by T. O. Munro
She shook her head and howled.
“This is the only way, girl,” his words came from an empty throne and she was alone.
She hesitated, not daring to look, but she had no choice. She slipped into the throne that Eadran had vacated and pulled the Helm down on her head. She saw what she knew she would see. Eadran the Vanquisher infront of her striding again across the Salved kingdom. Of Kimbolt there was no sign.
“Is he in there with you?” she demanded.
“He sleeps, like they all do.” Eadran bent to pick up The Father and The Son from where he had dropped them.
“I want you to tell him something from me,” she said.
“We have not the time for that,” Eadran said glancing at the bright western horizon as he handed her The Son. “I have not the time for that.”
“You must,” she pleaded.
Eadran shook his head. “Just work with me girl, and wait for my word.” He stiffened, sniffing the air. “He comes.” The Vanquisher span away to face a dark oval that was opening in the air.
Maelgrum stepped through it with easy grace. “At lassst, Eadran, we sssee each other clear,” his soft voice crowed.
Eadran set upon him with an attack of blinding speed, but Maelgrum was equal to it. Niarmit, driven by furious grief swung her own sword at the fray, but Maelgrum fended her off with ease, another sharp poke of his blade setting her on her backside saved from injury only by the power of the Helm.
Eadran leapt on Maelgrum in the opening. Dazed, Niarmit clambered to her feet, her awareness hovering between the real world and the Domain of the Helm. There was only one white throne now, and a thin stream of dust was falling from the ceiling as the palace of Eadran’s creation began to fade and crumble.
She refocussed her attention and sprang at Maelgrum’s back, but the Dark Lord ducked sideways in anticipation and her thrust nearly skewered Eadran who had not the advantage of the Helm’s defences to protect him.
Queen and Vanquisher separated and raised their blades just in time to intercept the downward slash of Maelgrum’s red sword. They held him there a moment, their strength against his and then flung him back.
Eadran gave her the slightest glance of recognition a curt grunt of approval, “’girl.” And then they were back into the fray, alternating positions as Eadran launched a strike and Niarmit stepped in to absorb the riposte.
The pace was furious. There was no time or space to think of anything else but matching his blade with hers. She saw Maelgrum curl his fingers in another lightning spell. She was off balance, unable to interpose herself as ward. But Eadran countered with a shimmering shield which shattered at the lightning bolt’s blow, but still absorbed its deadly energy.
Dust fell on her in the Domain of the Helm, the chamber yawned open on a dull grey sky. Everything that Eadran had wrought in that place was dying with his departure. Soon there would be nothing but the gilded throne and the white throne.
And still the desparate swordplay rang. The dusk air hummed, the steel sang. They circled wary, weary armed. Leaden legged, but yet unharmed.
A movement in the Domain of the Helm drew Niarmit’s eye and in that moment of distraction Maelgrum slammed his blade into her sword just below the hilt twisting his wrist in a viscious move that all but wrenched The Son from her grasp. She staggered and spun, wary of losing the Helm and its protection. Eadran darted in with a cry and a clash of steel, white blade on red.
Disorientated, Niarmit swung wildly, there was a shadow before her eyes, but which eyes.
“Threnspawn whore,” a thin voice hissed. With a lurch of her stomach, Niarmit refocused her attention on the Domain of the Hell, Chirard freed from the Vanquisher’s petrifying enchantment loomed before her, arms stretched for the Helm. She seized at it two handed, in her panic making the move in both the hidden plane and the material world so that The Son tumbled uselessly to the ground.
“Give it to me, bitch,” the scent of burning filled her nostrils as Chirard seized the lip of the Helm’s avatar. She clenched her eyes in fierce concentration and found herself seeing the hilltop battle between Maelgrum and the Vanquisher.
Eadran saw her, her hands clamped to the Helm, her mouth screaming in both places, “No, Chirard!” The Vanquisher flung himself in desperate fury at Maelgrum, keeping him distracted from Niarmit’s plight with flashing strokes of his sword. The Dark Lord circled round, his focus intent on the furious foe before him. He pressed hard in turn, with swingeing blows of his red blade, so that Eadran stumbled back, stumbled and fell.
Maelgrum loured low over Eadran as his one time Vanquisher scrambled back across the earth. The lich drew back his sword, and Eadran raised The Father to fend him off. Over his attacker’s shoulder Eadran met Niarmit’s gaze and he winked, and then he flung his arms out wide, laying himself open to Maelgrum’s thrust.
The lich took his chance, driving his red blade in and through the Vanquisher’s body and adding a twist of his wrist that had Eadran’s already paling face, wince with pain.
“NO!” Niarmit screamed again, and in the domain she raised her knee and flung the scalded Kinslayer tumbling down the steps of the dais. For all his smoking injuries, Chirard was quick to roll and rise, and turn for a fresh assault on the prize he craved.
But Niarmit took her chance, lifting the Helm high to leave the Domain forever. Entirely in the material world once more she slammed the cursed arrtefact down on Maelgrum’s head.
***
Jay was dragged back to consciousness by a visceral howl. It was a many textured scream, falsetto squeals mingling with deep bass moans as of a hundred different beasts burning in agony. Acrid smoke filled his nostrils and bit at the back of his throat to provoke a spluttering cough. He struggled upright, gave a shriek of his own at the pain in his arm, though the sound of his own cry barely troubled his ears above the keening scream that filled his senses. It was bright, bright as noon so he had to hold his good hand fingers splayed against the light and squint at the blazing sun that had descended onto the hilltop.
It was not a sun, it was Maelgrum, the Dark Lord wreathed in bright flames as he twisted and turned his hands clamped to a helm, the Helm, set firmly upon his head. But there was no purchase for his charred fingers, his hands slipped like oil across the metal surface. Though any oil would have surely burned for the Helm was blowing a dull red colour and getting brighter.
Jay turned away from the blinding light and saw the queen crawling backwards across the ground dragging an injured man behind her. Her face was obscured by her red hair as a powerful inward draft of air blew it towards the pillar of flaming lich. The same air fed the flames and rose with them sending a column of fire high into the air.
The queen had her hands under the injured man’s arms pulling him away from the roasting heat. Jay did not recognise who it was, just a powerfully built man of middle years, a high forehead slick with sweat above a face that was pale even with the firey red illumination.
The red was turning yellow now, then white. Jay looked back at the intense heat. It was a flame of pure white through which only dim outlines of shapes could be seen. The Helm was a dome of incandescence in a sea of white. The roar of fire and the inrushing wind that fed it had quite drowned out the screams. A figure stood tall within the glowing heat and then there was one last flash so bright and white that it filled and held Jay’s vision in a long embrace and only the silence told him that the fire was over.
***
“That’ll be the magnesium,” Eadran murmured as Niarmit cradled him in her arms.
She had been looking at the Vanquisher’s pale face, peering into his fading eyes when the last flash came and so her eyes were not blinded by the light. She turned and looked at the spot where Maelgrum had stood. There was nothing there. No Dark Lord. No Helm. Just a crater burned in the ground and lined with a fine white ash.
“Is he dead?”
Eadran shook his head, spilling a drop of blood from the corner of his mouth. “That which
is already dead can not be killed.”
“Then where is he? Did he escape?”
Eadran coughed a bloody laugh. “His body was ensnared and destroyed, his soul had to go somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Into the Domain of the Helm.”
“But the Helm’s gone. It’s destroyed. It’s ash.”
Eadran nodded. “The Helm was the only route in, or out, for anyone.”
“Then he’s trapped in the Domain of the Helm?”
Eadran blinked a weary agreement.
“With Chirard the Kinslayer?”
Eadran’s mouth twitched in a ghostly smile.
“He’s really gone, they’re both really gone.”
“They’re never coming back girl. They’ll never die and they’ll never escape.”
Niarmit’s mouth flattened with grim satisfaction. “No better prison for the pair of them.”
“Hey!” Jay called from the other side of the crater, blinking streaming tears away from his eyes and pointing down the slope. “What’s that? Who’s coming? I can just see shapes.”
Niarmit followed the line of his outstretched hand. Figures were climbing the hill towards them, a dozen or so, in borrowed arms and armour. The monarchs had come, a sombre sober gathering as the last few minutes of daylight slipped away. Some like the Dragonsoul and Danlak had found death early on the battlefield, the others wore the stains of combat with a certain pride. Bulveld the Third was splattered with the gore of a multitude of sundered orcish skulls.
Eadran stirred restlessly in Niarmit’s arms.
“Easy,” she said holding him close as the monarchs spread around them in a circle of silent homage. “Don’t try to move.” The blood pooling in her lap was testimony enough of the slim chance Eadran had of making it the mere seconds to sunset.
He shook his head, “must tell you.” His hoarse whisper drew her close. “I was wrong.”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“I was wrong about immortality. There are only four ways, four true ways to live on after death.”
She held the rambling monarch close. “The first is in the things we make that endure,” he glanced at the discarded swords of The Father and The Son. “Some more than others.”
“The second is in the memories that we sow in the minds of others.” He reached a bloody hand to stroke her cheek as she bent over him.
“The third is in the habits we teach which, whether we mean them to or no, others follow us in.” He looked across the crater to where Thren the First slipped uncomfortably from his gaze sidling behind the tall figure of Bulveld the First, longshanks. His voice was barely a whisper. “And the fourth and greatest immortality, lies in the children we leave behind us.”
“Is Kimbolt there with you?” she asked him. But the power of speech had gone from Eadran. He drew ragged painful breaths and stared at his son’s shoulder. “Tell him, if he can hear me, tell him…” But speech had deserted Niarmit too and she washed the Vanquisher’s face with her tears.
She saw a blur of movement through her watery eyes and looked up, her vision clearing briefly as the tears drained away. Santos was padding across the circle, bringing Thren the First by the hand. He bid the Vanquisher’s son kneel by his dying father and then pressed their hands together. Thren bowed his head and Eadran blinked his gratitude and seized his son’s hand with a grip that for all its puniness carried every scrap of strength he had left.
“Late again,” Queen Baltheza curtly observed as a final monarch joined the ring. “Where were you? Talking to trees?”
“I had some letters to write,” portly Gregor said. “Many things to explain.”
“We had a battle to fight,” Mitalda told him.
“Did we win?” Gregor asked.
“We did,” Thren the Seventh told him.
“A great victory,” Mitalda said.
“The greatest,” Niarmit’s father added taking a step towards his daughter.
“Then why is the queen crying so?” portly Gregor mumbled unhappy with his own confusion.
And the tears would not stop.
“I am in your debt beyond measure, Niarmit,” her father told her. He laid a hand on her shoulder and she reached for it and squeezed his fingers tight. “If the Goddess is willing, I may yet see Prince Matteus again and tell him what a daughter he raised, and tell your mother what a daughter she bore.”
“We are all in your debt,” Mitalda said.
As the sun slipped behind the mountains, gentle Thren spoke in his mild eastern twang, “The Goddess herself is in your debt, Queen Niarmit.”
With the coming of night, the monarchs began to glow with a ghostly yellow light. Against the odds Eadran had lasted to sunset, drawing ragged breaths through blood drowned lungs and Niarmit held him close and tight as the monarchs all fell to a gentle shower of glowing dust.
And the abandoned queen cradled the Vanquisher’s body, tears tumbling through clenched eyes as the day faded and she sat waiting for flesh to turn to dust and leave her all alone once more but still her arms closed round a hard physical presence.
“Look,” Jay said with a tremor in his voice.
She opened her eyes. The body in her arms had not crumbled, nor had it died. She looked down and blinked. Kimbolt lay in her arms in full rude good health, unharmed by anything save confusion.
She gasped and pulled him close and felt a light fluttering in the pit of her stomach as though a butterfly were trapped there. And then it came again another tiny kick of the life within her. She seized Kimbolt’s hand and pressed it to her belly. “It is our child Kimbolt,” she said.
Epilogue
They were all gathered in the graveyard by the lake at the volcano’s heart. The ceremony was done, the song was sung and the karib filtered away to honour the dead with their honest toil and private mourning. Two alone stayed behind. The tall cloaked girl and the squat figure beside her gripping her forearm as much for support as for condolence.
Persapha dabbed at the tears that stained her cheeks. “He shouldn’t have died,” she said. “It’s not fair.”
“He saved you,” came a hoarse answer. “He kept you safe from your greatest foe all your life. That is his achievement, his legacy to you.”
“I don’t want a legacy. I want him here, beside me, with you.”
“We cannot all have what we want, we must be grateful for what we have.” Her companion held up a clawed hand, three scaly twisted fingers. “He saved me too. He saved you from your inner demons and he brought me back from the fire, well brought most of me back.”
Persapha nodded. “He was a good karib.”
“The best,” Odestus added looking down at the simple stone set next to Lyndat’s. “If I should ever chance to catch fire again I will remind myself that they know nothing of healing burns who have not lived beneath the shadow of dragons in Grithsank.”
Persapha took his maimed hand in hers and stroked the wrinkled burned skin from the bald patch above the little wizard’s missing right ear down to his scarred neck. “It has healed well,” she said.
He smiled and the left hand side of his face lit up with something like pleasure. “You are a dreadful liar, Persapha, but I am a lot less dead than I deserve to be and that is miracle enough.”
“Bob,” she exclaimed as the little lizard high stepped its way across the freshly turned mound of earth. “Have you no respect?”
The chameleon opened its mouth to display a hopeful tongue. Odestus looked down with half a smile. “You have spoiled him,” he said. “Long years of being hand fed are not good for a reptile. It makes them lazy.” He rubbed his own scarred skin, its texture not unlike the lizard’s though the colour was a more violent mix of pinks than the muted shifting shades of the chameleon’s scales. “I should know, you hand fed me for long enough.”
Persapha scooped the chameleon up in her arms. “He’s not spoiled are you, Bob?” She stuck out her tongue at the lizard tasting the air between them. “He t
hinks you’re being very mean.”
Odestus hesitated rolling the thought around in his head before daring to make the suggestion. “Would he perhaps forgive me if I took him on a trip? If I took us all on a trip?”
Persapha wrinkled her nose. “We can’t go outside. The sandsnakes will be in season.”
“I wasn’t thinking of outside,” he said quickly. “I was thinking of going home. A one way trip home.”
She stood very still, she did even seem to be breathing and for a long drawn out moment he did not dare to draw a rasping breath.
“I thought you said you couldn’t,” she spoke all in a rush. “I thought you said you’d never be able to, that you were too injured.” She jerked her chin towards his twisted hand.
“It’s not easy,” he admitted. “I’m slower at everything than I used to be. But I’ve been practicing. I think I can do it.”
“I can’t leave here,” she looked around her suddenly frightened. The karib were at work in the fields or pushing skiffs out onto the lake. A few of the younger children splashed in the shadows. “These are my family.”
“They are your tribe, Persapha and they love you dearly. But they are not your family. Vlyndor was your family and he is gone now. It is time you went home.”
She set the lizard down on the ground. “I’m not ready,” she said. “Bob’s not ready. We need more time.”
Odestus raised his hands, both the three fingered right and the five fingered left up towards her head. Gently he pushed back the hood of her cloak. “You are ready, Persapha,” he said as her long blond hair tumbled free. “You’ve been ready for two and a half years.” He looked into those deep brown eyes so like her mother’s. “It is time we all went home.”
***
The rain battered at the shutters of the Dragonsoul Inn and the wind howled over the chimney top teasing the fire into long strands of flaming life. Ailsa wiped down the bar with a rag and grumbled at her plight. “Every night,” she muttered to the uncaring saloon. “Every night I’m left on my own. Grown man shouldn’t get an attack of the vapours, leastways not every night.”