The Giants’ Dance. Robert Goldthwaite Carter

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СКАЧАТЬ recently gone missing. He has been magically murdered. It is grisly evidence that Will is still being sought by Maskull. It cannot be long before he realizes that the wizard’s young bag-carrier is his quarry, and so Gwydion decides that Will must once more be lodged in a place of comparative safety.

      Meanwhile, Gwydion makes absolutely sure that Will is Arthur’s third incarnation, by stirring up his latent magical talents and teaching him to ‘scry’. And so, using Will’s partly-fledged abilities and the wizard’s command of ancient lore they manage to locate their first battlestone, the Dragon Stone. As they dig it up, Will experiences for the first time the frightening mental disturbances caused when such stones are threatened, but eventually Gwydion wraps it in binding spells and they take it to a place where Gwydion thinks it may be temporarily stored.

      Once at Castle Foderingham, the stone is carefully mortared into a dungeon under the keep – Gwydion hopes it will remain dormant there while he searches for further fragments of the Black Book in order to discover how to drain the stone of its harm. But the owner of Castle Foderingham is Duke Richard who, with some justice, considers himself to be the rightful king of the Realm. He has just discovered that his claim to the throne has been fatally weakened because the queen has at last given birth to a son. He is also already aware that the boy is not the king’s child, but fathered by Duke Edgar, who happens to be Richard’s political rival. Richard must do something about this, and soon. And Gwydion realizes that he must accompany Duke Richard on his urgent mission to the great city of Trinovant, or affairs will certainly take a turn for the worse. Thus, Will is abandoned once more. Now he must live with the duke’s family and the captive battlestone. He is told that under no circumstances must the Dragon Stone be interfered with.

      As the weeks become months at Castle Foderingham, Will turns from boy to man. He begins to learn lordly ways alongside Duke Richard’s sons. But while he learns how to ride and hunt and fight as they do, he also starts to understand more about his own developing magical talents. He is befriended by the old herbalist, Wortmaster Gort, and battles with the duke’s fierce heir, Edward. One night, despite Will’s warnings, Edward acquires a set of keys and leads his many brothers and sisters down to visit the Dragon Stone. There, though they do not understand it at the time, they are stricken by the stone, and none more so than Edward’s brother, Edmund.

      Life at Foderingham settles down again, but soon a wagon train of new weapons bound for the king’s armoury is captured by Duke Richard’s men, and Will is unexpectedly reunited with Willow, the girl he met in the Wychwoode. As vassals of Lord Strange, she and her father had been set to drive one of the ox-wagons from Grendon Mill to Trinovant, but they were intercepted by one of Duke Richard’s allies. When Will sees how scared they are of returning home to face Lord Strange’s wrath, he begs the duchess that they be attached to Duke Richard’s household, and she agrees.

      Willow says that Will is turning into a young lord. Will thinks there might be more to Willow’s unlikely arrival than meets the eye – perhaps the Dragon Stone is warping the fate of everyone around it, as Gwydion has hinted it may do. Perhaps they are all riding for a fall.

      As winter closes in, the news from Trinovant is sketchy, but Will learns that Gwydion’s patient diplomacy has so far failed to settle peace upon the factions. Despite having extracted the Dragon Stone the influence of the reawakening array of battlestones continues to increase. The harm contained within them begins to corrupt the political atmosphere. Greed, vengeance and malice begin to get the better of the spirit of compromise within the opposing parties, and the Realm slips ever closer to war.

      Will’s fears grow when Duke Richard gathers his armies and moves his household to Ludford. This is a great castle, deep in the hills of the west. As soon as he arrives, Will’s sensitivity to the stones’ influence begins to grow beyond his control. A bout of suspicion overtakes him. He feels that Edward is becoming his rival for Willow’s affections, and so acute does his jealousy become that he begins to fear for his sanity. When Gwydion appears Will says he believes the duke has fetched the Dragon Stone to Ludford and is trying to use it to his own advantage. Gwydion settles his fears and then gives Will a choice: he can either stay at Ludford and fight with Edward for Willow’s favour, or he can venture out upon the land as Gwydion now must, and help in the tracking down of the other battlestones – and especially the crucial Doomstone, which appears to control the others. Will reluctantly chooses to follow the wizard, and Gwydion says that this brave decision is yet another proof that he is indeed the Child of Destiny that was foretold.

      Gwydion now explains Maskull’s intentions. The two magicians are the last remaining members of an ancient wizardly council of nine whose task it was to direct the progress of the world along the true path. As Age succeeded Age their numbers have shrunk, until there are now only two, but one of the nine was always destined to become ‘the Betrayer’. When three wizards remained there was still room for doubt, but as soon as the phantarch, Semias, failed it became clear that Gwydion’s long-held suspicions about Maskull must have been right. Maskull has now thrown aside all pretences of guardianship and is working openly upon a plan of immense selfishness. As a sorcerer – one who misuses magic to his own benefit – he is seeking to direct the future along a path of his own choosing. It is one that will concentrate power in his own hands, but will also entail a new Age of Slavery and War far more dreadful than any that has gone before.

      

      Maskull must be defeated, but the battlestones are the immediate problem. Fortunately, they can be made to reveal verses that predict events and describe in maddening riddles where the next stone in the sequence lies. Will manages to track down two more battlestones, and though neither of them is the Doomstone, they seem to be making progress at last.

      But Maskull lays a clever trap at the stone circle known as the Giant’s Ring. Will is caught, and Gwydion is lured in to save him. Wizard and sorcerer fight and the wizard is defeated. His body is burned and his spirit banished into an elder tree. But he is saved by Will who braves his fears to restore his mentor to human form. Gwydion then sets to work on the perilous task of draining the nearby battlestone.

      After several quantities of harm have been drained from it a verse is forced from the stone:

      The Queen of the East shall spill Blood,

      On the Slave Road, by Werlame’s Flood.

      The King, in his Kingdom, a Martyr shall lie,

      And never shall gain the Victory.

      which, in the language of stones, has an alternative reading:

      When a Queen shall Enslave a King,

      Travel at Sunrise a Realm to gain,

      Werlame’s Martyr shall lose the Victory,

      And lie where Blood never Flows.

      Gwydion is elated, but as soon as he has read the verse disaster strikes. An entrapping spell that Maskull has set on the stone causes the remaining harm to escape all in a rush. Will and the wizard must flee through the night on the back of the White Horse of Uff which Will summons using the magical silver-bound horn that was given to him one Lammas night. They are pursued through the darkness by the manifest harm that has emerged from the battlestone. It almost catches them, but is then forced to fight with the earth giant, Alba, whom it devours. The harm is dispersed at last by Will as the red light of dawn glints from his raised sword above the forgotten battlefield of Badon Hill.

      They turn again to face two great armies marching, ready to give battle in the east. The shrine town of Verlamion is dominated by the great chapter house of the Fellowship of the Sightless Ones, and it is here that the Doomstone lies. Gwydion tries once again to avert disaster. He uses all his persuasion on Duke Richard, but the Doomstone has too strong a grip on the minds СКАЧАТЬ