Heart of the Staff - Complete Series

by Carol Marrs Phipps

  “I cannot possibly tell you!” he croaked. “I have no more idea than you do where he is!”

  Demonica stood up with a stunned look and stepped back from the rack with the Heart, letting James have the full force of the pain she had halted. He blacked out at once.

  “Well,” she said, stepping back to his side. “He's no more use to us at all. How shall I kill him, dear, quick or slow?”

  “Stop, Grandmother!” she cried, lunging at the rack to bat aside her hand. “He may yet be useful for finding Abaddon, even if he doesn't know where he is. There must be more to it all, somehow. Maybe Lance kidnapped Abaddon for revenge without James knowing.”

  “Yea?” she said, pocketing the Heart. “So why didn't he just say that Abaddon had been kidnapped in the first place?”

  “James is right fond of Lance, far more like friends than they should be. Maybe he was trying to protect him...”

  “At the cost of Abaddon's safety?”

  “Very well, I see that that doesn't make sense either, but I can't help feeling that there's something we've overlooked, and until we know what it is, I want James alive.”

  “Fine. Doesn't matter to me. Shall I have the guards haul him back up to your apartments, then?”

  “Hardly. He needs to rot a while right down here in the dungeon. Maybe he'll be more reasonable when I talk to him again.”

  “Well then,” said Demonica with a grand smile. “In that case, isn't it about time for breakfast? A brisk little torture always works up my appetite.”

  Chapter 105

  Lance put his elbows on the board and tore at a piece of bread as he watched Abadon follow Rodon out of the grotto. He looked down and mopped up the last streak of gravy on his trencher. “Mother Alvita, you do indeed make the most delicious food in the world,” he said, looking up at her with a smile. “There's nothing out there anywhere which even comes close to your wonderful acorn flour bread.” His face suddenly fell with a sigh as he looked 'round at them. He wiped off his knife and sheathed it. “I certainly hope I've not imposed on you all by bringing him here, Mothers. If you must, by all means take away his memory of this place and we shall leave here at first light.”

  The sisters glanced amongst themselves, then turned serenely to Lance with one accord. “Be as be may,” said Celeste with a kind, keen gaze, “but ffirst, telle us aboute the child. Why didst thou hym heere ybring?”

  “I could think of no other place to take him. I had the vain hope that you might do for him as you did for me so long ago.”

  “A! Oonly a moment a-go to us, my derre Lance,” said Nacea with an amused grin as she leant aside to pick up her knitting. She arranged it across her lap and paused for a moment, repositioning a comb in the lemon yellow streak of hair running along her temple before fixing her gaze on him. “Thou didist not have the derknesse aboute thee which hauntes this boye, Lance. Thou cam unto us in peyne but pure of herte. For

  Abaddon, ther nis no care for the ryghtes or nedis of thos beyonde hymselve. Yonge he to be so verray empty ybe.”

  “Nacea spak trewe,” said Alvita with a nod. “Yonge Abaddon beth so fer doun the path of uttir evyl that ther nis no grete hope of savynge hym.”

  Lance turned to Celeste, knowing that what she had to say would be their final word. He sat like a schoolboy awaiting her pronouncement. The very instant he thought he could no longer bear her silent gaze, she placed her hand softly upon his and spoke:

  “Ich feele that evene thogh hee hath not thy favor, thou hast a keene desire to torn hym arounde. Why so?”

  “He's the son of my close friend, my king, actually...”

  “Kyng James yclept hee not?”

  “Yes. These are dark times in Loxmere-Goll. He's already lost nigh everything dear to him, especially Abaddon. Is there truly no hope at all, Mother?”

  “Not yit, if Kyng James hath thee for hise frende.”

  “I meant for Abaddon, I'm afraid,” he said with a sigh as he put his leg over the bench and started to rise.

  “In verray dede,” she said, looking up with a frown and a quick nod for him to stay seated. “Ther doeth be a smal chaunce, smal chaunce thogh hit be, that hee myghte yit be saved.”

  “Truly?” he said, swinging right back to face her with a look of wide-eyed surprise.

  “Be thou not over hopelich, Lance,” said Celeste with a grave look. “Smal in dede doth the chaunce ybe atte beste. Derke hee be and derke wol be the dede ymaked. Is Kyng James worth swich a peyne?”

  “Yes.”

  Celeste studied his face for a moment. “So be hit,” she said with a decisive nod.

  “Now, telle us more aboute the boye. If we holpen hym in eny degre, we moste ylearn al that thou can telle.”

  “By all means, though I'm not sure where to begin.”

  “Wel, thou didest seyn that Demonica hise grete graunte mooder ybe and that Kyng James beth hise fader. Thou coudest sterte by ytellynge aboute the ootheres of hise ken, Ich sholde thynke.”

  “Very well,” said Lance. “Abaddon's great-grandfather is none other than Wizard Razzmorten...”

  “Razzmorten!” cried Celeste and Alvita at once as Nacea looked up from her knitting with a gasp.

  “Not Razzorbauch?” said Nacea.

  “Razzmorten is his great grandfather and no mistake, Mother Nacea,” he said with a certain nod. “As I understand it, Demonica married Razzmorten for the sole purpose of getting at the crown jewels of Niarg. Once she managed to steal those, she abandoned their newborn daughter, Ugleeuh, and fled to the Dark Continent with her lover, Razzorbauch, whom she may have taken up with long before she ever saw Razzmorten.” He paused to look 'round at their faces as he reached across the board for an especially nice red apple. “Ugleeuh turned out to be right rotten in spite of everything Razzmorten could do. Eventually she tried to involve Niarg in the sukere trade over the protests of the crown. When she tried to murder King Hebraun and her own half sister, Queen Minuet, to get them out of her way, Razzmorten used a spell to confine her to a part of the very Chokewoods which Razzorbauch once made from your forest.

  “Now, a short while before all this,” he said as he studied the apple in the greenish yellow ambience of the glow lichens as if it were a marble figurine, “Ugleeuh married Gastro, the son of the great wizard Gastron. She bore his daughter and right prior to her confinement, she gave her away to the king and queen of Goll without Gastro ever knowing a thing about it. Somebody named this daughter Spitemorta. And Spitemorta became queen of Goll before her eighteenth birthday by poisoning the king and queen. Not everyone knows about that, even yet. Just after that, she saw the right moment and married Prince James. Right after that, she murdered James's father and framed his stepmother, and to this day very few people know the truth on the matter.” He sighed, took a bite of the apple and looked at them. “Is this the kind of thing you want me to tell about?”

  “Thou art doing ful fyn, Lance,” said Celeste as she slid the bowl of apples toward him. “We wold the tale enjoye evene had hit no thyng to do with Abaddon. Now, this heere Spitemorta be hise mooder? Do ga on. The more we knowe the better hit beth.”

  He gave a wide eyed nod as he swallowed the last of his apple. He picked out another from the bowl and continued with his tale.

  ***

  Spitemorta stopped eating to look at Demonica gorging herself. “I've never before seen you eat like that,” she said as an orderly busily scurried away from the table. “I'm the one who's pregnant. You've had half a loaf of white bread, three eggs, most of the toad- in-a-hole brought to the table, a bowl of porridge and you just asked him if there were any sukere pastries in the kitchen. Sukere pastries! You've never eaten sukere anything before, even if you were once involved with Razzorbauch and his trade in it. And why do you keep rubbing your throat?”

  “Merely to strangle you on your own self-centered curiosity, dear”, she said sweetly as she smacked her napkin onto the table, rose abruptly and walked out.

  “And all, bec
ause I was so concerned!” said Spitemorta, calling after in an even sweeter voice as the footsteps faded down the hall. “Why, the old witch is anxious,” she thought with a toss of her eyebrows. “Here all this time I've gotten right familiar with her anger and her fury, but I've never seen her anxious. My, my! So what should one suppose is going on?”

  ***

  Demonica slammed the door to her chamber. The bang of it was not at all satisfying. Gorging had not made her feel any better, either. In fact, her side hurt after charging up those flights of stairs. “How come nothing's handy which would be satisfying to destroy?” she growled. “The Pitmaster take Spitemorta and her idiot husband!” She ripped aside the curtains of her canopy. Not good enough. She grabbed them again and yanked them down onto the floor. She paused to rub her throat. She slid the Heart from her kirtle and stared at it. For the first time in a very long time she felt fear. “I'm going to have to watch it,” she said, sitting on her bed with a bounce. “Here I go, stupidly sticking my neck out as though I have everything all figured out. If I'm not careful, she'll catch on that I don't know any more about the bloomin' Heart than she does.” She swallowed.

  “Damn! And speaking of neck, it does hurt. It's not my imagination running away with me after all.” She lay back and squeezed shut her eyes. Razzobauch had been furious. He had come back unexpectedly and had caught her trying to fit the Heart into its socket on the Staff. She had pleaded with him, telling him that she only wanted to examine it. He grabbed it away from her, snapping it onto the Staff to hold it against her throat. At once she confessed everything. She had tried to taste its power for herself. After all, it was she who had gotten the Heart for him. All she could do was sink to her knees and beg him to stop the terrible fiery pain.

  She shuddered at the memory. “Very well,” she said as she rubbed her throat again, “I understand having my recollection, but why would I actually feel the pain? I made James tell the truth, so why would my throat hurt?”

  She flung her bolster off the bed, rolled onto her elbow and sat up. “Why am I still fooling myself? I have no idea under the shining sun what I made James do.” She rolled out of bed, went to her window and pulled back her drapes. It was snowing heavily in big wet flakes, gathering into wooly white fingers on all of the twigs of the trees below. The floor was cold on her feet. She found some slippers in the bottom drawer of her wardrobe. “How did Razzorbauch manage?” she muttered, going back to the window to blow her breath on the glass. “He knew how to wield the Heart and Staff 'way too fast. He was no more skilled than I am.

  No one was around to tell him, either.” She fell silent for a good while, tracing with her finger the bevels of the misted glass where it met the leading as she stared off onto the swarms and eddies of falling snow flakes. “A grimoire,” she said, speaking out suddenly into the echoes of her chilly room. “The First Wizard must have had a grimoire. Yes! And Razzorbauch had to have gotten hold of it. But where would it be now? Would he have put it in the same cave with the Heart? Or what?”

  ***

  “Heere we be, thanne, yonge Maister Abaddon,” said Rodon as he rose anxiously on his hind quarters to give a grand gesture at the opening to a small grotto in the lava tube. “Thou woldest al that thou needst for the nyght wythinne yfynde, Ich be seur.”

  Abaddon flung Rodon a sullen look as he stepped into the softly-lit grotto, every bit as neat and comfortably tidy as one would expect in the dwelling of three elderly ladies. The clean quilted bed, the wee fireplace, crackling merrily, whose flue was dug over years of Rodon's scurrying labor, the spotless pitcher and basin on a starched doily and an oak wardrobe: he discounted the lot with one sweeping glance.

  Rodon scuttled past him and proudly withdrew a nightshirt which was just his size from the wardrobe, as if the old ladies had known all about him in advance and had troubled to prepare for him.

  He disdainfully eyed Rodon, standing there smiling and bobbing like a fool and grabbed away the nightshirt. Rodon bowed and hurried to the door, dragging his naked tail after him, sending an odd chill down Abaddon's back.

  “Oh I say, Rodon?” he called out, just as the tail vanished from sight. “What about Lance? Will he be sleeping here, too?”

  “O no,” said Rodon, peering back in. “Lance hath hise owene kaave, yonge maister. Now, thou trewly needest thy rest. Thou wilt see thy maister in the morwnynge.”

  “Lance is not my master!” he shouted with a spoilt stamp of his foot. “I am Prince and he is but a mere retainer, my father's retainer. I'll thank you to remember that, you overgrown vermin.”

  Rodon jerked as if slapped and stared agape. After a moment, still as a stone, he lurched into motion with a curt nod and left.

  “Good,” said Abaddon, planting his fists on his hips. “Get out and stop stinkin' up the place.” He looked about. “This is a room for servants. My momma's goin' 'o make you all pay for this kind of disrespect. I'm Prince of Goll!” he shouted, picking up a three legged chair and swinging it furiously against the mantle, only to lose his grip and drop it. He grabbed it up and tried again. When it refused to break, he squealed with rage and heaved it into the fire. “Good. And Momma's going to put all you in here. And you're goin' 'o burn, burn, burn. And I'll help her. I can't wait.” He picked up his nightshirt off the floor and wadded it up to fling it into the fire. He hesitated, dropped it onto the bed instead and tiptoed out into the lava tube. “I think I'll just see what Lance and those old hags are planning to do to me.”

  It was not long until he could hear voices ahead, coming from the dining room. He squatted in the shadows and listened to every word.

  “So, that was when James knew he had to get him free of his wicked mother and great-grandmother, if he were ever to be anything but evil himself,” said Lance, who was now eating his apples by the thoughtful slice with his knife.

  Celeste and Alvita exchanged a quick look with Nacea as she looked up from tugging her knitting along the length of first one needle, then the other.

  “How manye yere of eld wold the boye be now, Lance?” said Nacea.

  “Seven.”

  “A,” said Celeste. “Hee is moost quyk. Nis not hee?”

  “Oh yea,” said Lance, nearly choking on his apple with a snort. “Quick at a lot of things.”

  “Now, Lance,” said Celeste, wagging her finger. “If thou woldest my sustrin and me to setten the boye to rightes, needynge thine help we wol be. And thou moste nedis be ystarte by moustring the strengthe for to pity hym. Canst thou do that? For if thou cannot, thou myghtist undo oure beste laboures.”

  “By all means, my dear mothers,” he said with a sheepish nod. “I will certainly make every effort. My remark was due to considerable experience with Abaddon using his wits for spite and vicious errantry, and I daresay that his jumping up and down with glee at my being stretched on the rack left a lasting impression.”

  Celeste and Alvita gave wide-eyed gasps as Nacia put down her knitting once more. It was a moment before anyone spoke.

  “We moste knowe aboute this,” said Celeste, “but the more abhominable hee sounes, the more we knowe that we moste have every scrappe of thine holpe.”

  “I will treat him as if he were flesh and blood, if I must...”

  “O, thou certeynly moste,” said Celeste softly, as she thrust her steady green gaze into his.

  Lance sat back in silence.

  “Goode. Thanne hit be i-set,” said Celeste. “In the morwnynge we shal hym to the north ketil ytake.

  “You mean to the oak grove? Already?”

  “Me thynketh hit beste, in this circumstance,” said Celeste with a nod as she turned to Alvita and Nacea who each nodded in turn.

  “Are they still well?”

  “Certeynly. With swich lusty hertes they ygrowe,” said Celeste. “They absolut love the vulcan mounteynes erthe. We did that they wolde not ythryve yferen. Especiallye Longbark: she was the eldeste eldemooder in the Forest Primeval whan we hir heere ybrought, thogh as thou mayest reme
mbre, the ootheres weren oonly sappelynges and akernes.” She dropped her smile and closed her eyes for a moment with a sigh.

  “What is it Mother?”

  “A, they al yknowen the doom of Chokewoods.”

  “So you told them?”

  “Ich fere not,” she said with the slightest shake of her head. “Ich alwey ymene to, as thou knowest, yit trewthe to tellen, Ich never didde so bifore Ich discovered that they al redy kneu.”

  “So how? Rodon?”

  “Nis no thyng lyche unto that. They symply yknowen. They konnen yfeelen thaire bretheren, evene from heere. Hit is righte peyneful for hem.”

  “I'm so sorry, Mother...” he said, slumping with a sigh.

  “As aren we al,” she said as she reached across the board and patted his hand.

  “But if trewe the Elven profecie ybe, the day wol yit ycome whan the Forest Primeval wol restorid be, and what a joysome day that wol be.”

  “You believe the prophecy?”

  “What oother hope wold ther ybe?” she said with a sigh.

  “You certainly would know much more of such things than I would.”

  “Yis. Wel Ich afered that Fairies weren wel neye gone from thise londes whan the Elves aryved ybe. Yit evene thogh they be but long ylyved in stede of inmortal, they certeynly oure distaunt ken ybe, and do therby haven some special insightes...”

  “Well, yes...” said Lance, resting his chin in his hand.

  “...and Ich bileve that thaire abilite to fortellen konnen righte excepciounal ybe.”

  “Did the diatrymas tell you about their prophesy?”

  “A. Thou remembrest oure elden frendes, Ceidwad and Lladdwr.”

  “Absolutely, though I only saw them that one time, and that was only for a brief moment.”

  “Hit coude not holped ybe, as Ich remembre. Natheles, Ich hadde yhoped that they wolden retourne for a longer spelle bifore thou wendest of on thine owene. But whoso knowest?” she said, as a smile swept across her face. “Now that thou hast retourned, mayhap a nothere chaunce thou wilt get. Hit has long ybeen and Ich rekene that they atte eny tyme now coude appere.”