Malekith came to a wide, flat expanse near to the centre of the Blighted Isle. Here jagged black rocks veined with lines of red thrust up into the ruddy skies like a circle of columns. The ground within was as flat as glass and black as midnight. At the centre there stood a block of red-veined rock and something only partly visible shimmered above it. This was clearly the Shrine of Khaine, but as Malekith looked around he could see no sign of his father’s resting place nor any remains of Indraugnir. They must have come here, for Aenarion had returned the Sword of Khaine to the very altar close to which Malekith now stood.
Even as his thoughts touched upon the Godslayer, there came to Malekith’s ears a distant noise: a faint screaming. Now that it had attracted his attention, the prince looked at the Altar of Khaine more closely. As he did so, the sounds around him intensified. The screams of agony were joined by howls of horror. The ring of metal on metal, of fighting, echoed around the shrine. Malekith heard a thunderous heart beating, and thought he saw knives carving wounds upon flesh and limbs torn from bodies on the edge of his vision.
The red veins of the altar were not rock at all, but pulsed like arteries, blood flowing from the altar stone in spurting rivers of gore. He realised that the beating heart was his own, and it hammered in his chest like a swordsmith working at an anvil.
A keening sound, like a note sung by a sword’s edge as it cuts the air, rang in Malekith’s ears. It was not unpleasant, and he listened to it for a while, drawn by its siren call to take step after step closer to the altar. Finally, the prince of Nagarythe stood transfixed before that bloody shrine just as his father Aenarion had been.
The thing embedded in the rock shimmered before Malekith’s eyes, a blur of axe and sword and spear. Finally a single image emerged, of a bulbous mace studded with gems. Malekith was confused, for this was no weapon, but rather reminded him of the ornamental sceptres often carried by other princes. It seemed very similar to the one borne by Bel Shanaar when he had visited the colonies.
It was then that the meaning came to Malekith. All of Ulthuan would be his weapon. Unlike his father, he needed neither sword nor spear to destroy his foes. He would have the armies of an entire nation in his grasp, and would wield them however he pleased. If he but took up Khaine’s sceptre, there would be none that could oppose him. Like a vision, the future unfolded before Malekith.
He would return to Ulthuan and go to Tor Anroc, and there cast down the gates of the Phoenix King. He would offer up the body of Bel Shanaar to Khaine and become undisputed ruler of the elves. He would reign for eternity as the bloody right hand of the God of Murder. Death would stalk in his shadow as he brought ruination to the empire of the dwarfs, for such was the power of the elves that they need not share the world with any other creature. Beastmen were put to the sword by their thousands, and the carcasses of orcs and goblins spitted upon poles lined the roads of his empire for hundreds of miles.
Malekith laughed as he saw the rude villages of humans being put to the torch, their menfolk tossed onto pyres, their women with their hearts ripped out, whole families with their heads dashed in upon the bloodied rocks. Like an unstoppable tide, the elves would conquer all that lay before them, until Malekith presided over an empire that covered the entire globe and the fumes of the sacrificial fires blotted out the sun. Malekith was carried forwards on a giant palanquin made from the bones of his vanquished enemies, a river of blood pouring out before him.
‘No!’ cried Malekith, breaking his gaze from the sceptre and hurling himself face-first to the rocky ground.
He lay there for a long while, eyes screwed shut, his heart pounding, his breathing ragged and heavy. Slowly he calmed himself, and opened an eye. There seemed to be nothing amiss. There was no blood or fire. There was nothing but silent rock and the hiss of the wind.
The last rays of the day bathed the shrine in orange, and Malekith pushed himself to his feet and staggered from the circle, not daring to look back at the altar. Knowing that his father would not be found, Malekith gathered his senses as best he could and made for the boat, never once looking back.
Twenty-One
The Battle of the Blighted Isle
The Blighted Isle was a battle-ravaged boneyard. For five millennia the druchii and asur had contested control of the island, neither willing to sacrifice their hold on the Widowmaker’s resting place. Even before Nagash’s spell the dead had never rested easily here, their spirits taken by Khaine, denied their eternal rest in Mirai. Now those dead were silent, the magical wind that had sustained them stilled by the return of the Great Necromancer. The bones of five thousand years lay knee-deep in places, the corpses of the last years’ skirmishes still fresh on top of the charnel pile.
The white was splashed crimson with the blood of those now selling their lives for possession of the shrine, and great must have been Khaine’s mirth at the carnage being wrought to deny his return to the world. Elves foundered through the bone-drifts, cracking bleached ribs underfoot while hydras and griffons snapped vertebrae and crushed skulls. Companies of spears crashed together, wading through mires of blood and rotting flesh, the scene made all the more grisly by the crimson storm that continued to pour from the black clouds overhead.
Desire and desperation found equal purpose in Malekith’s heart and he fought with a fervour and strength he had not possessed for many an age. Not since the battles of his first war for Ulthuan had he known such spectacle and the pivot of history was swinging in his favour. If he prevailed this day all of Ulthuan would be his, as it should have been so many centuries before.
The knights of Tor Gavel could not match him. Urithain was a blur in his hand, cutting and slashing, severing griffon wings and princes’ heads with equal abandon. Malekith trusted to the armour of midnight to protect him from harm. As his iron skin absorbed blows from the blessed steel of Yvressian princes so his spellshield devoured the bolts and flames of Sapherian enchantments. Seraphon shared her master’s mood, claws and fangs leaving a tattered trail of bloody carcasses in their wake as they tore across the skies like a black thunderbolt. Behind them the other black dragons fell upon the archers and bolt throwers lining the boulder-strewn approaches to the Shrine of Khaine, cleaving bloody furrows in the ranks of the Yvressian militia.
While Malekith’s blade cut flesh and bone, his magic consumed an equal number of foes with dark lightning and organ-charring flames. Armour melted as bolts of dark magic leapt from his fingertips and Yvressian knights shrieked their last breaths as his mind tore apart their innards and pulverised their bones. Pegasi fell from the skies like swatted insects, hearts stopped by a simple gesture from the Witch King, their riders’ plunging death screams lost in the din of the armies clashing below.
Flying the colours of Lothern, a squadron of skycutters pulled by great eagles swept down into Malekith, the riders’ spears glinting with magic. Seraphon turned into the descending skycutters, a barbed wing raking the guts from one of the eagles while her jaws snapped around the neck of another. Malekith was surrounded by a welter of claws and speartips that glanced shrieking from his armour, a flurry of feather and beaks blotting all view. Urithain split one of the attacking birds from eye to tail while a coruscating black flame incinerated the skycutter it had been pulling. The other skycutters fell away quickly, pursued by the vengeful Witch King, the roars of Seraphon hastening their retreat.