Sword of Caledor Read Free Page B

of the knife opened her jugular. Blood spurted into the font. He threw the flopping carcass to one side and summoned the next with a gesture of his armoured hands. The whimpering went on but his will was strong. He would allow himself no weakness. One by one he sent their souls out into the void through the gap in reality his spell had created. They were his messengers to the dreadful being he intended to summon. Their very presence was part of the message.
    As the ritual built to its climax, his words took on a strange sibilant resonance, as if they echoed through unseen chasms in the unhallowed places beyond. Somewhere far off, in a darkness so deep it could swallow worlds, something responded.
    In a place that was not a place, in a time that lay outside time, N’Kari, Keeper of Secrets, great among daemons, felt the faint irritating tug of a summoning spell.
    At first he ignored it. That a being should be foolish enough to draw his attention piqued his curiosity, but not very much. The realms of mortals were full of those who sought to barter their puny souls for the benefits they thought daemons could provide. Sometimes, when he was bored, N’Kari allowed himself to be called and then destroyed those who sought to bend him to their will. Sometimes he granted their wishes and allowed them to destroy themselves, just so he could have the amusement of watching.
    There was something about the being making this summons though – something that nagged at N’Kari’s vast store of memories and set them to swirling, the way a scent of some half-remembered perfume makes an old rake remember the fleshpots of his youth.
    Yes, something familiar indeed.
    In this place that was not a place, in this time that was not a time, N’Kari’s mind worked in a different way than it would have had he been bound to the chronal flow of mortal reality. He remembered many things simultaneously, sometimes as vividly as if he were actually experiencing them, sometimes as if they were as remote as the birth of the universe. This summons triggered a fugue of memories and images.
    It reminded him of the mortal god Aenarion, and his descendants whom N’Kari had once tried so hard to kill. And there was about it a faint, frightening taint of the Flame of Asuryan, the god-thing that was numbered among N’Kari’s greatest enemies.
    N’Kari was curious now as he suspected he was intended to be.
    More virgin souls were offered up to him, slain in exactly the correct ritual manner to please him. It was nice that the proprieties were being observed. Languidly, he extended a tentacle of thought towards the gap in reality from which the summons had come. He forced a small portion of his mighty essence through the portal, and allowed it to take shape according to the whims and expectations of the summoner.
    In that moment, mortal reality crashed in on him. He found himself trapped within a sorcerer’s circle in the dank underground depths beneath some cold northern castle. An armoured figure as monstrous as any daemon loomed before him.
    He was pleased. This was going to prove more interesting than he had anticipated.
    Slowly a shape arose out of the pool of blood in the font of the altar. It was a beautiful woman made of congealed red plasma, snakes of hair swirling from her impossibly lovely head. She beckoned at Malekith in a lascivious, enticing way. Her hips swayed sinuously in a way that promised great pleasure.
    The Witch King was not even tempted. The wards on his armour neutralised the potent spells of intoxication. His destroyed olfactory nerves were insensitive to the narcotic musk. Seeing that this strategy was not working, the daemon changed tactics and shape, becoming something monstrous and four-armed and clawed. The blood congealed and hardened into a glistening carapace. The hands extended into talons and claws. The skull became horse-like, the teeth great tusks and fangs.
    This was more like its true shape, Malekith thought, if a