests and the legend carved upon it had been cut away. Will saw that the gate had no place in the world that was to come.

  They were drawing towards the Collen and Celin ligns again, and whenever Will wandered far from the cart he tasted hints of hazel and even birch, but always these flavours were massively overpowered by the spiky green bitterness of holly. In the distance he could make out twelve grey bastions, the towers of Drack’s Ford, and he knew that to the west and across the ligns lay the ill-starred Castle of Pomfret, which for so long had guarded the crossing of the River Eye like a mise
r.

  ‘Onward,’ he told Gwydion, and the wizard flapped the traces and clicked his tongue at the horses without bothering to voice his doubts that maybe they had already come too far.

  Will, keenly aware that the flow was still rushing headlong into the north, tried to square his feelings with his understanding of the warrior’s mind. Surely Henry of Mells, or Jasper, or Lord Strange would have thought to garrison the big river crossings. These mighty tributaries that drained half the Realm all emptied into the Umber. Each was a natural defence, and the bridges across them vital to anyone contemplating an attack upon Ebor. Even Mad Clifton must be able to see the importance of preventing their seizure by an army that was only a day or two’s march away.

  ‘The bridges will be down,’ he murmured.

  ‘Maybe.’

  They took a ferry at Cowdell, which was a league to the east of where the holly lign ran. They stayed south of the Ouzel, and instead of crossing it at Saltby and heading for Ebor, they kept away from the Great North Road and ended up on a track that wandered through the marshy ings where the Ouzel met with the Worffe.

  ‘It’s…that way,’ Will insisted. He jumped down and turned westward. All day he had been trying to remember the lie of the ligns that he had crossed while in Lotan’s company. Those days seemed half a lifetime ago now, though bare weeks had passed. Still, every time he was reminded of the big man’s betrayal, Will’s blood grew hot, and now he could see why: to have been so deceived was bad enough, but what had hurt most was Lotan’s cowardice, for he had chosen to make his confession at second hand, to Gwydion in Will’s absence.

  Master Gwydion did right to send you away, he thought. And I do right to erase all memory of the friendship I thought we had.

  ‘Are you sure it’s that way?’ the wizard asked, detecting the uncertainty in Will’s manner.

  ‘If we go much further we’ll be in Ebor itself.’

  ‘True. But can you actually feel the battlestone?’

  Will turned his ill-temper on the wizard. ‘I can hardly feel anything else! The ligns are roaring rivers of fire! I fear to cross them! Can’t you see that?’

  But he was not telling the whole truth. He could now see in his mind’s eye how the deadly flow was surging up the hazel lign and into the city of Ebor. There it was being directed south-westward by the Ebor stone, and sent a little way down the linking birch lign. There, where birch and holly crossed, there was the battlestone!

  All this was clear enough, but there was something else that nagged at Will’s mind. Twice before that day he had seen black flashes over to his left, voids on the edge of his vision. They could not possibly have been anything other than Chlu exercising his magic.

  Now Will fulsomely regretted his own impatience at the crossing of the Trennet. But there was nothing for it other than to press on, and in any case a more urgent and inescapable trial faced him, for there was still one more lign to cross.

  ‘We’ve made a mistake,’ he said, suddenly consumed by panic. ‘We should have crossed the hazel lign further south. I can’t do it here. It’s too strong.’

  ‘We cannot turn around now.’

  Just before Ozen-in-Elmet they found a messenger galloping a lathered horse eastward. He bore Lord Falconburgh’s badge and knew the wizard by sight. Questioned by Gwydion, he said there had lately been a bloody skirmish at Fordingbridge upon the River Eye and that he was riding with all speed to apprise Lord Northfolk of the tidings.

  ‘A body of our men under Lord Waters came up from the south in hopes to take the crossing before the bridge might be broken down,’ the messenger told them. ‘But they rode into a trap laid by Butcher Clifton. It was a—’

  ‘Mad Clifton?’ Will asked.

  ‘The same, though we call him “Butcher” since his foul deed upon Awakenfield Bridge. Yesterday he fell upon my lord Waters and slew him also. Most of our men at the Fordingbridge died, but some few got away and ran to the king who is presently at Pomfret along with Lord Warrewyk—’

  ‘Edward is at Pomfret already, you say?’ the wizard cut in.

  ‘Why, yes, Crowmaster…’

  ‘Go on,’ Will told the messenger.

  ‘At Pomfret they told the tale of their misfortune, and straightway the king launched my lord Falconburgh upon the enemy with main force.’

  ‘And was Clifton bested?’ Gwydion asked.

  ‘Better yet, Crowmaster. My lord put the Butcher in his grave. Hacked to pieces, he was, and so Edmund of Rutteland’s death has been avenged!’

  Despite himself, Will felt a burn of satisfaction to know that Clifton was dead. He saw clearly how justice did not taste like justice unless it also tasted of fairness, and fairness could never be without a seasoning of due recompense to the wronged. It was good to know that Mad Clifton was no more, Will reflected. But how different things would have been if the bolt of magic he himself had cast upon the madman at Delamprey Field had slain him and not just his steed. Edmund, at least, would have lived.

  ‘Is the whole army across the river?’ the wizard asked.

  ‘Not when I took my leave. The enemy hold the far bank, but the king is determined to force a way, even at risk to himself.’

  ‘A great fight is brewing,’ Will said ominously. ‘This is only a foretaste of it.’

  Gwydion looked to the west as the messenger prepared to leave them. ‘So soon the armies have come within range of one another. If Edward succeeds in sending his army across the Eye, we have not so long as I had thought – or hoped. Thank you, courier, and fare you well!’

  They came to the hamlet of Ryther as the daylight died. The cart halted on the road out of town and Gwydion tightened the horses’ harnesses and put everything in readiness for the dash they could no longer avoid.

  ‘Must we do it now?’ Will asked, his courage quailing.

  ‘If you would cross the lign at all. We cannot afford to wait for the moon to increase and diminish. And as for the sun, this is the best angle we shall have today.’

  It was true, of course, but the omens were tremendously against them. Will’s skin prickled. He could not take his eyes off the hazel lign which was blazing beyond the last of the cottages. It looked to him like a huge wall of fire, and he thought that if they plunged into it they would never come out again. Even so, he mustered his defiance and climbed down to speak to the horses, whispering spells of fortitude upon their heads.

  At a word from the wizard Will got into the back of the cart and straddled the stone.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Gwydion asked.

  Will nodded, his assent barely audible as he struggled to close his mind tight. This was the moment he had been dreading.

  ‘Do it!’

  The wizard clicked his tongue and urged the horses first into a walk, then into a canter, then finally to their best speed. The track was uneven, and the waggon began bouncing and crashing over tufts and tussocks as it sped towards the lign.

  Will feared that the axle must crack. He turned his mind away from that weakling thought, as if even to dwell upon it might tempt disaster. He was thrown about, but he hung onto the iron rings of the stone and pressed his head hard to it, all the while muttering a spell in the true tongue to keep the pressure of the lign from bursting his head open.

  But still the visions came at him. Like circling demons they tore at his mind. Although he had no direct contact with the ground, the raw power of the flow here connected sharply with his thoughts. As he stared he saw the cart become enmeshed in furnace heat. All around him the wood was blasted as if held in the jet of air that issues from a blacksmith’s bellows. The canvas cover blackened, then was burned to the hoops, revealing a boiling sky of yellow flame. Pain and horror assailed him. He saw his feet flare incandescent and his legs burn like sticks in a bonfire until the Stone of Scions smoked under his cheek, the wheels gave way and the bed of the cart collapsed and disintegrated, and he began falling into an abysmal deep among red-hot cinders…

  ‘I am in Hell!’ he cried. �
�Hell!’

  He screamed and screamed until the firebursts in his brain passed away, and then – mercifully – came death.

  But it was not quite death, because he could feel the stone feeding him. Not with counter-visions of sunshine and spring flowers, but with a memory equally horrific in its way. Once, to save his life, Gwydion had convinced him that he was bleeding to death, and he had lain in the back of a cart not unlike this one. And when the illusion designed to mislead others had been lifted and he had found himself unhurt the relief he had felt at that moment had been better by far than any boon he might have had, even of the king himself.

  I’m thinking, he told himself, grasping the only real truth a man can possess. I’m thinking, so I can’t be dead. And while I live, there’s hope…

  The next thing he knew the wizard was slapping his cheeks to bring him round and trying to force some fierce draught down his throat.

  ‘We have crossed the lign and left it far behind,’ Gwydion said, judiciously lifting each of Will’s eyelids in turn. ‘I think you will live, for a while at least.’

  ‘I wish Gort were here,’ he croaked at last, his mouth burning. ‘At least he doesn’t force a man to drink potions made from bats’ droppings.’

  Both of them knew that sometimes a vision inspired by terror, be it real or imagined, would refuse to let go of a man’s mind, and he would be lost to sanity. But not today. The wizard heard the humour in Will’s words and knew that his spirit had come through the ordeal intact.

  ‘Actually, Gort does use bats’ droppings in some of his potions,’ Gwydion said loftily. ‘But quite rarely, I assure you. And only when it is absolutely necessary.’

  The wizard produced a sprig of hawthorn on which white blossom had sprouted and gave it to Will. The tiny flowers delighted him and he murmured, ‘Who could lose hope in the spring?’

  When Will dared to let go of the stone, he said, ‘So much for your idea that the Stone of Scions would look after me. I nearly lost my grip.’