The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

directly.”
    “No time,” was his terse reply. “We are under attack from something greater than our causes.”
    Jemelda whirled round to follow the direction of his gaze. Outside, instead of the street, the shattered houses and the trees, there was only the thick mist which undulated against the door and obliterated everything that should have been in his view. Simon felt sick to the mind and gripped the cane more strongly, patterning the shape of it against his skin.
    “On the contrary,” Jemelda turned back to him, a sneer disfiguring her face. “It is an ally to help us destroy you, and its time is here at last.”
    Simon could find nothing to say in response but, after a heartbeat or two, someone moved out of the shadows. It was Frankel.
    “Jemelda,” he whispered. “Please, do not do this. We need to fight together. Please …”
    She turned to gaze at her husband. Simon wondered if this was it, if this was the moment when he came to matter less to the Tregannon cook than the needs of the land she loved, the moment when everything changed. But something within him remained empty and he understood before Jemelda had even opened her mouth how there was, for her, no way back.
    “No,” she said. “We must fight the murderer amongst us, if we are to be free.”
    Three things happened at once. Ralph took a step forward and stood in front of Simon as if to protect him from attack, even though the mind-cane would surely be protection enough. Behind him his father began to curse and mutter, and Simon heard the words in his thought even though they were impenetrable to the ear: it is coming, it is coming, it is coming …
    Third and finally, the mind-net broke and the emptiness came flooding in.
    Screams filled his mind, not his own but those of the people around him. Within the screams he saw the colours of their history, the words they had willingly given him and those they had not. And, beyond them, the history and words of Ralph and the people he had brought with him, both those in the night-woman’s home and those scattered across the village.
    Many of the people who’d taken refuge elsewhere died at once as the mist swallowed them up. Simon could sense the precise moment they were no more, each death taking a part of the whole, a part of himself. Almost as if his skin was being torn from his bones piece by piece. No. The word flashed into his mind, powered by black and silver and strengthened by the cane’s power. He grasped it, using it to fight off the terrible whiteness and to hang on to his sense of who he was. I am the Lost One, but I am not lost yet.
    He tumbled back into the reality of the village dwelling. Now the screams were in the air also, but strangely muffled, as if the mist was choking them off. Behind it was Jemelda’s terrible laughter, a sound which made him tremble. From instinct he grasped for Ralph but could not find him. Damn the man for never being there when the connection between them might have grounded him in this battle. But by the stars Simon would find another grounding or die a second time in the attempt.
    He could not do this alone, even with the mind-cane’s power deep within. He needed someone he knew and knew well to bring it out; he was a half-Gathandrian, not a full mind-dweller. And, as he stumbled forward, fighting to keep his balance even though he could scarcely breathe and the whiteness was stifling him, he knew who was in reach and whom he should try.
    Letting his mind roam free and cutting out any distractions as best he could, he formed one word in his thought, one beyond the words he had received earlier: father .
    How easy he assumed the connection would be. He was Bradyn’s son after all, no matter how bitter and distant the relationship between them. Blood should call to blood when there was none other to help. But there was only the silence where no words dwelt and no hint of his father’s whereabouts. Please . No time to think: he brought the cane to his own forehead and drove its power through him directly. It was flame and darkness, light and terror, and all else of horror and joy besides, but he held on as his mind blistered. Then it was there, a faint echo: it has come, it has come, it has come …
    He wrenched the cane away and was at Bradyn’s side in an instant. In the overwhelming whiteness filling both air and heart, he could no longer see anything but he could feel the shape of the old man and recognise his thought and his trembling