The Great Betrayal (32 page)

‘Sorcery,’ uttered Aflegard, the word bitter in his mouth. He chewed the end of his pipe, leaving an indentation in the clay from his clenched teeth.

‘Aye, magic of the darkest kind was unleashed against Agrin,’ said Nadri, weeping again, ‘and he was undone by it.’

And there the merchant’s story ended.

Brynnoth patted him on the back, saying, ‘Well done, lad. Well done,’ in a soothing tone.

Silence fell upon the hall, leavened only by the dulcet crackle of braziers.

Each of the kings looked at one another, their eyes revealing more of their inner thoughts than their tongues ever would.

Luftvarr’s were red-rimmed. The King of Kraka Drak was almost apoplectic. Others maintained a more guarded countenance, though it was fairly obvious that Varnuf was waiting for Gotrek to do or say something. His expectant gaze bordered on disparaging before the High King had even spoken.

‘Thurbad…’ Gotrek intoned to break the quietude.

Like a stone sentinel, the captain of the hearthguard emerged from penumbral shadow.

Gotrek addressed Nadri. ‘You’ll be escorted safely from the karak back to the Sea Hold. Thurbad will see to it.’

Brynnoth nodded again to his High King, knowing that he would need to remain behind for further talks. To make a decision in haste now would be foolish, but something would have to be done.

Gently taking Nadri by the arm, Thurbad led the merchant out of the hall and left the kings to ruminate.

‘Snorri,’ said the High King as Thurbad was leaving. Gotrek did not deign to look at his son. ‘You may go too.’

About to protest, Snorri clamped shut his mouth and marched from the Great Hall in barely veiled disgust.

‘He’s a fiery wee bastard, yer son,’ Grundin remarked when the prince was still in earshot.

Gotrek lowered his voice, only looking at Snorri with his back turned and walking away.

‘He is a headstrong fool with much to learn.’

‘And even more to prove, it would appear,’ added Varnuf.

‘Not so different from his father during his early reign,’ said Brynnoth, to which Aflegard nodded.

‘I care not!’ Luftvarr had spat out his beard. It spewed out with a spray of sputum. Gobbets still clung to it like dirty little pearls but the Norse king seemed not to notice. ‘My warriors stand ready to fight. Elgi have slain dawi in cold blood, and this time a lord of the rhun. No answer to that could ever end in peace, so tell me this, king of the high mountain – when do we make war?’

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Legacies

The surface of
the
dokbar
faded from pearlescent silver to ash grey, its activation robbing it of its lustre and plunging Ranuld into shadow. Like the massive runic shield, his surroundings were a dark mirror to his thoughts. Through the gate between holds he had warned the others. He hoped it would be enough to spare them a similar fate. The magic in the runes inscribed around the dokbar’s edge were fading. Soon it would speak no more and his voice would no longer be heard across the leagues.

Much as he had feared, old magic was leaving the world. As the secrets of the old lore diminished, so too did what the dwarfs used to be. Ruin was changing them, as slowly and inexorably as the tide erodes the face of a cliff and exposes its inner core to further decay.

Ranks of gronti-duraz surrounded the runelord but were not good company, no salve to his grief. Still dormant as they were, he alone did not possess the craft to reanimate the stone giants and breathe magical life back into their runes. He needed others to achieve that feat. It was one made harder by what had happened at the borders of Everpeak.

Since leaving the Great Hall after the rinkkaz, Ranuld had remained in the forge but he had felt the passing of Agrin Fireheart like a physical blow. Scattered coals, a fuller lying strewn and uncared for, still littered the floor above. Intent on his work in another chamber of the forge hall, Morek had not heard them fall.

Another light had faded, snuffed out by a great doom that would douse all the lamps should it be allowed to run unchallenged. Ranuld knew not what he could do to stop it, only that he must.

Hope lay in those younger than he and the ancients he had summoned to his conclave. Age and wisdom were giving way to youth and passion. All he could do was help temper this young steel into a blade that would cut through the encroaching shadow.

Weary, Ranuld left the vault and went back to the forge itself, drawn by the sound of hammering.

Morek was toiling at the anvil. Sweat lathered his muscled frame and he wiped a gloved hand against his brow to soak up the worst of it on his face.

‘Star-metal is not so easy to shape,’ uttered the runelord, causing his apprentice to turn.

A partially formed blade, slowly being cogged into shape and then to be edged and fullered, lay upon the anvil. Morek stared at it forlornly.

‘It is unyielding, master.’ He sounded breathless; the sinews in his arms were taut enough to snap and his muscles bunched like overripe fruit grown too big for its own skin.

‘Like the
karadurak
, it must be coaxed into giving up its secrets,’ Ranuld told him. ‘Strength is not enough. Any oaf can whack a hammer with enough force to split a rock, it will only respond to skill. And much like splitting ever-stone, meteoric iron,
gromril
, can only be forged by a master smith. Are you such a dawi, Morek of the Furrowbrows?’

‘I think so, master.’

Ranuld scoffed. ‘Werit. Think? Think, is it?
Think!
’ He bellowed, ‘You must
know
it. Az and klad will not forge themselves.’

‘Master, I…’

‘And to think it is to you who I must pass on all my knowledge… Kruti-eating
wanaz
, I should take the hammer from your hand this instant and use it upon your stupid head! Ufdi!’

‘Please don’t, master.’

‘Wazzock,’ spat the runelord. His eyes narrowed on his terrified apprentice then to the slowly bending star-metal he had clamped against the anvil. An axe blade was visible, and once it was finished the runes could be struck. ‘Hit it again,’ Ranuld told him, watching sternly as Morek worked the meteoric iron.

‘Gromril is the ore of heroes and masters. It is only they who can wield it, only they who can craft it.’

Morek kept going, hammering relentlessly, slowly building up a rhythm that Ranuld felt resonate in his very soul.

‘It requires an artisan’s touch to tame and temper. No mere metal-smith can do it. Let them forge shoes for mules or rivets for scaffolds. Theirs is not the way of the rhun. That is the province of our sacred order alone, of which you are a part.’

Hammering, Morek became entranced and the star-metal began to bend to his will.

Ranuld lit up his pipe, took a deep draw as he sat back to regard his apprentice.

‘The rhun is slow, so too the metal that bears it. Many weeks it can take just to make a single ingot. Forge its angles sharp and tight, imbue it with the magic of our elders and become a master.’

The ring of metal against metal was almost hypnotic now. Morek had transcended from the ‘now’ to a place of creation, the rites of forging tripping off his lips like a chant.

‘Aye,’ said Ranuld, ‘now you
know
, lad. Now you can see.’

Slowly, a smile crept up at the edges of his lips. Morek was learning.

‘As one light dies,’ he said, ‘another ignites.’

Even the skies
presaged a storm. Grim, black clouds crawled across the sun to blot out the light. Imladrik felt the cold pull at his clothes and seep beneath the plates of his armour. But it was not just the sun’s absence which chilled him. The look in the High King’s eyes was like ice when he had dismissed Imladrik and the other elves. Suppressing a shiver, he dug his heels into Draukhain’s flanks, urging the beast to fly lower.

Karaz-a-Karak was a bitter memory. He cursed inwardly that blades had been drawn in the High King’s hold hall and wondered if there was any turning back from the course they were set upon now.

The prince’s retainers were on their way back to Oeragor, where he would join them just as soon as he had made this last flight with Draukhain. Others would return to Athel Maraya, Kor Vanaeth and even the vaunted spires of Tor Alessi. After what little he had heard in the entrance hall, Imladrik had decided to track the dwarfs leaving Everpeak. Not those going to Barak Varr but the rangers who had been ordered to recover the bodies of the slain. He wanted to see where it had taken place, and know what had happened in order to make sense of it. One of the dwarfs’ runelords was dead. It was unlikely a bandit’s arrow had killed him. Imladrik suspected something darker was at work and intended to find out the root of it. The only way to do that was to go to where Agrin Fireheart had died.

The prince’s dragon snorted and growled, behaving more belligerently now than when it had been surrounded by dwarfs. It felt the prince’s ire and frustration, echoing and amplifying it.

‘Peace, Draukhain…’ Imladrik soothed, inflecting his voice with a mote of dragon mastery. The beast eased, piercing a layer of cloud.

Below, the rangers were gathering up the bodies of the dead, wrapping them in cloth and placing them reverently on the back of a cart. As funerary transportation went, it was hardly fitting. Imladrik stayed within the lower cloud layer, wreathed in its grey tendrils so if the dwarfs should look up they would not easily see him. The last thing peace needed now was the sighting of a dragon prowling the scene of a foul murder. But then perhaps peace was beyond them at this point. He hoped fervently that this was not the case, and wondered how much his brother knew or cared about what was unfolding on the Old World. Not for the first time in recent weeks, Imladrik wondered if he should return home. The letters he had received at the tournament were still tucked in his vambrace. Their words were burned so indelibly in his mind that he had no need for either any more.

Rising again with a beat of Draukhain’s powerful wings, Imladrik found he was not alone when he returned to higher skies.

‘Can you smell that reek?’ asked Liandra from the back of Vranesh. The beast was small in comparison to the mighty Draukhain but the two dragons recognised each other as kin, snarling and calling to one another in greeting.

Liandra wrinkled her nose. ‘It is dark magic. Like a canker on the breeze, the stench is unmistakable. The Wind of Dhar has been harnessed here.’

Though her lips moved, Imladrik heard the words in his mind as though they were standing side by side in a quiet room and not aloft and far apart in a turbulent sky.

He calmed Draukhain, for the depth of the beast’s greeting cries would build to the point where the dwarfs below could hear them and think they were under attack.

Liandra frowned. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Flying.’ Imladrik was in no mood for an inquisition. ‘Why did you follow me?’

Beyond his dragonsong, which was potent, Imladrik had no magical craft to draw upon. He had to shout, but Liandra heard him easily enough.

‘You can speak normally,’ she told him. ‘The enchantment works both ways.’ She reined Vranesh in a little, for the dragon could smell the dwarfs far below them and wanted to better taste their scent. Like its mistress, the beast neither liked nor trusted the dwarfs. But also like his mistress, he had even less love for dark elves.

Imladrik would not be distracted and asked again, ‘Why did you follow me, Liandra?’

‘If I said it was to make sure you weren’t going to do anything reckless, like try and talk to the dwarfs, would you have believed me?’

‘No.’

‘Then I did it to find out what you were doing. You entire household leaves the dwarf lands, headed for Oeragor, and yet you, their prince and master, go west after a trail of rangers. I wanted to know why you would do that, Imladrik.’

‘And do you?’

‘You don’t believe that asur did this.’

‘No elf of Ulthuan I know uses the Dark Wind. Those that do are rounded up as traitors by the warriors of the White Tower and executed.’

A darkness flashed across Liandra’s face at a bitter memory.

‘You think it was druchii?’

‘You do not?’

They circled one another, the wings of their mounts flapping lazily but their nostrils flaring as the wind grew steadily more vigorous. It was buffeting Liandra’s hair, releasing her gilded locks into the air like flecks of brilliant sunshine.

‘Storm is coming,’ she said, gazing into the heart of a thunderhead growing on the horizon.

Imladrik maintained a neutral expression. ‘You didn’t answer my question again.’

‘I do not think it matters whether the druchii are involved or not. But I can taste Dhar like ashes in my mouth. Whatever was unleashed down there in that gorge left a mark.’

‘A powerful sorceress then,’ said Imladrik, partly to himself. ‘It is worse than I first thought.’

Liandra nodded. ‘And something else too, something I cannot quite see.’

Imladrik was keen of sight. He looked through a patch of thinning cloud and saw that the dwarfs had collected their dead and were moving on.

‘Would a closer look make it any clearer?’

‘I would rather not descend into the gorge,’ she told him, and there was a note of fear in her voice.

‘The dwarfs are leaving. If we land at the ridge on either side and climb down into the gorge, they would not see us.’

Despite the prince’s reasoning, she looked far from certain.

‘I would have thought of all people, you would be the most keen to find out if there are druchii abroad in the Old World. It might have a bearing on whatever happens next. You are no friend to the dwarfs but I also know you do not want another war for our people.’