The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

sanctuary around her strained at the edges, flame pummelling its invisible barrier. It couldn’t last long.
    With the Nameless O ne.
    For two heartbeats, she didn’t understand what the Library meant. Then she glanced up, shielding her eyes from the overwhelming heat, and saw that the nearest segment of fire had reached the most ancient of the manuscripts stored here, the ones that spoke of the ancient enemy, he who had no name.
    It must be the mind-executioner. He had been in the Library, he had taken Simon. How had he got there without any of them knowing? Had something drawn him here and, if so, what, or who? As she screamed, her small area of protection exploded and the fire swept in. At the same time, something silver and solid black pierced her mind. She had no idea what it might signify as, with a terrible sound somewhere between a roar and a groan, the great Library of Gathandria finally collapsed. Stones flew outwards, sparking with fire, and the shelves tumbled down around her. Annyeke understood then that she was going to die. Still, she did not.
    Someone cried out her name. Annyeke.
    It was Johan’s voice.
    She glanced up, fire pricking her eyelids, to see a circle of white spinning a pattern round two tall shapes. It landed next to her and she heard her name cried out again.
    The f ires of this living hell were dancing round her skirts as the man she loved reached down towards her. Sobbing, Annyeke grasped his arm. The second figure coalesced into the shape of the First Elder and she clutched at him, unable to understand how he could be here at all. His grey eyes were darkened and bloodshot and his hair hung lank and thin around his lined face.
    To her mind, the Elder spoke. The raven and the cane brought me.
    No time for further explanation. No time for asking where Simon might be, or how Gelahn had managed to infiltrate them so. The First Elder grabbed her waist as the flame poured itself over them, and his head disappeared in the fire’s wild roaring. The mind-cane swooped a wild path upward and the next moment the three of them were outside, in front of the Library. The air was like a cool river on the unbearable heat of Annyeke’s skin. She felt the same agonies flooding through Johan, but all she could sense from the First Elder was a great and unfathomable darkness.
    The mind-cane, the raven, and the courage of these two men had been her salvation. Here she lay, breathless and aching, in front of the ruined building. As she struggled to get to her feet, her thoughts racing between the absence of Simon and how to put out the flames, there came a terrible thunder and she curled up once more on the ground, hands over her head to try to protect herself. In her head, the terror of the people, more deep-set and more bloodied than she had ever experienced before.
    Was this the full meaning of what the elders did, she wondered? Was every step they made, every action, every small thought framed with this overwhelming responsibility for Gathandria? This unbearable inability to save them all. Then she had some small sympathy for what the First Elder had done, or at least a glimmer of understanding for it.
    When the thunder had abated, she was the first to look up. Around her, the people she knew, Johan, the First Elder, Talus— thank the gods he was alive —and those she did not, were lying like rain-beaten corn, flat against the earth.
    The Library was gone.
    In its place lay pages and pages of manuscripts and books. They fluttered in the slight breeze from the sea, like the hands of children pleading for help she could not give. Some were blackened with fire and the smoke that still rose from the ruin of the heart of Gathandria. Some were ripped into a hundred pieces, more perhaps, their ink scrawled in impossible patterns across the parchment.
    Heart thudding a rhythm into her throat, Annyeke staggered onto her feet, swaying a little in the air’s bleakness. Something stirred in her fingers and she looked down to see a scrap of parchment wrapped around her hand. She unfurled it, blinking to bring the few words laced across it into a deeper focus.
    It was a tiny fragment of the Fourth Gathandrian Legend, the tale of Temperance and Greed. When you search for peace, you find only fire.
    By all the gods, that was true, she thought and closed her hand over the unlooked-for prophecy, for the truth was she had failed. Despite all her assumptions , Simon was not here and the Library was no more. How could