The Curse of the Phoenix Crown

by C. L. Werner

  ‘Here! To me!’ Liandra cried out, hurrying to the closest of the elves. When she reached for him, the asur seized her arm in a panicked grip, clinging to her like a drowning wretch seizing upon a bit of flotsam. Liandra tried to ease his fierce grip even as she worked more of her magic to allow his eyes to pierce the dust.

  ‘We have to help the others,’ Liandra told the elf when she saw her magic take effect. ‘Bring anyone you can find to me.’ She waited only long enough to get a nod of agreement, then hurried to reach another survivor and clear his vision with her magic.

  Whatever was coming, whatever horror had fallen upon Athel Toralien, being blind and confused would only make it worse. Liandra didn’t have time to think about the tower and Drutheira now. Survival was problem enough for the moment. And then, from the distance, from beyond the veil of dust, rose a fierce roar less deafening but far more malignant than what had come before. It was a sound every elf in Elthin Arvan had come to dread.

  ‘Khazuk!’ The dwarfish cry of war and battle. Whatever calamity had descended upon Athel Toralien, the dawi were hot on its heels.

  Drogor lingered upon the cliff even after the last of the sappers had withdrawn into the tunnels. As they left, the other dwarfs shared knowing glances with one another. It would be hard for them to say it to Morgrim, but among themselves they weren’t so sheepish. The thane from Karak Zorn was insane, and he was going to die because of it.

  Drogor cared little for the scorn of the dwarfs. It would take more than a handful of miners to make him abandon his vantage. From the mouth of the mine-working, he could look straight down at Athel Toralien. He could see almost the entirety of the city, could watch the elgi down in the streets as they bustled about on their business, oblivious to the doom that hung over them – the doom Drogor had done his part to arrange.

  When the explosives were detonated, the tunnel shook as though gripped by a seizure-suffering giant. Rocks pelted Drogor’s helm, tore at his feathered cloak and ripped at his leathery skin. Dirt and dust rolled down from the ceiling, coating him from head to toe. Dimly he was aware of the roar and rumble of the passage behind him collapsing. It wouldn’t reach him here, at the edge of the working – he could tell as much from the vibrations of the stone and the receding nature of the cave-in. It wouldn’t have mattered if it had drawn towards him; his choice had been made. He was staying to watch the annihilation of the elf city.

  Drogor watched the face of the cliff slide away, ripped clear as though by a gigantic axe. Thousands upon thousands of tonnes of stone rushed down at the city. The earth itself seemed to shiver in fear as the avalanche came rolling into Athel Toralien. Doubtless there were cries of alarm from the elgi, screams of terror and moans of disbelief, but any such sounds were utterly devoured by the gargantuan roar of the cascading rocks. As the avalanche smashed into the outer walls, the fortifications were blasted apart, great blocks flung hundreds of feet into the air only to come hurtling down again onto the houses below. A plume of grey dust erupted from the tidal wave of rock, flooding the streets in a rolling fog of dirt and debris.

  The avalanche smashed past the walls, torrents of rock gashing Athel Toralien like enormous knives, slicing through the buildings and spilling rubble in every direction. Entire towers were lifted off their foundations and hurled like javelins across the streets to come slamming down in a deluge of broken stone. Drogor smiled when he imagined how many of the elgi were crushed beneath that grotesque rain. It was only the slightest taste of what was to come.

  Through the deafening roar of the avalanche, Drogor strained his ears for another sound. Not the faint cries of dead and dying elves, but the war-cry of the dawi. Soon the warriors of the Karaz Ankor would swarm over the rubble, charge across the broken walls to take the stricken city. The elgi might stage some effort at defence, but it would be hopeless. The day was already lost to them.

  Drogor glanced back at the fallen tunnel behind him. He’d have to find another way down the cliff now, but just as he’d been determined to watch the cliff come smashing down upon the city, so too he was determined to be there when the last elves were vanquished.

  He’d waited too long for this to be denied that satisfaction now.

  Forek wrenched his axe from the dying elf, letting the wretch collapse in a gasping heap at his feet. The steelbeard glared down at his latest victim. Merchant, artisan, whatever the foppish swine had been, he should have kept himself in Ulthuan where all elgi belonged. Rubbing his finger along the gory blade, he watched the torchlight glisten on the blood he’d shed. Elgi blood was thin, but it had a curious viscosity about it. Somehow it never failed to remind him of oil – the way light played about it. The sheen of fresh elf blood was something he would never tire of seeing. He lusted after it the way some dawi coveted gold.

  ‘Lost your taste for glory, brother?’ Forek barked out with a certain disgust when he found Rundin staring at him. The skarrenawi still eschewed armour and his powerfully built body was a mass of scars and wounds left by elgi blades.

  ‘There’s no glory in butchery,’ Rundin told him.

  Forek scowled and kicked the corpse at his feet. ‘You were ready enough to kill the guards. I had to be satisfied with what you left for me.’ He looked beyond Rundin to the other dawi warriors who had followed the two heroes into the devastated streets of Athel Toralien. The initial wave of destruction inflicted by the collapse of the cliff had battered much of the city, leaving behind many buildings with weakened supports and broken foundations. At every turn, facades might come crashing down or a house suddenly collapse into itself as its compromised structure gave out.

  The elgi were there too. The dawi met persistent resistance, though never organised opposition. The enemy came at them in dribs and drabs: a few swordsmen here, the odd archer there. Not enough to satisfy either Forek’s thirst for revenge or Rundin’s need for atonement.

  Rundin pointed at the elf Forek had killed. ‘They did you a terrible dishonour,’ he told the steelbeard. ‘Don’t let them take even more from you than they have.’

  Forek shook his head. ‘All I have left to give them is steel,’ he snarled.

  ‘If you believe that, then you are dead already,’ Rundin said. He hefted his axe up onto his shoulder and started off down one of the broken streets. Forek watched him go, then turned to the warriors who had been watching the two heroes argue.

  ‘What does an oathbreaker know of honour?’ Forek cursed, giving the elf corpse another kick. He stared at the other dawi, holding them with his fierce gaze. ‘Only a wattock would find any disgrace in killing an elgi.’ Beckoning to the warriors, he led them away from the street Rundin had followed.

  Athel Toralien was a big place and there’d be enough elves to kill without having the disgraced champion of Kazad Kro judging him, Forek decided.

  His thoughts still on Rundin’s berating words, Forek almost missed the asur swordsmen in the street ahead. Cursing under his breath, he braced himself as they came at him. For a moment he was by himself, struggling to fend off the furious attack of five elgi blades. The shriek of steel scraping against steel rang out as the elves struck his armour again and again. Several links from his beard of chain were torn loose, the faceplate of his helm dented by the bashing pommel of a longsword.

  Then his comrades-in-arms were rushing in. Axe and hammer cracked against elven chain; shields were pressed before elven swords. Inch by inch and foot by foot Forek’s attackers were driven back. Given the space to breathe, the steelbeard rushed at the elves, the murderous runes of his axe glowing as he cleft through armour and flesh alike. In the space of a few heartbeats, the momentum of the battle shifted. The elves were forced onto the defensive, pressed back into the rubble. The advantages of height and reach vanished as the elgi lost their footing on broken, uneven ground. The struggle soon dissolved into a massacre.

  The last swordsman, the one the others had striven so valiantly to def
end, leapt back when his last companion was brought down. Scurrying to the top of a rubble pile, the elf tried to clamber onto a roof and pull himself to safety. The tiles cracked under his hands, spilling him back into the street.

  The dwarfs closed on the fallen elf, but stopped when he suddenly cried out to them in Khazalid. ‘Spare me, dread axes of Karaz Ankor! Let me pay wergild for my life!’ The elf reached to his belt, quickly removing a little casket of silver. Thumbing back the latch, he exposed a collection of gemstones that brought gasps of astonishment from the onlooking dawi. The quality of the stones was obvious at a glance, their value enough to ransom a king.

  Forek pushed aside the warriors who started to reach for the elf’s treasure. ‘Who are you?’ he growled in Eltharin. The elf blinked in surprise when he found the masked hero spoke his language. Perhaps he’d heard of the steelbeards. Perhaps he had some inkling of who it was he faced.

  ‘I am Lord Gelthar of House Derreth,’ the elf answered, turning his hand and displaying the gems for Forek alone. ‘They are all yours if you call your warriors back and let me leave. I will return to Ulthuan. You will never see me again.’

  ‘No,’ Forek agreed. ‘I never will.’ With a speed that caught Gelthar by surprise, the steelbeard sprang at him. The hideous axe blazed as it was brought crunching down into Gelthar’s skull, splitting his head from crown to jaw. The casket of gems fell from his hand, spilling into the rubble. Forek brought his boot stomping down on the hand of a dwarf who tried to retrieve one of the stones.

  ‘We’ve rejected his ransom,’ Forek declared. ‘Let the stones rot with his carcass. Then the elgi will know the price of dawi honour.’

  Grim nods greeted Forek’s declaration. With a few of their number watching for any straying elgi, the dwarfs gathered up Gelthar’s treasure and returned it to the silver casket. Scornfully, they dropped the casket onto Gelthar’s chest. As much as they coveted the gems, they valued their honour more.

  Between Forek and Rundin, the dawi had lessons enough on what it meant to live without honour.

  Drutheira crouched down in her cage, shivering as the sounds of battle continued to drift down to her. After the hideous quake that had trembled through her prison and sent her guards fleeing into the tower above, the sounds of conflict had grown both louder and more frequent. She didn’t know what was happening, of course, but she could guess well enough. The city was under attack and things were faring poorly for Athel Toralien. She didn’t think a mere siege could have wrought the turmoil she was hearing. Was it the dwarfs? The dragons? Had Ilendril’s foolishness finally brought him to his just end? Briefly she wondered if it might be her own people, but she discarded that thought. Malekith’s eyes were on Ulthuan, not the colonies. Elthin Arvan was just a distraction, nothing more.

  She pulled the shift she wore a bit closer to her, trying to fend off the cold, dank atmosphere of her lonely dungeon. Ilendril had been ungentle in his treatment of her, extending her just enough comfort to keep her alive. She’d wasted away down here in the dark, subsisting on the gruel her gaolers provided her with and such vermin as the length of her chains would let her catch. After so many years of this living hell, she had been looking forward to the day when she was of no further use to Ilendril and her son came to take her life.

  A vicious smile fixed itself on her thin face. That, of course, had been before whatever calamity it was struck Athel Toralien. Now circumstances had given Drutheira very different ideas.

  The sound of the dungeon door opening drew her attention. Blinking against the harsh light of a torch, it took Drutheira several seconds before she recognised the elf descending the stairs. She should have guessed it would be him. Nobody but Ashelir would trouble themselves over her when the city itself was beset.

  ‘Checking up on your mother?’ Drutheira mocked. ‘How courteous of you.’

  Ashelir set the torch into a sconce and turned towards her. Beneath his cloak he wore full armour, sword and quiver strapped to his lean body. His bow was strung, looped around one shoulder, and beneath his hood he wore a steel helm. The shadow warrior was kitted for battle. He was ready to fight and die, but first he had a bit of murder to attend to.

  ‘The dwarfs?’ Drutheira asked. ‘This is becoming a habit with them, rescuing me from prison.’

  ‘This isn’t Oeragor and I’m not the Lady Liandra,’ Ashelir growled at her. ‘I’ll let no one, dawi or asur, take your life. Killing you is the only dream left to me.’

  Drutheira cringed, pressing herself to the stone floor. She watched as Ashelir marched across the dungeon, the tramp of his boots sounding like the drums of doom. She watched, studying the hate on his face. There was so little of his father there, so little of Nagarythe. He looked like one of the merciless Naggarothi, bleached of all compassion and pity until only spite and malice remained.

  It was when Ashelir thrust at her with his blade that Drutheira sprang into motion. The quake that had shook Athel Toralien had loosened the staples binding her chains to the floor. She’d been able to draw them loose, hiding the chains under her shift. Now, as Ashelir came at her, she whipped one of the chains at him. The steel looped around his wrist, allowing her to tug his arm through the bars of her cage. Caught utterly by surprise, he didn’t react quickly enough to keep the druchii from ripping his dagger from him.

  Viciously, Drutheira thrust the captured blade up under her son’s chin, pushing it with all her strength through the roof of his mouth and into his brain. ‘I hope Slaanesh savours your soul for an age or two,’ she snarled into Ashelir’s dying eyes. ‘I should be happy to know you were being tortured in the hereafter.’

  Drutheira let her son’s corpse slide down against the bars of her cage. Quickly she lifted the key from his belt and unlocked the door. She stripped the cloak from him before pushing his body into the cage. She regretted leaving behind his sword and armour, but she knew that her years of deprivation had left her too weak to manage either. She only hoped the cloak would be enough to conceal the warding tattoos Ilendril had marked her with. It would be bad enough trying to elude the dwarfs as she made her way from the city. She didn’t need the added ordeal of trying to escape the asur as well.

  Pausing only to pluck the torch from the wall, Drutheira hurried up the steps and to the freedom so long denied to her.

  For Liandra, it was like Athel Maraya all over again. Handfuls of shocked, confused elves staggering about the dying city, lost and abandoned. She couldn’t leave them. Whatever she wanted for herself, she couldn’t forsake the need she saw all around her. Liandra turned her back on Ilendril’s tower and began to gather the survivors of Athel Toralien to her.

  The elf refugees skirted the main rush of the dwarfs. The dawi seemed intent on securing the waterfront and cutting off any retreat by sea, so by pressing landwards Liandra was able to lead the survivors away from most of the dwarf warriors. There were still small bands of roving enemies to contend with, gangs of looters for the most part who were easily dissuaded by any show of force. War brought out the best and worst in any people, and the dawi were no exception.

  Fortunately, enough asur warriors had been drawn into Liandra’s mass of refugees to make a decent show of force. With her came militia, Sea Guard, mercenaries and household soldiers, even a few knights. There was also a mage, who’d staggered out from a burning temple to join the exodus. He claimed his talents didn’t lend themselves to martial applications, but Liandra suspected that had more to do with moral qualms than ability. If a crisis arose, she hoped he’d put the lives of his own people ahead of his pacifism.

  The warriors and fighters she’d gathered were far outnumbered by the civilians, though. White-haired elders, soft-skinned artisans, haggard fisherfolk, pallid scholars, delicate courtesans and craftsmen – all had come stumbling from the chaos to join the exodus. Children, too, so many it pained Liandra to consider how few would have their parents among the survivors.

>   ‘Where will we go?’ a merchant with blackened skin and charred hair asked Liandra.

  ‘Away,’ was the only reply she could give him. It was all she could think to do for the moment. To get them away, away from the fighting and destruction. Away from the enemy. Away to anywhere that might offer them a chance to escape.

  Through the smoky streets, past the crumbling buildings and the broken towers, the refugees marched. With the dwarfs pressing their attack towards the harbour, Liandra felt their best chances lay in trying to reach one of the landward gates. Obsessed as they were with either loot or revenge, it would take time for the dawi to think about sealing off the lesser gates close to the cliffs. Or at least she prayed that it would be so. If they could gain the Jade Door, then perhaps they would have a chance of reaching the Loren Lacoi before the dwarfs came looking for them.

  Little clutches of survivors continued to flock to Liandra, but they were far fewer in number than before. They were entering that part of the city the dwarfs had already struck, the periphery of the districts smashed by the falling cliff. Sometimes they would find the body of a dwarf lying in the rubble, but far more often it was the corpses of asur they passed. Occasionally a cry would ring out as someone in the column recognised a loved one, but most were too dazed to care about the dead.

  Liandra wished she could slip into the same numbness. She wished the faces of the slain would stop haunting her for even a few moments. But they wouldn’t. Over and again she saw Vranesh and all those who had perished at Kor Vanaeth. She found herself looking over her shoulder in the direction of Ilendril’s tower.

  And then, with a suddenness that shocked her, Liandra found her attention riveted upon an alleyway. A little ragged group of refugees was climbing through the rubble-choked street, striving to reach her column. She gave scant notice to most of them. Her attention was firmly focused upon one particular survivor in a grey cloak, a survivor whose aura was familiar to Liandra’s magesight. Though dimmed and hollowed, subdued by guarding wards and eldritch tortures, it was unmistakable.