The Executioner's Cane (42 page)

Ignoring the pain in his leg and bottling his
swift anger into swifter action, Ralph shoves Jemelda to one side
and lunges for the blacksmith’s knife. It narrowly misses his arm
and the two men roll over and over closer to the night-woman’s
dwelling. Jemelda curses and leaps after them. This is not the
encounter Ralph had been hoping to have with the rebels. He must
stop this madness, and soon.

He grabs the blacksmith’s wrist as the knife
plunges down at him again and wrenches it backwards. His attacker
yelps and drops the weapon, just as Ralph manages to free his good
leg and kick him away. He senses rather than sees Jemelda leap for
him but he dodges her too and the next heartbeat Ralph is up on his
feet and stumbling through the mist towards the night-woman’s door.
The one imperative in his mind is this: he must reach Simon, and he
cannot gainsay it.

As he enters the whiteness, he gains the
impression for a moment that the strange mist is penetrating his
mind and wiping out the past which makes up who he is today. No
time to react however as another shove from behind brings him
scrabbling to the door which gives way and lands him, the mist and
his two attackers onto the dusty stone floor of the dwelling where
Simon is hiding.

Ralph gains an impression of flurry and panic
amidst the cries and shouts accompanying their unplanned entrance.
In it are the echo and shape of words, but they too make no sense.
With his next breath, the scribe himself appears before him, the
mind-cane hovering at his hand.

“Ralph,” he whispers. “I thought you’d never
arrive.”

Simon

The Lost One couldn’t understand why he
hadn’t sensed Ralph’s presence before he’d fallen, panting hard and
under attack, into their small refuge. The circle of people broke,
crying out as they flung themselves out of the way although, in all
honesty, there was no place to run. The emptiness had entered with
Ralph and was blocking the door.

No time to waste. Simon grabbed Annyeke’s
hand, although she was already reaching for him, took her
mind-strength together with the strength from the cane and sent
what was surely the last of the energy he had into the mind-net as
it fought against the whiteness. With it went some of the colour of
the words the people had gifted him with, but he couldn’t help
that. He would have to make do with what he had left, somehow.

A heart’s breath and then the white mist
shrunk away from Ralph and the other two, whom he could see were
Jemelda and Thomas, and disappeared beyond the door. They were
safe, for the moment. He hunkered down in front of Ralph, didn’t
know what to say though so many speeches were crowding his blood
and his tongue he could have written many scrolls with them. In the
end what he said made no sense but it was the first thought to
escape him, and it made him focus.

“Ralph. I thought you’d never arrive.”

It was then he realised the presence of the
Lammas Lord might be the best thing of all. Before Simon could
speak his hope, Thomas had stumbled to his feet and taken a step or
two in his direction. He jumped out of the way, unconsciously
bringing his hand to his cheek where the blacksmith had once
scarred him. No wound there now, because of the raven, because of
his luck. He raised the mind-cane in front of him and the
blacksmith stopped, cursing. Jemelda joined him, her eyes darting
from him to Ralph and back again. This close, Simon could see the
murderous intent in her heart towards them both, so thick and dark
he would never be able to find a way through to both her and the
woman she carried within, and bit down his grief. Neither Jemelda
nor Frankel deserved to bear such burdens.

“Coward,” Thomas said, his tone heavy with
scorn.

“Yes, always,” Simon replied. “But I will do
what I must to ensure we may live.”

“You use the cane to save yourself,” Jemelda
spat her words at him so he blinked. “But you will never face me
directly.”

“No time,” was his terse reply. “We are under
attack from something greater than our causes.”

Jemelda whirled round to follow the direction
of his gaze. Outside, instead of the street, the shattered houses
and the trees, there was only the thick mist which undulated
against the door and obliterated everything that should have been
in his view. Simon felt sick to the mind and gripped the cane more
strongly, patterning the shape of it against his skin.

“On the contrary,” Jemelda turned back to
him, a sneer disfiguring her face. “It is an ally to help us
destroy you, and its time is here at last.”

Simon could find nothing to say in response
but, after a heartbeat or two, someone moved out of the shadows. It
was Frankel.

“Jemelda,” he whispered. “Please, do not do
this. We need to fight together. Please …”

She turned to gaze at her husband. Simon
wondered if this was it, if this was the moment when he came to
matter less to the Tregannon cook than the needs of the land she
loved, the moment when everything changed. But something within him
remained empty and he understood before Jemelda had even opened her
mouth how there was, for her, no way back.

“No,” she said. “We must fight the murderer
amongst us, if we are to be free.”

Three things happened at once. Ralph took a
step forward and stood in front of Simon as if to protect him from
attack, even though the mind-cane would surely be protection
enough. Behind him his father began to curse and mutter, and Simon
heard the words in his thought even though they were impenetrable
to the ear: it is coming, it is coming, it is coming …

Third and finally, the mind-net broke and the
emptiness came flooding in.

Screams filled his mind, not his own but
those of the people around him. Within the screams he saw the
colours of their history, the words they had willingly given him
and those they had not. And, beyond them, the history and words of
Ralph and the people he had brought with him, both those in the
night-woman’s home and those scattered across the village.

Many of the people who’d taken refuge
elsewhere died at once as the mist swallowed them up. Simon could
sense the precise moment they were no more, each death taking a
part of the whole, a part of himself. Almost as if his skin was
being torn from his bones piece by piece. No. The word flashed into
his mind, powered by black and silver and strengthened by the
cane’s power. He grasped it, using it to fight off the terrible
whiteness and to hang on to his sense of who he was. I am the Lost
One, but I am not lost yet.

He tumbled back into the reality of the
village dwelling. Now the screams were in the air also, but
strangely muffled, as if the mist was choking them off. Behind it
was Jemelda’s terrible laughter, a sound which made him tremble.
From instinct he grasped for Ralph but could not find him. Damn the
man for never being there when the connection between them might
have grounded him in this battle. But by the stars Simon would find
another grounding or die a second time in the attempt.

He could not do this alone, even with the
mind-cane’s power deep within. He needed someone he knew and knew
well to bring it out; he was a half-Gathandrian, not a full
mind-dweller. And, as he stumbled forward, fighting to keep his
balance even though he could scarcely breathe and the whiteness was
stifling him, he knew who was in reach and whom he should try.

Letting his mind roam free and cutting out
any distractions as best he could, he formed one word in his
thought, one beyond the words he had received earlier: father.

How easy he assumed the connection would be.
He was Bradyn’s son after all, no matter how bitter and distant the
relationship between them. Blood should call to blood when there
was none other to help. But there was only the silence where no
words dwelt and no hint of his father’s whereabouts. Please. No
time to think: he brought the cane to his own forehead and drove
its power through him directly. It was flame and darkness, light
and terror, and all else of horror and joy besides, but he held on
as his mind blistered. Then it was there, a faint echo: it has
come, it has come, it has come …

He wrenched the cane away and was at Bradyn’s
side in an instant. In the overwhelming whiteness filling both air
and heart, he could no longer see anything but he could feel the
shape of the old man and recognise his thought and his trembling
well enough.

It has come, he repeated his father’s chanted
words, bridging the gap and not caring how much pain such a link
caused. It has come and now I need you. I need you to centre me,
please.

All these thoughts Simon had assumed he would
never say and now here they were, as if they had been waiting all
along. And with it the truth which lay at his own heart: I love
you, please help me.

He didn’t wait for an answer but grasped his
father’s face, feeling his way in the white darkness which
surrounded him, and placed his fingers on his forehead. He expected
shock, perhaps terror, or even confusion, as his father had made no
sign he’d understood any part of what was happening in the last few
day-cycles. Instead, he was pulled into Bradyn’s mind as if the old
man had been waiting for him. Simon had the impression of breaching
a barrier or finding a way open to him, and then an explosion of
colour overwhelmed his senses: red and the deepest green, silver
and sunlight, with behind it the river of blue he carried with him
always. His father cried out. Simon could hear his voice in the air
as well as in his thought. If he stayed here too long, Simon would
kill his mind and, despite the resentment he still carried at how
his father had betrayed him, this realisation brought bile to his
mouth. He would not kill again if he could help it, for his
mother’s sake and, by the gods, for his own. But he must find the
word, the one hidden in the colours, the one he had not been able
to reach during the mind-circle before.

Give me it this time, please.

Streaks of crimson began to appear in front
of Simon’s eyes and he knew the time he had was rapidly vanishing
and in the turn of a story’s edge his chance would be gone. He
plunged into the colours, inhabiting them instead of simply
staring. Their fierceness clutched and tore at his skin like the
beaks of ravens, or one raven, had once done, and his cries, real
now, mingled with his father’s. Please.

Then he had it. In the very centre of his
father’s mind, the word dwelt. He reached out to take it but the
sudden image of his mother’s face reared up before him and he
stumbled backwards, tears springing unbidden to his eyes. No, you
cannot fail now.

The voice was his father’s, how he had used
to sound in the days when Simon was young, before his mother was
killed. Only the shock of this stopped his backward motion and
propelled him forward once again. He reached out, took the word,
felt the memories of his mother and what she had meant to them both
sinking into his understanding. He wanted so much to stay and
remember but he could not; his father would die and a world of
people, including the man he was bound to, would be lost and he
could stomach neither of those futures.

He ripped himself from his father’s mind,
trying to do the least damage possible, but speed not comfort was
important now. Simon came to himself, back in the night-woman’s
house, his father’s screams echoing in the air, his father’s word
lodged deep within his mind: sacrifice.

Binding it to the strength of the remaining
words, he plunged himself and the cane into the heart of the
killing mist. Something inside it twisted away from him and he
sensed a kind of submission but it was not enough. The story he
held in his thoughts, the secrets and truth behind the words of the
others, and his father were somehow not enough. He needed more.

How the Lost One had hoped it would not come
to this, but his own fears and dreams were unimportant in the face
of this cruel onslaught on what they held as precious. He swept the
mind-cane in a perfect arc in front of him and the resulting swift
flames gave him a respite he could tumble through, back into the
harshness of the rough flooring and the reality of the wintry air.
He blinked and reached out with his mind to find the one he was
seeking. Surely Ralph would make the story complete. He had to.

At the same time, his father’s consciousness
battered against his own once more as the old man tumbled against
him. For a moment, he had no idea what was happening, and then he
sensed Jemelda framed against the terrible whiteness behind her.
She was holding a jagged stone with both hands high above her head
and he didn’t need to be any kind of mind-dweller to know her
intent.

Jemelda

This time, she was sure of herself. The
appearance of the mist was strengthening her thoughts and even her
very life seemed to be blended with the universe within her. She
could hear the screaming and how those around her, both friend and
enemy, were dying or trying to escape. But to where she could not
guess. The mist was all around and within and would not let them go
till its deadly and wonderful purpose was complete.

Your time is now, trust yourself.

And she found she did. Reaching out, she
touched someone – she thought it was Thomas but couldn’t be sure –
and used his body to thrust herself in the direction she had last
seen the murderer. With her other hand, she bent down and scrabbled
at the floor. This house was a poor one and there would be
something there for her purpose. Her heart beat fast at the thought
of it. Sure enough, as the right herbs make the dish sing, her
fingers found rough stone and grasped it. It was heavier than
expected but she had the strength of two women, one dead and one
living, to lift it.

She took two steps forward and then heard the
old man, the murderer’s father, scream. The murderer must be with
him but for what reason she could not tell. Then she saw the
scribe. He landed heavily in front of her as if he had suddenly
arrived from a great distance and a long journey. His face was pale
and his eyes shone with terror. The voice had been right. Now was
her time, their time. Before the man could recover himself, she
lifted the stone high and began to bring it down upon the
murderer’s head.