The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

nearby table. When he turned back again, he held a beaker of water in his hand, which he offered to Simon.
    “Drink,” he said. “You will have need of it.”
    The Lost One did so. It appeared the subject of what had just taken place was now closed in the Lammas Lord’s mind; how easily Ralph left behind the aspects of his life which worried him.
    “Thank you,” Simon said when he had finished the water. “Tell me, how did I get here?”
    The Lammas Lord misunderstood and began speaking of the villagers and the tree, but Simon interrupted him. “No, you mistake me. That I remember well enough. I meant how did I get here, in your chambers? I can remember being in the kitchen below and then nothing.”
    Ralph hesitated before replying. “The cook’s husband, Frankel, and I carried you upstairs. We thought you would find more comfort here. I have no experience of it myself, but I would imagine the kitchen table is not the best place for a man who has died and lives again.”
    “No, I suppose it is not.” Simon wanted to say more, about the memories, both good and bad, which being here brought to his mind, but he could not find the words. Instead, he chose a rather safer avenue of conversation. “I came here to save the Lammas Lands as best I could, Lord Tregannon, and the task is not yet finished. The land is wounded, and the people too. There is much to do and I must be strong to achieve it. If I need rest, I will take it, but after that we must work for the good of the lands, Lammas and Gathandria and the rest, before it is too late for any of us to recover.”
    “Bah!” Ralph made a dismissive gesture, almost knocking the empty water-beaker out of Simon’s grasp. “So you say, and how easy it is for you to talk of such matters! It is a miracle even that you are alive, and the powers you possess have surpassed all our knowledge and legends. Who knows what you might do after this? Neither do you need to remind me of the crimes I have committed, though it seems you have forgotten your part in them also, Simon the Scribe. You have moreover forgotten one essential fact about Lammas. It is I who am the Lord of it, not you, and when you arrive here with your miracles and your plans, know this: I will not be seduced by them. Not this time. This time, I will make my own decisions for the good of my people and not be swayed by the desires and unknown mission of another. Yes, we must work together, Simon. I am not a fool, though I have been one in the past. But any decisions taken here will be mine and mine alone. So tell this to your mind-cane and live with it.”
    With that, while Simon was still struggling for words to respond, Ralph turned in a swirl of threadbare, once noble, cloak, stalked out of the room and was gone.
    The conversation had not gone as he’d anticipated. All the mind-power in the world could not easily handle Lord Tregannon. In his hand, the cane bucked, as if objecting to his thought, but the Lost One clasped it harder and the trembling subsided. He had not intended with his plans, spoken aloud for the first time, to rile the Lammas Lord, but perhaps Ralph was unused to him being in any way a decision-maker; he had not been so when they were together. Still, all things were new from this day-cycle onwards, and each of them would have to learn to bear it. While he recovered from death, he needed to think what the gods and stars would wish to happen next and how he could bring that about.
    The Lammas snows would be over soon, as they never lasted more than a four-week cycle before turning to rains and winds which made men and women shiver in spite of the warmest of fires and the thickest of cloaks. That said, the winds had come from the mountain and now the mountain no longer existed, perhaps nature too would be different, he could not tell. Not all the wisdom of the mind-cane or the Tregannon emeralds had yet revealed that to him, if they ever would. He closed his eyes briefly at the memory of the mountain folk and their solidity which had in the end availed them nothing, before turning his thoughts to other possible projects.
    The people needed to eat and, from the look of them and Jemelda’s kitchen, food was scarcer than he’d anticipated. Simon imagined the consequences of the mind-war had been to blight the winter crops and perhaps to destroy the fields completely. They needed to replant the crops but this had never been attempted after the winter snows as the land had been too