The Executioner's Cane (41 page)

She didn’t have to ask twice. He pulled
himself to his feet, grasped her arm with his free hand and flung
the mind-cane at the door with the other. An arc of dark fire leapt
from its silver carving and the door, miraculously, slammed shut.
As the cane fell, red flame seared the wood but did not destroy
it.

“Oh, good,” the Lost One muttered. “I hoped
it would work.”

Even as he spoke, his fingers were at her
forehead and she was overcome by that well of undulating power
within him, so much nearer the surface than before. It was almost
as if his encounter with the emptiness had released something she
had never sensed in him, or at least not to this depth. She did not
know if she could contain such strength but then the mind-net he
was seeking for leapt to find him, and became a circle of deepest
red and green which wrapped itself around the walls, making the
whiteness that clung to the Lost One vanish.

He gasped as he let her go, and sat straight
down on the floor again, brushing one hand through his hair. The
mind-cane danced softly back to its master and settled like a
faithful hound at his side. She wondered if it would ever leave him
and then puzzled at the thought.

“That worked too,” the scribe said, staring
at the cane, his tone one of frank astonishment. “I was rather less
confident about it. Thank you, Annyeke.”

As the Lost One rose to his feet again,
helped by the night-woman who kept as far away from the terrors of
the mind-cane as she could, Annyeke hurried to the small window at
the back of the hut and peered out. The whiteness was swooping in
and she could barely see the trees or the damaged dwellings across
the narrow street. She swung back round.

“Lost One, Simon,” she said. “The danger is
here. We must do something soon.”

He responded at once, though she did not see
the reason for his action.

“Come, form your circle again,” he said and
then gestured at her as the rest of the people began to obey. “You
too, Annyeke. Please.”

As Annyeke complied, she couldn’t help but
question. “Why?”

“Because,” he said, “if it is our stories
which will fight the enemy who wishes to take them from us, then it
is the stories of us all, not just my own, which will save us.”

Then she saw it in truth.

Simon

He’d known the answer before Annyeke had
asked it. Something had travelled from the mind-cane through his
skin and directly to his mind before he could track its journey. A
black and silver flash with an echo of green. The colours should
not have blended, but they did. Amongst them, a wave of words and
pictures tumbled and flowed across his inner vision and then were
gone. He gained the impression of beginnings which could overcome
all the emptiness in the vast skies if they came to their
fullness.

The moment they vanished, he understood they
were not his, but the stories and the experiences of the people
surrounding him. They had within themselves the ability to win. All
he needed to do was channel it.

Could he do it and, if so, for how long?

Annyeke nodded as she took her place in the
circle of people. The question she had asked him had focused his
thought and he was glad of it. He ducked under her arm and entered
the circle, causing a murmur to rise and fall at the proximity of
the cane, though he tried to keep it close to his side. When he
straightened, the first person he saw was his father.

A jumble of words sprang up in Simon’s mind,
nonsensical, strange, the wild colours of them making him blink.
The voice he heard which accompanied them however was his father’s,
but the old man himself gave no sign he was even aware of what was
passing through his own thought. It was as if what had just
occurred between the mind-cane and himself had heightened Simon’s
senses so he had no need to delve for other men’s secrets. They
were there within him, in black and purple and gold. From instinct
and almost before he knew it, Simon was reaching out with the cane
and touching his father’s hair with the top of the silver
carving.

“Please,” he whispered as the old man’s eyes
widened and spittle gathered on his grey beard, “don’t be
afraid.”

He saw at once there was no chance of that;
his father’s mind showed no fear of the cane nor of the situation
they found themselves in. All Simon sensed was the jittering spikes
of madness, like a discordant sound in the harmony the mind-cane
brought him. Then, suddenly a light in the darkness shone through,
and one word came into Simon’s thought: expanse.

His father’s deepest word, he knew it, though
its meaning escaped him. Immediately afterwards, he all but cried
out as his father’s madness flooded in on him again. With an effort
he pulled the mind-cane away and broke the link. He was panting
hard.

“Lost One?”

Annyeke’s voice tumbled in to his
consciousness and grounded him. He turned to glance at her, nodded,
and saw behind her the beginnings of whiteness pushing against the
mind-net at the window.

So little time.

“I’m all right,” he said as the people again
began to murmur their anxiety. He and Annyeke had to contain them
as he understood none would survive losing their stories if they
broke from the circle. Only the cane and the net protected them
from the terror of the Book of Blood. “I’m all right, but I need to
touch each person’s thought with the cane’s power. I swear to you,
it will not harm you.”

Simon did not know whether further links with
this number of men and women in such quick succession would in fact
harm him, but he chose to hide that fear, at least from
Annyeke.

It was she who spoke first. “Start with me
then.”

He shook his head, speaking as clearly and
quickly as he could and determined not to let his eyes stray to the
weakness of the window-space. “No, First Elder, I must end with
you. Your skills will centre me again, but I must touch the minds
of the people here.”

A terrible silence. Too long, he thought.
Then the night-woman standing at the right hand of Annyeke took a
small step forward and looked up at him for a moment before
breaking his gaze again.

“I will do it,” she said so softly that each
of them had to lean towards her to hear.

“Thank you,” he said, his heart beating fast
at such evidence of courage where he did not, fool that he was,
expect it. Truly the women were the masters of them all.

He swung round so he brought each person’s
face into his mind and held it there for a mere moment before
moving to the next until he was back with the night-woman again.
“Do all of you agree?”

Another silence, this time briefer, laced
with surprise he had asked them the question at all. Then the yes
he needed.

“Come then,” he said. “Let us begin.”

Trying to find some measure of command that
was his, not simply the cane’s, and at the same time very much
aware of the threat outside, Simon began with the night-woman. He
felt rather than heard her gasp as the carving touched her hair
while already the wild and jumbled nature of the words she held
within were all but overwhelming him. So many of them were cruel
and bitter, heart-responses to the life she had led and the people
she had known. But in some he sensed a glimmer of what might have
been hope. It was hard to tell for sure as the colours were so
dark, like shadows of the brightness they should have. One word
however was strongest: grief.

He took it, feeling its weight in his mind,
and an answering echo from his own past. How he understood it. When
he released the woman, she half-staggered and he stepped forward to
hold her steady, but Annyeke was already there, her hand under the
woman’s elbow. The First Elder frowned at him.

“Don’t wait, Lost One,” she said. “We will
help each other. You need to hurry.”

He knew she was right. As quickly as
possible, and attempting with all his strength to minimise any
damage he might cause to the people he’d already injured so
greatly, Simon took the mind-words from the remainder of the
circle.

They were a motley mixture: along with
expanse and grief, he gathered despair, mistrust, anger,
bitterness, as well as loyalty, trust, hope and – from Annyeke –
love. Some of the words were shared amongst the people and some
gave more than one, but the sum of them was this.

When he finished and stepped back into the
centre of the circle, the mind-cane flashed the brightest silver
flare which vanished almost as soon as appearing. Ignoring the
cries of shock around him, themselves soon fading when the cane
stayed quiet, Simon stared unblinking at the artefact.

Something was missing. There should have been
more to find, both here and elsewhere, but he could not grasp
it.

“Lost One,” Annyeke said, her voice snapping
his attention to her at once. “Do you have all you need?”

Simon glanced at the window once more, heart
beating fast at the quantity of emptiness seeping through. The
mind-net’s power, however strengthened, surely could not hold for
long.

“No, I need more but I don’t know what it
is,” he said, the truth leaping from his tongue before he could
fashion it.

She cursed softly, then her eyes brightened.
“What about yourself? Your own story will surely complete our
defence.”

“Yes, of course, thank you.” It was obvious
now Annyeke had spoken and he blessed the gods and stars for her.
He needed her wisdom. But when he concentrated on the shape and
warmth of the cane in his palm and burrowed deep within himself for
his own essence, it was not entirely what he had expected. A long
moment of his own uncertainty and then something leapt out, framed
green against the dark: acceptance.

Simon smiled wryly. It made sense to him, but
in the same heartbeat, he still understood it wasn’t enough. The
story he had been chosen to create was missing the element that
would make it sing and overpower any enemy raised against them.

Just as he opened his mouth to say this to
Annyeke and the people, the window shattered and the door was flung
wide, bringing the emptiness in to them all.

Chapter Sixteen: The Power of Death

Ralph

The journey lasts only a heartbeat and it
lasts forever. As the emeralds take them into the green void, Ralph
feels as if his bones and blood are being sucked out of his skin.
He cries out and his cries are blended into the screams and wild
shouts of the soldiers and prisoners, the men and women he has
tricked into this returning.

He cannot see how they can survive it.
Perhaps only the power of Simon’s mind-cane gives protection to
this strange journey and that is as far from him as the earth from
the sky. Still the emeralds belong to him and he’ll be damned if he
lets them defeat him. As the air rushes from his throat, Ralph
twists himself closer to the nearest sparkling jewel, still just
visible in the rough and tumble of the dark, and tries to grasp it.
He misses, grimaces at his failure and makes one last effort to
hold the jewel in flight. Something heavy bumps into him and he
catches a glimpse of the blacksmith’s face before the man is pulled
away out of sight. But the encounter has helped him and when Ralph
tries for the jewel again, it touches the end of his fingers and
the next moment is in his palm with all the ease of a hawk
returning to the glove.

He feels the heat against his skin and can
breathe again. Now he has the emerald, he does not know how to use
it. He is a soldier not a magic-worker but he’ll have to do
something.

“Bring us safe to our journey’s end and let
it be soon!” he shouts, foolishly, at an object that has neither
ears nor sense.

The stars alone know what happens next, but
Ralph lands with a thump on rough soil, the breath leaving his body
only seconds after he has regained it. At the same time, he hears
the cries and groans of others landing around him. He struggles to
his feet, recognises at once they are back home, in the village, as
he prayed them to be. He is breathing hard, and reaches out to
catch the remaining emeralds as they fall. The pain in his leg and
from the recent attack by the wolf all but fell him again but he
swallows down bile and glances round for his men, and Jemelda’s
people. Because whatever happens now, it will happen here and with
them all.

He has hardly had time to wonder when Simon
will come when his mind tells him the scribe is already here, in
the night-woman’s dwelling. Neither is he alone. More than that,
above and around the dwelling, a white mist hovers. He doesn’t know
what it is but it makes him feel cold, as if the emptiness of the
world has come down to haunt them.

“Get up,” he shouts at the people around him,
but his voice is no more than a whisper so he tries again. “Get up!
We must find shelter.”

His command echoes round the village street,
and the men and women obey it as best they can. They pick
themselves off the ground, both soldiers and rebels alike, and
begin to half-run half-stumble towards the huts. He doesn’t know
how much shelter they’ll find there but he prays to the gods it
will be some. At the same time he grabs the man nearest to him and
propels them both towards the night-woman’s house where the mist is
thickest. His instincts tell him he has no time to see to the
prisoners; here in the village they are somehow at war and he needs
to regroup. The prisoners can wait. Now he must face the enemy,
find out who, or rather what, he is fighting. And, by the stars,
even if the enemy is insubstantial, if it is threatening Simon he
will fight it. That much is his truth and how he understands
it.

Without warning, something knocks Ralph off
balance and he spins round, falling with a thump to the earth. It
is Jemelda. Next to her is the blacksmith. He is on top of the man
who only a moment ago was supporting Ralph. There is a silver flash
in the blacksmith’s hand, and the man on the ground underneath him
screams. Then a gurgling cry and silence. When Ralph next sees the
knife again, it is heavy with blood.