Roger Taylor: Farnor

‘It’s not just today,’ he said abruptly. ‘It’s been grow-ing for some time. Years, perhaps. He’s getting worse.’

‘Who?’ Garren asked, puzzled.

‘Rannick, of course,’ Gryss replied, almost irritably. ‘And what you call my dislike for him.’

Garren shook his head as he recollected his own question. ‘What do you mean?’

Gryss hunched up his shoulders and his bright eyes became almost menacing. ‘He’s getting worse,’ he repeated. ‘More unpleasant, more argumentative, more unhelpful.’

‘I’ve never had much problem with him,’ Garren said, still feeling the need to plead for the absent Rannick. ‘Though I’ll grant he’s got an unfortunate manner.’

Gryss blew out a noisy breath. ‘You’d see good in a raiding fox, Garren Yarrance,’ he said, though not unkindly, laying a hand on Garren’s shoulder. ‘But I’ve watched Rannick from a lad in the hope that he’d improve as he grew up, and all I’ve seen is him going from bad to worse. And it seems he’s going faster and faster.’

Garren made to speak, but Gryss stopped him.

‘No, Garren,’ he said. ‘Don’t say anything. I’ve al-ways given him the benefit of the doubt – you know that, in spite of the fact that I didn’t like him. But I know his family farther back than you, or, for that matter, than almost anybody in the valley these days, and there’s an evil trait in it which is writ large in Rannick.’

Farnor and Marna glanced at one another as the word ‘evil’ floated into the sunny air. Farnor shivered suddenly.

Garren was more forthright. The word disturbed him also. ‘Evil!’ he exclaimed. ‘No, I can’t accept that. Good grief, his grandfather was a respected elder! A good man.’

‘Maybe,’ Gryss conceded. ‘But he wasn’t typical of the family by any means, and even he was a strange one until he married and seemed to quieten down.’ He stood still for a moment. ‘I think that’s perhaps what I’ve been expecting Rannick to do. Find a nice girl, settle down, become more… easy with his life.’

He set off again.

‘But Rannick’s grandfather was a healer,’ Garren said, falling in beside him. ‘And they say he had the power to understand the needs of animals almost as if he could talk to them.’

Gryss’s face darkened. ‘Yes, he could. And you’ve heard it said that if provoked he could knock a man down without seeming to touch him.’

Garren shrugged. ‘Alehouse tales,’ he said uncer-tainly.

Gryss shook his head. ‘I’ve seen him do it,’ he said. ‘Only once, when he was a young man and I was a lad. But I saw it. And I can see it now, as clear as if I was still there.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know how it came about, but there was some angry shouting, then there was a wave of his hand and this fellow went crashing across the room as if a cart had hit him. I remember the air tingling suddenly, as if a bad storm was due. And I remember the men around him going quiet and then start drifting away. And his face. I can’t forget that. Savage and cruel. Only ever saw it like that the once, but I’ve seen the same expression on Rannick’s many a time.’ He glanced down at his hands. ‘He had some skill… some power… that was beyond most people’s understanding. And his grandfather before him was said to be a wild man.’ He shook his head. ‘My father used to say the family line was tainted as far back as anyone could recall. I’ve thought as you do in the past: gossip, old wives’ tales, but all these old memories have been coming back lately.’ His voice faded away.

Farnor’s mouth went dry. Gryss’s tale, his patent concerns and doubts and, indeed, the whole conversa-tion between the two men, freely uttered within his hearing, seemed to have surrounded him with a fearful stillness into which the warm sun and the valley scents and sounds could not penetrate. It was as if, after passing over the boundary that had marked the limit of his wanderings all his life, he was now being taken across other, more subtle, boundaries by his father and the village elder. Boundaries to worlds that were at once here and yet far away. An urge rose within him to reach out and thank them both, to reassure them, to… comfort them?

Gryss raised his hand hesitantly as if something had lightly brushed against him. He smiled. ‘What…?’

The presence of the valley returned to Farnor so suddenly that he missed his step and staggered forward. He steadied himself with his staff.

‘Careful,’ his father said sternly. ‘I’ve no desire to be carrying you back home with a broken ankle.’

Before Farnor could reply however, a faint whistling reached them.

‘Someone’s found something,’ Gryss said, cocking his head on one side to see which direction the whistling was coming from. But the sound was rebounding from too many rock faces.

Gryss frowned and swore softly.

‘Let’s go on towards the castle,’ Garren suggested, pointing up a nearby slope. ‘We’ll be able to see and hear better from up there, and it’s not too far.’

Gryss nodded. Farnor’s excitement returned, though it was laced with trepidation.

The castle! The King’s castle! This was proving to be a remarkable day.

Standing almost at the head of the valley, the castle was large and impressive by the villagers’ standards, but although it commanded a view of much of the valley it did not dominate. No man-made structure could dominate the peaks that towered over it.

To the children of the valley however, it was a haunted, frightening and forbidden place: both the door to, and the protection from, the world that lay to the north. The world that was even more alien than the one over the hill. The world that lurked on the fringes of their darker dreams.

At play around the village, safe in their secret hud-dled conclaves, they would touch the darkness and run, whispering, ‘The caves…’ and, ‘The forest…’ And shivering breaths would be drawn.

To the adults of the valley on the other hand, the castle seemed to mean little, although they were not above saying ‘The King’s men will come for you’ to quieten their more awkward offspring. At most it was perhaps a reminder of the existence of the world over the hill, with its needs and, by implication, its powers. And, to that extent, people would tend to glance up at it more frequently towards Dalmas. Normally, however, it was just another unseen and ignored part of the landscape.

Yet even in the sober adults childhood shadows lingered, and most were content both to laugh at and to perpetuate them as ‘harmless tales’, while being happy that the castle was comfortably far away from the normal avenues of their lives. Few ever found it necessary to discuss the regions beyond, though the unkinder parents would occasionally extend the menace of their threats by declaring, ‘The Forest People will come for you!’

The four hunters moved off in the direction indi-cated by Garren.

‘Go ahead, if you want,’ he said to Farnor and Marna. ‘You’ll see the castle when you reach that ridge, but wait for us there. We don’t want to go trailing all the way unless we have to.’

Farnor wanted to ask his father how it was that he was so familiar with the terrain, but Garren was motioning him to follow Marna who had already set off.

‘Do you think we’ll catch it?’ he said, as he caught up with her.

The girl shook her head and made a disparaging noise. ‘Your father and Gryss might, and some of the other upland farmers, but the rest are only out here for the ale. Most of them need both hands to find their backsides at the best of times.’

Farnor grinned at Marna’s manner, but made a hasty gesture for silence and glanced quickly behind in case Gryss or his father were near enough to hear this cavalier disrespect. The two men were well out of earshot, though, trudging along at their own steady pace. He noticed however, that they were deep in conversation.