Farnor ft-1

by Roger Taylor

  ‘I’ve told you, I can’t lie any more. I might fool my father, but not my mother. And it’ll upset her if I try.’

  The request heartened Gryss. Here, he could help. ‘We’ll have to go halfway,’ he said, shrewdly. ‘Tell some of the truth. I’ll confess to going to search the place on my own, and to dragging you along with me. Then…’ His head wobbled from side to side as he pondered various alternatives. ‘We’d better say that the castle was locked, or Yakob and your father will be up there tomorrow.’ He fell silent and, brow furrowed, pondered yet more alternatives until, ‘We’ll have to say that the horse was startled and bolted, after all,’ he decided, a little unhappily. ‘And that you… banged your arm on a rock as you tried to catch me.’

  He made an effort to look enthusiastic, but Farnor pulled a sour face.

  ‘Well, you think of something better, then,’ Gryss said, a little indignant at this rebuff.

  ‘I suppose we’ll have to,’ Farnor conceded after a moment. ‘We can’t tell them what actually happened. It’s too… complicated. And my father would take Nilsson to task about it in the middle of the village green if he got wind of it. Stealing the tithe is one thing. Hurting people is another.’

  Gryss nodded. That was true, and something that he himself had not considered. Garren was a quiet and reasonable man but, as is the way with such men, if roused on a matter he would pursue it, quietly and reasonably, with a dogged relentlessness worthy of any wild-eyed fanatic, until he obtained an explanation that quietly and reasonably satisfied him.

  ‘It was some kind of a trap, you know,’ Farnor said.

  Gryss frowned, thrown off balance by this strange remark. ‘What was?’ he asked.

  ‘That… wind, or whatever it was. It was a trap,’ Farnor expanded. ‘It was left there in case anyone tried to get into the castle.’

  Gryss stared at Farnor anxiously, afraid that the shock of the young man’s injury might be affecting his mind. But even as these thoughts came to him, he realized that their clamour was because he himself did not want to hear what Farnor was saying. Did not want to hear anything that would make him give credence to what he had felt so strongly: that what had happened at the castle was no freak wind. That it was…

  He twitched away from the thought and turned his attention back to Farnor.

  As he knew it would be, Farnor’s face, though pale and lined with pain, showed no sign of that detachment which hallmarks a disordered or fevered mind. Farnor was calm and composed, and in full possession of his reason.

  ‘What do you mean, a trap?’ Gryss asked hesitantly. ‘I don’t understand. It was just…’ His voice tailed off.

  Farnor looked at him impatiently. ‘It was just what?’ he demanded scornfully.

  Gryss flinched a little at the unexpected force of the question but made no reply. Apart from having no answer, he knew he must not hinder Farnor’s sudden need to pursue the matter.

  ‘The damn thing was alive,’ Farnor went on, ur-gently, grimacing and hugging his arm as a jolt of pain struck him. His face was angry and fearful, as if he were back in the gloom of the archway again, battling to open the wicket. ‘It was a guard – a trap. There was a will behind it. Someone set it there.’

  Gryss wanted to argue. Wanted to say that this was foolishness brought on by his pain. Wanted to say, prosaically, ‘If they’d wanted to keep people out all they had to do was lock the gate.’ But he couldn’t. What he was trying to avoid, he would have to face now or later. Even without Farnor’s angry dismissal, he knew that the screaming turmoil that had risen to greet him when he entered the castle had not been any natural happening. There had been an intent in the force that had hurled him against the gate and nearly crushed Farnor’s arm. A malevolent intent. Even he had felt its burning malice focused on him.

  But what did it mean?

  He tried to shy away from the only answer that was left, but he could not. Nilsson, or one of his men, had powers beyond the understanding of ordinary people; powers that could control natural forces such as the wind. How such a thing could be he did not pause to consider. He was old enough to know that his ignorance out-reached his knowledge by far, and he had seen enough inexplicable events in his life not to reject such a possibility out of hand. But who it could be? That was a different question; one that seemed to be important. None of the few he had met had seemed in any way… extraordinary. But then, what might such a person look like?

  He remembered the vaguely familiar figure who had been in Nilsson’s room when he had received the news about the intended garrison, but, tantalizingly, face and name continued to elude him.

  ‘And I’m the same,’ Farnor said.

  The remark, filled as it was with guilt and despair, startled Gryss. ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked, eyes wide with concern. He stopped and took Farnor’s uninjured arm.

  ‘I’m the same,’ Farnor said, looking desperately from side to side as if for escape.

  ‘Same as what?’ Gryss said, forcefully, shaking him. Farnor pulled away and moved over to a tree by the roadside. He leaned against its trunk then slid to the ground, his eyes pained.

  ‘I saw it, Gryss. When you opened the gate, I saw it. I knew it was wrong. I knew it drew a power from… somewhere else. Something in me recognized it. Something came out from… inside me… and went for it. Like a fox after a rabbit. I couldn’t help myself. I attacked it. And it knew it was attacked,’ he went on. ‘It knew. It retreated. It was hurt. Somehow I’d taken its power from it. Weakened it. I must be the same as the person who set it there in the first place…’

  He looked down at his hands. Gryss did not speak. After a long silence, Farnor said softly, ‘I’m not going mad, am I, Gryss?’

  The question came almost as a relief to Gryss. ‘If you are, then so am I,’ he said without hesitation. ‘And do I look mad?’

  Farnor smiled weakly.

  ‘I can’t pretend to understand what’s happening here,’ Gryss went on. ‘Or to be other than frightened by it, but it’s not in our imaginations, that’s for certain.’ He took Farnor’s face in his hands and gazed at him intently. ‘You’re not perfect by any means, Farnor Yarrance, but you’ve no real ill in you. You may or may not have some strange skill that you knew nothing of, I don’t know – there are some strange things in the world. But I do know you’ll do no intentional harm with it.’

  Farnor’s eyes filled with doubt.

  Gryss dismissed it utterly. ‘Fire is fire, Farnor,’ he said. ‘Warm yourself by it, cook your food with it, or burn your neighbours’ ricks with it. Cut the crops or people’s throats with one of your sharpened blades. The choice is yours – always yours. And whatever gift you have, you’ll always choose rightly. Do you understand me?’

  Farnor looked at him uncertainly.

  ‘And remember this,’ Gryss went on, urgent now, ‘because I live by it. I might be frightened now – that’s part of being alive, part of learning – only fools are never afraid – but really nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ Farnor said quietly after a moment. Gryss released him gently.

  Then, as if following his own advice, Gryss found his mind coldly turning towards what had been happening. ‘Maybe it’s that creature that’s doing it,’ he mused. ‘It’s…’

  But Farnor was shaking his head.

  ‘I’ve touched the creature,’ he said. ‘And I touched that… thing at the castle. They’re connected in some way, but they’re not the same. It was a man who set that trap, not an animal.’

  Suddenly his face went white, and he began to trem-ble.

  Gryss just managed to catch him as he slumped forward.

  Chapter 26

  There was whirling darkness and chaos, shot through with the cold silver of moonlight and the blood-red of nightmare battlefield sunsets. Tormenting winds blew great storm clouds through it, bringing to him familiar faces that he could not recognize. As they came, so h
e reached out to them and so they faded.

  Somewhere someone laughed at him. The sound wove into that of the storm, rising and falling, taunting him.

  He was helpless; the merest autumn leaf, the frailest snowflake. He would be blown where the wind chose.

  And in the tumult a dark presence moved. A pres-ence that was both here and… beyond…

  And he must go beyond to still its awful power. It was important that he did it now, before it was too late.

  He reached out.

  A babble of inquisitive voices surrounded him, shattering the dark chaos into a myriad flickering lights. They were full of concern and disbelief. They questioned and argued…

  And there was fear…

  An old fear…

  He spoke to reassure them, but he could not under-stand his own words.

  Surprise shimmered through the disbelief, but still it lingered. And the curiosity and the concern grew stronger.

  But the deep and ancient fear grew also.

  He strained to speak again.

  The laughter returned, though gentler this time. And the lights began to dance and float to its rhythm.

  And there was coolness.

  The voices faded, though he could feel them calling to him. They did not want him to leave. There were so many questions to be asked.

  ‘Don’t go… We…’

  Farnor jerked towards wakefulness, his eyes open-ing grudgingly. But the coolness on his forehead did not allow him to rise. And there was gentle laughter again.

  ‘Are you feeling better now?’ came a familiar voice. He struggled, but even as he did so his mind began to understand what his eyes were focusing on.

  The remains of his sleep washed away from him as if he were emerging into the daylight from the breathless depths of some great lake.

  He was in his bedroom staring up at the old familiar beams that striped its ceiling.

  And the coolness on his forehead was his mother’s hand.

  ‘Are you feeling better now?’ she asked again. ‘Mut-tering away to yourself.’

  Farnor tried to sit up, but the pain in his right arm prevented him. His mother put her arms around him and, with an effort, pulled him upright and pushed a pillow behind him.

  ‘The size of you,’ she said, with a mixture of pride and reproach. ‘You’re too big for this kind of treatment these days.’

  The pain in his arm and the buffeting practicality of his mother’s sickbed manner brought Farnor fully to his senses. And with his senses came the memory of the events at the castle which, in their turn, brought faint wisps of a need for caution.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘How did I get here?’

  ‘How, indeed!’ his mother replied. ‘Quite the saga, I can tell you.’ She did not seem disposed to relate it, however. Instead she walked over to the door and shouted down the stairs, ‘He’s awake!’

  Farnor glanced round the room. There was some-thing unusual about it. Then he realized it was the light. It had been late afternoon when he and Gryss had gone to the castle. The light coming through the window now was the morning light, and none too early morning at that.

  The heavy tread of feet coming up the stairs turned his attention back towards the door. There was some muffled speech then his father entered followed by Gryss.

  Garren looked at him with exaggerated sternness. It was an expression Farnor knew well enough. There was humour and relief behind it; he’d been caught red-handed at something; something however that wasn’t particularly serious. It was a good sign. He gave a guilty smile and shrug in reply. Better play the child until he found out what had happened, and who knew what.

  ‘You’re a fine one, aren’t you?’ Garren said, walking over to the bed and sitting on the edge of it.

  But as Garren was speaking, Farnor caught Gryss’s eye. Standing behind both Garren and Katrin, Gryss, his hand casually massaging his chin, briefly touched his lips with his forefinger.

  Keep quiet.

  Farnor nodded as if in reply to his father.

  ‘They’re both fine ones,’ Katrin said, folding her arms and discarding her caring manner for a matriar-chal one. She cast a glance at Gryss that made him wilt as it struck. ‘Wandering off to see if they could get inside the castle. Like children sneaking into an orchard. I don’t know what…’

  Garren lifted a hand gently to silence his wife.

  ‘You’ve made your point, Katrin,’ he said, mouthing softly for Farnor’s benefit. ‘Two hundred times.’

  ‘It needs making,’ she said, directing the errant elder towards her son with a sharp nod. ‘See if he’s all right,’ she demanded. ‘He was scowling as if he had the cares of the world on his shoulders, just before.’ Then, in high-pitched surprise, she added, ‘And he’s been talking to someone for the last ten minutes.’

  Gryss stepped forward and displaced Garren from the bed rather as if he was seeking cover from a sudden and violent storm. He put on his healer’s manner and subjected Farnor to various proddings, pokings and twistings before announcing, ‘Fine. I told you he was just stunned. All he needed was a good night’s sleep. Let him rest that arm for a day or two and, apart from being every shade from yellow to black that you can imagine, it’ll be fine.’

  Katrin gave a noncommittal grunt. ‘I’ll leave you… children… together,’ she said. ‘I’ll be downstairs, getting on with the work.’

  ‘I’ll not be long,’ Garren said, winking at his son.

  When she had gone, however, his manner became more serious. ‘I’ve told you what I think about your little adventure, Gryss,’ he said. ‘But I’ll say it again, in front of Farnor, seeing as he’s party to all this, at your request.’

  ‘I know,’ Gryss said. ‘And I’ll apologize again, will-ingly. And in front of Farnor. He probably saved my life when he tried to catch me…’

  Gryss had told the tale about the horse bolting then, Farnor deduced.

  ‘It was an error of judgement on my part,’ Gryss went on. ‘I wasn’t thinking properly. I was concerned about letting Jeorg go off on his own.’

  But, once started, as a rock must reach the foot of a hill, so Garren’s conclusion had to be spoken. ‘We agreed we were going to work together,’ he said, with that special kind of insistence that made those who really knew him nod whether they agreed or not. ‘We must stick to that. Who knows what’ll happen if we each wander off doing what we fancy without telling each other?’ It reminded Gryss that, as Farnor had hinted the previous day, there were times when Garren was not a man to stand in front of.

  Then, the reproach out, Garren seemed to become his old patient self. He laid a hand on Gryss’s shoulder. Gryss covered it with his own.

  ‘Katrin been giving you a bad time as well?’ he said.

  Garren raised his eyebrows and blew out a long breath. ‘Yes, but I’m not surprised,’ he replied. ‘You frightened both of us out of five years’ growth when you staggered in telling us he’d had an accident.’ Garren made a sweeping gesture with his hand. ‘Still, no real harm done.’

  ‘Can I get up?’ Farnor asked, feeling the need to be a more active participant in this conversation.

  Gryss nodded. ‘Yes. Just take it easy with that arm for a day or so. Keep it as relaxed as you can, and let me know if it gives you any trouble.’

  Despite this permission, however, Farnor showed no particular inclination to leave his bed.

  His father prompted him. ‘Any time you like,’ he said, looking significantly at his son’s clothes draped across a nearby chair. ‘It’s only a couple of hours short of noon.’

  This declaration galvanized him more than it did his son, however, reminding him that, with Farnor incapacitated, he had a great many jobs that he should be attending to elsewhere. With a somewhat self-conscious leave-taking, larded with both relief and reproach, he left to get on with them.

  As soon as he heard his father’s footsteps reach the bottom of the stairs, Farnor pushed back the blankets and swung himself out of bed.
He put his hand to his head.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Gryss asked.

  ‘Nothing. Just a little muzzy with lying in so long,’ Farnor replied, adding almost immediately, ‘Well, everything’s the matter, I suppose. What happened to me?’

  ‘You fainted, that’s all,’ Gryss said. ‘Shock from the injury to your arm.’

  ‘Or?’ Farnor said, picking up the doubt in his voice.

  Gryss threw a mask of certainty across his face which had behind it too many long years of experience, as village healer and negotiator, to be penetrated by Farnor.

  ‘Or nothing,’ he said, his voice carrying the same certainty. ‘It was a nasty and painful injury and you were fretting about everything else that had happened. Both your head and your body needed to get away from it, needed a rest. So they took one when you showed no signs of taking it for them.’

  Farnor looked at him suspiciously, but Gryss’s mask deflected the gaze as easily as a stout shield would deflect a weakly thrown spear.

  Not wholly convinced, but seeing that no further information was to be had from Gryss, Farnor began to get dressed.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ he asked, in a low voice, as Gryss helped him thread his right arm into his shirtsleeve.

  ‘Nothing,’ Gryss said. ‘What can we do? I’m not going to the castle again.’ He became conspiratorial. ‘I’ve told your father that the gate was locked as we agreed, so at least he and Yakob won’t go wandering up there.’

  It was important to have the lies consistent, Farnor learned.

  ‘So all we can do is wait,’ Gryss went on. ‘See what happens when Nilsson gets back, and hope that Jeorg will reach the capital safely.’

  Farnor exhaled unhappily.

  Gryss became fatherly. ‘You take it easy. Get your-self properly well. That was a brave thing you did, but your arm’s going to be very sore for a day or two so you’ll be in no position to be doing anything strenuous, let alone adventurous.’

  Farnor shook his head. ‘I’ve had enough adven-tures,’ he said. ‘I think I’m beginning to value a quiet life now.’