Robert Carter - The Giants’ Dance

‘Tell me how things truly stand at court. It’s rumoured that the king’s latest insanity is ended. Perhaps it was a natural brain fever, but poison cannot be ruled out, and Master Gwydion suspects that the queen has arranged for spells to be cast upon his mind to make him appear well again.’

‘She’s done that kind of thing before, and that was at Maskull’s prompting.’

‘These days Master Gwydion sees the sorcerer’s hand in everything.’

Will took the remark without comment and thought to console himself with a slice of cheese. He reached out for Morann’s knife, which was handy, but when he came to cut the cheese the blade would not enter.

‘Either this cheese is a lot older than I thought,’ Will said, frowning at the knife, ‘or your steel has lost its edge.’

Morann laughed. ‘Do not worry yourself. Being a knife-grinder I’m never far from a whetstone.’

Will tried again, but looked up, seeing the cheese rind was untouched. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Nothing’s wrong with it. What you have in your hand is the second most precious item that I have ever clapped eyes upon.’

‘This old knife?’

‘It’s an old knife, surely, but not any old knife. This knife has been sharpened on the Whetstone of Tudwal, which is one of the spoils that was brought forth from Annuin by Great Arthur of old.’

Will’s interest deepened. ‘Master Gwydion has spoken many times of prophecies that concern Great Arthur, but he’s never told me much.’

Morann sat back in his chair and began to sing,

‘Where is the man who is mightier?

The four winds tell it not!

When greater the treasures that were taken?

Won in war and fair fight.

How bright was the blessing

Brought upon Albion?

Whose land now shall be the Wasteland?

Before Great Arthur led,

the Cauldron swirled…

Before Great Arthur sailed,

the Sword smote…

Before Great Arthur entered,

the Staff upheld…

Before Great Arthur’s coming,

the Star shone…

‘Aye, Willand. In those early days the Hallows were bound, blind and in darkness all, down in Annuin, in the Realm Below.

‘The spoils were brought out by Arthur, upon his ship,’ he said as if half remembering. ‘Out from a sea cave in the north. The Cave of Finglas, which was then a mouth into the Realm Below…

‘Many adventurers sailed with Great Arthur aboard the ship Prydwen. Bards, warriors and harpers – great men of old, they were! Among them, the famous Wordmaster Taliesin, who was one of seven who survived to tell the tale. He wrought a great poem about it called “The Breaking of the Dark”. Much went missing from the Black Book in the days when giants ruled the land of Albion, yet there was enough of it remaining for it to speak of a promise to be redeemed – a king shall come, a king whose forewarning sign shall be the drawing forth of a sword from a stone.’ And Morann sang again,

‘Child of magical union,

Hidden among hunters, weaned upon warriors.

Brave son of a poisoned father,

Sent to the city, tried at the tourney.

A king of tender years,

Sired by a sovereign, but made by Merlyn,

Drew he forth Branstock,

Great Arthur, the once and future king…’

The loremaster’s eyes softened, and he smiled. ‘So you see, Willand, you are not the only one to have been named in the Black Book. Master Gwydion is there too, when Master Merlyn was his name.’

Will tried to smile back. ‘It’s an uncomfortable feeling sometimes knowing that whatever path you choose, the outcome has long been decided.’

‘Don’t think that! Master Gwydion did not mean that when he said your life was hardly your own, only that you were mantled with duties and responsibilities that are heavier than those of most men. But your choices have always been free. It’s not the fulfilment of prophecies that matters, so much as the manner in which they are fulfilled. That’s where final outcomes are decided. Consider the next fragment of the Black Book in which we hear of Great Arthur’s passing, there by the lakeshore of Llyn Llydaw. He made another promise without fear or faltering, one that was to last a thousand years. The verses tell it thus:

‘The worth of my life, such that it be,

Has chained the future to a fateful turn.

When comes the final catastrophe,

Then, only then, shall I return! ’

‘When rises the greatest need I shall come again…’ Will whispered in the true tongue.

‘Those were your words. And what turbulent times have we seen since the overrunning of the Realm by the Easterlings. Though none have been worse than those that are upon us now. I will say it straightly, this is the final catastrophe.’

‘The once and future king did not come to save us from the Conquest.’

‘Perhaps the arrival of Gillan might have seemed to warrant it, but in the end the Phantarch, Semias, reached an understanding with the Conqueror and we saw that his invasion was not the ending of the world such as we had feared. That was near four hundred years ago.’

‘How long is it since Arthur fought his last fight at Camlan?’

‘I think you already know the answer to that – near a thousand. So we come to you, Will, and the last pitiful fragments of the Black Book that Master Gwydion has cherished in a secret place down so many generations. This also seems to speak of a king, though no one can be certain. One who is “…a True King, born of Strife, born of Calamity, born at Beltane in the Twentieth Year, when the beams of Eluned are strongest at the ending of the world”.’

‘The ending of the world?’ Will felt the shock of the idea. ‘I was born in a twentieth year…’

‘Aye, in the twentieth year of the reign of King Hal. And on the night of the full moon. And it was said that you would deny yourself thrice, and so you did.’

‘And “One being made two”?’ Will said, looking up suddenly from the strange knife that lay upon the table. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It too seems to be a part of the prophecy.’ Morann looked away. ‘As also is the suggestion that “two shall be made one”.’

Will straightened. ‘Then it was written all along that the Doomstone would mend itself!’

‘That could be one interpretation.’

Morann reached out to take his blade but Will stayed his hand. ‘You said this had been sharpened on the Whetstone of Tudwal. So what if it was?’

‘Ah, well, you see, a blade so sharpened will deal only a lethal blow, or no blow at all.’

Will quickly put the knife down.

‘Morann, if you’re leaving tomorrow, may I ask a favour of you tonight? Could you go to Trinovant by way of Nether Norton? I don’t know of another messenger who could find his way into the Vale.’

‘You may consider it done.’

When Will woke the next day at first light, he found that Morann had already left. He sat down at a small oak table and, while he waited for breakfast, took out the little red fish from his pouch. It was so like his own green fish that there could be no doubt that it had come from the same place. And as Gwydion always reminded him, a famous rede said there was no such thing as a coincidence. But what the meaning might be in the fish was far from clear. As he turned it over in his fingers he wondered why he had not shown it to Gwydion, or to Morann, who was surely the best person to give an opinion. He had just put it in his pouch and forgotten about it. Or had he?

Delicious smells wafted in from the kitchens and soon the Plough began to fill with Eiton’s harvesters. Will, who was sitting alone in the corner, saw how they first noticed him then touched their foreheads and shook him by the hand as they filed in.