The Executioner's Cane

by Anne Brooke

  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.

  Ignoring the pain in his leg and bottling his swift anger into swifter action, Ralph shoves Jemelda to one side and lunges for the blacksmith’s knife. It narrowly misses his arm and the two men roll over and over closer to the night-woman’s dwelling. Jemelda curses and leaps after them. This is not the encounter Ralph had been hoping to have with the rebels. He must stop this madness, and soon.

  He grabs the blacksmith’s wrist as the knife plunges down at him again and wrenches it backwards. His attacker yelps and drops the weapon, just as Ralph manages to free his good leg and kick him away. He senses rather than sees Jemelda leap for him but he dodges her too and the next heartbeat Ralph is up on his feet and stumbling through the mist towards the night-woman’s door. The one imperative in his mind is this: he mu
st reach Simon, and he cannot gainsay it.

  As he enters the whiteness, he gains the impression for a moment that the strange mist is penetrating his mind and wiping out the past which makes up who he is today. No time to react however as another shove from behind brings him scrabbling to the door which gives way and lands him, the mist and his two attackers onto the dusty stone floor of the dwelling where Simon is hiding.

  Ralph gains an impression of flurry and panic amidst the cries and shouts accompanying their unplanned entrance. In it are the echo and shape of words, but they too make no sense. With his next breath, the scribe himself appears before him, the mind-cane hovering at his hand.

  “Ralph,” he whispers. “I thought you’d never arrive.”

  Simon

  The Lost One couldn’t understand why he hadn’t sensed Ralph’s presence before he’d fallen, panting hard and under attack, into their small refuge. The circle of people broke, crying out as they flung themselves out of the way although, in all honesty, there was no place to run. The emptiness had entered with Ralph and was blocking the door.

  No time to waste. Simon grabbed Annyeke’s hand, although she was already reaching for him, took her mind-strength together with the strength from the cane and sent what was surely the last of the energy he had into the mind-net as it fought against the whiteness. With it went some of the colour of the words the people had gifted him with, but he couldn’t help that. He would have to make do with what he had left, somehow.

  A heart’s breath and then the white mist shrunk away from Ralph and the other two, whom he could see were Jemelda and Thomas, and disappeared beyond the door. They were safe, for the moment. He hunkered down in front of Ralph, didn’t know what to say though so many speeches were crowding his blood and his tongue he could have written many scrolls with them. In the end what he said made no sense but it was the first thought to escape him, and it made him focus.

  “Ralph. I thought you’d never arrive.”

  It was then he realised the presence of the Lammas Lord might be the best thing of all. Before Simon could speak his hope, Thomas had stumbled to his feet and taken a step or two in his direction. He jumped out of the way, unconsciously bringing his hand to his cheek where the blacksmith had once scarred him. No wound there now, because of the raven, because of his luck. He raised the mind-cane in front of him and the blacksmith stopped, cursing. Jemelda joined him, her eyes darting from him to Ralph and back again. This close, Simon could see the murderous intent in her heart towards them both, so thick and dark he would never be able to find a way through to both her and the woman she carried within, and bit down his grief. Neither Jemelda nor Frankel deserved to bear such burdens.

  “Coward,” Thomas said, his tone heavy with scorn.

  “Yes, always,” Simon replied. “But I will do what I must to ensure we may live.”

  “You use the cane to save yourself,” Jemelda spat her words at him so he blinked. “But you will never face me directly.”

  “No time,” was his terse reply. “We are under attack from something greater than our causes.”

  Jemelda whirled round to follow the direction of his gaze. Outside, instead of the street, the shattered houses and the trees, there was only the thick mist which undulated against the door and obliterated everything that should have been in his view. Simon felt sick to the mind and gripped the cane more strongly, patterning the shape of it against his skin.

  “On the contrary,” Jemelda turned back to him, a sneer disfiguring her face. “It is an ally to help us destroy you, and its time is here at last.”

  Simon could find nothing to say in response but, after a heartbeat or two, someone moved out of the shadows. It was Frankel.

  “Jemelda,” he whispered. “Please, do not do this. We need to fight together. Please …”

  She turned to gaze at her husband. Simon wondered if this was it, if this was the moment when he came to matter less to the Tregannon cook than the needs of the land she loved, the moment when everything changed. But something within him remained empty and he understood before Jemelda had even opened her mouth how there was, for her, no way back.

  “No,” she said. “We must fight the murderer amongst us, if we are to be free.”

  Three things happened at once. Ralph took a step forward and stood in front of Simon as if to protect him from attack, even though the mind-cane would surely be protection enough. Behind him his father began to curse and mutter, and Simon heard the words in his thought even though they were impenetrable to the ear: it is coming, it is coming, it is coming …

  Third and finally, the mind-net broke and the emptiness came flooding in.

  Screams filled his mind, not his own but those of the people around him. Within the screams he saw the colours of their history, the words they had willingly given him and those they had not. And, beyond them, the history and words of Ralph and the people he had brought with him, both those in the night-woman’s home and those scattered across the village.

  Many of the people who’d taken refuge elsewhere died at once as the mist swallowed them up. Simon could sense the precise moment they were no more, each death taking a part of the whole, a part of himself. Almost as if his skin was being torn from his bones piece by piece. No. The word flashed into his mind, powered by black and silver and strengthened by the cane’s power. He grasped it, using it to fight off the terrible whiteness and to hang on to his sense of who he was. I am the Lost One, but I am not lost yet.

  He tumbled back into the reality of the village dwelling. Now the screams were in the air also, but strangely muffled, as if the mist was choking them off. Behind it was Jemelda’s terrible laughter, a sound which made him tremble. From instinct he grasped for Ralph but could not find him. Damn the man for never being there when the connection between them might have grounded him in this battle. But by the stars Simon would find another grounding or die a second time in the attempt.

  He could not do this alone, even with the mind-cane’s power deep within. He needed someone he knew and knew well to bring it out; he was a half-Gathandrian, not a full mind-dweller. And, as he stumbled forward, fighting to keep his balance even though he could scarcely breathe and the whiteness was stifling him, he knew who was in reach and whom he should try.

  Letting his mind roam free and cutting out any distractions as best he could, he formed one word in his thought, one beyond the words he had received earlier: father.

  How easy he assumed the connection would be. He was Bradyn’s son after all, no matter how bitter and distant the relationship between them. Blood should call to blood when there was none other to help. But there was only the silence where no words dwelt and no hint of his father’s whereabouts. Please. No time to think: he brought the cane to his own forehead and drove its power through him directly. It was flame and darkness, light and terror, and all else of horror and joy besides, but he held on as his mind blistered. Then it was there, a faint echo: it has come, it has come, it has come …

  He wrenched the cane away and was at Bradyn’s side in an instant. In the overwhelming whiteness filling both air and heart, he could no longer see anything but he could feel the shape of the old man and recognise his thought and his trembling well enough.

  It has come, he repeated his father’s chanted words, bridging the gap and not caring how much pain such a link caused. It has come and now I need you. I need you to centre me, please.

  All these thoughts Simon had assumed he would never say and now here they were, as if they had been waiting all along. And with it the truth which lay at his own heart: I love you, please help me.

  He didn’t wait for an answer but grasped his father’s face, feeling his way in the white darkness which surrounded him, and placed his fingers on his forehead. He expected shock, perhaps terror, or even confusion, as his father had made no sign he’d understood any part of what was happening in the last few day-cycles. Instead, he was pulled into Bradyn’s mind as if the old man had been waiting for him.
Simon had the impression of breaching a barrier or finding a way open to him, and then an explosion of colour overwhelmed his senses: red and the deepest green, silver and sunlight, with behind it the river of blue he carried with him always. His father cried out. Simon could hear his voice in the air as well as in his thought. If he stayed here too long, Simon would kill his mind and, despite the resentment he still carried at how his father had betrayed him, this realisation brought bile to his mouth. He would not kill again if he could help it, for his mother’s sake and, by the gods, for his own. But he must find the word, the one hidden in the colours, the one he had not been able to reach during the mind-circle before.

  Give me it this time, please.

  Streaks of crimson began to appear in front of Simon’s eyes and he knew the time he had was rapidly vanishing and in the turn of a story’s edge his chance would be gone. He plunged into the colours, inhabiting them instead of simply staring. Their fierceness clutched and tore at his skin like the beaks of ravens, or one raven, had once done, and his cries, real now, mingled with his father’s. Please.

  Then he had it. In the very centre of his father’s mind, the word dwelt. He reached out to take it but the sudden image of his mother’s face reared up before him and he stumbled backwards, tears springing unbidden to his eyes. No, you cannot fail now.

  The voice was his father’s, how he had used to sound in the days when Simon was young, before his mother was killed. Only the shock of this stopped his backward motion and propelled him forward once again. He reached out, took the word, felt the memories of his mother and what she had meant to them both sinking into his understanding. He wanted so much to stay and remember but he could not; his father would die and a world of people, including the man he was bound to, would be lost and he could stomach neither of those futures.

  He ripped himself from his father’s mind, trying to do the least damage possible, but speed not comfort was important now. Simon came to himself, back in the night-woman’s house, his father’s screams echoing in the air, his father’s word lodged deep within his mind: sacrifice.