The Giants' Dance Page 5

  ‘What’s the favour you wanted to ask me?’

  Gwydion leaned on his staff. ‘I now know what must be done. No matter what the dangers, I must find the battlestones one at a time. I must either drain them or bind them, for I dare not confront them as you did the Doomstone.’

  ‘How many more have you found?’

  ‘In the past four years? None.’

  ‘None?’ The news was shocking.

  ‘Without your talent to guide me I have been blind.’ Gwydion opened his hands in a gesture that showed there was no other answer to the problem.

  ‘You should have called on me,’ Will told him. Then he saw the trap the wizard had set for him, and added, ‘Before Bethe was born I would gladly have come with you.’

  Gwydion met his gaze knowingly. ‘Would you?’

  He stared sullenly into the western haze, noting the starlings and how they flew. Their movements said there was something wrong with the air, something nasty blowing in from the Wolds.

  ‘You know I would have done anything to help you, Gwydion.’

  ‘But would you have wanted to?’ The wizard pulled up his staff and gestured westward. ‘I see you can taste the bitterness that lies upon the west wind. Do you smell that ghastly taint of burning? It is human flesh. We must go now. Straight away. To the hamlet of Little Slaughter to see what a fatal weakness in the spirit of a powerful man has done.’

  Will’s heart sickened to hear the words that he had known were coming since before sunrise. ‘I’m a husband and a father now. I can’t just leave without a word. It’s harvest time, Gwydion, and I promised Willow I wouldn’t be long.’

  His words were reasonable, sane by any standard. But they already sounded hollow in his ears.

  As the morning wore on, the August sun rose hot on their backs. Will saw its golden beams glittering on the headwaters of the Evenlode stream, and by midday they were across it and turning south, so that the sun began to fill the ups and downs of their path with shimmering patches and pools.

  They went a league or two out of their way to the south and passed many folk on the road. Gwydion made a sign to them and warned Will to silence. Some people seemed to see Will but not the wizard. Some seemed to see neither. Others turned about as if alarmed, or at least puzzled by some unaccountable presence. Occasionally there were those who embraced Gwydion as if they had been met by a long-dead kinsman, and to these Gwydion gave a word in friendship and sometimes a token of reward.

  They came down to a little river and saw a bridge-keeper’s shack. Here two men in red livery guarded the bridge. Arms had once been painted on a board but they had faded and peeled away.

  Neither the keeper of the Windrush crossing nor the two men-at-arms seemed to notice them, though a witless beggar put his hands out for a blessing and Gwydion clasped his hand briefly as he passed.

  ‘Welcome, Master Jack-in-a-box!’ the beggar said.

  ‘Keep up!’ Gwydion warned as Will looked pitifully at the beggar’s sores.

  ‘Has he no friends to take care of him?’ Will asked angrily. ‘Is he a man or a dog? And why is he clad in such filthy rags? Is there no Sister here? What sort of place is this?’

  ‘We are at the village of Lowe, and shall soon be through it,’ Gwydion said.

  ‘Can nothing be done for the people here?’

  ‘This village belongs to an ill-starred fellow whose company is best avoided. This lord has driven the local Wise Woman away, and for that his people will one day murder him, for it is a true rede that “by the least of men shall the best of men always be judged”.’

  There were cottages clustered here, with folk sitting at their doors. Half a dozen dirty children played in the way, and the people seemed odd. They made no acknowledgment of Will’s greetings as he passed. One old woman, however, received Gwydion as a subject would receive a king. She gave him a bundle which was put into the wizard’s crane bag which was instantly passed to Will to carry. As they left the village and rose up the hill high above the mossy thatches Will looked back down into the valley to where the brimming waters of the Windrush shone in brash daylight. There was a large manor some way to the right of the bridge.

  ‘Do not look at it,’ Gwydion said, and pulled him onward.

  ‘But how did the village get that way?’

  ‘It is a place of poor aspect. Land-blighted. Not every village in the Realm is as well set as Nether Norton. Many do not have a kindly lord. You should think yourself fortunate that the Vale is a place without any ruler, for some delight in making themselves overmighty while they may.’

  Their journey, Gwydion had said, would not take them far, but they had already walked many a long league and Will’s feet ached. They were going to the place where the violet light had burned, but it was ever the wizard’s way not to go anywhere very directly. He took account of the flows in the land, choosing ancient paths, or striding along great arcs that swirled from hill to saddle and then swept on along the spring-lines of an upland or plunged down into the cool heart of a wood. Always the wizard’s staff would swing out in a striding rhythm, seeking narrow deer paths, and more often than not Will found himself following in his guide’s footsteps instead of walking at his shoulder as he preferred. Seldom did they follow the ways used by men, though sometimes they found dusty tracks, or a line of gnarled trees, or a trackway that meandered among planted fields. By now Will had begun to worry about Willow and his regret at their not having said a proper farewell was eating at him. He went through what he would have liked to have said, then he pictured his daughter crawling across the grass while her mother gathered windfall apples, and that image brought him back to the events of the night and to the matter in hand.

  There were dangers. There was no denying that, for Maskull was implicated. And no denying the bubbling excitement in Will’s belly that others might have feared to call fear.

  When he paused to take stock he saw people in the distance, working in the fields or making their way to market. As soon as Gwydion saw them he turned away and passed into the dark shade of a wood. He whispered to himself, nor was he whispering blessings. From time to time he would put his hands flat on the smooth grey trunk of a tall beech tree to mutter an incantation or to ask the air for directions. He stooped to crumble soil between his fingers, then to drink a handful of cool water which he found bubbling fresh from the earth. Will thought of old Wortmaster Gort, whose own skills upon the land were a delight. But he had once said that a true wizard such as Gwydion knew all parts of the Realm, from having walked every step of it a dozen and one times. He said that Gwydion could tell from the taste of a handful of water, or the feel of a pinch of dust, where he stood to the nearest league, just as carriers upon the Great North Road might know how far they had gone just by listening to the way people said certain words.

  ‘How far is it now?’ Will asked.

  ‘Not far.’

  When Will began to feel hungry, Gwydion plunged into a wood and brought out a great armful of morels. They had a delicious taste. And again, down beside a stream where willows grew he found several white fleshy growths on the tree trunks that looked like giant ears and tasted like they looked but which filled the belly well.

  Here there were many dry-stone walls and sheep meadows, and ahead a country of windy heath on which the bracken was slowly turning russet. Gwydion halted as they approached one of the ancient roads that he detested so much. Will looked up and down it, finding that his eye could follow it a long way to north and south. It was dead straight and did not yield to the earth in any way. Though old and broken in places now, still it scarred the land like a knife wound.

  ‘Slave road!’ Gwydion said with disgust as he hurried to the far side. ‘The straightest of them, built here fifty generations ago, when the Slaver empire took the Isle by force. Its name now is the Fosse. Do you see how it still works its dividing influence upon the land?’

  After so long following Gwydion, Will’s feet had learned how to tread a true path throug
h the land. When he planted his feet and felt for the earth streams, he could sense the way the power was turned and pent up as if into brackish pools by the ancient highway. He could see what Gwydion meant about the village of Lowe being a place that was land-blighted. He wondered at how his talent had sharpened and matured during the past few years. What could that mean?

  After crossing the Fosse their own path trended more southerly. The land began to open out and there was more rising than falling. They began to cross a wide sweep of planted country that rose up into the higher Wolds. At length, Gwydion stopped and danced magic, calling out in the true tongue that there might now be an opening. In moments a path between the briars appeared where no path had been before. They went along it, and Will felt a tingle in his bones, the same he had felt when entering the Vale. At that time there had been joy in his heart, but not now, for the smell of burning had been rising on the wind and he began to taste something unpleasant at the back of his throat. Fine grit stuck to his lips and gathered in the corners of his eyes. The track before them and the leaves on the trees and bushes were dusty. Now they gave way to leaves that were rain spotted and again to leaves washed clean by a recent downpour.

  Will thought of the great towering cloud that had risen high into the sky last night. It was as if a column of rain had been sent deliberately to damp the fires down. The stream that came from the higher land was running milkygrey with dust, carrying black flecks on its surface. Gwydion stooped to look at it, but this time he did not dip his hand in or try to drink.

  ‘This is the valley of the Eyne Brook,’ he said at last. ‘Yonder lies Fossewyke. We are nearing our goal.’

  Will looked at the scum of ash that floated on the brook’s surface. He soon found the reason for it – the water had bubbled across a great heath that had been turned black by fire. When they ventured into the valley the soil was warm underfoot and smoking in places even though there had been rain heavy enough to douse it.

  ‘Steam,’ Gwydion said, nodding at the wisps. ‘Nothing could have survived here last night.’

  As they journeyed to the heart of the devastation, Will found himself gagging at the acrid smell. All the trees nearby had been smashed down, their trunks charred black on one side. Everything was layered in thin ash. In places it had drifted into banks that looked like so many grey snowdrifts. The woods seemed to have been brushed flat by a tremendous wind. Nothing green remained. Nothing stood properly upright. All around was a steamy haze, heaps of roasted dust and twisted rock rubble.

  Will gouged at his eyes to clear them as they came to what had been a fish pond. Its bed was still too warm to walk on. It had been dried so suddenly that the fish had been boiled alive and lay simmered on the cracked clay. Will stretched out his hands and felt the remains of ovenlike heat. Now he could see why Gwydion had not striven to get here sooner.

  Everything around them was strange and terrifying. He walked into a stinking ruin, staggered on after Gwydion over the hot ground until they came to a rise. A great bank of loose, smouldering earth reared up before them, and beyond stretched a curtain of smoke. Ash and cinders were raw and sharp underfoot. They scraped and crunched under Will’s feet as he climbed, sending up dust and a vile smell. He tried not to breathe but then as he reached the top of the bank he gasped, for beyond was a sight that he had not expected – a huge, smoking crater.

  ‘What could have done this?’ he whispered, looking across the shimmering waste.

  ‘Welcome,’ Gwydion said emptily, ‘to the village of Little Slaughter.’

  The whole village had been obliterated. But how? Ten thousand lightning strokes would not have been enough to cause such destruction. Nothing was left of cottage, granary, alehouse, mill. Everything had been smashed to powder and the powder scattered for half a league.

  ‘There was a battlestone here,’ Will said slowly. ‘A battlestone that someone tried to break. Is that it?’

  Gwydion looked at him for a moment but said nothing.

  Will went as close to the hole as he dared. It was still red hot, and fuming. He could not see how deep it was, but it was so big around that all of Nether Norton could have fitted inside. He felt numbed, drained of all feeling. His mind raced as he tried to understand what could have happened. When he knelt to touch the dust at the crater’s edge he saw there the brightness of what had been molten iron; now it shone like a solidified pool of the Wortmaster’s most precious quicksilver. He could not speak or tear his gaze away for a long time.

  Gwydion laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I am sorry you had to see this.’

  All around were ashes, but here and there away from the crater they saw small signs that this place had been home to many dozens of folk – a horseshoe, a burned chair, a child’s rag doll.

  A fist of fear clutched at Will’s stomach, and he suddenly looked up into the wizard’s face. ‘I remember Preston Mantles and the lad, Waylan, who Maskull mistook for me. This ruin was meant for Nether Norton, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It might have been.’ Gwydion closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. ‘And it may still happen.’

  Will stood up and walked away. He wanted to run, to run from the wizard, to run far away. And when his thoughts touched Willow and Bethe the blood in his heart froze solid. He was scared to open his mind in case too many terrors rushed in on him at once. Instead he wandered wherever his feet might lead him and cried for the people of the lost village, and his tears fell upon the wounded earth.

  In return the earth threw up an unlooked-for gift. He bent to look at a reaping hook that was lying on the ground nearby. It was rusted as red as hearth iron and the handle was black, turned wholly to charcoal. It flaked away as he tried to pick it up. But then a blood redness caught at his tear-blurred eyes. Something was down there in the dust at his feet. It was a little figure, carved in some material that was not harmed by fire. When he picked it up it was warm in his hand. It was a stone fish.

  He looked around, suspecting sorcery. This little fish was so very like his own in size and shape. But whereas his own had an eye of red set in green, this one had an eye of green set in red. On its side were marks he could not read, but they were just like those on his own talisman, and it bore the same sigil of three triple-sided figures set one within another. Hardly knowing why, he closed his hand over it as Gwydion came to stand beside him. The wizard signalled that they should leave, for there was nothing else to be done here.

  Will said, ‘You knew last night that something as terrible as this was happening, didn’t you?’

  Gwydion fixed his eyes on Will’s own. ‘As soon as you showed me the light in the sky I knew that a vicious revenge had been taken. I did not know precisely how, but it was clear that we were already too late to stop it.’

  ‘Then it was a battlestone?’

  ‘You are wrong.’

  ‘But what else could have done this?’

  ‘This was the work of a fireball.’ The wizard took his little knife from its sheath and showed it to Will. ‘I have spoken of this before. It is made from star-iron, the only thing of metal I carry, for it was neither wrested from the earth nor roasted from the rocks by men. This iron came down from above, just like the fireball that destroyed Little Slaughter. Have I not told you about the great, turning dome of the sky? How it is pierced in many places by holes through which we can see the brilliance that lies in the Beyond? Those holes are what we call the stars. It is said that nothing lives on the far side of the dome of the sky. There is only a great furnace that goes on forever, a parched realm of heat, of blinding light and searing fireballs.’

  Will nodded, seeing what the wizard was driving at. ‘And sometimes it happens that a fireball falls through a star hole and it’s then what we call a shooting star.’

  ‘Correct. Mostly these lumps burn away in the upper airs. But sometimes they are big enough to fall to earth as pieces of star-iron. Such iron was once rarer than gold. And in the days before men learned how to burn iron from the bones of the earth t
he finest magical tools were made from it.’

  ‘Is that what happened here?’ Will coughed and rubbed at his eyes as he looked around again. ‘A shooting star landed on the village? A lump of star-iron? But it must have been as big as a house to have done this. How could a thing so big fall through something so tiny as a star?’

  ‘Stars are not tiny. They are far away – nearly seventeen hundred leagues, which is half a world away. Each star is a hole, a great round window like the pupil of your eye. It opens as it rises and closes as it sets. And the biggest stars at their largest are large indeed – as many as twenty paces across when fully open. I know, for I have sailed to the very rim of the Western Deeps and stood upon the cataract at the end of the world. There the stars seem as big as the sun does here, and they move at great speed.’

  Will listened as Gwydion spoke. He shook the dust from his scalp as he tried to make sense of what he was being told. Stars that were giant eyes twenty or more paces across. Great holes through which fiery lumps of iron flew down to kill whole villages of people…It made no sense. It made no sense at all.

  He said, ‘It’s strange to me that Little Slaughter should have been hit so exactly.’

  ‘Do not imagine this was a chance misfortune.’

  ‘Then the fireball was directed here? By…Maskull?’

  The wizard nodded. ‘And the purpose of the thunderstorm we watched afterwards was to put out these fires. The storm was whipped up so that folk in other villages of the Wolds would believe as you tried to believe – that the noise and light were no more than a particularly violent summer storm, that what happened here was none of their concern.’

  Will thought again of Willow and Bethe. He said, ‘Gwydion, I must go home right away.’

  But the wizard took his arm. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is the very last thing you should do.’

  ‘But…if Maskull’s free again and in the world…’

  Gwydion took himself a few paces apart and conjured a small bird from one of his sleeves. He gentled its head with his finger, kissed it or perhaps murmured to it, then threw it up into the sky where it took wing and quickly flew away to the east.