Whitemantle Page 36

But Edward was ready for him. ‘It is the false messenger!’ he cried. ‘Let it speak, for that is the only way we shall have done with it.’

  Edward’s voice was steel hard, his glance deadly, like a man making just so much time for an essential matter he has been neglecting but which now has to be cleared up. Will saw the dreadful darkness in that face and supposed that at any moment he might be seized and an order given that he be beheaded as a liar and a traitor.

  Edward shouted to the sky, as if to some hidden magician, ‘Let it speak now, or I shall pass on!’

  Will took his strange reception with incredulity, hardly understanding the manner that had come over Edward. ‘There has…there has been a bloody battle by the Castle of Sundials,’ he began. Then he went on to tell the story of the Awakenfield disaster as briefly and compassionately as he could, relaying all that had happened of which he had sure knowledge. He told of the death in battle of the duke, and the murder of Edmund, but as he came to speak of the way in which the queen had made her decoration for the city’s gate, Edward’s strange pent-up expression exploded into impatience.

  He addressed the air a second time. ‘Hear me, sorcerer! I have heard enough from this thing! Whatever it may be, let it speak no more on the matter of my family, or I will cleave it in two parts!’

  Will was staggered by the madness that seemed to have overcome the warrior. ‘Please listen to me, Edward, your father is dead—’

  ‘Begone, I say, meddlesome spirit! Trouble my days no more!’ He tilted his face again to the sky. ‘I will have no more of this. Do you hear me, sorcerer?’

  And with that he cast over Will a black powder poured out from the heel of his gauntlet, a powder that blinded and choked and threw Will to his knees. And while Will groaned and staggered, the new Duke of Ebor mounted up and led his people onward at the trot.

  Will’s face burned as if it had been smitten with hot ashes. He rolled and gasped, then found his feet and ran like a madman. And perhaps it was only that insane dash that saved him from being trampled into the grass by Edward’s haughty escort, for they were used to despising that which their master despised. And perhaps it was only the presence of the escort that saved Will, for they screened him from the malice of the common soldiers.

  He ran like a lunatic across the boggy ground, making for the river. He threw himself into the icy water to thrash like so much dirty laundry against the river stones in hopes of washing that acrid powder away.

  ‘You’re no King Arthur!’ he cried, cursing himself. ‘You’re no Master Gwydion! Just a half-man set to flight by a handful of sorcerer’s powder! What hope is there now?’

  His impotence turned to rage and his rage to violence as he struggled to the banks of the Lugg and tore up fistfuls of cool grass and slammed his toes into the muddy earth. There he lay, caring little for the world, until the cheers and shouts in the distance prickled him more than the slowly subsiding pain in his eyes. He walked across the green, seeing now the withered yellow blooms as they sagged and browned on their stalks. They had been ripped from their bulbs by ill-devised magic and drooped, dying in their thousands. Humbled and hurt, slimed with mud, a pauper in his weeds, he went to sit in the branches of a tree, to see what wonders might come next.

  But if there was magic in the air now it was none of Will’s making, for the young duke was giving an oration to his army, and Will saw that seated on a horse to Edward’s left was his youngest brother, Richard, and to his right his other brother, George. They were boys still. Young boys. Too young for battle. Yet they were armoured, and being shown off to the army as encouragement.

  Will dripped and shivered, defeated. He fumed blackly, thinking out what had just come to pass. The battlestone was working hard on Edward now, but this matter had the whiff of another kind of sorcery about it. Even now it was hard to say if Edward truly understood what had been told to him. Had a spell been cast upon his comprehension? He behaved like a man who had already been told some twisted version of the truth, a man who had already made up his mind what to believe…

  And then there was the powder. What knight rode to his destiny with a glove full of sorcerer’s powder? It was as if Edward had been forewarned to expect a magical intervention. As if he had been counselled about what to do, and given the counter-measure.

  Will squeezed the sourness from his eyes. There had been weak magic in the powder, a slapdash formulation that had largely run to ground by the time it had been hurled in his face. A spell of blinding and burning, but incompetently made. He took a crumb of comfort from the fact that, by comparison, his own efforts had not been so crude. But still he had failed, for here he was up a tree and catching cold, while the man of the moment was bewitching the crowd.

  Will’s teeth chattered as he tried to tune his ear to Edward’s words. When he looked skyward, it was in amazement, for where there had been one sun, shining low down in the south, now there were three!

  Three suns blazing? How could that be? It was a trick of the moist air, nothing more, a phenomenon of sunlight penetrating the mists. It could not be otherwise for there was no feel of glamour about it, though the men who gawped at it were ready to believe too quickly in omens.

  Will tilted his head, shaded his eyes, and almost fell from his perch. Great consternation spread among the soldiers below. Many knelt and clasped their hands together or stared at one another in vast dismay. But when the hubbub died down, Edward’s voice carried clearer and he told the assembled thousands that this was indeed a sign that had been foretold. A sign from Almighty God, a wonder carried down from Heaven, a sign of the glorious afterlife now being enjoyed by the previous Duke of Ebor.

  A bell tolled dully in Will’s heart, for now he saw just how deeply the whisperings of the Sightless Ones had polluted Edward’s spirit. He was repeating the dangerous vision that was laid out in the Great Lie.

  ‘Dazzle mine eyes!’ Edward cried, looking now to the brilliant light. ‘Three suns in a clear-shining sky! Three suns that are to signify the three remaining sons of Ebor! See, my brothers! These that are yet boys – they are not afraid to die, for they see how the pearly sky brings forth for us our omen of victory!’

  And now all who watched the three suns saw the flanking lights glow the brighter, then fade.

  ‘See how three suns become one again! We will not fail you, our father! We shall fight for you, and if we win yours shall be the glory! And if we die we shall live again alongside you in Heaven!’

  And with those rapturous words, and many another, did Edward, Duke of Ebor, set the blaze then stoke up the roaring fire of his army. He exhorted the men of his battalions to pass southward down the Slaver road, to carry arms between the heights that in the time of the Brean kings had fortresses set upon their crests like crowns. Those hills frowned down upon the narrow way through Yatton Mystery, and though not a man who travelled that old Slaver road knew if he would live to see the sun go down again, not a man cared.

  With a heavy heart, Will watched the army march away, watched the last of them, set boiling by oratory, leave the muster field and head joyfully towards their fate, convinced by a mere refraction of the light.

  Words, words, simple words. Was that all it took to turn the minds of men? Magic of a new sort that encouraged them to drop the most obvious of truths and set their hearts upon the most self-serving of notions? So it seemed to Will. Those words were far more than they seemed, and he knew it. They were like trigger spells, set to trip the catch of a furnace door that held back a flaming desire to believe.

  ‘You all deserve to die!’ he shouted after them, shaking his fist. ‘Lambs! Calves! Has not one of you even half a mind to question? Must you believe in every sly and designing fancy that is fed to you? I hate your stupidity more than you will ever know, do you hear me?’

  He began to climb down from his tree, still muttering and railing against the battlestone’s victory over the common herd. He shouted into the face of a woman who stared at him in surprise. ‘They do not care fo
r hard truth, only soft lies that they think will help them better! But they are being led away from the true path and no mistake! What’s the matter with all of you? Have you no wills of your own?’

  But the woman hurried off in alarm and no one else would listen to a lunatic. Will’s anger at the foolishness of others began to be tempered by an anger that was directed at himself. He had meant to warn Edward not to engage the enemy, but instead to let Gwydion broker a peace. He had meant to say that this enemy was in fact a reasonable man, Jasper of Pendrake, a man horrified by what had already happened, a man convinced that the war had gone on long enough. But in the event he had said nothing.

  Will sat down in the trampled field and laughed in despair. He had meant to do so much, but in all things he had failed. There was no one to hear him now, save the old men, women and boys whose job it was to dismantle the camp and make ready the baggage train. If Will were to mount up on his palfrey now and ride as fast as the patient plodder would go, he could not possibly reach the stone until battle had been joined. The long way around these wooded hills allowed of no alternative. He would have to tag onto the tail of Edward’s host as it passed like sand through the waist of an hourglass. He would have to hope that time enough remained while the army took position to slip through to the iron tree.

  There was magic, but no spell he knew would help – and there were drawbacks.

  But why break his neck to reach the battlestone? To blunder into things again and probably get himself cut to pieces? Or worse, to mess up Gwydion’s complicated plan and get his wife killed? Half-man! the stone had taunted him. Half-man! Half-man indeed!

  All desire drained from him. He looked up into the milky sky and felt the warmth of the sun playing upon his face. He closed his eyes. The tang of woodsmoke was on the air. He heard the reedy voices of children running about among the tents. And he knew that the stone had struck to the very marrow of his bones. All it takes to make a ship founder is for the steersman to take his hand off the tiller, he told himself. No matter how hard it seems, and how weary and hopeless I am, I have to try one more time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE SECOND DUEL

  When Will had calmed himself he went to an open space to draw power again from the earth. He knew he must replenish what he had wasted, but there was an uneasy reluctance in the ground. Maybe he was too close to the Heligan lign. Or more likely the fault was with him, for he had asked aid of the earth four times in as many days, and that was something he had never done before.

  Where his feet sunk into the sodden turf the water welled warm. When he came to his senses, he knelt down to touch the muddy pools with his fingers. They steamed gently and confirmed what his toes had already told him – that a battle was almost upon them. And now, as he walked back towards the camp he felt a prickle of warning.

  Hundreds of waggons were lined up – the Ebor baggage train, waiting to receive tentage. Win or lose today, Edward’s army would not rest here tonight.

  As he came by the tail of a waggon drawn up where his horse had been tethered he heard laughter. It was not unlike his own laugh, but mocking. And when he turned, he saw himself looking back.

  ‘Step closer to the mirror, little brother.’

  Fear gripped him and suddenly everything fell into place. ‘It had to be you.’

  ‘Or…’ again that cruel grin and a pointing finger,’…you.’

  The sulphur sourness of misspent magic flared in Will’s mouth and nose. Then, with a twist and a flourish of mouse-brown, the cloak and the fair braided hair were gone. A black-clad figure was eyeing him instead, and in its hand was a small bird-hunter’s crossbow.

  Will stared at his twin. ‘You spoke with Edward. He thought you were me.’

  ‘It was not a difficult disguise to put on.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘Can’t you guess? To beware the one who would come to him moments before the fight. “He will be dressed in my flesh,” said I. “A demon messenger sent by the sorcerer, Maskull. A copy of me, albeit a good one. But no more than smoke and mirrors. He will tell you lies, Friend Edward. Don’t listen to him.”’

  ‘But you told him all the lies already.’ Will’s blood boiled as he realized how he had been robbed of the chance to bring the terrible truth to Edward.

  Chlu laughed. ‘Of course, I told him all about his father’s valiant fight, and how victory was snatched from him by the perfidy of his enemies. I explained how Duke Richard with his dying breath implored me to bring the news to his beloved son so that he might be avenged. “Do not rest, my son, until they are all dead. Every last one of them. Then I shall lie easy in my grave.” Oh, he’s ready for the fight now.’

  ‘You even gave him the sorcerer’s powder for his glove.’

  ‘To banish the demon. Did it sting your eyes?’ Chlu laughed, but then the laugh caught in his throat and he said, ‘But it’s really down to me to banish you, isn’t it?’

  Chlu raised the crossbow, and in the same moment Will reached behind him and slid a tent pole out of the cart, launching it across his shoulder like a spear in a single movement at Chlu’s head. It seemed that the pole made contact, for Chlu raised a hand to ward it off, but it was too late – the crossbow had already shot.

  The bolt caught Will’s splayed left hand and nailed it momentarily to his chin. He pulled it away in horror, but as soon as he clasped the fingers of his right hand around the bolt head, he was hit by a stunning red beam. He heard himself howl. It felt as if he had been kicked in the jaw by a horse then thrown against a wall. He fought unconsciousness, knowing that if he gave in to it he was a dead man, but an indescribable feeling of dislocation overcame him, and he found himself sprawling upon grass, staring up at a sky that was suddenly all dense cloud and threatening rain.

  What had happened? Panic fear drenched him. He suddenly thought that he had been carried somehow into that other world, the one that he feared. What if it was so?

  But no, he had felt this strange sensation before.

  When?

  He jumped up, ready for the fight, heart pounding, muscles tensed, then he stumbled to his knees again. Chlu was gone. The entire camp was gone. Everything was different.

  His eyesight was swimming, so he shook his head to clear it. When he looked around he saw dry winter grasses shivering, rabbit droppings and sheep-cropped turf, bushes of wind-torn gorse – wherever this was it was high up. A mossy hillside, cold and windy, and an angry sky that was very different from the one he had left behind.

  He’s vanished me, he thought. The beam – he’s landed a vanishing spell on me. But where’s it taken me to? And how?

  Anger surged through him, prompted by his own weakness and the irony of having been caught by the very same trap that had been proposed for Maskull. I should have been on guard against such an attack, he thought. But at least I’m not on the Baerberg…

  He felt disconnected from the world, and when he looked down at his hands they struck him as strange. There was no pain in his wounded hand, and hardly any blood yet, just a ragged hole in the web of skin between finger and thumb. He touched his jawbone. Instead of a bloody hole there was a dimple that felt as if it had been closed up by heat. He had been lucky. But wait – he looked again at his outstretched hands. He had the strongest feeling that they were on his wrists the wrong way round. And what was worse, he could not remember if his thumbs should be on the inside or the out.

  What’s happened? he thought, a grotesque fear surging up inside him. What’s he done to me?

  But there was a more pressing matter. Cursing, he jammed the shaft of the bolt into a joint in the rock and, with a grimace, leaned on it. The shaft snapped, and he was able to pull it out through the wound.

  ‘By the moon and stars…’

  The dart’s head was a chip of heavy, black stone. He looked at it, then at the dark ledges that protruded from the ground nearby. So that was it! There was no mystery about what had happened – this had been the trigg
er for the vanishing spell.

  A new suspicion made him look to the south. It was hard to tell, but it seemed from the shafts of light that played over the patchwork of farms and woods that the sun was lower and further east than it had been moments ago.

  ‘Change place, change time,’ he reminded himself. ‘Gywdion said that time could go backwards, but can it do that after a vanishing spell? If it can, that gives me more time!’

  He looked at his hands again, still unable to recall which way round they should be. He closed his eyes, but that only made it worse. It was maddening.

  ‘You’re just knocked a little silly,’ he told himself. ‘You’ll be alright in a moment or two.’

  The ground was astonishing here, like a miniature forest. Gort would have delighted in it, for it was springy as a mattress, green with mosses and spotted with pale lichens. The sky was huge with a glory bursting through the clouds, sending beams of sunlight down over the earth.

  As he scrambled over the summit he saw what looked like the skeleton of a building. It stood a little below on the shoulder of the hill. Beyond it, long views stretched east and south and west over what must have been three or four earldoms. The curious building was only a shell, but it was not a ruin: four sturdy posts supported a pitched roof of wooden shingles. It was not meant to be a barn because it was open on all four sides, and there was nothing stored inside except some sheaves of damp and rotting straw and a great lattice of timbers stacked higher than a man into which old tree branches and dried gorse bushes had been packed. When Will approached he saw that the ground was shadowed black like that around a charcoal burner’s mound.

  Nearby, and unseen at first, was a stone-built hovel, no more than a windowless den set hard against the stone outcrop from which it seemed to have grown. Pale smoke trailed from a chimney, and when Will pushed open the door he found signs that the place had been recently occupied. No one was at home, but it was warm inside and untidy and it smelled unexpectedly of tar. In its way, the place was homely, a welcome relief from the bleakness outside. Wyrmstone glowed on the hearth, and lumps of it were stacked ready nearby. There were cooking pots and rude furniture pushed against the walls – a table and benches where two or three men might sit down together. There was even a sleeping place covered with sheepskins. In the opposite corner was the bucket that accounted for the tarry smell. A wooden handle was sticking out of it.