The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

amongst a people who pay heed to the journeys of the stars, whereas I come from a people where the most important journey is that of the mind. The path of the stars is fixed, but the mind always needs new experiences, new places to explore. We have been to your world, Simon, but as yet you have not been to ours.”
    “Is that our destination now?” Simon asked. “To reach your home?”
    “Yes,” Isabella and Johan said together, the woman’s voice as strong as her brother’s. “Yes, that is the reason we came for you.”
    Simon’s mind was sparking in a hundred different directions, and his heart was beating rapidly. “Why? Why rescue me from death to take me to paradise? What little qualities do I have to add to your world that it does not already have in abundance?”
    Johan’s overwhelming sadness swept over Simon, who struggled for breath so he would not succumb to it.
    “It is to do with the war,” the other man said.
    “Which war?”
    “The war between our peoples, which started over four of your generations ago, and which has been rising, falling, and rising again ever since.”
    “That’s not true. There’s been no war,” Simon said, catching up at last and peering into their faces. “Since the wars in the mountains, the only battles have been within our own lands. No one like you has been involved; no, it has been about internal power and property, the poor murmuring against the rich, or the people turning against those like myself who…”
    He trailed off and drew back, fingers rubbing at his cheek. Everything seemed to be changing, or perhaps poised on the brink of a dark leap the scribe couldn’t fathom. A sigh then, stronger in Simon’s mind than in the air. Again, he felt Johan’s deep-seated grief but, from Isabella, only an emptiness.
    “Tell me what you mean,” he said.
    For a moment, Johan stopped. He glanced back along the path, frowned and began to walk again.
    “The war began, as I have already said,” he continued, “about four of your generations ago. The enemy, whom you met at Lord Tregannon’s, was jealous of the life we, and our people, have. Indeed the enemy was once one of us, but he misused his power to gain prestige, and to maim or kill others. He wandered through many countries, those we knew of and those we did not. This occurred in the days of your father’s grandfather. I believe the legends you have speak of him from that time?”
    “Yes,” the scribe whispered, “yes they do, but…”
    “He is the same man, believe me. The years are valued differently amongst us.”
    “I see.”
    Johan paused, as if leaving the scribe space to say more, but he did not know where to begin. His heart was still pounding. After a moment longer, Johan continued.
    “The enemy took the name that you know him by, when he found himself amongst you, perhaps because it is filled with resonances of your most ancient traditions and the oral history of your stars . The one who has power. His real name, which is not as you know him, is…no longer spoken. Soon he discovered that of all the lands he had travelled through during the years of his exile, you were the only peoples with a hint of the mind powers he had once been privileged to know. Therefore he decided to stay, and to manipulate those powers to take his vengeance on the Gathandrians, the people who had exiled him.”
    “I don’t understand,” Simon interrupted. “How can civil war in one place affect a world as far away as yours must be? Our land wars were devastating of course, and many died, but my ancestors fought only amongst themselves. And with the mountain people. There are no legends of another people, especially one like yours.”
    Johan shook his head. “Our enemy masterminded the battles. Whenever one of our people uses their powers to harm and destroy others, all our people suffer for it. However far away from you, we could feel your agony. Every one of your deaths tore into the flesh of our own, as it is doing now. Finally, the elders captured him and imprisoned him in Gathandria, so he could do no more harm, and your ancestors recovered. There was no more fighting. But then…”
    “Then…?”
    “Then,” Johan sighed, “two year-cycles ago the enemy escaped. We do not know how. Once we have captured him again, we will have to find out. But we have no opportunity for that now. For this time, the enemy took with him the mind-cane. The last of those written of in the legends. Because of it, his