Lady Of The Helm (Book 1) (38 page)

Maelgrum sniffed, “why every child would know asss much.  If that isss all I have taught you then you are a worthlessss ssstudent.”

“The planes each have their own worlds and inhabitants. I know you have long explored the infinite reaches of the planes and brought many of their denizens as servants to strengthen your power and glory, most recently the visit of the winged ladies.”

Maelgrum
nodded.  “You are obssservant. Perhapsss too much ssso.  What elssse have you noted?”

“But little
, my Master.  I know only that the twisted structure of the different planes means that time and space do not run in step in each of the planes.  A skilled navigator of the planes can use this to their advantage, taking a path through the planes to arrive in one place but a moment after leaving a spot many leagues away.”

“A moment after?” Maelgrum
’s head tilted to one side.

“Just so
, Master.”

“And you have ssseen the gate
sss I have ocasssionally opened?”

“As
great oval windows in the air, Master, that a man or beast can see and step through, though I have not yet been fortunate enough to earn your favour in travelling thus myself.”

Maelgrum came towards the prone and trembling ex-priest and knelt before him.  A fog of freezing vapour descended on the
shivering human.  “Now Hassselrig tell me and ssspeak true, what know you of a blue gate?”

“A blue gate
?” Haselrig’s best defence was his ingenuous surprise at the question.  “Why Master, I know nothing of a blue gate.”

“Have you read of sssuch a thing, ssseen one, or ssspoken of it with a
nyone, perhapsss with the lady?”

“Dema?” Haselrig almost
laughed at the thought.  “The Lady has little enough time for me, or I for her, and we have never spoken of any of the magic of the planes.”

There was a long still pause while Maelgrum weighed the ex-priest’s answer.  It was only whe
n the Lich stood up, that Haselrig realised he had been holding his own breath.

“You are disssmisssed,” Maelgrum announced airily as he turned and settled into his throne.

A brief spark of curiosity flourished in the relief that washed over Haselrig.  As he struggled to his feet he asked, “what does it mean, Master, the blue gate? Is it something you have done?”

“It isss sssomething I will do, Hassselrig, sssomething I mussst do.”

“When Master?”

The question hung between them for a
moment until Maelgrum uttered, with some surprise, three words that Haselrig had never heard him say before.  “I don’t know.”

When the ex-priest stood ope
n mouthed, the Lich waved him impatiently away.  “Go Hassselrig.  I have other ssservantsss I mussst ssspeak with and thisss evening I find your sssight offendsss me.”

Has
elrig needed no greater encouragement to scurry from his Master’s presence.

Kaylan was puzzled.  Resigned to his fate he had resolved to sell his life dearly with the rising Sun and now it seemed that no such payment would be necessary. 

Pu
rsued by the nomads, he had at last emerged into clear air from the stubbornly thick fog bank that stretched from North East to South West.  However, he had gone but a mile or so further before his horse had caught its foreleg enough to lame it.  Abandoning the animal, he had headed south on foot, towards the Hadrans.  Exhaustion had overwhelmed him at a small copse of trees, just as a line of pursuers had emerged from the fog.  Distant specks though they might be, Kaylan knew that the horses they had husbanded through the fog would soon close the distance between them and him.  Nightfall had given him time to prepare himself for the unavoidable, sleeping fitfully and always looking towards the distant campfire of his nemesis.

But when dawn broke, there had been no sign of
the nomads or the Governor.  The open plain was clear all the way to the obstinate fog into which they must have returned.  Kaylan picked his way North again, on foot.  At the abandoned camp of the nomads he found the signs of a fire, charred timbers on which suffocating dirt had been poured long before the wood was exhausted.  The tracks showed them retracing their path back into the fog.

The thief scratched his he
ad.  What had changed the Governor’s mind?  Had he realised what a wild goose chase they had been drawn on? If so had Kaylan bought Niarmit enough time to escape them, always assuming they could pick up her trail in this deep fog.  Kaylan himself was in no hurry to subject himself once more to the disorientating mistiness.  He sat a while in the nomads’ abandoned camp, the stress of pursuit receding but also with it went his chances of serving or finding Niarmit.

Quintala swung herself into the saddle just as the triumvirate of Rugan, Kychelle and Giseanne emerged into the courtyard.  Around her the lancers were mounting up in the dim morning light. 

“Where are you goi
ng, sister?” The Prince demanded, the familial greeting tarnished somewhat by his petulant tone.

“What does it ma
tter to you where I go, brother?”

“No one
may depart here without my leave,” Rugan began in robust voice.  At a cough and a severe stare from Kychelle he added more gently.  “It is a matter of common courtesy.”

“I have found courtesy to be in somewhat short supply in my stay here,” she rebuked him.

“We have need of your counsel,” Kychelle interrupted before Rugan could respond. 

Quintala snorte
d contemptuously.  “For ten days now I have rattled down your rich corridors, while the voice and views of my Lady’s wardrobe mistress have been heeded more than mine.  You had your chance of my advice and made clear you wanted it not.”

“Tomorrow my army marches for the
Palacintas and the border with Morsalve, there will be a place near its head for you,” Rugan announced.

“Tomorrow, always tomorrow, brother.  I am done with waiting for your tomorrows.”

“Where is it you think you will go?” Kychelle asked.

Qiuntala shrugged.  “You may be right about
Listcairn.  We will head south west and then work our way round the southern tip of the Palacintas.”

“Back into Mor
salve?”

“That is where I was sent from, that is where my master rules, I will return to him.”

Giseanne looked up sharply at that, her fingers instinctively covering the sapphire ring.  “Is Morsalve safe for a half-elf and a score of lancers?”

“Safe or not, L
ady, it is my home and I would rather die there than rot inactive here.”

Kychelle struck the base of her staff against the ground.  “My grandson has made it clear, his force will march tomorrow.  Your departure on this mission of pure vanity is both ill-timed and unwise.”

“Grandmother, as this may be the last time we meet let me speak my mind.   I wish Prince Rugan’s force the best of fortune, but I came here to deliver a message from King Gregor. I have tarried too long for the reply.  I will take no lectures on vanity or wisdom from painted peacocks who have delayed and paraded while a great peril has assailed the heart of the empire.  I know not what fate awaits us in Morsalve but I embrace it more readily than the stench of decayed courage and sluggish vigour that reeks about this palace.”

At this
rebuke, Rugan’s hands flew up, fingers twitching but Quintala pointed him down with one hand, while holding the other aloft its fingers curled in an intricate poise of readiness. “Not so fast brother,” she told him.  “It will do your royal dignity no good at all to be quacking all your commands like a duck.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Rugan breathed.

“Enchant me once, shame on you, brother, enchant me twice shame on me.  Now if you’ll make way, my lancers and I have a long day’s ride ahead.”

“Quintala,” Giseanne called out.  “You know there i
s nothing left for you in Morsalve.”

“There is
nothing left for me here,” the Seneschal replied before spurring her horse towards the gate.

The fog had enveloped Grundurg and his camp.  The orc chieftain held his fingers infront of his face and wondered at the way, as he pushed his hand out to arm’s length, his gnarled digits disappeared into the all encompassing murk.  The rolling bank had swept in rapidly from the North East, though the fickle morning breeze had been from the South.  Now, in the midst of the mist all was utterly still.  Miniscule droplets of water suspended in the air coated Grundurg’s skin with a sheen of liquid as the orc waded through the vapour, barking orders at his orcs concealed by the fog.

Around him there were shouts of acknowledgement muffled by the soupy haze as the hidden warriors sought to reassure the chief they were all still at their posts, even if they couldn’t see those positions anymore. 

Guided more by smell and touch than sight, Grundurg worked his way to the centre of the camp where his tent still stood.  His ragged standard, a crudely drawn face feasting on a heart, loomed out of the gloom and he swayed past it to the opening beyond.  “Skarat?!” he called, for the guard was not at the entrance, nor, judging by the lack of response, was he hidden within earshot by the enveloping cloud.  That oddity splashed like a pebble in Grundurg’s mind, though its ripples were swamped by consideration of the greater mystery. A fog that had drifted against the wind.

Grundrug stomped into his canvas quarters.  Here at least, the heat from three braziers had warmed
the air enough to absorb some of the hanging moisture. The plush stolen inner cloths were dripping with water, but the line of sight across the tent was clear if slightly blurred.  Grundurg stiffened as he saw a green hued shape sprawled face down across his bed.  A cacophony of connections fired in his brain as he remembered the odd glances Skarat had given towards the tent he guarded and in particular towards his chief’s human plaything, the girl Hepdida.  Three quick strides took Grundurg across the soft carpet.  He seized the shoulder of the recumbent guard who had so unwisely encroached upon his chieftain’s property under the unexpected cover of this fog.

Surprise was not yet finished with Grundurg
when the chieftain flung the deceitful orc over.  Skarat’s eyes were open and unseeing, his chest and throat punctured by a dozen dagger wounds.  The blade was broken off in the last of them, lodged between the betrayer’s ribs.  As the chief’s eyes scanned the scene he saw the hilt with an inch of jagged edge on the carpet.  It was a weapon he had seen Skarat play with many a time.  The guard would challenge others to the finger game, dancing the knife back and forth at ever increasing speed in the gaps between the fingers of his hand splayed against a table.  However, some other hand had now seized the weapon from Skarat’s belt and turned it on its owner. 

Grundrug bent to lift the broken knife.  The sharp shards of the blade were stained wi
th drying blood, black for the dead orc mingling with the scarlet of human origin.  The chieftain scanned the floor. He found the end of the rope hacked through, its frayed ends spotted with blood where the escapee’s haste had overridden caution.  The blood was still fresh and the drops led across the carpet to the back of the tent, where a flap of canvas hung looser than before.

Grundurg gave out
a great roar.  Nostrils flared, filling his senses with the scent of the bleeding fearful fleeing captive.  He whistled for his wolf and strode from the tent, calling into the white mist for a hunting party to assemble.  He was almost done with the girl. She’d had a couple more days before the end.  However, this insult to his dignity would not be borne. In seeking to flee she had not only brought forward the day of her demise, but chosen a method well suited to the orc’s foul sense of pleasure.  Hunting humans was always a joy and, with wolf and orcish olfactory powers at work, the fog would be but a minor inconvenience in tracking and toying with the fugitive.

Hepdida ran and ran.  The gash in her foot was bleeding freely and the fever that had spread from her other ill healed wounds was clouding her thinking.  The fog surrounding her was the stuff of dreams and nightmares.  Somewhere beyond sight was the orcish camp.  She did not know whither she was running any more, stumbling and staggering.  She might well be hastening back towards the odious captivity.  The moment of strength which had filled her limbs when the foul orc descended had faded.  The force with which she had driven the evil creature’s knife into his chest had sucked the last vestiges of power from her own shaking quivering body.

There was a howl of a wolf to her right.  She lurched to the left, a stumbling run taking her away from the pursuit but with little hope than for a few more seconds
’ survival.  The fog was thinner now, or was that her mind clearing.  Her vision stretched beyond her outstretched hand and then some thirty feet or more besides, and in that range of view a new apparition condensed from the mist.

It was a horse walking slowly, lead by a tall lean f
igure.  She staggered towards them, even as the walker perceived her.  “Help,” Hepdida cried as she tripped and fell into the stranger’s outstretched arms.  The newcomer laid her gently on the ground, though Hepdida winced as her wounded back touched the rough earth.