by T. O. Munro
“Then you and it are even better matched than I had thought,” Niarmit snapped.
“What do you mean?” her cousin shot back a surly demand.
Niarmit sighed. This was not how she had meant to raise the matter, but when would there be a good time. “On the battlefield by the Saeth, I heard. I heard what you did.”
“What?”
“Don’t play games Hepdida. I told you to stay with the archers, you were to keep safe, yet you start a headlong dash across the battlefield.”
“Thom!” Hepdida exclaimed her colour rising.
“It matters not who told me, Hepdida. You put yourself in danger. I have a duty, you have a duty, to keep yourself safe and that means doing as you are told.”
“That didn’t seem to matter so much when you let me walk the streets of Morwencairn disguised as one of Thom’s zombies.”
“That was then. A lot of things have changed since, about who we are and the politics with which we must work.”
“Oh! So when I was a servant girl it was fine for me to risk all dangers, but now I am discovered a Princess I must be swaddled in an infant’s wrappings and act like a lady and ride this fucking three legged pony.” Tears of frustration were rolling down Hepdida’s cheeks as the cob slowed once more bending its head towards another verdant clump of grass. Niarmit’s boot in its side abruptly reminded the horse of its duty.
“It is complicated,” Niarmit hissed. “And mind your language. It does not become a Princess, third in line to the throne to swear in public like a foot-soldier.”
“You’re not my fucking mother,” Hepdida shot back.
Niarmit grabbed her arm in a steel grip. “No I am not. I’ve never hit you, or sworn at you or locked you in the store room, or suggested you flutter your eyelashes at any passing soldier. All I did was save you from that monster Grundurg.”
Hepdida stared back wide eyed. Tears flooded down the girl’s cheeks as Niarmit ran through the litany of her mother’s vices, disclosed in a private moment and now shared in public. She wiped her hand across her eyes and then shouted, “and why did you wait so fucking long to do that?”
Then, before Niarmit could react, Hepdida harangued her horse once more and, by some chance, hit upon the combination of word and gesture to set the cob in cantering motion up the line of advancing cavalry.
Niarmit was about to gallop after her. The swaying bearing of the Princess bespoke one whose grip upon the saddle was uncertain, yet who seemed determined to pretend each pitch and lurch were all exactly as intended. Before the Queen could charge her own mare, Kaylan bore up beside her. “Let me my Lady, I can calm her down.” And then he was away before Niarmit could ask if he meant the cantering horse or its tearful rider.
***
It was the same dream and he knew it was a dream but that familiarity only intensified the sense of dread. He was approaching a shimmering oval window suspended in the air. Tendrils of different shades of blue wafted across its surface in a mesmerising dance. There were voices, and something really bad was about to happen. He knew not what but the fear caught at his chest with such force that he couldn’t breathe. It was going to happen and he couldn’t breathe he couldn’t move. And, as every time before, he shot into upright wakefulness sweating and gasping in unfulfilled terror.
“Bad dreams Captain?”
She was awake this time. Usually she slept through his nightmares, but this time she was awake seated in the embrasure her head turned to stare out through the arrow slits. There was a sibilant hiss of uncovered serpents. He shut his eyes. “Are you…”
“The mask is on Kimbolt. My snakes grow weary of confinement, but they will do you no harm.”
Kimbolt swung his feet out of the bed and looked across at Dema. The lantern had burned out so only the light of the Moon and the stars filtering in gave any definition to the shadows. “You could not sleep?” he asked. “Is it Galen?”
“That orc buggerer and his legions of undead? I have not lost a second’s sleep on his account,” she snarled though her voice cracked at the end.
Kimbolt tried to frame some words of reassurance. “He will suffer for his insolence. The Master will see him pay.”
Dema shook her head. “The Master does not give a shit either way. He fears me too much to let me speak with him and it amuses him to let Galen play games with my command.”
“It is poor leadership,” Kimbolt stormed. “To let your greatest general be challenged by one such as Galen.”
The Medusa sighed. “Do you know how many of those bastard zombies I shredded trying to get to his crimson canvas palace? It must have been dozens, maybe hundreds. And all the while he laughed, laughed at me!”
She stood up, fists clenched, hair hissing as she repeated the necromancer’s taunts. “’your snakes can’t poison the bloodless, your gaze can’t petrify the unliving, your sword can’t kill that which is already dead.’”
Kimbolt said nothing. He found that best when Dema was angry.
“’What are you Dema?” the Medusa maintained her mimicry of Galen’s reedy tone. “’Against my legion you are just another sell sword.’” She snorted. “Well I showed him, I’m a bloody fast sword, the fastest he’d ever see. They may be impossible to kill, but those zombies work a lot less well when their heads are separated from their bodies, I had the headless corpses grabbing each other as much as me. I almost made it to the little shit. I could smell his fear, smell it running down his leg.”
“I am glad Odestus did what he did,” Kimbolt said when Dema’s tirade had run its course.
She nodded curtly. “The little wizard has his uses, I must admit. It was quite funny to see the burning zombies set each other ablaze and when they caught that canvas palace, oh Galen!” she smiled, laughing at the recollection of a scene Kimbolt had heard of only at third hand from one of the outlander guards. Her smile died though, “I wish Odestus had let me finish it though, let me drive my blade down the little shit’s throat.” She sighed. “Still, Odestus has the Master’s voice and I do not.” She took something from her around her neck and tossed it towards Kimbolt.
His vision atuned to the shadowlight, Kimbolt caught the disc easily, a black medallion on a leather lanyard. He held it warily, “I should not have this. He will not be pleased.”
“Maelgrum? He doesn’t give a shit about me anymore. He doesn’t talk to me. I have already done him my greatest service. Now he looks to new servants to amuse him. That is why the little wizard would not let me destroy the little shit.”
“Dema, surely your greatest victories still lie ahead of you.”
She laughed, not a pleasant sound but a cackle bordering on hysteria. “No, Kimbolt, my greatest victories are all in my past. Nothing lies ahead of me but oblivion.”
He crossed the floor and seized her hand, felt her cool flesh as it drew the heat from his fingers. “Speak not like that Dema, where is the warrior I saw strike Constable Kircadden down? The indomitable spirit that defeated proud Hetwith. Those were the feats of a great general.”
She smiled at him her skin pale in the darkness. “You did not always think them so, Kimbolt.”
“Then I was a fool. Please Dema,” he touched her cheek, his fingers tracing the ragged scar of Rugan’s blow. The snakes hissed, but she grabbed his hand and held it against the wound. “Please Dema, do not be so despondent. It is not like you.”
“Odestus thinks I am not like me at all,” she grinned. “Like you, he worries too much. Tell me Captain, what was the dream that woke you with such violence?”
“I dreamed of a shimmering blue window, and something terrible was about to happen.”
“I had that dream once,” she said flatly. “It isn’t real, the window, or the terror. It cannot hurt you Kimbolt.”
He bent his head to kiss her cheek, pressing his lips against the ragged scar. The uncoiled snakes writhed around him, slithering over his scalp with a soft contented hiss.
***
“Have you been to
Laviserve before, Lady Niarmit?” Rugan was in loquacious mood as they rode down the avenue towards the elegant sprawl that was the Prince’s country palace. He had invited Niarmit to ride beside him at the head of their twin columns of soldiers for this last leg of the journey down the broad cobbled pathway.
Niarmit was grateful for the courtesy he shown her, a courtesy which admitted she was of equal rank with him. But at the same time, she feared that accepting his offer was to concede his right to dispense favour and her place to receive it. Hardly confirmation of his place as her vassal. Still, there was much to be bargained for at the forthcoming council of Princes and being close to Rugan was to be close to power.
“I have not had that pleasure before, Prince Rugan,” she admitted, choosing her next words with some care. “Prince Matteus however, told me its beauty was unparalleled not just in the Petred Isle but in all the Eastern Lands.” It pained her to speak of the man who raised her without giving him the epithet of father. The subtle semantic did not escape Rugan’s notice.
“Your father was a brave man and a fine soldier,” the Prince shot back.
“So many who served with him have told me,” Niarmit replied cautiously. She was silent for a moment, thinking of the other father, her real father King Gregor, who she had left abandoned in the Domain of the Helm. The man who had made a cuckold of Prince Matteus while his own wife was sick with child. She had been a poor daughter to them both. Snatched to safety from the ruination of Bledrag field without so much as a chance to say goodbye to the doomed Matteus. Struggling from the Domain of the Helm in such indecent haste she had had no words of thanks for Gregor, he who had braved flame and the undying fury of a mad dead wizard to secure her escape.
As they turned a right angle at the end of the avenue, her thoughts of her fathers were driven from her mind by the stunning beauty of the Prince’s mansion and its gardens. Sitting beside her, Rugan drank in her stunned amazement with evident satisfaction. The whole design of the palace and its approach was framed for this moment of revelation. She guessed Rugan had as much wanted to witness her reaction as to honour her in his invitation to ride the last league alongside him.
“Does it live up to Prince Matteus’s description?” the half-elf asked.
She smiled, “A soldier is rarely a good judge or an accurate conveyer of beauty. But he knew when superlatives were due and I have seen no building to come even close to this elegance.”
Rugan grinned broadly. “There are few causes that man or elf would die to defend, but a home such as this is one of them.” He peered towards the glittering arched entrance to the palace with keener eyes than Niarmit. “And there if I am not mistaken are two more such causes.”
He spurred his horse into a frantic gallop. Niarmit and the two columns of soldiers behind gathered their steeds into a more dignified canter after their hasty host.
By the time they caught him the Prince had dismounted before a select reception committee at the head of a long receiving line of servants and courtiers. He held in his arms a bundle wrapped in swaddling clothes, his eyes as bright as his grin was broad. Behind him the Lady Giseanne stood next to a rotund deaconess. Rugan’s wife was pale but smiling as was the cleric. On Giseanne’s other side Kychelle’s expression was a mask of disdain as Niarmit slipped lightly from her horse and approached the joyful Prince.
“Lady Niarmit,” Rugan announced. “May I present my son, the little Lord Andros.” He held up the pink bundle for her inspection and Niarmit peered into a strange squashed little face, tiny curled fingers covering its nose. It had a thatch of the same dark hair as the Prince, but its ears were roundedly human.
“Be careful she does not harm the child,” Kychelle said, striking her staff loudly on the flagstones as she stepped forward.
Niarmit eyed the elf coldly. “A child has nothing to fear from me, Lady Kychelle.”
“Legitimate children are always the objects of a bastard’s jealousy,” Kychelle retorted.
On cue the baby began to cry and, before Rugan could attempt to soothe it, a clucking wet nurse had swept Andros from his father’s arms.
Giseanne glided past the brooding elf to take Niarmit’s hands in hers. “Lady Niarmit you are most welcome here. It has been some years since we met.”
“Prince Matteus and I were at your wedding in Morwencairn. I would have been fifteen summers then.” Niarmit remembered the elaborate celebrations which now seemed like the high tide of The Salved Kingdom. A time before Bulveld fell ill, before Undersalve was lost. She blinked away the sombre thought. “It was quite an occasion.”
Giseanne nodded. “Indeed, the thawing of a decade long frost between my father and my husband was a cause for much rejoicing.” The Princess frowned as she examined her memory. “You were a striking young lady even then, all set for the service of the Goddess. So changed from the strong willed little girl I’d met before, at great court of Werkib. You would only have been five that time.”
Niarmit grimaced. The court of Werkib where Bulveld had blessed, or cursed Matteus with the province of Undersalve. Preferring the claims of an Old General over both his own son Prince Xander and the alternative choice of a close kin of Prince Rugan. “You will find, my Lady, that my stubborn streak at least has not changed in the intervening years, though much else has.”
Giseanne bent her head to speak softly, gripping Niarmit’s hands more firmly. “I was sorry to hear of your troubles and of the loss of your father.”
“Which one, my Lady?”
“They were both brave men,” Giseanne replied instantly. “Now come, we have made rooms ready for you and your party which I trust will both befit your station and offer some relief from the many trials and discomforts I am sure you have endured.”
***
“Shit, shit and more shit,” Haselrig exclaimed. “Did this man write about nothing but turds?”
Udecht looked across the table at the furious antiquary surrounded by an overlapping confusion of papers that had been his sole focus since their simple breakfast. The work had been a complex process of cross referencing the central parchment through two different ciphers to decode the latest doubly encrypted message that Chirard the Mad had left for posterity. From Haselrig’s reaction it seems he had uncovered only another regal rumination which said more about Chirard’s motions than his motives.
Haselrig slumped forward his head in his hands and then, with a roar he swung his arm across the table sweeping all the papers and one of the candles to the floor. When the brittle parchment caught the flame it quickly kindled and the antiquary was on his feet in an instant frantically stamping out the conflagration lest the precious cipher documents should be consumed in the blaze.
Udecht watched him with a grin which did little to calm Haselrig’s mood when the antiquary caught sight of it. “Your reverence would do well to wish greater success upon our venture here. Failure will pain you as much as me, may be more.” To clarify his threat he added, “there are orcs and outlanders would be pleased to do my bidding on your frame.”
“Why Haselrig,” Udecht smiled. “You grow more like my unlamented brother Xander with each passing day.”
“Xander had his merits,” the antiquary growled, combing his fingers through thinning hair. “He at least would speak of the Helm and of the power it would bring him. A subject on which you and Chirard are stubbornly mute.”
“I have nothing to say, I know nothing of the Helm. Did my brother not enlighten you with his own insight?”
Haselrig shook his head. “No, his only certainty was that it would bring him immeasurable power and, having seen the artefact being wielded, it seems his thinking was well founded. Had he survived the wearing of it I am sure he at least would have been most open with its secrets.”
Udecht shrugged, “why would he be any different to the rest?”
“What rest?”
“Those who wore the Helm have never spoken of it, so my father told me.”
“What do you mean?”
Udecht sighed. “My father never wore the Helm, like many before him, he said he would not set on his head an object that no-one could tell him a thing about. His great-grandfather, Gregor the third was the last who wore it, before my brother that is, and he became as mad as Chirard so they say, but in his lucid moments he would say nothing about the Helm. No-one who wore it ever has.” The Bishop stopped aware suddenly of the intense study that Haselrig was giving his every word.
“Go on your reverence,” the antiquary murmured with ill-concealed impatience.
“I am not your assistant, no matter what you may tell your Master.”
“Your reverence, is there nothing in this life you would think it worth living for, something to exert the slightest effort at self-preservation?”
Udecht was silent, his thoughts on a dark haired girl with a scarred face who had handed the Helm to him when he dropped it in the night.
“Ah,” Haselrig said. “There is something then, or perhaps someone? My Master has ways of teasing out every secret, you may as well tell me.”
“I was just thinking Haselrig, about your little problem,” Udecht blustered.
“And what conclusions did your reverence draw?”
The Bishop stumbled, thinking aloud. “These papers you have been examining, what led you to them?”
Haselrig resumed his seat and studied the bishop’s expression carefully. “I researched many of the papers of Chirard when first I came here. It was a hobby of mine, a challenge fitting for my talents when Forven consigned me to this career backwater. The Mad King wrote much and often of Maelgrum, of his power and such information as Chirard had gleaned about his imprisonment. These papers here,” he gestured at the scrolls on the floor which Udecht had carried from the darkest shelves at his command. “They were ones I did not study much before, I quickly deduced they were a catalogue of Chirard’s…” the antiquary flushed a little pink as he searched for a suitably delicate term.
“A catalogue of Chirard’s shit,” Udecht supplied it for him.
“Indeed, your reverence.” Haselrig nodded gratefully. “So having scoured his other writings I thought, maybe as King he had concealed any messages about the Helm in these annals. That all this.” He kicked the piles upon the floor. “That all this crap was just a cunning plan to hide his deepest secrets.”