The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

stars know when, he becomes aware of his right hand—in the body, not simply a vision of it. Something hot is digging into his palm. It sends splinters of pain through the deep ache of his mind. He doesn’t know what it is, but it makes him think he’s not dead yet, perhaps not even in the death that is no death which only the mind-executioner can bring.
    In the darkness of the mind, it takes more than a story’s beginning to open his eyes. When he does, all he can see is crimson. It must be his own blood, or the blood of his deepest thoughts, torn open. Impossible to tell which. Still, his shoulder throbs and slowly, slowly, Ralph follows the faint outline of his arm, elbow and hand in red. At the end of his fingers, where the rough wall presses against his skin, something green is glowing.
    He should know what this is, but he cannot gather together his memories to form a conclusion. The mountain dogs have taken that ability away. Soon, he will be lost to his past entirely.
    Grasp what you see.
    The voice is familiar. A man he ought to know, someone who means something to him, but he cannot tell what that might have been, cannot tell, also, whether the voice is to be trusted.
    Believe it. Take it, or you will die.
    Ralph’s mind is almost gone. He doesn’t know what to think, how to think—or what to do. Then, from a memory he’d forgotten he’d kept—his father’s voice, telling him that in battle a soldier must fight to the end and never give up. I don’t want to die.
    Of their own volition, his fingers curl around the green glow he can see but faintly. It brightens and sends a shaft of colour upwards over his arm, then across his face and down over his whole body. Suddenly, he hears his own voice and the word he is chanting, although he doesn’t know how long he’s been chanting it.
    No. No. No. Then: Not yet, you terrors of the earth.
    As Ralph screams out these brave and meaningless words, the glowing transforms itself into something hard and round in his hand, the rough surface he has been pushing at gives way and he tumbles headlong into a passageway that’s hard and cold against his face. He breathes in dust and mustiness just as a heavy thump behind tells him that a doorway has swung shut.
    The howling of the dogs disappears from his thoughts and becomes something heard by the ear alone, but behind the wooden panelling and not with him. That’s the important thing. They are no longer tearing him to pieces. The gods or the stars have been merciful. Ralph catches his breath, blinks, and the crimson darkness drifts into what he would expect for where he finds himself.
    He’s in the passageway from the bedroom to the courtyard. It’s familiar. The danger from the dogs has passed, only the gods know how. He’s not entirely unharmed, however, as his mind lies in pieces and he is unsure how to bind thoughts together again. His body, too, has taken its share of punishment once more. His legs and arms ache where the mountain dogs have mauled them and he can feel the warm slither of blood on his skin.
    Something hard, insistent, still lies in his hand. When Ralph opens his fingers, the soft glint of one green emerald greets him.
    “How did you get there?” he asks it. “And how have you saved me?”
    No answer, or at least none that he can hear. As he struggles to his feet, leaning against the stone walls for balance, it strikes him that the mind-executioner has still not shown himself. Truly, in Ralph’s desperate attempt to find him, and during the damage his dogs have caused, Gelahn would have revealed himself to the Overlord by now. And if the executioner had indeed taken the Tregannon emeralds, then why would he allow one of them to help Ralph as it has? Yes, Gelahn wants him for the military training and prowess the soldiers can provide, but not enough to spare any punishment.
    The emeralds are not yet the mind executioner’s, then, and his enemy’s whereabouts are still unknown. No matter. Shaking off the misplaced hope rising in his breast, Ralph stumbles towards the hiding place where he told the boy to leave the jewels. He has to know if they are there or not.
    It takes a while for his hands to follow his bidding, but at last the book tumbles to the stone floor and he is scrabbling inside the alcove for the only treasures he has.
    The pouch is there and, in it, the remaining six emeralds nestle. A sob rises unbidden to Ralph’s throat and he wipes his free hand over his face.