The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

the cold winter-cycle air and through the fields’ lengths between the city and their small gathering. It had been doing this for many days. She had told no-one about it, understanding somehow it was only she who could sense the elders’ prayers. She had not even told Johan, though she thought once or twice he might have guessed at something different in the colours which surrounded her and in the shifts in her thoughts. Annyeke would not bar him from even the deepest areas of her mind. For her, this joining was everything. No, the mind-link strangely forged with the missing elders must be something to do with her new role, and the responsibilities she carried. She had said to herself when she had simply been Acting Elder that it was good for a woman to step forward to take on such a duty. But, by the gods and stars, the road she had chosen to walk on since then had not been easy. No , she would not think of the mind-executioner’s death, it was done, it was done. She must think instead, even as her thoughts latched onto the regularity and distinctiveness of the wood slats above her, of how she might manage the returning elders, and what role they who had betrayed the city to suffering could have in its restitution.
    If only Simon the Lost One were still here. She had grown fond of him in the short time they had been together, trying between the two of them to understand the power of the mind-cane. He had been even more unsure than herself, but he had a kind of courage which showed itself when the greatest need for it arose. She couldn’t help but admire that. She hoped whatever was happening for him in the Lammas Lands would be good, and they would see him again soon. With or without his wretched bird.
    Next to her on the blankets, Johan stirred. In sleep, he reached for her, mumbled something she couldn’t catch and then wrapped his fingers round her arm. The muttering eased away. Annyeke smiled again.
    The love-creation they shared between them had been a revelation also. Indeed she wished she had been joined to him far sooner than this, although all the gods and stars knew the time then would not have been right. Their love had been forged in battle, when the true calibre of them both had been most clearly seen.
    Now though things were different. Annyeke snuggled closer to the man she loved and her smile deepened. What she had discovered with him here was a thousand times better than she’d expected from all her most private dreams. In truth, her knowledge of a joining relationship had been hazy at best; she couldn’t remember her mother and father ever having been happy together, and of course they were both dead. How she felt about her husband and how they were together was, she imagined, as far removed from her parents’ experience as … as the distance of the land of the mountains from the Gathandrian city.
    Though the mountains were destroyed, lost forever in the war. They would never return. Annyeke swallowed and felt the darkness of loss spike through her mind. She shook it away, refusing to allow the memory to spoil this moment, here and now. Because all she could sense around her, apart from her own doubts, was peace. The peace of her simple wooden ceiling, the peace of the blankets wrapped around their bodies, keeping the winter chill from their skin. Even the peace the two of them had created in this room – she could sense its soft golden colours drifting through her thoughts. She treasured each sensation, trying to hold on to it, make it part of herself, for as long as she could. But, no matter how much she tried, she could not gainsay the sense of something about to happen, something just out of reach which might take all this happiness away. Or, at the very least, leave it as something to be put aside in the light of her Eldership duties and then picked up once more when she was able. And, more than anything, she wanted her husband to be the major part of her life. She hated the thought that being First Elder might make things difficult. Still, Johan had his own role in the Sub-Council of Meditation, which would become increasingly vital as the Gathandrians began to rebuild their world. Both of them would be busy.
    So many fields to seed and so many paths to walk on ahead. She should stop worrying, and trust to her own skills to cope with whatever lay in the future.
    With that comforting thought filling her mind, Annyeke closed her eyes and slept again, the warmth of Johan’s body