The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

Johan and Isabella were standing together on the edge of the mountain. Behind them he could see only more clouds and nothingness.
    The boy’s weight lay heavy across his back and he had no concept of what they should do. Did Johan plan to fight the enemy here after all? With what weapons, when the enemy’s powers were so strong? And even if somehow their combined force held him off for a while, how long would it be before he broke through?
    “If we are to live,” Johan spoke, his eyes piercing through Simon into flesh and blood and marrow, “if we are to live, now, then we must walk the passages of air before us.”
    For a heartbeat, Simon had no comprehension of what this might mean, and then he staggered back, feeling the bile rise into his mouth.
    “You’re insane. I can’t do that.”
    “No, I’m not mad. I’m simply trying to do my best in impossible circumstances. Please believe me, it’s the only way. If you stay here, Simon, my sister and I will have to leave. We…don’t want to, but we will have no choice. You and the boy will be alone. For, as he was never meant to be part of our journey, he cannot cross the air unless you carry him. The Kingdom of the Air is sometimes cruel, but that is the nature of it. If you stay, the enemy will find you both, very soon, and he will tear you apart so that you will never be whole again. Neither will you be able to die, although you will beg him for it. You have danced with him, Simon, and he knows the way to your soul. Anything that can happen to you here is nothing compared to what will happen to you when our enemy finds you. And the boy. Yes, you may die in the air journey. I cannot tell. I have not been given that knowledge. But, if that is what is fated to happen, then I promise you it will be an easy death and a quick oblivion.”
    Simon laughed. The sound of it was strung out against the growing baying of the oncoming dogs like a reed across a river in flood. And like the reed, he would surely be torn apart by a greater force. Not him only, but the boy also. How could they cross clouds and wind and be safe?
    Choking back more wild laughter, he answered Johan’s madness.
    “You take us both on this unthinkable journey and now you ask the impossible,” he said. “How can we fall from this mountain and live? I can’t do it. I’m not a brave man. As you have already seen.”
    “I think, when you wish it, you have courage enough. Not all acts of bravery are physical. Besides,” Johan went on, “if you stay here, yours will not be the kind of death that brings you any release. Look behind you, Simon.”
    Damn him. The scribe had been avoiding that very action, the howling of the dogs beating in rhythm with his blood and the sense of them seeming to be already at his back. But now, reaching up, Simon found the boy, loosed his grip and slid him down and into his arms. His eyes still hooked onto Johan’s, he waited until the boy’s face was tight against his chest so that he could see nothing. Then he turned around. A stench of raw meat swept over him, and he gagged.
    The cloud of wild dogs was only a field’s length away. They had already swallowed so much of the mountain; but not quite all. Below their quivering mass, Simon could see where the rock face still held firm, the skin of the stones torn and somehow bloodied, but standing. Though in a different shape from what it had been before. Great boulders had been ripped from their allotted places and tumbled downwards, some strewing the long line of the path as it snaked to earth, blocking any way back there might ever have been. Others must have vanished into the great void of the valley and been smashed to smaller fragments in their headlong tumble. The mountain now seemed diminished, fragile. He wondered what had become of its people.
    As he continued to stare, he realised the dark, threatening cloud was no longer moving towards them. Instead, it was flowing forward, upward with every terrible bark of the dogs, whose enflamed eyes were now close enough to see. But each time, something stopped its movement, as if reaching an invisible barrier it could not cross.
    “Why don’t they come and finish us?” he whispered.
    “I don’t know,” Johan gasped out. “It doesn’t matter. We only have moments left. You…must… decide .”
    As he spoke, the dogs grew louder and the strange barrier began to give way.
    “What about the boy?” Simon said, the words falling over themselves in the race