Roger Taylor: Valderen

Farnor started and looked at Marna. He said the first thing that came into his head. ‘Does your father know?’

Marna gave a sad smile and a nod. ‘Yes, of course he does, you donkey.’ She gestured at the others. ‘We’ve all of us spent days talking about it.’

Farnor took her hands and looked at her earnestly.

‘He’s glad that I’m alive, and doing what I want to do,’ Marna added.

‘Well, so am I then, I suppose,’ Farnor said hesi-tantly. ‘Though I’ll miss you. I’ll miss you a lot.’

‘I’ll be back,’ she replied, smiling. ‘This is a good place.’

Farnor lowered his head. There was another awk-ward silence.

‘Farnor, do you want to tell us what happened to Rannick and the creature?’ Engir asked.

Farnor shook his head and repeated his litany. ‘They’re gone.’ Engir became more urgent. ‘There’s much we haven’t told you about our lands, Farnor. But you know we’ve suffered at the hands of people who used the power as Rannick used it, don’t you?’

Farnor nodded and Engir continued. ‘It worries us greatly that this power returned again when we’d all thought its very source destroyed. It worries us that that very destruction may have wakened the creature and drawn it from the depths, and we fear what else might have been stirred. Please tell us what happened. It may be more important than you realize. And I think it may help you too. Lift some of the shadows from you.’ He paused, then added finally, ‘Uldaneth will want to know.’

Farnor stood up as if he wanted to leave the room suddenly. Then he sat down again and, without further bidding, told them what he could of his final encounter with Rannick and the creature.

They asked few questions, but listened with great intensity. Engir’s response when Farnor had finished was unexpected. ‘Will you come with us too?’ he asked. ‘There are people there who will understand your strange powers and what should be done with them. And people who can help to ease your deeper pain.’

Farnor looked at him thoughtfully and then at Marna. Then he said quietly but unequivocally, ‘No. What I had to do, I did. I need to stay here now. To take back the threads of my life – my family’s life. That too, is important.’

‘You may be needed,’ Engir said finally, with a hint of anxiety.

Farnor thought for a moment. ‘Send for me then, and I’ll come,’ he replied, simply.

Aaren chuckled. ‘I told you,’ she said to Engir, who sat back with a rueful smile. ‘He’s one of us, like Marna.’ But she did not amplify the remark.

When they parted a little later, it was with promises that they would call on him the following day before they left. Rather self-consciously, Farnor leaned forward to kiss Marna on the cheek, but she took his face in her hands and kissed him on the mouth. There was a little ironic applause from the four watchers, and Marna blushed as she waved a fist at them.

Farnor went for a walk after they had left. He took the dogs with him. It was a bright moonlit night, but warm and full of summer calm. He reached out to the trees, and they welcomed him, as they would always. Coming to the top of a rise, he stood for a long time staring at the remains of the castle, bleached by the moonlight. What had been merely part of the landscape, a relic of the need to stand against evil times now long since forgotten, had become a jagged reminder of the inevitable consequences of such forgetfulness.

Then he turned away. Many things had changed as well as the castle but, he judged, on balance they had changed for the better, despite the pain that had come with the changing. A few mysteries had been lost, but there were as many as ever in the world, bad and good, and now the villagers had far more friends to share or face them with, and greater knowledge.

As he walked through the warm night, it came to him that, despite all he had lost from his life, he was, nonetheless, happy. He could, and he would, honour his parents and the life they had given him by living it well.

And with this simple realization, his mind, like his boisterous dogs chasing their cavorting black shadows in the moonlight, ran ahead of him. Once home, he would close his new door behind him, and – a new habit – he would touch the Threshold Sword that hung there, as it did in most of the cottages now. Then he would go up to his old bedroom, lie on his soft new bed and look up at the new beamed ceiling and wait patiently, and happily, until sleep carried him off into its welcoming darkness.