Whitemantle. Robert Goldthwaite Carter

is now fifteen, has begun to see that, whatever dukes and earls may think, the world is actually maintained by magic, and the real reason the Realm is sliding into war is a magical one. Gwydion tells him of something called ‘the lore’, an ancient network of nine ‘ligns’, or earth streams, extending throughout the Isles, which carries power to an array of standing stones. Each of these ‘battlestones’ contains great harm and has the power, when awoken, to draw men to battle. Gwydion also explains that he and Maskull are the last remaining members of a wizardly council of nine whose task it once was to direct the progress of the world along the true path. But as Age succeeded Age and magic gradually left the world their numbers shrank, until there are now only two wizards left. At last, Maskull has revealed himself as ‘the betrayer’. He has turned to sorcery and is now directing the future along a path of his own choosing – but it is a path that will lead to a final Age of slavery and war.

      Will and Gwydion set out to thwart Maskull by finding and uprooting the deadly battlestones. Will shows an extraordinary sensitivity to the lorc, and after many heroic struggles he locates the controlling ‘Doomstone’ in the town of Verlamion. There a bloody battle is halted when Will uses a talisman, a green stone fish he has had since birth, to crack the stone, while Gwydion fights a magical duel against Maskull. When Will confronts Maskull the sorcerer tells him, ‘I made you, I can unmake you just as easily,’ but then disappears as Gwydion lands a vanishing spell on him and transports him down into the Realm Below. In the end, the king and Duke Richard are reconciled. Will is rewarded and returns home with the greatest prize of all – Willow. But his origins, and his ultimate destiny, remain shrouded in mystery.

      

      The second novel, The Giants’ Dance, takes up the tale more than four years later. Will and Willow are now nineteen and living at Nether Norton, Will’s home village, with their baby daughter, Bethe. One summer’s night Will sees the skies begin to blaze with a lurid purple light. Immediately he summons the wizard.

      Will has recognized the purple light as that of Maskull’s magic, and when they investigate they find the village of Little Slaughter has been smashed to powder. In the ruins Will finds a little fish carved in red stone, the counterpart to his own talisman. Gwydion says that Maskull, who has escaped from the Realm Below, has directed a shooting star down onto the village. He asks for Will’s help once again.

      Soon they meet with loremaster Morann who reports a rumour that the Doomstone Will once cracked has now repaired itself. But as they struggle to discover the whereabouts of the other battlestones and so hold back the tides of war, Will becomes the target of a killer, and realizes that Willow and Bethe have been brought into jeopardy also. After the battle they have all been dreading takes place at Blow Heath, Will finds himself in Ludford Casde, where Willow brings him his green talisman. Meanwhile, the political situation has continued to bend to the lorc. Edgar, Duke of Mells, who died at Verlamion, has passed his tide to his son, Henry. The latter now schemes with Queen Mag to end the agreement that saw King Hal rule with the Duke of Ebor as his ‘Lord Protector’. While the queen’s forces besiege Duke Richard at Ludford, Will becomes greatly affected by the lorc. He tries to find the battlestone that is located there, but is afflicted by madness, and a second attempt is made on his life by the dark-robed assassin who visited him once before. When Will admits to Gwydion that the red fish talisman he found at Little Slaughter has gone, the wizard says that the village was destroyed because Will’s would-be killer once lived there. He is called Chlu, ‘the Dark Child’, and the village was obliterated to make Gwydion believe Chlu was no more, whereas in reality he had become Maskull’s agent.

      Will tries to understand the significance of Chlu and what he desires, but answers concerning him are few. Now Ludford is overrun and the Ebor forces flee over the seas. Gwydion magically disguises both Will and Willow so that they may masquerade as an emissary of the Blessed Isle and his wife. They attach themselves to the royal court, but they are ensnared by the wiles of Lord Dudlea who wants Will to arrange the murder of Richard of Ebor before he too can return into the Realm. Maskull is behind this demand and when his plan fails he punishes Lord Dudlea by turning his wife and son to stone.

      Nothing is seen of Gwydion for many months and Will fears for him. Then news comes that an army loyal to the House of Ebor, and commanded by Edward, Duke Richard’s heir, has landed and is marching north. As The Giants’ Dance reaches its conclusion, Will battles Chlu face to face and drives him off from one of the battlestones, but in doing so he loses his main weapon against the battlestones – the red and green fish talismans fuse together and become a real, live fish, which escapes. However, there is better news when Will finds that Gwydion is being held in the queen’s dungeon at Delamprey. He works hard to free him, and also to redeem himself by thwarting the battlestone that lies buried there. He discovers that one reason Maskull has been so keen to see the war proceed is because he knows a way to tap malign power from the battlestones and use it for his own ends. He has even employed some of this power to make sorcerous manacles which have impaired Gwydion’s ability to do magic.

      Seeing no other way, Will promises Lord Dudlea that if his forces will betray the queen and allow Edward an easy victory, then Gwydion will undo the spell that has made statues of Dudlea’s wife and son. Dudlea agrees, and in consequence the battle of Delamprey is soon over. Unfortunately, though King Hal falls into Duke Richard’s hands, the queen makes good her escape: this means that the war will go on.

      Once Gwydion has the manacles stricken from his wrists, he tells Will all he knows about the Dark Child – Chlu and Will are twins. Chlu’s name is, in the old tongue of the west, ‘Llyw’, and according to prophecy Will must never pronounce that name in a spell or he will be no more. Gwydion goes on to reveal that almost twenty years ago, he surprised Maskull while he was conducting magical experiments on two baby boys. He rescued them and took them in secret to two separate villages, to lessen the chances of them being found. These places Gwydion then magically hid from prying eyes. Since discovering Chlu’s whereabouts, Maskull has been using him as a means of locating Will. The sorcerer knows he must destroy Will because Will stands between him and the future he is trying to bring about. Will is to become the third incarnation of Arthur, and once that is allowed to happen, Maskull will fail.

      Will is angry that Gwydion has delayed telling all that he knows for so long for fear of affecting the outcome of the prophecies and appalled at the responsibility that now faces him. It is up to him to act, and to act heroically, but how can he become King Arthur, as Gwydion says he must? In addition, the wizard warns that the harm they have been drawing out from the battlestones in an attempt to prevent the fighting has not been destroyed, merely dispersed. Like a poisonous smoke, it is filling the world and bringing down the very future that Maskull so desires. And so, as the second book of the Language of Stones cycle ends, Will sees that he must solve the riddle of his own nature, the riddle that will rescue his world.

PART ONE THE ENCHANTED CHAIR

       CHAPTER ONE DOUBLE DEPETRIFICATION

      It was a mild summer night in July and the sun’s dying beams cast shadows from the elms. To the wise man the trees told of storm and strife and contentions in the upper airs, but down here in the evening glade neither breath of wind nor drop of rain threatened, for a strange peace enfolded all.

      Four men dressed in the livery colours of Lord Dudlea sat quietly in the clearing – a waggoner, the waggoner’s lad, and two servants. They were warming themselves and spooning down chicken stew, but although they enjoyed the gentle cheer of their master’s camp fire, still a dull fore-boding shadowed their minds. The sleeping infant that had been left among them was the only one untroubled by the magic that lay heavy on the air, and each of the four knew that before the night was done weird deeds would be accomplished in the lordly tent that stood nearby. They knew it because the great wizard, Gwydion, had told them it would be so.

      Only one of them had any idea of what was in the wooden crates they had brought with them, or why a wizard should be here with their lord in a forest clearing at dead of