Lady Of The Helm (Book 1)

by T. O. Munro

  ***

  Glafeld knew his customers and their habits well, so when the scrawny thief began drinking in the middle of the afternoon he was surprised. The thief usually nursed a solitary pint of mead through a whole evening of quiet people watching and target marking; this consumption in short order of a variety of strong spirits was a significant departure from the norm.

  However, the fat barkeep was not worried. Her boat was ready and if she wished to part with her spare cash before taking ship then his was as good an establishment as any to relieve her of it. Perhaps, as the drink took hold, he might get the opportunity to repay a week old insult by throwing her out into the gutter as a parting shot. She’d had the drop on him then, but he was prepared now, and the spring loaded blade within his sleeve was primed as ever for any emergency.

  Not that Glafeld anticipated an emergency, he was on his own turf and entirely in command. But then the elf walked in and Glafeld remembered how much he didn’t like elves.

  ***

  It was a sombre procession which rode down the long tree lined avenue towards the palace of Laviserve. At Quintala’s side, the corporal hefted the modest standard of the King’s Seneschal. It was to have been the far grander ensign of the Heir to the Vanquisher’s throne which was carried aloft to herald their arrival, while two trumpeters would have sounded the royal salute. However the trumpeters had been amongst the harpies’ victims, their broken bodies buried back at Listcairn. The royal standard lay flaccid over the makeshift bier of crossed spears and lances, borne by the four troopers immediately behind the pensive half-elf.

  Where the trees came to an end, the avenue turned a gentle right angle and the weary riders beheld the full splendour of Prince Rugan’s country palace. The ornamental gardens were filled with the elegant plants of his mother’s homeland. Beyond the intricate shrubs, in the shelter of a low hill, stretched the broad wings of the Medyrsalve mansion. Its sinuous confluence of wood and stone, like its princely builder, blended elven and human design in an unsettling but fascinating architecture.

  The guards at the main entrance arch, like those at the gatehouse, had been primed to expect them. The Seneschal’s small party made its mournful way into the palace’s inner courtyard to the accompaniment of sword salutes rather than bureaucratic challenges. Quintala dismounted at the main entrance and was met by the grim visaged trooper she had sent on ahead.

  “All is ready ma’am, they are in the receiving room,” he announced with a crisp salute.

  “Thank you, Sergeant Jolander.” The troop’s lieutenant, like the trumpeters, lay in the graveyard at Listcairn leaving Jolander as the senior officer in their reduced band. In the days since the disaster, Quintala had been grateful for the sergeant’s dour efficiency.

  Behind them the lancers dismounted and the designated pall bearers took up their burden before following Sergeant and Seneschal. They walked the broad arched corridor to the gilded room where Rugan habitually met all visitors. It was a long passage lined with nervous people two ranks deep. Rugan’s long reign had been an exercise in keeping his friends close and his enemies closer. The remoteness of his splendid palace meant that all involved in the business of government must reside at the palace. There they were ever under the close and inescapable scrutiny of the Prince and his network of well informed servants, all entirely dependent on Rugan for food and favour, entertainment and employment. Quintala was not sure whether it was her own arrival, or her half-brother’s spies that inspired the nervous glances and occasional twitches from the gathering crowd.

  At the end of the corridor two flunkeys pushed open the ornate double doors and, for the first time in two centuries, Quintala was formally received by her half-brother. They had met on many occasions at ceremonies as diverse as the Great Court at Werckib to decide the fate of Undersalve or, more recently, at King Gregor’s coronation. The Prince of Medyrsalve was one of the great magnates of the Petred Isle, to be humoured and honoured as the occasion required. However, the half-siblings’ meetings had never been brotherly. The Prince exuded a coldness bordering on resentment with every greeting. Until his sister’s birth, Rugan had been the only half-elf in this or any other empire and Quintala fancied that breaking the bubble of his uniqueness had pricked her brother’s vanity more deeply than he would admit.

  However, she always liked to see him for the simple benefit of observing how time made its imprint on their mixed race physiology. The Prince was some two hundred and fifty years her elder and, like her, had inherited the longevity of her mother’s kin against which a human lifespan seemed unbearably brief. Elves, barring war or accident, might live forever, or at least until they tired of this plane and took ship for the land whence none returned. However, no-one knew if the half-elven inherited that immortality in full, or simply had their human spans stretched but by some finite factor.

  Every time she felt an ache or pain on rising in the morning, Quintala wondered if her body was showing the signs of aging. The groans and ailments which her father, and so many human friends and lovers, had at first complained of and then in time succumbed to. Seeing Rugan was always a chance to scan his features for any slow sign of the creeping weakness of age. For that reason at least, Quintala could smile in her brother’s presence.

  She was smiling now as she strode into the room, the walls still lined with a curious audience, all eyes on her as she approached the princely throne. There were three of them. Rugan, swarthy and compact a darker version of his long dead father, the prince who had loved and wed an elf maiden. His beard was neatly trimmed and coal black, though Quintala’s sharp eyes saw flecks of grey she hadn’t seen before. His long hair was swept back to expose his cuspated ears, a badge of race he flaunted with as much angry pride as she did. His eyes, dark and impenetrable darted back and forth as Sergant Jolander followed her into the audience chamber.

  On his right stood a tall elf lady, her waist length hair the silvery grey of distinction rather than of age. She was unwearied by two millennia, but it was said that she had not smiled these last two and a half centuries since her husband and daughter had taken ship to leave this world.

  “Greetings Grandmama Kychelle,” Quintala gave the lady a deep nod of greeting, to which the elf lady gave a thin lipped dip of her chin.

  To Rugan’s left stood a robed lady, dark hair falling over pale skinned shoulders, a circlet about her brow. Her face was so reminiscent of the high cheek bones of her brother, whom Quintala had last seen in Morwencairn a lifetime of days ago. Her hands were clasped infront of her long flowing dress, its colour matched to the deep blue of the massive oval sapphire on her ring. Quintala noted how the hands were clasped not just for comfort but to cup a belly which swelled against the dress. “Greetings, Princess Giseanne,” the seneschal offered with a raised eyebrow. “I see congratulations are in order to you and your husband.”

  “Thank..” Giseanne cut short her gratitude with a quick glance at her husband whose expression had darkened perceptibly in these two brief exchanges.

  “It seems, Seneschal,” he growled. “That two centuries have not taught you the common courtesy to greet a prince your host, before his family.”

  “It seems, brother that five centuries have not taught you the common courtesy of letting a pregnant woman be seated in your presence.” This was not starting well, Quintala thought.

  ***

  “I don’t serve elves.”

  Niamrit gave the stubborn barkeep a bleak stare. She was not used to drinking and she tried to detach the effect of three shots of spirits from any response she might make. “You will serve this elf,” she said at last with some care.

  “I don’t serve elves,” Glafeld repeated, refolding his arms inside his apron.

  “The Lord Feyril has had a long a dusty ride.” Thought was a little difficult, but Niarmit managed, with some deliberation, to arrange her words in the correct order. “While I might disagree with every word he has spoken this afternoon, he is my guest and my friend, and the
Goddess knows I have few enough of them. So, that he may drink to our last parting, I say again barkeep, a flagon of ale for my companion here.”

  “I don’t serve elves and I don’t take orders from common drunks and thieves.” Glafeld spat carelessly on the floor. “Now get your pointy eared pet and your own elf-loving thieving hide out of my bar.”

  “That suits my purpose,” Feyril announced equably as he rose to his feet. “Come Niarmit.”

  But Niamrit, riled beyond reason by the barkeep’s manner, flung the table over at his feet as she stood up, reaching towards her shoulder scabbard. Feyril seized her arm. “No, not this,” he cried with a sharp exclamation.

  Niarmit, glancing at the irate elf, still caught a glint of steel as Glafled’s hands shot out of his apron. She shook herself free of Feyril’s grasp, alcohol driven from her blood by a surge of adrenalin as the reflexes of five years of survival took over. Faster than a gnat could blink, Glafled was sprawled on the sawdust of his own bar room floor, with Niarmit half kneeling on his chest. The thief held the barkeep’s collar in one hand while her other held a sword pressed against his throat. Her left foot ground his knife hand relentlessly into the floor. “Now barkeep our drinks, and be grateful that I have resolved that no more human blood should be shed on my account,though by the Goddess methinks you only just qualify.”

  She twisted the ball of her foot against his wrist until his fingers released the knife. As she picked it up she suddenly saw the blood on the blade, the reddening stain where it had lain amongst the dust.

  She was about to check her own person when Feyril staggered and fell to the floor.

  ***

  “I have granted you the audience your envoy requested, Seneschal,” Rugan glowered. “You now have but three more words before the audience is ended and I would urge that one of them be sorry, if you would wish to speak with me before another two centuries have passed.”

  Quintala frowned and then gave a nod of instruction to Jolander. The sergeant clapped his hands and again the double doors were opened and this time the four pall bearers entered, bearing aloft their makeshift stretcher, its burden covered by the royal standard. There was a murmur amongst the courtiers in the room at this new spectacle, until a glance from Rugan stilled the faint chattering.

  The lancers reverently laid the bier upon the floor between the two half-elves. Quintala stepped forward and seized the cloth covering, all the while holding her brother’s gaze as she pulled it aside with the words, “behold, Prince Eadran!”

  This time no glare or order from the discomforted Prince could still the wave of conversation which ran around the room at the unveiling of Edaran’s shattered corpse. Quintala was glad of the freezing spells she had used to slow decay, and efforts had been made at Listcairn to arrange Eadran’s remains with some dignity. However, it was beyond Quintala’s magic or Listacirn’s means to entirely conceal the catastrophic destruction that had ended his life.

  It was Quintala’s voice loud and clear that broke the hub-bub “And, if my audience is now at an end, perhaps you might let me speak as proxy for my poor dead Prince, your wife’s nephew and fulfil the emissary that cost him his life.”

  Even so Rugan seemed minded to dismiss her from his sight, but the Lady Kychelle reached out a hand to grip his shoulder, squeeze it once and then the Prince with a slight flick of his finger bade Quintala continue.

  “Countless times, by signal and by letter have you been summoned to fulfil your duty as a Prince of the Petred isle, to march to your King’s aid in time of great peril. The beacons have been lit, letters sent, yet still no host of Medyrsalve has crossed the Palacintas.”

  “’tis no small feat to muster an army and on scant evidence of need but a mis-fired beacon.”

  “Your pusillanimous delay has cost our Prince his life. Sturmcairn has fallen, Prince Thren and mayhap your brother in law Bishop Udecht have perished in that catastrophe. Your other brother in law Xander the lost has returned and is now in arms against the King. Prince Eadran has been taken on the road to Listcairn by monstrous magic, while riding to bid you discharge the obligations of fealty and faith. There has been no greater evidence of need in my or even your long lifetime. Perhaps the Lady Kychelle might cast her mind back to the Kinslaying wars to countenance when last such a sequence of disasters converged on the Salved Kingdom.”

  Rugan seemed ready to speak but again Kychelle stilled him. “A moment, my Prince.” Her voice was as clear and hard as diamonds. “There is much that must be discussed here and the court need not hear all of it save the conclusions to our deliberations.”

  Rugan nodded and standing gave a dismissive wave of his hand. Instantly doors opened and the gathered company filed quickly from the spectacle of fractious siblings and a dead Prince. Jolander too, made to leave, but Quintala bid him stay. Lowly sergeant or not, there was a power in numbers and she did not wish to stand on her own in an argument with Rugan and his women.

  “So,” she said, when the door shut on the last excited courtier. “You see the urgency of the situation, the need to ride to the King’s aid?”

  Rugan paced the room twice before turning to face her. Now, close up she could see the steel grey strands in beard and temples and the deepening crowfeet at the corners of his eyes. It seemed that after all there was to be a limit to the longevity that their mixed race had granted them.

  “What strikes me, Seneschal,” Rugan said at length. “Is that, if Thren, Edaran and Udecht are all dead and Xander is to be disinherited, then my wife and her unborn child are now Gregor’s heirs. Their protection must be my priority.”

  ***

  It was an ugly wound. The knife had stabbed through the weaker mesh mail in the elf’s armpit. The blade had gone deep and the blood that trickled from Feyril’s mouth was more ominous than the fuller frothy flow from the wound itself.

  “Is it bad?” the elf lord asked between coughs.

  “Not good,” Niarmit conceded.

  “My horse, take me to my horse.”

  She helped him outside to lean against the trough from which his horse was drinking greedily. “The saddlebags, there is a vial.”

  Niarmit found the bottle quickly enough, but liked not the light half empty weight of it in her hand. He took it from her and quaffed the contents greedily, shaking the empty bottle in reproachful search of a last drop or two. His pallid features lost something of their greyness and he broke into a weak smile.

  “Better?” she asked.

  He nodded, but still winced as he tried to straighten up. Quickly she checked the wound again. Blood now oozed rather than flowed from it and there was no trace of the alarming bubbles of air with their indications of an injured lung.

  “You will live, but you are not healed yet. It will take more magic or much rest to make you entirely whole again.”

  “A priestess of the Goddess can earn the power of healing through prayer,” he said hopefully.

  She shook her head and pulled her collar open to show her bare neck where once had been a crescent symbol of the goddess on its gold chain. “I am no more priestess than princess any longer, Feyril. The trappings of my faith, like my dreams and my friends lie discarded in a mountain pass in the Hadrans. If you seek healing then in Medyrsalve you may find their ruler’s mixed blood earns you a better welcome than from Glafeld’s kind. If Dwarfport were any other kind of place I would say rest here, but as it is not, I urge you ride North at your gentlest pace. Otherwise I will not answer for your health.”

  “First thief, now physician? You have taken many professions since leaving the church of the goddess.”

  “Do not mock me Feyril.”

  He shook his head, but not without discomfort. “I would not mock you lady, I know your short life so far has brought more anguish than many an old man’s, maybe even than an old elf’s. But, come will you not ride with me, to the court of Prince Rugan at least?”

  She shook her head firmly. “No. I have a few moments yet, but I mean to be
on that ship. The Petred Isle has seen the last of me and I of it. Do not seek to dissuade me, Feyril. You have not the strength to waste in idle words.”

  “It will not please the Goddess to see you go.”

  “The Goddess cares not whether I live or die, still less where I spend what years or months she is pleased to leave me. Feyril… friend Feyril, when you are well again, find whatever path it is you old elves take when you leave the land of men. Find it and take it. For if Glafeld could not convince you, let me tell you, this land is not worthy of the likes of you… or me. Let them all stew in a sauce of their own making.”

  Then she turned and, without a backward glance, strode off towards the dock where a solitary mast could be seen flying its departure pennant.

  ***

  Odestus ran a hand over his bald head once more and invoked the name of several gods he no longer believed in to curse his bad luck. The disaster at Hershwood had been awful. The failure to penetrate the passes of the Hadrans had been dire. The very mountains had seemed alive and orcs, wolves and nomads tumbling to their deaths for no adequately explained reason. These uncharted marshes of the upper Saeth levels had been his last route through which to break out from Undersalve. However, the levels were an unholy mix of horse swallowing bogs criss-crossed by narrow pathways. These would weave promisingly across the sodden ground before coming to abrupt dead ends. It was hardly a place to manoeuvre a platoon of disciplined marsh dwellers, let alone somewhere to try and lead a shrinking and demoralised army of several thousand.

  They had progressed like a traveller taking stepping stones across a river. Isolated patches of high ground gave places just large enough for the army to camp almost dry shod, while a flurry of patrols could then explore the snaking pathways to find the best route to the next dry campsite.