The Executioner's Cane (32 page)

The Lammas Lord pushed his way through a pile
of broken stones at the side of the hall where the autumn-cycle
tapestry had once dwelled. Briefly, Simon wondered where it had
gone and if he would see such beauty here again, but already Ralph
was indicating them through into a part of the castle Simon had
rarely visited.

“This is where my guests once waited,” Ralph
said, “if they wished for privacy. It is not as badly affected as
other rooms in my home and there are two or three stools left for
sitting. Will this be adequate for your needs, Scribe? If it rains
or snows again, you will avoid the worst of the weather.”

Simon nodded. “Thank you.”

It was a dismissal, of sorts, but Ralph
hesitated before turning. “Do-do you wish me to stay?”

This time his tone was softer and more
hesitant, and the Lost One sensed the concern behind it, compassion
too, and understood how he did not deserve this response. “No,
Ralph, please, this my father and I must do without others.”

Simon watched Ralph’s lips purse into a line
in the morning gloom, and then with a swirl of his thin cloak Lord
Tregannon made his exit.

He and his father were alone.

Unable to look into the old man’s face, Simon
reached out and drew up a stool.

“Sit,” he said. “You will have need of
rest.”

For a moment, he thought his father would
ignore him, but the old man sighed and did as Simon had suggested.
“Would you like something to eat or drink?”

Not that there would be much of either, but
his father shook his head, and it was Simon’s turn to sigh. He
could have done with the brief distraction, because he found his
heart was beating fast and his thoughts unable to settle. He sat
down himself but his legs could not be still. Carefully, he laid
the mind-cane upon his knees and felt the soothing warmth flow into
his skin. It gave him some necessary ease. It was obvious that
being dead and reborn by the power of the gods did not give you the
insight you might have hoped for.

He coughed, and his father gazed at him. A
shadow passed between them, an absence of light in the colours of
their thoughts, and Simon blinked. From instinct, he grasped after
whatever it might have been, but the brief darkness swirled back
against him and swallowed itself up so no shadow remained. He must
have imagined it, and he was only being foolish. Indeed, the
mind-cane sparked a crimson flare to remind him what he was here
for, and he shook himself and spoke.

“It is many year-cycles since we saw each
other, father,” he said, such meaningless words to begin with but
he could think of nothing else. And as he said them, in his mind he
was back at the day they had last met: the smell of the crowd, the
beating of the drums; his mother; the rope. Her death. And the
stone his father had thrown to drive him away. A betrayal, but
perhaps a mercy too, as Johan had once said. How Simon thought he
had accepted this possibility, but here with his father in front of
him after these long year-cycles of absence, forgiveness of any
sort was another matter, one he had not even touched on in his
conversation with his friend. Not in reality.

The old man groaned and rubbed one hand
through his grey matted hair. Simon could see the shift in his
thought-colours and the gathering darkness of shared memory, a more
physical entity than whatever he had glimpsed before.

He tried again. “Do you think we might be
able to find a common field between us? We share the same blood,
though you never came to search for me.”

There it was. The accusation. Simon could
taste the bitterness of it on his tongue. It overwhelmed him and
the heat from where he gripped the mind-cane plunged upward to his
lips.

“Yes, you never came,” he leaned forward,
lowering his voice. “Whatever Johan suggested of how you might have
loved me enough to drive me from danger, you never came looking for
me after the danger was past. I was alone, and you were in the end
no father to me at all.”

Without realising it, Simon had risen from
his stool and was pacing the few steps it took to reach the wall of
the small room Ralph had allocated them, back and forth, back and
forth. Realising the pointlessness of the action, he stopped and
tried to bring himself under control again. This was no way to talk
to his father, however estranged, not if they wished to rebuild
some kind of relationship again.

“You are right.”

The words came out of nowhere and pierced his
mind like the hottest of flames. He sat down. It was the first time
he had heard his father’s voice for so long and he found he had no
idea how to respond to the sensations it stirred within him.

“Right about what?” he whispered.

Instead of an answer, the old man began to
sway, shaking his head fiercely from side to side, and rocking on
his stool so Simon feared he might fall. It would have been easy to
sense his thoughts, but Simon did not wish to do it, partly from
courtesy and partly from fear. His father’s mind was unstable and
likely to remain so; touching him and forming a thought-link would
only crush his fragility entirely, and despite everything which had
happened and not happened between them he did not wish to do
that.

Still, the old man was saying words, but they
were so low the scribe could hardly make them out. “Please, I don’t
know what you’re saying. Look at me, I can’t hear you.”

It was no use. His father was swaying
dangerously now and his muttering was rising swiftly to become a
chant which pierced Simon’s mind. The old man would hurt himself
and then their progress, if there had been any, would be for
nought. The cane sparked a greater warmth in his hand, and the Lost
One brought it upwards, reaching across to touch the old man’s
shoulder with the ebony tip of the artefact. At the same time, he
concentrated his thoughts to provide a mind-net of safety for his
father, channelling its strength through the cane and into the old
man’s body. Where he was afraid to touch him, the presence of the
mind-cane might provide a higher grace. With the power to kill and
bring to life which lay in the cane’s sleek ebony, it was madness,
but it was sanity also; what Simon could not perform, the artefact
most certainly could, if he willed it so. And will it he did, as
much as was in his power.

The first touch of the cane caused silver
sparks to fly from his father’s skin, and the old man tried to get
away but Simon held him there. I will not hurt you, he said,
knowing that with the connection his father could understand him
even if he would not reply. The cane is a bridge, not a sword to
me. Please, have faith, as you once had faith in my mother.

His father’s eyes widened, but the sparks
from the cane faded and his struggle eased. He was breathing
heavily, but not too quickly, a sound that echoed Simon’s own heart
as he brought the renewed power of his thought to bear on the
mind-cane’s link.

The old man’s lips moved, but this time Simon
could hear the words clearly. “The cane is death, it is
cursed.”

So I thought once, he said, believe me. But
it sings to me and I listen.

“Your mother used to sing. She sang like the
winter-lark.”

The Lost One blinked away tears, the cane
trembling in his hand. Yes, she did. I remember, always.

“Because of you, Charis died.”

Simon flinched. There was so much injustice
in that statement he could not find words enough to gainsay it. But
it was true too, wasn’t it? In a fashion.

Because of you also, he countered.

“No.” A sudden flash of colour poured through
the cane and up into Simon’s thought. At once everything in his
mind turned to nothing so only a shadow he couldn’t interpret
remained. At the same time, his father twisted sideways and
launched himself at Simon so the two of them landed on the floor
with a clatter, the old man beating at Simon’s body like a man
possessed. By the gods, this is lunacy, the Lost One thought, glad
he could think at all, and it was a matter of moments only for him
to roll his father over and hold down his arms against the
floor.

Be still, will you.

A few more breaths when Simon could see the
rebellion in his father’s mind and then his colours faded out of
all sensing. The old man cackled with laughter and began to speak
again, but it was nothing but gibberish and child’s talk. Was this
the way that madness dwelt?

“What are you doing, Simon?”

From behind him, Ralph’s voice cut in to the
room like a scythe cutting through corn. What does it look like,
Lammas Lord?

A snort of laughter, barely suppressed. “It
does not look like talking.”

“No,” Simon said, relieved to let his mouth
take the burden of words this time. “But though you may not believe
it, I was doing my best.”

He rose to his feet and, together, he and
Ralph helped his father get up. By now, the old man was shaking and
stabbing at his own body with gnarled fingers while a long dribble
of saliva dropped slowly from his chin. They sat him down on the
stool and Ralph fetched a beaker of water, the stars knew from
where. The Lost One’s father drank some of it but then refused to
drink any more, letting the water run down from his mouth, like the
saliva. Simon used the edge of his cloak to wipe it away.

“He needs to sleep,” he said, “and perhaps I
shouldn’t have been so minded to talk with him in the first place.
We are both beyond tired.”

“It was not your fault,” Ralph said roughly,
turning his face away. “I persuaded you.”

This was true, in a sense, but Simon knew he
himself was the most at fault. “Do not take my guilt upon yourself,
Lord Tregannon, when we each have enough of our own to carry.”

His words had more of the tone of command in
them than he had wished to convey, but that too was good; it
brought Ralph’s attention back to him, and Simon needed his
help.

“Show me where my father can lie down. Since
I have started this conversation with him and it has disturbed him
so, the burden of responsibility is mine. As it should be.”

Simon could see the natural inclination in
Ralph to dispute the order, but he was in no mood to be
conciliatory and neither, it seemed, was the mind-cane, which
flashed a brief silver across its frame and danced its way to his
hand.

The Lammas Lord shrugged. “You fall naturally
into command, Scribe, but do not forget who is master of this
castle, whatever I have done to it. Come then, I will, for the lack
of any servant with me, find a place to act as refuge for your
father.”

With that, he set off, one steady hand at
Simon’s father’s elbow, as the Lost One himself hurried to take the
other. He could not help but smile to himself at Ralph’s haughty
words. There was indeed much to think of.

Ralph

He isn’t certain what he hoped to achieve by
bringing together Simon and his father, but it surely isn’t this.
When he enters the room, the jagged auras around both men almost
send him out again and he curses himself for his own foolishness.
What has this attempt been but an effort to make things right with
his own father, an impossible mission? He should have left well
alone, but the proximity of the scribe is setting him on edge in
ways he doesn’t wish to consider deeply.

The only thing they can do now is wait and
regain strength. In the morning, he will take the best of the
people who have stayed and search for Jemelda until he finds her.
She cannot be allowed to destroy the crops and drive them to
starvation and beyond, when they are barely keeping their grasp on
life as it is. He will not permit her to win.

At his side, Simon stops abruptly, bringing
the three of them to a halt, and coughs. “You cannot do all things
at once, Ralph. Even Lammas at its best wasn’t formed in one
day-cycle.”

How Ralph easily forgets that the scribe can
read him so, and he snorts a response. “But it has been brought to
its knees in almost less than that, and I have not been
instrumental in stopping our fall. You cannot blame me for wanting
to right a wrong.”

“Indeed not, my good Lord, but for that, as
you so wisely think, we need rest and then a plan. Jemelda cannot
fire your fields twice in one day-cycle. She will at the very least
need more fire-oil.”

Something else flashes in Simon’s eyes, and
Ralph catches his breath, already knowing the answering desire
rushing through his blood. He breaks the man’s gaze and turns away.
Such thoughts are not fitting, although for a moment he longs for
nothing more than to take Simon to his bed, such as it is, and show
him how little the concept of rest is on his mind. By the stars
above, this latest disaster has shaken him too much. And there is
so much he wants to say to Simon but not in the presence of his
father, though by the gods he will say it soon.

He shakes his head and continues walking. The
old man stumbles but manages to stay upright, and Ralph slows his
pace to compensate. The conversation with Simon has made him forget
for a moment the needs of his father. The scribe of course makes no
comment.

At last, Ralph arrives at a small room in the
servants’ quarters which has, barely, survived the war’s onslaught.
It does however have the advantage of a roof and a few threadbare
blankets that can be used for a man’s rest. Simon nods.

“Thank you. This will be sufficient, I
hope.”

With that, Simon turns and helps his father
to sit on the softest of the blankets. It looks as if he will busy
himself with the task of persuading the old man, who has begun to
shake and mutter once more, to sleep, and Ralph suspects this will
not be an easy prospect. He has to speak to the scribe.

In front of the man’s father, he cannot find
the words, so instead he does the only thing he can think of. He
takes the couple of strides needed to bring him to Simon’s side,
reaches up and places shaking fingers on his former lover’s
head.