The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

limbs to sleep.
    Just before sleep takes him, Simon whispers into the night, “I am sorry about your sister, Johan. I am sorry about Isabella. But for what little comfort it can give you, you have me. Please, let me be part of your family.”

    Simon
    The sun’s power woke him. With the watches he’d kept, it was too early. Even in the partial shade of the rock he’d stumbled against in the night, there was no refuge from its heat. When he glanced to his left, Johan was sitting up, his face dark with a fresh growth of stubble. He looked unkempt, half-wild, and Simon thought how he must look the same now. Johan was gazing out over the way they’d come, screwing up his eyes against the light.
    He was thinking of Isabella.
    Whatever strangeness Johan had been speaking the night before, Simon hoped that her death had been quick and clean.
    “Johan?”
    At the sound of Simon’s voice, he jumped. He must have been so involved in his own thoughts that he had been unable to sense the scribe’s consciousness at all. The moment he’d spoken however, Simon realised he had nothing to say. Nothing that would help. Johan looked at him as if he was a stranger and he could not understand why he should be there. Simon had never seen his expression so raw, so naked. For a moment, he understood how much Johan had taken on in this mission, how much he’d risked for the chance of his people’s survival. And in that knowledge, he wondered what the loss of Isabella might mean.
    At last Johan blinked and Simon felt the slow returning of his soul to his body.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, frowning. “Simon?”
    “Yes. It’s Simon. I’m here. We’re safe. How long have I been asleep this time?”
    “An hour-cycle, no more.” He wiped his eyes and sighed. When he spoke again, however, he sounded more like himself. “Today we must cross to the place of the waters. If we do not go now, then we will die here in the land of fire. The gods will not spare us for long.”
    “But what about Isabella…?”
    “No.” He silenced any objections with a wave of his hand, but his voice cracked. “As you have left Carthen here, so must I leave my sister. We must complete our journey, no matter what, if both of us, and our peoples, are to survive.”
    “But if she is your sister, and you say we are cousins, however distant , then she is my relative too, Johan. Should I not have a say in the matter also?”
    He closed his eyes. “Yes. Yes of course you should. I am sorry I did not ask you.”
    “Nor did you think to tell me this before. I… I, who have had no family for so long .”
    Several moments went by, during which the heat began to sear its way through Simon’s hair. He shook himself. “Forgive me. Now is not the time for this argument. Even I can see that.”
    Johan’s fingers squeezed his shoulder. “I’m sorry too. You’re right. I should have told you the truth before.”
    “Agreed,” he grimaced. “We’re both in the wrong. So what do we do now?”
    When Johan glanced at Simon, his expression was serious. And the answer was not what he had expected.
    “Tell me the next of your stories,” he said.

Ninth Gathandrian Interlude

    Annyeke
    “Isabella is dead,” the elder moaned, his hands over his face. “The boy I could understand, though I grieved it. But, Isabella? She is dead .”
    Annyeke, like the other elders, was silent. The mind-circle had already faded away. There was nothing more they could see. She felt one slow tear ease its way down her face, but she didn’t bother wiping it away. Within her, she understood the knowledge of grief and also a deep unmentionable relief; it had not been Johan. How she wished he were here so she could comfort him. Even though there was nothing she could say.
    Suddenly, it seemed that too much was happening at once. As if everything was racing to a finish when neither she nor any in Gathandria were prepared for what might be to come. The war, the journey, her inclusion in the elders’ councils, her encounter with the mind-circle and its protection of her thoughts, the death of Carthen, and, now, Isabella. She brushed her hand across her face and took a deep breath. More than anything, she wanted to get back home. She needed to read through the books she’d taken from the elders’ prison. And soon. Here the very air weighed her down and she needed to breathe cleanly again.
    When at last the elder opened his eyes, he gazed around as if he hadn’t expected them still