The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

that do? Perhaps my lack of sight has allowed my mind to see what my eyes and the eyes of others cannot. If so, I will use such a gift.
    I back away, feeling behind me with my hands until I reach the wall. It ’s a slow process and, once, I almost stumble over the stool I’d forgotten about. On the journey, my fingers run along Iffenia’s carving table and the dust of it clings to my skin. The strange fluidity of the dagger of the mind follows me. Like a spider’s web, trying to brush it away only worsens it. I have to find the gap, send out the rest of my strength to Annyeke through it, if I can.
    All the while, my heart beats out a warning. There is so little time.
    At the wall, I sink downwards until I am half sitting, half crouching on the floor. Now, I must try now or the time will have passed me by and I won’t have the ability for it. So I wait for the slimmest portion of the daggered net that surrounds me to come to the forefront of my thoughts. Only when I sense its presence, shimmering before me like a morning mist, do I plunge the remnants of my mind towards it. Wild singing and the feel of crimson crushed against my body, slicing at flesh, the jaggedness of falling. For a moment, I almost believe the mind-net has tumbled away and I stand in black space, panting. But it cannot be like that; mind-nets when destroyed leave damage and the tatters of their shape amongst thoughts. They do not vanish so utterly.
    The next moment, the fact of the net ’s presence swoops back around me, slashing the darkness with red and flame.
    I have not even reached the merest hint of Annyeke. I have failed at the first step of abandoning myself , with no strength of thought to attempt a second onslaught.
    How many others like Iffenia dwell amongst us? How much hold does the mind-executioner really have in our thoughts and our land , or indeed all the lands? And how can we bear it?
    My mind is as useless as my eyes. But there is yet something I have left. My body. The idea of this and what I must surely do fills my blood with grief, for mind-nets can, if one has the knowledge of it, be partially defeated by the decisions of the body, but none have ever lived for long afterwards.
    No matter. I am fated for death. The stars and gods decree it, and perhaps this end is what I was made for. I am weighed in the balance and found wanting. Bearing the heaviness of my thought-prison in my mind, I stagger to my feet and walk forwards. With every step, the pain my eyes have been holding onto sweeps over my flesh. It feels as if small angry knives pierce my skin over and over again and already I can feel the warm oozing of blood upon me. The mind-net is becoming physical. Slowly for now, but it has begun sooner than I have feared. And who is to say when its cruel pace will quicken?
    I am nearly at the door and can feel the chill dampness in the air that speaks of snow when the full power of the net kicks in.
    Pain.
    My flesh and blood are caught up in a red darkness that forces me under and I forget how to breathe. It is a river, but more than a river. The whole weight of soil and the vast expanses of sky crush me down until I am as small as a termite. All my bones are shattered and I no longer know my own shape. For a time and a time, or perhaps for all eternity if I only knew it, I huddle like a child on Iffenia’s floor. I know this as the daggers tearing into me allow me to see it so I do not have the mercy and forgetfulness of death. My only task is to suffer pain and to stay here until it is over.
    It will never be over.
    The despair that thought brings and the bleak truth of it drives me further downwards so my own thoughts are hacked into tiny fragments and I can no longer connect with them. My knowledge of my self is beyond my reach. A deeper darkness fills me, as if night has plunged in where only twilight dwelt. Soon I will be entirely gone and there will be nothing left of me to think at all.
    All my mind sees is darkness. Yet one small fact remains untrammelled. I must go forward. I can no longer remember why. I can hear howling, faint but clear, but I don ’t know whether it comes from my thoughts or whether it is in the world I cling to. The fact of this makes my heart beat ever faster and I know that, wherever I am, I am shaking.
    The floor beneath me shifts.
    But no, it is not the floor shifting. It is my body that has eased itself onward, towards the sensation of air. Even as I do this, I understand it is not