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‘You may expect us, Dimmet, when next you see us.’
‘Right you are,’ Dimmet said affably. ‘I’ll take that to mean I should mind my own business.’
He went off to take delivery of the milk jugs, but soon Duffred had hitched Bessie, the bay cob, to the tithe wagon. Will got up onto the cart to sit alongside Morann and Gwydion, and then they were off, heading east along a road that Will had travelled before.
A rolling land of good, brown clay met them as they drove steadily onward. The going was easy past Hemmel and Hencoop. The wagon ruts that had been made in the road during a wet spring had been baked into hard ridges by the summer sun and worn to dust. Hills to their left threw out low green rises that sloped across their path, and the sun shone on the part-harvested wheatfields to their right. But soon, tended fields gave way to wilder country.
Gwydion told of the times he had visited Caer Lugdunum, an ancient fortress that had once stood on a hill a little way to the north, and how graciously he had been received in poem and song by the druida who had lived there. Then Morann sang ‘The Lay of the Lady’ in a rich, clear voice that knew the true tongue well. His song was about the brave Queen of the East and the stand she had made long ago against the armies of the Slaver empire. It was so sad a song that Will felt shivers pass through him, and it was a long while before he returned to himself and felt the hot sun on his face again. When he did, he found that Bessie had already covered half the road to Nadderstone.
Hereabouts the land was scrubby and unkempt, and Will looked to a cluster of bushes on his left that he knew hid a pond. Gwydion had once said there was probably star-iron in the bottom of it, and now Will realized how the pond had been made, by a shooting star landing hard on the earth, though one much smaller than the one that had smashed Little Slaughter. The thought made him shiver.
‘There’s power flowing here,’ Morann said, his blue eyes on the far horizon. ‘We may expect miracles, or worse, I’m thinking, before the day is done.’
‘Remember, the road follows the path of a lign,’ Gwydion said, ‘whether we can see it or not. Willand, do you feel anything yet?’
‘Not yet, Master Gwydion. You can be sure I’ll speak up soon enough when I do.’
A short shower of rain came to refresh the land and went away again as soon as it had come. They continued across the valley and soon Will noticed a tall tower of mottled brown stone. It was the same one he had seen before, standing sentinel on a ridge, above lands that had once been tilled by the Sightless Ones, or those who laboured for them. But those fields were now neglected and overgrown, and that caused Will to wonder, for the Fellowship was notorious for never allowing its lands to lie fallow if gold could be mined in them.
As they drew near Will was shocked to realize that the tower was now in ruins, as was the cloister and chapter house it had served.
‘What happened to the Fellows?’ he asked in amazement.
‘Gone,’ Gwydion said.
They passed by two large fishponds. Once this place had made Will feel very uneasy. And now, as their road climbed up past the tall, iron-brown walls and vacant windows of the chapter house, Will suppressed a shudder. He turned to Gwydion and saw the wizard’s keen, grey eyes examining the battlements. The wizard called Bessie to a halt.
‘What are we stopping for?’ Will asked.
Gwydion handed him the reins. ‘We must look into what has happened.’
Will shielded his eyes against the sun and studied the tower, but he saw nothing more noteworthy than a lone gargoyle that stuck out from the corner of the parapet high above them. Morann jumped down from the cart and they both followed Gwydion through a yard of tumbled graves beside the chapter house.
The garden that had once held neat rows of green plants was now overgrown and its bee skeps smashed. The iron weather vane that had once shown the sign of a white heart and had stretched its four arms out above the roofs, had been cast into a corner of the yard. The roofs themselves were broken and pulled down too. Ahead the great gates were unhinged, and where, to Will’s recollection, the arch of the doorway had been incised with the curious motto:
Now the stonework was defaced so that only the letters R, A, N, S and I remained. Gwydion stood before the doors, deep in thought.
‘Strange,’ Will said, looking at the damage. ‘Do you think it means something?’
‘Everything means something.’ Gwydion made no further answer but continued to stare at the arch and then to run his fingers over the letters.
Morann spoke in a low voice. ‘Isnar is the name of the late Grand High Warden of the Sightless Ones. It seems the letters of his name were spared from the Fellowship’s motto when the rest were stricken out.’
Gwydion stirred. ‘This has meaning, for it surely was Isnar who ordered the roof of this chapter house to be broken in.’
‘How do you know that?’ Will asked.
‘Because no one else has the power to order it.’
Will heard the scurry and squeak of rats as they moved inside. Black glass had been shattered from windows. It crunched underfoot in the dampness. Two or three winters had ruined the fabric of the building, yet a greasy odour still clung to the place. They came back out into the open, entered the walled tithe yards and saw hurdles of woven willow sticks scattered about the cobbles. They were all that remained of stock pens and stalls. There was rotting gear here, tools for hauling animal carcasses: blocks, hooks, red rusted chains…
Will picked his way through the ghastly ruins and saw the slaughter sheds and the stone basins that had once caught the hot blood of terrified animals. The slaughter knives and poleaxes were all gone from their racks, but the grim channels and lead pipes put down to feed a line of barrels were still there. In the next shed was what remained of the fat-rendering cauldrons – the vats and moulds where the Sightless Ones had once mixed up wood-ash and fat to make their ritual washing blocks. The stone floor was still waxy from old spills, and slippery.
Will’s skin tingled as he looked around, but he could not be sure if it was the lign that was causing it. The pillars of the cloister stood like broken teeth now and the space of the great hall was open to the sky, though half of the roof beams remained overhead like the ribs of a great whale. Will saw ear-like growths on the timbers, and many of them were nibbled, as if by rats, though how rats had got up so high he could not imagine. Fragments of gilding and painting remained on the walls. Everything was defaced, rain-washed and sun-faded, and the gravestone floor was scattered with thousands of broken candles and spoiled washing blocks. The place seemed to have been ransacked and then abandoned quite suddenly many months ago. There had been much violence done here.
‘Now you see the horrible truth about what happens when the Sightless Ones gather the tithe,’ Morann said. ‘It’s not just carts full of grain they take to hoard and sell. Horses, cattle, sheep, fowl – all go into their slaughterhouses.’
Will saw the place where sheep and calves had been strung up to have their throats cut. Anything that walked on two legs or four was bled into ritual jars, then soap and wax made from their fat.
‘A sickly smoke always hangs over the houses of the Fellowship at tithing time,’ Gwydion said. ‘Many trees are hewn and much wood burned for ash to make soap. Flesh is boiled up and rendered of its fat, and the meat buried or left to rot, for the Fellows partake only of the blood.’
Will knew that the soap was used in ritual washing, which was why townspeople nicknamed the Fellows ‘red hands’, though never in public for that was punishable and could end in a person’s lips being cut off.
‘And why do they make so many candles?’ Gwydion asked, and when Will made no answer he added, ‘The Fellowship make candles to light their sacred pictures.’
Will looked to the wizard and then up at the faded remnants of paint and gold leaf. ‘But…why? When the Fellows have no eyes to see them? And why would a Grand High Warden want to visit destruction upon one of his own chapter houses?’
‘The Fellows call such a thing a “Decree of the Night Fogs”,’ Gwydion told him distantly. ‘It is ordered only rarely. It is their punishment for deviation.’
‘Deviation?’
‘That is, if a house strays from their creed so far that they cannot whip it back into line. Then they cut it off and trample it into dust. This is done partly lest the disease spreads to other chapter houses, and partly by way of example. They erase all reference to the broken house from their records. They destroy its chronicle, take away its adherents. Such a house becomes to them a house that has never stood, and the Fellows who failed become men who have never lived.’
‘Is that what happened here?’ Will said, looking around. He could feel the prickling in his skin growing stronger and wanted now only to get away from the place.
‘I do not know what happened here, for the doings of the Fellowship are kept a tightly bound secret. But did I not tell you how the houses of the Sightless Ones are most often built upon ligns and other streams of earth power?’
‘How could this house have failed?’ Will asked, stepping over piles of broken wood and fallen slates.
‘This may be the explanation,’ Gwydion said. ‘You know that the Doomstone was the slab that capped the tomb of their Founder. When it was broken that source of power which is habitually tapped and abused by the Sightless Ones must have shifted. Did you not tell me of the madness that beat through the chapter house of Verlamion when the lorc came alive?’
Will remembered. ‘It was hardly to be imagined. As if the one idea filling all their heads had suddenly gone out like a candle and left a darkness which they could not bear.’
Gwydion turned to him. ‘In like wise, Willand, the troubles of this house may have started as soon as we plucked up the Dragon Stone. For the power of the lorc certainly shifts when a battlestone is taken from the earth, and this house also stands upon the lign of the ash.’
Will looked around the stone-cold walls, aware of the perpetual shadows that lurked in the corners.
‘You must beware the Sightless Ones,’ Gwydion told him earnestly, ‘for they do not love you. They will not easily forgive the intruder who defiled their most revered shrine.’
Will felt the walls close in around him. ‘I’ve wondered more than once why the Fellowship has not come into the Vale to get me. They were the only ones, apart from yourself and Morann, who ever came near.’
Morann shook his head. ‘They cannot find the Vale. They’ve never come into it, nor will they ever. I was always at Nether Norton when the tithe fell due. It was I who took the carts through the quag and down to Middle Norton. The red hands from Great Norton never approached further than that. They don’t know of the Vale’s cloaking. They’re interested only in amassing wealth. It’s gold that gives them influence.’
Gwydion said, ‘The Fellowship does not connect the Vale and what they call the pollution of their chapter house at Verlamion. Still, at their annual public self-mutilations in Trinovant Isnar has sworn to destroy the one who broke the Doomstone. You must not underestimate him, for he never underestimates his enemies. And the threat you pose them is very great.’
‘With all their wealth and power?’ Will said, looking about. ‘What threat could I be to them?’
‘That is easy to answer. I have already said that you are the Child of Destiny, third incarnation of Great Arthur of old. What you will do if the prophecies of the Black Book are brought to full fruit, will cause their spires to topple. And not before time!’
‘But I don’t see how—’
Morann made an open-handed gesture at what lay around them. ‘It’s been their habit for at least a thousand years to build where the men of olden times set up cairns and groves, and so supplant the Old Ways.’
Gwydion grasped his staff tighter. ‘Many of their chapter houses must be built upon ligns. They do not know it, but they feed on the power of the lorc as greenfly feed upon sap that rises in a flower stem. With every battlestone we discover and root out, Willand, another of their houses will fall as this one has.’
Will folded his arms. ‘Then let us hope we find all the battlestones. Whatever it was that made the Sightless Ones leave here, I’m glad.’
‘Bravely said.’ Morann clapped him on the back. ‘The red hands tell all who will listen that they bring freedom, life and peace, but they trade in slavery, death and war.’
Now Gwydion hastened forward like one who has suddenly found what he was looking for: a steep stone stair that led down into the cellars. They followed him into the stinking darkness, until he struck up a pale blue light for them to see by. The place was vacant now, the treasury emptied of its gold and all the strongroom doors thrown open. The blue glow that lit the palm of the wizard’s hand seemed reluctant to penetrate the gloom. He walked alone in the magelight shadows, and unguessable thoughts troubled him. ‘Behold!’ he said, raising his staff. ‘It is as I suspected. This is more than a thieves’ hoard-room.’
As Will’s eyes adjusted there appeared in the cellar wall a low gate of iron bars. It was meant to stop off the way, but it was wrecked. A hole had been rent in it as if by some powerful beast.
‘What is it?’ Will asked. The magelight did not penetrate far beyond the bars.
Morann clasped his arm tightly, hushing him. Gwydion’s voice was rising: ‘I can smell it! Truly these are dungeons of despair!’
‘What could have done this to iron bars?’ Will asked, looking to Morann and putting his finger on the place where brute strength had torn the barrier.
Morann whispered, ‘Do you know what this is? It’s a passageway into the Realm Below. Can you feel the air moving up, and with it the salt of the Desolate Sea?’
And Will could feel it. On his face, a dank draught that issued up from a hidden place below the earth. Air that bespoke tremendous depths, great caverns, ceaseless tunnels, dark rivers that had never seen the light of the sun. This was truly the air of another world.
And something in Will wanted to go beyond the bars and venture into that darkness. He wanted to see for himself what lay below, but Morann drew his knife and said he thought the cellar unwholesome and that the fissure had the whiff of sorcery about it and needed to be blocked up. He wanted to leave the vile place for the sake of his lungs.
Will, and then Gwydion, followed him up the stone stair and out into the light. They stepped back across the rubblestrewn yard, and Will blew out a great breath. ‘Let’s go. Just being here makes my flesh crawl.’
Gwydion set a bleak eye on him. ‘The Sightless Ones are involved in a bigger way than I thought.’
The wizard quickly turned away and Will said, ‘So big that you daren’t speak of it?’
He was not sure Gwydion had heard, and the wizard offered no reply, saying only, ‘Have you forgotten why we set out?’
‘What’s bothering him?’ Will whispered to Morann as they followed on.
‘I think he’s found what he came here for. And whatever it is, he doesn’t like it.’
Out in the open again the wizard climbed quickly aboard the cart and clicked his tongue at the horse. Will looked up at the dismal tower and his eyes sought the lone gargoyle that he had seen on his arrival, but it was nowhere to be seen.
They rode on in silence, their spirits overcome by the stagnant earth streams that ran sluggishly now under the cloister. But Will’s low mood stemmed more from the gloom that Gwydion showed. Their walk in the ruins had put the wizard in a mighty sulk.
When the road rose and Bessie laboured in her pulling, Morann and Will jumped down and walked the meadows for a while. Morann renewed the flowers in his hat with bright yellow dandelions and purple knapweed. Will cooled his toes in the lush grass. He said, ‘What are the Sightless Ones involved in? Finding the stones? Did Gwydion mean that?’
Morann looked back towards the cart. ‘You must ask him that yourself, but if I had to hazard a guess I’d say he’s most worried about those broken bars and what must have come through them.’
‘I can feel the lign right here,’ Will said. He stopped suddenly.
Morann took his hazel wand and began to scry, but unsuccessfully. ‘I feel nothing unusual.’
‘It’s dispelled the bad taste left by the ruins. It’s running strongly under my heels.’
‘Where?’
Will ignored the question. ‘Oh, how can I explain it? It’s like a fiddle string, and once the chapter house was a finger pressing down on it in the wrong place, making a discordant note. And now the string is open the note is more pure again.’
‘We’ll tell Master Gwydion that. Maybe it’ll cheer him up.’
It was not long before they arrived in Nadderstone. Will hardly recognized the place. Flow along the lign was swift and joyous, like water in a new-dredged channel. Where once there had been abandoned buildings now there were new, white cottages. Lime-washed walls were bright in the noonday sun and new thatch shone neat and golden. Much of the land round about was under cultivation or had been fenced to keep cattle in. Men, women and children were busy in a barn threshing grain with flails. When they saw the cart approaching they came out. The place was clean and prosperous and the four or five young families who lived here now were courteous and welcoming.
Gwydion approached the foremost. ‘Where have you come from?’ he asked. ‘And who is your lord?’
For a moment it was as if a shadow had passed over them. The man fell under the spell of Gwydion’s voice. He shifted his feet and said, ‘We are poor, landless folk. We came here from a faraway place on the strength of a rumour that there was good land here that might be had.’
Gwydion smiled. ‘Have no fear – that rumour was mine. Enjoy Nadderstone and make it your own, for your hard work and care have already won me as your protector. I offer you a blessing of words upon your new homes, so that all will be well and when the time comes your sons and daughters will find good husbands and wives in the villages round about.’
While the wizard talked, Will and Morann went up into the meadows north of the hamlet. As soon as Will began to feel the lign running strongly underfoot again he took back his hazel wand and began to pace out the limits of it, scrying just as Gwydion had first taught him in this very same place.
Either the flow had increased several fold since then, or his own talents had developed greatly. ‘All the pain’s been cleaned out,’ he said. ‘It’s the difference between dirty ditchwater and a mountain stream.’
They came to the spot where the Dragon Stone had once lain. Its hole was filled in and there was a bed of pretty yellow flowers growing there. ‘I’m sure the Dragon Stone hasn’t been returned to the place where we found it. Let’s go and tell Gwydion the good news.’
Morann laughed. ‘I think he already knows. It doesn’t take a talent such as yours to see that this place is flourishing as never before.’
Will scrubbed at his head. ‘You know what I think? I think Nadderstone’s now taking its fair share of earth power – flows that were for too long pent up by that chapter house.’
Morann looked eastward. ‘This is the lign of the ash, you say?’
‘Yes. Its taste is unmistakably Indonen.’ Will shaded his eyes and looked east also.
‘Taste?’ Morann said, turning to look back the way they had come. ‘That seems a curious way to speak of it. Did you not just tell me that the tower and chapter house were like the finger that stops a fiddle string?’
‘I could just as easily have said it’s like the grip that pinches off a vein in a man’s arm and so holds back the flow of blood to his hand, bringing numbness and robbing his grasp of strength. I said “tasted”, but it’s not really a flavour I’m talking about.’ He shrugged, finding his talent impossible to describe.
Morann let out a piercing whistle and beckoned to Gwydion. ‘Let me see now. There are supposed to be nine ligns that make up the lorc. The one that runs by the Giant’s Ring is “Eburos”, the lign of the yew. The battlestone that you say is planted at Aston Oddingley lies upon the lign of the rowan, and the true name of that lign is “Caorthan”. While this lign is “Indonen” of the ash. What of the others?’
‘I’ve felt other ligns sometimes as we crossed them. There’s the one named “Mulart” for the elder tree, and “Tanne” for the oak. The rest are named in honour of the hazel, the holly, the willow and the birch. I’ve not felt them at all, or if I have I can’t easily call to mind their particular qualities.’
The wizard came up to join them. He leaned on his staff, seeming troubled still.
‘A fair old morning’s work,’ Morann said.
Gwydion wiped his brow and resettled his hat. ‘But as is so often the case, work begets more work, for now I must go urgently to the place that I was called away from.’
‘Foderingham?’ Will said.
‘Plainly, the Dragon Stone is not here, so I must go there.’
‘Now?’
