Graynelore (18 page)

Can music cry, weep with despair? Can it mimic the lucent stars falling out of the sky? It touched my heart, my soul too perhaps.

Then it stopped.

Most violently stopped…

It was I who came alone upon the second of the pair, among the stand of oak trees. I would not have wished any other to see her in that way.

I found her semi-naked body hanging limply by its broken neck from a branch of the furthest oak tree; now become a make shift gibbet. Sunfast had been hung, stretched, for a common wych; left only the dignity of her torn shift. Her blood and loose shit ran down her bare legs, dripped from her toes, still warm. She was not long dead. Her death had obviously been tortuous, cruel, and prolonged. Her executioners unpractised with the rope and the knot…

If this had been the last of the tragedy it would have been enough. Only we were ever upon Graynelore! Wily Cockatrice had realized much more of it than I. She was stood upon the field, bent over, as if to a child, her arms gently enfolding Fortuna’s distraught, cowering form. It was a hopeless gesture.

Fortuna would not be roused from her hiding place among the bracken. An utter wretch, she could not be pacified or consoled. The cowards who had brutally hung the one might well have hung them both together. These two had been the truest of fey creatures. They were not to be separated in life. Nor in death, either.

Fortuna died within that hour, though there was not a mark of violence upon her body. Her only symptoms: her despairing grief.

That pair’s foul destruction seemed wholly a crime. I had only ever seen love and sweet innocence upon their faces. They had harmed no man. Graynelore was ever a most brutal world. And this time it had surely broken the bounds…

I looked about me then; in my fury I would have killed any stranger I set my eyes upon, guilty or no. It was perhaps fortunate there was no sign of anyone. As for the perpetrators: they were either too well hid, or had long since made good their escape upon our approach.

My companions stood by in dispassionate silence, content to be my witnesses. I set fire to that stand of three oak trees, would see no living accomplice remain. I burned them all to the ground and the swinging corpse with them. I left the second body in the place where it had fallen, still. I burned the bracken and the gorse, and laid waste to much of the hillside. The earth, at least, would remember these deaths and carry the scars of their passing.

Graynelore does not shy away at the mention of a death. To a reiver it is a plain matter; and a common enough necessity. Neither is death long mourned, nor often regretted, if there is not a vengeance to be taken.

Living men still breathe; life is celebrated, in the moment. And that was always enough. There is little sense in planning for a lifetime when men are hungry, angry, thirsty, enamoured
now
…A single good memory has worth; an unfulfilled dream has none. A day lived is better than a lifetime in waiting.

Our company were unwilling to move on until the hillside fires had fully burned themselves out, until the thin slivers of windborne smoke stopped rising from the blackened earth, and the ash had grown quite cold.

The ancient crone sat upon a lonely rock, drawing thickly upon a cold dry pipe, watching the last of it subside.

These deaths were a burden of a different kind.

It was to the practicality of a basic sum that we now had to give our full attention. We had set ourselves upon a task. It was a weight we had, thus far, failed to carry. We were after the making of a Faerie Ring: A Ring of Eight. Our greater number had been in want of only one – and that one was Norda Elfwych, whose freedom had been gained at such a terrible cost…to the crows…to the wych herself…And yet here we were again, still in want of numbers! Only now the shortfall had doubled, and become two.

I felt it was a hopeless task. Already angered, I could not help my rising fury.

‘We were never meant for this, I think! What fucking use, our so-called
fey
talents? Eh?’ If I could not use the edge of my sword to break open fresh heads, I could use my foul tongue, instead, to bruise a few egos. Mine own included. ‘If I were a true
Wishard…
Aye, if I
were
…why could I not simply wish for our deliverance? I cannot wish death away! I cannot wish new life! What is it then that we know for certain? I see only passing shadows here! Aye! And bloody fools set upon an impossible adventure.’

‘We know what we are,’ said Wily Cockatrice, not unkindly. ‘And I know there is more to this angry young man before me than meets the common eye.’

I would not have her consolatory words.

‘Do you, now? Only, not
your
eye, eh? What is it that you really
see
, I wonder?’ I said. ‘You sit there no better than a blind old woman!’

Visibly affronted, Wily Cockatrice shuffled herself about, resettled herself, uncomfortably, upon her rock. ‘I see it is well past time for you to take a greater hand in this, Rogrig Wishard!’ This was the second time I had been brought to task.

‘And
I
see guesses!’ I said. ‘Only guesses! Or is it our conceit? Perhaps we are only ordinary men and women, after all. Like any other.’ I had the argument by the throat. I would not let it go. ‘Or are we an abomination…a foul deviance, rightly destroyed?’

‘Not so!’ she cried. Wily Cockatrice was suddenly up on her feet, standing high upon the rock. And I was pacing rings around its base. Lowly Crows was crouched uneasily upon my shoulder. She dug in her claws, used her wings to counter my frantic movement, determined to hang on.

‘We chose the story that suited us best, is all,’ I said. ‘We called it fact, because we wanted it to be so…’

‘And where does that leave us, Rogrig?’ asked Wily Cockatrice.

‘Stranded!’ I said, throwing my arms into the air, for want of iron to swing, or a target to aim for. ‘Stranded!’

‘What then
is
our course?’ asked Lowly Crows, her wings flapping wildly, finding herself almost thrown to the ground. ‘Now that Graynelore is up in arms! Are we all to become good fighting-men and then dead heroes?’

‘Fuck that! There are no heroes – alive or dead! And it seems to me, it is only
my
sword you ever see swinging, while others stand a-feared, shivering in their own shit!’ I was being sorely unfair, said it all the same.

‘Is there some sense here, at last?’ Wily Cockatrice picked out only what she wanted to hear from my extravagant rant. ‘Sometimes there are better ways of winning a fight than through the wielding of a war sword. Eh, Rogrig? We have not found the answer yet, only we are still searching…’

‘I am a reiver,’ I said, truculently. ‘That is what I do!’

‘Rogrig?’ Norda Elfwych, who, with the elder-man and Dogsbeard, had watched my performance in silence, came and stood in front of me, as if to calm my mood. I would not look at her, and continued to pace wildly. I only included her inside my circle.

Rogrig?

This time it was the shadow-tongue that beckoned to me.

Rogrig?

‘Fine…fine! What shall it be then? What would you all have me do? Will I make you all a fucking wish? Let me first close my eyes.’ I turned myself about, flailing my arms, blindly. Set Lowly Crows temporarily upon the air. I played out the role of the blundering oaf; the foolish babbie I felt I had become. My tone was mocking. ‘Is he here yet? Is he come? The lumbering Tom Troll I have wished for you – the bloody great rollicking gigant – is he come, strolling across the hill?’

I opened my eyes as if to take a look. There were several heads turned expectantly towards the brow of the hill. Settling herself, Lowly Crows raised her head and followed their gaze, crook-eyed.

The hillside stood empty.

‘Nothing to see, then?’ I said, flippantly. It was my turn to make faerie slight. ‘Is there, no one there at all? Nah, I thought not – I rather thought not.’

Lowly Crows decided she had finally had enough of my petulant anger. She shit on my shoulder, took off to the sky.

We were walking again; and at a measured pace. A forced march, Norda might have said. To what purpose? Maybe we simply wanted to put some distance between ourselves and that cursed spot where Sunfast and Fortuna had been so brutally slaughtered.

There was little talk between us. And I still continued in a bad humour: was caught a moody, brooding man among a most sullen crowd. I thought my anger was all for the death of the unifauns. Just for them. Only it was not…and hard to explain, my friend. It was for all those things in life you cannot have, and for all the things you have but do not want. The impositions and the expectations…The joys become burdens. Does that make any sense? I was a man yet – dissatisfied and uncertain. My anger was for me. It was for all of us. And it was for another…

I tried to let it go. I tried.

It seemed I had taken our lead; or else I had been given it without demand: no one among my company willing to make an argument.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Wily Cockatrice, a little cautiously.

‘Does it matter?’ I returned, truculently. ‘Life is our journey. It takes us all to the same destination in the end, regardless of where we
think
we are travelling.’

‘And is that morbid thought meant to comfort us, Rogrig?’

‘No. It is meant to hurry you along.’

‘Ah…’ She let the matter drop.

Though I should have answered her more fully, and said that I chose my path with little thought, and simply put one foot in front of the next. Only later, upon reflection, I felt there was, perhaps, some inclination that turned me ever towards the north, and to the heart of Graynelore. Not because I thought it gave us the certainty of a destination, but because there was a kind of comfort in seeing the distant outline of Earthrise, the black-headed mountain always on our horizon (and there was a subtle encouragement from the unspoken voices). So much so, that whenever the ground turned us away from it, my hidden instinct was to quickly turn us back toward it again.

‘Oh, for a simple foolish tune, played lightly upon a wooden whistle!’ My words were hardly more than a muffled grumble. I had not meant to share them.

‘What is it, Rogrig?’ asked Norda Elfwych.

I twisted my face. I shook my head and badly dismissed Norda’s honest enquiry.

Eventually, I was persuaded by my companions to stop so that we might all take a short rest. We had come upon a place where a few ruined blocks of stone stood up off the ground – almost as if they had been set there for just that purpose. I took myself apart, I said, to fetch us back some fresh meat – we were sorely in need of vitals – only in truth it was so that I could spend some time in my own company, with my own thoughts. Inside my head the unspoken voices had withdrawn, and sounded little more than whispered silence. I thought again of my…Notyet. I could not feed my wanting soul. Nor could I, even fill our wanting bellies…

Upon another day, the reiver might have looked about for the signs of wood-smoke from a campfire, better still, a stone chimney, then broken the house apart and stolen our repast. Only we were too far out upon the wilderness; there was nothing here of that sort. I returned with only the poorest part of a scavenged carcass; the hind end of a withered, scrawly druin, hardly worth its old meat.

We stayed that night where we were, and slept upon the ground. The few rough courses of broken stonework our only shelter within a scattered ruin. And only solemn clouds and an icy piddling rain for a roof.

In the early morning, we none of us woke the better for it. And Norda Elfwych, the worst of us; if in my selfish mood I chose not to see her fragility. We were
all
stiff and sore, and in want of a clean stream to bathe our soiled skin.

Do I wallow in self pity, my friend? Then I suppose I have reported our condition well enough!

Though I was in want of a clear destination – beyond the lure of the black-headed mountain – I would have had us quickly moving, and on our way again. ‘We are best kept travelling, if we are not to find ourselves caught out,’ I said. ‘Graynelore is ever restless now…We have remade the best part of our company and, thus far, avoided the greater part of the rising conflict, but the danger is always there.’

It was Wily Cockatrice who held me back then. ‘Wait, Rogrig. Let us stay here for just a little while longer. I see there is someone coming…’

‘
See
?’

‘There. Just off there.’ She was pointing with the chewed end of her cold pipe.

The piddling rain had let up. There was a trail of mist drifting across the fell in that place. In the sky a chink of yellow sun had broken through the constant cloud. Among the ruin, where there was a gap in the broken wall, a man now stood. The effect was to surround him with a halo of pale yellow light.

He was a tall man.

He was a very tall man. The tallest I had ever seen.

I could bear no arguments.

‘I did not seek to bring us to this forsaken spot!’ I said. ‘He has found us out, is all. I have not fetched him up. I have not wished him into existence! Do not blame me for this…this apparition!’

The big man, a stranger still, was obviously distressed and in a state of some confusion.

‘I…I do not know how this came about. I thought there were voices…Someone was calling out to me, begging me to answer them.’ He tried to use the ruined wall for a support. His massive hands grasped clumsily. He did not have the true measure of his own strength. He only pushed the wall over, set it moving instead. Stones tumbled erratically, their momentum scattering them further afield than they had any right to go. ‘I only walked a few steps away from my own door and yet I was, of a sudden, out upon a great fell!’ The face of the big man was stricken with fright. There was no deliberate lie there. ‘I could not find my way back. Though, I tried. I did try. I was lost. Forever it seemed. Wandering…The voice was still calling out to me…’ Cautiously, he held out his hand, first towards me, and then towards Norda, as if he would touch us but did not quite dare, as if he wanted to make certain we were real and not merely conjured phantoms. ‘Am I dreaming? Is this a night-torment? Will I awake? Or am I already a dead man?’

Still I persisted, ignored his questions. ‘This is not of my doing,’ I said, adamantly. ‘Yes, yes, it is obvious – he is of our kind. We were not aware of him, is all.’

‘If you say so, Rogrig,’ said Norda Elfwych. ‘We are here…this gigant of a man is here, all the same!’

‘Gigant?’ said the big man, as if the idea had truly not occurred to him. ‘My name is Licentious,’ he added, as if in the way of an explanation.

I might have turned on Norda then and made a real argument of it. Only she was smiling…Not for me, I hasten. There was a look of compassion on her face. Even in her obvious fragile state, her concern was for the stricken man. She took to him as if she had been expecting him.

I might have scowled.

‘Gigant?’ the big man repeated, still toying with the idea. ‘But my size is nothing,’ he said, defensively. ‘I have always been a little tall.’

‘A
little
tall!’

‘Is a tall man not
always
a gigant by default, then?’ asked Norda, not unkindly.

‘Eh?’

‘By virtue of their…
height
?’

‘Are all ordinary men, fey?’ he returned.

‘No. Of course not!’ she said.

‘Of course not…’ He shook his great head, as if to shake loose his befuddlement.

‘And you cannot wish us up another, Rogrig?’ asked Lowly Crows, aside. She was become the woman again. ‘It would be…most useful.’ She offered her arm to the reeling gigant, without waiting upon my answer.

‘No. I cannot,’ I said, unheard. I might have scowled again. I was still disputing the facts of it, and yet…as I stood there, dispassionately, and watched my companions give succour to that big man, I also realized I was telling the absolute truth.

If, in my anger, I had – after all – unwittingly, fetched him up, I could not simply wish up another.

How did I know? How, indeed…You tell me, my friend. The act had taken something away from me. Something I had no way of measuring. Again there had been a cost, as there was always a price to pay when a fey creature used its…talents. I was aware of it, if I did not understand it; certainly could not describe it. And I was also aware that, what had been taken away would at last return to me again, given the time to recover, as was the way of faerie.

As was the way of faerie…

Did I believe it yet?

The gigant was not the only man sorely troubled, and a-feared.

Yet again, I would have had us all quickly on our way.

Yet again, it was the ancient crone who stood across the welcoming path and beckoned us to stay a while longer.