by T. O. Munro
“Go after her you fool,” she said.
And he did, running across the courtyard with uneven steps, favouring his right leg quite noticeably.
Hepdida bit her lip as she watched him go. At her side Isobel walked her son towards the inner keep in the blissful silence of those who know they have all the time in the world to share each other’s stories.
Even the cavalryman and the prisoner seemed unwilling to disturb the silent stillness in the air. Torsden looked across at Pietrsen, pointed at his own head, and simply mouthed a question “on? off?”
***
Kimbolt’s leg hurt but it was the stiffness rather than the pain which slowed him down. He would have walked barefoot across hot coals without a second thought, but no force of will could flex his swollen knee into more rapid motion than an old man’s stagger.
The door was closed when he got there. The guard beside it wore the confused expression of a minion who had seen more than he thought he should. Kimbolt knocked on the oak, with more trepidation than he had approached the duel with Torsden. “Your Majesty?” There was a noise, but not an answer.
Kimbolt looked at the guard who gave a shrug of ignorance. Whatever the queen may have meant by retiring to her room in such haste she had given no orders to him.
“It’s me, Seneschal Kimbolt, your Majesty,” he announced himself, before pushing the door ajar.
She was sitting in a chair half turned away from him, head bowed, face in her hands. Her shoulders shook with violent emotion. He shut the door firmly behind him as watery sobs wracked her frame, air gulped through a veil of grief.
“My Queen?” He began stepping slowly across the room. “Your Majesty? Niarmit?” He stretched out his hand, finger tips reaching for her shoulder.
Her hand seized his, reaching behind her, squeezing his fingers in a painful grip, though she still would not turn to face him. “I thought you were dead,” she gasped at the wall. “You let me think you were dead!”
“I’m sorry.” He berated himself for never doing anything right. “I didn’t…”
“I’ve buried two lovers already, with my own hands. Piled rocks over their corpses. I’ll not do that again.” Still she addressed her words to the stonework infront of her, so she did not see the glimmer of a smile that her words wrought on his face. Buried in her grief was an admission that she cared for him and while his conscience battered him for his lack of consideration, his heart tapped out a double beat of joy.
He came round and knelt before her, taking her hands in his and looking up through the veil of auburn hair at the tear strewn face behind. She blinked bleary eyed at him. He smiled. She hit him, a round house buffet around the head, hard enough to daze.
“I have never been so angry! It was so stupid. If you wanted to kill yourself why not do it properly and jump off the fucking gatehouse?”
“It was something I had to do.” For once there was no apology in his tone.
“Something you had to do?” she parroted the phrase. “You wanted the Goddess’s judgment? You demanded her verdict! Threw yourself on her mercy in a trial by combat. She doesn’t like being quizzed by the self-obsessed, Kimbolt. She could have easily let your arrogance destroy you for the impertinence of asking the question.” She gripped his hands more tightly and stared at his face with red rimmed eyes. “You had survived, why couldn’t you just accept that as proof of her forgiveness and favour?”
“There is a price to survival, Niarmit.” He said stiffly. “It is a debt that is not easily forgotten or discharged.” He frowned. “You did get my letter didn’t you? I thought I had made my reasons…”
“Yes,” she interrupted. “I got your letter and I read it again and again, and it still didn’t make any bloody sense.”
“I had hoped I’d made my feelings clear, your Majesty,” he said grimly formal as he pushed himself upright. “Evidently not.”
She gave him a puzzled look as he lowered over her. He gave a bow and then spun on his heel, but his wounded knee rebelled, buckling with a painful snap that drew an involuntary cry from his unguarded lips. He would have fallen if she had not caught him, rising from the chair and catching his arm and elbow with surprising strength. There was a grip of iron within her wiry frame.
“You’re hurt,” she said, seeing his bruises for the first time. She reached out towards the swelling around his eye; despite the pain it awakened, he still welcomed the light touch of her finger tips against his skin.
“You should see the other man.”
“I did.” She said bluntly. “There’s not a mark on him.”
“I had to lull him into a false sense of security.”
“How? By hitting his sword with your face?”
He smiled and shrugged. She swept her hair out of her face and wiped the back of her hand across tear reddened eyes. “Who am I to talk,” she muttered. “I’m hardly a more presentable prospect.“
And then they were laughing and crying, and crying and laughing and kissing. Yes, kissing. She broke apart, “your lip, he split your lip. It looks painful.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” he lied, impatient again for the feel of her mouth on his and she returned his urgency in kind. And they were fumbling with the unfamiliar fastenings of each other’s clothing, as they stumbled their way towards the bedchamber.
***
Marvenna trod lightly on the fresh fallen snow, leaving barely the imprint of her foot as she walked into the open space at the heart of the Silverwood. In the centre of the clearing towered Malchion, the great sequoia planted by Andril’s grandfather when the elves had first come to the Petred Isle. The tree had been old when the Monar Empire was nothing more than an aggressive city state enslaving its immediate neighbours. It’s massive trunk and lofty canopy was a vision that always gave the steward a serene reassurance in the permanence and endurance of Andril’s realm. The realm he had entrusted to her and to Kychelle.
Marvenna crossed the empty open ground. This was a sacred place visited by few and guarded by a handful, except for moments of high celebration or great import. The last gathering had been a service of farewell to Kychelle, before the body had been set on a boat downriver to the sea. A hope, perhaps forlorn, that Andril’s murdered wife might yet find a path through death to a reunion with her husband and daughter in the Blessed Land.
Marvenna had little truck for the ways of the Goddess, the upstart deity and her adherents emerging from the ruins of the broken Monar Empire. Whether or not she were merely an old god worshipped in a new way, her promises of life hereafter rang hollow against the certainty of Talorin father of all elves and Lord of the Blessed Realm. He who had walked the worlds of East and West when human kind was nothing more than separate squabbling tribes; a time when alliances of anything more than a hundred of them would lay an immediate and momentary claim to nationhood.
“Good day, Steward Marvenna.”
The guard’s greeting broke in on her reverie. He stood at the margin where the snow began to thin to a faint dusting on the dry earth beneath. Malchion’s great bulbous canopy hundreds of feet above their heads cast a shadow against both sun and snow.
“Good day, Captain,” she replied with a smile. Andril was gone and Kychelle was dead, but still she was Steward Marvenna. She held the forest in trust for them, vows she had made when Andril had first raised her to that rank in this very clearing. She could have claimed the title of Lady of the Silverwood, those survivors of poor Feyril’s ruined realm had even expected it of her, but she was steward always. A servant to her aunt and uncle when they had walked the Petred Isle, and now a servant to the memory of their presence.
“It is a crisp day, Steward, the view will be clear from Malchion’s peak.” The captain was in conversational mood.
“Indeed.” Marvenna looked for the circle of slender steps, cuttings from higher branches driven, with loving care, into Malchion’s trunk. They encircled him with a living spiral staircase. Each step was a good stride apart from the other, no ne
ed to insult the tree with anything more than the most minimal aid to scaling its height. Marvenna grimaced, a human eye would have wrought an ornate stairway of carved handrails and balustrades and doubtless netting to guard against a fall. She shuddered at the thought of how human hubris would have clothed the sinuous magnificence of nature in an ugly garb of iron and dead trees.
“They say on a winter’s day, when the air is still you can see a glimmer of the Blessed Realm across the sea.”
“It’s Saranvil isn’t it, Captain Saranvil.”
“Yes,” the soldier flushed that his steward should remember him amongst so many.
“You are one of the ones that have been helping the remnants of Feyril’s people settle in their new abode.”
“Yes,” the captain frowned. “You have been most generous in the land you have granted them, land that others have vacated, Steward. But still I do not see the gratitude that our kindness is owed.”
She clapped him on the shoulder. “They are a people who have suffered much, Saranvil. We should not be too quick to judge them, nor they us. But they are true elves and entitled to all the kindness that kinship can offer.”
“Of course, Steward.” The captain bowed his head.
“Now let me see what Malchion can show me.” Marvenna leapt lightly onto the first rung and skipped up the winding stair two steps at a time.
***
Niarmit pulled the belt of the robe tight around her waist and stepped quickly across the room towards the puddle of discarded clothing. Her bare foot trod on a hook fastening lying some distance from the dress it belonged to. She scooped it up in her hand and then bent to retrieve the garment itself and Kimbolt’s breeches, gathering the items two handed.
There was a creak and she turned her head to see Lady Isobel and Prince Yannuck, standing by the door which Isobel was hastily pushing closed behind them. The diminutive mother and her fast growing son were almost of a height. Isobel’s expression was inscrutable but Yannuck’s mouth had dropped open wide enough to have admitted a butterfly in flight. Niarmit dropped the clothes, hastily straightening and reaching to pull the two edges of her robe closed up to her throat.
“I woke up and you had gone.” Kimbolt announced himself as he emerged from the bedchamber. The seneschal was naked apart from a sheet which he had wrapped around his lower half. However, the thin material did little to conceal what was on his mind.
With a grim face and an urgent flick of her eyebrows, Niarmit indicated the two visitors at the door. Isobel had clutched her son to her, a protective arm around his shoulder burying his face in her neck and, for good measure, her hand raised to shield the young prince’s eyes.
“Oh!” Kimbolt exclaimed. “Forgive me your, Majesty. I didn’t realise you had company.” He gave a stiff little bow and retreated to the sanctuary of the bedchamber.
When all was safely decent, Isobel pushed her son gently away. “Go Yannuck, find Nurse Hopwood I have been monopolising you and I am sure there are others besides me will want to hear of all your adventures.”
“Yes mama,” the young prince agreed, pleased of an excuse to flee the room.
“I am sorry, Lady Isobel, you have …” Niarmit began as soon as the door had closed behind the prince.
Isobel waved her silent. “No your Majesty, I must beg forgiveness for my intrusion. I did knock and wait but there was no answer. It is just that there was an urgent matter that needed your resolution. I was bidden to seek an answer.”
“Urgent?”
“Your last command had been to have Lord Torsden beheaded immediately and there was some uncertainty as to whether you still intended to do it personally or should another have deputised for you.”
Niarmit’s hand flew to her mouth. “By the Goddess, I … has he?”
Isobel shook her head. “No, Lord Torsden is still irritatingly and entirely whole. I understand your seneschal had forced him to yield so his life is forfeit anyway. I believe the intention was that you should have the final decision as to his fate.”
“It is you he has offended most grievously, Lady Isobel. Murder, imprisonment and kidnapping. These are serious crimes. You spoke often of having him hang for them; I will bow to your wishes in this matter.”
Isobel gave a wan smile. “Anger is a strange emotion, your Majesty. It seizes you like a hurricane and you cannot imagine anything but the maelstrom of fury and how you will express it, and then it is passed so suddenly and the sun shines, or at least my son shines, and next to its brilliance the torrent of that anger is little more than fast drying puddles on the ground.
“When he had my boy, I hated him. Now Yannuck is back I just don’t care about him anymore.”
Niarmit nodded slowly. She had been angry at Torsden, hiding her premature grief behind a wall of brittle spite and vengeance. She had been angry at Kimbolt for the stupidity of his pride and the manner of his reappearance, shattering her defences and laying bare the emotional turmoil at the heart of a queen. But both those furies had melted like snow in the spring.
“Have Torsden put in the dungeon, my lady. His head is safe, for now, if not his freedom.”
Isobel gave a deep curtsy. “As your Majesty commands.”
Niarmit was suddenly aware she stood still, in nothing more than a bed robe, beside hastily discarded clothes. She brushed at her hair with one hand trying to smooth the disordered tangle, while still clutching the two edges of the robe tight about her neck. “My Lady Isobel,” she began. “I don’t know what you must think.”
Isobel stopped her with a raised hand. “Your Majesty, I think nothing.”
“The seneschal, Kimbolt, and I, it is.” She searched for words. “It is … that is to say...”
Isobel shrugged. “I’ll not judge you your Majesty, or him. Seneschal Kimbolt brought my son back to me.” She gave the queen a level stare whose solemnity was at odds with the words she spoke. “For that service, I would let him have me on the chapel altar in the middle of Bishop Sorenson’s high communion mass.”
Niarmit stifled a laugh. “Thank you,” she said. It seemed the safest form of reply.
Isobel smiled a broad honest smile which lit her face up and made Niarmit at last see how this small slight woman might have stolen the heart of the great Hetwith.
“You look well, your Majesty.” She grinned as she said it and Niarmit felt the heat of her cheeks flushing red. “I will tell the court that you are resting, perhaps you have a headache?”
It was more a suggestion than a question, and one to which Niarmit gave a hasty mumbled acquiescence.
Isobel nodded her compliance before adding, “I think there is someone waiting for you.” Then, with another curtsy and a grin of bawdy breadth she was gone. Niarmit turned towards the bedchamber, all thoughts of war and state and government driven for the moment from her mind.
***
The view from the upper boughs of Malchion was stunning. His great branches spread in all directions and an elf could walk in comfort to the end of an upper limb and peer through a veil of snow capped fronds at the distant sea to the east, or the northern tip of the Palacinta Mountains to the south, or even glimpse a smudge of the mountains of Nordsalve to the north.
Marvenna stood a moment at the eastern limit of the great tree’s broad head, her thoughts as complex as the sequoia’s intertwined branches. Malchion’s thin leaves still held a dusting of fresh snow. Marvenna brushed idly against a hanging bough, sending a spray of fine white flakes across the yawning spaces between the trees.
“Did you see what you were looking for, Steward?” The silver elf at her side asked.
She shook her head and turned her eyes from the distant grey sea to the East. “No Voronyis. I didn’t see the Blessed Realm, I never have.”
“You will, Steward.”
Captain Voronyis was the most loyal of her followers, implicit in his trust, fervent in his admiration. As she looked at the young elf by her side, Marvenna caught a glimpse of how she must have appeared to
Andril standing at her Lord’s shoulder.
“We all will see the Blessed Realm, in time, Steward.” Voronyis elaborated.
“But not today, Captain,” Marvenna said sadly. “Come, there is work to be done.”
She led the captain back into the heart of Malchion where his upper branches had been teased and tempted to curve and twist into spacious halls and secluded enclosures. A living palace more elegant than any wit or artifice of man could have envisaged. It was a private retreat, a place where Andril and Kychelle had held court with those they allowed to approach them. It was Marvenna’s now, though the thrones which had grown to comfort and embrace her aunt and uncle were not yet twisted to her shape.
Voronyis followed her down a winding path to a knotty hole in Malchion’s flank. Another elf stood by the opening, an alert lieutenant from her inner circle. The hole was sealed with an iron grill, a single but necessary incursion on the natural splendour of the great sequoia. Marvenna peered through the grill into the cell it had created.
The solitary prisoner glared back at her, hunched within the cramped space, his eyes ablaze with fury. “What do you want, witch?” The disrespect drew a shocked intake of breath from Voronyis and the lieutenant.
“I merely came to ask if you have abandoned your intention to subvert my rulership of this domain.” Marvenna’s voice was calm and measured, the natural composure of one standing on the outside of a prison. “If you can convince me of that fact, then I may release you, Captain Tordil.”
Part Two
Jay was shivering. The borrowed blanket wrapped around his shoulders did little to combat a cold that had worked deep into his bones. His lips were blue and there was too little heat in his body even to begin to dry the wet hair plastered across his face. The guards watched him, though it was a mystery why anyone would think he needed guarding, still less by two hulking bearded soldiers in chain mail. The one on the right kept his gaze straight ahead a slave of procedure. His stony expression shouted the obedience his voice could not speak. “Making no eye contact with the prisoner, sah!”