by William King
The pegasus flew on, northwards, leaving the line of the river, heading towards the tournament grounds. Teclis dreaded what he would find there.
Even before he saw the tournament grounds, Teclis was filled with a sense of wrongness. The winds of magic in the area were curdled, tainted by some dark power whose aura was ominously familiar.
He sensed the psychic stench of a powerful daemonic force. It had faded and he doubted that it was present now, but something of it lingered in the air, the way the smell of a rotten corpse hung in the air near a charnel house.
He saw that there were the remnants of a vast military camp below him. A powerful force of dark elves was still down there. At the moment, Silver Wing was flying too high to be shot at and it would have taken a very powerful wizard indeed to be able to propel a spell to this height.
He could see that his arrival had created quite a stir. Dark elves had emerged from tents to stare at the sky. He was tempted to send a wave of destructive magic raining down on them. He resisted the temptation. He needed to preserve his strength in case of an emergency. He was alone here, without bodyguards or friends, and it would not do to waste his resources in pointless shows of strength.
He could see that the dark elves were camped within the boundaries of what had been an even larger campground. This was certainly where the great tournament for the favour of the Everqueen had taken place. It looked as if the vast tent-city had been overwhelmed very swiftly indeed. There was a nasty smell of death in the air as well as tainted magic. He suspected that huge piles of bodies must have been burned. It certainly was not a pleasant aroma.
He kept Silver Wing circling. Guards watched over huge pens full of enslaved high elves. It was what he would have expected. It was what he had been half-dreading all day. The dark elves were not wasteful except when it came to making sacrifices to their daemon gods. Living, sentient creatures represented wealth to them. They were slavers. Those were his people down there, but he could not take the risk of trying to free them. He might just be throwing away his life.
From this height, he could see that the earth had been churned as if by the passage of thousands of feet. There were many tracks. They ran everywhere. From above, they looked like the outline of some mad maze created by an insane god. Teclis knew that he was looking at the paths over which units had marched and crowds had fled, but he was not skilled enough in tracking to understand what they meant. One thing was clear though: the largest path led away from the camp in the direction from which he sensed the strongest stench of dark magic. Instinct told him he might find some answers there.
He turned Silver Wing in that direction, following it outwards as it ran through the forest. Sometimes, he lost sight of the tracks where the trees overhung the path, but always it emerged again. Even if it had not, he knew instinctively that all he needed to do was follow the strange psychic spoor of the dark magic. After what was not a very long flight, he came upon another, smaller dark elf camp.
Nearby was a tall standing stone carved with intricate runes and patterns. It was a waystone – part of Caledor’s vast, ancient spell. A company of dark elf soldiers stood near the point where the tracks vanished. They simply ended as if the whole crowd of people that had made them vanished. What was going on here, Teclis wondered? He knew it was imperative that he find out.
He directed Silver Wing downwards. The dark elf soldiers ran to meet him. They were clearly uncertain as to who he was, but they were wary and they were levelling their crossbows. Teclis spoke a spell and when they unleashed their bolts, the projectiles caught fire in the air long before they reached him. Teclis invoked another spell – chain lightning danced around him, leaping from dark elf to dark elf, sparking from blade to blade, killing everything it touched. The smell of scorched flesh filled the air, mingling with the ozone stink of the electrical bolt. The remainder of the druchii turned and fled. Teclis proceeded with his investigation.
The aura of dark magic was strongest near the waystone. It was also very familiar. His senses had grown much more discerning since the last time he had encountered this particular spiritual stink, but it was not something he would ever forget and it brought a chill of terror to his heart.
The Keeper of Secrets N’Kari had been here. The daemonic enemy that had sworn to destroy all of the descendants of Aenarion had walked on this very ground. Teclis glanced around warily, fearful that the daemon might suddenly manifest. Potent wizard as he was, he knew he was nothing compared to a greater daemon of Chaos. All of the confidence in his own power that had been building over the past few days flowed from him like wine from an overturned decanter.
If Malekith was in league with such a creature, it explained a very great deal. When he was very young, an army had been moved around Ulthuan with similar astonishing speed by N’Kari. He had managed to lay siege to a number of elven towns and even the shrine of Asuryan itself within the space of one month. No one had ever worked out how the daemon had done this, but just the fact that it had done so showed that it was theoretically possible, at least if you were a greater daemon of Slaanesh.
Or had access to the services of one.
That thought chilled Teclis’s heart. It was virtually impossible to imagine someone compelling a Keeper of Secrets, but if anyone had such a power, if any sorcerer possessed enough skill and knowledge, it was Malekith or his mother Morathi.
Teclis did not want to believe that it was possible, that this could have happened. His mind reeled at the possibilities. N’Kari was a daemon with a great thirst for vengeance, at least part of that thirst would be slaked by drinking the blood of Teclis and his brother. The daemon had sworn vengeance against them personally.
Was it possible that Malekith had known this and used it as a bargaining chip to win the services of the daemon?
But Malekith himself was of the blood of Aenarion, and N’Kari had sworn vengeance against all of the descendants of the first Phoenix King. Surely he would want to destroy Malekith as well as Tyrion and Teclis.
Those things were not mutually exclusive, Teclis thought. The daemon was a being of great cunning. It was perfectly capable of cutting a deal with the Witch King and then turning on him once it had achieved its vengeance on the twins.
The more he thought about it, the more Teclis thought that he had hit upon a potential explanation for what had happened, or at least part of one. The question was: what could he do with this knowledge?
He needed to tell someone – the High Loremaster was the best candidate for this, but how could he send the message? And after he had done that, what should he do – turn back to Hoeth with news of the discovery and attempt to find a way to thwart the Witch King’s magic, or press on with his quest?
Teclis heard booted feet racing closer through the trees. He saw a group of druchii emerging from the forest. They raised their crossbows and sent a hail of bolts flashing towards him. His charms repelled most of them. One or two found their way through, most of their energies spent. The impact was still painful though, and the sharp edge of one sliced his hands. Nearby Silver Wing whinnied and reared. Teclis turned to see that a bolt had bounced off his protective charms and hit the pegasus.
Realising they could not harm him with their weapons, they were, with the merciless vindictiveness of their kind, concentrating their fire on Silver Wing.
Teclis raced towards the pegasus, hoping to envelop it in the protective globe of his charms. Before he was within range, the winged horse screamed again. A dozen bolts had penetrated his hide.
Silver Wing fell, gasping. Bloody froth emerged from its nostrils. Its breathing was like the wheezing of a drunk man. It was drowning in its own blood. The pegasus looked up with sorrowful eyes. Teclis could see the intelligence fading from them. It was like watching the death of another elf.
He could try speaking a healing spell, but he did not have the time to do so and to protect himself. He was not familiar with the anatomy of pegasi and he doubted that any of the spells that he knew wo
uld be of much use. Even as these thoughts crossed his mind Silver Wing gave one last gasp, its wings twitched as if its spirit was making one last leap for the sky, and then the winged horse was still.
Fear dried out Teclis’s mouth. The fate of the pegasus would be his if the dark elves had their way. More than that though, he was enraged that he had failed to protect the creature. What was worse, he had lost the thing that would allow him to find his brother quickly. He was going to have to proceed on foot through the wilds of Avelorn, and this was at a time when speed was of the essence.
The war cries of the druchii were triumphant now. That they had killed something beautiful only pleased them more. A cold, cruel rage took hold of Teclis, burning away his fear, leaving him thinking with a terrible clarity that he had never enjoyed before.
He spread his arms wide and invoked his power, drawing the winds of magic to him with a force that could not be denied. It was as if he stood at the centre of a vast whirlpool of power, sucking all of the magical energy into himself. Once, such a thing would have killed him. Drawing on so much power so quickly might have burned out his gift for wielding it, overloaded his brain, driven him mad.
Perhaps that was happening anyway, perhaps he was deluding himself that he could handle so much of it. Blazing light surrounded him now. The patterns of the winds of magic themselves were visible in the air. Shimmering lines of light were drawn to him in all the colours of the rainbow and some colours that were not natural for the eye to see at all.
His body was on fire. He burned but he did not feel any pain. His skin tingled. When he breathed, the air he took into his lungs felt incandescent. He kept chanting, drawing more energy to him.
The shouts of the druchii faded. At first he thought it was because of the effects of the magic upon his hearing, but then he realised that they were silent out of dread and they were right to be so.
He was going to give them a lesson in the use of power that they would not live to forget.
There were wizards present among his enemies. They sensed what he was doing and tried to interfere. One of them sent a bolt of lightning arcing towards Teclis. It was like trying to put out a fire by throwing pitch upon it. Teclis merely drew on its energy and it dissipated harmlessly before it reached him.
He added it to his own and began to shape it. The other dark elf mage attempted to dispel the magic he was casting. Teclis squelched his spell as he would an insect underfoot.
He was drunk with power now. He was like a giant who could reach out and knock down the trees with his hands. He felt free for the first time in his life; free of all restraint, free of the restrictions he had placed upon himself out of fear of his own strength.
Hatred burned in his heart. It was not a new hatred. It had been there for a very long time. The druchii merely provided it with a focus. They were, after all, elves. They looked like the people who had sneered at him and tormented him all his life. They looked like every enemy he had ever had. Every female elf who had ever rejected him. Every male elf who had ever laughed at him or bullied him or sneered at his ill-health.
Living in Ulthuan, among the asur, he had needed to restrain himself. Even though he was an outsider, he was still a member of a society. The druchii were not his people. No law protected them. No one would punish him if he destroyed them. There was no need for him to restrain himself.
He laughed out loud, there was a wild, cackling evil in his voice. Some of those who heard it turned and fled.
He wove a spell of awesome, ominous power. Words emerged from his throat and seemed to take shape in the air, becoming glowing runes of light formed by the very vibrations of his voice. They swirled around him, forming ever more complex patterns, daemonic in their complexity, moving ever faster around him until they seemed to leave lines of fire behind.
Finally, when maintaining the spell was all but unendurable, he unleashed it. It flooded outwards, surging in lines of light towards the trees, lines dividing and re-dividing until there were hundreds of them. Each line sought out one living thing, one dark elf, and pursued it through the forest. Where those lines touched flesh, the targets screamed and died, becoming incandescent and then turning to dust which was blown away on the wind caused by the vortex of Teclis’s might.
A few wizards tried to shield themselves, but Teclis’s spell smashed through their defences like an axe through rotten timber. Within heartbeats all of the druchii were dead, and Teclis stood in the centre of the clearing, over the dead body of the pegasus, howling with mad exultation.
A small wary part of Teclis’s mind realised something.
Part of the rage and part of the anger was most definitely his, but part of it came from somewhere else. It was fuelled by the dark taint on the winds of magic, the even darker taint of the place where he stood, on ground upon which a greater daemon of Chaos had once trod and woven potent magic.
He sensed a darkness creeping into him, blighting his spirit and making him into something he had not intended to become. He knew, for he had been taught by true masters of magic, that there was always a chance of daemonic possession when working high and powerful magic, that things reached out from the Realm of Chaos when a wizard drew upon them for power. Something was doing that to him now. He closed his mouth and stopped his mad laughter with an effort of will, and began to utter ritual words of cleansing and to calm his mind with meditation.
It was a long time before he felt like himself again, even then he was both thrilled and appalled by what he had done, by the murder he had committed on such an epic scale. He felt for the first time in a long time the very dark depths within his soul, the awful potential for abomination that was his. He feared it and he loathed it, but he was entranced by its possibilities nonetheless.
He was shocked to find that he had enjoyed smiting his fellow elves far more than he had ever done any other foes. It came to him then that there was within him a terrible potential for evil. He started to understand why the dark elves took such pleasure in tormenting their foes. It was a way of asserting their personal power in a universe that did not care for them. In that moment, he was surprised indeed to find in his heart the truth that he was more like the spawn of Naggaroth than he would ever have previously cared to admit.
He looked at his hands and found that they were shaking. His mouth felt dry. His heart beat faster. He felt certain that he had crossed some personal bridge, had stepped onto a path that was going to take him somewhere that he might not like but that he felt was his destiny. He was starting to see that in this war he might find a crucible in which he would be transformed into someone very different from the person that he had previously thought that he was.
He began to understand his brother better than he ever previously had. Perhaps this was how Tyrion felt when he stood alone on a battlefield with all his foes vanquished.
Teclis had killed all the other wizards. He felt good about it. He had proved his superiority. He had not started that particular fight but he had finished it. He wondered at the moisture running down his cheeks. He had expected his spells to protect his eyes from the effects of the wind.
Chapter Thirteen
Teclis limped through the woods, heading east towards the Everflow as he had done for the past few days. Birds sang cheerfully. He felt like blasting them with magic because he was anything but cheerful.
Only now that it was gone did he really realise what the pegasus had given him. It had allowed him to travel with amazing speed across this vast wooded landscape. It had enabled him to cover in a few days what would have taken him months on foot and weeks on horseback, to navigate through a realm that had no major, well-marked roads. Now he was reduced to walking, and he was even slower at that than most people would be because of his limp and physical weakness. Only now did he have a real sense of the size of the forest he tramped through. It was as vast as many countries.
Even wearing the War Crown of Saphery, he felt trapped in a dense world where he could not see peril as it came to
wards him. The forest limited his vision, huge trees and dense undergrowth making it impossible for him to see very far.
Anything could be out there, creeping up on him, taking aim at him with a bow or spear, and he would not know it until it was too late. His magic protected him somewhat – he had charms against arrows and other missile weapons that would deflect things fired at him. That did not make him any less nervous though. He was not used to travelling on his own through such wild lands.
He had thought that Avelorn would be like the forests of Saphery, but that was not the case. Saphery had been domesticated by the presence of wizards. The roads there were protected by warding spells, and dark and wild creatures shunned the paths that were likely to be protected by magic. That was not the case here. Huge predatory cats stalked through the undergrowth. He heard them prowling at night. Sometimes, he could see their eyes reflecting his firelight as they watched him.
It was not just that. He sensed the presence of patches of old, dark magic in the trees around him. There were places that were blighted and had been since the time of Aenarion. Sometimes, he could sense powerful malign intelligences waiting for unwary passers-by to draw into their web of magic.
Sometimes he came across the signs of war. He passed bodies left on the ground where they had been slain. Sometimes, the corpses bore the marks of torture and they belonged to elves of Avelorn. It was obvious that the druchii were taking great pleasure in killing anyone they encountered.
That did not make any sense. The druchii were slavers. To them prisoners were wealth. They were looking for something and torturing the people they found for information. Part of them hoped that they were simply looking for the elves who opposed them.
Not all of the corpses he found belonged to high elves. Sometimes he came across the sites of ambushes were forces of dark elves had obviously been surprised by the natives of Avelorn. There, the bodies had been riddled with arrows and sometimes left nailed to trees as a warning. There was nothing honourable or chivalrous about the war being fought around him. It was savage, brutal, ancient hatred on both sides unleashed in the struggle.