The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

of each other’s hands. That will build up the strength you have between you. I think we will have need of it.”
    Quickly, she spun a mind-net round the small hovel. She had no real idea if this would work against something which was in essence nothingness but there was no harm in trying. Then, she made her way around each person in the group, using her skills of touch and thought to link with them in her own mind. She found first of all despair mixed profoundly with anger, the red and the black drifting like smoke through her senses. She could almost smell the acrid darkness of it. Next, fear, distrust and last of all determination. With the latter she could use the rest. It might be enough.
    When she’d finished, she saw the light in the room was brighter but it did not seem like the sun. Anxiety at this strange new development tugged at her thought, its thin strands threatening to break the veneer of control she clung to in the face of the unknown. By all the gods and stars, how she hated her own ignorance. She should be braver than this. And where, by the stars, was the Lost One?

    Simon

    The words are mine.
    If that were true, he thought, then he would write them against the whiteness, push back its consuming horror until it could do no harm to him or those in his care. Those the Gathandrian Spirit had given to his protection. So Simon the Lost One took the mind-cane and spun it into shapes in the air before him. The sparks from the cane fired out gold and mauve and pink and silver. They were a counterpoint to the white even though they were not yet words that spoke but those that listened, to his blood, to his mind, to the snow-raven’s song.
    The snow-raven: a whiteness behind this other deeper emptiness. Perhaps he could use it. As the fiery nonsensical words danced in the blank air, Simon gazed upwards and around him, searching for evidence of the great bird’s presence. Yes, he could hear the song but he could not see where the raven might be and, with all his soul, Simon knew he needed him.
    “You saved me once,” he cried out, “when you looked to destroy me. Come now, when I need you again.”
    At least that was what he wanted to say, his mind and his tongue combining, but the meaning was swallowed up by meaninglessness, and the dancing words of the mind-cane were not enough for him to be heard.
    Please, please, the snow-raven, he begged no-one, nothing and himself.
    Then, shockingly and suddenly, the bird was there, with him. Simon could feel warm wings against his skin and the whoosh of feather and flight rush past him. With his free hand, he grabbed for the raven, but the shape of it passed through his fingers like water. And still the cane-words sparked and shimmered their brief fire into the air. By the gods and stars, this was what he had come for and he would not be denied it.
    Then from his mind, his heart-words sprang: I am the Lost One. Come to me.
    The snow-raven dipped his wings and halted his flight at once. Simon could see the sudden banking in the bird’s wild course and then the raven was returning, responding to his thought-command. The next moment, the bird’s wings were sweeping over his head and he reached up with the cane and poured his energy, all he could give, into the artefact. It took it, willingly. Silver fire sprang from the carving, upwards into the raven as he flew and downwards into Simon, pouring like fiery honey into his mouth and through his skin and flesh.
    He thought it might kill him. It did not. It could not, because he was the Lost One, he was the words and the silence behind them, he was the story. Now all he needed was the means to tell it. Part of that, he knew, would be found in the Lammas village, with the people he had sworn to protect. The other part of it was not for the telling, yet.
    The urgency now lay in reaching Annyeke and all the others wherever they had hidden. Feeling the silence and the words both heavy within him, he began to walk. Ahead of him, he could see the white emptiness surge forward, outracing him utterly, although he did not think he could run. In spite of his foolish plans and pointless courage, such as it was, the vacancy had outmanoeuvred him, by the gods and stars. He spat a curse from under his tongue in the old Lammas language, as Ralph himself might have done, and quickened his pace. It did him no good and, besides, the sudden flow of memory linked to the Lammas Lord held him back, bright fire heating his blood and