Lady Of The Helm (Book 1) Read Free Page A

and within it the dark shadow flickered back and forth at an ever increasing rate.  The sharp note of the resonating crystal was deafening, the light blinding and in the midst of it Marius heard Haselrig cry, “now my Prince, strike now.”
    Marius looked up helplessly as Xander raised the knife two handed high above the dungeon warden’s chest, high above the spinning levitating jewel.  The prince shifted the knife to his right hand and drew the blade across the palm of his own left hand.  Marius gasped as a rich stream of regal blood dripped straight down onto the spinning singing humming crystal. 
    “Enough, get back all of you,” the mage commanded and the three conspirators stepped back away from the spectacle as the gem began to smoke and then exploded in a shower of sand that scoured Marius’s face waking him from the anaemic slumber into which he had all but fallen.
    Out of the dust a dark shadow rose. Like smoke it drifted back and forth, growing denser with each moment and then, on a faint intake of breath, the cloud shot inside Marius’s mouth, his nostrils his lungs.  It filled him consumed him.  Strange things were happening to his body.  The rope bindings fell from his hands and feet, he felt himself sit up, though he did not remember thinking it.  Hands were raised to his face.  They were his, but then they weren’t.  His arms withered and blackened before his eyes, skin stretched tight across bone, fingers gnarled into twisted shapes and yet they then flicked with rapid dexterity in a sudden complex gesture. 
    A wispy cloud of steam appeared infront of his face and condensed into a reflecting surface of increasing clarity.  As the image sharpened before him, Marius was horrified to see not his own old careworn features, but a blackened skull, with paperthin skin on fleshless bone.  Teeth sat improbably in a gumless mouth and where his eyes had been there were two blood red lights glowing in empty sockets.  He would have screamed but his mouth no longer answered to his will.  With another flick of his wizened fingers, Marius observed himself dismiss the invoked mirror and turn to face the trembling forms of the prince, the antiquary and the mage.
    It was as though watching himself from a great distance.  He heard Haselrig stumblingly announce, “welcome oh great Magister, we your servants rejoice in your resurrection.  Our names are….”
    Already the eyes that Marius could see through but not direct had moved on, gazing around the walls of the cavern, through the walls.  His transformed hand waved Haselrig into silence and a hissing sibilant voice emerged from a throat Marius could no longer feel.  “Your namessss are not of any consssequence.  You have purposssee only in ssssso far asss you can ssserve me.  Do sssso well and your rewardsssss will be great. Fail me and eternal ssssuffeering will be your lot.”
    Marius could feel a mind inhabiting his own, displacing his consciousness as it had abrogated his control of his own body.  He wanted to cry out, to exclaim he was here still, inside this nightmare creature, but the presence within him was too great effortlessly squeezing him out of existence.
    Haselrig was struggling to speak again, but the hissing voice quelled him once more.  “Thissss issss no place of sssafety for me.  There issss much that I musssst know and much that you mussst do, but firsssst let ussss leave this pris sson.”
    Marius’s dwindling sense of self saw the fingers flicker in yet more magic and then the chamber vanished and reformed a different place.  It was smaller, darker with the monster from the gem and the three traitors, but Marius was no longer there.

Part One
     
    Nordag the ogre was not a politician, but he nonetheless held the title and office of Mayor of Woldtag.  There had been some ceremony twelve months earlier, led by the Governor.  It had been called an election.  Ten frightened men had sat around the council table and put