The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

did not have either strength or wit to catch hold of. A shadow; a possibility. He gasped, but whether in reality or simply in thought he couldn’t tell. It felt— thought —dark. Fleeting. Each time he looked at where it had been, it was gone. As if it were playing with him.
    What was it in any case?
    Drawing back his mind from the other paths it had flitted down, he concentrated on the thing which shouldn’t have been there. At the edge of the eye, it lurked. Small, but impossibly strong. How could…? There, he had it—almost. If he could only…
    A flash of unbearable pain across the mind’s skin and Simon was tumbling, out of control, thoughts sparking in all directions, uncontainable. Around him the sky, the air, exploded and the trees and rivers shrunk to almost nothing. And the land screamed. Night swooped in. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t… No air, no breath, no…nowhere to fall, and yet no chance to stop. He was shaking…someone, some thing …was shaking him. He couldn’t be still, no chance to regroup, no…couldn’t see, couldn’t think…
    Sweating and gasping, Simon’s body shook so hard that he had no knowledge of how to make it stop. Or of what had brought him here. Here? Somewhere. Where was he? What had happened? What…?
    “Simon, open your eyes. Simon .”
    Automatically, from an internal pull he couldn’t name, he tried to do what the voice said. He could see white slabs, large and plain. He could smell herbs. Rosemary. Lemongrass.
    With a gasp, he sat up, mind spinning back from the directions he’d sent it out, and the chair he must have fallen from slid away across the stone floor. For a moment, Simon couldn’t recognise the stranger in front of him, and then it seeped back: Lord Ralph Tregannon; his request; the unexpected encounter.
    It took a while for his breathing to regulate itself again. During that time, Simon’s companion waited in silence. He offered water and the scribe took it, smiling thanks. Or trying to.
    When at last the shaking had stopped, Lord Tregannon seized the tumbled chair, righted it and sat down. Then he spoke.
    “What did you see?” he asked.
    Turning his gaze away, Simon thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I didn’t think I’d see anything. It all looked as it should: the land, the mountains, the sea. All of it. But…”
    “But…?”
    He took a breath, feeling the warmth of it filling his lungs. “There’s something there I didn’t understand, and I couldn’t hold down…in my thoughts, I mean. Something dark, powerful, intrusive.”
    “Did you sense anything else?”
    “No. Whatever it was, it knew what I was doing. It pushed me away, cut through my mind somehow so I wasn’t in control of the meditation anymore.”
    For a moment, he couldn’t speak. Lord Tregannon broke the silence.
    “How powerful is this…thing?”
    Simon half-laughed. “More powerful than I am.”
    “Powerful enough to change the hearts and minds of my people and turn them against me? Powerful enough to start a war where we have had peace for so long? To destroy everything I and my father before me have built here?”
    When he looked up at the Lammas Master from his position still on the floor, he could see the other man’s face was filled with shadows. He thought also that Lord Tregannon’s eyes were wet, but Simon could never be sure, either then or afterwards, and he was too weak to delve any further.
    “Yes,” the scribe said.
    “So.” He blinked and gazed at Simon. “Will you help me?”
    “I…”
    “Wait,” he said. “I have more to say to you.”
    Nothing of what Lord Tregannon had said or shown captured him as fully as what he said next.
    Leaning back on his chair, the Overlord opened his hands out in a gesture of honesty and asking, and his eyes at last met Simon’s.
    “I know something dangerous about you, Simon Hartstongue,” he said, “but at the same time what you now know about me, what you found out last night, could bring death upon my head. We are even. Almost. The simple fact of the matter is that I trust you. Do not ask me why, but it is true. I trust you and I need your help to survive. Please, will you help me?”

    Johan
    Simon’s choice of story is unexpected. Not expecting it to move him, it startles Johan to realise he is thinking of Annyeke. He wonders how she is managing the burden he left her with. He also hopes the mind-circle is doing its work. The elders promised him that it would. Perhaps it is simply