of Malekith, keeper of the iron key and lord high marshal of the realm of Naggaroth waited nervously in the antechamber of the Witch King’s throne room.
Frantically he reviewed all of his words and deeds for the past few months to see if there was anything that could possibly have caused a fall from grace. As far as he could tell there was nothing. Not even his most ambitious subordinate could have found an action or a speech that could possibly have been construed as disloyal. If they had made something up, they would swiftly discover the folly of spreading lies to the Witch King. Malekith had his own sources, and he checked and double-checked everything.
No. Dorian had performed his duties in an exemplary, some would say superlative fashion. He had held the border against Chaos for decades and he had overseen the arrival of the new allies Morathi had recruited as well as it was possible to do. There had been a minimum of fuss and trouble with the followers of the Dark Gods since their unexpected conversion to the cause of the rightful heir of Aenarion. If they planned treachery while within Naggaroth they would find themselves swiftly manoeuvred into a position where they could be destroyed by the druchii armies shadowing them.
Dorian knew that even the most diligent performance of one’s duties did not always guarantee Malekith’s favour, but it was unusual for the Witch King to take against those who served him well. Still, like every other dark elf he had skeletons in his closet that could be held against him. He supposed that there was always that business with his accursed half-brother Urian which ensured that the whole family would be forever tainted, and then there was his relationship with Cassandra, sorceress and follower of many secret paths, not all of them particularly favoured by Malekith.
He doubted that even those meant that much. If Malekith had been going to punish him for Urian’s transgressions he would already have done so. He had made his displeasure with Poisonblade known in the most spectacular fashion possible. For a thousand years druchii would talk about his fate in fearful whispers.
Dorian shuddered when he thought of his last sight of his brother hanging half-flayed from hooks over that blood-filled cauldron. Leather-clad torturers had driven truesilver spikes through his empty eye-sockets into the pleasure centres of his brain, and then muttered spells which turned agony into ecstasy and pleasure into pain. They had done it randomly so that the most awful torture became orgasmic pleasure, and the most gentle painkillers turned into nerve-wracking toxins.
Of course, Urian had gone mad many times, but he had always been nursed back to health. His body had hung there for thirteen months in this antechamber, kept alive by food and water pumped into his stomach through leather tubes and transfusions of blood from dying slaves hooked up to vampiric engines. Then one day Urian was just gone. Never mentioned again in Malekith’s hearing, his body tossed unmourned on some rubbish heap in Naggarond.
All because of one ill-considered joke. And he had been a favourite of Malekith’s up to that moment. His skill as a pit fighter and his wit and scholarship had all contributed to making him so. Malekith had made an example of him though, and now few considered speculating on how the armoured Witch King entertained himself in the privacy of his personal chambers.
Dorian had never liked his younger brother but it was a waste. Urian had been perhaps the greatest swordsman Naggaroth had seen in twenty generations. He had been a scholar of peculiar lore, an expert on poisons who had delighted in demonstrating their uses in the pits in which he had fought and made his name. He was merry and terrifying and entirely too self-confident. Dorian did not mind admitting now that he had feared him in a manner in which it was not entirely seemly to fear a younger sibling.
And yet he found he still missed him sometimes. They had come from the same place, poor scions of an impoverished ancient line. They had chosen different paths to fame and fortune at the court of Naggaroth, Urian in the fighting pits and bedchambers, he on the battlefield. They had both achieved success. One of them had gone on to demonstrate how transitory that could be. Dorian hoped he was not about to do the same.
Had he said anything about this to Cassandra, he wondered, and had his sorceress