Hallsfoot's Battle Page 19

  He finds himself lying on his back staring up at the sun. All the trees are singing. Laughter continues to bubble up in his throat as he chews and swallows the mind-medicine. He will know all things after this, he thinks. He will be able to please the Gathandrian Spirit, and fulfilment of life and happiness will more truly be his.

  As he swallows the last bite, he hears the wolf behind him, laughing. But the animal’s laughter is neither open nor free. It is full of mystery, holding at its centre the knowledge of all the world. When he opens his eyes, Sloth understands that the whole sky and earth are rich with wisdom and it can be his for the taking. The decision as to how he should live his life is his, and his alone. The Spirit of Gathandria is not the master of either his mind or his destiny.

  He sits up. Seeing the wolf is near, he hugs the animal whilst filling his mouth with the remaining leaves. There are so many things he wants to do—run through the cypress woods, plunge into the stream that flows through the path between the house and the meadow, cry out his exultation to the sun. But there is one act more important than all of these, and he must do it now before his heart leaps out of his flesh.

  “I must tell these things to my sister,” he pants, words tumbling over themselves in their haste to be out of his mouth. “Prudence must taste the wisdom of the leaves. I cannot keep these joys from her.”

  The wolf laughs again, and the sound of it is like the promise of rain on a dry summer-cycle day. “Come then, we will go to her and she, too, will know what you now understand. The two of you will be like the gods and stars, and the Spirit of Gathandria will not be able to stand against you.”

  Before Sloth can object, the wolf rears up on its hind legs once more and the two of them are flung into another breathless journey through the air. When he is next able to recognise his surroundings, Sloth knows he is back in his bed-area, the wolf at his side.

  Prudence is calling at his curtain. “My brother, wake up. It is time for us to greet the day.”

  Heart beating fast and his throat filled with all the words he longs to tell her, he leaps over the wolf and flings aside the heavy red velvet she made for his privacy. Hugging her slight form to him, he feels more than ever that he has indeed come home.

  Prudence smiles. He can sense the movement even though he cannot see her face. Her confusion is also evident. He does not usually greet her appearance at his bedside in the morning with such enthusiasm. This thought makes him smile, too.

  He holds her a little away from himself. “I have great and marvellous news.”

  “And what might that be, brother of mine? Oh!...”

  The exclamation is the result of her first sighting of the wolf as the animal lopes into her vision. She steps back, pulling Sloth with her. “What is that creature? Has it hurt you?”

  “No, no, not at all. Calm your fears, my beloved sister. The wolf has been good to me. See, I will show you.”

  Gently, Sloth releases himself from Prudence’s protective grip and hunkers down, stretching his arms towards the animal. The wolf pads across and nuzzles his hand, licking the fingers where they are still holding the remains of the leaves. However, the animal does not touch them.

  Sloth smiles. “See, there is no need to be frightened.”

  Prudence still frowns, but asks, “What has this creature done that you should be so trusting?”

  Sloth tells her the tale, what he has seen and what he has done. His sister listens with all her familiar intensity. She likes to weigh words as if they were bread before she speaks her thoughts. It is a gift he has come to rely on.

  When he is finished, he steps back from her and waits. The wolf sits up, ears pricked and head to one side. Sloth wonders if it will speak again but it does not. Perhaps it understands that further conversation will not sway Prudence’s decision.

  “What proof do you have that the Gathandrian Spirit wished you to eat the leaves of the forbidden tree?” she asks him. “If the Spirit wanted us to know we were not living the life it desired for us, why not simply show us that?”

  Sloth doesn’t know what to say to this, but it does not matter as, at last, his strange companion speaks.

  “It is a test,” says the wolf, “and because of your caution and need for comfort and familiarity, you have not faced it. Because of this, I have come to you to give you the life you should be leading. Eat, Prudence, eat of the leaves your brother brings you and be thankful. For then you will know all things and your wisdom will be complete. Indeed, you and your brother will converse with the Gathandrian Spirit as equals and you will be like all the gods and stars themselves. But if you do not do what I say, you will die. Go into the fields and see the storm of death is already approaching.”

  Prudence’s face pales as if lit by too much sun. Then, in the next heartbeat, the sky outside turns dark and the sound of thunder fills the house.

  The wolf leaps to the window.

  “Already, it is too late,” it cries. “Come, eat and live.”

  Sloth finds that the wolf’s muzzle nudges his hand and he is stretching out his fingers towards his sister. The leaves glow green and gold even in the darkness or, perhaps, that is the animal’s eyes as he cannot tell where his own body ends and the all-encompassing dark begins.

  Above the noise of thunder, Prudence screams. Tearing himself away from the wolf, he stumbles to her side. Her skin feels cold and she is trembling. A few leaves are still in his hand. As the storm and darkness and terror wrap their strange anger round the house, he doesn’t know what to do.

  There is only one thing worth the doing. A clarity he has not known before seizes his heart. He reaches his free hand towards Prudence’s hair, where he imagines her hair will be, and he’s right. Some instinct is guiding him in the dark. There’s something strange and powerful inside his mind that he thinks the cypress leaves have put there. It makes him feel alive.

  In his head, Sloth hears the wolf’s voice. The sound is triumphant. At the same time, he is raising his hand with its gift of leaves to his sister’s mouth.

  “Eat,” he whispers in her ear, knowing she can hear him in her thoughts and all the storms in the land cannot stop this happening. “Eat and live.”

  A flash of white in the dark and her fingers take the leaves from him. He thinks she is crying, but he cannot tell why. Too many other thoughts and impressions fill his mind for him to be sure—the freedom of the sky, the way his hand felt on the trunk of the cypress tree, and the green taste of leaves on his tongue.

  Just as the storm reaches its height, Prudence eats the gift he has brought her from the wood.

  Everything falls silent. The darkness clears as if it has never been real and the day is itself again, although he is sure the air has a richer colour to it. His sister stands before him, her fingers pressed against her mouth.

  “It tastes bitter,” she says. “Like a herb you should not eat.”

  Sloth shakes his head. “It tasted sweet when I ate it. But no matter, what you have done has saved us both. Look, the storm is gone and the morning is clear once more. We are ourselves as the Spirit wished us to be.”

  Next to him, and before his sister can reply, the wolf howls. The sound of it pierces his mind, dividing thought from imagination, bone from flesh. It is a grey noise, driving out the hope he has been dwelling in. Within it lie sparks of flame that scald his skin. Prudence screams again and tumbles to the floor. Hands over his ears, Sloth falls across her, the instinct to protect pushing her as far away from the wolf’s wild calling as he can.

  It can never be far enough.

  For the wolf is upon them, tearing at their bodies, drawing blood. Now its teeth glow white and its eyes are red. Sloth cries out, hears his sister’s sobs, knows the wolf’s meaning in his mind—you have turned away from the Spirit who would protect you and now you are lost.

  “Please. Please, have mercy,” he begs, but his words are unheeded.

  This is the true death, he thinks. I have been deceived, and my sister and I will
die.

  He hugs her to him in what must be their last moments together and reaches for her thoughts. He finds the same torment spilling through his own, branding him a fool and a murderer.

  But as his mind begins to collapse, he senses something else in his sister, too, something he does not have, which is protecting him when he thought he was trying to protect her. He senses innate strength and the willingness to fight.

  She whispers, “I did not eat all the leaves, brother. Some remain.”

  She is speaking to him, and the wolf does not hear. Perhaps it is too intent on its destruction of their bodies and pays no attention to the link between the siblings or, perhaps, it is this clear sanctuary in Prudence’s voice that keeps their mind-whispers unheard by anyone but themselves. He does not know.

  “What can we do?” he breathes. “I am sorry, I…”

  “Hush, no matter. You tried to help me, brother. Now let me help you. I have long thought that the day of temptation would come. Now that it is here, we must use the weapons left to us, whether they are those we have or those we have been given.”

  With that, she takes the cypress leaves remaining in the hand as yet untorn by the wolf, gazes at Sloth with such a look of love and acceptance that it splits him open and then plunges her fingers and the leaves into the animal’s mouth.

  Sloth cries out as sharp teeth cut through his sister’s flesh. He tries to pull her free, but she shakes him off as if he is mere water. The wolf continues to tear at her hand, saliva dripping from its mouth. There is a smell of blood and flesh, acrid and dark. Then the animal howls. Once only. Within its mouth, the cypress leaves are pulsating, becoming tiny green daggers ripping into the wolf’s tongue and cheek. Its eyes glow crimson. It breaks off its attack, staggers away.

  Paying the animal no attention, Sloth turns to his sister. Blood flows from her body and he knows the brunt of the injuries is hers. He can barely feel the pain of his own wounds.

  She is dying.

  He does not know what that means, but he understands her mind is weakening and he cannot save it. She is dying. Without her, he does not know what to do, how to be himself. Without her, he is nothing.

  He feels the cool touch of her hand on his face. Her eyes are open, but she does not see. Her faint words fill his mind.

  “The wolf…?”

  He glances sideways. “It is dead.”

  It is true. The animal’s jaw and head have been torn from its body and he sees only a scattering of green across grey fur. Somehow, the leaves have killed the wolf. He does not know how.

  None of that matters. Before he can look again at Prudence, he understands she is no more. Where her mind has been—where it has always coexisted with his—there is only darkness. For a heartbeat, for the small slot of time it takes for her to wake him each morning, he is still. Then he gathers her to him and begins to cry.

  It is impossible to tell how long he weeps but when he becomes aware of the day again, he sees the sun is high in the sky and the shadows around him are short. He is alone, but not entirely so.

  In the corner of his bed-area, Sloth can see a glitter of moving lights hovering about the wolf’s body. Each one is a different shape, shifting and dancing in the air. He gasps, thinks about running, but knows it is useless.

  “Why did you listen to the wolf?”

  The voice Sloth hears at the very centre of his thoughts is unlike his own, his sister’s or the wolf’s. It is unlike the whisper of the trees or the cry of the birds. It does not bring to his memory the song of the wind or the night silence. It is both none of these things and all of them.

  He has never heard this voice before, but he knows instinctively who it is. This is the Spirit of Gathandria, someone known and not known, a voice he has longed for, and dreaded, since birth.

  He opens his mouth, does not know what to say so says nothing. The question is repeated. He closes his eyes, cuts out the lights.

  “You know all things,” he whispers. “So why do you ask me this?”

  Through his own self-imposed darkness, Sloth can still see the glitter. Or is that in his mind? He cannot tell.

  “I ask only that you may know yourself.”

  An answer, but no answer at all. And the question he must respond to still remains. He draws himself together, tries to find the truth within himself. Surely the cypress-leaves, no matter what damage they have done that can never be undone, will give him the power to fill the silence?

  “You must do that yourself. The leaves of the cypress give you knowledge but they cannot change you. Come then, let us see how you answer.”

  Without further warning, Sloth feels the sparkle of light as it enters his thoughts. Its warmth flows through his skin and pierces to the very centre of his existence. It is a bright knife dividing the things he knows from the things he wishes for. It uncovers parts of himself never before acknowledged.

  He opens his eyes, seeing a long strand joining the lights in the corner to his own body. This time the answer is easy.

  “I listened to the wolf,” he says, “because your voice has been unheard to us for so long. How we have longed to please you, and you have not been there.”

  An explosion of light and pain overcomes him, and Sloth cries out, hands clasping at his head, trying to rid himself of the invasion. He plunges to the floor and night has already taken him when he reaches it. When he wakes, he is for the first time truly alone.

  He is also not how he remembers himself to have been.

  The innocence of all the days before the arrival of the wolf has vanished. The animal, too, has gone and only his dead sister remains. What is left to him is the knowledge gifted to him by the cypress-tree but none of the wisdom of the Spirit. The sparkle of light left to him tells him that.

  For a while, he cries again. Then he gets up, buries his sister and sets out to travel the land. Some say his journey has never been completed and out there he is travelling still. Only those blessed by the gods and stars have ever seen him and they do not tell the tale.

  *****

  When he finishes the Third Gathandrian Tale, Duncan is silent, as is the scribe. His companion’s face in the gloom is rapt and his eyes are shining. Now, with only a simple gesture, the mind-executioner could reach into the other man’s thoughts and take whatever he wants from him. He could plunder Simon’s very self. For a single breath, he is intending to do this, grasp what he needs and then the battle will be won. Gathandria will be his.

  But not for long, and not in the way he wants it to be his. If he overcomes the scribe’s mind by force, the battle will be easily ended, but the war will continue. Many year-cycles of waiting and planning in the elders’ cruel prison have taught Duncan patience. He will use it now.

  So Duncan channels his energy, all the remaining power the lost mind-cane gave him, deep inside himself and waits. He does not have to wait long.

  “Did the Spirit come to you, also?” Simon asks. “You said your reading of the tale was your first encounter with it.”

  The mind-executioner nods. He sees there are many questions flowing through his companion’s thoughts, but this is the issue most engraved on his mind.

  “Yes,” he replies. “As I read and brought to life the sparkle of light that Sloth saw at the death of his sister, that same light appeared to me under the cypress-tree that had become my refuge. It entered my mind, filled every part of my body and thoughts, and consumed me. A part of that same Spirit has dwelt with me ever since, no matter what has happened, no matter what I have done, or what has been done to me.”

  Saying such things here surprises Duncan, he has not intended to speak so openly. But the words he is saying are true, and he is as unguarded as he has ever been. The scribe must see this as at the next heartbeat the man lays his hand for a moment on the mind-executioner’s arm. Warmth floods through Duncan’s skin, and something more, too—a hint of a strength as yet untested, even, perhaps, unknown.

  He breaks the contact and stands up. He remin
ds himself to be careful.

  “It is no matter,” he continues. “The Spirit does what it desires, and I am merely its vessel. You see, Scribe, the Spirit is more important than all our dreams and wishes, across all the year-cycles that have ever been or will be. Its purpose is the salvation of Gathandria and that alone. And that purpose is, therefore, mine as well.”

  In the half light, Simon’s eyes are as dark as the mountain. “With all the death that clings to you, how can that be true? What if the Spirit you thought you saw was, in fact, the wolf? Perhaps Sloth’s mistake is yours.”

  Duncan laughs. “You think the wolf and the Spirit are not one? My friend, the wolf, for all his faults, is part of the Spirit’s purposes, however mysterious they might be. The Spirit gives and the Spirit takes away. It is more powerful than any of the gods or stars that guide you. It is greater even than good or evil.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Simon springs to his feet and the mind-executioner wonders if he will attack, but he is not so foolish to try. “There is a difference between good and evil. I have lived on both sides of that divide, so I know it.”

  The scribe makes as if to go on, but Duncan does not let him. The advantage is his, and he will not waste it.

  “Of course, there is a difference,” he interrupts. “You mistake me. But what I say to you is this—the Spirit is greater than either of them, and greater than our very hearts. All will be as the Spirit wishes, when the time is right. And, Simon of the White Lands, the time is very close to us. Almost at our shoulders, if you will. It no longer matters whether what we do is right or wrong, only that we do it and the Spirit uses it for its own glory. That is the way of Gathandria.”

  He pauses, knowing he holds the full attention of the scribe. He is so close, so close. Then he completes his thought.