by T. O. Munro
But, for all his descendant’s ignorance of him, the Vanquisher had a certain easy charm. The ill-starred pairing of Danlak and Chirard the Second had been welcomed to the gathering throng and graced with seats in the second rank. Even Bulveld the Second had put in an appearance and been granted a seat as far from his father and his son as was possible, in a concession to the widely accepted rumour that he had disappointed the former and been murdered to advance the succession of the latter.
Santos too, had taken his place on the simple wooden chair laid on for the Steward of the Helm, though the august company seemed to have silenced even his sycophantic utterings.
Niarmit surveyed the impressive array of her living and breathing antecedents. How could the power of the ancestors be best marshalled to defeat Maelgrum?
“What news of the enemy,” Eadran began proceedings. None had thought or dared to challenge him for the leadership of this most privy of privy councils.
“Johanssen reports little activity on the borders of the seven counties,” Niarmit began. “Lord Torsden and his cavalry have skirmished with occasional orc raiding parties, but there are no large scale movements. Scouts have identified holding camps of undead a league or more within the enemy’s territory, but Maelgrum must find them ill suited for the cut and thrust of raiding.” Niarmit paused between reviewing the enemies’ dispositions and describing their own forces. “Pietrsen’s levies are shaping up well in training, we will soon have sufficient force that we can launch an assault towards Morwencairn.”
“Is that wise?” Mitalda asked. “Listcairn still is in enemy hands. Should we not secure that fortress first and a coherent front line against the enemy.”
“Strike for the core, my lady,” the Dragonsoul weighed in. “Let us tear out the heart of this evil realm and the body will crumble to dust. The bold strokes are the best.”
“It is also the surest way of drawing Maelgrum himself into the fray,” Eadran spoke softly. “And defeating him is the only way to be sure of lasting victory.”
“Defeating? We must destroy him.” The Dragonsoul thumped a fist on the arm of his throne.
“And how, dear brother, does one kill that which is already dead?” Danlak made an acerbic query.
The Dragonsoul scowled at his younger sibling. “When you have won some victories, maybe you would be fit to ask questions in this gathering, brother.”
“It is a good question,” Niarmit broke in on the exchange of glares between first and second rows. “Perhaps my Lord Eadran can offer some enlightenment. How does one kill that which is already dead?”
The Vanquisher frowned. “It is true, Maelgrum is already dead, slain by his own hand, but he so arranged matters as to evade the harvesting of souls and remain here with his own corpse.”
“The harvesting of souls?” Gregor the Third made a timorous interjection from the far end of the back row. “Forgive me, but I have not heard this term.”
Niarmit saw a scowl of impatience crease Eadran’s features, though the Vanquisher was saved from answering by his granddaughter.
“When a person dies, their soul lingers on the Earth just until the sun next sets on their remains,” Mitalda explained. “That is when the souls are harvested as the Earth sweeps remourselessly into the shadow of night time. The reapers endlessly travel with the setting sun, claiming the dead in peace.”
“And if the dead don’t want to be claimed?” portly Gregor asked.
“No soul can escape the reapers for good or for ill,” Mitalda told him. “The guilty may fear what fate awaits them after death, but for good or ill, no man can defeat the reapers.”
“Maelgrum did,” Eadran reminded them. “Though not without a price to be paid in pain and suffering. He chose death at a time and place where he was buried so deep in the Earth that he might have thought himself already in hell. At that depth the power of the reapers was so attenuated that, though they could see and reach for him, his soul was able to struggle and rail against their clutches. The reapers once defeated could never claim him again and so alone of the dead souls his walks the Earth still. His body was dead, its decay held at bay only by icy magic, its strength fed and bound by the sinews of his will, more than the rotten tattered muscles of his limbs.”
“And if we destroy that body, what power has he to harm us then?” The younger Bulveld struck out for pragmatism.
The Vanquisher sighed. “At most that gains us some time. He has the power to seize another body and shape and form it to his will. It is his soul that we must banish, or trap, or destroy, and souls are hardy things. They can endure the fires of hell for all eternity, so there is little on Earth that can harm them.”
“You made a prison for him before,” Niarmit reminded her founding father. “A great gem to trap his soul. If we could destroy his body, could you imprison him again?”
“Gems that would make such a prison are hard to find and difficult to fashion, my dear.”
“I have seen some,” Niarmit said. “In fact I have seen twenty-two of them.”
There was a certain pleasure in puncturing the Vanquisher’s self-assurance. “Twenty -two?” He frowned at the familiarity of the number. “That would be a mighty ransom. The Monar Empire in its pomp would have traded a quarter of its cities for so many such jewels. How do you know that these were fit for the purpose you ascribe to them?”
“Because Maelgrum told me so. They were his prisons, intended to capture all of you in perpetuity, when he destroyed the Helm.”
There was an explosion of noise. The honoured monarchs of the first rank were lost to the Vanquisher in inattentive chatter, just as much as the less favoured kings seated behind them. Eadran glared around the room and thumped his fist against his throne in search of order, before being obliged to raise his voice and demand silence.
“Imprison us? Destroy the Helm? None of that is possible.” He stood up to glare at Niarmit. “Explain yourself child.”
She met his gaze with a level stare. “Maelgrum knows about the Helm. He knows what it is. He knows who is hidden here. He meant to get us, to get you all out of here. To trap your souls at his pleasure and convenience.”
Again the noise, again the Vanquisher’s furious command for silence. “He cannot know, it is impossible for him to know. It is impossible for any who knew to have told, and any who could tell, knew nothing.”
“The impossible has happened,” Niarmit told him.
Eadran ran his fingers through his thinning hair, then swept his arm in a broad gesture of dismissal. “Leave us,” he commanded. “I would talk with Queen Niarmit alone.”
“She is my daughter, I’ll not leave her.” Gregor stood firm as the other monarchs rose to file out. Santos had already fled.
“And I may know something of consequence in this matter,” Thren spoke up on the Vanquisher’s other side.
For a moment Niarmit thought Eadran minded to dismiss them nonetheless, but the square set to Gregor’s jaw and the steadfast stance of slim Thren persuaded him otherwise. “Stay then,” Eadran barked. “And see what sense can be made of this.”
***
It was a simple stone structure, or so at least it appeared once Odestus had completed his discreet perambulation of its perimeter. A square pen, its walls forty foot high and a hundred paces on a side. Squat towers perched at each corner and a solitary iron gate was punched in the centre of the eastern wall.
It had been an hour since the shuffling convoy of prisoners had disappeared inside. No hint of what had awaited them leaked through the walls by sound or sight. Odestus crept closer, sweat breaking on his brow as he drew on the chameleon scale to channel his concealing enchantment. The object, never much thicker than a leaf of paper, was now worn so thin as to be translucent. Odestus estimated he had another hour of protection in it.
Sidling in the shadow of the wall, Odestus glanced up at the watch towers. Shadowy shapes could be made out above the uncrenelated battlement, but their attention seemed to be directed inwards,
more absorbed by the goings on in the fortress’s interior than by any friend or foe that might approach from without.
The little wizard reached the iron gate and caught his panicked breath. He was not made for subterfuge. He had been obliged to follow many ill-matched careers, since an accident and a trial had robbed him of his mercantile profession. However, the role of spy was even less suited to his nervous disposition, heavy feet and unfit frame than had been that of general, or dictator.
He was spared any wondering as to his next step, when the gate swung inwards of its own accord and the troop of escorting orcs hurried out unencumbered by the prisoners they had brought. Odestus slipped past them, hugging the wall and hoping the stolen scale would hold its power as he slid inside the mysterious fortress.
He need not have worried. The orcs had eyes for nothing more than the road ahead. They hastened away at battle march speed, eerily bereft of the usual orcish grunts and catcalls from creatures who had nothing to say, but could not normally be prevented from saying it. Instead the only noise to accompany their departure was the rattle and jangle of their ragged armour, shaken on its straps by the speed of their passing.
The gate swung shut behind them and Odestus turned his head slowly to survey the hidden space he had penetrated. Too sudden a move could put a strain on the subtle camouflage that his spell had afforded him. He had no desire to trigger an attention drawing shimmer in the stone wall, at least not until he was sure whose or what’s attention he might be drawing.
The gate had opened on an arched passage way through the thickness of the wall, a length of twenty foot or so. Two orcs were hauling on chains to shut the halves of the gate, muscles bulging as they dragged the heavy links hand over fist in a bid to complete their work quickly. As the crack of daylight between the gates winked out, there was a thunderous roar of a portcullis sliding into place behind the gate and the orcs were away, scurrying for a side passage cut in the wall.
The opening showed a spiral stair case that rose and turned. The orcs had no sooner disappeared around its twists, with never a backward glance, than another smaller iron grill tumbled down sealing off the space and Odestus found himself alone.
He stood still, untrusting of orcs, not moving until the last echo of hobnailed boots on stone steps had long since died away. He let out a slow breath and pushed away from the concealing stone to walk a few steps towards the space that this high square wall had enclosed.
It was a broad open space like the arenas he had seen decades ago in the Eastern Lands. Places where strange creatures would be challenged by the bold and bravest of the town’s young men. Their prancing infront of the trapped beast nothing more than a distraction to draw attention from the score of dart throwing accomplices who would pepper the hapless animal’s hide until, exhausted it fell an easy victim to the leader’s sacred sword.
Like those long ago arenas the sandy floor was discoloured in patches with suspicious stains. However, this stone enclosure lacked the raised rows of seating which had characterised those amphitheatres of the Eastern Lands. Instead its inner perimeter was lined with low stone buildings. Barred windows and steel doors sealed two dozen squat rectangular blocks. There were only two variations in the dull monotony of the fortress’s inner architecture.
To Odestus’s left low moans emanated from a wooden stockade in the shadow of the gatewall. A hum of human misery, too exhausted by despair for talk or hope of escape.
Opposite him, facing the gate, was a two story building with a pitched roof, butting up against the western wall. Its door was set in carved stone at the top of a flight of three semicircular steps. It was a structure graced with more grandeur than the utilitarian buildings elsewhere in the compound. If there were any answer to the riddle of Persapha’s disappearance and Hustag’s sighting of a medusa, then it lay in that building.
Odestus glanced up at the tops of the walls where a handful of orcs walked a desultory patrol. He rubbed the chameleon scale once more for luck, taking care not to crack its much thinned surface, and then set off across the arena striding steadily towards the fortress’s big house.
***
The Vanquisher settled into his chosen throne and eyed Thren bleakly. “So tell me then, how is it that the secrets of the Helm and of this place are known to Maelgrum?”
“It was written in a book,” Niarmit said. Eadran’s eyebrows arched at her interception of a question he had directed elsewhere.
“What book? Who could write of such a thing?”
Both Thren and the queen instinctively looked towards the statue at the back of the chamber its mouth half open in rage. Eadran followed their gaze. “Him?” he said dully. “The Kinslayer.”
“He wrote it all down,” Thren insisted. “The secrets of the Helm and much else besides.”
“But he can’t have.” The Vanquisher made a blunt denial, before pushing himself up to pace back and forth before the dais. He shook his head as he entertained and then dismissed a dozen thoughts. At length he stopped arms spread to conclude, “there is no way. I know my art. No bearer of the Helm can write of it or speak of it or communicate it in anyway to another.”
Thren gulped. “I know. I couldn’t even tell anyone of the book, or show it to anyone. Let alone write such a work myself.”
“But Haselrig could show it and discuss it.” Niarmit was forced to elaborate when Eadran frowned at the unfamiliar name. “He is a traitor and a servant to Maelgrum, he must have found the book where Thren hid it and shared its secrets with all the Dark Lord’s associates. Even Quintala, the half-elf knows of it.”
Eadran cut the air with a sharp slice of his hand. “That is why any written record was interdicted. The moment it was written down it could get into any fool’s hands and the whole world would know. Orc’s blood where is this book now?”
“Destroyed,” Niarmit hastened to reassure the Vanquisher before his fury could rise any higher. “Its remains were found in the ashes of Haselrig’s workroom. The pages all burned to a crisp, only the cover remained.”
Eadran frowned, head tilted in suspicion. “How can you be sure it is the same book if the pages were all gone?”
“It had a very distinctive design on the cover,” Thren interjected. “Niarmit recognised the book from my description of the picture it bore.”
“A picture?”
“Yes, an oval filled with whirls of different shades of blue, light and dark mingling like eddies in a stream.” Niarmit’s explanation slowed as she saw the effect it was having on the Vanquisher. He had gone quite pale and stepped back reaching for support from the arm of his throne as he slid back into the seat. Niarmit’s voice died away as she completed the description, “it had a single word above the oval. Fate.”
Eadran was shaking his head and moaning. “No.” He looked across at the statue. “You fool, Kinslaer, you bloody fool. I should shatter that stone encasement and then petrify your shredded body all over again.”
“You know then,” Gregor said. “You know how it was done? How Chirard evaded all your precautions?”
Eadran nodded heavily. “Oh yes, I see it now. And I see how truly mad he was. Kinslaying was the least of his sins.”
“He killed three thousand of your own blood,” Thren’s tone was stern as he sought to quantify the crime which Eadran had so lightly dismissed.
“Three thousand?” Eadra waited for Thren’s nod before going on. “Then I still say that was a lighter sin than what he did with the blue gate.”
“Blue gate?” Gregor huffed. “What is a blue gate?”
Eadran smiled. “You should know what it is, if you are to understand what he has done.” He jerked a dismissive thumb towards their petrified adversary.
“Then tell us.”
“It is a long story.”
“We have time,” Niarmit assured him.
Eadran nodded heavily. “Tell me then, what do you know of the fall of the Monar Empire?” The demand threw them off balance. Gregor and Thren glanced at ea
ch other, sharing an understanding of what length of the story such a beginning must entail. The two kings took their seats again to either side of the Vanquisher.
“It was foretold.” For once Niarmit’s training in the path of the Goddess supplemented the deficiencies of detail in her mastery of her people’s history. “Jocasta, first prophet of the Goddess came to Emperor Justinian’s court and told him his empire was ruined unless he and all his people turned from their many deities to follow the path of the one true Goddess.”
“And for that presumption he had her burned at the stake,” Thren added.
“And the empire dully fell,” Gregor concluded.
Edaran smiled. “It was a little more complex than that. Did you hear in those tales of the part played by the council of twelve?” Ignorance was writ large on the faces of his audience so he hurried on. “The great cities of the empire all had their mages, great wizards who had perfected the magic craft to open these gates.” His hands rose to mime the casting of the spells and the oval shape of the portals they created. “This talent ensured that for all its size, the outer reaches of the empire could be constant communication with the centre. Instant movement of information and scarcely less swift mobilisation of troops meant that the empire could respond to any threat before it could grow dangerous.”
Thren nodded. “When I lived in the Eastern Lands, the phrase ‘as fast as an emperor’s mage’ was still used to mean something done in no time at all.”
“Aye,” Eadran agreed. “In my own day, it was also used betimes as an insult to a man less accomplished in the bedchamber.” Niarmit frowned at the lewd allusion; her sensibilities earned only a scowl of irritation from the Vanquisher, before he hurried on. “The council of twelve was the great advisory council of the empire and few emperor’s ever dared go against their advice.
