Blood of Aenarion

chapter three



‘I see you have made progress,’ said Korhien. He walked around the suit of armour, inspecting it but not touching it. The metal suit somehow dwarfed him while simultaneously giving the impression of having been made for someone about his size.

‘Not as much as I would have liked,’ said Father. He eyed the armour the way he would have gazed upon a personal enemy with whom he was about to fight a duel. Tyrion had never seen him look at it this way before. Maybe the presence of Korhien reminded him of something.

As usual Teclis was gazing at it in awe. His magesight was far better than Tyrion’s and he had often helped their father trace the runes on the armour and the flows of magic they were intended to contain. He even claimed to have sometimes seen the faintest flickers of power within it, a thing which had at first intrigued Father but which he had never witnessed himself.

Looking at the three of them now, Tyrion felt excluded, a blind man listening to three artists discussing painting, or a deaf man reading about musical composition.

Korhien looked at the suit once more. ‘When do you think you will be done with it?’

‘Who knows,’ Father responded. ‘I have given up trying to predict that. There have been so many false dawns and broken promises with this.’

‘It is a pity. It looks fine, and would put fear into the heart of Ulthuan’s foes whether Aenarion wore it or not.’

Father glared at his friend. ‘Aenarion wore it. I am certain.’

Korhien nodded soothingly, obviously aware he had touched a nerve with his quiet musing, even if he had not intended to.

‘The spells woven around this armour are old indeed,’ said Teclis. Korhien shot him an amused glance.

‘I am sure the Council of Loremasters will take your word for that, Prince Teclis.’

‘They ought to, if they are not fools,’ said Teclis.

Korhien laughed outright.

‘One son criticises the battle-plans of the greatest of our generals, the other is prepared to dismiss our most learned sorcerers as fools if they do not agree with his assessment of an artefact. Your children do not lack for confidence, Arathion.’

There was no malice in his tone, and yet there was a warning there that Tyrion did not quite know how to interpret.

‘They have been brought up to speak their minds,’ said Father.

‘You have made them in your own image then, which is only to be expected, I suppose. I am not sure it will serve them well in Lothern.’

Tyrion caught his breath. Father had said nothing yet about them being sent to the great seaport. Had Father already agreed to their going? Tyrion supposed he did not have much choice in the matter. If the law required them to be presented because they were of the Blood of Aenarion, presented they would be.

‘When?’ Tyrion asked. His father shot another venomous glance at Korhien and then at Tyrion.

‘Very soon,’ said Father. ‘If I choose to permit it. There are still details to be worked out.’

Tyrion looked at Teclis and smiled. He could sense his brother was as excited as he was by the prospect of seeing one of the greatest of all high elf cities once more, a place where they had not been since they were both small children.

There would be libraries there to consult and they would look upon wonders. They would see the Sea Gates, and the Lighthouse and the Courts. There would be soldiers and ships and tournaments. There would be the palaces of their mother’s family and their own old house. A whole vast dizzying prospect danced before his eyes. Korhien sensed their excitement too and laughed with them, rather than at them.

‘There are many things to be discussed,’ said Father. ‘Before you go. If you go.’

He sounded saddened by the words even as he said them. ‘Before we go,’ said Tyrion. ‘You are not coming with us?’

‘I have been presented at court,’ said Father. ‘I do not feel any great need to meet a Phoenix King and his courtiers again. And I have work to do here. You will be back soon enough.’

He did not look at them as he said this but there was a faint catch to his voice. He turned towards the armour and began to tinker with the scales on the left upper arm.

‘If you will excuse me,’ he said. ‘I will need to get on with it.’

‘Of course,’ said Korhien quietly. ‘Come, lads, let us leave your father in peace.’

Teclis pushed himself painfully up from his chair and limped over to Father, his body writhing as he moved. He laid a hand on Father’s shoulder and whispered something in his ear. Tyrion wished that he could bring himself to do the same, but he felt sure that Father would not have accepted it from him. Instead he waited for Teclis and then helped him along the corridor to his room.

Tyrion lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, tired and excited. All around him he sensed the presence of the strangers in the house. Some of them were still awake, talking in low voices so as not to disturb the others. Tyrion, who knew every night noise of their very quiet house, was disturbed by the sound. He had read of ship’s masters who knew there was something wrong with their vessels because of a faint, unfamiliar creaking. He suddenly understood how that could be.

He made himself relax. His breathing became deeper and slower and he closed his eyes. He became aware that a vast weight pressed down on him. He felt as if all of the breath was being crushed from his lungs. He had to force air into them. He tried to sit up but his body was weak and would not obey him. He burned as with a dreadful fever and ached all over as human victims of plagues were said to. He opened his eyes but the room was unfamiliar to him. There was a bell on the table for summoning assistance and a flask of the cordial his father had prepared to ease his sickness.

He reached for it, but his limbs felt wasted and numb. They refused to obey him with their customary alacrity. He forced more air into his lungs but it was a struggle. He opened his mouth to call for help but he could not force the words out. He knew he was dying and there was nothing he could do about it.

Suddenly his eyes snapped open and he was back in his own room, his own body. It had been a dream, but not just any dream. He got up from the bed and raced through the house to where Teclis lay, burning with fever, struggling to breathe, desperately reaching for his medicine. Tyrion moved over to the bed, poured some of the cordial and helped his brother to drink.

Teclis swallowed the medicine like a drowning man, a look of strange revulsion on his face that Tyrion understood. What must it be like to feel like you are drowning and have to force yourself to drink?

‘Thank you,’ said Teclis at last. His breathing had become more regular. The rasping sound coming from his chest had died away. His eyes were no longer bright with panic.

‘Shall I call father?’ Tyrion asked.

‘No need. I am all right now. I think I shall sleep.’

Tyrion nodded. His brother looked terribly frail and wasted in the beams of moonlight coming in through the gap in the shutters.

‘I shall sit a while,’ he said. Teclis nodded and closed his eyes. Tyrion watched silently and wondered whether his twin was dreaming about being him. He hoped so.

It would be the only experience of good health Teclis was ever likely to have.

Tyrion moved silently through the house, unable to get back to sleep now that he was awake. Night noises seemed determined to keep him up. Downstairs he could hear his father and Korhien talking quietly of old times as they sat beside the dying fire. Lady Malene was locked in her chamber. Teclis had finally drifted into fitful slumber.

Tyrion found himself inevitably drawn to his father’s work room, filled with curiosity as he sometimes was, and half-lost in a waking dream of adventure and glory and things that might yet come. Visions of grim knights and silken princesses and mighty kings filled his mind along with great ships, huge dragons, proud warhorses. He saw himself in palaces and on battlefields. He pictured jousts and sword fights and all manner of adventures with himself as hero. Sometimes Teclis was with him, a proud mage from the storybooks.

Beams of moonlight came in through the crystalline window, illuminating the huge armoured suit that was his father’s life’s work. Not for the first time, Tyrion thought how strange it was that this room should have windows of precious crystal when Teclis’s did not. When he was younger such thoughts had never troubled him. The world was the way it was and he had neither required nor expected any explanations from it. Now he found himself questioning things more and more.

In the moonlight the armour looked like a living warrior, tall and lithe and deadly. He approached it as he would a great cat he was hunting, padding in on silent feet till he stood before it, looking up at the massive helmet, measuring himself against the titanic figure of the elf who had once occupied it and finding himself insignificant and all his dreams of glory tiny, meaningless, insect things.

At this moment Tyrion had no trouble believing his father’s theories. It seemed perfectly possible that Aenarion had once worn this damaged armour. Even without the magic that would give it life, there was a power about the thing. Its simple presence spoke of an earlier, more primitive age when mortal gods strode the earth and made war with foes the likes of which no longer existed in the modern world.

The metalwork was beautiful but it lacked the sophistication and loveliness of much later elven armour. It had been forged by masters in an age of war. The elves who had made it had other things on their mind than the creation of an object of beauty. They had been making a weapon for the solitary being who stood between their world and utter destruction.

‘What were you like?’ he asked himself, trying to picture Aenarion, to imagine what it must have been like to walk the world in that ancient time of blood and darkness. It was impossible to imagine a being of flesh encased in this suit of armour. It was easier to picture a creature of living metal such as some claimed the Witch King now was. Yet Aenarion had lived and breathed and fathered children, from one of whom Tyrion was descended. There was a link of blood and bone and flesh between himself and the one who had once worn this armour.

He reached out and touched it as if by doing so he could reach across the ages and touch his distant ancestor. The metal was cold beneath his hand and there was no life in it, no sense of presence other than that the armour itself possessed.

He felt obscurely disappointed. There was no echo down the ages from the avatar of the godhead who had saved his people. And he felt obscurely relieved that he had disturbed no ancient ghost, felt no ancient power. Perhaps it was true as some scholars now claimed that the great magics had departed from the world and that the high elves were but pale shadows of what they had once been.

He stood there for a long moment, enjoying the cold and the odd sense of being linked with ancient glories and terrors that could not touch his life. It was thrilling to imagine the time of Aenarion but he was happy too that he would not have to confront the horrors the first Phoenix King had been called upon to face. He was safe within the walls of his father’s house and nothing could touch him.

Somewhere off in the night something screamed, a hunting cat that had found prey perhaps or maybe one of the monsters that sometimes made their way down from the Annulii. A trick of the moonlight made it seem as if a mocking smile twisted the armour’s helmet-face and for a moment Tyrion thought of ghosts and deadly destinies.

Then he shook his head and dismissed his fears and padded softly to his own bed.

N’Kari dreamed. He relived the ancient days of glory when he had led the horde of Chaos that had come so close to conquering Ulthuan. He saw himself lolling on a throne made of the fused bodies of still-living elf-women and giving orders for the sacrifice of a thousand elf-children. He saw himself storming ancient cities of carved wood and putting them to the torch. He relived inhaling the scent of the burning forests as if it were incense as he devoured the souls of the dying. He saw again his first battle with Aenarion in the burned-out ruins of that ancient city and found himself once again facing that terrible blade. Something about that image brought him, shuddering, back into the present.

All around him the fabric of the Vortex flowed in a way that would have been incomprehensible to anyone but a daemon, a mage or a ghost. It was like being trapped in an infinite labyrinth of light.

He needed to escape. He needed to break out of this place.

He forced himself to think, to concentrate on his plans. It was too easy to lose track of time in this place, to lose himself in his far too vivid dreams. He had slowly become himself again. Over the long millennia he had gathered power. He had found holes in the fabric of the Vortex. He knew where it was deteriorating. He knew where he could break out when the time came.

The time was almost right. The stars were in the correct position. The power was within his grasp. Soon he would escape from this sterile, dull, haunted place and write his name in blood on the pages of history.

He would take vengeance on all of the line of Aenarion.