by T. O. Munro
“It needs to be tight,” Niarmit replied. “And it won’t be for long, provided Hepdida plays her part.”
The princess stood to one side clutching the Great Helm of Eadran the Vanquisher to her chest with both hands. “I don’t see why you need me?” she said. “You can put this thing on and off your head yourself, or at least you could if you hadn’t made Kimbolt tie you to the chair.”
Kimbolt looked at the one time servant girl who had become crown princess to the Salved Kingdom. In that different world before the barrier fell and the Dark Lord returned, the girl had been besotted with him. It was a childish infatuation from which he had tried to extricate them both with tact and delicacy, but these were not skills taught at the officer’s academy. The brutality of Maelgrum’s conquest had excised the girl’s childish fantasy far more cleanly than Kimbolt’s clumsy rejection ever could. However, in its place was kindled a deep obligation on the captain’s part, a binding of the tattered shreds of his honour and his professionalism to the task of safeguarding the girl.
So much had happened since. While they had made their peace and found a companionship at a different level, he wondered how the princess would react if she knew how close he had been with her cousin the queen. A sigh escaped his lips. How would any of them react? Better to forget it ever happened. The queen and the soldier? It could never be.
He realised that a silence had fallen while everyone waited for Niarmit’s reply. Her mouth had opened a few times to speak, but no words came forward as though each time she had forgotten what she was going to say. She shook her head with frustration and said simply, “it is dangerous. The Helm is dangerous.”
“Your Majesty,” Kimbolt said. “If there is danger in this artefact I would rather we had more expertise in the magical arts here with us. Captain Tordil, or Prince Rugan, to supplement the talents of Mistress Elise.” He nodded his head in recognition of the sorceress’s presence and she returned the gesture with a flat smile.
Niarmit shook her head. “Tordil doesn’t understand this thing, he never has. It is just us. We are sufficient for this experiment.”
Kimbolt bowed his acquiescence and the queen turned again to her cousin. “Stand behind me, Hepdida. I want you to place the Helm upon my head, but don’t let go. Watch my hands. If my fingers so much as twitch lift that thing off me straight away. All of you, watch my hands.”
“Your Majesty, anyone would think you feared the object will possess you,” Giseanne said.
Kimbolt saw the look in Niarmit’s eyes, a yearning as her mouth worked in soundless answer to the Lady of Medyrsalve. But then, with a sad shake of her head, she said simply, “come on, Hepdida, let’s do this thing.”
Kimbolt watched as the princess lowered the Great Helm gently onto her cousin’s head. The solid steel visor slid past her forehead and concealed those bright green eyes from view, leaving Kimbolt baffled as to what and how his queen could see from within the Helm’s embrace.
***
The Domain of the Helm was pleasantly warm. The Vanquisher’s demi-plane nestled in the comfortable grip of its perpetual summer, quite unlike the piercing cold of Rugan’s draughty stilted creation in the gardens of Laviserve.
Niarmit looked down to find herself seated not on the heavy oak chair, but instead on the great stone throne on its raised dais in the Chamber of the Helm. Her physical form remained in Rugan’s palace, but the Helm’s blasphemous enchantment had brought her spirit as a guest to this pocket within the planes, seated beneath a facsimile of the Helm, an avatar for the artefact.
By a minor effort of will she could shift the focus of her gaze. In one moment looking through the opaque visor of the Helm at the anxious faces of Kimbolt and Giseanne, in the next looking at the two concentric semicircles of stone thrones which faced her commanding seat in the Chamber of the Helm. It was possible, if a little disorientating, to hold both views at once. A faint pattern of one image could be overlaid on the other like a landscape viewed through an etched glass window.
But this time, Niarmit’s attention was all for the Domain of the Helm. In this plane the chamber before her was deserted and, notwithstanding Kimbolt’s ropework, her hands were free. She raised her hands to feel the simulacrum of the real Helm upon her head and stood up warily.
“Santos,” she called, not too loudly. “Santos!” She did not trust the pusillanimous steward of the Domain of the Helm. He owed allegiance to all the monarchs of the Domain. Guilt, duty and fear held him most in thrall to the malevolent spirit that was Chirard the Kinslayer. Still, if he would at least come to her side as Mistress of the Helm he could not be answering to Chirard’s desires.
She surveyed the room looking for some sign of the horror she had glimpsed in her last brief moment of wearing the Helm. There was a smell in the air, the acrid scent of burnt flesh. The spirit forms in the Domain could not die, at least not permanently, but they could suffer and heal and suffer again. No wonder all the monarchs had long since fled to the outer reaches of the Domain, finding shelter from Chirard’s insanity. Again a waft of scalded skin. Someone had felt pain here, was feeling it still.
Niarmit looked up and gasped in horror. The Chamber of the Helm had a vaulted ceiling, a hollow hemisphere. Hanging twenty feet above her head was a man, or maybe a corpse, blackened by fire and bound by wrist and ankle with iron manacles to the curved ceiling. A groan emerged from the cracked lips. The proportions of the body were slight, no more than average height or build, confirming for her that this poor wretch was not her father King Gregor. It was, as she had feared, her ancestor King Thren the Seventh who had been writhing at Chirard’s mercy in her last brief visit to this place. While Chirard may have left the chamber, the torture was not over and the torturer would like as not soon return. She had little time to effect a rescue of the man who had rescued her.
There was a flap of sandals to her left. Santos scurried through the arched opening, still clad in a simple toga and bowing obeisance in the comfortable certainty that he ranked below every other spirit in the Domain.
“Majesty, Queen Niarmit,” he effused. “You have returned to us again, we are honoured.”
“Where is the mad bastard, Santos?”
The steward turned his head askance, answering her question with evasive humility. “I know not who you mean, your Majesty. However, King Chirard left this place an hour ago, I believe he is searching for your father.”
Niarmit grimaced. At least Gregor had escaped the Kinslayer’s clutches. She suspected he may have been helped by Chirard’s preoccupation with Thren, the man who had, despite his unprepossessing appearance, ended Chirard’s twenty year reign of terror with a blade in the lunatic’s heart.
“Then let us get Thren down.” She pointed up at the burned man stapled to the ceiling.
Santos looked up and then thrust a fist in his own mouth to suppress a wail of alarm at Thren’s predicament. “Oh your Majesty, we cannot,” he muttered. “His other majesty would not be pleased.”
“If you won’t then I will!” she made to step from the dais, but was held back by the Helm upon her head. It would not budge one fraction sideways.
“Majesty,” Santos told her. “The Helm must stay in its place in this chamber. It is the bridge. You can raise or lower it, but you cannot step away from the throne with it.”
Niarmit frowned behind the Helm’s visor and winced as another creaking moan echoed around the vault of the ceiling. “If I take the thing off, can Chirard seize it still?”
Santos grimaced. “His other Majesty could, though it would pain him just as much as if he wrested it directly from your head. That was how he seized control in the time of King Gregor the Third, when that majesty was surveying the outer reaches of the Domain.”
“And in that case would Chirard then have control of my body?”
“Of course, your Majesty. The Helm is a bridge. As long as your body wore the Helm in the material world, and Chirard wore the Helm here, then the bridge would be complete and
his mind would control your body.”
Niarmit bit her lip. If Hepdida played her part, if Kimbolt’s knots were secure, then she had no need to fear being usurped by Chirard in her own world. What the mad bastard could do to her in his world was another matter.
She raised her hands to the Helm, ready to lift it from her head. Thren’s briefly glimpsed plight had brought her back to this place. He had saved her and Kaylan both with a spell to slow their plummet from the sky at the Gap of Tandar; She could not leave him in such dire suffering.
The corner of Santos’s toga flapped in a tiny gust of wind. Niarmit froze at the sight. The steward felt it too. He drew the garment around himself as the hem on the other side flicked up. Niarmit felt the fingers of a breeze clutching at her cloak.
“He comes,” Santos cried.
Niarmit gripped the Helm more tightly, spinning left and right as she tried to guess from which direction the Kinslayer approached. A gale howled through the Chamber of the Helm and there was Chirard suddenly before her. Thin lips bent into a smile of habitual cruelty.
“Well well, the bitch is back!” he said.
“No closer, Kinslayer,” she yelled lifting the Helm fractionally above her head. The gesture was enough to stop the insane wizard in his tracks.
“Now then, Threnspawn whore, there is no need to act in haste.” He backed away and settled into one of the plain white thrones in the inner semi-circle, palms uppermost as he spread his arms. “See, I mean you no harm. Let us talk. There is the small matter of the service I rendered you and the debt you therefore owe me. The service, you must agree, was considerable. There is no other in the Petred Isle, nay in the whole world, save I who could have conjured your escape not just from a dragon but a swarm of harpies too.”
“The trick of flight is a neat achievement,” Niarmit spat back. “Though like all your greatest works, Kinslayer, it is a matter of theft. Stealing the power of flight from other creatures.”
His thin lips twisted into a sneer. “As the beneficiary of the theft, it becomes you ill to take such a high moral stance, bitch. Besides, are not your closest companions thieves and vagabonds. My how the line of the Vanquisher has become diluted through the weak seed of that bastard.”
Full of anger he raised his finger to point at the trapped monarch on the ceiling. Niarmit followed the gesture. Even now thanks to the fast healing that the domain conferred, Thren’s blistered skin was softening into mere angry redness. Chirard noted it too and growled, “ready to burn again, traitor?”
The Kinslayer’s fingers snapped in an enchantment that only Niarmit’s bellowed command could abort. “No, Chirard. Cast another spell on him and I am gone, never to return.” For emphasis she raised the Helm a fraction of an inch clear of her scalp once more.
With a nonchalant flick of his wrist Chirard flung the jet of flame sideways, scorching past the trembling steward. Then, the Kinslayer bent his fingers to examine his nails with scarcely a care in the world. “If you go, bitch, the treacherous shit on the ceiling will burn for all eternity. He has spent too long evading my wrath and now that he is within my gasp there is much that he must suffer for.” Chirard frowned. “Why did you return bitch? Is there some other service you want of me? What minor pitfall have you tumbled into now, that your feeble wits cannot find a way out of?”
“I came back for him,” Niarmit said. “You’ll not have him.”
Chirard arched an eyebrow. “If you go he burns. If you stay you can’t stop me from making him burn. You play cards with an empty hand, bitch.”
“There is something you want, Kinslayer. You want to wear this Helm again.”
She saw him stiffen, his studied complaisance evaporating at the mention of the prize he most sought.
“Release Thren and I will let you have ten minutes in the material world.”
“Don’t, you fool,” Thren gasped from the ceiling. “Give him ten minutes and he will take all eternity.”
“Silence, orcshit,” Chirard commanded. “I am intrigued by the bitch’s proposition.”
Niarmit focussed her attention on the Chamber of the Helm and slowly raised the great basinet from her head. In removing the Helm there was always a decision to be made. Which side of the bridge was she choosing? Focus here, stay in the Domain of the Helm; focus on the council chamber at Laviserve, return there. As the steel plate lifted past her face she was looking into the black depths of Chirard’s beady eyes.
The Kinslayer was smiling, a thin snake like tongue flicking across his lips. Greed consumed him as he waited for her to move just far enough from the Helm’s protection that it and she would be at his mercy.
“Don’t do it girl,” Thren called. “It is it not worth it. I am not worth it.”
“Release him,” Niarmit commanded. “Do it now.”
The merest waft of the Kinslayer’s hand, his eyes never wavering from the great Helm, and Thren fell with crunching force to the ground. “Have him, whore,” Chirard growled. “Let me have the Helm.” She stepped to one side eyeing the distance between them. Thren was struggling upright, burnt flesh fading into pink health, bruises running a gamut of rainbow colours in a matter of seconds. It was just as well, for the healing grace of the Goddess did not extend into this sacrilegious corner of existence.
In an instant she was hurrying towards Thren, three quick strides took her to her ancestor’s side. He was shaking his head in despair even as Chirard ran the other way and seized the Helm.
It was not a gift that Niarmit could voluntarily give him, all she had done was allow him to steal that to which he had no right. The Kinslayer screamed as the touch of the Helm burned his hands, searing through skin to flesh and bone beneath. Niarmit knew that pain. She had experienced it briefly, those months ago, when she had tried to seize back the Helm after Chirard’s first theft. The agony had been unendurable, flinging her back before she could tear the stolen artefact from the Kinslayer’s head. But now, as then, Chirard bore the pain as he drew the great Helm down on his head. Only one other had ever been able to usurp the Helm by force, her father Gregor, and he was not here now to claim it back for her.
“What have you done, you fool girl,” Thren cried.
“Run, while you can. I have bought you time.” She pushed him towards the arched opening. “Santos, take his Majesty away, help him find my father.”
“You have unleashed a monster,” her ancestor wept. At his side, the steward struggled to maintain a suitably obsequious stance, while still standing tall enough to support the injured monarch.
Niarmit turned back to Chirard, settling on the gilded throne. “Well, well,” he said. “What have we here? Indeed where is here?”
She watched his hands knowing he was seeing into Rugan’s council chamber. “Ropes!” He exclaimed. “Ropes, is that how you meant to trap me, whore’s daughter? Do you think ropes could confine Chirard the Magnificent.”
He was laughing and his hands were flexing on the armrests of the throne. Niarmit knew that the fingers of her own body, the body he controlled, would be mirroring his actions on the arms of the oaken chair in Rugan’s council chamber. “Now, Hepdida, now would be good,” she muttered to herself, but nothing happened.
“I shall be free in a trice witch,” he chuckled. “And look, here is that pretty elf I was about to kill when your fool father unhelmed me.”
“Oh shit!” Niarmit murmured. Something had gone wrong.
***
“What is going on here?” Tordil repeated the question, glowering round at the assembled company and reserving his sternest glare for Kimbolt.
“I’m not entirely sure, Captain,” Giseanne admitted.
“Why is the queen tied to her throne like some slave? Who has committed this affront?”
“I did.” Kimbolt cursed the fact that their attention had been so focussed on the queen, no-one had seen the elf approach nor been placed to forestall his intervention. Tordil was incandescent with rage and seemed ready to strike the seneschal there a
nd then.
“It was by the queen’s own command,” Giseanne struck up in Kimbolt’s defence.
“Her hands, they are moving,” Elise cried.
“No wonder,” Tordil exclaimed. “Trying to work some feeling back. Those ropes have all but cut her circulation off. Fear not, your Majesty, I will have you free in an instant.”
As the elf stepped towards the throne, the queen’s fingers whirled in a blur of enchantment. The knots instantly disentangled themselves and the ropes slipped to the floor. Tordil stopped with a grin as the queen stood up to her full height, a smirk playing across her mouth beneath the blank visor of the helm. The elf captain smiled back. “Truly this artefact carries many charms,” he said. “The power to kill, to fly and now escapology!”
“Hepdida!” Kimbolt shouted.
As though roused from slumber the princess, still standing behind the queen, seized the Helm and lifted it clear of her head. Niarmit gave a great inhuman bellow and collapsed insensible to the floor.
“Fool, girl,” Tordil exclaimed as he leapt to Niarmit’s side. “What have you done? Meddling with an artefact you don’t understand, you have injured the queen.”
“She was following the queen’s orders,” Elise said as Kimbolt and Giseanne joined the elf by Niarmit’s prone form. “And whatever the princess may or may not understand about the Helm, Captain, I am quite sure that you understand none of it.”
“Magic runs in the blood of elves more than it ever did in humans,” Tordil growled.
“This is not elf-magic Captain. The Helm was crafted by human hands. While you may nonetheless admire its powers, those of us gathered here have seen how the queen fears it. She is not a woman to fear without reason.”
“How is she?” Hepdida demanded, placing the Helm carefully upon the floor.
Kimbolt pursed his lips. “It is just a faint, I think. Here, help me get her to her chambers.”
***
Hepdida was whistling as she crossed the gardens. An old love song which had amused her as a child when she walked the corridors of a different palace. Through its simple melody she touched the reassurance of more innocent days gone by to set against the constant sense of bewilderment and failure which filled her present.
