Free The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting by Anne Brooke Page A

light, Simon could feel the pulse of fear under his skin. Johan sighed and said nothing. Instead, as the darkness trickled in through Simon’s mind and took its rightful place once more, Johan reached out, took a taper and lit it. The light flickered between the two men like a threat and in its shadows the scribe caught a glimpse of Isabella, her head resting on her knees. As he stared, she turned her face upwards towards him and her expression held only emptiness, and something like accusation: he couldn’t blame her for that.
    Johan’s face was also still, as if he’d been carved in stone. But his expression held no judgement.
    “You believe I’m going to make you suffer more than hanging could,” he said. Not as a question, but more as something he already knew. “Because that is the kind of life you have been living. Yet, you have been here with us in this cave for three days and nights, and still you live. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
    “Yes, believe me, I’m grateful for what you’ve done,” Simon said. “But my question remains: why?”
    Johan smiled then. “For safety, for a while, and then…”
    “And then…?”
    He blew out the candle, and Simon was blind once more.
    “That is not for you to know,” Johan said. “Not yet. Your pursuers have gone now. They will not be back before tomorrow. Later, just before dawn when the night is at its deepest, we will start our journey.”
    “Journey? Where are we going?”
    There was silence, followed by movement from Isabella. It sounded as if she might be standing up, stretching perhaps. Simon wondered what exactly they had done to keep his enemies—their enemies also—at bay, and how much it had drained them. The mind-executioner and the villagers had been at the entrance to where the three of them lay hidden, and yet had not found them. How?
    Johan spoke. “You ask too many questions. Instead you must learn to trust us.”
    Simon laughed, but there was no humour in it. “If I had done that over the year-cycles, then, I swear to you, I would not be alive today. You ask me to trust you, but you tell me nothing. I cannot imagine how you managed to keep the men away. If they found you here with me, they would kill us all. Unless…unless you’re in league with the mind-executioner, and you set my hopes up now only to destroy them later. When you hand me over to him. Is that what it is, in spite of what you say? Then why not have done with it and finish the task the rope began?”
    He broke off, not because there wasn’t more he wanted to know, but because the mention of the rope had brought starkly to mind the image of the man who’d wrapped it around his neck.
    Ralph Tregannon.
    Another man Simon had come to believe was his friend. Like Thomas. And, like Thomas, he had proven just as treacherous. He wiped his hand across his face and his fingers came away wet. Gods and stars. There was no time for this. He took several deep breaths and waited for the silence to steady.
    In the end, it was Isabella who spoke first. Her voice was soft, refreshing, like a summer stream, but with something hidden inside it that he couldn’t grasp. It brushed past him like cobwebs at dawn and was just as suddenly gone.
    “We mean you no harm, Simon,” she said. “We will not give you to our enemy.”
    The scribe thought she might say more, but a snort from Johan seemed to stop her.
    “That is enough, Isabella,” he said. “There is no time for further explanation. In two hour-cycles, we will set off, and until then we must seize what rest we can. The journey will be a long and arduous one. There will be time for talking then.”
    As he spoke, Simon felt the point of resistance within him hardening.
    “How can I rest,” he said, “when I do not know what this journey you speak of is? To where are we travelling? Lord Tregannon’s lands have been my home for two year-cycles. This is where I live. This is where my apprentice lives also. The mind-executioner