The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

him? Why did you make yourself into a slave? And worse. That’s what I need to hear, Simon. That’s what you need to see.”
    “You don’t understand,” he replied, trying to steady the rhythm of his breathing. “It was never like that. Whatever you may think about me, or about Ralph, I loved him. I’m not any kind of a slave, certainly not a whore. I realise that, to you, saying such words might seem foolish, but to me they were real. They still are. Even after… everything that’s happened.”
    Johan gazed at him as if he were peeling the scribe’s skin from his flesh with his eyes. When he next spoke, Simon heard the unsteadiness in his companion’s voice, and understood that this encounter was as distasteful to Johan as it was to him.
    “All right. Then tell me this. When you began your relationship with Tregannon, did you have a choice?”
    “What do you mean? Of course I had a choice.”
    “Really? You can sit here now and tell me, with honesty in your heart and in spite of your dreams last night, that the Lord of the Lammas Lands would have brooked a refusal from you and let you live? You could have walked away from his bed and still continued to serve him, unharmed and whole?”
    The air between them felt like a knife, half-unsheathed, ready to strike. Simon lifted his head and gazed at his questioner.
    “I had no thought of refusing him. I wanted him from the beginning,” he said. “As you surely must know from your intrusion into my dreams.”
    Johan was upon him before he’d even registered the movement. He snatched at the breast of Simon’s undershirt and pulled him to his feet. His teeth were clenched and his eyes narrowed.
    “ All I know, ” he said, spitting the words out as if they were weapons, “ is that you are in effect a slave and a murderer. And one who has never understood what he is. At least I know my faults and acknowledge them, though late and in part only, I admit it. But how can we bring an end to any of our mind-battles if you can’t see even a glimmer of what you are? Gods.”
    With his last words, he shoved the scribe backwards and Simon grabbed at his arm to save himself from falling into the water.
    “And all I see,” he said, “when I look at you is someone who never lets anyone get close to him. Unless he is absolutely driven to it. Tell me, is it easier for you in your walled-in castle, where you can gaze out now and again, and pass judgements on those who’ve tried for some kind of connection? Gods, indeed. No matter my faults, I know which type of man I’d rather be.”
    That said, Simon pushed him away, and took the few paces to the end of the boat. He sat down on the bench there. It took a story’s length, maybe longer, for the shaking to stop and still Simon kept on staring out at the ocean, but seeing nothing of it. He’d spent so many years trying to fit in, to be indistinguishable from the society around him, suppressing the emotions and thoughts which would mark him out as different, that to say something now which came from the inner pools of his mind and gut seemed to explode the blood inside him.
    But was Johan right? Was Simon so blind that he couldn’t see when love had turned to something darker?

    Johan
    Breathing deeply, Johan realises his attempts to take Simon to a deeper understanding have failed. He lost his temper when he should have been patient. This has shown him his own prejudices too. If Isabella had been here, she would have dealt with it far better than he. Isabella… But she is not here and he must accept it. That is his sticking point, as Ralph is the scribe’s. Perhaps they must both overcome these issues if the enemy is to be defeated. Perhaps indeed, Simon is right in what he says, and they both have something to learn. He will try again. There is so little time and somehow his companion has to be ready. He runs his hand through his hair, feeling the dampness on his fingers. At last, when the rain has slowed to a trickle and the sun is breaking through the clouds, he moves across the boat and sits down beside Simon.
    “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry if I’ve said things which hurt you and I’m sorry for the impression I give. Isabella… Isabella always told me I was hard to get to know.”
    The scribe sighs.
    “I think perhaps we’re all hard to know,” he says, slowly as if working things out in his thoughts. “The mind gifts we have make no real difference in the end, do they? They’re just