Free Graynelore by Stephen Moore

repaired. Dying men, alas, there were a few, brought kindly to their end. While the fallen-dead were recounted, their loss fiercely celebrated and briefly mourned (whether Wishard or Elfwych it has to be said).
    Wolfrid eagerly boasted of our exploits to all who would listen, spilled his gathered spoils upon our table, and drank himself into oblivion.
    For a short while, Edbur-the-Widdle became a simple boy again. He took his warm ale thankfully, aye, and the edge of his mother’s tongue for being a lazy son, for returning, out of the frae, with little of value.
    …And, I, what of Rogrig on his homecoming?
    Without a word – a game she was most fond of – Notyet came to me. She shamelessly searched my person – my boots, my cloth, and my intimates – and took back her leather purse, now fully laden. When I flinched at her touch she pulled open my bloodied jack to reveal the single knife wound in my side. She clicked her tongue, playfully…‘Be still, Rogrig!’ she said. ‘That is nothing but a babbie’s scratch!’ (In truth, it would soon heal and without a scar.) Content with her finds, and my safe, full-bodied return, Notyet took several full swigs from a great stone wine jar. In jest, she offered it up to Dandy before me. She roughed the hobb’s ears, as the beast drank it greedily down…And began to tweak a simple tune from an old wooden whistle, to catch my ear (and my eye, no doubt). Then she took herself on a lover’s walk, a deliberate enticement, bid me to follow after her.
    Did I?
    And did Rogrig Wishard at last stay gladly at home with his Notyet?
    Sadly, the sweet distractions of that merry day were not enough to hold me there for long.
    Above my head, the weathered sky was streaked blood-red: and there was a constant flutter of birds in flight. It seemed the crows would not let me alone, or cease their frantic calling, one to another. They cast a fleeting shade upon the ground as they passed me by, reminding me of another day and another man who had found he could not set his own two feet squarely upon the ground.
    I had been touched. I was a marked man. I had listened to the whispered voices of shadows. If yet unwittingly: I carried the full weight of a faerie’s Glamour…
    Aye, and the man was utterly confused by it. Only I had no doubt, whatever my part in this mischief, whatever my true connection to Norda Elfwych, I knew I was bound to it. There could be no turning away.
    I had set my mind upon a task.
    I could not easily settle.
    Soon fled…
    Though not before I visited a lonely piece of ground I had all but forgotten; a secret knoll that marked the spot where, as a simple child, I had buried a stolen treasure:
    The dead Beggar Bard’s relic, his talisman, his so-called Eye Stone…
    It had lain undisturbed these many years, seemed now like something out of a half-remembered dream. I fully expected to find no sign of it there.
    The place was largely unchanged, its trees a little older; a little broader. The object was not so well hidden after all, and easily found again by the grown man. I had wrapped it up in a piece of cloth to protect it from the dirt. Still attached to its leather thong, it gleamed. Only something stopped me from openly examining it. Was it guilt at the theft? Surely not! More like an uneasiness, lest I should be spied upon; a fervent desire to keep it secret still, and solely to myself. I quickly hung the stone about my neck; put it well out of sight beneath my jack.

Chapter Ten
Against the Grayne
    I was going against my close kin, going against my grayne. There is no greater sin. I was about to ride out on them. Had I gone quite mad? Had I lost my head, or had I lost my heart, perhaps? For certain, this was
not
love. Something far worse…Was I enamoured? A man does not take a fatal poison of his own free will.
    I was for turning my hobby-horse away from my home, and away from Dingly Dell. Poor Dandy, she was already trail-weary and wanting only her due respite. Yet