The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

something of Simon’s history with his father, and what the man did to the scribe so many year-cycles ago, Ralph grimaces. He is paying the price for his cruelty but, then again, so is Ralph. That realisation makes the Lammas Lord turn away as Annyeke and Frankel endeavour to calm Bradyn.
    It is then for no apparent reason that the mind-cane attacks him. By the time Annyeke calls out a warning, Ralph’s mind is a storm of black and silver heat. He can’t help but scream and fall to his knees where the stone floor bites into his skin. The fire from the cane overwhelms his thoughts and he gasps for breath which doesn’t come. A jumble of impressions: Simon’s face; the mind-executioner; the Lammas soldiers; his own father; and finally the Tregannon castle that has both protected him and trapped him.
    The fire disappears, though he doesn’t know why. Doesn’t it want to kill him for what he has done to its master? As he struggles to his feet, the ache in his leg almost as fierce as the mind-cane’s fury, the scribe suddenly speaks. Low tones, so low Ralph can scarcely catch them, but the urgency of the words somehow makes the sound carry.
    “Leave him be.”
    “ Simon?...” Ralph can’t hide the need which flies at once from his thoughts straight into the scribe’s understanding. Neither can he help the fact his weakness is obvious to everyone else in the kitchen – to Annyeke and, how much worse, to Frankel and Apolyon, his servants. This is not the behaviour expected of any Lammas Lord and he draws himself back, coughing as the cane hovers around him.
    Annyeke shrugs and soothes down the scribe’s hair from his face. Simon is blinking himself awake, and Ralph can see the slight tremble of his body. Again the realisation hits him: this man was dead and is alive again. He died, but he has returned.
    Still, when Ralph reaches out to the scribe, the cane snaps and fizzes, forcing him to retreat. Simon sighs.
    “Leave him,” he says again. “Please.”
    The scribe opens his hand and the mind-cane floats down into it. As his fingers close over the artefact, the cane’s brightness dims and the silver fizzing ceases. Ralph gains the impression something like a wild and dangerous bird has flown back to its handler’s grasp and is at peace again, although for how long he has no notion.
    “Simon …” he says again, testing the mind-cane’s patience, as by the gods and stars he has much to say and to his own surprise no longer cares who else is here to witness it.
    “Ralph,” the scribe speaks and his voice is stronger now. He is half-twisted towards Ralph, supported by Annyeke and with Frankel and Apolyon skulking in the background. “Lord Tregannon, I don’t wish to hear whatever you have to tell me. It is not the time and, besides, I need to sleep.”
    Then, without another word, the scribe falls back again onto the table and, after a few moments, his steady breathing begins again.
    That’s it, Ralph thinks. He has his answer, and the scribe is right, of course he is: the past is over and it is time he starts acting not like a foolish lover but like a Tregannon Lord. The opportunity for rebuilding the land is here, and it is up to him to take it.
    Before he can fully respond to this, Annyeke touches his hand. “Are you all right?”
    Her sympathy is written in her eyes, but Ralph is not ready for it. He isn’t sure he will ever want to be, so his answer is sharper than it should be.
    “Yes,” he says, “the mind-cane has left me unharmed. Which is a mercy as there is much we must do, if hope for the future of Lammas has been granted to us.”
    That is, he knows, not what the First Elder of Gathandria was asking, but her true question is not something he wishes to consider. For a moment, she frowns and seems as if she’d ask more, but then, thank the stars, her expression closes and she lets him go. He can’t help wondering if she has read him, however, and hopes to the gods she has not; he does not even wish to read himself.
    “Good,” she says, her voice as brittle as a dead tree. “In that case, I must go. The Lost One is alive and has fallen into your care, as the Spirit seems to wish it. You have, as you say, much to do here, and perhaps even internal battles to prepare for, and I should not delay you. Let me have some of the emeralds and I will return to Gathandria, for there is much to do there also. From what I have experienced recently, I no longer believe our wars are over,