by T. O. Munro
“Lady Maia.” He gave her the briefest courtesy of acknowledgement, hoping that minimal encouragement might drive her back to her master’s side.
“It may intrigue you to know that Lord Tybert and I have a small wager, Seneschal.”
He gave the slightest nod of his head hoping to convey merely that he had heard her rather than that he was interested.
“You have become so laconic since we last met, that Lord Tybert has wagered I cannot get more than two words of conversation from you.” She giggled. “I won’t let you know what stakes we are playing for, well not unless you force me to.”
Kimbolt drew in a long breath, choosing his words with care. “You lose,” he said after some deliberation.
Maia laughed, “oh so droll, dear seneschal. I can see why the queen found you so fascinating. No wonder she…”
“Whatever you have heard, Lady Maia,” he spat. “It is none of your business.”
She clapped her hands with joy. “Why, I did not expect to triumph so easily, Seneschal. A dozen words where a mere extra one would have sufficed.”
Kimbolt’s ears were burning as she leant across to pat him on the arm. “Fear not though, bold Kimbolt, I will not take my prize and run. You may enjoy my company a little longer.”
“You have bested me, Lady Maia,” Kimbolt ground out the words. “Like a good soldier I must yield and leave you in command of the field of battle.” He spurred his steed into a trot and drew two lengths ahead. With a cluck of her tongue, Maia put her own horse to faster motion and came level with him again.
“Oh dear Kimbolt,” she said with a mournful air. “Do not be such a sore loser. I did not mean to hurt your military pride.”
“Think nothing of it, Lady Maia,” he muttered. “The least said the soonest forgotten.”
She leant across, running a pink tongue tip across her lips. “If it would help in the forgetting, then I might let you have the prize Lord Tybert would have gained, had I lost our little wager.” She paused, meeting his incredulous gaze with a stare of unwavering steadiness. “I am good at helping men forget.”
The corners of Kimbolt’s mouth twitched in a smile as bereft of pleasure as a zombie was of life. “You have offered me amnesia before, Lady Maia. I would not take it then, I have no need of it now.”
She nodded slowly. “I remember it well, Seneschal Kimbolt. That meeting in Rugan’s frozen fountain court is as fresh in my memory as I hope it is in yours. You said then you didn’t want to forget, that you liked the pain you felt.” For a moment the artifice fell from her expression, the arch actress surrendered to the young woman that lay beneath. A woman not much older than the queen. She tilted her head and spoke in a voice denuded of husky innuendo, “do you still want to remember everything, Kimbolt? Do you still enjoy the pain?”
He gave her a curt nod. “Forgive me, Lady Maia, I must ride ahead to scout the ground.” Once again he spurred his horse onwards. This time the lady from Oostsalve let him blessedly alone, to ride and curse the stinging wind that made his eyes damp.
***
“It’s damnably cold in here.” The half-elf shrugged her shoulders in a shiver of dissatisfaction.
“I find I have grown used to it.” Odestus clasped his hands behind his back patiently subservient. Quintala prowled around the castellan’s chamber, picking at papers on the desk, examining the views from within the arrow slit alcoves.
“You find this room serves your purpose?” she demanded with a sniff.
“These were always the apartments of the castellan.” Odestus declared. “I inherited them as… as my predecessor did.”
At last Quintala looked at the shrouded form in the centre of the chamber. “Your predecessor does not appear to have entirely surrendered them.”
Odestus stiffened as the half-elf approached the covered corpse. He had drawn the shroud over her face, a veil of discretion for the dead medusa. Quintala’s fingers toyed with the edge of the cloth, steeling herself to cast it back. Odestus coughed. “She remains here at the master’s command, preserved and undisturbed.”
The half-elf dropped the material. “Yes, indeed, little wizard. Maelgrum’s commands must be obeyed.” She frowned and looked at Odestus carefully, scanning him from head to toe. “I must say, you are taller than I remember.”
“Remember?” To Odestus’s knowledge they had never met.
“I was at your trial, watching from the gallery, it must be twenty years ago now. You had more hair then. Something of a cause celebre, your little magical mishap.”
Odestus’s eyelids fluttered in a blink, but he made no comment. The trial was not an occasion he chose to remember.
Quintala shook her head. “I didn’t expect you to survive either of you, not in exile. But if anyone would have had a chance it was her. I never expected you to outlive her.”
“It was an equal surprise to me, Lady Quintala.”
The half-elf ran her hand along the side of the trestle on which the medusa’s corpse was laid. “I’ll not share her room.” Sudden decision seized her. “Who has the chamber below this?”
“Willem, captain of the outlanders.”
“Not anymore. Tell him to move his things out, I don’t care where.”
Odestus’s eyebrows lifted as he considered the order. “Of course, Lady Quintala, the room will be vacant within the quarter hour.” He hesitated. “Does this mean I can continue to make my own use of this chamber?”
Quintala shook her head quickly. “No, Odestus, no it does not. Maelgrum was most particular. The lady’s body was not to be moved and you were to have no access to it.”
Odestus spluttered as a strangled “why?” threaded its way through his indignation.
The half-elf shrugged. “Who knows the workings of Maelgrum’s mind? Maybe he has heard that you spend too much time talking to the dead, or at least the wrong dead. Not touting for the trade of necromancer are you?”
“No!” At the accusation a deep fear stirred within the little wizard’s thoughts. “Tell me, Lady Quintala, what are the master’s intentions with Dema’s remains. Why will he not let her be buried, or cremated?” Odestus’s lip was trembling. This talk of necromancy strayed too close to his darkest nightmare, that in some revenant form Dema’s body should be made to serve in the shuffling ranks of Galen’s zombies. He glanced in the direction of the desk, where he had concealed a flask of quick oil. If Maelgrum did intend to keep him from the body, these moments might be his last chance to use the volatile liquid and give Dema’s corpse the final absolution of immolation.
Quintala stepped towards him, unknowingly barring his path to the precious liquid. “I do not know all Maelgrum’s plans,” she said sadly. “There are some dark corners of his mind that he has not seen fit to share with me. Perhaps he wants her carried as a banner before us, when we march into Medyrsalve.”
Odestus whimpered at the awful thought, but Quintala went on with her musing aloud. “Maybe he intends we should set her on a horse with a poker down her back to keep her upright, and let her corpse lead our troops into battle, so that the bastard silver soldiers and Sir Ambrose think their bitch queen never killed the medusa at all.”
“It is not decent.”
The half-elf laughed. “You expect decency from Maelgrum? You have grown soft and foolish in the five years you have served him at a distance, Odestus.” She shook her head. “Bid your dead lady a last farewell and go drive this outlander out of my new rooms.”
***
Haselrig stood in the keep’s cramped inner bailey. Three quarters of the square enclosure was filled with an L shaped stone building, its two high ceilinged stories bringing its rooves level with the battlements on the curtain wall. The remaining space, a small square courtyard, nestled in near perpetual shadow. The sun would struggle to find an angle in to the flagstones around the well, save at its greatest height in mid-summer.
A robed wizard came out of the lower hall, too young to cultivate the beard he craved, but that had no
t stopped him trying. He paused and stroked the insubstantial fluff and pretended to take his time noticing Haselrig. “Ah,” the newcomer cried. “You must be Haselrig. The half-elf’s assistant.”
“And you must be the young man with no manners. What name should I give the Lady Quintala when I relate your insolence?”
The wizard’s composure was easily cracked. “Please forgive me, Master Halserig. My name is Walden. I serve with Lord Galen, the necromancer.”
“I have heard much of Galen,” Haselrig admitted. Walden stood a little taller, preening at the fame of his master. However, the swelling pride of the novice was swiftly punctured, as Haselrig went on. “You would do well not to follow him in all things, Walden. I have heard how Galen courts both power and peril but lacks the wisdom to distinguish between the two.”
The necromancer gave a brief ungrateful smile for the advice. “I was sent to aid you with your baggage. Where is it?”
Haselrig looked him up and down. “I don’t know about your wizarding powers, Walden, but I doubt you have the forearms for a castle porter.”
“I do not port,” Walden told him testily. “I arrange for others to do so. So pray tell, Master Haselrig, where is the baggage?”
Haselrig waved at the gate behind him, and the short passage way through the thick wall. “It’s all on the wagon, Walden. In the outer bailey, that is as close as the horses could bring it. They were not equal to the steps or the drawbridge.”
“Is there much luggage?”
Haselrig nodded, thinking of the sweepings of books and scrolls he had managed to seize during Quintala’s unhurried sojourn at Morwencairn. “There is indeed much, Walden and all of it precious, so ensure it is handled with care. Now please direct me to my room, I would shed some of the dirt of the road.”
Following Walden’s cursory instructions, Haselrig found his way through the keep’s ground floor feasting hall to the lowest level of the castellan’s tower. Quintala had apparently taken the room above for her own and Haselrig had hoped that her keeping him close was a mark of preferment. However, the immediate impression of the space was not one of favour. The floor was a half flight of steps below the level of the feasting hall, and there were no slits cut for arrows or illumination. A plain circular chamber furnished with a simple cot, a table and a chair. A torch spluttered smokily in a brazier, but Haselrig reassured himself that at least this workshop would not be burned down as readily as his last one had.
He busied himself pushing the meagre furniture to the northern portion of the room’s circumference, creating sufficient space for all his chattels. His existence in the service of Quintala and above her Maelgrum hung by a tenuous thread, the more so now that the half-elf’s blazing star no longer seemed to be in the ascendant. His value had never been in the crafts of war or the gifts of magic, he had been a purveyor of information. Knowledge was power, particularly if shared with judicious precision. But Haselrig found himself short of knowledge, impoverished in the only currency that had preserved his life for seventeen years. He wished he could have brought more. The shelves in the undercroft at Morwencairn were littered with the writings of great kings and mages. If he could unlock a secret from within them, a shining gem of an enigma to which he alone had found the key, then he might recover some lost ground. He might struggle a rung or two higher in the bloody hierarchy of Maelgrum’s service, and keep himself a while longer clear of that bottom rung from which time-expired servants were cast into oblivion.
He rubbed his hands slowly one over the other, sucking in a thoughtful breath. The thief. The queen had shown a high regard for the thief. His presence had kept her a cowed and obedient prisoner in Morwencairn, until the disaster of the dragon’s failure. But the thief had not been at the fortress at Colnhill. Haselrig rubbed his hands a little quicker as a glimmer of an opportunity called to him. Where was the thief, if not with the queen? Was she trying to keep her pet safe? If he could be found, if he could be captured, then who knows what leverage might be applied in Maelgrum’s cause.
Haselrig found he was pacing back and forth across the room’s diameter, letting the rhythm of his footsteps shake loose his thoughts. Listcairn, its frontier for the moment quiet, was the point where Maelgrum’s dominion came closest to Medyrsalve. It was as good place as any to start the search for intelligence on a rangy thief or, as Haselrig liked to think of him, an ideal tool with which to pick at the queen’s armour.
The fanciful prospect of a route to Maelgrum’s redemption was shattered by a clattering crash at the door to his new room. Haselrig spun round to see the long wooden case at the foot of the step, its sides stove in, the precious swords of The Father and The Son spilling out onto the stone floor.
“Orcs’ blood,” he snarled. However, it was his own blood that froze when he looked up to the top of the short flight of stairs.
Two grey figures stood there swaying unsteadily with the release of their burden. He had almost forgotten that with winter and its frost all gone, the carefully hoarded zombies had unfrozen their way back into the service of Maelgrum and all his acolytes even down to the lowly Walden.
The necromancer was only a few paces behind the undead pair, stepping from the corridor onto the landing besides his two charges. He took in the scene in an instant and cuffed one viciously around the head. “Idiots and morons,” he said. A fragment of ear cartilage flew off with the vigour of his pummelling, but neither wizard nor zombie seemed to notice the loss.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Walden went on. “Get down there and pick them up.”
“No need, Walden,” Haselrig tried to insist as the zombies shuffled uncertainly down the steps after their splintered case. “I have a method.” The item he needed would still be on the wagon. “Just give me a moment.”
There was no way to circumvent the stuttering zombies who were already at the foot of the stairway reaching for the hilts of the weapons. “Walden,” Haselrig cried. “Call them back, these aren’t ordinary swords.”
The necromancer did not even register Haselrig’s urgency, let alone understand it. The two creatures of death bent to touch the swords. Haselrig shut his eyes. There was no crash.
“Where do you want them put?” Walden’s voice demanded.
Haselrig opened his eyes. The two zombies were each holding one sword. There was no great martial stance in their pose, they gripped the weapons one handed more like clubs than swords, but with no obvious sign of distress or danger.
“I haven’t all day, Master Haselrig, so if you could suggest a place before these creatures decay into dust.”
“The table,” Haselrig muttered. “On the table.”
He watched in wonderment as the unharmed zombies shuffled across and deposited both swords with a clank upon the table. Walden misunderstood his fascination. “The undead are such reliable servants, so malleable and obedient. If we could find a way to stop their rot entirely, rather than slow it, then we would have no need of living slaves or servants.”
“The living have their charms.” Haselrig closed in on the table to examine the swords, but only with his eyes. They certainly looked like the weapons he had worked on these past months since Xander’s death. But he had been there when Xander had offered the hilt of Thren’s sword to an outlander. The unfortunate man had been blasted into insensibility while the traitor prince had sung the praises of his ancestor’s bloodline magic, the ward that prevented all save the Vanquisher’s own line from handling these artefacts in safety.
“We’ll get the rest then,” Walden suggested, as the zombies shuffled back towards the stair.
“You do that, Walden.” Haselrig, did not look round, his attention wholly absorbed by the two blades before him. He did not hear the necromancer and his charges leave.
He stretched out his hand, left it hovering over the hilt of the sword he believed to be The Father. They looked the same as the ones he had worked on in Colnhill, but then if a switch had been made when would it have been done? And by wh
om? Who could have handled the blades to steal them? That was the whole purpose of the Vanquisher’s bloodline protection. Haselrig doubted that anyone else would have had access to the ingenious if rather gruesome solution he had come up with to the problem of handling the blades. There was one way to be sure, to be certain if the originals had been stolen.
He held his hand over the hilt, lowering it to within an inch of the ancient weapon. One way to be sure? He lifted his hand abruptly curling the fingers into a fist. No there would have to be a better way. For a servant of Maelgrum, Haselrig had to admit he was uncomfortable with pain, particularly his own anticipated pain.
He pulled his hand away. He would have to find a different way, a different dupe, to check if these genuinely were the weapons he had tried too hard to keep from the queen’s grasp.
***
“It’s all right, miss it really doesn’t hurt anymore.” The farmer’s voice was soft and the pressure with which he squeezed Elise’s hand too light even to have dented a rotten peach. She tugged at his bloodied shirt front, trying to pull the edges close over the jagged wound. She shook her head. It should be his wife by his side not some scarred and cynical sorceress.
“Prior Abroath,” she called. “Prior Abroath. Over here.”
Abroath was bent over another casualty, one of a score stretched out in different degrees of discomfort on the green hill side. He turned his head, raising his index finger in acknowledgement of her call and his intention to answer it in a moment.
“Now, Abroath,” she cried. “This man needs you now.”
The prior stirred at that, leaving his patient and hurrying as swiftly as tired legs would allow to Elise and her wounded farmer. As Abroath knelt down beside them, words tumbled in entreaty from the sorceress’s mouth. “His name is Galdor, Colm Galdor. He has a wife and two little girls. He needs to live for them.”
Abroath lifted the torn cloth to look at the ugly hole which the axe had made. His frown was not a hopeful one.