Lady Of The Helm (Book 1)

by T. O. Munro

  The elf was discomforted and the priestess was smiling as she said, “It is true, my own visits to the capital have been but fleeting visits on matters of state. A little local knowledge may be of value, eh Captain, value enough to justify the guarding of this wilful encumbrance?”

  The Captain gave no answer and Illana clapped her hands briskly. “It is settled then. Tordil, Niarmit and Hepida will take boat together, with such prime volunteers as the Captain can garner.”

  “There will be many as want to make the trip, Tordil,” Feyril admonished the Captain. “Be sure to take only the best. The rest will find honour enough as escorts of the party bound for Silverwood.”

  “So, I’m going with you,” Hepdida turned to Niarmit. With the die cast she waited for her spinning emotions to settle. With the commitment irrevocably made, would it be fear or relief that landed uppermost.

  “Aye, you’re going home, to Morwencairn,” the priestess lazily acknowledged.

  ***

  “You took your time,” Dema snapped up at the weary rider.

  “Do you mean the five years or the three weeks,” Odestus riposted. “And could you not give me a hand of this damn nag, my buttocks are but paper over bone with all this infernal riding.”

  He held out his gloved hand for assistance. The Medusa took it and gave a sharp tug that dragged him tumbling from his horse. As the little wizard fell, her other arm swung round to catch and hold him pressed against her chest. His feet still dangled four inches short of the ground when she bent her head forward to whisper in his ear, “by all that’s unholy I’ve missed you, little wizard.” Beneath her hood the serpents slithered and softly hissed a reptilian purr.

  She put him down and stepped back to better survey her newly restored companion. “Look at you, I see you put some flesh back on those bones, never mind what the saddle might have worn away. My, my, there’s you the victor of Bledrag field, Governor of Undersalve, and me Castellan of Listcairn. Look what we have become eh?”

  “Indeed, Dema.” Odestus echoed. “Look what we’ve become.” The Medusa cocked her head to one side at the equivocation in Odestus’s tone, and the little wizard hurried on. “Now perhaps you can tell me by what means you have dragged me from a mission on our Master’s behalf to one of your own choosing. I have rarely felt him so incensed before. If I did not know such a thing were impossible, I would have said he was passing on an order that you had given to him.”

  Dema gave a fleeting grin which faded into grim urgency. “I cannot tell, I must show, come with me to the tower.” She seized and dragged him by the hand.

  “Is such haste necessary,” Odestus called as his half numb legs waddled in the Medusa’s wake. “No pause for a little repast? Perhaps to discuss the affairs of my troops with Vesten.”

  “I can broke no further delay,” Dema replied still towing the reluctant mage. “Besides you forget, your troops are now under my command so Secretary Vesten’s opinions are as irrelevant and inaccurate as his understanding of military matters.”

  ***

  The horse’s hooves scrabbled on the cobbles as Xander spurred the animal mercilessly towards the summit of Morwencairn. Mul and Tarbin the veteran outlanders had stayed with him, on promise of a treasure and a fortune beyond compare. The rest of his battalion having, charged past the advancing legion had dispersed in various small groups kicking in doors of houses and bursting in on a chorus of screaming.

  Fires raged in the wooded parks and timber artisan’s district. Small groups of terrified citizens scurried from house to house along the narrow streets. Mothers carrying babies, fathers dragging children. They ducked and hid as Xander charged past, but he had no time for them. “Come on,” he shouted at his two companions, lest they should be swayed from their mission by such tantalisingly soft pickings.

  They rounded the corner where the main street climbed and opened into the broad plaza between the citadel and the temple. The trickle of refugees from different corners of the town were all making their way to the steps of the temple merging into a mass of humanity seeking the hollow sanctuary of the temple.

  “Come, come my children, the Goddess will protect and save you,” a strong voice was calling. It was a tall figure at the top of the steps, long white beard and hair, his Archbishop’s crescent held high in one hand as his other hand dispensed blessings and benediction to the tide of people flowing past him through the wide doors of the temple.

  “Forven!” At a distance of sixty yards or more Archbishop and traitor Prince saw and recognised each other. Neither had more than half a heartbeat to spare to vent their mutual loathing, each with more pressing matters than personal vengeance.

  The shadow of the dragon passed over the plaza, causing the trembling citizens to cower still further and to remind Xander of the great will he had crossed for perhaps the last time in this pell mell rush to seize his prize. The baying of wolves from the base of the hill marked the approach of other forces more likely to bend to Maelgrum’s orders than Xander’s.

  “This way.” Spurred heels drawing blood from his horse’s flank, Xander spun right and charged for the citadel. This had been an early target for the dragon’s fire and the twin leaves of its gate hung open and charred. Of the guards that had been standing either side, all that remained were two ashy shadows ingrained on the wall. Xander hurtled through the opening. A soldier, fortunate enough to have escaped the flame, stepped from the guardhouse as Xander passed into the courtyard. The spear he raised to launch at the intruder clattered uselessly across the paving slabs as Mul’s axe caught him between the shoulderblades.

  Xander dismounted with a leap and, drawing his sword, raced through the palace gates towards a throne room he had not entered in seventeen years.

  ***

  “Well,” Dema demanded.

  “So this is what you led you to challenge the Master,” Odestus mused ruefully. “Have you taken leave of your senses? He will not forgive you the affront, not ever and all this to… to undo an accident.”

  “Can you do it? Do you still have the spell and the power in your head?”

  The little wizard was running his fingers over the smooth stone statue. A man standing wrapped in a bedsheet, head cocked to one side, lips parted to mouth a question. A pose of such life like qualities one would have paid the stone mason double the normal rate, yet this was no stonemason’s work. “What is he to you? Dema. Don’t tell me you’ve lost your heart as well as your mind?”

  “I owe him, and it is not his fate to perish here. Nor mine to let it happen. I did not have you summoned at such speed to my side, just so you could mock my choice of companions in my bedchamber,” the Medusa noted sourly. “Now tell me true, can you do it, or should I command the Master himself to take up the challenge?”

  Odestus’s eyes flared at that threat. He gave her an appraising stare as she glared back at him through her mask, arms folded, lower lip trembling. Then with a slow nod he settled to the matter in hand. “How long since …. Since it happened?”

  “A fortnight, maybe longer.”

  The wizard blenched at the information and Dema hurried on. “That aside he is healthy enough and young. He will survive. Of that I’m sure.”

  Odestus grimaced, “I can try to be gentle though in truth one cannot take the transformation too quick or too slow either extreme can make the shock of the experience a fatal one. Give me a moment to prepare.”

  “Before you do, there is one other thing.”

  “There is more!” Odestus gasped.

  With a quick twitch of her head, Dema directed the wizard’s attention to the garderobe in the corner of the room. Hesitantly the wizard stepped towards the private chamber and pulled back the curtain. “Hell’s teeth Dema,” he cried. “What have you done?”

  “I would have thought that was obvious.”

  “Eadran’s blood. What will you do?”

  “Me? Nothing. You. You’re going to get rid of it, and do it before you revive him.”

 
; Odestus swayed a moment and then sat down heavily. “It’s his?”

  “No.. stop there Odestus before you rouse my anger,” she cried. The snakes were writhing beneath her hood and her gaze was chilling through the gauze. “I’m a monster, that thing will be a monster too. Proof enough of both those facts is that I haven’t given birth to a child after nine months, I’ve laid a fucking egg in a matter of weeks.”

  “And what am I supposed to do with it.”

  “I don’t care, Odestus. I’m going to see your men are quartered and their horses stabled, and see if I can find a use for that spare piece of skin you call a secretary. When I get back I want him to be living breathing flesh again and I want that thing gone.” She jabbed a finger towards the statue and the garderobe for emphasis before ending with bitter sarcasm. “The means to both those ends I leave to you, old friend.”

  In a whirl she was gone, the chamber door pulled robustly closed behind her. Alone with the statue, Odestus shook his head sadly. He owed the Medusa so much, not least his life many times over. In so far as one could feel such emotions in their Master’s service he might even say he loved her. But, without doubt, life with Dema was full of unexpected complications.

  ***

  Xander panted for breath. He and his companions had had to dodge left to avoid a dozen castle guards and now he was working his way round to the throne room through his father’s old chambers. A snarling and grunting accompaniment to a clash of steel echoed around the corridors, suggesting that the guards had found other invaders to occupy them. However, it also meant there would be others chasing after the citadel’s rich treasures.

  “Orc’s guts, there’s the winged serpent again,” Mul called as a draft of wind gusted in through the open windows of old King Bulveld’s sitting room.

  “He’s circling to land,” Tarbin suggested.

  “Come on,” Xander urged them. It was not the dragon landing that bothered him. It was its rider dismounting.

  With a shout he burst into the throne room. Three orcs were already there, blood stained swords held loosely by their sides as they swaggered towards the throne and the iron Helm of Eadran. They gave Xander a brief glance of indifference. “Stop,” the traitor Prince commanded.

  “You not give orders anymore,” the wiry orc nearest the Prince said. “The Master coming for you. He not pleased with you.”

  “Don’t touch the Helm, you orc scum,” Xander insisted.

  “Or what,” the lead orc retorted reaching out a hand to seize the Helm from its pedestal.

  There was an explosion of sound and light that flung all three orcs thumping against the wall. The wiry one was scorched and dazed, the second unconscious, but the larger creature who had laid hands on it lay limbs akimbo in a twisted pile on the floor.

  “I did try to warn you,” Xander giggled. He leapt lightly past the fallen creatures and, taking the merest split second to observe the auspicious moment, seized the Helm two handed from its pedestal.

  “What isss the meaning of thisss disssobedience?” Maelgrum strode through the main doors to the throne room, trailing a row of bobbing sycophantic orcs and the nervous antiquary.

  “Haselrig,” Xander cried. “You betrayed me.”

  “Friend Hassselrig knowsss the importancsse of my wishesss, a fact you ssseem to have forgotten. Are thessse men with you?” The Lich gave the merest wave of his hand towards the nervous forms of Tarbin and Mul.

  “No, sir. No not us.” Both men threw down their swords and fell to their knees.

  “Liesss and disssobedience!” Maelgrum exclaimed. The gnarled fingers of his right hand twisted through a swift invocation ending with a flourish of index and little finger pointing at the two terrified outlanders. The Lich did not even look as strands of lightning shot from his hand towards Xander’s allies. The electrical energy consumed and framed them in a crackling paralysing light, their mouths open in a silent scream. Maelgrum’s gaze was on Xander as he strode the length of the great hall. While he walked, his right hand kept the blackening corpses of the Prince’s associates suspended in an electrical grip so intense their bodies were beginning to smoke.

  “Your time is done, Maelgrum. I will wear the Helm and destroy you.”

  The Lich stopped, stunned by the confident defiance in the traitor Prince’s voice. He released the shrivelled bodies of the two outlanders from his magical grip and titled his head to one side in curiosity. “What isss thisss Helm of yoursss?”

  “Let me show you, you undead bastard,” Xander yelled as he thrust the basinet down on his head.

  ***

  “By the Goddess,” Niarmit exclaimed as a fire erupted against her chest. She leapt to her feet clawing at her clothes to extract the source of the discomfort. “Eadran’s blood,” she cried as she pulled the ankh on the end of its chain free from within her robes. “What’s got into the bloody thing!”

  The gem at its heart was glowing pink with a fierce and throbbing heat. The light grew bright enough to cast a shadow of her hand upon the ground. “Feyril, you know this artefact. What is it doing and why?”

  The old elf looked carefully at the bright throbbing gem as its colour rose and faded then rose again in an undulating cycle of brightness. “I might guess, my Lady, but in truth I’ve never seen it do that before.”

  ***

  Kychelle sniffed the air with a wrinkled nose. “There is that scent of faint magic on the air again, granddaughter, stronger this time.”

  Walking in the gardens beside the elf matriarch, Giseanne felt the heat from her sapphire ring. An intensity she had not known before. Curiosity outstripped caution as she dropped a pace or two back and, crossing one hand over the other, brought the covered ring to her lips.

  Kychelle whirled round at the sharp cry from her granddaughter in law. The Princess was stretched full length on the ground unconscious. “Giseanne!” the elf exclaimed before calling for the ladies in waiting. “Come quickly, the Lady Giseanne is taken ill. Please the gods the baby is not harmed.”

  ***

  “And you’ve never seen that before?” Niarmit repeated the question as the throbbing pink heat of the gem slowly faded to milky whiteness.

  Feyril shrugged. “It flared like that when Gregor died, but that was a moment of bright light and heat that came and went in a flash. It did not take so long to fade.”

  “You said something in Dwarfport. You said it tracked the lifeline of my heir?”

  “Indeed, I did and what the ankh is telling us, is that your heir whoever he or she was has, over some long stretched instant of time, died!”

  ***

  Haselrig stuffed his fist in his mouth to try to stifle the rising gorge as his stomach turned somersaults. Behind him two orcs were throwing up noisily on the throne room floor. In the midst of the room the cooling helm of Eadran sat atop the ruined burned and sundered pile of flesh that, a million screams ago, had been Prince Xander on the brink of his triumph.

  Beside the nauseous antiquary Maelgrum flung back his head and rocked with laughter. “I have not been ssso amusssed in centuriesss. Ah Eadran, my old old friend, you have ssset the bessst jessst I could have imagined. Poor Princsse Xssander, ssso sssure of hisss victory and, by hisss own ancesstorss’ hand he isss undone. What a wonderful trick thisss artefact isss!”

  “What is to be done with it, Master?”

  “Fetch the Bishop Udecht. He at leassst can handle it in sssafety. Let it ressst here. It may yet serve a purpossse. Indeed if Udecht were ever to disspleasse me, or if I sssought another sssuch moment of amusssment, I will make him wear thisss choicsse headgear.”

  “And what of …. of the remains of Prince Xander, Master.”

  “Well friend Hassselrig, I sssuggesst you find two ssstrong ssstomached orcss, two ssspadesss and a bucket!” With that, the Lich strode out of the throne room the walls echoing with the dry sound of his chortling.

  Part Five

  “Blasted florist!” Thomelator berated this latest ill-fortune with h
is customary curse. Every adverse throw of fate these past three years could be traced back to a florist. Or rather one florist in particular. The flower seller in the market at Oostport. The impulse that had led him to mistress Verdina was not to blame; there would have been no harm in sending a floral tribute to accompany the carefully crafted letter. It had been right that the girl should know why he was leaving, why he could not take her with him, or rather why she would not want to go. It had been right that the bald black and white message in his spidery script should be softened with some token of his genuine affection.

  What was wrong was that the old crone had delayed him so long in bombarding him with choices, probing his reasons, all in the name of getting the perfect bouquet for the young lady. A task that should have occupied a mere five minutes had stretched to almost an hour, the costliest hour of his life. For that had brought him behind schedule, it had meant he was still crossing the quay when the officers came for him. He should have been safe on the sanctuary of the deck of an Eastern land’s trader, waving cheerfully at the Mayor’s agents from a place beyond their juresdiction. But no, Verdina the vile’s tedious curiosity ensured he was arrested a few steps short of safety.

  And that was when everything fell apart. A quick trial on charges of forbidden magic use, transportation across the empire to a brief incarceration in Morwencairn before being sent into exile. He had tried to tell them, explain that he was going, that he was leaving. Just let him go to the Eastern lands as he had planned, they’d never see him again. But no, it was exile for him, exile beyond the barrier in the land of snow and orcs. The irony was that the flowers which had cost him so dear were returned with the unread letter to Verdina’s stall. The girl could not disown him fast enough once news of his arrest had spread around.

  The prospect of exile had terrified him and the depth of his terror had been fully vindicated, albeit not for the reasons he had anticipated. In place of the expected savage and painful death at the hands of orcs he and his exiled brethren had been quickly intercepted by outlanders. These humans had not just survived, they had prospered and at their head had been a ruddy bearded giant of a man the sorcerer Rondol, with magical fire crackling from his fingertips. He had hailed the other mage in Thomelator’s party with a familiar greeting, “what kept you so long Brandini and who’s your friend?”