The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

in terms of the tug on his upper body and the almost unbearable pull on his arms. Darkness jagged in front of his eyes and he fought to remain awake. Jemelda.
    The plea came from the depths of his mind, but he had little hope she would hear it. Still, a flash of white he sensed more in his thoughts than in his eyes sprang past him and he felt the soft passage of the snow-raven’s wing on his hair. Then the bird was gone and he could have wept again at the loss of it. Please, please.
    “What do you want, Simon the Murderer?”
    He blinked in the direction of the cook’s voice. The ice in her words, the depth of suffering behind them, brought fresh agonies to his bones. Again, he tried to speak to answer her but could not. When she asked the question again, this time more quietly, his head fell backwards and the gnarled angles of the tree pressed into his hair. He found he was panting. Unable to catch his breath, it felt like he was being hanged all over again, but this time without the rope at his neck. How could he ever tell Jemelda what he needed to bring his suffering to its true fullness?
    Use me.
    The shock of the strange voice filling his head made him gasp and he struggled for comprehension. It was neither his own, nor anyone or anything he could recognise. He had once heard the snow-raven’s voice, but that was swift and fragmented, like the wind, and spoken with images he had needed time to understand. This new voice was different from any he had ever heard in his life: it was born from the clouds but also buried deep within the earth; soft like a playing cat and as hard as the once-proud mountain; it clung to his mind and shuddered through his skin. He longed to hear its strangeness again but wondered if it would destroy him.
    You know me already. You have always known me.
    Simon was about to protest the lie of those words which filled and surrounded him, but in that moment, the silver and black shapes created by the letters in his thoughts spoke their own kind of truth.
    You are the mind-cane. You … you have never spoken before. Somehow his own whispered disbelief made its logic known, in a way his lips could not. The shape of the cane’s utterances was a hook to hang his mind on and a wall to rest against.
    No matter. U se me.
    Simon could not see how. He also could not see how the cane could communicate with him when he had hidden it away so as to be all the more open with these people. What he wanted was a greater pain to purge his wrongdoings. If the mind-cane wished to do this, then in his weakened state it would kill him. So be it then, so be it.
    Do it, the Lost One said, with the last of his mind-strength bringing the object he desired to the topmost of his outer thoughts. Make Jemelda bring this to me.
    A burst of silver and terrible heat in his body, and the mind-cane’s words vanished from his grasp. Jemelda too was gone. Or at least he could no longer sense her. He could in fact no longer sense anything. No. He would fight to remain here, where these people had placed him, for as long as they wished it. Death was not a door he should walk through until they willed it. More than anything, he needed to drink deeper of the pain they had granted him. So much deeper. What remained uncertain was whether he might stay alive for long enough to feel it.
    Simon did not know how much time passed as he hung there, arms extended from the ropes that tied him to the tree, legs dangling in the loose bonds that prevented him from gaining traction to ease the pure agony of it. He could not tell whether it was day or night. Although it had been after midday when the Lammas people had tied him here, it could have been hour-cycles or day-cycles since then. He did not think he would survive for more than a day here though. Not with the pain and this great thirst upon him. He wasn’t sure but he thought he might be groaning, although he didn’t know how he could even produce such a sound.
    Something happened then. Something new which he hadn’t experienced in this solitary prison of necessary pain. He felt the touch of a hand upon his naked foot. He felt it and gasped. It seemed a lifetime-cycle since anyone had touched him. Though it might mean his death, his blood rejoiced in the sensation of warmth. Even though everywhere on his skin he was hot and cold at once. Immediately he felt something rough at his side – not flesh – and a shape at the edge of his vision.
    “Drink this.”
    The words were