The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

that he had been unable to sense any of her thoughts, even as they touched, and he wondered at the emptiness.
    “I will do my best,” she said, “but this time I promise nothing.”
    Isabella applied the same mixture to the knife wound on Simon’s cheek, and chanted what sounded like the same words she had sung before. The scribe waited but this time there was no answering touch of heat. After a few moments, she tried again before sitting back with a sigh.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve done what I can. The herbs I have bathed it with will heal it, in time, but in this case I have no magic for the act.”
    “It’s all right,” he said. “You’ve done your best. There are worse things, after all.”
    As he spoke, the image of his writing tools, wrapped in their blue silk cover, still lying safe in the drawer where he’d left them, came to his mind. The strength of it was enough to echo in Isabella’s thoughts too, in spite of the way she must have been protecting herself. She flinched and looked up.
    “Writing? Blue silk?” she said, but Simon cut her off before she could say more.
    “It doesn’t matter,” he replied, shaking his head and trying to quell the sense of loss flooding him. “There’s nothing anyone can do now. We can’t go back.”
    “But they were special to you. A present from…?”
    “My mother. Yes.” Standing up suddenly, Simon stretched and stared away from her, out onto the fields ahead. Beside them, the boy uncurled from his temporary sanctuary and peeped out, his brown eyes wide, like a young animal fearful of what the day might bring. He stared at Simon with a look of trust as if the scribe had the complete, unquestionable ability to protect him from whatever should happen. Knowing his own fears, Simon chose not to touch his mind in case the boy found him out.
    Unexpectedly, Isabella frowned and rose to her feet. Without speaking, she walked away, around the hillock and past the tree. Her gait looked purposeful, but he could not see why she would have anywhere to go. A little way ahead, Simon could see Johan waiting.
    Simon and the boy were alone. What should he say to him? He had brought the boy here, thinking to rescue him, but neither had any knowledge of what lay in the future. Perhaps Simon should have let him be, not thought he could be of any help to the boy at all. Without him, the boy might have lived and died an unknown life, despised by the villagers, but at least he would not have been taken and cast out onto the path to the mysterious and deadly mountains with no way back. Once again, Simon’s choices were deeply wrong. He was both a fool and a coward.
    “I’m sorry,” he whispered, sinking down onto his haunches and stretching out one hand to the boy. “I’m sorry if what I’ve done has made things worse for you. I swear I will do all I can to help you through this, but I’m sorry that it has had to begin. My friend, truly, I think I bring you little luck.”
    Leaning back against the tree, Simon closed his eyes, let his hand drop and tried to think what best to do now. After a moment, he heard a slight rustling and, when he opened his eyes, the boy had shuffled closer, his hair sticking out from his face like young hog spikes. He was smiling, a gesture Simon tried to reciprocate. He failed.
    “Come now, boy,” he whispered, thinking it was up to him to show some kind of courage. Though the gods alone knew what sort. “I am too foolish. Pay no attention to what I say. I don’t know what might lie ahead, but at least we’re together. And alive. Never mind the strangeness of the people we find ourselves with. We can laugh at them together, can’t we? As we did with the village-dwellers in their rituals sometimes.”
    The boy continued to smile, and cuddled up underneath Simon’s arm. A heartbeat later and he reached out to touch Simon’s face, where Thomas’ knife wound had disfigured him. The boy’s eyes filled with tears, his smile now a distant memory; Simon could see the glitter of his tears in the sunlight. For another moment or two, he allowed the boy’s fingers to remain on his cheek while suppressing the instinctive response to use his touch as a conduit for thoughts, then he drew back. Without seeming to take offence, the boy reached under his thin cloak to untie his belt. He took out something the scribe couldn’t see and pressed it into his hands.
    “What’s this? Something you’ve found? Food? I…”
    Trailing off,