Free Graynelore by Stephen Moore Page B

going to follow blindly after a murder of common crows. There was a more obvious answer. The shadow-tongues, the unspoken voices, had left me with a name…
    ‘I am leaving the South March. I am travelling to Wycken,’ I said. ‘I am going to Wycken-in-the-Mire, for the Winter Festival…for the Faerie Riding.’
    ‘And this is it, then – the Wycken Mire! This is your answer?’ Wolfrid looked at me coldly, still wanting a better truth, something he could believe in.
    I nodded, brusquely. ‘I will travel the trade roads…to the town.’
    ‘Towns…! What does any Wishard of the South March know of such places? Rogrig, you know as well as I, Wycken is a tinker’s town built of wooden sticks upon a shift of mud.’ He spoke as if I was already lost and he could see only the broken man. ‘And there is not a certain path across the mire that surrounds it, except for those born to it; those petty traders with stinking bog-moss in their blood. The town could not be better protected nor defended if it had its own standing army.’
    I turned my back on him. I made to mount Dandelion, took up the reigns. Wolfrid put his hand gently upon my shoulder as if to stop me. I did not recoil, though perhaps I had expected a blade.
    ‘You will not be turned from this foolishness, cousin?’ He asked. ‘Not for your kin, your blood? Not even for your true heart’s meat…?’
    I knew well enough what he was saying. I shrugged his hand away, before he could say any more. I took to my hobby-horse. Used the spur to move her on.
    ‘I fear I will not,’ I called back to him. ‘Forgive me for it. Tell Notyet…Tell her…’ Only my mouth stood empty. There were no words left to say.
    ‘Forgiveness will not save you, Rogrig,’ said Wolfrid, ‘if you ride out alone this day…’
    I gave him no answer.

Chapter Eleven
Into the Mire
    I heard again the voices of the old-wives calling to me out of my own past. ‘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…’
    Would I have listened? Would I indeed!
    How
do you find the mire? Let me tell you, my friend. In truth, you do not. The mire finds you. My travels took me north and east. But the mire has no constant geography. No certain edge about it. Rather, it comes, and it goes. It insinuates itself upon the land. It creeps upon you, lurks patiently in wait. It conceals itself behind an ever-changing mask; of pelting rain; of meadow mist; of winter fog or blinding snow. It eats up the very path upon which you tread. It steals upon you and hides the weathered trail. In the darkest night it beckons you in, lures, with the light of the jack-o’-lantern.
    Indeed, this was already a fool’s journey, and I, Rogrig, the greater fool, no doubt, for seeking it out.
    As the fortunes would have it, I did not travel quite alone, though I had to look again to the sky for the first of my companions. Aye, to the birds, to that same crowd of black birds – the crows – who, it seems, had taken it upon themselves to be my shadow on this foolhardy adventure. They flew so high they appeared to wheel among the clouds. Pointing the way with the direction of their flight, their vigil keeping my path constant; though it was Dandy’s sure footing that held me to the trail.
    Fair praise where it is due; without both of my guides I would have quickly been lost. I could neither lead the way through the mire, nor follow the shifting signs.
    My third companion was less expected. It appeared I was being deliberately followed. There was a lone rider at my back, clumsily copying my steps, keeping his distance, yet making no secret of his intentions. When the wind brought his scent to me I recognized it at once as belonging to Edbur-the-Widdle, Wolfrid’s son. (I told you Wolfrid was a shrewd man.) Was the youth sent to keep an eye out for me? Was he to be a second right arm,