Wrath Of The Medusa (Book 2) (38 page)

The air was chokingly sulphurous as the antiquary and the Bishop followed Maelgrum down the spiralling passageway.  Haselrig stumbled against a rocky wall and flinched at the heat of it.  “The rocks are boiling!”

“Of courssse, Hassselrig.  There isss no fire hotter than a Dragon’s
ss breath, sssave in the heart of our incandessscent Sssun.  Did you thing a lesssser heat would sssuficsse for our purpossse?”

“No M
aster, of course not.” In trying to bob his deference and half run to keep up with the swift walking master, Haselrig stumbled again and crashed into the blistering heat of the wall.  This time he made no comment, suffering his scalded skin in silence as Udecht helped him to his feet.

They rounded the corner of the passage where it opened up into the great underground cavern.  The walls glowed dull cherry
red and Haslerig hesitated on the threshold smelling the acrid scent of his own hair singed by the radiant heat.

“The Dragon is gone?” Udecht fell to a fit of coughing as his unwise words drew in a heady mix of brimstone and rotten eggs to inflame his lungs.  Haselrig kept his hands clamped across his face content to survey the empty chamber through splayed fingers.  Both the serpent and the window on his alien homeland had disappeared.  

“He will not linger oncsse hisss breath hasss done itsss work, Bissshop.  The flame consssumes the air in thisss confined ssspace, fassster than it can be replenisshed.  Even a dragon mussst breathe.”

Mael
grum had stalked into the broad cavern where the heat was crisping even his dark dank robes.  He spun slowly round to survey the glowing gems still obediently lustrous, balanced on their edges around the rough hall’s perimeter.  The sight pleased him and it was with a nod of satisfaction that Maelgrum turned at last to the plinth on which Udecht had placed the Helm.

Haselrig had been enjoying a cooling breeze which had been rushing from the entryway past his ankles, but suddenly he became aware of a frozen chill on his right side facing Maelgrum while his left continued to bask in the uncomfortable warmth of the dragon heated walls.   As he turned to face
his Master he was minded of boyhood camping expeditions in the arctic mountains of Nordsalve, where the camp fire had roasted his face while the glacier froze his behind.  Only this time it was in reverse, frost forming in his eyebrows as the undead lord’s anger sucked every drop of heat from the glowing chamber.

“What isss thisss?” Maelgrum demanded.

The answer was obvious, but Haselrig knew better than to voice it.  For good measure he elbowed Udecht a winding blow in the stomach when he suspected the Bishop might speak out of turn.  Though in fact, any speech would have been out of turn when Maelgrum was this furious.  A spreading rink of ice surrounded the Dark Lord’s footsteps as he strode towards the plinth on which the Helm rested, quite unscathed by its encounter with the dragon’s fire.

“Why isss thisss item not dessstroyed?”

“Perhaps, Master, the dragon has stripped it of its dweomer and it is now an ordinary helm.”  Haselrig offered the absurd hope as the thread by which his own salvation hung. It was not healthy to have shared any part in the Master’s chilling disappointment.

“Perhaps the d
ragon missed,” Udecht offered with unwise flippancy.  Maelgrum’s hand shot out and though the Bishop stood full five yards from the Dark One’s reach, he was flung back in a crumpled heap. 

“You make an intersssting sssugestion, Hassselrig,” Maelgrum hissed in a voice laden with malice.  “Let usss tessst if you are correct.  Pick up
the Helm!”

“Master,” Haselrig quailed.

“Pick up the Helm! If the Dragon hasss ssstripped it of itsss power then it will do you no harm.”

“Please, M
aster,” the antiquary begged in a voice so soft he could barely hear it himself.

“Do it!” The undead wizard’s arm moved in a vicious gesture and Haselrig felt a palpable blow between his shoulder blades as an invisible hand forcing him forward, toppling with bruising force to his knees at the foot of the plinth where
the Helm lay a brooding presence scarce less malevolent than the Dark Lord at his back.

“The Gems,” Udecht muttered gathering himself from the floor.  “If the dweomer is destroyed then the souls of Eadran and his scions now inhabit your special prisons.”

Maelgrum froze at the thought, his eye sockets dulling into dim red embers as his mind escaped into the myriad planes.  Haselrig took the opportunity to put as much distance between himself and the hateful Helm as possible. He limped across to the Bishop and helped him to his feet. 

Udecht gripped the antiquary’s forearm as he pulled himself up from the floor.  “Thank you, your reverence,” H
aselrig said, grateful for the few seconds of life at least that the Bishop’s interjection had bought him.

Udecht’s mouth bent in a half smile.  Words seemed inadequate between two men w
ho each enjoyed a fragile existence at the whim of Maelgrum. 

A blast of cold announced the return of the
undead spirit to its blackened body a moment before Maelgrum howled in a keen of disappointment.  “Empty, all empty.  The traitor and hisss kin ssstill ressside in their paltry hiding placsse.”

The wizard
’s fingers flicked and a bolt of lightning shattered the plinth into a mist of stony fragments which sprayed out, scouring the faces of Udecht and Haselrig.  The Helm dropped to the floor with a dull clang and rolled onto its side amidst the dust.

“Take it Udecht.” Maelgrum commanded stalking the room lest the chill of his own fury should freeze his dead limbs.  As Udecht bent amongst the rubble, Maelgrum hissed at his back, “maybe I should have l
et the Dragon burn you with it. Perhapsss your blood would have unlocked thisss petty puzzle.”

“Master,” Haselrig hastily i
nterjected.  “The Bishop and I will work on this.  There are other writings of Eadran’s, there is much we can still find out.  I promise that I, that we will not fail you.  We will solve this mystery.”  As the antiquary gabbled helpless assurances and Udecht stood holding the Helm gingerly in his hands, neither noticed at first the stillness that had overtaken the Dark Lord.

When at last they realised
that Maelgrum was oblivious to their presence the two men exchanged glances, a look of puzzlement, a shrug of ignorance.  The antiquary dared a glimpse at Maelgrum’s face. The eye sockets glowed bright enough to suggest his mind was still within his blackened shell of a body.

“I have sssolved it,” the voice hissed in triumph.  “It wasss alwaysss a trivial puzzle and I have sssolved it.”

“How?” Udecht mouthed.

“Master yours alway
s was the superior intellect,” Haselrig hurried to abase himself.  “In a few seconds you have done the work of many months’ of mortal labour.”

“What is the solution?” Udecht persisted.

“You are lucky, Bissshop that I ssstill have need of you to handle thisss artefact, elssse death would be but the final blessssing in my punissshment of your impudencsse.” Maelgrum proclaimed as he strode towards the cavern’s exit.  “Asss to the sssolution, another month will ssseee it done.  We mussst all be patient, but rest assssured Bissshop you and your kin will sssuffer in the exssecution of my plansss.”

And then he was gone and Bishop and antiquary shared a look of fear.  A month of life seemed vouchsafed to them, but still the prospect filled them both with dread.

The archer’s alcove presented a much needed respite for Secretary Vesten as he hurried up the winding stone stairway.  The
thin arrow slit afforded a view across the castle bailey while he dragged some air into his heaving lungs.  Galen had passed the gatehouse, strutting peacock in his finery, but accompanied by a retinue of well-armed nomads.  The pale winter Sun flashed on the curve of their drawn scimitars.  Vesten gulped.  It was as he had first feared; the necromancer was not making a purely social call.

Gathering breath
and courage, Vesten resumed his spiralling scurry upwards.  The Governor had given strict instructions he was not to be disturbed, but this was surely an exceptional circumstance.  Jelly legged with climbing he stumbled onto the stone landing outside the Castellan’s quarters.  The guard at the door afforded him a look of disdain, eyebrows flicking upwards at the wheezy gasps of the ill-conditioned secretary.

Vesten had no breath for words, a glare and a vague wave at the door were all the communication he could offer.

“The Governor said he was not to be disturbed.” 

“Must… see… him,” Vesten panted.

“He said he was not to be disturbed.  Most insistent he was.”  The guard gave a twisted smile, compressing the vivid blue tattoos on his cheeks. Vesten guessed that standing watch on a makeshift crypt must make for a dull duty, no matter whose corpse it contained.  Irking the Governor’s unloved lackey with a pedantic obedience to orders was probably the only entertainment the shift had to offer.

Vesten gesticulated down the stairway with a frantic fan of his hand.  “He’s coming.”

“Who,” the guard frowned in suspicion.

“Him,
Galen.”

The sound from below, a thin voice ca
lling “Odestus!” lent a versimilitudinous ring to Vesten’s warning.  It was enough to draw the guard a few steps from the door.  His head cocked to one side,  tattoos creased in suspicion at the clank of mailed feet on stone, men in armour charging up the stairway with far greater alacrity than the lightly clad secretary had managed.

With the doorman distracted, Vesten caught enough breath t
o make a dart for the door.  The guard got the first half of “hey!” out before Vesten was through and into the quarters which had once been Dema’s.

“Governor!” he cried.  “I’m sorry to interrupt, but Galen is…”  He stopped.  He was speaking to no one.  The room was empty.  The Medusa’s corpse in human form lay on the litter
in the centre of the floor, unmoved and unmoving since the day Odestus had aborted the planned funeral pyre.   Vesten stepped carefully around the edge of the room.  They had used her cloak as a shroud, but her face was uncovered, eyes closed at last, blond hair combed and plaited.  Perfectly preserved, with only the ragged mark of Rugan’s wound upon her cheek to make the link between this dead woman and the deadly snake lady she had been.  Vesten shivered either with fear or with the cold of the room, a magically enhanced chill which had protected Dema’s corpse against decay. 

Creeping slowly by the wall, Vesten
advanced on the ante-chamber calling ahead.  “Governor, I’m sorry to intrude, but really you must come.  Galen is on his way.”

There was no answer.  Vesten pushed upon the inner door and his eyes widened in shock.  The bedchamber was empty.  He spun round.  There was nowhere else, nowhere that a short and portly wizard could conceal himself.

There was a noise on the landing beyond the outer door, voices raised in anger, a clash of steel, a grunt.  Vesten gulped and checked again the impossibly empty suite of rooms.  There were windows carved in the stone, but too high and too small for a wizard to have squeezed through. 

There was
a hammering on the door.  “Odestus,”  the reedy voice of Galen whined a shrill command.  “Come out, Odestus.  Leave that woman’s body alone, we have business to attend to.”

Vesten froze to the spot, holding his breath in the silent pause which Galen had allowed for Odestus’s obedience.  Then another rapid knock.  “Come out, you has been, come out now, or we will come in and get you.  You have to four, before we come and drag you off your lover’s corpse.  One…. Two….three…”

Vesten pulled the door ajar and slipped out onto the landing on the third count.  It was a crowded space, Galen in his finery with his burly nomad escort.  Vesten could not see the guard at first, but then he spotted him slumped against a wall.  The doorman’s chin was lolling against his scarlet tabard.  Vesten frowned, he was sure the man had been wearing a paler tunic over his armour.  But then he saw the way the colour had leached onto the tasset of his plate mail and spotted the matching streak of crimson on the blade of the nearest nomad.

The secretary’s
unexpected appearance provoked a brief hiatus before Galen demanded, “Where is Odestus?” 

“Not there.”

“Fool, the idiot guard admitted he was there, claimed he was not to be disturbed until Burgo here opened his throat for him.  He’ll do the same for you Vesten unless you stand aside.”

The nomad with the bloodied blade grinned and raised his weapon for the secretary’s terrified inspection.

“I don’t know why he keeps that woman’s corpse,” Galen said in a voice of deliberate loudness.  “But in a second we are going in and I expect to see him fully clothed and ready to respond to our demands.”

“It was the Master Maelgrum who commanded we keep Dema’s body uninterred.”  Vesten ventured a rebuttal of Galen’s insinuation.  “You were there, Lord Galen, you know that.”

“I didn’t hear Maelgrum say she should be attended on every day. That is entirely Odestus’s strange choice.  Now step aside Vesten, though orcs’ blood you are scarce worth the trouble of killing.”

The secretary shuffled nervously to one side, trying to avoid the gaze of the swarthy
Burgo who seemed quite willing, eager even, to go to the trouble of killing him.

Behind him the door opened again.

“There, I knew your worm was lying,” Galen declared. Vesten spun round, Odestus was in the doorway, emerging from the empty room which Vesten had just left. The secretary struggled for speech as Galen went on with his taunt. “Though what good you thought it would do to send him out in such an artless deceit I cannot fathom.”

“Really,” Odestus
mused, inspecting the heavily armed visitors with little more than the polite curiosity one might spare a troop of modest pilgrims seeking hospitality.  Vesten’s mouth hung open as he looked his master up and down.  The little wizard wore a thick dark cloak over his robes. The governor’ balding pate and nose were pink with a misplaced blush and when Vesten looked down he saw sand on his master’s boots.  “What is it, that brings you here, Galen,” Odestus asked lightly.  “And why have you made such a mess of one of my guards?”

“I have come because enough is enough, old man.  Your Blackskulls killed a dozen of my Gutshredders last night.”

Odestus nodded.  “That is a serious matter, nearly as serious as when your Gutshredders murdered a score of my Redfangs the night before.”

“This must stop,” Galen declared.  “We have not the force to let them kill each other.  At this rate when spring comes there w
ill be no army of Listcairn.”

“I quite agree, it must stop”
Odestus was all nodding sincerity.  “How do you propose we prevent orcs from being,  well…. Er… from being orcs?”

“They didn’t used to.”

“No Galen, they didn’t, but then Dema was alive then.”

“The Lady’s only virtue was the unity of command
she brought, the fact that she held sway over all her creatures.  We need such unity again, we need the Redfangs, the Blackskulls and the Gutshredders all welded to serve a single will.”

“Excellent idea,” Odestus clapped his podgy hands together in praise of his protégé’s suggestion.  “And I take it you have come to put your troops at my command.”

Galen flushed as crimson as his robes, lips working a moment in silent search for an answer.  “I came to take your command from you, old man.  You will give over your force to my orders and do it now.”

“Oh!” Odestus thought for a moment before asking with an air of academic curiosity. “And how do you propose to make me?”

“I will take pleasure in watching you die, old man.  Animals and orcs know when to dispose of a leader gone past his prime.  Burgo!”

Odestus’s eyebrows flicked up as the muscled nomad stepped forward scimitar raised.  Then, with evident surprise written over his face, Burgo turned the blade and drove it deep into his
own stomach. Pain and puzzlement were etched on the nomad’s features as his treacherous hands sawed the weapon back and forth across his belly spilling copious quantities of blood and guts across the floor.  The murderous self-evisceration continued as Burgo toppled onto his side, eyes fading yet still his own hands worked his ruin, the last move before a shudder of death consumed him was a vicious twist of the pommel of the scimitar cutting deep into his stinking bowels.

“Oh dear, Galen,” Odestus said in the stunned silence that surrounded the steaming corpse.  “Your assassin seems to have committed suicide.”  He looked brightly towards the other nomads.  “Is there anyone else thinking to raise a weapon against me.”

“Take him,” Galen spat furiously.  “You are many, he is one, charge him down.”

They charged half a stride or so, before the lightning caught them, a bolt that shot from nomad to nomad with stunning sing
eing force, crumpling them into a scorched heap.  Those that weren’t dead were left moaning in electric agony.

“You were saying, Galen?” Odestus’s conversational tone had acquired a steely edge.  Vesten could not at first understand why the necromancer made no reply.  But then he watched as Odestus stalked his way around the dandied wizard, and Galen made no move at all apart from the darting left and right of his little black eyes.  There was so much hatred burning in those eyes, yet no other muscle in the necromancer’s body would answer to his will or communicate his thoughts.

“Yes,” Odestus went on.  “You are quite right, this division of command must stop.  You are also right, I have perhaps tarried to long in mourning for poor Dema.  She was thrice the general and twice the man you could ever be even if you lived as long as Maelgrum.”  He came round full circle to face the frozen necromancer.  “And there are times I thought to follow her out of this world, but then Galen, a man like me has obligations.  One of those obligations is to make sure that you, dear apprentice, know exactly where your place is in the order of things.  And for a little turd like you, that’s right at the bottom of the Redfangs’ latrine pit.”

He bent close, his face barely an inch from Galen’s.  “Now, my dear former student and present subordinate, you will place yourself and all those who answer to you under my direct command, or, so h
elp me I will bury you in orc shit.”