The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

could possibly begin. Then it came to her.
    “ I’ve been looking through the old texts,” she said. “While you’ve both been…resting, and I think they might be the key to what we do next.”
    Annyeke was surprised she had managed to vocalise her thoughts at all, much less that they sounded reasonable. The fact that Johan was sitting in her kitchen area continued to make her feel as if a shock of ice-cold water was drenching her, over and over again. From the instinct for personal preservation, she assessed her personal mind-wall but found nothing untoward there and, besides, Johan still hadn’t seemed to notice anything, which was something she should be accustomed to. Damn him to the far reaches of the Gathandrian empire. Knowing how she felt about Johan didn’t make it easier to bear. Nor did the realisation that the scribe had, in a way beyond her imaginings, guessed her secret make her life any less difficult. How had he done that? His mind-skills weren’t greater than hers, mind-cane or no mind-cane.
    “What old texts?” This from Simon. He had no real knowledge of Gathandria beyond the little Johan must have told him. She could sense the lack of her country’s history in his head. And books and writing were, of course, central to the scribe’s heart.
    “ They’re the legends of our country,” she explained. “Stories written down over the generations, before even our telling, and which have been kept in the Great Library of Gathandria for as long as the tales themselves have existed. Much of the Library was destroyed during the wars with Gelahn, but the most precious of the books were kept underground in a cellar only the elders knew of, until I found it. There were other far more terrible things going on in that cellar, too, but that’s not for the telling now. The fact is, I brought some of the most important texts home, not long before the two of you returned to us, and I’ve been reading them. They talk about many interesting things.”
    “The old legends,” Johan whispered, a frown creasing his forehead for a moment. “You have them? Which ones? What do they say?”
    “All the stories that the elders talked about,” Annyeke replied, “and some they didn’t. Mostly— and it’s hidden throughout the writings, so you have to read carefully—there’s an overarching legend about a ‘Lost One’ who has been missing for many year-cycles. So many that nobody can remember his name. Though why the elders assumed that it’s a man is a mystery to me—it may just as well be a woman. There’s no reason why not. Ancient Gathandrian doesn’t specify gender. Anyway, this Lost One returns one day to our city, when it is most in need of him. He fights for us and our world is safe. Not only us but all the worlds around us, too, which are our responsibility. All the tears and pain and crying will be gone, and instead we will have peace and joy and plenty of love. That, at least, is what the texts tell me.”
    By the time she’d finished, she was whispering. Neither of her companions said anything to fill the void. It was as if the truth of the words she’d spoken had filled the room and created its own brief world, or as if none dared speak at all.
    The air rolled in stillness. This was broken a moment later by the door being shoved open and a small boy rushing into the relative warmth of the cooking area. Talus.
    “ Johan ,” he panted, eyes shining and hair sticking up from his head like the plumage of young park-crows. “Johan, you’re here .”
    Johan took a step away from Annyeke’s young charge, arms stiff and eyes wide, as if faced with a wood-leopard on the hunt.
    At the same time, the mind-cane leapt from its position of rest in the corner, the wild humming louder than she’d ever heard it before, and hurtled across the space between them towards Talus. She could sense a surge of frustration, despair even, pouring from it, but didn’t know why.
    “ No.”
    The shout was hers, but it was Simon who got there first.

    Simon
    Without thinking, the scribe launched himself toward the mind-cane as it spun towards the boy. He could feel the waves of a strange anger born of fear sweeping over him from its silver carving, but he had no concept of any danger to himself. His thoughts were full of the memory of Carthen.
    He hit the cane away from Talus with his fingers. At once, heat seared up his arm and he tumbled to the floor with a cry. The pain arced between skin and mind, mind