The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

himself to his feet, grasped her arm with his free hand and flung the mind-cane at the door with the other. An arc of dark fire leapt from its silver carving and the door, miraculously, slammed shut. As the cane fell, red flame seared the wood but did not destroy it.
    “Oh, good,” the Lost One muttered. “I hoped it would work.”
    Even as he spoke, his fingers were at her forehead and she was overcome by that well of undulating power within him, so much nearer the surface than before. It was almost as if his encounter with the emptiness had released something she had never sensed in him, or at least not to this depth. She did not know if she could contain such strength but then the mind-net he was seeking for leapt to find him, and became a circle of deepest red and green which wrapped itself around the walls, making the whiteness that clung to the Lost One vanish.
    He gasped as he let her go, and sat straight down on the floor again, brushing one hand through his hair. The mind-cane danced softly back to its master and settled like a faithful hound at his side. She wondered if it would ever leave him and then puzzled at the thought.
    “That worked too,” the scribe said, staring at the cane, his tone one of frank astonishment. “I was rather less confident about it. Thank you, Annyeke.”
    As the Lost One rose to his feet again, helped by the night-woman who kept as far away from the terrors of the mind-cane as she could, Annyeke hurried to the small window at the back of the hut and peered out. The whiteness was swooping in and she could barely see the trees or the damaged dwellings across the narrow street. She swung back round.
    “Lost One, Simon ,” she said. “The danger is here. We must do something soon.”
    He responded at once, though she did not see the reason for his action.
    “Come, form your circle again,” he said and then gestured at her as the rest of the people began to obey. “You too, Annyeke. Please.”
    As Annyeke complied, she couldn’t help but question. “Why?”
    “Because,” he said, “if it is our stories which will fight the enemy who wishes to take them from us, then it is the stories of us all, not just my own, which will save us.”
    Then she saw it in truth.

    Simon

    He’d known the answer before Annyeke had asked it. Something had travelled from the mind-cane through his skin and directly to his mind before he could track its journey. A black and silver flash with an echo of green. The colours should not have blended, but they did. Amongst them, a wave of words and pictures tumbled and flowed across his inner vision and then were gone. He gained the impression of beginnings which could overcome all the emptiness in the vast skies if they came to their fullness.
    The moment they vanished, he understood they were not his, but the stories and the experiences of the people surrounding him. They had within themselves the ability to win. All he needed to do was channel it.
    Could he do it and, if so, for how long?
    Annyeke nodded as she took her place in the circle of people. The question she had asked him had focused his thought and he was glad of it. He ducked under her arm and entered the circle, causing a murmur to rise and fall at the proximity of the cane, though he tried to keep it close to his side. When he straightened, the first person he saw was his father.
    A jumble of words sprang up in Simon’s mind, nonsensical, strange, the wild colours of them making him blink. The voice he heard which accompanied them however was his father’s, but the old man himself gave no sign he was even aware of what was passing through his own thought. It was as if what had just occurred between the mind-cane and himself had heightened Simon’s senses so he had no need to delve for other men’s secrets. They were there within him, in black and purple and gold. From instinct and almost before he knew it, Simon was reaching out with the cane and touching his father’s hair with the top of the silver carving.
    “Please,” he whispered as the old man’s eyes widened and spittle gathered on his grey beard, “don’t be afraid.”
    He saw at once there was no chance of that; his father’s mind showed no fear of the cane nor of the situation they found themselves in. All Simon sensed was the jittering spikes of madness, like a discordant sound in the harmony the mind-cane brought him. Then, suddenly a light in the darkness shone through, and one word came into Simon’s