Sword of Caledor

Sword of Caledor - By William King


PROLOGUE





Morathi, queen of the elves of Naggaroth, watched the tidal wave of flesh thunder towards her. Hundreds of thousands of feral warriors emerged out of the grim, grey wasteland, mounted on horses, drawn on chariots, carried by monsters, borne by their own booted feet. Enormous plumes of contaminated dust rose in their wake. Savage, sinister chants boomed out, audible even over the thunder of hooves and the turning of iron-bound wheels.

The onrushing horde bore the marks of Chaos on their skin: the stigmata of mutation, the tattooed runes of evil magic. The banners of the Dark Gods fluttered in the chill wind that blew out from the uttermost north.

Morathi moistened her lips with her tongue. Her spell of far-seeing allowed her to make out the smallest details if she focussed on them: the rings that pierced warped flesh, the blood that caked the spikes of black armour, the unholy fanaticism that glittered in every eye.

How many times had she seen their like before, she wondered? How often had she encountered the followers of the Dark Gods since that first time more than six thousand years before? Her own legion trembled. They feared for their lives and rightly so. Compared to these deadly newcomers they were a flock of lambs in the path of a pack of wolves.

She strode to the front of her force and stood beneath her unfurled banner. She raised one delicate and lovely fist in the air. Her musicians struck up. Trumpets sounded. Braziers were lit. Narcotic incense drifted on the wind.

Her followers slowly deployed in the cold desert, a carnival procession in the midst of a slag-strewn wasteland. There were thousands of them, selected for their beauty and their erotic skills and their ability to endure the caresses of even the most repellent with a smile. Hers was not an army that could conquer anyone in battle nor was it expected to. Her son had legions of warriors who could kill and slaughter. This army would triumph in another way.

It was just as well she was not expecting these pampered pets to fight, she thought. Most of these beautiful girls and boys could not hold a blade properly. Their talents ran in other directions, just as hers did. The difference between her and them was that she could do battle if she needed to and would if the necessity arose.

She had fought beside Aenarion in the days of her youth, killing daemons, slaughtering the enemies of her people with wild abandon. She had cast spells and brewed poisons and worked out battle strategies for his armies. She had used her gift of visions to grant the elves victories innumerable.

The so-called high elves had forgotten that now, preferring to cast her as the villain in the simple-minded morality plays they so enjoyed since her son had sundered the realm. They had no idea what it had cost to win those battles back when all thought the world was ending, or the price she had paid for victory.

Still, she felt no need to crow about those millennia-gone triumphs. She preferred to live in the moment. All across the world, she was known, feared and desired. Her reach was long, longer even than her son’s and quite as strong in its way.

Malekith would learn to appreciate her again. He always did. At the moment, he was going through one of his independent phases, but he would learn soon enough that his followers were unreliable. At the end of the day, they were elven nobles and one of the things that made them so was the secret belief that they owed allegiance to none but themselves, and that no one was better or cleverer or stronger than they.

It was ironic. Out of the whole self-satisfied race, only one really had been so unique, and Aenarion had not needed to prove it or boast about it. He had been respected, loved and feared as their son tried so hard to be and never would.

Poor Aenarion. He would have been more than seven thousand years old today if he had lived, but he had turned down the immortality she had offered him to walk his own fatal path. It was one of those things that had made her hate him as well as love him.

She glanced at the dreary land around her once again and the huge army of deformed barbarians moving towards her. She would need to act soon but she felt a strange lassitude. She let her thoughts drift back to her first husband. She could still picture him all too easily, tall and mighty, with his strange, sad eyes and that terrible blade glowing on his hip.

Better to be ashes than dust he always said, and yet in the end there had been no hero’s pyre for him. He had walked into the fire and it had rejected him. Now his bones were dust that mingled with that of the millions his sword had killed. No one even knew where he had fallen in the end. She had looked many times and she had never found him.

They said that Tethlis the Slayer had found his broken armour but there had been nothing in it. She could not believe that he had rotted away. She did not like to think about it either. She preferred to remember him as he had been, brutal and beautiful and burning like the sun. There had never been another elf like him and she did not know whether that made her sad or grateful.

Poor Malekith, she thought. Her son had tried so hard to be like his lost father but he had never managed it. Malekith had his own cold genius, and he could make himself feared but never loved. He was stronger in some ways than Aenarion and certainly cleverer, but he lacked the fire that had made Aenarion what he was. He built empires as monuments to his desire to impress his absent father, a goal that defeated him even when he succeeded.

Aenarion was not there to be impressed and his achievements could not be matched. Malekith did not even understand why. Aenarion was safely dead. The elves could project onto him their own idealised image of themselves and there was no awkward living being to contradict them with his inconvenient goals and desires.

She sometimes wondered whether that was his appeal to her too. Their love, if love it had been, had not had time to grow stale, for her to learn to hate and despise him. She pushed that thought aside, not wanting to consider it.

No, Aenarion was the one the elves would always remember, their first Phoenix King, the warrior demigod who had saved them from certain doom.

Except, of course, that he had not.

He won every battle and yet he would still have lost that ancient war, had it not been for his so-called friend, the Archmage Caledor Dragontamer. Caledor had been the architect of the spell that had finally driven the daemons away and stabilised Ulthuan, keeping its quake-ravaged lands from sinking below the sea.

The elves choose to remember only the great battle and the heroism of Aenarion as he fought to protect you during those final hours, but it was you that saved the world, wasn’t it Caledor? You built the spell that drained magic from the world and sent the daemons back to hell.

The Chaos army had noticed her now, as she had intended that they do. Even at this range, she could hear the bellowed threats and promises. They were so lacking in originality that she could not even muster any contempt. The worshippers of the Dark Gods were ultimately so banal that she struggled to keep her attention focused.

It seemed to be a day to remember ancient times so she gave in to the desire. She thought about Caledor. With his gaunt features, his high balding forehead so unusual in an elf, his eyes cold and blue as a glacier in the Mountains of Frost, the master wizard had been as memorable as Aenarion. Perhaps he would have been a better tool than Aenarion. But no – he was too cold to be manipulated and far too clever, and she could not have loved him as she had loved Aenarion. Caledor was no hero.

And yet in his calm, calculating way he had been as terrifyingly brave as her husband. In the end, he and his fellow archmages had laid down their lives to make their great spell work, knowing that it would bring them only death and worse. Their ghosts were trapped to this day, frozen in the eternal amber of the moment they had died by the power of the spell they had woven.

Are you out there now, old ghost? Can you see me? Do you understand what I do and do you shiver at the thought? For millennia you have woven and re-woven your ancient fraying spell, and for millennia I have tried to unravel it. The day is fast approaching when I will succeed and this world will change forever.

She felt her age sometimes. She had lived long enough to see the shape of continents change, to watch the great rivers of ice advance and retreat, grinding mountains down as they went. She had watched nations rise and fall. There had been times when she had given them a push. It kept her amused.

She was perhaps the oldest living being in the world. Only the gods were older and they did not dwell in this place as she did and were not bound to it as she was.

All of those around her were moving shadows, alive for a few flickering moments and then gone. How many were there now who remembered the days of ancient glory? Herself, her son, a few daemons and the mad ghosts who guarded creation from destruction and rebirth.

It was a shadow-play but it afforded her some entertainment as she waited for the end of the world. She still pursued her pleasures as relentlessly as her son pursued his dreams of empire.

It had all seemed so different when she was young. Then the world had been bright. The shadow of Chaos had not yet fallen on the land. The elves had been at peace. It had been disgustingly boring but she was too stupid and naive to know it.

Or at least she had been until the visions came.

They had been her gift from her eleventh year, tormenting her with glimpses of the apocalypse to come. She had seen the dark, daemon-haunted future and no one had believed her. She was a prophetess whose gift it was to see and yet not be heard. Or so it had seemed back then.

The elves had not believed her visions of destruction because they could not believe her. Their lives had been so sheltered during the long golden reign of the first Everqueen that they had no idea of just how dreadful the world could be.

She had told them and they had not listened, simply because they were incapable of understanding. They were cattle grazing in summer fields, unwilling to believe in slaughterhouses because they had not yet been inside of one. The sun was shining, the grass was tender, and their alien masters looked after them and fed them well.

Long before the other elves had learned what the world was really like, she had known. She had seen the coming bloodbath and she had tried to warn them.

And no one had believed her.

Sometimes that thought could still outrage her. Mostly now it just amused her.

She had tried everything to get their attention. She had prophesied, she had seduced, she had used her great beauty to get the attention of princes, of the Everqueen herself. No one had taken her warnings seriously, because they had not wanted to. Their world was golden and it was ending and they had wilfully blinded themselves to its coming destruction. They had been taken by surprise when the daemons of Chaos came and the Old Ones had fled or been destroyed.

None of the people who had refused to believe her were alive now and she was. She would live forever and she would remake this world in her own image. The day would soon be here when she was a goddess and these barbarians would help her bring that dawn.

The huge metallic arm of a daemon-forged siege engine sent an enormous boulder arcing towards her. The rock hit the ground a hundred strides ahead of where she stood, bounced forward and came to rest not too far from her feet. It was close enough so that she could see the cursed runes scratched on it. Behind her, her legion moaned with anticipatory terror. She knew they only stood their ground because she did.

They were among those who worshipped her and adored her as something like divine. But that was not what she wanted. She did not wish merely for the empty gratification of her ego, although she enjoyed it. She desired the real, actual power of a god and she knew how to get it. All she had to do was destroy Caledor’s masterwork, the Vortex.

Her visions had shown her that too. In the beginning, the knowledge had horrified her. She had thought that daemons sent them. She thought what she saw was evil beyond imagining, but over the long lonely years she had come to see the power of the daemons as well as their horror. She had realised that they too could be manipulated and used and bound to her will.

Knowing the end was coming, she had prepared for it. She had sought out all manner of forbidden knowledge. She had made pacts with the enemies of her people while the sun still shone and the invasion was merely the tiniest cloud on the horizon. If her folk would not help themselves, the best she could do was ensure her own survival.

It was strange how in all of those tormenting visions she had never seen Aenarion. Perhaps if she had, things might have been different. She might have been different. But she had already walked a long way down a dark road when she met him and it was far too late to turn back, even if she had really wanted to.

He was famous then and mighty beyond all others, a grim, mortal god with haunted eyes. He had believed in her visions too. It was easy then, for they had all come true. And oddest of all, he had not wanted her. He did not abase himself before her beauty. He looked at her and saw just another elf woman.

His indifference had been a gauntlet thrown in her face, a challenge she could not back away from. She had set herself to win him, to woo him from his grief, to bring him over to her cause. And the oddest alchemy of all had been the trick fate had played on her. In pretending love, she had discovered the real thing. In trying to snare him, she had snared only herself.

She laughed at the irony of it. The sweet malice of her voice attracted the attention of her followers. She smiled at them, enjoying the fact that they did not understand, taking pleasure in their pleasure at the sight of her. They thought she was laughing at the oncoming horde, and it heartened them.

She had won Aenarion over in the end, but he had never loved her as she loved him. He was not capable of it. His dead Everqueen and his lost children filled his heart with gall. He was too lost in his own black grief and his dark desire for revenge. It had consumed him in the end. It had threatened to consume the world.

The barbarians laughed now too at the sight of the force they thought opposed them. Their laughter was bright, mad and cruel and it sounded so like the mirth that echoed through the towers of Naggarond that it was chilling. These humans had much in common with the elves of Naggaroth. Their Dark Gods had taught them well.

Briefly she considered the fact that she might die here, that her visions might be wrong, that the lords of Chaos might for their own reasons have decided to stamp on her face and end her immortal existence.

Part of her would honestly have welcomed it. She was sometimes weary unto death of the ways of this world, and longed to see what might wait on the other side of death’s dark doorway. Unfortunately, she had a good idea of what waited for her and those like her. In the endless night of the Realm of Chaos, the daemon lords lusted to devour the souls of her people. She would make a particularly tasty morsel for them, a soul fattened on millennia of sin. No, she was not keen to undergo that ultimate experience just yet.

She called for her mount. It was led to her by nervous grooms, a coal-black, burning-eyed hell-steed with enormous folded wings. Mist emerged from its nostrils, suggestive of the poisonous gas vented by the chasms of this unwelcoming place. It greeted her, eyes blazing with lust and hatred and a curious, twisted love. She stroked its cheek and it whinnied with pleasure from the spells woven into her hands. She vaulted onto its back and rode towards the Chaos horde, her mount becoming airborne after a dozen strides.

She heard her own followers gasp in wonder and fear. Perhaps they thought she was abandoning them to their fate and, for a moment, her malicious elven mind considered it, but she was too wise to do so merely to gratify a whim of the moment. Instead she soared above the oncoming tide of warriors, allowing them to view her half-naked form and luxuriate in the aura of unbridled, wanton lust that she projected. Ancient spells amplified the effects of her matchless beauty. All who looked on her groaned with desire.

She landed her steed defiantly in front of the chieftains of the horde, touching her heels to its flanks so that it reared and whinnied. A dozen brutal faces inspected her, a dozen muscular, mutated bodies stiffened with lust.

She paused for a moment to let them examine her as she examined them. They were powerful but primitive and they were already responding, although they did not know it, to the ancient sorceries surrounding her. She smiled at them and they smiled back and licked their lips, and she knew that in that moment, she had them in the palm of her hand.

She dismounted, showing no fear, and strode towards them, and they waited expectantly to hear what she had to say, as they would have if a messenger from their Dark Gods had descended in their midst. It was a role she was perfectly suited to play. She carried herself with the imperiousness of one who had ruled for nearly seven millennia and who expected homage as her right.

She had much to offer them, and they to offer her, and she was sure that a pact could be made with them. She would divert them from their drift southward into the lands of Men and offer them a much more tempting prize, the island-continent of Ulthuan. Her son saw it as part of a plan to put him back on his rightful throne, which it was, but she had reasons of her own as well.

The end of time was coming. She would begin the unmaking of the world soon, as a necessary prelude to its reshaping. The time of her ascension was close. Soon the daemons would return and the time of mortals would be at an end. New gods would be born. She intended to make sure that she was one of them.



In a cold cavern chamber beneath his freezing winter citadel, hidden even from the eyes of his mother’s sorcerous spies, Malekith the Great, Witch King of Naggaroth, prepared to perform the ritual that would make him master of first a continent and then the world. Frozen spikes of ice sheathed the stalactites surrounding him. Their cold gave him some relief from the divine fires that burned eternally and agonisingly within his flesh.

The whimpering of terrified virgin slaves did not disturb him any more than the icy chill. He had long ago ceased to let trivial things interfere with his concentration. He was about to seize control of the destiny of millions and he would not allow himself to be distracted by the mewling of the worthless. By casting one monstrous spell and binding one dreadful being to his will, he would alter the fate of kingdoms.

A girl looked at him. Tears ran down her face. She was frightened and alone. Malekith knew that the appearance of his gigantic metal-sheathed figure terrified her. He spoke a spell of calming and the fear disappeared to be replaced by a numb smile.

Malekith felt no sympathy but he had no desire to be needlessly cruel either. He was not like his mother or those of his drugged, deranged, self-indulgent subjects who feasted on the pain of others. He was merely doing what was needed to ensure that right prevailed. He would take the throne of Ulthuan in accordance with his father’s command and his own desires.

He raised one huge armoured hand before his face and studied it through the visor of his helmet. Hotek, that renegade priest of Vaul, had done his blasphemous work well. The ancient runes inscribed millennia ago in the aftermath of his greatest failure glowed with power. Caledor Dragontamer’s jealous disciple had forged this armour in the wake of Malekith’s attempt to pass through the Flame of Asuryan. Malekith had ordered him to wield the hammer despite the agony that had almost crippled him with every blow. It had kept him alive ever since.

He told himself he barely felt the pain any more. It was merely the reality in which he lived, as water was to a shark. There had been a time when his scorched flesh had both pained and humiliated him, a badge of the rejection of the gods who had refused to acknowledge him as great as his father, a symbol of his failure and weakness. Over the centuries the fire in his flesh had burned down and his own control had grown greater.

Even during the worst of times he had not let it stop him. He had learned from his mistakes. He had emerged from the period of agony and despair stronger than ever. The armour had hidden his scorched flesh from the view of his enemies and made him more potent than any living being before or since.

Before you can rule others, you must first rule yourself. That was the maxim he lived by.

He had lived for millennia and every passing year had added to his power and to his knowledge. He had studied his mother’s secret grimoires until he was more proficient in sorcery than she. He had outlived the generals who had defeated him in the long gone ages of the world.

As ruthless with himself as with his subjects, he had learned from his errors and drawn strength from his mistakes. No one would ever or had ever beaten him the same way twice. He was still here when his ancient opponents were in their graves. Despite the pain, despite the losses, despite a black despair that would have driven lesser beings to seek eternal oblivion, he endured.

He had toppled kingdoms and reshaped the world. He had lived longer and done more than his father, Aenarion, ever had. He would yet re-unify the kingdom that the treachery of his enemies had denied him. One day soon, all elves would bend the knee before him and acknowledge the righteousness of his rule. Then he would lead them into a new age of glory. They would subjugate the kingdoms of men and throw back the powers of Chaos and a new golden age would begin. All of them would see that they had been wrong.

And it started now.

Glory would be purchased by the suffering of these few slaves. They ought to be grateful to him. Without him they would have lived out their meaningless, insect lives. At the cost of a few of the years that would have swiftly passed anyway, they were being allowed to participate in the creation of a new world order. He pushed the thoughts away. They smacked of needless self-justification, of moral weakness. He was who he was. What he did was right. He need justify himself to no one.

He studied his handiwork with some satisfaction. He had carved the altar to the ritual specifications with his own hands. For six years he had sanctified it with blood and souls. He had forged the black iron sacrificial knife, tempering the blade by passing it through the body of a still living hero six times. He had inscribed the symbols of Slaanesh and his six favoured princes over the period of six moons.

He had prepared the chains from an alloy of truesilver and black iron and inscribed them with runes older than the world. At their centre was a gem so potently ensorcelled that it could entrap the soul of a daemon prince. The finding of that gem and the binding spells it contained was an epic in itself which would one day be recounted across his empire.

Everything was ready. It was time to begin.

He spoke the words he had memorised from the great grimoire and gestured for the first of the slaves to advance to the altar. She tried to refuse but his will bound her to obey. Slowly, one step at a time, as if pulled by overwhelming magnetic force, she advanced up the basalt steps and bowed her head before the altar.

A slash of the knife opened her jugular. Blood spurted into the font. He threw the flopping carcass to one side and summoned the next with a gesture of his armoured hands. The whimpering went on but his will was strong. He would allow himself no weakness. One by one he sent their souls out into the void through the gap in reality his spell had created. They were his messengers to the dreadful being he intended to summon. Their very presence was part of the message.

As the ritual built to its climax, his words took on a strange sibilant resonance, as if they echoed through unseen chasms in the unhallowed places beyond. Somewhere far off, in a darkness so deep it could swallow worlds, something responded.



In a place that was not a place, in a time that lay outside time, N’Kari, Keeper of Secrets, great among daemons, felt the faint irritating tug of a summoning spell.

At first he ignored it. That a being should be foolish enough to draw his attention piqued his curiosity, but not very much. The realms of mortals were full of those who sought to barter their puny souls for the benefits they thought daemons could provide. Sometimes, when he was bored, N’Kari allowed himself to be called and then destroyed those who sought to bend him to their will. Sometimes he granted their wishes and allowed them to destroy themselves, just so he could have the amusement of watching.

There was something about the being making this summons though – something that nagged at N’Kari’s vast store of memories and set them to swirling, the way a scent of some half-remembered perfume makes an old rake remember the fleshpots of his youth.

Yes, something familiar indeed.

In this place that was not a place, in this time that was not a time, N’Kari’s mind worked in a different way than it would have had he been bound to the chronal flow of mortal reality. He remembered many things simultaneously, sometimes as vividly as if he were actually experiencing them, sometimes as if they were as remote as the birth of the universe. This summons triggered a fugue of memories and images.

It reminded him of the mortal god Aenarion, and his descendants whom N’Kari had once tried so hard to kill. And there was about it a faint, frightening taint of the Flame of Asuryan, the god-thing that was numbered among N’Kari’s greatest enemies.

N’Kari was curious now as he suspected he was intended to be.

More virgin souls were offered up to him, slain in exactly the correct ritual manner to please him. It was nice that the proprieties were being observed. Languidly, he extended a tentacle of thought towards the gap in reality from which the summons had come. He forced a small portion of his mighty essence through the portal, and allowed it to take shape according to the whims and expectations of the summoner.

In that moment, mortal reality crashed in on him. He found himself trapped within a sorcerer’s circle in the dank underground depths beneath some cold northern castle. An armoured figure as monstrous as any daemon loomed before him.

He was pleased. This was going to prove more interesting than he had anticipated.



Slowly a shape arose out of the pool of blood in the font of the altar. It was a beautiful woman made of congealed red plasma, snakes of hair swirling from her impossibly lovely head. She beckoned at Malekith in a lascivious, enticing way. Her hips swayed sinuously in a way that promised great pleasure.

The Witch King was not even tempted. The wards on his armour neutralised the potent spells of intoxication. His destroyed olfactory nerves were insensitive to the narcotic musk. Seeing that this strategy was not working, the daemon changed tactics and shape, becoming something monstrous and four-armed and clawed. The blood congealed and hardened into a glistening carapace. The hands extended into talons and claws. The skull became horse-like, the teeth great tusks and fangs.

This was more like its true shape, Malekith thought, if a greater daemon could be said to have any such thing.

‘N’Kari, I name you and bind you,’ Malekith said. He spoke the ancient words of the ritual. The daemon resisted them. It was enormously strong, far more powerful than anything he had ever bound before. For a moment, and a moment only, the possibility that he might have encountered something too powerful for even his mighty will to dominate entered Malekith’s mind.

‘It is not so simple, little mortal,’ said the daemon in a voice at once beautiful and terrifying. ‘I am no mere daemonling to be bound by a passing sorcerer.’

‘And I am no mere mage, hell-spawn. I am Aenarion’s heir and Witch King. And you will do my bidding.’ The air between them crackled with the force of their conflict

‘Aenarion. That is a name you should not have mentioned,’ N’Kari said. ‘You shall pay for your presumption.’

‘I know you hate him and all his descendants, but I have summoned you to offer you a chance of vengeance.’

The daemon paused for a moment. ‘Revenge I shall have. Starting with you.’

‘That is not possible,’ said Malekith, not letting any of the strain that he felt show in his voice. ‘But I will let you drink the blood of those who humiliated you a century ago. I will let you have all of the others who claim descent from Aenarion.’

‘I can take my own vengeance,’ said N’Kari.

‘No, you cannot,’ said Malekith. ‘I have wound you round with spells that prevent you from returning whence you came. And while this avatar is trapped here, you cannot bring another into this world. I can keep you here until the end of time if I so desire and vengeance will never be yours.’

The daemon raged against the ever-tightening web of spells constraining it but they held. N’Kari was trapped within. His appearance changed again, becoming that of a seductive female elf. Its voice was the very essence of reasonableness.

‘State your terms,’ it said.



N’Kari considered the Witch King. As mortals went, he was impressive. His massive armoured figure radiated power and not unjustified confidence. The spells he had woven were well-constructed, a trap that it might take N’Kari millennia to escape from.

He had already spent too much time in this pathetic place bound into the Vortex. In mortal form, ennui would press as heavily on him as any other resident of this time and space. He felt sure that he could free himself eventually, but it might be easier to appear to give the mortal what he wanted. He was also sure that, in the long run, he would find a way to turn the tables on the arrogant fool. He always did.

‘State your terms,’ N’Kari said. The Witch King laughed triumphantly. Laugh away little mortal, N’Kari thought. I will have the last laugh.

‘Extend your arm,’ said the Witch King. N’Kari complied. Perhaps his foe would be foolish enough to break the magic circle binding him… Bracelets and chains snapped into place. The most powerful binding spell N’Kari had ever experienced snapped into place with them.

‘Now you truly are my servant,’ said Malekith, unable to keep the satisfaction from his voice.

N’Kari wanted to howl with rage, but the spells binding him would not even allow him that.



The dark elf assassin known as Urian Poisonblade and Prince Iltharis and dozens of other names looked across the carved table at the beautiful woman he was going to kill and smiled. She smiled back. Her glance moved from the table to the sleeping silks that filled the remainder of this small intimate tent. Outside throngs moved through the tent city that was the capital of the Everqueen. Inside spells kept all noise at bay. They could have been alone in the wild woods of Avelorn and not surrounded by her subjects.

It was a pity, he thought. She really was lovely and he liked her, and none of that emotion was caused by the aura of compulsive magic that surrounded her. It could not be. Centuries ago the Witch King of Naggaroth had wound him round with spells that made him immune to such sorceries.

As with Morathi, the Everqueen had great natural beauty and great natural charm and these were only amplified and enhanced by her magic, not a product of them. She was every bit as good-natured as she seemed and she looked genuinely interested in him as a person. Unlike some mighty personages he had encountered, she was not just acting the part.

If it had been up to him she could have lived out her natural span of days in peace. But, as always, it was not his decision, it was the Witch King’s. He felt sure that he was only one small link in a very long chain of plans and conspiracies his master had woven.

Urian was only Malekith’s tool in this matter as he was in so many others. Malekith had made him, had raised him up and could knock him down again. And if the woman sitting opposite him had been aware of his true history she would be calling for her guards right now.

Briefly he wondered why the Witch King was having the Everqueen killed now. She would simply be replaced by her daughter who was kept in a secure place far distant from the court, like all of an Everqueen’s daughters. The elves had learned long ago from the loss of Aenarion’s children by the first Everqueen. Never again would their royal family be assembled in one place, able to be killed in one fell swoop, or saved only by an accident so unlikely it smacked of divine intervention.

Doubtless timing had something to do with it. Or perhaps Malekith had found the Everqueen’s daughter and other assassins were even now at work…

‘You look very thoughtful, Prince Iltharis,’ the Everqueen said, reaching out to touch his hand in a most intimate manner. ‘Are you contemplating some deep matter of ancient history once again?’

Urian smiled. She thought of him only as a scholar and a formidable duellist, one of the many glittering talents who visited her court. He had made his reputation as a student of the history of the line of Aenarion, to which she was not the least ornament. It was a cover story that he had actually enjoyed living and which he was going to miss once he had shucked it off. That was assuming he was still alive after this evening, which was not exactly a certainty.

‘As a matter of fact, I was, your serenity,’ he said. It was true in a way too. The grudge Malekith bore against the Everqueen was a very ancient one. They were of the same family, and she had what Malekith had always desired, the love and respect of the elves of Ulthuan. It was as much for this as for political and strategic reasons she had to die. The envy and malice of his master were boundless when aroused, as Urian had more cause than almost anyone to understand.

‘It is ever the problem with true scholars that they are so easily distracted. You were telling me of the time when you worked out the plans of the daemon N’Kari, who planned to exterminate all of the line of Aenarion, including myself, a century ago.’

‘Mine was only a minor contribution. I saw the pattern in the apparently random destruction it had wrought, but it was mostly luck. I had talked with many of those who it killed, as part of my researches.’

‘You are too modest, Prince Iltharis.’

‘Alas, that is not something I have ever been much accused of your serenity. I doubt even my worst enemy would say that of me.’

She laughed, a silvery sound. He enjoyed it, as he always had. His pleasure was given a certain piquancy by the fact that he knew he would never hear the sound again after this evening.

‘And how is your new work coming?’ she asked.

‘Slowly, as these things always do. I have a great deal of research to go through before I even commit pen to vellum. That is why I am here. To consult the scholars of your court.’ He stroked her hand in return. ‘As well as to enjoy the boon of your company, of course.’

Urian lived his cover to the fullest, even though he knew he would not have any use for it much longer. Several centuries of deception were coming to an end. He was almost sorry. Soon he would be leaving Ulthuan forever and returning in secret triumph to Naggaroth to claim the rewards of his long covert service to Malekith’s interests.

It was strange – he was more at home now in the land of his enemies than he was in his ancestral home. He wondered what it would be like to go back to his estates finally and forever. Never to have to look upon this place again.

He knew he should be filled with nothing but contempt for the high elves, but he was not. He had found a great deal to respect in Ulthuan and over the long years, a great deal he would miss. Still his life was not his own. It never really had been since he entered Malekith’s service. The Witch King had taken a pit fighter from an impoverished ancient line and made him into the deadliest assassin in the world. He really ought to be grateful for that, but he wasn’t any more.

He leaned forward to pour more wine. As he did so, he allowed the powder he had palmed to drop from his hand. It was dragonspike, a poison inevitably fatal to mages, its effects stronger the more magical power they possessed, and the Everqueen had a very great deal indeed. He would soon find out if the poison were potent enough to kill an avatar of godhead. According to legend it was, but legends were notoriously unreliable.

It would slow her breathing and destroy her nerves and stop her heart. It could be found only in the forbidden jungles of the lost continent of Lustria, and it had no effect whatsoever on those not possessed of magical power. Urian sipped his own wine. The taste was not in the slightest impaired.

The Everqueen’s hand hovered over her own goblet. He wondered for a moment whether she had seen him, whether she suspected what was happening here. Part of him rather hoped that she did. He was surprised by that. He was not usually sympathetic to his victims. He kept the smile pinned to his face and waited to see what she would do.

She raised her glass to him, and then put it to her lips. ‘Your health, Prince Iltharis. May you live a thousand years.’

‘And you, your serenity.’ The queen drank. Her eyes widened. The glass dropped from her hands.

Urian rose from the cushions on which he rested and shouted with genuine concern. ‘Come quickly. Her serenity has been taken ill.’

Urian was possessed by a sudden sense that a war that would shatter the world had just begun and that he had played a vital part in starting it.