The Executioner's Cane (18 page)

Ralph cries out, one long sharp note that
pierces the noise of the huddle of people witnessing this death. He
half-lifts the old man in his arms and drags him across the stone
courtyard. He doesn’t know if he will need him or what the old man
can do, but the emeralds brought him to the scribe’s father, and
Ralph refuses to let him go. Behind him, Annyeke says something he
can’t hear and he doesn’t stop to listen. He must reach Simon,
before it is too late. Perhaps it is already too late. When he
glances round, desperate to see if she has any wisdom she can
impart, the First Elder is running in the other direction, away
from the tree of death. Above her the strange white raven flies,
calling out its sorrow in the falling snow. She has betrayed him
and later there will be a reckoning, he thinks as darkness fills
his mind. If Simon dies then Ralph’s vengeance will never find
rest.

Three times his feet slip on the scatterings
of resting snow across stone, the old man holding him back and
wailing like a young marsh-cat, but finally he is there, at the
execution place. The people part for him like the trees part for
the wind and he spits out his commands as they spring from his very
depths.

“You kill this man when it is I who commanded
him to do the things that ruined you? How you have judged wrongly,
and punished the hearth-dog when you should punish his master. I
have spent too long grieving for my crimes, but that time is past.
I am here and I order you to bring this innocent man down.”

All these year-cycles, and Ralph has never
berated the villagers in such a way. Yes, he has suspected them of
treason, harried and pursued them and murdered them too, but he has
never confronted them like this. Neither has he admitted his
wrongdoing, and the shape of the words in his mouth brings its own
strange freedom.

Jemelda, his treacherous cook, speaks first,
stepping up and gazing directly at him as if she is an equal. “It
is too late, Lammas Lord, as the murderer is dead.”

The blacksmith curses and spits on the
ground. “He died too soon, great sir. The rope should have kept his
agony for longer.”

Without a thought, Ralph knocks the man down
so he sprawls sideways, slipping on the snow, and the people surge
back. So much has his power amongst them diminished and how he
should have remembered this before fighting with those he needs to
appease.

“No, no.” The voice comes from one he has
forgotten and the people have discounted. He glances down, mind
pierced with a rising sense of pain, and the villagers crowding
them both come to a halt, as the old man cries out again. “My son,
my son, I abandoned you and now you are dead.”

Ralph can see it is true. Simon’s tongue is
swelling even in the cold air, and his whole body is slumped on the
tree. His heart pounds like the absent drums heralding death and he
knows all in one torrent how his crimes have returned to pierce
him. He staggers forward but the old man is faster. He reaches his
dead son and wraps his arms around his feet, pulling at the ropes
that bind him. He is weeping loud enough to wake all the Lammas
dead but Simon is beyond any response. Ralph pushes his way through
the people to reach him.

“Help me untie him,” he orders, panting hard
and not looking at any of them. There will be time for his own
grief later. “We must take this man down. Don’t you think there’s
been death enough in these lands?”

His voice is steadier than he’d hoped, but
all he can sense in his head are the colours of despair: black,
purple, white. So it has come to this and yesterday which he
thought the worst is not so.

It is the cook’s husband who helps him first.
The old man holds Simon’s body as best he can while Ralph struggles
with the knots. The blacksmith has tied them well, but a
combination of desperation and brute force at last gets the scribe
free. Finally the cook’s husband and Ralph lay Simon’s body onto
the snow. As Bradyn continues to cry over his son, the Lammas Lord
pulls off his cloak and lays it over the scribe though only the
gods and stars know why he needs to be protected from the snow now.
At the same time, Ralph wonders once more where Annyeke has gone
and curses her absence.

Annyeke

She saw at once this scene did not require
her. Funny how, since taking on the Eldership of Gathandria, her
instincts had become sharper. They had no doubt experienced more
use lately and, besides, something else was calling her: a narrow
golden cord in her mind drawing her away from the courtyard with
its death and despair and towards the castle. She refused to think
of Simon and what might be happening to him, she couldn’t mourn for
him yet. It was impossible to deny whatever was calling her and,
who knows, it might be the key to help the Lost One. More than
anything else at that moment, she longed to help him, even now.

As she ran across the cobbled stones layered
with snow, the icy wind pummelling her face, she heard the sound of
the snow-raven crying out over her head. Even though she feared it
less than she used to, its piercing note reverberated in her mind.
A sudden gust, and its pale softness was closer than she’d
imagined, the wings brushing through her hair. She ducked, but
already the great bird was ahead of her, flying round the corner of
the castle and then upwards back into overcast sky. Was it where
she was meant to go? To the corner of the castle? The gold cord in
her mind was growing ever more powerful, pulsating until it drove
almost all her other thoughts into hiding.

She reached the other side of the battered
walls, slipped a few more paces and fell to her knees. At head
height she saw a small door, which was glowing, sparking crimson
and black and silver. The shape of it sprang fully-formed into her
imagination as if it had always been there and she knew what it was
at once. Cursing, she scrabbled with the opening and pulled the
door outwards to reveal a small cupboard. It smelled of spices and
bread. Worse than anything this day might demand of her however was
the presence of the mind-cane. Annyeke couldn’t help but give a
small cry as its physical proximity connected with the image of its
calling in her thoughts. It was like fire and ice, air and sea
filling her very being, impossible to understand and impossible to
contain.

Before she could scramble backwards in a vain
attempt to protect herself, the cane sprang out, all but pushing
her down. She had no real idea how it had managed to miss her or
what its intentions were, but as it freed itself from its strange
prison and righted itself in the air, Annyeke stood up and smoothed
down her dress. She’d be damned for the eternal time-cycle if she,
First Elder of Gathandria, did not face this challenge on her feet
and with something approaching dignity.

“What do you want?” she asked in a whisper,
cautious still about allowing the words she spoke to dwell in her
mind only for fear of what the cane might do to her there.

She didn’t expect an answer as, to her
knowledge, the mind-cane had never communicated with anyone apart
from Simon, unless it was to threaten or wound, and that she
supposed was a kind of communication in itself. But the cane sprang
to her side as if obeying an order she had not given and the next
moment she felt the warm glitter of its touch for a brief moment on
her hand. From some deep-seated obstinacy even she hadn’t realised
she possessed, she somehow prevented herself from crying out. At
the same time, the sound of weeping rolled over her: the old man,
Simon’s father. It was the end then, the Lost One was truly
gone.

Before she could react, the mind-cane twisted
itself under her arm and pulled her away from the castle back the
way she had come, towards the courtyard and the crying. Annyeke
wrenched her arm away, her throat suddenly dry with possibility,
but she continued to chase the cane’s path as it flickered and
danced over the cobbles. Above them both, the snow-raven swooped
and swung in the clouds.

Annyeke had no notion as to what would happen
next, but if the mind-cane had a plan to save Simon, she would
follow it until all hope was gone.

Simon

The world stopped. The pain disappeared and
for a long and blissful moment Simon felt nothing at all. Except
the knowledge of death and how it held him.

Ralph

He hears her before he sees her. The sound of
her footsteps, though muffled by snow, is louder against the
silence of the people. Ralph springs to his feet and launches his
rage and sense of loss towards the Gathandrian Elder.

“If you had been here, you could have done
something to save this man, you with your mind-skills and smugness,
surely that would not have been too much for you?”

Before the words are out of his mouth, he
knows how petty they sound, and how much of the anger would be
better directed towards himself, but Annyeke merely grimaces. It is
at this point Ralph becomes aware of the mind-cane. He hisses
between his teeth, from instinct drops into battle pose and then
almost at once realises how meaningless that is. In spite of
everything, the Lammas Lord is proud of the fact he hasn’t stepped
back. Annyeke smiles.

“If you hadn’t made the Lost One into a
murderer and a slave, then perhaps we wouldn’t be here at all,” she
retorts, and he has no comeback to her accusations.

The mind-cane is having none of this. It
leaps from Annyeke’s side and parts the crowd of people huddling
round the death-tree like a mighty wind parting the rivers. The
villagers slip and slide away, some falling and scrabbling upright
again, all of them running to the edge of the courtyard to escape.
The only one of them who remains is the blacksmith, and Ralph can
feel the dark waves of his hatred flowing over them. It is as if
the experiences which have brought him here have made him
impenetrable to any sense of fear, or legend. Behind him lurks the
castle’s cook, as she too has not run far.

In the meantime, the mind-cane hovers over
Simon’s dead body, like a dog returning to a defeated master. It’s
glowing silver, its brightness almost too hard to look at.
Something in Ralph’s head cracks open and he gasps. When he
stretches out his hand, his fingers meet Annyeke’s and he grips her
unexpected steadiness, all animosity forgotten, but there is
something missing, something his mind aches to reach but
cannot.

The mind-cane. It needs you.

The coolness of her voice in his thoughts
shocks him to action and he lets her go. For one wild heartbeat, he
wonders if he can answer her in kind, but that power has never been
his. He is no true mind-dweller but only a half-breed of sorts.

“Why? Why does it need me?” he says. “What in
the stars’ names can I do for Simon now?”

Annyeke shakes her head. You know. You must
reach for the knowledge yourself, Lammas Lord, and soon. For
Simon’s sake, please.

As the mind-cane begins to sing, a
high-pitched and piercing note which drives its own urgency through
his blood, Ralph struggles to comprehend what he is being asked.
Somehow he understands there is, oh miraculously, a small pocket of
time in which the scribe can be saved, brought back from the dead
if that is even possible. But Ralph is a soldier, a regional Lord,
or he was once, not so long ago; he is no mystic to dabble with
meanings and magic. The strange green energy which explodes in his
head is beyond his ability to manage, and he groans, clutching at
his hair and falling to his knees. There are voices in the wind, so
many of them, and he cannot understand a single one of their
messages, while all the time the cursed cane dances over the body
of the man he loves. By the gods and stars he must do something to
end this pain or it will consume him.

And then one single voice, coming to him from
the depths of madness. Yes, she tells him, do it, focus on what you
see, on what you hear. Do it.

Her voice vanishes, and there is nothing
left, only noise, and emerald fire swirling and spitting around
him. Suddenly, just as he tastes failure on his tongue, he
understands the message the mind-cane is giving him. He reaches
into his cloak, feels the icy hardness of the jewels he retrieved
from the kitchen. Without thinking any more but knowing it is the
only action he can take, he flings them at the cane. The mind-cane
leaps to meet them, fire licking the air, and everything turns
dark.

Simon

The world exploded into his mind and body
once more and death slipped away. He knew how strong it had been,
and how much he’d given in to it. But now he was no longer hanging
from the tree. He could not feel the agonising stretch in his arms,
the splinter of pain at his right shoulder. Even so, every bone,
every part of his skin cried out for relief. He opened his mouth,
panted, but no sound came out. He had not expected it. He had been
… somewhere. He understood that, but the sense of the place he had
been in was rapidly vanishing out of his mind-grasp.

There had been people, Lammassers,
Gathandrians and a hundred other races and beings, but their
shapes, and whether he might have known any of them, were also fast
disappearing, and the more his thoughts grasped after them, the
faster they fled. It had been a place of darkness and light, of
night and day, simultaneously. It had been full of singing but also
utterly silent, a silence which flowed through his blood and into
the very centre of his being. The silence had overpowered his
senses so his only response had been to weep, at the same time as
he had been filled with such joy as he had never known. He had
stood, his feet on the expansive earth, and had seen the horizon
stretch out so far he could not see where the ground ended and the
sky began, or indeed if those measures meant anything in this
strange and glorious setting.