The sundering, p.93
The Sundering, page 93
Alith was disturbed by this. If there had been one constant throughout his turmoil of so long, it had been Elthyrior. The raven herald had been many things—a guardian, an ally and companion—though never quite friend.
‘The Shadow King watches over Nagarythe,’ said Elthyrior with a lopsided smile. ‘Morai-heg gives way to Kurnous, and moves her all-seeing gaze upon others.’
Alith could think of nothing to say, and so the two of them stood side-by-side in silence, looking to the west. It was not long before the druchii army could be seen, marching along the road from the north-west, cutting across the foothills in ribbons of black. Alith scanned the skies, searching for sign of dragon riders or manticores, but there was nothing. It seemed that Alith’s plan had succeeded: the Witch King would confront him personally.
For all that he had experienced, Alith felt a slight twinge of nervousness as the druchii army spread out across the hills. Their number was inconceivable, more than a hundred thousand at a rough guess. Where had so many warriors come from Alith had no idea. Had Morathi hoarded so many troops all of these years, perhaps waiting for the right leader to emerge?
Some distance away the army halted, out of bolt thrower range. The intent was clear: Alith was to feel no immediate threat and stay where he stood.
Whispers and shouts of alarm caused Alith to look at his shadow warriors. They pointed to the skies, where a dragon appeared through the clouds, descending slowly. It was the largest beast Alith had seen, half-again as big as the dragon that had carried Kheranion. Alith was about to call for his army to flee to the hills but stopped as the dragon circled back towards the druchii army, landing in front of it.
A tall figure dismounted, dropping to the ground beside the monster. The air shimmered around him, a haze of dark mists and rising heat. Alith watched closely as the Witch King approached.
He was far taller than any elf, and clad in an all-encompassing suit of black armour. He carried a shield adorned with a gold relief of a hateful rune that burned Alith’s eyes when he looked upon it. The sword in his right hand was enveloped by blue flame from hilt to tip, casting dancing shadows on snow.
It was the armour that caught Alith’s full attention. When the Witch King was less than a hundred paces distant, striding purposefully up the hill, Alith could see that it was not wholly black, but a ruddy light glowed from within. Wisps of steam swirled around the warrior. Alith realised with horror that the plates and mail of the armour smouldered, every joint and rivet still hot as if recently forged. The Witch King left molten snow and scorched earth in his wake while the air itself recoiled from his presence, streaming away from his body in whirling vortices.
The shadow warriors watched the Witch King carefully, bows in hand. Alith had ordered them not to attack until his command; he needed to know who dared call himself ruler of Nagarythe. Having seen the strength of the Witch King’s host, there was no doubt that this warrior commanded the loyalty of Anlec.
As the Witch King advanced through the tumbled remnants of the old gate, Alith’s gaze was drawn in by his eyes. They were pits of black flame, empty and yet full of energy. Nothing could be seen of his face save those terrible orbs; the Witch King’s head was enclosed in a black and gold helm adorned with a circlet of horns and spines made from a silvery-grey metal that reflected no light.
Remembering Elthyrior’s gift, Alith drew his knife from his belt and cut away the cords binding the canvas around the spear in Alith’s left hand. He shook the shaft to dislodge the bag, which fluttered away in the wind. Stirred by the breeze a flag snapped out from the shaft, tied with gold-threaded rope.
The banner was tattered and stained, ragged with many holes and frayed stitching at its edges. It had once been white, but was now dirty brown and grey. The design upon it was indistinct but Alith recognised it immediately as a golden griffon’s wing: the standard of House Anar.
Alith felt a surge of courage flow through him, dispelling the dread surrounding the approaching Witch King. The banner had flown in this place since the time of Aenarion and Alith drew on its strength, on the power of centuries that even the blood of the Anars could not wash away. Emboldened, Alith stared at his foe.
‘By what right do you enter these lands without the permission of Alith Anar, lord of house Anar, Shadow King of Nagarythe?’ Alith demanded, raising the ragged banner above his head. ‘If you come to treat with me, hear my oath to the dead. Nothing is forgotten, nothing is forgiven!’
The Witch King stopped half a dozen paces away, the heat from his body prickling at Alith’s skin. His infernal gaze moved up to the flag. The Witch King sheathed his sword and gestured at the banner, a mere flick of a finger.
The standard burst into black flames and disintegrated into a flutter of charred flakes that were quickly taken away by the wind, leaving Alith holding a burnt staff. He let the smoking wood drop from his fingers.
‘House Anar is dead,’ intoned the Witch King. His voice was echoing and deep, as if coming from a distant hall. ‘Only I rule Nagarythe. Swear loyalty to me and your past will be forgotten, your treachery forgiven. I will grant you these lands to rule as your own, your fealty owed only to me.’
Alith laughed.
‘You would make me a prince of graves, a custodian of nothing,’ he said. He grew serious, eyes narrowing. ‘By what right do you demand such loyalty?’
The Witch King stepped forwards and it took all of Alith’s nerve to hold his ground. Strange voices hissed at the edge of hearing—spirits of sacrifices bound within the armour. The heat was near unbearable, causing Alith’s eyes to water, his skin cracking with dryness. Alith licked his lips but his mouth was also parched. Worst was the crawling, filthy sensation of dark magic that leaked through Alith, drawing the life from his blood, chilling his heart.
‘Do you not recognise me, Alith?’ the Witch King said, bending close, his tone quiet, swathed in a charnel aura of burning and death. ‘Will you not serve me once more?’
The voice of the creature in front of Alith was cracked and hoarse, but the Shadow King recognised it. A lifetime ago it had spoken words upon which Alith had hung all his hopes and dreams. Once, in the distant past, that voice had sworn to Alith to set Nagarythe free from tyranny and he had believed it. Now it called for him to surrender.
It was the voice of Malekith.
The Dark path
Fields of golden crop bent gently in a magical breeze as the palace of Prince Thyriol floated across Saphery. A shimmering vision of white and silver towers and dove-wing buttresses, the citadel eased across the skies with the stately grace of a cloud. Slender minarets and spiralling steeples rose in circles surrounding a central gilded needle that glimmered with magic.
The farmers glanced up at the familiar beauty of the citadel and returned to their labours. If any of them wondered what events passed within the capital, none made mention of it to their companions. From the ground the floating citadel appeared as serene and ordered as ever, a reassuring vision to those that wondered when the war with the Naggarothi would come to their lands.
In truth, the palace was anything but peaceful.
Deep within the alabaster spires, Prince Thyriol strode to a wooden door at the end of a long corridor and tried to open it. The door was barred and magically locked. There were numerous counterspells with which he could negotiate the obstacle, but he was in no mood for such things. Thyriol laid his hand upon the white-painted planks of the door and summoned the wind of fire. As his growing anger fanned the magic, the paint blistered and the planks charred under his touch. As Thyriol contemplated the treachery he had suffered, and his own blindness to it, the invisible flames burned faster and deeper than any natural fire. Within ten heartbeats the door collapsed into cinders and ash.
Revealed within was a coterie of elves. They looked up at their prince, startled and fearful. Bloody entrails were scattered on the bare stone floor, arranged in displeasing patterns that drew forth Dark Magic. They sat amidst a number of dire tomes bound with black leather and skin. Candles made of bubbling fat flickered dully on stands made from blackened iron. Sorcery seethed in the air, milking Thyriol’s gums itch and slicking his skin with its oily touch.
The missing mages were all here, forbidden runes painted upon their faces with blood, fetishes of bone and sinew dangling around their necks. Thyriol paid them no heed. All of his attention was fixed upon one elf, the only one who showed no sign of fear.
Words escaped Thyriol. The shame and sense of betrayal that filled Thyriol was beyond any means of expression, though some of it showed in the prince’s face, twisted into a feral snarl even as tears of fire formed in his eyes.
Faerie lights glittered from extended fingertips and silver coronas shimmered around faces fixed in concentration as the young mages practised their spells. Visions of distant lands wavered in the air and golden clouds of protection wreathed around the robed figures. The air seemed to bubble with magical energy, the winds of magic made almost visible by the spells of the apprentices.
The students formed a semicircle around their tutors at the centre of a circular, domed hall—the Grand Chamber. The white wall was lined with alcoves containing sculptures of marble depicting the greatest mages of Ulthuan; some in studious repose, others in the flow of flamboyant conjurations, according to the tastes of successive generations of sculptors. All were austere, looking down with stern but not unkindly expressions on future generations. Their looks of strict expectation were repeated on the faces of Prince Thyriol and Menreir.
“You are speaking too fast,” Thyriol told Ellinithil, youngest of the would-be mages, barely two hundred years old. “Let the spell form as words in your mind before you speak.”
Ellinithil nodded, brow furrowed. He started the conjuration again but stuttered the first few words.
“You are not concentrating,” Thyriol said softly, laying a reassuring hand on the young elf’s shoulder. He raised his voice to address the whole class. “Finish your incantations safely and then listen to me.”
The apprentices dissipated the magic they had been weaving; illusions vapourised into air, magical flames flickered and dimmed into darkness. As each finished, he or she turned to the prince. All were intent, but none more so that Anamedion, Thyriol’s eldest grandson. Anamedion’s eyes bore into his grandfather as if by his gaze alone he could prise free the secrets of magic locked inside Thyriol’s mind.
“Celabreir,” said Thyriol, gesturing to one of the students to step forward. “Conjure Emendeil’s Flame for me.”
Celabreir glanced uncertainly at her fellow apprentices. The spell was one of the simplest to cast, often learnt in childhood even before any formal teaching had begun. With a shrug, the elf whispered three words of power and held up her right hand, fingers splayed. A flickering golden glow emanated from her fingertips, barely enough to light her slender face and brazen hair.
“Good,” said Thyriol. “Now, end it and cast it again.”
Celabreir dispersed the magic energy with a flick of her wrist, her fingertips returning to normal. Just as she opened her mouth to begin the incantation again, Thyriol spoke.
“Do you breathe in or out when you cast a spell?” he asked.
A frown knotted Celabreir’s brow for a moment. Distracted, she missed a syllable in the spell. Shaking her head, she tried again, but failed.
“What have you done to me, prince?” she asked plaintively. “Is this some counterspell you are using?”
Thyriol laughed gently, as did Menreir. Thyriol nodded for the other mage to explain the lesson and returned to his high-backed throne at the far end of the hall.
“You are thinking about how you breathe, aren’t you?” said Menreir.
“I… Yes, I am, master,” said Celabreir, her shoulders slumping. “I don’t know whether I breathe in or out when I cast. I can’t remember, but if I think about it I realise that I might be doing it differently because I am aware of it now.”
“And so you are no longer concentrating on your control of the magic,” said Menreir. “A spell you could cast without effort you now find… problematic. Even the most basic spells are still fickle if you do not have total focus. The simplest distraction—an overheard whisper or a flicker of movement in the corner of the eye—can be the difference between success and failure. Knowing this, who can tell me why Ellinithil is having difficulty?”
“He is thinking about the words and not the spell,” said Anamedion, a hint of contempt in his voice. He made no attempt to hide his boredom. “The more he worries about his pronunciation, the more distracted his inner voice.”
“That’s right,” said Thyriol, quelling a stab of annoyance. Anamedion had not called Menreir “master”, a title to which he had had earned over many centuries, a sign of growing disrespect that Thyriol would have to address. “Most of you already have the means to focus the power you need for some of the grandest enchantments ever devised by our people, but until you can cast them without effort or thought, that power is useless to you. Remember that the smallest magic can go a long way.”
“There is another way to overcome these difficulties,” said Anamedion, stepping forward. “Why do you not teach us that?”
Thyriol regarded Anamedion for a moment, confused.
“Control is the only means to master true magic,” said the prince.
Anamedion shook his head, and half-turned, addressing the other students as much as his grandfather.
“There is a way to tap into magic, unfettered by incantation and ritual,” said Anamedion. “Shaped by instinct and powered by raw magic, it is possible to cast the greatest spells of all.”
“You speak of sorcery,” said Menreir quickly, throwing a cautioning look at the apprentices. “Sorcery brings only two things: madness and death. If you lack the will and application to be a mage, then you will certainly not live long as a sorcerer. If Ellinithil or Celabreir falter with pure magic, the spell simply fails. If one miscasts a sorcerous incantation, the magic does not return to the winds. It must find a place to live, in your body or your mind. Even when sorcery is used successfully, it leaves a taint, on the world and in the spirit. It corrupts one’s thoughts and stains the winds of magic. Do not even consider using it.”
“Tell me from where you have heard such things,” said Thyriol. “Who has put these thoughts in your mind?”
“Oh, here and there,” said Anamedion with a shrug and a slight smile. “One hears about the druchii sorcerers quite often if one actually leaves the palace. I have heard that any sorcerer is a match for three Sapherian mages in power.”
“Then you have heard wrong,” said Thyriol patiently. “The mastery of magic is not about power. Any fool can pick up a sword and hack at a lump of wood until he has kindling, but a true woodsman knows to use axe and hatchet and knife. Sorcery is a blunt instrument, capable only of destruction, not creation. Sorcery could not have built this citadel, nor could sorcery have enchanted our fields to be rich with grain. Sorcery burns and scars and leaves nothing behind.”
“And yet Anlec was built with sorcery,” countered Anamedion.
“Anlec is sustained by sorcery, but it was built by Caledor Dragontamer, who used only pure magic,” Thyriol replied angrily.
He shot glances at the others in the room, searching for some sign that they paid undue attention to Anamedion’s arguments. There was rumour, whispered and incoherent, that some students, and even some mages, had begun to experiment with sorcery. It was so hard for Thyriol to tell. Dark Magic had been rising for decades, fuelled by the rituals and sacrifices of the Naggarothi and their cultist allies. It polluted the magical vortex of Ulthuan, twisting the Winds of Magic with its presence.
They had found druchii sorcerers hidden in the wilder parts of Saphery, in the foothills of the mountains, trying to teach their corrupted ways to the misguided. Some of the sorcerers had been slain, others had fled, forewarned of their discovery by fellow cultists. It was to protect the young from this corruption that Thyriol had brought the most talented Sapherians here, to learn from him and his most powerful mages. That Anamedion brought talk of sorcery into the capital was a grave concern. Saphethion, of all places, had to be free of the taint of Dark Magic, for the corruption of the power in the citadel could herald victory for the Naggarothi.
“I am glad you have found us,” Anamedion said with no hint of regret or shame. “I have longed to shed our secrecy, but the others insisted on this subterfuge.”
The mention of the other mages broke Thyriol’s focus and he took in the rest of the faces, settling on the blood-daubed features of Illeanith. This brought a fresh surge of anguish and he gave a choked gasp and lurched to one side, saved from falling only by the burnt frame of the doorway. He had been disappointed but not surprised by Anamedion’s presence. Seeing Illeanith was one shock too many.
It was as if daggers had been plunged into Thyriol’s heart and gut, a physical agony that writhed inside him, pulling away all sense and reason. The mages who had come with Thyriol began to shout and hurl accusations, but Thyriol heard nothing, just the arrhythmic thundering of his heart and a distant wailing in his head. Through a veil of tears and the waves of dismay welling up inside of him, Thyriol watched numbly as the sorcerers drew away from the door, adding their own voices to the cacophony.
“Everyone but Anamedion, leave me,” Thyriol commanded. “Menreir, I will call for you when I am finished, we must discuss the latest messages from King Caledor.”
The mage and students bowed their acquiescence and left silently. Anamedion stood defiantly before the throne, arms crossed. Thyriol put aside his anger and looked at his grandson with sympathetic eyes.
“You are gifted, Anamedion,” said the prince. “If you would but show a little more patience, there is no limit to what you might achieve in time.”
“What is it that you are afraid of?” countered Anamedion.
