The Language of Stones

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.