The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

She must be near, he thought, perhaps in the trees. Turning to try to find where she was, Simon reached out, blinking away the sunlight…
    His hand touched something smooth and cold. His eyes opened. He saw not a meadow or sunlight, but black rock lit by the glimmer of a small fire laid between stones and a soft line of light beyond. It must have been the rock that he’d felt.
    The humming stopped at once, and Simon wondered if he’d groaned aloud. The swish of moving cloth, two whispering voices—one man, one woman—and then the shape of a man looming over him, blocking the light. Simon flinched away as the memory of what had happened hit home: the mind-executioner, the mock trial, the hanging. He must be dead and, if so, he wondered if this was the afterlife.
    “Simon, it’s all right. You’re safe.”
    The man’s voice was deep, the accent not from amongst Ralph’s people, and unfamiliar. Blinking up and touching the tender parts of his neck, Simon tried to focus on either the face or the strange man’s thoughts, but was unable to do either.
    “Wh-where are we?”
    “The caves near the wood,” the stranger said. “The other side of your village. No one will find us here.”
    Suddenly, with no conscious decision, Simon’s mind touched the other man’s. He could feel coolness like a river, the sparkle of it refreshing him from within. The man muttered something he couldn’t catch and turned away, disappearing from view. At once the river vanished. Simon fell back on the rough cloth beneath him.
    “I shouldn’t be here,” he whispered, his throat pulsing with rawness. “I should be dead.”
    He thought no one would hear, but the stranger must have caught his words, or at least the meaning. When he spoke, Simon could hear the scorn in his voice.
    “No. Not dead yet, Simon Hartstongue,” he said, and then louder, “Isabella?”
    “Yes?”
    The sound of clothing again, as it swished across stone. The same noise Simon had heard before. The woman.
    “Now that our guest is awake,” the stranger continued, “he should be given water. Bread too if he wants it, though I know we have little enough here. He must gain strength for what we have to do.”
    The woman—Isabella—did not reply, but a few moments later, light hands lifted Simon up to a sitting position and a goblet of water was held to his lips. When he glanced up at her she didn’t meet his eyes, but he could see in the firelight that her face was rounded and her lips full. A strand of blonde hair fell across her forehead. Little by little, he drank as much as he could. Afterwards, while the man watched, Isabella took the rest of the water, squeezed a few drops of what smelled like lemon oil into it and wiped it with a cloth over his hands and head.
    “Thank you, Isabella,” Simon said.
    She helped him lie back on the cave floor again and he gazed up at the rugged blackness, watching the shadows chased by the flames into strange monsters and wild rivers.
    “You know my name,” he said, “and now I know the name of one of you. But not of the other. I would like to know whom it is I must thank for rescuing me. Surely that would only be polite.”
    From beyond the fire, the man spoke and this time his tone was harsher.
    “There is no need for that yet,” he said. “Nor for thanks. Now you can sleep and later, when you are more fully refreshed, you will know who I am. And also what we must do. But for now, sleep.”
    About to protest that he wasn’t tired and in fact had already slept enough, Simon found his eyelids closing. A breath or two later he was walking through the bright meadow again.

    Isabella
    This is not supposed to be happening and she doesn’t know what to do. Hartstongue should be dead by now. But he isn’t, and they are back in this cave. She must smile, as if she is happy, so that her brother suspects nothing. But Isabella cannot still the wild beating of her heart and the frantic secret searching of her mind. Where is Gelahn? She has tried again and again to call for him but he does not respond.
    How did her brother succeed in such a reckless act? The mind-storm is so rarely used in battle. It is so deadly to all who fall foul of it, even its instigators. She had no idea that Johan would be so foolish; if she had known, she would have found a way of warning Gelahn, but her brother gave her no hint of his intentions. He could not have known them himself.
    Watching her brother release the storm was breath-taking