The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

for you to understand now the way in which our thoughts can cause stones to provide light, but you will later. If we survive our journey. These particular stones are special. They are aligned to the presence of my people’s thoughts and feed from us even as we receive light from them. The benefit is mutual.”
    “Did you place them here too?”
    Johan nods. “Yes. They are only native to our country, not here where the oceans dwell. They make it easier for us to work with, and use…this.”
    When he finishes speaking, he presses his hand between two shining yellow rocks and pulls the wall of the cave towards him. As it moves, the friction of rock on rock makes a groaning sound. In the gap is revealed a deeper cavern containing a curved wooden structure that glitters in the gloom.
    Johan smiles. “Good. It is still here then. And not as derelict as I’d feared. At least, not at first sight. I will have to look closely though.”
    “What is it?”
    “A boat. Our means for travel and…”
    Without warning he stops speaking and sits down heavily near the little wooden boat, leaning against it. He passes his hand over his eyes. Simon joins him and Johan is cheered by the warmth of his shoulder. Because of the contact, it is easy to sense his thoughts. Simon has never seen a boat before. In the Lammas Lands, they have no need of such a craft; all their rivers are easily forded by a man on foot. It is a mystery to the scribe that anything so apparently heavy and oddly-shaped can float, and Johan understands how much and how powerfully Simon longs for parchment to write down his reactions, but he has none.
    Perhaps here and now it is time for the truth, as he understands it. So, at last, Johan begins to speak. Quietly at first, as if talking only to himself, but then gathering strength and purpose as he continues. Simon simply listens and, again, Johan is grateful. As he talks, feelings he has been quelling or ignoring for such a long time find their way into a different reality. One he struggles to accept.
    “I don’t think I can do this any more,” he says. “It’s been such a long journey. I know it has been so for you too, but there is so much I know which you cannot bear yet. It would not be fair to you. So much responsibility rests—now—on me alone. Before my sister and I travelled here, we tried to fight the war from Gathandria. Petran… Petran helped us, may the gods and stars be merciful to me for allowing it. The decision was mine by right. The three of us stood one night in the park when the mind-battle was fiercest and tried to defeat it with the power of our combined thoughts. I cannot fully bear to tell you all, but when I was at my most vulnerable, Petran saved my life. He stepped in front of a mind-sword sent by the enemy to kill me and took the wrath of it on himself. If…if he had not been there, then he would not have died that night. Because of this, because of my guilt, as well as because I thought it would be the city’s only means of survival, I was determined to leave Gathandria and seek our salvation in you. With Isabella, who has never blamed me for Petran’s death, not once. I swear it. May the gods help me, but I even saw this—at the beginning—as exciting and adventurous. A chance for glory perhaps, as well as a chance for redemption. Now, I’m not so sure that I am, after all, worthy of the task I have set myself, and I begin to think that the gods have been playing with us all. I had never imagined that another one of us would die, because of the decisions I have made—and neither do I understand why it is that I cannot acknowledge Isabella’s death within me. Except that it is some trick the enemy has performed in my heart that I cannot overcome. I had not realised that I had allowed him such an inroad to me and that too makes me doubt my own worthiness.”
    He pauses, but Simon still says nothing. After a moment, he continues.
    “And I never imagined that I would find myself beginning to count you as a friend quite as much as I do. At the beginning, I thought of you as a coward, a collaborator, and a murderer. Or a planner of murders. When, of course, at heart I am no better. What, I told myself, could I think to have in common with you, no matter what our family connection is? I started this journey wanting to use only the power I thought you might bring us, to try to save our people, perhaps even to save myself. But now I see so much else too that makes me glad