Robert Carter - The Giants’ Dance

As Will’s eyes adjusted there appeared in the cellar wall a low gate of iron bars. It was meant to stop off the way, but it was wrecked. A hole had been rent in it as if by some powerful beast.

‘What is it?’ Will asked. The magelight did not penetrate far beyond the bars.

Morann clasped his arm tightly, hushing him. Gwydion’s voice was rising: ‘I can smell it! Truly these are dungeons of despair!’

‘What could have done this to iron bars?’ Will asked, looking to Morann and putting his finger on the place where brute strength had torn the barrier.

Morann whispered, ‘Do you know what this is? It’s a passageway into the Realm Below. Can you feel the air moving up, and with it the salt of the Desolate Sea?’

And Will could feel it. On his face, a dank draught that issued up from a hidden place below the earth. Air that bespoke tremendous depths, great caverns, ceaseless tunnels, dark rivers that had never seen the light of the sun. This was truly the air of another world.

And something in Will wanted to go beyond the bars and venture into that darkness. He wanted to see for himself what lay below, but Morann drew his knife and said he thought the cellar unwholesome and that the fissure had the whiff of sorcery about it and needed to be blocked up. He wanted to leave the vile place for the sake of his lungs.

Will, and then Gwydion, followed him up the stone stair and out into the light. They stepped back across the rubblestrewn yard, and Will blew out a great breath. ‘Let’s go. Just being here makes my flesh crawl.’

Gwydion set a bleak eye on him. ‘The Sightless Ones are involved in a bigger way than I thought.’

The wizard quickly turned away and Will said, ‘So big that you daren’t speak of it?’

He was not sure Gwydion had heard, and the wizard offered no reply, saying only, ‘Have you forgotten why we set out?’

‘What’s bothering him?’ Will whispered to Morann as they followed on.

‘I think he’s found what he came here for. And whatever it is, he doesn’t like it.’

Out in the open again the wizard climbed quickly aboard the cart and clicked his tongue at the horse. Will looked up at the dismal tower and his eyes sought the lone gargoyle that he had seen on his arrival, but it was nowhere to be seen.

They rode on in silence, their spirits overcome by the stagnant earth streams that ran sluggishly now under the cloister. But Will’s low mood stemmed more from the gloom that Gwydion showed. Their walk in the ruins had put the wizard in a mighty sulk.

When the road rose and Bessie laboured in her pulling, Morann and Will jumped down and walked the meadows for a while. Morann renewed the flowers in his hat with bright yellow dandelions and purple knapweed. Will cooled his toes in the lush grass. He said, ‘What are the Sightless Ones involved in? Finding the stones? Did Gwydion mean that?’

Morann looked back towards the cart. ‘You must ask him that yourself, but if I had to hazard a guess I’d say he’s most worried about those broken bars and what must have come through them.’

‘I can feel the lign right here,’ Will said. He stopped suddenly.

Morann took his hazel wand and began to scry, but unsuccessfully. ‘I feel nothing unusual.’

‘It’s dispelled the bad taste left by the ruins. It’s running strongly under my heels.’

‘Where?’

Will ignored the question. ‘Oh, how can I explain it? It’s like a fiddle string, and once the chapter house was a finger pressing down on it in the wrong place, making a discordant note. And now the string is open the note is more pure again.’

‘We’ll tell Master Gwydion that. Maybe it’ll cheer him up.’

It was not long before they arrived in Nadderstone. Will hardly recognized the place. Flow along the lign was swift and joyous, like water in a new-dredged channel. Where once there had been abandoned buildings now there were new, white cottages. Lime-washed walls were bright in the noonday sun and new thatch shone neat and golden. Much of the land round about was under cultivation or had been fenced to keep cattle in. Men, women and children were busy in a barn threshing grain with flails. When they saw the cart approaching they came out. The place was clean and prosperous and the four or five young families who lived here now were courteous and welcoming.

Gwydion approached the foremost. ‘Where have you come from?’ he asked. ‘And who is your lord?’

For a moment it was as if a shadow had passed over them. The man fell under the spell of Gwydion’s voice. He shifted his feet and said, ‘We are poor, landless folk. We came here from a faraway place on the strength of a rumour that there was good land here that might be had.’

Gwydion smiled. ‘Have no fear – that rumour was mine. Enjoy Nadderstone and make it your own, for your hard work and care have already won me as your protector. I offer you a blessing of words upon your new homes, so that all will be well and when the time comes your sons and daughters will find good husbands and wives in the villages round about.’

While the wizard talked, Will and Morann went up into the meadows north of the hamlet. As soon as Will began to feel the lign running strongly underfoot again he took back his hazel wand and began to pace out the limits of it, scrying just as Gwydion had first taught him in this very same place.

Either the flow had increased several fold since then, or his own talents had developed greatly. ‘All the pain’s been cleaned out,’ he said. ‘It’s the difference between dirty ditchwater and a mountain stream.’

They came to the spot where the Dragon Stone had once lain. Its hole was filled in and there was a bed of pretty yellow flowers growing there. ‘I’m sure the Dragon Stone hasn’t been returned to the place where we found it. Let’s go and tell Gwydion the good news.’

Morann laughed. ‘I think he already knows. It doesn’t take a talent such as yours to see that this place is flourishing as never before.’

Will scrubbed at his head. ‘You know what I think? I think Nadderstone’s now taking its fair share of earth power – flows that were for too long pent up by that chapter house.’

Morann looked eastward. ‘This is the lign of the ash, you say?’

‘Yes. Its taste is unmistakably Indonen.’ Will shaded his eyes and looked east also.

‘Taste?’ Morann said, turning to look back the way they had come. ‘That seems a curious way to speak of it. Did you not just tell me that the tower and chapter house were like the finger that stops a fiddle string?’

‘I could just as easily have said it’s like the grip that pinches off a vein in a man’s arm and so holds back the flow of blood to his hand, bringing numbness and robbing his grasp of strength. I said “tasted”, but it’s not really a flavour I’m talking about.’ He shrugged, finding his talent impossible to describe.

Morann let out a piercing whistle and beckoned to Gwydion. ‘Let me see now. There are supposed to be nine ligns that make up the lorc. The one that runs by the Giant’s Ring is “Eburos”, the lign of the yew. The battlestone that you say is planted at Aston Oddingley lies upon the lign of the rowan, and the true name of that lign is “Caorthan”. While this lign is “Indonen” of the ash. What of the others?’

‘I’ve felt other ligns sometimes as we crossed them. There’s the one named “Mulart” for the elder tree, and “Tanne” for the oak. The rest are named in honour of the hazel, the holly, the willow and the birch. I’ve not felt them at all, or if I have I can’t easily call to mind their particular qualities.’

The wizard came up to join them. He leaned on his staff, seeming troubled still.

‘A fair old morning’s work,’ Morann said.