The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

speaks at last: false words of reassurance that mean nothing.
    “Don’t worry,” she says. “It is always bad at first for those who have not travelled here before. The mountain entrance is testing you. Soon the noise will be less.”
    In spite of her words, she can see he doesn’t believe her. He has more instinct in him than he understands. More politeness than she’d realised too; as she begins to climb after her brother, Hartstongue pushes the mean thought down and clambers up the first scattering of black rocks in her wake. The boy follows. She hears the scribe try to comfort him.
    “Hush, little one. This will soon be over. Trust me. Please.” In spite of this bravado, Hartstongue is awash in his own terrors.
    She and Johan set a fast pace. There is little climbing yet, the foothills of the great mountains being deceptively gentle. But even here, the rock beneath their feet is a sleeping and dangerous animal, which may at any moment wake and rise against them. The noise the mountain makes only adds to that impression. She and her brother have the power to overcome it, but the scribe does not. Neither does the boy, but he is not important and Isabella discounts him. Behind, she hears the two of them displacing loose rocks and once a small sheet of scree, which nearly makes Hartstongue fall. If he does, she will be forced to save him; the mind-healer wants him alive for a while longer.
    They journey like this for the length of what the Lammas people would describe as two of their stories. By then they have started to climb in truth. Sweat streams from the scribe’s face, and he longs to stop. In her mind, Isabella can even hear him wonder whether perhaps she still has a few water-leaves in her belt. The fool does not know how they weaken him. At last he speaks.
    “Isabella!”
    She slows to a stop and turns, waiting for Hartstongue and the boy to catch up with her. When they do, the scribe is breathing hard although Isabella is barely troubled by their exertions.
    “Why is it,” he asks, “that you have managed to climb this far and yet you act as if it’s nothing more than a summer’s stroll? Would that I had your endurance!”
    She shrugs and does not meet his eye. “The journey is far more than a physical one. It is a test of mental stamina and readiness too. Neither of which I am sure you have.”
    The scribe opens his mouth to respond but, at that instant, her brother’s shadow looms beside them.
    “Isabella means nothing by it,” he says, although of course he is wrong in that. “It is only that she and I have travelled this path before. You have not.”
    Hartstongue shakes his head. “No. She meant more than that. But, whatever it is, you won’t let her say it. You’re lying to me. Both of you.”

    Johan
    He swears in the old Gathandrian tongue and, before the scribe can react, reaches out and grabs him by the top of his tunic, twisting it to drag him closer until Simon gasps for air. The boy clings to his leg.
    “ Don’t. Ever. Call. Me. A liar. Again. Do you understand?”
    Simon nods. “Yes. Believe me, you’re making it perfectly clear.”
    Instead of letting the other man go, Johan tightens his grip and stares right into Simon’s eyes, overpowering his mind.
    For a moment, everything around them is still, and then Johan lets him go. He finds he is shaking. With all his heart, he regrets his foolish desire for adventure and wishes he was back in the Meditation Sub-Council doing what he evidently does best—encouraging others to develop their thought lives so that both they and the city are safe and fulfilled. He doesn’t want to be on this journey with a man unworthy of the effort. But because of his own former determination, and the elders’ command, he has no choice.
    Simon falls to his knees, taking great gulps of air into his lungs. Johan drops down beside him and clutches his shoulders, forcing Simon to look back down the path they have come.
    “What do you see, Simon?” he asks. “What do you see?”
    “What do you think? The mountain, of course. The way we’ve travelled. That’s all. There’s nothing else.”
    He shakes the scribe as he would shake an unwilling dog. “Then look again. Look with your heart, not your eyes.”

    Simon
    For a moment or two, Simon couldn’t understand what Johan meant. Then something in his mind cleared and his eyes travelled over the black outline of the mountain, the few scrubby trees clinging to nothing with their thin