by T. O. Munro
The man looked her steadily in the eye and said with utmost seriousness, “you are still in the throne room Majesty.” When she returned his stare with unbridled scepticism he went on, “you are still there at your coronation, though times have changed somewhat if these are now the robes in which the ruler of the salved is crowned.”
Niarmit looked down at the stained zombie rags which had drawn the man’s curious stare. “It was a rather unconventional coronation and there is unfinished business I have there. How do I get back?”
He was silent, glaring at her garments with fierce concentration and then the tattered cloth glowed and shifted until she was dressed in fine blue doublet and breeches. “I think you will find that more suitable, Majesty.”
Niarmit gazed at her transformed garb. “What kind of wizard are you?”
The man shook his head humbly. “Oh no, Majesty. I am no wizard. All of us here can transform the fabric of this place to suit our needs and desires. My own skill is but slight. See those flowers,” he pointed at a bed of bright purple fuscias. “I made those, I try to keep the gardens nice.”
“Us? There are others here? Who are they? Are you their leader?”
“Forgive me, Majesty. These greetings have been done so rarely these centuries past that I am somewhat out of practice. My name is Santos, Steward of the Helm and this is the Domain of the Helm. I serve I do not lead.”
“Serve who?”
Santos’ brow furrowed at the question. “Come, Majesty. Time is short before the bell rings again and there is much you must know first.”
His sense of urgency resonated with her own and drew her into following him, even though any comprehension of her surroundings or situation eluded her. The Steward hurried up the steps towards a side entrance into the bizarre accretion of styles that was the palace. In the limited opportunity that Niarmit had been afforded to study her escort, she saw a man past middle years with thinning mousey hair atop a pale face. Wiry arms and calves poking from beyond his robe denoted a frame devoid of excess flesh. “You speak in riddles master Santos,” she told him.
He paused with a smile at the sobriquet. “As I have said Majesty, I am no master. I should have been here to meet you but it has been some weeks since your father’s passing and I had begun to think you had foresworn the Helm as so many others have.”
“My father passed five years ago,” Niarmit interrupted sharply.
The Steward’s face creased in a frown of puzzlement. “Sure Majesty, time can stretch and squeeze here as occasion demands, but I am certain it is but weeks since King Gregor passed.”
“Gregor,” Niarmit sighed at the re-enforcement of Feyril’s tale.
“Would you like to see him?”
“What!” Niarmit stopped mid-stride quite non-plussed by the request.
“It is customary, Majesty. Most of your forbears use this time to pay their respects.”
“Gregor is here?!”
Santos took her surprised exclamation as acquiescence. “This way, Majesty,” he ducked through the doorway and set off down a marbled corridor. Niarmit struggled to keep up with the short quick steps of the steward. The corridor opened into a circular chamber with a domed ceiling. In the centre was a stone sarcophagus on which lay a reclining statue of a man arms crossed over his chest. Beckoned closer by the insistent Santos, Niarmit saw that it was no statue but the body of a man. She had met him on barely a dozen occasions and she racked her memory of those meetings, searching for some hint of favour or special recognition which would corroborate Feyril’s account of her conception. She could find none. The coal black hair and beard, the stern jaw of the still form roused echoes of an image from her youth when a child of an obscure general smiled into the sombre visage of a Crown Prince. “He looks younger than when I last saw him,” she said, thinking how skilled was the embalmer’s art in this unfathomable dream into which she had fallen.
“The Domain of the Helm preserves the vigour of the kings,” Santos intoned before asking. “Forgive me Majesty, but what is your title?”
“Title?”
“Name Majesty, your given name. Gregor did not mention you when first he visited here and he has not returned since the day of his coronation. Your presence assures me some misfortune has befallen his sons.”
Niarmit gave a hollow laugh. “You are not alone, Santos. There are few people that Gregor spoke to concerning the existence of Niarmit, his bastard daughter. I never had even a smile from him while he was alive.”
The Steward’s mouth twitched in a sympathetic mien. “Touch him, Majesty. Soothe his brow. Make your peace with him.”
Niarmit reached out obediently and then recoiled. “He is warm!” she glanced at the dead king’s chest and saw the barely perceptible rise and fall of respiration. “He breathes!”
In angry shock she rounded on the Steward seizing his wrist even as he tried to back away. “What place is this, Santos? What trickery what vile magic has swept me from my friends into the company of the living dead?”
“This is the Domain of the Helm,” Santos repeated nervously. “It is the place where the scions of Eadran the Vanquisher can live on for ever. Gregor has slept since he passed, but now you have worn the Helm he will shortly awaken and take his place in the grand hall of the Vanquisher.”
Niarmit shook him. “What nonsense is this prattle of living forever. I was told the Helm was a weapon. I was told it would help my friends. They are in danger now.”
“The Helm is a gateway it is a bridge to this realm,” Santos quaked. “Those who wear it can sit astride that junction both in this world and that.”
“But I’m not wearing the blasted Helm! Tell me now and fast, how do I get back?”
“Along here,” Santos waved her down a wider passage opposite the slumbering form of Gregor. They emerged in a semicircular chamber with a vaulted ceiling. Freizes of battle scenes decorated walls and ceiling. Niarmit recognised several of them from tales she had heard as a child, commemorations of key episodes of the Salved’s martial triumphs. Two concentric semi circles of stone thrones faced the chamber’s flat wall. At the wall’s centre was a raised dais, surmounted by a gilded throne. Hovering above the throne, suspended in the air, was the burnished steel Helm of Eadran.
“I put that on my head, I was wearing it,” Niarmit exclaimed.
“You still are, Majesty,” Santos asserted the impossible with infuriating calmness.
Niarmit seized the Steward’s arm and twisted it behind his back tight enough to draw a wince and to assure him of the potential for more serious discomfort. “Enough! Speak plain what is this place and how do I get back?”
“The Domain of the Helm,” Santos began and then gave another sharp squeak as Niarmit applied more pressure.
“I know its name already.”
“The Domain of the Helm,” Santos repeated through gritted teeth. “Is a pocket in the planes created by Eadran the Vanquisher, greatest warrior mage the Petred Isle has ever seen. Only those who wear the Helm can enter the Domain. When first you wear the Helm, it will mark you.” Here Santos gestured towards the side of Niarmit’s head where the burning sensation she had felt had now faded to a dull throb. “And on that first occasion it will bring you to the gardens where the Steward of the Helm can greet you and induct you into the mysteries of this place. Between the sounding of the bells, time here runs faster than in your home plane. To those you left behind barely the taking of a breath has passed since you put on the helm, but when the second bell strikes time will again run as fast here as there.
“Now that you are marked as a wearer of the Helm, you will move between here and there by taking your place on the gilded throne and simply raising or lowering the Helm. While you sit on that throne you are a bridge between the two planes. Your soul is in this plane, safe and invulnerable, but your mind can control your body.”
“To get back, I sit there and wear that version of Helm and when I remove it I will be in the other throne room?”
> “Yes Majesty.”
Niarmit sprang to the throne and pulled the Helm down upon her head. Despite the visor it placed across her eyes she found she could see into the citadel throne room which she had just left, feel her body, the cool of the marble floor on her bare feet, see Hepdida and Tordil gazing towards her, alarm etched on their faces. Tordil’s mouth half open in some exclamation. But none of them stirred, frozen in time, even Niarmit’s own body would not answer to her command, sensing but unresponsive to her will.
She lifted the Helm and found herself again in the Domain of the Helm with Santos standing expectantly infront of her, his palms sliding over each other in an endless mime of hand washing.
“What have you done to me? I am paralysed in that realm, my friends magically held.”
“Majesty, the second bell has not rung yet. Until it does time here is running faster than there. There is still a minute or two until the realms fall back into synchronisation.”
“And until then no harm can befall my friends?”
“Nothing is happening to them Majesty.”
Niarmit drew a deep breath and looked again around at her surroundings. The frescos of ancient battles on the walls featured so many images with the king at their centre wearing the simple steel helm and scattering his foes like chaff in the wind.
“Tell me, Santos,” Niarmit asked heavily. “In the minute we have left, how is this gimmickry a weapon of war?”
“In the first instance the wearer of the Helm is protected from all attacks launched from our home plane. No spell or blow can hurt your body while your soul resides here. Indeed any not of Eardran’s bloodline that lay hands upon the helm or its wearer will be repulsed by fire and lightning. That is a powerful defence.”
“And what of offense. How does one carry the fight to an enemy?”
The Steward gazed round at the double row of thrones. “The wearer of the Helm can draw on the strength of all his forbears who in their turn embraced eternal life and dared to wear the Helm.”
“You mean those who wear the Helm impart some of their strength to it on their death?”
Santos’ eyebrows peaked as he struggled to reframe his explanation. “No Majesty, not some part of their strength. It is their very souls that are tied to this Domain and at the moment of their death, the Helm claims them. It brings them here to reside for ever in a land of safety shaped by and for their wills.”
A cold dread gripped at Niarmit’s heart. “Here? They come here at their death. What if I choose not to come when that fate befalls me?”
Perplexed the steward give an apologetic moue. “You have already chosen, Majesty. You have worn the Helm. Your soul and fate are linked to it forever.”
“By the Goddess,” Niarmit cried.
“Be not fearful Majesty. Those who wear the Helm are assured a long life by its protection and, when age finally wearies them, they will come to their own private domain to share eternity with their forbears.”
“What a fucking nightmare!” Niarmit exclaimed. “And where are these forbears. I take it these thrones are for the three dozen kings and queens of the salved, not in any great hurry to greet me I see.”
“Twenty two,” the steward corrected and indeed Niarmit’s quick count of thrones fell someway short of the number of the Vanquisher’s successors. “There are some who sat upon the royal throne and yet refused to wear the Helm. They have no seat in this hall.”
“Wiser rulers or better counsellled than I,” Niarmit growled. “How was this blasphemy not shouted from the rooftops, that a mere man should strive to make some alternate heaven for their own afterlife?”
“None who wear the Helm can speak to others of its power or nature,” Santos replied. “The dweomer around the Domain of the Helm prevents even the attempt. The Vanquisher did not intend that his secrets should be shared with all and sundry.”
“And where are these twenty two fools now, poltroons duped into this prison by the hubris of a mercenary?”
Santos grew pale at Niarmit’s anger. “The Domain can be as great or small as its inhabitants choose. Most of them have created lodges and hunting grounds for themselves elsewhere within the domain. Well stocked forests, fresh running rivers, the finest minstrel music summoned on a whim, this is no purgatory, Majesty. The former Majesties can be summoned but these centuries past have rarely chosen to attend the central palace.”
“And you, Santos, which of my kingly forbears were you?”
“Majesty, I am servant and steward only. I never wore a crown, I have no throne. My seat is over there.” He pointed to a simple chair set apart from the ornate stone thrones. “I have resided here in the Domain since first the Helm was forged.”
“A thousand years? Santos, how did it not drive you mad?”
The Steward glanced quickly down at his toes wriggling within the open sandals. “I am too simple to go mad, Majesty,” he mumbled. He looked up to meet Niarmit’s unwavering gaze and then glanced away again, fingers twisting the fabric of his toga.
There was something else, some other secret to add to the awful truth of this Helm, but before Niarmit could press the matter a hidden bell rang once more and she rammed the Helm back upon her head.
***
Instantly she was back in the citadel throne room, seeing through the opaque visor of the Helm as clearly as through glass. The shadowy outline of that other throne room persisted like viewing the world through the threads of a spider’s web, but she found that the overlaid image hardened or faded as her concentration shifted from the simpering Santos to the anxious Tordil. Looking down at herself she saw again the tattered rags of the zombie’s clothing rather than the fine cloth in which the Steward’s whims had garbed her.
“The door won’t hold my Lady,” the elf Captain declared superfluously as the bar at the far end splintered beneath another blow.
“What do we do?” Hepdida’s voice cracked with supressed panic.
“Back the way we came!” Niarmit commanded. “When I give the word, Tordil unbar the door. I’ll go through first. Clear the way. Then you take Hepdida back to the hidden passageway. She should be able to open the door even if you can’t. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
“Are you sure my Lady?” the elf asked.
“Absolutely,” Niarmit lied. She offered a silent prayer to the Goddess not daring to imagine how the deity would view this obscene pursuit of twisted immortality, still less the disfavour that should come with her own unwitting subscription to the sacrilege. “By the Goddess, I didn’t know,” she ended her entreaty and prepared to trust her safety to the protection of this vile heresy.
Tordil flung off the bars and three orcs tumbled into the room. Niarmit was on them in an instant. The elf too swung his sword to strike one down, but Niarmit shrieked, “take Hepdida and run you fool.”
Swallowing the urge to fight normally, to hold the shield high and watchfully seek out the enemy’s weaknesses, Niarmit flung herself into the fray. She let the orcs circle round to surround her as she plunged at one of them. Whether the Goddess approved or not, the magic held. The orc’s blows bounced off some hidden armour and the leader, who had sacrificed position for what seemed sure to be a killing thrust found that his strike did no harm and a split second later Niarmit’s stolen mace crushed the side of his head. A second orc, seeing his sword deflected for a third time, abandoned the weapon to leap on Niarmit’s back. There was an explosion of light and sound as the hapless creature was sent flying across the throne room, while his compatriot fell stunned into incapacity by a blast which left Niarmit, at its epicentre, quite untouched.
With the way momentarily clear, Niarmit stepped out into the corridor. A quartet of outlanders falling upon her met a similar fate to the orcs. The screams and shrieks of burning flesh subdued the curiosity of others long enough for Niarmit to duck out of sight through the antechamber and start sprinting along the corridors to the safety of the concealed passage.
Somebody was screaming, but whe
n she glanced behind there was no-one there. Yet still the screaming came, a voice calling, “he is coming, he is coming!” She had just identified the speaker as Santos when there was an explosion of fire through all her senses and she was falling tumbling against hard stone objects that had not been infront of her a moment earlier. And then it all went black.
***
“At last, the bitch stirs,” a man’s voice snarled as Niarmit returned to wakefulness. Her ears were ringing and the stone was cool beneath her cheek. When she tried to push herself into a sitting position a dizzying nausea nearly overwhelmed her, not helped by the acrid smell of burnt flesh which filled her nostrils.
“Move slowly, Majesty,” Santos’s voice was by her ear, his hands supported her as she rose. “Your wits will come back to you shortly.”
“Silence non-blood slug. This feeble child is at my disposal,” the same harsh voice barked. “I will deal with your treachery shortly.”
“I did nothing, Majesty,” the steward wailed.
“Aye, nothing. You told me nothing of our new arrival. That is your treason.”
At her side Santos whimpered, and again the acrid smell of burning filled Niarmit’s nostrils. She wondered what injury she had suffered and when the pain would come. Slowly her vision cleared and she recognised the throne room in the Domain of the Helm. She was slumped between two of the stone thrones at the foot of the dais, held around her shoulders by the Steward. “I am sorry,” he was saying. “I would have told you.”
“Told me what?” Niarmit muttered looking up at the gilded throne and its new occupant. She could not see his face, not fully for he wore the helm. His jaw was sharp adorned with a precisely shaved beard that came to a narrow point at his chin. A thin straight moustache surmounted bloodless and unsmiling lips. He wore red robes lined with fur and decorated with the head of a serpent. However it was his hands, resting palms upwards on the arms of the throne, which drew her attention. In their blackened and blistered skin was the origin of the smell that had assailed Niarmit’s senses. Fresh weeping wounds which had scourged the skin through to red flesh beneath. It must have given him unspeakable pain and yet the newcomer seemed oblivious too it. “Your hands?” she murmured incredulously. “Who are you?”
