Lady Of The Helm (Book 1)

by T. O. Munro

  Xander seized a sword and struck out at the statue, scratching the smooth surface of Thren’s cheek. “Can he feel that?” he whirled round to interrogate Haselrig.

  “No, he can feel nothing,” came the weary re-assurance.

  “But if he were restored.”

  “Aye then he would bleed.”

  Heartened, Xander swung again at the single oddity in the statue. The ancestral sword was still a gleaming piece of steel, immune to the transformation that had overtaken the rest of Thren’s attire, equipment and flesh. He hacked at the stone fingers of the statue’s right hand until they shattered and released the ancient blade to Xander’s grasp. The false prince held the sword close, kissed its hilt, before quizzing Haselrig again. “And now, what if he should be restored now?”

  “Now he would have to learn to fight with his other hand, assuming healers were on hand to ensure he did not bleed to death.”

  Xander nodded with grim satisfaction and waved Thren’s sword at Dema. “See this lady, this is part of my inheritance. When I am in full possession of it, there will be scores I will settle.”

  Dema said nothing, but suddenly raised her hand to her mask as though to tear it off. Xander swung away averting his eyes in panic. The Medusa laughed. “Ah, well when your eyes can meet mine in safety, worm, then maybe you may give me as much as half a contest.”

  With a discrete cough, Haselrig pointed out, “Your brother’s sons still stand between you and a legitimate inheritance, my Prince.”

  “Indeed.” Xander seemed grateful for the intervention as he wheeled away from the teasing Medusa. Then he set his shoulder to the statue on the battlements and heaved with all his strength. Thren rocked a moment and then fell from view with startling abruptness. Xander cupped a hand to his ear as he listened, with exaggerated care for the crash of stone on the rocks below.

  ***

  As Gregor gazed into the glowing red gem, it flared into a sudden blinding red light. At the burst of heat he dropped the ankh on the floor with a cry of anguish which, despite the heat of the enchanted gem, owed more to raw emotion than pain. He fell to his knees fumbling across the thick rug of his bedchamber for the fallen talisman. When at last his fingers closed on it and he held to his eye, the gem at its heart glistened emptily white. The sight wrought a stifled sob from his throat.

  ***

  The fog in Kimbolt’s mind cleared at last. He was kneeling by the body of his dead friend, whose arms he must at some point have folded across the old captain’s chest. He closed Thackery’s reproachful blank eyes and let his ears and eyes absorb what was happening.

  The transformed Xander was sniggering gleefully and offering the hilt of his sword to the lady. “Go on, have a go, feel the weight of it, the perfect balance.”

  “I have a sword, worm,” she told him. “Keep your little dagger.”

  “Oh,” Xander feigned disappointment. “Does no one want to try out my new sword. Here, what about you.” The excited Prince skipped from outlander to outlander repeating his offer to each in turn, but none would accept, suspicions raised by Xander’s agitated state. The one at the end of the line, more brave or foolish than his fellows, at last reached out for the blade to his instant regret. As his fingers closed around the hilt there was a crack of lightning and the unfortunate outlander was flung back halfway across the tower before slumping into unconsciousness.

  “You utter arse, Xander,” Dema spat.

  “Oh sorry,” Xander gushed to the comatose outlander. “Did I not mention, you have to be of Eadran’s bloodline to handle one of these artefacts. Makes the things bloody hard to steal eh?”

  As the watchers on the platform watched or avoided Xander’s antics, according to their mood, Kimbolt rose to his feet, picked up the still glowing torch that Thren had mis-thrown and thrust it into the oil channel at the foot of the great pyre.

  ***

  The tower guard at Morwencairn kept an uneasy watch. At his shoulder stood King Gregor, an unaccustomed night time visitor to the capital’s beacon tower. The guard could not guess what cause had brought his Majesty to this place at such a time, still less why he tarried so long, always staring westwards towards the distant peaks of the great barrier mountains.

  “Ha!” the king cried with a certainty that the guard could not at first share. But then, there it was the unmistakeable kindling on the horizon of a beacon fire, the last one in a dozen strong chain that led from the capital all the way to Sturmcairn.

  “Orders your Majesty,” the guard asked, stunned at an event that had not been seen in his lifetime.

  “Repeat the signal onwards to North, South and East, let us alert Princes Hetwith and Rugan, as well as the Lord Feyril,” Gregor commanded grimly. As others hurried to his bidding, Gregor looked again at the Ankh still nestled in his palm. At the centre of the whitened precious stone a bead of red was visible, growing steadily. Gregor nodded somberly and called out, “pass the word for Prince Eadran.”

  ***

  Atop Sturmcairntor all was confusion. Outlanders scattered futiley. Some beat at the flames with cloaks that instantly caught fire and had to be discarded falling like flaming leaves into the bailey below. Others unhitched water bottles and threw the contents at the inferno, only for the liquid to turn to a cloud of steam mid-flight. Kimbolt noted with satisfaction the cold dread with which Xander stood rooted to the spot. Even though his beard was smouldering in the heat, his face was a mask of white terror. Even the masked Medusa, still aware enough to try to co-ordinate the efforts of the rapidly singeing outlanders, seemed shaken by this turn of events. Haselrig alone kept his head. “There’s no point any of you,” he cried. “This thing was never meant to be put out. Come we must leave here before we fry.”

  And in the midst of it, his own skin scorched by the intense radiation, Kimbolt waited for their retribution. It was Xander saw him first, anger serving as antidote to the traitor Prince’s fear filled paralysis. “Kimbolt!” he screamed, rushing at the Captain with Thren’s blade held high above his head for a blow Kimbolt had no intention of dodging.

  But the blow never came as, with an athletic flick of her foot, Dema dumped Xander on his backside. As the Prince tried to rise, Dema stepped astride him and grabbed a handful of his hair. A quick twist of her wrist subdued the furious traitor long enough for her to question the Captain.

  “You are Kimbolt? Captain Kimbolt?”

  “Of course he is woman, the man who has undone our Master’s plans.”

  “Only because your spell of entrancement failed, worm. I like this Captain. I think I will keep him.”

  “He must die.”

  “He is my prisoner. I decide.”

  “Our Master will not be pleased.”

  “He is my prisoner.”

  Xander opened his mouth to utter another argument, but then shut it again, a smug smile creeping over his lips. “On your squirming head be it, lady.”

  That settled, Xander scurried for the stairwell, while Dema held out her hand for Kimbolt to follow. “You are my prisoner Captain, come with me.”

  “I would rather die here and quickly.”

  “Bravery and stupidity are different things Captain, don’t mix them up.”

  “My life is forfeit anyway. Your sword, your gaze, those flames or that fall, I don’t intend to see another dawn,” Kimbolt replied his eyes full of shame at the part he had played in the invulnerable Sturmcairn’s fall.

  “Aye, Captain, but if you die what will then become of Hepdida?” A smile played across Dema’s lips as the servant girl’s name drew Kimbolt sharply from his self-destructive resignation. “Aye, I see she means something to you, and she a poor orphan now, trusting so much in the great Captain Kimbolt. However there is an orc I know who has taken a keen liking to your little serving wench.”

  “What would you want with me?” Kimbolt asked thickly. “What would you want with a servant girl?”

  “Come with me and you will find out.”

  With a rene
wed sense of dread, Kimbolt did as he was bidden.

  ***

  Kaylan used the flat edge of his sword to pat down the earthen mound, while Niarmit laid the last of the stones around its base. The thief turned resistance fighter wiped the grimy perspiration from his brow. It had taken all morning to find a spot that pleased his lady and most of the afternoon to scrape some hole half deep enough to inter Davyn’s body. But Kaylan had not dared to make any complaint, not when at last she had roused herself from torpor. So now the man who had come to kill her lay at rest in his own shallow grave. Kaylan would have left his corpse for the wolves, but that was not his lady’s wish. Instead he stood head bowed at the bastard’s graveside, waiting for some pious comment on the traitor’s passing.

  Niarmit took her place at the head of the mound, her clothing sweat stained by the day’s exertions. She had said little throughout the gruelling activity beyond short directions on the mechanics of burying her assailant. Kaylan had gratefully inhabited the silence losing himself in the task rather than face his Lady’s reproachful gaze. And now, like Davyn’s grave, her internal ruminations were finished.

  “Will you say a few words, my lady?”

  She shook her head. “What is there to say Kaylan?”

  He misconstrued her meaning. “I know not the words, my lady. I had thought a priestess of the Goddess would be accustomed… but perhaps… maybe…”

  “Fool, Kaylan,” she said. “I know the ceremonies well enough. I just doubt the word or wishes of the Goddess matter anymore.”

  Kaylan, ever superstitious, drew a hurried crescent across his chest and glanced around lest the Goddess herself should be spying on them from the trees. “My Lady, you are a priestess and princess, rich in the Goddess’s favour. Such words are blasphemy.”

  “Rich in her favour?” Niarmit laughed, an unsettling mirthless laugh that had Kaylan again scouring the woods for watchers. “How many came to us from Bledrag field, Kaylan?”

  The thief shrugged, “perhaps ten dozen, my lady.”

  “One hundred and eight, Kaylan. And you and I are all that are left. Those that didn’t die, slunk off in the night and now it is just us. If this is the Goddess’s favour, then I would hate to see what befell those she wished ill.”

  Kaylan crescented himself again and pleaded, “my Lady, speak not so. You are a priestess of the goddess…..”

  “I am a failure,” Niarmit interrupted. “I have failed my people.” As Kaylan mouthed denial, Niarmit glanced skywards and muttered thickly, “I have failed my father’s memory and I will go”

  “Go where?” Kaylan’s forehead creased in a frown as he struggled with the alien concept.

  “Leave Undersalve, go across the Hadrans.”

  “Leave Undersalve?! for Medyrsalve? Prince Rugan is no friend…….”

  “Why stop at Medyrsalve,” Niamit mused aloud. “There are ships still sail to the Eastern lands. You have taught me well, Kaylan. I’ll not starve, whether I have the Goddess’s favour or not. I am done, not just with Undersalve, not just with the Kingdom of the Salved, I am done with the whole Petred Isle.”

  As the thief shook his head in disbelief, Niarmit went on. “I won’t bind you to my travels Kaylan.”

  “You don’t want me, my Lady,” the panicked thought squeaked out of Kaylan’s mouth. “Are you done with me too?”

  “Come with me if you wish, Kaylan, as far as Medyrsalve, but after that I travel alone.”

  Kaylan bobbed his head, accepting the morsel of comfort her words offered. “We will need horses, my lady. I know a place, a farm not far from here.”

  Niarmit just nodded and then turned to Davyn’s grave while the thief hurried to his task before she should change her mind.

  ***

  Udecht, the real Udecht, stood shivering in the inner courtyard of Sturmcairn. He tried to stiffle the chattering of his teeth, anxious that Captain Kimbolt at his side should not think him seized by fear. While fear was one element of the Bishop’s trepidation, it ran deeper than anxiety of a purely personal physical nature. The night’s events awful as they had been, served as a harbinger of a still more profound re-ordering of the world. If a lost brother could return as a treacherous outlander sorcerer, and Sturmcairn could be overrun by orcs, what other as yet unimagined nightmares might come to pass. Whatever his own fate might be, it was but a drop in the ocean of disaster which seemed set to flood his nation, a peril great enough to make a bishop tremble.

  From his prison in the sacristy, Udecht had heard shouts and commotion, the clash of blade on blade. There had been a moment of relief when a recurrence of the nauseous sensation heralded a restoration of his normal appearance. He had prayed that the breaking of the spell might mean some evil had befallen Xander and his plans. However, those hopes had been dashed when first a pair of curious orcs, and then the gleeful traitor himself, had come to crow over their victory.

  Bound and dragged outside he took comfort from the beacon tower, blazing into the night. At least his brother the King would have some warning of the approaching tide of evil. However, there was little else to provide solace to the wretched Bishop. There was no sign of Thren, but the sword that Xander gleefully waved in Udecht’s face was proof enough of his nephew’s fate. The weapon was one of two twin blades, forged by Eadran the Vanquisher himself and ever-after known as the father and the son, for they were born by the King and his heir. Thren would never have parted with the blade while there had been breath in his body.

  There were bodies aplenty and as he stood, foul smelling orcs had been clearing them. Dragging, carrying or tossing the castle’s dead into the outer bailey. Udecht had yearned to give the fallen a final blessing, as much to atone for his own fall from grace as to succour their souls on the journey to the bosom of the Goddess. However, Udecht’s crescent symbol which Xander had taken from him still hung around the traitor’s neck; without it Udecht was powerless to invoke so much as the lighting of a chapel candle, even had he been unbound.

  Their work done, the corpse slinging party of orcs were leaving, and Udecht glanced again at his fellow prisoner. There were just the two of them, himself and Kimbolt. For a while Udecht had feared the entire rest of the castle population slaughtered. However, the mewling of a child and a woman’s cry on the other side of the wall persuaded him that some at least had survived. Kimbolt stood stunned, and Udecht guessed he was equally overwhelmed with horror and guilt. Horror at the fall of the fortress; guilt at having neither prevented it nor perished in the attempt.

  The big orc who had been giving the orders kicked the last of his comrades down the steps to the outer bailey and then turned to join the line of Sturmcairn’s conquerors standing just infront of the prisoners. It was a select line up, besides the orc there were a couple of burly outlander ruffians, picking at their teeth with daggers. Then there was the strange hooded lady who stood before Kimbolt, Xander was next to her and then a much changed figure whom Udecht only recognised when he spoke. “Haselrig!” Udecht had muttered at the unmistakeable broad northern accent. The former court antiquary and de-frocked priest had turned and inclined his head in the barest acknowledgement. Time had served the once portly book keeper just as unkindly as it had Xander. His face lined with stress, hair thinning unevenly, belly quite shrunken but above all else Udecht was struck by the coldness in the man’s eyes. The mischievous sparkle he remembered had gone, replaced by a haunted gaze.

  So there they stood, two prisoners and their six captors waiting in silence, but waiting for what?

  ***

  Seneschal Quintala strode through the anxious corridors of the citadel. Despite the hour there was a bustle of people about, servants and clerks, soldiers and clerics, all hurrying hither and thither. All with tasks to do, yet all pausing like ants as they passed each other, exchanging crumbs of information to try and build a picture of what this midnight activity might mean.

  However, even with the distraction of the night’s events, they stopped and stared as Quintala p
assed and then whispered behind her retreating back. They always had and the strangeness of the night gave them more cause than usual. Quintala even saw a couple crescenting themselves at her appearance. Irritated more than angered, she flung back her hood, flaunting the darkened skin and cusped ears of her mother’s heritage. Let them see more clearly the elvish traits that scattered their wits so. It was a childish act, but sometimes Quintala felt driven to act the age she appeared, rather than the age she was.

  She felt a certain pity for this shortlived race, these humans who were born, grew old and died, in a span of time that left barely a mark on her smooth skin. But it was this accelerated life cycle that filled them with a fear which their faith in the Goddess could soothe but not remove. Quintala understood this and had long accepted she would be an easy focus for their anxiety. The dispensation to wield magic which went with her half-breed blood was cause enough, without her distinct appearance and the fact she could have attended their great-great-grandparents’ name-giving ceremony.

  At the throne room door the disciplined guards showed no such fragile emotion. The crossed pikes were parted smartly, the door opened and her arrival announced, “Seneschal Quintala.”

  It was a long vaulted room with doors at its far end leading to the King’s private chambers and the various state offices. Torches burned brightly in sconces on the walls and, at the far end Quintala could see three figures gathered around the throne.

  King Gregor, dark haired, bright eyed, with a neat trim beard, sat on the simple wooden chair that served as a throne. The real symbol of kingly power was the blank visored iron helm of Eadran the Vanquisher perched on its high marble plinth behind the King’s seat.

  Prince Eadran knelt before him. Quintala had understood Gregor’s intention in reviving the name of the Salved’s greatest rulers. Prince Thren had been named particularly for the warrior king, the fifth of that name, who had brought nearly all of the Eastern lands within the dominion of the Salved. The younger of Gregor’s sons, Prince Eadran had an even more auspicious namesake in the Vanquisher himself. In truth Prince Thren, muscular and determined like his father, might well have echoed Thren the fifth’s achievements. However, Prince Eadran, drawing on the fine features and artistic talents of his mother, looked more like the court minstrel than the re-incarnation of the warrior mage who had founded the Salved kingdom.