Graynelore

I can huddle with a grieving family, grimly gathered at our fireside, making the cursed talk of revenge.

Sick with fear, I can taste stomach bile at my throat on seeing the sudden stillness of my first human killing. He was a Bogart by grayne; though a Bogart out of an Elfwych. Upon a holyday, I once played childish sport with the lad. Yet I dropped a great stone upon his head – broke it apart – as he lay face down upon the ground. His body was already sliced open, that the work of another’s sword, but it was I who killed him. To possess all that is life, then, in a breath, in less than a breath, to take it all away…

Before the raider’s trail, I can sit piss-scared upon my own dead father’s hobby-horse. And I can heed the old wives’ warnings that came ringing to my ears.

‘Mind how you go there, child! Keep off the bloody bog-moss. It swallows grown men whole! It sucks down full-laden fell-horses, carts and all! It will leave us no sign to remember you by…’

And, of a bright summer’s day, without a care, I can run again through the long dry grasses with Old Emma’s Notyet, chasing after the cat’s tail. Mind, that is no man’s business but my own, and I will thank you for it and keep it to myself.

Do you follow me, my friend?

Old Emma, my elder-cousin, was a long time dead. Notyet, her daughter, was my playfellow. She was a weedling child, plain-faced, stoical, yet not displeasing. In age, there was less than a season between us. We came together because we lived together. We sat out upon the same summer fields and watched, lazily, over the same stock. We ran, a-feared, from the same raiders, raised the hue and cry. We ate from the same table, burned our faces at the same fireside. Bloodied our noses against the same hard ground and broke ice from the same stone water trough. And we each caught the other looking, without a blush, when we washed ourselves, naked, in the same stream.

Notyet would often hide herself away in some secret woodland dell, where she would play awkward tunes upon the crude wooden whistles she made. I would listen, and follow after her simple music. I liked to find her there, in hiding. Was she my heart’s meat? Was she? Ha! Upon Graynelore! If it were true, I would not have admitted it. She was my kissing kin, but…(And but is enough to condemn me, and us.)

Little more than babbies, we made a babbie together. She did not carry the infant well. It was dropped too early, born a feeble weedling; and un-cherished, it was soon dead. Birth is such a bloody struggle. Life is such a difficult trail to follow, while death – the sudden stop – so very easy.

My friend, I have given you these awkward childhood memories; these fleeting glimpses of Graynelore, not because of their individual worth, but because together they might give you a sense of the world into which I was born. For the most part, they might appear to be nothing better than the gathered pieces from a broken clay pot! A handful of shattered fragments, a few, no doubt, so cruelly sharp they can hurt still, but, at best, incomplete.

Indeed, there are pieces missing. There is another memory I must share with you. I must take us to another day, and to a meeting with a Beggar Bard.

Chapter Two (#ulink_54e87df7-ccde-56eb-9745-3d5ef9b5a95a)

How the World was Made (#ulink_54e87df7-ccde-56eb-9745-3d5ef9b5a95a)

I can still see him, standing before an open door on a winter’s evening. He appeared out of the darkening shadows, just as a cold sun fell out of a weathered sky. Just as the bars were about to be drawn and the wind-eyes battened against the night. The old man’s back was stooped, his yellowing skin so dry, so thin, I was certain he was something of a wych’s trick; a bag of old bones somehow kept whole. Though he remains forever nameless – he offered us none and history does not recall – I remember him cadging a supper and a fireside in return for his story. All my family, from the eldest crone to the youngest babbie, quickly gathered there, eager to receive him. (For there is no luck in turning a Beggar Bard from your door; ask any who have tried, any still living.)

When he began to tell his story, he began mine. For he told us the tale of how the world was first made.

How easily that frail old man stole a fireside. For as long as he talked he kept his bones warmed, and his audience believing every word. And such a performance! He never stood still. His fragile limbs jerked and twisted in time to his every phrase. His sallow eyes, alert and sharp, even in old age, fell upon each of us in turn and seemed to reach into our very souls. He scared the babbies witless. He had grown men and women cursing and bellowing like cloddish fools. At my side a boyish Notyet was caught sorely stiff afraid. In my excitement I let my fists fly, made her yowl, banged her on the ear to bring her back.

‘Hoy!’ she cried, returned her closed hand, and cuffed me back.

And I? What did I make of this Beggar Bard? When he spoke, it was as if time itself ran at a listless pace, against its nature. Rogrig was…spellbound, beguiled. The Beggar Bard drew us all into his dark tale.

‘Look sharp, my friends. Look sharp about us,’ he began. He spoke through rotten teeth and with a rasping, ailing breath. ‘We are at the beginning of all things. So come and watch with me, as a single scratch of light appears out of an eternal darkness.’ The old man’s withered hands enticed, beckoned to us, all the while drawing magical, fleeting pictures in the smoke-filled air around us. ‘Pass through this stagnant swirl of ageing yellow mist. And come upon a tall grey figure, standing motionless before a great stone tablet.’ The Beggar Bard’s open fingers and narrowed eyes signalled a caution. ‘Make no sound! Keep deathly still. This man before us is a Great Wizard, a Lord of Creation. He must not see us here.’

From somewhere among our gathering there came a gentle roll of knowing laughter. (This childish Rogrig mistook it for simple pleasure.) There were many there who already knew this tale by heart, and the manner of its telling. They were content to play their part and hear it told again, but they took the Beggar Bard’s performance for what it was: common trickery and simple amusement. Sleight of hand to baffle Tom Fool, not a faerie’s Glamour, worthy of the gibbet. The Beggar Bard continued his tale, unabashed.

‘Now, my friends, watch carefully. Do not blink! Or you will miss the first of it!’ He gave a waggle of his bony finger. ‘See? The stone tablet, its surface, quite plain and unadorned, in an instant is deeply cut: incised and embellished by its master’s hand. The form is a map. The image is a pair of islands – one great, the other small – set upon the broadest sea. Notice how its waters glisten, even upon the stone. And the smaller island: it is such a strange curiosity. What magic is this? See how it moves…marking out its course as it cuts a swathe across the surface of the tablet.’

Again and again the Beggar Bard’s fingers made magical pictures in the fire smoke. The stone tablet…The Great Wizard…The map…The islands…The sea…I was so convinced of what I saw there that night I can still see it all, vividly. Every detail, everything conceived.

‘And why was the stone map made?’ asked the Beggar Bard, rhetorically, expecting no answer but his own. ‘It was like a great eye that looked out upon the whole world and saw everything. An Eye Stone,’ said the Beggar Bard, ‘an Eye Stone, created, that all creatures everywhere should know their place in the world and marvel at its splendour. Nothing was missed. For a Great Wizard knows his task and his world quite well enough. And if his concerns were for design and skilful ornament, rather than for accuracy and scale, then he made up for its lack with an indubitable certainty.’ Now, the meaning of many of the Beggar Bard’s words was often lost to the ears of an ignorant child (aye, and the contradictions too) and yet this only added to their mystique and to my unwavering belief in their authority.

‘He made a mark for the Stronghold of The Graynelord; the Headman of all the graynes…And a mark too, for the bastle-houses of lesser men,’ added the Beggar Bard, shrewdly. At which, there came a great stamping of feet and a roaring of approval. ‘There were marks made for the mountains of the gigants, and for the dwarven holes. Marks for the elfin forest dells; for the lakes and for the mires, where the kelpies lie in wait for unsuspecting travellers; and for the broad grasslands of the unifauns. There were simple marks for the hills and the vales; for the roads; and another for the great River Winding that comes out of the mountains and finds its way into every part of this land. All manner of things were cut upon that stone face: the marvellous and the mundane.

‘And when, within the making, the Great Wizard found himself at a loss – after all, if he knew his own homelands best, and other, stranger parts at the world’s furthest corners hardly at all, can he be blamed for his enthusiasms and omissions? – he simply cut these words and wrote: The Great Unknown, or Here Be Monsters.’

‘And what of this curious moving isle, Lord Bard—?’ The interruption came from the Headman of our house: Wolfrid, my elder-cousin, eager to have the story told. He spilled wine from the mouth of his stone drinking jar as he spoke, left a spattered trail upon the earth floor at his feet.

‘You do well to ask, my friend,’ replied the Beggar Bard. His fingers continued to draw fleeting shapes upon the smoke-filled air. ‘It is, of course, the Faerie Isle. Never yet seen by any mortal man, I would swear; only ever believed in. For such, you will agree, is true faith?’

Again there came the knowing laughter from among our company, if slightly less certain now. The Beggar Bard continued.

‘Just as surely as he knew the Moon moves across our night sky, the Great Wizard knew the Faerie Isle moves across our sea (if, ever and always, just out of sight). He knew it was there, and so he marked it there upon the stone as best he could; adding waves and ripples in want of movement and effect. And he was well satisfied, for he also knew that it was from the Faerie Isle that all the creatures of the world first came.

‘Finally, and with flourish, all around the edges of the tablet inscriptions were made, numbering the natural laws of this land, though in a symbol and tongue known only to the Great Wizard himself; that no common creature might challenge their worth or seek to interpret their truth to its own advantage.’

Here the Beggar Bard was forced to pause and take a breath. His sallow eyes briefly passed over us again, as if he was looking for the measure of our understanding. He smiled – at us, not with us – before continuing.

‘With that, my friends, the Great Wizard’s work was all but finished. The Eye Stone, almost complete. The world unmade, was at once a world made. Cut upon cut, line upon line. Only, in that very last moment of its making, he marked it with a name, and called it – Graynelore.’

There were sudden, fervent cheers. Wolfrid hauled himself upright, applauding loudly (if his wine-sodden face carried something of a befuddled look). At my back, men and women in a jolly drunken fashion, clashed their drinking bowls together, slopped and splashed a rain of warm ale down upon our heads. Notyet yelped and jumped at the excitement of it, which only encouraged the Beggar Bard to more.

‘Now then…there came a solemn day, when The Eye Stone was at last revealed to the creatures of Graynelore. And, all at once, they believed in its truth and in its accuracy. They believed without question; because they believed in the Great Wizard without question. And, just as these things occur, just as the Great Wizard had set it in stone, so the world at large became…and still is.’

The Beggar Bard fell silent, and for the first time stood suddenly stock-still. Though, his eyes continued to sharpen themselves upon us.

As if it was a given signal, the elder-women of my house quickly stood up. They offered the Beggar Bard a bowl of the best wine and a board of fresh meats, which he quietly accepted and sat down upon the stone hearth by the fire to consume. Out of courtesy, he was also offered a young woman for his own close company, which he politely refused.

Our general gathering sat on, unmoved, waited in eager anticipation of his return. Fortunately, his was a meagre appetite, soon sated. It was not long before he set his bowl and board aside.

In his own time, and beckoning both my own mother and Notyet for their support, he carefully stood up, and prepared himself to continue. It was obvious his great age was getting the better of him. ‘That ancient stone tablet, The Eye Stone, stood out upon the exact spot where it had been created and weathered countless centuries. Until, at last, its guardian and creator, the Great Wizard died…(Aye, for even the greatest of wizards was not an immortal, whatever other men might tell you).

‘Across the ages many Great Wizards have come and gone. There were those who, when they came upon The Eye Stone, believed in its truth. Though there were just as many who came upon it and did not believe. In the fullness of time, The Eye Stone seemed lost to history. Perhaps it toppled, or crumbled to dust, or else was stolen away.

‘Copies were made from its memory, sometimes cut upon stone, sometimes scribed upon parchment, or woven into the threads of great tapestries. Though some believe the real Eye Stone was eventually found again…Lost, and found.’ The Beggar Bard drew out the last of these words, lightly rocked his cradled hands as if he was passing them between one and the other.

Then his tone grew more sombre.

‘Upon a day, there came a calamitous moment in our history when, all at once, several Great Wizards claimed to be the only true descendent of the first. And each solemnly declared that the image of The Eye Stone in their possession was the only one made after the true original. Be it marked upon stone, or upon cloth, or upon parchment.

‘Their eager debates turned to sour arguments, turned to open conflicts…and war! Aye, and with truth and right on all sides and many—!’ The Beggar Bard smiled ruefully at this last remark. Around him, the light of the open fire grew suddenly dim. Its smoke belched black and thickened about his crooked form, leaving only the image of a ghastly golem in his place.

Still, grown men laughed, babbies cried, and the eldest crone wailed her distress.

The Beggar Bard’s performance was coming to its dramatic height.

‘I beseech you all, my friends. Turn away! Look no more upon me! Or else, if look you must, see only darkness here. I did not intend slaughter for an entertainment. We do not need to witness the destruction of war, need only understand its outcome and recognize the utter loss at its last battle’s bitter end.’

Even as the Beggar Bard spoke these words, within the fire-smoke filled air a great turmoil erupted. The shadows of men and beasts came together and did gruesome battle. Dark elfin creatures with beating wings, goblins, gigants, and dwarves rose up together in great clashing swathes only to dissolve again into wisps of smoke. Thundering herds of unifauns bolted from the depths of the fire crying their distress. Spitting flames became the fiery breath of angry dragons. The sound of crackling wood became the clash of iron war swords, the death cries of men, the breaking of bones, and the voices of despair. And among it all, in their fury, the feuding wizards cast their bolts of magic and laid the world to waste.

To my childish eyes it was all very real. In all my short life – though I had witnessed much – I had never experienced such pitiful dread. Between us, Notyet and I grasped at each other’s stiffened limbs and held on tight. Still the men of my house laughed and stamped their feet, and spat their approval, and demanded more, and more, and worse, and worse. The women wept a dreadful sorrow; and yet were still filled with eager anticipation. The babbies pissed themselves.

The Beggar Bard gave us one final spectacle to behold. At the very last, as I gaped open-mouthed, with the battle of the wizards still at its height, all across the heavens a great shade, a tumult of raging black cloud, descended. A rolling blanket of darkness…Then the rain fell, the black rain. It was not water, but dust: Faerie Dust. Each drop as fine as a grain of sand, as sharp as a fragment of broken glass. And as it fell it smothered all before it – even as creatures and men battled on – covering great swathes of the earth, and finding its pinnacle upon the heights of Earthrise, a distant mountain…only, now and forever more, to be known as the black-headed mountain.

And then – suddenly, quickly – it was all over and done with.