Graynelore

‘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.

With a simple shrug of his arm the Beggar Bard dispersed the smoke, as if he was tossing aside his winter cloak. It drifted upwards, a thing in itself, coming to rest against the wooden joists of the ceiling. And there, the skulking loathsome mass, seemed to hesitate, only to seep quietly away between the gaps in the wood and the broken stonework, until it was quite gone up through the house, to the very rafters, and out into the night. And the clash of battle, and the storm of war, and the black Faerie Dust, went with it.

Our gathering hushed then, though whether through dread, or understanding, or anticipation for what was to come next, Rogrig, the child, did not have the wit to tell.

The Beggar Bard waited there a long moment, as if to catch his breath; standing quietly, head solemnly bowed, until the silence was complete. Then, only then, he spoke again in hushed tones.

‘All the wizards are long dead now…and gone forever. There is little enough left of their true magic here. And if our world…if Graynelore survives still, the Faerie Isle, its ethereal partner, was utterly broken by it, grounded, never to move again. A landed wreck, left a mere earthly prominence: you need only look to the furthest point of our own eastern shores – to the forgotten March, the Wycken Mire.’ For the first time the Beggar Bard hesitated in his speech, almost at a loss for words.

‘Out of the chaos of that war came a chaotic peace…a new world order was made, but without magic or rule of law. A world without reason, in which only blood-ties and the strength of a man’s arm has any worth. The ways of faerie diminished and quite faded away…Much that was good and true, much that was light and fair, faded with them. The warm hearts of men turned to cold, cold stone.’

Was the Beggar Bard looking only at me when he spoke then? I was certain he was and shuddered for it. It was as if he had looked into my own stone heart and laid it bare; a thing to be despised. I tore my hand free of Notyet’s grasp, and roughly set myself aside from her. Upon Graynelore, the soft-hearted man is soon dead!

The Beggar Bard’s eyes moved on; and his mouth…

‘What few poor faerie creatures remained soon disappeared from sight. They hid themselves away among the beasts of the fields and the birds of the air; or else among common men. Until, as the ages passed, neither was distinguishable, not one from the other, and little remained of faerie other than their names. Names the great families of this world – the graynes – stole, and took to wearing as their own. Names…And the taint of black dust that still lies scattered upon distant fields and covers the head of Earthrise, the black-headed mountain.’

Sullen and forlorn, the Beggar Bard suddenly brightened. He stood up boldly before us, as a final twist to his tale came into his mind.

‘And what, you may well ask, became of the tablet that was the true Eye Stone of Graynelore? It has been told that it was destroyed. Already badly weathered through the ages, it was broken up and scattered to the ends of the earth. Symbolic of a broken land no doubt. But, see this—?’ The Beggar Bard thrust a withered hand inside his cloth and drew out a blackened shard of stone: a talisman, which was bound to his neck by a leather thong. (All Beggar Bards carried such a relic.) His was too distant, and the shadows too deep to see clearly. ‘This old-man’s Burden is, alas, only the smallest of broken fragments of the true stone. But do not despair for its safety; I am quite certain of its majority…You see, one day, a man they called Sylvane, who was the first Graynelord of the Wishards, built his Stronghold upon the very spot where it lay, forgotten. His stonemasons, not recognizing The Eye Stone for what it truly was, chose it for a foundation stone, built it into the very fabric of their walls. Which gave the building a great strength: greatest of all the Strongholds throughout Graynelore. An advantage the Wishards still make best use of. Though more lifetimes have passed since then than can be easily measured.’

Unable to control ourselves, and for one last time, his willing audience erupted into a furious display of abandoned approval. How very easily we took the sweetmeat he so generously offered.

Here, finally, the Beggar Bard’s tale came to its end. He quickly put away his stone talisman, tucked it out of sight within his cloth. And, suddenly exhausted by the telling of his epic tale, all at once lay down before the fire and slept.

Chapter Three

The Beggar Bard’s Burden

If there had been any truth in the Beggar Bard’s words (which there was) there had also been nonsense: honesty with lies, fact with theatre and make-believe. Though, which was which mattered less, when none of it could be either reliably proved or disproved.

Long into that night, there was much wild carousing and rough love-making among the men and women of my house. And there was enough warm ale and petty frolics to indulge its youth. Notyet and I took on too much drink between us, and were compelled – with a well-practised relish – to throw it up again, before we each found ourselves a piece of floor and a rag of cloth to call a cot and flounder upon.

We were not a learned people; the Beggar Bard’s tale was truth enough for us. It was as good an explanation of our history as any (when we were in want of any other), and worthy of celebration and repeating. The more his story was retold – and it was often retold thereafter – the more it was believed in, until in the retelling it became the certain truth. And if its ending had been a deliberate bribe, a passing gift to satisfy his audience – a gift the Beggar Bard no doubt bestowed upon all his customers of a cold winter’s eve – it was a contrived entertainment, gladly accepted and revelled in.

In the early hours, I was woken from my drunkard’s sleep by the sound of raised and worried voices. By the dim light of the night-fire I could see the outlines of men standing over the prone body of the Beggar Bard. He was still asleep, I thought. Someone was prodding at him, as if to wake him up. Only, the old man would not stir. There were a few more anxious, telling words; though the truth of the matter was becoming self-evident, even to a bleary-eyed child.

The Beggar Bard was dead.

Clearly, he had not been killed. He had not been murdered: upon Graynelore, a common enough method of dispatch. How fortunate the man…He had simply died, quietly, in his sleep.

For the first time, the only time in my memory, the night-fire was quickly dampened, and in the sudden darkness the body of the Beggar Bard was lifted and removed to some other place beyond my knowledge.

I was never to see any sign of him again; though the impression he had made upon me stays to this day. He had stirred something within me. A light was kindled. A curiosity uncovered. He exposed my own stone heart. But more than that; a truth was hinted at, if not fully revealed. I have heard the Beggar Bard’s tale retold many a time since, and with many an ending, yet it is with his voice and in his manner that I do best to recall it. I had seen it all so clearly: as real as the day. Or at least that was how I remembered it. And that was the same thing, was it not?

In the morning, with the first light of day creeping under the door and through the battened wind-eye, I searched the spot where the Beggar Bard had stood and performed, and the place next to the fire where he had slept. In my childish way, I was searching for his illusions: his sleight of hand, the source of the tricks he had played upon us. Evidence he had left behind, only for me. I even raked about among the clinker: the snuffed out embers of the night-fire.

What I found lay abandoned upon the ground. In among the rough, straw-strewn earth that made up the floor next to the hearth, something glistened. It was a roughly formed piece of stone, no bigger than the palm of my own hand. Much blackened, its jagged edges had been rubbed almost smooth with countless years of eager handling. It may well have been a broken shard from a much larger piece. The Beggar Bard’s Eye Stone? There were the faintest of lines marked upon its surface, and highlighted with real gold as if they were important, but if they had any literal meaning they were meaningless to a child. I could not make them out. Whatever the object was, it was obviously cherished. A sturdy metal clasp had been fashioned at its narrower end so that it could be hung safely from a chain or leather thong about the neck or wrist. I had seen nothing like it. The Wishards – Graynelord and his house apart – wore only base jewellery, cut from animal bone, or else we made do with staining our skin for decoration. Certainly, the object had belonged to the Beggar Bard; it had fallen from his body, been dropped unseen by the men who had roughly carried him away, in their eagerness to remove his remains. And if this treasure was the Beggar Bard’s to lose (even in death) then it was mine to find, and to keep to myself. I picked it up and quickly put it away out of sight.

Soon after, I dug a hole and I buried the thing. It was too great a treasure for a common child to hold about his person. A thief and a liar, among a house of thieves and liars is soon found out, cannot keep a secret well. I marked the spot and let it rest there, hidden and untouched.

Enough of this now, my friend! You have indulged Rogrig Wishard quite long enough for a fancy. Here my childhood stories end. After all, this is forever Graynelore. Its children must grow up quickly (if they are to grow up at all). And with this certain knowledge: there is no magic in the world; there is no faerie, real or imaginary, neither lost nor later to be found again.

Remember this: Graynelore was a land continually – habitually – defiled. It was not a good land gone bad it was a poor land made ever poorer (and kept so). Men preyed upon men; family upon family; grayne upon grayne. It was a sore continually picked at; so much so its wounds could never quite heal properly. It was a scarred landscape; a broken scab, ever enflamed and sore.

The fabled beasts of faerie – if ever they had lived – were far beyond the memory of any common men; long since dead and gone. There remained only the bereaved.

Part Two

Chapter Four

At the Mark of the Wishards

Graynelore has but two true seasons and a year equally divided by twelve months. Yet it has four Marches. How so? It is a simple babbie’s riddle, my friend. Look to the north of the country and to the south, look to the east and to the west. Mind, the naming of the Marches was not a strict territorial division. Rather, it was more the geographical convenience of a label. Every hill, every valley, every woodland dell had its recognized families: its graynes, both major and minor. And there were numerous surnames, if there were only four principle graynes. The Wishards kept themselves mostly to the South March; the Elfwych mostly to the West March; the Bogarts to the East March; and the Trolls to the foothills below the black-headed mountains in the North March. That said; this was not a settled land with hard and fast rules. There were no permanently fixed boundaries – except perhaps in the minds of a few covetous Headmen. Most men would have been hard-pressed to explain precisely where one March ended and the next began. Nor would they have greatly cared. Reivers did not draw lines upon the ground. They needed only the memory of what they believed had once been inscribed upon The Eye Stone. And if they were, more or less, always in bloody dispute because of it? So be it. It was a way of life.

In the long dry summers, the Marches of Graynelore were noisy; for it was then men preferred to fight. In the cold wet winters, the Marches were largely silent; for then, most men preferred to stay at home and rest at their firesides.

It was a morning in late summer. Winter was only a short step away. A great crowd of fighting-men had already gathered at the Heel Stone by first light that day. Many more would follow on. There was a handful of blood-tied Wises, Hogspurs, Bogarts, and other lesser kinsmen among the throng, though they were mostly Wishards by name, answering to their grayne. There were Wishards of the Three Dells: Tyne Dell, Fixlie Dell, and Dingly Dell (who were my own closest kin). There were Wishards from as far away as Carr Law. Wishards from Flat Top, and Wishards from Arch. They had come from all parts of the South March, and further. Many had travelled a long way already that morning and yet the real journey – whether it was to be a Long Riding or a Short Riding – had not yet begun.

The Heel Stone, the meeting point, was a giant solitary rock that lay toppled at the corner of Pennen Fields: a sweep of open moorland above Dragoncliffe, almost at the southern edge of the Great Sea. It was the Mark of the Wishards: a historic place of gathering.

Old-man Wishard, Headman of the Wishards of Carraw Peel, and more importantly, Graynelord of all Graynelore, had called his surname to the Mark.

Almost to a man, they sat upon their sturdy hobby-horses: the small, stolid and sure-footed fell-horses, native to the land. Creatures so lacking in height they left their rider’s feet and the tips of their rider’s iron war swords – that hung from their waists – dangling close to the ground as they rode, in what appeared an almost foolish manner for full grown men. Each man wore a reinforced handmade jack of leather or of rough cloth, as they could afford, inlaid with irregular scraps of metal to serve as make shift armour (more for show than an effective defence). In their saddle-packs they carried griddles with flour enough to make their daily bread. Some, skilled in the art, also carried a hunting wire to snare fresh meat. Only the poorest of men, or the unluckiest, those who had recently lost their mounts upon a frae, stood a-foot; and they gathered together in small packs, ready to fight at each other’s back.

Each fighting-man there was virtually the same then. Yet each man was different. These were homemade soldiers. This was a homemade army of reivers…

Among them you must look hard and find me out again; Rogrig Wishard, now fully grown to manhood. There was as yet nothing obvious about me to distinguish me from my close companions. I was still quite the ordinary man. Unexceptional, except perhaps for this: I, alone among the gathering, sat not upon a simple hobby-horse but upon a unicorn. I fear, I must explain. Do not be impressed. I…exaggerate (as is my want). My unicorn was not of flesh and blood. Rather, for a fancy, I had fashioned my mount a stout leather mask – a head-guard – struck through with a single metal spike that stood a full sword’s length proud of her nose. My hobb seemed an awesome sight to look upon. If only she might learn to use her weapon upon the frae. Still, she was a good man’s pack animal, and more than capable of carrying a full day’s toil.

I named her for another foolish whim and called her Dandelion (Dandy for short) with no better reason in mind than I liked the title.

I was sat upon Dandy then, a little away from a closed huddle of my nearest kin; nearly, though not quite, out on my own; I was keeping the wary eye. There was mostly silence here, expectant if thoughtful silence; only the rough breath of the hobbs, the odd clump of shifting hooves…hacking coughs, the breaking of wind. It was too early of a day for beer-fuddled heads (and there were enough). Where a few serious words were passed about, it was done in tight whispers. Otherwise it was an idle banter between scared men trying to talk themselves up to the fight ahead of them.

‘Mind, this Riding is to be no deadly feud…’ said one.

‘No…How so?’ answered another.

‘We must not blunt the sword, cousins – it is a simple, common lust!’ returned a third.

Now, though all of these men were well known to me, and spoke openly within my earshot, I chose only to listen…

‘They are saying the Old-man means to find himself a new wife this day.’

‘Aye, and it is rumoured he is after taking the daughter of Stain Elfwych.’

‘What, are you serious? Norda Elfwych? If it is a fighting wildcat he wants he will need to be at his guard.’

‘Aye, well…he will be taking her by force if he must.’ There was a spurt of careless laughter among the men that did not quite convince. Then a clumsy silence fell again.

In truth, whatever the cause, among the Wishards it was generally considered healthier to turn up when the Old-man commanded. Only a fool ignored the call of The Graynelord, would openly go against his grayne; man or woman. At best it left you for an outcast, a broken man without kith or kin, though more than likely it left you for dead.

That this raid was also the perfect opportunity for many a Wishard to settle old arguments of their own – to steal from their distant neighbours, to plunder, to pillage, to do murder, to set blackmails and kidnaps – is a cold dry meat. Excuse your narrator’s common bluntness. I try to speak plainly of these things. A call to the Mark was a familiar event, and this foul business a day-to-day routine. Upon Graynelore, there was nothing unusual in our gathering.

This day it was to be a Wishard riding against an Elfwych. Tomorrow it might be a Bogart riding against a Troll. Each was a grayne ready to take advantage of its lesser guarded neighbour – when the opportunity arose, or when needs must. And the Headman of every house among them would fancy himself The Graynelord; and every Graynelord was The Graynelord of all Graynelore (self-professed). Excepting, let any of these conceited men stand before Old-man Wishard and deny him his rank this day. It was a simple calculation; a balance of numbers. Try it. Count the swords at his command.

However great or petty the cause, whatever the nature of the risk, the Old-man, by virtue of holding the balance of power between the graynes (real or imaginary), was ever required to make a show of his strength. If he himself did not carry the sword to his enemies then at least he must deliver the swords of his blood-tied kinsmen to ring out a resolution. For if he did not, among others, there were two younger brothers who would make a dreadful noise over it, who would each look to their own advantage and aim to take The Graynelord’s place. They were both stood upon Pennen Fields among our number. Unthank Wishard, who was called Cloggie-Unthank, and Fibra, the younger…both faithful to their grayne this day; but what of tomorrow? I fear neither would be beyond planting the assassin’s knife, leaving the Old-man the gift of the dagger’s arse. It was their blood that tied these men together, not their love. It was likely blood that would separate them, in the end.

Whichever way I looked at it, I could safely say, more than a few men would surely meet their deaths this day, and as many return to their houses with sorely broken bodies, new scars in the making. It was ever so.

We were all of us waiting upon the Old-man’s arrival.

I was already growing restless, not eager for the fight; but it is better to be about the business than to be standing in endless contemplation of it. I am not a thinking man. On a whim, I let my eyes carry up towards the heavens. The sky looked burdened and worried this day. A long way above the Heel Stone, a ragged, windswept horde of black birds, winged scavengers – crows most likely – wheeled silently between broken banks of steel grey cloud and patches of glaring sunlight. It seemed the birds were already well aware of our gathering, already expectant of things to come. I saw their presence as a good omen. They were welcome company. Whatever the outcome for men this day, theirs would be a feast and nothing left to waste. It was more than easy pickings; it was a gorging fit for the fortunes. And the fortunes liked a spectacle.

On the ground there was a sudden new commotion, new arrivals, and come at a measured trot.

Here, at last! I thought.

Bright, silvered armour caught in the sunlight. A sword unsheathed, glinted. There were a handful of hobby-horses in this Riding, but there were many more full-sized horses. And not warhorses; but white and grey prancing ponies, stretched out in a formal line. Upon these, men were sat, not dressed for war, but rather like…well, like women, in their fancy drapes and embroidered finery. Their multicoloured skirts tailored for the show.

At the head of this procession, with his war sword lifted from its scabbard, rode The Graynelord, Old-man Wishard, upon his immaculately groomed silver-grey hobb. Immediately behind him followed four men-at-arms, with brightly coloured banners waving from their spears, demanding attention. The remainder of the line, the greater number, was his Council. These were the men who sat at his dinner table, who took shelter in his Stronghold, and protection from his arm. These were his advisers, his cunning men. These were his politicians, scholars, and scribes. Not a true bodyguard then.

None of the Council was dressed for a battle. Rather, gentle men, in want of a frivolous day’s sport. They were never meant for a fight. This arrival was more of a pageant; a cocksure display. The Graynelord was showing off to us.

Around me, part of the general throng began to fall back, to make way, allowing The Graynelord’s entourage to advance and take up a position on the elevated ground just beyond the Heel Stone, where everyone could see them.