The Giants’ Dance. Robert Goldthwaite Carter

looked around the homely room with heavylidded eyes, his brow knotted. He footed his staff with a bang against the fireplace. ‘I hope you have good reason to summon me thus!’

      Will felt the wizard’s displeasure like a knife. Their parting had been more than four years ago, and Will expected warmer words.

      ‘Good reason?’ Willow said, putting down the fire iron but still unwilling to have her husband roughly spoken to beside his own hearth. ‘I should say there’s good reason. And less of the “fool”, if you please, Master Gwydion. Those who don’t mind their manners in this house gets shown off these premises right quick, and that’s whoever they may be.’

      Gwydion turned to her sharply, but then seeming to bethink himself he swept out a low bow. ‘I have offended you. Please, accept my apologies. If I was rude, it was because I was upon an important errand and I did not expect to be disturbed from it.’

      Will stepped towards the door without hesitation. ‘I can’t be sure, Gwydion, but I think this is something you ought to see.’

      Once they were outside Gwydion shielded his eyes from the purple glare, then took Will’s arm. ‘You were right to summon me. Of course you were.’

      Will’s heart sank. ‘What is it?’

      ‘Something I have feared daily these four years.’

      ‘Hey!’ Will called, but Gwydion had already taken himself halfway down the path. ‘Hey, where are you going?’

      ‘To the Giant’s Ring, of course!’

      ‘Alone?’

      ‘That,’ the wizard called over his shoulder, ‘is entirely up to you.’

      Will watched the wizard stride away into the darkness. He looked helplessly towards the cottage door. ‘But…what about Willow? What about Bethe?’

      ‘Oh, they must not come! There is likely to be great danger on the Tops.’

      Will ran to the doorway and put his head inside. ‘Gwydion needs my help,’ he said. ‘I have to go with him.’

      Willow dandled their daughter. ‘Go? Go where?’

      ‘Up onto the Tops.’

      Her pretty eyes quizzed him, then she sighed. ‘Oh, Will…’

      ‘Don’t worry. I won’t be long. I promise.’ He held her for a moment, then kissed her hurriedly, unhooked his cloak and left.

      

      ‘What do you think it is?’ he asked as he caught up with the wizard.

      Gwydion tasted the air. He made hissing noises and held out his arm, but no barn owl came to his call. ‘Do you see how the night creatures hereabouts have all gone to ground? No bird can fly in this glare.’

      They climbed up the stony path that no one but Gwydion could ever find. It led up through the woods of Nethershaw, yet it wound past trees and the phantasms of trees and passed through impenetrable thickets of brambles that parted to let Gwydion through but then closed behind Will. He scrambled smartly up a mossy bank after the wizard and felt the earth crumbling away under his toes. But then the trees gave out and a dark land opened before them, stark under the purple glow.

      They walked onward across tussocky grass, over pools of shadow and a maze of spirals that Will sensed patterning the earth. Soon five great standing stones loomed out of the night, huddled closely one upon another like a group of conspirators. They were, Will knew, vastly ancient, all that remained of the tomb of Orba, Queen of the Summer Moon, who had lived in the Age of the First Men.

      She it was who had ruled the land here long ago, and close by was the dragon-ravaged tomb of her husband, Finglas, now no more than a bump in the flow-tattooed earth. The wizard swung his staff before him, his eyes penetrating the dark like lamps. Will’s heart was hammering as the wizard paused and shaded his eyes against the sky’s sickly violet sheen. ‘It’s not coming from the Giant’s Ring after all,’ he said. ‘It’s coming from somewhere in the west!’

      The wizard drew Will to a sudden halt beside him. ‘Behold! Liarix Finglas!’

      The awesome flickerings rose up in the sky behind the King’s Stone like a monstrous lightning storm. Will saw the great, crooked fang cut out in black against the glare. Beside it stood the twisted elder tree where Gwydion had once been trapped by sorcerer’s magic. Four years ago he had crossed blackened grass; now it had regrown and was lush and dew-cool underfoot.

      A clear view to the west opened up. There the sky was smudged by cloud, and far away a great plume had risen up through the layers, its top blown sideways by high winds, its underside lit amethyst and white.

      ‘Look,’ Will cried. ‘It’s a lightning storm on the Wolds!’

      ‘Did you ever see such lightning as that?’ When Gwydion turned a silent play of light smote the distant Wolds, making crags of his face. ‘And the rumble that shook down your pretty flower pots? Was that thunder?’

      ‘It seemed to come from far away.’

      Gwydion gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘You want to think the danger is far away and so none of your concern. But remember that the earth is one. Magic connects all who walk upon it. Faraway trouble is trouble all the same. Do not try to find comfort in what you see now, for the further away it is the bigger it must be.’

      Will felt the wizard’s words cut him. They accused him of a way of thinking that ran powerfully against the redes and laws of magic.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said humbly. ‘That was selfish.’

      ‘Liarix Finglas,’ Gwydion muttered, moving on. He slid fingers over the stone, savouring the name in the true tongue. ‘In the lesser words of latter days, “the King’s Stone”. And nowadays the herding men who come by here call it “the Shepherd’s Delight”. How quaint! For to them it is no more than a lump from which lucky charms may be chipped. Oh, how the Ages have declined! What a sorry inheritance the mighty days of yore have bequeathed! We are living in the old age of the world, Willand. And things are determined to turn against us!’

      He heard the bitterness in the wizard’s words. ‘Surely you don’t believe that.’

      The wizard’s face was difficult to read as he turned to Will again. ‘I believe that at this moment, you and your fellow villagers are very lucky to be alive.’

      A chill ran through him. ‘Why do you say that?’

      The wizard offered only a dismissive gesture, and Will took his arm in a firmer grip. ‘Gwydion, I asked you a question!’

      The wizard scowled and pulled his arm away. ‘And, as you see, I am avoiding answering you.’

      ‘But why? This isn’t how it was with us.’

      ‘Why?’ Gwydion put back his head and stared at the sky. ‘Because I am afraid.’

      A fresh pang of fear swam through Will’s belly and surfaced in his mind. This was worse than anything he could have expected. Yet the fear freshened his thinking, awakened him further to the danger. He felt intensely alert as he looked around. Up on the Tops the sky was large. It stretched all the way from east to west, from north to south. He felt suddenly very vulnerable.

      With a sinking heart he looked around for the place where they had unearthed the battlestone and found its grave, a shallow depression now partly filled and overgrown, but the burned-out stone was nowhere to be seen.

      ‘You’re not as kindly as I remembered you,’ he told Gwydion.

      ‘Memories are seldom accurate. And you too have changed. Do not forget that.’

      ‘Even so, you’re less amiable. Sharper tongued.’

      ‘If you find me so, that is because you see more these days. You are no longer the trusting innocent.’

      ‘I was never