by T. O. Munro
“We should be marching in there at the head of an army, not skulking in through some dwarven back door.” Kaylan nodded his head towards the queen’s chamber. “My lady should be leading them.”
“She has made her decision,” Kimbolt repeated wearily.
Kaylan pursed his lips. “She has,” he murmured softly staring over Kimbolt’s shoulder. “And she has trusted in you for this excursion to Nordsalve, to rescue the bishop’s damsel in distress.”
“I am honoured by her trust.”
Kaylan spoke on over Kimbolt’s reply. “My lady’s trust has been misplaced before.”
“It isn’t now.”
The thief gave him a level stare. “My lady, likes you,” he said.
Kimbolt attempted an insouciant shrug, though his ears were burning red.
“I don’t.” Kaylan added. “Your failure cost the princess dear. You were the guarantor of her safety and she nearly died at Grundurg’s hands, while you dallied in a medusa’s bedchamber capering to the lascivious hissing of her snakes.”
Kimbolt’s skin stretched white taught across his knuckles as he held his clenched fists by his side. “You should rest, Kaylan,” he ground out the advice.
“You should too,” the thief told him. “You need your rest. Fail my lady or the princess again, in the merest detail, and I will seek you out and find you even if you try to hide in Maelgrum’s throne room.”
“I don’t need your threats to bind me to my duty.” Kimbolt kept his gaze locked on Kaylan’s grey eyes.
“It’s not a threat Kimbolt, it’s a Goddess-sworn prophecy.” The thief jabbed a finger in the seneschal’s chest for emphasis and then, at last he turned and left.
Kimbolt could hear the thumping of his own heart echoing in his ears. He glanced around at the quartet of guards who had been witness to the thief’s parting words. They stared straight ahead, far too disciplined to show they had heard, but too enthralled to not have listened. This would make for good gossip in the guardroom at the end their watch.
Kimbolt gulped down his rage and embarrassment and shut the door on their impassive curiosity.
“What kept you?” Hepdida asked as he walked back into the sitting room which adjoined her and her cousin’s bed chambers.
“Kaylan wanted a word.”
Niarmit swung round from the litter of papers upon her desk. “Is he still grumbling?” Her eyes were tired beneath the weary frown.
Kimbolt shook his head quickly, not to shelter the thief from Niarmit’s disapproval but to protect her from being troubled by it. “It was nothing, your Majesty.”
“It was a long nothing,” Hepdida scowled.
“He doesn’t like me, that’s all.”
“Kaylan’s not a liking kind of person,” the queen observed. “Don’t take it personally. You will earn his trust eventually and then you will have it forever.”
Kimbolt’s lips twitched in a wry grin. “Is that a human eventually or a dwarven eventually, your Majesty?”
She laughed. He loved to make her laugh. “Probably an elven eventually, Kimbolt, but don’t let it worry you all the same.” She looked across at the crown princess, settled comfortably on a well upholstered chair. “You’d better go to bed, Hepdida. It will be a long day tomorrow.”
“It’ll be just as long as yours,” she replied. “Aren’t you going to bed too?”
“The seneschal and I have matters to discuss first.”
She looked from one to the other with a frown. Her mouth opened, closed and opened again, her first unspoken comment traded for another. “I’m the crown princess, surely anything you have to discuss is something I need to know about too. You’ve involved me in all your other conferences.”
Niarmit pinched the bridge of her nose. “Not everything, Hepdida, not this thing. Now just go to bed. I’ve had my fill of both arguments and diplomacy today. No more.”
The princess stood up giving both Kimbolt and her cousin a shrewd glance. She crossed to the door of her chamber and then looked back at both of them. Puzzlement creased her brow. Kimbolt felt the heat of her gaze as she softly announced, “I don’t like secrets.” She nodded towards Niarmit. “Both our fathers kept their secrets, and probably died because of them. Secrets and lies, they kill people.”
Niarmit shook her head. “I’m not lying to you, Hepdida, I’ve not lied to you. Now just go to bed.”
Hepdida sniffed and left, noisily pulling the door closed behind her.
Kimbolt wanted to say, ‘alone at last’ but it did not feel like they were alone. Spectres of their friends’ suspicion or disapproval vied with the haunting pressures of matters of state to fill the room with much more than two people remembering a night when they had been so close. Niarmit stood a little awkwardly by the desk. He wondered if he should wait for her to move, or should he take it on himself to close the gap between them and if so how close.
He ached to seize her and hold her tight against him, but he could not read her expression. There was the faintest smile on her lips or was that his imagination. As a young army officer his romantic liaisons had been relatively simple affairs. His rank and occupation made him the catch for those none too chaste women who had allowed him to chase them. Here was a woman so far above his station, whom he longed to embrace but dared not approach.
“So.” It was Niarmit who broke the silence. “Nordsalve tomorrow.”
“Yes, your Majesty.”
“Niarmit,” she corrected him.
“Yes, Niarmit.”
“Come here Kimbolt.” She sat on the couch and patted the space next to her. “We don’t seem to have found much chance to talk, these last three days.”
“No, Niarmit.”
She laughed. “My, and what a conversation we have been missing.”
He felt suddenly oafish and foolish. “I’m sorry Niarmit, I am not well versed in how to talk to a queen.”
“Sometimes I don’t want to be queen. How would you talk to me if I wasn’t, if I was just another girl? There must have been women in your past. Imagine I was one of them.” A girlish smile played across her lips. “One of the more decent ones of course.”
“None of them were at all like you, queen or not.”
She smiled at that, then hurriedly checked, “is that in a good way?”
“Oh yes. Crown or not, I would always think you immeasurably above my station.”
“Is that what it is? You think yourself beneath me?”
“There are others would hold the same opinion about me. I am a coarse blunt soldier with a chequered past.”
“You can be gentle though, so very gentle,” she said raising her hand to stroke his cheek. It was the easiest thing in the world to bend his head in towards hers, tilted to one side, lips parted. They melted into a kiss that was everything he had remembered it to be. For a long silent moment they kissed, then she broke the contact and pulled his head against her shoulder. “Is it wrong of me to want this?” she whispered in his ear.
“Nothing you did could be wrong, Niarmit,” he replied.
There was a thunderous crash, something heavy falling over, in Hepdida’s room. They sprang apart. “It’s all right!” Hepdida’s voice called out. “I just knocked over a couch.”
They both glanced at the crown princess’s door. “I should go,” he said. She didn’t contradict him. He mumbled on. “There is a lot to be done tomorrow. We don’t know what trouble we may find in Nordsalve.”
She reached across to him, letting her hand rest on his neck, lightly flicking his earlobe with her thumb. He caught her hand in his and brought it to his mouth, brushing her wrist with his lips. “I should go,” he repeated. This time she nodded sadly.
He stood up. “Rest well, your Majesty.”
“You too, Kimbolt,” she sighed.
***
“And you just let him in here?”
Vesten cowered as Odestus surveyed the upturned packing cases in the once locked wine cellar.
“He can be
most forceful, particularly with his guards in attendance, Governor. I had not the martial prowess, the magic art, or the platoons of soldiers to stand in his way.”
“That arse searching through my property, the impudence of it.”
“He claimed he was looking for orc fire-spirit.”
“Poppycock!”
“I know, Governor, I know” Vesten wrung his hands. “He was searching for some evidence to discredit you with the master.”
“And what did he find?”
“He was most puzzled by your chameleons, Governor.”
“Oh!”
“He could not understand what purpose you had for them. He asked me.”
“And what did you tell him?” Odestus was suddenly fearful.
Vesten shrugged. “I told him I knew nothing.”
“And he believed you?”
“He found it a very believable statement.”
“Good,” Odestus nodded.
“I didn’t tell him anything about the other chameleons.” Vesten bowed his head, the obsequious gesture hiding his face from Odestus’s scrutiny.
“Which ones?” Odestus leant close in, tipping the secretary’s head up with a finger beneath his chin.
“The ones you had delivered to Woldtag, the ones you took into your private workroom.” Vesten blinked disguising his nervousness behind his perpetual worried frown.
Odestus scowled. Was this an overture to blackmail from his loyal secretary. “What do you mean Vesten? Is there something you are after?”
The sharp tone brought a whimper from Vesten. “Governor, where did you go? Where have you been for the last four days? And what happened to your clothes, they are worn threadbare and faded in that short time?”
“What is it Vesten? Are you taunting me with the titbits you could throw to that arsehole? Is it money for silence you are after?”
Vesten’s face went white, spots of colour forming high on his cheeks. “No, Governor,” he insisted, imbuing those two words with more authority than the sum total of every previous utterance that Odestus had heard him make. “I would never betray you, and certainly not to that man.”
Odestus’s suspicious anger retreated like a broken wave before Vesten’s affronted dignity. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But why all the questions. Why probe on the very points that Galen wants answers on?”
“I want to know what I am protecting. I want to understand what you are hiding from him, Governor. Not in its entirety, but well enough to make sure I keep it hid and let nothing slip by some unfortunate mischance.”
Odestus smiled. “You are a loyal servant, Vesten and I do not deserve you. But please believe me, ignorance is your best protection.”
“It will not protect me, Governor, if you have another period where neither friend nor enemy can find you. These last days have been very... difficult.”
“I’m sorry, Vesten.” Odestus’s shoulders slumped with the admission of guilt. It was a dangerous path he trod and it exposed his few remaining friends to unwarranted risk. There was Vesten here and Vlyndor and the karib in Grithsank, not to mention Dema’s daughter. “It was careless of me to leave you so exposed to Galen’s whims and artifices. Be assured I will not do so again. I shall make sure I am in future never more than an hour from answering your call.”
***
“I thought it would be bigger,” Niarmit said.
Standing beside her cousin, Hepdida gripped the Helm more tightly. The oval window hanging in the side of the council chamber seemed big enough to her. Taller than Kimbolt, wider than Deaconness Rhodra, what size of opening did she want?
Sorenson flustered at the queen’s implied criticism. He stroked his own crescent symbol for reassurance before speaking. “If my communion with the Goddess has told me true, your Majesty, then this portal is near perfectly formed. The nature of these gates is to allow only the passage of a single soul at a time, what need have we of a larger doorway?”
Niarmit shrugged. “I guess the one I saw before had a somewhat larger creature to admit. I am sure it will serve admirably. Tell me, your reverence, where is it we are seeing.”
Hepdida peered through the wafer thin window at the simple chamber beyond. A desk and a few chairs in an austere stone walled room. There was a fireplace with an empty grate. Above it hung a carving of the prophetess bound to a stake atop a mound of brushwood. The iconograph had been positioned so that the sunlight from some high window just out of vision would play across the woman’s beatific expression.
“These are my own private apartments, your Majesty, within Prince Hetwith’s castle. I understand it is best for the caster of this enchantment to fix on somewhere they know well and this seemed suitably familiar but also discrete. It seemed safest given we have had no word from Nordsalve since you set off on your ill-fated journey along the Pale of the Silverwood.”
“Your Majesty,” Sergeant Jolander could restrain himself no longer. “Will you not allow the lancers to accompany you. There could be unknown dangers in that castle, just as there were when you left us behind for your trek by the Silverwood.” He broke off abruptly, bowing his head shamefaced at having so publically offered a reproach to his queen.
Niarmit shook her head. “Your loyalty and your courage as ever do you credit, Sergeant, but had you come with me there would simply have been more broken victims of the harpies to join Fenwell’s body in the snow on Morsalve.”
“The threat in Nordsalve is human, your Majesty.” The sergeant lowered his head in diffident persistence. “I doubt that Lord Torsden could sing my men into stupid fascination, while some of our cold steel could put another note on his treacherous lips.”
Sorenson laughed. “It is a charming notion, Sergeant and I for one would like to see the rogue sing to some other tune than his pride and ambition. Unfortunately it is quite impossible. These conjured gates are fragile things. Everything that crosses through them is a blow to their stability. Physical matter makes its mark which is why we must travel light, but it is each living soul that does the most to threaten their collapse. My prayers and research tell me that few have been known to outlast more than a dozen crossings and some as few as eight.”
“There are but four of you, your reverence.” The sergeant waved a hand across the little line of queen, bishop, princess and seneschal with their small collection of possessions. “That leaves room for another couple at least.”
“But we need to be able to come back, Sergeant,” Kimbolt intervened. “If something is amiss in Nordsalve then all four of us need to be sure we can go there and return. That makes up the eight crossings we have confidence that we may enjoy.”
Giseanne gazed through the window at Sorenson’s meagre chambers. “Are we sure that the enemy has not intercepted this gate, as he did the one Archbishop Forven set.”
“I have cast the spell as perfectly as I have ever delivered the Goddess’s grace, be assured there is no flaw in it.”
“But each soul that passes through it may send a ripple through the planes.” Rugan had been observing the exchange from his own seat of honour. The elevated position beside the queen’s own throne on the rudimentary dais enabled him to appear aloof from the business of departure while still witnessing everything that passed. “Those ripples may reach the senses of the foul defiler and alert him to what we attempt here.” The warning drew another moustache twitching show of anxiety from Jolander, who seemed poised to make a further suggestion.
“Then we must be quick,” Niarmit said.
“I will go first, your Majesty,” Sorenson volunteered. “To test the portal. I suggest you follow next.”
Niarmit nodded. “Hepdida third and Kimbolt at the rear.”
Hepdida’s mouth twitched in a smile at her placement between her cousin and the seneschal. She was not sure what she might have interrupted by throwing over her furniture the previous evening. Perhaps her own suspicions, aroused by Maia’s innuendo, were groundless. Maybe not, but if not was it really any business of h
ers? Kimbolt and Niarmit in some romantic attachment, or worse still some purely physical attraction. She shuddered. It was too awful to contemplate. They were both dear to her in different ways, but together? It was like imagining her parents in bed, it was just wrong.
In the moment of her thought, the bishop had stepped lightly through the oval window. There was a gasp from those around her as she looked and saw Sorenson hale and hearty standing in his own chambers in Hetwith’s castle and beckoning the rest of them to follow.
“Thank the Goddess,” Giseanne breathed. “It is safe.”
Niarmit followed in an instant and then Kimbolt was at Hepdida’s back. “Step lively, your Highness,” he said.
It was an odd sensation, like pressing against and through a silken membrane which slid across the Helm she held before her and across the skin of her hands and face, parting and then closing again behind her. Niarmit reached for her forearm and tugged her deeper into the room. They were both shivering for, cool as Rugan’s tented council chamber might have been, this room was colder still. There was a porcelain hand basin on the commode by the door filled with a layer of perfect ice, so slowly formed that it was transparent all the way to the heraldic crest at the bottom.
“I am sorry, your Majesty,” Sorenson said, thumping his hands together. “But no fire has been lit in this room since I left on my embassy to Prince Rugan’s court.”
Kimbolt stumbled through the portal to complete their party. There was a dull chattering sound behind them and turning Hepdida looked back through the same oval window into the council chamber she had just stepped out of a second ago and a hundred leagues away. The little party which had assembled to see them off had broken into spontaneous applause. Giseanne’s face split in a broad smile, while even Rugan wore a slight grin of admiring appreciation. Sorenson, delighted with his achievement, gave them a conjuror’s bow. Then he pulled up a chair near the gate and carefully hung his crescent symbol upon it.