The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

her understanding. She was glad of the ease of his mind linked to hers, and the way his heart somehow reached into her very centre and made her stronger, or at least that was how it felt.
    After all the words were over and the Lost One had given them the blessing of the Spirit of Gathandria, Johan leaned forward, touching the side of Annyeke’s face so the tips of his fingers brushed against her hair, and kissed her. His lips felt soft and she knew she was smiling.
    Yesterday was behind them. Even in spite of it, today, she knew, had become a good day, but what about tomorrow? For them all?

Chapter Fourteen: The parting of the ways

    Simon
    A week-cycle had run its course since the day of Johan and Annyeke’s joining. To allow them the privacy they’d needed, the scribe had gathered his meagre belongings from Annyeke’s house after the ceremony and pondered where to go.
    The answer had come to him just as the snow-raven took flight and the mind-cane began to hum. It had surprised him but, then again, many things surprised him and he would have to learn not to be afraid of that. So, he’d obeyed the impulse and the three of them, half Gathandrian, bird and cane, had walked the few streets to where Iffenia’s sculpting room lay empty.
    As he’d drawn aside the curtain that still hung there despite the disaster and pain of battle, he’d wondered again why Iffenia had fallen prey to such despair and blackness. When he and Johan had found out Isabella had betrayed them throughout their journey to Gathandria, the situation had been very different. She’d been mourning the loss of her beloved, Petrus, and grief had turned to revenge and the overarching desire for Petrus to live again. That, Simon could understand. But Iffenia? Somehow the unfathomable blackness unleashed by her despair and pain had swallowed her up so that light became darkness, and darkness light.
    A gentle touch on his shoulder and he turned to see the snow-raven, beak open and wings spread out, as if both to admonish and protect. The scribe gripped the cane a little tighter, and heard the song’s colours in his thoughts.
    He swallowed. Yes. The bird was right. With just a small step in any of the directions he had faced in his life and then not taken, perhaps his fate would have been Iffenia’s. After all, what deep despair might have overpowered him if Johan had simply left him in the Lammas Lands after his escape from death? Without the strange and terrifying journey to Gathandria to act as a call and focus point, where truly would his own mind have wandered? Perhaps, after all, even then the gods and stars had blessed him.
    Back on that first day-cycle in his new home, the scribe had stepped forward and allowed the curtain to fall behind him, letting the sensations of the sculpting room ease into his skin. He hadn’t really got used to the way the mind-cane made everything, his senses, his feelings, his mind itself, sharper, as if, up until this point in his life, he’d been seeing things at a distance or through a layer of cloud. Now, his eyes had been opened.
    In his palm, the cane quivered and he felt its warmth spreading through him. Because of it, he allowed himself one slight smile before focusing on the emotions and thoughts Iffenia had left behind here.
    At first, he could see in his mind nothing untoward. Love of the work she did and a deep abiding determination to protect it. Loneliness at the absence of her husband. Grief at the wars that had ravaged them. Concern for her country. Nothing that could explain why Gelahn had been able to use her to all but cause the land’s destruction, not in the way that there had been reason beneath Isabella’s choice.
    Perhaps, he thought, the mind could also then be a dangerous gift, as well as a liberating one. Even in Gathandria. Perhaps the executioner had taken the secret pathways of Iffenia’s desires, had been drawn to them somehow, had known they were there even before she did, and twisted them into a pattern of knots she could never untangle. After his recent dealings with Gelahn, the scribe understood only too well how easy it was to be fooled, how much he’d found himself believing in the executioner’s story. He had no right to blame another for falling into the same trap as he himself had done.
    He laid the cane on the largest of the carving tables and slowly walked the circumference of the sculpting room. As he did so, the snow-raven who had followed him inside fluttered