by William King
The Everqueen looked at him, as if frightened by what she read on his face as by the possibility of pursuit.
‘You look thoughtful, Prince Tyrion.’ He could tell she had wanted to say something else but she was being tactful.
He caught her by the wrist and pulled her along behind him, his elven eyes following the shadowy path without difficulty. ‘I was thinking that Avelorn might not be the only place the Witch King has attacked. In fact, it is very unlikely.’
Alarielle looked troubled. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Avelorn is not the centre of the world.’
‘Ah but it is, at least as far as the elves are concerned, your serenity,’ said Tyrion. ‘That’s why we must get you as far away from here as possible come dawn.’
He was not sure how long these disguises would hold once the dark elves really started looking. He doubted either he or Alarielle could pass as druchii under even the most cursory of inspections.
As if summoned by that thought, a group of at least a dozen figures emerged out of the gloom, all of them dark elves and all of them female. They were beautiful in a savage sort of way – their garb consisted of leather straps, quivers, scabbards and very little else. Their hair was long and matted. Intricate, evil-looking tattoos marked their skins with shocking runes.
Crimson smeared their pouting lips as if they had been drinking the blood of their victims. Each of them bore two blades, and those bloody blades had seen use. Runes on the blades mirrored the ink on their skins. Into those swords, fell magic had been woven. Strange poisons dripped from their points, venoms capable of killing a warrior over a period of many days, making sure that he died in screaming agony.
Tyrion’s heart sank. He had faced these women-warriors before in the cold dark lands of Naggaroth. These were witch elves, among the deadliest fighters of a deadly breed.
The women blocked their path away from the tournament grounds. Tyrion had no idea what they were doing out here. Perhaps they were already scouring the woods for high elf survivors fleeing the battlefield. He gestured for Alarielle to hold her ground.
The witch elves came closer, half surrounding them in a great semicircle. Tyrion did not like the way their leader looked at him at all. He liked the way she looked at Alarielle even less.
‘Hail, brother,’ she said. ‘You seem to be going the wrong way.’
Her bright, mad eyes studied Tyrion. He smiled easily and said, ‘we were just looking for a private place to do some celebrating.’
The witch elf smiled, showing small, sharp teeth. ‘Is that so?’
Tyrion reached out and took Alarielle’s hand and squeezed it. ‘That is so.’
The witch elves moved closer, and it was all that Tyrion could do to keep from drawing his blade. That would give them away as nothing else would. No dark elf bore a sword like Sunfang. The magic of that ancient blade would mark him as a stranger among the druchii.
The leader reached out and stroked Alarielle’s cheek. The Everqueen shivered a little at the contact. ‘She is certainly a pretty one. I can understand why you would feel that way. On the other hand, now is not the time to be leaving the battlefield.’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Tyrion. ‘Perhaps we should head back and report to our units.’
‘And what unit would that be, my pretty boy with the so-strange accent?’ The witch elf was suspicious. He knew that he did not sound very much like an inhabitant of Naggaroth even when he tried. He was always going to have the accent of Lothern overlaying the mountain twang of Cothique he had picked up as a boy.
‘We are with Captain Ichmael,’ Tyrion said.
The witch elf laughed, a high-pitched crazed tittering that set cold fingers running up and down Tyrion’s spine. She reached out and stroked Tyrion’s chin now. Her nails were long and sharp and enamelled black. She tilted her head to one side and her eyes narrowed. ‘Captain who?’
Tyrion did not miss the faint gesture she made with her left hand or the response that the other witch elves made. They had begun to circle behind Tyrion and Alarielle and within heartbeats the two of them were surrounded. Somewhere in the witch elf leader’s crazed mind a mad suspicion had bloomed.
Tyrion drew Sunfang in one eye-blurring motion. The sword blazed to life, flames flickering along its length. The woman’s drug-enhanced reflexes were so quick she almost managed to parry the blow. Sunfang grated along her blade, sparks bursting out as the metal ground together, then buried itself in the witch elf’s head with the sound of a butcher’s cleaver hitting a hanging carcass.
Tyrion lashed out left then right, taking down two more of the witch elves with as many blows. The rest of them responded with the speed of elite troops and something else…
Surprise did not slow them. Something about the drugs they had taken made them accept the sudden eruption of violence in their midst as if it was a perfectly normal occurrence. Perhaps for them it was. He knew how crazed witch elves could be.
They swarmed towards him, blades stabbing. He danced through a whirlwind of razor-sharp swords, ducking, weaving and slashing. Within a few more heartbeats he had killed three more. Other elves might have turned tail and fled in the face of the carnage that he wrought, but not these ones.
A poisoned dagger flickered towards the Everqueen. Desperately, Tyrion twisted to parry the blade, striking it from the air. As he did so, he felt a stab of pain in his side. One of the witch elves had managed to penetrate his stolen armour. He could only pray that no poison had got into the wound.
Seeing his concern for Alarielle, his foes switched targets, two of them going for her and the rest of them striking at him, knowing that he would be distracted.
There was no way he could protect Alarielle and himself at the same time. If the witch elves were determined to cut her down, they would, and there was nothing he could do about it, short of throwing himself in front of their blades.
‘Don’t kill her! She is the Everqueen!’ Tyrion shouted. It was the only way he could think of to slow them down.
The two witch elves attacking Alarielle paused for a second. Tyrion took advantage of it to stab one of them through the throat. Her flesh sizzled as Sunfang bit.
Alarielle raised her hands together over her head and spoke a word. There was a flash of greenish light and the witch elves reeled back, momentarily blinded. Tyrion leapt forwards into the blinded mass, blade slashing, leaving only dead and dying in his wake.
‘You are hurt, Prince Tyrion,’ said the Everqueen. Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in the strange quiet after the combat.
Tyrion’s side stung where the witch elf’s blade had bit. He took off the chainmail shirt, unlaced his jerkin and inspected the wound. It was nothing, a mere scratch that would not even require stitching.
‘I took worse in practice matches when I was a boy.’
The Everqueen looked at him scornfully. ‘I doubt you duelled with witch elf blades when you were a youth. There is no need for such bravado.’
She was right, of course. He had seen too much of what happened to those wounded by witch elves to want to take any chances now. He unstoppered the canteen that was part of the gear he had stolen. It smelled of potent alcohol. Trust a druchii to carry that in his water bottle. He poured some out onto the scratch. It burned as if he was being branded by a dark elf torturer. He kept his face calm, not wanting to give the Everqueen the satisfaction of seeing him in pain.
‘Let me see it,’ Alarielle said. Tyrion wanted to refuse but to do so would have seemed childish, so he stood there while she bent down to look at it.
‘You might have been lucky, but I don’t like the shadow surrounding the wound. If it gets worse, let me know.’
He looked at the wound again. There was a curious blackness around its edges that did not bode well, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
‘What will you do, work magic on it?’
‘I might have to.’ She did not sound at all confident in her ability to do so.
In the
distance horns rang out again. They made Tyrion think of hunters with packs of hounds. ‘Not now. We had best be going,’ he said. ‘Run!’
They raced off into the night.
‘A new day at last,’ said Tyrion, looking at the red sun as it rose upon the horizon, clearly visible through a gap in the foliage. Birds had begun to sing. The grass was moist with dew. It all seemed strangely normal after the long night of flight and terror.
‘Let us hope that it proves to be a happier one than the last,’ said the Everqueen. ‘I am not sure that I can endure another like yesterday.’
‘I’m afraid you’re just going to have to, your serenity,’ said Tyrion. ‘There will be many days like yesterday and worse ahead of us.’
‘You’re doing nothing to bolster my courage, Prince Tyrion,’ said the Everqueen.
‘I am trying to be realistic. We don’t have an army. We don’t have any friends. We only have the two of us to rely upon for our own safety.’
The Everqueen nodded. Her jaw tightened. Her eyes narrowed. She straightened her shoulders and stood a little taller. She was grim but resolute, and for the first time in a long time it seemed to Tyrion that here was someone he could follow.
‘Where should we go?’ the Everqueen asked. Just when she seemed ready to be a leader, she reminded him she was hardly more than a young girl. It was a strange mix.
‘That’s a very good question,’ said Tyrion. ‘We need to go in the direction that Malekith’s minions least expect.’
‘That’s all very well, but it needs to be a direction in which we can eventually find refuge and get help.’
‘Indeed. I say that we should strike out east.’
‘How do we know that the dark elves are not waiting for us in that direction?’
‘We don’t – we will just have to take our chances.’
‘What I still don’t understand is how they managed to get to us. It should have been impossible for a force so large to penetrate so deeply into Avelorn without being spotted.’
‘Magic,’ said Tyrion. ‘It’s the only explanation.’
‘Even so, I should have been able to sense such magic in the very heart of my domain. I may only have just become Everqueen, but in these lands nothing should be able to happen without me knowing it.’
‘I am no sorcerer, but if you’ve only just inherited the power, perhaps you overlooked something.’
‘You’re not making me feel any better, Prince Tyrion.’
‘I don’t think it was a coincidence that the dark elves attacked so soon after your mother’s death. I think that we have fallen into a trap that has been in preparation for a very long time. I think that we are very lucky indeed to have escaped it with our lives.’
The Everqueen looked thoughtful. ‘The only reason that I am here, that we managed to escape at all, is because of you. I am very grateful for that. Perhaps I misjudged you, Prince Tyrion.’
Tyrion was very surprised to receive that apology. After all, he was the one who had been rude to her over the past few days. ‘I do not think you were wrong about me at all, your serenity. And I think that the reason that we are here is that the gods have smiled upon us so far.’
‘Then we are the only ones that the gods have smiled upon. I do not think there are many more survivors among our people.’
Tyrion felt cold rage spark within his heart. ‘I left a number of friends back there cold upon the ground. The dark elves owe me a great debt, and I intend to collect upon it. But first we must get you to safety. As long as you are alive and free, the Witch King’s plan has failed. Let us see that it continues to do so. If this is the only blow that we can strike against our enemies, it will have to do, for now.’
‘Yes, Prince Tyrion. Let us do exactly that.’ She began to collect some berries from the undergrowth. ‘And now let us eat. We will need all of our strength and all of our wits about us if we are going to maintain our freedom.’
‘How do you know these are not poisonous?’ Tyrion asked.
Her smile was dazzling. ‘I grew up here, Prince Tyrion. There is little I don’t know about life in these woods.’
‘I am glad one of us has that knowledge,’ said Tyrion. ‘I suspect it is going to prove necessary.’
Chapter Two
Death looked at the witch elf piece and smiled. It was removed from the board now but the pawn had done its work. It had infected Prince Tyrion with a poison that would surely kill him before he could perform his purpose. If nothing else, it would slow him down until the pursuit could overtake him.
‘A subtle move,’ Caledor said.
Death smiled. ‘I await your response with interest.’
Caledor focussed his power on the square containing Tyrion and the new Everqueen. It was near a waystone. Of course it was. He saw another part of the pattern here.
Somehow his enemies were using the Vortex as part of their plans, or perhaps the mystical structures of the Old Ones that lay beneath. It mattered not at this moment in time. He needed to concentrate on making events run his way.
A vision danced into his mind, of a torn pavilion, a pile of corpses, an army running half out of control. The dead lay everywhere, elves. A huge number were garbed as if for a festival. Far fewer of the corpses wore the iron armour of the dark elves. It saddened Caledor that his own people should have taken to slaughtering each other, as if there were not enough enemies in the world. Somehow all of this was connected with Aenarion and his cursed blade. It would have been better for the elves if it had never been drawn from its altar.
Another image sprang into his mind – a great metal mirror, forged in the ancient manner, had been set up within the pavilion. Potent spells were woven into its magical glass, a strange intelligence glittered in the crystal eyes of the metal dragons that held the frame in their claws. The glass itself was many-layered and magical. It could be used to communicate across distances by those who knew how.
Before it stood a powerful-looking dark elf in the elaborate armour of a high officer. His head was bowed as if in grief. That surprised Caledor. It was not what he would have expected at all. The dark elf was waiting for someone or something. He had already invoked a spell. There was a sense of a powerful cold mind being brought to bear through the mirror. Caledor knew that mind, or had done in the past, although back then it did not have the aura of ruthless evil it emitted now. It was Malekith, son of Aenarion, much changed from the quiet lad he had once been.
Caledor expended a morsel of his carefully husbanded power, disrupting the spell that the mirror contained, making it impossible for its master to look out of it or speak through it.
‘Interesting,’ said Death, ‘although I don’t see what good it does you. A messenger will work as well as that mirror albeit more slowly.’
Caledor smiled at him, knowing that in this game tempo was all-important. Time might work as well for him as it did for his enemy.
Death reached out to pick up a piece. ‘I believe that was a mistake,’ he said.
‘We shall see,’ said Caledor, wishing that he felt as confident as he tried to sound.
General Dorian, Marshal of the North, by Grace of Malekith the Great Commander of the First Army of Conquest, stared into the mirror bleakly. Cassandra was dead. The thought hit him harder than he would have expected. In some ways it weighed on him more heavily than his failure to capture the Everqueen; and that was most likely going to cost him his life.
What did it matter? Life seemed bleak and empty now. He felt the woman’s absence in a way he had never felt her presence in life. Or perhaps he had, and had just never noticed until today, the way one never notices the presence of a limb until it is amputated. He told himself it was only a foolish, sentimental attachment – as a druchii such things were meaningless to him. He could not convince himself of the truth of that.
He glared into the mirror, willing it to come to life so that he could get things over with, but all he could see was his own reflection: pale, angry and scared, glarin
g back at him. His armour was dented, his face was bruised, his lip was split. His side was bandaged and bloody.
He did not look like a successful druchii general. He looked like the broken survivors he had sometimes seen after a great defeat. He wore the expression of one of the slaves he used to capture when raiding the Bretonnian coast immediately after it had been put in chains.
He forced himself to smile coldly, to make his face a mask of confidence and command. The expression was not convincing.
What was taking the Witch King so long? Dorian had already made the offering of blood and invoked the spell that should have let him speak to his master over the long leagues of Ulthuan. Why had Malekith not made contact? He had never taken this long before.
Was his master toying with him, like a great predatory cat tormenting its prey?
He thought about the warrior who had done this to him. It should not have been possible. One elf could not simply stroll through a formation of druchii soldiers, walk into the presence of its general, slaughter half the command staff and their bodyguards and then walk out again, taking their prisoner and prize with them.
It beggared belief.
It was the sort of thing that happened in old tales, in the legends of Aenarion and Caledor. It did not happen in reality.
Still, this had been a gathering of champions, where a group of the mightiest warriors in Ulthuan had come together to compete for the favour of the Everqueen and to become her champion. If ever there was a place for a hero to emerge from, it was here. It was not something that the Witch King had calculated upon, apparently. He could imagine it becoming the start of a new epic, a myth of the asur, if the elf who had done it got away with it.
He shook his head and his reflection in the mirror did the same, mocking him. He felt like striking the magical thing with his sword, but he doubted it would do any good. This mirror had been forged beneath Naggarond by Malekith himself. The mage-steel frame was marked with dragons and looked as hard as the Witch King’s armour. The glass only appeared fragile. It had been made to survive being taken on campaign with an army. It was, after all, how Malekith kept in touch with his generals when they were in the field and needed his personal supervision.