by T. O. Munro
“You go too far, little priest,” the wizard said struggling out from beneath the antiquary.
“The Bishop is my slave and both he and I are at the heart of our Master’s plans.” Haselrig retorted. “Interfere with those and he will pump you full of mind numbing juice and feed you to Marwella’s zombies, if you are lucky.”
Rondol stumbled back. “The wheel of the Master’s favour is ever turning, little priest. Today you may be in his high regard but there will be a tomorrow where I have risen again and you have fallen. When that day comes, make no mistake, I will crush you beneath my heel. Crush you so deep and hard the Master would have to assemble you from a million fragments before he could set you again at his right hand.”
“Good advice from the one at the bottom to give to the one currently at the top,” Haselrig snapped. “You’d best be gone before I find my crushing boots, or find some story that will make the Master do it for me.”
Rondol’s jaw worked in futile rage as he looked from Bishop to antiquary and back again. He wagged a finger at both of them, twice drew in a breath to speak, but then with no further word turned and stormed from the room, dragging the door shut behind him.
Haselrig waited a moment, until the slamming of a more distant door indicated the sorcerer was entirely departed. “When I served under Archbishop Forven he always said a leader should surround himself with those of complimentary talents, people whose skills and strengths matched the voids and gaps in his own repertoire. I fear my Lord Maelgrum is too fond of advancing like-minded arrogant and intemperate wizards, spirits like himself but writ smaller and meaner.”
“I should thank you,” Udecht said.
“Should you?” Haselrig asked, a glimmer of mischief in his eye. “Does that mean you will?”
“You acted to save my life, again.”
“As I said, your reverence, you are part of my Master’s plans. It is entirely self-interest which would have me safeguard you. Few of us would escape his ire if this latest venture where to come adrift.”
“And what is it the Master has planned?”
“I could not say, your reverence. Each of us must be told no more than we need know and no earlier than we must act.” He hurried on, dissuading further enquiry. “I saw you start to duck, your reverence. It seems the death you speak so often of craving, was not so welcome after all. You find still a purpose and a promise to your life perhaps?”
“If there is, Haselrig, I will tell you no sooner than you need to know, and no earlier than you must act.” Udecht shot back at the antiquary.
Haselrig nodded, with a wry grin. “As you please your reverence.”
***
“Any news?”
Kimbolt ducked Hepdida’s question. “The blond streak suits you,” he said. They had decided, once Elise had checked Maia’s pots and unguents with great care, that there was no harm to be done in letting Tybert’s concubine amuse Hepdida with her skills. Indulging in some vain idleness offered a distraction from the lurking fear of an assassin within the palace walls.
Hepdida touched at the coloured hair with a grin of pleasure. Kimbolt had seen her smile before, in the passages of Sturmcairn whenever he had passed the slightest comment on the existence, let alone the appearance, of the dark haired servant girl. A time when his greatest problem had been safeguarding his career and her heart against the mutual perils of a young girl’s infatuation. So much had changed since then, not least of which was Hepdida’s susceptibility to distraction by flattery. “What news, Kimbolt?” She repeated.
“No news, Princess.”
“They’ve been gone five days now. They must be in Nordsalve.”
“The escort should return soon, they can tell us when the Queen started out across the Pale of Silverwood. That will give us a better idea of when we may hear from them.”
Hepdida was sitting in a chair by the window, a shawl pulled around her thin shoulders. Since the fever had broken, there had been no need to have the cooling winter gale blast through her chamber. Instead the shutters were drawn and a fire crackled in the hearth where Elise knelt warming her rheumatic fingers.
“I wonder what it is like in Nordsalve. Do you think Niarmit will be safe?” Hepdida asked.
“She has her sword, she has Kaylan and she will have Lady Isobel’s loyal garrison. I am sure she will be safe.”
“I would still rather have news.” Hepdida pulled the shawl tighter.
“Be careful of the chill.” Kimbolt said. “Mistress Elise and I have not laboured this long to protect you for you to succumb to a winter cold.”
“I am much better, really.” She assured him, but she still rose and walked towards the bed. Legs weakened by weeks of idleness, were not the steadiest of supports. The girl swayed a little as she passed the fire, glancing into its mesmerising depths at the flames lapping around thick forest logs.
Kimbolt stepped closer offering his arm when Hepdida stopped, hypnotised by the flickering light in the grate.
“Are you all right?” Elise asked.
Kimbolt edged round to see Hepdida’s puzzled expression eyes darting back and forth, lips moving as a troubling train of thought surfaced on her face. “Are you remembering something? Something else? Something else important?”
“It was black!”
“What was black?”
“The last thing I remember, when I went riding. He had one just like it.”
“What was black, who had one?” Kimbolt demanded.
“Hush, Captain, don’t try to overcook this broth,” Elise quietened him.
Hepdida held up her hand finger and thumb pinched together as though hanging an invisible object before her eyes. “I found it by a tree. A black medallion.”
“A black medallion?” An awful anxiety seized Kimbolt’s heart so tightly he could barely breathe.
“Grundurg had one. He showed me, told me the Master spoke to him through it.”
“Dema had one too, she wore it often.”
“When I met Feyril he said that the black medallions were how Maelgrum spoke to his servants, to all his servants over great distances.”
“And you found one? Where?”
“It was in the forest. That morning. I was waiting for someone. They’d left me a note, under my pillow. It must have been one of the servants. The note said they’d seen something when Kychelle died, they were scared, they’d only talk to me alone. I was waiting where the note said, by the tree.”
Kimbolt shook his head. “Kaylan and the Queen said nothing about servants or there being any note when you were found.”
Hepdida narrowed her eyes, scanning her unco-operative memory. “Nobody came and then I saw the medallion, I picked it up. I remember knowing what it was, but after that I can’t remember.” Hepdida struck at her head with the palm of her hand, tears of frustration trickling down her cheeks. “I can’t remember what happened next. Why can’t I remember?”
Elise rose and wrapped her arms around the shaking girl.
“By the Goddess,” Kimbolt cried. “We have all been fools.”
“How so?”
“This is no squabble amongst men. No petty rivalry risen to murder, no foiled noble seeking to hurt Hepdida or Niarmit or Kychelle. This is the work of Maelgrum. This has all been his will always.” Kimbolt gasped into Elise’s stunned face. “He has a servant here, a traitor in our midst. He will have been told our every move. Orcs’ blood, can you not see?”
The sorceress blenched at his crude curse but still shook her head in incomprehension. “Please Captain, lay it out for me in plain and simple language.”
“Think Elise, what benefit did Hepdida’s illness bring to Maelgrum?”
She shrugged as she eased the troubled girl into a seat by the fire. “None. What interest would he have in her?”
“Not in her, in Niarmit. Hepdida’s illness tied the Queen to this place, it drained her of energy, far from the Gap of Tandar where she alone had bested Dema’s troops. Far from Nordsalve where t
he Lady Isobel cried out for assistance. He controlled Niarmit, he paralysed our cause and all through keeping Hepdida sick.”
The girl was crying now as Kimbolt delivered his analysis with a passionate flourish. “I knew I should have died,” she said.
“Hush child.” Elise stroked her hair. “None of this was your doing.”
Kimbolt paced the room. “I am a fool, a fool not to have seen it. I who have lived in his shadow, seen how he works.”
“You are a fool who is upsetting a child.”
“I’m all right,” Hepdida sobbed into Elise’s shoulder.
“And Kychelle’s murder, what of that?” the sorceress demanded.
“It all must link, but was there even a servant, or was it just a ruse. A trick to get at you.” Kimbolt paused in his pacing by the tearful girl. “Who was it Hepdida? Who was in the forest?”
“I can’t remember,” she cried covering her ears with her hands and burying her head within Elise’s comforting embrace.
“Kimbolt, enough.”
“I must tell Giseanne. She alone would Niarmit trust. We must uncover this traitor.” He strode towards the door and yanked it open. “Wait here both of you!” he gave an unnecessary command and then was gone.
***
“We should reach the Derrach crossing by noon tomorrow, Lady Niarmit.” Fenwell had the faintest hint of a smile as he walked down the slope into the hollow where they had made camp for the night.
Niarmit nodded, “Thank you Master Fenwell. We’ve made good time. You must know these paths well.”
The manservant gave a slight shrug. “I have travelled a lot, Lady Niarmit, I know many paths.”
“Aye,” Kaylan looked up from the small fire he had kindled. Just large enough for warmth, but not so great that any glow from it should be seen beyond the encircling ridge around their camp. “You’re not a native of Nordsalve, by your accent. Where do you hail from, Master Fenwell?”
The manservant shuffled uncomfortably at the question and looked to Niarmit for guidance. “Kaylan’s history is a strange one filled with far too many misdeeds, Master Fenwell,” she told him. “My own too is not all it might appear. I doubt your story could be more unusual or less virtuous than ours, but there is no need to share what you do not want to tell.”
Kaylan scowled, doubtless disappointed that Niarmit would let the man say nothing, but Fenwell chose to unload some of his past at least. “I was born in the Eastern lands beyond Salicia, Lady Niarmit.”
There was a cluck of triumph from Kaylan which the thief tried to cover with a cough. At the end of the spluttering that followed, he said with streaming eyes, “they do things different in the Eastern lands, I hear.”
“And where I came from the word is they do things differently in the Kingdom of the Salved,” Fenwell responded.
“So how did you come to be in Lady Isobel’s retinue?” Niarmit asked.
“A long and slightly chequered story, Lady Niarmit. Her father had much business in the Eastern Lands and had need of certain services that I was able to provide.”
“What services?”
“Discrete services, Master Kaylan, the kind one does not talk about, but which might afford one man an advantage in business over another.”
“Spying?”
Fenwell shook his head, “I would not call it that, Master Kaylan. But one time in an affair that did not concern the lady’s father, there was a misunderstanding, a rather serious misunderstanding, and a number of people acquired a keen and unhealthy interest in my whereabouts.”
“So Lady Isobel’s father saved you from a set of vigilantes?” Kaylan offered.
Fenwell frowned. “He offered me an opportunity,” the manservant admitted. “A new life in the Petred Isle where my talents could be put to good use.”
“And what are those talents?” Kaylan demanded.
Fenwell shifted uneasily. “Talents whose usefulness is diminished the more who know of them,” he mumbled equivocally.
Kaylan snorted in disgust. “That makes you a thief or an assassin,” he declared.
Fenwell blenched white at the accusation. “Neither, master Kaylan, I assure you.” He turned his head as he spoke to direct the last entreaty at Niarmit.
The Queen gave an airy wave of her hand. “Kaylan teases, Master Fenwell, that is all. Come we should get some sleep and make an early start in the morning.”
“I’ll take first watch,” Kaylan declared.
***
“I wish I could remember more.”
“Hush child, you will make yourself ill.” Despite Elise’s reassurances, the young Princess was growing increasingly agitated as she paced back and forth in front of the fire thumping her own recalcitrant head with the heel of her hand. The sorceress fumbled in her pouch for a few grains of myrroot, thinking to cast a spell of mild sedation. Not to make the girl sleep, just enough to stop her from concussing herself. “Kimbolt will be back soon with the Lady Regent. Don’t try to force your memory, it will come back in its own good time.”
Hepdida stopped suddenly and sank to her knees on the hearth of the fire. Elise kicked the poker to one side to save the oblivious girl from sitting on it. “What is it, Hepdida? Is there something else?”
The girl’s face was creased in a deep frown, staring at the floor but seeing something else.
“Do you remember who it was? Who came to you in the forest?”
Hepdida shook her head slowly. “No,” she said in some surprise. “It’s not that. I’m remembering when I first met you.”
“You were distraught then, upset. It was all understandable.” Elise thought back to the thin ill girl, arms bent to thrust a knife into her own ribcage. “You were sick. You were worried for Niarmit. Things can seem desperate.”
A quicker shake in eager rebuttal. “No, Elise, it’s not that. But before you came I had been dreaming I think, but it wasn’t a dream. Someone was there, talking to me, telling me what I must do, and I was agreeing. They said when I awoke there would be a knife, said I must use it, said I owed it to Niarmit, that I had to.”
“Someone told you to kill yourself? Who?”
“I don’t know,” Hepdida wailed in misery.
“That makes no sense.” Elise tried to fit this piece into the jagged conspiracy that Kimbolt had described. “Why spend all that effort to keep you sick and tie Niarmit to your bedside and then have you end it.”
“But that was it, that voice, I can’t place it, but soft reasonable. I was holding Niarmit here.” Hepdida sounded out the brutally rational argument for a young girl’s suicide. “I was dying anyway. I was stopping her from helping her people. I had to let her go, I had to kill myself. It said I would know what to do when I awoke. That I would find what I needed.”
“Why? Why?” Elise railed at the nonsense of it. “Unless Maelgrum wanted Niarmit to go, unless something had changed and he wanted her in Nordsalve.” It was the sorceress’s turn to scratch her head in search of answers. “If her leaving is what Maelgrum wanted, then… then this could all be a trap for the Queen!”
“Tell someone!” Hepdida shrieked. “There must be a way to warn them. Tell Rugan.”
Elise turned towards the door. She had taken two steps before there was a yelp of alarm behind her. She tried to turn back, but she couldn’t, not back, not forwards, no muscle answered to her command. Panic seized her, a visceral childhood fear. Malchus had been the only one that had ever used a spell of holding on her and those memories were dire enough.
Unseen behind her Hepdida yelped again. “You,” she cried. “It was you..” The words were cut short by the sound of a sharp slap, and the thump of a body falling to the floor.
Elise strained every sinew, fought against the enchantment with long practise of the futile struggle. She was older now, she was stronger now. She would break free. Her eyelid trembled in half a blink. Movement yes, but not force enough to stop whatever assassin lurked behind her.
But no blow came, no sound, no sti
rring all was silence.
Hepdida are you all right? Her mind thought the words but her mouth would not say them. There was a scuffling sound, the girl lived. “Heh-eeda,” a slurred call slipped past Elise’s treacherous lips. “Heh-eeda, oo’ aw ‘ight?”
The answer was an unintelligible howl, a growl of malice and hatred. There was a clink of metal against stone floor. The poker. Oh shit!
“Heh-eeda, ‘s no’ ‘oo,” Elise squeezed her own plea out but the only answer was a closer animal grunt. She could feel hot breath on her neck. She wept inside for the warnings she could not give and the people she could not save, not least of them herself.
***
Niarmit always knew when she was dreaming. Her dreams often featured her father Matteus, the man who had raised her, the man who had conjured her away from his side at the calamity of Bledrag field. Asleep she saw him again, sometimes close, sometimes far, always smiling but turning away and vanishing as she ran towards him. More recently she dreamt of Gregor, King Gregor the adulterer who against all her hopes was the one who indubitably had sired her. He too was always running away, but not from her, from something else and it was fear she saw in his eyes as she hovered like a wraith at the shoulder of his fleeing form. No matter how hard she shouted he never seemed to hear, still less to give the answers that she begged for.
All her dreams were the same, populated by the people who had been taken from her and, wilfully or not, left her alone to search for solutions to problems she had not courted.
So this must be a dream too, her father’s voice singing strong. His hands beneath her armpits lifting her high onto the back of his horse as he had when she was a tiny child. She had always loved to sit infront of him on the saddle of his great destrier. But this dream horse was constantly growing, or maybe she had shrunk, for he was lifting her still and the horse’s saddle never came level. It wasn’t so much a horse as an equine cliff that she was soaring up past and her father had become a veritable giant, his rich melodious voice filling the night as his face disappeared from view into the clouds. Strangely though his hands were still small enough to lift her beneath the arms, sharp fingers bruising her skin through the soft leather she had gone to sleep in.
