The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

no more words plunging in. The only sign of life was Johan’s tightening grip on his shoulder, giving him a pure focus for pain.
    Then, suddenly, Ralph.
    His face rose into Simon’s mind. As if he’d been there for long day-cycles, hidden, but now was the first time Simon had been able to see him. No. The word burst through what little defences he had and he could see the Lammas Master as if he stood in front of him. Black hair, hooded grey eyes. Sweat lining the brow and his lips twisted—the look he’d worn when he’d tied the rope around Simon’s neck and tried to kill him. He saw Ralph blink, and then the Overlord’s eyes widened as if in surprise at seeing him there.
    Ralph?
    When Simon reached out, shaking himself free of Johan’s restraining touch, Ralph vanished as if he’d never been there at all. The feelings, however, proved more difficult to conquer.
    He found himself scrabbling in the dust. He might as well have been lost in the plains leading to the marshlands from Ralph’s domain, with no companions, no ravens, and no strange dance of the air to guide him. No way forward, and no way back. The only pull the one in his gut, which spoke of Ralph. The wanting him, and the fear of him too. Simon had never lost that, no matter what the man had done. And the knowledge of this made him into a liar. Gods and stars, in truth he never wanted to be free.
    When the flood of memory at last began to recede—although the ache remained—he brought himself up to his knees again. He could no longer sense the presence of his companions.
    His eyes caught the gaze of the raven. For a moment it felt as if something unfamiliar was leaving him, slithering away back to the domain of the bird-land.
    He knows, Simon realised. He’s been in my thoughts and he knows. About Ralph. About everything.
    It was then that he understood that the raven and he were alone. Everyone and everything else had gone. The vast flock of ravens, his friends—if he could call them that. The trees, the rocks and the streams. Everything. Only he and the bird were left. In a place of their own making.
    Or perhaps, only of Simon’s.
    “Where is this?” he said, pleased that sound of any sort proved possible here.
    He hadn’t expected any answer, or at least none he could understand, but he was mistaken.
    This is where you dwell.
    The familiarity of the voice—heard not aloud but only within—made him gasp before realising a moment later that he was wrong once more. It sounded so much like Ralph, but not like him; it had also something of the air. The snow-raven.
    “Who are you?” Simon’s words now were internal only, and continued to be so.
    I am one who questions.
    “That’s all very well, but questions what?”
    The raven paused and one black eye blinked. Simon saw he was searching for the words and the way to put them together, which he must somehow have gleaned in his journey through Simon’s mind. Perhaps that was why he sounded more human this time. Bile rose in his throat as he realised what he’d allowed to be taken from him. Still, he did not feel the loss of it.
    Questions the arc of your flight.
    The words pulsated like wings in the mind, and it took Simon a moment or two to understand the sense.
    “You mean my life? You’re going to question my life? Gods, but we’re here for a while then.”
    The bird’s head cocked to one side and back again, a movement Simon took as meaning yes .
    “May I ask why?”
    The worm dies but the leaves are born again.
    “What?” he stared at the raven, trying to unpick the metaphor he offered, trying to see the world as he saw it. “I don’t understand, I…”
    With a shake of his wings, the raven stretched out his snowy neck, opened his beak and released a lilting scale of notes into the air between them. Each note became an orb of gold, floating towards Simon in an unseen breeze. Without wanting it and unable to move a limb to escape, his mouth opened as the first of the orbs reached him and he felt its glitter and lightness on his tongue. It tasted like honey and cloves.
    He swallowed the note and his head was filled with singing. He felt the throb, as piercing as joy, as it travelled down his throat and into his stomach. It filled his body with sunlight. He reached forward and took another of the raven’s notes from the air. And another, and another. Each one brought the song in his blood to a greater height and pleasure, until at last he felt like a bird himself,