The Curse of the Phoenix Crown

by C. L. Werner

  It was the aura of Drutheira.

  Maybe if the witch’s senses had been whole, if her magic hadn’t been stripped away from her, she would have detected Liandra before her enemy had a chance to rush at her. Snarling in almost bestial exhilaration, Liandra lunged at the sorceress, seizing her cloak in a steely grip. Spitting like a cornered panther, Drutheira recoiled and drew her dagger. The refugees around her scattered, crying out in horror as Liandra tore the cloak from her enemy and revealed the warding tattoos.

  Liandra’s sword flashed out, striking Drutheira’s hand, severing it at the wrist. The sorceress shrieked and turned to flee. In her panic, she turned not towards the alley but back to the column of refugees. Sight of the witch and the marks inked into her flesh provoked a dramatic change in the battered survivors. Faces that only a moment before had been lost and forlorn now became contorted with hate and outrage. Hands clenched about broken stones and loose rocks. From somewhere a voice cried out, giving a name to the hate that had galvanised the refugees and drawn them out of their dazed shock.

  ‘Druchii!’

  Even if she’d wanted to, Liandra couldn’t have stopped what happened. A wave of shouting, cursing asur swept down upon Drutheira. Enraged fists brought heavy stones smashing onto her, spilling her to the ground. The mob ploughed her under, bringing their primitive bludgeons crashing down again and again. When at last they were through, what lay strewn along the street wasn’t recognisable as anything any more.

  Liandra didn’t linger over the sight. There was no satisfaction in looking at that gory mess. The witch was gone, and in her death she’d managed to take one last thing from Liandra. She’d left a gaping wound inside her where her hate had been. It was strange how that hurt almost as much as losing Vranesh.

  The refugees turned away from what they had done, as though they shared the sense of loss Liandra was feeling. But it was only a matter of an instant before they had something more to ponder than the slaughter of a druchii witch. Frightened voices cried out as grim armoured warriors appeared all around them.

  Liandra had known their progress through the ruins wouldn’t go unnoticed. She had only hoped they could be out of the city before any organised force moved to stop them. Now she saw how fragile and transitory hope could be. The streets around them were swarming with dawi, not the stragglers and looters they’d chased off before, but disciplined columns of warriors. A regiment of crossbows took position on their right flank, a detachment of bloodied axemen formed up at their rear. Ahead of them, Liandra was stunned to recognise the masked ambassador she’d spared at the Battle of Blind River. The hate exuding from Forek Grimbok was, if anything, even more potent now than it had been then.

  A dwarf wearing a wild cloak of feathers appeared at the head of the warriors before Liandra’s refugees. His demeanour was completely different from that of Forek. There was an expression of sadistic enjoyment on his face, a malignance that Liandra hadn’t thought anyone, be they dawi, asur or druchii, could embody. Beside her, she heard the mage from the temple moan in despair. He covered his eyes and grovelled in the street.

  ‘Kill them,’ the dwarf in the feathered cloak snarled. ‘Kill them all.’

  Before the dwarfs could advance, before the crossbows could loose their bolts, a fierce bellow arrested them where they stood. Forcing his way through the throng was another dwarf Liandra recognised. Morgrim, the Elfdoom himself.

  ‘Stand down!’ Morgrim roared, casting a withering look at the dwarf in the feathered cloak.

  ‘Don’t sully a great victory with a senseless massacre.’ He turned from his warriors and glowered at Liandra. ‘I remember you. Imladrik’s lady. You understand our tongue?’

  Liandra matched Morgrim’s glare. ‘I remember,’ she said. Her eyes fixed on the sword hanging from the thane’s belt. The urge to fling herself upon him rushed through her. It was difficult to put it down, almost as though the idea was being forced into her from somewhere outside herself.

  Carefully, she forced herself to relax. If she did anything, if any of them made one move against Morgrim, the dwarfs would slaughter the entire column. She knew that and so did everyone with her. Whatever benefit killing Morgrim might serve the overall war, whatever satisfaction she might derive from it, nothing could justify such a massacre.

  ‘Surrender your arms,’ Morgrim told her. ‘Surrender and I will guarantee your lives.’

  Liandra turned from Morgrim, looking at the dwarf in the feathered cloak and Forek in turn. ‘Can you speak for all your people? You forget that I saw what was done when Kor Vanaeth fell the first time. I was there when Athel Maraya burned. I was there when you took Oeragor.’

  Morgrim glowered at her. ‘Your kind should never have come here at all. Everything that has happened was the doing of elgi.’

  ‘You know that isn’t true,’ Liandra told him. She didn’t need to remind him how Snorri Halfhand had poked and prodded to get his war. In the end, neither side could hold itself blameless. She turned and gestured to the bloody ruin of Drutheira. ‘You saw what happened here? That… that was a druchii. You may recall that Imladrik tried to speak to you of them.’

  A tinge of uncertainty crept into Morgrim’s face. Briefly he consulted with a fur-clad dwarf, a scout who no doubt had been watching the refugees and had seen the mob execute one of their own.

  ‘We have no interest in elgi feuds,’ Morgrim declared, provoking grunts of approval from many of his warriors. He cast his stern gaze across his fighters. ‘Neither do we have any interest in a massacre.’ He fixed his attention on Forek for a moment before turning back to Liandra. ‘Leave your weapons and go. None of my throng will assault you.’

  Liandra shook her head. ‘And what of all the other throngs? The land is filled with dawi, dawi who won’t know of the clemency the great Morgrim Elfdoom has extended to the wreckage of Athel Toralien. If we are to be butchered by dwarfs, let it be here and now.’

  Morgrim was pensive a moment. Liandra knew it could still go either way with him. He might use force to seize the refugees and lead those who couldn’t fight into captivity. In the end, it was his conscience that won out. He could afford to allow the handful of warriors among Liandra’s exodus to escape. They wouldn’t diminish the victory he’d won or the damage he’d inflicted against the asur.

  ‘You’ll not be harmed by my army,’ Morgrim said. He reached to his neck, ripping free one of the amulets he wore. ‘Show this to any dawi you meet and they will know you tell them the truth when you say it is by the grace of Morgrim Bargrum that you are alive.’ He cast the amulet at Liandra’s feet. ‘I can speak only for the warriors who have sworn fealty to me. Any others you encounter may not be moved to show you the same mercy.’

  The dwarf lord watched as Liandra retrieved the amulet from the ground. ‘Leave,’ he declared, pointing his axe in the direction of the forests. ‘Keep going until no dawi ever has to look at you again. Only then will the threat of our axes be gone from your necks.’

  Liandra bowed her head, an act of obeisance an elf rarely afforded to a dwarf. She could imagine the discord Morgrim’s act of compassion would sow among his vassals. Already she could see the feathered dwarf whispering something to Forek. Somehow, the sight brought cold dread closing around her heart.

  ‘Hurry,’ she told the refugees with her. ‘They might change their minds at any moment.’

  The elves didn’t need to be told twice. With such haste as they could, carrying the wounded and dying with them, the last survivors of Athel Toralien filed past the grumbling, jeering ranks of the dwarfs.

  It was only much later, when they were away from the city and deep in the forest, that Liandra would notice the mage was gone. None among the refugees had noticed the elf lying in the street as they hurried past the dwarfs. None had noticed while the mystic clawed out his own eyes and bled out in the gutter. None had heard the word he muttered as he died.

&nbs
p; ‘Daemon.’

  Chapter Twelve

  The Scouring of Sith Rionnasc

  536th year of the reign of Caledor II

  ‘They’re coming.’

  The words reached her in a subdued whisper that was more awful than any cry of alarm or scream of terror could be. It meant that the enemy was near enough that they had to be careful about not being overheard.

  Liandra rose from the mossy rock she was sitting on and looked at the hardened scout who stood before her. He was whipcord thin, dressed in crude buckskin and wolf-fur, a brown pelt to better match the foliage. A cloak of woven leaves was stretched across his lean shoulders. His boots were leather reinforced with animal bone; the sheath of his sword was fashioned from wood and lined with weasel-skin. The bow he carried was yew strung with bear-gut, and his arrows were fletched with the feathers of shrikes and hawks.

  Everything about him had come from the forest, even the hard cast of his face and the sinewy toughness of his skin. It was hard to imagine him as a child playing in a marble-walled hall in Athel Toralien. But, then, that had been long ago. Another lifetime.

  When she’d led the refugees from the dying city, the path had seemed so clear to Liandra. She’d lead her people inland, use the forest for cover, and then strike out along the coast to Sith Rionnasc. From there, her people could find passage to Tor Alessi or Sith Remora or back to Ulthuan if they chose.

  If only it had stayed that simple. From the start a pall had hung over their retreat. Morgrim had extended his clemency to them, but even among his army there were elements who demurred. It hadn’t taken long before a regiment of dwarfs led by Forek Grimbok came looking for them. It wasn’t hard for the dwarfs to guess what Liandra’s intentions were, nor was it hard for them to block the way.

  Every time the refugees tried to break out onto the coastal plains, the dwarfs had been there waiting. There was no question of fighting them; the only choice had been to retreat back into the forest and lose their enemies among the trees. Another enemy would have tired of the chase after a time, but the dwarfs were a stubborn and intractable people. Once they had an idea in their heads it was almost impossible to remove it. Even more so when their warchief believed himself to have been shamed by the refugee’s leader.

  Liandra realised how little she truly appreciated or understood the dawi mentality. Her act of mercy towards Forek had engendered a vicious resentment that had only festered and grown more malignant over the years. She’d magnified the shame he felt at what King Caledor had done to him, and the worst thing in the world that could be done to a dwarf was to make him feel shame.

  ‘How far?’ Liandra asked. The dawi disliked the forests and usually didn’t penetrate too deeply when they took it into their heads to go looking for the elves. If they were far enough away, Liandra could pass the warning along to the camps, get her people to scatter.

  Her people. She still wasn’t sure how it had happened. Maybe it was simply because she’d led them from Athel Toralien or stood up against Morgrim. Maybe it was nothing more than her highborn station, the rank she enjoyed back in the courts and grandeur of Ulthuan. Maybe it was just that there was no one else willing to assume responsibility for five hundred refugees. Whatever the cause, she’d been accepted as leader of the elves who’d fled Athel Toralien. They looked to her for guidance, trusted her judgement, leapt at her every command. For Liandra, the faith her followers invested in her was a grave burden. They trusted her, but she had no such delusions about her own infallibility. The city her father had entrusted to her had been twice destroyed, she’d led her dragon to its death and she’d watched her lover die. There were so many mistakes and always it had been others left to pay for them.

  The young scout shook his head. ‘Not far enough. Maybe two miles. My lady, I think this time they mean to pursue us wherever we go. I’ve never seen them come into the forest in such numbers. The masked dwarf leads them.’

  Liandra nodded. Of course Forek would be there, goading the dwarfs on. If he couldn’t lead them, then he would shame them by reminding them of what he’d suffered. Insulting a dwarf’s pride was dangerous, but it was the quickest way to push him forwards. Forek had become a shrewd manipulator of his own people since devoting himself to destroying the refugee asur.

  ‘This is your trial.’ The statement came from a wispy, frail-­looking elf maiden with golden hair and strange amber eyes. Aismarr’s eyes were the most striking thing about her. They were at once dull like an animal’s yet at the same time impossibly wise. Liandra was always reminded of the way an owl or a raven looked, at once brutish and profound. Aismarr hadn’t been in Athel Toralien. She and the mangy hunting dog that always crept by her side had joined them after they came into the forest. Whenever anyone asked her where she was from, she’d simply say, ‘Loren Lacoi.’

  Liandra looked at the elf maid, trying to find some recognisable emotion in her strange eyes. ‘We have escaped them before,’ she said. ‘We will do so again.’ She started to call out to the other elves in her camp. By design, the refugees kept themselves in loose groups of no more than thirty, using fleet-footed runners to maintain communication with each other. It was deemed a good way to keep the dwarfs from finding the asur – and if they did, from catching them all in the same trap.

  Aismarr caught Liandra’s arm before she could call out her orders. ‘There is a season for flight and a season for fight. The time of the deer is over. Now you must be the wolf.’ She looked up, staring at the trees with her strange eyes. ‘You cannot escape this time. This is your trial.’

  Something in Aismarr’s voice made Liandra hesitate. She was right. They couldn’t keep running away, sinking deeper and deeper into the forest. They were subsisting on roots and berries, on such game as the scouts could bring back to their camps. Their clothes were scraps stitched together from furs and skins, from leaves and vines. They were losing themselves, vanishing into this primitive squalor. They huddled in tents and lean-tos where once they had walked marble halls and slept upon silken sheets. The dwarfs didn’t need to kill them to destroy them. The forest was already doing that all on its own.

  ‘The dwarfs, are they scattered or do they march in a column?’ Liandra asked her scout.

  The youth was thoughtful for a moment. ‘From what I could see, they have sent out pickets, but most of them are in a single body led by the masked dwarf.’

  Liandra cursed. The pickets would be rangers and long experience had forced a grudging respect for those dwarfs upon her. They were as capable as any asur huntsman when it came to finding and following a trail. Forek had made good use of his rangers in his earlier searches, twice managing to catch one of the elf camps.

  But for the rangers, Liandra would have tried an attack against the dwarfs. She could muster about three hundred fighters from her followers. Few had swords or any weapons of steel, it was true, but every one had a bow. If they could surprise the dwarfs…

  She clenched her fists in a fit of frustration. If not for the rangers, they might have had a chance. If they could strike the dwarfs, fade back into the trees and then hit them again, victory would be achievable.

  ‘Do not worry about their rangers,’ Aismarr said. She was still looking at the trees, watching the branches swaying in the breeze. ‘They will not trouble you.’

  There was no reason for Liandra to believe the elf maid’s words, yet she was more certain of them than anything she’d ever been told. How, why, she couldn’t begin to guess, but somehow she knew the dwarf rangers wouldn’t be there to help Forek’s troops.

  ‘Send runners to all the camps,’ Liandra called out to the elves around her. ‘Every asur able to draw a bow is to come here at haste.’ A fierce smile spread on her face. ‘We won’t run any more. Today we show the dwarfs why they should keep to their burrows and holes!’

  Liandra saw the excitement on the faces of her followers as they hurried away to carry her commands
to the other camps. Maybe some of her own thirst for battle had passed on to them. She hoped so, for they would need all their courage and resilience in the fight ahead of them.

  Aismarr reached down and stroked the neck of her dog. The animal licked her hand, then turned and raced away into the trees. She watched it until it was lost among the undergrowth, then she turned and looked at Liandra. ‘This is your trial,’ she repeated. ‘When you fight the dwarfs, remember that.’

  Overhead, Liandra could hear the branches swaying and creaking, the rustle of the wind through the leaves. Somehow, the sounds seemed sinister to her now.

  Like the whispers of magistrates sitting in judgement of the accused.

  Draukhain settled onto its perch just beneath the tower’s spire, its great wings folding against its back. Thoriol’s cloak whipped about him as the dragon’s settling wings sent a hot breeze wafting down the drake’s back. For an instant, the prince worried about his appearance, then laughed at his concern. No one was going to criticise the decorum of a highborn sitting on the back of a dragon.

  They called it the Tower of Mathlann and it was the highest point in Sith Rionnasc. From the tower, Thoriol could look out into the vast fields and meadows that stretched away in every direction. Little fingers of sapphire water wound their way between vast gardens of brilliant flowers, fruit orchards and olive groves, crops of corn and wheat and millet, sunken ponds for rice. The lands around Sith Rionnasc were the richest in the asur colonies, the breadbasket of Elthin Arvan. Except for Tor Alessi itself, nowhere had been more fiercely defended by the elves. A ring of keeps surrounded the farmland. The great dam upriver that chained the Anurein and fed the intricate canal system was built like a fortress itself, with great towers and parapets, batteries of ballistae and one of the largest garrisons in the colonies. Seven times the dwarfs had tried to capture the dam; seven times they had been sent away to bury their dead and lick their wounds.