Master Of The Planes (Book 3) (52 page)

Eadran frowned and shook his head.  “None, Justinian made one plea for one last blue gate.  He said, give me a chance to go back, to unmake everything. And Dayaraf did so, opening a gate into the emperor’s childhood. And Justinian stepped through it, and neither he nor Dayaraf were ever seen again.  Not that it mattered then, for the empire was in tatters and every man, woman and child had more on their minds than the disappearance of two old fools.”

“What happened to them?”

Eadran shrugged.  “I don’t know.  But he who told me this tale had an idea.  He believed that Justinian went back to his childhood intending to secure the death of Dayaraf before he could make his discovery of the blue gate.  That seventh gate apparently opened near to a book binder’s shop, some years in the past.”

“He can’t have succeeded,” Gregor huffed.  “Not if the knowledge of blue gates and of Dayaraf still exists in the world.”

“Indeed,” Eadran agreed.  “But Zeln took charge of the council and forbade the use of the blue gates on pain of death and he and the other mages tried to preserve some shred of the Monar Empire, but it was too late and all that great civilisation’s knowledge and culture was lost when their cities were sacked by the barbarians.  The mages disappeared and with them should have gone all knowledge of their craft. But it seems that the evil of the blue gate and how it could be cast must have been uncovered by the Kinslayer”

“How would a blue gate have enabled Chirard to write this book,” Niarmit asked.  “Having worn the Helm, even if he went back he could not talk to anyone else of it.”

“He could talk to no other,” Thren’s face lit up with an epiphany of understanding.  “But he could talk to himself.”

Eadran nodded slowly.  “His old self could tell his younger self all about the Helm and the history they would share, and the younger self unencumbered by having worn the Helm would be free to write it down in this damnable book.”

The Vanquisher shook his head in dismay.  “I should have seen it.  I should have laid plans against what a madman might do.”

“What difference does it make if people know?” Gregor growled.  “The infernal secrecy about this thing this place you have consigned us to, that is its greatest curse.  Let Maelgrum shout it from the rooftops, he still can’t get at us, but maybe Niarmit’s friends might support her better if they understood more.”

Eadran glared at him for a long moment then shook his head.  “The curse of Chirard’s blue gate may be unravelling still.  It brought about his own ruin, I am sure of that.”

Thren nodded.  “Yalents told me of what he said the night she tricked him and lured him to his doom on my sword.   He said then, how he had anticipated our every move, even her own embasy to see him.  But it must have been that night he cast this spell to speak to his younger self.  He told himself to expect Yalents, to trust her, but he did not know and could say how she would betray him.  Indeed his misplaced trust in her made the betrayal all the easier.”

Eadran nodded.  “Time defeats the tampering of fools.  It layers the wounds their blue gates make, covering them with a weight of scar tissue that obliterates the caster.   Chirard’s ruin is not yet complete, he exists still, and his existence is tied to this place.  The doom that he brought upon himself when he stepped through that azure portal may yet engulf us here too.  That the knowledge of the Helm should leak into the world may be the first pebble in an avalanche that will bury us all.”

“You think Chirard’s folly could drag us all into oblivion?”  Niarmit asked.

Eadran nodded heavily. “That is why you must never use the blue gate spell as Chirard did.  The consequences are far reaching, unforseeable and never what the caster intended or desired.”

“You seem most knowledgeable about a form of spell craft that surely died with the Monar Empire almost five hundred years before you were born.” Thren alone was bold enough to challenge the Vanquisher’s expertise.

Eadran sighed.  “I heard this tale from one who would know the truth of it more than most.  I heard it from the great mage Zeln himself.”

“Zeln?  He would still have to be centuries old to have met you.”

The Vanquisher nodded heavily.  “He was indeed, and calling himself by different names by then.  Sometimes Magister, but more often he was known as Maelgrum.”

“Maelgrum was a mage of the Monar Empire?”  Thren gasped.

Eadran cast him a baleful look.  “It should not surprise you.  He had to have been alive once, a living man before he could be a dead one.  Where else would wizardry of his skill have had its origins save in that glittering empire.”

Niarmit flung a hand to her mouth.  “I saw a circle of blue when Udecht healed me, when he gave me that slim chance to escape the dragon.  That was Maelgrum, spying into the past, striving to find out how I defeated his plans.”

Eadran nodded heavily.  “It was the only use that his own dictum, the dictum of Zeln allowed for the blue gates, a chance to observe but not change what was past and in so doing inform those as yet unmade actions which shape the future.  To use the gates thus, as Dayaraf initially chose to, does not distort or corrupt the flow of time.”

“And that is why he punished Udecht so cruelly, once he saw for himself what the bishop had done.”

“That reason perhaps, but also for his own pleasure.  When you have lived the millennia that Maelgrum has, mastering a dozen different worlds at different times, all sense of conscience is eroded.  Nothing matters but your own desires, ambitions and entertainment.”

“How does a mere man become such a monster?” Gregor growled.

“The real mystery is why it doesn’t happen more often,” Eadran replied in the midst of a distracted scrutiny of his own hand, turning it back and forth infront of his eyes.

The horse was winded and doubtful for more than another half mile at most, so it was as well that Kimblot clattered into the broad courtyard of Lavisevre when he did.  The seneschal slid from his saddle, handing the reins to a stable hand and hurrying for the palace entrance.  He was brought up short by an excited squeak of recognition.

“Kimbolt!”

She emerged from the summer garden, resplendent in a dress of simple elegance, well suited to the dignity of a crown princess.

He waited for her to draw closer, her pace quick, sometimes skipping a few steps beneath her skirts as she sought to close the distance between them.  “Your Highness.”  He accompanied the formal greeting with a stiff bow, unsure of his standing with any of the queen’s circle after his banishment to Oostport.

“Please,” she begged as she looped her arm through his.  “Call me Hepdida.  So few people in Rugan’s palace know how to use my name.”

“Is the queen here too?”

Hepdida gave a wide eyed shrug.  “She was, but she’s gone, it was all most sudden and mysterious.”

“How so?”  Kimbolt demanded, his alarm raised as much as his interest was piqued

“We came charging here at speed because she was worried at what Quintala might be up in Listcairn.  Then we stalled here for a few days because I showed her a bit of a book I had found and she thought there might be something significant to it.  Then suddenly she decided she was needed back at Karlbad, so she darted through the gate all by herself and, apparently, it dissolved after she’d gone.”

They were in the main hallway of Lavisevre. Kimbolt stopped and turned the princess to face him.   “So the queen is in Karlbad?”

“Yes, or at least that’s where she was.”

“And there is no way of reaching her, or knowing if she is still there.”

“Well only by a messenger on horseback.”

“And something that you showed her, some fragment of a book, has alarmed her enough to disrupt her plans?”

Hepdida shrugged.  “I don’t know if that was exactly that.  She was certainly very interested in it at first, but then she claimed it was all about supporting Isobel that meant she had to go to Nordsalve immediately.”  The princess sniffed.  “I don’t think that can have been it.  There was something else on her mind and she left the blasted bit of book behind.”

“Are you sure? Where is this book?”  He had gripped her arm more tightly than he intended and she looked at his offending hand, trying to hide the alarm of the once abused beneath the mere annoyance of a child.  He hurriedly let go.  “Please, Hepdida, show me.  It may be important.  I fear the queen has been acting outside herself lately.”

She looked at him curiously.  “How could you know, you’ve been in Oostport for weeks?”

“I had a feeling, that is all and I care about her.”

She pursed her lips.  “What was it you two argued about? I thought she really liked you.”

He felt his colour rising as the fifteen year old girl poked at feelings he himself had not entirely reconciled and certainly had no desire to discuss.  “I don’t know, Hepdida.  There was no argument.  She just sent me away.”

Hepdida looked away.  “Not letting you know what you’ve done wrong, yes that sounds like our impenetrable Niarmit.”

“You shouldn’t speak of your cousin like that,” he snapped.

The princess glared back at him.  “She treated you like dirt, you worse than anyone, and still you defend her.  That’s a powerful sickness you’re afflicted with Kimbolt.”

“Where is this scrap of a book?”  Kimbolt drove on, eager to escape any talk of his relationship with the queen.  “Let me see it, now.”

“It’s in my room,” Hepdida said with a pout before turning to lead the way.  “I found it after she had gone, like I said, it can’t have been that important.”

“But seeing it made her change her plans.  It may hold a clue as to where and why she went so hastily.”

“I think you’ll find it a very short clue,” Hepdida said sourly.

“I would still like to see it before I go on my way to Karlbad.”

The pair of them walked in a silence born more of tolerance than companionship, each feeling disappointment in their reunion with the other.

Thom was seated at a desk in the lounge of their royal suite of rooms.  He rose from the tome he was studying with a surprised but courteous “hello” when Hepdida and Kimbolt swept into the chamber.  The two men exchanged stiff smiles while the princess darted into her own room. 

“How go the queen’s affairs in Oostport?” Thom asked.

“They go very well, we shall soon have a force of some consequence to aid her Majesty’s summer campaign.”

“I have seen too many battles to be in a hurry to see another,” Thom replied.

“Maelgrum will not be defeated without at least one more battle.” Kimbolt glanced pointedly at the book on the illusionist’s desk.  “Of course if you would rather pass the time reading.”

Two spots of colour appeared high on Thom’s cheeks.  “I may not enjoy the spectacle of battle, as observer or participant, Seneschal,” he admitted.  “But I will serve however and whenever the queen requires it.”

Hepdida returned holding a thin cracked piece of parchment in her outstretched hand.  “There is not much to it.  I thought the picture must mean something.”

Kimbolt took it from her and immediately shivered.  It was a vivid image snatched by some artifice from within his darkest dreams and perfectly reproduced in ink and paint on the paper in his hand.  It captured the azure oval spectre so precisely he might have thought he had drawn it himself, or at least personally instructed the artist.  It was the gate he had seen the night that Dema had met his gaze with the cold sparkle of her unmasked blue eyes.  He knew now, she had turned him to stone.  He had spent weeks as a statue until Odestus’s craft had restored him to flesh and blood, albeit with his senses and his conscience, like his memory, scrambled by the ordeal.  The blue oval of his nightmares had been a harbinger of doom, not in itself, but for what came after. 

What omen should he see in such a picture drawn by another?  What fate did it foretell and why had Niarmit been so moved by it as to seek him out when she had laid eyes on it?  He had never told her of the blue portal. They had not spoken of his time as the medusa’s bedslave.  His guilt and her consideration had always steered them away from such unwelcome reflections.  But still this picture of gate had meant something to her, something she must have wanted to discuss with him.  And Maia’s lies had driven the queen away, her questions unasked let alone answered.

“Where did you find this?”

“Do not be cross with her.”  It was only when Thom spoke up that Kimbolt realised the grim set to his expression and the impatient discourtesy of his demand.

“I found it in the ashes of the hut that Haselrig used at Colnhill.  It must have been his.  It was a book once.”

“I can see that.” Kimbolt bit off the retort and, in a gentler tone, said, “I’m sorry I speak so sharply, Hepdida, but I fear for the queen.  This sight has set her off on some solitary jaunt and I do not believe it can be a good omen.”

“What do we do then?”

“I will follow after her, the fastest horse I can find to take me to Karlbad or Colnhill or wherever she has gone.  But first I would have words with Prince Rugan, he may know something of what this means.  He is after all trained in the art.”

“Elise is here too,” Hepdida said.  “She arrived a half hour before you did.  She knows much of sorcery, perhaps she will understand what this is.”

“Elise?” Kimbolt frowned.  “Has something gone ill with Kalan and our allies in Undersalve?”

Hepdida shook her head.  “I don’t think so, she was in a hurry certainly. But she did not look distressed or alarmed.  Like you she wanted to speak with the queen, but when she heard Niarmit had gone she agreed to see Rugan and Giseanne.  She is with them now.”