The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

After all, I am not the only one who has hurt people on the way, am I?”
    In the emptiness where the scribe’s response should have been, he heard only the accusation of his own soul.
    “What do you want?” he whispered when the silence grew strong enough to break him.
    Gelahn sighed, as if he’d been waiting for a gate to open and allow him access to a forbidden field. “I wish to tell you my own Gathandrian legend and why it drives me to do what I have done. The only question is: will you listen?”

The Third Gathandrian Legend: Prudence and Sloth

    Duncan Gelahn
    With every heartbeat, the mind-executioner grows more aware of the shapes and patterns of his childhood home. Memories carve their way into his skin. The empty wine bottles each have their place on the shelves around his old bed, but they sing to him of abandonment. He never had that knowledge of belonging. The only part of himself that exists here lies in the collection of manuscripts, a riot of words that kept his parents at bay and do so still. He longs to touch their glistening pages, but there is no time.
    For the scribe is stronger than the mind-executioner has believed but, even so, he has his weaknesses. Duncan is glad that, after the disaster of losing the mind-cane, he has at least had the presence of mind to bring his captive here. The house he grew up in is almost the mirror of the scribe’s own childhood home. This fact, the sudden kinship between them, could yet prove Hartstongue’s undoing provided that the executioner does not allow it to be his, also.
    The way to victory, however, will be through persuasion, not violence. That much is obvious. Something he has learned from his link with the half Gathandrian, perhaps.
    Simon draws his hands up, folds them under his chin. “Do I have a choice about whether or not I listen to you?”
    Duncan smiles, shakes his head. “You mistake me. There is always a choice. I will not force you to hear the Third Legend, but I believe you were only recently longing to understand what all the major Legends tell us. Why else would you be in the Library?”
    “You know too much.”
    “Then let me share it with you.”
    “How can I be sure that the Legend you tell me is the real one?”
    “How can you be sure it is not? And how can you be sure that the others you have heard from the Gathandrians are real?”
    A spark of purple fire and the scribe leaps to his feet, the chair falling back behind him with a clatter.
    “Oh no,” he all but snarls. “Whatever you do to me, do not try to sully the truths I already have. If you do then I will surely leave.”
    Behind the fire lies the image of a meadow of summer corn, soft, pliable, ready for harvest. Duncan sees it but knows Simon does not. He is hooked—this threat of leaving shows the executioner more than any actions could that his quarry is willing to stay.
    “Forgive me,” he holds up his hands, a false gesture of yielding. “I have been on my own too long and forget how to tender my discourse to the understandings of those I meet. I meant no offence this time.”
    The purple fire fades, but does not entirely vanish. Duncan will have to be careful. After a pause, the scribe sets the chair upright and sits down. The mind-executioner waits. It is a skill he knows well.
    At last, Simon nods.
    “Speak then,” he says. “I will listen but make my own judgements.”
    The poor fool, Duncan thinks, but suppresses the words so they cannot be found. Then he begins, not using phrases that can be heard but only the links of the mind. That way, Simon will be the more securely netted.
    *****
    The first time the Spirit of Gathandria connected to me, I was only eight winter-cycles old. The flash of surprise in the scribe’s untutored mind lurches through them both, but Duncan discounts it. What he is saying is true, or as true as his story, his role in the Legends, becomes. And I think he came to me simply because I needed him. My parents were out harvesting the wine-grapes, and I had walked alone to the nearest woods. I remember how cold it was, but I didn’t let it stop me. I loved the Gathandrian woods. I still miss them. But no matter. What I tell you is this: whilst my father and mother barely remembered me many field-lengths away, I sat alone under the grey cypress tree, its leaves shading me from the worst of the chill. There I waited. There was something about that day which told me my life would be different at the end of it. Why a boy so