Master Of The Planes (Book 3) (45 page)

The horse was fretful, shifting from hoof to hoof and braying at the air in its eagerness to be off.  Elise felt less secure on its back and even the pair of lancers that Kaylan had assigned to be her escort did little to ease her racing heart.  She had sought out this mission, demanded it even.  However, it was different now that she faced the reality of a frantic gallop across the soft marsh of southern Medyrsalve. 

She turned in the saddle to look down at her little send off party.  The brothers Mag and Glim-ap-Bruin leant on their battle axes and gave her an appraising eye.  There was no sign of the thief turned general.

“Don’t let him do anything stupid,” she told the dark haired dwarf.

Mag blew out a long breath. “This is Kaylan-ap-Stonehelm we’re talking about.  A man I first met when I was dragging him from beneath a pile of fully armed orcs who he had charged wearing nothing more than boiled leather and waving a blade I wouldn’t deign to use as a toothpick.  I think our general’s capacity for stupidity goes quite beyond my powers of restraint.”   

“Aye but it was a woman that drove him to it, a red headed lady that he has a certain feeling…”  Glim’s grinning observation ended in an abrupt muffled woosh as Mag’s elbow found his solar plexus.

Elise smiled away the elder dwarf’s clumsy consideration.  “I know he values Queen Niarmit’s views above all others.  That’s why I want the weight of her voice behind my argument.”

“Lavisevre is ten days hard riding ahead of ye, and as many back again.” Mag whistled softly.  “You’ll not have much change from the month‘s grace Vezer Khan gave to consider his offer.”

“Khan’s impatience doesn’t worry me,” Elise said.  “Kaylan’s does.”

“I’ll do my best to keep him in check,” Mag assured her.  “There’s still orcs enough to slay, without him having to rattle sabres with Khan or his putative allies.”

There was a scatter of stones on the mountain path behind them.   The dwarves and lancers reached for their weapons, only to stay their hands when the saw the white habit of Prior Abroath rounding the last outcrop of rock.  “A blessing for a sorceress,” he exclaimed reaching up to grasp Elise by her forearms.  “I’m sorry I nearly missed you, but I am come to wish you joy in your embassy.”

“Your prayers for our success would be most welcome, father.”

Half a laugh sounded in his throat and he gave her an amused smile.  “I had thought you were estranged from the Goddess, my dear.”

It was her turn to grin, albeit with a darker expression than the prior’s perennial sunblest countenance. “I will take my allies wherever I can find them, father.  Forsaken deities and faltering nomads alike, all are welcome beneath my banner.”

“I am sure the Goddess will be pleased that you are so accommodating, Mistress Elise.”

She gave a nervous laugh and a nod in the direction of the two dwarves.  “These two Bruins are not sure of holding our general in check.  They think his stupidity might extend beyond their reach.”

Abroath’s gave her a thoughtful frown.  “And you are hoping I might lend my voice to theirs?”

She shook her head.  “His leg still troubles him, but he won’t rest properly, or take his ease.”

“He wants to impress the queen, to win back her province and her people.”

Elise gave a broad sweep of her arm towards the land beyond the mountains.  “These aren’t the queen’s people.  They’re Kaylan’s and he is so desperate to make her a gift of Undersalve that he does not see how important he is to them, how much and how many depend on him.”

“Aye,” Mag-ap-Bruin nodded.  “He is become a greater talisman than the wee lass on her distant throne.  Always in the forefront of any action.”

“It seems to me,” Glim stroked his beard thoughtfully, keeping a watchful eye on his brother’s elbow.  “That there may be one amongst us for whom our longshanks has acquired a more than ordinary importance.”  He stepped lightly out of the way of Mag’s jabbing arm, only to stifle a cry of pain as Mag trod heavily on his booted foot.

A hot blush inflamed Elise’s cheeks.  She knew the emotion would only scrawl a ridiculous marbled mottling across her pock marked face.  “He is important to all of us,” she said.  “And his loyalty, his heart even, is given entirely to the queen.”

The more senior lancer coughed a discrete impatience.  Abroath gave Elise’s hand a squeeze.  “We will do our best to keep Kaylan safe, my dear.  Until you return.”

“I’m not asking for myself, father,” she insisted.  “His fate matters to everyone.”

The prior nodded, and spoke softly in a voice free of guile.  “I know and I understand.  And, whether you believe in her or not, the Goddess does too.”

“What do you mean, ‘he’s gone?’”  Quintala looked up sharply at the outlander captain.

Willem shrugged.  “Just that, Lady Quintala.”

The half-elf dropped the sheaf of papers on the desk.  The dry returns of total men, orcs and zombies available for combat suddenly lost what little draw they had on her quicksilver curiosity.  “Even a little wizard doesn’t just disappear.”  The words mocked her even as she uttered them.    Of course Odestus could disappear.  He, like she, had learned much from Maelgrum of the opening of gates.  The question would be what clues there might be as to where he had gone.

“Get Haselrig, bring him here,” she barked.  If the ex-antiquary had any hope of being useful to her, now was the time to show it.  To prove he had gleaned more than a thick head in his efforts to wheedle his way into Odestus’s confidences.

“He’s gone too.”  The outlander’s reply was flat and unemotional.  His neutral tone was either ennui or an effort to avoid sparking an outburst of fury from the temperamental half-elf.  

“Gone!”  Quintala slammed a fist against the desk.  “Gone.  How did you let that happen?”

“You didn’t tell me to watch Haselrig as well.”

“Do I have to tell you everything?  Where’s your fucking initiative?”

Willem stood still and impassive, a rock against which Quintala’s rage washed and receded.  She ran a hand through her silver hair.  “When were they last seen?”

“Yesterday evening, when you were touring the orc encampments.  Vezer Dev saw them walking together.”

“Where, where were they going?”

Willem’s eyes flicked upwards towards the castellan’s chamber which lay above the one he had surrendered to the half-elf.  Quintala felt a sudden cold dread grip her heart.  Maelgrum had given her one task, one task above all others.  Keep Odestus away from Dema’s body.

She was out of the door before the big outlander could move a muscle.  She heard him lumbering after her as she took the staircase between the floors three steps at a time, dancing with effortless grace up the tightly wound spiral.  Her finger was trembling as she traced the secret glyph to release the master’s magical lock.

A wave of cold blasted over her as the door swung open.  That part of the enchantment was intact at least.  It had been laziness on her part to delegate the tedious task of daily visits to Haselrig, disobedience to have shown him the way to open Maelgrum’s lock.  She took a deep breath and hoped these errors might not haunt her night-time conversation with the master. 

The room looked exactly as she had left it, the shrouded form on its bier.  She stepped inside.  If this was indeed where the two missing men had gone, there was no sign that they remained or that they had taken anything.  The floor was covered with a fine layer of hoarfrost, and there were footprints two different sizes of feet, leading in and out. 

The smaller footed one had stood by the bier.  Quintala stepped in the trail and pulled back the shroud.  She hadn’t realised she had been holding her breath until relief and lightheadedness forced her to inhale.  All was as it should be, no harm had been done.

“What did they want in here?”  Willem asked from the doorway. 

Quintala’s shoulders twitched in a momentary shrug.  “Maybe they just wanted to look, maybe they were saying goodbye.”

“Where would they go?”

Quintala shook her head.  “Who knows?” She flung the shroud impatiently back over the dead woman’s face.  There was a double clatter as two objects slipped from the bier to the frosty floor.  Quintala looked in surprise at the black discs and then bent to retrieve them.  Two of the master’s medallions.  She held them up by their lanyards, offering them to Willem for the outlander’s inspection.   “What do you think these mean?”

He gave her a wary frown. “I don’t know, Lady Quintala,” he claimed.

She rubbed the two black discs over each other in the palm of her hand.  “Put simply, Willem, it means that both Odestus and Haselrig have resigned from the master’s service.”

“I didn’t think you could do that, Lady Quintala.”

She smiled.  “You can’t Willem, no-one can.”

The outlander absorbed this information with a pensive frown.  “I’ll get search parties after them, wolf riding orcs should catch up with them quick enough.”

“Excellent idea.”  Quintala nodded her approval for a proposal she knew could never work.  “You get on with that, Willem.”

The outlander was through the door before he stopped and turned to enquire, “Which direction should I send them in?”

“And there, my sharp witted outlander friend,” she congratulated him. “Right there you have hit upon the nub of the problem.  Which direction indeed?”

Willem glowered uncomfortably, waiting for the half-elf to answer her own question. Quintala scowled.  The reach of the gate spell was anywhere that the little wizard had ever been and seen in his life.  She knew he had been a merchant in his public life, and a student of wizardry in his private illegal life, that much had become clear at his trial.  The scroll with which he had so disastrously enchanted Dema had been purchased on a trip to the Eastern Lands, beyond Salicia.  If he and Haselrig had chosen this moment to flee the master’s service then Odestus could have carried them a thousand leagues or more.   Not far enough to be safe, but far enough to significantly delay pursuit.

Willem coughed.  “Two short old men, they can’t be moving that quickly.  I am sure we could track them down.  Which way would they have gone?”

“I expect they have already strayed beyond the sight and reach of your riders, Willem.”  Quintala jangled the medallions against each other.

“What will you tell the master?”

“The truth.  That they have deserted him.” 

“And what should I tell anyone else that asks?”

“The same as we told them about Galen, that they are despatched on the master’s business.  That should stifle any unwise questions, or tempt the faint hearts of any other would-be deserters.”

Hepdida followed her cousin through the gardens of Lavisevre trying to keep the petulant frustration from her voice.  “I don’t understand,” she wailed.

“You don’t have to understand,” Niarmit snapped a response over her shoulder.

“One day the most important thing is to get to the Gap of Tandar and foil whatever Quintala has got planned and then the next day you suddenly have to fly to Nordsalve. It makes no sense.”

“You were there in council, you heard as well as I did.”

Hepdida quickened her step, closing the short distance between them so she could lay a hand on Niarmit’s arm.  “Please wait.”

At last the queen stopped, shifting the weight of the knapsack on her back as she turned to face her cousin.  Hepdida tried to catch her cousin’s eye, but Niarmit’s gaze flicked restlessly to left and right never alighting for more than a second on the princess’s face.  “It didn’t sound so bad to me,” Hepdida insisted.  “Johanssen and Torsden had just asked Isobel when the reinforcements were due.  No need for you to go at all, still less to set off hours earlier than you had told them you would.”

“They sense a threat, I should be there not here.”  

Hepdida frowned.  The words lacked Niarmit’s usual certainty. It was less a statement of conviction, more an attempt to convince.

“And what of Quintala and the threat she poses?”

“I can’t be everywhere.  I made a mistake coming here, that is all.”

The princess bit her lip.  “The last time you left me here while you went gallivanting off to Nordsalve it nearly ended badly, very badly for both of us.”

Niarmit waved her cousin’s concerns aside. “tsk, that was then.  We’ve discussed this already.  You are safer here now behind the wards Rugan has laid, than anywhere else in the whole Salved Kingdom. And I am not about to journey across some frozen wasteland under the eye of hostile orcs, but am taking passage through a gate directly from one fortress to another.”

“But such haste.” Hepdida shook her head as the queen stepped back, itching to be on her way.  “What are you running from, Niarmit?”

The queen went pale. “I am not running, at least not from anything.  If I take the gate to Karlbad I am a two day ride from Colnhill.   Here I am five days away.  I think even you might see how those sums add up.”

Hepdida took a step back at the rebuke, but there was a brittle edge to the rare scorn in her cousin’s voice.  “What’s worrying you, Niarmit?”  She demanded. “Tell me.”

“Nothing, Hepdida.” The queen swung away, impatient strides taking her towards the raised council chamber in the middle of Rugan’s gardens.  “Nothing except a pressing need to be elsewhere, as I have explained.”

“To be elsewhere, or to be alone.” Hepdida called after her.  “Why are you going there alone?”

Niarmit swung round.  Her shoulders slumped in weariness, but her hand combed fretfully through her red hair. “Must I explain everything?  There is no point in challenging Sorenson’s gate with more traffic than we need.  Extra souls passing through may dissolve it entirely, while we still may have need of it.”

“You are a queen, you should not travel alone.”

“I’m used to ‘alone’ it has been my companion through long years in Undersalve stalking the invaders.”

“That was then, this is now.”  Hepdida found she had stamped her foot.  “It does not become a queen to dart here and there on her own on a whim.”

“And it does not become a servant girl turned princess to give lectures to her monarch.”

Hepdida glared back at her cousin, silent but defiant. She had irked Niarmit enough times to know her different moods, the times she had been disappointed, or annoyed, or furious.  There was some other motivation lurking here, a tremble to her lip, a flicker of eyelashes as she blinked a little faster than before.  Anxiety? Some gut wrenching anxiety?  “What’s the matter Niarmit?”

“Nothing, beyond what I’ve already told you a dozen times.  Now I have to go.”

“I’ll come with you.” 

“No!”  Niarmit’s vehemence startled both of them.  Hepdida covered her mouth with her hand; The queen looked abashed.

“I’ll see you on your way then.”

Niarmit shook her head.  “No, we say our goodbyes here.  You’ll be safe here, keeping Andros entertained and Giseanne will be glad of the company.  You’ll enjoy it.  Now let me go, Hepdida.  Please, no more arguing.  I can’t…”  She looked away at the trees of Rugan’s garden frothy now with summer blossom. “Just let me go.  I have to do this and do it by myself.”

“You don’t have to be alone.”

“I do.  I always have.  Now goodbye.”  She spread her arms to invite a parting hug.   Hepdida returned her cousin’s embrace with interest, squeezing her tight.  Niarmit pulled back and straightened some wayward seam on Hepdida’s dress. 

“There,” she said.  “You’ll be fine.”  And then she turned and was gone, leaping up the steps to the raised council chamber two at a time.