Heart of the Staff - Complete Series

by Carol Marrs Phipps

  When they reached the stable, they quietly walked around to the side and stood as Llewyrch gave the tremulous whistle of a screech owl. A “screech owl” answered from inside. “All clear,” said Owain. “They wouldn't have answered unless they were by themselves.”

  “So you know that owl is them?” said James, following along as they hurried around to the front of the stable.

  “Sure. Screech owls never go inside barns.”

  Inside they were met by the stable boy and his brother, who were waiting with a proper little donkey hitched to a cart.

  “This is Bran,” said Owain.

  “At your service, Your Majesty,” said Bran, doffing his hat with a deep bow.

  “And this is my younger brother, Aeron, who'll be your driver.”

  “At your service...” said Aeron.

  “Is something wrong, Your Majesty?” said Bran.

  “Not exactly. I was wondering what became of Dewr, my dark chestnut cyflymder, when Spitemorta threw me into the dungeon. I know she wouldn't have tolerated him in the inside stable. I merely had the vain hope that perchance he was out here.”

  “He sure was,” said Bran with a bob of his head. “We have him safely in the stables of the Tafarn Coch in Goldtown, a good league south of Gold Lake. He's a-waiting for you there, sire. Ask for a fellow called Beli, there in the tavern. Tell him you've come for Dewr. If you don't give the name 'Dewr,' he won't show you your mount. He knows not to expect you to give your name.” He shifted nervously on his feet and began again: “Now as I was a-saying, I'm fixin' for to stay here, but as I said, my kid brother here will...now, he's real good with donkeys...Aeron here will drive ye...”

  “I'll enjoy the company,” said James.

  “Aeron, he be right good company, sire,” said Bran, curling up the brim of his hat between his fists. “He can read. He taught himself, too. Can ye believe? He's starting to learn me, too. Of course all we've got is just the one book, A Taxonomie of Beasts, Fowles, Fishes and Herbs by Razmorten...”

  “My word! How would you come by such a book?”

  “Hit's Dad's, but he can't read it. He only looks at the pictures...”

  “Pryderi's their dad,” said Llewyrch.

  “Ah! You are a remarkable young fellow,” said James. “And I'm afraid that my knowledge of donkeys is like most people's ability to read.”

  “No problem, then,” said Owain. “Aeron is very good at both. He intends for to drive.”

  “Well there's nothing for it then,” said James as he stepped into the cart. “It's time to go. The longer we fool around, the more likely we'll be discovered.”

  “Right you are,” said Owain, as Aeron clambered up and took the reins, “but if you ones ever chance to come this way again, sire, we'd surely welcome ye if you're in need of friends...”

  “My word!” said James as he eyed Owain and Llewyrch up and down. “How would I ever be worth the risks you all have taken if I didn't come back here to set you free? I can't know yet when that will be or how I shall do it, but I'm coming back to knock my witch wife off the throne, and I intend to have you all at my side when I do.”

  “Yes, sire!” chorused Owain and Llewyrch fiercly, as they stepped back smartly and thumped their chests.

  “We're right ready,” said Owain, as he and Llewyrch gave resolute nods.

  “I wish you were coming with me,” said James.

  “You won't get out if we try that,” said Owain.

  “Then prepare for my return,” said James with a decisive nod as he pointed to the door. “We're in this together.”

  And with a shake of the reins, Aeron had them out the door. James raised his hood and wrapped himself in the warm folds of his wool cloak. He could just make out the faint outline of the gate at the far end of the street in the blackness as his heart began to pound.

  “Hoy you!” called out the guard in the echoes over the vacant street from the walk inside the battlement above the gate. “What makes you think I'll run up the portcullis after nine bell?”

  “Right good business today, hit was!” hollered Aeron. “We needed the money! But if we don't get home to milk the cows, the old lady'll tan both our hides! She's a fierce one! She's why we needed the extra money!”

  “She ugly?”

  “She'd scare you right off that wall.”

  “You going to bring her tomorrow?” said the guard, throwing back his head for a laugh.

  “Only if ye don't let us out.”

  “Hurry up then! I'm only goin' 'o hike hit up half way!”

  “Thank 'ee, sir!”

  After a pause for the clank and rattle of chains, Aeron gave his reins a shake and they were outside the castle walls, hurriedly trotting a meandering path down the road, the cart hammering up and down in time.

  “Do you think we're far enough away to slow down, Aeron?” said James, feeling the small of his back. “This rig's just shaking me to pieces.”

  “We probably aren't yet, sire, if ye don't object to my saying so. Why don't ye sit over the axle? There's a box back there. We can still talk...”

  “Very well, here goes,” he said as he stepped back into the cart and centered the box before having a seat. “Dang it! Damn that witch!”

  “Are you all right, sire?”

  “Just the holes in the road. Spitemorta spent all our money getting wiped out, making war on our friends.”

  “There's a hill, yonder. When we get to the far side of it, I think it'll be safe to let little ol' Jigs here have a rest and walk.”

  “Well, keep going. I'm alive and out of the stinking dungeon, and believe you me, I'd choose endless potholes to the basement of Castle Goll.”

  “All the same, sire, I'll try harder to miss as many holes as I can.”

  “That's her damn fault, not yours. You can drive any way you see fit in order to get us clean out of here, and you can have my gratitude for it into the bargain.”

  “Thank you sire,” said Aeron with a grin and a quick nod before facing forward and sitting up, wide eyed. “Whoa, Jigs! Whoa, girl!”

  “Now, who's that?” said James between his teeth as he stepped out of the cart and strode forth to stand in front of Jigs as he unbuttoned his coat. “Hoy yonder!” he called out, “Who steps into the road from the ditch like thieves?”

  “Your friends whom you wished were a-coming with ye, King James!” hollered Owain, before coming forward. “We had to send just the two of you, because they'd never let all of us through, if ye know what I mean, sire, and we hadn't figured out how we were going to get out. But you ones need two right good swordsmen, and that's a fact.”

  “You have no idea how glad I am to see you two,” said James as he gave a leap and clicked his heels.

  Chapter 121

  Demonica watched King Neron vanish into the rubble of Caislean Oilean Gairdin as she gripped the wrist of her severed hand, reeling and staggering to her knees. She closed her eyes for a moment and steadied herself against the nauseating urge to pass out. She opened them and spied the Heart nearby, glowing deep and dim in the brush. Squeezing tight her stump, she rolled forward to crawl toward it on her knees and elbow. At last, she let go with an anguished gasp to grab it up as her arm spurted out blood into the dry leaves. For a long time she rocked back and forth, holding the Heart against her wound as she sobbed, whimpered and moaned.

  Presently her pain faded and she saw that the Heart had stopped her bleeding altogether. She sat back, breathing in feeble heaves for a good while longer. “Now where's my hand?” she said, laboring to her feet. “Maybe I can stick it back on... Stinking Pitmaster! Where did it get to?” She set loose a brilliant mage light and frantically searched all about until the dead grass and leaves were so tramped and wallowed that she at last realized that it was simply no use.

  “I'll get you for this you Elven pig!” she cried out at the top of her lungs. She stopped short. “I'll have trolls hurrying over here to see, if I'm not careful.”

  She struggled to
put away the Heart and to work her scrying globe out from the folds of her kirtle. “Why, oh why did it have to be my right hand?” She paused to sweep her toe from side to side through the brush one last time. “I'm simply not going to find it, no matter what I want,” she said, turning to her ball to mumble a traveling spell.

  At once, she was stumbling about in the blackness of her apartment, getting her bearings. She didn't bother with the candles, but turned loose a small mage light to light the room while she found a towel to cradle her arm in. “When I find the grimoire,” she said with a sob as she hurriedly stepped out of her clothes on the floor and got under the covers, “surely I can use the Heart to grow a new hand.”

  ***

  “Damn her!” wailed Spitemorta, pausing amidst her pacing and bouncing her new daughter to manage a one handed yank on the bell pull. “Hoy! Bronbuwch! Where the stinking blazes are you?” She huffed out a snarl and shifted her crying bundle to the other arm. “Shut up, you little shit! Bronbuwch! Well then, Nimue! Nimue, can you hear me?”

  Presently the chambermaid clopped in from the frantic echoes of her footfalls in the hallway. “Your Majesty...” she heaved, catching her breath as she gave a deep curtsey, “Your Majesty, Bronbuwch, she's...” She stopped short with a wide-eyed gasp at the sight of Spitemorta hatefully bowling her beet-red baby to a rolling stop on the bedspread.

  “Bronbuwch what?” snapped Spitemorta.

  “Well...” she squeaked, glancing furtively at the kicking baby, “we were just making a mad search for her...”

  “And?”

  “Well, she's got clean away, and we put up quite a hunt, if ye know what I mean. She's plum gone, Your Majesty, and she's the dead last of the four...”

  “'Dead is right! You can count on it. Now, take her out o' here and get her quiet.”

  “Ye mean take Nasteuh?”

  “What do you think I said?”

  “But I'm not fresh. All my young ones be long weaned...”

  “Why should I care?” she snapped, struggling to fit a fresh cloth into her bodice as she plumped onto the stool before her dressing table. “Get Nasteuh out of here and get her quiet if you don't want to be added to my list of wet nurses to draw and quarter. Find someone with milk. Somebody around here's nursing. You can count on it.”

  “Yes, yes, Your Majesty,” said Nimue as she scooped up Nasteuh and wheeled about to leave.

  “And Nimue,” said Spitemorta, “while you're at it, find Samuel and send him up here to see me immediately.”

  “At once, Your Majesty...”

  “So Nimue, how many does Bronbuwch make?”

  “You mean how many wet nurses has Nasteuh...” she said, going scarlet. “I mean how many wet nurses have forsaken their duty to the crown and run off since last night?”

  “Yea.”

  “Why four, counting her, Your Majesty...”

  “A good big number to keep track of.”

  “Begging Your Majesty's pardon, but I don't understand how four is much of a number to keep track of...”

  “Oh but it is, dear, if you manage not to let out even a single teensy detail to any living soul. But I'm altogether confident that you can keep quiet, because if you can't, you're simply dead. Poof! Now go.” Spitemorta gave a bored glance at the backs of her hands as Nimue scurried out, before swiveling about to pick up a brush from her dressing table, peering this way and that into the mirror.

  “This is all Demonica's fault,” she hissed as she added a bit of rouge. “And this time...this time I'm goin' 'o get her.”

  She rose, feeling of her middle, and went to peer at the peg on the window sill. “Almost ten. Just enough time for another primp or two before going down to the balcony.”

  Down the steps she swept with her skinweler. She crossed the throne room, heaved aside the heavy velvet drapes and drew back the glazed double doors to the balcony, as she grandly stepped out into the sunshine to nestle it into the fingers of its gilded stand. The stirring murmurs below set off within her a geyser of giddy conceit which she quieted by lifting her chin. She had been keenly aware of people anxiously checking the skinweler below each of the past two days at ten, and today she was showing them her mettle by surprising them with an address immediately after the birth.

  ***

  It was nearly ten when Demonica awoke in the throes of despair over her hand. Suddenly she stopped short. “I wonder if she's making a delivery today,” she said, throwing back the covers. “Probably not this soon, but I think I'll go see just the same.” She paused to cast a glamourie on herself to save the bother of grooming and to restore the image of her lost hand. “Looks good. I'll have to mind that I don't forget and try to use it.”

  Soon she found herself walking quietly across the throne room in time to hear applause dying away to a hush outside. She took a seat behind the double doors to the balcony.

  Spitemorta was finishing her address. “...And so, deep in the woods of the Jut of Niarg, along our very northern border, the Elves have been busy (with Niarg's help) breeding a new sort of troll. We've all grown up with stories of the murderous solitary trolls of the Jutwoods. Elven tampering has bred hundreds upon hundreds more! And thanks to their wicked magic, these can speak to one another and organize themselves into roving killer bands, grabbing up children in the wee hours to pull off their arms and eat them alive! They stalk at night. They see as well as owls. From now on you'll need to know where your loved ones are when the shadows grow long!

  “Mark well that for your protection, the crown proclaims a curfew. After sunset, all citizens of Goll are to be off the streets and safely indoors. Anyone caught out after hours by the constabulary will be arrested. Do not be foolish. Do not be embarrassed. Be certain that you are indoors after dark, secure with the knowledge that your queen is looking out for your safety!” she cried, to a roar of cheers.

  “And my promise to you...” she said, waiting for the pandemonium to subside, “and my promise to you, my fine and loyal subjects, on this lovely spring morning, is that we will strike back soon! Niarg shall not be allowed to continue their foul and odious deeds!”

  Spitemorta left the balcony and closed the double doors, quieting the storm of cheers and applause as a wicked gloat framed her sparkling eyes. “Oh!” she said with a gasp. “I didn't see you Grandmother! How long have you been sitting there?”

  “Long enough to hear a few of your idiotic lies, dear,” said Demonica. “Just what possesses you?”

  “Two awful twins, that's what!” shouted Spitemorta. “Have a taste of your own stew! It's because of you and your horrible trolls that my twins were born monsters! And you probably planned it, I don't care what you say! At least my people know about the trolls and can protect themselves.”

  “Your people!” snorted Demonica. “You don't give a tinker's damn about them. They only matter to you if you can use them for something. This has nothing to do with their safety. It's your self-centered vengeance flung at me! Childish fool! Oilean Gairdin is rubble. The few survivors have fled, probably all the way back to Lobadh! They do this for you and you stab them in the back. Good job for them and for you that I overheard in time to warn them.” She sprang from her chair and marched out, slipping on a pair of gloves, finding her crystal ball and mumbling a traveling spell as she went.

  Before she had reached the steps at the end of the hall, she found herself in a sea of bluebells with soundly sleeping trolls curled up in the leaves, all about. She resigned herself to wait for sunset with a sigh and sank into the leaves to lean against a big rock near where Dyr-jinyr-yy slept, oinking and rhythmically blowing the bluebells out of his face.

  Overhead, an ivory billed woodpecker hammered out a drum roll on a dead limb as she began snoring softly alongside the trolls.

  ***

  Herio, Hubba Hubba, Chirp, Tweet and Squeak rode Gwynt into Ash Fork at a sauntering walk. Far overhead in the bright blue sky, a soaring red tailed hawk screeched out a hunting whistle. “No way is this anythin
g but Ashmore Road,” thought Herio, “but there's sure nothing to go on but the lay of the land... Oh, I guess I can tell by the foundations and charred timbers...Oh fates! There's the oak by the tavern where

  Cefnogi...” He began shaking with silent sobs. One of his tears spotted the back of his pigskin glove.

  Hubba Hubba could see that this was not any sort of laughter. “You've not said a word, Herio, but is this one of those 'ghosts' you were talking about, yesterday?”

  Herio squeezed shut his eyes as he bit his lip and nodded.

  Reckon we should kind o' get away from here so it wouldn't be so hard on ye?”

  Herio coughed out a sob. “Yes,” he said, raking away a rattling sniffle on the back of his glove. “I'm sorry. Pardon me. I'm some knight. I don't mean to...”

  “Hey!” croaked Hubba Hubba. “We're all friends! There's nothing to apologize for. I can imagine what happened here. Let's get out o' here.”

  “You sure got that right, Hubba,” said Herio. “Let's do indeed get out of here. He gently urged Gwynt to resume his plodding walk down Ashmore Road, wending between the muddy grey mounds of ashes.

  Near the far side of town, Hubba Hubba spied the broken porcelain head of some little girl's precious dolly, washed into the street in a fan of ashes. “Poor little thing!” he thought, ruffling up his feathers. “Look yonder!” he cawed out, suddenly springing into flight. “King Hebraun's ring o' stones!”

  Herio reached the spot just as Hubba Hubba and the sparrows swooped down to land at the foot of the big menhir stone in the center of the ring of twenty-one smaller stone posts. Herio dismounted and walked up to find him studying the inscription.

  “That says Hebraun, doesn't it Herio?” said Hubba Hubba, blinking his wet eyes.

  “Sure does, Hubba. King Hebraun...”

  “Well I might not get those huffs and shudders that you humans get, but I'm powerful sad all the same.”

  Chirp, Tweet and Squeak looked up and nodded at this.

  “I only saw him the one time,” said Herio, looking all 'round in awe at the monument, “but hit makes me sad not having the chance to know him. Queen Minuet's just plain wonderful.” He knelt and scratched each of their heads as the breeze blew between the stones. Presently he stood up. “Come on boys. Don't ye reckon we've had enough ghosts?”