The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

did not tell me how or when. So the Council and I decided to release the mind-executioner so that the time the stories spoke of would be hastened. We thought that would be the only way to usher in peace, but the enemy stole the mind-cane, and still the Lost One did not come. Our search for who he might be continued and the mind-executioner set about his work.”
    His voice broke, and Annyeke could see the tears on his face, the dark pain of the fire around him. Her accusations of treachery and murder seemed to vanish away, replaced only by the knowledge of how foolishness, misplaced hope and desperation had brought them all to this point.
    “And when Johan approached you,” she said, “you thought that was a sign also? That the scribe was the man you sought?”
    The elder wiped away his tears. The others stood closer to him as if to offer comfort, though Annyeke wondered if they were all beyond that now.
    “Yes,” he said. “The times and the seasons spoke of it, and Johan has always been attuned to the needs of the land. His mind is a pure one. When he came to us, it seemed like the final confirmation.”
    “And now Isabella and the boy, Carthen, are dead because of that decision,” Annyeke said. “And Gelahn is close. Soon they will be here. Simon’s final story must be told. But how can he save us now? How can he save himself? There are questions you still need to answer , not just to me, but to our people.”
    “Yes. I understand that,” the elder said. “But now is not the time. As for Simon, the mind-cane recognises him.”
    He gestured toward the mind-circle, brimming with images as it began to form amongst them, linking them to the travellers.
    “But he still does not have the power or the purity to use it. The pictures we see tell us that.”
    “Then,” the elder said as he knelt, gesturing them to do the same, “we must hope he learns to do so, and quickly. We must pray he is ready.”

Chapter Sixteen: Simon’s Fourth Story

    Simon
    Simon wasn’t ready. Not by a long season. He could never be ready, not for this story. Not for this one . Closing his eyes, he knew that, somewhere far away, his hand remained pressed to Johan’s forehead. But here, within his mind, all he knew was his own story. The most important one of all.
    He gasped as the memory came spinning outwards, the one he held inside his blood always. But this time he had no power to block it or send it back to the depths. Instead, it radiated through just as the heat of the sun caused spring seeds to grow. It seeped through every part of him so he could not stand against it.
    It’s possible he might have cried out “Johan!” once while he was still capable. But he couldn’t be sure and, in any case, he heard no reply. He was alone.
    When he opens his eyes, Johan’s mind—or what he knows of it—is no longer there. And he remembers everything as if it is happening all over again. Not as contained in his history, but here and now. Real.
    He sees a wooden table, framed by a glimmer of moonlight, and feels the roughness of the cloths bundled underneath which serve for a makeshift bed. More than that, he can smell the remains of the broth that his mother cooked for their evening meal, only a few hours earlier. Spice and yeast and mutton. She has had a week of good fortune for once, and even gained a new customer for her cures—a rich man, darkly dressed—and they have eaten well for it. From the moon’s small light, Simon can tell—if he didn’t know it already—that it’s the fourth hour of the night. He’s nearly eleven year-cycles old.
    In spite of the heat, he shivers. Something has woken him.
    In that quiver of time between being woken up and being fully alert, the knowledge of the years rises up to fill him—the slow side-lining of his mother’s business; his father’s regular absences; the way he has learned to sit alone during the occasional schooling days. Though since the winter they have been taught nothing of note. The soldiers from their lord’s new garrison have seen to that, and his fingers itch for the feel of the quill and the rasping of parchment as the ink stains the whiteness. And, over and beyond all of this, he remembers the way his mind itself sometimes scares him.
    Whatever woke him the first time stirs again and he sits upright, clutching the thin blanket to his chest. For a long moment, he hears nothing and the silence tingles his ears. Then the sound revisits the air and he knows it