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The Court of the Blind King – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

Prince Lurien slumped boredly into the Jade Throne of Briomdar. An artefact of whale ivory and aquamarine, it had thin strands of jade woven through an armature of living coral by the shamanic tide magicks of the isharann chorralus. The physical discomfort of that seat was offset somewhat by the novelty, and by the still-fuzzy glow of his mother’s death. Lurien smiled and shifted position. It was the ‘living’ part, he decided. The coral. In essence, he was sitting on a cunningly crafted rock, one that would regrow itself for each new generation of royalty and never be worn to fit an aelf’s shape. There was a lesson from the gods there, his mother would have said, about hubris and impermanence.

And Queen Lágethé, Tidemistress of the City of Seers, a proven authority on hubris, was now well placed to muse on impermanence.

Her soul, on the other hand…

With a weary sigh, Lurien wound a gauntleted finger through the algal strands of his periwig. The lengths were tied into knots and braids, luminescent turquoise wound with coarse-textured gold. The royal colours of Briomdar. With the bone of his jaw resting against his knuckles, he watched the performance.

The néthic dancer swirled, fishlike, between scattered groups of hooded isharann and ceremonially armoured akhelian, swimming through the deep green ethersea of the hall with the glowing chorrileum shard held above her head. Her body had been painted in mourning purple, marked further in subdued golden pigments with the runes of Erek, Thial and Néthu, with long streamers of black algal hair arranged in fishtails that swarmed over the emblems of the old gods of the dead like cleaner fish about a sacred allopex. Slave dancers of both sexes rippled through the hall in her wake, ribbons trailing from poles. With graceful tumbles, they swam together to conjure scenes from the age of eolas: red dragons breathing golden fire, white isles falling under black seas, golden goddesses devouring the world.

Surrounded by whorls of flesh and colour, the nobility of Briomdar engaged in abstinence, performing the solitary dances of the court. The avarai. The sarail. Or even, for those more daring, the iltaer, in which an aelf partnered with another on the opposite side of the hall. Every great house was accounted for but one, and yet the sense Lurien took from it was emptiness.

Nothing upset the sensibilities of the deepkin like the company of another of their kin.

Lurien watched the dancers with a curled lip. The Dance of the First Age, from the epoch before the Awakening, was a little morbid, even for his idea of entertainment.

With his left hand he wiggled the stem of his wine flute.

A girl bearing a conch shell was beside him almost immediately.

She looked about thirteen or fourteen, although her actual age was impossible to determine: namarti souls aged more quickly than the ivory-skinned perfection of their bodies could show. It was her scars, though, that fascinated Lurien. The namastir ‘half-soul’ rune branded into her forehead. The imperfect flesh that had grown over her hollow eye sockets. The hadrilkar slave collar with the swarming reef emblem of the house of Lágethé. Her bald white scalp had been polished with scented fish oils. Lurien held out his flute, already looking away. The girl flinched from the sudden movement, but didn’t allow any of the dark caulep wine to splash the turquoise-and-gold mosaic of the prince’s armour as she poured.

‘Will that be all, my prince?’ she murmured.

‘For now.’ Lurien darkened his ghoulishly white lips with wine. ‘But do not venture far.’ He watched the dancers distractedly as the conch girl eeled away.

He took a sip of the wine, amusing himself with the thought of how much more enthralling it would be to have the slaves calling him ‘my king’ after the assembral.

‘I hear that the Mirai Wardens are going to inter her above King Lorthael.’

Lurien turned to the three knights lounging variously about the foot of the throne. Each had come clad in piecemeal armour of turquoise scalloping and fine lace, the heraldries of their akhelian houses drifting with their long cloaks in the currents. The hall was a lattice woven of coral strands and gossamer algal netting that draped the original wooden scaffold of the Crannstock, and the icy currents in the ethersea that drove through its many openings never ceased. Lurien frowned down at the three. He was not sure which of them had spoken.

‘The namarti wench?’

The three akhelian laughed, a sound like the last air gurgling from the lungs of a drowning man.

‘Only you would have his mind on his slaves at a time like this,’ said Éodrain, his own gaze nevertheless lingering overlong on the departing girl. His colourless eyes were hooded, as though what he saw both bored and disappointed. His chin was pointed. The pale flush of too much caulep blued his cheeks. He drained the flute.

‘He pities you your royal duties,’ said Calohaire. A scar from a fyresteel axe cleft his left eye up the middle, which, coupled with the angular, ashen jawline of the Briomdar idoneth, lent him a permanently critical look. He glanced to Éodrain and smirked. ‘Or should that be envies?’

Éodrain’s shapeless leer took on an appearance of disgust.

Calohaire laughed coldly. ‘A king must set aside his spiritual discomfort and think of the enclave. Would you not agree, Vágös?’

The third aelf gave a disinterested grunt, his eyes fixed on the eolas dances.

‘Your problem, my prince, is that you treat the namarti almost as though they are real people with feelings,’ Calohaire went on. ‘It confuses them. They do not understand it.’

‘Do you not whip a fangmora that defies you?’ said Éodrain, speaking with a faint slur.

‘And when did you last mount a bound-beast, Éodrain?’ Calohaire laughed.

Lurien laughed as well.

Éodrain said nothing, instead summoning the conch girl for more wine.

‘Do you mean to leer through the entire rite of passage, Prince Lurien?’

An aelf in an austere harness of translucent white plate and a high-buckled cloak swam up to the throne. She was as bald and grey as a manatee, and cadaverous as a skeleton crab, all sharp bone and thin cords of muscle. Her cloak bore the spiked-gauntlet emblem of Túrach – the City of Spines. A group of asglir’akhelian in coats of silvered scales, conical helms and cloaks of identical bearing milled amongst the dancers, disarmed as the custom of assembrals required. Lurien put away his smirk. His retainers studiously occupied their gazes elsewhere.

‘Queen Anaer.’ Lurien bowed his head. ‘Do you come to request the next dance?’

Éodrain sniggered softly.

Anaer glared at him, unblinking.

‘I come because this is an assembral, and you are my host.’ She dipped her head to the precise angle of Lurien’s bow. ‘Were it not for our traditions, the descendants of the cythai would have scattered into the oceans when they first found their way from the Bright Haven and lived solitary lives until one by one they perished.’ Her mouth firmed slightly, noticeable only because of the wastage of flesh from her jawline. ‘Traditions such as rising when you address a queen.’

Lurien startled himself by rising, swiftly covering his embarrassment with a florid bow and then offering the Queen of Spines his hand once more.

Éodrain covered his mouth with his hand.

‘I am considered the finest dancer in the Jade Court,’ said Lurien.

‘Lágethé must have been very proud.’

Lurien felt the spite trickle out of him.

He sat back down.

‘I disliked your mother very much,’ said Anaer.

‘You were not alone.’

‘I found her ambition to rule vulgar. Hers and her sister’s. And I thought her energy… distasteful. You.’ She pursed her lips as she appraised him, slumped in his chair, caulep flute hanging limp between the fingers of one hand. ‘You I have not seen since the tyrant of the azydrazor invited me to witness your mhair trials.’

‘I passed, if I remember.’

‘Everyone passes mhair, Prince Lurien. It is how you pass that defines an akhelian warrior.’

Lurien spread his hands. ‘And?’

‘It can take a century to properly appreciate an ishratisar-made sword.’ Her gaze flicked up from her shallow appraisal and back to Lurien’s eyes. Her stare was lazy and unfocused. ‘A glance alone will show the faults in a bad one.’

The queen of Túrach bowed once more, then turned to rejoin the mailed knights of her entourage. Éodrain emitted a snort that Lurien choked, stillborn, with a glare.

‘I am told she does not even eat,’ Calohaire whispered. ‘They say she sustains herself on malice and the beast souls that she consumes.’

Vágös nodded as though this were truth, incontrovertible as the Light of Teclis.

‘My prince?’ Éodrain waved his fingertips across the twisted barbs that decorated Lurien’s pauldrons as a delegation of warriors armoured in lapis blue came next to pay the customary respects to the throne.

Lurien straightened, determined to make more of an impression on the king of Guethen than he had with Anaer.

‘Galrohir,’ he said, bowing his head lower.

The giant aelf’s face was marbled with scars, new and old, from a hairline nick across his pointed chin to an ugly knot of pallid lines around his eyes that were so tightly drawn that Lurien initially thought they had to be tattoos. His eyes were yellowed, his flesh sickly in hue if not obviously deficient in health. His armour was twisted and barbed to evoke angry waves, coloured every blue-green shade of a slaughter at sea. A dark haze of imprisoned magic gave him a shimmering outline, though it was not of the armour. Magic both ancient and potent abounded in the deep places of the oceans, but the Guethen infamously never employed such materials in their armour. It came from the poleaxe sheathed diagonally across his back. A hilt of merkraken bone and black jewels projected over his left shoulder.

‘King Galrohir,’ said the aelf. His voice was like shingle being slowly worked into sand. He did not bow.

Lurien bit his lip. Even Anaer had bowed.

‘I thought there were no titles amongst equals.’

‘There aren’t. You may claim equality when Vanglyr and the akhelian council emerge from conclave to give their verdict to the assembral.’ He looked around. ‘Where is the House of Vanglyr anyway? Is it not time?’

‘I am sure he will be here soon.’ Lurien held on to his smile. The verdict of the akhelian council was, of course, only a formality.

As well as he could remember from the lessons that he had cared to attend in the first instance, only a handful of heirs in the thousand-year history of Briomdar had ever been rejected by the akhelian council. The incompetent generally removed themselves from contention through death and misadventure long before the incumbent’s demise, and Lurien was nothing if not cautious in his misadventures. If that were not reassurance enough for him, and if he were of the kind that sought after reassurance, then Raidlord Vanglyr’s infamous devotion to Queen Lágethé would suffice. Lurien smiled to himself. For a race that clove to material abstinence and seclusion as its ideals, the idoneth took a rare delight in intrigue. The tyrant of the azydrazor was known to have been a frequent night guest of his queen. He would do nothing to harm her legacy now.

Lurien bowed as though accepting Galrohir’s critique. ‘I am just relieved that you could attend, King Galrohir. None of my invitations were returned.’

Galrohir crossed his arms over his chest. ‘I was out raiding. You might be familiar with the idea of it.’

‘I am passingly familiar with the notion,’ Lurien replied, more caustically than he had intended. ‘And in fact it is my opinion that the enclaves have been raiding rather too frequently of late. It is more than just fishing villages and lost sylvaneth for the picking on the shores of the Green Gulch these days. The stormclaimed have raised a mighty keep of Azyrite stone on the mouth of the River Dwell, and claim a thousand leagues of coast for their own. Those fishing villages are great towns now, with walls and armies to defend them.’

He sat forwards, feeling his cold flesh warm to the passion of the old argument.

‘And yet even as the stormed god encroaches, some worm whispers in the mind of the Gulch Empress of Coryza, telling her to cede those territories she still possesses that she might cast yet more bilgeships into the sea. She hunts us, Galrohir. They all hunt us now. Skaven submersibles prowl the shallows of Dwy-Hor. Slaaneshi seekers and soulblight agents of the Undying King pick through the ruins of your raids for whatever clues to our existence you leave behind.’

He slumped back in his throne, sneering.

‘Your akhelian have done more than any to see our namarti…’ He waved his hand vaguely ‘…problem deferred, but enough is enough. A strong king of Briomdar might be wise to rein in the warriors of Guethen.’

Lurien’s retainers were holding their breath. For a moment, he feared he might have gone too far. Assembral was one of the few occasions when a king of the idoneth was permitted to challenge another. By his reputation, the king of Guethen was probably brutish enough to put that little-used law to the test. Slowly, Galrohir began to smile. It was the cruellest, most murderous expression that Lurien had ever seen outside of his own mirror.

‘That is a fine cut to your eye I see, Lord Calohaire.’ Galrohir looked past Lurien to address his retainer. ‘Taken in Vanglyr’s latest raid, correct? I heard you rode your fangmora against the Okthallin lodges with great skill.’ Lurien bristled at the offhand dismissal. His retainer looked genuinely pleased that the king of Guethen knew his name.

‘It was taken,’ said Lurien, clearly enunciating each word lest Galrohir be in danger of misunderstanding, ‘because you and the raidlord have left nothing more on the coast to be won. The soulscryers instead guided Vanglyr’s phalanx onto the mountain lodges of the fyreslayers. Hardly easy pickings.’

‘The only things that come easily are those which no one values,’ said Galrohir, and smiled. ‘Teclis, his fourth lesson to the Awakened. Teclis it was who drew the cythai from the belly of the Gorged God, but it was his brother, Tyrion, who stayed the god’s hand when he saw the cursed things he had made. Blindness, we are, as much as hubris.’

‘I never took you for a student of the gods,’ said Lurien.

Galrohir tilted his head back, as if to look down his hooked half-moon nose at the enthroned prince. ‘When you take a warrior’s soul, he will insist you fight for it. Remember that.’ He turned from Lurien, then nodded. ‘Lord Calohaire.’

Lurien trembled with barely suppressed venom as Galrohir made his departure. ‘Who does that ugly gathal think he is?’

‘The king of Guethen,’ said Calohaire. ‘Perhaps we should not put ourselves on his bad side.’

‘When did you become so friendly with Galrohir?’ said Éodrain, peering over the rim of his flute.

‘I have never met any knight of Guethen before now.’

‘So he just…’ Éodrain waved airily. ‘…heard of your deeds, did he?’

‘Fuéthain,’ Lurien swore.

‘My prince?’ said Calohaire.

‘There are barely a hundred true-souled idoneth in that sulphurous pit to the underworld they call an enclave, you know. And he thinks he can intimidate me.’

‘But over twenty hardened namarti battalions,’ said Calohaire. ‘Their raids bring in a great number of sou–’

‘Yes, yes, yes.’ Lurien wormed into the back of his throne. ‘His legions of conch girls and eolas dancers terrify me. Guethen is an angry little power that Lágethé tolerated because the growth of the enclaves was in her interests at the time. No. It is only Túrach that comes close to being Briomdar’s rival for influence in the Green Gulch.’

‘And you and Anaer seem to get along so well.’ Éodrain smirked and sipped at his wine.

‘No matter.’ Lurien waved his hand dismissively. ‘Disputes are heated and untidy. Anaer hates that more than she hates me. Mahbòr is… well, he’s Mahbòr.’ They all nodded sagely at that wisdom. ‘And Aunt Laramé loves me.’ He smiled at the rare feeling of genuine affection. Deciphering the family trees of the idoneth nobility was like trying to pick salt out of water. With so few healthy-souled children born and, purely by the arithmetic involved, most of those being born to namarti, the entire edifice of house and heritage was a fascinating charade of adoption and strategic marriage designed to generate the appearance of noble lineages dating back to the cythai. Laramé and Lágethé had been something rarer even than a true-souled child.

They had been blood twins. Isharann queens.

‘The queen of Elgaen would never go against her sister’s heir.’

‘Where is she?’ Calohaire muttered, still glaring ice daggers at Éodrain.

‘She would not want the others to see her grieve,’ said Lurien, his eyes distant. ‘Anaer in particular. They would not understand her loss.’

‘I don’t recall you being so interested in politics at the azydrazor,’ said Calohaire.

‘I simply never set my mind to it before. It’s really not complicated.’

‘The azydrazor was a long time ago for us all,’ Vágös mused.

‘It speaks!’ declared Éodrain, the caulep raising his voice too loud.

Vágös bared translucent teeth, and then, saying nothing further, turned back to the gathering. His mouth parted slightly in surprise.

‘As Mathlann protects…’

‘What?’ said Lurien, sitting up.

‘Oh my,’ said Éodrain.

Calohaire pointed. ‘King Mahbòr has arrived.’

Surrounded by a globe of silent knights in beryl-green warplate and circlets of thorns, the Laughing King of Dwy-Hor danced a traíga quickstep that was completely out of tempo with his fellow guests and the dour mood of the assembral. His partner was a female akhelian in a wooden masque and a long cloak of woven sea-green leaves. Her bare arms were tattooed with a spiralling spread of thorns, one hand upon her king’s shoulder, the other around his waist.

Lurien watched in scandalised fascination.

‘They are… touching.’

‘Is that the queen of Dwy-Hor?’ said Calohaire.

‘No,’ said Lurien. ‘Mahbòr is unwed.’

‘That is not what I heard,’ said Éodrain.

‘No one cares what you heard, Éodrain,’ said Calohaire. ‘Still less where you heard it.’

‘I heard that he wed that tree spirit of his,’ said Éodrain, his voice low.

‘Do not be absurd,’ said Calohaire.

‘It is true.’

‘It is not.’

‘They call her Queen of the Deepgrove.’

‘Enough,’ said Lurien. ‘All of you.’ He stared into the Deep Nothing, frowning through one of Lágethé’s half-remembered contemplation exercises. ‘If there’s one thing I do not want to be thinking about right now, it’s that.’ The three akhelian chuckled, equal parts disgust and lurid fascination. ‘In any case, I heard he adopted her as his daughter.’

Éodrain lowered his caulep flute. ‘He wouldn’t. Even he wouldn’t.’

‘Wouldn’t he?’ said Lurien. ‘Why then does he keep her?’

Vágös shook his head. ‘She is a pet. A trophy. A reminder of his last raid on the Cueth’ene.’

‘Why would he want to remember?’ said Éodrain.

The other akhelian shrugged.

‘They do things differently in Dwy-Hor,’ Lurien mused.

An explosion of brightly coloured heralklir fish burst from the hall’s pearl-inlaid doorway before Lurien could continue. The fish had been bred by the enclave’s embailors over hundreds of generations for their short memories, the tendency to scatter from any significant grouping of aelves and the royal turquoise and gold of their scales. The school ribboned and ballooned towards the heralklirs’ favoured hiding places in the ceiling’s arches, stilling sombre dances and leaving hushed conversation in their wake. Lurien closed his mouth and turned to the doorway, to the armoured aelves whose procession had disturbed the tiny heralds.

Vanglyr.

And the akhelian council.

The prince’s retinue pulled themselves upright and surreptitiously concealed their wine flutes. Despite every conscious effort to remain seated and prideful, Lurien found himself straightening, pushing himself up to hover in the ethersea above the Jade Throne. It did not matter how long it had been since an akhelian passed his mhair. Vanglyr Fellglaive, raidlord of Briomdar and tyrant of the azydrazor, still had the power to command absolute obedience from his former charges.

Where the Fellglaive passed, the water bubbled, agitated even under the tremendous pressures of the ocean floor to boiling by the power he wore. The unformed magic that filled the deepest oceans of the Mortal Realms manifested in numerous ways. In planktonic form it fed the mouths of the great behemoths that prowled below the depths of mortal prey. It sustained empires of daemons unaligned to any god, whose powers waxed and waned with the tides. And it would, in rare conjunctions of the spheres, break in apocalyptic storms that could scour an ocean and leave not a ripple upon its surface. In some rare places it deposited as a metal that some jewel of intuition in the idoneth psyche had bade them to name ithilmhair. Armour forged from its seasilver scales would withstand a blow from Sigmar’s hammer. A blade of it would cleave any ward.

Noble guests and namarti performers alike drifted into a wide circle as the akhelian came to face the Jade Throne. The tyrant said nothing until the hall was quiet and everybody was still. Though Vanglyr was a tall aelf, he did not loom like Galrohir. Rather, he was a cold force of charisma around which brine might freeze and mortal souls hasten to obey. Only the néthic dancer bearing Lágethé’s chorrileum shard continued to twist and gyrate around the circle of souls.

‘For eighty-three years has Queen Lágethé ruled Briomdar,’ said Vanglyr, his voice so resonant and deep that Lurien felt it almost as a vibration on his skin rather than in his ears. ‘She oversaw the growth of the isharann túrscoll to one without rival in the oceans of the seven realms. And she bade Briomdar rise from the old wood citadel of the Crannstock to an enclave of a hundred thousand souls.’ The namarti dancers bowed their heads in homage. A handful of Briomdain nobles mimed silent handclaps. ‘And it was under her rule that Briomdar eclipsed her sister enclave, Túrach, as the pre-eminent civilisation in the Green Gulch.’

Lurien sought out Anaer and her retinue, eager to see what the Queen of Spines made of that remark, only to find her quietly conferring with Galrohir. Both their expressions were inscrutable. Lurien frowned, wondering what those two could possibly have to talk about.

‘But now her body is empty.’ Vanglyr’s voice lowered still further. He growled as he surveyed the gathered nobility. ‘Her soul.’ He raised a hook-taloned gauntlet and gestured to the maroon-painted macabre, the néthic dancer, who swirled uncaringly about the hall, higher, higher in the ethersea where the full stillness of the nobles’ attention could follow, holding the glowing chorrileum stone aloft. ‘Her soul goes to blessed isolation. Lágethé need feel no more.’ If the tyrant suffered any pain at the loss of his lover and queen, there was no way to know it. ‘Briomdar must find its way without her guidance.’

Lurien put his hand to the turquoise-and-gold dominoes that adorned his breastplate. His heart was pounding underneath, so hard it seemed almost perverse that he could not feel it through the metal.

‘I am ready to guide it,’ he said.

Silence overtook the hall.

Anticipation was a vernal tide, swelling around him, bearing him up, lifting him high. He was drunk on caulep, a little, tipsy with expectancy. If there was one thing in the Mortal Realms that could sweeten becoming king of Briomdar, it was being crowned so by Vanglyr Fellglaive.

Lurien closed his eyes.

There was a hiss as an ithilmhair blade left its scabbard.

‘By the custom of assembral,’ said Vanglyr, ‘I challenge your claim to your mother’s crown.’

The flute slipped from Lurien’s fingers. The innate magic of the idoneth deserted it as it did so, dark red caulep squirting from the rim like blood from a living heart, crushed by the titanic pressures of the sea floor. It all made sense to him now – the attempts to break him at the azydrazor, the whispers of his reluctance to raid at court, the courting of Queen Lágethé’s black heart. It had all been for this, to rob him of this. Well, he was not a frightened child now, alone in a house of warriors and bereft of his mother. He was regent of Briomdar. And if Vanglyr wished to face his prince in the Court of the Blind King, the challenge of swords, then he was welcome.

His right hand closed over the aquamarine pommel of his akhelian sword.

Metal hissed throughout the hall as namarti warriors that Lurien had not even noticed until that moment drew blades. No palace guards these, the Emerald Phalanx, armed with falx and netcasters – these were battalion thralls, seasoned raiders bearing coldly beautiful lanmari greatswords, exquisite alloys of lead and silver that seawater would never rust. Behind him, Lurien’s retainers hastily drew their swords.

‘Do not draw in anger, Lurien,’ said Vanglyr. The growling cadence of his voice was bitterly familiar, as indeed were the words and every variation thereof. Think before you strike, Lurien. Keep your mind on your foe, Lurien. The only battle that must be won is in your own heart, Lurien. It was as though the tyrant were explaining another lesson whose nuance had once more passed Lurien by, only this time with an entire assembral to witness his humiliation. ‘De’comhrac has been offered.’ He lifted his glaive, the black weapon that had earned him his name. ‘The rite of Lacelothrai. Trial by sword. My blade has spoken the challenge. Unsheathe yours now and the gods will demand that it end in blood.’

Lurien tightened his grip on the pommel.

Calohaire caught his hand by the wrist. He squeezed. Lurien stared at the akhelian’s hand in horror.

‘Do not answer the challenge,’ Calohaire hissed.

‘Do not touch me.’

‘My prince,’ said Éodrain. ‘Are you sure?’

‘He has had this coming for years.’

Pulling his hand away from Calohaire’s, Lurien bared pallid teeth in a snarl. The sound it made echoed that of the blued steel as it slid from his scabbard. His sword was thinner than the blade at the head of Vanglyr’s glaive, but longer, more elegant. The tyrant’s blade was a hacking implement, notched and black, more befitting an ironjaw chieftain than a king of Briomdar. Lurien’s was patterned with waving lines of gold. Where it caught the rays of the light globes and glowstones, and even the luminescent pigments in his periwig, the metal shimmered like liquid.

Vanglyr’s expression turned dark. His voice became smoke. ‘It will be as the gods will it, then.’

‘You think you frighten me, Fellglaive? I am not a child any more.’

‘A child is exactly what you are.’

With a hiss of fury, Lurien chopped his sword towards Vanglyr’s neck.

The tyrant parried it effortlessly with the huge blunt width of his blade. Sparks curled off between the scraping blades to be quenched in freezing ethersea. Using the impact force to propel himself upwards, Lurien spun, switched grips and stabbed at Vanglyr’s head from above. Vanglyr blocked with his long glaive like a shield.

Lurien spun his elegant blade through a dazzling sequence of manoeuvres. ‘You fight like a duardin.’ He was already breathing hard, an unpleasant warmth blueing his cheeks. His cloak swam wild about him.

‘Duardin are easy to mock,’ said Vanglyr, returning his sword to its guard. ‘More challenging by far to kill.’

‘My sword is unmatched.’

Vanglyr snorted. ‘Your sword is untested. Not in any way that matters.’

With a strangled yell, Lurien launched himself at the tyrant, a measured sequence of warm-up routines devolving into a maddened flurry of chopping actions that the older warrior coolly weathered. Stabbing low and forcing a parry, he punched Vanglyr as hard as he could in the jaw. The tyrant did not seem to feel it. But he did react. Wrath lit up his eyes, just for a moment, and Lurien kicked back, blinding Vanglyr with riptides and tiny bubbles.

‘Yield,’ Calohaire called out to him. ‘Blood has been spilled. The gods will be satisfied.’

Lurien frowned, then felt the thin sting of indigo blue across his cheek. It did not bleed. The pressure exerted by the ethersea at the sea floor was far in excess of that inside his body. One had to inflict an extraordinary amount of damage to really destroy a deepkin aelf. Even so, he felt the injury far in excess of the wound’s severity.

For the first time in his short life, it occurred to Lurien that he might actually be in danger.

Fear and spite warred in him as he considered his retainer’s words, the heat of their struggle bringing a tingle to his cold, clammy flesh.

‘The crown is mine,’ he hissed at last.

‘Why do you want it?’ said Vanglyr. ‘You have never shown the slightest interest in ruling wisely.’

‘Because it is mine. Why do you wish it?’

‘For Briomdar.’

‘Then you yield!’

Lurien threw a looping slash towards Vanglyr’s neck, aiming for the white skin above the curved lip of his gorget.

Vanglyr simply opened his hand and caught the strike in the super-hard ithilmhair of his gauntlet. Lurien pulled at the sword, but it would not move, stuck in the tyrant’s grip like a mollusc enveloped by an expanding reef. Then, with a speed and a brutality that belied his mass, the armoured warrior hammered his forehead into Lurien’s nose. Spots burst across the prince’s eyes. Water rushed through his ears. The next thing he knew, he was falling backwards over a coral spur.

‘You may sit on the throne,’ came Vanglyr’s voice with the deliberate, distant tones of an executioner, one who wielded the blade but drew no personal satisfaction from its tally. ‘But you are not a king.’

Pain ripped through Lurien’s body.

He had never felt anything like it. So intense. So limitless. He was not entirely sure where he had been struck, only that it was grievous. Upper body. Yes. Shoulder. Gods, yes. His mind groped for Lágethé’s meditation litanies. His body could have its suffering and be damned, but the very pain he sought retreat from scrambled his thoughts, and his mind stumbled over the first exercise.

‘Asyr… Asir… Asur…’

He looked down, and whimpered.

Vanglyr’s glaive was embedded in his shoulder. It had struck down, through meat, through bone, through whale ivory, aquamarine and living coral, and cut diagonally through Lurien’s chest. His breathing hitched, as though inhaling might rip a lung. His eyes roved wildly. The water was thick with atomised coral. Vanglyr’s glaive pinned him to the throne like a chopped fillet to a block. Water pressure kept his blood from spraying, but he could feel it pulsing against the wedge of ithilmhair that had been driven into his body.

It occurred to Lurien, somewhat belatedly, that he was not quite as good with a sword as he had believed.

‘As the Blind King stands witness,’ said Vanglyr. Lurien almost blacked out with pain as the tyrant set a boot to the throne’s arm, the other anchored on the dais, and began to wrench the heavy glaive from his torso. ‘I claim the Jade Throne of Briomdar.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Alexander Mokhov.

The Court of the Blind King © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. The Court of the Blind King, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-78999-634-0

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