Farnor

Chapter 3-2

‘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 always 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 uncertainly.

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 conversation 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, c*****g 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 huddled 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 indicated 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.

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 immediately 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, suspiciously.

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 something 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 authoritative. ‘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 dissatisfaction 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.’