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Farnor

a Mushroom eBooks sampler

Copyright © 1992, Roger Taylor

Roger Taylor has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

First published in United Kingdom in 1992 by Headline Book Publishing.

This Edition published in 2003 by Mushroom eBooks,
an imprint of Mushroom Publishing,
Bath, BA1 4EB, United Kingdom
www.mushroom-ebooks.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This is a sampler of Farnor by Roger Taylor. If you enjoy reading these sample chapters and would like to read the rest, you can buy the complete Mushroom eBook edition from the usual bookshops online, or find more details at www.mushroom-ebooks.com.

Contents

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Fantasy Books by Roger Taylor

Chapter 1

Darkness fell cold across Farnor’s face, extinguishing the myriad lights that had been flickering behind his closed eyelids and replacing them with shifting, blue-in-black shadows.

He opened his eyes with a start, momentarily fearful that some stranger or menacing creature had silently crept upon him as he lay, half dozing, under the gently swaying trees. It was not so, however. The darkness was only a cloud passing in front of the sun.

He made to smile away his reaction as foolishness, but, oddly, the unease persisted and with a frown he gazed around the sunlit woodland, searching for a sign of anything untoward that might have provoked this response. But there was nothing; just the rustling whisper of the wind-stirred trees and the innumerable splashes of bright sunlight flitting and dancing at their nodding behest.

Guilty conscience, he thought wryly as he struggled to his feet, brushing twigs and grass from his trousers and shirt. Loafing around in the woods when you’re supposed to be checking the sheep.

Thoughts of justification jostled for position as he walked to the edge of the wood and out into the brilliant spring sunshine. He hadn’t actually gone to sleep – well, hardly, anyway, and not for long – and besides, he’d get the job done – and there wasn’t anything special to do on the farm today . . .

He cut them short. They were a remnant from the times when his father would regularly interrogate him about his daily doings – or misdoings. Now, however, he was being treated increasingly as a trusted partner in the running of the farm; as a man, even though he would still be considered a boy in the eyes of the villagers for almost a year yet. It was quite amazing how much his father had learned over the past few years, he reflected.

Pausing, he looked down the valley towards the farm. It was hidden from view by the rolling terrain, but, as ever, he could feel its presence, solid and dependable; always there, always welcoming, a haven from all ills.

And yet, as he turned and began to walk up the valley again, he could still feel the shadow of the unease to which he had wakened. He had a faint memory of strange voices talking all around him . . . talking about him. The sound of the trees intruding into his half dreams, he presumed, but . . .

Almost angrily, he drove the end of his staff into the soft turf in an attempt to dispel once and for all the darkness that seemed reluctant to leave him. It hadn’t been the wisest of things to do, he supposed, going to sleep up here. Especially not with something worrying the sheep.

‘Someone’s dog gone wild,’ had been the usual opinion of the villagers to such happenings on the few occasions that Farnor had known them in the past; an opinion that was invariably proved correct after some judicious night-watching and trap-laying. The brighter sparks in the village would even take wagers on whose dog it was liable to be.

But it was different this time, for though only a few sheep had been worried, the damage to them had been massive and the traditional conclusion had been spoken hesitantly and in subdued and anxious tones. Then, like a mysterious creak in an empty house, Farnor caught a whisper of the word ‘bear’. Somewhat awkwardly, he put it to his father, only to receive a confident shake of the head and a lip-curling dismissal of the author of the suggestion.

‘Ale-topers’ talk. Berries, grubs, the odd fish, that’s all bears eat unless they’re desperate. They’ve little taste for meat and generally sense enough to keep well away from people.’

‘They say you can get rogue bears,’ Farnor offered. ‘Bears that have . . .’

His father cut across the tale with his final verdict:

‘The only rogues around here are those who should be working in the fields instead of swilling ale during the day and filling people’s heads with nonsense.’ Though he added, reassuringly, ‘It’s just a big dog gone wild, that’s all, Farnor. Probably from over the hill somewhere.’

From over the hill. The anonymous beyond. Where lived outsiders; people who weren’t ‘our’ people and who must necessarily be odd and thus quite capable of allowing large dogs to run wild and escape.

Nevertheless, and with a deliberate casualness, his father had from that time insisted that his son take a particularly stout staff with him whenever, as today, he was to go any distance up the valley.

As he moved further from the trees the last vestiges of Farnor’s unease fluttered away. Unconsciously he patted his knife in its rough sheath, then, impulsively, be swung his staff around in a whistling arc.

He began to daydream. His mind ran ahead along his journey. He would come to his favourite spot near the head of the valley and there sit down to eat the food his mother had prepared for him. Then, just as he was about to eat, he would notice bloodstains trailing across the ground. He would follow them and soon come to their source: the mangled body of a sheep. Almost before he would be able to react however, there would be a rustling in the nearby undergrowth and the culprit would emerge, charging towards him at full tilt: a huge hound, wild-eyed and ferocious, with bloodstained foam spraying from its snarling mouth.

A great battle would then ensue in which only Farnor’s skill with his staff would save him from the lightning, killing reflexes of this monstrous animal until finally, slipping on the bloodstained grass, he would crash to the ground and the creature would be on him, teeth scarce a hand span from his throat.

Farnor drew his knife with a flourish and thrust it upwards into the sunlit air to emulate the final blow that would unexpectedly finish his attacker at the very last moment.

He laughed out loud in his excitement and allowed his fantasy to peter out with images of his triumphal return to the village and the wide-eyed appreciation of the villagers – and their children in the years to come – who would beg him to tell them, yet again, the tale of his mighty battle against the beast of the valley.

Then, though he knew he was quite alone, he glanced about, slightly embarrassed at this lapse into childish imagining.

Nonetheless, it was a good tale. It was the kind of tale that Yonas the Teller would tell with much drama on his rare visits to the village. Farnor began to embellish it and to mouth it to himself after the manner of Yonas. Then he began to imagine himself to be a great Teller, travelling not only to towns and cities about the land, but even to other lands far, far away. Lands ruled by great princes and kings, and full of noble lords and fine ladies. Farnor stretched himself tall; ladies who would smile knowingly at him and . . .

His foot sank into a cow pat.

An ignoble but vigorous oath rose up amid the unique incense released by the deed, and self-reproaches fell back down on him. ‘Dreaming again, Farnor?’ he heard his father’s oft-repeated comment.

A few ungainly, dragging steps relieved him of the bulk of his burden, but the remainder proved persistent and, despite a further brief, foot-twisting ballet, he was finally obliged to resort to sitting down and finishing the task with a clump of grass.

His poetic mood dispelled, Farnor strode on sourly, content for the time being to be earthbound; neither slayer of beasts nor Teller of tales, but a plain, ordinary farmer’s son out looking after his father’s sheep.

He was still so minded when he eventually came to the end of his journey: the place where, a little earlier, he had chosen to fight the ravening sheep-worrier.

‘That will be far enough,’ his father had said. It was his usual admonition; unelaborated, but laden with meaning. Farnor leaned on his staff and stared up the valley.

This was the last rolling hummock before the mountains began to assert their presence on the terrain, closing in darkly and rising steep and rugged out of the lush greenery. But it was more than that: it was, to Farnor, the boundary of the known land. Just as beyond the valley and the village lay a strange and alien world best kept at bay, so beyond this point lay a forbidden world, a world of unspoken dangers and strange menace.

As ever when he was here Farnor imagined how easy it would be to walk down the grassy slope in front of him and begin the climb up towards the head of the valley. The thought gave him a not unpleasant shiver of fear, but he could no more take that first step than he could fly.

Such a journey would take him first to the old castle.

The King’s castle stood stark and desolate, keeping a blank-eyed watch over the valley and, though long abandoned, it was still spoken of only with lowered voices by the villagers. Then beyond that were the caves. Caves that were said to wind down through steep, intricate tunnels into the bowels of the mountains to dark and secret vaults where lay unheard-of terrors; terrors from the ancient times that slept as the world had become civilized but which might be awakened again by the blundering of the unwary. And beyond that yet, never spoken of save by the children in their world of whispering and wonder, was the eerie, silent tree-filled gorge that led to the land of the Great Forest to the north. The land where even the people were different, and where who knew what other creatures dwelt?

For a moment Farnor suddenly felt himself to be constrained, bound by unseen ties. He sensed a part of him struggling, crying out inarticulately.

He drew in a sharp breath, as if someone had dashed cold water in his face, so unexpected and vivid was this sensation. Briefly the mountains became mountains and the castle a castle, then, once again, they were the mountains, the castle, and the images he saw were those of his upbringing.

Yet . . . not quite so. Something was different. Something seemed to have changed.

He shook his head. You’re hungry, he thought.

Swinging his pack off his shoulder he turned towards his favourite seat: a small rocky outcrop which hid him from the ominous region to the north and on which he could sit and lean back and look down the valley.

He settled down with relish and fumbled with the straps on his pack without looking at them. Ahead of him, green fields, white-dotted with sheep and outcropping rocks, lay vivid in the spring sunshine. The shadows of the few small clouds passing overhead marched slowly but resolutely across all obstacles, and the air was filled with the susurrant whispering of distant rustling trees, tumbling streams and the soft shifting of countless wind-stirred grasses and shrubs. Occasionally an isolated sound rose above this harmony: a sheep, a hoarse croak from one of the great black birds that circled high above, the buzz of some passing insect.

Don’t go to sleep again, Farnor cautioned himself, as he felt the valley’s peace seeping into him.

He sat up and began to concentrate on his food.

After a mere mouthful, however, another matter forced itself upon him, setting aside both appetite and any chance of slipping into sleep. Only a few paces ahead of him the grass was streaked with blood.

What had a little earlier been an exciting daydream was a more sober, not to say frightening, reality. With almost incongruous care he laid the piece of bread he had been eating back in his pack, stood up and walked hesitantly over to the stained grass.

As he neared it he saw more blood. And the grass was crushed. Something had been dragged across it recently. A faint sense of excitement began to return, but it was mingled unevenly with alarm. Then duty and his native common sense took command. He had been sent out to check on the sheep. It was one of the responsibilities that his father had entrusted to him. This was probably no more than a rabbit killed by a fox, but he must have a look around just to be sure, and then he could return to his father and tell him what he had seen and what he had done about it.

He found himself walking along quite a distinctive trail.

It was a lot of blood for a rabbit.

He bent down and pulled something that had snagged on a gorse bush.

And that wasn’t rabbit’s fur . . .

His face wrinkled in distress. He was going to find a sheep. One that might perhaps have injured itself. But that was his head talking; his stomach was beginning to tell him something else.

And it was correct. He was at the end of his search: the remains of a sheep, its body rent open and its exposed entrails scattered recklessly about. In obscene contrast to the stark stillness of the animal, the gaping wound was crawlingly alive with flies, a shifting shroud glittering iridescent blue-black in the bright sunlight.

As Farnor approached, the writhing mass disintegrated and rose up in front of him in a noisy black cloud. He flailed his arms angrily and pointlessly.

Then, as if released by the departure of the flies, the smell struck him and he took an involuntary step backwards. He swore at his reaction. He’d seen enough dead animals and encountered enough smells in his days.

Except this was peculiarly awful.

And the damage to the sheep . . .

It was – had been – a good-sized animal, certainly no weak and ailing stray. And there was a lot of it missing. He had seen worried sheep before, although he had been much younger, but this seemed to be different. Whatever had killed it must indeed have been large and powerful.

Farnor looked around to see if there was any other sign the creature had left that would help his father and the villagers in the hunt they must surely now mount.

But there was nothing. Not even an indication as to which way the creature had gone, no footprints on the short grass, no damage to the nearby shrubbery, nothing.

Farnor was not unduly disappointed. His earlier, dramatic flight of fancy about the animal was now far from his mind. Dreamer he might be from time to time, but the hard-headed farm helper within him knew enough about the reality of wild animals not to wish to meet such a one as this alone, and so far from help. He must get back and tell his father what he had seen.

A sudden sound made him start. He turned round quickly, his heart racing.

The sound came again.

Something was coming through the shrubbery towards him. Something large.

Chapter 2

Wide-eyed and fearful, Farnor stepped back and swung his staff up to point at the rustling shrubbery.

The noise came nearer. Farnor stepped back further to give himself more space in which to manoeuvre. Whatever might be coming towards him, he knew that to attempt to flee from a predator would be to draw it after him inexorably.

The shrubbery parted.

‘Rannick!’ Farnor exclaimed in a mixture of anger and relief as he lowered his staff. ‘You frightened me to death.’

The newcomer’s lip curled peevishly. It was his characteristic expression. He ignored Farnor’s outburst.

‘What’re you doing up here, young Yarrance?’ he said, twisting Farnor’s family name into a sneer.

Despite his relief at encountering a person instead of some blood-crazed animal, Farnor took no delight in Rannick’s arrival. Few in the community liked the man but, for reasons he could not identify, Farnor felt a particular, and deep, antipathy to him. It was not without some irony, however, that while on the whole Rannick reciprocated the community’s opinion of him he seemed to have a special regard for Farnor – in so far as he had regard for anyone. For although life had not presented Rannick with any special disadvantages, his general demeanour exuded the bitterness and envy of a man unjustly dispossessed of some great fortune. When he spoke, it was as if to praise or admire something would be to risk choking himself to death. And when he undertook a task it was as if to create something willingly, or for its own sake, might wither his hands.

‘Don’t let him near the cows,’ Farnor’s mother would say if she saw him wandering near the farm. ‘That face of his will sour the milk for a week.’

He had wilfully neglected the quite adequate portion of land that his father had left him and now he earned his keep by casual labouring on the valley farms and, it was generally agreed, by some judicious thieving and poaching, though he had never been caught at such.

Worse, it was rumoured that on his periodic disappearances from the valley he was thick with travellers and the like from over the hill.

Apart from his invariably unpleasant manner however, perhaps his most damning feature was his intelligence; his considerable intelligence. In others such a gift would have been a boon, an affirmation, but in Rannick it was what truly set him apart. It gleamed with mocking scorn in his permanently narrowed eyes when they were not full of anger or malice, and it could lend a keen and vicious edge to his tongue, too subtle to provoke an immediate angry rebuke but cruel and long-lasting in its wounding nonetheless.

And, perhaps, there were other things.

Farnor remembered a soft, incomplete conversation between his mother and father overheard one night when he had crept down the stairs to eavesdrop on that mysterious world of adult life that awoke only as the children went to sleep.

‘Rannick has his grandfather in him, I’d swear. He knows and sees more than the rest of us.’ His father’s voice, muffled.

Ear close to the door, Farnor had sensed his mother nodding in agreement. ‘It’s to be hoped not,’ she said. ‘Not with that dark nature of his. It’ll do neither him nor anyone else any good.’

And that had been all. But unspoken meanings had permeated the words, and something deep in Farnor’s unease about Rannick had resonated to them.

‘I’m tending the sheep,’ he replied to Rannick’s question.

‘Not doing such a good job, are you?’ Rannick retorted, nudging the dead sheep with his foot and making the flies swarm upwards again. This time they did not travel far, but settled back to their noisome business almost immediately.

Farnor grimaced but said nothing. He looked at Rannick’s angular, unshaven face, his unkempt black hair and his generally soiled appearance. He was like someone that Yonas might have described as a bandit or some other kind of a villain in one of his tales.

And yet, even as he watched Rannick examining the sheep, he felt that the man was not without a quality of some kind: a strange, inner strength or purposefulness. And, too, he noted almost reluctantly, that with a little cleaning up he might even be quite handsome; that he could perhaps serve as much as a hero as a villain in such a tale.

Abruptly the flies flew up again, surrounding Rannick. He swore profanely and Farnor’s new vision of him disappeared. Then Rannick snapped his fingers. Or at least that was what Farnor thought he did, though the movement he made was very swift and the sound was odd . . . strangely loud, and yet distant. Almost as if it were in a different place.

For an instant Farnor felt disorientated: as though he had been suddenly jolted awake as sometimes happened to him when he was hovering halfway between sleep and waking. As he recovered he found Rannick gazing at him, his eyes searching him intently.

‘What’s the matter?’ Farnor heard him say.

‘Nothing,’ Farnor replied as casually as he could, waving a hand vaguely. ‘I . . . don’t like the flies.’

Rannick sneered dismissively and, muttering something to himself, turned back to the sheep. Farnor noticed, however, that the flies were gone from both the corpse and Rannick. They were hovering in a dark shifting cloud some way away, almost as if they were being constrained there or were too fearful to venture closer. And he sensed that Rannick was observing him in some way, even though he seemed to be totally occupied by his examination of the sheep. Briefly, his disorientation returned.

‘What are you looking for?’ he ventured after a moment in an attempt to recover himself. Rannick did not reply, but bent forward and retrieved something from the sheep’s fleece. He looked at it closely and then he lifted it to his nose and sniffed at it. It was a peculiarly repellent action. Farnor grimaced.

‘I . . . I’ll have to get back,’ he stammered, stepping back as he felt his stomach beginning to heave. Only the fear of Rannick’s mockery prevented him from vomiting there and then.

Again, Rannick did not reply. Instead he stood up and moved his head from side to side like an animal searching for a scent. Farnor felt the unseen observation pass from him.

‘I’ll have to get back,’ he said again, continuing to retreat. ‘Tell my father what’s happened. He’ll need to know. And the others . . . they’ll want to hunt this thing . . .’

Still Rannick said nothing. He was looking to the north, still, so it seemed, scenting the wind.

Farnor turned and began to run. Not so fast as to appear to be frightened, he hoped, but sufficient to emphasize the urgency of his message. He needed the movement and the wind in his face to quieten his churning stomach. He did not look back until he knew he would no longer be able to see Rannick on the skyline.

* * * *

The farmhouse of Garren and Katrin Yarrance was little different from any other in the valley, though its stone walls were somewhat thicker than most and its thatched roof a little steeper, in deference to the fact that it was the highest farm up the valley and tended to receive more of the winter snows than those lower down.

The Yarrance family land was not particularly good but it was quite extensive, having grown through the generations as less able, or less fortunate, families had gradually given up the struggle to eke a living from those farms that were then even higher up the valley.

Land ownership, however, was not a matter of great sensitivity to the valley dwellers. Not much was fenced, and cattle, sheep and people roamed fairly freely. The valley was big enough to feed everyone who lived in it and that was all that really mattered.

In any event, technically, the land belonged to the King, being let on lease and liable to the payment of an annual tithe. This was calculated from an ancient and very arcane formula, which approximated (very roughly) to one seventeenth of the dairy produce, a nineteenth of all grains and harvestable grasses, and a sixteenth of all meat produce on alternate years except in the year of a coronation or in the event of invasion or eclipse. (There were also exemptions for some produce and special levies for others during those years in which the King and his family, to first cousin, were blessed with children or diminished by death). Root crops were exempt, as were strawberries and apples (except where grown for purposes of barter), but not raspberries or pears. All individual tithings were doubled in respect of any produce used in the making of spirituous liquors (of any character, save those used medicinally).

After that, matters became complicated.

How this fiscal wisdom had been so succinctly distilled was beyond anyone’s current knowledge, and, indeed, there were only a few left in the valley who could even attempt to calculate the due tithe. And they rarely agreed on the final answer.

Not that any of this was of great concern, for just as Garren Yarrance’s farm was at the extremity of the valley, so the valley itself was at the extremity of the kingdom, and not only did little or no news of kingly affairs ever reach them, neither did the tithe gatherers. Or at least they had not done so for many years.

Views were divided on this benison.

‘The tithe should be collected,’ said some. ‘It is the King’s due and if the gatherers come and there’s nothing prepared, then the penalty could be harsh.’

This could not be denied and was a cause of much furrowing of brows amongst those advocating this course. Others, less cautious, thought differently.

‘The King’s got no need for our small offering, else the gatherers would have been around fast enough,’ they declared. ‘And in any case, we haven’t had a tithe master in living memory. How are we supposed to know what’s due? We can’t prepare for collection what we don’t know about, can we?’

This was a telling point and invariably provoked much sage nodding, even amongst their opponents.

‘Nevertheless . . .’ came the final rebuttal, uttered with great significance but never completed. It needed no completion. The penalties for non-payment of the tithe were indeed severe, and not something to be risked lightly, especially as the tithe, calculated by whatever method, was not particularly onerous.

The debate had reached the status now of being an annual ritual, and so too had the conclusion. On the due date, Dalmas Eve, the estimated tithe would be ceremoniously prepared in the tithe barn for collection by the King’s gatherers and the barn officially sealed by the senior village elder.

Although many matters relating to the tithe were contended amongst the villagers, all, both ignorant and knowledgeable, knew for certain that the gatherers having failed to appear on Dalmas Day or Dalmas Morrow meant that the King had munificently returned the tithe to his loyal subjects.

Thus, three days into Dalmastide, no gatherers having appeared, the seals would be solemnly broken and the barn opened.

With continued solemnity, a short speech of gratitude would be made to the generosity of the absent monarch and then a portion of the tithe would be distributed to those whose crops had fared least well and those who could not properly fend for themselves from whatever cause. That done, the solemnity faded rapidly and the barn would become a market place filled with loud haggling and bartering over the remaining produce. This would be followed by a large and usually raucous banquet.

During the fourth day of Dalmastide the village – indeed the whole valley – was invariably unusually quiet.

It was the approach of Dalmas, rather than any concern about sheep worrying, that had prompted Garren Yarrance to send his son out to check on the sheep, and he was leaning on a gate pondering the extent of his contribution to the tithe this year when Farnor came into sight over the top of a nearby hill.

Garren clicked his tongue reproachfully as he watched his son running and jumping down the steep hillside.

How many times had he told the lad not to run? ‘You stumble and fall, break a leg, then where are we, your mother and me? Tending you and doing your work, that’s where. Or getting into debt paying someone else to do it.’ He would pause. ‘That’s always minding we find you, or that old Gryss can put you together again if we do.’

It was a litany that he himself had learned, from his own father, as doubtless he in his turn had from his. And Farnor ignored it similarly.

Garren changed the emphasis somewhat as Farnor reached him, sweating and breathless. ‘Very good, son,’ he said. ‘You save ten minutes by risking life and limb to bring me an urgent tale, then I have to wait for ten minutes before you can speak.’

But the reproach faded from his voice even while he was speaking as Farnor’s agitation became apparent. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, as much man to man as father to son.

Farnor told his tale.

Garren scowled. He had hoped that, the last attack having been some months ago, the dog responsible would have moved on, but now there would have to be a hunt. There was always the risk that there might be more than one dog and that raised the spectre of their breeding and thus turning a problem into a nightmare.

‘What was Rannick doing out there?’ he asked absently as his mind went over what was to be done next.

‘I don’t know,’ Farnor replied. ‘I didn’t ask.’ He shied away from describing Rannick’s behaviour. ‘I don’t like him. He’s strange.’

Garren wrinkled his nose. ‘He’s not the most pleasant of men, that’s true,’ he said. ‘But some people are like that. Never content with what they have. Always wanting something else, then still miserable when they’ve got it. He’s probably quite a sad soul at heart.’

Farnor curled his lip in dismissal of this verdict. ‘Well he can be sad on his own, then,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t disturb me if he went on his wanderings and never came back. He makes my skin crawl sometimes.’

Garren looked at his son again, considering some reproach for his harsh tone, but the simple openness of Farnor’s response forbade it and instead he reached out and patted him sympathetically on the arm.

‘Not a nice sight, is it, a mangled sheep,’ he said. ‘Go inside and make yourself presentable then we’ll go into the village and see old Gryss.’

* * * *

Old Gryss was the senior elder of the village: the one who got things done. He mended broken limbs and cracked heads, cured sick animals, extracted teeth, settled quarrels and generally organized the villagers whenever organization was needed. He was also one of the few villagers who, when younger, had travelled beyond the valley; been over the hill, seen towns and even, it was said, cities.

‘Noisy, smelly, and too crowded,’ was all that he would say about such places however, whenever he was asked directly. Though, in his cups, he would sometimes regale his audience with tales of his adventures, albeit somewhat incoherently.

The sun had fallen behind the mountains when Garren and Farnor reached Gryss’s cottage, and the few clouds drifting overhead were slowly turning pink. The cottage was not unlike its occupant, having a thick but rather scruffy thatch lowering over two sparklingly bright, polished windows and a hunched and slightly skewed appearance due to its original builder having been both wall-eyed and too fond of his ale.

An iron ring hung from a chain by the door. It was attached to a small bell. Garren took hold of it but did not pull it immediately.

‘He brought this back from his travels, you know,’ he said. ‘Heaven knows how many people have tugged on it through the years, but it’s not shown a scrap of wear. I’d give something for a plough made of the same.’

Farnor, familiar with this oft-repeated parental wish, gave the ring a casual glance for politeness’ sake. Gryss had many relics of his wandering days and, over the years, Farnor had been made tediously familiar with all of them.

Then, on an impulse, he took the ring from his father and looked at it more closely. As if for the first time, he saw the finely etched rows of tiny figures that decorated it. They were warriors, some on horseback with lances and some on foot carrying long spears. They were amazingly detailed and lifelike and, as Farnor moved the ring to examine it further, it seemed to him that they were alive with movement. For a moment he felt he was inside the scene. It was a lull in a terrible battle. A waiting for a final, brutal onslaught from an enemy who . . .

‘It’s a lucky charm.’

Gryss’s familiar, authoritative voice made Farnor jump. The old man had opened the door silently and was standing watching Farnor’s scrutiny of the ring. Startled, Farnor let it fall. The chain rattled as the ring bounced then swung to and fro, and the bell rang slightly. Thus summoned, an old, sleepy-eyed dog emerged from behind Gryss’s legs, gave a desultory bark into the evening and then turned back into the cottage.

Garren laughed at his son’s discomfiture.

‘You’d think he’d never seen it before,’ he said.

‘Where did you get it from?’ Farnor asked, almost rudely. His father raised his eyebrows and was about to intervene when Gryss answered the question.

‘From over the hill, young Farnor,’ he said. ‘Off a trader from a land far, far away. Could hardly understand a word he said, though he managed to wring a rare price from me for it. Said it would protect me . . . I think.’ He chuckled at his youthful folly, then lifted up the ring and gazed at it. ‘Worth it, though. It took my fancy and it’s a fine piece of work.’

‘And a fine piece of iron,’ Garren added, reverting to practicalities. ‘Those lines are as sharp as they ever were.’

Gryss nodded. ‘Indeed they are,’ he said, his voice suddenly distant.

A brief awkward silence hung over the group, then Gryss said, ‘Anyway, what brings you to my humble cottage, with the prospect of a dark journey home ahead of you? No broken limbs by the look of you. And you’re not a man for picking quarrels with your neighbours.’ He hunched forward and stared at Farnor. ‘Toothache, perhaps?’ he said.

Farnor edged behind his father a little.

Before Garren could reply, however, Gryss stepped back and beckoned them inside. As they followed him through a small hallway and into a room at the back of the cottage, the old dog trundled forward again, sniffed at each of them and gave another dutiful bark before retiring, apparently for the evening by its demeanour, to a basket in the corner.

Gryss waved his visitors towards a bench by a long, well-scrubbed table. He sat down opposite them and looked at them expectantly.

‘Farnor was checking the sheep for the tithe when he found another one worried,’ Garren said, without preamble. ‘I think we’ll have to get a hunt together.’

Gryss frowned. ‘Tell me exactly what you found,’ he said to Farnor.

Farnor told his tale for the second time.

Gryss’s frown darkened. ‘It sounds like the others and it sounds bad,’ he said. ‘It’s something big all right, and it looks as if it intends to stay. I’ll have a word with Rannick when he appears, see if he saw anything that Farnor might have missed, then we’ll have to organize a hunt as you say.’

As they left Gryss’s cottage Farnor let his hand run over the iron ring again. Though he could not see them clearly in the dying daylight, he could feel the etched lines, fine and hard; the strange touch of the world over the hill. Heroic deeds captured in fine craftsmanship. Perhaps not everything out there was darkness and suspicion, he thought, unexpectedly.

Gryss’s parting words to his father interrupted his reverie. ‘Don’t send him out alone again, Garren,’ he was saying. ‘And don’t go out alone yourself.’

* * * *

Deep in the cold darkness, a black-in-black shadow stirred uneasily.

Mingling with the scents that had returned with it was one it had known before. Long before . . . if it had ever known what time was.

With it came the desires that it had known before. Desires that it had long forgotten . . . if it had ever known what memory was. Ancient, black desires that fulfilled its heart and made it whole . . . it understood desires.

The scent came.

And went.

Elusive. Tormenting.

Deep in the darkness came a low, menacing growl that had not been heard for countless generations.

Chapter 3

The prospect of a hunt might have been a source of some irritation to the adults of the valley, but to the young men and the boys it offered the prospect of considerable excitement although the former affected a haughty indifference to it.

And even the men were making little effort to keep their faces stern as they gathered a few mornings later at Garren’s farm with their various dogs and a motley assortment of weapons. There were pitchforks, spades, hatchets, billhooks, even a rusty old sword or two and, of course, the inevitable bows. There were also more than a few ale jugs in evidence.

Gryss looked at them dubiously and then laid down the law sternly.

‘No bows,’ he declared.

There were injured protests.

Gryss gave his reasons without any concession to the finer feelings of his audience.

‘There’s not one of you could hit a cottage end from ten paces, sober. The last time bows went out on a hunt we lost the dog we were after and brought down two beaters and three ewes.

It was somewhat of an exaggeration but not entirely unfair. With all their needs being well met from their farming, hunting skills were generally not required by the valley people.

Denials rose among the continuing protests.

Gryss met them full on. ‘Half of you don’t know which hand to let go of,’ he expanded heatedly.

Hackles rose even further and rebellion seemed imminent. Gryss’s eyes narrowed and his shoulders rose as if he were about to push a large weight. Then he seemed to concede and, swinging his pack off his shoulder, he began rooting around in it.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to argue with you, but . . .’ He pulled a long-bladed and lethal-looking knife from his pack and squinted knowledgeably along its edge. Then he breathed on it and slowly and deliberately whetted it on his sleeve. ‘If I’m going to be gouging arrows out of people . . .’ He made a laboured, scooping gesture with the knife as he laid emphasis on the word ‘gouging’. ‘Then I’ll be needing this. And . . .’ He turned to Garren. ‘Lend me one of your boring irons and some good dry kindling would you, Garren? Or, better still, a few sunstones if you can spare them so that we can get some real heat. It’s always best to seal those big wounds in the field. Better a little discomfort than bleeding to death on the way home.’

Interest in archery waned abruptly, as did the protests, and soon the bows and quivers were leaning against the wall of Garren’s farmhouse.

Gryss allowed himself no victory celebration, but turned immediately to the next skirmish. ‘And you needn’t think you’re coming, Marna,’ he said, pointing a curved arm over the heads of the group. ‘I can see you there, trying to be inconspicuous.’

The small crowd parted to reveal a black-haired figure with what could have been a handsome face had it not been for its defiant glowering and a mouth wavering between a grim line and a pout. There was expectant amusement among the crowd and even the dogs fell silent.

Gryss threw up his hands in despair. ‘Look at you in those clothes!’ he said. ‘You look like a boy, for heaven’s sake. You should be home cleaning your father’s house, mending, cooking . . .’

The girl interrupted him with an angry gesture. ‘The house is clean, nothing needs mending and my father’s downland cutting reeds,’ she said, her voice as defiant as her appearance.

‘He wants to cut a thick one and lay it across your backside,’ Gryss muttered, though very softly. ‘Yes. And I’ve got to look him in the face when he gets back,’ he went on, louder. ‘I don’t want to be telling him his daughter’s been savaged by some wild animal.’

‘What’s going to savage anyone with all you around?’ Marna retorted, her tone witheringly dismissive. ‘It’s only some stupid dog we’ll be chasing.’

Gryss cringed inwardly. Having had no mother that she could recall, and a gentle, slightly lost father who was as compliant as the canes he wove into baskets and stools, Marna was wild, outspoken and prodigiously self-willed. That she was also large-hearted and generous in her nature served only to make her more difficult to deal with when she chose to stand her ground.

‘You’re not coming,’ Gryss declaimed, with as much an air of finality as he could muster, though, as ever with Marna, he could feel the argument slipping from him. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

‘It’s only a dog, for pity’s sake, Gryss,’ Marna reiterated. Her look darkened further. ‘You don’t want me along because I’ll probably find it while you’re all swilling ale. The only chance of me getting hurt is through one of you falling on top of me.’

All eyes turned back to Gryss. He clutched at a straw. ‘It might be a bear,’ he said.

The eyes returned to Marna. Her hands came to her hips and she shook her head in mock weariness at having to deal with such blatant foolishness.

‘Bear, my behind!’ she snorted.

Laughter erupted around her, coupled with shouts of encouragement. Marna’s cheeks coloured. One swain reached out as if to tug at her trousers, but retreated rapidly to avoid a ferocious blow. The dogs began barking again.

Gryss smiled, but did not join in the laughter. He shook his head. ‘You can come, Marna,’ he said, unable to take advantage of his inadvertent victory over her. ‘But stay by me and Garren.’

The party thus set out in a mood of some merriment, wending its way through the morning sunshine and leaving a dark trail through the dew-sodden grass.

It was a while before they reached the place where Farnor had found the dead sheep and, as a result of stopping once or twice to enable the slower members to ‘catch their wind’, some of the party were already unsteady.

The remains of the sheep, however, sobered them. The corpse was a little smaller than it had been when Farnor had first found it, but it was alive with crawling activity and the extent of the damage caused by the predator was vividly displayed. The increasingly warm sun did nothing to improve the scene.

The dogs, restrained some distance away, whined. Looking again at the destruction wrought on the animal, Farnor was glad that his father had decided not to bring their own dogs on the hunt, and Gryss unthinkingly laid a protective arm on Marna’s shoulder. She made no protest.

‘It was big,’ someone said eventually, voicing everyone’s concern. Then hesitantly, ‘It couldn’t be a bear, I suppose?’

Another voice sniggered, ‘Bear my behind,’ nervously, but the buzzing air sustained no humour.

‘No,’ Gryss said at last. ‘We’d have seen more sign by now if it was a bear. No . . . It’ll be some big dog wandered in from . . . somewhere.’ He waved vaguely towards the mountains. ‘But this is worse than the others we’ve lost. It could be two dogs. We must find it . . . or them . . . and we mustn’t take any chances.’ He became more businesslike. ‘We’ll work in groups of four. Whatever you do, don’t split up. And if you happen to stumble on anything, don’t be a hero. Whistle us all in first.’

No one seemed inclined to dispute this advice and, after some further discussion, the party split into its various groups.

Gryss remained by the dead sheep with Garren, Farnor and Marna.

‘Did Rannick have anything to say?’ Garren asked.

‘I haven’t seen him since you told me about this,’ Gryss replied, offhandedly. ‘I’ve no idea where he is. Probably gone wandering off again. You know the way he is.’

Garren nodded. ‘God knows why he was out here in the first place,’ he said, his face puzzled. ‘But you’d imagine even he had enough sense of responsibility to help us find whatever did this. He’s got quite a nose for tracking.’

Gryss frowned. ‘Rannick’s Rannick,’ he said, as if reluctant to pursue the matter. ‘He’d be out here for no good, you can rest assured on that. The man’s not just irresponsible, he’s bad.’

Garren looked sharply at the elder and then, briefly, at Farnor and Marna. Farnor knew that it was his and Marna’s presence that prevented his father from reproaching Gryss for this complete and uncharacteristic condemnation. For a moment he considered taxing the old man himself, but the thought faded even as it formed. Marna might be able to handle Gryss up to a point but, for all her outspoken ways, she was a girl – or a woman, as she would protest – and thus allowed far more latitude than he would be. Besides, Gryss’s words were flaring up like a beacon for him, casting the shadow that Rannick threw across his mind into even darker relief. He realized that he agreed with Gryss’s verdict. Agreed with it totally.

Gryss cut across Farnor’s thoughts. ‘Rannick?’ he asked, flicking his hand towards some damage in the nearby shrubbery.

Farnor nodded. Gryss looked around. By now, almost all of the villagers had disappeared from view in the rolling terrain, though an occasional shout could be heard.

‘We’ll go this way,’ he said.

Farnor’s stomach tightened. Gryss was pointing to the north. He glanced at his father, but Garren showed no surprise at this decision. In fact, he was agreeing. Farnor made an effort to keep the surprise and excitement from his face in case Marna saw it.

Gryss instructed as they walked down from the top of the rise. The remarks were ostensibly addressed to Farnor, but they were for everyone’s benefit. ‘The ground’s mostly too hard for tracks, but there’ll be the odd muddy patch which might be helpful, so watch where you’re walking. And keep your eyes open for any broken branches or bits of snagged fur.’

Farnor tightened his grip on his staff and his mind began to wander. He would be like one of the figures etched on the iron ring that hung from Gryss’s door: grim-faced and unyielding as he waited for the enemy’s final assault. Once again he would vanquish the monstrous sheep-slayer – several sheep-slayers – in a great battle. Or perhaps he might die heroically saving Marna from its cruel jaws . . .

He coloured at this unexpected thought and brought himself sharply back to the present. Surreptitiously he glanced at his companions in case he might have given some outward sign of this strange notion: especially to Marna. But there were no knowing looks being directed at him and he congratulated himself on a fortunate escape. Concentrate, hero, he thought.

The temperature rose as they dropped further down the hillside and moved out of the mild breeze that was drifting over the top. Their pace slowed.

Looking about him diligently, Farnor could see nothing untoward: occasional sheep tracks looking deceptively like man-made pathways, rocky outcrops, gorse, ferns, white and purple spring flowers, birds and insects flitting hither and thither. In fact this new terrain they were exploring was little different from the rest of the valley.

At the bottom of the slope a small stream dribbled by and the ground became softer.

‘Look around carefully,’ Gryss said. ‘See if you can find any unusual tracks.’

They spread out and moved through the squelching turf.

Farnor could see nothing other than the footprints of sheep in the muddier areas, except for the occasional skittering trail of some small animal and the busy, narrow scratches left by worm-hunting birds.

‘Here.’

It was Garren.

The other three converged on him. He was pointing his staff at a row of footprints.

‘You didn’t come down here, did you, Farnor?’ Gryss asked.

Farnor shook his head. ‘No, never,’ he said.

‘It’s Rannick then,’ Gryss said, none too pleasantly. ‘Damn his eyes.’

This time the presence of Farnor and Marna did not restrain Garren. Farnor respected his father’s sense of justice.

‘I know you don’t like the man, Gryss,’ he said. ‘But you seem more than usually set against him today.’

Gryss grunted by way of an answer, then he waved the party forward again. Farnor looked ahead and then instinctively back for some landmark to guide him should he become lost and have to return alone.

They followed Rannick’s footprints as far as they could and then continued in the direction they had been leading when they finally disappeared.

After a while Garren spoke. His voice was soft but Farnor could hear the concern in it. ‘This way will take us . . .’ He did not finish his sentence, but looked significantly at Gryss.

Gryss nodded, but again did not reply, and the party went on for some time in silence.

‘It’s not just today,’ he said abruptly. ‘It’s been growing for some time. Years, perhaps. He’s getting worse.’

‘Who?’ Garren asked, puzzled.

‘Rannick, of course,’ Gryss replied, almost irritably. ‘And what you call my dislike for him.’

Garren shook his head as he recollected his own question. ‘What do you mean?’

Gryss hunched up his shoulders and his bright eyes became almost menacing. ‘He’s getting worse,’ he repeated. ‘More unpleasant, more argumentative, more unhelpful.’

‘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, cocking 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.’

Chapter 4

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.

This certainty sustained him daily, yet, too, though he had not the perception to realize it, it burdened him; for the expectation it bred twisted and turned within him endlessly, and constantly drew his heart away from matters of the moment. Rannick lived ever in his own future, his joys marred, his miseries heightened.

Abruptly his elation vanished and his mood lurched into darkness. He clenched his fists in familiar frustration as the reality of his circumstances impinged on him with its usual relentless inevitability.

Where was this greatness to come from? And, above all, when?

Soon it would be Dalmas again. Like the other annual festivals celebrated in the valley, Dalmas had meant little to him for most of his life, except as an excuse to do even less work than he normally did and an opportunity to eat and drink not only more than usual, but at the expense of others. Over the last few years, however, it had also begun to serve as a reminder that he was yet another year older. Its imminence invariably served to sour his manner even further.

A year older and still bound to this place, his life remaining resolutely unchanged while his ambition burgeoned with time. Indeed the reality of his life was probably becoming worse, so increasingly at odds with the people of the valley was he growing.

He looked back down the valley again. This place where his family had always been mistrusted – feared, even; as near outcast as could be without actually being so. Only his grandfather had escaped this treatment.

He gazed at his hands. Part of him wanted to be like his grandfather – a healer – a person thought highly of; someone at whom people smiled whenever they met him strolling through the village. With Rannick they would turn surreptitiously away rather than risk catching his eye and be obliged to acknowledge him.

It was a small and diminishing part, though. What the greater part of him wanted was to increase the power that had come down to him from the darker reaches of his ancestry. But here his grandfather’s presence intruded more forcefully. The old man’s words, spoken to him long ago when he was very young, had burned into him like fire and were as fresh now as they had been then.

Eyes had looked deep into him, dominating him, pinioning him. He had never known such total helplessness before, even when his father had beaten him, seemingly endlessly, with his thick leather belt. Yet, and to his bewilderment, the eyes were also full of affection and concern.

‘You have it, Rannick. You have our family’s taint.’ He remembered something inside him struggling, as if it wanted to avoid discovery, but it seemed that nothing could escape the searching eyes. The words went on. ‘It is no blessing, Rannick, and never think it so. However it shows itself, set it aside, ignore it, bury it, let it wither and die. It is master, not servant. It will deceive. And it will enslave you utterly.’

But even as his grandfather had spoken Rannick had sensed another presence within, far beyond his grandfather’s searching. A presence shining clear and bright like a single silver star in a golden evening sky. And with it came a voice; distant, too, but still sharp and certain. A voice that gave his grandfather’s words the lie; that showed Rannick the fear in the old man’s voice.

‘I am the light,’ it said. ‘The One True Light. Follow me.’

And still it shone, guiding him forward. A lodestone lure drawing him inexorably into the dark knowledge beyond knowing that his grandfather had declared tainted.

Rannick turned away from the mountains and the valley and slid down to the ground, his back solid against the rock he had been peering over. With the thought of his power came the desire to use it; to test himself again.

He extended his left hand.

Birds and insects nearby fell silent, though Rannick was oblivious to the change. The air around him began to stir and, slowly, small pebbles some way in front of him began to tumble over as if caught in a sudden breeze. Then larger stones began to move. And larger ones still. Rannick smiled and his narrow eyes widened. His mouth worked noiselessly.

He withdrew his hand. It would not be needed now. He felt the power rising from wherever it lay within him and moving through him to do his will.

‘It is no blessing, Rannick, and never think it so.’ His grandfather’s words returned to him as they always did at this point.

‘I am the One True Light,’ said his deeper guide.

I hear you. I see you. I will follow you. Rannick paid silent homage to his chosen mentor.

‘Set it aside, ignore it, bury it, let it wither and die. It is master, not servant. It will deceive. And it will enslave you utterly.’

‘No,’ Rannick whispered in defiance of the shade of his father’s father. ‘No. I smell your desperation now, old man. You feared me. Feared my power. As will others. This gift is mine. Given to me to use. And I will use it. I will use it!’

He felt himself amid the tumbling, rolling rocks. Touching each one, from the least grain to the largest boulder, effortlessly guiding, directing. They were his, utterly. His to lead to whatever destiny he chose.

He laughed breathlessly as he felt exhilaration rising within him. Then his rumbling charges began to move faster and faster, round and round, and he fell silent.

His face became ecstatic.

Abruptly, the circling movement ended and the captive stones and boulders hurtled straight into a nearby rock face. They struck with such force that several of them shattered. Rannick drove his fingernails into his palms.

Slowly, stillness returned to his eyrie and the breeze caught the dust rising from the commotion he had made and carried it gently away. It was like a soft healing hand, but it passed unnoticed. Rannick slumped forward. Sweat was forming on his forehead and he was weak and drained. It was ever thus. If only he could use the power without this awful weakness, then . . .

Vistas of a glorious future opened in front of him, but he ignored them. They were all too familiar and they had nothing to offer him other than to distract him and drag him down. He must follow his chosen discipline. He must look for what he had gained from this day’s work.

His skill was growing, he knew, as was the range and strength of the power he could exert. And, he confirmed to himself with growing satisfaction, although he felt battered and empty, his weakness was less than it would have been but a few months ago.

Something was happening. Something was in the air. Something new.

And even as the thought occurred to him, a strangeness touched his still-raw awareness.

Instantly, he became motionless and silent, like a hunter who has just seen his prey. Then, tentatively, he reached out and touched the strangeness again.

It was alive!

Hastily he withdrew the power. Had some oaf blundered up this way as part of the hunt and seen his display with the rocks? He struggled to his feet and gazed around fearfully. But there was no one in sight save the distant figures below.

No, he reassured himself after a moment. They might perhaps wander as far as the castle, but none of them would dare go beyond it, no matter how many sheep had been worried.

What was it he had touched then?

He reached out again; gently, carefully. This time the power felt different, as if that slight touch of a living thing and his response to it had transmuted it – or him – in some way. His exhaustion slipped from him, and he probed more confidently.

It was still there.

He sensed a vision through tangled, swaying branches. Felt an unconscious shifting of balance in the gently buffeting breeze.

It was a bird, he realized. Then, in confirmation, he felt alarm calls strangled in his throat. Felt the wings that would not move. Felt the fevered tremor of a tiny heart.

It was terrified.

Yet it did not fly away. Could not fly away. It sensed his touch, but it could not fly away!

It was in his thrall! Bound to and by him as totally as any of the lifeless rocks he had just sent hurtling to their destruction.

Come to me, he willed, drawing the bird towards him.

There was some kind of resistance that he could not identify, then he felt it yield. Wings fluttered and the balance shifted again. Come to me. He set forth his power more urgently.

Then, abruptly, there was nothing.

He held his breath. What had happened?

His eyes narrowed as he realized that the frantic tattoo of the tiny heart had stopped. Startled, he let his control slip.

The faint sound of something falling through the leaves in the trees nearby reached him, but Rannick would not have heard the roar of an avalanche, so loud was the exultation ringing in his head.

Throughout his life, following the voice beyond his grandfather’s, Rannick had applied himself to the development of his gift with an assiduity that would have made him a master of any craft had he studied it with the same intensity. Hitherto his progress had been marked by the movement of increasingly large objects at increasingly greater distances. Exhaustion had been the price paid for each use of the power, but even had this not begun to diminish with practice he would have tolerated it for the exhilaration that the use of the power gave him.

But now his progress had taken an entirely unexpected leap forward. He had touched a living creature. Touched it from within. Controlled it. Killed it!

For a long time, Rannick sat leaning against the rock, breathing heavily, his mind incoherent with the welter of feelings and ideas and schemes that were cascading through it. The rational part of him knew that he must retreat and rest; think. Above all he must think. The destiny that but minutes before had been quite certain, yet infinitely beyond him, was flittering tantalizingly amid this chaos. He had but to grasp it.

The turmoil, however, showed little inclination to diminish. With an effort he forced himself to stand up and to walk. It was no easy task; he was trembling from head to foot.

He shook his head in an attempt to clear it, but to no avail. The excitement burning through him seemed to be drawing its energy from some unquenchable source.

He must try again. Try immediately. Try to reach some other living creature. Learn. Learn now, while the power was so alive in him. He must not let this slip away.

He lurched forward in the direction of the nearby trees. Pebbles and stones jumped and bounced out of his path as he neared them, branches rustled away from him as if he were the heart of a great wind.

Though aware of this turmoil, Rannick ignored it, letting his power flit to and fro indiscriminately. He felt a myriad tiny scrabblings and burrowings, panic-stricken, terrified. Insects, worms, ants, all the inconsequential creatures of the woodland, he divined. But nothing larger. And yet there must be birds about, perhaps squirrels, even a fox . . .

He stopped and forced himself to become calmer.

The uproar in his mind silenced, the sounds around him began to impinge again. He leaned forward, listening carefully. Beneath the ceaseless rustle of the trees he began to detect other noises, though they were diminishing rapidly. There were cries and squeals, and the crackling of undergrowth being hastily swept aside and trodden underfoot.

They were fleeing! All those creatures that could do so were fleeing from him. Running from him as if he were a summer fire.

He smacked the edge of his clenched fist against a tree in both frustration and elation. The rough bark grazed his hand but he did not notice. They knew what he could do. The simple creatures of the forest knew. They needed no painstaking reasoning and explanation. No demonstrations. They did not have to struggle with disbelief. They had confirmed his new-found skill with their flight as effectively as if they had remained there to be hurled to and fro like the rocks themselves.

It was good.

Then his hand throbbed. He looked at it. The skin had been broken and peeled back slightly. Absently, he raised his hand to his mouth, bit off the torn skin and sucked the small, bleeding wound clean.

It was good, he thought again as he spat out the dead skin.

Good . . .

The sensation resonated in his mind as if it had echoed and re-echoed from some towering cliff face, and his mouth suddenly became alive with the taste of blood; bitter . . . warm . . .

Good . . .

For a moment terror flooded through him. As surely as he knew his own power when it reached out and touched things, so he knew now that that same power was reaching out and touching him.

The realization transformed his terror on the instant. No! His whole being cried out in rage. Grasses and bushes bowed flat before him and the branches of the trees around him swayed frantically. Somewhere, stones rattled. This could not be. This would not be. This was his gift, his power. He would share it with no one and he would destroy anyone who sought to use it against him.

He would destroy anyone who even possessed it.

The strange touch, however, was gone. Seemingly vanished at the instant of his furious inner cry.

Watchful, Rannick waited.

Slowly he sensed a faint shadow of the presence returning hesitantly. It was almost as if it were reluctant to depart.

Rannick gathered himself for a berserker onslaught to expunge this lingering remnant. The touch slithered away from his rage again. But it did not flee utterly. Rannick hesitated, curious now. He closed his eyes and covered his ears to shut out the sights and sounds around him so that he could better feel this strange presence that was both within and without him.

He sank to the ground, unwittingly increasing his isolation from his surroundings by crouching low and drawing his arms up over his head.

Cautiously he reached out. The presence moved away, wary, nervous. Yet Rannick sensed great strength in it; and its power was both the same and different from his own. It was more whole, more balanced, more assured. But it was also more feral, savage, unfettered.

It was an animal, he realized. A powerful, predatory, animal. Rannick’s curiosity grew. What kind of an animal could it be, and how could it have his power?

And why did it stay with him like this? What did it want?

Then amid the nervousness he began to sense something else. It was familiar, but it eluded him for a moment. Only gradually did he recognize it as subservience.

And need!

The presence lingered because it needed him in some way!

No sooner had he reached this conclusion than the character of the presence seemed to change. A profound, black sense of loneliness – eternal loneliness – passed over him. But for all that, it evoked no sympathy, for it was riddled through with a dreadful malice, a malice that Rannick found drawing a like response from somewhere deep within himself.

Whatever this creature was, it was a kindred spirit.

And it needed him.

A small part of him whispered tentatively, Why? but the question died almost before it could be formed. Deeper forces within Rannick were guiding him now. Forces that knew that this creature could serve their needs.

Yet Rannick knew that it was a fearful thing. Could it not in its turn become the master instead of the servant?

It was the last lingering doubt.

No. He had never encountered an animal that he could not master if need arose, with whip or with will. And this one had already accepted him as its superior. Powerful and savage this creature might be, but it would be his to command.

A malevolent glee swept over him as the presence began to fawn on him.

* * * *

Farnor and Marna were the first to join the growing group of hunters converging on the edge of a small lake. Garren and Gryss had again fallen behind despite the downhill slope.

The group had formed into a circle at the centre of which lay another brutally slaughtered sheep.

From the peaks above came a sound like distant thunder. Farnor’s flesh tingled.

‘Rock slide,’ someone said casually, and attention reverted to the dead animal.

Garren and Gryss arrived, the elder quietly pushing his way to the front of the circle. He bent over the remains of the sheep. ‘This hasn’t been dead as long as the other one,’ he pronounced after a brief inspection. ‘It’s getting hungrier.’

‘Or it’s just acquiring the taste,’ Garren said. Gryss nodded. it was irrelevant which. Both knew that the attacks on the sheep would now become more frequent.

‘It’s making itself at home,’ someone said, by way of confirmation.

Gryss looked up at the sun. ‘We’ve quite a lot of the day left. We must try and find it or we’ll be having to round up the flocks and set a night watch.’

This observation sobered even the merriest members of the group. A hunt was a hunt, but night watches were a different matter altogether. Dismal affairs at best. Small groups chosen by lot to mount guard on a few huddled sheep. Waiting silent through the cold, dark night, with no fire, no light, not even any talking to set aside the brooding presence of the unseen mountains. And certainly no ale. Fall asleep out there full of ale and glowing and, blanket or no, you could expect to wake up dead.

‘Where do we start?’ a young man asked. ‘There aren’t any tracks to follow.’

Gryss glowered at the speaker. ‘It’s a big dog, or more than one,’ he said, pointing at the corpse. ‘There’ll be signs somewhere if we bother to look properly. If not footprints, then fur snagged on the gorse or a bush. Or bits of this poor beast dropped somewhere. Just spread out carefully and keep your eyes open.’

Subdued, the hunters did as they were bidden.

‘What can we do?’ Farnor asked his father.

‘The same,’ Garren replied. ‘But keep us in sight.’

As Farnor made to walk away, Garren laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I mean that,’ he said sternly but softly so that Marna would not hear. ‘I don’t want you, by the way, drifting off into some thicket with milady there.’

Farnor coloured and opened his mouth to deny the implicit accusation, but too many protestations formed at once and culminated only in an incoherent stutter which Garren waved to silence. He repeated Gryss’s comments. ‘We have to find whatever’s killing these sheep as quickly as possible now, but it’s marked this place out as its territory and it’s liable to attack anyone who stumbles on it carelessly. So be alert. No foolishness of any kind. Do you understand?’

‘What’s the matter?’ Marna asked as Farnor joined her.

Farnor, still a little indignant, fought down a petulant ‘Nothing!’, and substituted, ‘He was just telling me to be careful.’

Marna looked at him and then back at the two men. They were laughing about something. Her eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.

Inexorably, Marna and Farnor’s search carried them back in the direction of the castle, though, in conscience, they were diligent in their duties, scanning the ground for signs of the passage of the predator. It was, however, with mixed feelings that Farnor noticed some flattened ferns at the edge of an overgrown area bounding the grassy slope up which he and Marna were walking.

He bent down to examine the damaged fronds. They were bloodstained.

‘I’ll call the others,’ Marna said and, putting two fingers in her mouth, she gave a piercing whistle.

‘Don’t touch it,’ she said. ‘The dogs might be able to pick up a scent.’

They did. But instead of a chorus of excited barking rising to greet this find, an oppressive silence fell on the group as each dog in its turn sniffed the ferns and then started back, ears flattened and tail curled deep between its legs. Some whimpered.

‘Leash them,’ Gryss said softly. ‘It looks like we’ll have to finish this without them.’

The dogs’ unease, though, had spread to the hunters and such enthusiasm as they still had waned markedly as they tied up their dogs.

‘So it’s big,’ Garren said, speaking the silent concern. ‘We knew that. We’ve got staves and axes enough for any dog, haven’t we, for pity’s sake? Do you really want to come back up here on night watches? Come on. Let’s find the damn thing and kill it.’ And without waiting for any debate, he plunged off through the ferns. Rather shamefacedly the others followed, some of them raising their spirits by roundly swearing at their dogs.

After his initial rush Garren soon slowed down for, large though it might have been, the animal had left little in the way of clear signs to follow: a broken stem here, long grass trampled there.

Then some fur snagged on a bush.

Garren untangled it and rubbed it pensively between his fingers. It was a mixture of black and dark brown and unusually coarse. He offered it to one of the dogs, but again the ears went back and the tail drooped, and the dog looked reproachfully at its master.

Garren pulled a rueful face as he straightened up and threw the fur away. ‘Well, at least with this colour it should be easy enough to spot,’ he said.

Farnor bent and picked up the fur as the group set off again. It had a peculiarly unpleasant feel to it, and he felt his skin crawling again just as it had when he had heard the rumble of the rock slide earlier.

He rubbed his right arm to still the sensation but his touch felt odd, as if both hand and arm were someone else’s, someone in a different place, at once near and far away. He glanced down, momentarily fearful. His arm and his hand looked as they felt, near yet distant; his, yet not his. Only the dark fur of the strange, slaughtering animal held in the familiar, alien fingers seemed to be truly real and present. Indeed, it was vividly present, as if it alone belonged here.

Something somewhere began to form the idea that he was light-headed with the sun and the walking and the excitement of events that day, but it faded into the background as, abruptly, a dreadful malevolence seemed to possess him.

That it was the spirit of the creature they were hunting he knew as surely as he knew his father and Gryss and the others about him, pressing forward through the ferns in their own distant world.

He heard the breath being drawn from him at the horror of the sensation, while at the same time he felt two responses rise within him like ill-matched horses drawing a wagon. Sword-swinging rage to destroy this abomination and all its ilk for ever. And pity for this creation, into which so much wilful evil had been nurtured.

Part of him reached out . . .

* * * *

Following a path of his own, Rannick faltered as the presence about him momentarily vanished, then returned, heightened tenfold and full of bloodlust and desire. Desire for vengeance.

* * * *

With a gasp, Farnor fell headlong forward.

Chapter 5

Many sounds filled the swimming darkness that was another place. Sounds and sensations. Clamouring, pushing. Unfocused and incoherent.

Confusion, bewilderment, concern. And, too, anger; human anger. And a different anger; a demented anger; an unfettered animal anger full of awful intent. The two were mingled in an unholy union.

Then they were gone, snatched away brutally. In their wake was a strange void that gradually filled with a myriad voices whispering and calling softly. There was a sense of a vast . . . family? filled with surprise and inquiry; and some disbelieving alarm. How could it have come here?

But that too drifted away . . . softer . . . and softer.

And then he was many people, staring, talking, anxious for the downed young man.

Mostly anxious.

And finally there was only confusion. Eddying to and fro, slipping tantalizingly into coherence then slipping away before it could be grasped. Until, slowly, a rhythm made its way through the swirling din and demanded attention. Drawing all to it like mountain streams to a valley lake.

‘Farnor. Farnor.’

Light entered the darkness, painfully bright.

And blue.

‘Farnor. Son.’

And he was back; the focus of a ring of worried faces centred by Gryss, head cocked on one side, and his father and Marna gazing down at him. The heavy scent of crushed ferns filling his nostrils.

He held up his hand and stared at it curiously. It was there, and solid, and, beyond debate, his. He felt unexpectedly relieved at the revelation.

‘Are you all right?’ His father’s voice impinged on his reverie.

Farnor looked up at him and smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What happened?’

‘You tell me what happened,’ Gryss replied, almost indignantly. ‘You fell over. You’ve been unconscious for a good few minutes.’

Farnor made to sit up but Gryss restrained him. ‘Give yourself a moment,’ he said. ‘It’s probably the heat. When did you eat last?’

Farnor scowled. A surge of rebellion stirred in him. He wouldn’t be treated like some sticky child out on his first round-up. The humiliation!

But a quieter part of him set the indignation aside.

He looked again at the watching faces. People he had known all his life. Down-to-earth people. Some he liked, some he respected, some made him laugh, some were just friends.

He wanted to tell them that in some way he had touched the creature that they were hunting. Touched it and other things also. He wanted to tell them that the creature was profoundly evil and that if it were caught – and that would be no light task – then it would wreak appalling destruction on its captors.

There was no doubt about his new-gained knowledge of the creature, though how it had come to him he could not begin to fathom – it was just there. But they would not understand. Not even his own father. Gryss, perhaps. But still . . .

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Truly. I must have snagged my foot and tumbled. Winded myself. Or banged my head on the ground.’

Garren looked at him closely and then stood up, relieved normality closing about him. He made a small pantomime of searching for damage to the ground as he gave his son’s shoulder a squeeze. ‘I can’t see a dent,’ he said. There was some laughter from the spectators at this antic, and several hands helped Farnor to his feet. As he stood he caught Gryss’s eye; the eye of old Gryss, the healer, from whom little could be kept.

Farnor shrugged.

‘Watch where you’re putting your feet then, young Farnor,’ Gryss said significantly. ‘I doubt anyone here’s anxious to be carrying you back home.’

And the hunt set off again.

Farnor was relieved to have avoided further interrogation by Gryss, but sensed that this was only a postponement.

‘Are you all right? What happened?’ The questions this time came softly from Marna.

‘I told you, I tripped,’ Farnor replied irritably, though equally softly.

‘You didn’t,’ Marna hissed. ‘You were looking at the fur, then you went down like a log. I saw you.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Farnor said, recognizing the mistake even as he made it.

Marna seized it. ‘Talk about what?’ she demanded.

‘Nothing!’ Farnor snapped as loudly as he dared. Marna took his arm and shook it. ‘I’ll tell you later,’ he surrendered, and Marna released him grudgingly.

The group continued in silence for some time until the ferns petered out, and with them even such small signs as the creature had left. And there were other problems.

The path they had been following had taken them away from the castle, but they were almost level with it. Ahead the valley floor rose gradually, and the tree cover became thicker.

Without any command they stopped. To continue would be to go beyond the castle. They had reached the boundary of their territory and, though no obstacle opposed them, only some grim necessity would make them go further.

Gryss swore under his breath. He knew that for every reason he could put forward for continuing, two would be raised for turning back and trying some other method of catching the creature. Even night watches. As leader he would have to follow.

‘This is far enough,’ he said, voicing the silent consensus. ‘It seems as if it’s hiding in the woods up there. It could be anywhere. We’ll have to wait for it to come to us, after all.’

Farnor looked around, registering only faintly the unspoken unwillingness to travel beyond this unmarked boundary. Having been drawn past his own limits, he saw nothing in this place to restrain him. On either side of the valley the high peaks were closing in, but they were not yet oppressive. Ahead lay rising undulations of easy mountain turf no different from those parts of the valley that he knew. And the trees too were no different. Swaying and whispering gently. Almost as if they were calling out to him.

To the left, some way away and much higher than the motionless group, was the castle, oddly dominant now in spite of the mountains behind it.

‘We might see something from up there,’ Farnor offered, pointing towards it.

Gryss looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Maybe,’ he said. He cast a glance at the others, watching him uneasily after Farnor’s suggestion. ‘But it’ll be too late to be going much further even if we do.’ He spoke to the watchers. ‘You head back. Start making arrangements for a round-up, and schooling yourselves to the idea of night watches. I’ll go to the castle with Garren and these two.’ He nodded at Farnor and Marna. ‘Perhaps we can see something from there.’

There was no dispute and the group divided.

As he trudged slowly up the long slope to the castle, Farnor found himself next to Gryss while Garren and Marna walked ahead.

‘What happened?’ Gryss asked bluntly.

‘What do you mean?’ Farnor tried.

‘What happened when you passed out?’

Farnor shrugged his shoulders and repeated his earlier explanation.

‘You were neither winded nor stunned, young Farnor,’ Gryss declared. ‘And even if I didn’t have the wits to see that, I’ve known you since before you were born and I certainly know when you’re lying. Now what happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ Farnor said, after hesitating as long as he dared and taking refuge in a version of the truth. ‘I just remember feeling light-headed. As if I was far away but here at the same time. And then I was waking up with you all round me.’

Gryss looked at him narrowly but did not press his interrogation. Instead, he admitted his ignorance.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’re not cursed with the falling sickness, nor are any of your family. And you’re too strong to be overcome by the sun and a little walking.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘And I’d swear you were dreaming. It was almost as if you were awake and just had your eyes closed.’

‘I wasn’t pretending!’ Farnor exclaimed, heatedly.

Gryss was taken aback at this response. ‘I know,’ he said both reassuringly and apologetically. ‘But I’ve never seen anything like it before. Can’t you remember anything?’

Farnor suddenly wanted to spill out the strange contact he had had with the creature they were hunting, but even as the thought formed he rejected the idea. Besides, as time had passed, the incident had become less vivid in his mind. Perhaps indeed he had only been dreaming.

‘No,’ he replied.

Gryss nodded resignedly and seemed to accept this answer as final, though Farnor sensed that in due course the incident would be returned to again. He knew Gryss’s persistence and patience of old. For the nonce, however, they walked on in companionable silence until they reached the top of the slope. Garren was sitting on a rocky outcrop waiting for them while Marna was wandering over towards the castle.

‘Go on,’ Gryss said to Farnor with a nod in her direction. ‘Have a look while you’re here. It’s an interesting place and I doubt you’ll get much call to come up here in the normal course of events. Your father and I will see if we can spot our predator on its prowl.’

Farnor needed no urging and strode after Marna. Watching him, Gryss turned to Garren and spoke quietly.

‘Keep an eye on him,’ he said. ‘I’m not quite sure what happened when he fell over, and he seems to be deliberately keeping something from me.’

Concern then irritation crossed Garren’s face and he made as if to call after his son, but Gryss took his arm and directed his gaze back to the valley. ‘No, Garren,’ he said. ‘Leave him. He’s no child any more. He can’t be forced to do anything he doesn’t want to do, at least not without hurting both of you. If he’s choosing not to tell us something, then we’ll have to trust his judgement. But you just watch him. If he looks like wanting to talk, you look as if you want to listen. Man to man. A friend rather than a father.’

Garren looked unconvinced. ‘He’s child enough still,’ he said stiffly. ‘If he’s keeping something from you I can get it out of him.’

‘No,’ Gryss insisted. ‘Trust me in this, even if you can’t trust him. You’re too close to him to see what he’s become. He’s a good son, but you’ll find you’re dealing with someone near your equal if you try to lord it over him too much now. Besides, it may not be that important.’

Garren grimaced. ‘Well, what’s all the fuss about then?’ he said testily. ‘You suddenly telling me how to bring up my own boy.’ Then, almost immediately repenting his manner, he raised an apologetic hand. ‘I’m sorry, that was rude of me,’ he said. ‘I think seeing him go down like that must have upset me more than I thought.’ The look of concern returned. ‘He’s not ill, is he?’

Gryss sat down on the rock next to the farmer. ‘No,’ he said, wilfully using his healer’s authority. ‘I’m sure he isn’t . . .’

There was an implication in his voice. Garren waited, then voiced it himself.

‘But?’

Doubt came into the old man’s eyes. ‘There’s a strangeness in the air, Garren,’ he said. ‘I’ve sensed it ever since Farnor brought the news back about the sheep. And it seems to have been growing worse as the day’s passed.’

Garren frowned, unsettled by this down-to-earth elder talking almost like Yonas the Teller. ‘What do you mean – strangeness?’ he asked.

Gryss gesticulated vaguely. ‘There’s the extent of the damage that’s been done to the sheep for one thing,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen anything quite so bad before. And the dogs. They’ve scented something they really don’t want to meet.’

‘They’re not stupid,’ Garren said. ‘They can probably tell better than we can that it’s more than one dog and that they’re wild to boot. A chase and a kill is one thing. Risking getting hurt is another.’

Gryss shook his head. ‘That would make them nervous, cautious. But you’ve been watching them. They grew quieter and quieter as we moved on, and when they smelled that fur . . .’ He turned to Garren, his eyes piercing underneath his scruffy hair. ‘They were really frightened. Half a chance and they’d have been back down the valley at the run.’

Under the old man’s gaze, Garren could not disagree.

‘And it’s not a pack, it’s one animal,’ Gryss added definitively as he turned back to look out over the valley.

Garren stared at him in surprise. ‘You’re very certain all of a sudden,’ he said.

‘I’m very certain after some reflection,’ Gryss corrected. ‘I’ve been thinking about the size of the wounds in that sheep, and the way some of the big bones had been broken. It’s one animal, and it’s big.’

Still there was a hint of some unspoken concern in his voice that disturbed Garren.

‘And?’ he ventured, almost in spite of himself.

Gryss frowned, as if wrinkling his forehead would squeeze an answer out of his troublesome thoughts.

‘And there’s Rannick,’ he went on. ‘What was he doing so far up the valley the other day? And why did he go beyond? And where is he now?’

Garren shrugged. ‘You said yourself he’s irresponsible,’ he offered. ‘Besides he knew Farnor would tell us.’

‘I said he was bad,’ Gryss corrected again. ‘And Farnor or not, it’s still out of character for him not to tell us. For one thing, he enjoys bringing bad news and for another hunting is one of the few things he does with anything approaching enthusiasm.’

‘He’s no great loss,’ Garren said dismissively.

‘Maybe,’ Gryss replied, half to himself. He fell silent and the sounds of the valley filled the warm air around the two men. Then he held out his hands and, looking at them, he seemed to reach a decision.

‘But it’s just one more . . . strangeness,’ he said.

The word unsettled Garren once more.

Gryss went on, purposeful now. ‘Farnor was holding that piece of fur when he fell over, and when I took it from him it gave me the shudders. For an instant I felt something bad . . . evil, almost.’

He appeared almost relieved, having spoken the words.

‘I felt nothing,’ Garren said, after an awkward silence.

‘It was only a brief impression, but it was very strong,’ Gryss said, adding, as if to a nervous patient, ‘I get similar flashes of certainty sometimes when I’m healing. I’ve always found it worthwhile to pay heed to them.’

The descent into explanation eased the tension that Garren had felt building within him, and, almost incongruously, he smiled. ‘What are you trying to say?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ Gryss said. ‘I just have a feeling that there’s a lot more to this sheep-worrier than meets the eye and that we’ll have to be both craftier and more careful if we’re going to catch it. Much more careful.’

The words that Gryss had spoken a few days ago, when Farnor had first brought the news, returned to Garren. ‘Don’t send him out alone again, and don’t go out alone yourself.’ For a moment he touched on the depths of Gryss’s unease.

Wordless and indefinable though it might have been, it chilled him.

* * * *

Marna patted the stone wall and, holding herself close to it, looked up at the ramparts above. Suddenly she gave a little cry and jumped back, lifting her hand protectively.

Farnor, standing some way away, laughed.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

Marna ignored the condescending taunt in his voice and beckoned him. ‘Come here, come here,’ she ordered. Then, seizing his arm, she dragged him forward and pushed him face first against the wall of the castle.

‘Look up, look up!’ she insisted.

A strong arm kept him pressed against the wall, but he managed to turn his head round to give her a look full of suspicion.

‘Up! Up!’ Marna said excitedly, pointing. Uneasily, Farnor did as he was told, gazing up the foreshortened perspective of the lichen-stained wall.

After a moment a cloud, brilliant white against the blue sky, passed overhead and began to disappear past the top of the wall. In direct imitation of Marna, Farnor let out a startled cry and jumped backwards as the wall seemed slowly but inexorably to lean forward towards him.

For some time they tested this phenomenon with a relish that was more befitting young people considerably their junior.

‘It’s so high,’ Marna said in some awe when the game had begun to pall a little. ‘It must be three or four times the height of the inn.’

‘Even more than that,’ Farnor said, shading his eyes and squinting up at the battlements. The noise of battle rose around him. Overlain with the ringing tones of Yonas, men surged up unsteady ladders propped giddily against the walls only to be felled or overturned by the castle’s valiant defenders. Swaying wooden siege towers were laboured forward under lethal cascades of arrows.

‘Let’s look at the gate,’ Marna said, cutting the thread of Farnor’s burgeoning saga.

As they walked towards it, Farnor felt other impressions making their way through the dramatic clutter of the siege. The stones from which the walls had been built were old and weathered but they were also finely worked and very tightly jointed. He had heard a tale once of a general who had become separated from his army in the heat of battle to find himself trapped inside a walled city by a hastily closed gate. His men, on the outside, had been so enraged and distraught that they had driven spears into the joints of the wall and mounted these impromptu ladders to fall upon the enemy from above and rescue their leader.

Farnor ran his fingers along one of the fine masonry joints and peered again at the towering height above. The idea of such a feat made him shiver.

They moved to the gate. Over it was an arch held solid by an enormous keystone on which was carved an ancient coat of arms. Practicalities began to intrude into his imaginings.

How could they have lifted that? he wondered. Memories came back to him of the stone door lintels that he and his father and no small number of helpers had struggled to lift into position on a simple storehouse for a neighbour. There had been sweat, effort and bad language enough in that to last for a long time. Not to mention a narrow escape for someone’s finger on at least one occasion and a crashing collapse on another. At times it had been for him a frightening and desperate affair with the lumbering weight of the stone seeming to have a relentless will of its own.

And as for the towers now soaring above them; they were so high. How could they have been built?

His attention turned to the huge double-leaved gate itself and he ran his hand over the long-seasoned wood. He imagined them crashing open to release a charging column of riders grimly intent on breaking a siege, but at the same time he marvelled at the size of the timbers and the skill with which they had been joined together. Where could trees be found that could provide such timbers? And where the men to hew and shape them? He thought of the rough beams that formed the ceilings and roofs of most of the village houses.

He came to a wicket door. What must this place be like on the inside?

‘Impressive, isn’t it?’

His father’s voice intruded on his thoughts, though not harshly. Farnor turned and smiled. ‘I’d no idea it was so big,’ he said. ‘Whoever built this could have built all our houses and barns, even the inn, in an afternoon.’

Garren laughed. ‘A little longer than that, I suspect. This place probably took many years in the building, maybe several lifetimes, and doubtless it cost more than a few lives.’ He gazed at the battlements and the towers rising beyond them. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

Farnor affected to be looking at the wicket door. ‘I’m fine,’ he replied casually. ‘Does this open?’ He pushed at a brass cover plate behind which was presumably a keyhole.

A hand reached out and restrained him. It was Gryss. ‘Quite possibly,’ he said. ‘But the keyholder, whoever he was, is long gone and entering this place without permission would be treated as an offence against the King’s person. Best leave be.’

‘Why is it so big?’ Marna asked.

‘Time was when it held a garrison of several hundred men, so my grandfather used to say,’ Gryss replied.

Marna wrinkled her nose in dissatisfaction at this reply. ‘But why so many? In a place like this. At the end of a valley at the end of the Kingdom?’

Gryss waved a schoolmasterly hand. ‘Enough questions. Who am I to question the ways of kings? I shouldn’t imagine for one moment that things have always been as quiet and peaceful as they are now. Certainly Yonas is never short of warlike tales to tell.’ The notion seemed to disturb him and he became almost brusque. ‘Anyway, from what I’ve seen of soldiers and their ilk, consider yourself more than fortunate that the castle is empty and locked.’ He glanced at the sun. ‘Come on. Time we were heading back.’

Marna seemed to be considering pursuing her questions, but Gryss’s manner forbade it.

For a while they followed the old castle road back to the village, but it was overgrown with brambles in places and uniformly hard and uneven underfoot. Further, being intended for carts and wagons, it wound too leisurely a way round the contours of the route for the pleasure of the quartet, and very soon they cut off it and began walking across the steep grassland directly towards the village. They spoke little, each pondering the events that had occurred to make the present so radically different from what they might have expected at the outset of the day.

* * * *

Rannick moved cautiously forward. Following the lure of the creature, he had gradually dropped down from his high vantage and now found himself passing through increasingly dense woodland.

The eerie, tenuous contact he had made had been maintained constantly, a mutual anxiety keeping it whole. What part of it was guiding his feet he could not have said, but he knew that he was moving steadily towards his goal.

Occasionally, flutterings of doubt arose, urging caution. What was this creature he was so blithely breaking new ground to find? Judging from the sheep it had taken it was large and powerful, and hadn’t he himself lured many animals into his traps with suitably tempting bait? And, should some ill fate befall him, then even assuming that the villagers would notice he was missing and be concerned enough to send out search parties, they would not even think to look for him out here.

But he dismissed such thoughts out of hand. The need of the creature for him was beyond doubt, as was his certainty that he could master it when finally they met. And, too, he conceded that there was a desperate recklessness in his behaviour. This creature knew and used the power that he possessed; something he had never known before. True, he had sensed occasional, flickering sparks of contact at times, even when he had been in the village, but these were rare and fleetingly elusive, and could have been nothing more than imagination. But this was not. This was as real and solid as the mountains themselves. This, he knew, was the key to his future greatness and it was better to die contending for that than to shrivel and die like an autumn leaf within the stultifying confines of the valley.

He glanced around. There was little to be seen; the trees obscured almost everything save the sky. But he knew that he was well beyond the castle, and he felt a brief frisson of alarm as childhood memories rose to the surface. He had long grown used to wandering in parts of the valley that were not commonly used by the villagers, such as the far downland where he had met travellers from over the hill, or upland, around the castle, where most of the villagers were almost too afraid to tread.

But here was beyond where even he had trodden before. Here was the region where the caves were said to lie, with their deep, winding tunnels and, so the tales had it, the chambers where lay ancient, evil creatures. Creatures from a time long dead. Creatures that were sleeping until . . . until when?

Now?

He ignored the question, but he paused for a moment and looked around again. He was hot, tired and thirsty, but he could not rest. He had an inner momentum that was carrying him forward inexorably. Nothing would stop him now until he had reached . . . whatever it was that was calling him.

He shrugged off the discomfort and strode on. There would probably be a stream across his path where he could pause to cool himself and take a drink.

Soon, however, he found that he was moving upwards again. The terrain became steeper and rockier and the trees less dense, then, quite suddenly, he was at the edge of the trees and clambering awkwardly along a scree slope, a sheer rock face looming above him to his right and a view over an unfamiliar tree canopy to his left. Looking back, he could make out the taller towers of the castle rising above a ridge on the far side of the valley. He had come much further than he thought.

The presence of the creature was almost palpable now, filling him completely with its desire; a desire to which his whole being resonated in response. He turned away from the castle and continued his journey.

There was little of it left, however. Scrambling over a tumbled mass of rocks that had fallen on top of the scree, he found himself on the edge of a great cwm. But it was not the majestic, arcing sweep of the weathered rock face that drew his gaze; it was the dark mouth of a cave only a short way above and beyond him.

He began running towards it, almost falling over in his haste as he leapt across the rocks. Small stones and boulders, dislodged by his passage, went clattering down towards the trees below.

Reaching the entrance to the cave, he stopped and gazed into the forbidding darkness. A damp coldness rolled out to greet him, carrying with it a scent of musty rottenness. Once again, childhood terrors rose up to test him, but he swept them aside. The cry of need that was now ringing through him was so all-pervading that he no longer knew whether it was his or the creature’s.

Here everything came into focus. Here lay his destiny: drawn mysteriously from an unknown, inaccessible future to the solid present.

Rannick stepped into the cave and disappeared from the light.

That's the end of the sampler. We hope you enjoyed it. If you would like to find out what happens next, you can buy the complete Mushroom eBook edition from the usual online bookshops or through www.mushroom-ebooks.com.

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Fantasy Books by Roger Taylor

The Call of the Sword
The Fall of Fyorlund
The Waking of Orthlund
Into Narsindal
Dream Finder
Farnor
Valderen
Whistler
Ibryen
Arash-Felloren
Caddoran
The Return of the Sword

Further information on these titles is available from www.mushroom-ebooks.com

More info about "Farnor"