The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

Ralph had already put away his work tools and was in the act of placing the mud-barrel in the corner of the room. When he saw Simon, he stood upright and smoothed down his hair, a gesture which scattered a seed-throw of drying mud over it.
    “Are you done for the night?”
    The scribe nodded.
    “I see,” said the Lammas Lord, and then seemed as if he wanted to say more but did not know how to begin.
    Simon waited.
    “Let us sit,” Ralph cleared his throat at last and gestured at the side table in the centre of the room. “We can talk undisturbed here.”
    Simon smiled at the tone of command in the instruction, and sat down, an act both in keeping with and utterly disrespectful of the former Lammas laws. Obedience to the castle Lord was part of the make-up of the land, but Ralph should have been allowed to take his seat first.
    He gazed up at his companion. “Thank you.”
    Ralph nodded, and Simon could feel the mix of colours in his lover’s mind circling and dancing until the blend of them settled once more: deepest crimson and a startling blue laced with white. A dangerous blending but one so familiar to the scribe that it made his blood sing.
    Then the Lammas Lord sat also, at an angle to him. “You seem somehow naked without the mind-cane. You will miss it.”
    In spite of their mind-closeness, Simon had not expected such a question; Ralph had always had the capacity to startle him. He laughed.
    “Is that something you have gleaned from my thoughts, or something you ascertained for yourself?”
    Ralph frowned. “I know what it is to have honour taken from me so I can see it in your eyes, Simon. You miss the artefact.”
    “Yes,” he replied simply. “I do.”
    “And it will not return to you.”
    “No, it will not.” That much Ralph had certainly discovered from his gifts as a mind-sensitive.
    “What then will you do?”
    Many things had the scribe expected from this necessary conversation with Lord Tregannon, both fears and delights, but in none of his imaginings had the question been this. He rubbed his hands on his legs and looked away, feeling a slight constriction in his throat.
    I do not know.
    Ralph reached across to take Simon’s hand, cementing the link between them.
    In the thought-silence, the scribe allowed his words to flow: it is as if I have been one person, with the help of the mind-cane and the raven, and I grew accustomed to being that person. He was braver and more vibrant than I am, his mind and spirit were full of hope and power, no matter what happened, and his growing relationship with his god, the Gathandrian Spirit, was like the first touch of the dawn sun on a warm spring day. But this day-cycle I am on my own and I do not know if I can be that man again. I do not know if I am still the Lost One.
    The Lammas Lord smiled; Simon could see it in his mind and also in truth. One thing I have learnt, Ralph began though his words came more slowly than Simon’s and the colours of his thoughts were paler as he gathered them together, one thing I have learnt from what has happened in the land and between us is this: we are not the same this day-cycle as we were the one before and we are unlikely to be the same on the morrow either. Matters under the sky change like the wind, Simon, and we can only glean what we can from it and pray for courage for the moment we dwell in.
    That may be true, Simon replied, but I am the same man who lay in your bed last night, the nights before and, I hope, tonight also. Even though much both of good and evil has happened between us and may well do so again, that is an experience I would wish to repeat without fear.
    As Simon finished his thought-words, the emeralds at Ralph’s belt sparked with fire and began to hum, notes similar to the mind-cane’s song but with a greater warmth. He wondered if when the emeralds and cane had joined in the fields, something of the giftings of each had been shared with the other. A thought to ponder on in his heart for the day-cycles ahead.
    Ralph too had something of the same idea as their mind-colours blended and danced together, because he released his grip and stood to place the bag of emeralds between them.
    “So,” said Ralph, his eyes gazing directly at Simon. “The mind-cane and the emeralds together made something different, something good.”
    “Yes. I think they did.” The words he spoke, the words both of them spoke, were echoed too in the mind’s deep channels.
    A pause then, but this time