Lady Of The Helm (Book 1) (46 page)

“I’m an illusionist,” Thomelator bridled with a spark of professional pride.  “I dissemble, I obfus
ticate, I confuse and deceive and I’m a very bad necromancer that much is true.  That’s all they ever thought I was.  The lowest of the low.”

Tordil weighed the words carefully before
straightening up.  “May hap you’re right, but the lowest of the low won’t have much worth telling.” He gestured to one of his kin.  “Open the scoundrel’s throat. It’s a kindness.”

“Nooo!” screeched Thomelator as the other elf advanced
sword drawn.  “Let me help you. I want to help you. I can help you.”

“How
?” The priestess interjected, waving the would-be executioner back.  “How can you help us?”

“That depends,” the miserable illusionist replied damply. 
“What is it you’re trying to do?”

“See,” Tordil gave a furious cry, his lips split in a fearsome scowl though the corners of his eyes were crinkled wi
th amusement.  “See how he tries to interrogate us.”

“Enough, Captain Tordil,” the pri
estess commanded.  “I have an idea and this snivelling wretch may yet give us the information we need to make it work.  So Mr Illusionist, I have some more questions for you. Answer them true and if luck attends me, you may yet live to see another sunrise.  Lie and you will die.”

Thomelator nodded quickly, gulping down breaths of relief.
“Please, lady, call me Thom. Everyone does, or did back in Oostport.”

The priestess nodded slowly.  “Very well, Thom.  Now tel
l me, when did Morwencairn fall?”

“Orc’s blood, Odestus, how can you drink that stuff.” 

The little wizard gave a little pout.  “Allow me my indulgences Dema, as I allow you yours.” He jerked his head in the direction of the bedchamber where Kimbolt slumbered easily.  “We have both earned some little comfort for what we have endured these long years.”

“We would have survived any how, you know.” Dema returned to a theme they had often explored in private moments.  “We would have survived without him.”

“Without Maelgrum
?”

“We had lasted thre
e years before he came to us. Survived and grown stronger.”

Odestus nodded.  “Aye, we survived, we migh
t even have survived this long.  But we would never have returned, not without the Master.”

Dema was lost in thought for a moment. “Do you ever think of death Odestu
s, of a world without you in it?”

The little wizard gave his companion a sharp look.
  “Death will come to us all. Our existence is perhaps more perilous than we ever imagined it could be.  Between the Master’s wrath and our enemy’s assassins, each day is an adventure to be survived.  But I try not to think of death. The contemplation can be paralysing.”

Dema nodded quickly in vigor
ous agreement.  “But suppose our deaths are all appointed. Suppose you knew when yours was due.  Would you try to avoid it, to face it or to fight it?”

Odestus eyed the M
edusa over the rim of his glass, braving the chilling stare of her gauze clad eyes in a bid to fathom her mood.  “The past can’t be changed,” he observed.  “But the future is not written.  For myself, I would prefer death to take me in my sleep at the age of a hundred and quite a lot and beyond that I prefer not to dwell on the matter.  But you my dear have always been a fighter, not just a fighter but a winner.  In a fight between you and death, it’s not the man with the scythe that I’d be betting on.”

She laughed at that
with the honest amusement which had always charmed him, from that first shadowy meeting in a dark alleyway twenty one years earlier, and he smiled to see her happy.  “Well dear Odestus when, no if, that day comes, I’ll do my best to keep your money safe.”

“You found them then,” Cholus greeted the returning wanderers.  “Took you long enough.”

The
wispy bearded form of Thomelator the dogsbody stared back at him with unaccustomed defiance.  Even the two zombies he had been shepherding through the ruined city gateway seemed to sense the tension for they faltered in their stumbling.

“Don’t you be staring me out you corpse loving apology for a necromancer,” Cholus unleashed a quick jet of invective to assert the natural order of things.   The audience of orcs and outlanders that formed the picket at the city limit grunted their approval, their interest roused at the prospect of an entertaining confrontation.  “If you want to play with the big boys then I can set your
pets ablaze so’s you’ve nothing but ash to show Marwella for your morning’s efforts.  She might then decide you’d serve her better as a zombie than as a witless excuse for a wizard.”

For a brief second Thomelator held his tormentor’s gaze, and Cholus thought he might have to make good his threat.  There was a whisper
from an outlander to his left. The placing of a bet.   Cholus gave a flex of his forearm to loosen his sleeves and flexed his fingers in thaumatic menace.

The taller of the zombies gave a hiss, an unusual vocalisation from the mindless ones, which gave them all a start and seemed to break the mood.   Thomelator’s head dropped in defeat and, with eyes fixed on the ground, he turned back to the road into the city.

“That’s right,” Cholus taunted, ramming home his advantage.  “You stumble up the road to mama Marwella.  There’s plenty of rock clearing for you to do. Help the Master back to his old halls and caverns.  That’s all you and your pets are good for, labouring.  You’re not real wizards any of you.”

The s
orcerer enjoyed the satisfaction of Thomelator’s silent submission, no word of riposte, not even a raising of the eyes in his abuser’s direction, as the reedy necromancer and his two charges stumbled into the city.  “That’s right, you stick close to your dead kin,” Cholus called, for Thomelator was barely a couple of paces behind the staggering zombies.  “Maybe your hold will weaken enough and they’ll tear your throat out for you, maybe they think you’re already dead. To be sure you’d hardly be less use if you were.”

He shouted a few more insults until the little trio had turned the corner, so he did not see the moment when the taller zombie fell back a step an
d hoarsely whispered, “Captain, forget your elvish pride and act like the feeble simpleton whose appearance you wear, or this plan will come to nothing”

“My L
ady,” the one in the shape of Thomelator acknowledged.

“Hush,” the smaller zombie mumbled through fixed lips. 
“and keep moving.”

Another necromancer was coming down the street driving a dozen undead each burdened by a basket of rubble.  The task did little to feed the creatures
’ incessant hunger and their shepherd needed all his efforts to hold them in his will.  As the newcomers passed the three spies, a couple of the genuine zombies hesitated in their shuffling gait, sniffing the air at the scarce disguised smell of fresh meat.  “Get those two moving, you halfwit,” the necromancer called.  “The slaves are nearly through to the old chambers and the Master is growing impatient.”

Obediently the three spies staggered up the main street, meeting an ever increasing flow of traffic as they neared the town square. Like the rest of Morwe
ncairn, the town square was on a noticeable incline with the Western side somewhat higher than the Eastern side.  The centrepiece of the open plaza had been the great statue of Thren the fifth atop his column of triumph, with the crowned leaders of the Eastern lands bowing down in submission to him at the pillar’s foot.  The entire edifice had gone, reduced to rubble on one side of the open space.  In its place was a yawning maw, twenty foot in diameter, in the centre of the square.  Steady streams of zombies were entering the steeply sloped tunnel beyond, while others of their kind were leaving bearing with them the detritus of excavation. Dust covered men and women huddled in the open, coughing and spluttering as far as exhaustion would let them, while orcs and outlanders stood an unnecessary guard duty. 

The trio of interlopers skulked unsteadily along the Southern side of the plaza heading for the steeply rising avenue which led towards the heights of the capital.

“Where you going?” an orc challenged them.  “Digging is over there.” The lime hued monster waved an arm towards the mined opening in the middle of the plaza.

“The temple,” Tordil in Thomelator’s form hastily assured him.

“No-one goes up there, not without escort,” the orc grunted.

“You escort us then,” Tordil commanded.  “Or you can answer to Marwella as to why you have delayed her
servants.  You know how many orc bodies walk with the undead, denied pleasure in the feasting halls of the afterlife? Do you want to be one of them?”

The orc glowered uncertainly. 

“Vos amici mei mandabo, Orcus!”  At Tordil’s declamation, his hand twirling in a subtle incantation, the orc’s grimace softened into a lopsided grin.  “You will escort us then?”

“Yes, little master, Borok escort you,”
the orc agreed slapping an arm against his leather breastplate in salute.

So
the quartet of enchanted orc, faux zombies, and disguised elf trod and shuffled along the cobbles of the regal avenue to the summit of Morwencairn.  A score or more of orcs and outlanders patrolled the open space between temple and citadel.  They spared an interested glance at the arrival of a wizard and two zombies, but the presence of Borok and the group’s self-assured walk towards the temple steps quickly stifled their curiosity.

The two ersatz
zombies faltered as they crossed the steps. The polished marble was obscured by countless splattered red brown stains. A testament to the bloody tragedy which had recently unfolded at the temple’s entrance.  The steps gave them some excuse for the stumbling to mask the nauseated dismay which had shaken their composure.

The temple itself was deserted.  A great slaughter had be
en wrought in here as outside, but the dead were evident only in the trails and splashes of their life’s blood across the ruin of broken pews and sundered altar.  This holiest of the chapels of the Goddess still held some terror for the orcs and outlanders for her ire burned into the consciences of the infidels and betrayers alike.  It was not a tangible sense of threat, more a deeply nauseating sense of foreboding.  Borok bobbed unhappily the chains of Tordil’s enchantment loosened by the intrusive atmosphere.  

“Wha
t you want in this place anyway?” he demanded querulously.

“The M
aster himself commanded it,” Tordil replied in a soothing voice. The two zombies walked, a little too smoothly, down the nave gazing up and around at the devastation.  Then the smaller one gasped. Hanging over the altar was a bloodied rag of a man.  Ropes from the body’s wrists slung over sconces in the wall pulled him into a crucifix.  Blood from a hundred wounds of varying depths had dripped, dribbled and spurted in a wide radius over the inlaid floor.  His white hair was torn, shorn and plastered in blood across his face.  The beard of which he had, in life been so proud, had formed a makeshift gag to stifle his final screams.

“By the G
oddess,” the smaller zombie exclaimed.  “It is Archbishop Forven.”

The last vestiges of Tordil’s charm
spell evaporated at this unfeasibly articulate zombie.  Instead the orc’s face twisted in a fury as fierce as battle rage.  “You not zombies,” he howled.  “You tricked me, wizardspawn.”  Borok slid his broad sword from its scabbard, making the small zombie the first focus for his wrath.  His target ducked with a squeak and fled along the nave.  The pursuing orc was blind to the danger as the other zombie and the wizard mumbled hasty incantations.  The wizard’s struck first and the unfortunate Borok erupted in flame.  Screaming in rage and pain he spun round. The sword flailed still as the howling orcish torch blundered towards the temple entrance.

The taller zombie seized a broken strut from the floor
and swung it like a club, catching the incandescent orc behind the knees. Still alive despite the flames that consumed his leathery hide, Borok swung wildly with his sword at ankle height.  The zombie leapt lightly over the blade and clubbed the orc again across the head.  The wizard drew a fine elven blade from concealement beneath the robes on his back and, with a precise thrust, silenced the unfortunate Borok permanently.

“Check the door, Hepdida,” the taller zombie commanded, exchanging a scowl with the wizard. 
The smaller zombie scurried to the temple entrance while her companions exchanged a few heated words.  “There’s only three of us, Tordil.  This had to be subtle and unobtrusive, not drawing attention to ourselves.  Where in the name of the Goddess does an immolation spell fit with that?”

“Twas the first one
that sprang to mind, my Lady,” the wizard replied.

“There’s a couple of orcs coming this way.”  The smaller one had taken a peek through a crack in the door. “They
just look curious now, but they’ll be more than that when they see the Captain’s latest roast.”

“See it,” the leader snorted. “They’ll smell it in a moment.  Quick
, through the sacistry to the Archbishop’s palace.”

The others needed no encouragement.  The storming of the temple had sundered all the bars and bolts that might have secured the doorways and bought them some time. 
There was no option but to run, to run and find somewhere to hide.  They disappeared down the passageway at the Eastern end of the chancel just as the two orcs pushed their way in through the Western entrance.  There was a clamour of guttural grunts when they espied the smouldering remnants of Borok followed by barked orders to summon reinforcements from the plaza.