Wrath Of The Medusa (Book 2)

by T. O. Munro

  Maia smiled and stretched out a hand to pat the girl’s knee. “You can be any colour or mix of colours you like. Think of this lighter streak as an opportunity not a curse.”

  “What is this?” Elise demanded. “Who gave you leave to be here, Lady Maia?”

  The Oostslave courtier flung a hand against her chest in injured pride. “Mistress Elise, I am only visiting a poor sick girl who has been starved of any real companionship in her illness. The good father here told me it would be fine.”

  “I could see no harm in it,” the curate hastily muttered. “The Lady Hepdida has been wide awake this past hour and seemed unmoved by my discourse on the life of the Prophet. I think she is still younger than her years, more like to find amusement in childish past times.” He glared pointedly at the mirror which the girl was holding.

  “Come now father,” Maia chided. “What woman would not want to see what injury an illness had wrought on her appearance, and now the girl has got some colour back she can see how little lasting harm has been done to her looks.” She stretched out her hand to lift and tilt Hepdida’s chin. “Why even those marks of distinction that the orc gave you have faded somewhat, while the thinning of your frame is no barrier to beauty quite the opposite in fact. I am sure my Lord Tybert would think you even more handsome now than he did before.”

  “You may leave,” Elise announced. “Now,” she added by way of emphasis when the other woman was slow to rise.

  Maia wrinkled her nose as she met the herbalist’s fierce stare. “Mistress Elise, you too might learn some tricks. The older ladies that I know back in Oostsalve have found ways to hide the whitening of their hair. No need to lose all colour, in fact you have much more choice now.” She touched a hand to her own cheek, lips pursed in a frown of puzzlement. “Of course, I am not sure that there is anything we could do about… there are creams I know which smooth the skin, but…”

  “I like myself exactly as I am, Lady Maia,” the herbalist said with a level voice. “If I did not, how could I expect anyone else to?”

  “How indeed!” Maia cried.

  “Please leave us, Lady Maia, father Merlow.” Kimbolt weighed in. “There are matters we would discuss with the Princess.”

  “Of course.” The curate gathered himself for a grateful departure. Maia moved more reluctantly, giving an affectionate glance back at Hepdida on the bed.

  “Keep the mirror my dear, I will call again tomorrow with all my salves. You can decide how red you want your hair to be, or perhaps a golden yellow. No need to follow the Lady Niarmit in everything!”

  As the door closed behind the departing pair, Hepdida scowled up at the herbalist and the captain. “I was enjoying her company.”

  “The Lady Maia is not a fit companion for you, she talks nothing but vain idleness.” Elise prowled the room as she delivered her verdict, staring into corners and at the fine wood panelling.

  “I like vain idleness.” Hepdida pouted. “There was a time when that was all I had to worry about, girls chattering about how to make themselves pretty. How to make a man look twice.” She glanced up at Kimbolt. “I remember…”

  “Yes, child. How is your memory?” Elise returned from her inspection of the walls to sit at the foot of the bed.

  “Of when?”

  “Of now, of your illness.”

  “I don’t like to remember it.”

  “That’s as maybe, but this is important.”

  “I remember what I did, watching what I did. Feeling the hate and the madness driving me while I watched it. I don’t like that memory.”

  “Tsh,” Elise wafted her concerns away. “What about before, before you fell ill. What can you remember then?”

  Hepdida frowned with concentration. “I can’t really remember much.”

  “Try, Hepdida,” Kimbolt urged. “It’s important.”

  “Why? I’m getting better now. I’m just tired, and a bit thin. Why does it matter how I fell ill?”

  “Because….” Kimbolt frowned as he tried to find the words to explain.

  Elise filled the void of his hesitation. “Because you did not fall ill, you were made ill. You’ve been cursed child, just as I was. Someone did this to you.”

  “Who?”

  “We don’t know. That’s why we need you to remember, to remember everything.”

  Hepdida screwed up her face as she sifted through her broken memories. “I remember going out riding.” She said at length. “I was going to meet someone.”

  “Who?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not clear, but I was happy about it.”

  “That’s more than you’ve remembered before,” Kimbolt said.

  “The rest will come back if we give it time,” Elise added. “If we can afford to give it time.”

  “Why would anyone want to harm me though?”

  Elise counted the possibilities off on her fingers. “Because of who you are, or what you know, or something you’ve done or something they fear you are going to do.”

  Hepdida shook her head in disbelief, then stopped suddenly eyes widening as a flood of memories returned. ”Kychelle!”

  “The Elf lady?” Elise asked.

  The girl nodded vigorously. “Kaylan and me, we had ideas how she had been murdered. Someone in the palace, someone who stole Kaylan’s sword, who got into the nursery.”

  “Kaylan’s sword?” Kimbolt’s ears pricked up at the mention of the thief. “How is Kaylan’s sword involved in Kychelle’s murder?”

  Hepdida looked quickly around. “Kaylan said I shouldn’t speak of it.”

  “Kaylan isn’t here and so far he has not acquitted himself well as your protector. I think you are safely discharged from any promise you gave that thief,” Kimbolt said sourly.

  “It wasn’t that.” Hepdida dropped her voice and beckoned the others close. “He said the walls of the palace had ears, we had to be careful. He thought someone skilled in climbing might have got into his room and into the nursery to kill the elf Lady. I can’t remember but maybe I stumbled on something, something that made the murderer want to silence me.” She banged her head with the heel of her palm. “I wish I could remember.”

  “Whoever it was child, they didn’t curse you just once.” Elise’s statement drew blank looks from her companions. “The curse is a vicious one, I know that from painful experience. A priest cannot cure it, only slow or stall its progress. But you my dear, you have had some relapses of striking severity.”

  “And?”

  “The curse must have been re-applied, and more than once since you first fell ill. Someone has come close enough to entwine you more deeply in the web of sickness. A great deal of effort and artifice has been used to keep you ill.”

  “But Hepdida has been sat with day and night, who could have done it. Not any of those who tended her? Surely not?”

  “It is either one of them or someone who found a secret way into this room while your attendants slept.”

  “The same person who stole Kaylan’s sword and killed Kychelle with it?” In her excitement at making the link, Hepdida let slip more story than she had intended. She put a hand to her mouth too late to stop the outflow of words, before hastily adding. “I am sure he didn’t kill Kychelle.”

  Kimbolt’s eyes had widened at the revelation and the thought of finding such grievous fault in the thief did fill him with a certain satisfaction. But it could not be sustained. “While I could happily suspect him of a hand in Kychelle’s death,” he told Hepdida. “I am sure he would do nothing to harm you. And since the two crimes appear to be intertwined, I must accept his innocence of both.”

  “Fenwell,” Hepdida cried. “Fenwell, that was who we suspected.”

  “Well Fenwell is gone North with Kaylan and the Queen, so that should give us some peace of mind until his return.”

  “If it was in fact Fenwell,” Elise drily punctured Kimbolt’s peace of mind. “This curse is a work of sorcery. I saw the thin fellow. He did not strike me as the wizard
ing type. A climber maybe, but a sorcerer? No.”

  “You said the sorcerers have learned new ways to hide their nature.”

  She shrugged. “If so, Fenwell has the best disguise I’ve seen so far. I still say it could be anyone.”

  “Then we must still be on our guard, until Hepdida’s memory yields up the last few pieces of this puzzle,” Kimbolt conceded.

  “One of us, Captain, you or I, must be with the Princess at all times, and no sleeping on watch.” Elise looked at Hepdida squarely. “The more you remember, girl, the more dangerous you are to whoever did this to you. So try to remember quickly but quietly.”

  ***

  The Helm stood there on the table reflecting the flickering torch light in its burnished metal surface. Udecht stole a glance towards the door. Haselrig had pulled it shut as he left and the guard was on the other side. The antiquary had been irritated enough by the wheezing outlander’s noisy intrusion to insist he stand guard outside their door. It was a demand which Haslerig, for the moment riding high in the undead lord’s fragile favour, had been able to make with some conviction.

  In consequence, with his chief gaoler suddenly summoned to Maelgrum’s presence, Udecht was now alone with the Helm. For the first time since his abortive escape attempt he had the Helm within his unfettered grasp. There were no archers poised to strike him down, no sentries ready to raise the alarm, no Dark Lord at hand to make him drive it down on his own head, should he chose to swing the ancient artefact as a crude but explosive weapon.

  He took a hesitant step towards the object, reached out to it. There was a hint of warmth to the metal, and a strangely insubstantial solidity. Its steel surface was hard to the touch yet it filled his fingers with the slightest tingling numbness of unfaded pins and needles.

  He had not noticed it before, but now he knew the Helm’s great secret every impression it had made on him was re-examined and placed in the context of an incredible and evil artefact. This was not simply a fearsome piece of enchanted armour. It was the gateway to another plane, a place where the spirits of his forefathers still lived. Like passengers on a boat that had left harbour, but dropped anchor beyond the breakwater, they were halted in their journey from this world to the hereafter. They existed still but stalled within reach and touch of the world that Death should have permanently taken them from.

  Udecht’s fingers slipped down the curved side of the Helm in a smooth stroking gesture. He placed his fingertips against the surface and imagined his forebears pressing their hands against his from the other side of some glass window. His father King Bulveld would not be there. The old King had never worn the Helm, never embraced its promise or been the victim of its curse. For that Udecht was grateful, that his father should be safe with the Goddess, cured at last of his stubbornly insidious illness.

  “Gregor?”

  Udecht surprised himself by speaking his brother’s name aloud, calling to his sibling through the polished basinet. Did they know that Maelgrum hunted them still, that he had plans to confine them each in a cell to his own taste. Udecht picked the Helm up two handed and held it up above his head peering into its velvet lined interior. He scanned the dark material for some clue that had eluded the weeks of fruitless study, some means by which he could warn them.

  But there was none. Only the rightful wearer of the Helm could open the gateway between the planes, and Udecht was no more the rightful wearer than his brother Xander had been. Udecht hastily put the Helm back on the bench, his mind filled with the image of the twisted congealing mess that had been his last sight of his traitor sibling. That was what the Helm did to any would be usurper and there were far easier ways to commit suicide. Walking outside and threatening to poke at a guard with the lethal artefact would earn him a far quicker end on the point of a sword or pierced by many arrows.

  He sighed and asked himself why he had not taken that easy course on any one of the many chances it had presented itself. Part of him rationalised it as an adherence to faith. His life was a gift from the Goddess, it was not his to take. Whatever happened to him was part of her plan. But he had had chances to defy his captors more boldly than he had, to refuse to help them and in so doing earn a death that would not have been his direct action and might have been more worthy of a servant of the Goddess. Had she offered him the opportunity for martyrdom? Had he refused it from simple cowardice?

  He rubbed at his tired eyes. It had been so long since he had felt the reassuring touch of his symbol of office, his holy crescent. Not just a badge of ordination, but a bridge between him and his deity, an amplifier of prayers, a gateway to her favour. How could he know what she intended for him without it? Or was that just part of the test she had set?

  He picked up the Helm once more and took a few steps towards the door. Perhaps this was his opportunity, this happy chance when he could take a few of the Dark Lord’s servants with him.

  The door was flung open with some force and the red bearded sorcerer, Rondol ducked through the doorway. He stopped abruptly when he saw Udecht and the Helm in his hands. “What are you doing, preacher man?” There was a touch of hesitancy colouring the customary arrogance of Maelgrum’s towering lieutenant. A touch which became more pronounced when Udecht made no answer. “Where are you going with that?” Rondol’s eyes flicked down to the Helm.

  Udecht gripped the artefact more tightly. Rondol was a worthy target, an evil scion of his master’s will. Achieving his destruction would be a more than even trade for the meagre worth of Udecht’s own life. The sorcerer was within arms’ reach, stretch out your arms, touch the surface to his flesh and the ancient wards of Eadran would flare blasting the sorcerer to whatever hell his deeds had earned. Udecht lowered his hands and turned away. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m doing nothing, going nowhere.” He put the Helm back carefully on the table.

  Rondol behind him gave a long exhale of relief before spitting with his customary robust assurance, “Just as well, priest, know your place and be grateful for each day you are spared.”

  “Haselrig isn’t here,” Udecht said, anxious to be rid of the sorcerer so he could be alone with his guilty cowardice.

  “I know. It’s you I came to see.”

  That was a surprise. “Truly I know no more than Haselrig, indeed far less than him. If it is answers you seek, you would be better to approach him than me.”

  “Haselrig is with the Master,” Rondol growled. “He was summoned and… and I was sent away.”

  Oh! The dismissal clearly rankled the red wizard; Udecht let slip a sly smile.

  “What is the matter they discuss?” Rondol’s temperament was not equipped for subtle entreaty. However casual and off the cuff he may have intended to be, his question came out as a demanding weedle which Udecht had neither the knowledge nor inclination to answer.

  “Is it about the blue gate?” Rondol prompted.

  Udecht shrugged. “I know nothing of gates, blue or any other hue,” he exaggerated his ignorance for convenience sake, but it mattered not. The sorcerer nonetheless heard some echo of his own thoughts in Udecht’s words.

  Rondol nodded, “yes, it would be the blue gate. That is the secret they share. I did ask him, I did ask the Master…..”

  He stopped then, massaging his neck beneath his beard and as he turned his head Udecht saw four black prints upon the sorcerer’s throat, frozen scars of an undead hand. “I asked, but he…. He would not say.”

  Udecht grimaced. Maelgrum’s approval was a finite quantity with only so much to be shared between his frightened servants. Haselrig’s gain was Rondol’s loss. However, the sorcerer’s palpable fear wrought a grim satisfaction in the Bishop’s mind. He thought back on Haselrig’s moments of torment before Maelgrum and wondered how Haselrig, so much more the architect of this calamity, had still engendered in him some scrap of sympathy.

  The door opened again to admit Haselrig himself. The priest turned antiquary turned traitor was unusually unkempt. A foul odour accompanied him and as he brushed pa
st Rondol with barely a second glance Udecht saw a long streak of stinking white goo down the length of his cloak, from shoulder to hip.

  “What happened to you?” Rondol demanded, covering his nose as Haselrig hastily disrobed.

  Haselrig shrugged, and folded the soiled item into a tight bundle to mask its scent. “One of the Master’s guests took exception to my presence.” He spoke briskly trying to make light of the event, but Udecht could see the tremor in his hands. “When I was a child such an anointment might have been considered a sign of good fortune.”

  “Good fortune?” Udecht said. “You mean it’s…”

  “Bird shit?” Rondol completed the sentence. “What size of eagle shat on you then, little priest? Orcs’ blood, you should have enough luck to last the rest of your miserable life now. Who were the Master’s guests?”

  Haselrig was uneasy at the sorcerer’s probing. “I cannot say, that is part of the Master’s plan.”

  “But these guests, they came through the blue gate you spoke of?”

  “No!” Haselrig snapped. “There was no blue gate, there is no blue gate. I know nothing of blue gates.”

  “But,” Rondol began. “You told me, you said.. and I asked him and he became most vexed. They must exist! How else could it raise his ire?”

  “Rondol, that is all I know of them, that any mention of them is sure to rouse our Master’s temper. Beyond that, I know nothing and now you know as much as me and may have learned the wisdom to never mention it again.”

  The wizard’s beard waggled as his lips worked in soundless fury until at last the words came tumbling out. “You, you played me for a fool! You made me rouse his temper!” His fingers flicked at the beginning of an incantation, but Haselrig stopped him with an upraised hand. The sorcerer swung his aim wide targeting his spell instead at Udecht’s chest. The Bishop froze for an instant. Death beckoned from Rondol’s fingertips and then he ducked below the table and Haselrig sprung at Rondol. The wizard crashed to the ground, his misdirected bolt of lightning scorching a path across the ceiling.