The Curse of the Phoenix Crown

by C. L. Werner

  ‘You can feel the anger of Barak Varr pulsing from Brynnoth’s head,’ Onkmarr said, pointing with his axe at the scowling effigy. The observation wasn’t entirely imagination. Potent and terrible runes had been carved into the head, the most powerful and malignant the runelords of Barak Varr dared to employ. The eldritch letters pulsed with a crimson light, throbbing as though in sympathy to some spectral heart.

  ‘The elgi give us reason enough for our rage,’ Strombak said. ‘They draw from us the very depths of hate and then demand even more.’

  Onkmarr walked to the arm of the catapult. He glowered at the tautened chain that restrained the tensed arm. ‘They will demand nothing from anyone ever again,’ he said as he brought his axe shearing through the chain.

  Despite all the precautions, Brynnoth’s Wrath rose up as the arm slapped against the crossbeam and lobbed the gigantic head down the valley. One of the artillerists was crushed as a counterbalance tore free and smashed down upon him. Another had his leg reduced to pulp as the lower part of the arm splintered and snapped back at him.

  Onkmarr was oblivious to the hurts of his subjects, however. Seizing his spyglass from his belt, he dashed to one of the observation posts and fixed the scope at the victim he’d chosen for Brynnoth’s Wrath decades ago. He focused on the great dam the elgi had built across the river. An instant it stood there, vast and imposing. The next moment the stone head smashed into it. With a thunderous boom, the face of the dam was broken.

  The runes of destruction carved into the stone erupted into ferocious, awful malignancy as the head struck. They conspired to magnify the impact a thousandfold. It was just possible the immense elgi dam could have withstood the crash of the stone by itself, but with the magical enhancement its demolition was assured.

  Through the crimson flashes and whorls of the released rune magic, Onkmarr could see grand cracks snaking away across the face of the dam, rushing in every direction from the ugly crater the head had gouged into the meat of the structure. Streams of water spurted from the cracks, provoking still more fractures. On the wall above, in the little forts that guarded the dam, the elgi defenders could be seen rushing about in alarm and confusion. Onkmarr couldn’t make out their faces, but he could well imagine the horror written across them.

  ‘Now the elgi learn what it means when a dwarf takes revenge,’ Onkmarr hissed, clenching his hand tight about the spyglass.

  Strombak and the engineers had reckoned the exact spot that Brynnoth’s Wrath would need to strike, the spot where the impact would be the most devastating. The spot where the pressure of the waters behind the dam would explode the compromised structure and bring the whole thing crashing down.

  A vibrant roar of delight echoed from the hills as the dwarfs hidden there saw the distant dam break apart. Through the spyglass, Onkmarr could see the tiny figures of elves hurtling from the walls to be caught in the roaring cataract that had erupted from the shattered dam. A tidal wave of churning, rushing obliteration was spilling down the valley, roaring across the path the river had once taken before the elgi tried to chain it. The path that would lead back to the sea.

  The path that would bring the flood smashing down upon Sith Rionnasc.

  Onkmarr dropped the glass and turned to face Strombak. When they’d lobbed the head at the dam, they’d known they had invited death upon themselves. The engineers had timed the speed of the flood waters they expected to unleash with Brynnoth’s Wrath. Their conclusions had been sobering: the crew of the catapult wouldn’t have time to escape the deluge.

  The king didn’t even try. With his death, he would wipe out an entire city of elgi. What greater feat could he aspire towards?

  ‘It is a good death, my liege,’ Strombak told him.

  ‘Aye, a grand death,’ Onkmarr replied.

  The floodwaters slammed down upon Brynnoth’s Wrath, smashing the catapult to splinters and bearing its remains away with it towards the sea. Somewhere, in the boiling deluge, the corpses of Onkmarr and the others were borne away to the deeps.

  The Anurein went sweeping through the countryside, uprooting forests and submerging hills as it ploughed its way towards the coast. The breadbasket of Elthin Arvan vanished beneath the deluge, the carefully cultivated soil washed out to sea, leaving behind a morass of silt and mud that would never again be anything more than a quagmire of marshes and fens.

  Sith Rionnasc itself was obliterated by the floodwaters. Houses and shops simply disappeared. Sections of rubble from the walls were transformed into rolling, crashing, crushing juggernauts. The lofty towers toppled, their foundations shorn by the tide of debris. Many of the ships at anchor in the harbour were flooded, pitching to the bottom with all hands. Some few managed to ride out the assault, surviving to lend themselves to the rescue of those who’d been spared by the deluge.

  From surrounding hills, the dwarfs were content to merely watch as the asur rowed out to drowned buildings and plucked wretched survivors from rooftops. They didn’t move to intercept the ships as they sailed out to sea, escorted by a pair of massive dragons. They didn’t do anything but wait until the floodwaters had receded and the ruins were exposed. Then and only then did they stir themselves. In a great troop they swarmed down into the ravaged port. With hammer and mattock they destroyed what remained, tearing the ruins down to their very foundations.

  True to the promise they’d given their brethren in Barak Varr, when the dawi were finished there was almost no trace that Sith Rionnasc had ever existed.

  The city had been erased from the world.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Return of the Phoenix King

  596th year of the reign of Caledor II

  The walls of Tor Alessi had become a symbol of the tenacity and arrogance of the elgi. Foremost of the elven settlements in Elthin Arvan, Tor Alessi surpassed them all in size and grandeur. Its opulence was shabby and crude by the refined standards of Ulthuan, but to those born in the colonies it was inspiring. They took heart from the concentric rings of walls running clear down into the harbour. They marvelled at the wide streets and their tiled intersections, at the ashwood lampposts with their bronze lanterns that lined every avenue. They wondered at the soaring majesty of the great towers with their white walls and golden domes. They gazed in astonishment at the enormity of Founders’ Square, the place where the asur had raised the very first stones of what would become a mighty city. An obelisk of red-veined marble stood proudly at the centre of that square, its shadow perfectly aligned with the sun to mark out the shifting seasons and the coming solstice. From the square, broad roads swept down to the always-busy harbour, where goods from Elthin Arvan were loaded onto ships bound for the ten kingdoms.

  Again and again, the dawi had tried to smash their way through the barrier, only to be thrown back. Other elven settlements had been conquered and demolished. Athel Maraya was so much ash. Kor Vanaeth was overgrown ruins. The streets of Oeragor were smothered beneath desert sands. Athel Toralien was peopled only by rooks and rats. Sith Rionnasc was lost in the muck of marsh and fen. The dwarfs had evicted the colonists from most of their former holdings, but they knew that so long as Tor Alessi still stood, they could never claim any victory.

  High King Gotrek felt the weight of his centuries like chains of iron bound tight about him. It seemed so long ago when he’d led his people to victory over the greenskins, when they’d at last driven the menace of urk and grobi from the realms of the Karaz Ankor. Such glory there had been, such a bright and shining future ahead of his people. But it hadn’t been anything more than a dream. Maybe from the first there had been no chance of peace with the elgi. Two peoples could be no more different than dwarf and elf. The dwarfs were slow and deliberate, gruff and direct in their manners, pragmatic in their thinking. To most dwarfs, the elves were never more than flighty, foppish hedonists who pampered themselves with luxury and decadence. It was inevitable that they would go to war with a race with w
hich they had almost nothing in common. As much as he’d tried to encourage coexistence with the elgi, Gotrek wondered sometimes how much of the blame for this war rested on his own shoulders.

  Certainly there had been forces at work to bring dwarf and elf into conflict. There were the stories of renegade elgi called druchii who bore responsibility for atrocities like the murder of Runelord Agrin Fireheart. Then there was the chilling account related to the High King by Morgrim and Morek, the report that Drogor Zarrdum had actually been some kind of daemon, an unholy beast exuding his poisonous influence to speed the war to ever greater heights of barbarity and atrocity. The lorekeepers of Karaz-a-Karak speculated that the daemon might have been the fiend Htarken, a loathsome lord vanquished by High King Snorri Whitebeard and the elf prince Malekith nearly two thousand years past. A daemon was never truly destroyed and with time its essence could return to perpetuate its evil upon the descendents of those who had foiled its schemes.

  Daemon or druchii, neither were the cause of the war. All they might have done was fan the flames, but the spark had come from the elgi king himself. Gotrek felt his body tremble as a wave of absolute rage coursed through him. The arrogant contempt of Caledor II had brought all of this about. First there had been the disgraceful mutilation of Forek Grimbok and the rest of the ambassadors sent to Ulthuan. Then there had been the Phoenix King’s butchery of Prince Snorri. To have his son fall in battle would have been hurtful enough, but to have the body defiled by the elf king, to have his son’s spirit condemned to wander Gazul’s halls as a maimed thing, that was too great an insult to bear. True, wiser and more compassionate elgi had retrieved the ‘trophy’ their king took away and returned Snorri’s missing hand to the dawi, but the damage was done. There could never be any reconciliation between their peoples. Peace and coexistence weren’t even dreams now. They belonged to the world of fable and legend.

  Gotrek stroked his long beard, feeling the little onyx beads as they slid across his leathery palm. For him, there would never be any peace. Not while the elgi king breathed.

  The little spit of rock rising from the forest had become known as the ‘Long Watch’. For centuries dwarf rangers had maintained a presence here, living in the caves beneath the rock while using its summit to spy upon Tor Alessi. It had endured, sometimes with only a single ranger occupying it for years. The Long Watch, devoted to one grim and terrible purpose: to call the dawi to the final battle.

  Gotrek climbed down the cunningly concealed steps that had been cut into the side of the rock. There was nothing else to be seen by studying the elgi city. What he wanted wasn’t there. Burying his disappointment under his stolid exterior, the High King joined his hearthguard waiting for him below. His thronebearers hurried forwards, straining beneath the weight of his stone chair. By long tradition, the High King could sit on no lesser seat than his Throne of Power. Whatever the obstacles and hardships, it was the honour of his thronebearers to always keep the ancient seat ready for him. Gotrek considered it a foolish custom, but even a king had to bow to the traditions of his people.

  With a wave of his hand, Gotrek sent his thronebearers to precede him into the cave. The mammoth door was fashioned to mimic the rock around it and when closed, even a dwarf was unable to find any sign of its presence. The eyes of elgi, unused to the subtle differences exhibited by rock and stone, had never pierced the camouflage, nor had the spells of their mages, for the runesmiths had taken pains to inscribe potent symbols of concealment in the rock. The steps just within the entrance had been worked so that they seemed jagged and uneven, the product of nature rather than dwarfish pick and hammer. The cave beyond likewise betrayed no artificiality, but hidden in its deep shadows, shielded by stalagmites and stalactites, were tunnels that led down into vast vaults and chambers.

  It was to one of these vaults that Gotrek and his entourage descended. Once past the outer cave, the tunnels lost their ruggedness. Great blocks of granite and limestone flanked the walls and ceiling while the floor was a smooth series of steps. The room at the end of the corridor was a great hall, its ceiling some fifty feet off the stone floor. Soaring pillars and archways supported the roof, the glowering visages of ancestors frowning down from the heights. Except for the lack of a hearth and a roaring fire, the hall wasn’t so dissimilar from the sort that might be found in Ekrund or Kraka Drak, or some of the more distant strongholds. There were many, of course, who still grumbled that it was an unfit residence for the High King, but Gotrek had no patience for those mutterings. When he came to Tor Alessi, he didn’t do so to be comfortable. He came to make war.

  The thronebearers marched to the middle of the hall, hefting their burden to where a raised dais awaited them. Grunting, they lifted the throne up over their heads and set it back down again upon the platform. With a precision born of long practice, they withdrew the gilded poles from the sides of the pedestal beneath the seat, leaving it to stand on its own upon the dais.

  Gotrek marched over and climbed the steps. Only when he was on his throne did he cast his gaze across the hall. A long table of wutroth, a relic salvaged from the rubble of Kazad Thar, stretched ahead of the dais and around it were gathered many kings and generals, drawn from every corner of the Karaz Ankor. The almost barbarous Norse dwarfs of Kraka Drak far to the north and the steely-eyed desert-dwellers from the lands beyond Ekrund sat beside the lords of Karak Izil in their silver-chased finery and the grim nobles of the Grey Mountains with their eagle-winged helms. Warchiefs from Karak Kadrin and Karak Ungor with their girdles of gold and their breastplates of gromril, commanders from Zhufbar proudly displaying jewels looted from vanquished elgi. Great or small, whatever matters they had been discussing had been forgotten when the High King entered the hall. One and all, they watched their king, waiting for him to speak.

  Gotrek was silent for a long time. His eyes didn’t linger on the generals or his subject kings. He stared beyond them, out across the hall to the silken banner that hung on the wall. Torches set to either side of the standard made it stand out from the gloom around it. It had been captured in Athel Toralien, found in the ruins of its great palace. Captive elgi had identified it.

  A great dragon and a fiery bird, entwined about one another, both beasts rendered in crimson against a white field. It was a standard that had been kept by the governor of Athel Toralien against the possibility of a royal visit. It was the heraldry of one elgi and one elgi alone. It was the personal device of King Caledor II and would be unfurled only when the Phoenix King was in residence.

  Gotrek could feel his hate burning inside him as he stared at the standard of his son’s killer. How desperately he wanted to see those colours flying from the spires of Tor Alessi! It was what he’d commanded his rangers to watch for ever since Morgrim had brought the banner to him. It was what he’d dreamed about for decades, the message that the elgi king had returned to the Old World, had placed himself again within reach of the dawi.

  By his own decree, Gotrek had allowed Tor Alessi to endure. The many sieges against the city had been half-hearted, probing attacks. They’d been staged to cover more important strikes elsewhere, such as Morgrim’s conquest of Athel Toralien, or been used to forestall any fresh campaign mounted by their enemy. The elgi could always be depended on to come running back anytime Tor Alessi was threatened. They knew if the city fell, there would be no rebuilding their lost colonies.

  With each siege, the dawi had diverted some of their resources towards the future. Beneath the plains, far from where they could be discovered by the enemy, a network of tunnels had been excavated, underground storehouses and barracks constructed. Traps by the hundreds had been prepared, all waiting for the day when the High King would declare the final attack.

  The very momentum of their successes elsewhere had become burdensome to Gotrek. With the elgi reeling at every turn, with their people fleeing out to sea or into the forests, the dawi were riding the tide of victory. Ever since the destruction of Sith
Rionnasc, there had been voices calling for a total assault against Tor Alessi. Gotrek had tried to argue against these voices, tried to quieten them until such time as he could end the war his way, but with each year the effort had become more onerous. The kings argued that the war had been fought long enough, that they’d spent enough blood and treasure. There was no need to prolong it when a single attack against Tor Alessi could end it all.

  Even now there were some strongholds that seemed to think the war was over. Barrak Varr had sent only the smallest contingent to join Gotrek’s throng. Karak Eight Peaks hadn’t come at all, King Varnuf keeping his warriors in his own lands with condescending talk of maintaining a ‘reserve’ should the High King’s plans go awry. Other holds, too, had offered their excuses. Everyone seemed to want Gotrek to capture the city, but none wanted to spend their own treasure and warriors to make it happen.

  Turning his eyes from the elf standard, Gotrek studied the generals and kings who had come to join him. He knew he couldn’t afford to demur. If he was to maintain the cohesion of the Karaz Ankor and the authority of the High King, this attack had to succeed. He locked eyes with Morgrim, motioning for his nephew to stand.

  ‘Light fires to honour our dead and to draw the eyes of our ancestors,’ Gotrek said. ‘Call the grudge-keepers to reckon the accounts. We attack with the dawn. You, Morgrim Bargrum, will command my armies. Bring down the walls and let the elgi know that this time they will not escape vengeance.’

  Morgrim Bargrum leaned against the craggy outcropping that topped the Long Watch and studied the elgi city stretching down to the sea.

  The walls of Tor Alessi had changed since last Morgrim cast his eyes upon them. They’d been expanded, strengthened, rendered far more formidable than they had been in Imladrik’s day. It was only natural. After thirteen sieges, the elves had taken pains to prevent a repeat of what they’d suffered during each attack. Walls had been heightened to defy siege towers and ladders, thickened to thwart catapults and bolt throwers. Gates had been strengthened to withstand battering rams. Jagged blocks of stone had been strewn about the approaches to the gates to spoil the momentum of any wheeled engine being rushed against them. In several places, elaborate earthworks had been established to interrupt any rush by an enemy approaching the walls. He could see the bolt throwers and catapults standing atop the towers, the archers lined up along the battlements. Somewhere, he knew, the dragons would be waiting, probably in their eyries deep within the city proper. The drakk would be nesting in the tallest towers, waiting for their elgi masters to send them into battle. It was an endless source of disgust and disbelief to him that anyone could dwell with such monsters, could accept the presence of such beasts.