The Gathandrian Trilogy 03 - The Executioners Cane Read Free Page A

against the wall and the stone-leavings sift through his fingers. He can feel their dampness against his skin.
    A shaft of light illuminates the room dust and is just as suddenly gone. Without wanting to, Ralph takes three paces to the window and leans out. The chill air makes him gasp and he shivers. He can see nothing untoward. Only the abandoned courtyard, the glint of the stream and the ruined booth where the best of his soldiers once guarded him. He has no idea where the army are now. He has not dared think about it, not since the mind-executioner raised an army for himself from the dead of Ralph’s. He does not believe he will ever forget the terrifying noise of their bones and the sight of their empty eyes as they marched upon the hapless Gathandrians. They too haunt his dreams.
    So what then has brought him to the window? He grips the stone ledge more firmly and tries to concentrate. But still he senses nothing. He must learn to put away foolish notions and continue to keep himself as hidden as he can. When he turns round, however, Ralph’s glance drifts over the door to his bedroom. He rubs one hand over his face and back through his hair. His palm comes away brushed with dirt. He has no wish to enter his bedroom even though any sane Lammasser would do it without a qualm. He has not opened that door since arriving back here once more and he swore to himself on the first day-cycle that he would not. It reminds him only of the mind-executioner and what he has done. It reminds Ralph too of Simon. One bad memory and one that should in some respects be good. But he is capable of dealing with neither. He does not have the faith that the future will be worth the risk-taking. Not any more.
    Indeed he wonders if he has any faith, of any kind, left at all.

    Jemelda

    After so much war and the devastation caused by men, it is a wonder she had a kitchen left to work in. That was the one and only thing she could see to be thankful for on this chill morning. Jemelda Littlewater, third daughter of a third daughter and the last in a long line of Tregannon cooks, shook out her baking cloth and scattered over it the last of the herbs. Dried winter-larch and field-ginger. It was all she had left. To this she added the corn-flour and enough sprinkling of water from the ewer to form a dough. For a while, she kneaded the mixture, feeling the soft warmth and stickiness coating her fingers. With each push of her shoulders, she let out a little grunt. Just enough to provide a warning for her husband, Frankel. In the mornings, he was inclined to talk and she was happier simply to think. Forty-two year-cycles of marriage had taught them both well how to communicate without necessarily speaking. It was a wise skill. And she would need all the wise skills she possessed to see through yet another day-cycle. Even now she could hear behind her the scraping of furniture, the slow sweep of the broom and, every so often, Frankel’s exclamation of surprise as he found a wood-rat. Since the war, neither of them had been able to get the vermin out of the kitchen, no matter what they did. Now, Jemelda wondered whether the attempts to keep their kitchen and work-areas clean and decent would be the death of them both in the end. All because of the Tregannon greed. She had no truck with it, or with Ralph Tregannon, no matter what he promised, or tried to. Indeed she did not. She would willingly take apart the Lammas Lord himself, piece by piece, and bake him into her own batch of loaves if he so much as looked at her. Oh yes, she would do such a thing and have no remorse about it afterwards. Even more so, she would take the murderer who had brought her Lord and all of them to this terrible day-cycle and throw him to the wolves. She would enjoy watching him die, and something dark within her stirred into life at the thought. As she pondered that deeply satisfying act, the silence in her head drove the image deeper while the rhythmic thumping of Frankel’s