by T. O. Munro
“She was working in the hut, the witch made her work as Haselrig’s assistant.”
“Haselrig?” Niarmit’s head snapped round at the name and she seized Crespin’s jaw between finger and thumb. “Haselrig was here?”
The blind prisoner nodded as far as Niarmit’s iron grip would allow. “He had his workshop, the wooden hut by the south wall.”
“It’s gone,” Aleric growled. “Burnt to ashes. Doubtless they were both incinerated within it.”
Niarmit gazed towards the remnants of the wooden hut and shook her head. Hepdida was shuffling through the ashes, turning over burnt timbers untroubled by anything she found. “There were no bodies there, just wood and some flammable oils. We would have smelt bodies burning.”
“They must be there,” Aleric insisted. “No-one escaped.”
Niarmit shook her head. “I am not mistaken, wizard, not at all. That burning section of scaffolding was no accident, and if Haselrig is not here then he has escaped, and if he has escaped then Quintala will know.”
At last a smile played across Aleric’s bloodless face. “And she will be coming to get you. Better run while you can, bastard born bitch.”
“Keep a civil tongue in your head,” Johanssen cuffed the handless prisoner across the back of the head.
“It’s sound advice, Aleric,” Niarmit said. “My good nature is the only thing keeping you from master Jay’s vile imagination.”
Aleric was laughing. “Sing a song, the bitch is dead, the witch is coming to get you.” He kept on repeating it until a blow from Johanssen knocked the prisoner to his knees. The jarring force dragged out a howl of anguish in place of his taunts.
***
“Ah, Rondol, just in time,” Quintala greeted the sorcerer with an amused smile. “For a change.”
Rondol glared around the canopied tent at the half-elf’s disordered belongings. “They are striking camp as we speak, Lady Quintala. We should be ready to march back within the hour, perhaps sooner if you could be moved to tend to your own possessions. Or perhaps a servant could pack on your behalf.”
“No servants here, Rondol, just you and I. This business is too secret for other eyes.”
She pushed back her sleeves and flexed her fingers, limbering up for the spell she must cast. Rondol watched her preparations his jaw dropping as she sketched an outline in the air. “You are going to open a gate?”
“Well how else would I check this extravagant tale that Haselrig has told?”
“I have never seen anyone but the master cast such a spell.”
Quintala paused in her casting to look at the sorcerer. There was a genuine awe in his expression. “He never taught you how, did he?”
Rondol looked away, tugging at the fingers of one hand. “There was never the time.”
“You mean, you had not the talent,” Quintala corrected mercilessly. “That’s one more reason why it was Odestus and not you that the master sent to Undersalve, one amongst many.”
“There were very few that the master shared his gift with.”
“Few, Rondol? There’s only ever been the two of us and you are a very sorry best of the rest. Mastery of the planes does not come easily, nor would Maelgrum teach it to just anyone.”
“In the days of the Monar Empire the skill was well known. They said the great cities all had a mage who could open a portal in the planes.”
“Maybe, but only with a lot of constipated straining and general huffing and puffing. They could not open gates like this.” As she spoke Quintala put her forefingers and thumbs together. When she pulled them apart it drew out a circle like a film of soapy water between them, save only that through the palm sized film, they could see a clear image of a different place.
The half-elf dropped her hands to her sides and the thin circle hung in the air where she had left it. “Take a peek through that,” she commanded.
Still awestruck at the conjuration, Rondol stepped up and bent to put one eye against the suspended window to another place. “What am I seeing, Lady Quintala?”
“If I have cast it right,” the half-elf said. “And experience shows that I almost certainly have, then you are looking down from the ceiling of the outer gatehouse at Colnhill.”
“I am flattered that you let me make first use of this gate, Lady Quintala,” Rondol gushed.
She shrugged. “It’s not so much that Rondol, just that if somebody should spot the other end of my spy hole hanging in the air and decide to jab a spear through it, I would rather it was your eye than mine they struck out.”
Rondol snapped his head back and glared at the half-elf with renewed loathing.
“No spears then?” she said.
“None coming my way,” he admitted.
“Who and what can you see?”
“There’s a bald soldier with a grey beard in the colours of Nordsalve. He is talking to a big man. I thought we had killed all the priests but this one wears a crescent, a proper one.”
Quintala nodded thoughtfully. “Well put your ear to the gate, Rondol, really close. Sound doesn’t travel too well through gates, and the smaller the gate the worse it is.”
The sorcerer hesitated. “What if I should get a spear in the ear for my pains?”
“Come now, Rondol,” she rebuked him. “The magical opening is in the dark and cobwebby recesses of the gatehouse ceiling. That hairy orifice on the side of your head will blend in perfectly, should anybody chance to look up. Though orcs’ blood if you could only listen with your arse, rather than talk out of it, you would have an even more perfect camouflage.”
With a scowl the sorcerer set his ear close against the tiny shimmering portal. He was silent for a moment, concentrating hard. Quintala fidgeted with impatience but Rondol was determined to savour the tiny scrap of power he had, parting with nothing until he was ready. At last he straightened up and gave a flat lipped smile.
“Well?” The half-elf demanded.
Still Rondol hesitated to part with his pearls of information until Quintala took a finger twitching stride towards him. “The Nordsalve soldier is called Johanssen, the priest is called Simeon. It is as Haselrig reported, the witch queen has taken your precious fortress.”
“Old news,” Quintala spat. “Tell me something I didn’t know.”
“They have less than four hundred to hold it. Johanssen told Simeon that Prince Rugan was bringing re-inforcements.”
Quintala laughed. “My brother? And when do they expect the great procrastinator to arrive?”
“Johanssen said he should be there in three days.”
“Then it will be a week before the laggard turns up if that, and we are but two days away. There will be nothing and no-one left for him to relieve.” Quintala rubbed her hands together gleefully. “With a bit of luck I can have the bastard born bitch for breakfast, and my brother for dinner, all nicely drawn to a finish before Maelgrum even returns.”
“The master will not be pleased to hear that the fortress you built had fallen so easily,” Rondol could not keep the smug smile from bending the corners of his mouth.
Quintala frowned, the instinctive rebuke stalled on her lips, before she substituted another dismissive rejoinder. “It will be of no matter. The falling of the fortress is merely the means to an end, the bitch’s end. When I present her head to Maelgrum, he will lose all interest in how she came to be in Colnhill.”
Rondol nodded. “Lilith is with Haselrig is she not?”
“What? Yes, the silly oaf said something about her being with him.”
“But they have no place to hide, no one to guard them. The garrison is quite destroyed?”
“I’m sure they’ll find a rock to hide under for two days.”
“Why wait?”
“What?”
“You have the power to cast gates, can you not march our army through them.”
Quintala stuck her hands on her hips to look at Rondol with utter disdain. “You do know each soul that passes shakes the fabric of the spell, o
n and on until it collapses? Even Maelgrum has never created a portal that would last more than thirty crossings.”
The sorcerer nodded. “Thirty? Could you manage as many?”
Quintala gave a pout of feigned modesty. “Maybe twenty,” she lied.
“Twenty would be enough to seize the gatehouse and hold it,” Rondol warmed to his theme. “Why do you not cast such a spell now? Let our soldiers, pour through an enlarged portal, rather than indulge in this cowardly spying through peepholes in the planes. It is ill-matched to my temperament.”
“Why do I not?” Quintala cried. “Because that a suggestion of rank stupidity. It seems that following common sense is the action most ill-matched to your temperament.”
“You could capture the gatehouse.” Rondol insisted obdurately. “You could do it now.”
Quintala reached up and patted him lightly on the cheek. “Yes, I could, Rondol, but I won’t.” She pushed him towards the entrance to her tent. “The time to capture the gatehouse with such a raiding party will be in two days’ time, when our army is camped outside the fortress poised to pounce on the opportunity. It is not now, when seizing the gatehouse would only give the bitch two days to skin our soldiers alive, while they waited for the rest of us to march up. That would be to seize a gatehouse too far.”
Rondol scowled as the dismemberment of his strategy.
“Be on your way, Rondol,” The half-elf urged. “We march within the hour.”
***
Niarmit was on the roof of the inner gatehouse, when Father Simeon found her, the queen’s gaze drawn by the bizarre keep on the crest of Quintala’s fortress. Long scrutiny had brought her no closer to answering the puzzle of the slender tower’s design or purpose. Tall certainly, but too slim of diameter and thick of wall to hold more than a winding staircase and a single modest room on each floor. She had explored inside, threading her way through the temporary wooden cross bracing until it became too thick to ascend without considerable effort. The structure made a statement to be sure, but Niarmit was damned if she knew what the half-elf had been trying to say.
“Your Majesty,” the priest coughed discreetly.
“Father Simeon?” She turned away from the architectural puzzle.
“A delegation has come to me.” His eyes flicked from side to side, uncomfortable with the message he was about to impart. “From the town.”
“And?”
“They are concerned for their safety. Taking the fortress as we have, it will inflame the half-breed witch’s anger, they are sure to feel the brunt of it when she returns.” He hesitated. “They might have been in less danger if we had stuck with my intended plan, your Majesty.”
“The half-elf’s vengeance would still have been fearsome, Father Simeon, even if you had just slaughtered the garrison and destroyed the fortress,” Niarmit snapped. She gestured towards the huge bailey with a sweep of her hand. “Quintala has enclosed virtually the whole hill top. At least this way we have got some walls to hide the people behind. Speak to your delegates. Bring the people in here. There will be room enough for the people of the town and the warriors of Rugan’s force.”
Simeon followed her gaze across the large enclosure. The curtain walls had been raised on a low earth ridge which encircled the hilltop’s circumference, a relic of some older cruder fortification of a time and a people before even Maelgrum. The ridges were too simple on their own to provide much protection from determined archers and warriors, but they gave a hint of how in ancient times a sizeable population might have found refuge on the hilltop. A hilltop which the half-elf had helpfully augmented with lengths of enchanted stone walls.
The wide bailey held a scattering of wooden buildings; a simple barracks; stables, empty now for the outlander cavalry had all ridden out with Quintala; a few block houses. There was only one stone structure inside the bailey, a two storey building near the main gate that must have been Quintala’s residence. Niarmit had not ventured inside it. She dared not go somewhere where the traitor’s powers of magical surveillance would be augmented through familiarity. She shivered, all too aware that in Quintala’s home, the half-elf’s eyes could see anywhere.
“I will relay your message, your Majesty.”
She nodded. “Good, and have them bring what food and supplies they can, Quintala has dug down to several wells, but her storerooms are not yet full. I fancy that we may both have need to call on the Goddess’s grace for purposes other than the conjuring of food or drink. ”
“Indeed, your Majesty.” Simeon bowed low and turned to go. “The prisoners, Father Simeon.” Niarmit called him back. “Crespin and Aleric, have you followed my instructions?”
There was an edge to the priest’s grudging reply. “I have sealed their wounds, your Majesty. Their health is in no immediate peril.”
“Good.”
“Their souls, on the other hand, if I may beg leave to speak, are surely damned for all eternity.” He spoke quickly before she could rebuke him. “It seemed but a slight anticipation of their hellish future, to let their torment of agony begin before their death. Rather than making them comfortable as we have.”
“Torture is not the way of the Goddess.”
“With respect, your Majesty, it is the way of the orc, the orc and the outlander both. You will surely have seen what evils they have visited on our people, heard what vile torture they inflicted on young Jay’s family. He above all others has reason enough to hate. It is not meet that these vermin should escape repayment in the same currency they dished out.”
“I know what orcs do, Father Simeon, and I know what we do and there should be a difference. If not, then what are we fighting for.” The words had come out quick and hot; Niarmit bit back her anger to finish with a cold but firm observation. “Maybe, what you have seen of late, has obscured the light of the Goddess for you, Father.”
“Your Majesty,” Simeon gave a stiff low bow as he withdrew.
Niarmit rested her hands on the eastern parapet, her gaze sweeping across the broad bailey towards the far gatehouse. It was a huge enclosure; on the one hand big enough to hold an army, on the other, big enough to need an army to hold it. The ease with which they had overrun Quintala’s paltry garrison showed how vulnerable the place could be when inadequately defended. The few hundred she had, together with the ill-disciplined townsfolk were hardly fit force to withstand even a modestly pressed besiegement.
A faint sound carried on the air, a giggle from the empty stable block, and then another. Niarmit frowned, her mood ill matched to humour, her own or any other’s. She glared at the low wooden building and as she watched the boy emerged, Jay, Just Jay with the cruel twist. The lad paused in the doorway, glancing around warily before setting off on an exaggerated saunter. Niarmit frowned. What mischief was the lad up to now? At least the laughter suggested it was something less gruesome than blinding and disarming helpless wizards.
She watched the boy’s back until he was half way across the open space, but then the creak of the stable door snatched her attention back to the building just as Hepdida appeared. The crown princess still wore the boyish clothes she had borrowed, with her hair cropped short, to fool the boatman on the Derrach. She walked quickly away, eyes fixed on the ground beneath her feet. She plucked at something, a piece of straw from behind her ear and re-tied the lacing at the neck of her coarse shirt.
Niarmit scowled and felt the slight give in the unset wizard stone as it flexed beneath the pressure of her fingers.
***
“You cannot keep me locked up forever, Marvenna.”
The steward scowled. “No, Captain Tordil, indeed not. I will keep you locked up only as long as you remain a fool. The duration of your imprisonment is therefore entirely in your hands.” She was perched on one of Malchion’s slender boughs just beyond the iron gate to Tordil’s prison cell. She had dismissed the guards, content to do without her loyal inner circle in trading words with the Silverwood’s only prisoner.
The tall elf cl
utched at the bars, peering through at his pensive jailer. “The folly is all yours Marvenna. Kychelle’s murder goes unpunished and all the force of the Silverwood sits idle while better men and nobler spirits take the fight to the enemy.”
“And it is the preaching of that nonsense which is sure to keep you safely locked in Malchion’s embrace for some time.”
“Do you doubt my word? Do you doubt that it was the half-breed who struck Kychelle down, stabbed her in the back.”
“No, I am sure you are right. Quintala’s path was birthed in evil. But Quintala’s existence, never mind her crimes, and Kychelle’s death are rooted in a shared error.”
“Error? You think this is just some simple little mistake?”
“Simple, yes, little no. Both are products of a disregard for the axioms of Lord Andril, the principles which have enabled the Silverwood to grow and flower while your own sad realm has withered and died.”
Tordil slammed his palms against the bars, pushing himself backwards into the heart of the hollow within the great sequoia.
“It is when those axioms have been disregarded, that disaster has befallen,” Marvenna went on with her cold analysis. “Retribution will come to Quintala and it is long overdue I grant you, but – for a vow I made – it will not come by my hand. In the meantime I aim to see that no silver elf incites further ruin by straying beyond our borders without my express leave.”
“I am not a silver elf, thank the Goddess. Let me go, let me speak with my people, those that Feyril bid come here.”
She shook her head. “They are silver elves now, Tordil, people of my realm not yours. They are growing used to our ways, to the obedience that is expected here, and in return they have been most generously provided for. But it would disturb their integration to let you loose amongst them, while you are still ruled by that hot head of yours.”
“What kind of elf are you, Marvenna?”
