Heart of the Staff - Complete Series

by Carol Marrs Phipps

The Black Desert was once a vast primeval landscape of obsidian spewing volcanoes whose gigantic caldera had since eroded away to ridges, dunes and downs of jet black, leaving a forbidding countryside, far too hot to cross in the daytime, except in the winter, making it a good thing that it was now December. They had no choice but to travel from oasis to oasis for water, game and feed, and it is fortunate that were many aquifers, for the frequent dunes and ridges made seeing vegetation in the distance all but impossible. Even so, they had their frightening moments.

  Edward's map had a notation at the location of the New Dragon Caves: “Machlud Mountains can be seen,” so as soon as the party began seeing snow capped mountains in the distance, they left a marker atop a tall dune and began criss-crossing the countryside, league by league in hopes of finding the dragons. However, they had been at this for nearly two weeks and were beginning to discuss the prospect of turning about and hunting for the ship.

  “Look Fuzz,” said Rose, pointing to the sand as they rode. “See all those Ss? What earthly sort of tracks could those possibly be?”

  “Well!” he said. “Then there must be truth to the myth. A viper called the sidewinder is supposed to live where it's too hot to slither and so tumbles along like unto a whirled rope. Let's keep our...”

  “That way!” cried Obbree. “'Way yonder...”

  “Sidewinder?” said Rose, peering under her hand.

  “No. In the air, just above the horizon. I couldn't tell how big or how far away, but something about it made it look enormous. It was green. Some of it's head might have been sky blue.”

  “A dragon!” cried Rose. “Fuzz! We have to 'ave found them.

  “Thank the Fates,” he said. “But let's not get so excited that we forget to watch for the sidewinder tracks. They're supposed to bury themselves in the sand and bite those who step too near.”

  At once they found themselves at an unsteady canter through the sand, following Obbree and the birds, who reached the top of a low prominence and waited in the light of the sinking sun. “Down there,” he said, pointing to the kite field. “I don't see any sign of the dragon, but it's an oasis at least. And that whole broad flat area down there looks like it's being used. And look 'ee yonder at the far end of the flat, at the bottoms of those hills where that layer of limestone runs behind the trees and brush. Aren't those caves?”

  “We've found them!” cried Rose with a bounce in her saddle.

  “I expect we have,” said Olloo, “but we'd best be wary as we approach. We could be very wrong. Let's ready the birds and our bows, and then stay quiet as we walk up and see what we're going to see.”

  Everyone dismounted briefly to string their bows. Fuzz strung Rose's and handed it up to her. With nods all 'round they ambled forth.

  “Stay with me, Carrey,” said Rose.

  Carrey gave her feathers a shake and trotted alongside.

  Down to the kite field they went, the strike falcons as silent as wraiths. Obbree and Karl-Veur traded nods as they pointed out dragon tracks. Just as they reached a stand of agaves and century plants with paths running every which way, they began hearing the warm stir of a conversing multitude.

  “I hear a fiddle!” whispered Roseen, just as everyone suddenly saw long tables running along the limestone bluff and out of the mouths of the gigantic cave and two smaller caves nearby, seated with dragons and hundreds of people. As they hesitated at the edge of the forest of agaves, a great wave of silence fell over the people at the tables as they looked up wide eyed.

  “Rose! Fuzz!” cried a yellow headed parrot as it came flying toward them.

  “Hubba Hubba!” cried Rose.

  A great crowd rose from the tables and surrounded them. There were shouts as Olloo and Roseen recognized Neron.

  “You're alive!” cried Neron. “Fates! You've tamed the shawkyn spooghey, too.”

  “Mother!” cried Rose as Minuet rushed to her with open arms.

  “My word!” said Minuet, holding Rose at arm's length. “You're pregnant. How soon?”

  “Maybe February.”

  “Unca Fuzz!” cried Edward, flinging himself into Fuzz's arms. “I thought I'd never see you and Rose again. Unca Spark, Aunt Lippy and Laora said I was being silly, but I was getting worried, especially after losing Momma.”

  “What kind of birds are these, Rose?” said Lipperella as Lukus and Soraya grabbed Rose into a hug at the same time.

  “They're strike falcons, the terror birds of the Great Strah on the Eastern Continent,” she said. “They're our bond mates. Mine here is Carrey. She's not quite grown. The Elves use them to kill trolls.”

  “Vyrpudi won't like that,” said Spark.

  “Vyrpudi?” said Rose.

  “A trollbrute,” said Lipperella. But don't worry. He's in chains.

  “I hear fiddles again,” said Rose.

  “Oh, there'll be a dance for sure, now that you all are here,” said Lipperella. “Go get something to eat. There's still tons o' catfish, 'taters and fried horned lizards. You all must be starved. We were just finishing when you arrived.”

  “I see three, four, five...seven fiddlers,” said Rose, “a bodhrn and some whistles...”

  “They're forming the lines now,” said Lipperella. “It looks like the lead couple for the first dance will be King James and Queen Mary. They're getting to be so very good...”

  “James and Mary the White!” cried Rose.

  And the very first tune they danced to was Queen's Head.

  ***

  “Brrr!” said Spitemorta as she squatted on the hearth in her bedroom at Castle Loxmere, hugging her knees with one arm as she raked together a handful of live coals from the ashes with the other. She reached aside for some kindling. “I hate the cold. I'm never warm enough. At least the campaign in the north is done and we're out of the worst of the winter weather. But Loxmere is still cold and just awful. There's no way I can start the campaign in the south soon enough to suit me...”

  “I'm not sure I'd even know you dear, without your going on about something wrong,” said Demonica, dumping on a great heap of splinters as she appeared.

  “Yea. Like your showing up and ruining my enjoyment of things.”

  “My word! I missed that altogether,” she said.

  “So why do you have to be here, Grandmother?”

  “Why, to warm the room for you,” she said, feeding sticks into the first licks of flame from her smoking kindling. “Actually, I was wondering if you'd checked on Bratin Brute since you got back.”

  Spitemorta rolled her eyes. “Why ever would I need to?”

  “Well why'd you leave a skinweler with King Theran if you never meant to check up on him?” said Demonica.

  “That was your notion, Grandmother. I never did see the point. That old gaffer is useless, useless, useless and no threat to anyone at all. One of these days, his heart will give out when he's asleep on his throne and no one will ever have reason to notice until he starts to stink.”

  “The point you may have missed,” she said, still busily feeding the fire, “is that Theran is sly enough to have you ignoring him so that he can get away with anything he wants.”

  “All right,” said Spitemorta. “Let's just have a look at Theran then.” She fetched her bag from a hook on one of the wardrobes, sat on the bed and rolled out her skinweler.

  Demonica worked a heavy piece of oak into the flames and stood up, brushing off her kirtle as she came to the bed to see.

  “Ha!” said Spitemorta at the sight of Theran lolling on his throne without his slippers. “Just as I thought.” But the sudden glimpse of a beautiful young woman beside him talking and laughing as if they were the very closest of friends had her sitting upright at once for a second look. “Who is she?” she gasped.

  “Good question,” said Demonica, peering in to see for herself. “And I have another one. Why can't you hear what they're saying? After all, we did leave a skinweler in his throne room.”

  “I don't see it anywhere,” she said
, springing to her feet and leaving the ball on the bed for Demonica to peer into. “The old pen cachu was supposed to be listening to my ten o' clock deliveries every single day...”

  “This could be why,” said Demonica, waving her back to the skinweler.

  Spitemorta grabbed up the ball to find three naked blue men. “Beaks!” she screeched. “We'll see about that...”

  “See about what, dear?”

  “Beat it Grandmother!”

  “As you wish Granddaughter.” And with that, she winked out, taking the fire and the warmth of the room with her.

  ***

  “So how was it?” said Rose as Fuzz appeared in the doorway.

  “Oh my word!” he said, pecking her on the cheek. “It's right up there with Ugleeuh turning me into a bear. The difference is that you'll want to try it after the baby comes. It was the most hair raising thing I've ever done until I got used to it. Now, I'm afraid I'll be doing it every chance I can manage.”

  “Next, you'll want a dragon bondmate.”

  “Fiddlesticks. I'll have all the bonds I need between you and Sidoor and our children.”

  “Oh!”

  “What's wrong?”

  “My water broke!” she gasped. “Please go find Mother and Soraya. Now!”

  Fuzz stepped out and ran. Before she could quite figure out what she was doing with rags and pillows, he was back in the room with Minuet, Soraya, Ceidwad, Lipperella and Mary.

  “Let me listen,” said Ceidwad.

  Rose paused between pants and gave a nod.

  Ceidwad closed her eyes and gently laid her head across her. She looked up at once. “She's going to be perfect, dear,” she said, rattling her beak along a strand of Rose's hair.

  And sometime well after the evening slipped away to darkness, the new Princess Lily was placed into Rose's outstretched arms.

  ***

  Coel had a well worked out strategy that he was calling “Stealth and Strangle” by the time they were done with their campaign in the north. It consisted of placing themselves in a ring around the target castle, just out of sight, by silencing all of the farms that they came to. When Spitemorta had slain the monarch and anyone else who might possibly give orders inside, she would contact him by skinweler and his troops would storm the castle and its surrounding town.

  His troops had dropped anchor a league north and a league south of where Castle Theranholm lay, surrounded by the town of Bratin, a mile inland from the Bratin Brute coast. When his troops were in place out of sight of the castle, Cole took his skinweler and climbed up into a red pine, far enough to be able to see Castle Theranholm. He gave a great sigh and rolled the ball out of its bag. The back of his neck prickled as it always did when colors began swirling under its pearly surface. And there she was, looking right out at him.

  “We're in place just out of sight of Bratin, Your Majesty,” he said.

  “You've surrounded Castle Bratin Brute, then?” she said.

  “I suppose you could call it that. Yes. We have it surrounded.”

  “Excellent, General,” she said. “Be ready to strike in one hour. Have your ball ready. When I've cleaned house, I'll give you the order to attack.”

  “Your Majesty,” he said as she winked out.

  ***

  Spitemorta set down her steaming cup of klenved-mor herbs and broke out laughing, bouncing on her chair. She silenced herself with another sip. “Ah,” she said, smacking down her empty cup. She rolled the skinweler off the table into her lap to study for a moment. “Ha! There you are, you moldy old gaffer.”

  She stood up with the Staff, recited her spell and found herself standing in front of King Theran himself, snoring away on his throne. “Hey cachu face!” she shouted. “Sit up.”

  “Now what for?” he said, shaking his head with a great gaping yawn as he sat forward and rubbed his face. “Oh! Queen Spitemorta. I was asleep. What can I do for you?”

  “You need to be awake to see who kills you.”

  “Why thank you,” he said with an appreciative nod. “I'd certainly hate to miss out.”

  “I'm here to kill you, fool.”

  “Well here I am, wide awake.”

  “Damn you!” she shrieked, blowing him apart with a concussion that split the back of his great chair and spattered the entire room.

  “What happened?” cried Arianrhod, stumbling in wide eyed through a side door.

  Spitemorta looked up from whisking at a stray piece of flesh on her bodice, cast a glamourie of Theran upon herself and calmly sat upon his broken throne.

  Arianrhod steadied himself against the doorpost for a moment, rubbing his temples.

  “Hey!” she called out, forgetting to disguise her voice. “Go fetch my young Beak friends.”

  Arianrhod gave a quick bow and stepped back out, still rubbing a temple.

  In a few moments, Tramae and Donnel came hurrying up the carpet to the dais, deep in a discussion about using pikes on wild hog, suddenly stopping short at the sight of things.

  “Father Theran!” cried Tramae. “What happened in here?”

  “He died of his own stupidity, I'm afraid,” said Spitemorta, standing up without the glamourie.

  “Father Ther...!” wailed Tramae, cut short as she was blown asunder.

  Donnel came up the carpet, ringing with the steel of his claymore as he made a furious swing at Spitemorta which glanced off the Staff in time for her to blow him apart like a petard, flinging his claymore into the far wall.

  Spitemorta hopped astride the Staff and shot out of the throne room and down the hall, blowing apart Captains Drest and Erp as they drew their swords. On she flew, up and down every passage and hallway, setting off anyone alive.

  Outside, a crosspiece in a rose trellis splintered with a crack, as Captain Girom slipped and climbed to a third storey window to tumble inside, scramble to his feet and fling open the door of a wardrobe to grab up the blowgun, darts and the no-magic poison. At the sight of her on the Staff flying away from the castle, he raced down the hall, down the stairs and out into the countryside.

  ***

  Snow melted, trickling everywhere in the bright February sun. Far above, a raven croaked. Jays and chickadees called. Bound to one of Longbark's great branches, a leafy cocoon larger than any hornet's nest began having twitches. Soon, it was rocking from side to side as a lime green split suddenly ran down its side. A pair of titmice flit away to a nearby tree, as a young woman pushed out of the cocoon like a wad of wet lettuce.

  She climbed onto the outside and held fast throughout the afternoon as her wings unfolded and her thigh length cascades of dark green hair dried and fell free to stir in the hushed air. As the sun westered to the far rim of the crater, her great luna moth wings now felt flat and firm and she opened her emerald eyes and slipped to the ground.

  Celeste, Nacea, Alvita and Rodon were sitting at the board having salsify soup when she appeared. Celeste looked up with a gasp at the only winged Fairy she had ever seen and dropped her spoon into her soup. “A!” chorused everyone, “the Dampned Babi!”

  The gorgeous Fairy held out her arms. “Mamas,” she said with her smile of wee shark teeth.

  DOOM

  Book 6

  Chapter 177

  At last the day arrived. Empress Spitemorta had scarcely been back in Loxmere for a month after King Vortigern's funeral in Gwael when word came that her husband King Artamus had been murdered, making her queen of Gwael and ruler of the entire known world. As she was having a private giddy whirl across the floor of her bower, one of her stewards dared to knock and tell her that her new castle at Niarg was ready for her inspection at last. Forget any further pretenses of mourning. She was on her way to Castle Niarg. She grabbed up her skinweler, hunting for a place to appear in the new surroundings. “Ha!” she said at the sight of the new throne. She stood up with the Staff and recited a traveling spell.

  Immediately she found herself catching her balance before an imposing throne of black marble, made by G
anet-Pounner Roparzh, the royal sculptor of the House of Dark.

  She sat at once upon its plump red velvet cushion, looking this way and that at the huge rubies from her catoptrolite mine inlaid into its arms. And her arms had goose-flesh. She gave them a vigorous rub and looked out the windows at the sheets of grey rain. “All the way from Loxmere in my nightgown,” she said, quickly casting an illusion of a black kirtle upon herself with a crimson hourglass down the lacings of its bodice to match the one on the back of her great chair. “Brrr! No warmth in glamouries.”

  A cold torrent drenched the great skylight, directly overhead in the vaulted Gothic ceiling. “Good,” she said, looking up at the leaded glass which surrounded an elliptical black glazing with yet another red hourglass. “The fools got it right, after all. And it took them long enough that they've earned their deaths, even if they did get it right.” She nodded with a rocking chair rhythm, her eyes running down the massive gargoyle pillars to the black and white marble chessboard of a floor on either side of the coal black carpet runner where Demonica stood with folded arms.

  “What?” said Spitemorta. “Finding it hard to admit that I rule the entire world?”

  “I was here to help you enjoy the occasion,” said Demonica, “but since you make such a point of it, are you quite sure that you actually do?”

  “Did Artie's death get by you? I've been queen of Gwael from the moment he died. There's no place left to conquer...”

  “That you know about. Have you wondered what lies beyond the Argos Ocean sunrise outside Artamus's bedroom window?”

  “Oh, go on! If there were lands to the east, Gwael would already be trading with them. I rule every single land on earth.”

  “I see. Then what about the vast lands beyond the Barrier Mountains on this very continent?”

  “Who cares? There's not a thing there.”

  “You've checked?”

  “Beat it, Grandmother!”

  “Why bother dear?” said Demonica, glancing at General Coel, on his way up the black carpet. “He can no more see nor hear me than he could at any time after you and I fell from the sky together.”