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