The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

pleased to bless our efforts.”
    Such an act had, she knew it, never been suggested in all their legends or days. When praying, the elders prayed alone or amongst themselves and they never mixed with the people. The stories and tradition said those whom the Spirit and the people had chosen must cleanse their minds apart from others. If anyone saw an elder engaged in prayer in public then they would always leave them alone, although in latter year-cycles this sight had become increasingly rare. Annyeke knew the elders had expected the men and women around them to leave when they formed the prayer-link. It was the people who had understood first how things had changed, at the heart.
    She stepped away from the Chair Maker, ignoring the way the colours of his mind sparked and trembled at her words, and gestured to the people. Perhaps her plan would put to rest her fears about the old legends and cancel out any remaining darkness there might be in the land or its rulers. Her actions would at least satisfy herself.
    “Now, the new way of our city really begins,” she cried out, making what she said pulsate in her thoughts too so everyone in the city could hear, not simply those in the Square of Meeting. “It is time for us to link our meditations together, not to keep them apart. So let us pray as one people, not as a divided world.”
    No more speeches now. Annyeke put her feet where her mind was and, reaching out, touched the hand of the Gathandrian next to her. It was not Johan but the young man on the other side who had first answered her questions upon arrival. After a small hesitation, he took her hand in his and then in turn touched the woman next to him. She was his chosen one, Annyeke had known it but now the mind-link deepened and sang with the strength of the love they held together. It reminded her of Johan and how, even in the midst of the changes and difficulties they faced, he was a gift to be grateful for. She could sense him walking towards her, preparing to take his place in this new way of being she had instigated, but she understood the elders as well as the Gathandrian people must prove willing.
    Annyeke smiled and shook her head at Johan and he stopped at once, catching her intent. She stretched out her free hand to the Chair Maker who blinked at her.
    “Come,” she said quietly. “Start this new world with us.”
    For a long moment nothing and she could almost hear the year-cycles of tradition and place battling for supremacy in his mind and in the minds of his fellow-elders too. Her elders, by all the stars. How some wars were fiercest when they were not physical ones, and the hardest won too.
    Then the Chair Maker was beside her, solid fingers touching her arm and sliding, slow and uncertain, up to her shoulder. She nodded, braced herself for his confusion and took the brunt of it, dark and wild and strange in her mind. She could glimpse nothing else underneath it, however, and this gave her new heart. It was what being First Elder truly meant: leading her people into new pathways; taking their pain and hope. By the gods, she was ready for it, longed for it even, for the sake of their great city and for those lands under their care.
    One by one those in the Meeting Place joined their circle, Johan next to the Chair Maker and then another Gathandrian beyond him. Annyeke took the power of the mind-links being formed as best she could and held them in her thoughts, acting as a barrier and a safeguard. Not everyone with them joined her and there were many further away in the city and beyond who could not, but she hoped the strength of their connection would reach them all, and the great Spirit of Gathandria who watched over everything would, by their action here, be minded to heed them.
    That was what Annyeke hoped for, and she knew her hope was sound. But the next moment, just as the circle of the willing closed hands and the link became complete, crimson fire ripped through her mind from nowhere and she heard the screams of the people in the day’s harsh truth. She fell, all connection shattered, and her thoughts crying out for release from the flames. She could understand neither where the fire had come from nor where it might go, as her entire world was at that moment comprised of nothing but desert and cruelty, baking heat and fear. Just as it had been that day in her home when the library was lost and the last battle began. She thought she might die, but not as the Lost One had done, to