Graynelore
Rogrig Wishard is a killer, a liar and a thief.Rogrig is the last person the fey would turn to for help. But they know something he doesn’t.In a world without government or law, where a man’s loyalty is to his family and faerie tales are strictly for children, Rogrig is not happy to discover that he’s carrying faerie blood. Especially when he starts to see them wherever he goes.To get his life back, he’s going to have to journey further from home than he’s ever been before and find out what the fey could possibly want from him. But that’s easier said than done when the punishment for abandoning your family is death.
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Graynelore
STEPHEN MOORE
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015
Copyright © Stephen Moore 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015. Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
Stephen Moore asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
Ebook Edition © August 2015 ISBN: 978-0-00-810353-8
Version: 2016-10-31
For Carol
‘Whenever you think I’m lost, and you cannot find me, look here. I am always here.’
If every man’s life has the makings of a story, the comings and the goings and the things in-between, where does my story truly begin?
For want of a narrator, for want of a name and the soul it belongs to, I fear, it must begin here…
[From: A Beggar Bard’s Tale. Anon.]
Contents
Part One: The Beggar Bard’s Tale
Chapter Two: How the World was Made
Chapter Three: The Beggar Bard’s Burden
Chapter Four: At the Mark of the Wishards
Chapter Five: The Elfwych Riding
Chapter Six: The Killing Field
Chapter Seven: The Unspoken Voice
Chapter Eight: The Broken Tower
Chapter Ten: Against the Grayne
Chapter Twelve: Wycken-on-the-Mire
Chapter Fourteen: Joining the Dance
Chapter Fifteen: The Secret Meet
Chapter Sixteen: The Changelings
Chapter Seventeen: A Brief and Intimate Respite
Chapter Eighteen: Upon the Threshold and a Dream
Chapter Twenty: The Faerie in the Tower
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
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.
