The end times, p.26
The End Times, page 26
Morathi gave a scream of derision, but Malekith held up a hand to silence her.
‘The fate of Ulthuan is not for a single elf to decide, and I accede to the wisdom of this council,’ Malekith declared. He crossed the glade and, to the amazement of all, bent to one knee before Bel Shanaar. ‘Bel Shanaar shall succeed my father, though he cannot replace him, and with his wisdom we shall herald a new age for our people. May the gods grant our new king the strength to prosper and rule justly, and know that should ever his will falter or his resolve waver, Nagarythe stands ready.’
‘They would not choose me because the darkness of Khaine lay upon me.’ Malekith’s laugh was shrill, rebounding from the vaulted walls in mocking echoes. ‘A shadow of Khaine? A shadow? A hint? There were times, times of weakness, when my strength was withered and my ambition stunted, when I wondered if they had been right. I would think that the blood and mayhem was the curse of Khaine as Caledor foretold and the First Council had chosen wisely. Now the wisdom of elven princes is truly revealed. Pathetic! Had I taken the Sword of Khaine they would have quailed and begged for me to be king and we would have been doomed to slaughter ourselves into history and then extinction. Is that what they want? Do they really think this blood-hungry usurper will lead them to sanctuary?’
‘They do not think,’ Teclis said, his hands raised to calm Malekith. ‘At least, they cannot think clearly. Their ancient enemy has invaded, swift on the heels of daemons that nearly destroyed their homes. Tyrion protected them then, and he bears the armour of Aenarion and his blood. The Widowmaker, it taints their thoughts, making them warmongers also, but it is fear rather than blood-thirst that drives them.’
‘They shall all be slain, in turn,’ Malekith declared, ‘for their lack of loyalty.’
‘They cannot be loyal to a king in hiding, your majesty,’ Teclis said carefully. ‘Is it your intent to make public your ascension?’
Malekith’s first instinct, fuelled by indignation, was to declare that he would. His announcement would shake elvendom to its core, make known the fact that six thousand years of injustice had finally ended. The princes would see that he had been accepted by Asuryan and would flock to his banner as their ancestors should have done.
Teclis’s calculating gaze punctured the illusion, reminding the Phoenix King of the wounds that still dogged him and the blade as-yet-unforged. To reveal himself as king now would make Malekith a target and Tyrion would come to Caledor with all speed.
‘Better to let Imrik continue to goad the beast,’ Malekith concluded, as though speaking the mage’s thoughts for him. ‘Like the bull bitten by too many flies, Tyrion will succumb to the rage and lash out. It is only a matter of time. His allies will be as mist in the growing sun when that happens.’
They concluded their conference swiftly, for the news that Tyrion now led the enemy army directly required careful counter. Teclis removed himself to consult with such authorities and agents as he could trust while Malekith was left to ponder the possible paths of his future.
Destiny demanded that he face Tyrion at some point. It was simply the way the godly cycles worked, and could not be avoided. He would not receive unexpected but pleasant news one day that a dragon had eaten his foe or a fireball had incinerated the pretender to his throne. Myths required more direct action.
Malekith was not sure at all that he would prevail, even with Asuryan’s blade. The last time he had faced Tyrion, the Dragon of Cothique had wielded the Sunfang and fought alone. Next time he would have the Widowmaker and every sorcerous assistance Morathi could devise.
The Phoenix King regarded his options as though they were laid out on the table before him but he knew his perspective was skewed. He needed counsel, but Teclis had his own agenda and Kouran and Imrik were warriors whose advice was painfully confined to the military.
Requiring a fresh source of inspiration, Malekith spent some time preparing his audience room for a difficult ritual. Retainers came and went bringing candles and iron icons and other paraphernalia, laid out to their master’s precise instructions. When he was done, Malekith sent his minions away, forbade any interruption and began his summoning.
Drawing on his dark magic, Malekith drew forth spirits he had trapped in the hinterlands between mortality and Mirai – the souls of his dead rivals conjured from the afterlife to serve him again as they had served in the Black Council of Naggarond.
They came as insubstantial spectres, their faces barely recognisable, but Malekith knew them all by name, deed and temperament. Lord Khaivan of Ghrond, founder of the city and one of Morathi’s first lovers returned screaming to existence. Others followed soon after: Lyar Winterspear of Har Ganeth; Tyrios the Flayer; Kordrilian of Clar Karond. More than two dozen ghosts crowded into the circle of power created by the Witch King, hissing and moaning wordlessly.
‘Speak,’ commanded the Witch King. ‘I would know your minds and the knowledge you bring from beyond the veil of death. Tell me how I might slay Prince Tyrion and defeat the wielder of the Widowmaker.’
Lord Shimmerghast, Dreadmarshal of Naggarond, floated closer. The first captain of the Black Guard regarded Malekith with hate-filled eyes, the skin of his ghost torn to tatters as it had been in life.
‘No blade can match the Widowmaker. No warrior can defeat its wielder. You are doomed, Malekith. Doomed to join us in an eternity of perdition and pain!’
‘How predictable,’ said the king, dismissing the spectre with a wave of his hand. He glared at the other assembled spirits. ‘You know, I could grant you the peace you desire, if you are willing to help. Do any of you have anything to say?’
‘He that lays his hand upon the Widowmaker becomes Khaine’s weapon,’ wailed Lady Mystyr. Her face was veiled with black lace, hiding the bloody holes where her eyes had been gouged out by Malekith’s torturers. ‘Only the fire of Asuryan can defeat such a foe.’
‘I know this already!’ snapped Malekith. Mystyr screamed as he banished her soul back into the pale waters of undeath that flowed around the border of Mirai. ‘I have taken the fire of Asuryan into myself and Hotek labours on a sword fitting for the king of kings. Surely there must be more than that?’
‘You are bound by the cycle of life, the circle of myth,’ said Lothek Heartstealer. The former grand admiral of Klar Karond looked odd, his head lolling to one side on a broken neck, his floating torso missing legs and limbs. ‘Time turns and Khaine will face Asuryan. Such is inevitable, King Malekith.’
With a frustrated shout, Malekith stood and swept his arm through the shimmering haze that encircled the ritual space, causing ripples of power to break apart the apparitions within.
‘Useless!’ he raved, snuffing the light from the candles with a surge of magic, sending braziers and talismans whirling across the chamber with a flicked hand. The surge of ire that filled the king made his head throb. ‘As duplicitous and pointless in death as they were in life.’
Malekith cooled his anger, grasping his head in both hands, forcing the pain to subside, clearing his thoughts. There had to be another way. He was not prepared to gamble not only his life but the future of all elvenkind on the notion that the war of the gods would simply be repeated on the mortal plane. There was too much at stake to risk on the half-baked idea of mythical inevitability. He had been schooled and advised by the most devious minds in history and he would not relax until he found a weakness to exploit, an advantage to be gained.
He accepted the predictability of fighting Tyrion. The myths demanded a confrontation, but there was nothing in the legends that said Malekith could not try a few other plans first.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A KING IN NAME ONLY
It chafed at Malekith to wait while others sealed their glories in battle and prosecuted his war, for he had always been an elf of determined action, following the example of his father. The knowledge that his enforced absence from the battlefield would bring him later victory was a salve to the frustration, but many a day and night he paced the halls and balconies of Imrik’s citadel – the upper levels cleared of all but the most trustworthy souls lest word of Malekith’s presence be discovered by Morathi.
He wondered at these times what happened further afield, not just in Saphery and Cothique but beyond the Great Ocean in the lands of Elthin Arvan and the jungles of Lustria. With Morathi gone, Ghrond would have been overrun for some time, the last bastion of the elves in Naggaroth save for the Hellebron-stalked ruins of Har Ganeth.
Sometimes he allowed his essence to fly over the waves to the lands of the humans, where living and dead fought against and beside each other, in a complex to and fro of alliance and treachery against the great beast of Chaos, the one called Archaon. He was the herald of the Rhana Dandra, that the barbarians called the Lord of the End Times, but the fate of the elves would not rest in his hands. The gods themselves contested for the fate of Ulthuan’s children, not mere mortals.
Malekith was always careful to conceal himself on these excursions, unwilling to expose himself to detection by his mother. He could feel her sometimes scouring the winds of magic, seeking the telltale signs of his presence, and occasionally he was certain that she had found him. The magic of his armour, the force that she had poured into him to sustain him after his near death, were as distinctive as his seal. Yet however close she came, no matter how much he felt her lingering presence hovering over him as though she could set eyes upon him, he never felt that moment of connection that would reveal he had been discovered.
He brought up this matter with Teclis when the mage returned to Tor Caleda. They convened on a moonlit rampart at the summit of the fortress, the lights and sounds of the city far below while the odd footfall of a guard broke the still on the walls beneath them.
‘You really do not understand that which you have hungered after for so long,’ Teclis said, with a rare moment of genuine humour. ‘Your majesty, you have become the Phoenix King and the fire of Asuryan burns within you. Morathi is no doubt confused, because she will see the fire but not recognise it.’
‘Surely she would remember such a thing from her time with my father?’
‘Her memories are splitting, her mind finally dissembling after so many years adrift on the tides of magic. She thinks Tyrion is your father reborn. Now that he has lifted the Sword of Khaine, has become the Lord of Murder, her self-deception is complete. She was young when Aenarion was Asuryan’s chosen, and likely if she ever did witness him at that time the memory of it is quite obliterated by the towering force that was the blood-wreathed avenger he became. It was not your father she craved, it was the power of the Widowmaker.’
‘My mother is more than just the power-hungry witch as she has been painted by the lies of the Phoenix Kings,’ Malekith said. ‘Of late a madness has consumed her, and her ambition has never been a secret, but I cannot doubt that she cared for me and loved my father.’
‘It is nigh impossible for a son to think harshly of his mother,’ Teclis replied. The moonlight made his pale flesh glow with silvery light as he turned away and looked east towards the Inner Sea. ‘Family makes fools of us all at one time or another. I was blind for so long to Tyrion’s weaknesses. He was lauded from Caledor to Chrace, and that works a terrible toll upon the mind. When you despatched your daemonic ally N’Kari to kill the Everqueen, and my brother saved her and became her consort, you initiated a turn of events that led us to this current point.’
‘Your brother’s amour and the Everqueen’s poor choice of lovers is my fault?’ Malekith gripped the rampart in metal fingers, clawing grooves in the stone. ‘Is there any woe of the world for which you would not lay blame upon me?’
‘You misunderstand, your majesty, or I do not explain myself well.’ Teclis looked at the Phoenix King. ‘All of the choices we have made have laid the path that brings us to the place we are in, here and now. When I came to you and offered to make pact with you, do you think it was easy for me? Lileath showed me the grief and death to come, and I could have ended it with a single blow of my sword. I could have slain Tyrion without effort, forestalling this war.’
‘Your love of him stopped you?’
Teclis shook his head, saddened. ‘No, my fear of the consequences did. Without Tyrion we would have failed against the daemons and you would be the lone survivor in Naggarond, fighting with your last breath against the very creatures of Chaos that you unleashed upon us so many times.’
Malekith wondered if he had ever really made a decision himself, or if they were all simply pawns of powers far beyond their comprehension, playing out petty games for the amusement of otherworldly entities. They fell silent, contemplating the past.
Turning, Malekith leapt up the stairs three at a time, chasing after his mother. Despite his haste, Morathi was already standing beside the balcony window by the time Malekith reached the top of the tower. She turned and smiled as he strode into the room, and held out an arm for him to hold. Sighing, the prince allowed his mother to lay her hand upon his and led her out onto the balcony. This time, the seeress-queen and prince of Nagarythe were greeted with rapturous cheers and applause. The streets were packed with elves in every direction, and windows and balconies were full as the people of Athel Toralien sought the best vantage point to see their mysterious, glamorous visitor.
‘What are you doing here?’ Malekith whispered as he waved to the adoring crowds.
‘I have come to visit you, my wonderful son,’ replied Morathi, not turning her smile from the masses below. ‘A mother worries, you know that. Word came to me that you were heading off into the wilds for some ridiculous adventures, so I thought it best that I finally visit your new home before you left.’
‘You will not dissuade me,’ Malekith warned her. ‘I am ready to leave within days.’
‘Dissuade you?’ said Morathi with a faint laugh. ‘Why would I not want you to go? Was it not me that stood upon the quayside when you left Nagarythe, and told you to earn glory and renown for yourself and your people? Have you not done so, and have I not looked upon all that you have achieved with great love and pride?’
‘Forgive my misunderstanding,’ said Malekith. ‘If you are here to lend your support, then I am very grateful.’
Morathi did not reply straightaway, but instead indicated discreetly that they should retire inside. With a final wave and a grin, Malekith stepped off the balcony and his mother followed. Closing the window, Malekith rounded on his mother.
‘So why is it that you are here?’ he asked, not with accusation but with genuine curiosity.
‘It is not my support that you need, at least not in any physical way,’ Morathi replied.
Seeing his mother wave a hand towards the bottle upon the desk, Malekith took a clean glass from one of the many cabinets in the room and poured wine for Morathi. She took it with a nod, had a sip and then continued.
‘You have been away from Ulthuan for too long. I was of a mind to persuade you to return rather than go gallivanting across the Wastes, but then I realised that such a course of action would be a fool’s errand and only earn me your enmity, perhaps even your disdain.’
‘You are right, I will not return to Ulthuan,’ said Malekith. ‘Why do you think it is so important that I do so now?’
‘Not now, but soon,’ Morathi said. ‘I sense that Bel Shanaar’s rule is fading. His usurpation of your relationship with the dwarfs was an attempt to bolster his flagging fortunes. Now that the colonies are well established, all of the kingdoms enjoy the comfort and wealth that the realms overseas bring to us, Tiranoc no less so, nor more so than any others. Nagarythe’s most adventurous spirits have departed the shores of the isle, for new generations look to the likes of you to emulate, not to the staid and overly sincere Bel Shanaar. In comfort there is frailty, for a sword must be forged in the burning fires before it can rest in its scabbard. There is no more fire in Ulthuan. Even as her empire continues to grow, Ulthuan herself is diminishing.’
‘If Ulthuan has become lessened, then it is the fault of the princes who rule there,’ said Malekith, pouring himself some wine.
‘That is my point,’ snapped Morathi. ‘There is none capable of succeeding Bel Shanaar – his court is as weak as he is. Your achievements here have been rightly lauded, but your success has been copied and appropriated and demeaned by others. If only you had returned to us before Bel Shanaar accorded himself and his rule with the dwarfs and stole your victory. It is time to create a new legend for yourself, and return in triumph to reclaim what is rightfully yours.’
‘What would you say if I told you that I wish never to return to Ulthuan?’ said Malekith. ‘What if I have decided that my life is out here, away from the coddling embrace of Ulthuan?’
‘Then I would curse you for a fool and cast you out of my life,’ said Morathi. ‘But that is not really how you think. You do not like Ulthuan, and I cannot blame you. She is like a maiden that you love, gripped tightly within the arms of a less-deserving amour. But, just as you turn away from that sight, within your heart still lingers that love for the maiden, no matter what she does.’
‘You are right, of course,’ admitted Malekith. ‘She is like to me as a lover who has spurned my attentions many times, and yet her gaze lingers upon me always, tempting me with the notion that one day she will accept my advances. However, if what you say is true, then perhaps it is too late for me. The beauty of youth has faded and Ulthuan perhaps is on the decline into infirmity and then a swift passing away. Perhaps it is better this way – that we break our ties to that small isle, and reach out to the wider world.’
Morathi strode across the room, her face a mask of fury, and slapped Malekith across the cheek. In instinct he raised his hand to reply in kind, but Morathi was as quick as a serpent and snatched his wrist in her fingers, her long and sharpened nails digging so deep into the flesh that blood trickled across her hand.
