The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

And it will be longer still now that Isabella is… He takes a deep breath, shakes the thought away. Best to be simple; he does not have the strength for all the truth.
    “Your stories, Simon,” he says, “take you more fully into yourself. They cleanse you, give you a chance to access the man you should be. From that basis, and given the power that family members can access when tales are shared, enemies can be defeated and victories won. At least, that is our hope. But the process takes time.”
    “Time we do not have?”
    He nods and the scribe swallows.

    Simon
    Without speaking further, he drew away from Johan and allowed his mind to drift back to the scene he’d been describing. But not too close—the power of his link with the boy had shaken him. So when he took up the story again, it was not the same day he’d been trapped in, but a different time. A different occasion, although still in the home he had been granted. And only a week before the blacksmith had come for him.
    Simon settled down at the table, remembered so well by Carthen, in order to transcribe papers given to him by Ralph. For the records. Another man accused of rebellion, another man doomed to die. The Overlord had his own scribes of course, but he trusted only Simon with this task, a fact that did not endear him to his fellow scribes. But, for fear of what they thought Simon might do to them, they said nothing. Gods forgive them all. Concentrating his whole mind on the work alone and leaving aside the reasons for it, he thought at first the sound he heard was that of the wolves on their evening hunt, and discounted it. Sometimes, as the depths of the cold cycle approached, the wolves would lose enough of their natural fear to scavenge close to the village. On those nights, the people kept their children in.
    It was only when the door crashed open and the boy fell inside, his small figure framed by sudden light and noise, that Simon understood a storm had begun. Rare, for the Horseman season. An ill omen, if he believed in such things. In the meantime, he had the boy to care for.
    “Come there,” Simon soothed as he lifted the boy to his feet again. “It’s all right. You’re safe here.”
    When the task of struggling to shut the door against the tunnel of wind and rain was done, the scribe turned to smile at him, but he shook his head and backed away, eyes wide. Sensing the boy’s growing terror, Simon knew he would need more from him than mere words.
    Beckoning him to the reading chair, Simon waited until he’d settled himself in its depths and knelt at his side, hand resting on the boy’s trembling arm. His eyes fluttered back and forth, to the door and to his master. The scribe waited until his thoughts had calmed his apprentice and he was at least facing him for more than a moment or two.
    “Listen,” Simon said, “listen and remember.”
    The formality of the words, with their flavour of traditional story-telling and rich living, startled the boy. Simon had used this trick deliberately before, even though he did not come from a family accustomed to such things. It worked now.
    When the boy nodded, the scribe began.
    “In the Horseman season,” he said, his hand still resting on the child’s arm, “sometimes the Horseman rides alone and that is when the mountain storms are greatest. Rare, I know, and not something you will have seen before, but it happens. On those evenings—such as tonight—the Horseman takes his blackest, strongest horse, and saddles it with a golden saddle carved by the rays of the sun. On this stallion, he places a bridle of wild bells, and reins made of fire. Because both god and horse always wish to be free, they become angry and the stars tremble. All night long, the Horseman rides over the mountains and cries out his fury. His words become the fierce wind and the horse’s mane the streaks of flame in the night sky. He leaps the chasms of the valleys to ride the mountains’ path, and the sky road between them.
    “But listen to me, boy. No matter how loud and terrifying he and the stallion are, and no matter how bright their anger, they can never harm us. We live in the valley, and the Horseman cannot fall so far. His domain is the highest skies and ours the lowest earth. If once, by some strange miracle, he fell to us, then his voice would become nothing but a whisper, and his wild stallion only the young fawn you see in the woodlands in spring. There is nothing to fear; the Horseman has