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 uncer-tainly.
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 conversa-tion 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 hud-dled 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 indi-cated 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 immedi-ately 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, suspi-ciously.
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.’