Heart of the Staff - Complete Series

by Carol Marrs Phipps

  “Yes!” said Rose. “Queen Spitemorta and her grandmother, Demonica. They have the Great Staff and they've found the Heart and they're getting ready to make war on my kingdom of Niarg.”

  “Well now, that old book has nothing in it about any sort of staff, but it does talk about the witches having the heart of the Great Stone tree...”

  “I wonder if it's the same thing?”

  “Did Radella have anything else to say?” said Vorona.

  “When I said that my brother and his wife had twins, she said the Elves would be in peril if they're ever separated. Who do you suppose she means, the twins separated from each other, or from the Elves?”

  Vorona sighed and looked quite lost, staring into the running water of her fountain. “Or,” she said, taking Rose by the hand, “do you reckon she could possibly have meant us separated from your Elves across the great salt sea?”

  Chapter 150

  “Your concern for their souls is most touching, General Cunedda,” said Spitemorta as she daubed away the last of her laughter with her hanky. “In fact, a wicker man or two might be just what a grand celebration needs. We'll discuss it more as the time draws neigh.

  “And General Coel, this plan of yours is wonderful. In fact I want the pleasure of watching you round up our new Niarg workforce...”

  “But Your Majesty, wouldn't...” said Cunedda, drawing a breath at the threatening look which came and went in her eyes. “Your Majesty, I beg your pardon for another one of my unforgivable interruptions, but wouldn't that be an unnecessary risk? Wouldn't it be far safer to use your pellweler... I'm sorry. Skinweler. Wouldn't it be better to watch from a safe distance with your skinweler?”

  “Doesn't the queen get to have her amusements, General Cunedda?” she said, quickly looking Coel up and down as she took a chair behind where he stood. “I might actually be amused if they know that I'm watching. Besides, I know how far an arrow flies. And if I'm able to take off a head or two while I look on, at least I'll be in on the partaking.”

  “Now if you know right where to look, Your Majesty, you say you can find them with your pellwolok, your stone ball, without any problem?” said Coel as he moved aside so that she could see the map and caught her looking at him with interest.

  “Damn!” she thought, looking aside suddenly. “If I know exactly where,” she growled, as if he were the one caught studying her.

  “Right there,” he said, not noticing any of this as he pecked on the map. “You know right where that would be in your ball?”

  “I'm quite able to read a map, General.”

  “Well, if we're not certain that they're right there a-waiting for us, none of this will work.”

  Spitemorta gave an irritated sigh and rolled her skinweler out of its bag.

  The ship heaved gently with the ebb and swell of the sea. General Coel stared at the middle of the map, nodding along as if she were still speaking. A gull cried out as it flew by outside.

  Spitemorta studied the trees which came into view as the swirling colors faded. “Yes!” she said, holding up the ball for Coel to see. “There they are, just waiting for us to get there.”

  Coel gave a nod, as if his agreement were more important than his seeing anything. Cunedda took an expectant step forward.

  “There!” she cried, suddenly yanking back the ball for a look. “Herio! He's the very one we talked about. He's the spy I'm going to kill while you all round up our two construction gangs. This is perfect. Ha! My amusements, the way they should be.” She dropped her skinweler back into the bag and gave its strings a yank.

  “Well,” she said, abruptly standing up with the Staff, “I'm off to see to a pressing matter in Niarg. I'll be right back. If I should be detained, wait for me in Oyster Cove. Do not go on without me. Understood?”

  And with a nod from each of them, she stepped out the door, got astride the Staff and shot away into the blue sky. The washboard of waves far below sparkled in the early afternoon sun. “I'm about to be queen of the whole world, now that you're not in my way, Grandmother!” she crowed over the drone of her kirtle's fluttering fury. Suddenly she was looking over her shoulder with a shudder of goose-flesh, sending the Staff swerving this way and that. “Demonica?” she turned forward at once to keep from falling. “Of course you're not there, witch. You'd 'ave at least been in my face by now over that fat lady with the rug, back at Tafarn Bonheddig. I got you good.”

  When she reached Niarg, she could no longer see the fleet, so she made a sharp turn east and set out across the expanse of the Orin Ocean for Demonica's keep in the waters just off Head. She spent the rest of the afternoon sitting first one way then another on the Staff as the waves below raced into the distance behind her. The skies ahead grew overcast over grey ocean as the sun westered at her back. Presently she could make out a prominence of black rock, rearing up from the water, peppered with the white flecks of sea birds. “Arabat Enez!” she cried. “Demonica's Forbidden Island. There's her stupid castle.”

  A skua shot by in pursuit of three terrified puffins as Spitemorta picked a spot just back from the precipice to land, so that she could limber up with a walk before going inside. Suddenly she was on her hands and knees in the grass, listening to the waves crashing on the rocks, far below. “My!” she said. “Saddle sore is utterly nothing compared with this.” After a couple of stumbling tries, she was on her feet, picking her way uphill to the castle through the jumble of black basalt.

  “No drawbridge,” she said, pausing to stretch her back. “I reckon that there'd be no need for a moat on this rock sticking 'way up out of the sea. Is that why I can't feel the slightest trace of any magical protections? She never needed them? Or did I really get her?” She heaved a sigh as she looked about. “Bother! She's left the portcullis down. I'll be damned if I beg the help to raise it.” And with that, she leveled the Staff and shot a beam of ruby light from the Heart, setting alight the oak timbers of the portcullis with a blinding flash to crumble into a tumbling cascade of glowing coals.

  “Well,” she said with a smart nod of resolution. “I'll just walk right in, then. My house.” She discovered at once that not only had the castle no moat, but that it also had no inner curtain to divide the yard into inner and outer wards. There was only a formal garden of fleshy agaves and spurges between the stone curtain and the castle proper. She turned about to walk backward for a few steps in order to look back at a fountain in the form of three women being beaten by a demon which matched the gargoyles atop the castle walls. She had her staff ready to smash open the door, but found that the latch lifted easily.

  She stepped through the vestibule into the audience-chamber and leant the Staff against the archway between them. “White!” she scoffed, glancing all about. “The walls, the timbers, the floor, even all the furniture. The only thing not white is this runner I walked in on, which is deep red like your stupid dress and the drapes and the cushions on the chairs. Taste and overbearing restraint. What is all this white supposed to be anyway, Grandmother? Purity? And the great white chair on the dais, what did you think you had here, a throne room? Ha! You wished. Well it is now. My throne room.” She tramped straight for the chair.

  “And this is my throne, cat!” she snarled as she lunged to pin the snow white Persian against the cushion.

  The cat growled, leaving deep scratches on her arms.

  “Damn you!” she shouted as she came down on the cat with all her weight on one knee.

  The cat bit the inside of her knee and streaked from the chair. Spitemorta gave a furious kick, slipped and bounced off the corner of the chair with her hip before sitting down hard on the floor. “Oh!” she cried out, rolling onto her cheek and knees as she held onto her dear hip bones. After some time, she managed to stump to her feet.

  “You're just plain dead, cat,” she whimpered as she began hobbling down the runner to where the Staff and Heart leant against the archway. “And it's a good thing, too, because you have to be Grandmother's stinking familiar.” She
grabbed hold of the Staff and steadied herself. “I'd better hunt for the skinweleriou. It's going to be dark soon.”

  Spitemorta began a frantic room to room search of the castle, hoping to find some sign of skinweleriou or at least some hired somebody, who still happened to be about. Soon she was lighting her way with the Staff. After searching in the dark for quite a while, she suddenly stopped short on the stairway to Razzorbauch's tower. “Maybe someone's still guarding the dungeon,” she said as she turned about at once and began the long trot down. When she reached the ground floor she had an unexpected delay, hunting for more stairs down, but soon found herself on a stairway with a dankness that suggested that she must be going right. There was a massive door at the bottom. When she lifted the heavy iron latch, a foul reek whirled into the landing. “Phew!” she said, peering around the door. There was a light coming from the bottom of the next flight of stairs. Pointing the Staff ahead of her, she jogged on down to find two unshaven guards, already standing at uneasy attention on either side of a barrel spread with playing cards and flagons of mead.

  “Entron Demonica!” said one of the guards as the pair of them bobbed their wide- eyed faces in the candlelight.

  “You don't see very well in this light,” said Spitemorta. “Just who are you?”

  “Why it's you as isn't seeing well, if you pardon my saying so, since you don't recognize us, Demonica...” said the guard.

  “I have no way of recognizing you, fool. I'm Queen Spitemorta.”

  “Demonica's granddaughter?” said the other guard. “I didn't think you were wearing red.”

  “I'm delighted that you at least have a faint idea about what you're seeing. Now who in thunderation are you, and what makes you worth living?”

  “Why I'm Budog,” he said, frantically shifting from foot to foot, “and this is Mazhev. And we work for Entron Demonica, so you'd want us alive for sure...”

  “Demonica's dead, so you work for me, and whether I let you live depends on how well you...”

  Suddenly they were on their knees, groveling at her feet.

  “Get up!”

  “At your service,” said Budog as he and Mazhev scrambled to their feet, “but what happened to Demonica, if I might ask?”

  “She vexed me.”

  Budog and Mazhev shared a very alarmed look.

  “And the pair of you could avoid doing that if you show me where you have the rest of the skinweleriou.”

  “Avoid vexing you, you mean?” said Mazhev.

  Spitemorta gave a coy nod.

  “By showing you the rest of the skinweleriou, that is?”

  “If you're quick enough,” she said sweetly.

  “We've got all eight thousand in the oat granary of the stable,” said Budog as he and Mazhev scurried about snuffing candles and lighting a torch apiece in the coals of the fireplace. “Now is it Entron Spitemorta, or shall we call you 'Your Majesty?'“

  “I am queen.”

  “Your Majesty, is it then?” said Budog.

  Spitemorta heaved a long suffering sigh and rolled her eyes.

  “Right this way then,” said Mazhev, waving for her to follow him to the stairwell.

  “Well Your Majesty,” said Budog, “if you don't mind my asking, queen of what?”

  “This rock, you can be certain, but I'm also queen of the kingdom of Niarg- Loxmere-Goll.”

  “Niarg?”

  “Oh yes. We're acquiring more lands all the time.”

  Soon Spitemorta found herself standing in the dusty oats inside the door of the granary, peering at the skinweleriou glistening in the dark. She picked up the nearest two and put them into her bag. “Why only eight thousand?” she said.

  “That's all Demonica asked for,” said Mazhev. “That's the last Smole made. We dismissed him.”

  Spitemorta seemed not to be listening. “I want you to load these balls into two freshly made wagons,” she said, stepping outside. “See that they're waiting for me when I get back and you'll be off to a good start in my service. Oh yes. When you're done, find that white cat and kill it.”

  “Demonica's cat?” said Budog. “I'm not sure it can be. I think it has powers...”

  “Oh, you'll manage,” she said as if she were coaxing an uncertain child, “because I would be vexed if I ever see it alive.

  “Now. Once you've killed the cat, find this Smole, whoever he is, and have him continue making skinweleriou, just as he was. I'll need them supplied without any letting up for some time to come.”

  Budog and Mazhev shared an apoplectic look in the light of the torches.

  “I'll be on my way in the morning,” she said as she picked up the Staff and started for Demonica's bower, “but I'll be back shortly, so you'll want to have everything done and waiting. Good night, then.”

  ***

  Spitemorta lay in Demonica's bed, listening to the cries of gulls out her window as the first rays of sunlight lit the wall behind her. She threw back her covers, sat on the side of the bed and nearly fell when she tried to stand up. She hobbled to the tea table and ate some of the cheese and corned beef she had found in one of the larders while hunting skinweleriou. She had forgotten all about eating for some time and discovered that she was quite hungry. At last she decided to get dressed. The broadening daylight made her want to hurry.

  “Well, it's back west to Niarg before rejoining Coel and Cunedda,” she said as she stepped into her black kirtle, “but I'll never be able to straddle the Staff for the entire way across the Orin Ocean. I'll just have to pick a place where I can vomit when I get there.” She laced up her bodice, grabbed up the Staff and turned her dress deep vermilion. She put the strap of her bag across her shoulder and sat on the bed with her skinweler. “Now just where is it?” she said as the swirling colors in the skinweler gave way to images. “Show me the manor house at Peach Knob. So that's where Mother grew up with Auntie Min and Grandfather Razzmorten. Why would it be so dark? Very well, let's find some place out of the way, around back.”

  Suddenly she was on her hands and knees in a pandemonium of terrified chickens, squawking and flapping dust and old feathers all about her in the dim light of dawn as she retched and heaved her breakfast onto the floor between her hands. “Aangh!” she cried, catching her breath and sitting back on her heels as the chickens crowded round to snap up tidbits of her cheese and corned beef.

  She grabbed up the Staff and sprang to her feet to pound with her fist along the chicken house wall until she found the door and threw it open. “My dress!” she wailed, waltzing into the pigweed with her arms held wide. Just then it occurred to her that she was holding the Staff and she quickly used it to make herself as clean as she was when she was first dressed. Suddenly she stopped short with a scald of alarm at the sight of her second sunrise in one day. “No!” She shook her head. “No way it's Demonica. It can't be anything but the traveling spell.

  “There's the house,” she said, looking uphill beyond the big orchard. “And that was my very last traveling spell ever, ever, ever, I swear.” She started walking up the grassy lane between the rows of peach trees. An oriole gave a bawdy whistle. Up the lane, a kingbird chased away a pair of grackles. She could hear a tinkling of bells as sheep came running.

  “Hoy!” she thought she heard someone holler. She looked back beyond the sheep to see a stooped old man wave. She turned away and made for the house. The summer kitchen reared up before her as she came out of the trees. She got a whiff of steak and eggs as she heard someone bang a skillet. She stopped and looked up at the manor house behind the kitchen. “Good for gentry,” she said. “At lest it's temporary.”

  A heavy set woman appeared in the doorway of the summer kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “Good morning to you, mistress,” she called out with a smile. “You look bewildered, a-coming up on us out o' the orchard, that a-way. I've just fixed breakfast and I already set out an extra...”

  “Oh I know exactly where I am.”

  “Well now I'm Bethan, but should I k
now who you be?”

  “It makes no difference who you are. But it's always best to know your new queen, particularly when you work on her manor.”

  “Peredur,” said Bethan as the old man appeared behind Spitemorta. “did you hear what she just said to me?”

  “No, but I can't begin to imagine what she was doing in the chicken house.”

  Bethan folded her arms and looked Spitemorta in the eye. “Well since I can't begin to believe what you just told me, dear, why don't you be so kind as to tell him what it was?”

  “It's quite simple. I'm queen and you're in my house.”

  “Minuet is queen, and I'm queen mother. I raised the queen and her two children. This is my house. Razzmorten and the crown gave it to me.”

  Spitemorta let out a whoop of laughter and stopped. “Minuet is dead, dead, dead and you may be lucky enough to be the hired help in my house, if you don't get carried away,” she said with a satiny rustle as she stepped into the doorway and pushed past Bethan.

  “Now look 'ee here, child! Queen Minuet and Razzmorten saw us just days ago, and she certainly was queen then...”

  “Yea? My soldiers found them dead of the plague when we destroyed Castle Niarg, what, yesterday? And my mother grew up in this house, so it's mine.”

  Bethan went apoplectically wide eyed. “You're Queen Spitemorta!” she gasped.

  “It is Bethan's house,” said Peredur as he steadied himself, stepping inside, “and I'm to live out my days here, too.”

  “Which could be up any moment from what I see,” said Spitemorta as she picked up a piece of steak and took a bite.

  “That won't hold up before the Bench,” said Peredur.

  “Queen's Bench,” said Spitemorta with a cherubic smile and another bite.

  Bethan caught his eye and shook her head.

  “If you're a willing part of my loyal service, you'll be alive to wait on me when I come back to stay.”

  “At your service, Your Majesty,” said Bethan with a heavy curtsey.