He heard a hiss from Volker, and glanced at the knight. The white-haired man was staring hard at Nagash. Hammerson looked more closely at the liche and saw that the creature was stirring. One great claw rose, and silence fell over the glade. ‘YOUR FEAR IS WITHOUT CAUSE,’ the liche said. His voice spread through the glade like a noxious fog. ‘THE WORD OF NAGASH IS INVIOLATE. AND NAGASH HAS SWORN TO FIGHT FOR THIS WORLD.’
Hammerson shuddered. The liche’s voice crept under your skin like the cold of winter, and fastened claws in your heart. He wasn’t alone in feeling that way. The Incarnates stared at the creature the way birds might regard a snake. Malekith reacted first. ‘Any betrayer would say the same, if it suited his interest,’ the Eternity King rasped, glaring down at Nagash from his dais. Nagash stared at the elf, as if sizing him up. Then he inclined his head.
‘INDEED. AND SO I OFFER A GIFT, AS TOKEN OF MY INTENT.’
Malekith laughed. ‘A gift offered by one such as you can hardly be considered proof of anything. I know, for I have used the same trick to great effect more than once.’
‘I HAVE WRONGED YOU. YET THE INITIAL OFFENCE, THE FIRST LINK IN THE CHAIN, WAS NOT AT MY INSTIGATION,’ Nagash grated. If a skeleton could look amused, Hammerson thought, then Nagash was it. The wide, fleshless rictus seemed to grow wider still, less a smile than a tiger’s grin. ‘THE EVERCHILD’S DEATH WAS NOT MY DOING.’
Teclis flinched as the words rolled over the glade. He closed his eyes. He could feel the heat of Tyrion’s rage beginning to build. Nagash’s words had stoked fires that could never truly be extinguished. Malekith too must have sensed it, for he moved quickly to speak. But he fell silent, his words dying on his lips, as Alarielle rose from her throne.
‘You speak of my daughter as if you were fit to say her name,’ the Everqueen said coolly. Her voice was composed, and controlled, but Teclis could sense the fragility beneath. ‘More and more, you insist on your own destruction.’
‘MY DESTRUCTION WILL NOT BRING HER BACK. NOR WILL IT AVENGE HER.’ Nagash looked around the glade. ‘IT WILL ONLY BRING RUIN.’
‘Listen to the dead thing plead,’ Tyrion snarled. He had not drawn his sword, but his hands were balled into fists, and the light within him was beginning to stir. ‘We will not bargain for Aliathra’s soul,’ he spat. Alarielle looked sharply at him, but said nothing. Teclis could feel the Wind of Life beginning to stir as well. Is this how it ends, even as it began… over the soul of the Everchild? he thought.
His brother’s sin, come home to roost. The child he’d fathered, against all logic, reason and tradition, the child who had been the hope of Ulthuan, and its destruction. Aenarion’s curse made flesh, in a moment of passion and stupidity. Teclis’s grip on his staff tightened. Brave child. I failed you, as I failed your father and our people. But I failed you most of all. Sorrow washed over him, leaving only numbness in its wake.
It seemed like only weeks ago that Aliathra had been sent to the dwarfs of Karaz-a-Karak as part of the Phoenix Delegation of Ulthuan. As royalty, and a sorceress in her own right, the Everchild was thought fit to treat with the High King, Thorgrim Grudgebearer. Aliathra had her mother’s grace and poise and her father’s courage, and the old alliances had been renewed and invigorated. But then, death had swept down on tattered wings and put paid to the plans of dwarfs and elves.
Teclis studied Mannfred von Carstein, taking in the sharp contours of a face that shifted constantly between regal indifference and bestial malice. The name the creature went by was an assumed one, just another falsehood tacked on to the ledger that contained his crimes. Once, Teclis had sought to unravel that particular mystery – to find the source of the von Carstein bloodline and perhaps even eliminate it. Of all the vampiric infestations which blighted the world, theirs was the most militant, if not the best organised, and thus a potential threat to Ulthuan in the future. And of all the von Carsteins, Mannfred was the most dangerous.
His defeat of Eltharion the Grim in Sylvania proved that, if nothing else. The Grim Warden had attempted to rescue Aliathra at Tyrion’s behest. The army he had taken into death with him had been sorely missed in the days and weeks which followed. Teclis could not say for certain that Eltharion’s counsel would have ameliorated the tragedies that occurred after Tyrion had gone mad and their people had fallen to civil war, but his presence might have been enough to avert at least some of the anguish of those terrible days.
Instead, he’d died. And the hopes of Ulthuan had died with him. And now his killer stood smirking in the heart of Athel Loren, protected by an even greater evil. For a moment, Teclis wished that he were his brother, that he had even an ounce of Tyrion’s fire in him, so that he might put aside reason and caution and drive his sword through Mannfred’s twisted heart. But he wasn’t, and he never had been. Instead, he watched and thought, and wondered why Nagash was offering anything at all.
When the answer occurred to him, he smiled. Ah, clever. Of course. Why else insist on bringing the creature into the forest?
Nagash faced Tyrion and Alarielle. Perhaps the creature judged them the greatest threat, or maybe he simply wished to enjoy their agony. ‘YOU HAVE NO NEED TO BARGAIN. THE SOUL OF THE EVERCHILD IS NOT MINE TO GIVE. LIKE ALL OF YOUR KIND, SHE IS ALREADY FODDER FOR THE DARK PRINCE,’ Nagash said. Alarielle’s hand lashed out, catching Tyrion in the chest, stopping him before he could lunge at the liche.
Teclis could feel the other Incarnates gathering their powers now. Malekith and Gelt would act first, before the others. Caradryan would act last, despite being bound to the most impulsive of winds. He would wait for Alarielle, or Tyrion. The Emperor, as ever, stood to the side. Teclis could almost see the wheels turning in the human’s mind. The Emperor glanced at him, and gave a barely perceptible nod. He had figured out Nagash’s ploy as well.
‘INSTEAD,’ Nagash went on, ‘I WILL OFFER YOU THE ARCHITECT OF HER DEATH, TO DO WITH AS YOU WILL.’ As he spoke, Mannfred threw a triumphant look at Arkhan the Black. That look crumbled into abject horror, as Nagash turned and fastened one great metal claw on the back of the vampire’s head, hoisted him from his feet, and tossed him towards Tyrion and Alarielle without hesitation.
Mannfred struck the dais with a resounding crack, and flailed helplessly for a moment, his face twisted in shock. ‘No,’ he shrieked. ‘No, it wasn’t me! I didn’t kill her, it was…’ Whatever he’d been about to say was lost as Tyrion’s blade descended like a thunderbolt. Mannfred barely avoided the blow, scrambling to his feet, his own sword in hand. He whirled, looking for an exit, some avenue of escape, but a crackling flare of amethyst light rose and spread between the trees at the merest twitch of Nagash’s talons.
‘No, I’ve come too far, sacrificed too much to be your scapegoat,’ the vampire snarled. He turned back and forth, blade extended, trying to keep everyone at bay simultaneously. He looked at Nagash. ‘I served you! I brought you back, and this is how I am to be repaid?’
‘YOU STILL SERVE ME, MANNFRED VON CARSTEIN. YOU HAVE SERVED ME IN LIFE, AND YOU WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO BY YOUR DEATH.’ Nagash cocked his head. ‘REST ASSURED THAT IT IS APPRECIATED.’