Here on the edge of the Realm of Chaos, distances could be perversely extended or contracted, and so it was within the city. Short pathways seemed to widen as the elves approached, streets appeared to take longer to walk along than the buildings around them would imply, while eerie avenues that seemed to stretch for miles could be walked along in a matter of moments.
Eventually Malekith and the others ventured inside one of the buildings. It was a grand structure of five storeys, which widened unnaturally as it soared towards the grey skies, its flat walls pricked with hundreds of tiny, dark windows. The lower floor was open, with no internal walls, and the only feature was a wide stairwell that led downwards; there appeared to be no means to reach the upper levels.
Bringing out dwarf-made lanterns that glittered with silver fire, the elves descended the steps. These brought them into a contorted network of passages and rooms, and very quickly Malekith feared they would get lost. He ordered a warrior to stand at each junction with a lamp held aloft, so that no elf was ever out of sight from the route back. In this way, they slowly explored the windowless catacomb. They found no sign of the city’s builders, just blank stone devoid of carvings or colour.
After an hour of searching—far longer than Malekith would have suspected by the size of the building above—they came upon another stair. It rose steeply upwards and double-backed and criss-crossed itself in a disturbing way. That it reached far higher than the ceiling was indisputable, though its position, as far as Malekith could tell, put it in the centre of the storey above where no stair had been seen.
Their breath carving clouds upon the cold air, Malekith and his warriors mounted the steps, continuing to leave sentries at each twisted landing so that no elf was out of sight of another. The elves scaled the stairway in a surprisingly short time, and it opened out onto another empty floor, with wide windows through which they could only see the cloudy skies.
Walking to the nearest window, Malekith looked out and then stepped back with a gasp. The stairwell had brought them up to a floor above where they had entered the building, for down below he could see a few of his warriors standing guard at the doorway where they had come in. The city stretched out in every direction as far as he could see, going on and on until it was lost in a grey haze.
Disorientated, Malekith closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Having recovered himself a little, he leaned out of the glassless window, avoiding looking towards the horizon, and hailed the Naggarothi some sixty feet below. They looked up with startled shouts, and their voices came back impossibly distant.
Disturbed, Malekith ordered the Naggarothi to leave, though it took another hour for them to climb down the winding stairway and trace their way back out of the labyrinthine catacomb. There was much distressed murmuring by the Naggarothi, and Malekith’s usual confidence had been eroded by the unnatural surroundings. Looking up into the sky, he could see no sign of the sun and so only his internal awareness gave him any sense of the passage of time.
He reckoned it to be mid-afternoon, and knew that in these northern climes the sun would set early at this time of the year, barely passing above the horizon for a few hours. Malekith declared that they would leave the city before night fell and seek out its secrets with renewed vigour the following day.
However, with no sun to guide them, none of the Naggarothi knew from which direction they had entered the city. They retraced their steps as best they could from the footprints in the snow, but these soon petered out and could be found no more, though no snow had fallen since their arrival as far as they were aware. Now even more unnerved, Malekith called for the company to gather, and found that five of their number were missing. None could recall where they had last been seen, and the prince feared that they were lost in the city somewhere, perhaps forever.
Sensing the unease in his warriors becoming panic, Malekith bid them to stay where they were, somewhere amidst the criss-crossing arteries of the city’s maze-like roads. Clearly the proximity of the Realm of Chaos was addling their senses, and Malekith could not trust his own eyes. Instead he turned to a deeper sense, of the magic that flowed across the world from the Gate of Chaos.
Closing his eyes and blanking out all other sensation, the prince entered a meditative trance he had learnt from Morathi in his youth. Normally he needed no such concentration to harness the winds of magic, but now he desired finesse and focus and so looked to the lessons of his childhood to give him a centre upon which to concentrate.
Imagining himself as a small speck, a grain of dust upon the ground, Malekith allowed his othersense to reach outwards just a small distance. Magic swirled in all directions, without form or rhythm. Edging out his sphere of awareness, he allowed his mind’s eye to encompass a greater part of the city. Here he could detect a more regular stream of power; an underlying flow that poured from one direction. Fixing that point in his mind, Malekith opened his eyes.
Composed once more, Malekith could feel the gentle but persistent surge of Chaos unconsciously, and knew in which direction north now lay. Turning to the south, he ordered the Naggarothi to follow him.
They had walked for perhaps an hour when Malekith felt a different current in the flow of magic. Something close at hand was causing an eddy to form, much like the dispelling stone of the dwarfs. More confident that he could lead his warriors from the city if necessary, Malekith decided to make a detour and investigate this phenomenon. Now that he was aligned with the winds of magic again, Malekith marched unerringly between the grotesque buildings, guiding the company directly to the source of the anomaly.
There was something about the building that disturbed Malekith even more than the others. It was not as tall as some, but was very broad and rose up like a five-levelled ziggurat, though each successive step was slightly misaligned in comparison to the one beneath, so that the whole structure seemed to have been twisted by a god’s hand in some prehistoric time. There were archways all around its bottom floor, though nothing could be seen of the upper floors. Though he could not reason exactly why, the building brought Malekith to mind of a temple; to what deity or power, he could not fathom.
Malekith commanded half of his warriors to form a perimeter around the building, which stood alone just off-centre in a huge irregular eight-sided plaza. The other half of the company, Malekith led through one of the slanted archways. They followed the corridors, stairs and tunnels within for some time, but ever their path led them outwards so that they stood in rooms and galleries on the outer edge of each level. Malekith felt magic bubbling around him, and could sense a ward upon the inner walls keeping the magic at bay from somewhere within.
Eventually he found a spot where the magic churned violently, though looking about Malekith could see no physical source for such a disturbance. Holding up a hand to command his warriors to wait, he walked to the point where several streams of energy collided with each other. He stood on that exact spot, nauseated by the clashing magical waves.
Looking around he could see a triangular door that could be seen from nowhere else. He pointed and told Yeasir to follow his directions. Confused but obedient, the captain stalked across the floor of the room, following Malekith’s gestures. To Yeasir it seemed as if Malekith guided him towards a solid wall and he hesitated, just a pace from the stone, before the prince’s snarling voice bid him to walk forwards once more. With a grimace, his eyes half-closed in expectation of thudding into the wall, Yeasir took a step; he nearly fell over as he found himself atop a strange angular stair, much like the one they had found in the first building.
Through cunning artifice and magic, the stair was impossible to see, as if the door to it stood slightly apart from the world. Once Yeasir had stepped through, he had disappeared from sight, but he returned in moments and waved for the others to follow him.
The stairs led down for a comparatively short stretch, though such concepts as time and distance were becoming increasingly irrelevant in this impossible city. They led into a chamber, utterly black bu
t for the glimmer of the elves’ lanterns. The air seemed to suck all the light into itself, and even with the radiance from the lamps Malekith could see barely ten paces ahead.
Stepping cautiously forwards, he found himself treading upon a tiled floor, arranged in a seemingly haphazard mess of geometry yet every tile still fitting perfectly in the insane mosaic. The tiles were as grey as the stone of the rest of the city, but were slightly soft to tread upon, like a thin carpet. Casting the light of his lantern to the right and the left, Malekith could make out dim shapes rising in the gloom: figures stood upon pedestals lining a wide concourse that led away from the door. Malekith raised a hand to halt those following behind, and turned left to inspect the statues more closely.
By the silvery light of the lamp, they looked to be made out of some dull alloy, but as he came within a few paces Malekith could see more clearly that they were skeletons of greying bone. They were not unlike the bones of an elf, or for that matter a man, or dwarf; in proportion they were short of torso and long of limb like an elf, but had the thicker bones of a man, and were of a height little more than a dwarf. Their faces were slender, with a mouth, two eyes and two nostrils that were so disturbingly familiar yet not quite like any skull he had seen, causing Malekith to pause a moment before continuing his inspection.
They were clad in black shrouds that were wrapped about the bodies and shoulders in identical fashion, with hoods raised up on their skulls. Every cadaver wore chains of dark beads, perhaps black pearls, which hung limply from bony wrists and about throatless necks. Each held a serrated, angular sword in its right hand and a triangular shield upon its left arm, both free of any design that Malekith could discern.
The tiles stopped at the line of plinths, and beyond them the floor seemed to be made of the same stone as the rest of the building. Malekith could see nothing in the darkness, the lantern light reflected off no edge or surface, and he had no idea whether there were any other features or if the rest of the chamber was utterly empty.
Walking along the line of inanimate sentries, Malekith could not guess at how far the two lines stretched, but sensed that their course narrowed almost imperceptibly, bringing them together at some distant point as yet out of sight.
Glancing back towards the others, Malekith had another surprise. Though he was sure that he had walked no more than fifty paces, in as straight a line as made no difference, the glimmer of his companions’ lanterns was like distant starlight in the gloom, and quite some way off to his left and higher up than his current position.
The prince called out for them to send a party to join him, and his voice echoed off distant walls, bouncing and resounding within a space he judged to be much vaster than the building in which it was supposedly enclosed. With a shiver, Malekith waited for the others to reach him, the light from their lanterns swiftly growing brighter with every heartbeat as if they covered a dozen paces with every stride.
Yeasir was with them and he gazed wide-eyed at the skeletal parade. He said nothing, but his look of concern was not lost on Malekith. With a reassuring nod, the prince turned along the line once more and followed the skeleton-flanked concourse. The pathway did indeed narrow gradually, and led the Naggarothi to a great stepped plinth the summit of which lay in the gloom beyond their lights. Ascending the first few steps and walking around them, Malekith saw that five other lines of skeletons joined the central feature at irregular angles. He rejoined his comrades and ordered a handful of them to stand guard at the bottom of the steps, while the others followed him up the steep dais.
It led onto a plateau, which was impossibly, maddeningly as wide as the base of the steps below. Seven figures sat upon low square stools, more opulent versions of the skeletons below with more dark pearls and brooches of the same black material. Six sat facing outwards, each one facing one of the lines upon the ground below as far as Malekith could tell. They had no hoods but instead wore simple crowns consisting of a narrow band about the skull with a black gem that reflected no light upon their foreheads.
The seventh figure sat facing Malekith, though the prince suspected that he would have faced the intruders regardless of which direction they had approached from. His crown was much larger, of a silver-grey metal, with curling, horn-like protrusions; the only organic shape they had seen since entering the city.
“Highness!” snapped Yeasir, and Malekith turned, his hand on his sword hilt. It was only then that he realised that his other hand had been reaching out towards the skeletal king, to pluck the crown from his skull. Malekith had no recollection of having crossed the dais, and shook his head as if dazed by a blow.
“We should touch nothing,” said Yeasir. “This place is cursed, by the gods, or worse.”
Malekith laughed and the noise seemed stifled and flat, with none of the ringing echoes of his earlier shout.
“I think this great king rules here no more,” said Malekith. “This is my sign, Yeasir. What greater statement about my destiny could I make? Imagine returning to Ulthuan with such a crown upon my head, an artefact of the time before.”
“Before what?” asked Yeasir.
“Before everything!” said Malekith. “Before Chaos, before the Everqueen, before even the gods themselves. Can you not feel it, the great antiquity that fills this place?”
“I feel it,” growled Yeasir. “There is ancient malice here, can you not sense it? I say again, there is a curse upon this place.”
“You were willing to follow me to the Gate of Chaos,” Malekith reminded his captain. “Would you rather we left this treasure here and continued north?”
Yeasir’s muttered reply was inaudible, but Malekith took it to be his captain’s acquiescence. Not that the prince needed the permission of anyone to take whatever he wanted, from wherever he wanted. Magic had guided him to this place and Malekith knew that there was purpose behind it. Whether it was the gods or some other will that had led him here, it was to stand before this prehistoric king and take his crown.
With a smile, Malekith lifted the circlet from the dead king’s skull; it was as light as air and came away with no difficulty.
“You have it, now let us leave,” said Yeasir, fear making his voice shrill.
“Calm yourself,” said Malekith. “Does it not make me kingly?”
With that, the prince of Nagarythe placed the circlet upon his head and the world vanished.
* * *
Golden light blazed throughout the immense hall. It did not appear to have a single source, but simply radiated out from all of the walls. Yeasir blinked in the sudden brightness, trying to clear spots from his eyes. As his vision returned, he saw more clearly where they were.
The chamber was vast, larger than any hall he had ever seen on Ulthuan or in the realm of the dwarfs. The walls were impossibly distant, and as Yeasir turned about to look around, he swore that their number increased and reduced, so that at one moment he was standing in a great irregular octagon, at others a triangular chamber.
Disorientated, he looked up and saw a vast ceiling stretching out to the horizon, so immense that he could not see where it met the walls. Huge angular stalactites jagged downwards at strange slants. The ceiling itself was made up of immense plates and surfaces that formed bizarre vertices, and perspective seemed to bend and contract depending on where he looked. Tearing away his gaze from the maddening vista, Yeasir turned his attention to his lord.
To Yeasir, it seemed as if Malekith had been frozen. He stood next to the regal skeleton at the centre of the dais locked in his pose, the crown upon his head, his fingers still touching the strange iron-like headgear. Yeasir leapt forwards with a shout, fearing some bewitchment had befallen his master. Another cry from one of the warriors distracted him and he turned his head to see several of the Naggarothi pointing out across the hall.
Following their fingers, Yeasir saw what he had feared ever since they had entered the ancient hall: the skeletal figures stepping down from their plinths and turning towards the central dais. They a
lso glowed with light, and stalked purposefully forwards, their shields and weapons held ready. Yeasir cast a quick glance at the figures seated around them and was relieved to see that not one of them stirred. Ignoring his transfixed prince, Yeasir dashed to the opposite side of the platform and saw that skeletal warriors were advancing from every direction.
“Form up for defence!” Yeasir commanded, and the Naggarothi came together in a ring of spears and shields that encircled the top of the high podium.
“Prince!” the captain cried out, crossing the dais and laying a hand on his shoulder as if to wake him.
As soon as he touched Malekith, sparks of energy exploded across Yeasir’s body and he was flung backwards across the dais, clattering and rolling across the hard stone. His body was numb and his muscles jerked and spasmed as magical energy coursed through him. Gritting his teeth, he fought to control his juddering limbs but felt drained of all strength. He lay there groaning, his arms and legs as heavy as lead, his ears ringing, his vision hazy.
There were more alarmed shouts but Yeasir could not discern the words. In momentary flashes of clarity he could see the Naggarothi archers raising arrows to their bowstrings and loosing them out from the edge of the dais, but he could not see if their shots had any effect. Moaning, he managed to roll to his stomach, and the numbness began to dissipate, replaced instead by gnawing pain in every joint and bone.
He tried to speak, but all he could do was clench his teeth and hiss, as pain shot along the captain’s spine and exploded inside his brain. Amongst the buzzing and squealing that filled his hearing, Yeasir caught snatches of shouts and the dreadful clatter of thousands of bony feet marching upon the stone. A panicked thought shot through his pain-clouded mind: we are doomed.
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[Sundering 01] - Malekith Page 18