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 some-thing 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 authorita-tive. ‘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 dissat-isfaction 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 frustra-tion 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 an-nual 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 helpless-ness 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.’