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.
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