Wrath Of The Medusa (Book 2) (52 page)

“What does it mean, Governor?”

Odestus and Vesten stood atop the tower of Listcairn gazing East.  The wizard was not in a loquacious mood, so the secretary prodded him further, in search of some understanding.

“Winged ladies falling to their deaths in the forest of Kilsrek, Orcs reporting that two wingless creatures fell from the sky onto the rocks of the Palacintas, and that the enemy ventured forth to retrieve the bodies.  It is a time of strange and mir
aculous things.  What says our Master to it all?”

“Our M
aster is unhappy, Vesten, and the ripples of his spreading discontent are waves that may yet swamp all our lives.” Odestus thumped his gauntleted hands together.  “I wish those orcs had seized the bodies first.   Then we would have some news which might stem the flow of anguish from our Master’s mind.”

“
Who were they, Governor?”

“Thieves, Vesten.  Thieves already condemned to death who had
escaped his wrath and stolen from him.”  He sighed.  “We will know in time for sure what their fate was, but the waiting for certainty will not ease the Master’s mood one jot.”

Sir Ambrose stood over her all solicitous as Niarmit slumped onto the camp bed in her old tent. The brazier which the knight’s men had brought in was already radiating a heat to chill her frozen bones.  A tin bath had been brought and half filled with precious hot water.  There was a bowl of broth and the hunk of bread on the table where they had oh so long ago been planning a counter strike after the victory in the Gap of Tandar. The knight’s servant had draped a selection of fresh clothes across the back of a chair.

“
I’m sorry we have no one fit to attend on you, your Majesty, but I hope these arrangements will meet your needs. The guards are outside. I will not be far away, awaiting your call.”

“Kaylan?”
Niarmit framed a one word question riddled with exhaustion.

“
Prior Abroath is with him.  Tordil too.  They will both want to speak with you I am sure.  But you must rest, your Majesty.”

“Horses? Get horses ready.”

Ambrose shook his great head. “No your Majesty, you are in no fit state to travel.”

She pushed herself up from the bed, reaching up to seize the collar of Ambrose’s cloak.  “Horses, Sir Ambrose.  Horses, now!
  I leave as soon as they can be made ready.”

They stood thus, the giant knight and the exhausted Queen.  Then Ambrose dipped his chin in a nod of acknowledgement.  “As your Majesty co
mmands, but please rest in the interval.”

Alone again, Niarmit sat back heavily on
the bed and tried to rub the weariness from her eyes.  The bath was beckoning like a siren and she had not felt clean in days.  The gently steaming water promised to re-invigorate as much as to wash away the filth of her captivity at Maelgrum’s hands.

She stripped off the thin torn shirt and the ragged breeches and knelt gingerly in the warm water. 
The Ankh still hung on its chain against her chest, next to her golden crescent symbol.  The fierce heat was gone, with no more lasting damage than a reddening of the skin below her throat. The central gem, which had been white now showed a tiny bead of pink growing in its centre.  Niarmit felt suddenly weighed down with weary sorrow. Udecht was gone.   Another victim in the long line of victims who had bought her salvation with their own lives.  A line that had begun with her mother’s death in childbirth, continued by her father Matteus at Bledrag field, and then so many since.  How could she ever be worthy of so much sacrifice?

She
splashed the water over herself, too tired to do much more than scrape the surface grime away.  There was a cough outside the tent and Tordil’s voice begged admittance.

“A moment, Captai
n if you please.”   She rose from the bath and dabbed herself dry with a rough woollen blanket.  “I am not dressed,” she told the unseen waiting elf.

“I beg your pardon your M
ajesty.” The elf’s voice crawled with embarrassment.

Niarmit
sat on the bed and quickly pulled on a linen tunic and a fresh pair of breeches.  She was threading her arms through a heavy woollen jacket as she urged Tordil to enter.

The elf was grinning with delight as he shouldered his way past th
e tent flap.  “Great joy, your Majesty, what a triumph and so unlooked for.”  He glanced at the far end of the table where the Helm sat brooding and shook his head in wonderment.  “I had never thought to see that artefact again and yet you have retrieved it.  To steal such a treasure from beneath the Dark Lord’s nose not just once but twice is surely a sign of the Goddess’s great favour.” He paused, lips pursed as he tried to frame his next thought into words.  “Is this favour not also a clear sign that the Goddess means you to use the Helm, to wield it as the weapon Feyril always believed it to be?” 

He shook his head in disbelieving admiration
.  “The sentries were clear what they saw, young Thom as well.  They saw you flying, flying through the power of the Helm.” The elf spread his arms wide yet still found their span insufficient to quantify the scale of her achievement. He paced the canvas enclosure. “To master the trick of flight! Truly this is an artefact of miracles and today methinks I have seen near all of them.”

Niarmit thought but could not speak of the dangers of
the Helm.  “Kaylan’s two broken legs do not speak to me of miracles or mastery, Captain,” was the only observation she found could pass her lips.  “How is he?”

“Abroa
th has made him comfortable. He had other wounds as well but they are healing now.  He spoke little of sense so I am all agog to hear your Majesty’s tale.”  He looked down at her, bright eyed with curiosity.  “When last we heard, your Majesty was travelling to Nordsalve. By what route you came to retrieve the Helm I cannot guess.”

“
By treachery, Tordil,” she told him plain.  “We were betrayed. We are betrayed. Our journey to Nordsalve was known of and we were ambushed. It seems the Dark Lord has been my puppet master all along.  Not just anticipating but dictating my every move.”

Tordil’s face coloured with fury.  “Who, your Majesty, who has betrayed us to Maelgrum?”

Before she could find the breath for an answer, Ambrose returned with a cough.  “The horses are ready, Your Majesty, but I would earnestly counsel, you do not go.  You are too fatigued to ride today. You will like as not fall and do yourself more grievous injury than a tumble onto the rocks of the Palacintas.”

Niarmit thrust herself upright.  “I am going, Sir Ambrose. 
I have been blind for too long to a danger lurking at Laviserve.”  The sudden movement made her lightheaded, days of pain without food or rest abruptly caught up with her and Tordil had to catch her arm to save her from falling.

“You are not fit, your Majesty,” Ambrose
cried.  “You can barely stand, let alone ride.”

Niarmit fell against Tordil’s chest, hearing the slow steady beat of his untiring elven heart.  The elf Captain wrapped his arms around t
he Queen to steady her.

“Take me there, Tordil,” she said.  “Tie me to your horse if you have to, but take me to Laviserve, now.  I command it!” 

Haselrig was sweating but for once it was with exertion rather than fear.   The outlander guard and the frightened child stood by the hand cart watching him as he placed a final rock on the pile and stepped back to view his work.  They didn’t understand, and that was no surprise.  Haselrig didn’t really understand himself. 

For two days he had skulked in his library waiting to be summoned, waiting his turn to face the inevitable retribution.  His star was fallen so low that Rondol did not even think him worth tormenting, or perhaps the red bearded bastard was being kept busy re
-weaving the Master’s plans after the disaster of the dragon.

But in two days nothing had happened.  Venturing from his
book lined bolt hole, Haselrig had found that the orcs and the outlanders still graced him with some small marks of deference.  They stopped to let him past, they turned when he called, but they leaked little by way of information.  The antiquary knew not what fresh purpose the Master was pursuing, but he dared not ask the lackeys and the corridor guards.  Seeking information from them would only reveal how far he was from Maelgrum’s fragile and mutable circle of trust.

So he had strolled the citadel passages maintaining an illusion of importance until the one question he had risked asking took him beyond the walls of Morwencairn
.  He had walked round to the Western foot of the crag of rock on which the city stood.  The smell had been indescribable, where all the ordure and rubbish of the castle had been discarded, tumbling from hundreds of feet above. 

There Haselrig had found him, lodged in a crevice some little way up the granite cliff.  It had not been an easy clim
b to reach up and dislodge the Bishop’s body.  It had not been the fall which had killed him. Maelgrum was too cruel to punish betrayal so lightly. 

Haselrig had carried the spare form of the Bishop as far from that place as he could, and covered it in his cloak while he summoned the assistance of the outlander guard and the child with a handcart.

It was not a dignified funeral procession and they had not travelled as far as Haselrig would have liked.  The winter Sun gave too few hours of daylight and the road was rutted with icy tracks, but they made it to the low rise south of the Nevers river.   From here one could look back on the city atop its granite plug and see, through half closed eyes, a fortress unchanged from the time of the Salved Empire’s pomp and majesty.

The rocks had been hard to f
ind, and the ground was too frozen to dig.  But between them they had found enough stones. Haselrig had taken off the Bishop’s blood soaked robes and draped his own cloak over Udecht’s thinned body.  The work had kept him warm as they had piled the rocks up, but now as he surveyed the paltry monument, he was shivering with the sweat that froze on his skin.

He gripped
Udecht’s robe in his fist, hearing the dried rusty stains crack.  Then he flung the garment over his shoulder and stretched out his hand for the outlander’s knife.  As the two puzzled mourners watched, Haselrig carefully carved a crescent shape into the largest stone atop the pyre and beneath that he etched a letter U.  It was the simplest of memorials but, as Haselrig had once been taught so long ago, the grandeur of the monument was no indication of the greatness of the spirit or the depth of the Goddess’s love.

And there they left him.

“You are sure about this?” Quintala asked.

Kimbolt gulped back his fear.  “Just get me in there Quintala, let me speak, make sure I get to finish.”

“You are going to cause quite a stir, Captain.  Are you su
re you want such a public forum?”

“It is safest that way, too many witnesses to silence.”

“Some might say too many people in harm’s way,” the Seneschal chided lightly.

“Come Quintala, this is
no time for cold feet.  You start to sound like your brother!”

The half-elf’s eyebrows shot up at
the poor taste of Kimbolt’s meagre jest.  He clapped her on the arm by way of apology.  “Let’s go.  The meeting of the Council awaits us.”

She glowered back at him.  “This may not end well, Captain.”

Odestus rubbed his temple with his finger trying to erase the lingering pain of his last mental conference with the
Master.  A never pleasant experience had grown more sickening as a rare uncertainty plagued Maelgrum’s thinking.  To share in the malevolence that was the undead wizard’s mind, to let him rummage in one’s head poking fingers in one’s private thoughts, was discomfort enough.  But to have his will backing and filling like a ship in a gale was profoundly disorientating. 

The M
aster wanted answers and he was looking everywhere for them.  He particularly wanted to know of the sky fallers, the pair who had tumbled to earth within sight of Listcairn.  What had been their fate? Where were their bodies?

Odestus slid back his sleeves and raised his hands to cast a spell once more upon the patch of wall behind the tapestry.  As the palm sized opening in the fabric of space began to open again, he glanced across at Dema’s shrouded form. 

“You defied him my dear, may be it is time I did too.”

Giseanne surveyed a council chamber that was more crowded than usual.  When the others had heard of the Captain’s attendance they had insisted as a matter of courtesy that their own advisers should also be present.  On the Eastern side of the chamber Kimbolt sat with Quintala representing, in Niarmit’s name, the fallen province of Undersalve.  A place to which, as far as Giseanne knew, neither of them had ever been.

Opposite them were the contingent from Oostsalve. Leniot and his man Sir
Vahnce at least were trying to look serious.  Tybert however had been whispering some humorous aside to the painted trollop he called a spiritual adviser.  The Lord of Oostsalve suddenly stiffened.   The initial look of surprise on his sparsely bearded face quickly turned to a lascivious grin, which had Giseanne checking the whereabouts of the Lady Maia’s hands and her feet.

 
Sorenson and Merlow were to the South, in front of the double doors.  The thin ascetic curate sat with such stiff-backed self-assurance one might almost think it was he rather than Giseanne who was chairing the meeting.  His clerical superior, by contrast was leaning forward, hands cupping his chin, elbows resting on his knees a picture of weariness.

At her side Rugan harrumphed his displeasure at the augmented gathering, muttering beneath his breath about harlots and hangers on.

The door opened just wide enough to admit Rhodra.  The Deaconess’s eyes were shadowed but her smile was bright and she managed the briefest of nods at Giseanne before she took a seat at the Regent’s left side.  Giseanne felt her heart lift for the first time in the two days since the ring had told of the death of her last and dearest brother.  

Their company complete, she turned to Quintala with a courteous dip of her head.  “Seneschal, you said that urgent matters
of state had come to light which needed to be shared with the whole council.”

“Indeed I did, Lady Regent, but it is the Captain here who has pieced this story together.  With the council’s permission, I would have him tell it.”

As Kimbolt took to his feet, Rugan growled, “what a pass this is when traitors and turncoats have the floor!”

Giseanne saw the pink spots of anger flowering on the Captain’s cheeks and she reached out to her husband, drawing his grudging silence with a pat of her hand on hi
s arm.  “Speak, Captain Kimbolt. We value your insights,” she said.

Kimbolt blew out a long breath surveying the circle of delegates.  “The tale I have is a sorry one, Lady Regent.  We all
know of poor Hepdida’s illness, so like the one that claimed your own dear father King Bulveld.   Some of us are also aware of a particular artefact of the enemy’s, a black medallion which all his servants have.  By this means his agents are kept in constant communication with him, both to receive his orders and to feed him information. 

“B
efore this latest setback, Hepdida was recovering well. Her memory was returning and we began to understand a little more of what had happened to her.”

“Understand?  The girl was ill,” Rugan snorted.

“Not ill, my Lord Prince, she had been cursed a sorcerer’s curse.”

“You mean
Mistress Elise was poisoning her with magic,” Tybert spluttered.  When Kimbolt turned on him with eye-rolling disdain, the lord of Oostslave glared about him for support.  “Well, she is a sorceress, that is proven is it not? There is no doubt on that score?”

“Elise
was healing the Princess.  She arrived after the curse had been bestowed.”  Kimbolt stripped the lord of his argument.  “Aye she was and is a sorceress, but that only made her understand the illness more.  She knew it for the curse it was, a curse she had herself endured, and she alone had the power to entirely lift it.”

“But Captain,” Sir
Vahnce interjected.  “If the Princess’s ailment is in fact a curse from the forbidden art of wizardry, what was it that befell the good King Bulveld?”

“The self-same curse.”

Giseanne had to admit that the Captain had their attention with that.

“You mean a second sorcerer attended at King Bulveld’s confinement?” Sorenson, despite his evident fatigue, was following Kimbolt’s line of reasoning with a sharp mind.  “Two evil mages at work.”

“No, your reverence, just one.  One bestower of curses.  One betrayer of kings.  One servant of Maelgrum.”  In the hush that followed, Kimbolt held up his hand to show an incomplete circle of finger and thumb.  “Hepdida told myself and Mistress Elise, of a black medallion she had found in the forest just before she fell ill.  That is the mark of Maelgrum, and the traitor who bore it is the one who made her ill and who had most to lose by the recovery she had so nearly completed.”

“Where is this medallion then?” Merlow demanded.  “Let us deal in facts and objects, not mere supposition.”

Sorenson waved his curate silent.  “You are saying then, that the girl’s relapse was no accident.  That she was cursed again to buy her silence.”

“Aye you
r reverence, to buy her silence with her life.  A crime I hope we are in time to stop, before the curse destroys her entirely as it did so nearly kill Mistress Elise.”

“And who cursed Mistress Elise?”  Tybert snorted, turning to the fawning Lady Maia for
admiration of his perceptive interjection.  The rest ignored his contribution.

Rugan scowled, his chin on his hands.  “There is no medallion Captain, for you to show to us.” He frowned.  “Th
e girl cannot speak for herself. Mistress Elise is a condemned criminal, while you yourself have at best a chequered recent past.  These are thin and insubstantial foundations on which to build such a delicate if ugly story.”

“Hepdida’s sickness is not the only crime or treachery that has come to pass in your house, Prince Rugan.”  Kimbolt’s voice had hardened with the half-elf’s scepticism.

“On that at least we may agree, Captain,” Rugan exclaimed.  “But the curse which cut down my poor grand-mother was pure traitor’s steel.  No matter what, the good Deaconess may say, I am sure the assassin came from within my walls and I doubt very much that they have strayed far from them since.”

Giseanne saw Kimbolt nod at her husband’s words, a certain admiration shaded the Captain’s expression as he chose his next words with care.  “The question, Prince Rugan, is who had the benefit from Lady Kychelle’
s death?”

“Explain!”

“The Lady Kychelle had just agreed to allow the Silverwood to lend its support to our cause.  Her death was most timely for the enemy, for Maelgrum.  The entirely predictable response of Steward Marvenna was to increase the Silverwood’s isolation rather than relax it.  In so doing it kept a wedge between ourselves and Nordsalve.”

Kimbolt paused to draw a breath, circling steadily, assessing the impact of his words.  “Kychelle’s murder was wrought by an agent of Maelgrum, a traitor serving the
Dark Lord’s interests.  Hepdida’s illness served the same end, keeping Niarmit here away from endangered Nordsalve.  Hepdida’s death would protect that traitor with the permanence of her silence.”

“But Captain,” Sir
Vahnce interrupted.  “Kychelle was murdered before any of us knew of her reconciliation with the Lady Niarmit and her relaxation of her stance on the Silverwood.  When she died, no one could have known her death would so neatly serve the Dark Lord’s interests.”

A wry smile played across Kimbolt’s lips.  At her side, Giseanne felt her husband tense within his throne.  “That is not entirely true, the Lady Kychelle had given
advance warning of her intention to a few, a very select few, just hours before she died.”

Giseanne at last saw the direction that the Captain’s reasoning had taken him.  Her hand flew to her mouth as Rugan shot to his feet beside her.  Her husband was quick, but his sister was quicker.

Rugan got the first syllable of angry rebuttal out, hands raised in fury, before the Seneschal’s spell of holding struck.

“What is the meaning of this, Captain,” Giseanne exclaimed as the room erupted in a hubbub of chatter and Tybert slid into hiding behind the Lady Maia.

“It is a dire story my Lady.  I am sorry you had to hear it, but your husband is a traitor.”  Kimbolt tried to take her hands in his, but she shook him off. 

Someone was shouting for the guards, but Quintala’s gentle lilt bid them be still.

“Think my Lady,” Kimbolt urged as Giseanne wrapped her arms around her frozen husband, only the eyes moving furiously within his face.  “He was with King Bulveld all the time you were. How better placed could he be to administer the curse that killed your father.  Who else but he could move so freely and unseen about this palace, to strike down Kychelle in the Nursery and Hepdida in her sick chamber.    Why else, when she had him at his mercy by the side of the Saeth, did Dema stay her hand and let him live?”

Giseanne was shaking her head.  “Kimbolt, you speak madness, this is the man who has loved me always, who has loved my child.  Rugan is no traitor.”

“Hepdida knows the truth of it,” Kimbolt said.  “She can tell all, or will as soon as Mistress Elise is released to tend to her and she has sufficient time to let her memories return to her.  Surely the greatest condemnation of your husband is that he would let the girl die, his only means to guarantee her silence.”

“I had no part in that decision,” Giseanne asserted with a flick of her head.

“Then let Elise be released, let Hepdida be cured this instant.”

“It is already done,” she told him, enjoying a split second of pleasure in the
midst of this nightmare.  “The Bishop and the Deaconess have been working night and day to keep the sickness at bay.”

She savoured his stunned expression as the clerics confirmed her words with brief nods and tired eyes.  “T
hey have also been feeding Mistress Elise a harmless mixture of crushed berries at my command.  I fancy the dose of mind numbing juice that she was first given will have worn off by now and she should once more be able to administer her cure to the Princess Hepdida.”

“That is so, my Lady,”
Rhodra confirmed.  “I have just now left the Mistress Elise with Hepdida.  Though, as we know, the young lady’s memories may take a few days to reassemble.”

“So you knew…” Kimbolt began.

Giseanne jabbed a finger towards the Captain’s chest.  “No! Do not presume I am your witness in this affair or that my actions speak against my husband in your monstrous story, Captain Kimbolt.  I believe Rugan made an error of judgement, nothing more sinister.  And I am sure he did so only to protect me from further pain.  Just because I found a way to defy his wishes in this, does not mean I think him a traitor. Let us wait for Hepdida’s recovery and let us hear what she has to say as to who cursed her.”

Kimbolt bowed his head.  “Of course, my lady, but in the meantime, I would urge that the Prince is confined securely.  Only you as Regent would have authority to do so.”

“You would have me lock my husband up? in his own palace?”  She accompanied the question with a steeply arched eyebrow.

Whether it was Rugan’s fury or a weakness in Quintala’s spell, Giseanne could not tell, but suddenly her husband rolled free
, his fingers working frantically in an enchantment.

Again his sister beat him to the mark with a searing bolt of lightnin
g that scorched the floor, the Prince just dodging clear.  There were screams from the delegates.  Sir Vahnce had pushed Leniot down and stood over him.  Tybert and Maia cowered together. 

Rugan’s counterspell, a tongue of fire which Quintala quenched with a watershield, had even Merlow sacrificing his ecclesiastical dignity
in the rush for the uncertain protection of a hanging tapestry.

Steam filled the room as Kimbolt dragged Giseanne down.  “Do you not see now, my Lady?  He is condemned by his own actions.”

“No,” she cried.  “I will not credit it.”

And then the sound and commotion was sundered by an unlooked for voice and a lilac flame as Niarmit commanded, “hold still all of you, in the Queen’s name, in my name!”

And all was still, and the steam condensed to water on the walls and floor and through it all she saw Niarmit, standing tall, Tordil at her side, and in her hand come hot from Maelgrum’s
hall was the Great Helm of Eadran the Vanquisher.