Hallsfoot's Battle (31 page)

It is then that the skin of Ralph’s palm
where it touches the jewel-pouch begins to grow hot. He continues
to limp onwards, gasping for air, and when he glances down he sees
that the emeralds are glowing—all of them. He can see them through
the bag’s velvet. It is the same way they glowed before destroying
the mountain dog. Are they going to kill him, too? Just as the
village is almost in sight?

But he misunderstands their purpose. Before
Ralph can respond in any fashion, the heat from the jewels
transfers itself to his body and he feels a surge of strength power
through his blood. He starts to run, in truth this time and as if
he has never been injured at all, with the beat of his heart
pounding in his ears. Risking a glance behind him, when all reason
tells him it will be foolish, Ralph sees the remaining dogs are
starting their pursuit. This time they are as silent as the deep
stone they come from and that terrifies him even more.

He can glimpse the outskirts of the village
now. The baker’s home, or what is left of it. No roof, only three
walls and the remains of his working oven lying half in and half
out of the entrance. Ralph’s heart quickens its irregular rhythm as
he sees that, next to the well, two women are deep in conversation.
They shouldn’t be there. It is long past the hour for water talk.
But these days nothing is what it should be. His decisions have
swept away their traditions along with their safety.

When Ralph tries to shout a warning, his
mouth makes no noise above a harsh whisper. They have to go, they
have to. Once the dogs arrive, their hot breath all but snapping at
his heels once more, there is no knowing what they will do, whom
they will kill. Will the emeralds and the water protect all three
of them? Ralph cannot guarantee it.

Not caring what they will think, he somehow
brings together the corners of his thoughts in the way Simon showed
him, a thousand lifetimes ago. He imagines crimson and black,
colours to induce terror. He takes that picture and he uses what
little mind-power he has to cast it in the direction of the
women.

The nearest one spins round. Even at this
distance, Ralph can see her eyes widen. Her hands go to her mouth
and she begins to scream.

Run, he says in his mind, but he does not
know whether either of them can hear his pleading. Run. Hide.

It is her companion, however, who takes the
first action. She grabs the screaming woman and begins to race over
the grass and weeds. They are heading for the baker’s house. Ralph
does not know whether it will be enough, but it is something.

As he reaches the well, the women stumble
over the ramshackle stone of the ruined dwelling and disappear from
sight beneath the walls and, as the dogs finally catch up with him,
his hand grasps the sides of the well and he feels the hint of
water on his flesh. The emeralds begin to sing, something Ralph has
never heard before, and he collapses to the earth, beaten and
exhausted.

He expects to die. The hunt is over and the
victim cornered. It is now that the final blow falls.

Except it does not. The dogs cease their
howling and the only sound left is the song of the emeralds. It
pierces Ralph’s flesh and he drops the pouch containing them. The
tune continues, but he could never repeat its notes. They are from
a range impossible for the tongues of men; they are that particular
shade of white in the leaves of winter-lilac before the coldest
part of the year-cycle, a white that cannot be copied in paint or
thread; they are the melody that wakes you at dawn when the summer
season is at its height and which is half dream, half reality.

The mountain dogs cower back, whimpering. The
emeralds’ song becomes louder and green fire flares out from
amongst them. It darts past Ralph’s face so he feels the heat from
its depth scald his skin. The fire forms a circle on the other side
of the well. It burns away the air around it and darkness fills the
space within so he cannot see through to what he knows should lie
beyond—the grass, the shattered houses of the poor and the path
through the village. Is this the magic his ancestors promised? He
does not know and cannot control what it may do.

At the edge of his eye, Ralph catches a swift
movement—dark against the morning light. When he swings round, the
nearest of the dogs is already leaping towards him. It comes to him
that he is tired of running and he does not want to die like a
coward. So he faces the mountain beast full on and, arms stretched
wide, tries to roar out his anger and frustration to the emptiness
and desolation of the village he has helped to ruin. Of course, he
has no voice and he is nothing but a fool. He can only hope Jemelda
and the emeralds may somehow save his people.

But what Ralph expects does not occur. His
face is not torn, nor the flesh ripped from his bones by Gelahn’s
star-forsaken hounds. The mountain dog leaps over his head and
Ralph catches the scent of rock and death as he flies above him.
The animal passes easily over the well mouth and plunges into the
fire circle created by the emeralds, where he vanishes into the
dark.

The flames leap higher and Ralph only has
time to gasp once before the remainder of the pack is following
suit. One by one, the dogs disappear into the flames. Each time one
of them is swallowed up into the strange green night, Ralph thinks
he sees a glimpse of something—someone—that should not be there,
but his mind recoils away from the image, cannot admit the chance
of it.

Finally, when all the mountain dogs have
vanished, the circle’s voice softens until, with a sudden long
drawn out hiss, the flames turn in on themselves and vanish. All he
can hear now is the shallow whistle of his own breath, all he can
feel is the warm blood on his skin. For the first time he realises
he is thirsty almost to death. Perhaps the dogs did not need to
finish him off at all. Perhaps he is already vanquished.

The morning around him shimmers and he blinks
to clear his vision. It doesn’t work. Trees bend and dance, and the
sun falls and rises in the sky. When he tries to move, he has not
strength enough to do it. A sound from his right. Whispering and
footsteps. He turns his head a fraction and sees long dark hair, a
glimpse of torn skirts, blood.

Ralph’s last sight before the blackness takes
hold of his body is a woman bending towards him, concern and terror
in her eyes.

Chapter Nine:
Deceits and desires

Duncan Gelahn

In the vast expanse of blue and white, which
is both the executioner’s childhood Gathandria and a place of
emptiness where the Spirit has led them, the mountain dogs appear
as if from nowhere, leaping through air into air from a mysterious
circle of green fire. The Lost One cries out, but Duncan seizes
him, stops him from running.

“No,” he whispers. “Their blood is up. If you
run, they will tear you apart.”

It is true, not just a lie to keep him here.
Each dog arrives snarling and howling, saliva and blood dripping
from their jaws. They bring with them all the deepest colours of
the night. It makes the fresh colours of green, blue and white
around them fade into nothing. It takes over all the desires and
deceits of the heart. Gelahn cherishes it.

He senses Simon’s terror and smiles to
himself; the mountain dogs are an unexpected bonus in the situation
in which he now stands. He does not know how they have arrived here
or who has sent them, but he knows he can use them if the Lost One
proves too weak. The scribe has a deep seated fear of the dogs. The
shoulder under his hand is trembling. Still, the half Gathandrian
stays where he is, and Gelahn cannot help but admire that. For a
wise coward, though one who does not fully know his own wisdom,
Simon can act in surprising ways. He must make sure he never
discounts that fact.

“Do you trust me?” he asks.

The Lost One makes no reply. He is beyond
speech.

Gelahn bends down, takes full hold of the
mind-cane with his free hand, for the first time since he lost it.
Once more that shock of recognition and the undercurrent of
unspoken pain, the way the cane knows him and doesn’t know him. All
the day-cycles he has held its black and silver perfection in his
hand, he has fought to keep its power in balance with his own.
Since first he stole it away from the elders’ prison, that day when
he knew there would be a reckoning for what they had done to him
there, he has understood that the mind-cane and he do not belong
together. But that has never meant that alliances cannot be made.
At the beginning, it fought him, but the wisdom he gained in
year-cycles of long study and the patience he learned in the great
Library’s cage have taught Gelahn well. Now, the mind-cane respects
his choices. They understand each other.

Although it truly belongs to Simon.

Sweeping that thought out of his mind as
irrelevant, the executioner curls his fingers around the cane and
brings it down onto the head of the first hound just as it lunges
upwards towards the Lost One’s neck. The dog falls to the earth,
whimpering. Purple and orange fire leap from the cane’s silver
carving and, at once, the remainder of the hounds skid to a halt,
their stone paws scoring bloody lines through grass. The howling
stops. At the same time, the circle of green that brought the pack
to them collapses. No trace of it remains.

The snow-raven spreads its feathers and takes
to the air, circling around them. The bird makes no noise, only the
waft of its wings lessens the strange silence. It is Simon who
speaks first.

“Wh-what are they doing here?” he says, his
voice steadier than Gelahn has assumed it would be.

For a beat or two of his heart, the
mind-executioner does not know, although he keeps that weakness
from his companion. He is aware with every part of his being that
the Lost One will be able to sense him more clearly now,
particularly as they are touching. He lets his hand drop from
Simon’s shoulder. It is then that the answer comes to him; the
mind-cane’s wisdom begins to settle more deeply within and gives
him what he longs to know.

He laughs, delight rising like a river in his
gut. “The dogs are here to show us the way. Can you not see
it?”

Then, striding through the beaten animals
and, in fact, barely acknowledging their presence, Gelahn reaches
the place where the circle appeared and hunkers down, stretching
his hand across the grass, fingers feeling for he knows not what,
but he understands it is there. He can sense it. As he does so, the
cane fizzes against his skin and he glances down to see a soft
green glow surrounding its ebony shape. The same green as the
circle.

“So,” he whispers, as if the cane is able to
answer him at all. Ah, but it can, it can, though not in words of
the tongue. “So then, what do you know, and what are you not
telling me?”

“What have you found?” This from the Lost
One, who has not yet gained the courage to cross through the dogs,
although Gelahn senses he wishes to.

The mind-executioner does not answer, yet.
Instead, he brushes the cane slowly through the tallest of the
grasses and smiles as the glow deepens. When that glow fires up
into sparks, he pushes his fingers down into the earth so black
soil spills over his hand. At this, he grimaces, but forces himself
to continue. For another moment or two, he finds nothing. Then,
just as he is about to curse himself and the deceitful cane for all
kinds of betrayal, his fingers touch something hard and round
hidden in the soil. It is so small he all but missed it.

He grasps the unknown treasure and pulls it
upward into the sun. What he sees is an emerald. And what value can
such easy riches bring him? Almost nothing, except he can feel the
mind-cane’s power surging through his blood, singing itself towards
the jewel he holds in his fingers. At the same time, the emerald
responds in kind to the song and its sparkle takes on a richer hue.
Gelahn feels as if he is a bridge between worlds that have been
apart for too long.

Simon’s question remains. What is it? This
jewel should not be in this place. It lies nowhere in his mind so
he cannot have placed it here. It must have come through with the
dogs. It must be part of the pathway that carried them from the
Lammas Lands where he left them. But how, and for what purpose?
And, more importantly, how can such magic be used to help him?

Simon

When the mind-executioner held up the small
green jewel, the scribe knew at once what it was. His heart beat
faster and he stepped forward, only for one of the mountain beasts,
those dark tearers of flesh, to raise its head and snarl softly at
him. He stopped at once, not that his customary cowardice mattered.
He had one thought in his mind and one thought only. Ralph.

The emerald belonged to the Lammas Lord,
Simon was sure of it, not that he had seen it with his eyes, but he
had sensed it often enough in Ralph’s mind when they were together.
He had assumed there were more of them, however, not just one.
Where were the others? And why should Ralph have let them go? The
knowledge of them had been a private matter, something to do with
the Lammas Lord’s family. When Simon had seen their image in his
liege lord’s thoughts, it had been buried deep in an almost unused
corner of his memories. The scribe had not disturbed it, but he
knew Ralph held the mysterious emeralds in high regard. Something
must have happened to him for one of them to be lost, and for the
dogs to be here.

It was odd, Simon thought, that only in this
moment had he understood it was one thing to turn one’s back on a
friend because that was the right, the only, thing to do. It was
quite another to accept it in the blood.

He took another step and the dog raised
itself to its haunches. The snarling turned into a growl. At the
same time, several things happened at once. The snow-raven swooped
down towards him and he felt the edge of the bird’s wing brush
against his face, causing a jolt of power to flare upwards in his
mind. He lifted his hand and the mind-cane twisted out of Gelahn’s
grip and flew easily into his fingers, once more fitting there as
naturally as if it had been carved for him alone and, finally, he
strode towards the mountain dog as if he were another kind of beast
entirely and brought down the end of the cane onto its undulating
head as Gelahn had done only a few moments ago. The animal sank to
the earth, stone paws twitching and blood oozing from its flesh.
The rest of the pack dogs flattened themselves to the ground and
Simon passed through, the mind-cane humming a song whose melody
echoed in his own head. He was shaking, but whether with the sudden
influx of power or through fear he could not tell. Probably, it was
both.