The Executioner's Cane (26 page)

He turned back and gazed outside, blinking.
For another moment or two, he saw nothing. Then a shadowy figure
came round the castle corner and began to hurry across the
courtyard in front of him, every now and then looking back as if in
fear of pursuit. He debated whether to call out, bring their
presence here out into the open as surely whoever it was could not
be here for any legitimate reason. The Lammassers rarely travelled
at night as it was too dangerous, or had been before and during the
wars.

However, he himself had been an interloper
once, so what right did he have to call attention to another? But
he needed to know who it was, come what may. He leant further out
of the window but still could not see enough, only that it was a
woman and she was carrying something in her arms. By now she was
nearly at the stream and then his chance would have gone, and
something in his mind and the way the cane was flooding its warmth
through him told him more than anything how important this might
be.

At the last moment, before she disappeared
from view, white feathers swept across the moon and dazzled the
water where the unknown woman was poised to cross. The snow-raven
flew onwards but as the woman glanced up, Simon could clearly see
it was Jemelda, and then a few heartbeats later she was gone.

The only reason she could be here was to work
against them, that much he was sure of and that much he had already
understood from his brief brush with Ralph’s mind. It had been
easy, being as it was at the forefront of the Lammas Lord’s
thoughts. The cook must have taken something from the castle back
to wherever she and her people were hiding. Unless she’d come to
try to persuade Frankel to join her, a mission which had proved
unsuccessful, bearing in mind she’d left alone. But no, it was
more: she had been carrying something with her and, in any case,
the colours flowing round his thought were red and the deepest
brown, the shades of purpose and determination, not the shades of
plea and defeat.

She was planning something. He wondered
briefly whether to rouse his host to let him know what he had seen
but it was the middle of the night and they would be better able to
face whatever mission Jemelda was involved with in the morning. He
grasped the cane more firmly to make the journey back to the
makeshift bed but a further movement at the edge of his eye caught
his attention. Someone else was walking slowly across the
courtyard. By the time Simon caught sight of him, the figure was
already in the middle of the stone flags, and he could see grey
beard and a stooped physique. The Lost One swallowed hard and let
go of the cane which would have fallen if it had been in any way
ordinary but, as it was, the artefact danced across the room
sparking a darker fire against the gloom. He let it dance, his mind
and eye gripped by the old man still walking across his vision
below. His father. He’d known it even before he’d fully understood
the old man was there. Odd how their colours of blue and silver
were similar, although his were pale and his father’s were dark,
and wilder.

He saw the figure stop, straighten and gaze
upwards at his window. It was impossible for anyone to see where he
stood trembling so far up, but Simon had the sense his father saw
him, nonetheless. His throat constricted and his skin felt cold,
colder even than this winter night warranted. He did not want his
father to watch him. Simon had not seen him since the day so many
year-cycles ago when his mother had been murdered and his father
had driven him away. Yes, he knew how, recently, during their long
and arduous journey to Gathandria, he had told Johan everything
about that day and had walked some way towards forgiveness, of a
sort. But it was one thing to forgive in principle and quite
another to retain the same generosity when the man who had wronged
him was actually here. How he understood this now. There was a wide
gap between plans for a book and the actual scribing of it.
Nonetheless he did not turn away from his father’s strange perusal
but gazed back into the gloom.

One heartbeat his father was there, and the
next he had continued on his slow progression towards the edge of
the castle, almost without Simon noticing the change. He should go
to bed, get the sleep he needed without this introspection.
Tomorrow he would tell Ralph of what he had seen and warn the
remaining Lammassers to take care, and he would talk to his father.
He was no longer a child. He was the Lost One and he should have
courage enough to face personal matters as well as more
wide-ranging ones. So should it be.

Jemelda

She was the last one back to the old well
and, as she approached, the cook could see her people hiding in the
shadows, the women crouching down on the most part with the men
keeping a look-out. None of them were speaking, and she couldn’t
even hear the faint echo of whispering. They had obeyed her
instructions to draw as little attention to themselves as possible.
She hoped they had had as much success with the goods she had sent
them to steal. Though steal wasn’t the word she was searching for:
using what was theirs in truth would be better.

“Is it done?” she whispered, gazing at them
in turn as they parted to let her through. “Do you have what we
came for?”

“Yes,” said Thomas, his voice nothing but a
low growl in her ear. “I checked with each of us as we
arrived.”

“Good. Then let us to work,” she said.

They didn’t take long in arriving at the
first of the fields, the one most often used for corn although
every fifth year-cycle the men would burn the stubble and re-sow
the next season for wheat or oats. Jemelda knew this was the field
where the menfolk had been trying most recently to sow the poor
seed left to them in the hope there might still be a harvest in the
next year-cycle. In the hope that the crops, however poor the
yield, might be enough to allow them to live in their homes and to
rebuild their lives as best they could. She had hardened her heart
to this short-term view and now she was baking a different recipe,
something to nourish them all in the end. Because she understood,
more than any of those she had taken so long to persuade and who
accompanied her this night, that if the hope of food to come was
destroyed and in such a way so none could be in doubt of it, then
the people would be forced to forage in the woods and wilder
meadows. Even perhaps towards the once-majestic mountain. It was
war, and this was the only way she knew how to fight it, seeing as
she and her people would never be soldiers, though she would do her
utmost to ensure that no innocent person died for this. So she
would find the scribe and his allies when they fled to search for
nourishment. She would find them and she would kill them. Away from
the village and perhaps parted from the bird and the cane, the
murderer’s power would be weakened and she would kill him. If some
of her own people were marked by the gods for death, she would have
to accept that also. Then, when the threat to them all was finally
destroyed, they would leave and make another home for themselves
elsewhere. Away from the cruelty of memory.

Now her people gathered round her. This close
she could see they had enough supplies.

She nodded. “Let us begin.”

Between them it took less than the length of
a summer story, perhaps even one for the children, to cover most of
the field with wood, ashes and scraps of cloth. It was astounding
how much of use could be found in a village devastated by war. When
this was done, Jemelda scattered the fire-oil across the wintry
ground, all the while praying the ancient song of burning, the song
the villagers used to chant on the bitterest night-seasons:

Let the fire-gods and sky-gods unite

and give us the blessings of fire.

Then may we burn up what is useless

and give back the heat to our skin and the
sky.

As she began the song, the villagers around
her grew quiet to pay their respects to those gods people rarely
worshipped in these times, and perhaps also to better hear the
words as Jemelda kept her voice low, nothing but a chanted whisper.
At the last two lines however, Thomas’ gruff voice joined hers and
doubled the blessing. It was fitting because blacksmiths were used
to fire. It was their livelihood. Finally she had done as much as
she thought was necessary and she laid her hand on Thomas’
shoulder.

“Make the fire a good one,” she said.

He made no answer but she thought he might
have nodded. Her grip on him tightened for a moment before she let
him go and he turned to take the fire-sticks from his belt. She saw
him run his hand over them as if communicating in some way with the
treated wood, and then she caught the flash of white teeth as he
smiled. She thought it might be the first time she’d seen him smile
since she’d found him again in the woods.

The blacksmith spat on his hands and wiped
them over the sticks. Then he took the final drop of fire-oil
Jemelda had saved for him and brushed it over the wood also. She
heard his muttered prayers as he rubbed the fire-sticks together.
For a moment or two, she wondered if it would work, but of course
it always did. The sparks came quickly and a tiny arrow of flame
fell onto the field where it licked its way into a tongue of fire
and began to spread along the trail of ashes and wood they had laid
for it. Jemelda watched in wonder as the flames progressed. She had
only ever used fire herself for baking or keeping warm but to see
it used here as an act of destruction made her heart beat faster
and her throat tighten. She didn’t know whether that was fear or
elation, perhaps both.

It didn’t take long for the ground and the
soil beneath it to begin to burn. In her mind’s vision, Jemelda
could almost see the corn seeds and the seeds of spare herbs
scattered at the edges of the field turn to nothing but ashes and
dust. The fire-oil knew how to sink deep into the earth and destroy
everything it met, especially with the power of the prayers Thomas
had muttered and the song she had sung.

As the fire reached its height, the cook
swung away and beckoned for her people to follow. The murderer
would be dead by the winter-cycle end and that, by all the strange
darkness that danced and rolled within her, was her solemn
promise.

Seventh Gathandrian
Interlude

Annyeke

She forced herself to stay alert, knowing she
must not lose consciousness with the pain of the fire in her mind.
The elders were rigid with the same pain; she knew it because of
the echo, or rather the blast of it in her thoughts. The people
were the same, and in those people the two she cared for most:
Johan and Talus.

As she whispered her husband’s name, she
became aware of the grip of his hand on her shoulder where somehow
in the midst of the chaos he had found his way to her.

Thank the gods, she cried out in her mind and
felt the mirror-sense of the words in his own. Then, as the horror
deepened: Talus?

With me, Annyeke, Talus is with me.

At once she wrapped the net of her thoughts,
sparse though it was in the heat and fire, around the boy’s mind
and found Johan’s mind-net already there. The flames around Talus
subsided and she caught the thought-sense of his cry which, under
the circumstances, was stronger than she’d hoped. The elders and
she had been the centre of the strange attack and, as a child, her
charge had been lucky. She hoped the grown Gathandrians could,
joined as they were, take care of themselves.

Was this the work of Iffenia? If it was, then
the Book of Blood had certainly helped her. In the middle of the
crimson heat, Annyeke saw a flash of emerald. The Lammas jewels.
For a heartbeat or two she wondered if someone could be travelling
to them through the wild green passageway the emeralds were able to
create, but she felt neither movement nor the punch of the
borderline between their two countries. No, the green she saw was
steadier and more contained. She needed to find out what it was and
quickly.

I can protect Talus for a while, Annyeke. You
must discover it.

She nodded her thanks at him, then making
sure the net around the boy maintained its strength, she reached
deep within her thoughts for the Lammas mark. It slipped through
her fingers like launderer’s soap and she muttered a soft curse she
hoped her husband would overlook. With a shake of her head, she
tried again and this time caught it. The wisp of green felt as if
it were sparkling into her skin, emerald turned to the strangest of
water, but in mere moments she’d understood why it was there and
what it was telling her. A heartbeat more and the heat was beyond
bearing, and she let the light go, watching it vanish to see if it
gave up any more of its secrets but it did not.

She came back to the knowledge of her body
and the strong presence of Johan and Talus beside her. Around them
the people and even the elders were rather less determined and she
knew then, as if for the first time, how much they needed her.

Help me, she asked her life-partner, the link
between them ensuring the privacy of her need. He reached for her
at once, understanding without further words what she was after was
a hand to support her, rather than a mind from which to gain
comfort. She would face the elders and the Gathandrians with her
own clear thought as a leader should. What she did not know was how
they would respond to the truth she had seen.

Once upright next to Johan, with Talus
gripping her other hand, Annyeke cast her mind-net across the
people. The colours of it, blue and gold and winter-white, fizzed
for a moment in the air before settling into the Gathandrians’
thoughts. She found the elders – yes, even the Chair Maker – were
helping the process and was grateful.