THE GHOSTS OF ENSIGNFORT

Tyndash Khenst, who thought of himself as the Slender Walker, approached the forbidding facade of Ensignfort with a half-smile on his pallid lips. His hand strayed to the Katophranian mirror at his waist, the artefact wrapped tight as a mummified corpse. Lord Arkhan’s gift was still safe, and unbroken, just as it had been the last hundred times he had checked it.

Not even the most gifted gheist-caller could count on surviving what followed if the mirror shattered with no-one else around. No, better to wait until the guards of Ensignfort had allowed him inside before letting his dead friends out to play amongst the masses.

He should have little problem gaining entrance. Even in these troubled times, a purse of hex-cut diamonds could see an unarmed man win passage through almost any gate. Men had to eat, to drink, to dream of better lives. Since the omens had begun, that was truer than ever.

When the fools let him past the gheist-wards, they would have mere moments to regret their decision before it was too late. The spectral host would do its dark work, he would scoop the diamonds back up, and move on – just as he had at the previous fortress, and the one before that.

Ensignfort’s eight towers were truly massive, the works of master masons from ages past. They were each large enough to house a few generations of the turnip-eating soldiery that had the temerity to call it their home. It had taken Khenst near half an hour to walk around the outer moat from the woods at the fortress’ rear to the gatehouse, but time was no real issue to him. Since he had begun his studies under Lord Arkhan, the idea of haste seemed foolish. Sooner or later, all souls found their homes in deathly Shyish, the Land of Endings, and ultimately time became meaningless.

On a more practical level, there were good reasons to walk slow. Though he had felt no eyes upon him, Khenst knew that the fort’s castellans would be watching through arrow slits and sally ports, their crossbows and halberds ready. This fortress had stood fast for centuries against Chaos raiders and the undead of lesser necromancers alike.

The necromancer turned the corner of the gatehouse’s easternmost tower. Affecting an approximation of a smile, he prepared to make his offer to the owner of the spear or halberd he felt sure would be at his breastbone in moments.

Instead he was greeted by the sight of an empty gatehouse with not a soul in sight. Twin pennants, each bearing the heraldry of the fortress, swayed idly in the breeze either side of a raised portcullis. To Khenst’s shock, the drawbridge was down, and the gate ajar. He glimpsed birds making a nest in the murder holes, and a fox trotting past on the other side of the thick oaken doors.

The gheistcaller looked around, fighting the urge to call out, but saw no-one. Shrugging, Khenst crossed the drawbridge and ventured inside, keeping one hand on the enchanted mirror. He felt a brief tingle as he crossed over the threshold – likely the emanations of a warding circle, its runes designed to keep out dead-walkers and the daemons. But Khenst was still alive, technically speaking. There was a reason why the Mortarchs favoured the living as well as the dead amongst their agents.

Still no one greeted him, nor barred his path. The absence of people was unnerving, even for one so used to being alone. Thus far there was no sign of conflict. The fortress was intact. Khenst pushed further in, eyes narrowed, and paced across the courtyard.

Through a partially open door, he thought he could make out a shock of blonde hair. He headed towards it, and pushed against the oak door, his nose wrinkling at a strange briny smell that reminded him of his days walking the sea-cliffs of Penultima. The door opened with a long, protesting creak.

The body behind the door was that of a middle-aged woman. She was dripping wet, pale, and comatose. Stranger still, she was hovering at waist height as if lying on a bed, but there was nothing holding her up.

Other bodies, clearly those of civilians, were dotted around the room. Each hovered as if held suspended in water, their limbs loose and flopping, but none of them moved so much as an eyelid. Khenst, no stranger to bodies on the threshold of death, put his fingers against the warm neck of the woman. He found the faint throb of her bloodstream; the strong pulse of a peasant used to manual labour. Yet she did not even twitch at his touch.

The smell of seawater intensified as he headed into the royal hall. The table was half-set, dotted with dishes of simple but abundant fare. Around it were two dozen bodies, each floating in a sitting position a few feet above a high-backed chair. Those with long hair were framed by a halo of tendril-like tresses.

The smell of the sea grew even stronger, strong enough to sting in Khenst’s nose. He swallowed as he noticed the walls here were dripping wet, water pooling where they met the flagstones. Muttering to himself, he unclasped the mirror at his side and unwrapped it with the care of a museum curator. Somehow, he could hear the faint cawing of seabirds, and the crashing of waves against the rocks; sounds that he had listened to as a youth. Hands shaking, he removed another bandage from the mirror, then another, painstakingly rolling them and tucking them away in his robes as he did so.

A clutch of pale figures darted from the corridor ahead, bald and eyeless. They held long staves with blades stylised in the aelven tradition. As they turned their blank skin-sockets in Khenst’s direction, they grinned to expose pointed teeth, and called out in a series of curt shouts as they ran towards him.

The gheist-caller stumbled to interpose the table between them, fumbling the mirror as he did so. It bounced off the arm of an ornate chair and clattered under the table. Jaw slack with fear, Khenst darted to recover it, but it was just out of his reach.

A wall of aetheric force hit Khenst like a crashing wave, staggering him. The aelven figures were coming in fast, leaping over the table and springing from chair to chair. He pushed a hand at the nearest in the gesture of the Black Warding. Sizzling bolts of energy crackled from his palm to strike the nearest creature, but the aelf-thing dived under them, rolled, and came up with its halberd thrust forward in one smooth motion. The leading edge took Khenst in the guts. He felt an electric burst of pain, his lifeblood squirting out to sheet all over the blade and spatter the food half-eaten on the banqueting table.

The last sensations the gheist-caller remembered as a mortal man was the sight of the grinning sea-creeper that had taken his life, the feeling of weightlessness, and the smell of the seawater drizzling from his fingertips.

Somehow, with ironclad certainty, Khenst knew there was a far worse fate awaiting him.

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