The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

journey, we must maintain a good distance from our pursuers. If we can.”
    Simon didn’t answer him, at least not directly.
    “This is the edge of my knowledge of these lands,” he said. “When I came here, I came from the west, through the smaller villages and the marshes which lie between them. For generations, no one has gone beyond the boundary of the wood or, even more rarely, beyond the few fields which surround them. No one has ventured close to the mountains. There are tales… Though once, history tells us, trade between the valley-dwellers and the mountain tribes was common, and even in my memory there were some mountain people who visited us, now it is no longer so. Such a journey is forbidden.”
    “Are you afraid?” Johan asked, his mouth set to a sneer.
    Simon looked up at him.
    “What do you think?” the scribe said simply. “Yes. I am not a fool. Of course I am afraid.”
    “Why?”
    Simon twisted his mouth into a half-smile, which sent an arrow of pain shooting through his cheek. “Because I have spent all of my life, or as much of it as I can remember, being afraid. That is my life. And it is one I have grown familiar with over the year-cycles.”
    Johan gazed at Simon for a moment and then opened his mouth as if to say something more, but it was Isabella who spoke. Simon hadn’t noticed her approaching.
    “We know you’re afraid,” she said. “We are not fools either, but you have to come with us.”
    She reached out her hand and, after another heartbeat or two, Simon took it. With his other hand he held the boy close to his side. Isabella’s fingers in his felt cool and delicate. A young deer reaching for water. A field-crocus. But, still, there was something he couldn’t understand in her grip, some strange power he could almost taste. And then it was gone again.
    Johan stepped aside.
    Slowly, so slowly, Isabella backed away from Simon, holding his hand. He and the boy followed her, inching out of the wood’s protection into the harsh openness of the fields. Each footfall felt as if Simon might be stepping on fire or, worse, nothing at all. As if he and the boy might be about to plunge into the depths of the earth, the skin of its surface closing over them, leaving them in limbo, wracked only by unimaginable tortures and the cruelty of demons. Such was the power of the tales Simon had learned at his mother’s side. Isabella kept on smiling and he fastened his eyes on her, taking what courage he could from her apparently calm expression, her wide blue eyes, darker than her brother’s, and her unhurried movements.
    The boy moaned and hung back. Simon bent his head to whisper soothing words, casting a mind-net of comfort over the child’s thoughts. Something to stop the boy truly seeing the mountain. The net would not be permanent, and he would have to deal with the boy’s fear soon enough, as well as his own. But Simon did not know what else to do. After a while, they walked forward again.
    At last, when he was far enough away from the woods and into the open land to make it foolish to run back, Isabella let go of his hand. Simon took a breath, which turned out to be more ragged than he’d hoped. Damn his cowardice. When would it ever leave him?
    “I’ve never been here before,” Simon said. “Not this far away from what I know in the Lammas Lands. It’s funny, but I thought if you went beyond the woods and the narrow fields after them you would die. It’s what the people are taught here. Especially since the wars in our neighbours’ lands, and the rumours of wars to come. They say there are terrors and demons here, the like of which we have never known.”
    It was Johan, not Isabella, who answered him. Naturally, the reply gave Simon no comfort.
    “There is nothing here which need terrify you,” he said, “but I cannot say the same for what may lie ahead.”

    Isabella
    It makes her laugh inside to see her brother so scornful. Hartstongue cuts a sorry figure on this journey Gelahn has permitted them to take. His fear is so strong; it almost covers every other emotion in his mind. He has no control. He is an unholy mix of terror, dread, confusion, misplaced love, loneliness and grief. Isabella can hardly bear to come close to his thoughts; they are as bitter herbs on her tongue.
    But she must act as Gelahn wishes it. There is something about Hartstongue that the mind-healer wishes to study before destroying him. And she will do as he asks, biding her time until