[Ulthuan 02] - Sons of Ellyrion

by Graham McNeill

  Before Eldain could answer, the very air rumbled and a crack split the ground. The world shuddered as a powerful earthquake shook it. The trunks of the trees split open and they toppled, disintegrating into billowing clouds of dust as they struck the ground. Flickering magical fire seethed from the cracks in the earth, like the fire at the heart of the world oozing up through wounds in its surface. Forks of lightning arced from the vortex and struck deep in the forest. Fire bloomed as tinder-dry trees caught light.

  One of the towering columns of light in the centre of the plain was snuffed out, and the heaves of the ground intensified. Like the gods themselves bestrode the earth with titanic footsteps, the ground bucked with thunderous heaves.

  The spiralling mist split apart as whipping tendrils of mist and light began spinning off, like debris from an apprentice potter’s wheel that spun too fast. Monumental power sheared from the vortex and bled ferociously back into the world.

  “What’s happening?” asked Caelir.

  “We are too late,” said Rhianna. “Morathi has unmade the vortex, and everything is unravelling.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE VORTEX UNDONE

  No sensation in the world came close to the thrill of battle, and that thought saddened Lord Swiftwing, even as he drove his spear through the heart of another druchii warrior. Casadesus steered with great skill, wheeling and twisting the heavy chariot in exquisite arcs that carried it close enough to the enemy to strike, but fast enough that they could not board it.

  Iron bolts hammered the chariot’s armoured flanks, but the enchantments woven into its timbers kept it from harm. Lord Swiftwing could not draw a bow, but Casadesus passed him long javelins that he hurled with deadly accuracy. They rode away from the druchii line as the spear hosts marched forward with their blades lowered to engage the enemy.

  Lord Swiftwing saw Menethis of Lothern in the front rank, his tunic bloodied and his face set with resolve. The young elf had earned great glory this day, and Lord Swiftwing only hoped he would be able to reward him properly at battle’s end. Command of a squadron of Silver Helms would be good for him.

  “Coming about, my lord,” said Casadesus, as he brought the horses around in a tight turn.

  “Once more, dear friend,” said Lord Swiftwing, as two Reaver Knight hosts formed up on his flanks. Laurena Starchaser commanded one group, while an elf-maid with hair of crimson and gold, held in place by a butterfly pin worked in silver, led the other.

  “Take us in, Casadesus!” shouted Lord Swiftwing.

  Archers loosed arrows into the druchii, as Mitherion Silverfawn sought to counter the druchii’s sorcery with spells of his own. His Sword Masters were led by a fierce-looking elf-maid with auburn hair. A little too square-featured for Lord Swiftwing’s tastes, but her prowess with the heavy broadsword she carried set his blood afire.

  Cavalry skirmishes broke out on the left flank as the dark-cloaked riders who had crossed the river fought with a scattered band of Reavers. Both groups of horsemen swirled around one another, stabbing, loosing and riding in, only to break apart in dusty spirals. Each clash left elves and horses on the ground, bloodied and dead, but neither side showed any sign of breaking.

  A glittering host of light and magic filled the horizon to the north, and Lord Swiftwing anxiously awaited news of what it heralded. Frantic word had come that it was the army of Avelorn, but he had received no clear confirmation as to what was happening on his right flank. Even atop his chariot, he could see little that made sense. Phantoms of light and colour shimmered on the fields he knew, and from that rainbow miasma he could hear the sounds of battle. But who was doing the majority of the dying was a mystery to him.

  Salvation or doom awaited on that flank, and only when it arrived would he know which.

  Lord Swiftwing led the charge in the centre, and though it was anathema to throw a chariot straight at the enemy, there was little room left for subtlety in this fight. The Reaver Knights alongside him kicked their horses to the gallop, and Lord Swiftwing loosed an ancient war cry in the old tongue of Ellyrion.

  The two hosts of warriors came together with a resounding clash of blades and flesh. Casadesus threw the chariot into a long skid. The spinning wheels swung around and smashed into the druchii, scattering them like children’s skittles. Axle blades scythed them down in droves, and blood splashed Lord Swiftwing’s armour.

  The Reavers slammed into the druchii and their spears stabbed and broke as they rammed them home like lances. They switched to swords, hacking at the druchii as they turned to flee from the thundering hooves and slashing blades of the Reavers. The wedge of the charge had punched deep into the druchii, but still they held on.

  The chariot bucked as enemy warriors went under the wheels, ground to red paste as Casadesus tugged the reins and pushed deeper into the mass of druchii. Lord Swiftwing threw his last javelin and drew his sword, leaning out over the edge of his chariot and stabbing down. His blade parted mail links and cut through plate with pleasing ease, and his buckler deflected the worst of the return strikes.

  “I overestimated our enemies’ prowess!” he yelled as the chariot rumbled onwards.

  His spear hosts shouted as they drove their weapons forward, the archers raised their bows and let fly in arcing lines over the fighting ranks. He laughed as he struck left and right, letting Casadesus pick their route through the killing. A crossbow bolt struck his left shoulder and ricocheted away. Another hit him square in the chest and wedged there, the tip an inch from penetrating his heart.

  The chariot circled around and carried him out of reach of the druchii, and he broke the shaft of the bolt with the hilt of his sword; angry more than shocked at so close a brush with death. Druchii milled in confusion, bodies lay broken and bloodied all around, like stalks of corn in a trampled field. Swords, bows and spears lay discarded like unwanted playthings, and the soil of Ellyrion was stained red with the blood of slaughter.

  “Come, Casadesus!” he shouted. “Into them once more!”

  “As you say, my lord,” replied Casadesus, turning the chariot back to the fighting.

  Once again the chariot carved a gory path through the druchii, the ithilmar axle blades cutting through greaves, meat and bone to leave only screaming cripples in their wake. Swords and axes slammed the wood and metal of his chariot, some biting deep and splintering armoured plates, others sliding clear. Lord Swiftwing lopped limbs and heads with each blow of his sword as Casadesus swung the chariot like a madman, weaving a bloody course through the druchii.

  “Again, Casadesus! Again!” yelled Lord Swiftwing. “Turn and ride them down again!”

  The chariot swung around, but all thoughts of another charge were forgotten as the druchii swarmed them. A spear punched through the timber sidings of the chariot and punctured Lord Swiftwing’s leg armour. He grunted and hacked the haft in two. Blood streamed down his leg, but he could barely feel it. Crossbow bolts zipped past him, and he ducked.

  An ear-splitting roar echoed over the field, and Lord Swiftwing saw a rearing hydra creature with a huge body and a multitude of serpentine necks. It reeked of decaying meat and soured sweat, its many mouths screaming one discordant wail of fury.

  Casadesus didn’t even wait for Lord Swiftwing’s order, turning the chariot towards the creature. Druchii and asur alike fled from the beast’s rampage as its grossly swollen tail of chitinous barbs swept warriors from their feet and fed them into gaping maws filled with grinding teeth.

  Its pendulous heads turned towards Lord Swiftwing’s chariot with a roar of monstrous appetite. It vomited up a host of half-digested remains, and bellowed in hunger.

  The chariot slashed along its flanks, the scythe blades opening up a yard long gash that sprayed foaming ichor and black blood. A rippling frond of torn muscle tangled itself around the wheel of the chariot. Such was the speed of the attack that the muscular tissue was ripped out of the hydra’s body, but not before its drag slewed the chariot around and threatened to tip it ove
r.

  Lord Swiftwing gripped the edge of the chariot with his free hand and fought for balance. Casadesus braced himself against the fairings, but the horses pulling the chariot had no such luxury, and the first had its jaw broken by the sudden jerk of the bit in its mouth. The second had its back legs shattered as the yoke snapped and the entire bulk of the chariot rolled over them. The horses screamed horribly and thrashed in agony.

  Casadesus leapt from the ruined chariot and lanced his sword through the throats of each stricken beast. Both were beyond help, and no horse of Ellyrion should suffer such pain. Lord Swiftwing twisted around in the specially modified seat in the chariot as the hydra hauled its body around to face him.

  Asur warriors ran to his side, spears stabbing its bulk, but the beast had clearly set its sights on him. A long neck curled towards him, and he hacked it away. Another swung at him, and it too was despatched. Then Casadesus was at his side, keeping the beast at bay with jabs and swings of his spear.

  “Still glad you stayed at my side?” said Lord Swiftwing.

  “I am beginning to have second thoughts,” replied Casadesus.

  The beast spat a hawking wad of burning phlegm at them, and Lord Swiftwing ducked behind the cracked fairings of the chariot. Instantly, the chariot’s sides began melting, the molten heat of the venomous mucus eating through ithilmar plates with horrifying ease. Droplets had spattered his armour, and burned rivulets streaked the unblemished lustre of his breastplate.

  “Damn you!” he cried. “This was hand-crafted by the Old Man of Vaul himself!”

  He reared up, though a shooting lance of white hot pain burned its way up through his twisted pelvis. His sword swung out and cut deep into the meat of the hydra’s head, splitting one of its eyes open in a popping spray of white fluid. The beast shrieked, and Lord Swiftwing stepped down from the chariot, taking painful step after painful step towards it.

  Its flesh melted before the enchantments woven into his blade, and each strike was hideously painful to it. Lord Swiftwing lost all sense of the battle around him, the screams of asur and druchii mingling into one constant death note. Shimmering light, like droplets of rainbows, fell around him and he heard the most wondrous music from the very air itself. It made him want to dance, and that angered Lord Swiftwing, for he never danced now.

  His sword rose and fell, each time cutting deep into the muscular flesh of the hydra. Its cries were feeble now, hideous, gurgling, honking sounds of something dying. At last he halted his mechanistic swings. The monster was dead, its flesh collapsing in on itself like a deflated bladder, and its limbs snapping and twitching as the last spark of life fled its carcass.

  “Asuryan and Isha preserve us,” he gasped as the world snapped back into focus around him. His armour and cloak were matted with blood and ichor and other, less identifiable, fluids. Cheering warriors surrounded him, waving bloodied spears in the air as they rejoiced at having fought alongside the master of Tor Elyr.

  The surge of adrenaline that had kept him on his feet drained from him in an instant, and Lord Swiftwing gasped as the pain of his crippled leg and pelvis shot through him once again. He sagged, and a spearman caught him. Another two helped, and they carried him away from the awful stench of the hydra’s body, which was already beginning to decay like a week-old cadaver.

  “Casadesus? Casadesus, where are you?”

  He looked into the faces around him, and knew none of them.

  “Where is Casadesus?” he asked, almost blind with pain. The spearman looking at him was nonplussed. He shared a look with one of his spear-host brethren.

  “I do not know who that is,” he said.

  “My spear bearer,” said Lord Swiftwing. “My chariot…”

  “He’s gone, my lord,” said the spearman. “I am sorry.”

  “What? No! Impossible!”

  Lord Swiftwing threw off their supporting arms and searched for his chariot. There it was, listing badly where the hydra’s fire had devoured the timber and supports. One wheel was little more than spokes and a slowly dissolving hub. The scythe blade drooped like a melting candle.

  “Casadesus?” he said, upon seeing the slumped form of his bondsman. “No!”

  He lowered himself to the ground and placed a hand on Casadesus’ chest. His face and upper body was all bloody meat and scorched bone, eaten away by the corrosive flame of the creature’s breath.

  “Damn you and your duty,” he snarled. “You wouldn’t listen and now look where it’s got you. You glorious fool, you stupid, glorious fool…”

  Lord Swiftwing wept for his lost friend, and almost didn’t notice the gentle hands lifting him from the ground. He felt the hard edges of the grips and looked up into faces formed from bark and moss and broken edges of timber. They were creatures of the forest, knots of wood and splinters for eyes, slender trunks for bodies and twisting root legs to bear them.

  “No!” he cried. “I will not leave him for the druchii!”

  The tree creatures did not answer him, but the bark around where their mouths would have been creaked and rasped with clicking, cracking sounds. If it was language, it was no language Lord Swiftwing understood. A nimbus of radiant light shone in the heart of their bodies, and he saw they had not come alone.

  Wild wolves snapped at the druchii and capering fauns with emerald skin fought them with shimmering axes of light. Gambolling sprites swirled like water around the druchii, nipping and biting and clawing. Something tall and in flames battled another many-headed hydra, its heavy limbs of bark and timber breaking necks and rupturing spines with every blow of its heavy branch limbs. Another two such creatures joined their oaken brother, a whip-limbed willow and a clawed pine.

  “What is happening?” he yelled, and one of the creatures of wood turned its bole towards him. Its bark cracked into a semblance of a face and a soft voice issued from its mouth, utterly at odds with the harsh lines and earthy nature of the creature.

  “I am Alarielle, and my army is here to fight alongside you.”

  “The Everqueen? You are the Everqueen?”

  “I am all things in Avelorn,” said the Everqueen in the guise of the wooded creature. “I am speaking to you through this dryad, but I am close at hand.”

  “Then we are victorious?” said Lord Swiftwing, hardly daring to believe it.

  “No,” said the Everqueen sadly, as the dryads stood him up. They had carried him far and fast, and Lord Swiftwing found himself on the slopes of the causeway that led up to the great bastion castle of Tor Elyr, looking over the battlefield.

  The centre had broken, and the warriors that had fought so valiantly alongside him were being driven back by heavily armoured blocks of druchii infantry. Mitherion Silverfawn and his Sword Masters coordinated the retreat, and their courage alone kept the retreat from becoming a rout.

  The south was folding rapidly, the spear hosts and Reaver Knights falling back to the city in good order. It was clear that the Everqueen’s army had indeed come from the north, and though its magnificence was wonderful and beautiful to behold, its troubadour warriors, poet archers and acrobat swordsmen were no match for Morathi’s determined and ferociously disciplined army.

  The noose had finally closed on Tor Elyr, and his city was doomed.

  “We are defeated,” said Lord Swiftwing.

  “Not yet,” said the dryad with the voice of beguiling sweetness. “Wait…”

  The world exploded with light and magic.

  All across Ulthuan, the magical lines of force devised by Caledor Dragontamer surged with power. Conduits of magic blazed through the landscape, like lines of mercury fire poured onto the land. Power that once drained from the world now found no outlet, and unimaginable energies spilled into its magical winds.

  The Annulii screamed as the titanic power chained within their peaks surged like a molten river of light at floodtide. Streamers of fire poured down the mountainsides in glittering waterfalls, sparkling with unleashed power and uncontained magic. Where it touched woul
d never be the same, the solid substance of matter reshaped and born anew in chaotic jumbles of random form.

  The wild creatures of the mountains—the chimera, the cockatrice, the jabberwocky and other magical beasts of incredible form and myriad variety—came down from the highest peaks. Lonely hunters’ cabins high in the mountains were ripped apart by voracious beasts driven to madness by the surging power boiling their brains, or destroyed in the tsunami of raging magical energy.

  Nor was the devastation confined to the mountains. Earthquakes of terrifying power ripped across Ulthuan, shearing kingdoms from one another and cracking the earth like a second Sundering. The walls of Tor Yvresse broke open and whole swathes of the city were buried beneath a monstrous avalanche. Three hundred souls were lost, from a city that could ill-afford to lose any of its sad inhabitants.

  In Lothern, the fighting on the quayside halted as the city threatened to tear itself apart. Grand villas of marble slid down the hillside of the lagoon as the land rumbled and heaved and shook. The towering statues of the Everqueen and Phoenix King that stood sentinel over the city cracked and swayed and the outstretched hands of the pair finally met as the Phoenix King toppled forwards and smashed into the marble face of the Everqueen.

  Floodwater spilled over the docks and through the streets of the city as Ulthuan tipped and the seas roared over its coastal regions. Once again, Tiranoc knew the terror of being lost beneath the waves as seawater gushed through it fjords and spilled onto its fields. Towns and villages along the coasts of Naggarythe and Caledor sank beneath the waves, their people obliterated in a heartbeat as the pulse of magical energies threatened to break the island apart.

  Throughout Ulthuan, the waystones blazed like spears of fire, desperately venting magical energies as they tried to dissipate the colossal power building within them. Some exploded as that power became too much for them to contain, others melted to liquid rock in the searing heat.