Wrath Of The Medusa (Book 2)

by T. O. Munro

Next, to complete Kimbolt’s consternation, she waved her hands in a tangle of fingers and a cloud of vapour condensed from the cold air and thickened into fresh flakes of snow which tumbled to the ground recreating the windblown mound which her flaming staff had melted.

  He had been craning forward to watch the spectacle, so mesmerised by it that he almost toppled forward. He flicked out a foot to stop himself, but in so doing caught a low branch with his knee dislodging a little flurry of snowflakes. The movement caught Elise’s eye and she spun round staff held two handed before her.

  “Who’s there?” There was more anger than fear in her voice.

  Kimbolt stepped carefully from his hiding place, left hand resting casually on the scabbard of his sword, fingers of his right hand twitching to reach for the weapon.

  “Captain Kimbolt,” she said evenly. “How unseemly of you to be following a young woman around the forest. Have you been spying on me long?”

  “Long enough.” He kept his tone level and watched her eyes trying to guess her next move.

  “Oh!” she said, hands tightening on her staff.

  “I know who you are, what you are,” he said as his right hand crept across his waist.

  “Do you now?” If Elise was alarmed she hid it well.

  “You’re a sorcerer, a mage.”

  “And?”

  “You don’t deny it?”

  “I’m guessing you saw my little tricks to protect my fingers from the cold. The sickness still plagues my joints with rheumatism. It makes scrabbling through the snow very painful for me. I don’t suppose there would be much point in denying what you had seen.”

  “But wizardry is forbidden to humans, all mages are condemned to exile.”

  She laughed at that. “I am indeed.”

  “It is the law.” Her amusement stung his professional pride.

  “Well Captain Kimbolt, if you can carry me across a hundred leagues of zombie and orc infested Morsalve to cast me into exile beyond the fallen barrier then you will certainly have earned your commission.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “And what is?”

  “That you’re a criminal.”

  “Yes that’s right. I am the criminal who is saving your young friend’s life, and incidentally if you are skulking after me, who is with Hepdida now?”

  “I asked father Merlow to sit with the Princess. I had to follow you.”

  He had fired her anger now. “You fool of a man, are you really so blind to what has been going on around you.” She spun away from him, quick anxious steps retracing her path. He had to half run to catch her up.

  “I knew you were not who you seemed, I knew you were hiding something.” He wailed his cleverness at her indifference. “I guessed it wasn’t herbs for Hepdida that brought you out here. What is that white stuff you were chewing anyway?”

  “Radix Tegendo.”

  “What?”

  “Radix Tegendo. Some call it thief’s friend. It shields the mind from magical scrying.”

  “So you don’t deny you were hiding something.”

  “I know my craft puts me beyond the law, Captain. I’m hardly likely to blunder into Rugan’s palace with all its wards and guards with my sorcerous nature shining like a beacon for every cleric and curate to see.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Hepdida, where you should be.”

  “Wait,” he caught her by the shoulder to draw her back. She whirled round, staff raised a few inches from the ground. “How can I trust you?”

  “How can you not?”

  “You come here, unannounced, illegal user of magic, worm your way into our favour, effect some cure of an illness it seems only you can understand, despite the finest efforts of every priest and priestess in the palace.” He tried to be stern in the face of her glare. “What else might you be hiding?”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Do you not see it Captain, Hepdida was not ill.”

  “Not ill? but….”

  Elise waved his confusion aside and declared with the certainty of a parade ground sergeant major, “She was cursed.” The assertion brought another frown of puzzlement to Kimbolt’s features, before the faux herbalist went on. “It was a wizard’s curse. Somewhere in that palace is another user of my art who has turned it to a dark path and cursed your young friend. That is why the many prayers and offerings of the Goddess’s servants could not shift the ailment. It takes a wizard to undo a wizard’s curse and there have been precious few of them since that fool Thren the eighth condemned us all to ignorance or exile.”

  Kimbolt’s eyes flicked left and right as he struggled to assimilate the news. “And you think Merlow is that wizard?”

  “I don’t know, Captain. Any of them might be. Those who practice the crime of sorcery have learnt new ways of concealment, Radix Tegendo is the least of them.”

  The world she painted of a hidden column of secret sorcerers filled Kimbolt with horror. Suddenly he saw wizards behind every tree and trembled at the thought of how many might lurk along the corridors of Laviserve. “Who is there we can trust?”

  “There is just the two of us Captain, and to be honest, I am not that sure about you.”

  They were nearing the edge of the forest now. A log jam of questions was backed up in Kimbolt’s mind and at last one shook free from his constipated thought processes.

  “How long have you been involved in this criminal witchcraft?”

  Elise sighed. “Since the day I was saved, since the day my sister died. When magic and a wizard save your life, you find you owe them both something.”

  “You were a child then!”

  “I was twelve years old with old woman’s hair and skin as pitted and uneven as the Palacintas. I was dying and he came.”

  “Who.”

  “The wizard.”

  “What wizard?”

  “It doesn’t matter now. He’s dead.”

  He caught her arm to stop her while they were still beyond earshot of the palace. “It does matter, it all matters. Explain yourself woman. I am done with puzzles and mysteries.” He waved towards the towers of Laviserve poking above the tree line. “Speak plain or I will tell all at Rugan’s palace just who and what you are.”

  She shook his hand free and glared back, “you wouldn’t do that, Captain. Who else will complete Hepdida’s cure?”

  “You know as well as I that she is cured already, cured of the sickness. It is only the weakness that remains. A few weeks of good broth is all she needs.”

  “And you would betray me?” Elise sniffed and shook her white hair. “The ingratitude of men, it was ever thus.”

  “Enough mystery, tell all. Tell it now. Who was this wizard? What is your history?”

  Elise gave a weary sigh. “The wizard was called Malchus, my mother found him. I do not know how she heard of him, but she was desperate.” She spoke in quick sparse sentences, as though it were some dry tale of ancient history she were delivering rather than her own life story. “Rancine and I were sick practically to death. She would have tried anything, she tried him and only just in time, for me at least.”

  “Your father, what did he say to this?”

  A shadow clouded Elise’s ravaged face. “He was gone by then, a month gone. He told my mother all would be well, that he had something planned, he couldn’t tell what but she shouldn’t worry. He never came back, abandoned his post, abandoned us.” The sorceress glared at the ground. “Two sick daughters, no money, thrown out of our home. What was my mother to do? Cures were expensive. Malchus was our only hope.”

  “How did she pay?”

  She gave him a pitying look. “How do you think, Captain?”

  Still Kimbolt felt driven to ask the question, his tone thick with disbelief. “She prostituted herself?”

  Elise’s eyes flared in anger. “What mother wouldn’t do anything, everything to save their child. Come, Captain, ‘tis the gossip of the palace how you were the snake lady’s bed slave. I thi
nk you are ill placed to pass comment on anyone else’s morality.”

  “I am ashamed of many things I have done, Mistress Elise.”

  “Well I am not ashamed,” she stormed. “Nor need my mother be.”

  “How did you come to Oostport then?”

  “Malchus kept a house there as well as in Morwencairn. In the summer he liked to travel to the Eastern Lands. Trade and research he called it.” She glanced to one side. “After my father left it was difficult for us in Morwencairn. But at least in Oostport no-one knew our history. There was only my face to shock the passers-by into unsubtle mutterings.”

  “And this wizard took you on as his apprentice?”

  “He kept us both, in different ways. At first they were different.”

  “At first?”

  “He took me on the first visit to Salicia when I was thirteen. He told my mother he needed my help in gathering and storing the ingredients that you could only buy freely over there. It became a regular thing then, journeying abroad, just me and him.” She shrugged and looked away. “And we did buy all those special ingredients by day. By night it was different.”

  Kimbolt frowned. “So, the master of magic was also an abuser of trust, of innocence. Does this not prove the taint of magic, prove its power to corrupt. Can you not admit the wisdom of Thren in banning its study?”

  “No!” She shouted. “No, fool. In making magic criminal, Thren made honest people into criminals. Those who have been told they live a life of crime lose all respect for other laws. It is not the magic which corrupts and makes them criminal, it is the law.”

  “You’re saying this Malchus would have left you and your mother alone if he had been allowed to flaunt his mage-craft openly.”

  She shrugged. “Malchus was not a good man, but it was not magic that made him bad. If the one pastime had not been made a crime he might never have gained the will to indulge the other. Indeed, if wizardry had not been bound in myth and fear my sickness and my sister’s would have been understood far sooner. She would not be dead, my father would not have left. In short, if Thren the Eighth had had as much sense as he had wives, the Kingdom of the Salved would be a far better place today.”

  Kimbolt’s mouth worked in wordless incomprehension at the blasphemous assertion. Before he could shape his thoughts into sound she snapped. “There that is all my story. Well all you will ever hear and more than I have ever told. If it is not enough to keep that foolish tongue still in your head then so be it. Whatever cure I may have affected on Hepdida there is someone that has cursed her, someone who remains at large. If you would still expose me as the criminal that Thren’s foolish laws have made me, then do so. As I said, sending me to exile will be a struggle for you now.”

  “One last question,” Kimbolt asked. “And then I’m done.”

  “Make it quick.”

  “Malchus. What happened to him? How did he die? Did you…”

  “My mother killed him, and then herself.” With that the sorceress turned on her heel and marched towards the palace.

  ***

  The horses’ breath frosted in the pale light of morning. They stamped and snorted as their riders argued around the remains of the campfire. “Your Majesty,” Sergeant Jolander was insistent. “This is madness.”

  Quintala stood at the big cavalryman’s side, the contrast between them heightened by his encumbrance of winter clothing while she was lightly garbed with little more than a cloak against the cold. For all their differences of race, gender and appearance, they had found a fierce common cause. The Seneschal shook her silver hair and leant her weight to the soldier’s plea. “Sergeant Jolander is right, your Majesty. This is an absurd risk.”

  “Everything is a risk, Seneschal,” Niarmit replied. “Which is more absurd, for three of us to try to sneak unnoticed along the forest line, or for a troop of twenty cavalry to blunder through the snow?”

  “But, your Majesty, if anything should go wrong, if you should be spotted…” the ice on the fringes of Jolander’s moustache was shaken free by the vigour of his distress.

  “If we are spotted then three or three and twenty will make no difference. Neither would be enough to fight, our objective must be to minimise the risk of being seen, not to try and armour ourselves against the consequences.”

  “You are my Queen, your Majesty.” Jolander gestured at his small troop with a broad sweep of his hand. “This is the last remnant of the army of Morsalve, we are here to serve you, not abandon you.”

  “You are here, as ever Sergeant, to obey my orders and my orders are that you ride back to Rugan’s palace.”

  It was only the icy cold which stopped tears of frustration from coursing across Jolander’s frost bitten cheeks. Quintala’s hand upon his arm bid him refrain from further pleading. When the Seneschal spoke it was in a softer tone which had Niarmit immediately on guard against some more subtle entreaty. “Your Majesty,” Quintala began. “If you are indeed determined on this course, then make your party just one stronger. Four is a round number. Take me with you.”

  The sergeant whimpered at the betrayal, but Niarmit simply shook her head. Before she could open her mouth to explain her reasons, Quintala placed a finger on her lips to stifle the unspoken rebuttal. “Your Majesty, we stand here at the tip of the Palacintas.” She waved to the South-West with a broad sweep of her hand where the peaks of the Palacinta mountains had gradually worn down to lowly hills. “To the North is the unwelcoming forest of Silverwood and your path takes you North East through conquered Morsalve in that narrow strip of land between Marvenna’s realm and Maelgrum’s conquest. It is a perilous and uncertain path.”

  “It is a path that Lady Isobel’s heralds have trod quite safely and singly these past few weeks. There is no reason to think it any more perilous now.”

  “Aye your Majesty, but think who you take with you.” She shot a glance to one side where Kaylan stood impatient to be off. “If Marvenna should have gleaned some inkling of your companion’s …. involvement….”

  “How could she?” Niarmit spoke firmly to dissuade any further allusion however thinly veiled to Kychelle’s murder. “There is nothing for her to know.”

  “All the same, your Majesty,” Quintala drove on. “If I rode with you then I could argue the cause with any of my mother’s people. I can move softly, I would not to add in any measure to your risk of discovery, but I could add protection against the ill will of either orcs or elves.”

  Niarmit tried to mask the compassion in her eyes, she knew it would humiliate Quintala to be pitied. But the half-elf was as much an outsider to her mother’s people as Kaylan the thief was. “I need you at Laviserve, Quintala,” she said. “Hepdida and Kimbolt are alone in your brother’s house.”

  “You do not trust my brother?”

  “Do you?”

  “I try not to trust anybody your Majesty, saving yourself of course.”

  “Is that why you have spent the midnight watch scouting for signs of pursuit?”

  “I need less sleep, your Majesty. I like to use the time to see what or who is out there.”

  “And what have you found?”

  Quintala looked away and bit her lip. “No-one your Majesty.”

  “So, you have only confirmed what we already knew. We have not been shadowed by any party still less with one of ill intent. Quintala, this is the course of action I am determined on.”

  The Seneschal pursed her lips and bowed her head. Jolander clasped his hands atop his head in despair. “And what of your other companion, your Majesty, the Bishop’s man?” Quintala shot back.

  “Fenwell? What of him?”

  The thin manservant, bulked out with winter furs, stood apart from the rest tending to his horse’s tack.

  “You and Kaylan both have reasons to doubt him. That is why you set me to spy on him.”

  “And you uncovered nothing, Quintala. He is our guide, he’s trod this path before.”

  “Let me follow him still. There may be secrets
hidden deep within him, I am not certain he can be trusted?”

  “Nor am I, but I think Kaylan and I can manage. It is two nights at most before we reach the river Derrach and Lady Isobel’s loyal garrison. This journey is one his Mistress has most earnestly entreated for; I do not see that Fenwell would find any advantage in compromising it. But perhaps on the journey we will find a moment to probe Kaylan’s suspicions with more rigour.”

  “All the same, your Majesty, I wish you would...”

  “I need you at Laviserve, Quintala.” Niarmit seized the disconsolate half-elf’s hand and squeezed it. “Who knows how long I will be gone, a month, maybe two. That is a long time to have no voice at Rugan’s court. Be my eyes and ears there, Quintala. Speak with my voice, with my authority.”

  The half-elf looked up and met her gaze at last. “I will try to do your wishes justice, your Majesty.”

  “That’s all I want.”

  “My Lady!” Kaylan had waited long enough. He rattled his horse’s bridle in an uncharacteristically public show of impatience. “The Sun is up, we must be on our way. I would hope to spend no more than two nights in the Pale of the Silverwood.”

  “I’m coming, Kaylan,” Niarmit assured him.

  ***

  Kimbolt and Elise paused side by side in the doorway, both stunned by the strange trio assembled in Hepdida’s sick room. The curate Merlow sat stiff backed with discomfort unwilling to relinquish his role as the Princess’s attendant, but uneasy in the company of two women engaged in girlish talk. Maia was sitting on the bed, the close confidante of the invalid. Hepdida was sitting cross-legged atop the bedclothes a vanity mirror held in one hand while the other pulled up the central streak of disease whitened hair, twisting it left and right to check its extent.

  “There are treatments I have got,” Maia was saying. “From my friends in Oostport. Salves and ointments which will turn the hue of any hair.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “There is a girl I know, her husband thinks she is a true born redhead, fiery like your Lady Niarmit. In truth her natural colour is as plain as a field mouse.”

  “I could have red hair?” Hepdida squealed. “I don’t have to look like a badger all my life.”