Heart of the Staff - Complete Series

by Carol Marrs Phipps

  “Augh!” said Fnadi-phnig-nyd as he sank with a heavy sigh to sit on a log, hang his head and scratch his neck. “Metal-heads and metal-heads, and fly-out-bites, fly-out-bites, fly-out-bites.” A loon on the lake gave out a long shivering cry.

  “No grab-up-squeakers,” said Ni-oowfn, rubbing his chin, “too much far-eye.”

  “No plenty-to-eat here...” said Tref-ni-fryd as he went wide eyed at the sight of Dyr-jinyr-yy on his knees, rolling a stone ball out of a leather bag. “Fnadi-yaphin said: 'If you need me,'“ said Dyr-jinyr-yy with a derisive chuckle, as he batted the ball back and forth between his hands.

  Everyone laughed.

  “What does it do?” said Vyf-japf.

  “Nothing,” said Dyrjinyryy with beady-eyed amusement, still rolling the ball about on the spongy mat of spruce needles, as everyone laughed more uproariously than before.

  ***

  “Well here I am, off to the throne room to get things started with Captain Boar,” said Spitemorta in short breaths, as she heaved forward from Demonica's bed, struggling onto her feet. “You didn't say what you plan on doing while I'm busy arranging everything with the skinweleriou.”

  “Why, why would you ever ask such a thing?” said Demonica. “You know very well that I'll be helping you carry out all of your...”

  “Aaah!” wailed Spitemorta at the sight of the puddle she found herself standing in. “It's too early for the twins.”

  “Pooh!” said Demonica with an airy shrug. “Babies come when they come. Besides, twins usually are early. Who knows? Maybe they just get tired of being crowded.” She took Spitemorta by the arm. “Be that as it may, I'd prefer your giving birth in your own apartment.”

  “Grandmother! I can't believe it! It's not as if it can't be cleaned up,” she said as she went falsetto with a commanding contraction. “And it's not like I wouldn't rather be there, either. Couldn't we use a traveling spell as we did when we came up here with your wagon?”

  “Nay. 'Way too risky now that you've started. Either walk or stay.”

  “I'm walking,” said Spitemorta with another squeak.

  “You'll be lying down right here, I think,” said Demonica as she patted one of the pillows on her bed.

  “Fie! Very well then, why?”

  Doesn't it seem that your pains are awfully close together, dear?”

  “Now that you mention it, yes. You think this is a false alarm?”

  “Your water broke, remember?” said Demonica, hiking her eyebrows with a laugh. “You won't begin to make it all the way back.”

  “Aaang!” yelled Spitemorta. She sat back on the bed.

  Demonica gave a nod and tugged on the bell pull.

  “Yes, mistress?” said the maid with a curtsey as her eyes went wide.

  “She's giving birth right here, could you please?... Snap out of it, dear! Fetch the midwife and get something to clean up. Now!”

  “Aaaah!” wailed Spitemorta before giving three or four pants and backing further onto the bed.

  “Oh, do control yourself, Spitemorta!” snapped Demonica as she planted her fists on her hips. “You're supposed to be queen. Act like it!”

  “Easy for you to say,” she said between pants. “You're not the one bearing twins.”

  “That's a mercy, isn't it? I didn't get pregnant, and you didn't have to either.”

  “I didn't do it by myself, Grandmother! Aaaaa! Aaaaaah!”

  “True, true, dear,” she said as she drew up a chair and sat. “Would you have me to send to the dungeon for the one who helped you do this, so that he can share in your joyous moment?”

  “How can you say that? Have you been down there? James reeks. He looks like the living dead. I'll not have him anywhere near my babies.”

  “Oh. Well, I guess that takes care of that, then.”

  “You bet it does,” said Spitemorta, cut short by her own screams.

  Demonica turned toward the bed and ran her hand lightly down the front of Spitemorta's belly. “You've got a big one, dear,” she said, wide eyed. “A real whopper. And he'll be right powerful, 'way stronger than little Abaddon. Oh, he'll even have Razzmorten beat.” She paused to search her face for a moment before running her hand down her front once more. “He's a-comin' out first. The other one's a little girl, though not at all in your image. She'll never have your power, I'm sorry to say.” She shrugged. “A fair trade though, don't you reckon? I mean, you'll have one kid out of the bargain who can stamp the mighty Razzmorten right into the ground.”

  Spitemorta was stunned. She had so wanted a girl to follow in her shoes. The coming contraction already had her utterly speechless, but a very powerful child of any kind was most definitely to her liking. “Aaaag!” she wailed “Aaaaaa! Aaaaaa!”

  “Ah,” said Demonica buoyantly at the sight of the midwife. She rose at once and offered her chair as she backed away to lean against the wheel of her wagon.

  “Fnadi-yaphn fnadirr-fanf...” said something behind her, before barking with a distant chorus of laughter.

  “My word!” thought Demonica as she wheeled 'round. “Something in the seat just declared that Spitemorta the troll goddess is a buttock. Ha! My skinweler, ol' Number One.”

  “Duda-fayyr-fny-ophn Gnyr-jan ntu Afa-joy,” said the skinweler.

  “'No way is this the land of Plenty to Eat,' aye?” she thought, as she scooped it into her hands and climbed into the seat. “Sounds like the Marooderyn Imshee need a little guidance.” She put the ball in her lap and peered closely at the faces mirthfully lunging at it from the other end. “Fnadi-phnig-nyd and Dyr-jinyr-yy, aye? Oh yes, and also the ever so eager Vyp-japf and Ni-oowfn along with a couple of nobodies. So let's see, what would make a nice lesson for you all?”

  As the trolls began talking excitedly about movement that Ni-oowfn and Vyr-pudi had just spied amongst the metal-heads across Jutland Lake, Dyr-jinyr-yy's skinweler gave a red flash from where it lay in the spruce needles at their feet.

  Dyr-jinyr-yy dropped to his knees to peer at it in time to have Fnadi-yaphn's furious winged servant lunge shrieking back at him with her flaming crimson eyes and snapping phosphorescent teeth.

  “Boof!” he hooted as he sprang backward and fell flat on his back. The other trolls streaked away to hide in the brush.

  “You, Dyr-jinyr-yy are faithless!” shouted the skinweler.

  Dyr-jinyr-yy cautiously rolled onto his knees and timidly crawled toward the ball, the moment it went quiet.

  “How dare you speak for the spirits, shaman Dyr-jinyr-yy,” roared Demonica the moment he had gotten close enough peep at her, “when you fail to recognize your very own goddess, Fnadi-yaphn!”

  Dyr-jinyr-yy dropped onto his face into the spruce needles with a squeal. Slowly he lifted his head for another look as the others crept out of hiding. He peered at the ball. Things were happening inside. He knitted his brow and dared to get closer as the others crept up to look over his shoulders. He gave an apoplectic gasp at the sight of Fnadi-yaphn in labor. “Goddess birth-grunts no be!” he cried at the sight of her delivering a strapping troll kid. But he froze rigidly open mouthed when the next baby to crown and come out of her was a Human.

  Chapter 116

  “This is right painful for me!” cried Yann-Ber between clenched teeth, as two guards in gleaming silver helms and crimson and white tunics yanked him onto his feet after he stumbled. “Me a zo gant an droug-sant-Maodez! If you'd just be patient, I'd come right along wherever you lead.”

  “Peoc'h, bramm ki du!” barked the larger guard, giving him a hateful shake. “You've probably given us the plague.” He shared a curled lipped look with the other guard as the pair of them set to earnestly dragging him along in front of four tramping pikemen, down the polished hallway and up a broad stairway, painfully banging his ankles and knees. Suddenly their echoes went silent as they came to a long runner of thick red carpet, reaching out from the throne room. By now, he had fully dozens of putrid pustules ruptured and oozing through his clean clothes.
>
  “Your Imperial Majesty,” said the serjeant-at-arms, speaking out in the cavernous room, “your guard fetches forth the suspect!” He gave a starched bow.

  “Keep your head down, kaoc'h ki,” snarled the small guard as he yanked on what was left of Yann-Ber's hair. “Down, or I'll make you see stars.”

  With the two pikemen who were standing directly in front of him, and now this, Yann-Ber was unable to get any sort of glimpse of his father up on his throne, several steps aloft. “Oh, I'm sure he sees me,” he thought, with a flash of anger. “But what's the use? It's always been that whatever he wills is what will be.”

  At a signal from the serjeant-at-arms they tramped up the steps and halted directly before the throne. The guards in front stood aside. Yann-Ber kept his eyes on the richly patterned carpet.

  “Kneel!” barked Largeguard.

  Yann-Ber hesitated, still in pain from his climb up the steps.

  “Bremañ!” roared a guard from behind as he came down on Yann-Ber between the shoulders with the but of his pike hard enough to bring him to his knees. “Now!”

  “Your Imperial Majesty,” said Largeguard and Smallguard as they bowed low enough on either side of him to drag their coal black braids on the carpet.

  “Rise Serjeant...Corporal,” came a familiar nasal baritone voice.

  Yann-Ber glanced aside to the seated figure with the voice, then immediately forward to see Emperor Azenor sitting as though he were a stone figure on his jewel encrusted gold throne, supported on the backs of four gold tortoises, in time to be struck from behind hard enough to pitch him forward onto the carpet, rupturing a huge boil on his cheek.

  “I said: head down until his majesty gives you leave to speak...imposter!” shouted Smallguard.

  “Imposter?” cried Yann-Ber. “I'm no imposter!”

  Largeguard silenced him with such a vicious kick in the ribs that it was some time before he could breathe.

  “Where did they get this thing, Father?” said the nasal baritone. “He's an obvious fraud, and a diseased fraud at that. Get rid of him. He could've been sent to start a plague. Look at him. What does he have, leprosy?”

  Yann-Ber sat up and looked straight into the brilliant blue eyes of the baritone. “Aha!” he thought. “So it was you, Karl-Veur. You look exactly as I remember, right down to our blue eyes. Not long ago I could've been taken for your twin.” He hesitated, seeing a flicker of recognition. “Ha!” he said out loud, causing the guard behind him to raise his pike for another blow. “You know me, don't you Karl-Veur!”

  “Hold,” commanded Azenor, raising his hand, freezing the pikeman and stopping everything about him so suddenly that his voice could be heard echoing from the far corners through the forest of black marble pillars which stood everywhere under the arches of the vaulted ceiling in the immense room. He twirled one of his three dark braids in the silence as he stone-facedly studied Yann-Ber. Presently he looked across the room to Karl-Veur, sitting on his less ornate throne on his lower, smaller dais.

  “His witch wife could have sent him to us to bring a pestilence, Father,” said Karl-Veur with a look of revulsion. “Perhaps it's her way of finally defeating us and seizing the continent once and for all.”

  Azenor turned back to stare with his intense blue eyes at Yann-Ber.

  “I have no contagion, Father,” said Yann-Ber, straightening up as much as his knees would allow. “What I have is a curse of boils put on me by the very witch wife Karl-Veur speaks of. And she does indeed deserve every bit of his contempt, and far, far more. I'm ruefully aware that you warned me and that I refused to listen. You cast me out and I threw away my life. Now, I've come here on what little time I've left of my life to warn you of her sinister plans for the House of Dark, the continent and the entire world.” By now he was trembling uncontrollably. “May I please stand? I'm in terrible pain on my knees.”

  “By all means, rise then,” said Azenor smoothly without the slightest twitch of expression. “And how might we know that what you say is anything other than

  Demonica's lies brought by you as a ruse while the pestilence you carry spreads like wildfire throughout the empire?”

  Karl-Veur rose abruptly and crossed the room to study Yann-Ber for a moment, struggling to his feet, and then stood before Azenor. “Remember that we do have the Seeing Stone,” he said. “It will tell for certain if he brings her lies.”

  “We've not used it for years, but yes, it would,” said Azenor, turning aside to his serjeant-of-arms. “Bring forth the Seeing Stone at once.”

  The serjeant bowed and turned on his heel, motioning for two of his men to come along as he went. When they had faded away down the onyx corridor, Azenor addressed Yann-Ber: “If you have anything at all to confess, now would be the time. Once you sit upon the Seeing Stone, even the smallest lie will kill you on the spot.”

  “I well remember the Seeing Stone, Father,” said Yann-Ber. “I saw it used twice when I was still in your good graces. It left a lasting impression. But I don't fear it, for not only am I telling the truth, but I am so far gone that death would be a blessing. However I will indeed live, since I am here of my own free will solely to deliver the truth.”

  “Then we shall see what comes of it.”

  “Would you please tell me what became of my friends from Niarg, Father? Are they unharmed?”

  “Karl-Veur is our only son. You are an exile, permitted to be here by our good graces. You'd do well to keep this in mind.”

  “As you wish, Your Imperial Majesty.”

  “Your 'friends,' as you call them, are being detained, but they're being treated as guests with the utmost courtesy, for the time being. We've yet to rule out that they're merely your accomplices in some plan to bring down the empire. The royal Niarg ship and colors could have been pirated by Demonica. She's done that sort of thing from time to time over the years, you know.”

  “Demonica is quite capable of any imaginable sort of iniquity,” said Yann-Ber as a wave of anger passed through him, “but they are indeed royal emissaries and they happen to be my very good friends, Princess Rose of Niarg and her husband, Sir Karlton Strong, a former Captain of the Royal Niarg Guard.”

  “A princess allowed to marry outside her royal station?” said Karl-Veur with a scowl. “It sounds as though she could be an exile of some sort, like you.”

  “She is no exile!” snapped Yann-Ber, pausing with alarm at the angry tone of his voice echoing back to him from the far reaches of the hall. He cleared his throat and began again: “Karlton is an honorable man and a hero, truth to tell. The citizens of Niarg are often given unusual liberties. She was actually allowed to choose her husband. They married with the blessing of the crown. Her brother, Lukus is to succeed to the throne. He's married to an Elven princess, the great-granddaughter of King Neron.”

  “My word!” said Azenor. “Here we thought the Elves had long ceased to be, and you declare that this Elven princess is married to a Human? Odd that we should know nothing about any of this.”

  “Oh, but they are quite alive and well, Imperial Majesty, quite well indeed. And you should well know something about this, because one of their prophesies has to do with what has happened to me and why I am here.”

  “We see they're back,” said Azenor with a languid wag of a finger he had hanging beyond the arm of his chair. Without the slightest expression, he watched the serjeant and his men carefully unload the stone from its two wheeled barrow. “As you can plainly see, this is your very last moment to refuse to sit on the stone.”

  “I've nothing to hide, Your Imperial Majesty,” said Yann-Ber, shaking his head. “Well then, be seated.”

  The guards seized Azenor's cue and at once had Yann-Ber by the arms, steering him to the large and quite ordinary looking grey stone. As he took his seat, he swore that he caught a glimpse of a pained look on his father's face, but when he blinked his eyes to see, he beheld no trace at all.

  “Remember that even the slightest err from the truth, even be
it trivial or unintentional, will cause the Stone to strike you down before your next breath,” said

  Azenor.

  “As I said: I've witnessed this stone at work.”

  “Well then,” said Azenor with a nod, “why did Demonica smite you with this curse of boils?”

  “I was keeping a tryst with another woman and she found us.”

  “So does this mean that you are forever estranged from Demonica?”

  “Absolutely. She did this to me and my greatest wish beyond all else is to see her die. In fact, her dying right away is the only thing which will keep me from dying on the exact date she chose.”

  “Exact? How exact? Can you not die in advance of that date?”

  “No.”

  “So could you actually lie to us and live through the Seeing Stone's attempt to kill you?”

  Yann-Ber swallowed hard. “That is indeed part of what I'm saying...”

  Karl-Veur jerked back a step, expecting some kind of violence from the stone. Nothing happened. “Serjeant, are you quite certain that this is the Seeing Stone?”

  “Why I should think so!” stammered the wide-eyed serjeant. “It has to be! We found it with its cart by itself in its own storage room, down off the first landing on the way to the dungeon. It took three separate keys to get in.”

  Karl-Veur ran an impatient hand over his face. “Perhaps the real Stone has been stolen and this similar looking one was in its place,” he said. “There must be a way to test it.”

  “Not without somebody dying,” said Yann-Ber. “Someone has to tell a lie while sitting on it. That's a high price to pay for a test. It would be death for anyone but me.”

  “If you don't die on it, how is that a test?”

  “You've not seen the stone at work, have you? I won't die, but the stone will almost certainly strike me so that all can see it doing something, if I lie. No doubt, it will be most unpleasant, but I won't die.”

  Karl-Veur traded wide-eyed looks with Azenor, but the emperor finished the matter with a nod.

  Yann-Ber closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, bracing himself for the excruciating pain he knew would come. No one said a word, so having waited all he could stand, he met Azenor's eyes and declared: “I am not the first and only legitimately born son of Emperor Azenor of the House of Dark.”