The Executioner's Cane (30 page)

The elders were busy with other matters so
whilst you met with them, I slipped into the library and searched
amongst its most hidden texts. I knew the Book of Blood was the one
I wanted, but I did not think to find it. I assumed the elders
would have hidden it in their secret library the people talk of,
but they have not yet done so. Our stories tell us of the ancient
power of its legend to bind a couple together in life and in death
too, and of the joy it can bring, so I took hold of it in the Great
Library’s silence and weaved a mind-trick to fill its space. I do
not have the strength for it to last more than a day-cycle but we
will explore this book’s magic tonight and I will return it
tomorrow. Nothing will be lost but everything gained, I promise
you.

I did not know Iffenia could act in such a
way, even through all the time of loving her, and I was about to
open my mouth, tell her to return the dreaded book to our Library
and pray none had sensed its absence, when she touched my arm. At
once our thoughts connected and I could see to the full the reasons
and the possibilities behind what she had spoken of.

Yes, and so easily, such magic was part of
the power of the Book of Blood, but it is also hidden deep within
our own blood. I could not see, and I still do not see, how what
she wanted to do was wrong. Who would not want to link more closely
with the one they love? It gave us both hope and from hope only
greater hope can come. It was a private matter, not a public one,
and did not affect my journey to becoming an elder. No-one had to
know of it.

So, with Iffenia, I opened the book and began
to experience its strange tales. I cannot tell you the beauty it
contained nor its wildness, not to the full and certainly not in a
way anyone else could understand. But I tell you that, as we
allowed its distinct flavour into our thoughts, I knew everything I
saw and touched and tasted would be more alive and more vibrant
than it had ever been. It was as if up until that point we had both
of us been walking in the half-darkness and the Book of Blood
opened our eyes so we could see the world anew, as if we had been
born a second time upon the earth. It was ice and fire, the deepest
night and the brightest day. When we pledged ourselves over its
pages, Iffenia and I knew we would never be parted, and we knew the
blood the book contained would be the binding strength to our lives
and after our deaths. Death was indeed meaningless, as your Lost
One has so recently discovered.

*****

The Chair Maker paused in his tale. As
Annyeke saw it he had plundered his mind and his traditions in
pursuit of what should, by rights, be the gift only of the
Gathandrian Spirit. She knew the beliefs of her people were too
deeply ingrained upon her thoughts for her to see otherwise. What
shook her to the core was how his actions sat askew with what the
Book of Blood was said to be.

“But the Book of Blood has no stories,” she
said quietly. “Its pages are said to be blank and no-one knows
their meaning.”

The Chair Maker laughed, the sound of it
filling her kitchen-area, unfamiliar, harsh. “That is because the
Book brings out all that is hidden within and makes it real so it
can never be gainsaid or destroyed. It shows us the secret places
and power of our hearts, and has no need for words to enchant us.
It makes ourselves the meaning and then we can do anything.”

“This is against all we know and love,”
Annyeke said, her voice low and direct, ensuring her mind echoed
her emotion to try to reach her fellow-elder. “Any deceit we plunge
into and practise, as elders or any of the people, will turn and
destroy us. The Book of Blood is dangerous and no-one should touch
it. It is said to bring silence where there is life and despair
where there is light. Truly, what have you done, Chair Maker?”

He gazed at her and she noticed his eyes were
unclouded as if the memory of what he and Iffenia had done was gone
and only the result remained. “I have done what is right for me,
and Iffenia is alive still. Her spirit lives within me as we cannot
be parted, and also within the one from Lammas who is most like
her, the one who will destroy the Lost One. Because Simon must die
or the Book of Blood will begin to lose its power, and Iffenia and
I cannot countenance that. Through that chosen Lammasser, the Lost
One will die a second time, the death from which there can be no
returning. And because of Iffenia and because of the Book of Blood
we can only succeed.”

Chapter Twelve: Aftermath

Simon

This wasn’t how he’d wanted to encounter the
Lammas Lord again, not in the early morning-cycle of a winter’s day
in a burning field at the beginning of what might turn out to be
another smaller war. No, Simon’s hopes had been different. He
rolled off Ralph’s body onto crackling soil which flattened itself
beneath his weight. It smelt of fire. How he hated that smell and
how he’d hoped here he would have none of it. Indeed the
Gathandrian Spirit, and even the gods and stars, brought their will
to pass through mysterious means.

“Thank you,” he said to the figure next to
him, preferring to use the spoken word rather than any form of
mind-link. That would be an intimacy too far under the
circumstances. “Are you hurt?”

Ralph’s reply was slow in coming, but clear.
“No. But I must get up, we must defeat these flames, Jemelda must
not be allowed to destroy everything.”

Somehow the two men got to their feet, Simon
racked with pain which he could sense in Ralph also. This was
foolishness, they were both too physically weak to overcome the
fire, although the explosion had blown some of the flames out near
its centre. There would be perhaps some salvaged seed where it had
failed to burn them to the core. But something deeper than Simon’s
own mind had constrained him to come, he had the cane in his hand,
and the snow-raven flew slowly overhead, so he must have some
purpose here. The villagers also needed Ralph and even now lurked
around them, awaiting his command.

The Lammas Lord was not slow in giving it
either.

“I am winded,” he said to the crowd. “You
must continue the battle and I will do what I can. When you work,
do not run, whatever dangers you see, as the wolves will not
venture onto a field for the fire-oil, but walk slowly and beat the
flames down.”

For a heartbeat, the Lost One thought the
people would baulk at this necessary command, partly because of the
terrible death of one of their own, but also because of their
uncertainty about their own Lord. It struck him for the first time
how much Ralph’s authority had weakened due to recent events, and
he felt a thud of compassion in his stomach.

Ralph swung round and fixed him with a fierce
gaze. He laid his fingers on Simon’s shoulders. Do not pity me,
scribe. I stand by my own decisions and they are not for your
judgement.

The fact Lord Tregannon had himself
instigated this link knocked Simon off balance and he stepped back,
breaking the contact between them. It was, as he had anticipated,
too much, given their history and given the men they were or had
become. However, as he stepped away, Simon caught the look of
surprise on the Lammas Lord’s face, and then dislike and sorrow,
something which for a heartbeat or two he could not fathom.

Then it came to him: Ralph had seen, even in
this brief link, what had transpired between himself and the
mind-executioner when Gelahn had stolen him away, and Simon felt
the heat rise to his skin. He had kept the unsettling encounter
hidden where none could discover it, or he thought he had, but all
it had taken for the Lammas Lord to know his secret was one touch,
may the gods and stars be cursed. He turned away, still shaken by
Ralph’s expression. He had no time for regrets. What was done was
done, and his own unwillingness and strange pleasure in Gelahn’s
ravishment could not be altered, for all the wishing of it.

Unable to help himself, he glanced again at
Ralph, but the man had already noted Simon’s unspoken truths and
turned again to the immediate crisis.

“Quickly,” he urged his people, “we must do
what we can. But leave the place where death occurred to me; I will
salvage what I can there.”

This time, the villagers obeyed, spreading
out slowly across the field wherever flames appeared and beating
them down until they were nothing. The Lost One noticed the first
glimmer of dawn was lightening the far horizon to soft yellows and
pinks. He shivered, realising once more how cold he felt.

“Come then,” he whispered to the mind-cane as
the Lammas Lord limped away. “You have helped me here so let’s see
what you can do.”

The Lost One stood for a moment and ran his
fingers over the cane’s silver carvings as he scanned the burning
field. When his gaze fell on the western side, nearest the woods,
the cane began to hum and he felt the warmth of its vibration
through his hand. He smiled.

“You are a strange artefact and I will never
fully understand you,” he said, “but I will follow where you lead
and work with you where I can.”

Using the mind-cane as support, Simon began
to make his way in the direction it had promised him. Halfway
across, the Lammas Lord interrupted his journey.

“There is little use in going there, scribe,”
he shouted, the words rising in mist from his tongue in the chill
air. “If you wish to help and are able to, then come and join us
where we are.”

The Lost One shook his head. He trusted the
warmth in his fingers and the cane’s song, and had no time for
distractions. He waited until Ralph shrugged and turned back to his
own task before continuing.

When Simon reached the furthest end of the
field, the mind-cane ceased its humming. This is the place, he
thought, and crouched down, resting his free hand on the earth. It
was almost hot enough to burn him and he gasped. It should not be
like that, as the fire had gone out here, unless the essence of it
had had time to sink into the soil, but he could hardly credit this
as being possible. If it was so, then there must be a greater
mind-magic at work here than he had imagined. Was it something to
do with the dark power he had already sensed in Jemelda?

No time for battling with what he could not
yet comprehend. He stood up, took the cane and plunged it as hard
as he could into the dry ground. The effort made his body shake and
he wondered if he would fall, but the cane itself kept him upright.
He felt the flames before he saw them, fire from the earth rising
through the artefact, first by its heat and then in vast flashes of
crimson and black. The fire-oil must have sunk deeper, a strange
magic, and ignited the soil itself beneath the layer of seed. The
Lost One clung on to the mind-cane, knowing instinctively this was
his best chance of weathering the storm, as the cries of the people
from the other side of the field came to his ears.

There was more danger in Lammas than he had
anticipated, but he was glad of it. Here was something he could do;
he could drain the fire’s threat at the depths of the earth. So he
kept on going, pushing the cane even deeper into the soil and
shutting his eyes to the waves of fire and light flowing upward
over his body and into the air.

“Simon.”

He heard Ralph’s warning shout, already too
late, in his thought before it came to him in truth, and knew the
Lammas Lord’s deadly intent.

No! Do not run to me. You will die.

He doubted Ralph would obey, but he had no
choice but to stay with the mind-cane. So he opened his eyes and
searched the skies for the help he hoped he would find there.

The snow-raven had already anticipated the
need; the great bird was plunging from the heavens towards the
group of villagers and towards Ralph. The Lammas Lord had barely
taken two or three steps across the field when the raven reached
him and knocked him to the ground with one sweep of his vast wing.
Simon held his breath in case the shock of the jolt onto the earth
might ignite some few drops of fire-oil the people had not yet
doused but the snow-raven spread out his wings and opened his beak.
A perfect orb of gold spun outwards with the snow-raven’s song and
for a glorious dawn-lit moment everything in Simon’s mind was
silent. The orb burst and a golden river flowed over the field and
seeds, over the people and the wood. When it reached the Lost One
as he continued to thrust the mind-cane deep into the earth, the
fire and brightness turned to silver and then was swallowed up into
air. The silence spread beyond his own thought and into his flesh
and then it too was gone.

He let go of the cane, landed with a thump on
his back on the soil and stretched out, gazing at the sky. It took
him a moment to catch his breath while he puzzled over what had
just happened. The fire under the soil had been dampened, buried
deep in the heart of the land where it belonged, a success achieved
through the cane and through the bird. And through his own action
also, he told himself wryly. The fire-oil was no longer a danger
beneath them, he could sense it, and indeed the gold from the
raven’s song had smoothed over the surface flame and the heat was
already dissipating.

How had the oil been able to sink so far? It
should not have done so and it riled him he could not fathom its
mystery. In his role as the Lost One of the Gathandrians, he should
have been able to hope for some insight, but none came to him. He
sat upright and struggled to his feet as Ralph and the villagers
made their way cautiously towards him.

He only spoke when the Lammas Lord and the
people were near enough to hear his words.

“The fire-oil shouldn’t have penetrated
beyond the surface,” he said, “but some trick I don’t yet
understand had enabled it to do so. We should be careful in this
new battle, my Lord, but we are at least warned.”