The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

park land. She felt her throat grow tight and her eyes fill with an emotion so enriched with a variety of colours and shades she could barely name it. She was being ridiculous, and too female, something she abhorred. A touch on her arm, accompanied by an echo in her mind, drew her attention back to the present.
    “On the contrary, First Elder,” the Lost One said, “tears are the most natural response of all, as far as I can see, especially after so much darkness.”
    Annyeke gazed at the man standing in front of her. At first sight, she could almost believe nothing had changed in Simon’s appearance. A slight man, his expressions tentative, the aura around him a shifting blue, sometimes so pale that sunlight obliterated it altogether. But now he had shadows in his eyes that had not been there before, and scars on his flesh from his ordeal with young Talus. Then again, so had Johan. So had they all, though it was remarkable that her own sight was unaltered from before. The marks on her loved one’s face would heal, but the impression of them would remain forever, as would the wound at his side. None of this mattered to Annyeke. Besides, it was somehow fitting, and they had indeed been lucky. Shadows of loss and shadows of strength, the two senses forming a mirror image of each other. The beginnings of wisdom for them all perhaps? In the Lost One’s right hand lay the mind-cane, like a sleeping animal, its colours now the customary black and silver—no longer a weapon of war. At his left on a nearby scattering of skeleton and stone that had once been the undead Lammas soldiers and Gelahn’s mountain dogs, the snow-raven perched, its watchful eye turned towards the scribe. The bird looked as if it would follow him forever.
    “You are right,” said Annyeke. “For a man, that is itself unusual. Still…”
    “Still, it is a day such as you have not experienced before and we are glad of it.”
    In an unexpected gesture, the Lost One pulled her into a brief hug, taking care to keep the mind-cane away from her skin. The new First Elder of Gathandria was grateful for that. Now that Simon had begun to open his mind to the artefact, allowing its deep strength to guide his journey, she had no way of telling how the cane would respond to the sudden contact with another’s thoughts. The scribe and the mind-cane needed to consolidate their fragile relationship without hindrance. She hoped he would be granted the time to do it.
    Perhaps, indeed, that was what they should have done at the very start. There had been no need for any of them, her least of all, to concern themselves with the scribe’s mind-training. The cane had its own purposes and had probably carried them in secret all along, waiting only for the chance to speak in full to its new master.
    One day, Annyeke thought, this tale might well be a legend many in Gathandria and beyond would read.
    Simon released her and laughed, the sound causing the silver carving on the cane to sparkle in the bright air.
    “You may well be right,” he said. “But that is for later, much later. Now is for you and Johan.”
    Annyeke turned in the direction of the Lost One’s gaze. Through the faces and minds of the gathered people, focused in the preparatory silence of ritual, she could see her beloved had arrived at last.
    The first thing she noticed about him was what she always did, the utter deep blue glory of his eyes. Not sky blue—they had never been so, but a blue like the depths of the vast seas that surrounded the city. He was dressed in a tunic and cloak of pure gold and he was smiling. Next to him Talus, in his role of groom companion and looking for all the world as if his recent taste of death had been nothing, was walking, his young face solemn and his hair smoothed down. Annyeke wondered how long that had taken Johan to achieve and how long it would last.
    It didn’t matter.
    The crowd parted for him. And, for the first time in her life, she understood that here and now was where she should be, and there was nowhere else better in the whole of Gathandria or even the skies themselves.
    Simon led them both in the few words of commitment customary on such occasions. He had learned them well and quickly and the ancient words flowed from his mouth as if he had always known them. In fact, it was Annyeke who stumbled. From the moment Johan had appeared, everything around her seemed brighter, and the words she knew so well filled her thoughts with colours beyond