This time was different. Blood streaming from his many wounds, molten iron running with it, Malekith stood up, his left arm useless, Urithain in his right.
Malekith tried to draw in magical energy, to summon up an incantation that would shred Tyrion’s flesh from his bones, would shatter those bones to splinters, would pulverise his organs and set a burning agony into his mind, but the fog of pain that invaded his thoughts was too thick. There was a more sinister sensation that had been spreading from the dagger in his shoulder.
Poison carried from the wound caused by Shadowblade.
The winds of magic swirled sluggishly so close to Khaine’s altar and the Witch King found them slipping through his grasp. He could feel a fluttering on the winds of magic, a disturbance in Ulgu, the power of shadow, but he was too weary to make any sense of it.
The Sunfang flashed towards his throat and only at the last moment was Malekith able to raise Urithain to weakly deflect the blow. The enchanted blade exploded at the touch of Tyrion’s sword, scattering shards of black metal. Pain seared up the Witch King’s arm but it quickly dissipated, swamped by the numbness that was filling Malekith’s whole being.
Malekith could do nothing as Tyrion’s next blow, impossibly fast, crashed into the gorget protecting his throat. The impact staggered the Witch King, and he fell to his knees, a moment before his foe’s armoured boot caught him in the face, breaking his cheek. His head crashed against the black Altar of Khaine and he slid to the bloodied ground, nearly all feeling lost in his limbs.
The Dragon of Cothique loomed over the Witch King. Tyrion’s eyes were orbs of blood-red as he looked at the altar. In that moment Malekith and Tyrion were connected, and they too with Aenarion, who so long ago had set the Curse of Khaine upon his bloodline.
There was a sense of dislocation, of timelessness. Malekith looked on the fire-ravaged face of his distant nephew, but saw only the features of his father. The cycle came about, and all things that were ancient were renewed. Perhaps it was right that this happened. Perhaps he had fought against his real destiny for six thousand years. Together the Witch King and Ulthuan’s regent witnessed the moment that had defined the existence of the elves for seven thousand years.
Even as Aenarion’s thoughts touched upon the Godslayer, there came to his ears a distant noise: a faint screaming. The ring of metal on metal, of fighting, echoed around the shrine. Aenarion 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 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.
Aenarion stood transfixed before that bloody shrine. The thing embedded in the rock danced and wavered before the Phoenix King’s eyes, a blur of axe and sword and spear and bow and knife and strange weapons not known to the elves. Finally a single image emerged, of a long-bladed sword, cross guard curled into the rune of Khaine, its black blade etched with red symbols of death and blood.
Aenarion reached out… and stopped, his fingers a hair’s breadth from the hilt of the sword. All became silent; not a movement stirred the air as the world and the gods held their breath.
Aenarion knew this would be his doom. All of the warnings came back to him, the words of Caledor merged with dire predictions of the daemons and the pleading of his dead wife. It all mattered nothing to him, for his spirit was empty and only the Sword of Khaine could fill the void within him.
As Tyrion switched the Sunfang to his left hand and reached out with his right, Malekith managed a sneer.
‘At least my father paused a moment,’ he snarled between bloody coughs. ‘I turned away. You have no willpower.’ Tyrion paid him no heed as he drew back, his prize in hand.
Widowmaker, Godslayer, Doom of Worlds, Spear of Vengeance, Deathshard, and Heavenblight. By many names it was called, by mortals and daemons and gods. But one name alone it truly held: Sword of Khaine, the Lord of Murder.
Tyrion admired the weapon with wide eyes. In his fist he held a warped mirror of the Sunfang. Where Lacelothrai was shard of sunlight, bright and golden, this new blade was as black as a starless night and as cold as the deepest abyss of space.
The storm clouds overhead roiled with cracks of thunder and shafts of blood-red lightning. Tyrion held up his new sword, lips curled in a manic grin. Malekith looked up helplessly, unable to move a muscle in retaliation.
‘Larhathrai,’ Tyrion whispered, naming the blade.
Icefang.
Twenty-Three
Brother against Brother
Something black and grey surged between the perimeter slabs of the shrine, a thick shadow bunching and releasing like the muscles of an immense horse. Slowing, the apparition did indeed become a half-formed image of a horse with midnight flanks and streamers of shadow for a mane. Teclis swung a leg and dismounted a few paces from Malekith and Tyrion.
‘Brother, don’t do this!’ the mage shouted through the blood rain.
Tyrion gave no sign of heeding the words. He flexed his fingers around the Widowmaker’s grip and swept the sword up. At once, the shadows about Malekith lengthened and the rain grew colder. Thunder cracked against the turbulent sky and dark laughter billowed in its wake. The ground shook; the skulls chattered and gibbered in sudden mirth and then fell eerily silent.
The shadow steed vanished, its magic undone by the Widowmaker’s presence, and Malekith felt the winds of magic grow thin about him.
‘I should be surprised to find you here,’ the regent said at last, turning to face his brother, ‘but little you do surprises me any longer.’ His blackened lips cracked into a cruel smile as he prodded Malekith with his toe. ‘Yet I find that I am pleased to see you. This… thing… is not yet slain, and I would like one witness to my triumph, even if it is a treacherous one.’
Thing? thought Malekith, but he had not the strength to utter a contemptuous riposte.
‘You cannot kill him,’ Teclis said urgently. ‘If you do, our people are doomed.’
Listen to your brother, Malekith willed, eyes drawn to the abysall blackness of Larhathrai. I am the saviour of our people. Pay attention!
‘Our people will never falter while I am alive to lead them,’ Tyrion laughed. ‘Or at least, to lead those who prove worthy. The coming war will winnow out all others.’
Malekith managed a grimace, recalling similar words coming from his lips for these past thousands of years. Tyrion had been so noble, so exemplary of the finest traits of elvenkind only days earlier, now as bloodthirsty and cold as Malekith after six thousand years of hate-filled war. He looked at the fire-ravaged features of the Dragon of Cothique and could not help but make comparison to himself, ragged and burned by another flame. It made the Witch King remember, painfully, that like Tyrion he had once been lauded by the greatest of elvenkind as the epitome of elven nobility.
‘Listen to yourself. These are not your words,’ warned Teclis, staring at his brother but not moving. Malekith had to wonder if they had ever really been his, or put into his thoughts by another. ‘This is our curse! This is the madness of Khaine!’ As he spoke, Teclis’s expression was desperate, betraying the doubt in his heart that his cautionary words would be heeded.