The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

lived for so long a time-cycle and endured much which could never be conveyed. What histories had this object seen, both of his own lands, those he knew and those he did not? What people had it encountered, and how had it left them? Terrified, inspired or, most likely, both? If it hadn’t killed them first. By the gods and stars, Simon would never reach the end of its mysteries, however short or long a season they spent together.
    Gradually his eye reached the mind-cane’s carved silver top: the constellations and all their glory in miniature, both beautiful and deadly. The everlasting mountain, present in the sky though no longer here on the land, the lone man and the lovers, the horseman and the elm, the latter his mother’s sign. Then, as the cane slowly spun in its air-dance before him, he could see the signs of the river, the wolf and the oak. Something strong and wild. Finally in the carving and echoed in the night skies came the fox, Ralph’s sign, and the owl, his own. Strange how they were always together, although their differences were so many. He flicked the memory away, believing it unsuited to the time.
    Not so: you must hold that remembrance, and look again, my friend.
    The mind-cane had never spoken to him, in any fashion, with such gentleness before, and Simon was moved to obey. Not that any other choice remained to him, as the both of them were together in this silver no-land, poised between one time and the next, just as he had been at the Lammas outlands before the great mountains.
    He turned his attention back to the cane’s carving. For a while, longer than he would have wished even though he did not think of himself as an impatient man, nothing changed. Then he realised the carving was not only beginning to glow a deeper shade of silver, but it was pulsating too, slowly turning as if linking itself to a more demanding rhythm, one Simon could not yet hear.
    He could not help himself, he reached out to touch it. Before he could complete the gesture, fire leapt from the cane, a long rich flame of all the colours in the world and more besides, piercing the silver structure around them and flying out towards the skies. Simon gasped and rose to his feet, staring as the flame spread itself wider and wider even as it travelled upwards until at last the whole expanse of the sky was linked to the cane’s constellations. He heard singing also, the voice of the mind-cane multiplied a thousand times until the magic of the notes filled his whole being, body and thought, skin, bone and blood. He thought he had never heard anything so beautiful and never would do so again, and he listened and gazed, quite unable to do otherwise, as the fire linked the hidden stars to the land, and back again, and all the gods sang the beauty and meaning of it.
    It was for this he had come; it was for this he had been formed. May the gods and stars themselves grant him the joy and memory of it, he prayed, and knew his plea was surely answered. So the song continued until, in the end, he could take no more joy, being only of the land not yet of the skies, and somewhere the mind-cane knew this, as it knew everything, and the fire ceased, returning to its source, and the song was quiet and everything around them was still.
    After a time-cycle and a time-cycle again, Simon voiced his thought to the cane, knowing at last the strange truth of it. You are the stars, aren’t you, he said. You are the stars and the gods themselves if we could only see them; the carving you carry is no carving as we know it but the life and pulse of the world above, dwelling here on the land below.
    He needed no answer, but the mind-cane gave it him nonetheless: Yes. I am the beginning and the end, the stars, the moon and the sun, the earth you stand on and everything between. Know me.
    With that, the silver glow around the carving flew to Simon’s hand even as he reached up to catch it. If catching such a phenomenon was even a possibility, but had he not seen things as strange as this before? This time, he felt no pain or sudden jolt of power, as had been the custom with the mind-cane when it linked with him. Instead, his mind opened out so all the colours and light, all the sound and silence of the world flowed through his thought, and he found he was laughing with the kind of delight he had never known. His skin too was glowing with reflected light and he could almost track the journey of the cane’s life-force as it passed through his blood;