Hallsfoot's Battle by Anne Brooke

Author:Anne Brooke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy, sword and sorcery, epic fantasy, sword sorcery epic, sword and magic, battle against evil

*****

The first time the Spirit of Gathandria connected to me, I was only eight winter-cycles old. The flash of surprise in the scribe’s untutored mind lurches through them both, but Duncan discounts it. What he is saying is true, or as true as his story, his role in the Legends, becomes. And I think he came to me simply because I needed him. My parents were out harvesting the wine-grapes, and I had walked alone to the nearest woods. I remember how cold it was, but I didn’t let it stop me. I loved the Gathandrian woods. I still miss them. But no matter. What I tell you is this: whilst my father and mother barely remembered me many field-lengths away, I sat alone under the grey cypress tree, its leaves shading me from the worst of the chill. There I waited. There was something about that day which told me my life would be different at the end of it. Why a boy so young would think that, I do not know. Perhaps it was the way the air folded itself green and blue through the leaves or the way the night-rooks sang their melody well into the morning. Or perhaps it was the way the sky seemed to wrap itself around me like the cypress leaves, as if I were the only Gathandrian alive that crisp autumnal day.

I had not walked out entirely alone, however. No one who loves words and manuscripts as we do, Simon, is ever entirely alone. I took with me the Third Legend of Gathandria, the Tale of Prudence and Sloth. Not that I needed to carry the pages with me; it has always been my favourite of the Legends and even then I knew it by heart. Does that surprise you? Did you think I would lean towards one of the more dramatic or even violent Legends? Yes, I see that you did. Believe me, your opinion is coloured by the Gathandrians you have lived amongst. If you wish to judge me rightly, then you must cleanse your mind and, as you have declared, form your own view.

Under the tree, I opened the book, letting the words my eye read fuse with the memory of my mind. The tale starts with a woman and a man. But desire does not muddy the river in their case. They are not lovers; they are sister and brother. The mysteries of their beginnings, how they came to be there, are not permitted to be understood. They are locked in the mysteries of the origins of the land itself, part of what only the Spirit of Gathandria knows. This man and woman are neither rich nor poor, noble nor decadent, such is the terrible combination of the attributes they are named by. For prudence and sloth together does not make for richness of life. But in the reading and living of this most special of Legends, you can see how your own life falls short and how to change it to be the best it can be.

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