by T. O. Munro
She knew this dream and this creature for a phantasm of her own invention, a means by which she tortured herself. But that did not lessen the terror his image could inspire. He might lie in the Blessed Realm, beyond all reach of communication, but the simulacrum of Marvenna’s dreams had power enough.
Except not tonight. The best day’s work she had ever done lay behind her. She drew back her shoulders and held her head high as she closed on the familiar cloaked figure waiting beneath the arbour.
The moonlight sliced through the trees, throwing broad lines of light and dark across the hooded form. He stood so still, waiting to speak. Usually it was his voice first, and then Marvenna’s apology. But he had nothing to say and she had perfection to share with him.
“Well met, Lord Andril,” her dream-self greeted him. “I bring great news that peace and obedience once more embrace your realm.”
The figure flung back its hood, long auburn hair flowed over shoulders and around a pale but perfect face. It was not Lord Andril. The fine chin trembled and the green eyes blazed as her cousin Liessa demanded, “where are my children?”
Marvenna’s jaw dropped, she stumbled back. This was a dream, she should wake, but she could not. The apparition of her cousin pursued her, two steps forward to each one of Marvenna’s back, until the two elves were within a yard of each other. “Where are my children?” Her cousin’s words gained ferocity with repetition.
Marvenna could only stammer syllables of incomprehension.
“The last charge I laid upon you,” Liessa’s gentle voice curled in a snarl around her words. “The final vow you made to me, before my father took me away, do you remember it?”
“I…” Marvenna shook her head. Why could she not wake up? She should be sitting upright in her bed in Malchion’s protection, sweating her fear at the terrors her conscience could subject her to. She should not still be dreaming.
“For the ties of love and friendship and blood that we shared, you made an oath to me,” Liessa said.
Marvenna’s chin twitched to the side, but her gaze could not stray by the slightest degree from the paralysing fury of her cousin’s eyes.
“You swore you would protect my children and guard their interests as I would have done, if I could have stayed.”
The steward’s mouth opened and closed in mute despair. The apparition seized her. Marvenna winced and looked down where Liessa’s fine fingers pressed into her forearm. She whimpered as her cousin shook her.
“Where are my children? How have you honoured the vow you made to me?”
Marvenna clutched at the rock within her, the touchstone of certainty to which she always turned. Lord Andril, who had drawn from Marvenna a vow of almost exactly contrary intent to his daughter’s, a demand that his steward should keep the Silverwood ever free of the taint of his daughter’s half-bred offspring. Andril, the solution to any problem that Marvenna had ever set herself. What would Andril do? “Your father…”
Liessa thrust out with the hand that gripped Marvenna’s arm, pushing the steward so hard she staggered back and fell. Liessa stepped forward bending down to close the distance between them. Marvenna scrabbled backwards, fingers curling frantically through the dirt in her desperation to put distance between her and the half-elves’ vengeful mother.
“Do not speak of him,” she spat. “Your adulation of my father served you ill while he walked the Silverwood, but I had thought and hoped you would find it in yourself to step beyond his shadow, once he left.”
“He…”
“He did not love you.”
The words hung between them. A dark hole was being opened in Marvenna’s mind, deep secrets she had never shared were blinking in the unwelcome light. “I never asked, I never sought, we never.” Marvenna shook her stammering head, her cousin’s ghost could not believe, must not believe any ill of Lord Andril. “Liessa, please. Your father never… not with me… he did not stray from the path of virtue.”
“He didn’t have to, did he,” Liessa shook her head. “He controlled you always by the weight of admiration that you bore him. His merest smile was enough to satisfy your hidden love, his scowl enough to darken your days for centuries at a time.”
“He never knew what I felt for him. I never let him know, I never told him.”
“Of course he knew, you fool. He always knew and he used that knowledge and he used you. He let you bind yourself to his will with ties of love and guilt, cords that you knotted yourself.”
“He never knew. I never said. I hid my feelings.”
“Nothing in the Silverwood was ever hidden from my father.” The appartion of Liessa straightened, and glared around its old forest haunts. Marvenna drew in great lungfuls of damp air, the musk of the trees sweating in a summer’s evening. She pushed herself up as Liessa shook her head. “How much more willingly and tightly do those enslave themselves, who think they are in love?”
Marvenna followed her cousin’s gaze around the familiar arbour. Branches hung heavy with leaves. Ferns lifted in the slight breeze along the forest floor. A deer paused head raised, alert to the discussions of the elven cousins. Why was this most dreadful of dreams so vivid and so stubbornly resistant to the blessing of wakefulness?
“Where are my children, Marvenna?” Liessa’s voice was dull, devoid of hope as she asked for the third time.
The steward could only shake her head. “I don’t know.”
“What promise did my father extract from you?”
Marvenna bit her lip. She opened her mouth but Liessa waved her silent before the first word could form.
“I can guess,” she said. “And it matters not, not anymore.”
For an instant Marvenna imagined the pair of them back in their carefree youth, bright with each other’s company and the unparalleled beauty of their world. It was on a night such as this, all those centuries ago, that Andril had first come to tell them of the bargain he had struck with Maelgrum. A bargain which had bought peace but bound Liessa to a tortured captivity. And there Liessa stood, head bowed, saner but sadder than Marvenna could ever remember. “Where are your children, Liessa?” she asked.
Liessa shook her head. “Gone. They are gone. Both gone. I felt their father’s pain.”
Marvenna frowned. “Those men are dead, the seneschal and the prince. They feel no pain.”
Liessa looked at her cousin, sprawled on the ground. “They were born out of a dread darkness, but I loved them nonetheless and I wish you would have loved them as I did.” There were no tears on Liessa’s face, just an expression of sorrow deep enough to drown in.
“I’m sorry.” The words slipped from Marvenna’s mouth; with them went that inner certainty in the wisdom of Lord Andril.
Liessa bent down and stroked a hand along the steward’s cheek. “There are no evil people, cousin, and certainly no evil children,” she said. “Only evil choices.”
Marvenna blinked wordlessly as her cousin rose and walked away. She tried to rise, but her limbs were leaden heavy. She called after Liessa, but her words were lost in an enshrouding mist that rolled through the trees. She was screaming an apology as the grey whiteness enveloped her and then she was awake in her own bed in the heart of Malchion. Voronyis was beyond the veil of twisted branches calling in, “Steward, are you well. I heard you call.”
“It was just a dream,” she called back. “A bad dream.”
The captain murmured an apology and she heard the soft sounds of his retreat. She reached for the sheet to pull it over herself, for in her writhings she had flung it aside. As she did so she saw the forest dirt beneath her fingernails. She turned her right hand in wonder and gasped. There, on the inside nearer the wrist than the elbow were five round bruises; the marks of four fingers and a thumb pressed deep into her skin. She gripped her forearm with her left hand, trying to fit her own fingers over the contusions to see if, in the torment of her dream, she could have inflicted the injury herself.
They were of just a size and spacing to have be
en made by her own hand, save only that he or she who made these marks had used their right hand to do so.
***
They were about halfway across the bridge when Hepdida noticed a shimmering around her three companions. The assumed masks and physiques of grey hided orcs blurred and shifted and again became undeniably human.
The disguise had been good enough to get past the orc guards at the western end of the bridge. Haselrig had a fluency in the orcish tongue and Thom’s illusion had matched the man’s voice to his appearance. The ex-antiquary’s chest thumping assertions had met a grudging acceptance from the sentries.
It was a believable subterfuge, given the blaze which had engulfed Listcairn castle. Of course the outlander Willem would send messengers to bring news of the disaster to Quintala and chief Barnuck. The confident mention of such well feared names had also brought more credibility to their tale. It had been sufficient to dispel any awkward questions about where were the wolves and horses that any messenger should have been riding, and why were their clothes so mismatched at the waist?
So it was with nothing more than a half-suspicious grunt, that the quartet had set out across the bridge. But now, caught midway between the western orcish sentries and the eastern outlander guards, the magic had abandoned them.
The light of the moon and the inferno on the hill glinted off the mirror smooth waters of the swift moving Saeth. Hepdida peered into the distance. To make a perilous situation worse, an outlander foot patrol was also on the bridge striding towards them. No chance now of sidling past and no place to hide.
“Your magic never seems to last,” Elise said tartly.
“It won’t outlast the destruction of the subjects I copied,” Thom replied glaring at the ravaged castle as the roar of a tumbling tower followed a few seconds behind the sight of its collapse. “We locked them in that tower cellar, remember.”
“That’s as maybe.” Haselrig jerked his head towards the approaching men. “But we have more pressing problems than mourning a trio of orcs buried in masonry.”
Hepdida saw the lead outlander in the patrol stiffen, his attention drawn to the little group standing at the midpoint of the crossing. The flickering light of reflected fire and moon was enough to show they were not orcs and had no business in the oversized breastplates and misshapen helmets that they bore. She saw a shadow of movement as he stretched his arm across his chest, reaching for his sword. “We could jump,” she said. Getting in had always been the easy part, getting out they had ridden their luck almost to the end.
“I was never a great swimmer,” Elise said. “And a deadweight of orc armour is not going to improve my skill.”
The outlander had his sword out, the other half dozen in the patrol were also reaching for weapons. “You, you four,” the man called out.
“Ego praecipio tibi, ut adoleret,” Elise cried. A circle of fire erupted on the bridge, engulfing the last five outlanders. The leader and another man hefting a two bladed axe, were ahead of the flames. It took them less than a split second to gather their wits and lunge weapons held high at the white haired sorceress and her associates.
Thom muttered something. Elise blinked out of existence and reappeared to one side of the leader’s frantic swing. He turned to aim another blow at the shifting woman but Haselrig ducked behind him and gave the off-balance swordsman a hearty push. It sent him spiralling over the parapet. Elise, wore a confused expression between re-appearances, struggling to get a grip on her constantly changing bearings.
Haselrig turned from the leader’s splash as the second outlander raised an ugly axe to split his head. Hepdida had been too slight a target to draw the axeman’s initial attention, or at least he saw Haselrig as the main threat. She glanced at Thom. The illusionist was frowning, fingers flicking as he sought to draw down some other dissembling spell to deceive or confuse Haselrig’s attacker. But the ugly weapon was already swinging down, the ex-antiquary’s nervous sideways dodge was too late and slow.
Hepdida did not quite know how it happened. The thin bladed knife of last resort, the weapon Kaylan had taught her to carry, was in her hand and its blade was red. The axeman lay on the ground, coughing blood. His weighty weapon had split a stone in the road, his aim quite ruined by the deep thrust Hepdida had made into his armpit.
Haselrig looked over the dying man at Hepdida’s pale face, his own expression scarcely less drawn. “Thank you,” he mumbled.
“Come on,” Elise cried, her random perambulations at an end. The other blazing outlanders were too distracted by the fire to make much protest as the quartet dodged past in their bid to escape.
“Great spellcraft,” Thom cried. “To take five of them down.”
“With better aim, you might have had all seven,” Haselrig grumbled jogging behind them, still shaken from his narrow escape.
“If your half-elf’s curse had not withered my joints, I am sure I could have done better,” Elise panted. “Accuracy and precision in spell craft are the preserve of more nimble fingers than mine.”
“Enough arguing,” Hepdida said. “We are not free yet.”
There was a double splash behind them, as two of the immolated outlanders either jumped or fell into the river’s watery embrace. Hepdida glanced back. One more was rolling on the cobbled roadway. The other two had slumped against the low wall, all hope and breath consumed by the flames. They were free of pursuit, but there were still guards at the far eastern end of the bridge. Their attention was sure to have been drawn from the flaming skyline of Listcairn castle to the bonfire of the outlanders that Elise had set so much closer to their post.
“A little more fire, Mistress Elise,” Thom suggested as they saw a line of soldiers taking position across the roadway. “Before their crossbows seek us out.”
“I can’t run and cast,” Elise gasped. “I can barely do both on their own and certainly not two together.”
“Horsemen,” Haselrig groaned, as shapes emerged at a gallop from the dark gloom to the south of the bridge’s end. “Nomads!”
“Damn you Goddess,” Hepdida blasphemed in desperation at the night sky. “We’ve helped ourselves so much and so far, isn’t it time you helped us.”
A crossbow bolt whistled past Hepdida’s ear, a second one followed it higher and wider. The horseman were galloping through the bridgehead soldiers. Only they weren’t coming through. They were milling about, the flash of curved scimitars descending on the outlander crossbowmen.
The fleeing quartet crashed to a halt sixty foot short of the end of the bridge, watching as the nomads set about their allies with murderous fury. “What is going on?” Haselrig muttered.
Death was soon done with the bridge’s western guards. The column of riders trotted onto the bridge, three abreast, moonlight glinting off bloodied blades and golden jewellery. In the centre rode a silver haired nomad, proud and tall in his saddle, to his left a younger dark haired nomad eyes scanning the rode ahead. But it was the familiar figure on the leader’s right who drew Hepdida’s attention, leaner limbed than the nomad but carrying himself with no less assurance.
“Kaylan!”
Hepdida called out the name a fraction of a second before Elise, but it was the sorceress who exclaimed in wonderment at the thief’s companions. “Vezer Khan, Ismael.”
The old nomad dipped his chin in greeting, the younger nomad smiled. “Well met, Mistress Elise,” he said. “How many are there at the other end of the bridge?”
“Two dozen. They are orcs, easily confused. They will not have seen clearly what you did to their comrades at the western end of the bridge.”
Ismael nodded grimly. “Then we will show them.” He muttered to the older nomad in their own tongue and then the two spurred their horses to a canter and the troop of nomads followed with a clatter of hooves.
“Kaylan,” Elise called as the thief wheeled out of line and slipped from his saddle to greet them. “You made an alliance with Khan. You didn’t wait for the queen’s authority?”
Kaylan shrugged. “Prior Abroath can be very persuasive, the dwarves too.”
Elise stepped out reaching towards him, but then her foot turned in a pitted cobble and the embrace she had been stretching for became a fall into the thief’s quick arms. They rose, embarrassed and Kaylan set Elise back on her feet. The sorceress stepped away, running a hand through her white hair and mumbling an apology for her clumsiness.
Hepdida was less circumspect, she seized the thief and crushed him against her in a hug that drove the air from both their chests. “I’ve missed you,” she said.
Cries of battle and alarm rose from the western end of the bridge. Kaylan glanced to where Vezer Khan’s nomads were dealing severely with the surprised and demoralised orcs. “I should go,” he pulled away from her.
“Not yet,” Hepdida said. “As crown princess I command you to stay, and to see us safely home.”
He grinned at that. “Getting used to the trappings of power are we, my princess?”
“I hear you are not without power yourself, Master Kaylan,” Thom said. “How goes the war in Undersalve?”
Kaylan nodded. “Well enough. Vezer Khan has done as he promised and brought all the tribes beneath his overlordship. Now the orcs and the ogres are outnumbered and besieged and the people have hope enough to rise up beneath our banner. I had force enough to bring Khan here and see what impact he might have on the alleigances of the nomads at Listcairn.”
He frowned. “But I have come across much that I did not expect. First Rugan and Quintala locked in battle from which they both fled through some portal. Then you three unlooked for and ill-dressed in the middle of the river Saeth. And in the distance I see something or someone has quite destroyed Listcairn castle. That is a little too much coincidence for these events to be unrelated.”