The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

given you inside. Stay there. If I don’t come or if danger falls upon us, then the other side of the library leads to another passage. That will take you to the fields beyond the bridge, a chance for escape if you need it. Understand?”
    “Yes, m-my lord.”
    Then he’s gone. Ralph hopes the boy has the courage to do what he tells him. He hopes the emeralds will be safe. A glance down at his hands tells him that his fingers carry a soft green aura even in the gloom, but he doesn’t know what it means. After that, there’s no chance to hope or fret about anything else. He just has time to secure the trapdoor, take a few paces into the middle of the bed area and draw in a deep breath, but not deep enough to find any courage from it, when Gelahn is there.
    A deeper darkness in the gloom around him, a flash of fire, and the mind-executioner is present. Strange how the power that once drew Ralph to him repels him now. Strange, too, how in the darkness he can still see. What he sees is this—a Lone Man, born under the auspices of that distant star, a star whose course never meets with another. Naturally, the mind-executioner has never told him that. He says nothing that is not to the point. Neither is he what one might expect. A head shorter than Ralph is, shorter even than Simon, he is not physically strong and the only distinguishing feature he possesses is the mystery of his eyes. They hold you, so it is impossible to get away. It is his eyes that make him beautiful. Beauty is power and Ralph knows the executioner uses this. As always, he wears round his neck the pendant in the shape of a small silver circle. It’s a light even in the darkness. By it, Ralph sees the executioner is dressed simply, in a dark tunic with his cloak layered across one arm, ready for action.
    Of course, now he does not carry the mind-cane. Simon and the Gathandrians have that, and Ralph wonders if they will use it. If they even know how.
    He wonders, too, how much of his mind Gelahn has already plundered and how long it will be before he understands all of Ralph’s secrets. Each of his defences must surely be useless against the executioner. What will he do with that knowledge?
    Gelahn smiles, but Ralph does not respond. Something in him is proud of that moment. When the other man speaks, his voice is as cold as winter.
    “It is good to see you again, Lord Tregannon,” he says. “I trust you have prepared for my arrival?”
    All this, of course, is a lie, and they both know it. As he speaks, the darkness that has consumed the land begins to lift and Ralph hears the sound of Gelahn’s mountain-dogs. Perhaps it is they who have helped cause the darkness. It would not surprise him.
    “It is hard to prepare for anyone’s arrival in a land that has been so devastated,” Ralph says. “Now we have little to offer any guest who may chance upon us and many of our neighbours are keeping to themselves.”
    For fear of being tainted or made vulnerable by the curse of the Lammas Lands and what has happened to us is the natural end of the sentence, but Ralph does not say it.
    This does not matter. For the next moment, before even a story’s first breath can be felt, Gelahn has lifted his free hand in a small and casual gesture, and Ralph’s mind explodes.
    He finds himself scrabbling for relief, gasping for air, and with his back slammed against the bedroom wall behind him. Gelahn’s darkness fills Ralph’s head and it is as if the executioner’s power alone obliterates every thought he has ever had, every hope and every dream. Ralph has no history—no past and no future. This is the worst it has ever been when Gelahn reads him, moulds Ralph’s will to his. All the Overlord can do is wait for the mind-executioner to discover everything that has happened since Ralph returned here without him. Discover it and punish him.
    This time, however, something is different.
    In the darkness, and even in the pain which tracks through his body as the wolfhounds track young wolves, something remains untouched. Something green and glowing, like the colour around his hand just before Gelahn arrived. And even as Ralph thinks this thought, the green glow surrounds it. Within its faint circle, there is no darkness.
    Safe.
    The word floats, a deeper green framing it. Safe. Ralph reaches for it. Not with his hand, but with his thought. Somehow it captures him and for a long, long moment, all the life he has led since this morning, all the memories he