The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane

from hope only greater hope can come. It was a private matter, not a public one, and did not affect my journey to becoming an elder. No-one had to know of it.
    So, with Iffenia, I opened the book and began to experience its strange tales. I cannot tell you the beauty it contained nor its wildness, not to the full and certainly not in a way anyone else could understand. But I tell you that, as we allowed its distinct flavour into our thoughts, I knew everything I saw and touched and tasted would be more alive and more vibrant than it had ever been. It was as if up until that point we had both of us been walking in the half-darkness and the Book of Blood opened our eyes so we could see the world anew, as if we had been born a second time upon the earth. It was ice and fire, the deepest night and the brightest day. When we pledged ourselves over its pages, Iffenia and I knew we would never be parted, and we knew the blood the book contained would be the binding strength to our lives and after our deaths. Death was indeed meaningless, as your Lost One has so recently discovered.

    *****

    The Chair Maker paused in his tale. As Annyeke saw it he had plundered his mind and his traditions in pursuit of what should, by rights, be the gift only of the Gathandrian Spirit. She knew the beliefs of her people were too deeply ingrained upon her thoughts for her to see otherwise. What shook her to the core was how his actions sat askew with what the Book of Blood was said to be.
    “But the Book of Blood has no stories,” she said quietly. “Its pages are said to be blank and no-one knows their meaning.”
    The Chair Maker laughed, the sound of it filling her kitchen-area, unfamiliar, harsh. “That is because the Book brings out all that is hidden within and makes it real so it can never be gainsaid or destroyed. It shows us the secret places and power of our hearts, and has no need for words to enchant us. It makes ourselves the meaning and then we can do anything.”
    “This is against all we know and love,” Annyeke said, her voice low and direct, ensuring her mind echoed her emotion to try to reach her fellow-elder. “Any deceit we plunge into and practise, as elders or any of the people, will turn and destroy us. The Book of Blood is dangerous and no-one should touch it. It is said to bring silence where there is life and despair where there is light. Truly, what have you done, Chair Maker?”
    He gazed at her and she noticed his eyes were unclouded as if the memory of what he and Iffenia had done was gone and only the result remained. “I have done what is right for me, and Iffenia is alive still. Her spirit lives within me as we cannot be parted, and also within the one from Lammas who is most like her, the one who will destroy the Lost One. Because Simon must die or the Book of Blood will begin to lose its power, and Iffenia and I cannot countenance that. Through that chosen Lammasser, the Lost One will die a second time, the death from which there can be no returning. And because of Iffenia and because of the Book of Blood we can only succeed.”

Chapter Twelve: Aftermath

    Simon

    This wasn’t how he’d wanted to encounter the Lammas Lord again, not in the early morning-cycle of a winter’s day in a burning field at the beginning of what might turn out to be another smaller war. No, Simon’s hopes had been different. He rolled off Ralph’s body onto crackling soil which flattened itself beneath his weight. It smelt of fire. How he hated that smell and how he’d hoped here he would have none of it. Indeed the Gathandrian Spirit, and even the gods and stars, brought their will to pass through mysterious means.
    “Thank you,” he said to the figure next to him, preferring to use the spoken word rather than any form of mind-link. That would be an intimacy too far under the circumstances. “Are you hurt?”
    Ralph’s reply was slow in coming, but clear. “No. But I must get up, we must defeat these flames, Jemelda must not be allowed to destroy everything.”
    Somehow the two men got to their feet, Simon racked with pain which he could sense in Ralph also. This was foolishness, they were both too physically weak to overcome the fire, although the explosion had blown some of the flames out near its centre. There would be perhaps some salvaged seed where it had failed to burn them to the core. But something deeper than Simon’s own mind had constrained him to come, he had the cane in his hand, and the