Lady Of The Helm (Book 1) (27 page)

Kimbolt could not help but crescent h
imself. “I had guessed as much, the magic anyway, though not the accident.”

Dema shrugged.  “One w
ould think a wizard could read, but it seems a spell can be written in many different and confusing languages. Still, my father was found of saying that everything happens for a reason and the way things turn out is the way they were probably meant to be.  Sitting here, in independent command of an elite band on a desparate mission I would have to say he was probably right.”

“Your father
?”

She looked at him squarely and he blinked in discomfort at the chill of her veiled g
aze.  “My father was a Captain, in the King’s guard.”

“He would be ashamed to see you now!” Her revelation drew a reflex of rebuke from Kimbolt and she in turn snap
ped her hand to the gauze mask, her mouth hardening in fury.

He looked away clenching his eyes shut even as she spo
ke with icy calm.  “He is dead and there is another of the King’s Captains who is not long for this world, unless he learns to keep a civil tongue in his head.”  With a rustle she was gone and only when he heard her voice barking impatient orders at a distance, did Kimbolt dare to look about him once more.

“Think, my Lady,” Feyril insisted at Niarmit’s shoulder.  “Can you not see what sense this makes of things which must have seemed strange even to you?”

Pale and shaken, Niarmit understood his meaning well enough.  “You ar
e saying that is why my father, why Matteus, was granted the province of Undersalve.”

“Indeed, that is the only reason why Gregor could pe
rsuade Bulveld to dismiss the claims of Xander and of Rugan’s kin.”

“Ol
d Bulveld knew? You knew? When was this?”

“At the court of We
rckib, just before the decision was made.”

“Who else
was privy to this vile slander?”

“Just Gregor, Bulveld and I. N
o-one else knew, no-one else has ever known.”

“My father, Matteus, did he know?
  Did Gregor tell him how he had been cuckolded, how he was given a province not for his military prowess but to secure a land and a living for a royal bastard?”  Niarmit railed against the neat explanation of events which this unwelcome news unlocked.  “No,” she cried.  “It is a lie, my mother, my mother….”

“You never knew your mother,” Feyril reminded her gently.  “S
he was a proud woman, but the prospects of an impoverished youngest daughter are never certain, no matter how noble the lineage.  Matteus gave her many things, but he was old and could never have given her the child she wanted.”

Niarmit laughed bitterly.  “Aye the child that cost her her life.”

“She thought the risk well worth the prize.”

“Are you sayi
ng she sought out this liaison, this fictitious affair, that she entertained any or all in hope of begetting a child?”

Feyril shook his head quickly before Niarmi
t’s ire.  “It happened Niarmit. The Lady Kopetcha was much sickened when carrying Prince Eadran, Gregor and your mother .. it…” The old elf struggled vainly to find excuses for an old infidelity.  “Human lives are complex.”

“It’s a story
Feyril, a sordid and unpleasant story.  Had any other lips than yours first uttered it, then be certain that the steel edge of my sword would have silenced the slander for ever.  There is no proof, there can be no proof for such lies.  My father, Matteus my father loved me as only one who sired me could.  I have eighteen years of memories to set against this ugly and dissembling fiction that you trumpet so.”

“Time and custom can breed the love you remember but the magic of the
bloodline cannot lie.  See.” Feyril drew an ornately jewelled Ankh from around his neck.  At its centre a great gem pulsated red then white with ferocious brightness.  “This you know is the Royal Ankh, borne by all the rulers of the house of Eadran and entrusted to me by Gregor but hours before he died.”

Niarmit gazed in wonderment at the jewel whose light cast sharp shadows on the whitewashed walls of the shack. “Touch it,” Feyril urged and instinctively Niarmit reached for the artefact.  When her fingers closed on it, she felt its warmth as though it were of living flesh not inert stone or metal.  But in the instant that she touched it the rhythmic pulsing stopped.  The gem glowed
with a constant rose pink hue, a colour that dimmed slowly into the simple sparkle of a precious stone.  At the same time the metal cooled until the item she held seemed nothing more than a well crafted coronation piece.

“What does it mean
?”

“T
he Ankh has acknowledged you. You are indeed Gregor’s heir third of his three children, and now the Ankh tracks the life of your heir.”

“My heir
?”

“The King’s brother,
perhaps Udecht, perhaps Xander who we believed lost or, if both those have perished it tracks Giseanne their sister and Princess of Medyrsalve.  Whoever it be it is no-one of your line.  You have no children. Of this much the Ankh makes me certain.”

“And if I had
?”

“Then the gem would glow red as long as they lived and breathed, just as it glowed red for your brothers Thren and Eadran and when they perished it glowed red for you.”
  While Niarmit gazed into the rose pink stone, Feyril gathered his arguments about him once again.  “Niarmit, the royal Ankh cannot lie.  The bloodline magic is the most powerful and enduring that Eadran the Vanquisher created.  You must now believe that you are Gregor’s daughter. You must now take on the mantle of Queen.  Ride to Sturmcairn while it still holds against the dread force of the enemy.  Wear the helm of Eadran. Wield it for it is the only weapon with the power to vanquish the evil one.”

“The ancient helm is a weapon? H
ow can that be?”

“The source and nature of its power is a mystery known only to those who have worn it and which they are forbidden to share,
but I myself have seen in ancient days how nations trembled at the power of the wearer of the helm.”

Niarmit shook her head defiantly.  “Feyril, in your long journey you must have left your wits some way behind.  You come with some elven bauble in imitation of the coronation Ankh that only kings would bear.  You tell me that my mother was a whore,” she stayed his protest with an u
praised hand.  “That my father, he who reared me, was a cuckold, my true father a philanderer.  That both he and two brothers I never knew I had are dead.  You would have me ride half way across the empire to wield a weapon you cannot describe against an enemy you will not name.  It is a story not worthy of belief.”

“But it is true!”

“Whether it is true or not it is not worthy of belief.  I have a better one to remember and since I am bound to leave this Petred Isle in a short while it is those memories I will take with me.  Your fanciful story you can keep.”

“You must believe me,” he cried at last.

Niarmit strode pointedly out into the dirt track which served Dwarfport as a street.  “In memory of dangers we once shared and of kindnesses you showed to my father, Prince Matteus, I leave you all I have in this land, to whit, this shack.  This is what all the dreams I once cherished have come to. I will not ride another such whirlwind of disapppointment.  You must excuse me, my Lord Feyril, suddenly the taverns of Dwarfport seem irresistible.”

Constable Kircadden was nervous.  The chill of the evening breeze bothered him less than the wind of rumour and uncertainty that had blown along the great Eastway these past few days.  His comfortable existance as the King’s officer in Listcairn seemed suddenly less secure. 

While others might gossip about the lighting of the beacons, or the latest talk of missing livestock in the woods of Kelsrik, Kircadden had more concrete reasons for fear.  It had been two days
since the half-elf had ridden through with her escort of lancers and their sombre load.  To Kircadden alone she had lifted the shroud to show the broken body of Prince Eadran, brought to his ruin by creatures of magic on the safest road in the realm.

The tro
op had stopped just to water horses and gather a few short hours of sleep before riding on across the River Saeth and towards the foothills of the Palacintas where Rugan’s province began.  Like every other message and emissary since the lighting of the beacons there had been no reply or return from their passage.

Kircadden wiped his balding pate an
d wished again that his command were the secure and homely posting it had once been. On the safest highway, at the border between the strongest provinces in the Petred Isle, Listcairn had always been a place of absolute security and safety.  Yet now, with unknown perils lurking in the woods to the West and a deafening silence from the hills to the East, Kircadden felt the awful loneliness of command.

Glafeld knew his customers and their habits well, so when the scrawny thief began drinking in the middle of the afternoon he was surprised.  The thief usually nursed a solitary pint of mead through a whole evening of quiet people watching and target marking; this consumption in short order of a variety of strong spirits was a significant departure from the norm.

However, the fat barkeep was not worried. 
Her boat was ready and if she wished to part with her spare cash before taking ship then his was as good an establishment as any to relieve her of it.  Perhaps, as the drink took hold, he might get the opportunity to repay a week old insult by throwing her out into the gutter as a parting shot.  She’d had the drop on him then, but he was prepared now, and the spring loaded blade within his sleeve was primed as ever for any emergency.

Not that Gl
afeld anticipated an emergency, he was on his own turf and entirely in command.  But then the elf walked in and Glafeld remembered how much he didn’t like elves.

It was a sombre procession which rode down the long tree lined avenue towards the palace of Laviserve.  At Quintala’s side, the corporal hefted the modest standard of the King’s Seneschal.  It was to have been the far grander ensign of the Heir to the Vanquisher’s throne which was carried aloft to herald their arrival, while two trumpeters would have sounded the royal salute.  However the trumpeters had been amongst the harpies’ victims, their broken bodies buried back at Listcairn.  The royal standard lay flaccid over the makeshift bier of crossed spears and lances, borne by the four troopers immediately behind the pensive half-elf.

Where the trees came to an end, t
he avenue turned a gentle right angle and the weary riders beheld the full splendour of Prince Rugan’s country palace.  The ornamental gardens were filled with the elegant plants of his mother’s homeland.  Beyond the intricate shrubs, in the shelter of a low hill, stretched the broad wings of the Medyrsalve mansion.  Its sinuous confluence of wood and stone, like its princely builder, blended elven and human design in an unsettling but fascinating architecture.

The guards at the main entrance arch, like those at the gatehouse, had be
en primed to expect them.  The Seneschal’s small party made its mournful way into the palace’s inner courtyard to the accompaniment of sword salutes rather than bureaucratic challenges.   Quintala dismounted at the main entrance and was met by the grim visaged trooper she had sent on ahead. 

“All is ready ma’am, they are in the receiving room,” he announced with a crisp salute.

“Thank you, Sergeant Jolander.”  The troop’s lieutenant, like the trumpeters, lay in the graveyard at Listcairn leaving Jolander as the senior officer in their reduced band.  In the days since the disaster, Quintala had been grateful for the sergeant’s dour efficiency.

Behind them the
lancers dismounted and the designated pall bearers took up their burden before following Sergeant and Seneschal.  They walked the broad arched corridor to the gilded room where Rugan habitually met all visitors.    It was a long passage lined with nervous people two ranks deep.  Rugan’s long reign had been an exercise in keeping his friends close and his enemies closer.  The remoteness of his splendid palace meant that all involved in the business of government must reside at the palace.  There they were ever under the close and inescapable scrutiny of the Prince and his network of well informed servants, all entirely dependent on Rugan for food and favour, entertainment and employment. Quintala was not sure whether it was her own arrival, or her half-brother’s spies that inspired the nervous glances and occasional twitches from the gathering crowd.

At the end of the corridor two flunkeys pushed open the o
rnate double doors and, for the first time in two centuries, Quintala was formally received by her half-brother.  They had met on many occasions at ceremonies as diverse as the Great Court at Werckib to decide the fate of Undersalve or, more recently, at King Gregor’s coronation.  The Prince of Medyrsalve was one of the great magnates of the Petred Isle, to be humoured and honoured as the occasion required.  However, the half-siblings’ meetings had never been brotherly.  The Prince exuded a coldness bordering on resentment with every greeting.  Until his sister’s birth, Rugan had been the only half-elf in this or any other empire and Quintala fancied that breaking the bubble of his uniqueness had pricked her brother’s vanity more deeply than he would admit.