Farnor ft-1

by Roger Taylor

  Gryss looked at him, his eyes full of compassion but his mouth twitching into a smile. ‘That’s old man’s talk,’ he said, his smile rumbling into a chuckle. ‘There’s plenty of time before you come to that kind of conclu-sion with any conviction. You just do as I say. Take it easy for a little while. You’ll be ready for action again in no time.’

  It was an injudicious remark, Gryss realized as soon as he spoke it.

  ‘You think something’s going to happen?’ Farnor asked, his face alarmed.

  Gryss shrugged awkwardly. ‘No. I don’t think so,’ he said uncertainly. ‘But…’

  His doubt hung in the silent sunlit air of the homely bedroom. He made no attempt to resolve it, and Farnor, sensing they would be futile, pressed no more questions.

  ‘It’s only a month since Dalmas Day,’ he said, qui-etly, after a moment. ‘Who could’ve foreseen all this?’

  ‘Who indeed?’ Gryss agreed. And who’d have fore-seen you changing so much in so short a time, Farnor, he thought. ‘It’s the way of things,’ he said, affecting a worldly ease that he did not feel. ‘It’s not much fun, but everything’ll settle into some kind of order eventually. What we’ve got to do is keep our wits about us, that’s all.’ His mouth tightened into a thin line. ‘And keep our faith in the basic rightness of things.’

  Somewhat to his surprise however, Farnor did not seem disposed to discuss the matter. He was struggling to fasten a loose kerchief about his neck with one and a half hands. Gryss stepped forward to help him, but he shook his head. ‘I’ll have to get used to it,’ he said. A sheepish grin appeared, putting to flight the grimness that seemed to have taken possession of his features. ‘My mother’s only waiting for half a chance to start looking after me and I’m not too sure I can cope with that.’

  Gryss nodded understandingly. Farnor’s mood, like a fever, had passed some inner crisis; perhaps one that he himself did not even realize had been reached.

  Gryss left the farm shortly afterwards, pausing only to brave Katrin in her kitchen.

  ‘I know you two are up to something,’ she declared, waving a long wooden spoon at him like a regal sceptre and jerking her head in the direction of the stairs. ‘Though I don’t suppose you’ll tell me, who has to pick up the pieces when you’ve finished. But I know this, and you know I know it: that inn horse can’t lift both front feet off the ground at once, let alone rear and toss someone out of the saddle. And it’s seen many a fox before.’ Gryss endeavoured to maintain a look of innocent reproach to cover his inner quaking as she closed with him, spoon levelled ominously. ‘And that bruise on his arm never came from any rock I ever saw.’

  The spoon pinned Gryss to the wall. ‘Don’t you go getting my son involved in matters he can’t handle, Har Grysstson, or you’ll have me to answer to. He’s only a boy, for all his size.’

  ‘He’s near enough a man, Katrin,’ Gryss risked in-gratiatingly, but with a judicious hint of sternness.

  The spoon released him with disdain; he was too unworthy a foe. Retreating to her table Katrin made a disparaging noise. ‘Near enough a man!’ she echoed scornfully. ‘You’re all only eight years old. I don’t know why we bother about you so.’

  When she turned, however, any mockery in her manner was gone, and the look she gave Gryss was grim and worldly wise. Simple and direct, her words cut to the heart of her need. ‘You take care of my son, Gryss,’ she said. ‘And my husband. And, for that matter, take care of us all in your dealings with that Captain and his men. Whatever else they are, they’re all fighting men. Used to brutality, to stabbing and killing and…’ She paused, struggling to form the words to the measure of her feelings. ‘And everything else that goes with such a trade,’ she said significantly. ‘There’s none in the whole valley could stand against any of them and hope to live should need arise.’

  ‘I understand, Katrin,’ Gryss said soberly. ‘Truly.’

  But do you, healer? he thought as he walked across the yard. He gave an acknowledging wave to Farnor, watching him from an upstairs window, then bent to stroke one of the farm dogs that was routinely checking him for interesting smells.

  Not like she does, he concluded. Katrin’s perception of the reality of events disturbed him. It was no different from his own, but he found himself echoing Farnor’s strange phrase: it came from a different place. Beyond a certain point, there was an unknowing between man and woman which could not be bridged by words.

  As he opened the gate to the lane he gave the dog a final affectionate pat. Having seen him to the bounda-ries of its demesne, it wandered away from him, turning its attention to the lure of the richer aromas that were calling to it from all about the yard.

  Gryss felt the weariness of his years closing in on him again, despite the warmth of the sunshine and the vigorous optimism of the farm life about him. As he closed the gate, he caught another glimpse of Farnor. He remembered his awkward grin as he had struggled with his kerchief and the shades about him retreated a little.

  Resilience, he thought. The dominant hallmark of youth. But the very thought brought back others that he had been holding at bay.

  Just stunned, he had confidently declared many times to assuage the alarm of Garren and Katrin as they had raced out to retrieve their unconscious son. But he did not really know. He had peered into Farnor’s vacant eyes, searched his pulses, done everything that he knew, but the only insight he had gained was one into his own inadequacy, his own ignorance.

  ‘The body is like a great, well-founded ship. Count-less unseen forces work to right it when it is disturbed.’

  ‘The true study of healing lies not in why our bodies become sick, but in why they remain so well against the innumerable ills that constantly assail them.’

  Words that he had heard in his youthful wanderings in his search for knowledge and… whatever it is that youth searches for. Words that had seemed wise then, and which time and experience had made seem wiser still. They had returned to sustain him as he had gently lain Farnor on the grass, carefully positioning him so that he would not roll over and choke should he vomit or swallow his tongue. Indeed, they were all that sustained him in his desperation, for he had no idea what had happened to the young man. Blows to the head, he knew, could produce unforeseeable, alarming effects, but Farnor had received no such injury.

  As he had looked down at the motionless figure, Farnor had seemed simply to be asleep. But Gryss had known that he was beyond any normal waking. All he could do was sustain the powerful will to heal that permeated the hearts of Garren and Katrin, and which, perhaps alone, could reach into those unknown regions to where Farnor’s spirit might have wandered. By his manner and with his every fibre, Gryss had striven to impart to them his faith in the ancient ability of the young man’s body to dispatch its enemies, to right itself, to call back his spirit to its true home.

  And it had happened so, though whether or not he had helped in this, Gryss could not guess. It was irrelevant anyway. He could not have done otherwise.

  He stopped and looked around the sunlit fields. So full of life and vigour. He shivered. Fear, he diagnosed starkly. How could it be otherwise now? His body was shaking itself loose, telling him to be ready to run.

  Or to fight.

  He closed his eyes and raised his face to the sun, as if its life-giving warmth would soak into him as it did into the sunstones, bestowing on him an inner light that would dispel the awful chill that had settled over his heart.

  And to some extent it did as, for a little while, he revelled in its warm caress and followed the dancing and flickering of the lighted shapes behind his eyelids.

  When he opened his eyes again, the shapes, though changed in colour, remained, jumping and dancing to their own spasmodic rhythm, and it was some time before he could see clearly. When he could, he found his gaze turning towards the castle. He looked at it pensively. It was no different from what it had been since he was a child. But now it seemed to him to be like a great predatory animal crouching in the lee of
the mountains and waiting to spring forward and devour the village.

  The analogy brought to him the thought of the crea-ture. And in the wake of this came the village lore about the caves beyond the castle where lay ancient evil creatures from another time, waiting only to be awakened to ravage the world again.

  He could not believe such tales, but he could no longer dismiss them as airily as once he would have done.

  And Farnor’s contact with it had been prior to the arrival of Nilsson and his men…

  It occurred to him for the first time that perhaps what was happening was the result of some grim coincidence. After all, Nilsson had not ridden into the valley like a man carrying in his train a powerful mover of the elements. He had ridden in at the head of a motley assortment of dispirited, even broken men. Nor had they been any different when he had visited the castle to examine their sick.

  Only after they had started to explore the north of the valley had these changes come about.

  Could it be the creature using Nilsson in some way? But Farnor’s answer had been unequivocal: ‘It was a man who set that trap, not an animal.’ And there had been a human quality in the malice that he had felt attacking him yesterday.

  There were certain trees that needed an apparently parasitic fungus in their roots in order to be able to survive. Each fed and sustained the other and both prospered, where each alone would wither and die. So perhaps it was now. Perhaps creature and man had encountered one another during Nilsson’s foray to the north, and from thence they had grown in strength together.

  Gryss nodded to himself. His reasoning had some merit to it, though quite what action he could take as a result of it he did not know.

  None, other than watch and wait, he decided yet again. Be aware.

  He straightened himself up, taking a deep breath as he did so. For a moment he was twenty years old again. Strong, wilful and determined. It was a good feeling.

  He smiled. It was good. But not as good as being here now. He would not be that callow youth again for all the life and vigour it put back into his limbs. He had enough life and vigour to get himself around without too much discomfort, and his deeper senses and knowledge were superior beyond measure.

  ‘Take care of us all in your dealings with the Captain and his men,’ Katrin had said to him. He would keep her incisive insights into the true needs of the moment at the forefront of his mind, and he would fulfil her demands of him to the fullest extent of his ability.

  He felt a faint stirring within him. It was excitement. He crushed it ruthlessly. This was not something to be enjoyed. This was something in which stern discipline and an awareness that others looked to him for their safety must order his deeds.

  Nevertheless, as he started back off towards the village there was a spring in his step that had not been there for many a year.

  Chapter 27

  The only certainty in life is uncertainty, Gryss had decided for himself many years ago, but occasionally one had to conjure out of the confusion a place, a foundation as it were, on which one might stand apparently securely, for a while, just to look around, and make at least some attempt to assess the degrees of probability and improbability of possible events.

  In forming his conclusions about what was happen-ing, though knowing that they might well prove incorrect, Gryss had done this. Thus, despite the physical ordeal he had suffered at the castle and the subsequent journey back to the village followed by a night of broken and uneven sleep and a day of heart-searching, he woke the next morning feeling refreshed and with his mind alert and clear, even though his worries about the future were, if anything, greater than before.

  He performed his routine stretchings and scratch-ings as he rose from his bed, and then, yawning noisily, he drew back the curtains.

  ‘Oops,’ he said softly to himself as the morning light flooded in. It was a grey, rainy day that greeted him, but he needed no timepiece to tell him that it was much later than he normally rose. Mentally the previous day’s earnest reflections may have left him more at ease with himself, but physically he had been sorely tried and obviously his body had insisted on having the rest that it felt it needed regardless of such trivialities as his regular morning activities.

  It was of no great consequence. Today he would further order his thoughts and then decide to what extent he should share them with his confidants.

  He opened the window and leaned on the sill. A soft freshness greeted him, laden with the moist scents of grasses and flowers. It should be a day for perhaps sitting in the porch and watching the rain, and listening to it, and thinking. Thinking about something… anything… nothing.

  But the prospect of such wholly innocuous self-indulgence did not lure him as once, but a few weeks ago, it would have. Now, despite his determination to watch and wait and to act only as circumstances dictated, there was a dark edge to all his thinking, a constant nagging wish that all this would be over and forgotten, that all would be as it was. It filled him with a sense of urgency, which told him that he should be doing something even though his mind had told him, beyond dispute, that he could not. And worst of all it left him with a leaden uneasiness in the pit of his stomach.

  He breathed in the cool air.

  The shades eased a little. Not to savour such mo-ments was some kind of a desecration. But…

  He shook his head vigorously and closed the win-dow. He would have to learn to live with this new uncertainty. Katrin’s words could no more be torn from his thoughts than a barbed arrow from a wound.

  ‘… take care of us all in your dealings with that Captain…’

  She had meant, he knew, ‘Do not be reckless as you have been today, you speak for us all.’ But he had heard the plea within the command. ‘Take care of us all, we depend on you.’

  And he would strive to do that, no matter what it cost him in restless nights, burdened with worry and fear. He had done so all his life and he could do no other now.

  He turned away from facing what might be the ulti-mate cost. Matters could not come to that. Somewhere, reasoned words would prevail. They always did. Deals could be struck, bargains made, mutual interests agreed and satisfied…

  Surely…?

  He growled irritably and tried yet again to dispel this variable and shifting mist that was the future. Right now, both he and his uneasy stomach would have to be satisfied with food.

  After a wilfully leisurely breakfast he set off for Yakob’s with the intention of establishing further the story that the castle was locked and that he had been thrown from his horse when it was startled. He found, however, that Yakob was well acquainted with the tale. Garren, too busy to attend to the matter himself had sent Pieter with a simple outline of events to the inn and to Yakob and Harlen. As a result, Yakob was also in possession of several intriguing details which Gryss had not only not told to Garren, but which had not actually happened.

  ‘It trampled on you, I hear,’ was one such.

  It took Gryss some time to extract from the message that had reached Yakob the version that he required him to hear. Yakob looked almost disappointed; Gryss’s tale was quite prosaic in comparison to that which Garren’s too youthful messenger had brought.

  ‘Just a tumble, then?’ he summarized finally, through pursed lips. ‘I thought that young Pieter was a bit excited.’

  Leaving Yakob, Gryss headed towards Harlen’s house. Doubtless he would hear the same tale when he arrived there, although, he mused, Harlen’s being somewhat farther on it could be even more extravagant by then. He had a fleeting impression of a fabulous bird whose drab plumage grew ever more ornate and colourful as it moved further and further from its humble nest.

  ‘Whimsy, whimsy,’ he muttered to himself. A sure sign of aging faculties.

  But it transpired that Harlen had brought down the bird in full flight.

  ‘He’s gone downland to collect some willow rods,’ Marna told him as she took his wet cape. ‘He’ll probably be gone for some time.’ Her face was amused.
‘He was going to come up and measure you for a coffin at first,’ she went on. ‘It took him quite a time to get Garren’s proper message out of young Pieter.’ She pointed Gryss towards a chair.

  ‘Trampled underfoot and fallen off a cliff, I sup-pose,’ he said, sitting down. The chair creaked, but it was more like a welcome than a protest, and Gryss half closed his eyes in a small ecstasy as Harlen’s chair pressed comfort upon him.

  ‘More or less,’ Marna agreed, laughing. ‘I should imagine that by the time Pieter’s finished, there’ll be quite a crowd of mourners at your cottage. He’s so sweet. And so serious.’

  She laughed again. Gryss felt as though the room had suddenly filled with light.

  ‘Perhaps he’s going to be a Teller,’ he said, chuckling himself.

  ‘What possessed Garren to send him with the tale?’ Marna asked.

  ‘He’s got a lot to do, with Farnor hurt,’ Gryss replied. ‘And I doubt he realized Pieter had such a vivid imagination.’

  Marna ran her hands through her hair and shifted it here and there until it looked exactly the same as it had before. ‘So, no daring assault on the castle today?’ she said mockingly. Though, as Gryss caught her eye, he sensed a sharpness at the heart of the inquiry.

  Gryss shook his head and leaned forward and Marna’s mockery faded as if it had never been.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, uncertainly.

  Gryss looked at her. Should he tell her what had happened, or should he not? Would telling her be for her benefit or his own; lightening his own concerns by sharing them? What could she do other than feel the pain and distress of being able to do nothing?

  But the choice was not wholly his. As she herself had said, she was like a mole in a trap; she had walked in and could go only forward. And with what she already knew she was likely to give little more credence to the tale that Gryss had had put about than if it were just another of young Pieter’s childish ramblings. And she had the strength and the resilience – the word came again – to support the truth where a falsehood from someone she had placed her trust in might well crush her.