Robert Carter - The Giants’ Dance

‘By the moon and stars, he’s found me…’

A great terror seized him. He recalled the time when he had sat alongside Gwydion in a cart and the wizard had told him what could happen if someone tried to tamper magically with a battlestone. ‘If all the harm were to be released in a single hand clap…it would be enough to torment the land beyond endurance.’

And who else but Maskull would dare to tamper with a battlestone?

Fears stirred, wormlike, in Will’s guts as he looked up at the Tops now. There was no doubt what he must do. He went inside and lit a fresh candle. The damp wick crackled as it caught from a flame that already glowed in its niche. Dust still sifted down from the rafters in the gloom. Willow stood by the cradle, her daughter in her arms. Bethe had been woken up by the quake and was mewling.

‘Where’re you going?’ Willow asked, seeing him climb the ladder into the loft.

‘To call on an old friend.’

He went to his oak chest and brought out the book that grew bigger the more it was read. He brought it down the ladder, took a soft cloth and wiped clean the great covers of tooled brown leather. There was not much time. Soon the other Valesmen would notice the glow and they would come for his advice.

He placed the treasured book on the wooden lectern by the fire, a piece of furniture he had made himself specially for it. Then he composed himself for the ritual that should always attend the opening of any book of magic.

He placed his left hand flat on the book’s front cover and repeated the words of the true tongue that were written there:

‘Ane radhas a’leguim oicheamna;

ainsagimn deo teuiccimn.’

And then he voiced the spell again in plain speech.

‘Speak these words to read the secrets within;

learn and so come to a true understanding.’

There were no iron clasps on this book as there were on most others, for this book was locked by magic. As he muttered the charm the bindings were released and he was able to open it. Inside were words for his eyes alone. He turned to a special page with Gwydion’s parting words in mind.

‘…should you find yourself in dire need, you must

find the page where flies the swiftest bird. Call

it by name and that will be enough.’

His fingers trembled as the page before him began to fill with the picture of a bird, black and white with a russet throat and long tail streamers. He hesitated. Is this truly a moment of ‘dire need’? he asked himself. Am I doing the right thing?

He looked inside himself, then across to where Willow nursed their daughter, and suddenly he feared to invoke the spell. But then he saw the livid light flare and heard Bethe begin to cry, and he knew he must pronounce the trigger-word without delay.

‘Fannala!’

He spoke the true name of the swallow. Immediately, his thoughts were knocked sideways as if by a great blow to his head. A bird flew up out of the book and into the candlelight. There was a flash of white breast feathers and it was gone, so that when Will’s bedazzled eyes tried to follow it he lost it in the shadows. When he looked again not knowing what to expect, a grey shape had appeared in the corner.

‘Who’s there?’ Willow shouted, clutching Bethe close to her and snatching up a fire iron.

Will was overwhelmed. It seemed that a great bear or tiger cat had appeared in the room and was making ready to attack. Yet the shape gave off a pale blue light that faded, and then the figure of an old man walked out of the darkness.

The wizard was tall and grave, swathed in his long wayfarer’s cloak of mouse-brown. His head was closely clad in a dark skullcap, and his hand clasped an oaken staff. Bare toes peeped out from under the long skirts of his belted robe, and he wore a long beard that was divided now into two forks.

‘A swift, I told you! Not a swallow ! Fool!’

Will stared as the wizard stroked the two stiff prongs of his beard together and made them into one.

‘Master Gwydion…’

The wizard looked around the homely room with heavylidded eyes, his brow knotted. He footed his staff with a bang against the fireplace. ‘I hope you have good reason to summon me thus!’

Will felt the wizard’s displeasure like a knife. Their parting had been more than four years ago, and Will expected warmer words.

‘Good reason?’ Willow said, putting down the fire iron but still unwilling to have her husband roughly spoken to beside his own hearth. ‘I should say there’s good reason. And less of the “fool”, if you please, Master Gwydion. Those who don’t mind their manners in this house gets shown off these premises right quick, and that’s whoever they may be.’

Gwydion turned to her sharply, but then seeming to bethink himself he swept out a low bow. ‘I have offended you. Please, accept my apologies. If I was rude, it was because I was upon an important errand and I did not expect to be disturbed from it.’

Will stepped towards the door without hesitation. ‘I can’t be sure, Gwydion, but I think this is something you ought to see.’

Once they were outside Gwydion shielded his eyes from the purple glare, then took Will’s arm. ‘You were right to summon me. Of course you were.’

Will’s heart sank. ‘What is it?’

‘Something I have feared daily these four years.’

‘Hey!’ Will called, but Gwydion had already taken himself halfway down the path. ‘Hey, where are you going?’

‘To the Giant’s Ring, of course!’

‘Alone?’

‘That,’ the wizard called over his shoulder, ‘is entirely up to you.’

Will watched the wizard stride away into the darkness. He looked helplessly towards the cottage door. ‘But…what about Willow? What about Bethe?’

‘Oh, they must not come! There is likely to be great danger on the Tops.’

Will ran to the doorway and put his head inside. ‘Gwydion needs my help,’ he said. ‘I have to go with him.’

Willow dandled their daughter. ‘Go? Go where?’

‘Up onto the Tops.’

Her pretty eyes quizzed him, then she sighed. ‘Oh, Will…’

‘Don’t worry. I won’t be long. I promise.’ He held her for a moment, then kissed her hurriedly, unhooked his cloak and left.

‘What do you think it is?’ he asked as he caught up with the wizard.

Gwydion tasted the air. He made hissing noises and held out his arm, but no barn owl came to his call. ‘Do you see how the night creatures hereabouts have all gone to ground? No bird can fly in this glare.’

They climbed up the stony path that no one but Gwydion could ever find. It led up through the woods of Nethershaw, yet it wound past trees and the phantasms of trees and passed through impenetrable thickets of brambles that parted to let Gwydion through but then closed behind Will. He scrambled smartly up a mossy bank after the wizard and felt the earth crumbling away under his toes. But then the trees gave out and a dark land opened before them, stark under the purple glow.

They walked onward across tussocky grass, over pools of shadow and a maze of spirals that Will sensed patterning the earth. Soon five great standing stones loomed out of the night, huddled closely one upon another like a group of conspirators. They were, Will knew, vastly ancient, all that remained of the tomb of Orba, Queen of the Summer Moon, who had lived in the Age of the First Men.

She it was who had ruled the land here long ago, and close by was the dragon-ravaged tomb of her husband, Finglas, now no more than a bump in the flow-tattooed earth. The wizard swung his staff before him, his eyes penetrating the dark like lamps. Will’s heart was hammering as the wizard paused and shaded his eyes against the sky’s sickly violet sheen. ‘It’s not coming from the Giant’s Ring after all,’ he said. ‘It’s coming from somewhere in the west!’