The Giants’ Dance

He brushed back the two thick braids of hair that hung at his left cheek and stared into the depths of the bonfire. Slowly he let his thoughts drift away from Nether Norton and slip into the fire-pictures that the flames made for him. He opened his mind and a dozen memories rushed upon him, memories of great days, terrible days, and worse nights. But the most insistent image was still of the moment when the sorcerer, Maskull, had raised him up in a blaze of fire above the stone circle called the Giant’s Ring. That night he had seen Gwydion blasted by Maskull’s magic, and afterwards, as Gwydion had tried to drain the harm from a battlestone, the future of the Realm had balanced on the edge of a knife…

It had been more than four years ago, but the dread he had felt on that night and the redeeming day that had followed remained alive in him. It always would.

‘Will?’ Willow asked, searching his face. ‘What are you thinking?’

He broached a smile. ‘Maybe I’ve taken a little too much to drink,’ he said and touched his wife’s hair. It was gold in the firelight and about as long as his own. He looked at her, then down at the child whose small hand had first clasped his finger just over a year ago. How she had begun to look like her mother.

‘Ah, but she’s a beautiful child!’ said old Baldgood the Brewster, his red face glowing from the day’s sunshine. He had begun to clear up and was carrying one end of a table back into the parlour of the Green Man. The other end of the table was carried by Baldram, one of Baldgood’s grown sons.

‘Seems like Bethe was born only yesterday,’ Will told the older man.

‘She’ll be a year and a quarter old tomorrow, won’t you, my lovely?’ Willow said dreamily.

‘Aye, and she’ll be grown up before you can say “Jack o’ Lantern”. Look at this big lumpkin of mine! Get a move on, Baldram my son, or we’ll be out here all night!’

‘My, but he’s a bossy old dad, ain’t he?’ Baldram said, grinning.

Will smiled back at the alehouse-keeper’s son as they disappeared into the Green Man. It was hard to imagine Baldram as a babe-in-arms – nowadays he could carry a barrel of ale under each arm all the way down to Pannage and still not break into a sweat.

‘Hey-ho, Will,’ one of the lads from Overmast said as he went by.

‘Hathra. How goes it?’

‘Very well. The hay’s in from Suckener’s Field and all’s ready for the morrow. Did you settle with Gunwold for them weaners?’

‘He offered me a dozen chickens each, but I beat him down to ten in the end. Seemed fairer.’

Hathra laughed. ‘Quite right, too!’

‘Show us a magic trick, Willand!’ one of the youngsters cried. It was Leomar, Leoftan the Smith’s boy, with three of his friends. He had eyes of piercing blue like his father and just as direct a manner.

Will asked for the ring from Leomar’s finger, but when the boy looked for it, it was not there. Then Will took a plum from the pouch at his own belt and offered it.

‘Go on. Bite into it. But be careful of the stone.’

The boy did as he was told and found his ring tight around the plumstone. He gasped. His friends wrinkled their noses and then laughed uncertainly.

‘How’dya do that?’ they asked.

‘It’s magic.’

‘No t’aint. It’s just conjuring!’

‘Away with you, now, and enjoy the Blazing!’ he said, ruffling the lad’s hair. ‘And you’re right – that was only conjuring. Real magic is not to be trifled with!’

Two more passers-by nodded their heads at Will, and he nodded back. The Vale was a place where everybody knew everybody else, and all were glad of that. Nobody from the outside ever came in, and nobody from the inside ever went out. Months and years passed by without anything out of the ordinary happening, and that was how everybody liked it. Everybody except Will.

Though the Valesmen did not know it, it was Gwydion who had made their lives run so quietly. Long ago he had cast a spell of concealment so that those passing by the Vale could not find it – and those living inside would never want to leave. The wizard had made it so that any man who wandered the path down from Nether Norton towards Great Norton would only get as far as Middle Norton before he found himself walking back into Nether Norton again. Only Tilwin the Tinker, knife-grinder and seller of necessaries, had ever come into the Vale from outside, but now even his visits had stopped. Apart from Tilwin, only the Sightless Ones, the ‘red hands’, with their withered eyes and love of gold, had ever had the knack of seeing through the cloak. But the Fellows were only interested in payment, and so long as the tithe carts were sent down to Middle Norton for collection they had always let the Valesmen be. Four years ago, Will’s service to King Hal in ending the battle at Verlamion had won him a secret royal warrant that paid Nether Norton’s tithe out of the king’s own coffers, so now the Vale was truly cut off.

And I’m the reason Gwydion’s kept us all hidden, Will thought uncomfortably as he stared again into the depths of the fire. He must believe the danger’s not yet fully passed. But with Maskull sent into exile and the Doomstone broken, is there still a need to hide us away?

Maskull’s defeat had given Gwydion the upper hand, but he had shown scant joy at his victory. He and Maskull had once been part of the Ogdoad, the council of nine earth guardians whose job it had been to steer the fate of the world along the true path. But then Maskull had given himself over to selfishness, and though a great betrayal had been prophesied all along, that had not made it any easier for Gwydion to accept.

Will sighed, roused himself from his thoughts and looked around at the familiar surroundings. It was strange – in all his months of wandering he had thought there was nothing better than home. And now he had a family of his own there was even more reason to love the way life was in the Vale. And yet…when a man had extraordinary adventures they changed him…

It’s easy for a man to go to war, he thought. But having seen it, can he so easily settle down behind a plough once more?

It hardly seemed so. Occasionally, a yearning would steal over Will’s heart. At such times he would go alone into the woods and practise with his quarterstaff until his body shone with sweat and his muscles ached. There was wanderlust in him, and at the root of it was a mess of unanswered questions.

He stirred himself and kissed Willow on the cheek. ‘Happy Lammas,’ he said.

‘And a happy Lammas to you too,’ she said and kissed him back. ‘I guess we’re just about finished with the Blazing. Looks like everyone’s had a good time.’

‘As usual.’

‘What about you?’

‘Me?’ he asked, his eyebrows lifting. ‘I enjoyed it.’

‘It looks like you did,’ she said, a strange little half-smile on her lips.

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

She fingered the manly braid that hung beside his ear. ‘I saw you looking into the bonfire just then. What were you thinking?’

‘I was thinking that only a fool would want to be anywhere else today.’

She smiled. ‘Truly?’

‘Truly.’

It was good to see everyone so happy. They had watched the lads and lasses circling the fire. They had listened to the vows that had brought the night’s celebration to a fitting close. Some had plighted their troths, and others had made final handfasting vows. Now couples were slipping off into the shadows, heading for home.

There was no doubt about it, since the ending of the tithe the Vale had prospered as never before. They had put up three new cottages in the summer. They had filled the new granary too, and all this from the working of less land. Now the surpluses were not being taken away to make others rich, the plenty was such that Valesmen’s families had already forgotten what it was to feel the pinch of hunger.

‘About time this little one was abed,’ Willow said.

‘Yes, it’s been a long day.’

They walked up the dark path to their cottage, his arm about her in the warm, calm night. In the paddock, Avon, the white warhorse that Duke Richard of Ebor had given him, moved like a ghost in the darkness. Away from the fire the stars glittered brightly – Brigita’s star, sinking now in the west; Arondiel rising in the east; and to the south Iolirn Fireunha, the Golden Eagle.

An owl called. Will remembered the Lammastide he had spent six years ago sitting with a wizard atop Dumhacan Nadir, the Dragon’s Mound, close by the turf-cut figure of an ancient white horse. Together they had watched a thousand stars and a hundred bonfires dying red across the Plains of Barklea.

He sighed again.

‘What’s that for?’ Willow asked.

He scrubbed fingers through his hair. ‘Oh…I was just thinking. You know – about old times. About Gwydion.’

It seemed a long time since Will and the wizard had last set eyes on one another. How good it would be to wander the ways as they had once done. To walk abroad again among summer hedgerows, enjoying the sun and the rain, or feeling the bite of an icy wind on their cheeks.

‘I wonder what he’s doing right now?’ Will muttered.

‘Unless I miss my guess, he’ll be striding the green hills of the Blessed Isle,’ Willow said. ‘Or sitting in a high tower somewhere out in the wilds of Albanay.’

Will’s eyes wandered the dark gulfs between the stars. ‘Hmmm. Probably.’

‘Wilds?’ he could almost hear Gwydion chuckle. ‘It is not wild here. See! These trees in a line show where a hedge once grew. And what of those ancient furrow marks? The Realm has been loved and tended for a hundred generations of men. It is almost, you might say, a garden.’

While Willow went indoors to put Bethe into her cradle, Will lingered in the yard at the back of their cottage. He could smell the herbs, all the green leaf he had grown in the good soil – plants ripe and ready to offer the sweetness of the earth’s bounty. The scents of the orchard were keen on the still air. He heard Avon whinny again, and tried to recall when he had noticed the elusive feeling in his belly before, but when he looked inside himself he was shocked.

‘A premonition about a premonition,’ he told himself wryly. ‘Now that would be something…’

Willow came out and said, ‘I’m glad we chose to call her Bethe. There’s strong magic in naming, for I can’t think now what else we could have called her.’

‘Bethe is the birch tree,’ he said. ‘“Beth”, first letter of the druid’s alphabet, and Bethe our firstborn.’

‘I like that.’

‘You know, the birch was the first tree to clothe these isles when the ice drew back into the north. Her white bark remembers the White Lady, she who was wise and first taught about births and beginnings, the one who some call the Lady Cerridwen. Our May Pole is always a birch, and Bethe was born on May Day, which is my birthday too. In the old tongue of the west “bith” means “being”. And “beitharn” in the true tongue means “the world”. Maybe that’s the reason I suggested the name and why you agreed – because our daughter means the world to us.’

Willow squeezed him close and laid her head against his breast. ‘There’s such a power of learning in that book of yours.’

She meant the magic book that Gwydion had given him that sad day at Verlamion. He said, ‘There’s much to read and more to know. It’s said that a country swain comes of age at thirteen years, that the son of a fighting lord may carry arms in battle at fifteen, and that a king must reach eighteen years to rule by his word alone – but one who would learn magic may not be properly called wise until he has come to full manhood.’

Willow looked at him. ‘And how old’s that?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But as the saying has it: “The willow wand is slow to become an oaken staff.” And so it must be, for if I know anything at all it’s that there’s much more to be understood in the world than can ever be learned in one man’s lifetime.’

Now it was Willow’s turn to sigh. ‘Then tell me true: do you read that book every day in the hope that one day you’ll become a wizard too? Like Gwydion?’

He laughed. ‘No. That I can never be.’

‘Then why?’

‘Because Gwydion gave it to me and bade me read it. And I gave him my word that I would.’

She squeezed him again, but this time it was to stress her words. ‘Well, now, you’re going to promise me something, Willand Bookreader: that you won’t be burning any candle stubs over hard words tonight!’

He grinned. ‘Now that I’ll gladly promise!’

They held one another in the starlight for a moment. A shooting star flared brilliantly and briefly in the west, and then a coolness stirred among the leaves of the nearest apple trees. She looked up, and he felt her stiffen.

‘What is it?’

But there was no need for an answer, for there, high up over the Tops, an eerie purple glow had begun to bruise the sky.

‘Don’t look at it,’ she told him, turning away suddenly.

He felt his foreboding intensify. ‘It’s…it’s only the northern lights.’

‘I don’t care what it is…’ Her voice faded.

He stared at the flickering as it grew. ‘Gwydion once told me about the northern lights,’ he whispered, ‘but I’ve never seen them.’

As he looked into the darkness he felt the earth power crackling in his toes. The apple trees felt it too. His eyes narrowed as he realized that this flaring glow was not – could not be – the northern lights. This was brighter, more focused, and it spoke to him.

‘Will, come inside!’ she said, pulling at his arm.

‘I…’ The light pulsed irregularly like distant lightning, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was livid. It seemed to reach out from a source that was hidden by the dark hills surrounding the Vale. When he recalled what he knew of sky lore, his unease grew, for this was no natural light.

His thoughts went immediately to the lorc, that web of lines in the earth that fed the battlestones. They had glowed with an eerie light. At certain phases of the moon they had stood out in the darkness, clothed with a pale and otherworldly sheen.

‘Look!’ he said, pointing. ‘That halo. It seems to be coming from near the Giant’s Ring.’

The ancient stone circle could not be seen from the Vale. It was in Gwydion’s words Bethen feilli Imbliungh, the Navel of the World, a place of tremendous influence, and the fount through which earth power erupted into the lorc. That, Will had always supposed, was the reason the fae had set up one of their terrible battlestones there, the one that had fought Gwydion’s magic and won.

‘It can’t be the battlestone, can it?’ Willow asked as she peered into the inconstant light. ‘You said Gwydion had drawn all the harm out of it.’

‘So he did. But tonight is Lammas when the power of the earth waxes highest.’

‘We didn’t see lights there last year. Nor any year before.’

Willow’s words ceased as a low rumbling passed through the ground. It was so low that it could not be heard, only felt in the bones. Will heard Avon whinny, then came the sound of ripe apples dropping in the orchard. The ground itself was trembling. As he stared into the night he was aware of Willow’s frightened eyes upon him. Then two flower pots fell from the window ledge at the back of the cottage. He heard them crack one after the other on the stone kerb below. Willow jumped.

‘What’s happening?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m going to see if Bethe’s all right.’ She vanished into the cottage.

Will let her go, listening only to the night as the rumble passed away beneath his feet and stillness returned to the Vale. Gwydion had once spoken of mountains of fire that rose up in remote parts of the world, mountains that spewed forth flames and hot cinders. But there were none of those in the Realm. He had spoken too of tremblings that shook the land from time to time. They came sometimes as workings that had been delved deep under the earth long ago shifted or fell in on themselves.

Could that have caused the rumblings?

And if so, what about the light?

There was something about that light that caused a shiver to run up Will’s spine. This rippling, eye-deceiving glow was the same colour as the flames that had once trapped and burned him within the compass of the Giant’s Ring. It was purple fire that had lifted him up high over the stones and had begun to consume his flesh. Purple fire that would have killed him in dreadful agony had not Gwydion’s magic saved him. And such a flame as that came only from Maskull’s hands.

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

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

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

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

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

‘To call on an old friend.’

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

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

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

‘Ane radhas a’leguim oicheamna;

ainsagimn deo teuiccimn.’

And then he voiced the spell again in plain speech.

‘Speak these words to read the secrets within;

learn and so come to a true understanding.’

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

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

find the page where flies the swiftest bird. Call

it by name and that will be enough.’

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

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

‘Fannala!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Master Gwydion…’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will’s heart sank. ‘What is it?’

‘Something I have feared daily these four years.’

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

‘To the Giant’s Ring, of course!’

‘Alone?’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Up onto the Tops.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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