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The Sands of Grief – Guy Haley

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A Black Library Publication

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The Sands of Grief

Guy Haley

‘I don’t like it here, master. Please, let us go. Too much magic, hurts my bones.’

‘Hush, Shattercap, they are nearly done, and then we can leave. Be patient.’

The second speaker was Maesa, a proud aelf prince in the bronze armour and green-and-grey clothing of the wayfarer peoples. The first was a vicious spite, a small, gangrel creature of ill intent. His appearance did nothing to disguise his nature. He was a clutch of bones and twiggy fingers, garbed in wizened green skin. From a small, apelike face, his button black eyes peered at the world with fearful malice, in marked contrast to the calm benevolence radiated by his keeper. But though a captive, Shattercap was more or less content to live among the folds of the prince’s cloak.

Content, because the aelf offered a way out of wickedness, and Shattercap desired that in a half-grasped way. Less, because the prince and the spite were at that time within the shop of Erasmus Throck and Durdek Grimmson, providers of the finest alchemical instruments in Glymmsforge in the Realm of Shyish, a place Shattercap feared greatly.

Throck and Grimmson were comical opposites. Grimmson was a stout duardin with a blue beard and bald head. Throck was a tall scrap of man with a shock of white hair and clean-shaven chin. The duardin rooted about behind the counter near the floor. The man was balanced upon rolling steps, searching cubbyholes high up by the ceiling.

Grimmson hauled out a leather-covered box and placed it on the glass counter top.

‘This is it, aelfling, the soul glass you wished for.’

Throck tutted from the top of the steps at his colleague.

‘Come now, Durdek! Prince Maesa is highborn and worthy of respect.’

Durdek’s granitic face maintained its scowl. ‘He’s an aelf, and I call it as I see it, Erasmus.’

Throck shook his head, and pulled the wheeled ladder along to the next stack of cubbyholes.

‘Don’t worry, your worthiness,’ said Grimmson to Maesa. ‘I’ve outdone myself for you. Look at this.’

With a delicacy his massive fingers seemed incapable of, Grimmson took out a tiny hourglass. Its bulbs were no bigger than a child’s clenched fists, decorated with delicate fretwork of silver and gold.

Durdek flicked open a lid in the glass’ top. ‘Life sand goes in here. Seal it. Tip it over when it’s near run out. Keep on with that to prolong the life within. Away you go. Very simple concept, but simple usage is no reason for drab work.’

‘We pride ourselves on the finest equipment,’ said Throck. ‘Durdek here makes the devices…’

‘…and it’s him as does the enchanting,’ said Durdek.

‘It is a beautiful piece,’ said Maesa. He took the hourglass from Grimmson and turned it over in his hands. ‘Such fine workmanship.’

Grimmson hooked his fingers into his belt, gave a loud sniff and pulled himself up proudly.

‘We do what we can.’

‘Aha! Here is the other item,’ said Throck. He jumped from the ladder. From a soft velvet bag, he took out a complex compass. It too had a lid in the top, covering over a small compartment. ‘A soul seeker. This should lead you to the realmstone deposit you seek.’

Grimmson took the glass and placed it carefully back into the box so Maesa could examine the compass.

Eight nested circles of gold, each free moving against the other, surrounded the central lidded well. On one side of the well was an indicator made in the shape of the hooked symbol of Shyish. Maesa pushed it with his finger. It spun silently through many revolutions at the gentlest touch.

‘It floats on a bath of ghostsilver,’ said Throck. ‘Very good work.’

‘Should be,’ said Shattercap. ‘For the money you are being paid.’

‘You get what you pay for,’ Grimmson growled. ‘Quality. We are Glymmsforge’s foremost makers of such devices.’

‘We are expensive, I admit, but you will find none better,’ said Throck.

‘Indeed,’ said Maesa. ‘I have no issue with the cost. Ignore my servant, he has yet to learn manners.’ He handed the compass back and produced a white leather pouch from his belt. ‘Five hundred black diamond chips, from the Realm of Ulgu, as you required.’

Grimmson took the bag from Maesa’s hand and tugged at the drawstring ready to count the contents.

Throck patted his partner’s burly arm. ‘That won’t be necessary. I am sure the prince is good to his word.’ Throck was awed by the prince’s breeding, and couldn’t help but give a short bow. Maesa returned the gesture with a graceful inclination of his head. Grimmson looked at them both fiercely.

‘You best be careful out there,’ the duardin said. ‘We sell maybe eight or nine of these a year, but the folks that buy them don’t always come to the best end. Most go out into the Sands of Grief, and vanish.’

‘How do you know they work then?’ said Shattercap, slinking around the back of Maesa’s head from one shoulder to the other.

‘Ahem,’ Throck looked apologetic. ‘Their ghosts come back to tell us.’

‘Ghosts? Ghosts! Master!’ squealed Shattercap. ‘Why did we come here?’

‘I trust you have supernatural means of sustenance?’ said Throck amiably. ‘I do not mean to pry into your business, but where you intend to go is no place for the living. There is no water, no food, no life of any kind, only the dead, and storms of wild magic. We can provide the necessary protections – amulets, enchanted vittles, all you would require – if you have none of your own.’

‘Oh, no!’ Shattercap shrieked again. Maesa ignored him.

‘I have what I need. My kind have wandered in every place. This realm is no alien land to me. I shall return in person to inform you how well your goods performed.’ Maesa bowed and picked up his packages. ‘My thanks, and good day to you, sirs.’

The door of the shop banged closed behind the prince. Shattercap cowered from the strange sights of Glymmsforge. The sky was a bruised purple, forever brooding, its long night scattered with amethyst stars. Outside the walls were afterlives ruined by the war with Chaos, and haunted by broken souls. But the streets of the young city were full of life, bathed in the light of magical lanterns that held back the dark.

Throck and Grimmson’s shop was located on Thaumaturgy Way, along with dozens of other purveyors of magical goods. Market stalls narrowed the street, leaving only a slender cobbled passage down the centre. Humans, aelfs, duardin and all manner of other creatures thronged the market, and not only the living, but the shades of the dead also, for Glymmsforge was situated in the afterlife of Lyria, where some vestiges of past glory still clung.

The crowd moved slowly. People browsed goods, creating hard knots in the flow that eddied irritably around each other. Maesa could pass through a thicket of brambles without disturbing a twig, but his aelven gifts were of no use in that place, and he was forced to shove through the crowd along with the rest.

‘Market days, I hate market days!’ hissed Shattercap. ‘So many people. Where is the forest quiet? Where is the mossy silence?’

‘You will yearn for their fellowship where we are going, small evil,’ said Maesa. He slipped through a gaggle of ebon-skinned men of Ghur haggling over an imp imprisoned in a bottle, and reached the relative quiet of the main street.

Free of the overhanging eaves of Thaumaturgy Way, more of the city was visible. Concentric rings of walls soared to touch the sky. The innermost held within their compass the Shimmergate, a blue slash of light high up in the dark sky. Shattercap and Maesa were in the second district, thus close to the Stormkeep, the College of Amethyst and all the other wonders of the deepest ward.

Maesa turned his back on the central spires. His destination lay outside the city.

He returned to their lodgings in the fourth ward, and there arranged his equipment for the journey while Shattercap fretted in the corner. The spite could have bolted at any time, and for that reason Maesa had kept the thing chained for the first part of their association. As the days passed, a bond had grown between them. Besides, Shattercap was too cowardly to flee, so Maesa had abandoned the fetters.

Maesa packed his saddlebags with food, drink and sustenance of a less mundane kind. He stowed his unstringed bow into its case on the outside of his quiver. The compass from Throck and Grimmson he hung about his neck in its bag, and he stored the hourglass carefully in his packs. Lastly, he took from the table his most prized possession – the skull of his dead love, Ellamar – and placed it carefully into a light knapsack woven from the silk of forest spiders.

He called the house boy to take the bags to the stables, and followed him down.

The inn’s stable block housed every sort of riding beast imaginable. At one end of the stalls was a mighty gryph-charger that rattled its beak in conversation with a pair of its lesser demi-gryph kin stabled next to it. Dozens of horses, flightless birds, great cats and more all whinnied, growled, squawked and screeched. As the air was a confusion of different calls, so the smell of the stables was a mighty animal reek composed of many bestial perfumes.

There was only a single great stag in the stable. His name was Aelphis and he was Maesa’s mount. He waited for his master, aloofly enduring the clumsy efforts of the grooms to saddle him.

‘Aelphis,’ said Maesa softly.

The giant stag bowed his head and snorted gladly at the prince’s greeting. He dropped to his knees to allow Maesa to load him with the baggage.

‘I am sorry, my lord, but I do not think I have your saddle right,’ said the head groom. ‘I have never tacked up a creature like he before.’

‘No matter,’ said Maesa. Although the groom had made a poor job of it, he was genuinely apologetic. The prince adjusted the saddle while the groom looked on, and Maesa welcomed his desire to learn. When all was as it should be, Maesa leapt nimbly upon Aelphis’ back. The stag let out a lusty bellow and rose up to his full, majestic height.

‘We shall return,’ said Maesa, and took his helm from a groom. Its spread of bronze antlers mirrored the magnificence of Aelphis’ rack. Armoured, he and the beast were perfectly matched.

Maesa rode from the inn’s yard. He would dearly have liked to give Aelphis his head, and let the beast break into its springing run, but the streets of the fourth ward were as crowded as those of the second. Beast and rider were forced to keep their patience until they reached the eastern outgate.

A permit was required to leave the walls at night. Maesa duly provided his papers to the gate captain, who scrutinised them carefully.

No one else was leaving.

‘All is in order,’ said the captain reluctantly.

At a shout from the captain, the gates swung wide. The road leading away from Glymmsforge was empty. Not one soul walked the level paving. A channel of purple salt cut through the road surface a hundred yards out, interrupting its journey into desert nowheres devoid of living souls.

The walls were patrolled by keen-eyed men armed with sorcerous guns. Two of them barred Maesa’s exit.

‘You must be an influential man to secure exit from the city at night,’ said the captain, handing back the papers. ‘I advise you to wait for the day.’

‘I am eager to be away.’

‘I have a suspicion where you are bound, prince,’ said the captain. ‘I’ve seen plenty of creatures with the same look you have in your eyes. They are not to be dissuaded, so I will not try. I will give you the warning that all free-thinking folk receive from me. At the line of salt out there, the protection of Sigmar ends. There are perils aplenty beyond these walls. This gate is the frontier of life. Out there is only death and undeath. Are you sure whatever reason you are going out there for is worth your soul?’

‘It is a price I will gladly pay,’ said Maesa.

‘Then Sigmar watch over you. There are no others that can,’ said the captain.

‘Your warning is noted, captain,’ said Maesa. ‘But I have nothing to fear.’

The men stepped aside at a nod from the captain.

Maesa’s trilling song set Aelphis bounding out into the empty desert, joyful to be free of the confines of the city.

The road entered the low hills some miles from Glymmsforge, and there it petered out at a half-finished cutting. Construction gear lay around, awaiting the day and the work gangs. Night-time was altogether too dangerous for mortal labour. As the stag left smooth paving for the sand, Maesa directed him up the slope and pulled him to a stop.

Dust kicked up by the stag’s hooves blew away on a cold wind. Maesa turned back for one last look upon Glymmsforge. From the vantage of the hillside, it was set out like a model for him to examine.

The Shimmergate gleamed in the sky, surrounded by the gossamer traceries of the stairs leading to its threshold. The realmgate reflected in the Glass Mere, the broad lake encompassed by the fortifications. Monumental buildings stretched spires skywards, taller even than the walls, all ablaze with fires and shining mage-light. Among the finest were the cathedral-like mausolea of the celestial saints, the relics of a dozen creatures whose holy power kept back evil, joined together by trenches of the purple salt. The twelve-pointed star the mausolea and the sand trench made was the reason for the city’s survival, being a barrier to all wicked things.

Around this oasis city, the Zircona desert stretched its gloomy grey expanses. The haunting cries of tormented spirits blended with the fluting wind.

‘Look back at the city, small evil,’ Maesa said to Shattercap. ‘It will be our last sight of life ere our task is done.’

Tiny, whistling snores answered. Shattercap was a relaxed weight in the bottom of Maesa’s hood.

Quietly, so as not to disturb the slumbering spite, Maesa urged Aelphis into a run.

Zircona’s desert ran for leagues. Aelphis covered its distances without tiring. He cut straight across the landscape, bounding as quickly over crags and shattered badlands as he ran over the flats. Day’s watery light came and went, and Maesa did not pause. Every third night he would rest, for aelven kind are hardier than mortal men, and sleep rules their lives with a looser hand. Aelphis slept when the prince did while Shattercap kept watch. Trusting terror to keep the spite vigilant, aelf and stag rested without misgiving.

There were ruins in the wastes. Shattered cities dotted the lands, though whether raised by the living or the dead it was impossible to say. The metaphysics of Shyish were complicated. Before the Age of Chaos cast them into ruin, many lesser afterlives had occupied the desert. As time went on, the living had come into those places also, and lived alongside those who had been born and died in other places and come to Shyish for their reward. In the south of Glymmsforge, towards the heartlands of Shyish, there were mighty realms yet, but towards realm’s edge where Maesa headed, only ruins remained, haunted by the shrieking gheists of the dispossessed.

None of these wandering shades dared come near him. To the sight of the dead, Prince Maesa shone with baleful power. His sword, the soul-drinking Song of Thorns, would bring their end with a single cut, and Maesa had other magical arts to command should it fail him.

They passed a great city whose walls were whole and aglow with corpse-light. No sound issued from the place. There was no sense of vitality, only an ominous watchfulness. The city filled the valley it occupied from side to side, and Maesa was forced to travel uneasily within the shadow of its fortifications.

A wail went up from the gatehouse as he approached, answered by others sounding from the towers in the curtain wall. Aelphis pranced and snorted at the din. Shattercap gibbered in miserable fright. Disturbed, Maesa spurred Aelphis on. The wailing harrowed their ears as they galloped by, but nothing came out from the city, not phantom nor spectral arrow, and as Maesa passed, the ghostly shrieks died one by one, until terrible silence fell.

They quickly left the city behind. Afterwards, the character of the land changed for the worse.

During the night that followed, they camped. All were weary, for the land took a toll on their spirits. Shattercap puled miserably and tugged at Maesa’s hair.

‘Master, master,’ he whined. ‘I feel so ill, not good at all.’

Maesa squatted at Aelphis’ side. The giant stag was sleeping, its huge flanks pumping like bellows, gusting breaths whose warmth the bitter lands swiftly stole. Maesa took Shattercap from his shoulder and looked at him carefully. The spite’s skin had gone dry and grey. Maesa too was ailing. His pale face had lost its alabaster sheen, becoming pasty. Dark rings shaded his almond eyes.

‘It is the land. The nearer the edge we go, the less forgiving to mortal flesh it is, even to those like we, small evil, who are blessed with boundless lifespans.’

Shattercap coughed. Maesa cradled him in the crook of his arm like a sick lamb as he hunted through his bags with his free hand.

‘It is time. For you especially, a creature born of the magic of life, this place is hard. I have something here for you to ensure your survival.’

He took out a round flask protected by a net of cord. Contained in the glass was a clear liquid that glowed faintly with yellow light. As Maesa uncorked it, it flared, lighting up the bones and veins in his fine hands. He held the bottle to Shattercap’s lips.

‘Water from the Lifewells of Ghyran,’ Maesa explained. ‘Drawn long before the Plague God’s corruption. Take but one drop. Any more will change you, and we have but a little.’

Shattercap dipped his pink tongue into the glass. When it touched the blessed water, he let out a relieved sigh.

‘It tastes of the forests. It tastes of the rivers and the seas. It tastes of home!’

Maesa set Shattercap down and wet his own lips with the water. His skin tingled. His face glowed with renewed life, and the dark rings faded. He dabbed a little on his forefinger, to rub on the gums of the sleeping stag, then corked the flask and put it away.

A miserable moaning sang out of the night.

‘Best keep this out of sight,’ Maesa said. ‘The dead here are cold, and will seek out a source of life such as this.’

They went further edgewards, heading away from the heartlands of Shyish. At night, the dark was full of desperate howls. Cold winds blew, carrying whispers that chilled the marrow. Thunderous storms cracked the sky with displays of purple lightning. No rain fell. Nothing lived. The days grew shorter with every league they went, the sun paler, until they passed some fateful meridian, and went into lands clothed perpetually in shadow.

Where the light died, the sky changed. Beneath amethyst chips of stars a new desert began. Zircona was a wasteland, but it was part of a living world. This new desert was wholly a dead place.

Maesa slipped from Aelphis’ saddle.

‘We have reached the Sands of Grief. Now is the time for the magic of Throck and Grimmson,’ he said. He took out the gold compass, and set it on a stone. From a velvet bag he removed the skull of Ellamar and unwound its wrappings, set it on the ground, and knelt beside it.

‘Forgive me, my love,’ he said. Delicately, he took up the brown skull, and pinched a tooth between forefinger and thumb. ‘I apologise for this insult to your remains. I shall replace it with the brightest silver.’

Grimacing at what he must do, he drew the tooth. It came free with a dry scraping.

He set the tooth aside, rewrapped his precious relic, and returned it to the back of his saddle. Then he opened up the lid of the compass-box and placed the tooth within.

‘Let us see if it works.’

He held the compass up to his face.

Slowly, the pointer swung about, left, then right, then left, before coming to a stop. Maesa moved the compass. The pointer remained fixed unwaveringly on the desert.

‘Success?’ said Shattercap.

‘Success,’ said Maesa in relief.

Daylight receded from recollection. Shifting dunes crowded the mind as much as the landscape, and Maesa put all his formidable will into remembering who he was, and why he was there. Had he not, his sanity would have faded, and he would have wandered the desert forever.

Time without day loses meaning. The compass did not move from its position. Hours or lifetimes could have gone by. The desert landscape changed slowly, but it did change. Maesa came out of his fugue to find himself looking down into a gorge where shapes marched in two lines from one horizon to another. One line headed deeper into the desert and the realm’s edge, the other oppositely towards the heartlands of Shyish.

The sight was enough to shake Maesa from his torpor. Shattercap stirred.

‘What is it?’ asked Shattercap. His voice was weak.

‘Skeletons. Animate remains of the dead,’ said Maesa. The percussive click of dry joints and the whisper of fleshless feet echoed from the gorge’s sides. Purple starlight glinted from ancient bone.

‘What are they doing?’ said Shattercap.

‘I have no idea,’ said Maesa. ‘But we must cross their march.’

‘Master!’ said Shattercap. ‘Please, no. This is too much.’

Maesa urged Aelphis on. The great stag was weary, and stumbled upon the scree. Stones loosened by his feet sent a shower of rock before him that barged through the lines of skeletons and took two down with a hollow clatter. The skin of magic holding the skeletons together burst. Bones scattered. Like ants on their way to their nest, the animates stepped around the scene of the catastrophe, and continued on their silent way.

‘Oh, no,’ whimpered Shattercap.

‘Be not afraid,’ said Maesa. ‘They see nothing. They are set upon a single task. They will not harm us.’ He drew Aelphis up alongside the line, and rode against its direction. The skeletons heading outwards marched with their arms at their sides, but those going inwards each held one hand high in front of eyeless sockets, thumb and forefinger pinched upon an invisible burden.

Shattercap snuffled at them. ‘Oh, I see! I see! They carry realmstone, such small motes of power I can hardly perceive them. Why, master, why?’

‘I know not,’ said Maesa, though the revelation filled him with unease. Nervously, he checked his compass, in case the undead carried off that which he sought, but the compass arrow remained pointing the same direction as always. ‘I have no wish to discover why. Few beings could animate so many of the dead. We should be away from here.’

They left the name unsaid, but it was to Nagash, lord of undeath, Maesa referred. To whisper his name would call his attention onto them, and in that place Maesa had no power to oppose him.

‘Come, Aelphis, through the line.’

The king of stags bounded through a gap. The skeletons were blind to the aelven prince. With exaggerated, mechanical care, they trooped through the endless night, bearing their tiny cargoes onwards.

They passed several skeleton columns over the coming days. Always, they marched in two directions, one corewards, the other to the edge. They followed the lie of the land and, like water, wore it away with their feet where they passed, forming a branching of dry tributaries carrying flows of bone. Not once did the skeletons notice them, and soon the companions’ crossing of the lines became routine. The compass turned gradually away from their current path. By then notions of edgewards and corewards had lost all meaning. They knew the direction changed simply because they found themselves coming against the skeleton columns diagonally, then, as the compass shifted again, walking alongside them to the deeper desert. For safety’s sake, Maesa withdrew a little from the column the compass demanded he follow, shadowing it at a mile’s distance. Time ran on. The line of skeletons did not break or waver, but stamped on, on, on towards Shyish’s centre, each step a progression of the one behind, so the skeletons were like so many drawings pulled from a child’s zoetrope.

Some time later ¬– neither Maesa nor Shattercap knew how long – they witnessed a new sight. In a lonely hollow they spied a figure. On impulse Maesa turned Aelphis away from their route to investigate.

A human male squatted in the dust, a prospector’s pan in one hand. From the other he let a slow trickle of sand patter into the pan, then sifted it carefully around the pan while croaking minor words of power. Sometimes he would take a speck of sand out and put it into something near his feet. More often he would tip the load aside.

‘Good evening,’ said Maesa. It was dangerous approaching anyone in the wastes, but even the prince, who had spent solitary decades in his wandering, felt the need for company.

‘Eh, eh? Evening? Always night time. What do you want?’ said the man. He did not look up from his work.

Maesa saw no reason to lie. ‘I seek the life sands of my lost love. I hope to bring her back, and be with her again.’

‘Mmm, hmmm, yes. Many come here for the realm sand, the crystallised essence of mortal years,’ said the necromancer, pawing at the ground. He mumbled something unintelligible, then suddenly looked around, eyes wide. His skin was pallid. A peculiar smell rose from him. ‘You must be a great practitioner of the arts of necromancy to attempt to find a particular vein, though I doubt it. I never met an aelf with a knack for the wind of Shyish. But I, Qualos the Astute, necromancer supreme, I will have my own life soon bottled in this glass! By reversing it, I shall live forever. I alone have the art to exploit the Sands of Grief, whereas you shall fail!’ He chuckled madly. ‘What do you think of that?’

‘It is most impressive,’ said Maesa.

The smile dropped from Qualos’ face, his eyes widened. ‘Oh, you best be careful! He doesn’t like it when souls are taken! You take the one you’re looking for, even a part, and he’ll come for you. He’ll not let you be until your bones march in his legions and your spirit shrieks in his host.’ He looked about, then whispered. ‘I speak of Nagash.’

The whisper streamed from his lips and away over the dunes, growing louder the further it travelled. Thunder boomed far away. Aelphis shied.

‘Not I, though. I have this! Within is my life! My soul is none but my own.’ He held up the bottom bulb of an hourglass. The neck was snapped, the top lost. The glass was scratched to the point of opacity. No sand would run in that vessel, unless it was to fall out.

‘I see,’ said Maesa neutrally.

‘The man is mad!’ hissed Shattercap.

‘Just a few grains more, then I will be heading back,’ said Qualos. ‘All the peoples of Eska will marvel at my feat!’ he said. He licked his lips with a tongue dry and black as old leather. ‘I don’t think you can do it, not like me.’ He cradled his broken glass to his chest.

‘We shall see,’ said Maesa.

‘Well, on your way!’ said the necromancer, his face transformed by a snarl. ‘You distract me from my task. Get ye gone.’

Aelphis plodded slowly by the man. As they passed him, Maesa glimpsed white shining inside his open robes. Shattercap growled.

Qualos’ ribs poked through desiccated flesh. Splintered bone trapped a dark hole where his heart had beaten, now gone.

‘He is dead!’ whispered Shattercap.

‘Yes,’ said Maesa.

Shattercap scrambled across Maesa’s shoulders to look behind.

‘You knew?’

‘Only when he spoke,’ admitted Maesa. ‘I thought him alive, at first.’

‘Should we not tell him?’ asked Shattercap.

‘I do not think it would make any difference, and it may put us in danger. His fate is not our business. The lord of undeath has him in his thrall. A cruel joke.’

Maesa directed Aelphis back upon their course and rode for a while. When he was sure they were out of sight of Qualos, Maesa pulled out Ghyran’s bottled life and regarded it critically.

‘The lack of this, however, is a cause for concern. There is enough for a few more days,’ he said. He looked towards the centre of Shyish, estimating the ride to more hospitable lands. ‘No more than that.’

‘What do we do when we run out?’ whimpered Shattercap.

Maesa would not answer.

Maesa and his companions were dying. Not a sharp blade-cut end, but the slow drip of souls weeping from broken hearts.

Grey dunes rolled away to chill eternities. Aelphis stumbled up slopes and down slip faces, his antlers drooped to his feet. Maesa swayed listlessly in the saddle. Shattercap was silent. A few drops of Ghyran’s life-giving waters remained to sustain them. They would have to return soon, or they would die.

At the same time, they grew hopeful. Increasingly in the dust they saw glittering streams of coarse grains of green, black, amethyst and other gemstone colours. These were realmstones of Shyish ¬– life sands, each streak on the dunes the crystallised essence of a life, a grain for every week or so. Maesa looked at his compass often, hoping against hope that the needle would turn and point to one of the deposits, but he was disappointed. The needle aimed towards the horizon always. None of the coloured streaks were Ellamar’s mortal days.

And then, the miraculous occurred. After what felt like years, and could have been, the needle on the compass twitched. Maesa stared dumbly at the device cupped in his hands. The needle was moving, swinging away from their line of travel.

‘Shattercap!’ said Maesa, his voice cracked from days of disuse.

‘Master?’ replied the spite, a breath of words no louder than the whisper of the windblown sand.

‘We approach! We are near!’

Maesa spurred Aelphis into life. Huffing wearily, the king of stags lumbered into a trot.

‘To the right, Aelphis! There!’ said Maesa, intent upon the dial.

Their path took them closer to the line of skeletons. At last, the source of the animates’ burdens became apparent. Where realmstone gathered most thickly, a depression had been carved.

Within the bowl of a great quarry, the two lines of skeletons joined into one. They entered, looped round, bent without slowing to peck at the sand, then walked around the back of the bowl and thence out again, carrying their dot of treasure away to their master. In the dim starlight, Maesa spied many such pits, some worked out, some alive with the flash of dead bones.

A moment of horror gripped him. If Ellamar’s sands were in one of those pits…

Relief came from the compass. It span a little to the left, then as Aelphis followed, to the right. The compass rotated slowly around and around. Maesa brought Aelphis to a halt and slid from his back.

Sand shifted under his feet. Rivulets of it ran from the dunes’ sides to fill his footsteps. The grey dust comprised the lesser part of it, much was realmstone. Many colours were mingled there. Many lives blended.

The prince stooped low, the compass held to the sand. By lifting individual grains to the compass rose and watching its spin, he ascertained that Ellamar’s life was of an indigo hue. One grain set the compass twirling sharply. A handful made it blur.

‘Fitting,’ he said. ‘Indigo was her favourite colour.’ He took out the last of the life water, and roused the spite. ‘Shattercap.’

‘Good prince?’

‘We shall finish this. We shall need all our strength. The servants of Nagash will come.’ He took a sip, gave a drink to Shattercap, and then tipped the last of the water into Aelphis’ mouth. The stag huffed and stood taller as vitality returned.

‘Help me. Pluck up this indigo sand.’ He drew out the hourglass from his saddlebags and placed it on the desert floor. He opened up the lid. ‘Fill it up. Carefully. Not one other grain, only hers.’

When lowered to the sand, Shattercap mewled. ‘It burns me, master!’

‘Bear the pain, and you shall be four steps closer to freedom,’ said the prince sternly. ‘Hurry!’

Together the aelf and spite worked, fastidiously plucking single grains of the glittering sand from the dust and depositing them in the hourglass.

The bottom bulb was almost full, and the grains becoming harder to sift from the rest, when a piercing shriek rose over the desert.

Shattercap’s head whipped up. His hands opened and closed nervously.

‘Master…’ he whimpered. ‘We are noticed.’

Another shriek sounded, then a third, each one nearer than the last. The ceaseless, gentle wind of the desert gusted fiercely.

‘Fill it, spite!’ commanded Maesa. He drew the Song of Thorns. The woody edge of the living sword sparked with starlight. ‘Get it all. I shall hold them back.’

Howling with outrage, a wraith came flying over the ridge of a nearby dune. It had no legs, but trailed streamers of magic from black robes in place of lower limbs. Its face was a skull locked into a permanent roar. Its hands bore a scythe. This, unlike the aethereal bearer, was solid enough, a shaft of worm-eaten wood and a blade of rusted metal with a terrible bite. Other wraiths came skimming over the sands, their corpse-light shining from the tiny jewels of other creature’s lives.

The first wraith raised its weapon, and bore down on the prince. Moving with the grace native to all aelves, Maesa sidestepped and with a single precise cut, sliced the spirit in two. It screamed its last, the shreds of its soul sucked within the Song of Thorns. Another came, swooping around and around Aelphis and Maesa before plunging arrow-swift at the prince. Maesa was faster, and ended it. The Song of Thorns glowed with the power of the stolen spirits.

More wraiths were coming. A chorus of shrieks sounded from every direction. The undead burst from the sand, they swooped down from the sky. The watchdogs of Nagash were alert for thieves taking their master’s property, and responded to the alarm with alacrity.

‘Quickly, Shattercap!’

Maesa slew another, and another. The Song of Thorns was anathema to things such as the wraiths, but there were hundreds of them gathering in a tempest of phantoms. The spite scrabbled at the ground, his earlier finesse gone as he shovelled Ellamar’s life sands into the glass.

‘Be careful not to mix the grains!’ the prince shouted, cleaving the head of another wraith from its owner.

‘I am trying!’ squeaked the spite.

‘I cannot fight all these things,’ said Maesa. He was right. Now the wraiths saw the danger the Song of Thorns posed, they turned their attacks against Aelphis and Shattercap, and it took all of Maesa’s skill to keep them from harm. Aelphis reared and pawed at the wraiths, but all he could do was deflect their weapons from his hide. When his hooves hit their bodies, they passed through, leaving wakes of glowing mist.

‘I have it all!’ said Shattercap, ducking the raking hand of a wraith. He slammed closed the lid atop the hourglass.

‘You are sure? You have checked the compass?’

‘Yes!’ squealed Shattercap.

The prince danced around the stag, snatching up hourglass and compass in one hand while killing with the other. Shattercap leapt from the sand to the prince’s arm. Maesa jumped onto the back of the stag, cutting away the head of a scythe in mid-air, then reversing his stroke as he landed in the saddle to render another phantom into shreds of ectoplasm.

Aelphis reared. Maesa slashed from left to right. Braying loudly, the stag leapt forward.

Invigorated by Ghyran’s waters of life, Aelphis ran as fast as the wind. The wraiths set up pursuit, and more streamed from the depths of the desert to join them. Maesa slew all that came against him. He cried out when a scythe blade nicked his arm, numbing it with the grave’s chill. The wraiths screeched to see his discomfort and they closed in for the kill, but Maesa yelled the war cries of his ancestors and fought on.

It seemed as if the great stag flew. The wraiths were outpaced. Their dark shapes were left behind. No more came from the wastes.

Aelphis ran on. Light grew ahead. The vastness of the Sands of Grief were coming to an end. Desert of a more ordinary sort blended into its edges. At last, Maesa came to a place where dawn stood still upon the edge of the world, and pale sun lit upon his face. At the margins of a wadi, dry grasses rattled in the wind – life had returned. They had gone far from the lines of skeletons and their ghoulish mines. Maesa brought Aelphis to a stop.

The stag snorted. Froth lathered its skin. He shuddered from antlers to tail, spraying foam across the rocks, then settled, and blared out his throaty call in pleasure at their escape.

Maesa held up the hourglass. He looked with wonder at the indigo sand within.

‘The first part of the task is done,’ he said. ‘With this, when Ellamar returns, she will not age. She will be forever at my side.’

‘Yes, my master,’ said Shattercap. ‘But the lord of undeath will not rest until he has brought you to account for your crime, and we must find a way to steal her back from whatever place she languishes within first.’

‘Let Nagash’s servants come,’ said Maesa. He sheathed the Song of Thorns. It vibrated with strange warmth from its feast, passing its strength into him. ‘I will be ready. You did well, Shattercap. You are learning.’

‘Learning to be good?’

‘Learning to be useful. Goodness comes later.’

‘Thank you, kind prince,’ said the spite. He snuggled down into Maesa’s hood. But though his words were fawning, his heart retained a little flinty wickedness. His tiny fist was clenched. In it he held a single grain of Ellamar’s soul dust, kept for himself.

Unaware of his companion’s thievery, Maesa set his joyous face into the dawn, and rode out full of hope.

About the Author

Guy Haley is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Wolfsbane and Pharos, the Primarchs novel Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia and the Warhammer 40,000 novels Dark Imperium, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Baneblade, Shadowsword, Valedor and Death of Integrity. He has also written Throneworld and The Beheading for The Beast Arises series. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

For an age, the Realm of Life has languished in the grip of Nurgle, the god of pestilence and decay. Now, the Queen of the Radiant Wood has awoken in her war aspect, and the sylvaneth heed her call to reclaim their forest kingdoms in all the Mortal Realms. Now is the season of vengeance.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2018.by Black Library,
Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Yusen Song.

The Sands of Grief © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. The Sands of Grief, 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.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78572-923-2

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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