by T. O. Munro
“You go to Nordsalve, Lady Niarmit?” Giseanne rode smoothly over her husband’s irritation. “Have you told Hepdida yet?”
“I meant to tell you first, Lady Giseanne, though your husband guessed my purpose.”
“It wasn’t hard to decipher,” Rugan snorted. “It has been the chief discussion at council these past weeks, will she? won’t she? I daresay Leniot and Tybert will have a wager on it.”
“If I could, I would time my departure so that they both lost,” Niarmit replied evenly.
That wrought a smile from the half-elf, happy to share a dislike of the wastrel lords of Oostsalve.
“There are other factors should affect the timing of your journey,” Giseanne interrupted. “Which route you will take and who will escort you?”
“I have decided. I need to travel light and swift. The route that Isobel’s heralds take should answer our purpose. If Marvenna will not let us pass through the Silverwood itself, we should at least make use of the shadow of unease that the elven forest casts into Morsalve.”
“The Pale of Silverwood?”
Niarmit nodded. “The strip is a few leagues wide running beyond the tree line. There are no settlements or farming there. Too many shy away in fearful awe of Andril’s people. By the same token we should avoid any of Maelgrum’s billeted orcish troops, and provided there are few of us, we should not stir up attention to draw any of his patrols beyond the towns and villages they have enslaved.”
“Lady Isobel will be most grateful for your arrival I am sure. A woman and child in a court of warrior men can feel very alone.”
“If I understand the Bishop well enough, there is a garrison at the Eastern crossing of the Derrach that is most loyal to Lady Regent in memory of Hetwith. We will head there first.”
“When do you leave?”
Niarmit glanced at Rugan. “As soon as horses can be saddled would still be too late for my liking.”
***
“Well Captain, I see it is your turn to stand vigil.”
Kimbolt struggled up from the chair as the Lady Regent and a rotund deaconess came into Hepdida’s sick room. “I’m always happy to do so, your Highness.”
“Yes,” Giseanne smiled. “I have brought one of Hepdida’s previous nurse maids to marvel at the progress she has made. This is Deaconess Rhodra.”
The woman shuffled forward. Her hair was worn unusually short, in a close cropped boyish cut and her robes hung loosely on a figure which, while not slim, was less full than it must once have been. There was a certain unevenness to her gait, a favouring of her right leg, with her left arm tucked tight against her side. “Her colour is much improved, my Lady,” Rhodra agreed as she stood at the foot of the bed to inspect Hepdida’s slumbering form. “It seems a natural sleep.”
“She is awake for longer these last few days and her talk and manner are quite untainted by sickness.” Kimbolt added. “It is only the failings in her memory that give her some frustration, and the weakness of her body.”
Rhodra touched at her scalp, running a hand above her right ear where the short hair was at its most unruly. “The sickness gave her a surprising strength.”
At the woman’s voice Hepdida stirred and stretched and rolled over to her other side, curling into a ball. Rhodra stepped back with a small cry of alarm. “You have undone her bonds!”
“Easy,” Giseanne patted the Deaconess’s arm. “We have the good Captain to stand watch and since Mistress Elise has arrived there has been no sign or tremor of the madness that afflicted her. The disease of the mind was gone the instant our Goddess sent herbalist arrived, the sickness of the body is answering less rapidly but no less surely to her balms.”
“I am glad of that,” Rhodra nodded, still standing close to Giseanne. “We have much to thank this herbalist for. Where is she? I would like to meet her.”
“She went to the woods an hour ago. She said she has more herbs to collect,” Kimbolt said. “With the Princess asleep it seemed the best time.”
“Herbs?” Rhodra frowned. “In this frost?”
“Whatever it is she finds out there, Deaconess, I can but be grateful that she was sent to us. This is a cure I never dreamt of seeing.” Giseanne turned away quickly and walked towards the balcony. She sniffed and raised a hand to her face to wipe at her eyes. “I just think of my poor father and only wish..” Her voice tailed of as Rhodra limped after her.
“All which could be done for your father was done, your Highness.” The Deaconess took a turn to offer reassurance.
“I know.” Giseanne’s voice was thick. “But he suffered such torment, we all did. I had steeled myself to suffer it all again with poor Hepdida and this chance of a cure, it unlocks as much past pain as it kindles present hope.”
“The Goddess is the source of all hope and the balm for all pain, your Highness.” The Lady Regent gave a nod as Rhodra squeezed her hand. “Now, if you will excuse me, Bishop Sorenson has assured me he can cure this dratted arm of its laziness and give me a more upright stance. It is slow work but I think I see an improvement each day.”
“Of course, Deaconess, you must go. You have given more than any of us to keep Hepdida well. We owe you much.”
Rhodra turned and limped from the room with a nod and a smile of acknowledgement to Kimbolt. When the door had closed behind her he asked, “your Highness, that was the lady who Hepdida struck in her madness?”
Giseanne turned back towards him, hugging herself against a shiver which owed little to the cold. “I was here then as well. It might have been my skull that got split by the bowl.” She shook her head, “I could not have believed someone so slight could have such strength in her. It was only Lady Niarmit’s prayers that saved poor Rhodra’s life.”
“Hepdida is much better now,” he tried to drag Giseanne from the horrific memory. “Rhodra too.”
“Indeed, Captain. It seems our herbalist has found a cure which eluded all the priests and priestesses of Morwencairn. She is truly Goddess sent.”
Kimbolt frowned. “It was five? six years ago when your esteemed father fell ill was it not?”
“Yes Captain,” Giseanne agreed. “He has been dead five summers now, but he fell ill near twelve months before he passed.” She drew close, scanning his perplexed expression. “This is well known, Captain. Throughout the land his illness was proclaimed. Is your own memory troubling you?”
Kimbolt bit his lip, chasing down a thought that ducked and weaved through the corridors of his mind. “Why then did Mistress Elise not come when your father was ill?”
“What?” Giseanne’s brow wrinkled as she considered this complication. “Perhaps she fell ill after him?”
Kimbolt shook his head. “No, she fell ill as a child, when she was twelve and her sister nine. Whatever cure she found, she found it long before your father fell ill. She must have known the nature of his sickness no less surely than she knew what afflicted Hepdida.”
“She is from Oostport. Maybe she did not hear of it, maybe it was too far.”
“No, she came here through the snow and ice in the depths of winter. She had a whole year to come to your father’s sick bed and offer her services. You said yourself it was proclaimed throughout the land. We all knew of it, I knew of it. Why did she not come? Besides you note her accent? You know where she was brought up?”
Giseanne shrugged unhappily. Kimbolt grimaced. He would not have wished to burden her with the bubble of thoughts that had been troubling him, but Kaylan, Quintala and Niarmit had all ridden North two days past. There was no-one else to raise his concerns with. Neither the decadent lords of Oostalve and their retinue, nor the priests of Nordsalve offered much by way of worthy confidantes. There had been too much deceit and secrecy and only the uncomplicated truth would reassure him.
“You know her accent, your Highness.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“It is of Morwencairn, of the back streets of your home town. The same place that Hepdida lived as a child. Mistress Elise fell
ill as a child long before your father was afflicted and in some street a stone’s throw from his palace.”
“Captain,” There was a cold edge to Giseanne’s voice. “Mistress Elise has been the solution to all our woes. You must admit she has herself suffered much at the hands of this vile illness. By the marks it has left upon her, she must have been saved with barely a few days to spare. How can you try to twist her charity into some unholy form. As a friend to Hepdida, and a newly restored friend at that, it befits you ill to be sowing suspicion around our young herbalist. ”
“I beg pardon your Highness.” Kimbolt bowed low, wincing at the Lady Regent’s personal rebuke. “It is just, I have grown to be suspicious of loose ends. There are stories untold and motivations unheard that flow through the corridors of your husband’s palace. One thing I have learned in my recent and often unworthy past is that all is rarely as it first appears.”
“Hush, Captain, no more of this. The girl is stirring.”
On the bed Hepdida stretched and yawned. “I heard voices,” she said. “Were you arguing?”
***
It was freezing in the lofty chamber, the high windows gave scant protection against the winter gale. But Odestus shivering at his desk in the cold’s embrace welcomed the numbing discomfort like an old friend. Orcs’ blood he had few enough of those.
There was a knock at the door, soft and hesitant. “Come in Vesten,” the wizard commanded.
The secretary slipped inside, not daring to open the door more than an inch further than necessary to admit his slender form. Notwithstanding that he had garbed himself in thick wools and fur, Vesten was so thin that he could entirely disappear from view simply by turning sideways or, Odestus thought with private cruelty, by sharing his personality.
“You summoned me, Governor?” The secretary’s voice and face were directed squarely at Odestus but his eyes slid ever sideways to the shrouded form in the middle of the chamber.
“She bothers you, Vesten?”
“No, Governor, no,” the secretary trembled with his lie. “Why … why do we keep her…. Why have we not…”
Odestus shrugged. “The Master wills it this way, Vesten. I have not been given leave to bury or to burn her.”
Vesten shook his head, incredulous. “What can it mean? Does he want her for a zombie?”
Odestus rose like a storm with such a fury that Vesten backed all the way to the door. “If Maelgrum were to even suggest it, I would burn her myself!” he thundered. His own alarm surprised him. The secret fear he had harboured these past weeks resonated when echoed by another. It had driven him to conceal a bottle of quick oil with a soaked rag wick beneath his desk. Vesten’s voicing of his own private fear made that seem more a rational precaution than an insane paranoia.
“Of course, Governor,” Vesten cowered in submissive agreement.
Odestus’s temper fizzled away at the man’s shivering trepidation. He could not stay angry in the face of those who feared him. The absurdity that he, of all people, should inspire horror in another just filled him with weary sadness. He sat down and beckoned Vesten over. The secretary was wary at first but then came and stood before him with the merest hint of a glance over his shoulder at the still form of Dema.
“I did not call you here to argue over what the Master may or may not intend for the fallen lady.”
“No, Governor.” Vesten was inscrutable, every glimmer of curiosity scourged from his face as he waited for Odestus to enlighten him.
“You recall the other day, when Galen launched his little attempt at a coup?”
“Yes, Governor,” the secretary paled at the memory.
“And you came looking for me, to warn me?”
“Yes, Governor.”
“But you did not find me?”
Vesten’s face twisted in distress as he tried to fathom what was the correct answer, or at least the safe answer. His mouth worked in the beginnings of half a dozen yes’s and no’s while he scanned his master’s face for the slightest hint of which was the favoured response. Odestus had not seen such discomfort since he had, by accident, dropped a chameleon on the multi-coloured flag of Undersalve. The reptile had died and Vesten seemed likely to follow the same fate.
“You came in here and I was not there.”
“Er … yes,” Vesten announced with painful slowness as his attempts to simultaneously shake and nod his head had him tracing circles in the air with his chin. “If that is what you wanted me to not find.”
“Oh Vesten!” Odestus let his exasperation slip. “There is no artifice in my question. I know the answer anyway.”
“Then why ask for it Governor,” Vesten whimpered.
“You came in here found the room empty and left to speak with Galen.”
“But then you came out after me.”
“Does Galen know you found the room empty?”
Vesten was all stiff injured pride. “I do not talk to the necromancer,” he said with haughty servility. “He does not like me.”
“Galen doesn’t like anybody.” Odestus bit back the further observation that nobody liked Vesten. “So as far as Galen sees it, I was simply hiding in the room, biding my time.”
“But you were not.” Vesten frowned. “The room was empty.”
“It may have appeared so, but I… I was on the Master’s business.”
Vesten’s head twitched in a quarter turn towards the shrouded corpse. “Did it concern the Lady?”
Odestus shook his head quickly. “No, no Vesten. It was another matter, but a secret matter, you understand.”
Vesten nodded eagerly.
“And Galen must not know of it. The Master would be ill pleased.”
“Oh yes, of course Governor.”
“As far as our fine plumed necromancer is concerned I simply chose to work in private seclusion with, admittedly, only a dead friend for company. He must think I am always here when I am in retreat.”
“He will hear no hint or suspicion of anything other, not from my lips, Governor.”
“Good, good,” Odestus nodded slowly. “Make sure it stays that way Vesten. If I should ever suspect you might be about to fail me in this matter…”
“You won’t Governor.”
“…then I would have to kill you.”
Odestus smiled a broad twinkling smile. Vesten smiled back keen to share the joke, but the secretary’s hopeful grin cracked and crumbled at the unwavering rictus on his master’s face. There was no joke.
“Is that all, Governor?” he asked faintly.
“For now, Vesten, yes that is all.”
Odestus waited a long minute after the door had closed, drawing deep even breaths to calm himself for the ordeal ahead. Then slowly he rose and crossed the chamber to a hanging tapestry, heavy cloth which moved reluctantly aside to expose the bare stone wall behind it. Odestus worked his fingers in a delicate conjuration stretching his palms apart as the final gesture in the enchantment. Between his hands an oval window appeared in the air, a few inches wide and not much taller. Odestus let his hands drop to his side as he stared into the opening, no larger than a hand mirror. It was always safer this way, an opening just big enough to see through, far too small for anyone to pass through. The best way to check that the coast was clear.
***
The fresh fall of snow cushioned his feet as Kimbolt crept between the trees. Ahead of him the hooded herbalist strode on oblivious to the dogged tracker that she had acquired. Kimbolt had slipped onto her trail as she had first entered the woods, a hundred yards or so beyond the palace compound. Elise walked with the assured purpose of someone with a destination in mind. Her staff punched precise holes in the snow alongside the swishing track swept out by her skirts. Kimbolt’s precaution of ducking from tree to tree in pursuit was quite superfluous given her disinclination to so much as glance behind her.
She turned just once. Some landmark invisible to Kimbolt, prompted her to swerve to the left bringing his only moment of near discovery. He duc
ked behind a bush, careful not to dislodge the high blades of snow that perched on its branches. There was only the soft fading shuffle of robes sweeping through the powdery whiteness as Elise went on her way.
After a moment’s pause, Kimbolt crept from concealment and hurried after her. She had made good ground, her cloaked form disappearing down an avenue of trees. As he hurried on he nearly stumbled into the clearing where she had stopped. Fortunately she was facing away from him and he was able to step back behind a tree trunk. Peeping round its bark, etched with white by the wind driven snow, he saw her surveying the ground before a great oak with an air of discontent. The snow was piled high before the massive trunk. With a flick of her foot she kicked up a spray of white mist from the mound’s surface. Then she stabbed the ground with the butt of her staff.
Kimbolt’s jaw dropped as the head of her staff erupted in a flickering green fire. Verdant flames licked at its gnarled surface. The fire did not consume the wood but there must have been a heat in the wavering tongues of fire for there was a hiss of steam as Elise thrust the blazing end of the staff into the mound of snow. The cloud enveloped her as she swept the unquenchable torch back and forth across the pile of snow.
It took some time for the resultant fog to dissipate and when it did, Kimbolt saw the herbalist kneeling in the patch of ground she had cleared pulling something from a leather sack that still lay half hidden beneath one of the tree’s proud roots.
He edged sideways, tiptoeing from tree to tree to try and see what she was doing. If the show with the staff had surprised him, its fundamental purpose remained baffling. Elise was kneeling, resting on her heels as she chewed absently at a piece of white root in her hand. She opened her mouth to bite off another chunk and a thin trail of purple juice dripped down her chin. They stayed there a minute or so, the incredulous Captain and the munching herbalist. Then, suddenly satisfied with her unusual repast, Elise thrust the remaining root back in the bag, bundled the bag into the cavity beneath the tree and, with an audible creak of her knees, straightened up.