Master Of The Planes (Book 3) (71 page)

“But you must know.  You made the thing.”

To any casual observer, the queen was simply seated resting against a tree trunk gathering a few minutes of rest in the midst of the endless retreat.  Though that same casual observer might also wonder at the fact that she chose the Helm of the Vanquisher as a midday eye mask.  In her own thoughts though, Niarmit was wholly in the Domain of the Helm and impatient with its creator’s prevarication.

“You must know,” she repeated.  “The ankh tracks the life of my heir, you must know a way to find out who that heir is.  Hepdida or Giseanne?”

The Vanquisher scowled back at her.  “To fashion just one device that senses and responds to the degrees of kinship would be a remarkable feat, my dear girl,” he said.  “To have made four of them is an achievement that beggars belief.  Maelgrum himself could not have done so much.  I am not used to having my craft in the art upbraided, still less by one who has not the skill to tie her own shoelaces without touching them.”

“I do not doubt your skill as a mage and an artificer,” Niarmit said reigning in her own temper.  “I just want some means to interrogate the device more closely.”

“You speak of a miracle that can find and rank and track the faintest drop of blood across a thousand leagues or more.  Miracles do not take well to interrogation.”

“I understand my daughter’s concern,” Gregor weighed in on her behalf.  “I found I had lost two sons through the flaring of the ankh, and it was the ankh that then told me Niarmit lived still.  It is a cruel tease to not know for whom the ankh glows.”

Eadran gave a haughty sneer.  “The ankh goes first white before it glows for a new heir, you know that well enough, Gregor.  In my design I had thought my heirs would pay more close attention to the messages that my magic gave them.”

“I was in the battle with the medusa,” Niarmit reminded him, rising from the throne in her fury. “There was not the opportunity to examine the colour changes of your bauble when the abomination had her sword to my belly.”

“Bauble! My bauble?”

Thren stood too, spread splayed hands waving down the strain of conflict.  “Niarmit’s anxiety is understandable.  Perhaps there is some spell would set her mind at rest.  An opening in the planes might allow her to travel to her cousin’s side.   There is no reassurance like the evidence of her own eyes.”

Eadran sniffed.  “That would suffice, if we knew where her cousin stood or lay, and if that were some place I knew well enough myself to cast a gate spell to it.”

Niarmit’s hopes had risen at Thren’s suggestion, and could not be entirely quenched by the ice-cold indifference of the Vanquisher.  “You know the gap of Tandar, there will be soldiers there from whom we could seek news.”

Eadran wafted the proposal away.  “I did not think we had the time too spare for such purely personal enquiry, not when matters of state press upon us, in the person of Maelgrum hard on our heels.”

He glared round at the mute assembly of monarchs before turning back to Niarmit.  “I had thought,” he went on.  “That your return to us, which let us not forget is overdue as it is, was so we could discuss the conduct of this war which you seem so intent on losing.  You shackle your army to the snail’s pace of a multitude of fleeing peasants.  You put a few days of jolting discomfort to the doomed and dying above the urgent need for speed.  And then, when you come here to hear our counsel, you will take no heed of it and instead make demands to know who stands to inherit the crown you are doing so little to safeguard. ”

“Niarmit has done more to confound the enemy than any of us ever have or ever could,” Thren said in soft rebuke.

“I did not burn in a pyre of thorns for you to come here and insult my daughter,” Gregor added in a tone devoid of deference to the founder of his line.

Eadran looked from one descendant to the other, with a scowl upon his face.  “You asked for my aid, Gregor and I came.  I am not some lackey to dance to anyone’s beck and call.  I am no slave to another’s bidding.  I am not Santos.  You have all of me, my art, my knowledge, my advice, or you have none of me.”

“”I would have all of you, save the attitude,” Gregor replied.

“That,” Eadran told him.  “Is as much a part of me as my name, Eadran, Eadran the Vanquisher.  I have not heard that sobriquet appended to the names of Thren or Gregor.” He sniffed, glaring round at the silent company and then strode from the hall.

The long silence was broken by Lady Mitalda.  “I will go after him,” she said.  “My father always said he had a quick temper but one that faded fast too.  All it would take was a little massaging of his sense of self-worth.”

“You’d need bigger hands to massage that, my lady,” Gregor called after her as she made to follow her grandfather from the room.  “You’d better bid him work on his manners too, though they are so shrunken I doubt you could find them without an eye glass.”

Mitalda paused in the archway.  “I know he has faults, by the Goddess my father told me enough of them, but he is right in two things at least.  He is the greatest sorcerer that ever sat upon our throne and he is the only one who has ever defeated Maelgrum.  We will not win this war without his aid.”

“Indeed,” Thren agreed.  “But neither will he win it without our aid.  Perhaps you could impress that thought upon him while you massage his ego.”

“And search for his manners,” Gregor added.

Mitalda gave them both a weak smile before hurrying away.

Niarmit slumped back on the gilded throne.  “Eadran is right on a third point too.” It pained her to make the admission.  “We do not have the time to spare for purely personal affairs.”

“Niarmit, your Majesty.” A voice from outside the Helm beckoned for her attention.  She shifted her focus to the material world and there stood Kimbolt.  The sight of the seneschal did not please her.

“What is it?” she said.

“Take off the Helm.”

“Why?”

“I do not like it when I cannot see your eyes.”

“Your other lover said much the same, before she ran me through,” Niarmit snarled. “Or should I say your other other lover?”  It was so easy to hurt him, to hurt him as she wanted to hurt herself, for the wrong she couldn’t help but do whenever she tried to do what was right.  Eadran cruel gifted general that he was, was right.  Johanssen the dying constable she had not the strength to heal, was right. It was folly to try to save everyone and in that moment of bleak realisation Kimbolt ambled, an ill-timed conductor for her scathing self-reproach.

Kimbolt sighed wearily.  “Please, Niarmit.  Take off the Helm.”

“Why?”

“Because I would speak to you in private, without all your ancestors bearing witness to our conversation.”

She was stunned into silence and even when her surprise at his awareness faded, her mouth still would not work to question how he had come by his knowledge.

He nodded.  “Aye, I know you cannot speak of it.  I know none who wear the Helm can tell another of its secrets.  But I have not worn the helm, and I have heard from Haselrig what dark magic is at the heart of that thing.”  He tilted his head to one side. “How many of them sit there, looking at me through your eyes, Niarmit?  How many of them do you want to hear what I have to say?”

She snatched the artefact from her head and glared at him.  “There is nothing we need to say, Kimbolt.” She struggled to tired feet, pushing herself up against the tree trunk and waving away Kimbolt’s support.  “This is not the time.”

“I did not ride apace across half the Petred isle in search of you for no small purpose.”

“I am grateful for the swords you brought,” she said stiffly. “You are a most dutiful, Seneschal.”

“I did not do it for duty,” he said.

“That does not change the nature of my gratitude.”

“There are secrets and lies to be discussed and uncovered.”

“Maybe there are, Kimbolt, maybe there are but not here not now.”

“Yes, now.”

“No.”

“Maia, she…”

Niarmit’s hand shot up, her finger shook a warning in the seneschal’s face. “Do not speak of that woman.”  The ferocity of her tone silenced Kimbolt for the taking of a breath and when she saw his lips part to speak again she cried out.  “No, not now. Not here.”

“Then when? Then where?”

“I don’t know, but when I do I’ll seek you out.”

He shook his head. “For a clever woman you can be incredibly stupid.”

“For a dutiful subject you can be incredibly insolent.”

Jay read the note.  Kimbolt was watching him.  He read it twice and then folded it closed.  He gulped and looked at the seneschal’s face.  “Did she say anything, anything else besides… besides this?”  He gave a small wave of the folded paper.

Kimbolt shrugged.  “She said she’d said it all in the note.”

“It wasn’t a very long note.”  Jay looked away.  The image of Hepdida’s face floated before him, the laughter in her eyes above the scars on her cheeks.  The ever shifting hues of the paler central streak, in the midst of her jet black hair. 

“She said she wasn’t angry anymore,” Kimbolt told him.

Jay kicked a stone.  “They were just words. I just said some words. Words shouldn’t have made her angry.  Not mad angry like that.  I didn’t mean anything by it, not really.”

The seneschal shrugged.  “They were your words, Jay, whatever you meant by them.”

“Do you think I’ll see her again, when this is all over.  Do you think she’ll see me?”

Kimbolt looked away to the west where the sky was red with the setting Sun.  “I hope so, Jay.”

“I’d like to see her again.  I really want to see her again,” Jay frowned surprised at himself.  “It hurts, you know.  Wanting to see her and not seeing her. It hurts. It really hurts.”

The senseschal was silent for a moment, glaring towards the setting sun.  He swallowed and said, “I know it does.”

Jay followed the seneschal’s gaze towards the western horizon.  “Do you think we can outrun them?”

Kimbolt shook his head.

“So there’s going to be a battle?”

Kimbolt nodded.

“A big one?”

“The biggest.”

“And can we win it?”

“I don’t know. Jay.”

“Will he be there, Maelgrum, that is?”

“Probably.  I expect he’d want to be there.”

“I made a promise,” Jay said. “A promise to myself.  I told Simeon and Travis, but they’re dead now.  But it’s still a promise.”

“We’ve all made promises we couldn’t keep, Jay,” Kimbolt told him.  “We do it in good faith, but sometimes our power falls short of our intentions.”

“I mean to keep this one, if there’s a battle.”

“What promise did you make, Jay?”  There was a touch of weariness in the seneschal’s question.

“I promised to kill him, to kill Maelgrum.  That bastard made me hate my father before they killed him, and made me let my father know I hated him, his last sight of me.  I’m going to kill the bastard for that.” He broke off as Kimbolt seized his arm and shook him.

“You fool,” the seneschal said.  “Do you think you are the only one with a grievance that great?  Do you think you have the power to strike him down?”

“I mean to make the attempt.  Let go.  That’s hurting.”

Kimbolt shook his head.  “You are a boy, Jay, full of boyish pride and you think that is armour enough to make you invincible.  It is not. There are a thousand other equally proud corpses across the plains of Morsalve.” He have a dry humourless laugh.  “I daresay some of them even walk in Maelgrum’s army of the undead.”

“I’m not a boy.”

“You are, Jay, you are.  And there is a girl you want to see, and I think she wants to see you too.  Hate and pride are not strong enough weapons to bring Maelgrum down.”

Jay sat, sulkily silent.  Kimbolt let go his arm.  “Where in the army do you serve?”

Jay shrugged.  “I was a messenger for Constable Johanssen, but he has no need of me now.   I’ve ridden with Lord Torsden too, but there are no horses to spare for the likes of me.”  He sniffed.  “I was just going to grab a spear and stand in line with the rest.”

“You should stand with the elves,” Kimbolt said.

Jay looked at him warily.  “Why them?”

“Because the only ones that came in any order from Bledrag Field and from Proginnot were the elves.”

“Those were battles we lost,” Jay said.  “Do you think we’re going to lose this one then?”

“Unless someone finds a way to kill Maelgrum, I don’t see how we can do anything else.” 

The Chamber of the Helm was all but full.  Only two seats remained untaken.  Even Santos had slipped unwitnessed onto his humble wooden chair.  But still there was no answer to Niarmit’s question.

“How can Maelgrum be destroyed?”  She asked it again.

The Vanquisher had retaken his seat but without showing much inclination to contribute to the debate.

“We have the swords,” the Dragonsoul ventured.  “They will cut through anything.  I clove the archduke’s shield of dragon scales in two when I was but a strappling wielding The Son.  I fancy Maelgrum’s arms come off as easy as any man’s.  After all what is he but a walking corpse and what spells could he cast without hands?”

“But we would have to get so close to wield the swords,” portly Gregor whimpered.

“That’s how a sword works,” Bulveld the Third leaned in to tell him with a grin. “You have to get close enough to stick it in him.”

The words were enough to draw a squeak of alarm even without the sharp dig of an elbow in the nervous Gregor’s ribs.   The man whom history had called mad because of the Kinslayer’s curse dabbed at his mouth with a lace handkerchief.  “Can we not shoot him from a distance?”

Mitalda sniffed and with a flick of her fingers conjured a shimmering shield of shifting colours before her.  “If I can protect myself so easily,” she said.  “Then I doubt the Dark Lord will be much discomforted by bolts and arrows.”

“Then we go up close,” the Dragonsoul insisted.  “Make this personal.  Cut him down. There’s never been a man I’ve laid low as has ever got up again.”

“He’s not a man though,” Niarmit said.  “And he’s already dead.”

“So it may take a little longer.”  The Dragonsoul was unfazed.  “But we have the Helm’s protection against his spells and strikes while my sword craft dismembers him.”

“The Helm availed us not one wit with that dreadful snake lady,” the timorous Gregor wailed. “She was dead and yet she laid plenty of blows upon us.”

“That was different.” Niarmit said.  She nodded towards the statue of the Kinslayer immobile at the back of the chamber.  “When Chirard usurped my body and duelled with Maelgrum, the Dark Lord’s spells did not touch us, not at first.  Though the Kinslayer’s struck home at him.”   She closed her eyes, remembering the scene in the plaza at the crest of Morwencairn.  “He made Maelgrum kneel, he wounded him and drained him and the Dark Lord knelt.”

“Then it will be with spells that we defeat him,” Mitalda said briskly.

“A blade is more certain,” the Dragonsoul replied.  “I have always trusted the strength and speed of my sword arm and it never failed me.”

“That is your answer to everything, brother,” Danlak drawled from the second rank of thrones.  “If you can’t eat it or bed it, hack at it with a sword.”  Their father Thren the Second shook his head as the Dragonsoul’s younger brother warmed to his theme. “You cannot comprehend what spell craft can do.  You never had the patience to study the art, did you?  Too busy playing with your swords and your armour.”

“Aye, little brother, and that won me an empire, an empire that all your knowledge of sorcery could not help you hold,” came the intemperate response.

“Let us not argue,” mild Thren the Seventh urged.  He gave the Dragonsoul a respectful nod.  “While we may have need of your martial prowess, Niarmit’s testimony is clear.  If the Kinslayer’s spells could cow the Dark Lord then think what all of our craft delivered in concert could accomplish.  There are ten amongst us who have some significant skills in sorcerous combat.  Surely combined we could wreak more havoc than Chirard did alone.”

“It was a momentary advantage,” Niarmit said.  “Before Maelgrum found some counter spell that could penetrate even within the Helm.  It hurt me, both here and in the material world and he forced Chirard to flee in defeat.”

“Then we must be swift,” Mitalda said.  “We must unleash our full power upon him while he is still gathering himself.  Leave him no time to retaliate.”

The Vanquisher shifted in his seat and stood.  All eyes turned to the founder of their line, waiting for his contribution, but Edaran said nothing.  He sucked in a breath, rubbed a hand over his jaw, and walked pensively round to the statue of Chirard.  He gave the Kinslayer’s petrified form an appraising look. 

“You say this fool drove Maelgrum to his knees with his spellcraft?”  He directed the question with a brief glance in Niarmit’s direction.

She nodded.

“Then he is more of a fool than I could ever have thought.”

“Insane certainly,” the timorous Gregor wobbled a few chins.  “But I never thought him a fool. Too cunning surely for that, too cunning and too skilled.”

The Vanquisher speared him with a look.  “Less foolish than you maybe, but a fool nonetheless.”

“But he hurt Maelgrum,” Mitalda weighed in on the side of the downcast monarch.

Eadran graced his granddaughter with a more indulgent shake of the head than he had spared his more distant descendant. He stroked the statue’s stony cheek and pressed a finger against its open mouthed cry. “Chirard was a fool.  Casting magic from within the domain opens a channel, a pathway to allow the energy to flow out.  For just an instant energy can flow back in, a spell caster can strike back in here.”

Mitalda frowned.  “I have cast spells through the Helm in centuries gone by, lending my aid to Bulved and to Thren in their conquest of the Eastern Lands.  We faced many mages then, but none of them struck back as Niarmit says Maelgrum did.  If the Helm has a weakness why was it not exposed then?”

Bulveld the Third and Thren the Fifth both nodded their agreement and their endorsement for Mitalda’s contribution.

“It is not an unforeseen weakness it is a necessary aspect of the design,” Eadran sighed.  “Those eastern wizards you fought would have been inexpert in the ways of the planes.  They would never have realised the extraplanar origins of the magic with which you assailed them. Maelgrum however is not just an expert, but the expert. He is the Master of the Planes and to attack him from here with spellcraft is to open yourselves to a riposte which will destroy you.  Admittedly not a permanent fate for most of you,” he swung an arm to point at Niarmit.   “But it will destroy her, utterly, both here and in her plane.”

“It took him time to find the range, the effort weakened him.  Time as Mitalda says when we could strike him down.”  Niarmit clutched at straws.  Feyril had spoken so forcefully of the power of the Helm of the unwearying magic it could dispense at any enemy.  To think that potential rendered impotent was too cruel a blow after the hope she had invested in the artefact. 

“He was only weakened because he had to use nearly all his strength and spread his power across virtually all the infinite planes in the hope that some of it would strike home at you here.”  Eadran sighed.  “What you felt when this statueseque fool assaulted Maelgrum was but one tiny fraction of the Dark Lord’s power.  But that element which struck home, will have resonated for him like a bell.  He will have learned.  He will remember.” The Vanquisher shook his head.  “He will know where in the planes to focus his power to strike at us here.  He will be waiting for the second we give him an opening with an unwise spell cast.”

“It nearly killed me before.”

“And if we cast a spell against him again, he will kill you for sure, and that will be an end to all our hopes of defeating him.”

“So we cannot cast a spell at him, not from here.”

“But provided we show that restraint,” the Dragonsoul pounced.  "Then the protection of the Helm will hold good while we trust in the virtues of sword craft.”  For emphasis he brought his fist crashing down on the arm of his throne, clearly sorry that it was only white stone he struck rather than Maelgrum’s blackened skull.

“An admirable ambition, my great-great-grandson,” Eadran congratulated him.  “But before you seek to take him apart, let me ask what you know of Maelgrum’s history?”

The Dragonsoul looked around the assembled company straining with a deficiency in historical knowledge as great as his shortcomings in spellcraft.  Thren the Seventh supplied an answer in his soft eastern twang. “You told us he was known once as Zeln a mage of the Monar Empire.”

Eadran nodded.  “Aye, he came to the court of the Monar Empire calling himself Zeln.   He was a skilled sorcerer then and served two decades as a mage of the empire before it fell.  But that was not the name he was born with, nor was sorcery his first line of employment.”  The Vanquisher paused for effect, savouring the naked curiosity of his descendants.  “He was born far in the East, where the empire never held sway.  His name then was, Usna he whom legend called Usna the Marshal.”

The Dragonsoul paled at the name.

Mitalda frowned, her lips moved in some unspoken thought. ”But Usna lived a century before the empire fell.  He could not have been this man. Why that would mean Zeln was a hundred and twenty years old when the empire fell.”

Eadran nodded.  “That is what drew him to the art in the first place, the desire to extend and lengthen his life.  And where better to continue his studies of how to extend his span of days, than within the very empire he had once fought so hard.  He sought out learning to enhance his craft, but even the days he had stolen by wizardry could not last forever, and death chased him still.  And that is when he chose the path and the form he now inhabits.”

“But you see, within Maelgrum walks Zeln, last archmage of the Monar Empire, and within Zeln walks Usna greatest swordsman of his age.  Not so confident in the power of your sword play now my bold scion?”

“So you are saying,” Niarmit’s father growled. “That Maelgrum is both a great sorcerer and an incomparable swordsman.”

Eadran gave a slight moue of acquiescence.  “He was and is the original warrior mage.  Victory over him will not come easily by spell or swordplay and even then destroying him would be another matter.”

“This seems to be little more than a counsel of despair,” the Dragonsoul grumbled.  “I will trust my sword arm in combat with any man, living or dead.  I doubt dead sinews will answer the will of Usna as well as they did in his youth and I am sure my brothers and sisters in the Helm can lend my blows enough weight to shatter a corpse’s body.”

“Your courage does you credit,” Eadran admitted.  “Though I am less sure your confidence is well placed.  There is a way to defeat him, once we have denuded him of his armies of course, and that is an equally pressing matter.”

“Destroying Maelgrum is the priority,” Niarmit insisted.  “If we cannot destroy him, then defeating his armies will avail us little.  If we can destroy him then it gives hope that if not us, then others may win a lasting peace by military means.”

“Then the only question,” Eadran said, with a sparkle in his eye.  “Is will you trust me?”

“Trust you?  I’d rather eat my own shit.”

Niarmit had opened her mouth to speak, but the words were not hers.   They came from the far entrance to the Chamber of the Helm, where a newcomer stood glaring at the bristling figure of the Vanquisher by the statue of Chirard. 

“Father,” Mitalda gasped.

“Hello, my boy,” Eadran said, his body was still but his eyes flicked up and down as they inspected the new arrival.  Thren, the first of that name was a man of middling height, broadshouldered with dark hair and a neat sharp beard.  In physique there was little imposing about him, but there was a presence in the stillness of his stance and in the fierce loathing with which he viewed the Vanquisher.

“I’m not your boy, father,” he declared.  “And I’d as soon trust the Dark Lord himself as trust you.”

“I am your father and you will show me some respect.”  Eadran stepped away from Chirard’s statue.  His arms hung by his side but his hands flexed restlessly, thumbs brushing fingers, fingers half clenching.   His son, by contrast was scarcely more mobile than the Kinslayer.

“You lost any right to my respect a thousand years ago, father.  Stepping at last from behind the protection of your wall of thorns is still scarcely an achievement of honour.”

“Is this how your mother would have you greet me?”

“You are dead to my mother, you know that.  Your hands are red with blood and guilt you cannot wash free.”

“Kingship is not for cowards nor for the faint hearted.  Your mother understood that.  She knew that freedom was a hard won prize.”

“Freedom?”  Thren raised an eyebrow.  “Freedom is a prize you both fought for.  But immortality? That was your quest alone, and the crimes you committed stain you still.”

“Your mother did not understand, that is all.”  The Vanquisher swept round to look at the assembled monarchs, incredulous witnesses to a long simmering filial argument. “You understand don’t you?  You all must understand.  The prize that this Helm afforded. Morwena didn’t understand that was all.”

Thren shook his head.  “She understood too well, father.  Far too well. There are some murders where the grief of a mother will quite supplant the dutiful love of a wife.”

“Murder?” Niarmit echoed.  “What murder?”

Thren shook his head.  “You don’t know?  None of you? You never guessed?”

“Who was murdered?”  portly Gregor whined.  But by then Thren was looking elsewhere and the monarchs turned to follow his gaze to the slight figure blinking owlishly on his simple wooden chair.