Sons of Ellyrion

by Graham McNeill

  ‘What did you do?’ asked the Sword Master in disbelief.

  ‘What I had to,’ said Rhianna, staring at the fallen Everqueen.

  Alarielle’s hair spilled around her head like a pillow of spun gold. A single droplet of blood marred the illusion that she was simply resting, and tears welled in Rhianna’s eyes.

  She looked up as a shadow halted before her.

  Through tear-blurred vision, Rhianna saw the leader of the Maiden Guard, her dark hair wild and unbound beneath her bronze helm. Cold fury glittered in her amber eyes, and a terrible grief was held in check only by centuries of training. Her lance was aimed at Rhianna’s heart, and the urge to drive it home was evident in every taut sinew and bunched muscle.

  ‘You will come with me,’ hissed the Maiden.

  Ten warriors of the Maiden Guard led Eldain, Rhianna and Yvraine into a deeper part of the forest, one where what little light remained to the day was filtered through a damp mist of drizzle. Though the ride from their landing at the River Arduil had been frantic, Eldain had not been blind to the soaring magical nature of the forest, yet here its beauty was as flat and dull as any forest of the Old World. The trees here looked dead and withered, devoid of magic and light.

  Eldain felt the potent anger of the Maiden Guard, the hostility that came off them in waves, but also the fear that they would be held accountable for this disaster.

  ‘Are we prisoners?’ whispered Rhianna.

  Eldain shrugged, unsure of their status in Avelorn. ‘I don’t know, maybe.’

  ‘But we came with a warning,’ said Yvraine, chafing at the loss of her greatsword. The Maiden Guard had divested them of weapons, and to take away a Sword Master’s blade was like taking a limb. ‘We tried to stop this.’

  ‘But you did not stop it,’ said the Handmaiden with midnight tresses. She removed her helm, setting it down on a moss-covered rock carved with spiralling vines. He face was beautiful, but with its angular lines and narrowed eyes, her beauty took on a twilit aspect that chilled Eldain’s blood. ‘You aided the Everqueen’s attacker in his escape.’

  ‘And he’s only getting farther away,’ pointed out Yvraine. ‘You are wasting time.’

  ‘Your deeds are known to me, Yvraine Hawkblade,’ said the Handmaiden, ‘so I will not take you to task for your youthful impudence. I am Lirazel, Chief Handmaiden of Everqueen Alarielle, and I do not like others telling me my business.’

  ‘Every moment we tarry here, Caelir slips beyond our grasp,’ pressed Yvraine.

  Lirazel said, ‘For now he is beyond my reach,’ and Eldain saw how much it hurt to say those words.

  Rhianna saw it too and said, ‘Then let us go. We know Caelir. We have been following him since the attack on the White Tower. I have to save him.’

  ‘Save him?’ demanded Lirazel, stepping close to Rhianna with a white-knuckled grip on her silver lance. ‘After what he did? Who are you, and why would you say such a thing?’

  ‘I am Rhianna Silverfawn, child of Saphery and daughter of Mitherion Silverfawn’ said Rhianna. ‘And I can say this because I once loved Caelir. We were to be wed in a gentler time I can scarce recall.’

  Lirazel’s eyes flicked from the pledge ring on Rhianna’s hand to the matching one upon Eldain’s. Her eyes narrowed as she took in the contours of his features.

  ‘You are kin to Caelir,’ she said.

  ‘I am his brother, Eldain of House Éadaoin,’ said Eldain, feeling the Handmaiden’s gaze strip him bare. Lirazel had failed to protect the Everqueen from one assassin’s blade, and she wasn’t about to take the chance that murder ran in the family.

  ‘You are one of the horsemasters?’

  ‘Indeed,’ agreed Eldain. ‘My family has trained with the herds for a thousand years, and none know the way of the horse as we do.’

  Lirazel nodded, and said, ‘Do you also desire to save Caelir?’

  ‘I do not wish him dead,’ replied Eldain, hoping she believed him. In truth, Eldain wasn’t sure what he desired. To see Caelir dead would allow him to live the life he had only recently won back, but the chance for redemption that had come with the reawakening of his brother’s true self would die with him. The Everqueen might have forgiven him, but hers was not the forgiveness he craved.

  ‘Tell me how you came to be in Avelorn,’ said Lirazel. ‘Leave nothing out.’

  Eldain told how Yvraine had escorted them to the Tower of Hoeth at the behest of Rhianna’s father, of how they had arrived in the midst of a terrible battle between the Sword Masters and nightmarish creations of raw magic unleashed by a trap laid in Caelir’s memories by Morathi.

  Rhianna took up the tale as they sailed across the Inner Sea to the Gaen Vale and travelled the hidden paths on the isle of the Mother Goddess. Her voice fell to little more than a whisper as she spoke of what happened at the island’s heart, her soft tones heard only by Yvraine and Lirazel. Eldain made no attempt to hear what passed between the oracle and Rhianna, for it was clearly not meant for the male of the species.

  ‘Save him and you save me,’ said Rhianna as she concluded her tale of events on the Gaen Vale. ‘I do not understand what it means, but it is all I have.’

  From the island of the Mother Goddess they sailed for Avelorn and there the tale ended as Yvraine described their ride through the forest to reach the Everqueen before Caelir. When their tale reached its conclusion, Eldain saw Lirazel’s suspicion ease a fraction, and let out a pent-up breath.

  Lirazel planted her spear in the earth and ran her hands through her hair. Her skin was tanned from a life spent in the forest, yet her pallor was deathly, as though her wellbeing was contingent on some external factor.

  Eldain realised there was one question no one had yet asked.

  ‘What of the Everqueen?’ he asked. ‘Did Caelir… I mean… is she…?’

  ‘No,’ snapped Lirazel. ‘And do not say the words. Her mortal flesh hangs in the balance, and the connection to the power within her remains intact only by the slenderest of threads.’

  ‘She’s alive,’ breathed Rhianna.

  ‘For now,’ agreed Lirazel. ‘All Ulthuan would feel it were it not so.’

  ‘How can we help?’ asked Yvraine, as one of the Maiden Guard appeared at her side bearing her sheathed greatsword. The Sword Master looped the belt around her shoulders, the soft shagreen scabbard slipping exactly into place. ‘I am bound to House Éadaoin and Silverfawn by the Oath of the Sword Masters. Where they go, I go.’

  ‘There is little that can be done,’ admitted Lirazel. ‘Though perhaps the soft wretches that brought Caelir within the borders of Avelorn can shed some light on how they managed to avoid the snares and delusions that should have enraptured any evildoers.’

  Eldain looked over his shoulder as he heard a commotion at the edge of the trees, and saw several Handmaidens usher a group of gaudily dressed elves into the clearing. He recognised two as the poet and dancer who had been next to Caelir as he plunged the dagger…

  No, don’t think it!

  ‘Please!’ begged the poet, ‘this is all a terrible misunderstanding. We had no inkling that Caelir was a killer. You have to believe us!’

  ‘Shut up, Narentir,’ hissed the dancer, with a venom that surprised Eldain. ‘You might not have known he was a killer, but I did.’

  ‘Sweet Lilani,’ said the poet. ‘You have a most delectable mouth, but please, for the love of Loec, keep it shut or you will see us all slain! And lover of new sensations though I am, the embrace of Morai-Heg is not one I am keen to experience.’

  ‘I don’t think that is up to me,’ said the dancer as Lirazel plucked her spear from the earth.

  ‘Actually it is,’ said the Handmaiden.

  In the spaces between life and death, magic and reality, Alarielle floated in an ocean of pain. Her lifeblood was all but spent, drawn out by the dark magic bound to the blade of cold iron, and her spirit was adrift in a place where she was alone.

  No, not alone. Alone would have been a blessing.
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br />   She heard the howls of the banshees in the distance, far away, but closing on her with all the dreadful hunger for which they were rightly feared. The hounds of Morai-Heg, their keening wail was a portent of death, and Alarielle wondered if this was to be her time to pass from the embrace of the Everqueen.

  Her body lay on a bed of leaves somewhere impossibly distant, held fast to her spirit by the slenderest of silver cords wrapped around her wrist. What floated in this abyssal darkness was not the crude matter of flesh, but her ageless, immortal essence of magic. One could not exist without the other, and as one sickened so the other faded.

  Alarielle felt the banshees gathering, like ocean predators with the scent of blood in the water. Their wailing laments echoed in the void, but their cries were not for her. All around the island of Ulthuan, elves were dying. War had come to her fair isle, the druchii once again bringing hate and blood to the land they had forsaken all those centuries ago.

  That age was a time of legend to Alarielle, but little more than a blink of an eye to the power that dwelled within her. Chosen since before her birth to take up the mantle of Everqueen, she had studied and trained for decades before rising to become one of Ulthuan’s twin rulers. She remembered the day of her coronation, the terror and awesome sense of multiple threads of fate converging upon her.

  Though complex rituals of magical preparation had readied her for the moment of surrender, nothing could have prepared her for the surging torrent of power that coursed through her. The crown upon her brow was a living connection to every queen who had ruled in Avelorn, their memories were her memories, and she struggled to hold on to all that was Alarielle.

  What the asur called the Everqueen rose up within her, claiming her for its own ancient purpose. The lives, loves, hopes, dreams and nightmares of all who had held the title before her filled her mind with ancient knowledge. Her mother and grandmother rose up to greet her, easing her into the embrace of the Everqueen and welcoming her to their numberless sisterhood. The line of motherhood stretched back to time immemorial, and Alarielle felt the strength of her lineage steel her to retain her own identity in the face of the vast, elemental power of the Everqueen.

  That power was a distant memory, lost to her now as though carved away by a butcher’s blade. She could feel it somewhere in the darkness: directionless and unfocussed without a mortal host. It was angry, though such a small word did no justice to the roiling fury that sought her in the darkness. Alarielle felt a great weariness closing in on her, and the magical cords binding her spirit and flesh loosened, unwinding from her wrist like a silken glove, and she felt herself drifting away from the earthly realms. The swirling black shapes of the banshees closed in, their faces hidden, but with gleaming fangs bared and sharpened claws uncurling from gnarled fists.

  Hold fast, my daughter, your time in the realm of mortals is not yet over…

  It was not one voice, but many, and she knew them all. Hundreds of voices layered into one spoke to her, and each was right to call her daughter. The banshees wailed, this time in anger as this most succulent of morsels was drawn away from them.

  Alarielle gripped the silver cords tighter.

  ‘I cannot hold on,’ she whispered to the voices within her.

  You can. You must. Ulthuan yet needs you…

  The voices spoke with one purpose, but a hundred voices, each one subtly different and seeming to come from a multitude of places within her skull. So many voices, so many lives, she could only retain her sense of self thanks to the decades of preparation and her own mastery of the winds of magic. A lesser being would have been driven to madness the instant the crown had been placed upon their brow.

  Alarielle held to the voices, letting them guide her back towards her destiny. She followed their gentle urgings, feeling her strength grow the closer she came to the colossal power that lay at the heart of Ulthuan. Leave the Phoenix King his comforting fiction of a shared rule, the power of the Everqueen dwarfed that of any male sovereign.

  In her was embodied the true power of creation, what king could match such a gift?

  At last she felt the power that made her whole, the power she had been wedded to since her birth and which had been waiting for her since before even that.

  The banshees retreated, realising there would be no prize beyond the hundreds of souls being sent to them daily from the blood being spilled on Ulthuan’s ancient soil. Alarielle felt the pain and suffering of her children, and surrendered herself to the gathering power of the Everqueen.

  Her body was wounded unto death, but the frailties of a mortal vessel were insignificant in the face of the Everqueen’s ability to heal and renew. She knew there would be pain, and braced herself for a return to the world of flesh.

  With a cry of agony, Alarielle opened her eyes.

  And the Everqueen looked out.

  Chapter Two

  War Calls

  The blue-fletched arrow leapt from Alathenar’s bow, arcing through the cold air to punch through the cheek-plate of a druchii helm. The warrior fell from the ramparts of the Eagle Gate, and Alathenar nocked another arrow to his bow. His fingers were raw and callused, his limbs weary beyond imagining. Once again he loosed, and once again a druchii warrior was pitched from the ramparts.

  Beside him, the Shadow Warrior, Alanrias, loosed shafts with a speed and precision that put his own rate of fire to shame. Each black-shafted arrow thudded home in the belly or neck of an enemy fighter, hits that would take them out of the fight, but leave them writhing in agony for days.

  Alanrias paused only to take a drink from a ceramic wine jug placed behind the toothed parapet.

  ‘Thirsty work, killing druchii,’ he said, as though they were shooting at targets instead of fighting for their lives.

  Alathenar wasted no words on the Shadow Warrior, seeing in him a reflection of the druchii army that battered itself bloody against the mighty fortress that guarded this route through the Annulii to Ellyrion. He reached for another shaft, but his hands closed on empty air. His quiver was spent.

  ‘Here,’ said Alanrias, tossing him a full quiver of black leather.

  ‘My thanks,’ said Alathenar, drawing an arrow from the quiver. It was lighter than he was used to, fashioned from some withered tree of Nagarythe, and the iron tip was barbed to make it next to impossible to remove. Its length was spiked with tiny thorns that would cause ghastly torment to any victim as they writhed in pain.

  Alathenar said nothing, but nocked the arrow to his bow. The string was woven with strands of hair from his beloved Arenia, and her love gave his arrows an extra ten yards at least. The string slipped, as though rebelling at so vile a barb, but Alathenar whispered words of soothing magic and the bow was appeased.

  He scanned the walls of the Eagle Gate, looking for a target worthy of his bow.

  There were plenty to choose from.

  The walls of the fortress stretched across the mountain pass, its white and blue stonework marred by weeks of war and magical attack. An unbroken line of elven warriors, wondrously arrayed in tunics of cream and gold, blue and silver, held the wall against thousands of dark-armoured druchii and human fighters in burnished plates of iron and baked leather. The defenders of the Eagle Gate were magnificent and proud, yet there was a brittle edge of desperation to their fighting.

  An assassin’s blade had ended the life of the Eagle Gate’s commander, Cerion Goldwing, and the heart of the defenders had died with their beloved leader. Alathenar glanced towards the Aquila Spire, and a splinter of ice wormed its way into his heart. The warriors of the Eagle Gate were fighting to protect their homeland against the bitterest of foes, yet Cerion’s successor had yet to wield a blade alongside them.

  A flitting shadow darted overhead, and Alathenar cursed his inattention. Screeching, bat-like creatures with a repellent female aspect swooped overhead, darting down to tear at the defenders with ebony dewclaws. He sent a shaft into the breast of one of the flying creatures, sending it tumbling down to the floor
of the pass, where druchii beastmasters goaded even more terrible creatures into battle.

  Chained draconic things with a multitude of roaring heads sprayed the wall with caustic fire and bellowed in pain at their master’s tridents. Beside them, mindless abominations with elastic limbs and forms so abhorrent they resembled no creature known to the Loremasters of Hoeth, clawed and howled as they smote the reinforced gateway. The air crackled and fizzed with unleashed magic as elven mages countered the sorceries of the druchii, and protective runes worked into the parapet blazed with powerful light.

  Druchii warriors clambered up black ladders, only to be met with asur steel, and the carnage was terrible to behold. Precious elven blood made the ramparts slick, and the healers were stretched far beyond their ability to cope with the number of wounded being carried to them by stretcher bearers.

  Alathenar saw Eloien Redcloak fighting at the centre of the wall, where once a mighty carven eagle head had stared into the west. His sword was a blur of silver, his cloak a darting wing of blood as he wove a path of destruction through those druchii who gained the walls. The warrior of Ellyrion was the master of war from horseback, but was just as lethal on foot.

  A towering brute in crudely strapped plates of iron daubed in lurid blue rose up behind Redcloak, and Alathenar sent a borrowed arrow through the gap between his neck torque and helmet. The enemy warrior dropped and Eloien raised his sword in salute, knowing full well who had loosed the fatal shaft. Alathenar soon found other targets, a druchii climbing the face of the Aquila Spire, another poised to deliver the deathblow to a fallen asur warrior, a screeching monster that swooped down on a wounded archer. Each time his arrow slashed home with deadly accuracy, though none were killing strikes.

  ‘Is it my imagination, or are these arrows spiteful?’ he shouted to Alanrias.

  The Shadow Warrior grinned. ‘I crafted them from the trees upon which the blood of the druchii fell after Alith Anar nailed seven hundred of them to the walls of Griffon Pass. If there is spite within them, it is of their own making.’