Master Of The Planes (Book 3) (49 page)

The cavalryman spotted him first, emerging from the forest to the right of the path.  A short man bundling a cloak under his arm.  Elise was concentrating too fiercely on keeping her seat on the horse.  The man turned and waved them down.  She was grateful of the chance to haul her horse’s wind.  Her backside was bruised and her thighs ached from the constant battle to counter the horses swaying motion.

“What is it, sir?”  The cavalryman’s words showed the courtesy of address owed to an older man by a young solider, but his tone betrayed the contempt of a mounted traveller for one who, by choice or circumstance, must travel afoot.

“Forgive me,” the man asked.  “But can you tell me if this is the road to Prince Rugan’s palace.”

“It is indeed,” Elise answered.  “We are bound there ourselves an urgent mission.”

“Indeed,” the man’s eyebrows rose.  “I have a message for the prince myself, also urgent, and I have been some days on the road already.”

“Then you should have furnished yourself with a horse, sir,” the cavalryman hauled on his reins, eager to be on their journey once more.

The man gave a sad smile.  “I have tried to do just that, but in these troubled times there are few mounts to be had that the army has not seized, and those who have horses still will not part with them even for ready money.” At this he drew a purse from within his cloak and showed them the glint of gold within it.

“You’ll not be buying horses from us, old man.”  The soldier dropped what little courtesy had been guiding his words.  “You’ve five days walk ahead of you.  You’d best get going.”

“I know that, my good soldier.”  The man smiled away the cavalryman’s rudeness. “But I had hoped maybe I could ride behind one of you, my mission is a little urgent.  I would pay well.”  He patted his flat stomach.  “I am not such a burden as I used to be.”

“Be off with you, impudent scoundrel,” the soldier retorted.

“Wait.”  There was something familiar about the man, though Elise couldn’t quite place it. “He can ride with me.”

“My lady.”  The dull tone conveyed a world of disapproval, but Elise gave the soldier a sharp look to remind him who was the escort and who was the escorted.  

She reached down and the ragged man gripped her, his hand to her forearm, his other hand on the horse’s rump.  He hopped experimentally on one leg and then thrust off scrabbling awkwardly onto the horse.  “Much obliged, madam,” he said a little of out of breath from the simple exertion.  “I’m more used to riding behind these creatures, than on them.”

“My name is Elise,” she said over her shoulder.

“Mine is Harris,” he replied.  “I’m much obliged to you, Mistress Elise.”  He frowned into her shoulder.  “An unusual name.”

“My father’s choice, Master Harris, not mine.  Now you had better hold on, we ride hard, these soldiers and me.”

Harris snaked his arms with utmost propriety around her waist.  The lead cavalryman shook his head with slow sad insolence and then spurred his steed to motion.

It was still a warm summer’s day in the Domain of the Helm and Niarmit was once again on the garden seat before the misshapen palace.  But this time it was not Thren her ancestor, but Gregor her father who sat beside her.

“You are injured,” she said reaching towards the twisted scars on the back of his hands.  She traced the marks with her finger hovering half an inch above his skin, as she followed them up his arm until she met the crude sleeve of his surcoat. 

He smiled.  “It will heal fully in time, everything does here.”

“It must have hurt.”

He shrugged.  “It is only pain.  Your mother bore worse with greater fortitude.”

She looked up at him sharply.  “Tell me about her.”

“Matteus will have told you.”

“He told me what he knew, he did not know her as you did.”

Gregor ran scarred fingers through his thick black hair and sighed.  “You must not judge her.  It was my fault not hers.”

“Your fault that I was born? Your error?”

He shook his head.  She saw his struggle to thread a path through the delicate issue and for moment regretted her intemperate pounce upon his words. 

“Did you love her?”

“Yes,” he breathed.

“And did she love you?”

He nodded.  “I believe so.”

“And what of my father – of Matteus?”

“We …neither of us would have done anything to hurt him, we loved him too.”  He took her hand and squeezed it, pressing his scarred uneven fingers around her palm. “Your mother knew how it would hurt him, she knew it could not go on, she knew my duty to Kopetcha, to my boys.  For a few short months we loved each other as we never loved another, but then Eadran was born, my boy Eadran.”  He shook his head again, pinching at the bridge of his nose, “and we vowed we must part.”

“What was she like, my mother?”

“What did Matteus tell you?”

“That she was fair and clever and virtuous,” she held his gaze. “That she was a paragon of womanhood that I should aspire to follow.”

“She was all those things and more.  She was kind in so many tiny ways.  When we walked in the gardens she’d pick snails off the path if she thought they might get trodden on by a passing gardener.  She said every living thing was entitled to life.”

Niarmit looked away with a tiny shake of her head.  Gregor squeezed her hand a little tighter.

“She was fierce too,” he went on.  “A servant of hers was ill handled by some lord in the market place once.”  He laughed.  “You should have heard her then, a tongue sharp and coarse at the same time.  Never before have I seen a man so shrunken by an attack of words.  It would have made a soldier blush.”

He laughed at Niarmit’s pale face.   “She was dutiful and loyal to Matteus, but there were sides of her she didn’t dare show him.”

“But she showed you.”

“For one brief summer she made me happier than I have ever been before or since.  But then autumn came and we knew it had to end.”

Niarmit shook her head.  “I never knew her, not even the stories I was told were true.”

“They were true, Niarmit.  Matteus would not lie to you.  They were just not the whole truth.” 

“What would he have said if he had known?  If he had known he had raised another man’s bastard.”

“He would have forgiven her and he would have loved you no less for it.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can Niarmit, I do. Matteus was a man of honour but also of humanity.  He would have done nothing to hurt you or to shame her.”  He sighed.  “I saw him, I came when I heard your mother was ill, that the birth had not gone well.  I rode as fast as I could, but I was too late to say goodbye.  Matteus was there, holding you in his arms, he would not let the nursemaids take you.  He said you were all he had left of her.  He never blamed you, he loved you always.  I only saw him weep the once, and he was the strongest man I ever knew.”

“They both lost their lives because of me.”

“Don’t blame yourself for that.  If they were given those choices again they would both do exactly the same thing.  I would do as they did if it would save you, or if it could have saved either of my boys.  That’s what it means to be a father or a mother.”

Again she looked away, her eyes flitting across the carefully tended lawns, one hand rubbing her belly.  “Oh!” she gave a little gasp of surprise as Santos emerged from between two bushes. 

“Santos, you old rogue,” Gregor greeted him good naturedly.  “Last to the party as always.”

The Steward of the Domain of the Helm flapped towards them on sandaled feet, holding his toga around him.  He glanced left and right as he crossed the lawn, as though fearful of stepping into the path of a cattle stampede.  “Greetings, your Majesties,” he bowed low.  “I heard a commotion, felt the wind of his Other Majesty’s arrival.  I could not tell what was going on.”

“So you hid in your hidey-hole?”  Gregor grinned.

Santos dropped his head shamefaced.  “I am not made for martial efforts, your Majesty.  Weak of both body and will, I do least harm by being absent.”

Niarmit reached out to him and gripped his hand.  “You need not fear the Kinslayer anymore, Santos, and I know you have been a better friend to my father than his manners will let him admit.”

Gregor’s eyebrows shot up at the rebuke and he muttered without ill-will, “your mother’s daughter.”

“The other majesties have banished King Chirard?” Santos made an incredulous question of a simple statement.

“It was the Vanquisher,” Gregor said with some pride.  “He has not banished Chirard, he has imprisoned him in stone, petrified here for all eternity.”

Santos went very pale.  “The Vanquisher is come, Eadran himself? From behind his wall of thorns?” 

“He has left his lodge and come again to this palace,” Gregor assured the disbelieving steward. “My daughter and I left him in conversation with his many descendants, he will still be in the Chamber of the Helm if you wish to bid him your own welcome.”

Gregor turned to point unnecessarily towards the winding steps that led from the garden to the palace.  “Oh, no need here he comes now.”

Niarmit followed her father’s gaze to see two figures approaching. The slim form of Thren was in the lead, still walking a little gingerly as the ravages of Chirard’s attack took time to submit to the Domain’s healing nature.  The Vanquisher loomed behind him, broad shoulders and a purposeful stride shortened only by the need to avoid treading on his descendant’s heels.  

“May we intrude,” Thren called as he stepped from the last stone slab onto the verdant lawn. 

“Of course,” Niarmit replied, standing to cross the lawn.   Her father followed.

“Queen Niarmit,” Eadran greeted her.  She gave a clumsy curtsy to the founder of her royal line.  He reached for her hand and bowed his head a fraction to kiss it.

“You are sure it is safe.” She had to check, for her own account, not just Santos’s.  “The Kinslayer, could he recover and free himself to unleash the revenge he must be plotting.”

Eadran gave a brisk impatient shake of his head.  “He is not injured, he has no wounds to heal, nor does he have the wits to think so he is not plotting anything.  He is a statue.  They don’t think.”

“A most effective means of subduing him,” Thren purred with an adulation that ill-suited the normally sober minded monarch.

“The only means that would work in this Domain anyway,” Eadran said before turning back to Niarmit.  “Now, I have met the other gathered monarchs but you, who I most came to see, you scuttled off before we could speak.”  There was reproach in the Vanquisher’s tone.

“My daughter and I had matters we needed to discuss,” Gregor spoke up for both of them.  “Steward Santos was also unaware until just now of your return.”

“Santos?” Eadran played with the name.  “You have seen Santos?”

“He is here.” Gregor stepped aside stretching out a hand to urge the Steward forward, but then found himself admitting, “well he was here.”

Niarmit too was baffled by the speed of Santos’s subtle disappearance. She looked from the space the steward had occupied to the Vanquisher standing at ease in the gardens of the world he had created.  Here was a king who could freely take the Helm from any of them, whose manner and behaviour showed how he owned this Domain, whose own grand-daughter Queen Mitalda had described him as a ‘murdering enslaving bastard servant of Maelgrum’  who had envisaged and created this blasphemous hell hole.  Despite his power, or perhaps because of it, he was not exactly a man she could freely trust. However, she asked herself, did she have any choice in the matter?

“May I ask a question, your Majesty?” she said.

The Vanquisher smiled.  “When everyone here holds that title, it loses the mark of distinction my dear.  Twenty-two monarchs and one steward, maybe we should be bowing to Santos, and not the other way around.”

Her smile in return did not reach her eyes.  She thought of the steward’s pale face and swift disappearance.

The Vanquisher clapped her companionably on the shoulder.  “Just call me Eadran, my dear.  It is my name and I seem to be the only bearer of it within this domain.  Now let fly with your question and let us see what mark it hits.”

“The protection of the Helm, it failed me when I was attacked by a horde of zombies. Why?”

“The risen dead?”  Eadran arched a flaming eyebrow.  “I had hoped that Maelgrum would not call on them too greatly.”

“He has hordes of necromancers trained to raise and marshal these undead armies.  Now that winter’s frost is well past, we suspect that he will send increasing numbers of unrested corpses against us.”

Eadran shrugged.  “The defensive dweomer of the bloodline magic is tuned and responds to living souls.  It cannot be triggered by the physical contact of mere animals, or by the animated shells of bodies separated from their souls.”

“It is still a clever piece of magic,” Thren said.

“It is more than clever,” Eadran snorted.  “It is a work of genius.”

“But it will not protect my body from the undead.”

“Touching the Helmwearer’s person will not harm them, but it will not harm you either.  A fall might injure you, but their teeth and blades could not penetrate your magical shield.  Provided you have the good sense to keep the Helm on your head and not stand at the edge of any clifftops, you are better protected than a knight in full plate.” Eadran replied.  “There are other ways to destroy the unrested dead, besides relying on the Helm’s defences to do it for you.”

Niarmit nodded.  “The Goddess’s blessing has despatched many of them to dust.”  She kept a steady eye on the Vanquisher.  “She is generous enough to grant me her grace still.”

There was a flicker of irritation, or something darker, behind Eadran’s eyes.  “I am sure you are much beloved of the Goddess, my dear, though she has yet to take the field in person against the Dark Lord.  I see she still prefers to work her will through the choices she imposes on others.”

“I should get back,” Niarmit said quickly.  “My body wears the Helm in my rooms at Karlbad, it would trouble my friends there if they thought me too long in a trance of helmwearing.”

“Indeed,” Thren concurred.  “But we need more certainty about your visits to this Domain.  You know how much it troubles us when you leave and do not return for days.”

“There is much to be planned,” Eadran insisted.  “Great strategy to be decided and implemented.”

“And I would speak with you again,” Gregor said.  “We have only scratched the surface of memories you have missed.”

It was her father’s plea which had the most appeal.

“I will return here,” Niarmit agreed.  “But, for now I must leave.”  Her three forebears of varying antiquity gave courteous bows each of a depth commensurate with their seniority. “I will be back,” she told them.  “Tomorrow.”