Hallsfoot's Battle (37 page)

“They have not come to harm, I swear it.”

Iffenia laughs but the sound of it is as dark
as winter. “I do not believe you know what is harm and what is not.
Because of you, the great Library is no more and the attack from
the mind-executioner is all but upon us. Outside of the city, how
can any, however wise, ever hope to survive what is to come?”

She is right. I know it. Gelahn will sweep
through all that is unprotected, and the minds of the people are
the only fragile defence we have. Those who are not amongst us are
most open to destruction. On all sides then, I have been lacking. I
raise my face to where I hear her breathing.

“I do not know,” I say and let the truth of
that also slide through my flesh. “Show me what I can do,
Iffenia.”

Whether or not she will kill me, I am open to
her decision. She makes a sound, somewhere between a groan and a
cry, and something in the colour of the air between us eases. I
know then I will not die here, although suffering will come. Too
soon it will come, too soon. I do not know whether that will be a
blessing or a curse. Even so, behind the great wall of the emotions
she carries, I sense a greater power, hovering within her as if
feeding off her despair. Does she know what the executioner can do
to all of us with just one who hates? And if I dare to tell her,
how will that be for us then?

What we will do is this, she says, unwitting
of the greater battle already being fought around us both. I will
ease your body’s scars and then both of us will do whatever Annyeke
commands. It is the womenfolk, I think, who must try to save us
today.

*****

Unable to help herself, Annyeke gasped, tried
to escape the power of the First Elder’s mind-story, but there was
more, so much more to come.

*****

Before she left me, Iffenia spun a mind-net
for protection, but she and I both knew it was for imprisonment.
She did not want Annyeke to know what I have discovered. I could
feel the fluidity of it in my mind, but the colours were wrong, not
the surface of them. Oh no, all there was as it should be, the
blues and greens of safety vibrating my thoughts into a softer more
attentive shade. Still something felt wrong, though I said nothing
as she lifted the curtain and I felt the chill wind penetrate her
sculpting room. Then she was gone. My skin felt prickly, but the
sharp pain in my eyes was such that it swallowed up all else in its
wake.

I feel that way still.

I should sleep, but sleep will not come. Nor
do I want it to. I feigned it when Iffenia left, the remnants of my
skill such that she did not discover my deceit. Her mind was
elsewhere, playing with the beginnings of realisation. When she
realises the extent of how her hatred has brought betrayal, and how
the mind-executioner has used her mind-rebellion, her love for her
husband and hatred of the Lost One to slip easily into our lands,
what will happen then? Of all people, I should know how the heart’s
greatest desires can bring treachery. We are companions in
wrongdoing, Iffenia and I. Nor did she see the liquid she gave me
was poured out under the washing cloths stored beneath the table.
At least, that is what my hands told me they were; my eyes, of
course, are beyond it.

So I wait until the fullness of the silence
seeps in. As I sit, I reach out in my thoughts to the remnants of
my mind-strength. It is hard to link with it as each fragment is so
very small. I cannot even find the special place that each
Gathandrian except one holds within themselves as a point of
refuge; the door to it is nailed shut. If I could dwell there, even
for a moment, the task would be so much easier and, perhaps, then,
the pain in my eyes would fade, but I cannot afford to dwell on
what is impossible; I must work only with what can be done, however
meagre. Slowly, so slowly, I pull my mind-strength back to the
centre of what is left. The effort of it makes my body shake and I
slip from the couch onto the floor. The smell of dust and wood
shavings wraps round me and tiny slivers of clay pierce the skin on
my knees. A flash of what the room I am in looks like fills my
mind, scattered tables and half finished sculptures, bowls of water
for keeping the dirt at bay, and windows placed to get the best of
the daylight. I remember I visited once, many year-cycles ago, in
happier times.

What I recall does not fit with the message
my body is giving me. The pieces of my mind gel together, but the
journey seems achingly slow. There is something else in the
darkness I cannot see, something I have missed, and which, as
former First Elder of this land, all my instincts are telling me I
should know.

All I can experience, however, is only in my
thoughts. The world of objects is too new to my taste and touch,
hearing and smell to be fully understood without the help of
memory.

So it must be something in my mind, something
else Iffenia has sparked off in me. The edge of discomfort nags
more deeply; I must see to it, if I can, before I may continue with
my task. Without the star-blessed focus of what I am doing,
however, and with the uncertain mind-net, will I lose the light
hold I have on my reason? No matter. I have committed worse
atrocities than madness. I take a breath, try to straighten my
shoulders, and let go.

As in my thoughts, I step away from the
rebuilding of my mind, the net Iffenia has left tumbles in. I had
discounted it, I am a fool. The fluidity of its colours is as
insubstantial as water and as deadly. It flows swiftly through the
slow re-gathering of my mind, wiping away the bond that has been
holding it together and, even as I try to cling to the pieces of
myself, they are gone.

Just as I open my mouth to scream, the net
sweeps through my very self. The shock of disintegration, mindful
not physical when, all around and within me, I find only emptiness
instead of memory and senses, at least from within, although
outside me I know it is still there. Something clings to me,
though, a hovering presence in the darkness. Not Gathandrian,
neither man nor woman, but connected to our inmost private
longings. A dagger made from the night with the breath of fire
contained inside it.

How has Iffenia made such a thing? She must
understand more of what she has done, and with whom she had allied
herself, than I realise. That, too, she has hidden from me, from us
all. It must have been deliberate; its concealment in the everyday
reassurance of a mind-net does not smack of the innocence I
assumed. She has taken this moment of unimagined terror and hidden
it where none would seek. For what purpose exactly? I cannot fathom
it. One thing I know, if this danger in the midst of the land is
allowed to be free of whatever Iffenia uses to control it, then the
greatest terror will not be from the mind-executioner, but from
ourselves.

How true that has always been.

I find myself taking in great gulps of
breath, but neither strength nor purpose comes from them. I only
know one thing. It is vital for Annyeke to hear this. After all,
Iffenia is with her, or will shortly be so. What dangers might her
presence bring to the woman I have set in command of Gathandria?
What dangers, then, for the land’s future?

If only I could see.

What good could that do? Perhaps my lack of
sight has allowed my mind to see what my eyes and the eyes of
others cannot. If so, I will use such a gift.

I back away, feeling behind me with my hands
until I reach the wall. It’s a slow process and, once, I almost
stumble over the stool I’d forgotten about. On the journey, my
fingers run along Iffenia’s carving table and the dust of it clings
to my skin. The strange fluidity of the dagger of the mind follows
me. Like a spider’s web, trying to brush it away only worsens it. I
have to find the gap, send out the rest of my strength to Annyeke
through it, if I can.

All the while, my heart beats out a warning.
There is so little time.

At the wall, I sink downwards until I am half
sitting, half crouching on the floor. Now, I must try now or the
time will have passed me by and I won’t have the ability for it. So
I wait for the slimmest portion of the daggered net that surrounds
me to come to the forefront of my thoughts. Only when I sense its
presence, shimmering before me like a morning mist, do I plunge the
remnants of my mind towards it. Wild singing and the feel of
crimson crushed against my body, slicing at flesh, the jaggedness
of falling. For a moment, I almost believe the mind-net has tumbled
away and I stand in black space, panting. But it cannot be like
that; mind-nets when destroyed leave damage and the tatters of
their shape amongst thoughts. They do not vanish so utterly.

The next moment, the fact of the net’s
presence swoops back around me, slashing the darkness with red and
flame.

I have not even reached the merest hint of
Annyeke. I have failed at the first step of abandoning myself, with
no strength of thought to attempt a second onslaught.

How many others like Iffenia dwell amongst
us? How much hold does the mind-executioner really have in our
thoughts and our land, or indeed all the lands? And how can we bear
it?

My mind is as useless as my eyes. But there
is yet something I have left. My body. The idea of this and what I
must surely do fills my blood with grief, for mind-nets can, if one
has the knowledge of it, be partially defeated by the decisions of
the body, but none have ever lived for long afterwards.

No matter. I am fated for death. The stars
and gods decree it, and perhaps this end is what I was made for. I
am weighed in the balance and found wanting. Bearing the heaviness
of my thought-prison in my mind, I stagger to my feet and walk
forwards. With every step, the pain my eyes have been holding onto
sweeps over my flesh. It feels as if small angry knives pierce my
skin over and over again and already I can feel the warm oozing of
blood upon me. The mind-net is becoming physical. Slowly for now,
but it has begun sooner than I have feared. And who is to say when
its cruel pace will quicken?

I am nearly at the door and can feel the
chill dampness in the air that speaks of snow when the full power
of the net kicks in.

Pain.

My flesh and blood are caught up in a red
darkness that forces me under and I forget how to breathe. It is a
river, but more than a river. The whole weight of soil and the vast
expanses of sky crush me down until I am as small as a termite. All
my bones are shattered and I no longer know my own shape. For a
time and a time, or perhaps for all eternity if I only knew it, I
huddle like a child on Iffenia’s floor. I know this as the daggers
tearing into me allow me to see it so I do not have the mercy and
forgetfulness of death. My only task is to suffer pain and to stay
here until it is over.

It will never be over.

The despair that thought brings and the bleak
truth of it drives me further downwards so my own thoughts are
hacked into tiny fragments and I can no longer connect with them.
My knowledge of my self is beyond my reach. A deeper darkness fills
me, as if night has plunged in where only twilight dwelt. Soon I
will be entirely gone and there will be nothing left of me to think
at all.

All my mind sees is darkness. Yet one small
fact remains untrammelled. I must go forward. I can no longer
remember why. I can hear howling, faint but clear, but I don’t know
whether it comes from my thoughts or whether it is in the world I
cling to. The fact of this makes my heart beat ever faster and I
know that, wherever I am, I am shaking.

The floor beneath me shifts.

But no, it is not the floor shifting. It is
my body that has eased itself onward, towards the sensation of air.
Even as I do this, I understand it is not courage or strength that
drives me, but fear. I have to get out. As if an unknown voice has
spoken aloud into my mind, I know I must escape and soon. For it is
from the sculpting-room that the mind-net gathers its power. If I
stay, I will die and truly.

Each time I drag myself onward, knives
flicker and dance through my body. In my mind, I am almost beyond
pain, the understanding of it more than I can acknowledge, but skin
and bone take the brunt of the attack. I drag myself through the
sticky warmth of my own blood. Nausea hovers in my throat, but I
turn aside from its lure. I cannot afford to give in to anything
that takes me away from the task of reaching the outside. Nearer
and ever nearer, and now the howling is louder, too.

I should know what that means, but the memory
is lost to me.

And, finally, I am there, the heavy curtain
brushing my head, adding its weight to the torment of both flesh
and mind, and the night air pulling me into itself.

Softly, slowly, I fall into snow. It layers
the ground. The cold is like another source of pain, but it pierces
the darkest of nights surrounding me. At the same time, the howling
stops. It is then I remember the mountain dogs. Drawn by the scent
of my blood from whichever hell they have been hiding in, I sense
their lust for meat just as the knives of the mind-net finally
release me.

There is one thought only in what sense of
myself I have left. No matter what, and may the gods and stars take
me, but I must reach Annyeke.

*****

Annyeke cried out as the death story of the
First Elder filled her thoughts and as it came at last to its end,
even though somehow in the real time-cycle it had lasted only a
moment—a long, low cry full of foreknowledge she could not express.
At the same time, the First Elder flung himself upon Iffenia where
she still held Annyeke pinned to the earth and tore at her arms and
throat. Iffenia fell sideways as if a wave from the sea had swept
her clear. She screamed, a sound that pierced Annyeke’s mind, made
her press her hands to her ears, even though it wasn’t purely
physical.