The Language of Stones
Robert Carter

This book is dedicated to Britain’s greatest living Welshman – Terry Jones.

‘First there were nine,

Then nine became seven,

And seven became five.

Now, as sure as the Ages decline,

Three are no more,

But one is alive.’

The Black Book of Tara

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Epigraph

PART ONE A BOY, A MAN

CHAPTER ONE OUT OF THE VALE

CHAPTER TWO INTO THE REALM

CHAPTER THREE TO THE TOWER OF LORD STRANGE

CHAPTER FOUR A LITTLE LEARNING

CHAPTER FIVE THE MARISH HAG

PART TWO THE POWERS OF THE EARTH

CHAPTER SIX A NEST OF SECRETS

CHAPTER SEVEN LAMMASTIDE

CHAPTER EIGHT CLARENDON

CHAPTER NINE A BARROW ON THE BLESSED ISLE

CHAPTER TEN LEIR’S TREASURE

CHAPTER ELEVEN THE STONE OF CAER LUGDUNUM

CHAPTER TWELVE ALONG THE BANKS OF THE NEANE

PART THREE THE DUKE OF EBOR’S PLEASURE

CHAPTER FOURTEEN A WINTER OF DISCONTENT

CHAPTER FIFTEEN AGAINST BETTER JUDGMENT

CHAPTER SIXTEEN COLD COMFORT IN THE WEST

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN IN THE HALL OF KING LUDD

PART FOUR WILL’S TEST

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN THE PLAGUESTONE

CHAPTER NINETEEN AT THE NAVEL OF THE WORLD

CHAPTER TWENTY THE NIGHT RIDE TO HOOE

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE SKIES OF FIRE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO THE SARCOPHAGUS OF VERLAMION

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE ALL IS WON, YET ALL IS LOST

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR THE GREEN MAN

AUTHOR’S NOTE

APPENDIX I ON THE AGES OF THE WORLD

APPENDIX II

Preview

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

PART ONE A BOY, A MAN

CHAPTER ONE OUT OF THE VALE

Willand son of Eldmar turned his gaze away from the Tops and ran down towards the village. The sun was warm today, the sky cloudless and the grass soft and thriving underfoot. His long hair streamed freely in the sun like golden wheat as he ran past a cluster of thatched cottages and came at last to the Green Man.

‘Is Tilwin here yet?’ he asked, hoping the knife-grinder was already slaking his thirst. But Baldgood the alehouse keeper shook his head. There was no sign of Tilwin, nor of his grinding wheel, so Will went out and sat on the grass.

Sunshine blazed on the white linen of his shirt. It was a fine spot just here. Daisies and dandelions had come out all over the green, as if it had known to put on its summer best. Every year it was fine and sunny at Cuckootide. There was racing to the Tarry Stone, kicking at the campball, and all the other sports. And afterwards there would be the bonfire. Songs would be sung and there would be dances and games and contests with the quarterstaff before the drinking of dragon soup. It would be the same this year as it had always been, and next year it would be the same again and on and on forever.

In the Vale they called today Cuckootide, the day the May Pole was put up and all the world came out onto the green to have a good time. But Will knew he could not have a good time – not until he had talked with Tilwin. He looked up at the round-shouldered hills they called the Tops and felt the longing again. It had been getting stronger, and today it felt like an invisible cord trying to pull his heart right out of his chest. That was why he had to speak with Tilwin. It had to be Tilwin, because only he would understand.

‘Hey-ho, Will!’

He knew that voice at once – whiskery Leoftan, the smith. His two thick braids hung like tarred rope side by side at his left cheek. He wore a belted shirt of white linen like Will’s own and a cap of red wool.

‘Your dad’ll be putting in your braids soon enough now, eh?’

Will shrugged. ‘It’s a hard week to turn thirteen, the week after May Day.’

Leoftan put down his armful of wooden tent-pegs. ‘Aye, you’ll have to wait near another year before you can run in the men’s race.’

Will scrubbed his fingers through his fair hair and stole another glance at the Tops. ‘Have you ever wondered what it’s like up there, Luffy?’

The smith stood up, gave him a distracted look. ‘What’s that you say?’

‘I was just thinking.’ He nodded towards the Tops. ‘One day I’d like to go up and see what’s there. Haven’t you ever thought what Nether Norton would look like with the whole Vale laid out down below?’

‘Huh?’

The moment stretched out awkwardly, but Will could not let it go. Once he had seen a small figure riding on a white horse far away where the earth met the sky. In the spring there were sheep – thousands of them – driven along by black dogs, and sometimes by men too. He had seen them many times, but whenever he had spoken of it to the others they had fallen quiet, and Gunwold the Swineherd had smirked, as if he had said something that ought not to have been said.

‘Well, Luffy? Haven’t you ever wanted to go up onto the Tops?’

Leoftan’s face lost its good humour. ‘What do you want to go talking like that for? They say there’s an ill wind up there.’

‘Is that what they say? An ill wind? And who are they who say that, Luffy? And how do they know? I wish – I wish—’

Just then Baldulf came up. He was fourteen, a fleshy, self-assured youth, and there was Wybda the Gossip and two or three others with him. ‘You want to be careful what you go a-wishing for, Willand,’ Wybda said. ‘They say that what fools and kings wishes for most often comes true.’

Will gazed back, undaunted. ‘I’m not a king or a fool. I just want to go up there and see for myself. What’s wrong with that?’

Wybda carried her embroidery with her. She plied her needle all the time, but still her pigs turned out too round and her flowers too squat. ‘Don’t you know the fae folk’ll eat you up?’

‘What do you know about the fae folk?’

Baldulf swished a willow wand at the grass near him. ‘She’s right. Nobody’s got any business up on the Tops.’

Gunwold grinned his lop-sided grin. ‘Yah, everybody knows that, Willand.’

They all began to move off and Leoftan said, ‘Aren’t you going over to watch the men’s race?’

‘Maybe later.’

He let them go. He did not know why, but just lately their company made him feel uncomfortable. He wondered if it was something to do with becoming a man. Maybe that was what made him feel so strange.

‘There’s a trackway up over the Tops,’ a gritty voice said in his ear.

He started, and when he looked round he saw Tilwin. ‘You made me jump.’

Tilwin gave a knowing grin. ‘I’ve made a lot of people jump in my time, Willand, but what I say is the truth. They’ve sent flocks along that trackway every summer for five thousand years and more. Now what do you think about that?’

Tilwin never said too much, but he knew plenty. He was not yet of middling age, and for some reason he wore his dark hair unbraided. He came once in a blue moon to fetch necessaries up from Middle Norton and beyond. Twice yearly he took the carts down to hand over the tithe, the village tax, to the Sightless Ones. Tilwin could put a sharper edge on a blade than anyone, and he was the only person Will knew who had ever been out of the Vale.

‘Who are the men who send the flocks through?’

‘Shepherds. They come this way because of the ring.’

‘What ring?’ Will’s eyes moved to the smooth emerald on Tilwin’s finger, but the knife-grinder laughed.

‘Ah, not that sort of a ring. Don’t you know there were giants in the land in the days of yore? There’s a Giant’s Ring away up on those Tops. A circle of standing stones. It’s a place of great magic.’

A shiver passed down Will’s spine. He could feel the tightness forming inside him again. Maybe it was the Giant’s Ring that was calling to him.

‘Magic…you say?’

‘Earth magic. Close by the Giant’s Ring stands Liarix Finglas, called the King’s Stone. Every shepherd who’s passed this way for fifty generations has chipped a piece off that King’s Stone until it’s now crooked as a giant’s thumb.’

‘Truly?’

‘Oh, you may believe it is so.’

‘Why do the shepherds do it?’

‘For a lucky keepsake, what do you think?’

Will did not know what he thought. The talk had set his mind on fire. ‘Fetch me a piece of it, will you, when next you go up there?’

‘Oh, and it’s a piece of the King’s Stone you want now, is it?’ Tilwin had a strange way of speaking, and a strange, deep way of looking at a person at times. ‘Ah, but you’re lucky enough in yourself, I think, Willand. Lucky enough for the meanwhile, let’s say that.’

The strange feeling welled up and squeezed his heart again. His eyes ran along the Tops, looking for a sign, but there was none. And when he looked around again Tilwin had vanished. For a moment it seemed that the knife-grinder had never been there at all.

Will wandered down and stood under the painted sign of the Green Man. It was a merry face – one of the fae folk – green as a leaf and all overgrown with ivy. The sign was bedecked now with white Cuckootide hawthorn blossom.

Cuthwal was inside, playing his fiddle, but there was no sign of Eldmar, his father, so Will wandered away, sat down on the grass for a while and watched folk coming up from way down the Vale. Then it was time for the boys’ race and there was cheering as half a dozen lads sprinted across the green and tried to be first to lay a hand on the Tarry Stone.

But Will did not feel like cheering anybody on. Leoftan had mentioned an ill wind, and an ill wind had sprung up – or at least a cold one – and not just over the Tops either. Iron-grey clouds had begun to boil up and gather darkly in the west. At first no one among the villagers seemed to notice, but then as the sun went in, one or two of them started to look skyward, and soon the bunting began to flap and the crowns of the tall beeches in Pannage Woods started to sway and roar. Folk began to feel a sudden chill touch them. It looked suddenly as if it would rain.

The music stopped and folk set to helping one another clear the stalls and tables away. They muttered that this was unheard of, because the last time the May Pole dance had been washed out was beyond living memory. Will had just finished lending a hand when a cry went up. He turned and saw old Frithwold coming up the track, shaking his fists as he ran.

‘Jack o’ Lantern!’ he wheezed as he reached the Green Man. ‘May Death cut me down if I tell a lie! Jack o’ Lantern’s down in the lanes!’

‘Now, sit down and catch your thoughts, Frith,’ Bregowina, the brewster’s wife, said coolly. ‘There ain’t no warlocks round here.’

‘Sit down be blowed! It be Jack o’ Lantern in the lanes over by Bloody Meadow, I tell you!’

Baldgood peered past his barrels. ‘You’ve had too much of them cider dregs, Frith.’

‘Noooo! It was Jack o’ Lantern, as I live and breathe!’

They settled him down, and the clearing away carried on until all the doors were put back on their hinges and everything was closed up tight. There was no doubting Frithwold believed what he was saying – he was grey in the face and more upset than Will had ever seen him. Groups ofValesmen were muttering to one another, scythes in hand, glancing fearfully down the track. He turned to Baldgood and asked, ‘Who’s Jack o’ Lantern?’

‘You won’t recall him,’ Baldgood said, troubled.

‘Tell me.’

‘He’s a visitor who comes to these parts from time to time. And not such a welcome one neither. You’d’ve been just a babe in arms when last he came this way, or not even born maybe.’

Cuthwal leaned across. ‘We don’t none of us like the looks of him. And we never did.’

Will looked down the lane and saw nothing unusual. ‘Why not?’

‘Because he’s a crow, and up to no good.’

‘Don’t you fear now, Will,’ Baldgood said. ‘There’s a hue and cry gone up after him. Our stout lads’ll drive him off! Now you best get back home.’

Will looked out across the green. Inky clouds filled the sky now. It was almost as dark as night. Then it began to pelt with rain. The May Pole looked forlorn as it swayed with its ribbons streaming out. The wind had got up fiercely and was trying to tear down what was left of the bunting. Bregowina, unruffled as ever, lit candles, and her sons barred the doors. They had just finished when Gifold One-Tooth and both his sons started banging, wanting to be let in. The way they held their pitchforks showed they expected trouble, but nobody had told them what sort.

‘What does Jack o’ Lantern look like?’ Will asked, but nobody answered him.

He folded his arms. No fire burned in the hearth and the only light in the parlour now was from two candles that burned with a quavering, smoky flame. It was a light that did not penetrate far. ‘I’ve never seen a crow. Is that the same as a warlock?’

‘None of them knows much about what Jack o’ Lantern looks like, Will.’

He turned at the voice that came from the back of the room. At the table in the corner shadows sat Tilwin. He had found a place where nobody had noticed him. His hat was in front of him on the table, and he was thumbing the edge of a long, thin knife. He said, ‘The only man in Nether Norton who ever challenged Jack o’ Lantern face to face was Evergern the Potter, and he’s been dead these ten years.’

‘What are you doing, skulking back there?’ Gifold demanded, as if he was speaking to a ghost.

‘Minding my own business, Gif. Like you should be doing.’ Tilwin leaned forward and turned his gaze on the rest of them. ‘I slipped in quiet, so I did, while you were all running about down the way like fowls with their heads stricken off. I could have marched an army in here for all you’d have known about it.’

‘You’re a strange customer, and no mistake,’ Baldgood said.

‘That I may be, but let me tell you something about your Jack o’ Lantern – in this part of the Vale you call him by that name and say he’s a crow. Others further down call him “Merlyn”, or “Master Merlyn” to be correct about it, though that isn’t his true name. Down by Great Norton they say he’s “Erilar” and claim he’s a warlock. While over at Bruern they put the name “Finnygus” on him and fetch their horses to him to benefit from his leechcraft. But none of them knows who he is, for Jack casts a weirder light than any lantern ever I saw.’ Tilwin leaned further forward until the candlelight caught in his blue eyes. ‘He runs deep does our friend Jack. Deep as the Kyle of Stratha. Nor does he suffer fools easily. So if he’s got business in this place, I’d let him finish it without hindrance – if I were you.’

There was silence. Like everyone else, Will listened and held his peace. He didn’t understand much of what had been said, but the thrill of excitement at Tilwin’s words made the hairs rise up on the back of his neck.

‘Now that’s enough of that kind of talk,’ Baldgood muttered, bustling out from behind his counter. ‘Willand! Now, I thought I told you to get on home?’

Will went to the door but after what Tilwin had said home seemed a long way to go in the pitch dark. In truth it was no more than a furlong – a couple of hundred paces – but it was still raining hard. He poked his head outside. Water was trickling down the track. Where only a short while before there had been dry dust, now there was a stream. He jumped out into the night and set off at a run until the light from the alehouse gave out. Then he stubbed his toe painfully on a flint and almost fell. After that he groped his way along by the side of the green. His shirt was soaked. Every village door was closed and every shutter barred tight.

So much for welcoming the summer in, he thought as he felt twigs snapping in the grass under his feet. His outstretched hands met the deeply grooved bark of the Old Oak. He paused, listening. Overhead, leaves were rattling in the downpour, and there was something eerie about the sound, as if the tree was talking to itself.

He shook the water out of his eyes and peered into the dark to where a faint bar of yellow light escaped under a door. Home. He stumbled towards it, and soon his fingers felt a familiar latch.

The light guttered in the draught as he came in, then steadied. He saw Breona and Eldmar, his mother and father, standing together by the unlit hearth, and there, seated before them, was a stranger.

The figure was wrapped in a mouse-brown cloak with a hood that shadowed his face. Will’s heart beat against his ribs. He was about to speak when his father told him sternly: ‘Go up to bed, Willand.’

‘But Father—’

‘Will! Do as I tell you!’

Eldmar had never barked at him like that before. He looked from face to face, scared now. He wanted to go to his mother’s side, but his father was not to be argued with, and Will obeyed. He felt his knees give slightly as he climbed the ladder into the rafters, and dived straight to his nest in the loft. There he lay on the bag of straw that served as his bed. It was warm and smoky up here under the eaves. His wet hair stuck to his forehead and his shirt was clammy on his back as his hand sought out the comfort of a stout wooden threshing flail. He moved as quietly as he could to the edge of the loft where he could watch and listen, telling himself that if anything happened he would pull back the hurdles, jump down and set about the stranger.

But if this was Jack o’ Lantern, he was nothing like the warlock the men had spoken about. By his knee there rested a staff a full fathom in length, fashioned from a kind of wood that had a marvellous sheen to it. The stranger himself had a pale, careworn face, with a long nose and longer beard. The hair of his beard might once have been the colour of corn or copper, but it had faded to badger shades of grey. He was swathed in a wayfarer’s cloak that was made of shreds, and at times seemed almost colourless in the flickering tallow light. Beneath his hood he wore a skullcap, but under the hem of his belted gown his long legs were without hose and his feet unshod. There were many cords about his neck, and among the amulets and charms that rattled at his chest, a bird’s skull.

‘It is said that eavesdroppers will often pick up things they do not like to hear,’ the stranger said. His voice was quiet, yet it carried. It was touched with a strangeness that made Will think of faraway places.

‘Why can’t you leave us alone?‘Will’s mother whispered.

‘Because promises were made. You know why I am here. I must have him.’

At that, Will felt an icy fist clutch him. His world suddenly lurched and refused to right itself. He heard his father say, ‘But those promises were made thirteen years ago!’

‘What does the passage of time signify when a promise is made?’

‘We’ve grown to love him as you said we should!’

‘A promise is eternal. Have you forgotten how matters stood when you made it? You and your good wife were childless, denied the joys that parents know. How dearly you wished for a baby boy of your own. And then one night, on the third day past Cuckootide, I came to you with a three-day-old babe and your misery was at an end.’

‘You can’t take him back!’ Will’s mother shrieked.

The stranger made suddenly as if to rise. Will’s parents took a step back as his grip tightened on the flail. ‘He is no longer a boy. A child you wanted, and a child I brought. But now the child is become a man – a man – and I must have this son of Beltane as we agreed. I said there would be an errand for him, and so there is.’

A dark gulf of silence stood between them for a moment, then the stranger spoke subtle words and Eldmar and Breona hung their heads and made no further argument.

Up in his loft Will found himself numbed to the marrow of his bones. He began to tremble. Whether it was from shock or fear or the working of evil magic he could not tell. As the stranger rose, Will’s grip tightened on the threshing flail, but when he looked again there was nothing in his hand but a wooden spoon, and the flail was nowhere to be seen.

‘Call the lad down,’ the stranger suggested. ‘Tell him he has no need to fear me.’

Eldmar called, and Will came down the ladder as if his arms and legs had minds of their own. He felt his father’s hands on his shoulders, but his father’s face betrayed only heartsickness. ‘Forgive me if you can, Willand,’ he said simply. ‘I should have had the courage to tell you sooner.’

‘Tell me what?’ Will asked, blinking. ‘I won’t go with him. He’s a warlock, and I won’t go with him!’

‘You must, son.’ Eldmar’s face remained grim. ‘Thirteen years ago we gave our word. We swore to keep the manner of your coming to us a secret. We swore because we so wanted a boy of our own. Each year that passed sons came to others, but never to us. You seemed like our blessing.’

Will drew a hollow breath. ‘You…should have told me.’

‘We were sworn to tell no one,’ Breona wailed. ‘Even so we meant to tell you, Will. But first you were too young. Then, you were such a well-liked boy that we couldn’t find the proper time to upset our happy home. It would have broken our hearts, do you see?’

Eldmar hung his head and Breona held out her hand. There were tears in her eyes. ‘Say you forgive us for what we did, Willand.’

Will wiped away his own tears. ‘There’s nothing to forgive. You’re the best father and mother any boy could have.’

‘Please,’ Breona said, turning back to the stranger. ‘Can’t you give us just a little more time? Let him stay for one more day, as a mercy to us!’

‘It would be no mercy,’ the stranger said. ‘Of that I am quite sure, for he may be the Child of Destiny, the one whose name appears in the Black Book.’

At that, Breona’s eyes flared. She would have thrown herself on the stranger had Eldmar not caught her in his arms. ‘He’s my Willand, and nobody else!’

Will found himself unable to move. The stranger reached out to touch man and wife, speaking words and making a sign above both their foreheads. ‘Do not punish yourselves,’ he commanded. ‘You are blameless. You have done all that was asked of you.’

Eldmar’s eyes drooped, and his wife’s hands hung loose at her sides. Then Breona shook her head as if she had just come awake. She hugged Will, her eyes full of tenderness now. ‘You must put on a dry shirt, son. I’ll fetch out your best jerkin and give you a bundle of sweetcakes for your journey.’

But Will drew back in fear. ‘What have you done to them?’ he cried.

‘Be calm, Willand. They remember nothing of their former fears. They have been comforted.’

‘You’ve bewitched them!’

‘I have applied an incantation. There is no harm in it.’

Will tried to launch himself at the visitor, but Eldmar caught him in strong arms and said, ‘Willand, be easy! I made a promise, but it’s you who must redeem it. That’s often the way with sons and fathers.’

Breona kissed him again and went to the linen chest. From it she took a parting gift, an ornament the size of his thumb made of smooth, greenish stone. It was carved in the form of a leaping salmon, and engraved with a figure and some words. Words were beyond Will’s plain learning to read, though the figure was three triangles placed one within another. Its meaning – if it had one – was not clear.

‘It was inside your blanket when you were brought to us,’ Breona said. ‘It’s only right that it should go with you now. Wear it as a charm, for a mother’s love goes with it. And, like the salmon, may you return to us again some day.’

Her eyes sparkled when she smiled at him, and he threw his arms around her neck. ‘You’ll always be my mother. Always!’

Eldmar said, ‘I have nothing to give you, but I will do one thing before you go. Sit down.’

When Will sat down on the three-legged stool, Eldmar caught up a handful of his hair. His big, blunt fingers carefully teased out the strands. They twisted and pulled and twisted again, working expertly until two braids were done.

‘There,’ his father said as he stood up. ‘Now you’re a man.’

CHAPTER TWO INTO THE REALM

They climbed up towards the Tops through the pouring rain, and Will told himself that he had made a fool’s wish come true after all. He did not know how or why his feet followed one another, but after a while they felt the tread-worn track peter out and long grass begin. The stranger was leading him onward through Nethershaw Woods. There were thousands of bluebells clothing the ground hereabouts, but blind darkness pressed in all around, and he saw nothing. The air was alive with deep green smells, but apart from the sound of rain, the night was quiet. Creatures of fur and feather had drawn deep inside their holes and hollows, and nothing stirred.

It was as if the journey was happening to someone else. His new, manly braids felt strange as they swung against his wet cheek. He put a hand to them and began to think of his parents again, and that filled his eyes with tears. He stumbled in the darkness and the stranger said, ‘Tread softly, Willand, for we have far to go tonight.’

The steady climb brought them out onto open land. It was curious how slow the raindrops seemed to fall here, and how filled with echoes was their noise. Underfoot the going was as gentle as a sheep-cropped meadow. Will had never climbed so high before, nor walked so far or so fast in the dark. The stranger did not lean on his staff as an old man should, he wielded it. His long legs strode out as if he could see the night world around him as clearly as any cat.

A hundred questions about the stranger whirled in Will’s head. Perhaps he’s a sorcerer, he thought, dread welling up. It’s plain he’s got the power about him, and he spoke an incantation onto my…

His thoughts turned away from Breona and Eldmar. The pang in his belly felt like fear, and underneath it there lurked a dark and dreadful question – if Eldmar and Breona are not my real parents, then who are?

There must be a spell on me now, he told himself, or why else are my legs being forced to follow him?

Will tried to resist, but he could not. In the back of his mind, shapeless fears writhed.

‘What’s the matter now?’ the stranger said, turning.

He wanted to ask the dreadful question, but instead he stammered, ‘Are…are we going to the Giant’s Ring?’

The stranger loomed in the darkness. ‘What do you know about the Giant’s Ring?’

‘N…Nothing.’

‘Then why do you fear it? Are you drawn by its power? Tell me!’ The stranger gripped his arm. ‘What do you know about the Ring?’

‘Only that there’s a stone near it that shepherds say is lucky.’

The stranger’s tone softened, and he laughed unexpectedly. ‘Forgive me if I frightened you, Willand. We are not going to the Giant’s Ring. Nor was that ever a place where folk were ritually slain, or beheaded, or buried alive – as no doubt you have been led to believe.’

Will’s heart hammered at the strange answer, but already some of his fear had begun to turn to obstinacy. They went on, crested a shallow rise, and headed over the brow into lands that drained westward. Moments later they skirted the sleeping hamlet of what could only be Over Norton, a fabled place spoken of rarely by Valesmen. A hound barked in the distance, a deep-throated, echoing sound that was full of longing.

At last, Will staggered to a halt. He shielded his eyes from the rain, peering back the way they had come. They had reached another track, this time on level ground, that ran right across the Tops.

The stranger turned. ‘What now?’

‘I’m…scared.’

He flinched away as the stranger reached out and touched his shoulder, but the words that came this time were plain enough. ‘I will not say there is no reason for you to be scared. This is the most dangerous night of your short life. But I will do everything in my power to protect you.’

Something seemed to burst in Will’s chest and he blurted out, ‘Well, if you’re so wise, why don’t you just magic us to wherever it is we’re supposed to be going?’

The stranger paused and regarded him for a long moment before saying, ‘Because magic must always be used sparingly, and never without considering gains against losses. Magic must be requested, never summoned, respected, never treated with disdain. It must be asked for openly and honestly. Listen to me, Willand! I am trying very hard to deliver you to a place of safety. But we may not reach it if you decide to defy me. And the danger will be the more, the more you resist.’

The stranger seemed suddenly older than old, a man used to talking high talk, giving important words to important people, not a man who was used to coaxing frightened lads into following him through the night. Will stared at the ground sullenly. ‘Aren’t there…aren’t there giants up here?’

The other laughed softly. ‘Giants? Now who could have put that notion into your head? Ah, let me guess. That would have been Tilwin, the well-travelled man.’

Will’s mouth fell open. ‘Then – you do know Tilwin!’

‘I know a great many folk. Did Tilwin say he knew me?’

It was more than a question and Will gave no answer. He gritted his teeth, still fighting the urge that moved his legs forward. ‘You still haven’t told me where we’re going.’

‘The less you know about that the better, until we are a good deal closer to it.’

‘Is it far?’

‘Four more leagues tonight, three as the rook flies, then we shall come to a place of sanctuary.’ The voice mellowed. ‘Try to be easy in your mind, Willand. There will come a day when you are no longer afraid of giants – but we shall have to work hard to make sure you live that long.’

The stranger’s voice was as vivid as lightning – at once exciting, comforting and terrifying. Oh, yes, he must be a great sorcerer, Will thought. For who but a great sorcerer could use words like that? But four leagues! Four leagues was a very long way. In the Vale a single league was a trip from Nether Norton to Pannage then away to Overmast and back again. To go four leagues in one journey seemed unimaginable.

But I’m not going. I’ll test his magic long before that, he told himself stubbornly. I’ll bide my time. I’ll wait until he’s wrapped up in his big thoughts, and then I’ll fall behind little by little and make a run for it. He won’t be able to find me, because I won’t go straight home. No! I’ll wait till first light, then run down to Overmast and hide in Ingulph’s Oak. He’ll never find me there.

But a firm grip took him by the collar and hauled him onward. ‘Please try to keep up. Have I not already made clear to you the dangers?’

Will tried to pull away from the grip. ‘You’re trying to enchant me with your sorcerer’s whisper-words.’

‘Oh, a sorcerer, am I?’

‘It’s magic you’ve put on me. I can feel it working in my legs!’

‘And what do you know about magic? Your village has not even the benefit of a wise woman.’

‘I know sorcerers are evil!’

The stranger made no immediate reply, but then he sighed and his breath steamed in the moist air. ‘Do not speak to me of evil, for you do not know what that is. Be assured, your life and the lives of ten thousand others may depend on your obedience to me tonight. Now come along willingly or I shall have to take measures.’

Will refused to believe a word of it, but he could do nothing except pace onward through the gloom and wait for his chance. At length he said, ‘In the village they say you’re a crow called Jack o’ Lantern.’

‘Jack is as good a name as any. Noblemen have long used the word “crow” to mean wanderers such as I, but the folk of Nether Norton do not know the difference between a crow and a craft-saw.’

That was no help. ‘But it’s not your real name.’

‘I have a true name, but that may not be learned by others.’

‘Why not?’

The stranger’s eyebrow arched impressively. ‘Because if it became known to my enemy, it would put me in his power.’

‘Do you have many enemies?’

‘Only one.’

Will thought that was a very guarded answer. ‘What’s he called?’

‘At times he uses the name “Clinsor” at others “Maskull”. But those are not his true names any more than Gwydion is mine.’

Will seized on the slip. ‘Is that what I should call you?’

The sorcerer laughed. ‘Sharp! Let me put your mind at rest. I have been known by many names – Erilar, Finegas, Tanabure, Merlyn, Laeloken, Bresil, Tiernnadrui – but you should call me by the name the present lords of this realm use when they speak of me. Call me Master Gwydion.’

‘Master Gwydion,’ Will repeated, satisfied. He said portentously, ‘Gwydion the Sorcerer!’

‘Do not make such jests.’ The plea was made quietly, but Will heard in it a solemn warning.

‘Why not? You perform magic. You don’t deny that. So you’re a sorcerer.’

Gwydion put his face close to Will’s own. ‘Try to remember that words are important. They have precise meanings. I do not perform magic, Willand. Magic is never performed. It is not the stuff of conjuring shows, it is what links the world together. And you must never call me “enchanter”, “warlock” or “magician” – those words are easily misunderstood by folk of little learning. They cause trouble.’

Will stumbled over a coney burrow and almost fell. ‘I wish this rain would stop! I can’t see a thing!’

Gwydion grunted. ‘Wishes! Every spell of magic I expend tonight must be heavily veiled, but perhaps we might go by faelight for a while without any greater risk of being noticed.’

The sorcerer muttered hard-to-hear words, then he took hold of Willand’s head and used his thumbs to wipe the water from his face. All at once Will became lightheaded, and it seemed as if there was a glow in the wet grass around him, a glow like mist caught in a spider’s web, like a dusting of green moonlight over a soft land. Then he realized he had not opened his eyes. He gasped in wonder, still more than a little fearful of what was happening to him.

‘Am I dreaming?’ he asked as the rain began to slacken. A few moments more and it had stopped altogether. But not in the usual way. Each drop was now hanging in the air as if it had forgotten how to fall. He felt the drops collide with his face as he moved through them, like magic dew. Then, quite suddenly the drops began to fall again, but very slowly.

Up above, the clouds began to clear away. They revealed a host of bright, green stars. He heard the comforting call of a barn owl, and through the air it came, silent and huge and white and incredibly slow, as if swimming through the rain-washed air. It shattered the drops in its path and passed so close to him that he could have reached out to touch it. He saw every detail of each wonderful feather on its wings before it vanished. The sight of it astonished him, then all at once they were going along again, and it was as if they had walked out from the region of bewitched rain in a dream, because now the ground was stony and broken and dry as dust. The foot of the sorcerer’s staff was beating a rhythmic toc-toc-toc on what seemed to be a trackway. Will wandered towards it through the still faintly glowing land, while his mind bubbled and fizzed. Another enchantment had been laid on him, he knew that much. And was that not another very good reason to mistrust this dangerous man?

And yet – what if he was telling the truth about that greater danger?

‘Who’s Beltane?’ he asked at last. ‘What did you mean when you said “this son of Beltane”? Is Beltane my real father?’

Gwydion grunted, seemingly amused by the question. A crescent moon had begun to rise, low and large and ruddy in the east. ‘How much you have to learn. Beltane is not a person, it is a day. It lies between the equinox of spring and the solstice of summer. Beltane is what you in the Vale call Cuckootide, and what others call “May Day”. It’s a special day, the day that gave you birth.’

‘Who are my real parents?’ He said it almost without thinking, and like a painful thorn it was suddenly out. ‘Please tell me.’

‘Willand, I cannot tell you.’

‘But you must!’

‘I cannot because I do not know.’

‘I don’t believe you!’

‘I would not lie about it.’

But Will could not let it go. ‘Where did you find me, then? Tell me that.’

It seemed Gwydion would give no answer, but then he said, ‘When I found you, you were only a day or two old.’

‘But where did you find me? Who was there?’

The stranger halted. ‘No one was there. Willand – you had been left to die.’

The shock of that answer flowed through his heart like icy water. He let the sorcerer turn away and walk on, while his mind wandered numbly. Who would leave a little baby to die? What reason could there possibly have been? What was wrong with me?

The stranger came back, made a sign over Will’s forehead and muttered powerful words until the numbness dissolved and he was hardly able to recall the questions that had so troubled him. After that, the journey was like floating through the silent night. He watched the moon rise ever higher in the south-east. Gradually it lost its rosy glow and began to shine chalk white in a clear and star-spangled sky. For some time now a grey light had been seeping in from the east, and when Will next closed his eyes he found that the faelight had left him.

He marvelled at the low, flat skyline: there was so much more sky on the Tops than ever there had been in the Vale. Land stretched as far as the eye could see. It made a man feel like standing straighter and breathing deeper. He looked ahead. Far away the rich brown soil had been tilled and planted. Nearer by there was a shallow ridge and a slope. To the south the land dropped down into a broad valley, and on the far side it rose again in forest. The dawn was coming faster now, a power that would soon send unstoppable rays searching over the land. Already the glimmers revealed tussocky chases beside the trackway, pale stone clothed in a thin flesh of loam and cloaked in green. There were patches of woodland here too, and plenty of folds hereabouts where someone who wanted to make a run for it might choose to hide…

That idea brought his scattered thoughts up sharply. He had almost forgotten about escaping. He had walked all night, yet he was neither hungry nor tired. But things were changing. The faelight was gone and now the sensation in his legs had almost drained away too. His braids swung encouragingly at his cheek, and he put a hand to them. The Realm was indeed a bigger and stranger place than ever he had thought.

I won’t be able to find my way back if we go much further, he thought. I’ll have to make my break now, before it’s too late! But carefully, he warned himself. This Master Gwydion may have done me no harm as yet, but he’s a lot more dangerous than he tries to seem. Still, I’ll bet he can’t run as fast as me, nor aim his night-magic so well in full daylight. I’ll bide my time then – off! With a bit of luck his hood will stay up and he won’t even see me go.

He glanced to left and right. The old, straight track as it ran over the Tops was broken. It rose and fell no more than the height of a man in a thousand paces now, and it kept to high ground where the skin of the land was pulled tightest over its bones. There were sheep droppings among the grass, and coney burrows too. Grey stones outcropped here and there along the trackway, and Will hung back as far as he dared, wondering if these old stones might not be the remains of giants’ houses set beside the ancient road. Tilwin had once said that beyond the Vale there were houses and castles built of stone, wondrous ruins that had lasted since the days of the First Men…

Thinking no more about it, Will tore suddenly away and ran down the slope. Once out of sight he went as fast as he could, jinking over the tussocks like a hare, looking once, twice, over his shoulder to check that the sorcerer had not missed him. Only when he was sure did he dive down behind a hillock and lie pressed hard against the ground.

From here he could see where the track wound onward, and soon he spied a tiny, dark figure continuing along the track in the distance, wrapped up in his cloak and seemingly deep in thought. Will exulted. He’ll never find me now, he told himself, lying on his back among the moss until he had got his breath back. His clothes were still damp from the rain and he began to feel a certain weariness seeping into his joints, but none of that mattered. He was free. He would lie low until the sorcerer had gone. Then he would find a way home.

He thought of opening the bundle of sweetcakes that was lodged inside his jerkin, but decided against it. He might have greater need of them before the day was done. But thinking about the sweetcakes made him remember his mother and a lonely feeling crept over him. She’s not my mother, he thought. Though I don’t know how a real mother could have loved me any better.

He took out the fish-shaped talisman and turned it over in his fingers. He could not read what was written on it, yet still its touch comforted him. His feelings towards Breona and Eldmar had not changed, but now there were gaping questions where once there had been certainties.

A male blackbird looking for breakfast turned one wary yellow-rimmed eye on him and began clucking at him as if he was a cat. Will told it to hush, but the bird fled in noisy distress, and he wondered if the sorcerer was alert enough to have noticed it. Then the ground began to tremble and tear. He turned to look behind him and saw a huge grey-green shape that had begun to rise up from what he had thought was a small hill. The hill looked like a man’s back, but the shoulders were as broad as a barn door and the skin filthy and warty like a toad’s. Dread seized him and held him in its grip. He tried to yell, but the air was already filled with groans.

The creature was getting to its feet. It rose up from its hollow in the ground like a boulder being forced from its bed, and it carried on rising until it was as tall as the May Pole. Two immense legs were each as far around as an oak. And the body was built in proportion, with two heavily muscled arms. But it was the hairless head that was most terrifying – ugly and gross-featured, with a wide mouth filled with uneven, soil-brown teeth, a bone-hooded brow and bulbous, penetrating eyes.

Terror swarmed through Will. He could neither stand nor run, only stare until every self-preserving thought was blotted from his mind. But as the monster turned on him, he yelped and scrambled to get away. His arms and legs would not work fast enough, but then the monster’s eyes fixed hard on him. It let out a deep-roaring bellow and began to step forward. Each of its footfalls shook the land. It came so close that he could smell the earthy stink of its breath and feel the closeness of its hands.

Somehow Will ran clear of those flailing arms. He bolted along the trackway, never pausing to look back, certain that if the monster caught him it would eat him alive. His braids banged against his ear as he ran. When at last he did look over his shoulder, he saw that a great stone had been wrenched up from the ground. It was hurled through the air, bounced and blundered past him like a great wooden ball pitched at a skittle. Finally, it came to rest at the very place where a little while ago he had schemed to make his escape.

When Will saw the distant figure of the sorcerer by the brow of the next hill, he flew to him. The old man was continuing in the same way, his staff beating a steady toc-toc-toc over the stones. Will’s heart was bursting, his lungs gasping for air as he shouted his warning.

‘Master Gwydion! Master Gwydion!’ His hands grasped at the sorcerer’s much-patched cloak as he tried to get his words out. ‘A gi – a gi—! A giant coming!’

The sorcerer stopped, put a hand on Will’s head and smiled. ‘Alba will not harm you so long as you do nothing to harm that which he holds dear.’

‘He – he’s trying to kill me!’

‘Then stay close to me, for I am his friend. One day you will be glad that the flesh of this land is his flesh. But come now. The new day is brightening and we have yet to reach the Evenlode Bridge.’

Gwydion walked on, unconcerned. But the terror was still fresh in Will. He felt it rattling inside him as he plucked up the courage to look back again. There was nothing to see now, nothing except what might be the long shadow of an outcrop thrown across the track by the golden light of the newly-risen sun. As for the great boulder that had been hurled after him, it was there – a lone standing stone that looked as if it had been sitting by the side of the track for fifty generations.

It was a trick! Will told himself with sudden outrage. Just an evil sorcerer’s trick! And I believed it!

But a bigger part of him was not so easily persuaded that it had been a trick, and so he hurried to catch up.

CHAPTER THREE TO THE TOWER OF LORD STRANGE

By now it was late morning, yet they had seen no other person along their path. Folk must be dwelling close by, Will thought, for someone must work these fields, and once or twice I’ve seen the thatch of houses in the distance. Maybe we’re going the quiet way on purpose.

After walking down off the Tops and some way into the broad valley that lay ahead, Will halted. ‘I can’t take another step,’ he croaked.

The sorcerer seemed uncomfortable that they should stop here. He gave Will a hard look. ‘We will rest. But not in this place.’ Then he did a strange thing: he drew a little stick from his sleeve and twisted it over the ground, walking back and forth as if testing for something until they had gone a few hundred paces further on.

When he saw Will watching him, he said, ‘Do not be afraid, it is only scrying. Do you see how the hazel wand moves? It helps me feel out the power that flows in the land.’

Will stared back mutely, and the sorcerer carried on. The place he eventually chose for them to rest was an oblong enclosure of cropped grass about as big as Nether Norton’s green. It was surrounded by a grassy earth bank a little higher than a man’s head. Weathered standing stones guarded its four corners, sticking up like four grey teeth. Will had no idea who might have laboured to build such a place, or why, for as a sheep pen it would have been very poor. But as he let the feel of it seep into his bones he had the idea that this was ancient ground and very much to be respected. It did feel good to sit here as the swallows looped and swooped high overhead, but he also sensed an echo of distant doings – dark events – that seemed to run through the land.

Gwydion watched him closely. ‘Long ago, Willand, this was a famous stronghold. Here it was that, eighty generations ago, Memprax the Tyrant conspired with his brother, Malin, to gain the Realm. And when the Realm was won Memprax murdered Malin in his bed, and thereafter ruled as a despot. I remember it all as if it was yesteryear.’

Will looked at the sorcerer with astonishment, for who but an immortal could remember events that had taken place eighty generations ago? The thought made him uneasy. He took out and opened his bundle of sweetcakes, chose the smaller one for himself and offered the other.

‘That was kindly done,’ Gwydion said. ‘And in return you shall have this.’ He picked up a pebble, and offered it.

‘What is it?’

‘As you see, a pebble. But a very fine pebble. Or do you think otherwise?’

‘Are you laughing at me?’

‘Laughing? Why should you say that? This is your reward. You will find that you are able to spend it like a silver shilling, for those who value coins will see it as such.’

‘You are laughing at me. Or you’re mad.’

The sorcerer shrugged. ‘If you think so, then throw it away.’

But Will decided to put the pebble in his pouch.

The sun had begun to warm the day and Gwydion pulled back his hood, revealing a high-browed head set with a close-fitting cap of grey linen that covered long, unbraided hair. His face was also long and his dark eyes deeply set under thick brows. It was a kindly face. He wore the beard of an old man, but it still seemed impossible to place a certain age upon him.

After finishing his sweetcake, the sorcerer took out his hazel wand and went back to scrying the ground around the stones. Despite all that had happened, Will could not now think too badly of him. In the sunshine, he seemed to be no more than a pitiful old man – one weighed down with too many cares. Perhaps he had been telling the truth all along. And perhaps it might not be such a bad life to be apprenticed to a sorcerer for a while.

When Gwydion noticed he was being watched, he beckoned Will to him. ‘I’m reading the stone.’

‘You really are mad.’

‘And you really must be careful.’

‘Reading it how?’

‘With my fingers. I want to see if it is a battlestone.’ He walked carefully around the stone, touching its surface with his fingertips. ‘Are you any the wiser?’

‘What’s a battlestone?’

Gwydion straightened, then a wry smile broke out across his face. ‘Perhaps there is no harm in telling you. I want to know if this is one of the stones that are bringing war to the Realm.’

Will screwed up his face, but said nothing.

‘Oh, you are not alone in your disbelief! All standing stones are powerful and precious things. They were put in place long ago by the fae or else by wise men who knew something of the fae’s skills. Only fools have ever tried to move them since.’

Will looked at the stone critically. It was a large, weathered grey rock, much taller than it was broad, and quite unremarkable. He put his hands on it and found the surface nicely sun-warmed.

Gwydion smiled. ‘Most stones bring benefits to the land – like the Tarry Stone which keeps your village green so lush and makes the sheep who graze there very glad, but some stones are not so helpful. The worst of them were made long ago with the aim of inciting men to war. That is why they are called battlestones.’

‘Is this one?’

Gwydion sighed. ‘In truth, I cannot easily tell what is a battlestone and what is not. It has become my wearisome task to try to find them, but so far I have failed.’

‘Failed?’

‘I lack the particular skill for it. The fae knew well how to protect the lorc from prying.’ He patted the stone he had been examining. ‘But at least this one may be discounted, for it carries the sign that tells me its purpose is harmless.’

‘A sign? Where? Let me see.’

The sorcerer cast him an amused glance. ‘Do you think you would be able to see it?’

Will digested Gwydion’s words in silence, then he said, ‘What’s a lorc?’

‘The lorc? It is a web of earth power that runs through the land. The battlestones are fed by it, and—’

He stopped abruptly, and Will became aware that the skylarks high above had ceased their warbling song. A powerful sense of danger settled over him as Gwydion looked sharply around him.

‘Did you feel that?’

‘What?’

But the sorcerer only shook his head and listened again. ‘Come!’ he said, heading swiftly away. ‘We must take our leave of this place. By my shadow, look at the time! We should have crossed the Evenlode Bridge and passed into the Wychwoode by now!’

As he hurried on, Will’s sense of danger mounted. The sorcerer behaved as if something truly dreadful was following hard on their heels, but he could neither see nor hear any sign of pursuit. At last, they entered the shade of a wooded valley bottom, and Will’s fears began to fall away again. The waters of the Evenlode flowed over stones and glimmered under fronds of beech and oak and elm. A stone wall snaked out of sight across the river and led down to a well-used stone bridge. A woman seemed to be standing some way along the far bank next to a willow tree. She was beautiful, tall and veiled in white, yet sad. It seemed she had been crying. She watched him approach then stretched out a hand to him longingly, but the sorcerer called gruffly to him not to dawdle, and when he looked again the woman was gone.

As they followed the path up into the woodland green, he asked who she was and why she had been weeping. But Gwydion looked askance at him and said only, ‘By that willow tree? I saw no one there.’

Will stopped and looked back again, but even the shaft of sunlight in which the woman had seemed to stand had faded. He knew he had seen her, though now he could not say how real she had been.

Gwydion had raised his staff and was exclaiming, ‘Behold the great Forest of Wychwoode! Rejoice, Willand, for now you will be safe for a little while at least.’

They travelled deeper into the forest along whispering runnels, among towering trees where sunshine flecked the green gloom with gold. Will heard the clatter of a woodpecker far away in the distance. Cuckoos and cowschotts and other woodland birds flittered among the trees. After a while, he said, ‘Master Gwydion, how is it you’ve got memories that go back eighty generations? Are you immortal?’

‘I have lived long and seen much, but that does not make me immortal. No one is that. I was born as other men were born. My first home was Druidale, on the Ellan Vannin, which some now call the Island of Manx – though that was long ago. I can be hurt as other men are hurt – by accident or by malice – though it is quite hard to catch unawares one who has lived so long in the world. I do not grow old as other men grow old, and many magical defences protect me from different kinds of murderous harm, but one day I will cease to be just as all men cease to be. As for what I am, there is no proper word for that in these latter days. I am both guardian and pathfinder. Once I might have been called “phantarch”, but you may call me a wizard.’

‘Aren’t wizards the same as sorcerers, then? Or is one good and the other evil?’

‘There are many fools who would have you believe it. But be careful of such words, for believers in good and evil cannot understand true magic.’

‘Believers?’ Will said, frowning. ‘Do you mean there might be no such thing as good or evil? But how could that be?’

But Gwydion said only, ‘For the present you would do well to forget all you have ever learned of light and dark, for the true nature of the world is not as you suppose.’

Will looked about. ‘So am I to live with you here in this wood, and learn magic?’

Gwydion seemed puzzled by his question, but then he laughed and clapped Will on the shoulder. ‘See there, we are nearing the tower of Lord Strange. He will settle some of your endless questions.’

As Will followed, he wondered who Lord Strange might be. He had never seen a lord, for no lord had ever bothered to tramp through Quaggy Marsh down by Middle Norton. No one except Tilwin ever visited the upper reaches of the Vale. Even so, Will had heard tell of lordly ways, about their finery, about how they feasted in stone-built castles and rode snow-white horses, and most of all about how they wore shining armour and wielded swords in battle. Lords had sounded at once a fine and a fearsome lot.

As for Gwydion, he did not look as though he did any of those things. He dressed simply, like a wayfarer, not in robes of velvet or cloth-of-gold, but in plain wool and linen. And he went barefoot like a man who could not afford himself a pair of shoes. There was no metal about him, nor anything that came from the killing of an animal – no fur, no leather and no bone – except for the bird’s skull charm that he wore around his neck.

‘Why do you wear that?’ he asked, pointing to it as they came over a mossy bank and headed down towards a forest glade.

The wizard looked sidelong at him. ‘This? It is an ornament…and a safeguard.’

‘Against what?’

‘The unexpected.’ He intercepted Will’s finger as he tried to touch it. ‘Be careful! It is a trigger that sets off a very powerful piece of magic. It works much as a crossbow works upon a bolt. If the spell were invoked, I would become the bolt.’

Will did not understand. It was only a bird’s skull. But there was no time to dwell on the matter, for just then Will saw a fallow deer hind. He touched the wizard’s sleeve and pointed her out. She was watching them nervously from beyond a stand of birch trees, but as soon as she knew she had been discovered she leapt away.

Will saw the marks of her cloven hooves in the damp earth, but there were others that were bigger and uncloven. Gwydion examined some droppings then a half-smile appeared on his face. ‘These are rare fumets indeed,’ he said. ‘Unicorn dung! It is most odd. They are not often to be found so far south. Something is amiss here.’

The forest deepened around them and the undergrowth thickened, but just as it seemed their path would be blocked the ground began to fall away into a clearing. There stood a double tower of dressed stone which rose to many times the height of a man. Will marvelled at it, though it seemed a dismal place. It was old and round and green with moss. Its top was battlemented and set with pointed roofs and several small, high windows. Below the tower there was a square moat.

Will’s fears returned as they approached the gate. When they reached the bridge a frightening figure came out to bar their way. He was a man, but he was wearing a bonnet of iron and a coat that jangled with countless interlinked iron rings. His body was covered with a red surcoat that displayed the likeness of two silvery hounds. Will had never seen cloth so bright. It was as red as blood.

‘Who comes to the dwelling of Lord Strange?’

Gwydion spread his hands. ‘Tell your master there is a friend at his gate. One who brings tidings of wind and water and of war to come.’

‘Wait here for your answer.’

When the man had disappeared, Gwydion said, ‘The warden of the forest is named John le Strange. This is his lodge. His own domains are in the North where many men follow him, but King Hal has made him warden here. The king hunts rarely and has never come to this place, but Wychwoode is a royal forest and must be kept as such. You will soon see why Lord Strange has been appointed to a place where few eyes can linger upon him.’

‘Is he…ugly?’

Gwydion looked up to the top of the tower. ‘He was once the handsomest of men, but his appearance has been changed. He wears a ring of gold in his nose. That is his wedding ring which he is loath to cut and cannot otherwise remove. Take care not to stare at him.’

Will’s fears surged. ‘Why not?’

‘Because first impressions count for a lot. You do not want to be thought rude.’

Will swallowed hard. ‘Master Gwydion, why have you brought me here?’

‘To learn, Willand. To learn.’

The man returned. This time he lifted up the front part of his iron hat and bade them enter. Will followed as Gwydion crossed the threshold and entered the hall. There, attended by his people, Lord Strange came out to greet them both. He was a big man with a chest like a barrel, but what was terrifying about him, and what made Will reel back in horror, was the fact that his head was more than a little like that of a wild boar.

Will managed to steady himself. He rubbed at his eyes, but the sight persisted. The lord’s face sprouted grey bristles and his lower jaw foamed where two yellow teeth jutted. His nose was snout-like and did indeed carry a golden ring. Below the neck, though, he had the normal figure of a man and was attired in fine red robes.

To stop himself staring at the hog-headed lord, Will looked instead at the lady who came to stand by his side. She was a long-faced woman, tall and thin, and her hair was swept back inside a veiled hat which was the same grey as her long belted gown of embroidered velvet. The gown was tight to her form at bodice and sleeve, and at her neck was an ornament of silver set with pale stones. She seemed not to care that her husband was a monster.

‘You are welcome to Wychwoode, Crowmaster,’ Lord Strange said. ‘Have you succeeded in your quest?’

‘I thank you for your welcome,’ Gwydion replied. ‘And as for my quest, we must talk urgently, you and I. But first, I shall beg a favour on behalf of my young companion. He has walked throughout the night and is both weary and footsore. He may fall down soon where he stands if he is not afforded a corner in which to lay his poor head.’

Will felt the shock of the lord’s appearance still tingling through him as he entered the tower. After a little while a man and a woman appeared and asked him to follow them up a curving stair of finely mortared stone that was lit by bright rays of dappled sunlight. After a turn or two, the stair opened onto a broad gallery, supported by many carved pillars. Will had never been in such a place, and it filled him with awe. ‘I suppose you must be Lord Strange’s kin,’ he said, offering his hand to the man as soon as he turned. ‘My name’s Willand.’

The attendants looked blankly at him. ‘Sir, we are my lord’s servants. We do his lordship’s bidding.’

Neither the man nor the woman would smile or speak further to him, and their coldness set him on edge. He could see no reason for their unfriendliness. They were dressed in costly stuff, though the style and cut were lacking in dignity. The man’s hair was cut to shoulder length, but he wore no braids. The woman’s hair was hidden inside a plain headcloth. They showed him into a gorgeously painted chamber that looked as if it belonged to the lord himself.

He looked around in wonderment. ‘Are we to go in there? What a place it is, hey!’

But the woman only looked away and lowered her gaze. ‘My lord bids you to take refreshment, and sleep if you will.’

‘And food and drink too!’ He could hardly believe it. ‘I thank you, but tell me—’ he lowered his voice and said with a grin ‘—how did Old Nittywhiskers come by that hog’s head of his?’

At once a look of horror came over both the servants’ faces, and instead of answering him they made as if to leave.

‘Wait,’ Will said, as an idea came to him. ‘Here. I have something for you.’

He fished the pebble that Gwydion had given him out of his pouch, and gave it to the maidservant. She stared at it in amazement, so that Will could not tell if she was happy at getting a shilling or bewildered at having been offered a pebble. But then the serving man said, ‘Thank you, sir!’ And the way he said it removed all doubt.

The servants backed away, thanking him again and closing the door after themselves. Will laughed out loud. He saw a plate of food and a goblet of small beer. He fell on it with good appetite, then he climbed up onto the great bed, wiped his mouth on his sleeve and stared up at the ceiling.

It seemed for a moment that a thousand new sights and sounds whirled inside his head, dizzying him, then sleep whispered in his ear and he knew no more.

He awoke in darkness. For a moment he wondered where he could be, but then a dozen memories came flooding back and his belly turned over. He got up and went to the tall, narrow window of lead and horn that opened onto the tree tops of the forest. The night was balmy and dry. No moon lit the whispering trees, but there was glow enough from the castle to show ghostly beech trunks standing motionless in the still air. He could smell the stagnant water of the moat down below, and from somewhere far away there came a strange heartbeat, a low but insistent sound that echoed with a regular thump-thump-thump through the forest.

Wychwoode seemed to be a solemn place, not at all what Will had imagined when the wizard had spoken of a place of safety. He ducked back inside the window and went to try the door. It was of thick oak and set with clever craftsmanship into stonework that was as solid as any outcrop of the earth. At first, the door would not open, and he wondered if he had been made a prisoner, but then he found the heavy iron latch ring, lifted it, and the door swung easily and noiselessly.

Outside, a pillared gallery gave onto the great hall below. It was decorated with woven hangings that showed hunting scenes and a painted frieze of hounds and woodcutters. A huge stone-hooded fireplace was set in the far wall, its grate empty. The remains of a meal were scattered across a large table, set with many wooden trenchers and bowls which had yet to be cleared away. Two dozen candles, each as thick as a man’s arm, burned brightly on a pair of iron stands and threw back the shadows. Gwydion sat in the lord’s own high-backed chair at the top of the table, while Lord Strange and his lady sat on each side and listened to him.

‘I have read the portents,’ Gwydion was saying. ‘And if I had in my pouch a thousand silver crowns and if there was at my command a company of nine dozen men, still that would not be enough to avert the disaster that is surely coming.’

Lord Strange leaned forward in his chair, his moist snout twitching at the mention of silver. ‘If war is coming as you say then all our hopes walk alongside you, Crowmaster.’

Gwydion put out his hand and said, ‘That is why I urge you to come with me to the court at Trinovant. So far, I have worked in secret, but the time of uncertainties is at an end, and the day is fast approaching when I must bring unwelcome tidings to those who surround the king.’

‘Alas for my affliction!’ Lord Strange looked away, so that the ring in his nose glittered and the candlelight danced on his blond eyelashes. ‘For who will be persuaded by one who carries on him the head of a hog? The queen cannot stomach to stay in the same room as me. She calls me “King Bladud of the Swine” and mocks me. Therefore you would do better to seek the favour of the court without me.’

Gwydion let a long silence stretch out before he spoke again. ‘I feared you would answer me thus, Friend John. Listen to me: I tell you there is nothing left to a man in your position save to attend to your duties as honestly and as generously as you may. I say to you that you must not look to others to find the remedy to your ailment, you must seek for it in diligence and prudent action. Give rather than take.’

‘You make much of your advice, Crowmaster, and yet you seem to me to speak in riddles.’

‘If I do, then perhaps it is because there is no straighter way to speak to you at present.’ Gwydion spread his hands. ‘Nor do I wish to trouble you with the detail of my own task, but I must make some explanation so you understand something of the import of this news that I bear. Just as water flows upon the earth in streams and in rivers, so there are also flows of power within the earth.’

Lord Strange grunted. ‘Power, you say?’

‘Just as some places are wetter and drier, so accordingly there are places where there is an abundance of earth power, and other places that suffer from a lack of it.’

The lord’s wife looked bored by this. ‘Crowmaster, we know this much for we have seen you scry the ground with your hazel wand.’

‘Oh, those patterns are wholly natural, and long have I studied them. The Realm is tattooed from end to end with subtle flows that any willing person may learn to feel. They spiral and coil underfoot, always rising and falling as the moon and sun run their several ways. Farmers read the land by them, and use such knowledge to ensure their crops will thrive. A fast flow of power makes for a place of good aspect, whereas a sluggish flow diminishes the life force of all that grows in the ground or goes upon it. This is well known.’

The Hogshead gave a great yawn. ‘We will take your word for it, Crowmaster. For we know nothing of such matters and care for them less.’

The wizard leaned forward and his manner became as wily as a conspirator’s. ‘But, Friend John, this is not the power of which I now speak. Consider this: just as there are natural rivers upon which men ride to trade their goods, yet also men will oftentimes cut artificial canals so they may reach places where no natural river runs. And so it once was with the great flows of earth power, for long ago, during the days of the First Men and before the fae retired into the Realm Below, a thing called the lorc was made.’

‘Lorc? We have never heard this word before,’ Lord Strange scratched at his chin. ‘What does it signify?’

The wizard shook his head. ‘No one in these latter days has any knowledge of it. Even we wizards of the Ogdoad supposed it to have been broken by the Slavers some fifty generations ago. Yet according to fragments of the Black Book of Tara which I have lately found in the Blessed Isle, there is reason to believe otherwise. Think of the lorc as channels, built by the fae and set deep in the earth. These channels – or “ligns” to give them their proper name – are nine in number and cross the Realm in different directions. They were made to draw and direct flows of earth power from one end of the Isle to the other.’

‘And their purpose?’ the lord’s wife asked.

‘Lady, your shrewdness brings me neatly to my point – their purpose was – and is – to feed certain standing stones which are known as “battlestones”. Once primed they are able to incite men to war.’

Lord Strange frowned at this. ‘And you now wish to find these battlestones?’

‘Quite so. But whereas I can easily scry the natural flows that lie in the ground, I cannot feel the ligns that were made by the fae, for their artifice was ever beyond that of men to comprehend, and in this case has been well hidden from us. I do not know how many battlestones there may be, but since I have become aware of their purpose my hope is to find at least some of them, if I can, by indirect means.’

The lord and his lady exchanged a wordless glance, then Lord Strange said, ‘It is your wish to render these battlestones harmless?’

‘It may yet be possible to lessen the slaughter that approaches. But time is already short, and I cannot accomplish my task alone. Men and horses and silver have I none – in short, I must beg for the king’s permission and hope for the aid of his court.’

The silence grew heavy. Then Lord Strange said bluntly, ‘As I have already explained, I cannot help you at court. I hope you have not come here to ask me for silver, Crowmaster, for I have little enough—’

The wizard held up his hand. ‘Have no fear, I will not ask you for silver, Friend John. But it will help me immeasurably if you would agree to look after the young apprentice lad.’

Will almost fell off his perch.

The wizard went on. ‘You see, I was obliged to save his life. It is a tiresome tale with which I will not burden you, save to say that for a while I had hopes of using him as my bag-carrier, but so far he has proven himself to be more of an encumbrance. I dare not allow myself to be weighed down by him any longer.’

‘You would have us keep the boy for you?’ the lord’s wife said.

‘He is a teasel-headed young churl, yet he may be turned to some use if he were to have some book learning knocked into him. Would you be so kind as to do that, my lady?’

She returned Gwydion’s gaze frostily. The lord growled, and it seemed to Will who watched in speechless horror that he would refuse, but then the wizard inclined his head persuasively and it seemed that an atmosphere of compliance came over the hall.

‘I would remind you that all such favours come around full circle in time.’

‘So you never tire of repeating, Crowmaster.’ The great, piggy head tossed. ‘However, I shall again do as you ask in the hope that one day—’

‘No!’Will shouted. ‘I won’t stay here! Not in this dismal place! I’m coming with you, Master Gwydion, or else I’ll go home! I’m not a teasel-head and you’re not giving me away!’

He bolted for the stair, but at a sign from the lord one of the guards stepped forward and grabbed him so that he was carried struggling into the hall.

‘You will be quiet!’ Gwydion commanded, and momentarily Will was robbed of his power of speech. Then the wizard bent close and whispered, ‘Wychwoode is a place of good aspect, Willand. You must stay here at least until Lammastide. A time of great danger follows your thirteenth birthday. It will last for six months—’

‘Six months?’ Will squealed. ‘Oh, take me with you, I beg you, Master Gwydion! Please!’

Gwydion leaned forward patiently once again and took his hands. ‘Listen to me, Willand. You were eavesdropping long enough to know that powerful forces are growing in the Realm, forces that will bring down a welter of blood upon the people unless they can be confounded. It is my duty to do what I can to prevent suffering. And it is your duty to do as I say.’

‘But I can’t live here! Please, don’t leave me!’

‘How soon your mind changes. Yesterday you were begging me not to take you away from home. Now, you are begging to come with me. What will you want tomorrow, I wonder? I will come for you at Lammastide.’

Some of the fire went out of him. ‘But that’s still all summer long, Master Gwydion. I can’t—’

But the wizard turned about in a whirl of steps and called out subtle words so that all other motion in the hall ceased. He drew a deep breath and spoke very privately to Will. ‘For thirteen years you lived as a happy child. You had a loving home and not a care to trouble you. You must thank me for that, for your peace was of my devising. But now there is a threat against your life, a threat that mere keeping spells cannot hold at bay.’ He raised a finger to Will’s lips. ‘Be mindful of your situation. I know you are not a teasel-head – that was said for Lord Strange’s benefit. The Wychwoode is the only safe place to spend this most critical season of your life. Do not go beyond its bounds. I will return for you before Lammastide – you have had my word on that. Now, will you promise to obey me in this matter or am I to wash my hands of you?’

And the look on the wizard’s face was so grave that Will found himself nodding and making a promise that he hated even before the spell had begun to pall.

CHAPTER FOUR A LITTLE LEARNING

And so it was that Will was lodged in the tower of John, Lord Strange for the season of the year that ran from Beltane to Lammastide. It was not long before he got used to the long days he had to spend at the tower, and began to forget some of the horror he had felt on first seeing the Hogshead.

The lord’s wife had agreed to set about Will’s schooling, but it soon grew into a torture for him. First they made him wear a suit of lordly stuff, all stiff and not to be soiled, and a rule was laid on him never to go beyond clarion call of the tower.

At first he obeyed. During the warmth of May and the heat of June he explored the nearer parts of the forest as far as the river, always looking out for unicorns, always mindful of Gwydion’s pledge to return for him, and his own not to stray. But no clarion was ever blown to summon him back to the tower, and little by little the lord’s strict rule was relaxed.

In the mornings he suffered terrible, spirit-crushing labours, while not a word was mentioned about magic as he had hoped. Instead he was put to reading and writing and speaking out from his slate, and near half of every day was spent chalking marks over and over, and when the slate was full, rubbing them all out again. But at least there were always the afternoons when he could roam as he wished.

Nor was he as lonely as he had feared he would be. On most nights a beautiful white cat came to visit him, and on some days a bent-backed old woman was accustomed to arrive at the tower to deliver firewood. Will felt sorry for her, for she would bring heavy loads on her back – fuel to cook the lord’s mountainous dinners. She said that when her summer’s toil was done there would be a further stock of wood laid in to keep Lord Strange and his wife warm throughout the winter, and she would have coin enough to pay her keep. So Will began helping her, and that was when he began to get back more than he gave, for without his knowing it the old woman had already begun to teach him the rudiments of magic.

She was known about the Wychwoode as the Wise Woman of Wenn, for she knew much about herbs and field remedies, and even something of the higher arts. She told Will many things as they walked the dusty path beside the river. First she told him about the ‘Great Rede’, then she spoke of the ‘Three-fold Way’, and then, as they came close to the hamlet of Assart Finstocke she taught him about the language of birds.

‘Fools think that birds and animals are of lesser rank and wisdom than men, but it is not so. Do you know that all crows are left-handed?’

He grinned. ‘Crows don’t have hands, Wise Woman.’

‘Left-handedness has nothing to do with these.’ She held up her own hands, then pointed at her head. ‘Like most other things it has to do with what’s in here. Do you know that all birds dream?’

‘Truly? What do they dream about?’

‘Songs. Birds are most wise in their way.’ She crooked a finger at a green froglet hiding among the reeds. ‘And see this little fellow here? A frog is wise in his own special way, for he is much better at being a frog than any man could ever be. What man could live without a stitch of clothing in a frozen pond all winter through? But he can. Likewise, a mole, a squirrel and a seagull can go where no man can go. Each creature of the wild has its own special knowledge of the world. If we scorn the wisdom of beasts we make fools of ourselves.’

The Wise Woman was a marvel. She said that folk who had patience could learn extraordinary tidings from birds and mice and not only from watching their habits or having knowledge of their ways, but from listening directly to their little hearts’ concerns and heeding their warnings about the future.

‘Don’t you know that all animals have foreknowledge?’ she asked. ‘Bees will swarm when they smell fire, ants know when thunderstorms are coming and hornets can tell which tree lightning will strike. And when it comes to greatness of character, you will never find loyalty in any lord’s man greater than that given by his hounds. Nor will you find elegance in any lady greater than that to be found in the cat who comes to sleep on your bed at night.’

‘You know him?’ said Will, startled.

‘Surely I do. His name is Pangur Ban. All the Sisters of the Wise have “familiars”, favoured animals who attend us. I am told by my toad, Treacle, that Pangur Ban is the true lord of Wychwoode and a great friend of Gwydion. Has the cat not told you this himself yet?’

Will grinned. ‘But surely, Wise Woman, no creature can speak?’

‘They all speak. Though no man or woman, no matter how wise, can hear what words are spoken. A hedgehog or a vole or a wasp will not spy for a wizard on the counsels of the great as some say they do, but woodpeckers may always be relied upon to tell if outlaws are concealed in a wood, and starlings can tell you if a village tithe has been paid or not – and, if it has, how much grain still lies in the barns.’ She produced a piece of dry bread. ‘Here! Take this and feed the ducks. Then perhaps you will learn how it is with ducks, and you will see how they thank you.’

No sooner had Will taken the bread than he turned to see a dozen mallards gliding over the water towards him. They had appeared out of nowhere and with such swiftness that he thought the Wise Woman must have summoned them by magic. Earlier he had seen her receive the bread from a tower guard whose injured hand she had healed the day before. He broke off small pieces and threw them out to the mallards, eager that each of the colourful drakes and each of the brown-speckled ducks should have its proper share. The birds dabbled their beaks and paddled back and forth and sported like children at play until all the bread was gone, then, seeing there was no more, they swam away again, almost as fast as they had appeared – but never a one turned to thank Will for lunch as he now half-expected.

‘Do you understand yet?’ the Wise Woman asked as Will followed her away from the water’s edge.

‘But…I didn’t hear any thanks from them. Should I have? It seems to me that when I had bread they were my friends, but when I had none they were my friends no longer.’

The Wise Woman laughed. ‘Oh, not at all! You are not thinking in the way of magic yet.’ She patted his belly three times. ‘You feel thanks in there – a warm glow just below your heart. Concentrate. Do you feel it now? The spirit of life? It’s a power that has come from those ducks – that’s their gratitude that burns inside you. A gift as sure and real as any gift of bread that you made to them. Feel it, Will, and learn how to feel it again! Mark it well, for it is a power that can put a smile on a man’s face and a spring in his step!’

And Will did smile, and he thought that perhaps he had grasped a little of what the Wise Woman had said after all. There must be in the world chains of good deeds, for had not the Wise Woman healed the hand of the guard who gave the bread that came to Will to give to the ducks who had made him smile? Now, he thought, if only there was someone I could pass this smile on to, then the chain would carry on…

‘Most folk believe they know nothing of magic, but it is natural for folk to understand it more than they think. No doubt you have heard fragments of great wisdom in old sayings? Many come from magical redes, or laws. One good turn deserveth another – you must have heard that?’

‘Why, yes! Many times.’

‘That is a rede of magic. So is “All things come full circle”. And “A man must be mad to ride a dragon”. And “Riches are like horse muck”.’

‘Riches are like horse muck? That doesn’t sound so wise to me.’

‘But riches are like horse muck, for they stink when in a heap, but spread about they make everything fruitful.’

Will learned how the Great Rede and the Three-fold Way were the taproots of magical law. He discovered how obedience to the Great Rede was the thing that set wizards apart from sorcerers, for it said simply:

Use magic as thou wilt, but harm no other.

He saw how that fitted with what Master Gwydion had said about having to use magic sparingly and never without due forethought as to the balance between gain and loss. A great deal of a wizard’s skill, he saw, must come in taking gain in such a way that the loss to others that arrived with it did as little harm as possible. A sorcerer, on the other hand, could ignore the Great Rede, for he abused magic, employing it just as he pleased. A sorcerer took to himself the gains but never cared about the losses. That, in its way, said the Wise Woman, was ever the truest meaning of the word ‘evil’, and why evil was, in the end, always the cause of its own downfall.

No wonder Gwydion was displeased when I called him a sorcerer, Will thought. Compared to wizardry, sorcery must be a blundering and clumsy thing, full of force and brute magic instead of elegance and skill.

He thought again of the Law of the Three-fold Way, which said:

Whatsoever is accomplished by magic, returneth upon the world three-fold.

‘But doesn’t a greedy and uncaring sorcerer soon find himself buried under a heap of evils of his own creating?’

‘Magic returns consequences upon the world, not always upon the head of the magic-worker himself. That is why sorcerers can flourish. You will know them by the trail of destruction they leave behind for others to clear up.’

Will was indignant. ‘Do they not see what they’re doing to others? Don’t they feel ashamed to behave that way?’

‘Ashamed? Never! A sorcerer has no shame. For, you see, no sorcerer truly believes himself to be a sorcerer.’

Will’s head ached at that idea. ‘I…I don’t think I understand.’

‘Willand, there is no “good” and there is no “evil”. These are false ideas that greedy men have sought to misguide fools with. A sorcerer always believes himself to be special. He falls in love with himself. To him, means can always be justified by ends, and he has excuses for everything. This is because he always breaks the Third Law of Magic, which says:

He whom magic encompasseth must be true unto his own heart.

‘Sorcerers use dirty magic, Willand. They lie to themselves. They always claim the crimes they commit should be discounted for they are done in the service of a greater good. But that is never so, for real advantage is never brought forth from malice. You must be strong to work untainted magic. And strength is, in the end, much the same as selflessness. Now do you begin to see?’

Will’s head was spinning. ‘I don’t know if I do.’

She sighed and pointed to where a pretty flower grew. Its stem was delicate and its head like that of a purple dragon. ‘Greater butterwort. The biggest and handsomest one I’ve seen this summer. Pick it for me.’

He looked at her, surprised. ‘But you said it was the work of knaves and fools to go around plucking up wild flowers for themselves when they can be so much better enjoyed alive.’

‘Do it. It will teach you a hard lesson. Or do you lack the strength to break such a slender neck without good reason?’

He picked the flower, half expecting some power to prevent him, but the stem snapped easily and he felt a small pang of protest in his heart.

‘There,’ the Wise Woman said. ‘By that action you’ve lost a day out of your life. Did you feel it go?’

‘Why…yes.’

‘Now crush that flower to pieces! Rub it angrily between your hands until it is all broken!’

A sudden fear bit at him. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘You might as well now.’ She took the flower from him and threw it away into the long grass. Then she said with great firmness, ‘“Real strength never impairs harmony.” That’s a very clever old rede, Willand. So clever I’ll say it for you again in its full form: “Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, it bestows it.” Real strength has much to do with magic. Do you see now?’

He looked at the flowerless plant. It looked bereft. ‘No. But I can begin to see why the folk of Wychwoode call you the “Wise Woman”.’

She took his hand, ‘Cheer up, Willand. It’s only one day you’ve dropped, and that’ll be lost from the far end of your life where it’ll do you far less good than a day like today.’

He thought about that for a while and decided she was right – he had better cheer himself up. ‘Wise Woman, perhaps you can tell me the answer to a question that’s been troubling me.’

‘I will try.’

‘What’s a Child of Destiny?’

‘That’s a curious phrase. Where did you hear it?’

‘Master Gwydion used it once about me. He said something about a Black Book too. What does it mean?’

The Wise Woman smiled. Her leathery face wrinkled, but her bright eyes remained fast on his. ‘That, Willand, I cannot tell you.’

The answer disappointed him for it was no answer at all, and the Wise Woman’s secret smile seemed to raise still more troublesome questions. At last he said, ‘Was it a sorcerer who made Lord Strange hog-headed?’

But the Wise Woman only cackled, as if she thought that was a very good joke.

High summer came with the solstice, the day when the sun climbed to its loftiest place in the sky. It was the longest day of the year, but Will wished all of it away. Despite having spent so short a time in the wizard’s company, and most of that reluctantly, he ached for Lammastide.

Lammas was no more than what was called in the Vale ‘Loaf Day’, a day of ritual breadmaking. And Gwydion had told him it was so with the other festivals – solstices were just Midsummer, the longest day, and Ewletide, the shortest. Equinoxes were likewise marked in the Vale as important days in spring and autumn when days and nights were the same length. Lammas was the first day of Harvest-tide, the day that signified the first ripened corn, or the first day of the month of August. But June was not yet past, and the corn was still as green as grass.

Lord Strange and his people counted time only in Slaver months. Nor was any ceremony kept by them at Midsummer. When he asked the lord’s wife she told him in her stiff way, ‘The churls, the simple folk, have many foolish beliefs. They will go out on Midsummer’s Eve to stand beneath an elder tree, or sit within a ring of mushrooms. Perhaps they are hoping to dance with the fae.’

‘May I go too?’ he asked, delighted at the idea.

But she only drew herself up and said, ‘You were sent to us to learn proper ways. We do not observe low customs here.’

Then Lord Strange came in and sat down at his great oak table, which was as usual spread with pies and pastries. He was looking more pig-like than ever, and as he ate he began to count the cost of Will’s lodging at the tower, and to complain again that the wizard had laid an unlooked for burden upon him. And in that moment Will pitied the greedy, miserly lord and his desolate lady, for she had a heart of ice, and dared not walk in the sun for fear that it would melt.

‘It’s time you had your hair cut,’ Lord Strange growled as he lifted up the nearest pie.

‘What’s wrong with my hair?’

‘Those pigtails you wear befit a girlchild! We shall cut them off!’ He banged the table with his fist.

‘They’re braids, not pigtails, and they’re the sign of a man!’

‘A man? A man, he says! Not here. Here the sign of a man is a shaven head. Churls wear lousy locks, warriors have short hair. Like mine. See?’

Will looked at the ridge of grey bristles of which Lord Strange seemed so proud. He set himself defiantly. ‘Your soldiers may do your bidding, but I’ll not!’

‘Whaaat?’

‘Try and cut my hair if you dare. If you do that, Master Gwydion will never take the pig spell off you! Remember what he said – all things come full circle!’

Sudden rage burst from the Hogshead and he threw down his pie. ‘Is that what he told you? That it’s his spell! I knew as much!’

‘I didn’t say that! You only think that because you’re stupid! Stupid as a pig!’

‘Come here!’

Will leapt out of the lord’s reach.

‘Come back, you young louse! You shall be made a scullion for your insolence! A scullion, do you hear me? You shall wash pans and pie dishes until you’ve paid for your keep! Come here, I say!’

But Will escaped the bellowing voice. He dashed from the tower and dived into the forest. And there he ran and ran, and after he had run all the breath and all the bile out of him he lay down in a glade and stared up at the sky. ‘Whatever came over me?’ he asked himself, unable to remember when he had endured such violent feelings of disobedience before. To calm himself he began to listen to the birdsong. He wondered what songs blackbirds dreamed about, and what was the true name of a wren he saw hiding in a holly bush. Perhaps the birds used true names when they sang to one another. He listened hard, trying to fathom their language, but he could not.

At last he adjusted his ear to the other sound, the one he had once thought of as the malign heartbeat of the forest. It had become so familiar that he usually blanked it out, but now he became aware of it again. This time it sounded deeper and more sinister, and there seemed to be something insistent to it. He followed it, feeling out the direction as best he could, and came to a place where the forest began to thin. This was its margin, where dusty fields stretched out in hot, shimmering brightness to envelop the land beyond Wychwoode. The insistent rhythm was strong here. He felt it in his feet, a low thump-thump-thump that was not a wholesome sound at all, but morbid and relentless. There was something else too, for the air here was no longer green and clean, but tainted by the smell of smoke.

Then, quite suddenly, the sound stopped.

The slope ahead of him fell steeply down to a sluggish stream. He followed it and saw it widen and slow into a broad, scum-covered reach. And there his eye halted. For a moment he thought he had glimpsed a figure, that of a woman floating just under the water. From the corner of his eye it seemed that white veils were rippling in a slow current, but when he looked again he saw that it had been no more than a trick of the light.

At the other end of the reach a great dam of earth and timber blocked the stream’s flow. The water was held back in a long, stagnant pool that had crept up the sides of the valley and drowned many fine trees on the lower slopes. But the level had once been much higher, as if the feeder stream had not been strong enough to keep the pool up through the dry summer months. Then he discovered the reason the dam had been built – there was a mill.

It had a big undershot wheel, twice the height of a man, that sat in a race to the side of the dam, and there were men standing by the sluices. More were in the clearing beyond, tending smouldering mounds of earth or walking to and fro.

He watched them for a while, fingering his fish talisman and lying low. He wondered who the men were, but decided not to make himself known to them just in case word got back to Lord Strange. Then three men started to walk towards him – one wore a blue robe cinched with a broad belt, a shorter man was dressed in grey, and a tall, silent man in a belted shirt brought up the rear. Caution made Will hide himself behind a tree as they came along the path that ran below him. He crouched down as they stopped.

‘A thousand,’ the first man said. ‘That’s the order. We’re to begin cutting tomorrow. And this time I’ll choose them myself.’

The smaller man simpered. ‘How many oaks in all, master?’

‘All the big trunks. Them’s to be saved. Ones so wide two men can’t hold hands around. I want them all, and the rest you can cut up as you like.’

The smaller man seemed satisfied with that, but the tall man looked sadly around at the greenery. ‘There’s to be a lot of changes round here, then?’

‘It’s the times that are changing! Warships! That’s what the Realm needs now. Warships, not deer haunts and forgotten bramble patches. I want this lot cleared.’

‘What about the king’s hunting?’ the tall man said.

The other turned to him. ‘Hunting? If we’re to be rich it’s trade we wants, not bloody deer-chasing. And to have trade we must have ships, see?’

‘You said warships.’

‘Aye!’ The man in blue gave him an impatient glance and turned away. ‘Trade, war – what does it matter? We’ll grow rich on either one, or both together if you like!’

The man in blue continued to gesture broadly, showing off his plans for the Wychwoode, while the others trotted after him. Will looked up at the threadbare leaf canopy. The forest already looked sad and shabby where it had been drowned and cut back. Still, it seemed an enormous crime to chop down the biggest oaks, he thought, trees that had taken many human lifetimes to grow and made any place what it was. The Wise Woman had said that more creeping things took food and shelter from oaks than from any other kind of tree. ‘Beetles and butterflies make the oak their trysting place. Squirrels, jays and pigeons take his acorns, even badgers dig their sets among his roots. And after the rutting season, when stags eat little, the oak’s autumn bounty of acorns arrives at just the right time for deer to fatten themselves against the coming cold.’ If there are to be no oaks here, he thought desolately, what will the deer have to eat? And what about the unicorns?

‘Here! What’s your game?’ said a voice behind him.

Will jumped up and almost knocked himself cold on an overhanging bough.

‘Listening in on other people’s business, I suppose?’

When he looked round he saw a girl was watching him. She was lithe and trim in a boyish garb of dark green but she had a pretty, heart-shaped face framed by wisps of yellow hair. She seemed to be about his own age.

‘Oh, poor thing! Did I startle you?’

‘Just a bit,’ Will said, frowning and rubbing his head.

‘Good. I’m glad. It’s your fault for being here in the first place. What’s your name?’

‘Will. It’s short for Willand. What’s yours?’

‘Never you mind.’

Will scowled. ‘Neveryoumind? That’s a stupid sort of a name.’

‘And you’re a stupid sort of a boy. What’re you doing here?’

‘Looking for unicorns.’

‘Unicorns?’ She laughed. ‘You won’t see any unicorns around here.’

‘I suppose not. They don’t often come this far south.’ He tried to sound knowledgeable. ‘They wouldn’t like it here much either. Not with that mill down there making such a thumping din half the time.’

She gave him a hard look. ‘Where do you belong?’

‘I…I live at the tower.’ He wanted to point out his braids and tell her that he was not a boy any more but a man, but her face had taken on a look of deep disgust.

‘The tower? I didn’t know the Hogshead had a son.’

‘You mean Lord Strange.’

‘That’s what you call him. You’re his kin, more’s the pity for you. A proper warden would look after the forest, but this one brings men here to cut it down. You can tell your kinsman that he’s a pig, his purveyor’s a pig, and all the rest of them are pigs too!’

She jumped down and ran from him, but he ran after her. ‘Hey!’ he called. ‘I’m no lordling! I’m a churl like you! Don’t be a fool! Wait for me!’

But the girl would not wait. She was as fleet as a fawn and knew the ground well, dodging along the deer runs where she thought he could not follow. But he did, until she came to a slender fallen tree that bridged a ditch of muddy water and, stepping lightly across, reached the far side. Will attempted it, but as soon as he stepped onto it she pulled over a side branch and turned the trunk under him so that he fell off. He landed flat in the mud below, while she stood six feet above him laughing like a drain. ‘Who’s the fool now?’ she cried.

‘I’ll spank you for that!’ he shouted back.

‘No, you won’t. You’ll never catch me! Not here!’

He stood up, slopping the mud from him. He was soaked all down one side in black, foul-smelling slime. ‘You know what? I think you’re right. Give me a hand up out of here instead.’

She looked down at his outstretched hand, and shook her head. ‘Think I’m a fool? I’m not, you know. Anyway, look at your hand. It’s filthy.’

‘Listen, I’m not Lord Strange’s kin. I’m not a lordling. I’m nothing to do with the folk at the tower.’

‘You said you lived there. Were you lying then – or now?’

‘Neither. What I meant was I’m only lodging there. And I agree with you, the lord is a swine, and he’s wrong to have his best trees cut down. It’s just wickedness and greed, but he can’t help being a pig because there’s a spell of magic on his head.’

She looked at him afresh. ‘You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.’

‘The same as you, at a guess. Just walking about, listening to what the birds tell each other.’ He clasped his hand round a tree root and began to haul himself up. When he put his hand out to her again she stepped back and made ready to run.

‘Oh, come on. You can trust me.’

‘I’ll decide who I’m going to trust. And you look like trouble. I don’t expect you understand anything worth knowing. My father says your sort never do.’

‘I told you – I’m not any sort. I’m just me.’

She sniffed. ‘Why’s your hair all done up like a girl’s?’

‘It’s…it’s a sign of manhood where I come from.’

‘Manhood?’ She laughed. ‘That’s girl hair. You look like a girl.’

Just as he began to think she was not going to help him she made a grab for his wrist. She would not let him clasp her hand. She braced her foot and, with one final effort, pulled him out of the hole.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You see? I’m not going to throw you down – even though I could.’

‘Says who?’

‘Says me.’

‘Try it, then. If you think you can.’

‘Oh, this is baby talk,’ he said turning away. ‘And on the Midsummer of all days.’

She seemed taken aback. ‘Do you respect the solstice, then?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

‘The Hogshead doesn’t. Lords don’t. You should know that.’

‘Lady Strange thinks it’d ruin her dignity to have any fun. She says only churlish folk go out on Midsummer’s Eve. I can’t see her standing under elder trees or dancing at fae rings.’

‘We do all kinds of things. We sing songs mainly.’

‘What do you sing?’

‘Mostly the old songs. My favourite’s the one about the prince who plants three apple trees that bear him gifts of silver, gold and diamonds. You must know it.’

‘Maybe. Sing it for me.’

She hesitated, embarrassed, but then she relented. ‘All right. Just one verse.’

But she sang all four, and when she had finished, he clapped his hands. ‘That was pretty. You have a sweet voice, you know.’ Then he backed away a pace.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Nowhere. But I’ll have to go back soon. I’m in trouble with the Hogshead for backchatting him.’ He glanced in the direction of the tower. ‘But first, I’d like to know your name.’

She laughed. ‘I bet you would.’

‘No, really. I would.’

‘We live down by the river, so folk call me…Willow.’ She looked down at her feet. ‘I know it’s a stupid name.’

‘Don’t be embarrassed. It’s a lovely name. It’s beautiful, just like the tree. And it suits you.’

They walked slowly back to the place where they had met, and sat down. She told him she lived in the village of Leigh. Her father, Stenn, was one of the verderers, men whose job it was to tend the forest. He was one of the men who were going to be made to fell the trees.

‘But that kind of work isn’t at all to his liking,’ she said. They crouched down together behind a fallen trunk and looked at the mill and the smouldering heaps nearby. ‘A man can’t look after a forest all his life as my father has and then be expected to lead a tree massacre. He says the law may say the forest belongs to the king, but there’s more to forests than just owning them.’

‘And more to trees than just the using of them for timber.’

She looked at him and smiled. ‘You do understand, after all. Those big oaks are my father’s friends. He grew up with them and delights in each and every one of them. He says there’s been an oak grove here since long before the Slavers came. He doesn’t like what’s happening of late. He says it all stinks!’

‘There’s certainly something nasty in the air around here.’ He looked down at the wreaths of smoke that laced the air around the mill and gave it an acrid tang.

‘That’s the charcoal burners, stinking the place up with their heaps. They need charcoal to heat the iron and melt it. They cut down all of Grendon copse where that mill pond is now. My dad says there are three blacksmith’s hearths down there. Going all the time, they are, with big bellows and everything. And that thumping you can hear all over the forest – that’s what you call trip-hammers.’

He looked at her. ‘What are they doing?’

‘I don’t know. Making things. We aren’t supposed to go near Grendon Mill, but I know it’s where they work iron into shapes. Waggons come up from the Old Road most days and take stuff away.’

‘What kind of stuff?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Whenever I go down there they chase me off. I don’t care. I don’t want to be down there anyway. It’s a dirty, stinky, smoky place now. Not at all the sort of place I like.’

‘That’s not what I meant about there being something in the air. It’s what that man said – the times are changing.’

She nodded. ‘And far too quickly, I’d say.’

‘It all seems to fit in with what Master Gwydion told me.’

She sat up and looked at him with sudden interest. ‘Who’s Master Gwydion?’

Straight away Will regretted mentioning the wizard’s name. So much was important and secretive about Gwydion that it seemed almost like a betrayal. And yet when he looked at Willow he felt he could have done nothing very wrong. ‘He’s the one who brought me into Wychwoode. Can you keep a secret?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know, I’ve never tried.’

He looked at her and remembered the look on her face as she hauled him out of the ditch, then decided he could trust her. ‘If you swear to keep it to yourself, I’ll tell you about Master Gwydion.’

‘I swear.’

‘Hand on heart?’

‘Hand on heart.’

He took a deep breath. ‘Master Gwydion is a wizard.’

Her mouth opened wide and then her nose wrinkled. ‘No!’

‘It’s true. And I’m his apprentice.’

‘And do they all tell such whopping lies where you come from?’

‘I’m not telling lies! It’s true. I’ll swear to it if you like.’

‘Hand on heart?’

‘Hand on heart.’

She looked at him sidelong, and Will could not be sure but he thought she had decided to believe him.

‘It must be very exciting being a wizard’s apprentice.’

‘It’s a little scary sometimes. You’d be amazed at the things I’ve seen.’

She smiled a doubting smile. ‘Like what?’

‘Oh, all kinds of things. He makes owls fly so slowly that you can count their wingbeats. He makes falling rain stop, right in mid-air. He can whistle up a storm just like that—’ He clicked his fingers and leaned towards her confidentially. ‘And he even summons giants out of the earth. Giants as big as barns. They’re terrifying.’

‘Go on, then,’ she said, her eyes sparkling now. ‘Do a bit of magic for me.’

That stopped him dead, and he wondered what his boasting had led him to, but then he put on his most serious expression. ‘I’d like to, but…’

‘But what?’

He shook his head and sucked in a breath. ‘You must know that magic is dangerous?’

‘Surely not if you know what you’re doing.’

He drew himself up. ‘Oh, no. It’s always dangerous. All magic is dangerous because, you see, it affects the harmony, the balance, the…the way things touch one another, and so on.’

‘Is that right?’

She watched him, waiting for more, while he desperately tried to remember all the things the Wise Woman had told him.

‘It’s quite hard to give magical knowledge to someone who hasn’t had the proper grounding.’

‘So I see. But I don’t want you to give me any magical knowledge. I just want you to do some for me.’

‘I’ll…I’ll think on that.’ He nodded his head gravely. ‘Yes, I’ll think on it. And maybe I’ll show you some tomorrow.’

Her glance slid away from him. ‘Oh, I see. And what makes you think you’ll be seeing me tomorrow?’

‘Well…I mean I’d like to. I really would.’ He felt his composure deserting him so that he couldn’t meet her eye now. ‘That is, if you’re able to…if you want to come back here. They say all things come full circle – that’s a rede, you know.’

Just then, Will heard two piercing whistles and he looked down the slope. There stood a bearded man with his head tilted back and a couple of fingers stuck in his mouth.

‘That’s my father! He’s going back with the others to make ready for the celebrations. Can’t stay. I’m late.’

She jumped up and without another word scampered down the slope.

He was about to call after her, but her father was there and he thought better of it.

‘Willow…’ he said to himself. ‘But what about tomorrow?’

CHAPTER FIVE THE MARISH HAG

For a while Will lay by himself on the fringe of the forest, knowing he ought to return to face Lord Strange’s wrath, and that the longer he delayed the worse it would be. But something defiant inside him resisted. He looked out at the still waters of the pool. When the thump-thump-thump had ended for the day it had been like the fading away of a toothache. Wisps of smoke still rose up from the charcoal burners’ mounds, but there was no other movement. Everyone, it seemed, had gone down to the village to prepare for the Midsummer.

He sighed, feeling truly alone. At home in the Vale, folk would be dancing and feasting and playing festive games long into the evening, but all that seemed too far away now, and a chill touched him as he lay on his mat of mossy grass. He fell into a sombre mood as he watched the pool and saw the doomed trees reflected there.

After listening to the silence for a while, curiosity roused him and drew him down the slope into a forbidden place. He was mindful of his promise to Gwydion to remain within the Wychwoode, but a desire to know the truth pushed him just a few steps beyond its bounds. Around him stood heaps of rubbish, piles of sawdust and the axe-hacked stumps of large trees. Sheds and shelters clustered round Grendon Mill. Piles of small logs were stacked up ready for charring. Where the sluice leaked there was the sound of water spilling down behind the stationary wheel and tumbling through the race.

He looked inside the mill and saw a great square oaken shaft, toothed wheels, trundles bound in iron and bearings set in stone. There were empty anvils at each of the three trip-hammers and an idle bellows by the covered hearth. Long pincers and mallets hung on the walls. All around lay piles of metal that had been cut into different shapes. Most of it was rusty or fire-blackened, though some of it was burnished bright, but there was no mistaking what was being made here.

‘War,’ he whispered, picking up a half-formed sword blade. ‘Just like Master Gwydion said…’

Excitement thrilled through him as he looked at what had been fashioned. There were blades of different lengths, all as yet without point or edge. Grim-looking axe-heads and war-hammers stood in rows. And thousands of sharpened arrowheads waited to be attached to shafts. In another shed were iron hats and helms, many roughly-made pieces of armour for limb and body. And in the shelter of a thatched lean-to was a mail-maker’s bench with boxes of rivets and pairs of pincers with rags tied round their handles. Thousands of close-linked rings had already been painstakingly fitted together to make hoods of mail like Lord Strange’s guards wore.

Every shed Will looked into was the same. There seemed to be enough iron to arm five hundred soldiers, and if as Willow had said waggons came most days taking away what had been finished, who could say how much had already gone into store?

Does Lord Strange know what’s happening? he wondered. Of course he must know! The sound of those trip-hammers carries far and wide.

He felt suddenly cold inside. His fingers reached for the comfort of the leaping salmon talisman that hung about his neck. He wished Gwydion was here. This is a fine way to spend Midsummer, he thought as he came away.

He was picking his way past the mill-race when he chanced to look down. The sight that met his eye made him exclaim. Where the water gushed under the sluice and splashed down like a waterfall behind the green paddles of the wheel there was a pale hand. Slender it was, like a girlchild’s, and wax-pale in the darkness.

He stared at it, shocked. Unable to turn away, he bent to get a better view. The hand seemed to wave to him and he watched it beckon for a moment. Then, he stood up and looked around in panic. Moments ago he had feared discovery in a forbidden place, now he yelled as loud as he could for help.

But no help came.

I have to do something, he thought, and leapt down into the race. The escaping flow was knee-deep under the wheel and cold enough to make him gasp. The water showering down on him gurgled past in a mass of bubbles. The wheel and stonework in which it was set were slimy and slippery. He reached out to touch the waxen hand, but it was dead and he pulled back from it.

A groan of dismay escaped him. Here was a drowned thing, a body caught up horribly in a wheel. What had the beating and turning of it done to the flesh? He screwed up his face and reached into the narrow gap. There, revealed to his exploring fingers, was a lolling head and a slender arm, trapped and mangled by the tearing of the wheel. His feet kept slipping, but he ducked under the water again, braced his back against the paddles and forced himself up with all his strength against the current to lift the wheel a little and so free the arm from its grip.

It fell away. There was no blood. The body was frail and light as it came free. He carried it in his arms, looking for a place to lay it down. There was dust and dirt everywhere in the clearing, so he carried the body back up into the forest and laid it on a bed of moss. He was drenched and shivering as he knelt beside the dead, pale thing, but all he could feel was an immense sadness.

He blinked, wiped his face and allowed his eyes to dwell on the body. At first it seemed to be a trick of the light, but then he realized that the skin was as pale as could be, silvery, transparent almost. A tracery of greenish-blue veins showed through. The flesh of the arm was torn where it had been trapped in the wheel, and on the forehead and at the temples there were greenish marks, as if lampreys or sucker fish had attached themselves to draw blood. The hair was greenish too and child-fine, yet the features of the face were adult – sharp and delicate, a pointed chin and wide mouth, and the eyes almost as if closed in sleep. Will knew the creature he was laying out had not been born of woman, but that did not matter.

The poor thing must have died alone, he thought. Caught as it tried to swim in the pool. Dragged under the wheel.

A bout of shivering overcame him and he shed a tear. But he arranged the creature’s limbs with dignity and laid leafy branches over it to cover its nakedness until only the face showed. Then he gathered a posy of woodland flowers. Despite its ugly wounds the creature was beautiful. He felt he must lean over and kiss its forehead in farewell. He did so, then fled back to the tower.

As blazing June turned into an even hotter July, Will longed more and more for the return of the wizard. The wild words he had spoken to Lord Strange had brought punishment – work at the slate had been doubled and his long afternoons of freedom were taken away. He was put to do the chores of a kitchen servant to pay his way, which he did not mind. What did trouble him was that he had been stopped from going back to the mill to see if Willow had come to meet him, and now he was no longer allowed to go beyond the moat.

‘What about Willow?’ he asked the white cat, appalled. ‘Shall I ever see her again?’

The cat came and rubbed its head against him, looking up with unblinking eyes.

He hated staying indoors when the sun was shining. The constant squeezing of the quill made his finger-ends sore, but he had begun to see the power of letters, and then the power of words, and beyond it all he had begun to grasp the blazing power of ideas too. Writing, he saw, was not, after all, about the tiresome business of scratching jots and tittles onto slate or parchment, it was about gaining the power to lodge ideas in other people’s heads – people who were far away, people who might even be living in another age!

The immensity of the discovery startled him, for no one had yet bothered to warn him what delights all the drudgery would lead to. All he needed now was a book to read, and so far as that was concerned he had already hatched a plan.

Excitement beat through him as he followed Pangur Ban up the stair to the lord’s privy chamber. There, he knew, three books bound in old leather stood together on a limewood stand. He looked over his shoulder to make sure none of the servants had seen him, then he went in and pulled out the first of the books. It was a book of household accounts and he looked it over quickly and put it back.

The second book looked the same as the first, but the third was quite different. It seemed to be much older than the others and its cover was not secured with an iron clasp and chain. There was something written on the front, and though Will could read the words, they made no sense:

Ane radhas a’leguim oicheamna ainsagimn…

The rest had been destroyed by a deep scorch-mark. It looked as if someone had once tried to throw the book onto a fire but had changed their mind. When he opened it, he saw that every other page showed a large picture. There were many lines of careful black writing, with some parts done in red, and lettering so even that Will wondered at the skill of the scribe. The pictures were of animals, all kinds of animals, and one especially caught his eye – a lion, which was the creature on the surcoats of Lord Strange’s men, and which he had taken at first to be an odd-looking dog for the only lion he had ever seen before was a dandelion. There was also a leopard, which the book said came of crossing a lion with another, even fiercer animal called a pard. Looking at the pictures it seemed that quite a few of the beasts were crossed with one another, some even with humankind.

Will bent close over the book while Pangur Ban walked on the table and rubbed himself against Will’s head. In the margins beside a few of the pictures someone had written several lines. The writing was thin, like beetle-tracks, and looked as if it had been inked by a pin, but again it was writing of a kind he could not read. In the back of the book was more curious handwriting, and this time, as he tried in vain to read it, an idea came to him.

He fetched the lady’s looking-glass and then tried the writing again. Now he could read it. But not quite, because although he could spell out the words, still they did not make any more sense than the words written on the cover. He read them aloud – they sounded magical. And when he looked back through the pictures, beside the eagle there was added the word feoreunn, beside the bee begier, and beside the wyvern – which was a man-eating beast of the air, a two-legged, winged dragon – was the word nathirfang.

Will mouthed them aloud for a while, then turned to look in the back of the book where the same small writing was:

To have the creature come, say,

‘Aillse, aillse, ______ comla na duil!’

To have the creature do thy bidding, say:

‘Aillse, aillse, ______ erchim archas ni! Teirisi! Taigu!’

‘They’re spells!’ Will whispered fiercely to himself. ‘And those gaps are where to put the true names.’

I shouldn’t be looking at this, he thought, suddenly mindful of the Wise Woman’s warnings about the respect that magic demanded. It seemed wrong to be stealing peeks at a book that was not his to look at, and even more wrong to be slyly acquiring spells, but now he had started reading it was hard to stop.

He began to commit the words to memory, and he had made a fair job of it before a sound outside alerted him. He had been so engrossed that he only just managed to scramble back to his own chamber before the housekeeper’s maid came past.

After the noonday meal Will took a piece of bread and honey away from the kitchen, and armed with his spells he set about catching a fly. As soon as one came in through the window to feed on the honey he shut it in the room and all afternoon, instead of practising his writing, he called out the words he had learned.

But it was not as easy as he imagined. There were many ways to pronounce what he had written down, and the fly took no notice of any of them. Also, the fly was not exactly like any of those pictured in the book. Was it a foulaman? Or could it be a gleagh, or a crevar? Lastly, he tried cuelan with no better success, but when he opened the door a big, fat bluebottle came in and began to buzz round his head.

He let out a yell of triumph. Wherever he went in the room the cuelan followed, flying round his head with the same solid determination that a moth flies about a candle flame. When he walked back and forth, the fly followed. When he stood still, it flew round him in a perfect circle.

‘I’ve done it!’ he said, enormously pleased with himself.

He lay down on his bed and watched the fly circling above his face. Then the fly landed on his nose. He tried to waft it away. But it dodged his hand.

‘That’s enough. You can go away now,’ he said.

But it would not go away. It had been called to him magically and nothing he said would persuade it to leave. He quickly tired of it, but it did not tire of him. It kept landing on his lips and bothering him as he tried to write, until finally he dived under the bedclothes to rid himself of it.

When he came out again, it was waiting for him. When he went down to supper it came too, and though three pieces of bread and honey were put before him, the fly took no notice of any of them. It wanted only to circle his head, and when it next landed on him he slapped himself hard on the mouth, threw a fit of temper and almost fell off his chair.

The cook stared at him oddly. He shrugged back at her and scampered off, the fly in pursuit. Lady Strange, annoyed by the fly’s attentions when she came near him, asked Will if he had forgotten to wash behind his ears. She set him an evening writing exercise and went away. Will hoped the fly would go too, but it did not.

As darkness fell there was no hope of concentrating on his studies. All evening the fly plagued him, and when the moon rose and every kind of daytime fly might reasonably be expected to go to its rest, this one continued to buzz. It seemed to Will that the only way to catch it would be to let it go where it so obviously wanted to go – into his mouth – then to swallow it whole.

He finally succeeded in killing it – he shot out a hand and slapped it against the wall then trod on it. But his savage joy was tempered with guilt. It was only a bluebottle, but that was beside the point. Working with naming magic could lead to unexpected trouble. He would have to learn a lot more about magic if he was ever going to do it right.

As Lammastide approached, Will planned his escape. It was an unsophisticated plan. Two weeks of obedience had slackened the vigilance of those who might otherwise have watched him with greater care, and when the courtyard next emptied he made a dash for the gate. He went straight down to the river and there he found the Wise Woman’s hovel, pitched as it was in the shade of a spreading willow tree.

‘Hello, Wise Woman!’ he cried as he came up.

She had a basket on her lap and was shelling peas into it, but she greeted him with a kind word and asked him in. He sat down on an upturned pail and said, ‘Wise Woman, will you answer me a question?’

‘If I can.’

‘Do you know a village called Leigh?’

‘Surely. I pass by it every third day.’

‘Do you know a girl who lives there by the name of Willow?’

The Wise Woman nodded thoughtfully. ‘That one is very pretty, is she not?’

‘I – I’d like you to take a message to her. If you wouldn’t mind, that is.’

‘Oh.’ She broke open another pod. ‘And why don’t you go yourself?’

Will knew the Wise Woman well enough to have anticipated that. ‘Because Leigh’s beyond the bounds of the Wychwoode, and I don’t want to break my word to Master Gwydion.’

The Wise Woman’s face was like cracked leather, but her eyes were pools. They seemed to see deep inside him. ‘That’s a fine sentiment when you’ve already broken faith to come here.’

Will looked down. ‘That wasn’t any promise made to Master Gwydion. It’s only Lord Strange’s rule.’

‘Does it matter? It’s your promise that loses its value when you break it.’

A powerful mixture of feelings welled up inside him. ‘But I must get a message to Willow.’

The Wise Woman watched him again in her quiet way. ‘What does your message say?’

‘I want to ask if she’ll meet me in the place above Grendon Mill where we first saw one another at noonday tomorrow. Please tell her how much I want her to come, and say I’ve got something important to show her.’

The Wise Woman laid her basket aside and hobbled to the doorway. ‘What do you want to show her? Let me see it.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Then I can’t take your message.’

He squirmed. ‘I want to show her some…feats.’

‘What sort of feats?’

‘Just some small magic. The sort you’ve told me about.’

She looked at him for a long while, then she shook her head. ‘Willand, the secrets of magic are not to be vouchsafed lightly. Magic is not a toy. And it is not for everyone to play with as they will. I have told the secrets to you only because Master Gwydion says you are very special.’

‘But Willow’s special too. If you’ve seen her, you’ll know she’s—’

‘I know she’s pretty.’

Will’s cheeks coloured. ‘Please, Wise Woman.’

‘Oh, I’ll take your message to her.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘But I’ll do it for my own reasons, not yours. You may not think so, but in my time I’ve known what it’s like to burn with youthful fires. I’ll do as you ask, but first you must promise not to teach the girl any lessons in magic, for as a famous inscription says “to be curious about that which is not your concern while you are still in ignorance of your own self, that is ridiculous”.’

‘I promise, Wise Woman. I won’t teach her anything at all. I give you my word.’

‘Your word?’ She laughed. ‘Oh, I shall treasure that, Willand. Truly I shall.’

The next day, he rose early and set about completing all the writing exercises the lord’s wife had set for him, then he began to watch the courtyard and await his chance. By employing a little craftiness he had managed to get back from yesterday’s meeting without being missed. Now, once again, he stole away at the changing of the guard. Excitement churned in him as he sped through the wood. All his worries had been stirred up – what if the Wise Woman had failed to find Willow? What if Willow had got the message but had been given some inescapable chore to do? And, worst of all, what if she had got the message but had decided not to come?

He pushed that idea away. Then, even though he was a little late, he forced himself to stop and calm down. ‘There’s no point in worrying,’ he told an elm tree. ‘I’ll know what’s what soon enough.’

But when he reached the heights above Grendon Mill a terrible sight met him. The entire hillside above the pool had been cut and all the fallen trunks dragged down to the road. Where there had been deep forest it was now a ruinous wasteland. It made his heart sink to realize that the special place in which he and Willow had met was now no more.

All around were crudely axed stumps, broken twigs and chippings underfoot where tree limbs had been hacked off and stacked by the charcoal pits. He looked up suddenly, feeling his skin prickle in warning. Then, as if he was dreaming it, he imagined gangs of men chopping and sawing, and a pair of yoked oxen hauling the trunks away. There were shouts and the cracking of an ancient yew tree as it groaned and split suddenly in half. But then the moment burst open inside his head and the horrible vision was gone, leaving him alone and in silence.

There was no thump-thump-thump. The continuing dry weather had, in the intervening weeks, lowered the water in the pool below the level needed to drive the wheel. The mill was deserted, and all the men sent away to other labours. He went down to the pool and called out Willow’s name.

His voice echoed, but no reply came, so he sat down on a log and waited, his chin in his hands. An emptiness was growing inside him, though at first he refused to call it disappointment. He got up and walked back and forth across the earth dam. He did not want to go near the sheds or kilns that stood by the mill, so finally he wandered back to the edge of the pool and looked down at his own face in the water. Two fair braids hung down by his left cheek. Without thinking more about it, he took out his knife and cut one of them off. Then he cut the other.

‘There! I don’t look like a girl now,’ he told the emptiness, and threw the braids as far as he could into the pool. They floated forlornly as circles widened around them on the surface.

‘Willow!’ he called out again. If she had bothered to come at all she would not have waited long. He remembered what she had said: It’s a dirty, stinky, smoky place now. Not at all the sort of place I like. It was foolish to have tried to meet her here. But how could he have known it would be like this? And where else was there? They had not shared the name of any other place within Wychwoode except the tower.

As his hopes faded he thought of the trick he had learned in the hope of impressing her. He had practised long and hard with craneflies after the bluebottle incident. Before making his promise to the Wise Woman he had meant to do a piece of naming magic for Willow with dragonflies. He had found out the true name of the large kind that wore a dazzling pale blue stripe along its body.

Well, he thought, if Willow’s not coming then there’s no longer any harm in it.

In an effort to cheer himself up he stepped to the water’s edge and called out grandly, like King Leir of old addressing his army.

‘Ealsha, ealsha, sathincarenta comla na duil!’ he commanded.

No sooner had his words echoed out across the pool than a dragonfly swooped in and began to circle before him. He repeated the enchantment five times, and a moment later there were half a dozen of the wonderful insects dancing in the air before him.

‘Sathincarentegh erchim archas, teirisi! Cruind!’ he told them, raising his arms, and they immediately began to fly in triangles. Yet another command, and they began to loop in figures of eight, darting in and out of each other’s paths, their great double pairs of wings chattering in time with one another.

‘What marvellous skill you have!’

Will turned at the voice. There was a girl standing behind him in the brightness, a girl just like…

‘Willow?’ he said, shading his eyes.

She looked like Willow, but surely she was not, for she shimmered like pale gauze.

He rubbed his eyes. She was tall and slender, and as like Willow as any sister, but her eyes were glowing with a faint, sad light and her voice was deeper and more dreamy. She wore a shining, white gown of such fineness that it might have been made of dragonfly wings. It reminded Will of the one the ghost had worn down by the bridge over the Evenlode, the one he had seen the day he had arrived at the Wychwoode.

‘Come to me, Will,’ she said. ‘Give me your hands and I will show you wonderful things.’

‘Willow? Is…is it you?’ He shook his head, trying to clear it but the whole world was swimming now. ‘Who are you? How do you know my name?’

‘I’m your friend, Will. I’ve been searching for you, and now I’ve found you. You’ve come to me at last, my own true love.’

‘I…’ He wiped at his face, striving against the weariness that was overpowering him, but there was a cloying sweetness on the air. It was as if his arms and legs had lost their strength.

‘Sit down. You’re tired. Don’t you want to sit down?’

The girl’s glowing eyes had lost their sadness. Now they assured him that sitting next to her would be the most wonderful thing there was. He remembered the look on Willow’s face when she had reached down to help him out of the muddy hole. How could he not do as she asked? It was hot now and the still, quiet warmth of the afternoon closed in around him like a suffocating blanket. He drew breath, but the air did not seem to satisfy his lungs and he sighed for more.

‘Let me touch you,’ the girl said, soothing his struggles. He felt a cool hand stroke his knee, his arm, the side of his face. ‘Isn’t that better? Isn’t that so much better than waiting alone? Close your eyes, Will. Rest. Soon we will be together.’

A part of him resisted, knowing there was something wrong, something important, but when he tried to think what it might be it vanished. His eyes felt dusty and sore, and it was getting too hard to keep them open. He fixed his gaze on the dragonflies still turning and circling above the water. The brilliant blue flashes of their bodies swept out the loops into which his spell had locked them. I must release them before I go, he thought. But somehow he could not remember the releasing words, and it seemed not to matter any more if they flew on while he rested.

The dragonflies’ weaving patterns reflected in the dark waters of the pool like a mystic symbol. It seemed as if the surface of the water was a looking-glass, a looking-glass that had the power to change him. He would have smiled but the tiredness was too great, and the soothing voice irresistible. ‘Close your eyes, Will. Come with me. Come with me into the beautiful, cool water. There is a wonderful world below. A wonderful realm bigger and more beautiful than anything you’ve ever dreamed. So much. So much you never thought could be. You’ll see many things, many wonderful things. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Come with me, then. Come, and we shall be together. Together forever.’

He felt the last shreds of resolve drain from him. The drowsy opal sky burned and seemed to press down on his head. He felt the warm mud seeping between his toes, making the ache in his feet go away, making the hurts of his long journey out of childhood fade. When he looked again he was already knee-deep in the water and the girl was naked beside him. But it was all right. It was how it was meant to be. Velvet smooth mud caressed his skin, inviting him deeper. He sank to his waist, then to his chest, and then he felt the water creeping up his neck and chin. The air above was filled with the lulling drone of dragonfly wings, repeating, repeating, endlessly repeating. And Willow, graceful beside him, walking a watery aisle, her cool hands on his face. Then she kissed him full on the mouth and led him down into the wonderful world that lay below the surface.

PART TWO THE POWERS OF THE EARTH

CHAPTER SIX A NEST OF SECRETS

When Will burst into wakefulness he was choking and fighting for breath. A cage of bony fingers imprisoned his face and, as they were ripped away, they tore at his cheeks.

‘Be gone, foul hag!’ a tremendous voice roared.

He saw a vile creature draw back from him. Its mottled grey skin sagged and fell in slack folds, its hair hung like fronds of stinking pondweed, its mouth hissed and spat as it struggled against Gwydion’s grip.

‘How dare you exact your revenges upon the innocent?’ the wizard demanded. ‘This obligation I lay upon you: get back into the slime where you belong and bother the sons of men no more!’

The creature’s long fingers grasped for Gwydion’s face. Their ends had suckers that tried to attach themselves to him, but the wizard held the hag away. For a moment it seemed that it would succeed in embracing him, but then he laid a mighty word on it, and it collapsed into the water and melted away.

Will was on his hands and knees coughing and spluttering. Every time he tried to draw breath, water vomited from his lungs and he began retching. Gwydion pushed him down and squeezed the water out of him and soon he was able to lie on his back and breathe freely again.

‘It was horrible,’ he said wildly. ‘Horrible! I thought it was a girl! I thought it was Willow!’

‘And what of your promise that you would not stray beyond the bounds of Wychwoode?’ Gwydion’s voice was soft but there was such a power of accusation contained there that Will shrank from it.

‘I didn’t mean to disobey! The forest got cut down and I sent word for Willow to come to the place we knew and then, and then—’

‘And then you fell neatly into a trap set for you by the marish hag! And I hoped you could be trusted.’

Will was shivering and could not stop. ‘What…what was it?’

‘A hag. A creature that preys on fools.’

He put a hand to his throat. ‘I almost drowned…’

‘Oh, you would not have drowned! You would have been kept happily alive for many days and weeks as part of the loathsome larder that all such water hags keep down below. And there all the juices would have been sucked from you one day at a time as you dreamed your death dream!’

Will wallowed in the mush of stinking, black ooze that had accompanied him out of the pond. ‘Master Gwydion, if you hadn’t come…’

‘You are lucky indeed that I have returned.’ The wizard looked down on him as if from a great height. ‘Augh! I cannot abide the stench of dirty magic.’

‘But how did you know where to find me?’

‘Do you remember your little friends the dragonflies? Your use of naming magic upon them drew me just as it drew the hag. You are fortunate it drew nothing worse, for you were lit up like a beacon!’

‘I didn’t mean to do wrong. I—’

‘You are no better than the child who delights in pulling the wings from butterflies. Cruelty is a grievous failing, Willand.’

Those words cut deep. ‘But I didn’t harm them.’

‘Of course you harmed them. And after all you were told. Who are you to entrap dragonflies and use them as you did? They are living creatures, with their own concerns and neither the time nor the strength to dance attendance on the will of a lad who merely wants to impress a pretty girl!’

‘I never thought of it that way.’

‘Indeed you did not!’

The wizard paced up and down the bank and Will looked away in shame. He saw his dragonflies lying exhausted on the surface, their tiny legs moving weakly. He had nearly killed them.

Gwydion reached down and lifted them from the water one by one and whispered words that unbound them, so they revived and flew away whole from the glow that was in his hands. When he had done with them he looked around, his face still grey with anger. ‘I hope you now have the strength to walk, for we must be gone from here.’ His anger blazed up. ‘Na duil! Look at the desecration they have wrought! They have hewn down an ancient and sacred grove. This is a high crime, the like of which we have not seen since Nis and Conat burned the groves of Mona!’ He turned suddenly. ‘And you! Where are your braids?’

‘I cut them off.’

‘Young savage!’

He was shivering, and now he began to babble. ‘When the hag came to me she was beautiful, Master Gwydion. She reminded me of the white lady. The one who stood by the bridge over the Evenlode when we first came into the Wychwoode. You know, the one I asked you about. Why was she weeping?’

Gwydion laid his hands on Will’s shoulders, his expression hard to fathom. ‘That is the innocent form of her apparition. She weeps for a lost love, for she was driven to madness by a jilting.’

‘Who was she?’

‘Do you not yet know? Did I not tell you that Lord Strange was once the handsomest of noblemen? Before he became a lord he was the younger son of a noble family that lived many leagues to the north, but being without title he greatly desired advancement. While travelling near Wychwoode he met a beautiful girl called Rowen who lived close by. She was a churl’s daughter, a commoner, but she loved John le Strange with all her heart, and she was happy when he promised her they would marry.’

‘Do you mean his wife? The lady who taught me to read and write?’

‘On the day that everyone expected John le Strange to marry Rowen, he announced that he would marry another. That other is the Lady Strange whom you know. Rowen fell prey to despondency. She allowed herself to sink into madness and wandered the Wychwoode, living in the wild for a year before committing herself to the Evenlode. Now she cannot bear to see others who are in love. It is her delight to lure hopeful young men down to their doom to make them pay for her suffering. And meanwhile Lord Strange’s foul betrayal left him open to the spell that holds him in its power. Now do you understand?’

Will nodded. He thought again of the figure in white weeds that he thought he had glimpsed floating in Grendon Pool. ‘Now I see why Lord Strange must wear his wedding ring through his nose. He is more cursed than ever I knew.’

‘Take this lesson from today – bitter grudges corrode the human spirit, while only forgiveness restores it. The same is true of painful memories.’

Will hurried after the wizard until they regained the forest. Had he been a dog, his tail would have been between his legs. He halted and saw how Gwydion drew apart and flushed the anger out of himself. The wizard became as still as stone before he gathered his powers. Then, holding out his hands in an attitude of appeal he focused a thousand brilliant points of light on himself and called forth a staggering thunderbolt.

It was bluer than the flash of a dragonfly, brighter than the noonday sun. It flashed forth with a bang and burst the dam asunder. Out of the brilliance, a cloud of steam boiled up into the air, and the pent-up waters were suddenly relieved. They raged out for a few moments in a dark flood, then the water was gone and all that remained of the pool was a foetid acre of mud in which ooze-worms wriggled and thrashed.

Will followed, both comforted and cowed by the wizard’s overawing presence. He was unwilling to break the silence and was still shocked at what had happened. When he closed his eyes he could see crimson spots that the flash had made. A dozen men could not have dug a hole that big in half a day – it was easy to respect such power, and hard not to fear it.

At the tower moat they were met by a guard of alert soldiers. Some of them started in surprise when they recognized Will’s companion. They drew weapons, fearing what they called sorcery. No doubt they had heard the thunderbolt, but Gwydion offered only the same words of greeting he had spoken last time he arrived at their lord’s tower. But there was no need for the guard to seek permission to admit them, for both Lord Strange and his lady came to the gate.

Will felt wretched. What on earth had made him cut off his braids? He stood before the severe lord and his retinue, his clothes mud-soaked and his face blotched and bloodied. He had proved himself an oathbreaker and a fool, but at least no one was taking any interest in him. All eyes were upon Gwydion.

‘You are welcome, Crowmaster,’ Lord Strange said stiffly as he halted.

‘Welcome?’ Gwydion laid aside all niceties: ‘I am unable to forgive you for what you have allowed here, John le Strange. There is a madness abroad in the Realm. But what madness is it that allows the ruining of an ancient grove while the Lord Warden of Wychwoode sits in his tower, turning a blind eye to all that passes?’

Lord Strange’s fearsome face was set, his small, pale eyes unblinking. ‘Madness, you say?’ he grunted. ‘You may count the felling of Grendon Copse a grievous loss, Crowmaster, but it means little to me, for I am unlearned in the matter of trees. I was placed here merely for the sake of the king’s convenience, and as you must know – I cannot tell a sacred grove from any other kind.’

‘Have you learned so little from your misfortune? Even a fool would know that he had no business allowing the cutting of any of the oaks of Wychwoode. You are making preparations for war.’

Will saw a sneer playing at the corners of Lord Strange’s mouth. ‘Preparations for war I do not deny. But your memory fails you, Crowmaster, for it was you who brought warning of strife to me. Is it not prudent to stand ready for the blow which you say is coming?’

Gwydion shook his staff and banged its haft into the ground. ‘John le Strange! I have known you since you were a babe in arms. Once I had great hopes of you and your line, but you have failed me. That foul mill was stamping out swords long before any news of war was brought here by me. Why have you ignored your duty when the king himself set you to command watch and ward over this ancient wood?’

‘I did not ignore my duty,’ Lord Strange’s snout jutted. He put his hand to his monstrous face as if some part of him wanted to preserve the secret still. Then he wiped the foam from his lips then said in a voice that was barely audible, ‘for it was the king himself who ordered Grendon Mill to be built.’

It seemed to Will that, behind his solemnity, Lord Strange was laughing. He looked to Gwydion with alarm. The wizard was barely in control of his displeasure as he said, ‘I thank you for that morsel of courage at least, but it would have been better for you had you found your tongue sooner, for now you have presided over the murder of the living heart of Wychwoode. This forest is doomed to fail and never again to be as it was. But know this, John le Strange, the circle of fate turns ever upon itself. By your cowardice and negligence you have tainted yourself. Because of this your blood shall fail as the forest green fails. Your firstborn shall be a girlchild, and all who follow shall be girlchildren likewise. Unless you purify your heart of greed and ambition, you will have no son, and your title and worldly wealth will pass to the son of another. I bid you think on that in my absence.’

Gwydion turned away. He was going from a lord’s presence without dismissal, which was a great slight, but the curse had stunned everyone, and there was not a soldier in the Realm who dared lay hands upon a wizard.

The guards fell back as Gwydion swept from the scene. Will followed, hoping that the wizard’s power would see them safely away from the tower. Whatever happened, it seemed that a dismal shadow had been cast over the future of John, Lord Strange, and that he would not let it go. But, despite the unbearable tension Will felt between his shoulder blades, no call to arms was made, and no order to loose an arrow was given.

‘This is bad, very bad,’ Gwydion muttered as they passed from view.

‘What is?’ Will asked, looking over his shoulder again.

‘Lord Strange is the gauge that shows the prevailing temper of the nobility. He has grown worse these last few months, I think. And that worries me.’

And now that Will thought about it, perhaps Lord Strange had indeed become more pig-like of late. Seeing him every day might have masked slow changes that were stealing over him.

‘If the spell’s getting worse, why don’t you take it off him?’

‘How little you know,’ the wizard said, and walked on in silence for a while, but then he added, ‘John le Strange was once the handsomest of men. Both his vanity and his ambition laid him open to magical attack. The spell he labours under was not put on him by me, but by Maskull. My ingenious enemy wished to make of Lord Strange a gauge with which he might test the governance of the Realm.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Friend John does not know it, but his appearance follows – and depends upon – the state of corruption of his peers. Is that simple enough for you?’

Will scratched his head. ‘Do you mean, the worse his fellow lords behave the uglier Lord Strange becomes?’

Gwydion nodded. ‘Exactly!’

‘Well, you could’ve said that in the first place! That’s nasty.’

‘It is a cruel and clever spell, is it not? And all the more cruel for the Hogshead himself already has the means to set it aside – if he did but realize it.’

Will blinked. ‘Do you mean that?’

‘All he has to do is attend to his own duties selflessly and in good conscience. That would break Maskull’s spellhold over him.’

‘You mean, if he started being a little less greedy then he’d start looking less ugly again?’ Will blew out a breath. ‘But, why didn’t you tell him that?’

‘Because Maskull’s spells are rarely simple. There is a stubborn protection that binds this curse. It makes all assistance deadly to the victim. Did I not say that the spell was constructed by an ingenious enemy? John le Strange must release himself, and I have gone as far as I dare in pointing him in the right direction. If I, or anyone else, were to tell him what to do, then he would die.’ The wizard looked back. ‘Friend John was sent here to keep him out of sight – sent by one who could not stand to see their own failings portrayed in his features. Unfortunately, ambition convinced him that the only way back from exile is to help the king’s weapon-maker.’

The idea that had been forming in Will’s mind sought release. ‘Is the king a bad man, then?’

‘The king himself is a gentle spirit. It is those who surround him whom we must worry about.’

They went on in silence as Will digested the wizard’s words, and soon they had passed fully into the forest’s green embrace. Then Gwydion produced a bag from the folds of his robes which he gave Will to carry.

‘What’s this?’

‘It is my crane bag, made long ago from the skin of a large wading bird that once lived in the West. The bag is of small size, but you will find it is of surprising capacity. It contains all needful things for the wayfarer. And whatever you put inside, it will always weigh the same.’

Will took it. ‘Then I suppose it must be magical.’

‘There is a very considerable spell upon it.’

He hefted it dubiously. ‘You don’t carry much else that’s made of leather.’

‘I do not like to kill my friends for the use of their hides. What would you say if you knew that a book had been bound in skin cut from a dead person’s back? Would you read it?’

‘Urgh! No!’

‘You may make a face, but that is so with some manuals of sorcery and star lorc. However, the hide of this bag is quite different. It was sloughed and shed long ago, when the crane, whose name was Aoife, returned to human form.’

The wizard said no more about that, and Will lapsed into silence too. He began thinking about Willow, appalled now at the way he had endangered her. What if she had been taken by the hag? What if he had seen her body, white and bloodless, at the bottom of the pool when the waters had drained away? It was too horrible. Magic, as the Wise Woman had said, was mostly about consequences. Harnessing the power was the easy part, what was difficult was managing what happened as a result.

The more he thought about Willow the more heartsick he felt. He had so wanted her to come, but now he would never even know if she had agreed. He wanted to have the chance to explain. He wanted it so much that it hurt to think about it. He tried to put her out of his mind, but there was something that the wizard had said that would not let his thoughts rest – he had said that the hag could not bear to see others who were in love…

Might that mean he was in love with Willow? And might it mean Willow was in love with him too?

The idea excited him mightily. He was considering whether he could ask Gwydion about it when the wizard halted and thrust out a hand.

‘Did you feel that?’

‘Feel what?’ He felt only a breeze that shivered the birch leaves.

The wizard braced himself and looked around, as if he expected some great beast to leap from the forest and try to tear him to pieces.

‘Feel what, Master Gwydion?’

‘A passing danger…but we are not its target.’

‘But what was it?’Will asked suspiciously. ‘I saw nothing. I felt nothing. I never do.’

‘That is merely your inexperience. But one day soon, I think, you will begin to feel the warning of such threats.’

Will touched the other’s sleeve. ‘Master Gwydion, why do you say I’m a Child of Destiny?’

The wizard decided it was safe to go on, then for once he deigned to answer directly. ‘Because, if I am correct about you, according to prophecy one day you will stand at the crossroads, at the place where the future of the world will be decided.’

‘What prophecy?’ he said, fully alert now. ‘Tell me.’

The wizard’s half-smile faded. ‘Have you ever heard the name “Arthur”?’

‘You mean like Great Arthur? The king of olden days?’

‘Olden days. Well perhaps those days seem olden to you. What do you know about him?’

‘Only what the stories say.’ Will tried to recall what he had been told, but realized his knowledge was scant. ‘Arthur lived long ago, just a little time after the Slavers left the Realm. It was a time of war and so he found a sword in a stone and…and when he pulled it out that made him king. And then he had a big, round table made out of a dozen different trees in Waincaister, and his knights came and ate their dinners at it…and…’

‘And?’

‘Well…he fought battles and always won, except for the last one, because he got shot in the eye with an arrow. But before he died he had to give his sword back to a lady who lived in the pond. And…’

The wizard seemed amused. ‘Oh, is that what happened?’

Will shrugged. ‘So the stories that I’ve heard say. I’m sure there’s more, but I can’t remember it all. Valesmen add their own parts to a tale every time they tell it, so the stories about Arthur the King, which were always our favourites, got more mixed up than most. I’ve heard them told all ways around and can’t rightly say what’s true.’

‘Then I shall have to tell you how it was. Great Arthur was the hundred-and-first king of the line of Brea. He succeeded his father when he was but thirteen years of age, and he lived a most extraordinary life. But you know, his strange fate was hardly that of a mortal king, for he was in truth nothing of the sort.’

‘You once said there was no such thing as immortals.’

‘Oh, Arthur was not immortal. He was the second coming of a king of old, one who reigned in the time of the First Men, the same who swore to protect these isles in time of peril. What you were told about in Valesmen’s stories was Arthur’s second coming, which was prophesied and watched over by one who then called himself Master Merlyn. But you are right about the manner in which Arthur’s kingship was confirmed. When he was just thirteen he drew the hallowed sword Branstock from a stone, which is one of the signs that were to be watched for.’

‘Calibor!’ Will said. ‘I remember King Arthur’s sword was called Calibor!’

But Gwydion, who had been watching him carefully, shook his head. ‘No, that was much later. The Lady of the Lake granted Arthur a sword called Carabur. But the sword he drew from the stone was quite different. That was called Branstock. And it was one of the Four Hallows of the Realm.’

Will put a hand to his mouth thoughtfully. He had the feeling that something was dimly familiar. ‘The Four Hallows…’ he whispered. ‘Wand, sword, cup and pentacle!’

‘Now, how could you know that, I wonder?’ the wizard asked, very satisfied.

‘I don’t know…I…’ Will shook his head as if trying to clear it. ‘Tilwin! Of course! He brought cards to the Vale and taught me to play.’

‘And have you heard of the Sceptre, the Sword of State, the Ampulla and the Crown?’

‘No.’

‘They are four items of regalia that represent the Hallows when a king is crowned. These four objects must be present at each royal coronation. Unless they are, no man may call himself king. But they are not the real Hallows. Those were once lodged deep underground. In ancient times they resided together in a vault in the Realm Below. The first is the Sword of Might, called Branstock. The second is the Staff of Justice. The third is the Cauldron of Plenty, and the last—’

‘And the last is a star.’

‘The last is the Star of Annuin. Tell me, how did you know that?’

He shook his head. ‘I…’ His fears suddenly overflowed. He swallowed hard and looked up. ‘Master Gwydion, has this got something to do with me being a Child of Destiny, because if it has then a big mistake has been—’

The wizard held up a hand. ‘In the same way that King Arthur’s second coming was prophesied in the Black Book, so also was another’s.’

Will felt another current of fear run through him. ‘Whose?’

The wizard looked away. ‘It may be that it was yours. What do you think of that?’

Will tried to laugh. ‘Mine? But that’s – that’s silly!’

‘Is it? Why do you think I saw to it that you were saved from harm and cared for by loving parents, hmmm? Why do you think I made sure you were brought to adulthood in the carefree bosom of the Vale? That place has long been under my magical cloak, for if you were the Child of Destiny, then you had to be preserved from Maskull. Now do you see? You must be properly prepared to fulfil your destiny.’

The idea was vast, terrible. He wanted to hide from it. ‘But…but what if I don’t want to be prepared?’

‘It does not much matter what you want. You must be. That is one of my tasks. And it seems to me there is still plenty to be made of you.’

‘What does the prophecy say?’ he asked, dazed.

‘As with all prophecies, the wording is far from clear. It speaks mistily, of “one being made two” and other notions that are hard to fathom.’

Will felt heartsick. ‘But it can’t be anything to do with me!’

‘Ah! A further proof.’

‘What?’

‘The prophecy says you would deny yourself thrice. That is the second time you have done so.’

‘But I’m not denying myself!’

‘And that sounds like a third denial to me.’ Gwydion glanced at him critically. ‘Still, Lord Strange and his lady have not accomplished as much as I had hoped with you. You have yet the bare means to gain knowledge which is needful, for no man can truly call himself a man until he has stocked his head with a goodly measure of knowledge. You are still far from being sufficiently taught. I think perhaps you need—’

He halted suddenly again and threw out a staying hand. Will froze, then they crouched down together behind a stand of saplings. But nothing showed itself, and the afternoon sun filtered through the leaves until all was still and sleepy again.

‘What was it?’ Will whispered at last. ‘Something evil?’

Gwydion turned, frowning, light upon his feet. ‘I have asked you not to use that word. It makes for loose thinking.’

‘Then tell me what you felt.’

‘A danger. A shadow…some piece of malice in hiding. Or so it seemed for a moment.’

‘Do you mean Maskull?’

‘It felt somewhat like his dirty magic. But perhaps I was mistaken – ah, look there!’

The wizard drew the split hazel wand from his sleeve and began to test the ground ahead. He went on a few paces and pointed his staff at a partly overgrown track that drove through the forest like a green tunnel. It was too wide to jump across, and paved with stones so that its way was clear, for no trees grew along the line where the close-set slabs had been laid. It looked as if it had not been used in a great many years, but still it was a better-made road than any that Will had ever seen.

‘If you would know a little of what you call evil, Willand, then mark this scar upon the land.’

‘It’s a fine path made of stones, Master Gwydion,’ Will said, staring up and down it. He wondered where it came from and where it went.

‘Do not admire it! It is the Akemain, a Slaver road! Slavebuilt, laid here long ages ago by a sorcerer’s empire. Its main purpose was to take armies of foot soldiers across the land as fast as could be. It was built to aid in the work of murder and the holding down of the people.’

‘Sorry.’ He scuffed at the grass with his toes. ‘Where does it go?’

‘It runs fifty leagues and more east to west. And there are many other such slave roads that defile the land in like manner. See how it goes straight and takes no heed of hill or dale? Mark that arrogance well, Willand! For the stones of this long street and others like it have ever been an insult to the earth and are the present bane of our Realm.’

‘How so?’ asked Will stepping into the middle of it. ‘It’s just an old stone road.’

‘You will learn soon enough what it truly means. Come! Do not stand upon it!’

As he hurried on, the ancient road faded quickly from his mind, and little more passed between them until at last they came to the southern edge of the Wychwoode.

It was a hot and close afternoon, but a change came into the air as the sun reddened and the evening became golden. They were once more among open fields. Gwydion avoided the places where folk might be found, meandering instead through woods and along overgrown paths, and as they crossed over a small stream the wizard asked about the lessons the Wise Woman had told him, and what manner of magic he thought he had learned from her.

Will repeated the first of the Wise Woman’s lessons, but then he could not help but admit to having read the book of beasts in which the spells had been written.

‘I know I shouldn’t have,’ he said lamely. ‘I know that now.’

‘And doubtless you did at the time too. Tell me, were there any words written on the front cover of the book?’

Will nodded. ‘A few. But I couldn’t read them in the ordinary way.’

‘The words were most probably, Ane radhas a’leguim oicheamna; ainsagimn deo teuiccimn. That is the true tongue.’

Will marvelled. ‘The sound of it rings pleasantly in my ears.’

‘It is a very ancient way of speech, the words the First Men learned from the fae. They cause a mighty hunger in the head, do they not? That is why you must take care when speaking the true tongue, for it is the language of stones and it has great power. Now tell me what else the Wise Woman taught you.’

While Will recalled all he could, the wizard nodded or stroked his beard, but he asked no more questions and gave no rebukes, for which Will was grateful. At last Gwydion said, ‘Say after me: Fiel ean mail arh an mailor treas.’

Will tried. Then he tried again. And then he tried a third time to get the sound just right, and at last Gwydion smiled.

‘There!’

‘What does it mean?’

‘You have spoken the Rede of the Three-fold Way in the true tongue.’

Will smiled back, pleased. ‘That was easy.’

‘Easy enough for some. But heed me well: magic must always be requested and never summoned. Always respect it, and never treat it with disdain. And when you ask, ask openly and honestly, for the honest man alone has the right to speak the words of power.’

By now they had come to a river bank, and Will saw a small standing stone sticking up out of the grassy bank.

Gwydion said, ‘Come here and put down the crane bag.’

Once more, Will did as he was told, and the wizard made him jump up and sit on the stone. ‘Do not be afraid. This little stone is called Taynton Sarsen. It is as benign as your own Tarry Stone. It marks an important ancient crossing point over the stream.’ He took from his pouch a piece of flint so sharp at the edge that it could have been used to shave with.

‘What are you going to do with that?’ Will asked, eyeing the flint uncertainly.

‘Give you a beggar’s head.’

‘What?’

The wizard tested the edge of the flint, then began to cut off locks of Will’s hair. ‘Hold still. The place where your braids used to hang looks like a half-harvested wheatfield and we can’t have that.’

Will screwed up his face but endured the indignity and when at last he put a hand to his head he found his hair was no more than half a finger’s length all over, and tussocky. He ruffled it and followed the wizard, picking up a stick on the way. ‘Why did you cut my hair?’

‘It is a disguise.’

‘It’s not much of one.’

‘It will serve to confound those who have been sent to make report on you.’

Will felt renewed anxiety cramp his stomach. ‘People sent by Maskull, do you mean?’

‘It is not unusual for him to have me watched when he can get news of my whereabouts. It is likely we are being watched now, for he certainly knows my bag-carrier was lodged in the Wychwoode.’

Will’s anxiety turned to alarm. ‘He found out about me?’

Gwydion smiled. ‘I made sure of it.’

‘You mean, you told him?’

‘I made sure Maskull found out that I had brought an unsatisfactory apprentice lad to Lord Strange’s tower for a summer of correction.’

‘Wasn’t that dangerous?’

‘Of course. But far less dangerous than if I had not done so. You see, Maskull does not know who you are. He will dismiss the detail from his thoughts, and once dismissed it will stay dismissed.’

‘I hope so.’

‘He believes I am a coward. He cannot bring himself to believe that I would dare bring the one spoken of in prophecy into plain view, for were he in my place he would certainly have kept you locked away in a fortress of spells. Be warned, Maskull wants very much to find the prophesied one, and if ever he decided that you were he, then…’ The wizard’s words petered out and he made a lethal gesture.

Will passed a hand over his throat and looked around uncomfortably. Fresh fears bubbled up inside him. It was terrifying to think that his survival now depended on his being mistaken for his own decoy. ‘Where are we going?’

‘You’ll know that when we get there.’

‘Well…how far is it?’

‘About as far as it is to Nempnett Thrubwell.’

Will gave a hard, frustrated sigh. ‘Oh, Master Gwydion, why will you never tell me where I came from and what is to become of me?’

‘As to the first, I do not know. And I have already told you the second – you are going to be taught.’

‘Taught what?’

‘What the world is truly like.’

Will snorted. ‘Who can know what the world is truly like?’

Gwydion tapped his nose with a forefinger. ‘Ah! The world is the sum of what men believe it to be. Now, that is deep wisdom, if you did but know it.’

He liked the idea. ‘Do you mean that if most men thought the sky was green and the grass was blue then they would be?’

The wizard smiled. ‘Willand, I mean precisely that.’

‘Is that why magic is leaving the world? Because people are stopping believing in it?’

Gwydion’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Why, Willand, you surprise me! That is a very interesting question. Indeed, there is an important rede that says, “Magic alters” and another that says, “Magic to him who magic thinks”.’

Will swished at the dust with the stick. ‘But what I really want to know is why did Maskull put that spell on Lord Strange if he’s not an evil sorcerer?’

Gwydion picked his way towards a mass of brambles. ‘Three steps forward, two steps back. How easily you use the word “evil”, Willand. Where did the idea come from in the first place?’

‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged and pushed the spiky briars aside with his stick. ‘Isn’t it right? To use the word “evil”, sometimes. I mean, surely Maskull is evil, even though he may not know it.’

‘“Evil” is a dangerous idea to have in your head if you wish to understand magic properly. Each of us carries tremendous power for the doing of what you unthinkingly call “good” and “evil”.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I suppose you ought to be given instruction about this, though you hardly seem ripe for it.’

Will wrinkled his nose at that. ‘I don’t want to know.’

Gwydion stopped dead and turned so that the charms which hung inside his shirt clattered together. ‘Is that truly so? Make no mistake, people are forestalled or led on by knowledge – and by the lack of it. I must be careful what I reveal to you, and what I hide. You must be taught. You must be prepared. But I must not fill your head with so much that your essential nature is altered. Do you see?’

Will thought about that as they followed the banks of the river. The sky deepened and the brighter stars began to appear. Before night fell fully, they camped. Gwydion picked a place close to running water and in the lee of a hill. He danced earth magic around his chosen spot, then produced a cooking pot that was heavier when taken from the crane bag than the bag was with the pot and all its other contents put together.

‘What’s this pot made from?’Will said feeling the weight. ‘Some kind of stone?’

‘Correct. That is cleberkh, or loomlode as some say, a kind of stone found in the Isles of the Sword, a place that lies beyond even the Orcas in the Far North. At first the stone is soft enough to shape, but the more you cook with it the harder it gets.’ Gwydion took out a patched brown travelling cloak much like his own. ‘And this is for you. It will help you to sleep.’

He took out a slate blade and cut a yard square in the grass, made nine turfs of it and stacked them up. Then he gathered twigs into the hole and whispered a merry fire into being. In the pot he made a thick, savoury broth in which pieces of roasted vegetable floated. Will could not tell if it was done by magic or the brown powder the wizard spilled into the mix, but the soup tasted wonderfully flavoursome.

As the flames of the fire died down Gwydion lay back and searched the sky.

‘What are you looking for?’ Will asked. ‘A sign?’

‘I am simply marvelling.’

Gwydion told him how the dome of the sky was very far away, and how tiny windows in the dome let through the light of the great furnace that was the Beyond. ‘Those windows,’ he said, ‘are the stars.’

‘And shooting stars?’ Will asked. ‘What are they?’

‘The Beyond is a place of unimaginable brightness. There are fireballs with hearts of iron that perpetually crash against the outer dome of the sky. Sometimes one of them falls down through a star window. That is what we call a shooting star.’

‘A shooting star.’Will echoed. He stretched out his hand in wonder. ‘Can a person ever touch the sky?’

He continued to stare at the vast, eerie dome, but soon his eyelids grew heavy and moments later he was asleep.

CHAPTER SEVEN LAMMASTIDE

They rose early, just before dawn. Gwydion turned about on his heels, tasting the air warily until he was sure that no danger had been laid for them. Then he danced and paced and danced a little more. He spoke words to himself until it seemed to Will that a billowing net of blue gossamer came into being around their sleeping place. As Gwydion spoke, the light was drawn down to his hands and vanished inside him. Then, as if nothing had happened, he raked the ashes out of the fire and scattered them about, while seeming to thank the grass for having made them welcome. Will watched with raised eyebrows.

‘And now we must remake the ground,’ Gwydion told him. ‘Do you want to do it?’

He shrugged, feeling a little foolish. ‘What should I do?’

He was told to replace the turfs just as they had been before, and ritually water them. This he did, not really knowing how ritual watering differed from pouring the jug out over the ground, but Gwydion seemed to approve his actions, and when all was done and the ground looked almost as if they had never come this way, they set off.

‘What were you doing before?’ Will asked.

‘I was dancing back the magic that I laid forth last night as our protection.’

‘Against Maskull?’

‘Against all harm.’

Will’s heart felt suddenly leaden. ‘Why does Maskull want to kill the one spoken about in the Black Book?’

‘Because he was “…born of Strife, born of Calamity…born at Beltane in the Twentieth Year…when the beams of Eluned are strongest”.’

Will tried to be withering. ‘I suppose that’s meant to tell me everything.’

‘Perhaps it does not make much sense to you, but Maskull knows that the prophesied one will eventually stand between him and that which he most desires.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘To be the one who chooses the direction of the future.’

‘Well, I’ll not stand in his way. He can do what he likes with the future for all I care!’

The wizard smiled knowingly. ‘If you are the one, then you will eventually confound him. This he knows, and knowing it he cannot rest.’

‘And because Maskull is your enemy too, you’ve become my friend. Is that it?’ he said gloomily. It felt like he had been caught between gigantic forces, and that they were fast closing on him.

But the wizard smiled another wistful smile and shook his head. ‘I see that you doubt my sincerity, Willand. But I was a friend to you long before I suspected whom you might be.’

They continued south, skirting villages and avoiding the most well-travelled roads. They kept off the fields where golden grain awaited harvest, and Will enjoyed the walking. After weeks of homesickness and stifling study in the tower he felt truly free at last. Still, the wizard’s words had unsettled him more than a little.

He took his knife, went to the hedge and cut a bough from the blackthorn. It was an arm’s length from end to end and two fingers around. As Gwydion looked on he began stripping it of twigs and bark, shaping the torn end into a handle, the other into a point. But he felt ever more uncomfortable as he worked, for Gwydion’s eyes rested upon him and at length he stopped and looked up. ‘Is there anything amiss, Master Gwydion?’

‘What is it you are at, lad?’

‘Just carving a new stick for walking.’

‘Blackthorn is a good choice. Like ash, fine wood for tool handles, a wood that is strong and dense.’

Will smiled back, encouraged.

‘But you neglected to ask first if the blackthorn minded.’

‘Should I have done that?’

‘It would have been the polite thing to do.’

Will looked at his stick, confused. It was just a stick. ‘Do you mean I should have asked forgiveness of a bush?’

‘Not forgiveness, Will.’ Gwydion’s voice grew mellow. ‘Permission.’

‘But surely a bush couldn’t hear what I said to it.’

‘That is quite true. But also quite beside the point. One day you will understand. Meanwhile, tell me: are you versed in any weapon?’

‘Only the quarterstaff, Master Gwydion.’

‘In the wider world it is important you know how to protect yourself. When next you cut yourself a quarterstaff, make it as long as you are. And remember that you will double its strength if you give thanks for it beforehand.’

Will narrowed his eyes at the wizard. ‘They say a quarterstaff is always to be preferred to a sword, but I can’t see how that can be true.’

‘Can’t you?’ Gwydion opened his crane bag and drew out an impossibly long staff. ‘No swordsman, no matter how fine his weapon, can hurt you if he cannot reach you. You need only learn how a suitable distance may be kept.’

Suddenly Gwydion rose up and danced, stroking the staff about him in eye-fooling twists and thrusts, then, equally suddenly, he halted, pushed the staff back into the crane bag and motioned him to follow on.

‘That was amazing!’ Will said. ‘You moved the staff so fast I could hardly see it!’

‘Practice, as the rede says, maketh perfect.’

They pressed on across a river, the broadest yet, which they crossed easily by walking ankle-deep across an eel weir. Will dogged Gwydion’s steps three paces behind until, as night fell, they came near to a barn. Gwydion made it safe by crumbling bread crusts in the corners and dancing out an eerie-sounding protection. But for half the night Will lay awake in the straw, listening to every sound. He curled himself tighter in his nest and did not have the courage even to wake the wizard, but in the morning he made his admission.

‘Master Gwydion, I heard noises last night. I thought they must be Maskull’s spies.’

‘I heard them too.’

‘You did?’ His eyes widened. ‘Then I was right?’

‘Oh, indeed. They were spies. Three of them, in fact. All in brown velvet coats. All about this long.’ He placed his hands a little way apart.

Will tutted. ‘Rats?’

‘Rats. Exceptional creatures. They were looking out for our safety as I asked them.’

With the dawning of the day they went down into the village of Uff, and Will saw the Blowing Stone. It turned out to be only a great block with three holes in it that stood in the yard of the village alehouse. ‘It is played like a stone flute every second year,’ Gwydion said. ‘It calls men to the Scouring. Do not hang back from it, it is not a battlestone, nor anything to be afraid of.’

‘Scouring? What’s that?’

‘You will know all about that by the end of Lammas.’

All that morning while the wizard talked with the villagers, Will waited and waited. The wizard was well liked in Uff, and well used to tarrying there, for it was horse country and he seemed greatly fond of horses. Word soon got about that a famous horse leech had come into the village. Food and cider were brought out for him, but he gave both to Will to offset his fears and forestall his impatience. And after so much cheese and bread and a quart of best apple dash to wash it down, Will lay in a corner and did not get up again until a goodly while had passed.

‘When are we going to leave?’ he asked Gwydion, feeling more than a little wretched and dry in the throat. ‘I thought you wanted to get along, yet you’ve nearly wasted the whole day.’

‘And lying dead drunk on your back all day is wasting nothing at all, I suppose?’ the wizard said, ruffling the mane of a fine, white horse.

‘Come on, Master Gwydion. You know what I mean.’ He rubbed his arms and looked around unhappily. ‘Maskull.’

‘But first things first. You must learn patience, and understand that old debts must always be paid. Anyway, we cannot go on more urgently if we are to spend Lammas night on the Dragon’s Mound. Behold this mare, Willand. Is she not the very image of Arondiel?’

‘Who?’

‘Have you not heard tales of Arondiel, the steed of Epona?’

When the villagers overheard Gwydion’s remark they began to grin and clap their hands as if the wizard had conferred some deep and secret honour upon them. Will had never been told who Arondiel was, nor Epona, though for some reason he had the unshakable idea in his mind that the latter was a great lady who had lived hereabouts long ago. He did not know why, but her name made him think of white horses and a queen of old who delighted to feed her favourite mount apples…

He started. ‘Hey! Master Gwydion! What’s that about a “Dragon’s Mound”? You can’t trick me like that!’

But the wizard was too busy appreciating horseflesh to pay him much heed. ‘There is no cause to worry, Willand,’ he said lightly. ‘It’s just the name of a little hill near here. You will like the place, I think.’

When Gwydion finally took his leave and called Will onward, he said, ‘They are faithful folk hereabouts who know their horses. There is a bond between us that I would not deny for they have kept to the Old Ways more than most.’

They pressed on southward through what remained of the day, and soon came to the foot of a ridge that rose up green and round out of the haze. It took longer than Will expected to reach, so that just as the sun was beginning to sink into the west they came to a halt under a great swell of sheep-cropped land.

Gwydion was delighted. ‘This is a very special place,’ he said.

‘But are we going to be safe here?’

‘We can do no better than to camp here tonight.’

He led Will up a curious little conical hill and showed him how the flattened top gave a fine view to the north of the plain across which they had walked. The hill stood below a fold of the ridge which blotted out the prospect to the south. Directly below them an arm of flat land swept interestingly halfway around the hill and into a dead-end, while on the other side a well-worn path meandered up into a fold of the scarp as if it was taking the easiest way up to higher ground. It seemed a most ancient place.

Will breathed deep and decided that anyone with both a heart and a head would know that this place was very special, but as he looked up to the south-east he saw a shape cut high on the ridge which put its uniqueness beyond all doubt. Above the path was a strange set of curves, shapes cut out of the turf so that the white chalk underneath showed through. The slope of the land foreshortened the figure somewhat, but the white lines flowed around one another in the unmistakable shape of a horse.

‘Behold, Arondiel!’ Gwydion exclaimed. ‘Is she not most beautiful to your eye?’

Will was awed by the figure. ‘She’s wonderful!’

‘Look upon her with respect, for she is the oldest form made by the hand of man that you have yet seen in the land. On yonder plains there once grew great orchards where a powerful queen once reigned. She rode yearly to this place upon a white mare. Men have been coming up from the village of Uff every second year for thousands of years to keep Arondiel alive. This is the Scouring of which I spoke. Were it not for that effort of care, Arondiel would have vanished under the encroaching grass long ago, and we would all be the worse for that.’

‘But what is she?’ he asked, staring at the figure like one who finds himself suddenly unable to remember something important.

‘She is both a sign to read and a spirit guardian. Some see in her form the idea “horse”. What do you see?’

‘She looks like a horse to me too,’Will agreed. ‘But maybe…’ He shaded his eyes and studied the figure a moment longer. ‘I think that if she’s a word she isn’t “horse”, but rather “gallop”, or maybe “speed”.’

Gwydion beamed. ‘Ah, Willand! How easily you prove yourself again!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean you are more in tune with the spirit of this sacred place than I had dared to hope. You will be very safe here tonight. Speed! Her name means speed! And such a form as hers cannot be cut in these latter times, for though this is a land of many horses, there are no longer men who know how to draw lines like this upon the land.’

The gift that Gwydion had taken when they left the village was a loaf of new-baked bread. For this was Lammastide, also called in the Vale ‘the festival of loaves’, the day when the first ripe grain was cut and threshed, ground and baked into bread, all in the space of a day. This was ritual bread-making, a solemn and sacred duty, and done to mark the bounty of the earth. A time to give thanks to the land, and for folk to count their blessings.

They climbed the flat-topped hill and munched their bread, and it seemed to Will that the taste of it was as good as any food he had ever eaten. Festive bonfires burned red across the plains of the old Kingdom of Wesset to the north. As darkness deepened, folk would be attending each of those fires, toasting bread on long forks. There would be butter and honey for the children, and much ale drunk and many songs sung. They sat together and talked far into the night and Will felt himself to be closer to Gwydion than ever before. Tonight the wizard seemed joyous and wonderfully wise and very pleased to be here. He spoke much about history, showing Will to the very the spot where, almost a thousand years before, Great Arthur had stood to address his assembled troops.

The wizard said quietly. ‘Shall I tell you the name of this hill in the true tongue? It is “Dumhacan Nadir”.’

Will repeated the words as if he half recognized them. ‘“Dumhacan Nadir” – the Dragon’s Mound.’

‘You have not slept upon a dragon’s mound before, I think. Nor shall you again for a very long time.’

Will patted the ground under him in wonder – there was something too regular about this mound for it to be a natural hill, and nearby was an odd bare patch of chalk, a part where the grass would not grow.

‘Flenir was the greatest of the great dragons of old, the most famous in the land. Huge and fierce was he, the “winged beast with breath of flame” of which many tales were told and many songs sung in a time long before the establishment of the Realm. For long years did Flenir misuse this land, preying upon sheep and cattle across the domain of Angnor. Any man unwary enough to be caught in the open at his approach would be torn to pieces like a mouse caught in the talons of an eagle. Flenir would breakfast in a place near here – it is still called Wormhill Bottom – and when he had rent enough flesh from bone he would return to his lair to lie. The top of his mound is flat because Flenir was accustomed to rest here, rubbing his great red belly free of the lice that clung to it. All dragons had lice, Willand, and dragon lice were as big as a man’s hand. In daylight you can see the groove where Flenir wrapped his tail around the mound, and if you look carefully down there you might discover the entrance he used, though it has long since been sealed. It is said that one day, while flying over Angnor, Flenir saw the figure of Arondiel and became enamoured of it. That is why he made his mound here. Though other tales say the site was chosen only out of jealousy.’

Will looked down into the darkness below. ‘I think a dragon would have found this a perfect place to launch himself into the air.’

‘That much is certain.’

Will scuffed at the turf with his toes. ‘So was there once a great treasure buried under here?’

‘There was, for as you know the great dragons were like magpies. They would collect any trinket that glittered. They coveted bright metal for its own sake and would always try to make a hoard of it. But in the end Flenir did not much like the bright bronze blade that was forged up on yonder ridge, for that was his bane.’

Will thought of those brilliant, ancient days, all long gone now and impossibly heroic. But what kind of heroes did the world have now? Men who wore the heads of pigs, and lords whose own increasing greed showed in the Hogshead. A shiver passed through him as he sat there, and thoughts of home began to crowd in on him. His fingers went to the greenstone talisman that hung at his neck, and he remembered the song that Valesmen used to sing every year called the Wyrm Charm. Last year it had been Eldmar’s turn to sing it. The moment had come when they had all raised their hot, steaming dragon soup together and supped off the flavoursome liquor, then Eldmar had raised his voice and led the others through the verses.

Will felt a tear come to the corner of his eye. He sniffed, fighting the sadness away, knowing very well that it was no use pining for home now. He stood up and went to stand alone and a feeling of such strangeness came over him then that his eyes rolled up into his head and his hands went deathly cold and it was as if all the world was melting away before him. And when he opened his eyes he saw a ghostly army of ten thousand filling the space below, and he knew they were gathering here before starting their heroes’ march to Badon Hill where great deeds of war would soon be accomplished.

He saw them clear as day, saw their burnished war gear, watched them shake the charms on their spearheads and clash their spearshafts against shields that bore the device of the hawk. He saw their faces, and heard them raise such a shout that it echoed across a forsaken land like rolling thunder. And he stared back, enthralled, standing at the edge, lifting up his arms, to shout in reply, ‘Anh farh bouaidan! An ger bouaidhane!’

Then Gwydion’s arms were instantly around him, and the echoes were rolling around the hill as he shook himself out of the vision and when he came to himself he was cold as death and he could still hear the horns of Elfland faintly blowing.

‘Where am I?’ he said, falling.

The wizard drew him back from the edge. ‘Do not sit here. Do you see how it is bare of grass? That is where dragon’s blood once was spilt. Nothing has grown here since.’

He staggered in the wizard’s arms as vague fears flashed through him. For a moment he wondered if he had unleashed some unnamed peril upon them, but when he looked up at the sky, only the cold stars shone down, pitiless as the glint in a dragon’s eye.

His words came all in a rush. ‘Master Gwydion, let me go home. I can’t be this Child of Destiny you’ve been looking for, really I—’

‘Easy, lad. The Rede of Foolishness says, “Talk not about things whereof you know nothing.” You are what you are. Stop fighting yourself.’

For a moment Gwydion’s answer put a stone in his heart, but then he saw a shooting star flare and its beauty so moved him that he wept. The wizard laid a comforting arm across his shoulders and Will leaned against him and soon he began to drowse. It seemed he had been sleeping half the night when he woke up with a start to find that all was still and silent. Gwydion was nowhere to be seen, so he got up and began to look around. This time he was careful to respect the bare patch as if it was a gravestone. He walked around the top of the hill, telling himself not to worry, then he stumbled over something hard and sharp that was half buried in the grass.

When he knelt down to try to discover what it was, it felt cold to his fingers, like metal, and as he scraped the hard earth from around it he saw that it was curved, a metal rim – like the edge of a goblet – sticking out of the ground.

The more he scraped the freer the goblet became, until he was able to pull it out. Then he saw it was no goblet at all, but a horn, clogged with earth, the silverwork upon it battered and tarnished black but a horn all the same. It was not the sort that shepherds blew, but the kind warriors winded to send a warning clear across a valley. Even in the starlight he could see there were words cut in the metal.

He knocked the dirt out of it and tucked it into his bundle. Then, with a heavy sigh, he lay down to sleep.

The next day they travelled onward, following the meandering path that climbed up the ridge. They passed a great bank of bracken that was overgrown with bindweed. It parted before Gwydion’s steps, and the many pale pink flowers closed up and seemed to nod respectfully as he climbed up between them. Will saw revealed another ancient earth enclosure much like the one in which they had rested on their way to the Wychwoode. This ruin was round in form, and Gwydion said it was the remains of a burgh, a dwelling camp, built in a time when all men raised their homes in timber and thatch and did not arrogantly root out the bones of the earth for the sake of vanity.

‘They used only those stones which the earth itself offered up. A great gate once stood here. How wondrously worked were the timbers of that camp, how great the magic knotted into its carven beams. But great though the ancient camps were, all of them fell easily to the iron-girt invader.’ Gwydion’s eyes flashed. ‘There was no defence against Slaver steel and Slaver sorcery once the Isles were betrayed. The Slavers were the beginning of the darkness that has ever since shadowed this land. I do not say such a thing easily, but I would that Gruech had never lived!’

‘Gruech? Who’s he?’

‘A foul traitor! One whose bones lie in a dusty cave far away.’ Gwydion grunted. ‘Let me tell you how it was: King Hely reigned forty-four years, longer than any king of the line of Brea since Dunval the Great, and his first son was called Ludd. When Ludd became king, he rebuilt Trinovant, the city that Brea had founded near a thousand years before. So great were King Ludd’s works that the city was renamed Caer Ludd, in his honour, but on his death the name Trinovant was taken up again. Ludd’s body was interred in one of the great gates of the city that bears his name – Luddsgate. It was I who gave his funeral oration, and at that time I made known certain truths that disqualified Ludd’s son, Androg, from the kingship.

‘This was well done, for Androg was possessed of a weak spirit, and four years after Ludd’s death, during the reign of his brother Caswalan, there turned out to be much work for a strong leader. The mighty power from the East that we called “the Slavers” first invaded the Isles. They claimed they had come on the Day of Auspices, one thousand years to the day since the landing in the Isles of the hero Brea. By this boast they sought to terrify the people, for Iuliu, the captain-general of the Slaver army, was a famous seer and he had said that the line of Brean kings could stand only so long.

‘But our bards sang well their histories in reply. They countered that the true Day of Auspices must already have passed unmarked during the reign of King Hely, and Iuliu’s prediction was therefore false. Thus were our warriors heartened, and afterwards they scorned the claims of the enemy, even when what they said was true. Now as the first Slaver foot stepped upon shingle shore, the lorc awakened. It happened exactly as the fae had always intended it should. Soon a great battle was fought, and one of Ludd’s younger brothers, Neni, who was a master of many arts, fought bravely against the Slaver armies that day, though in the end he paid dearly for his enterprise. The Slavers were setting camp on the banks of the River Iesis when the great clash came. Neni’s men rushed upon them and he himself captured the Slaver sorcerer’s sword, but it cut him and the poison entered his body, so that he died of his wounds fifteen days later and was interred in another of the northern gates of Trinovant. The sorcerer’s gilded blade which he took as spoil, and which he named Thamebuide, or “yellow death”, was buried with him.

‘And that’s how the Slavers won the Realm?’ Will said, frowning.

‘Oh, not so! The Slavers’ ill-fated first invasion was ended by their captain-general, Iuliu the Seer. Ever since landing on the shingle shore, he had been troubled. He suffered falling fits and terrible night visions, both of which were conjured in his mind by the lorc. So affected was he that after the great battle fought against Caswalan and Neni, he chose to withdraw his dread army back across the Narrow Seas. He returned with it to his great capital of Tibor where he vowed never to trouble the Isles again. Iuliu the Seer became a despot upon his own people and was murdered by his friends.’

Will scratched his head. ‘Then how did the Realm pass to the Slavers?’

‘A hundred years later we were betrayed by one of our own.’

Will nodded. ‘And that must have been Gruech’s doing?’

‘Indeed it was. And all the worse for he was one of the druida, and a bard. There could have been no greater betrayal than his.’

Gwydion strode onward in silence then, and a little while later they passed by some ancient stones and the wizard explained that this was the place where Welan son of Wada had forged the exquisite bronze sword called Balmung, the same that had shaved the scales from the dragon’s ribs.

‘These stones mark the place where Wada was laid to rest by his grateful people.’ The wizard’s lips pursed wryly. ‘Had Welan but known how, he might have charmed Flenir to his will, and then there would have been no need to forge a sword. There is no need to dig earth-iron from holes when you have skill in your hands and in your head. The earth gives up freely all that a wise man needs. She holds fast to that which should not be had by fools. Alas! The earth can never give all that men desire, for men’s desire is limitless.’

But Will’s mind was already bounding along another path. ‘Could the great dragons be tamed by words alone, then?’

‘Tamed? Never! But charmed certainly. At least in some measure, for the greatest of the dragons were vain and greedy beasts, and those are failings against which compliment and flattery most easily succeeds. In that, dragons were much like kings.’

Will looked back the way they had come. In the bright summer sun he could see for many leagues, and the view served to make him wonder at the vastness of the Realm and how small was the world that he had hitherto known.

‘Where are we going, Master Gwydion?’

‘That question again? Over hill and down dale to sup with the king.’

Will sucked his teeth, hating to be so casually talked down to. ‘There and back to see how far it is,’ he muttered.

Gwydion poked him good-naturedly with the foot of his staff. ‘We go to the king to offer him consolation in his time of trouble. But travelling is not simply an attempt to arrive somewhere by the shortest possible route. A destination must be arrived at properly, for there is much more in the going than there is in the getting there.’

‘You’re not making much sense.’

‘Then let me put it plainly – there may be those whom we might wish to meet with on the way, or those who might wish to meet with us.’

Will sighed. The crane bag seemed to be heavier, though he knew it could not be. Then he realized that it was weighed down with a secret. He had not yet told Gwydion about the silver-bound horn. I’ll tell him about it when he tells me where we’re going, he thought, and swapped the bag from hand to hand. Fair trade is no robbery, and that’s a Valesman’s rede!

At Lyttenden Hill they came upon ancient, wind-bitten towers and a lake of mist below. The ridge turned south again and they walked on along high ground, coming down at last, late and after dark, into a looming wood that lay across their path.

On the way, Gwydion told him about some of the different sorts of magic. There was ‘seeming’, which was making things appear to be what they were not. Then there were the persuasive arts of talking people into a state of sleep or enthusiastic agreement. Then came the power of perceiving deceit in men’s hearts. ‘No motive is hidden from a wizard,’ Gwydion said. ‘He hears truth in people’s voices as others hear joy in laughter or sadness in sobs. Much that folk suppose is powerful magic is really only illusion-weaving. Most people cannot tell the difference, but it is the difference between a person believing he sees a mouse change into an apple and the change actually taking place. True transformations are much more difficult – they are very tiring, and they tend to return to their original state in a short space of time. Which is especially upsetting if you have just eaten an apple that once was a mouse.’

Will laughed. ‘Yes, and more upsetting still if you’re the mouse!’

As they entered the gloom of the woods Gwydion sang a song of an ambush of shadows that he had met with in the far darker forests of the West, in the land of Cambray, where hidden strings were often plucked and deadly arrows flew, biting deep into the flesh of those who came uninvited into what was the most mystical of lands. The song wrung the blood from Will’s heart. And when it was done he thrilled to hear cries in the dark, though they were only owls answering the moon.

They camped and ate the last of their Lammas bread along with some wonderful mushrooms called pig’s ears that Gwydion hunted out. Tonight he cut no cooking pit nor did he whisper up any fire, but went to stand in a clearing for a while to ask strength from the earth and fill himself with its potent power. Afterwards he told Will to wrap himself tight in his cloak and take his night’s rest under a bush where the moss was thickest. But if the wizard’s aim was Will’s peace of mind, his words failed, for he also said that this place was shunned by the local folk. It was known by the name of ‘Severed Neck Woods’, Gwydion told him, and lay under the hereditary wardenship of the House of Sturme. From olden times, it had always been stalked by woses and wood ogres. Perhaps that was why Will was restless and still only half asleep when he saw figures moving among the trees.

At first he thought they were animals, deer probably. Then he thought they were men, then he knew they were neither. They came to him in a ghostly light, pale yet growing to a strange lambency like the shine cast by a slim crescent moon. They came like a tribe gathering from all directions, and he heard a sound on the edge of hearing, like the low hum that rises in a man’s head just before he faints. Will felt the back of his neck tingling. He had listened to Gwydion’s warnings of pursuit long enough to believe there was a danger shadowing them, and if Gwydion was afraid of it then it must be considerable. Then he remembered the woses and wood ogres and fear jolted him.

‘Gwydion!’ he hissed. He tried to shake the wizard awake, but he could not. Gwydion slept on, unmoving as a log. The mushrooms! he thought. He must have made a mistake and poisoned himself!

For a moment he sat there in the dark dern, frozen-hearted and alone, wondering what he should do. Panic began to envelop him, but then he took a deep breath and looked inside himself. To his surprise, he found a calm strength there that he little expected. ‘Whoever they are, they’ll not take us without a fight,’ he muttered, taking up his stout blackthorn stick.

If only Gwydion had not made an uncooked supper, he thought, but then he realized he was feeling well enough himself, and he had eaten far more pig’s ears than Gwydion.

The glowing figures swayed as they approached. He watched as the wraith-like gathering came towards him steadily. This was no wood ogre’s band. He did not feel threatened. Rather there was a sense that this was their place, and it was his fault for having walked into it uninvited. He heard the tread of their feet on the forest floor, the sound of branches moving aside as they came. He rose up and shook off his cloak and stood as a man stands to meet a stranger, half warily, yet half in greeting, and as the glowing ones came to him at last he began to see their true form.

Astonishingly, they looked like the creature he had pulled from the wheel at Grendon Mill. They had the same silvery pale skin, the same wispy hair and the same delicate faces. Some came mounted and some on foot, and those who rode sat upon the bare backs of unicorns. It seemed that a light came from within them, as if from their hearts. He dropped his stick, all thought of violence vanishing from his mind, and a feeling came over him that this was a moment more beautiful than any he had known.

No words were spoken. None were needed. The shining folk gathered around him, droning softly, and soon there appeared their king, for king he must be judging by his great size. Fearless now, Will was amazed to find that he recognized him – his likeness was painted on the board that hung above Baldgood’s alehouse! This was none other than the Green Man. His stout body was twined about with ivy leaves, fronds clothed his limbs, and a crown of holly sat upon his head. Briars issued from his nostrils and from the corners of his mouth, but they could not disguise his wild eyes, nor his smiling strength, nor hide the fulsome power of his nature.

As Will watched in delight and reverence, the Green Man came to him, clasped him hard about the body and squeezed him like a great bear so that the breath was forced from him. Green smells like the earth in spring filled Will’s nostrils and the humming drone rose louder in his ears as he felt his feet being uprooted from the ground in welcome. He did not struggle, only closed his eyes against the crushing grip, and when he opened them again he found that the Green Man had let him go.

Everyone had gone. All was now silent in the dern. He looked around, his heart beating fast, his mouth dry, but his thoughts were vivid and he was filled with an overpowering sense of oneness with all around him. There below was the dark form of Gwydion, slumbering still, but the Green Man and his shining host had departed. Will breathed deep, taking in the keen night odours and watching starlight rain silver through the branches of the wildwood. Then he lay down on the moss, pulled his cloak tighter about him and rolled back into slumber.

CHAPTER EIGHT CLARENDON

The next morning Will awoke covered in diamonds of dew. Silver mists lay over the land, until golden sunbeams put them to flight. He said nothing to Gwydion about what had happened during the night. He found it hard to believe it had not all been a dream, though his heart told him that the meeting had been real enough. But as he packed up and readied himself once more for the road, he noted the glint of bright metal that shone in the top of the bag.

He pulled out the battered horn he had taken from the dragon’s mound and stared at it in disbelief. It was now as perfect as the day it had been made, bound at rim and tip in finely-worked silver and inscribed with unknown words. As he polished it with his sleeve a shiver passed through him, and he knew he had been thanked and also, in some peculiar way, accepted.

Gwydion was already dancing out mysterious signs in the air, appearing to cast spells on the trees. When he had finished he collected leaves and threaded them into a wreath which he left by the roadside, then he said, ‘Did you sleep well? I hoped you would.’

As they moved off, an encouraging thought struck Will: although Gwydion had seemed to be speaking in riddles the day before, what he had said about walking up hill and down dale and supping with the king had, after a fashion, come to pass. Because the Green Man was surely the king of this place.

‘There is a saying that goes, “You cannot make a silken purse from a pig’s ear”,’ Gwydion told him, then added knowingly. ‘But sometimes you can.’

As they cleared the bounds of the Severed Neck Woods, Will became aware of larks singing above the cornfields. There were summer snowflakes on the road verge, downy woundwort and meadow cranesbill and the brilliant yellow of ragwort. There were so many pretty flowers growing that Gwydion whispered his regrets over them, pulled up a few and saved them in his pouch. He said out of the blue, ‘Something has put a spring in your step today. Have you been feeding ducks again?’

Will smiled. ‘No, Master Gwydion.’

‘I would say you look like someone who has lately passed an important test.’

Will looked askance. ‘Do you think so?’

‘I do indeed. Returning respect has settled upon you – I would say.’

Will shrugged. ‘Maybe I’ve been given the freedom of the wildwood.’

Gwydion nodded thoughtfully. ‘Maybe. It would be a great honour to be given that. What could you have done to deserve it, I wonder?’

Will felt proud and humble and a little uneasy all at the same time. ‘Don’t you know?’ he asked.

‘I know many things. Many more than most, but not quite everything.’

Will smiled again, pleased to find that one so powerful as Gwydion also had the capacity to laugh at himself. ‘In that case, I’ll tell you why I was given the freedom of the wildwood when I judge it right for you to know.’

Gwydion’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Are you mocking me, young man?’

‘Fair trade is no robbery, as we say in the Vale, Master Gwydion. And they say every man must have his secrets.’

The wizard suppressed a smile. ‘Spoken like a wizard, lad! Now let me see what it was that you took from the earth upon Dumhacan Nadir.’

Will reddened, then bent to undo the bag. ‘It was just an old horn, all battered and tarnished when I found it.’

Gwydion took the horn. ‘It does not look so battered and tarnished to me.’

Will passed it across. ‘Whoever visited us last night must have polished it while we slept.’

‘Great is the power of that embrace, for all the world is renewed by it each and every spring. Keep this horn with you always, for it is a rare gift. Now put it away from prying eyes, and be more careful with your secrets. Now that you have passed your test and been accepted I must inform you regarding important matters. How much do you know about your king and those who surround him?’

Will gave an empty shrug. ‘My king? Not a lot.’

‘Then hearken to me closely, for the time has come when you must know. The king sits on the throne which is in the palace of the White Hall. He does so with the approval of the Stone of Scions and without demur from either Magog or Gogmagog, who are, all three, the throne’s guardians. Now, if—’

‘Whoa, Master Gwydion!’Will’s eyes had begun to glaze at this sudden rush of strange names. They meant nothing to him.

‘Hmmm – well, do you know what a usurper is?’

Will brightened. ‘Is that not a lord who tries to take the crown away from a king?’

‘And then becomes king in his stead. Correct. Though you would not know it to look at him, your mild King Hal is the grandson of a most fierce usurper. He had a fearsome warrior father too – also in his time called King Hal – who won lands in conquest across the Narrow Seas from Burgund to Breize. That the fool died of the bloody flux before he had any chance to enjoy what he had won, or even to clap eyes upon the son he had fathered, is down to what his own father did.’

‘So Hal the Warrior’s father was Hal the Usurper?’ Will said, trying to keep up.

‘Correct. The first Hal seized the crown unlawfully, which was a very great crime. He starved the true king to death in a castle dungeon. No matter that the true king was arrogant and wilful and trustless. No matter either that the usurper was clever and able and acclaimed by all as the best leader of men. Still it was a crime, for the true king must be appointed by sovereignty, and must be approved by the Stone of Scions. He is only allowed to sit on the throne if there is no word of complaint from Magog and Gogmagog, which are the names of two beady-eyed statues that stand in niches behind the throne. Now do you see?’

‘Not really,’ Will said.

‘It is no matter. All you have to understand is that King Hal is a usurper’s grandson, and that he knows very well how the curse of his blighted ancestor has followed him.’

‘Is it a magical curse?’

‘Judge for yourself. There was once a common saying: “Woe betide the land that hath a child for a king”, and, though that saying may no longer be uttered upon pain of death, it nevertheless remains true. The crown came to King Hal in the first year of his life, and though he remains king in name, he has always been the pawn of powerful men. He was purposely grown into a weakling by contending barons. Their aim was always to keep him pliable to their will, and so he has proved, for he never grew much of a spine. If the curse that settled on King Hal’s father brought that king’s untimely death, then that which afflicts the present Hal is worse, for he lives on in helplessness and sees the Realm plunged ever deeper into the direst distress.’

‘That sounds like a curse indeed.’

‘The crown that was placed on the child-king’s brow thirty years ago was a disputed one. Nevertheless, in the minds of many lords so long an elapse of time has served to make Hal the legitimate king. He is, they argue, the third generation of his line to hear their oaths of fealty. They say that true majesty flows in his blood now. But equally, in the opinion of others Hal is – and always will be – no more than the grandson of a murdering usurper.’

Will could only just follow Gwydion’s explanation, but he was disturbed by it. He had never thought there could be so much to consider about kingship. Suddenly, his childhood notions of what it would be like to be the king seemed simple-minded. ‘But what about the true king?’ he asked suddenly. ‘The one that was usurped and starved. Didn’t he have any children?’

The wizard looked sideways at Will, as if he had chanced to raise an important point. ‘The dispossessed king left no child. But there remains a living blood line whose claim, according to the strict laws of kingship, is stronger than Hal’s – and that blood line has continued all the while and is presently into the fourth generation.’

‘Who is it? A great lord?’

‘A duke, no less. The royal blood flows now in the veins of Duke Richard of Ebor, he who was sent by the king’s council not long ago to rule over the Blessed Isle as Lord Lieutenant there – though what right he has to such a title as that may well be debated. Still, he is a man in all his power, and a most capable governor. In truth he is most like a king, and kingly in his thoughts. When last I spoke with him I saw that it was in his mind to return into the Realm and press his claim to rule.’

‘But I don’t understand. Surely everyone would be best served by the crowning of the rightful king according to the laws of kingship. And surely, if he’s the better leader of men into the bargain—’

‘Think again. What did I just say about Friend Hal?’

‘Oh, I see…’ Will nodded. ‘You mean there are many lords who prefer to keep King Hal because he’s easily handled. While the true king is shunned for he’d be strong with them.’

‘Now you see clear to the bottom of the pail. But that is a truth best not spoken aloud, for the man who does so puts his life in jeopardy.’

All that day they walked along through a mellow land that rolled gently across their southerly path. For a league or so it rose up to broad chalky tops, then fell away for the same distance into rolling clay vales. As they climbed higher there were stretches where dense clumps of spiky furze showed off their yellow flowers. Gwydion led Will on sheep tracks that ran among the bushes. For much of the way the sky was hazy and threaded with the warbling of larks, but as the sun declined across the south a chill wind blew in across the high plain.

Gwydion looked into the western sky to where clouds were boiling up. ‘Thousands of years ago there were great temples to the moon and sun over there. All are now in ruin and forgotten, and the moon and the sun are both the less for it. One day, if you would know the essential nature of magic, I will take you to the Great Henge. It was once called in the true tongue, Celuai na Sencassimnh, which is to say “the meadows of the storytellers”. It was built on a node in the earth where three great oaks once stood, and a tower was raised upon them. Later, when the woods around were cleared, a henge of wood was built, then two of stone, one within the other. Many of the tombs of the kings of the First Men are set about it.’

Will listened, hoping to hear more about the battlestones, but Gwydion called him onward, saying, ‘Look down there! What do you see?’

Will shaded his eyes and looked into the south. In the distance the land was all a-shimmer with light. ‘What is it?’ he asked, awed. It seemed like a vast plain, part land, part sky, yet brilliant as a bank of fog.

‘That, Willand, is called the sea.’

‘The sea…’ Will echoed, still staring at the ribbon of light. ‘I had no idea it would be like that.’

‘To the south of us lies the valley of the Bourne. Do you see that grey spire that sits on yonder skyline like a crack in the sky? That is a chapter house, a cloister of the Sightless Ones.’

Will stared at the sharp, soaring point. ‘Who are they? They come up every year to the bogs near Middle Norton to take the tithe. I know they come to impoverish honest folk, but it’s said their eyes have been plucked out. And do they really have hands that are red?’

‘As red as a rooster’s comb, some of them. And yellow fingernails like claws. Do you know the saying, “to be caught red-handed”?’

Horror thrilled down Will’s spine. He knew that to use the name ‘red hands’ in their hearing risked the cutting off of a man’s lips. ‘But are they truly blind?’

‘As blind as love and justice. Though they deal in neither of those fine goods. Nor do they believe that all things come full circle. They are mind-slaves, you see.’

Will shivered, and the wind that whipped among the furze bushes seemed suddenly cold. ‘Who are they?’

‘Clever blood-suckers who have found a way to interpose themselves between lord and churl and so grow fat at the expense of both.’

‘Why don’t the lords and the churlish folk fight back against them?’

‘The churls can do nothing because the work of the Fellowship is under the protection of lordly arms. And that is so because the Fellows relieve the lords of the trouble of collecting tithes and taxes. The chapter house which you see down there is one of many thousands that have been built across the Realm to store their ill-gotten booty in. That spire is second only in height to the great Black Spire of Trinovant, which place you will also see one day. In such places are kept all the tithes taken from the districts round about. Half they keep for themselves, and half they pass on to the lords who rule.’

‘What if a village can’t pay?’Will asked, thinking of some of the thin years they had had in the Vale. ‘What if there’s a poor crop or a failed harvest? Or damp rots the grain after threshing? Or pests come and spoil it? What do the Sightless Ones do then?’

‘In that case the Iron Rule is invoked.’ Gwydion looked out darkly from under his eyebrows. ‘When famine comes the only way the Sightless Ones can be appeased is by making an offering of youth to the Elders.’

‘Youth?’

‘Children. They call it having too many mouths to feed. Did I not tell you that the Fellowship is always on the lookout for new recruits?’

‘Are we going down there now?’ Will asked, putting a hand to his throat.

‘The grey spire yonder lies close by the city of Sarum. But we are going a little way beyond, to the royal lodge of Clarendon, and there, as I have already told you, our host is to be the king himself.’

They came off the high downs, passing on the way an ancient earth circle. Gwydion waved his hazel wand at it and said that these overgrown banks were all that remained of the once-great Figgesburgh Calendar. In times past it had held a huge mirror of polished bronze that had sent beams of sunlight down into the ancient palaces of Sarum on the most sacred of days. And on sacred nights the ancient astronomers had used their great mirror to interrogate the stars. Will delighted in the feel of the place and tried to imagine the observatory that Gwydion described, but so little of it remained now that even Gwydion’s words could not easily bring it back to life.

They descended by a wooded valley and reached the limits of Clarendon Forest just as the sun was setting, but tonight there was no beautiful display of pink and gold in the sky to bid the day farewell. Grey clouds that looked as heavy as anvils had gathered, and there was the sound of distant thunder as they entered the forest.

Will soon saw that this was no forgotten forest like Wychwoode. This was a much-visited royal park, and within it stood a magnificent hunting lodge that had become over the years a palace in its own right. Gwydion said that the king’s court came often to Clarendon to hunt, and that a hundred foresters kept his herds and managed his chases.

‘But the king never liked hunting. He is not a man of blood. It is his nobles who enjoy the killing, lesser men, cruel and brutish – and loud, as you will soon see.’

Will looked up at the leaves of the great oaks. They were in the dark green of late summer, but many had become covered in a white bloom they called in the Vale ‘oak mildew’, and he knew that meant the trees hereabouts were unhappy. The lodge itself could be seen at the end of a long processional avenue, a green maybe two thousand paces long by a hundred wide. Gwydion saw him looking at it and whispered, ‘It was made so to prevent an ambush of the royal party.’

‘But who would want to ambush the king?’ he asked, shocked.

‘Politicking is a deadly and self-serving game. The aim is for one lord to make himself richer than all the rest, and so more powerful. If he owns more land, then he can lord it over more men. If he is rich enough he will have the final say in all things, for he may keep the king himself in his purse.’

Will shrugged, thinking of Lord Strange. ‘But what use is all the gold in all the world if a man cannot sleep easy at night and be at peace with himself and his neighbours?’

‘Ah, lad! I would that your country wisdom was better understood among the company we are soon to meet. But it is not.’

Will recalled what Gwydion had said about the usurper’s curse that lay upon the king, and a pang of fear ran through him.

Gwydion shook his head, ‘Chivalry gutters low in these latter days. There is ever the stink of greed and ambition rising over the king’s court. Violence must soon follow, as night succeeds day.’

Now they were nearing the lodge, many people were to be seen. The poor and the sick, hearing of the king’s presence, had come – as was their right – to petition him, to receive his healing hand. But they had been allowed to approach the lodge only as far as a line of hurdles. Behind these stood a wall and a gate, and beside the gate-posts half a dozen soldiers lounged at their ease.

Gwydion moved unnoticed to the front of the crowd. He murmured and moved his arms, slowly, as if casting a stone towards the group of soldiers. Then, with Will following in his wake, he unhooked one of the hurdles and walked through the gap.

‘Hoy!’ one of the soldiers shouted. Three of them got up, pushed forward their iron hats and moved towards Gwydion. Their chief carried with him an axe with a long handle. He said, ‘And where do you think you’re going?’

‘To see the king, of course,’ Gwydion told him.

‘Get back there!’

Two of the three soldiers made to lay hands on what appeared to them to be an old man too bewildered to obey instructions. ‘Stay back behind the hur—’

Then their chief came forward. He pulled the others away and bowed an abject apology. ‘I’m sorry, your grace. They didn’t recognize you. Let Duke Edgar and his kin pass!’

‘Come along, Henry,’ Gwydion muttered.

‘Henry?’ Will repeated, looking around, but then he darted after the wizard as he went through the gates. ‘Who’s Henry?’

‘You are. How does it feel to be taken for the young Earl of Morteigne and Desart?’

Will looked at himself but could see no change. The soldiers looked at one another. One of them shook his head while the other tried to argue with his chief.

Will glanced round. There rose a hooting and jeering from the crowd of petitioners.

‘But that’s not his grace!’ the soldier insisted. ‘That’s a beggar!’

His chief turned away angrily, saying from the corner of his mouth, ‘Can’t you see, it’s meant to be a disguise…’

A second set of guards came into view by the inner doors, two mailed and helmeted men, wearing royal tabards of quartered red and blue and embroidered with golden lions and silver flowers. A third man was seated at a high desk. He wore black hose and jerkin and had sharp, watchful eyes and hair cut and shaped like a black mushroom. Will disliked him on sight.

Gwydion began to twist and turn along the passageway, like a man beginning a dance or preparing to throw a heavy weight ahead of him. Though nothing was thrown that Will could see, something appeared to hit the man square in the face, so that he almost fell off his stool, but then straightened.

‘Good evening, your grace,’ he said smoothly. ‘The gathering awaits.’

‘Thank you, chamberlain,’ Gwydion said, in a voice that was not his own. He whispered words to the guards and made signs above their foreheads so they swept their helmaxes aside and opened the doors for him. Will stumbled as he went past them, but they just looked straight through him. He snapped his fingers under the nose of one of them, but the man did not notice.

As Will entered, what he saw made him gasp: the hall was fifty paces long by at least half that in width, and lit by half a thousand blazing candles. It was the biggest room he had ever seen, and by far the brightest. The roof above was supported by ornate beams between which many flags hung, all in bright colours and all bearing lordly devices. The floor was made of squares of pure black and pure white stone and the painted walls had been plastered to a smooth flatness and pierced by tall, dark windows. Between the windows were arrays of trophies, mostly deer skulls, complete with antlers, or huge boars’ heads that made Will think of Lord Strange. But this hall outdid the tower of Wychwoode in every way. Two long, finely-wrought elmwood tables set with all manner of mouthwatering foods ran the length of it, each of them seating more than a hundred well-dressed folk, and capping those tables was a third high table, more ornate than the others and raised above them. The high table was set with eight seats, whose backs grew taller towards the middle, where Will supposed, the king and queen sat.

And there was a deal of noise too. Everyone was talking and a band of minstrels was playing music, while a man in sparkling robes of many colours juggled fire in his hands. Will watched him making great boasts and amazing the watchers with the shapes he made in the air.

‘Careful you do not catch fire, Jarred,’ Gwydion told him. ‘They say illusionists burn very well!’

The moment the juggler saw who had entered, he let out a yelp and his leaping flames all dropped to the ground in a smoky heap.

Then the music ceased.

Gwydion’s arrival hushed the echoing din, and when the guarded doors banged shut, a profound silence fell. Will felt his palms dampen, and everything that Gwydion had told him about self-serving lords came together.

All eyes were now on the wizard. On the top table a man sitting on one of the two tallest chairs, a big man in blue and white robes, got to his feet. ‘Who dares enter the royal presence uninvited?’ he demanded, angrily.

At first Will took the man for the king, but then he realized that he could not be, for here was a thick-set man with short, greying hair, a fighter’s neck and heavy, black eyebrows. He had limbs that a lifetime of sword practice and riding at the hunt had kept powerful. His hawk nose and hooded eyes gave him a cruel and self-possessed air that was at odds with all that Will had been told about the king. And this man was aged forty-and-some years, which was ten years older than King Hal should be, for the present year was the thirty-first of King Hal’s reign, and he had become king while still a babe in arms.

‘You know me well enough, Edgar de Bowforde,’ Gwydion cried, throwing up his arms, ‘though it is not my part to answer to you, nor any of your people. Even so, I will tell you, and all who dare to ask, that I am come here at your king’s command, for he did bid me appear before him whenever I deemed an appearance necessary.’

All the while as Gwydion’s fiery words rang in the rafters, Will’s gaze ran between Duke Edgar and the incredible woman who sat beside him in the other of the two tallest chairs. Will saw right away that she must be Queen Mag. She was slim and gowned in brilliant crimson, and her headdress was elaborate with what looked to Will like horns sweeping up from the sides of her head and overdraped with the finest of crimson veils. Her hands were ringed and covered in jewels, and her death-white face was set off by a pair of blood-red lips and eyes that were as black as night. If she was beautiful, then it was the kind of beauty that made women proud and caused men to obey. When she spoke her voice was honeyed with amusement. ‘Then come in if you please, Old Crow, and eat with us.’

Edgar gnashed his teeth at that, but then the queen picked up a chicken leg and tossed it down onto the floor.

‘No doubt, you’re here again to beg at my husband’s table.’

There was uproarious laughter all around, but it faded somewhat as Gwydion bent down to pick up the morsel. He called a greyhound out from under one of the tables, and began to feed it flakes of flesh while stroking its head. ‘Listen to me carefully, Mag, for I shall speak neither loud nor long to you. You should know that, whether you like it or not – whether you believe it or not – privilege always brings with it responsibility. We shall soon see what it has brought to you and your friends.’

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