‘They shall all be slain, in turn,’ Malekith declared, ‘for their lack of loyalty.’
‘They cannot be loyal to a king in hiding, your majesty,’ Teclis said carefully. ‘Is it your intent to make public your ascension?’
Malekith’s first instinct, fuelled by indignation, was to declare that he would. His announcement would shake elvendom to its core, make known the fact that six thousand years of injustice had finally ended. The princes would see that he had been accepted by Asuryan and would flock to his banner as their ancestors should have done.
Teclis’s calculating gaze punctured the illusion, reminding the Phoenix King of the wounds that still dogged him and the blade as-yet-unforged. To reveal himself as king now would make Malekith a target and Tyrion would come to Caledor with all speed.
‘Better to let Imrik continue to goad the beast,’ Malekith concluded, as though speaking the mage’s thoughts for him. ‘Like the bull bitten by too many flies, Tyrion will succumb to the rage and lash out. It is only a matter of time. His allies will be as mist in the growing sun when that happens.’
They concluded their conference swiftly, for the news that Tyrion now led the enemy army directly required careful counter. Teclis removed himself to consult with such authorities and agents as he could trust while Malekith was left to ponder the possible paths of his future.
Destiny demanded that he face Tyrion at some point. It was simply the way the godly cycles worked, and could not be avoided. He would not receive unexpected but pleasant news one day that a dragon had eaten his foe or a fireball had incinerated the pretender to his throne. Myths required more direct action.
Malekith was not sure at all that he would prevail, even with Asuryan’s blade. The last time he had faced Tyrion, the Dragon of Cothique had wielded the Sunfang and fought alone. Next time he would have the Widowmaker and every sorcerous assistance Morathi could devise.
The Phoenix King regarded his options as though they were laid out on the table before him but he knew his perspective was skewed. He needed counsel, but Teclis had his own agenda and Kouran and Imrik were warriors whose advice was painfully confined to the military.
Requiring a fresh source of inspiration, Malekith spent some time preparing his audience room for a difficult ritual. Retainers came and went bringing candles and iron icons and other paraphernalia, laid out to their master’s precise instructions. When he was done, Malekith sent his minions away, forbade any interruption and began his summoning.
Drawing on his dark magic, Malekith drew forth spirits he had trapped in the hinterlands between mortality and Mirai – the souls of his dead rivals conjured from the afterlife to serve him again as they had served in the Black Council of Naggarond.
They came as insubstantial spectres, their faces barely recognisable, but Malekith knew them all by name, deed and temperament. Lord Khaivan of Ghrond, founder of the city and one of Morathi’s first lovers returned screaming to existence. Others followed soon after: Lyar Winterspear of Har Ganeth; Tyrios the Flayer; Kordrilian of Clar Karond. More than two dozen ghosts crowded into the circle of power created by the Witch King, hissing and moaning wordlessly.
‘Speak,’ commanded the Witch King. ‘I would know your minds and the knowledge you bring from beyond the veil of death. Tell me how I might slay Prince Tyrion and defeat the wielder of the Widowmaker.’
Lord Shimmerghast, Dreadmarshal of Naggarond, floated closer. The first captain of the Black Guard regarded Malekith with hate-filled eyes, the skin of his ghost torn to tatters as it had been in life.
‘No blade can match the Widowmaker. No warrior can defeat its wielder. You are doomed, Malekith. Doomed to join us in an eternity of perdition and pain!’
‘How predictable,’ said the king, dismissing the spectre with a wave of his hand. He glared at the other assembled spirits. ‘You know, I could grant you the peace you desire, if you are willing to help. Do any of you have anything to say?’
‘He that lays his hand upon the Widowmaker becomes Khaine’s weapon,’ wailed Lady Mystyr. Her face was veiled with black lace, hiding the bloody holes where her eyes had been gouged out by Malekith’s torturers. ‘Only the fire of Asuryan can defeat such a foe.’
‘I know this already!’ snapped Malekith. Mystyr screamed as he banished her soul back into the pale waters of undeath that flowed around the border of Mirai. ‘I have taken the fire of Asuryan into myself and Hotek labours on a sword fitting for the king of kings. Surely there must be more than that?’
‘You are bound by the cycle of life, the circle of myth,’ said Lothek Heartstealer. The former grand admiral of Klar Karond looked odd, his head lolling to one side on a broken neck, his floating torso missing legs and limbs. ‘Time turns and Khaine will face Asuryan. Such is inevitable, King Malekith.’
With a frustrated shout, Malekith stood and swept his arm through the shimmering haze that encircled the ritual space, causing ripples of power to break apart the apparitions within.
‘Useless!’ he raved, snuffing the light from the candles with a surge of magic, sending braziers and talismans whirling across the chamber with a flicked hand. The surge of ire that filled the king made his head throb. ‘As duplicitous and pointless in death as they were in life.’
Malekith cooled his anger, grasping his head in both hands, forcing the pain to subside, clearing his thoughts. There had to be another way. He was not prepared to gamble not only his life but the future of all elvenkind on the notion that the war of the gods would simply be repeated on the mortal plane. There was too much at stake to risk on the half-baked idea of mythical inevitability. He had been schooled and advised by the most devious minds in history and he would not relax until he found a weakness to exploit, an advantage to be gained.
He accepted the predictability of fighting Tyrion. The myths demanded a confrontation, but there was nothing in the legends that said Malekith could not try a few other plans first.
Twenty-Eight
A King in Name Only
It chafed at Malekith to wait while others sealed their glories in battle and prosecuted his war, for he had always been an elf of determined action, following the example of his father. The knowledge that his enforced absence from the battlefield would bring him later victory was a salve to the frustration, but many a day and night he paced the halls and balconies of Imrik’s citadel – the upper levels cleared of all but the most trustworthy souls lest word of Malekith’s presence be discovered by Morathi.
He wondered at these times what happened further afield, not just in Saphery and Cothique but beyond the Great Ocean in the lands of Elthin Arvan and the jungles of Lustria. With Morathi gone, Ghrond would have been overrun for some time, the last bastion of the elves in Naggaroth save for the Hellebron-stalked ruins of Har Ganeth.
Sometimes he allowed his essence to fly over the waves to the lands of the humans, where living and dead fought against and beside each other, in a complex to and fro of alliance and treachery against the great beast of Chaos, the one called Archaon. He was the herald of the Rhana Dandra, that the barbarians called the Lord of the End Times, but the fate of the elves would not rest in his hands. The gods themselves contested for the fate of Ulthuan’s children, not mere mortals.
Malekith was always careful to conceal himself on these excursions, unwilling to expose himself to detection by his mother. He could feel her sometimes scouring the winds of magic, seeking the telltale signs of his presence, and occasionally he was certain that she had found him. The magic of his armour, the force that she had poured into him to sustain him after his near death, were as distinctive as his seal. Yet however close she came, no matter how much he felt her lingering presence hovering over him as though she could set eyes upon him, he never felt that moment of connection that would reveal he had been discovered.