by C. L. Werner
Silar managed to smile back at her. ‘All I was supposed to do was watch and report,’ he said, nodding at the dead Sarkol. ‘I was warned against taking any hand in the attack.’
‘You killed two of my kindred,’ Merikaar accused, gesturing at Silar with the knife in his hand.
‘Do be fair, Merikaar,’ Drusala told the shade. ‘After all, they were trying to kill him.’ Her face lightened, almost wistful. ‘This is Silar Thornblood, one of the highest of the highborn of Hag Graef. We mustn’t be too capricious about allowing him to die.
‘After all, if something were to happen to Malus Darkblade, Lord Silar would be the logical choice to succeed him as drachau.’
SEVENTEEN
Twenty asur captives had been the price set by the Blood Coven to work their magic and conceal the Bloodseekers of Sarkol Narza during the battle. In their time as refugees under the protection of Hellebron in Har Ganeth, the three sorceresses had many centuries to hone their craft, to merge the ritualistic powers of the cult of Khaine to their own dark sorcery. The end result had been a debased and abominable kind of magic, a magic that drew its strength from blood and suffering.
The witches gazed cruelly, hungrily, upon their prisoners. The great Tullaris himself had brought them here, bound to stakes that were driven into the ground in such a way that from the sky, from whence the gods observed the mortal realm, the stakes would form the mark of Khaine. Blood and slaughter delighted the Lord of Murder, and the witches intended to give their violent deity quite a spectacle in exchange for their own revitalisation.
Flinging aside their crimson cloaks, the witches drew long, fang-like knives from their girdles. Sacrificial blades long in the service of Har Ganeth’s witch elves, the weapons exuded an aura of atrocity, the stink of blood and death soaked into the ancient bronze, perverting the very metal with the stain of murder. Gleefully, the Blood Coven kissed the hoary blades and ran their tongues along the sides. Blood welled up from the tiny scratches the knives cut into their tongues. The witches laughed in delight, rolling the blood around in their mouths until their teeth took on a crimson hue.
From the stakes, the captive asur looked on with horror and repugnance as the sorceresses worked themselves up into a frenzy, playing the knives across their nubile bodies, unheeding of the cuts and slashes they inflicted on their bare flesh. They threw themselves into a wanton dance of madness and bloodshed, cutting at one another as their bodies writhed and gyrated as though in the thrall of some phantom musician. Wilder, faster, crazier the dance became. The Blood Coven raised their voices in animalistic screeches, howls that mimicked the slavering growls of hounds and the shrieks of hawks on the hunt. The bestial chorus increased in malignance and savagery, dipping into the hisses of jungle saurians and the hellish abominations of the Wastes.
With a final wail, the Blood Coven broke away from their dance of self-mutilation. The witches rushed at the bound captives, slashing at them with their grisly knives. One after another, the asur wilted in their bonds, throats slashed and hearts stabbed as the sorceresses ran amok. Blood fountained from each of the butchered elves, the sanguine fluid taking on a lustrous black sheen as it slopped from the wounds. Ecstatic squeals leapt from the witches as they raced amongst their victims, sacrificing each in turn. The earth within the symbol of Khaine formed by the stakes soon became a bog of dark, shimmering blood.
As their last victim died, the Blood Coven returned their knives to their girdles and hurled themselves to the ground. In a spasm of obscenity, the witches squirmed and writhed through the gory mire, letting the blood soak into their pale skin. As they slithered through the muck, each of them could feel the dark magic they had trapped in the blood passing into themselves in turn. Their bodies tingled, their souls sickened, their stomachs turned as the aethyric powers were drawn into their flesh.
Abruptly, the blood-caked witches looked up, their heads snapping around to stare past the ring of stakes that surrounded them. Beyond the perimeter, they could see a lone druchii, a she-elf dressed in black, her dark hair layered in tiers upon a silver headdress. She leaned against a ghoulish-looking staff, its head aglow with the sorceries bound inside it. An expression of derisive contempt was written across her face and her eyes gleamed with the malice of an old hate long deferred.
‘Wallowing in the mud like hogs,’ Drusala sneered. ‘Is this why you betrayed your mistress?’
One of the Blood Coven, the eldest of the trio, climbed to her feet and pointed a clawed finger at the handmaiden. ‘You are a fine one to speak of betrayals. Is your place not in Ghrond, with your mistress Morathi? Do not lecture us about loyalty, Drusala!’
‘And who commands your loyalty now that you have fled Hellebron?’ Drusala asked. Before the witches could answer, she opened her hand, displaying the protective charm she had stripped from the body of Sarkol Narza. ‘An interesting curio to find in the possession of an assassin,’ she said. ‘And even more curious to find each member of his entourage carrying the same.’
The Blood Coven glanced at one another uneasily. They had imagined Sarkol and his killers had simply missed Drusala in the dead of night. The foothills were, after all, quite a vast wilderness.
‘You needn’t worry,’ Drusala told the Blood Coven. ‘They are all dead… well, most of them.’ She smiled at the bloody sorceresses. ‘There are none left to bear witness against you.’
One of the witches uttered a dry, scoffing laugh. ‘There is still you, Drusala. You are alive to bear witness against us.’
Drusala smiled coldly. ‘Indeed, and what will three refugees of the convents do about that?’
Again, the witches exchanged a look, but this time there was a sly quality about it. ‘We have called upon the old magic. We have drawn the blessing of Khaine into ourselves, transformed our bodies into reservoirs of dark magic. You bring your scorn and mockery at a poor time, harlot of Morathi. The Blood Coven has bathed in the favours of Khaine. Our powers are at their peak!’
‘Yes,’ Drusala conceded, strangely calm before the threats and boasts of the Blood Coven. ‘You are indeed at the height of your ability and power. I have waited many hours to see you at your strongest. It will make beating you still more satisfying.’
A feral snarl rose from one of the witches. Throwing out her hand, the druchii sent a wave of rolling, smouldering darkness at Drusala. As the tide of darkness sped forwards, its essence pitted the wooden stakes and decayed the asur bodies bound to them.
The sorceress gestured with her staff, causing the noxious darkness to fold in upon itself. The cloud quickly disintegrated, dripping into the earth like some malefic dew. ‘That was… unimpressive,’ Drusala sneered.
Snarling their rage, the three witches made cabalistic symbols with their fingers, the eerie glyphs blazing for an instant in the air. As each symbol flashed into life, the blood-soaked flesh of the conjurers likewise took on a spectral glow. When the Blood Coven unleashed their fury against Drusala, the spell drew nourishment from all three witches rather than one alone. The enchantment took shape as streamers of gore flew upwards from the ground. In a few breaths, a long spear of pulsating blood hovered above the earth. Throwing their hands forwards in unison, the Blood Coven sent the gruesome lance straight at the sorceress.
Drusala drew back as the lance sped towards her. Quickly she threw the folds of her robe about her face, her staff held crosswise against her breast. The bloody spear hurtled straight at her. Like the ball of darkness, it broke against the defensive counter-spell she’d evoked. Unlike the black cloud, however, the spear didn’t dissipate. Instead, it exploded into a great morass of blood, a writhing mass of gore that wrapped itself around the sorceress.
The Blood Coven laughed as the blood coiled around Drusala. Each of the witches made pulling motions with her left hand. In response the shattered spear threw more tendrils of itself about their foe. Soon, Drusala’s very shape was lost beneath a blanket
of pulsating liquid. Grimly, the witches stopped the pulling motions with their left hands. Now, they extended their right hands, slowly closing their fingers. In response, the shell that had formed around Drusala began to collapse in upon itself, shrinking more and more as the Blood Coven closed their hands into fists.
‘Broken bones and mangled meat,’ one of the witches chortled. ‘A fitting end for any of Morathi’s trash.’ Her eyes took on a light of sadistic glee as she watched the shell contract still further, reducing itself to something on the order of a large pumpkin.
‘There won’t be enough of her left to fill a thimble,’ a second witch observed, cackling with obscene mirth.
‘Are you impressed now?’ the third witch taunted the shell as it reduced itself to the size of a melon.
‘Not particularly.’
The Blood Coven spun about as they heard Drusala call to them. The voice came not from within the shrinking shell, but from the centre of the sacrificial ground. The sorceress stood amongst the stakes, the unnaturally decayed husks of the asur crumbling around her. She held her staff before her, as she had at the start of the attack. Now she thrust it towards the witches, a purplish light erupting from the head of the staff.
‘Let’s see how you like my magic,’ Drusala hissed.
The Blood Coven railed as lashes of purple light whipped around them. One of the elves was struck on the shoulder, a livid scar appearing as the arcane light seared her skin. Before another lash could strike true, however, a slobbering chant erupted from the lips of all three of the witches. The tonalities weren’t entirely of elven speech, but derived from the susurrations of ancient amphibian mage-priests and the cachinnations of daemons.
The sounds themselves seemed to take on a phantasmal substance, speeding away from the witches like a storm of fireflies. Each of the knife-edged motes slashed through the whipping tendrils, sending streamers of purplish light to dissipate in the night air.
Before the lashes could be completely vanquished, Drusala magnified their power, drawing them together into a single great cord of pulsating light. Swirling her staff skywards, she caused the purple cord to shift along with it. When she brought the staff striking earthwards, the phantom luminance did likewise. The ground shook as Drusala’s spell slammed against it, quivering with violent tremors that toppled many of the stakes. The purple light exploded in a burst of sound and energy, casting slivers of itself in every direction. The robes of the sorceress were slashed by the burning slivers, her pale skin cut in a dozen places. She dabbed a finger in the blood flowing from her cut cheek, for an instant her body flickering, assuming a different visage. Quickly, she reasserted her will and repaired the momentary dissipation of her protective wards.
The Blood Coven had been sent flying by the aethyric explosion. When the witches picked themselves up from the mire of blood, their bodies were scraped and bruised, the patina of sacrificial blood upon them crumbling into black ash with their every breath. The loathsome coating had preserved them against the worst of the attack, but it had drawn heavily upon their powers. They glared at Drusala as they wiped long locks of blood-matted hair from their faces.
‘Enough!’ Drusala shouted, slamming the butt of her staff against the earth. A sympathetic tremor rolled through the ground, causing the Blood Coven to stumble. ‘You have seen that my magic is greater than yours. Must I destroy you to prove it?’ She laughed, a tone of withering scorn. ‘I can afford to spare you because your sorcery is no threat to me. And now you know it!’
The witches continued to glare at the sorceress. ‘We know you too, Drusala. We know your devotion to Morathi. Whatever lies you’ve told Malekith, we know who you serve,’ the eldest of the witches snarled.
Drusala nodded. ‘You know much,’ she said. ‘But do you know enough? Do you know that Morathi is prepared to forgive your betrayal? Do you know she is prepared to welcome back her sisters? Think of it. You can slip away from the pious madness of Hellebron. You can return to the true sisterhood of sorcery.’
‘What if we prefer freedom?’ one of the witches demanded.
‘What if we have come to favour the Lord of Murder as He favours us?’ another asked.
The sorceress laughed. ‘Then you are fools,’ she declared. ‘Think! For all of your magic, even united, you could not oppose me. And I am but Morathi’s servant! How should you fare if the Queen herself were here? Do not be so foolish as to think she will be content to be exiled to Ghrond. She will stir herself when the time is right. When she does, she will know her loyal servants… and her enemies. The walls of Har Ganeth will not protect you when she does.’
A murmur swept through the Blood Coven. The three witches turned to one another, conversing without speaking, debating the things Drusala had said.
Drusala watched them with no small amount of misgiving. Their magic had been almost enough to destroy her. But for the hasty translocation spell she’d employed, their gruesome blood spear might have overwhelmed her. Certainly escaping such a fiendish evocation would have been arduous. Then there had been the ghastly survival of the witches against the malign ferocity of her own assault. Any sorceress in Naggaroth should have been obliterated, yet these renegades were merely bruised.
An offer of truce and a promise of rehabilitation hadn’t been in Drusala’s mind when she’d come here to confront the Blood Coven. Yet, as any druchii general knew, no plan remained intact after contact with the enemy. She felt she knew how they would decide. They had existed for too long in fear of Morathi. The chance to escape that fear was too great to let slip through their fingers now. They’d agree to Drusala’s proposal.
Malus and Tullaris would find it exceedingly difficult to act against Drusala now that their pet witches were under her control. She decided not to disillusion them, however. Let them think the Blood Coven was a resource they could draw upon. Their mistake would provide her with early warning of any plan they concocted.
That was if Malus Darkblade was even around to hatch any new plots after this night. Drusala rather hoped he would be. She had a bit too much invested in Malus to see him go to waste.
Darkness had settled over the compound in which the surviving Naggorites were held. Kunor Kunoll’s Son had shown unusual restraint following the vicious battle against the Ellyrian army. He’d only executed every third slave-soldier who tried to desert and escape into the hills. Barely a score of Naggorites had been impaled and set as a warning at the perimeters of the enclosure. As atrocities went, it was scarcely worth noting.
Of course, much of that restraint had to do with the attrition the Naggorites had suffered. From thousands of war-slaves, they had been bled into a force of only hundreds. Less than a twentieth of those who’d surrendered when Hag Graef defeated the black ark remained. Even Kunor recognised that the time would soon come when his slaves could no longer field a viable fighting force.
The sons of Naggor had sought noble death in battle, an end that might draw the attention of Khaine and Ereth Khial, a finish that might be worthy of the gods. To such an end they had suffered the indignities and cruelties heaped upon them by Kunor and his minions. They had forgotten their pride and sworn their service to their conqueror. At every turn, Malus had betrayed them, dispatching them not into battle, but into massacres. They weren’t deployed as warriors; they were used as fodder for the arrows and blades of the enemy. Even the illusion of a glorious death in combat was stripped away from them, left to rot alongside the butchered dead.
This last callous deployment against the Ellyrians had seen the slave-soldiers decimated by their fellow druchii, shot down without remorse alongside the asur. It was the final affront for those who survived.
Through the darkened camp, three shadows moved. Silently they stole past the rows of tents in which the surviving Naggorites slept. Only a few of the survivors knew the plot that was unfolding this night. They were the only ones in the enclosure who slept the sleep o
f the just and whose dreams were happy ones.
The time for action had come. Now, while they yet had the strength to strike, to avenge themselves upon the tyrant who had abused them so capriciously. One last act for the glory of Naggor! One last moment when the sons of the black ark could hold their heads high and remember the pride that had once been theirs.
Bragath Blyte ran his thumb along the back of the knife he carried. The blade itself had been anointed with hydra venom during the battle for the Eagle Gate, dipped into the poison gushing from the torn remains of Griselfang. Using secrets taught to him by the Witchguard, Brek Burok’s Son had preserved the envenomed blades, maintaining their potency throughout the long march across Ellyrion.
Bragath could feel the lethal power of the weapon he held. He could feel its strength flowing into him. Should he but reverse his grip, brush his finger along the edge itself, there would be an end to it all. No more doubt and fear, no more suffering. An instant of pain and it would all be over. To hold such power in his hand made his heart beat faster, made his chest swell and his stomach tighten. Death was in his hand and before the night was over, that death would sheathe itself in the breast of Malus Darkblade.
To kill the tyrant. The last act of defiance that was left to the Naggorites.
Three avengers, Brek Burok’s Son, Lorfal the Sly and Bragath himself. There’d been only enough venom to anoint three blades. The other members of their conspiracy had been compelled to remain behind. It would be up to these three to bring all their plans to fruition.
The complexity of the intrigue had been complex in itself. Bribes of treasure looted from fallen asur on the battlefield had bought the service of a wine steward of Hag Graef, an elf with his own grudge against Malus having found his entire household left behind in the exodus from Naggaroth. After their victory over the Ellyrian host, the druchii had celebrated far into the night. The bribed steward had ensured drugged skins of wine reached the people Bragath needed them to reach. He was only sorry the resources weren’t available to put something stronger in the wine.