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.
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
