The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

provide a warning for her husband, Frankel. In the mornings, he was inclined to talk and she was happier simply to think. Forty-two year-cycles of marriage had taught them both well how to communicate without necessarily speaking. It was a wise skill. And she would need all the wise skills she possessed to see through yet another day-cycle. Even now she could hear behind her the scraping of furniture, the slow sweep of the broom and, every so often, Frankel’s exclamation of surprise as he found a wood-rat. Since the war, neither of them had been able to get the vermin out of the kitchen, no matter what they did. Now, Jemelda wondered whether the attempts to keep their kitchen and work-areas clean and decent would be the death of them both in the end. All because of the Tregannon greed. She had no truck with it, or with Ralph Tregannon, no matter what he promised, or tried to. Indeed she did not. She would willingly take apart the Lammas Lord himself, piece by piece, and bake him into her own batch of loaves if he so much as looked at her. Oh yes, she would do such a thing and have no remorse about it afterwards. Even more so, she would take the murderer who had brought her Lord and all of them to this terrible day-cycle and throw him to the wolves. She would enjoy watching him die, and something dark within her stirred into life at the thought. As she pondered that deeply satisfying act, the silence in her head drove the image deeper while the rhythmic thumping of Frankel’s broom as he chased the rat away echoed the strain and push of her shoulders as she continued to prepare the dough.
    “Frankel? Let it go, won’t you?” she snapped at last, pushing her hair away from her eyes and, no doubt, streaking flour over her face. “The rats will always be with us. So what is the use of it all?”
    To her annoyance, Jemelda found her eyes were wet. Ridiculous. She never cried. She wasn’t the crying kind. This too was no help whatsoever. As she heard the clatter of her husband’s broom where it fell to the floor, she gave the undulating dough one great pummel and hissed between her teeth. Best that than the words she might say. Nobody ever knew when either the gods or stars were listening.
    When Frankel’s thin arms went round her, she leaned back against him and sighed, trying to put the dark and murderous thoughts away. He felt frail but warm. He didn’t say anything and she was glad of it. She couldn’t think of any words which might improve the situation they and all the Lammas people found themselves in. This year-cycle would be spoken about – if there were any left to speak about it anyway – as one in which many curses had been laid upon their heads. Firstly, the way the Lammas Lord had turned against his own people, aided by the murderer and mind-delver, Simon the Scribe, and the terrifying mind-executioner. Jemelda could never think of his name without shuddering. The loss of so many friends and neighbours, killed for no good reason she could see or understand. What was so special about mind-skills in any case? Then the way Simon had vanished, spirited away at his own hanging by the mysterious people of Gathandria. At once, the Lammas Lord and the mind-executioner had pursued him and it was then that the land and home Jemelda loved began to disintegrate before her very eyes. Homes torn down and field crops ruined. Even the plants already stored for the winter had rotted away for no reason and many of the animals had died. The autumn-cycle planting had come to nothing and it was a sky-mystery how the people – what there were left of them – would eat at all when the spring-cycle arrived. If it did. And this terrible destruction and death – for yes, yet more strange disease and death had swept over them and only a handful of her once thriving village were left to mourn – had happened with no visible enemy attacking them, with nobody to fight against. Something to do with the Lammas Lord’s journey to Gathandria, something to do with the mind-wars. She could make no sense of it. Nothing like this had ever occurred in her parents’ or grandparents’ time; no stories were told of such things.
    Back then she had thought it could not get any worse. But then Lord Tregannon had returned, alone, an all but defeated man. And after him had come the mind-executioner and his army of wild dogs and undead soldiers. When they had departed in an overwhelming storm of magic and terror, the skies above the