Honourkeeper

by Nick Kyme

  A smoking sword of ruin thrust in a black anvil.

  Daemons, their maws hungering, crouched before a dreaded altar.

  The world ended in bloodshed and darkness.

  Malbeth shook his head to banish the fever-dream images, snapping at the edge of his sight like lashing vipers. It was not his memory. It was the Blighted Isle and the final resting place of the Sword of Khaine, that most cursed of all artefacts, driven into the black anvil by Aenarion the Defender, the first Phoenix King, and arguably the greatest and most tragic of them all. By first drawing the sword, he had embraced Khaine utterly. In becoming a near god, he had saved the high elf race, and yet, at the same time, his actions had doomed them.

  Malbeth got to his feet, revelling in the coolness of his naked form as his evaporating sweat chilled him, and padded over to a shrine devoted to the goddess Lileath. It was a simple thing, a statue upon a raised dais, set aside innocuously in one of the tent’s antechambers. His heart was thudding loudly as he regarded her silver effigy, arms wide with her palms upward in acceptance. Malbeth lifted Lileath carefully from her silver, gem-stoned dais and placed her reverently by its side. With two hands, he then lifted off the disc of the dais itself, revealing a small compartment within that housed a wooden chest. Taking out the chest, he set it down on the ground and then sat crossed-legged with it in front of him. It was locked, but Malbeth had the key around his neck – a small golden rune, elthrai, attached to a gilt chain. It meant ‘hope’, but like much of elven symbolism it had a counter meaning, one that could also be interpreted as ‘doom’.

  Unlocking and opening the chest, Malbeth still felt the pull of anger, the arousal of killing, albeit experienced cathartically, from his dream. The verisimilitude of the battlefield was still strong. There were sixteen vials within, no larger than a finger joint, each containing a pale green milky liquid. With a trembling hand, Malbeth took one of them, ripping off the cork stopper and drinking it swiftly. Rivulets of the thick fluid ran down the curves in his mouth, and Malbeth wiped them away with the back of his hand. Slowing his breath, the thrashing in his heart, the violent desire, subsided and Malbeth began to feel better.

  Something had broken in him the day that Elethya died. He’d found solace in rage and death, embracing the will of Khaine. All of the asur held the capacity for those traits embodied by the Bloody Handed God. Murder, hatred, war and destruction: they were part of the elven psyche, as insoluble as stubbornness and gold-hunger was to dwarfs. But it was tempered by peace and love and order – the elven philosophy that one element cannot exist without its counterpart. Malbeth did not possess the same balance that most other elves of Ulthuan did. To his mind, he was cursed, the bloodletting and reaving of his youth, barely justifiable, and an eternal stain upon his soul.

  Malbeth returned the chest to its hiding place and remade the shrine. Sinking to his knees, he prayed fervently to Lileath for forgiveness. There were tears in his eyes when he’d finished. He stood wearily, reaching for a robe and soft boots, before drifting out of his tent without a sound.

  Outside, Korhvale was the only one left awake. He was scribing something furtively by the dimmed glow of the eldritch lanterns and didn’t notice Malbeth as he slipped by him silently.

  I’ll find no further sleep this night, thought Malbeth, heading out of the Hall of Belgrad and into the hold.

  The sweeps and twists of the elven script were applied with the utmost care and attention. Korhvale took great pains to be exacting and neat in every detail. The wet ink glistened in the low lamp light, the pigments reacting with the oily luminescence that filled the former Hall of Belgrad. The shining runes reminded him of the light in her eyes and that then led to a remembrance of the shape of her lips, the glittering cascade of her golden hair.

  He had loved Arthelas for as long as he had known her. A chance encounter with the Prince Ithalred, whilst he was out hunting sparhawks in the Annuli Mountains of northern Chrace, had led Korhvale to his service as a guide and, eventually, bodyguard. It was then that he had met Arthelas, and then that his heart had been lost.

  Korhvale did not have the ready wit or charm of Lethralmir, nor the erudite intelligence of Malbeth; he was an intense and brooding soul, but beneath all that there was an artist that desired to be set free. As he sat upon a short, white, wooden stool, he scratched with a sparhawk quill upon a leaf of parchment, just one of many he had already filled as his ode to Arthelas grew. It was a work in progress, having undergone many revisions. He dared not speak his feelings out loud; to do so would reveal the inadequacy of his tongue, the shortfall in his eloquence and charm. Only in these words did Korhvale feel that the depth of his emotion could be expressed. Once finished, he then only needed the courage to show them to her…

  The faintest scrape of leather against stone commanded the White Lion’s attention and he stopped writing at once, immediately thrusting the leaves of parchment into a nearby knapsack. He stood, surveying the dark for any presence.

  A dwarf, their captain of the hearth guard if Korhvale’s memory served, appeared in the Hall of Belgrad, holding a lantern.

  ‘Keeping the late watch, eh?’ said Morek, moving into the light.

  Korhvale noticed the axe, cinctured at his hip, immediately.

  ‘I don’t sleep,’ he responded in Khazalid, forming the words crudely.

  ‘Must be tiring,’ Morek replied, idly casting his gaze about the chamber. The dwarf’s expression hardened as his took in all the tents, the elven furnishing and subsequent obliteration of anything resembling dwarf culture.

  ‘I need only to meditate,’ said Korhvale.

  Morek grumbled beneath his breath, before saying, ‘All is well then.’

  ‘All is well.’

  ‘All is well,’ the dwarf repeated, but it was as if he’d said the words to himself and with an air of speculation.

  Silence fell, elf and dwarf staring at each other uncomfortably.

  After a moment, Morek about-faced and tromped from the hall, lantern swinging lightly as he went.

  After walking through tunnels, passing galleries, kitchens and stores, Malbeth’s wanderings had brought him to a massive, vaulted chamber. The room glowed with starlight, reflected from the upper world. The disparate shafts were diverted through a series of mirrored chambers and funnels until they converged on this place, bathing it in silver. The effect was wondrous, diamonds set around the room’s six walls glittering like the celestial bodies whose light they refracted; lines of beaten gold shimmered like liquid and runes carved into the walls glowed with power.

  Most impressive of all, though, was the monolithic statue that dominated the centre of the hexagonal chamber. It was a female dwarf, rendered in stone. She was dressed in simple robes; her hands rested across her body serenely, her countenance benevolent and wise, yet also possessing a sense of ageless fortitude.

  From his studies, Malbeth knew this to be Valaya, one of the dwarf ancestor gods, in her aspect as teacher and mother. The gravitas invested in this temple, in the statue itself was humbling. There was peace here, Malbeth felt it at once, and whispered a blessing to the effigy of his benefactor.

  ‘You elgi are light sleepers,’ complained a voice from behind him, arresting his thoughts.

  Malbeth turned to see Morek, one of King Bagrik’s captains, regarding him sternly.

  ‘Or do you merely ‘meditate’, as well?’ said the dwarf, approaching the statue himself.

  Malbeth looked nonplussed, and decided to ignore the remark. ‘Elgi,’ he said instead, ‘I’ve heard that word several times. What does it mean?’ he asked in good Khazalid.

  If Morek appreciated the gesture he did not show it.

  ‘It has two meanings; “elf” is one of them,’ he replied.

  Malbeth followed the dwarf’s gaze to the statue.

  ‘Valaya,’ he said, changing the subject but confirming Malbeth’s initial belief. ‘She is the wife of Grungni, goddess of Hearth and Hold, one of our greatest ancestors.’ Th
e mood softened a little, as if the power of the goddess was affecting the pugnacious dwarf even through his mere presence in her temple.

  ‘Grungni taught the dawi how to fashion metal into weapons, how to fight when the lands were shrouded in darkness, before the coming of elves.’ Morek almost spat the last word, Valaya’s influence upon him clearly fleeting. ‘It is a sacred place,’ he added, the implication in his words strong so as to leave no doubt at Malbeth’s trespass.

  ‘I meant no offence,’ offered Malbeth.

  Morek grumbled again, and turned away.

  ‘Elgi; you said it had two meanings,’ said the ambassador, ‘elf and what else?’

  Morek looked back briefly, a scowl on his face.

  ‘Weak.’

  The dwarf walked off, expecting Malbeth to follow.

  The elf was not the only one abroad in secret that night, others more familiar with the myriad passageways and ancient, dust-drenched halls of Karak Ungor were also moving clandestinely amongst the shadows.

  ‘I beg you, Queen Brunvilda, reconsider,’ Grikk pleaded, a fettered lantern held in front of him in one hand, his ironbreaker’s axe in the other.

  ‘If the king finds out about this, I shall tell him I made my own way here,’ replied Brunvilda, her gaze upon the armoured dwarf’s back as he led them through the catacombs of the hold.

  ‘Aye, my queen, and he’ll then shear my beard for letting you walk the Grey Road alone.’

  There was no pleasing some dwarfs, thought Brunvilda, and carried on her way.

  These vaults, as they were known, were seldom trodden paths. It was as if eons of dust collected on every surface in an all-pervading patina, hence the name given to it by the ironbreakers, ‘The Grey Road’. Every alcove, every statue fallen into ruin, every shattered tomb and reliquary was overlaid by a shroud of grey.

  Known also as Delving Hold, Karak Ungor was the deepest of all the realms of the Karaz Ankor. Here, in the lowest habitable level it was as if time itself was held fast, like a body in tar. This far down, only ghosts and their whispers frequented the lonely corridors.

  Though they were far below the clan halls and the royal quarters of the king, Brunvilda winced with every other thudding report of Grikk’s armoured boots. The sound echoed rudely, as if the silence took umbrage at the disturbance. The darkness, too, seemed to shrink reluctantly from the lantern light, as if affronted by its presence. There was sentience in these walls. Dwarfs had lived here once, thousands of years ago. They had mined the rock, and built their lofty chambers until the ore had run dry, and they’d moved on. Only memory lingered. It was an ill-feeling; Bagrik knew it too. It was part of the reason the king had imprisoned him here, but it was also something that Brunvilda was prepared to endure.

  A sudden draft wafted down the long, pitch-black tunnel. It smelled musty and bitter, the stench of it prickling Brunvilda’s nose.

  ‘Stay close to me, my queen,’ said Grikk, his voice low as he turned his head slowly, surveying the route ahead. ‘One of the fallen gates into the ungdrin ankor is nearby,’ he told her in a whisper.

  The underway, the subterranean road that linked all of the dwarf holds of the Worlds Edge Mountains, was divided by a series of gates, portals that were guarded and patrolled by the ironbreakers. Though generally considered safe, some of the gates had fallen, the dark creatures that lived beneath the mountain and who vied with the dwarfs for dominance of the underearth having destroyed them. Such gates were sometimes left alone, rather than retaken, clan miners despatched to close them off with controlled cave-ins. Not all of the gates stayed closed, and Grikk was ever mindful of the ones that weren’t.

  Brunvilda quickened her pace, looking left and right as dilapidated columns were revealed by the wan lantern light, along with the skeletal remains of disused torch sconces. She was so close to Grikk, and so preoccupied with her surroundings that when the ironbreaker finally stopped she barrelled right into him.

  Grikk apologised profusely, his eyes wide with shame and embarrassment behind the full face plate of his gromril armour. Brunvilda waved it away with good humour, confessing it was her fault, brushing down her robes and doing her best to placate the mortified dwarf captain.

  ‘We are here, my queen,’ Grikk said at last, once he’d finished saying he was sorry.

  Brunvilda looked past him to a short length of corridor, at the end of which was the faintest glow of another lantern.

  ‘Thank you, Grikk. I can go the rest of the way by myself,’ she said.

  ‘But my queen–’ he started to protest.

  ‘Captain – that was not a request. I’ll be just fine on my own from here. You need to get back to your duties. If the king finds you absent, he’ll know that something is wrong. I have risked his anger once today, already; I will not do so a second time.’ Brunvilda placed her hand against his pauldron. ‘Your concern is touching – really,’ she told him, genuinely, ‘but leave me now, Grikk.’

  The captain of the ironbreakers obeyed reluctantly, turning back the way they’d come. Brunvilda watched him all the way, until he’d disappeared around a corner. Satisfied he’d done as asked, she checked the satchel she had slung over her shoulder then took a deep breath and headed in a hurry towards the distant lantern and her destination.

  Another ironbreaker greeted Brunvilda as she reached the lambent glow cast by his lantern. He was stood stock still in front of an oaken, ironbound door, the hinges embossed with the snarling visage of Grimnir. The dwarf looked shocked when he saw the queen approach from the gloom.

  ‘Queen Brunvilda!’ he said quickly, almost dropping the lantern. ‘You’re not supposed to be here.’

  ‘I know that, ironbreaker,’ she answered. ‘Now let me pass.’

  ‘I… can’t, my queen. The king has forbidden it,’ the dwarf answered, clearly flustered.

  ‘Bagrik is not here, but I am, and as your queen I demand that you let me pass,’ she pressed. Eyeing him sternly, she detected a chink in his resolve and took a step towards him.

  ‘I cannot, milady. My duty is to guard the gate. None may enter without the king’s sanction, I have sworn it.’ Despite his protests, the ironbreaker took a half step back as Brunvilda advanced.

  ‘Even still, let me through,’ Brunvilda reasserted calmly. ‘I have food here going to waste.’

  The ironbreaker paused, the dilemma he faced rendering him momentarily mute.

  ‘Let me through, and the king will not hear of it. You have my word,’ she said, taking another step forward. ‘I am queen of Karak Ungor,’ she told him when the ironbreaker maintained his silence, ‘and I will not be denied in my own hold.’

  The ironbreaker faltered as he fought between the orders of his king and the wishes of his queen.

  ‘It has already been fed,’ he said in the end.

  It was a poor choice of words that the ironbreaker regretted instantly.

  ‘That is my son you speak of,’ Brunvilda snapped.

  ‘Of course, my queen, I didn’t mean… it’s just. I cannot let you pass,’ he urged, his tone pleading. Yet still he did not yield.

  ‘Do you think me weak, ironbreaker?’ Brunvilda said after a moment.

  ‘My queen, I only–’

  ‘I ask again,’ she said, cutting him off, ‘Do you think me a weak queen?’

  ‘No,’ the ironbreaker said humbly, ‘of course not.’

  ‘Then you’ll know I will not leave here until I’ve seen my son.’

  Queen Brunvilda came right up to the armoured warrior, her chin almost touching his breastplate. Though he stood a good half-foot taller and was bristling with weapons, the ironbreaker seemed instantly diminished by her formidable presence.

  ‘Let me pass. Now,’ she said firmly.

  The ironbreaker could only hold her gaze for a moment, then he nodded swiftly and turned towards the portal behind him. With a stout bronze key, held around his neck on a thick chain, he unlocked the door with a loud, metallic clunk and opened it.

  A
t once, the reek of sweat and old meat assailed Brunvilda. It warred with the stagnant aroma of standing water and badly brewed ale. With a last scathing glance at the ironbreaker, she went inside, the door closing firmly behind her.

  A small, roughly-hewn chamber lay beyond, guttering torches set at intervals upon the walls offering little light to alleviate the gloom. No statues here, no remnants of former days or remembrances of heroes. It was dank and barren. A hole in the middle of the room, like a crude well, was the only feature. Its purpose was obvious, despite what Bagrik and his ironbreakers might have said – it was a gaol.

  Brunvilda steadied herself, trying to master her emotions and the stench wafting from the hole, as she stepped towards it. She got down to her knees in order to peer into the deeper gloom of the well. A faint shaft of light, issuing from some point high above, and reflected into the hole, illuminated a cell. A darkened figure, wearing scuffed dwarf boots and clad in ragged clothes shuffled out of the patch of light and lingered at the shadow’s edge.

  ‘Lothvar,’ Brunvilda coaxed gently. ‘Lothvar, I’ve brought you food.’

  The shadow moved slightly, as if it recognised her voice and after a moment, came forward. It was a dwarf, or at least, some twisted parody of one. Patches of beard clung to his face in sporadic clumps and his eyes were albino pink. A deformed mouth made a jagged line across his features. A flattened nose, one of the nostrils wide and grotesque, sniffed at the air then detected the food in the satchel. As Lothvar shuffled towards the light, enticed by the aroma, Brunvilda saw the withered and twisted hand he held close to his body. His skin was pale, like alabaster, and though the light was weak, it clearly caused him discomfort to endure it.

  ‘Mother…’

  The sound of Lothvar’s voice nearly broke her heart, and Brunvilda had to turn away.