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Obsidian – David Annandale

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Rulers of the Dead’

A Black Library Publication

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Obsidian

David Annandale

It would not be the first wedding in Nulahmia to be preceded by a murder, Karya Treveign thought. She stood beside Evered Halorecht in the nave of the Grand Chapel of Night’s Hunger, looking back towards the main entrance. The two were alone in this cavernous space. But there was room within for thousands. Here, Nulahmian society would congregate to make obeisance to Nagash, and to the consuming, predatory need that was the cost of existence after death.

The Grand Chapel was constructed around the fossilised ribcage of an ancient leviathan slain by Nagash at the dawn of the Age of Myth. The chapel walls therefore curved outwards, then back in, and formed the building’s dome. Monolithic slabs of obsidian filled the spaces between the ribs. Adjacent to the dome stood the high tower, carved from the monster’s legs, and from the tower’s roof a single claw jutted, a spire raking at the sky. The trace of the predator’s hunger.

From the centre of the dome hung two fangs, each more than fifty feet long. Between them was a latticework of smaller bones holding hundreds of tallow candles, encased in glass stained with red and fragments of blue and green. The flames filled the ribcage with this softly blended, crimson hue. In the glow, the blackness of the petrified bones was rendered even more profound.

If Karya was honest with herself, she would have to admit that it would not be the first wedding precipitated by a murder, either. And being honest was, for Karya, a matter of principle. Honesty in Nulahmia was a precious metal, rarer than gold. Even so, she had been forced to engage in some degree of subterfuge when it came to her relationship with Evered. She had had to do more than omit to reveal the truth of their love to her father. On three separate occasions, Karya had lied about where she had been. The memory of each of those instances was a festering wound upon her heart, an injury that struck all the deeper because her father, Lord Vorst Treveign, had believed her. And he believed her because he trusted, absolutely, in her honesty.

You are, he had once told her, that which I have never had the strength to be. The path you have chosen is a hard one. It runs against the grain of everything our queen has forged. I fear for you. But you give me hope, and for that I will be eternally grateful and proud. Your mother would be, too.

‘Do you think she’ll agree?’ Evered whispered, pulling Karya from memories and guilt.

‘We can but hope,’ said Karya. She looked at him and entwined her fingers with his.

‘Hope,’ Evered repeated. He smiled. ‘I can do that. You have taught me how. You have shown me that there is such a thing, and that it is strong.’

Their sibilant echoes seemed too loud for their hushed voices, and so they gently kissed, each wrapping themselves in the other’s protective silence.

Hope. The one Karya held now was that the Mortarch of Blood would agree to her and Evered’s request. There was no guarantee, though, that they would even have the chance to speak with her, let alone receive her blessing. There were many reasons why Neferata would refuse to permit the union of the Houses of Treveign and Halorecht. Karya was not naïve. Trying to follow strict principles of honesty had forced upon her a hard awareness of political realities. No, this was not the first wedding preceded by murder, nor the first precipitated by murder. But this murder leading to this union would, she knew, be the talk of Nulahmia, and perhaps all of Neferatia, if the dread queen allowed it to come to pass.

Karya and Evered had come here to force the issue.

In one of the circular crypts that clung like petrified tumours to the sides of the main chamber lay the body of Therul, high counsellor to House Treveign. When Karya had heard that Neferata planned to pay her respects to the assassinated vampire lord, she had determined to face the Mortarch and know her fate. No one knew when Neferata intended to come to the Grand Chapel, so Karya had performed her own visitation to the corpse, shortly after her father’s, and then, joined by Evered, she had waited.

They had been here, in the centre of the nave, motionless and expectant, for five hours. No one else had passed through. Karya felt trapped, pinned by a dagger of expectation to a limbo as huge and unforgiving as the structure of bone and obsidian that enclosed her.

‘Will she believe in us?’ Evered wondered aloud.

‘Yes,’ Karya said. ‘I am sure she will. She will understand.’ If, that is, Karya could prove she understood the political realities, was not blind to them, and knew how to overcome them.

The huge iron doors of the entrance opened. The deep, reverberating groan of their hinges climbed the walls of the Grand Chapel, becoming the echo of the great beast’s death rattle. Neferata advanced down the aisle, accompanied by the Lady Mereneth. The Mortarch and her high courtier wore long, black dresses. Neferata’s was accented by threads of silver that picked up the dim light of the candelabra, flashing in and out of sight with the movements of the dress like a glint of steel or, as Karya chose to interpret it, the return of light that always waited within darkness. Mereneth’s robes were trimmed in a deep crimson that counterpointed and emphasised the brilliance and deep shadow of her mistress’ garb.

Queen and noble regarded Karya and Evered as they approached. Mereneth’s gaze was cold, flat, unreadable. Neferata bore a smile as slight as it was powerful. Her eyes were narrowed in amusement. Karya’s determination wavered. The closer Neferata came, the more Karya felt herself shrink before the aura of majesty that surrounded the queen. Neferata’s presence filled the Grand Chapel until it seemed as though the monolithic building struggled to contain her. She was more ancient than the fossil, and more powerful than the beast had ever been in life. Karya was beneath the notice of so great a being, though she had dared to call attention to herself by standing in the path of the queen.

She realised that she would be fortunate not to be turned to ash. To ask for more would be foolishly presumptuous. Yet she gathered her failing courage to do just that. Beside her, Evered was rigid with barely suppressed trembling.

At a slight nod from Neferata, Mereneth turned from the couple and swept past, heading off towards the crypt where Therul lay. Neferata stopped before Karya and Evered. Her smile grew almost imperceptibly broader. Her lips were the red of arterial blood, her face the white of perfect, glacial death.

‘Treveign and Halorecht, side by side,’ said Neferata. ‘I doubt I will see a greater wonder today. Explain it to me. What is the nature of this wonder?’

Karya had no doubt that Neferata already knew the answer to her question. She had felt the queen’s gaze scour her being of all secrets. Yet she was called upon to speak, and so she did, honestly, and proud.

‘We are pledged to one another,’ Karya said. ‘We seek your blessing for this union.’

Neferata laughed. Her mirth was as silvery as bells, filling Karya’s heart with love and the urgent need to please her ruler. The laughter’s echo resounded with the iron slam of a coffin lid, and Karya quailed in fear.

‘And thus it comes to pass,’ said Neferata. ‘After centuries of enmity, the two great houses are joined through the love of their heirs. How very star-crossed of you. How worthy of verse you both are. Tell me more. Delight me further. Why now? How can it be, Karya Treveign, that the murder of your father’s right hand leads not to greater bloodshed but to reconciliation?’

‘It is because the death of Counsellor Therul could make things worse that we must act now, my queen,’ said Evered.

Neferata regarded Evered for a brief moment, then turned her attention back to Karya. ‘Did Therul approve of this union?’

‘He did not know about it,’ Karya said, glancing at Evered. ‘He would certainly have advised my father against it. Without his opposition, I believe that my father will be easier to convince. Should we have your blessing, I know he would be.’

Neferata laughed again. ‘An easy prediction,’ she said. ‘Its truth is too certain to have any worth as flattery. What interest would I have in granting this blessing?’

Karya had not been trying to flatter. Everything she said was the truth as she saw it.

‘Acting as one, Treveign and Halorecht could serve your majesty with tremendous strength and loyalty. Our every act would be an expression of gratitude. This I swear.’

‘And what can you offer as guarantee of your word? Your father rules House Treveign and your betrothed is just as powerless – or has Nagra Halorecht relinquished control to her son and I am ignorant of it?’

Karya bowed her head, as did Evered beside her.

There was silence for a long moment. Then, for a third time, Neferata laughed. ‘Your answers only increase the wonder of this union,’ she said. ‘You delight me, and so you shall have my blessing. Have you given any thought to where you will celebrate your union?’

‘Here,’ said Karya, looking up. ‘Both our families have long attended the Grand Chapel.’

‘I approve. Go, then. Make your preparations. Surprise Vorst Treveign and Nagra Halorecht. Surprise Nulahmia. For I will do more than bless your union. I will attend its ceremony.’

‘Treveign and Halorecht together are more than twice as dangerous as each is separately,’ Mereneth said when Neferata joined her in the crypt. The spymistress did not sound happy.

‘Of course they are,’ said Neferata. ‘The way to neutralise this threat, though, is not by simply opposing it.’

The crypt was circular. The only light was the gloomy red that filtered in through the arched doorway. The walls bulged outwards in imitation of the great chamber’s gargantuan ribcage. Neferata walked around the dais upon which Therul lay. There was a gap of a few inches between his head and his body. His entire neck was missing. Whoever had killed him had taken care to create a wound so massive, it could not be interpreted.

‘Did Therul ever mention the romance?’ Neferata asked. As long as the two families had been at war, she had not had to devote much attention to them. Vorst Treveign’s high counsellor had been her spy. With him in place, she had been content to let things simmer, ready to interfere only if the violence between the families rose to a level that inconvenienced her. Peace had never been a possibility. But the situation had changed, and her attention was required.

‘I don’t think he knew of the courtship,’ said Mereneth. ‘Not directly, at least. He reported that Vorst had some concerns about what his daughter might be doing, but it does not appear to have crossed his mind that she might be falling in love with Evered Halorecht.’

‘And they are both sole heirs,’ said Neferata.

Like many of the vampire nobility, the Treveigns and Halorechts had, through the ages, ensured there were enough mortals in the family to sustain the bloodline through direct descent. The firstborn of each generation were given the soulblight curse of vampiric immortality. Both Nagra Halorecht and Vorst Treveign had lost their consorts shortly after the births of Evered and Karya, and neither had thus far acted to produce any further offspring. Vorst was strong, and it might be a millennium before Karya took control of her house. Nagra, though, seemed weak. Therul suspected the Treveigns had found the means to erode her immortality with poison, though the assassin had silenced him before he could find proof.

‘Therul’s death is convenient for the union,’ Neferata went on. ‘Karya admits this freely. Do we know where she was at the time of the assassination?’

‘At a masked ball hosted by House Falkreach,’ said Mereneth. ‘Do you think she arranged the killing?’

Neferata thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘She is too young… and sincere. Had she wished Therul dead, I believe she would have killed him herself and then confessed. No, this union must benefit someone else.’

‘So the question is whether Therul was a target because he would have opposed the union, or because he was our spy,’ said Mereneth.

‘We will act on the presumption that both are true. Belief in coincidence is the prologue to defeat. The stage has been set for us. Let us take measures. Then we will let the performance proceed, and the players reveal themselves.’

Twenty feet up from the floor of the Grand Chapel, a gallery ran the entire circumference of the walls. On the night of the marriage ceremony, Neferata walked the gallery alone. As she passed from archway to archway, she appeared and disappeared to the sight of the gathered multitude, but the crowd was always open to her gaze.

The Grand Chapel was filled with hunger. The full houses of Treveign and Halorecht were there, as were their allies. There were hundreds on both sides, two armies present to witness a contentious peace treaty. The curious were more numerous still, here in their thousands. The hunger for power and the hunger for knowledge were so thick, the air roiled with tension.

The walls were hung with the colours of the two houses. Treveign’s banners were obsidian streaked with gold. Halorecht’s were scarlet, trimmed with black. They seemed to hang together, rather than in opposition, and Neferata wondered if the two lovers saw a good omen in the complementarity of the colours. For herself, the serendipity was irrelevant. As the ceremony progressed, what Neferata saw was a ritual that was the result of a much greater, longer, hidden orchestration.

In the centre of the nave, surrounded by their families, Karya and Evered stood facing each other, attending the words of the ancient necromancer, Alvaras. The few wisps of hair on Alvaras’ yellow-grey scalp floated in the still air of the chapel, a serpentine halo. Ceremonial attendants flanked the betrothed, each holding the golden chain of a collared, subdued mortal from each household. As Alvaras approached the conclusion of the ceremony, Neferata scrutinised the leaders of the houses. Even the slightest change in their expressions was clearly visible to Neferata’s witchsight. Nagra looked even more fragile than when Neferata had last seen her. The Halorecht matriarch was stooped, her face withered as crumbling leather. Her features were pinched into a frown, but her eyes were rheumy, as if she had trouble concentrating on the event unfolding before her. Vorst Treveign, on the other hand, looked far more sanguine. His expression was neutral, but Neferata could see no flicker of concern as his sole heir pledged herself to the son of his enemies. The other members of the family seemed much more uneasy than Vorst. Their expressions mirrored Nagra’s and those of the other Halorechts. There seemed to be very few parties present who saw the union as anything other than harmful to their interests.

‘Where two rivers of blood have flowed, let there now be one,’ Alvaras intoned. He gestured to the attendants, who pulled the imprisoned mortals forward. They opened the collars, but retained their grips on their charges’ shoulders. Alvaras bowed to Karya, to Evered, and then, in a single motion rose and turned, right arm outstretched. His talon of a nail on his middle finger sliced open the jugular veins of the mortals. Every move of the ritual was known and rehearsed by the participants, and the couple fastened their mouths on the throat of the other family’s mortal before a first jet of blood had splashed to the ground. Treveign drank deeply of Halorecht blood, and Halorecht drank Treveign. They drained the bodies, then quickly twisted off the heads, completing the sacrifice, leaving bloodless husks that would not rise again.

The lovers stepped away from the bodies, joined hands and stood before Alvaras again. He touched their foreheads with his crimson-stained finger. ‘And so two are one,’ he said, his voice like the rasp of sand over bone. ‘The work of this solemn day is complete.’

No, Neferata thought. I believe it has just begun.

The taste of the Halorecht mortal’s blood still on her tongue, Karya looked up at the conclusion of the ritual to see Neferata gazing down at her. She had been circling the ceremony since its start, only fitfully visible, a shadow in flowing crimson robes. Now that she had paused, Karya saw that her arms were clad in what looked like dark armour. It seemed to Karya that the queen was clad for the celebration and for war. Karya felt reassured. Neferata’s dress revealed the risks attendant on this union. Karya would have donned more protective clothing too, if there had been a way of doing so. But the robes she and Evered wore would not have concealed any armour underneath, and the result would have been a provocation to violence. So she and Evered were armed only with hope. She trusted that would be enough.

There was a flurry of movement to Karya’s left. She turned in time to see a silver blade stab through Nagra Halorecht’s throat. Evered’s mother opened her mouth in a soundless gasp of agony. Night-dark blood burst from her lips, and her skin crumbled like parchment. The figure behind her was hooded and robed, a shape of darkness so featureless it was as if the sword moved of its own volition. While Karya was still in the first moments of shock, the blade withdrew from Nagra’s throat, rose to one side, then slashed into the side of her neck. Her head tumbled off her body and rolled to her son’s feet.

In the same moment, another figure leapt out of the crowd from Karya’s right. It was shrouded like the first, though to Karya’s horrified eyes the clothing seemed subtly different in style, wrapped around the limbs more tightly. That was enough for her to understand. Though her limbs were frozen in horror and surprise, it came to her that the attackers were not of the same faction. They were not working together. The second was responding to the actions of the first.

The assassin raised his sword, pointing it at Karya’s heart. She took a step back. Evered threw himself at the killer, and the blade plunged forwards.

‘Evered!’ Karya screamed as the assassin stabbed him through the chest. Evered’s hands fluttered at the hilt in weak protest, and then stilled as his body went limp.

The first killer rushed in to attack the second. Their blades clashed once before the crowd finally reacted. The spectators who had come out of simple curiosity now shouted in alarm and rushed for the doors, desperate to avoid the coming storm of violence. Fury rippled out from the centre of the nave. The families of Treveign and Halorecht and their allies and vassals roared with anger and hurled themselves at one another. None were armed, for Neferata had decreed no weapons could enter the Grand Chapel on this night, but vampires did not need steel to wage war, and the dim, crimson glow of the immense chamber exploded with the sudden fires of sorcery.

Karya sank to her knees. The frenzy around her was a dull, background roar. She cradled Evered in her arms. His eyes were dull, unseeing. His mouth hung open. A trickle of his own blood dribbled past his fangs and down his chin. Karya called to him again and again, rocking the body, begging him to return. His mother’s head lay a few feet away. Its flesh had fallen to dust. All that remained was an ancient skull in a splayed nest of grey hair. Nagra had been centuries old, and time had rushed to claim its due from her corpse. Evered did not crumble. Like Karya, he was truly young. They had both been turned only a few years ago, and so he lay in his pooling blood, youth in his features, decay having to take his body in its natural time.

Karya howled. She could not hear her own voice over the rising shriek of the battles around her. The force of her screams tore at her throat. Her dream of hope was gone, and it burned on a pyre of renewed violence. Instead of two families becoming one, soon there would be none. Inside the Grand Chapel of Night’s Hunger, darkness was swelling, gorged with blood. Karya screamed. She felt as if she would go blind. There was nothing before her now, no future for anything, only an abyss of absolute darkness.

She wept until she choked on her grief and pain. She doubled over Evered’s corpse, gagging. Around the two, fighting swirled, but the combatants ignored them. Both of the assassins lay still, ripped apart by outraged family members, who now were in turn fighting for their existence. Karya regarded the struggle with the dullness of despair. She did not look up for succour from Neferata. The slaughter unfolding in the chapel deserved nothing but disgust from the queen. The jaws of apathy closed around Karya. She welcomed them. They would hold her for eternity, or until a Halorecht finished the work of the second assassin.

She believed this for several long moments until, looking up, she searched for her father’s face amongst the fray. But Vorst Treveign was not there, nor was he lying butchered on the floor.

Karya frowned. The apathy began to lose its grip on her, and she stood. She turned around slowly, searching. It was entirely possible that her father was just a few yards away and that she would not see him. She could barely make out any of the bloodied faces in the flares of sorcerous fire and crushing darkness. Yet she kept turning, compelled by an instinct and a growing terror.

Finally, she saw him. He had managed to make his way through the melee to the far wall. The struggle between the nave and the main doors was too intense to push through without being drawn into it. Between the nave and the entrance to the tower, though, the crowd was more sparse. Vorst had climbed a short flight of steps leading to the tower’s landing. He paused before an open doorway, looking at the battle in the great chamber, and then his eyes met hers. Even from this distance, through darkness slashed by magical bolts and misted with blood, Karya felt the impact of his dispassionate contempt. Then he turned his back on his family and its foes, disappearing through the doorway.

Karya pursued. She plunged through the fray, running in a straight line for the tower. She pounded over flagstones slick with gore, ducking and weaving between the struggles, flowing around them as if she were the wind. Clawed hands snatched at her, tearing at her robes and flesh. Snarling, enraged faces turned at her passing. She was too fast to be caught. She had seen the face of betrayal, and rage gave her wings.

She reached the steps and raced up them, through the doorway, and then climbed the endless spiral staircase of the tower, never slowing. There was no apathy now. Her grief was as strong as ever, pricked to an incandescent fury. Somehow, her father had brought the horror below into being. Karya’s existence had narrowed to a single goal. She would confront Vorst and demand an answer. Why? She would force the answer from him if she had to rip it from his throat with her hands. Why?

Why?

From an archway at the top of the staircase, Karya ran onto the roof of the tower and stopped short. The immense claw-spire loomed thirty feet above her, a curved dagger of a silhouette in the night. Vorst leaned on the parapet, his back to her.

‘Father,’ she croaked, her voice raw from her screams.

Vorst turned around. He folded his arms and stared at her coldly. ‘What?’ he snapped, impatient.

His anger baffled her. He glared as if somehow she were to blame for the massacre. She refused to be cowed, and marched towards him.

‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Why have you done this?’

Her father snorted. ‘You served your purpose,’ he said. ‘And now your utility is over. I no longer have either the need or the patience to put up with your squalling pretensions of morality.’ He took a step forward and extended his right hand. ‘Come here, daughter. Let me throw you over the parapet.’

Karya froze.

‘You will do as you are told,’ Vorst said.

Karya backed towards the door.

‘I am your father,’ Vorst said. ‘You owe your existence to me, and so you are mine to dispose of as I see fit.’ His presumption of ownership was so powerful, his betrayal so utterly cold-blooded, that these words assumed a perverse, terrible authority. ‘You will obey me,’ he said.

The monstrous words held Karya fast. She could no longer move her feet.

Vorst stepped forward, his hand crooked like a talon, reaching out to seize her. ‘I have seen your future,’ he said. ‘It lies shattered on the cobblestones below. It is time for you to join it.’

‘You are wrong.’ The words came from behind Karya. They came from a being infinitely older and of far greater authority than Vorst. He looked past Karya, his eyes blazing first in anger, and then in fear. His spell broke, and Karya rushed away. She crouched against the parapet, transfixed by the confrontation.

Neferata stood in the doorway, clad in blood and night. ‘It is your future that is shattered,’ Neferata said to Vorst. ‘Your manipulations are at an end, and so are you.’

For the space of a heartbeat, it seemed to Karya that, in his arrogance, Vorst would try to fight. Then he turned to flee, though there was nowhere to go. His eyes fell on Karya, and his face contorted with a hate so pure it burned. Karya covered her face in horror. Through her fingers, she saw him open his mouth, and she dreaded the curse he would call down upon her.

He never had the chance.

Karya was able to see what Neferata did next, because the majesty of the queen and the grace of her movement were such that they commanded witness. Yet she acted with a speed beyond lightning. She swept forward from the doorway, and in a single movement seized Vorst by the throat and lifted him high. She drew the dagger Akmet-har from the folds of her dress and slit Vorst’s neck. The gesture was so small it looked like an afterthought. Yet Vorst convulsed upon the instant. Blood flowed in a cataract down his body. With an idle gesture, as if flicking dust from a sleeve, Neferata tossed him over the parapet. The crunch of corpse on stone, when it finally came, was barely audible, though it would sound in Karya’s mind forever.

Karya advanced on trembling legs towards Neferata. She looked over the wall at the broken thing far below.

‘He did this,’ she said, as if speaking the words would help her believe them. ‘He allowed my union with Evered so that he could destroy both our families. Why? I don’t understand.’

‘Greed,’ said Neferata. ‘A hunger for power so great it bred delusions. Your father believed that if he gave two houses and his only daughter to me as a burnt offering, this would prove his devotion, and I would reward him.’ She shook her head. ‘That is not loyalty. That is selfishness and waste. I reward neither.’ She smiled at Karya. ‘And he failed. Through you, House Treveign still stands.’

‘It does not stand,’ said Karya. ‘It kneels before you.’ She did as she said, her heart burning with gratitude and love for the queen who had saved her. Once again, Karya saw the chance of purpose in her existence, and she seized it with fervour. ‘I seek nothing now but the glory of serving you,’ she said.

Neferata smiled. ‘Then I am pleased.’

Mereneth joined Neferata on the rooftop some time later. Together, they watched the lone figure of Karya walking across the square away from the Grand Chapel.

‘The fire that fuelled her honesty is now the fuel of her devotion to me,’ Neferata said.

‘She has the makings of a good spy,’ Mereneth agreed.

‘I am confident you will make that promise flower.’

Mereneth bowed her head. ‘The battle is finished in the great chamber,’ she said.

‘Any survivors?’

‘Some. All the families involved will be greatly diminished.’

Neferata nodded in satisfaction. ‘Good.’ Vorst’s assassins, chosen by her, had done their job well. Where there had been two powerful houses of uncertain loyalty, now there was a single, weaker one that would be hers entirely.

‘I’m curious,’ said Mereneth. ‘How did you know Evered would give his life for Karya?’

‘I saw his devotion when they asked for my consent to their union. He was consumed with love for her. This made his actions utterly predictable.’

‘And it was Vorst who killed Therul?’ Mereneth asked.

‘Yes. The union of the two houses gave him the opportunity to stage this massacre.’

‘What did you tell Karya about his motives?’

‘The truth. That he believed this would earn my favour. I simply did not tell her that I encouraged him in this belief.’

Mereneth chuckled. ‘You hold her love with a dark truth.’

‘Darkness is the key, Mereneth. Look to the darkness in which your enemy operates, that shrouds a rival, that lives in the heart of a friend. Then find a deeper darkness, and use it.’ Neferata smiled, tasting the night. ‘Always seek the darkness,’ she repeated. ‘Always go deeper.’

She ran her fingers over the parapet, and savoured the feel of obsidian between bone.

About the Author

David Annandale is the author of the novella The Faith and the Flesh, which features in the Warhammer Horror portmanteau The Wicked and the Damned. His work for the Horus Heresy range includes the novels Ruinstorm and The Damnation of Pythos, and the Primarchs novels Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar and Vulkan: Lord of Drakes. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine, the Yarrick series, and several stories involving the Grey Knights, as well as titles for The Beast Arises and the Space Marine Battles series. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he has written Neferata: Mortarch of Blood. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

An extract from Rulers of the Dead.

Snow the colour of ash fell over Nulahmia. It was the grey of abandoned hopes and forgotten graves. It gathered upon rooftops like torn shrouds, their tatters sweeping onto windowsills. In the streets, mounds formed. Gazing down at them from his chambers in a corner turret of his family’s palace, Mathas Hellezan thought the mounds looked like huddled bodies. Cold death descended from the sky to blanket the city of tombs. Mathas felt trapped between the dooms of sky and land. He couldn’t breathe. He yanked at the casement and opened the windows. The wind of sepulchres keened into the room, stinging his face with the grey flakes. The cold braced him, and he filled his lungs. He choked, swallowing fragments of pain. Bent double over the sill, gasping, he heard the hammering at the palace doors. The sound shocked him back to calm. The knock was heavy, a mailed fist slamming against bronze three times.

Three reverberating booms, the tolling of a bell reaching up through the night for him. At first he was surprised he could hear the knocking from the far side of the palace. Then he realised what the summons portended, and of course he heard it. Every Hellezan heard it. The walls of the palace trembled with the impact of fate coming to call.

Mathas stood back from the window. He crossed his chamber, passed through the narrow recess into his armoury, and began to make ready. He was just donning his helm when his father appeared at the doorway.

‘It is tonight, then,’ Mathas said.

Verrick Hellezan nodded. He was pale, and his eyes were stricken.

The Culling of the Firstborn was upon them.

‘You aren’t grieving, are you, father?’ Mathas asked. ‘We knew this moment would arrive. We have been preparing for it.’ The Mortarch of Blood had cursed mortal houses of Nulahmia with the tradition centuries before.

‘Yes, I know.’ Verrick’s voice trembled with fear and the anticipation of sorrow. ‘I did not think it would be this night.’

‘Would another night make a difference?’

‘No,’ Verrick admitted.

‘She knows I am about to ascend to command of the house, father,’ said Mathas. ‘There is no hiding that from her.’ Like all other firstborns in his position, he must go to the Palace of Seven Vultures. ‘It is my time to be tested.’

‘I had hoped we might have been able to discover the nature of the test before this moment.’

Mathas smiled. ‘It is deadly. We know that much.’ The Culling was real. Most firstborn never returned, except in coffins. Their mutilated remains were presented to their families, and the biers were carried in mocking silence by a cortege of skeletons.

‘If you fall…’ Verrick began.

‘I won’t. But if I do, you will go on.’

‘Will we?’

Mathas could already see, in his father, the same despairing face he had encountered so often in the kin of the lost firstborns. ‘The Hellezans can survive,’ he said. ‘The others have.’ More or less. Weakened by the losses, some houses failed, decapitated by the death of the firstborn. But others continued to exist, diminished and humbled, taught the futility of resisting the blood queen, often even before the idea had been whispered in the halls. The grieving leaders of these houses bent their knees and bowed their heads before Neferata, entreating her that this son, or this daughter, should be a full and sufficient sacrifice.

‘But you won’t have to just survive,’ Mathas said. ‘I will return. I will return as myself,’ he emphasised, as he saw the shadow of a greater horror pass across Verrick’s eyes.

Some firstborn did not return in coffins. Shrouded by darkness, their flesh cold and pale, their eyes red with ancient, unquenchable thirst, the new vampire thralls of Neferata crossed their thresholds as destroyers.

‘You weren’t at the home of the Salveins,’ Verrick said. ‘You didn’t see what Harvath did to them. He painted the walls with their blood. And the bodies…’ When Verrick shook his head, it seemed to Mathas that he sent a tremor down his entire frame. ‘They filled the corridors, and we couldn’t count them. Such butchery. So many pieces.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, squeezing them tight against the vision of the charnel halls. ‘Harvath just stood there, the blood of his family dripping from his mouth. I don’t know if he even saw us.’

‘That won’t be me, father. You know it won’t.’

Verrick smiled sadly. No matter what Mathas said, it seemed, the old man refused to be comforted. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You might be more restrained.’

‘Like Wrentis Nalvaux?’ He had been merciless in his bloodletting, killing his family members who needed killing, turning those who would be of use, and subjugating everyone else. And so another house had become Neferata’s, controlled by her will as surely as if her terrible presence resided in its chambers. ‘No,’ Mathas said. ‘I will return, and we will all rejoice. This is not the moment of doom. This is our chance to strike.’ He paused. ‘We want this,’ he said softly.

‘I know,’ Verrick said, without conviction.

Mathas clasped his father’s shoulder. Verrick had devoted himself to the struggle, and the effort of the decades had told on him. His frame had withered. His bones seemed frail under Mathas’ touch. His eyes were sunken in his sallow face.

‘You’ve done well, father. You’ve brought us this far. It is time I took up the torch. This night, I will.’ He had been in training for his entire life, waiting for this very night. He, his parents and their allies had not known when the summons would come, but they had known it was inevitable. Mathas was a firstborn, and as mercurial as the queen of Nulahmia could be, she had never spared anyone marked to take part in this ritual.

Why would she? Mathas thought. It is so useful for her.

He left his quarters and made his way through the palace. Verrick walked at his side, seeming to age with every step. The wall sconces burned brightly in the halls, casting a defiant light over the great portraits of the Hellezan line. Gold inlay on the columns and gold leaf on the ceiling gleamed, rich with the pride of a family that had carved out a wealthy life in the kingdom of death. Withstand and Prevail: that was the Hellezan motto, and Mathas believed in it. He would prove its worth and his own tonight.

His armoured boot steps echoed down the halls, the only sound in the palace, though everyone was awake. Servants clustered in doorways to watch his passage. The household seemed to be holding its collective breath. His mother, his brother and his sisters were waiting for him at the main entrance. Teyosa of House Avaranthe, his wife, stood beside them holding their infant son, Kasten.

The doors were closed, but Mathas could sense the dark beings waiting on the other side. Two men-at-arms stood at attention, ready to pull the doors open when he gave the signal.

Mathas embraced his mother. Glanath’s lips were pressed together tightly, her face taught with strain. The years had been hard on her too. It was his responsibility now to make sure his parents’ sacrifice had not been in vain.

Nor would they be the only ones depending on him. There were other families whose fortunes would rise or fall because of this night. In truth, he believed that the fate of all Nulahmia rested on his shoulders. There was solemn pride, but no vanity, in that belief. If he succeeded this night, everything would change. If he failed, someone else would have to take his place, and someone surely would, because the struggle was too important. There was no alternative, other than the despair of complete surrender.

‘I won’t fail,’ he said to Glanath.

‘I know you won’t,’ she said. ‘You march from our palace to a greater one, and to your destiny.’ Her voice trembled only once. She spoke quietly, but with incantatory fervour.

Mathas turned to Teyosa. ‘I will return to you,’ he said. His hand hovered over the sleeping head of Kasten. ‘I swear it.’

‘You should not have to fight alone,’ said Teyosa.

‘Yet I must.’

‘I could…’ she began, but trailed off as he shook his head.

‘If you tried to follow, they would kill you before you had taken ten paces from our gates. You are second-born. Your family has already paid its tithe of blood. And we need you here.’

Teyosa looked down at Kasten and nodded. ‘You will pass by my family’s house,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Mathas. ‘I will learn what I can as we do.’

In the last week, rumours had reached the Hellezan palace that a plague had come to House Avaranthe. Silence had fallen over the family, but there had been no way to learn the truth, no way to know if Neferata had discovered that they were part of the plot against her. If the worst had happened, there could be no open contact between the two houses, especially now that the attention of the dark queen had fallen on the Hellezans.

The days and nights of the Hellezan palace had been consumed with the dread anticipation of Mathas’ summons. The Culling of the Firstborn came to every house. Since there were no exceptions, the summons was predictable. It was possible to prepare for it. Mathas had. The threat stiffened the resolve of the Hellezans and the families with whom they forged quiet, whispered alliances. They vowed to break the chains Neferata had thrown over Nulahmia. The city may have been her creation, but it was time it was freed from the grip of its creator. As plans were laid and the kernel of an organised resistance slowly, almost imperceptibly, came into being, the links between the families had become, on the surface, more distant. If the Avaranthes had been found out, and punished, the appearance of that distance was all the more vital.

Teyosa understood. Yet Mathas knew she feared for her family and grieved in the expectation of tragedy. Knowing one way or another might help. Mathas needed to know, too. Everyone in House Hellezan did.

‘I’ll find out,’ he promised, determination growing. ‘Good news or ill, I will come back, and I will hold you as I tell you.’

‘I can ask no more,’ said Teyosa.

Mathas nodded to the guards, and they opened the doors.

The wind shrieked into the entrance hall, blowing grey before it. The snow whirled about the Hellezans. Verrick winced and brushed the flakes from his shoulders as if trying to shed himself of a dark omen. Three Black Knights stood on the portico. Their heavy armour gleamed dully in the reflected lights of the hall’s torches. The cold breath of the night whistled through their empty eye sockets, and the chill of the grave worked through the seams of Mathas’ armour and clutched his face with a numbing grasp. The blast of the snow storm surrounded the Black Knights, but another, more frigid wind blew from the undead warriors themselves.

Mathas took in the eroded crests on the trio’s armour and bowed. The skeletons were nobles from houses that had been powerful when their families were alive, and were even greater now they were dead.

The middle Black Knight cocked his head as if amused by Mathas’ display of courtesy. You aren’t fooled, Mathas thought. You sense my loathing. Good. But I will walk into the dark with honour. Do not think you can take that from me. He stared back into the knight’s empty sockets. After a few moments, the skeleton turned and strode away, armour creaking, bones grinding together. The other two waited for Mathas to come between them. When he did, they fell into step on either side, an escort of doom.

At street level, the mounds of snow looked even more like bodies, huddled in agony against the building walls. Though the night was freezing, the shapes were melting, heated by the unnatural alchemy that governed their existence. Where the grey was piled high enough to take on the curves of agony, it began to bleed. The masses sank down, rotting, turning to blackened slush, then running in crimson streams down the cobblestones, washing against Mathas’ boots.

The Black Knights took him down a wide boulevard that ran between towering mausoleums. The black walls were hundreds of feet high. Rank upon rank of huge, snarling gargoyle maws covered the facades. Behind every gaping mouth was a stone throat, leading into the structures and the tombs within. The mausoleums held tens of thousands of coffins. Few of their occupants slept soundly.

The grey snow fell past the gargoyles. It gathered on Mathas’ shoulders. It settled onto the street, and was swept away by the streams of blood.

Everything in the night shouted to Mathas that only death could triumph in Nulahmia. He was going to prove the night wrong. They did not know it, but the Black Knights were giving him the opportunity to make that attempt. He would spill blood, and he would kill. But it was one death in particular he sought. One death, to bring the hope of life to the mortals of Nulahmia. Or, no – not a death, for he did not pretend he could kill what was already dead. Destruction, then. He lived to destroy one being.

He was going to destroy Neferata.

Mathas recognised the folly of the quest. He knew he was not the first mortal to make the attempt. What did his two decades of training mean compared to her countless millennia of existence? The hubris of his attempt was without measure. But one of us will bring you down, he thought. One of these times, the blade would strike home. He refused to believe that she was eternal. She, too, was guilty of pride. What was happening to him this night was proof of that. She was inviting destruction over her threshold. One day, the invitation would be accepted.

Your hour is coming, he thought.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Gods & Mortals 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 Kari Christensen.

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