by T. O. Munro
He smiled. “It will heal fully in time, everything does here.”
“It must have hurt.”
He shrugged. “It is only pain. Your mother bore worse with greater fortitude.”
She looked up at him sharply. “Tell me about her.”
“Matteus will have told you.”
“He told me what he knew, he did not know her as you did.”
Gregor ran scarred fingers through his thick black hair and sighed. “You must not judge her. It was my fault not hers.”
“Your fault that I was born? Your error?”
He shook his head. She saw his struggle to thread a path through the delicate issue and for moment regretted her intemperate pounce upon his words.
“Did you love her?”
“Yes,” he breathed.
“And did she love you?”
He nodded. “I believe so.”
“And what of my father – of Matteus?”
“We …neither of us would have done anything to hurt him, we loved him too.” He took her hand and squeezed it, pressing his scarred uneven fingers around her palm. “Your mother knew how it would hurt him, she knew it could not go on, she knew my duty to Kopetcha, to my boys. For a few short months we loved each other as we never loved another, but then Eadran was born, my boy Eadran.” He shook his head again, pinching at the bridge of his nose, “and we vowed we must part.”
“What was she like, my mother?”
“What did Matteus tell you?”
“That she was fair and clever and virtuous,” she held his gaze. “That she was a paragon of womanhood that I should aspire to follow.”
“She was all those things and more. She was kind in so many tiny ways. When we walked in the gardens she’d pick snails off the path if she thought they might get trodden on by a passing gardener. She said every living thing was entitled to life.”
Niarmit looked away with a tiny shake of her head. Gregor squeezed her hand a little tighter.
“She was fierce too,” he went on. “A servant of hers was ill handled by some lord in the market place once.” He laughed. “You should have heard her then, a tongue sharp and coarse at the same time. Never before have I seen a man so shrunken by an attack of words. It would have made a soldier blush.”
He laughed at Niarmit’s pale face. “She was dutiful and loyal to Matteus, but there were sides of her she didn’t dare show him.”
“But she showed you.”
“For one brief summer she made me happier than I have ever been before or since. But then autumn came and we knew it had to end.”
Niarmit shook her head. “I never knew her, not even the stories I was told were true.”
“They were true, Niarmit. Matteus would not lie to you. They were just not the whole truth.”
“What would he have said if he had known? If he had known he had raised another man’s bastard.”
“He would have forgiven her and he would have loved you no less for it.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can Niarmit, I do. Matteus was a man of honour but also of humanity. He would have done nothing to hurt you or to shame her.” He sighed. “I saw him, I came when I heard your mother was ill, that the birth had not gone well. I rode as fast as I could, but I was too late to say goodbye. Matteus was there, holding you in his arms, he would not let the nursemaids take you. He said you were all he had left of her. He never blamed you, he loved you always. I only saw him weep the once, and he was the strongest man I ever knew.”
“They both lost their lives because of me.”
“Don’t blame yourself for that. If they were given those choices again they would both do exactly the same thing. I would do as they did if it would save you, or if it could have saved either of my boys. That’s what it means to be a father or a mother.”
Again she looked away, her eyes flitting across the carefully tended lawns, one hand rubbing her belly. “Oh!” she gave a little gasp of surprise as Santos emerged from between two bushes.
“Santos, you old rogue,” Gregor greeted him good naturedly. “Last to the party as always.”
The Steward of the Domain of the Helm flapped towards them on sandaled feet, holding his toga around him. He glanced left and right as he crossed the lawn, as though fearful of stepping into the path of a cattle stampede. “Greetings, your Majesties,” he bowed low. “I heard a commotion, felt the wind of his Other Majesty’s arrival. I could not tell what was going on.”
“So you hid in your hidey-hole?” Gregor grinned.
Santos dropped his head shamefaced. “I am not made for martial efforts, your Majesty. Weak of both body and will, I do least harm by being absent.”
Niarmit reached out to him and gripped his hand. “You need not fear the Kinslayer anymore, Santos, and I know you have been a better friend to my father than his manners will let him admit.”
Gregor’s eyebrows shot up at the rebuke and he muttered without ill-will, “your mother’s daughter.”
“The other majesties have banished King Chirard?” Santos made an incredulous question of a simple statement.
“It was the Vanquisher,” Gregor said with some pride. “He has not banished Chirard, he has imprisoned him in stone, petrified here for all eternity.”
Santos went very pale. “The Vanquisher is come, Eadran himself? From behind his wall of thorns?”
“He has left his lodge and come again to this palace,” Gregor assured the disbelieving steward. “My daughter and I left him in conversation with his many descendants, he will still be in the Chamber of the Helm if you wish to bid him your own welcome.”
Gregor turned to point unnecessarily towards the winding steps that led from the garden to the palace. “Oh, no need here he comes now.”
Niarmit followed her father’s gaze to see two figures approaching. The slim form of Thren was in the lead, still walking a little gingerly as the ravages of Chirard’s attack took time to submit to the Domain’s healing nature. The Vanquisher loomed behind him, broad shoulders and a purposeful stride shortened only by the need to avoid treading on his descendant’s heels.
“May we intrude,” Thren called as he stepped from the last stone slab onto the verdant lawn.
“Of course,” Niarmit replied, standing to cross the lawn. Her father followed.
“Queen Niarmit,” Eadran greeted her. She gave a clumsy curtsy to the founder of her royal line. He reached for her hand and bowed his head a fraction to kiss it.
“You are sure it is safe.” She had to check, for her own account, not just Santos’s. “The Kinslayer, could he recover and free himself to unleash the revenge he must be plotting.”
Eadran gave a brisk impatient shake of his head. “He is not injured, he has no wounds to heal, nor does he have the wits to think so he is not plotting anything. He is a statue. They don’t think.”
“A most effective means of subduing him,” Thren purred with an adulation that ill-suited the normally sober minded monarch.
“The only means that would work in this Domain anyway,” Eadran said before turning back to Niarmit. “Now, I have met the other gathered monarchs but you, who I most came to see, you scuttled off before we could speak.” There was reproach in the Vanquisher’s tone.
“My daughter and I had matters we needed to discuss,” Gregor spoke up for both of them. “Steward Santos was also unaware until just now of your return.”
“Santos?” Eadran played with the name. “You have seen Santos?”
“He is here.” Gregor stepped aside stretching out a hand to urge the Steward forward, but then found himself admitting, “well he was here.”
Niarmit too was baffled by the speed of Santos’s subtle disappearance. She looked from the space the steward had occupied to the Vanquisher standing at ease in the gardens of the world he had created. Here was a king who could freely take the Helm from any of them, whose manner and behaviour showed how he owned this Domain, whose own grand-daughter Queen Mitalda had described h
im as a ‘murdering enslaving bastard servant of Maelgrum’ who had envisaged and created this blasphemous hell hole. Despite his power, or perhaps because of it, he was not exactly a man she could freely trust. However, she asked herself, did she have any choice in the matter?
“May I ask a question, your Majesty?” she said.
The Vanquisher smiled. “When everyone here holds that title, it loses the mark of distinction my dear. Twenty-two monarchs and one steward, maybe we should be bowing to Santos, and not the other way around.”
Her smile in return did not reach her eyes. She thought of the steward’s pale face and swift disappearance.
The Vanquisher clapped her companionably on the shoulder. “Just call me Eadran, my dear. It is my name and I seem to be the only bearer of it within this domain. Now let fly with your question and let us see what mark it hits.”
“The protection of the Helm, it failed me when I was attacked by a horde of zombies. Why?”
“The risen dead?” Eadran arched a flaming eyebrow. “I had hoped that Maelgrum would not call on them too greatly.”
“He has hordes of necromancers trained to raise and marshal these undead armies. Now that winter’s frost is well past, we suspect that he will send increasing numbers of unrested corpses against us.”
Eadran shrugged. “The defensive dweomer of the bloodline magic is tuned and responds to living souls. It cannot be triggered by the physical contact of mere animals, or by the animated shells of bodies separated from their souls.”
“It is still a clever piece of magic,” Thren said.
“It is more than clever,” Eadran snorted. “It is a work of genius.”
“But it will not protect my body from the undead.”
“Touching the Helmwearer’s person will not harm them, but it will not harm you either. A fall might injure you, but their teeth and blades could not penetrate your magical shield. Provided you have the good sense to keep the Helm on your head and not stand at the edge of any clifftops, you are better protected than a knight in full plate.” Eadran replied. “There are other ways to destroy the unrested dead, besides relying on the Helm’s defences to do it for you.”
Niarmit nodded. “The Goddess’s blessing has despatched many of them to dust.” She kept a steady eye on the Vanquisher. “She is generous enough to grant me her grace still.”
There was a flicker of irritation, or something darker, behind Eadran’s eyes. “I am sure you are much beloved of the Goddess, my dear, though she has yet to take the field in person against the Dark Lord. I see she still prefers to work her will through the choices she imposes on others.”
“I should get back,” Niarmit said quickly. “My body wears the Helm in my rooms at Karlbad, it would trouble my friends there if they thought me too long in a trance of helmwearing.”
“Indeed,” Thren concurred. “But we need more certainty about your visits to this Domain. You know how much it troubles us when you leave and do not return for days.”
“There is much to be planned,” Eadran insisted. “Great strategy to be decided and implemented.”
“And I would speak with you again,” Gregor said. “We have only scratched the surface of memories you have missed.”
It was her father’s plea which had the most appeal.
“I will return here,” Niarmit agreed. “But, for now I must leave.” Her three forebears of varying antiquity gave courteous bows each of a depth commensurate with their seniority. “I will be back,” she told them. “Tomorrow.”
***
Elise watched as Harris arranged his bedding. Their fellow traveller had chosen a spot a little apart from Elise and her pair of soldiers. An additional few feet from the campfire to recognise his foreign status with their little group.
It was the lead cavalryman’s turn to cook so Elise watched as Harris folded the old worn cloak he carried, dark and stained, into a tightly wound pillow. He pulled a scrap of jerky from his bag and chewed on it while his hands worked at a scrap of branch with a short knife. The activity put her in mind of Kaylan and the whittling which kept the thief’s quick hands busy, when his mind needed to be elsewhere.
The cook handed her a mess tin filled with beans and some scraps of salted pork. She thanked him and picked at the meal with little interest. The soldiers fell to talking as they often had, dull murmured conversations she was not meant to overhear. Nothing untoward, simply the talk of military men who would rather not be in company with women or civilians.
She stood and carried her tin the few yards to where Harris was gnawing with difficulty at the lump of leathery meat, while his hands struggled with the simple sculpture he was attempting. She sat next to him and offered him the meal. She saw the flash of hunger in his eyes before the courtesy took control and he shook his head. “Oh no, Mistress Elise, you are too kind. I could not.”
She took the knife and the carving from his hands and pressed the tin upon him in their place. For a few seconds some sense of sensibility fought with his hunger, but then hunger won and he scooped a handful of hot food into his mouth.
Elise turned the piece of wood over in her hand. It had a natural curve which Harris had been trying to accentuate, paring off strips of grain and narrowing the ends to sharp points. As she twisted it back and forth, Elise suddenly saw what he was making. “You’re carving a crescent.”
He looked up, flushing with embarrassment before he nodded. She stifled the dry laugh tickling the back of her throat. “Have you not got a proper one?”
Harris quickly swallowed what must have been a painful mouthful of heat. “I lost it,” he said. “A while ago now.”
“And so superstitious that you do not like to be without one?”
“There is a lot of superstition around, superstition and fear. I have walked through many places, where gold would not buy food, or a horse or a token of the Goddess’s grace.”
Elise held the crudely carved symbol up to her eyes. It was a clumsy piece. Kaylan would have wrought something much more graceful with much less effort. “I would lend you mine,” she said. “Save that I don’t have one. The Goddess and I, we are estranged, if she exists at all.”
“I too have had such moments of doubt,” Harris admitted. “I have them still. But I dare not risk offending the Goddess by not believing in her.”
Elise laughed at that and Harris smiled too.
“What is your business at Rugan’s court?” she asked.
He frowned. “I have a message to pass on.” He tapped his head. “It is in here, not written down, but it is important.”
Elise smiled at the little man, thin and grey and old. He was an unlikely messenger for any message of significance, but then could he not say the same of her. Disease ravaged and bitter, she made an unlikely ambassador.
“My guards tell me we will be at Lavisevre before midday tomorrow. You will have your chance then to speak with Prince Rugan. My audience is with the queen.”
“The queen is there?” Surprise caught Harris mid-spoonful and a mouthful of pork and beans fell back untasted into the mess tin.
Elise nodded. “She was headed there when word last reached me, my news is for her to hear.”
“My own story would better suit her ears than the prince’s.” The prospect had driven all thought of food from Harris’s mind. He stared over the steaming mess tin at some imagined meeting that Elise could not see.
“Well, when mine is told, maybe I shall ask her to see you next.”
“You are too kind,” Harris said with feeling.
***
The little wizard’s legs ached and his finger tip was numb from the constant pressing against the chameleon scale in his pocket. But at least his quarry was moving no faster than he was. A long sorry line of men and women walked the dusty road ahead of him, a handful of guards kept a hundred prisoners in thrall with the rarest crack of a whip.
Odestus suspected that necessity rather than mercy stayed the guards’ whip hands. Their prisoners were in too d
ire a state of health to bear much punishment, but evidently they were to be delivered intact. This was their second day on the road and already some where tottering unsteadily.
His enquiries in Morwencairn had thrown up too few fragments to assemble a whole picture. No-one had been able to corroborate Hustag’s sighting of a snake lady in company with some indescribable new allies of the Dark Lord. If Odestus had thought Hustag had the wit to lie, then he might have thought the whole story a pure deception. But the details of description were at once too credible and too far beyond the miserable orc’s capacity for imagination and dissembling.
However, even if Hustag alone had seen the snake lady, several of his interviewees had backed up the captain’s account of a camp north of Morwencairn which was in receipt of regular consignments of prisoners. A camp where new allies were in training. It was the only lead to pursue. So Odestus found himself dawdling discretely behind the crowd of prisoners all of them too miserable even to moan.
***
It was crowded in the Chamber of the Helm, nearly all the thrones were occupied. Chirard Dragonsoul had been somewhat dismayed to find that the great coup of his own recruitment to the cause had been trumped by the return of the Vanquisher himself. The Dragonsoul was a handsome man of considerable height and a full head of red gold hair. His imposing physical presence and the genuine achievements which history had credited to him had fuelled a well developed sense of his own importance. That ego had been only partially mollified by Eadran’s admittance of him to the front rank of the thrones.
The Vanquisher had determined that they should each take an assigned seat. He sat on the central white seat, facing Niarmit on her gilded throne atop the dais. To either side of the Vanquisher sat Gregor and Thren, the two who had between them marshalled the squabbling monarchs and yoked them to a single purpose. Beyond them the Dragonsoul sat on the left and the Lady Mitalda on the right.
It had been some surprise to Niarmit to discover that the Vanquisher had never met or known his granddaughter. She had been born after his death and came to the Helm after his self-imposed internal exile. Only Mitalda’s father, Thren the First, had known the vanquisher in person and his seat, at the end of the second row was one of only two yet to be taken. The other was that of the Kinslayer who stood a perpetual statue behind the outer semicircle of thrones.