by T. O. Munro
Kimbolt saw a familiar slight figure treading gracefully from one pool of light to another, the silk of his shirt flapping loosely in the slight breeze. “Sir Vahnce,” Kimbolt hailed him. “How goes it with the division of Oostsalve?”
The black clad knight looked about him at the bustle of activity. “Much as it does here, Seneschal,” he said. “We are carving some surprises into the hillside. Though I think we have more advantage of our position than you.”
Kimbolt nodded. The steepness of the slope increased as the ridge jutted further south east into the shallow valley. Vahnce’s command held the position beyond Torsden’s where the slope of the ground was so steep that no assault could proceed faster than a walking pace, and even then the attackers would be sorely drained of energy by their approach. The only soldiers beyond Vahnce were archers, predominantly those left by Rugan to man Colnhill. Their station was at the highest point at the southern tip of the ridge, the incline made them virtually unassailable while the height would add a hundred yards range to their arrows.
“Still, my Lord Seneschal,” Vahnce looked into the gloom of the western night where a force more than twice as large would be marching on their position. “I think your station will carry more honour.”
“There are enough of the enemy that we will all find plenty of honour to win tomorrow,” Kimbolt said. The neighing of a horse caught his ear. He glanced towards the rear of their line where the ridge flattened out towards a shallow summit. “The cavalry will like as not be charging from one end of the ridge to the other as they are needed.”
Vahnce nodded. “A reserve of under two thousand is small enough, but at least they are mounted. I do not think that Master of Horse Pietrsen will have too long to wait before he is sent into battle.”
Kimbolt frowned. The cavalry were mostly made of Nordsalve horsemen, but there were the lancers that he and Jolander had brought and a few horsemen of Medyrsalve who owed as much loyalty to him as to the saturnine Lord of Nordsalve.
Vahnce read his look. “I would have thought,” he said with some care. “That the command of the mounted reserve might more properly have fallen on the post of seneschal.”
Kimbolt kicked at the dirt, digging out an ankle twisting pothole with his heel. The busy days and nights had left him little time to reflect on how far his duties had kept him from Niarmit’s side. “This is a station of high honour.” He encompassed his command with a broad sweep of his hand.
Vahnce frowned. “Forgive me if I speak out of turn, Seneschal, but the queen, she did not seem to hold your counsel as highly as I would have expected.”
The hole beneath his foot was deep now. Kimbolt used his toe to scuff it wide enough to take a foot. “She is much vexed about the crown princess. She fears for her safety and I have regrettably had only uncertainty to offer her on that score.” He looked up. “She holds me accountable for that, and for other things.”
Vahnce sucked in a breath through pursed lips. “But she knows the nature of Maia’s lies?”
Kimbolt shrugged. “We have not had the opportunity for that conversation. It is a private matter and in this turbulent retreat there has been no moment when we two have been alone where I could raise the subject.”
“She doesn’t know?”
“As she says, this is no time for purely personal concerns, Sir Vahnce. We have a battle to fight, a nation to preserve. When that is done perhaps we may speak of smaller matters.”
Vahnce shook his head slowly. “The truth is never a small matter, Seneschal.”
***
The Palace of the Helm was a sprawling mess of different architectural styles. That much Niarmit had seen when viewing the structure from the calm tranquillity of Santos’s garden. From inside, the confusion was all the more baffling as Gregor led her up winding stairs and along twisted corridors.
“I should stay with the Helm,” she protested looking over her shoulder. She had seen little of the palace’s interior beyond the Chamber of the Helm and a few connecting passageways. She hoped she could navigate her way back to the heart of Eadran’s creation and the link through the Helm to the real world. “There is a battle being prepared. They will have need of me.”
“And if they should come into your tent, my dear, all they will see is the queen asleep, albeit wearing the Helm. No one would begrudge you a few minutes rest.”
“Maelgrum’s army will be upon us in a few short hours. I have not the time for riddles, father.”
He stopped and smiled at her. She looked away, fiddling with a stray strand of hair. She had never called him ‘father’ before. What would Prince Matteus have said?
“This will not take long,” Gregor assured her. He flung open a door and ushered her in. “Welcome to my home.” It was a roughly shaped and furnished chamber, unfinished stone walls and a bed of crude design and manufacture. “We have all taken or fashioned rooms for ourselves here in the palace,” he said. “So we are close at hand when you attend upon the Helm.” He spread his arms wide. “These are my quarters.”
She glanced around at the spartan room. Rough spun clothes flung over blunt chairs, a dull curtain draped over a long mirror, a carpet of fibres so coarse it could have excoriated the soles of any foolish enough to walk unshod across it. She nodded slowly searching for some compliment to offer that would not be immediately transparent as vain flattery. “It is very understated.”
Gregor stood foursquare, his hands on his hips. “Aye, I’ve not the trick of creation my fellows have mastered. I can see well enough what lies infront of me, but imagining what I wish to see infront of me, that does not come with such clarity or precision. Still, I did not bring you here in search of compliments.”
“Then why did you bring me here?”
“I have not forgotten what day tomorrow is, Niarmit. Have you?”
“It is the day we must defeat Maelgrum.”
He stepped towards her, stretching his hand towards her cheek. “Tomorrow is the longest day, the high point of summer.”
“I know that too.” She blinked.
“It is your birthday, Niarmit,” he said it softly sadly almost. “You will be twenty-four, a score and four if you like.”
She shrugged. “We did not mark it much, Matteus and I,” she said. “It was an anniversary which brought my father sorrow as well as joy.”
Gregor nodded. “I know, but I remembered it always and said a prayer for you and for your mother. Even after Bledrag field, when I thought you were lost.”
Niarmit sighed. “Then you observed it better than I did.”
He took her hand and drew her towards the cloth covered mirror. “I have a gift for you. It is not much, but I doubt there will be time to share it on the morrow.”
“You are too kind,” she said mechanically ready to make some automatic reflex of gratitude as he pulled the cloth from the mirror and then she gasped. It was not a mirror, but a painting, a portrait of a young woman. She was dressed in a green gown of simple elegance. Dark hair tumbled over her shoulders. Her body was turned to one side, but her face and bold green eyes were looking straight at the artist. A smile played across her lips of some untold but joyous secret and her gaze drilled into Niarmit’s eyes.
“It is your mother,” he said.
“I know,” her dry mouth croaked out an answer. “I recognise it from the one in my father’s study.” But to draw the comparison was to flatter the painting that had hung all those years on Prince Mattteus’s wall. The woman in that picture had been as beautiful but more distant. A tension had stretched her brow and her eyes were blank, focussed on something other than he who painted her. This was the first depiction of her mother that seemed to Niarmit to show not just a woman who had lived, but a woman who lived still. “Where did you get it?”
He shrugged, “where does a resident of this Domain get anything. I drew it forth from my imagination.”
She looked around at the crude furnishings of the room and then the exquisite detail in the vibrant paintin
g. She reached out to trace with her finger tips a jawline so like her own. She looked into eyes that were so familiar she had might have still thought it was a mirror before her, rather than a picture.
He followed her glance from painting to furniture and back again. “There are some things where memory and imagination serve me better than others,” he said.
She looked at her mother and thought this was how she had looked at Gregor, this is what she had shown him. “She must have loved you,” she said.
“And I loved her,” he shrugged with the simple truth of it. “And I love you no less.”
She clutched at her belly and thought of the child that lay within. By Isobel’s reckoning she was not quite twelve weeks gone. That time of danger was nearly passed, the time before she began to show when nature might by fickle chance have miscarried the life she bore. Yet as her condition grew more certain everything else seemed ever more doubtful. She shook her head and wiped her eyes.
“I did not mean for it to upset you,” Gregor said, reaching for the cloth to cast over the painting.
She laid a hand on his arm to stop him. “Don’t,” she said. “It is beautiful. She is beautiful. Thank you.”
He grimaced uncertainly, but let the cloth fall from his hands. Niarmit looked again into her mother’s eyes. “There is something I must tell you, father.”
“Your Majesty, your Majesty,” the wail of the steward came from the corridor outside.
Gregor did not answer him, but Niarmit with a resigned shake of her head called out, “in here Santos. We are in here.”
The steward bustled into the chamber, wringing his hands and tottering on sandaled feet. “You are attended, your Majesty. A man has come into your tent and seems unwilling to let your physical form repose in slumber.”
“What make of man?” Gregor growled.
“A man dressed in black, he does not go away.”
“I am coming, Santos.”
Gregor coughed. “There was something you were about to tell me,” he said.
“Later, father, later.”
***
The Chamber of the Helm was nearly full when Gregor and his daughter arrived, closely followed by the agitated steward. Gregor knew their hunger for any glimpses of the world in which they had lived; He felt it too. For all the fantastic gifts the Domain could offer to those with the imagination and the skill to use it, there was nothing to compare with experiencing again the world they had lost. Through Niarmit’s body, they could see a plain canvas pavilion, feel the draft which lifted the tent flaps, smell the smoke and spitting fat of camp fires roasting a last feast for exhausted warriors, hear the low chatter of distant voices. It was an experience too real to be readily foregone, so all but the Vanquisher sat upon their thrones sampling the world from which death and Eadran’s magic had torn them.
Gregor slipped into his own seat and closed his eyes as Niarmit lowered the Helm upon her head. A man clad in black stood before her, head tilted to one side, his forehead creased in curiosity. “Your Majesty,” Gregor heard him say, the frown deepening with the repetition of his greeting.
“Yes, Sir Vahnce,” Niarmit said.
Gregor saw the knight step back, as alarmed by the queen’s sudden response as he had been perplexed by her previous silence.
“Forgive me, your Majesty,” he stammered. “I had thought you were sleeping, but when you did not wake at my call I grew worried.”
“I was very tired,” Niarmit said. “But I take it this is a matter of some urgency that you have sought me out at this hour.”
“All matters are urgent tonight, your Majesty.” The knight replied. An uncertain smile flickered across the man’s lips and he opened his mouth to speak, but then there was a noise behind him. He turned with a frown as a priest bustled into the small tent and then stalled his progress at the sight of Vahnce.
“I’m sorry, your Majesty,” the priest muttered. “I had not realised you were attended.”
Through the medium of the Helm, Gregor saw his daughter raise her hand and wave a reassurance at the cleric. “Fear not, Father Novus,” she said. “I did ask you to bring news of the wounded as soon as you were able. I take it that is why you have come.”
Novus gulped. “Yes, your Majesty.”
“And?”
“We have drawn as deeply as we can on the grace of the Goddess and nearly half of them are well enough to stand in the line of battle tomorrow.”
Niarmit nodded. “Another score of soldiers is most welcome, every spear will count. What of the others?”
The priest looked at his toes for a moment and had begun to speak before raising his eyes to look again upon his Queen. “They are in no pain, your Majesty.” He said. “We have made them comfortable but the Goddess has them in her care until their time comes.”
“Johanssen? The Constable?”
“He will not see the dawn, your Majesty.”
Niarmit slumped in her seat. “He was a good man. He is a good man.”
“I’m sorry, your Majesty.”
She shook her head. “You have done all you could. Father Novus. How long?”
“Lord Johanssen has another hour, two at most. There are another twenty who will not be long after him.”
Niarmit nodded. “I will visit them shortly, Father Novus. As soon as Sir Vahnce is done with his embassy.”
The priest bowed a retreat from the tent and Niarmit turned again to the black clad knight of Oostsalve.
“I am sorry about the constable,” he said. “Many good men have been lost in this fight.”
She gave a short nod to acknowledge his condolence. “Indeed, Sir Vahnce, and we will make great demands of a good many more tomorrow. Is the force of Oostsalve ready for what the morning may bring?”
Vahnce nodded. “They are, your Majesty. The ground has been well prepared, their blades have been tested and they are taking a last meal and catching a few hours of sleep before daybreak.”
“Then you have done all that I have asked of you. You should rest too.”
“Kimbolt’s division is also well set,” Vahnce said. Gregor saw a glint in the knight’s gaze and heard another harder purpose behind the soft observation. Niarmit heard it too for he felt her body tense at the mention of the seneschal’s name.
“He is a loyal and efficient soldier.” Her tone was flat and guarded. “I would expect no less from him.”
“Your Majesty.” Vahnce flicked a tongue across his lips. “The Lady Maia…”
“I do not choose to hear of the Lady Maia.” The words shot from his daughter’s mouth. He felt her rage and beneath that a vein of fear so sharp his eyes sprang open to look at her on the gilded throne. Her hands were clamped to the Helm; she meant to raise it from her head, to banish the witnessing monarchs from this conversation.
“She lied!”
Gregor heard the knight call out; his daughter’s hands froze on the Helm.
“She lied, your Majesty,” Sir Vahnce repeated more respectfully.
“What lies, Sir Vahnce,” Niarmit stammered. “What lies did Maia tell?”
Gregor frowned. He could feel the frantic beating of his daughter’s heart. This was a matter of great moment to her and yet it was one of which he knew nothing. Was this the secret she had been about to share by her mother’s portrait?
“She intercepted a letter, your Majesty, meant for another. It never reached its intended recipient, at least not until long after.”
“She intercepted it?”
Vahnce nodded. “And read it, and took a feeble witted associate to a seat in an inn where they would tell outrageous lies, meaning them to be overheard.”
“Lies?” Gregor’s daughter shook her head. “She meant them to be overheard?”
“Aye, your Majesty, and with not one shred of truth in any of them. Pure mischief sown by an evil witch who belongs on the far side of the barrier far more than she does in the parlours of Oostport.”
“No truth, no truth at all?”
/> There was a faint whisper to Gregor’s left. He opened his eyes in the Domain of the Helm. Mitalda had raised her hands from her white throne, Thren the Seventh also had broken the link with Niarmit’s body. The other monarchs were following suit. “This is not for our ears,” Mitalda hissed.
Gregor looked at his daughter on her guilded throne. The Helm masked her eyes, but her lip was trembling. Her hand hovered infront of her mouth stifling some horror she dared not utter. Despite a glare from the Vanquisher’s granddaughter Gregor thrust his hands back on the arms of his white throne and clenched his eyes tight shut, the better to see and hear and feel what touched his daughter’s heart.
“I should go to him,” Niarmit was saying. “I should go to him now.”
The black clad knight graced her with a soft smile. “He would be glad of that, your Majesty, I am sure.”
“Thank you.”
The knight ducked out of the tent and Gregor sat a little straighter in his seat as his daughter turned her attention back to the Domain of the Helm. She raised the avatar of the artefact to survey the monarchs on their white thrones. “How much did you hear?” she asked.
Mitalda gave a careless flick of her wrist. “I stopped listening some moments ago, my dear.”
Thren echoed her in his eastern twang. “We all did.”
“Who is the man that Vahnce spoke of?” Gregor demanded. “What is he to you?”
His daughter levelled a shrewd stare at him. “It is a little late to take an interest in my personal private life.”
“You’re a queen, girl. You don’t get to have a private life.”
“You did,” she shot back at him.
Another voice hailed them both from the far side of the chamber. “I thought there were more pressing matters than these petty personal private concerns.” Eadran stood arms folded in the archway glaring at the assembled company. “Like the imminent arrival of Maelgrum with an army more than twice our size.”