The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

glowing silver and a deeper shade of black, in his grasp.
    As she opened her mouth to speak, though only the good Spirit knew what she might want to say, Gelahn raised the cane and a spear of silver light flashed from its carved top through her flesh, blood and thoughts.
    Annyeke screamed as all the sensations of pain and terror she had ever known ripped through her consciousness. Then she felt nothing.

    Simon
    The scribe opened his eyes just in time to see Annyeke fall, silver sparks leaping from her skin and hair. He saw Talus beside her, reaching out, and snatched the boy, holding him back as the fire from the cane hissed and sang. The effort made him sink to his knees, and the sound of the mind-executioner’s laughter filled his head. All the hopes he’d had somehow to find the chink, the vulnerable point of the mind-executioner’s plan, and to turn his victory around on itself, vanished away, if they had ever been there. He should not have pretended to agree to Gelahn’s requests. As he had already acknowledged, he’d been a fool to think he could ever trick a Gathandrian so versed in the art of deceit and the legends’ mysteries.
    Panting hard, he turned to face his enemy, and knew in an instant his mind was as open to Gelahn as a cloudless day. The executioner laughed.
    “No,” he said. “I am not your enemy, Simon Hartstongue, for all your wishing it so. Not yet at least.”
    While he spoke, Simon heard someone groan and, a moment later, Johan staggered to his feet, taking several faltering steps towards Annyeke who continued to lie across the Library’s broken stone slabs without moving. Gelahn took no notice as Johan fell onto the ground beside her, leaning forward and whispering her name as his hands stroked the hair from her face.
    Trying to ignore them both and to turn his thoughts aside from the silence that lay behind him where Ralph’s mind should have been, the scribe continued to stare straight at Gelahn. He couldn’t stop the shaking of his body, though, and cursed once more his own weakness.
    “You don’t have to harm her,” he whispered. “Why do you need to when the power and victory in this bloodied war are so obviously yours?”
    From the corner of his vision, he saw Johan gather the still motionless Annyeke in his arms and press her against his chest, moaning. Talus gave a low cry and tried to pull away, but Simon held on. Gelahn grimaced and swung towards Johan and Annyeke, lifting the cane upwards. The green glow from the Tregannon jewels flowed over it.
    The scribe almost ceased to breathe. Whatever the mind-executioner did next, he knew from somewhere deep inside him that Annyeke couldn’t survive it. No. Not another death. He would not—could not—allow it.
    He stretched out his hand even as the cane flashed emerald and silver in the dying afternoon light. Without warning, his thoughts seemed to leap to meet its brightness even though he still remained kneeling on the rough broken flooring. He sensed rather than heard Ralph’s sudden awakening, a lurch in the channels of his mind where the connection of memory was stored. For a heartbeat or two he was flying. In his own mind, not in the reality of the city’s destruction, in the vast rivers and plains of thought, he was caught between silver and green and black and the colours danced and fused within him. Music flared from his blood and the notes were more than honey in his mouth.
    When he breathed again, he was back in the Library, facing destruction and the curse of the endless death, but something had changed.
    Something had changed, and Gelahn saw it, too.

    Duncan Gelahn
    He sees it the moment the river’s tide turns against him. He sees it, but he cannot understand how it can be so. The mind-cane is his, as is the strange power of the emeralds. How, then, can the silver and green fire flow in a direction other than that he has intended?
    Annyeke, the foolish woman who thinks she can best him in the type of mind-war she has never even heard whisper of, should be dead. That is what he has wished for, no matter whether it is necessary or not. But the scribe has stood between him and his purpose and something has shifted. Indeed, for a moment or two, it was almost as if the Lost One was not there at all, but that cannot be so. The emeralds have not formed their circle of passage and, besides, the half Gathandrian is too weak to run. Still, Gelahn must change the way the air is flowing. He cannot let the