The Giants’ Dance. Robert Goldthwaite Carter

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 that.’

      The wizard gazed up and down an avenue of earthlight that stretched, spear-straight across the land. To Will’s eye it was greenish, elfin and fey. But it was a light that he knew well, though very bright for lign-light, brighter than he had ever seen it. It passed close by the circle of standing stones.

      ‘That shimmering path is called Eburos,’ Gwydion told him. ‘It is the lign of the yew tree. Look upon it, Willand, and remember what you see, for according to the Black Book this is the greatest of the nine ligns that make up the lorc. Its brightness surprises you, I see. But perhaps it should not, for tonight is Lughnasad, and very close after the new moon. All crossquarter days are magical but now is the start of Iucer, the time when the edges of this world blur with those of the Realm Below – Lughnasad upon a new moon is a time when even lowland swine rooting in the forest floor may see the lign glowing strongly in the earth. “Trea lathan iucer sean vailan…” Three days of magic in the earth, as the old saying goes. Even I can see it tonight.’

      Will nodded. ‘The lorc is once more growing in power.’

      Gwydion met his eye. ‘I feared you would say that.’

      Frustration erupted sourly inside Will. ‘But how can that be? I destroyed the Doomstone at Verlamion. The heart of the lorc was broken!’

      ‘But was the Doomstone destroyed?’

      ‘Do you doubt that I told you the truth?’

      There was silence.

      ‘The battle stopped, didn’t it?’ Will said.

      The wizard inclined his head a fraction. ‘The battle did not continue.’

      ‘I only know what I saw, Gwydion. The Doomstone was cracked clean across. It must have been destroyed, for it fell silent and all the Sightless Ones in the chapter house lost their minds.’

      To that the wizard made no reply other than to give a doubtful grunt. Then he raised his staff towards the livid glow. They walked the lign together across the crest of the Tops. Earth power tingled in Will’s fingers and toes as he walked. They soon came to what looked from a distance like a ring of silent, unmoving figures. He looked at the perfect circle of eighty or so stones, the ring that was forty paces across. The shadows cast by each stone groped out across the uneven land. He felt as if he was intruding and said so.

      ‘You СКАЧАТЬ