The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

options for me.”
    When he finished speaking, the silence around them seemed heavier and more menacing and Jemelda shivered.
    “There are no other options for any of us,” she said. “This is what we will do.”

    Simon

    When he woke, he didn’t recognise his surroundings, at least not at first. Whatever he was lying on was soft and he felt warm and, above, he could see a strange pattern of sky and wood and stone. He couldn’t understand why he was not colder, if he could see the sky as the great snows were not yet over. Or they had not been when he had last noticed them.
    Pictures danced and swirled across his mind but he couldn’t make sense of them: rope; the toughness of wood carved onto his back; the anger of men, and women too. He stirred and groaned and, at once, he felt someone’s hand on his shoulder easing him back on to the bed, as bed it must be.
    With that touch, a hundred other pictures: armour and bones; a man dressed in a cloak with strange symbols; another man who smiled at him but whose beauty was ravaged by grief; then a raven as white as snow; and the mind-cane. The mind-cane.
    Simon woke for certain with a gasp, arms flailing, pain tracking through his bones. Let me up, I must have the cane.
    He spoke without the need for a voice, his thoughts crystallising in a surge of mind-power which brought him half-risen on the bed and all but fighting the man who tried to hold him down. At the same time-cycle, his companion’s mind collapsed beneath the sudden onslaught from his own and in the midst of the pain he was unaccountably causing he caught one word only: Simon .
    He let go at once, still gasping, still fighting for possession of the cane. Ralph? The Lammas Lord was kneeling half-on half-off the bed, his hand continuing to grasp Simon’s shoulder, but his thoughts scattering away to the stars and beyond, if that were possible, as he ran in his mind from Simon’s unwitting attack.
    “Forgive me,” the Lost One spoke aloud this time, fearing to cause more damage to the floundering man. For a heartbeat, maybe more, he didn’t know what to do or how to remedy his actions but then the mind-cane, which must have been there with him all along but he had not linked with its voice, fell like a homing bird into his palm and he felt something like a rush of water flowing through him.
    With his other hand, he touched Ralph’s forehead, acknowledging the man’s sweat and fear on his fingers, and mind-delved further until he was standing at the very centre of the Lammas Lord’s thoughts. How familiar the landscape was to him: salty sand and stormy sky with fire-filled clouds. Trying to ignore the fact the last time he had been allowed here, the two of them had been lovers, he called back the spiralling sparks of Ralph’s broken mind, using his own, feeble as it was, as a beacon. He was slow in this, his own thoughts trembling and his limbs aching, but he put his weakness to one side and concentrated on undoing such havoc as he had caused.
    It took the length of a summer story, the longest of all the seasons’ tales, but at last it was done. In time-cycles past, Simon would have desired nothing more than to stay and enjoy the Lammas Lord’s mind to the full, but he could not be as he once was. As they had been, now.
    So he turned away and spun his thoughts back to where his body waited for them, in the Lammas Lord’s bedroom. He realised this for the first time, and swallowed. One heartbeat, then another, and he was where he had been, but not quite as he remembered himself.
    Because everything had changed, hadn’t it? He’d given himself over to the villagers’ anger, he’d died and somehow he’d been reborn again. Oh yes, he remembered it all. He even remembered how he’d been taken down from the Tree of Execution and found himself in the castle kitchen. None of this was the usual arc to a Lammasser’s life, or even a half-Gathandrian, as he was. He sighed and felt Ralph stir. Slowly he took his hand away from his companion’s forehead and felt the slight click in his thoughts as they disconnected. By the gods, he already missed it.
    Ralph stood, not confidently but holding himself steady by means of the nearest stonework.
    “You are stronger than any of us anticipated,” he said. “Thank you for putting me together again. It seems you were always adept at that in some fashion.”
    Simon had no answer, but perhaps Ralph expected none as he turned and reached for something on a