The Giants' Dance by Robert Carter Read Free Book Online Page B

gnawed at his spirit. After a while, he shivered and got up. A cool westerly breeze had sprung up and he felt an ache in his bones that he thought must be coming from the dampness of the grass. The power flowing from the Giant’s Ring was subsiding as the sun rose higher, but still he could feel the echoes coursing in darkness beneath his bare feet. He looked inside himself for an answer, then went to talk withGwydion about the power that moved in the earth.
    â€˜Can’t you find a way to stop the empowering of the lorc?’ he asked. ‘Why not halt the flow right here at its source? That way the battlestones would never awaken.’
    Gwydion shook his head. ‘What you suggest is impossible.’
    â€˜But why? You said the Giant’s Ring controls the earth flow like a sluice controls a millstream. I can feel the influence surging under here. It’s huge.’
    â€˜So it is, but I could not control it any more than I could dam a raging river torrent with my bare hands. And in any case, it would do no good. Any attempt to block the flow would wreak havoc – blocking the millrace would surely stop the mill-wheel turning, but it would also raise the millpond to overflowing and eventually it would burst the dam. To interfere with the lorc directly would risk disrupting all the earth flows that sustain us. In the end it would turn the Realm into a wasteland.’
    â€˜If the power of this lign is anything to go by, I’d say the lorc is about to do that anyway. It’s definitely waking up. Can’t you feel it, Gwydion? Have your powers declined that much?’
    The wizard’s glance was sharp. ‘Declined? You know very well that I could never feel the lorc directly. In that respect, your abilities are unmatched.’
    Will’s mind tuned to a sound high in the air. The untiring warbling of the skylark. Could they hear that song in the Vale too? Could Willow hear it? He stopped and turned.
    â€˜What’s the favour you wanted to ask me?’
    Gwydion leaned on his staff. ‘I now know what must be done. No matter what the dangers, I must find the battlestones one at a time. I must either drain them or bind them, for I dare not confront them as you did the Doomstone.’
    â€˜How many more have you found?’
    â€˜In the past four years? None.’
    â€˜None?’ The news was shocking.
    â€˜Without your talent to guide me I have been blind.’ Gwydion opened his hands in a gesture that showed there was no other answer to the problem.
    â€˜You should have called on me,’ Will told him. Then he saw the trap the wizard had set for him, and added, ‘Before Bethe was born I would gladly have come with you.’
    Gwydion met his gaze knowingly. ‘Would you?’
    He stared sullenly into the western haze, noting the starlings and how they flew. Their movements said there was something wrong with the air, something nasty blowing in from the Wolds.
    â€˜You know I would have done anything to help you, Gwydion.’
    â€˜But would you have wanted to?’ The wizard pulled up his staff and gestured westward. ‘I see you can taste the bitterness that lies upon the west wind. Do you smell that ghastly taint of burning? It is human flesh. We must go now. Straight away. To the hamlet of Little Slaughter to see what a fatal weakness in the spirit of a powerful man has done.’
    Will’s heart sickened to hear the words that he had known were coming since before sunrise. ‘I’m a husband and a father now. I can’t just leave without a word. It’s harvest time, Gwydion, and I promised Willow I wouldn’t be long.’
    His words were reasonable, sane by any standard. But they already sounded hollow in his ears.
    As the morning wore on, the August sun rose hot on their backs. Will saw its golden beams glittering on the headwaters of the Evenlode stream, and by midday they were across it and turning south, so that the