The Giants’ Dance. Robert Goldthwaite Carter

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СКАЧАТЬ greater sort, remains undisturbed, for when we found it we had another quarry in mind, and my advice was that we should leave it be for the moment.’

      Will turned to Morann. ‘That’s because the Aston Oddingley stone was planted on lands controlled by mad Lord Clifton, who Gwydion said would never bid us welcome. It was true. He was killed at Verlamion.’

      Gwydion looked to Morann and the many charms hanging at the wizard’s chest rattled together. ‘I wanted to show Will here that according to the redes of magic some problems, though they are insoluble in themselves, in time often turn into different problems which may be solved.’ He raised another finger. ‘Fourthly came the stone we found near the Giant’s Ring. Our triumph over it was accomplished at great risk, for it was a stone of the greater sort, though its nearness to the King’s Stone had muted it. Its downfall was complete, and now its stump has been returned whence it came. Henceforth it will do good service for a mutual friend.’

      Gwydion now unfolded his little finger and tapped it significantly. ‘And that brings us to the final stone of which we have sure knowledge, the Doomstone of Verlamion, the same one that Will may have destroyed.’

      ‘May have…’ Will repeated.

      The wizard took a deep breath. ‘That stone, I believe to be the controlling stone, and without it the power of the others will be so diminished that they cannot complete their tasks. But when Will made his brave attack he was young and untried, so it is possible that the Doomstone was not destroyed after all. Perhaps it only suffered a disabling shock, one which temporarily shattered its power into many parts. But perhaps those parts have been growing together again like drops of lead in the bottom of a fiery crucible.’

      ‘And when enough drops are gathered into one?’ Will asked.

      ‘Then we shall know if I am right.’

      Gwydion’s mouse-brown robes had merged with the shadows of the snug. Will had been aware of a bumble bee buzzing at the trellis, but now even this tireless labourer had gone to its burrow and the climbing flowers that had listened in all around the window had closed their trumpets for the night.

      Morann, whose chin rested on his hand, said, ‘So, of the stones you know about, one has been drained, two are stored, one lies yet undisturbed, and the master of them all, the Doomstone, has been attacked but may be repairing itself. The sites of the other battlestones – if there are others – you have not yet learned.’

      ‘We do know something.’ Gwydion clasped his hands before him. ‘When Willand was at Ludford Castle he felt himself affected by a strange melancholy. He thought it may have been caused by the emanations of a powerful stone, but in such a fortified place it was hard to tell exactly where they were coming from.’

      Will thought back to the morbid feelings he had endured while staying at Ludford. ‘I was certain it was a battlestone, Morann. At first I believed it to be the Dragon Stone, and I suspected Duke Richard of having carried it there for his own purposes. But then Gwydion explained to me that my thinking was out of kilter. The Dragon Stone was still at Foderingham, and my state of mind must have been roused up by another stone.’

      ‘But you couldn’t find it?’ Morann asked.

      Will shook his head. ‘Though it seemed very strong. Ludford Castle and the town itself is a maze of walls and towers. There is too much dressed stone there. My feelings were confused. It was like listening for a sound inside a cave full of echoes.’

      ‘Yet you were able to find the Doomstone, even though it lay under a great stone-built chapter house,’ Morann said.

      Gwydion spread his hands. ‘That is because the Doomstone was by then awake, in the full flood of its power and actively calling men to the fight. It is possible that some powerful hiding magic is at work at Ludford. That may be a good reason to let the battlestone lie for the meanwhile, just as we have let the Aston Oddingley stone lie.’

      ‘The trouble is,’ Will muttered, glancing at Gwydion, ‘we can’t keep deciding to let sleeping dogs lie.’

      Gwydion nodded at the hidden accusation. ‘What Willand wants to know is why I seem to have done nothing to unearth the battlestones in the intervening years. I will tell him, for what youthful impatience sees as idleness may now appear otherwise. When the battle at Verlamion was halted I believed that the breaking of the Doomstone had likely solved the problem of the lorc. The Black Book predicts that Arthur’s third coming signals the end of the fifth Age – therefore we know that it must end within Will’s lifetime. When he cracked the Doomstone and I banished Maskull into the Realm Below there seemed little likelihood of trouble arising again before the current Age drew to a close, and so I went about on other errands, in Albanay and elsewhere. It has turned out that my optimism was misplaced. I might have known it would be, for the end of each Age is a strange time and in the last days odd things do happen. But if optimism is one of my failings, I have at least learned not to put all my eggs in the same basket. It could be that neither Maskull nor the lorc were wholly settled – and so I kept Will safe in the Vale against the possibility of rainier days.’

      Morann nodded. ‘He dared not risk squandering you, for you are the only way he has of finding the stones.’

      Will compressed his lips. ‘You make it seem as if my life is hardly my own.’

      Gwydion’s face was never more serious. ‘It has never been that, Willand.’

      They lapsed into a gloomy silence, but then the wizard strove to lift their spirits. ‘My friends, let me speak rather of what lies within the hearts of brave men. I should tell you that the true tally of stones is more encouraging than you presently imagine, for my efforts during the past four years have not been entirely without fruit. I returned to the cave of Anstin the Hermit, and now a second stone is undone.’

      ‘You mean you succeeded in draining the Plaguestone?’ Will said, sitting up in amazement.

      The wizard set a taper to a candle and brought a rich golden light to the gloom. ‘It was a far from simple task. My plan was to take the Plaguestone across to the Blessed Isle, but I could find no safe way to sail an undrained battlestone, even one of the lesser sort, over the seas. I could not hazard the lives of a ship’s crew. Nor could I allow the stone to sink itself into the Deeps, for even the lesser stones will blight whatever they can, and many a ship would be wrecked by such a hazard forever afterwards.’

      ‘So what did you do?’ Will asked.

      ‘Anstin the Hermit agreed to aid me, and in the end he paid dearly for his decision.’ Gwydion’s face set in sadness once more. ‘I was much troubled, for when I reached Anstin’s cave he told me the battlestone had been struggling against the bondage into which I had placed it. He said he feared that soon the harm would succeed against the spells that contained it. Every month it would writhe and spit at the eye of the full moon. Anstin was a man of true worth who came to know the nature of the stone very well. Great valour lived in his heart. In his younger days he was a lad with a good head for heights and for this one reason he was sent into a trade that did not sit well with his spirit. Even so, his hands proved to be talented. They were taught to work stone, and he decorated many of the high spires that sit atop the chapter houses and cloisters of the Sightless Ones. But in time his spirit cried against such work, and the feeling withdrew from his fingers. When the Sightless Ones learned of his plight they pressed upon him admission to their Fellowship, and when he refused them they said he had deliberately dropped a hammer, meaning for it to fall onto the head of an Elder. He repeatedly swore his innocence until they saw that he would not be moved. Then they drove him off, saying they would have nothing more to do with a man who was СКАЧАТЬ