by Roger Taylor
Be afraid.
A menacing rumble came through the darkness in reply. It turned abruptly into a snarl and Farnor sensed rather than heard feet gripping the ground and muscles tensing.
He jumped to one side and swung the staff. His arms caught the side of the creature and in an instant he felt its great weight and muscular power. The impact knocked him over and he fell heavily, something driving into his ribs and sending pain to every part of his body. He cried out, his voice strange in his own ears, but somehow he kept hold of the staff and, fear overriding his pain, he rolled over, away from the sound of the creature, scrabbling once more over the damp rocks to recover its balance. If only he could see! If only there was a vestige of light to guide him!
Then there was a pause. Farnor swung the staff tentatively in a low arc about him. It struck nothing again, and though he could hear the creature breathing, the sound was coming from all around him. Then he felt it trying once again to draw on the power beyond, trying to rend open that which he had sealed. That part of him that healed such wounds cried out, No, here we decide this, you hellhound. But there was no response except a vaguely familiar sound in front of him. His mind searched to identify it.
It had dropped down on the ground. The damned thing was lying down! Waiting!
The sound of thunder reached him again.
It was going to wait for Rannick!
Man and beast must overwhelm him for sure.
He glanced quickly at the glowing sky to the south.
What was happening to the village? And to Derwyn? he thought again. And with the thought of Derwyn came the memory of Angwen. One hand still waving the staff in front of him, he fumbled through his pockets.
It was still there. Angwen’s lantern. As he scrambled to his feet, he heard the creature doing the same. Then he threw open the shutter on the lantern.
The light burst into his face, blinding him. Frantic-ally he turned the lantern round. There was an angry snarl and, through the myriad coloured patterns dancing in his vision, he caught a glimpse of a huge black shape, turning away and disappearing into the darkness.
With desperate slowness his vision cleared, and though the small lantern did not throw a great deal of light, it did show him that he was standing by the entrance to a cave.
His eyes widened in shock. Accidentally he had almost walked directly into the creature’s den!
Now, however, he must do it deliberately. He must face this creature before Rannick arrived. Face it in its own lair. Gripping the staff, he stepped inside. A musty foulness greeted him.
The light gave him some comfort. At least he would be able to see the creature this time. At least he would be able to aim some kind of purposeful blow. And – he checked – he still had his mother’s knife in his belt. With the light, he had a chance.
The smell grew worse, making him want to retch, and a chilling dampness started to strike through him. He was sodden with rain and sweat. He walked on, carefully shining the lantern into the many shadows that the uneven walls and floor formed. The light reflected back off glistening dampness, until the cave suddenly opened out and the lantern’s beam faded into darkness, revealing nothing but the floor. There was blackness to either side of him.
Which way should he go? Suddenly very afraid, he stopped and listened. Nothing was to be heard except a faint dripping in the distance. He swung the lantern slowly from side to side, leaning forward to search into the shadows. Then bright, malignant eyes flared out, pinioning him, and the pool of darkness from which they had emerged surged towards him.
His fear saved him, for only at the very last moment did some reflex manage to twist him to one side. The movement however, did not prevent the creature crashing into him heavily and knocking him down. The lantern spun from his hand and, tumbling across the rocky floor, sent wild shadows dancing into the darkness. Marrin’s staff snapped as he fell on it. He barely had time to cry out before the creature was upon him, its saliva dropping on to his face and its powerful forelegs rigid on his chest. The light from the roiling lantern fell momentarily on its face, lighting its eyes a savage red and revealing its gaping maw and terrible teeth. Its head jerked back a little as the light struck it. Farnor’s hands came up frantically and seized its throat. The muscles and sinews that he grasped told him immediately that he could not hope to strangle it, nor best it in any kind of physical contest. He let out a great cry of fear and rage and, pushing upward desperately with his left hand, brought his clenched right fist up and struck the creature on the side of the head. It produced no noticeable effect except to make it hesitate again slightly.
I won’t die here, Farnor roared inwardly. I won’t die here. Countless images burst simultaneously into his mind: sunset watches, solstice festivals, his journey through the Great Forest, Bildar, Edrien, Gryss, Marna, his mother, his father, Uldaneth…
Uldaneth!
‘Why do you carry a kitchen knife with you, Farnor?’
The images vanished, and his right hand began to grope towards his belt.
The creature’s forelegs pounded painfully into his chest and he felt its back legs scrabbling for purchase on the rocky floor. He also felt his left arm, screaming with effort, beginning to buckle under the increasing pressure. The creature’s foul breath gusted over his face and saliva sprayed hotly into it as the savage jaws snapped shut the merest fraction in front of him.
‘How did you do that?’ he heard himself asking Uldaneth.
‘I didn’t, you did,’ came the reply.
With a final effort he reached the knife and drew it, then jerking his head desperately to one side to avoid the descending jaws, he closed his eyes.
‘I didn’t, you did.’
He let his left arm collapse.
The creature crashed on to the upturned blade.
It let out a strange cry and stiffened. Despite the crushing impact of the fall, Farnor felt his own blood fury grow as the creature’s faded, and with the last residue of his strength he thrust the creature to one side and dragged the knife up the length of its chest. He felt blood spilling hot over his arms.
Then he was rolling free, gasping with terror. To his horror however, he saw the shadow that was the creature struggling to regain its feet. He could not move. His mind told him to stab the creature again, quickly. Stab it over and over until it was still. But his trembling hands would not obey. And still it struggled, a great pool of blood spreading, black in the dim, reflected lantern light.
Then it turned to look at him, and, inclining its head on one side, it whimpered. The sound, unexpectedly poignant, seemed to fill Farnor’s head, until he realized that the sound he was hearing was no longer that of the creature. It was something else. And a flickering uneasy light was pervading the cave. The sound formed itself into words. Words as full of horror as they were of menace.
‘What have you done?’
And Rannick was kneeling by the creature, cradling its head tenderly. Farnor, barely conscious, shook his head. It seemed to him that flames were dancing about Rannick, and that part of him was elsewhere.
Slowly Rannick turned. His hand came out and took Farnor’s knife from him. Farnor could not resist. Rannick raised the bloodstained blade to his mouth and licked it.
Good…
Farnor felt the exhilaration and desire run through him. They turned into Rannick’s laughter. ‘Yes, cousin,’ he was saying. ‘You feel it, don’t you? All this time you’ve been the same as me and we never knew.’ Farnor tried to shake his head in denial but he could not.
Rannick spoke again. ‘I liked you, Farnor. Such things we could have achieved; you, me and…’ He looked down at the creature. His mouth curled vi-ciously. ‘But we will yet, cousin. She and I. You may have a gift of sorts, but it is perverse and twisted, and hers is beyond yours by far. And perhaps you would only have become a rival to me in time.’ He let the knife fall and held out a bloodstained hand. ‘Look at what you’ve done,’ he said, his voice suddenly rasping and full of hatred.
Yet though his eyes were blazing, it seemed as if he were going to weep as he cradled the creature’s head. He turned sharply away from Farnor and bent low over the creature, speaking to it softly, comfortingly.
‘I can mend this hurt you’ve done to her,’ he said, looking up again. ‘And all the other hurts that have been wrought tonight. But you’ll see none of it. You, I’ll destroy as I destroyed your insolent father. Only more slowly. Far more slowly. I’ll squeeze all her pain and an eternity more into each wretched heartbeat that you have left. As you’ve sown, so must you reap, farmer. And I’ve skills now that I’d scarcely dreamed of when your father was sacrificed to my greater learning.’
‘No,’ Farnor whispered, struggling to lever himself up on to his elbows.
‘Oh yes, Farnor. Oh yes. Have no doubts about it. All is mine now.’
‘No,’ Farnor whispered again. ‘I shall destroy you. You abomination.’
Rannick sneered. ‘You weary me, Farnor. Weary me beyond measure,’ he said. Then, in a voice that seemed to penetrate every part of Farnor’s body, he cried, ‘Know my power, Farnor Yarrance. Know the power to which I have access. Look on it and weep, before I begin to kill you. For it could have been yours too.’
Farnor stared, wild eyed, as he became aware of a strange sound, so deep that it could scarcely be heard, permeating the cave. Permeating him. Permeating all things.
And then it was done, and he was looking into one of the worlds beyond. But it was no world of nightmare and terror. It was sunlit and wooded and, in the distance, over rolling countryside, snow-covered mountains rose sharp and clear.
It was beautiful.
And he saw yet more worlds. Worlds beyond num-ber. And the shifting, flickering spaces between them. The spaces that should not be entered other than by those who had the true knowledge, and where Rannick and the creature moved so freely; malevolent trespass-ers.
His every fibre protested at what he saw and felt as he looked at Rannick and his grotesque mentor. It seemed to him that they were both far and near, the focus of the fearful gash that had been wrought in this reality. For it was not the worlds beyond that wrought the harm. It was their nature to be where they were, just as it was the nature of this world to be where it was. It was only in the wild conjoining of the two that the imbalance, the chaos, could be made manifest.
Agonizingly, Farnor forced himself up into a sitting position.
As he did so, his hand fell on the jagged end of Mar-rin’s broken staff. Faintly, in the long dead wood, he felt again the presence of the most ancient. And with it came the memory of the Forest, awash with the dawn sun and the ringing sounds of the horns of the Valderen. And too the remembrance that whatever else, he must hold to his resolve to honour the lives and the love of his parents by being as they had been, and as they would have wished him to be: true to himself.
Human he was, and thus savage and cruel he could be, as need arose. But always he had choice. Always everyone had choice. His savagery and cruelty had saved him from the creature, but perhaps the creature itself had had no choice in its nature. Rannick however, did. And he could do no other than help him.
He held out a hand towards him. ‘Rannick, no,’ he shouted into the eerie stillness. ‘Come back. Nothing there belongs here. There’s only loneliness, pain and madness for you if you go on. Come back.’
He hesitated for a moment, then he cried out, ‘I forgive you the death of my parents.’
Rannick started violently and his hand clutched at the creature feverishly. ‘No!’ he cried, his face alive with horror. He began to sway unsteadily. The vision of the worlds beyond shifted and changed, and Farnor felt Rannick reaching out, moving further and further into those places beyond, gathering as never before that which might give him the power to protect himself from the fearful revelation he heard in Farnor’s words.
Farnor reached after him. Rannick’s doubts and pain filled him, as did his desires. ‘No, Rannick. I forgive you, truly. Come back.’ But even as he spoke, he knew that in reaching for him he was reaching out once more to make whole the rent that Rannick had torn in the fabric of this reality. For therein lay Rannick’s pain. And he knew too that Rannick had bound himself dreadfully to those places beyond.
Yet still there was hope.
‘No, Rannick!’ he cried out again, in desperation. ‘Come back! Let go! Let go! LET GO!’
Then there was silence.
Save for the lingering echo of Farnor’s final, plain-tive cry…
And the howl of the creature.
And when that was no more, Farnor, pain-racked, was alone in a damp, empty cave, dimly lit by Angwen’s tumbled lantern. Both Rannick and the creature were gone, and no sense of either lingered anywhere.
‘No,’ Farnor whispered faintly, over and over. ‘Let go. Let go.’
Then he wept.
Chapter 27
Farnor was found the following day by a search party of villagers and Valderen. He was leaning against a rock at the entrance to the cave, exhausted and covered in blood. Apart from some bad bruising, however, he was unhurt.
There was all manner of speculation about what had happened to Rannick and the creature, but despite every entreaty Farnor would say nothing except, ‘They’re gone.’
Besides Farnor’s mysterious reappearance and the apparent destruction at his hand of Rannick and the creature, many other tales from that night went down into village and Valderen legend. Marna’s desperate leap through the burning gate to rescue the four strangers. Rannick’s screaming flight into the night. The death of Nilsson. And the strange and terrible fire that had consumed even the stonework of the castle until it had suddenly flickered out, as if it had never truly been there.
And too there was the appearance out of the woods of the Valderen and the four strangers escorting the remainder of Nilsson’s men to join those held by the villagers at the castle. Following the death of their leader at the hands of their new Lord, most of Nilsson’s men had thrown down their weapons, though a few had fled into the Forest. It proved to be a costly mistake for them however, as Angwen, quiet and graceful, had listened to Farnor and trusted him, and she and the other women were waiting, bows and vicious hunting arrows ready, for the sudden arrival of armed strangers. They killed all of them without mercy, as is the way with women when they choose to kill.
And they killed Rannick’s awful steed also, as, both masterless and riderless it careened, howling, through the Forest.
In due course, the survivors were given to the charge of a contingent of the king’s army which had eventually been drawn to the area by news of Rannick’s depredations in the surrounding countryside.
‘Others will be sent to take them, in time,’ Engir told the king’s commander. ‘We must return home as soon as possible.’
‘What did they do that you travelled so far and for so long to find them?’ Marna asked Aaren.
Aaren looked down at her hands. ‘Wearing a false livery, they rode into a quiet village one misty autumn morning and killed everyone they could find,’ she said without emotion. ‘Men – women – children. None were spared. Then they burned the houses.’
The stark flatness of the telling shook Marna more than any amount of passion could have.
‘Why?’ she asked, rather hoarsely, after a moment.
‘To start a war,’ Aaren replied, as flatly as before. ‘A civil war.’
‘Which you won, I presume,’ Marna retorted sav-agely, suddenly desperately angry at this coldness.
Aaren looked up sharply, but though she saw the torment in Marna’s face, she did not spare her. ‘You stood with us all amid the Valderen’s grief when the butchered remains of their dead were buried. You saw the terrible wounds that came out of the Forest. And you heard the screams of people maimed for ever. And there are injuries you can’t see.’ She fidgeted with her damaged finger, then tapped her head. ‘In here. Like the memory of the one you killed. He’ll never leave you, Marna.’ She seemed to relent a little. ‘And
all this was barely a skirmish.’ She paused. ‘No one wins a war, Marna. Least of all a civil war. The more fortunate survive and grow a little wiser. But no one ever forgets. Not a day passes for as long as they live but some memory doesn’t come back to them.’
‘Why do you stay a soldier, then?’ Marna asked. She had not intended it, but again there was a hint of anger and reproach in her voice.
There was an equal note of annoyance in Aaren’s reply. ‘Because circumstances made me such. And just as it was right for me then, so it’s still right for me now.’ Marna could not tear her eyes away from Aaren’s bleak gaze. ‘There are evils in this world, Marna, and there are always people who choose to forget or ignore that, and then they need people like me and the others – with our particular skills – because of the inevitable conse-quences of that forgetting.’
Marna suddenly felt very ashamed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I won’t forget.’
Unexpectedly Aaren embraced her. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know. Circumstances have made you one of us, haven’t they?’
They talked a lot after that. And Marna thought a lot.
* * * *
The Valderen and the villagers became cautious friends. As did the villagers and those people from other villages who had been brought there as captives. Indeed, after the kind tending of these unfortunates, the villagers did much to help the communities over the hill that had suffered from Rannick’s ambitions. It became much less… eccentric… for villagers to travel abroad.
While they remained in the village, Engir and his companions found themselves engaged in long discussions with Gryss and elders from the other villages, all anxious to make preparations to ensure that no such tragedy could befall them again. Derwyn, too, listened thoughtfully and sorrowfully, and made his own resolutions for the future.
* * * *
Farnor, with the help of his neighbours, began to rebuild his farmhouse, and very soon part of it was fit to live in. Gryss and his other friends watched approvingly, but grieved a little at the sadness that now seemed to lie just below the surface of the young man.
