CHAPTER SIXTEEN 
Like ink spreading in water, the Witch King’s magic started to pollute the stream of Ghyran brought forth by Ystranna. It was like forging against a river current, pushing against the resistance, but slowly, heartbeat by heartbeat, Malekith infected the magical current with his own will, corrupting it to his desire, perverting its nature.
The grass began to wither and the branches on the trees drooped as the life-force of the forest started leeching into Malekith’s dark magic. The power that had sustained the greenery now fed his wrath, and the longer he suckled on its foul-tasting purity the stronger his own sorcery grew.
Suddenly there was a flash of golden sunlight, arrowing down through the canopy, enveloping Malekith’s extension of will with an aura of warmth. He felt himself drawn out of his body, and blinked unreal eyes against the sudden light.
He stood in a quaint grotto, the sun overhead dappled by lustrous foliage swaying in a warm summer breeze. He could smell wild flowers on the banks of the dell – a sensation he had not enjoyed for several thousand years. His armour was no more, and he was clad in garlands of blooms and leaves, which coiled about him with a comforting embrace. A stream trickled through the grotto from a tinkling waterfall, fish of all colours darting to and fro beneath the surface.
‘Why hate so much?’ asked Ystranna. ‘Hate has never created anything.’
She appeared part maiden and part light and part tree, her hair spilling like willow branches, her eyes wells of sunshine. Streamers of flowers grew from the ground at her feet and enveloped her nakedness with a gown of rainbow hues, shimmering like the sunlight on the waterfall.
‘My hate created Naggaroth,’ said Malekith.
‘And what now of that creation? It has fallen, exposed as the pale imitation of life that it was. Something raised out of jealousy can never endure.’
‘What do you hope to achieve here? To sway my mind away from destroying you and taking back that which rightfully belongs to me?’ Malekith walked across the dell, feeling the soft turf beneath his bare feet, the grass between his toes. He closed his eyes, unable to avoid the memories stirred by the sensation. Memories of living flesh when he had thought he might love and be loved, fulfilled by duty and belonging.
‘No, Malekith, I do not. This is not for you. Nature can be harsh as well as beautiful. I am here to kill you with kindness.’
Ystranna’s expression changed. Her eyes became shards of ice and the garlands that wreathed Malekith revealed themselves to be the roots of the immense tree whose boughs spread over the dell, casting darkness across the Witch King. The roots tightened around his limbs and throat while thorns erupted from the tendrils, piercing his flesh, his splashing blood nurturing the ground to bring forth more bramble-like appendages.
The handmaiden stalked closer, her skin now like the bark of white trees, her fingers the clawing taproots that could prise open the foundations of castles and penetrate the walls of cities. Green and golden Ghyran continued to pulse through her body as she approached, hand outstretched.
‘I think not,’ said Malekith, letting free the bonds he had placed on his power to conceal it from Ystranna’s awareness. Aqshy, fire magic, surged through him, burning away the grasping roots and branches in a moment, turning his avatar into a pillar of fire.
‘You cannot harm me,’ the handmaiden said, her scornful expression written in creased bark and cracked leaves. ‘This is my realm and you are nothing but a projection of your will.’
The Witch King lunged at Ystranna’s apparition and before she realised what was happening, insubstantial fingers closed on her throat. She gasped in shock as the fires of his projection died, leaving a shadow-figure in their place.
‘Your realm?’
Ystranna looked around to see that the trees were withered, twisted things hunched over sickly-looking fungal growths. The ground had become a black mire, the river bubbling with the movement of fanged, slithering eels, the sun obscured by storm clouds.
‘My will is strong indeed, Ystranna,’ Malekith mocked. His blackened fingers become iron claws, digging into the flesh of Ystranna’s neck, puncturing the blood vessels. His spite bubbled from the wounds like acid, flowing into her body to create a spider’s web of blackening veins and arteries. ‘Thank you so much for coming to me. You are the taproot, the motherstone, the source of the power and now you have opened it to me. You should have stayed hidden.’
Ystranna’s flesh blistered and burned from within, pustules erupting to release clouds of spores that stung her eyes and choked her. She was immobile in Malekith’s grasp, unable to put up the slightest resistance.
‘Ulthuan will never be yours,’ the handmaiden gasped. Ystranna’s swollen veins started to pulse, splitting her bark-skin to allow sap-like fluid to run free, washing away Malekith’s venom. Her form shrank, becoming a tangle of blossoming vines that fell from the Witch King’s grasp. The blooms shattered like glass and where the shards landed, the decay of dark magic was dispelled, greenness and life returning to push back Malekith’s curse.
Assuming his usual form, the Witch King stamped a flaming foot on the spreading patch of earth magic, leaving a cindered footprint. The patch continued to grow, running up the hunched boles of the trees leaving fresh shoots in its wake, cleansing the filth from the brook, changing pale, eyeless eels into gleaming fish once more.
‘So crude, so clumsy,’ Ystranna said, her voice coming to Malekith from all around, carried on the rustle of jade leaves and the trickle of fresh water, the creak of branches and swish of grass mocking him with subtle laughter. The words tore at his pride, so close to those barbed comments his own mother had made.
‘Is that so?’ he snarled in reply, striding up to the closest tree. He punched his fist through the bark and opened his fingers in the heartwood, letting his frustration loose as a flame that consumed the tree from within. Steam and smoke billowed from the wound as the core of the tree disappeared, leaving the mass of branches to collapse in a welter of splinters and cracking wood.
The sun broke through, a ray piercing the storm gloom to light Malekith with a pale glow, blinding him momentarily, forcing him back into the grotto.
‘How can you defeat me when you cannot even find me,’ taunted the handmaiden. As the Witch King recovered his sight he spied a faerie light bobbing in the shadows cast by the canopy, whirling left and right, up and down.
‘You forget to whom you speak, child,’ Malekith said as his body slewed into a new shape, armour dissipating like mist, his form becoming that of a giant panther with burning amber eyes, claws and fangs of iron. With a roar he pounced into the woods towards the light. The gleam dodged and fled, zigzagging between the trees, Malekith’s claws tearing up the mulch as he chased it just a few steps behind, snarling and snapping.
The light cut sharply to the left behind the bole of a huge oak, and Malekith lost sight of it. He skidded to a stop, his gaze like a lantern beam as he passed it to and fro in the arboreal twilight. Suddenly he spied the hovering wisp of energy but before he could set off another appeared, a little further away. A third emerged from the leaves of a holly bush just a little way to his right. Within a dozen heartbeats there were scores of floating spheres, a tiny winged figure with the face of Ystranna in the heart of each.
Malekith looked past the glamour of the artificial world they had created to visualise their immaterial duel, seeing the raw winds of magic at work. Malekith was a knot of raw power, bloated and seething with unreleased energy. Dark magic required a focus, a fulcrum in the real world through which its power was harnessed. For the most powerful magic this was usually a sacrifice, to avoid the corruption of the mortal body of the sorcerer, but Malekith’s immortal form placed him beyond such petty consideration.
In stark contrast, Ystranna’s spirit was dispersed across the forest, absorbing Ghyran from everywhere. It was a structure of harmony and balance, kept alive by the interplay of energies themselves, taking from one area and giving to another. It was a creation of great intricacy, requiring intense concentration to maintain. There was no central point, no convergence for him to use to locate Ystranna. She was, as far as it mattered for the winds of magic, everywhere.
‘Impressive,’ he growled. ‘But your parlour trick has run its course. I do not need to find you to defeat you.’
Malekith’s panther body shuddered, black fur falling away, flesh becoming a thorn bush, his limbs extending and splitting into roots that delved deep into the earth. Down and down the Witch King pushed his avatar, striking out to find the roots of the trees, the rivulets of water that sustained them, deeper even than the Ghyran that Ystranna commanded. Spreading like an oil slick, Malekith’s dark magic pooled beneath the forest, cutting it off from the swell of the winds of magic, forcing Ystranna to shift the balance of her counter-spell. Malekith probed and stretched, claw-like roots rasping at Ystranna’s enchantment, seeking to tear through the harmonic web that made it possible.
He felt a stab of white fire as the other mages lent their support to the handmaiden, sensing that Malekith’s plan might work. Their panic only strengthened his resolve and bolstered the dark magic coursing through his projection. Their fire guttered and died, leaving silver trails back into the minds of the Sapherians. Malekith’s glee gave haste to his next attack. He pulsed dark magic into the thoughts of the mages and on the ground above they shrieked their horror as blood leaked from their eyes and bones split within their flesh.
‘You should choose your allies more carefully,’ Malekith gloated, feeling the pool of Ystranna’s power dwindling with every moment.
The handmaiden was losing control of the Ghyran, unable to maintain the balance of power as Malekith’s assault switched and veered from one place to the next, making inroads towards her.
All of a sudden Malekith felt the closeness of Ystranna, her magical presence within reach. He made a metaphysical grasp at her, ensnaring her will with his own. A moment later they both materialised back in the grotto, Malekith’s fist inside Ystranna’s chest, clutching her heart.
Feeding on the earth power the handmaiden commanded, Malekith’s magical presence swelled, growing and growing to gigantic proportion, towering above the forest like a tornado of dark wind, crackling with lightning. Her projection crumbled into dust as she fled, cutting herself off from the winds of magic, but it was too late. Malekith laughed as her avatar slipped away, leaving a slender thread of green and golden sunlight in his hands, pulsing beneath armoured fingers. He had all the power he needed, Ghyran stripped of all its earth power to become raw magic. Swelled by this he became a bloated thundercloud of destruction that flowed between the trees and billowed into the air.
Atop Seraphon’s back, Malekith opened his eyes. Much of the day had passed during his metaphysical battle; his forces below had been pushed steadily back and now formed a semi-circle around the encampment, hard pressed on three sides. Dusk was not far off, and defeat closer still.
With a grim smile, he unleashed his spell.
The ground shuddered, throwing asur and druchii alike from their feet, toppling trees and treemen. As the broken remnants of the forest swayed, the thunderous grinding grew even stronger until the Witch King’s magic burst forth, fuelled by the strength of mountain roots, gushing directly from the vortex that whirled in the bedrock of Ulthuan. An immense chasm cracked open, swallowing hundreds of Ystranna’s maiden guard in a tumble of boulders and broken trees.
Like a volcano erupting, the Ghyran-fuelled dark magic spewed into the sky, a black-tinged fog spreading out through the daemon-cursed trees, freezing every living thing it touched but bringing life to dead branches, filling petrified trees with vitality so that they lifted up limbs and roots and set upon the archers cowering beneath them with thorn-nailed hands.
Higher and higher swelled the sorcerous mass, touching the clouds that roiled overhead. Fire and lightning flickered in their depths and rain started to fall, droplets of flame that quickly became a burning hail and then a storm of flaming meteors that crushed elves and chariots, set fire to tree-kin and lions, obliterated shadow warriors and great eagles.
Malekith felt the burning in his heart first. The spell was channelling more and more power through his body, trying to break free of his control, the peripheral effect causing his already ravaged flesh to steam with fresh vigour, the fires that had crippled him burning behind his eyes and in his bones.
With a last snarl of hatred, Malekith let the spell end, collapsing exhausted in the saddle-throne. Seraphon continued to circle, keeping any potential attack at bay with blasts of gaseous breath and roars, while below the druchii surged out of their defensive line to charge the devastated Chracians and Avelorn maiden guard. To the west the aesenar slunk back towards Phoenix Pass, their retreat covered with hails of black arrows.
His vision dimming, Malekith directed Seraphon to the mountainside and dismounted, almost collapsing as his feet touched the magic-scoured rock. Hidden by the bulk of the black dragon, he knelt down, light-headed, limbs trembling.
Time passed but the Witch King could not mark how long. Eventually the crackle of ancient fires died in his ears and some measure of strength returned to his body. He opened iron-lidded eyes with some effort. It was dark but the clouds parted to reveal the Chaos moon in full ebb, the red orb glaring down like the eye of a wrathful god. The Witch King rose to his feet, flakes of ash drifting from his armour, and stepped past Seraphon to regard the battle below.
Total victory seemed certain. The spirits of the forest had gone, either destroyed by Malekith’s spell or fled from the vengeful counter-attack of the Naggarothi. Malekith’s army advanced in three prongs, while the Caledorians had flown eastward to the bottom of the valley in pursuit of the phoenixes and great eagles.
Malekith moved to pull himself up to Seraphon’s saddle but stopped a pace away, sensing something changing in the winds of magic. He looked up, drawn to the Chaos moon, and it appeared as though its cratered surface were a skull glaring down at him.
Death. Death filled the air.
The winds of magic stilled, impossibly, as though the entire world had frozen. Malekith’s breath steamed on air that had been hot a moment before. In the pass below both sides came to faltering stops as the embattled elves, always sensitive to magical change, felt the unnatural stillness. A cold terror filled the hearts of asur and Naggarothi together as they gazed up at the skull moon.
Malekith realised what was happening and he too felt a chilling dread. What if Teclis had been wrong? What if the Great Necromancer had awoken with all of his power?