The Endless Circle - Chapter 17: Falen

"The hillside was quiet, apart from the sighing of the wind
and the mournful bleating of the sheep."

In the hall of Craec Annwn the soldiers were waking up after their night of revelry. Coughs and groans filled the air as they stirred their stinking, ale-soaked bodies.

The last to wake was a young man whose name was Falen. At twenty years old he was allowed to call himself a man, but in truth he was scarcely more than a lad: his beard was sparse, and his voice still cracked occasionally. He was more hung-over than the rest, his eyeballs as dry as sandpaper and an ache in his head the size of a fist; as he sat up and rubbed his eyes the pain intensified, making him wince and clap his hands to his temples.

There were laughs from the other end of the hall.

“Hey! Look! Baby’s up at last!”

“You all right, mate? Bit of a lightweight, ain’t yer?”

“‘E is, isn’t ‘e?”

“Oi! Falen! You should stick to milk, mate!”

Lifting the Lid - Part 1

For those of you who are interested in the craft of writing, I've put together a series of articles that lift the lid on my own writing process.

Of course, everyone's writing process is different, and I can only speak for myself. But I hope that these may prove helpful and instructional for readers wanting to get into writing themselves.


For this first installment, I thought it would be interesting to give an example of something that happens more often than you might think: life imitating art (or as we say in the business - 'blind luck').

When I wrote the sixteenth chapter of 'The Endless Circle' I spent some time coming up with the description of Craec Annwn. Here are the resulting drafts (scroll down if these bore you):

'The Endless Circle' - Chapter 16: Haemel

"Upon its summit a castle crouched, like some predatory beast ..."

Banac woke with a start and sat up sharply, looking around in confusion. For some reason he was not in his warm, comfortable bed, but in the middle of a wood with the bright sun shining down in dappled shades of green through the canopy overhead. For a moment he was baffled, then he looked down at Balor’s small form lying with his head in his lap, and slowly the events of the night before came back to him, and he knew it had not been a dream.

He yawned and stretched his aching limbs, taking care not to disturb Balor. He looked around again, remembering more and more of the details of the previous twelve hours. In the cheerful light of day it seemed impossible that such things had taken place, here in this peaceful wood. But they had: the standing stones, the fire, the galac-men, the beremer ...

The beremer! He twisted his head, looking this way and that, but the glade was empty. They were alone. The beremer had not kept his word. He had left them here and run off.