Whitemantle (36 page)

A bell tolled dully in Will’s heart, for now he saw just how deeply the whisperings of the Sightless Ones had polluted Edward’s spirit. He was repeating the dangerous vision that was laid out in the Great Lie.

‘Dazzle mine eyes!’ Edward cried, looking now to the brilliant light. ‘Three suns in a clear-shining sky! Three suns that are to signify the three remaining sons of Ebor! See, my brothers! These that are yet boys – they are not afraid to die, for they see how the pearly sky brings forth for us our omen of victory!’

And now all who watched the three suns saw the flanking lights glow the brighter, then fade.

‘See how three suns become one again! We will not fail you, our father! We shall fight for you, and if we win yours shall be the glory! And if we die we shall live again alongside you in Heaven!’

And with those rapturous words, and many another, did Edward, Duke of Ebor, set the blaze then stoke up the roaring fire of his army. He exhorted the men of his battalions to pass southward down the Slaver road, to carry arms between the heights that in the time of the Brean kings had fortresses set upon their crests like crowns. Those hills frowned down
upon the narrow way through Yatton Mystery, and though not a man who travelled that old Slaver road knew if he would live to see the sun go down again, not a man cared.

With a heavy heart, Will watched the army march away, watched the last of them, set boiling by oratory, leave the muster field and head joyfully towards their fate, convinced by a mere refraction of the light.

Words, words, simple words. Was that all it took to turn the minds of men? Magic of a new sort that encouraged them to drop the most obvious of truths and set their hearts upon the most self-serving of notions? So it seemed to Will. Those words were far more than they seemed, and he knew it. They were like trigger spells, set to trip the catch of a furnace door that held back a flaming desire to
believe.

‘You all deserve to die!’ he shouted after them, shaking his fist. ‘Lambs! Calves! Has not one of you even half a mind to question? Must you believe in every sly and designing fancy that is fed to you? I hate your stupidity more than you will ever know, do you hear me?’

He began to climb down from his tree, still muttering and railing against the battlestone’s victory over the common herd. He shouted into the face of a woman who stared at him in surprise. ‘They do not care for hard truth, only soft lies that they think will help them better! But they are being led away from the true path and no mistake! What’s the matter with all of you? Have you no wills of your own?’

But the woman hurried off in alarm and no one else would listen to a lunatic. Will’s anger at the foolishness of others began to be tempered by an anger that was directed at himself. He had meant to warn Edward not to engage the enemy, but instead to let Gwydion broker a peace. He had meant to say that this enemy was in fact a reasonable man, Jasper of Pendrake, a man horrified by what had already happened, a man convinced that the war had gone on long enough. But in the event he had said nothing.

Will sat down in the trampled field and laughed in despair. He had meant to do so much, but in all things he had failed. There was no one to hear him now, save the old men, women and boys whose job it was to dismantle the camp and make ready the baggage train. If Will were to mount up on his palfrey now and ride as fast as the patient plodder would go, he could not possibly reach the stone until battle had been joined. The long way around these wooded hills allowed of no alternative. He would have to tag onto the tail of Edward’s host as it passed like sand through the waist of an hourglass. He would have to hope that time enough remained while the army took position to slip through to the iron tree.

There was magic, but no spell he knew would help – and there were drawbacks.

But why break his neck to reach the battlestone? To blunder into things again and probably get himself cut to pieces? Or worse, to mess up Gwydion’s complicated plan and get his wife killed? Half-man! the stone had taunted him. Half-man! Half-man indeed!

All desire drained from him. He looked up into the milky sky and felt the warmth of the sun playing upon his face. He closed his eyes. The tang of woodsmoke was on the air. He heard the reedy voices of children running about among the tents. And he knew that the stone had struck to the very marrow of his bones. All it takes to make a ship founder is for the steersman to take his hand off the tiller, he told himself. No matter how hard it seems, and how weary and hopeless I am,
I have to try one more time.

W
hen Will had calmed himself he went to an open space to draw power again from the earth. He knew he must replenish what he had wasted, but there was an uneasy reluctance in the ground. Maybe he was too close to the Heligan lign. Or more likely the fault was with him, for he had asked aid of the earth four times in as many days, and that was something he had never done before.

Where his feet sunk into the sodden turf the water welled warm. When he came to his senses, he knelt down to touch the muddy pools with his fingers. They steamed gently and confirmed what his toes had already told him – that a battle was almost upon them. And now, as he walked back towards the camp he felt a prickle of warning.

Hundreds of waggons were lined up – the Ebor baggage train, waiting to receive tentage. Win or lose today, Edward’s army would not rest here tonight.

As he came by the tail of a waggon drawn up where his horse had been tethered he heard laughter. It was not unlike his own laugh, but mocking. And when he turned, he saw himself looking back.

‘Step closer to the mirror, little brother.’

Fear gripped him and suddenly everything fell into place. ‘It had to be you.’

‘Or…’ again that cruel grin and a pointing finger,’…you.’

The sulphur sourness of misspent magic flared in Will’s mouth and nose. Then, with a twist and a flourish of mouse-brown, the cloak and the fair braided hair were gone. A black-clad figure was eyeing him instead, and in its hand was a small bird-hunter’s crossbow.

Will stared at his twin. ‘You spoke with Edward. He thought you were me.’

‘It was not a difficult disguise to put on.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Can’t you guess? To beware the one who would come to him moments before the fight. “He will be dressed in my flesh,” said I. “A demon messenger sent by the sorcerer, Maskull. A copy of me, albeit a good one. But no more than smoke and mirrors. He will tell you lies, Friend Edward. Don’t listen to him.”’

‘But you told him all the lies already.’ Will’s blood boiled as he realized how he had been robbed of the chance to bring the terrible truth to Edward.

Chlu laughed. ‘Of course, I told him all about his father’s valiant fight, and how victory was snatched from him by the perfidy of his enemies. I explained how Duke Richard with his dying breath implored me to bring the news to his beloved son so that he might be avenged. “Do not rest, my son, until they are all dead. Every last one of them. Then I shall lie easy in my grave.” Oh, he’s ready for the fight now.’

‘You even gave him the sorcerer’s powder for his glove.’

‘To banish the demon. Did it sting your eyes?’ Chlu laughed, but then the laugh caught in his throat and he said, ‘But it’s really down to
me
to banish you, isn’t it?’

Chlu raised the crossbow, and in the same moment Will reached behind him and slid a tent pole out of the cart,
launching it across his shoulder like a spear in a single movement at Chlu’s head. It seemed that the pole made contact, for Chlu raised a hand to ward it off, but it was too late – the crossbow had already shot.

The bolt caught Will’s splayed left hand and nailed it momentarily to his chin. He pulled it away in horror, but as soon as he clasped the fingers of his right hand around the bolt head, he was hit by a stunning red beam. He heard himself howl. It felt as if he had been kicked in the jaw by a horse then thrown against a wall. He fought unconsciousness, knowing that if he gave in to it he was a dead man, but an indescribable feeling of dislocation overcame him, and he found himself sprawling upon grass, staring up at a sky that was suddenly all dense cloud and threatening rain.

What had happened? Panic fear drenched him. He suddenly thought that he had been carried somehow into that other world, the one that he feared. What if it was so?

But no, he had felt this strange sensation before.

When?

He jumped up, ready for the fight, heart pounding, muscles tensed, then he stumbled to his knees again. Chlu was gone. The entire camp was gone. Everything was
different.

His eyesight was swimming, so he shook his head to clear it. When he looked around he saw dry winter grasses shivering, rabbit droppings and sheep-cropped turf, bushes of wind-torn gorse – wherever this was it was high up. A mossy hillside, cold and windy, and an angry sky that was very different from the one he had left behind.

He’s vanished me, he thought. The beam – he’s landed a vanishing spell on me. But where’s it taken me to? And how?

Anger surged through him, prompted by his own weakness and the irony of having been caught by the very same trap that had been proposed for Maskull. I should have
been on guard against such an attack, he thought. But at least I’m not on the Baerberg…

He felt disconnected from the world, and when he looked down at his hands they struck him as strange. There was no pain in his wounded hand, and hardly any blood yet, just a ragged hole in the web of skin between finger and thumb. He touched his jawbone. Instead of a bloody hole there was a dimple that felt as if it had been closed up by heat. He had been lucky. But wait – he looked again at his outstretched hands. He had the strongest feeling that they were on his wrists the wrong way round. And what was worse, he could not remember if his thumbs should be on the inside or the out.

What’s happened? he thought, a grotesque fear surging up inside him. What’s he done to me?

But there was a more pressing matter. Cursing, he jammed the shaft of the bolt into a joint in the rock and, with a grimace, leaned on it. The shaft snapped, and he was able to pull it out through the wound.

‘By the moon and stars…’

The dart’s head was a chip of heavy, black stone. He looked at it, then at the dark ledges that protruded from the ground nearby. So that was it! There was no mystery about what had happened – this had been the trigger for the vanishing spell.

A new suspicion made him look to the south. It was hard to tell, but it seemed from the shafts of light that played over the patchwork of farms and woods that the sun was lower and further east than it had been moments ago.

‘Change place, change time,’ he reminded himself. ‘Gywdion said that time could go backwards, but can it do that after a vanishing spell? If it can, that gives me more time!’

He looked at his hands again, still unable to recall which way round they should be. He closed his eyes, but that only made it worse. It was maddening.

‘You’re just knocked a little silly,’ he told himself. ‘You’ll be alright in a moment or two.’

The ground was astonishing here, like a miniature forest. Gort would have delighted in it, for it was springy as a mattress, green with mosses and spotted with pale lichens. The sky was huge with a glory bursting through the clouds, sending beams of sunlight down over the earth.

As he scrambled over the summit he saw what looked like the skeleton of a building. It stood a little below on the shoulder of the hill. Beyond it, long views stretched east and south and west over what must have been three or four earldoms. The curious building was only a shell, but it was not a ruin: four sturdy posts supported a pitched roof of wooden shingles. It was not meant to be a barn because it was open on all four sides, and there was nothing stored inside except some sheaves of damp and rotting straw and a great lattice of timbers stacked higher than a man into which old tree branches and dried gorse bushes had been packed. When Will approached he saw that the ground was shadowed black like that around a charcoal burner’s mound.

Nearby, and unseen at first, was a stone-built hovel, no more than a windowless den set hard against the stone outcrop from which it seemed to have grown. Pale smoke trailed from a chimney, and when Will pushed open the door he found signs that the place had been recently occupied. No one was at home, but it was warm inside and untidy and it smelled unexpectedly of tar. In its way, the place was homely, a welcome relief from the bleakness outside. Wyrmstone glowed on the hearth, and lumps of it were stacked ready nearby. There were cooking pots and rude furniture pushed against the walls – a table and benches where two or three men might sit down together. There was even a sleeping place covered with sheepskins. In the opposite corner was the bucket that accounted for the tarry smell. A wooden handle was sticking out of it.

Blood dripped from Will’s hand. He fumbled in his pouch and found the tiny shard of stone, scraped the last of it away with his knife and sprinkled the grit into both sides of the wound. Then he found a dirty rag and began to bind up the crook of his thumb. As he did so, the realization of where he had come to struck him like a hammer blow.

‘Of course…’

He went outside again. That roof was what had thrown him. The whole structure had been designed to burn. It had to be ready to fire at any time, and how else could the weather be kept off the kindling but by a roof? As for the bales, the light of a fire would be visible by night, but by day a beacon would need to throw up quantities of thick smoke…

This must be Cullee Hill, he thought. And the watchers – wherever they are – must be Edward’s men!

He turned into the teeth of the wind and went to overlook the western prospect. But he was puzzled to find there was no Ludford down on the plain to confirm his guess, no Cambray mountains beyond.

The watchers must have a look-out, he decided, probably a hut on the eastern side and a little down from the summit where there would be shelter from rain and the prevailing wind. They would want to look towards Trinovant and to the chain of beacons that relayed by prior arrangement great decisions made at the White Hall.

He drew his cloak tighter about him. Prevailing wind? That should be a westerly. But surely this wind was coming out of the east…

He shook his head again, trying once more to shake off the oddness of his thoughts. Blood had soaked the rag wrapping his right hand and pain had begun to throb there. His jaw was burning too, but the discomfort was muted and he could feel the magic of Gort’s grit already beginning to work in all his flesh.

When he rounded the ridge he saw distant mountains rising in limitless shades of blue, and down on the colourless winter plain below, a castle and a town…

‘That can’t be!’ he cried, staring, looking back over his shoulder and staring again. ‘Ludford?’

But Ludford was to the west of Cullee Hill, not east of it. Even so, there could be no doubting what lay below. He could make out the distinctive roofs of the castle and the square mass of the keep. He looked at his hands again, and slowly it began to dawn on him why his mind was so befuddled.

East was west, and west was east, reversed like the letters he had once read in a lady’s looking-glass.

But how could that be? And where had he come to?

‘Bad magic!’ he cried. ‘Rough and badly wrought! By all that’s best and beautiful, what is this place?’

As he scrambled back across the ridge he realized he was not alone. He caught a flash of crimson light above him, then he sensed movement on the crest. When he stepped back, he saw his twin appear out of thin air.

Chlu was facing in the other direction, but Will could see that his hand was bound up where the metal spur of the tent pole had speared him. And when Chlu turned to look about himself, Will saw that there was blood on his chin. Chlu cast something aside, and Will knew it was another piece of blackstone from the summit, the trigger he had used for the vanishing spell he had laid on himself.

Will dived down like a hunted animal, wondering what else of the destructive arts Maskull had taught to this most superficial of scholars. He brought himself up sharp. Whatever else was true, the rules had changed now, it seemed. Chlu’s previous attacks had been furious, but they had not been magical. Something – fear perhaps – had prevented him from using magic against his twin. It was almost as though Maskull had issued a warning against it. But if he had, why?

Will clung to the turf, dug his fingers into the stony soil, his mind still in shock and rushing over the possibilities.

And why has he brought me here? he thought. If he was going to ambush me with a vanishing spell, why not tip the bolt with the claw of a wyrm from far Xanadu? Or better still a sea shell? Why not send me to the bottom of the Western Deeps?

His eyes locked on the black form. Chlu came to a halt and threw back his head. He was still some paces from the beacon, but the flames that came screaming from his hands lit the structure and consumed it with fire. Chlu delighted like a mad ogre, blasting the waiting timbers with brilliant orange, releasing flames in which demonic shapes twisted and tumbled before expiring in black billows.

Chlu staggered back. So great was the pressure of the fire streams that he ejected, he had to brace his feet against the force. So intense was the heat, that he was soon forced to break off, shielding his face as he retreated.

The beacon blazed up strongly, as if the fire had been set in a hearth and blown bright by a blacksmith’s bellows. As Will watched, two of the roof posts charred through and the roof collapsed, sending a great column of smoke and sparks skyward. Flames leapt five or six times the height of a man into the air. Then, his task done, Chlu turned and began to walk straight towards his twin.

The sheep that had been patiently munching the miserly hill pasture startled and scattered. Will managed to scramble down the bank. The slope ended abruptly below him where the rocky outcrop dropped onto a flat ledge. The fall was no more than the height of a man, down onto a track. Beyond that the hillside rolled gently away again. He took one last look back, then jumped.

The fire’s meant for Edward, he thought. A signal to start the battle. And now Chlu’s work is done, he’s coming for me.

Once under the overhanging wall Will pressed himself hard against the rock. He opened his mind and tried to maintain the icy concentration needed to draw strength from the mountain. Here the power was fresh as an upland stream, cool and nourishing to his spirit in that it was unsullied by the crisscrossing ligns that passed on the plain below, but it was also thin and threadbare, a meal of light and air. Even so, he drank, grateful for even a short measure of bliss and the encouragement that came with it.