LVI
The last turn in this tale will bring us once more to Knale. In the time following Bleygo’s murder, he took himself back up to Bradhambelaw to gloat. There he found Gesdelo perched atop the mountain, as ever he was, scorning the world that had long since left him behind.
‘Oy-oy!’ said Knale, ‘Gesdelo, sweetie, I have some news, and good news!’
‘Begone,’ said Gesdelo, ‘I care nothing for your news, nor you.’
‘No, no! You really ought to hear this, I think.’ Knale took out the fragment of Bleygo’s claw and cast it at Gesdelo’s feet. ‘I found someone.’
Gesdelo did not stir.
‘Before you get upset,’ said Knale, ‘you should know that I had no part in it. Bleygo died by another fellow’s hands. Mine are quite clean.’
Still, Gesdelo sat unmoving.
‘Nothing? Have you forgotten him already?’
At last, Gesdelo bowed his head and said, ‘I do not forget.’
‘How lovely that must be.’
‘There is nothing lovely in this life. It is a curse, the weight of time growing ever heavier upon my mind, the pain of life written inexorably in my memory. Would that I could forget.’
Knale giggled. ‘Please. Such is the fate of all we long-lived folk.’
‘Not this.’ Gesdelo set his glare upon Knale, unyielding, his face grim, his eyes brimming with malice, or sorrow. ‘How could you, a prancer, a frolicker, understand my anguish? You cannot now, but you will. You will know what I did to him, my friend, my kinsman. You will suffer as I made him, and as he made me.’
Knale stepped back, but he would not be threatened. ‘Try it, magic man. Your power is my power, only lesser.’
At that, Gesdelo managed a slim, withered smile. ‘My power is your power indeed.’
Then he picked up his wizardly fingers and put a curse in Knale’s flesh. At once, Knale lost control of himself. His elfin body crumpled into his foxen coat, his skin burning as if his fur were aflame, his blood boiling, his bones searing. That was an agony unlike any he had known before, and he had known many.
Gesdelo caught him by his brush and held him aloft, squealing and writhing.
‘Feel it!’ he said. ‘Feel it all!’
Try as he might, Knale could not wriggle his way out of Gesdelo’s grasp, nor could he free himself from his fox fur.
‘Nor will you,’ said Gesdelo, ‘until I so choose, until you have earnt it.’ He threw Knale onto the floor, sat down, and took up Bleygo’s claw, pawing at it. ‘Bring forth their blood. That of the killer, and that of all his kin. Do that, Knale, and I will release you.’
Knale scrambled back onto his feet. Though he had regained control of his body, the pain within had not lessened at all. His head low, he circled Gesdelo, growling, snarling, a fearsome beast, but Gesdelo remained stoic.
‘Put your fangs away,’ he said. ‘You will need no tooth, no claw, for you have done your work, spelt your curse. You need only wait as I have waited. Suffer as I have suffered, and I will release you. Otherwise, an ill fate awaits.’
Then Gesdelo spoke these words:
‘Let he who deals be dealt the worst;
twice-over doomed, twice-over cursed.’
With little choice but to do as Gesdelo bade, Knale left Bradhambelaw with all haste, but there was nothing to be gained from that—the years would come no quicker. Even so, come they would, and they soon brought him eastwards to the cemetery near Pearmol, to the mound beneath which lay the remnants of his greatest foe, two years to the day since his death. Beside the burial mound stood a fine young oak, gold-leafed and glimmering, and next to that, a lone woman. That was Ormana. She knelt before the tree, brushed her hand through its leaves, watched the dying light of the sunset flicker across them, and then bowed her head.
‘Thalo,’ she said, ‘how did it come to this? Need it have? I loved you once. I wish I still could. Perhaps I might, had I been stronger, had I the strength to speak. Perhaps, then, you might yet live, and my pains would be all the lesser. But no. The pain I bear is not the pain of your passing, but the pain of your having lived. As the years fall away, I am relieved, free of your grip at last. It is a queer sort of gladness, gladness where there should be grief, and grief where there should be none. How wicked am I to be glad for your death, the death of my dearest friend? What manner of woman have I become? What manner of woman am I? How did it come to this?’
Ormana stayed beside the mound for a little while thereafter, watching the sunset. Then, as the evening twilight fell upon the land, she arose at last, and out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a glint amid the nearby trees, as if of gold, and the shuffling of a black shadow. She stopped for a moment, watching, waiting, but she saw nothing more.
‘The wind blows,’ she said, and she went on her way.
Here ends the tale of Thalo Thennelo.