Wrath Of The Medusa (Book 2)

by T. O. Munro

  Quintala frowned, suddenly impelled to puncture the Bishop’s certainty. “And what wonder did she seek to perform through you, your reverence, when she led you to leave your dinner plate within the Princess’s reach?”

  Sorenson shrunk back at the jibe no less piercing for the softness of the half-elf’s tone. “I…. er…. That is I can’t think how it happened, Seneschal.”

  “By all accounts your reverence, a fraction of a second’s delay and the Princess would have been beyond anybody’s cures. Her life taken by her own hand and your knife.”

  Sorenson waved his hands, splayed fingered, as if to stem the flood of accusation. “I was sure I had not left it there. I was not even by her bed when Fenwell came to summon me.” He saw Quintala’s eyebrow raised in doubtful query and hurried on. “Still, the thing that matters is she did not do it. Mistress Elise’s arrival saved her from the sin of suicide.”

  “It would have been a very convenient suicide.” Quintala was in no hurry to let the matter drop. “I know how much you fretted that the Queen would not ride to Nordsalve, all because of the Princess’s sickness. Hepdida’s death would have been so convenient for the cause of Nordsalve. You could not have wished for a more fortuitous act of self-destruction.”

  Sorenson recoiled as if struck. “You cannot think that, Seneschal, you surely cannot believe….” A still more horrible thought creased his features in dread. “The Lady Niarmit, she cannot believe… she cannot believe that of me. I am a man of the cloth. I would never…”

  “I cannot say what her Majesty believes, your reverence. We are just all grateful for the charms that have so far protected the Princess.”

  “And she will soon be better?”

  “She makes steady progress, but recovery from this illness is a journey not an event, your reverence.”

  “And the Lady Niarmit?”

  “What of her Majesty?”

  “Do you think she might be minded now to consider my Lady Isobel’s petition?”

  “Ah!” Quintala cried in triumph. “You hope that if not Hepdida’s death, then now Hepdida’s health might free the Queen’s attention for the affairs of Nordsalve.”

  Sorenson grimaced. “I can only repeat, Seneschal, that I had no part, beyond some unfathomable accident, in the Lady Hepdida’s brush with self-destruction. However, I make no excuses in representing the interests of my Lady Regent and her people.” He sighed. “If the emissary from Nordsalve had been less urgent, his news more auspicious, then I am sure I would have a clearer recollection of what I did when Fenwell summoned me from Hepdida’s room. But I am grown old and it is all a blur.”

  Quintala snorted, “strange to think that your Lady’s herald was arriving by the front gate at almost the same time mistress Elise arrived at the back gate.”

  “At least one of them brought good news,” Sorenson muttered. “My Lady Isobel is now beset from within as well as without.”

  “Yes,” Quintala mused. “What is this Lord’s name, the one who troubles your lady so?”

  “Torsden,” Sorenson spat the name out. “He is a brute, a coarse oaf. As fierce in battle as the much lamented Prince Hetwith, but with none of the charm or grace.”

  “But still he has ambitions above his station.”

  “The rogue would make himself regent. He presses his suit upon my poor lady even as we speak. He claims Nordsalve must look to itself for its own protection, that a woman alone cannot rule the province, that she needs a man at her side. A man to guide her and to teach the boy.”

  “That is an opinion which will not find much welcome in Queen Niarmit’s ears.”

  “That is why my Lady Isobel is most anxious that the Lady Niarmit should visit her court, to show Torsden and his thuggish allies that Nordsalve has not been abandoned.”

  “Maybe the Queen would prefer to have Torsden be her ally in the North, in place of Isobel. In truth she has got little succour or support from your Lady Regent.” Quintala smiled at the horror her suggestion wrought on the Bishop’s face. His features twisted in distress as he tried to discern if the half-elf was teasing him.

  “You cannot be serious, Seneschal. If Torsden should become Regent, I would not answer for the safety of the young Prince. Those who stand in Torsden’s way have a tendency to disappear.”

  She clapped him on the shoulder. “Ah, your reverence, you might have hit upon the magic formula. You could tell her Majesty that a dead prince’s widow has an unwelcome suitor and I am not sure you would move her to action, but tell her a child is in danger from a murderous bully? Aye, you may just get your petition heard.”

  ***

  “Is it fresh?”

  Kimbolt looked at the crushed snow in the bowl, sucking the last vestige of heat from his hands through the porcelain. “It is entirely fresh, Mistress Elise,” he assured her.

  The herbalist rose from the bed, on which Hepdida lay sleeping, and came to inspect the Captain’s burden. “And your hands were cleansed?”

  “I washed them in iced water and gathered the snow up with my bare fingers.” Kimbolt could barely feel his hands, beyond a numb sensation of swollen fingers cupped around the bowl. In the meagre warmth of Hepdida’s sick room he was disappointed at how his painful harvest of ice was melting. For all his efforts at gathering and compacting it, the snow melt seemed likely to rise to barely a fifth of the bowl’s depth. Elise noticed the shortfall too.

  “You will have to go out for more, Captain,” she said.

  “Of course.”

  The readiness with which he agreed drew a sharp look of suspicion from the herbalist. “It is essential the Princess has only the purest freshest water past her lips, Captain,” she said, bright eyes glaring within her pockmarked face.

  “I know. I will do whatever is necessary.”

  She nodded and took the bowl from him to set it on the dresser.

  “How has she been?” Kimbolt asked, looking at Hepdida’s sleeping form. The white streak in her hair remained, but the blistering pustules had already began to dry and shrink without having broken. Her skin, while still sallow was a lot less jaundiced than it had been but more than that, her sleep was restful and untroubled. “Has she woken or said anything?”

  Elise shook her head. “Not since this morning.”

  “At least she was free of the demons then, more like her old self at last.” The sentiment felt foolish even as it slipped from Kimbolt’s lips. Her old self? What was her old self? The servant girl from Sturmcairn could never return, too much had changed for Hepdida, for who she was and what she had known.

  “We can never go back, Captain,” Elise said her words echoing his thoughts. “Things cannot be as they were. No matter how much we might wish it.”

  They stood a moment, the herbalist who wore the scars of sickness upon her face, and the soldier who bore the wounds of treachery within his heart.

  “How old were you, when the sickness caught you?” Kimbolt immediately tried to retract the intrusive question. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “Twelve, Captain. I was twelve, my sister was nine.” She looked him in the eye. “How old do you think I am now?”

  “I couldn’t say.” He tried to be gallant.

  “Go on Captain, how old?”

  He shrugged then had a guess and subtracted a decade for chivalry’s sake. “Thirty four?”

  “I’m twenty nine.”

  “Oh.”

  “The disease was caught with me much later than with the Princess here. My face a mass of blistered bleeding boils which wept more freely than my eyes. Time may heal all wounds, but they are still wounds nonetheless.”

  “Your sister, what happened…”

  “Rancine?” Elise tasted the name on her lips, toying with a sound made unfamiliar through neglect. “She died. Perhaps it was better that way. She was always the pretty one, father’s favourite. She could not have born to be ugly.”

  “You are not ugly,” Kimbolt stumbled in an increasingly inaccurat
e search for the right thing to say. “You have, you have…”

  “An inner beauty?” she raised an eyebrow at him.

  “I’m sorry mistress Elise, for what you have suffered.”

  She shrugged, “why was it your fault?”

  “No, at least I don’t think so, though I feel sure I am to blame for most of the ills that beset us.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself Captain. Wallowing in guilt is a most unbecoming habit.”

  “I don’t wallow…” He began.

  “Aye sure you don’t and dogs don’t bark at me in the street,” she sniffed. “Ah, your relief has arrived.”

  Kimbolt looked across at the doorway where Kaylan had slipped unheard into the room. The Captain gave the thief an ingenuous smile of welcome, pleased beyond measure at the arrival of a newcomer to rescue him from the caltrop littered field of conversation with Elise.

  “Another fool who thinks he is the root of all evil, I trust you two are not going to have some ‘I’m guiltier than thou’ sparring match.”

  Kaylan gave Kimbolt a quizzical look, unsettled by the herbalist’s acerbic tone. The captain returned a cheerful grin as he walked past. “Good luck with the snow gathering, Kaylan.” He urged, touching the back of his frozen hand to the thief’s cheek. Kaylan started at the chilling contact and looking back Kimbolt was sure he saw a smile break across Elise’s ravaged features.

  ***

  The uniformed flunky pulled the door shut behind her as Niarmit strode into the grand receiving room. The twin thrones stood empty. Pale winter daylight filtered through frost laced windows. Niarmit shivered at the chill in the air as she stepped towards the passageway to the antechamber. “Lady Giseanne,” she called.

  “She is not there, Lady Niarmit.”

  It was a voice behind her. How had she not seen him? She turned with slow care, determined not to show he had surprised her. “Prince Rugan.” She gave the slightest of bows.

  The half-elf was sitting on his throne watching her over his interlocked fingers. She was sure he had not been there when she entered. “What business have you with my wife?” He asked.

  “I wish to speak with the Lady Regent,” Niarmit placed careful emphasis on Giseanne’s title.

  He frowned. “I see, and her poor husband, as a mere Prince of the Salved, is not considered senior enough to be privy to that discussion.”

  “There are some things that the Regent should hear first.”

  “You’re going then,” he said. “To Nordsalve, to rescue the Lady Isobel from her unwanted admirer.”

  She struggled to remain inscrutable despite the accuracy of his deduction. He shrugged at her silence, and tilted his head in enquiry. “Surely you don’t deny it. The girl is getting better, what reason have you left to deny the Bishop’s desperate insistence?”

  “Hepdida’s recovery is incomplete.”

  “But she has travelled further towards health than poor King Bulveld ever did. Moreover, it is not your tending but this herbalist that makes her well.” He sighed. “The snow has driven the orcs into shelter and turned the zombies to ice, there will be no better time to try and sneak across the North-Eastern tip of Morsalve. You are not needed here, but you are needed there.”

  Niarmit bit back the rejoinder that Hepdida had said much the same, when she had held a knife to her own heart. “Anyone would think you were anxious to be rid of me, Prince Rugan.”

  “Your reputation rides high, Lady Niarmit. Word of your deeds on the plain of The Saeth and in the Gap of Tandar, and even of your miraculous return from Bledrag Field have made you a powerful talisman.”

  “There were no miracles at Bledrag field,” Niarmit glowered swallowing down a bitter recollection.

  “Notwithstanding the Lady Isobel’s eagerness for what they are calling the Niarmit touch, I even have letters from my noble Knight Commander enquiring after you.”

  “Sir Ambrose?”

  “He’s been asking when you might return. Despite the snow and ice he is convinced there is a victory to be won down on the plain by Listcairn. He thinks if you will but deign to lead then his force could sweep all before them.”

  “Sir Ambrose flatters my generalship, Prince Rugan, but it would always have been an honour to lead the forces of Medyrsalve.”

  The half-elf rose from the throne and gave a languid stretch of his arms. “I find the cold afflicts me more than it used to, Lady Niarmit,” he said.

  “You are young for an elf.”

  “But getting old for a half-elf it would seem.” He looked at her quizzically. “And Lady Niarmit, had I accepted Sir Ambrose’s plea and let you go to lead my troops, in which direction would you have led them? Would it have been Westwards towards Listcairn, or Eastwards, back here?” His eyes were fixed on her as he let the accusing question slip, watching every muscle in her face for some tremor of admission. All she showed was raw horror that he should think such a thing.

  “Lead them here, Prince Rugan?” She gave him an incredulous stare. “To what purpose? There are better foes for us to fight than each other. I have no plan or even the merest thought of usurping the throne of your province. I am amazed you could even think it.”

  “A long life as an unloved Prince has taught me to seek and find conspiracy everywhere, Lady Niarmit. I have rarely been disappointed in my expectations.” He gave a joyless smile. “At least if one always expects the worst, then all the surprises are pleasant ones.”

  “Prince Rugan, we have a winter to gather our strength for the enemy’s onslaught. We dare nor spend it in bickering and suspicion.”

  “So,” He turned to view the frozen gardens through the web of icicles criss-crossing the window. “You are going to stiffen the resolve of Nordsalve for the ordeal ahead.”

  “Aye,” it seemed pointless to deny it. “And I would like to be sure that those of my party that I leave behind continue to enjoy a safe and secure stay at your hospitality.”

  Rugan spun round. Now it was his turn to warp his features in rage at the hint of accusation against his honour. “I am no barbarian, Lady Niarmit. The host’s code is not broken in my house.”

  “Hepdida fell ill in your care,” Niarmit snapped back.

  “An illness, Lady Niarmit, an illness,” he cried, his face so close to hers that she could see the lines time was wearing in his swarthy skin. “May I remind you my grandmother was struck down by a callous and cowardly blow from behind. No matter what nonsense Deaconess Rhodra might spout about some outside assassin, I know there is someone within these walls who has most heinously betrayed the obligations of a guest.”

  “Which do your grieve for more, the lady’s death, or the injury to your honour?”

  He stood stunned, as if she had slapped him. “How dare you!”

  Niarmit’s own colour was rising. Half a decade of frustration with the procrastination and self-serving of the Prince of Medyrsalve bubbled over in a fury so pure that it was as well she had left her sword in her chambers. “Your sister thinks there is no-one you have ever loved bar yourself. No service you have ever done bar your own. I have bitten my tongue a hundred times, Rugan, but nothing will wipe away the memory of Bledrag field, looking in last hope for the spears of Medyrsalve and finding only orcs and ogres. My father fell waiting in vain for your arrival, Gregor went outnumbered to his death, while you skulked on this side of the Palacintas. There are many questions your honour has yet to answer.”

  “Your father? You mean Matteus was your father?”

  “You betrayed both my fathers,” she spat irritated by his pedantry.

  “I couldn’t have saved Matteus, any more than Feyril could. I couldn’t have saved Gregor either. All I could have achieved was to leave Medyrsalve unprotected.”

  “What made you so fearful, Rugan? Always waiting until it was too late before doing anything. Five hundred years of waiting while so many moments had passed. So many lost opportunities to get off your throne and make a difference.”

  “Five hundred
years can teach you a lot about mortality, Lady Niarmit, about the fragility and ultimate transience of all life. Do you know how many wives I have buried? Loved aye, but also buried. The mistakes we may be easily drawn into are not so readily undone.”

  “Better to have made a mistake than to have made nothing. I’d rather have a human lifetime of courage, than a half-elf’s span spent in cowardice.”

  He was quick, she had to admit that. Quicker than she would have thought. His hand was around her throat before she could take even half a step backwards, but her hand was on his dagger, drawing it from its sheaf and raising it to his neck before he could tighten his grip. They froze thus, exchanging a glare of hatred in the suspended moment of mutually assured destruction. At a cough from the entrance to the antechamber, they both slid their gaze warily sideways.

  Giesanne stood at the threshold of the room, regally calm at the prospect of husband and niece about to do away with each other. Like children caught in the pastry larder, they hastily disengaged. Rugan adjusted Niarmit’s collar where his intemperate gesture had ruffled the cloth. Niarmit handed him back his knife, hilt first.

  “The Lady Niarmit was just telling me that she would be on her way shortly,” Rugan explained.

  “And you were giving her a warm embrace to wish her good fortune on her travels?” The stern gaze and the hard edge to Giseanne’s voice belied the lightly mocking nature of her words.

  “These have been trying times of late, Lady Giseanne,” Niarmit ventured. “Both our tempers may have frayed a little shorter than would be proper for our station.”

  “You are both extremely dear to me,” Giseanne insisted. “It pains me to see you so very much at each other’s throats.”

  “It is perhaps timely then that I shall be on my travels.” Niarmit said. “Splendid and spacious as this palace is, I think it is too confined a space to peaceably hold two such contrary spirits as my own and your husband’s.”

  Rugan’s dark eyes flashed sideways, alert to any rebuke in Niarmit’s words.