The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

for conversation with him.
    “It is not wrong to look at yourself, scribe.”
    He blushes and stumbles into excuses as she sits by him at the river. “Forgive me. I am not usually so childish. After all, what does appearance matter? I know my gifts lie, if they lie anywhere, in the craft of writing and the powers of my mind. Something too of herb-lore. I should pay no heed to appearance. It is nothing but foolishness.”
    “On the contrary, it is part of who we are, Simon,” she replies. “We are not all thought or all body, but a combination of the two. Both aspects matter, and must be held in balance. Do the people you have lived amongst not teach that to their children?”
    “I cannot remember such a lesson,” Hartstongue says. “Is that something that Gathandrians live by, Isabella? What do your people teach their children?”
    She shrugs. She does not like the way he has turned the discussion back to her. That path is dangerous. “Many things. Too many to mention now. But, as we are speaking about children, do you not think it is time to grant your young friend a name? Such an act would surely be a blessing.”
    Hartstongue lets out a breath and sits back. She has breached his weak defences. Behind him, Isabella smiles. She knows from Gelahn that what she is asking is reaching the edges of the unthinkable in the world the scribe and the boy come from. He has neither strength nor skill for such a task. Not in the present, nor in any time to come.
    “I cannot,” he says at last, his voice hardly more than the sound of the running waters beside them. “I do not have the right to do that. I have no power to name anyone. Do not ask it of me. You must see that.”
    “Why not? The boy needs a name, almost as much as he needs you. And I know it would give him so much joy. No matter what the background of you both.”
    She can’t help herself. The cats-paw of her curiosity drifts over the scribe’s memories. Her disdain too. Hartstongue must feel it as he flings her away from his mind at once.
    “Forgive me,” she says quickly and blocks him before he can follow her into her own domain. “I did not intend to pry into what is private for you. That is not our way. I simply wanted to offer support, that is all. My brother tells me I am sometimes too eager to help, even before it is asked for.”
    The scribe makes no reply. It is time for her to be gone.
    “But it seems to me,” she says, rising to her feet and shaking out her skirts, “that having no name is a burden too heavy for a young child to bear—too heavy also for an adult, I think. You love the child, and he you. The duty, if it is faced, is yours. No matter what the cost. Think about what I have said.”

    Simon
    After Simon’s experience with the raven, Johan decreed rest for them all, although not for long as soon they must take the next part of the journey. There was no need to stand watch; the ravens would act as protection for them now. Even so, it took a while to sleep and Simon’s dreams were restless, full of flight and shapes too complex to name. The vision of the boy and the mind-cane drifted through them all, but never together. When he woke, he shook off the nightmares and stared up at the now dark sky, trying to understand why the stars were no longer in their place before the memory rose again. The land of the birds—the kingdom of the air—had no stars. And no moon either. Only an encompassing light in daytime, that seemed to spring from the air itself.
    Something touched him. Simon turned his head. One of the ravens was perched nearby, its feathers glowing silver in the darkness. As he gazed, the bird stretched out its wing and brushed his face. The dazzle of light in the movement made him shield his eyes.
    “What do you want?” he whispered, praying that it would not be further tests. “Why have you come?”
    The raven gave no answer, only turning its head to one side to eye Simon again. Before he could cast around for what else to say, it stretched out both its wings, the length and a half of a full-grown man, and danced upwards into the sky. He stared after it, watching the shimmer of its wings fade into the distance, and it was then that he knew . As if the bird had spoken aloud and given him the answer.
    The snow-ravens. It was they who gave this land its daylight and who delivered darkness by their absence alone. The Kingdom of the Air had no need for sun or moon; the birds were its light. Hadn’t they only seen