The Giants' Dance (45 page)

‘Waxing, waning, fat full moon,

Stormy weather coming soon!

Make it wane, make it wax,

Use his hair instead of flax!'

The Sister of Elventoft's grating laugh made Will uneasy. He cut himself a switch from the nearest hazel and fashioned a wand from it, then he composed himself. At first the meadows yielded nothing to his probing. He felt no sense of what ran beneath the grass, but as the sun mounted higher towards noon his feet led him up a slight rise and the feelings he had hoped for began to tingle in his arms.

‘I don't think it's just wishfulness on my part,' he said, walking a spiral. ‘It's quite faint, but it seems to me this rise marks the Mulart lign. That's one of the three ligns that cross at Verlamion. Having touched the Doomstone I think I'd know that feeling anywhere, no matter how faint.'

‘Which way should we go?' Willow asked, shading her
eyes. ‘North or south? Good sense says Duke Richard must have landed to the north and west of Corben.'

Will turned. ‘When was good sense ever the best guide in matters touching the lorc? It controls men's wills. We ought to heed what's written on the stones first. It's south.'

‘All the same…' He saw what was bothering her. Every step that took her further from their daughter was proving to be torturesome.

‘We need to ask where Harleston village lies,' he said gently. ‘I have an idea that we're now not so many leagues north of Eiton and the lign of the ash. It may be that the stone we seek lies at the crossing of Mulart and Indonen – if I can find that place.'

Judging by the sun, the lign led them a little south of south-east. They followed the road which wound along beside it, but now it seemed there was no one travelling except themselves. Will scanned the rolling lands anxiously. He had seen such things before, and an ominous feeling had begun to grow in the pit of his stomach. Even so, they pressed on and an hour or so later they saw an ox-cart coming in the other direction. They hailed the two carriers who sat beside one another, and asked what village they would come to next.

‘Ravenstrop,' the elder of the two men called down.

They exchanged a meaningful glance. ‘And beyond?'

The carrier eyed Will closely, but he was unwilling to call his oxen to a halt. ‘Beyond lies Corde.'

‘Do you mean Cordewan?'

‘Arh. Corde's what the local folks call it. We've just come up past the cloister at Delamprey. The lands around are running with soldiers. There's big things going on down there, right enough. It's said the red hands have been fixing to receive the king for more than a week now, and there're strange noises come out of that cloister at night.'

The younger man gave a lewd smile. ‘Them red hands at Delamprey has got women.'

‘Women?' Willow repeated.

‘Aye, bequines – you know, noblewomen who're lost to the world. Folks say the queen's sorcerer has been seen there working spells on them.'

Will tried not to show his dismay. He asked, ‘Do you know of a village called Harleston that lies this way?'

‘Hardingstones, did you say? They're down by Delamprey.'

‘No. Harleston, I said. Harleston.'

‘What business you got there?' the older man said, his eyes narrowing. ‘Whatever it is, I'd turn around if I was you. There's trouble brewing down in them parts, and no mistake about it.'

‘We have to go that way.'

‘Then you're a bigger fool than you look.'

Will watched the cart rumble on, and called after it. ‘At least tell us how far it is to Ravenstrop!'

‘Two leagues, no more,' the younger man called back, then he pointed at Will's bare feet and grinned. ‘Two leagues, but in shoes like yours you should do it in three.'

As soon as the cart was out of sight, Willow said, ‘Well, at least we know we're going the right way.'

‘This is exactly what happened after Gwydion took the battlestone out of Aston Oddingley. Soldiers began gathering about us like wasps around a pot of honey. Before we could do anything about it the fight had already started.'

‘What did he mean by “bequines”?' Willow asked, shading her eyes.

‘When men of title die, inconvenient wives are sometimes left behind. They're often given into the care of the Fellowship and become bequines. It happened to Queen Kat, the king's mother. Jasper told me all about it.'

‘That's horrible.' Willow looked up at the sky mistrustfully. ‘But they said the red hands had been preparing royal lodgings for a week. How can that be?'

‘Doubtless Maskull was looking ahead, beyond his Great Council. The royal victuallers will have been sent on to fix everything. But why Delamprey?'

‘Now that they've eaten everyone in the district of Corben out of hearth and home, I expect the victuallers have to go a long way to find new supplies.'

‘But Maskull is not the prime mover here. Don't forget what's really controlling events. If the king's soldiery is gathering at Delamprey the stone must be quite close.'

She tossed her head. ‘A day's march anyway. But that's still a lot of ground.'

‘Yes. It doesn't help us all that much.'

‘Still, it seems strange that Maskull has sent the court to a cloister of the Fellowship,' Willow said glumly. ‘He has no more regard for them than Master Gwydion does. Everything's strange about the way the stones work – no one can tell which of them will start trouble next, but the stones themselves must know, for their own verses foretell it.'

‘The lorc warps men's fates so they are forced to fall in with its grand plan.'

‘Was there never a way to control the lorc?'

‘Gwydion said the fae left much of their knowledge with the First Men, but when the last of them died those secrets died also. Most of what the First Men did was revealed at Doward's Cave when King Cherin had his visions and the scribes wrote them down, but I don't think Cherin said anything about the stones.'

‘Cherin – how long ago did he live?'

‘Twelve hundred years ago. But Gwydion said the coming of the First Men into these parts of the world happened above twelve
thousand
years ago, and the fae went into the Realm Below a thousand years after that. He said
the First Men dwelt peaceably here and lived according to the ways of the fae for thousands of years, and in those days there was more magic in the world.'

‘But then, three and a half thousand years ago, the world changed,' Willow said. ‘And the Age of Trees came to an end.'

Will looked at her. ‘How do you know that?'

‘Morann told me about the Ages.' She sighed. ‘He said that when the Age of Trees ended, the first phantarch, who was called Celenost, went into the Far North with his deputy. Then the Age of Giants began, when there were no folk in the Isles at all. And that Age was a time of desolation that lasted a thousand years.'

As they walked, Will told her what Gwydion had said concerning the five Ages that had been, and of the Ogdoad of Nine who had arisen in the first Age when magic had been plentiful and the fae had clothed the land with trees. But then had come a great disaster and much magic had escaped the world. In the Age of Giants that followed, there had been only enough magic for an Ogdoad of Seven. And by the third Age, the Age of Iron, when the Isle was reconquered by the hero-king Brea, so much magic had drained from the world that there remained only enough for an Ogdoad of Five. In the fourth Age, the Age of Slavery and War, the Ogdoad had shrunk again to three, and now the world was in its Last Age, when all that had gone before could give no clue to what must come in future times…

As they walked, Will became aware of a strange sensation that came every now and then. It was hard to fathom its source, but it seemed almost like a distant stroke of black lightning that made him turn his head in its direction. Though whenever he did turn, he saw nothing in the sky. He rubbed his eyes, and looked instead at the tall cow parsley that nodded at the side of the road – its small creamy flowers, its leaves ferny and home to many small, resting
flies. There was nothing to be seen that was out of the ordinary: a thickly overgrown ditch had been delved along their right, and blackberry bushes grew beyond, though the fruits were still green. A flurry of little buntings broke from cover and disappeared, chirruping, into the ripening wheatfield. Then the sun went behind a cloud. It took the fierce light off the road, but the day seemed no cooler. They hurried on, heedless now of their tiredness or of who might see them.

Will took out his hazel wand again. Scrying was not the same as casting magic, but even so he worried that the powers that stirred inside him while scrying might give some hint for Chlu to follow.

During most of the afternoon they traced the Mulart lign and all the while Will felt the strength rising in it like waves of pain increasing in an infected limb. That was against what he had expected, and could only mean that the waning that should have come between noon and midnight was being overwhelmed by a greater surge. There was as yet no sign of the Indonen lign.

They crossed a little brook and refreshed their feet in the cool water.

‘Do you think the folk in Harleston really do have four eyes?' Willow asked uneasily. ‘And do they spin linen from their own hair?'

He laughed. ‘Who knows what's truth and what's fable in an old Sister's song?'

‘The old one was right about stormy weather coming though.'

‘Yes, the air's very
close.
'

‘Do Wise Women have second sight?'

‘Do pine cones?' he said. ‘They foretell the weather too.'

She scoured the skies again, then ran her eyes along the horizon to where the haze was thickening and yellowing. ‘When will the moon rise?'

‘A little before midnight.' He followed her gaze to the north-west. She was right – the day was becoming unnaturally sticky and oppressive. It was not just a blight that came from his own feelings. He looked deep into the land and remembered what the Wortmaster had taught him. He noted how the vetches were patterned about in the verges of the meadow. Where before he had seen purple loosestrife and yellow toadflax and the white bells of wild carrot and pig nut, now they had begun to give way to the poisonous fool's parsley and hemlock. He looked back, checking that they were not straying from the lign, because to lose it now must cost them dear.

‘We're coming to a place of poor aspect,' he said.

She looked around, unable to see what he meant. ‘How many chimes before sunset?'

Will stretched out his hand and measured off the sun's path in the sky. ‘About four. The sun will sink at the ninth chime this evening.'

Rooks cawed among the treetops, diving and clowning in the sky, irritated maybe by the sullen charge that hung in the air. As Will scried the green lane he looked up at the birds and saw they were mobbing a dove. But then he looked again and saw it was one of their own number which was pure white. The feeling in the ground heaved queasily like music that slides from one mode to another. He knew he had found the place he was looking for.

‘This is Harleston,' he said. ‘I'm sure of it.'

‘Be careful.' Willow took his arm.

‘With a battlestone so close I think that's good advice.' The hazel in his hand twisted down powerfully. ‘There's water near here too. Bigger than a pond. More like a small lake. This way.'

They came through long grass, past a spinney of yew trees and saw a stile set across a wooden fence. Will beat the stinging nettles away from it with his wand. When they
entered the village they found it was no more than a few shabby hovels built around a long pond and the shacks of the linen weavers who lived there. Beyond it was the lake Will had felt. It was long and triangular, made generations ago by the damming of a stream. In the middle of its broadest part stood the Harle Stone.

‘It's not even buried,' Willow said, looking unsmilingly at the pure white finger of stone that stuck up from the lake.

‘Someone in the past tried to drown it,' he said distantly. ‘They shouldn't have bothered. It was probably happy to be cut off by a moat. They don't like to be disturbed.'

‘You make it sound like it's alive.'

‘It might as well be. They harbour malice like a weakling's mind.'

Will wondered what violence he should expect from this battlestone. It was the biggest one he had yet seen, almost twice the height of a man, though waist-slender from top to bottom. Its surface, he could see, was patterned with spirals, loops and whorls.

Willow tugged on his arm and whispered, ‘Look what it's done to the folk who live here.'

The people they saw paid them no heed, but continued about their work. They were ungainly, awkward folk, tall and thin as reeds, with skin as pale as chalk and teeth that seemed yellow by contrast. Their hair was partly hidden under their wide-brimmed hats, but it was always silverwhite, no matter what their age. They seemed to be all of one family.

There were dogs here too, half a dozen of them at least, hairless, skinny creatures with long muzzles and mournful eyes. They trotted about but showed no interest in the new arrivals, which seemed most strange to Will. Perhaps they were mute, he thought, for they made no sound either.

When Will approached one of the young women, he could hardly contain his shock at seeing her face. The skin of her lips was an unnatural red, but what discomfited him most were her eyes: they were bright pink and each contained two pupils.

‘Hey-ho,' Will said.

The girl twitched unhappily, half looking at him. She enquired softly what business he had in Harleston. The rest of them, mainly men, yet all dressed alike in unbleached smocks and wide-brimmed straw hats, hung back in the shade of their scutching shacks. They seemed like folk used to being left to themselves, and certainly unused to offering a welcome.