The Giants' Dance (56 page)

‘Will, are you sure?'

‘Just do as I ask.'

He walked away, and began quietly to prepare himself for the coming fight. He found his place on a slight rise where the earth patterns spiralled, and there he stood, feet planted, and began to drink in the power. He drew on it too greedily at first. The power quivered in his legs, squeezing like cramp in his calf muscles, rose up, threatening to buckle his knees. He was like a thirst-maddened man – bolting it, then coughing it back. But soon he felt the spangling cool thrill running freely in his bones. It flooded his breast and flowed up into his head and hands until, once again, he became the white star, enrayed and encircled in light. Time stuttered, passed swiftly, froze crystal solid. He felt the whole world in him and nothing stood between his infinitely reaching spirit and what lay beyond. Then, quite suddenly, the flow ceased and he was Will again. Awed. Amazed. Renewed. And the stain he had felt on his heart before seemed to have gone.

When he entered the tent, his mind was focused. He approached the stump, laid both hands on it and began to blow, spending a portion of the power he had just drawn.

His breath blew hotter, and had Gwydion been himself he would instantly have been aware that a plot was being hatched against him. But he did not stir while Willow talked. She was asking about Bethe, then about the Vale and what she should tell her neighbours about their absence. But then the wizard did look up from her chatter.

‘What are you doing?'

Will's body shielded the stump. He made no reply, nor could he, for his task was tricky. When setting his mind against a live battlestone his every effort was opposed, but here his will was accepted and he needed to find a different kind of balance. It was like pushing against something that did not push back but drew him eagerly on.

He took heart from that, and the fact that the stump's top had already begun to glow easily. Red became yellow, and yellow white. Then the glow melted in on itself and became liquid, like the wax in the top of a burning candle.

Gwydion jumped up, took him by the arm. He cried out,
‘What meddling is this?'

‘Trust me, Gwydion!'

‘O miec a cheait!'
The wizard flinched away from the mounting heat, but Willow had stepped behind him. She threw her arms around his chest and locked her hands together over his breastbone, hugging him tight. Her grip did not falter. Will laid a quelling mark on his forehead, seized his arms strongly, suppressed his struggles. ‘I'm taking these off before they destroy you!'

‘You must not break them!'

‘I have no need to break them. They'll drop away of their own accord.'

‘But they are filled with harm! It must not be allowed to escape! It must not!'

‘It won't.' He took Gwydion by the wrists and pulled his hands towards the bubbling, white pool of molten ironstone.

‘But you have not the power to contain it – agggh!'

It was too late. Willow hung on until Will's mind was hardened, set firm on its course. Every hair on his body rose up as he pronounced the spells that directed his powers. Then he plunged Gwydion's splayed hands into the spitting furnace, and watched the wizard's fingers catch fire.

‘Cher mhac maer ane t-athair thu!'
Gwydion screamed, struggled, kicked out. His face lit with ghastly brilliance as he watched his fingers burn down. Black bones charred away in the blast, yet the gold dripped from his wrists like melted butter until the fetters fell away into the ironstone pool and vanished.

The furnace light dimmed. The stump writhed, shrank
down to a grey cinder. As Will withdrew Gwydion's hands, he saw that the bracelets were gone, but the flesh was unscathed. There had been no seething out of harm, no explosion of malice. Not the faintest hint of the black smoke that had issued from the broken chain in the dungeon was seen, nor did the spell break back against them.

Gwydion's harrowed amazement as he examined his unhurt hands was a joy for Will to witness. ‘But – the
price
?'

‘There is none to pay here. Remember the residue of kindness that exists in every spent battlestone? I hoped it would be enough to contain the bale that Maskull put into those bracelets.'

Gwydion rolled his eyes. ‘You
hoped
?'

‘What else was I to do? You yourself said that all was lost otherwise.'

‘It was the bracelets making me speak that way!'

‘But you did say that I should listen to my inner voice. Of course, this stump will no longer grant boons, but that's a price worth the paying, don't you think?'

Gwydion's eyes rolled and he slumped down, exhausted by his experience. ‘I hope Edward doesn't blame you for destroying his precious victory stone.'

‘He will.'

Willow was puffing and wiping her sleeve across her brow. ‘I think our friend's customary humour is coming back to him.' She poked the wizard's shoulder. ‘Now, Master Gwydion, “One good turn deserveth another.” Isn't that what wizards say? We must know the reason why Chlu wears a semblance of Willand's face. Did Maskull shape him so with a spell? And if he did, what's been the purpose of it?'

When Gwydion hesitated once more, Will's levity deserted him. ‘I was once led to believe that Maskull was my father, and though you assured me it wasn't so, still I don't know why he said, “I made you, I can just as easily unmake you.”'

‘Then perhaps the time has come for you to know.' Gwydion hunched, seeming incomplete without his staff to lean on. ‘Listen, then, and learn, and come at last – if I may re-use an ancient formula – to a true understanding. During my captivity much was revealed to me that was hidden before, and this knowledge has served to make matters all the clearer. Since there is no longer any doubt in my mind, there is no longer any cause to withhold from you the three secrets that have lain heavy on my heart. The first is that Chlu's name is spelled thus in the old tongue of the west: L-l-y-w. This is his true name, Will, and you must never pronounce that name in a spell, no matter what the temptation. If you do you will be destroyed yourself.'

He blinked with surprise. ‘But that makes no sense. Surely—'

Gwydion brooked no objection. ‘What I tell you has been prophesied. The second secret is this – though Chlu has acted somewhat as Maskull's agent, his form and features are not the result of any imposed enchantment. When you look at Chlu you are looking at his true appearance, for you see…Chlu is your own twin brother.'

‘My
brother
? But how can that be?'

‘Chlu is everything that you are not. Even when you were boys this was so. Through Loremaster Morann, I kept a discreet watch on you both. Whereas you were drawn to the accomplishment of noble tasks, he was most easily drawn into mischief. Whereas you were conscientious and cared for the comfort of your friends, he was selfish and took pleasure in cruelty. And now that you are men, you feel the urge to know Chlu and to love him as a brother, whereas he wants only to have done with you, to destroy you if he can. His desire to seek you out is strong, and this urge has been used by Maskull for his own ends. But there is a deeper link between Chlu and the betrayer.'

‘That's what we can't understand,' Willow said. ‘Why Maskull wants so much to find Will.'

‘It may be answered in part by the third secret. It was Loremaster Morann and I who first brought Will to the Vale. Will knows nothing of this, though he has asked many times where I found him. I can now tell how it was.

‘Back in the spring of the twentieth year of the reign of King Hal, when Cuckootide fell upon a full moon, I was riding in pursuit of Maskull. I stopped at a place not so many leagues from here. At that time, I had lately inflicted a setback on him, and it seemed to me that if I could only confront him in a suitable place – and on a magically important day – then, and only then, might I be able to confine him and so bring our conflict to an end.

‘But tracking his movements has always proved difficult. On the day in question, three days before the magical moment, I lost him. Darkness began to fall, and I was considering where I might lay my head for the night, when I passed through a wooded glade in which I smelled once again a strong whiff of sorcery. “By his magic, so shall ye know him,” thus runs the well-known rede, and so I knew straight away that the taint was Maskull's, and that he was active in his mischief. There was no doubt of its source, but there was in the magic a hint of the workings of a far more ancient power.

‘Thus was I drawn forward, in the direction of a certain tower which was known to me. I thought Maskull must have found it and turned it into his secret workshop. My best hope was to surprise him there and, if I could, bring to naught whatever scheme he had put in hand to turn the destiny of the world to his advantage. But as I drew nigh, I felt the ground begin to tremble beneath my feet and the boughs above me start to shake.

‘My first feeling was that it was a quaking of the earth – these happenings come from time to time when one of
the halls of the fae falls in on itself down in the Realm Below. But here the telltale signs of Maskull's magic told me the cause was otherwise. The power that had made the earth quake had another source, for there suddenly appeared from the highest part of the tower a spinning, violet ray of enormous strength. The magic was powerful and carefully conducted, yet its style echoed that of the fae.

‘This was the last thing I had expected, for the fae never much figured in Maskull's preferences, nor did he care to study their arts. I pressed on quietly through the undergrowth, following along deer paths, and pausing in the shadows of great beech trees. The smooth, grey trunks of those trees seemed to me to be moving like the legs of giant beasts as I crept among them, for the ray was sweeping ever faster overhead. Still, I pushed myself onward, and I was about to emerge onto the grassy sward at the foot of the tower when the door burst into flame, and Maskull fled out through a ring of fire and into the woods, running as if his very life depended upon it.

‘You may imagine my surprise at this but, as soon as I turned my eyes skyward, that fast-spinning light burst screaming into the air, and a great cloud lifted the top from the tower. The concussion threw me down and put my own lights out. A wave of pain passed through my flesh, and it was an agony unlike any that I had felt before.

‘As I lay there, pieces of stone fell like rain through the trees. I do not know how long I lay on the ground. At first, I thought that Maskull had divined my coming and prepared a blast to receive me. Then I thought he might have accidentally set light to some great store of sorcerer's powder. It would not have been the first time his experiments had gone awry, though in the devising of weapons he knows no peer. But neither of these explanations was the true cause, for I had felt an undeniable accompaniment of fae magic colouring the blast. That marked it as an event unparalleled
in latter days. I knew then that Maskull's tests and trials in the tower must have had an even more sinister goal.'

Will stirred. He heard the persuasive power growing once more in the wizard's voice, and knew that something important must soon be told, though Gwydion remained reluctant to tell it.

‘You're going to say, after all, that in some way Maskull
is
my father,' he said stonily. ‘Aren't you?'

The wizard's face was unreadable. ‘Willand, you must not think that, though perhaps you will decide the truth is even worse.'

‘Worse?' Willow cried. ‘What does it matter where Will's from? He's as fine a man as any who lives!'

He held up a hand. ‘I do not doubt that you think so, nor even that it may be so, but you asked for the truth, and so you must hear me out. When I came to my senses, I approached the foundations of that broken tower. A night mist had settled over the eerie twilight, making the scene ghostly. Gradually, I became aware of a sound – two infants crying, or so it seemed to my ringing ears. They bawled out lustily, and so I hurried into the tower and climbed to a place just below the shattered top. There I found, naked and abandoned, two babies. The first was a boy-child, and the second also, and as alike as twins. They were lying upon a stone, a table carved from a single block, much like one of the altar-stones of the Sightless Ones. A great swirling slab of green and red marble whereon were set two small tokens—'

Will threw back his head and muttered, ‘They were the fish. Two leaping salmon.'

Willow grasped Will's hand, and said, ‘Go on, Master Gwydion.'

‘As I watched, one child moved towards the red fish, and the other towards the green, and each took up the fish
that was nearest to him and clasped it to his breast. But other than this there was no sign. I wondered what I should do. I was in a quandary, for there was no way to know where these newborn babes might belong, or what should be done with them.

‘One thing alone was certain: these babes must not be left to Maskull's untender mercies. Being naked and motherless they seemed to me to want for proper care and indeed to be already quite hungry. It angered me greatly to see how they had been left to die by Maskull when he ran to save his own skin. Therefore I danced a protection over them, and as I danced, I tried to foresee the purpose for which two infants might have been brought here, to discover what part they were meant to play in Maskull's foul magical ambitions. It was clear to me that Maskull had already moved, in spirit at least, into the strange future that he wished then, and wishes still, to foist upon the world.

‘Eventually I began to recall to mind certain of the prophecies of the Black Book, those several indeed that concerned the Child of Destiny and the third coming of the king. Once the spells of protection were cast, I determined on a plan. I knew I must move swiftly, before Maskull could recover his boldness and return to the tower. I took the babes, one in each arm, and I plunged into the woods. All that night, I moved across the moonwashed darks and deeps of the forest until I came at last to a place that I delighted in, and there I urgently summoned Loremaster Morann to meet me.'