Master Of The Planes (Book 3)

by T. O. Munro

  It took Niarmit’s own swift reflexes to roll free of the crushing blow, Dema aimed at her throat. The glimpse of ultimate victory made the medusa bold, to the point of rashness. She charged again and Niarmit glimpsed an opening, beneath the medusa’s guard. She thrust her sword with the strength of twenty.

  As the blade flashed forward she remembered the last battle in the dead of winter, the sword thrust through the shield that she was sure had speared the medusa only to find that Dema had turned her body at the last instant and evaded the killing thrust. That thought brought the minutest adjustment to her aim, a little pressure of Niarmit to redirect the many arms that drove her sword.

  Her blade slid past the edge of Dema’s shield, driving into the side of the medusa’s belly even as Dema turned away. They froze thus, Dema looking at the sword buried in her side. “Good, little girl, good,” she purred, “but not good enough.”

  Her leg flicked out with a speed that quite belied the pain, the inconvenience even, of a sword impaling her. The mailed knee caught Niarmit just beneath the ribcage lifting her up and hurling her back. Despite the winding blow she kept a tight grip on the hilt of her sword. The weapon slid free and clean from the crippling wound it should have carved in the medusa. Niarmit staggered back hearing a chorus of disbelief in her head as Dema straightened up and shook her head of hissing snakes.

  “A good strike,” she said, though it seemed to have discomforted her not one bit. “I must repay you for it.”

  “What are you?” Niarmit cried. “Who are you?”

  The medusa advanced again and Niarmit gave ground. “I am Dema.”

  “He has made some kind of zombie of you.”

  “Oh!” The medusa pressed her shield hand against her chest with an air of injury. Certainly the words seemed to have hurt her far more than the blade. “I am no zombie, I am Dema, plucked through a blue gate into this moment, a moment where I will be your nemesis.”

  “A blue gate?” Niarmit gasped as dominos of realisation toppled in her own mind and those of at least two monarchs in the domain. The shouts of Thren and Eadran in her head echoed almost word for word the cry that came from her mouth. “Maelgrum brought you from the past into your own future.”

  Dema nodded appreciately, surprised by Niarmit’s perceptiveness. “Strictly speaking,” she corrected. “He has brought me beyond my own future into a world and a time where we both know I am already dead.”

  Her light conversational tone dulled Niarmit’s reactions to a minor but almost fatal degree, for suddenly the medusa exploded in a welter of slashing sword and swinging shield. It was only through the added strength of her ancestors that the queen could withstand the blows and still dodge the snakes. Dema was panting with exertion when they parted, Niarmit wary looking for a weakness in a woman who could not even be slowed by a sword through the belly.

  “As you will have seen, being already dead does confer me certain advantages,” Dema said. “The master was not sure; it has never been done before. But then apparently I had told him that this is how it would work, or rather I will tell him.”

  “How does it work? Tell me,” Niarmit demanded above the hubbub of horrified chatter within the Domain of the Helm. By the Goddess could those monarchs not shut up, she needed to think.

  “My soul has already been claimed, death cannot have me twice. My body’s future is already known and mapped. It can’t be destroyed now, time would be offended.” She smiled at Niarmit’s puzzled face. “Do not worry, girl. At some point in a few days or months, maybe years, the master will have the victory he craves and I will have helped him secure it. And then I will go quietly back through the blue gate to meet the fate that lies somewhere in my future and your past.”

  Another berserk assault and Niarmit was practically at the tree line. “Of course,” Dema panted. “By the time I go back you will be long dead. Though I must admit, since it seems that you cannot tire, and I cannot be hurt, it could take us a little while to get to that point.”

  Niarmit flew at her, hacking in desperation, she carved a second bloodless slash across Dema’s sword arm, yet strayed close enough for a snakehead to spit poison on her cheek, and then they parted, circling warily.

  “What’s your name girl?” Dema demanded. “Show me your face. Why hide behind your pretty little helmet.”

  Well, your collective Majesties, Niarmit thought aloud in the Domain of the Helm. I am open to any suggestions.

  ***

  Hepdida’s hands were covered in the dust which lay thick upon the floor. The stairwell leading down was destroyed. The adjacent upwards spiral was intact but unlikely to offer much by way of an escape route. Still escape later, body first. She pushed herself upwards and sprang towards the castellan’s chamber. Gwin’s fallen body lay across the threshold, holding the door ajar. She stepped lightly over the dead guard into the cool air of Dema’s tomb.

  She snatched at the shroud, pulling it free to expose the body. She gave a sharp intake of breath at the entirely human form assumed in death by the monster who had captured her all those months ago at the fall of Sturmcairn. There was no time to wonder though, she had to destroy the body and with what? Elise had planned to burn the body with a fire spell, but Hepdida had not the skill for such a feat. She glanced at the glowing orbs of light on the walls which shed a dim flame free light. She reached up towards one and felt no heat from it. It appeared that Maelgrum had tried to guard against any accidental immolation of the medusa’s corpse.

  Fuck. There must be something. She scanned the room. Besides the bier on which the medusa lay there were a few bare shelves, an empty brazier and a broad desk. She scurried round behind it, pulling out the chair. There was a clink as something fell over. She reached down into the shadows and pulled up a bottle. It was strangely shaped. It was made of thick green glass in an almost perfect sphere, bar the flattening of its bottom surface and the thick neck with a glass stopper on a cord. As she raised it to her eyes and turned it could see the surface of a liquid within it. A surface that slipped and flowed in a way that was too smooth for water. There was a strange jagged rune lightly carved in the surface of the glass.

  “Put it down,” a dreadfully familiar lilting voice commanded.

  Hepdida turned slowly, still holding the flask. Quintala stood facing her, silver hair swept back over her cusped ears. Her eyes gazed with a fierce intensity on the princess but, more ominously, her hand was poised fingers contorted into a trigger of enchantment, her arm extended towards the princess. “Put it down,” Quintala repeated. “No sudden moves now. You know what I can do little girl and if you want your skin and bones to stay in close proximity, then do what I say now!” The half-elf’s eyes flared with her rising temper.

  Hepdida hastily set the jar down, it rocked a little and she saw Quintala’s eyes widen in alarm as she waved Hepdida to one side. “Step away little girl, step away.”

  Reluctantly Hepdida shuffled to one side. Quintala circled round to steady the bottle. “Do you even know what this is?”

  Hepdida shook her head dumbly. Quintala wasn’t supposed to be here. She’d seen the witch ride out. Everything was going wrong.

  “Quick oil,” Quintala spat. “Fuck knows what it’s doing here of all places. One drop can start a bonfire, a bottle that size could destroy a town.”

  And she’d put the bloody thing down. Oh shit. “Now where were we, little girl,” Quintala crowed. “Or should I say your highness? No I think little girl sums it up quite well.”

  Quintala flexed her fingers as she advanced on Hepdida. The princess backed away towards the door. “Oh yes,” the half-elf exclaimed as though the recollection had only just dawned on her. “I was trying to kill you.”

  Hepdida ducked and turned, a fizz of energy flashed over her head. She leapt through the doorway, but tripped on Gwin’s prostrate corpse stretching her length on the floor. She rolled over, scrabbling backwards and Quintala flew at her, pinning her to the floor. Hepdida scratched and clawed at Quin
tala’s face and arms, but the half-elf battered her defence aside, reaching a fine fingered hand towards the princess’s throat. “Does that bitch of a cousin of yours still wear the royal ankh?”

  Fingers were closing around Hepdida’s neck. She wriggled and kicked but Quintala’s weight held her pressed against the ground. The pressure on her throat was steadily increasing. She struggled reaching to pull at the half-elf’s hair, but Quintala shifted position. She brought up one knee to pin Hepdida’s arm to the floor and then did the same with her other knee, so that she was sitting on Hepdida’s chest and could fasten both hands around her neck. “It’s better this way,” Quintala said as she gripped tighter. “I want that witch to feel your pain, your slow miserable pain.” She leant forward to glare into Hepdida’s eyes. “The Vanquisher’s bloodline magic does have its uses, like making sure that bitch knows the very instant, the very long drawn out instant, that her cousin dies.”

  Hepdida kicked with her feet, but her head was pounding and the half-elf’s leering face was fading into a grey mist. Oh fuck, this had all gone so horribly wrong.

  ***

  Niarmit and Dema were in the midst of another clash of blade and shield when the ankh’s fire flared against her chest. The meaning was too plain, too ghastly, for it not to seize her attention. Fuck no! And in that instant Dema landed a kick that sent Niarmit spinning away. The queen ducked beneath the inevitable sword swipe. The medusa’s blade brushed up her crouching back and caught the lip of the Helm.

  Fuck, she was on the ground, bare headed. She shut her eyes and rolled blindly to one side. The wind of Dema’s sword brushed past her face.

  “A red head!” The medusa exclaimed. “And not an elf, how quaint.”

  Niarmit sprang up, eyes scanning the ground looking for Dema’s feet. The exultant hiss of the spitting serpents alerted her to the next attack and she just swayed out of the way.

  “Not brave enough to look at me without your pretty little helm then,” the medusa taunted as she circled just beyond Niarmit’s sword reach.

  “You will die, abomination,” Niarmit spat. “You are dead.”

  “Yes,” Dema agreed. “About that...”

  Quick feet charged at Niarmit, the queen raised her gaze as far as she dared, but the medusa’s sword descended from above her eyeline and Niarmit could manage only a clumsy parry. The medusa’s blade caught her own and with a deft flick of her wrist, Dema sent Niarmit’s weapon spinning over her shoulder. A crashing swipe with her other arm and Niarmit’s shield flew in the opposite direction. The queen fell backwards on to her elbows, crab crawling away, eyes averted. The medusa followed breathing easily. There was a crash as Dema threw her own shield away.

  “I meet so few people who know anything of my past,” she was saying. “That is how Maelgrum prefers it.”

  Niarmit tried to quicken her retreat, twisting her shoulder to turn and run, but the medusa leapt at her, pinning her to the ground. She could feel the spit of the snakes upon her cheek, a hand seized the back of her neck trying to turn her face. She resisted the pressure, keeping her eyes clenched shut.

  “Now you will die here, my little red headed girl. Snake, stone or sword, I don’t mind which. It can be quick or slow, your choice. But first you can answer me a question.”

  “Fuck off,” Niarmit spat at the ground.

  “Tell me little girl, since you know so much.” Beneath the supercilious air of the victor there was a hunger in Dema’s voice. “How did I die? Who killed me?”

  A memory surfaced in Niarmit’s panicked mind. This monster lying on the ground, spitting her blood on the stones, fatally run through with Kimbolt’s sword. The medusa’s last words, words that had made no sense at that, their first meeting. “You lied to me,” she had wheezed on the brink of death. “You lied to me, bitch.”

  Shit, she knew what she had to say. She could not disturb the stream of time. “I did it,” she said. “I killed you.”

  There was an inhuman screech of rage. Indescribable pain erupted in her side, the medusa had run her through. Niarmit screamed, and then again as Dema pulled the bloodied blade free. “That is for just now, when your sword struck me.” She carved another wound in Niarmit’s arm in honour of the bloodless cut that the queen had scored moments earlier. “And that as well.”

  Fuck this hurt. Niarmit slumped on the ground, feeling the warmth of her own blood. Dema leant back, the point of her sword, scarlet in the moonlight, holding Niarmit’s petrified attention. “And this is for the blow you struck that killed me.”

  ***

  Hepdida’s vision was going, she tried to turn her head to bend her dimming sight away from the leering face of her half-elven murderess. “Die bitch,” Quintala cried her fingers digging into Hepdida’s throat.

  There was clatter of noise, the arrival of the soul reapers perhaps, but less celestial than Hepdida had expected.

  “Hello, sis.”

  Hepdida forced her eyes wider, helped by the slight easing of the pressure on her throat as Quintala looked up at this new distraction.

  Rugan sat slumped in the stairwell from the upper storey. His face was strangely misshapen and his right arm was a bloody ruin, but in his left he held a wavering crossbow its aim precessing gently in the general region of his sister and her victim.

  Hepdida felt the pressure of Quintala’s knees, digging harder into her arms as the half-elf prepared to spring. But then there was the twang of a crossbow string and Quintala did leap but she fell awkwardly and Hepdida rolled free spluttering for breath.

  She had to move, she had to move quickly. But her neck was sore, her head pounding and her limbs leaden heavy. She staggered upright. “Quick, girl,” Rugan’s voice rasped. She shook her head, the cloudiness clearing from her vision. Quintala lay at an awkward angle on the floor. The half-elf was coughing and she pushed herself into a half sitting position with her hands. Rugan was struggling to reload the crossbow one handed.

  Hepdida stumbled warily around the fallen sister. Quintala glared at her. The half-elf pressed her palms against the floor pushing herself backwards against the wall. As she did so her tangled legs stretched out straight and limp before her. The half-elf’s face was fierce in painful concentration with every scraped inch. Hepdida glimpsed the feathered tail of the crossbow bolt sticking out from Quintala’s shoulder. From the angle of the projectile, Hepdida guessed it must have struck while Quintala’s body had barely risen from her horizontal leer over the princess’s choking form.

  “Be still, sister,” Rugan growled as the next quarrel slipped uselessly unloaded through his fingers.

  “Fear not, brother,” Quintala coughed. “You have done for me at last. My back is shot through and there is a gushing in my chest that says I will not last to enjoy life in a bath chair.”

  “Is the abomination destroyed?” Rugan addressed Hepdida, for the moment his sister’s pale and breathless face the lesser of his concerns.

  Hepdida skirted quickly around Quintala’s motionless feet and over Gwin’s body to get back into the castellan’s chamber. The bottle sat where she had left it on the desk. She lifted it carefully and pulled the stopper. One drop could start a bonfire, Quintala had said, if anything from her lips could ever be trusted. She held the flask at arm’s length over the medusa’s body and tipped it carefully. It was hard to judge the liquid level and before Hepdida knew it a splash of several drops had fallen on the chainmail shirt which Dema wore in death as she had in life.

  Hepdida started in shock at the excessive spillage, but nothing happened. The runny liquid merely seeped through the gaps in the chainmail, leaving clean polished links as the only sign of its passing. Hepdida waited a second then another and was about to tip some more from the flask when flames erupted from the body, blazing as high as the timbers of the roof. In shock she dropped the bottle and it fell and rolled on its side leaking fluid across the timbers of the foor. She looked in horror at the liquid running between the cracks in the timber floor.

&nb
sp; Then she fled from the room, desperately hauling Gwin’s body out of the way of the door. The crackle of timbers from the room brought a raised eyebrow from the pale prince. “Job done then?” he growled with a wince.

  “I dropped it,” Hepdida cried in alarm. “I dropped the bottle.”

  “Best pull the door to then, girl,” Quintala breathed. “Maelgrum’s wizard lock was designed to keep everything, including fire at bay. From the outside anyway. It should work both ways, for a while at least.”

  Hepdida needed no encouragement from the crippled traitor. Partly driven by the magic laid upon it, partly by Hepdida’s frantic tug on the iron hasp, the heavy oak door swung closed, shutting out the roar of the flames in the chamber beyond.

  The princess leapt across the stone of the landing to Rugan’s side. “Come on, we’ve got to get you out of here.”

  Up close she could see the dreadful state the prince was in. The ugly swelling stretching from temple to jaw was the least of his injuries. His right arm was a mangled ruin, she bit back a retch at the sight of white bone through bloodied flesh. Blood leaked around the end of a crossbow quarrel buried in his stomach. “I don’t think I’m going anywhere, girl,” he said.

  “Come on,” she grabbed at his uninjured arm but then let it fall as the movement of his body brought a roar of pain from the half-elf.

  “You get out of here, girl, just go!” He ground the command out with something like his old fierce hostility. “Go!”

  “I’ll get help,” she started the first few steps up the stairway. “I’ll come back.”

  “Don’t,” he ordered. “Just save yourself, girl. Someone has to keep an eye on my witch of a sister. There is spite in her still, I am sure.”

  Hepdida gulped, looking at the prince’s angry face. “For the sake of the Goddess, go!”

  She ran up the steps. The wall was already warm to the touch of her fingers as the heat of the inferno beyond leached through the stone. Tears were evaporating on her cheeks.