Hallsfoot's Battle Read online

With one sweep of the arm holding the cane, the emerald circle flows towards and across them all. Gelahn focuses his mind on the once fertile lands of Gathandria. Oh, how he will heal them. He will bring them in their poverty under the gentle shadow of his wings, give them the life they need, the life they can only get from his power. As for the scribe? Once the wells of the wisdom the poor fool cannot see have been fully drained, Gelahn will have no more use for him. The mind-cane will then be utterly his, and the executioner can live and rule those under him in perfect freedom.

  Even as these truths fill his thoughts, they are once more in the circle’s passageway, the executioner, the scribe, Tregannon, the snow-raven, the dogs and, most important of all, the great army he has summoned. This time, the journey is a smooth one and as Gelahn lands with his feet planted on soil, arm holding the mind-cane still raised, he understands where it is that his desires have brought him.

  The Gathandrian park with the weak and threadbare army of the Gathandrian men gathered before him ripe for the conquering.

  As he brings the cane down to his side, the massacre that will lead to peace at last has its way.

  Annyeke

  The winter cold was settling in and, without the great Library’s bulk, the winds from the south had nothing to stop them. Annyeke shivered as she rose to her feet, still thinking of the silence that had, for a short while, been so delightfully hers. Bringing herself back to the present, she allowed her command to cease the stories’ collection to flow from her thoughts and out to her companions.

  From across the park, a great flash of emerald fire exploded through the trees. The roar of it deafened her inner mind, knocking her backwards and onto the ground again. She scrabbled for safety and a wave of cool flame passed over her. It was a thousand times more deadly than the Library fire. Annyeke felt a terrible darkness hidden within the light, but all she could think about were Johan and Talus. They were at the park, battle-training. What was happening to them? And all the time, around her, women and children were crying and, from further away, men were shouting.

  The terrible sound passed into the distance, but something had been left behind, something she couldn’t grasp. She couldn’t see anything in the immediate vicinity. Iffenia had vanished. Where was she? They had been standing together and now the other woman had gone. She should have paid closer attention to her. Only the snow and the feeling of loss cloaked Annyeke. Something had happened, the world was wrong, off kilter more than it had been.

  Shaking her head to dispel confusion and concern about what her missing companion had done, and why, Annyeke scrambled to her feet, shaking off soil and grass from her skirts. She could see other people were following suit. Heart beating fast, she knew something more was expected of her, now more than ever. She shut her eyes and concentrated. It didn’t take long to find what she sought for, the air all but vibrated with it. Gelahn and his forces were already upon them. Too soon. They had once more breached the sacred gap between worlds and were, even now, streaming in through the far side of the park. Because of Iffenia? By the gods, she could not be sure.

  She opened her eyes again. For a long moment, Annyeke’s glance took in the salvaged tales of her people, those from the destruction of the library and those they had shared aloud and in their own hearts today. She knew then what she had to do.

  Listen.

  She hadn’t thought the word she’d carved out in her mind would have the effect that it did, but everyone around turned towards her at once. Even in the midst of this new emergency, Annyeke found she was pleased with the ability to garner such instantaneous attention. She, Acting Elder of the Gathandrian people, had to rise to the occasion.

  Take up the stories, she said, using only her thoughts to convey the command. Take them quickly and follow me. The enemy is here and we must meet with him, before it is too late for us.

  She gathered an armful of stories, old and new, from the stacks near the once majestic Library and began to run towards the sound of the explosion. She didn’t need to look back to know the women were copying her act, hurrying after her even in spite of the orange streak of fear that gripped them. It hovered over them all. In Annyeke’s arms, the tales made her skin prickle, words rubbing against her flesh as if singing in a voice she was unable to reach after. She had no time to listen to them. All she could think about was Talus and Johan in the park, where she could see a bright tongue of green fire rising to the skies and then falling, over and over again so there was no break in it. A circle, she thought, it’s a circle. What was it doing? She slipped on the packed down snow that covered the streets. She couldn’t run fast enough, would never get there in time.

  Then her feet met something solid hidden in whiteness and she stumbled forward. A strong hand saved her from landing winded on the earth. When she looked round, it was Iffenia. Where had she come from? She saw a green and fiery light in the other Gathandrian woman’s eyes that had not been there before, as if the glow from the circle of fire could be found also in Iffenia’s face.

  “What is it?” Annyeke demanded, trying and failing to shake her arm free. “What have you done? It’s because of you that Gelahn is here, isn’t it? The battle has begun.”

  For a moment, the air between the two of them was silent, although the echoes of the explosion and small aftershocks still haunted Annyeke’s ears, and the cries and gasps of the crowd of women hemmed them in. Then Iffenia spoke, but the voice was not hers.

  “The battle is yours, Annyeke,” she whispered, her tone deep and edgy. “So you must never join it.”

  Then Iffenia pushed her fiercely onto the ground. Stories rolled away, landing in snow, their small centres breaking under the strain, words leaking into air. Annyeke cried out, more in frustration than fear, and struggled to push the sculptor away from her.

  Other hands reached out to pull them apart, but it was no use. Iffenia seemed possessed with a strength Annyeke and the other women had no way of fighting. Neither could she understand her attacker’s words, though they were ones she had used herself only recently. Why was the battle hers? It was Gelahn who fought them, and they were not the instigators of this war, either in the mind or in the body. No, the words were meaningless, but none of that mattered. She had to get free, she had to lead her would be army, with the tales she hoped would save them, to where the war had commenced. But more than anything, she had to know if Johan and Talus were safe. If they weren’t, she’d…by the truth of the gods and stars, she didn’t know what she would do, but someone would pay.

  And she could start now.

  With a sharp cry, Annyeke punched Iffenia in the eye with all the strength she could muster. There was no way on Gathandria she was going to be defeated by this elegant, silver haired woman, no matter who else might be holding her mind-power at the moment. Redheads were always stronger, everyone knew that.

  Iffenia gasped, but didn’t weaken. Annyeke found her fist pushed aside and held down, and at the same time Iffenia reached out towards her head.

  Whatever happens, she mustn’t touch me.

  Acting purely from instinct, Annyeke twisted her head towards the approaching fingers, opened her mouth and bit down on them hard.

  Iffenia screamed and this time the voice was her own. Seizing the opportunity, Annyeke scrambled out from underneath her body and tried to get to her feet. Willing hands from the crowd struggled to assist her efforts but, with a roar, Iffenia grabbed her legs and the two of them fell again.

  The battle must be yours, Annyeke. Fight it.

  These new words filled her mind, but she didn’t know where they came from. For an agonising heartbeat, she couldn’t even recognise who had placed them there, but then the realisation swept over her.

  The First Elder. But how?

  Even as she thought that question, a figure rose up from the snow, dark and bloodied against the pure whiteness and deep holes where eyes should have been. It must have been his body she’d stumbled over when first she fell. Now he was barely Gathandrian, si
mply a mass of dying flesh and pain. What had Iffenia done to him? Had he ever found shelter? Bile rose in her throat but she swallowed it down.

  It was then that, suddenly and shockingly, his story overwhelmed her and the First Elder’s voice was the only one she heard.

  *****

  I am at the Great Library. Both of us broken beyond repair. The darkness in front of my eyes is tearing into my mind and I can barely think. The world is out of kilter and what I had thought I was a part of does not exist. I cannot find Gathandria in my senses. The pain blocks out everything.

  I had so many things I want to tell Annyeke, but none of them have any meaning now. Everything has changed. The old stories are lost to us and, as she has commanded, we must sculpt new ones. I thought I could somehow, even in my disgraced state, help to save the Library, but I have failed even in that task. The mind-cane and the snow-raven who brought me here have other visions I can no longer see. Surely my fellow elders can help Annyeke, but they are so far away. It will take them half a day-cycle to get here. By then, it will be almost night and the battle will have commenced.

  Annyeke thinks what she has seen now is the beginnings of the battle, but I know it is not. That is what I must say to her—this is what she has to know—but even as this wisdom fills the part of my mind not blasted by pain, strong hands are taking hold of me, lifting me up and half supporting, half carrying me away from the place of destruction.

  One of them I do not know and one I do—Iffenia, the wife of the Second Elder. She is at my right side. I recognise her mind as it links to my shattered thoughts. It is her touch and the scent of wood shavings she bears on her clothes that brings my disorder into a kind of peace or, if not peace, then at least stability.

  Come, she says but not with spoken words, we must find shelter.

  As she speaks, what I have known falls into place and my blood cries out a warning. It is she, it is she, it is she, but she does not yet know it. Unable to respond or to understand fully what my own soul tells me, I submit to her ministrations and at once the colour blue fills my imagination. It is the most violent shade I have ever seen, but it is neither my nor her colour. Iffenia’s character is a subtle grey, like the chairs her husband used to make, whereas my own is mauve. Where has this terrible blue come from?

  It is the Lost One, she says. He is most truly lost.

  You have seen him? The words do not appear in the right order in my thoughts but, nonetheless, Iffenia seems to understand.

  Yes. This morning, before the fire.

  It is not the answer I sought. The sudden down-lurch of hope makes the pain shatter my mind once more. As she speaks to me in the connection running through her fingers on my arm, we are walking, to where I cannot tell. But the fact of movement is itself a steadying hand in the midst of the blackness of her strange anger and grief that fill the air between us. It makes me want to cry out, but I have no voice. Instead, the grit and soil carve out their patterns on the underparts of my feet; I can feel each small puncture like a gift that focuses me on a lesser pain. The air is unexpectedly cool on my face and the threat of snow overpowers the remains of the fire-heat. I notice if I think only of the physical, then the mind-pain is kept at bay, although not vanquished.

  The two women and I stumble through streets I know only from memory until at last the air changes, and Iffenia alters her pace. All I know now is I must go with her. Her suppressed hatred of me nibbles at my skin like wood beetles.

  We’re home, she says.

  For one sky-spun moment, I imagine she means my home, but of course she does not. The smell of wood shavings deepens and I feel the velvet warmth of her door curtain brush against my shoulder.

  The unknown woman at my left guides my hand until my fingers touch the smoothness of polished wood. She then steps back. For the first time I feel alone. I am breathing hard, unable to re-form my world out of what it once was into what it is now.

  “I must go,” the strange woman says. These are the first spoken words between the three of us.

  “Of course,” Iffenia says. “You have your family. You must go to them.”

  Her voice comes to me from further away than I had anticipated, from the other side of the room, I think, though my memory of the crafting-area is poor. I had not felt her step away, but I feel the stranger go. With all that I am, I long for her to stay, but Iffenia waits for me and I will not harm another by begging her not to leave us.

  “Thank you,” I call out as I hear the curtain rustle and the air swoops in. I do not know if she hears me.

  It is only when she has gone that I understand fully how much the woman I am with despises me and how much she has been holding back. The words family, love, cowardice assault me from every side and, from instinct, I raise my hands to fend off what I cannot see and cannot touch. At once, I stagger, supported only by air, and grasp the table again before I fall. It must have been the presence of the stranger that has kept this grief in check. Well, it is set free now, with something underneath it that I cannot yet fathom.

  “Please,” I whisper when at last I am able to. “What do you mean?”

  A silence. And somehow that is worse than what came before it. I have no idea what Iffenia is doing. I cannot see it. I am afraid to use the remnants of my mind to sense her intention, even if I had that capacity any more. Slowly, as if any swift movement would break the sudden impasse between us, the stool curves its way into the back of my knees. I sit down. Words bite at my skin and thoughts, but I cannot interpret them.

  Finally, she takes a sharp breath and speaks. “So. You are here. I did not intend you to sense all of that but, even so, you are here.”

  With her voice come images—she and her husband, his narrow lips set in a line that contains a sorrow I have never paid heed to, and the river of black between them as he abandoned her in order to follow me.

  The noise of my swallowing is loud in my ears and the words are at last on my tongue.

  “Forgive me,” I whisper. “I did not think about those left behind when I walked away from the damage I had done.”

  “No,” she replies and this time her voice is close, almost at my ear. “No. You did not think. That is the truest thing you have ever said, Daagmund Winnland. You did not think about the fact the Council of Elders would follow you out of loyalty, though the tradition of faith to the Chosen Elder is as real to us as any of the ones you chased after in your foolishness. Neither did you think of the wives and families you tore those elders from. For who is to say we will ever see them again? The snow-raven brings you back, but where are your fellow elders? Where are the ones we love? All of them chose to be with you but, when you return, you return alone. Where is your own loyalty?”

  “They have not come to harm, I swear it.”

  Iffenia laughs but the sound of it is as dark as winter. “I do not believe you know what is harm and what is not. Because of you, the great Library is no more and the attack from the mind-executioner is all but upon us. Outside of the city, how can any, however wise, ever hope to survive what is to come?”

  She is right. I know it. Gelahn will sweep through all that is unprotected, and the minds of the people are the only fragile defence we have. Those who are not amongst us are most open to destruction. On all sides then, I have been lacking. I raise my face to where I hear her breathing.

  “I do not know,” I say and let the truth of that also slide through my flesh. “Show me what I can do, Iffenia.”

  Whether or not she will kill me, I am open to her decision. She makes a sound, somewhere between a groan and a cry, and something in the colour of the air between us eases. I know then I will not die here, although suffering will come. Too soon it will come, too soon. I do not know whether that will be a blessing or a curse. Even so, behind the great wall of the emotions she carries, I sense a greater power, hovering within her as if feeding off her despair. Does she know what the executioner can do to all of us with just one who hates? And if I dare to tell her, how will that
be for us then?

  What we will do is this, she says, unwitting of the greater battle already being fought around us both. I will ease your body’s scars and then both of us will do whatever Annyeke commands. It is the womenfolk, I think, who must try to save us today.

  *****

  Unable to help herself, Annyeke gasped, tried to escape the power of the First Elder’s mind-story, but there was more, so much more to come.

  *****

  Before she left me, Iffenia spun a mind-net for protection, but she and I both knew it was for imprisonment. She did not want Annyeke to know what I have discovered. I could feel the fluidity of it in my mind, but the colours were wrong, not the surface of them. Oh no, all there was as it should be, the blues and greens of safety vibrating my thoughts into a softer more attentive shade. Still something felt wrong, though I said nothing as she lifted the curtain and I felt the chill wind penetrate her sculpting room. Then she was gone. My skin felt prickly, but the sharp pain in my eyes was such that it swallowed up all else in its wake.

  I feel that way still.

  I should sleep, but sleep will not come. Nor do I want it to. I feigned it when Iffenia left, the remnants of my skill such that she did not discover my deceit. Her mind was elsewhere, playing with the beginnings of realisation. When she realises the extent of how her hatred has brought betrayal, and how the mind-executioner has used her mind-rebellion, her love for her husband and hatred of the Lost One to slip easily into our lands, what will happen then? Of all people, I should know how the heart’s greatest desires can bring treachery. We are companions in wrongdoing, Iffenia and I. Nor did she see the liquid she gave me was poured out under the washing cloths stored beneath the table. At least, that is what my hands told me they were; my eyes, of course, are beyond it.