Robert Carter - The Giants’ Dance

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 the 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.

‘Recall, if you will, the battle of Verlamion, and the moment when Maskull vanished. Do you know where I sent him? It was into the Realm Below. He has remained for years lost there, trapped in that great maze that was made by the fae when they withdrew from the light. My hope and belief was that Maskull would take far longer to find his way clear of those myriad chambers. I thought that in that time I would be able to solve the problem of the battlestones, but my hopes have proved groundless. Late last year I began to notice an uneasy presence at Trinovant and elsewhere. It warned me that Maskull had made good his escape. “By his magic, so shall ye know him!”The rede says that spells betray their makers to others who are skilled in the same arts. You see, I have known for some time about Maskull’s return. I have read his signature in much, and I have expected his power to be unleashed again. But not like this. Not like this.’

Will’s anger surfaced. ‘Why didn’t you warn me?’

‘Warn you?’ There was recrimination in Gwydion’s eyes. ‘To what end? You were already in what I believed to be the safest place there was. Living where you do, Willand, it would not have been clear to you that the spirit of the Realm has been growing steadily darker since this year’s beginning. Mistrust is burgeoning, confidence slackening. A great turbulence and greed is increasing among the lords in Trinovant. As Lord Protector, Richard of Ebor is the centre about which all now revolves, but that centre cannot hold for long. An attempt will soon be made to arrest him. His enemies are ready to move again. You see, I have had much to contend with.’

Will followed Gwydion’s words with difficulty. The shock of seeing Little Slaughter filled his mind, and his fears about Willow and Bethe and the Vale came once again to the fore. If Maskull was now at large and the lorc drawing power again, then nothing but misery could be foreseen.

Gwydion turned to survey the fuming waste they had left behind. He spent a moment deep in thought, and then measured his words carefully. ‘You may rest a little easier in your mind, my friend, for I do not believe Maskull will have quite the opportunity to do again what he has done here. Nor do I believe you were the reason he destroyed Little Slaughter.’

Gwydion led Will some way back eastward, heading towards the Four-shire Stone before the light died. This was no battlestone, but a benign landmark that showed the place where four earldoms met. On the way they spoke of the strife that was growing among the lords at Trinovant. The trouble, Gwydion explained, had not come solely out of the queen’s viciousness. Richard of Ebor had also played his part.

‘That is not what I required of the man whom I chose to be Lord Protector,’ Gwydion said ruefully. ‘He is by nature a ruler, and usually dedicated to good governance, but as long as a year ago I began to look for reasons why his nature might have been turned. I now ask myself whether leakage of harm from the Dragon Stone might not be to blame, for when I told him I wished to visit Foderingham Castle to inspect the Dragon Stone, he denied me out of hand. “No one,” said he, “is to go near that stone.”’