The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting Read Free Page A

attention. He’d been too busy worrying about what Ralph Tregannon, the Lammas Lands’ Overlord, would ask him to do next. He’d also been preparing parchment and quills for the morning lessons. Not only that, but he was starting to consider whether it was time to move on, search for another place of refuge for one such as him. If he could find the strength and integrity for it, which he doubted. He could no longer sleep easily at night. All these thoughts had occupied him during the previous hours and, without knowing it, he was to pay for his lack of attention now.
    The knocking at the door alerted him to their visit first. If he’d been keeping his mind-skills as sharp as he should have been, they would never have succeeded. But nearly two year-cycles of Ralph’s protection had dulled Simon’s edges, making him weak. Once again, he had no one to blame but himself.
    The harsh noise made the boy jump.
    “Hush,” Simon whispered, stilling him with one hand on his shoulder. “Go into the food store. There’s an alcove at the back. Hide there, behind the curtain.”
    Wide black eyes stared up at Simon, and he could see sweat on the boy. His fear seeped through Simon’s senses like a rock snake.
    “ Do it ,” he said, this time more urgently, as the rapping came once more.
    The boy gave him one more wide-eyed look and was gone.
    “Wait a moment!” Simon called so that whoever was outside could hear him as his fingers hurried to hide parchments, quill pens, books in the drawers from where they had come. “I’m not prepared for visitors, but I’m on my way.”
    “You don’t have a moment, Master Simon,” a voice growled with menace. The North Country accent told him it was Thomas, the blacksmith.
    Anything else Thomas might have said then was overpowered by the sound of the door being rammed with something solid. The frame shook and the thin strips of woods splintered and cracked.
    “Wait!” Simon called again, trying to still the sudden shake of his hands. “I’m coming. Just be patient, won’t you?”
    Fumbling with the mechanism, he caught a glimpse of his narrow features in the polished plate, drying on the shelf: slight, willowy, his brown hair combed back, brown eyes wide. Some thought him attractive, though he could never fathom why. He kept up a stream of meaningless words, trying to connect with them in his mind in order to search out their intent. It was no use; his own fear was too strong for him and when, at last, he had no option but to open the door, the only advantage he had was the evidence of his eyes alone.
    He knew then that they wanted to kill him. This wasn’t at all what he’d signed up for with Ralph. It wasn’t how he’d hoped things would turn out.
    Three men entered Simon’s room. Thomas reached out to grab him. Surprising himself and them, Simon feinted downwards and to the left. The man behind Thomas, whom he didn’t recognise, side-stepped the blacksmith and raised his staff. It landed with a glancing blow on Simon’s shoulder and he staggered, almost falling to his knees.
    When he looked up, he could see the third man clutching a rope in one hand, a knife in the other. A glimpse of deep blue eyes and obstinacy. Simon didn’t know him either. Both strangers looked like hired hands, and he wondered how much Thomas had had to pay them, and where he’d gotten the money.
    The last man raised his knife. The blade of it glinted in the candlelight. Simon leapt towards him, snarling, and for a moment a shocked expression crossed the knifeman’s face. Then for a flash out of time, and in a way he hadn’t anticipated, he was falling through the man’s mind, senses caught on the jagged rocks of thoughts. An impression of blackness. Water. An island. And then…
    Simon spat at him. A stream of saliva hit him in the eye and he cried out. Simon dodged under his rope arm, reaching the splintered wide-open door. As he took the first step to freedom, a remnant of the man’s