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.’
But even as his grandfather had spoken Rannick had sensed another presence within, far beyond his grandfather’s searching. A presence shining clear and bright like a single silver star in a golden evening sky. And with it came a voice; distant, too, but still sharp and certain. A voice that gave his grandfather’s words the lie; that showed Rannick the fear in the old man’s voice.
‘I am the light,’ it said. ‘The One True Light. Follow me.’
And still it shone, guiding him forward. A lodestone lure drawing him inexorably into the dark knowledge beyond knowing that his grandfather had declared tainted.
Rannick turned away from the mountains and the valley and slid down to the ground, his back solid against the rock he had been peering over. With the thought of his power came the desire to use it; to test himself again.
He extended his left hand.
Birds and insects nearby fell silent, though Rannick was oblivious to the change. The air around him began to stir and, slowly, small pebbles some way in front of him began to tumble over as if caught in a sudden breeze. Then larger stones began to move. And larger ones still. Rannick smiled and his narrow eyes widened. His mouth worked noiselessly.
He withdrew his hand. It would not be needed now. He felt the power rising from wherever it lay within him and moving through him to do his will.
‘It is no blessing, Rannick, and never think it so.’ His grandfather’s words returned to him as they always did at this point.
‘I am the One True Light,’ said his deeper guide.
I hear you. I see you. I will follow you. Rannick paid silent homage to his chosen mentor.
‘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.’
‘No,’ Rannick whispered in defiance of the shade of his father’s father. ‘No. I smell your desperation now, old man. You feared me. Feared my power. As will others. This gift is mine. Given to me to use. And I will use it. I will use it!’
He felt himself amid the tumbling, rolling rocks. Touching each one, from the least grain to the largest boulder, effortlessly guiding, directing. They were his, utterly. His to lead to whatever destiny he chose.
He laughed breathlessly as he felt exhilaration rising within him. Then his rumbling charges began to move faster and faster, round and round, and he fell silent.
His face became ecstatic.
Abruptly, the circling movement ended and the captive stones and boulders hurtled straight into a nearby rock face. They struck with such force that several of them shattered. Rannick drove his fingernails into his palms.
Slowly, stillness returned to his eyrie and the breeze caught the dust rising from the commotion he had made and carried it gently away. It was like a soft healing hand, but it passed unnoticed. Rannick slumped forward. Sweat was forming on his forehead and he was weak and drained. It was ever thus. If only he could use the power without this awful weakness, then…
Vistas of a glorious future opened in front of him, but he ignored them. They were all too familiar and they had nothing to offer him other than to distract him and drag him down. He must follow his chosen discipline. He must look for what he had gained from this day’s work.
His skill was growing, he knew, as was the range and strength of the power he could exert. And, he confirmed to himself with growing satisfaction, although he felt battered and empty, his weakness was less than it would have been but a few months ago.
Something was happening. Something was in the air. Something new.
And even as the thought occurred to him, a strange-ness touched his still-raw awareness.
Instantly, he became motionless and silent, like a hunter who has just seen his prey. Then, tentatively, he reached out and touched the strangeness again.
It was alive!
Hastily he withdrew the power. Had some oaf blun-dered up this way as part of the hunt and seen his display with the rocks? He struggled to his feet and gazed around fearfully. But there was no one in sight save the distant figures below.
No, he reassured himself after a moment. They might perhaps wander as far as the castle, but none of them would dare go beyond it, no matter how many sheep had been worried.
What was it he had touched then?
He reached out again; gently, carefully. This time the power felt different, as if that slight touch of a living thing and his response to it had transmuted it – or him – in some way. His exhaustion slipped from him, and he probed more confidently.
It was still there.
He sensed a vision through tangled, swaying branches. Felt an unconscious shifting of balance in the gently buffeting breeze.
It was a bird, he realized. Then, in confirmation, he felt alarm calls strangled in his throat. Felt the wings that would not move. Felt the fevered tremor of a tiny heart.
It was terrified.
Yet it did not fly away. Could not fly away. It sensed his touch, but it could not fly away!
It was in his thrall! Bound to and by him as totally as any of the lifeless rocks he had just sent hurtling to their destruction.
Come to me, he willed, drawing the bird towards him.
There was some kind of resistance that he could not identify, then he felt it yield. Wings fluttered and the balance shifted again. Come to me. He set forth his power more urgently.
Then, abruptly, there was nothing.
He held his breath. What had happened?
His eyes narrowed as he realized that the frantic tattoo of the tiny heart had stopped. Startled, he let his control slip.
The faint sound of something falling through the leaves in the trees nearby reached him, but Rannick would not have heard the roar of an avalanche, so loud was the exultation ringing in his head.
Throughout his life, following the voice beyond his grandfather’s, Rannick had applied himself to the development of his gift with an assiduity that would have made him a master of any craft had he studied it with the same intensity. Hitherto his progress had been marked by the movement of increasingly large objects at increasingly greater distances. Exhaustion had been the price paid for each use of the power, but even had this not begun to diminish with practice he would have tolerated it for the exhilaration that the use of the power gave him.
But now his progress had taken an entirely unex-pected leap forward. He had touched a living creature. Touched it from within. Controlled it. Killed it!
For a long time, Rannick sat leaning against the rock, breathing heavily, his mind incoherent with the welter of feelings and ideas and schemes that were cascading through it. The rational part of him knew that he must retreat and rest; think. Above all he must think. The destiny that but minutes before had been quite certain, yet infinitely beyond him, was flittering tantalizingly amid this chaos. He had but to grasp it.
The turmoil, however, showed little inclination to diminish. With an effort he forced himself to stand up and to walk. It was no easy task; he was trembling from head to foot.
He shook his head in an attempt to clear it, but to no avail. The excitement burning through him seemed to be drawing its energy from some unquenchable source.
He must try again. Try immediately. Try to reach some other living creature. Learn. Learn now, while the power was so alive in him. He must not let this slip away.
He lurched forward in the direction of the nearby trees. Pebbles and stones jumped and bounced out of his path as he neared them, branches rustled away from him as if he were the heart of a great wind.
Though aware of this turmoil, Rannick ignored it, letting his power flit to and fro indiscriminately. He felt a myriad tiny scrabblings and burrowings, panic-stricken, terrified. Insects, worms, ants, all the inconse-quential creatures of the woodland, he divined. But nothing larger. And yet there must be birds about, perhaps squirrels, even a fox…
He stopped and forced himself to become calmer.
The uproar in his mind silenced, the sounds around him began to impinge again. He leaned forward, listening carefully. Beneath the ceaseless rustle of the trees he began to detect other noises, though they were diminishing rapidly. There were cries and squeals, and the crackling of undergrowth being hastily swept aside and trodden underfoot.
They were fleeing! All those creatures that could do so were fleeing from him. Running from him as if he were a summer fire.
He smacked the edge of his clenched fist against a tree in both frustration and elation. The rough bark grazed his hand but he did not notice. They knew what he could do. The simple creatures of the forest knew. They needed no painstaking reasoning and explanation. No demonstrations. They did not have to struggle with disbelief. They had confirmed his new-found skill with their flight as effectively as if they had remained there to be hurled to and fro like the rocks themselves.
It was good.
Then his hand throbbed. He looked at it. The skin had been broken and peeled back slightly. Absently, he raised his hand to his mouth, bit off the torn skin and sucked the small, bleeding wound clean.
It was good, he thought again as he spat out the dead skin.
Good…
The sensation resonated in his mind as if it had echoed and re-echoed from some towering cliff face, and his mouth suddenly became alive with the taste of blood; bitter… warm…
Good…
For a moment terror flooded through him. As surely as he knew his own power when it reached out and touched things, so he knew now that that same power was reaching out and touching him.
The realization transformed his terror on the in-stant. No! His whole being cried out in rage. Grasses and bushes bowed flat before him and the branches of the trees around him swayed frantically. Somewhere, stones rattled. This could not be. This would not be. This was his gift, his power. He would share it with no one and he would destroy anyone who sought to use it against him.
He would destroy anyone who even possessed it.
The strange touch, however, was gone. Seemingly vanished at the instant of his furious inner cry.
Watchful, Rannick waited.
Slowly he sensed a faint shadow of the presence returning hesitantly. It was almost as if it were reluctant to depart.
Rannick gathered himself for a berserker onslaught to expunge this lingering remnant. The touch slithered away from his rage again. But it did not flee utterly. Rannick hesitated, curious now. He closed his eyes and covered his ears to shut out the sights and sounds around him so that he could better feel this strange presence that was both within and without him.
He sank to the ground, unwittingly increasing his isolation from his surroundings by crouching low and drawing his arms up over his head.
Cautiously he reached out. The presence moved away, wary, nervous. Yet Rannick sensed great strength in it; and its power was both the same and different from his own. It was more whole, more balanced, more assured. But it was also more feral, savage, unfettered.
It was an animal, he realized. A powerful, predatory, animal. Rannick’s curiosity grew. What kind of an animal could it be, and how could it have his power?
And why did it stay with him like this? What did it want?
Then amid the nervousness he began to sense some-thing else. It was familiar, but it eluded him for a moment. Only gradually did he recognize it as subservi-ence.
And need!
The presence lingered because it needed him in some way!
No sooner had he reached this conclusion than the character of the presence seemed to change. A pro-found, black sense of loneliness – eternal loneliness – passed over him. But for all that, it evoked no sympathy, for it was riddled through with a dreadful malice, a malice that Rannick found drawing a like response from somewhere deep within himself.
Whatever this creature was, it was a kindred spirit.
And it needed him.
A small part of him whispered tentatively, Why? but the question died almost before it could be formed. Deeper forces within Rannick were guiding him now. Forces that knew that this creature could serve their needs.
Yet Rannick knew that it was a fearful thing. Could it not in its turn become the master instead of the servant?
It was the last lingering doubt.
No. He had never encountered an animal that he could not master if need arose, with whip or with will. And this one had already accepted him as its superior. Powerful and savage this creature might be, but it would be his to command.
A malevolent glee swept over him as the presence began to fawn on him.
Farnor and Marna were the first to join the growing group of hunters converging on the edge of a small lake. Garren and Gryss had again fallen behind despite the downhill slope.
The group had formed into a circle at the centre of which lay another brutally slaughtered sheep.
From the peaks above came a sound like distant thunder. Farnor’s flesh tingled.
‘Rock slide,’ someone said casually, and attention reverted to the dead animal.
Garren and Gryss arrived, the elder quietly pushing his way to the front of the circle. He bent over the remains of the sheep. ‘This hasn’t been dead as long as the other one,’ he pronounced after a brief inspection. ‘It’s getting hungrier.’
‘Or it’s just acquiring the taste,’ Garren said. Gryss nodded. it was irrelevant which. Both knew that the attacks on the sheep would now become more frequent.
‘It’s making itself at home,’ someone said, by way of confirmation.
Gryss looked up at the sun. ‘We’ve quite a lot of the day left. We must try and find it or we’ll be having to round up the flocks and set a night watch.’
This observation sobered even the merriest mem-bers of the group. A hunt was a hunt, but night watches were a different matter altogether. Dismal affairs at best. Small groups chosen by lot to mount guard on a few huddled sheep. Waiting silent through the cold, dark night, with no fire, no light, not even any talking to set aside the brooding presence of the unseen mountains. And certainly no ale. Fall asleep out there full of ale and glowing and, blanket or no, you could expect to wake up dead.
‘Where do we start?’ a young man asked. ‘There aren’t any tracks to follow.’
Gryss glowered at the speaker. ‘It’s a big dog, or more than one,’ he said, pointing at the corpse. ‘There’ll be signs somewhere if we bother to look properly. If not footprints, then fur snagged on the gorse or a bush. Or bits of this poor beast dropped somewhere. Just spread out carefully and keep your eyes open.’
Subdued, the hunters did as they were bidden.
‘What can we do?’ Farnor asked his father.
‘The same,’ Garren replied. ‘But keep us in sight.’
As Farnor made to walk away, Garren laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I mean that,’ he said sternly but softly so that Marna would not hear. ‘I don’t want you, by the way, drifting off into some thicket with milady there.’
Farnor coloured and opened his mouth to deny the implicit accusation, but too many protestations formed at once and culminated only in an incoherent stutter which Garren waved to silence. He repeated Gryss’s comments. ‘We have to find whatever’s killing these sheep as quickly as possible now, but it’s marked this place out as its territory and it’s liable to attack anyone who stumbles on it carelessly. So be alert. No foolish-ness of any kind. Do you understand?’
‘What’s the matter?’ Marna asked as Farnor joined her.
Farnor, still a little indignant, fought down a petu-lant ‘Nothing!’, and substituted, ‘He was just telling me to be careful.’
Marna looked at him and then back at the two men. They were laughing about something. Her eyes nar-rowed, but she said nothing.
Inexorably, Marna and Farnor’s search carried them back in the direction of the castle, though, in con-science, they were diligent in their duties, scanning the ground for signs of the passage of the predator. It was, however, with mixed feelings that Farnor noticed some flattened ferns at the edge of an overgrown area bounding the grassy slope up which he and Marna were walking.
He bent down to examine the damaged fronds. They were bloodstained.
‘I’ll call the others,’ Marna said and, putting two fingers in her mouth, she gave a piercing whistle.
‘Don’t touch it,’ she said. ‘The dogs might be able to pick up a scent.’
They did. But instead of a chorus of excited barking rising to greet this find, an oppressive silence fell on the group as each dog in its turn sniffed the ferns and then started back, ears flattened and tail curled deep between its legs. Some whimpered.
‘Leash them,’ Gryss said softly. ‘It looks like we’ll have to finish this without them.’
The dogs’ unease, though, had spread to the hunters and such enthusiasm as they still had waned markedly as they tied up their dogs.
‘So it’s big,’ Garren said, speaking the silent concern. ‘We knew that. We’ve got staves and axes enough for any dog, haven’t we, for pity’s sake? Do you really want to come back up here on night watches? Come on. Let’s find the damn thing and kill it.’ And without waiting for any debate, he plunged off through the ferns. Rather shamefacedly the others followed, some of them raising their spirits by roundly swearing at their dogs.
After his initial rush Garren soon slowed down for, large though it might have been, the animal had left little in the way of clear signs to follow: a broken stem here, long grass trampled there.
Then some fur snagged on a bush.
Garren untangled it and rubbed it pensively between his fingers. It was a mixture of black and dark brown and unusually coarse. He offered it to one of the dogs, but again the ears went back and the tail drooped, and the dog looked reproachfully at its master.
Garren pulled a rueful face as he straightened up and threw the fur away. ‘Well, at least with this colour it should be easy enough to spot,’ he said.
Farnor bent and picked up the fur as the group set off again. It had a peculiarly unpleasant feel to it, and he felt his skin crawling again just as it had when he had heard the rumble of the rock slide earlier.
He rubbed his right arm to still the sensation but his touch felt odd, as if both hand and arm were someone else’s, someone in a different place, at once near and far away. He glanced down, momentarily fearful. His arm and his hand looked as they felt, near yet distant; his, yet not his. Only the dark fur of the strange, slaughter-ing animal held in the familiar, alien fingers seemed to be truly real and present. Indeed, it was vividly present, as if it alone belonged here.
Something somewhere began to form the idea that he was light-headed with the sun and the walking and the excitement of events that day, but it faded into the background as, abruptly, a dreadful malevolence seemed to possess him.
That it was the spirit of the creature they were hunt-ing he knew as surely as he knew his father and Gryss and the others about him, pressing forward through the ferns in their own distant world.
He heard the breath being drawn from him at the horror of the sensation, while at the same time he felt two responses rise within him like ill-matched horses drawing a wagon. Sword-swinging rage to destroy this abomination and all its ilk for ever. And pity for this creation, into which so much wilful evil had been nurtured.
Part of him reached out…
Following a path of his own, Rannick faltered as the presence about him momentarily vanished, then returned, heightened tenfold and full of bloodlust and desire. Desire for vengeance.
With a gasp, Farnor fell headlong forward.