Lady Of The Helm (Book 1) (45 page)

“Liesss and disssobedience!” Maelgrum exclaimed. 
The gnarled fingers of his right hand twisted through a swift invocation ending with a flourish of index and little finger pointing at the two terrified outlanders.  The Lich did not even look as strands of lightning shot from his hand towards Xander’s allies.  The electrical energy consumed and framed them in a crackling paralysing light, their mouths open in a silent scream.  Maelgrum’s gaze was on Xander as he strode the length of the great hall. While he walked, his right hand kept the blackening corpses of the Prince’s associates suspended in an electrical grip so intense their bodies were beginning to smoke.

“Your time is do
ne, Maelgrum.  I will wear the Helm and destroy you.”

The L
ich stopped, stunned by the confident defiance in the traitor Prince’s voice.  He released the shrivelled bodies of the two outlanders from his magical grip and titled his head to one side in curiosity.  “What isss thisss Helm of yoursss?”

“Let me show you, you undead bastard,” Xander yelled as he thrust the basinet down on his head.

“By the G
oddess,” Niarmit exclaimed as a fire erupted against her chest.  She leapt to her feet clawing at her clothes to extract the source of the discomfort.  “Eadran’s blood,” she cried as she pulled the ankh on the end of its chain free from within her robes.  “What’s got into the bloody thing!”

The gem at its heart was glowing pink with a fierce and throbbing heat.  The light grew bright enough to cast a shadow of her hand upon the ground.  “Feyril, you know this arte
fact. What is it doing and why?”

The old elf looked carefully at the bright throbbing gem as its colour rose and faded then rose again in an undulating cycle of b
rightness.  “I might guess, my Lady, but in truth I’ve never seen it do that before.”

Kychelle sniffed the air with a wrinkled nose.  “There is that scent of faint magic on the air again, granddaughter, stronger this time.”

Walking in the gardens beside the elf matriarch, Gise
anne felt the heat from her sapphire ring. An intensity she had not known before.  Curiosity outstripped caution as she dropped a pace or two back and, crossing one hand over the other, brought the covered ring to her lips.

Kychelle whirled round at the sharp cry from
her granddaughter in law.  The Princess was stretched full length on the ground unconscious.  “Giseanne!” the elf exclaimed before calling for the ladies in waiting.  “Come quickly, the Lady Giseanne is taken ill. Please the gods the baby is not harmed.”

“And you’ve never seen that before?” Niarmit repeated the question as the throbbing pink heat of the gem slowly faded to milky whiteness.

Feyril shrugged.  “It flared like that when Gregor died, but that was a moment of bright light and heat that came and went in a flash.  It did not take so long to fade.”

“You said something in Dwarfport. You said it tracked the lifeline of my heir?”

“Indeed, I did and what the ankh is telling us, is that you
r heir  whoever he or she was has, over some long stretched instant of time, died!”

Haselrig stuffed his fist in his mouth to try to stifle the rising gorge as his stomach turned somersaults.  Behind him two orcs were throwing up noisily on the throne room floor.  In the midst of the room the cooling helm of Eadran sat atop the ruined burned and sundered pile of flesh that, a million screams ago, had been Prince Xander on the brink of his triumph.

Beside the
nauseous antiquary Maelgrum flung back his head and rocked with laughter.  “I have not been ssso amusssed in centuriesss.  Ah Eadran, my old old friend, you have ssset the bessst jessst I could have imagined.  Poor Princsse Xssander, ssso sssure of hisss victory and, by hisss own ancesstorss’ hand he isss undone.  What a wonderful trick thisss artefact isss!”

“Wha
t is to be done with it, Master?”

“Fetch the B
ishop Udecht.  He at leassst can handle it in sssafety.  Let it ressst here. It may yet serve a purpossse.    Indeed if Udecht were ever to disspleasse me, or if I sssought another sssuch moment of amusssment, I will make him wear thisss choicsse headgear.”

“And what of …. of the remains of Prince Xander, Master.”

“Well friend Hassselrig, I sssuggesst you find two ssstrong ssstomached orcss, two ssspadesss and a bucket!”  With that, the Lich strode out of the throne room the walls echoing with the dry sound of his chortling.

“Blasted florist!
”  Thomelator berated this latest ill-fortune with his customary curse.  Every adverse throw of fate these past three years could be traced back to a florist.  Or rather one florist in particular. The flower seller in the market at Oostport.  The impulse that had led him to mistress Verdina was not to blame; there would have been no harm in sending a floral tribute to accompany the carefully crafted letter.  It had been right that the girl should know why he was leaving, why he could not take her with him, or rather why she would not want to go.   It had been right that the bald black and white message in his spidery script should be softened with some token of his genuine affection. 

What was wrong was that
the old crone had delayed him so long in bombarding him with choices, probing his reasons, all in the name of getting the perfect bouquet for the young lady.  A task that should have occupied a mere five minutes had stretched to almost an hour, the costliest hour of his life.  For that had brought him behind schedule, it had meant he was still crossing the quay when the officers came for him.  He should have been safe on the sanctuary of the deck of an Eastern land’s trader, waving cheerfully at the Mayor’s agents from a place beyond their juresdiction.  But no, Verdina the vile’s tedious curiosity ensured he was arrested a few steps short of safety. 

And that wa
s when everything fell apart. A quick trial on charges of forbidden magic use, transportation across the empire to a brief incarceration in Morwencairn before being sent into exile.  He had tried to tell them, explain that he was going, that he was leaving. Just let him go to the Eastern lands as he had planned, they’d never see him again.  But no, it was exile for him, exile beyond the barrier in the land of snow and orcs.  The irony was that the flowers which had cost him so dear were returned with the unread letter to Verdina’s stall.  The girl could not disown him fast enough once news of his arrest had spread around.

The prospect of exile had terrified him and the depth of his terror had been fully vindicated
, albeit not for the reasons he had anticipated.  In place of the expected savage and painful death at the hands of orcs he and his exiled brethren had been quickly intercepted by outlanders.  These humans had not just survived, they had prospered and at their head had been a ruddy bearded giant of a man the sorcerer Rondol, with magical fire crackling from his fingertips.  He had hailed the other mage in Thomelator’s party with a familiar greeting, “what kept you so long Brandini and who’s your friend?”

The sorcerer’s cheerful interest in Thomelator had faded quickly when the younger man had reve
aled his chosen sphere of magic craft.  “Illusion!” Rondol had stormed.  “Orc’s blood, why make an illusion of fire when you can make a real fire. Fucking useless waste of thaumatic energy!”

“The M
aster wants us to use all the exiles,” an outlander had reminded the volatile sorcerer.

“Well let Marwella and the necromancers have him
. I am sure he has enough wits to drive her witless creations around or if he doesn’t they’ll eat him soon enough. Either way, it’ll keep him out of the path of the real wizards.”

So it had begun
, the apprenticeship to the foul mannered, and foul smelling Marwella.  Three years of learning how to herd the mindless animated corpses and yet always being the most junior of the wizened hag’s assistants.  Try as he might, and to be honest he had not tried that hard, Thomelator had never learned the skill of animating corpses to create these awful revenants.  So he was only ever a shepherd boy to the herd of zombies.

Thus a direct causal chain could be assembled linking that distant ill fated trip to the blasted florist and Thomelator’s current solitary stumble across the burned stubble of a wheat field by the banks of the Nevers River.

The morning head count had shown two of the zombies had somehow broken free of their pen and wandered off in the night.  Who else would Marwella send to retrieve them, but Thomelator the kicking boy.  “They probably smelled fresh flesh somewhere out there, always hungry those ones.  If you want to draw ‘em back faster you could always cut yourself, let ‘em smell your blood. You can bring them under your will before they attack you. Probably.”  Her cackling laugh had quickly been echoed by the other necromancers as Thomelator set off on his thankless task.

It was not a hard trail to follow.  One of the creatures had a broken foot
and its dragging twisted limb scored a shallow furrow across the soil, there had even been a grey toe or two dropping free along the way to reassure the unhappy illusionist that he was on the right path. The other was lighter on its feet but prone to falling over leaving periodic imprints on the ground.

It was nearly noon and Thomelator was confident he was gaining on the missing re-animations.  As he walked he rehearsed the foul words of the spell of command.  He also tried flexing the mental muscles that
he would need to exert some influence on the vestigial consciousness that drove these corpses.   The process gave him a sick headache but he had no choice. Nausea was preferable to becoming a target himself for their never ending hunger.

As he crested a low rise Thomelator caught sight of them at last, the two walking corpses stumbling towards the river.  “Blasted florist,” the illusionist m
uttered.  “Where are they going?”  The field ran almost to the Nervers’ edge but there was a sharp drop before the river hiding the bank from view.  The two slightly built grey monsters would either stumble into the water or fall on stony ground.  Neither eventuality would destroy them but a few more broken limbs would reduce their effectiveness while the strong river current would carry them swiftly down stream, two different kinds of failure to fuel Marwella’s contempt for him.

“Hey,” he called trying to draw their attention, but they staggered on obl
ivious.  “Hey, stop!” he shouted hopelessly, before gathering up his robes and breaking into an ungainly run.

He was a hundred yards short of them when the two fugitive zombies toppled awkwardly out of sight.  Huffing and puffing, he picked up the pace in his haste to see what had befallen Marwella’s escaped pets.  He was qu
ite out of breath when he reached the edge of the bank and what he saw there took what little wind he had left.

The bank dropped about eight feet vertically to a short sandy beach which
was quite invisible until one got this close, literally on top of it.  There was an elegant silver boat hauled up half out of the water.  A half dozen well armed and armoured figures stood by the boat looking up at him, fine featured and dark skinned Thomelator did not need to see their cuspate ears to know he was in the company of elves.  The two escapees that had been his quarry were in an untidy pile at the foot of the sheer drop.  They were still animate, but cowed and submissive, for standing infront of them was a robed priestess with flame red hair.  The woman held before her a crescent symbol of the Goddess and was murmuring some invocation which had quelled and stilled the ravenous rotting monsters.  Hiding behind the priestess was a dark haired girl, staring wide eyed at the grey tangle of dead limbs.

All this Thomelator absorbed in an eyeblink and a further split second of thought made him turn to run.  But it was too late.   “Adhuc hospes,” a powerful elven
voice commanded and inevitably Thomelator obeyed, frozen rigid to the spot despite the quivering fear that pervaded his being.

Kimbolt’s chest heaved as he drew desparate breaths into lungs that burned.  It felt like surfacing after an unendurable period underwater but yet there was no water, just the stone floor beneath his feet and the arms into which he collapsed.

“There, there,” a male voice was reassuring him.  “You’ve be
en ill. You’d fainted.”

He’d fainted
? Kimbolt leaned heavily on the stranger, his limbs answered weakly to his bidding as though weighed down with lead.   If he’d fainted why was he coming round standing up?  Coherent thought however was difficult and a wave of nausea overcame him as he struggled to make any connections in his brain.  “Water,” he rasped, for his mouth and throat were as dry as dust.

“Certainly,” he was assured as the other man clumsily
manouevred his charge back and down on to the bed.  “Water, in here, now!”

There was a swish of silk as they were joined by a third person.  Kimbolt struggled to focus his vision on either of his carers, but a cup of water was pressed to his lips and he drank greedily from it.  “More,” he croaked as soon as the vessel was drained and it was quickly replenished.

“Do you know where you are?” a woman’s voice demanded, familiar and yet he could not place a face or name to it.

He s
hook his head.  “No, where am I?”

“D
o you know who you are, soldier?”  The male voice came from a podgy round face that hovered infront of his slowly clearing vision.

With a rising sense of panic
Kimbolt found he could not answer the question.  He tried to rise from the bed, as though physical activity might kick start his sluggish senses. 

“You need rest, soldier.” The man pushed him back gently onto the bed with one hand, the fingers of his other twitching. “Requiescet facilis.” 

Kimbolt slipped into near slumber only dimly aware of the continuing conversation between the man and the woman.  “Has he forgotten everything?” she was demanding.

“I think most of it will come back to him in time,” he assured he
r.  “But I don’t know for sure. I have never brought one back after so long in an altered state.”

“Does h
e know what has happened to him?”

“Let us say he has been ill, close to death.”

“Well that is true enough and he has you to be grateful to for his deliverance.”

“Indeed, my dear, indeed.” There was a moment’s silence as the pair of them surveyed the dormant   invalid.  “Now have I at last earned the usual welcome of some refreshment
for a weary traveller.  I have these past five years discovered a liking for crème du liebay. Do you think you might have some?”

The woman’s lau
gh echoed in Kimbolt’s dream. A laugh he had heard before though often with a harder edge. “What a vile concoction you have chosen Odestus. The former castellan here did have a cask of the green muck somewhere.  I am sure it is still there; even the orcs have standards and would rather drink lamp oil than that thickened pig’s piss.”

Thomelator could not wait for the enchantment to wear off.  They had brought his paralysed form down to the beach and bound him tightly.  The zombies too had been restrained with ropes, though their hungry hostility had been cowed by the presence of the priestess.  She was now in urgent conference with the elf mage and it was their discussion which made Thomelator desparate to speak.

“It is best you take the girl away,” the elf was saying.  “She shouldn’t see this.”

“What are you going to do to him, Tordil?”

“I’ve seen his kind before. L
ook at him.  He has been driving those poor dead wretches, denying them rest, tying some tattered shreds of their souls to this world.  ‘tis not right and getting the truth out of him will be some recompense for their suffering.”

“How long do you need
?”

“A couple
of hours and I will have everything he knows of any worth. There won’t be much left of the rogue by then.”

“Yes Tordil, but t
he last one you interrogated. That got really messy.”

“Fear not my lady.  I allowed my heart to o’er rule my head
.  Thinking on what this foul scum did it can make it hard to hold back I can’t say I regret it though.  That outlander simply got what he deserved, just as this one will.  As soon as the holding spell releases him we’ll begin. Ah ha, it’s softening now. See how he’s blinking.”

The elf had taken a step towards the unhappy illusionist, under
the priestess’s watchful eye, when Thomelator at last found his voice.  The words came tumbling out in a single breath.  “My name’s Thomelator, I’m an illusionist, I was exiled three years ago.  I work for Marwella and the necromancers but I’m not really one of them. I’m no good at it.  I was sent out to retrieve these two.  We need them for the work that the Master has us doing in Morwencairn.  He’s carving into the mountain and the undead are used for labour to clear the rubble.  That’s why I have to get them back. I won’t tell anyone about you. I don’t want to go back anyway.”

His gushing confession
had non-plussed even the sombre faced elf who paused in his stride to exchange a glance with the priestess.  She met his gaze with a half-smile and then turned quickly away, her shoulders shaking a little as the elf homed in.

“My, but you’re a cheerful little
songbird,” Tordil mused as he crouched before the trembling illusionist.  “Not forgetting of course that you’re also an undead torturing exiled traitor.”

“I’m not,” Thomelator gasped.
  “I’m not one of them, by the Goddess.”

“Three years
in their company you say, and you reckon there’s still some core of decency in you.  Do you take me for some fool. You’re one of Maelgrum’s scum through and through.  If there’d ever been any doubts about you they’d have thrown you into a worg pit.”