The moon moved slowly across the sky.
The castle lay quiet, as did the village, though there were many troubled dreams there.
Then, abruptly, Farnor was awake. Pain echoed through him as he moved, but some instinct kept him from crying out. He looked around into the darkness. He could just make out the dim form of his horse, silent and undisturbed.
What, then, had woken him? Distantly he seemed to hear voices, though perhaps they were no more than the memory of a fading dream mingling with the soft rustle of the leaves about him.
Yet, faint though it was, it was clear.
‘Flee, mover, you are hunted.’
Farnor grunted questioningly, his throat dry. The coarseness of the sound shattered the delicate texture of the dwindling words, if words they were, and they were gone, leaving only the familiar night sounds of the forest.
Farnor considered lying down again, but he was far from comfortable and, besides, he was now wide awake. Cautiously, he levered himself into a sitting position and peered into the darkness again. Nothing was untoward: no sudden silence had fallen; his horse was not restive. He frowned. ‘Mover,’ he whispered softly, trying to recapture the subtle meanings that he had felt hidden within the sound of the word.
But it meant nothing. His voice was as far from what he had heard as children’s pictures in the dust were from the finely etched figures on the ring that hung outside Gryss’s door.
He let out an irritated sigh. Whatever had happened, it had left him too awake to return to sleep while it was still too dark for him to search out a better hiding place.
As these thoughts wandered through his head so the memory of why he was here returned, and the darkness of the night seemed to enter his very soul.
Painfully he wrapped the blanket about himself and settled back against the tree trunk to wait for the dawn.
Slowly, he began to relax. Thoughts of his parents and of the wreckage of his home drifted into his mind, but he set them aside. He did this coldly, but as they continued to return he was obliged to resort to crushing them ruthlessly. There would be time enough for such indulgence when he had destroyed Rannick.
This inner turmoil angered him and after a while he stood up. Despite the warmth of the night and the blanket around him, he shivered.
Yet he wasn’t cold. Why then should he feel such a chill?
Then, with an impact that was almost physical, the presence of the creature was all about him. He flattened himself against the trunk of the tree and cast about desperately, looking for the special shadow within the shadows that would mark the presence of the animal. But there was nothing. Nor too, was his horse distressed, and it, surely, would have felt such a presence if it were nearby.
Yet it was all around him.
Farnor stood very still, scarcely daring to breathe. He must learn about this creature, for it was Rannick’s creature. Or he its. Either way, to learn of one was to learn of the other.
The memory of the incident in the courtyard came back to him. Of something that had reached out from within him and denied the harm that was being brought here. The images meant nothing to him; places that were here and yet not here? Power that was great only because it did not truly belong?
Yet whatever they meant they were vivid and, he knew, accurately remembered.
As, too, was the memory that he had reached out and stopped this… unlawful?… dangerous?… flow!
Or some part of him had.
He did not dwell on the thoughts, however; the per-vasive presence of the creature forbade that. Farnor clung almost desperately to the knowledge that, whatever was happening, the thing itself was not nearby. He could rely on his horse and the forest dwellers to tell him that.
Nonetheless, he drew the knife from his belt and gripped it tightly.
As he did so, the thought formed in his head; I shall kill you, you abomination. You do not belong. You never belonged.
The presence about him shifted, as if it had heard something. Farnor could feel its power, drawn again from a place which should not be here. He felt some-thing stir faintly within him, but it faded as the creature’s presence moved away again. There was something familiar about the way in which the presence came and went.
It was hunting, he realized sharply.
Then, chillingly, he felt another presence mingling with that of the creature, riding it almost, both guiding and following.
Rannick!
Farnor’s grip on the knife tightened further.
He felt anger and hatred surging up inside him.
‘Flee, mover, you have not…’
Farnor started as the voices whispered softly to him. His mind jerked towards them but that very action again dispelled the subtle sound and the message was lost to him.
Who are you? he thought, but there was no reply. Fearfully, he gritted his teeth and pressed himself back against the tree trunk.
Was he going insane? Quivering in the silent woods beyond the castle, clutching his mother’s favourite knife and hearing voices, feeling the presence of a creature that he had never seen?
He felt as though his mind were teetering on the edge of a terrible darkness from which he could never return if he tumbled in. He heard the heavy thumping of his heart and the harsh rasping of his breath. All around he sensed forces moving, though to what end he could not even begin to guess.
It seemed to him that he stood on this fearful edge for an eternity of time, waiting.
Waiting…
But for what…
Faint ribbons of thought flitted through the dark-ness. Gryss, who had listened and believed; Marna, who had listened and believed; Rannick who had looked into the entrails of the slaughtered sheep and found – what…? A wind that had slammed a wicket door on his arm. His hand reached for the bruised arm and squeezed it hard.
The pain cut through the darkness like distant lightning in the night sky, and the twisting ribbons of thought became like the pennants of an approaching army; sharp-etched against the gloom; confident and bold.
No! For all its appalling strangeness, what was hap-pening was happening and it was real. It was no rambling disorder from inside himself.
I’m here, Rannick! Farnor called into the creature’s watching silence.
‘No…’ came the voices in despair.
And, on the instant, Farnor felt the truth of their concern. For the presence of the creature was about him now as it had been on his flight back to the ruin of his home. Vast and overwhelming. Power pouring through huge rents in reality that must surely be beyond any repairing.
And with it was Rannick’s will, malevolent and wild with rage.
‘Farnor Yarrance,’ Rannick whispered to himself in the darkness of his communion with the creature. ‘Farnor Yarrance. It was you who defied me. Who stood in my light and marred my power.’
It was beyond belief that such a thing could be. That a beaten and broken farmer’s boy should have such a skill. And that he should come now with a defiant challenge.
But in the same instant, he knew that his concerns had been of no account. For all that happened in the courtyard, the farm boy’s will was no more than an autumn leaf caught in a winter wind. He could not prevail against the might that he, Rannick, now possessed; a might that grew daily both in its totality and in the refinement of its use.
Tomorrow Farnor Yarrance would pay the penalty for his rash interference. There could be no escape for him. Rannick smiled. There would be the joy of the hunt and then the joy of the slow destroying. That this would also serve to quell further the spirit of the villagers added an exquisite savour to the prospect.
Rannick wallowed in the glow of his triumph. Truly great powers were guiding and protecting him, to lead him so ingeniously to expose the one person in the valley who might have opposed him. His destiny, as ever, ran true.
But something was amiss.
The creature was disturbed. Rannick sensed its unease, and the awakening of its most ancient hunting instincts.