‘Hekarti? What vanity has the queen of lies fallen into now?’
Tullaris was incredulous. The Mistress of Magic was one of the greatest of the elf pantheon. For Morathi to claim her mantle was an act of supreme arrogance. Only Malekith himself had ever dared to anoint himself the manifestation of a god, Khaine himself. And that had been a lie. Tullaris knew that for a fact, for the god had told him so.
‘She is Hekarti,’ said the sorceress. ‘Everything is changing, Tullaris. The gods walk the earth once more. Khaine and Asuryan will clash again, and the world will tremble. But the mythic cycles need not repeat, Tullaris. Khaine can best the phoenix. If he has the correct host, someone strong enough. Someone with a connection to Him…’
Tullaris turned this over in his mind. The implications were troubling, but the possibilities were undeniably enticing.
‘What is your offer, witch?’ he asked.
She turned away. ‘My mistress would have you take Hellebron’s place at the head of the cult. You will be anointed as Khaine and unite with Hekarti. Murder and magic will rule Naggaroth together.’
‘Malekith may have something to say about that.’
‘He will be dealt with,’ she said with a dismissive wave. ‘Plans are already in motion. Even now, the lord of Hag Graef is planning Malekith’s death.’
‘Darkblade?’ snorted Tullaris. ‘He will fail.’
‘Do not underestimate Malus Darkblade. There is more to him than is visible to the eye.’
‘Regardless, your offer is intriguing. You need me only to kill Hellebron?’
‘No. That is also being taken care of. We need you only to take her place.’
‘That was all I needed to know,’ said Tullaris, rising up and grabbing the sorceress by the throat.
I hurry as best I can, and eventually reach the main concourse. To my surprise, the great thoroughfare is empty. For weeks, the Chaos worshippers have been attacking it, drawn to the Shrine of Khaine, driven by their blood-soaked deity to try to defile the holy structure and install one of their champions on my throne.
The wide pathway is littered with bodies: elf, human and beastman. I drag my aching body around the corpses. Until now, I have stuck to the shadows, but there is no way to cross the street and not step into the light of the moons, one large and pale, the other small and casting a green glow across everything.
The shrine is within sight, a great edifice of crimson marble. In my haste to reach it, I fail to watch where I am going and I trip, stumble, fall. This time I do not make the mistake of putting out an arm and I land on the rotting corpse of one of my witch elves. Another weakling, to fall beneath the blade of a human or filthy halfbreed animal. Flies burst upwards and maggots writhe away from me.
And in front of me, the shadows coalesce into a figure. Female, young, clad in the colours of Ghrond.
‘Of course,’ I croak as I pull myself to my knees. ‘One of Morathi’s whelps. She is taking advantage of this situation to end our feud, then.’
It is a good plan. I wish I had thought of it first.
The sorceress kneels in front of me and pulls a short knife from her belt. It is inscribed with runes that dance along the blade. She looks me in the eye.
‘Everything is changing, and Morathi needs you disposed of. Your enmity no longer amuses her. She did bid me deliver a message before this knife slips into your heart, queen of hags.’
‘Oh, please just kill me and spare me her witless prattlings,’ I say.
Enraged, she punches me and knocks me sprawling. I reach out to push myself back up and my hand touches something cold. Something metal. Khaine has delivered me once more.
‘A great change is coming.’ The sorceress yammers on. ‘My mistress has seen it. Darkness is rising and the gods walk. Khaine will be made manifest and it will be Morathi, not Hellebron, who stands at his side.’ She grips the ritual dagger in both hands and plunges it downwards.
I roll, though it causes agony to course through my body, and stab upwards with the long knife that my witch elf once carried. I am rewarded with a pained scream. She slashes out wildly and cuts my leg, a long and deep gash. I stab again and blood splatters my face. I swallow and taste it, feel the power in it. I am invigorated and I surge upwards. The pain leaves me and a red mist descends. For a moment, I consider what some murmur, that Khaine and the bloody god the northerners worship are one and the same. I dismiss the thought as unworthy. We are not howling savages seeking skulls and gore. Though to see me now, you would not know it.
When the bloodlust lifts, I am atop a ruined mess that was once a sorceress.
I briefly regret that I did not have time to consecrate her death to Khaine.
The strength passes, and I fall. One-armed, blood streaming from a leg that is rapidly numbing around the cut – the knife was poisoned, I assume – I begin to pull myself towards my apotheosis.
Morathi’s sorceress started to gesture with her free hand, but Tullaris broke her wrist. Her yelp of pain cut off as he squeezed her neck even tighter.
‘You have sent assassins?’ he growled.
She nodded frantically, and he slackened his grip.
‘We are three,’ she rasped. ‘Morathi’s Drakirites. I was sent to you. My sisters will be already with the Hag–’
A loud crack cut off the sorceress’s words as Tullaris snapped her neck. He let the body drop to the ground. Around him, the shadows receded. A howl split the night, followed closely by another. Both came from the direction of Hellebron’s palace.
‘Drakirites,’ he murmured. ‘How theatrical.’ It was just like Morathi to name assassins after the goddess of revenge, grandiose and ridiculous. The threat they posed was quite real though. Right now, two of them stalked Hellebron in the darkness of her half-abandoned palace, and only Tullaris knew it.
His murder of her emissary wouldn’t change Morathi’s offer. All he had to do was let the witch’s sisters strike and he would be on the road to becoming one of the most powerful elves in Naggaroth. He looked up once again at the tower that split the sky and asked Khaine for guidance.
Finally, I have reached my master’s shrine. Normally, I would revel in the architecture that gives glory to Khaine, great statues of him and murals showing his deeds from the Wars of the Gods. But now I am weak. I am dying. I look behind me and see a trail of my own blood stretching back to the butchered corpse of the assassin. So much blood. My arm and hip blaze with agony and I can barely feel my legs. A further painstaking effort brings me to the Cauldron.
I roll over and look up at it, and beyond to the great vaulted ceiling, decorated with paintings of Tullaris’s Executioners and my witch elves. My gaze is drawn to the statue of Khaine that surmounts the Cauldron of Blood. It shows my lord clutching a dagger in one mighty hand and a heart in the other. It may as well be my heart that he carries, ready to plunge the weapon in. My death is certain now. Will he welcome me to his side, I wonder? Or will my weakness, allowing myself to be killed by a simple sorceress, ensure that I am forever damned?
I try to pull myself up the steps that lead to the Cauldron. I cannot. I try again. I will die trying. I will not give up. I laugh bitterly.
‘Seven thousand years, Seven thousand years in your service, and it comes to this? I die bleeding my last on the floor of your shrine, inches from salvation?’
I close my eyes. When I open them again, it is fully dark around me. Did I fall asleep? No, with the blood I have lost, had I succumbed to unconsciousness, I would not have awakened. What then?
The shadows move and I understand. They coalesce, whirling into a elven form. Another assassin. Of course, Morathi would not just send one. She looks exactly the same as the other. I would think she had returned to life, were she not a lump of ruined meat a hundred feet away.
‘I am without weapon,’ I whisper. ‘Without hope. I am at your mercy. Not that I expect any.’
‘Would you show any, were our situations reversed?’ Her voice is soft.
‘No,’ I confess. ‘You would be dead already, or in much pain.’
‘Well, be glad I am not you, Hellebron. I am not going to kill you. I must deliver a message. You need to live. You need to thwart Morathi’s plans. She is mad, she–’
She is cut off, metaphorically and literally, as her head parts from her shoulders and rolls out of my line of vision. Her body stands for a second, then falls to the side and reveals the form of an Executioner, draich raised. But this is not any draich, and not any Executioner.
‘Tullaris,’ I say weakly. ‘The Cauldron…’
He says nothing. He doesn’t move. He gazes down at me, the First Draich still raised. Slowly, he pulls off his skull-helm and in his eyes is a murder-gleam. I have seen it there many times, but never has it been directed towards me.
For the first time in a long time, I know fear. And for the first time ever, I acknowledge that I need Tullaris Dreadbringer. That I love him. It is my greatest weakness. To love another, to need them, is to make yourself vulnerable to them. And I am now more vulnerable than I have ever been.
For a long moment we remain like that, and I am sure that I am going to die at the hands of my champion. My… love. Then the moment is over. He drops his weapon and kneels. He lifts me, and I sink into his arms, and allow myself to drift into unconsciousness. The last thing I feel is my body being immersed in the blood of Khaine’s great Cauldron.