by T. O. Munro
***
It was a long ten minutes before Sir Vahnce returned. Kimbolt looked up from his restless pacing as the knight burst in, holding a slim letter aloft. Lady Maia followed after him, bleating explanations.
“This brute puts the worst complexion on everything,” she cried. “I did what I did in your best interests, Kimbolt.”
Vahnce pressed the letter into the seneschal’s hand without a word. Kimbolt took in the folded and unfolded paper, the blob of wax neatly sliced through to break a simple seal. “You did read it then,” he shot an accusation at Maia.
“You were better off not knowing. Fine ladies should not make men like you bend or break. I was protecting you, you had a right not to know. I saw what she did to you, I know what it is to have a broken heart.”
“You don’t have a heart, Maia,” Vahnce murmured.
“Get out.” Kimbolt said with a cold rage which had even Vahnce look at him in surprise. When the same stupefaction struck Maia motionless, the seneschal roared, “Get her out of here!”
Sir Vahnce swept the dumbfounded courtesan up in his arms and carried her from the room. Kimbolt was trembling with an imminent eruption of fury, a rage so pure he would not trust himself to be in the same room as Maia.
He had seen the writing too many times. Rising from a lonely bed at Karlbad, and finding her at her desk penning another missive of instruction or support, by the light of a midnight candle. And he would wrap his arms around her and drag her back to bed holding her close until the sleep she needed could claim her.
This was the same hand, delivered in person. And she who had delivered it had sat waiting and been subjected to Maia’s vile lies. What could she have thought? He turned the open letter over in his hands. And what could she want from him? Why had she come so far?
He unfolded the paper and read.
Kimbolt, I need to see you. Find me in the Focus Inn by Cathedral Park but dress plain, no-one can see us meet or know I am in Oostport. Please pay the bearer to secure their discretion. N.
He read it several times. The message had been days delayed and she was long gone. Some trick of magic must have spirited her here and equally quickly taken her away with Maia’s damnable lies ringing in her ears. He turned the letter over, held it up to the light, but found nothing beyond the simple insistence on an urgent secret meeting between the pair of them.
“Sir Vahnce!”
The knight came through the door before Kimbolt had even finished calling his name. “Yes, Seneschal.”
“I am riding to Lavisevre.”
“Yes, Seneschal.”
Kimbolt looked up at Vahnce in his black silk shirt and breeches. There was no surprise or curiosity in the knight’s expression, just an unquestioning acceptance.
“You seek the queen?”
Kimbolt gave a quick nod. “She sought me out and would have succeeded but for Maia’s meddling. I must unpick the harlot’s lies and find out what need the queen had of me. I can be at Colnhill in twelve days, maybe ten.”
“And the tasks here which her Majesty entrusted to your care?”
“I entrust them in turn to you, Sir Vahnce. You can see the Salicia garrison brought home and ensure the men of Oostsalve are properly drilled and deployed.” Kimbolt looked the knight in the eye and extended his hand. “I am in your debt, Sir Vahnce. You are a better man than your royal masters.”
Vahnce returned Kimbolt’s firm grip. “Do not judge them too harshly, Seneschal. Tybert and Leniot had the makings of fine young lordlings until their mother died.” His eyebrows knit closer in a frown of regret. “I promised her that I would stand by her sons, but I was of an age with them and I could not stand between them and their chosen vices. Tybert especially I failed.”
Kimbolt clapped Vahnce on the arm with his free hand. “You were not their keeper, Sir Vahnce. You can answer only for your own honour, not another man’s. Now let us be quick, there are arrangements to be made and I intend to be on the road within the hour.”
***
It was carnage in the Chamber of the Helm. Cackling on the raised dais, the Kinslayer flung enchantments left and right. Bulvelds First and Third tried to charge him down but were flung aside by scorching bolts of lightning.
Thren summoned a glittering shield as Chirad discharged a spell with an outstretched finger, but the multi-coloured disc was shattered by the blast of fire which tore the clothes in smoking rags from Thren’s back.
“Lady Mitalda,” Niarmit gasped from her shelter behind a stone throne, as the Vanquisher’s granddaughter came through one of the chamber’s arched entrances.
The lady flung a freezing blast towards the triumphant Kinslayer, but the magic faded, petering out into a wet mist several feet short of striking its target. “Stupid witch,” Chirard cried. “You can no more strike me while I wear the Helm here than any mage could when I wore the Helm in the material world.”
The momentary twitch of annoyance on Mitalda’s face became alarm as Chirard thrust his palm towards her and she was slammed back a dozen feet to crash with stunning force against the curved stone. As the unconscious queen slipped down the wall, Niarmit glanced around at the rest. Chirard had spoken true, there was no blow or spell that could land on him.
Thren the Fifth jumped at Chirard’s back, hands grasping for the Helm, but the Kinslayer slipped to one side and the conqueror of the Eastern Lands found his fingers scrabbling across the scalding metal surface. Then as he fell to the floor infront of Chirard, the Kinslayer made a fist infront of him and drove it into the air. The fallen king was raised up by an invisible force, burnt fingers clutched to his belly, his face a mask of pain.
Chirard moved his hand up and down, and the suspended king oscillated in time with Chirard’s movements. Then with a final upward thrust and an opening of his hand, Chirard cast the monarch aside, flinging him across the room to tumble broken and twisted across two white thrones in the second row.
Niarmit could have wept even before Chirard screamed, “none of you can stand against me. Fools!” As she looked around the room she saw the truth in the Kinslayer’s words. None of the monarchs were standing, they were sprawled in different poses of defeat, each slight stirring of recovery only drawing more fire from the hands of Chirard. “You ran from me before, you fools. You should run from me again. Go hide in your hidden corners, let a real king wield the Helmwearer.”
Gregor the Third had lain hidden and quivering behind the second row of stone thrones, his worst nightmares realised with Chirard’s resurgence. The portly monarch made an abrupt dash for freedom through the open arch. The Kinslayer slung a snaking ball of light after him. The glowing orb, dodged round the corner, disappearing from view, but a shrill cry of distress suggested it had found its target.
Chirard swung his Helmed head from side to side, scanning his fallen foes. “Where is the bitch? The bitch who owes me so much. Come out bitch, it’s time to pay your debts.”
Niarmit drew her knees against her chest, a thin layer of stone and a few feet of air all that separated her from Chirard’s fury.
“Come out now, or I make your pet Thren burn some more.”
There was a sharp cry of agony from the stunned form of Thren the Seventh his senses returning to him with a fresh dose of the Kinslayer’s pain. Niarmit rose slowly to her feet, turning to face Chirard over the back of a throne. “Leave him be,” she said.
Chirard inclined his head a fraction and coughed a mirthless laugh. “You are poorly placed to make demands, bitch.” There was a moment’s pause in which the Kinslayer’s thin mouth spread in an ugly smile. “My, my you have dispensed with your puny ropes, and there is no accomplice poised to unhelm me. You have grown confident bitch.”
“No!” The panic in her voice caught Chirard’s interest. He flicked his fingers briefly and two slowly rising Bulvelds were sent spinning across the floor into mental oblivion. Niarmit slipped into a white throne seizing the arms and closing her own eyes to see what Chirard saw. He was sp
inning her slowly in her chambers in Karlbad. There was no Hepdida to seize the Helm from the queen’s treacherous head. This was so fucking bad it wasn’t true.
“I take it this is a place where you feel safe, bitch, where you have friends. How friendly will they be when they see your feeble frame walking amonst them and casting them all down in flames? Fat Gregor lost a lot of friends that way, not just the ones I burned.”
“No,” Niarmit shrieked. “Don’t, we can make an agreement.”
“That time is past bitch, you have no cards left to play, no chips to bargain with. “ Another recovering monarch was squashed against the stone floor by a clenched fist gesture from the Kinslayer, a blow he repeated on a couple of other kings, presumably as a precautionary measure, for they had showed no sign of stirring.
“Please.” She whispered the useless word; it only amused him, but she could not stop herself repeating it. “Please, don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.”
He smiled. “You are quite right, bitch. I don’t have to do this.” He slapped the air with the back of his hand sending another monarch smashing into the wall. “But I’m still going to do it, because I want to, because I like to. Now, let us take a stroll through this home you have found for me.”
“Hold fast!”
Another figure stood at the arched entrance to the chamber. He must, of necessity, be a monarch of the salved, but he was not one that Niarmit had met before. He stood a shade under six feet, but powerful arms and shoulders gave him an appearance of stockiness. His hair was a deep red colour at the sides and on the crown of his head but had receded somewhat from his forehead. The Domain of the Helm, Niarmit had noticed, tended to gift its residents the appearance which they had worn in their prime. Few monarchs showed signs of the decrepitude of age, this newcomer must have started to lose his hair early. In compensation he wore a moustache, a blaze of red stretched out Nordic style to either side, but there was no beard adorning his square jaw. His eyes were bright, intent upon the Kinslayer, looking out from dark hollows beneath his brow.
Niarmit could not place the description in the pantheon of her forebears. Many pictures and statues of ancient kings had been lost in the Kinslaying wars so this could have been any of the missing monarchs that Thren had listed. She guessed it was not Danlak, the man had too much presence for that ill augured fool. She thought it might be Chirard the First, the Dragonsoul. She held her breath to see how he would fare against his treacherous namesake.
“Which one are you then?” Chirard called. “”I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure. Are you some spawn of this thin blooded traitor?” He flicked a finger at the groaning form of Thren the Seventh, and the slim monarch burst into flames which drew a hideous scream from his lips. Niarmit rushed to pat the fire out, though it scalded and blistered her skin.
“No, I am not.” The voice held a slight burr, not unlike the accent of the poor smouldering Thren. The man advanced a pace or two into the room, unhurried and unworried despite the stench of defeat and despair which filled the chamber.
“It matters not which one you are,” Chirard grinned. “All flesh burns the same.” He flung out a hand and a jet of fire torched its way across the room. It flowed over and around his steady paced adversary, but did not seem to harm him or slow his advance. The fire faded and the man stepped closer, unmarked by any injury.
Chirard’s fingers, healing fast from his theft of the Helm, worked double time, two bolts of lightning zig-zagged their way towards the unknown king but made no greater impression than the fire which had preceded them. Chirard slapped the back of his hand towards the man. Niarmit waited for the impact of the blow that would send him flying against a wall, but there was nothing more than a momentary hesitation, as the red headed monarch, grinned and pressed on until he was a few paces from the thoroughly unsettled Kinslayer.
Chirard tried to step back, but the Helm he wore would not let him leave the dais. He raised his hands to physically push his assailant away, but the man brushed his arms aside and placed two hands firmly upon the Helm and unhelmed the wretched Kinslayer. There was no smoke or stench of scalded flesh. The Helm’s avatar lifted from Chirard’s head as easily and harmlessly as if it had been Hepdida raising the real artefact from Niarmit’s head in the material world.
Chirard slipped to his knees. “Who are you?” he gasped.
“Who are you, Kinslayer,” the man replied. “To think you could assault me in my own domain, the world I created, to think that you could keep me from my own possession, to think that you could attack me in my own palace. Who do you think you are, Kinslayer?” The last word was spat out as Chirard scrabbled backwards across the floor.
“You don’t exist,” he insisted. “You’ve hidden so long behind your wall of thorns that your mind has shrivelled into extinction. You are not the Vanquisher, you cannot be the Vanquisher.”
“I am.”
Chirard turned and fled, but steel bars slid down to seal off the exits from the chamber. He spun fury distorting his pasty features, hands whirling in another incantation, but he never finished it. A gust of wind blew a cloud of dust around him, which whirled tighter and tighter, as his opponent spun a finger in the air. The dust obscured Chirard from view. A strangled cry penetrated the cloying whirling cloud which slowly dissipated and in its place the Kinslayer was revealed. Or rather a lifelike statue of Chirard, even down to the grimace of hatred which the stone surface made into something uglier still.
“You are the Vanquisher!” Niarmit murmured. “Eadran the Vanquisher.”
The king nodded, a slight dip of his head, a gentle twinkle in his eye. He looked at the Helm still in his hand, a long thoughtful look, and then with an abrupt sigh, he released it to hover once more suspended above the gilded throne. “I am Eadran, and you are Niarmit.”
“Why did you come? Why now?” Thren coughed from within Niarmit’s arms, his throat still raw from the fire he had inhaled.
“Because a man came to visit me and spoke long and hard of you.”
“I sought you,” Bulveld the Third pushed himself upright, his face bloody from where Chirard’s blows had pulped it against the floor. “I sought you out and found your wall of thorns and there was no way through. No way at all.”
Eadran nodded. “That was how I made them, but this man burnt them, burnt them and himself. He walked through fire to find me. How could I not listen?”
“Where is this man?” Niarmit asked.
“I’m here, Niarmit.” She turned and there behind her, by the other opening to the chamber, stood Gregor, her father.
***
The cavalryman spotted him first, emerging from the forest to the right of the path. A short man bundling a cloak under his arm. Elise was concentrating too fiercely on keeping her seat on the horse. The man turned and waved them down. She was grateful of the chance to haul her horse’s wind. Her backside was bruised and her thighs ached from the constant battle to counter the horses swaying motion.
“What is it, sir?” The cavalryman’s words showed the courtesy of address owed to an older man by a young solider, but his tone betrayed the contempt of a mounted traveller for one who, by choice or circumstance, must travel afoot.
“Forgive me,” the man asked. “But can you tell me if this is the road to Prince Rugan’s palace.”
“It is indeed,” Elise answered. “We are bound there ourselves an urgent mission.”
“Indeed,” the man’s eyebrows rose. “I have a message for the prince myself, also urgent, and I have been some days on the road already.”
“Then you should have furnished yourself with a horse, sir,” the cavalryman hauled on his reins, eager to be on their journey once more.
The man gave a sad smile. “I have tried to do just that, but in these troubled times there are few mounts to be had that the army has not seized, and those who have horses still will not part with them even for ready money.” At this he drew a purse from within his cloak and showed them the glint of go
ld within it.
“You’ll not be buying horses from us, old man.” The soldier dropped what little courtesy had been guiding his words. “You’ve five days walk ahead of you. You’d best get going.”
“I know that, my good soldier.” The man smiled away the cavalryman’s rudeness. “But I had hoped maybe I could ride behind one of you, my mission is a little urgent. I would pay well.” He patted his flat stomach. “I am not such a burden as I used to be.”
“Be off with you, impudent scoundrel,” the soldier retorted.
“Wait.” There was something familiar about the man, though Elise couldn’t quite place it. “He can ride with me.”
“My lady.” The dull tone conveyed a world of disapproval, but Elise gave the soldier a sharp look to remind him who was the escort and who was the escorted.
She reached down and the ragged man gripped her, his hand to her forearm, his other hand on the horse’s rump. He hopped experimentally on one leg and then thrust off scrabbling awkwardly onto the horse. “Much obliged, madam,” he said a little of out of breath from the simple exertion. “I’m more used to riding behind these creatures, than on them.”
“My name is Elise,” she said over her shoulder.
“Mine is Harris,” he replied. “I’m much obliged to you, Mistress Elise.” He frowned into her shoulder. “An unusual name.”
“My father’s choice, Master Harris, not mine. Now you had better hold on, we ride hard, these soldiers and me.”
Harris snaked his arms with utmost propriety around her waist. The lead cavalryman shook his head with slow sad insolence and then spurred his steed to motion.
***
It was still a warm summer’s day in the Domain of the Helm and Niarmit was once again on the garden seat before the misshapen palace. But this time it was not Thren her ancestor, but Gregor her father who sat beside her.
“You are injured,” she said reaching towards the twisted scars on the back of his hands. She traced the marks with her finger hovering half an inch above his skin, as she followed them up his arm until she met the crude sleeve of his surcoat.
