Master Of The Planes (Book 3) (72 page)

“Tell them, Santos,” Thren growled.  “Tell them who you are.”

The thin spare man drew his toga tighter around him and blinked more quickly. “I am Santos,” he insisted uncertainly.  “I am Steward of the Helm.”

“The domain could not be uninhabited,” Eadran was speaking fast, pouring out explanations of his craft as a defence of his morality. “It needed a living soul.  It was not an end, just a temporary separation.”

“Tell them.” Thren’s eyes and voice were only for the steward who was shaking beneath the curious attention of every monarch of the Helm.

Santos shook his head.  “I am the steward…”

“No,” Thren cut him short.   “Tell them who you were, before that.”

“Before?  I don’t remember.”

“They would have been together again, if she had only worn the Helm,” Eadran was insisting.  “I did it for both of them, for all of us, for all of you.”

“What did you do?” All Niarmit’s fears of the blasphemy within the Helm resurfaced as she saw the Vanquisher sweating.

“I don’t remember,” Santos whimpered.

Thren knelt before him and took the steward’s shaking hands in his own steady ones.  “You do, remember.  Before you were Steward of the Helm, you were a Deacon of the Goddess, and a Prince.”

“I was to forget, he said I should forget it,” The steward’s gaze darted first towards Eadran and then to the soft eyed face of Thren the first. “You said I could forget it.”

“And now I am telling you to remember it, to remember who you were.  It is time to remember who you are, and why this man is to be trusted no further than the Dark Lord himself.”

“A prince?” Mitalda murmured.

“Which prince?” portly Gregor whined as the steward started snivelling on his chair.

Thren straightened up.  “He is my brother.  My half-brother.”

“Eadran had another wife?” The Dragonsoul said.

“No, Morwena had another husband,” Thren told him.  “Santhric who fell in battle with the Caliphs before Morwena and the people of the Goddess were captured and sold into slavery to Maelgrum.”

He jerked his head towards Eadran who stood pale and apart.  “When my father brought my mother to the Petred Isle she already had a babe in arms.”

“They would not have been long parted, if she had only worn the Helm,” Eadran ground out the refrain through gritted teeth.

“What did you do?” Niarmit demanded.

Thren gave a short laugh devoid of mirth and held his arms up high and wide as he gazed at the domed ceiling of the Chamber of the Helm.  “This prison that confines us, it was supposed to be a paradise for two people so very much in love.  You think the bloodline is just the bloodline of Eadran?”  He shook his head.  “He enchanted it for Morwena too, so she could wear the Helm in safety, so she could receive its cursed blessing.  And just as it was enchanted for his wife, so too it was enchanted for her son, for Santhric’s son.”

“It needed a living soul to preserve the domain,” Eadran’s arms were folded, his voice defiant.  “It needed a soul to hold it ready for our arrival.  For mine and Morwena’s.”

“It was an honour,” Santos muttered.  “It was to be a great honour that was bestowed on me.”

“He murdered you, my brother, and trapped you here,” Thren insisted sadly.

“No, no, it was an honour.”

“You murdered him,” Niarmit said.  “You murdered your step son.”

“You never told me this, father,” Mitalda said.  “Not when you were alive, not when you passed into this place.  Why did you not tell me?”

Thren scowled.  “The dismal story was a tale of the Helm and like all tales of the Helm I was chained in silence by this bastard’s spell.  I could not speak of it while I lived. Once death had brought me here I kept the words I had for him alone, for him that sired me. Long have I waited for him to crawl from behind his wall of thorns that he might hear my curse on his name, his legacy and on his bloodstained soul.” 

“Why?”  Niarmit faced the Vanquisher, from whom all spirit and bluster seemed to have drained away.  “Why did you do it?”

Eadran shrugged.  “Conquering death, it was the only battle left for me.”

“Ha!” his son cried.  “By his own lips he confesses.  He is still a slave to his master’s dark ambition.  Just as Maelgrum sought out imortaility at any price, so too his chief lieutenant at the end has sacrificed all in the same vain blasphemous pursuit.”

“Your mother…”

“Do not speak of her again, father.” Thren growled. “She kept your secret, she let your fame grow when it should have withered and died in disgrace.  My centuries old regret is that I found her warning too late to heed it and have ever since been chained by your paranoid spell craft, as we all have.”

“She should be here,” Eadran insisted obdurately. 

“She is where we all should be, resting in the arms of the Goddess, not stranded in this blood stained pit.”

“Whatever I may have done,” Eadran snarled.  “I cannot now undo, that much is certain.”  He glanced at Santos.  The steward stared in grim concentration at his own sandaled feet.  “But there is still a peril we all face.  Maelgrum walks again and must be defeated.”

“Which brings us once again,” Thren said.  “To the question of trust.  Can you trust this kinslaying bastard?”

Eadran looked up at Niarmit seated on her gilded throne.  His eyes were hooded, his expression a conflict of pride and regret.  “Listen to me, girl,” he said.

She shook her head slowly and clamped her hands against the Helm.

“No,” he cried.  “Niarmit, no.”

She lifted the Helm from her head and vanished from the Vanquisher’s cursed plane.

The patient stirred on the rough matting of the bed.  Strips of flesh hung from his fire flayed hands.  “Dema,” he moaned. 

Vlyndor ground powder in a pestle for another ungent casting anxious glances at the prone form and his restless nursemaid.

“I am not Dema,” Persapha held a wet sponge to his cracked lips.  Her snakes slithered beneath her hood, unsettled by her distress.  The young medusa looked round.  “Can you not do more, he hurts so much?” There was an edge of anger in her voice, clear enough for Vlyndor to hear as well as taste.  A temper rising with the frustration of a situation that simply was not as she wished.

“I am working as fast as I can,” Vlydnor assured her, his old fingers wrapped around the pestle as he pressed hard pods into a fine powder.  “Lyndat was much better than me at this, I wish she was here now.”

“Well she isn’t,” Persapha snapped.  “And what you’ve done so far isn’t working.”

Vlyndor blinked fast.  Bob the chameleon stepped archly into the little room looking hopefully for some small insectoid offering. When the medusa scowled through her sparkling gauze, the little reptile turned and showed an impressive turn of speed as it fled.

“Patience, child,” Vlyndor clucked in the closest to a show of temper he had had in years.  “The little wizard is not dead yet.”

At that Odestus gave a low groan and a rattling breath, wheezing as though sucking air through the narrowest marsh reed.  “Hurry!” Persapha insisted.  It was a command not a plea.

Vlyndor added a fine oil to the crushed powder and mixed them into a smooth paste.  “This should soothe the burns and seal them against the risk of going foul.”

“But will it heal him?”

Vlyndor sighed.  “All I can do is give his body a chance to heal itself, Persapha and offer him some small protection and a softening of his pain while he does that.”

“And he will get better?”

Vlyndor held himself very still, selecting his words with care.  “He is very ill, Persapha. Besides his outward injuries, the skin he has lost that he may never get back, there is damage within.  He has inhaled smoke and flame that will have scored his lungs.  You should not hope too much.”

“Make him better!” the monster within her snarled with force enough that for the first time ever, Vlyndor stepped back from his adopted daughter. 

He steadied himself.   “I will do my best for the little wizard,” he said feeling the cold seep into his old bones as he held the sparkling gaze of the medusa through her gauze.  “But whatever happens, Persapha, remember you are a karib.  Neither Lyndat nor Odestus would like to think of you being anything less.”

She turned away from him then and the writhing mass beneath her hood fell silent as the medusa scratched distractedly at her gauze eye mask.

The retreat was slowing.  The clutter of refugees like weeds and barnacles on the hull of an ocean going ship had sapped the speed of the endless eastward march.  The soldiers had gained little ease from the reduced pace as, whenever a fleeing citizen stumbled or fell, it was the soldiers who went back to gather them.  It was truly a retreat of two steps back and one step forward.

And now their progress had utterly halted. 

Jay sat with a company of Nordsalve Infantry.  He had, for the moment, eschewed Kimbolt’s advice to station himself with the elves.  Their unwearying endurance, for all the help he knew they would have given him, would only have dented his pride.  So he chose to walk the dusty road with equally leaden footed soldiers and to slump uncaring into the brief moments of rest that chance should throw their way.

The retreat had funnelled into a shallow valley.  It skirted round the southern tip of a great tree topped escarpment which ran from north-west to south-east.  Jay’s company had progressed east and drifted south in a series of leapfrogging manouveres.  Their moments of rest had doubled as picket duty behind the main body, providing a screen against the approaching enemy.  The meanders in their progress had carried them towards the southern edge of the fleeing army and so they took their rest where the ground began to rise again.  Jay lay back and surveyed the scene. 

Within the resting mass of humanity there were isolated points of movement as captains and lieutenants were summoned to attend on the queen.   The small regiment of elves habitually formed the rear guard and their tall captain was striding to the centre of the camp.  Jay glanced westwards beyond the elves.  The corporal at his side muttered, “bugger me, but that’s a lot of dust.”

Jay shaded his eyes with his hand to better see the line of beige cloud smudging the horizon.  It stretched so far to north and south that he might have thought it a blurring of his vision or a heat haze rather than the airborne herald of an approaching army.  “How far away are they?” he asked.

“Not much more than fifteen miles,” the soldier guessed.   “They’ll be here by this time tomorrow.”  He patted the ground for emphasis.

“And where will we be?” 

“Well I’d like to say, bloody miles away,” the corporal told him. “But we’re going slower day by day not faster and…”  He broke off staring east.  Jay followed his gaze to the crest of a low rise two or three miles distant.  “… and,” the corporal went on.  “We appear to be surrounded.”

The crest was filling with a line of troops, sunlight glinting off polished mail, detachments of cavalry to either flank.  “How did they get round there?” Jay stumbled to his feet.

His companion gave a low whistle.  “It seems the enemy mean to hold us here for sure.” He grabbed his shield.  “Mind you, it’s poorly timed, they come at us today and the main body won’t reach us until tomorrow.”

“That’s still two battles to be fought, corp,” a soldier observed as the new arrivals continued their deployment in battle lines.  “Even if we beat them today, I warrant there won’t be much left fit to fight tomorrow.”  

There was a thunder of hooves behind them and a horse pulled up level with the corporal.  “I thought I told you to march with the elves,” the seneschal’s voice made Jay spin around. 

Kimbolt’s expression was grim, though it had seldom been otherwise in the glimpses that Jay had caught over the past three days.

“I didn’t think it would make much difference,” Jay said.  He waved an arm eastwards, “particularly not now we’re surrounded.” 

At last Kimbolt cracked a smile and even let slip a half-hearted laugh.  “Surrounded, boy? Is your hope so dulled that your eyes are driven to deceive you.  Those are men of the salved, few enough for our purpose perhaps, but better friend than foe.”

Jay looked again at the gathering divisions.  They were too ordered in their deployment for outlanders, and the easterly breeze bore no hint of the foul but different stenches of zombies or orcs.  Great standards were unfurling red and gold on the left, a deep verdant green on the right.  “Where do they hail from then, Seneschal?”

“Red and gold stands for Oostsalve, while the green, well that is the garrision from Salicia come home at last to the Petred Isle.  It seems the princes of Oostsalve have finally been stirred to their duty.”  

“They’re ours?” Jay said dully.  He had grown unused to good news in the seven days since he had seen a troll head, cloven by his axe, seal itself back into grinning malevolence. 

The corporal at his side spat on the ground.  “Aye, they’re ours, though we could do with thrice as many and still not think ourselves secure.”

“Watch your tongue,” Kimbolt commanded.  “These are fresh re-inforcements that the foe knows nothing of.  It is time we all let in a glimmer of hope and remembered too that in battle as in all things, whether you think you’ve won, or whether you think you’ve lost, you’re probably right.”

Jay’s companions frowned as they tried to decipher the seneschal’s meaning, but Kimbolt saw them not. He was already riding hard towards the newcomers.