by T. O. Munro
“Of course.” Kimbolt flushed red. He glared at the prince for a moment and then quickly turned back to Hepdida, “It was but an instant between my hearing your cry and the gate vanishing. I am sure it is a task easily accomplished.”
Haselrig fidgeted unhappily. “The blue gate of our present is anchored to a single stretched moment in the past,” he said. “Though it has existed now for many weeks at our end of the stream of time, it existed there for a few hours at most, maybe only minutes.”
“And?” Kimbolt growled.
“When I looked through it, you were still abed and all time moved slowly, the torch’s flicker was a slow imperceptible beat.”
“Your point, Haselrig, spit it out.”
“Only that a short instant in your perception on the past side of the gate may not prove to be so brief a moment on this the present side.” He looked down and mumbled, “I do not mean to alarm anyone, merely forewarn you.”
Rugan broke the tense silence with brisk assurance. “The twisted perversion of these gates is hard to decipher or predict. Time loops and swirls like the blooms of blue within the gate’s surface,” he said dismissively. “We can know nothing of how this thing happens, only that it will happen and that we may guess we all have a part to play in it and in supporting the princess. Maelgrum may have made the gentle stream of time into a raging torrent between the walls of a high gorge. We are all of us obliged to shoot those rapids and hope we find a calm pool at the other side.”
They nodded in sober acceptance of the half-elf’s analysis. “So,” Kimbolt said. “Jolander and I ride for the queen.” Haselrig stretched out to offer him the boodstained cloak, imbued with the last traces of Prince Udecht. The seneschal took the old stained cloth with a brief nod of gratitude.
“And I am really to return to Lavisevre?” Giseanne shot a glare of challenge at her husband.
The half-elf nodded sadly. “My realm needs governance and my son needs a mother. The rest of us ride to the Gap of Tandar to plan out the assault on Listcairn.”
Giseanne reached out for the half-elf’s hand. He took her arms and pulled her close. “Take care.” She said.
Elise saw a stern look pass between husband and wife, before Rugan laughed. “I always take care, my dear. Have you not heard? I am famous for my caution. Infamous even!”
Hepdida stepped away from Elise’s side calling softly, “Kimbolt.”
The seneschal turned at her voice, his eyes hooded with concern. The girl reached into her purse to pull out a folded piece of paper. “Will you take this for me?”
He took it, weighing it in his hand with a speculative air. “For your cousin?”
Hepdida shook her head quickly. “No, give it to the boy.” Her voice grew stern at Kimbolt’s raised eyebrow. “He and I parted on bad terms, I would not want…” she glanced around catching Elise’s eye with a beseeching look. The sorceress shrugged uncertain how she was supposed to help. The princess turned back to the seneschal. “I just wanted him to know that I stopped being angry with him, that’s all. Life is too short to waste it in anger.”
Kimbolt slipped the folded paper inside his jerkin. “You can tell him that yourself,” he said. “When this is all over.”
“Please Kimbolt,” she gripped his hand. “Do this for me.”
He shook his head doubtfully. “I will do it,” he said, looking over the princess’s shoulder into Elise’s eyes. “But I charge you Mistress Elise to make sure the princess is well looked after.”
Elise scowled back at him, gripping her staff more tightly. “Haven’t I always, seneschal.”
***
Dema stared through the gate and its view of a disconsolate wizard sitting on a cold tower top. “He can’t see me,” she said. “How can I be sure he is well if I can’t ask him?”
“You can ssseee for yourssself,” Maelgrum assured her from within a small cloud of mist. “Do you not trussst the evidencsse of your own eyesss?”
“I would as soon hear from his own lips.”
“You know that isss impossssible,” Maelgrum hissed, his eyes flaring red. “What I have done hasss broken every ssstricture I laid upon myssself and othersss in timesss long passst. You can have no communication with the little wizard, but remember if you ssshould fail me then I will have no reassson to ssspare him what isss hisss due for the treachery he hasss committed.”
Dema turned from the window on the imprisoned wizard with a nod and a sigh. Maelgrum gave the merest twitch of a blackened finger tip and the room darkened as the light from the distant tower top was shut off by the closing of the gate. “Very well then,” she said wearily. “Tell me, what is it I must do?”
Maelgrum settled his physical form into the only chair in the medusa’s spartan quarters. Dema took a seat on the bed, she was buggered if she was going to stand while the Dark Lord sat.
“Come, dearessst Dema, why ssso glum?” He chided her. “You may have died already but I can ssstill offer you the great opportunity, the chancsse for sssucccesss in battle sssuch asss will make generationsss tremble at the mention of your name.” One red eye flickered in what may have been a ghastly attempt at a wink by the undead wizard. “There are few who are able to boassst that they did their greatessst deedsss after they have died.”
“You did,” Dema shot back.
The room grew a little colder but then Maelgrum threw back his head and a dry laugh echoed from the walls. “Quite ssso, Dema, quite ssso.”
“And my task?”
“The trollsss are battle ready?”
She gave a brief nod of irritation at an unnecessary question. “They will rip your enemies to pieces at my command. And by the same token they will not rip your allies to pieces.”
Maelgrum nodded. “Then we are ready to begin our campaign and we will not ssstop until I ssstand at the ssshoresss of the great ocean and all of Eadran’sss realmsss lie behind me in abject ssslavery or sssmoking ruinsss, I care not which.”
“Admirable ambition, but every great conquest begins somewhere,” Dema reminded him. “Where do we strike first?”
“Where the enemy is weakessst, though they may think themssselvesss strong. My sssourcess of intelligencsse may have been compromisssed by the half-elf’sss unmasssking. But they too are blind to the forcesss I have mussstered.
“You will be my lightning ssstrike, Dema, the sssharp point of my ssspear. But in your wake will roll legionsss and orcsss in sssuch numbersss as thisss isssland hasss not ssseen in a thousssand yearsss. It isss fortunate that both the dead and the living can be bred at sssuch ssspeed.”
***
Niarmit stood on the battlements of Karlbad and ran a hand over the curve of her belly. She found no outward sign of the quickening within her. There was no swelling. Her clothes all fitted her as well as they always had, both the ill tailored garb she had accumulated in her forest haunts in plundered Undersalve and also the borrowed finery she had been acquired since accepting her royal destiny.
She shook her hair loose as a fresh gust of wind whipped in from the East. The grace of the Goddess kept the dawn sickness at bay and her breakfasts down. But secrecy could not last. She had resolved that she would carry the child, but that in no way meant she had the slightest idea what to do about it. Nor had she found anyone whose counsel she would trust in this most delicate of matters.
Within the Helm she would readily trust her ancestors to consider any question of military strategy or national governance. However, the many monarchs were still too new found acquaintances or too austere of manner for Niarmit to share so personal a dilemma.
Beyond the Helm, in a fortress still shaking off the grasp of winter, there was only Lady Isobel who had any awareness of the queen’s situation. The Lady of the North had been the soul of discretion, eschewing any unwelcome questioning and Niarmit in turn had been reluctant to volunteer any information. The combination ensured Isobel knew nothing more than that the pulped juice from the leaves of mother’s bane had been discarded unused.
Niarmit found she had reached for the crescent on its chain, gripping it tightly. She had perhaps as much as another fortnight before the matter of her confinement would have to be made public. Distasteful as the prospect was, she would have to wrench Kimbolt from his painted whore to let him know what fruit the folly of their lust had borne. This child would know its father and its mother, that much at least she could promise it. But against the future worries of the as yet unborn, there were still the present tribulations of its mother to be resolved.
“Your Majesty.”
She turned slowly, settling her thoughts once more to matters of statecraft. “Yes, Pietrsen.”
The Master of Horse stood to attention, Chancellor Margrave at his shoulder. “The last of the northern levies have arrived by the eastern crossing. We have eight thousand battle ready and fit for the march.”
Niarmit nodded grimly. “The waiting is over then, time to return to war.”
“It is a great honour that the host of Nordsalve should be entrusted with the task of reclaiming the lost province of Morsalve.” The chancellor’s jowls wobbled with his enthusiasm.
“Indeed,” Niarmit arched an eyebrow.
“Perhaps you would care to march with us,” Pietrsen suggested with a smile. “Share in the honour at first hand.”
The gyrations of Margave’s full figure reached a new pitch of intensity as he bowed and scraped and waved away the Master of Horse’s offer. “Oh no, I couldn’t. I am quartermaster to this great endeavour, supplying the stores and essentials on which such an army marches. Martial glory is not mine to claim.”
The corners of Pietrsen’s mouth twitched briefly upwards to accompany the sparkle in his eyes. “No, I thought not.”
“I will take my leave of, Lady Isobel,” Niarmit said. “Chancellor, please see to the packing of my belongings.”
Margrave quivered anew at the fresh privilege and Pietresen merely grinned.
***
Without quite realising it Hepdida’s feet had brought her out on a broad ledge of rock overlooking the plain of the river Saeth. She sat down, hugging her knees and gazing out beyond the river at the teardrop shaped town that was Listcairn, perched on the side of the hill and at its point was the eight towered castle, her target.
She shivered and hugged herself a little tighter. She had been scared before, mortally afraid. There had been the deepening nightmare of being Grundurg’s prisoner. Time and distance had gradually eroded the veneer of fearful obedience which Dema had laid upon the vile orc, and exposed the full range and cruelty of the imagination he had vented on her pale form. She winced in remembrance of the staggeringly insensitive epithet which Jay, in his anger had flung at her. “Orc whore.” She bit her lip and buried her head on her knees.
Then there had been the curse that Quintala laid on her, the awful sane sick madness. Her body wasting away and the brief periods of consciousness little more than a dreadful sleep paralysis; one part of her mind travelling a helpless passenger within a body consumed by a rage that wanted only to destroy and to kill.
But then for all the fear and despair, the future had been less certain and less full of dread than now. She was going to go into that castle where Quintala ruled. Quintala who had lured her into the forest, who had cursed her so many times, who had set her loose a raging lunatic against both Elise and Giseanne. Quintala who had come to her in her sleep and bid Hepdida drive a knife into her own heart. Smiling, laughing Quintala who had buried a malice so deep within her that no-one, not even she who had been its principal target and victim had realised the serpent coiled within their midst.
She knew she would go into that castle, she knew what she would see, what she would say. But no-one knew for certain what would happen after that. Would she come out?
“Hello, I thought I’d find you here.”
She looked up as the young illusionist joined her on the ledge. He settled companionably beside her, two old friends admiring a view of the Salved Kingdom in all its summer glory. Provided of course that one could ignore the dotted encampments of disparate orc tribes, provided one could turn a blind eye to the pens of the undead whose stench reached even this far - a faint whiff carried on a gust of wind, provided one could be oblivious to the dirt of the unploughed fields where a shrunken and enslaved population no longer had the manpower to reap all that the bountiful land had to offer.
“I used to sit up here a lot.” Thom filled the silence with easy chatter. “I was up here when we saw the queen and Kaylan fall from the sky, over there.” He pointed south. “Falling a thousand feet and both survived, prospered even. What greater proof is there that we have the favour of the Goddess?”
He put a fraternal arm around her and hugged her tight. “It will be all right,” he said. “You’ll see.”
She shook her head. “How by all that’s holy am I going to get in there, Thom?”
“There was a lively debate taking place on that point when I left,” Thom admitted. “It was all matter of how far Haselrig can be trusted.”
“Haselrig?”
“To be honest Mistress Elise and the prince seemed to be having a competition as to who could doubt the man more sincerely and deeply. So much so that Sir Ambrose had to bid them both be silent so we could at least hear what Haselrig was proposing.”
“Which was?”
“The place we must reach is the castellan’s chamber. That is where the medusa’s body lies. The door has been locked by Maelgrum, wizard locked and only Quintala was entrusted with the glyph to open it.”
“So, we ask that bitch to just let us in?”
Thom smiled and shook his head. “Amongst her other faults, the ex-seneschal has a certain tendency to idleness. A disinclination to exert effort where it can be delegated to others.”
Hepdida gave him a blank look and Thom hurried to explain more simply. “Checking the condition of the medusa’s corpse is a task that she passed onto Haselrig. Quintala entrusted him with the secret sign to secure access to the room. Haselrig can open that last door.”
“So he intends to accompany us?”
Thom nodded. “And Elise and Rugan are both insistent that he should teach one or other of them the sigil just as Quintala taught it to him. They are fearful that he is intent on leading you into a trap.”
“Is he?”
Thom spread his hands hopelessly. “I am an illusionist not a mindreader, Hepdida,” he said. “But the Lady Giseanne spoke right. Since first his identity was revealed he has been entirely remourseful and co-operative.”
“My father trusted him with a message, and he delivered it,” Hepdida said.
Thom nodded and they both looked out beyond the swift flowing summer Saeth and the specks of orcish movement on the plain towards the towers of Listcairn.
“I’m scared, Thom.”
He took her hand and squeezed it. “I’ll be there,” he said. “Right beside you.”
“What if she’s there?” She shuddered. “I don’t think I could face her.”
“She won’t be. It has been decided Rugan and Ambrose’s task is to draw her out and away. They’ll lead her a merry dance down a false trail, just as she once tried to lead us on a fool’s errand before the battle of the Saeth. Listcairn will be practically empty when we arrive.”
She gave him a baleful eye. “Wearing another of your disguises?”
“If Sir Ambrose’s patrols can capture me some suitable subjects as raw material, I will make of you either a perfect orc, or outlander, or nomad. “
She sighed. “I’m sure that may help us get in, Thom. It certainly did at Morwencairn when first we seized the Helm.”
“See,” he gave her a good natured punch on the arm. “A tried and tested method.”
“Getting out though,” she rolled on over his cheerful manner. “That was an entirely different matter.”
***
Dema strode towards the heart of the great encampment, two rubbery skinned trolls loping along at her should
ers. The impact of their presence brought a broad grin to the medusa’s lips. No-one spared the trio more than a single fearful glance. Then all who could conceivably find a reason to be anywhere other than on that broad highway beat a swift retreat, anxious to dig latrines or hand feed strips of meat to starving wargs, or fix a bent post around the pens of the snapping snarling undead. Anything was preferable to spending more than a few seconds within notice of the master’s latest allies and their unrivalled general.
Dema felt the familiar pride of command. She had won the battle of the Derrach Bridge, she had taken the impregnable fortresses of Sturmcairn and Listcairn, she had welded a group of foul but lethal animals into a disciplined and even more lethal fighting machine. For a few short minutes, she could forget the body in the castellan’s chamber, she could forget the fate that lurked in wait for her. For the time being there was a future ahead of her that no-one knew, not even Maelgrum, and in that uncertainty lay an infinity of possibilities. The wealth of opportunity lifted her mood still higher as Maelgrum’s command tent hove in sight at the centre of the vast encampment.
Dema did not doubt that Maelgrum could have conjured an opulent pavilion with the merest flick of his gnarled fingers, but she guessed it pleased the Dark Lord to see orcs and outlanders sweating to recreate the same grim perfection through purely physical endeavour. The outer guy ropes of the rich and gaudy canopy were still being anchored in place when the medusa and her lurching lieutenants arrived. The guard at the opening somehow managed to back away while making his salute, in no haste to approach still less challenge the fearsome trio.
The medusa swept past him into the pavilion. The trolls straightened into sentry duty awaiting her return.
“Ah Dema, lassst to arrive but firssst in battle,” Maelgrum hissed a greeting. “You will remember Rondol and Marwella of courssse. Sssadly our legion of magesss hasss been somewhat reducssed of late, but the necromancssersss continue to disssplay their ssskills.” The redbearded sorcerer dipped his chin in nervous acknowledgement of the medusa. The crone, Marwella, sucked indifferently on her gums.