by T. O. Munro
“Just get me in there.” The little wizard must have seen the uncertainty written across Haselrig’s face for he managed a ghastly smile of reassurance. “I simply want to satisfy myself on a particular point. I will change nothing, disturb no-one.”
“And you will answer my question?”
“I will tell you all you need to know, Haselrig.”
The ex-antiquary took a deep breath. Who to trust? No one in Maelgrum’s service was ever entirely trustworthy, but the little wizard was probably one who came closest to that quality. He turned and traced a sigil on the door with his finger. The wood glowed blue where he touched and then faded and the door swung open at the lightest touch of his fingers.
Odestus tutted a note of admiration. “Clever, very clever.”
“I just had to remember the sign,” Haselrig blushed at the praise.
“I wasn’t talking about you and your finger painting,” Odestus punctured Haselrig’s pride. “I meant the magical lock itself. Something so simple, and yet it still locked me out both physically and by spell.”
“You tried to break in already? Tried and failed?”
Odestus shrugged. “What else could have driven me to come and bargain with you, Haselrig?”
“And now the first part of the bargain is done and you have something of mine to return?”
Odestus grinned and pulled the precious cloth from within his robes. He tossed it towards Haselrig and gave a dry laugh at the ex-antiquary’s lunge to catch it. “Now, let’s be inside.”
The little wizard led the way. Haselrig folded his prize and pushed the door to behind them, keeping a watchful eye on his companion’s movements. Odestus had walked straight to the bier on which the still form lay beneath a white shroud. He stood waiting, watching. His fingers twitched towards the simple sheet covering the body and then withdrew.
“See, nothing has changed.” Haselrig crossed to stand by the little wizard.
Odestus suddenly grasped the shroud and pulled it back. A soft “oh!” escaped his lips as he exposed the head and shoulders of the body beneath.
“What did you expect?” Halserig looked down on the fallen medusa in human form. Blond hair framing a pale face. Eyes closed as if in sleep.
“I knew he was mistaken,” Odestus murmured. “I knew it was not you.”
Haselrig was about to voice his confusion when he realised that the little wizard was talking to the corpse, not to him.
Odestus traced a finger along the line of the scar along Dema’s cheek, shaking his head slowly. Then suddenly he bent and kissed her, pressing his lips softly against the medusa’s cold mouth.
“She won’t wake up,” Haselrig told him.
“I promise you, I will find her.”
“Find who?” Haselrig was a little put out to find he could still be the excluded third party in a conversation, even when one of the trio was dead.
Odestus made no answer, instead walking through to the stone landing beyond Dema’s chamber. There he closed his eyes and twisted his fingers in a delicate conjuration, pulling his hands steadily apart. Between his splayed hands a skein of shimmering light grew and cleared and became an oval window in space.
“Hey, where are you going?” Haselrig failed to keep the panic from his voice at the prospect of the little wizard’s flight. “What about the answer to my question?” The vision through the gate was of a river bank, a sandy cove where the few trees cast long evening shadows. The sun had already set on Listcairn so Haselrig was sure this was not the river Saeth or any other nearby location.
Odestus reached up and lifted a lanyard from around his neck. As he raised it over his head the black medallion was pulled free from within his robes. The little wizard handed it to Haselrig, pressing it into the other man’s hand and closing his fingers over it.
“What is this, Odestus? What are you doing? Have you gone mad?”
“On the contrary Haselrig, I think I have gone sane.”
“Where are you going? Who are you seeking?”
“You asked me a question a while back and I promised you an answer.”
“You said you would tell me all that I needed to know.”
Odestus nodded. “Indeed, and there are only three things you need to know. The first is that all we can leave the world are people’s memories of us and hope that there is enough warmth in them that someone sheds a tear at our passing. The second is that friends, true friends, would do anything for each other and each other’s kin.”
“This is balderdash, Odestus. Tell me something I need to know.”
The little wizard looked him in the eye. “This is what you need to know, Haselrig. And I think you know it already, you just will not let yourself see it. Goodbye. I doubt we will meet again, but there is still time for us both to bring a little light into the world before we leave it”
Odestus turned to go, pressing his hand against the yielding surface of the gate to the distant river bank.
“Wait.” He turned at Haselrig’s command. “Wait. Three things, you said there were three. What is the third?”
Odestus gave a broad smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. He pointed at the black medallion in Haselrig’s hand. “The third is that he can only sense where you are, while you wear his token. Take it off and you can become invisible to him. Good luck.”
Haselrig raised a hand to call him back, but the wizard stepped through onto the distant sandy shore with a crunching footfall. As soon as he was wholly through, the gate shrank to a point and disappeared.
The ex-antiquary shook his head, baffled and alarmed. He was alone by the castellan’s chamber, with only Dema’s cold corpse and his own fears for company. He had no friends, had never had had any friends. Not one.
A memory swam into his mind, a plain stone cairn on a low ridge facing Morwencairn. A rock on which he had carved the simplest of inscriptions, the letter U. A man who had given him a message to convey, because there was no-one else to tell it to. Suddenly weak knee-ed Haselrig staggered to the chair behind the desk and sat down. What was he to do? Odestus storming off on some mad excursion, abandoning all pretence at serving Maelgrum. Himself a party in some way to that betrayal?
He shook his head. Seventeen years of pursuing a dream of greed and power, willing to pay the most terrible of prices. Seventeen years and now he found that, despite the price he had paid many times over, the rewards remained just as distant but now less lustrous than they had once appeared. There might be nothing for him anywhere else, but there was less than nothing here. Odestus had struck out, Udecht too. Was it his turn next?
He stood, shaking with his decision. He held out a trembling hand and caught, out of the corner of his eye, a distracting electric crackle from beneath the door to Dema’s bedchamber.
***
The horse was fretful, shifting from hoof to hoof and braying at the air in its eagerness to be off. Elise felt less secure on its back and even the pair of lancers that Kaylan had assigned to be her escort did little to ease her racing heart. She had sought out this mission, demanded it even. However, it was different now that she faced the reality of a frantic gallop across the soft marsh of southern Medyrsalve.
She turned in the saddle to look down at her little send off party. The brothers Mag and Glim-ap-Bruin leant on their battle axes and gave her an appraising eye. There was no sign of the thief turned general.
“Don’t let him do anything stupid,” she told the dark haired dwarf.
Mag blew out a long breath. “This is Kaylan-ap-Stonehelm we’re talking about. A man I first met when I was dragging him from beneath a pile of fully armed orcs who he had charged wearing nothing more than boiled leather and waving a blade I wouldn’t deign to use as a toothpick. I think our general’s capacity for stupidity goes quite beyond my powers of restraint.”
“Aye but it was a woman that drove him to it, a red headed lady that he has a certain feeling…” Glim’s grinning observation ended in an abrupt muffled woosh as Mag’s elbow f
ound his solar plexus.
Elise smiled away the elder dwarf’s clumsy consideration. “I know he values Queen Niarmit’s views above all others. That’s why I want the weight of her voice behind my argument.”
“Lavisevre is ten days hard riding ahead of ye, and as many back again.” Mag whistled softly. “You’ll not have much change from the month‘s grace Vezer Khan gave to consider his offer.”
“Khan’s impatience doesn’t worry me,” Elise said. “Kaylan’s does.”
“I’ll do my best to keep him in check,” Mag assured her. “There’s still orcs enough to slay, without him having to rattle sabres with Khan or his putative allies.”
There was a scatter of stones on the mountain path behind them. The dwarves and lancers reached for their weapons, only to stay their hands when the saw the white habit of Prior Abroath rounding the last outcrop of rock. “A blessing for a sorceress,” he exclaimed reaching up to grasp Elise by her forearms. “I’m sorry I nearly missed you, but I am come to wish you joy in your embassy.”
“Your prayers for our success would be most welcome, father.”
Half a laugh sounded in his throat and he gave her an amused smile. “I had thought you were estranged from the Goddess, my dear.”
It was her turn to grin, albeit with a darker expression than the prior’s perennial sunblest countenance. “I will take my allies wherever I can find them, father. Forsaken deities and faltering nomads alike, all are welcome beneath my banner.”
“I am sure the Goddess will be pleased that you are so accommodating, Mistress Elise.”
She gave a nervous laugh and a nod in the direction of the two dwarves. “These two Bruins are not sure of holding our general in check. They think his stupidity might extend beyond their reach.”
Abroath’s gave her a thoughtful frown. “And you are hoping I might lend my voice to theirs?”
She shook her head. “His leg still troubles him, but he won’t rest properly, or take his ease.”
“He wants to impress the queen, to win back her province and her people.”
Elise gave a broad sweep of her arm towards the land beyond the mountains. “These aren’t the queen’s people. They’re Kaylan’s and he is so desperate to make her a gift of Undersalve that he does not see how important he is to them, how much and how many depend on him.”
“Aye,” Mag-ap-Bruin nodded. “He is become a greater talisman than the wee lass on her distant throne. Always in the forefront of any action.”
“It seems to me,” Glim stroked his beard thoughtfully, keeping a watchful eye on his brother’s elbow. “That there may be one amongst us for whom our longshanks has acquired a more than ordinary importance.” He stepped lightly out of the way of Mag’s jabbing arm, only to stifle a cry of pain as Mag trod heavily on his booted foot.
A hot blush inflamed Elise’s cheeks. She knew the emotion would only scrawl a ridiculous marbled mottling across her pock marked face. “He is important to all of us,” she said. “And his loyalty, his heart even, is given entirely to the queen.”
The more senior lancer coughed a discrete impatience. Abroath gave Elise’s hand a squeeze. “We will do our best to keep Kaylan safe, my dear. Until you return.”
“I’m not asking for myself, father,” she insisted. “His fate matters to everyone.”
The prior nodded, and spoke softly in a voice free of guile. “I know and I understand. And, whether you believe in her or not, the Goddess does too.”
***
“What do you mean, ‘he’s gone?’” Quintala looked up sharply at the outlander captain.
Willem shrugged. “Just that, Lady Quintala.”
The half-elf dropped the sheaf of papers on the desk. The dry returns of total men, orcs and zombies available for combat suddenly lost what little draw they had on her quicksilver curiosity. “Even a little wizard doesn’t just disappear.” The words mocked her even as she uttered them. Of course Odestus could disappear. He, like she, had learned much from Maelgrum of the opening of gates. The question would be what clues there might be as to where he had gone.
“Get Haselrig, bring him here,” she barked. If the ex-antiquary had any hope of being useful to her, now was the time to show it. To prove he had gleaned more than a thick head in his efforts to wheedle his way into Odestus’s confidences.
“He’s gone too.” The outlander’s reply was flat and unemotional. His neutral tone was either ennui or an effort to avoid sparking an outburst of fury from the temperamental half-elf.
“Gone!” Quintala slammed a fist against the desk. “Gone. How did you let that happen?”
“You didn’t tell me to watch Haselrig as well.”
“Do I have to tell you everything? Where’s your fucking initiative?”
Willem stood still and impassive, a rock against which Quintala’s rage washed and receded. She ran a hand through her silver hair. “When were they last seen?”
“Yesterday evening, when you were touring the orc encampments. Vezer Dev saw them walking together.”
“Where, where were they going?”
Willem’s eyes flicked upwards towards the castellan’s chamber which lay above the one he had surrendered to the half-elf. Quintala felt a sudden cold dread grip her heart. Maelgrum had given her one task, one task above all others. Keep Odestus away from Dema’s body.
She was out of the door before the big outlander could move a muscle. She heard him lumbering after her as she took the staircase between the floors three steps at a time, dancing with effortless grace up the tightly wound spiral. Her finger was trembling as she traced the secret glyph to release the master’s magical lock.
A wave of cold blasted over her as the door swung open. That part of the enchantment was intact at least. It had been laziness on her part to delegate the tedious task of daily visits to Haselrig, disobedience to have shown him the way to open Maelgrum’s lock. She took a deep breath and hoped these errors might not haunt her night-time conversation with the master.
The room looked exactly as she had left it, the shrouded form on its bier. She stepped inside. If this was indeed where the two missing men had gone, there was no sign that they remained or that they had taken anything. The floor was covered with a fine layer of hoarfrost, and there were footprints two different sizes of feet, leading in and out.
The smaller footed one had stood by the bier. Quintala stepped in the trail and pulled back the shroud. She hadn’t realised she had been holding her breath until relief and lightheadedness forced her to inhale. All was as it should be, no harm had been done.
“What did they want in here?” Willem asked from the doorway.
Quintala’s shoulders twitched in a momentary shrug. “Maybe they just wanted to look, maybe they were saying goodbye.”
“Where would they go?”
Quintala shook her head. “Who knows?” She flung the shroud impatiently back over the dead woman’s face. There was a double clatter as two objects slipped from the bier to the frosty floor. Quintala looked in surprise at the black discs and then bent to retrieve them. Two of the master’s medallions. She held them up by their lanyards, offering them to Willem for the outlander’s inspection. “What do you think these mean?”
He gave her a wary frown. “I don’t know, Lady Quintala,” he claimed.
She rubbed the two black discs over each other in the palm of her hand. “Put simply, Willem, it means that both Odestus and Haselrig have resigned from the master’s service.”
“I didn’t think you could do that, Lady Quintala.”
She smiled. “You can’t Willem, no-one can.”
The outlander absorbed this information with a pensive frown. “I’ll get search parties after them, wolf riding orcs should catch up with them quick enough.”
“Excellent idea.” Quintala nodded her approval for a proposal she knew could never work. “You get on with that, Willem.”
The outlander was through the door before he stopped and turned to enquire, “Which
direction should I send them in?”
“And there, my sharp witted outlander friend,” she congratulated him. “Right there you have hit upon the nub of the problem. Which direction indeed?”
Willem glowered uncomfortably, waiting for the half-elf to answer her own question. Quintala scowled. The reach of the gate spell was anywhere that the little wizard had ever been and seen in his life. She knew he had been a merchant in his public life, and a student of wizardry in his private illegal life, that much had become clear at his trial. The scroll with which he had so disastrously enchanted Dema had been purchased on a trip to the Eastern Lands, beyond Salicia. If he and Haselrig had chosen this moment to flee the master’s service then Odestus could have carried them a thousand leagues or more. Not far enough to be safe, but far enough to significantly delay pursuit.
Willem coughed. “Two short old men, they can’t be moving that quickly. I am sure we could track them down. Which way would they have gone?”
“I expect they have already strayed beyond the sight and reach of your riders, Willem.” Quintala jangled the medallions against each other.
“What will you tell the master?”
“The truth. That they have deserted him.”
“And what should I tell anyone else that asks?”
“The same as we told them about Galen, that they are despatched on the master’s business. That should stifle any unwise questions, or tempt the faint hearts of any other would-be deserters.”
***
Hepdida followed her cousin through the gardens of Lavisevre trying to keep the petulant frustration from her voice. “I don’t understand,” she wailed.
“You don’t have to understand,” Niarmit snapped a response over her shoulder.
“One day the most important thing is to get to the Gap of Tandar and foil whatever Quintala has got planned and then the next day you suddenly have to fly to Nordsalve. It makes no sense.”
“You were there in council, you heard as well as I did.”
Hepdida quickened her step, closing the short distance between them so she could lay a hand on Niarmit’s arm. “Please wait.”