The Executioner's Cane

by Anne Brooke

Ralph stands at the threshold and stares outside. He sees the crowd of people round the Tree of Execution, knows why they are there. The people have made their decision; they will kill Simon today. From the knots they have tied, his death will be a slow, agonising one. Ralph trembles and tries to swallow, but he cannot. His breath is stuttering in his throat. He must do something this time, before the man is beyond the saving. He owes him this.

  If he still had the emeralds, something might be done.

  But Ralph doesn’t have them; Simon does. He stops, holds himself all but motionless in the moment. The scribe doesn’t have them now, does he? Not when he’s hanging on the tree and primed to die. Where would he leave them? He must have picked them up when Ralph flung them at him in the great hall. He has no idea where the scribe slept, but he knows who he has been talking with.

  Ralph begins to run towards the kitchen. His bad leg sends streaks of pain upwards but he ignores it as best he can. Still his progress isn’t as fast as he wants. He uses the servants’ entrance, deciding against venturing outside when the people are at their most violent. Seeing him may make their bloodlust worse.

  The kitchen is dark. No lamps are lit but he knows at once someone is there, lurking in the shadows near the table.

  “Who is it?” The words are spoken with something like his former instinctive command, but he knows the answer before the sentence is fully out. Ralph can sense his colours in his mind, the soft mix of them.

  It is Apolyon, the young steward. His pale hair is a lighter shade in the gloom as he tries to scrabble away. He must have been hiding here, safe from the events of the day, if such safety is even possible, and for that effort Ralph cannot blame him.

  “Wait.”

  Again the tone of command works its ancient magic and the boy halts. The air smells of stale bread and herbs he cannot differentiate. It also smells of emeralds in his thoughts, but he cannot tell where they are.

  “Wait, boy,” he says, this time more gently. He does not want to terrify him so much that he leaves; Ralph has done this so often the boy is probably the only one left. “Apolyon.”

  At the sound of his name, the boy’s breathing steadies.

  “Why are you here?” Ralph continues. “Do you not wish to witness the death of the scribe?”

  “No, my lord. We have had too much of death.”

  Apolyon shows wisdom beyond his year-cycles and beyond the year-cycles of them all in saying it.

  “Good. Because I must try and save him. Tell me where the scribe left the emeralds. I must find them soon.”

  As he is talking, Ralph is already hunting, pulling the table to one side, though he sees nothing underneath. Then a few strides bring the Tregannon Lord to the back wall of cupboards. He hasn’t got long before Simon will die. He must hurry. Ralph wrenches the cupboards open, scrabbling in the dark to see what he longs to. Still nothing. The boy’s voice brings him to himself again.

  “Sir, they are yours. Can you sense them?”

  Ralph spins round to face him. The young steward has never directly questioned him before, and has certainly never spoken unless he commanded him. There are a thousand things Ralph should say for this intrusion, things his father taught him, but those days are over, and he needs to learn to listen to the truth.

  Closing his eyes, he reaches out with the little mind-power he has to pinpoint the Tregannon jewels. He no longer cares if the boy realises what he is doing and what these mind-skills mean. Let him.

  When Ralph opens his eyes, he knows where the jewels are and who has put them there. Frankel, the cook’s quiet husband took them from Simon and they are hidden in the depths of the small cupboard near the washing area. A heartbeat later and they are in the Lammas Lord’s hands. The boy gasps as the green glow flows across Ralph’s fingers but he pays him no heed. He is too busy fighting the unexpected heat which launches through his skin the moment he touches the emeralds.

  Ralph can’t fight it for long; it burns him up and he fall backwards against the table, displacing a jug and a plate that fall with a clatter to the stone flooring. The next moment, Apolyon is beside him. The Lammas Lord has no idea why he should be so concerned and tries to warn him to stay away. Nothing comes out of his mouth, but the boy seems to understand Ralph’s expression as he frowns and pauses in the act of trying to reach for him. At the same time, the green fire enters Ralph’s mind.

  Foolishly, like a man who hopes he can win, the Lammas Lord fights it for one long and agonised moment. Then the green fire forms a circle as it did when the mind-executioner fought his last battle, and Ralph is pulled roughly into the middle of the flames.

  He can’t breathe and wonders if by now Simon feels the same. By the gods and stars, whatever he does, he must do quickly, or he may be too late. Then, when he expects to be plunged into darkness, his throat opens and he sucks in air. It’s green. In fact everything is green and he is floating, but where he is it is impossible to say. It is similar to the journey he took with Simon and the mind-executioner from the Lammas Lands to Gathandria, except that journey was wild and terrifying in its strangeness; this one is calmer, more fluid. And he is not arriving anywhere else, but instead he is simply floating in a world of the emeralds’ making. The time-cycle has stopped. It is impossible but he knows it to be true. This must indeed be part of the unknown power of the jewels: they are a mind-road and a harbour, of sorts. He is certainly no longer in the castle kitchen and neither is the boy with him; he can sense nobody here but himself.

  What do the emeralds wish him to do and can they help him save Simon?

  He stretches out his hands and presses his fingers against the mysterious green circle that surrounds him. It gives a little but not enough to break through into whatever is beyond. Just as he wonders how he can discover what his next step should be, the area of the circle ahead of him bursts inwards and someone comes flying through. Behind this figure, Ralph catches a glimpse of broken stone walls and flying papers and a wide-eyed boy before the flame closes in on itself again.

  He turns his attention to his new companion, already groaning and struggling to rise. It’s a woman. For a full heartbeat he has no idea who she is, but then she turns and glares at him, as if he is the perpetrator of her sudden entrance to the emeralds’ circle. When, in fact, he has no control over what his family treasures can do. He recognises her red hair and the fury in her eyes.

  “Annyeke Hallsfoot,” he says, finding the name suddenly in his thoughts even though he is not aware of knowing it before. “You are from Gathandria. You are First Elder.”

  He knows this already, but the situation does not inspire any sensible phrases to his mouth; it is not something his father had ever prepared him for. All to the good then; perhaps he can do better on his own.

  Before he can say anything else to the point, whatever the point may be, Hallsfoot leaps towards him with an energy Ralph can only admire and pummels her fists against his chest. The blows make him gasp and step backwards, and she increases her attack. In spite of this, it is a matter of moments only to grab her arms, turn her round and hold her so close to him that she can do no further damage.

  Still, she spits and kicks. “Let me go. Why have you brought me here? You of all people have no right to do this and I will fight you to the death if I have to.”

  “Be still, woman,” he begins before reminding himself this is no way to speak to any leader, whatever the gender or the difference in their cultures. “Forgive me, I mean First Elder. But be still; I have not brought you here deliberately. Believe me. I only wish to save the scribe from death, and you appear.”

  She stops fighting and turns round in his arms before he finishes speaking. Her expression changes. Before he can stop her, she reaches out and presses her fingers to his head. At once, it feels like a new kind of flame has exploded within him and he gasps. He even thinks he might fall but somehow she holds him upright. She’s strong, for a small woman, and how that thought carries her disapproval on its tail as she links to
his mind. Her dislike of him, also, but he can’t blame her for it.

  “What are you doing?”

  Hush, be silent. This is the quickest way to speak with each other, though I’ll thank you for not judging me on my height. I don’t believe I’ve judged you on your appearance when there are so many other factors about you that are ripe for judgement.

  She’ll get no argument from him. The flame of her fingers settles to a dull heat in his mind and in a heartbeat he discovers the following, details offered and fed back to him through her: she’d been snatched away from rebuilding the elders’ core to be with him; neither of them understand why the green fire has brought them here; and finally she sees something hidden in him, a secret knowledge, which may somehow help Simon when he needs it most.

  The emeralds are a bond between our lands we have not yet used to the full.

  The words are spoken in his thoughts as well as hers, and then the link is broken. Her fingers are gone.

  “Wh-what?” he stutters. “What does it mean? The emeralds are a passage through lands, that I have seen, but how can they be a bond too?”

  Let me think, she waves her hand at him, but there is no time for thinking. Simon is dying.

  “You do not have time for thinking,” he grabs her arm and hisses in her ear. “Hold the green flame in your hand with me and let it do what it will. Now.”

  She concurs. When her hand touches his, the green circle of flame begins to dance and swirl around them, knocking them both onto the ground. If ground is what this mystical place possesses. Ralph tries to protect her but it is impossible to tell which way the circle swings or how to stand against its wild movement. Beneath him, Annyeke cries out, staring at something beyond him. When he turns to face whatever enemy is at hand, he sees there is none. Instead the fire around them is exploding and through it, he can see nothing but the fierce emptiness of sky.

  “No!” he clutches Annyeke to him, trying to protect them both from what he cannot understand. By the gods and stars, he will do something right in these difficult time-cycles, even if it profits them nothing.

  Let me go, the woman wails in his head. I can’t …

  In the twinkling of an eye, the circle vanishes entirely and Ralph feels the tremor of the emeralds in his grasp, as if their power has come home to roost. At the same time, he and Annyeke land with a thump on something mercifully soft. Ralph curses in relief they are not dead, that the emeralds did not plant them in the sky, and rolls over. He lets Annyeke go.

  … breathe, she completes her sentence at last and Ralph can only admire her sheer bloody-mindedness.

  He staggers to his feet and dusts himself off before offering her a helping hand.

  I can manage.

  “As you wish,” he dismisses her as the more important mission takes over his mind. “We must help Simon. We have to save him.”

  Yes, we must. If he is in the danger you think he is. But you must tell me what that danger is, Lammas Lord. Our Gathandrian mind-circle is not what it was and the elders and I don’t know what’s happening. Tell me.

  She doesn’t know. Why doesn’t she know? She’s read him, hasn’t she?

  Annyeke shakes her head and speaks aloud. “You Lammassers. You never change – I sensed only what was in the outskirts of your mind, not what you hold deepest. Interesting to see though that you bear the fate of the Lost One in your inner being, isn’t it? After what you did to him, that is.”

  Ralph flinches. She doesn’t need to remind him; he lives with it every day, every moment-cycle, by the stars. Still, he answers her question, “The remaining villagers at the castle intend to kill Simon. They are hanging him from the tree, the tree from which I tried to hang him before. Tell me, you who hold the wisdom of the magic city in the palm of your hand, will they succeed this time?”

  When he finishes, he finds he is holding her cloak in his fingers, twisting it round and round until she is all but trapped once more against him. For a few heartbeats, he stares at her and she stares back, before he comes to his senses and lets her go.

  Annyeke shakes out her red hair and blinks at him. “You still love him then, though the last thing you will do is admit it.”

  How he has given away too much and how he can never take this moment back.

  “What if I do?” he says with a snarl. “It does no good to Simon. We must go to him, save him if we can.”

  He makes a move to depart but Annyeke steps in front of him. “Not so speedily, great Lord, don’t you see we are no longer in your lands at all?”

  Ralph opens his mouth to object to such a concept but remembers the emeralds’ powers and looks for himself. He blinks and sees it’s true. He and Annyeke are standing in a wood and on all sides the tall trees, oak, beech and wild wintergreen, thrust their branches up at the morning sky. The soil beneath their feet is as white as snow.

  “The White Lands?” Ralph asks, though the answer is obvious. “Simon’s birth-land? Why?”

  I don’t know, she answers, her eyes darting around as if seeking enemies. He too should be on the alert, but the unexpected landing has shaken him. But I hear a keening and we must follow where it leads.

  He listens but hears nothing but the voice of the wind and the rustle of branches. “I hear nothing.”

  She shakes her head. It is a keening of the mind. Come, let us go.

  Ralph frowns at her disappearing back. Even in his ruined state, the thought of following a woman’s lead makes his stomach recoil but, nonetheless, he does it. She moves at a fast pace under the trees and doesn’t pay any attention to the thorny undergrowth that catches at his legs and tears at his skin. They should be finding a way back to the Lammas Lands, not chasing mind-shadows in a strange country.

  It is important, Tregannon, it might give us the way back. Stop wasting energy. Hurry, for Simon’s sake!

  Annyeke increases her speed and Ralph does likewise. If Simon is to be helped in this way, however that can be, then he will bare his face and body to all the thorns and branches in Lammas and every country and pay no heed to it. Pray to the gods and stars the rescue will be soon.

  Without warning, the woman in front of him comes to an abrupt halt, and Ralph all but knocks her over, saving them both at the last moment by wheeling left into the density of trees. She pays him no heed.

  “It’s stopped,” she says, her words now in the air as well as in his mind. “I can’t hear it any more.”

  Ralph brushes aside the few oak twigs obscuring his vision.

  “I don’t think it matters,” he says, beckoning her nearer. “Look.”

  The two of them stand side by side, both slightly panting, though she is more breathless than he, and gaze out at the scene before them. In the heart of the wood, a small glade opens up to create a haven of light in a world of darkness. Ralph notes the softer grasses lining the forest floor and, at the edge of the glade, a pale cow, a span and a half beyond the height of a man, suckles her calf. A short distance from her lies a stone hut, half ruined and looking as if it has not been lived in for many a generation-cycle. The chimney however, if it can even be called by that name, is producing smoke, and Ralph smells its heavy spices in the air. What interests him most of all these is the man. He is old, his dark hair salted with grey and the lines on his face burnt there by the sun. There is something about him which is familiar but he cannot place it. His cloak is torn and so thin that Ralph can swear the light shines through it. The old man is crying, silently, his body swaying with the rhythms of his grief, and it is almost the only movement occurring in this star-forsaken wood. Ralph wonders if he has been crying for so long that the possibility of stopping is unthinkable. He is reluctant to break the strange spell of weeping, but already Annyeke is stepping forward into the glade, the colours of compassion flowing from her like a spring river: blue, pink, mauve.

  “Who are you?” she asks. “Why are you crying?”

  The old man gives a low gasping moan and staggers to his feet. Upright, his hair is more m
atted than the Lammas Lord first realised and there is madness there also, something fluid and uncontrollable about his expression.

  “No, no,” the old man whispers in a rising note which pierces through the wind. And then, foolishly, he is running away, round behind the cow and her calf and heading for the other side of the wood.

  From instinct and without question, Ralph pursues him, a nagging knife of familiarity stabbing at his thoughts. Somehow this man is the key to saving Simon. He must not be allowed to escape.

  The capture takes but a matter of moments, no longer. Ralph reaches the fugitive easily and brings him down, even before he’s run more than a few paces back into the trees.

  “Be gentle,” Annyeke cries out, and he can hear the rustle and soft thud of her footsteps as she hurries after them. “Don’t hurt him.”

  Ralph curses. “I don’t intend to.”

  She frowns and nods, before crouching down next to the old man. He is shaking like a leaf in an autumn gale. She lays her hand upon his shoulder and he glances round, whimpering.

  Even before the man speaks, Ralph knows who he is.

  “My name is Bradyn Hartstongue of the White Lands,” he said. “Tell me, where is my son?”

  Chapter Seven: Despair and Hope

  Simon

  He tried to move his wrists but the ropes pinioned his body to the tree. The pain ripped through him and he groaned aloud. This must be a series of knots the blacksmith knew, something designed to teach a horse to obey in the slow tightening of the bond. Now it was being used for an equally slow killing. He should accept it, he shouldn’t be looking for any relief. If this punishment was what the villagers had chosen to subject him to, as they had every right to do, then he should be silent and allow it to happen. Hadn’t he offered himself up for what he had done?

  But at his heart, in the very depths of his blood, the truth remained: it wasn’t enough. The pain he suffered here would never be enough for the way he had betrayed these people and murdered the best of them. All those month-cycles of giving Ralph what he wanted – the names and thoughts of those the Lammas Lord feared would rise against him. Every desire for a better life, every stray notion of future freedom punished by banishment or death. He and Ralph had been caught up, yes, in the mind-executioner’s revenge, but that was only an excuse for the choices they had made. Choices to fear and not to trust, choices to deny the inevitability of change and stand like the worst kind of fools against it, choices to kill and not to protect. Oh yes, the punishment he suffered, both for himself and for Ralph, was even now – when his every bone cried out for relief and his skin cried out for water – too light. The atonement he was making was not yet complete. Tears sprang to his eyes, but he had no more strength to weep them. He needed to do something more, but what?