Master Of The Planes (Book 3) (26 page)

“Is it true,” Mitalda asked.  “That Maelgrum walks the Petred Isle once more?”

Niarmit’s nod brought a collective sigh from the gathered kings.  “But there is a more immediate peril,” she said.

“There can be nothing more immediate than introductions, your Majesties,” Santos insisted.  “Please Queen Niarmit, allow me.”

So Niarmit shook the hands of her illustrious forbears, in strict order of precedence.  First was Queen Mitalda, granddaughter of the Vanquisher who had spent long years wrestling Stephus for control of her grandfather’s kingdom.

Then came Bulveld the First, Great-Great-Grandson to Queen Mitalda.  He who had subdued the disorderly lords of Swalle and turned their land into the Province of Undersalve, and who had so battered the independent minded rulers of Nordsalve that they called him the Cudgel of the North.

Next was his Grandson Bulveld the Third, who had first taken an army to reclaim lost lands in the East.  Three Kings of the Eastern Lands had sworn fealty to Bulveld.

It was an overlordship which his great-grandson Thren the Fifth had reclaimed in glorious style in the final long summer of the Salved Empire, before it had begun the precipitous descent into the crisis of the Kinslaying. A time of chaos from which Chirard’s brother Bulveld the Fourth had briefly fashioned some order, before his own death unleashed the full horror of his brother’s usurpation of the throne.  It had been a much damaged and shrunken kingdom that Thren the Seventh had claimed with his sword in Chirard’s belly.

It was by any yardstick an awe inspiring half dozen of the greatest monarchs of the salved people.  Three Bulvelds, two Threns and a Mitalda. At any other time, Niarmit, the daughter of an obscure general as she still thought of herself would have been humbled into silence.  But it was no ordinary time and her immediate snapped demand took the company by surprise.

“Do any of you know how to kill a dragon?”

“Niarmit?  Your Majesty?”  Kimbolt called out in the darkened room, not wanting to alarm her while she wore the Helm.  The ropes had been dispensed with, and Hepdida’s attendance too.  Niarmit had told them it was no longer necessary, though she had not said why or what had changed her mind on the matter.

So the crown princess had spent time with Kimbolt as he fashioned his hurried siege engines, a task more usually undertaken outside a besieged castle rather than within it.  And Niarmit had spent long hours sitting alone in Quintala’s receiving room, in silent communion with the Helm.

“Niarmit?” He came close, setting the lantern down on the table by her chair.  She looked up then, looking straight at him, though her eyes were covered by the Helm’s visor.

“Is it done?” she asked.

He gave a moue of acknowledgement.  “I have something that might give the beast a bloody nose.  Tomorrow is the day he will come, if Quintala spoke true.”

Niarmit lifted the Helm from her head, ruffling fingers through her hair to comb out the flatness that the steel basinet had imposed on it.  “And you are ready?” She set the Helm down on the table, gazing in some surprise past Kimbolt at the darkness of night beyond the window.

“I have my plan,” he admitted.

“Me too,” she said.  “What’s yours?”

“To kill the dragon.”

“Mine too.”

She reached for him, pulling herself up by his arms, and snaking hers around his back. “There must be more to it than that?” he asked.

“There is, Kimbolt, but I cannot tell you.” She rested her head against his chest looking at the sombre steel of the Helm. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”

He shrugged.  “Will it work?”

“I hope so.” Her hand slid up to stroke his cheek. “If the Dragon comes tomorrow, let me try my plan first.”

“The plan that you won’t tell me about.”

“Not won’t, can’t.”

He smiled at the woman in his arms.  “It’s good to have more than one plan of attack, hit the enemy with everything.”

“When it starts,” she said.  “And you’ll know when it starts, stay away Kimbolt.  Promise me that.  Don’t try what you’re thinking of until and unless I have failed.  In that case yours will be the only thing standing between death and ten thousand souls.”

“There’s one soul in particular I’d face death down for,” he said.  He bent his head, to brush his lips against hers. 

She shook her head and pulled him towards the door at the rear of the chamber.  “Come. I want you to hold me, tonight, just hold me, Kimbolt, that’s all.”

And he was all right with that.  And when, after several hours of sleepless twisting and turning, she decided that she didn’t just want to be held he was all right with that too.  And afterwards when she was sleeping soundly, he lay watching over her until the dawn came.

It was hot in Grithsank but that was not the reason why Quintala was sweating. She had scribed the glyph of summoning correctly, she was sure of that.  Maelgrum had let her witness the calling of the dragon a couple of times, trapped within his head, though those had been acts of showmanship rather than training.  He could never have intended her to try the spell herself.

She glanced over her shoulder at the huge gate she had created.  Its edges were ragged, tiny irregularities exaggerated in the stretching of the portal to a size and shape she had never conjured before.  On the far side, in the Petred Isle, the dumb triumvirate of Lilith, Haselrig and Rondol watched her efforts.  The dislocation of time between the two planes made their actions appear slothfully lethargic.  A movement which Rondol doubtless experienced as a discrete and momentary excavation of his right nostril with his left forefinger was slowed into hideous detail. Quintala smiled at the oafish fool before making a crude and unambiguous gesture at him which she knew would have appeared too fast for the sorcerer to register.

The yellow sun was high in Grithsank’s purple sky. Quintala stared at the glyph she had carved in the sand, wondering if this was perhaps one risk too many.  For two centuries she had flung down the gauntlet to fate, taken absurd risks and outrageous liberties. She had charmed and joked her way in and out of council chambers and princely beds. She had been stunned by the gullibility of those she deceived, and hardened by the suspicions of those few who had dimly perceived the darkness of the soul that lurked behind her smile.  Like a gambler on a winning run, she could not stop herself betting against the house.  Even the throws of fates’ dice which she had appeared to lose, in the end had turned out to be amongst her finest victories.  But now as she waited for the dragon to arrive, she wondered if this at last would be the moment when the house took all.

A shadow flickered across the sun. Quintala squinted through splayed fingers at the blazing orb; a dark shape grew within the circle of its fire, larger and darker until it entirely eclipsed the sun with its spreading wings and still the dragon grew.  It circled once and landed, the sand surrendering to its weight as it settled on the other side of the glyph, its huge claws half buried in the golden grains.

The half-elf shivered, sweat clammy on her back as the giant reptile bent its head to inspect her.

“Oh dragon, I have summoned you, in accordance with your contract.”  Quintala couldn’t recall the form of words that Maelgrum used on these occasions, but she tried to frame a greeting of sufficient solemnity to stand proxy for the Dark Lord.

You are not the wizard.

It was a voice in her head, deep and sonorous though the dragon’s mouth made no move to form words.  There was a puzzled air to the words reverberating in her skull, curious but not hostile – not yet.

But you are like him.
  The voice continued though more in the manner of a shared thought than a conversation.

“I hold Maelgrum’s authority, yes,” Quintala wondered if she needed to say it out loud or if thinking it would have been sufficient.

This is not how we usually do business.

“Not usually maybe, but it is how we do business today.  Today is your day of service.  You are due to serve the will of Maelgrum.”

Some days of service are missed, I am not required and I make no demand for payment.

Payment, shit.

You do have the payment as is laid down?

“Yes.”  Quintala sweated, hoping the dragon could not hear thoughts as well as it spoke them.  “Payment at the end of the service, not before.”

Of course.
A smooth rumble rolled reassuringly through her mind. 
What is the task this time?

“There is a castle, an army and a woman, you must destroy them all.”

A woman? One woman? How shall I know her?

“She leads the army, trapped within the castle. She has red hair and you must make her burn.”

The wizard wanted me to make a woman burn, a woman with red hair, is this the same woman?

“Yes, the same woman.  The woman you met in the cavern beneath Morwencairn.”

There was a trembling of thought, ripples of consciousness that spread through Quintala’s mind.
  I was not paid for that day’s service. The woman eluded me, she flew and I could not.

“Then fly now, to the castle, make them all burn.  Find the bitch and destroy her and every single soul with her.”

I shall, and then I will return for payment.

“And I will have it ready.” 

The dragon shuffled forward across the sand, drawing its wings tight against its body to fit through the irregular opening between the planes. At its side Quintala grinned, and tried to work out how far the life of a red bearded sorcerer and a bald sorceress might count as payment for a dragon’s service.   

Thom opened his eyes and he was immediately back on top of the gatehouse, shivering but safe.  Three miles away in the half-elf’s camp the conjured hovering eyeball he had been seeing through would have abruptly vanished, its existence terminated with the break of his concentration.  However, the safety of the fortress and his friends’ company felt as illusory as one of his spells of deception and distraction.

The little gathering around him were grim faced, too aware of what his distant eye had seen from the commentary he had relayed to them.  “It is coming then,” Elyas said.  “How long, do we have?”

Thom shook his head.  “Not long.” He gazed at the enemy encampment, seeing waves of movement in the massed ranks of soldiers as orcs and outlanders parted to make way for a greater foe. “Not long at all.”

“We must make the signal,” Kimbolt glanced at the tall tower at the far end of the fortress.  “She must know.”

Thom nodded, but found his hand was trembling as he tried to work his fingers to the spell.  “Elyas,” he said.  “Would you be so kind? I don’t think I can.”

The elf muttered a brief incantation and a flash of lightning cracked into the air.  Thom shut his eyes too late against the fierce blue light and found himself squinting and blinking. “Did she see it?” he asked.

“Yes, she waved back.” It was Hepdida’s voice that answered, taking his cold hands in hers.  “Come on Thom, you’re shivering still. Are you cold?”

“Not cold, no,” he replied.  Over the princess’s shoulder he could see a dark form taking shape at the edge of the half-elf’s encampment.  A shape that suddenly launched itself into the air; His own stomach made a similarly abrupt leap upwards which nearly cost him his breakfast.  The dragon had scared him witless when he had seen it from afar and knew it served on the same side as him.  Now, he was its enemy, one of ten thousand vulnerable targets with no place to hide and nowhere to run and it was coming closer.

Whatever the queen’s plan was, and she had shared it with no-one, he prayed for the miracle of it working and somehow swallowed his rising gorge.

“There are two weak points to a Dragon.” 

Niarmit’s ears heard Thren’s voice echoing in the Domain of the Helm.  Her eyes, however, were focussed entirely in the fortress atop Colnhill, gazing through the Helm’s opaque visor at Quintala’s camp.  She could see a dark mass rising into the air with frightening speed and knew that the same sight would appear to the four monarchs seated on stone thrones in the Domain of the Helm.

Mitalda, Thren the Seventh and two of the Bulvelds were sharing the experience and the command of her body; the Helm afforded a bridge for sensation and control between the material world and Eadran’s blasphemous hell hole.  The other two monarchs, together with Santos, stood watch against any reappearance by Chirard in the Chamber of the Helm. 

Much as Niarmit would have craved the support of all six of her illustrious forbears in battling the dragon, there was still a formidable foe within the Domain of the Helm.  Chirard was at best a distraction that she needed to guard against, at worst an interfering usurper of the Helm who would seize control of her body to serve his own purpose.  The two monarchs who stood guard, Thren the Fifth and Bulveld the Fourth, had more reason than most to hate him.  Both had born sons, more legitimate heirs than Chirard himself, who had been murdered to further the Kinslayer’s rampant ambition.   Niarmit, hoped that loss would keep their vigilance sharp enough while the remaining four would still be able to give sufficient support, channelled through the Helm, to defeat the Dragon.

“Two weak points,” Niarmit repeated, though whether she uttered the words in both worlds or just the Domain of the Helm she could not be sure.  “You are certain there are only two weak points?”

“I have it on good authority, from one who knows,” Thren repeated from his stone throne.  “I read it in a book.  There are two places where a dragon’s skin can be penetrated.”

“And you are quite sure the eyes are not amongst them?” The stockier Bulveld demanded.  “Blinding it has such appeal as a first move.”

“Which is precisely why dragons that could easily be blinded would not have lived such long lives nor raised many young,” Thren’s voice retorted.  “A Dragon’s eye is covered with a transparent layer as hard as steel, as thick as your arm and as clear as glass.  There was a shard of a dragon’s eyeball which was used as a shield by one of the first of the monar emperors.  A great heirloom it was.”

“So not the eyes then.” The taller Bulveld, the grandfather, agreed impatiently.

“No, it really is just inside the ear and the roof of the mouth,” Thren went on.  “Those are the only places where an arrow might pierce through its armoured hide to the dragon flesh beneath.”

“So I’ve got to plant an arrow in its ear, or wait until it opens its mouth and take a pot shot then,” Bulveld the grandson grumbled.

“I don’t think we’ll have long to wait for it to open its mouth,” Queen Mitalda chided.  “And when that happens I don’t think the aim will be too taxing for one of your reputation with a bow.”

“You are sure that the Helm is proof against even dragon fire, Queen Niarmit,” the grandfather asked.

Niarmit, eyes still on the approaching dragon, found herself nodding in both worlds.  “Yes, it breathed fire on me several times, but the Helm protected not just me, but my possessions and also a friend I had take shelter behind me.”

“But an arrow alone will still be nothing more than a pinprick to a dragon, uncomfortable but hardly fatal.”

“Which is why, my dear Bulveld, these arrows will have been so carefully augmented,” Mitalda said from a throne on Bulveld’s right.  “The spell I will arm them with will take effect not so much on impact as at the moment of penetration.  A ball of ice exploding within the dragon’s skull will freeze whatever parts of the creature’s brain it does not entirely destroy.”

It was unusual surrendering her body to the will of others.  She had fought Chirard for control as incumbent on the gilded throne and also as a supplicant on one of the white stone thrones. Those had been uncomfortable experiences a discordant clash of wills always testing and probing each other’s limits but with the one on the gilded throne always in the ascendancy. 

However, with the harmonious co-operation of the other monarchs the experience was more of being one part of a greater collective mind driving her physical self.  It was as though her body had become a ship of which she was captain and they were crew, collaborating to draw from her physical form performances she had never thought possible. Long years of hardship and combat had honed her into a lithe swift fighter, but a little experimentation in the privacy of Quintala’s house had shown her how, with the Helm, she possessed a speed and strength of action which had astounded her and on which she was relying to defeat the dragon.

“It’s coming,” she said.

“I see it,” Mitalda replied.

Niarmit bent down behind the battlements at the very top of Quintala’s tower.  It had been an awkward struggle to thread her way through the tower’s inner bracing, but she had emerged into the dizzy daylight barely out of breath from the climb.  They had thirty arrows in two quivers and a bow of prodigious size. 

On Bulveld’s instructions she had borrowed it from the very tallest and strongest of Johanssen’s soldiers.  The man had handed it over with a smile, a length of yew a full foot taller than she was.  Neither he nor she had expected her to be able to draw it.  But practice had shown, with both Bulvelds lending their strength to her arms, that the only risk was she might snap it.

The bow for the moment lay on the stone while her hands, working to Mitalda’s will, spread out a dozen arrows. Swift incantations cast a bead of pulsating blue that lodged behind the head of six of the arrows.

“Why not enchant them all?” the stockier Bulveld’s voice rang out.

Mitalda clucked her irritation with her descendant.  “My boy, you may as well ask why I didn’t enchant them all last night.”  Before Bulveld could ask that exact question, as he seemed minded to do, she hurried to an answer.  “There is a limit to how long and how many of these spells I can keep in suspended discharge. Now look you, the beast nears the gatehouse. Let’s bend this bow and see if we can draw him this way.”

The dragon’s slow beating wings brought it with lazy grace towards the gatehouse, its head drawn back, mouth yawning wide as the people scurried for useless shelter.  Niarmit bent her back pulling on the great bow with an ease that astounded her.  In effect and sensation it was not unlike the times as a child when Matteus had stood behind her, his hands over hers, and helped her draw and aim her first bow. 

It was Bulveld guided her aim this time and the arrow shot from the string so fast her eye could barely follow it and so far that it diminished into invisibility long before it drew level with the gatehouse. Already a second arrow was on the string, drawn and loosed.  She readied a third but found only her own strength at work.  “Again,” she cried.  “Another arrow.”

“Two is enough,” Bulveld said.  “For now.”

“Our purpose is to draw him closer for a killing shot, remember,” Mitalda admonished.

“But what if we miss.”

“I didn’t miss,” Bulveld said flatly.  And then, even across the length of the bailey and beyond, Niarmt saw a flare of blue white light against the Dragon’s flank. Then as the creature’s head jerked round in surprise, its jet of flame scorching the empty air, she saw a second spell burst in the angle of the Dragon’s wing.  The great lizard roared, its voice a rumble of thunder rolling across the fortress.

“We hurt it!” Niarmit cried.

“I am afraid we have done so such thing, Niarmit, not yet,” Thren corrected her.  “There is no spell nor weapon that can penetrate a dragon’s hide.  We have merely been saying hello.”

“Now!” At Bulveld’s command they drew a third arrow and launched it at the hovering beast.  The dragon must have caught a flicker of the arrow and tracked its source, for it gave a powerful downbeat of its wings propelling it towards Niarmit’s vantage point, just before the enhanced missile burst in a shower of ice along its neck.

“I think he heard us.” The leaner Bulveld said as the beast soared towards them, beating its way over the bailey and climbing.

“Wait for it,” Mitalda cried.

Niarmit watched the dragon, claw its way higher even than the top of the tower, circling around the pinnacle of Quintala’s fortress at a distance of a hundred yards or so. 

“I can try for an ear shot,” Bulveld called out.

“No!” Mitalda commanded.  “A mouth shot is surer, wait until that presents itself.”

After a couple of wary circuits, the dragon swerved away heading north.

“The coward’s running.”  There was disappointment in the stocky Bulveld’s voice as the winged serpent clawed further and higher.

“No he’s not.” Mitalda’s observation was scarcely out of the great queen’s mouth, before the reptile flicked his tail over and performed a lightning quick mid-air about face, so that he was now facing and heading downwards in a steep dive towards the tower top.

“Get ready.”

The beast was closing at a great speed, his mouth opening. Within the gaping maw, Niarmit saw a flicker of flame from two glands either side of its throat and then the dragon breathed out and a jet of flame bathed her.  The stone blistered, but she and those within the Helm felt nothing more than a mild warmth.

“I can’t see the target.”  They all shared Bulveld’s complaint, their field of vision filled with harmless yellow and white heat and then it was gone and the dragon too. The arrow unloosed on the string, the reptile diving down out of shot.

“Next time,” Thren offered his reassurance as the dragon beat its wings powerfully, climbing for another turning pass.

“This time!” Bulveld made his own emphatic assurance.

The dragon jinked round again with an agility that would have credited a mouse, never mind something larger than most buildings.  Niarmit leant her own meagre strength to the drawing of the bow.  As the dragon’s jaw gaped opened Bulveld directed her eyes, focussed on the aiming point at the roof of its mouth.  The flames came, but the king adjusted his aim for the movement of the beast that had covered them in fire and the arrow was loosed into the midst of the heat.

There was a burst of blue within the white and yellow, a hiss a splutter.  The flame vanished, specks of warm water sprinkled on Niarmit’s face.  Vision returned as a scaly tail shot past them.

“Did we get it?”

Niarmit swung round to catch sight of the dragon.  It had levelled out of its dive and was climbing once more, though with more effort than before.  “It doesn’t look like its brain has been destroyed by a shower of ice,” she said glumly.

“My aim was true,” Bulveld said indignantly.

“The spell must have gone off prematurely,” Mitalda suggested.  “Once the arrow passed beyond the protection of the Helm, the flame destroyed it and set off the iceball in midair.  Between the fire and the ice, it would have given the beast nothing more than mouthful of warm water.”

The great queen’s analysis was born out by the dragon’s spluttering climb.  Water dripped from its jaws, as its chest heaved in a spasm of coughing.

“We must wait to loose the arrow until its fire has quite passed, then catch it with the projectile before it has closed its mouth again.”

Thren coughed a modest disagreement with Mitalda.  “Or better still we catch it in the second before the fire is first launched.  His flames last until he is passed us.”  The modified proposal got a murmur of assent from Mitalda.

“That’s an eye blink of opportunity, young Thren,” Bulveld remarked as the dragon shrugged off the inconvenience of a mouthful of water and resumed its powerful climb for the height from which to make another diving pass.  “A fast moving target, a split second shot, you ask much.”

“If you can’t make the shot, then you are no grandson of mine,” the taller Bulveld chided.

“He’s coming,” Niarmit cried.

“I see,” Bulveld the grandson replied as they bent their collective strength to draw the bow.

“Wait until his mouth opens, watching, waiting.”

Niarmit and her ancestors waited as the dragon swooped in, faster and steeper than before, but he didn’t open his mouth, or aim for them.  “He’s diving too steeply.   He can’t control it. He will crash.”

“No Niarmit.”  There was horror in Thren’s voice.  “He is controlling it.  He means to crash.”

And then the serpent slammed into the tower beneath their feet. A thunderous collision that had the tower top sway left and right by as much an entire diameter.  The arrows scattered across the stone, the bow fell from Niarmit’s hand and the floor of the tower tilted at a crazy angle which had her sliding towards the parapet.  The creature must have hung onto the stone, its claws ripping huge holes in what was little more than an overgrown chimney, for a blast of heat erupted from within the tower, a tongue of yellow flame shooting through the narrow hatchway by which Niarmit had ascended onto the roof. 

What little strength was left in the battered wizardstone quite vanished as the internal bracing of wooden beams and poles was turned to instant ash.

“Oh shit!”  Niarmit felt her stomach leap upwards as the floor beneath her turned to dust and she was falling.

“The Helm,” Thren was calling.  “Hold the Helm on your head.”