Worms' Ending: Book Eight (The Longsword Chronicles 8) (19 page)

“By your leave, my lord,” Ector announced softly, “I should
precede you into her Majesty’s presence. She is in company with our new elvish
friends
,
and protocol demands an introduction.”

Gawain smiled at the captain’s use of the world ‘elvish’; he
was clearly an educated man and would of course know the difference between
that adjective and ‘elven’.

“Of course, Captain. I trust the Crown won’t be too
surprised when we are presented without additional escort?”

“My Lord Vex, I am not entirely certain that I am concerned
for her Majesty’s feelings in the matter. It is the Crown I serve, so too the
Guards. Not the individual presently wearing it.”

“Then I fear for Hellin, for Juria is betrayed to an enemy
which has destroyed the Hallencloister, and all wizards within it, and wedded
the Crown you serve to that enemy, as you, and she, shall shortly learn.”

Stunned into silence, the captain led the way across the
atrium to the staircase, and Gawain, though he couldn’t be certain, thought he
saw the flash of a hand-signal or two to the sentry on duty in the alcove
beside it.

oOo

20. Behold then…

“Your Majesty,” Ector announced, striding into the council chamber
with which both Gawain and Ognorm behind him were familiar. The captain halted
and saluted his Queen, Hellin seated at the far side of the broad and circular
oak table around which a handful of nobles were placed according to their rank.
Judging by the empty seats, this was certainly not the full Council of Juria.

Serat and his assistant soolen-Viell were sat opposite each
other in respectable positions either side of the table, and the six
Toorsengard were placed discreetly around the room, standing in the gloom by
bookcases or in the shadow of doorways leading to other rooms.

“My lords,” Ector continued. “His Royal Majesty and
Commander of the Kindred Army, Gawain, King of Raheen, and Serre Ognorm of the
Ruttmark.”

A complete, stunned silence fell. Chins dropped, eyes
bulged, food or wine held poised by paralysed lips as Gawain, with Ognorm
behind and to his left, stepped forward, and Ector, lips compressed thin
against a smile, took two paces back behind them.

“Honour to the Crown of Juria,” Gawain saluted. “I hope your
Majesty and your dinner guests will forgive my intrusion, but uninvited and
unexpected though I am, I feel certain one or two of you will welcome my
presence here nonetheless. I would have waited until after breakfast tomorrow,
but at the D’ith Hallencloister I gave my word to Riders of the Grey that I
would present myself to you at the earliest opportunity, and this is it.”

Gawain paused, smiling disarmingly, every inch regal and
charming. Hellin blinked, and her head twitched as though she would shake it to
wake herself from some dream.

“If you will allow me, your Majesty,” Gawain continued,
deliberately avoiding looking at the far corner of the room behind her where
the misty shapes of Allazar and Venderrian remained motionless, “I should
perhaps explain that I am about the business of another urgent quest, this time
to discover the whereabouts of a certain orb, which some time ago was used to
annihilate the D’ith Hallencloister, and to destroy all those who dwelled
therein. How convenient for me, then, that one who likely has knowledge of that
orb’s current whereabouts is here, seated at this very table.”

And at this, Gawain turned an icy gaze upon Serat of the
Ahk-Viell. The direction of his gaze was not lost on any at the table, or standing
guard nearby.

“You!” Serat announced, excitement and perhaps a little fear
giving his voice a shrill edge. “You shall be taken in chains to Thallanhall,
there to face judgement for your crimes!”

“Be silent, Serat, traitor of the creed responsible for the
destruction of all wizardkind!” Gawain commanded, his voice charged with regal
power. “Crowned heads are talking!”

“You dare speak to my honoured guests in such a manner, in
my own hall! At my own table!” Hellin’s eyes flashed, her expression darkening,
lips white with anger. “You dare to enter here armed and defiant and threaten
my guests!”

“Ah,” Gawain announced, hearing noises behind him, and from
the look of dismay and alarm stealing over all the faces at the table, he knew
it was well-dressed and well-armed men of the Guards from below, filing in to
stand in silent readiness along the wall at his back. “So now at last we hear
the ire of a queen. Where was that queen, Hellin, when your father Willam fell?
Where was that queen when her beloved Jerryn was denied to her? Jerryn, who walked
from this very table, and rode from your side to face horror and death in a
distant land, your
honoured guests’ land
.

“Jerryn, who said to me:
I should like my name never to
be graven on the Wall in the Guards’ Hall, at home. I do not wish forever to be
a question in the mind of any who might see it there and wonder who I was, and
how my name came to be there. I wish for my name to end when all the hearts who
have ever known me cease their beating.
”

Hellin stood, trembling with rage. “How dare you…!”

“How dare I? Oh you make it sound as though there is some
kind of risk attached to my being here. I assure you, there is not. Spare us
your posturing, Hellin, your
queenly
ire masks a dead heart and a dull
mind. Where was this queenly queen, when the Crown passed to you? You were Juria!
Had you the wit and the heart and the spine you could have dispensed at the
stroke of a pen with the worthless protocol which denied Jerryn your hand! You
could have ended with a word that decrepit decree which sundered a noble man
from his dreams and his love, and in the grief of Willam’s passing and the
fresh joy of Far-gor’s victory none would have denied you your happiness! None!
Not a single man or woman of this realm would have denied your heart its
cleaving with Jerryn’s, knowing as they did Willam’s intentions before his
demise!

“But
you
, standing there now with your fists balled
and tears coursing, face flushed with
queenly
rage, instead became
dullard stone and cold, and sent Jerryn to his doom, the man rendered nought in
your heart but a name etched on the colder stone below
this very table
. A
name now struck off, in accordance with his wishes! Tell me, your
Majesty
,
do you even remember the colour of his eyes? Did you spare Jerryn a moment’s
thought when you wed a weedling worm and boy of the forest and took him yonder,
there beyond this table, to your private rooms and to matrimonial
commencement?”

Shuddering, blinking, trapped between fury and grief and the
rising horror of being unable now to recall the details of Jerryn’s aspect
which Gawain had demanded, Hellin sat hard back into her chair, as if felled by
a sharp blow to the head.

“You were queen. You could have commanded, but you did not,”
Gawain advanced a pace, tension rising in the air all around him. “And now, you
have wedded Willam’s proud land to that of a creed bent upon the destruction of
all wizardkind save their own. Allied now is your Crown to those who have
destroyed the Hallencloister, and all within it. All save one. Sardor Eljon
Meritus, Master of Sek and Sardorian of D’ith Hallencloister, who survived to
bear witness to the attack by elves of the Toorseneth, all of those foul and
murderous elves wearing the sign of the Tau, as do your
honoured guests
and their retinue!”

“Lies,” Serat declared. “Lies and foul calumny, my Queen,
from the mouth of a criminal condemned by all those noble Jurians who witnessed
murder and theft in the north!”

“No. Truth from the mouth of the D’ith Sardor, a wizard your
foul treachery could not reach. The Toorseneth erred, Serat of the traitor’s
tower. They left a survivor. The Sardor of the D’ith yet lives. Tell me,
Hellin. Where is Mahlek, First Wizard of Juria?”

Hellin blinked again, her mind wheeling, and stunned, it
seemed, beyond simple comprehension.

“He is gone to Ferdan in the northwest, taking private
letters and papers to Insinnian, Crown’s Consort, in Elvendere,” an elderly
nobleman to Hellin’s immediate right declared emphatically.

“Then he is doubtless dead,” Gawain asserted, his gaze fixed
upon the queen but his attention fixed on the elfwizard sitting a quarter of
the way around the table from Hellin’s left. “Tell me Hellin, where are all
those other wizards who survived Far-gor, or who remained here in defence of
the good folk of Juria when war came?”

Again, Hellin’s lips moved, but no sound emerged. Gawain
glanced from her to Serat, and then across the table to Kahsen of the
soolen-Viell, lest some unobserved mumbling be the cause of Hellin’s silence
rather than shock and outrage.

“Dispersed, to the south,” the elderly fellow declared.

The old fellow was perhaps, Gawain guessed but did not know,
Hellin’s chamberlain, but the nobleman was certainly seated in a place of high
status at the table. A place Jerryn would have occupied but for Hellin’s lack
of strength.

“Dispersed,” the elderly nobleman repeated, and continued,
his expression one of a man greatly affronted, “Lest Callodon in his madness breach
the border there, or through the immense provocation of that madness, Gorian
retribution for his insanity at Pellarn cross the Ostern into these lands!”

“Dispersed, to Doosen,”

“Yes,” the nobleman replied hesitantly.

“And to Bardin, and other villages and towns in the south,
many close to the border with Elvendere.”

“Yes.”

“Dead, then. All of them.”

“Madness!” the old fellow protested. “Insulting madness!”

“Truth,” Gawain declared. “Is that not why so many
honoured
guests
now fortify and occupy so many Jurian towns and villages, and patrol
in such numbers this friendly land? Is that not the reason, Serat, snake of the
Tau? To seek out and destroy wizards of the D’ith?”

“Traitors!” Hellin blurted, her voice querulous and sounding
very much like that of a little girl. “Traitors who slew my father in his own
Hall!”

“And now you see the depth of the treachery. The Crown’s
mind once turned against wizards of the D’ith for the slaying of her father, why
should the Crown protest at the destruction of all of them, even should
evidence be forthcoming as it is now, that the lands were betrayed at Far-gor
not by wizards avoiding their duty to all the kindred races. But by
Toorsencreed, who destroyed the Hallencloister before the war began, while all
eyes were on Ferdan and the army mustering there in the north.”

“Your Majesty,” Serat oozed, “Your orders are clear, the
warrant issued, this man is a criminal who must be taken to Thallanhall, there
to stand trial for crimes against your husband’s people…”

“Toorsencreed,” Gawain announced, “Who allied with Maraciss
of Simatheum sowed a crop of Flagellweed in Jurian soil. Elfwizards of that
creed riding on Grakens of their own making, flitting here and there and
raining evil upon innocent Jurian heads. How convenient Serat’s arrival then,
to clear the ‘weed they themselves had sown.”

“More desperate lies, your Majesty…”

But Hellin sat blinking, silent, mouth agape, slumped back
in her chair. Again Gawain studied the soolen-Viell, but the elfwizard sat with
one hand clutching a napkin and the other still idly holding a goblet of wine,
blinking in astonishment at the proceedings and, it seemed from his expression,
not in possession of the grander details of his masters’ plans.

“Be quiet!” another nobleman declared, this one heavy set,
verging on obesity, well-used to good living. He was seated next to Serat, and
thus was clearly of some social stature. “I would hear Raheen’s words! Too long
at this table have we been obliged to listen to yours!”

“Lord Eggers!” the old man protested, “You forget whose
table this is!”

“I do not, Lord Chamberlain. It is the Crown’s table! And it
is a Crown speaking!”

“Aye,” another agreed hurriedly. “Speak, my lord Raheen! If
this treachery be true I would hear it long before I would see Lord Vex in
chains and dragged to the forest!”

Along the walls, elves of the Tau inched closer together and
closer to Gawain. He remained unconcerned, for though they were armed with
short swords, their progress came to an abrupt halt when Captain Ector and his
contingent took half a pace forward from behind him.

Gawain’s visage darkened, and he had to fight hard against the
urge to look towards the gloomy corner where he had seen Allazar and Venderrian
cloaked from everyone’s view. Hellin’s paralysis to his eyes seemed rather more
mystic than emotional, and since it was neither the soolen-Viell nor the
Ahk-Viell mumbling a chant to bring such weeping silence about, there could be
only one mystic source responsible.

“Recently,” he declared, “You will by now know, I and
others, including my friend Major Jerryn, once Defender of Juria, set out on a
quest to rid the world of the Orb of Arristanas, a device constructed long ago
to defend all lands from darkness Morloch-made. That device was corrupted by
treacherous wizards of a tower in Ostinath, named the Toorseneth. So corrupted
was it, it unleashed fire and shadow upon the city of Calhaneth, and destroyed
it, utterly. Such survivors as there were, were later were hunted down and
killed by those same traitors…”

“Lies! I shall not sit here and listen to this calumny!”
Serat declared in sudden panic, throwing down his napkin and making as if to
stand. His staff was eight feet behind him, propped against a bookcase.

“You shall!” Lord Eggers declared, placing a meaty hand upon
the elfwizard’s shoulder and thrusting him back into his seat. “And you shall
do so in silence!”

“That Orb,” Gawain continued, “Was the last of many earlier,
failed devices. We secured it, and carried it to safety, pursued by dark
wizards and mercenaries from the west, and disposed of it. But another, older, device,
twisted and warped, was taken in a casket by elf-warriors of the Tau, all of them
wearing the same mark as those now armed and standing behind you, and carried
it in the dead of night into the very heart of the Hallencloister. There, its
evil was unleashed, the gates of the citadel sealed from without against all
hope of escape from within. All perished. All save one, the Sardor whose
account of these events I have just given you, though his, of course, is far
more detailed.”

“And we may have this account from him ourselves, my lord?”
lord Eggers enquired.

“You may, though knowing the Toorseneth’s intention to
destroy all wizardkind in the name of their absurd creed, you will understand
our decision not to provide it here, where the Sardor’s enemies are made welcome
at table. It is sufficient to say that the Sardor is nearby.”

Eggers grunted, and eyed the soolen-Viell opposite him with
intense suspicion.

“It is entirely too convenient, my lord,” the Chamberlain
announced, his elderly voice faltering in places through age rather than any
lack of courage, “That your evidence is elsewhere. The crime of which you stand
accused was witnessed by many of our people in the north, yet here you stand
with nothing but a silent dwarf beside you and a tale to tell, though also with,
I grant, the rather disturbing sight of many of her Majesty’s Guard at your
back. It is difficult to perceive by this light, whether the good Captain
stands poised to arrest you, my lord, or to arrest us! You will, I am sure,
understand why, in such circumstance, I am certainly disposed more towards my
Crown and her honoured guests, than to yourself.”