Chapter Twenty-One: An Unexpected Murder
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Eye Stone
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Pain of Norda Elfwych
Chapter Twenty-Four: As the Crow Flies
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Debateable Land
Chapter Twenty-Six: Night Sounds
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Gibbet Tree
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Rogrig the Wishard
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Gigant
Chapter Thirty: The Illicit Agreement
Chapter Thirty-One: The Quickening
Chapter Thirty-Two: The Battle of the Withering
Chapter Thirty-Three: A Cry Among the Mists
Chapter Thirty-Four: A Ring of Eight
Chapter Thirty-Five: When the Dust Finally Settled
Chapter Thirty-Six: The Eye of the World
Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Faerie Isle
Epilogue: Rogrig the Confessor
I am Rogrig, Rogrig Wishard by grayne. Though, I was always Rogrig Stone Heart by desire. This is my memoir and my testimony. What can I tell you about myself that will be believed? Not much, I fear. I am a poor fell-stockman and a worse farmer (that much is true). I am a fighting-man. I am a killer, a soldier-thief, and a blood-soaked reiver. I am a sometime liar and a coward. I have a cruel tongue, a foul temper, not to be crossed. And, I am – reliably informed – a pitiful dagger’s arse when blathering drunk.
You can see, my friend, I am not well blessed.
For all that, I am just an ordinary man of Graynelore. No different to any other man of my breed. (Ah, now we come to the nub of it. I must temper my words.)
Rogrig is mostly an ordinary man. The emphasis is important. For if a tale really can hang, then it is from this single thread mine is suspended.
Even now I hesitate, and fear my words will forever run in rings around the truth. Why? Put simply, I would have preferred it otherwise.
Let me explain. I have told you that I am a Wishard. It is my family name…it is also something rather more. I say it again, Wish-ard, and not wizard. I do not craft spells. I do not brew potions or anything of the like. No. My talent, such as it is, is more obscure. You see, a Wishard’s skill is inherent, it belongs to the man. You either possess it or you do not. (Most men, most Wishards do not.) It cannot be taught. As best as can be described, I have a knack. Rather, I influence things. I make wishes, of a kind.
Aye, wishes…(There, at last, it is said.)
Forgive me, my friend. I will admit, I find it difficult, if not tortuous, to speak of such fanciful whimsy. Make what you will of my reticence; measure Rogrig by it, if you must. I will say only this much more (it is a caution): by necessity, my testimony must begin with my childhood. But be warned: if I tell you that this is a faerie tale – and it is a faerie tale – it is not a children’s story.
Please, humour me. Suffer Rogrig Wishard to lead you down the winding path and see where it takes you. There is purpose to it. Else I would not trouble you.
Children remember in childish ways. So, through a child’s eyes, I will look again upon Graynelore. I can see a frozen wasteland. Deep winter’s ice lying broken and sharp upon a horse-trodden path. The riders are long departed. My breath is a broken kiss upon the air. The land before me is a magical silence.
I can pass a child’s hand across the ruts and crevasses of a cold, wet stone wall. It is the wall of a house, and built so thickly this Rogrig can stand at his full height and yet hide safely within the depth of its wind-eyes.
I can find a child’s delight in the crackle and spark of burning logs, the heat of an open fire.
I can lift a child’s finger to my tongue and taste the iron of an abandoned broken war sword. I can feel the dead weight of it again, as I struggle to drag it across a stone floor for the lack of body strength to lift it.
I can sting my nose with the smell of the piss and