Valderen ft-2

by Roger Taylor

  They stood for some time in silence, each support-ing and sustaining the other. Then Harlen gently pulled Marna’s arms from around him and straightened up. ‘You put me to shame, daughter,’ he said. ‘Your mother would’ve been proud of you. But I don’t know if I can sit idly by while that man comes to collect you tomorrow – like just another piece of furniture.’

  Unexpectedly the comparison made Marna laugh, though it was a strained and humourless sound. ‘Rannick has some… affection… for me, Father,’ she said. ‘I think I…’

  ‘I know what he has for you well enough, girl,’ Har-len replied bluntly before she could finish.

  Marna held up her hand to prevent him continuing. ‘Yes, and I know that, too,’ she said. ‘But I told you, I’ll manage somehow, if I know all’s well here.’ She faltered, and her lower lip trembled momentarily. ‘There are women up there putting up with far worse right now. Women far from home who don’t even know what’s happened to their men, or worse, have probably seen them killed. I’ll manage, I know.’ Her face became determined. ‘And it will bring me close to him. Closer than anyone else could possibly be. Opportunities will arise.’

  Harlen lifted his hands as if to sweep aside the im-plications of what he was hearing, then they fell limply by his side. ‘We’re trapped, aren’t we?’ he said.

  Marna sank into a chair. ‘Yes,’ she said starkly. She gripped the arms of the chair to prevent her hands from shaking. Harlen caught the movement. He knelt down beside her, urgently. ‘No, Father,’ she said, looking with wide eyes into his distraught face and reaching out gently to fend him off. ‘No more. Don’t touch me again. Just let me know that you’ll be here, like you’ve always been, ready to pick up the pieces.’

  Harlen looked at her steadily for a long time, then, his face tense, he stood up. ‘I understand,’ he said softly.

  An uncertain silence hung between them until fi-nally Harlen said, ‘I’ll leave you alone to get your thoughts clear. I’ll go for a walk. To do the same.’ He smiled slightly. ‘I won’t be long. And I won’t do anything foolish.’

  Marna nodded, unable to risk speaking. She knew that he needed to weep, somewhere out of sight and out of hearing. He wanted to rave into the night, to bend with the terrible wind that had suddenly blown through his life. Then he would be upright again, and strong. For all his gentleness and seeming weakness, he would sustain her unfailingly.

  Later that night she lay in bed staring up at the fa-miliar beamed ceiling lit by a dim lantern that, for some reason, she did not want to extinguish. Despite her best endeavours she had been unable to control and order her thoughts as she had hoped; not while she had sat alone in the house while her father grieved into the night, nor in the hours since his return.

  Heading away from the castle, clinging to Nilsson’s bulk, and nestling in the comfort of her father’s love, she had boasted that she could cope with anything that might happen. But alone, in the quiet hours of the night, her resolve wavered. The strange, alien character of what Rannick had created both fascinated and repelled her. Nervously she twitched a strand of hair from her face as she remembered the breath that had fluttered around her head as she had left the castle. That, with its secretive intimacy, had, if anything, been worse than the eerie, dancing flames he had created.

  Yet the proximity of Rannick, his will, his intention – his touch – all so focused on her, made her reluctant body ache with an unexpected need. But the images that came with the need and its fulfilling were tainted with the cruelty that she was all too aware of; the dull-eyed women that she had seen in the courtyard; the strange response she had had to the plundered furniture in Rannick’s tower room; the memory of Jeorg’s beaten body, and, underscoring all, like a bloody harmony note, the brutal slaying of Garren and Katrin Yarrance.

  Suddenly frantic, she swept the blankets from her and swung round to sit on the edge of her bed. Seizing her pillow, she pressed her flushed face into its cool underside. She could not do it. Whatever benefits might come to the valley by her being Rannick’s woman, she could not pay the price. It was too much to ask. She did not have the courage to lie with him and to lie to him, still less to plunge a knife into him as he embraced her.

  Yet how could her fate be avoided? The darkness around her would yield to the daylight, and the daylight would wear into the evening, and the solitary form of Nilsson would appear along the road, as surely as the sun would rise and set. Her chest tightened with fear as, in as many heartbeats, she lived through those hours. It tightened and tightened until she thought she would have to scream out loud for release.

  Then the tension evaporated, and another, longer-held resolve reasserted itself. She tossed the pillow to one side and walked quietly across the room to a chest of drawers. Kneeling, she cautiously opened the bottom drawer and pushed her hand underneath the neatly arranged contents. After a brief search, she took out a small bundle wrapped loosely in an embroidered kerchief. Unfolding the kerchief, she withdrew the finely made leather wallet that contained Gryss’s maps and notes showing the route to the capital; the wallet that she had stolen from Jeorg’s pack, having carefully substituted a handful of old rags neatly wrapped in the waxed paper.

  Like Jeorg before her, she had spent a great deal of time quietly memorizing the contents of this wallet.

  * * * *

  Farnor ran and ran. He gave no thought either to direction or destination; he just ran. He must escape from these… trees, these… beings… whatever they were, before they could bring to bear against him whatever resource it was they possessed.

  His mind rang with defiance. He should never have come to this place. He would not be bound. He would not be restrained. He would not be denied his vengeance upon Rannick and his hell-spawned familiar, or any who stood beside him.

  At times, breaking through the swirling turmoil filling his mind, he Heard the voice… voices?… of the trees calling out to him. They were full of fear. Fear of the consequences of attempting to restrain him, fear of the consequences of allowing him to escape. Agonizing doubt mingled with confusion and anger and reproach.

  Every part of Farnor trembled under the images of pursuit. Snarling dogs were scenting after him, foaming horses were being spurred recklessly forward, sharp-ened edges and points glinted in the forest light. And always the towering trees seemed to be bending forward, their branches flailing wildly down to entangle and ensnare him in an embrace that would hold him there for ever.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ he cried out repeatedly as he crashed blindly through the Forest.

  Dissension washed over him furiously. Now loud, now soft, now one, now many. But he could not – would not – listen.

  ‘He is Its spawn. He has come here to destroy us from our heart, as before.’

  ‘No, he is a sapling, unformed and foolish.’

  ‘He moves in the worlds beyond this world, and in the places between the worlds.’

  Fear.

  ‘He is a shaper, a sealer. He could make whole that which is rent.’

  ‘And he could rend also. He could destroy us. The darkness in him is beyond our reach. We cannot know.’

  ‘We must defeat him.’

  ‘No. We must trust.’

  ‘Trust in what?’

  Fear returned to swamp the broken discourse. Fear of the ancient evil, the Great Evil, returned again.

  There had been truth in the signs they had Heard. She had confirmed it. And her word was beyond any gainsaying.

  Fear. Crueller than the bitterest winter.

  And self-reproach at a vigilance long-neglected; at an age-spanning complacency.

  And such ignorance; such appalling lack of knowl-edge.

  And all the time, Farnor ran and ran.

  ‘We must trust.’ A resonant, persistent declamation.

  Doubt.

  ‘What can be said that has not been said? The Hearer Mar-ken judged him sound…’

  Scorn. ‘He has not this one’s power. He is only a…’

&
nbsp; ‘A Mover. And many-ringed by their lights. Skilled in their ways. However dimly, he sees where we cannot. We must trust.’

  There was a sudden silence.

  ‘And she too bade us trust.’

  Realization.

  Resignation.

  Farnor burst through into sunlight. A rocky slope lay in front of him. With scarcely a pause he began to scramble up it.

  Silence now, save for the sound of his rasping breath and his scrabbling feet as he clambered higher and higher.

  ‘We will trust.’

  ‘But his darkness is terrifying.’

  ‘We can do no other. We shall watch him still. Do not despair.’

  And the debate faded, dwindling fainter and fainter into an unknowable distance.

  But the conclusion was unnoted by Farnor. His only need was escape. Escape from the great soaring temple of trees where their ancient spirit tried to bind him. Upwards, upwards he went, over the thinly grassed turf until it was no more and, knees and hands bruised and skinned, he was clambering over rocks.

  Then he could go no further. Through his sweat-blurred vision, he saw a sheer rock face ahead of him. He fell against it. His hands came up to beat a brief and futile tattoo, then exhaustion, physical, emotional, total, seeped up through him like a black cloud, and with a plaintive, almost animal whimper, he slithered to the ground.

  Silence.

  * * * *

  Time, now, was nothing. Nor place. Nor how he had come here, nor how he would leave. Some instinct had drawn him into the lee of a long-tumbled slab that leaned against the rock face, and in this narrow lair the world had become a tight drawn, nameless knot of aching limbs and tortured thoughts, the one indistin-guishable from the other.

  And in the darkness dreadful things stirred. Fearful, crushed and oppressed things that had long been prowling in the shadows and which should not be shown the light, nor heard, nor felt, for fear of what would come in their wake.

  Things that disturbed and distorted the sustaining, pain-branded images of the dying and dead Rannick; blurred their edges; questioned them…

  Memories, simultaneous and separate, ordered and random, came and went. Sustaining hands and voices. Scents – of flowers, of cooking, of cattle and hay and grass, of soft embracing, and comforting clothes. And hands that tended, and mended; made whole that which was broken, made new from that which was old; repaired and healed, and nursed with tender sorrow where they could not do either; strove endlessly and without question to weave order from disorder, because that was how it should be.

  Memories that ripped open and probed deep into his pain.

  And through all, threading unbreakable, that which no words could encompass. That which showed, ‘This is wrong, because…’ and, ‘This is right, because…’ And too, ‘This is both right and wrong, because… and there will be pain in the judging, but it is not to be shunned.’

  Kindness and gentleness. And love; love that was not afraid to be stern and to reproach and restrain.

  But mingled with this remembering came also the darkness; the anger, the hatred, the desires. They too tore and wracked, treading these gentle memories, these deep and gentle learnings, under iron-shod feet, lest they rise up and bring the light, the truth, with them.

  * * * *

  Knees pulled tight against his chest, arms wrapped about his head, Farnor wedged himself harder and harder against the ancient rock, as if this painful immobility would halt what seemed to be rolling inexorably towards him. Yet though his body was motionless, his inner self tossed and turned, swayed hither and thither, tormented by the boiling mixture that his conflicting emotions both fanned and stirred.

  Faster and faster his thoughts began to whirl, a terrifying, churning conflict beyond any possibility of reconciliation or control.

  Then, with a momentum like that of a tumbling boulder, the release crashed through the remains of his fading resistance, a great cry, filling his mind, filling his whole body. A great wordless cry of agony at the cruel, untimely death of his parents.

  And through the breach, like vomit, poured all that had been dammed there; the guilt that he had not been by their side when they died, but tending to his own trivial concerns; guilt that he had not died with them, and guilt that he was glad that he had not died, but lived and breathed still, and did not want to die, ever. Then anger at his guilt; and familiar well-worn anger at Rannick and Nilsson and the creature, and the blind chance that had brought about their fateful alignment; and unfamiliar anger at Gryss and Marna and all his friends for not being there to save his parents, or to help him in his pain.

  Then, an awful climax in this fearful torrent; bitter, choking reproach for his parents for having died and abandoned him, and shown him the wretched frailty of his own mortality. And, in its wake, yet more guilt at this treacherous betrayal of everything his parents had ever been to him.

  Farnor’s hands clawed at the cold, unyielding rock, his body racked with sobs, his eyes blinded, his face sodden.

  The flood ebbed and flowed, but it could not be stemmed. Not one part of it took form but it came back a score of times.

  But weaker…

  And weaker…

  Until there was only a husk, filled with a cold, black emptiness, and surrounded by a cold, black, empty night. A husk that waited and waited for it knew not what, until an older wisdom within it gave it sleep; dreamless, restful sleep, far below the wreckage of the turmoil on which such indulgence would surely have foundered.

  * * * *

  A trembling penetrated the darkness, and with it, a greyness.

  Slowly, very slowly, it came to Farnor who he was, and where he was. Cold struck through to the core of him, and wretched, dragging pain filled his joints and muscles. It focused what little consciousness he had and, with painstaking slowness, he eased each limb into life and crawled from the narrow cleft that had been his shelter for the night. As his awareness grew, so did his discomfort.

  But something had changed.

  He did not pursue this vague realization. Instead he concentrated on gradually, painfully bringing himself upright and attempting to rub some of the juddering cold out of his bones. His every movement felt alien, inappropriate.

  He looked around at his surroundings. The sky was grey with the light of the coming dawn, and in front of him was the rock face that had barred his reckless upward progress an eternity ago. It was not as large as it had been and to one side it fell away to reveal a gentler slope. For no reason that he could clearly form, except perhaps to distance himself further from the trees, though even these now seemed to be of little import to him, Farnor turned and began slowly walking up the slope.

  As he walked he gave no thought to where he was going, though vaguely he began to feel that he needed to be on a high place, where he could just…

  He needed to be on a high place.

  The journey passed unheeded, but had it been ten times the length, Farnor would not have noticed. All was a grey emptiness. Time, distance, effort, were naught.

  He reached the jagged summit.

  Neighbouring mountains, hidden by their fellow from its foot, now looked down upon it, bleakly indifferent.

  Farnor stared out over the Great Forest, though little was to be seen except for the tops of some of the trees reaching up above a thin, damp, summer morning mist.

  He sat down and dropped his head into his hands.

  And waited.

  Faint echoes of the dreadful turmoil of the previous night still sounded through him, reverberating to and fro. But they were distant now, no longer such a part of him. All feeling seemed to have gone from him.

  Yet something had changed. His pain was different. It was the pain of healing rather than the pain of injury.

  Still he waited, his head buried in his hands, staring at the rocky ground between his feet, though scarcely seeing it. Occasionally he shuddered, as his body responded to the chill that his mind was not noting.

  Then a vibration ran through
him that was different; finer, more delicate, longer.

  And the light around his feet changed.

  And there was a sound in the air; distant, but or-dered.

  As though he were waking from a long sleep he leaned forward into the sound, his head still bent low.

  It was a horn call. Indeed, a series of horn calls. Calls such as he had heard almost every morning since he had left Derwyn’s lodge, and to which he had paid no heed. Others rose out of the Forest to mingle with the first.

  There was a joyous quality about them that but the previous day would have jarred and offended, stirred him to black anger. But no longer. Now the sounds passed into him unhindered, ringing, and sonorous, moving amid the grey emptiness that waited there.

  The light around him grew brighter and, still gazing down, he became aware of every small detail of his soiled and scuffed boots. The sight unfolded before him their entire history, commonplace and familiar, yet poignant and intense. His vision blurred as the memories mingled with the sound of the horns and brought unforced tears to his eyes.

  ‘Mother, Father,’ he heard himself saying, softly and hoarsely, through an aching throat, and out into the morning stillness.

  A warmth touched him.

  He looked up.

  Into the full glory of the rising sun.

  He could do no other than stand as the dazzling sea of light washed over the vastness of the Forest to engulf him. His eyes blurred again, splintering the sunlight into bright, shifting shafts as tears ran down his face.

  And, though they were distant, and should have been faint, the echoing horn calls became part of the light and rose up to fill his entire world with a tumultu-ous paean of thanksgiving; of joy at being.

  And he was one with it.

  ‘Thank you, Mother, Father,’ every part of him cried out over and over.