As the weeks become months at Castle Foderingham, Will turns from boy to man. He begins to learn lordly ways alongside Duke Richard’s sons. But while he learns how to ride and hunt and fight as they do, he also starts to understand more about his own developing magical talents. He is befriended by the old herbalist, Wortmaster Gort, and battles with the duke’s fierce heir, Edward. One night, despite Will’s warnings, Edward acquires a set of keys and leads his many brothers and sisters down to visit the Dragon Stone. There, though they do not understand it at the time, they are stricken by the stone, and none more so than Edward’s brother, Edmund.
Life at Foderingham settles down again, but soon a wagon train of new weapons bound for the king’s armoury is captured by Duke Richard’s men, and Will is unexpectedly reunited with Willow, the girl he met in the Wychwoode. As vassals of Lord Strange, she and her father had been set to drive one of the ox-wagons from Grendon Mill to Trinovant, but they were intercepted by one of Duke Richard’s allies. When Will sees how scared they are of returning home to face Lord Strange’s wrath, he begs the duchess that they be attached to Duke Richard’s household, and she agrees.
Willow says that Will is turning into a young lord. Will thinks there might be more to Willow’s unlikely arrival than meets the eye – perhaps the Dragon Stone is warping the fate of everyone around it, as Gwydion has hinted it may do. Perhaps they are all riding for a fall.
As winter closes in, the news from Trinovant is sketchy, but Will learns that Gwydion’s patient diplomacy has so far failed to settle peace upon the factions. Despite having extracted the Dragon Stone the influence of the reawakening array of battlestones continues to increase. The harm contained within them begins to corrupt the political atmosphere. Greed, vengeance and malice begin to get the better of the spirit of compromise within the opposing parties, and the Realm slips ever closer to war.
Will’s fears grow when Duke Richard gathers his armies and moves his household to Ludford. This is a great castle, deep in the hills of the west. As soon as he arrives, Will’s sensitivity to the stones’ influence begins to grow beyond his control. A bout of suspicion overtakes him. He feels that Edward is becoming his rival for Willow’s affections, and so acute does his jealousy become that he begins to fear for his sanity. When Gwydion appears Will says he believes the duke has fetched the Dragon Stone to Ludford and is trying to use it to his own advantage. Gwydion settles his fears and then gives Will a choice: he can either stay at Ludford and fight with Edward for Willow’s favour, or he can venture out upon the land as Gwydion now must, and help in the tracking down of the other battlestones – and especially the crucial Doomstone, which appears to control the others. Will reluctantly chooses to follow the wizard, and Gwydion says that this brave decision is yet another proof that he is indeed the Child of Destiny that was foretold.
Gwydion now explains Maskull’s intentions. The two magicians are the last remaining members of an ancient wizardly council of nine whose task it was to direct the progress of the world along the true path. As Age succeeded Age their numbers have shrunk, until there are now only two, but one of the nine was always destined to become ‘the Betrayer’. When three wizards remained there was still room for doubt, but as soon as the phantarch, Semias, failed it became clear that Gwydion’s long-held suspicions about Maskull must have been right. Maskull has now thrown aside all pretences of guardianship and is working openly upon a plan of immense selfishness. As a sorcerer – one who misuses magic to his own benefit – he is seeking to direct the future along a path of his own choosing. It is one that will concentrate power in his own hands, but will also entail a new Age of Slavery and War far more dreadful than any that has gone before.
Maskull must be defeated, but the battlestones are the immediate problem. Fortunately, they can be made to reveal verses that predict events and describe in maddening riddles where the next stone in the sequence lies. Will manages to track down two more battlestones, and though neither of them is the Doomstone, they seem to be making progress at last.
But Maskull lays a clever trap at the stone circle known as the Giant’s Ring. Will is caught, and Gwydion is lured in to save him. Wizard and sorcerer fight and the wizard is defeated. His body is burned and his spirit banished into an elder tree. But he is saved by Will who braves his fears to restore his mentor to human form. Gwydion then sets to work on the perilous task of draining the nearby battlestone.
After several quantities of harm have been drained from it a verse is forced from the stone:
The Queen of the East shall spill Blood,
On the Slave Road, by Werlame’s Flood.
The King, in his Kingdom, a Martyr shall lie,
And never shall gain the Victory.
which, in the language of stones, has an alternative reading:
When a Queen shall Enslave a King,
Travel at Sunrise a Realm to gain,
Werlame’s Martyr shall lose the Victory,
And lie where Blood never Flows.
Gwydion is elated, but as soon as he has read the verse disaster strikes. An entrapping spell that Maskull has set on the stone causes the remaining harm to escape all in a rush. Will and the wizard must flee through the night on the back of the White Horse of Uff which Will summons using the magical silver-bound horn that was given to him one Lammas night. They are pursued through the darkness by the manifest harm that has emerged from the battlestone. It almost catches them, but is then forced to fight with the earth giant, Alba, whom it devours. The harm is dispersed at last by Will as the red light of dawn glints from his raised sword above the forgotten battlefield of Badon Hill.
They turn again to face two great armies marching, ready to give battle in the east. The shrine town of Verlamion is dominated by the great chapter house of the Fellowship of the Sightless Ones, and it is here that the Doomstone lies. Gwydion tries once again to avert disaster. He uses all his persuasion on Duke Richard, but the Doomstone has too strong a grip on the minds of those who have been drawn here to fight.
The duke’s army closes on Verlamion, which is strongly garrisoned by King Hal. As the two hosts come together, thousands of men clash in a terrifying death-struggle. Showers of deadly arrows darken the skies, and as soldier battles soldier in the market square, wizard battles sorcerer in a flame-fight that blasts across the rooftops in a blaze of fiery magic and counter magic.
Will is trapped among the savagery and bloodshed below. He knows he must reach the Doomstone and try to stop the battle, but the stone is somewhere inside the chapter house. Will claims the ‘sanctuary of the Fellowship’ and so gains entry. He fights his way through hundreds of blind, kneeling, enraptured Fellows before he locates the deadly stone under the Founder’s shrine. The power of the Doomstone is very strong, but Will remembers everything that Gwydion has taught him. He digs deep and finds the courage to do what he must – go down into the tomb to attack the battlestone directly.
As his spells are spoken out, the Doomstone fights back, but Will hangs on grimly. Appalling visions are cast into his mind, and it is only when he uses the leaping salmon talisman which Breona gave him that the stone submits. There is a blinding flash, and when the smoke clears he sees that the monstrous slab has been cracked in two!
Will emerges from the tomb, his head ringing. Outside, the roar of battle has ceased, brother has stopped killing brother, and war seems to have been averted. But there has been bloodshed – Duke Edgar, Baron Clifton and several of the other corrupt lords who have been controlling the king now lie dead. Others, including Queen Mag, have fled. As for Maskull, Will finds him atop the fire-blackened curfew tower where he has been conducting his own magical duel against Gwydion. When Will confronts him, Maskull recognizes him as the Child of Destiny, and prepares to kill him, saying, ‘I made you, I can just as easily unmake you.’ But as Maskull readies the killing stroke he is vanished away by a spell that Gwydion manages to land on him while