“Checkmate, I believe,” said Eldwin.
“Hey!” said Mazhev, looking up and down. “You didn't do that. You're too stupid. You cheated.”
“That's very good, sir,” said Eldwin with a polite laugh. “But since you carefully watched each of my moves, we both certainly know better...”
“You kaoc'h face!” cried Mazhev, springing to his feet with his dagger out, knocking the board off the keg and over the side of the ledge. “You cheated!”
“I am not a cheat, sir,” said Eldwin calmly as he watched the chessboard vanish. “But before you stick me and heave me over the edge, I would have you know that you are without a doubt the finest chess player I've ever sat across from. It was your very strategy I was using against you.”
“Well,” said Mazhev with a haughty toss of his head as he sheathed his knife, “I've been told that kind of thing, time and again, actually. I'm sure that there was luck involved too, but I did think some of your moves looked familiar.” He did not look very steady on his feet as he waved at the window for Eldwin to crawl back in. “Now I've got to eat. Let's get you back to your cell. Herri'll bring your victuals after a while.”
“Da c'houel Mazhe ar frouezh holl 'zo darev!” sang out Mazhev in his grandest opera voice. “Da c'houel Yann ya ar goukouk d'al lann!” He staggered as he came, tramping along first one side, then the other of the fetid gutter in the echoes of the passage to Eldwin's cell as he returned to the guardroom, suddenly stopping short with a gasp at having nearly collided with Spitemorta.
“So!” she said, leaning into his wide eyes of panic. “The very sight of me stops your fun, aye?”
“Your Majesty...!”
“Well your rotten breath nearly stops mine. Have you been drinking on duty?”
“No,” he squeaked, nearly toppling from his awkward bow.
“Aren't you at all anxious to hear what happened to your chummy-chum-chum?”
“Budog?”
“Is that what his name was? It wasn't nearly as easy for me to remember as his hooting stupidity.”
“Was?”
“Oh yea,” she said, waltzing over to peer out the window with its grate still standing open. “The help at Demonica's mine thought stupid old Budog treated them very badly.”
“Smole's help,” said Mazhev with a dry swallow. “There's no way you could trust them. And they'd...”
“Are you suggesting that I was slow witted enough to be taken in by a bunch of morons in leather aprons?”
“Why no! I'm just shocked to hear Budog wasn't treating them completely proper.”
“That's odd for you to say with what the miners and the grinders told me. They said that Budog helped you kill Smole right in front of them.”
Mazhev dropped to his knees with a whimper, falling forward to flatten himself on the floor before her in time for her to pop him in the eye with the toe of Demonica's red spool heeled shoe, flinging him onto his back where he lay holding his eye, moaning and rolling from side to side.
“Now Mazhev,” she said as if she were merely coaxing a child, “you surely know better by than to deny anything, since I do know what happened. I just want your version.”
Mazhev sat up and broke into sobs at the sight of the blood soaked hand he was pulling away from his eye which could no longer see.
“Well?” she said.
“I only held Smole while Budog beat on him,” he wailed. “I never once hit him myself.”
“And the hired help?”
“I throttled one or two, maybe, but only enough to keep them straight, if ye know what I mean. If I hadn't, You'd never 'ave got your two wagons of skinweleriou.”
Spitemorta stared at him long enough to make him shudder. “All right,” she said, walking about the room as if she had a blackboard on the wall behind her. “That's easy enough to picture. And I can see how the worthless amongst them might resent working for something as disgusting as you are. But they're mine now. And if you want to live, you'll see that you ask me before you so much as slap one of them. Now stand up like a man worthy of being in my service.”
“Yes Your Majesty.”
“Let me look at you. Good. You've only got one eye. Maybe now you won't be fool enough to lose the other one, aye?”
“No Your Majesty.”
“So. Have you killed Eldwin yet?”
“Why no. We've been feeding him and everything.”
“Is he poorly?”
“Not so much as he was. I can fetch him out for you.”
“No. I don't want to smell him, but you'll have him completely fit and able in a month, right?”
“Yes Your Majesty.”
“Good. He'll have to be when Demonica delivers him to the Pit.”
“But she'd dead.”
“And you'd better believe it.”
“I already do.”
“Good,” she said. “Now, will I find the two wagons loaded with the skinweleriou in Demonica's throne room?”
“Just as they were,” he said, holding his bleeding eye.
“And the stinking cat,” said Spitemorta, “you got rid of it?”
“One would think that after managing to kill me, dear,” said Demonica, “it would be rather pointless to go after my cat.”
“It needs to be dead, Grandmother!” she shouted. “It not only scratched me, it bit me.”
Mazhev dropped his mouth agape and looked fearfully about the room for signs of an apparition, in spite of not hearing anyone but Spitemorta.
“My cat very likely shares my opinion of your behavior,” said Demonica. “And you'd best not do him any damage in the least unless you want me determined to arrange your destruction by the very world you seek to rule.”
“Ah! So he was your familiar...”
“Caesar was not my familiar. I've never had such a thing, though I have kept him from aging. He's older than you and your mother put together.”
“Caesar! How embarrassingly inflated, Grandmother...”
“Not at all,” said Demonica. “And he'd better be right healthy or it's grief for you. And if you think I've been troublesome so far, you've not seen a proverbial thing, dear.”
“It's just a cat, Grandmother.”
Demonica folded her arms and shook her head. “You may be in for another lesson you refuse to see coming,” she said.
Spitemorta thrust out her jaw for a moment. “Mazhev?” she said, giving him a start in spite of his anxious effort to make sense of how she had been carrying on.
“Yes Your Majesty?”
“Have you managed to get the cat yet?”
“No,” he said cringing until he trembled. “I've tried every single day...”
“Good!” said Spitemorta with a sigh of resolution. “You can...”
And with that, poor Mazhev sat on the floor and toppled sideways, passing out.
***
After time out for a stiff cup of klenved-mor tea, Spitemorta gave a resentful glance at Demonica who was perched smugly on one of the skinweler wagons in her throne room and climbed aboard the other wagon, Staff in hand. She rolled the stone ball out of her bag, stared into it briefly and said a few words. The moment they vanished, the fluffy white Caesar bounded onto the red velvet cushion in Demonica's great chair.
Chapter 168
Minuet sat with Razzmorten and Herio in the green light of the glow lichens, ravenously eating pie made from the very first fall apples to be picked up out of the grass around the trees by Longbark in the big crater. “Mmm! How I will miss this pie, Nacea,” she said, closing her eyes with a delirious moan as she took a bite. “This is simply the very best I've ever eat, which is saying something indeed, for I was raised on the wonderful pies made by Bethan. And where's Blodwen, this morning? She's plain mad about your pies.”
“Out atte the fer ende for to holpen Rodon to gete thyngs redy,” said Alvita with a sad look. “Ich that weo han no way of fedyng oon thousynd and thre hunderd sowdyores for verray long do knowe, but hit a righte good
yere hath yben, especiallye with al the holpe, and weo do so haten you oones to russchen of to seen. Hit maketh me to drede sonne set, whan Dampned Babi the oonly oon of you stylle heere wol ben.”
“You have been wonderful,” said Minuet. “But if we stay, everyone will starve. That would be a fine way to thank you all! And we have to hurry, now that Meri undoubtedly has the Elves expecting us to meet them at the new dragon caves in the Black Desert. And we don't want to waste time out in the open where the witches could find us.”
“Minuet righte ybe,” said Celeste with watery eyes. “Evene hast bethe slowe, the way thynges beth. With Fateses spede, weo shal al buen togidre agayne for the joysome tymes to comen.”
“I give you my word,” said Minuet. “I will see Spitemorta and Demonica dead and you all free again if it's the very last thing I do in this world.”
“Weo knowen thou wolt, Thine Magestee,” said Celeste as she squeezed Minuet's hand.
“Thank you Celeste. But please. I'm just Minuet to you all, always.”
Celeste looked up suddenly to find Rodon quite out of breath, anxiously twisting his tail in his hands. “Wel what artow ther doynge, ydaunsyng fro fote to fote lyche thou nedith to pissen?” she said.
“Everych thyng redy ybe,” he said. “Plese, brynge everych oon out to the fer ende righte now.”
“What's all this?” said Minuet.
“Rodon and Blodwen han ben up sithence mydnyht, rostinge hogges,” said Celeste. “They to supprisen you didde wante. Come. Lat us togidre to festen oon laste tyme.”
***
Minuet rode Virtue up the steep path of crunching volcanic cinders to the cleft in the rim of Mount Bedd and waited for Razzmorten as the sudden wind caught her in a whirl of fiery red hair above her polished armor in the late afternoon sun.
“Ready to stay in the saddle all night?” said Razzmorten as he brought Abracadabra alongside her.
“That's what we planned, but how are we to find our way in the dark? I never did ask you.”
“Meri was supposed to have left markers which you and I should be able sense like wards. We'll see. Here come Bernard and Herio. We'd better start down the mountainside.”
“Father?” she said, staying abreast of him. “Have we done the right thing, a- leaving Nastea with the Fairies?”
“Can you think of a better plan?” he said, taking off his hat to scratch his head. “Can you imagine traveling with an army and a baby under the cover of darkness? I know we've got civilians with us, but having the demon spawn of Spitemorta herself along for the ride might just be a kind of beacon to her and Demonica, undoing any advantage we might have traveling after dark. And Damned Baby herself? No one wants to put her out of her misery, but I think that there's a good chance she'll have to be. In the shape she's in? I can't imagine that she'll do anything but become harder to control, the older she gets. Between Longbark and the Fairies, she's in the safest place she could be for everyone. And I mean everyone. Besides, I'm glad we left the goats. They would have been something to eat, all right, but they were chaos itself.”
Minuet nodded, reins in hand, keeping Virtue well away from the tree trunks as they skidded down the steep places. Nastea made her earliest recollections of Ugleeuh almost angelic by comparison. “What in Fates' name could Spitemorta have done to her own daughter?” she thought. “And why would she ever? It's undoubtedly another good reason she should die. Oh how I miss my wonderful Hebraun!”
***
It was a bright late morning under the great vault of blue sky as Ocker and Urr-Urr dozed in the steady hot wind coming up the rocks from the Red Desert basin below, making their great limb heave and sway in the fluttering leaves as if it were riding swells on the sea. A sudden stout gust rocked the limb enough to make Ocker open an eye and put down the foot he had tucked into his feathers. He saw that Urr-Urr was still sound asleep in their nest, right beside him. The rattling calls of a nearby cactus wren came and went in the currents of air. He saw someone sitting in the shade of the wax nut pines beyond the Fairy ring. “Urr-Urr,” he said, nibbling at her neck feathers. “Isn't that Neron yonder?”
“So?” she said, wiggling her beak into her breast feathers. “I'm not done with my nap. Right now he makes no more difference to me than a rock.”
“Yea, but...” he said. He could see that she was not going to let herself be disturbed. He gave himself a ruffling shake and studied Neron for some time. Something in Neron's hands gave a blinding glint in the sun. At this, Ocker shot high into the rushing air, pumping hard into its currents in order to set himself down in one of the pines. There was Neron right below, carefully studying a stone ball.
“Hey!” croaked Ocker, swooping down to land in the red dirt before him. “Where'd you get that?”
“Good morning Ocker,” said Neron, scarcely looking up.
“Did that come back with you from Niarg?”
“Yes, actually.”
“Hit's possible to use that without magic, isn't hit?” he said as he hopped up close.
“Why yes, so long as someone magically endowed is controlling it,” said Neron, finally looking at Ocker.
“Well I know something about hit you need to know...”
“For how much, my feathered hustler?”
“Don't ever look into hit!” said Ocker, bristling up all over to give himself a shake. “We'll make the deal later...”
“What? Why?”
“That's one of those swyving skinheads, right?”
Neron threw back his head with a laugh. “If you say so,” he said, peering into the ball again. “It's called a skinweler, actually...”
“Don't look, you stupid hole!” croaked Ocker as he landed on the ball with a frenzy of feathers.
“Oh go on!” said Neron, grabbing away the ball. “You don't even know what it's called.”
“Don't ever look into hit!” awked Ocker, kicking up a cloud of dust and grit with his wings as he hovered at Neron's face. “One look and the stinking strumpet wicche will have you by the toute! And that's straight from Razzmorten himself. She'll know about us. She'll know about the Fairies.” He flapped up into the air and landed in front of Neron again.
“Ocker!” said Neron, rolling the ball into a bag. “I do thank you for your concern. All of that may indeed be true for ordinary people without powers, but you and I are magically endowed. We could likely use the ball unseen and get away with spying on the witches to help bring them down.”
“Yea? Well If I were Meri Greenwood, you'd pissen me off right smart for taking chances. I just might want to stay hid.” And with that, Ocker flew straight for the Fairy ring.
“Ocker!” hollered Neron. He shook his head with a sigh and rolled his ball back out of the bag.
Ocker flew to the middle of the Fairy ring and hovered over it for a moment before dropping onto the moss. “Schyt!” he said. He flew outside the ring and landed before the spot where he knew the head of the stairs was. He trotted up to the mushrooms and hopped over. “Well son of a mother swyving bicche!” he said as he stumbled to a stop on the moss. He flew up to the rotted out hollow in the crotch of the great silver maidenhair, got his stick of power and his scrying marble and swooped down again to the moss in the Fairy ring to fall through with a flapping awk of alarm like a skater on thin ice. On the stairs below, he paused to peer into his marble to find the whereabouts of Meri before vanishing.
He appeared to find Meri staring right at him. “Just how did you manage to be expecting me?” he said, suddenly going sleek.
“Thou art noiseful,” said Meri, putting down his whittling. “Ich alwey am herynge thee ycomen.”
“There's something you need to know,” said Ocker.
“In retourne for what? Wol Ich ben able to aforden thine holpe?”
“No time!” awked Ocker. “King Neron has a swyving skinweler and he won't stop looking into hit.”
Suddenly Meri was not any place he looked.
“Dampne hit! Run away from a deal, aye s
wyver?” he awked, taking flight straight for the stairs. At the top, he found that he had flown clean out of the Fairy ring and into the hot desert wind without even noticing the moss. Up he flew until he landed beside Urr-Urr. “Urr-Urr!”
Urr-Urr awoke with a start.
“We've got to get out of here,” he said, sorting through his flight feathers. “Neron's down there right now looking into one of those skinwelers. And when I went to find Meri, he ran off because he was afraid to make a deal...”
Urr-Urr stretched out a leg under one wing, gave an eye-watering yawn and then stretched out her other leg under the other wing. “Now what was that?” she said.
“I already told you,” he said, bristling out at the neck before pointing himself at her. “Neron's looking into his skinweler and Meri the green haired hole just plain ran off, so grab your stone egg and let's go before the swyving wicches get here.”
“Well now what about this other egg?” said Urr-Urr, standing up to peer between her feet.
“What other egg? Did Meri give you another one?”
“No doo-doo, you did.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“I laid an egg,” she said, standing up again. “See? Hit's a real one and hit's ours.”
“But we've been barren for six year,” he said, nibbling at her cheek feathers.
“I knew Meri's egg would keep me from getting older, but could hit even make me younger?”
“I'll ask him.”
“How? Aren't we leaving?”
“How can we go with the egg?” he said with a thorough shake. “I've got to find Meri, dampne him!”
“Well there he is, Ocker, right down yonder with Neron.”
“I'll be right back,” he said, springing into the air at once to glide down to where they were in the shade of the wax nut pines.
“Ich was just aboute to comen fynden thee, Ocker,” said Meri, holding up a leather bag with the skinweler in it. “Lok 'ee heere. King Neron hit to me ygeve the minut hee fond out hit ben realy as daungerous as thou hast ben sayn. Hee juste didde nat know thou knewst what thou was talkyng aboute...”
Heart of the Staff - Complete Series Page 178
