The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

waterlogged for any seed to take. Somehow they needed to make it dry but Simon was no farmer. He was a scribe and a runaway who could live off the land, yes, but he had never needed to plant what he took. Until he met Ralph, there had never been time and after that, well after that he had taken part in the feasting and provisions owed to the Lammas Lord from his villagers.
    Farming was a skill he needed to learn, and quickly. If Ralph wished, as was his right, to be the final decision-maker, then he too would need to learn those talents, and Lord Tregannon had always been a soldier first and foremost. It was why he fought Simon, but he would need to understand the old ways were gone, and something entirely new was taking place.
    If only the Lost One himself understood what this might be, then the Lammas people and the surrounding countries might yet live to the full. The mind-cane hummed and Simon felt a sudden warmth flowing over his skin. Perhaps the cane wished to give him some kind of knowledge? By the stars, he needed it, so he closed his eyes and tried, in spite of his exhaustion, to concentrate on the artefact and its wisdom, and to open his mind to its truths.
    Nothing. Only a sense of blankness and a strange silence, perhaps a warning he couldn’t quite grasp. He needed to rest again, in order to regain his energies, and then he would be able to fulfil the purposes he’d returned to the land to perform. The cane’s humming ceased and Simon faded to sleep. The last question he had before he succumbed to exhaustion was what he should do about his father.

    Ralph

    So far he has behaved neither with hospitality to his former scribe nor with honour and it has therefore not been an auspicious beginning to this strange new world, and the possibility of hope. There is something about Simon which disturbs him deeply and he is unable to keep reason at the forefront of his dealings with him. By his father’s blood, the man has died and been brought to life again for the sake of the Lammas Lands, and Ralph has only argued with him and tried to assert his own authority when the words he meant to speak should have been those of gratitude and thanks. He is by all the stars a fool.
    So he swears under his breath in his mother’s tongue as he strides along the hallways towards the newly fragile stairs but, as he reaches them, something snags at his thought and he turns back. For a heartbeat he wonders if it is the scribe, whose powers have always been beyond his mind-strength, but no it is not, as he senses no other presence within him but his own. Still, something is different or has become so in his angry retreat from his bedroom, and he wrinkles his nose in order to pinpoint it again.
    He stares at the window onto the courtyard which has been cracked and useless in keeping out the winds since the war began. At first he sees no change but then he reaches out and touches the edges of the stonework holding what is left of the glass in place. It is this that has changed. Instead of the uneven surface pocked by destruction, the blight that has affected almost all of his once-loved home, Ralph sees the smoothness of the stone as it meets the glass. Earlier it was not like this, he can swear it, but as the light sinks over the ravaged woods, he knows it is changed. The stonework is somehow mending itself, but how can that be possible without the hard work of servants he no longer has, or without the direct power of the mind-cane?
    It is a mystery, one he is determined to solve, and the magic of which he is equally determined to learn, not only for this castle but for the shattered homes of his villagers. The problem is persuading the remaining Lammassers to accept that help.
    Neither is that the only matter to be concerned about; Jemelda has left him as she should no doubt have done many week-cycles ago, but her leaving has become rebellion. If Ralph knows his cook, and in some respects he believes he does, she will not let the Lost One live if she can help it. She and her band of would-be soldiers will fight as best they can, not in the manner which he has been taught and is well-practised in, but in secret and in the dark, where all matter of evil lie. This is the fruit of the treachery of the mind-executioner and also his own: civil rebellion and despair. Soon there will be war again and it will not come from their enemies but from those they have counted as their closest allies. He must work to change it.
    He abandons