The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

“Won’t you? If I turn to the bad again, or even if I’m tempted to. Because something tells me I’ll always need your help, my friend.”
    He didn’t expect an answer. Bird wisdom came when it wanted to, and not when he requested it. And, even then, the interpretation of what the raven said could be complex. But, this day, he saw a flash of silver from the raven’s beak spark its way through the air and into the skin of his arm.
    Some flights are sky length, others only the span of the trees, but no bird need travel alone.
    The words themselves were not so measured—the snow-raven’s speech was his own—but the scribe found that now he could more easily interpret what was said.
    Thank you.
    *****
    Now, a week-cycle after that day of celebration, when the sun had shone from the faces of both his friends, Simon had begun almost to feel as if the sculpting room might be home, of a sort. Still, something niggled at him. Words and thoughts in his head came to him in the colours of the vast waters and spun him out of his comfort. There were too many things that remained unresolved and even uncommenced, such things as could not be brought to any conclusion here.
    One of them, of course, was Ralph. He assumed the Lammas Lord was back in his own land, in the ruined castle with the ruined people around him. The scribe could still sense the Lammasser in his blood and was glad he lived. Neither had he sensed anything beyond that he had arrived in his own lands after his perilous journey, although the state of him could not be guessed at, physically or of the mind. Nor could Simon forget how Ralph had helped him win the battle with the gift of the emeralds, just that one time, with no hope that anything he could do would be enough, but with an instinct which had driven him on.
    What did that action mean? Lord Tregannon had made it more than evident Simon was a liability to him, from the place of the Hanging Tree until here. He had left in the end, hadn’t he, when he could so easily have stayed. Everything had changed in their circumstances and, to go back to what they had once been, for however short a time, was beyond the impossible. It might have been more logical for Ralph to stand beside Gelahn in those final few moments of war. The emeralds were his, after all, and with them and the executioner he might even have had whatever he wished, power over Gathandria and the scribe’s destruction. But he had chosen not to do so. Even with the segment of mind left to him, he had chosen to try for life.
    Perhaps then, there was hope…but it could not be deciphered. Simon shook his head and thought of the other matters that stirred him. He had unfinished business, not just with Ralph, but with the Lammas Lands themselves. He had left there as a murderer. The lands had been ravaged, more deeply even than Gathandria, and the people undoubtedly lost. And for the moment the Lammas Master himself would be too broken to help. Ralph would heal, somehow, Simon knew it, but whether that healing would come in time to save the lands and those who dwelt within them he could not tell. On that matter, even the mind-cane and the snow-raven were silent.
    He sighed, rose to his feet and stood at the doorway, looking out at the street and the still damaged buildings of the city. Groups of men and women made their way through the park area, carrying with them stone, glass and wood, every material they could find to rebuild their beloved Gathandria—except for the stones that had once been Gelahn’s dogs, which had been buried during the aftermath of the battle. And with the dogs lay the bones of the undead army. He could hear the low murmur of voices and the occasional burst of laughter but, more than that, he sensed something in the air and soil he had not sensed here before. Hope. The knowledge there would be no more mind-daggers nor flashes of strange destroying fire to maim and kill. Yes, the pain of loss and death was still fresh and he could see the aura of deep red hovering around each person, but within that colour of grief something lighter also dwelt, silver, cream, white. And with every hour-cycle, the light grew stronger.
    The mind-cane could help them. With its power, they could rebuild their homes and their lives more quickly and, although such magic might cost him dear, he longed to do what his own strength allowed him in order to give them what they worked for. But the itch in his feet, the need to journey back to where