Robert Carter - The Giants’ Dance

He sighed again.

‘What’s that for?’ Willow asked.

He scrubbed fingers through his hair. ‘Oh…I was just thinking. You know – about old times. About Gwydion.’

It seemed a long time since Will and the wizard had last set eyes on one another. How good it would be to wander the ways as they had once done. To walk abroad again among summer hedgerows, enjoying the sun and the rain, or feeling the bite of an icy wind on their cheeks.

‘I wonder what he’s doing right now?’ Will muttered.

‘Unless I miss my guess, he’ll be striding the green hills of the Blessed Isle,’ Willow said. ‘Or sitting in a high tower somewhere out in the wilds of Albanay.’

Will’s eyes wandered the dark gulfs between the stars. ‘Hmmm. Probably.’

‘Wilds?’ he could almost hear Gwydion chuckle. ‘It is not wild here. See! These trees in a line show where a hedge once grew. And what of those ancient furrow marks? The Realm has been loved and tended for a hundred generations of men. It is almost, you might say, a garden.’

While Willow went indoors to put Bethe into her cradle, Will lingered in the yard at the back of their cottage. He could smell the herbs, all the green leaf he had grown in the good soil – plants ripe and ready to offer the sweetness of the earth’s bounty. The scents of the orchard were keen on the still air. He heard Avon whinny again, and tried to recall when he had noticed the elusive feeling in his belly before, but when he looked inside himself he was shocked.

‘A premonition about a premonition,’ he told himself wryly. ‘Now that would be something…’

Willow came out and said, ‘I’m glad we chose to call her Bethe. There’s strong magic in naming, for I can’t think now what else we could have called her.’

‘Bethe is the birch tree,’ he said. ‘“Beth”, first letter of the druid’s alphabet, and Bethe our firstborn.’

‘I like that.’

‘You know, the birch was the first tree to clothe these isles when the ice drew back into the north. Her white bark remembers the White Lady, she who was wise and first taught about births and beginnings, the one who some call the Lady Cerridwen. Our May Pole is always a birch, and Bethe was born on May Day, which is my birthday too. In the old tongue of the west “bith” means “being”. And “beitharn” in the true tongue means “the world”. Maybe that’s the reason I suggested the name and why you agreed – because our daughter means the world to us.’

Willow squeezed him close and laid her head against his breast. ‘There’s such a power of learning in that book of yours.’

She meant the magic book that Gwydion had given him that sad day at Verlamion. He said, ‘There’s much to read and more to know. It’s said that a country swain comes of age at thirteen years, that the son of a fighting lord may carry arms in battle at fifteen, and that a king must reach eighteen years to rule by his word alone – but one who would learn magic may not be properly called wise until he has come to full manhood.’

Willow looked at him. ‘And how old’s that?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But as the saying has it: “The willow wand is slow to become an oaken staff.” And so it must be, for if I know anything at all it’s that there’s much more to be understood in the world than can ever be learned in one man’s lifetime.’

Now it was Willow’s turn to sigh. ‘Then tell me true: do you read that book every day in the hope that one day you’ll become a wizard too? Like Gwydion?’

He laughed. ‘No. That I can never be.’

‘Then why?’

‘Because Gwydion gave it to me and bade me read it. And I gave him my word that I would.’

She squeezed him again, but this time it was to stress her words. ‘Well, now, you’re going to promise me something, Willand Bookreader: that you won’t be burning any candle stubs over hard words tonight!’

He grinned. ‘Now that I’ll gladly promise!’

They held one another in the starlight for a moment. A shooting star flared brilliantly and briefly in the west, and then a coolness stirred among the leaves of the nearest apple trees. She looked up, and he felt her stiffen.

‘What is it?’

But there was no need for an answer, for there, high up over the Tops, an eerie purple glow had begun to bruise the sky.

‘Don’t look at it,’ she told him, turning away suddenly.

He felt his foreboding intensify. ‘It’s…it’s only the northern lights.’

‘I don’t care what it is…’ Her voice faded.

He stared at the flickering as it grew. ‘Gwydion once told me about the northern lights,’ he whispered, ‘but I’ve never seen them.’

As he looked into the darkness he felt the earth power crackling in his toes. The apple trees felt it too. His eyes narrowed as he realized that this flaring glow was not – could not be – the northern lights. This was brighter, more focused, and it spoke to him.

‘Will, come inside!’ she said, pulling at his arm.

‘I…’ The light pulsed irregularly like distant lightning, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was livid. It seemed to reach out from a source that was hidden by the dark hills surrounding the Vale. When he recalled what he knew of sky lore, his unease grew, for this was no natural light.

His thoughts went immediately to the lorc, that web of lines in the earth that fed the battlestones. They had glowed with an eerie light. At certain phases of the moon they had stood out in the darkness, clothed with a pale and otherworldly sheen.

‘Look!’ he said, pointing. ‘That halo. It seems to be coming from near the Giant’s Ring.’

The ancient stone circle could not be seen from the Vale. It was in Gwydion’s words Bethen feilli Imbliungh , the Navel of the World, a place of tremendous influence, and the fount through which earth power erupted into the lorc. That, Will had always supposed, was the reason the fae had set up one of their terrible battlestones there, the one that had fought Gwydion’s magic and won.

‘It can’t be the battlestone, can it?’ Willow asked as she peered into the inconstant light. ‘You said Gwydion had drawn all the harm out of it.’

‘So he did. But tonight is Lammas when the power of the earth waxes highest.’

‘We didn’t see lights there last year. Nor any year before.’

Willow’s words ceased as a low rumbling passed through the ground. It was so low that it could not be heard, only felt in the bones. Will heard Avon whinny, then came the sound of ripe apples dropping in the orchard. The ground itself was trembling. As he stared into the night he was aware of Willow’s frightened eyes upon him. Then two flower pots fell from the window ledge at the back of the cottage. He heard them crack one after the other on the stone kerb below. Willow jumped.

‘What’s happening?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m going to see if Bethe’s all right.’ She vanished into the cottage.

Will let her go, listening only to the night as the rumble passed away beneath his feet and stillness returned to the Vale. Gwydion had once spoken of mountains of fire that rose up in remote parts of the world, mountains that spewed forth flames and hot cinders. But there were none of those in the Realm. He had spoken too of tremblings that shook the land from time to time. They came sometimes as workings that had been delved deep under the earth long ago shifted or fell in on themselves.

Could that have caused the rumblings?

And if so, what about the light?

There was something about that light that caused a shiver to run up Will’s spine. This rippling, eye-deceiving glow was the same colour as the flames that had once trapped and burned him within the compass of the Giant’s Ring. It was purple fire that had lifted him up high over the stones and had begun to consume his flesh. Purple fire that would have killed him in dreadful agony had not Gwydion’s magic saved him. And such a flame as that came only from Maskull’s hands.