Alarielle stooped briefly at Malekith’s side. This close, he could feel the raw Ghyran that filled her. Always she had been a queen of life, and now the bargain was made whole, the wind of magic finding home in her. The Phoenix King realised that there was an arrow in his back and though his memory was dim now recalled that Anar had loosed another shaft as he fell, but even this had not finished Malekith. The Everqueen brushed the arrow-shaft protruding from his back and the wood burst into a fine cloud of seeds. They hung in the air for a moment, gossamer against the light. Then the wind scattered them across the rock. The seeds took root wherever they landed, shoots bursting from the husks to burrow into cracks. Alarielle’s presence was all the nourishment the seeds required. Decades of growth occurred in seconds, and soon a thin but glorious glade of oaks stood at the isle’s heart.
Malekith’s fists clenched and unclenched as the strange forest unfurled about him, but he otherwise made no move. Alarielle paid him no further heed. Without a word, she knelt in the dust beside Tyrion. Malekith watched as a single tear spilled from the Everqueen’s cheek, splashing across the prince’s brow. In death, all the malice and cruelty had faded from the prince’s face, and his aspect was again that which had brought hope to his people.
The ground rumbled and a short distance from where Alarielle knelt, a waystone collapsed, showering the ground with dust and shards of stone. The rock where the vortex had once stood fell away, replaced by a seething cauldron of white water.
Malekith, at last roused, staggered to his feet. No one moved to help and as blood splashed to the wet rocks he noticed that not all of his wounds were healing. The shaft of the arrow had been transmuted by Alarielle’s touch, but the tip remained, lodged close to his heart. Every motion was agony, but Malekith was no stranger to pain. He reached out for the Widowmaker, which lay where it had fallen from Tyrion’s hands. Malekith’s Ulgu-wreathed form blurred as he moved, every motion leaving an afterimage of shadow in its wake.
It was Alarielle who first saw Malekith moving towards the icefang. She cried out in alarm and moved to block his path. Others heard the warning and started forward, but were all too late. The shadowy fingers of Malekith’s right hand closed around the Widowmaker’s hilt, and the Phoenix King gave a snort of triumph.
For a long moment, Malekith stood silhouetted against the billowing sea spray, the Widowmaker outstretched.
‘Naught but steel,’ he declared, feeling nothing of Khaine’s power remaining in the blade. ‘Just metal, nothing more.’
The Phoenix King turned and hurled the sword into the frothing waters. For a heartbeat, the Widowmaker glinted darkly. Then it was gone to the depths of the ocean. With its master’s passing, the legendary Sword of Khaine could neither command Malekith, nor offer him anything that a dozen other blades could not provide.
As the Widowmaker vanished, another great tremor struck the Isle of the Dead. Jagged spurs of rock burst from the ground, and waystones sank into the whirling waters. Stone by stone, inch by inch, the island began to slip into the sea. It was the same all across Ulthuan. For thousands of years, only the magic of the Great Vortex had kept the continent above the waves. Now, with the magic scattered, the hungry ocean laid claim to a prize long denied.
‘You have work to do. Save our people,’ Malekith told the Everqueen, sparing a brief glance for dead Tyrion. ‘He really is the very image of my father, you know.’
Malekith managed a few more paces before his injuries and weakness proved too much. He stumbled and then collapsed and his unconscious form was carried from the Isle of the Dead by the survivors of the Shadowfire Guard.
Epilogue
His every footstep was silent, his movements precise. He had tracked his quarry for hours, and confrontation was at last here. Silently, the hunter entered the glade, approaching the Phoenix King from behind. The hunter’s bow was slung upon his shoulder, but his hand was on his sword’s pommel.
It was pathetic really. Twice before the Phoenix King had detected the approach of Alith Anar, on the Blighted Isle and the Isle of the Dead. Malekith had become the embodiment of Ulgu, the power of shadow, but the so-called Shadow King still thought that he could sneak up on the former ruler of Nagarythe.
It was strange to Malekith that Alith had survived so long, being nearly as old as he was. Malekith had done so only through the armour of midnight and daemonic pacts, his mother, now swallowed up by the Realm of Chaos trying to prevent Teclis unleashing the power of the vortex, had sustained herself with blood-rites and sorcery, while others like Ariel had been divine embodiments, fragments of the gods on the mortal plane. Alith had spent much time with the raven heralds in his youth, devotees of Morai-heg, so perhaps he was the incarnation not of Drakira the queen of vengeance as some suspected, but of capricious fate itself.
Whatever the source of the Shadow King’s longevity, he had not matured at all, and Malekith saw him as the same broken child pretending to be a prince he had confronted and sent running into the darkness before the Sundering had destroyed Nagarythe.
He had advanced to within a dozen paces when Malekith’s voice broke the silence.
‘I have been expecting you,’ the king announced without turning. Clichéd, but Alith Anar seemed to have turned his life into a long cliché in recent years. ‘Have you come to finish what you began?’
At last Malekith turned, his gaze falling across the other.
‘I do not know,’ said Alith Anar, and there was uncertainty in his voice while suspicion vied with hope in his eyes. ‘I should kill you, avenge the horrors you have wrought…’
His words faded into the darkness.
‘And yet your sword remains sheathed,’ Malekith noted, with a faint trace of mockery.
‘As does yours,’ remarked the Shadow King.
‘Perhaps we are neither of us what we used to be.’
‘Perhaps,’ Alith conceded. ‘I wish I could believe that.’
‘Then you have come as my assassin.’
‘No, but I do come bearing a message.’
Alith Anar took a step closer, his gaze hardening as he stared up at Malekith. The Phoenix King smiled, remembering the same resolute look on the youngster’s face moments before Malekith had revealed the fact that he and the tyrannical Witch King of Nagarythe were one and the same, shattering every illusion the boy had held about the world and his former prince.
‘My arrow tip rests next to your heart, and you will never be able to remove it. The agony it causes shall suffice as my vengeance for as long as you serve our people. Fail them, and my next shot will take your life.’
‘Your threats mean nothing,’ Malekith growled.
‘Then you have nothing to fear,’ Alith Anar replied. The moon passed behind a cloud. The Shadow King departed, leaving Malekith alone with his thoughts.
Not long after Alith had left, another entered the clearing. Alarielle stopped beside her husband and held a hand to his arm.
‘It is done?’ she asked.
‘Yes, he was here just now.’
‘It is better this way. If you simply kill him, others will try to avenge him. We are one people again, the aesenar included.’
‘He thinks he has me on a leash,’ Malekith said quietly.
‘Good, it will stop him doing something rash that we would all regret.’ Alarielle slipped something into Malekith’s metal hand and turned away. ‘We will control our own destiny from now on – Morai-heg will tug the strands of fate no more.’