“So how far is the Mammvro?” said Cinder.
“A right fair piece, south-west,” said Karl-Veur, “at least as far as Balley Cheerey down to where we camped. Why?”
“Cook and I talked about flying down there to see where we all came from. We've only heard stories from the folks. And the fire heads are forever telling lies.”
“I'd be careful. They may be windy, but they did leave because Spitemorta's takeover made it too dangerous for them to stay.”
“Maybe we need to check with some of the Headlanders your father trusts.”
“I would...”
“This is terrible of me I suppose,” said Yuna with a yawn. “But I just keep wondering if Yann-Ber and I will ever see our birds again. Or if we'll ever even leave this place.”
And before these cheerful little matters could be discussed, they were on the ground, running alongside Cinder and Cook as they came to a stop on the crunching gravel in the enormous courtyard which Emperor Azenor had maintained as a formal garden for as long as Karl-Veur could remember.
They were immediately surrounded by soldiers dressed in black tunics with Spitemorta's red hourglass, who seemed to be waiting, weapons ready, behind every one of the immaculately pruned evergreens.
“Fates! Has everyone been slain?” thought Karl-Veur. “Novezh vat!” he said, speaking out. “I am Karl-Veur, Prince of the House of Dark, returned home with my wife and son...”
“Your Highness,” said an officer as he stepped forward to thump his chest and kneel.
“Would you have been Serjeant Argan when I was last here?” said Karl-Veur.
“I'm now Lieutenant Argan, at your service.”
“In that case, might word of our arrival be sent to my father, Emperor Azenor?”
“I'm at liberty to see you directly there,” said Argan, “but I must tell you that the Emperor no longer holds his title, nor do you yours. He is now referred to as 'First Steward.' Also, Headlandish is no longer allowed to be spoken. Headlanders are called Darklanders. And the dragons must remain here.”
“If they must,” said Karl-Veur with an apologetic look for Cinder and Cook.
The moment Argan motioned for them to follow, Yuna drew a startled breath that made Karl-Veur hesitate long enough to see the dragons being held at pike point.
“I don't remember any of this,” said Yann-Ber, looking all about when they were underway.
“Nor do I,” muttered Karl Veur, “In spite of what I may recognize.”
To Karl-Veur's surprise, they found Azenor on his throne, dozing.
“First Steward,” said Argan in the polished echoes.
“Yes, yes,” said Azenor at once. “Oh!” he said, sitting up with a smile. “My son! My son has returned. All will be well now.”
Karl-Veur saw at once how pale and gaunt his father was and that he had aged much more than he had expected. “It's good to see you, Father,” he said as he bowed.
“Are you well?”
“At the sight of you I am,” he said with a tug on the bell-pull. “We'll have a visit as soon as you all freshen up and eat.” He paused for a servant who stepped in from a door behind the throne. “Karl-Veur's home. Fix a feast for the four of us plus the three who've been eating with me lately. Berc'hed knows all his favorites...”
“Six. Six plus your three, actually,” said Karl-Veur. “We came all this way on two very fine dragons who are friends and are being held at pike-point as we speak.”
“Oh my! Spitemorta has branded all fire heads traitors. It's out of my hands.”
“It shouldn't be, Father. Our friends are sky heads...”
“With the blue-green crest feathers? Why, I thought they all vanished years ago.”
“They did indeed, to Norz-Meurzouar. And I'd have thought that there'd be no possible mistaking of our cockerel Cinder with any red crested fire head.”
“Well?” said Azenor, turning to Argan.
“An oversight, I'm afraid sir,” said Argan. “We'd forgotten all about the sky heads.”
“Then go straightway and show in our two guests.”
And with a thump of his chest, Argan turned on his heel and marched right down the carpet.
Two hours later, when Karl-Veur, Yuna and Yann-Ber were summoned to supper in Azenor's private dining solar, they were delighted to find Cinder and Cook already at the table with Azenor, Lieutenant Argand and two other familiar looking blue eyed officers. When they were seated, Azenor raised his chalice of mead. “My son returns with his wife and my grown grandson,” he boomed. “And I shall always be grateful to my wonderful new dragon friends who brought them home.”
And before they had managed to drain their goblets, up the stairs came a pair of orderlies, laboring with a great steaming hog, roasted in a marmalade of cumquats, bitter oranges and honey. Soon there were hot wheat rolls, sausage and mashed potatoes and red eye gravy, turnips, carrots, kale and rhubarb pie. “Now, the cooks about had a fit,” said Azenor grandly, as a straggling cook set down the final platter, “but here be toad in the hole made with fat bitter toads caught all along the garden wall under the ferns and crown vetch this very evening for the dragons.”
Cinder and Cook cheered and bumped and drained their goblets at this, which made Azenor beam, for he was very proud of the mead. “I've taken to a bit of bee keeping since I was stung,” he said. On it went throughout the jovial supper, as if the world were new and free all along.
At last, the table was cleared. Argand nodded at one of the other two lieutenants, who quietly ordered guards to stand at the doors. Azenor put a glowing coal on top of the pungent twist in his clay pipe and pushed back from the table. “So,” he said, fixing his eyes on Karl-Veur. “I'd allow you all are here because it's neigh time to bring down the witch. Aye?”
“And I trust that the House of Dark will be fighting on the side of the rebels. Am I right?” said Karl-Veur.
Azenor quietly clamped his pipe between his teeth and gave his hands a furious smack. “Whee-oo!” he cried, grabbing his pipe away from his mouth. “My only regret is that we shall not see Demonica dead and in the Pit alongside her, seven times over.”
“At least be happy that Spitemorta already got her.”
“Her only good deed,” said Azenor. “So what are your plans? I'm only a figurehead these days, as you could plainly see by how you found me in my chair, but I still do have power.”
“When I saw you asleep,” said Karl-Veur, “I feared you'd given up.”
“I damned near had,” he said.
***
The heavy bell in Argentowre struck one, and with one last great contraction, Spitmorta's new baby girl slid right out onto the sheet. The midwife had her tied, snipped and crying in no time at all. She had her in a soft white towel at once, all ready for Spitemorta to nurse. “Oh my, Your Omnipotence!” she said. “We've not undone your bodice...”
“Shut her up!” barked Spitemorta.
“My word!” gasped the wide-eyed midwife. “You need to put a teat in her mouth.”
“You put a teat in her mouth, damn you! Or get her awful racket out of here. And get me cleaned up.”
“Don't you have milk?”
“I feel like a pair of sore melons.”
“But she be the prettiest little newborn I ever...”
“She looks like General Coel, a-peeping out of the thunderbox. Take her and find someone in this place who's fresh. I don't care if it is the dead o' night. And if I'm not cleaned up with new linen and dry wood on the fire by the time you return, you won't live to tell it. Now get out!”
“Yes Your Omnipotence,” said the midwife, breathing fiercely through her nose as she grabbed up another towel to wind about the baby. “I'm going. I am going.” She was out in the hall at once, nearly running. On the stair, she met Coel coming up.
“Mistress Genedigaeth!” he said, stopping her on the steps. “Am I plain mad, or do you have the baby?”
“Mad!” she cried. “That she-bitch sent me for
to find a wet-nurse at this hour, in spite of her having milk, or I'm dead! If you're going up there, please tell her I'm on my way. And I'm sending up service.” And she wheeled away for a run down the stairs.
“Whoa!” boomed Coel in the echoes. “Give me the baby. Go find a wet-nurse and show her to the Empress's apartment as fast as you can. Send her in, but you go home, just to be safe.”
When Coel walked in with the crying baby, Spitemorta had already cleaned herself up with the Staff and was up on her elbows at once at the sound of his arrival.
“See what you put me through?” she shouted. “Now get her out! Go wait for the nurse in my sitting room. And shut the damned door!”
Chapter 199
Coel squatted on the hearth of Spitemorta's sitting room with the new baby as he carefully stirred the coals and reached for a stick of wood. He studied his bundle for a moment, rose to his feet and ambled to the window to wipe a streak across the glass to peer through. “Ergh gul ergh,” he murmured, “Snowing snow. I've never seen it snow so much this early, even here, little one. And it looks like it just might be starting to get light.” He backed up to a chair and carefully sat down. “I wonder what your name is.
Even if I'm to have nothing to do with you, I do hope she's not named you something vile.
“And that's just it,” he said with a sigh as he looked up at the shadows from the candles, dancing under the ceiling. “Here I am, worried about your name. And no matter how it flies in the face of prudence or risks getting me killed, I'll undoubtedly end up trying to stand between you and her a-ruining you.”
He gently lifted the blanket and studied her as the fire popped and sent a swarm of sparks dashing up the flue. “Well you don't look one bit like her,” he said, spitting across the hearth, “and that's a very good start...” Suddenly, Spitemorta's bedroom door clicked open.
“I see they've not got the rubbish,” she said as she shuffled in, holding her middle.
“This wouldn't be rubbish,” he said, gently raising his bundle.
“No, but far more trouble,” she said raising her voice. “And why must you still be part of the trash they haven't got? And where's the wet-nurse?”
“You're going to wake our little girl.”
“Referring to anything of mine as 'ours' could very well turn you into a corpse, General,” she said as she slowly took a chair across the hearth without the slightest glance at the bundle in his arms. “Now why the stinking Pit aren't you the damned wet- nurse?”
“I've got her moving into the nursery. She's out as we speak, gathering her things.”
“You gave her leave to move into my bower?”
“What choice had I? You wouldn't be bothered. You were the one who sent me out here with our newborn daughter...”
“Nothing of mine that you shall ever live to tell about is 'ours!'“ she shouted.
“She's Artamus's daughter, then? Have you cared enough to name her?”
“Pandora is indeed Artie's, as far as you're concerned,” she said with an indifferent shrug.
“Dew dyfen! The Pandora who opened the box of evils for the world?”
“It's a nice name,” she said as if his remark hurt her feelings. “I thought you'd like it, as if you deserved any sort of say.”
“How touching!” said Demonica, clasping her hands.
“Touch my arse!”
Coel looked shocked.
Demonica threw back her head, laughed and suddenly peered into Coel's bundle.
“I do declare!” she gasped. “My powerful wee great-granddaughter is so gorgeous. Looks just like her father, doesn't she?”
“Get out!” screeched Spitemorta.
Coel sat mouth agape before snapping to in preparation to hand over Pandora.
“I hate her, I hate her!” cried Spitemorta. “Why won't she ever stay dead?”
“Oh,” said Coel, nestling Pandora back where she was. “Your grandmother, then.
I have moments when this still throws me.”
“And you think Grandmother doesn't deserve being sent out, since Pandora's her great-granddaughter?”
Coel was working his mouth and shaking his head.
“Well, I'm her mother and empress and it’s my say who sees her, and my say alone. Pit take you and Demonica!”
“As you say, Your Omnipotence,” said Coel with a nod, shifting on his chair.
“You said what? I didn't hear that.”
“I said: as you say. I mean certainly. I agree with you absolutely.”
She stared at him for a moment as if his head had vanished from his shoulders.
“It's time you did, General,” she said as if this was working out entirely as she had expected. “Now. I'm going back to bed. Be at your duties before I wake up.”
“By all means, Your Omnipotence,” he said agreeably. “I shall be here with Pandora, keeping her quiet for you until the wet-nurse returns.”
And when the bedroom door closed behind her, she still had not peeked at the child.
***
Directly above the great spring of Spring 'n' Drain, in the garden outside Lucas and Soraya's kitchen, was a depression in the rock that they called “the tank” at the foot of the bluff which was ideal for holding fish. Soraya had been convinced that Neron would return any day from Mount Bedd with Daniel and Ariel, so Lukus had made himself busy, filling it with buckets of blind catfish that he hauled up from the waters of the deep caverns. So convinced was she of their return that she had Lukus sitting out in the late afternoon sun with her, sharpening their filleting knives and listening to the cactus wren and the whirlpool doves, the moment Smoke, Scorch and Ash appeared with Neron, Daniel and Ariel. With a brief exchange of polite regards, the dragons flew on home, leaving the Elves to put a board across the tops of a pair of kegs and begin boning fish for supper in the warm winter air.
“So where's Abaddon, Mother?” said Ariel as she picked out her usual knife. “I should go and let him know that we're back, so he could have supper with us. He loves fried catfish and potatoes. What are you doing? If I'm going to find Abaddon, why are you handing me a fish?”
“I doubt very much if he's here,” said Soraya. “He and Toast have been out flying patrol up and down the coast for days at a time. Hardly anyone's seen him lately.”
“He shows up at James and Mary's vaults in the morning sometimes,” said Lukus, pausing to cut open a fish, “but he's usually gone by the time anyone knows he's there.”
“Well hasn't he been talking to you all?”
“Why would he do that?” said Lukus.
“He hasn't?”
Lukus and Soraya were both shaking their heads.
“Oh fiddlesticks!” said Daniel as he grabbed at a fish in the tank. “He's just been off pouting somewhere as usual, dreaming up ways to keep you upset.”
“Well he promised me he would!” she said. And with that she smacked down her knife and dashed inside.
“Damn him!” said Lukus as he sliced off a fish head.
“Why?” said Soraya.
“Well at the very moment she needs to be mustering every thing she has, he's got her upset and reeling.”
“She loves him,” said Soraya. “She needs him right now.”
“Yea? To summon her strength to slay his mother. Who really knows how that sits with him.”
“He made it very clear to Ariel that he wants Spitemorta dead so badly that he feels he won't have peace until she is.”
Lukus put down his knife. “So he says. And it probably is the truth, but I can't help it. His mother blew my father to smithereens. And I like James these days. I really do. But I do remember when he had a bad character, from the time he was a mean kid, clear up through his treatment of Rose. So just remember how Vyrpudi still makes you feel. Anyway, I didn't say anything until she was inside.”
“I know,” she said as she dried her hands on her apron. “Nobody's upset with you, but I'm going inside to see if she needs anything.”
“I
t bugs me that he still has her worked up when things are this close to happening,” said Daniel. “He was supposed to be all through with getting in her way...”
“And you're both quite right,” said Neron, looking up from his fish. “Having everyone settled and behind her is indeed important to her survival. I mean, my doubts would certainly be no help to her, any more than Abaddon's.”
Lukus and Daniel looked up one at a time and went on cutting up catfish to the determined rattling of the wren and the calls of the whirlpool doves.
Up at the top of the lava tube, Soraya pecked on Ariel's door. “Ariel?” she called.
“Ariel?” She lifted the latch to find Ariel's faithful rag dolly leaning against the pillow on her neatly made bed. “She's gone to find Abby.”
***
Ariel appeared in the agave garden just outside Lipperella's kitchen. She could see everyone inside rushing about, seeing to the final preparations of supper.
“Hey poop,” came a voice from right behind her.
“Fornigell!” gasped Ariel. “You gave me quite a start. What are you doing?”
“Catching sphinx moths for supper,” she said, holding up a sack. “And you're always invited, but you probably couldn't handle it...”
“I'd pass on the moths, but...”
“You'd run right back out. It's kind of a dragon delicacy. I've yet to see an Elf...”
“O fiddlesticks! I can't imagine being that rude.”
“It's carrion cow and chocolate sauce.”
“Oh my!” said Ariel, going wide eyed, trying not to make a face.
“I'll tell Ash you're out here,” said Fornigell. And she stepped inside.
At a waft of air from the kitchen, Ariel saw at once how it all was, swallowed hard and backed well out into the agaves to wait.
“Ariel,” said Ash as she came out into the long shadows with her putrid sandwich.
“What's wrong?”
“Abby's not here,” she said, looking away through the agave spikes at the sunset to avoid the sandwich. “And not only that, but he's not once come to see Mother and Father.”
“So?”
“But he promised he would.”
Heart of the Staff - Complete Series Page 208
