Roger Taylor - Farnor

Not all boundaries were to be swept aside today, he sensed.

The thought brought a shadow back to him.

‘And Rannick,’ he said to Marna, not knowing why. ‘Could he catch it?’

He felt her stiffen. ‘Oh yes,’ she said flatly. ‘He could catch it.’

Farnor pressed on. ‘What do you think Gryss was talking about back there?’

‘Nothing I didn’t already know,’ Marna replied. ‘Rannick’s a mad dog. Bad and dangerous. The valley would be a quieter place without him.’ She shuddered.

Farnor could not keep the surprise from his face. Marna could be blunt to the point of considerable rudeness at times, but it was usually to someone’s face. And he had never heard her speak so brutally of anyone before. He found himself instinctively trying to take his father’s part as defender of the man against this condemnation, but he remained silent. Just as Gryss’s words had illuminated his own feelings about Rannick, so too had Marna’s.

But feelings were feelings. There must surely be reasons for such vehemence.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ he half stammered. ‘I don’t like him much myself but…’

‘He wants things, Farnor,’ Marna replied before he could finish.

‘We all want things,’ Farnor retorted.

Marna shook her head. ‘No, not like that,’ she said. ‘He wants to be what he’s not. Wants to… push people about… make them run when he tells them… jump when he tells them. Wants to be in charge of everything.’

‘An elder?’ Farnor queried, though sensing immedi-ately that this was a naive response.

‘No, of course not,’ Marna said impatiently. ‘Nothing like an elder. He wants to be like…’ She waved her arms about, in search of a word. ‘Like a… great lord of some kind… a king, even.’

Farnor looked at her intently. ‘You mean it, don’t you?’ he said. Then, without waiting for a reply, ‘That’s stupid. Why on earth would he want to be something he couldn’t possibly be? No one in the whole valley would let him.’ A thought came to him. ‘And how would you know something like that, anyway?’ he added, suspi-ciously.

Marna glowered at him. ‘Because he’s a man, and men think stupid thoughts like that, that’s why, you donkey. And I know because it’s written in his face, in his eyes. Just look at them one day.’

Farnor felt that he had inadvertently wandered into a thorn bush and he retreated in haste. He sensed that Marna was blustering to hide some other concern, but he wasn’t going to ask about it.

They continued in an uneasy silence.

As they walked over the rounded top of the rise, the castle came into view ahead of them. It was still some considerable distance away, but neither Farnor nor Marna had been so close to it before. They stopped and gazed at it in awe.

Its high, grey stone walls crawled purposefully over the uneven ground, between great buttressing towers. These for the most part were circular, but wherever the wall changed direction they were six-sided. From some of them more slender towers rose up haughtily as if disdaining the earthbound solidity that actually supported them. Other towers, too, could be seen, rising from behind the walls, as could the roofs of lesser buildings. The walls themselves were made strangely watchful by lines of narrow vertical slits and, at intervals, small turrets jutted out from the battlements to hang confidently over the drop below. A tall, narrow gate wedged between two particularly massive towers fronted the whole.

‘It’s so big,’ Marna said softly. ‘It really is like some-thing out of one of Yonas’s tales.’

‘But this is real,’ Farnor wanted to say, but he just nodded dumbly. He felt the hairs on his arms rising in response to the sight. Questions burst in upon him.

What must it have been like here once, when it was first built back in the unknown past, or when the King’s soldiers occupied it? He saw lines of riders clattering up to the open gate, surcoats and shields emblazoned with strange devices shining bright amid the glittering armour. Servants and grooms ran out to greet the arrivals, dogs barked, orders were shouted, voices were raised in welcome, trumpets sounded…

‘Come on!’ Marna was tugging at his sleeve, the child in her showing through her stern adult mask. ‘Let’s go!’

Farnor hesitated. The castle was at once inviting and forbidding.

‘Wait there!’ A faint voice reached them from below to spare Farnor the need for a decision. He turned to see his father gesticulating. The command was repeated and he waved back in acknowledgement. Marna’s mouth tightened as she bit back some comment, and with a soft snort she sat down on the grass. Farnor felt awkward.

Eventually, Garren and Gryss reached them. Gryss was puffing heavily.

‘It’s been too long since I went sheep-herding,’ he said, smiling ruefully as Garren motioned him to a flat rock on which he could sit.

‘I walked too quickly for you,’ Garren said. ‘I’m sorry.’

Gryss brushed the apology aside and looked up at the castle.

‘It doesn’t seem to change, does it?’ he said.

Garren shook his head. ‘There’s craftsmanship there that we can’t begin to equal,’ he said.

Farnor could remain silent no longer. ‘You’ve been here before?’ he said, almost rhetorically. ‘Why? You never told me. You’ve always said it was a place where we shouldn’t go.’

‘And so it is,’ Garren replied, his manner authorita-tive. ‘I’ve been here from time to time, just to look for sheep, that’s all. But it’s a…’ He paused and his authority seemed to fade. ‘It’s a place you should avoid,’ he concluded lamely.

Unexpectedly, Farnor felt affronted. An indignant protest began to form, but Gryss intercepted it.

‘All things in their time, Farnor,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing here for any of the valley folk. The ground’s too poor for cultivation, and not even very good for grazing sheep.’

He looked at Farnor, who could not keep his dissat-isfaction at this answer from his face. He seemed to reach a conclusion.

‘It’s a limit, Farnor,’ he said. ‘A boundary. You’ll meet them all your life. Things that can’t be done… for many reasons. Things you can’t have.’ He pointed beyond the castle, to the north. ‘The land over the hill is a strange enough place, with not much to commend it. But over there…’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Over there, there’s a world stranger still. It’s best let be. Kept away from.’

‘How do you know?’ Marna asked. Farnor started at her tone, part true inquiry, part challenging taunt.

Gryss scowled and turned to speak to her, but the whistling that had brought them to the top of the rise reached them again.

‘Over there,’ Garren said, pointing. He clambered up on to a small outcrop. ‘I can see them. They’ve found something.’

Rannick looked down at the tiny figures below. He took a long grass stem from his mouth and threw it away, spitting after it.

Ants, he thought, with scornful elation. Ants. Scurrying about in the valley all their lives and not even realizing they were trapped there just as generations before them had been trapped. The idea drew his eyes upwards toward the enclosing mountains, and his lip curled. It would not be so for him. Not for him, that blind captivity. He saw and knew the bars of his cage and knew too that he would break free of them.

Undimmed for as long as he could remember was the knowledge that he was destined for greater things than could conceivably be offered or attained here. At some time he would know a life beyond the valley and its people, with their suffocating ways: a life that would be full of power over such lesser creatures.