Hallsfoot's Battle (42 page)

He knew then that what the Gathandrians said
about him was true. He could not understand how it had happened or
why, but he knew. He opened his eyes and spoke the words that had
been hidden from him for so long.

“I am he,” he whispered to everyone and to
himself most of all. “I am the Lost One.”

Ralph

The moment the scribe speaks the words, his
eyes shining a strange green at Ralph as if he can see all that the
Overlord is and all he has hidden, the mind-cane in the
executioner’s hand dances into the air and falls into Simon’s grasp
like a bird returning to the falconer.

Ralph holds the scribe in his arms. He finds
he has the strength to do so, though he doesn’t know how. No time
to question it. This is the first time he’s touched Simon since he
laced the rope round the scribe’s neck in the Place of Hanging at
the castle, as himself, that is, and not with the
mind-executioner’s voice in his mouth, his enemy’s thoughts in his
head. The sheer fact of the scribe’s skin plunges Ralph’s blood
into unaccountable heat and Simon’s gaze locks with his. Ralph
thinks it’s the first time he’s looked at the man, really looked at
him, since…since he doesn’t know when. Something in the scribe has
changed. He can see it as clearly as if this were daylight and they
were back in the quiet of his castle rooms. There are a thousand
words on Ralph’s tongue that he wants to say, but he understands
none of them will be welcome. It is not the time.

Use the emeralds, Ralph says, mind to mind
with no words wasted. May they bring you the power you need.

Simon nods, as the Gathandrian stories swirl
and dance around them, streaming towards the now ecstatic Gelahn.
He steps back from Ralph, turns away.

Duncan Gelahn

The mind-cane is gone. He sees the green
flash travel between the Hallsfoot woman and the Lammas Lord, knows
what Ralph will do with it, and he is too far away to stop him,
even with the original Tregannon emeralds still in his grasp.

He has come too far to lose now. Surely the
great Spirit will not allow it. Here, in the Library he has
destroyed in order for the stories contained in the walls to be
more truly his, he must be the master of the lands. It is written,
it is spoken. It must be so. The stories dance around him, touching
his mouth and mind with their colours and shapes and song.

Nonetheless, the Lammas emeralds seep out
from under his authority. He can feel their pull towards the fresh
jewels Annyeke has created. Some of the essence of their power must
have been leeched from him during their encounters. He did not feel
it vanish. She must have more to her than he suspected, enough to
form new jewels from the shadows of his.

Gelahn doesn’t like the turn in the flow.
Even as Ralph passes the newborn gifts to the Lost One, the two of
them standing so close in the freezing snow that they could be one
man, one mind, Gelahn’s thoughts have leapt to a thousand
possibilities for victory. Of which, one is the nearest and most
enticing. The boy crouches at Annyeke’s side. The two Gathandrians
do not look at the executioner. The transference of the new
emeralds has taken all Annyeke’s strength, and Johan’s mind is on
her alone. Love, Gelahn thinks, is indeed a devil he can use.

Before the Lost One has turned away from the
Lammas Lord, his hand glowing a deep green from the magic he holds,
Gelahn launches himself across the small space between them,
stories clinging like fireflies to his torn cloak, and snatches the
boy away. Even as he does so, he feels the cane’s power growing
through its contact with the scribe. From his belt, he draws his
knife.

The child cries out, but Gelahn pulls him
closer, bringing the knife up and slashing through his hair with
it. At once, blood pulsates outwards from where the dagger has
pierced skin. The boy falls silent.

A scream fills the air. It is louder by far
than the approaching soldiers of the dead who are responding to the
Library’s victory call. Bone on bone and the harsh clang of metal.
Hallsfoot stands, one arm steadying herself against Montfort’s
shoulder. Her face is the face of a skull and her eyes as black as
night.

Her scream ends in a sudden sob and she takes
one step towards him. The mind-executioner does not know where that
strength comes from, for she has surely suffered enough for death
to take her, yet she still lives. He grips her young charge tighter
and raises the knife once more.

At once, she stops. He sees her body
shake.

Through the soft enticement of legends, the
last of them crowding around him, Gelahn speaks, with his mind
only. They do not need to say the words aloud.

Give me the emeralds you have made and the
cane you have stolen, he says, and the boy will not have to
die.

Annyeke

Whatever happened, Talus must not be harmed.
It was Annyeke’s first thought as, from what seemed like a thousand
field-lengths away in her shattered body, she watched the
mind-executioner—that demon—snatch her young charge from her
side.

Strength poured into her from the depths of
the earth, from the wild patterns of her own blood. She stood.
Somehow, she could see again, the gods and stars alone knew how.
She sensed Johan at her side, his arm round her waist holding her
upright, but her whole mind-attention was on Talus.

Before she could do anything to stop him, the
executioner drew something thin and bright from his belt and
slashed once across Talus’ hair. Blood spurted upward and the boy
slumped in Gelahn’s arms. Annyeke opened her mouth and screamed.
She could feel the bones of her face pressing against her skin, a
mirrored mockery of the undead soldiers of the battlefield, even
now closing in on them. Her scream ended in a sob and she began to
run, towards Gelahn.

The next moment, something forced her to stop
and she would have fallen, except for Johan’s sudden shout and
steadying hand. When she turned around, the Lost One stood behind
her. He was more than simply Simon the Scribe now, though she could
not understand how that could be. His flesh and face glowed green
and he held the mind-cane before him like a sword. It was the
emerald light that shone from it that had stopped her. He shook his
head at her, stepping forward.

Simon

The time was now. He could sense it. The
moment Ralph opened his fingers and dropped the emeralds into his
waiting hand, the patterns inside him stopped their unstructured
dance and slotted into place. At the same time, he could feel the
heat of the Lammas Lord’s gaze as if it were the first time they’d
ever looked at each other. Knowledge and pain, memory and grief,
and something deeper, too.

No matter. Everything then happened at once,
as it always seemed to, he thought, in his encounters with the
people of Gathandria. Gelahn snatched Talus from Annyeke’s side and
split his young head open with his belt-knife. Annyeke’s answering
scream, more rage than terror, pierced them all.

Then the mind-executioner’s words, spoken to
Annyeke, but meant, he knew, for him.

Give me the emeralds you have made and the
cane you have stolen, he said, and the boy will not have to
die.

“As you wish,” Simon spoke aloud, his words
glancing like fire knives through the air. He sensed the dark lurch
of Ralph’s confusion and the intake of breath from Johan. No
matter. He strode forward, the mind-cane giving him the ability he
needed. His thoughts were fizzing, as if an unseen fire of his own
burned him from within. And he found he wasn’t afraid of the
flames.

There were harsher enemies and other shores
of life to be afraid of, Duncan Gelahn, for one.

When he reached Gelahn, the executioner
smiled, but his eyes were wary. Simon thrust his free hand outward
so Annyeke’s emeralds fell into the space between them. Green fire
hissed and flared. The emeralds stolen by Gelahn sprang upwards
from the executioner’s cloak, met their fellows in the air and
roared into a circle of flame encompassing all three of them, the
two men and the boy. Not just all three of them, but the intensity
and colour of the Gathandrian stories, too. They pushed at his
consciousness and his body, ideas and unspoken words beating like
wings against his skin. Simon took a step back, had to fight
against the urge to run. Where was his courage now? At the same
time, the mind-cane touched Talus’ hair and the blood ceased its
flow. The cane formed a link between Simon, the boy and Gelahn.
Almost of its own accord, his other arm landed on the executioner’s
shoulder so the scribe could feel the extraordinary power of his
enemy’s skin under his fingers. All Simon could see was the green
haze of heat and Duncan’s eyes.

He knew Gelahn wanted to speak first and
rejected that assumption, opening his mouth and allowing the words
to frame the impasse between them.

“I will speak,” he said. “I will tell you a
legend to end all legends and that tale will be mine and mine
alone.”

Annyeke

She barely stood, half sagging, at Johan’s
elbow. She could scarcely believe her eyes were her own again,
though the memory of what she had done in the realm of dreams clung
to her. With all her blood, she wanted to fight, and fight now,
however bitter the end. But the Lost One had spoken and something
told her to wait, as she had done before, in the place of silence.
The time for action would come, too soon, but it was not now.

Johan, however, sensed none of this. She
could tell his mind was too full of the physical world to pay heed
to anything deeper. Was this what war did? Then, by the gods, she
wished no more of it. Her beloved could see only the advancing dead
soldiers, the enemy of them all holding Talus hostage, and Simon,
his friend and cousin, grappling with the mind-executioner single
handedly within the fire of the emeralds he’d seemed to yield to
Gelahn.

“Come on,” he shouted. “We must help
him.”

He leapt forward, clutching the thought-sword
and she could not stop him. Neither of them, as the Lammas Lord
followed instantly after. At the wall of green flickering flame,
Johan’s best intentions tumbled helplessly into snow-filled air.
The first touch of fire on his skin flung him spinning backwards,
sending both men crashing to the ground.

Tregannon cursed, in the old Lammasser
tongue, while Johan rolled away and struggled to his feet, panting.
As he stretched out a hand to help the Lammas Lord to his feet,
Annyeke reached them, her limbs barely able to carry her weight.
She had to make him understand, she had to.

“Annyeke,” he whispered, but she shook her
head to quiet him even as the flames danced and sang around
them.

When she spoke, she prayed it would be enough
for him.

“Hush,” she whispered. “It’s beginning.
Simon’s last story. It might be the only thing to save us.”

The Fourth Gathandrian Legend: Temperance
and Greed

Simon

The Lost One stared deeply into Duncan
Gelahn’s eyes. The mind-executioner struggled against his grip but,
for once, Simon was too strong for him.

“No,” the scribe said. “Not this time. This
time the battle is between the two of us alone and the stories we
tell, the stories that cling to us. We stay here until it is
done.”

As he spoke, Simon felt the searching arrows
of his mind flow through his flesh and into the ebony and silver
cane. From there, the shifting blue changed to starlight that
pierced Gelahn’s skin and travelled upwards into his thoughts. The
executioner drew in a sharp breath and gritted his teeth for a
heartbeat.

How did you do that?

Simon did not know. He only understood the
conjunction of the emeralds and the mind-cane in his hand had
unlocked something deep within him he hadn’t realised was there. As
the link between his thoughts and Gelahn’s grew more insistent, he
shook his head.

“No matter. The story you and I live in, and
which must be fulfilled today, is this. It is a tale of temperance
and greed, and will become the last Gathandrian legend you and I
will ever share. Hear me now, and afterwards let the Great Spirit’s
will be done.” As the Lost One began to speak, the words echoed in
both their minds as well as in the air’s green heat around
them:

There once was a boy. He was born in a
country he did not fully understand and had no hope of
comprehending. Because two different worlds fought for supremacy in
his blood, and neither could win, he was always a loner. An
outcast, if you like. When he was young, something happened that
changed his life. That event could be anything, but for me, Simon
Hartstongue of the White Lands, it was the discovery my mind had
more gifts than I could ever know about whilst I lived amongst what
I thought were my people. For you, Duncan Gelahn of Gathandria, it
was the coming of the Spirit into your thoughts—directly, not in
stories and hints of something once known, as is told in all the
lands.

But what happens after this is far more
important than all. What path will those two young men choose? How
will they live their lives with the knowledge that has been gifted
to them? Simon chose the path of moderation. Driven away by his
father, he chose to live in the shadows, to run and not to seek
vengeance. He learned not to expect too much, a coward’s way, but a
temperate one. He even chose to turn away from the truth of the
gift he possessed, to deny all he could be and keep on running. Ah,
but Duncan was the opposite of this. When he saw what could be
achieved, he wanted it. For the good of the people, he told
himself, and for the health of the lands but, more than any of
these, he wanted it for himself and for himself only.