by T. O. Munro
“Your coiffure is restless this evening, my dear,” he said to mask his nerves.
She did not turn to face him, staring out to the flickering lights in the Gap of Tandar. Odestus followed her gaze, keeping a weather eye out for her writhing snakes. “I have bound them too long beneath my hood, little wizard. Let them wake and enjoy their freedom for once free from the duty of battle.”
A second serpent jerked in the wizard’s direction and Odestus recoiled. “They make me nervous, my dear. I know not where they stop and you begin.”
She shrugged, “we are one, little wizard, my serpents and I. It is a more certain unity than you have fabricated between myself and Galen. I hope our combined venture is enough to please your Master.”
“He is your Master too.”
Dema pulled the black medallion from her neck and tossed it on the stone floor. “He has not been my Master in weeks.”
Odestus swayed as another snake swooped towards him. “Could you not put up your hood my dear? I find it hard to speak clearly when your serpents are so agitated.”
“You should be proud of them, Odestus. They are as much your creation, your children even, as they are my crowning glory. Fuck knows they are the only children either of us will ever have.”
Odestus made no reply for a moment and another snake hissed spite in his direction. “They seem particularly rebellious and ungrateful offspring this evening, my dear.”
“They sense when others mean me harm, little wizard.” She did not turn but asked him lightly, “do you mean me harm, little wizard?”
He gripped the bottle more tightly. “No my dear, never.”
Again a snake lunged in his direction and, at last, Dema flicked up her hood and turned to face Odestus. “What is it then that has brought you here to interrupt my evening retreat? Has the Master some new instruction, has his interest in me been re-awakened?”
“Kimbolt said you might be here.”
She cocked her head to one side. “That is the answer to a different question, little wizard.”
“I came on my own cognisance, Dema. There is a conversation I would have with you.”
She folded her arms to hug herself. “That sounds ominous, little wizard. My father sounded much the same after he had heard of the first man I kissed.” She smiled at an old memory and, beneath the wrinkled scar on her cheek, Odestus saw a glimmer of the Dema of old and took it for a good omen. “He never knew what else the man got, or what I demanded in return. He simply said that Sergeant Kullick was far too old for a fourteen year old girl and he should have known better.”
She laughed. “The sergeant was the finest swordsmen in the company, probably the entire army. A shame he wielded his other weapon with somewhat less generosity or skill. Still he taught me all he knew that was of any value.”
Odestus was cheered to hear her talk of the life before, before everything changed. He gripped the bottle more tightly. “You remember when it happened, Dema, when you became as you are?”
“What, little wizard, is this to be another lecture on my monstrous nature?” The cowl about her head shifted with the stirring of unquiet snakes.
He shook his head quickly. “You gave me a task then, it was urgent and I am sorry that it has taken twenty years but at last I have the answer you demanded.“ He drew out the bottle and held it before her, its contents fluorescing in the grey light of dusk.
“What is this?” She said her voice breaking with something, fear or hope he knew not which. “Another vile liqueur whose taste you acquired as the pampered Governor of Undersalve?” Her sharp rebuke at his expense lost some of its edge through the tremor in her voice.
He shook his head with slow deliberation. “You know what it is, Dema?”
“No!”
“I worked on it in every spare hour I had in Undersalve. I sought answers and ingredients not just in this plane but in many others besides.” He wanted her to understand, to be not just pleased and grateful, but impressed at this his greatest work.
“No, little wizard,” she was shaking her head now and backing away from him.
“This will make you human again, Dema.” He smiled as he said it, so pleased to at last share the triumph of his research. “This will cure you of that curse.”
“No, never.”
Her hood was a writhing mess as he stepped towards her. “Be not afraid Dema. You do not need your snakes or your gaze, you are the greatest warrior I have ever seen, the greatest general. You would still succeed in the Master’s service restored to the woman you once were.” He hesitated, tongue flicking across his lips. “In human form you could even seek service in another cause. I hear the Caliphs of the Eastern lands always have need of skilful soldiers.”
She lunged at him, seizing him one handed about the throat with a ferocity that almost made him drop the precious container. With his free hand he grabbed at her arm, the cold skin with its corded muscles like steel beneath his touch. “You fool, little wizard, would you kill me? Is the greatest betrayal always to come from our dearest friends?”
“I would never kill you, Dema,” he gasped. Her grip was tight enough to restrain yet not quite choke, but the flare behind the gauze suggested the grip might yet tighten. “I only seek to make you as you were, to make you human again, to save you from becoming a monster. It is what I have always striven for, it is what you have always wanted.”
“I can live with the monster, little wizard but I will die as a human. You will not do that to me, no-one will do that to me.”
She let go of his throat and as he staggered back she seized the bottle from his hand and, in one fluid movement flung it far over the battlements.
“No,” he shrieked an agony of rage searing his nerves as though it had been the child he’d never had which she had cast so viciously aside. He flung himself at the embrasure, leaning between the merlons to track the bottle’s flight. In the bailey below two outlander guards were looking up at the tower in some surprise. Between them, in the flickering torchlight, a puddle of dark liquid spread and smoked.
“You bloody fool,” he rounded on her, trying to pummel her face and chest with his fists but she caught his wrists and effortlessly restrained him. “You ungrateful bitch, you cow, you misshapen monster. Some of those ingredients took years to find, have you any idea how many chameleons I had to skin before I found the right one. You wouldn’t even think about it. You just threw it away.” He started trying to kick her but she dodged his clumsy feet with nimble steps as though they were inventing a new dance. “That bottle was irreplaceable!”
“Good,” she said. “Then that will save me the trouble of killing you to prevent you replacing it.”
He stopped flailing at that and looked into her covered eyes. “I don’t know you Dema, I don’t know you anymore.”
She smiled back at him. “As your certainties shrink, little wizard, mine grow. With that one throw I have just saved myself, and who knows I may even have saved you. Who says the future cannot be changed!” She laughed. “Come, let us get a glass of that green slime you think a luxury. It may not be as precious as your little potion, but I wager it tastes better. I may even join you in a glass to celebrate.”
***
Hepdida shot awake in a cold sweat. She could smell him, still smell him, surely it was not a dream. Grundurg’s foul odour washed over her cloying at her nostrils. So many times he had loomed over her, with his thin bladed knife or worse. She shook her head, it was a dream, only a dream. The orc was dead. Niarmit had killed him. She padded out of bed and pulled open the door to the sitting room. Niarmit’s room was beside her own. She took the few steps towards the heavy door reaching for its handle. No. She would conquer these nightmares alone. She walked to the balcony. The carefully crafted elegance of Rugan’s gardens endured even in the winter moonlight, shadows of empty trees made intricate shapes across the lawns.
She hugged herself and tried to guess the hour from the height of the bright star Croen above the Eastern h
orizon. Niarmit had tried to show her once, on another night that the dead orc had awakened her. She screwed up one eye and held out fist and thumb to gauge angle as she had been taught, but recollection of the exact method eluded her.
Sleep too, seemed to have fled her mind. She gathered a shawl about her shoulders and padded softly out of the door to the sitting room. They were quartered in the heart of Rugan’s palace. Each of the suites of rooms opened onto a common covered gallery which ran around three sides of a central courtyard. In the centre of the courtyard a fountain shot a perpetual jet of water high into the air. Hepdida felt the faint touch of its spray on her cheek and turned to walk around the gallery.
The first door she passed was the nursery where Giseanne had let her play with baby Andros. She looked towards it with a smile at the happy recollection and then frowned. The door was ajar.
She took a barefoot step towards it and pushed at the door’s carved surface. It swung noiselessly open. There was a guard just inside the door, sitting, not standing. She nearly tripped over his legs on her way into the outer day nursery. She looked down, at him. He was still, too still. A dark spreading stain seeped towards her toes from beneath the fallen guard. She stepped back away from the body. The wall came up behind her with a thump that echoed in her chest. She edged away but her foot struck something that rolled. She looked down. It was a staff an old wooden stick its curved head worn pale with constant handling. Breathing was difficult, movement impossible. She let her gaze trace the length of the stick in the soft moonlight. There was a thin old hand by the staff’s other end. The thundering of her heart was deafening, the only muscle in her body to escape the paralysis of panic. Her eyes followed the line of the body, the old elf sprawled sideways on the floor a point of steel protruding from her chest, the pale rug beneath her discoloured with a dark pool of blood.
The body gave a grunt, a lurching exhale as the blade was pulled free from behind and the crouching figure at Kychelle’s back stood up, the dripping murder weapon in his hand.
“No, no.” The words whispered from Hepdida’s throat, her breaths out of time with her speech. Heart heaving, lungs fluttering.
The figure straightened. His eyes met hers in the half-light even as she shook her head in a desperate denial.
“This is not how it seems, my Princess,” said Kaylan.
Part Three
No muscle would answer. Hepdida tried to scream but every mistimed shout came on an inward breath giving only the gasp of budding hysteria. Kaylan, her friend Kaylan, stepped over the body of Kychelle, blood dripping from his short sword and clamped his other hand across Hepdida’s mouth. “I need you not to scream, my Princess,” his whisper was an unnerving island of calm in the midst of the nightmare she had stumbled on.
She clutched at that straw. Maybe she had never woken up from Grundurg’s dream. Maybe this was just part of some layered phantasm. Maybe if she tried really hard she could wake up in her own bed.
“My Princess, I will take my hand away but you must not scream. Do you understand?”
Kaylan’s hand was warm against her mouth, the wall was cold at her back. This was too real for dreaming. She nodded. He took his hand away.
“Kaylan, what have you done?” she hissed.
“This is not my doing, Princess.”
“I saw you, kneeling over her, pulling your sword from her.”
“I didn’t put it in her though. The old lady is cold, long dead before I got here. Touch her, feel for yourself.”
Hepdida shook her head violently.
“I swear, my Princess, I did not kill her, or him,” he nodded towards the guard.
“Swear it Kaylan, swear it!” she whispered.
He looked her steadily in the eye. “On my Lady Niarmit’s life I had no hand in these two deaths.”
“We must tell Niarmit then.” Relief flooded over Hepdida with that realisation. Niarmit would know, she had half turned to go when Kaylan grabbed her arm.
“No,” the thief hissed.
“She will know what to do,” Hepdida whispered back inspiration making her insistent.
“No, she cannot know,” Kaylan equally urgent softly rebutted her. “This is complicated, it will look bad for me and the Lady Niarmit would have to lie for me or let the murderer’s plans unfold as they had intended. We cannot let her know more than she can freely speak of. My Princess this must just be our secret.”
A whimper passed through Hepdida’s lips. “Kaylan, please, oh by the Goddess swear you had no part in this.”
He rested his hand on her shoulder and met her gaze. “By the Goddess and on my Lady Niarmit’s life, this is not my doing.“
She gulped and nodded.
“Now quickly, back to our rooms. The nurse and the baby have not stirred in their chamber yet, but I would not say how long our luck will hold. Quick and soft my Princess, you first.”
***
“Hepdida, are you in here?”
The Princess tried not to stir at her cousin’s voice, she tried to maintain the illusion of sleeping safe within her own bed despite the hushed urgency that was plainly audible beyond her bedroom door. There had been a voice calling for Lady Niarmit, Quintala languidly demanding on what grounds, some whispering around the name Giseanne and then doors slamming, hasty footsteps. And all the while Hepdida pretended to be asleep. Her eyes were clenched shut against any sudden intrusion, though real rest had quite eluded her in the hours since she had left Kaylan and slunk back into their quarters.
Incoherent images and thoughts had chased each other around her head filling her mind with fruitless worry. Kaylan, honest Kaylan, Kaylan the honest thief? Kychelle the awful woman, dead. He had sworn he had not done it. A horror had not struck her so close to home since Grundurg had put an orcish shield spike through her mother’s face in their own kitchen.
“Hepdida!” Niarmit’s voice again, louder commanding her to awaken. Quick footsteps across the marble floor. “Hepdida?” quiet this time, hesitant, fearful. The lightest touch pushed at Hepdida’s shoulder. She rolled with it, stretching her arms in a pretended yawn.
“What is…“ the question stalled on her lips as she saw her cousin’s haunted expression.
“By the Goddess!” Niarmit seized her in a ferocious hug, crushing the younger girl against her chest so hard Hepdida could feel the thundering of her cousin’s heart above her own.
“Why are you trembling?” Hepdida mumbled into Niarmit’s shoulder.
“I thought for a moment ….” Niarmit shook her head as if to lose that thought. “Cousin, you choose a fine night to escape those dreams,” she laughed.
Of course, Hepdida berated herself. ‘Do nothing different,’ Kaylan had said, and here she was feigning her first undisturbed night’s sleep since Niarmit had cut Grundurg’s head off. “I did wake up,” she tried to conjure a hasty credibility to shroud her lie.
Niarmit’s eyebrows rose, her expression tense with expectation.
“But then I went back to sleep,” the Princess tried to quash her cousin’s curiosity. “I thought I should try to stay in my own room for once. There was a dream, but it was all right this time. It was one I’d had before.” She was proud of the last detail, a little elegant gilding to her deceit.
That pride evaporated as Niarmit observed drily, “you’ve had them all before, Hepdida, many times.”
“Well, maybe I’m just learning to manage them on my own,” Hepdida snapped back. She pushed herself into a sitting position, smoothing down the covers to avoid her cousin’s gaze. “What did you want me for anyway?” she asked the eiderdown.
“Get dressed. You’re to come to the council chamber, Lady Giseanne would speak to us all.”
“But I’ve said my piece to the delegates. They cannot want to quiz me about it again.”
Niarmit shook her head. “This is not about that other business. All the delegates and princes and their retinues are to attend the Lady Giseanne in ten minutes. Hurry and get dressed.”
/> “Oh,” Hepdida said. Then, when Niarmit seemed to expect more she added, “What is it about?”
The Queen shrugged. “Lady Giseanne will explain it all. Just get ready quickly.” She made to leave, but paused in the doorway. “I’m glad you’re trying to deal with your nightmares,” she said. “It is very brave of you.”
Hepdida gave a weak smile but her cousin still waited, until the Princess felt driven to ask, “is there something else?”
“Hepdida,” Niarmit said. “You know you can tell me anything. Anything at all?”
Hepdida turned away from the bright green eyed gaze. She felt her cheeks and ears flushing red. “I know I can,” she told the bedclothes.
Niarmit closed the door softly behind her, but not before Hepdida heard a brief exchange in the outer sitting room. “The Princess is well then?” Quintala asked.
“She slept,” Niarmit replied. “She slept through it, thank the Goddess.”
***
There was a sombre atmosphere in the council chamber, more crowded than it had been when Thom and Hepdida had given their accounts of the Dark Lord’s invasion. They sat in little groups on the high backed wooden chairs which Rugan’s flunkies provided. The Prince of Medyrsalve sat in his own ornate throne, the Lady Giseanne at his side and beyond her the Deaconess Rhodra.
Niarmit was at the centre of her party. At Giseanne’s bidding she had named her associates, the illusionist and Princess to her right and the Seneschal to the left. While they were already known to the others in the room, Hepdida watched how the curious eyes of the others had settled on Kaylan. Niarmit had called him her trusted companion and a fellow warrior in the struggle to free Undersalve. Hepdida had seen the Lords of Oostsalve exchange a look and Leniot mouthed to Tybert, ‘the thief.’
Hepdida had tried to catch Kaylan’s eye as she scurried along the corridor in another borrowed dress, but the thief had granted her the smallest courtesy of a smile before they had entered the council chamber and now he was subjecting the other delegates to his own intense scrutiny.
