The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

Johan sees the executioner’s grimace as he fights the scribe, the sheen of sweat and blood on his forehead. The mind-cane hisses and spits, the roar a song again, but wilder.
    Gelahn laughs.
    “Would you die for your friend?” he snarls at Simon as they continue to grapple. “Even after all your cowardice? Then you are truly a fool beyond all fools.”
    Bringing up his other hand to the cane, Simon grunts. “I am sick of death. I want no more of it. ”

    Annyeke
    She was on her knees. She knew the mind-circle’s power in her was weaker. It had spent itself on destroying the wall and she was panting hard. But Gelahn’s strength had not been touched. Johan lay defeated at his feet and the scribe was even now losing the battle.
    Annyeke had to do something. But what?
    With increasing desperation, she glanced about her. Her eyes met the clear gaze of the First Elder. Around him, the other elders were crouched, possibly crying. She couldn’t tell.
    In her mind, a realisation of what she should do. Had it come from the elder? He nodded.
    “Go,” he whispered, and she could sense the meaning of his words in her blood, rather than hear them. “You must act quickly.”
    Tearing off her cloak and casting it to one side, she ran. Towards the scribe and the mind-executioner.
    “Simon!” she yelled and he turned towards her, his fingers still struggling for possession of the precious cane. Struggling and losing.
    A moment’s confusion and then her hand was grasping the side of his face. The mind-circle’s power swept through her arm, blue and gold and crimson, and was gone. The fire of it entered the scribe and then was lost to her sight. She was herself again.
    Simon yelled out, a cry of courage and longing. He grasped the cane.

    Simon
    The red-haired woman let Simon go as he cried out. From nowhere, a surge of knowledge raced through him. As he fully grasped the mind-cane, his thoughts exploded. The singing filled him and he wrenched the cane backwards, tearing it from his opponent’s grip.
    Gelahn screamed.
    The cane and the scribe were one. He had no life beyond it, and it had none beyond him. It twisted as he clutched it, and swung itself down, down, in an arc towards the mind-executioner’s head.
    I do not want to kill this time . Simon cried the words out into the air.
    An eternity passed, and only a moment. As the last of the words left his mouth, the cane shuddered to a halt, only a finger’s breadth from Gelahn’s head.
    “P-please,” Gelahn stammered, shaking. “Please…”
    The scribe shut his eyes, knew what his enemy was asking.
    The mind-executioner began to whimper. Simon opened his eyes. In front of him, he did not see a powerful figure of legend, made to seek and kill, maim and destroy; he saw only a terrified man. As he himself had once been.
    “You will not die,” he said. “You will go where you can do no harm.”
    Then he touched the mind-cane to the executioner’s head.
    The world turned to gold and silver. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. The cane felt like a living thing in his grasp. A wild untameable animal. He shook his head and the colours of the world returned to their accustomed state once more. Beneath him the grass, behind him Johan and the sea and, a little further away, Ralph and Isabella, the old men and the red-haired woman.
    But the mind-executioner had vanished.
    The cane scalded Simon’s flesh and, with a gasp, he let it go. It fell to the ground, no longer making any noise and lay still, as if sleeping.
    His whole body shook and his mind felt numb. As Simon fell, Johan caught him, carried him gently to the earth.
    “The mind-executioner?” Simon panted. “Where is he?”
    “Gone, Simon,” Johan said. “He’s gone. But you should have destroyed him utterly.”
    “ No . I’ve had enough of death. I want no more of it.”
    Johan hesitated. “You are more merciful than you realise. But the enemy will not rest until he faces you again. He…”
    A low moaning sound cut across his words and both of them turned to their companions.

    Isabella
    Blinking, Isabella struggles upwards, hair drifting across her face. She does not understand why she is dead and not dead. Or why her master does not kill her utterly. More than anything she longs to die. Even though she knows that she will never see Petran again. She has chanced so much only to lose it all.
    Johan runs towards her, slipping down next to her shoulder. Already he feels only like someone