Bound in Stone 3

by K. M. Frontain

  “Keep it! You could have had me hung for treason. The monk almost caught me in a lie. Why didn’t you say he could hear truths?”

  Marun stared back at him wordlessly.

  Ufrid sneered. “You don’t need to answer. I’ve already guessed. You were hoping both my brother and I would be eliminated at once. You can forget any bargain we had, faithless traitor. I can’t trust any potion you send next.” Ufrid lowered the mirror.

  “Wait!” the distant voice cried. Ufrid lifted the device after many prolonged seconds of silence. The sorcerer looked through the mirror coldly, once more in control of his emotions. “I will leave your kingdom alone as promised. I will see you made king. Just tell me what you hear of Ugoth’s plans.”

  “I promise nothing.”

  “Then you may speak with me again or not,” the Shadow Master said “It is now your choice alone whether I press forward once Omera has fallen.” The image sank into dark cloth. When the surface lightened again, Ufrid gazed at himself.

  “You like having the last word, don’t you, you cold bastard?” Ufrid spat. “But it’s up to me, just as you said.” He set his mirror back in its hiding place and rode out into the open.

  ***

  Scowling, Marun turned toward the larger mirror, intending to step back within.

  “Please!” the queen begged. “Please! Let me have the mirror back. Ufrid might pick his up during the day. Please!”

  “Then he shall speak to me.”

  “He won’t say everything to you!” she shouted. “He doesn’t trust you anymore!”

  “And why should he trust you?” The look he gave her was scathing. She was dressed and coifed as a queen, but he knew what a slut she was beneath the royal blue cloak.

  “He wants to be king,” she replied. “He needs my cooperation. He thinks I love him.”

  “And don’t you?”

  “No,” she said. “I love Ugoth.”

  Marun laughed. “You betray him!”

  “He cheated me!” she shrieked. “He cheated me of what was mine! I should have been the one he loved! I should have been! I am Queen Eshaia! I am Omeran! How dare he look down on me the way he does! The way he has always done!”

  “You want to make him pay for such a small slight? How curious.”

  “Yes!” she cried. “A small slight! A small slight of eight years weight! I heard Ufrid. He took a whore with another man. He used a whore instead of me.” She thudded to her knees and put her manicured hands over her face. She sobbed brokenly. “He used her like a whore!”

  Marun stared down at her, his interest piqued. Such torment! He turned toward the mirror and crooked a finger. “I have a gift for you Eshaia. You can keep him just until tonight.”

  Her head lifted hopefully. “Oh!” she cried. It was the hideous soldier. She began shivering. She pulled her bodice open before he’d stepped through the great mirror.

  Marun smiled, set the smaller mirror on the floor and walked back into Omera. “Drive her mad,” he ordered the Stohar soldier before the twin was covered. “Drive her completely mad.”

  The warrior smiled viciously. He pulled his genitals free of his clothing and pulled her face to his groin. “Such soft skin,” he said as she drew him in. He scraped her cheek with his dirty nails. Her flesh turned red. She moaned. “Do you protest?”

  She moaned again. He rammed her down on him until she choked. She shuddered in release immediately. The warrior laughed and shoved her off. He bent and twisted her nipples until she cried out with pain, but she begged him for more even as he did it.

  ***

  Two days passed, and the Omeran army at last met the Ulmeniran forces. Ugoth sat his stallion and surveyed the Omeran column. Today he wore his full armour. Along with his usual chain mail, he was burdened with shoulder guards, brassards and leather gauntlets that had claw-like metal over the knuckles. His legs were armoured as well, and he wore boots with wicked spikes. His bascinet, when the visor was lowered, resembled the upper half of a gryphon head. Just now the beak-like visor was lifted, and Ugoth’s sapphire eyes stared out from beneath, cold and angry.

  The Omeran army was smaller than Ugoth had expected and therefore a singularly disheartening sight. The Omeran monarch had sent missives reporting that his vanguard fought Marun in the north, but it was obvious that King Olent had lied. The vanguard had more than likely been his main force. Omera was already beaten. Olent was a fool.

  “Well,” Herfod said—he sat a mount next to Ugoth, “that’s not an uplifting scene.”

  Ugoth nodded agreement. “The liar! He sent his best north already. He’s beaten! Just watch, Herfod. He’ll come up here blustering and posturing like he’s better than us, but he’ll have fear in his damned eyes. Omeran idiot! Why the hells do we bother with them?”

  “Because of their nice big ports,” Herfod responded complacently.

  “I should invade and take their nice big ports, the lowland whoresons!”

  “Yes, well, we all know Ulmenirans make awful sailors. No sense of balance off a horse or dry land.”

  “At least we know what to do when we’re on dry land, unlike those dizzy bastards. Gods! Those are boys!”

  The king was correct. As the army approached, the faces beneath the helmets were revealed to be young, the eyes of the boy soldiers anxious and uncertain. “A green army!” Ugoth scoffed.

  “Looks as if the Cho Korth haven’t come north to Omera,” Herfod murmured, finding no sign of a Cho Korth plume on a single helmet.

  “Then they’ve broken treaty. They’ll be dealt with later,” Ugoth said firmly.

  Herfod said nothing. He had convinced Ugoth to act as if there would be a later. He had insisted the future was not fixed. He hadn’t lied. Small changes now could make big differences later. Ugoth clutched the feeble line of hope like a drowning man. ‘The future is not fixed’ had become his favourite maxim. Herfod said it in his mind that very moment. He clasped the same mental lifeline with his lover and just as desperately.

  “What the hells is he waiting for?” Ugoth snarled.

  Herfod squinted at the group of Omeran nobles who sat their horses some distance off from the dusty army. The Omeran king waited in the centre of the group, bright raiment on his stout figure. Herfod was reminded of fancy gamecocks. That one had grown fat on a diet of complacency.

  The gamecock and his entourage stared in King Ugoth’s direction expectantly. “Looks as if they are waiting for you to approach,” Herfod observed. Stupid of the gamecock to insult a gryphon so.

  Ugoth laughed. The noise was more a snort of disgust. “Me? Approach them?”

  He turned his stallion and headed back to the Ulmeniran camp. Grinning sardonically, Herfod wheeled his mount around and raced after him.

  Ugoth had called the Ulmeniran army to a halt earlier in the afternoon. His scouts had reported that the Omeran contingent would meet them at their current location by the end of the day. Ugoth had decided to let them catch up. Now he wished he hadn’t. Useless Omeran bastard!

  Monumentally irritated, he dismounted outside his pavilion and stalked into it. He drew off his gauntlets, tossed these and his helmet onto a desk, sat in his chair and listened to Herfod take a report of the day’s training advances. Herfod was still outside the tent. Ugoth could just make out his shadow on the canvas, a straight proud figure, the habit flapping tightly against his back in the strong breeze.

  After a few instructions to the messenger, Herfod lifted the canvas flap and entered. He noticed Ugoth’s hungry stare and paused within the entrance, considering the idea of retreating.

  “You don’t have leave to quit my presence,” Ugoth said, somehow knowing exactly what Herfod thought. “Come here.”

  “We’ve no time for that. The gods busted Omeran king will get his sorry ass over here soon.”

  Ugoth rose and approached him instead. He kissed him, dragged him from the entry and continued kissing him, even when a guard outside announced the arrival of King Olent. He had H
erfod’s habit up and his hands on intimate anatomy when the tent flap was thrust open.

  Ufrid stomped in. “Get your hands off him, man! Olent is outside looking fit to burst.”

  “So is Herfod. Tell Olent to wait.”

  “Ugoth!” Herfod protested. He knocked his royal lover down, pulled his pants up and let his habit fall. Ugoth grinned smugly and rose to his feet. Herfod shook his head and retreated behind the chairs, where he would stand and observe as a servant of the king should.

  “You pervert,” Ufrid said to his brother. “Did you want Olent to come and watch?”

  “No. But you can,” Ugoth mocked. “You like it. Don’t you, Ufrid? I heard you started in on men yesterday.”

  “The roaches are willing enough. Why the hells shouldn’t I?”

  “Keep away from Vik!” the monk warned from beyond the chairs. “He said you made advances. He’s not interested.”

  “That’s because he’s a teasing prick like you,” Ufrid snarled.

  “That’s because he prefers to beat his lovers,” Ugoth said coolly. “Do you like to be punished, Ufrid? Vik is very good at it.”

  Ufrid gaped in surprise. “No!” he cried quickly.

  “No, that’s right. You prefer to punish them.” Ugoth scorned him with a black look. “Stay away from Vik,” he repeated. “And stay away from what’s mine.”

  “Is Vik your boy too?”

  “No! But he’s under my protection. Is that clear?”

  Ufrid nodded. He stomped off to a place at the side of the tent while glaring at Herfod. His gaze fell toward Herfod’s middle and what he’d seen revealed moments earlier. Herfod shook his head and cast a rude gesture at him. Ufrid sneered and sent one back. Herfod grinned and gave him three more, all meaning something consecutively worse. Ufrid didn’t know what they meant and went back to glaring.

  Having paused to watch the silent jousting, Ugoth heaved an annoyed sigh. Herfod was incorrigible. So was that bastard Ufrid. Testily, His Majesty sat in his chair. “Enter!” he roared.

  Behind him, Herfod jumped in surprise. Ugoth grinned evilly. Caught him!

  He wiped the grin off as the flap lifted high. King Olent, bending only the necessary distance, entered. He straightened and regarded Ugoth frigidly. Several of his noblemen rounded him and gazed down their noses with the same frosty expressions.

  A man in a black habit stepped into the pavilion to their rear. He stood quietly without advancing further. Rather than a disapproving demeanour, he peered about with evident interest, eyeing in particular the golden-haired Ulmeniran monarch who sat his field chair like a king should, with the weight of power and pride.

  “You do not greet me on the field and now you thsit rather than rithse!” King Olent snapped. “Have you no manners?”

  “Not for an idiot,” Ugoth responded.

  Olent whitened with outrage. “How dare you!”

  “Shut up, fool. You will greet me as is my due. I am the king who comes to save your kingdom. You will show gratitude!”

  “My army haths had but a thsetback,” Olent said brusquely. “What you bring iths due by treaty.”

  “A treaty signed by a better man than you. Your father was a worthy king. But you!” Ugoth rose and towered wrathfully. “Your northern vanguard was your army! And it was crushed! Now you march with untrained boys! Do not lie to me, Olent. You let fools govern your soldiers while you sat back on your perfumed ass and stupidly expected your will to be obeyed. Do not come before me acting high and mighty, you pathetic, untutored idiot. You are less skilled than the boy’s you have brought me.”

  Olent, stark with fear as well as fury, sputtered without issuing a word to justify his stupidity. Ugoth had done the unthinkable. The uncivilized. The unpardonable. He had brought the truth into the open. He had named an Omeran king a fool.

  Olent found his voice at last and seized on personal alliance. “You! You are my thithster’s huthsband! How dare you thspeak to me thuths!”

  “Is that it?” Ugoth said. “The only defence you have is to name my marriage to that slut?”

  “What?” Olent gasped. “What did you thsay?”

  “I said slut!” Ugoth roared. “You think I’m a fool? She was no virgin the day she came to me. I kept her only to satisfy the peace between our kingdoms. Gods! She was hoisting her dress for my brother within days of arriving at court!”

  “You …! You liar!” Olent bellowed.

  Ugoth laughed cynically.

  “Gods!” he heard Herfod cry. “You knew?”

  Ugoth turned just enough that he could still keep an eye on the enraged Omeran monarch. “I must admit I left her to her own devices for a few weeks, Brother Herfod,” he answered. “I was hoping she’d give me an excuse to get rid of her, but then you went and ruined it by frightening her into being a faithful wife.”

  “You knew?” Herfod repeated. “All these years and you never let on!”

  Ugoth smirked. “I’m not an idiot. Since you terrified her slut ass into order, I decided I would make do with her after all, especially so when you said the baby was a girl.” He faced Ufrid suddenly. “Whose child is Emelle, by the way? Whose is she, Ufrid?”

  “Yours! I think,” Ufrid said, face blank with fear. “Eshaia said she was yours.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, Ufrid,” Ugoth sneered. “I like Emelle more than you. She has more sense than her mother already.”

  “Godths!” they heard Olent say. The royal brothers faced him. Confronted by two sets of suspicious hawk-like gazes, he flushed and blurted a protest. “How could you thspeak of thiths before …?” The Omeran monarch glanced at the men with him and refocused on Ugoth. “Have you no care for your good name and honour?”

  Ugoth smiled viciously. “My good name? My honour? You think your sister ever cared to protect them? I put up with the Omeran whore you sent to be my wife, but with Ufrid’s confession, I have the right to hang her and place in the queen’s chair a woman worthy of the title.”

  “You would hang my thithster? You would break the peathe between our kingdomths?”

  “Shut up!” Ugoth said. “There is no peace, Olent. There is war, and your kingdom has as good as fallen to the Shadow Master. Do not speak to me of peace, you who marches in desperation with an army of children! As it stands, because she has produced a son that is mine and daughters too, I’ll spare your sister, but she will be sent to the convent of Virginal Sisters when this war is over, where she will be locked away from men for the rest of her life. It’s more than she deserves.”

  Olent’s lips thinned into a compressed line, and his gaze veered away, but Ugoth wasn’t finished. A certain irritation had bothered him since the Omeran monarch had entered the pavilion and spoken the first challenge. Ugoth could not resist addressing it.

  “By the way, Olent,” he said. “Your language originated in Ulmenir. Did you know that? It appears you’ve bastardized it since then. The way you lisp the letter Salm, I always found that laughable. But I have to say, your sister’s lisp isn’t nearly as annoying as your own. Fortunately, none of my children have chosen to speak like her, I suppose because sensible Ulmeniran nannies actually raise them. Thank the gods I refused to let your sister hire Omeran ones.”

  Olent began to splutter a protest, but Ugoth continued speaking over top of him. “I traced the origination of your lisp to a useless, effeminate king some five generations back. Your King Oslal, I believe, though he called himself Othwaw. He emptied the royal treasury building pleasure palaces, yet never fathered children, which resulted in your line taking the throne. You can thank silly buggering Othwaw for your throne and your bastardized language. It’s a good thing no one took up lisping the letter Les. Your kingdom would never have withstood the laughter.”

  Ugoth returned to his seat and glared at silent, mortified Olent expectantly. “Bow, Owent! Or take your snivelling army of boy’s back to Lordun and wait like the useless king you are!”

  Olent bowed. Ugoth smiled coldly. There, now. Everyon
e knew who was in charge of the combined armies. “I would know the number of your men in this march,” Ugoth demanded curtly.

  A nobleman stepped forward and bowed. “Eleven hundred and seventy-two,” this man said after rising. Ugoth noted that he spoke correctly without lisping. He was young, sandy-haired and skinny. He stood tall and straight and he seemed confident. Better yet, he didn’t stare haughtily down his nose.

  “Are you in charge of this army of boys?” Ugoth asked.

  “I am as of this minute,” the nobleman said flatly.

  Ugoth stared at him. After a moment, he smiled. “Who was in charge a minute ago?”

  The lord jerked his head toward a flushing older gentleman. “I’ve decided to save Lord Amrae the trouble of being embarrassed. I’ve been doing all the work for him in any case. I am Lord Berholt.”

  “You don’t speak like a highborn Omeran,” Ugoth remarked.

  “I looked up the origination of our kingdoms’ differences in speech years ago, after I noticed some commoners mocking the upper classes when they thought no one was listening. I haven’t spoken with a lisp since. Believe me when I say this: the younger set are changing how we act.”

  Ugoth approved with another smile. “Good. There may be some hope for your kingdom after all.” He stood. “I have the white witches your kingdom threw out. You will get with Brother Herfod after you’ve seen to your camp. We’ll need some of your men training for the dragon watch.”

  “Witches?” a voice barked.

  With a repressive countenance, Ugoth regarded the speaker. “I did not invite you to speak, priest,” he rebuked the holy man of the new sect.

  The black-garbed priest bowed apologetically. “Forgive me, Sire. I was but shocked. Witches are evil.”

  “Not the white ones.” Ugoth strode forward, forcing King Olent aside. “Exactly who are you?”

  “Bishop Petrin,” the priest said. He bowed again, hands pressed in a point before him. He was a slight, dark-haired man with a plain face.

  “Bishop Petrin, how many priests are here with you?”