The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

well enough.
    It has come , he repeated his father’s chanted words, bridging the gap and not caring how much pain such a link caused. It has come and now I need you. I need you to centre me, please.
    All these thoughts Simon had assumed he would never say and now here they were, as if they had been waiting all along. And with it the truth which lay at his own heart: I love you, please help me.
    He didn’t wait for an answer but grasped his father’s face, feeling his way in the white darkness which surrounded him, and placed his fingers on his forehead. He expected shock, perhaps terror, or even confusion, as his father had made no sign he’d understood any part of what was happening in the last few day-cycles. Instead, he was pulled into Bradyn’s mind as if the old man had been waiting for him. Simon had the impression of breaching a barrier or finding a way open to him, and then an explosion of colour overwhelmed his senses: red and the deepest green, silver and sunlight, with behind it the river of blue he carried with him always. His father cried out. Simon could hear his voice in the air as well as in his thought. If he stayed here too long, Simon would kill his mind and, despite the resentment he still carried at how his father had betrayed him, this realisation brought bile to his mouth. He would not kill again if he could help it, for his mother’s sake and, by the gods, for his own. But he must find the word, the one hidden in the colours, the one he had not been able to reach during the mind-circle before.
    Give me it this time, please.
    Streaks of crimson began to appear in front of Simon’s eyes and he knew the time he had was rapidly vanishing and in the turn of a story’s edge his chance would be gone. He plunged into the colours, inhabiting them instead of simply staring. Their fierceness clutched and tore at his skin like the beaks of ravens, or one raven, had once done, and his cries, real now, mingled with his father’s. Please.
    Then he had it. In the very centre of his father’s mind, the word dwelt. He reached out to take it but the sudden image of his mother’s face reared up before him and he stumbled backwards, tears springing unbidden to his eyes. No, you cannot fail now.
    The voice was his father’s, how he had used to sound in the days when Simon was young, before his mother was killed. Only the shock of this stopped his backward motion and propelled him forward once again. He reached out, took the word, felt the memories of his mother and what she had meant to them both sinking into his understanding. He wanted so much to stay and remember but he could not; his father would die and a world of people, including the man he was bound to, would be lost and he could stomach neither of those futures.
    He ripped himself from his father’s mind, trying to do the least damage possible, but speed not comfort was important now. Simon came to himself, back in the night-woman’s house, his father’s screams echoing in the air, his father’s word lodged deep within his mind: sacrifice .
    Binding it to the strength of the remaining words, he plunged himself and the cane into the heart of the killing mist. Something inside it twisted away from him and he sensed a kind of submission but it was not enough. The story he held in his thoughts, the secrets and truth behind the words of the others, and his father were somehow not enough. He needed more.
    How the Lost One had hoped it would not come to this, but his own fears and dreams were unimportant in the face of this cruel onslaught on what they held as precious. He swept the mind-cane in a perfect arc in front of him and the resulting swift flames gave him a respite he could tumble through, back into the harshness of the rough flooring and the reality of the wintry air. He blinked and reached out with his mind to find the one he was seeking. Surely Ralph would make the story complete. He had to.
    At the same time, his father’s consciousness battered against his own once more as the old man tumbled against him. For a moment, he had no idea what was happening, and then he sensed Jemelda framed against the terrible whiteness behind her. She was holding a jagged stone with both hands high above her head and he didn’t need to be any kind of mind-dweller to know her intent.

    Jemelda

    This time, she was sure of herself. The appearance of the mist was strengthening her thoughts and even her very life seemed to be blended with the universe