The Giants' Dance (48 page)

‘Someone like you?' She looked at him suddenly, but said nothing more.

He stared at the shrunken, darkened stump that stood crookedly in the pond. The sun glinted on the jagged edge where the top half had been cloven free by Chlu. Gwydion had said long ago that the breaking of a battlestone by violence risked unforeseeable – but certainly terrible – consequences. Yet here was a second stone that had been cracked in two, and no great catastrophe had come to pass. Perhaps such harm as had escaped would come together and fall like poison rain over the next battle.

Fears welled up, and this time he chose to speak them aloud. ‘When Gwydion and I first found the Dragon Stone, we took it to Foderingham,' he said. ‘We followed the road that led by the town of Cordewan. We passed a meadow of grass along by the River Neane. There were many standing stones, hundreds of them, all grouped together, like so many people waiting for something awful to happen. I had what Gwydion called a premonition. It was an unpleasant feeling that came just as we passed by – a vision of the plague. I remember Gwydion remarking that I shivered, “as if someone had walked on my grave”. Yes, those were his words. I asked him about the field and what was in it. He said they were tombstones, but unlike any tombstones that I might see elsewhere.'

‘What do you think he meant by that?'

‘When the Great Plague came to Cordewan in the olden days it killed many folk. When some saw the signs of the pestilence starting on their bodies they fled to the College of Delamprey. There a bargain was struck with the Sightless Ones. So great was their fear that they begged the red hands to use such sorcery as they commanded to turn them to stone and so preserve their lives.'

‘They preferred to give themselves over to sorcery rather than die a natural death?' she asked, revolted by the idea.

‘So Gwydion said. Then the red hands gave it out that those who were turned to stone must wait three times three dozen and one years, until a healer would come to bring them back to life. That's a hundred and nine years.'

‘And how many years have passed since the Great Plague?'

‘Let me reckon it back,' he said, counting the reigns of five kings off on his fingers, before looking up at her. ‘It's…it's now a hundred and eleven years since the mortality came to Cordewan.'

‘Then it doesn't fit,' she said. ‘The Hardingstones should have been healed two years ago.'

‘Not unless they've already been healed.'

‘But that carrier said they were near Delamprey. He wouldn't have said that if they had gone two years ago.'

‘Something's wrong. Or someone's been meddling. Maskull, or the red hands maybe.'

‘Will?' she asked suddenly. ‘Remind me what you made of the alternate reading of the verse.'

He thought for a moment, then began to stumble over the lines afresh,

‘Soon shall there be no graves,

In the dead place of the shoes.

A field of statues yawns awake,

Some say that death walks widely.'

‘“The dead place of the shoes”,' Willow repeated. ‘That doesn't sound right. Are you sure that's what it means?'

Will puzzled over it in silence for a while, then he said, ‘Cordewan gets its name from its main trade, which is making shoes. A lot of cordwainers and leather tanners live there. Maybe the verse might be better this way,

‘Soon no more the plague pits,

Shall hold the dead of Corde.

A field of statues shall awake,

And death shall walk abroad.'

She nodded approvingly. ‘That sounds much better. It's a neater verse anyway. Though I don't know how much good will come of fathoming its meaning.'

‘I really think we ought to head for Delamprey as fast as we can.'

She embraced him. ‘We'd better take care not to be seen. We don't know where Chlu went, but he can't be far away. If the court have taken the straight road they must have
arrived already. We're no longer in disguise, and there'll be plenty among Lord Strange's retinue who could remember us from Ludford before the castle fell.'

Will tied the strings of his weaver's cap and mounted up, wanting only to ride on and leave Harleston to those who lived in it. He leaned forward, ready to pull Willow up behind him, but she took her hand away from his and said, ‘Do you think it'd be all right to fill our water flask from the pond?'

He nodded. ‘We should. We have some thirsty work ahead.'

She bent to fill the flask, but then paused as if she had seen something in the mud by the pond's edge.

‘What is it?' Will said, looking down from the horse.

‘Oh, Will! Look! It's just like your talisman. Only it's…red.'

Will jumped down and took it from her, staring at it in amazement. ‘By the moon and stars! It's the red fish, the token I found at Little Slaughter! The one I think Chlu stole from my belongings at Ludford just before you arrived. However did it come here?'

‘He must have dropped it.'

‘I don't believe it…Willow, something strange is happening here.' Will looked around and drew Morann's blade from his belt, suspecting a trap, but for all that he tried he could feel nothing of Chlu's presence.

‘What's the meaning of it?' Willow asked sharply, disliking the red fish and reacting against the weirdness of the moment.

He studied the fish for a while longer, then brought his own talisman out of his shirt and compared them. Each was no bigger than his thumb. They were both graven with three triangles nested within one another. The two fish were identical in all respects except colour. ‘It seems as if they were meant to fit together mouth to tail.'

He brought them together in that arrangement, but as he did so he felt a sudden pressure in his fingers. It was as if the two fish wanted to be connected. Then there was a sudden jolt and a flash of blinding light, and there in his hands was a real fish, a big, silver-grey salmon! It threshed and wriggled from his grasp, and leapt into the retting pond.

Will stared in awe as it swam quickly from the shallows and was gone.

Willow looked down at the water, dumbstruck. ‘Oh, Will!'

‘My talisman…' he said faintly. ‘How am I going to break the next battlestone without my talisman?'

By the time they reached the River Neane they had still not recovered from the shock of the calamity, but Will knew there was nothing else for it but to go on. He saw men labouring and others foraging the land around. They were soldiers. Earthworks were being hastily thrown up on the far bank of the river and in the grounds of the old cloister of Delamprey. There was no doubt that this was a place being prepared for battle.

Will found a sandy mound smothered in burrows. It had been a thriving warren, but there were ferret tracks in the soil that spoke of a recent slaughter of coneys, killed to feed the army. Nearby stood a grove of ash trees. That was as near to Delamprey as Will dared go. He decided to leave the horse tethered in a glade and hope that it was close enough to the chapter house to have been already scavenged for game.

As for the battlestone, Will could feel nothing of its presence, except an eerie silence and perhaps the creeping sense of impending doom.

‘I'll have to scry for it,' he said.

‘You'll never get near. And if you did, how can you drain it without your talisman?'

‘Maybe I can't, but I might be able to find out what Maskull's up to.'

‘Be careful, Will.'

He smiled at her and cautiously opened his mind. Nothing. The absence of feeling was worrying. Even at this distance from the cloister he could see that a battle would have to take place here soon. As he passed a critical eye over the preparations, a persistent vision leapt at him – that of Maskull smugly believing he had chosen the time and place of battle. In reality, Will knew, the battlestone was doing the choosing.

Several thousand men were grimly going about the task of preparing the ground. They had secured both flanks and heaped up defences between. They had fortified the cloister itself too. It was old, little more than a royal manor house with a couple of large enclosed yards and a tall tower built of the local brownstone, though now an ornate iron weather vane surmounted it. Will recalled Gwydion's remarks, that it had indeed once been a royal house, but that over the centuries its lands had been granted away piecemeal to the Fellowship and eventually it had been taken over almost entirely by them. First they had made it into a cloister college. Now, from what Will could make out, it seemed to have become a sequestering hall, a place where the inconvenient womenfolk of lordly households could be sent to live if they incurred their masters' displeasure.

‘You must go on from here alone,' Willow said, echoing his own thoughts. ‘Two spies are better than one. I'll go over to the earthworks and see what I can find out about the king.'

They had already seen a regal-looking tent set up on the banks of the river, and far to the rear of the army. The queen had doubtless sent him there to wait, attended by two burly servants, while the battle was decided. Three horses were saddled and tethered nearby.

Will took a drink from the water flask, passed it to Willow and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘We'll meet here again as soon after the noontide as we can. Or if we should miss one another, this is where I'll come back to.'

His mind had begun to flash with horrible visions – the carnage of Blow Heath, images of Willow cradling her father's bloody body after the clash at Verlamion. The stone's emanations were seeping into him, and his voice faltered, ‘I hope we can stop this. All these men are looking to us…'

She gazed into his eyes. ‘Save their lives, Will. They don't deserve to die.'

‘They never do.'

He let out a long breath, and gave her Morann's blade. ‘Look after this for Morann. It kills or it doesn't cut at all. I'll have no use for its peculiarities today.'

‘I love you, Will.'

‘And I love you.'

They held one another close for a long moment, then, when he was sure he could delay no longer, he kissed her and told her to be mindful of her safety and never stop believing she would see Bethe again. Then she set off through the bright sunshine. Once she had passed out of sight he forced a frosty calm to settle over his mind and tried to listen to his inner promptings, then he began to order his thoughts and started to work out a plan.

They had found the Dragon Stone at Nadderstone. It had drawn its power from the Indonen lign. The Blow Stone, too, had stood on only one lign – Caorthan – and the King's Stone battlestone on one lign, that called Eburos. The Harle Stone, too, had been on one lign, Mulart, the lign of the elder tree. The Plaguestone, however, had stood where two ligns crossed, Mulart and Bethe. And so had the Blood Stone – Bethe and Caorthan, and also the stones at Arebury and Tysoe – Indonen and Tanne, and Indonen and
Caorthan, respectively. Lastly, the mighty Verlamion Doomstone had stood upon three ligns – Caorthan, Celin and Mulart.

Will closed his eyes and tried to make sense of it all, but the names swam before his eyes and he could not picture the arrangement, or even see how such knowledge might help him. But then he thought of the ked, and the Great Book of the Realm of which the creature had spoken. And that made him think about the night when he had lain in sweating torment as his mind's eye had risen up and looked down over the lands around Ludford as if from above…

That was it!

Was there not a way of picturing the whole Realm, picturing it as if he was looking down on it from a great height? Making a plan that showed every coast, every hill and every river – every village, every road…
and every lign
!

What if such a picture could be drawn? Surely then every lign would be shown in its proper place. And the nine ligns that made up the lorc would be shown as straight lines, just as straight as they actually were. And so where these straight lines ran and crossed would show the places where the real battlestones lay. Find the underlying pattern and you could find every one of them!

The idea was exciting, and too important to let go. But how could such a picture of the ground be made? There was no art that could show the world in small size. There was no clue as to how such a thing might be accomplished – except perhaps by the use of magic.

‘Oh, Gwydion,' he murmured. ‘I have so much to tell you when next we meet.'

But he knew that before they could meet again the next battlestone would have to be thwarted. He would open his mind at noon to see if there was any hint of the lign. Whenever he had found the Indonen lign before, it had run
broadly east and west, and since ligns always ran straight, it would have to run in the same direction here. But where exactly was it? Did it go through the place where the earthworks had been heaped up, and through the fields that the king's captains had sought to make a killing ground? That seemed likely. And if it was true, then the Indonen lign must also run through Delamprey's field of death. That meadow, with its strange tombstones, was now a soldiers' camp, filled with many hundreds of colourful tents. He peered across the field where the battle would have to take place. He tried to foresee how the royal forces would be drawn up, considering in turn each of the lords who might command the fight. The centre would almost certainly be led by Duke Henry, and the king's right by Duke Humphrey of Rockingham. But who would take charge of the king's left?

Will opened his mind cautiously again, but he could sense nothing. The battlestone was behaving stealthily, guarding itself. Even the power flowing in the lign had become hard to discern, like a fish moving in deep, murky water. He checked the sun. It was still rising higher in the south. This was still the forenoon – the best time for scrying would come soon. He undid the strings of his weaver's cap, and tried to look a little more like one of the archers loitering nearby. He began to follow the long grass by a water course that ran near the lign. As he made his way, he opened his mind wider to sense the strangeness of the tombstones. They were mute – unnaturally so, given the magic that tainted them.