The Giants' Dance Read Online Free PDF Page B

through the layers, its top blown sideways by high winds, its underside lit amethyst and white.
    â€˜Look,’ Will cried. ‘It’s a lightning storm on the Wolds!’
    â€˜Did you ever see such lightning as that?’ When Gwydion turned a silent play of light smote the distant Wolds, making crags of his face. ‘And the rumble that shook down your pretty flower pots? Was that thunder?’
    â€˜It seemed to come from far away.’
    Gwydion gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘You want to think the danger is far away and so none of your concern. But remember that the earth is one. Magic connects all who walk upon it. Faraway trouble is trouble all the same.Do not try to find comfort in what you see now, for the further away it is the bigger it must be.’
    Will felt the wizard’s words cut him. They accused him of a way of thinking that ran powerfully against the redes and laws of magic.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ he said humbly. ‘That was selfish.’
    â€˜Liarix Finglas,’ Gwydion muttered, moving on. He slid fingers over the stone, savouring the name in the true tongue. ‘In the lesser words of latter days, “the King’s Stone”. And nowadays the herding men who come by here call it “the Shepherd’s Delight”. How quaint! For to them it is no more than a lump from which lucky charms may be chipped. Oh, how the Ages have declined! What a sorry inheritance the mighty days of yore have bequeathed! We are living in the old age of the world, Willand. And things are determined to turn against us!’
    He heard the bitterness in the wizard’s words. ‘Surely you don’t believe that.’
    The wizard’s face was difficult to read as he turned to Will again. ‘I believe that at this moment, you and your fellow villagers are very lucky to be alive.’
    A chill ran through him. ‘Why do you say that?’
    The wizard offered only a dismissive gesture, and Will took his arm in a firmer grip. ‘Gwydion, I asked you a question!’
    The wizard scowled and pulled his arm away. ‘And, as you see, I am avoiding answering you.’
    â€˜But why? This isn’t how it was with us.’
    â€˜Why?’ Gwydion put back his head and stared at the sky. ‘Because I am afraid. ’
    A fresh pang of fear swam through Will’s belly and surfaced in his mind. This was worse than anything he could have expected. Yet the fear freshened his thinking, awakened him further to the danger. He felt intensely alert as he looked around. Up on the Tops the sky was large. Itstretched all the way from east to west, from north to south. He felt suddenly very vulnerable.
    With a sinking heart he looked around for the place where they had unearthed the battlestone and found its grave, a shallow depression now partly filled and overgrown, but the burned-out stone was nowhere to be seen.
    â€˜You’re not as kindly as I remembered you,’ he told Gwydion.
    â€˜Memories are seldom accurate. And you too have changed. Do not forget that.’
    â€˜Even so, you’re less amiable. Sharper tongued.’
    â€˜If you find me so, that is because you see more these days. You are no longer the trusting innocent.’
    â€˜I was never that.’
    The wizard gazed up and down an avenue of earthlight that stretched, spear-straight across the land. To Will’s eye it was greenish, elfin and fey. But it was a light that he knew well, though very bright for lign-light, brighter than he had ever seen it. It passed close by the circle of standing stones.
    â€˜That shimmering path is called Eburos,’ Gwydion told him. ‘It is the lign of the yew tree. Look upon it, Willand, and remember what you see, for according to the Black Book this is the greatest of the nine ligns that make up the lorc. Its brightness surprises you, I see. But perhaps it should not, for tonight is Lughnasad, and very close after the new moon. All