01 - Defenders of Ulthuan

by Graham McNeill

  Every movement of Yvraine Hawkblade told Eldain that she had come here with purpose.

  “Have you travelled directly from Saphery, Mistress Hawkblade?”

  “I have,” said Yvraine, helping herself to a ripened aoilym fruit.

  “And to what do we owe the pleasure of your company?”

  He felt the heat of Rhianna’s gaze upon him, knowing he was being discourteous by being so blunt, but knowing that if this warrior brought his doom then he would sooner face it than dance around it.

  Yvraine displayed no outward sign of noticing his boorish behaviour, taking a bite of the fruit and savouring its perfectly moist flesh. “I bring a message to the daughter of Mitherion Silverfawn from her father.”

  “A message for me?” said Rhianna.

  Eldain’s heart calmed and a beaming smile of relief spread across his face. So typical of an Archmage to resort to the pomp of sending one of the Sword Masters to deliver a message, when there were a dozen different ways to communicate by magical means.

  He reached out to take a piece of fruit and said, “Then I urge you to deliver it, Mistress Hawkblade. How fares my father-in-law?”

  “Well,” said Yvraine. “He prospers and his researches into celestial phenomena continue to meet with favour from the Loremasters. In fact his divinations are proving to be of great interest these days.”

  Rhianna leaned forwards across the table. “Please do not think me rude, but I would hear what my father has to say.”

  Yvraine placed the core of the aoilym back on the platter and said, “Of course. He simply asks that you accompany me back to the Tower of Hoeth.”

  “What? To Saphery? Why?”

  “I do not know,” said Yvraine and Eldain could sense that there was some other part of the message yet to be imparted. “But it was with some urgency that I was despatched. I have taken the liberty of securing us passage on a ship from Tor Elyr and its captain has orders to await our arrival before sailing. If we leave soon, we can be in Tor Elyr before nightfall.”

  “Is he ill? Is that why he sends for me?”

  Yvraine shook her head, a faint smile on her lips. “No, he is quite well, I assure you, my lady. But he was most insistent that you both accompany me back to Saphery.”

  At first, Eldain thought he’d misheard, then saw the look of quiet amusement on the Sword Master’s face. “Both of us? He wants both of us to travel with you?”

  “He does.”

  “Without a reason?”

  “I was not given a reason, simply a directive.”

  “And we’re supposed to pack up and go because he says so?” said Eldain.

  Yvraine nodded and Eldain felt his irritation grow at her lack of elaboration. Though he held great respect for Rhianna’s father, he was, like many practitioners of magic, somewhat mercurial and capricious. A trait he was more than aware existed in his daughter.

  But to travel the breadth of Ulthuan with no clue as to why or what awaited them at the end of the journey seemed like an unreasonable request, even by the standards of a mage.

  Rhianna seemed similarly confused by her father’s request, but the prospect of visiting her father soon won out over any concern as to the reason.

  “He gave no hint as to why he wants us to travel to the White Tower?” said Rhianna.

  “He did not.”

  “Then would you mind speculating?” said Eldain. “You must have some idea of why he sends one of the White Tower’s guardians to retrieve his daughter.”

  Yvraine shook her head. “In life, the wisest and soundest people avoid speculation.”

  Wonderful, thought Eldain, a warrior and a philosopher…

  Her name was Kyrielle Greenkin and she had saved his life.

  When the pain and discomfort of the carnivorous plant’s aromatic siren song had faded from his mind, she helped him to his feet and tutted as she dusted off the fresh clothes that had been laid out for him.

  “Look at the state of you!” she said. “And I went to such trouble to find one of the guards the same size as you.”

  “What…” he said, gesturing feebly at the smoking remains of the plant, “was that?”

  “That? Oh, that was just one of father’s more outlandish creations,” she said dismissively and waving a delicate hand. “It was a bit of an experiment really, which, between you and I, did not work out too well, but he does love to tinker with things from beyond this world to see how they combine with our own native species.”

  “Is it dead?”

  “I should think so,” she said and then laughed. “Unless my magic is becoming very rusty.”

  “You are a mage?”

  “I have a little power,” she said, “but then who of Saphery doesn’t?”

  “Saphery? Is that where you are from?” he said, though he had already guessed as much.

  “It is indeed.”

  She smiled and said, “You are a guest of Anurion the Green, Archmage of Saphery, and this is his winter palace in Yvresse. I, on the other hand, am his daughter, Kyrielle.”

  He could feel the expectant pause after she had spoken her name, but he had nothing to tell her and said, “I am sorry, my lady, but I have no name to give you. I can remember nothing before my time adrift in the sea.”

  “Nothing? Nothing at all? Well that’s unfortunate,” she said in a masterful display of understatement. “Well I can’t very well speak to you if you haven’t got a name. Would you mind terribly if I thought of one for you? Just until you remember your own of course!”

  Her speech was so quick he had trouble following it, especially with the fog that seemed to fill his thoughts. He shook his head and said, “No, I suppose not.”

  Kyrielle’s face screwed up in a manner that suggested she was thinking hard until at last she said, “Then I will call you Daroir. Will that do?”

  He smiled and said, “The rune for remembrance and memory.”

  “It seems fitting, yes?”

  “Daroir,” he said, turning the name over in his mind. He had no connection to the name and instinctually knew that it was not his real name, but it would suffice until he could recall what it truly was. “I suppose it is fitting, yes. Maybe it will help.”

  “So you don’t remember anything at all?” said Kyrielle. “Not a thing?”

  He shook his head. “No. I remember almost dying in the sea and crawling up the beach. And… that’s it.”

  “Such a sad tale,” she said and a tear rolled down her cheek.

  The suddenness of her mood swing surprised him and he said, “With a tear in her eye and a smile on her lips…”

  Even though he heard himself speak the words, they sounded unfamiliar to his ears, yet flowed naturally from his mouth.

  She smiled and she said, “You know the works of Mecelion?”

  “Who?”

  “Mecelion,” said Kyrielle. “The warrior poet of Chrace. You just quoted from Fairest Daum of Ulthuan.”

  “I did?” said Daroir. “I’ve never heard of Mecelion, much less read any of his poems.”

  “Are you sure? You might be the greatest student of poetry in Ulthuan for all we know.”

  “True, but what would a student of poetry be doing at sea?”

  Kyrielle looked him up and down and said, “No, you don’t look much like a student, too many muscles. And how many students carry wounds like yours on your shoulder and hip? You’ve been a warrior in your time.”

  Daroir blushed, realising that she must have seen him naked to know of the old wounds on his body. She laughed as she saw the colour rise in his cheeks.

  “Did you think you got undressed all by yourself?” she said.

  He didn’t answer as she took his hand and led him towards a gentle arch of palm fronds that parted at her approach to reveal stairs that rose towards the villa at the top of the cliff.

  So artfully were the stairs cut into the rock, that Daroir wasn’t sure that they hadn’t formed naturally. Unusually for this place of wondrous flora, t
he steps were completely free of any trace of growth and earth, as though the plants knew to keep this ascent clear.

  He followed her willingly as she led him up the steps. “Where are we going?”

  “To see my father,” she said. “He is a powerful mage and perhaps he can restore your memory to you.”

  She released his hand and began to climb the steps. Daroir felt a warm glow envelop him at her smile, as though some strange, soothing magic was worked within it.

  He followed her up the steps.

  Far, far away, in a land devoid of kind laughter or sunlight that warmed the skin, a shrill cry that spoke of spilled blood echoed from a tower of brazen darkness. About this highest and bleakest of towers were a hundred others, cold and reeking with malice, and about these were a thousand more. Black smoke coiled around the towers, which rose above a city hunched at the foot of iron mountains and which lived in the nightmares of the world.

  For this was Naggarond, the Tower of Cold… the forsaken domain of the Witch King, dread ruler of the dark kin of the elves of Ulthuan.

  The druchii.

  Black castles and turrets ringed the mighty tower at the centre of the city, shrouded in the ashen rain of those burned upon the sacrificial fires that smouldered, red and black, in temples that ran with blood.

  Walls a hundred feet high encircled the city, and from the walls rose an evil forest of dark and crooked towers, upon which flew the bloody banners of the city’s infernal master. An army of severed heads and a tapestry of skins hung from the jagged battlements and the sickly ruin of their demise dripped down the black stone of the wall.

  Carrion birds circled the city in an ever present pall, their cries hungry and impatient as they crossed the bleak and cheerless sky. The beating of hammers and the scrape of iron rose from the city, mingling with the cries of the anguished and the moaning of the damned into one murderous death-rattle that never ended.

  The dwelling places of the dark elves; bleak and shattered ruins, windy garrets and haunted towers filled the city, each more forlorn than the last.

  The scream that issued from the tallest tower at the centre of the city lingered, as though savoured by the air itself, and those below gave thanks to their gods that it was not they who suffered this day. The screaming had been going on for days, and while screams were nothing new in Naggarond, these spoke of a level of suffering beyond imagining.

  But the cause of those screams was not one of the city’s ivory skinned elves, but a man, though he had forsaken all bonds with his species many years ago in the ecstasy of battle and the worship of the dark gods of the north.

  In a shuttered room lit only by the coals of a smouldering brazier, Issyk Kul worked his dark torments upon a canvas of flesh granted to him by the Hag Sorceress. Where the youth had come from was irrelevant and what he knew was unimportant, for Kul had not begun his tortures with any purpose other than the infliction of agony. To work such wonderful ruin on a perfect body, yet keep it alive and aware of the havoc being wrought upon it was both his art and an act of worship.

  Kul was broad and muscular, his body worked into iron-hardness by the harsh northern climes of the Old World and a life of war and excess. Leather coils held a patchwork of contoured plates tight to his tanned flesh, his armour glistening and undulating like raw, pink meat and his skin gleaming with scented oils. Lustrous golden hair topped the face of a libertine, full featured and handsome to the point of beauty. But where beauty ended, cruelty began and his wide eyes knew nothing of pity or compassion, only wicked indulgence and the obsession of a fetishist.

  When he was done with this plaything, he would release it, eyeless, lipless and insane into the city to drool and plead for a death that would be too slow in coming. It would roam the streets a freak, cries of revulsion and admiration chasing it into the dark corners of the city where it would become a feast for the creatures of the night.

  Kul straightened from his works, discarding the needles and selecting a blade so slender and fine that it would be quite useless for any purpose other than inflicting the most excruciating tortures on the most sensitive organs of the body.

  More screams filled the chamber and Kul’s joined those of his plaything, his growls of pleasure climaxing in an atavistic howl of pleasure as he completed his violation of what had once been a pale, bright-eyed messenger.

  With his desires sated for the moment, Issyk Kul bent to kiss the mewling scraps of flesh and said, “Your pain has pleased the great god, Shornaal, and for that I thank you.”

  He turned to leave the chamber, pausing only long enough to retrieve a gloriously elaborate sword of sweeping curves and cruel spikes. Quillons of bone pricked the flesh of his hands and a razor worked into the handle scored his palm as he spun the blade into a rippling sheath across his back.

  Beyond the confines of the room he used for worship, a stone-flagged passageway curved away to either side, following the shape of the tower, and he set off with a long, graceful stride towards the sounds of chanting and wailing.

  The music of the tower was pressed into its structure, millennia of suffering and blood imprinted into its very bones. Kul could feel the anguish that had been unleashed in this place as surely as if it happened right before his eyes. Ghosts of murders past paraded before him and the torments that built this place were like wine from the sweetest blood vineyard.

  At last the curve of the passageway terminated at a wide portal of bone and bronze that led within the core of the tower. Six cloaked warriors in long hauberks of black mail and tall helms of bronze guarded the portal, their great, black-bladed halberds reflecting the light of the torches that burned in sconces fashioned from skulls. Each warrior’s face was branded with the mark of Khaine, the bloody handed god of murder, hatred and destruction, and Kul smiled to see such wanton deformation of flesh.

  Though he was well known in Naggarond, their weapons still clashed together to block his passage through to the ebony stairs that led to the inner sanctum of the tower.

  Kul nodded in satisfaction, knowing that had they admitted him into the presence of their lord without challenge, he would have killed them himself. More than one champion of the dark gods had fallen foul of the treachery of a trusted comrade and Kul had not lived for three centuries by assuming that the faith of friends was eternal.

  “You do your master proud,” said Kul, “but I am expected.”

  “Expected you may be, but you do not go before Lord Malekith unescorted,” said a voice behind him and Kul smiled.

  “Kouran,” he said, turning to face the commander of the Black Guard of Naggarond, the elite guard of the Witch King’s city. Kouran was almost a foot shorter than Issyk Kul, but was a formidable presence nonetheless, his dark armour forged from the unbreakable metal of a fallen star and his blade ensorcelled by ancient, forgotten magic.

  The elf’s violet eyes met Kul’s and the champion of Chaos was pleased to see a total absence of fear in his gaze.

  “You do not trust me?” said Kul.

  “Should I?”

  “No,” he admitted. “I have killed friends and allies before when it suited me.”

  “Then we will go up together, yes?” said Kouran, leaving Kul in no doubt that it was not a request. He nodded and waved the captain of the Black Guard forward. Kouran wrapped a hand around the hilt of his sword and Kul could feel the blade’s malice seep into the air like sweet incense.

  The gleaming blades of the Black Guard parted and Issyk Kul and Kouran passed through the portal of bone, a hazy curtain of sweet smelling smoke arising from the floor to surround them and bear them onwards. The chamber beyond the portal was cold, a web of frost forming a patina of white across his armour. The oil chilled on his flesh and his breath feathered the air before him as Kouran led the way through the purple mists towards a spiral staircase of stained metal from which dripped a sticky residue of old blood.

  Kouran climbed the stairs and Kul followed him, his bulky frame unsuited to such a narrow stairwell.
He had dreamed of walking the route to the Witch King’s presence a thousand times since he had brought his army to Naggarond, and felt a delicious wave of apprehension and excitement thunder through his veins as he followed Kouran upwards. Though he had killed and tortured for hundreds of years, Kul was only too aware that the darkness he had wrought upon the world was but a fraction of the shadow cast by the Witch King.

  For more than five thousand years, the Witch King had reigned over Naggaroth and all the later ages of the world had known his dread power. In Ulthuan, his name was not spoken except as a curse, while in the lands of men, his power was a terrible legend that still stalked the world and plotted to bring about its ruin. To the tribes of the north, the Witch King was just another ruler of a distant kingdom, by turns a mighty tyrant to dread or an ally to fight alongside.

  A red rain of spattering blood fell from high above, rendering Kul’s golden hair to lank ropes of bloody crimson and he licked the congealed droplets from his lips as they ran down his face.

  The creaking, iron stairs seemed to go on for an eternity, climbing higher into the aching cold and purple smoke that surrounded him. The oil on his skin cracked and his muscles began to shiver as he drew near the throne room of Malekith.

  At last they reached the summit of the tower, the pinnacle of evil in Naggarond, and Kul’s every sense was alive with the living quality of hatred and bitterness that flavoured every breath with its power.

  The darkness of the Witch King’s throne room was a force unto itself, a presence felt as palpably as that of Kouran beside him. It coated the walls like a creeping sickness, slithering across the floor and climbing the walls in defiance of the white, soulless light that struggled through the leaded windows of the tower.

  Kul began to shiver, his heavily muscled frame unused to such bitter, unnatural cold and without a shred of fat to insulate him. He could see nothing beyond the faint outline of Kouran and the all-encompassing darkness that seemed to press in on him to render him blind as surely as if a hood had been placed over his head.

  No, that wasn’t quite right…