by T. O. Munro
Their grins spread wider as their vision grew accustomed to the sudden brightness. Mouths opening to reveal a row of crooked but serated teeth, as much a peril to the leathery tongues that flicked over them as to anything they might eat. “Meat,” one creature hissed in a cracked mockery of the common tongue. “Fresh meat, brothers.”
Odestus gulped. He had not expected this to be easy and he was not unprepared. As the bipedal animals shuffled towards him he flung his hand out, fingers spread and two bolts of electric energy shot to his left.
Two down. The first fell with a sharp hole bored straight through its chest, it slumped against the wall, green blood oozing from the space where its heart had been. The little wizard’s aim had been a little off for the second one. The blast of thaumatic energy caught the second creature in the centre of its forehead. The bright black eyes rolled up to inspect the missing top of the creature’s skull, as though it needed to check it was dead before actually being dead. Then it too fell to the floor in a puddle of its own ichor.
On his other side, Odestus pushed out his palm and his would be attackers were caught in a blow that magnified the wizard’s simple gesture a thousand fold. The pair of them crumpled against the wall with bone crunching force, jagged bone poking through broken flesh.
Yet still they rose, not slowed by the injury or any pain it might have caused. Odestus, cast another spell at speed, sweating with the exertion of unleashing enchantments of such power in so short a space of time. The creatures lunged at him, but he was not there. They clutched at empty air, squabbling their distress, as the little wizard reappeared behind them.
They turned fast enough, sniffing him out and Odestus was grateful for the chance to catch his breath as another flickering blink carried him to a different corner of the room. The creatures spun round growling their dissatisfaction and moving far more freely than a biped with two broken legs had any right to do.
In a moment of horror, Odestus realised that their legs weren’t broken. Not anymore. The jagged bone had shrunk within the flesh, and the mottled skin had closed over the wounds as though they’d never been there.
Monsters that healed themselves. Oh shit, these were trolls. The stuff of story books, of childhood nightmares.
As the grey green giants lumbered round, chasing him down in the corner of the room, Odestus changed tack, reaching into his memory for a spell he had rarely used. The first troll erupted in a pillar of flame, then ran around the room setting its bedding on fire.
The air filled with oily black smoke from the troll’s roasting flesh. In the midst of the intense but clashing odours of the room there was now the distinctive smell of rotten meat being cooked and burned.
Odestus was breathing heavily as the random teleporting spell carried him beyond the grasp of the last troll. He reached deep into his reserves of strength to summon another firey immolation.
But his feet were pulled out from beneath him and he fell forward crashed his jaw against the stone floor with force enough to loosen his back teeth. He tried to turn, to spin and cast a spell, but other hands seized his arms. Shit, the two dead trolls had come back to life. The holes in the chest of one and the head of the other had been sealed and healed as completely as their comrades’ broken limbs. Shit, creatures that healed themselves even when dead.
Irritation at the unfair impossibility of such monsters’ existence was the first impulse that filled the little wizard’s mind. The whining thought made a more strident claim on his attention than the more concrete prospect of his imminent demise at those same ccreatures’ hands.
He was held by all four limbs, a rag doll in a ghastly tug of war. One troll on his left arm, one on his left leg and the other holding his right arm and leg, a limb in each hand. The flaming troll was burning itself out into a sticky puddle of tar. The stone and iron construction prevented the flames from spreading, though the acrid smoke that filled the room added the irrelevance of a rasping cough to Odestus’s many woes.
He could do nothing but submit to the unco-ordinated tugging of his body by his three enemies. His ligaments groaned, sinews tore, but the overall effect was that one troll would yank the others off their feet and then, out of balance would be dragged back when the others returned the favour.
“This stupid,” the one holding two of the little wizard’s limbs argued. “We need to pull at same time, break meat into pieces, then eat.”
“Yes, pull together,” the others agreed.
“On count of three,” the one with just a leg to hold suggested.
The others grunted their agreement and the one with Odestus’s left arm gripped in his sizable hands began. “One, two,” he paused. “What next?”
“Three, three is next,” the one opposite him said.
Not realising this was part of the instruction, rather than the count, the third troll gave a sharp tug on Odestus’s leg which pulled the other two off balance. For a moment, the little wizard thought he might work free from the grip of the toppling trolls, but even as they fell, they held more tightly to his arms and legs. Bruised arms and legs were as nothing to a troll, but letting meat escape, that would have been a most serious business.
“I count this time,” the leading troll announced, to a complete absence of dissent from his two fellows.
Shit. Odestus tried to work his fingers free, but the trolls held his hands closed within their great clenched fists. Shit. I’m sorry Persapha, he thought.
“One, two,” the troll went, and then silence. For a moment Odestus thought he too had forgotten, but then he realised it wasn’t silence. There was a noise that the trolls had heard before he had and they were very still. It was the unmistakable sibilant hiss of a snake, of many snakes.
A female voice barked commands in a language that Odestus could not recognise and suddenly he was released and the three trolls were scrabbling out of the door and down the stairs.
His eyes were watering and his abused limbs were so sore he could barely shift himself into a sitting position. There was a shape, tall, slim and elegant, a long sword held comfortably in one hand. A fine jaw, so like her mother’s, a sparkling gaze behind a gauze mask, and above the snakes a swarming mass of hissing serpents.
“Persapha?” He said.
“Persapha?” the medusa replied head cocked on one side. “Really, little wizard, I know it’s been five years, but have you forgotten my name. Persephus was my father, you know that.”
The voice, that voice, it was her. He scanned the face, the unblemished cheek with no sign of the scar Rugan’s sword tip had left. “Dema?” he said in a voice laden with disbelief.
“The very same, little wizard,” she replied. “How can you doubt it?”
“But you’re dead. I’ve seen your body.”
For a moment he saw a sadness seize the medusa, her mischievous smile dimmed into a flat line of sorrow, even her snakes fell still and silent against her head as though subdued by an invisible hood.
“I know,” she said. “I’ve seen it too.”
Part Four
Odestus’s legs gave way. He slumped to the floor, his fall cushioned by a layer of troll filth. He was shaking his head from side to side, lips framing a denial as Dema strode across the room with that familiar languid elegance.
“It can’t be, it’s not possible,” he said, despite the living breathing evidence that it was. “How?”
Dema smiled beneath her mask, her sorrow displaced by amusment at his discomfort. He’d seen that smile a thousand times. The infallible medusa, the equal of any challenge, grinning at another failure of action or comprehension by her creator.
“I don’t know all the details,” she said. “He wouldn’t tell me.” She was level with him now, the blue sparkle behind her gauze mask, stilling his blood as she looked down at him.
“Who? Maelgrum!”
She nodded at Odestus’s answer to his own question and extended her hand to pull him up. He took it. Her grip was firm and real. Her skin, in testament to
her part reptilian part human physiognomy, was cool to the touch.
“Tell me what you do know, Dema, please,” he begged. “Help me to understand.”
She shrugged. “I’m not supposed to tell.” Then she frowned, the creasing of her brow ruffling the mask. “Or is that I’m not supposed to hear?” She swept the back of her hand across his robe, brushing off some detritus of troll bedding. “Come, my quarters are marginally more salubrious than here. I am glad of the company, it’s been a long five years.”
“Five years?”
She put a finger to her lips and led him out onto the landing and through the door to the left. It was a spartan chamber sparsely furnished. A simple cot bed, a chair and desk, a chest. Her chainmail surcoat hung from a stand in the corner. He well remembered the day when Maelgrum had given it to her and the many battles in which she had worn it. There was now no rent in its front, where the links had been forced apart by the cowardly thrust from behind which had killed her. There was no scar on her cheek where Rugan’s blade had marked her at the battle of the Saeth. Odestus remembered the blood washed by the rain into a red curtain down her cheek as she had raged at the imperfection of her victory.
“Five years?”
She didn’t answer, merely taking a seat on the bed and waving him towards the chair.
“Dema,” he struggled to frame a relevant question. “What is the last victory that you won?”
Her eyebrows arched, her lips pouted. “You catch on fast little wizard.” He worked his fingers over themselves, waiting in silence for her answer. At last it came. “I have captured the fortress of Listcairn from an idiot constable called Kircadden.” She smiled, a broad grin of pleasurable recollection. “That was barely a week after I slaughtered Hetwith and repulsed the army of Nordsalve with a mere five hundred. Then I rode half way across the Petred Isle to take Listcairn.”
She paused to wag a finger at him. “Mind, little wizard, it was your fault. Listcairn was your task once you had pushed through Hershwood. Your failure snatched me from the prospect of the greatest battle that the Salved Empire has seen since the Kinslaying wars. It should have been me riding against King Gregor, not that worm Xander who is doubtless still glorying in his overpriced ad unworthy triumph.”
Xander was dead, seven months dead. Odestus thought it, but stopped himself short of saying it. “How long ago was that, Dema? How long ago did you take Listcairn?”
Again a frown. “A month ago,” she admitted. “I have been here a month. I came here the night of my triumph at Listcairn.”
“How?” His voice was a dry croak.
She didn’t answer. She looked at the floor and the walls. “Of course,” she began. “I know it’s been longer than a month for you. A year and a half maybe? Perhaps two and a half?” There was an edge to her voice as she went on quickly. “It can’t really have been any longer than that. Maelgrum wouldn’t have let the war go on any longer, and I can’t see the likes of Rugan stretching it out. But maybe a year and a half?”
She was looking at him, her head still, her body tense with a longing he had not seen since their first meeting. That dark alleyway two decades earlier, where she had first entreated his aid, making the request that had precipitated them both along this dark path of accident, exile and infernal service. Then, as now, behind the fearsome warrior had been a supplicant desperate for an answer.
He opened his mouth to give it. “Dema,” he said. “It’s been…”
“No!” she held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t say. You mustn’t. He said I mustn’t ask, must not be told. You shouldn’t even be here. He will be furious.” She rose from the bed, pacing the room in some agitation.
“Why?”
“I’m not to know anything of what has happened, what will happen to me. He was most insistent. He would tell me nothing, let me see no-one, no-one who might have known anything about me.” She grinned and huffed a half-laugh. “It has been so very dull. Trolls are not great conversationalists, even the orcs are more entertaining, when they aren’t too scared to come down off their high walls. Oh I have missed you little wizard.” She looked at him appraisingly. “And you have grown old I see, much more than five years older since we parted.” Again a smile. “And I will have to take what clue I can about the passage of time from your battered appearance.”
“Dema, I…”
She stopped him again. “No. It is good to see you. Let’s not spoil it.”
“How?” He repeated dry mouthed. “How did Maelgrum pluck you from that night of triumph to this place and to this time?”
“He called me, I was sleeping in my new claimed quarters and he called me. There was a blue gate an oval filled with opaque swirls of colour and there was Maelgrum. I…” She hesitated. “I was not alone, but my companion, he slept on. Maelgrum took me through the gate and when I looked back, I could see my chamber still. The man still sleeping, though everything was still, even the flame of the torch had ceased to flicker.”
“Then Maelgrum led me into the room next door, the castellan’s chamber and he showed me.” She stopped, lips thinned as though in pain. “He showed me…”
“What did he show you, Dema?”
She looked at him, her masked eyes glaring a chilling sparkle at him. “You know what he showed me little wizard?”
“Your own dead body.”
She nodded and then shook her head. “Though how did I come to be human again?”
Odestus opened his mouth to answer but with a chop of her hand she bid him silent again. “I must not know. This magic, this strange magic that Maelgrum used, he said I must not know. That knowing would make it all go wrong, get worse.” She laughed. “Though what could be worse than knowing I’m dead? I don’t even know how, I just know I’m dead. Somewhere between our two nows, somewhere in my future and in your past I am going to have died.” She looked at him sharply. “Did you weep for me, little wizard?”
“I’m weeping still,” he said and it was true for his eyes were full.
“Did anyone else, was there anyone else, another perhaps who mourned my passing?” She cut off the question with a slice of her hand across her throat. “No, I must trust Maelgrum. I must hear nothing.”
“Why?” Odestus asked. “Why did he bring you here and now?”
She accepted the less perilous question with a quick nod. “There are two reasons. You have met the master’s new allies, not exactly native to this plane and slightly more quarrelsome than orcs. An orc argument ends with one survivor and a lot of dead bodies. A troll argument never ends, the dead and injured heal so fast. Maelgrum wanted someone to bring order and purpose to their ferocity. So they could serve his will.”
“And he reached into the past to pluck you forth to be their general?”
Dema nodded. “Even in death I am still his greatest warrior. He has promised me a colossal battle a conflagration of conflict that will make Xander’s incompetent triumph look like a squabble between street urchins. I will be his general then, and I will win a victory that will be heard and sung of in the furthest reaches of the Eastern Lands.” There was a brightening to the sparkle behind her mask as she gazed through the wall into a glorious martial future. She looked away from whatever mental image had captured her attention and gave a wry grin. “There are also advantages to being technically dead, particularly when training trolls.”
Odestus shivered, the room suddenly seemed colder as he contemplated the bizarre reality of his dearest dead friend seized from a moment before her death and transported here. “You said there were two reasons,” he reminded her, his breath misting in front of his face. “Two reasons why Maelgrum brought you from then and there to here and now. What was the second?”
“Becaussse ssshe herssself hasss told me that I would cassst the blue gate ssspell to sssummon her, or at leassst ssshe will tell me,” a familiar sibilant voice hissed at Odestus’s back. The little wizard tried to turn to face his master, but found he could not move.
***
As though posed for a sculpture, the occupants of Rugan’s throne room held their positions for a long stretched moment. White faced Hepdida clung to Thom. The illusionist glared at the unmasked Haselrig. Maelgrum’s former lieutenant hung slumped between the shoulders of his enormous guards. Elise sat gripping her staff with enough force to break either its slender timber or her own wizened fingers. Giseanne held her arms high, imploring some sense to descend and calm the raging emotions of her kith and kin. Rugan and Kimbolt glowered at each other, unsure why the same questions should be passing both their lips.
It was Kimbolt who spoke first, unsure whether prince or traitor should be the target of his question. “What do you know of a blue gate?”
“I’ve seen just one, Captain Kimbolt,” Haselrig answered. “And I’ve seen you through it.”
“Do you know what it is, traitor?” Rugan barked.
“I saw a picture of one before,” Haselrig admitted. “But I did not know what I was seeing then, not until I saw the real thing and realised what it was and how it worked and what my ma… what Maelgrum had done.”
“You’re saying that Maelgrum opened a blue gate.” Rugan circled the prisoner with lupine intensity as he took the lead in the questioning.
Haselrig nodded.
“A gate between the present and the past?”
Again the prisoner nodded, while the air hummed with collective gasps of astonishment from the assembled company.
“Where is this gate?” Kimbolt’s voice was thick. “Where did you see it?”
Haselrig’s mouth twitched. “It is in the castellan’s bedchamber at Listcairn, Captain.” He bowed his head averting his gaze as he added, “I saw you through it, sleeping there.”
Kimbolt felt the heat of Rugan’s glance in his direction. His past mis-service was known to all, but still he blushed to be reminded in such company of how close had been his companionship with the medusa. He shook his head. “That gate was blue, but you could not see through it. You cannot have seen me there, Haselrig, you lie.”