Sons of Ellyrion

by Graham McNeill

  Though everything around her exploded with life, her eyes held only the promise of death.

  Outwardly, the Everqueen was exactly as she had been before, but a force more powerful than any known to the asur beat within her breast. Eldain understood immediately that this was old magic, perhaps the oldest in the world. The first heartbeat of creation empowered her, the birth cry at the beginning of the universe sighed from her lungs, and the power to create everything that was or could be shone in the light that bathed her.

  Rhianna was here too, similarly enraptured by the Everqueen’s brilliance, and it was all Eldain could do to acknowledge her. She spared him the briefest glance before returning her fervent gaze to the force at the centre of the grove.

  The Everqueen shifted in her living throne of roots, raising her hand and beckoning Eldain closer. He could no more disobey that gesture than he could stop his own heart from beating.

  ‘Eldain Éadaoin, called the Fleetmane,’ said the Everqueen. Her voice was the sound of new life, and Eldain felt the years melt from him at the sound of his name on her lips.

  ‘My Lady,’ said Eldain. ‘How would you have me serve you?’

  She smiled, but it was the smile of a cat with a helpless mouse in its claws.

  ‘I would see your truth unveiled,’ she said. ‘I would see you undone and your secrets revealed before those you love.’

  Eldain fell to his knees, and shooting buds of new wood erupted from the ground, writhing like fast-growing vines to wrap around his wrists and pull his arms wide. The Everqueen’s throne groaned as the roots twisted and bore her towards Eldain. She reached out and cupped his chin with her glistening fingertips. Eldain’s skin thrilled at her touch, even as he realised she could destroy him utterly.

  Her eyes locked with his, and Eldain felt the primordial energies that danced within the frail mortal frame of the woman before him. She poured into him, and he cried out at the touch of such enormous power. It burned him, and his entire body felt afire with its surging, ancient force. It hollowed him out, scouring his body for every memory, thought and deed that made up his long life. In a heartbeat she knew him entirely, understood what he loved, hated and desired. In that one moment of connection, she knew him better than he knew himself.

  ‘You left your brother to die,’ said the Everqueen, looking up at Rhianna. ‘For her. You told yourself it was for love, but nothing so noble turned you away from him. Jealousy, spite and hurt pride drove you. You deluded yourself that good could come from evil, but all that springs from evil is tainted by it.’

  With the comforting shield of his denial stripped from him, the full force of Eldain’s guilt rose up in a choking wave of horror. He saw Caelir’s outstretched hand, the silver pledge ring glinting in the cold, bleached light of Naggaroth. Eldain relived that moment a thousand times in the space of a heartbeat, experiencing the shame of his betrayal over and over again.

  He had told himself that the love that bloomed anew between he and Rhianna made his betrayal a small thing. Time and unconscious self-preservation had built walls around the memory of Caelir’s abandonment, but the power of the Everqueen smashed them asunder and forced him to confront what he had done.

  In that moment, he had hated Caelir, hated that he was more liked, more carefree, more beloved and naturally luckier. Caelir took everything that was once Eldain’s, and he did it with such ease that no deed of Eldain’s could ever compete. The world fell into Caelir’s lap without effort, and in that glinting instant, Eldain let a lifetime’s worth of bitterness spill out in one terrible mistake.

  A moment of weakness, that was all it had taken to betray his life, his love and his own flesh and blood. Eldain wished he could take it back, undo the damage his actions had set in motion, but it was too late for regrets. Too late by far.

  ‘I could have saved him,’ said Eldain. ‘Lotharin was strong enough to carry us both clear. Caelir ran to me. He called for me to save him, but I ignored him. Worse, I told him I was leaving him to die. I wanted him to know why he was going to die. Oh, Isha forgive me!’

  ‘You left him…?’ gasped Rhianna, experiencing the full weight of Eldain’s betrayal as it filled her mind with the memory of that black night. ‘You returned from Naggaroth and lied to me? I loved Caelir and you left him to die!’

  ‘I loved him too,’ said Eldain, but Rhianna wasn’t listening. Her hands seethed with magical fire, incandescent in the presence of the Everqueen’s power. Tears of grief and horror spilled down Rhianna’s cheeks as the certainties of her life crumbled around her. Eldain felt the build up of killing magic, and awaited his just punishment. Rhianna would kill him, and it would be a death well deserved.

  Before the fire could erupt from Rhianna’s hands, the Everqueen snapped her fingers and the roots entwining Eldain’s limbs withdrew into the ground like retreating snakes. Unseen hands jerked him to his feet and sheathed him in protective energies as Rhianna’s magic blazed. Blue flames washed over Eldain, licking hungrily at his body. But like a Phoenix King of old, not a single hair upon his head was so much as singed by the fire.

  The roaring of incredible magic burned the air around him, the air fizzing and cracking with its violence, but none of it touched him. The fire retreated, and Rhianna fell to the ground, sobbing with aching loss and sickness. Her eyes blazed hatred at him, and Eldain welcomed it.

  The Everqueen rose from her throne, and Eldain said, ‘Why did you save me? Let me die, please. I deserve everything Rhianna’s hatred can do and more.’

  ‘Think you that I am so limited in view as mortals?’ said the Everqueen. ‘There is purpose that might yet be served by my mercy.’

  ‘There is nothing left for me,’ begged Eldain. ‘I beg of you, let me die.’

  The Everqueen shook her head, and her spun gold tresses were like corn before the scythe. Eldain felt himself lifted from the ground by invisible winds, his body suspended before the awesome force that claimed the Everqueen’s body.

  ‘No, Eldain Éadaoin, called the Fleetmane,’ said the Everqueen, and Eldain thought he heard the faintest echo of the mortal vessel that contained her power. ‘You will live with the guilt, the shame and the torment all your remaining days. Now go, little elf, fly away before my forgiveness is spent.’

  With a flick of her wrist, the magical winds holding Eldain aloft gusted with hurricane force, and he was hurled from the grove like a dust mote in a thunderstorm. Trees and branches and leaves whirled past him in a blur as he spun through the forest.

  Cast forever from Avelorn like a banished spirit.

  Cold winds blew over the Eagle Gate, carrying the smoky tang of sensual oils and gaudy incenses. Alathenar could taste the seductive promise of fleshy delights they offered in every breath, like the scent lamps in a Lothern pleasure court. The smell made him hungry and angry, for he knew it was a lie. Nothing that blew on the wind from the druchii camp could be trusted; it was an art as black as the land that birthed it.

  Morathi had yet to rejoin the battle, her debaucheries within the silken pavilion leaving her no time to fight alongside her mortal allies. Any other army would have balked to have an ally take so little part in the fighting, but these northern barbarians had such a hunger for battle and bleeding that they cared little for the inequalities of blood shed to carry the fortress.

  Their battle cries were vulgar obscenities as they climbed barbed ropes that sliced their palms or raced up scaling ladders of heated iron. Alathenar had emptied six quivers of arrows, and once again had taken a fresh quiver from Alanrias. The Shadow Warrior seemed always to have arrows to spare, and Alathenar hated that he relished using such spiteful shafts on the foe.

  He knelt beside the splintered remains of the left wing of the eagle that had once proudly kept watch over the pass, loosing arrow after arrow into the mass of tribesmen. They were big men, brutish giants with bloated bodies of muscle and fur and iron. Iron axes and wide-bladed broadswords smashed through elven armour, and their frothing madness gave them s
trength enough to withstand injuries that would have slain any normal mortal twice over.

  The walls were thick with fur-cloaked warriors, grappling and slashing to gain a desperate foothold on the ramparts. They bit and clawed without grace or skill, relying on strength, narcotic roots and ferocity to keep them alive long enough to win. Eloien Redcloak fought from the ramparts high on the eastern flank of the fortress, protecting the few bolt throwers left to them.

  Redcloak cut down enemy warriors with darting sweeps of his curved sabre. It was a weapon designed for use on horseback, but it was a perfect weapon for slitting throats, slashing tendons and opening bellies as he danced past clumsy mortals as though borne on a fine Ellyrian steed.

  In the centre of the wall stood Glorien Truecrown.

  Surrounded by a dozen asur warriors, his lack of skill as a warrior was hopelessly exposed. He despatched dying humans, stabbed and flailed with his sword at foes that had been disarmed by his protectors. Alathenar saw that Glorien thought he was fighting like Tyrion himself. He yelled and whooped in delight, and the warriors assigned to protect him by Menethis had to fight twice as hard as any other. The garrison’s morale had shone at the sight of Glorien on the walls, but that had soured as his lack of ability became plain.

  ‘Truly it is like Aethis reborn,’ said Alanrias, looking over Alathenar’s shoulder at Glorien’s wild attacks.

  Alathenar started. He hadn’t heard the Shadow Warrior approach. He wanted to contradict Alanrias, but the comparison was an apt one. Aethis had been Phoenix King over a thousand years ago, a poet and dreamer who had scorned the arts of war in favour of decadent plays, indulgent artwork and grand public performances.

  ‘I’m not sure I like the comparison,’ said Alathenar.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Aethis was slain by a trusted friend. A poisoned dagger to the heart, if I remember my history.’

  ‘You do,’ said Alanrias, loosing a shaft over Alathenar’s head. It took a tribesman low in the groin, and the man fell from the wall with a squeal of pain.

  ‘Ha! No sons to bear your name into the future!’ shouted Alanrias.

  Alathenar couldn’t read the Shadow Warrior, and never knew if the words he spoke were intended to be laden with hidden meaning. Was his naming of Aethis simply to deride Glorien’s skill or was it a further nail in the young prince’s coffin?

  Alathenar watched as Glorien’s protectors saved him from a baying mob of tribesmen. Two fine warriors were cut down in the process, lives that might not have been lost were their efforts bent to their own battles instead of another’s. Even on the walls, Glorien was costing them dearly.

  A heavy metal clang shook dust and rock splinters from the parapet behind them. Alathenar spun to see a smoking ladder of hissing iron bounce from the stone. A flailing hook swung up over the battered parapet and he rolled aside as it bit where he had knelt a moment before. Callused hands appeared in the embrasure, and a muscular warrior clad in soft ermine and baked leather strips vaulted onto the rampart. He bore a short, stabbing sword in his free hand, and a long length of chain in the other.

  Alanrias put an arrow in his belly, but the warrior didn’t even blink. Two more fur and leather-wrapped tribesmen clambered up the ladder and onto the rampart. Alathenar dropped his bow, and his sword was in his hand a second later. Before the warriors could drop to the walls, Alathenar’s sword lanced into a belly and emptied its entrails. The man shrieked as he died, but before Alathenar could turn to face the second human, a hobnailed boot slammed into the side of his head.

  He dropped and rolled as stinging light flared before his eyes. He kept moving, bringing his sword up to block a killing sweep. Crude, steppe-beaten iron slammed into gleaming steel from a craftsman’s forge, and Alathenar grunted at the brute strength of the blow. He went with it, letting himself roll backwards to his feet as his attacker came at him again. The human was a fang-toothed warrior with hideous brands burned into his cheeks, and his eyes blazed with drug-induced fury. Behind the tribesman, more enemy warriors had gained the ramparts, and Alanrias fought three of them as he tried to keep them from taking this part of the walls.

  ‘We need more warriors!’ shouted Alanrias.

  ‘There are no more!’ returned Alathenar. The fang-toothed warrior came at him again, but Alathenar was ready for him this time. As the tribesman swung his axe, Alathenar spun in low and rammed his sword, two-handed, into his belly. He used his forward momentum to drive the blade up into the man’s heart, twisting the blade and sliding it clear in one motion.

  The tribesman grunted in pain, and dropped to his knees as his lifeblood poured out. Alathenar was disgusted to see a look of exquisite pleasure twist the man’s features as he died. Another six enemy warriors had gained the wall, and Alathenar saw it was hopeless to try and plug this breach. Alanrias bled from several wounds, and was backing steadily away from the wall. The northern barbarians could scent victory and their baying cries rose in volume.

  A clear elven voice cut through their raucous bellows, like a beam of sunlight through a thundercloud.

  ‘Get down,’ it said.

  Alanrias and Alathenar obeyed without hesitation as a hissing cloud of starwood bolts scythed the air above them. A dozen, then a dozen more flashed past in a blur of pale wood and glinting leaf-bladed barbs. The volley of bolts swept the walls clean of barbarian warriors, and Alathenar looked up to see Eloien Redcloak on the far side of the fortress with an Eagle’s Claw bolt thrower turned towards their struggle.

  He started to wave his thanks, but stopped as he saw a look of horror on his friend’s face.

  Alathenar rolled to his feet as a monstrously muscular warrior clad in a patchwork of contoured plates held fast to his tanned flesh by a mass of leather coils dropped to the rampart. His armour glistened like flayed meat, branded with the rune of the Dark Prince, and his body reeked of a hundred scented oils. The warrior smiled, and Alathenar was struck by the hammer-blow of his fierce beauty. This was not the mask of a killer; this was the face of a lover, a poet and a dreamer.

  Then Alathenar saw his eyes, cruel and hateful, filled from a well of hate and indulgence, seeing through the mask of beauty a moment before the glamoured warrior would have killed him. A curved and barbed sword with too many blades cut the air with a scream, and Alathenar hurled himself to the side. A hooked barb cut into his chest, slicing through his mail shirt and tearing the skin beneath. Blood flowed down his body, and Alathenar fell onto his haunches, desperately scrambling backwards to escape this madman’s blows.

  ‘I am Issyk Kul!’ roared the warrior. ‘And this wall is mine to do with as I please!’

  Half a dozen elven warriors rushed to secure the wall so recently cleared of enemy fighters, but the ferocious enemy champion cut them down in as many blows. His sword flew faster than any of the elven warriors could match. Its blade was surely woven with dark enchantments, for none in the mortal realm were swifter than the asur. Alanrias was struck, hurled down into the courtyard by a savage blow. Alathenar watched him fall, but could not see whether he yet lived.

  Issyk Kul towered over Alathenar, and he heard his name shouted from behind him.

  ‘Time to die, frail thing,’ growled Issyk Kul, his voice the rasping growl of a jungle cat.

  Alathenar heard a powerful thwack of starwood and coiled rope, and spat his defiance at the worshipper of the Dark Gods.

  ‘For you,’ he said as the single, mighty bolt of an Eagle’s Claw flew straight and true.

  Kul’s sword swept up and the enormous bolt was smashed from the air with a single blow.

  The champion grinned and looked up at the Eagle’s Claw that even now was being made ready to fire once more. Kul sprang onto the broken stumps of the battlements and aimed his sword at Alathenar.

  ‘The gods bid me spare you for a reason,’ he said with a gleeful laugh.

  Another bolt from the Eagle’s Claw punched the air, but Kul had already slid back down the ladder, leaving Alathenar
breathless on a rampart filled with the dead. He slowly picked himself up, resting on the blood-slick parapet as the enemy host withdrew once again.

  Alathenar heard a wild yell of triumph, and turned to see Glorien Truecrown thrust his sword towards the sky, as though this reprieve was a victory he had won single-handed.

  Anger filled Alathenar, and he looked back into the courtyard as Alanrias climbed painfully from the ground, his bow arm cradled close to his chest. Alathenar’s eyes locked with those of the Shadow Warrior.

  He saw the question, and slowly, Alathenar nodded.

  And their pact of murder was sealed.

  The grove was silent, the winds that had billowed its branches and shaken the leaves from the trees now stilled. Rhianna watched Eldain snatched from sight, and hot tears spilled down her cheeks. She wept for Caelir, for herself and the world that had suddenly changed in the time it took to draw breath. Rhianna knew betrayal was in the blood of mortals, but to know that one of the asur could turn on another was like a dagger of ice to the heart. She clenched her fists, as anger began to overtake horror, and coruscating sparks of fire rippled around her arms. Reflected power from the Everqueen shone in her eyes, and it pulled Rhianna to her feet.

  She had thought the grove silent, but now saw that wasn’t true. Birds had returned to the trees and slender-limbed deer nuzzled at bushes at its edges. Doves mingled with ravens, peacocks and kingfishers. Hawks settled on the tallest branches, attended by white-plumed falcons and red-breasted warblers.

  Shapes creaked within the heartwood of the trees, suggestions of faces and limbs formed by the groan of roots and branches. Darting lights spun through the foliage, and giggling laughter echoed on the last breath of drifting zephyrs. They floated through the grove in hopeful loops, gathering above the Everqueen and bathing her in their dream-like radiance. Rhianna shielded her eyes as that brightness was taken into the Everqueen’s body, filling her with such brilliance that it seemed a second sun had come to Avelorn.