The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

through possibilities. There is a gate to another world here in the air. It opens when we travel in trust. But I can feel so much anger, confusion even, that it’s as if…
    Isabella breaks off as her master presses deep, understanding that she has come near to conveying too much. Forgive me. At once, she sweeps her presence from Hartstongue’s mind and out of danger.
    He reaches out for her again. But Johan?
    They attacked him, she says. He must have allowed it to stop them attacking you.
    The scribe’s mind spins with questions, but Isabella pays him no attention. Her thoughts are broken and she ceases the contact between them once more. She must save her brother. But how?
    Thinking of Johan, she sees that something beside him is moving. The blood next to him is drifting closer together, drop by drop. No, not drifting. There is purpose in it. She has seen nothing like it before and cannot tell what it might mean. Before she can make a move towards her brother, Hartstongue places the boy into her arms without touching her, ignoring her protests and her efforts to hold him back. For the first time on this journey, she has no idea what the scribe is going to do.

    Simon
    He’d had enough. This time he would do something while he could hope to influence the outcome.
    As the blood surrounding Johan began to swirl and congeal into shapes Simon couldn’t yet make out, he stumbled across the sky. When he reached the fallen man, who seemed smaller than before, Simon reached down to try to pull him away from the growing whirlpool of blood. He didn’t care what Johan had said about not touching. He couldn’t see what else to do. There was more than blood around Johan now; sharp fragments of ice cut into his skin. The sky’s angry teeth. But instead of allowing himself to be pulled away from danger, or even chiding him for his foolishness, Johan tugged back, catching Simon off balance so he, too, fell.
    At the same time, he yelled out his sister’s name.
    “ Isabella , come!”
    A moment later, he grabbed Johan and the circle of crimson ice became a mouth, swallowing them up from sky into sky. Simon could feel Isabella’s hot breath at his neck and her hand clutching his belt and prayed she still held the boy. Johan’s body felt thin and frail, as if a strange sickness had taken him and left the skeleton behind. Simon could have crushed him in his arms. All these thoughts scattered through his mind as a great current of stinking, swirling air rushed up and around them. Together they plunged through wind and nothingness. Simon could hear the cries of birds and great expanses of colour rushed past his eyes and were gone: blue, white and streaks of black, yellow, pink and cream. When he opened his mouth to cry out, heedless of what dangers might follow, he had not breath enough to do it. Johan’s fingers clung to the edge of his cloak, his body buffeted against Simon’s in the headlong tumble.
    In his mind, he could hear the terrified silent cries of the boy.
    And one word— Courage .
    He didn’t know how long the four of them fell. He kept expecting the end to come, and screwed his eyes shut in anticipation of the bloody contact of their bodies against… Against what? Rock? Grass? More air? Impossible to tell in this world, where men walked across the sky but did not fall. His skin felt as if it were being dragged from his body by the force of the wild wind. At last, something in the nature of the noise and strange cries accompanying them began to change.
    The wind, the song of it almost deafening in its pitch and intensity, started to become more bearable. Instead of a continuous howling, the sound came in waves, pulsating as if its origin was moving towards them for a few moments, drifting away and then approaching again. It sounded alive.
    Simon opened his eyes. Not fully—he didn’t have the courage for that—but enough to see through his eyelashes. The colours in the air still streaked by, but something told him their onward flight had slowed. Beyond the layer of air that had first caught them up in itself, something moved.
    He shut his eyes again. Surely he’d shown enough courage for one day. No one could ask for more. His heart was pounding, but still he held on to Johan, trying to protect him.
    Johan? Simon tried to think his name and spin it out of his head, but heard no response. Only the pulsating sky. He tried again.
    Isabella? Again, no response. Perhaps though, they were trying to reach him