Hallsfoot's Battle (20 page)

As he strode behind the two men, the scribe
thought it odd that he could pick up no individual thoughts from
the brothers themselves. His only understanding emanated from the
sensations filtered through the book and he could not tell their
origin. He had a sense of history, as if this place, these people,
had been here for generation-cycles beyond numbering, and would
always be here. Beyond that, the background hum of the
village-dwellers’ feelings, exhaustion, satisfaction, hunger, the
need for sleep, friendship, love and peace. More frightening
emotions, too, swirled in the void left by men and women who had
never been real, fear, jealousy, resentment and hatred. All these
passed over him and he could not make them stop, or understand
their meaning, not fully. He was new to this.

Nearer the trees, Ahelos took out a pouch
from his belt that he unfolded and handed to his brother. “Come
then, if we both gather the elm nuts, then we will the sooner be
home.”

“And free from the threat of the river
foxes,” Kanlin added.

The scribe did not like the sound of such
animals, but decided asking would only bring an answer to his
question and he did not want to know. He thought he, too, should
perhaps offer to help, but the younger brother shook his head,
smiling.

“I have only two belt pouches,” he said.
“And, besides, I see you already have your own burdens to carry.
You will have to keep watch for us.”

Before Simon could object, Ahelos had turned
away and was striding deeper into the wood, Kanlin by his side. In
the sky, the snow-raven continued to wheel and dance an intricate
pattern, each change of direction accompanied by a harsh whistling.
The scribe shivered and plunged into the trees.

They swallowed him up. Tall, interlocked
branches cut out most of the dying light and the only glimmer came
from the silver carvings on the top of the cane. He could hear a
constant low howling and wondered whether that could be one of the
river-foxes—whatever they were—before realising it was only the
wind. His own foolishness made him smile but, nevertheless, he
tracked the brothers and kept watch as best he could, not that he
knew how he could protect them from danger if it transpired. He had
no weapon, only the cane, and it did not always act as he might
wish. If it chose to be, it was stronger than any knife. But the
scribe could not guarantee its choice, especially in a fictional
world such as this, no matter how real it felt.

To his left, he caught the bulky shadow of
Kanlin hunkering down beside a great tree-trunk and gathering
handfuls of what must be the elm nuts, pouring them into the belt
pouch. Ahelos he couldn’t see. His slight figure must be hidden
amongst the trees.

The scribe took a step forward, drawing
together his scant supply of courage to tell the older man that
already he had failed in his task. He had not been keeping watch
and the younger brother had vanished. At the same time, a wave of
thick blackness swept over him and he found he couldn’t move at
all. The book felt cold to his touch and the mind-cane’s silver
ceased to glow.

Ahelos appeared on the other side of Kanlin.
The man crouching down failed to notice. From instinct, Simon
opened his mouth to cry a warning, but no sound came out. Something
glittered in the younger brother’s hand. A heartbeat later, the
scribe saw it was a knife. This shining object plunged deep into
the figure of the older man, who cried out and fell backwards
against the tree. Dark liquid gushed from the wound, and the scribe
felt the sticky wetness spray against his face. He turned, able to
move at last, and vomited into the undergrowth. From the edge of
his vision, he saw the knife rise and fall again, twice, and then
Kanlin was silent.

“Please,” the scribe heard himself say.
“Please…”

“Hush your mouth,” came Ahelos’ reply, his
voice now changed from the charm of before into a harsher tone. And
still Simon could sense none of the man’s emotions. “I have to make
sure my brother is dead.”

“Why have you killed him?” The question was
in the air before the scribe could prevent it and he would have
given much of the little he owned, and all he didn’t, to pull the
question back.

Ahelos laughed. “Would you not wish to? He
has spent years of his life belittling me and taking what is mine.
He deserves to die. It is a miracle he has survived thus far.”

“You will be punished. Even if you k-kill me,
those you live with will find it out, no matter how far you run.”
The scribe wished he’d sounded stronger, but his stammer under
pressure couldn’t be helped. He also wished he’d had the sense to
remain silent or even to run, but the taste of vomit in his mouth
seemed to force words out of him he would never otherwise have
said. Likewise, the tremble in his legs betrayed his need to
escape.

“Ah, but I don’t intend to run,” whispered
Ahelos, and now Simon could see the glitter of the knife streaked
with its black globules of blood as it came ever closer. “Because
you, a stranger, are here. I’d thought of a river fox as the killer
of my beloved brother, but why should not a stranger be a murderer
just as well?”

“I-I don’t want to kill anyone,” the scribe
tried to back away but the mind-cane hummed in his hand and once
more he found he couldn’t move. From somewhere beyond the trees, he
heard the snow-raven’s cry.

“Nobody knows that,” Ahelos said with a
laugh. “I’ll say you followed us, tried to rob us and killed my
brother. Then I, in my natural anger, killed you. Justice was
done.”

He brought the knife down. The steel, still
warm from Kanlin’s body, touched Simon’s arm on its way to his
belly. The scribe cried out. The mind-cane screamed but not with
fear and, the next moment, Simon drove the cane into Ahelos’
face.

He was hoping only to fend off his assailant,
but the mind-cane had a different purpose. As the ebony touched the
murderous brother, fire leapt from it, suffused with the wild
humming. The sound was so piercing that Simon was forced to cover
his ears with his arms, although the overwhelming noise was in his
thoughts, also, and that could not be gainsaid. Ahelos’ hair burst
into a dark crimson flame that ran down his body, licking away
tunic and skin and flesh. The smell of burning drove all other
thoughts away and the scribe turned and vomited again.

When he looked round, the air was still and
the humming had stopped. The mind-cane was motionless. The
snow-raven was perched on a branch nearby that swayed under his
weight. The bird was glowing and a single speck of bright blood
marked his head. Simon couldn’t help but shake. He longed to drop
both the book of this legend and the cane, but his fingers would
not let go. He glanced at the ground. Ahelos lay at his feet. In
the light cast through the trees by the snow-raven, Simon could see
the man’s face and skin were burnt away.

He swore with words he had heard Ralph say in
what seemed a lifetime ago. His heart was beating at such a pace
but he could not breathe in enough air. He’d killed Ahelos. He’d
killed him, when he’d sworn to himself he would not kill again. He
hadn’t meant to. Dropping to his knees, Simon peered into his
victim’s features, or what he could see of them. He could sense
nothing, but that was no surprise—he had been unable to link with
either of these men while they lived, so how could he understand
fully when they had died?

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to no one. “I’m
sorry.”

The snow-raven gave a low whistle and Ahelos’
eyes flickered open. Simon gasped but could not draw back. Somehow,
his eyes had been saved from the all-consuming flame, but the
scribe did not think they focused on anything. The glint of life
was fading away. Ahelos was dying.

In the silence after the raven’s call, he
realised he could hear something but didn’t know what it was. A
quick search around him revealed no danger, but still the low noise
continued. It formed itself into words. He stared at Ahelos. Yes,
his lips were moving, his teeth glittering strangely as they worked
the sound into shapes.

More than anything, the scribe wanted to run.
It was always his first, his most pressing instinct. Instead, now,
he shut his eyes, told himself that because of what he had done, he
had to stay. Then he leaned forward, moving his ear to the remains
of Ahelos’ mouth. It took half a story’s beginning to hear what he
was saying and, even then, understanding did not follow in the wake
of knowledge.

“You are the justice-bringer after all, you
are he…”

The same words spoken over and over again,
but so quietly and fading so rapidly that Simon did not, at first,
believe he’d heard it at all.

At last, the talking stopped. Ahelos’ eyes
dulled to nothing and closed. Simon was alone. Finding what little
strength he had left, he staggered to his feet and backed away
until he felt the solidity of bark and leaf. With a fierce shout,
he flung both the book and the mind-cane as far from himself as he
could. The cane landed with a dull thump in leaf-mulch and the book
hit the branch of an ash standing opposite and stayed, entangled by
twigs. Its green glow vanished at once and the light from the
snow-raven began to fade.

At the same time, a hand that was not his
reached out and plucked the discarded book from the tree. Before he
could think whether it was one of the brothers’ fellow villagers
and, if it were, what he might say, a voice spoke, but only to his
mind.

It was Gelahn. A slight dark-eyed figure
dressed in the way Simon had first encountered him, a black
over-tunic edged with white circles. The cloak, he knew, would be
trimmed with the shape of a pentagon, although now he could not see
it. His heart skittered in his throat and his thoughts became as
ice. With the mind-executioner’s presence, the scent of fire and
darkness deepened and, behind Gelahn, the shadows of another that
the scribe could not quite make out.

If you cannot bear the story, the
mind-executioner said, then you are nothing but a fool to tell
it.

Fourth Lammas Lands
Chronicle

PRUDENCE AND SLOTH

Ralph

Something has happened. He no longer senses
the mind-executioner’s presence in his home, although the snarling
of the mountain dogs in the bedroom can be heard as far as the
great hall. The fact of Gelahn’s absence snapped into Ralph’s mind
as soon as he limped into the shelter of home, the irritation of
his encounter with Jemelda in the kitchens still fresh on his
skin.

Where is he?

His first thought is it must be a trick.
Gelahn is testing him by hiding himself so completely that Ralph
does not know when he will appear next. He is waiting to see what
the Overlord will do.

Ralph shakes the rain from his hair and takes
off his boots. The stone slabs freeze his feet and he reaches for
the cloth he keeps by the cloak store. Not bothering to find a
chair, he simply sits on the floor and dries himself as best he
may. In recent times, this would have been a servant’s job and the
change in routine makes him grimace. No matter. For the foreseeable
future-cycle, this is something he will have to grow accustomed
to.

And, all the time, under this light clatter
of thought that he hopes masks at least some of the deeper part of
his mind, Ralph is pondering on weightier matters. Whenever Gelahn
is here he has, up until now, always been able to sense him. If
this is a trick, it is a good one. But why would the
mind-executioner do this? He has the power over Ralph that he
wishes. Even if, by some strange miracle, there are things Gelahn
does not know or has not yet spoken of, like the presence of the
emeralds, the fact remains that Ralph does not know how to use
their magic and so the knowledge of them is worse than useless.

A sudden lurch takes him. The emeralds. They
hid the boy from Gelahn. Perhaps, then, the mind-executioner has
already discovered them and that is why Ralph does not sense him
now. The emeralds—may their power and all the gods and stars that
made them be cursed—are hiding his enemy from him, also. Gelahn is
still here, he would not leave without taking the wretched dogs
with him, and he is using Ralph’s own so-called cunning to taunt
him.

Ralph scrambles upright, still cursing under
his breath, and launches himself through the hall towards the
ancient oak staircase and the bedrooms above. His breath comes in
short gasps and he almost stumbles over the last of his own dogs.
No time to stop. It is quicker this way than if he uses the
passage’s outside entrance. He needs to see Gelahn now before he
takes his vengeance on any of the people, if that is his plan.
Ralph needs to try to explain, though he has no excuses.

The executioner will see the emeralds. He
will know how to mine them in full and any advantage Ralph has will
be gone. How his father would cast Ralph out now if he could see
what his son has done. All the Tregannons’ power and hope vanished
in a tenth of the time his father took to build it. He was right
about Ralph all along.

At the door to the room Gelahn has taken,
Ralph finally remembers the mountain dogs. Their howling wraps
round him, snapping at his flesh. Gods and stars. But he cannot
retrace his steps. He must see the mind-executioner and understand
the shape of the landscape he must meet. To wait for Gelahn to
reveal himself would be impossible.

He might even be inside Ralph’s room now. He
has no way of telling.

Swinging round, he slams his fists on the
wall and lets loose another guttural curse in his mother’s tongue.
For a moment, the sound of his voice almost holds back the baying
of the dogs. In that moment, and not caring what may come from his
actions, Ralph opens the door and plunges inside.