The Giants’ Dance. Robert Goldthwaite Carter

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       CHAPTER FOUR THE LIGN OF THE ASH TREE

      Will was surprised to find the sun high in the sky by the time he awoke. Bright shafts of sunlight pierced the shutters, and he sprang up from the mattress and got dressed as quickly as he could, fearing that Gwydion and Morann might have left without him.

      But he soon found them outside in the yard, talking with the inn’s people.

      ‘Morning, Gwydion. Morning, Morann.’

      ‘And a fine morning it is,’ Morann said.

      ‘Ah, Willand,’ Gwydion said. ‘I hope you are feeling able today. There may be tough work ahead.’

      Dimmet sniffed at a side of beef that was hanging in his out-house. ‘Not too high for the pie, nor yet too low for the crow,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Now, Master Gwydion, shall I expect you back by noon?’

      ‘You may expect us, Dimmet, when next you see us.’

      ‘Right you are,’ Dimmet said affably. ‘I’ll take that to mean I should mind my own business.’

      He went off to take delivery of the milk jugs, but soon Duffred had hitched Bessie, the bay cob, to the tithe wagon. Will got up onto the cart to sit alongside Morann and Gwydion, and then they were off, heading east along a road that Will had travelled before.

      A rolling land of good, brown clay met them as they drove steadily onward. The going was easy past Hemmel and Hencoop. The wagon ruts that had been made in the road during a wet spring had been baked into hard ridges by the summer sun and worn to dust. Hills to their left threw out low green rises that sloped across their path, and the sun shone on the part-harvested wheatfields to their right. But soon, tended fields gave way to wilder country.

      Gwydion told of the times he had visited Caer Lugdunum, an ancient fortress that had once stood on a hill a little way to the north, and how graciously he had been received in poem and song by the druida who had lived there. Then Morann sang ‘The Lay of the Lady’ in a rich, clear voice that knew the true tongue well. His song was about the brave Queen of the East and the stand she had made long ago against the armies of the Slaver empire. It was so sad a song that Will felt shivers pass through him, and it was a long while before he returned to himself and felt the hot sun on his face again. When he did, he found that Bessie had already covered half the road to Nadderstone.

      Hereabouts the land was scrubby and unkempt, and Will looked to a cluster of bushes on his left that he knew hid a pond. Gwydion had once said there was probably star-iron in the bottom of it, and now Will realized how the pond had been made, by a shooting star landing hard on the earth, though one much smaller than the one that had smashed Little Slaughter. The thought made him shiver.

      ‘There’s power flowing here,’ Morann said, his blue eyes on the far horizon. ‘We may expect miracles, or worse, I’m thinking, before the day is done.’

      ‘Remember, the road follows the path of a lign,’ Gwydion said, ‘whether we can see it or not. Willand, do you feel anything yet?’

      ‘Not yet, Master Gwydion. You can be sure I’ll speak up soon enough when I do.’

      A short shower of rain came to refresh the land and went away again as soon as it had come. They continued across the valley and soon Will noticed a tall tower of mottled brown stone. It was the same one he had seen before, standing sentinel on a ridge, above lands that had once been tilled by the Sightless Ones, or those who laboured for them. But those fields were now neglected and overgrown, and that caused Will to wonder, for the Fellowship was notorious for never allowing its lands to lie fallow if gold could be mined in them.

      As they drew near Will was shocked to realize that the tower was now in ruins, as was the cloister and chapter house it had served.

      ‘What happened to the Fellows?’ he asked in amazement.

      ‘Gone,’ Gwydion said.

      They passed by two large fishponds. Once this place had made Will feel very uneasy. And now, as their road climbed up past the tall, iron-brown walls and vacant windows of the chapter house, Will suppressed a shudder. He turned to Gwydion and saw the wizard’s keen, grey eyes examining the battlements. The wizard called Bessie to a halt.

      ‘What are we stopping for?’ Will asked.

      Gwydion handed him the reins. ‘We must look into what has happened.’

      Will shielded his eyes against the sun and studied the tower, but he saw nothing more noteworthy than a lone gargoyle that stuck out from the corner of the parapet high above them. Morann jumped down from the cart and they both followed Gwydion through a yard of tumbled graves beside the chapter house.

      The garden that had once held neat rows of green plants was now overgrown and its bee skeps smashed. The iron weather vane that had once shown the sign of a white heart and had stretched its four arms out above the roofs, had been cast into a corner of the yard. The roofs themselves were broken and pulled down too. Ahead the great gates were unhinged, and where, to Will’s recollection, the arch of the doorway had been incised with the curious motto: