The Executioner's Cane (29 page)

He would overcome it, no matter what Jemelda
intended. He had beaten death, with the gods’ help, and it was this
he was made for. As the snow-raven floated above the field, Simon
glanced down and saw the ravages beneath. Most of the seed sown
would be lost but there might yet be some they could save. The
fire-oil’s explosion had taken the heart-energy of the blaze away,
and the men and women had started to beat out the flames that were
left. He could not see Ralph amongst the crowd but he would be
there, somewhere. Simon could sense it.

Bring me to the earth.

The words left his mind before he could fully
comprehend them and he felt the warmth of the mind-cane flooding
through his frame. The snow-raven turned on the whim of a wing and
dropped towards the land. As the earth rose up to greet him,
dizzyingly fast, Simon waited a moment more, heart beating
double-rate, and then let go. He landed on something softer than he
had expected, and without the heat of burning to it. That didn’t
stop the red fire of pain ripping through his skin as he came to a
halt, but at least he was feeling it in the land of breath, not
where the dead lay waiting.

The great bird gave one long screech, a note
of green edged with yellow tones, and flapped slowly away. He would
have no more help from the snow-raven this night, but the bird had
brought him here and that was what had been necessary.

Whatever was underneath him and had softened
his fall moved and made a sound like a slow groaning.

“Simon?” the Lammas Lord whispered.

Jemelda

She watched the scene from the edge of the
woods. Nobody could see her, or at least no-one battling the flames
on the field had time to confront her and she was glad of it. She
had sent the rest of her small band back to the cave where they
might find safety but she could not leave. She had to see the
results of her mission and, most of all, she needed to see the
reactions of the murderer.

Still, she almost cried out and began to run
to try to help when she saw the villager, one of the field-workers
who had been with them for more year-cycles than she could
remember, fleeing from the wolf threatening the men at the other
side of the fire. It was certain death to run wherever fire-oil had
been sprinkled and she would have done anything to save him, but
she could not. If her aim to kill the scribe was to be fulfilled,
she needed to remain alive. Her heart pounded when she saw the
Lammas Lord himself make as if to rescue the man, and she did not
know if she felt relief or disappointment when his young steward
tumbled him to safety.

She knew for certain what she felt when she
saw the great white bird in the sky and the burden he carried,
however. She wondered, with a strange leap of the heart, if the
scribe might die again when he seemed to release his grip on the
bird’s talons and plunge to the earth. But he had judged well and
the distance was not so far, all the more so as Lord Tregannon
caught him as he landed, softening the fall. Under her breath she
cursed, and felt that strange leap of the heart once more.

She was not as she used to be, and things
inside her were altering into a fashion she could not guess at, but
the bleak and all-consuming force she carried now was glad of it.
How she was learning to use her power.

Not wishing to see what the murderous scribe
would do, but knowing the fire would be doused, she slipped away
between the trees. The wolf at the other side of the field had
vanished but he would not harm her. Fire was a strong deterrent to
every creature in the land. It would have destroyed some of the
seed the Lammassers needed to live and she would have to be glad of
this one small step towards success. How she wished it had not come
with an unnecessary death however. She had not planned for
that.

It didn’t take her long to return to the
cave. Thomas was on the look-out for her and nodded when he picked
her out in the gloom, itself a shade lighter with the beginnings of
the distant sunrise.

“Is it done?” he asked her.

“Yes. It is a beginning,” she said. “But we
must do more.”

He nodded again and stood to let her pass.
The cave felt colder and Jemelda wrapped her thin cloak round her
more tightly to keep in what little warmth there was. Once inside,
she gazed round the group. The women were huddled together, the boy
amongst them, and she smiled at him. Tonight he had performed well
for one so young. The menfolk formed a barrier of protection around
the women. She had much to tell them.

“Come,” she said as Thomas sat down with the
group. “This is what we have achieved tonight, both for good and
for bad.”

As she told them how the seed had burned and
would produce a poor crop for the spring, they reacted with
calmness. This after all was what they had anticipated. But as she
came to the section of her story where one of their own had
perished, and the manner of it, the men began to grumble and the
women to shake. They had not bargained for another loss, although
it would be inevitable along the way. And in truth at the start of
this night, Jemelda had not bargained for it either, but she must
needs do so during their next attack. This much was clear.

She waited until they were quieter and then
she stared around at each one of them, catching their gaze for a
moment or two before moving on to the next and the next. Finally,
she looked at Thomas. He had not spoken although his posture in the
shadows seemed folded in on itself. She could only see his
eyes.

“There must be blood shed,” he whispered but
loud enough for all to hear, “before we can be free again.”

She thought he would say more but he did not.
She cleared her throat. “It is a terrible thing one of our
villagers had to die, but the wolf startled him and he ran. I could
not stop it. But I know if the murderer stays amongst us to do his
will, more of us will die as we did before and then no-one will be
able to stop him. Our own Lord cannot stand against his wiles, so
how should we think we can do it? Remember the wars and steel
yourselves for battle. For this is only the beginning. We will
harry our neighbours and our friends too so they have no choice but
to come to join us, and we will continue to fight to destroy the
murderer until we are free or until we die. There are no other
possibilities. We must steal the little grain they have left,
contaminate the water they drink and burn yet more fields until
there are none left to sow in order to flush him out for
destruction. We are the courageous ones and it is up to us to make
our land safe again and, though we will count the cost of the blood
which is shed, we will not turn away from it. Do you understand
this?”

Jemelda paused and looked round the people.
One by one they nodded, although some swallowed hard and a few of
the women gripped the hands of their neighbours. It was up to
Thomas to speak for them.

“We will follow you, Jemelda,” he said,
“until the man who has wronged us is most truly dead.”

Eighth Gathandrian
Interlude

Annyeke

The First Elder didn’t waste any time-cycles;
within the length of a winter evening story, she had settled the
Chair Maker into her home, leaving Johan organising the people into
work-teams for the morning. Little could be done tonight. Talus was
asleep in his bed-area. She had kissed him and soothed a
mind-comfort around his thought. Though such things were used for
younger children, she knew he had need of it, and now he would
sleep until daylight.

In the kitchen, she poured a beaker of water
for the Chair Maker who had accompanied her in silence and was
sitting on one of her kitchen stools. She was glad for the lack of
speech, as she needed to concentrate her mind for what needed to be
done. She was not fool enough to imagine her fellow-elder did not
glean at least some of this from keeping company with her, but he
would not understand everything. Annyeke had made sure of it.

She gave him his water-beaker and took one
for herself before sitting down opposite him. The water tasted warm
and musty but it would have to suffice as she did not have the
heart to renew it. The rest of her people did not take fresh water
more than once a day in this post-war world, and neither would
she.

Annyeke put down the glass and gazed at the
Chair Maker. “You must tell me the truth, about everything you and
your wife have done, or nothing of what we try to heal in any of
the lands will succeed. Why did you not tell me this before?”

She thought he might protest, tell her she
was mistaken, but he did not. He laughed and she swore a dark
shadow she could not grasp drifted over his expression but the next
moment it had gone and he was himself again.

“Why do you not simply read my mind?” he
asked her. “It would be quicker to get the truth you say I keep
from you.”

She leaned forward, knowing a frown was
wrinkling her forehead. “I do not ravish your thought like that,
because I am not made of that ilk. I am not an elder who moulds
everything to suit myself and does not care who suffers for it.
Then again, neither am I an elder who will let you ruin the lives
of our people and not see you punished in full. So, I will ask you
once more only in words: tell me the truth about your wife and how
far this dabbling with the most evil of legends has gone, and do
not addle me with the foolish sentiment you did before. By the
great Gathandrian spirit, Chair Maker, speak or that will be the
end of it.”

She meant what she said, and she knew the
Chair Maker could see it. His lips thinned and he sighed.

“No matter,” he said, breaking her gaze. “You
will know soon enough, and the damage has already begun. So, I will
tell you what I know, First Elder.”

As the Chair Maker began to speak, he first
took a careful sip of the water she had given him, so Annyeke
wondered if he thought it might be poisoned, as if drinking from
her own beaker should not have told him otherwise. If she killed,
she would kill cleanly as she had despatched the mind-executioner;
she would not perform such finality in the dark.

“I explained to you how much I loved my
wife,” he said. “Iffenia has been my heart’s joy from the day I met
her. When Johan and Isabella started their journey to find the
mysterious Lost One, we knew there would be difficulties for us and
we knew above all else that finding the Lost One would bring a
diminishing of the elders’ power. How could it be otherwise? We
knew, or at least some of us did, the story we were unleashing. In
the very beginning, whilst our then First Elder was burying himself
deep within our ancient Gathandrian legends in his search for what
he could discover about Simon, Iffenia and I were, all along,
meditating on other, perhaps more ancient, stories. As you have
discovered, the Tale of the Book of Blood was one of them.”

Annyeke blinked. It was as she had dreaded.
The Book of Blood was the one book in the elders’ library which was
never opened for fear of what lay there. She couldn’t help
shivering at the knowledge the Chair Maker and his wife had
plundered it. What had they found within its pages?

The man opposite her laughed once more, and
she felt the sudden pressure of his mind on hers, like the onset of
a winter storm. “Ah, Annyeke, we found much riches in it, such
quantity of them you could not dream of. All our partnered lives
Iffenia and I had dreaded the certainty of death and the terror of
being apart, but the Book of Blood took away our fear. We knew if
we followed its wisdom, the wisdom of the earth and not the sky, we
would find the everlasting link between us, which meant we would
never be alone, not even after death. Can you see how happy that
made us and how we had no other choice but to follow the teachings
we discovered?”

Annyeke knew there were no words to respond
to this story of his, so she said nothing, and after a moment or
two he continued, perhaps seeing something of what she held in her
thought. Still, in spite of his insistence of joy, the Chair Maker
told her the heart of his tale in something approaching a whisper.
His eyes clouded over as she watched him, as if reliving the
experience over again.

*****

It happened one winter evening. I was late
back from my initial meeting with the elders, as it was the time
when I was about to become one of them. We had even meditated
together. Iffenia was waiting for me on the threshold of our home
and the sight of her made my blood sing. She must have been looking
out for my return. I knew before I reached her side there was
something different about her; the shifting colours of her aura
were rippled with black. She was hiding a secret from the minds of
others she planned to reveal to me alone.

“Come,” she whispered as I came nearer and
she reached for my arm. “I have something to show you and something
to tell.”

Inside, shadows encroached the familiar
shapes of my home and I followed my partner through the narrow
hallway and into the bedroom. I thought she would share her day
with me in the eating-area as she cooked, but that was not her
plan. She gestured to me to sit upon our bed and I did so, gazing
up at her with a smile. I eased my mind to hers and felt her warmth
envelop my thought.

Instead of allowing me to sense her purpose,
she shook her head and returned my smile. Do you trust me?

The answer to her question was simple: with
all that I am.

Iffenia nodded and hunkered down next to me.
She reached under the bed and drew out something rectangular that
glittered crimson. I knew what it was at once. From its heart
flowed fire and blood and I couldn’t help myself, I veered away and
stared at her. How did you get that and why have you brought it
here?