by T. O. Munro
“…and,” he demanded. “And what, little wizard?”
Odestus said nothing, hurrying to raise the barriers within his mind, to man the mental barricades against an assault which was certain to come.
“You have presssumed a knowledge of my mind, little wizard,” Maelgrum stood opposite Odestus, his gaze focussed on the wizard. “Let me sssee inssside yoursss. Ssso sssmall a ssspace, I wonder how you keep yourssself from boredom.”
Odestus had discarded his black medallion at Listcairn, the medium by which he had experienced the intrusive evening interrogations with Maelgrum. But here, in his very presence, the Dark Lord had no need of any artefact to reach into Odestus’s psyche and rummage through his thoughts.
For months, the little wizard had buried the secret of Persapha in a dim recess of a purposefully disordered mind. Chaos had its merits, a memory that worked on the bizarrest of chains of connections. Thinking comprised of disparate thoughts fired in rapid succession across the span of his mind, their inter-relatedness only revealed at the split second they were triggered, the train of thought then fading into instant obscurity. Secrets could stay hidden so long as he kept them unthought during the Dark Lord’s enquiry.
The defense had grown organically, as the little wizard sought at first to hide the true extent of his squeamishness, to bury his own humanity so deep that only the very tip protruded to draw Maelgrum’s attention. The same technique had served well to conceal all thoughts of Persapha from Maelgrum’s awareness, to overlay the daughter with images of the mother, to let Maelgrum misapprehend a love for the living as being a grief for the dead. After all, the Dark Lord lacked the skills, or perhaps simply the memory, to distinguish between those emotions.
However, all that concealment and obfustication had been possible when and whilst Maelgrum inspected Odestus’s mind from a distance through the medallion’s mediation. And only whilst Maelgrum lacked the inclination or the suspicion to inspect his servant’s thoughts more closely. But now, in person, enraged and alert to some dissembling, the Dark Lord’s scrutiny was not so easily evaded.
What isss thisss? the other voice in his head demanded. Why are you ssstill concsserned with our absssent friend Galen?
Odestus perched his consciousness on the image of Galen, trying to find a safe thought to leap to from there.
Isss it that you murdered him? Isss that your guilty sssecret? I would think better of you for it, you mussst know that.
Galen, Galen, Galen. The necromancer’s grinning face hung before Odestus, and then there was the scrap of cloth he had found in the heart of the volcano. Oh shit. His thoughts were straying. Hold the thought, hold the thought. He fixed on the image of the cloth, the torn red cloth. He held it in his mind’s eye.
What are you hiding little wizard? What are you hiding?
The cloth, the fucking cloth, hold the cloth.
A cold hand reached into his mind, reached for the cloth and snatched it away and there, there smiling at him was the image of Persapha in the little graveyard, by the subterranean lake. Oh shit, oh shit.
The Medusssa! Maelgrum’s startled first thought was quickly reassessed as freezing fingers reached for Odestus’s memories.
A medusssa? Another medusssa? Dema’sss daughter? Dema had a daughter?
Odestus was trembling with effort but every mental defence was crumbling. Tears were freezing on his cheeks as he knew every thought, every moment of memory of Persapha would soon be in Maelgrum’s possession.
Dema had a daughter? Where isss ssshe? Where have you hidden her, Odessstusss, ssshow me!
Odestus’s fingers flicked and twitched as he summoned a spell. Maelgrum saw the thought that shaped the action and, inside Odestus’s head, he laughed.
You can’t burn me, little wizard, not with that tawdry little ssspell. I am not sssome troll you can ssset ablaze. I can’t burn.
“But I can,” Odestus declared. And he did.
Maelgrum fled from the little wizard’s mind with a shriek as the little wizard’s body was wreathed in flame and pure physical pain filled Odestus’s consciousness. Through the fire that consumed him, Odestus saw Maelgrum watching in stunned silence. He stepped back, his limbs still answering his commands despite the flames blistering the hands that he held up before his face.
With a physical jolt, Maelgrum shot into his mind again. Where isss ssshe? Where have you hidden thisss Persssepha?
Odestus flung himself away, backwards, over the edge of the battlements and he was falling, falling and burning, chased by Maelgrum’s mind. The little wizard’s fingers worked in tortured patterns as the rush of cold air extinguished the flames, but the dawn light now shone on the rocks rushing up to meet him and still Maelgrum’s malice searched his pain ridden mind.
Where isss ssshe, Odessstusss? Where have you hidden her?
***
“Your Majesty, your Majesty?” A voice dragged Niarmit from her slumber. A man stood over her, so far away she thought she must be lying on the ground, but if it were so then the earth was lurching like an ocean swell. She struggled to push herself up on one elbow and realised that she was being borne on a stretcher held by four tired and stumbling soldiers. The man walking anxiously beside them, his head over five feet feet from hers was the towering Lord Torsden. “Where are you hurt?” he demanded.
“I’m fine.” She couldn’t quite suppress a wince as she sat up. The shift in her weight almost undid the faltering balance of her stretcher bearers, and she submitted without protest to the gentle pressure of Torsden’s hand on her shoulder pushing her back down.
“How long have I slept?” The sky was bright, the sun high, its glare partially eclipsed by Torsden’s head. “It must be nearly midday.”
She glanced to either side. Corporal Raskstal’s battered company were her escort, marching ever eastwards. Eriksen was one of her stretcher bearers and another soldier led her horse.
“It is an hour to noon, your Majesty,” Torsden said. “I rode out in search of you as soon as Pietrsen told me of your plan.”
Niarmit gave a slim smile. “Then he found you, and the boy Jay?”
“Yes, a little after dawn.” Torsden frowned, eyeing the eastern horizon. “I could not credit it, that he let you go alone to face the trolls. It was… it was not…”
“It was an order, Lord Torsden. I gave the Master of Horse an order. He obeyed it.”
“Not all orders should be obeyed, your Majesty.” The Northern Lord stared down at her, eyebrows knitted with concern. “You could have been killed, you nearly were.”
“By the Grace of the Goddess I was not though.” Niarmit reached for her throat, clutching at the fine chain on which the crescent symbol hung, and next to it the royal ankh still glowing its steady pink hue. “Some other force dispelled my enemy and gave me time to staunch the wounds she’d made.” She frowned. Dema conjured from the past, the ankh flaring to show Hepdida in mortal peril, and Dema dismissed. The sequence of events could not be mere coincidence. “Have you had any word from Laviserve, Lord Tordsen? Some news of how things are in Rugan’s domain, perhaps of my cousin?”
Torsden shook his head. “No word at all from the east, your Majesty. The only one I have spoken with save Pietrsen, was a certain Captain Carlsen who marches an hour ahead of you.”
“And Johanssen?”
Torsden held her gaze. “He is a brave man, your Majesty. He had bid them leave him behind and make their own way at a faster pace to whatever safety they could find. Carlsen would not hear of it, but he was most anxious to get the constable to a priest. His injuries were grievous enough and no matter how gently they bore him, the journey will only weaken his condition. I think the swoon he had fallen into when I passed was a blessing from the Goddess.”
Niarmit sat up, swinging her feet round in a move that challenged her stretcher bearers and unsettled her own sense of balance. “I can heal him,” she said staggering upright and finding she had to catch more firmly at Torsden’s arm than she had int
ended.
“You are not well your Majesty, a priestess should first heal herself before she seeks to aid others.”
She straightened up, ignoring how the stabbing pain in her side felt as though Dema had wounded her anew. “I am fine, get my horse, let me ride to him.”
Raskstal barked an order at the man leading the queen’s horse. Torsden snapped a countermand. Niarmit glared at him; her anger made a useful focus to save her from falling down. “You are not well enough. Besides, Carlsen will be within reach of the main column before you could fetch up with him. There are bearers of the crescent there who can tend to him.”
“How far away are they?” Niarmit pursed her lips at this fresh news. “And how quickly are they moving, if a troop of wounded can catch up with them.”
“Not so any leagues away, Your Majesty. We should catch them ourselves well before nightfall.”
She gripped his arm again, though this time more for emphasis than support. “We cannot move so slow, Lord Torsden. The enemy will be at our heels in an instant. The trolls may be destroyed, but Maelgrum has many other allies with which to beset us. A swift retreat into Medyrsalve is our only hope.”
“Our soldiers could march faster, your Majesty,” Torsden admitted. “But the refugees could not. Besides the inhabitants of Colnham, most of the villages we pass are emptying, their people struggling with small wheeled mountains of possessions. We could not leave them as chaff to be swept aside as the enemy pursues us.”
“No, we could not.” Niarmit acquiesced with a slow nod. She ran a hand over her hair and then turned to jab a finger at Torsden’s chest. “But this is no time for worldly goods. Send a rider back, tell them my orders. All handcarts are to be burnt. The refugees must walk ahead of the army. Any who slacken from the pace must be stripped of any possessions they carry until either they can walk fast enough or they bear nothing more than the clothes on their back.”
“As you command, your Majesty.”
“And send scouts to the west, let us have news of the enemy’s movements.”
“It is already done, your Majesty. It seems so far that the Dark Lord has been somewhat laggardly in his pursuit. Perhaps he lost his impetus with the trolls.”
Niarmit scowled. It was possible that the reverse inflicted on Dema and her force had unsettled Maelgrum. It was equally possible that he was toying with them allowing them to accumulate an unwieldy train of refugees before hastening after them. Even zombies could walk faster than wounded soldiers and the fleeing old, sick and lame of all the villages between Colnham and Medyrsalve. He would guess that she could not abandon them and he would count that a weakness to be exploited.
However, whether it were by accident or design that Maelgrum had not yet raised the chase, she had no choice but to make the best speed they could and to hope for help that could not come.
***
It was peaceful in the heart of the volcano. The phosphorescent lichen on the walls was in its dormant phase, casting a dull light not unlike the starlight nights on the surface of Grithsank. Vlyndor patted down the earth over Lyndat’s grave. They had reinterred her bones and those of all the other karib recovered at some peril from the desert. The tribe had accepted, with a view no less unanimous for beng unvoiced, that the dead as well as the living should return to reclaim the home they had been driven from.
So, once more Vlyndor sat in the graveyard alone with his thoughts and the young medusa. Persapha scrabbled on her hands and knees, reaching in the dirt within the mushroom fields. Her quick hands closed on something and she tossed it behind her, a small dark shape no bigger than a thumb.
But the little reptile saw it, its eyes swivelling to follow the object in its flight and a long sticky tongue shot out and snared the unfortunate beetle in mid air. Then, as fast as Vlyndor could blink, the bulbous ended tongue shot back into the creature’s mouth which closed with a satisfied crunch. Persapha laughed. “He is so quick,” she exclaimed. Then straight away she was scraping through the dirt seeking another hard coated morsel for her new found pet.
The chameleon took a couple of splay footed steps towards her, head tilting as it tried to anticipate the trajectory of the next offering.
“You should not over feed him, Persapha,” Vlyndor said kindly.
There was a stillness from the girl, she held herself unmoving for a moment, save for the agitated slithering of the serpents beneath her hood. Then she shook her shoulders briskly, as though iced water had been poured down her spine. The hooded snakes fell silent, and she said a little petulantly, “I’m not going to. Just one more.”
“Just one more,” Vlyndor agreed. He knew he should be alarmed by this monster he had raised who now struggled to bite her temper at every minor rebuke. But he did not fear her, so much as fear for her. He was old by the measure of his people and the medusa would long outlive him. He should give some thought to what arrangements would be made for when he was gone. He stretched out his tail, flexing the tip before curling it once more over his three toed feet.
He had been a fool. He should have planned for this long ago. He should have begun planning when Lyndat died. She would have made him. He shook his head in self chastisement as he sat at his wife’s graveside. He should have found someone else whom Persapha could trust and more importantly, someone who would trust Persapha.
As the medusa grew into adulthood it was becoming more of a strain for her to chain the temper that flared within her. A karib village was never a place riven with conflict and disharmony, but there were enough checks on self-interest to frustrate a karib child, or a wilful adult. She needed a touchstone, someone who would always remind her of the good that lay within her, of the person she really was. The tribe knew not what to make of her. It was not in their nature to think evil or do evil. She was one of their own bred in their ways from the moment her unnatural form had hatched. Yet the simple tennents of karib life, of consideration, of altruism, of courtesy had not tamed the beast within her. Her nature threatened ever more insistently to break through the years of nurture.
He would have to work fast, find someone who would take on the mantle of her chaperone, while he was still there to mentor them. A karib handful of names was all that came immediately to mind. He tried to think which one might prove most able to take on this challenge, but then chirped a note of self-rebuke. He must start with Persapha’s view as to who she thought most sympathetic.
The medusa looked up from her beetle drive at the click of Vlyndor’s tongue. “Persapha,” he said. “We need to talk.”
His serious tone drew a frown from his young charge. “I think I’ll call him Bob,” she said.
“Who?” Vlyndor clucked a little irritation as he was lured into her distraction.
“The lizard,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to meet a Bob.” She tossed a second beetle and the lizard caught it with the same accurate shot of a sticky globular tongue. “Good boy, Bob,” she applauded.
“Persapha,” Vlyndor added volume and a seasoning of impatience to his serious tone.
“What was that?” she cried.
He sliced his hand sideways in a bid to urge her silence.
“No,” she said. “I heard something, out on the lake, a splash.”
“It is probably just Kolyn landing a fish,” Vlyndor insisted. “He says they come bigger in the dark.”
Persapha stuck her tongue out at him, waggling the tip of the absurdly short fat organ. “You’re angry with me,” she said. “I can taste it.”
Vlyndor let his own forked tongue sample the air between them. His eyes widened. “And you are scared.”
She sat cross legged on the ground and Bob the lizard stalked over towards her, lifting diametric pairs of legs in a high stepping gait into her lap. She reached to scratch the loose skin beneath the creature’s chin. “You’re going to send me away aren’t you?”
“Never.” It came out louder than he intended, loud enough to make her look up sharply from the animal in her lap.
“You are not Galen, you are nothing like Galen.”
She laughed. It was not a happy sound. “I hoped when I came back that it would be different. That if I was here, home again, those urges would die away. But they haven’t Vlyndor.”
“You just need a friend, someone besides on old fool like me. Someone more your own age to help you.”
She said something to the lizard, something so soft he could not hear it over the splash of boat paddles on the lake. “What was that?”
She looked up then her gauze clad eyes boring into his H shaped pupils. “I’ll run away,” she said. “When it gets too much, or just before, if I judge it right. I’ll run away, into the desert.”
“Persapha,” the name was ripped from his mouth. “You cannot, there are sand snakes and land sharks, never mind the dragons.”
“And I will pray it is a land shark or a dragon that finds me first,” she said. “But whichever it is doesn’t really matter. I’ll not outlive you Vlyndor.”
“Now that’s a cruel and unkind thing to say to him that hatched you,” Vlyndor blinked, a fast flutter of eyelids flickering in dismay.
She reached a hand towards him as the karib looked down at the ground, old head shaking at the torrent of emotions coursing through him. How could she harbour such dark thoughts? What despair could possibly make her think of self-destruction?
There was a splash close by, where the waters of the lake lapped at the shore beneath the graveyard. Kolyn’s skiff had grounded in the shallow beach and the karib fisherman was chittering high pitched calls of alarm.