by T. O. Munro
At last the queen stopped, shifting the weight of the knapsack on her back as she turned to face her cousin. Hepdida tried to catch her cousin’s eye, but Niarmit’s gaze flicked restlessly to left and right never alighting for more than a second on the princess’s face. “It didn’t sound so bad to me,” Hepdida insisted. “Johanssen and Torsden had just asked Isobel when the reinforcements were due. No need for you to go at all, still less to set off hours earlier than you had told them you would.”
“They sense a threat, I should be there not here.”
Hepdida frowned. The words lacked Niarmit’s usual certainty. It was less a statement of conviction, more an attempt to convince.
“And what of Quintala and the threat she poses?”
“I can’t be everywhere. I made a mistake coming here, that is all.”
The princess bit her lip. “The last time you left me here while you went gallivanting off to Nordsalve it nearly ended badly, very badly for both of us.”
Niarmit waved her cousin’s concerns aside. “tsk, that was then. We’ve discussed this already. You are safer here now behind the wards Rugan has laid, than anywhere else in the whole Salved Kingdom. And I am not about to journey across some frozen wasteland under the eye of hostile orcs, but am taking passage through a gate directly from one fortress to another.”
“But such haste.” Hepdida shook her head as the queen stepped back, itching to be on her way. “What are you running from, Niarmit?”
The queen went pale. “I am not running, at least not from anything. If I take the gate to Karlbad I am a two day ride from Colnhill. Here I am five days away. I think even you might see how those sums add up.”
Hepdida took a step back at the rebuke, but there was a brittle edge to the rare scorn in her cousin’s voice. “What’s worrying you, Niarmit?” She demanded. “Tell me.”
“Nothing, Hepdida.” The queen swung away, impatient strides taking her towards the raised council chamber in the middle of Rugan’s gardens. “Nothing except a pressing need to be elsewhere, as I have explained.”
“To be elsewhere, or to be alone.” Hepdida called after her. “Why are you going there alone?”
Niarmit swung round. Her shoulders slumped in weariness, but her hand combed fretfully through her red hair. “Must I explain everything? There is no point in challenging Sorenson’s gate with more traffic than we need. Extra souls passing through may dissolve it entirely, while we still may have need of it.”
“You are a queen, you should not travel alone.”
“I’m used to ‘alone’ it has been my companion through long years in Undersalve stalking the invaders.”
“That was then, this is now.” Hepdida found she had stamped her foot. “It does not become a queen to dart here and there on her own on a whim.”
“And it does not become a servant girl turned princess to give lectures to her monarch.”
Hepdida glared back at her cousin, silent but defiant. She had irked Niarmit enough times to know her different moods, the times she had been disappointed, or annoyed, or furious. There was some other motivation lurking here, a tremble to her lip, a flicker of eyelashes as she blinked a little faster than before. Anxiety? Some gut wrenching anxiety? “What’s the matter Niarmit?”
“Nothing, beyond what I’ve already told you a dozen times. Now I have to go.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No!” Niarmit’s vehemence startled both of them. Hepdida covered her mouth with her hand; The queen looked abashed.
“I’ll see you on your way then.”
Niarmit shook her head. “No, we say our goodbyes here. You’ll be safe here, keeping Andros entertained and Giseanne will be glad of the company. You’ll enjoy it. Now let me go, Hepdida. Please, no more arguing. I can’t…” She looked away at the trees of Rugan’s garden frothy now with summer blossom. “Just let me go. I have to do this and do it by myself.”
“You don’t have to be alone.”
“I do. I always have. Now goodbye.” She spread her arms to invite a parting hug. Hepdida returned her cousin’s embrace with interest, squeezing her tight. Niarmit pulled back and straightened some wayward seam on Hepdida’s dress.
“There,” she said. “You’ll be fine.” And then she turned and was gone, leaping up the steps to the raised council chamber two at a time.
***
Odestus picked his way carefully along the stinking alleyway. This had once been the safest city in the whole of the known world, it had been Morwencairn, his home. Now with orcs, outlanders and zombies, all swaggering, strutting, or simply stumbling along its streets, decent folk kept to a self-imposed curfew.
The hours just before and after dawn were the best, with Maelgrum’s servants sleeping off their excesses or nursing thick heads on the guard duty that everyone tried to dodge. This was the time when the little wizard could sneak from his hiding place and find another victim to interrogate. All he needed was another drunk taking his rest in the gutter. He thought he had seen one, but it turned out to be a pile of rags discarded or stripped from their original owner.
He hissed a note of regret. As the streets got busier he would have to retreat once more to his garret hiding place. The little attic room was as secure a place as he could have found, lurking as he was in Maelgrum’s very shadow. It helped that the innkeeper had been helped to forget that the room even existed, let alone who occupied it.
But he needed information, he craved it. The fragments he had so far were as little use to his purpose as a few bits of broken pottery might have been to the task of recreating the Monar Empire in its pomp.
A noise behind him had the little wizard slipping back against the wall. He brushed his fingers over a chameleon scale in his pocket, shrouding himself in the dull stained colours of the mortared wall.
It was an outlander, a captain by his cloak and armour, and a man in a hurry, perhaps late for a duty. He paused suddenly unsteady, by Odestus’s place of concealment. He gave a hurried hollow retch. Then another need overtook him and he hastily fumbled with his breeches and turned his back to the little wizard to piss against the wall.
Odestus worked his fingers in a small invocation, and then gave a short jab of a splay fingered hand towards the captain’s back. The man was slammed face first against the wall with concussing force. Stunned he slid to the ground, the rough surface of the wall sandpapering his cheeks, while his knees landed in the puddle he had just created.
Odestus stepped from the shadows and pulled the captain onto his back in the gutter. His victim stirred, lips moving in incoherent protest. “Whassup? Whodat?” he mumbled.
“Loquimini veritatem,” the little wizard waved a finger in a complex sign over the captain’s face, and the man’s mutterings died away into silence.
Odestus looked around quickly. They were alone, but he could not be sure for how long. Nor could he drag his prize to a more secluded spot, not without leaving tracks that would be too readily followed. He assembled his thoughts quickly.
“Have you seen a medusa?” The man rolled his eyes in protest, either at the question or the enchantment which was forcing him to answer it. “A snake lady?” Odestus elaborated.
“Not seen no snake lady,” the answer was dragged from the man’s lips against his will, stretched out vowels drooling from his mouth.
“What about the master’s new allies. Have you seen them?”
The man shook his head, wearing a surprised expression at his compulsion to respond to the interrogation.
“Have you heard of them?” desperation drove Odestus to lean in, bending over the man.
A slow puzzled nod was his reward.
“What kind of creatures are they? Which plane do they hail from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are they then? How do you even know they exist?”
“They’re not here. They’re in a camp, twenty leagues north of Morwencairn.”
“How do you know?”
“We send prisoners, many prisoners there. Bad orcs, townspeople. I rode escort once.”
“What happens to these prisoners?”
“I don’t know, they don’t come back.”
Odestus glanced around, time was running out. He had probably already spent too long trying to mine this unyielding lump for information.
He drew another airborne glyph and murmured “oblivisci, oblivisci me.” The captain’s eyes glazed over and Odestus hopped nimbly out of his sight and out of his mind. The captain would come to his senses not recalling how he came to be lying on his back in a puddle of urine which he wouldn’t even realise was his own. However, he would hopefully put his amnesia down to the overnight effects of inebriation, leaving Odestus free to continue his search for answers about the master’s new allies and for witnesses to a young medusa’s existance.
***
The gate shimmered behind her. Niarmit looked back at the council chamber and gave a reassuring wave to the little party gathered at the gate’s other opening. Giseanne and Rhodra waved back, Rugan gave a half-smile.
Sorenson’s quarters were unchanged from that first journey nearly four months earlier. The gate’s endurance was a tribute to the strength of the bishop’s faith, the passage through the planes anchored by his holy symbol still dangling on the chair.
Niarmit smiled again and, while her body concealed the move from any witnesses, she lifted the symbol by its chain and walked towards the door. There was a flicker of light that bloomed and faded against the stone walls of Sorenson’s austere apartment. She did not look back. She knew that the gate had collapsed, that no-one, not even Hepdida, would be following her now.
The guard outside the door covered his surprise with a creditably brisk snap to attention when she emerged into the corridor. “Your Majesty,” he said. “We did not expect you so soon.”
“I thought to make an early start,” she told him. “Though I am a little tired by it.”
“I will have word sent to Lady Isobel.”
“No don’t disturb her. I will call on her myself when I am ready.”
“Yes, your Majesty.”
She held up the holy symbol. “In the meantime please find Bishop Sorenson and return this to him. It has done good service and I know he has rued its absence greatly.”
“Your Majesty, with your permission I will do so as soon as I am relieved. My orders are that the portal to Medyrsalve must be guarded at all times.”
“The portal is gone, it has served its purpose, soldier. Consider your duty done.”
After a puzzled look and a brief nod of emphasis from Niarmit, the guard gave another crashing salute and set off down the corridor. He held the liberated talisman reverently out in front of him. Niarmit watched until he had turned the corner and then she set off in the opposite direction to the guest quarters still set aside for her use.
A fire had been set in the grate in readiness for her arrival, and a jug of fresh water drawn and set by a bowl on the table. She smiled grimly. She would have need of both, as well as the privacy that her unexpectedly early arrival should guarantee. It took a moment to unpack her meagre baggage. The Helm resumed its place upon the side table. A few clothes disappeared into the armoire. A battered mess tin was placed next to the bowl of water. The dozen leaves of mother’s bane were laid out carefully on the table.
She took her thin bladed knife and scored a few quick cuts across the thick waxy surface of each leaf. Then she crushed them in her hands and dropped the crumpled shapes in the tin. Already the sweet nauseating scent was filling her nostrils. She covered the broken leaves with an inch depth of water and then hooked the tin’s handles over a poker and held it in the fire.
It was heavy in her hand, a burden to hold, as the tin blackened in the yellow flame and the water hissed and spat its way to boiling. Her muscles ached, but she embraced the discomfort. It was a small price to pay for the solution she sought.
She coughed as the powerful aroma assaulted her senses. Once the liquid had turned the dark green she had been waiting for, she set the tin on the hearth and hurried to open the window. She flapped her arms to drive a draft out over the castle walls, suddenly anxious that the smell might drift the other way, beneath the door. It could arouse suspicion, much as that long ago governess had had her own intentions brought to Prince Matteus’s notice.
As she reached for a hanging drape to whip up a local gust of wind, she heard a knock and saw the handle turn. “Wait,” she called, but Lady Isobel was already entering the room.
“Bishop Sorenson is overwhelmed by your consideration, your Majesty,” Isobel began. “I just had to tell you, you have made him the happiest…”
Her voice tailed off. Her nose wrinkled at the scent which filled the room. Niarmit looked at the diminutive Lady of the North. They both looked at the steaming tin with its dark green contents, on the hearth of the fire.
Isobel pushed the door shut behind her. Niarmit gave a futile flap of the drapes and then let the cloth fall against the wall.
They stood there in a long moment of silence which the aroma of mother’s bane filled until there was nothing but two women separated by the mortal sin which one of them was about to commit. Niarmit shook her head. Isobel gave her a shrewd appraising look. The queen found herself speechless.
“How far gone are you?” The lady was brisk, business like. Almost as an afterthought she added, “your Majesty.”
Niarmit shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know.”
Isobel arched a sceptical eyebrow. “When were you last visited, your Majesty? Your last moons?”
Niarmit looked away, mortified to be in such a conversation with anyone. “I…” she flapped her hands helplessly. “The life I lead, it has not been…” She touched her temple. “I thought that was one curse the Goddess had spared me from betimes.”
Isobel pursed her lips. “Then when did you last…” she hesitated, her hands spread in a gesture of uncomfortable ambiguity.
Niarmit flushed a deep red and mumbled an answer which Isobel had to ask her to repeat.
“Eight weeks.” Niarmit stared at the floor, thinking of Isobel thinking of her and Kimbolt tangled in that last sad gentle moment of comfort on the eve of the dragon’s attack.
“And how many leaves have you used?” Isobel skated over the queen’s embarrassment with functional enquiries.
“A dozen.”
The lady’s composure was shattered by the admission. “By the Goddess, your Majesty,” she spluttered. “Do you want to destroy yourself as well as the child?”
“Remember, Lady Isobel, I am your queen.” It came out more shrilly than Niarmit had intended. “This is not a discussion I should be having with you.”
“If not me, your Majesty, then who?”
“I answer to the Goddess, she guides me in all things.”
“In this too? Is this the Goddess’s guidance.” Isobel swept a palm towards the steaming sickly sweet broth in its blackened mess tin.
“The Goddess needs me fit and well. Need I remind you, there is a fight to be fought against a dreadful foe.”
“This is not an illness you have, your Majesty, and mother’s bane is not a cure. It is a poison.”
“What would you have me do, Lady Isobel?”
“Who else here knows?”
“No-one, just you and me.”
“By the Goddess what are you thinking of. Do you not know how many friends you have desperate to help you in anyway?”
Niarmit shrugged. “What help is there for me in this?”
Isobel frowned. “And Seneschal Kimbolt, you have told him? What does he say?”
Niarmit shook her head. “He doesn’t know, he can’t know.”
Isobel drew a deep breath. “You really meant, you really mean to do this thing and to do it all by yourself.”
“Why not? This,” Niarmit jabbed a finger towards her belly. “This is not a child. This is just another bastard in the making, like me, like Quintala, like Hepdida
and who knows how much misfortune lies ahead for it and all who encounter it.”
Isobel was paler than Niarmit had ever seen her. “No child is a bastard in its mother’s eyes.”
“I’m not a mother, I could never be a mother. I am not Giseanne. I am not you. I can barely look at a baby without making it cry. I care for Hepdida more than I dare admit, but I can’t speak to her without it turning into an argument. I am many things. I need to be many things. But I am not, I cannot be a mother, not now, not ever.” She gazed at a corner of the ceiling struggling for composure, then thrust a hand towards the offending broth. “I did not seek out this weed, I chanced upon it in the depth of my despair.”
“And you think the Goddess was offering you a solution?” When Niarmit gave a gulping nod, Isobel went on, “or was she offering you a test?”
“She was giving me a choice,” Niarmit cried. “My choice.”
“A choice?” Isobel gave a slow sigh and a sad nod. “Maybe she was at that and maybe I should leave you to make it, your Majesty.”
“I think you should,” Niarmit said stiffly.
Isobel turned to go, one hand on the door, but then as Niarmit breathed her own slow sigh of relief the Lady of the North turned back. “One thing though, your Majesty.”
“Yes.”
“If you have indeed used twelve leaves in that mixture do not drink more than a teaspoon of the liquid.” She shook her head. “It would not be wise.”
“Thank you, Lady Isobel.” Would the woman never go? Still she hesitated.
“I will tell the servants you are resting and not to be disturbed until the evening. I will call later, in case you need me.”
“Thank you for the kindness, but I will not need you.”
Isobel’s mouth twitched on the brink of murmuring some dissent. “I will call anyway, your Majesty. I will be just by myself. Please indulge me.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not in that matter, no, your Majesty. I wish you well in the other choice you must make.”
And then she was gone, the door closing with softly behind her and Niarmit was alone in a room filled with the sickly sweet smell of mother’s bane. She approached the cooling tin of liquid, reduced by heat to a syrupy consistency.
