The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

village had turned to night and the trees themselves had wept. Stone had roared and rivers had flooded their banks and poured as red as blood through the village byways and paths. She hadn’t even known if she, Frankel and the Lammas Lord’s young steward, Apolyon would survive but somehow they had.
    When, after a day of hiding in the woods, she had finally gained the courage to return, with her bedraggled spouse and fellow-servant, she had heard the Lammas Lord’s weeping as she had approached the ruined castle.
    She had not thought to comfort him. She was a cook. She baked and fed people. That was her calling and she was no comforter. Certainly not of one who had betrayed them so.
    “Hush,” Frankel whispered in her ear. “I know, my love, I know.”
    Jemelda shook herself. She hadn’t realised she’d been whispering aloud some of her thoughts. No matter. Only Frankel was present to hear them. He had always kept her secrets. Turning towards him, she half-smiled. He squeezed her arm and let go. Reaching behind, he picked up the broom, his grey hair catching a ray of morning light through the gaps in the stonework. He smiled back at her.
    “Come then,” he said. “We can do nothing important here. We are only what we are and we must fulfil the small roles we play. I must sweep the kitchen and you must bake the bread to feed our Master, no matter what his circumstances or ours. This is what we were born for.”
    She was about to reply when something happened. Not something physical but something beyond that. A strangeness in itself as she did not count herself as one who delved into mind-games at any level. Jemelda always lived her life fully in the skin. She swung round. Outside the window she caught a sense of movement. But the shape had gone as soon as she thought she saw it. Was it Ralph Tregannon? Had he left the castle at such an hour?
    The next moment, a low but piercing whistle split the air. The hawk-hunting cry. Despite what she’d been thinking about the Lammas overlord earlier, she was all but running towards the doorway, bread forgotten. Despite everything, she found she didn’t want Tregannon to come to harm. At the door, she came to a sudden and juddering halt. She’d expected to see Lord Tregannon. She did not.
    Instead she saw a slight man. Brown hair and pale face. Almost nondescript apart from the haunting power of his eyes. How they had all been seduced by that , at first. Wrapped around his tunic was a cloak that shimmered with all the colours of blue and green, although its impact would have been far greater if it had not been streaked with mud and torn in places. At the exact same moment the cook noticed the silver-topped cane dancing in the man’s hand, a vast white shape flew over them both, almost knocking the unwelcome visitor over.
    Jemelda shook off her husband’s restraining hand and, uncaring of the effects or reactions of either the deadly mind-cane or the strange bird, ran into the courtyard and found the words she’d wanted to say to this man for so long.
    “How dare you come to us like this,” she hissed. “You will never in the eternal time-cycles now or to come be welcome here amongst the Lammas people. Murderer .”
    And that was only the beginning. Once her words had begun, Jemelda found she couldn’t stop. All the pain and misery and death this foreign murderer had caused, the grief and poverty he’d brought upon them rose up on her tongue. She called him names she’d almost forgotten. Ancient curses in the ancient language. Words she’d only heard her grandmother say. Scorpion; Dark Cloud-Bringer; Ravid Dog. Simon the Scribe stood his ground as she continued to vent her wrath. In spite of the purple anger that roared and swooped around them both like a north-west gale, she could at least give him that. She’d thought at the first sight of her – cane or no cane – he’d run like the coward he was. He did not, although his hand on the cane’s silver top tightened until the skin on his fingers was as white as rice-milk. She wanted to lunge at him, drive his pallid face down to the ground until blood gushed upwards to mar that elegant face of his. She wanted to do a hundred things she’d never dared to do before. Why didn’t she fear the power of the old mysteries? The legends of her land should be calling to her, speaking of the caution all her people felt when confronted by mind-power in whatever form. But this fierce new anger swept through her