The Language of Stones. Robert Goldthwaite Carter

after all, about the tiresome business of scratching jots and tittles onto slate or parchment, it was about gaining the power to lodge ideas in other people’s heads – people who were far away, people who might even be living in another age!

      The immensity of the discovery startled him, for no one had yet bothered to warn him what delights all the drudgery would lead to. All he needed now was a book to read, and so far as that was concerned he had already hatched a plan.

      Excitement beat through him as he followed Pangur Ban up the stair to the lord’s privy chamber. There, he knew, three books bound in old leather stood together on a limewood stand. He looked over his shoulder to make sure none of the servants had seen him, then he went in and pulled out the first of the books. It was a book of household accounts and he looked it over quickly and put it back.

      The second book looked the same as the first, but the third was quite different. It seemed to be much older than the others and its cover was not secured with an iron clasp and chain. There was something written on the front, and though Will could read the words, they made no sense:

       Ane radhas a’leguim oicheamna ainsagimn…

      The rest had been destroyed by a deep scorch-mark. It looked as if someone had once tried to throw the book onto a fire but had changed their mind. When he opened it, he saw that every other page showed a large picture. There were many lines of careful black writing, with some parts done in red, and lettering so even that Will wondered at the skill of the scribe. The pictures were of animals, all kinds of animals, and one especially caught his eye – a lion, which was the creature on the surcoats of Lord Strange’s men, and which he had taken at first to be an odd-looking dog for the only lion he had ever seen before was a dandelion. There was also a leopard, which the book said came of crossing a lion with another, even fiercer animal called a pard. Looking at the pictures it seemed that quite a few of the beasts were crossed with one another, some even with humankind.

      Will bent close over the book while Pangur Ban walked on the table and rubbed himself against Will’s head. In the margins beside a few of the pictures someone had written several lines. The writing was thin, like beetle-tracks, and looked as if it had been inked by a pin, but again it was writing of a kind he could not read. In the back of the book was more curious handwriting, and this time, as he tried in vain to read it, an idea came to him.

      He fetched the lady’s looking-glass and then tried the writing again. Now he could read it. But not quite, because although he could spell out the words, still they did not make any more sense than the words written on the cover. He read them aloud – they sounded magical. And when he looked back through the pictures, beside the eagle there was added the word feoreunn, beside the bee begier, and beside the wyvern – which was a man-eating beast of the air, a two-legged, winged dragon – was the word nathirfang.

      Will mouthed them aloud for a while, then turned to look in the back of the book where the same small writing was:

      To have the creature come, say,

      ‘Aillse, aillse, ______ comla na duil!’

      To have the creature do thy bidding, say:

      ‘Aillse, aillse, ______ erchim archas ni! Teirisi! Taigu!’

      ‘They’re spells!’ Will whispered fiercely to himself. ‘And those gaps are where to put the true names.’

      I shouldn’t be looking at this, he thought, suddenly mindful of the Wise Woman’s warnings about the respect that magic demanded. It seemed wrong to be stealing peeks at a book that was not his to look at, and even more wrong to be slyly acquiring spells, but now he had started reading it was hard to stop.

      He began to commit the words to memory, and he had made a fair job of it before a sound outside alerted him. He had been so engrossed that he only just managed to scramble back to his own chamber before the housekeeper’s maid came past.

      After the noonday meal Will took a piece of bread and honey away from the kitchen, and armed with his spells he set about catching a fly. As soon as one came in through the window to feed on the honey he shut it in the room and all afternoon, instead of practising his writing, he called out the words he had learned.

      But it was not as easy as he imagined. There were many ways to pronounce what he had written down, and the fly took no notice of any of them. Also, the fly was not exactly like any of those pictured in the book. Was it a foulaman? Or could it be a gleagh, or a crevar? Lastly, he tried cuelan with no better success, but when he opened the door a big, fat bluebottle came in and began to buzz round his head.

      He let out a yell of triumph. Wherever he went in the room the cuelan followed, flying round his head with the same solid determination that a moth flies about a candle flame. When he walked back and forth, the fly followed. When he stood still, it flew round him in a perfect circle.

      ‘I’ve done it!’ he said, enormously pleased with himself.

      He lay down on his bed and watched the fly circling above his face. Then the fly landed on his nose. He tried to waft it away. But it dodged his hand.

      ‘That’s enough. You can go away now,’ he said.

      But it would not go away. It had been called to him magically and nothing he said would persuade it to leave. He quickly tired of it, but it did not tire of him. It kept landing on his lips and bothering him as he tried to write, until finally he dived under the bedclothes to rid himself of it.

      When he came out again, it was waiting for him. When he went down to supper it came too, and though three pieces of bread and honey were put before him, the fly took no notice of any of them. It wanted only to circle his head, and when it next landed on him he slapped himself hard on the mouth, threw a fit of temper and almost fell off his chair.

      The cook stared at him oddly. He shrugged back at her and scampered off, the fly in pursuit. Lady Strange, annoyed by the fly’s attentions when she came near him, asked Will if he had forgotten to wash behind his ears. She set him an evening writing exercise and went away. Will hoped the fly would go too, but it did not.

      As darkness fell there was no hope of concentrating on his studies. All evening the fly plagued him, and when the moon rose and every kind of daytime fly might reasonably be expected to go to its rest, this one continued to buzz. It seemed to Will that the only way to catch it would be to let it go where it so obviously wanted to go – into his mouth – then to swallow it whole.

      He finally succeeded in killing it – he shot out a hand and slapped it against the wall then trod on it. But his savage joy was tempered with guilt. It was only a bluebottle, but that was beside the point. Working with naming magic could lead to unexpected trouble. He would have to learn a lot more about magic if he was ever going to do it right.

      

      As Lammastide approached, Will planned his escape. It was an unsophisticated plan. Two weeks of obedience had slackened the vigilance of those who might otherwise have watched him with greater care, and when the courtyard next emptied he made a dash for the gate. He went straight down to the river and there he found the Wise Woman’s hovel, pitched as it was in the shade of a spreading willow tree.

      ‘Hello, Wise Woman!’ he cried as he came up.

      She had a basket on her lap and was shelling peas into it, but she greeted him with a kind word and asked him in. He sat down on an upturned pail and said, ‘Wise Woman, will you answer me a question?’

      ‘If I can.’

      ‘Do you know a village called Leigh?’

      ‘Surely. I pass by it every third day.’

      ‘Do you know a girl who lives there by the name of Willow?’

      The Wise Woman nodded thoughtfully. ‘That one is very pretty, is she not?’

      ‘I – I’d like you to take a message to her. If you wouldn’t mind, that is.’

      ‘Oh.’ She broke open another pod. ‘And why don’t you go yourself?’