The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

be reborn, as she was not so blessed, but then something else resonated deep within as the fire – greatest of miracles – left her: the memory, the reality of someone who should have been dead but who was somehow all too much alive. Her worst fears were shockingly realised: Iffenia, the Chair Maker’s wife, she who had betrayed them during the battle, was somehow here, in the midst of them. And, with Iffenia, the darkest legend of all Gathandria: the legend of blood and silence held in the Book of Blood which Annyeke had hoped never to see in her lifetime, but which she had felt in her earlier encounters with the Chair Maker, and most powerfully of all at the library. She had not wanted to admit it to herself then, but she had no choice now.
    May all the gods help them, but this changed everything.

Chapter Ten: Secret Betrayals

    Jemelda

    She waited till nightfall in the cave. Images of silence and blood tugged at her mind and, at each small encounter, she gave in to the thrill and dance of them. Still she wondered if someone from the castle would come looking for them to try to persuade them to return. She wondered if it would be Frankel. Either that or they would come to fight them, but she didn’t believe they would do so, not yet. They would ask for peace, but she would never be ready for that, not while the murderer lived.
    When the fox-star had risen in its everlasting pursuit of the star of the owl, Jemelda knew it was time. Gently she woke those amongst them who were sleeping: Corannan, one of the women weavers and the boy. The rest were wakeful, as she was, and she could see the glint in Thomas’s eyes by the faint moonlight lining the cave entrance.
    “We must go,” she said. “It is time.”
    They already knew what she intended to do this night-cycle. Most had agreed with it at first, Thomas being the most enthusiastic as she had expected him to be as his motives too were based on revenge. Others had not been so willing and it had taken some time to persuade the women. The boy had remained silent, but had nodded when Jemelda had asked him if he would come with them. She would try to keep a watch on him if she could, to keep him out of harm, but she would need his skills. You had to crush seeds to bake bread and risks had to be taken.
    They slipped out of the cave’s safety, with Jemelda in front. Immediately behind her came Thomas and then the boy, and the rest of them found their places as they might. They carried with them no fire-torches but, in any case, the moonlight was enough. All of them knew these woods and a group such as they should keep any hungry wolves at a distance.
    Jemelda made her way down the incline, picking a path between rocks until she reached level ground and felt the softness of earth and grasses beneath her feet. They didn’t have to hurry as the night would be dark for some while yet. Still she wanted to finish her new mission as soon as it had begun; she was exactly the same when it came to cooking. Once she had decided upon the recipe or the menu for the day-cycle, she was reluctant to rest until she had completed it. It had always been so. She would simply have to bring that determination with her tonight.
    They kept to the edge of the woods as they walked towards the village, close enough to the shadows to avoid being seen by any Lammasser cleaving to Lord Tregannon but not too close that the wolves might be encouraged to attack. It had stopped snowing and soon the weather would turn to a milder winter’s end but Jemelda couldn’t help wishing she’d brought her thickest cloak with her. The one in which she had walked away from the castle was too thin for the night, but others in her group must be suffering too, and the younger of the farming wives wore a cloak you could have seen sunlight through.
    On their journey past the woods, they met no-one, but only heard the customary sounds of the night-cycle: the hunting cry of a female oak-owl; the rustle of small nameless creatures in the undergrowth; the distant howling of a wolf. The latter made them stop and huddle together before the realisation the animal was still some distance off and was unlikely to be tracking them. Above, the sky was pierced with stars, and Jemelda had to blink away unaccountable tears at such beauty. Soon, once the scribe was dead, their land and their people would echo such wonder on the earth again.
    Finally, after what seemed the length of two autumnal stories although Jemelda could