Master Of The Planes (Book 3) (19 page)

  The troops were ready to move out.  It was just their missing guide and the seneschal that they were waiting on.  Niarmit fretted, trying not to let her anxiety show.  Quintala had deceived her so utterly that she felt sure she could never trust again; the boy had seemed genuine, and the excursion she had committed herself to was not his plan.  But why run?   She reached for the chains around her neck on which hung the golden crescent symbol and the royal ankh.  She twisted the fine links around her fingers.

There was a shout from the guard posted at the northern edge of the clearing.  Figures emerging from the treeline, the tall shape of Kimbolt, with two smaller figures held each by one arm, bringing them forward for Niarmit’s scrutiny.  They didn’t seem to be struggling from anything more than discomfort beneath the seneschal’s hold, but still Kimbolt would not let them go. The boy on the left was Jay, pale skin showing through the dirt streaks on his face.  The other shuffled face down, a bag slung over one shoulder.

“Master Jay has brought a friend,” Kimbolt announced grimly as the little party reached the queen.

Niarmit scowled.  Kimbolt placed a heavy emphasis on the word friend, which she did not like.  A hint of a deeper mystery beneath the obvious puzzle.  It was too dark to read his features and too dangerous a place for riddles.

She seized the unknown boy by the hair and pushed his head back to look him in the eye.  “Who are you? … you!” The exclamation raced the question out of her mouth as Hepdida looked back with a glare which was three parts defiance one part fear.

Hepdida said nothing, Niarmit cried in suppressed fury, “take her back to the boats, right now.”

“I tried,” Kimbolt said.  “The boats are all gone, long gone.”

“She’ll have to stay here.” Niarmit made a snap decision.  “We’ll leave an escort, ten, no fifteen should do it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Niarmit,” Hepdida replied fear giving way to the smug satisfaction of one who has seen parental fury take them beyond the edge of reasonable thought.  “You can’t spare the men and I’d be no safer camped here than I would travelling with you.”

“You are my heir, you crass idiot,” Niarmit seized the girl by the shoulders and shook her.  “I need to know you’re safe.”  She dragged the ankh from about her neck, waving the pink gem at its head in the girl’s face.  “I need to know that this thing isn’t going to suddenly flare into heat and light because you’ve gone and got your stupid little hide killed.  You have to be safe. If something happens to me, you are the queen.”

Hepdida’s lip was trembling but her voice was firm.  “And what use would I be then?  Always kept closeted out of danger, out of council, secrets hidden from me but no-one else.” Her eyes darted to the left where Kimbolt stood a dark shadow in the night.  “I’d be a fucking awful queen because I know practically nothing. You let me know nothing.  If anything happens to you, then it had better happen to me too, then at least Giseanne could take up the crown.  You’ve always trusted her more than you trust me, hell you trust Rugan more than me.”

“Niarmit.”  Kimbolt’s voice was soft, urgently pleading.  “This is getting us nowhere.  What’s done is done.  Now is not the time to pick over the hows and the whys of it.  The little fool is right.  We can’t send her back and we can’t leave her here.  She has to come with us.”

“I’m not a little fool.”

“No, you’re a Goddess-sworn big one,” Niarmit’s rebuke swiftly punctured the princess’s adolescent pride.  “And some poor bastard is going to have to risk his back keeping an eye on yours.”

“I’ll watch out for her.”  

At Jay’s unwise interruption, Niarmit swung round to glare at the boy from Colnham.  Her gaze switched back and forth a couple of times between the princess and the boy, before she exclaimed, “you’ll do no such thing.  You, boy, you’re walking in the van with me. And you,” she jabbed a finger at Hepdida. “You are in the centre with the seneschal and you move more than five feet from his side and I’ll tie you together with a bloody rope.”

The queen’s crushing rage completed the deflation of Hepdida’s defiance.  The tremble to the princess’s lip was more pronounced, the whites of her eyes glistening brighter with welling tears.  She shifted the knapsack on her back, “I brought you…”

“Shut it!  The only word I want to hear from you is sorry, and I won’t be calm enough to hear it for another three days at least.  Now get out of my sight.”  She swung away shaking her head to try and free it of the raging demons of doubt that assailed her.

Another gust whipped around the tower. It slammed into Haselrig’s back with enough force to oblige him to step closer to the wooden rail.

“The view is magnificent is it not?”  At his side Quintala spread her arms wide letting cloak and silver hair fly in the grasping wind. “And this is just from half way up.”

Haselrig gripped the rail and tried to look out rather than down.  The ledge which girdled the midpoint in the tower’s height was only just wide enough for two to stand abreast and he would not trust the timber balustrade to withstand more than a slight knock before collapsing.

“From the top of the tower you could see all the way to the Palacintas or to Morwencairn.” Quintala’s gushing self- congratulation did little to ease the ex-priest’s vertigo.  He was just grateful that the obstruction of wooden bracing which quite filled the narrower core of the upper tower had dissuaded Quintala from trying to climb all the way to the pinnacle of her monumental folly.

“What was it you wanted to see me about?”  Haselrig kept his eyes on the distant horizon, swallowing back the thought of what height he must be at to see so far.

She clapped him on the shoulder; he staggered against the rail which gave a far from re-assuring tremble.  “Can’t two old friends share a moment to chew over the past and savour the future?”

“I have my work, Quintala.”  He longed to return to the safety of his ground floor hutch.

“Your work, yes.” She frowned.  “How goes it, staring all day at two old swords you can’t even handle?” 

“I have my methods, Quintala.”

She didn’t probe his obdurate response.  He was grateful for that as she swept down another train of thought. “And you have an assistant.  I am sure the lovely Lilith is keeping you busy in that little hutch.”

“Lilith has been of value yes,” Haselrig answered with slow deliberation.

“And obedient?”

“She has done everything I have asked of her.”

Quintala gave a coarse laugh too heavy for the wind to whip away.  “I hope you have been asking her to do plenty.”

Haselrig wanted to make some rebuttal, to deny the ugly allusion in Quintala’s words, but he knew that was not what the half-elf wanted to hear.  “She misses her former companion.”

“Good,” Quintala spat. “Why else do you think I gave you Rondol’s favourite concubine for your personal slave?”

“I think Rondol hates me quite enough already.”

She shook her head.  “No, Haselrig.  Not nearly enough.  Not until he is consumed by a blaze of hate he daren’t express, eaten up from within, rotten with loathing.  And then, when his skin cracks and he dares to raise a hand to me or to you, then I will destroy him.”

Haselrig frowned.  “Why do you despise him so?  I know he has tormented me, but apart from his arrogance and idiocy I do not see what he has done to earn your hatred.”

Quintala turned to him with a laugh and a smile and patted him on the cheek.  “I hate everybody, Haselrig.  Even you.  Rondol is just too convenient a rod through which to distil and conduct my contempt for humanity and elfinity.”

“You didn’t always have such hatred in you.”

“I did,” she retorted.  “I just had to hide it better then.  Think how long I have spent deceiving and duping the great and the wise and think how quickly the dissembler must inevitably conceive an utter contempt for those she gulls.”

Haselrig bit his lip, eyes darting left and right.  “So, Quintala, was I one of your gulls, one of the blank pieces on your board?  Were you just playing me for a fool?”

She smiled sadly at him, and shook her head. “Was I?” she echoed.  “What makes you think I’ve stopped?”

Before Haselrig could make some answer, the half-elf’s gaze shifted over his shoulder, a broad false smile playing across her lips as she welcomed a newcomer to the walkway around the tower.  “Ah, Rondol, we were just talking about you.  Haselrig was telling me how much he is enjoying Lilith’s company and she his.  Apparently size does matter after all.”

Haselrig spun round.  The sorcerer stood on the narrow ledge, eyes narrowed, face red, but with his temper firmly held in check.  The half-elf’s taunts were swallowed entire, like arrows shot into the night, his features studiously unmarked by whatever damage her words may have wrought within his closely shielded mind.

“We have had news, Lady Quintala.”  His voice was level, his expression stony.

“Well spit it out, Rondol,” Quintala urged.  “Or are your thoughts as constipated as the rest of you?”

“There is an army being massed by Nordsalve.”

“The beggars have found their courage then.”

“They have crossed the Derrach, just to the west of the Silverwood.”

Quintala pursed her lips in thought, her toying with Rondol quite forgotten in the excitement of fresh news.  She nodded quickly, sharing aloud her analysis of the news. “They are hoping, no doubt, that the silver elves might be drawn into coming to their aid.  Fools.  Marvenna is Andril’s creature, we will see no sign of her people until Maelgrum leads his orcs and zombies into the very heart of their sacred groves.”

“It is a force of considerable size,” Rondol said.  “They have no need of silver elves to be a threat.  Already the orcbands and the freeholders in that part have fallen back, while their villages have sent words of welcome to Torsden.”

“Torsden?”

“The Northern Lord commands their force.”

Quintala frowned and paced the stone ledge back and forth.  Both Haselrig and Rondol had to step aside to let her carve a thoughtful path around the tower.  “Torsden?” she mused.  “Why now?”

“We are in the last throws of winter, soon the ice and frost will melt and Marwella’s zombies will be free to join our force.” Rondol offered his assessment. “They, who have no hope of fresh strength, should strike before we can grow stronger.”

“And where is the bitch in this?  I have not seen her in my scrying of my brother’s palace.  Did she somehow make it to Nordsalve?”

Rondol shrugged.  “We have no spies beyond the Derrach.  No way of knowing.”

Quintala scowled.  “A failing on your part Rondol.  Your sorcerers should have cast spells of concealment, outlanders disguised as refugees could have swum the Derrach and brought back news.”

“No one could swim those icy waters at this time of year.” Haselrig made an instinctive defence of Rondol’s position, but then quailed at the furious glare it drew from the half-elf.  

“Besides, my sorcerers have been too busy making wizard stone to have time or energy to spare enchanting spies.  It is neither their fault, nor mine that we are blind beyond the Derrach.”

“Could Niarmit be the one stirring up trouble in Undersalve?” Haselrig said.

Quintala nodded slowly.  “Aye, reclaiming her father’s province would be just the thing to draw her sentimental arse out of my brother’s domain.”  She gripped the rail and glared at the north-eastern horizon.  “I was never welcome in Nordsalve. Hetwith, like all his house, they didn’t trust me.” She laughed.  “Not that that wisdom saved him in the end.”

She scowled.  “Torsden was determined to bend the boy prince and the Lady Isobel to his will.  I remember Sorenson being much vexed by the prospect. Well, if the Northern Lord now wishes to extend his claim to power south as well as north of the Derrach, then I think it meet that we meet him, and in force.”

Rondol nodded.  “I will speak to Mazdurg and the outlander captains.”

“Tell them to find a horse for you, Rondol.  You’re coming too.”

“Me!”

“You know what they say, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.  It’s one maxim of my brother’s that I am inclined to share.”

“But…”

“Don’t worry.  Haselrig will stay here.  I am sure he will continue to look after Lilith while you are gone.”

Hepdida was good at sulking, but sulking only worked when you had an audience and Niarmit had been obstinately absent while Kimbolt had been a most taciturn companion.  She tried again to draw him out.  “How long do you think they’ll be?”

The seneschal shrugged and looked around the little camp.  Another wood, another clearing and soldiers resting after a hard forced march along secret paths and valleys.  Moving by night, camping by day. It was the enthusiasm of their friends as much as the interference of their enemies that they had been trying to evade.  Kimbolt had been more morose than usual.  Occasionally at the rest stops Hepdida had seen a distant look in his eyes.  He would survey the makeshift encampments, give a sad shake of his head and then fall into a stony faced silence.  Niarmit hadn’t noticed his changed demeanour.  Or maybe she had, but she was just too pre-occupied with their objective or too furious still with the princess to come near the pair of them.

Despite the cold, her mouth was dry. She scooped up a handful of snow from the ground behind her and raised it to her mouth, but Kimbolt suddenly knocked her hand aside, scattering the white flakes.

“I’m thirsty,” she protested.

“Where’s your water bottle then, the one the queen loaned you?”

She lifted the leather vessel on its strap and turned it upside down to demonstrate its dryness.  Kimbolt handed her his own. “If it was empty, why didn’t you get the queen to refill it this morning?”

“She’s not speaking to me at the moment, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“She’d have conjured water for you though, rather that than have you eat snow or drink from puddles.”

Hepdida shrugged. “I don’t mind where I get a drink from.”

He looked at her balefully.  “You should.  I was on a march once, two men drank from a dirty puddle they were that thirsty.  They fell sick and we didn’t have a priest.”

“And?”

“They died,” he said flatly. ”So the next time you are out of clean fresh water, swallow your pride before you swallow the first handful of dirty snow you can grab.”

She sniffed.  “Well, the marching’s just about done now isn’t it? How far away is this barn, anyway?”

“A quarter mile due south.”

She shivered.  “Well, it would have been good for us to be inside.  This may be the last gasp of winter but it’s got bloody cold breath.”

“We don’t want to scare this Father Simeon and his associates off.  All he is expecting is Jay.  It’ll be enough of a shock that the boy’s brought Johanssen and the queen.”

His tone was still cool, but this was by far the longest conversation she had had with him in three days. “Are you still cross with me Kimbolt?” she asked. “Am I still a little fool?”

He shook his head slowly.  “Listen Hepdida.  Niarmit… that is to say the queen and I, we have tried so hard to keep you safe and still you throw yourself in harm’s way.”

She scowled.  “You’re not my parents, and I’m not a child.”

He leant back against a tree trunk, and looked up at the stars through the web of snow covered branches.  “It’s not that simple, Hepdida.  Our plans are built on the most precise calculation of risk and opportunity.  A delicate act of timing that requires a co-ordination of Torsden’s diversion, our attack and Rugan’s reinforcement.  Unknown quantities like your foolish stunt, they could upset all our endeavours.”

“So I’m an unknown quantity am I, as well as a little fool,” she snapped. “Or perhaps you think I’m just a foolish stunt?”

He gave her a sharp look and pushed himself upright.  “I need a little air,” he said, his breath misting in the darkness as he walked away.

“I just wanted to help,” she called after him.  “I wanted to do something, rather than nothing.”

He spun round. “Keep your voice down.  Use what little sense you seem to have, to stay silent, silent and still.”