The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

Ralph said again. “Come back with me. Please.”
    Their fingers intertwined but, with his free hand, Simon touched his neck. The memory of the rope blazed more powerfully again and his eyes darted around once more, sensing danger but unable to see the source of it.
    “It’s all right, Simon,” Ralph whispered. “Gelahn won’t hurt us. It’s only me here. We’re safe, I promise you.”
    Still, a whisper of warning in his head.
    “I love you,” Simon said. “You know that. Wherever you are, something of my mind will always be. But why did you want to kill me? ”
    Ralph closed his eyes. Simon could smell him; heather and sweat.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, opening his eyes again. “I’m sorry, but I had no choice. Come with me. Please.”
    “Wh-what about my friends?” Simon stammered, trying to clutch onto what he knew to be right, although the feel of it was even then slipping through his fingers. “Where are they? What has the enemy done with them?”
    “Ah, Simon, what have they got to do with us? Aren’t we more important than anything?”
    His hand caressing Simon’s neck, soothing the pain he felt there. The fact of Ralph was heavy in his thoughts, overwhelming him. Simon didn’t know what to think, he only wanted to be with this man. Couldn’t think…couldn’t feel anything else but him.
    “Aren’t we?” Ralph said again, his voice like a finger running down the spine. “Simon…?”
    “Yes,” he said, surrendering to Ralph’s embrace and rejoicing in the sensation of the man’s lips on his throat. “Yes, we’re all that matters. You’re all that matters, Ralph.”

    Johan
    Thanks to the ravens, who fight back against the attack with more vigour than he has ever seen or imagined any bird could have, Johan breaks into the enemy’s mind-fantasy just as the scribe is surrendering. It should not have taken this long. The sudden tearing brings the noise and stench of death with them into the imaginary world.
    “ Run , Simon.”
    Simon gasps. Lets go of Tregannon. The white cloud of ravens descends at speed towards the two men. Their beaks glitter with dark fire. Johan grabs Simon’s arm and starts to pull him away. The scribe reaches for the Overlord. Johan knows his charge is too much deceived to listen, so he snatches at the dazzle of bright dust in his belt-pouch and flings it over him, uncovering what Simon has been blinded to before—the figure of the enemy looming behind, his mouth caught in a triumphant grimace, the mind-cane already in flight towards him. This time the enemy is too close to miss.
    Simon screams. It is too late for Johan to call a warning.
    Expecting blackness and the embrace of death, Johan experiences neither. The scribe reaches out. The cane lands in his fingers like a bird finding its roost. For a long moment he holds it aloft, the shape of man and weapon outlined in light, and then, with a wild cry, he launches it back.
    The enemy roars his fury out. The next heartbeat, his cry is cut off as the ravens cover both him and Tregannon. Mind flailing with the impossibility of what he has just seen, Johan senses his opportunity.
    “Now,” he shouts again to Simon. “Run.”

Chapter Thirteen: The Trial of Fire

    Simon
    In the desert, the power of the sun never stopped. It beat down minute by minute, its strength increasing with the maturity of the day. The sun separated skin from sweat, flesh from bone. It tore apart both thought and hope, and there was no escape from it. Not even at night, when the air held the memory of heat. Simon had not learned this before, in any of his life.
    He learned it now. And learned it quickly
    When they left the kingdom of the snow-ravens, the sound of the hawks and that one wild scream echoing in his heart, the four of them—Carthen clinging like a kitten to Isabella’s waist—leapt through a membrane of soft feathers which roared like a winter storm and the land behind them snapped shut.
    They fell heavily, as if the path beneath their feet had suddenly been snatched away by an unseen hand, and all around them the silence rushed in.
    Dryness. Power. Heat.
    Simon opened his eyes and was at once blinded. The sun blazed down on their heads, the rays of light ricocheting upwards from yellow earth and piercing through flesh. Groaning, he tried to shade his vision and with his other hand reached out for Carthen, his heart thumping staccato in his chest.
    Somehow, he found the boy. His fingers curled around Simon’s, and