by T. O. Munro
“Did you think them cruel for doing that?”
Thren stared at the blossom filled branches. “It was necessary,” he said. “It had to be done. It hurt at the time, yes, but it had to be done.” He frowned. “But enough about my trials and tribulations, all lost in the misty past. We were talking about you and whether there was anyone looking out for you, before you changed the subject that is.”
“Did I?” she mused.
“You’re a stubborn one.” Thren’s tone was uncomplaining. “That’s what your father said. He spoke of you a lot while he stayed with me.”
“Gregor?”
“Of course. He said how he watched you growing up, admiring you, wishing he could have been a better father to you.”
“I’m bastard born you know.”
Thren nodded. “My great-grandfather was a bastard. I’d never have come to the throne if Chirard hadn’t killed absolutely everybody else.” He paused, selecting his words with care. “It doesn’t mean you have to drive yourself into the ground to prove your own legitimacy. You don’t have to do everything. The world cannot rest just on your shoulders, and you should not try to make it.”
“I owe many debts.”
Thren raised a hand to brush away another leaky tear from her cheek. “Be kinder to yourself, Niarmit. There is a part of you that is crying and the rest of you will not even let it tell you why.”
“I’m fine,” Niarmit insisted. “I really don’t need looking after.”
Thren gave her a long cool stare. “My cousin Yalents…” he began.
“I’m not Yalents, Thren. I’m Niarmit.” She hurried past his solicitation with a frown. “I don’t need looking after. What I need is to know how far I can trust the Helm.”
“Aah!” His eastern accent broadened, packing many layers into a single syllable.
“How could the zombies touch me without harm?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t design or enchant the thing. Its dweomer is entirely beyond my wits.”
“But you know everything. You know how to kill Dragons.”
He scuffed at the grass with an elegant boot. “I read that in a book long ago, a book of useful information.” His forehead wrinkled with effort as he examined the memory. “It said some things about the Helm too.”
Niarmit brought him to a halt with a sharp jerk of her arm. “Written down? Things about the Helm written down in a book? How can that be? I have tried to set pen to paper to tell people what the Helm is, to make my ardent but misguided advisers understand it better. But all my attempts come to naught. I can no more form the words on the page than I can shape them with my tongue. What was in this book about the Helm, was it lies, guesses or the truth?”
Thren nodded slowly. “It was the truth, though by the time I read the words I knew it all already. The nature of the Helm, the existence of this domain, the names of its occupants. I had worn the Helm while Chirard’s body was still warm by my feet. I learnt then the hell I had consigned us to, both that demon him and I. I found the book much later when I came to Morwencairn.” Thren drew a cautious breath through pursed lips before admitting, “Chirard himself was the author. It was in his collection of papers.”
“Chirard?” Niarmit shook her head in wonder. “How could he have broken the Helm’s spell? How could he have written freely on matters of which we cannot even speak?”
Thren shrugged. “The Kinslayer broke many rules, both in our world and in this.”
A thought seized Niarmit. “What became of the book?”
The King glanced down where Niarmit had grabbed his arms with urgent rigour. His look of reproach had her loosen her grip but did not dampen her curiosity. He frowned. “I could not speak of the Helm, I could not speak of the book. The same enchantment constrained both actions. Having worn the Helm I could not bring anyone else to an understanding of it in writing, speech or deed. There were parts I could mention, the weaknesses of dragons for example, but I could not even share or show the book. I hid it.”
“But this was a book in which Chirard told the truth about the Helm and what it was.” She pursed her lips. “Where did you hide it?”
Thren gave an uneasy shrug. “Buried in his papers in the citadel at Morwencairn. These were documents that none could touch. The Kinslayer’s own traps made them hazardous even to handle. That is why I called off any attempt to catalogue them, or dispose of them, or indeed do anything other than store them.”
Niarmit raised her arm reaching for some understanding, and then let it fall as the simplest of truths washed over her. “That is how he knew, how Maelgrum came to understand the Helm and how to destroy it. He must have found the book that you hid.”
Thren’s face darkened with a guilty pain.
Niarmit paced the garden, “and once he knew, he could share what he knew with his entourage. No spell of the Vanquisher’s binds his lips. Quintala knows, the whole world could know.”
“And what good would it avail them, Niarmit.” Thren’s tone was calm, in deliberate contrast to Niarmit’s heightened anxiety. “The knowledge did not save the dragon, nor did it give the half-elf an advantage over you. Knowing how the weapon works is not the same thing as stopping it or protecting themselves from it.”
“Maybe he found a way to make these zombies immune to it.”
Thren shook his head quickly. “I have given that particular matter some thought. I think I have the answer.”
She stopped, waiting for him to go on. He spoke carefully, counting off points on his fingers. “The Helm’s defences, this bloodline enchantment in which Eadran invested so much effort, they are not triggered by dead bodies or by dumb animals. There is a threshold of life and awareness in the attacker below which it would have been inconvenient and unnecessary for the Helm to fire out bursts of magical energy. However he crafted it, the Vanquisher must have made it insensitive to the dead and therefore to the undead.”
Niarmit gave a grim flat mouthed nod. “Can it be altered then? Can it be made to destroy zombies as readily as it fries orcs?”
Thren spread his arms hopelessly wide. “I only live here, Niarmit, I do not understand or control this enchantment. The Vanquisher’s craft is immeasurably beyond my art. He trained at Maelgrum’s knee remember, I only travelled the Eastern Lands for my education.”
“Then we must take care to tackle the undead differently, and I must trust to other armour as well as the Helm.”
Thren smiled sadly. “And you must not place yourself in such danger again.”
***
Odestus rolled the stem of the glass between his fingers, setting the green liquid lapping up the sides. The sticky liqueur left a thin translucent residue which only slowly slid down to join the rest of the measure.
The glass was half full, but it wasn’t enough. He picked up the bottle and found it disappointingly empty. The glass had been half full many times since he had sent Vesten scurrying away.
Odestus shut his eyes and then abruptly opened them again as an unwelcome image swam into the dark void of his vision. It was no use, his befuddled mind seized the picture and tormented him with it once more. His own feet tracing the path into the volcano’s heart. There had been no sentry just a dark black smear against the rock. The great cavern had been empty, an abandoned skiff drifted on the surface of the lake. The mushroom fields were overgrown, the fluorescent lichen on the rock walls untrimmed.
Heavy with foreboding he had searched the empty village and then turned at last to the cemetery, where the worst horrors had awaited him. Empty graves, dug open from within. He’d dropped the chameleon, dropped even the precious vial as he had sunk to his knees in despair. Empty graves, empty houses, and a torn shred of embroidered red cloth. The swirls of rich silver and gold thread bore testament to its owner’s monumental ego, the deathly emptiness of the cavern bore witness to his craft.
“Galen!” Odestus had screamed the name over and over again until the walls resounded with his misery. Then he had sobbed
into the broken earth.
He remembered well Galen’s boast when the necromancer had first arrived in Listcairn with his ramshackle army. En route, a whole caravan of fleeing refugees had succumbed to Galen’s force with not a single body left behind. The tidy minded wizard had raised all the corpses, marching them to join in the battle by the Saeth.
The cavern once filled with the guttural laughs and gentle chittering of the karib folk had been as empty as that caravan, devoid of both the living and the dead.
Odestus flung the glass of liquid down his throat. That Galen had been there was clear, and that he had brought disaster with him could be no less certain. But so far no enquiry from the master had come his way, no summons to account for how he had concealed Dema’s daughter. Had she fallen unnoticed where the scuffed soil revealed the signs of battle? Did Maelgrum know nothing of her or did he know everything? Was Odestus to be slyly tormented with doubt or ignored for his irrelevance? All things were possible. In that pit of uncertainty Odestus wallowed with just a bottle and his secretary’s well-meaning interference for company.
There was a knock on the door. “Piss off, Vesten,” Odestus slurred.
“It’s not Vesten,” a different voice answered.
“Piss off, Haselrig,” Odestus amended his instruction and then threw the bottle at the door for emphasis.
His aim was off, which was just as well, for Haselrig had opened the door anyway and stood in the intended path of the reed wrapped flagon. The mis-directed bottle shattered in a shower of glass fragments against the wall by the ex-antiquary’s head.
Haselrig blinked slowly and brushed a few of the larger shards of glass off his shoulder. “Oh dear,” he said. “You seem to have run out of drink, still, I brought some of my own.” He brought a flask from within his cloak, liquid of a brackish brown, rather than the virulent green which the little wizard favoured. He pulled out the stopper and offered it to Odestus.
The wizard inhaled the coarse aroma. “Filthy stuff, wouldn’t touch it.”
“I find it keeps the nightmares at bay,” Haselrig said.
Odestus lunged for the bottle with a speed that defied his state of inebriation. Haselrig let him take it, but something in the ex-antiquary’s curious stare penetrated the little wizard’s fuddled brain. He tipped the bottle over his glass with elaborate care, pouring out a modest measure and admitting, “it is time I tried a different beverage. Dema always said I had too little variety in my drinking tastes.”
“Yes,” Haselrig said, his tongue flicking quickly across his lips. “The Lady Dema.”
“What of her?” Odestus asked sharply.
“You were very close. You must miss her.”
Odestus shrugged, and wrinkled his nose. “What does the master intend by keeping her from rest?”
Haselrig smiled, “sadly I cannot enlighten you. I am outside the inner circle of our master’s confidences.”
“As am I.” He tossed back a draught of the brackish drink Haselrig had brought. It lacked the thick sweetness of flavour of his green liqueur but it still kindled a pleasing heat in his belly. “It seems we have little we can offer each other by way of information.” He made the observation into an accusation, fixing the ex-antiquary with a steady if myopic glare.
The ex-antiquary simpered. “You misjudge me, Odestus. Cannot two old friends catch up on past times over a drink without each fearing that the other has some ulterior motivation?”
“I never misjudged you Haselrig, you were always after only thing, whatever it was that would best serve the interests of Haselrig nothing more nothing less. And I’m not your friend, I had only one friend in this world and she’s dead.” Odestus scowled. “I have nothing to share with you and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you if Maelgrum himself were clawing at my eyeballs.” He drained his glass and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. “So, to refer you to my original answer, you can piss off Haselrig.”
The ex-antiquary rose, eyes bright with anger. He reached across the table but Odestus waved him away. “You can leave the bottle,” the little wizard said. “It is better company than you, more honest and less self-serving at least.”
Haselrig paused in the doorway, anger fading to sadness as he watched Odestus pour another glass full, the liquid splashing out on to the table. “I thought we could help each other, Odestus.”
The wizard sniffed. “No one can help me, and no one can help you, Haselrig. We were doomed long ago. Now piss off, I’ve got a bottle to finish.” He raised the glass and nodded Haselrig towards the door. The ex-antiquary retreated, drawing it closed and letting the iron latch fall softly into place.
***
Hepdida turned the book cover over in her hands. One side blackened by the fire that had destroyed its pages, the other with its single word title and the strange illustration of the blue bloomed oval. She shook her head puzzling at her own foolishness. It might have been important once, it might have held some secret of the enemy’s, but what could she hope to decipher from just a word and a picture. What could anyone decipher?
The ground was hard beneath her backside. She had sat too long upon the broken rock pile of Quintala’s tower. Jay was late. She held the scorched binding up to catch the evening sun. There was a sheen to the picture that scattered the light, it flashed across her eyes. Then there was a shadow and the object was seized from her hand.
“What have we here?” Jay laughed as he turned the single leaf back and forth. “Is this what princesses read these days?”
“Give it back.” She rose up, grabbing for it, irked by his taunt and the numbness of her behind.
He grinned and danced out of her reach, holding his prize aloft. “You’ll have to catch me first.”
“You’re late, and that’s mine, give it back.” She stumbled after him, knowing it to be foolishness but unable to stop herself. He was small and fast in boots and breeches. The tightness of her gown shortened her stride and where the garment didn’t catch on the broken stone her soft shoes would slip between the crevices in the rock.
The boy was enjoying the chase, using his agility to hover just at the limit of her reach. He held himself close enough that she might think a sudden lunge would bring her victory, yet always snatching the prize from her grasping fingers when she made the attempt.
“Bastard,” she spat as she stumbled in another mistimed swipe.
He frowned and pursed his lips. “It’s a short book,” he said. “Have you finished it yet?”
“Bastard, give it here,” she repeated making a desperate grab that only served to steal her balance. She fell and rolled onto her back and suddenly Jay was sitting on top of her, his knees either side of her waist, waving the disputed cover in her face.
“Give it!” she demanded.
“What’s it worth?” he grinned a question.
“It’s mine,” she said. And at last he let her take it from her hand and then, just as she gave a sniff of grim satisfaction he lunged forward leaning over her to kiss her firmly on the lips, his face over hers, his hands on her scarred cheeks.
For a moment she was too surprised to react and then her body recoiled. Him louring over her, pressing her into the ground, his mouth on hers in an uninvited kiss. A deep panic seized her. Her knee came up. It caught him on the base of his spine with sufficient force to hurtle him face first onto the grass beyond her head.
She leaped to her feet, he rose more gingerly, rubbing his bruised posterior.
“What did you do that for?” The question sprang simultaneously from both their lips.
“You kissed me.” She made it an accusation.
“I’ve kissed you before,” he replied sullenly. There was a scratch on his forehead too, where an edge of stone must have caught his face.
“That was different.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Then you’re an idiot boy. A very little idiot boy.”
He flushed scarlet. “Well at least I can read books with more than one word in them
.” He drew an angry breath. “And I know enough to make my own way in the world on my own talents, not being cousin to the queen.”
She slapped him. “Ogre breath”
He said something, a mumble of abuse. She wasn’t sure she’d heard it right, couldn’t believe he would have said it, but the look of dark insolence the challenge in his glare told Hepdida she was not mistaken. “Say that again,” she breathed.
“You heard.” There was a sullen defiance in his stance, one shoulder lifted jutting towards her, a sneer on his mouth. His hooded gaze said he knew he’d overstepped the mark, his stance showed pride would not allow him to retract the words.
She stepped closer, her face inches from his. “Say it again.”
He looked to one side, shuffled his feet and looked back. “You know what I said.”
“I can’t believe what you said. Say it again.” She was so close their noses were all but touching, she could count the lashes on his fast blinking eyelids. They had barely been much closer when they had kissed, not the stolen kiss on the ground, but the consensual whisper of lips on lips a half dozen times since the castle had fallen.
He stiffened, suddenly resolute, as though absolved of blame by her intransigence. “Orc whore,” he repeated with slow deliberation.
***
Niarmit tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair. Pietrsen shuffled infront of her. “So Quintala is at Listcairn then?” she said.
The Master of Horse nodded. “That is the message we received from Prince Rugan’s court, your Majesty.” He frowned in concentration. “She must have been there nearly three weeks now. To what end no one seems sure. However, with summer coming, Sir Ambrose has been finding the enemy patrols more probing in their exploration of the Gap of Tandar. It was from one set of overzealous skirmishers that he extracted the information about the half-elf’s arrival.”
Niarmit clenched a fist. “Despite her failures it seems Maelgrum still trusts her with high office and a position at the heart of his plans. I do not like to think of her sitting unchallenged with an army on the border of her brother’s realm.”
