by T. O. Munro
She held the Helm with both hands, more for the gravity of the object than its weight. She was sure someone somewhere would think it unseemly for a crown princess to skip through the palace corridors swinging so ancient a relic one handed at her side. There were plenty who had been quick to upbraid her for any momentary lapses in her royal demeanour.
As she turned a corner she almost stumbled into Lady Maia and had to turn herself sideways to keep the Helm from touching the Oostsalve courtesan.
“Well, well, my dear,” Tybert’s mistress exclaimed. “I see my lord spoke true, you are fully recovered and restored to us.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Oh, please,” she pressed a finger to Hepdida’s lips. “Now that it is confirmed that you are crown princess, you must call me Maia.”
“Of course, Maia.”
“And this,” Maia stepped back in wonderment at the object in Hepdida’s hands. “This is the famous Helm of the Vanquisher, the one your cousin wore to ward off the half-breed witch’s treachery?”
Quintala had called Maia a whore and a harlot, with some reason. Hepdida felt her hackles rise at the casual prejudice in the courtesan’s words, but then the woman was right. Quintala had been the greatest of traitors to them all, and to Hepdida especially.
Maia stretched a finger towards the Helm and Hepdida abruptly swung it to one side. “Don’t Lady Maia. To touch it is to die. Its enchantment will destroy any not of Eadran’s line who lay a hand upon it.”
Maia’s eyes widened and her tongue flicked across her lips, but still she held her hand reaching towards the artefact trembling with a feverish curiosity.
“Dead,” Hepdida repeated as she took another step back, adding, by way of emphasis, “in an instant.”
“An instant,” Maia echoed and at last she dropped her hand. Her face broke into a smile, “such power, in such young hands. My my Hepdida, I thought I had already lived when I was your age, but your experiences quite outreach mine, in depth if not variety.”
“Yes.”
“So how come so slight a girl is walking the palace with such a lethal weapon?”
“Kimbolt sent me to get it.”
“Ah, the good captain newly raised to the high rank of seneschal.” Maia nodded thoughtfully. “It was a controversial appointment, so Tybert tells me. And now the soldier is giving orders to the crown princess.”
Hepdida shrugged. “We left it in the council chamber when we took the queen back to her room. Kimbolt said we shouldn’t have left it. I don’t know why he worried though. It’s not as if anyone could the steal the thing.”
Maia’s perfectly defined eyebrows rose in elegant twin arches. “Kimbolt and you took the queen to her chamber and then Kimbolt sent you away on an errand?” She gave an amused smile and patted Hepdida’s shoulder sympathetically. “Perhaps you shouldn’t hurry back too quickly, child. Grown ups sometimes need a little time, a little time alone.”
Hepdida’s felt her cheeks burn red with a cocktail of rage and embarrassment. “It’s not like that,” she insisted. “It’s Kimbolt and Niarmit. It’s state business. Besides, Giseanne was there, Tordil and Elise too!”
Maia frowned. “Those scars show up more when you blush, child.” She traced a finger along the line of one Grundurg’s cuts. “I have a powder that would mask both them and the flaring of passion in your face. You do not want to let some young fellow read your mood so easily.” Her hand rose to lift the long lock of white hair in the centre of Hepdida’s forehead. “I see the colour I gave you has faded during your last sickness. We can give it another tint. Perhaps we should go red this time, in honour of your triumphant cousin?”
Hepdida pursed her lips and clutched the Helm closer to her chest. There was a side of Maia that she liked, a lightness of mood and interests which had afforded her some relief from the great matters of state which pre-occupied her cousin. But there were times such as this, when the courtesan made her feel not just uncomfortable, but tainted in a way no-one had managed since Grundurg died. “I have to go, Maia,” she said flatly.
“Of course, my dear. But when you have decided what colour you favour seek me out. I have enjoyed our little tete-a-tetes. We girls must stick together and I am so bereft of company now that your Mistress has sent Lord Leniot and Sir Vahnce away.” Maia exhaled such a deep sigh of sorrow that Hepdida felt obliged to counter her despondency.
“They are only going to Oostport to stir their prince into further and faster action,” she said.
Maia clutched a theatrical hand to her chest. “Oh Oosport, how I miss it. The friends, the parties. Who would have thought that a palace as beautiful as this could be so frightfully dull?”
“I am sure you can find and make your own entertainment, Lady Maia,” Hepdida assured her. “Now please excuse me, Kimbolt will be waiting for me. Kimbolt and the queen.”
***
Niarmit could hear voices, familiar voices. She tried to open her eyes but found no part of her body would answer her commands. She struggled without moving, held in the paralysis of the just woken.
“Your Majesty,” Kimbolt’s voice shrouded in anxiety. “Niarmit.” Her name breathed with soft insistence. “Open your eyes.”
Her eyelids flickered against the lead weights which held them shut. She uncurled her fingers and sighed in relief at the return of her senses. On each previous occasion when she had left the Domain of the Helm it had been entirely at her own control and volition, choosing to return to her own body while she occupied the gilded throne of command within the Chamber of the Helm. While it was a relief to find that she inhabited her body rather than the Kinslayer, this return had been an entirely more brutal and numbing affair, snapped back across the dimensions as though flung by a catapult. She had a vague recollection of passing a screaming scalded presence flying in the opposite direction. She hoped Chirard’s return to his rightful place had been at least as discomforting as her own.
“Careful Kimbolt, she wakes. Do not crowd her so.” Tordil’s voice cracked a little, a wavering in the elf captain’s habitual certainty and in its place crept a tone of querulous rebuke. He may not have been sure he was right, but he remained sure that others were more wrong than he.
Light poured in as her eyes opened and a blur of pink before her slowly resolved itself into Kimbolt’s face, eyes hooded with concern.
“How long?” She murmured.
“It is a little shy of ten minutes since Hepdida took the Helm off you, your Majesty.”
“She should not have done so,” Tordil insisted. “She may have damaged the weapon, she may have harmed you, your Majesty.”
Niarmit pushed herself up on her elbows. She was lying on her own bed, with Kimbolt kneeling at her side and Tordil standing over him. Elise and Giseanne stood apart near the door. Niarmit’s sweeping glance of self-orientation caught the women mid-whisper. Giseanne said, “I was going to send for Deaconess Rhodra, your Majesty. You have need of healing.”
Niarmit shook her head with dizzying force and swung her feet over the edge of the bed. “I am fine. I’ve done what I had to do.” She frowned. “Where is Hepdida? Was she cast into a faint too?”
“Not at all,” Kimbolt was first to answer. “I sent her to retrieve the Helm.”
On cue the door creaked ajar and Hepdida slipped into the room, holding the Helm infront of her. Kimbolt stood up abruptly, moving fractionally away from Niarmit’s side before the princess’s gaze could alight upon them. “I got it,” Hepdida answered the silent looks which had greeted her arrival. “Where shall I put it?”
Niarmit shrugged. Tordil pointed towards the top of an ornate dresser, a sufficiently elevated resting place to match the elf’s high opinion of the item’s worth.
“I am glad no great harm has been done, to your Majesty or to the Helm,” he said before embarking on a tentative suggestion. “Perhaps a little further practise would help to gain full mastery of its powers?”
Niarmit gave him a silent scowl and shook he
r head.
“I told you, Captain.” Elise said. “If her Majesty fears that object, we would be fools not to fear it as well.”
“The queen doesn’t fear it,” Tordil blustered.
“Oh I do, Tordil. I do. I fear it more than I can ever tell.” Niarmit assured him.
Disappointment bordering on despair haunted the elf’s expression. Niarmit thought he might even weep at this dismissal of the solution in which he and Feyril had invested so much hope. She stood and reached up to draw an arm around his shoulder. “Come Tordil, there are other matters where a little effort might advance our cause far more securely than dabbling with the Vanquisher’s cursed bauble.”
“Your Majesty,” the elf sniffed.
“There is a task, an urgent embassy that I would send you on.”
“I would rather stay at your side, your Majesty.” Tordil said with a dark look in Kimbolt’s direction.
“Only you can serve me in this matter,” Niarmit assured him. “Elyas, Caranthas and Michil are still with Sir Ambrose at the Gap of Tandar.” She watched Tordil’s face as the implications of those names unfolded in the elf’s mind. They were his three compatriots, last survivors of the great elven Lordship of Hershwood. There had been six who had sailed from Feyril’s realm on that first mission to seize the Helm from Morwencairn. Two had died on orcish swords by the banks of the Nevers. These four were all that remained in the provinces of the Salved Kingdom of the elven dignity. The rest of Feyril’s diminished people had either travelled with their lord and lady to the blessed realm or, by diverse paths, found refuge in the isolation of the Silverwood.
Tordil nodded. “You mean to send me to Marvenna!”
Niarmit gripped the elf’s arm adding physical pressure to the force of her argument. “Remember, she told us ‘send word when you have found the murderer.’ When Quintala killed Kychelle she struck down not just her grandmother, but the first glimmers of active alliance from the Silverwood in over a millenium. Three thousand elven warriors stood ready to serve our cause.”
“And Marvenna turned them about and led them away again, the instant she heard of her aunt’s murder.”
“Exactly. But now we know who did it we can move Steward Marvenna to honour Kychelle’s last command, maybe to be more martially active in the affairs of the Petred Isle than Andril or Kychelle ever were.”
“I would wish there was someone else,” Tordil said hopelessly. He glanced over his shoulder. “Perhaps the queen’s seneschal would be a more apt emissary.”
“That would be a little indelicate, Captain,” Giseanne observed. “Given that it was the last holder of that office who stabbed the steward’s aunt in the back.”
“Besides,” Niarmit played the ace in her argument. “The wards of the Silverwood are impenetrable to any not of elven blood. If I sent Kimbolt he would fall into a slumber before he got a half a mile beyond the treeline and then wake a league from the forest edge with scattered wits and empty memories.”
“The experience might improve him,” Tordil muttered in a leaden voice of defeat. “When would you have me ride out, your Majesty?”
“Today, we have lost too much time already.”
Tordil swallowed hard. “There was another time, your Majesty, when you chose between keeping me by your side or a seneschal. I think we all know how you have lived to regret the choice you made. The princess too.” He nodded towards Hepdida.
“Kimbolt is not Quintala,” Niarmit said briskly.
The elf sighed. “As your Majesty commands but if I may make one plea.”
“I will always hear you Tordil.”
He nodded towards the Helm. “Keep that by your side, my queen.” He raised a finger at the scowl that creased her face. “I am not asking you to wear it, but you do not know what the future may bring. If you had not had it in your hands, then Quintala’s lightning spell would have destroyed Lady Giseanne. You are right, you are all right. I do not understand its enchantment. Maybe its once great power is all twisted to evil, but better such power is kept nearby.” He grinned, “and at the very least you can always throw it at any courtiers who annoy you. I would be amused to see Lord Tybert attempt to juggle it.”
Niarmit smiled back. It was an easy assurance to give. She had no intention of wearing the thing but, as it was unlikely to accidentally fall on her head, there was no harm in acceding to the elf captain’s request. “Of course Tordil.”
He nodded. “Then I will go and make ready for my journey.” With a curt bow, the elf was gone.
***
Vesten surveyed the disorder in dismay. “What are you doing?” he exclaimed. “The governor will be incensed.”
The red robed wizard looked up from the scattering of crates which his two nomad warriors had flung around the small wine cellar. “I’m just checking the supplies,” Galen said.
“But these are the governor’s own private supplies. You have no business to be examining them,” Vesten wheedled. “How did you even get in here? This door is always locked.”
Galen smiled. It was not an improving or comforting gesture. From polished scalp to hirsute chest, every detail of the necromancer’s appearance was designed to project an image of personal power and arcane mastery. It was not, however, the final effect that was intimidating so much as the evident self-belief that lay behind it. Galen was a self-important arsehole, everyone agreed, but that wouldn’t stop him shitting on them and on Vesten most of all. “I had a report that some contraband was being smuggled in concealed in the governor’s possessions, Secretary Vesten.” Scorn dripped from his thin lips. “I am duty bound to investigate.”
“What contraband? How could it possibly be in the governor’s possessions?”
“Where better to hide two casks of orc flame-breath?” Galen replied. “Think what damage that could do if it got shared out in the camps?”
Vesten shivered. The most fearsome spirit in existence. One to which orcs were dangerously drawn and especially vulnerable as the powerful liquor exaggerated all the traits of their race in acts of violent and destructive cruelty. Entire tribes had been known to wipe themselves out in a night after sharing little more than a half-gallon tankard of the stuff. In the encampments of cold and bored orc tribes around Listcairn two casks of the brew would be a recipe for utter disaster. Certainly the prospect that such a proscribed cargo might be secreted in the governor’s own personal supplies was justification enough for this intrusion. Or at least it would have been if the story were not such a damnable lie.
The Necromancer’s grin grew broader as Vesten folded his hands one over the other in impotent rage. “This is preposterous, Galen. The governor will have your hide for this.”
“Then go and fetch him, Vesten, bring him here.” Galen cried. “I did send word to summon him, to let him witness our search, but he could not be found.” He spread his arms wide. “I mean, where is the little bastard? Do you even know Vesten?”
“He’s in his study.” Vesten stared at the stone floor.
“He’s been in there for three days. The bastard’s probably died of a stroke, or of stroking something. If I could be bothered to break open the door we’d probably find his rotting corpse with a silly grin on his face.”
There was a grunt from one of the nomads as another case cracked open and he lifted out a glass bottle of a thick green liquid. Galen was strangely uninterested in the find and it was Vesten who admonished, “be careful with that. It is the governor’s favourite liqueur, he sends for it from the Eastern Lands especially.”
The nomad shrugged and placed it none too gently back in the straw filled box.
“What are you looking for, Galen? What are you really looking for?”
The necromancer frowned, torn between discretion and a desire to share his own imagined cleverness. He shrugged and confessed. “I’m not sure, Mr Secretary. But your precious governor is up to something and I mean to find out what. Whatever treachery he has been planning, I intend to be the one who shares the ne
ws with the Dark Lord.” His hand went to the heavy gold disc on its chain around his neck. Vesten knew the reverse of the disc held a plain black medallion through which, like all his key servants, Maelgrum allowed Galen to commune with him.
“Odestus has always been the master’s most loyal servant.”
“Has! Vesten, has!” Galen wagged a triumphant finger in Vesten’s face. “All things change. Since his snake headed bitch got herself killed I think we would all agree your governor’s grip on affairs has been slipping. My time is coming, Vesten!”
A guttural shout from the other nomad interrupted the necromancer’s spit flecked invective. Both Galen and Vesten crossed to the case he had uncovered. Unlike the others this one had small holes punched in the sides and tops. “Open it,” the Necromancer commanded.
The nomad wedged his short curved dagger in beneath the lid and twisted it. Nails squealed their way out of the wooden sides while Galen waited breathless for the revelation. As the lid fell back the three of them looked in on a deep straw filled chest. A dozen scaled eyes swivelled to look back at them as six fat bodied reptiles each a little more than a hand-span in length blinked owlishly in the dim lantern light.
“Lizards?” The nomad grunted.
Galen shook his head and lifted the nearest green bodied creature onto a fold in his scarlet cloak. “Not just lizards, no, my friend.” The reptile sat on the necromancer’s cloak flicking out a long thin tongue to taste the air and slowly but surely turned from green to red. “Not just lizards, they’re chameleons.”
He glared a challenge at Vesten. “What the fuck does Odestus want with a crate of chameleons?”
***
It was cool in the heart of the dead volcano, walls of rock insulating them from the extremes of Grithsank’s harsh climate. Odestus stood at the back of the gathering. He was the outsider and, despite the courteous welcome which the karib people had always afforded him, this was an occasion above all others where he should fade into the background.