Rannick spoke again. ‘I liked you, Farnor. Such things we could have achieved; you, me and…’ He looked down at the creature. His mouth curled vi-ciously. ‘But we will yet, cousin. She and I. You may have a gift of sorts, but it is perverse and twisted, and hers is beyond yours by far. And perhaps you would only have become a rival to me in time.’ He let the knife fall and held out a bloodstained hand. ‘Look at what you’ve done,’ he said, his voice suddenly rasping and full of hatred. Yet though his eyes were blazing, it seemed as if he were going to weep as he cradled the creature’s head. He turned sharply away from Farnor and bent low over the creature, speaking to it softly, comfortingly.
‘I can mend this hurt you’ve done to her,’ he said, looking up again. ‘And all the other hurts that have been wrought tonight. But you’ll see none of it. You, I’ll destroy as I destroyed your insolent father. Only more slowly. Far more slowly. I’ll squeeze all her pain and an eternity more into each wretched heartbeat that you have left. As you’ve sown, so must you reap, farmer. And I’ve skills now that I’d scarcely dreamed of when your father was sacrificed to my greater learning.’
‘No,’ Farnor whispered, struggling to lever himself up on to his elbows.
‘Oh yes, Farnor. Oh yes. Have no doubts about it. All is mine now.’
‘No,’ Farnor whispered again. ‘I shall destroy you. You abomination.’
Rannick sneered. ‘You weary me, Farnor. Weary me beyond measure,’ he said. Then, in a voice that seemed to penetrate every part of Farnor’s body, he cried, ‘Know my power, Farnor Yarrance. Know the power to which I have access. Look on it and weep, before I begin to kill you. For it could have been yours too.’
Farnor stared, wild eyed, as he became aware of a strange sound, so deep that it could scarcely be heard, permeating the cave. Permeating him. Permeating all things.
And then it was done, and he was looking into one of the worlds beyond. But it was no world of nightmare and terror. It was sunlit and wooded and, in the distance, over rolling countryside, snow-covered mountains rose sharp and clear.
It was beautiful.
And he saw yet more worlds. Worlds beyond num-ber. And the shifting, flickering spaces between them. The spaces that should not be entered other than by those who had the true knowledge, and where Rannick and the creature moved so freely; malevolent trespass-ers.
His every fibre protested at what he saw and felt as he looked at Rannick and his grotesque mentor. It seemed to him that they were both far and near, the focus of the fearful gash that had been wrought in this reality. For it was not the worlds beyond that wrought the harm. It was their nature to be where they were, just as it was the nature of this world to be where it was. It was only in the wild conjoining of the two that the imbalance, the chaos, could be made manifest.
Agonizingly, Farnor forced himself up into a sitting position.
As he did so, his hand fell on the jagged end of Mar-rin’s broken staff. Faintly, in the long dead wood, he felt again the presence of the most ancient. And with it came the memory of the Forest, awash with the dawn sun and the ringing sounds of the horns of the Valderen. And too the remembrance that whatever else, he must hold to his resolve to honour the lives and the love of his parents by being as they had been, and as they would have wished him to be: true to himself.
Human he was, and thus savage and cruel he could be, as need arose. But always he had choice. Always everyone had choice. His savagery and cruelty had saved him from the creature, but perhaps the creature itself had had no choice in its nature. Rannick however, did. And he could do no other than help him.
He held out a hand towards him. ‘Rannick, no,’ he shouted into the eerie stillness. ‘Come back. Nothing there belongs here. There’s only loneliness, pain and madness for you if you go on. Come back.’
He hesitated for a moment, then he cried out, ‘I forgive you the death of my parents.’
Rannick started violently and his hand clutched at the creature feverishly. ‘No!’ he cried, his face alive with horror. He began to sway unsteadily. The vision of the worlds beyond shifted and changed, and Farnor felt Rannick reaching out, moving further and further into those places beyond, gathering as never before that which might give him the power to protect himself from the fearful revelation he heard in Farnor’s words.
Farnor reached after him. Rannick’s doubts and pain filled him, as did his desires. ‘No, Rannick. I forgive you, truly. Come back.’ But even as he spoke, he knew that in reaching for him he was reaching out once more to make whole the rent that Rannick had torn in the fabric of this reality. For therein lay Rannick’s pain. And he knew too that Rannick had bound himself dreadfully to those places beyond.
Yet still there was hope.
‘No, Rannick!’ he cried out again, in desperation. ‘Come back! Let go! Let go! LET GO!’
Then there was silence.
Save for the lingering echo of Farnor’s final, plain-tive cry…
And the howl of the creature.
And when that was no more, Farnor, pain-racked, was alone in a damp, empty cave, dimly lit by Angwen’s tumbled lantern. Both Rannick and the creature were gone, and no sense of either lingered anywhere.
‘No,’ Farnor whispered faintly, over and over. ‘Let go. Let go.’
Then he wept.
Chapter 27
Farnor was found the following day by a search party of villagers and Valderen. He was leaning against a rock at the entrance to the cave, exhausted and covered in blood. Apart from some bad bruising, however, he was unhurt.
There was all manner of speculation about what had happened to Rannick and the creature, but despite every entreaty Farnor would say nothing except, ‘They’re gone.’
Besides Farnor’s mysterious reappearance and the apparent destruction at his hand of Rannick and the creature, many other tales from that night went down into village and Valderen legend. Marna’s desperate leap through the burning gate to rescue the four strangers. Rannick’s screaming flight into the night. The death of Nilsson. And the strange and terrible fire that had consumed even the stonework of the castle until it had suddenly flickered out, as if it had never truly been there.
And too there was the appearance out of the woods of the Valderen and the four strangers escorting the remainder of Nilsson’s men to join those held by the villagers at the castle. Following the death of their leader at the hands of their new Lord, most of Nilsson’s men had thrown down their weapons, though a few had fled into the Forest. It proved to be a costly mistake for them however, as Angwen, quiet and graceful, had listened to Farnor and trusted him, and she and the other women were waiting, bows and vicious hunting arrows ready, for the sudden arrival of armed strangers. They killed all of them without mercy, as is the way with women when they choose to kill.
And they killed Rannick’s awful steed also, as, both masterless and riderless it careened, howling, through the Forest.
In due course, the survivors were given to the charge of a contingent of the king’s army which had eventually been drawn to the area by news of Rannick’s depredations in the surrounding countryside.
‘Others will be sent to take them, in time,’ Engir told the king’s commander. ‘We must return home as soon as possible.’
‘What did they do that you travelled so far and for so long to find them?’ Marna asked Aaren.
Aaren looked down at her hands. ‘Wearing a false livery, they rode into a quiet village one misty autumn morning and killed everyone they could find,’ she said without emotion. ‘Men – women – children. None were spared. Then they burned the houses.’
The stark flatness of the telling shook Marna more than any amount of passion could have.
‘Why?’ she asked, rather hoarsely, after a moment.
‘To start a war,’ Aaren replied, as flatly as before. ‘A civil war.’
‘Which you won, I presume,’ Marna retorted sav-agely, suddenly desperately angry at this coldness.