The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

must. If he is in the danger you think he is. But you must tell me what that danger is, Lammas Lord. Our Gathandrian mind-circle is not what it was and the elders and I don’t know what’s happening. Tell me.
    She doesn’t know. Why doesn’t she know? She’s read him, hasn’t she?
    Annyeke shakes her head and speaks aloud. “You Lammassers. You never change – I sensed only what was in the outskirts of your mind, not what you hold deepest. Interesting to see though that you bear the fate of the Lost One in your inner being, isn’t it? After what you did to him, that is.”
    Ralph flinches. She doesn’t need to remind him; he lives with it every day, every moment-cycle, by the stars. Still, he answers her question, “The remaining villagers at the castle intend to kill Simon. They are hanging him from the tree, the tree from which I tried to hang him before. Tell me, you who hold the wisdom of the magic city in the palm of your hand, will they succeed this time? ”
    When he finishes, he finds he is holding her cloak in his fingers, twisting it round and round until she is all but trapped once more against him. For a few heartbeats, he stares at her and she stares back, before he comes to his senses and lets her go.
    Annyeke shakes out her red hair and blinks at him. “You still love him then, though the last thing you will do is admit it.”
    How he has given away too much and how he can never take this moment back.
    “What if I do?” he says with a snarl. “It does no good to Simon. We must go to him, save him if we can.”
    He makes a move to depart but Annyeke steps in front of him. “Not so speedily, great Lord, don’t you see we are no longer in your lands at all?”
    Ralph opens his mouth to object to such a concept but remembers the emeralds’ powers and looks for himself. He blinks and sees it’s true. He and Annyeke are standing in a wood and on all sides the tall trees, oak, beech and wild wintergreen, thrust their branches up at the morning sky. The soil beneath their feet is as white as snow.
    “The White Lands?” Ralph asks, though the answer is obvious. “Simon’s birth-land? Why?”
    I don’t know , she answers, her eyes darting around as if seeking enemies. He too should be on the alert, but the unexpected landing has shaken him. But I hear a keening and we must follow where it leads.
    He listens but hears nothing but the voice of the wind and the rustle of branches. “I hear nothing.”
    She shakes her head. It is a keening of the mind. Come, let us go.
    Ralph frowns at her disappearing back. Even in his ruined state, the thought of following a woman’s lead makes his stomach recoil but, nonetheless, he does it. She moves at a fast pace under the trees and doesn’t pay any attention to the thorny undergrowth that catches at his legs and tears at his skin. They should be finding a way back to the Lammas Lands, not chasing mind-shadows in a strange country.
    It is important, Tregannon, it might give us the way back. Stop wasting energy. Hurry, for Simon’s sake!
    Annyeke increases her speed and Ralph does likewise. If Simon is to be helped in this way, however that can be, then he will bare his face and body to all the thorns and branches in Lammas and every country and pay no heed to it. Pray to the gods and stars the rescue will be soon.
    Without warning, the woman in front of him comes to an abrupt halt, and Ralph all but knocks her over, saving them both at the last moment by wheeling left into the density of trees. She pays him no heed.
    “It’s stopped,” she says, her words now in the air as well as in his mind. “I can’t hear it any more.”
    Ralph brushes aside the few oak twigs obscuring his vision.
    “I don’t think it matters,” he says, beckoning her nearer. “Look.”
    The two of them stand side by side, both slightly panting, though she is more breathless than he, and gaze out at the scene before them. In the heart of the wood, a small glade opens up to create a haven of light in a world of darkness. Ralph notes the softer grasses lining the forest floor and, at the edge of the glade, a pale cow, a span and a half beyond the height of a man, suckles her calf. A short distance from her lies a stone hut, half ruined and looking as if it has not been lived in for many a generation-cycle. The chimney however, if it can even be called by that name, is producing smoke, and Ralph smells its heavy spices in the air. What interests him most of all these is