The Giants’ Dance. Robert Goldthwaite Carter

sheathed blade away from her as Gwydion pointed a warning finger in her face. ‘To thine own self be true – now promise me that also.’

      ‘I promise, Master.’

      ‘Go now! Prosper under the sky, and do not be tempted to meddle again with crafts that lie beyond your scope.’

      And with that the Sister rose to her feet and skipped away as briskly as a lamb, leaving Will in awe of the power that lay in Gwydion’s words.

      ‘Is she in her right mind again?’ he asked doubtfully.

      ‘Not yet. But by sundown she will be, save for a strong cider headache. And that might teach her to go more slowly in high matters. I did not chastise her further, for she must have acted in fear to save her life. By rights great magic such as she used should have killed her, but it did not, and that is a discrepancy which troubles me.’

      ‘Discrepancy?’ Will asked, his heart sinking. ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Come, Willand, I have a favour to ask of you.’

      He followed, going towards the lign and out along it to the west until Gwydion said:

      ‘Slaughter great,

      Slaughter small!

      All slaughter now,

      No Slaughter at all!

      ‘Do you know what that means?’

      Will shook his head. ‘Should I?’

      ‘It is the answer to the lights that burned last night over the Wolds.’

      ‘How could that be an answer?’

      Gwydion sat down on the ground. ‘I will tell you, but first you must tell me again what happened to the Doomstone of Verlamion, the same which you think you destroyed – but cannot say how.’

      Will sat down too. He thought back to the desperate moment when he had struggled against the Doomstone. He told all he could remember of what had taken place in the cellar under the great chapter house of the Sightless Ones. The Doomstone had been none other than the slab that covered the Founder’s sarcophagus.

      ‘In the end I used this to break it,’ he said, hooking a finger inside the neck of his shirt.

      He had meant to draw out his fish talisman and show it to Gwydion, but it was not there. He patted his chest in puzzlement, then remembered how the day before he had washed his hair and replaited his braids ready for the Lammas celebrations. He had hung the fish on a nail and had forgotten to put it back on. It was only the figure of a fish, no bigger than his thumb, carved in green and with a red eye, but he missed it.

      ‘No matter,’ he said regretfully. ‘It’s probably not important.’

      Gwydion’s grey eyes watched him. ‘The power of magic is often made greater by tokens. Much strength may be drawn upon in time of peril if a true belief lies within your heart. You knew what to do without being taught. I have said it many times, Willand, you are the Child of Destiny. The Black Book has said so.’

      He chewed his lip, a heavy weight burdening him. ‘I don’t know where I come from, and that scares me, Gwydion.’

      The wizard touched him with a kindly hand. ‘Willand, I must interfere as lightly as possible where you are concerned. I know little enough about the part you are to play, except a pitiful portion revealed by the seers of old. Believe me when I say that I am hiding nothing from you that it would serve you to know.’

      He sighed and hugged his knees. ‘I’ve been having the same nightmare over and over lately. An idea comes to me in shallow sleep – that Maskull is my father.’

      Gwydion shook his head. ‘The Doomstone traded in fear and lies. The planting of deceits in men’s minds is the way all such stones make a defence of themselves.’

      ‘Then how do you explain what Maskull himself said when I faced him on top of the curfew tower? That was something else I can’t forget. He said, “I made you, I can just as easily unmake you.” I’ve wondered too many times what he meant by it.’

      Gwydion said gently, ‘Maskull is not your father. Be assured of that.’

      ‘Then why did he say what he did?’

      ‘Try to forget about it.’

      The wizard got up and walked away. Will wanted to leap up, to go after him and badger him on the matter, but Gwydion’s certainty made him pause, made him remember that a wizard’s secrets must be respected.

      ‘If you say so.’

      As he watched his long morning shadow stretching before him, a keen hunger gnawed at his spirit. After a while, he shivered and got up. A cool westerly breeze had sprung up and he felt an ache in his bones that he thought must be coming from the dampness of the grass. The power flowing from the Giant’s Ring was subsiding as the sun rose higher, but still he could feel the echoes coursing in darkness beneath his bare feet. He looked inside himself for an answer, then went to talk with Gwydion about the power that moved in the earth.

      ‘Can’t you find a way to stop the empowering of the lorc?’ he asked. ‘Why not halt the flow right here at its source? That way the battlestones would never awaken.’

      Gwydion shook his head. ‘What you suggest is impossible.’

      ‘But why? You said the Giant’s Ring controls the earth flow like a sluice controls a millstream. I can feel the influence surging under here. It’s huge.’

      ‘So it is, but I could not control it any more than I could dam a raging river torrent with my bare hands. And in any case, it would do no good. Any attempt to block the flow would wreak havoc – blocking the millrace would surely stop the mill-wheel turning, but it would also raise the millpond to overflowing and eventually it would burst the dam. To interfere with the lorc directly would risk disrupting all the earth flows that sustain us. In the end it would turn the Realm into a wasteland.’

      ‘If the power of this lign is anything to go by, I’d say the lorc is about to do that anyway. It’s definitely waking up. Can’t you feel it, Gwydion? Have your powers declined that much?’

      The wizard’s glance was sharp. ‘Declined? You know very well that I could never feel the lorc directly. In that respect, your abilities are unmatched.’

      Will’s mind tuned to a sound high in the air. The untiring warbling of the skylark. Could they hear that song in the Vale too? Could Willow hear it? He stopped and turned.

      ‘What’s the favour you wanted to ask me?’

      Gwydion leaned on his staff. ‘I now know what must be done. No matter what the dangers, I must find the battlestones one at a time. I must either drain them or bind them, for I dare not confront them as you did the Doomstone.’

      ‘How many more have you found?’

      ‘In the past four years? None.’

      ‘None?’ The news was shocking.

      ‘Without your talent to guide me I have been blind.’ Gwydion opened his hands in a gesture that showed there was no other answer to the problem.

      ‘You should have called on me,’ Will told him. Then he saw the trap the wizard had set for him, and added, ‘Before Bethe was born I would gladly have come with you.’

      Gwydion met his gaze knowingly. ‘Would you?’

      He stared sullenly into the western haze, noting the starlings and how they flew. Their movements said there was something wrong with the air, something nasty blowing in from the Wolds.

      ‘You know I would have done anything to help you, Gwydion.’

      ‘But would you have wanted to?’ The wizard pulled up his staff and gestured westward. ‘I see you can taste the bitterness that lies upon the west wind. Do you smell that ghastly taint of burning? It is human flesh. We must go now. Straight