by T. O. Munro
”But if you try to seize the Helm, I will remove it.”
“That would kill you,” Chirard observed. “How strange that you should be the one who calls me mad!”
“It would trap you here, with no hope of ever tasting the mortal world again. You don’t want that,” Niarmit told him.
“Stalemate, then?”
“But we still fly.” The Queen gave a smile on her gilded throne. “Take us East Chirard, to Medyrsalve.”
***
Kimbolt had, only for a fraction of a second, ceased his pacing and taken a seat when the door creaked open and Quintala entered. The Captain leapt to his feet. “Well?” The hopeful enquiry died on his lips at the Seneschal’s grim expression.
“I had no more joy than you. My brother’s guards were on the strictest orders that no-one not even I was to be admitted to see the invalids.”
“Could you not use your art to find a way past?” Kimbolt pleaded. “Using magic is no crime for a… for one not of human blood.”
Quintala winced, “by which you mean not pure blood human. Well, Captain, my brother would take it much amiss if I tried to cast a spell upon his elite guards, and they have been very well protected against the charms of sorcery, given Elise’s nature.“
“She is alive though, alive and well.”
“Aye, physically she is well, the guards told me that much. I should not fear for her welfare until such times as they can find a means to exile her. But she is subject to daily doses of mind-numbing juice. My brother is taking no chances. It is the Bishop or the Deaconess themselves who administer them.”
“And Hepdida, what did the guards say of her?”
The half-elf looked away. “They said nothing, but I heard her howl in her madness.”
Kimbolt turned and punched the wall, a patch of plaster was crushed to dust beneath his blow. “Why, why will he let Hepdida die?”
Quintala ran a hand through her silver hair and sighed. “He gave me the same reasons that he gave you, she is doomed, he does not believe in prolonging her agony, simply making her end as comfortable as possible.”
Kimbolt snorted. “If that is so, then why does he not just kill her now, like a horse with a broken leg. By the Goddess, when did that half-share of humanity leak out of him?”
“My brother is at least convinced that to kill is a sin, but to let die it seems is not.”
Kimbolt paced a couple of lengths of the room. “She was cured, Quintala, she was cured. As right as rain.”
“My brother called it just another remission and then the inevitable relapse.”
“No, No, that is not what it was.” The Captain shook his head, punched his palm, and turned to face the Seneschal. She stood, patient, sympathetic, her head inclined in curious expectation. So unlike her brother.
“What was it then, Captain?”
“Elise said that Hepdida was cursed, a wizard’s curse. That is why the priests couldn’t properly cure her. That is why a sorceress could. She was cured, she was remembering.” He grabbed the half-elf by her shoulders as though to squeeze his argument into her.
Quintala’s lips were parted and her brow creased in astonishment. Her amazement deepened as Kimbolt unloaded more of his discoveries. “She was cursed that morning in the forest. She had found a medallion, a black medallion, the kind that Maelgrum issues to his servants.”
“But…” The half-elf was struggling with this revelation. “But that, that means…”
“There is a traitor in our midst, a traitor who used Hepdida’s illness to tie Niarmit to this place. The same traitor must have cursed her again, condemned her to madness.”
“To what purpose?” Quintala asked. “The Queen had already left on her mission. It was too late to stop her.”
“To save themselves from being exposed. The better Hepdida got, the more they had to fear.” Kimbolt punched his palm. “They must have crept into the room while I was fetching the Lady Giseanne.”
“Crept? How? Did any of the servants see someone enter?”
Kimbolt shook his head, reliving the dreadful moments of that night, holding a writhing Hepdida while Elise bled on the floor. “No the door stayed shut from the moment I left to when I returned with Giseanne. The shutters were broken, but that was from the inside. I thought at first that Hepdida had fled over the balcony.”
Quintala nodded slowly and settled into one of the chairs, leaning forward to rest her chin in her hands as she thought. “So we have a traitor wizard loose in the palace who has a means of getting in and out of rooms without using the door, including the chambers at the heart of Rugan’s private suite.”
“You have said that in Rugan’s palace the walls have ears,” Kimbolt suddenly dropped his voice at the implication of what he had said. “There would be passages within the walls that could accommodate spies, could there also be a way for such a passage to be used to enter and leave a room unseen?”
Quintala shrugged. “Anything is possible in my brother’s house but possible and provable are different things. Tell me Kimbolt, who do you suspect in this?”
He shook his head. “The Prince’s palace is full of strange people. Who here would trust those prattling Lords of Oostsalve?”
Quintala nodded. “No further than I could throw them certainly, but if they are spies then they are also the most gifted actors I have ever seen. On no stage in the grand theatre of Morwencairn was the fool played as skilfully as by my Lords Leniot and Tybert.”
“A successful traitor must always be a skilled actor,” Kimbolt retorted. “We should not dismiss them. We should not dismiss anyone.”
The half-elf pursed her lips and blew a soft breath of thought. “Tell me Captain, what do you know of my Grandmother’s murder?”
Kimbolt tried to turn his initial scowl of distaste into something more sympathetic for the bereaved grand-daughter. “I am sorry for your loss, Seneschal.”
She flashed a wry smile. “Don’t worry, Captain. My grandmother’s feelings towards me meant it was not as great a loss as it should have been. But I mention it because Kaylan ..”
“I know. Kaylan said his sword was stolen and used to murder Kychelle.”
“If Kychelle was murdered in the nursery with a sword stolen from another room, then it adds credence to your suspicion that we have someone able to move freely but unseen around the palace.”
“But who?”
Half-elven Seneschal and human Captain looked at each other each shaking their heads with creeping disbelief.
***
The cold had penetrated even to the library where Udecht and Haselrig had their workroom but that was not the cause of the antiquary’s shivering. Not the cold or the knee trembling exhaustion of their run up the twisting passage could explain the ague that consumed him. Udecht, was much calmer. He pushed Haselrig by the shoulders and sat him by the fire.
“Did you see the orcs?” Haselrig was muttering. “If your leg hadn’t held us back, we’d have been first in the chamber. It would have been us.”
The Bishop patted him on the back and poured a glass of water from the jug on the table. He added a dash of amber liquid from a flask and handed the glass to the trembling antiquary.
“Frozen, frozen and then they shattered. Oh we are dead, so dead. I have never felt him so angry.” He gulped down a mouthful of drink and then another. He looked towards the door where a thin web of frost was forming on the panelling. “What can have gone wrong? How wrong can it have gone?”
“There is no point trying to guess, Haselrig.” Udecht smiled down at his gaoler. “Maybe it is time to pray.”
Haselrig looked up at him, blinking at the absurd suggestion. “I haven’t prayed to the Goddess in nearly two decades.”
“She hasn’t forgotten you, not you, not anyone.”
Haselrig gulped down another mouthful and shook his head. “I can’t, your reverence. It’s been too long, I’ve done too much.”
Udecht smiled again, shaking his head but whatever he
was about to say was lost as the door crashed open. Haselrig jumped from the seat, spilling his drink and backed towards the fire.
Rondol was framed in the doorway, his red beard tipped with frost. Behind him a cold mist filled the corridor parted by the rushing forms of orcs and outlanders dashing hither and thither. Haselrig trembled searching the sorcerer’s expression for the triumphant vindication that was surely his entitlement. The venture which had raised Haselrig once more to Maelgrum’s right hand had self-evidently ended in disaster. The wheel of Maelgrum’s favour had turned with brutal swiftness and Rondol could expect to be the beneficiary. But in the ruddy sorcerer’s face, Haselrig saw only a reflection of his own fear at a fury from their Master so deep and random it could sweep them all into painful oblivion.
“Where are the winged ladies?” Rondol demanded. “The Master is asking for them, asking for them now. Where are they?”
***
They had flown all night and met the rising Sun head on. A delicate in flight adjustment had shifted their relative positions. Niarmit lay prone as that was how the unseen force of flight seemed best to support her. Kaylan had shifted onto Niarmit’s back, the thief balanced precariously sitting astride the slighter form of the Queen, gripping the torn fabric of her shirt for support, while trying to keep himself from touching the steel of the Helm. She had warned him of dire consequences if his flesh should touch the enchanted artefact. The arrangement was easier than clinging on from below, but it was not conducive to a restful journey. Niarmit, head down, kept her earthly gaze on the straight grey ribbon of the Eastway. The arrow straight road stretched across the midst of a snow white landscape as Chirard’s miracle of flight took them ever eastwards towards the Palacintas and safety, well safety from Maelgrum at least.
In the Domain of the Helm, Chirard slumped in his throne, brow furrowed in concentration as he sustained their airborne travel.
Niarmit’s spirit avatar, sat watching him with eye wearying effort. Her hands were still poised to raise the Helm in suicidal spite if the Kinslayer should attempt to seize more control of her body than she would grant him. Fatigue assailed her with clubbing blows, while the oblivion of sleep beckoned more seductively than a siren call. Drained of adrenaline she taunted herself awake with Maelgrum’s dark threats against Hepdida. The girl had to be safe, Elise would keep her cured. But as thoughts threatened to become dreams, she forced herself to talk with the Kinslayer, answering his questions about the dragon and its Master and firing out her own enquiries.
“I don’t understand, though, how Maelgrum found out about the Helm,” she said. “Santos said we couldn’t tell anyone about it and I haven’t been able to anytime that I’ve tried. Didn’t you Santos?” She took her eyes from Chirard for an instant to glance around the room. “Santos?” The steward’s humble chair was empty. She hadn’t seen him go.
She glanced quickly back to where Chirard was giving an experimental flex in his throne. “Where is Santos?”
Chirard shrugged. “The unblood worm does not like to stay too close to me, in case he offends me. He does offend me, quite often and with painful consequences for him. Tell me again though, girl, how men of weaker wit and power than I should have succeeded where I did not. How could they release Maelgrum?”
“It took three,” Niarmit said. “A priest, a descendant of Eadran’s bloodline and a mage. One alone could not do it. This treachery required three traitors and that fact alone should have been enough protection for the Salved Kingdom.”
“Three traitors!” Chirard laughed. “That is not so hard to find. I found three thousand and killed them all, all save two.”
The nights of pain and torture and the frantic struggle for escape, were taking their toll on Niarmit. She was grateful for the whine to Chirard’s voice, which ensured his comments were far from a soothing lullaby. The words rolled around in her head. Three traitors, a prince, a priest and a mage.
A sudden wave of fear washed through her, driving all thought of rest or sleep from her mind. She saw laid bare the substance behind Maelgrum’s threat against Hepdida, a threat so real all thought of sleep was banished from her mind. Eyes wide open she stared at the ground far below. The Eastway was cutting a channel through a thick forest, snow tipped tree tops were just being lit by the rising Sun its rays driving over the peaks of the Palacintas. At this height the land seemed to be crawling by. No, there was no seemed about it.
“Chirard,” she cried. “Why are we slowing? What trickery is this?”
“No trickery, girl, this is the best speed I can make, the miracle of flight is not easily won, nor is it inexhaustible.”
“Then set us on the ground, we can walk from here we must make haste.”
He sniffed. “You know why I cannot set you down, bitch. Though it is a brave little girl that thinks she can walk from the Forest of Kelsrik all the way past Listcairn.”
“We must hurry Chirard. I must get back. I have been a fool!”
“At last Thren-spawn bitch, something we can agree on,” Chirard snarled. “But I will not hurry for your command, or anyone’s.”
“Will not? Or cannot?” she snapped back. “Has the great Chirard lost his power?”
“You know nothing of how flight may be sustained, bitch. This is my triumph which has brought you half way across the Kingdom in little more than a night. No other sorcerer in history has solved this riddle.”
Niarmit gazed down at the stationary landscape below. “And it seems you have forgot the solution, Chirard.”
“My Lady,” Kaylan called on her back. “There is something following us.”
“Let me see!”
Chirard was also keen to see this pursuit and Niarmit found her body glided slowly round to face East.
“I saw them, my Lady, dark spots, but getting closer.”
Niarmit saw them too, nine of them, darker nuclei in the blackness of the Western night, clawing across the sky. She could see the motion of their wings. “It is the harpies, Kaylan, cover your ears, but hold on.”
“I’ll try, my Lady.” She felt him wobble and his knees gripped her waist. The harpies might not be able to harm her, not with the protection of the Helm. But they could still pluck Kimbolt from her back, particularly as Chirard seemed to have lost the will or the power to give them any forward motion.
The Kinslayer, however, was cackling in delight on his throne. “Fortune certainly favours me, this day.”
“Be careful Chirard, these are the creatures that kidnapped me and Kaylan, they are the creatures who destroyed my half-brother Eadran by dropping him onto the Eastway. Can you not find some speed to evade them, or some spell to destroy them.”
“Much as it pains me bitch, your brother, Thren-spawn that he may have been, is about to get his revenge.”
The harpies were closer now. The wings flexing powerfully, while the thin strains of their music were drifting to Niarmit’s ears, though this time it seemed more discordant than before. The charms of the Harpies’ song stripped out by the filtering protection of the Helm. For the thief though, she was not so sure. “Keep your hands over your ears, Kaylan,” she repeated.
“I’m trying, my Lady,” he said, but there was a strained quality to his voice.
And then suddenly, one of the harpies plummeted earthwards. Despite the frantic flapping of its wings, the effort in no way slowed its acceleration towards the ground. And then another fell, and each time Niarmit felt her body lift more buoyantly in the air.
The Harpies slowed, hovering in the air fifty yards away, their song stilled, their confidence dented. Two more dropped, their winged shapes abruptly gifted with all the aerodynamic properties of a stone. The rest turned and fled and Niarmit found herself chasing after them.
“No Chirard,” she cried. “That way is West! Do not let them draw us from safety.”
But her body was flying faster than ever in pursuit of the monstrous feathered women. She dared not interfere too much in Chirard’s control of her physical form
, for fear that she might destroy that power which kept them aloft or at the least unseat the loyal Kaylan perched precariously astride her back.
Whatever aerial speed Chirard had lost, he had rediscovered it now, closing on the fleeing harpies with merciless haste. As he drew near, first one then another plummeted squawking to the ground. The desperate bird-women tried to split up, but he chased them down and they fell spinning to their doom, each fresh victim brought more speed and vigour to the Kinslayer’s manoeuvring.
The last of them dived, plunging towards the ground, desperate to seek the solidity of Mother Earth at a time of its own choosing. She was only a few feet from the touchdown when her wings failed her and she crashed in an ungainly heap, one broken leg twisting beneath her as Chirard swooped down towards her. She waved a fist and cawed her fury at him. Niarmit saw her own hands stretch out ahead of her, fingers twisting in a blur of motion, and as they shot past the grounded harpy, the bird women erupted in a screaming column of green flame.
And then they were driving upwards, higher than ever, circling wide and travelling back Eastwards faster than they had before. They soared, a thousand feet or more above the place where the harpies had met the same fate that they had inflicted on Prince Eadran. The fate which had thrust Niarmit into the unwanted position of Gregor’s heir.
Chirard was cackling. “Did you see them fall, did you see the surprise in their pointy little faces.”
Niarmit gasped at the renewed speed of travel. “You stole their flight!” she cried. “You stole their flight, and you stole it from the dragon too!”
“Of course girl,” Chirard laughed. “There is no miracle to flight. The power of flight cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred from one creature to another. The transfer is not permanent, but the creature about to lose the ability to fly should make sure to be on the ground first!”
***
It was quiet in the workroom. Haselrig was lost in seeming contemplation of one ancient tome, but Udecht knew it for a charade. The antiquary had not turned a page in an hour or more.
