Graynelore

by Stephen Moore

  Wolfrid quickly interrupted me. ‘Exactly, how many hands do you have to reveal here, cousin?’

  ‘Only as many as I need to make my play…’ I faltered there, my feeble jest unheeded.

  I had nothing more to say to him.

  The moment was come.

  All about us, eager fighting-men, patient until now, stiffened in their saddles, steadied their mounts in readiness. Their breath came suddenly hard and fast.

  And the air was become suddenly pungent. It stung my nose. I knew that sign well enough. Close beside me, at Wolfrid’s side, Edbur-the-Widdle had pissed himself.

  Beneath him, Dandy snorted disdainfully. Through her leather mask her eyes sharpened upon me, knew me there. Among all, the snitch would be made to pay for his youthful folly…aye and for Dandy’s dishonouring. And I knew she would see to this in my stead, if, in the event, I could not.

  Hands resting upon hilts drew swords and would come to blows.

  Only I did not want this. Truly, I did not want this. Still I hesitated.

  Lowly Crows did not.

  As I look back upon that scene now, I feel as if I stood by and watched as she made her attack; akin to one transfixed by it. Perhaps I was. Perhaps I did.

  The man, Wolfrid, upon his fine grey hobby-horse, silhouetted against a wretched sky, his hand raised within a fisted iron-bound glove. The mob of crows crying murder, suddenly plummeting, falling down upon him…Choosing him for their first victim, and relentless with it. One upon the next upon the next, throwing their collective weight against him, using their beaks and their practised claws. Each blow compounded the last, left a cut or a hefty bruise. And Lowly Crows’ dreadful, screech; a foul, demonic sound to every ear there, human and faerie…

  Him, striking the air blindly with his sword: finding contact with the birds only because their number was so great his weapon could not be avoided. The bodies of headless, wingless, birds began to fall like some kind of obscene rain.

  While impotent men – the majority and seemingly stupefied – stood about, rigidly fixed and unmoving.

  Still, Lowly Crows attacked. Again and again and again, until blood-red ribbons of flailed skin hung from Wolfrid’s distorted face and from the poor grey hobb’s exposed flanks.

  It was the man who fell dead first; well before the horse.

  Only then the greater field came back to life, openly clashed, and brought their iron to bear upon the frae.

  I would not have had it so.

  If I was a Wishard – more than a man with a name – if I could, truly wish…I wished then.

  How quickly a world can turn, and turn about again.

  The sky, suddenly tormented, broke open upon the instant. The standing mists, now lying dormant at the foot of the mountains, sprang up, a mass of flailing tails and rope-like spirals; rent the air to the very heart of a glowering storm. Came back to ground again, not only driving rain, but a raging torrent; a rising wall of churning waters. Without a warning it took up both friend and foe alike. Its cruel edge divided riders from their horses, and swept them away. It ran them off their feet and turned them into the ground. It drove them apart with such a vicious fury there was not the briefest inch of time for men to see their fate, or understand its root. There was not a reiver among our horde canny enough to parry the blows of that storm.

  Not even, I, its maker.

  Though I might have closed my eyes against it, and wished that I could…

  Indeed. And found myself at a loss, sterile and unable. The cost of the deed not yet fully paid out.

  As was the way of faerie…

  Nevertheless, I would wish again. I would…

  Part Six

  The Faerie Ring

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  A Ring of Eight

  When I opened my eyes again the storm had passed and the waters receded. The sky, though worried still, was at least passively at rest.

  I was stood out upon the plateau – become another killing field.

  There had been a most terrible act of violence. There had been a small act of mercy. Both, it seemed, committed by my own fey hand. All about, the Long Riding of Wolfrid-the-Wishard, The Great Riding, lay in utter devastation.

  Yet I was not standing alone. There was my company – a ring of solitary figures. They were untouched by the storm I had wished for, protected by the shield I had wished for. Speechless, bewildered by the event: mercifully unharmed.

  The immensity of the act took up all of my wits, stole the strength from my body, and for a long while after. Again, that part of me that was fey was left utterly spent.

  So, I continued to stand there, sorely diminished, the weedling man, waiting upon the return of my full senses, content in the knowledge that my company stood there with me. Inside my head there were no voices, no songs, or meaningless drawl. The shadow-tongues were speechless. There was only silence. Utter silence. For there was nothing left to say; nothing needed to be said.

  When I next heard a sound, it was real – the cry of a babbie.

  It was the cry of a newborn infant, in sore need of first succour, and giving full vent to its lungs. Amidst all, Norda Elfwych had born her child. There had been more than one battle fought this day, and hers surely the greater for her victory.

  I tried to bring myself fully awake and seek the pair out; only to find myself suddenly reeling giddily and light-headed; suddenly on my knees, floundering upon all fours, for want of the character to hold myself upright.

  Norda Elfwych sat apart. How very small she seemed, how fragile; crouched upon the ground, her arms tightly wrapped about herself. And so insignificant the tiny thing she cradled there; I could see no more of it than a bundle of rags. Again I heard the babbie’s plaintive cry. And did my stone heart at last go out to them? Indeed…they cast a shadow there that gives me trouble still.

  Wily Cockatrice came and stood resolutely before me.

  ‘She is best left, Rogrig, best left…And you…you must look to yourself, and take a hold of the man, for we must get on,’ said the ancient crone. Her voice was gentle, cautious almost, but resigned.

  We must get on…

  We must get on…

  I slowly nodded my head, content to let her speak; soothed by her words, as much as if it was I who was the infant again, and held still within its mother’s nurturing arms.

  ‘Our company of Eight is…at its best,’ she said, before briefly casting her eyes toward the distant peak of Earthrise. The black-headed mountain, stood up, as if entirely alone, between a break in the weathered, storm-damaged cloud that draped the sky. ‘We are all here, all together at last. And alive – and that is enough for the purpose of our task.’

  ‘What – then, you mean it could be done here?’ I said. ‘Completed; finished – right here! In the middle of a bloody battlefield! In the middle of nowhere?’

  In my eyeline I could see Licentious, the lumbering gigant. He was stood among a patch of the black dust; a dazed, a worried man. As I watched him, he bent to the ground and picked up a handful. He let it spill slowly through his open fingers, almost mesmerized. It danced lightly upon the wind as it fell back to the earth. Where it had been upon his skin it left the faintest stain of red.

  I struggled to my feet.

  ‘Wily Cockatrice is right,’ said Lowly Crows. The bird was once more become the woman, and already standing purposefully close to the ancient crone. ‘It is worth a try, at least. If it is ever to be done, then this is as good a place as any.’

  ‘It is not as if we are going to be disturbed again,’ said the elder-man, who now came and stood at my side.

  I let my eyes stray across that killing field, picking over the bodies of the men, the women, the horses, and the doomed youth – the dead.

  Though, I could see, not all of the men who lay there were become corpses yet. Standing a good way off across the field were a few dozen men a-foot, and their remaining horses. All grey, all solemn, and unmoving: the small mass of common survivors. If the
y saw us at all it was clear they did not know what to make of us or the event that had befallen them this day. Certainly they would not try to come at us again. They refused even to move themselves to the aid of their own stranded living-dead: the broken horses that still twitched or shied; the broken men that cried out loud where they lay badly injured, seeking only an easy end.

  Now, and in future times, my kin would leave this stricken field ever untouched. And many years later it remained un-plundered; a sacred faerie ground, and a Wishard’s graveyard.

  I would have looked no more upon it, except there was a sight to behold: out of the distant grey column of men and horses, there was a slight movement, after all. First, men gathered together in a close huddle, then men standing deliberately apart. One man walked cautiously forward, leading his hobby-horse. After only a dozen steps or so, and hardly clear of his companions, the man stopped again. He used a hand upon its rump to encourage the hobb to continue before him, only for it to kick back at him, and come on at its own pace. Then he turned away and walked back into the column of grey. There was no real telling who that man might have been; if, for a fancy, I truly would have liked it to have been Edbur-the-Widdle, alive still (for I had no more stomach or desire for further killing or revenge). Perhaps it was.

  Dandy walked on across that field of dying men. For certain now I knew it was her. Still dressed in her leather mask, the point of her iron horn gleamed, caught for a moment in the light of a breaking sun. She kept coming, stepped over the dead, plodded through the random scatterings of black dust, until she was close enough to find me out. And then, with only the slightest snort and a twitch of an ear in recognition, she set her teeth about a patch of green meadow grass that stood proud of the dust and began to chew upon it, contentedly.

  There was to be no faerie dance, no sweet chanting; no songs. There was to be no gathering circle, no holding of hands, no magic…not even a binding Ring.

  Where he stood, the gigant fell down upon his knees and bowed his great head.

  Norda Elfwych remained sat upon the earth, embracing her raggedy baby…her son…my son…In silence, she rocked herself gently back and forth, as if she meant it for a lullaby.

  The elder-man stood up proudly. He spread his arms wide in a mimic of his own tree.

  Lowly Crows transformed into the bird and settled herself upon her favourite spot; that is, riding high upon the air.

  Dogsbeard, in the way of a child, simply lay down upon the ground and looked up at the sky.

  Wily Cockatrice lit her battered wooden pipe, closed her old eyes, and sucked deeply upon it, until a great plume of grey and blue and green smoke issued from her mouth and her nose, and the unruly flame singed her wiry hair.

  So, my companions stood about, or else sat, or lay down flat upon the ground. They took wing upon the air, or they knelt down in prayer.

  And I…what did I, Rogrig Wishard, do?

  For an instant, my mind was struck with the memory of the prancing unifauns, Sunfast and Fortuna, in all their fragile beauty. Then:

  I made a wish. That is all. Nothing more…

  I made one last wish.

  Even in my weakened state, it was enough it seems.

  How very quietly the world changed.

  Had I expected the unspoken voices, the shadow-tongues, and a crying wind; the calling out of a thousand lost names? Was our History to come to our aid; were the long dead to return, and was a great pageant to be played out?

  No. Not now. There was none of it. Now there was – only us. Each of us exactly as we were; plainly described. We shared our thoughts equally between us, unbridled now. I knew them all and they knew me:

  The shift, among her murder of crows; the childish elf; the wyrm; the dryad; the wych with her newborn babbie; the gangling gigant, and I – the wishmaker. As one, together:

  The Ring of Eight…

  The silence came first: compelling, utter and intense, and as real as if it had taken a solid form. All voices were made mute; both the common and the fey. Bird chatter, feet pacing across stony ground, restless hooves, and the moans of dying men; the rattling chatter of a distant stream, and the sighing breath of the wind…all manner of noise stopped then, and yet the world continued on a while: a silent mime.

  Until, only the briefest moment later, we all became suddenly still. I was certain I was still drawing my breath, only there was no outward sign of it, no movement. We were frozen, locked in a space between times. Betwixt was, and now, and will be. Even in the sky, the billowing clouds and the flapping wings of the crows were caught and held stiffly, as if they had been captured within a painted picture, unruffled by the wind. And yet it was real. The world about us, and everything in it, had simply stopped, and stood utterly still.

  Then it began. The dust, the black dust rising: lifting off the ground. It was not windblown, not taken up by a warm eddy, not shifted by a human hand, but rising of its own volition. Nor was it moving in trailing wisps, or in patches, but in its entirety. It rose ever skyward, and from visible horizon to visible horizon; as far as could be seen in any direction. All across the fells and the hillsides, both far distant and near too, it rose up. Great black walls rising…stretching out into the sky. Most spectacularly of all it lifted from the very head of the black-mountain. So complete was the effect, it appeared to render Earthrise a lowlier mount than its nearest neighbour upon the skyline.

  I felt the Faerie Dust moving over my skin; between my fingers, and upon my arms, and upon my face, and in my hair, and in my eyes, tingling – no – stinging me, raising welts and drawing irritating scratches. It left my exposed skin damp, not with sweat, but with blood. Yet the pain and the irritation did not matter to me, was almost welcome; like the pain of a foul tooth as it is cut from your mouth.

  And then there was noise, after all. First, slight pinpricks of sound, in a rising pitch. It gained in intensity, becoming a fierce ringing hiss; enough to match the movement of the spiralling banks of black dust, as it swallowed up the sky and stole away the sun. What little warmth, what little winter daylight there had been went with it. All Graynelore within my sight became a grey, a sombre, shadow-land.

  And my thoughts?…And the thoughts of the shadow-tongues inside my head; the Ring of Eight calling out together?

  This is all of our making…This is all our own…This is ours…

  If I had had the wit to wish again, I would have wished for this…next:

  Suddenly the black dust turned upon the sky, and not black any more, but a swell of bright glowing colours that dispelled the gloom. There were greens and gold, purples and reds, yellows and silver and blues: only their names alone cannot help define them. Endlessly changing hues so intensely rich I realized I was a witness to their creation for the very first time. And these were not the colours of a dead blackened earth, not merely random threads woven from a scattering of dust:

  There, stretched out before us and all across the heavens was the Faerie Isle – The Living Isle…

  This was what we had wanted all along. This was our one – our sole desire. And it was the answer to a foolish man’s simple wish.

  If a lifetime can pass in but a single instant (which it can), then a single instant can last for an eternity.

  Only there were no more wishes to be had…The truth was revealed.

  The instant was, at once, completely undone. What we knew we had seen we had not seen. What we knew to be true was not true. Our belief, unbearably, cruelly replaced by a singular disbelief:

  There was no miracle to behold.

  There was no Faerie Isle, after all.

  Upon the moment there were broken strands of black dust coming down out of the sky, falling toward the earth. Though it was a thin scattering reached the ground, without substance, that did not even cast a shade. The most of it dissipated upon the air, as if it were taken up by some great, unseen hand, to be carried away and beyond the knowledge of all men.

  The image of the Faerie Isle that had stood, brief
ly, out upon the sky was disappeared. It was gone as if it had never been there. And with it went all my senses; and my sensibility.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  When the Dust Finally Settled

  Had I been lost inside another dream, another night-torment? I recognized the first feelings returning to my inert body. It was not a sense of joy, or excitement, rather, an intense human frailty, together with a deep note of pain; something in the way of strength ebbing away. As if I had been bodily holding the Faerie Isle in the sky, and being unable to hold it any longer, I had at last failed and let it fall.

  Around me my greater company were also coming to themselves. We were no longer conjoined: the Ring of Eight was taken apart. My thoughts were my own. The shadow-tongues were silent.

  At my side, Licentious, the gigant was standing scratching his heavy head. Confused, or defeated? Norda Elfwych – cradling her raggedy baby – was quietly weeping, and would not be consoled.

  It was then I realized, impossibly, the sun was warm upon my back. I looked up into the sky, almost afraid of what I might see there. The sky was clear…not only of clouds. It was empty.

  It was quite empty.

  There was no Isle.

  I had seen its formation. I had seen its disintegration. Its creation…its destruction…Seeing is…not always believing. I wanted it to be there; needed it to be there. Wished for it…Only there were no more wishes to be had.

  We had done nothing. We had achieved only this…and there was nothing to see for it.

  The Ring was broken. And the world about us stood utterly unchanged.

  I was not the only one perplexed.

  ‘Did it not work then, Rogrig?’ asked Licentious, befuddled. ‘Only I truly thought it did.’

  ‘And I…’ I said, ‘and I.’

  The gigant began to nod his head, only to shake it instead.

  ‘I do not understand any of this…’ said Norda Elfwych, between her tears. ‘What sense?’

  I could only shrug. I looked toward Lowly Crows, who had come to ground the woman in black, and toward Wily Cockatrice. They were standing together, a little distant from us, and in a preoccupied manner. They were looking toward the east, as if they were searching for the still waters of the Great Sea; though it was far beyond the horizon and out of view. There was the beginning of a smile upon each of their faces, and a tear with it, a joyful tear…a sparkle in their eye.