Prologue


The body of Rafell the Magistrate lay in state beside the hole he was soon to inhabit. The family, of which there were few and the friends, of which there were even fewer, had already deserted the graveside, leaving Graves and his apprentice gravedigger to nail down the coffin lid and lower the late Magistrate into the earth.

Rain was falling in a drab, hopeless manner. Graves, who had earned his name through diligent work at the cemetery for many years, knew that the water now puddling in the waiting pit would rot through the wood of the coffin and spoil the corpse faster than if it were buried in a dry pit. He said as much, in his bland, rough tones.

His apprentice gravedigger nodded simply to acknowledge that he had heard.

Graves shook his head, looking left, down the slight incline of the hill towards the great iron cemetery gates, through which Magistrate Rafell’s nearest and dearest had hurriedly left, encouraged by the first heavy drops of rain.

‘T’aint right, Perin, my boy. A family should wait ‘til the departed is safely interred. T’aint right for them to leave like that.’

Perin said nothing. He was not a dramatically intelligent boy but he certainly knew enough about the little town that sat beside the graveyard, tucked in against the forested hills below the great mountain. He knew that perhaps the most disliked and mistrusted man in the settlement had been Magistrate Rafell.

The lawman had sent down all manner of smugglers and vagabonds. The former had provided cheap luxuries from the bazaars of far off Nagyevo, the castle town across the plains to the west. The latter had provided theatre and spectacle as entertainers and storytellers. Rafell, representing the Claimfold of the Tacnimag, and therefore standing as representative to Power itself in Valo, had systematically removed both smuggled goods and entertainment from the town.

The result was a settlement distinctly lacking in both luxuries and culture. Perin had no interest in this; not being able to afford the first, and not seeing the necessity of the second. His life was to dig graves for Graves until Graves died, and then he would become Graves, burying the mentor who had once held that name. The idea that this life had no ambition towards a higher destiny had not occurred to Perin.

Things had really become bad in the little town called Erdhanger when the already unpopular magistrate had closed the only remaining source of distraction to the men of the place, a brothel on the outskirts of Erdhanger with as many clients as could be found in such a small settlement.

A man had decided that the best thing to do in the circumstances was to introduce the magistrate to the sharp end of a log-wedge. He had fled the town the night after, though no one had felt inclined to hunt him down. The brothel was reopening and a company of actors had appeared, as if from nowhere, to resume the crude but immensely enjoyable performances of tragedies and epics that the townspeople so loved. Hence, the sorrow at Magistrate Rafell’s death was largely outweighed by the elation and vindictive pleasure at the same.

The only two people in Erdhanger that felt able to show respect to the unlamented lawman’s last remains now stood beside his last resting place.

Graves slapped his shovel down on the heaped earth, compressing it. It would have been easier to stamp the damp soil flat but that was something the grizzled gravedigger would never do. If Graves showed respect to anyone, it was the dead.

Graves was in no state to take advantage of brothels, nor was he in any way a patron of the arts. The change in the town had completely passed him by, and in any case, he disliked and feared people who still had a pulse. He finished the touches to Rafell’s grave. The following day, the faces of the ‘clients’ - namely Rafell’s covertly ecstatic, wealthy widow, as well as the magistrate’s uninterested cousin - would have faded from his memory. But he would never forget the name of the man buried in plot number eleven, for that name was inscribed on a cheap tablet of stone, and written in the enormous graveyard tome. ‘Clients’ were to be forgotten. But ‘customers’ were marked down and remembered for ever.

Perin did feel a measure of contained sorrow for the unloved man now buried six feet beneath the topsoil. It was an emotion he felt for any body that came through the iron gates destined for a wooden bed and a quiet resting place. Strange that he was to be a gravedigger, for the sorrow was something that another person would not necessarily have felt. In a way, it was a poetry in Perin’s uneducated being coming to the fore, albeit a poetry that would never escape. Perin had no writing, and only enough reading to tell who was buried where.

Perin sighed. He didn’t understand the people in the town any more than Graves did. Their animosity towards each other was mostly incomprehensible to him. He cared not for the theatrical troupes, nor for the various whores on offer in the town. He found the enactments unrealistic and he did not get the jokes. And as for women, although Perin was of an age to be interested in them, they were very like that which he did not comprehend of the stage. They did not hold his interest any longer than it took for him to note that they were attractive, and in conversation with them he proved as uninteresting to the fairer sex as their charms did to him.

The boy picked up his shovel and his edging spade and carried them to Graves’ hut, walking in the footsteps of the old man, who was not of the character that would choose to stand in the rain any longer than necessary.

The rain pattered persistently on the sodden earth heap and made the overgrown grass bounce and dance under its weight. Dirty brown clouds slowly dragged themselves across the darkening grey heavens. The sun’s position was invisible, though it must surely be low in the sky now. The firs shook and swayed wildly in the precipitous weather, the rain making them seem like darkly caped giants in the failing light, surrounding the crowded little graveyard from the high banks on which they stood.

In Graves’ cabin, an oil lamp was lit, casting golden light out into the wind and rain through the one, dirty paned little window.


One:
And after the storm


Perin walked directly to the butcher’s. He kept his head down, knowing that if any of the other apprentices of worthier trades were running errands, or taking free time, he would become easy game to their verbal abuse. In fact, they never showed much reluctance to demonstrate the finer points of physical pain and humiliation in addition to the normal tongue-lashing. The gravedigger’s boy was a friend to no one. Those that kept house with the dead were strange folk to start with, and ‘there were none stranger than that Perin boy’.

The butcher silently cut and wrapped the meat that was Graves weekly order. His wife, a sympathetic woman who was not originally from Erdhanger, attempted to make conversation with Perin.

‘You know, we can have our boy make delivery each week, seeing as how master Graves always wants the same thing. It’s only a little walk up the hill, after all!’

The butcher gave his spouse a dark look, but Perin was already shaking his head.

‘That’s alright, thank you, mistress Hoer. Graves… master Graves says I should get the walk into town for my health and wellbeing, mistress Hoer. I’m happy to come and get it.’

The boy had a measured way of speaking and he had a pleasant voice. If it wasn’t for the fact that he always had that intense, determined expression of concentration on his face, and the muddy coat and hat he wore, and of course his unpleasant but highly necessary occupation… well, he could prove quite handsome. Mistress Hoer ran these thoughts through her mind as the gravedigger’s apprentice waited patiently for his meat.

Perin said goodbye politely and left with the cloth bundle of meat under his arm. The order was always the same. Graves liked a cut of mutton, a small chicken and some pig’s liver. The meat was in small portions, but the parsimonious gravedigger would make them last the week and maybe more, with nought else to eat in between such meals save for crusty bread that he got cheap from the baker. Occasionally, if Graves himself had been down into the village, there would be a cabbage, and therefore a thin soup to go with the bread if the meat was gone.

Perin closed the iron gate of the graveyard behind him, stepping up the poorly maintained path of stepping stones that cut into the bank, then following the path towards the cabin, walking through the plots. Gravestones, large and small, mean and grand passed by on either side of him. Autumn’s first fallen leaves had been blown in from the deciduous trees on the lower hillside and the air smelled fresh and clean. The firs on the higher bank hardly stirred today.

Perin found himself humming a melody. It had slipped into his head and he had not noticed the beguiling notes passing his lips until he heard a loud, incredibly deep voice boom out from in front of Graves’ cabin.

Graves was standing in a nervous posture that he always adopted when dealing with the breathing. It was not he that had spoken, but the enormous stranger that was next to him. Perin was so surprised that he did not register what the voice said, and he almost dropped the meat.

The stranger was very broad in the shoulder, and each thigh of his powerful legs was like a young tree in girth and stoutness. His clothing was a rumpled canvas, coloured vividly in dark red and darker, almost midnight blue. There was no seeming pattern to the colour. His hood seemed somehow odd, and nothing of his face could be seen beneath it’s red covering.

The stranger strode forward, two strides to three or four of Perin’s, removing his hood and leaning in with urgency, looking down at the not at all diminutive apprentice from a height of some nine feet. Now Perin did fumble the package of meat out of shock, but to his credit caught it before it could hit the cracked paving at his feet. Beneath the hood, the stranger’s face was monstrous, dark skinned and bull like, but with the sagacity of an eagle to his eyes, and with a noble, ridged brow, heavy like his jaw.

A broad, strong lipped mouth – the lips themselves a dark, black-red – concealed large teeth, clean and white but alien to Perin’s eyes. The bull like effect was caused by the large gold ring that ornamented the stranger’s flared nostrils. Not to mention the pale horns that pushed through his thicket of black hair, curving outwards slightly from just above the temples, reaching a length of some seven or eight inches from the head.

‘I said, where did you hear that tune!’ The voice had an almost melodious quality itself, now Perin heard it up close, rumbled down at him with impatient but not aggressive inflection.

‘Come now, child, haven’t you ever seen a Prigon before?’

Perin shook his head dumbly, aware that his hat had fallen off, clutching the meat bundle to his chest. The Prigon chuckled like thunder and crouched down to retrieve Perin’s hat from the floor. He settled it on the apprentice’s head with a large, dark nailed hand made up of four broad fingers and a thumb. Perin noticed the similarity between their hands and fixed on it, so as to pretend that he could not see the person’s strange visage, pale horns and tri-coloured eyes, now visible as the Prigon rose back to its full height.

‘I am Kesairl. I am a tribesman of the land you call Helynvale and I am conducting business with your…’ here he looked back at Graves, with a question in his tone.

‘He’s ‘prenticed to me.’ Graves supplied gruffly.

‘Indeed.’ The Prigon tribesman fixed Perin with a smile, which although uniquely terrifying, as it revealed bulky canines within his mouth that had been hidden before, forced Perin to remember his well learned manners.

‘It’s nice to meet you, Kesairl Prigon from Helynvale. I’m Perin Foundling, apprentice to master Graves. I am at your service.’
The Prigon raised his heavy brows, still smiling.

‘Indeed! Well said, child of man. Though be careful, while putting yourself at my service may simply be a figure of speech among your people, it might be taken much more seriously in the valleys of the northeast where I live. And Prigon is not the name of my family, nor my tribe, but the name of my race.’

He bowed deeply, seeming to have forgotten the tune that had caused such a reaction moments before. Then, with a smile, he returned quickly to Graves’ side and began to talk to him once more.

With a faltering bow, Perin quickly carried the meat in to Graves’ cabin, where he placed it in the stone chamber at the back. The space had been quarried out of the bank which the cabin had been built against, with shelves going some way back into the earth. Those on the right were sparsely occupied by Graves’ treasures and money, as well as his perishable food supplies. The shelves on the left were much more crowded with the collected and catalogued bones of former inhabitants of the graveyard. Each bone within had been buried long before Graves had finished his own apprenticeship, and the plots where they had once lain were filled now with new ‘customers’.

Perin had never been bothered by such things as bodily remains and in fact the familiarity of the clean, white, scrupulously tagged femurs on his immediate left served to calm the fright put in him by the appearance of the Prigon. He knew little about such people, save that they were a noble and nomadic barbarian race, allied to the Peoples of the Claimfold, and in technicality, also allied with the Tacnimag.

As far as History went, Perin knew more than some, as Graves was an amateur student of the inexact science. It pleased him, because very few of the people in it were alive.

In the time long past, when Graves’ grandfather had yet to be born, the Claimfold, the farmsteads and settlements that had been planted by Man in the unspoiled hills and forests of Valo had come under attack by hordes of armoured, wire furred creatures known as Drizen, wild eyed, snouted people with a taste for Mankind’s flesh.

When it had seemed certain that the people of Man would be wiped from the face of Valo by the barbaric monsters, an equally monstrous looking envoy arrived, dressed not in crude plates of armour but in thick, studded leather, caped and hooded, with a  noble bearing and a fearless disposition. Its passage to the town that would one day become Nagyevo was safeguarded by constables and borderers that had been saved from Drizen by the envoy. Its message was received, and the offered help through alliance with a northern people known simply as the Prigon was seized upon.

And thus the strongest enduring alliance of Valo was made. Man gave Prigon the knowledge of iron and steel, and Prigon gave Man some rudimentary understanding of magic. Each race had proved apt at mastering the gifts of the other and now the Prigon were a sophisticated race of forgers and jewellers, while Man had come to possess many highly skilled mages.

In a way, the alliance between Man and Prigon was responsible for the creation of the Tacnimag.

Perin made his way back into the one roomed cabin, closing the oaken door to the crypt. He sat in his chair by the door, hoping to catch some of his master’s conversation with Kesairl.

‘…Foundling is an unusual name. What kind of family are called that in your culture?’
Any guilt Perin might have had at eavesdropping on his master vanished. They were talking about him. Graves coughed, seemingly surprised at this turn in the conversation as he spoke.

‘It’s the name given to any lad, or lass, that’s born from the house of bad repute in town. If a girl there gets taken with child, then she’ll have it, and leave it where she will, if she wants to work still…’

‘You mean the place where women mate with men for money?’ The Prigon spoke in a slightly disapproving tone. Graves did not reply but must have nodded.

‘I see. So he has no knowledge of his Sire or his Dam. Hard for a child to find his way with such a beginning.’

‘Well, his way now is digging graves, if you’ll pardon me bluntness, master Kesairl.’

‘No no, pardon me. You must be anxious to return to business. Now, I know you do not normally serve people of my race here, but size will not be an issue. It is not a Prigon that needs burial. The plot need be no larger than for any man. All that I require is secrecy on your part, and naturally on the boy’s.’

‘That won’t be a problem. He don’t talk all that much, and he’s got no friends. Nor ‘ave I, for that matter. Not many wants to make friendly with a keeper of the dead!’

‘All men, be they Man or Prigon or something other than these, should know friendship.’ The Prigon intoned solemnly. A stab of regret at the fact that he had no companions save for Graves hit Perin then. It was an emotion he had not known he had. Suddenly he yearned for friendship. For the first time in his exceedingly lonely life, Perin felt that loneliness rise in him like a harsh, bittersweet song.

‘Well, as you say, master Kesairl.’ The gravedigger muttered gruffly outside the door. ‘Bring the recently departed through the woods and down the bank then, if you don’t want watching eyes. I’ll ‘ave locked the gates ready.’

‘Very good, master Graves. I shall return then, at nightfall on second day of this coming Sevenday. Until then?’

‘Aye, until then. It… it has to be the full moon, does it? Only I don’t normally do burials under a full moon…’

‘Meaningless superstition, my friend. I am afraid no other night will do. Goodbye.’

‘Fare thee well then, master Kesairl.’

Perin listened to Kesairl’s heavy footfalls die away, not in the direction of the path into town, but towards the bank and the waiting fir trees. Graves’ feet stamped at the doorstep to kick off mud and then he entered, grumbling under his breath.

‘We’ll have the liver tonight then, lad. All ‘f it, we’ll be getting paid very well come next Secondday so we can afford to feast for once. C’mon now, up with you and get it, that’s right, the sooner we cook the sooner we get it… funny fellow that Prigon… not that they aren’t all funny, in their way. Wanted to talk ‘bout you for a moment out there, very odd, very odd… you must ‘ave got ‘is attention with that tune you was ‘umming, lad. Heard it in town did you? Come on now, find the pan, I want to eat…’

The moon rose above the stirring fir trees, nearly waxed full in the clear night sky. Its pale light joined the luminescence of the stars in illuminating the rain-washed slopes of the Claimfold.

The same light shone down on the broad stone walls of Nagyevo, and on the glass roofed observatory of the Tacnimag in the forbidden district of the great castle town. It shone on the rocky moors of Helynvale, where colourful tents spread out in nomadic settlements all across this fold of Valo. It shone on the high paths of Csus, lone mountain of the Claimfold upon the mere foothills of which lay Erdhanger and the home of Perin, apprentice gravedigger.