The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

the cane’s path as it flickered and danced over the cobbles. Above them both, the snow-raven swooped and swung in the clouds.
    Annyeke had no notion as to what would happen next, but if the mind-cane had a plan to save Simon, she would follow it until all hope was gone.

    Simon

    The world stopped. The pain disappeared and for a long and blissful moment Simon felt nothing at all. Except the knowledge of death and how it held him.

    Ralph

    He hears her before he sees her. The sound of her footsteps, though muffled by snow, is louder against the silence of the people. Ralph springs to his feet and launches his rage and sense of loss towards the Gathandrian Elder.
    “If you had been here, you could have done something to save this man, you with your mind-skills and smugness, surely that would not have been too much for you?”
    Before the words are out of his mouth, he knows how petty they sound, and how much of the anger would be better directed towards himself, but Annyeke merely grimaces. It is at this point Ralph becomes aware of the mind-cane. He hisses between his teeth, from instinct drops into battle pose and then almost at once realises how meaningless that is. In spite of everything, the Lammas Lord is proud of the fact he hasn’t stepped back. Annyeke smiles.
    “If you hadn’t made the Lost One into a murderer and a slave, then perhaps we wouldn’t be here at all,” she retorts, and he has no comeback to her accusations.
    The mind-cane is having none of this. It leaps from Annyeke’s side and parts the crowd of people huddling round the death-tree like a mighty wind parting the rivers. The villagers slip and slide away, some falling and scrabbling upright again, all of them running to the edge of the courtyard to escape. The only one of them who remains is the blacksmith, and Ralph can feel the dark waves of his hatred flowing over them. It is as if the experiences which have brought him here have made him impenetrable to any sense of fear, or legend. Behind him lurks the castle’s cook, as she too has not run far.
    In the meantime, the mind-cane hovers over Simon’s dead body, like a dog returning to a defeated master. It’s glowing silver, its brightness almost too hard to look at. Something in Ralph’s head cracks open and he gasps. When he stretches out his hand, his fingers meet Annyeke’s and he grips her unexpected steadiness, all animosity forgotten, but there is something missing, something his mind aches to reach but cannot.
    The mind -cane. It needs you.
    The coolness of her voice in his thoughts shocks him to action and he lets her go. For one wild heartbeat, he wonders if he can answer her in kind, but that power has never been his. He is no true mind-dweller but only a half-breed of sorts.
    “Why? Why does it need me?” he says. “What in the stars’ names can I do for Simon now?”
    Annyeke shakes her head. You know. You must reach for the knowledge yourself, Lammas Lord, and soon. For Simon’s sake, please.
    As the mind-cane begins to sing, a high-pitched and piercing note which drives its own urgency through his blood, Ralph struggles to comprehend what he is being asked. Somehow he understands there is, oh miraculously, a small pocket of time in which the scribe can be saved, brought back from the dead if that is even possible. But Ralph is a soldier, a regional Lord, or he was once, not so long ago; he is no mystic to dabble with meanings and magic. The strange green energy which explodes in his head is beyond his ability to manage, and he groans, clutching at his hair and falling to his knees. There are voices in the wind, so many of them, and he cannot understand a single one of their messages, while all the time the cursed cane dances over the body of the man he loves. By the gods and stars he must do something to end this pain or it will consume him.
    And then one single voice, coming to him from the depths of madness. Yes , she tells him, do it, focus on what you see, on what you hear. Do it.
    Her voice vanishes, and there is nothing left, only noise, and emerald fire swirling and spitting around him. Suddenly, just as he tastes failure on his tongue, he understands the message the mind-cane is giving him. He reaches into his cloak, feels the icy hardness of the jewels he retrieved from the kitchen. Without thinking any more but knowing it is the only action he can take, he flings them at the cane. The mind-cane leaps to meet them, fire licking the air, and