The Executioner's Cane (3 page)

“Frankel? Let it go, won’t you?” she snapped
at last, pushing her hair away from her eyes and, no doubt,
streaking flour over her face. “The rats will always be with us. So
what is the use of it all?”

To her annoyance, Jemelda found her eyes were
wet. Ridiculous. She never cried. She wasn’t the crying kind. This
too was no help whatsoever. As she heard the clatter of her
husband’s broom where it fell to the floor, she gave the undulating
dough one great pummel and hissed between her teeth. Best that than
the words she might say. Nobody ever knew when either the gods or
stars were listening.

When Frankel’s thin arms went round her, she
leaned back against him and sighed, trying to put the dark and
murderous thoughts away. He felt frail but warm. He didn’t say
anything and she was glad of it. She couldn’t think of any words
which might improve the situation they and all the Lammas people
found themselves in. This year-cycle would be spoken about – if
there were any left to speak about it anyway – as one in which many
curses had been laid upon their heads. Firstly, the way the Lammas
Lord had turned against his own people, aided by the murderer and
mind-delver, Simon the Scribe, and the terrifying mind-executioner.
Jemelda could never think of his name without shuddering. The loss
of so many friends and neighbours, killed for no good reason she
could see or understand. What was so special about mind-skills in
any case? Then the way Simon had vanished, spirited away at his own
hanging by the mysterious people of Gathandria. At once, the Lammas
Lord and the mind-executioner had pursued him and it was then that
the land and home Jemelda loved began to disintegrate before her
very eyes. Homes torn down and field crops ruined. Even the plants
already stored for the winter had rotted away for no reason and
many of the animals had died. The autumn-cycle planting had come to
nothing and it was a sky-mystery how the people – what there were
left of them – would eat at all when the spring-cycle arrived. If
it did. And this terrible destruction and death – for yes, yet more
strange disease and death had swept over them and only a handful of
her once thriving village were left to mourn – had happened with no
visible enemy attacking them, with nobody to fight against.
Something to do with the Lammas Lord’s journey to Gathandria,
something to do with the mind-wars. She could make no sense of it.
Nothing like this had ever occurred in her parents’ or
grandparents’ time; no stories were told of such things.

Back then she had thought it could not get
any worse. But then Lord Tregannon had returned, alone, an all but
defeated man. And after him had come the mind-executioner and his
army of wild dogs and undead soldiers. When they had departed in an
overwhelming storm of magic and terror, the skies above the village
had turned to night and the trees themselves had wept. Stone had
roared and rivers had flooded their banks and poured as red as
blood through the village byways and paths. She hadn’t even known
if she, Frankel and the Lammas Lord’s young steward, Apolyon would
survive but somehow they had.

When, after a day of hiding in the woods, she
had finally gained the courage to return, with her bedraggled
spouse and fellow-servant, she had heard the Lammas Lord’s weeping
as she had approached the ruined castle.

She had not thought to comfort him. She was a
cook. She baked and fed people. That was her calling and she was no
comforter. Certainly not of one who had betrayed them so.

“Hush,” Frankel whispered in her ear. “I
know, my love, I know.”

Jemelda shook herself. She hadn’t realised
she’d been whispering aloud some of her thoughts. No matter. Only
Frankel was present to hear them. He had always kept her secrets.
Turning towards him, she half-smiled. He squeezed her arm and let
go. Reaching behind, he picked up the broom, his grey hair catching
a ray of morning light through the gaps in the stonework. He smiled
back at her.

“Come then,” he said. “We can do nothing
important here. We are only what we are and we must fulfil the
small roles we play. I must sweep the kitchen and you must bake the
bread to feed our Master, no matter what his circumstances or ours.
This is what we were born for.”

She was about to reply when something
happened. Not something physical but something beyond that. A
strangeness in itself as she did not count herself as one who
delved into mind-games at any level. Jemelda always lived her life
fully in the skin. She swung round. Outside the window she caught a
sense of movement. But the shape had gone as soon as she thought
she saw it. Was it Ralph Tregannon? Had he left the castle at such
an hour?

The next moment, a low but piercing whistle
split the air. The hawk-hunting cry. Despite what she’d been
thinking about the Lammas overlord earlier, she was all but running
towards the doorway, bread forgotten. Despite everything, she found
she didn’t want Tregannon to come to harm. At the door, she came to
a sudden and juddering halt. She’d expected to see Lord Tregannon.
She did not.

Instead she saw a slight man. Brown hair and
pale face. Almost nondescript apart from the haunting power of his
eyes. How they had all been seduced by that, at first. Wrapped
around his tunic was a cloak that shimmered with all the colours of
blue and green, although its impact would have been far greater if
it had not been streaked with mud and torn in places. At the exact
same moment the cook noticed the silver-topped cane dancing in the
man’s hand, a vast white shape flew over them both, almost knocking
the unwelcome visitor over.

Jemelda shook off her husband’s restraining
hand and, uncaring of the effects or reactions of either the deadly
mind-cane or the strange bird, ran into the courtyard and found the
words she’d wanted to say to this man for so long.

“How dare you come to us like this,” she
hissed. “You will never in the eternal time-cycles now or to come
be welcome here amongst the Lammas people. Murderer.”

And that was only the beginning. Once her
words had begun, Jemelda found she couldn’t stop. All the pain and
misery and death this foreign murderer had caused, the grief and
poverty he’d brought upon them rose up on her tongue. She called
him names she’d almost forgotten. Ancient curses in the ancient
language. Words she’d only heard her grandmother say. Scorpion;
Dark Cloud-Bringer; Ravid Dog. Simon the Scribe stood his ground as
she continued to vent her wrath. In spite of the purple anger that
roared and swooped around them both like a north-west gale, she
could at least give him that. She’d thought at the first sight of
her – cane or no cane – he’d run like the coward he was. He did
not, although his hand on the cane’s silver top tightened until the
skin on his fingers was as white as rice-milk. She wanted to lunge
at him, drive his pallid face down to the ground until blood gushed
upwards to mar that elegant face of his. She wanted to do a hundred
things she’d never dared to do before. Why didn’t she fear the
power of the old mysteries? The legends of her land should be
calling to her, speaking of the caution all her people felt when
confronted by mind-power in whatever form. But this fierce new
anger swept through her and she could not tell where it came from
or what it meant. She only knew she felt she could do anything, and
it was the mere fact of the cane held her back. It had caused too
many tears in this land. She would make do only with her words, for
now, which could never be piercing enough, by the stars. Later, she
would do more, something within her whispered, but now was not the
time for it.

Simon

Whoever Jemelda was, she had a great deal to
say, and rightly so. While the cane remained in his grasp, Simon
could feel the waves of her anger flooding over him like the
wildest river in its fullest rage. All the colours of red and
orange and the deepest black flowed round him. He felt as if he
would drown if he so much as lost his footing. He wanted to run but
the cane and the bird kept him there. Such depth and heat of fury
was beyond what even he had expected and he couldn’t understand how
the woman facing him could contain these levels of hatred and
power.

Of course he had expected anger from these
people, but, by the gods and stars, nothing like this. Had he
underestimated the experiences of the Lammassers and the wrong he
had done them so very greatly? She had, he suspected, only just
commenced the true depths of her accusations when a thin, shadowy
figure appeared from behind her as if from nowhere. Frankel was the
name that coloured his mind in soft shades of blue and mauve. An
old man, who seemed as if he could at any moment collapse to the
ground and stay there. How Simon understood that.

At his side, the raven launched itself into
the air. He had no idea what the great bird might do. He stumbled
to his knees.

“Please,” he whispered, though he had no idea
whether he was begging the angry woman, the frail man, the bird or
indeed something else entirely. “Please, I’m sorry …”

The woman fell silent at once and the cane
flashed green and yellow in his hands. Then it too returned to its
customary state, and the bird alighted on the ground a little way
off and cocked his head, viewing the encounter. The man called
Frankel spoke.

“What do you want here, Simon the Scribe?” he
asked.

Jemelda made as if to step forward, perhaps
punish him physically in some way, but Frankel laid a hand on her
shoulder and she merely grimaced.

“What do you want?” Frankel said again.

In truth, Simon wondered. He had come here
with such confidence, such purpose which had seemed so right to him
at the time – but now his ideas and hopes resembled nothing so much
as leaves on the wind.

“I-I don’t know,” he stuttered. “I wanted to
put things right. I’m sorry.”

Another silence, and he wished he’d never had
the courage to come. He gripped the mind-cane more firmly but no
help came from there.

Jemelda’s lips moved, and Simon held his
breath, bracing himself for yet another torrent of abuse he
undoubtedly deserved. This however did not arrive. Instead the cook
twisted her mouth further and spat directly at him. Her aim was
good. Her saliva hit him on the right cheek, just below his eye,
and flowed downwards towards his chin.

“Murderer,” she said again, turned on her
heels and marched back into the part of the castle she had appeared
from. The kitchen, Simon knew, though he had never physically been
there. Had never, when he was Lord Tregannon’s companion, needed
to.

Frankel sighed.

Simon rose to his feet. He stopped looking at
the doorway where Jemelda had disappeared and gazed at the cook’s
husband instead. His figure and hair were a study of age and
greyness, but the colours of his mind folded over Simon’s and were,
as he had sensed before, made up of the softness of blue and mauve.
For a moment, the Lost One closed his eyes and felt their
refreshment on his skin.

When he opened them again, his vision was
blurred, but he did not raise a hand either to wipe away his tears
or the spittle on his face.

“Thank you,” he said.

Frankel shook his head. “I have done nothing,
scribe, but you have done too much, and yet you still come to
us.”

“I am sorry.”

“So you say, again. Yet my wife is right in
her beliefs – your sorrow cannot help us. Not now and perhaps not
ever. This land is marked for destruction and loss because of you.
The gods and stars have made that clear.”

“Yes, I know it. I am … no matter. You know
what I would say already. But surely if I do not even try to
correct what I have done wrong in some measure, then the gods and
stars have every right to punish us all to the hilt.”

Frankel blinked at the scribe, as if seeing
him for the first time. The colours Simon sensed from him darkened
and twisted together before flowing apart once more. In his hand,
the mind-cane suddenly felt warmer, a heat that crept from his
fingers, down his arm and then into his whole body. He thought it
might almost be like hope, but he could not say for certain.

The other man took a step back and turned
away. Simon felt the tears dampen his cheeks, but then the old man
turned again.

“If you come in, Jemelda, my wife, will not
harm you,” he said.

It was only when, legs trembling, he began to
follow Frankel towards the kitchen that Simon felt the brush of
someone else’s eyes upon him. But when he looked up at a window
high at the corner of the ruined building, there was nobody
there.

Ralph

Simon is here. Covered in mud, wearied and
his beautiful cloak torn from the gods and stars know what kind of
terrible journey, but he is here. Ralph has never believed he would
come. Simon the Scribe. It is what he has dreamed of. It is what he
has dreaded.

Jemelda upbraids him and Simon sinks to his
knees. If Ralph were there on the courtyard now, beside Simon, he
would tear his servant apart until she ceased to speak. That kind
of courage is, however, no longer his. The pounding of his heart is
so great in his ears he is surprised Simon does not hear him and
look up. But he does not. Ralph knows with the full intent of his
blood it is not this man the cook should be accusing in the way she
does. It is Ralph.

Still, it is what Simon grasps that sends
shivers through Ralph’s skin. In his hand, Simon holds the
mind-cane, its black length and silver-carved top seeming to be an
extension of himself. It fits more naturally there than it ever did
in the mind-executioner’s hand. Gelahn is dead. Ralph knows that.
He saw it happen. He saw the moment when Annyeke Hallsfoot, the
Gathandrian First Elder, took up the mind-sword and he saw the
moment when the understanding of death swept through Gelahn’s eyes.
He will never forget either of these images; they live always in
his memory. He did not expect Simon would take the cane and return
here. Whatever comes of this, it cannot bode well for any of them.
Perhaps if he had the courage to take his stand in the courtyard
right now, it should not be Jemelda, but Simon he would need to
fight.