Master Of The Planes (Book 3)

by T. O. Munro

  “It isss your misssfortune and the bitchess’sss that I did not teach you all I knew.” The Dark Lord traded blows at a furious frequency. He slashed with his right in a blow that Eadran caught on his left hand blade, but Maelgrum slid his weapon down so it caught the edge of Eadran’s other sword. Levering his right sword up, he lifted both Eadran’s blades high exposing his belly – exposing Niarmit’s belly – for a jabbing thrust from his other weapon.

  Niarmit winced on her white throne, bracing her self for the same pain that Dema had inflicted when the medusa had impaled her by the forest of Coln. But the stab did not strike home. She felt a dull prod around her stomach as the weapon was stalled by the Helm’s wards.

  Maelgrum snarled his displeasure and Eadran launched a counterattack of such dazzling speed that the Dark Lord had to yield ground, wholly defensive before his former acolyte’s assault. Niarmit sat frozen white knuckled to her white throne not daring to twitch a muscle lest the tremour of her will should perturb the scything harmony of Eadran’s sword play.

  Eadran landed a combination that beat Maelgrum to the ground. The Dark Lord knelt. Four blades crossed at a point and Eadran strained every sinew to drive him down. Then Maelgrum exploded upwards flinging Eadran back and growled his displeasure as a pillar of flame erupted around Niarmit’s borrowed body.

  Niarmit shrank in her seat but little more than a faint warmth permeated through the Helm’s defences. Eadran stepped lightly out of the firey confines. Maelgrum paced warily just beyond sword reach.

  “Isss it not ssstrange, old friend, that you have chosssen thisss falssse immortality. I offered you the universsse asss my heir and you forsssook all that for a tumble between sssome ssslut’sss thighsss.” Maelgrum shook his head and then emitted a cold hard laugh. “And even then you tried to find your own path to eternal exissstance and could inssstead sssecure only thisss sssad apology for immortality. Trapped in your little Helm, needing thisss ssslip of a girl to even ssseee the world you once bessstrode by my ssside.”

  Maelgrum’s taunt hung unanswered in the air between them. The Dark Lord launched another flurry of strikes. Eadran parried and stepped back and they parted neither able to penetrate the other’s defences.

  “I sssee you have not forgotten how to be a warrior,” Maelgrum said. “What about the sssorcerousss artsss you once held ssso dear. Will you not tessst me with your ssspellcraft?”

  “Don’t,” Niarmit cried at Eadran on the gilded throne. “He’s taunting you into the error.”

  “I know that, girl,” Eadran snarled through a gap in his concentration. And in that gap Maelgrum sprang, great crashing blows three of which broke through the barrier of swords to invoke the Helm’s defences. Eadran gave ground, Maelgrum in his eagerness overreached himself and the Vanquisher struck back. Two strikes of his own broke past the red blades, one carved a slice through Maelgrum’s blackened right bicep, the other cut across his left wrist severing dead sinews almost to the bone.

  The red blade dropped from Maelgrum’s nerveless left hand, his fingers falling useless and open. The Dark Lord stepped back quickly, defending one handed as Eadran sought to press home his advantage. Niarmit slid forward in her seat, willing her ancestor to find the opening to hurt this dead body more. She could feel the weight of the ankh on its chain around her neck, the gem prepared, all it needed was the prisoner. All it needed.

  ***

  “Seneschal.”

  Kimbolt paused in his leaden footed jog across the battle field and turned. “Sir Vahnce,” he smiled a greeting as the black knight rode up in company.

  “You need a mount,” Vahnce said. He gestured to his equerry riding beside him. The man dismounted with immediate obedience and offered Kimbolt the reins to his own horse.

  Kimbolt wiped the black blood from his sword and sheaved it before pulling himself up into the saddle. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Chasing fleeing orcs is not a job for a man in armour,” Vahnce said. “The buggers run too fast.”

  Kimbolt blew out a breath. “When they have somewhere to run, indeed, Sir Vahnce.” He swept his hand across the vista of the battlefield. “But between our weary hammer and the fresh anvil of the silver elves they have nowhere to run or hide.”

  “The zombies too have rich enough pickings amongst their friends to not be in too much haste to attack us.” Vahnce laughed. “Who’d be an orc or outlander today?”

  Kimbolt nodded. The necromancers marshalling the zombies had been among the first to abandon their duties and try and flee. Between the crescented blessings of the priests, and the firey immolation by the silver elves, there was a different pressure shepherding the undead towards their own routed comrades. “Let us make sure that not one orc makes it back beyond the Gramorcs to tell the tale of this disaster.”

  “A noble proposal, Seneschal, I declare it seconded and carried.” Vahnce hauled on his reins and raised his hand to bid his little company forward, but then a movement caught his eye. “By the Goddess does that outlander not even know which direction to run away in?” He flung his arm towards a lone horseman galloping full pelt towards the ridge that the Salved had all but abandoned. “Archers, take him down.”

  “Wait!” Kimbolt cried as two mounted archers nocked arrows to their composite bows. Though the tattered barding on the horse denoted a foe, the rider crouched in the saddle was too slight for a hulking outlander, scarcely more than a boy in fact. “Wait,” he repeated with more urgency. “That’s no outlander.”

  The boy galloped past, never closer than fifty yards, oblivious to the danger he had been in. “Where is he going in such haste,” Vahnce mused.

  Kimbolt followed the line of the boy’s simple straightline gallop, followed it to the tip of the ridge where two figures stood and danced about each other. He peered into the darker eastern sky trying to see what had drawn Jay so. “Where indeed, but more importantly why?”

  Vahnce shrugged and squinted westwards at the low sun. “We have a bare half hour until sunset, Seneschal. If we are to make good our boast to leave not one orc alive, then we had best be about it while the light lasts.”

  “You go, Sir Vahnce,” Kimbolt said. “And good hunting. My road lies in a different direction.”

  “I wish you joy of it, Seneschal.”

  They exchanged a courteous bow and then spurred their steeds in opposite direction. Vahnce to lead his mounted troop aganst the scattered and fleeing orcs, Kimbolt to ride alone in pursuit of the boy.

  ***

  Eadran rained swingeing blows left then right, against Maelgrum’s single handed defence. Niarmit willed the Vanquisher on. They had to seize the advantage while they had it. Maelgrum backed away countering resolutely. Niarmit could see the gash in his arm sealing up but then Eadran snaked another strike through Maelgrum’s defences slashing deep across his blackened ribs.

  “I’ll take you apart piece by piece,” Eadran growled through Niarmit’s mouth.

  “He findsss a voicsse at lassst!” Maelgrum laughed.

  Eadran pressed him back, his crossed blades pressing down on Maelgrum’s single sword. Even in the Domain of the Helm, Niarmit coughed, her nostrils filled with the rotted stench of him as they two stood toe to toe.

  “Isss that your plan, old friend, to dicsse and slicsse your poor mentor, he who taught you every cruel trick and vile treachery that you know?”

  “Bastard,” Eadran spat from Niarmit’s lips.

  Maelgrum’s mouth opened in a parody of a smile and, with sudden strength he flung Eadran back. Niarmit felt a sharp jerk at the back of her neck as something dug in, painfully sharp. Eadran stumbled an extra couple of paces to gather his balance. Maelgrum stood, in no hurry to close the ten foot gap that had opened between them.

  “What then, Eadran?” Maelgrum asked. “What did you plan to do oncsse you had me in piecsses?”

  Something was wrong. He was amused and something felt different, lighter. Shit, the ankh. Niarmit and Eadran saw it at the same time, dangling on
its broken chain from Maelgrum’s restored left hand. The Dark Lord held it aloft so it caught the light of the low sun. “Wasss thisss to be my new prissson?” there was a harder edge to Maelgrum’s amusement. “Did you think to confine me oncsse more in a petty bauble sssuch asss thisss?”

  On the white throne Niarmit was shaking her head in despair. Eadran was impassive, but the grim set of his flat mouth betrayed his own dismay. Maelgrum parted his teeth in a grinning laugh and tossed the ankh up to catch its central gem in the palm of his hand. Then he closed his fingers over it, all trace of injury gone as his blackened hand clenched into a steadily tighter smaller fist, squeezing down on the great jewel. He held his hand up high and opened his fingers a fraction. A thin trail of powder slipped from his hand, falling like egg-timer sand upon the ground.

  “Wasss there a sssecond plan?” Maelgrum asked.

  Eadran flung himself two sworded at the grinning lich and Maelgrum merely laughed and raised his sword to meet the Vanquisher’s challenge.

  ***

  There were precious few foes left to kill, or in the case of the zombies re-kill. Gregor strode across the battlefield swinging his borrowed sword against orc corpses and fragments of undead. A cloak stirred, beside a pile of decayed and dismembered bodies. It might have been lifted by a breeze only there was no wind.

  Gregor stopped and twisted to watch the robe. It shivered and he took a quick step towards the form, sword raised. The shape must have heard the crunch of his mailed boot for it suddenly rose up, but not very high, to reveal an old woman crouched on her knees. “Oh please, thir,” she lisped through gapped teeth. “Thpare me, I am only an old woman enthlaved by the evil one.”

  Gregor held his sword steady, its point towards the woman’s chest. She was certainly old but her well fleshed form, pressing outwards on her robes, bore witness to a better diet than most slaves. “You’re not an orc, or a zombie,” Gregor checked himself with a second quick look at her lined face. “Or at least I don’t think you’re a zombie. So that would make you a necromancer.”

  “Oh no, lord,” the woman wailed. “I wath never any good at that, they barely tolerated me. I jutht rounded up the strayth.” A pink tongue flicked across slack lips. “I have heard tell you have welcomed such ath me to your cauthe, held some in high ethteem too, clothe to the queen.”

  She crawled closer on her knees, besseching him. “Pleathe great Lord, there was a granddaughter I had that fate thtole me away from. I never thought I might thee thweet Lily again, but now at latht I can hope.”

  Gregor was sickened by the woman’s grovelling. But he nonetheless bent to pick her up. “Gregor!” Thren’s call saved his life. He turned his head at the slim monarch’s hail and the fistful of rock that the old crone swung crashed into his helmet rather than his temple. Nonetheless the blow had his senses ringing he stumbled sideways as the foul witch grappled for the dagger at his belt. He kicked her away and staggered backwards. Thren was at his side, the point of his sword held at the woman’s throat, keeping her still and honest on the ground.

  As the stars cleared from his vision, Gregor saw her eyes flitting with nervous cunning between the two monarchs. “Come on boyth,” she said. “You can’t kill an old woman like me, why, I could be your mother.”

  Mitalda stepped between the two kings, their swords wavering with conditioned hesitancy at the sight of a helpless old lady. “You’re not my fucking mother,” the Vanquisher’s granddaughter said, striking a sharp skull cracking blow on the old crone’s forehead with the blunt end of her staff. The woman fell back and didn’t rise.

  Mitalda stretched out her arms to embrace the two of them. “Come my kings, our day is nearly done.”

  “It’s been a good last day.” Thren rested on his sword looking across the battlefield towards the long shadows of the dying day.

  “Where is Niarmit?” Gregor was suddenly alarmed at the speed with which the sands of time were running out. “Where is my daughter?”

  Thren glanced behind them at the tall ridge they had defended so hard and so long and at the flashes of light that sparked near its peak. “More to the point, where is Maelgrum?”

  Gregor was already loping up the incline to where two tiny distant figures danced around each other. Thren smiled at Mitalda. “Our day is not yet done it seems, my lady.” He waved her on with a courteous bow and they followed Gregor at a brisk jog as the king went in search of his daughter.

  ***

  Jay slipped from his horse a hundred yards short of the dancing whirling figures and slapped the beast’s rump to send it away down the hill. He crept half bent across the ground, his knees nearly thumping his chest as he tried to keep low. His breath came short in gasps for the posture cramped his diaphragm and the stabbing strides made his thighs ache. He crawled the last twenty yards, face turned sideways to watch the duelling pair.

  The speed of their swords was dazzling. The queen wearing the Helm traded two bladed blows with the Dark Lord, all three weapons little more than a blur as wrist and arm and bicep combined to move lumps of sharpened steel in a whirl of intricate combinations.

  Jay crawled closer, pulling his short sword from his belt. His courage was not failing him, whatever bravery sapping enchantment Maelgrum had used before he must have thought he had no need of it up here in single combat. Or perhaps the queen’s consummate swordsmanship left him no concentration to spare. Skilled though Tordil and Marvenna had been, they did not compare to the blinding speed of the queen as every blow was met with a swift riposte.

  The duellists’ absorption in each other was most welcome. Jay rose a bare ten yards from Maelgrum’s back his concentration focussed on a point below the lich’s shoulder to the right of his spine, where Jay fancied he could most easily bury his blade to the hilt.

  A feint from Maelgrum and the queen dodged to the right. She saw Jay poised behind the Dark Lord. A flicker of surprise flecked her concentration. Jay saw it. Maelgrum saw it too. He crashed through the instantaneous gap in her defence a short brutal stab of his red blade sending her flying backwards. And then the tall dark figure was spinning round, the fingers of his left hand a blur of motion.

  Jay stood stock still; the instant was far too short for him to react. He saw the long blackened index finger extended towards him, the glowing bead of blue as a lightning bolt began to streak towards him. He wanted to shout no, this is not how it ends, I will have my vengeance, but there was no time, no time anymore.

  And then a shadow blocked out the blue light and arms enfolded him sweeping him sideways and still the blue light struck and he screamed in pain and over his own shout he heard a louder cry, the queen’s voice howling one long drawn syllable of denial, “No!”

  ***

  “No!” The scream forced its way past her lips even though it was Eadran who controlled her body. Eyes clenched tight shut on her white throne she strained to see, or rather to unsee what her eyes had witnessed. To find a better truth than that which was.

  She saw Maelgrum turning back towards them, his red eyes glowing with amused triumph. Eadran had dropped the swords. His hands were twisting a skein of magic. Maelgrum cocked his head, raising his sword, puzzled that the spell was cast but he could see no sign of its outcome. But Niarmit could see, a tunnel of oval windows was opening behind the Dark Lord, gates within gates like an endless array of reflections between two mirrors. As Maelgrum levelled his sword, Eadran thrust out his hand and even though they were ten foot apart, the blow struck Maelgrum in the chest and he staggered back and fell, fell through the gate, through one gate after the other.

  Eadran snapped his fingers and the sequence of gates winked out to a dot and was gone and they were alone on the hill top.

  Eadran ran to the two figures lying crumpled on the ground. Niarmit tried to steer her own footsteps but it was to Jay that Eadran took them first. He rolled the boy over. He was scorched and senseless, but he was breathing, his right arm cruelly scalded. Eadran made some grunt of satisfaction or maybe i
t was dissatisfaction and turned to the other fallen body.

  The electrical blast had scorched him more deeply, his clothing smoked and as they turned him over, Niarmit could see the dreadful injuries wrought by the jolting shock that had travelled through his back and arm. There were burned black marks where the lightning had entered and exited and she dared not think what harm it had done in its journey through his body.

  “Kimbolt,” she wept.

  “It’s all right, Niarmit,” he croaked through cracked lips. “It doesn’t hurt, not at all.”

  “Nooooo!” she screamed. Let it hurt, let him feel pain, let him know that he lived still and could be healed. “Nooo! You will not have him, you cannot have him.”

  But those words went unheard for she had not the control of her own body’s lips and Eadran pressed her hand against Kimbolt’s head and looked into his eyes. The dying seneschal blinked at her. Her fingers flickered over him, a glow formed about his body, a web of gleaming dust spun from Niarmit’s enslaved fingers. She opened her eyes in the domain of the Helm to see the same glowing net enmeshing the form of Eadran upon the gilded throne.

  “Nooo!” Again she screamed. She rose from the white throne charging across to Eadran on the dais. “No, you cannot have him.” She could not touch the Vanquisher, she could not come within a yard of him. His body was already blurring encased in light.

  “This is the only way,” his voice came from the centre of his incandescent face. “Be ready when I give the word.”

  “Maelgrum is gone,” she howled. “You have despatched him.”

  A snort of derision sprang from the ghostly form. “I have thrust him into a planar maze, a momentary distraction to a mind like his. He will be back.”