by C. L. Werner
‘You have something to report?’ Malus asked Vincirix as the knight dismounted and bowed before him. He noticed that her cold one was even less willing to be around Drusala’s horse than Spite was, the reptile straining at the reins she held in her hand. ‘Has my mother accompanied you back from the beachhead?’
Malus had dispatched Vincirix and her knights to return to the black ark and see if Eldire was rested enough to join the march. He was anxious about leaving her behind, worrying that when Tiranoc came to assault the Eternal Malediction, she would be cut off from his army. His mind didn’t rest any easier with the dire predictions Tz’arkan kept feeding him, allusions that his mother was gone, that her sorcery had helped him for the last time.
‘There was no trace of Lady Eldire,’ Vincirix reported. The knight was aware of the magical barriers that obscured the pavilion of the sorceress and had concocted a clever way of finding the place just the same, spreading her cold one knights in a wide circle and seeing at what point the reptiles began to grow agitated. It would then be a simple matter of dismounting and heading for the centre of that circle. Malus had been impressed by the simplicity of such a ploy. Now the drachau wondered if his faith in his lover’s cleverness had been misplaced.
Vincirix could see the anger and doubt in Malus’s eyes. ‘We found her pavilion,’ she hurried to explain. ‘But there was no sign of your mother there.’ She rose to her feet and waved her arm at a small group of knights who had followed her. ‘We did find this, however.’
The knights came loping forwards on their cold ones. Between them the two elves held a large leather bag of the sort corsairs used to stash plunder when out raiding. The way the bag squirmed and shuddered, Malus could tell it held something living. The size of the bag suggested whatever was inside would be about his own size. Gruffly, the knights tossed their burden to the ground. A muffled yelp of pain sounded from whatever was inside.
Vincirix stepped over to the bag. Removing the dagger from her belt, she slashed the rope binding the mouth. With a kick, she forced the contents of the bag to wriggle out through the opening. Malus found himself glaring down at his mother’s consort, Korbus. The conjurer was bound and gagged, his body bruised from the rough treatment he’d endured at the hands of Vincirix and her knights.
‘I found him among the corsairs,’ Vincirix explained. ‘He seemed reluctant to leave their company and rejoin the host of Hag Graef.’
Spite’s saddle creaked as Malus leaned forwards and fixed his cold eyes on those of Korbus, fairly willing the captive to meet his gaze. ‘Did this worm tell you where my mother is?’
Vincirix grabbed Korbus by the back of his neck and jerked the servant to his feet. ‘He claimed that shadow warriors infiltrated into the beachhead and attacked the pavilion. He says your mother was killed in the fighting.’
Deep inside Malus, some forgotten piece of himself turned cold. When he spoke, his words were as sharp as knives. ‘Did you see any evidence of this fighting? Did the Shadowland curs leave any mark after them?’
‘There was nothing,’ Vincirix said. ‘The corsairs had fought off a band of infiltrators several nights before, but that attack had been at the other end of their perimeter.’
Malus saw the terror in Korbus’s eyes. The conjurer was desperate to speak, to make the drachau believe his story. Malus started to give the order for Vincirix to remove the gag when he noticed the frightened look the prisoner directed at Drusala. He swung around and gave the sorceress a cold smile.
‘He seems to recognise you,’ Malus accused.
Drusala brushed aside the accusation. ‘Naturally,’ she said. ‘I was Morathi’s closest retainer. This maggot is a sorcerer, despite the Witch King’s decrees against males practising the black arts. He has probably had nightmares about our meeting for decades.’
‘Perhaps,’ Malus mused. He waved Vincirix to cut away the gag. ‘Let’s hear what he has to say.’
Korbus at once began to speak, but an expression of utter horror gripped him, as though he was frightened by his own words. Malus could understand that. The worm had, after all, just invoked Malekith’s name. He closed his mouth, licked his lips. When he started to speak again, it was the Witch King he spoke of. Once more, the conjurer clamped his mouth tight, sweat pouring down his face, his eyes wide with terror.
‘I grow weary of this, pig,’ Malus snarled. ‘Tell me what happened to my mother!’
‘He is too frightened to obey,’ Drusala said. ‘His horror of the Witch King is greater than his fear of you. If you like, I could use my magic to draw the truth out of him, despite his fear.’
Malus glared at the trembling conjurer. He already knew something of the truth even without Drusala’s magic. Whatever had befallen Eldire, it had come about because of this maggot’s treachery. He waved a warning finger at the sorceress. ‘This scum has betrayed me. How do I know I can trust you any better?’
‘Loyalty is sometimes displayed not in what one does,’ Drusala replied, ‘but in what one chooses not to do.’
Malus nodded, appreciating the unstated meaning behind her words. Even if he didn’t trust her, he appreciated that in such a public arena he couldn’t afford to call her loyalty into question. Besides, if his mother was gone, he would need Drusala’s magic. After that… after that it might be prudent to listen a little more closely to Tz’arkan’s advice about her.
‘So long as you do not kill him or strip away his senses,’ Malus warned.
Drusala bowed in token of her understanding the restraint her powers were under. Looking back to Korbus, her eyes took on a fiery gleam, the pupils blazing until they assumed a golden hue. She reached out with her hand, the fingers splayed in a claw-like gesture. Strange words hissed across her lips. Spite and Vincirix’s cold one growled, raking their claws against the ground and lashing their tails from side to side.
Korbus cried out, rearing forwards and almost slipping free of Vincirix’s grip. There was absolute panic in his eyes, anguish on his face as he opened his mouth and tried to shout. The only sound that emerged was the name ‘Malekith’. Hearing his own voice only increased the conjurer’s despair.
‘Speak, traitor!’ Drusala snarled. A gibbous light began to shine from inside Korbus’s mouth. Try as he might, the captive couldn’t keep himself from opening his mouth. When he did, it could be seen that the light emanated from his tongue. ‘Tell us what has befallen Lady Eldire,’ Drusala commanded.
Korbus wept, his bound body thrashing violently in Vincirix’s arms as the sordid tale of treachery and murder sprang from his tongue. He had conspired with the Witch King to kill Eldire and thereby weaken Malus. His part had been to remove and sabotage the protective spells Eldire had cast around her pavilion, opening the way for Malekith’s assassins. His reward, he said, would be absolution, the Witch King’s grace for Korbus’s crime of practising sorcery despite the royal admonition.
Malus sat in brooding silence as the story was forced from the traitor. Drusala’s magic wrenched every detail from his mother’s betrayer. When the tale was told, the gibbous light faded away. All that was left in the conjurer’s mouth was a burned and blackened nub of meat that had once been his tongue.
Vincirix let the traitor flop to the ground. Pulling the mace from her belt, she raised the weapon high.
‘Halt! Do not touch the worm,’ Malus called out before she could strike. His enraged gaze fastened itself on the shuddering figure of Korbus. ‘He doesn’t die so easily. This day or the next we will be at the Eagle Gate.’ A cruel gleam shone in the drachau’s eyes. ‘I have a much better idea for how he can be paid back for the service he has rendered his king.’
The sound of rattling harnesses and marching boots echoed from the marble walls. The vibrations from two hundred warriors made the jewelled lamps sway on their golden chains, the wings of gilded eagles fluttering from where their silver talons clasped the rounded lip of each lamp.
The deceptively delicate chains that held the enormous lamps high above the hall shivered in the bronze moorings that bound them to ceiling and wall. Servants in powder-blue livery hurried behind the two hundred, scrubbing and polishing the tile mosaic as they passed.
Upon a short dais, a great seat carved from the trunk of a white oak commanded the vast chamber. The back of the throne had been cunningly shaped into a lifelike semblance of a great eagle, outstretched pinions framing the sides of the throne, crooked talons making the seat itself. The brooding visage of the raptor’s head loomed above the seat, the ferocity of its manner reminding all who met its gaze of the power and authority of the one who sat in the shadow of its sharp beak.
Prince Yvarin of Meletan had been commander of the Eagle Gate for only five years, a blink of the eye in the reckoning of elves. Many felt he was too raw, too untried to be given the prestigious duty of commanding the garrison, the responsibility of guarding the pass leading down from the blighted Shadowlands into the eternal summer of Ellyrion’s sweeping plains. The beauty of Ellyrion, the tranquillity of that peaceful kingdom, depended upon the vigilance of the Eagle Gate. The threat of the exiled Naggarothi was perpetual, almost eternal it seemed. The pretender Malekith would never forsake his abominable claim upon the Phoenix Crown. So long as the foul Witch King of Naggaroth lived, he would never relent in his mad dream of conquest, to grind the lands of Ulthuan under his iron heel.
Amidst the turmoil besetting Ulthuan, the unprecedented numbers of strange beasts emerging from the Annulii Mountains to ravage the countryside, the burning of Chrace by mighty daemons, the horrific incidence of daemonic manifestations in the cities of Yvresse, Saphery and even Avelorn, somehow it was only to be expected that the Naggarothi would come again. Like jackals smelling a dying stag, they came from their forsaken land of chill to snap at the defences of Ulthuan. Yet another enemy at a time when the world seemed poised at the edge of the precipice. Was this, then, the final war?
Yvarin tried to banish such dire thoughts from his mind, but it was a difficult thing. It didn’t need a mage to see the crimson slashes that stained the skies above the Shadowlands, a gruesome celestial corruption that grew and spread with each passing hour. The light of sun and moons had taken on a sickly quality – nothing that could be seen but something that could be felt down to an asur’s very soul. The birds of summer had fled, spiralling skywards and streaming not to their winter haunts to the south but into the blighted north, the north of mutation and madness. The wind that blew through the pass bore with it little flecks of iridescence, like shards of rainbows, vibrant motes of raw magic that blighted whatever they touched.
Omens, as dire and fell as any Yvarin had ever read in the oldest legends, had become commonplace. Foremost among the evil portents had been the death of Finubar the Seafarer, last of the Phoenix Kings. His death had left Ulthuan without a leader and the turmoil besetting the land made it unlikely a new king would be chosen soon.
Then there had come the great daemon host to assault the Eagle Gate itself. That attack had been costly, both to the fortress and the garrison. Replacements were slowly arriving to reinforce the stronghold, but reconstruction of the walls the daemons had breached was advancing at a sluggish pace. The gigantic plague daemon that had struck the walls had done more than simply knock down stone and mortar. The fiend’s very touch had corrupted the rock, making the rubble brittle and unusable. Fresh stone had to be brought into the pass to replace what had been ruined, an ordeal that was made all the more laborious by the turmoil afflicting the land.
The prince ran his fingers across the wand of dragon-horn he had been presented with by the last company of soldiers to arrive at the Eagle Gate. It was a splendid, marvellous piece of artistry, inlaid with rubies and fire sapphires so that whenever the light struck it, Yvarin felt like he held a sliver of frozen flame in his hand. Shrinastor, the haughty loremaster from Saphery, would no doubt be unimpressed by the token of esteem Yvarin had been given by the contingent from Caledor. The secrets of its flawless beauty would hold no surprises for the cynical mage. The prince felt it was just as well Shrinastor had slighted the soldiers sent by Prince Imrik by locking himself away in his chambers to consult his crystals and his astrological charts. He could do without the added burden of Shrinastor’s presence.
Yvarin looked at the wand, turning it over in his hands, then nodded in appreciation to Jariel, the captain of the Talons of Tor Caldea. ‘We thank you for your gift, but more importantly, we thank you for your service. In this hour of crisis, when the old enemy comes upon us once more, it is more important than ever to remember the honour and tradition that unites the kingdoms of the asur.’
Jariel bent to her knee, setting her ruby-encrusted helm on the tile floor. Stolid and proud, her face seemed to be chiselled from the same marble as the chamber walls until she raised her eyes and stared at the seated prince. An expression of pained humiliation swept across her heroic features. ‘I bring shame to you, highness,’ she said. ‘Please accept my apology for this inexcusable slight upon your noble house and do not hold my error against these valiant warriors who have come to serve you.’
Yvarin stared in confusion at Jariel, then, as his fingers continued to caress the wand she had presented him, he felt a roughness beneath his touch. Lowering his eyes just the smallest fraction, he saw the ruby he was touching and the deep flaw that ran through it, a blight upon the beauteous perfection of the wand.
‘There is nothing to forgive,’ Yvarin said. ‘At a time of crisis, the fellowship of the asur is the only jewel that is without flaw. I know that the sons and daughters of Caledor will observe their duty to Ulthuan. I know that you will fight with courage and valour. I know that you will do honour to your ancestors.’
Yvarin watched as Jariel led the Talons of Tor Caldea from the grand reception hall. They were a magnificent sight in their coats of armoured scales and their tall, dragon-winged helms. The heads of their spears were broad and sported long tassels to sop up the blood of their enemies. Their shields were thick, reinforced with the cast-off scales of the great wyrms that slept in Caledor’s mountains. Such a complement of warriors was a boon to his garrison.
Even so, Yvarin couldn’t help but let his eyes fall once more to the wand he held and the flawed ruby.
Another ill omen for the lords of Ulthuan.
TEN
There was a chill in the air as Malus stared into the pass. The shadow of the Annulii Mountains cast the foothills at their feet into darkness, little wisps of snow wafting down from their peaks whenever the wind shifted. Malus covertly glanced at the druchii warriors who surrounded him. He smiled as he noted the briskness that crept into their step, the squaring of their shoulders, the almost imperceptible eagerness in their eyes. The dark, the cold, these might be hostile and unwelcome to the soft, pampered asur. But to the druchii, reared and raised in the bleak wastes of Naggaroth, darkness and cold were their element. The kiss of snow, the shroud of shadow, these were almost welcoming to them. It was as though the land itself were calling to them, reassuring them that they were indeed coming home.
Even the most jaded and cynical of his warriors took heart from the change. The more superstitious, those who bore charms of Khaine about their necks or wore rings devoted to the various Cytharai, took these things to be an omen of victory.
Malus wasn’t prepared to go so far as that. Even with his mother’s last prophecy burned into his brain, he wasn’t going to place too much trust in the intrigues of fate. Destiny was something that was shaped by mortal hands and mortal acts. It was in a commander’s power to squander a predestined victory through his own mistakes and his own hubris. Having seen the future, it was in his hands to bring it to fruition.
Horsemen came galloping out from the pass, their black cloaks whipping behind them, their steeds frothing at the mouth. White-feathered arrows protruded from several of the dark riders, the shafts stabbed deep into the flesh o
f elf and horse alike. As they stormed towards the army, one of the horses pitched and fell, crushing its injured rider beneath it as it rolled in agony on the ground. Malus swatted the top of Spite’s head, warning the reptile to keep calm despite the smell of horseblood in the air. Along the line of his knights, he could hear the sharp crack of other druchii disciplining their cold ones.
The dark riders peeled away from the cold one knights. Now that they were beyond the arrows of their enemy, the threat posed by their own comrades was impressed upon them. Two of the riders drew rein some hundred yards from the cold ones. While one rider dropped down from his saddle, the other took his horse and led it away. Malus watched the returning cavalry gallop around the flank of his infantry, headed for the rear to rest and recover from their foray into the pass.
Silar Thornblood and a small group of heavily armoured spearmen intercepted the dismounted rider. The elf was wounded, an arrow pinning his left arm to his side, but Silar was careful to remove his sword and dagger just the same before leading him through the line of cold one knights to where the drachau waited.
‘Dreadlord, the scouts have returned,’ Silar reported as his guards helped the rider squirm between the scaly flanks of the reptiles.
‘Really?’ Malus grumbled. ‘I thought it was some other band of horsemen wearing the colours of Hag Graef who just happened to be riding around in the pass.’ He waved his retainer away and motioned the guards to step aside. The wounded scout struggled to keep his feet. Malus could see the jewelled badge fastened to the druchii’s helm that marked him as a captain. A sense of duty, this one, to bring his report despite his wound. Or perhaps he just had enough ambition in him that he didn’t dare allow one of his subordinates the distinction of meeting with the drachau.
‘The Eagle Gate is intact, dreadlord,’ the scout said. It had been a faint hope, but there had been whispers of earthquakes and elemental upheavals when Malekith commanded his kingdom into this final assault on Ulthuan. If such turmoil had broken the defences he might have pushed his army headlong through the rubble and into the Inner Kingdoms. What a feat that would have been. A wondrous glory for Hag Graef and her drachau!
