The sundering, p.22
The Sundering, page 22
Stepping cautiously forwards, he found himself treading upon a tiled floor, arranged in a seemingly haphazard mess of geometry yet every tile still fitting perfectly in the insane mosaic. The tiles were as grey as the stone of the rest of the city, but were slightly soft to tread upon, like a thin carpet. Casting the light of his lantern to the right and the left, Malekith could make out dim shapes rising in the gloom: figures stood upon pedestals lining a wide concourse that led away from the door. Malekith raised a hand to halt those following behind, and turned left to inspect the statues more closely.
By the silvery light of the lamp, they looked to be made out of some dull alloy, but as he came within a few paces Malekith could see more clearly that they were skeletons of greying bone. They were not unlike the bones of an elf, or for that matter a man, or dwarf; in proportion they were short of torso and long of limb like an elf, but had the thicker bones of a man, and were of a height little more than a dwarf. Their faces were slender, with a mouth, two eyes and two nostrils that were so disturbingly familiar yet not quite like any skull he had seen, causing Malekith to pause a moment before continuing his inspection.
They were clad in black shrouds that were wrapped about the bodies and shoulders in identical fashion, with hoods raised up on their skulls. Every cadaver wore chains of dark beads, perhaps black pearls, which hung limply from bony wrists and about throatless necks. Each held a serrated, angular sword in its right hand and a triangular shield upon its left arm, both free of any design that Malekith could discern.
The tiles stopped at the line of plinths, and beyond them the floor seemed to be made of the same stone as the rest of the building. Malekith could see nothing in the darkness, the lantern light reflected off no edge or surface, and he had no idea whether there were any other features or if the rest of the chamber was utterly empty.
Walking along the line of inanimate sentries, Malekith could not guess at how far the two lines stretched, but sensed that their course narrowed almost imperceptibly, bringing them together at some distant point as yet out of sight.
Glancing back towards the others, Malekith had another surprise. Though he was sure that he had walked no more than fifty paces, in as straight a line as made no difference, the glimmer of his companions’ lanterns was like distant starlight in the gloom, and quite some way off to his left and higher up than his current position.
The prince called out for them to send a party to join him, and his voice echoed off distant walls, bouncing and resounding within a space he judged to be much vaster than the building in which it was supposedly enclosed. With a shiver, Malekith waited for the others to reach him, the light from their lanterns swiftly growing brighter with every heartbeat as if they covered a dozen paces with every stride.
Yeasir was with them and he gazed wide-eyed at the skeletal parade. He said nothing, but his look of concern was not lost on Malekith. With a reassuring nod, the prince turned along the line once more and followed the skeleton-flanked concourse. The pathway did indeed narrow gradually, and led the Naggarothi to a great stepped plinth the summit of which lay in the gloom beyond their lights. Ascending the first few steps and walking around them, Malekith saw that five other lines of skeletons joined the central feature at irregular angles. He rejoined his comrades and ordered a handful of them to stand guard at the bottom of the steps, while the others followed him up the steep dais.
It led onto a plateau, which was impossibly, maddeningly as wide as the base of the steps below. Seven figures sat upon low square stools, more opulent versions of the skeletons below with more dark pearls and brooches of the same black material. Six sat facing outwards, each one facing one of the lines upon the ground below as far as Malekith could tell. They had no hoods but instead wore simple crowns consisting of a narrow band about the skull with a black gem that reflected no light upon their foreheads.
The seventh figure sat facing Malekith, though the prince suspected that he would have faced the intruders regardless of which direction they had approached from. His crown was much larger, of a silver-grey metal, with curling, horn-like protrusions; the only organic shape they had seen since entering the city.
‘Highness!’ snapped Yeasir, and Malekith turned, his hand on his sword hilt. It was only then that he realised that his other hand had been reaching out towards the skeletal king, to pluck the crown from his skull. Malekith had no recollection of having crossed the dais, and shook his head as if dazed by a blow.
‘We should touch nothing,’ said Yeasir. ‘This place is cursed, by the gods, or worse.’
Malekith laughed and the noise seemed stifled and flat, with none of the ringing echoes of his earlier shout.
‘I think this great king rules here no more,’ said Malekith. ‘This is my sign, Yeasir. What greater statement about my destiny could I make? Imagine returning to Ulthuan with such a crown upon my head, an artefact of the time before.’
‘Before what?’ asked Yeasir.
‘Before everything!’ said Malekith. ‘Before Chaos, before the Everqueen, before even the gods themselves. Can you not feel it, the great antiquity that fills this place?’
‘I feel it,’ growled Yeasir. ‘There is ancient malice here, can you not sense it? I say again, there is a curse upon this place.’
‘You were willing to follow me to the Gate of Chaos,’ Malekith reminded his captain. ‘Would you rather we left this treasure here and continued north?’
Yeasir’s muttered reply was inaudible, but Malekith took it to be his captain’s acquiescence. Not that the prince needed the permission of anyone to take whatever he wanted, from wherever he wanted. Magic had guided him to this place and Malekith knew that there was purpose behind it. Whether it was the gods or some other will that had led him here, it was to stand before this prehistoric king and take his crown.
With a smile, Malekith lifted the circlet from the dead king’s skull; it was as light as air and came away with no difficulty.
‘You have it, now let us leave,’ said Yeasir, fear making his voice shrill.
‘Calm yourself,’ said Malekith. ‘Does it not make me kingly?’
With that, the prince of Nagarythe placed the circlet upon his head and the world vanished.
Golden light blazed throughout the immense hall. It did not appear to have a single source, but simply radiated out from all of the walls. Yeasir blinked in the sudden brightness, trying to clear spots from his eyes. As his vision returned, he saw more clearly where they were.
The chamber was vast, larger than any hall he had ever seen on Ulthuan or in the realm of the dwarfs. The walls were impossibly distant, and as Yeasir turned about to look around, he swore that their number increased and reduced, so that at one moment he was standing in a great irregular octagon, at others a triangular chamber.
Disorientated, he looked up and saw a vast ceiling stretching out to the horizon, so immense that he could not see where it met the walls. Huge angular stalactites jagged downwards at strange slants. The ceiling itself was made up of immense plates and surfaces that formed bizarre vertices, and perspective seemed to bend and contract depending on where he looked. Tearing away his gaze from the maddening vista, Yeasir turned his attention to his lord.
To Yeasir, it seemed as if Malekith had been frozen. He stood next to the regal skeleton at the centre of the dais locked in his pose, the crown upon his head, his fingers still touching the strange iron-like headgear. Yeasir leapt forwards with a shout, fearing some bewitchment had befallen his master. Another cry from one of the warriors distracted him and he turned his head to see several of the Naggarothi pointing out across the hall.
Following their fingers, Yeasir saw what he had feared ever since they had entered the ancient hall: the skeletal figures stepping down from their plinths and turning towards the central dais. They also glowed with light, and stalked purposefully forwards, their shields and weapons held ready. Yeasir cast a quick glance at the figures seated around them and was relieved to see that not one of them stirred. Ignoring his transfixed prince, Yeasir dashed to the opposite side of the platform and saw that skeletal warriors were advancing from every direction.
‘Form up for defence!’ Yeasir commanded, and the Naggarothi came together in a ring of spears and shields that encircled the top of the high podium.
‘Prince!’ the captain cried out, crossing the dais and laying a hand on his shoulder as if to wake him.
As soon as he touched Malekith, sparks of energy exploded across Yeasir’s body and he was flung backwards across the dais, clattering and rolling across the hard stone. His body was numb and his muscles jerked and spasmed as magical energy coursed through him. Gritting his teeth, he fought to control his juddering limbs but felt drained of all strength. He lay there groaning, his arms and legs as heavy as lead, his ears ringing, his vision hazy.
There were more alarmed shouts but Yeasir could not discern the words. In momentary flashes of clarity he could see the Naggarothi archers raising arrows to their bowstrings and loosing them out from the edge of the dais, but he could not see if their shots had any effect. Moaning, he managed to roll to his stomach, and the numbness began to dissipate, replaced instead by gnawing pain in every joint and bone.
He tried to speak, but all he could do was clench his teeth and hiss, as pain shot along the captain’s spine and exploded inside his brain. Amongst the buzzing and squealing that filled his hearing, Yeasir caught snatches of shouts and the dreadful clatter of thousands of bony feet marching upon the stone. A panicked thought shot through his pain-clouded mind: we are doomed.
Twelve
Primordial Foes
A kaleidoscope of clashing colours swarmed around Malekith. He was filled with the peculiar sensation of rising high up into the air whilst at the same time plummeting down towards some bottomless depth. His head swam and his skin tingled with power. He was lost in sensation, his whole being pulsing and vibrating with unknown energy.
In time—moments or an eternity, Malekith could not tell—the swirling colours began to coalesce around him. They formed into a nightmarish landscape above the centre of which floated the elf prince. The skies boiled with fire and black clouds, and beneath him stretched an arcane plateau that stretched on for infinity: the Realm of Chaos.
In one direction Malekith spied an unending garden, forlorn and decaying, filled with drooping willows and sallow grasses. A miasma of fog and flies drifted up from the overgrown copses of bent and withered trees, and rivers of oozing pus gurgled between fronds of clinging fungi and piles of rotted corpses. Marshes bubbled and boiled and pits of tar gurgled, spewing gaseous vapours into the thick air.
At the centre of the unkempt morass rose up a mansion of titanic proportions: a grandiose but tottering edifice of crumbling stone and worm-eaten wood. Peeling paint and flaking brick stood upon cracked stone and bowed beams, crawling with sickly yellow ivy and immense black roses. Fumes belched from a hundred chimneys and gargoyle-headed pipes spat and drooled gobbets of ichor across cracked tiles and mouldering thatch.
In the smog and gloom shambled daemons of death and plague; immensely bloated creatures with pustulant flesh and pox-marked skin, and slobbering beasts with slug-like bodies and fronds of tentacles dribbling noxious emissions. Swarms of boil-like mites scrabbled over the sagging walls and roofs of the manse, while a legion of cyclopean daemons, each with a single cracked horn, meandered about the wild gardens chanting sonorously.
Turning his gaze from the filth and squalor, Malekith then looked upon a mighty citadel made up of glimmering mirrors and crystal. Its surface shimmered with a rainbow of colours, translucent yet transparent, shifting with eddies and swirls of magic. Doors yawned like devouring mouths and windows stared back at the prince like lidless eyes. Fires of all colours billowed from the spires of thin towers, sending fountains of sparks trailing down to the ground below.
All about the bizarre palace was an immense maze, of shifting walls of crystal. The twisting, contorted pathways overlapped above and below, and passed across each other through unseen dimensions. Arcing gateways of flame linked parts of the immense labyrinth together, flickering from blue to green to purple and to colours not meant to be seen by mortals.
The skies about the horrifying tower were filled with shoals of creatures that climbed and swooped upon the magical thermals, shark-like and fearsome. Formless, cackling things cavorted and whirled about the maze, flashing with magical power. Daemons with arms that dripped with fire bounded manically along the winding crystal passages, leaping and bouncing with insane abandon. Malekith felt his eyes drawn back to the impossible fortress and saw that a great gallery had opened up.
Here stalked arcane things with multi-coloured wings and bird-like faces, with contorting staves in their hands and robes of glistening pink and blue. One of the creatures paused and looked up at him. Its eyes were like pits of never-ending madness, deep oceans of swirling power that threatened to draw him into their depths for eternity.
Breaking that transfixing stare, Malekith then looked upon a blasted wasteland, surrounded by a great chain of volcanoes that spewed rivers of lava down their black sides and choked the air with their foul soot. Immense ramparts were carved from the mountainsides, huge bastions of dread hung with skulls and from whose jagged battlements fluttered a thousand times a thousand banners of red.
Within the encircling peaks the land was rent by great tears and chasms that welled up with blood like wounds, as if it had been constantly rent by the blows of some godly blade. The skeletons of unimaginable creatures were piled high amongst lakes of burning crimson, and all about were dunes made of the dust of countless bones. Hounds the size of horses with red-scaled flesh and enormous fangs prowled amongst the ruination, their howls tearing the air above the snap and crack of bone and gristle.
At the heart of this desolation grew a tower of unimaginable proportion, so vast that it seemed to fill Malekith’s vision. Of black stone and brass was it made, tower upon tower, wall upon wall, a castle so great that it would hold back the armies of the whole universe. Gargoyles spouted boiling blood down its brazen fortifications, and red-skinned warriors with wiry frames and bulbous, horned heads patrolled its ramparts. Upon its highest parapet there stood a thing of pure fury; rage given bestial, winged form. It beat its broad chest and roared into the dark skies.
Shuddering, Malekith turned fully about and stood bewitched by a panorama of entrancing beauty. Enchanting glades of gently swaying emerald-leafed trees bordered golden beaches upon which crashed white-foamed waves, while glittering lakes of tranquil water beckoned to him. Majestic mountains soared above all, their flanks clad in the whitest snow, glistening in the unseen sun.
Lithe creatures clad in the guise of half-maidens cavorted through the paradise, laughing and chattering, caressing each other with shimmering claws. Across emerald meadows roamed herds of sinuous beasts whose bodies shimmered and changed colour, their iridescent patterns hypnotising to the elf prince. Malekith felt himself drawn onwards, ensnared by their beauty.
Suddenly realising his peril, Malekith tore his gaze away from the mesmerising vision. He became distinctly aware that he was being watched and could feel the attention of otherworldly beings being turned in his direction. Feeling as if his soul were about to be laid bare and flayed before the gaze of the Chaos Gods, Malekith felt terror gripping him. He sought somewhere to flee, but in every direction spread the domains of the Dark Gods. With a last dread-driven effort, he wished himself away and was surrounded again by the twirling energies of magic.
When his vision had cleared again, Malekith found himself hovering far above the world, as if stood upon the edge of creation itself and looking down upon the realms of men and elves and dwarfs and every other creature under the sun. He could see the jungle-swathed forests of Lustria where lizardmen scuttled through the ruins of the Old Ones’ cities. He saw orc tribes massing in the blighted wilderness, carpeting the ground in tides of green.
Over everything drifted the winds of magic, now more clear to him than they had ever been. The prince saw them streaming from the shattered Gate of Chaos in the north and spreading out across the northlands. He saw the vortex of Ulthuan as a great swirl of power, drawing the energy out of the world. He saw sinkholes of darkness and blazing mountains of light.
In that instant it all became clear to Malekith. The whole world was laid out before him, and he saw as perhaps only his mother had before seen. There were torrents of power that swept across the lands untapped by mortal kind. The very breath of the gods sighed over oceans and plains, down valleys and across forests. From Chaos came all magic, whether good or ill. It was stunning in its beauty, just as a storm-tossed sea can enthral those not caught in its deadly grip.
Malekith lingered awhile, now aware of the crown burning upon his head. It acted as some kind of key, some artefact created by the races that had come before the rise of elves, before even the coming of the Old Ones. It would be easy for him to stay here forever, marvelling at the rich, random choreography of the dancing winds of magic. He could spend an eternity studying their heights and depths with the circlet and still not unlock all of their secrets.
Something nagged at his mind however, a sensation deep within his soul that threatened to break his reverie.
Yeasir struggled to his knees, still weak from the magical blast that had cast him down. The alarmed shouts of his comrades grew more urgent as the skeletons began to advance up the steps towards the Naggarothi. Crawling to the edge of the uppermost level, he looked down to see the unliving legion marching implacably onwards, each stepping in synchronicity with all the others, guided by common purpose or will. The arrows of the elves had little effect, most bouncing harmless from the glowing bones of their enemies, others simply passing through them as if they were nothing more than ghosts.
