The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

is up. If you run, they will tear you apart.”
    It is true, not just a lie to keep him here. Each dog arrives snarling and howling, saliva and blood dripping from their jaws. They bring with them all the deepest colours of the night. It makes the fresh colours of green, blue and white around them fade into nothing. It takes over all the desires and deceits of the heart. Gelahn cherishes it.
    He senses Simon’s terror and smiles to himself; the mountain dogs are an unexpected bonus in the situation in which he now stands. He does not know how they have arrived here or who has sent them, but he knows he can use them if the Lost One proves too weak. The scribe has a deep seated fear of the dogs. The shoulder under his hand is trembling. Still, the half Gathandrian stays where he is, and Gelahn cannot help but admire that. For a wise coward, though one who does not fully know his own wisdom, Simon can act in surprising ways. He must make sure he never discounts that fact.
    “Do you trust me?” he asks.
    The Lost One makes no reply. He is beyond speech.
    Gelahn bends down, takes full hold of the mind-cane with his free hand, for the first time since he lost it. Once more that shock of recognition and the undercurrent of unspoken pain, the way the cane knows him and doesn’t know him. All the day-cycles he has held its black and silver perfection in his hand, he has fought to keep its power in balance with his own. Since first he stole it away from the elders’ prison, that day when he knew there would be a reckoning for what they had done to him there, he has understood that the mind-cane and he do not belong together. But that has never meant that alliances cannot be made. At the beginning, it fought him, but the wisdom he gained in year-cycles of long study and the patience he learned in the great Library’s cage have taught Gelahn well. Now, the mind-cane respects his choices. They understand each other.
    Although it truly belongs to Simon .
    Sweeping that thought out of his mind as irrelevant, the executioner curls his fingers around the cane and brings it down onto the head of the first hound just as it lunges upwards towards the Lost One’s neck. The dog falls to the earth, whimpering. Purple and orange fire leap from the cane’s silver carving and, at once, the remainder of the hounds skid to a halt, their stone paws scoring bloody lines through grass. The howling stops. At the same time, the circle of green that brought the pack to them collapses. No trace of it remains.
    The snow-raven spreads its feathers and takes to the air, circling around them. The bird makes no noise, only the waft of its wings lessens the strange silence. It is Simon who speaks first.
    “Wh-what are they doing here?” he says, his voice steadier than Gelahn has assumed it would be.
    For a beat or two of his heart, the mind-executioner does not know, although he keeps that weakness from his companion. He is aware with every part of his being that the Lost One will be able to sense him more clearly now, particularly as they are touching. He lets his hand drop from Simon’s shoulder. It is then that the answer comes to him; the mind-cane’s wisdom begins to settle more deeply within and gives him what he longs to know.
    He laughs, delight rising like a river in his gut. “The dogs are here to show us the way. Can you not see it?”
    Then, striding through the beaten animals and, in fact, barely acknowledging their presence, Gelahn reaches the place where the circle appeared and hunkers down, stretching his hand across the grass, fingers feeling for he knows not what, but he understands it is there. He can sense it. As he does so, the cane fizzes against his skin and he glances down to see a soft green glow surrounding its ebony shape. The same green as the circle.
    “So,” he whispers, as if the cane is able to answer him at all. Ah, but it can, it can, though not in words of the tongue. “So then, what do you know, and what are you not telling me?”
    “What have you found?” This from the Lost One, who has not yet gained the courage to cross through the dogs, although Gelahn senses he wishes to.
    The mind-executioner does not answer, yet. Instead, he brushes the cane slowly through the tallest of the grasses and smiles as the glow deepens. When that glow fires up into sparks, he pushes his fingers down into the earth so black soil spills over his hand. At this, he grimaces, but forces himself to continue. For another