Hallsfoot's Battle (28 page)

Someone cried out her name. Annyeke.

It was Johan’s voice.

She glanced up, fire pricking her eyelids, to
see a circle of white spinning a pattern round two tall shapes. It
landed next to her and she heard her name cried out again.

The fires of this living hell were dancing
round her skirts as the man she loved reached down towards her.
Sobbing, Annyeke grasped his arm. The second figure coalesced into
the shape of the First Elder and she clutched at him, unable to
understand how he could be here at all. His grey eyes were darkened
and bloodshot and his hair hung lank and thin around his lined
face.

To her mind, the Elder spoke. The raven and
the cane brought me.

No time for further explanation. No time for
asking where Simon might be, or how Gelahn had managed to
infiltrate them so. The First Elder grabbed her waist as the flame
poured itself over them, and his head disappeared in the fire’s
wild roaring. The mind-cane swooped a wild path upward and the next
moment the three of them were outside, in front of the Library. The
air was like a cool river on the unbearable heat of Annyeke’s skin.
She felt the same agonies flooding through Johan, but all she could
sense from the First Elder was a great and unfathomable
darkness.

The mind-cane, the raven, and the courage of
these two men had been her salvation. Here she lay, breathless and
aching, in front of the ruined building. As she struggled to get to
her feet, her thoughts racing between the absence of Simon and how
to put out the flames, there came a terrible thunder and she curled
up once more on the ground, hands over her head to try to protect
herself. In her head, the terror of the people, more deep-set and
more bloodied than she had ever experienced before.

Was this the full meaning of what the elders
did, she wondered? Was every step they made, every action, every
small thought framed with this overwhelming responsibility for
Gathandria? This unbearable inability to save them all. Then she
had some small sympathy for what the First Elder had done, or at
least a glimmer of understanding for it.

When the thunder had abated, she was the
first to look up. Around her, the people she knew, Johan, the First
Elder, Talus—thank the gods he was alive—and those she did not,
were lying like rain-beaten corn, flat against the earth.

The Library was gone.

In its place lay pages and pages of
manuscripts and books. They fluttered in the slight breeze from the
sea, like the hands of children pleading for help she could not
give. Some were blackened with fire and the smoke that still rose
from the ruin of the heart of Gathandria. Some were ripped into a
hundred pieces, more perhaps, their ink scrawled in impossible
patterns across the parchment.

Heart thudding a rhythm into her throat,
Annyeke staggered onto her feet, swaying a little in the air’s
bleakness. Something stirred in her fingers and she looked down to
see a scrap of parchment wrapped around her hand. She unfurled it,
blinking to bring the few words laced across it into a deeper
focus.

It was a tiny fragment of the Fourth
Gathandrian Legend, the tale of Temperance and Greed. When you
search for peace, you find only fire.

By all the gods, that was true, she thought
and closed her hand over the unlooked-for prophecy, for the truth
was she had failed. Despite all her assumptions, Simon was not here
and the Library was no more. How could they find the courage to
fight against the mind-executioner after this?

She felt a touch at the edge of her mind like
a small sharp needle prodding her for a response, and glanced
around to see where it came from. It tasted of fear and
unknowing.

A moment later, she knew who it was and
almost fell again to the scorched earth.

The First Elder. He knelt close to her, his
hands touching his face as if trying to remove a mask.

His eyes were no longer there.

Before she could stop it, give herself time
to build up any veneer of strength, all the First Elder’s pain and
darkness rushed in upon her, and she sensed his agonies as if each
one were her own. There was no light within him, not a physical
light and not even a mind one. Not a simple darkness either. No, it
pressed into him and burned his aged skin so he could scarcely
breathe. His arms pushed out in front of him, as if seeking a light
hidden in shadow, but there was nothing beyond the pain. His eyes
were burning, burning. When he touched them, the pain drove its
knife deeper, searing a trail of crimson and black like old blood,
into his thoughts.

He groaned aloud and then, thank the gods and
stars, the link between them shattered. The noise of his groaning
was somewhere between a child and a dying animal. Along with this,
words of denial, over and over again, formed a barrier around him
in a meaningless attempt to keep the truth at bay.

The strange fire had blinded him, Annyeke
knew it. Not only his eyes, but there were parts of his thoughts he
could no longer find, the things in his life he still held dear, no
matter what he had done—friendship, vocation, and love.

When he fell to the earth, panting hard, she
caught him and lifted him up. He was as slight as the air itself,
almost as if his enforced period of meditation and prayer had taken
away his flesh as the fire had taken away his eyes. She called for
water, sensing the presence of Johan behind her. Then a flurry of
wings and something soft drifted through her hair. Behind it a
whole world of power and peace—the snow-raven. It had brought the
First Elder here from his hilltop sanctuary when they needed him
most, and how she was glad of it. But, most important of all in the
rediscovery of the cane and the bird, where were Simon and
Gelahn?

No space to answer these questions, even if
she knew how, as the First Elder began to speak.

“My eyes,” he whispered. “All is darkness.
What is happening? I cannot tell anything, I cannot…”

“Hush, hush there,” Annyeke did not know what
else to say. Some things were too cruel for the telling.

Johan knelt, placed a beaker at the First
Elder’s lips—the gods alone know where he had found it—and the
injured Gathandrian gulped down water. His body shook so much that
Annyeke felt the echo of it in her own flesh. While he drank,
Annyeke told him of the death of the Library, the missing scribe,
and the torn and bleeding parchments lying on the earth around
them. Her voice no longer sounded like her own. When he heard her
words, the First Elder reached out, fingers scrabbling on the soil,
trying to connect with the scattered legends so precious to them
all.

“Here,” Johan said. “Here is one of our
tales.”

His hands pressed a scrap of parchment into
the First Elder’s palm and she smiled her gratitude at Johan.
Something in the darkness inside the Elder lightened a little.

There was something else. Important words the
First Elder was trying to remember, the shadow of which she could
sense from the physical contact between them—a fact he longed to
tell her that had been revealed to him in the Library, or perhaps
earlier than that, from his meditations. She did not know. The
effort of it seared his thoughts, slid away from the thinness of
his mind as if wary of causing harm. She opened her mouth to
reassure him, tell him to rest. Whatever he knew could surely wait
till later, for what more could come upon them now that had not
already torn the hearts from them all? But the First Elder spoke
before she could.

“A-Annyeke,” he stammered and at once she
leaned closer to his lips, trying to hear what he was determined to
say.

“Yes, First Elder.”

“Please, I…” Words would not come but, there
in his mind, she saw a glimpse of something long and dark. Then the
image was gone and the Elder let forth a cry, half frustration,
half despair.

Annyeke blinked, and looked across the
smouldering embers and scattered parchment.

“The cane,” she panted. “Where is it?”

At her words, Johan swung round, his eyes
following hers. Then, a flash of silver and black. She cried out in
triumph and he started to run towards it; at her back, a whooshing
sound of wind and feather. The snow-raven launched itself into the
air over her and, even as she shouted a warning, the bird tumbled
Johan to the ground, leaving him scrabbling amongst the Library’s
smoking ruins.

The raven swooped over his shoulder, talons
stretched outwards. With a movement as swift and elegant as a
summer waterfall, the bird snatched up the cane that glowed a
richer black against the feathered whiteness. A sudden humming
washed over her senses as bird and cane rose sharply into the
air.

“No!” Johan cried out after them both, but
neither raven nor mind-cane heeded his plea. Annyeke watched the
bird swing sharply to the right and head out towards the sea. Even
at this distance, the cane’s humming could still be heard, if only
as an echo in her thoughts.

Johan turned and began to trudge back to
where she and the First Elder sat on the ground. He did not meet
her gaze. The small groups of Gathandrians were as silent as the
depths of night just before the dawn. She rose to meet him, her
hand still touching the Elder’s shoulder, a point of contact for
him to cling to.

He looked at her. She could sense he was full
of questions and didn’t know how to ask any of them. What could
they do now? Where had the snow-raven gone, and why? And, like her,
where was Simon, and was he safe or had he suffered a worse fate
than the First Elder? Out of nowhere, Talus ran to them and hugged
them both, burying his head against Johan’s waist. Johan’s
expression crumpled, but he took a breath and she felt him grow
steadier. Now was not the time for tears—now was the time for
fighting.

“Simon is surely still alive,” Annyeke said,
wondering indeed where such confidence came from and where it might
take them all. “If he was not, the raven would not have gone.”

“You think the bird is seeking Simon, then?”
Johan asked her, rubbing one hand upward over his face. The gesture
left a smudge of dirt on his forehead that she longed to wipe away
but knew she could not.

“Yes. It must be. For whatever he is doing
and whatever danger he is in with the mind-executioner, however
Gelahn managed to breech us like this, Simon will have need of the
cane, whether or not he can use it.”

Simon

As the mind-executioner gripped him, Simon
felt the walls of Gelahn’s childhood room grow ever darker, looming
like stormclouds in his thoughts, pressing him down. The smell of
the wine bottles assaulted his senses so he wished he could breathe
clear air again. More than anything, however, the scribe longed for
the power of the mind-cane and the wisdom of the raven, but both of
these gifts were denied him. He would have to make his own decision
about the mind-executioner’s extraordinary offer. In the past, his
own decisions had mostly not proved to be the right ones. No
matter. He would have to do his best.

So many shades of colour in his thoughts and
not one of them giving him the overarching guide to action.

Knowing that Gelahn could interpret his mind
rather better than he could himself, Simon withdrew his hand from
the executioner’s grasp. At once, the jumbled colours filling his
head eased into a kind of order. Had Gelahn been causing his
confusion? Was that why he could no longer tell what the best way
forward might be? His heart beat faster and he wiped sweat from his
forehead. What would happen if he could no longer even rely on
himself?

No, he could not afford to think like that.
Madness ran on that path, and he had no wish to follow it.

Gelahn smiled. “I am perhaps not as intrusive
as you would imagine, Scribe. I can only influence those thoughts
you hold that are already confused and compromised. I cannot create
confusion where there is none.”

“I don’t believe you,” the scribe answered.
“You lie and lie again, and there is no truth in anything you do or
say. There never has been.”

To Simon’s surprise, the mind-executioner
leaned back in his chair and laughed. Not with mockery but in an
apparently genuine delight.

“Do you not only describe yourself, Simon of
the White Lands?” he said. “We are indeed two sides of the same
pasture, when you ponder it.”

“I do not wish to ponder it,” Simon replied,
refusing to acknowledge the possible truth of his enemy’s words.
“But one thing I know is I have not set out to destroy and rule a
whole nation as you have. My crimes are not as great as yours.”

“No matter. What is your answer? While you
insist on considering it, the people of Gathandria put themselves
in ever greater danger. There is no need for them to fight.
Together, you and I can bring them what they wish, healing and
peace.”

The scribe groaned, leaned his head on his
hands and felt the black hollow of his palm against his eyes. How
he longed to escape into that deep shelter, to crawl away somewhere
and hide from the demands lurking around him like the wolf of
Gelahn’s story. He was a scribe, not a saviour of people or a great
fighter. If he was the latter, he could tumble the mind-executioner
to the floor and overcome him by physical force, as long as he
didn’t let the Gathandrian touch his thoughts. An impossible plan,
then. If he was a saviour, as Johan and Annyeke seemed to assume,
then he could simply access Gelahn’s mind and be the victor there,
too. He almost laughed at that concept. Another impossible plan.
After all, how could he be stronger than his opponent if he
couldn’t even begin to understand the mind-cane’s power for more
than a few paltry moments or when he was overcome with anger? Not
that the artefact was here, and not that he felt angry. His main
thoughts were those of despair and exhaustion.