Contents

Cover

Tower of Empty Mirrors – John French

About the Author

An Extract from ‘A Dynasty of Monsters’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

THE ROAD OF THE HOLLOW KING:

TOWER OF EMPTY MIRRORS

By John French

‘Why do you hate us?

‘You want to answer me, Hollow King, even though you hold your tongue. Why is that? Do you think I will trick you? Do you think that I will steal your voice, or your memories, or your truth? I won’t. You can trust me. I do not lie, not with this face, not with this mouth. So when I ask you why you hate us, Cado Ezechiar, I genuinely want to know the answer… I want that truth. That is all I ask you to give me. One truth, one answer in exchange for another.

‘I am a sorcerer. I am a manipulator of reality. I am a servant of the great-truth that is magic and mutation. You are a king. These things do not change. All else does. Your throne is gone. My power is fleeing. A king without a throne, and a sorcerer without magic. Yet a sorcerer I will ever be, and king you always are.

‘So, sire, shall we sit in this falling tower and talk of truth?’

The daemon leaped from the steps to the wall. Blocks of stone crumbled to fragments of silver where its feet touched. Cado brought his sword around as it lunged at him. Its skin was bleached pink.

‘Bla… rarh… mul….’ The babble coming from its mouth became stars of blue fire.

He had been climbing the tower, up and up its inner spiral, up towards its top. Except he could not remember starting the climb or entering the tower. He remembered trying to find it. He remembered why. He just could not think exactly how he had got here. That was part of its defence. It was a place of sorcery, the bastion of a disciple of the dark god of lies and madness. It had been hidden on the edge of a city of mortals without any of them realising it, while its master sent out his followers to eat the people’s truths. Cado was here to reach that sorcerer and take from it the truth he would use to find an enemy he had hunted for many mortal lifetimes. He had entered the tower knowing that it was a trap, but its jaws had closed on him, and now he was lost in a tangle of endless stairs and corridors connecting different points in time. He knew this and recalled every step he had taken on the road to this point. But how it linked to where he was now was a mystery. The present felt as though the immediate past had been bitten off.

The edge of Cado’s sword hit the daemon between the teeth. The runes on the blade were red with heat. The sword sliced through the back of the creature’s mouth and through the sphere of its body to the back. The two halves fell onto the stairs at Cado’s feet. Pale pink skin flashed to blue. The teeth of each half of the split mouth curved into two new grins. Then there were two daemons spinning and wobbling towards him.

‘Te… hel… la… sa… ra…’ Their babbles were shrill. Cado lunged at the nearest one as it came at him. It spun aside, but the edge of the sword tore the skin beneath its grin. Yellow foam bubbled out. The steps under Cado’s feet lurched, and suddenly the walls and stairs were rolling over each other like cogwork. Blocks of blue marble fell, exploding as they hit walkways. Cado glanced behind him and saw that the stone he was standing on was melting into the wall. A door opened above him. The blue daemons flailed as they surged forward. He leapt for the door, caught the lintel, and pulled himself through onto–

‘The easternmost tower that sits on the highest crag without snow. You will find what you want and need there…’ the man called Byrazan had said. Except there was no tower there.

Cado looked across Glimmerheart as the sun rose to its apex. The wind breathed ice across his cheek. The mountaintops above the town gleamed silver-white. Plumes of smoke rose from chimneys. He had sat on the top of the broken temple since dawn, watching as the mist cleared and daylight moved across the crag where the tower should have been. But there was nothing, not even a fracture in the light or the fall of shadows to say that anything was here except empty air. A barrow-hawk, hunting for prey amidst the snow, passed over the tor and gave no sign that its surroundings were amiss.

He had come here on the trail of a sorcerer called the Burning Hand. He had found some of her acolytes hiding as priests. They had all died, but they had been lower acolytes. Somewhere in the city was their master, Cado was certain. He had looked, listened, and found nothing. Then, two days ago, Byrazan had told Cado to look here.

~He might have lied,~ said Solia from just behind Cado. The glow of her ghost-form was a pale presence at the edge of his sight.

‘He might have, but he didn’t,’ said Cado.

~Why are you so sure?~

‘There was no reason for him to lie.’

~There is always a reason to lie, my prince.~

Cado kept his gaze steady and did not reply. The barrow-hawk was turning into a gyre above the crag. The wind blew across his face. Ice crystals had gathered on his cheeks. Down in the streets, the few figures outside wore heavy cloaks, their faces hidden under fur-lined hoods. Winter in this underworld always bit deep, but in the last two days the skies had cleared and both stars and sun had seemed to want to drain the land of warmth. Crouched on the lintel of a broken arch thirty feet above the ground, Cado could feel the cold reaching into his flesh but finding no purchase. That was one of the things about the curse of his unlife: it did not eliminate discomfort or pain, it only allowed him to ignore them if he so chose.

He had tried for two days to reach the tower that Byrazan had said was on the crag. He had climbed up to its summit, but aside from the fact that the rocks were bare of snow, there was no sign of a tower ever having been there.

~No taste of sorcery in the air… no mark on the ground…~ said Solia as though pulling his thoughts into the light. ~The power to hide a structure from existence should leave traces in the world.~

Cado gave half a nod.

‘The cold,’ he said. ‘I learn of the tower and try to find it, and the cold begins to bite.’

~An arcanomorphic effect could be the cause… An alternative explanation that you should consider, my boy, is that this is midwinter in the mountains of an underworld where the snow only melts when spring is all but done…~ He imagined his tutor’s face creased in that frown she wore when she thought he was being needlessly obtuse. ~Besides, this tower has been absent since before we arrived. No one in this place thinks it has ever existed. If it is there, it has remained hidden for a lot longer than this two-day-old chill. Why would you learning of it cause a change?~

‘I don’t know.’ He lapsed into silence. She was right, of course. Even if Byrazan had spoken truthfully and the tower was there, without a way to find it the information was worthless. Cado watched the barrow-hawk turn in its gyre. He was running out of possibilities to explore. He was about to dismiss Solia’s shade when he stopped.

His head snapped around.

~What is it?~

Cado’s eyes moved over the crags and roofs and arch of sky.

~What–~

‘It was there.’

~I saw nothing.~

‘As I turned, it was there.’

~And now it is gone.~

‘Yes.’ He looked at the plumes of smoke winding into the empty air. Nothing. Just the barrow-hawk spinning its circle above the bare rock.

‘Why is the bird circling?’ he said aloud.

~Looking for prey, surely?~

‘The arc of its flight is wide and has not narrowed. It’s as though it is circling an obstacle, an object…’

~Like a tower…~

He looked at it closer. His eyes reached across the distance, picking out the violet-and-black plumage, the dots of eyes and white beak. He watched as its feathers caught a thermal and it rose higher. And as he watched, he saw something form in his sight. It was there in the space just behind where the bird had been.

A tower jabbing up into the air like a crooked finger. Sunlight broke into halos of colour as it struck walls of lapis and silver. Cado could suddenly see windows and doors, and flights of stairs kinking back on themselves in defiance of logic.

~It is there…~ Solia said, surprise clear in her voice. ~Go, before it vanishes.~

Cado was already swinging down from the ruins. He landed on a broken wooden spar, and pivoted through a window–

‘Because we have done great evil? Is that why you claim to hate us, Cado? Because we killed, burned and deceived? We consumed your own kingdom with fire. We ripped the souls from your loved ones and friends and all those thousands of other mortals that you believed you cared for. Yes, we did all that. We broke empires. We killed and tormented and turned peace into war. Yes, we did all these things and more. Guilty. True. Beyond dispute. But is that why you hate us, truly, Hollow King?

‘People die. Times end. Suffering and war circle into being like the rains of autumn and the winds of spring. You know this. We did not, and do not, bring evil into these realms. It is already here. How many cities had you burned before you took this penitent path? How much blood have you seen our enemies spill? How much suffering fills life without the True Gods ever lifting a finger?’

He stepped into a room without a roof. He rose, sword up, a word of power on the breath behind his teeth. The light of poisoned stars poured from a night sky. A figure stood on the other side of a floor of crystal. Or what looked like crystal. A glance down pulled the gaze as though Cado were walking on the surface of a sea. Cracks ran through the crystal, and tides of grey fog moved in slow clouds in its depths. Pale things with whip tails and gills drifted in the currents. Pink fluid leaked from lesions in their backs. One squirmed as Cado stepped on the floor above it. His eyes moved over the lapis-and-marble walls. A colourless liquid was seeping from the stone to pool on the ground. Silence surrounded him, heavy, like a physical force pressing his senses.

‘Greetings again,’ said a voice. The sound scratched the air.

Cado froze, turning his head as the words chased echoes through the air. When he looked back, a figure stood in front of him. He was tall, on eye level with Cado himself. A yellow robe hung from his shoulders, the folds rippling like fire in a breeze. Horns rose from a bare scalp. The eyes above the smile were green. A sceptre of tarnished silver rested under his hands. Daemon faces screamed from the metal, as the sorcerer – for what else could he be? – tapped its point on the floor.

‘You have come a long way, Hollow King,’ he said. ‘But you have further to go yet.’

The tower lurched. A spark of light whirled across the floor around Cado. He began to move. A circle of the crystal-like material lifted into the air under his feet. He leaped for the ground…

And his feet landed on another disc. He leaped again, and another disc caught him. He was spinning through the air around the sorcerer. The pillars of the chamber rolled back like a wave from a beach, so that the space between him and his quarry was a plateau.

‘I am not here to kill you,’ said Cado.

‘Liar…’ laughed the sorcerer. Cado blinked as the echoes faded. He could hear something else under the laughter – a rattling scratch, and hiss. The sound that lungs make in a body fighting to hold on to the last seconds of life.

‘I have come for truth.’

‘Not before you have the answer to my question.’

‘I will give you nothing.’

‘Then we must start again,’ the sorcerer said, and slammed his sceptre into the floor. The disc holding Cado shattered. He fell, and when he hit the ground, it was not crystal but water. Above, the sorcerer of the tower smiled down at Cado as he sank lower to the–

The outside of the tower was still there when Cado reached the crag. None of the mortals on the street saw it, he could tell. It was there for him alone, shimmering like a mirage. The stones of the base blended into the rock of the crag, the arch of the only door in its side old wood that looked daubed with thick blue paint to cover the pitch. Above its lowest circuit, silver began to thread stone, and the dimensions of the walls flexed between impossibilities. Every time Cado looked at it directly, it was different: towering past sight into the sky, bending in the wind like a reed, spreading into inverted bridges and balustrades. Colours skimmed across its stones, as though the sun were a kaleidoscope. It reminded him of a parasite coral growing on the back of a leviathan. The cold in the air had vanished as soon as he stepped into the tower’s shadow. It was not that the air became warmer, just that the cold was absent, that it belonged to somewhere else. He went through the door.

‘I see you are not to be drawn. Well, let me put this another way, one that will reframe the question. Let us go by particulars. You have a code, a very particular code for one of your kind. You feed only on the blood of those who have fallen – as you see it – to darkness. My first question is, what makes it right for you to judge? Oh, you are a king, and is not the power of a king to mete and dole right and wrong unto all, to sit upon a throne and look down on those beneath and say, “These are true and these are false, these shall have torment and these plenty.”?

‘But your throne is forgotten and the land it looked on ashes. Your subjects are the dead, so why judge the living?

‘For suffering, you say. You have suffered. That is beyond dispute. Look here, in my hand, where the ash falls from my fingers, you can see it… Your mother, trying to speak, but that smile beneath her throat is red and her lungs are filling with blood as she looks at you for the last time. And here the fire taking the royal city – that small figure is trying to climb a tree to escape, but the flames are already in the branches, and they are crying for their sister, but their sister is already gone to the flames… All these things you have seen. You carry them with you, the holes in the fabric that make your shape. Yes, yes, yes… But… But you survived, after a fashion. You did not try to gasp out a last word as you drowned in your own life. You did not cling to the trunk of that tree trying to choose between burning in the fire below or above. You were merely the witness. So, how does that suffering anoint you with the power of judgement?

‘They are dead and so cannot judge or revenge – a fair point if you would make it, but that also means that you either do not know what they would want, or you have not asked. Come, Sire Ezechiar, this is the realm of the dead. You carry a court of ghosts on your fingers. Some agree, no doubt, but all of the slain you claim to fight for…? You judge for the dead and your suffering makes you righteous… No, let us put aside that lie. We are close to the truth though… close to the last truth.’

He was in a stairway… except it was not a stair that rose or went down. Cado looked to his side. Walls and steps spiralled away from him to both his left and right. To his eyes, he stood in a corridor shaped like the inside of a seashell. Colours bloomed and spiralled across every surface. How long had he been here? Had he been here already? He had his sword drawn. There was blood on the blade.

A glimmer of light shifted in the distance, drawing his gaze.

‘Can you hear me, Hollow King?’

The voice echoed. He began to turn. His balance shifted as his foot touched the floor that was not directly down any more. He took another step and another. The corridor corkscrewed, and suddenly he was sliding and running as steps and walls rotated past him. He was going backwards. Voices and whispers filled his ears, overlapping, babbling. He looked behind him as the spiral tightened to a point of blackness which–

‘Am I to be loathed? I am dying. My god, my power, my life, all of it is fleeing. I can never leave here. I am cursed, you see. This trap of time and space is not to keep you out – it is to keep me in, imprisoned, cursed to remain until someone releases me… and by releases me, I mean kills me. I challenged another of my kind. I lost, and the Spiral of Change is not forgiving. Power is everything. If you lose, then you are not worthy of its gifts. Down the spiral to nothing… starving yet not dying, sight failing, in a maze of my achievements…

‘Hatred. Would pity not be a truer judgement?’

Cado opened his eyes. The beast looked down at him. He felt the world turn over in his mind. Where was he now? Time did not give him a chance to find an answer. The beast raised a hooked blade. Cado kicked up into its chest. It reeled back, ribs shattered. Cado was on his feet. His sword was behind him, on the floor. The beast was pale. Pink blood drooled from the beak that projected from its face. It tried to take a step forward, but its movement was slow. Claws skidded on the glass-smooth ground.

Cado paused, looking at it. It was a beastman, of the breed that the dark god of sorcery touched with the aspect of birds. They were deadly, and as fanatical as they were cunning. This one, though, was spindle-limbed. Its muscles had wasted onto its bones. It raised a sword, looked at Cado with cataract-filmed eyes. It swung and collapsed as it moved. By the time it hit the floor, it was dust.

Cado looked up. The space where he stood had nine sides, each one an obsidian mirror. He could not tell if his feet were upon the floor or if there was a floor at all. Faces looked back from each of the mirrors. A skull with fangs, another slick with blood, another snarling with rage, on and on, no image the same.

‘This goes on forever,’ said all the reflections in a mocking version of Cado’s own voice. ‘Soon a door will open and you will go through, and on the other side you will find another place and another and another. You have been here before. You cannot die, but you will never leave. The only way out is to kill the bird at the heart of this cage.’

Cado cocked his head, then shook it.

‘This ends now,’ he said, and swept his sword from the ground and into the reflected faces. The walls shattered. Silver and black splinters fell around him as he tumbled upwards, through slivers and dust. The voice that had followed him through every entry and exit reached him as he flew up towards a waiting door–

He was in a room with a black sky for a ceiling. The sorcerer lay on the floor. The yellow silk of his robes was in tatters. Cado could see absences opening under the translucent skin. He looked up at Cado. There were cataracts spreading across the green eyes.

‘Ah… You see now. My power flees my grasp. The more I try to hold it, the swifter it runs between my fingers. Last chance, for both of us I think.’

‘You have failed,’ said Cado. ‘And your false god betrays you.’

The sorcerer laughed, the sound dissolving into a wracking cough.

‘Failed? This was done to me. She dealt the first blows – you the last of them.’

‘She?’ asked Cado.

‘The one you seek, the Burning Hand herself. She came here and she did this to me, bound me to this tower, never to leave, starving on the scraps of truth that my followers could steal from the local populace.’ He smiled. The teeth behind the lips were cracking. He unbent a crooked finger to point at Cado. ‘I know who she is, you see.’

The smile went to the edge of the withered face. Cado felt like ice had formed in his guts and chest.

‘Oh yes, I know… I know who wears that silver mask, and calls herself the Burning Hand. A great secret, and all mine. I thought I could use that knowledge against her, but… I was wrong. Then you came and slaughtered the last few of my acolytes. So, I starve. My power fades, and the tower crumbles. You have undone me, both of you – the Burning Hand and the Hollow King.’

‘You are lying,’ said Cado. ‘You are a disciple of the Burning Hand, not her enemy.’

Another crackle of laughter.

‘You know us so well, but so little. I was a disciple, but what disciple does not want to be the master? Power, and freedom – that is what the gods promise. You cannot be a follower and call yourself free. You cannot submit and say that you have power. So I defied her, and she showed me who our god favoured more.’

Cado began to shake his head, but the sorcerer spoke Cado’s doubts before he voiced them.

The sorcerer opened his hand. Blue-grey dust filled the palm. ‘Do you need to see it to believe it?’

Without waiting for an answer, the sorcerer tipped the handful of dust into the air. Images shimmered in the cascading particles: a figure, tall, in ivory robes and cloak, a silver mask for a face, eyes of bright blue light. She raised a hand and chains of blue fire blotted out the vision as the last motes of dust fell to the floor.

Cado starred at the space where the image had been. It had been a long time since he had seen that silver mask or the face behind it.

‘You think this is a trap? That she and I have conspired to create this moment? A reasonable expectation, but it is not her trap. It is mine. I wanted you here. I showed you the tower. I opened the door, Hollow King.’

Cado raised his sword.

The sorcerer raised his hands. ‘Wait! I will give you what you want.’

Cado did not lower the sword but held it still.

‘I will tell you of the Burning Hand, and her disciples. I will betray them to you. I opened the door to you so that I could give you what you want. I diverted you until you were ready to talk, until you were ready to bargain…’

Cado shook his head slowly. ‘I do not bargain.’

‘But you do…’ said the sorcerer. ‘And a bargain it must be. You see, that is the way the followers of the Burning Hand work. We eat truth. Eat it from your eyes and memory, swallow it down and listen to it plead as it warms our gullets. You know the way we protect ourselves. As soon as we speak secrets, they start to unravel. The things we say vanish from our minds, our memories collapse. But I am already dying and trapped. So, the only thing that matters is that my enemies fall. I am going to tell you truths. So I must have a truth from you, to balance the scales. It is the only way, Hollow King. Compromise and get a step closer to your goal, or hold on to your ideals and leave with nothing.’

Cado did not move.

‘There is not much time. My god is taking the last of its favour from me. Soon I will not even be able to give you what you want, and you will be trapped here forever. So, I ask again for your last secret – I ask, why do you hate us?’

Cado knelt next to the withering sorcerer. Cracks had begun to radiate across the floor from where they stood. Cado shook his head once.

‘I do not hate you because of what you did to my family and my kingdom…’

The sorcerer nodded, eyes bright and gleeful.

‘I hate you because you showed me what I am, and what I have always been.’

‘Ah…’ the sorcerer sighed, and smiled. ‘The truth… Exquisite, my thanks. Now listen to your reward…’

Cado walked down the stairs to the bottom of the tower. With every step, colour stripped from the walls. The twists of the spiralling steps unravelled behind him like a cut rope. The shadows of daemons fled downwards, flat images of colour on the cracked stone. Threads of moss and then rot bloomed. Stones began to crumble. Debris started to fall past him: bits of burning parchment, shards of mirror and glass, splinters of marble. By the time he reached the door, the tower was groaning as it struggled to stand. He put his hand on the door. Its planks were already decaying. He pushed it open.

Noon sunlight poured down on him as he walked across the rock crag towards the steps that led down to the road into Glimmerheart. Behind him he heard the tower fall with a brief roar of breaking stone and surrendering beams. No one stirred from the nearest buildings. If they had heard anything, they would forget it quickly. Anyone who looked at the crag now would see the remains of a broken tower, weeds tangling the rubble under a blanket of snow. Just as it had always been.

Solia’s ghost-presence returned to his shoulder as though it had never gone.

~The tower!~ she said, voice sharp. ~It’s there…~ She trailed off. ~A time puzzle. You have already been in?~

He nodded.

~You obtained what you needed?~

‘There is a secret way into the underworlds to the south. The Burning Hand laid that path, and so must have gone that way. Some of the disciples of the sorcerer broke from him and fled there before midwinter. I will follow them and find them.’

~Then all is well.~

He did not reply. A barrow-hawk was circling above him, still looking for prey. In his mind, the last words of the sorcerer echoed in the quiet of his skull.

‘I will give you one more truth that is not a secret, Cado. This road you walk, it is possible that you will reach its end. It is possible that you will have vengeance for all that you have become. When that moment comes, it will mean nothing. Redemption has no more to offer you than it does to me.’

‘I know.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John French is the author of several Horus Heresy stories including the novels The Solar War, Mortis, Praetorian of Dorn, Tallarn and Slaves to Darkness, the novella The Crimson Fist, and the audio dramas Dark Compliance, Templar and Warmaster. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Resurrection, Incarnation and Divination for The Horusian Wars and three tie-in audio dramas – the Scribe Award-winning Agent of the Throne: Blood and Lies, as well as Agent of the Throne: Truth and Dreams and Agent of the Throne: Ashes and Oaths. John has also written the Ahriman series and many short stories.

An extract from A Dynasty of Monsters.

The earth moved in the morning, when it should not have until the afternoon.

Jaras Anvarheim rose to greet the dawn of what was supposed to be the last day of the caravan’s journey to the Colonnade. The merchants and their armed escorts were camped on a high, wooded ridge, and though the Colonnade was not yet visible, Jaras knew it was just over the horizon to the east, hidden by another line of hills on the far side of a rock-strewn plain. A river cut a serpent’s line north-south, a barrier to cross a few miles away; a barrier that he expected to have changed by the time the caravan reached it.

Jaras watched Hysh rise, thinking about its rays shining on the Diamond Spire of home, and then the ridge began to rumble. Merchants scrambled out of tents to grab the tethers of startled horses. Jaras seized the trunk of the nearest tree, the instinct to hold on to something solid too hard to overcome, even when solidity was a lie.

The ridge dropped, and the land on either side rose. Stones flowed and reknit themselves. The trees swayed as if caught in a gale. Some of them disappeared, swallowed up where the earth turned soft as water. Jaras’ feet began to sink into the ground. He let go of the tree and danced away just as that patch of land folded in on itself. He jumped onto a boulder that emerged from the underbrush and rode it down. The rocks of the plain turned into scree as the new cliffs thrust their backs up. They tumbled down slopes that angled up from the horizontal to the near vertical, the roar of their fall filling the new valley. They piled up against the edges of the forest, toppling more trees.

The shaking stopped. The reshaping was complete. The ridge was now a deep gorge. The slopes of the forest had reversed, with the trees clinging to the lower slopes of the cliffs. About a mile to the north, a waterfall shouted down the cliff. The river on the plains had changed course and rushed into the gorge. Water foamed by fifty yards to Jaras’ right, where the centre of the gorge had formed a deep bed. The level of the river would rise quickly, but the caravan was high enough up the new banks to keep from being swept away.

Jaras looked up at the jagged cliffs and sighed. There would be no going east this morning. The merchants would have to travel south, where the level of the gorge and the riverbanks began a slow rise. He guessed the land shift had cost them half a day.

Someone was shouting at the caravan leader. ‘You said we had time! You said the change wouldn’t come until hours from now!’

‘That’s what the charts indicated,’ Vela Peltoan said, sounding both patient and exhausted.

Jaras made his way over to the confrontation. Three of the escorting guards from the Colonnade Freeguild stood nearby, unconcerned. They were used to merchants venting at each other, and Vela had proven adept at defusing tensions during the weeks-long trek from Fangshield. The upset merchant was named Bayar, and he had been in the vanguard of the malcontents from the first day out.

Jaras waited to see if he could help. As the caravan’s bard, he was being paid to keep morale up and make the journey seem shorter than it was. Now that it was going to be longer than it should have been, his duties would become more important. If the trip took an extra day, that put a few more riches in his pocket, though he was even more anxious than Bayar for the trek to be over. Bayar was from Fangshield. For Jaras, the Colonnade was home, and he had been away for months.

‘The charts!’ Bayar exclaimed. ‘Are they even real, or are you just incapable of reading them?’

‘They’re old,’ said Vela.

‘Can you afford the new ones?’ Jaras asked Bayar. He smiled to show he was sympathetic, that anyone would wish to have the latest tidal charts to come out of the Colonnade, but who in this caravan had the means for that? Quality was expensive. The charts from before the Necroquake were still accurate to within half a day, and that had been enough to make the journey manageable to this point. It was true that the early change in the land today was a hard blow. At the moment the end of the voyage should have been in sight, the horizon had been taken away.

Bayar turned to Jaras, ready for a fight. Jaras put an arm around his shoulder. ‘Listen,’ he said, as if to a fellow conspirator. ‘I’m grieving with you. Do you know how long it’s been since I saw home?’

‘You aren’t depending on the sale of rugs to put food on your table.’

‘That’s true. But you’re not hungry today, are you? We’ll still be at the Colonnade tomorrow. The next market isn’t until two days from now. But you know what? People will notice our delay. People will be anxious that they might not be able to buy the latest rugs from the looms of Fangshield. That won’t be a bad thing, will it?’

Bayar mumbled something incomprehensible, but his face was no longer turning purple. Jaras gave his shoulders a squeeze and let him go.

The caravan was ready to start the day’s march a few minutes later. The wagons were solid, built for the rapid upheavals of this region of Ghur, their cargoes held by four raised sides four feet high and securely fastened with nets. Jaras jumped up onto the lead wagon and stood up on its load of chests, making himself visible to the whole train. His clothing helped him stand out. It was a variant of the Freeguild livery of the Colonnade. A narrow wedge of silver, representing the castle’s great spire, bisected the green of the fields, above the brown of the land. This was the pattern for armour and uniforms alike. Jaras’ clothes turned the livery to a bright motley. The colours were there, but playfully brighter, and the complex repetitions of the pattern made it a celebration. The bard’s mission was joy, remembrance and exaltation.

‘My fellow travellers!’ Jaras called. ‘I woke up early just to look east. And you know what I saw of the Colonnade before the ridge fell? Nothing. It was still too far.’ He turned to address the cliffs. ‘Do you hear that, you rocks of the perverse? You are not taking anything away from us!’ Addressing the caravan again, he said, ‘The pleasure of our arrival is merely deferred! Let us use our extra time well! Shall we revel in our anticipation?’ He paused, long enough for a couple of faint cheers to make themselves heard, not long enough to make the absence of voices more awkward. He answered his own question with an enthusiastic, ‘Yes! We shall!’

He started to sing, and the walls of the gorge picked up his voice. Before he reached the second verse, most of the merchants had joined in.

‘Sing high for the hills, as they climb at dawn,

Sing low for the gorge, born the night just gone.

Sing high for the town that is unafraid!

Sing high for the Colonnade!

Oh, the land will rise and the land will fall,

And the waves of change shatter every wall.

But the Diamond Spire will never fade!

Sing high for the Colonnade!

Sing high for the Colonnade!’

There were twenty more verses. He had begun teaching the song to the members of the caravan on the morning of their departure from Fangshield. They all knew it by now, and they knew it well. By the time the song was done, the mood of the travellers was closer to eager than disappointed, and Jaras was satisfied.

He hopped down from the wagon and worked his way along the line of the caravan, joking with the travellers. He talked longer with those who seemed most troubled. One of those was a jeweller named Gallaf. Mid-morning, with the riverbanks rising more steeply, they could see the exit from the gorge only a couple of miles straight ahead. Gallaf looked as if he would be sorry to leave the cliff walls, as if their confines represented some kind of safety to him.

‘Why so grim?’ Jaras asked. ‘Don’t tell me that you’re starting to feel your jewels are shown off to better effect away from cities. Is the untamed land so much better a contrast?’

‘No, it isn’t that,’ said Gallaf.

‘You’re missing Fangshield,’ said Jaras.

‘I miss its civilisation.’

‘Is this your first trip to the Colonnade?’

‘It is.’

Jaras laughed. ‘Then you should be overjoyed. I mean no insult to Fangshield when I say that at the Colonnade, you will find true civilisation. It does not have its equal anywhere in Ghur.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

‘You don’t believe it,’ Jaras said, chiding.

‘Oh no, I do! I do! It’s just… I’ve heard some things about this region.’

‘What things?’

‘About monsters near the Colonnade.’

‘You mean the Avengorii,’ said Jaras.

Gallaf winced. He looked up anxiously, as if expecting the blue sky to darken and the horrors to fall on the caravan, summoned by the utterance of their name.

‘Don’t worry,’ Jaras said. ‘You wouldn’t find me in this caravan if I thought we were going anywhere near their lairs.’ He grimaced in disgust and anger. ‘The land they’ve stolen is some distance east of the Colonnade.’ He took a breath. ‘They won’t hold it forever,’ he promised.

‘You have a song ready for their defeat?’ Gallaf asked, doing his best to mount a front of bravado now that he knew he was safe from what he feared.

‘Many,’ said Jaras, and he strummed a few light chords on his lute before moving on.

To his right, the eastern riverbank widened as it rose. The cliff on Jaras’ left was less than fifty feet high now, its barren top poking up above the trees. The woods here were thick, though the trees stopped a good hundred yards from the edge of the water. The way forward angled westward ahead, but soon the slope would be level with the plain, and the caravan could finally strike eastward again.

Jaras was making his way back up to the head of the caravan, and was three wagons away from Vela’s, when the captain of the escort, walking point, stopped suddenly and held up a hand, warning for silence. The caravan creaked to a halt. Jaras padded forward to join Vela. ‘What is it?’ he whispered.

She shook her head.

The guard looked back at them. ‘Thought I heard growling,’ she said.

Jaras turned around slowly, scanning the clifftops, staring into the shadows of the forest.

‘This doesn’t feel like a very defensible position,’ said Vela.

‘It isn’t,’ said the captain. ‘We also have no choice.’ She raised her horn to her lips to sound the call to form a circle.

Before she could, another horn blew. It sounded from just around the bend. The call was savage, brutal, more animal than instrument. It stopped Jaras’ breath with fear.

Click here to buy A Dynasty of Monsters.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

This eBook edition published in 2022 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited - Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Tower of Empty Mirrors © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2022. Tower of Empty Mirrors, 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: 978-1-80407-118-2

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.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

the purchaser of a Black Library e-book product (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase a Black Library e-book (“e-book”). The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media.

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.