The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

afraid and angry enough to do it. As it was, they would share the responsibility with the remaining villagers. It was a reasoned approach.
    Because in the deepest well of his thoughts, the Lost One understood he must die. He had understood it from the moment he’d made the decision in Gathandria to return here. Without that decision, he was unsure whether any kind of healing could ever be achieved, not merely in the Lammas Lands but in the great city itself, and all the satellite lands around them. Simon blinked as the subconscious realisation swept over him like the onward rush of a vast river. Understanding this fact in theory was not the same as knowing it in his mind. He wished he had not abandoned the cane, and indeed the snow-raven, and found his hands had started to shake. He took a few deep breaths, reminded himself he was here, in the castle kitchen and the time of decision was not yet upon him. It might yet not be the worst.
    Even as these thoughts filled Simon, the shape of his mind suddenly altered, and he gasped and reached for the chair he sat on to ground himself; he could feel the wood grain patterning his skin and knew he was still here in the Lammas Lands. In his body only, however; his thoughts were shifting and deepening, and patterns he didn’t fully recognise were starting to form within him.
    For a moment, he fought them, heart beating wildly and trying to hold on to the sense of himself he recognised. He had lived through more than enough strangeness in these last day-cycles and did not think he could bear any more. Then, in his mind but also everywhere a voice: You are the Lost One; you must undergo what must happen.
    The voice was one he knew, a bleak light in the swooping gloom of unfamiliarity which felt as if he were drowning. The Spirit of Gathandria. Simon wanted to open his mouth and ask what it meant and whether there was any other Gathandrian who would surely be more suitable for undergoing what must happen. But he couldn’t move, even to speak, and in any case as the ideas formed in his thoughts he understood the Gathandrian Spirit had seen them. They did not need to be spoken.
    His mind continued to expand to take in whatever pictures and people were forming there and, with it, came a river of blackness. It tasted salty and its fabric covered him like a book. He was a word. No, smaller than that, a mere letter, and the parchment was drowning him. More than that, it was him. And he was the river with, inside it, all the colours of despair and grief, loss and fear. How well he knew those colours. In the past, too well, but now he had thought things were different and his life had changed. But perhaps he had assumed too much too soon; he had journeyed back to the Lammas Lands to tackle his past. He could not expect to avoid the feelings it raised in him.
    He let the feelings come. For the first time in his life he did not run. Instead he opened his arms wide and let the pain take him. It connected with parts of his history he had not considered for a while, it connected with all he could offer it. And, just as he saw how such pain might destroy him utterly, the shapes and patterns he had been aware of in his mind before became as clear as sunlight.
    He was walking through the Lammas village, from the dwelling nearest the fields along the one street towards the castle. He could not see the small houses clearly as the dark river layered his eyes, but he had the impression it was after the war had devastated them. Even so, each group of people, each family filled his thoughts as his strange mind-journey continued. He knew which had died, and which still lived, and the straitened circumstances they lived in. Only the night-women and a few half-starved children remained in the village, but the rest of them were scattered through the fields and woods. That understanding shook him most of all; the wolves would be most dangerous in winter, and most desperate for food. They must have killed some of the people. Whatever happened, at least Jemelda’s actions were bringing them back to their ruined homes, if only temporarily. He could not fully understand why they had scattered, apart from the terror of loss and the fear the mind-war would continue to destroy them. But the war had ended and did they still fear to return to the village?
    In his mind, the Lost One continued to walk, reaching the old well, where he had first met Ralph on a night as dark as the air he journeyed through now. It