The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

Within the black lay glimpses of silver and he knew then what he saw—Gelahn’s knowledge of the cane.
    How can I know this is real? he asked. It is your mind and you can show me what you choose.
    Then take hold of it and see, came the reply. Here, it will not harm you. The cane is not physical, but in my memory alone. Take it and trust your own understanding.
    Simon stepped forward and found himself held in the power of Gelahn’s protection. The realisation made him blink. An instant later, another black and silver flash of thought. He reached out, grasped it and, for a moment more out of time, he felt all the power in the world, known and unknown, spark through his fingers. It made him fly with the birds over the mountain top, and burrow deep into the hot earth with the bones of those who had died. It was all the colours he had ever seen, red, blue, gold, green, purple, black and silver, and all the sounds he had ever heard, from the crying of a child to the last breath of a dying man. In that heartbeat, he understood the power of the cane, knew Gelahn’s grief at the losing of it, and the way he himself had been scarred for his thoughtless use of its mysteries. No matter that the cane had, for its own fathomless reasons, sought him out and chosen him—his use of it before he was ready had shown him as wanting. He was being punished for his foolhardiness, but for how long? And what exactly was the punishment?
    With a cry, he flung the black memories away. The thought-world around him swung violently and he fell, down and down until the air was forced from his lungs and he could no longer breathe.
    He came to himself, panting and gasping, back in Gelahn’s family home. The mind-executioner still held his fingers so he snatched them away. His own thoughts were already too torn and wild; he did not wish them to be at the mercy of an unfamiliar power.
    “On the contrary, Simon, I could help you calm yourself,” Gelahn said. “I could help you order those thoughts beating at your skin even now, if you allow me.”
    “Let me be.”
    “As you wish.”
    The mind-executioner waited until Simon sat down. The scribe found he was gasping, shattered by the experience he had just been granted, unable to weigh it and allow the sense of it to flow, but knowing the truth of what Gelahn had said, the truth of what he was now saying.
    “So you see it at last,” the executioner’s voice was low, almost gentle but insistent. “The mind-cane seeks you, but you are too weak to bond with it, too weak to become more fully yourself, which is the gift it offers you. But I know its energies and how they can be wielded for the greater good. Now you see it, Simon. Together, and with the help of the cane, the two of us can form a mind-union that will free the people of every country, Gathandria, Lammas, the White Lands, and all their neighbours, to be what the Spirit intended. So then, what do you say? Though, after what you have seen in me, you have no choice, do you?”
    As he continued to struggle for breath, Simon grimaced, pointing out what surely must be obvious. “Yes, I-I understand what you say. But n-neither of us possesses the cane any longer. So your…your plan is flawed from the outset.”
    “Now that’s where you are wrong, my friend,” Gelahn replied. “Because, in fact, the artefact that will see us as the victors in this game is even now approaching.”

    Duncan Gelahn
    Even as he speaks his words of impending triumph to Simon, the mind-executioner knows in his blood that the snow-raven is near and, with it, the source of all power. The balance of success is changing, and faster than he anticipated.
    “Come,” he says. “Look upwards.”
    As the scribe lifts his head, the ceiling above them both dissolves. The walls shimmer and vanish, taking with them the table, the shelves, the chairs. Only the two Gathandrians are left, standing now in a vast expanse of blue.
    “What happened to the house?” Simon asks. “Is this truly the sky?”
    “A measure of it, perhaps,” Gelahn replies, “and something your snow-raven brings.”
    The scribe starts and swings round, his gaze darting upwards into the air. A white wave of mixed joy and relief flows from him through Gelahn, making him smile. The innocent knows so little of what is truly expected of him; taking his unplumbed knowledge will be easier than anticipated. After this, the glory will be his. For the raven has not been able to deny the undercurrent of