Whitemantle (20 page)

Will swallowed hard. ‘This is like some horrible dream.’

Gwydion snapped his fingers. ‘Then you must
wake up
!’

Just then there came a knock at the door that made Will jump like a guilty man. He opened it, and Willow ushered Lotan into the room.

‘You see – now our friend has truly escaped the Fellowship,’ she said triumphantly.

But the wizard hardly regarded Lotan. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Willow, you have done what you were always going to do. I knew you would do it, for wilfulness is in your nature.’

She braced herself, ready for the confrontation that was to come, but the wizard merely turned away.

‘Aren’t you angry?’ Will asked.

Gwydion sighed deeply, and his voice, when it came, was unruffled. ‘The time is past when a show of anger on my part could achieve anything. Willow will have to accept the consequences of her actions when the time comes. And there will be consequences, you can be sure of that.’

The wizard’s soft words struck more alarm in them than any loud remonstration could have done. But then there came the sound of footsteps in the passage outside. Heads turned, Lotan’s hand tightened on his sword scabbard, and the door flew open.

‘Morann!’ Will cried, relieved.

‘Aye, large as life.’

‘And twice as nasty.’

Morann grinned. His hat was gone and a recently healed scar lined his cheek. Wrapped in his travelling cloak of earth
colours he looked like a living part of the moorland that he loved. Ever since Will had first known him there had seemed to be an air of adventure about him, but never more so than now.

‘Well, don’t just stand there with the door open!’ Gort cried. ‘Bring him in, hey?’

The greetings were elaborate. Everyone clasped one another dearly and much was spoken in the true tongue that passed Will’s meagre understanding. For a while it was possible to believe that the heyday of loremasters and wizards had not passed away, but at last Morann’s smile faded and he grew serious.

‘I come with news concerning events in the north.’

‘We already know about it,’ Will said. ‘Duke Richard’s army left this morning.’

‘Indeed. But do you know why? The queen is marching upon the brave city of Ebor.’

‘Ebor?’ Gwydion and Gort exclaimed together.

‘She has lately named it as the new capital city of the Realm. She said it will become so once she has captured it, and remain so until Trinovant is retaken.’

‘Has it fallen?’ Gwydion asked.

‘By now Ebor’s walls may have been breached, I can’t say. And ten thousand pities upon that place if they have, for the queen’s host is a fearsome thing indeed, and her anger boundless!’

‘That was quick,’ Willow said. ‘She can only just have heard about her son being dispossessed.’

‘The queen’s armies were on the move long before that. This is the revenge she has been planning since the day of Delamprey Field.’

Gwydion’s hands clenched as if he had reached a grand conclusion. ‘ “Ebor shall overlook Ebor before the year is out” – I think we too must go into the north.’

‘For what reason?’ Will asked sharply. ‘We can’t do
anything about the next stone even if we find it, and we surely daren’t try to prevent the next battle for fear of dropping the world even faster into Maskull’s hands.’

‘True,’ Morann said. ‘We daren’t.’

Gwydion dismissed their objections with a wave of his hand. ‘This concerns neither stone nor battle, but Maskull himself. I have examined his chamber in detail and it seems to me that I may have found a way forward. Though it could be a dangerous one.’

‘The entire Realm is in danger…’ Morann murmured. ‘Maskull has filled the hearts of the noble warriors of Albanay with greed. They’re marching through the Northern Shires laying waste to everything in their path. Every hearth and home south of Dunhelm is being torn apart even as we speak. And there’s worse – hill trolls are in their midst. Wart-faced ogres and wild-men have come down from the mountains and high moors. They’re flocking to the queen’s banner.’

‘Then the rumours we heard were near the mark…’ Willow said. She looked to Will, who frowned back equally concerned.

‘Hill trolls…’ Lotan murmured. He had been sitting quietly with his sword laying across his knees, staring into the fire. ‘They are not so difficult to kill.’

‘I have something for you, Morann,’ Will said suddenly. He drew the loremaster into the adjoining room and lowered his voice. ‘Master Gwydion’s power is hardly recovered yet, and we don’t know if it ever will. He’s changed since the time he spent in Maskull’s fetters. He’s in no fit state to take on his old enemy and…’

‘And?’

‘Whatever weapons might have been fashioned out of the harm Maskull tapped from the Delamprey battlestone, Master Gwydion mustn’t be tempted to use them.’

‘You speak mainly of Master Gwydion, but this is no longer his fight. A crucial moment is at hand, Willand. It’s
a moment that will decide the future. You must seize it manfully.’

He swallowed. ‘I…I mean to. Though I wonder if one such as I can ever become a king in a world where there is no magic.’

Morann’s eyes gleamed guilelessly. ‘There is still magic enough for that. Fae magic is the oldest and will be the last to leave the world. King Arthur will come again. Put aside your fears, Willand. You must not lose faith in yourself.’

Will felt the strength flowing into him from Morann’s simple words. He went to the table, lifted up a pouch and began to unwrap the leather thongs. Then he drew out a knife that glinted green. ‘Yours, I believe.’

Morann’s delight was plain to see. He met Will’s eye as he took the blade. It was the knife that had been sharpened on the Whetstone of Tudwal, the blade that Chlu had stolen, the one that had later saved Will’s life.

‘Aye, that’s mine right enough. And I didn’t think I’d clap eyes on it again. How did you come by it?’

‘I’ll tell you that once you’ve told me how it was taken from you.’

‘I think you already have a good idea about that.’

‘I think maybe I do.’

Morann scratched at his stubbled chin. ‘When I came to Castle Corben all those months ago I told you I’d been asked to go into the Blessed Isle.’

Will nodded. ‘And I asked you to put the word about that you’d been sent to kill Duke Richard.’

‘And I did as you asked. But that course must have been against Maskull’s plans, for when I left you I headed north towards Caster to find a ship, and on the way I was waylaid. Now, no one easily waylays me, but…’

‘Chlu found a way.’

‘He did.’ Morann smiled ruefully at the memory, turning the blade over. ‘He’s a strong one, and he had the advantage
on me, you see. And that’s because at first I thought he was your good self.’

Will grunted. ‘That was a sorry mistake to make.’

‘Well, it was dark. And in a certain light he does have the outline of you and the same timbre of voice. There was a slight altercation, you might say. He took my knife from me and then killed me with it. Or so he thought.’

Will laughed. ‘You too, eh? That old blade is as worthless as they come. Did it ever cut anything?’

‘Oh, now. I won’t have that. The magic upon it causes it to cut only when it should. I’m grateful that it chose not to cut me, for that twin of yours plunged it hard into me above a dozen times before he ran off into the night.’

‘Then I’m not surprised he thought he’d done for you.’

‘Well, I guess that’s what he’s told his master.’

When they returned to the others, Morann showed everyone the magic blade. ‘Do you see how things still come full circle, Master Gwydion? If this is not proof of how magic clings on even now, then I’m the Queen of Elmet – which I’m not. So this old world is not wholly done for just yet!’

‘The question,’ Gwydion said ominously, ‘is how are we to prevent the collision of worlds?’

Morann sat down and put his elbows on the table and waited for Will to speak up, but he did not.

‘Well, if no one else wishes to offer a solution,’ the wizard said. ‘It seems to me that I have no choice but to try to vanquish Maskull once and for all.’

‘He’s wrought magical weapons with which to destroy you, Master Gwydion,’ Willow said. ‘I think you ought to be trying to kill him.’

‘Aye, it would be a fight to the death,’ Morann said. ‘Unless anyone can think of a way he may be constrained.’

No sooner were the loremaster’s words out than Gwydion reached inside his robes and threw onto the table a piece of
metal. It was heavy and maliciously wrought, the large fetter that Will had seen in Maskull’s chamber. ‘This is, I believe, an original – a first attempt which he then refined into the bracelets used to capture me.’

Will shifted uneasily. ‘You said you would never try to use Maskull’s weapons against him, no matter how desperate the strait.’

Willow said, ‘He won’t have to. Master Gwydion need have nothing to do with them, for I’ll gladly play the queen’s part and put them on Maskull myself – so long as the rest of you promise me that you’ll kill him when you catch him!’

Will sat back slowly, seeing just how desperate their strait had become. ‘No, Willow. The cost of failure—’

‘—is too high,’ Gwydion finished. ‘Your fiery courage does you much credit, Willow, but yours is not the way.’

Will looked from face to face, relieved. But then his concern hardened. ‘Then what? How do we attack Maskull?’

‘My friends, you have learned much, but you know little of wizardly matters. No member of the Ogdoad has ever tried to kill another. The very idea is repellent, and no occasion of necessity has ever arisen. There are sound reasons why even Maskull should not have tried, and sounder ones why we of the Ogdoad must not attempt to punish our betrayer with death, no matter what his crime. You see, there is a principle that magic and paradoxes make poor bedfellows.’

‘What does that mean?’ Will asked. His feelings closed against the argument. But Gwydion’s gesture called for a moment of indulgence. ‘For a lawmaker to kill a man because he has committed a murder – that is a paradox, do you see? So if a punishment of death were to be visited on that murderer using magic, then a number of unfortunate consequences would result, consequences that would in the end outweigh the justice of the case.’

‘But Maskull has no scruples about using magic to kill,’ Willow said. ‘If anyone deserves—’

Will sliced the air with his hand. ‘And
that’s
why he’s a sorcerer – he has no scruples about using magic to kill. Now, are you saying that we should all descend to sorcery?’

The Wortmaster, who had said nothing until now, broke his silence. ‘Of course we must not sink to his level. We do not believe, and have never believed, that an eye is worth any other eye, or that a tooth is worth any other tooth. We believe that eyes and teeth are better sitting in people’s heads, hey? Isn’t that better sense?’

Lotan growled at that, but otherwise held his peace.

Willow said, ‘Then what
are
we to do with Maskull? If Master Gwydion will not try to kill him, and killing him is beyond the powers of anyone but an Ogdoad wizard, what shall we do? It’s all very well having high principles, but unless you can stop him doing what he wants by throwing a barrel of kindness over him, then you’d better find another way.’

Morann calmed her. ‘We’ll just have to try again to send Maskull away somewhere. Somewhere even further away than last time. If there is any such place.’

‘Are you joking?’ Gort said. ‘He escaped from the Realm Below. If that endless maze of darkness could not hold him, I should like to know what manner of place can!’

Gwydion was tired and his hands, lifting momentarily from the carved arms of his chair, revealed a deep frustration. ‘Alas! No remedy is simple. Maskull’s jealousies have driven him to seek ever more arcane knowledge to use against me. He has wandered far in the world. Long ago he overreached me in the destructive arts. In his search he learned much and took to himself many cunning skills, though most would have been better left undisturbed. He took something of great value from a cave in the east, and many years passed before I found out what it was.’

‘Another weapon?’ Willow asked.

‘In fact it was just the opposite – a protection of sorts. It is said that whomsoever washes in the Spring of
Celamon shall henceforward only ever suffer one day of imprisonment.’

‘And did Maskull wash there?’ Will asked.

‘He has twice boasted to me of it. And I believe him.’

‘Well, it couldn’t have been a very thorough wash,’ Willow said. ‘What about the four years of peace that followed the battle at Verlamion? We only enjoyed peace because Maskull was locked up for all that time.’

Will nodded. ‘That’s right. It was four years that Maskull was exiled in the Realm Below. How does that square with his washing in the Spring of Celamon?’

Gwydion got up and slowly began to pace the room. ‘You must be more careful with your use of words – exile is by no means the same as imprisonment. Nor is wandering in a maze the same as being locked up. Maskull was not confined – he was merely elsewhere and lost.’

‘Surely this is splitting hairs,’ Will objected. ‘Mere words.’

‘Oh, not so. Not so.’ The wizard let his own words sink in, then he said, ‘Laws are made of words. Magic is brought into being by them, for they are ideas that have been given expressible form. Words, and the meaning and power of them, are what we all live by.’

Morann touched his shoulder indulgently. ‘What Master Gwydion is trying to say is that Maskull could not find a way out, but there
was
a way out.’

The wizard spread his hands. ‘That is why I did not try to trap Maskull into any kind of locked prison. I vanished him deeply – to a place so vast and labyrinthine that it should have taken him the rest of the Age to find his way out.’

‘That’s no use to us now, Master Gwydion,’ Willow said.

‘Maskull caught one of those poor, shadowy creatures who dwell in the Realm Below,’ Will said, remembering the ked. ‘He forced it to show him the way out, so his return is no mystery. But where can we put him that’s more secure than the Land of Annuin? Perhaps we can sail him to the
Rim of the World and cast him down into the space between sea and sky. Once he tumbles into the Desolate Sea that lies below—’