The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

intend to use it to kill the scribe and tear him apart so he can never live again, Jemelda, and I will make it the best it can be for that purpose.”
    She nodded. His words were good and she could only echo them.
    “It is what I should have done when we tried to hang him on the tree,” Thomas continued, but this time as if he were talking only to himself. “I was a fool not to do it.”
    “You thought he was dead and dead forever,” Jemelda replied, putting a comforting hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “We all thought the same.”
    Thomas shuddered, as if her touch alone had brought him back into the cool winter morning and, without it, he might have been a thousand fields away where Jemelda could not reach him. He gazed up at her, stilling the movement of his hands as they worked across the metal.
    “Do you think the murderer cannot die?” he asked her. “Is that what you believe? That even the realms of the dead will not welcome him?”
    “I do not know,” she admitted. “But in these time-cycles it is better to try another recipe than to attempt again one which has already failed. And who knows? The revenge I desire is still to come. There are other ways of killing, and you, Thomas, will have a part in it. I promise you.”
    He nodded at that, his expression lightening. The day would soon be upon them in its fullness, and the sun would see Jemelda’s people and herself at their chosen work. Something told her there was little time and she intended to use it well.

Eleventh Gathandrian Interlude

    Annyeke

    It took Annyeke the length of several stories to persuade the elders she could trust how she needed to travel back to Lammas to tell Simon what he needed to know. The Chair-Maker was not present. Annyeke had not allowed it, but instead he had remained in his former dwelling which she had protected with a powerful mind-net so he could not leave without her knowing it. When she had shared what she knew of Iffenia and the Book of Blood, the gathered elders had been silent, both in shock and in grief, and their shifting mind-colours had almost made her gasp. Perhaps there were indeed no words for it.
    About her plan, Johan too was uncertain, letting her sense his concerns about the danger of the trip. In fact it felt as if the whole of the Gathandrian leadership was ranged against her and for the first time she found herself having some measure of sympathy with the First Elder before her, even in spite of his errors.
    “It is the way forward, I know it,” she said, reverting to speaking aloud as she paced the length of the old Council meeting room. The last time she’d been here was just after Johan and Isabella had left for Lammas, and the elders had summoned her to them. Then, she had been wary and the walls had been solid. Now she was wary still, but for different reasons, and the room was almost nothing more than broken stone and memories. “I must go back to let the Lost One know he holds the power to let both our lands live again by the strength of the stories that are his, and the stories that he has yet to tell. It is he who will truly begin to heal us.”
    “What makes you think that, Annyeke?” This from the Mentor, and she was glad he had taken his lead from her and spoken aloud also. Everything must be in the open so all could hear. This would be their way from now onwards and they would have to get used to it.
    In any case, her answer was easy. “I dreamt it and, when I woke, the lemon tree in my garden blossomed with parchment instead of leaves. I knew then it longed for stories, and the Lost One also calls himself the Scribe, so who better to tell those stories for us? The tales of the Great Library lie shattered and, because of the situation in Lammas and the potential for civil battle there, we do not have enough time to rebuild them, not alone. The power of our city and our lives lie in our stories. In order to live well, we need them.”
    “And what makes you believe the Lost One can do this task? It does not lie in our legends, First Elder.”
    The Mentor’s question was one she knew she would have to deal with, but she’d wished it not quite so soon.
    “I know it does not,” she said, “and, believe me, I understand and acknowledge the power of our legends to move and inform us. But when I accepted the First Eldership, I accepted it knowing we needed, under my leadership, to try something new. This is something new.”
    The Mentor shook his head. “That was akin to the