by T. O. Munro
“And even if we did, we’d still be a little more than a concentrated target for the dragon. In or out of these walls, we cannot hide if he comes. Our only hope is that he doesn’t come” Niarmit said.
Thom worked his mouth in a grimace of dismay. “But he will come, one way or another. Quintala or Maelgrum will send him against us,” Thom said. “I’m sorry, your Majesty, but it is the truth.”
She nodded glumly. “You are right, Thom, and I have been a fool. Collecting all our force in what will be little more than a bonfire to my vanity. Just this stone house to hide within, and a half-formed curtain wall held up by nothing more than kindling.” She rounded on Hepdida, suddenly. “Do you see now, why it was folly to follow me? Why you should have stayed safe in Karlbad as I ordered you?”
Hepdida glanced out of the window. In the courtyard beyond soldiers and townspeople went about the business of preparing for a siege, hauling water from the countless wells, but not enough water to put out a dragon’s fire. The princess, for once, kept her own temper from rising with the queen’s. “You have faced the dragon before,” she said. “And survived.”
“That was different.”
“Kaylan told me of it, even though you wouldn’t. He trusted me with secrets.”
“It wasn’t a secret,” Niarmit said wearily. “You just didn’t need to know. It didn’t matter how we survived, it was irrelevant.”
“You used the Helm, the Helm that makes you invincible.”
“The cursed Helm, more dangerous than you can know. I have no need or use of it, besides it is back in Karlbad.”
“It’s here.” Hepdida said quickly. “I brought it with me. I’ve hidden it in the stables.”
Kimbolt spluttered his stupefaction. “You hid the Great Helm of Eadran the Vanquisher in a stable?”
Hepdida shrugged. “It’s not as if anyone could steal it.”
“But the attempt, even accidental, could kill them!” Niarmit cried. “Fetch it here, immediately, and carefully.”
“Then I did a good thing?” Hepdida said hopefully as she turned to go.
Niarmit shook her head. “I’m sorry Hepdida, but you cannot comprehend how little use that thing is.”
“Tordil thought it was useful. Tordil told you to always keep it by you. I was just making sure you kept your word to him.”
“Don’t speak of Tordil. He didn’t know it as I do, none of you do. Now go. Get the bloody thing, before it does any harm.”
Once the illusionist and the princess had fled, Kimbolt turned to Niarmit. “You are hard on her,” he said.
She glared at him, balefully. “No harder than she deserves.”
“You are hard on yourself.”
“With good reason, I’ve brought nearly ten thousand souls into a death trap.”
“A dragon is a living creature. Anything that lives can die, it can be killed. We just have to find a way.”
“Do you know anyone who has ever killed a dragon?”
He shrugged. “It’s just a matter of hitting it with something big enough and heavy enough. I have fashioned trebuchets and mangonels and scorpions.”
“Siege engines, Kimbolt. Formidable yes, but slow. Fantastic for attacking castles, which are let us admit renowned for not moving about, but not so easy for hitting a fast moving armoured target.” She flapped her arms for effect.
“I have two days, let us see what I can make with all the timber we have to hand.” He spoke stiffly formal, colour rising above the collar of his shirt. Niarmit knew her ridicule had hurt him, but despair made her cruel and she was deep in despair. He put a palm on his own chest. “Maybe, Niarmit, you have already met someone who might slay a dragon. I’m certainly not going to sit around doing nothing for two days.”
“Wait!” she said as he turned to go. She glanced at the heavy wooden chair Quintala had used when holding court, then back at Kimbolt. “Fetch some rope,” she said. “And make sure to be back here when Hepdida brings that bloody thing in.”
The seneschal’s expression was quizzical at first, but then his eyebrows rose in startlement. “The last time we tried that you ended in a dead faint, Niarmit. And you swore you would never do it again.”
She gave a grim smile. “But this time we’re going to do it right.”
***
It was a cool summer evening in the Domain of the Helm, or so Niarmit surmised as she sat motionless on the gilded throne. Chirard, the Kinslayer, the Mad, the tormentor of her dreams, sat opposite her. His pose was carefully casual, slouched to the right, the fingers of his left hand drumming against the arm of his own white stone throne, his right thumb brushing down the precisely trimmed beard upon his jaw.
Niarmit’s arms ached. It was a strain to keep them high enough to press the Helm upon her head. However, she dare not relax any precaution; not while there was a risk of the Kinslayer making a sudden move to seize the Helm.
“Your hands are trembling, Threnspawned whore,” Chirard observed genially.
“Just stay where you are, Chirard.”
He clucked his tongue. “Really, you illegitimate slut, you can dispense with holding that thing on. This is not some children’s game we play.”
“I don’t trust you.”
He gave a contemptuous snort. “Trust? Your lips are too tainted to speak the word.”
“I never murdered and betrayed my kin.”
“I beg to disagree. You are a treacherous whore. Much as it pains me to admit the fact, we must share some bond of blood, or else we could not both be here. Yet you have betrayed me, not once but twice.”
“Betrayed you!” the laugh was out of her throat before she could stop it.
Her amusement annoyed him, she saw the fury cross his face, but he kept it in check for now, still the avuncular ancestor chewing over old times with a descendant. “I freed you from a subterranean cave, I shared the trick of flight with you, I destroyed the harpies that pursued you. How did you repay me? You ran, at the first opportunity, your significant debt quite unpaid.”
“You sought to extort a promise from me, such compulsion does not make for a fair or binding contract.”
“And then you promised me ten minutes in the material world in exchange for a bastard traitor’s release. You gave me barely ten seconds.”
“You were about to commit murder.”
“But you never intended to keep the bargain did you, bitch?”
She shrugged.
“You deceived me!” He was warming to his theme. “And I take it you have made provision for the same trick even now. Your physical form tied or chained to the ground. And at the same time some thin blooded assistant drawn from Thren’s stunted line, waits to remove the Helm from your head should your body stir too fast.”
Niarmit spared him only a grim smile. Hepdida’s instructions were to remove the Helm if the queen’s body stirred at all, never mind too fast. “You were about to commit murder,” she repeated.
“Words, mere words. What you would consider murder I would call merely a cull, a purging of the unacceptable.”
“I won’t let you, Kinslayer,” she said. “I won’t let you kill so much as one man or one elf, one woman or one child.”
He paused in his grooming to look at her through thin lidded eyes, his attention snared by her choice of words. “What will you let me do then Bitch? Who or what would you let me kill?”
She paused, drawing in a deep breath. “You remember the dragon.”
He smiled, eyes twinkling at the memory. “Yes, the beast I secured your escape from, yours and that strange companion you were so attached to. Whatever happened to him? A painful and futile death perhaps? One can only hope.”
“I want you to kill the dragon.”
“Want? You want me to do something for you? And why should I do anything of the sort.”
She ignored the question, plunging on in a search for his curiosity, his enthusiasm and maybe his co-operation. “I have a plan. A plan for you to follow.”
&nbs
p; “Oh,” he clapped his hands together in stillborn applause. “A plan? What is it the treacherous slut has got planned for Chirard the Magnificent?”
“You stole its flight before, used its power for us to fly free while it remained stuck to the ground.”
“Yes, indeed. I stole enough flight to carry us virtually to Listcairn. What of it?”
“I want you to do the same again, to steal its flight, only this time to do so when it is in the air, high in the air, as high as we can make it chase us. And then you steal its flight, all its flight and it will fall, fall and be crushed by its own weight.”
Chirard nodded. “That is novel, plausible, workable even.”
Niarmit was surprised. “You said you had killed dragons before. I assumed that was how you had done it.”
The Kinslayer shook his head quickly, though the lank black hair stayed plastered to his scalp. “No, not that way. When I hunted the great reptiles on Grithsank we made use of karib conscripts as dragon fodder and then struck out at one of the two weak points in a dragon.”
“Two weak points? What are they?”
He swotted the question away. “That’s not important. Your method, crude and inelegant as it is, it would … it would work.”
“Then you’ll do it?” For all the awfulness of treating with the Kinslayer a bead of hope grew in Niarmit’s heart.
He nodded slowly, a whining “Hmmm” forming in his throat. “There is just one question though.”
“Yes?”
“Why the slut-fucking hell should I, you treacherous scion of a line of bastard traitors?” He stood up as he spat his defiance at her. Niarmit lifted the Helm a fraction, a gesture to dissuade him should he be tempted into coming any closer. She had anticipated this, but was still numbed by the venom with which he snuffed out any spirit of willing co-operation.
“When we flew from Morwencairn, at the end of the flight,” she said.
“The point where your bastard forebears knocked me down and aided your escape from a sizeable unpaid debt?”
“No, before that. Just before the ankh’s fire distracted me before you chose that moment to try and seize the Helm.”
He shrugged. “I remember it differently.”
“You had said then, that you had a plan. That you had been thinking of how to resolve the impasse, the fact that you would not let me land and I would not let you take the Helm.”
Chirard nodded slowly. “That is familiar. I had given the matter much thought it is true.”
“You asked then if I wanted to hear your plan.”
He was still, watching her intently.
“Well I do, I want to hear that plan. I want to hear it now. How do you think we could manage this … this situation to both our satisfactions.”
The Kinslayer pursed his lips and then blew out a long breath. “You really want this dragon dead, don’t you, bitch.” He grinned and then frowned, head titled to one side as a second thought struck him. “You really need this dragon dead!”
“What’s the plan, Chirard?” Niarmit tried hard to keep the desperation from her voice.
“Don’t, Niarmit!” The new voice had the distinctive twang of the Eastern Lands and there he was, Thren, the Seventh of that name, the king who killed the Kinslayer. Thren whom Chirad had stapled to the ceiling of this very chamber in smoking agony.
The Kinslayer spun round, “well, look who we have here.”
“Thren, get out of here,” Niarmit cried.
“No stay,” Chirard insisted fingers twitching in a spell that sent twisting cords of electric blue snaking towards the man who had succeeded him. Thren flung a counter spell that dissolved one strand, but the other caught him by the wrist in a grip that brought a gasp of agony. The king struggled to cast a one handed disenchantment, despite the pain, but the cord pulled him relentlessly towards the smiling Kinslayer. “Come bastard born traitor. I think your presence here could enhance the persuasiveness of my plan to this bitch descendant of yours.”
Much as Thren tried to wriggle free, the binding was unshakeable. “Thren, no,” Niarmit sobbed. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“I had to,” the tethered king declared through a mask of pain.
“So did I,” another voice, a woman’s, declared from Niarmit’s left. There was a flash of light and the blue strand of silken lightning slipped from Thren’s hand. Chirard lashed out immediately with an array of bolts of energy, but Thren’s twisting fingers conjured a shimmering disc of protection that absorbed the blast.
Niarmit’s head spun as she turned to see the new arrival. A tall woman, dark hair piled high in an ancient style, clad in a simple gown. Her features blunt and purposeful, like her actions. She launched her own volley of glowing missiles, but these evaporated into mist a few feet short of their target. Chirard’s counter casting, forced the woman back, her fingers slicing snaking ropes of electricity into short twitching worms upon the floor.
“It’s been a while, Lady Mitalda,” Chirard laughed. “Time has not honed your talents better than it has mine.” The Kinslayer was unfazed by the trial of fighting off two of his fellow former monarchs.
“Then try ours,” a pair of bearded men emerged from the corridor, one tall and lanky, the other squat and stocky. They used swords to deflect the snaking spells of Chirard’s threats, while the Kinslayer whirled and danced at the centre of a maelstrom of magic.
“So, grandson and granddaddy all made up have they?” the Kinslayer declared. “Forgiven and forgotten eh? Bulveld One and Bulveld Three, just Bulveld Two and a marrow bone twixt thee.”
“Save your breath, Chirard.”
“I don’t need to, it’s nice to see the family gathering. I mean you two, you haven’t spoken to each other in centuries have you?” In midst of a roar of exploding magic, Chirard kept up a lively banter, though Niarmit noticed the hint of breathlessness creeping into the Kinslayer’s voice.
“We were persuaded,” the taller grandfather announced.
“Found a cause more worthy than our arguments,” the stocky grandson added.
“Well well,” Chirard flung out a spell that dissolved Thren’s shield, sending the king smashing into a stone throne. “This is most entertaining.” A trailing loop of lighting caught the Lady Mitalda’s foot tipping her onto her backside. But before Chirard could strike home his advantage, the two Bulvelds were upon him swords flashing as they hacked at a hastily conjured shield of the Kinslayer’s own. And Thren and Mitalda were picking themselves up, murmuring incantations of attack.
“You killed my son,” a fifth contender entered the chamber, clean shaven with a mop of hair that would have befitted a monk, though it was a sword not a crescent that he wielded in his hand. Niarmit gasped at the resemblance he bore to the statue that had stood so long in the plaza of Morwencairn. Thren the Fifth, conqueror of the Eastern Lands.
“And mine too, both of mine,” A sixth monarch joined the fray. “If it weren’t a dishonour to our mother, I’d call you a bastard, brother dear.”
Chirard was sweating now, but grinning still. “It had to be done, brother, the kingdom needed me and my pure line, not those ragged urchins you sired through rutting with a servant girl.”
The latest arrival let out a great scream as he charged at the whirling ball of spell casting that was Chirard. There was a flash of blinding light, and then a cloud of fog condensed from the dry air and hung impenetrably for a long moment. Niarmit sat motionless on the gilded throne, the Helm clamped two handed on her head.
There were shouts and calls from within the mist.
“Where is he?”
“Come out Kinslayer!”
A clash of swords, a yelp, “that’s me, not him.”
And then at last the mist faded and the room was clear, clear of Chirard, though the six monarchs still stood, weapons drawn warily watching every entrance and exit.
There was a flap of sandals in the corridor and the pairing of grandfather and grandson leapt into action, nearly slicing o
ff the head of the unfortunate Santos as he rounded the corner. The Steward of the Domain of the Helm gave a panicked cry and fell to his knees. “Your Majesties, oh, your Majesties.”
“Get up Santos,” Mitalda commanded as she settled into the throne Chirard had vacated. “Looks like the bastard’s gone and run.”
“Who are you all?” Niarmit asked. “Why did you come, why now?”
“Your father sent us.” The grandfather replied.
“My father?”
“Gregor,” his grandson replied. “Hardly a traditional salved name, if you ask me, but apparently a lot of kings have used it.”
“He has been scouring the Domain, Niarmit,” her Thren spoke up in his eastern twang. “Seeking out all the kings and queens in their hidden halls. Persuading them it was time to forget old differences, that there were greater perils within and beyond the Domain of the Helm.”
“Where is he? Why isn’t he here?” Niarmit had a sudden hunger to see Gregor, the man who had loved her mother and cuckolded her father, Prince Matteus.
Thren shrugged. “Still searching the outer reaches of this demi-plane. Six of us are here, we could do with more if we are to keep the Kinslayer at bay and let this Helm function as Eadran intended.”
“Keep Chirard at bay?”
“It is he who tainted what Eadran created. If enough of us had found the spirit to unite against him, his terror might have been swiftly cowed.”
“There was never a clear enough cause though,” the grandfather Bulveld sniffed.
“Is it true,” Mitalda asked. “That Maelgrum walks the Petred Isle once more?”
Niarmit’s nod brought a collective sigh from the gathered kings. “But there is a more immediate peril,” she said.
“There can be nothing more immediate than introductions, your Majesties,” Santos insisted. “Please Queen Niarmit, allow me.”
So Niarmit shook the hands of her illustrious forbears, in strict order of precedence. First was Queen Mitalda, granddaughter of the Vanquisher who had spent long years wrestling Stephus for control of her grandfather’s kingdom.
Then came Bulveld the First, Great-Great-Grandson to Queen Mitalda. He who had subdued the disorderly lords of Swalle and turned their land into the Province of Undersalve, and who had so battered the independent minded rulers of Nordsalve that they called him the Cudgel of the North.
