Wrath Of The Medusa (Book 2)

by T. O. Munro

  He fumbled around his neck for the black medallion. The Master should hear of this. He glanced out of the window, the Sun was some way short of setting. It was too early for the Master’s audience. Bugger that, let’s drag the bastard back from which ever plane he is partying in. There is misery to be shared and that undead miser of joy should take his piece of it.

  Odestus folded his hands around the black disk, breathing hard and trying to fight the waves of nausea as his liqueur dinner threatened to assault his taste buds from behind. Only in the direst emergencssssssssy should a good ssssssservant of Maelgrum sssssssseeek to ssssssssssumon the massssster, he parodied the undead lord in his head. Well, you bastard, he thought. This is such a time, come into my head and share it.

  The force of Maelgrum’s arrival in his mind was almost physical, a ball of vomit shot up his throat and could only just be swallowed away, leaving a sickly aftertaste. The liqueur didn’t taste any better the second time.

  What issss the meaning of thisss, Odessstusss?

  Emergency, it was hard to keep the slur from his thoughts.

  What ailsss you, Odessstuss? Beside the raging fury the wizard could sense his Master’s curiosity. It took a lot to surprise Maelgrum, a sensation that either amused or inflamed him. Odestus no longer cared which.

  You need to know. Odestus flung the thought at Maelgrum. A vision of the empty bottle striking the undead lord in the face filled the wizard’s mind.

  Where are your witsss, Odessstusss, are you drunk?

  The wizard’s mind was black with Maelgrum’s rage, a cold fury that had his teeth chattering. Right, Odestus wrestled a thought free. Not amused then.

  Tell me why you have sssummoned me, Odessstusss, or I will go and take your addled mind with me, ssso that only a vacant ssshell remainsss ssssitting in your own pissss and sssqualor.

  Dema’s dead, he screamed it in his head. Pictured himself yelling those two words over and over again in the blackened holes where Maelgrum’s ears had been. He didn’t care, nothing mattered, let Maelgrum take him he’d already lived twenty years too long, saved by Dema’s charity.

  But no fury came, only silence, a calm more terrible than the anger. It hasss happened then! Maelgrum’s thought echoed around the little wizard’s skull. When? How?

  In the Gap of Tandar, she was ambushed struck down from behind.

  Who elssse sssaw thisss happen?

  No-one, no-one was there. She died alone. The thought wrenched another sob within his mind. He felt Maelgrum flick his grief away in irritation.

  That isss good, Maelgrum muttered. It isss sssimpler that way.

  Good?! Odestus’s brain screamed. What is good in this?

  Where isss the body now?

  Atop her funeral pyre, we will bid her farewell in flame at sunset.

  Noooooo!

  The rage filled Odestus’s skull with a presence which threatened to squash his own mind out of existence. He slid down in his chair, face contorted, grimacing with an instinctive fight for sanity in the furious torrent that was his master’s anger.

  You will not dessstroy her body.

  Why? The thought evaporated from the surface of Odestus’s conscience.

  Ssshe isss mine, Odessstusss.

  The little wizard found his voice at last as the tsunami of undead ire receded. You ignored her when she was alive, why care now it is too late. She’s dead. Our forces in the pass are defeated and in retreat. Niarmit could come storming down the valley and none would try to stop her and all because you ostracised and neglected Dema. You wasted her talents, setting Galen against her.

  I had no choicsse, Odessstusss. But do not take me for a fool. The passss will be held and in the Ssspring, the ressst of Eadran’sss wretched realmsss will fall under my sssway and all of Eadran’sss ssspawn will perisssh.

  Odestus was sweating, the alcohol driven from his system by the probing menace of his master. Where must I bury her then?

  I will come to you, Odessstusss. Let me pay my ressspectsss before we inter the lady. You mussst open a gate for me. Thisss Lisstcairn isss a placsse I have not visssited before, one of Eadran’sss new sssettlementsss.

  Master. The fight was gone from the little wizard. Dema would not have faltered, she would have railed and stormed against the undead will. The last thought Odestus shared with his master, before beginning the conjuration that would open a pathway through the planes, was that in this as in everything he had failed Dema.

  ***

  The scrawny little wizard would just not give up. The more Kimbolt sought solitude, the more Thom sought him out with cheerful reassurance.

  “It will be well, Captain Kimbolt,” the boy was babbling. “We all do things under duress. The enemy makes us do it, but he doesn’t make us evil, not so long as we fight and remember in our hearts who we are.”

  Kimbolt looked at him blankly. “You climbed all the way up here to tell me that?” He ground out the question.

  His tone had discomforted the illusionist. Thom looked around and down, at the encampment and then beyond to the land of Medyrsalve stretching away on the other side of the Palacintas. “Well,” he said at length. “There was the view as well. It’s a nice view.”

  Kimbolt nodded. “It is a great view, I was enjoying it. On my own.”

  “But you don’t have to, not on your own. Escaping from Maelgrum and his servants, you’re not alone. I’ve done it too. You will find acceptance here.” He reached for Kimbolt’s arm. “I know what you’re feeling.”

  In an instant Kimbolt’s hand was on the illusionist’s throat. “You know nothing boy. You know nothing about me or what I feel or think, or what I did.”

  He relaxed his grip and Thom settled back on his haunches rubbing his neck. “You’re not like I expected. Not how she described you.”

  “Who? Hepdida?”

  “She said you were brave and kind.”

  “Maybe I was. People change.”

  “Whatever you did Kimbolt, it wasn’t you.”

  Kimbolt sighed. It was a seductive idea, that he had merely been a dupe. When Prince Xander, in Udecht’s guise, had enchanted him in Sturmcairn and led him to betray the fortress, aye then maybe he had been a dupe. Powerless in the grip of a sorcerer’s spell. But Dema? He had known what he was doing. By the Goddess he had suggested using living beings, women and children, as ammunition for the monstrous trebuchet. What kind of rational madness had seized him? What kind of creature had he become?

  “It will get better,” Thom assured him. “When you see Hepdida again you will feel more at ease.” He stood up and took a step down the path. “I’m going now. Don’t think you have to be alone though.”

  Kimbolt was minded to say nothing, or to assert that he liked ‘alone’ but a movement at the Eastern foot of the pass drew his attention. A horse ridden fast, too fast. “Who is that fool, he’ll kill the animal!”

  Thom brushed his eyes with his thumbs in a strangely elaborate gesture and peered towards the distant rider. “That’s no man,” he exclaimed, though how he could tell at this distance Kimbolt could not fathom. “That’s Seneschal Quintala. Come, if you hurry we may beat her to camp. Come on, Captain, you’ll like Quintala.”

  ***

  The shouts outside the tent grew louder and closer until Niarmit told the knight. “Forgive me, Sir Ambrose, This plan will have to wait.”

  “No matter, Lady Niarmit,” he assured her. “The enemy are hardly threatening our position now. There is plenty of space and time for us to consider our counter-attack.”

  Niarmit stepped outside the tent as Quintala arrived on a slavering horse which promptly collapsed, ribs heaving, as the half-elf leapt to the ground. “What is it Seneschal? Why such haste?” The first questions came easily, the Queen merely processing the fact of the winded horse and the windswept half-elf. But when Quintala made no early answer, when the half-elf having ridden at such ruinous haste had not the words or the courage to begin her message, then a cold fear gripped at Niarm
it. She scanned the half-elf’s face. Devoid of mischief or amusement, drawn and sombre.

  “What is…” Niarmit could not finish the question. With each passing second of silence the tide of fear gripped at her.

  “No!” she murmured.

  The half-elf blinked a mournful yes. “Something has happened, your Majesty, Hepdida…. she’s”

  “Not dead?” Niarmit had to ask.

  There was an inhuman groan, from amongst the crowd that had gathered around this hasty emissary. Niarmit followed the source of the noise to see Kimbolt a picture of despair.

  The half-elf shook her head. “It’s worse than that, your Majesty.”

  Part Four

  Kimbolt had never ridden so hard. He spurred his slavering horse on after the galloping pair ahead. Even in the mad charge across Morsalve to the battle of the Derrach gorge, Dema had let her elite troops and her captive slave enjoy a night of rest. Yet now he survived on the illusory fragments of sleep snatched while fresh mounts were saddled. He had lost count of how many times they had changed horses and it was only by wrapping the reins around his wrists that he had saved himself from falling off.

  Riding through the night, he and Niarmit were reliant for guidance on the half-elf’s eyesight and their own ability to follow the shadows and the thunder of her ride. The smooth perfection of Rugan’s roads had eased their passage. But now a bone penetrating fatigue had Kimbolt dozing in the turbulent saddle, eyes half closing even as his heels dug into the horse’s flanks.

  The long tree-lined avenue turned and broadened into a huge courtyard before a towering palace. Kimbolt would have ridden straight across the plaza, his brain dulled of all thought save the need to ride and ride. However, ahead of him the half-elf and the Queen had brought their winded steeds to a halt and his own mount gratefully followed suit. The Queen slipped from her saddle, barely less exhausted than Kimbolt, but the Seneschal was at her side to catch and ease her dismount. Kimbolt was less tidy in his stumble to the ground, legs numb with riding, balance floored by the unaccustomed solidity beneath his feet.

  Attendants rushed from beneath the colonnaded portico gushing welcomes as they seized the horses’ reins. One colourful flunky reached to steady Niarmit as she stumbled but the support was shaken away. “Where is she?” the Queen demanded of no-one and everyone.

  “In my chambers, Lady Niarmit,” a newcomer to the welcome party announced. Kimbolt, scarcely less easy on his feet than the Queen, looked up at the swarthy figure. His manner, his dark hair and saturnine beard were distinctive enough without the flaunting of his pointed ears to mark out the other half-elf.

  Niarmit nodded an acknowledgement at the Prince of Medyrsalve. “I must go to her.” The first step was nearly the Queen’s undoing, legs too tired to lift her feet, her boot caught the lip of the stone step. Rugan caught her arm to check her fall.

  She glowered at him.

  “You must rest, Lady Niarmit.” The Prince commanded. “You are exhausted.”

  “Take me to her, Rugan.”

  The Prince seemed ready to argue but then, as Niarmit’s fingers dug into his arm and her gaze bored into his head, he relented. “This way.”

  Kimbolt lurched unsteadily after them, his eyes concentrating on the Queen’s back as his brain dumbly put one foot approximately infront of the other through a maze of palace corridors. There was a sudden obstruction between them, pikes crossed infront of his face as the guards he had barely registered barred his way. So somnolent was his gait that he blundered into the weapons before he could stop himself.

  “Who are you?” a voice demanded. “What business have you in the Prince’s chambers?”

  Exhaustion dulled his wits and stole his speech. He pointed after Rugan and Niarmit, mumbling some plea to follow them. None of it impressed the pikemen until Quintala, unreasonably fresh from their frantic ride, leant her assistance. “He is with the Queen, I can vouch for him.” The half-elf’s assurance earned him admittance but he could do no more than blink his eyes in gratitude.

  The Seneschal smiled and threaded her arm through his. Quintala’s sure direction guided them along marbled corridors and through great oaken doors until at last he stumbled into a dimly lit bedchamber.

  Despite the freezing night, the shutters were open admitting a steady draft of fresh air to sweep away the fetid stench of sickness. It was a huge bed, made larger by the tiny frail shape in its midst. Impressions of the room’s other occupants dimly registered on Kimbolt’s brain. A lady with long dark hair was rising sleepily from a chair by the foot of the bed extending her hand to Rugan. A round faced priestess with rosy cheeks and hollowed eyes was standing by the side of the bed speaking in soft quick words to Niarmit. The Queen had eyes for none but the small invalid at the room’s centre. The same sight drove the torpor from Kimbolt’s senses as he looked again at the girl he had sworn to protect through and with his own unfailing obedience to Dema.

  Her skin was yellow, her lips purple, beads of sweat glistened on her forehead despite the chill winter air. White lines were scored across her cheeks. Her breathing was so slight and shallow that Kimbolt had to hold himself completely still to even perceive it. Her shrouded form barely broke the smooth line of the bedclothes, themselves far too thin for the season.

  As Niarmit fell to her knees at the bedside, Kimbolt heard the lady behind him speak. “She is much better than she was, Lady Niarmit. Deaconess Rhodra here has worked tirelessly to invoke the Goddess’s grace on your cousin’s behalf and Bishop Sorenson has also leant his aid.”

  The Queen’s hand stretched across the bed reaching for Hepdida’s. She gripped it tightly, muttered some half-heard words of greeting, smoothed the girl’s brow with her other hand. “She is hot and her skin is slack.” Niarmit pinched the flesh of her cousin’s arm into a stiff peak that persisted even after she let go. “She needs water, can she drink?”

  “There is a sponge, Lady Niarmit,” the Deaconess gestured to a bowl by the bed. “We find if we dampen her lips and squeeze a little in, she swallows it. We have added honey to the water too.”

  “Has she wakened? Has she said anything?”

  “Aye, Lady Niarmit an hour or so perhaps twice a day, around dawn and dusk. But she is the grip of fever and she says little that makes sense,” the dark haired lady spoke.

  “She knows not where she is Lady Niarmit, or who she is,” Rugan said. Kimbolt saw the look that passed between the Lady and the Prince, her hand tightening on his while he patted her arm. “Giseanne, it will do the Lady Niarmit no good to hide the truth.”

  “Truth? What truth?” the Queen demanded.

  “We have seen this sickness before. My wife has seen the illness run its ugly course. This is no time for false hope,” Rugan said heavily.

  “By the Goddess’s grace there is always hope,” Niarmit insisted with grim determination, fatigue for the moment in abeyance. “Where and when did you see an illness the like of this, Giseanne?”

  Giseanne clasped her hands together, her eyes hooded with remembered sorrow. “It was my father,” she said. “This is the self- same ailment that carried King Bulveld to his grave, despite my nursing and the many prayers and invocations of my brother Udecht. There can be no doubt. Your cousin suffers the same affliction.”

  “Let me then trespass on the Goddess’s favour,” Niarmit declared. “And see if my entreaties are better answered than my uncle Udecht’s were.”

  The Deaconess raised a hand to try and dissuade the Queen, but Niarmit had already dragged her own crescent symbol free and was beginning the prayer of healing. “Sanaret servum tuum carus dea.” Kimbolt felt the Goddess’s favour in the room, but saw too how the effort drained all energy from the Queen. Her voice faltered and failed half-way through a second invocation as her head slumped onto the bedclothes. For all that exertion, he saw a little easing in Hepdida’s breathing, a little fading of the ghastly yellow pallor of her skin.

  There was a crash behind them and a voice calling, “my Lad
y, where is my Lady, I must speak with her.”

  Kimbolt spun wearily round as a thin rangy man blundered into the room. His chin was stubbled with neglect, his eyes haunted, and his clothes had the crumpled slept in look of a man who had spent a week on the trail, rather than in the hospitality of a palace. He gave an inhuman squeak of alarm, hand flying to his mouth when he saw the form of Niarmit stretched oblivious on the bed.

  “Easy Kaylan,” Quintala said. “Her Majesty has ridden and prayed her way into a long owed sleep. Let her and her cousin rest, you may speak with her in the morning.”

  Kaylan surveyed the room, absorbing the Seneschal’s words, but still unwilling to abide by them. His eyes alighted on Kimbolt, swaying a little on his feet as his body clamoured for the same rest that Niarmit had slipped into.

  “Who is this?”

  “This is Captain Kimbolt,” Quintala made the introduction. “A friend of the Princess. He insisted on coming when he heard she was so ill.”

  Kimbolt blinked slowly, glimpsing in a series of separate images, the hardening in Kaylan’s expression, the movement of his hand, a fist flying across the space between them. In truth he may have been asleep a fraction of a second before the blow crashed into his jaw, if not he certainly was afterwards, finding, like Niarmit, an unexpected route into the slumber he had too long denied himself.

  ***

  Niarmit woke in a soft bed beneath warm covers and was instantly on edge. The unsettling comfort had seduced her senses and dulled her wits. Now cold reality flooded through her mind. Hepdida!

  She flung aside the blankets and leapt from the bed. In the gloom of winter’s pre-dawn filtering through the shutters, her eyes made out the familiar bedchamber within her old quarters. There was an edge of yellow light beneath the door and she wrenched it open, momentarily blinded by the bright illumination of the sitting room.

  “I trust you are rested, your Majesty,” the lilt of Quintala’s voice welcomed her. The half-elf was in repose on one of the couches, looking refreshed and alert.