The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

however, he will need help, perhaps even from Gathandria. For a moment, the mind-executioner licks his lips and ponders. Then he remembers. Of course. Isabella was not the only woman whose mind he had trammelled and brought under his command in the great city. There is another, too, but it will be difficult, and the Gathandrian elders and the woman called Hallsfoot might not be slow in objecting if they find out. At the moment, they do not know anything, and the fact of his strange ally is something Gelahn is determined they will not discover.
    Still, the Gathandrian Elders do know two things. They know he will not accept defeat as the final answer, and they know he must use means other than mind-powers to continue the war. So. They will guess at some of his plans and will, in some respects, be right. They, too, will be preparing for physical onslaught. Therefore, Tregannon’s battle preparations must be speedy and precise, as the greatest advantage and the greatest demand of all will be time.
    By the end of this week-cycle, they must be on their way to Gathandria. But how to get them there? The Kingdoms of Earth, Air, Fire and Water are not tackled lightly, no matter how barren and weak the first of them is now. He must meditate on the problem. Yes, that will be best. He needs to hone his mind-skills in any case, keep them the sharpest they can be. Without the mind-cane, he must take care of such things himself.
    He shuts his eyes and lets his mind stretch out. It fills his very being until, with just one small pace, he could almost be only thought itself. No flesh. It is the state he strives for, the body bringing only pain. Gelahn’s mind is different from all Gathandrians, the people he has disowned and who have disowned him in return. It has always been so; if he believed in legends other than the ones he himself creates, he would say that it has been written that way. But that is not true, not for him. The mind-executioner makes his own fate. He is master of his days.
    What he thinks is wrapped in darkness. From earliest childhood, Gelahn has held no mind-space, no special place as others have. The few times he tried to create a mind-world in which he could be himself, it was quickly destroyed by his discontent. It is this ability that sets him apart from others; it gave him his vocation.
    In the darkness, he is most truly himself and most powerfully alone. The aloneness shifts around him like velvet but remains as strong as the earth. It hides nothing, though within it lie flashes of red and gold and another kind of brightness he has never interpreted. He has no wish to. He has never needed it. Indeed it is a truth known only to a few that, for power and mind-knowledge to grow and mature, some mysteries must be left untrammelled. For now, he relaxes, allowing himself to float free in the emptiness and at the same time permitting it to consume him.
    He meditates on the dark for as long as he is able to, though time-cycles are meaningless in the world he finds himself in. Then, when he is ready, he begins to call back his mind to its moorings, preparing himself for life in the body again. As this returning takes place, the flashes in the darkness become more frequent but, of course, he is used to that. Grateful to them also, for allowing his physical form to reorientate itself.
    This time, however, something is different. Amongst the streaks of gold and red, the mysterious brightness is stronger, like a door to another world beyond the dark he is accustomed to. Strange how it almost calls to him. How real it seems. How real and how close. Without knowing it, he reaches out to the flashes of light and, for a moment, here in Tregannon’s home, it is almost as if he has a choice and his heart beats faster before the darkness plunges in to him once more.
    No, he is being foolish. It is the unfamiliarity of this room and his new mission that has unsteadied him. And, of course, he forgets that there is no choice. There has never been one. From the moment the elders (may they ever be cursed) imprisoned him in the cage of terrors in Gathandria’s hidden library so many year-cycles ago, Gelahn has sworn that he will live by the dark, not by the light. The dark has been good to him and he will not abandon it now. It is in the dark where kindness and courage and justice are found—the light brings only cruelty and weakness and anger. He will cleave to the dark still, understanding that success comes only through pain