The Executioner's Cane

by Anne Brooke

  When she did so, she ignored the silent bird. Instead she glared at the cane and then at him. Then she spoke.

  “How dare you come to us like this,” she hissed. “You will never in the eternal time-cycles now or to come be welcome here amongst the Lammas people. Murderer.”

  Chapter Two: An Unexpected Guest

  Ralph

  In the end he had been able to do nothing. Every time he wakes and all through his darkest dreams, he sees that moment in the circle when he could not even bring himself to step forward to save Simon from the mind-executioner’s threat. The Gathandrian elder had done what he had not found the courage for. She, a mere slip of a woman, had taken a sword and cut through the executioner’s neck, bringing the war to a final and bloody end.

  The battle indeed had been hers.

  Afterwards Ralph Tregannon had slipped away, the family emeralds – at least those of them he still possessed at that time-cycle – providing an easy route back to a home he no longer knew. The Lammas lands. He had heard Simon’s shout as he had stepped into the strange green circle, but he had not turned back to acknowledge it. He would never have been able to look Simon in the eyes. Even though his presence had made Ralph’s skin tingle and quake. As it does so now, whenever he thinks of him. Pleasure and shame. A heady brew. More powerful than the freshest wheat-beer.

  Ralph opens his eyes and the dream shimmers into emptiness. He is lying, as has been his wont in these day-cycles since his return, in his dressing-room. Above, the shattered roof gives way to the morning sky. There are a few clouds in the small gap allotted to him but the wind rolls them along quickly and he thinks it might rain later. No matter. There remain still other rooms in his ruined home that would better shelter him, but something in Ralph’s blood commands him to stay here. A few raindrops wetting the skin and this sparse bedding are as nothing compared to what he has done to the people under his care. They have neither shelter nor comfort; why then should he seek any?

  Nonetheless, sense dictates that as Ralph pulls himself awake and upward, he gathers the blankets together, folds them as small as they will go and stores them next to the strongest wall. It makes no difference anyway as he barely sleeps. His dreams are waking ones. If he needed to, he would dress himself but he has neither changed his torn clothing nor washed his body since returning. Somehow it seems a step too far. He has eaten though, a little. Food has been left outside the door at least once a day, he does not know by whom. Perhaps the young steward? Though he has seen nobody so cannot confirm his assumption. Whoever they are, they leave dried hunks of bread, stale goats cheese, a poor scattering of autumn pine-nuts and water which Ralph drinks straight from the jug. The first time this occurred on the day-cycle after he returned, he only drank the water and ate some of the nuts, but the second morning his resolve broke and he tore at the bread like an animal. Indeed he no longer knows whether he is fully a Lammasser or part of the beasts. It is beyond the telling. The gods and stars do what they will. Ralph has always believed in them more than Simon did. Then again, they were drummed out of the scribe at an early stage of life, whereas Ralph must, it seems, encounter now the place where the paths twist into darkness.

  But enough. If he is not to dress or cleanse himself, then he must needs do something. Whilst he has kept himself enclosed for the initial day-cycles, for the most recent ones he has been walking the crumbling walls of the once beautiful castle. Ralph’s eyes take in the scarred carvings, the torn-down tapestries and the muddied rugs. He has stumbled over the remains of his father’s chairs and felt the newly-roughened edges of the dining table. It is covered in dusts and cobwebs. Everywhere the wood-spiders take over, encroaching on the riches and beauty of what once was his with their silken white orbs. The breeze from where he passes them makes them drift, shimmering against the half-light.

  Perhapstoday he will walk again. A ghost in his own home, a phantom of the wood. Much like the wood-spiders, in many ways. In truth he is surprised those he once promised to protect have not yet murdered him. If he were in their minds, then Ralph does not think he would be so forbearing. But he is not his people, and they are not him. Now more than ever.

  It is only when his hand is at the door that something stops him. Almost like a glint at the edge of his vision. Something that has not been there before, or that he has failed to notice. He swings round, and almost falls. He is too weak for sudden action, of any kind. He steadies himself against the wall and the stone-leavings sift through his fingers. He can feel their dampness against his skin.

  A shaft of light illuminates the room dust and is just as suddenly gone. Without wanting to, Ralph takes three paces to the window and leans out. The chill air makes him gasp and he shivers. He can see nothing untoward. Only the abandoned courtyard, the glint of the stream and the ruined booth where the best of his soldiers once guarded him. He has no idea where the army are now. He has not dared think about it, not since the mind-executioner raised an army for himself from the dead of Ralph’s. He does not believe he will ever forget the terrifying noise of their bones and the sight of their empty eyes as they marched upon the hapless Gathandrians. They too haunt his dreams.

  So what then has brought him to the window? He grips the stone ledge more firmly and tries to concentrate. But still he senses nothing. He must learn to put away foolish notions and continue to keep himself as hidden as he can. When he turns round, however, Ralph’s glance drifts over the door to his bedroom. He rubs one hand over his face and back through his hair. His palm comes away brushed with dirt. He has no wish to enter his bedroom even though any sane Lammasser would do it without a qualm. He has not opened that door since arriving back here once more and he swore to himself on the first day-cycle that he would not. It reminds him only of the mind-executioner and what he has done. It reminds Ralph too of Simon. One bad memory and one that should in some respects be good. But he is capable of dealing with neither. He does not have the faith that the future will be worth the risk-taking. Not any more.

  Indeed he wonders if he has any faith, of any kind, left at all.

  Jemelda

  After so much war and the devastation caused by men, it is a wonder she had a kitchen left to work in. That was the one and only thing she could see to be thankful for on this chill morning. Jemelda Littlewater, third daughter of a third daughter and the last in a long line of Tregannon cooks, shook out her baking cloth and scattered over it the last of the herbs. Dried winter-larch and field-ginger. It was all she had left. To this she added the corn-flour and enough sprinkling of water from the ewer to form a dough. For a while, she kneaded the mixture, feeling the soft warmth and stickiness coating her fingers. With each push of her shoulders, she let out a little grunt. Just enough to provide a warning for her husband, Frankel. In the mornings, he was inclined to talk and she was happier simply to think. Forty-two year-cycles of marriage had taught them both well how to communicate without necessarily speaking. It was a wise skill. And she would need all the wise skills she possessed to see through yet another day-cycle. Even now she could hear behind her the scraping of furniture, the slow sweep of the broom and, every so often, Frankel’s exclamation of surprise as he found a wood-rat. Since the war, neither of them had been able to get the vermin out of the kitchen, no matter what they did. Now, Jemelda wondered whether the attempts to keep their kitchen and work-areas clean and decent would be the death of them both in the end. All because of the Tregannon greed. She had no truck with it, or with Ralph Tregannon, no matter what he promised, or tried to. Indeed she did not. She would willingly take apart the Lammas Lord himself, piece by piece, and bake him into her own batch of loaves if he so much as looked at her. Oh yes, she would do such a thing and have no remorse about it afterwards. Even more so, she would take the murderer who had brought her Lord and all of them to this terrible day-cycle and throw him to the wolves. She would enjoy watching him die, and something dark within her stirred into life at the thought. As she pondered that deeply satisfying act, the silen
ce in her head drove the image deeper while the rhythmic thumping of Frankel’s broom as he chased the rat away echoed the strain and push of her shoulders as she continued to prepare the dough.

  “Frankel? Let it go, won’t you?” she snapped at last, pushing her hair away from her eyes and, no doubt, streaking flour over her face. “The rats will always be with us. So what is the use of it all?”

  To her annoyance, Jemelda found her eyes were wet. Ridiculous. She never cried. She wasn’t the crying kind. This too was no help whatsoever. As she heard the clatter of her husband’s broom where it fell to the floor, she gave the undulating dough one great pummel and hissed between her teeth. Best that than the words she might say. Nobody ever knew when either the gods or stars were listening.

  When Frankel’s thin arms went round her, she leaned back against him and sighed, trying to put the dark and murderous thoughts away. He felt frail but warm. He didn’t say anything and she was glad of it. She couldn’t think of any words which might improve the situation they and all the Lammas people found themselves in. This year-cycle would be spoken about – if there were any left to speak about it anyway – as one in which many curses had been laid upon their heads. Firstly, the way the Lammas Lord had turned against his own people, aided by the murderer and mind-delver, Simon the Scribe, and the terrifying mind-executioner. Jemelda could never think of his name without shuddering. The loss of so many friends and neighbours, killed for no good reason she could see or understand. What was so special about mind-skills in any case? Then the way Simon had vanished, spirited away at his own hanging by the mysterious people of Gathandria. At once, the Lammas Lord and the mind-executioner had pursued him and it was then that the land and home Jemelda loved began to disintegrate before her very eyes. Homes torn down and field crops ruined. Even the plants already stored for the winter had rotted away for no reason and many of the animals had died. The autumn-cycle planting had come to nothing and it was a sky-mystery how the people – what there were left of them – would eat at all when the spring-cycle arrived. If it did. And this terrible destruction and death – for yes, yet more strange disease and death had swept over them and only a handful of her once thriving village were left to mourn – had happened with no visible enemy attacking them, with nobody to fight against. Something to do with the Lammas Lord’s journey to Gathandria, something to do with the mind-wars. She could make no sense of it. Nothing like this had ever occurred in her parents’ or grandparents’ time; no stories were told of such things.

  Back then she had thought it could not get any worse. But then Lord Tregannon had returned, alone, an all but defeated man. And after him had come the mind-executioner and his army of wild dogs and undead soldiers. When they had departed in an overwhelming storm of magic and terror, the skies above the village had turned to night and the trees themselves had wept. Stone had roared and rivers had flooded their banks and poured as red as blood through the village byways and paths. She hadn’t even known if she, Frankel and the Lammas Lord’s young steward, Apolyon would survive but somehow they had.

  When, after a day of hiding in the woods, she had finally gained the courage to return, with her bedraggled spouse and fellow-servant, she had heard the Lammas Lord’s weeping as she had approached the ruined castle.

  She had not thought to comfort him. She was a cook. She baked and fed people. That was her calling and she was no comforter. Certainly not of one who had betrayed them so.

  “Hush,” Frankel whispered in her ear. “I know, my love, I know.”

  Jemelda shook herself. She hadn’t realised she’d been whispering aloud some of her thoughts. No matter. Only Frankel was present to hear them. He had always kept her secrets. Turning towards him, she half-smiled. He squeezed her arm and let go. Reaching behind, he picked up the broom, his grey hair catching a ray of morning light through the gaps in the stonework. He smiled back at her.

  “Come then,” he said. “We can do nothing important here. We are only what we are and we must fulfil the small roles we play. I must sweep the kitchen and you must bake the bread to feed our Master, no matter what his circumstances or ours. This is what we were born for.”

  She was about to reply when something happened. Not something physical but something beyond that. A strangeness in itself as she did not count herself as one who delved into mind-games at any level. Jemelda always lived her life fully in the skin. She swung round. Outside the window she caught a sense of movement. But the shape had gone as soon as she thought she saw it. Was it Ralph Tregannon? Had he left the castle at such an hour?

  The next moment, a low but piercing whistle split the air. The hawk-hunting cry. Despite what she’d been thinking about the Lammas overlord earlier, she was all but running towards the doorway, bread forgotten. Despite everything, she found she didn’t want Tregannon to come to harm. At the door, she came to a sudden and juddering halt. She’d expected to see Lord Tregannon. She did not.

  Instead she saw a slight man. Brown hair and pale face. Almost nondescript apart from the haunting power of his eyes. How they had all been seduced by that, at first. Wrapped around his tunic was a cloak that shimmered with all the colours of blue and green, although its impact would have been far greater if it had not been streaked with mud and torn in places. At the exact same moment the cook noticed the silver-topped cane dancing in the man’s hand, a vast white shape flew over them both, almost knocking the unwelcome visitor over.

  Jemelda shook off her husband’s restraining hand and, uncaring of the effects or reactions of either the deadly mind-cane or the strange bird, ran into the courtyard and found the words she’d wanted to say to this man for so long.

  “How dare you come to us like this,” she hissed. “You will never in the eternal time-cycles now or to come be welcome here amongst the Lammas people. Murderer.”

  And that was only the beginning. Once her words had begun, Jemelda found she couldn’t stop. All the pain and misery and death this foreign murderer had caused, the grief and poverty he’d brought upon them rose up on her tongue. She called him names she’d almost forgotten. Ancient curses in the ancient language. Words she’d only heard her grandmother say. Scorpion; Dark Cloud-Bringer; Ravid Dog. Simon the Scribe stood his ground as she continued to vent her wrath. In spite of the purple anger that roared and swooped around them both like a north-west gale, she could at least give him that. She’d thought at the first sight of her – cane or no cane – he’d run like the coward he was. He did not, although his hand on the cane’s silver top tightened until the skin on his fingers was as white as rice-milk. She wanted to lunge at him, drive his pallid face down to the ground until blood gushed upwards to mar that elegant face of his. She wanted to do a hundred things she’d never dared to do before. Why didn’t she fear the power of the old mysteries? The legends of her land should be calling to her, speaking of the caution all her people felt when confronted by mind-power in whatever form. But this fierce new anger swept through her and she could not tell where it came from or what it meant. She only knew she felt she could do anything, and it was the mere fact of the cane held her back. It had caused too many tears in this land. She would make do only with her words, for now, which could never be piercing enough, by the stars. Later, she would do more, something within her whispered, but now was not the time for it.

  Simon

  Whoever Jemelda was, she had a great deal to say, and rightly so. While the cane remained in his grasp, Simon could feel the waves of her anger flooding over him like the wildest river in its fullest rage. All the colours of red and orange and the deepest black flowed round him. He felt as if he would drown if he so much as lost his footing. He wanted to run but the cane and the bird kept him there. Such depth and heat of fury was beyond what even he had expected and he couldn’t understand how the woman facing him could contain these levels of hatred and power.

  Of course he had expected anger from these people, but, by the gods and stars, nothing like this. Had he underestimated the experienc
es of the Lammassers and the wrong he had done them so very greatly? She had, he suspected, only just commenced the true depths of her accusations when a thin, shadowy figure appeared from behind her as if from nowhere. Frankel was the name that coloured his mind in soft shades of blue and mauve. An old man, who seemed as if he could at any moment collapse to the ground and stay there. How Simon understood that.

  At his side, the raven launched itself into the air. He had no idea what the great bird might do. He stumbled to his knees.

  “Please,” he whispered, though he had no idea whether he was begging the angry woman, the frail man, the bird or indeed something else entirely. “Please, I’m sorry …”

  The woman fell silent at once and the cane flashed green and yellow in his hands. Then it too returned to its customary state, and the bird alighted on the ground a little way off and cocked his head, viewing the encounter. The man called Frankel spoke.

  “What do you want here, Simon the Scribe?” he asked.

  Jemelda made as if to step forward, perhaps punish him physically in some way, but Frankel laid a hand on her shoulder and she merely grimaced.

  “What do you want?” Frankel said again.

  In truth, Simon wondered. He had come here with such confidence, such purpose which had seemed so right to him at the time – but now his ideas and hopes resembled nothing so much as leaves on the wind.

  “I-I don’t know,” he stuttered. “I wanted to put things right. I’m sorry.”

  Another silence, and he wished he’d never had the courage to come. He gripped the mind-cane more firmly but no help came from there.