by C. L. Werner
For now, however, it was enough to have the dour little swine attending him like a serving wench. Korbus could do with a dose of humility and a reminder that whatever consideration Malus might accord his mother didn’t extend to his mother’s consort. As Malus beckoned to him, Korbus shambled over with another bottle of wine.
‘Go any slower, Korbus, and I’ll reconsider the wisdom of allowing you to remain on board,’ Malus snapped as the steward proffered him the bottle.
‘Forgive me, dread master,’ Korbus said, bowing to the floor. ‘I know your wounds pain you, but do you think it wise to imbibe so freely?’
Malus rolled the bottle along the side of his arm where Eldire’s poultice covered the slash he’d received from one of the gladiatrixes. His mother’s magic was mending his hurts well enough. It wasn’t any physical pain Malus sought to deaden with the draught. It was Tz’arkan. The daemon was responding to the spells his mother had used, fattening on them like some phantom leech. The draught dulled its appetite, enticing it back into hibernation or whatever it was the daemon did when it wasn’t nagging at his mind and trying to usurp his flesh.
At the moment, of course, the daemon was one of the less unsettling aspects of his life. Since sailing from Hag Graef and joining the rest of Malekith’s fleet in the Gulf of Naggarond, Malus had come to appreciate the esteem with which his king regarded him. The Eternal Malediction had been given the dubious honour of leading the rest of the fleet out into the Sea of Malice. The vanguard position offered more than the usual hazards. The threat of an asur ship might be minimal, but they’d already fended off the mindless violence offered by dozens of barbarian dragonships. There were strange blocks of luminous ice drifting through the sea, ice that exuded fingers of lightning and which seemed to chase after the black ark with an animalistic hunger. Reefs that had never existed before menaced the vessel as she sailed across waters that should have been as familiar to the corsairs as their own boots. Eerie storms of light and sound rumbled through the sky, flashing through the clouds like primordial leviathans, sometimes reaching down to draw up part of the sea in a shrieking water spout.
Naggaroth was slipping into the abyss. The invasion besetting the realm was far more than hordes of beasts and barbarians. The corruption flowing down from the Wastes was attacking the very fabric of reality, inundating the land itself with the corrosive energies of unrestrained and unfocused magic. The Witch King’s decision to abandon his kingdom was more than a last thrust at the hated asur. It was the only way for the druchii to survive as a people.
Of course, it was his own survival that was of the utmost concern to Malus. When he’d seen Drusala and her entourage from Ghrond among the passengers aboard the Eternal Malediction, he’d thought her presence indicated that Malekith was trying to keep a close eye on him. Despite all the talk about the Witch King falling out with his mother and leaving Morathi to rot in her tower, Malus hadn’t believed it. He’d been certain that the two were yet working in concert. Drusala had been sent to watch him because Malekith expected her to faithfully attend her duty.
The turmoil of their voyage into the Sea of Malice made him reconsider that idea. He knew how precarious his own position with his king was; now he wondered if Drusala weren’t in the same boat. It would be like Malekith to put all of his enemies in one cage so they might be more easily disposed of. The sorceress from Ghrond and the drachau of Hag Graef might both be living on borrowed time.
Malus stared at the bottle of wine Korbus had brought him. A cold smile played across his face. ‘Steward,’ he laughed, knowing how the servile title upset Korbus, ‘you are forgetting that the first glass always belongs to you.’
Korbus was usually much better at hiding his emotions than he was today, Malus reflected. There was almost a suggestion of anger in his posture as he retrieved a crystal glass and poured out a small measure of the dark wine. He’d have to talk with his mother about that. A suitably brutal corrective measure might remind the petty sorcerer of exactly where he stood in the grand scheme of things.
Betraying barely a breath of hesitation, Korbus drank the measure of wine from his glass. Malus leaned back in his chair, watching with the most intense interest as the steward replaced the glass on the table and folded his arms behind his back. Seconds stretched into minutes, master studying servant while the servant stared blankly at one of the tapestries hanging from the wall. At length, Malus gave an irritated wave of his hand.
‘It seems you’ve succeeded in keeping poisoners away from my wine,’ Malus said. ‘That, or maybe you have enough magic that you can keep it from affecting you.’ He gripped the neck of the bottle and sketched a mocking salute to Korbus. ‘I wonder what my mother will do to you if that’s the case. Letting your little spells protect you while failing to save her beloved son.’ Laughing, Malus took a long pull from the bottle. He could feel the welcome rush of warm numbness spread through his body. Peering down the length of the upended bottle, he saw Korbus scowling back at him. Losing patience with him, Malus gave an angry flick of his hand and dismissed his mother’s consort. Considering these were the rooms Lady Eldire shared with the sorcerer, he was certain the added insult wouldn’t be lost on Korbus.
As Korbus beat a graceless retreat from the room, Silar stepped away from the alcove from which he had been keeping guard. ‘Is it prudent to bait him so, my lord?’ he asked.
Malus shrugged his shoulders, feeling just the faintest echo of pain from the one the gladiatrix had slashed. ‘No, probably not, but it is most satisfying. Someday Lady Eldire will tire of that arse-kissing conjurer and when she does, I’ll get some real satisfaction out of him.’
‘I shall eagerly anticipate the day, my lord,’ Silar said.
A twinge of nostalgia tugged at Malus when he heard Silar speak. It was just the sort of thing Hauclir would have said, that insufferable mix of servility and sarcasm his old retainer had never been able to refrain from employing. Dear Hauclir. He’d been the closest thing to a friend Darkblade had ever had. Gone these many years, his memorial abandoned with the rest of Hag Graef…
Malus glared at the wine yet sloshing about the bottom of the bottle. It was making him maudlin, teasing out the weaker impulses and affections lying deep inside his mind. He’d almost prefer to give Tz’arkan free rein than evoke such puerile emotions. Angrily, he cast the bottle away, smiling as he heard it smack against one of the extravagant divans with which the apartment was furnished. The wine-stains would cost some corsair officer fair coin to remove once these rooms were restored to him. Allowing of course the sea-rat hadn’t already been dumped over the side.
Yes, Malus reflected, there were a good many enemies who could have engaged the Sisters of Slaughter to take his life, among them the inhabitants of the black ark itself. When the drachau’s enormous army had embarked, a great number of Fleetmaster Hadrith’s people had been displaced, left to fend for themselves in the wilds around Hag Graef. The black ark was a floating city and, like any city, it had become bloated with the weak and wastrel. To make room for his soldiers, for their weapons and their beasts of war, Malus had ordered the removal of these worthless elves. At this stage of the game, there was no concealing from them that being left behind was a death sentence. There had been riots and rebellion, the corsairs forced to slaughter their own kin in order to maintain Hadrith’s rule over the ship. The young, the old, the sick and the worthless – they had tried to resist, but it was a futile gesture against seasoned warriors. The eels and harpies had a grand feast when the black ark left Hag Graef.
Still, for all the necessity of his ruthless orders, Malus knew there would be many on the Eternal Malediction who bore him ill. Parents who’d seen their families cast over the side, sons and daughters who’d watched their progenitors abandoned as the black ark sailed away, any number of more torrid and unsavoury attachments that had been erased by the drachau’s decree. Few druchii were so simple-minded as to let tender regard
s seep into their hearts, but there were even fewer who accepted their possessions being taken from them with good grace. In forcibly severing these ties of blood and intrigue, Malus had earned the hate of the corsairs.
‘Someone among Hadrith’s crew helped those she-daemons reach me,’ Malus mused aloud. ‘They must have had help getting into the rigging and knowing the right spot to rappel into my chambers.’
‘Did the prisoner say as much before…’ Silar shuddered, unable to finish the thought. He’d been present during most of Eldire’s interrogation of the gladiatrix. The things he’d seen done were enough to shock even his sensibilities.
Malus frowned and shook his head. ‘No, she didn’t. But it stands to reason that they had inside help.’ He tapped his chin as he considered just how obvious that connection was. Such bluntness was crude. No druchii would take any satisfaction from so direct a course of reprisal. It was the cunning behind a murder, the craft employed to conceal motive and perpetrator alike, that gave an elf pride in his sins. The very directness of the connection back to Hadrith’s people made him doubt they were ultimately behind the attack. Certainly, someone had been involved at some level, but things weren’t so desperate for the crew that they’d act in such a reckless fashion on their own. No, there was some other hand involved, some manipulator working from the shadows.
The question remained – who was that murderous plotter? The more Malus thought about it, the less he considered it possible Ezresor was striking at him from the beyond. The tattooed glyph on the leg of each gladiatrix was too obvious; besides there was the problem of the spymaster anticipating that Malekith would command the Eternal Malediction to carry the drachau and his army, a decision that the Witch King hadn’t made until well after that final gathering of the Black Council. That, of course, still left entirely too many possibilities, starting with the Witch King himself. Lady Khyra and her fellow conspirators were likely candidates too, eager to obscure their own involvement in the attempt against Malekith.
Whoever was behind it, they’d had their own share of sorcery to draw upon. Despite the most heinous tortures her magic could inflict, Eldire had been unable to penetrate the barrier that had been raised inside the prisoner’s mind. Some spell had partitioned the memory of whoever had engaged the troupe of gladiatrixes to kill Malus. Eldire was certain the memory was there – her own magic was powerful enough to uncover that much – but it stubbornly resisted every effort to pry it free. Before the end, after what she’d endured, Malus was certain the gladitarix would have gladly confessed if it had been in her power to do so. Instead, she’d taken her secret with her into Ereth Khial’s underworld. Even Eldire’s efforts to command the elf’s departed spirit had been fruitless. It was rare when his mother encountered magic stronger than her own, and when she did it tended to put her into a dangerous mood.
Thinking of dangerous sorceresses made Malus turn his thoughts to Drusala. How far was he prepared to trust that her timely intervention had been caused by an omen and not arranged beforehand? What sort of game was she trying to play? If she was out of favour with Malekith, was she trying to inveigle herself into the good graces of Malus? If that were the case, anything that smacked of collusion between them would provoke the Witch King into some sort of response. Probably something involving a regiment of Black Guard. The prudent thing would be to keep the witch as far away as possible.
Malus hadn’t risen to the rank of drachau by doing what was prudent.
‘Where is Drusala?’ Malus asked Silar as he rose from his chair.
Silar bit back whatever wise words of caution leapt to his tongue. Instead he took a moment to collect himself and tell his master what he wanted to hear. ‘Lady Eldire and the witch from Ghrond have been in consultation all morning.’
That bit of information was intriguing. All his life, Malus’s mother had lived in dread of Morathi’s sorceresses, fearing falling into their clutches even more than she had being returned to the Witch Lords of Naggor. Why the sudden change? What had brought about such a dramatic adjustment in Eldire’s sensibilities? Had the disgrace and exile of Morathi made his mother overbold? Or had her witchsight told her she would need magic beyond what her own abilities could provide on the journey ahead? Eldire had a pronounced talent for prophecy, a quality that had made her valuable to Naggor and dangerous to Ghrond. What had she foreseen that made her entertain Drusala?
Malus scowled at Silar as he realised his retainer hadn’t answered his question. ‘I did not ask what she’s been doing,’ he warned the noble. ‘I asked you where she is.’
There were only a few elves Malus considered dependable and even fewer he felt comfortable allowing close to him. Silar Thornblood, with all his quaint concepts of duty and obligation, was the nearest of them all. He could be depended upon to faithfully serve the drachau because he honestly saw his own prestige as being dependent upon the drachau’s power. As close as he was, however, even Silar felt a twinge of fear when his master employed that cold, flat tone of voice against him.
‘Lady Eldire is meeting with Drusala in the Star Spire,’ he reported. ‘Several of Fleetmaster Hadrith’s diviners and astrologers are with them.’
‘Some great effort on mother’s part to see a bit further into the future,’ Malus said. He nodded as he reached a decision. ‘We’ll just go and see the results of her divination.’
‘Shall I call your knights?’ Silar asked.
Malus uttered a sneering laugh. ‘Let’s wait and hear what sort of prophecies these witches have conjured before I have them massacred.’
Spanning the reaches between the great spires of the black ark, vast platforms and bridges had been erected. Supported by the most powerful of old Nagarythe’s ancient sorceries, the black ark was a floating city unto itself. Incapable of expanding outwards, the city had built itself upwards. Gantries and walkways coiled around the stone towers, like fungus growing on a tree. Mazes of chain and rigging spooled downwards to anchor platforms of brass, bronze, bone and timber into place. Unlike a natural ship or even the strange bastions fitted to the scaly backs of helldrakes, there was little sense of motion when standing on the platforms. The turmoil of wind and sea were largely baffled by the magics that saturated the black ark. Fierce winter storms, even the deranged tempests of shimmering light streaming down from the Wastes, were incapable of battering the seafaring citadel.
As he prowled along the bridges, making his way to the Star Spire, Malus took a sardonic pleasure from the hastily downcast eyes of the elves he passed. How many of them resented him for abandoning the Hag? They were fools, and worse, they were hypocrites. Not one of them had forsaken his place on the Eternal Malediction. They had all accepted the choice between sacrificing the city or remaining behind to die with it.
He could have had much better followers if he’d only cast aside the title of drachau and ridden into the north. Malus would have become master of things no earthly lord could ever aspire towards! He would have stretched forth his hand and seen eternity itself coiling about his fingers. He would know the secret names of all things and understand the fragile skein that bound the essence of worlds. His heart would have despaired from the singing of the aethyr and the great truth beyond.
Malus stopped and leaned against the iron rail lining the platform he was crossing. He could feel the darkness of Tz’arkan boiling up inside him. So far, the wine had numbed the daemon too much for it to make itself coherent and understandable. Instead he could feel it as a shadow crawling through his flesh. ‘Relent’, he hissed at the abomination inside him, smashing his fist against the rail in his frustration.
‘Are you ill, my lord?’ The question came from a young druchii in the studded armour of a beast-keeper. Malus directed a scowl at the elf so fierce that he stumbled back towards the pack of cold ones he’d been helping to keep under control.
Silar came up beside Malus, his face imperturbable but his tone carrying a note of worr
y. ‘Is… your trouble… becoming a problem?’
Malus grimaced. ‘My guest should be impotent for hours after all I’ve poured into my body,’ he said. ‘Instead I can feel the thing’s dreams slithering into my thoughts.’ He uttered a bitter laugh. ‘Do you remember, Silar, when I would drink for the pleasure of wine, not to quiet a monster inside my head?’ The drachau looked away from his retainer, staring across the platform, at the beast-keepers and their reptilian charges.
The beast-keepers looked absolutely puny beside the twenty-foot-long reptiles. Lizard-like, with great clawed hind legs and smaller forelegs, the cold ones were the natural inhabitants of the dank caverns beneath Naggaroth. Ages ago, the huge lizards had been adopted by the druchii as beasts of war. The powerful jaws of a cold one, its rending claws and tough scaly flesh made for a much more formidable steed than a mere horse. Through special scents and perfumes, an elf knight could deceive the reptile into believing him to be a member of its pack; through the cruellest training and privation, a beast-breaker could force the cold one to adopt the knight as a superior member of its pack. When a troop of cold one knights charged across the field of battle, only the most resolute of foes had the stomach to stand against them.
