The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

the shaft of additional concern Ralph felt towards him had flowed over Simon also. He couldn’t have missed it.
    He gestured to the boy and sensed his name even before the lad came running: Apolyon. It meant something in Ralph’s old language, but as he wasn’t here, Simon couldn’t tell what it might be.
    “Apolyon,” he said as the boy stopped and gazed up at him with an unaccountable expression of trust. And how that brought back memories of the other boy who had died earlier on their great journey together. “Apolyon, is there somewhere quiet in the village we can go?”
    The boy nodded, but Annyeke stepped forward.
    “Surely you can find the stories you need to tell more easily here, Lost One?”
    Simon knew, from the openness of her mind, that Annyeke did not believe there would be time to journey to the village, bearing in mind the frailty of both young and old. But, with all his thought, he understood they needed to travel there in order to begin. The white shimmer of the raven and the heat of the mind-cane told him that.
    “No,” he said as gently as possible. “Stories do not come from the rich but the poor. Why would the rich have need of them? If I am going to try to find a fresh legend, then it must be at the village, First Elder, where everything began for me. And it will involve us all. Stories of any kind do not in the end come from nothing, but from the people and things around us.”
    After a flicker of hesitation, she nodded. “Then we had better start out.”
    Simon took the lead, knowing how in the recent past before he had encountered the mind-cane and before he had died he would never have assumed such a thing. He would have freely given the honour to Annyeke. Now it seemed natural. He hoped he wouldn’t get too used to it, however. One day, if they and the land survived what they needs must face, he hoped for a normal life again, whatever that might be.
    So he set the pace to the village, with Apolyon at his right and his father leaning on his arm on the left. Behind him followed Annyeke and Frankel, whilst overhead the snow-raven flapped a slow path across the nearer sky. Odd how the ice beneath his feet seemed to be softer, melting in what must surely be a false harbinger of spring. It was too soon for a thaw, but something in the air had changed since Annyeke’s return, since his own acceptance of the new role she brought him. It would not be denied. In any case, they were, by any measure, no kind of an army, and if Ralph were here he would have laughed to see them.
    But we are not an army, Lost One. We are not here to fight battles but to build a peace.
    He blinked at the sudden influx of Annyeke’s words directly to his mind. Sometimes, peace too needs an army, he replied and, when she did not respond, left it at that.
    As they walked through the water and onto the path leading to the village, the boy tugging at his hand in eagerness in spite of his limp, Simon felt a frisson of excitement spark through him. It sprang from the mind-cane and also from himself, as if his deepest thought was rejoicing at the cane’s secret knowledge. Something was about to begin.
    “Look!” Frankel said from behind him. “Look.”
    Simon turned round, steadying his father so he didn’t fall. The old castle servant was staring up into the trees and pointing at something Simon couldn’t see.
    “What is it?” he said, feeling Annyeke’s impatience sweeping over him like a wintry gust of wind. “What can you see?”
    Frankel didn’t reply directly, but merely carried on pointing, glancing first at Simon and then at whatever he’d seen in the trees. Simon followed the direction of his gaze. Heart pounding with the need to reach the village, he nonetheless forced himself to be still. Whatever the old man had seen might turn out to be important. In these time-cycles you never knew.
    At first he saw nothing. Then, when he blinked, he realised the topmost branches of the trees were white. He had imagined it was snow but it was not. It was … nothing.
    Next to him, Annyeke gasped, but he had already understood the meaning. The sudden cry of the snow-raven and the lurch of the mind-cane in his grasp told him what he already knew.
    “They are vanishing,” he whispered. “The trees are vanishing.”
    Annyeke’s hand on his arm gave him courage. “Yes, it is the power of the Book of Blood which makes everything disappear and begin again, but for good or ill depends on us. It is just as I