The Broken Sword Read Online Free Page A

of flowing rivers and fish therein, of frog and otter and kingfisher and what those had to say to each other, of sunlit pebbly bottoms and of secret pools where the water lay still and green-and the rush through the falls in a roar and a rainbow, shooting down to cavort in whirlpools!
    Other watery places there were from which Skafloc was warned away, quaking bogs and silent dark tarns, for the dwellers were not good.
    Often he would be out in the forest to speak with the little folk who lived in ft, humble gnomes with grey and brown clothes and long stocking caps and the men’s beards hanging to their waists. They dwelt in gnarly comfort beneath the largest trees, and were glad to see the elf children. But they feared the grown elves, and thought it well that none of these could squeeze into their homes-unless of course by shrinking to gnome size, which none of the haughty elf lords cared to do.
    A few goblins were about. Once they had been powerful in the land, but Imric had entered with fire and sword, and those who were not slain or driven elsewhere had been broken of their might. They were furtive cave dwellers now, but Skafloc managed to befriend one and from him got some curious goblin lore.
    ***
    Once the boy heard a piping far off in the woods, and he thrilled to its eeriness and hastened to the glen from which it came. So softly had he learned to move that he stood before the creature ere it was aware of him. It was a strange being, manlike but with the legs and ears and horns of a goat. On a set of reed pipes it blew an air that was as sorrowful as its eyes.
    “Who are you?” asked Skafloc wonderingly.
    The creature lowered his pipes, seeming ready to flee, then grew easier and sat down on a log. His accent was odd. “I am a faun,” he said.
    “I have heard of no such.” Skafloc lowered himself cross-legged to the grass.
    The faun smiled sadly in the twilight. The first star blinked forth above his head. “There are none save me hereabouts. I am an exile.”
    “Whence came you hither, faun?”
    “I came from the south, after great Pan was dead and the new god whose name I cannot speak was in Hellas. No place remained for the old gods and the old beings of our land. The priests cut down the sacred groves and built churches-Oh, I remember how the dryads screamed, unheard by them, screams that quivered on the hot still air as if to hang there for ever. They ring yet in my ears, they always will.” The faun shook his curly head. “I fled north; but I wonder if those of my comrades who stayed and fought and were slain with exorcisms were not wiser. Long and long has it been, elf-boy, and lonelier than it was long.” Tears glimmered in his eyes. “The nymphs and the fauns and the very gods are less than dust. The temples stand empty, white under the sky, and bit by bit they crumble to ruin. And I-I wander alone in a foreign land, scorned by its gods and shunned by its people. It is a land of mist and rain and iron winters, angry grey seas and pale sunlight spearing through clouds. No more of sapphire water and gentle swells, no more of little rocky islands and the dear warm woods where the nymphs waited for us, no more of grapevines and fig trees heavy with fruit, no more of the stately gods on high Olympus-”
    The faun ceased his crooning, stiffened, cocked his ears forward, then rose and bounded into the brush. Skafloc looked around and saw the elf guard approaching to take him home.
    ***
    But often he was out by himself. He could stand the daylight which the folk of Faerie must shun, and Imric did not await any danger to him from mortal things. Thus he ranged far more around than the other children of Elfheugh, and came to know the land far better than a human might who had lived there for a lifetime.
    Of the wild beasts, the fox and the otter were friendliest to elves, it being thought that there was some kind of kinship, and insofar as these had a language the elves knew it. From the fox Skafloc