Hallsfoot's Battle (22 page)

Talus slipped out from behind Johan and
burrowed his way into Annyeke’s arms. Johan made a move to pull the
boy away, but Annyeke shook her head.

“No, please, he’s fine,” she said.

“What happened?” Johan said again, this time
more quietly.

“I don’t know,” she answered him. “I came
into the sleeping-area and there was a wave of such despair and
terror, as if a knife made of fire was leaping towards me. I saw
it, I swear by all the stars. Then it was gone, and all I was left
with was this.”

Still hugging Talus to herself, Annyeke
pointed at the book where it lay on her floor. Johan picked it up.
Now some of the pages were moulded together, the parchment fused
into one.

“The fire you saw? It did this?” he asked
her.

She nodded. “I think so.”

“It must be the executioner,” he said. “He
used mind-knives to try to prevent our journey to the Lammas Lands.
I didn’t think he could do that without the mind-cane.”

“He shouldn’t be able to, I know it.” Annyeke
gently lifted Talus to one side. “So the burning of the book of
legends must be something to do with Simon. He’s gone to the
Library by himself and…”

“He’s done what?”

Annyeke clenched her fists and glared up at
him. Now was most definitely not the time for him to be angry with
her, and she was pleased to see him step back.

“Yes,” she all but spat at him. “Yes, I know
what you’ll say. I shouldn’t have let him go on his own, it’s too
dangerous. You would have gone with him. I didn’t, therefore what’s
happened here has to be my fault. Well, that’s all very well,
Johan, but we don’t have time for prudence, so I had to take a
risk. My decision. My responsibility. But, don’t worry, because as
soon as we find Simon, we can…”

All the way through her words, Johan was
trying to interrupt her, but she refused to let him. When she
paused for breath, and he opened his mouth, a loud explosion
shattered the calm of the night outside her home and rattled the
walls around them.

Johan flung himself on top of her, grabbing
the boy as they tumbled to the floor. A spate of terrible noise
passed through the air and kept on reverberating. Annyeke’s mind
closed in, burying itself deep within her like a wood-fox
protecting itself in winter. From somewhere outside her
consciousness, she heard Talus scream. From instinct, her fingers
pressed the side of Johan’s head. They’d never touched like this
before, not in the middle of only the gods knew what kind of
danger. Their joining had only been for the purposes of meditation
training and with the proper safeguards. This felt different, more
desperate and more liberating. More desirable.

She knew at once that he felt it, too. But he
didn’t know how to respond.

It didn’t matter. At their next breath,
Annyeke had reached the reasoning element of Johan’s thoughts,
knitted them together, and was building a link they could use to
fight against the unknown assailant—a link wide enough to include
Talus, too. A moment later her young companion stopped screaming
and Annyeke could sense only the sound of the explosion as it
continued, over and over until the rhythm seeped into her skin, her
blood, her heart. She focused on the colour of the mind-ribbon
attaching the three of them, gold, green, ivory. She couldn’t
remember any of these colours when she and Johan had meditated
together in the past. Why was it different now?

No time to ponder. The net widened to take on
the room and finally the house. Annyeke breathed again, sensed
Johan and Talus reaching a plateau. The three of them were no
longer gripped by fear, but able to manage it through the ribbon
and the net they had created together. Still that elusive something
in Johan’s mind though but when, without thinking, she reached for
it, she could no longer sense it at all. Gradually she realised the
echoes of the explosion, which had been so overwhelming for such a
long time, were diminishing; the air beyond the net no longer shook
with forces beyond their understanding.

Johan? she said.

Yes? he answered at once.

Whatever that was, it’s more bearable now. I
think we can lower the net. We need to find out what’s
happening.

He nodded and the net around Annyeke
lightened and she could see her room, the books, the pile of her
clothes. Johan was still lying on top of her. Heart beating fast,
she felt herself blush before he struggled to his feet, saw his
face redden, too.

I’m sorry, I…he began.

Please. It’s nothing. Don’t worry about
it.

Ignoring his outstretched hand, she got up,
brushed down her skirt and turned to Talus.

“Stay here,” she said, speaking aloud for the
first time since the strange explosion had shattered the
atmosphere. “Johan and I are going to find out what just attacked
us. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

“But, Annyeke…” the boy began to protest.

“No arguments, Talus.”

“The boy might be useful,” Johan said. “Let
him come. Please?”

She hesitated for a moment before giving
in.

“All right,” she said. “As you wish.”

“Yes.” Talus’ shout of triumph did little to
support Johan’s opinion of his usefulness, but the decision was
made and Annyeke knew it. She allowed herself a brief smile before
swallowing it away.

“We will go out together, but quietly,”
Annyeke said, trying to ensure the calmness in her voice and
thoughts filled the room. “And you do what I say. Understood?”

They both nodded, though she’d meant the
command only for Talus. Johan must have picked up on this as he
pretended to be examining something on his hand while Talus beamed
his thanks up at him.

At the door, Johan reached to open it and
step out first, but Annyeke laid her fingers on his arm.

It was not his place to be in front here. She
was the leader. He would not only have to acknowledge that, but act
on the acknowledgement also. After the briefest of hesitations, he
took a pace back, waved her before him.

Annyeke took a deep breath, squared her
shoulders and opened the door.

It wasn’t what she’d been expecting at all.
Outside, the air was dripping with crimson, and flames skittered
past them, a mixture of reality and thought. She ducked down,
pulling Talus with her and flinging a warning to Johan.

He caught it at once, grabbing her hand to
strengthen the mind-net still shielding them.

“What is it? What’s happening?” Talus’
questions remained unanswered as she glanced from side to side,
looking for danger and trying to see where it had come from.

The next moment she knew, the knowledge
drawing a long gasp from the depths of her mind.

The Library. It’s the Library.

Unable to move or even respond, Annyeke
stared in the direction of the great Gathandrian Library, the place
where Simon had gone, the place where she had allowed him to go.
The partially destroyed building, already shattered in the Wars,
was swallowed up by fire. Not simply one section of it, but a great
wall of flame covered every stone and window. Surely nothing, and
nobody, could survive in that. Simon, the snow-raven, even the
mind-cane must be trapped there, if that was where they had gone.
And, if so, perhaps the scribe was already dead?

Around them in the street, people were
running, hiding, screaming out if the deadly fire touched them. A
man she didn’t know grabbed her arm and she saw that flames were
licking at his hair. Before she could do anything, fire engulfed
him and he fell writhing to the ground. With a scream, she reached
out to try to help in some way, but Johan dragged her backwards,
saying words she struggled to accept but already knew were
true.

“It’s too late. You can’t help him.”

In her arms, Talus was sobbing. She should
never have agreed to Johan’s request. Again too late; behind them
flame caught at her door, blocking their escape.

If they couldn’t go back, they would have to
go forward. Her people needed her to do something.

Come on.

She picked Talus up and began to run, towards
the library, not needing to look back to know that Johan would be
following her. With each step, she sent out one word and one word
only from her mind: Fight.

She hoped the people would take courage from
that. She hoped they would pay her some heed. They mustn’t let the
mind-fire overcome them, nor the terrible fact of where it came
from. If they did, all would be lost. Still imprisoned in her grip,
Talus squirmed but she refused to let him go. She had sworn to
herself to protect him; she would keep that promise until no breath
remained in her.

The streets were full of cries and heat.
Twice, an arrow of flame came close enough to singe her hair and
blister her arm, but she caught at the pain and swallowed it down
before it could destroy her. Fight. Fight. Fight.

At the corner of the street where the great
Library stood, the heat drove her back. She could go no further.
With a cry of despair, Annyeke crushed Talus into Johan’s arms and
turned to continue her onward path, but the boy snatched at her
hair and screamed.

“No, Annyeke, please.”

It’s too dangerous; you can’t go, Johan’s
voice broke into her thoughts as if they’d been waiting for a
chance to be heard. A pause, then: we need you, Annyeke. We—I need
you here.

When she looked at him, his face was as open
and vulnerable as she’d ever seen it. All the sense of pride, of
his own separate identity and the need to hold to it, even his
innate jaggedness was gone. He simply held the boy as if she’d
offered him a precious gift he had no right to accept and shouted
so he could be heard above the roar of the flames, “Don’t go any
nearer, Annyeke! You’ll die.”

Duncan Gelahn

In the Great Library of Gathandria, the
snow-raven lets forth a cry the mind-executioner has never heard
any snow-raven give before. The notes have no harmony and, when
they take physical form in front of him, they are not perfect orbs,
but have sharp edges, frayed in all the shades of blood, winter
earth and night.

Duncan laughs. His hand grasps the book of
the story that must have brought him here. Who knows how? He is a
wolf amongst mere birds who, like Simon, are feather-torn, unable
to fly. He will ravage them and make the lands his own.

The mind-cane lies between himself and the
scribe. Duncan moves first. He is, as ever, more prepared for the
hunt. He lunges towards the cane. A heartbeat later, the Lost One
leaps forward and reaches for it, also.

At the same time the notes from the raven’s
discordant song turn in the dusty air and become claws and deadly
beaks to wound and to kill. One of them dances across Duncan’s face
and gashes blood from his flesh. He screams. The Lost One cries out
also and twists sideways in mid-air, landing sprawled across the
ground. The second note narrowly misses the scribe’s arm.

Just as suddenly, the bird is in flight. The
mind-executioner’s fingers touch the ebony cane. So near to having
it. So near. But the raven plunges between Simon and himself, the
adamantine strength of its wings beating away Duncan’s desperate
grasp. As darkness sweeps over the executioner once more, the bird
snatches up the cane in its beak and bears it upwards, upwards,
through the open roof of the Library and into the freedom of
air.

His fruitless scream rises and fades away. At
the same time, fire tracks from the cane the raven carries. Its
crimson talon falls to the earth beneath and the Library is
engulfed in a scarlet roar which somehow fails to kill them.
Instead, they are, for the moment, held safe in a circle of blue
while the fire rages round them.

He had not expected to feel the King of the
Air’s anger and the harshness of his wing. It is because of this
and this alone that the mind-executioner stumbles. It is because of
this that the mind-cane is lost to him once more.

Too late to curse the gods in the fire. For,
in spite of the heat and terror, the scribe, for all his
foolishness, is upon him in an instant. The weight of the Lost
One’s body knocks Duncan to the floor and he struggles for
breath.

Nausea at the man’s closeness prickles at the
executioner’s tongue. He is not accustomed to such unlooked-for
contact. For many year-cycles, he has lived only in his mind. The
elders’ cage taught him that. With a twist of his body, he frees
his arm and brings his hand up to the Lost One’s throat. He could
kill him, even without the cane. But that would be in the body
only; the coward’s mind would still be free. Not only that, but
such a death would unite the Gathandrians against him and the land
would never be his. He should have killed Simon before he came to
the city. He knows that now. The Gathandrians have chosen to
believe this man, a murderer and a traitor, might be their saviour,
and everything has changed.

Duncan moves his hand upwards, clamps his
fingers on the scribe’s forehead and penetrates his mind as he did
before.

Although he should not be able to do such an
act, the Lost One speaks.

“Why do you hate me so?” Hartstongue asks,
sweat lining his forehead and the vast uncharted sea of his
thoughts almost drowning the executioner with its wild currents.
“No matter what the Gathandrian legends say, what have I ever done
that you should hate me?”

Duncan stares at the scribe and realises that
power from the other companion here in Gathandria who holds to him
in secret is still open to him. He takes a decision he had not
thought to take.

It is precisely at this moment that the
flames break through.

Simon

Snatched from the world of the story and back
in the heart of the Library, Simon flung himself onto the
mind-executioner as the fire around them roared out its bright hot
anger. He still had no idea how Gelahn had spirited himself here,
but he had to do something. The snow-raven had rescued the cane. He
was on his own now. Such courage as his act seemed to indicate was
borne of desperation alone.