The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

stares at Simon, incapable of speaking to him. Simon breaks the impasse, and his words are words of defeat.
    “It’s no good,” he says, “The boy and I, we’re finished. We can travel with you no further on this mountain. I’m grateful for what you’ve done, Johan, for saving him—and me—but haven’t you asked enough of us? Surely the danger is over by now. I, one man only, I am not so important. The… Your enemy will have found other victims.”
    Johan simply stands where he is on the snowy path. His mind is telling him they need to move and fast. The enemy is raising strength for another attack. He almost wishes he’d left the boy dead, but cuts off the thought as unworthy. Now, he must find the words to spur on his charge.
    “You are more than you think you are,” he says at last, his voice low, almost unrecognisable. As he speaks, the truth of it fires through him. Simon is more than they know. More even than he knows. What has just happened has proved it. But how can it be so? “It was you who saved the boy, not me. But you need worry about the mountain no more.”
    “Good. That surely is a relief to all of us. But tell me, why not?”
    “Because now, Simon, it is time for the next part of our journey.”

Chapter Ten: The Trial of the Air, Part One

    Simon
    That didn’t sound like good news. Turning, Simon gazed uncomprehendingly out from the cave at the small circle of clear air, criss-crossed by ravens and distant grey-lined clouds. He could see no way from the mountains but back down the way they had come.
    “Oh yes?” he said. “There is only more mountain to climb. What happens when we reach the end of it? Do we fly?”
    Johan shook his head.
    “Look for yourself,” he said.
    Shrugging off the cloak, Simon wrapped it around the boy and laid him carefully on the cave floor. He stirred once, but did not waken. Isabella moved to watch over him. “Go on.”
    Simon stood up, slowly. The effort took more out of him than he’d imagined and his legs nearly gave way. But, cursing his weakness, he gripped the edge of the rock overhang and, after a few unsteady moments, the feeling passed.
    At the cave entrance, the cold wind hit him. But it was the view that made Simon gasp. The mountain was not as it had been before. Instead of the path up which they had laboriously climbed, there was only sheer cliff and an impossible drop. Above, what he had thought to be at least another day-cycle’s climb to the top—if that was where Johan and Isabella were guiding them—had somehow shortened and he could have reached out his hand to touch the jagged barren peak. He clung to the edge of the shelter and forced his breathing to slow.
    Without warning, a flock of ravens cut across the view, giant wings all but touching his face, and he almost lost his grip. Instead of the customary blackness, they were white, like the snow. His fingers fell away from the cold rock edge and for a moment or two out of time he grasped at nothing. Then warm flesh and a low voice, this time not in thought only.
    “I wouldn’t do that, Simon. Not yet anyway.”

    Johan
    The scribe gazes at him, speechless. Simon’s confusion is overpowering, but already Johan is glimpsing the opportunities to come. They do not have long but, in the time they have, he must build up the other man’s knowledge. The more Simon understands, the more they will all be protected. But such knowledge has to be fed slowly; everything at once will destroy him.
    “How…?” Simon stutters. “How…?”
    Johan lets go of the scribe’s hand, his body shielding Simon from the sheer drop only a few feet in front.
    “You ask so many questions, Simon Hartstongue. But, truly, can you bear the answers?”
    The scribe squares his shoulders and nods. Johan smiles.
    “The mountain is alive,” he says. “You have seen that in the people you have met here, though I do not think you will see them again. At least, not until…but no matter. For now, one meeting only has been granted between you and the dwellers of the rock. It is enough. But what you have not seen is that the mountain is not simply the place where they exist; it is their flesh and blood, how they live and who they are. Because of that, the shape of the mountain is not fixed.”
    “Don’t mock me. That can’t be true. Besides, in my lifetime there has been no shift in the view the valley dwellers gaze on.”
    “No,” he concedes, “but that is because, in the years since what you