Sword of Caledor Read online

She dismounted, showing no fear, and strode towards them, and they waited expectantly to hear what she had to say, as they would have if a messenger from their Dark Gods had descended in their midst. It was a role she was perfectly suited to play. She carried herself with the imperiousness of one who had ruled for nearly seven millennia and who expected homage as her right.

  She had much to offer them, and they to offer her, and she was sure that a pact could be made with them. She would divert them from their drift southward into the lands of Men and offer them a much more tempting prize, the island-continent of Ulthuan. Her son saw it as part of a plan to put him back on his rightful throne, which it was, but she had reasons of her own as well.

  The end of time was coming. She would begin the unmaking of the world soon, as a necessary prelude to its reshaping. The time of her ascension was close. Soon the daemons would return and the time of mortals would be at an end. New gods would be born. She intended to make sure that she was one of them.

  In a cold cavern chamber beneath his freezing winter citadel, hidden even from the eyes of his mother’s sorcerous spies, Malekith the Great, Witch King of Naggaroth, prepared to perform the ritual that would make him master of first a continent and then the world. Frozen spikes of ice sheathed the stalactites surrounding him. Their cold gave him some relief from the divine fires that burned eternally and agonisingly within his flesh.

  The whimpering of terrified virgin slaves did not disturb him any more than the icy chill. He had long ago ceased to let trivial things interfere with his concentration. He was about to seize control of the destiny of millions and he would not allow himself to be distracted by the mewling of the worthless. By casting one monstrous spell and binding one dreadful being to his will, he would alter the fate of kingdoms.

  A girl looked at him. Tears ran down her face. She was frightened and alone. Malekith knew that the appearance of his gigantic metal-sheathed figure terrified her. He spoke a spell of calming and the fear disappeared to be replaced by a numb smile.

  Malekith felt no sympathy but he had no desire to be needlessly cruel either. He was not like his mother or those of his drugged, deranged, self-indulgent subjects who feasted on the pain of others. He was merely doing what was needed to ensure that right prevailed. He would take the throne of Ulthuan in accordance with his father’s command and his own desires.

  He raised one huge armoured hand before his face and studied it through the visor of his helmet. Hotek, that renegade priest of Vaul, had done his blasphemous work well. The ancient runes inscribed millennia ago in the aftermath of his greatest failure glowed with power. Caledor Dragontamer’s jealous disciple had forged this armour in the wake of Malekith’s attempt to pass through the Flame of Asuryan. Malekith had ordered him to wield the hammer despite the agony that had almost crippled him with every blow. It had kept him alive ever since.

  He told himself he barely felt the pain any more. It was merely the reality in which he lived, as water was to a shark. There had been a time when his scorched flesh had both pained and humiliated him, a badge of the rejection of the gods who had refused to acknowledge him as great as his father, a symbol of his failure and weakness. Over the centuries the fire in his flesh had burned down and his own control had grown greater.

  Even during the worst of times he had not let it stop him. He had learned from his mistakes. He had emerged from the period of agony and despair stronger than ever. The armour had hidden his scorched flesh from the view of his enemies and made him more potent than any living being before or since.

  Before you can rule others, you must first rule yourself. That was the maxim he lived by.

  He had lived for millennia and every passing year had added to his power and to his knowledge. He had studied his mother’s secret grimoires until he was more proficient in sorcery than she. He had outlived the generals who had defeated him in the long gone ages of the world.

  As ruthless with himself as with his subjects, he had learned from his errors and drawn strength from his mistakes. No one would ever or had ever beaten him the same way twice. He was still here when his ancient opponents were in their graves. Despite the pain, despite the losses, despite a black despair that would have driven lesser beings to seek eternal oblivion, he endured.

  He had toppled kingdoms and reshaped the world. He had lived longer and done more than his father, Aenarion, ever had. He would yet re-unify the kingdom that the treachery of his enemies had denied him. One day soon, all elves would bend the knee before him and acknowledge the righteousness of his rule. Then he would lead them into a new age of glory. They would subjugate the kingdoms of men and throw back the powers of Chaos and a new golden age would begin. All of them would see that they had been wrong.

  And it started now.

  Glory would be purchased by the suffering of these few slaves. They ought to be grateful to him. Without him they would have lived out their meaningless, insect lives. At the cost of a few of the years that would have swiftly passed anyway, they were being allowed to participate in the creation of a new world order. He pushed the thoughts away. They smacked of needless self-justification, of moral weakness. He was who he was. What he did was right. He need justify himself to no one.

  He studied his handiwork with some satisfaction. He had carved the altar to the ritual specifications with his own hands. For six years he had sanctified it with blood and souls. He had forged the black iron sacrificial knife, tempering the blade by passing it through the body of a still living hero six times. He had inscribed the symbols of Slaanesh and his six favoured princes over the period of six moons.

  He had prepared the chains from an alloy of truesilver and black iron and inscribed them with runes older than the world. At their centre was a gem so potently ensorcelled that it could entrap the soul of a daemon prince. The finding of that gem and the binding spells it contained was an epic in itself which would one day be recounted across his empire.

  Everything was ready. It was time to begin.

  He spoke the words he had memorised from the great grimoire and gestured for the first of the slaves to advance to the altar. She tried to refuse but his will bound her to obey. Slowly, one step at a time, as if pulled by overwhelming magnetic force, she advanced up the basalt steps and bowed her head before the altar.

  A slash of the knife opened her jugular. Blood spurted into the font. He threw the flopping carcass to one side and summoned the next with a gesture of his armoured hands. The whimpering went on but his will was strong. He would allow himself no weakness. One by one he sent their souls out into the void through the gap in reality his spell had created. They were his messengers to the dreadful being he intended to summon. Their very presence was part of the message.

  As the ritual built to its climax, his words took on a strange sibilant resonance, as if they echoed through unseen chasms in the unhallowed places beyond. Somewhere far off, in a darkness so deep it could swallow worlds, something responded.

  In a place that was not a place, in a time that lay outside time, N’Kari, Keeper of Secrets, great among daemons, felt the faint irritating tug of a summoning spell.

  At first he ignored it. That a being should be foolish enough to draw his attention piqued his curiosity, but not very much. The realms of mortals were full of those who sought to barter their puny souls for the benefits they thought daemons could provide. Sometimes, when he was bored, N’Kari allowed himself to be called and then destroyed those who sought to bend him to their will. Sometimes he granted their wishes and allowed them to destroy themselves, just so he could have the amusement of watching.

  There was something about the being making this summons though – something that nagged at N’Kari’s vast store of memories and set them to swirling, the way a scent of some half-remembered perfume makes an old rake remember the fleshpots of his youth.

  Yes, something familiar indeed.

  In this place that wa
s not a place, in this time that was not a time, N’Kari’s mind worked in a different way than it would have had he been bound to the chronal flow of mortal reality. He remembered many things simultaneously, sometimes as vividly as if he were actually experiencing them, sometimes as if they were as remote as the birth of the universe. This summons triggered a fugue of memories and images.

  It reminded him of the mortal god Aenarion, and his descendants whom N’Kari had once tried so hard to kill. And there was about it a faint, frightening taint of the Flame of Asuryan, the god-thing that was numbered among N’Kari’s greatest enemies.

  N’Kari was curious now as he suspected he was intended to be.

  More virgin souls were offered up to him, slain in exactly the correct ritual manner to please him. It was nice that the proprieties were being observed. Languidly, he extended a tentacle of thought towards the gap in reality from which the summons had come. He forced a small portion of his mighty essence through the portal, and allowed it to take shape according to the whims and expectations of the summoner.

  In that moment, mortal reality crashed in on him. He found himself trapped within a sorcerer’s circle in the dank underground depths beneath some cold northern castle. An armoured figure as monstrous as any daemon loomed before him.

  He was pleased. This was going to prove more interesting than he had anticipated.

  Slowly a shape arose out of the pool of blood in the font of the altar. It was a beautiful woman made of congealed red plasma, snakes of hair swirling from her impossibly lovely head. She beckoned at Malekith in a lascivious, enticing way. Her hips swayed sinuously in a way that promised great pleasure.

  The Witch King was not even tempted. The wards on his armour neutralised the potent spells of intoxication. His destroyed olfactory nerves were insensitive to the narcotic musk. Seeing that this strategy was not working, the daemon changed tactics and shape, becoming something monstrous and four-armed and clawed. The blood congealed and hardened into a glistening carapace. The hands extended into talons and claws. The skull became horse-like, the teeth great tusks and fangs.

  This was more like its true shape, Malekith thought, if a greater daemon could be said to have any such thing.

  ‘N’Kari, I name you and bind you,’ Malekith said. He spoke the ancient words of the ritual. The daemon resisted them. It was enormously strong, far more powerful than anything he had ever bound before. For a moment, and a moment only, the possibility that he might have encountered something too powerful for even his mighty will to dominate entered Malekith’s mind.

  ‘It is not so simple, little mortal,’ said the daemon in a voice at once beautiful and terrifying. ‘I am no mere daemonling to be bound by a passing sorcerer.’

  ‘And I am no mere mage, hell-spawn. I am Aenarion’s heir and Witch King. And you will do my bidding.’ The air between them crackled with the force of their conflict

  ‘Aenarion. That is a name you should not have mentioned,’ N’Kari said. ‘You shall pay for your presumption.’

  ‘I know you hate him and all his descendants, but I have summoned you to offer you a chance of vengeance.’

  The daemon paused for a moment. ‘Revenge I shall have. Starting with you.’

  ‘That is not possible,’ said Malekith, not letting any of the strain that he felt show in his voice. ‘But I will let you drink the blood of those who humiliated you a century ago. I will let you have all of the others who claim descent from Aenarion.’

  ‘I can take my own vengeance,’ said N’Kari.

  ‘No, you cannot,’ said Malekith. ‘I have wound you round with spells that prevent you from returning whence you came. And while this avatar is trapped here, you cannot bring another into this world. I can keep you here until the end of time if I so desire and vengeance will never be yours.’

  The daemon raged against the ever-tightening web of spells constraining it but they held. N’Kari was trapped within. His appearance changed again, becoming that of a seductive female elf. Its voice was the very essence of reasonableness.

  ‘State your terms,’ it said.

  N’Kari considered the Witch King. As mortals went, he was impressive. His massive armoured figure radiated power and not unjustified confidence. The spells he had woven were well-constructed, a trap that it might take N’Kari millennia to escape from.

  He had already spent too much time in this pathetic place bound into the Vortex. In mortal form, ennui would press as heavily on him as any other resident of this time and space. He felt sure that he could free himself eventually, but it might be easier to appear to give the mortal what he wanted. He was also sure that, in the long run, he would find a way to turn the tables on the arrogant fool. He always did.

  ‘State your terms,’ N’Kari said. The Witch King laughed triumphantly. Laugh away little mortal, N’Kari thought. I will have the last laugh.

  ‘Extend your arm,’ said the Witch King. N’Kari complied. Perhaps his foe would be foolish enough to break the magic circle binding him… Bracelets and chains snapped into place. The most powerful binding spell N’Kari had ever experienced snapped into place with them.

  ‘Now you truly are my servant,’ said Malekith, unable to keep the satisfaction from his voice.

  N’Kari wanted to howl with rage, but the spells binding him would not even allow him that.

  The dark elf assassin known as Urian Poisonblade and Prince Iltharis and dozens of other names looked across the carved table at the beautiful woman he was going to kill and smiled. She smiled back. Her glance moved from the table to the sleeping silks that filled the remainder of this small intimate tent. Outside throngs moved through the tent city that was the capital of the Everqueen. Inside spells kept all noise at bay. They could have been alone in the wild woods of Avelorn and not surrounded by her subjects.

  It was a pity, he thought. She really was lovely and he liked her, and none of that emotion was caused by the aura of compulsive magic that surrounded her. It could not be. Centuries ago the Witch King of Naggaroth had wound him round with spells that made him immune to such sorceries.

  As with Morathi, the Everqueen had great natural beauty and great natural charm and these were only amplified and enhanced by her magic, not a product of them. She was every bit as good-natured as she seemed and she looked genuinely interested in him as a person. Unlike some mighty personages he had encountered, she was not just acting the part.

  If it had been up to him she could have lived out her natural span of days in peace. But, as always, it was not his decision, it was the Witch King’s. He felt sure that he was only one small link in a very long chain of plans and conspiracies his master had woven.

  Urian was only Malekith’s tool in this matter as he was in so many others. Malekith had made him, had raised him up and could knock him down again. And if the woman sitting opposite him had been aware of his true history she would be calling for her guards right now.

  Briefly he wondered why the Witch King was having the Everqueen killed now. She would simply be replaced by her daughter who was kept in a secure place far distant from the court, like all of an Everqueen’s daughters. The elves had learned long ago from the loss of Aenarion’s children by the first Everqueen. Never again would their royal family be assembled in one place, able to be killed in one fell swoop, or saved only by an accident so unlikely it smacked of divine intervention.

  Doubtless timing had something to do with it. Or perhaps Malekith had found the Everqueen’s daughter and other assassins were even now at work…

  ‘You look very thoughtful, Prince Iltharis,’ the Everqueen said, reaching out to touch his hand in a most intimate manner. ‘Are you contemplating some deep matter of ancient history once again?’

  Urian smiled. She thought of him only as a scholar and a formidable duellist, one of the many glittering talents who visited her court. He had made his reputation as a student of the his
tory of the line of Aenarion, to which she was not the least ornament. It was a cover story that he had actually enjoyed living and which he was going to miss once he had shucked it off. That was assuming he was still alive after this evening, which was not exactly a certainty.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I was, your serenity,’ he said. It was true in a way too. The grudge Malekith bore against the Everqueen was a very ancient one. They were of the same family, and she had what Malekith had always desired, the love and respect of the elves of Ulthuan. It was as much for this as for political and strategic reasons she had to die. The envy and malice of his master were boundless when aroused, as Urian had more cause than almost anyone to understand.

  ‘It is ever the problem with true scholars that they are so easily distracted. You were telling me of the time when you worked out the plans of the daemon N’Kari, who planned to exterminate all of the line of Aenarion, including myself, a century ago.’

  ‘Mine was only a minor contribution. I saw the pattern in the apparently random destruction it had wrought, but it was mostly luck. I had talked with many of those who it killed, as part of my researches.’

  ‘You are too modest, Prince Iltharis.’

  ‘Alas, that is not something I have ever been much accused of your serenity. I doubt even my worst enemy would say that of me.’

  She laughed, a silvery sound. He enjoyed it, as he always had. His pleasure was given a certain piquancy by the fact that he knew he would never hear the sound again after this evening.

  ‘And how is your new work coming?’ she asked.

  ‘Slowly, as these things always do. I have a great deal of research to go through before I even commit pen to vellum. That is why I am here. To consult the scholars of your court.’ He stroked her hand in return. ‘As well as to enjoy the boon of your company, of course.’

  Urian lived his cover to the fullest, even though he knew he would not have any use for it much longer. Several centuries of deception were coming to an end. He was almost sorry. Soon he would be leaving Ulthuan forever and returning in secret triumph to Naggaroth to claim the rewards of his long covert service to Malekith’s interests.