The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

than she could see, and the mystery made her skin grow colder and thoughts swirl like night-mists in her mind. What was the executioner really up to? This puzzle had lodged itself in her blood since the return of Johan to the city, bringing the scribe with him. It came with the cloak of responsibility that the First Elder had handed to her.
    Annyeke was sick of it.
    She was sick of trying to shadow-guess the mind-executioner, of the uncertainty of what might happen next, and of the ill-fitting role she couldn’t perform. It was time for something different.
    “I’ve had enough,” she said, not even realising she was going to say the thought out loud.
    Johan’s eyebrow rose and his grip on her young charge tightened. “So have we all, Annyeke. We are all near the end of ability to hope.”
    Even in the midst of the river-changes flowing through her blood, she could almost smile. She could still rely on Johan to say what was true rather than what was comforting then. Some things never altered.
    “No,” she replied. “I didn’t mean that. I meant that ever since I became Acting Elder, I have tried to do too much in the way it was done before, in the way we expected things to unfold. But the mind-executioner has not yet attacked us with his armies, Simon has not understood the mind-cane’s power, and now, in any case, he has gone, and the Library is no more. It is time to try a different path.”
    “How, Annyeke?” This from Talus, and in such a tone as opened up the possibilities rather than prevented them. Indeed, how she loved him for that.
    As she answered, the words came from a place within that she did not know existed.
    “The battle,” she said, “is not Gathandria’s, nor the elders’, nor indeed Gelahn’s. The battle is mine. This time we will fight it, not according to the mind-executioner’s wish, nor as tradition or even as the elders advise. We will fight it in the way my own wisdom guides me and we will fight it first.”
    “How?” Johan asked.
    She smiled.
    “We will call him to us,” she said.
    Something light and powerful passed through Johan’s mind that she could not comprehend, but it made her shivering cease. He blinked.
    “Isn’t that too dangerous?” he asked.
    Annyeke flung out her arm to indicate the scenes of devastation in which they stood. “And you think all this is not dangerous, Johan?”
    After a moment, he smiled. And still that something else slipped from her grasp. What was it?
    “Yes, you’re right,” he said. “We have suffered too much while we wait for the executioner to come to us.”
    Annyeke nodded. She gestured for several of the Gathandrians nearest to them and gave them orders to take the First Elder and Talus to a place of safety if one could be found. Talus objected, but she shushed him with a touch of her hand and he left, grumbling, hand in hand with a woman she thought she knew from the old theatre. Three Gathandrian men carried away the injured Elder. The women fussed around them, tiny sparks of mauve and gold flying from their skin, the colours of compassion. One of them was Iffenia, the Second Elder’s wife, but that was good. A woman to be trusted, Annyeke thought.
    As soon as the remaining wounded and children had been cared for as much as was possible, she turned to Johan. Gazing at him, she felt all the words she wanted so much to say dancing in her thoughts. She should ask him about the little battle training he and Talus might have managed to impart to the people in spite of the sense of failure she had already gleaned from him, but she could not. For a moment, she once more sensed something she couldn’t interpret, a gift she wasn’t expecting, but then, just as suddenly, it was withdrawn. Perhaps it had never been there at all. What in the gods’ and stars’ names was going on?
    She pulled her feelings back before she said anything foolish. Her heart was beating fast and her skin felt too hot. Now was not the time for emotion of any sort. Now was a time for clear, concerted action.
    She stepped away from Johan, the tendrils of his puzzlement clinging to her skin. She tracked her mind into the waiting air so her thought-words would be clear to everyone.
    It is the stories, she said. It is the stories that bring destruction and healing, that give life and take it away. It is the Great Library that has proved an entry point for our enemy. I do not yet know how this has happened, but rest assured I will discover the reasons for