Robert Carter - Whitemantle

For Andrew Ritchie – the Brompton man – who gave me back my fitness.

‘I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, in order to keep it out of as many things as possible.’

Sean O’Casey

The Plough and the Stars

Cover Page

Title Page Whitemantle Book Three of the Language Of Stones Robert Carter

Epigraph ‘I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, in order to keep it out of as many things as possible.’ Sean O’Casey The Plough and the Stars

PROLOGUE

PART ONE THE ENCHANTED CHAIR

CHAPTER ONE DOUBLE DEPETRIFICATION

CHAPTER TWO TRINOVANT

CHAPTER THREE THE BIER OF ETERNITY

CHAPTER FOUR THE VANE

CHAPTER FIVE ‘KILL! KILL!’

CHAPTER SIX ONCE A FELLOW…

CHAPTER SEVEN LEIR’S LEGACY

CHAPTER EIGHT MAGOG AND GOGMAGOG

PART TWO THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT BE KING

CHAPTER NINE THE LAMB HYTHE YALE

CHAPTER TEN THE WINDOWLESS CHAMBER

CHAPTER ELEVEN PROMISES AND PIECRUSTS

CHAPTER TWELVE THE KING OF PENTACLES

CHAPTER FOURTEEN PROPHECIES, LIBELS AND DREAMS

PART THREE ON THE SEVENTH DAY

CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE FAST-FLOWING STREAM

CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE SLEEPLESS FIELD

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN MUCKLE GATE

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN THE DOOMSTONE OF THE WEST

PART FOUR THE END OF ALL THINGS

CHAPTER NINETEEN THE IRON TREE

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE SUNS

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE THE SECOND DUEL

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO THE STONE THAT WAS HEALED

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE EDWARD

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR A BROKEN LAND

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE WHITE SNOW, RED RIVER

EPILOGUE

AUTHOR’S HISTORICAL NOTE

About the Author

By Robert Carter

Copyright

About the Publisher

Whitemantle is the third novel in the Language of Stones cycle. The first two, called The Language of Stones , and The Giants’ Dance , recount the story of Willand, an ordinary boy who stands on the threshold of manhood. On the day that Will turns thirteen, the wizard Gwydion takes him away from home and explains certain extraordinary prophecies that concern the third and final coming of an ancient hero-king called Arthur. Gwydion suggests that Will himself is that predicted incarnation, but Will does not want to believe it.

However, as Will’s adventures progress dark forces are seen to be at work, chiefly embodied in the person of Maskull, a ruthless sorcerer and Gwydion’s arch-enemy, and the Sightless Ones, a sinister order of tax collectors who squeeze the common people and try to persuade them to believe in the mind-enslaving ‘Great Lie’. Gwydion is at pains to hide Will’s true identity from the world, and so the boy is lodged in secret, first with the fearsome hog-headed Lord Strange, then with the family of Duke Richard of Ebor, where he is educated in lordly ways. Will also comes to learn ‘the redes’ – the rules that govern magic – and he meets a girl named Willow who becomes his friend. He is also befriended by the House of Ebor’s venerable herbalist, Wortmaster Gort, and he stands up to Edward, the Duke of Ebor’s wilful heir, eventually winning his respect.

But while Will is learning, the Realm is slipping into war, for the present king is descended from a usurper, and there are many who believe he is not the rightful king. In fact, King Hal is being controlled by his beautiful but greedy queen, Mag, and her violent ally, Duke Edgar of Mells. Set against their party is the House of Ebor and its allies, who believe that Duke Richard must be recognized as sovereign. Duke Richard himself is content to wait until the sickly Hal dies, for the latter has no heir, but when the queen falls unexpectedly pregnant, rumours begin to circulate that the child has been fathered by the Duke of Mells as part of a scheme to keep Richard from his just deserts. The gauntlet of conflict is thrown down.

Meanwhile Will, who is now fifteen, has begun to see that, whatever dukes and earls may think, the world is actually maintained by magic, and the real reason the Realm is sliding into war is a magical one. Gwydion tells him of something called ‘the lore’, an ancient network of nine ‘ligns’, or earth streams, extending throughout the Isles, which carries power to an array of standing stones. Each of these ‘battlestones’ contains great harm and has the power, when awoken, to draw men to battle. Gwydion also explains that he and Maskull are the last remaining members of a wizardly council of nine whose task it once was to direct the progress of the world along the true path. But as Age succeeded Age and magic gradually left the world their numbers shrank, until there are now only two wizards left. At last, Maskull has revealed himself as ‘the betrayer’. He has turned to sorcery and is now directing the future along a path of his own choosing – but it is a path that will lead to a final Age of slavery and war.

Will and Gwydion set out to thwart Maskull by finding and uprooting the deadly battlestones. Will shows an extraordinary sensitivity to the lorc, and after many heroic struggles he locates the controlling ‘Doomstone’ in the town of Verlamion. There a bloody battle is halted when Will uses a talisman, a green stone fish he has had since birth, to crack the stone, while Gwydion fights a magical duel against Maskull. When Will confronts Maskull the sorcerer tells him, ‘I made you, I can unmake you just as easily,’ but then disappears as Gwydion lands a vanishing spell on him and transports him down into the Realm Below. In the end, the king and Duke Richard are reconciled. Will is rewarded and returns home with the greatest prize of all – Willow. But his origins, and his ultimate destiny, remain shrouded in mystery.

The second novel, The Giants’ Dance , takes up the tale more than four years later. Will and Willow are now nineteen and living at Nether Norton, Will’s home village, with their baby daughter, Bethe. One summer’s night Will sees the skies begin to blaze with a lurid purple light. Immediately he summons the wizard.

Will has recognized the purple light as that of Maskull’s magic, and when they investigate they find the village of Little Slaughter has been smashed to powder. In the ruins Will finds a little fish carved in red stone, the counterpart to his own talisman. Gwydion says that Maskull, who has escaped from the Realm Below, has directed a shooting star down onto the village. He asks for Will’s help once again.

Soon they meet with loremaster Morann who reports a rumour that the Doomstone Will once cracked has now repaired itself. But as they struggle to discover the whereabouts of the other battlestones and so hold back the tides of war, Will becomes the target of a killer, and realizes that Willow and Bethe have been brought into jeopardy also. After the battle they have all been dreading takes place at Blow Heath, Will finds himself in Ludford Casde, where Willow brings him his green talisman. Meanwhile, the political situation has continued to bend to the lorc. Edgar, Duke of Mells, who died at Verlamion, has passed his tide to his son, Henry. The latter now schemes with Queen Mag to end the agreement that saw King Hal rule with the Duke of Ebor as his ‘Lord Protector’. While the queen’s forces besiege Duke Richard at Ludford, Will becomes greatly affected by the lorc. He tries to find the battlestone that is located there, but is afflicted by madness, and a second attempt is made on his life by the dark-robed assassin who visited him once before. When Will admits to Gwydion that the red fish talisman he found at Little Slaughter has gone, the wizard says that the village was destroyed because Will’s would-be killer once lived there. He is called Chlu, ‘the Dark Child’, and the village was obliterated to make Gwydion believe Chlu was no more, whereas in reality he had become Maskull’s agent.