The Curse of the Phoenix Crown

by C. L. Werner

  A snort of bitter laughter wheezed from the High King. In a way, by making his journey to Tor Alessi, Caledor had not only brought fresh troops to the elves, he’d given Gotrek the best instrument with which to draw the full might of his kingdom into one great throng. Duty, honour, loyalty and obligation – these were all powerful, tremendous forces in the hearts and minds of the dwarfs, but they were slow, ponderous things that took time to stir and bring to a boil. Greed, however… greed was something that could make a grey-headed venerable as spry as a beardling.

  The elf king had brought the might of his nation to Tor Alessi. Soon Gotrek would be able to do the same.

  ‘Maybe the elgi will pay the wergild,’ Gotrek mused. ‘When they see the vast throng arrayed against them, maybe they will forget their pride. Grimnir forbid! Let them remain defiant and arrogant. Let them fight us!’

  Gotrek swept his gaze across the empty darkness of his hall. Except for his memories, he was alone in the shadowy vault. It was to one of those memories that the High King spoke.

  ‘Gold and treasure won’t bring you back,’ Gotrek whispered, ‘but the blood of the elgi king will bring peace to your spirit, my son.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Duel of Kings

  597th year of the reign of Caledor II

  The smell of burning wood hung heavy upon the air. The Loren Lacoi rang with the crack of axes and the gruff voices of dwarfs.

  Liandra watched from the boughs of the oak she’d climbed, watching and waiting for the marching dwarfs to draw closer. Never before had such a vast horde of the dawi come tromping into the forest. They numbered not in the hundreds but in the thousands. Their march was like a raging tempest, smashing through the trees like a hurricane, careless and indifferent to the destruction they wrought. By axe and torch, they cut their way across the land, a great monster of steel and muscle crushing all in its path.

  Dimly, Liandra wondered what had engendered such boisterous arrogance in the usually dour dawi. Surely something of great consequence to make them raise their voices in bawdy songs, to pass flagons of beer and mead from the hulking carts that accompanied them. Even in times of peace the dwarfs had been wary of the forests, and with the war they’d come to shun any stand of trees that might conceal asur bows. Something had changed, something that made the dwarfs contemptuous of the risks of forest trails and too proud to stalk their underground vaults.

  Had the dawi finally claimed victory over the elves? Was it possible they’d captured Tor Alessi? Liandra was surprised to find how little she cared about either possibility. Those were concerns from a different time and a different world. All that mattered now was the forest, the sanctuary that had sheltered her people for so many decades. Whatever had happened outside, be it war or peace, the dwarfs made battle against the forest and that was all Liandra’s people needed to know.

  She had only seven hundred fighters between the camps. Their numbers had slowly grown through the years as children matured and stragglers from the outside found their way into the forest. There had even been a few more like Aismarr, fey elves with strange eyes and a weird air of wisdom about them. Many were veterans of the fighting against Forek Grimbok, and some had even taken part in the great battles outside. Many more were untested. She knew their skill with the bow – a few had even taken dwarfish stragglers before – but none of them had been called to fight in a real battle until now. It would be a baptism of fire, one that might burn them all if too many of the novices lost their courage.

  The elves were arrayed along the flanks of the advancing dwarfs, slipping like shadows from tree to tree and bush to bush. Decades lurking in the wilds had given them a facility for shifting and fading into their surroundings that bordered on the mystical. Liandra had seen some of her best scouts steal so near to a buck that they brought the animal down with knives rather than arrows. The dwarfs, by comparison, were a simple adversary to hide from. Even their rangers, the only warriors among them with some knack for woodcraft, failed to sound the alarm.

  Seven hundred against perhaps ten times their number. They were odds that Liandra would have shunned even with Vranesh at her side. Yet she didn’t intend to give battle to the whole dwarfish host. To drive them from the forest, they need kill only one dwarf. Her scouts had already brought her word of the dwarf king with the tall, golden crown who marched with the dawi, borne along on a sort of stone palanquin by a dozen burly warriors. That was the dwarf they had to kill. Whether he was their High King or simply the ruler of a single stronghold, he was clearly the leader of the army. There were few things that could make dwarfs abandon the field of battle, but the death of their lord was one. They’d gather up the body and hurry to enshrine his remains in a crypt. Only after their dead hero was entombed would they begin turning their minds to reprisal and revenge.

  On the bough just below her, Aismarr shared Liandra’s vigil. Once again, the fey elf had dispatched her mangy hound on some obscure errand, and once again Liandra knew better than to ask her purpose in sending the dog away. There were no answers when Aismarr spoke, only more questions.

  Still, Liandra never thought it hurt to ask. ‘Is this part of our trial as well? Are we still being tested?’

  Aismarr closed her eyes and nodded. ‘Your trial nears its end,’ she said. ‘But whether for good or ill, I do not know.’

  Liandra fixed her gaze back on the advancing dwarfs. She felt an unspeakable revulsion as she watched them clearing their road through the forest. Each tree they struck down, each bramble and bush they put to the torch, all of it filled her with a disgust she hadn’t felt even when she watched them burn Athel Maraya.

  ‘So long as there are dwarfs to kill, I do not care,’ Liandra said. She waved her staff before her, a length of yew topped by a strangely gnarled knot that resembled some impish face. A grey light streaked from the end of the staff, shrieking up over the trees to explode in a spiral of shimmering embers. Before the invading dwarfs could react to the arcane flare, the elves lying in wait at either side of the path snapped into action. Arrows whistled out from the trees, stabbing into victims chosen minutes before. A hundred dwarfs were struck down in that first butchering assault, twice that number wounded or maimed.

  The lurking elves didn’t wait for the dwarfs to come rushing into the undergrowth looking for them. As soon as the first arrows were loosed, the asur were already in motion, fading to another vantage from which to attack the invaders.

  Liandra knew that they had to be careful. If the asur proved too elusive, then the dwarfs would become frustrated and in their malice would simply try to burn the trees to root out their hidden foes. Deliberately, some of her people held back, exposing themselves and sacrificing their lives to encourage the dwarfs to pursue them into the forest. Even the most enraged dwarf wouldn’t consider burning the woods while his kinsfolk were among the trees.

  The dwarf king recognised the peril presented by the headlong rush of his warriors in pursuit of their shadowy enemies. Standing up from his stone throne, the silver-bearded dwarf howled at his subjects, raging at them to fall back and form ranks. Liandra was surprised that she recognised that voice and the ostentatious crown that circled the dwarf’s head. He was Varnuf of Karak Eight Peaks, one of the more belligerent dwarf lords she’d met at that long-ago feast at Karaz-a-Karak. The years of conflict hadn’t been kind to Varnuf. He’d lost an arm in some engagement, replacing it with a surrogate of gold. One of his eyes was milky and blind, and one of his ears notched where an arrow had almost ripped it from his head. Age had taken its toll as well, withering his limbs and curling his back. Yet there was still an air of command about the old dwarf and an imperiousness in his voice that made his subjects attend his every word.

  Liandra drew the aethyric vibrations from the air around her. Since retreating into the forest, her old abilities had atrophied, the fiery magics that had once been as natural to her as breathing. In their stead had come stra
nge, eerie patterns – conjurations that seemed to imprint themselves onto her mind. She was certain she’d never learned them from some hoary old tome, or heard them discussed by a loremaster. They were too raw and primal to be the magic of books and scholars, too wild to be bound by the strictures of theory and hypothesis.

  At her instigation, Liandra formed the vibrations into a coruscating nimbus of amber light. With a word, the light leapt from her staff, expanding, twisting and writhing until it was sent streaming along the road the dwarfs had gouged from the forest. The trees the light passed through were left unharmed and untouched, but wherever it struck dwarfish flesh, the dawi burned.

  Varnuf and his thronebearers were lost for an instant in the amber light, but only for an instant. When the glow faded, the dwarf king and his bodyguards stood unharmed, runes of protection glowing fiercely from their armour. A gnarled runelord glared out from among the king’s entourage. Thrusting his staff forwards, he called upon his own magic to strike back at Liandra.

  The fire the runelord called forth scorched its way through the trees. Barely had Liandra and Aismarr leapt down from the oak in which they perched before the thick boles and branches were transformed into a great pyre. Liandra raised her staff again, conjuring a roaring tempest to smother the flames the runelord had kindled. As she sought to quench the fire, the dwarfs were already charging towards her, determined to slay the witch who had tried to kill their king.

  Aismarr drew her blade and struck down the first of the dwarfs rushing to confront Liandra. The armoured axeman fell, his throat opened from ear to ear. A second dawi dropped, then a third. Aismarr cried out as the fourth dwarf’s axe ripped down her leg, opening it to the bone. A fifth dwarf smashed her ribs with his hammer. Then the warriors were surging past the dying she-elf to come to grips with the mage herself.

  Fierce war-whoops sounded from amidst the trees. Arrows streaked out from the shadows to strike down the dwarfs closest to Liandra. As she turned from extinguishing the fires, her heart became heavy. Hundreds of her people were rushing out from the forest, rallying to her aid. They struck at the dwarfs with their swords and spears, heedless of the thick armour, and superior numbers, of their foe. Stealth and woodcraft, the greatest weapons the elves had at their disposal, had been abandoned in this vainglorious attempt to save their leader.

  Liandra drew upon her powers once more. She couldn’t let her people be massacred any more than she could let the forest be despoiled. She had to make the effort, had to try the only thing that might at least give them a pyrrhic victory. If they could yet strike down Varnuf, then they could still turn the dawi back. Even if none of them were alive to see it.

  Even as Liandra focused her mind upon the grim conjuration, cries of terror rose from the dwarfs. From the edges of the forest, shapes now emerged, weird and monstrous figures that reached out with wooden talons to pluck dwarfs from the road. Ghastly creatures of wood creaked out onto the path, lumbering on trunk-like legs and flailing about with branch-like arms to rend and slay. Ghostly lights shone from knotted faces, glaring at the dwarfs with ancient malignance. The dawi, their faces pale with fright, closed ranks and pressed back towards the road they had been cutting. A palpable aura of fear rose from the dwarfs.

  The forest itself had come alive, had roused itself to combat the invaders who would maim it with axe and flame.

  A great, hulking thing stomped out from the woods, a giant of bark and timber with only the roughest semblance of a humanoid form. The hollows of its trunk formed the vaguest image of a scowling visage, jagged splinters lending the impression of a fanged maw gaping beneath its hollow eyes. The wooden giant brought its clawed hands smashing down, pulverising several of Varnuf’s thronebearers with a single blow. The stone seat lurched to one side, hurling the horrified king to the ground. The treeman loomed up above him while its lesser kin rampaged among his army.

  Swiftly, Liandra refocused her spell, training her magic not upon the king, but against the runelord. Only the dwarf mystic could have the power to harm the gigantic treeman – and that was something she had to prevent, whatever the cost. Aismarr had spoken of trials and tests. At this moment, Liandra understood what the fey elf had meant.

  How much was she willing to sacrifice to defend something greater than herself?

  Liandra sent the roiling ball of shadow she evoked crawling across the runelord. The dwarf tried to banish the malefic conjuration, but as he strained to dispel it, Liandra focused more and more of herself into the attack. The magic of the dwarfs was more earthy than that of elves, more bound to things and objects. The runelord, for all his skill and experience, simply couldn’t match the powers Liandra brought to bear. With a cry that was more resignation than despair, the runelord’s counter-magic failed and the arcane blight his foe had called forth swept down upon him. The dwarf’s armour corroded off his body, his beard withered to its roots, and his flesh crumbled and flaked away. In only a few heartbeats, all that was left of him was a little pile of ash.

  Liandra reeled back from the tremendous toll of her conjuration. She was too weak to defend herself as the dawi warrior came charging at her. He thrust at her with the head of his axe, the spike fixed to its tip piercing her breast. Even as she felt her life pouring out from the wound, Liandra smiled. Beyond her attacker, she could see the treeman standing tall, Varnuf’s aged body clutched in one of its great branch-like claws. As she watched, the giant closed its hand into a fist and burst the shrieking king like a blood-gorged tick.

  As a warm, peaceful darkness washed over her, Liandra heard the cries of battle fading away, drowned out by a soft, inviting harmony. It was a sound strange to her ears, yet it seemed dear and familiar to her soul, as if it had always been there inside her, biding its time.

  The voice of the forest.

  Caradryel had ever been a light sleeper. A few too many dalliances with married ladies had impressed the habit upon him. Now, the uncomfortable weight of his new duties only added to his sleeplessness. Inveigled in the confidences of those opposed to the king, only to then be appointed steward by that same king! He had to hand it to Caledor – he was as cunning as a jackal. It certainly couldn’t be lost on him that Caradryel’s appointment would make his detractors assume the new steward had betrayed them. Given the intrigues Caradryel had been involved in before taking service with House Tor Caled, he had to concede that such suspicions weren’t completely irrational. With a suspected traitor to worry about, the king’s enemies would be taking pains to be as discreet and unobtrusive as possible.

  While at the same time seeing what steps they could initiate to remove the elf who’d betrayed them.

  That cheery notion focused Caradryel’s thoughts on the sound that had awoken him. Straining his ears, he waited for it to be repeated. His vigilance was rewarded several minutes later when he heard a footfall sound from the direction of the door. The sound that had disturbed him was that door being opened. Now he listened as the intruder crept across the room.

  Caradryel had taken up the practice of sleeping with a dagger strapped to his arm. He drew the blade now, holding it behind his back to conceal its presence. He wasn’t skilled at throwing a blade, indeed he was doubtful of his facility with any weapon, but assumed his chances would be better the closer his enemy was. Holding his breath, he waited while the creeping steps drew closer.

  When he judged the owner of those footsteps to be somewhere near the foot of his bed, Caradryel did something he was certain would take his guest by surprise. Although he wasn’t a mage by any stretch of the imagination, he’d spent enough time visiting the courts of Saphery to learn a few small tricks, such as the cantrip he now evoked. Shutting his eyes, he conjured up a dazzling flare of light that instantly threw the darkened room into brilliance.

  Caradryel felt the bed shiver as something violently slammed into it. Opening his eyes again, he found a dagger stuck into the sheets and a blinded elf standing beside h
is bed groping for the weapon. Outraged that this coward should steal in here and try to murder him in his sleep, Caradryel lashed out with his own blade, raking it across the would-be assassin’s hand.

  The intruder recoiled in both pain and surprise. Caradryel was shocked himself when his attacker lowered his arm to clutch at his injured hand. The elf’s features were far from unknown to him.

  ‘Hulviar,’ Caradryel gasped.

  The outburst was a mistake. Snarling, the seneschal turned towards the sound of Caradryel’s voice and lunged at him. Hulviar’s hands closed about Caradryel’s neck, thumbs pressing against his windpipe.

  Caradryel stabbed his dagger into Hulviar’s breast, plunging it again and again into his attacker. Just when he thought he’d surely be throttled before the seneschal expired, he felt Hulviar’s grip relax. With a groan, the assassin collapsed on top of him. Caradryel shoved the corpse aside, letting it crash to the floor.

  The door to his chambers burst inwards a moment later. Caradryel found himself staring at a pair of armoured White Lions, the king’s own bodyguard. He could imagine the spectacle he must present – covered in blood, a bloodied dagger in his hand and the blood-soaked corpse of the king’s seneschal lying practically at his feet.

  Caradryel started to speak, to offer an explanation for the grisly scene, but before he could, the White Lions were surging towards him.

  ‘Are you unharmed, my lord?’ one of the guards inquired, plucking at his nightshirt to check for wounds. ‘The sentry outside your door is dead,’ he added, answering a question that hadn’t occurred to Caradryel until that moment.