Master Of The Planes (Book 3)

by T. O. Munro

The prisoner frowned. “You must have woken while the gate still endured and seen it then.” He took his turn to shake his head in refutation. “But what you saw was the past side of the gate, from which one cannot see into the future. Looking from the present into the past it is a barely tinted window. I saw you sleeping, Captain.”

  Rugan looked from seneschal to prisoner and back again. “You have seen the other end of this gate, Kimbolt? You can endorse that this traitor speaks some truth, that the Dark Lord did open a cursed path across the stream of time?”

  “Husband,” Giseanne’s voice was thin, trembling with confusion. “Explain. What are these blue gates? How come you have not spoken to me of them before?”

  “My grandfather Lord Andril told me of them when I was young and still allowed to come to his court in Malchion. He cited the blue gate as an example, the greatest example, of the weakness of human nature and of their unsuitability for being granted the art and dignity of magic use.”

  “That doesn’t answer the lady’s question.” Elise ground out her own inquiry through clenched teeth.

  “It is not so hard to know what they are,” Rugan replied. “Believing they exist is the more challenging task. The Monar Empire was destroyed by idiot mages using these gates between the present and the past to try and travel back in time and change history. Every meddling interference only served to confound the wishes and aspirations of he who meddled. Time is not to be trifled with. It will destroy those who try to pervert it.”

  “So Maelgrum has travelled into the past and tried to change what has already happened,” Thom murmured. “And if Prince Rugan is right in his understanding of these gates, then the Dark Lord has already failed. Maybe that is why he did not win the battle of the Saeth, well not as clearly as he had hoped.”

  Haselrig shook his head. “Maelgrum knows the dangers of the blue gates, if any could bend that enchantment to his advantage then it is Maelgrum. He would not, he did not, use it to try to tamper with the past.”

  “Then what purpose could it serve?” Thom demanded. “To go back and change nothing? Why only a student of history would find merit in that.”

  “I was not alone that night,” Kimbolt mumbled. “Not at first.”

  “Where was the medusa?” Rugan closed on Haselrig and gripped the prisoner by the jaw. “Where was the abomination, when you looked through the gate?”

  Despite the half-elf’s iron grip, Haselrig managed a marginal shake of his head from side to side and a stifled admission. “She was not there, she was not in the past.”

  “She has come here?” Rugan gripped a little tighter. Haselrig went a little paler. “He has seized her from the past to plague our present?”

  “Just because she was not in the room when Haselrig looked through the gate, it does not mean she has been brought into our time.” Giesanne was trembling as she tried to dispel the dread which had consumed her husband. “She might have been anywhere in the past, rather than here in our own time.”

  “I’m sorry, your Highness.” Kimbolt was assailed by memories he had once thought just part of an old nightmare but whose true menace he only now understood. “I have seen the other side of this gate, I have seen how it ends.”

  “It ends?” Giseanne said hopefully. “The gate is broken, or it will be?”

  “And when it broke, when the shimmering oval was dispelled,” Kimbolt’s voice was strained as he remembered that moment in the castellan’s bedchamber. “What stood in its place was Dema, summoned in mid-fury from some distant battlefield. Her sword was bloodied, her mask was off, and as she rose she looked at me.”

  “She looked at you?” Giseanne’s eyes widened. “She looked at you unmasked?”

  Kimbolt was shivering as he recalled that moment. The mere memory of her gaze was enough to chill his blood and paralyse his lungs. He swung away and found a seat. “Aye, your Highness,” he gasped. “I have served my time as a stone monument to Dema’s power, though I remember none of it. The little wizard restored me to flesh, though at the time both he and she let me believe I had merely been rescued from some deep fever.”

  “What does the Dark Lord mean by this insanity?” Rugan demanded of their prisoner. “What is his aim in bringing the medusa beyond her own span of years?”

  “Release him husband,” Giseanne said. “Give the man breath to speak if you want him to answer your questions.”

  With a last vice like compression of Haselrig’s neck, Rugan strutted away and the prisoner slumped sputtering between his guards. “I do not know, but I think I may guess,” he said when he had found his voice again.

  “We can all guess,” Rugan snorted.

  “I have discovered that the Vanquisher’s enchantments of protection, so potent against orcs and humans alike, are blind to the undead.”

  “That’s right,” Hepdida emerged from the shadow of Thom’s arms. “There was a time Niarmit was nearly killed by zombies despite her wearing the Helm.”

  Kimbolt spun round, face pale, an alarm of questions bursting to be asked. Hepdida saw his expression and gave a quick smile. “She is well, Torsden came to her aid and the zombies were destroyed. But the Helm could not protect her from them.”

  Rugan nodded heavily. “And the medusa is already dead, but now she is here? What power would the Vanquisher’s charms have against her?”

  “I do not know,” Haselrig admitted. “But I came to warn the queen, to warn you all.”

  “Thank you.”

  Rugan swung round at his wife’s expression of gratitude. She met his rage with a glare of icy defiance. “Take the traitor away,” Rugan commanded. “There is a cell that should be strong enough to hold him.”

  “Wait,” Haselrig cried. “There is more that I must tell you.”

  “You have told us enough for now,” Rugan insisted. “We must consider this news I would rather have no treacherous ears listening in on our deliberations.”

  “I can tell the Dark Lord nothing, I have discarded the black medallion through which we communicated. He knows not where I am.” Haselrig ended with a plaintiff cry, “you can trust me.”

  The snort of contempt was ripped from the half-elf’s throat. “I trust no-one beyond my wife and the queen,” Rugan assured him. “And in my roll call of mistrust you and your foul master lie at the very bottom, together with that bitch sister of mine. Be thankful for the moment that I leave you with your miserable life. You should use the time to think on what you owe and how you might persuade me to let you see another dawn or two before an axe of retribution falls for all your sins.”

  The assembled company quailed at the ferocity of Rugan’s scorn, but the prisoner simply lowered his head and allowed the guards to march him briskly from the chamber.

  With its object gone, the fury seemed to relinquish its hold on Rugan too. The half-elf slumped into his throne with a weary sight, muttering darkly of blue gates.

  “You think this is bad, your Highness?” Kimbolt asked, trying not to smart at Rugan’s public declaration that he, along with the rest of the world, lay outside the prince’s circle of trust.

  The half-elf sniffed. “Maelgrum has cast a blue gate spell, and the abomination walks the Earth months after her own death. Such arrogant interference in the natural order is beyond belief, beyond experience, beyond sufferance. It will surely raise a storm with strength enough to sweep us all aside; that may be the only way to cleanse this pollution from the stream of time.”

  ***

  Odestus’s heart was racing though his body could not move. Cold cloying mist enveloped him as the dark shape of Maelgrum stalked round to face him, red eye pits flaring with a furious beat. Dema stood apart head bowed, dutifully subservient in the presence of the master.

  “The little wizard ssshould not be here,” Maelgrum’s voice filled the freezing room. “What hasss he told you?”

  “Nothing.” Dema looked up, jaw jutting towards the Dark Lord.

  “How long hasss he been here?”

  “A few m
inutes nothing more.”

  “And in that time he hasss told you nothing, nothing of consssequencsse?”

  “He wanted to, but I would not let him. He’s told me nothing more about my fate than what I already knew.”

  Maelgrum came close. The medusa was tall, but Maelgrum was taller still and he bent his head to look down his red eyes glaring into the sparkle of her gauze covered blue ones. “You know there isss nothing that you can do to change it. What hasss happened will happen. Oncsse the gate fadesss, oncsse your work here isss done, you will go back to the future that awaitsss you.”

  “I know,” she said sternly. “You have told me often enough.”

  Maelgrum nodded in grim satisfaction. Odestus a helpless prisoner in his own body could only watch and hear as Dema launched another question. “How long? How long before the gate fades and the link is broken?”

  “The exissstance of your body isss a powerful anchor for the ssspell. It will lassst for many monthsss, yearsss maybe.”

  “And I can stay here that long?”

  Maelgrum didn’t seem to hear the question. He turned to inspect the paralysed form of Odestus. “You did not tell me of the little wizard’sss visssit, or rather I sshould ssay you will not tell me. I ssshould have liked to know of it. But in your future you kept thisss matter sssecret from my passst.”

  Dema shrugged. “I cannot. I must not tell you what lies in your future, any more than you can let Odestus tell me what lies in my future. You told me that yourself. Whatever I learn now and whenever I take it back into the past with me, I cannot tell anyone of it, least of all you.”

  Maelgrum tilted his head to one side, the beat of his red eyes slowing a fraction. “You are right of courssse. I wasss merely testing your underssstanding of the sssituation.”

  “Of course.”

  “And it isss equally cssertain that the little wizard cannot remain here. He hasss abandoned my ssservice and ssshown himssself at lassst to be a traitor.”

  “What will you do to him?” There was a hard edge to Dema’s question.

  Maelgrum straightened, cold fury condensing from the rotten sleeves of his robes. “That isss no concssern of yoursss.”

  “You will not harm him.”

  “You forget yourssself, lady medusssa, to think you can command me.”

  “If I return to my past knowing that you have harmed so much as a hair on the little wizard’s head, then there will be nothing that stops me from telling everyone where, or rather when, I have been and what I have seen.”

  The temperature dropped at least ten degrees, ice formed on the floor. Maelgrum’s voice was as precise and sharp as cut crystal. “We have dissscusssed thisss. Sssuch profligacssy would dessspoil the ssstream of time. Untold disssastersss would ensssue all of them working againssst your own intentionsss.”

  “You forget, Maelgrum. I’m going to die. That’s what lies in my future and, for reasons I cannot fathom, Odestus is the only living person.” She stopped and corrected herself, “Odestus is the only person, living or dead about whose fate I give a flying fuck.

  “So, if I am to be dead and he is doomed, then the whole world can go screw itself and the rampaging streams of time can drown you all in your own piss and shit.”

  Odestus’s fingers were going blue with the cold, deprived even of the means to shiver he could feel his mind slowing, thoughts fumbling over themselves in the the arctic chill of Maelgrum’s ire.

  “So you are going to let Odestus go, unharmed.” Dema made a bald statement of it.

  “That isss sssomething I cannot do. He knowsss you are here. He may by sssome chance betray sssome ssshred of information, sssome beat of a butterfly’sss wing, that will dissstort your presssent and hisss passst in waysss to the detriment of you both.”

  Dema scowled. “There must be a way.”

  “I can confine him.”

  “He must go free. I must see him go free.”

  Maelgrum nodded slowly. “Until your work here isss done, the little wizard will ressside at my pleasssure. Then, jussst when I am ready to return you to your passst, the lassst thing you will ssseee is him ssset free and sssafe.”

  “You promise?” Dema said doubtfully. “How can I be sure?”

  “If I break my bargain, then you can wreak what havoc you wisssh in the passst. It will dessstroy usss both, and many more besssidesss, but asss you sssay, you would have nothing left to lossse. You have the power to assssure our mutual dessstruction, I will not trifle with that.”

  Dema nodded. “We have a bargain then.” She glanced at Odestus’s frozen form, a half smile playing on her lips. “A last word then, before you take him away.”

  Odestus strained to break free of the magical bond that held him, to flex some muscle, an eyebrow even, in a desperate bid to tell Dema of the daughter she had, of the daughter that even now she must unknowingly be carrying. But Maelgrum stepped between them, obscuring Odestus’s view and raising a hand to thrust towards the frozen wizard. “No wordsss, no more talk. It isss time the little wizard left.”

  Odestus felt the pressure on his chest as he was pushed back and he was falling, falling through a gate. The air was cold, the space was open, mountain peaks to left and right, and cold stone beneath his back. And as he felt movement returning to his limbs, his thoughts turned from Dema to her daughter.

  If as it transpired, Hustag had been right and it was the mother that he had seen in Morwencairn in the company of trolls, then where was Persapha? Where had Galen taken her when the necromancer had attacked the karib settlement? Or was she dead already?

  ***

  The yellow sun beat down from a purple sky on the hot sands of Grithsank. Vlyndor placed one three toed foot infront of the other, leaning forward, tail extended for balance. He did not like to be at large in the daytime but that choice, like so many other choices had been somewhat restricted for the last three years.

  The mountains loomed ahead, their peaks blunted into hollow caldera. A place that had once been home, from which they had been driven. Anger was not a karib trait, but Vlyndor felt a deep sadness at the fate that had befallen his people. The karib were not warlike creatures, but war had come to them in the most horrible way. Chased by the walking bones of their own forbears, they had fled their home, scurrying through myriad passages to gather on the flank of the volcano cowering in the glare of Grithsank’s sun.

  He had led them, those survivors, in search of shelter, picking a way north. It was the only way to go, even though that took them towards the territory of dragons and through the infested sands of the desert. He had lost good friends on the way, and children too, for they were the easiest for the land sharks to seize. The creatures were drawn by the lightness of the children’s footfall, picking the weakest targets to drag underground.

  His eyes blinked faster at the memory, a tear formed on his greying scales and swiftly dried in the desert heat. It had taken them a month to reach the safety of Lyndat’s people. A month of exposure when, by some grace, they had evaded the interest of the airborne lizards that circled in the distant skies.

  And Lyndat’s people, led by her brother Glyndower and rich in memory of the karib who had married beyond their tribe, had welcomed the refugees. Their simple domain, the small network of caves within the walls of a deep crevasse lacked the security of the volcano’s heart which Vlyndor’s tribe had abandoned. There were few resources that could be gathered without a perilous daytime journey beyond the meagre protection of the narrow fissure in the rock. A few of the children had complained, bemoaning the change in circumstance, but Vlyndor had quickly reminded them of the gratitude they owed to his wife’s people, who had so little and yet shared it all.

  For three long years they could not go back, not to confront the horror which had driven them from their home. But here he was, within sight of the mountain they had abandoned. He trod carefully, ducking forward, stepping lightly seeking the spots where his feet could fall unheard. Then he crested the last rise before the
mountains and he stopped.

  There in the shallow valley before him lay a field of bones, bleached white by the fierce heat of the Grithsank sun, half buried by drifts of orange sand. He scanned the scene. Karib after karib skeleton lay there, the curved spines with the extended tail vertebrae, and the long white skulls, all lying where they must have fallen.

  He started forward, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him. “Is it safe?” she asked.

  He turned to the girl. She was tall now. He hoped she had stopped growing. He did not like to look at her eyes, even when she wore the gauze mask. But he still tried to face her always despite the chilling of his blood that the azure sparkle induced. He did not want her to think he was afraid to look at her, for he knew that would hurt her more than anything else she had endured.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “There is no other way, if we are to go home.”

  “But we don’t have to go home. He might be there still. We could stay with Lyndat’s people. I don’t like the way he made me feel. I don’t want to feel like that again.”

  His tongue flicked out, tasting the air between them, sensing the heady flavour of fear and anger that the young medusa exuded. Her hood stirred, the serpents seething with her mood. “Let’s go back,” she said. “We can still go back.”

  “You know we cannot, Persapha,” he said sadly.

  “We can share. I can eat less, we can all eat less.”

  Vlyndor shook his head. The barren nature of the land was not the real reason he had to make this journey. He had not told her, he never would, nor would anyone. But Glyndower, Lyndat’s brother had taken him aside. They would not question his decision to take and raise the medusa’s child as one of their own. But that had been a decision of Vlyndor’s tribe, not theirs. Even a karib baby could taste the otherness of Persapha. They cried at the sublimated rage which salted their tongues everytime the medusa walked past.

  Glyndower had not asked them to leave, he would never ask them to leave. But his concern so gently expressed meant Vlyndor knew they must choose to leave, so he and the medusa had travelled across the desert to their old home.