DEATHMASQUE

Graham McNeill

DEATH’S MESSENGER STALKED the streets of Tor Yvresse. Clad in a fuliginous cloak that cast off light and shadow in equal measure, he ghosted towards his inevitable destination with grim strides. He wore his hood up, and the gleam of a white porcelain mask beneath reflected distant torchlight and gave the impression of features moving from youth to death in a heartbeat. A few platinum tresses were all that escaped from behind the mask, like the last wisps of hair clinging to a fleshless skull.

He could hear voices raised in song and his bloodless lip curled in disdain.

On this night of nights, they mocked him with their vibrancy and sense of hope.

This portion of the city was in darkness, the magnificent buildings to either side of him empty and abandoned. No glow of candles or softly-shimmering magic shone from their lightless windows, and only ghosts haunted their echoing vestibules and dining chambers. He liked to roam the streets here, finding comfort in the silence and absence of the living. Solitude was peace, social interaction was torture, and he relished the time he could spend in the twisting, empty streets with only the ghosts of the past for company.

He remembered a time when Tor Yvresse had bustled with life. It had been a city of grace and wonders that outshone Lothern, which had been little more than a city-port in decline until Finubar the Seafarer became Phoenix King. This street had once boasted a thriving market where the choicest sweetmeats and pastries could be purchased. An epicurean delight, the many stalls had groaned under the weight of delicacies from all across Ulthuan, food and drink to satisfy even the most demanding gastronome.

Before the coming of the goblin king, he had come here with his brother and happily whiled away the hours haggling with traders, sampling dreamwine from Avelorn, shimmer-fish caught off the coast of Cothique and lion meat hunted in the forests of Chrace. It angered him now to think of those days, how he had wasted time with frivolity when the world was just waiting to tear away the comforting illusion of peace.

He turned a corner, following a marble-flagged thoroughfare that led to a wide amphitheatre where plays commissioned in the time of Aethis had been performed. His mother had loved the theatre and had come here with his father whenever the demands of duty allowed him the time.

He walked into the centre of the amphitheatre, hearing the long-dead voices of performers as they strutted across the proscenium, delivering their lines with theatrical aplomb. Even before the beginning of the end, he had loathed the theatre, preferring the blood-thundering fury of war. Like many of the brash asur his age, he had lived life with fierce relish, taking pleasure in the arts of death over all others. As a youth he had led daring expeditions to Naggaroth, fought the druchii on the shores of Ulthuan and slain the dread beasts that ventured from their lairs in the Annulii.

His mother had chided him for being so sombre in times of peace, but as he stood in the centre of the deserted amphitheatre, he knew time had proved him right. The songs from the distant festival were louder here, the perfect acoustics throwing back random echoes of words and music. Even in this gloomy, shadow-haunted part of the city, there was no escaping the fierce sounds of life resurgent.

He knew he would need to venture out into the festival. The thought held no joy for him, but there was blood to be spilled this night. The Festival of Masques was a time for wild abandon, the pursuit of excess without consequence. For some that meant indulgence in food, others in drink or opiates. Far more indulged their hedonistic impulses, flouting all bounds of decency behind their anonymous masks and painted on identities.

For others, it allowed darker appetites to be sated.

HE LEFT THE amphitheatre and made his way towards the centre of the city. At the heart of Tor Yvresse reared the gleaming tower of the Warden, and he made that his destination. The minstrel he came to find had announced he would play out his tale at Dethelion’s Theatre.

That would be the perfect place to end this charade.

The song-tale the minstrel was reciting had spread throughout Yvresse, and this grand retelling would no doubt be best served with the tower as a backdrop. He had the minstrel’s name, but little else to go on, but that was all he needed. In any case, a physical description would do him little good on this night. Behind their masks, the players of the city were invisible and free from repercussions.

Once again, he made his way through the empty streets. It seemed an age ago that the city had been so full that this many dwellings had been required to house its inhabitants. Since the invasion of the goblin king, the city could house many times the number of elves who called Tor Yvresse home.

The walls of the city were high and strong, made mighty by the magic woven into their construction, but there were too few warriors left to defend them. Tor Yvresse was finished as a bulwark against invasion, and the knowledge was galling. How could so formidable a city have come to such a low ebb?

The noise of the festival was getting louder, and he steeled himself for the discomfort and irritation that close proximity to others engendered. The music bounced from the walls, skirling through the streets like serpentine streamers of light. It sought to lift him, but only depressed him more. Anyone with a brain could see there was no room for songs of love and victory.

Just because elves still occupied Tor Yvresse didn’t mean it wasn’t already lost.

The street he was following bent to the north and a soft, flickering glow of light, both magical and natural, illuminated the road. Ahead was the River of Stars, a street of magic and light, a place of wonder and glittering enchantment. Shadows danced on the walls, a mockery of life and animation that sent a spike of anger into his heart. The minstrel’s arrival had brought joy to the city, sending a spreading wave of euphoria through its inhabitants. Everyone had heard fragments of his song, but tonight would see it played out for people who had seen the events it described first hand.

The Theatre of Dethelion would play host to this rogue minstrel’s dangerous work, but surely anyone who had witnessed the bloodshed of the goblin king’s assault would balk at its horrors being told in song. Some things were best consigned to history - not forgotten, never that - but not celebrated. Not immortalised in song. He paused to draw a calming breath, feeling his hands bunch into fists. His was a quick temper, but he forced his anger down with a series of mental exercises taught to him by his father.

He turned into the River of Stars and let the full force of the festival wash over him.

EVERYWHERE WAS LIGHT and magic. The elves of Tor Yvresse, normally so stolid and not given to gaudy behaviour, thronged the streets in their hundreds. They wore their grief like a cloak, but tonight it was cast off as costumes of all description and colour bedazzled the eye. Revellers dressed in a riot of flesh and fabrics that would make a courtesan of Lothern blush. Magical will-o’-the-wisps darted overhead, flitting to the sound of music played by unseen lyres and flutes.

Fire breathers capered in the centre of the street, and a spellsinger wove their blazing exhalations into dancing forms above the heads of the crowd. Blazing representations of colourful dragons, eagles and battling warriors burned the sky. A troupe of dancers and tumblers spun and wove through the fire, twirling in tight spirals as they performed an ancient dance from the time of Aenarion. Their robes were like wings and they moved as though in defiance of gravity.

He moved into the mass of cavorting anarchy, feeling the press of bodies around him like a physical pain. He longed for his rune-encrusted sword, but the shimmering chimera-skin sword belt lay in his bedchamber. Only a slender, leaf-bladed dagger hung at his thigh, in defiance of the joyous spirit of the festival.

The fire breathers moved on, and another band of entertainers took their place, a host of painted figures more akin to the barbarously insane wardancers of the asrai than any noble family of Ulthuan. Like the acrobats before them, they darted through the crowd, spinning swords and spears in dazzling displays of martial skill. Their oiled bodies gleamed in the torchlight, and laughing revellers pawed at them with lewd caresses.

He felt the woman’s touch coming a heartbeat before she made contact with his arm.

He spun, catching her wrist as it reached out to his shoulder. Acting on instinct, he twisted the wrist and sent his free hand pistoning towards her masked face.

His fist never connected, the killing blow intercepted a hair’s breadth from the bejewelled features of her mask. As he held one of her wrists, she too held one of his. They released each other in the same instant, and he stepped back as the crowd pulled away, his violent outburst a flagrant breach of festival etiquette. The woman straightened and massaged her shoulder where he had twisted it fiercely.

She took in the darkness of his robe, and the pale, lifeless white of his half-hidden mask.

‘You are fast,’ she said. ‘As a banshee should be.’

‘As are you,’ he replied. ‘I might have killed you.’

‘But you did not. Be thankful for that, for it would have displeased my husband greatly, and he is a great hunter.’

‘Really?’ he said. ‘And who is he, this great hunter?’

She cocked her head to the side, and he saw that her eyes were the most brilliant amber colour. Silver flecks of icy white glittered there, and he saw her great sadness, like a mother who has outlived all her children. Golden hair, like fresh-ripened corn, framed a delicate heart-shaped mask of silver with a single painted tear that curved down her cheek.

‘You know it is impolite to ask for names during the Festival of Masques.’

He shrugged. ‘Then do not answer. I care not.’

He turned to walk away, but the woman caught up with him.

‘I will tell you if you really want to know.’

She had intrigued him at first, with her speed and secret beauty, but he was already weary of her presence and had no wish to indulge her further. He had work to do.

‘His name is Kurnous,’ she said, and he stopped in his tracks.

‘Ah,’ he said, without turning. ‘You are mad.’

She danced around him, trailing her fingertips over his chest. ‘If grief makes one mad, then yes, I suppose I am.’

‘Your husband is dead, is he not?’

‘No, not dead,’ she said, looking furtively around her as though afraid of being seen talking to him. ‘He is merely

elsewhere.’

He pushed on through the crowds, watching a tumbler in the guise of Loec spin and laugh through the revellers like a mischievous child. A troupe of cloaked shadows followed him, forever dancing to unheard music and never stopping. The followers of the Shadow Dancer were capricious and given to unpredictable behaviour, teasing and cajoling, stealing and giving offence in equal measure.

‘I love watching their dance,’ said the woman. ‘It gives me hope.’

‘Then you are deluded as well as mad,’ he replied, increasing his pace.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because hope is a fool’s refuge. Where is the hope left to this world?’

‘Look around you, banshee. It is everywhere. You can see it in every smile, taste it in every tear and hear it in every tune. It is sung from the highest tower and every shadowed arbour. Even in the darkest times, there is always hope.’

He rounded on her as a carnival of sword dancers paraded down the street, their blades spinning silver webs around them, through which the followers of Loec tumbled and twisted. Wild cheers echoed from the buildings to either side of them, and the music swelled in volume as the crowd applauded their skill.

The woman gripped his arm in fear as the warriors moved past, their leader naked save for a crimson mask of Khaine.

‘Their swords are bloody,’ she said.

‘No, it is just the firelight.’

She gripped him tighter. ‘You are wrong. Khaine’s swords are always bloody. Vaul’s labours are never-ending, and many are the weapons of infinite cunning he crafts for the wars against the Dark Prince. And no sooner are they forged than they are bloody.’

‘I see no blood,’ he said. ‘Only the silver-white of the finest ithilmar.’

‘You do not see the blood, for you do not know grief as I know it,’ she replied.

Anger touched him, and his hands bunched into fists. His heart surged with the urge to strike her, to show her just how well acquainted he was with grief. He had sacrificed all that he had in service to Ulthuan, and still that had not been enough. No one knew the terrible price he had paid to keep these lands safe, and she thought the loss of a single loved one could outweigh his pain?

‘Your anger will be your undoing,’ she said, and his fury ebbed to the point where he felt he could speak without violence.

‘I know grief,’ he said, every word forced from behind clenched teeth.

‘You know mortal grief,’ she said. ‘When you must watch the beautiful children you love above all else wither and die throughout eternity, then you will know true anguish.’

Yvresse had more than its share of grieving widows and mothers; goblins, druchii and men had seen to that. Every family in the city had suffered loss, and the white cloaks of mourning were more common on the city streets than the gaudy silks of Lothern’s latest fashions. He remembered his own father’s death, which had been swiftly followed by his brother’s. He had had no time to mourn, the demands of war allowing no respite for grief.

Chains of duty held him fast, and the life he had known, where hope and the promise of a return to the Golden Times, was a distant memory. This woman was an irritating distraction, and had already wasted too much of his time. Whatever sorrow had undone her sanity was of no interest to him, and he stepped away.

‘I must take my leave, madam,’ he said. ‘I am sorry for your loss, but I have other duties to attend to this night.’

‘On festival night?’ she said. ‘Tor Yvresse sheds tears enough throughout the year, do not sully this one night of revelry and hope with anything as tawdry as duty. All year, these people mourn and walk through life like shadows. Allow them this one night to remember that they are alive, to act with abandon and live a few hours without fear for the future.’

‘They should fear for the future,’ he snapped, no longer caring whether he offended her with his boorish behaviour. ‘The future is blood and war, death and grief. That is all there is, and all there will ever be. To believe anything else is delusional.’

He turned and moved deeper into the crowd, ignoring offers of companionship from naked elves of both sexes. Their painted bodies writhed in the magical light that bathed the city, and the tempo of the music increased the deeper into the city he went. From street corners, he heard snatches of verse, drifting echoes of the minstrel’s song. His heart hardened with every fleeting glimpse of joy, every tantalising echo of the hateful ballad that told of the city’s greatest battle. Everywhere he looked, he saw eyes shining with tears, yet they were not tears of sorrow and emptiness, they were shed in newfound hope and the promise of a better tomorrow.

‘Fools,’ he hissed, watching as couples swayed in time to the song.

‘Is it foolish to believe things can get better?’ said the woman, appearing at his side.

He sighed. ‘Will I never be rid of you?’

‘Never,’ she answered with a laugh like the chiming of silver bells. ‘It is my nature to be persistent, to always believe that spring’s hope will follow winter’s despair.’

He halted as pleasurable warmth spread through him, the restful peace of a good night’s sleep. Ever since that night in the tower he had been wracked by dreadful nightmares, and had almost forgotten how it felt to be rested. He turned to face the woman, feeling her hand in his, though he had not felt her take it.

‘After all, a world of winter will die, just as surely as a world of summer. Hope is the light that offers a chance for life, and without it there will only ever be darkness. Remember that before you drive that dagger home.’

He snatched his hand back as though burned. The crowd surged, and a star-burst of magical fire exploded overhead to rapturous cheers. Spirals of white and gold light tumbled through the air, and a thousand songs filled the glittering heart of the city, drifting out through the empty streets, abandoned villas and deserted markets. Distant echoes seemed to answer, the memory of those beyond death roused by the potency of this night.

The sounds faded and he looked for the masked woman, but she was nowhere to be seen.

‘Thank the gods for that,’ he muttered, turning and following the crowd.

To Dethelion’s Theatre.

THE GREAT DRAMATIST Dethelion of Tiranoc had penned some of Ulthuan’s greatest artistic works, such as The Forest of Midnight, Amelia and Timore, as well as composing many of its most heart-wrenching songs of lament. His work had travelled beyond Ulthuan’s shores, though little of the true power of his works survived translation into human tongues. The songs men knew of the fey folk were poor shadows compared to the originals. Dethelion had been a melancholy poet, his works inevitably ending in tragedy, with star-crossed lovers doomed never to find happiness, heroes cursed to triumph at the cost of everything that mattered to them most.

He had read all of Dethelion’s compositions, and admired the long-dead poet’s work greatly. Despite the grand melodrama of his epic tales, there was a commendable lack of sentimentality to his characters. Was it an affront to have this minstrel’s work played out in Dethelion’s theatre, or was it more apt than he cared to admit? In truth, he did not know.

The excitement of the crowd was palpable, a delicious frisson that passed from skin to skin like a charge of tingling magic. He felt it pass through his own flesh, the gestalt magical nature of his race buoying him up on a wave of shared wonderment. He viciously suppressed the feeling, knowing it would only serve him ill were he to be caught up in the tale like the rest of these fools.

These are your people, said a treacherous voice inside him.

He shook his head as the River of Stars widened into a great piazza which, to the untrained eye, appeared to be ruined. Designed by Dethelion himself, it was a recreation of one of the ancient cities of Ulthuan that now lay at the bottom of the ocean. No one now remembered the city’s name, though it was said that its ruins could be seen far beneath the waters off the coast of Tiranoc when the skies were bright and the seas calm.

Fashioned from artfully sculpted stone of pale blue and green, it resembled a coral reef raised from the rock upon which Tor Yvresse was built. It had all the appearance of a labyrinth, yet no matter where a viewer was to stand, they would have a perfect view of the proscenium. Islands of tiered seats worked in fluted stone and bathed in the light of the stars gave prince and pauper an unrivalled perch from which to enjoy whatever play or drama was to be acted out before them.

Beyond the majesty of the theatre rose the Tower of the Warden.

Its blue marble was subdued, where normally a fine web of magical energies pulsed through its stonework. Its base was obscured by the rained artifice of the theatre, yet its windowless length reared up over the skyline, dominating the fanged peaks of the Annulii in the distance. Crepuscular light glimmered weakly from the Warden’s lonely windows, and a single balcony gave its solitary occupant an unrivalled view of his empty city.

Shadows danced in the window, as though a lonely figure stirred within, and he turned away from the sad tower. It was within the tower that the city had been saved, and a soul damned. He never knew how to feel whenever he saw the tower from this angle, for it was a symbol of great victory and a reminder of dreadful loss.

A figure jostled him, an elf clad in a robe and horned mask intended to render unto him the semblance of Orion, the atavistic huntsman of Athel Loren. It was a poor likeness, for the King of the Wild Wood was a fearsome avatar, a ferocious, elemental force that chilled the soul with its rapacious fury. The figure bowed to him with an ululating laugh, and spun away into the crowd. The sight unsettled him, for he was seeing the faces of gods in every fleeting glimpse of a mask, every half-concealed smile. The Festival of Masques was a time of miracles and raptures, when poetic souls claimed that the gods might walk the earth, but he had never thought it to be a literal sentiment. He shook off his unease and moved on, pushing ever closer to the stage.

Never before had the theatre played host to so many. Every portion of wall and tier was occupied, all of Tor Yvresse spilling from their draughty homes to listen to this minstrel’s tale of their greatest tragedy. It seemed at once abhorrent and self-flagellating to come out in such numbers to hear the tale of so terrible a battle.

He moved through the throng, making his way towards the stage, where the lilting sounds of music and voices preparing for song could he heard. He attracted no little attention as he moved with grim purpose, each masked face that turned in his direction quickly averted as the eyes behind it beheld his garb as one of Morai-heg’s deathly messengers.

The dagger at his side grew warm, and he realised he was gripping its hilt tightly. He couldn’t remember slipping a hand beneath his dark cloak, and it took all his self-control not to draw the weapon. He blinked away a blurred red haze from his eyes, pushing through the murmuring crowds with ever greater urgency as he felt his heartbeat pulse in time with the swelling music. The light, the noise and the heat assaulted him, and the breath caught in his throat as he felt the crowd pressing in on him, smothering him and threatening to crush him beneath their constant demands, the never-ending duty and the fear that he could never match up to their expectations. He was deep in the labyrinth of twisting walls and passageways, lost in a maze of possible routes, and his skull throbbed with pain.

He paused, releasing his grip on the dagger and pressed his hands to his temple. The pain building behind his eyes was like a spike of hot iron driven into his skull. He threw back his head and loosed a wail of anguish and pain, the sound echoing from the walls of the theatre and bouncing back and forth across the suddenly quiet crowd.

The silence that followed his wail was like a void in the world, an emptiness of the soul, and he ran from the hostile stares and quizzical looks he was attracting. He ran past dancers, singers, musicians, spellsingers and weavers of enchantments. The beat of hammers rang from the walls, sparks flying as a blind and hooded priest of Vaul shaped swords and armour by the light of the moons.

He ran until he came to a secluded hollow behind the stage, where a trio of brightly painted wagons had been left. Each was gaudily coloured and lacquered so that their flanks shone like rainbows in the light reflected from the tower. A tall elf with lush features and silver hair stood beside the wagons, pacing back and forth and waving his arms as though debating with an army of invisible ghosts. Alone of all the people he had seen tonight, this elf wore no mask, but was clad in armour that was ludicrously impractical, and so ornamented in gold and over-elaborate fretwork that it would be impossible to wear in combat.

A long sword was belted at his waist, but it was too low to draw without effort. Whoever he was, this elf was no warrior.

The costumed elf turned and his handsome features paled at the sight of him.

‘Dear boy, one does not sneak up on one of artistic temperament dressed thusly,’ said the would-be warrior.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I believe I am lost.’

‘Aren’t we all in the grand scheme of things?’ replied the handsome elf, taking a step towards him and extending his hand.

‘I am Narentir,’ said the elf. ‘You may have heard of me.’

Narentir’s features were soft, gentle even, and his warrior’s garb now seemed offensive. Only one who had faced the enemy and drawn blood had the right to dress like this. Not some poet who took the horrors of others and turned them into bloodless dramas.

‘I have heard of you,’ he said, feeling his heart-rate return to normal. ‘In fact I have sought you all night.’

‘But of course you have,’ said Narentir, closing his eyes and smiling, tilting his head back to breathe in the air and listen to the murmur of the crowd from beyond. ‘Everyone in Tor Yvresse has come to see me. My music and poetry fills a need in these people they did not even realise they had until tonight, an unrequited urge to relive their greatest joy and most poignant sorrow.’

‘Some sorrows should be left alone,’ he snarled. ‘No good can come of reopening old wounds.’

‘I disagree,’ said Narentir, oblivious to his threatening tone. ‘If we ignore such wounds they fester like the fruit left too long on the branch. No, we must embrace the glories of the past and all our memories of them. Those joyous and those painful, for without the bitter the sweet tastes not so sweet.’

The hilt of the dagger slipped into his hand once more, and the urge to plunge the blade into the minstrel’s neck right now was almost uncontrollable.

‘You speak of things you do not know,’ he said. ‘You sing songs of honour, hope, love and triumph, when such things are for children’s stories. They are not the way of the real world.’

Narentir laughed. ‘Oh, my dear fellow, how mistaken you are. You, who come dressed as a harbinger of death, have allowed the grim fatalism of Morai-heg to enter your soul, but I now see that your arrival is the very thing that will make this night complete!’

A swelling roar of applause began spontaneously as the gathered elves sensed that the grand retelling they had come to witness was about to begin. Narentir swept forward and took him by the arm, leading him up a curved flight of steps towards the marble proscenium. His heart filled with warring desires as he realised where Narentir was taking him.

‘The Tale of Eltharion is nothing without the spectre of death hovering in the wings!’ exclaimed Narentir. ‘I am but one player, and in my time play many parts, but you will be my muse, the living promise of death’s dark shadow. What say you, nameless banshee, will you strut upon this lonely stage with me, the darkness to my light?’

He hesitated, unsure of the turn this night had taken. ‘I will,’ he said at last, feeling a measure of the minstrel’s enthusiasm pass between them.

‘Wonderful,’ said Narentir, striding past onto the stage as the throats of Tor Yvresse opened to welcome him. Still clutching the dagger, he followed the minstrel as he took his position and the applause began to fade. He had expected the ludicrously armoured elf to wax lyrical upon taking the stage, but he began his tale without grandiose pontificating.

Narentir spoke with the perfect pitch and timing of a professional teller of tales, a saga poet with the power to enchant an audience with words. Like all good storytellers, he set the stage upon which his tale would be told, a mordant coastline of mist and shadow amid a storm of ill-omen. From this splintered darkness came the goblins, a ragged fleet of them, drunk on slaughter and hungry to wage war on the island home of the asur.

From the wings of the stage, he felt Narentir’s gaze upon him and he stepped onto the stage, letting the shadows curl around him as he prowled the edges of this retelling of his nightmares. His anger built as he heard Narentir speak of the goblin king, he who called himself Grom. Prowling the stage, Narentir’s voice dropped as he spoke of how the goblins had laid waste to the land of Yvresse, burning mansions and castles that had stood for thousands of years in a single night.

The audience responded to his softly-sung tale as the music built from wistful lament to horror. Emotions filled the air, and even though he knew the truth of those days, his throat choked as Narentir retold the fall of Athel Tamarha and the death of Lord Moranion. He had not seen that beautiful castle burn, and had never visited its blackened ruins, but as Narentir spoke of Lord Moranion’s selfless valour in facing the goblin king, he dearly wished he had taken one day to fly to the fallen castle and breathe in the past.

He was circling Narentir, and the audience gasped as they saw him clearly now. The dagger was unsheathed in his hand, and Narentir nodded to him as he drew closer with every circuit. He barely heard the rest of the tale, his attention fixed on the pale neck of the minstrel. A vein pulsed below the curved sweep of his jaw, an ideal place for the keen point of a blade to plunge home.

What an ending this would be. Not the terrible battle fought around the Warden’s Tower, but the curtain falling on the narrator’s death. No one who saw this bloody truth would fail to see the lie of hope. Without its weight, the elves of Tor Yvresse would be free to fight with the grim knowledge of their doom, for what warrior ever fought harder than the one with nothing left to lose?

The clouds parted and stars came out in droves, bathing the stage in their ancient glow. Narentir’s armour shone with their light, and he now displayed not the soft features of a minstrel, but the hard, hollow-cheeked visage of a killer. So complete was the transformation that he paused in his circular path, the breath catching in his throat as Narentir sang the conclusion of his tale.

Behind him, the tower shone in the starlight, as though a willing participant in this retelling. He listened as Narentir held the audience spellbound in the palm of his hand, singing in hushed tones of Eltharion entering the tower with his closest companions and returning the following morning alone.

He felt a keening moan of sorrow begin in the back of his throat as he thought back to that terrible night. The horror and unimaginable sacrifices he had made that night were too awful to remember, and here they were being paraded for the aggrandisement of a mere bard. He took a step towards Narentir, the dagger’s blade glinting in the moonlight. The crowd hushed. Not a breath of wind or a rustle of fabric disturbed the silence. He and Narentir might as well have been the only two souls left in the world.

Narentir turned to face him, and they walked towards one another slowly. He lifted the dagger until it was aimed at Narentir’s throat. A chill passed through him, and he heard distant laughter, at first girlish and full of childhood mischief, then rich with age-won wisdom, finally brittle and cackling, like that of an ancient crone.

His steps faltered, and he looked out into the audience. An entire city watched him, utterly still and silent but for one figure, a woman robed in cream with a silver mask. She seemed to glide through the audience, though no one acknowledged her. Wherever she passed, he saw the faces of the elves around her bathed in light. Every one of them shone with hope and joy, their spirits soaring to hear how Eltharion had saved them all.

He saw the strength and courage that filled them. His example had lifted them to greater heights of nobility than ever they could have imagined. They loved their grim liege-lord, understanding on levels they could never articulate that he had sacrificed everything he was to save them.

Hope is the light that offers a chance for life, and without it there will only ever be darkness.

He stood face to face with Narentir. Barely a foot separated them, and the minstrel tilted his head a fraction, exposing the delicate flesh of his neck.

‘Do you still desire to slay me, my lord?’ he said, fear making his voice tremble.

The dagger shook in his hand. He looked out into the audience, hoping for another glimpse of the silver-masked woman. The audience waited with bated breath to see what would happen next, knowing that events of great moment were unfolding before them.

Would it be murder or salvation?

He lowered the dagger. ‘You know who I am?’ he asked.

‘You are Eltharion, Warden of Tor Yvresse,’ said Narentir. ‘And you are here to kill me.’

‘You knew?’

Narentir nodded. ‘I knew the moment I heard your banshee wail.’

‘Yet you did not flee?’

‘What would have been the point?’ said Narentir, his voice regaining a measure of composure. ‘I could die alone begging for life, or I could die on stage, remembered forever by all who saw me struck down. Which would you choose?’

‘You are braver than you look,’ said Eltharion.

Narentir laughed in relief. ‘I assure you I am not, my lord. If this has been my greatest performance, it is in no small measure thanks to the fear that your dagger would spill my blood across this fine stage. Dethelion would, I am sure, have approved of the suitably tragic ending for the noble minstrel.’

Eltharion took a deep breath and turned to the crowd. He reached up and tore off his mask, letting it fall to the stage. It shattered with a thwarted shriek, and Eltharion sighed to be rid of the ghastly visage.

The crowd erupted in applause, and wild cheers filled the air as Narentir took his bow. Though Narentir waved at him to do likewise, Eltharion did not follow the minstrel’s example, for this night was not his. It belonged to Narentir.

‘What changed your mind?’ asked Narentir as he stood straight once again.

Eltharion considered the question, and the ghost of a smile split his bloodless lips.

‘I met a woman,’ he said.

‘Ah, the fairer sex,’ said Narentir with a theatrical sigh. ‘Truly they tame the raging beast within us and make us yearn to be better than we are. Was she beautiful?’

Eltharion tried to picture the woman, her golden, corn-coloured hair and amber eyes, but the image was already hazy and indistinct. His gaze swept the farthest reaches of the theatre, longing for one last sight of her. He caught a flash of golden hair and a mask of purest silver at an arched entrance. Though a great distance separated them, he could see the pools of her amber eyes as though she stood right next to him. The silver that concealed her face no longer seemed like a mask, but the embodiment of her divine radiance.

A single tear rolled from her eye and a great weight lifted from Eltharion’s heart. The doom he had brought upon himself on that dread night remained, as it always would, but the all-consuming despair that had almost driven him to murder was gone.

She had come to save him, when he had not even known he needed saving.

‘Who was she?’ asked Narentir. ‘This handmaiden to whom I owe my life?’

‘She was hope,’ said Eltharion. ‘Simply hope.’