When they had gone Gryss returned to his wicker chair. He had been right to risk speaking to Farnor. The boy – he corrected himself – the young man, was indeed troubled in some way. But the question he had asked, ‘Am I related to Rannick?’ was puzzling.
Why in the name of sanity should Farnor suddenly imagine he was related to Rannick? And be so terrified at the prospect? Distaste Gryss could understand, but fear?
What had happened the other day when Farnor had met Rannick? And what had Rannick been doing so far up the valley?
He frowned. Alone now, he felt a much greater sense of urgency about these recent happenings than he had hitherto. He really must seek out an opportunity to be alone with Farnor with a view to tackling these ques-tions head on. Then he swore at himself for a dull-witted old fool and, slapping his hands hard on the arms of his chair, he heaved himself up and almost ran to the front door. The chair creaked unhappily at this treatment, and the dog, caught in this sudden maelstrom of activity, scuttled indignantly out of his way and, grumbling darkly, went to lie down in a corner.
Farnor and Garren had not walked very far, and both turned at the sound of Gryss’s penetrating whistle. The old man beckoned them back.
‘I’m sorry, Garren,’ he said as they reached him. ‘There is a little job that Farnor can do for me if it’s not too much trouble. Can you spare him for a while?’
‘Of course,’ Garren said. ‘Any time. Just ask. You know that.’
As he closed the door, Gryss motioned Farnor to the back room.
‘Sit down,’ he said, indicating the chair that Farnor had been sitting in previously. Then he dropped back into his own chair opposite and, without preamble, said simply, ‘Now. Tell me everything.’
Farnor looked at him for a moment, then, clearing his throat, said, ‘Did you really sense something about the… sheep-worrier… yesterday?’
Although he had already admitted this to Farnor only minutes before, Gryss found that the prospect of giving a more detailed explanation was more daunting than he had anticipated. He made his face stern, fearing that he was going to look as awkward as the young man in front of him.
‘Yes,’ he managed to say, authoritatively. ‘Just a flash of something when I held that piece of fur. But my guess is that you felt much more. That’s why you passed out. Please tell me what happened to you. I think it’s important.’
Farnor grimaced and turned away from the old man’s gaze.
Impatience crept into Gryss’s voice. ‘Farnor, you’re not remotely interested in organizing the night watches, are you?’ he said. ‘Least of all if it means walking here through the pouring rain.’ He paused to let the words take effect. ‘You came to warn us about something. And you called that animal out there a creature. Not a dog, a creature. And why have you suddenly got the idea that you’re related to…?’
Farnor lifted a hand before he could finish the ques-tion. ‘Rannick touches things… animals… insects,’ he blurted out. ‘Controls them.’
Then, scarcely pausing for breath, he spilled out the details of his meeting with Rannick and the strange behaviour of the flies.
‘And, yesterday, I touched the… thing… that’s out there.’ He waved his hands vaguely. ‘When I held that fur I seemed to go into… some other place. And I touched it. And it’s more than just savage, it’s bad… evil. It’ll kill people without a doubt. It might even prefer people to sheep.’
He stopped and looked intently at his interrogator.
Gryss had received Farnor’s outburst like a man trying to catch several things falling simultaneously from a shelf; only with an effort did he prevent his mouth from dropping open. He wanted to dismiss this young man’s nonsense out of hand, but he could not deny what he himself had felt, however fleeting it had been. And there was the strange trance that Farnor had fallen into.
He met Farnor’s gaze. The lad was imaginative. He knew that, having watched him many times sitting spellbound as Yonas the Teller had spun his sonorous tales of wonder. Yet, too, he was solid and practical, with his feet well on the ground. His father had seen to that. Farnor would be a fitting heir to the Yarrance land when the time came.
Despite their clamour, he set the how and the why of it all firmly to one side.
‘I believe you,’ he said quietly. ‘Though what it all means and how it’s all come about, I can’t say.’ He went on, anticipating Farnor’s next question, ‘And we have to accept that we can’t tell this tale to the others as you’ve told it to me.’ He smiled weakly. ‘They’ll think we’ve both gone down with brain fever.’ He made his face become thoughtful lest Farnor misconstrue his levity, and when he spoke again his manner was bluntly practical. ‘What we must concern ourselves with is the danger that this creature offers. Nothing else. Perhaps what you and I felt was…’ He shrugged. ‘Something like the tension we feel when a thunderstorm is about to break, or that quality in the air that tells us winter is coming… who can say?’
‘But why now?’ Farnor’s question burst through. ‘I’ve never had anything like that happen before, have you?’
‘No, not really,’ Gryss admitted. ‘But we’ve never known a sheep-worrier like this before, and we mustn’t fret about it. Not yet, anyway. We must stick to practical matters. We must protect ourselves when we go hunting and, above all, we must protect our herds – our winter food and our future. If we catch this thing, or kill it or drive it away, then perhaps we can give some thought to what’s happened and why, but for the moment it’s not important.’
Although Farnor would have preferred answers from the elder, he found that the acceptance of his tale had lifted a burden from him that he had scarcely realized he had been carrying. And the practicality of Gryss’s response heartened him.
Gryss reached out and took from the table the sheet of paper on which Garren had written the arrangements for the night watches. He nodded slowly as he studied it. ‘I think we can do it without causing too much stir,’ he said. ‘I’ll attend to it when you’ve gone.’
Yet something lingered between the two men. Lin-gered like foul air over a stagnant pond.
‘Rannick,’ Gryss said, like a cold, dispelling breeze.
Farnor looked at him but did not speak.
‘It’s just occurred to me that you heard me talking about the taint of Rannick’s family yesterday, didn’t you?’ Gryss said.
Farnor nodded.
Gryss paused for a moment. Farnor’s concern had become clearer. He voiced it.
‘Looking back, you think that when Rannick snapped his fingers he moved that cloud of flies away, controlled them in some way, don’t you? Then, within days, you found yourself mysteriously drawn out beyond the place you were in and touching a strange animal presence. It occurs to you, therefore, that you might be like Rannick. And Rannick is tainted, you heard me say.
Farnor nodded again, his face pained.
Gryss held a brief debate with himself. Better the truth, he decided. Or at least such truth as he knew, and an honest admission of his uncertainties.
He held out his hands. ‘When people come to me with their ailments and their aches, I use what knowl-edge I’ve gathered over the years to try to help them. Some of it I was taught by another healer when I was younger, some I’ve learned from books, most I’ve probably learned by experience. But sometimes…’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Only sometimes, sadly, and far from often, these hands seem to heal things on their own. They sense things. They go straight to a hurt and put it right almost as if I wasn’t there.’ He gave a disclaiming shrug. ‘I get the credit for it, but I don’t begin to know how it happens. It’s just some attribute that I seem to have been born with.’ He looked at Farnor squarely. ‘For all I know, now you’ve made me think about it, such a trait could be some remnant of the strangeness that runs in Rannick’s family. The strangeness that yesterday I referred to as a taint. So also might be the brief awareness of… the creature… that I sensed yester-day.’
Farnor shook his head. ‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ he said. ‘Are you saying that you’re related to Rannick in some way, and because of what happened yesterday you think I might be too?’ Fear came back into his eyes, mixed with anger. ‘I don’t want to be related to Rannick,’ he said. ‘I don’t want anything to do with him. I can’t stand him.’
‘It’s not something you’ve got any choice about,’ Gryss replied starkly. ‘This is a small community and very few here have either the inclination or the oppor-tunity to marry outsiders. It’s always been that way and if you go back a few generations and think what it means, you’ll soon realize that by now everyone’s related to everyone else. We’re all cousins at some degree and at one remove or other. The blood of Rannick’s family is in all of us, just as all of ours is in his.’
Farnor knew enough about the breeding of animals to understand this, though it did nothing to make him feel any easier.
‘But it’s diluted, Farnor,’ Gryss went on reassuringly. ‘Spread thin. And mixed with the blood of many other good solid folk before it came to you from your mother and father.’
‘I’ve heard of traits coming out in sheep after five generations and more,’ Farnor said in rebuttal.
‘And what traits do you have in common with Ran-nick, Farnor?’ Gryss said. ‘His surly, self-destructive disposition? His sour idleness? You’ve certainly none of his looks.’ He did not wait for a reply. ‘Just consider what’s happened. You think you’ve seen him exert some mysterious control over animals, or flies anyway.’ He allowed a hint of scorn to colour this last remark. ‘Then you think that you’ve… touched… one particular animal. How can you draw any profound conclusions from such vagueness? It might all be no more than coincidence.’ He jabbed an emphatic finger at the young man. ‘And in any case, Farnor, while you’re half your mother and half your father, you’re wholly yourself. Whatever traits you were born with, bad or good, and whoever they might have derived from, they’re yours now and how you use them is up to you! Whether they become masters or servants is your choice.’
Farnor grimaced. ‘I suppose so,’ he conceded reluc-tantly, though the thought of being related to Rannick, however distantly, made him feel as though he were wearing a shirt full of hay chaff. He fidgeted uncom-fortably in the wicker chair.
‘Don’t suppose so, know so,’ Gryss insisted. ‘It truly doesn’t bother me if part of my healing skill is some-thing inherited from Rannick’s line.’ His face darkened as the memory of tragic failures he had known rose to overshadow his many successes. ‘I only wish I had more of it,’ he added softly. ‘And you yourself. How has this ability shown itself?’ He leaned forward, his voice compelling. ‘It warned you about something, Farnor. And you warned us. Perhaps because of it some of our friends and neighbours will be alive next week instead of being dead. It was your choice, Farnor, and you made it correctly. How can that be bad? Be grateful to whatever fate gave you such an opportunity to help others.’
Farnor’s remaining resistance crumbled in the face of this assault. ‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said, his face lighting up. ‘Thank you.’
Gryss warmed to this simple, unconditional grati-tude. It was like seeing a fever patient pass through a crisis. He was both relieved and more than a little pleased with himself that in helping Farnor he had also been able to shine some light into the darkness of his own recent concerns. He looked at Farnor. Young people could be monumentally tedious at times, he mused. But at others they were quite splendid. And they certainly kept you on your toes.
He raised a cautionary finger. ‘But,’ he said, ‘this is still our secret until we know more. I can quietly arrange for our hunters to be better protected, but you must tell me if anything like this contact happens again. However slight, however odd.’
‘Of course,’ Farnor said, almost off-handedly. Most of his anxiety having been taken from him, he wanted to be away; to be outside; to breathe cool, fresh air and feel space about him.
Gryss released him with a flick of his hand. ‘And if you see Rannick, ask him if he could drop in and see me urgently,’ he concluded as Farnor rose to leave.
By dint of his knowledge of the villagers and farmers, coupled with some shrewd talking and some straight-forward alarmism based on the results of ‘another look at’ the damage to the two corpses, Gryss persuaded the hunters to go out in groups of six and armed with, amongst other things, sharpened staves, axes, sickles and the inevitable rusty swords.
The sheep were rounded up and brought lower down the valley, except for a few that were left to act as bait for the marauder. With varying degrees of patience the hunters kept their nightly vigils, but apart from an occasional alarm prompted by a curious fox, or some night bird, nothing happened, and after a few nights spent thus, such small enthusiasm there had been for night watches disappeared completely.
‘It’s left. We’ve frightened it away,’ was the consen-sus among the yawning and by now bad-tempered watchers. Gryss could scarcely disagree. In the past, offending animals had invariably been caught by the third night at the latest. And, too, Dalmas was imminent and there would be a great deal of work involved in agreeing the final value and distribution of the tithe and then collecting and preparing it.
The night watches were thus abandoned without further debate and village and valley life reverted to normal, enlivened by a rash of new tales being told, retold and exaggerated about the many small incidents that had coloured the tedious nightly outings.
Superficially Gryss was satisfied with this outcome, though something inside him could not accept that it was yet finished. And two more specific matters lingered uncomfortably in his thoughts. One was that Rannick had still not appeared. The other, though vaguer, Gryss found more disturbing. When the sheep had been rounded up, one of the farmers thought that some of his were missing. He made no great issue of it as the round-up was necessarily not a particularly thorough one, and Gryss gave the remark little heed. In due course, however, independently and equally casually, some four or five other farmers made the same observation and Gryss realized that the possible total number of sheep missing was disturbingly large.
But, with Dalmas pending, and general disenchant-ment at the fruitless night watches dominating village affairs, Gryss held his peace. It felt like an act of cowardice however: something that he might come to regret in due course.
Farnor, not privy to these concerns, and to some extent still glowing from Gryss’s secret approval of his actions, happily let the whole affair slip into the past. And as Dalmas approached, like everyone else, he became increasingly occupied with the business of gathering the tithe.
To Farnor there was something comforting about the particular reliability of Dalmastide, with its long-winded and almost ritualistic haggling over who had to pay what and why, and the subsequent communal effort involved in the gathering.
Daily routines were changed, carts and wagons were borrowed, as were casks and kegs and barrels and all manner of other containers. Special breads and cakes were baked and meats prepared. The village had a smell of spring awakening and of cooking that was uniquely Dalmastide. People were not where they usually were and, bumping into friends and acquaintances they had ‘not seen for ages’, invariably stopped too long to gossip and chatter – usually in the inn.
Overall, a sense of excitement, expectation and, not infrequently, dire emergency filled the air.
Farnor was less taken by the details of the prepara-tion, affecting to regard it as women’s work, though it was not a comment he would have said out loud in the vicinity of his mother or any of the other women. And, notwithstanding this affectation, he always found the careful arrangements of the stored produce decorated with elaborate patterns of spring flowers and leaves a happy, even moving, sight.
On the evening of Dalmas Eve there were the usual last-minute alarms but, as ever, the preparation was eventually declared adequate and the tithe barn was ceremoniously closed and sealed at sunset.
Gryss stepped back from the door of the barn and performed the final task of the ceremony, the striking of a sunstone which was to be mounted on the ridge of the barn. In earlier days this had involved a hair-raising climb up a long and invariably shaking ladder, but following a series of unfortunate happenings to one particular elder, an ingenious rope-and-pulley system had been devised so that the matter could be attended to with dignity from the safety of ground level.
Farnor watched the shining sunstone as it rose to the top of the barn in its open metal bowl. It swung hypnotically from side to side until with a click it came to a halt. The barn being on raised ground, the sunstone would be visible from many parts of the valley and at night would look like a bright new star set low in the sky. It seemed like a good omen, a celebration of the end of the strangeness that had begun with his finding of the dead sheep and to some extent still lingered with him, albeit greatly lessened by Gryss’s lancing.
Dalmas Day passed quietly, as always, it being regarded as a rest day following the flurry and bustle of the tithe gathering. Dalmas Morrow, too, was quiet, though, as usual, it had a livelier air about it as final preparations were made for the cooking of the special meals that were a feature of the following day.
At risk of being drawn into this activity by his mother, Farnor judiciously opted to observe another Dalmastide tradition, namely the sunset watch. This was ostensibly the oldest of the Dalmastide ceremonies though, whatever the truth of this, it had undoubtedly changed in character from its original form.
Once believed to have been a gathering of worthies charged with the task of watching for the arrival of the King’s tithe gatherers, it was now an excuse for the young sparks of the village to gather with a view to making merry. Accompanied by knowing looks, unorthodox bottles full of ‘my father’s best fruit cordial’ and ‘my mother’s liniment’ appeared, as did food more properly destined for the morrow. Instruments were brought and played, songs sung, dances danced and other activities pursued as the mood of the moment dictated. There was much talk and laughter and the ‘ceremony’ always extended well beyond sunset, the time by which the gatherers had to arrive if the tithe was not deemed to be unrequired by the King. Indeed, the ceremony did not normally begin to get properly under way until the light began to fade.
It was still some time to sunset when Farnor arrived at the hillock to the south of the village where the sunset watch was traditionally held and, after greeting those already there, he flopped down on the short springy grass and lay back luxuriously to await events.
It had been a fine warm day and it promised to be a fine warm evening. The atmosphere on the hillock was already lively and happy and Farnor felt a euphoria seeping over him: a feeling of gratitude such as he had felt for his mother the day after the hunt; a feeling of gratitude for his father and Gryss and all his friends, and the good life that was to be found in the valley. Yonas’s ringing tales of wars and battle and heroism in distant magic lands, and Gryss’s quiet reticence about the world over the hill, swung in easy counter-balance to one another against this contentment. Tonight, whether it be quiet and reflective or noisy and boisterous, would be good, he knew. It always was.
Through half-opened eyes he watched his friends. Some were lying idly on the grass as he was, some were standing and talking, others were just wandering to and fro. The buzz of their conversation and the smell of the grass seemed to flow right through him. His friends appeared to be at once here, around him, and a long way away. He wanted to reach out and thank them for being.
Abruptly, a great spasm shook him wide awake as if he had been lifted gently off the ground and then dropped violently. It was a familiar enough experience often happening as he was drifting into sleep.
He smiled ruefully to himself. A lucky escape, he thought. Had he gone to sleep there was no doubt that some atrocity would have been committed on him by his friends that would have served as a topic for merriment for the rest of the year. As he levered himself on to his elbow, he noticed that the hillock was suddenly silent and that many of his companions had raised their hands as if something had touched them or as if to catch a distant sound.
He clapped his hands loudly, making several of them jump and immediately restoring the noisy hubbub to the top of the hillock twofold.
He laughed as he dodged various missiles, then looked around to decide which of the groups he should favour with his company.
As he did so, however, something caught his eye. For a moment it confused him, then he sought it out again and studied it intently.
Silence once again descended on the gathering. Others had seen it.
To the south, winding slowly over the undulating ground, was a long line of riders.