Hallsfoot's Battle Read online

So I wait until the fullness of the silence seeps in. As I sit, I reach out in my thoughts to the remnants of my mind-strength. It is hard to link with it as each fragment is so very small. I cannot even find the special place that each Gathandrian except one holds within themselves as a point of refuge; the door to it is nailed shut. If I could dwell there, even for a moment, the task would be so much easier and, perhaps, then, the pain in my eyes would fade, but I cannot afford to dwell on what is impossible; I must work only with what can be done, however meagre. Slowly, so slowly, I pull my mind-strength back to the centre of what is left. The effort of it makes my body shake and I slip from the couch onto the floor. The smell of dust and wood shavings wraps round me and tiny slivers of clay pierce the skin on my knees. A flash of what the room I am in looks like fills my mind, scattered tables and half finished sculptures, bowls of water for keeping the dirt at bay, and windows placed to get the best of the daylight. I remember I visited once, many year-cycles ago, in happier times.

  What I recall does not fit with the message my body is giving me. The pieces of my mind gel together, but the journey seems achingly slow. There is something else in the darkness I cannot see, something I have missed, and which, as former First Elder of this land, all my instincts are telling me I should know.

  All I can experience, however, is only in my thoughts. The world of objects is too new to my taste and touch, hearing and smell to be fully understood without the help of memory.

  So it must be something in my mind, something else Iffenia has sparked off in me. The edge of discomfort nags more deeply; I must see to it, if I can, before I may continue with my task. Without the star-blessed focus of what I am doing, however, and with the uncertain mind-net, will I lose the light hold I have on my reason? No matter. I have committed worse atrocities than madness. I take a breath, try to straighten my shoulders, and let go.

  As in my thoughts, I step away from the rebuilding of my mind, the net Iffenia has left tumbles in. I had discounted it, I am a fool. The fluidity of its colours is as insubstantial as water and as deadly. It flows swiftly through the slow re-gathering of my mind, wiping away the bond that has been holding it together and, even as I try to cling to the pieces of myself, they are gone.

  Just as I open my mouth to scream, the net sweeps through my very self. The shock of disintegration, mindful not physical when, all around and within me, I find only emptiness instead of memory and senses, at least from within, although outside me I know it is still there. Something clings to me, though, a hovering presence in the darkness. Not Gathandrian, neither man nor woman, but connected to our inmost private longings. A dagger made from the night with the breath of fire contained inside it.

  How has Iffenia made such a thing? She must understand more of what she has done, and with whom she had allied herself, than I realise. That, too, she has hidden from me, from us all. It must have been deliberate; its concealment in the everyday reassurance of a mind-net does not smack of the innocence I assumed. She has taken this moment of unimagined terror and hidden it where none would seek. For what purpose exactly? I cannot fathom it. One thing I know, if this danger in the midst of the land is allowed to be free of whatever Iffenia uses to control it, then the greatest terror will not be from the mind-executioner, but from ourselves.

  How true that has always been.

  I find myself taking in great gulps of breath, but neither strength nor purpose comes from them. I only know one thing. It is vital for Annyeke to hear this. After all, Iffenia is with her, or will shortly be so. What dangers might her presence bring to the woman I have set in command of Gathandria? What dangers, then, for the land’s future?

  If only I could see.

  What good could that do? Perhaps my lack of sight has allowed my mind to see what my eyes and the eyes of others cannot. If so, I will use such a gift.

  I back away, feeling behind me with my hands until I reach the wall. It’s a slow process and, once, I almost stumble over the stool I’d forgotten about. On the journey, my fingers run along Iffenia’s carving table and the dust of it clings to my skin. The strange fluidity of the dagger of the mind follows me. Like a spider’s web, trying to brush it away only worsens it. I have to find the gap, send out the rest of my strength to Annyeke through it, if I can.

  All the while, my heart beats out a warning. There is so little time.

  At the wall, I sink downwards until I am half sitting, half crouching on the floor. Now, I must try now or the time will have passed me by and I won’t have the ability for it. So I wait for the slimmest portion of the daggered net that surrounds me to come to the forefront of my thoughts. Only when I sense its presence, shimmering before me like a morning mist, do I plunge the remnants of my mind towards it. Wild singing and the feel of crimson crushed against my body, slicing at flesh, the jaggedness of falling. For a moment, I almost believe the mind-net has tumbled away and I stand in black space, panting. But it cannot be like that; mind-nets when destroyed leave damage and the tatters of their shape amongst thoughts. They do not vanish so utterly.

  The next moment, the fact of the net’s presence swoops back around me, slashing the darkness with red and flame.

  I have not even reached the merest hint of Annyeke. I have failed at the first step of abandoning myself, with no strength of thought to attempt a second onslaught.

  How many others like Iffenia dwell amongst us? How much hold does the mind-executioner really have in our thoughts and our land, or indeed all the lands? And how can we bear it?

  My mind is as useless as my eyes. But there is yet something I have left. My body. The idea of this and what I must surely do fills my blood with grief, for mind-nets can, if one has the knowledge of it, be partially defeated by the decisions of the body, but none have ever lived for long afterwards.

  No matter. I am fated for death. The stars and gods decree it, and perhaps this end is what I was made for. I am weighed in the balance and found wanting. Bearing the heaviness of my thought-prison in my mind, I stagger to my feet and walk forwards. With every step, the pain my eyes have been holding onto sweeps over my flesh. It feels as if small angry knives pierce my skin over and over again and already I can feel the warm oozing of blood upon me. The mind-net is becoming physical. Slowly for now, but it has begun sooner than I have feared. And who is to say when its cruel pace will quicken?

  I am nearly at the door and can feel the chill dampness in the air that speaks of snow when the full power of the net kicks in.

  Pain.

  My flesh and blood are caught up in a red darkness that forces me under and I forget how to breathe. It is a river, but more than a river. The whole weight of soil and the vast expanses of sky crush me down until I am as small as a termite. All my bones are shattered and I no longer know my own shape. For a time and a time, or perhaps for all eternity if I only knew it, I huddle like a child on Iffenia’s floor. I know this as the daggers tearing into me allow me to see it so I do not have the mercy and forgetfulness of death. My only task is to suffer pain and to stay here until it is over.

  It will never be over.

  The despair that thought brings and the bleak truth of it drives me further downwards so my own thoughts are hacked into tiny fragments and I can no longer connect with them. My knowledge of my self is beyond my reach. A deeper darkness fills me, as if night has plunged in where only twilight dwelt. Soon I will be entirely gone and there will be nothing left of me to think at all.

  All my mind sees is darkness. Yet one small fact remains untrammelled. I must go forward. I can no longer remember why. I can hear howling, faint but clear, but I don’t know whether it comes from my thoughts or whether it is in the world I cling to. The fact of this makes my heart beat ever faster and I know that, wherever I am, I am shaking.

  The floor beneath me shifts.

  But no, it is not the floor shifting. It is my body that has eased itself onward, towards the sensation of air. Even as I do this, I understand it is not courage or strength that drives m
e, but fear. I have to get out. As if an unknown voice has spoken aloud into my mind, I know I must escape and soon. For it is from the sculpting-room that the mind-net gathers its power. If I stay, I will die and truly.

  Each time I drag myself onward, knives flicker and dance through my body. In my mind, I am almost beyond pain, the understanding of it more than I can acknowledge, but skin and bone take the brunt of the attack. I drag myself through the sticky warmth of my own blood. Nausea hovers in my throat, but I turn aside from its lure. I cannot afford to give in to anything that takes me away from the task of reaching the outside. Nearer and ever nearer, and now the howling is louder, too.

  I should know what that means, but the memory is lost to me.

  And, finally, I am there, the heavy curtain brushing my head, adding its weight to the torment of both flesh and mind, and the night air pulling me into itself.

  Softly, slowly, I fall into snow. It layers the ground. The cold is like another source of pain, but it pierces the darkest of nights surrounding me. At the same time, the howling stops. It is then I remember the mountain dogs. Drawn by the scent of my blood from whichever hell they have been hiding in, I sense their lust for meat just as the knives of the mind-net finally release me.

  There is one thought only in what sense of myself I have left. No matter what, and may the gods and stars take me, but I must reach Annyeke.

  *****

  Annyeke cried out as the death story of the First Elder filled her thoughts and as it came at last to its end, even though somehow in the real time-cycle it had lasted only a moment—a long, low cry full of foreknowledge she could not express. At the same time, the First Elder flung himself upon Iffenia where she still held Annyeke pinned to the earth and tore at her arms and throat. Iffenia fell sideways as if a wave from the sea had swept her clear. She screamed, a sound that pierced Annyeke’s mind, made her press her hands to her ears, even though it wasn’t purely physical.

  She scrambled back from the struggling Elder and Iffenia. She found herself helped to her feet by the nearest Gathandrian women, stood swaying in the falling snow as the concern of those around her clothed her.

  Iffenia was still screaming. The breath from her throat spun crimson into the chill white air. Her head was turned aside from the Elder’s sightless face and Annyeke could not blame her. His eyes seemed to be melting, red flames pouring over his skin and over Iffenia’s body also. Annyeke cried out, trying to take a step towards them, though she had no idea what she might do to help, but those around her held her back, shielding their faces from the sudden influx of burning heat.

  Another scream, a burst of wild green fire streaked with that terrible red, and everything in the immediate vicinity fell silent. It was as if a barrier had been placed between them and the larger world so that none could cross over the boundary to reach them and neither could any of them escape into whatever lay beyond. Even the snow vanished for the space of two heartbeats.

  Then the Gathandrian world, its pain and its hopes, its battles and its dreams of peace one day, came floating back, and Annyeke could see that where the First Elder and Iffenia had been fighting, only one body remained. It was blackened and ruined beyond anything she had seen before. The taste of bile once more filled her mouth and she spat it out. The woman next to her vomited into the snow and Annyeke held her shoulders, murmuring sounds she hoped were soothing, although her words were blank.

  When someone else was strong enough to take over, Annyeke took a breath and walked toward the destroyed corpse.

  It took all her courage to do so. With each step, she told herself she had no choice but to discover the truth. She was Acting Elder and this was her responsibility. But, even although she had understood the weight of the role she had taken on, she had never imagined it would be so difficult.

  Not like this.

  She knelt down beside the body. Aware of the demands that would meet her when she turned round—the newly-commenced battle and the need to defend their land—she peered down into the face of the dead Gathandrian.

  It was the First Elder. The colours of his mind tinged the surrounding air in shades of green and black before bleeding into nothingness. In her mind, she intoned the traditional prayer for the dead, feeling the echo of it in those accompanying her.

  Oh, great Spirit, do not judge what we cannot change and see only the places where we have tried to be what we should. May the spirit of this man rest in your one true Spirit.

  No time for anything else, though she knew later there would be a reckoning for what had happened here.

  She rose to her feet. “Come, then. Now we must fight.”

  As the group of them began to run towards the park, clutching the tales they hoped would help them, Annyeke had only one thought in her mind. If that was the First Elder, where was Iffenia?

  Simon

  Once again, the scribe was cast into the midst of a battle he had never sought and, once again, he found himself unprepared for the fray. When he’d consented to follow the executioner, he’d had no real choice. He’d wanted to live and, no matter what Gelahn said, Simon knew that refusal meant nothing but death. The thought had also flitted through his mind that if he stayed close to his enemy then he might be in a position to undermine him at some future point, something Ralph had said to him once, a lifetime ago. It had been the hope of a soldier and Simon was not a fighting man. He dropped to the ground and laid Ralph on the soil as gently as he could. As the Gathandrian parkland exploded round him into men and weapons, shouting and terror, he saw the green fire from Ralph’s emeralds surround the mind-executioner. Jagged determination drove him to do something, although he didn’t quite know what. Simon reached towards the fire and it snarled and spat at him so he fell back, almost knocking over the snow-raven.

  The bird opened his beak and let out a harsh cry. It could be heard even over the rising noise of bones and battle. The sound splintered through Simon’s head, leaving strange trails of white and orange in its wake. The snow-raven opened his wings and lunged upwards into snow-filled sky. The scribe leapt after him, heart pounding, his pulse tightening in his throat. His fingers met bright feather, but slid downwards as the bird continued to rise.

  “No,” he yelled upwards, snow spattering his hair and stinging his eyes. “Don’t leave me.”

  Too late. The raven was gone. The scribe was left alone with one man he could not trust and who had tricked him into doing what he did not wish to, another he could not bring to consciousness, and an army of the dead he could barely bring himself to look on. Not to mention the terrifying dogs, scrabbling to their feet around him. He wondered whether he, too, might die today and, then, how that might feel.

  A wave of Gathandrian men pounded across the grass towards them and he caught a glimpse of Johan and Talus at the very front of the onslaught. Gods and stars, how would this day end? The look in Johan’s eye, the sensations he could catch from his friend and cousin, even at this distance and in such circumstances, made him cry out in horror. Johan believed he had betrayed them. The truth of this was like the blackest of night against his face, a covering he could not claw through into the light, if any light remained.

  “Run!” he cried out to them both, as if his feeble voice could lend wings to their feet when no escape was possible. At the last second, Johan stood in front of his young companion, but Simon had no hope that such an act was worth doing.

  Blood and bone and a deep abiding terror surrounded the battlefield. Green fire roared in his ears, and the bodies of the long-dead skeletons shone in the eerie light and clattered like rock on rock with every movement. As Simon looked on, Johan lifted a curved sword high into the air so that the last of the dying green fire made it gleam, and brought it crashing down on the bleak bones of the soldier nearest to him. The soldier simply brushed the sword away as if it was nothing but a feather on the wind and thrust the short knife he held into Johan’s side.

  The scribe cried out as Johan fell to his knees, blood oozing fro
m the wound. The screams and shouts of people fighting and dying around him tore into his understanding, sent it spinning into a vacuum he could not seize hold of. For two heartbeats, he thought his cousin was lost, but then Johan staggered to his feet just as his undead enemy pulled back the knife. Johan leapt towards his other side and landed on the soldier’s left arm and the two of them fell grovelling to the snowy earth. The scribe saw where he twisted round and scrabbled at the soldier’s loose armour and then the two of them were rolling over and over together across the parkland. He could see them no more. At the same time, the clash and din of battle rose to an even greater height. Blood splashed over the earth and a falling body almost crushed his leg. He knew then it was the first of the Gathandrians to die. But please, by the gods and stars, not Johan. Not Johan.

  Please, great Spirit, help us.

  He turned towards Ralph, the need to find safety for them both uppermost in his mind, but strong fingers seized his shoulder, hauled him upwards, and spun him round. Just before he found his balance again, Simon spun a mind-net round the Lammas Lord. He didn’t know how effective that might be, but for the sake of the past and, yes, his own illogical heart, he had to try.

  The man he stood facing was a very different concept. But then again, perhaps not. The mind-executioner’s eyes shone a deeper shade of black against the dusky afternoon light, all but night now, and the scribe shivered.

  No. Gelahn’s next words cut through Simon’s thoughts and left scars where understanding should have lain. From now on, you will stay with me. Always. Together we will win this war and rule over the land. Everything will then be as it should and the past will never have been at all.

  The scribe gasped.

  Gelahn smiled. But none of that matters, does it? Now you have me. You are at last on the winning side.

  Then he began to thrust his way through the battling throngs, dragging Simon with him. Blood splashed onto the scribe’s clothes and face as one of the skeleton soldiers plunged a knife into the throat of a hapless Gathandrian. The iron taste in his mouth made him gag, but there was no time for mercy. He stumbled after the mind-executioner, panting hard and fighting to keep upright in the throng.