The Language of Stones. Robert Goldthwaite Carter

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СКАЧАТЬ in his legs had almost drained away too. His braids swung encouragingly at his cheek, and he put a hand to them. The Realm was indeed a bigger and stranger place than ever he had thought.

      I won’t be able to find my way back if we go much further, he thought. I’ll have to make my break now, before it’s too late! But carefully, he warned himself. This Master Gwydion may have done me no harm as yet, but he’s a lot more dangerous than he tries to seem. Still, I’ll bet he can’t run as fast as me, nor aim his night-magic so well in full daylight. I’ll bide my time then – off! With a bit of luck his hood will stay up and he won’t even see me go.

      He glanced to left and right. The old, straight track as it ran over the Tops was broken. It rose and fell no more than the height of a man in a thousand paces now, and it kept to high ground where the skin of the land was pulled tightest over its bones. There were sheep droppings among the grass, and coney burrows too. Grey stones outcropped here and there along the trackway, and Will hung back as far as he dared, wondering if these old stones might not be the remains of giants’ houses set beside the ancient road. Tilwin had once said that beyond the Vale there were houses and castles built of stone, wondrous ruins that had lasted since the days of the First Men…

      Thinking no more about it, Will tore suddenly away and ran down the slope. Once out of sight he went as fast as he could, jinking over the tussocks like a hare, looking once, twice, over his shoulder to check that the sorcerer had not missed him. Only when he was sure did he dive down behind a hillock and lie pressed hard against the ground.

      From here he could see where the track wound onward, and soon he spied a tiny, dark figure continuing along the track in the distance, wrapped up in his cloak and seemingly deep in thought. Will exulted. He’ll never find me now, he told himself, lying on his back among the moss until he had got his breath back. His clothes were still damp from the rain and he began to feel a certain weariness seeping into his joints, but none of that mattered. He was free. He would lie low until the sorcerer had gone. Then he would find a way home.

      He thought of opening the bundle of sweetcakes that was lodged inside his jerkin, but decided against it. He might have greater need of them before the day was done. But thinking about the sweetcakes made him remember his mother and a lonely feeling crept over him. She’s not my mother, he thought. Though I don’t know how a real mother could have loved me any better.

      He took out the fish-shaped talisman and turned it over in his fingers. He could not read what was written on it, yet still its touch comforted him. His feelings towards Breona and Eldmar had not changed, but now there were gaping questions where once there had been certainties.

      A male blackbird looking for breakfast turned one wary yellow-rimmed eye on him and began clucking at him as if he was a cat. Will told it to hush, but the bird fled in noisy distress, and he wondered if the sorcerer was alert enough to have noticed it. Then the ground began to tremble and tear. He turned to look behind him and saw a huge grey-green shape that had begun to rise up from what he had thought was a small hill. The hill looked like a man’s back, but the shoulders were as broad as a barn door and the skin filthy and warty like a toad’s. Dread seized him and held him in its grip. He tried to yell, but the air was already filled with groans.

      The creature was getting to its feet. It rose up from its hollow in the ground like a boulder being forced from its bed, and it carried on rising until it was as tall as the May Pole. Two immense legs were each as far around as an oak. And the body was built in proportion, with two heavily muscled arms. But it was the hairless head that was most terrifying – ugly and gross-featured, with a wide mouth filled with uneven, soil-brown teeth, a bone-hooded brow and bulbous, penetrating eyes.

      Terror swarmed through Will. He could neither stand nor run, only stare until every self-preserving thought was blotted from his mind. But as the monster turned on him, he yelped and scrambled to get away. His arms and legs would not work fast enough, but then the monster’s eyes fixed hard on him. It let out a deep-roaring bellow and began to step forward. Each of its footfalls shook the land. It came so close that he could smell the earthy stink of its breath and feel the closeness of its hands.

      Somehow Will ran clear of those flailing arms. He bolted along the trackway, never pausing to look back, certain that if the monster caught him it would eat him alive. His braids banged against his ear as he ran. When at last he did look over his shoulder, he saw that a great stone had been wrenched up from the ground. It was hurled through the air, bounced and blundered past him like a great wooden ball pitched at a skittle. Finally, it came to rest at the very place where a little while ago he had schemed to make his escape.

      When Will saw the distant figure of the sorcerer by the brow of the next hill, he flew to him. The old man was continuing in the same way, his staff beating a steady toc-toc-toc over the stones. Will’s heart was bursting, his lungs gasping for air as he shouted his warning.

      ‘Master Gwydion! Master Gwydion!’ His hands grasped at the sorcerer’s much-patched cloak as he tried to get his words out. ‘A gi – a gi—! A giant coming!’

      The sorcerer stopped, put a hand on Will’s head and smiled. ‘Alba will not harm you so long as you do nothing to harm that which he holds dear.’

      ‘He – he’s trying to kill me!’

      ‘Then stay close to me, for I am his friend. One day you will be glad that the flesh of this land is his flesh. But come now. The new day is brightening and we have yet to reach the Evenlode Bridge.’

      Gwydion walked on, unconcerned. But the terror was still fresh in Will. He felt it rattling inside him as he plucked up the courage to look back again. There was nothing to see now, nothing except what might be the long shadow of an outcrop thrown across the track by the golden light of the newly-risen sun. As for the great boulder that had been hurled after him, it was there – a lone standing stone that looked as if it had been sitting by the side of the track for fifty generations.

      It was a trick! Will told himself with sudden outrage. Just an evil sorcerer’s trick! And I believed it!

      But a bigger part of him was not so easily persuaded that it had been a trick, and so he hurried to catch up.

       CHAPTER THREE TO THE TOWER OF LORD STRANGE

      By now it was late morning, yet they had seen no other person along their path. Folk must be dwelling close by, Will thought, for someone must work these fields, and once or twice I’ve seen the thatch of houses in the distance. Maybe we’re going the quiet way on purpose.

      After walking down off the Tops and some way into the broad valley that lay ahead, Will halted. ‘I can’t take another step,’ he croaked.

      The sorcerer seemed uncomfortable that they should stop here. He gave Will a hard look. ‘We will rest. But not in this place.’ Then he did a strange thing: he drew a little stick from his sleeve and twisted it over the ground, walking back and forth as if testing for something until they had gone a few hundred paces further on.

      When he saw Will watching him, he said, ‘Do not be afraid, it is only scrying. Do you see how the hazel wand moves? It helps me feel out the power that flows in the land.’

      Will stared back mutely, and the sorcerer carried on. The place he eventually chose for them to rest was an oblong enclosure of cropped grass about as big as Nether Norton’s green. It was surrounded by a grassy earth bank a little higher than a man’s head. Weathered standing stones guarded its four corners, sticking up like four grey teeth. Will had no idea who might have laboured to build СКАЧАТЬ