Robert Carter - The Giants’ Dance

Will listened with mounting alarm, and also a pang of guilt. He already knew, from having lived among the duke’s family, that Richard of Ebor was a man who treated his duties seriously. He was not a crudely ambitious man. He did regard himself as the rightful king of the Realm, but that was more out of respect for the laws of blood than any personal desire for power. Following the battle at Verlamion he had been prepared to agree to Gwydion’s compromise, which was to content himself with the modest title of Lord Protector and to take on the day-to-day running of the Realm. For the sake of peace, he had allowed the weak usurper-king, Hal, to continue on the throne as figurehead despite his having fallen twice into further bouts of incapacity and madness.

But things must have soured a great deal, Will told himself, if Duke Richard won’t allow Gwydion to see the Dragon Stone.

As for Will’s uncomfortable pang of guilt, that came because he had never admitted an incident when one night he and Edward, the duke’s eldest son, had led the other Ebor children down to look at what Edward had called ‘the magic stone’.

‘Duke Richard has not been quite himself lately,’ Gwydion said.

‘Do you think he’s hiding something? About the Dragon Stone, I mean.’

‘It may be nothing more than Friend Richard’s woebegotten attempt to haggle with me. He is inclined to treat everything as if it might become part of a political bargain. He often says: “I will do something for you, Master Gwydion, if you will do something for me.” Though he must know well enough by now that magic cannot be traded that way.’

‘That would be a hard lesson for any lord to learn,’ Will said. ‘It seems to me that Duke Richard is not a man who’ll ever understand magic.’

Gwydion grunted. ‘You are right, for the trading of favours is how men of power try to gain advantage over one another. What self-seeking fools they are, when trust and selflessness are what is truly needed. So little magic is left in the world that men have lost their taste for it. Even the greatest exercise of magic does not stick for long in the memory. It fades from men’s minds – speak today with anyone who fought at Verlamion and they will keenly remember arrow and sword, but they will have little recollection of the beams of fire that burst so scorchingly over their heads as the fighting raged below.’

Will thought about that, hearing a note of regret in the wizard’s voice, and realizing that his own memories were vivid enough. A sudden suspicion prickled him. ‘Were you by any chance on your way to Foderingham when I conjured you?’

‘In truth I was already there – passing through the inner bailey and about to reclaim my wayward charge.’

Will blinked. ‘You were going to take the Dragon Stone away without the duke’s permission?’

The wizard made a dismissive gesture. ‘I had not yet made my decision.’

Will wondered at what Gwydion knew and what he needed to know concerning the Dragon Stone. He had always said there was no such thing as coincidence, that every weft thread in the great tapestry of fate touched every warp thread and vice-versa, and from all those touches was made the great picture of existence.

Will’s thoughts returned to what had happened that night at Foderingham when he had last clapped eyes on the Dragon Stone. ‘Gwydion, I think there’s something I ought to tell you…’

He explained how he and Edward, and all the Ebor children, had got more than their curiosities had bargained for. The stone’s writhing surface had terrified them. It had begun by posing a morbid riddle for Edward, and had finished by attacking Edmund, the duke’s second son, sending him into a swoon from which he had never fully recovered. He told of how he had wrestled with the stone and how it had almost overcome him, before cringing back at the mention of its true name.

When Will had finished explaining, the wizard leaned heavily on his staff and said, ‘Let us overnight here. We shall talk more on this after supper, though it would have been better for all concerned if you had told me about this sooner.’

‘I couldn’t break a confidence,’ Will said lamely.

‘You are breaking it now.’

‘That’s because Edward is boastful and very close to his father. He may have told tales about the powers that dwell in the stone. That might be the reason the duke is behaving this way.’

Gwydion turned sharply. ‘You think Friend Richard seeks to use the battlestone’s power for himself?’

Will knit his brows over the suggestion. ‘I don’t think he would ever be that foolhardy.’

‘Hmmm. It would depend on how desperate he became.’

Here, east of the Slaver road, the air was cleaner and the grass greener. At their backs a slim crescent moon was following the sun down over the western horizon. Their camp was made on a rise close by the manor of Swell. Once again Gwydion had avoided the villages and farms that nestled nearby. He chose the best ground and then carefully cut away the turf to make a fire pit and piled up enough dry sticks to give them good cheer until they should fall asleep. Will was very hungry, and glad of old dry bread and a delicious soup of dried roots and morels that Gwydion cooked up from ingredients he took from his crane bag.

Will’s eyes drooped as, with a full belly, he listened to the crackle of burning wood and the calls of night creatures. The ground was hard under his elbow and hip bone. He smelled the drowsy perfume of cow parsley and meadowsweet and bruised grass, and felt pleased to be back in the wider world.

‘My First in the West shall Marry…’ he said, stirring himself to recite the riddle that had appeared in the skin of the Dragon Stone.

‘My first in the West shall marry,

My second a king shall be.

My third upon a bridge lies dead.

My fourth far in the East shall wed.

My fifth over the seas shall send.

My sixth in wine shall meet his end.

My seventh, whom none now fears,

Shall be reviled five hundred years.’

‘What are we to make of that?’ Gwydion asked.

Will looked into the night. ‘If the Black Book said there were many battlestones, maybe it’s the Dragon Stone’s way of giving clues about its brothers. Maybe one of the stones is fated to be reunited with its sister-stone in the West – that might fit with the piece you sailed over to your friend Cormac in the Blessed Isle. Or maybe that’s the second stone mentioned, because it stood in the shadow of the King’s Stone. It could be that the third will be found, or drained, on a bridge. Or maybe it lies near a place called Deadbridge – oh, you know better than I how riddles go.’

Gwydion settled back, watching the last rosy blink of moonset. He said distantly, ‘It may be that the Dragon Stone is more important than we have so far supposed.’

‘Why did you choose to lodge it with Duke Richard?’ Will asked, unable to keep the criticism from his voice.

‘You think that was a mistake. In truth, it was no choice of mine, but a course forced on me by events. There was nowhere better to lodge a battlestone at the time. Do you know that time itself has a most curious character? I have discussed it much with the loremaster who lives at the Castle of Sundials. Though he speaks of “time’s arrow”, its nature, he says, is not straight so much as turning ever and again upon itself – wheels within wheels, like the cogs that turn within his confounded engines. As the rede of time says, “History repeateth.” Thus, if we are wise, we may learn from the past—’

‘Gwydion,’ Will knew when he was being distracted, ‘what are we going to do ?’

The wizard stirred restlessly. ‘Rather than return to Foderingham, let us find out first if it has been put back in its original resting place. That is my greatest fear. And in any case we must go by Nadderstone if we would go to Foderingham by the shortest way.’