by T. O. Munro
“Indeed grandmama, we both watched him go,” Giseanne acknowledged this old news.
“He has a fine force at his command. The finest in the Petred Isle.”
“It would be finer still if the spears of Silverwood had marched with him,” Giseanne asserted softly.
Kychelle’s chin snapped round at the younger woman’s rebuke. “The Elves of my husband’s realm have their own interests to defend.”
“Quintala said that Feyril had marched to Gregor’s side before even the beacon fires had died down.”
“Feyril was ever an old fool,” Kychelle mused. “Dragging his people into the affairs of men to their ultimate ruin. Andril always said it was the elven duty to advise these short lived mayflies, not to serve them. But tell me, what else did the half-breed witch have to say?”
Giseanne shrugged. “We had little time for her, she had few words for us.”
Kychelle harrumphed, “she told us nothing of import. I would know what my grandson is riding towards, yet the hussy parted with her information far less readily than she parts her legs.”
Giseanne flushed red at the elf lady’s plain speaking coarseness. “We could perhaps have treated her more kindly, Grandmama.”
“Her birth was a mistake, an awful mistake albeit not one of her making. However, that her life should also be a long sequence of mistakes is a matter purely of her own choice. On this occasion she had the opportunity to behave in accordance with the high office she holds, to conduct herself with dignity and statesmanship. Instead she chose to strut and stomp like a petulant child. I had not thought she had it in her to cause me more disappointment.”
“She is of your blood grandmama, no less than my husband is.”
“Your husband’s father was a prince an honourable man. Quintala’s was barely noble born. A thief who stole my daughter’s heart when the sickness afflicted her. Through their ill starred union I lost both a husband and a daughter taking sail to the lands over the seas. In return I have this creature whose two and a half centuries’ of existence have brought little lustre and much shame and embarrassement on my name and race.”
They were silent for a moment, Kychelle reflecting on the misfortune of her grand-daughter’s birth and life, Giseanne in no hurry to give that disappointment the oxygen of further discourse.
“What else did the witch say? She came to see you. To what purpose?”
Giseanne closed her hands more firmly one upon the other, feeling the cool sapphire press into her palm. “We spoke of small things, she was frustrated. I think we all are.”
Kychelle’s brow furrowed and her nose wrinkled. She shot Giseanne a puzzled glance. “There is a whiff of magic about you this morning, my dear.”
Her granddaughter in law hurriedly spread her hands in wide eyed innocence. The faint dweomer of the sapphire ring evaporated before Kychelle could sharpen her focus on it. “An echo of my husband, grandmama, he made an incantation of protection for me and the baby before he left.”
“I know that spell,” Kychelle acknowledged. “This was something else. But it is gone now.”
“What is it you fear that Rugan faces?” Giseanne asked quickly.
“I fear the unknown and I fear that which is known but not shared. It is in the gaps in our knowledge that an enemy can find and probe our greatest weaknesses.”
***
Niarmit had not realised how tired she was until at last they had reached the centre of Feyril and Illana’s domain. The walk through the forest had traversed swathes of blackened timber where a great fire must have raged consuming countless ancient trees. The inferno had laid down a thick coat of fine ash that rose in clouds around each footfall, coating their leggings with grey dust. Niarmit had gazed in wonderment at the destruction while the elves had walked, heads bowed in sorrow through the devastated woodland.
“Who did this?” Niarmit had asked of the elf at the head of Hepdida’s makeshift stretcher.
“We did,” the elf had replied dully in a tone which stifled further enquiry.
At last they had crossed the great scar in the midst of the forest and walked beneath healthier greener canopies and there atop a low mound in the middle of a clearing Illana was waiting for them. She was as beautiful as Niarmit remembered her, running with girlish grace to her husband on his stretcher.
Feyril raised his arm to clasp her hand and she bent her head to hear some whispered message. With a nod she had left his side to approach Niarmit and take the thief’s hands in her own. “You are welcome here, my Lady Niarmit. I owe you much that you have brought my lord safe to me.”
“I had help,” Niarmit had hastened to assure her, waving in the direction of the elven archers and the faithful Sharkle.
“But you are wounded,” Illana had cried seeing the bloody cut that Grundurg’s scimitar had scored in her arm.
“I will live, there are others have need of healing before me.”
The elf lady had nodded. “I must minister to my husband first, Tordil will attend to your needs. We must speak soon, there is much we must discuss and I have something of yours.”
So Niarmit sat slumped beneath the boughs of an elegant ash while Tordil bound up her wounded arm with a poultice of leaves. “Forgive my clumsiness, my lady, I am not skilled in the healing arts.”
“It is your archer’s eye that saved me today, Captain Tordil. It will take a great deal of clumsiness to cancel out that debt I owe you.”
“The girl, has need of something more than a warrior’s bandage,” the elf captain commented, looking across at the leafy bed on which Hepdida tossed and turned, crying out in feverish dreams.
“Have you no potions of healing to use on her?”
“Plenty enough my lady but the infections in her wounds have driven far inside her body. The salves we apply to her skin cannot reach deep enough and she cannot swallow the potions we pour into her mouth. If she is dear to you, then spend some time with her now. I fear it will not be long.”
Niarmit rose and walked stiffly across to the prone Hepdida. The girl lay on her side, there was an odour of decay from the wound on her back and her brow was hot and clammy. Niarmit pushed the damp hair out of the girl’s face and picked up a cup of water to wet her dry cracked lips. The girl was mumbling, incoherent sounds in which stray syllables would make themselves known. “No… Dema…. Mother…. No…. please…. Kimbolt.”
“Rest easy, Hepdida,” Niarmit urged. “It is but a dream. No one can hurt you now. No one will hurt you anymore.”
She knelt a half hour or more by the girl’s side, soothing and calming and at length the cries dimmed though the fever remained. Hepdida breathed easier but so shallowly it seemed scarcely possible she coud be drawing in enough air to live.
“My Lady Niarmit.”
In her intense focus on the mortally ill child, Niarmit had not noticed the Lady Illana approach. She looked up at the elegant elf. “How goes it with my Lord Feyril?”
“He rests, and may yet be well enough to speak with us. What of your servant girl.”
“It goes ill with her. Is there no power of deeper healing you can exert on her behalf.”
Illana frowned. “I am a sorceress not a healer. I can create potions that ease the spirit, but the deep healing you speak of is beyond my arts.”
Niarmit turned glumly back to the sick girl, but was called by Illana. “Come with me a moment. I have something for you.”
“If it can wait, my lady, I would like to stay with her until the end is played out.”
“A moment of your time, Lady Niarmit, the girl can spare you that much I am sure.”
Niarmit swept Hepida’s forehead with a cooling damp cloth and then reluctantly rose to follow the elf Lady into her bower. Illana was waiting for her before a screen of living woven vines. “You are much changed my Lady since last we met, you were a priestess of the Goddess then.”
“I have forsaken her as she has forsaken not just me, but all the people I have ever loved. I am a thief now
, a thief who would be Queen of the Salved if I am to credit your husband’s fantastic stories.”
Illana nodded. “You do not accept your fate yet, but still you brought my husband halfway across the Petred Isle.”
“I owed him my life. Indeed my life is mortaged to many people in debts I can never repay,” Niarmit gave a bleak reply, thinking on her father, on Kaylan, Feyril, Tordil and the poor shivering servant girl whose arrival from the fog had saved her from stumbling into an orc encampment.
Illana shook her head slowly. “So many people have intervened on your behalf and yet you still think the Goddess has forsaken you.”
Niarmit frowned. “The sacrafices of others are no sign of the Goddess’s favour, unless she choses to work her schemes with living souls as mere pawns for her amusement.”
“You were a priestess once, Niarmit. A high priestess,” Illana exclaimed. “What agonies you must have suffered to blind you so, I cannot imagine. Yet you know, that is you knew and you must still know that the Goddess cannot act so directly in the affairs of this world. We are none of us her pawns to be moved at her caprice. We all prove ourselves through the choices we freely make and the favour of the Goddess manifests itself in a hundred subtle ways.”
“So subtle as to be invisible!” Niarmit snapped, restless to return to the sick servant girl.
“Or fog bound. Did you not think it strange that your slow journey Westwards should have been accompanied by such a fog, yet Sharkle never faltered in showing the path while all the while you were hidden from those that sought you.”
“Sought me? Looking for me?”
“For nearly two weeks now Grundurg has camped on our borders waiting for my husband’s return. Who knows what other forces the enemy has sent to track and trap the pair of you. Yet all the while you have been hidden inside a mist the like of which no man or elf has seen before. A mist that rolls against the wind.”
“It was not a natural fog?”
“Indeed not, my Lady for, besides its other peculiarities, this fog appears to have sucked the very wits out of your head.”
“What would the Goddess want with me?”
“Only what she wants of all of us. That you do your utmost to do the greatest good for others, and so prove yourself worthy of her grace.”
“I have done all I can, my Lady. There is a dying girl I would sit with now. If you and the Goddess are finished with me.”
The thief turned to go but the elf lady called her back. “There is something else, Niarmit. You have returned my husband to me and I have something for you.”
As Niarmit turned again to face Illana she saw a flash of gold in the elf lady’s outstretched palm. It was battered, the soft metal scratched and bent yet still it held its crescent shape.
“Tordil found it in the shallows on the Western bank of the Saeth river. The Saeth is fed by the streams and snowmelt from the Hadrans. It seemed the likeliest way for a lost symbol of the Goddess to have found its way into a river.”
“I didn’t lose it,” Niarmit mumbled dumbly.
“I recognised it. I was there when your father Prince Matteus first hung it around your neck on the day you were ordained. Our elven smiths helped carve the design. Matteus wanted nothing but the finest for his daughter. Here take it.”
“I didn’t lose it,” Niarmit repeated, wondering how in the Petred Isle she and the symbol she had intemperately cast off should, by such disparate paths, be re-united.
“However it was that you came to part with it, it seems clear the Goddess did not mean that parting to be permanent. Take it, take it and use it, Niarmit. Deep healing is beyond my power, but not yours. There is more you can do for a dying girl than merely sit with her.”
Niarmit seized the crescent symbol, felt a warmth as her fingers closed over its familiar surface, the slight nick in its outer edge where a long ago nomad dart had all but penetrated her mail shirt. She raised the talisman to her lips and kissed it and then stumbled from Illana’s arbour to Hepdida’s sick bed. Niarmit was trembling as much as the ailing child when she knelt and pressed the crescent symbol against the girl’s back. Hepdida gave a faint whimper at the metallic touch. Niarmit ran a hand through her own hair uncertain whether, even with the returned artefact, she could enjoy the grace of the Goddess. She made a silent prayer to her father’s memory and then began. “Sanaret servum tuum carus dea, sanaret servum tuum carus dea, sanaret servum tuum carus dea.”
The familiar sense of divine power coursing through her body was a tangible reminder of the reality of the Goddess. Niarmit’s eyes shed guilty tears at her betrayal of the deity and she scourged herself with a repetition of the incantation that went past sense and reason. Every utterance not only channelled holy healing, but drew on her own energy to invigorate the sickly servant girl.
Thrice more she mouthed the healing spell, her voice fading to a whisper at the last. “Sanaret servum tuum carus dea, sanaret servum tuum carus dea, sanaret servum tuum carus dea.”
Then exhausted she slumped unconscious across the invalid, oblivious to the impact of her fervent prayer. The ragged edges of Hepdida’s wounds had knitted into healthy pinkness, the fever broke and her breathing eased, the poison expunged from her system. Healer and healed shared a profound and peaceful slumber while Tordil flung his cloak across the pair of them.
***
It was Jolander who spotted the stranger first, to the Seneschal’s chagrin. The sergeant’s human eyesight and perception had outstripped the half-elf’s sharper mixed race senses, leaving Quintala to rue the distractions that had been preying on her mind.
“He’s over to our left, crouching in a ditch,” Jolander was saying, his eyes fixed straight ahead. “Don’t look ma’am. Let him think himself un-noticed.”
“How far?” Quintala asked, her own gaze firmly on the rough dirt trail they were following.
“About a hundred and fity yards ahead and off to the side. I caught a flash of movement when we crested the rise back there, been watching the spot as we drew near. Fellow must have been walking alongside the track, rather than on it, probably always planning to duck from view.”
“You’re sure?”
“He’s kept very still, but just then he popped his head up to see where we were.”
“Is he alone?”
The Sergeant thought a moment as he scanned the horizon insouciantly. “There’s no one else ma’am apart from us lancers.”
“Aye, and if there is any traveller more foolish than a small troop of cavalry in potentially hostile territory, it must be an individual on foot. How far now?”
“Sixty yards down track, about twenty to the East.”
“I see him. Drop back Sergeant, into single file. On my signal we surround him.”
Jolander obediently tucked his horse in behind Quintala’s and the rest of the troop followed suit so that a long line of cavalry processed past their quarry’s bolt hole. Then, when as many were ahead as behind the hiding place, Quintala gave a shout and a wave and the entire troop wheeled left and charged off the track, lances lowered.
Imediately the concealed figure shot up and made to run eastwards, away from the track and the pursuit. However, he had but cleared the ditch and covered a couple of strides before three dozen lancers had formed a ring around him. The man drew a sword and glared warily at the encircling cavalry. He was a scrawny fellow, nearing middle years, unshaven and clad in greys and browns. “Who are you?” Quintala demanded.
“Kaylan,” the man replied, adding with some defiance, “Kaylan-ap-Stonehelm.”
“You’re a bit tall for a dwarf,” Quintala observed, raising an eyebrow at the man’s chosen sobriquet.
“What business are you about?” Jolander queried, steadying his impatient horse.
The man scanned the Sergeant’s bold livery and retorted, “I might ask you the same, you’re a long way from Morwencairn.”
“Aye, but I’m not skulking by the road like a fugitive. What crime are you running from Kaylan dw
arf-friend?” The last epithet was added with a sneer.
“I take dwarf-friend as a badge of honour, Sergeant. The dwarves of the Hadrans have done much for me and a lot more than your Morwencairn lancers to keep the nomads and the orcs on the far side of the Hadrans these past five years,” Kaylan snapped back, his sword still held high. “As to my crime, these are dangerous times. I’ve spent two days being chased by nomad horsemen. An experience like that makes a man cautious not criminal. So forgive me if I don’t leap up to salute every squadron of horses that gallops past me.”
“Nomads? Here?”
Quintala spurred her horse forward to come level with the wary fugitive. “Why would they be chasing you?”
Kaylan eyed the Seneschal steadily, taking in her dark complexion and silver hair, then he called to Jolander. “You’re a fine one to be jeering at the dwarven company I’ve been keeping, Sergeant.”
The Sergeant rode up on Kaylan’s other side. “Keep a civil tongue in your head, this is Seneschal Quintala and we ride on King Gregor’s business. Mind I’ve still time enough to teach you some manners.”
“There’s plenty better than you have tried,” Kaylan snapped back.
“Easy Sergeant,“ Quintala raised a soothing hand. “There is a tale and a half here and I would hear the rest of it. An outsize dwarf with a Woldtag accent, who’s been chased by nomads across the southern Marches of Medyrsalve. You’re a long way from Undersalve, my friend, almost as far as the nomads would be from their desert home. What brought you both here?”
“There’s many of us left Undersalve when the orcs and the nomads came, no mystery in that. As to what the nomads wanted with me, well you’d have to ask them that. I was too busy running to stop and ask why.”
“These Nomads, how many, where and when?” Jolander demanded.
“About two hundred riders, last saw them four days ago now, due East of here.”
“You must be a lot faster runner than you look, if two hundred nomad horsemen couldn’t catch up with you,” the Sergeant quipped.
