The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

Even in that darkness, the mind-cane loomed towards him. He tensed for the blow. Waited.
    From nowhere, a stream of ice-cold water swept across Simon’s head and he gasped for breath. Something wet and cold plunged over his body, and his eyes flew open.
    The enemy had vanished. Whatever was streaming over him wasn’t his blood.
    A vast, silver river flowed down the path, skirting the mountainside, around the path and over the animals. As he watched, the pack leader’s grip on his leg loosened and his feet slipped away, the strength of the flood carrying him backward. At the same time, the cur at Simon’s head howled, a higher pitched cry than the hunting sound of before. As he too fell away, he tore a mouthful of hair from Simon’s head, causing him to yell again.
    The water didn’t touch him. Instead it flowed over and around his body, as if he were an island in the middle of a sea. But it was pushing the creatures away, all of them now slipping and falling back down the path, jaws wide open and legs scrabbling for impossible footholds, the current picking them up and swirling them out of sight.
    Simon. Hold on.
    It was too late. Just as he thought the water—wherever it came from—wouldn’t touch him and that somehow it was keeping him safe, the scribe slipped on the ground and began to tumble after the wild pack. The path, the ledge where he’d been standing only moments before, and all but the sheer mountain face disappeared. Reaching out in order to find something to grab onto that might stop the mad spin downwards, his hand met heat and hardness, and clung on.
    The mountain, but more than the mountain. For another beat of his heart, Simon couldn’t understand what it was, but then as the current swept him sideways, against the mountainside, he could see what he was clinging to.
    The pack leader.
    Somehow the lead beast’s fall hadn’t been as swift and deadly as the rest of his pack. Perhaps he’d managed to scrabble out of the main flood before it took his companions. But now, its eyes were fixed on Simon, teeth snapping in his direction, grazing his fingers as he continued to clutch the side of that long, panting body. With each bite, he came closer. Simon couldn’t understand why he didn’t make an end of it for both of them, but then he saw what he’d missed when the river slammed him into the dog.
    The animal hung to the mountain only by his front paws, which had somehow managed to find a cleft in the rock face. But his hind legs were free, and the weight of them meant he could climb no higher.
    Fighting the scribe meant the beast would lose that respite. And because of Simon, both of them would fall.
    The cur made one last wild lunge at his fingers and Simon let him go, grabbing instead for the hind legs as he fell.
    If I die, you’ll go with me, you bastard.
    The two of them danced on the air, companions in imminent death. The mongrel howled, a sound so piercing that Simon screamed to stop the fear overwhelming him and flung out his arms to nothing.
    Something stopped him.
    Something slim and warm. Simon’s body slammed once more into the mountain and he looked up, winded. The boy was leaning towards him, attached to the rock as if he were a spider. His hand was wrapped around Simon’s fingers. He could sense no fear in the boy’s heart and indeed he was smiling.
    But how?
    The boy couldn’t possibly hold Simon here; he was too heavy for the child. Even as he made the decision to free himself and save the boy, Simon realised their fingers were barely touching. Something else was keeping him in place.
    The sound of the pack leader and his troop died away. The silence came. Cool, like water.
    Simon .
    The voice in his head was Johan’s. As he spoke, it was as if a layer of transparent flesh over Simon’s eyes was being peeled back. Attached to the boy’s hand, he saw a thin ribbon of silver, which pulsated as if responding to an unseen breeze. The scents of lavender and eucalyptus filled the air. Raising his eyes, he traced the long line of the cord as it floated upwards, meeting its end where two distant figures seemed to stand on the edge of the mountain.
    There was so much Simon did not understand. And, by the stars, so much he was grateful for.
    When he blinked, the rope disappeared, but the boy remained.
    Johan , he said in his mind, casting the words upwards and wondering if the other man would catch them at all. There are no footholds.
    Climb then , he said.
    The answer had