by C. L. Werner
Malus panted, gasping for breath, his entire body shivering from the magnitude of what he had done. He had killed Malekith! He had killed the Witch King! By his own hand he had made himself master of all Naggaroth!
For only a heartbeat, the grand images swam through Malus’s mind. It took that long for him to accept the wrongness of what was happening before his eyes. Cut nearly in half by the warpsword, Malekith was reaching for the blade sheathed at his side. Segments of torn plate flopped obscenely about the wound, yet still the ghastly figure persisted. Malus noted that there was no blood pumping from that wound, nor was there blood upon the warpsword’s hungry steel.
As the tyrant began to draw the Destroyer, Malus struck at him again. Pride had fuelled his first assault on Malekith, but the king’s horrible vitality had brought all of the drachau’s fear racing along his spine. Panic drove Malus back to the attack, the panic that only a condemned soul can feel. Having struck the Witch King, he knew there were only two choices now: succeed or die.
Malus struck just as the Destroyer cleared its scabbard. The warpsword came slashing down, a blur of ravenous steel that bit into the Witch King’s hand, cleaving through the rune-etched gauntlet and shattering the hilt of the tyrant’s weapon. The Destroyer’s blade went spinning across the hall, clattering along the dusty tiles. The severed hand flopped to the floor, rolling towards Malus.
Again, Malus was stunned by the lack of blood, the absence of pain exhibited by his foe. Instead of reeling back in agony or clutching at his maimed arm, the Witch King surged forwards, reaching for his attacker with the talon-like claws of his remaining hand. Malus took a single step backwards, then, uttering a snarl of defiance, he brought the warpsword whipping back around. It licked across Malekith’s shoulder, striking sparks from the armour, and tore across the tyrant’s neck.
The helm and its horned crown were sent leaping into the air as Malus chopped through the Witch King’s neck. He gawked in disbelief as the helm went spinning away in the darkness. The headless body remained upright, still reaching for him with its hand. Malus felt cold terror clench his heart as the beheaded tyrant lumbered towards him.
The iron talons of the outstretched hand nearly closed around Malus’s throat. It was more reflex than conscious thought that made the elf dart aside at the last instant, to spin around and drive the warpsword into his attacker. This time he caught the thing in the waist. Fear infused his arms with a desperate strength and the biting edge of his weapon tore its way through the iron plate as though it were butter. When Malus ended his destructive spin, his adversary crashed to the floor in two disparate sections.
Shocked, Malus watched as the armoured legs flopped impotently against the floor. The torso, with its single hand, struggled to flip itself onto its belly. Despite the continued havoc he’d wrought against the body, still there was not a trace of blood – not even a whiff of sanguine scent in the musty air. Malus could see why, now. As the bisected body flailed on the ground, he could see inside it. He could see that the thing was empty, nothing more than a suit of armour invested with the simulacrum of vitality by some profane sorcery.
It would seem you’re not going to add regicide to your accomplishments.
Malus was about to growl a response to the daemon when the sound of strident clapping brought him spinning around. His hands tightened about the warpsword as he saw shapes manifest from the darkness, illuminated by the crystal lanterns several of them bore. Like the supposed Witch King, these elves were armoured from head to toe, and in a style that was impossible to mistake. They were the Black Guard, Malekith’s personal army. Leading them, his hands coming together in jeering applause, was Kouran Darkhand, the Witch King’s loyal dog.
‘The drachau of Hag Graef,’ Kouran said, his voice laced with vicious amusement. ‘How low have the mighty fallen to come slinking into their lord’s tower bent upon murder. Surely you might have hired another to do it for you?’
Malus glared back at Kouran across the still-writhing bits of armour on the floor. He’d been lured into a trap, that he understood the moment he saw the armour was empty, but to have it sprung by a common-born cur like Kouran was too great an insult to bear. As he glared at Kouran, Malus’s mind was already racing. The rest of the Black Guard had come armed, but Kouran had neglected to bring either sword or halberd. That was a mistake Malus was going to ensure the dog regretted for the few moments left to him.
‘When you want something done right, you do it yourself,’ Malus snarled at Kouran. In a blur of motion, he charged the other elf, leaping over the twitching armour to reach his foe. The warpsword came swinging downwards, gleaming in the luminance of the crystal lamps.
Malus heard the wailing shriek as the warpsword bit into its victim, wrenching the soul from the victim as it ripped through his armour. The problem was, his blow had struck the wrong victim. As he lunged for Kouran, the elf seized the arm of the Black Guard closest to him and pulled the warrior into the path of Malus’s blade. Even as Malus was trying to pull free from the warrior he’d struck, Kouran was in motion, smashing the helmeted head of the dead warrior into the drachau’s face.
Blood streaming from his broken nose, Malus staggered back. The weight of the dead Black Guard dragged down the warpsword and as he kicked at the body to free his weapon, Kouran came rushing at him. The captain’s fist slammed into Malus’s face, knocking him back in a spray of blood and curses. The momentum caused the warpsword to tear free from its victim, and as Malus stumbled back, he was able to bring his blade whipping up.
The edge of the warpsword raked across Kouran’s belly, scraping along the black armour in a shriek of grinding metal. The blade failed to do more than scratch the ancient plates, but its effect was pronounced nonetheless. Malus cried out as he was struck by a piercing agony, as though a candle had been set against every nerve in his body.
‘This is the Armour of Grief,’ Kouran laughed, slapping his hand against the breastplate. ‘The enchantment Lord Arnaethron invested into it is quite zealous about punishing those who dare strike its wearer.’
Stunned by the magical backlash of Kouran’s armour, Malus’s blade slipped from his weakened grasp. He staggered back, fighting to recover command of his tortured body. Kouran’s cruel face split in a sadistic leer.
‘Take him,’ the captain ordered his warriors, waving them forwards. ‘I want to bring him alive before the king.’
Kouran’s smile became impossibly colder as the Black Guard swarmed around Malus and beat him down with the butts of their halberds. ‘His highness could do with an amusing diversion. It might be weeks before he tires of torturing this traitor.’
Malus felt a sharp pain against his skull as one of the bludgeoning warriors brought his weapon cracking against his head. He was unconscious when his head slammed against the dusty floor.
Are you awake, Malus? I should think you’d like to see this. There might not be a chance later.
Tz’arkan’s jeers echoed through Malus’s throbbing head. His body felt like one big bruise. He could feel cold iron against his arms and legs, and knew he was shackled upright to some sort of frame. The chill crawling over his flesh told him his armour had been stripped away. He guessed it would prove inconvenient for his torturers. They’d prefer a clean canvas at the start of their performance.
Slowly, Malus opened his eyes, squinting through narrowed eyelids at his surroundings. He wasn’t surprised that he was in a dungeon of some sort. Richly appointed with ghoulish tapestries depicting imaginative cruelties hanging on the walls, it was a room designed to enhance the terror of its occupants. Malus hoped the tapestries were decorative and not a reference guide for his tormentors. He could see them, seven pale-skinned elves wearing long smocks of serpent-hide, their arms branded with tally-marks to commemorate their many victims. Several of the torturers were so scarred that they looked like they were wearing sleeves of boiled leather.
All of the torturers we
re fiddling about with an assemblage of ghastly tools, arraying them along a marble table, an altar to terrible Ellinill. Tongs and probes, cruel pincers and knives, bone-scrapers and flesh-hooks, each implement the druchii removed from their ebony reliquaries was more grisly than the last. Malus tried not to imagine what sort of havoc would be inflicted upon him for his attempt at regicide. The thought of biting his own tongue and cheating his captors flashed through his mind, but the taste of a metal bit in his mouth told him the same idea had already occurred to the torturers.
Groaning in frustration, Malus tilted his head enough that he could see the black throne standing between the tapestries. In the fitful light cast by the flaming braziers scattered about the torture theatre, the throne’s malachite surface glistened with an oily sheen. He had a sense of foreboding as he looked over at the throne. He knew who it was who would soon occupy that seat, and when he did, then the pain would begin.
‘His highness has a great many duties, drachau.’
The words came from just behind Malus, a scratchy whisper that made his gorge rise. He tilted his head back, drawing his arms up on the chains that bound them, feeling the manacles binding his feet bite against his skin as he stretched. His reward was a view of the speaker. A spindly, almost skeletal elf adorned in robes of black and gold. Malus recognised his old adversary, one who had nearly brought him to ruin once before. It was plain that Ezresor hadn’t forgotten Malus’s earlier escape. It was equally plain that Malekith’s spymaster was eager to make up for that lost opportunity. He reached over his captive’s shoulder and rudely pulled the bit from Malus’s mouth.
Malus spat the taste of metal from his mouth. ‘I won’t tell you anything,’ he said.
Ezresor stepped around the iron framework that held Malus. He stared up at the prisoner, his gaunt face probing into the druchii’s bloodied features. ‘You’ll tell me anything I want to hear,’ he said. He pointed to the torturers. ‘They will make it happen. An hour or a day, it won’t make a difference. They will extract every secret buried in that brain of yours. They’ll pull it out of you and pin it to a board. If you try to lie to them, they’ll know and they’ll make it hurt worse. Keep that in mind, Darkblade. Whatever agony they inflict on you, know they always hold a little back. When you think it can’t get any worse, know that it can.’
‘If I told you what you want to know, it wouldn’t change anything,’ Malus said.
Ezresor tapped a finger against his chin. ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘it wouldn’t. But won’t you feel better knowing the ones who convinced you to betray our king will share your fate?’
Malus managed a derisive laugh. ‘No, carrion-face, I won’t. I’ll feel better knowing they might try again and that if they succeed their first order of business will be feeding your carcass to the harpies.’
The ghoulish spymaster’s hand flew towards Malus. A dagger was in Ezresor’s fist, projected there by some mechanism hidden in the sleeve of his robe. He brought it against Malus’s cheek.
‘You’ll spoil the king’s show,’ Malus warned Ezresor.
Ezresor scowled as he pulled back the dagger. With the sleeve of his robe he wiped away the single bead of blood he had drawn. ‘I can wait, Darkblade. I’ve waited this long, I can wait a little longer.’ A smile slithered onto his emaciated face. He cocked his head to one side, assuming an attitude of attentive listening. He turned his grin on Malus. ‘I think the wait is over,’ he said.
Malus followed Ezresor’s gaze as the spymaster turned towards a particularly horrendous tapestry. The hanging, with its depiction of mutilation and brutality, fluttered outwards as a sudden breeze struck it. Some concealed panel had slid open, ushering in a blast of air even more frigid than that of the dungeon. No, Malus corrected himself, the intense cold was nothing felt by the body. It was a chill that scratched at the soul, even a soul shared by a daemon.
The tapestry was pushed aside and into the torture theatre there marched the same figure Malus had so recently cut to ribbons. This time it was no sorcerous puppet of iron, but the puppeteer himself. Malus could feel the awful power exuding from the Witch King like an aura of cruelty. The eyes that burned within the face of the helm were like twin embers of hate, insatiable and implacable.
‘Your highness,’ Ezresor greeted the tyrant as he fell to his knees. The torturers mirrored his gesture of submission and fealty. Instinctively, Malus felt his own head start to bow. It was an effort to resist the automatic obedience Malekith had compelled from every druchii since the Sundering, but resist he did. As he raised his eyes, he found himself staring into Malekith’s merciless gaze. There seemed a note of sardonic humour in the tyrant’s stare.
‘The fleshtakers await your pleasure, highness,’ Ezresor announced as he started to escort Malekith towards the marble table and the cruel implements arrayed there so that his king might inspect them. Instead, Malekith turned away and approached the frame to which Malus was shackled.
‘Did you really think you could kill me?’ the Witch King asked, his voice like the rumble of an angry mountain. Malus shuddered as the tyrant came towards him, reaching out with a rune-etched gauntlet to close his cold fingers about the prisoner’s jaw. ‘Was your daring so great? Was your arrogance so mighty? Who are you, Darkblade, to think you can kill me? You are druchii, the spawn of this miserable land! You are my creation, moulded and forged like my armour and my blade! I raised you from nothing to command my armies, to lead my warriors in battle.’ With a snarl, Malekith released the captive’s jaw, shoving him back on his chains.
Malus glared back at the tyrant, pride crushing down his instinctive terror of the Witch King. ‘You did nothing,’ he growled. ‘Everything I have achieved I won for myself. I clawed my way from being the vaulkhar’s bastard son to drachau of Hag Graef. I did that, not you! I crushed the black ark of Naggor’s legions and vanquished their Witch Lords! It was I who…’
Ezresor came charging at Malus, the glowing length of a poker held before him. The spymaster shouted in outrage at the temerity of the traitor in daring to defy Malekith. As he ran past the tyrant, the poker was plucked from his hand and sent flying across the chamber. A backhanded swat of Malekith’s gauntlet knocked Ezresor to the floor, blood trickling from his split lip.
‘If my armour fails me, if my blade breaks, I discard it and forge a new one,’ the Witch King declared, still glaring at the shackled elf. ‘But you aren’t broken, are you Malus? You still burn with enough pride to defy me even here.’ Malus could feel the tyrant’s tone grow colder still. ‘I should take great delight in making an example of you, but there is not the time, so I must grant you a reprieve.’ Malekith waved his hand at Ezresor and pointed to the iron framework.
‘Highness?’ the spymaster asked as he picked himself off the floor.
‘Release him,’ Malekith said. His eyes continued to glare into Malus’s. ‘Long ago, the pretender Bel Shanaar sent me into the wilds to be his ambassador among the dwarfs. Crude but clever things, the dwarf-folk. Do you know how they would check for foul vapours in their mines? They would bear with them a tiny bird and hang it from a cage where they could watch it. If the bird expired, they would know the air in the mine was becoming foul and hurry to the surface.’ Malekith pressed his iron finger against Malus’s chest. ‘You are going to be my little bird, Darkblade. I know even you would not dare to strike against me without support from the other dreadlords. If there were time, I would rip each name from your flesh and savour every scream as I did so. But I cannot indulge in such pleasures now. Instead, I will pretend none of this ever happened. I will present the illusion that there was no attempt against my life, that you did not cut down my surrogate. I will restore you to your command of Hag Graef and none will be the wiser.’
Malus rubbed his cramped limbs as Ezresor unlocked his bindings. His mind whirled with the impossible things he was hearing, the unbelievable mercy and forgiveness Malekith was showing. Such qualitie
s were the ultimate sign of weakness in any druchii. The society the Witch King had created was one that had long ago purged itself of such moral degeneracy.
‘How do you know I won’t betray you?’ Malus asked.
The Witch King laughed, a sound that was far from pleasant. ‘You mistake me. You are still my little bird. When I free you, when you go back among the dreadlords without any reprisal from me, what will they think? They will say that Malus has betrayed them. The cowardly ones will flee and I will have no need to worry about them. The bolder ones will stay. They’ll plot against me, to be sure, but before they act they will strike against the bastard who betrayed them. You are my little bird, Malus! When the assassins come for you, that is when I will know to be on my guard.’
Malekith turned and stalked back towards the door hidden behind the tapestry. ‘Ezresor will return your armour and sword to you. The Black Council meets tomorrow. I expect the drachau of Hag Graef to be in attendance.
‘It would pain me to hear he has suffered an accident.’
THREE
There was no greater a concentration of malignance and evil in all the world than a gathering of the Black Council. From every corner of Naggaroth, the dreadlords came, hurrying to answer the Witch King’s summons. Butchers who slaughtered for the simple pleasure of carnage, despots who crushed untold thousands beneath their heels, fiends who indulged in every depravity a mortal mind could conceive – all left their strongholds behind when Malekith called. Half the kingdom might be overrun by hordes of daemons and savages, the roads reduced to a nightmarish gauntlet of battle and horror, yet still the fear of their monarch was too great for anyone to defy his command.
The great throne room was situated high in the Black Tower, far above the streets and spires of Naggarond. The hall was of vast dimensions, its vaulted ceiling vanishing into shadowy heights so impenetrable that even the keen eyes of corsairs from the Underworld Sea couldn’t pierce their darkness. Massive buttresses, every inch of their surfaces adorned with intricate carvings, loomed from the walls. Stone gods glowered down from the pillars: Ellinill, the Lord of Destruction, and his wrathful progeny. The eyes of each god were crafted from enormous gemstones, their lustre enhanced by an enchantment that caused them to glow with a smouldering malevolence. Between the buttresses, the walls were lost behind macabre tapestries fashioned from scalps encrusted with gore, a silent reminder of the many who had defied the Witch King’s authority, and of the ultimate sanction for such defiance.
