The Executioner's Cane

by Anne Brooke

  Before she could react, the mind-cane twisted itself under her arm and pulled her away from the castle back the way she had come, towards the courtyard and the crying. Annyeke wrenched her arm away, her throat suddenly dry with possibility, but she continued to chase the cane’s path as it flickered and danced over the cobbles. Above them both, the snow-raven swooped and swung in the clouds.

  Annyeke had no notion as to what would happen next, but if the mind-cane had a plan to save Simon, she would follow it until all hope was gone.

  Simon

  The world stopped. The pain disappeared and for a long and blissful moment Simon felt nothing at all. Except the knowledge of death and how it held him.

  Ralph

  He hears her before he sees her. The sound of her footsteps, though muffled by snow, is louder against the silence of the people. Ralph springs to his feet and launches his rage and sense of loss towards the Gathandrian Elder.

  “If you had been here, you could have done something to save this man, you with your mind-skills and smugness, surely that would not have been too much for you?”

  Before the words are out of his mouth, he knows how petty they sound, and how much of the anger would be better directed towards himself, but Annyeke merely grimaces. It is at this point Ralph becomes aware of the mind-cane. He hisses between his teeth, from instinct drops into battle pose and then almost at once realises how meaningless that is. In spite of everything, the Lammas Lord is proud of the fact he hasn’t stepped back. Annyeke smiles.

  “If you hadn’t made the Lost One into a murderer and a slave, then perhaps we wouldn’t be here at all,” she retorts, and he has no comeback to her accusations.

  The mind-cane is having none of this. It leaps from Annyeke’s side and parts the crowd of people huddling round the death-tree like a mighty wind parting the rivers. The villagers slip and slide away, some falling and scrabbling upright again, all of them running to the edge of the courtyard to escape. The only one of them who remains is the blacksmith, and Ralph can feel the dark waves of his hatred flowing over them. It is as if the experiences which have brought him here have made him impenetrable to any sense of fear, or legend. Behind him lurks the castle’s cook, as she too has not run far.

  In the meantime, the mind-cane hovers over Simon’s dead body, like a dog returning to a defeated master. It’s glowing silver, its brightness almost too hard to look at. Something in Ralph’s head cracks open and he gasps. When he stretches out his hand, his fingers meet Annyeke’s and he grips her unexpected steadiness, all animosity forgotten, but there is something missing, something his mind aches to reach but cannot.

  The mind-cane. It needs you.

  The coolness of her voice in his thoughts shocks him to action and he lets her go. For one wild heartbeat, he wonders if he can answer her in kind, but that power has never been his. He is no true mind-dweller but only a half-breed of sorts.

  “Why? Why does it need me?” he says. “What in the stars’ names can I do for Simon now?”

  Annyeke shakes her head. You know. You must reach for the knowledge yourself, Lammas Lord, and soon. For Simon’s sake, please.

  As the mind-cane begins to sing, a high-pitched and piercing note which drives its own urgency through his blood, Ralph struggles to comprehend what he is being asked. Somehow he understands there is, oh miraculously, a small pocket of time in which the scribe can be saved, brought back from the dead if that is even possible. But Ralph is a soldier, a regional Lord, or he was once, not so long ago; he is no mystic to dabble with meanings and magic. The strange green energy which explodes in his head is beyond his ability to manage, and he groans, clutching at his hair and falling to his knees. There are voices in the wind, so many of them, and he cannot understand a single one of their messages, while all the time the cursed cane dances over the body of the man he loves. By the gods and stars he must do something to end this pain or it will consume him.

  And then one single voice, coming to him from the depths of madness. Yes, she tells him, do it, focus on what you see, on what you hear. Do it.

  Her voice vanishes, and there is nothing left, only noise, and emerald fire swirling and spitting around him. Suddenly, just as he tastes failure on his tongue, he understands the message the mind-cane is giving him. He reaches into his cloak, feels the icy hardness of the jewels he retrieved from the kitchen. Without thinking any more but knowing it is the only action he can take, he flings them at the cane. The mind-cane leaps to meet them, fire licking the air, and everything turns dark.

  Simon

  The world exploded into his mind and body once more and death slipped away. He knew how strong it had been, and how much he’d given in to it. But now he was no longer hanging from the tree. He could not feel the agonising stretch in his arms, the splinter of pain at his right shoulder. Even so, every bone, every part of his skin cried out for relief. He opened his mouth, panted, but no sound came out. He had not expected it. He had been … somewhere. He understood that, but the sense of the place he had been in was rapidly vanishing out of his mind-grasp.

  There had been people, Lammassers, Gathandrians and a hundred other races and beings, but their shapes, and whether he might have known any of them, were also fast disappearing, and the more his thoughts grasped after them, the faster they fled. It had been a place of darkness and light, of night and day, simultaneously. It had been full of singing but also utterly silent, a silence which flowed through his blood and into the very centre of his being. The silence had overpowered his senses so his only response had been to weep, at the same time as he had been filled with such joy as he had never known. He had stood, his feet on the expansive earth, and had seen the horizon stretch out so far he could not see where the ground ended and the sky began, or indeed if those measures meant anything in this strange and glorious setting.

  He sensed a presence in the centre of the scene, straight ahead, and was drawn towards it. He had encountered this before, after the battle when Annyeke had killed Gelahn, and Simon himself had entered the realms of the dead to try to rescue her young charge. However he had not expected to meet the Spirit of Gathandria again quite so soon, although “meeting” didn’t accurately describe the experience in any way. Because he had walked only a few steps when the Great Spirit of the lands slipped through his skin and bone and poured its strange energy through his blood, which was the only way to speak of the sheer devastation and ecstasy of it. He fell to his knees, scrabbled like a child on the ground, fingers digging deep into grass and soil, and panting hard. His thoughts and memories, all the loves and pains of his life exploded out of flesh and time-cycle and into bright air. It turned him inside out, it made him know what death was like and it also gave him strength.

  The words that launched themselves from his heart to the heart of the being ravishing him were these: Show me then, show me what is my life, and then I can live it.

  A long silence in which everything happened and also nothing. Simon became aware the light around him was fading, but the light inside was growing stronger. He rose to his feet, staggering under the strain. Across his vision streams of people and vast lands flowed past, and he felt as if he were seeing all the worlds and races that had ever been up until now. He feared them and he longed for them too.

  Is this what you see when you watch us, Spirit of Gathandria? So many people needing you and with none to help them?

  The Lost One did not wait for any response; he understood the answer lay within the depths of the question, and what he had asked was what the Spirit saw. He was aware of the wide beginnings of calm, perhaps even acceptance.

  I am closer to you than I think. How then can I help them?

  Simon closed his eyes, shutting off the scenes in front of him from his sight but not his mind. It was strange how much he felt at one with the air and the earth and the sky above, how his body was no longer a barrier but a channel. Was this what death meant? He laughed, but quietly, because this was indeed what it meant. Death was a
ll around him and within him, and over and beneath him too. It was impossible to ignore or deny, stronger even than life in its intensity. He stretched his arms out as far as he could and flung his thoughts into the darkness within and without.

  So this is true. I am dead and this is the end of my journey. As that is what you wish, Great Spirit, then it is also what I long for, with even more passionate acceptance than you could ever plan for. Because of you I have sought my death at the hands of Lammas and it has been done. Your desire and mine are here fulfilled and you have all of me, body, mind and heart. Do with me here what you wish to do. Everything or nothing, it does not matter, as I am yours, in life and in death. Let all of it be as you alone have wanted.

  When the Lost One opened his eyes, he was crying. His own words carved the richness of meaning into his mind, giving back the power with which he had spoken them. He could see them dancing like young birds within a circle of green. Beyond it, light and dark flowed round them, and within that dwelt the unknowable, powerful Spirit. No, as even that understanding was too impartial; it was truer to acknowledge the Gathandrian Spirit was everywhere, not merely in the elements holding him safe, but here in the words and the circle, and even in himself. Even in death, especially in death.

  I will stay with you forever, and indeed I long to do so if you permit it, but allow me in this moment-cycle to want one thing above all: that you will make my death count for those who still dwell throughout the lands, and they will not be punished for what they have done. By the gods and stars who live in your unbearable light, Great Spirit, there has been punishment and pain enough, and now is the time for life and peace, if peace is possible. Let it be so.

  These words flowed out of the Lost One’s mouth and heart and mind, and spun through the air to join their fellows in the thought-circle. Its emerald edges all but vanished to allow them entry before closing up again. As it did so, something sparked in the shadows of Simon’s memory.

  The circle was green, emerald-bright. Emerald. He drew in a breath, feeling the warmth of it in his throat. At the centre of the world of the dead, could life still be felt and remembered in the way it had been, once? He did not dare recall it, only knowing that for this glorious line of eternity he and the Gathandrian Spirit were one, the memories and emotion shared. Perhaps this was as it had always been, if only he had known it.

  Is this not the end, but only the beginning?

  A rush of confidence, such certainty as the Lost One had never experienced, drove him forward to where the green circle danced and sparkled with words. His words. The Spirit’s words. Simon found he was laughing, and the light from the laughter flowed within the air like a silver stream on a bright spring-season morning. Still laughing, he reached out and touched the circle.

  It exploded in green, enfolding him in light and music. Simon felt free, truly alive, as the colours invigorated his mind. At the heart of the emerald was something black and silver: the mind-cane, an object which had somehow wormed its way into his affections and not let go. He had no idea how it had come to be here, in the Land of the Dead, but the sight of it gave him renewed hope. He did what he had been born to do: he grasped the cane, feeling its warmth and power meld with his own, and slashed it across the exploding circle.

  The world turned white and he spun through the air as the ground beneath him disappeared. With it vanished the people and the histories he had sensed and seen, but their loss was his alone; he knew they remained as they had been. Even for the Lost One, some acts of salvation were not his to perform. As he tumbled through the absence of things, the circle and the cane went with him, strange comforts in the unaccountable light. Indeed, falling through air was an experience he should be used to by now, and he wondered if the Gathandrian Spirit would ever stop testing him like this. Surely he had proved himself enough?

  The choice is yours alone.

  The voice came from nowhere and everywhere, it was within and without. If Simon had been forced to choose to whom it belonged, then his answer would have been the mind-cane. Something had changed.

  What choice? he formed the words and breathed them out as he continued to fall, hoping his obvious foolishness would not be too cruelly punished.

  The choice of life or death.

  The Lost One would have laughed again, if he had found air enough to do so. Then that is easy; I have died already and am in the Land of the Dead. If there is a choice, then it must be for life, but life not as I wish it but as you alone may grant.

  He had not intended to add so much to his decision, but the words flowed through him like water and he knew he was not speaking them on his own. For this time-cycle, he and the cane and the circle were one: he was as dark as winter and as bright as the silver carving on the artefact; he was as green as a forest and as wild as the fire which sparked from the magical circle. He was Simon the Scribe, he was the Lost One.

  It was enough. He landed without warning on earth and ice, and he did not have air to cry out even as the pain scorched through him. Beneath his cheek he felt the roughness of stones. Somebody grasped his body and he felt himself lifted skywards. Was he to be hanged from the tree once more? He tried to reach out with his thoughts to learn who it was, but the energy for that had vanished. The Lost One had never felt so helpless, in spite of the fact he could feel the cane in his grip and sense the emerald power, though even that was lessening rapidly. It must be returning into the form of jewels it dwelt within. No time to ponder further as a hand at the back of his head offered him support, and he felt strong fingers digging into his hair. Not the Lammas Lord then, at least so his memory told him. A sudden sense of movement and then he could hold onto this renewal of life no longer. His mind spun away, desperate for familiarity, but found none.

  Annyeke

  If she were being entirely truthful with herself, as a First Elder of Gathandria and more importantly as the woman she most definitely was, she never expected anything to happen. When the Lammas Lord flung the emeralds at the cane where it hovered over Simon’s dead body, she had no idea what he meant to achieve. It even crossed her mind it might have been some strange Lammas tradition she didn’t know about or that Johan, in his studies of them, had never mentioned. An honouring of the dead. She never expected the green fire to roar into life and engulf the mind-cane, whilst the screams of the villagers echoed through the air. Without a further thought, Annyeke launched herself across Simon’s body. At the same time, someone else landed above her and she felt the Lost One and herself gathered into a rough and juddering embrace. The Lammas Lord.

  She had no further opportunity to respond as the green fire swept over them, and the only thought filling her mind was brightness and energy, the seasons rolled into one vast triumph, and the sky and the land as all but inseparable. She closed her eyes and gasped, unable to bear the power of it, whilst Tregannon’s grip on her tightened and he cried out, pouring strange curses into her ear.

  It lasted longer than she could ever recount and was over before she could fully understand where they had been. As it had been somewhere different, she was sure of it. A land far away from both Lammas and her beloved Gathandria, a land as far as the distant stars themselves, and at the same time closer than her own heart.

  The fire vanished and she heard the dull thud of something falling onto the snow. When she opened her eyes, she could see the cane and the handful of jewels lying as innocent as sunshine a man’s length away from them on the earth. The screams of the people stopped and all she could hear now was whimpering, all she could taste in her mind was the aftershock of their fear: yellow, orange, black. Most of them were running away, back across the water, over the field the other side and to the woods. She wondered if they would find any safety there, but did not think so. What had happened today, what was happening still, was beyond all their understandings. Of the Lammassers, only the small woman, her thin husband and the grim-faced workman remained, as well as Tregannon and his young steward. She could only admire their courage.
/>   Tregannon let her go.

  “Simon?” he whispered. “Simon?”

  As if responding to the Lammas Lord’s voice alone, and as if he had been waiting only for that stimulus, the man in her arms shuddered and drew in a sudden, harsh breath. It was her turn to cry out; the Lost One had been dead, she had known this fully in her mind, as had those around her. He had been dead, and now he lived again. She had seen one such miracle herself after the battle in the Gathandrian park, where the Lost One had brought back her young charge from the dead, a gift for which she would by the stars love him for all her living days. But she had not truly thought to witness it again, when the Lost One himself was dead.

  How the day-cycles were changing, and their worlds were all new.

  The Lost One opened his eyes, his breathing steadying, and Tregannon began to cry, harsh sobs he made no effort to hide. Annyeke felt the pressures and pain the Lammasser had been holding inside leech slowly, and only a little, out of his blood.

  “How …? I c-cannot … this day. What-what happens now?” he whispered, to himself.

  From smiling down in ridiculous fashion at the Lost One, Annyeke eased round and faced Tregannon, feeling the words already crowding her tongue.

  “Now we have hope,” she said.

  Chapter Eight: Beginning Again

  HOPE

  Jemelda

  She breathed deeply, feeling her whole body tremble. Since the war, she had dreamed of nothing but destroying this man if she ever had the chance, and she had spent the whole morning gathering together the people who would help her do it. She thought she had done it, in spite of the Lammas Lord, the cane and the strange green fire. He had been dead, she knew it; the blacksmith’s slow rope and the winter-sour beer had made the murderer of their people suffer and die.