The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

“Now, you need to know this. We are no longer in danger. The village lies far behind. Where we are is a place not known to us. But, there is no need to be afraid. We are together, and our new friends here will protect us. Little one, we are on our way to the mountains.”
    When Simon finished speaking, he wondered again at his own capacity for untruths. The boy made no sound, but simply blinked again. Taking him by the shoulders and feeling his thin frame beneath his fingers, Simon slowly turned him around so that he was safe in his arms but facing the mountains.
    For a moment nothing happened. Then the boy’s body stiffened; Simon could feel the terror sifting through the boy like wheat, pouring itself upward through his hands and into his heart. Then the boy cried out, an anguished cry, heard only in Simon’s thoughts. A young fox about to be torn apart by the huntsmen’s hounds.
    “ No . Little one, listen… Listen to me…”
    But he wouldn’t. He was already beyond the comfort of words. The cry went on and on, rising higher and higher in Simon’s mind, and the boy twisted, the unsaid words in him ricocheting through the air: Run. Escape. Death. Pain. But Simon clung to him. As he was now, the boy would be too swift and if he ran back to the village, he would certainly die. The thought of that made bile rise in Simon’s throat. He couldn’t let him go. Shutting down all interference from outside—Isabella’s focus on the boy, Johan’s impatience mixed with compassion, the air’s bite, all the noise of the waking world—Simon concentrated entirely on sending what little peace he had out from his mind, through his body and into the boy’s struggling one, praying all the while that the physical contact would do what his debilitated power could not. He also cursed the legends that could make a child so afraid. In all his time in the Lammas Lands as Ralph’s and the villagers’ scribe, he’d never focused on the frightening stories in his lessons.
    For another few moments—any longer and the scribe might have lost him—the boy continued to twist and turn, dragging Simon on his knees across the hard earth and carpet of weeds and twigs beneath.
    Little one, little one, trust me, be at peace . At last the repeated words found a home within the boy and he ceased his struggles, and began instead to cry. The rhythmic sobbing cut Simon’s own clarity in two, and he turned the boy around, hugging him to his chest.
    “Hush there,” Simon said again, this time aloud, as the curtain of his mind lifted and the outside world came tumbling in again. The breeze. The sharp cry of a wolf somewhere in the distance, and the scent of wet leaves on soil. “Hush.”
    When he could breathe again, Simon glanced in Johan’s direction. For a second, his face was as impassive as stone, and then he nodded.
    “Hurry with your comfort,” he said. “We don’t have the time, and Isabella must do her work quickly.”

    Isabella
    Isabella is already kneeling on the earth, the dark brown layers of her skirt blending with the soil beneath. The branches provide a net of protection from a threatening sky. She frowns at Hartstongue. There will be no gentleness in the performance of her duties. She wants him to know it.
    The scribe loosens his grip on the boy, who folds himself onto the ground and almost vanishes into the darkness of the mound behind him. Only the slight shake of his body, as he weeps silently, gives him away. Hartstongue sighs. Isabella knows he is thinking of the horrors that lie only a short way ahead and is wondering if he was right to bring his young companion even this far.
    “Come,” she says, spinning a veneer of compassion in her voice and mind, just enough to fool him. “I need to give your wounds more oil. Be still.”
    The scribe watches as she tears a handful of long, thick-stemmed grasses from next to the tree roots and forms them into a makeshift pad base. Next, she reaches into her cloak and takes a sprinkling of herbs out of the pouch she always carries and mixes them with one or two drops of citrus and eucalyptus oil. It only galls her that none of this will harm him.
    “What herbs are you using?” he asks.
    She answers without looking up.
    “Calendula and hypericum. They’re the best for flesh wounds. And because what you suffer has been caused by the misuse of mind-power, I’m adding a portion of maplewood. It gives the mixture the strength you need.”
    “So, you’re a wisewoman