Wrath Of The Medusa (Book 2) (35 page)

Niarmit woke in a soft bed beneath warm covers and was instantly on edge.  The unsettling comfort had seduced her senses and dulled her wits.  Now cold reality flooded through her mind.  Hepdida!

She flung aside the blankets and leapt from the bed. 
In the gloom of winter’s pre-dawn filtering through the shutters, her eyes made out the familiar bedchamber within her old quarters. There was an edge of yellow light beneath the door and she wrenched it open, momentarily blinded by the bright illumination of the sitting room.

“I trust you are rested, your M
ajesty,” the lilt of Quintala’s voice welcomed her.  The half-elf was in repose on one of the couches, looking refreshed and alert. 

“Do you never sleep, Seneschal?” Niarmit growled suddenly aware of the dryness of her mouth and a hunger in her belly.

“More than an elf, less than a man,” the half-elf replied. 

Niarmit balled her fists to rub the sleep from her eyes.  “I would I had your stamina.”

Quintala gave a half-smile. “There is much more to being a half-elf than heightened endurance, your Majesty.  I doubt you would enjoy the whole package of my life.”

“Hepdida?”

“She sleeps still.  Word will be sent the instant that she wakes.”

The door behind Quintala creaked open.  “I heard voices,”
Kimbolt mumbled emerging into the sitting room.

“What happened to you, Captain?” Niarmit asked a
t the sight of the bruise shadowing the side of Kimbolt’s jaw, a livid purple core within a spreading penumbra of yellows and greens which groped towards his chin and neck.

“Nothing,” the C
aptain insisted, wincing with the pain of speaking.

“Who did this, Kimbolt?”

“Someone who had every right to do so,” was the Captain’s only reply.

Niarmit
glowered and turned to the half-elf.  “Do you have the answer to this riddle, Seneschal?”

Quintala frowned in turn, looking
from Captain to Queen as the former gave a brief shake of his head and the latter raised an eyebrow in enquiry. The half-elf’s dilemma was postponed by a short firm rap at the door.  She leapt from the seat and pulled the door open herself, surprising the curate Merlow on the point of making another knock.

“Come in, father,” Quintala bid with a bow and a flourish.

Niarmit saw the curate’s suspicious glance, unsure how far the half-elf mocked him with her excess of courtesy.  “What is it, father?” the Queen demanded.

“My master the B
ishop Sorenson, sent me,” Merlow replied with a slight inclination of his head.  He had folded his arms inside his sleeves and stood straight and tall so he could look down his nose at the room’s occupants.  His humble station as a lowly curate might make him their social inferior, but Merlow in his stance and his disdain seemed determined to exude his moral and spiritual supremacy.

“Why did he send you, pray tell?”  Quintala prompted.

“He has been attending on the Lady Hepdida, these last few hours.  He sent me to tell you…”

The curate had to step aside, his message incomplete, as Niarmit brushed past him into the cloistered corridor beyond.   “Tell me on the way,” Niarmit barked.

Despite his long legs, the curate had to half walk half run to keep pace with the Queen’s quick strides.   “His reverence thought you would like to know that the Lady Hepdida has awakened.”

“That is good.”  When Merlow made no response, Niarmit snapped, “it is good is it not?”

Merlow shrugged.  “She wakes each day, Lady Niarmit, it seems to be part of the slow progress of the disease.”

“Sorenson attends on her?”

“He and Deaconness Rhodra have in turns begged the grace of the Goddess to ease the young lady’s suffering.  The Deaconess retired to rest a little after midnight.”

“That is good of the B
ishop.”

“The La
dy Regent was most insistent,” the curate said.  “No effort has been spared on your companion’s behalf.  All those ordained in the service of the Goddess have laid healing hands upon the lady.”

“Including you Merlow?”

The curate’s mouth twitched in a brief uncomfortable smile. “I strove to aid the Lady Hepdida, as many did.  However it seems that it is numbers of years spent in the service of the Goddess rather than the purity of one’s faith which earns sufficient grace to bring the young woman some ease.”

“Your prayers went unanswered?”

“Only the Bishop and the Deaconess have so far had any power to salve the Lady’s suffering.  The Lady Regent has required they attend her continuously between them.”

“Thank you for trying, father.”

The gratitude confused the curate. Merlow bobbed his head and simpered uncomfortably at approbation from a quarter he despised for a kindness he had failed to deliver.

Rug
an and Giseanne had given over one of their own chambers for Hepdida’s sick-room, deep in the heart of the Prince’s private suite.  As Niarmit entered, Hepdida was thrashing from side to side and kicking at the bedclothes while Bishop Sorenson gripped her hand and invoked the power of the Goddess.

The prayer eased her torment and Hepdida’s wild movements faded to little more than twitches.  Her eyes were open, scanning the room. They fixed on Niarmit.  “I know you,” she said through dry cracked lips.

“Of course you do,” the Queen replied hastening to the bedside opposite the Bishop.  “It is me, Niarmit, your cousin.” She held out her own hand and Hepdida seized it eagerly.

The girl’s hand was icy cold
and, despite the ravages of sickness, her fingers dug into Niarmit’s wrist with a grip as unyielding as steel.  The Queen had to use her other hand to prise her cousin’s grasp open.  

“Thirsty,” the girl said
, but her head tossed from side to side when Sorenson tried to bring the sponge to her mouth and the water he squeezed out dribbled down her cheeks as much as in her mouth.

Her head lolled towards Niarmit and she asked, “who are you?”

“Is she always like this?”

Sorenson shrugged.  “Some moments she is more lucid than others, she has been better these past few days, less…..less prone to outbursts.”

Niarmit uncurled Hepdida’s fingers and saw a rough chaffed line around her cousin’s wrist.  “What are these marks?”

“They were necessary, my Lady, when she was in the grip of the fever we had to for her safety, for…”

“You tied her down?” The fury in Niarmit’s eyes had the Bishop cowering as she repeated the question.  “You tied her down?”

“She has been better these past few days, my Lady.  Th
e Lady Regent said we could remove the bindings.”

“And who, in the name of the Goddess said you could put them on in the first place.”

“I did.”

Niarmit spun round at the sound of Giseanne’s voice.

“I told them to tie her down, Lady Niarmit.”

Fury fought
confusion as the Queen stared at the Lady Regent.  Giseanne pulled her night cloak closer around her shoulders and took a seat in the chair at the foot of the bed. “Show, the Lady Niarmit your neck, Bishop Sorenson.”

With a grimace Sorenson obliged, pulling aside his robe to reveal five livid bruis
es on his neck, four on the right, one on the left each one deep purple and tipped with a curved cut the shape of a finger nail.  “Hepdida did that?” Niarmit asked.

The B
ishop shrugged.  “As I said my Lady she has been prone to outbursts.  Thankfully Merlow was able to prise her hand free before any lasting damage was done.”

“Yet still you tend her?”

“The Lady Regent has been most emphatic on that point, Lady Niarmit.  I am only sorry that my powers should have but scratched the surface of her ailment.  This is a sickness of the mind as well as the body.  I have never felt its like before.”

Niarmit turned back to Giseanne. “How did it run its course with King Bulveld?” 

Giseanne brushed a lock of hair from her face and hugged herself against the cold. “Much the same, brief moments of lucidity, which only alerted him to depth of his own sickness, interspersed with alternating fever and rage.  Udecht and Forven attended him.  Their great efforts, like Rhodra and the Bishop’s here, wrought no lasting improvement, only a temporary slowing of his decline. His body was strong, but from the day the illness took hold I lost my father, many months before he died.”

“
Months?” Niarmit seized the symbol from about her neck and set herself to prayer.  The Goddess’s familiar power flowed through her, but less easily than before.  When first she’d tried to heal the Princess she had thought it was her own fatigue that threw up an illusion of resistance to the Goddess’s grace, but now, refreshed and with daylight breaking through the slatted shutters, there was no mistaking it.   Like forcing water through too narrow a pipe, the healing power flowed but fitfully into her cousin.  Niarmit was panting when the spell was done.

“It is an uncommon sickness is it not, my Lady?” Sorenson marked well the difficulty she had encountered. 

“Niarmit, you came back.” Hepdida said with soft clarity.  “I was so frightened I wouldn’t see you again.”

“It’s all right,” Niarmit hastened to reassure her
, seeing in the Bishop and the Lady Regent’s expressions, that this was an unusual response.

“What happened?”

“You’ve been sick. You’re going to get better.”

“Do you remember anything, child?” It was Rugan, who had slipped into the room, his hand resting on his wife’s shoulder.  “I found you in the forest, do you remember that?”

Hepdida shook her head, distressed at her memory’s failure.  “I don’t, I don’t remember.”  She raised a limp hand to her face, drawing in a sharp breath at her yellow skin and blue finger nails.  She frowned at some troubling thought and turned to the Bishop.  “Your reverence, I remember something. You, you were by the bed, my hand, I was… it wasn’t a dream was it?!”

“It was the illness, my Lady,” Sorenson reassured her.

“What’s happening to me?” she cried. 

Niarmit clambered onto the bed and gathered her cousin in arms.  She kissed her head and held her tight.  “It’s all going to be fine, Hepdida.  You’ll see.”

The half-elf had not offered to escort
Kimbolt to Hepdida’s sick room and the Captain did not feel bold enough to make the request. He moped in their sitting room, grateful that there was no sign of the lean footpad who had laid him out.  While, professional pride compelled Kimbolt to think it was an entirely lucky blow that had caught him in the depth of his own fatigue, his conscience welcomed the pain of his bruised jaw, seeing in it a mere fraction of the punishment his conduct merited.  Reviewing the memories of his recent past invoked a viscerally physical reaction, a nausea which gripped his stomach and had him hastening for the door.

“Going somewhere, Captain,” Quintala asked.

“Fresh air,” he muttered through clenched lips.

“Watch out for Kaylan,” the Seneschal called after him.  “He is out there too somewhere, he may fancy taking another blow to even up your appearance.”

The door swung shut behind him and Kimbolt sucked in air so cold it brought a splitting pain to his head. The sharp ache behind his eyes was easier to bear than the tumbling of his stomach.  A short walk and some steps, slick with frost, brought him to the central courtyard. The fountain still sprayed its jet of water but the spout wore a girdle of ice through which only great pressure could have sustained a steady flow.  Kimbolt stumbled towards it, eager for a splash of cold water from the pond at the foot of the fountain.  The water was as smooth as glass, and just as hard, obsidian black beneath the frozen surface.

Kimbolt tested
the ice, his fingertips stuck to it with cold.  He pulled them free, leaving two thin prints of skin behind.  He balled his fist and punched down hard. His knuckles cracked; the ice splintered.  He punched again, twice, thrice, until his bloodied hand broke through to the freezing water below.  The cold flooded over his torn skin making him gasp with pain. He cupped his hand and pulled up a palm of water to splash against his face.  It felt good, the pain, the cold, a penance more tangible than the guilt which had assailed him ever since that bloody epiphany in the Gap of Tandar.

“Who have we here?”

He turned towards the sound of a woman’s voice.

She was elegantly dressed in a fur lined cloak, hair piled
high in the epitome of fashion. A broad smile lit her lips and there was laughter in her eyes.  “I haven’t seen you before,” she went on, unfazed by his silence.

“I arrived last night,” he muttered.

“A new arrival is such a pleasure,” she said.  “It is so dull here without enlivening company, and all the talk is of war.”

“My name is Kimbolt,
madam. Captain Kimbolt.  I think you’ll find my talk as much of war as any other man’s would be.  These are dire times.”

“And you,” she said raising her hand to his cheek.  “You’ve been in the wars I see, that is a great bruise.  What hero did it take to strike you down?”

He caught her wrist, before her outstretched fingers reached his skin.  “I’d rather not say.”

His grip was firm and a fleeting shadow of alarm flashed across her face.  She looked at the hand that held her, taking in the battered bloody knuckles.  “Oh my
, Captain,” she said, the amusement restored to her voice. “Don’t tell me you hit yourself, those poor wounded fingers, you must have struck so hard you could have broken your jaw and your hand at the same time.”

He snatched his hand back and stepped away from the
teasing woman.  “Who are you, Lady?  What are you doing here?”

“Why I am Maia, adviser to Lord Tybert of Oostsalve.  I came to support my lord as he deliberates on matters of high policy.  But what of you Captain, why are you here?”

“I came for Hepdida.”

“Oh!”

“You know her?”

She shrugged.  “We have ha
d a few words, she’s very young and so sick I hear, so very sick.”

“She will get better. She must.”

“Come Captain, no women does something just because a man tells her she must.  You will have to do better than that.”

“I mean to. A
nything I can do I will.”

Her smile was not pleasant, her mouth bent in an amuse
ment which was neither shared nor kind. “Such a brave soldier, but from what I hear the Lady’s demons will not scurry from your sword.  It takes two priests all day to keep them at bay for just a night.  And even then she recognises no-one.”

“Kimbolt!”

“Your Majesty.” He looked up at the Northern cloister where the Queen stood glaring down at him.

“Lady Niarmit, you are returned to us,” Maia gave the slightest inclination of her head.

“How is Hepdida?”
  Kimbolt asked, over the silence with which Niarmit ignored Maia.

“She sleeps.”

“Is she… is she… improved?”   Kimbolt asked.  There was an utter stillness from the woman at his side as she awaited whatever answer Niarmit might give.

The Queen made no reply beyond a brief jerk of her head towards their quarters and then she strode that way herself.

“You must excuse me, Lady Maia,” Kimbolt gave the woman a stilted courtesy.

“Of course, Captain,” she replied with easy elegance.  “But if you want to talk, please seek me out.  I am sure you have many soldier’s tales to tell, and I am skilled in easing people’s hurts.”

His brow creased in confusion.  “You are a priestess, Lady Maia? You have the favour of the Goddess?”

She laughed, a tinkling sound like
falling icicles. “Oh no Captain, I have other talents that will make a man forget all his woes.” She reached for his wounded hand, running her fingers lightly over the bruised knuckles in a touch that made him shiver despite the warmth of her skin.  “If you find your memories troubling, come to me. I will help you forget.”

“I don’t want to forget.”

“Captain, I can make it so even if you remember, you will cease to care. The memories will not pain you.”

“I like the pain.”  He snatched his hand back.  She recoiled at the glare of loathing in his eyes, but then her self-assured composure returned.

“You will change your mind, Captain.  Men always do.”

“Kimbolt!”  From the Eastern side of the raised cloister Niarmit called him again with threadbare patience.

With the briefest of nods at Maia, Kimbolt hurried at his Queen’s command taking the perilous icy steps two at a time.  He froze on entering the chamber. Kaylan was there.  The thief barely spared the Captain a first glance, let alone a second, his eyes fixed on Niarmit.

“My Lady,” Kaylan was saying.  “I must speak with you.”

“Then speak.”

“Alone, my Lady.  I would speak with you alone.”

Kimbolt walked slowly into the room, stepping a wide berth around the pair.  Kaylan stood, dis-shelved and unhappy.  Kimbolt noted with some satisfaction the dark bruising on his assailant’s knuckles.  Niarmit, puzzled and impatient.

“Why?”

Kaylan licked his lips.  “Please, my Lady.  For the service I have done you, let me share this news in private.” He begged.

With a
n upward flick of her eyebrows, Niarmit acquiesced and waved him towards her chamber.