Other great stories from Warhammer Age of Sigmar

DIRECHASM
Various authors
An anthology of short stories

THUNDERSTRIKE & OTHER STORIES
Various authors
An anthology of short stories

COVENS OF BLOOD
A novel by Anna Stephens, Liane Merciel and Jamie Crisalli

DOMINION
A novel by Darius Hinks

A DYNASTY OF MONSTERS
A novel by David Annandale

CURSED CITY
A novel by C L Werner

THE END OF ENLIGHTENMENT
A novel by Richard Strachan

STORMVAULT
A novel by Andy Clark

BEASTGRAVE
A novel by C L Werner

REALM-LORDS
A novel by Dale Lucas

GHOULSLAYER
A novel by Darius Hinks

GITSLAYER
A novel by Darius Hinks

• HALLOWED KNIGHTS •
Josh Reynolds
Book One: PLAGUE GARDEN
Book Two: BLACK PYRAMID

• KHARADRON OVERLORDS •
C L Werner
Book One: OVERLORDS OF THE IRON DRAGON
Book Two: PROFIT’S RUIN

SHADESPIRE: THE MIRRORED CITY
A novel by Josh Reynolds

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer Age of Sigmar

KNIVES IN THE DEEP

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

NADIR

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

THE TALE OF THE PRIESTS

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Epilogue

About the Authors

An Extract from ‘Cursed City’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

The Mortal Realms have been despoiled. Ravaged by the followers of the Chaos Gods, they stand on the brink of utter destruction.

The fortress-cities of Sigmar are islands of light in a sea of darkness. Constantly besieged, their walls are assailed by maniacal hordes and monstrous beasts. The bones of good men are littered thick outside the gates. These bulwarks of Order are embattled within as well as without, for the lure of Chaos beguiles the citizens with promises of power.

Still the champions of Order fight on. At the break of dawn, the Crusader’s Bell rings and a new expedition departs. Storm-forged knights march shoulder to shoulder with resolute militia, stoic duardin and slender aelves. Bedecked in the splendour of war, the Dawnbringer Crusades venture out to found civilisations anew. These grim pioneers take with them the fires of hope. Yet they go forth into a hellish wasteland.

Out in the wilds, hardy colonists restore order to a crumbling world. Haunted eyes scan the horizon for tyrannical reavers as they build upon the bones of ancient empires, eking out a meagre existence from cursed soil and ice-cold seas. By their valour, the fate of the Mortal Realms will be decided.

The ravening terrors that prey upon these settlers take a thousand forms. Cannibal barbarians and deranged murderers crawl from hidden lairs. Martial hosts clad in black steel march from skull-strewn castles. The savage hordes of Destruction batter the frontier towns until no stone stands atop another. In the dead of night come howling throngs of the undead, hungry to feast upon the living.

Against such foes, courage is the truest defence and the most effective weapon. It is something that Sigmar’s chosen do not lack. But they are not always strong enough to prevail, and even in victory, each new battle saps their souls a little more.

This is the time of turmoil. This is the era of war.

This is the Age of Sigmar

KNIVES IN THE DEEP

Gary Kloster

CHAPTER ONE

Nico Spahr leaned back against the driftwood wall, the hilt of his heavy two-hander digging into his back, and stared at the crowd of Scourge Privateers that surrounded him. The aelven corsairs were decked out in all their finery: rich fabrics in dark greens and purples, blues and blacks, layered over with cloaks and armour made from the polished hides of sea drakes and kharibdyss. Weapons rode the ornate belts that crossed their hips, swords and daggers wrought of steel, inlayed with bone and coral and jewels. They were beautiful and deadly and proud, and when Nico couldn’t stand watching them any more he turned his head and spat.

‘No,’ Serim said. Her sharp brown eyes locked on him, her hard features set in that familiar warning frown.

‘What?’ Nico asked. He was a big man, tall, broad-shouldered, heavily muscled, with long red hair the colour of blood and a closely trimmed beard to match. Between his size, his booming laugh and his affinity for brawling, Nico was used to being the centre of attention. But not here, not at this conclave. Here, among the high and mighty that controlled the floating city of Misthåvn, he and his crew were freaks – humans and duardin and ogors, dressed in clothes that might have been fine before they were looted from waterlogged chests or corpses, carrying weapons of every shape and kind. They were the misfits sent to sit in the farthest, darkest corner of the House of the Grey Swells, the finest house on the finest raft in the city, while the sharp-eared masters of the city played their games and made their deals.

It was enough to make a man want to kick over his table, to stand and pull steel, just to see the cold, hard expressions on all those pretty, cruel faces change.

‘No to whatever you’re thinking.’ Adak sat on the other side of him, and his voice was as threatening as Serim’s frown. The duardin was short and broad like all his people, but his head and chin were bare of the usual bristly collection of beard and braid. Lines of scars pockmarked Adak’s neck and chin and scalp instead, circular scars left by the suckers of some hideous sea thing that had tried to tear the duardin’s head off when he was a boy. ‘We warned you. Told you the aelves would hate having us here.’

‘I thought you meant there would be a fight. Not that I’d be bored out of my mind.’ Nico looked around the huge common room of the House of the Grey Swells. On one end, on a raised stage over the long common tables, the fleetmasters sat around a table laden with food and drink, setting up the deals that would shape the currents of power and profit in Misthåvn. They were the reason for this conclave. Everyone else was crew of the best ships of each of the floating city’s disparate armadas, the privateers who controlled the Penumbral Sea. Nico had fought his whole life to be included in their number, and now that he finally was… they turned their back on him.

On one side of the room, the crews were gathered together, singing. The music was supposed to be drinking songs, but it was all in Aelfish chatter, pretty but nonsensical. Too pretty, really. Nico listened to those sweet, complicated melodies and had trouble believing they were about fighting, drinking, loving or drowning, the only things worth singing about. The other side of the room should have been better – that’s where the aelves were competing for the pennants they flew from the tops of their masts, bright trophies that the corsairs liked to show off. There were stupid contests with maps and astrolabes and knots, and there were some better ones with wrestling and knives, but the aelves somehow managed even to ruin fun like that. Right now they were having a knife-throwing contest, but were there cheers and boasts and insults and bets? No. The two corsair captains throwing were silent as death, and the only noise the crowd watching them made was a light patter of applause after each round.

Nico spat again. ‘I’ve been to funerals that were more fun than this. I’ve been to funerals of people I’ve killed that were more welcoming.’

‘It’ll be our funeral if you start something because you’re bored,’ Serim said. ‘This is the Fleetmasters’ Conclave. There’s no fighting here. Ever. I told you that.’

Nico picked up a mug – maybe it was his, maybe it was Serim’s, he didn’t care as long as it was full – and took a long drink. The ale here was damn good, better than he’d ever had on a human-controlled raft, and that wasn’t helping his mood. The Scourge Privateers always ended up with the best of everything in Misthåvn, it seemed.

‘You tell me a lot of things,’ Nico growled. He slammed down the empty mug and shifted his elbow instinctively to block his kidney from the vicious little jab Serim threw at it. Serim was going to kill him someday, and he’d deserve it, but he’d probably at least be laughing.

‘We could leave,’ Adak said. ‘Any other house on any other raft in the city would be more entertainment. And you could punch anyone you liked.’

‘You charting my course, sailing-captain?’ Nico asked.

‘I’m trying to keep you from landing us all on a reef, battle-captain,’ Adak answered.

Nico grunted, and looked at his crew, gathered around this back table in the darkest part of the house. ‘What do you think, you mass of eel bait? Should we leave this funeral to the long-eared corpses?’

Halfway down the table, Grizi the ogor raised her kettle of fish guts – the third they’d given her – and slid the last of the slimy dregs down her gullet. ‘Point the prow, cap’n,’ she grunted, ‘and we’ll set the sails.’ She slammed the kettle down and belched thunderously, completely covering another round of quiet clapping. Nico looked over just in time to see the aelves gathered around the knife-throwers glaring poison at them, and his hand fell to the ornate hilt of the knife sheathed at his belt.

‘Then let’s go!’ Nico surged up and his crew took their last swallows of wine or ale, stuffed leftover food into their pockets, and stood behind him. The aelves ignored them as they started out, their indifference a silent shout of contempt. Serim walked beside Nico, her hands free but always close to the hilts of the short swords that rode her hips. She saw where Nico’s hand rested, and shook her head.

‘We’re on our way, Nico. Whatever it is, you don’t need to do it.’

‘You think I’m just going to scuttle out of here like a crab dodging gulls?’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be funny.’

‘Funny,’ she said. ‘Getting us killed isn’t funny – you know that, right?’

‘Nobody’s dying today,’ he said. They were walking past the knife-throwers, who were so intent on their game they weren’t even looking at them. One of the corsairs threw up the next set of targets, a dozen little wooden discs, and they started their throws – just as Nico pulled the knife from his belt and flung it across the room.

He didn’t know where the blade had come from. He’d taken it from a sailor who had tried to jam a cutlass in his guts, and the man hadn’t been in a condition to explain its provenance after Nico had finished with him. The ornate blade must have come from Azyr or Hysh or Chamon, though, someplace where they knew how to work spells deep into steel. It was beautiful and valuable and it’d be a shame to lose it, but showmanship was important to Nico. When he threw it, the single dagger split apart into a dozen whirling blades and each point slammed home into the centre of one of the targets, knocking them out of the air before the other throwers’ knives could even reach them.

Blades and targets clattered to the floor in a room suddenly gone silent and staring. Nico grinned at all the bright eyes facing them, happy to finally be the centre of attention.

‘Lovely party, thanks for having us, but we really must go… anywhere else.’

The male corsair who’d been throwing knives was snarling and fingering one of his blades as if he would throw it, while the other corsair captain was watching Nico with deep, intense fury in her eyes.

‘You can send the pennant to my ship,’ Nico said, smiling at them. ‘The Mother’s Luck. I’m sure you know her. Or you will.’

With that, he led them out into the fog-covered night, heading for a house that would be louder, better and filled with the proper reek of sweat and ale and blood.

‘Funny, right?’ Nico said.

‘Hilarious,’ Serim said, watching behind them, making sure they weren’t followed.

‘And nobody died.’

‘Not tonight.’ Serim looked back at him, that frown returned to her face. ‘But aelves remember. You made new enemies tonight, Nico.’

Nico looked past her, past the shouting, laughing members of his crew, to a group of shadows flitting across the boardwalks far ahead of them, fleeing their approach. ‘There’s worse things than being remembered, Serim.’ He watched the shadows – drift-born children of Misthåvn’s poor out scavenging for food – disappear into the fog and the darkness of Ulgu’s perpetual twilight. That had been him, not so many years ago. ‘There’s never being seen at all.’

CHAPTER TWO

There was a wind on the Penumbral Sea, and it rocked Misthåvn, filling the dark with the low groan of ship timbers shifting, the flap of loose sails, and the grinding rasp of hulls rubbing together.

The sounds almost covered the tap of boots across the plank walk that connected Sweet Raft to the Haze Armada, but the vibration of all those feet through the salt-crusted wood was enough to make the night sliders lift their blind, slimy heads and croak their warnings before they slid off the walk’s edges and into the black seawater. One of the scavengers, bigger than the others, didn’t move. It curled its body in, clawed tentacles tucked tight to its side, and opened its fanged mouth, hissing its threat, until a finely made sharkskin boot smashed it aside.

Kora Stormlost didn’t let the vicious little thing break her stride. Her thoughts were focused on much bigger, much more troublesome scavengers. ‘Is this going to work?’ she said as she strode from the walkway onto the Sweet Raft.

‘It’ll work.’ Malas, her twin, stepped off the plank bridge and caught up with her. The wind made his grey cloak of mourn-gull feathers stream around him like the clouds that precede a storm. ‘If you follow the plot.’

Plots and secrets and the cunning dance of betrayal. It was typical of Ulgu, to be sure, but at times Kora grew sick of it. ‘I still don’t see why I can’t just stab him through the eye,’ she muttered, one hand on the black enamelled hilt of her rapier.

‘Because he might kill you first,’ said Malas.

Kora stopped, boots snapping against the heavy planks that made up the raft beneath her. Her brother and the other corsairs behind stopped too, catching themselves quickly despite her sudden halt and the slow rise and fall of the huge raft beneath their feet. Her crew, like all Scourge Privateers, were used to the rock of the waves beneath them. They were also used to their captain’s temper, and they stayed silent as she glared at her brother.

‘Do you actually believe that muscle-brained human could beat me?’ she asked, her voice cutting through the sounds of the wind and the laughter that spilled from the tall, rickety structure built into the Sweet Raft’s centre. Lanterns hung from it, some burning with the mellow golden light of whale oil, while others shed the sharp violet light of smouldering wave dragon venom. In that light, Kora looked as deadly as a wave dragon. She was tall, and her lean body was hard with muscle. Her grey-black armour, made from the hides of sea beasts, was as tough as it was light, and she moved with an easy, terrible purpose. On her left hip she wore a rapier – simple, dark and deadly – and on the other hung a heavy blocking blade. Thin throwing knives hung in loops across her chest like metal scales. Glaring at her brother, her short, dark hair shifting in the wind, she was nothing but threat.

But she was a threat that Malas had grown up with.

He stood beneath his billowing grey cloak, his long black hair blowing across his face. He was her height, and lean too, but he lacked her whipcord strength, her armour, her blades. Malas had been cursed with magic as his birthright, and he wielded it as a weapon.

‘Of course not, sister mine,’ he said. ‘I’m sure all those others he killed just tripped and fell on their swords by chance.’

Kora frowned at him and Malas stared back, the faintest hint of a smile on his face. ‘The plan,’ he said. ‘And then the pay-off.’

‘The plan had better work,’ she said. ‘And the pay-off had better come through. I hate this eel-faced cheat.’

‘The conclave is long past. Can’t you–’ Malas started, but he stopped when his sister’s hand tightened on her sword. He was one of the few people who could stand up to his twin, but part of that was knowing when to give way. ‘Shall we?’ he said, nodding towards the loud, brightly lit building ahead. Kora answered by stalking towards it with her hand still on her blade.

The Sweet House of Joy was one of many rafts in Misthåvn. The rough wooden squares lay between the separate armadas of the city, neutral zones that were part of no privateer or merchant fleet. Most held markets, but some, like the Sweet Raft, held houses, establishments that catered to the various tastes of the floating city’s varied inhabitants, from the simple appetites of hunger to desires much more complex. The Sweet House of Joy was neither very simple nor very exotic; it was mostly crude and loud. Its customers were mainly humans, and when Kora stepped in, the stink of them rolled over her like a wave.

The house was built around a roughly circular stage, with different levels rising around it, each new level narrower and shoddier than the ones below. The entrance hall cut through all of them like a wound, leading towards the first tier of tables and benches arranged around the stage. Walking down it was to walk through a storm of shouts and laughter, spilled drink and banks of smoke that reeked of intoxicants. In the dark spaces beneath the stands a warren of rooms had been built, and from the noises spilling through those gaudily painted walls Kora could imagine the activities taking place. She gritted her teeth and tried to breathe through her mouth, hoping to cut the stench, but gave up when it felt like she was tasting the mass of crass humanity around her. With a curse she strode forward and the humans crowding the entrance pulled back and away, staring at her and her dark-clad crew.

Corsairs stood out here. The few other aelves Kora could see were on the stage, dressed in ribbons and dancing with the less graceful human performers who spun and twirled there. Kora ignored them and turned, staring out at the humans looking down at the stage and shouting, or gambling, or drinking, or smoking, or generally being loud and foul and stupid.

‘He’s here, somewhere,’ Malas said, almost having to shout. ‘With most of his damned crew.’

‘There.’ Kora had spotted them, halfway up the hall. They’d laid claim to most of a level, a motley group dressed in ragged finery of mismatched red and gold. In their centre, seated behind a wide table and shouting down at the stage, was a big man with blood-coloured hair. He was laughing and pounding on the back of the man sitting next to him, knocking the sailor out of his chair and under the table, and the red-haired man laughed louder as his drunken friend rolled off their level and down to the next, whose inhabitants cheerfully started to pummel him.

Kora ignored the fight and stared up at the laughing man, her dark eyes sharp with hate. ‘Nico Spahr.’

‘What an ass,’ Malas said, following her as she pushed her way through the throng and up a set of stairs. The rest of their crew trailed behind, and there was a shift in the crowd of humans, a silence in the ones packed in around the stairs as they watched Kora lead her crew up. By the time she’d reached the level where Nico was, the noise level in the Sweet House of Joy had dropped to almost nothing, and the dancers on the stage below had stopped. All those human eyes were on them.

Including those of Nico Spahr, who was grinning broadly at Kora as she stopped in front of his table.

‘Lora!’ He set down a mug of something that reeked of equal parts alcohol and sugar cane. The table before him was scattered with bottles and jars and vials, and Kora recognised Synesthalcum, Glatch Ink and Witch-mist in the jumble of intoxicants.

The woman sitting behind Nico leaned forward, tapping him sharply on the shoulder. She was middle-aged, and her face was hard. Serim, one of the few people in Nico’s crew that could actually scrape a few thoughts together. ‘Kora. Captain Kora.’

‘Oh, right,’ Nico said. ‘Kora. You’ve got a boat too. A little one.’

The fact that the insult seemed completely involuntary made it worse, and part of Kora wanted to drop this whole complicated charade and go with her idea of just stabbing the damn fool. There was something about this idiot that so encapsulated everything that she loathed about humans. Speaking to him was like feeling a splinter go under her fingernail. But… abandoning the plan and giving in to her irritation would be letting Nico win, in a way, and she had no intention of doing that. So she kept her voice calm and cool and condescending. ‘I am the captain of the Black Tern. And you are… whatever you are on the Mother’s Luck.’

‘Whatever I am is battle-captain,’ Nico said. ‘It’s just like being a captain, without all the boring bits about sails and rope.’ He waved a hand towards a scarred duardin who was watching her and her crew warily. ‘There’s Adak, my sailing-captain. He handles all the stuff that gets us to our good work, and brings us back.’ The so-called sailing-captain rolled his eyes, but he didn’t say anything, just took a long drink. Nico kept going, leaning forward, grinning at Kora. ‘Tell me, captain. What are you good at? Playing with boats, or playing with blades?’

‘I’m good at being a real captain, which means I can do both.’ Kora stood hipshot in front of him, hand light on the hilt of her sword. A casual stance to most, a shouted warning to anyone half decent with a blade. And Nico, though it pained her to admit it, was good with that monstrous two-hander that he wielded. It leaned against his chair now, a great length of steel that would give him reach on her… if he could draw the huge thing before her blade was sliding through his head.

‘Oh, a real captain,’ Nico said, his crew watching him, cracking their knuckles, waiting for the order to brawl. There were almost twice as many of them as Kora’s band, but most were at least half drunk on something. Nico bellowed a laugh and they relaxed once more.

‘I may not know my knots, captain, but I’ve got by with my other skills,’ he said, his hand touching his sword as it rested in its red sheath. He glanced past Kora to her crew, considering. ‘I don’t think you came for a drink or a smoke or to watch the pretty dancers. So why don’t you tell me why you brought all your friends to the party, and we’ll see what kind of fun we can have?’

‘I didn’t come for fun, battle-captain.’ The title dropped from Kora’s lips heavy with contempt. ‘I came because three days ago you took the ship Last Rain, looted her cargo, and scuttled her. Seventy souls gone, Nico. You know the rules. We might take each other’s cargo, but we don’t break each other’s ships. We don’t murder their crews.’

Nico looked at her, the humour gone from him. ‘Right. And I did neither.’

‘Then why is your ship’s hold full of her cargo?’ she said. ‘And why did I find the Last Rain spread all over the ocean, its crew floating, food for eels?’

The house had fallen dangerously silent now. In the subtle war between the different armadas that made up Misthåvn, there weren’t many rules. Taking someone else’s cargo, that was just trade, and if some were injured or killed in the action, that was the cost of business. But destroying a ship after killing the crew wholesale… that was the kind of thing that could get a ship hounded, or an armada cut free from the city and burned.

‘We took the Last Rain,’ Nico said. ‘We took their cargo. But we left them alive and cursing our mothers.’

‘So you say.’

Nico stood. He was fast for a man his size, and his sword was in his hands now, ready to be drawn. ‘You’re calling me a liar?’

‘No,’ Kora said. ‘I’m calling you a murderer, a coward and a liar.’

Nico’s smile came back, but there was no humour in it, and he was starting to pull his blade free when suddenly a man was in between them, old and soft but absolutely unafraid.

‘Good man! Good aelf!’ he snapped, voice ringing. ‘Have care! This is the Sweet House of Joy, not some worm-eaten drifthouse of ill repute!’ Glaring at them both, he pointed down at the stage, where the men and women who’d been dancing were quickly clearing way. ‘If you wish to duel, you will do it in the centre where all can see and only after the bookies have properly set the odds and taken the wagers!’

‘My pardon,’ Kora said, her eyes never leaving Nico. ‘Would you like to go down first?’ she asked Nico.

‘Oh no, real captains first.’

She locked eyes with him for a moment, then turned her back on him, making the move as disdainful as possible. Her brother beside her kept his eyes on the human as they walked down the stairs. ‘Perfect so far,’ he breathed to her.

‘I want to fight him,’ she said back, her words lost to anyone else as the crowd roared to life, people yelling odds and insults.

‘That would not be perfect,’ Malas said. ‘You’re doing well – don’t scuttle us now.’

Kora gritted her teeth. This whole thing was stupid. She just wanted to make this loud-mouthed braggart pay for what he’d done to her. She could probably win a cargo’s worth of plunder betting on herself.

‘Remember what you’ve been promised,’ Malas warned, knowing exactly what she was thinking, ‘and what the cost would be if you go against your fleetmaster.’ They stepped up between the hot footlights and onto the stage. Workers were already covering it with dried seagrass to soak up the blood. The humans were a seething mass behind the lights, yelling and stinking. Nico’s crew were bellowing a wildly obscene shanty at the top of their lungs, apparently in support of their battle-captain, who was taking to the other side of the stage with Serim behind him, looking exasperated.

‘Play your part, sister mine,’ Malas warned. ‘I’m too good-looking to be fed to the eels.’

Kora gave him a smile, then rolled her shoulders, stretching them out. The bookies were chalking odds on slates and holding them up, their minions running through the hall and collecting bets. Across from her, Nico was warming up by taking his shirt off and flexing for some of the dancers. Kora rolled her eyes and practised her breathing, closing in on her battle focus. She wasn’t supposed to need it, but… Nico liked to boast that his family was blessed by Sigmar. Maybe his luck would hold tonight and…

‘Captain Kora! You must stop!’

The shout rang out through the din that filled the house, and she sighed inside. No such luck then. She turned and glared offstage at the aelf that stood below. ‘Don’t tell me what to do, Tervin.’

‘I’m first mate to your fleetmaster, Kora. I am his voice, sent to bring you back to port.’ He strode up to the stage, ignoring the humans in the crowd that were shouting and booing at him. ‘You know our agreements with the humans in that armada. You can’t kill him.’

‘After what he and his crew did to our own?’ she snapped. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Serim slapping Nico on the shoulder, tearing the big man’s attention away from the dancers. She had to fight to keep from rolling her eyes again. All this damn pantomime, and the fool was barely paying attention. When she spoke again, she raised her voice, as if giving orders in a storm. ‘We’ve suffered this fool’s bumbling play at privateering enough. It was painful to see before, but now he’s breaking our rules. You want to talk agreements? Talk to the crew of the Last Rain.’

The jeering was still going on, wild shouts and curses flying down, but Kora could see the effect her words were having. The crowd was still firmly behind Nico. But some of them had questions. Nico, idiot or not, could apparently see it too.

‘You name me a liar?’ Nico ripped his sword from his sheath and stepped forward. He was impressive in the footlights, a huge man with blood-coloured hair holding a massive blade. He settled into a stance and crooked a finger at her. ‘Come and prove it.’

Kora’s lips twitched into something that was part smile, part snarl. Her rapier was in her hand, its blade so thin compared to Nico’s. But its dark metal flickered through the air like a shadow, barely seen and then gone. ‘Happy to.’

‘No.’ A hand closed on her shoulder and she spun, and the tip of her sword was resting on Tervin’s cheek, just below his left eye. A tiny shift of her shoulders would be all it would take to slide the steel into his brain, and in the crowd bookies were taking fast bets as to whether she would. But Tervin took no notice of her threat. ‘You will return to your ship, captain, and your proper mission. Your fleetmaster has given you a target, and you’ll take it. Or see your commission stripped.’

Kora glared at him, a long pause while the human crowd bayed for her to kill him. Then she dropped her sword and turned, glaring at Nico. ‘There will be another time. If not on this deck, then on the waves. Battle-captain.’ She packed the hold of that name full of as much contempt as she could, and there was no acting necessary for that. Across the stage, Nico threw out his hands, still holding his sword.

‘Oh, come on. You can’t walk away from this!’

‘She is ordered to and she will,’ Tervin snapped. ‘There are compacts to be honoured, human. Between my fleetmaster and yours. You should respect them too.’

‘I told you,’ Serim said, the woman shaking her head, but Nico wasn’t listening.

‘Compacts? What in all the deepest, darkest hells? What’s the fun of that?’ The crowd roared, and he nodded. ‘See? You can’t get us all riled up and just walk out!’

‘And yet we are doing so,’ Tervin said. Nico stepped forward, starting to raise his sword again, and the aelf looked at him coolly. ‘Or is it war between our armadas?’

Serim grabbed Nico’s arm. She wasn’t nearly as big, but it was clear she had experience of stopping him. She spoke to him, words lost in the sound of the jeering crowd, and he frowned. Then he looked at Kora again. ‘First blood. No one dies. Just to the first drop.’

‘In what realm,’ Malas said, his dry voice surprisingly loud, ‘does that monster of a blade draw first blood without taking a limb with it?’

Nico actually laughed at that, but when Kora turned her back and started walking away with Tervin, he joined in with the crowd. ‘Who’s the coward now, aelf? Who’s the liar?’

‘Don’t,’ Malas warned as they left the stage. He was watching the crowd, not looking at his sister as they fell in with the rest of their crew, but he clearly didn’t need to. ‘Remember the plan.’

‘The plan rots,’ she said, as a mug crashed down near them and the crowd jeered, led by Nico from the stage. They walked fast, getting out quickly to where the darkness was cool and the salty air sweet compared to the hot human stink of the Sweet House of Joy. But it did little to settle Kora’s anger.

‘You did well,’ Tervin said. ‘The hook’s baited, the line cast. Tomorrow we see if the fool bites.’

‘He’d better,’ Kora said. ‘I need something to gut after that.’ She finally looked at Tervin. ‘And when you see the fleetmaster, you tell him I don’t just want a bigger boat for this. I want the biggest damn boat in the armada.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘It’s a trick,’ Serim said, staring out past the figurehead of the Mother’s Luck, a voluptuous seamaid scaled in crimson and gold. In the distance, Captain Kora’s ship, the Black Tern, was a dark spot on the waves.

‘You say everything’s a trick.’ Nico, clad only in a wrinkled set of crimson trousers, leaned against the back of the figurehead. He took another swig from the bottle he’d bought on a raft market that morning before they’d pushed out from Misthåvn, a sure cure for hangovers, supposedly. The first taste of it wasn’t too bad, but every swig after that was more and more reminiscent of tar. And piss. Nico spat it out, then threw the bottle over the rail, wincing. Things had gone a bit wild in the Sweet House of Joy after the aelves had made their scene.

Serim looked up at him. She didn’t look hungover at all. The woman dealt with drink like a fish did water – she swam through it, completely unaffected, a trick Nico was envious of. But she did look exasperated, and she waved her hand at the dark, mist-shrouded sea that surrounded them. ‘This is Ulgu! Everything is a trick here! Damn it, you were born to this lie of a realm, so that should have got through even your thick skull by now.’ Serim spat over the rail at the eels that were fighting over the bottle Nico had thrown. ‘That big public accusation. The little hint of her having a mission. Then that challenge to face you on the waves. It’s more obvious than the twisted plots these corsairs usually lay out, but I suppose they were taking their target into account.’ She looked at him meaningfully.

‘I’m not stupid, Serim,’ Nico said. ‘I just hate this shadowy, tricksy stuff as much as you, despite not being born in a proper realm like Azyr.’ She nodded in agreement, which he ignored. ‘So I don’t play that game. I decide what I want, and I do it. Forge straight ahead, no subtle plots, no fancy lies, just smash things around until I’ve got what I want.’

‘And I have to admit, that philosophy has served you well. So far.’ She pointed at the distant ship. ‘But what do you want out of this?’

‘Information.’ Nico rubbed his head, wincing. That hideous draught hadn’t helped at all. ‘The corsairs have had it in for me ever since I took this ship and made it mine. They just haven’t been able to touch me because of all those pacts you set up with our armada. Still… they’re under the water, circling, ready to bite, and I’m sick of waiting for them to make their move on their time. So why not stick my foot in, wiggle my toes and see what comes snapping?’

‘Because you want to keep all your damn toes?’ said Serim, and she sighed when Nico grinned at her and held up one bare foot, toes wiggling. With another exasperated sigh, she changed the subject. ‘It would be good to know what happened to the Last Rain.’

‘Everyone knows we didn’t scuttle her,’ Nico said. ‘Except those who find the lie useful.’

‘Which is plenty,’ Serim said. ‘But disproving them isn’t the reason I want answers. That’s the fourth ship that hasn’t come back recently. The Penumbral Sea is dangerous, but those were all good ships with good crews. There’s something new out there. Some of the aelves were telling stories, of ghosts that ride monsters or some foolishness like that.’

‘New danger is new opportunity.’

‘New opportunity to die,’ Serim muttered.

‘Die? Me?’ Nico shook his head. ‘My mother was blessed by Sigmar for her beauty, and that divine luck runs through my veins. I’m never going to die.’

‘The terrifying thing is that you tell that lie so easy I sometimes almost fall for it,’ she said. She nodded towards the dot disappearing in the dark and the mist. ‘The Black Tern is half our size and can go almost twice as fast, depending on the wind. Are you sure about this?’

‘Are you sure about the information you paid so dearly for?’ Nico said.

‘Sure as the mist in Ulgu,’ said Serim. Which was a way of saying she was as sure as she could be – and still suspected a trick.

‘Then we stick to the plan,’ said Nico. ‘Adak knows what he’s doing.’ He nodded back to the stern, where the duardin was snapping orders at the sailors moving through the rigging. ‘You found out where the Black Tern is going. Adak will get us there, get us close… and then we’ll see what our Captain Kora is about.’

‘Sneaking up on a captain that specialises in hit-and-run raids, whose brother is a magician…’ Serim frowned. ‘I hope your mother did kiss Sigmar. I think we’ll need the god’s luck for this one.’

‘No one trusts me,’ Nico said, scratching at the red hair that covered his chest.

‘No, far too many do.’ Serim looked at him again, her grey eyes thoughtful. ‘You’re lucky, and you’ve done well by me and this crew. That’s why we stick with you. But this time… There’s something not right in the water.’ Her eyes went up, staring at the sky. It was mostly covered in mist, as usual, but there was a rent in that grey curtain high overhead. Behind the grey was darkness, and in that dark hung the Orb Duplicita, like a baleful blind eye. ‘Or maybe it’s the sky,’ she said. ‘Whenever that damn moon is out… I feel like Nagash has taken the dice in his bony hands and is getting ready to roll.’

‘Good.’ Nico slapped her shoulder. ‘Why bother to get out of bed to gamble, unless the stakes are high?’

CHAPTER FOUR

Mist surrounded the Black Tern, gleaming in the strange light of the Orb Duplicita. That same light shone on the dark water beneath the boat, water as flat and still as black glass. Kora, sick of staring out at the grey walls of mist, looked down at the sea spread out below them and met her reflection. In the black seawater, her face shifted from smiling to sobbing, angry to terrified, to absolutely still, still and peaceful as death. She shook her head, but her reflection didn’t move.

‘In the light of the lying moon, truth is the greatest illusion.’

‘If you’re going to quote philosophy to me,’ Kora said, looking away from the water to her brother, who stood a little way down the rail, ‘come closer. So I can hit you.’

‘You know, you and this Nico fellow really aren’t that different,’ Malas said, thoughtfully, staying out of range.

‘You think?’ she said, one hand drawing out one of her throwing knives. It was pointed at both ends, thin as parchment, sharp as malice, and she could make it swim through her fingers like a sea snake.

‘Not before I speak, apparently,’ he said. He looked out at the silent sea. ‘I hate it when it’s calm like this. I’d rather a storm than this silence, especially when I can see that moon overhead.’ Malas twitched his grey-feathered cloak around him. ‘I keep thinking of the Last Rain. I talked to some of the crew that found the wreck, the bodies. Some were torn apart, but others… they had not a wound on them, but their faces were twisted in agony. It made me think of the stories our parents told, about the Deepkin.’

‘This light is bad for you, brother,’ Kora said. ‘It’s got you thinking about ghost stories told to frighten children into their hammocks. Stop worrying about the Last Rain and focus on our prize, and what comes after.’

‘Yes, captain,’ Malas said, and as usual Kora couldn’t tell how much of his response was sincerity and how much was sarcasm. But his next question was nothing but honest annoyance. ‘Where in the wet hells are they?’

‘The Mother’s Luck moves as well in the water as a seal does on the beach.’ Kora slid her knife back. ‘But their so-called sailing-captain knows what he’s about. Their “informant” told that woman Serim where we are. Adak will lead them here soon enough, and then the hard part will be not losing them before we can draw them to the site of the ambush where the other ships the fleetmaster sent to fall on the fool are waiting.’

‘Now you’re the one trusting the plan,’ Malas said.

‘I’m on my ship and on the sea, not play-acting for children.’ Kora looked around the Black Tern, satisfied that every part and every crew member was in place. ‘Plan or not, Nico Spahr will be under the waves soon.’

Her brother tilted his head at her quiet vehemence. ‘One game of knives, and it’s blood in the water?’

‘He cheated at a game he wasn’t even playing,’ Kora answered. ‘And you know what that cost me.’ Then her head jerked up, as from high above came the sound of a mourn gull, then again. The signal for a ship spotted, drifting down from the crow’s nest atop the highest mast.

The Black Tern fell silent, the crew waiting, watching. Beside her, Malas was whispering to himself, and the air around him shimmered and twisted as he pulled magic from the world, getting some spell ready. Then, through the grey wall, a light. A lantern, and beneath it a figurehead of a woman wrapped part in scales of gold and crimson. Kora smiled, satisfied.

‘Stand quiet,’ she snapped to her crew. ‘Hold position!’

Malas stopped whispering, and whatever spell he’d been readying fell apart around him as he turned to her. ‘That’s not the plan. We’re supposed to run, to lead them to the fleet!’

‘We’ll do that later,’ Kora said. ‘After Nico’s paid his debt to me.’ She tapped her hand on the hilt of her sword, watching the human’s boat loom larger. Her crew stared at her and Malas, wary, wondering what was going on, and they all flinched when a barbed bolt shot out from the Mother’s Luck’s forward ballista and splashed down into the water near their bow.

‘One warning, Captain Kora!’ Nico’s bellow carried over the flat sea. ‘The next will go through your hull! Ship those oars and prepare to be boarded. We’ve business to settle!’

‘We certainly do,’ Kora said quietly. Then she raised her voice in answer. ‘Any of your scum that touches foot to my deck will be gutted, battle-captain. This is between us. Reef your sails. I’ll come across and we’ll settle this.’

She could see him, wrapped in red and gold, staring at her across the black water, his sword already out and resting across one shoulder. The woman Serim stood beside him, whispering some caution, and Nico nodded. ‘No tricks! Will you swear it?’

‘By my ship!’ Kora said, slapping the Black Tern’s rail.

‘Then come aboard!’

‘This isn’t the plan, Kora,’ Malas told her as she walked to the Black Tern’s gig. Her crew was already getting the small boat ready for launch over the side, to take her to the Mother’s Luck. ‘You don’t have to fight this loud-mouthed brute. We already have the trap set.’

‘But I want to fight this loud-mouthed brute,’ Kora said. ‘I want to bleed that battle-captain out on his own deck, in front of his crew. That’s my plan, Malas. Humiliate him like he humiliated me. Then the trap can take his ship and his crew. Our fleetmaster will get everything he wants. But Nico Spahr is mine.’

CHAPTER FIVE

The aelves came over the rail, Kora first and then her brother. Nico watched her step onto his deck, her eyes flashing around, taking in his crew, his ship, then landing on him. They were sharp with hate, and Nico wondered again what exactly he had done to piss off the aelven captain so much. Probably just existed. The Scourge Privateers couldn’t stand a human sharing an ocean with them, apparently.

‘Welcome aboard, Captain Kora,’ he said. His sword was still sheathed, but his crew stood in a threatening ring around the deck, fingering blades and grinning at the corsairs. Grizi stood with them, a looming threat as she toyed with the rusty chain attached to the heavy anchor that she used as a weapon.

All their theatrics seemed to be wasted on the aelves, though. Kora stepped towards Nico with the smooth, easy stride of someone born at sea, the knives strapped to her leather armour flashing like scales. ‘My thanks for your hospitality, battle-captain.’

The sneering way she said his title grated like sand in a boot, but Nico was determined not to acknowledge it. ‘Of course. We are all honourable privateers here.’ She was tall, almost as tall as him, and he stared straight into her eyes as they bantered. How long should he keep this up? Almost automatically he flicked a look towards Serim, and saw that she was giving him her worst frown. She was convinced this was all just an ambush, a way to pin them in place while Kora’s fleetmaster surrounded them with ships, and that was a reasonable assumption… but Nico didn’t really care. Kora had called him out in public, called him a killer and a coward and a fake, and in that moment she’d made herself the representative for all the cold contempt Nico had felt flowing towards him and his ship and his crew. And so her challenge had to be answered.

But he could at least move things along.

‘We were rudely interrupted, captain.’ Nico stripped the sheath from his sword and held the blade out, its sharpened edge gleaming in the dull light of the Orb Duplicita. ‘When you turned your back and ran from me the other night. Now that I’ve caught up with you, why don’t we finish our business?’

‘That’s why I’m here,’ she said, her rapier already in hand, the sword’s edge thin and fine. She pulled out the blocking blade – shorter, heavier, but still wickedly sharp. ‘Captain’s rules?’ she asked. ‘Battle-captain?’

‘Captain’s rules,’ Nico replied. He could hear that edge of anger in his voice, and he hated that she certainly could too. ‘Until death or cry mercy. Until it ends, the fight is only between us and no one else. Our crews’ – he looked pointedly at her mage brother – ‘will stay out of it – no attacks, no tricks.’

‘Agreed,’ Kora said, and she stepped forward, moving with the deadly grace of a rakerdart in deep water. Behind her, her brother folded his arms beneath his grey cloak, watching silently with grim eyes.

Behind Nico, his crew roared as he stepped forward, shifting his great blade in his hand. Even in all their noise, Nico couldn’t help noticing that Serim was silent. She was probably pulling back from the fight, joining up with Adak to scan the water around them in case Kora’s armada was trying to skulk up to them through the mist. Watching his back as usual, Nico thought, and then he was moving forward, rushing at Kora, swinging his sword in a fast, savage strike that made the salt air whistle around his blade.

Kora didn’t try to block the blow, the aelf knowing that Nico’s heavier blade would smash aside her rapier or blocking blade. She ducked beneath it instead, thrusting forward to stab him beneath the ribs with the tip of her sword. The aelf was fast, so fast she almost caught him, but after a life of fighting Nico knew his business. He was already twisting away from her thrust as he brought his blade back, and Kora had to slide away from the vicious backhand, unable to follow him with her thrust.

They spun apart, boots tapping on the boards, watching each other, their blades shifting in their hands. Then together again, steel chiming as Nico slapped away Kora’s rapier before its point found his throat. He turned the block into a slashing swing that should have cut across her belly, but she knew this bloody business too. Her rapier flicked off his block and swung high, the point heading right for Nico’s eye. He might be faster than she expected from a big man, but she was lightning. He jerked his head back and lashed out with a fist, his blade too far to the side to block again.

The tip of Kora’s sword drew a line under Nico’s eye, razor-sharp metal slashing a neat furrow through his flesh, a finger long but shallow, not touching the bone. First blood, but in return he punched her hard enough in the chest to send her stumbling back, unable to follow up on the strike.

They stood a little apart from each other, breathing heavily, and Nico could feel the blood running hot down his cheek and into his beard. He stared at the aelf over his sword, heart pounding, and she stared back, drawn in a perfect stance, her eyes cold and haughty – and then she had to turn her head and cough, her face twisting for a moment in pain. A hit and a hit, Nico thought, and they’d be lucky if both of them weren’t bleeding out on the deck before this was over. But it was too late now – this fight was going to end in one way and it wasn’t going to be a cry for mercy. Nico wiped the blood away from his mouth, grinned at the aelf and stepped forward–

And then the Mother’s Luck lurched.

The whole ship shifted beneath them, as if it had caught a swell, even though the Penumbral Sea still stretched as still as stone around them. Nico’s crew swore and lurched, bumping into each other as the ship rolled. Nico kept his balance, his eyes never leaving Kora, who adjusted easily to the ship’s movement. But something flickered in her eyes, a captain’s concern, and Nico had to check an impulse to lunge forward and strike at her while she was distracted.

‘Serim?’ he snapped, still watching Kora. The mist had thickened around them, and the air had gone chill, damp and heavy. Was this the corsairs’ trick? The ambush Serim had been so worried about?

But before he heard any answer, a sound came from the Black Tern, a high ululation of alarm that rang across the water.

‘Allopex!’ shouted Malas, spinning to look at the water.

‘Allo-what?’ Nico said, but before anyone could answer the ocean roared beside them, as if something huge had ripped its way through the smooth surface of the sea.

‘Draw arms and take position,’ Nico roared. The crew broke, rushing across the deck, circling around Kora as she drew up. ‘What have you done, aelf?’ he growled at her, stepping back, annoyed that he had to keep one eye on her as he tried to understand what was going on. She seemed just as angry, moving warily around him as she tried to see her ship.

‘Nothing,’ she snapped, but she was frowning. ‘Malas?’

‘It’s not us,’ the aelf mage said. ‘It’s…’ He stared out over the water, his eyes widening. ‘Gods damn me. It’s the Deepkin!’

‘The what?’ Nico asked, but out over the water the mist roiled like a curtain in a storm, then broke. Half a dozen dark shapes tore through it, monstrous fangmora eels with flashing white teeth. The hideous beasts sped through the sky towards the Mother’s Luck, their long, undulating bodies pushing them through the open air as if it were the ocean. On the back of each one sat a rider, armoured in silvery metal that curved around their body and head, wrapping each of them in a bladed and spiked shell. In their hands they carried polished shields and swords curved like claws.

Nico had a moment to blink at them, then he was moving, spinning out of the way of an eel’s snapping teeth. He came back, trying to slash his sword into that scaly green hide, but he had to turn the strike into a block as the rider swung their own sword at his head. The eels flew past, swimming over the deck as if the Mother’s Luck were five fathoms deep, and hit the crew. Teeth flashed as the squirming creatures bit, latching on to arms and shoulders and necks, snatching sailors up and carrying them shrieking over the rail to drop into the sea.

‘What was–’ Nico started, but Serim was suddenly by his side, swords drawn and bloody. She pointed past him, and Nico turned to see other shapes pouring out of the mist. More eel riders, and other armoured figures mounted on allopexes, the fierce shark-like predators of the deep.

Behind the allopexes, two huge shapes pushed through the grey curtain: giant sea turtles with armour fixed to their shells, controlled by the riders on their backs. Weed-wrapped chains ran from the turtles to the barnacle-encrusted remnants of a long-wrecked ship, which they pulled across the water behind them.

Standing at what was left of the ship’s worm-gnawed prow was a figure wrapped in robes and silver armour. It turned its head towards them, and Nico saw that the huge horn protruding from the back of its helmet and curving over its head held a lantern, glowing an eldritch green in the light of the Orb Duplicita. As he watched, the figure raised a long staff that ended in a wickedly hooked blade, its edge notched with serrations like teeth. Behind it, the shipwreck’s ragged deck was crowded with figures, thin and tall, carrying long, strangely shaped bows.

Aelves. They were definitely aelves, their faces angular beneath their hairless scalps, their ears high and pointed, but their eyes… Where their eyes should be there was only pale skin, unblemished by lid or lens, iris or pupil. They were as blind as the eels, but they shifted their heads, alert, and when the lantern bearer pointed his hook at the Mother’s Luck, they raised their bows, drew back the strings and, somehow, took aim.

‘’Ware arrows,’ shouted Nico, and he dropped and rolled to the ship’s sidewall, dragging Serim with him. The rest of the crew scrambled for cover as dozens of long shafts thundered down into the deck like hail. One landed, quivering, in front of Nico and he stared at the thing, carved from some kind of translucent quill taken from a monster that swam the deeps below.

‘Those things!’ Serim said, her face inches from his. ‘They’re aelves! I told you this was an ambush!’

‘So you were right. I owe you a drink!’ Nico said, rolling up. Another arrow smashed into the rail beside him. ‘But for now–’ Nico raised his voice, bellowing across the deck, ‘Mother’s Luck! No quarter! Kill them all!’

CHAPTER SIX

‘The Deepkin. The soul eaters.’ There was fear in Malas’ voice as he stared at the great armoured beasts swimming through the air over them. ‘They were supposed to be a story!’

Kora stared out over the dark water, trying to find the Black Tern. The crew of the Mother’s Luck charged around behind her and she could hear Nico bellowing at them to man the ballista, but she had no time for the humans now. They were under attack, and she belonged on her ship.

But her ship was gone. It should have been right there, but sometime during the attack the still sea had started to move. A current was running through the dark water, pulling at the Mother’s Luck, turning the ship, and Kora could feel the deck begin to tilt beneath her.

‘Now what?’ Malas asked, feeling the shift.

‘Maelstrom,’ Kora said.

‘There are no maelstroms in this part of the sea!’ he protested.

‘There are no flying eels either!’ she snapped back. ‘Find the Black Tern!’ Somewhere in the distance she could hear shouts and screams in Aelfish, the sound of her crew fighting, but the noise was drowned out by horns from above, shrill and weird, and the great turtles groaning in response, a sound so deep that it shook the Mother’s Luck’s timbers.

Cursing, Kora spun from the rail, moving to cross the deck to look over the other side, but a knot of human sailors was moving towards her, faces angry and weapons raised. ‘Captain’s rules!’ she snapped at them, waving them to the side. Her and Nico’s duel certainly hadn’t ended yet.

‘You trying to call captain’s rules?’ The man in the lead shouted. ‘After you brought these monsters to kill us, aelf? Stuff that bilge water back in your belly and use your lying mouth to call your friends off or we’ll slit your throat!’

Kora snarled to herself, stepping forward to meet the man. He swung a cutlass at her, meaning to slap her sword out of her hand, and she stepped past the blade easily and kicked him in the groin, dropping him. The woman behind him dodged his writhing and grabbed at Malas.

‘Move and I’ll cut him!’ the human threatened, raising her sword, but Malas was already whispering something. He touched the woman’s wrist and whatever magic he’d summoned ran through her, making her stiffen and fall, almost like the man Kora had kicked. The last human, a ragged man with boat hooks in both hands, spat at them and scurried off. But he barely got two paces before an allopex dived and closed massive jaws on him, spilling a gout of blood across the deck. The beast swam away, carrying the screaming, bleeding man with it, but Kora could see more of the monsters breaking out of the mist towards them.

‘Do not get in my way!’ she snapped, but the riders’ helmets were already turning towards her, their hands moving on the reins that ran to the allopexes’ armoured heads. The beasts turned, carving through the air, and for a second Kora could see a trail of bubbles coming from their fins, as if they were slicing through water, not sky. But there was no time to contemplate the madness of this magic. They were answering, charging straight at her, and she slammed her blocking blade back into its scabbard and reached for her throwing knives.

Kora pulled a blade from the row of knives running across her chest and threw it, long arm moving like a whip. The blade hit the allopex leading the charge, digging into the mottled grey hide of its head. The next blade bounced off its metal armour, but the third flew into its mouth as the beast spread its jaws, rushing towards Kora, burying itself deep in the soft tissue inside. The shark-like beast slewed to the side, slamming into the allopex swimming beside it. The collision made both blind monsters tangle together, snapping at each other, triangular teeth digging flesh and spilling great gouts of blood that billowed around them like dark red clouds. On their backs, their riders smashed their swords into the beasts, smacking them with the flats of their blades as they hauled on the reins with their other hands.

The last allopex dodged around the fight, snapping up mouthfuls of blood as it came. It swam straight at Kora, its rider pulling back their sword to swing. Kora moved, dodging the beast’s teeth as it went by and catching the blade of the rider on her sword. She moved with the strike, snapping her wrist as she turned the momentum of the other aelf’s blade away from her. The parry pulled the rider half out of their saddle, and Kora lashed a kick out that slammed into the aelf’s ribs and sent them tumbling the rest of the way out.

The armoured aelf managed to keep its hold on the reins, swinging below the eel’s head. In their fall, they’d lost their helmet and Kora could now see their face – a male aelf, but unlike the archers he had hair and eyes, light blue eyes that stared at Kora with hate – until the allopex, its charge diverted into a careening circle by the loss of its rider, spun over the side of the ship and dragged the warrior straight into the rail. The stout wooden rail shattered against the back of the aelf’s head, and then he was gone, tumbling over the side of the ship to fall into the sea. Unguided, his mount spun in the air, then shot over to the fight still happening between the other allopexes, slamming into them and turning the battle into a frenzy of twisting grey bodies and gouting blood.

‘Tear each other apart,’ Kora hissed. Then she stumbled, and had to move her feet fast to catch her balance. The tilt to the Mother’s Luck’s deck was increasing fast, and she could hear the groan of timbers as the ship twisted below the heavy thrum of its ballista. ‘Damn,’ she swore, and ran for the opposite rail, boots cracking off the wet boards.

On the other side she could see it. Another kind of monster, different from the beasts cutting through the sky around her: a great gyre, spinning on itself, the water curving like dark glass down into a pit that seemed to fall all the way to the black bottom of the Penumbral Sea. The Mother’s Luck was caught on its edge, balancing half over the great watery maw as it spun in a circle around it. But the Black Tern was already in it.

Kora could see her ship, small but fast, a dagger blade of a boat that had gutted so many bigger vessels, spinning around the maelstrom’s throat. Shapes were swarming it, fangmora eels and allopexes flying across the deck, picking off her crew as they fought to free the ship from the hungry vortex that was pulling it down.

‘Get the rudder,’ she hissed, clutching the Mother’s Luck’s rail as she watched her ship fall. It was too late, she knew it, but she had to say it, had to bark out orders as she watched the ship she’d fought so hard for shake in the whirlpool’s grip, the banner of her armada and the pennants of her victories streaming from the masts as it spun faster and faster.

And then an eel rider snatched away the aelf straining at the wheel of the ship and the Black Tern shuddered, twisted, and smashed apart. There was an explosion of broken beams and shattered planks, and the maelstrom drank down the wreckage, gone, and then there was nothing, nothing at all.

‘Gods take me!’ Kora snarled, staring at the water churning below her. Rage swept through her, and when she heard a roar answer her curse she spun to meet it. A swarm of eel riders were arching over the Mother’s Luck’s gig, flying over the strapped-down boat graceful as mourn gulls as they drove towards her, and Kora crouched, ready to meet them all, her anger desperate for an outlet.

Beside her, her brother snapped words that pulled the light from the air over him and flung it into the eyes of the Deepkin approaching them, sending two careening away. Another rider was smashed from their saddle by an anchor, flung at it by an ogor standing halfway down the deck. But the last rider continued their charge, their sword pointed at Kora like a lance. Kora waited until that sharp point was a hand’s breadth from her, and spun aside, twisting out of the way of the weapon and then stepping in to drive her blade deep into the slimy hide of the beast. The eel thrashed and slammed into the deck, spilling the rider, who rolled to their feet. Kora pulled her sword free and moved towards the aelf, but before she could reach them Nico came charging around the gig.

Nico’s sword, driven by the human’s strength and momentum, took the aelf in the ribs, smashing through armour and shearing through flesh, knocking the rider down in a heap of blood and broken metal that slid across the tilting deck and off the ship, tumbling down into the water.

‘You!’ Nico shouted, pointing his bloody sword at Kora. The cut she’d given him was a streaming red slash beneath one of his glaring eyes. ‘You did this!’

‘This?’ snapped Kora. The eel whipped its body across the deck and she dodged it, then drove her sword into the unarmoured flesh under its jaw, punching her dark blade through scales and bone and into the tiny brain. Jerking her blade free, she snapped her wrist, flicking the beast’s blood at his feet. ‘What part of this madness do you think belongs to me?’

‘All of it!’ Nico stepped up the slanted deck towards her, his sword low, and Kora pulled out one of her throwing knives. But before she could throw, Serim slid out from behind the netted-down gig, her face pale, eyes wide.

‘Nico!’ the woman shouted. ‘Trouble coming!’

‘Coming?’ Malas said, incredulously. Kora’s brother had cut a length of rope and tied it off, and he was holding it as he stepped down the increasingly slanted deck towards her. But he went silent as a new monster swung around the gig in pursuit of Serim.

It was a massive beast, its scales emerald and sapphire, with a gleaming white horn atop a broad-muzzled head. It had two forelegs with long black claws and a powerful body that tapered and split into three long, finned tails. Mounted on its back was another aelf in gleaming silver armour, carrying a long-bladed polearm and shield.

The Deepkin pulled his beast to a stop, staring at them all with eyes of pale grey. Behind him came another group of eel riders, each one of them carrying prisoners bound to the backs of their beasts – humans and a few corsairs from Kora’s crew.

‘We’ll take these too,’ the grey-eyed Deepkin said, his Aelfish so heavily accented that Kora barely understood him.

‘You’ll take this,’ Kora said, snapping her arm out as she threw her knife. It flashed through the air, but the aelf leader raised his shield and the blade clanged off the silver metal. The attack distracted him from Nico, though, who charged at him down the pitched deck. The red-haired warrior was barely keeping his footing, but he swung his huge sword hard, arcing it through the air towards the aelf. Before it could hit, the aelf’s mount twisted and caught the blow on its horn. It snarled, white fangs gleaming, and one forepaw lashed out, catching Nico and throwing him back. He hit the deck hard, almost losing his sword, the air smashed out of his lungs. He started to slide down the buckling boards but Serim caught him. The woman slammed one of her swords into the tilting deck for purchase, and clung to it while holding Nico with her other hand, straining against the pull of his weight.

‘Help me!’ the human shouted. Kora hesitated, but only for a second; she wanted to be the one to kill Nico. Grabbing the rope that Malas held, Kora threw herself down the deck to the humans.

‘Take it,’ she said, holding out the rope. He caught it and pulled himself up, Serim taking hold too. They needed the line now. The Mother’s Luck had tipped into the maelstrom and was falling deeper fast. The angle of its decks had gone from steep to almost vertical, and without the rope all would have fallen into the spinning water – or into the jaws and nets of the beasts and aelves hovering below.

‘What now?’ Serim shouted. The wind was howling around them as the ship spun faster, and the boards of the hull cracked and popped.

‘We go under,’ Kora answered, grim. ‘But we take as many of these soul swallowers as we can with us.’ She slid her sword into its scabbard and pulled a knife, lining up a throw. The horned beast’s armour didn’t cover its eyes, and–

‘Good plan,’ Nico said, and the big man suddenly moved, rushing forward as he clung to the rope, almost pulling Kora off her feet. She caught her balance, barely holding on to the blade in her hand as she ran with him.

‘What are you doing?’ she shouted at him, wondering why she’d bothered to save him.

‘What I do best!’ He stretched the rope out, Serim and Malas cursing above him, boots pushing against the deck, until he reached the limit of its swing – then he slashed out with his sword. The tip of it caught the ropes that strapped the gig boat to the deck, and they parted with twangs like bows firing. The boat was small compared to the Mother’s Luck, but it could easily hold a dozen men, and when the rest of the nets and ropes holding it popped free, the gig fell like a wooden avalanche down the almost vertical deck and smashed into the aelves below.

Eels and riders and their grey-eyed commander on his white-horned beast tried to dodge the gig and the broken nets flailing around it, but they were caught and dragged down into the spinning black water. Kora blinked at their fall, and then snapped her head back to stare at the Mother’s Luck.

The ship was shaking, and there was a low groan building in it, deep and painful, mixed with the snapping pops of boards and timbers. Then came the great crack as the Mother’s Luck’s spine broke, the ship’s keel snapping. It shattered in the spinning water, flying apart as if it’d been dropped from the heavens, and the last Kora saw was the dark water coming at her like a curving black mirror, and she stared into her own eyes in the moment before she smashed into it and lost the world.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Plip.

It was a soft sound, a single drop of water, falling.

Plip.

Nico heard the tiny splash, so loud in the great silence that surrounded him. Silence, and stillness. The subtle motion of water beneath him was gone. He was lying on stone, smooth and cold and wet. Unmoving. Nico opened his eyes, trying to understand, but there was nothing to see. Darkness wrapped around him, making him blind. Was he blind? He blinked his eyes, then ran a hand over them, but the only wound he found was the cut beneath his right eye, a gift from one of those eel-riding aelves. The aelves… the eels… the Mother’s Luck had broken apart in that whirlpool and he had fallen, plummeted towards the black water that he never seemed to reach…

Now this. Darkness, silence, cold wet clothes chafing his arse, and boots full of salt water.

‘I miss the eels already,’ he said, sitting up. In the dark, his words echoed strangely, stretching into a hiss – I miss, I miss, Isisss, sissss – and the nothing before his eyes seemed to stretch and twist into a thousand writhing strands of black. He closed his eyes and opened them but there was no difference, no change in the twisting darkness.

‘Damn me,’ he swore and stood. Damn me, damn me, damn me, damn, damn, damn… the echo mocked him, his words whispering in from every side, distorted and hollow. ‘Shut up,’ he shouted at those mocking ghost words, and the dark seemed to listen, his echo gone, silent, as if the black had eaten his words. He stood there, ears straining in the dark, and then it came.

Plip.

The tiny sound almost made him jump out of his wet boots. ‘Damn me,’ Nico said again, quieter. He raised his arms, feeling around him, but there was nothing, just empty space, so he carefully took a step… and then he was falling, pitching over something lying on the smooth floor, something soft and wet that groaned when his foot hit it. Nico caught himself before he could bash out his brains on the hard floor and twisted, grabbing the body he’d tripped over and slapping his hands across it until he found a neck to grab. The person was saying something, a male voice muttering words in a language that Nico didn’t understand, but the words turned into a hacking, choking noise when Nico’s hands tightened on their throat.

‘Who’re you?’ Nico demanded, and was answered with wheezing. He eased his grip a little, ready to tighten it down again, but then he finally saw something. A snapping arc of light lashed out from the hands of the person below him, striking Nico’s chest, and his muscles seized as if every part of him were cramping – and then it was gone. He was lying on his back, trying to pull in a breath while light bloomed to life around him, motes like tiny stars spinning away from the aelf that lay on the stone floor beside him, rubbing his throat.

‘Malas?’ Nico said as the aelf sat up. Of course. The mage had hit him with a spell, and his hands were now pointing at Nico threateningly.

‘Try that again and I’ll tear what passes for a soul from your stinking body, human.’

‘If you could do that kind of magic, you wouldn’t spend all your time hiding behind your sister.’ Nico pushed himself up again, rolling his shoulders. His soul may have been safe, but his back ached like he’d taken a lashing. Magic was cheating in a fight, but he did appreciate the light that the aelf had managed to pull out of nothing. The little stars had spread around them, and in their pale glow Nico could finally see.

They were on a small platform that jutted from the wall of a wide circular chamber, carved out of dark grey stone. The stone was smooth and so polished the thin witch light gleamed off it, and the curved walls ran up, up, up into darkness, the distant ceiling hidden by shadows. Occasionally a drop would fall from somewhere up there, flashing like a tiny star as it fell past them into the clear pool of water that filled the chamber below their ledge. The only exit from the cavern that Nico could see was an opening on the opposite side of the chamber, across the water.

‘Where in the hells are we?’ Nico said, pulling himself up to stand. The ledge they were on was only a few paces across, and he’d been lucky. If he hadn’t tripped over the aelf he would have fallen into the water. He crouched down, peering into it. Just below the ledge they were on, there was a crack in the stone and something gleamed inside it, a hint of reflection almost swallowed by shadow.

‘I don’t know,’ Malas said. ‘Not the hells, I don’t think. We’re not dead.’

Nico looked at the aelf, and Malas looked back. ‘Not yet. Even after all that.’ The Mother’s Luck, gone. All his life he’d dreamed of having a ship, of being free. Now… Now there wasn’t anything to do but to keep going, just like he had for his whole life before this.

‘Some of the others must have survived. Serim better damn well have. We can work together, looking for them.’

‘And if we find my sister instead of your Serim?’ Malas asked.

‘Then we can finish our business,’ Nico said. ‘And your family gets smaller.’ He plunged his hand into the water. It was cold as ice, but he ignored the pain, reaching for the gleam he’d seen. His fingers found something smooth and hard, a familiar grip, and he grabbed hold and jerked his hand out of the water, pulling his sword with it. The mirror-smooth face of the pool rippled, and then it rippled again, as if something below had moved. Nico frowned and stood up, taking a step back away from the water.

Malas glared at the bare blade, dripping salt water onto the stone. ‘You seem confident you’ll kill her.’

‘Well, I doubt she’ll cry mercy.’ Nico wiped the blade off as best he could on the smooth hide of his armour. ‘And she won’t win.’ He looked at the aelf, and Malas stared back, each silent, considering, until they heard a deep voice boom out of the door across the chamber.

‘’Ello? Who’s got the light?’

‘Ha!’ Nico shouted. ‘Grizi!’ In the dark opening a huge shape moved, and there she was, the ogor woman wrapped in dripping clothes, her anchor slung over her shoulder, chain dragging behind.

‘Somethin’ happened, cap’n,’ the ogor said. ‘I was punchin’ a flying fish, and then the boat fell over and I ended up in a hole, all wet. And no fish to eat.’ Even in the shadows, Nico could see the disappointment on Grizi’s face. But she brightened as she peered across the chamber at him. ‘You got one of them aelves, though!’

‘Yes, but you can’t eat this one. Not yet, at least.’ It was good to see the ogor’s face. They’d survived, she’d survived, so some of the others had to have survived. Serim and Adak and maybe–

‘How I come over?’ Grizi said, frowning at the water between them.

‘You don’t,’ Nico said. ‘We need to come over there.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Malas said. He nodded towards the pool, where a few ripples were spreading over the surface. ‘When you shouted, and every time that ogor speaks, the water shifts. As if there’s something moving under there.’

‘Can you bring those lights closer?’ Nico asked. Malas waved a hand, and a few of the little motes dropped down below the surface of the pool. The water stayed still as they dipped into it, and in their light Nico could see to the bottom. It was empty, nothing but water, smooth stone walls and dark grey sand at the bottom.

Sand that had a rippled pattern to it, perfect circles marching out from a tiny dark divot in its centre.

‘What is that?’ Malas asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Nico said. ‘But I don’t like it. We need some way to cross without getting into that water.’ He looked at the ogor, who was still staring at the aelf as she rubbed her belly. ‘Grizi. Is that chain long enough to reach us?’

‘Don’t know,’ Grizi said, and then before Nico could stop her she grabbed her anchor and threw it across the chamber. Nico dodged to one side and Malas to the other, barely avoiding the heavy steel hooks of Grizi’s massive weapon as it hit the wall and bounced off, chips of stone and dust showering them. The anchor rattled down onto the ledge, and below them the sand stirred, rippling the water before the grains settled back into stillness. ‘Yes!’ Grizi shouted, ignoring their curses, and she started pulling the anchor back.

‘No, Grizi, keep it here!’ Nico told her, but as he was speaking the chain brushed against the water, breaking the surface of the pool, and the sand at the bottom of the pool exploded up.

It burst into the water like a storm cloud, and there was something in it, something huge that shoved the sand aside as it launched itself upwards. It broke out of the water and Nico could see it, a hideous worm-like thing as big around as Grizi’s belly. It was segmented, with short, clawed legs hanging from each armoured part of its body. The appendages moved in waves as it reared up, its massive head swinging through the air. It had no eyes, its head nothing but a massive, circular maw of churning teeth with two viciously barbed mandibles on either side. That blind head moved from side to side, seeking, and then the creature shot down towards Grizi.

The ogor swung her chain-wrapped hand at the thing, a massive punch that could have smashed a mast in two. But the worm twisted, impossibly fast for something so huge, and its mandibles snapped shut on Grizi’s arm.

Grizi had been with Nico for years, had fought with him when he’d been nothing more than another driftborn thug stalking the planks of Misthåvn. He’d watched knives and swords bounce off her hide without leaving a mark, but when the great worm’s mandibles slammed shut on Grizi’s bicep, they tore through the ogor’s flesh, shearing hide and muscle and bone as easily as a sword through a sponge. The arm started to fall, but the worm spat its toothed gullet from its mouth, its pink, fang-studded throat turning inside out. It caught the arm – teeth and muscled flesh wrapping around it like some hideous, toothed tongue – and then swallowed it all back in one great gulp, jerking the severed limb and the chain it still clutched into its mouth.

Grizi grunted, sounding more surprised than pained, and she pounded her other hand into the thing’s side. The worm spun, clawed feet lashing across the ogor, tearing wounds into her tough hide. Then the mandibles snapped again, and the ogor’s other arm was off, disappearing down the monster’s distended gullet and then into its gaping maw.

‘Grizi!’ Nico shouted. He swung his sword at the worm’s writhing body, the tip of his blade smashing off one waving leg, but the thing didn’t even seem to notice. It was wrapping around the ogor like a snake, clawed feet clutching at her tight. Grizi was still standing, snarling and biting, her broad teeth bending the beast’s armoured hide, but it brought its head down on her.

The mandibles smashed in, driving their spiked ends deep into the ogor’s belly and back. Flailing like a gaffed fish, she cursed and bit as she bled, until the worm vomited its hideous gullet out around her head and shoulders. Its great maw of teeth clenched around the ogor and pulled her in, the chain still running out of its mouth, not seeming to bother it at all. Grizi’s massive legs kicked once, twice, then finally went still.

‘Damn it!’ Nico shouted, too angry to be frightened. He moved forward and grabbed the heavy anchor from the ledge. With a grunt, he shoved it off into the water and it plummeted towards the bottom. The chain, still running into the worm’s mouth, went suddenly tight, and the thing’s head twisted down towards Nico.

He saw the mandibles spread as the head dropped towards him, and Nico pulled back his sword. When those deadly jaws, each one as long as his massive blade, swept together, Nico was already moving. He ducked beneath their slicing strike and slammed his sword into the knot of muscle at the base of one mandible. Blood, green as kelp, splashed out and spattered across the rock, and the thing thrashed. It tried to spread its mandibles again, but the one that Nico had hit was slow, faltering as it pulled back. When it snapped at Nico a second time, he ducked the strike easily, stepping away from its strong side and slashing his blade across the muscles of the other mandible.

The worm shook its hideous head, the great fangs on either side of its mouth swinging uselessly. But still it lunged at him, wrapping its body around him. Claws dug into Nico, trying to gut him as the thing tightened – and then there was a peal of thunder and it loosened, letting him go as it shook with pain. Nico stumbled back and he saw Malas diving away from the beast, his grey-feathered cloak torn off by one grasping claw.

Magic might be cheating, but Nico didn’t mind that now, and he stepped forward, the point of his sword aimed at the worm. It had no belly, no top or bottom, and it was armoured all over, but he could see one of the places where Grizi had bit the thing and twisted one of those armour plates out of place, showing the soft flesh beneath. With a shout Nico slammed his sword into that exposed spot, sinking it almost to the hilt.

He felt the thing shudder as he twisted the blade before ripping it out again. The worm swayed over him, its gullet vomiting out once more, teeth flexing as it tried to grab him – and then it fell into the water. Another shudder ran through it, its hundreds of legs twitched, vibrating, and then it went still. The chain still connected to its mouth pulled it down, and the great hideous body lay coiled below the water, now clotted with its green blood and Grizi’s red.

Nico stood, panting, staring down at it, waiting for it to rise again, but the only thing that moved was another drop of water into the pool.

Plip.

‘It’s dead,’ Malas said, joining him on the edge.

‘Yeah,’ Nico said, unable to think of anything better. He cleaned his sword on his battered armour. ‘Thanks,’ he said. The aelf was bleeding from a claw mark on his shoulder.

Malas nodded back, picking a grey feather out of the blood. ‘I’ll miss that cloak,’ he said, then sat down, shaking. ‘I’m sorry about the ogor,’ he said, after taking a few breaths. ‘Even if she wanted to eat me.’

‘She wanted to eat everybody,’ Nico said. It was the truth, and the best epitaph he could think of for Grizi. He had thought nothing could kill her, that she would just keep going on forever, immortal and cheerful and stupid.

‘This wasn’t us,’ Malas said. ‘Not me or Kora. We didn’t mean any of this to happen. The Deepkin. The maelstrom. This… whatever this is.’ The aelf waved at the stone that surrounded them. ‘We baited a trap for you, but it wasn’t this.’

‘That supposed to make me feel better?’ Nico asked.

‘Not really.’ Malas looked at him. ‘That thing would have killed us, if we hadn’t worked together. I just wanted you to know.’

‘Well, now I know. And for what it’s worth I believe you. But your sister still started this, and if I ever meet her again I’m going to kill her for it.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ Malas said, looking at the dead worm. ‘Because now I’m really worried you might.’

Nico decided there wasn’t any good answer to that. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We need to get out of here. Which means we have to swim.’

Malas sighed and said something in Aelfish, but Nico could recognise a curse in any language, no matter how pretty. He decided to let that cheer him up, and smiling faintly, he stripped off his boots and got ready to cross the charnel-pit of the pool.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Kora woke to total darkness, and almost total silence.

Almost, but not quite.

Someone was breathing near her. Slow, regular. Sleep breathing, but not her brother’s. There was a rasp to this she didn’t know. Softly, she took a deep breath of her own. Blood and saltwater, smoke and sweat. The smell of skin, but not aelven. Her nose wrinkled at the slightly acrid tang. Human, but not too bad. A woman, probably. She was lying asleep beside her, probably close enough for Kora to reach, but she stayed still. The only other scents were of cold, dead stone. The floor beneath her, so hard and so strangely still. She was lying in darkness, on smooth polished stone, next to a sleeping human woman, and none of this made a damn bit of sense.

She moved, deliberately, silently. Putting space between her and the sleeper, she crept across the floor until she felt a wall. Kora pushed herself up to sit, and ran her hands over herself. She was in her armour, and her knives were still all there. Her blocking dagger was in its sheath, but her rapier was gone. Her belt pouch was there though, and she pulled out flint and steel, a little bit of tinder, and a stub of candle. She drew her dagger and laid it beside her, then made light.

The scrape of steel woke the sleeper, but the woman didn’t move. When Kora had the candle lit, she could see smooth grey stone walls and a smooth grey stone floor and Serim, stretched out and feigning sleep not far from her. They were in a corridor, two paces wide and twice that high, that ran off into darkness in either direction. There was nothing else except her rapier, sitting against the base of the opposite wall. Kora considered it, and the short swords that were held loosely in Serim’s hands.

‘If I pick up my sword, are you going to try to stab me?’ she asked quietly, but her words still seemed like a shout in the silence of that dark hall.

‘I don’t see much point to it,’ Serim said. She opened her eyes, looking at Kora. ‘Unless you mean to stab me.’

‘I’ve no issue with you. Except for your judgement in friends.’

‘I have the same issue myself, sometimes.’ The woman slowly, slowly gathered herself up, moving away from Kora’s sword. She waited until Kora had picked it up, and stood with her. ‘Do you think we’re dead?’ she said.

‘I don’t think so. I think I’d be angrier if I were dead.’ Kora slid her rapier into its scabbard. It was a strange and true thing to say. Her ship was gone, her crew was gone, her brother was gone, her rival was gone, and all she had left was a dark hall and a human she barely knew. Her rage at all of this was there, somewhere, but without anything to focus it on she couldn’t touch it.

‘So…’ Serim looked at her, her face a careful mask. ‘Do we stay together? Or are we still on different courses?’

‘I don’t think we’ll ever share the same course,’ Kora said. ‘But we’re both stuck going where the wind takes us sometimes.’

‘All right. Which way then?’ Serim asked. She was looking back and forth down the hall. Both sides were shadowy, featureless, but on one side something glimmered at the edge of the light. Kora took a few steps towards it and saw a pointed archway of white stone, holding up the corridor she supposed. There was nothing but more darkness beyond it, but it was something, so she started walking. Serim fell in behind, just as quiet.

They walked a long way down the corridor, passing through one of the white arches every fifty paces. There was nothing else to break the monotony of the grey walls, stone polished so carefully it reflected the little candle flame back like a mirror. Kora had stopped looking at the reflections after going through the first few arches. The flickering flame seemed to have a strange shape in the stone, as if there were something beneath it, a shape like a skull or flowers or shells. When she tried to see what it was, she felt herself being drawn in, as if the reflection were trying to catch her, and so she stopped watching.

They walked, the candle burned, and she wondered what would happen when it finally guttered out and they were trapped in the darkness. But before that happened she saw the distant light.

Kora stopped and blew out the candle. She could feel Serim stop behind her. ‘What?’ the woman breathed, but Kora just waited until she was sure. Yes. There was a light somewhere ahead, a light the colour of blood. She started forward, moving towards it, and Serim followed. They passed another arch, its white stone gleaming faintly pink, and the human finally saw it.

‘Firelight?’ she whispered.

‘No,’ Kora said. ‘I don’t know what it is. But it’s something.’

After that they both fell to silence, creeping up the corridor in the glowing crimson light. It grew, and they could finally see that there was another white arch ahead, and in its opening was a door of twisting lines. They slowed, edging up to it, and Kora could see that the door was iron, spotted with rust. There were lines cut into the metal, the thickest as wide as her finger, splitting and narrowing as they ran across the surface. Like rivers, or… veins. Veins that let that red, red light spill through. Kora moved up to them, and through the metal she could hear voices speaking faintly in Aelfish – but the dialect was strange, archaic and foreign.

‘Leave the body. We’ve no space to carry her, so say her blessings and take her supplies. We don’t know what lies ahead.’

‘King Yiris. With all respect, we surely cannot leave her here!’

‘We can and will. If he takes her… then maybe the Lord of Murder will bless and guide us to the ones who trapped us here.’

‘Your highness, you cannot call upon–’

‘Take care with your words, soulrender. Or you might find yourself giving me an order.’

‘Never, my king.’

There was a long pause, and Kora crouched near the door, trying to peer through one of the vein-like cuts in the metal, but the red light dazzled her eyes, keeping her from seeing the speakers or the room they were in.

‘We go!’

The king’s voice was followed by a sound, like some kind of animal snarling, and then there was silence. Kora and Serim stood beside the door, waiting, waiting, until they were sure they were gone.

‘Did you understand that?’ Serim asked.

‘Yes,’ said Kora. ‘I couldn’t see them, but I know who they were.’

‘Your friends with the eels and turtles?’

‘Not our friends.’ Kora touched the door. There was no handle, but she felt it move when she pressed on it. ‘Our legends, told to us by our parents. Our nightmares come to life.’

Serim looked at her, her hard face unreadable. Then she shrugged. ‘Are we going in?’

‘We are,’ Kora said, and pushed open the door.

The room beyond was huge, fifty paces across at least, and shaped like a hexagon. The six walls were the same grey, polished stone of the hall but rose much higher, towering over them. The ceiling was a high dome supported by white stone arches that rose from the sharp angles where the walls met. They ran to the centre of the dome overhead, meeting at a white ring of stone centred around the highest point. Nestled in that ring was a massive crystal of raw ruby. The jewel glowed, filling the whole chamber with crimson light, bright but unsettling, thick and somehow liquid as it poured down over the statue that stood in the centre of the chamber.

Serim stepped through the dark door, almost stumbling as her boot snagged on the uneven floor. Kora caught her arm, steadying the human as she continued looking around the room. There were two other doors and a broken pile of something lay on the floor partway between the statue and the far wall, but there was nothing else in here, no sign of the aelves or beasts they’d heard or other survivors from the Mother’s Luck or the Black Tern.

‘They’re gone,’ she said, letting go of Serim’s arm. The room picked up Kora’s words, whispering them back, They’re gone, gone, gone…

‘Is that…?’ Serim didn’t say the name, just stared at the statue.

‘Yes,’ Kora said, and the word bounced back from the walls, drawing out into a thin hiss, Yes, yes, esss.

The statue depicted an aelf, twice the height of Kora. He was covered in armour made of thick plates of cast iron, scabbed over with rust which ran like streaks of dried blood down the lines of ruby that had been set into it. Like the massive gem overhead, the red stones glowed brightly, contrasting against the black metal. The aelf’s face was worked in obsidian, the glossy dark stone carved into features sharp and cruel and beautiful. Its eyes were also rubies, polished smooth and glowing, and were both blind and all-seeing, looking nowhere and everywhere at once. Kora couldn’t look at them long.

‘Khaine,’ Serim breathed, barely a whisper, but the echo picked it up and magnified it: Khaine, Khaine, KHAINE. The last was a shout that seemed to fill the dome like the crash of a war drum.

Kora watched the doors, hands on her rapier’s hilt, but they stayed shut, silent. ‘Don’t name him.’ Him, him, him, echoed through the room, but the sound was quiet, slippery, ominous. ‘Not here, not ever.’ She watched the statue as if it were a sea serpent found unexpected in a net, coiled and ready to strike. The echo repeated ever around them, mocking Kora with her own voice, but she made herself ignore it and walked over to the statue.

She had to be careful of her footing. Unlike the hall, the floor here wasn’t smooth and polished. Instead, it was paved with stone hearts, each meticulously shaped to look as if it had just been ripped beating from a chest. They shifted beneath her boots, not set into the floor but packed tightly together, so that they couldn’t roll when stepped on. But they moved just enough to click and rasp, an uneasy noise that seemed to fill the space beneath the dome, like teeth grinding. She tried to ignore that too, but by the time she reached the base of the statue she was ready to smash every one of the grotesque things to gravel.

‘That’s… horrifying,’ Serim said. She’d followed along and stood with Kora, staring at the pedestal that held up the statue of the god. It was a great square slab of the same grey stone that made up the walls, but that slab was held up by a forest of steel spears, their points driven into the bottom of the stone. The length of every one of the spears had been decorated with rocks carved into the shapes of heads, hands or hearts, stacks of them impaled on each one. Hundreds of grotesquely realistic carvings, each a masterpiece of gore, and every one of them stained dark with old blood. On top of the slab, between the statue’s metal boots, a space had been carved into the stone, sized for a body. Steel spikes lined its bottom, sharp but hollow, like hundreds of serpent fangs ready to bite. There were heavy iron rings set around the spike-filled space, attachment points for chains, probably. A victim, a sacrifice, was meant to be placed here and bled, while they were still alive.

Serim looked at Kora, her stern face pale. ‘You aelves have unsettling gods, captain.’

‘That’s not my god,’ Kora said. ‘That god’s long dead, whatever Morathi’s followers believe. The Daughters of K–’ She made herself stop before she said the name. ‘Of him are deluded. But I wouldn’t tell them that.’

Serim shuddered. ‘No.’ The human moved around the statue, heading for the heap of debris that lay on the floor behind it, the only other thing in the chamber. ‘Could this…’ Serim paused, frowning. ‘Could we be in Hagg Nar?’

‘No,’ Kora said.

‘We don’t know anything about where we are.’

‘I know we’re not in the dark fortress of the witch aelves,’ Kora said. ‘If we were, we’d already be dead.’

Kora stared at the pile of wreckage ahead. ‘Is that the gig from your ship?’

‘It is.’ Serim kicked over a piece of wood that had broken off the shattered prow of the boat. There were letters on the other side in gold-gilt, Mama’s Boy. ‘Nico dropped this on those monsters.’

‘And there’s one still under it.’ There was a body pinned beneath the wreckage, a crushed allopex, Kora saw, as she bent to examine the dead, armoured beast. ‘Two bodies.’ There were two saddles on the back of the allopex. One was empty, but the other still held the corpse of an aelf strapped to it. Kora looked her over, the strange armour, the almost colourless eyes. A Deepkin, for real.

‘What does that say?’ Serim asked, pointing to a line of script worked into the aelven woman’s armour.

‘It’s hard to read. The style is old, strange. But…’ She slowly worked the twisting lines out into meaning. ‘“Life will give life, until we are all whole again.”’ Kora shook her head. ‘It means nothing to me. And it doesn’t sound like something a Daughter would say.’ She stepped away from the bodies. ‘This all fell into the whirlpool and came out here. And so did the ones we heard in this room just now.’ She frowned at the wreckage. ‘Nico sent them here, when he knocked them into the water.’

‘Do you think he made a mistake when he kept them from stuffing you into a net and hauling you off?’ Serim asked.

‘I think your battle-captain did what he does best,’ Kora said, her hands resting on the hilts of her sword and parrying dagger. ‘He acted without thinking, and now, in addition to being stuck wherever this is, we are stuck here with the Deepkin.’

‘We’re stuck here because you were trying to trick Nico into an ambush,’ Serim said, rounding on her. ‘I know why your fleetmaster wants him dead. He’s messing with trade, taking things that your armada wants. It’s business. But what’s in this for you? Why is it so personal? Is this whole thing, your challenge, this ambush gone bad all just because Nico cost you that damned pennant?’

Kora stared back at her. ‘You don’t understand what he cost me. And why I’m going to make him pay me back in blood.’

Blood, blood, blood… The word echoed under the dome, and Kora shook her head. ‘Enough. This is between me and Nico, not you.’ She looked at the two other doors that led from the room.

‘Let’s start with this one.’ Kora paced across the clicking hearts to one of the doors. Behind it, there was a white arch of stone set in the wall, an opening to another passage. But it was blocked by a wall of shadow, a sheet of glossy darkness like black glass.

‘What is this?’ Kora stepped close, staring into the dark glass. It gleamed in the ruby light, but the red glow didn’t seem to penetrate its depths… Kora peered deep inside, trying to see, but there was nothing, just currents of black twisting in on each other behind the reflection of her face. Nothing, but that nothing pulled at her, another kind of swirling current, and without thinking she raised one hand and touched the glass, felt it smooth and cold beneath her fingers – and then something thrummed through her, a tiny twist of pain from her fingertips through her heart and head, and she jerked her hand away. In front of her, on the other side of the glass, the currents snapped into shape, a reflection of her face that stared at her with the empty eyes of a mask before sinking into the depths. As it fell away, the mask’s mouth stretched, as if it were screaming. Or drowning.

She stepped back, shuddering, the tips of her fingers still cold.

‘Some other mystery,’ Serim said. ‘As if we needed another.’

‘Do you seek answers, then?’

The sound of the voice made Kora take another step back from the dark wall. It had come from there – but it hadn’t. Those words had run through her head like the edge of a building migraine. But she knew, somehow, that something behind the wall had spoken to her, and in the darkness before her there was a shape slowly resolving, swimming through the solid glass like a serpent through water. As it grew close she could see a terrible echo of her screaming reflection in it, but it resolved slowly into a very different face. The corpse face of a man long dead, pale skin as thin as parchment, stretched tight over muscles, bone and tendon. His ears were tattered scraps of leather, his hair faint white wisps clinging to ragged remnants of a skull. The back of the head was gone, torn away with the neck and body, just jagged pieces of bone and scraps of flesh trailing behind the face like a hideous comet tail. The dead thing reached the inside edge of the glass wall, then pressed forward, slowly, as if it would break free. But the glass stretched around it, clinging to it like a thin film of black water, holding it in, and it stopped before them, hanging dead and motionless in the centre of the wall.

‘I can give you answers.’

‘What are you?’ Kora drew her sword and pointed it at the face. Its pale lips never moved while its words ached in her head – a tight, unmoving line; a thin covering over the thing’s rows of square, even teeth, except for the two top canines, which were twice as long as they should be and sharp as daggers.

‘I am a scholar, an explorer, a vampire. I am Larus of Shyish. Or at least a piece of him.’

‘A hideous piece,’ Serim whispered.

‘Don’t be impolite, Serim. My existence in this place requires certain sacrifices.’

‘So we see,’ Kora said, staring at Larus’ dead face. ‘What can you tell us, vampire?’

‘Many things,’ Larus whispered in her head. ‘But what you mean, I think, is what do I know about this place? Let me start with a name. The Ulara’idon. The Harrowdeep.’

Kora looked at Serim, who shook her head. ‘I’ve heard… scraps of stories. A secret place. A labyrinth, hidden and forgotten. A maze with a treasure at its centre. There are a thousand tales like it in Ulgu, most of them lies.’

‘No lie, this,’ Larus said. ‘But forgotten… yes. It is a place made of shadows and illusion, meant to be forgotten. It is a place that reaches out and gathers in, and those it takes vanish, never seen again. It is a maze that everyone solves, and no one escapes.’

‘No one yet,’ Kora said, and in her mind came a whispered kind of pain, dry and tattered, like the dead wings of insects and razors blowing together in a cold wind. Larus’ laugh, lacerating through her head, except somehow the cavern around her caught that unnerving pain and whispered it back to her ears, a terrible, impossible echo.

‘You all arrive with such swagger. I wonder if the Harrowdeep feeds on the pride that it strips from its victims.’

‘You say a lot, but you give precious few answers, Larus.’ Kora shook her head, trying to clear the ache of his words. ‘Do you really know anything but a name?’

‘I know almost everything that happens in this dark maze, Kora. Bits of me are scattered through all this shadeglass, and every bit of me is aware. I am alive in this dark death, and I listen, and I learn.’ Larus’ painful voice paused, then came back, edged with the ache of dark amusement. ‘And I know, too, when someone wants to trick me into speaking.’

‘You made the offer, vampire,’ Kora said.

‘I did. And it’s up to you to pay the cost. I will tell you more. But you must pay with blood.’

Kora’s hand tightened on her sword, and she slid into her fighting stance, while behind her she heard Serim’s hands move to her own weapons.

‘So suspicious,’ Larus said. ‘What harm do you think I can do to you? As little as you can do to me. I want blood, but just a taste from each of you. Just enough to give me eyes and tongue and ears once more… for a little while at least.’

‘Just a taste,’ Kora said. She looked at Serim, who frowned but nodded. ‘All right,’ she said to Larus. ‘We’ll risk this shore. You’ve got your bargain, bloodsucker. Now how do we do this?’

‘Just wet my lips, captain.’ There was a hungry note to the grating hurt of Larus’ voice, a threatening hint of greed. Kora considered the dead face warily, and then reached down and pulled one of her throwing daggers free. She used its sharp blade to cut her arm, then tore a strip of cloth away from the shirt beneath her armour. Kora soaked the little piece of cloth in her blood, then reached out with it and painted the glass over the dead husks of those lips red.

There was a second of nothing. Then the lips ripped apart, gaping open as the jaws behind them spread wide, showing in sharp detail all those even, brown teeth set in black gums, the oversized fangs cutting through the air as Kora snatched her hand back fast, just fast enough to keep them from tearing into her flesh.

A leathery tongue scraped across the lips, and a painful chuckle echoed through Kora’s head. ‘So good. But not quite a taste. A little more, captain.’ Those withered lips had twitched as Larus spoke, and now they moved a little more, stretching into a hideous almost-smile. ‘If you please.’

Kora stared at the trail of blood running down from the cut she’d made. ‘Here.’ She took her throwing knife and touched Larus’ mouth with the tip of the blade. ‘Maybe this will help you eat politely.’

Kora watched the trail of blood travel down the blade to the dead lips. Larus lapped at the flow of red, but he went easier this time. When the thread of blood thinned to nothing, Kora pulled her hand away.

‘Our answers?’ she said.

‘When I have tasted you both.’

‘You’ll give me something now,’ Kora said. ‘To make up for your manners.’

Larus’ face stretched into a smile again. The blood Kora had fed it had made the skin less tight, the lips more motile. Behind the loose folds of eyelids, the wrinkled remains of eyeballs were beginning to swell and shift. ‘All right, captain. I will tell you this. Before you fell into the dark and the deep, one of you sent a group of aelves before you. You call them simply Deepkin, but they are truly named the Idoneth, and in their way they are more dangerous than the murderous Daughters of Khaine, because they want more than your life. They will consume your soul if they catch you, captain, and King Yiris, the leader of their band, has pronounced vengeance upon each of you for sending him to this place. Even now he rides through these dark passages on his deepmare, hunting for you.’

‘We knew some of that already, vampire. But at least that shows you know something.’ Kora held out her knife to Serim, and the woman made a cut in her skin and pressed the dagger to the vampire’s lips. Larus lapped the blood up eagerly, and as before it changed him. Dead flesh became moist, plump, seemingly alive. His eyes swelled up, each regaining a brown iris and black pupil. His skin went from the dead white of sand to a ruddy pink, and the wisps of white hair became a streaming mane of black edged with silver that almost covered the bloody shards of skull and flesh forming the back of the vampire’s head. Larus looked almost alive now, floating behind his thin film of glass, and Kora tried not to think about how the blood had slipped through that barrier.

‘All right, Larus. You’ve had your taste.’ Kora tied off the cloth she’d wrapped around her cut and pointed her dagger at the restored face. ‘Tell us what you know.’

‘I will tell you what you need,’ he said. The vampire’s mouth moved with his words, though his voice still echoed in Kora’s head. But it was less grating, less painful. Either his restoration had helped with that, or she had grown used to it.

‘This is the Harrowdeep, the Shadow-flux that lies beneath the Helleflux of the Shadowsea, beneath the sand and the stone upon which the hidden city of Urama Othal was built. But Harrowdeep is older than that city and is its doom. The witch-aelves and Idoneth that built Urama Othal were drawn down, into the labyrinth that lay beneath their city. They built rooms like this at first, thinking they were claiming this place for themselves, for their god. They didn’t know that the Harrowdeep was claiming them instead.’

‘I don’t need history, Larus,’ said Kora. ‘I need to know how to get out.’

‘There is only one sure way out of the Harrowdeep. Death.’ Larus’ brown eyes considered her. ‘Though even death is not sure in this place. Especially now. Especially for you. But you don’t want that. So there is only the centre. Serim spoke of stories of treasure there. Yes. There are riches scattered through the maze, and more arrive all the time, carried here by those people drawn into the whirlpools that form when the Orb Duplicita is reflected in still water.

‘Like all things, those riches come to the centre of the labyrinth. And like all things, they stay there. Forever. The greatest treasure of the labyrinth is its exit, but while everyone is drawn to the centre, where it is, the closer they are to it, the more it eludes them. And so they spiral themselves into darkness and madness, and their torment drives the great whirl of magic that sustains this place. You will see this when you get there. When it’s too late. When you are trapped, forever.’

‘You’re a cheerful sort,’ Serim muttered.

‘I am happy, in my cold, dead way,’ Larus agreed. ‘Embedded and scattered as I am, I cannot escape the Harrowdeep, but I cannot be drawn in. I wait instead, and watch, and learn. Until the maze has eaten all the realms, I learn.’

‘You say all things are drawn to this centre,’ Kora said. ‘But I don’t want to be drawn by whatever current flows through this place. I want to sail there directly. Do you know a route?’

‘As with all things here, it changes. The shadows shift, the illusions alter, and you see doors instead of walls. Enemies where there was nothing.’ Larus considered her. ‘You may think that the greatest hazards in the Harrowdeep are the things that have been brought here, things like you and the Deepkin. But the real danger is in believing. In what you see, or hear, or touch. Everything can be a lie in this place, and that truth is the greatest danger of all. It can break you, into a thousand scattered pieces.’ Larus laughed, and though the sound was less grating in Kora’s head, the echo was worse in her ears. ‘But you asked for a path, so I’ll give you one. The heart is deep, so go low, and when you find the shadeglass follow it. The clear, hard death magic of it cleaves the soft spells of illusion. At least sometimes.’

‘That’s all you have?’ Kora said. ‘What about my brother? Anyone else from my crew? Did they survive?’

‘Or Nico?’ Serim asked.

‘Yes, or Nico,’ Kora said.

‘That is all you need,’ Larus said. ‘This is the dark in the deep. This is the place where you can die without knowing, live without dying, and not understand the difference. Go hunt for the centre. If the others still live, that’s where they are going. Find that place before it finds you, and then you will understand. There is no escape, because all roads in all the realms lead to this place, and every foot will walk the labyrinth eventually, until darkness claims us all.’

Larus laughed again, louder than before, and as he did his face pulled back, the glass going smooth behind it. The painful sound of his mirth died in Kora’s skull as the vampire’s face receded, lost in the dark shadows of the glass, but the echoes of it remained, rising and falling in the blood-coloured room.

CHAPTER NINE

‘You know, I spent my whole damn life wanting to be like you Scourge Privateers,’ Nico said to Malas as they walked through the empty hall. It was grey, with gleaming walls and white arches, and it seemed to go on forever. ‘I pulled myself out of the half-sunk drift I was born to, fighting and scrapping and scheming until I finally had a ship like yours, a fancy uniform like yours, could be all haughty and cocky like you, and then in one day your sister takes it all away. And now I’m stuck again, wishing I could have what you have again. Except now it’s not a boat, it’s drier clothes and magic lanterns.’

‘If I told you your envy was misplaced, you probably wouldn’t believe me, would you?’ Malas asked. His lights spun around him like tiny stars, illuminating their path.

‘What?’ Nico looked at the man walking beside him. ‘You’re going to say you had it rough too? The boat you were given was too small?’

Malas shook his head. ‘Never mind,’ he said, then stopped. The long hall had reached another intersection, a passage splitting off the one they had been following. They’d passed a few of these before, but for the first time this one was different. There were no pointed white arches, no straight, high walls. This passage was a tunnel through the grey stone, round and irregular. Bumps and hollows covered the tunnel walls, but still they were smooth, still polished and glossy. Carved by water, polished by sand, the stone looked… alive. Like the gullet of some vast sea creature, wet and hungry to swallow them up. It was as dark as the others, but there was a noticeable drop to it as it curved off into the shadows.

‘Well?’ Malas asked.

‘Anything different seems good,’ said Nico. ‘But deeper in is deeper in.’

‘You have a way of pulling a knot out quickly,’ Malas said. ‘But I agree. Down seems dangerous.’

Dangerous. Monsters and darkness, and what else was there in this place? Then the sound drifted up to them. A snatch of Aelfish, echoing up through the tunnel. Malas leaned forward eagerly at the sound, but then he frowned.

‘What is it?’ Nico whispered.

‘Someone giving orders,’ Malas breathed. ‘Telling them to turn the eels back the other way.’

‘Eels,’ Nico said. ‘Your Deepkin.’

‘Yes.’ Malas looked at him. ‘We’d avoid them, if we were smart.’

‘We would, but they were taking captives,’ Nico said. Could they have Serim? Or Kora? Anyone? Only the gods knew. ‘Well. At least now we know which way we’re going.’

‘Deeper is deeper,’ Malas said, and the lights surrounding him dimmed. They started forward, moving into the new tunnel.

The passage curved and dropped, the descents sometimes shallow, sometimes so steep they had to scrabble down on all fours. Occasionally another passage intersected theirs, shaped the same but smaller, but they kept moving down this one. They went quietly, careful, stopping frequently to listen, and occasionally caught other snatches of Aelfish from somewhere far ahead. If the echoes in this place weren’t lying, that is. But they kept moving, boots and fingers scrabbling at the tunnel’s smooth walls – until Nico’s fingers felt something rougher, sharp-edged.

‘Stop,’ he whispered, and Malas drew up, staring back at him. A few of the floating motes of light came drifting back towards Nico, letting him see what his fingers had found.

It was a line of teeth, a bit of nasal cavity, the side of one empty eye socket. Part of the side of a skull, either carved with great skill into the stone or embedded in it somehow, Nico couldn’t tell.

‘There’s one up here too.’ Malas nodded towards a shadowed hollow a little ahead of him. They walked forward, and there was the skull, staring at them with empty eyes. They looked back at it, until Nico shrugged. ‘What are we expecting down here? Flowers?’

They kept going, still keeping silent, Malas’ lights dim and close but bright enough to reveal more and more of the skulls appearing, all of them placed to face more or less out into the corridor. Their placement seemed random at first, dotted around the tunnel, above them and at their feet, but as they grew more numerous they came in groups, short lines, tapered curves. Eventually one group kept going, forming a continual line that ran down the side of the tunnel, curving up and down like the carving of a flame. It slowly grew in width as other groups of carvings dotted the ceiling and floor, all of them worked into those same tapered, flame-like shapes. Hundreds of skulls, staring at them with empty eyes and locked teeth. They were all the same size, the same grey colour, which made Nico think they must have been carved into the smooth walls. That only made their sightless watch slightly less eerie, and that was before they found the first glowing one.

Its light spilled down the corridor, and they froze when they saw it, thinking the Deepkin had heard them and turned back. But the tunnel was silent and the light didn’t move. They crept forward, and Nico could make out a single crystal skull set among all the grey ones, glowing with a light that seemed strangely impure. It seemed to fill the corridor grudgingly, a light like stagnant water, still and foetid, and the shadows it cast were dark, too dark.

‘There’s another,’ Malas said, pointing down the tunnel. They moved towards it, another glowing crystal skull, and past it was another, and as they continued the crystal skulls appeared more and more along the walls, like corpse stars, filling the tunnel with their queasy light. Malas’ little constellation of lights vanished at a wave of his hand, the skull light making them unnecessary, but Nico remained ill at ease. He’d worried that the aelves they were stalking would see Malas’ light, but the glow spilling out of the crystal carvings was worse – the white of exposed bone or fresh pus, unsettling and unclean. And it changed the shadows that they cast. They both had only the one shadow now, despite the light coming from different sources in different places, and those too-dark shadows were out of sync with the bodies that created them, moving the wrong way sometimes, or too slow, or worse, too fast.

Before him, Malas stopped, and Nico forgot about the cursed shadows. There was an opening up ahead: a rough, dark circle. Another room, a different tunnel? Nico couldn’t tell from here, but the twisting stripe of skulls carved in the wall grew wider as it approached the opening, as if this were the base of a tongue of grey, skull-carved flame.

Nico pulled his sword free, holding it in front of him, and Malas was whispering to himself, his hands weaving in preparation. Nico watched the aelf, watched his shadow flicker, moving from behind Malas to his front, and then back. Nico shook his head and stepped around the aelf mage, making sure not to touch the shade. He moved down the tunnel, keeping as silent as he could, until he reached the end and could see into the vast open space beyond.

Before him was a great circle, hundreds of paces across, that had no ceiling or floor – a pit stretching up and down into darkness, its lumpy-smooth stone walls perfectly straight, so much so that they had to have been constructed, though Nico couldn’t imagine how. Where their tunnel ended, a ridge bulged out from the wall, a walkway a few paces across that ringed the entire circle. Bands of skulls were carved in the wall over it, lines of them twisting in and around each other like a fraying braid. The glowing crystal skulls set in those bands spread a sickening light over the path, and in that pale glow Nico could see the entrances to other tunnels opening off the walkway as it curved around the empty circle.

There was darkness over them, and darkness beneath, but in the centre of the great circle there was another kind of darkness. A pillar of gushing blackness, running from above to below, was set in the middle of the vast chamber. The black falls filled fully half of the space, but it was so dark that Nico saw it simply as nothing, a great shadow that completely blocked his line of sight. There was nothing there, a black column of blindness that slashed across his vision. It was hard to look at, but Nico forced himself to. There was something about that darkness, something beyond its terrible emptiness that made his eyes ache. It was a sense of motion, as if the column were formed of shadows gone liquid that were falling in silence from above to far, far below.

‘What is that?’ Nico asked Malas as the mage stepped out into the cavern.

‘Not water,’ the aelf said, staring with wide eyes at the column. ‘It’s shadow magic, pure. So much…’ His hands clenched into fists. ‘I can’t cast in here. Any spell I tried would explode into ruin.’

Magic, Nico thought. Unlike swords, it could never be counted on when you really needed it. ‘Can we go out there?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Malas said, though he hesitated a little. ‘Just don’t go near that black fall.’

Nico glanced at the yawning gulf that stretched between the edge of the walkway and the dark slash of liquid magic. ‘Not an issue,’ he said, and stepped out. It was cooler in the great shaft, and he felt a breeze slip past him, chill and wet. Looking down, Nico could see tiny drops of darkness beading on his skin like water, then flying away again.

‘We can’t stay here long,’ Malas warned, his voice shaking.

Nico answered by moving, starting around the curve, wary of the drop beside him. How were they going to tell where the aelves had gone? There were at least six other tunnels opening off this ledge, and there were others higher and lower in the cavern, and those damned eels could fly…

And then he saw the shadow.

Long and black and sinuous, it flickered out of the tunnel ahead like the tongue of a snake, there, and then flashing away, gone – the way the aelves’ shadows had sometimes jumped in front of them and then back. He stopped and Malas almost ran into him, and Nico had to fight the impulse to whirl around. But he stayed still and silent, pointing to the tunnel entrance. Malas must have seen the shadow, because his hand went to the long knife that hung from his belt.

And then Kora stepped out onto the ledge.

Nico blinked, staring at her, and he saw her eyes widen as she saw him. Her rapier was out and up, its tip turned to him, pointing at his throat.

‘You,’ he said.

‘You,’ she answered, and they started to step towards each other. Then he saw Serim standing behind Kora, her eyes furious as she waved her hand at him. He drew up, and Kora stopped too, staring past his shoulder at her brother.

‘Don’t!’ Serim hissed at him, just as Kora whispered ‘Malas!’ They were all staring at each other, angry and confused and jubilant.

‘Quiet, all of you!’ Malas said, trying to keep his voice down. ‘The Deepkin are–’

‘Right ahead of us, we know,’ said Kora. ‘We’ve been following them.’

‘Us too,’ Nico said. Serim stepped around Kora, walked to him and he grasped her arm and pulled her close. ‘I knew you were too tough to die.’

She grinned at him. ‘I had my doubts about your luck holding this time.’

‘Never doubt my luck,’ Nico said. ‘How many times do I have to tell you I can’t die?’

Malas stepped around them, going to his sister, and they shared a quick embrace, then pulled apart.

‘The Deepkin are called the Idoneth,’ Kora told him. ‘A branch of our people lost to us for good reason, apparently. The one leading them on that horned beast, the deepmare, is called King Yiris. He’s hunting all of us. But Nico especially.’

‘A king,’ Nico said. ‘About time I had some quality enemies.’ His eyes flicked to Kora.

She didn’t even give him the satisfaction of rolling her eyes. ‘Have you seen any others?’ Serim asked him, interrupting his next insult.

‘Grizi,’ he said. ‘But she was killed.’

‘Killed?’ Serim said, shocked. ‘What could kill–’

‘Later,’ he said. ‘This isn’t the place. These Idoneth Deepkin, they may still be near.’

‘Not near, battle-captain.’ Kora was pulling her rapier free, as her other hand dipped down, grasping one of her throwing knives. ‘Here.’ Nico spun, saw the shadow of the beast on the wall of the next tunnel and swung his blade up.

It came out of the tunnel entrance, a blunt, blind head armoured in silver, followed by a sinuous body. A fangmora eel, as big around as Nico, and mounted on its back an aelf whose searching eyes found them almost instantly. He opened his mouth to shout and there was a flash of silver through the air, and suddenly he was pitching in his saddle, thrashing as blood poured out of his mouth. The knife Kora had thrown had smashed through his teeth and buried itself somewhere in his upper palate, and the only noise the monster-riding aelf could make was a gurgling cough as he choked on his own blood.

When the knife had hit, the aelf had dropped the reins that were connected to the armour wrapped around the eel’s head. Free of that control, the beast surged out into the open, its sinuous body driving it through the air, blind head twitching and searching for escape, for prey, for something. What it found was the black fall.

Somehow the eel sensed the silent flow of darkness right before it touched it. It spun in the air, trying not to make contact, but it was a fraction of an instant too late. As it turned away, its side brushed the fall, and its mouth opened, teeth flashing as it silently screamed its agony. It was still moving, still turning away, and Nico could see what the shadow magic’s touch had done. It had stripped away everything it passed over, like a perfect knife, infinitely sharp. There was a clean cut in the side of the eel where the scales were gone, the red muscle beneath exposed, where nerves and bone and blood vessels flashed horribly in the pallid skull light. The beast convulsed, and the twitching movement drove more of its body into the column, including its rider. The aelf stiffened at the cold touch of the shadow fall, going silent as the eel thrashed again. In that moment Nico could see the rider, could see the armour peeled away, could see red meat and blood and organs all holding in place for that tiny slice of time. Then beast and rider were falling, tumbling down into the darkness, their bodies diminishing every time they brushed that column of the black fall until they were gone, lost in dissolution and darkness.

‘Sigmar save me,’ Nico said, and it was a prayer and a curse, but it was also too late. More eels and riders were swarming out of the tunnel ahead, and with them a group of the bald, eyeless aelves that had been riding the turtle-borne shipwreck, and then, of course, the aelf on the monstrous three-tailed deepmare. King Yiris, if Kora could be trusted.

Another one of the aelven captain’s knives flashed past Nico’s head, flying at the king, but the Deepkin batted it out of the air with his shield and snapped orders in Aelfish, pointing at them with his polearm.

The eyeless ones took their places blocking the path, bows pointed at them, Yiris hovering behind them while the eel riders went up, arcing high overhead and then swimming down, putting themselves in front of the tunnel entrance that Nico and the others had just left. Trapping them on the narrow path, between bows and monsters and a liquid fall of shadow that could dissolve them to nothing.

‘Gods damn me,’ Nico said, and this time it was just a simple, tired statement.

‘You don’t need gods for that, human.’ The king stared over his eyeless archers at Nico. ‘You did that well enough. You brought us here, to this cursed maze, and for that you will suffer, until you beg us to tear your soul away.’

‘What in the hells?’ Nico straightened up, shifting his sword to rest on his shoulder. ‘Why are you aelves incapable of admitting you started something? You attacked my boat! You killed my crew! You! You did that, Yiris, king of eels. I dropped a boat on you to keep you from killing me, and here you are whingeing about it like I bloody took a drink of your beer! What is it that makes you incapable of accepting the fact that when you try to kill people, we might try to kill you back?’

‘The same thing that keeps me from arguing with the fish I kill for my meat.’ The aelf’s grey eyes were filled with contempt. ‘You are made to be consumed, and your thrashing is an obscenity. As is your mouth. How do you know that much of my name to butcher?’

‘Your mother told it to me last night,’ Nico said. Somewhere behind him, Serim sighed, and from closer he could hear Kora growl.

‘Is this your plan, battle-captain? Griping and insults?’

Nico didn’t look to her, but he made himself smile anyway. ‘Do I need anything else to fight these fish-kissers?’

‘How about some of your supposed luck?’ Kora said.

‘Luck’s for the ready.’ Nico shifted his shoulders, adjusting the grip on his sword. If they wanted to torture him, they’d have to take him alive. Which meant they’d try to be careful. At least at first, before he’d knocked too many of them over this edge.

A figure had stepped out from behind the deepmare, an aelf wrapped in robes and armour, carrying a hooked staff and a helmet with a glowing green lantern. He snapped his fingers and the eyeless aelves all shifted, moving together. The first rank of archers slung their bows and pulled out nets, broad and weighted, and blunt tridents meant to catch and hold and pin. The lantern aelf took his place behind them, shifting his barbed weapon, and over his shoulder drifted a gleaming silver shape, long and narrow and sharp-billed. A fish, a rakerdart, small but deadly. Some kind of nasty pet, as dangerous as the aelf’s hook.

From above and behind him, the king barked something in Aelfish, and Nico didn’t need Kora to translate. The aelves were starting to move forward, ready to tangle and catch.

As if they were going to wait on them.

‘So are you ready?’ he asked Kora. ‘Because here’s the plan. Go!’

He didn’t wait for her reaction. Nico uncoiled, springing forward. One of the archers snapped a shot at him, and Nico slapped the arrow aside with his sword as he charged. The other archers stopped, held by a command from their king. The ones with tridents surged forward, blunt weapons raised to hold him back as the ones with nets swung in behind them, but Nico dropped and slid across the smooth floor. His boots smashed into the shin of the first aelf, sending her flying back into one of the net bearers, and Nico spun his sword, cracking it into the knee of another Deepkin. The blade bit deep, severing tendons and arteries, and sent the aelf down with a howl.

Nico shoved one boot against the injured aelf, pushing him off his blade and spinning himself back, away from the net that came smacking down on the stone where he’d been. He caught the rope strands with a hand and jerked the net, bringing his back to the wall as the overbalanced net holder stumbled forward and then pitched over the side of the walk. He fell shrieking, and Nico surged to his feet, sword up as the aelves charged in.

He slapped away a trident, moving to drive his sword into the gut of the eyeless aelf holding it, but had to jerk his head back as the rakerdart darted at him, its sharp bill narrowly missing his eye. He swung at it, then twisted his sword fast to block the hooked staff of the lantern aelf. He snarled at Nico and spun his weapon in his hands, trying to hook Nico’s sword, arms, legs, anything, while on either side of him an aelf was driving in with swinging nets. Nico cursed, slashing fast with his sword, keeping them all back. He could hear shouting, the clang of swords, Serim cursing and the sharp hiss of breath that Kora let out when she threw a knife, but if they didn’t wade in beside him soon–

And even as he was thinking it, one of the eyeless Deepkin holding a net jerked and grunted, blood splashing out of their nose and mouth as a curving blade came ripping through their chest. And then they were gone, jerked up and away as grey wings beat overhead.

Wings. There were wings beating in the open air between the edge of the walk and the deadly black falls. Great grey wings of bone and leather, wings that held up women, more aelves by the look of their faces, but aelves with wings and tails, and eyes wracked with madness. They held curved swords in each hand and they were swinging them at everyone they could reach.

The lantern Deepkin spun his hooked staff, trying to slash the wings from one of the flying aelves, while his rakerdart whirled around her. But there were more of them, and another of the eyeless Deepkin carrying a trident went down, one of those hooked blades tearing out her throat; and then an arrow slammed into the belly of the winged aelf that had swung that sword. She flew backwards, screaming, and vanished into the black falls, scrubbed out of existence by the shadow magic’s touch.

Nico didn’t have time to curse, barely had time to breathe as he whipped his sword up, slashing away another net. The Deepkin were pulling back behind the lantern aelf and drawing their bows. Their king barked orders in Aelfish, his mount snarling and slashing at the air with claws and tails. The winged aelves close to them circled, wary, but another group of them tore into the eel riders that had been blocking the way back, making a thrashing ball of wings, slimy bodies and flashing blades. That left the walk behind him clear of everything but Kora and the others.

‘Come on!’ Serim shouted at him. The captain and her brother were already running, pelting around the circular walk past the opening to the tunnel they’d just left. Nico shoved himself off the wall and sprinted after them, moving faster when a long arrow ticked off one of the grey skulls carved in the wall near his head. He followed Serim through the pool of blood that marked where the eels had been waiting, watching as Kora and Malas reached the first tunnel past the one they had come down – and then went past it.

‘Where are we–’ he shouted, but there was a sound behind him, a shriek and a snarl, and he threw a look over his shoulder. The eyeless aelves were gone, pulled back into a tunnel probably, but their king was cutting across the chamber, his deepmare skirting dangerously close to the black fall. Swarming behind him, the winged aelves screamed as they dived after his beast. But the armoured aelf was pointing his bloody blade at Nico, aiming it like a lance at his heart.

Nico almost stopped, almost spun to face the king, but he heard Serim shout his name, and that was enough to make him realise how stupid it would be to stop and fight. So he kept running. Up ahead, Kora and Malas were at the next tunnel and Serim was not far behind. When she reached its opening, she turned, looking back at him. Even at this distance he could see her eyes widen, read the silent curse on her lips, and he knew how close the Idoneth king must be. He leaned forward, knees pumping, his breath rasping through his teeth. If he could reach the tunnel–

Behind him, the king’s deepmare hissed like a great serpent, so close he could feel the breath of it, echoed by the shrieks of the flying aelves. Too close, and Nico started to spin, his sword coming up as he slashed it around. But as he turned he saw Malas stepping forward, and heard the mage snap out words that made the air tremble around them as their shadows suddenly went mad.

The too-singular, too-dark shades cast by the distressed skull light shattered, each turning into dozens of shadows that twitched and flailed, convulsing around each other. They stretched across the walls and floor, raced out through the open air that separated the column of falling darkness from the grey stone walls. The shadows that touched the black falls swelled, grew huge and bloated. They slammed home, devouring the other shadows around them, and laid their dark hands and claws on the people or beasts that had made them.

Nico was falling, twisting through the air, swinging his two-handed sword in an arc that should have smashed into the scaled hide of the Idoneth king’s deepmare. But instead he saw the shadows flash around him, strobing across his vision like inverted lightning strikes, and then he was on his back on the walkway, being pulled by ice-cold hands.

His shadow jerked Nico towards the ledge, and he slammed his boots down, shoving himself back towards the wall. Around him he could hear the screams as the winged aelves and the Deepkin king battled their own shades, but Nico had no attention to spare for that. Cursing, he fought against the pull of the darkness. He pushed until he could reach out and dig his fingers into the eye sockets of the skulls carved into the walls, gripping them like death as his bloated shadow jerked and pulled. The muscles in Nico’s arm bulged as the shadow pulled his legs inexorably towards the edge–

And then it was shrinking, its grip on him faltering, falling back to what it had been before the madness of Malas’ magic had made it come alive. Nico lay sprawled on the floor, muscles trembling, but he could hear the shouts of the Idoneth king and the roar of his mount, echoing up the shaft from somewhere far below, mixed with the shrieks of whatever winged aelves were still alive. And over all that:

‘Nico! Move your arse! Now!’

Nico snarled and shoved himself off the ground with bleeding fingers. He grabbed his sword and staggered to where Serim and Kora were dragging Malas down the new tunnel, the aelf magician twitching in their grip, blood leaking from his nose, his eyes rolled back in his head to show just their whites.

‘Here,’ Nico snapped, and took Malas, throwing him over a shoulder. Then he started down the new tunnel in a slow, painful run, Kora in front of him and Serim behind, leaving the darkness and the screams in their wake.

CHAPTER TEN

The tunnel was much like the one that had taken them to that circular pit with its black falls. The same polished but lumpy grey stone walls, the same carved skulls, some of them crystal and glowing with that awful light. But unlike the other passages, this one kept curving and dropping, a long corkscrew driving down through the stone. There was another difference too, the one that had caught Kora’s eye and made her sprint towards this particular tunnel. Set in the walls were patches of the shadeglass they had seen in the distant red chamber dedicated to Khaine, gleaming scabs over jagged cracks that marked the otherwise smooth stone.

Larus had said to go down, and to follow the shadeglass. Advice from a vampire, from a piece of an undead monster that she had no reason to trust, but he’d at least told them some truth about this place for a mouthful of blood. And didn’t everything real cost blood?

She looked back at Malas, still hanging motionless over Nico’s shoulder. The blood had stopped seeping from his nose and his face was no longer so pale, but his eyes were closed. Better that than open and rolled back in his head, but still. She wanted him awake, and off that damn human’s back.

The floor beneath Kora’s boots shifted, the slight but constant slope of the tunnel beginning to flatten out, and she made herself concentrate on what was coming. The skull carvings had been growing fewer and fewer, the glowing crystal skulls farther and farther apart, and the tunnel was thick with shadows. But she could see the constant turn of the walls was fading, that the passage was straightening out as it levelled. The tunnel ran before them, and in the dim light of one last glowing skull she could see something blocking the passage ahead. Not a wall. A door.

Kora quickened her pace. A door meant something besides more winding tunnel, a place where they might be able to stop and rest. It meant something they could shut between them and whoever or whatever might be pursuing them. If there was nothing already sheltering behind it.

Closer, and she could see that the door was a circle of white, carved from some enormous shell, ridged with a spiral that twisted into a rough point on its centre. There was no handle or hinge, just that heavy shell. When she reached it, she looked at it carefully, envisioning locks, traps, illusions, ambushes…

‘To the depths with it all,’ she said, raising a hand and pushing at it. The shell swung away from her touch, opening smooth and silent. Light spilled through the door, white like that which had come from the crystal skulls but completely different. This light was bright and clear as a knife, blinding and painful after the darkness-choked tunnels of the rest of the Harrowdeep. Kora had to raise her hand up to shield her eyes from all that light, and when she did she could see the dark shadow of her bones through her skin, as if her flesh were barely more than water to the light’s brilliance.

‘What is this?’ Nico asked. A sliver of the light fell back on him, showing every ragged thread of his tunic, every speck of dirt and blood. It fell on his skin and his gross flesh barely disturbed it. Kora could see his skull clearer than she could see his frown as he ducked his head, half-blinded.

‘Shelter, maybe,’ she said. Kora stepped through the door and into the room. It was shaped something like a shell inside, a giant cone that opened in front of them. The floor stayed flat, but the walls and ceiling rose as they moved away from the door, and the far side of the room was massive, tall and wide. That far wall was patterned with the same spiral as the door, but much larger, and this time it was not a ridge that formed the pattern but a valley, a deep crevice that twisted into the central point. At the bottom of that spiral, farthest from them, something silver gleamed, as if the crevice were coated in mirror or mercury, and the light slanted out from it like a scream.

The rest of the room was empty, just glossy white walls that looked as if they were made from the same kind of polished shell as the door, except for a jagged slash of shadeglass that ran across the floor from door to end like a scar of black. Though smooth in some sections, the shadeglass rose in jagged spikes and twisted curves in others, resembling the spray flung from waves smashing into stones. Walking into the room, Kora avoided stepping on it, keeping to the white shell stuff on one side. The humans did the same, following her, but Serim stopped just inside the door.

She started to speak, then skipped forward as the door suddenly snapped shut. The human swore, running her hands over the smooth surface, but on the inside there was nothing: no ridges, no spiral, just smooth shell curving to a close, a dead end.

‘That answers that,’ Nico said, setting Malas down on the floor. In the light, Malas looked bad, but then they all did. The pure white glow was so different from the nauseating light that had come from the skulls. This light… it was too much. There were no shadows, none at all, but it made them all hideous. Highlighted every piece of dirt that clung to them, turned their skin and flesh translucent; made them look as ugly as the strange, transparent things that fishermen sometimes found in nets that had fallen too deep.

‘Now we’re stuck here,’ Nico went on, rubbing hands that were stained with blood, seamed with cuts and bruises. ‘In a place with light. Awful, terrible light.’ He walked away from Malas and sat, sprawling on the floor, his back against the curve of the wall.

Kora crouched over her brother, ignoring Nico. There wasn’t a wound on Malas, no mark but the smudge of blood on his face. In the strange light the blood was a hideous, vivid red smeared over the blur of his lips and chin, and she wiped it carefully away.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ Nico asked, staring at a cut on his hand he’d picked up sometime during the last fight. The wound was small, just a little thing, but in this light it was clear and gory, the torn flesh vivid and sharp while the skin around it was a blur.

‘He tried to help you,’ she said. ‘Your famous luck is a strange thing, battle-captain. It seems to be a wind that doesn’t so much blow your way as against everyone else around you.’

‘My ill-luck wind seemed to work pretty well for all of us,’ Nico said. ‘Those Idoneth fishkin had us netted, until those other things showed up.’

‘Khinerai Lifetakers,’ Kora said. ‘Dedicated to Khaine. Maybe they came from that Urama Othal city that Larus spoke of. Or maybe they were caught like us. But they weren’t some clever plan of yours, Nico. Your idea was to charge into death, to get separated from us, and because of that my brother had to risk himself saving you.’

‘Saving me?’ Nico held up both his hands, turning their palms to face her. Each fingertip was raw and oozing, each scrape and scratch so clear. ‘My own damn shadow almost dragged me to my death. And who the hell is Larus?’

‘Complaints, complaints.’ The words were almost whispers, but Kora whipped her head around, hearing her brother’s voice. His eyes were open – maybe, it was so hard to tell in this strange light, but he was definitely shifting, rubbing one hand across his forehead. ‘I told you I didn’t want to cast in there. That was supposed to have been a flash of light, blinding them for a moment, but the shadow magic took it and…’ Malas shook his head. ‘It stole my magic and made it into what it wanted, and it almost broke me doing it.’

‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ Kora said. ‘You knew it was dangerous.’

Her twin shrugged, the bones in his shoulders sliding with the movement. ‘Captain’s rules. There’s no fight between us, until your fight is done. Or until you say it’s done. So we worked together, and here we all are.’

‘Me being here doesn’t seem to be a win for the captain,’ Nico said.

Kora squared back up to Nico, looking down at his skeletal shape draped in hazy flesh and vividly sharp wounds. He might have looked better that way. Clearer. A man who wore his wounds like badges. ‘You think I’m sorry to have you here, Nico? You’re wrong. I’m thrilled to have you here, so we can finally settle what you started.’

‘That,’ he snapped, ‘is what I should be saying. Without your lies, without you–’

‘Enough!’ Kora said, cutting him off. ‘You’re too ignorant to understand what started our feud, and too selfish to bother learning.’ She shook her head. ‘We met someone down here, Larus, who told us that this is the Harrowdeep, an endless labyrinth that cannot be solved, and yet here you are. We can’t be rid of each other it seems, until we finally finish this.’

He glared at her, hideous in the horrible light. ‘So what are we waiting for, captain? Let’s finish this, finally, once and for all.’

Kora’s blades chimed as she pulled them free. They flashed in the bright light, every tiny bit of blood she’d ever failed to wipe off them gleaming like a great red star. ‘Once and for all sounds good,’ she said.

‘Kora,’ Malas said, warning, almost at the same time that Serim snapped, ‘Nico!’

The aelf captain didn’t shift her gaze from Nico, and his eyes stayed on hers. ‘I–’ she started, and cut off when he said the same thing. They both waited a beat, frowning at each other, then Nico nodded to her. She almost wanted to argue, but this foolishness had gone on long enough.

‘Don’t worry about Serim, Nico. I don’t blame her for you. We don’t need captain’s rules. We’ll take care of her, when this is done.’

Nico smiled grimly at her. ‘We’ll take care of Malas,’ he said. ‘After.’

They tapped their fingers to their lips, a captain’s oath, but Serim broke the moment with a curse.

‘We don’t want your bloody oaths or your care!’ she snapped. ‘We want you to both stop acting like fools and forget this stupid duel! We need both of you to fight the Idoneth and get out of this damned place!’

‘She’s right!’ Malas said, his voice still shaking, but angry. ‘Give this idiocy up and maybe we’ll get out of Harrowdeep alive!’

Kora looked at her brother, then turned back to face the man with blood-coloured hair. ‘But that’s the thing, brother. I don’t want us to all get out of this alive.’

‘And neither do I, captain,’ Nico answered. They stared at each other, their hate clear and settled, and raised their swords. Then Kora slid back into her battle stance, sword and parrying dagger up, ready. Focused on Nico’s centre, waiting to see him move.

Nico raised his sword, the bones in his arm shifting, and then he was stepping forward, the long blade slicing through the air with a thin whistle.

The blow wasn’t his full strength. Kora knew his sword work from their first fight, knew he wasn’t going to throw himself off balance like that. But that great sword, with just part of his mass and muscle behind it, would have sheared through the light hide armour that Kora wore and cut deep into her side, slicing her lungs as it shattered her ribs. She raised her parrying dagger, but didn’t try to step into the swing to block it. She spun under it instead, her dagger barely kissing the huge blade as it swung over her head, there to make sure Nico didn’t try to drop the blow down to catch her. She flicked her sword out, so much lighter and faster than his, the point heading for his knee to cut tendons and cripple him. But Nico was shifting his stance as he swung, and his leg was gone, pulled back away from her swing before it could connect.

An instant in, and they were still again, staring at each other. He was fast, but Kora knew she was faster. She had two blades, but his single one would shatter either of hers if she tried to block it directly. Kora took a deep breath, her heart already hammering with adrenaline. This was going to be terrifying. Then with a shout she lunged, sword and dagger flashing as she came for his gut and neck and heart, a steel weave of flashing strikes.

Nico moved back, using strength and mass to sweep Kora’s thrusts out of the air. He smashed them away, matching her elegance with brutal efficiency, and they moved through the empty chamber, boots stamping over white stone and black shadeglass. When they stepped over that dark, jagged seam, waves seemed to splash out beneath their feet, ripples moving beneath the black glass like water, though it felt no different for Kora’s footing. She drove in again, moving fast, a storm of strikes, trying to tire Nico, overwhelm him, and she felt the sweet sensation of give as her dagger hit flesh, not steel. But before she could press the blade deep, Nico punched his sword out, slamming the hilt into her ribs.

Kora staggered back, wheezing. The blow had knocked her breath out, had probably cracked her ribs, and pain sang through her as she tried to pull in more air. Her boot suddenly stopped, and she felt something jab her in the back, something sharp that wasn’t a blade. She’d slid back into one of the places where the shadeglass had risen from the floor in jagged, broken shards. Still trying to catch her breath, she raised her blades, trapped. But Nico wasn’t charging in on her.

He was standing across a smooth almost-circle of shadeglass that spread across the white floor, with more of the jagged stuff rising behind him like a fence of swords. Nico was watching her, breathing hard as he shook his left arm. Blood was running down it from a wound punched deep in his bicep. In the strange light, the blood gleamed gold, torn flesh vivid and sparkling like jewels, the gore brilliant and beautiful, and it made Kora sick in a way that had nothing to do with the pain in her ribs.

‘First blood again, Nico,’ she said. In her head, she heard her brother’s voice, challenging her. ‘Cry mercy, and we can be done.’

‘You started this.’ He swung his head, his grinning skull black through the reddish blur of his beard and flesh. ‘I’ll finish it.’

‘Then let’s go,’ she said, making herself straighten up, gritting her teeth against the pain. ‘We’ve already been at this too long.’

‘True words, captain.’ He hefted his sword, his left arm shaking, but he hit his stance and moved forward, the shadeglass pulsing under every step, and sending out smaller flickers each time a drop of his blood splashed down on the dark surface.

Kora watched him close, her own body still, unmoving, until she slid to the side, her sword chiming as she flicked a blow at him that he caught and pushed back. They moved, spiralling around the black circle as their blades flashed and clashed. The pain in Kora’s side was lost as she flowed through her moves, swinging, ducking, thrusting. Opening a cut on his leg, taking a punch to her shoulder that almost made her fall. Keeping out of range of his sweeping, murderous swings but diving in after them, trying to stick him with sword or dagger. It was moments, maybe minutes, of step and duck and dance, but it felt like an eternity. And then she slipped another swing and it was just that much too far. Nico couldn’t sweep his sword back fast enough to block as she lunged and drove her sword deep into his thigh.

He grunted as the blade sliced in, his leg buckling, knee smashing into the shadeglass. Kora jerked at her sword, intending to pull it free and swing it across his throat, but the heavy muscles in Nico’s leg had clenched in pain around the steel, catching and binding it. She was stuck, pulling at it for too long, and his heavy sword came up, catching her under her arm.

Kora felt the steel edge bite, but there was only a flicker of pain; then her arm went numb, cold. Too weak to swing hard, she thought, even as she looked down and saw the beautiful red fountain of blood pouring from her. It hit the black shadeglass and shone like fire, like rubies, so beautiful. The cold was spreading, down her arm and through her chest, and Kora felt her heart falter, the pounding rhythm stumbling, and she knew. She’d had first blood, but now he’d drawn hers by severing the great vessel that ran into her arm, and her heart was pumping her blood straight out of her, fast, so fast.

She was slipping, slipping in that beautiful blood and was on her knees, staring at Nico, their eyes on the same level as they both knelt in their mingled blood on the shadeglass circle. The brilliant light was changing around her, dimming as her blood poured out, but his face seemed suddenly clearer, skin and hair and eyes, not just blur and skull, and there was an expression on his face, something that wasn’t braggadocio or anger or anything she’d seen there before. Maybe it was regret?

‘Sorry, captain,’ he said, his words ringing strangely in her ears. But she nodded, staring at him. ‘This was just our course, I guess.’

‘I understand,’ she said, and then drove the blade of her parrying dagger hilt-deep into his right eye before falling into the red sea that stretched beneath her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There was blood, red and shining, beautiful and brilliant. And then there was darkness.

Nico was falling. Falling through the black, tumbling down, a cold wind howling around him. There was darkness, and falling, and wind, and nothing else. Until there was pain.

It hit him like a sword blade forged of ice. Stabbed through his heart, agony, agony, and it took him an age of pain to realise he’d stopped falling. He was hanging in the darkness, impaled through the chest on a spike of black glass, hanging there, hurting.

Not alone.

Kora hung above him, another razor of dark glass sticking out of her chest. Or maybe she hung below. He couldn’t tell. There was falling in this place, but there was no up, no down, no direction, just pain and the darkness that surrounded him, hiding everything but them, the glossy spikes that pierced them, and the brilliant red lines of the blood that ran down each spike. Down to the tips, where it slowly gathered into heavy drops. One at the end of each spike, both growing until they started to stretch and stretch – until they fell and struck each other with a noise tiny in all that wind but loud as a thunderclap in Nico’s head.

Plip.

The memory opened in his head. Crawling across waterlogged barrels as a child, barnacles scraping at his hands and knees. Snatching up a piece of fish, dropped by some butcher, growling as he wrestled for the bit of flesh with a night slider, the little beast’s tentacles wrapping around his hand, digging in–

Then it was gone, and Nico was hanging on the spike again, but that felt less real than that glimpse of his past. He’d been born in the drift, the clogs of scrap and garbage that grew between the rafts and the ships of Misthåvn’s armadas. Born into nothing, fighting for everything, and he’d spent his whole life trying to forget being that skinny child wrestling for scraps with scavengers.

Then memory came again.

Curled in a narrow hammock, twin brother beside her taking up so much room even though he was so small, it wasn’t fair, and she was shoving at him, trying to get him to shift when she heard the cries. The clash of steel, the screams, and through the cracks of the old ship’s hull that their room was built in she could see the red light of flames. An attack, and she knew her parents were both gone, down to protect the ship that they served on, which was docked somewhere in the direction of those flames, and Kora lay still, not noticing her brother any more as she stared at her parents’ empty hammock and knew they wouldn’t be coming back.

Then gone. Memory, so clear and sharp again, but not his. Not him.

Nico stared across the space separating him from Kora, meeting her eyes. She stared back at him, her eyes wide with pain, confusion, anger, terror, the same things whirling through him. Her memory. Her brother in the hammock. Her parents, dying in that fire. Why was he seeing her memory? Had she seen his?

The horror of that made him snatch his eyes away from hers, and in the space between the fangs of black glass that held them, he saw something else. The drop of blood was growing. Swelling. Two lines grew out from the blood, twisting through the darkness. They stopped growing when they were a few paces apart, their tips beginning to fracture. A web of little lines like veins emerged, weaving through the empty void, untouched by the howling wind.

He watched those things grow, feeding off the blood flowing out of them, and he wanted to retch. But then there was memory.

Rolling on the rough surface of a raft, throwing punches and knees at the other boy who was trying to hold him down so he could smash Nico’s face in. There was a crowd of urchins gathered around them, drifters and rafties and the children from the armadas, the ones with good clothes and real knives who stayed together, ready to kick in the teeth of anybody who touched them. But they were all together watching the fight, throwing out bets as the other boy, older, bigger, kneed Nico in the groin and rolled up on him, fists already beginning to fall. Nico twisted beneath the boy, trying to squirm out but he was stuck – until the other boy’s knuckles missed his head and smashed into the rough boards of the raft. A splinter like a dagger drove into the hand of Nico’s opponent and he screamed, bleeding, but Nico was already taking advantage, twisting out from under him and wrapping his arms around the bigger boy’s throat–

The memory was gone, but the echo rang through his head. Lucky, the kids had called him, and he came up with the story then, of a beautiful mother and a god, and they’d laughed but he kept telling it as he survived, and survived, and survived…

Then another.

She pulled herself out of the bilge, every muscle shaking, her skin and hair slick with filth. They’d been down there all day, scrubbing out the slime that had built up over the years, in water foetid and foul as a sewer. Sailors passing by laughed at her as she pulled Malas out, as slimy and hideous as she was. Bilge rats. Night sliders. She’d heard all the names. Ever since their parents had died, this is how they had survived, doing dirty work in wretched places too small for the grown aelves to reach. It fed them, but it was breaking Malas. Breaking her. She got Malas out and they stood together in the great dark hold, the vast ship rising around them.

‘We’re going to die down here someday,’ Malas said. ‘In the dirty dark arse of a ship like this.’

‘No,’ Kora had told him. ‘We’re going to live, and someday we’ll stand on the deck of a ship like this and I’ll be captain and you’ll be my wizard, pulling in the winds for our sails.’

He looked at her, covered in slime, and somewhere a sailor laughed, but Malas saw the certainty in her eyes, and he nodded.

Gone.

Just as real as his, it drove through Nico’s head like… like a dagger. He stared at the aelf, hanging in that howling abyss with him, and he saw the same shameful hurt in her eyes before he had to look away again. In the air between them, the venous, bloody growths were still swelling. They were filling with the blood flowing down the spikes and the tiny bits of flesh it was carrying, pieces of them falling off to flow into those things that were shaping themselves into something like two awful, flayed dolls. Hideous mockeries of life, bleeding and squirming as they slowly grew.

And as they grew, the memories came pouring back. Nico growing up, fighting his way into the ranks of a skiff gang. Dodging the armadas’ enforcers, making money doing the dirty jobs of the rafters, growing in reputation and skill. And all the while watching the great ships sailing in and out of Misthåvn. Things of grace and beauty, free, that could leave the floating junk-pile and fly across the black waters like birds. They were the prizes of the privateers, and what drifter could ever own one of them? An impossible dream, and it was all Nico wanted.

And there was her. Kora growing up, with that same dream, made impossible for different reasons. The aelven families held their power in a tight grip, and they made sure those below them stayed below. But Kora fought her way up through every level, smashing through all the barriers meant to keep her down, teeth locked into her goal like a shark.

Cracked mirror lives, the memories flashed through Nico’s head, unrelenting, and they hurt. Every one of them tore through him like a line of fish hooks, dragging pieces of himself out as they went. The memories were taking him apart, and those chunks of himself were flowing like a river of tattered flesh down the black glass. They ran down the path carved by his blood, meeting in that space between the spikes, and tumbled out to one of the things growing in the void. Blood and bone, flesh and skin, every bit of him tearing apart and going into that mewling monster growing in the air before him, red and raw and ugly. And the same was happening to Kora.

They were drowning in each other’s memories as they dissolved away.

‘It’s mine,’ Nico said, resting the point of his sword against the throat of the grizzled old man who had called himself captain. Beneath his boots, blood spread across the wooden deck, spread by the steady roll of waves beneath the ship. ‘Now and forever.’

‘Yours!’ The old captain spat. ‘You’re a brawler, Nico, a stupid bravo hired by your betters to crack heads, nothing more!’

‘No,’ he said, leaning just enough onto the sword to dimple the older man’s flesh. ‘That’s what I was, until you decided it was cheaper to kill me than pay what you owe. Now I own this ship, and I own your life. Guess which one I’m going to keep?’

‘You won’t even get her back to harbour,’ the man growled. ‘You need me for that, you fool.’

It took so little pressure to drive the sword forward, to drive its point through the man’s throat and into the deck behind him. The old captain choked on his blood, and Nico scooped up his hat. ‘No. I just need the luck of my mother.’ He considered the hat, with its ridiculous feather, and tossed it over the side of the ship. ‘Mother’s Luck.’ Stepping away from the dead man, he shouted for paint, to redo the name on the boat’s prow.

There, gone, taking bits of his spine and feet and fingers. He was being hollowed out, a husk hanging on that black spike like a battered pennant. Then came another.

Kora’s knives thumped into the targets, sending them to the floor, her blades dead centre in each. Beside her, Captain Narin frowned, sweat trickling down his face. When the targets were thrown he pitched his knives and knocked each from the air – but on the last two the blades trembled on the edge of the circles of painted wood, barely a hit.

He was good, but he was cracking. Kora knew it, and she was so close. If she won this pennant, she won the whole competition, and the fleetmaster had promised the newest great ship of the armada to the winner to captain. She pulled her blades, ready to throw again. Ready to win, and to claim the prize she had fought for since the night her parents had burned. And she watched as a blur of knives flashed over her shoulder, smashing the targets out of the air, and her hopes with them. They would throw out this contest, and now Narin and she were tied, but that tie and the ship would go to him, because Narin’s family had power and treasure and standing, and she had nothing but rage.

Memories. Tearing through Nico, hers and his, and he was gutted. His legs were gone, his body hollowed out, his arms dissolved up almost to the shoulders, his jaw gone, the remains of his head fragmenting, only his eyes still there, staring, watching as Kora fell apart across from him. The things before them were knitting together now, skin flowing over the raw muscle, covering them, hair sprouting from their scalps. It was them. Nico knew his body, and that was it, just as he’d left it, but his fingers were unbloody, his arm and leg and face unwounded. Him. And Kora. Being torn apart. Being rebuilt.

He couldn’t blink. His eyelids had shredded and streamed away; couldn’t close out the sight of the last of him dissolving as the final memories came through. The Sweet House of Joy. Sailing after the Black Tern. The ambush of the Idoneth, the whirlpool, and everything after their arrival in the Harrowdeep. And then it came again, similar but so different, as he watched Kora’s trip through this terrible maze.

And then her eyes were gone, every piece of her slipping away off the spike, flowing into that new body, and everything was going black for him too. The spike, the void, everything lost but the pain as his eyes tore to pieces, and the memories were gone too; there was nothing now but darkness and agony.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kora opened her eyes.

The walls arched over her, smooth and white and perfect, lit by that too bright light. She raised her hand and looked at it, and the flesh was hazy, the bones dark and clear through it. But there was no dirt, no blood, no little wounds shining and beautiful. She was alive. She was whole.

Kora closed her eyes again. In the darkness she could see the void, the place where the memories had come, where she had been torn apart. She’d died. Nico’s sword had cut the blood out of her. Then she’d gone to that place, and been torn apart. Now… she was alive. Again. But in her bones and in her brain, she felt an echo of the pain of her resurrection.

‘Malas,’ she said.

‘Kora.’ His voice was uncertain, shaking.

‘What happened to me?’

‘You… Nico… You killed each other. You fell on the shadeglass, in all that blood, and then… you disappeared. You slid into the glass, and were gone, your blood too. Just your weapons and clothes left behind. Then you came back.’ His voice was uncertain. ‘Did you come back? I don’t think you’re an illusion, but…’

‘I’m not an illusion.’ She didn’t know magic, but she was sure illusions didn’t ache. But was this her? She’d been torn apart, and put back together, and in the process her memories had been merged with Nico’s. She could feel shards of his life crowding in her head like tumours, fragments of someone else that didn’t belong. But… she felt like herself.

‘Damn it all.’ She opened her eyes and sat up. Her clothes and armour were piled on her, dirty and stinking, but she held them close to keep them from sliding off. Nico was sprawled next to her, and he’d already seen her stripped down to her soul, and that knowledge was awful enough.

He was moving too, propping himself up. His flesh was hazy, his bones showing through, but there were no marks on him any more either. The wounds she’d given him were gone, healed. Was it healing if you were shattered and rebuilt? Did it matter? They stared at each other, and it was easier because their faces were blurred, their eyes smears in front of their skulls, but they still couldn’t do it long.

‘When I threw that trick dagger, in your contest. I didn’t know…’ Nico said.

‘I never really thought you scuttled the Last Rain. It was just a convenient excuse. The fleetmaster promised me a new ship if I tricked you into chasing me, if I pulled you into an ambush.’ She stared at the wall, unable to look at him. ‘I don’t know what hell we just shared. But that’s done between us. We’ve both paid blood for it.’

‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘And the rest. Those memories…’

‘That we’re never going to talk about,’ she said, shuddering. No one knew her like Nico did now, not even Malas, and she’d never know anyone as well as Nico, and everything about the whole situation was horrifying.

‘Good,’ he said, and they both turned their backs on each other as they pulled their filthy clothes back on.

It wasn’t until they were dressed that Kora noticed the door to the shell-shaped room was open. Not open, but shattered, its pieces scattered across the floor.

‘What–’ she started, but Nico interrupted her.

‘Where’s Serim?’

Malas, his flesh a blur of shining cuts and lovingly illuminated bruises, sighed.

‘You were gone for hours. We didn’t know what to do, to stay or try to get out. But then something broke in. The Idoneth. That king, and some of his eyeless warriors.’

‘Yiris,’ Kora said. ‘What happened?’

‘We heard them at the door, and I tried to use my magic to hide us. But my head… I haven’t recovered yet. I couldn’t do it. I cloaked myself, but not her.’

Nico’s hand was tight on his sword, but there was no threat to it, only frustration. ‘What did they do?’

‘Serim drew their attention away, kept them from seeing through my illusion. They caught her and she told them the truth about what had happened to you, that you’d died and fallen into the shadeglass. Then she lied and told them that the same had happened to me. Yiris didn’t know what to make of any of that, but when he couldn’t find us he gave up and left, taking Serim with him.’

‘You told us Larus said they consume souls,’ Nico said. ‘I don’t know what the hell that means, but I’m not letting that happen to Serim.’

‘We’re not letting that happen,’ Kora said. ‘I said I’d take care of her, after the duel.’

Nico stopped at the door, and the skull light of the corridor blended with the shell-chamber’s brilliance, enough for Kora to see his face. ‘You did. And you keep your promises,’ he said. ‘I know that now. But thank you.’

‘Save your thanks,’ she said. ‘We’re still two captains on one ship, and we’re both too used to forcing the world to do what we want to work together easy.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’re going to want to stab each other again. So many times. But damned if I’m ever dying with you again. Better to force ourselves to work together, and live.’

Kora stepped out of the room, back into the tunnel and its rancid skull light. But she took one last look back, at the twisting scar of shadeglass that marred the smooth white floor. Black and bare of any spot of blood, it looked thin as a sail, not deeper than the sea. But she knew now. ‘Damned indeed,’ she said, turning her back on the darkness and walking away, but that ache of death and rebirth still throbbed in her bones.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘How many were there?’ Nico was looking at the floor of the tunnel, trying to find anything marking the grey stone. There was nothing, but here it didn’t matter – this tunnel led to nothing but that terrible chamber they had just left. When they got back to the black falls, though…

‘Five of the eyeless ones,’ Malas said. ‘The one with the fish and the strange helmet, with the lantern. And the king, with that thing he rides.’

The eyeless aelves weren’t a problem. Between the three of them, they’d carve them up. The one with the lantern, and the fish… he was strange, but they could take him too. But the king and his mount weren’t going to die easy. ‘We’ll deal with them.’

They moved up the spiralling passage, all the way to where it opened into the chamber with the black falls. The darkness still fell, silent and unending in the centre. The blood that had marked the walk was gone, scrubbed away by the spray of black drops that Nico could feel landing on his skin, pinpricks of ice. He gritted his teeth against its touch, the cold reminding him of the void and the wind that had run through his body as he dissolved. His new skin shivered to goosebumps, but he strode along the walkway’s circle, searching. At the second tunnel past the one they’d just left, he found something. A few drops of blood on the grey stone, then a few more a pace past that, far enough into the tunnel not to be eaten away by the shadow magic.

‘She’s smart,’ Kora said to him, looking at the blood. ‘She made this trail.’

‘That’s why I put up with her,’ Nico said. ‘Why she puts up with me is another question.’ He started down the tunnel, another grey passage of skulls and bad light, looking for more blood.

He found it, whenever a branch split off from this tunnel. There would be a drop or two on the floor, leaked from one of Serim’s wounds, marking the path they’d taken. What did she expect? Nico wondered. She’d seen him die, and Kora. Did she think Malas could save her? Probably not. But she’d left a trail of her blood anyway because she was stubborn. And maybe because she believed in his luck, still.

Hadn’t he always said he couldn’t die? As it turned out, he’d told the truth, this time. Although thinking of the cost of that resurrection made him want to vomit.

The tunnel they were in twisted, dropped, as the skull carvings began to fade, the glow faltering and dying, but Malas didn’t summon his light. While they still had enough light to see through the shadows, they would use it. And so they saw the violet glow flickering over the stone, growing slowly brighter as they moved forward.

It reminded Nico of the light that came from the lanterns on Misthåvn, the ones that burned the volatile wave dragon venom. But it was darker somehow, and it made their skin shine strangely. The blood on their clothes and Malas’ skin went black, and the few tiny drops of shadow spray that hadn’t melted away into the darkness gleamed like purple gems.

Then from somewhere up ahead came a sound. Like singing. Or chanting.

They crept forward towards the sound, silent, until they reached the tunnel’s end. There was no door here, just a flood of violet light pouring out of the cavern that the tunnel opened into. The sound was coming from in there, a low chant from a deep voice. Nico moved forward, quiet as he could, and looked inside.

He peered down at a cavern in the shape of a smooth circle, a huge domed room, empty except for a jagged chunk of shadeglass that erupted from the floor like the base of a shattered glass column. Directly over it, a formation of massive glowing crystals jutted from the centre of the dome, the source of the violet light that filled the room.

The tunnel Nico stood in was one of four passages that opened into the chamber, spaced evenly around its circumference. A small balcony hung outside each door, with smooth ramps that ran down the walls from either side of them to the floor.

The floor was smooth, tiled with brilliant circles that each glowed a different garish colour in the violet light. The Idoneth stood on these tiled circles, arced around the shadeglass centrepiece. The five eyeless ones, their skin glowing and their clothes shimmering with strange colours in the light, had their hands out, pointing at each other as they stood, heads bowed. Bows were slung across their backs and curved blades sheathed at their belts. Standing in their circle, his cruelly hooked polearm gleaming with the greenish light from the lantern that hung from his helmet, was the aelf that had tried to catch Nico back at the black falls. His razor-billed fish drifted in lazy arcs around him as he chanted, his low voice echoing through the domed chamber. Behind him, still and watching, was Yiris. The king’s silver armour glowed in the violet light, the clothes beneath it shimmering as if woven of light. But his panoply paled in comparison to his beast.

Beneath that violet light, the deepmare’s hide shone with stripes and dots of colour, pinks and yellows over the blue and green hide, the flickering tails. It was gaudy and deadly, its eyes flashing as it stared at the body sprawled on the one flat facet of the shadeglass. Serim, bound and still, her eyes shut.

Nico’s hands tightened on his sword, but he didn’t charge forward. Instead he slid back a little, gathering Malas and Kora in close.

‘The one with the lantern, the one you said the king called soulrender, is doing some kind of necromantic magic,’ Malas breathed. ‘It’s building. Getting close to an end.’

‘Can you stop it?’ Nico whispered, and he nodded.

‘Any of us can. Just stick some steel in him.’

‘All right,’ Nico said. ‘If we swarm in, I’ll swing right, you two to the left, then charge–’

‘A suggestion, battle-captain?’ Kora’s tone didn’t carry nearly as much derision as it had before their resurrection. But it wasn’t completely gone. Still, he opened his hand. She and Malas had been fighting together for years.

‘Malas can cast his flash spell. We’re far enough from the black falls for that to work?’ He nodded, and she continued. ‘That’ll blind the one with the hook and lantern, and the king and his beast, giving us time to rush them.’

‘It won’t blind the eyeless ones,’ Nico pointed out, and she smiled at him.

‘I’ve something for them.’ She cocked her head. ‘Soulrender or king?’

‘King,’ he said without hesitation.

She looked at him, as if weighing his bravado, then nodded. ‘Keep him off me and I’ll take the others.’

‘What should I do after the spell?’ Malas said.

‘Get Serim,’ said Nico, at the same time as Kora said, ‘Run.’

They looked at each other, and Kora shrugged.

‘Get Serim, then run,’ Nico said. ‘Ready?’

‘Anchors up,’ Kora said, and they slipped back to the door.

Inside, the aelf with the lantern was chanting louder, building to a crescendo, and Nico pulled his sword free. He jerked his head at Malas, who took a breath and then jumped through the door, his hands flying wide as he shouted something in Aelfish. Nico was shooting past him on one side, Kora on the other, both hitting the ramps that led down to the floor just as a brilliant wash of golden light snapped across the chamber.

The burst of illumination made the deepmare rear back, squealing in pain as Yiris jerked at its reins, cursing. In front of the king, the aelf with the lantern had broken off his chant and was swinging his hook blind before him, almost hitting his fish. The eyeless aelves, though, were unaffected. They swung around, pulling blades and bows as they somehow sensed each of their attackers.

Nico trusted Kora when she said she had a plan for dealing with them, but he was really wondering what that plan was when three of the eyeless aelves – a male with a short, hooked blade and two females with bows – moved towards him. From the corner of his eye, Nico watched as Kora reached into her belt, pulled out a knife and threw it, hard.

The blade flashed across the room, and then split – one blade into five, each one slamming deep into the bare skin that covered the aelves’ eye sockets. Each one of them fell, twitching, their blood splashing across the glowing circles on the floor.

‘So that’s where that went,’ he said, just as his feet hit the rounded arcs of the glowing circles. He raised his sword, swinging it up and back, then snapped it forward. It wasn’t an elegant strike, all power over precision, but he was aiming it for the neck of the blind deepmare, meaning to cut its horned head clean off. And he might have, if it hadn’t thrashed back and given the still-blinking king time to bring his shield around.

The clang of metal on metal echoed through the domed chamber, as loud as the shriek that poured out of the deepmare’s fanged mouth when Nico’s half-blocked blade cut a line into its hide. The beast reared again, head swinging and jaws snapping at the enemy it couldn’t see. On its back Yiris was hauling at the reins with one hand, the other turning his shield to catch Nico’s blade as he swept it back.

‘You’re supposed to be dead, human.’ He finally got his mount settled, the deepmare pulling back to the wall of the room. The king let the reins fall, guiding the monster with his knees, and drew out his polearm. The curved blade flashed purple in the light, shining like his shield.

Behind Nico, metal clashed as Kora and the soulrender went at it, and in some dim, distant part of his brain he felt as if he knew exactly where Kora was, how she was moving, dodging and weaving as she ducked that barbed hook then spun away from the flashing bill of the rakerdart.

Nico shook off those ghost feelings, like memories that weren’t his. He pulled his sword up, focusing on the enemy in front of him. Yiris shifted his shield, held his polearm wide and ready.

‘I didn’t know this place at first, human.’ Membranes flickered over the deepmare’s black eyes, and blue-glowing tears spilled from them. It was tilting its head towards Nico, but the beast was obviously still fighting to see. ‘But I tore that knowledge from the khinerai, along with their souls. The Ulara’idon. But you wouldn’t know that name, would you?’

The king was buying time, letting his beast get its eyes back. But Nico was willing to let him, to give Malas time to grab Serim and get away. Besides, Kora had told him all about Larus and his information as they had followed Yiris here. ‘I know the name Harrowdeep, aelf.’

‘So you do know it. Do you know what is supposed to be at its centre?’

‘So far I’ve heard treasure, freedom and death.’ Nico stepped back and forth, eyes on the king, waiting for his attack to come. ‘I can save you time and give you the last, right here, right now.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Yiris said. ‘I’d rather the treasure.’

Nico smiled at him, toothy as an allopex. ‘Treasure the moment, King Yiris of the Idoneth. You’re not getting another.’

Yiris’ sneering look shifted, went serious and dangerous. ‘You know too much, red one.’ The king shifted his legs, and the deepmare stilled, pulled in on itself, its three tails coiling beneath it. ‘I don’t know how, but I’ll find that out when I pull your soul free and feed it to my thralls. They will live again, born through your death.’

‘I don’t think they’ll thank you for that, Yiris.’ Nico watched Yiris’ knees, the shift of the deepmare, and readied his sword. ‘I’ve been resurrected once, and it’s not a pleasant process.’

‘You’re a strange, irritating human, red one.’ Yiris leaned forward, his polearm sweeping up into position like a lance. ‘And soon, a dead one.’ His knees dug in, and the deepmare jerked forward, driving towards Nico, tearing a stream of bubbles out of the empty air.

Nico, ready, slid to the side. Away from Yiris’ driving blade, to his shield side. He avoided the snap of the deepmare’s teeth, the swing of its horn, but its claws tore a chunk out of his tunic and scored a line across his chest, the first mark on his new skin. Nico barely noticed it, swinging his sword at the aelf. It clanged off the king’s shield, as he expected, and Nico used the momentum from the rebound to swing down and around, the blade slashing in a murderous arc into one of the deepmare’s tails. It cut through leathery hide and muscle, split vertebrae and left half the tail thrashing across the ground like a dying snake.

The deepmare screamed again, blood splashing from its severed tail, black in the violet light. Nico whirled and rose, Yiris driving in on him again. Nico moved, dodging the horn and claw of the deepmare, but the king’s blade caught his shoulder, carving through the hide armour and cutting into the muscle beside his neck, the tip ticking off his collarbone. He spun away, the pain like a brand across his skin. He pulled his sword up, cracking aside the king’s blade as it came whipping back, but then the deepmare snapped its teeth into him. It caught his shoulder, its cold saliva burning into his cut. The beast closed its jaws, teeth catching on Nico’s hide armour, but it held him and thrashed its head, swinging him through the air and throwing him down. He hit the ground, rolling, and his head clipped off the tiled stone floor. He slid to a stop and jerked himself to his feet, but the world spun around him, his sword wavering in his hands.

Yiris shouted, swinging up his blade as the deepmare charged. Nico stepped back, trying to make the world stop tilting, trying to keep his sword steady to block as Yiris aimed his polearm at Nico’s head – then a knife flashed through the air, clipping the king’s arm, turning his blade away as Nico staggered out of the way of the charge.

The deepmare pulled up, turning just before it reached the wall behind Nico. The king’s mouth was set in a snarl as he examined the dark line of his blood soaking through the glowing cloth of the shirt that lay beneath his armour. ‘You marked me,’ he said, his words underlaid with the low, thrumming hiss coming from the deepmare.

‘My apologies.’ Across the chamber, Kora raised her bloody sword, pointing it at Yiris, a mockery of a salute. ‘I’d meant to kill you.’ There was a bruise growing on her cheek, a cut bleeding black down the side of her leg, but she stood poised, ready. Behind her, the soulrender lay sprawled against the shadeglass, his blood almost as dark in the violet light as the splinters of glass. The silvery form of the aelf’s rakerdart was flopping on the ground, pinned there by one of Kora’s heels as it bled its last.

‘You’re welcome to try again,’ the king snapped, pulling his long-handled blade back into position and turning his deepmare to face Nico again. ‘After I’ve finished off this miserable human.’

‘Miserable?’ Nico said, forcing himself to stand steady. The dizziness was fading, but not gone, but damn him if he was going to let this aelf see him weak. ‘Come try it, soul stealer.’

Yiris shook his head, settling into his saddle, getting ready to charge – but Kora was stepping forward, her left arm blurring as she pulled blades from the loops on her armour and whipped them across the chamber.

‘I…’ A blade clanged off the king’s helmet. ‘Am…’ Another was caught by his shield. ‘No one’s…’ Another blade cracked off the shield and ricocheted from the deepmare’s neck, making it toss its horned head. ‘Second…’ Another knife cracked off the armour on the king’s thigh, and his shield came down, trying to block it a second too late. ‘Dance!’ Kora shouted the last word, and threw one more time, the double-sided blade whistling through the air as it went over the king’s lowered shield and caught him in the side of the head.

Yiris ducked as the blade spun in, but there was a flash of blood as a razor edge sliced off the pointed end of the aelf’s ear. The triangle of flesh, glowing in the violet light, landed in the centre of one of the floor’s bright circles. The king stared down at it, blood streaming from the side of his head and into his hair, and then with a savage shout and a twist of his knees he turned the deepmare towards Kora and charged.

The captain moved, sprinting straight at Yiris, and Nico shouted, ‘No!’ Her thin blades couldn’t block the deepmare’s heavy strikes, or the swinging weight of the king’s polearm. Meeting his charge like this was suicide, she had to know that, but Kora was racing forward, blades raised, right at the lowered horn and blade. And then, just before she met them, she dropped, rolling across the floor. Passing under blade and horn, beneath the whipping tails of the beast, whole and cut, she was up in an instant, moving to meet Nico.

‘Good to fight, battle-captain?’ she said, settling in beside him.

‘Always,’ he said, the last bits of blurriness falling away as he watched Yiris spin the deepmare around, the aelf king’s teeth clenched, pale eyes blazing as he charged back at them. ‘You’re port,’ he said. ‘I’ve got starboard.’

Then the king was on them, and they split apart. Nico cracked aside the deepmare’s horn, spun and smashed a blow into Yiris’ shield, hard enough to rock the aelf in his saddle. On the other side, Kora ducked a clawed swipe, dodged a thrust from the king’s blade and stabbed her sword deep into the deepmare’s flank as it flew past. The beast screeched and spun, flashing bubbles appearing out of nowhere as it moved.

The fight fell into a blur of black blood and violet blades as they twisted and struck. The king and his mount were a whirlwind of polearm and horn, claws, jaws and slapping tails. Yiris and his mount should have been able to wear them down, overwhelm them with the deepmare’s strength and the aelf’s speed, but Nico and Kora were a storm of blades that shifted and moved, one of them darting away from strikes while the other moved in to cut. They danced the battle perfectly together, weaving past each other, not getting in the way but helping, setting up the other to strike, striking to disrupt an attack on the other. They did it without speaking, without looking at each other. Nico just knew how Kora was going to move, and he knew she was anticipating each of his steps.

He’d never fought like that with anyone else before, and it was exhilarating and devastating and terrifying.

Nico smashed aside Yiris’ polearm and stepped back, stopping just as Kora’s shoulder touched his own. They stood together, staring at the aelf king. Yiris was bleeding from cuts on his cheek and arms and legs, and the deepmare was marked with wounds, the dark blood glimmering with a bluish sheen as it ran out across the beast’s hide. The aelf was breathing hard, his face a mix of fury and fear. Then he shouted, slapping the side of the monster he rode. The deepmare rose up, rearing over them, claws slashing the air as it gave a whistling scream. Then it was falling, plunging at them horn first, the white gleam of it glowing purple, driving down for their hearts.

They both moved at once, stepping apart so that the deepmare’s head and horn fell between them. When it turned, driving its horn towards Nico, he blocked it with his sword, boots sliding across the smooth tiled floor. But as it drove at him, Kora stepped in. She ducked beneath Yiris’ reaping swing and slid the tip of her sword behind the corner of the deepmare’s jaw. The blade bit into the soft hide, cutting in, and the beast twisted its head away from Nico, whipping around like a snake to snap at Kora. And Nico, left alone, shifted his sword, took a running step, and leapt into the air.

He whipped his sword down, slamming its edge into the deepmare’s thick neck. The blade sliced through the finned crest that ran down its spine and then slammed into the hide beneath. Steel bit deep, slashing through muscle to vertebrae, cracking the armour of the thick bone and severing the nerves beneath.

The deepmare didn’t make a sound. It went rigid, claws and tails all spreading out as it arched its back, its whole body shaking as every muscle in it tightened at once. The movement made it fly up, halfway to the crystals glowing in the dome overhead. The sudden surge of its flight ripped the sword out of Nico’s hands, and he fell to his knees, staring up at the dying beast as it reared over him, every tail and claw twitching – and then it fell. Limp and boneless, its heavy body crashed to the floor, its head and back smashing into the circle of jagged shadeglass.

Nico rolled, barely avoiding the beast’s body, and slowly pulled himself up. The deepmare lay still, limp, impaled on a dozen pieces of shadeglass. Blood spread out from it, a black sea across the bright coloured floor, dulling it. He stepped across the tile, boots coated with cold blood, and went to where the handle of his sword stuck out of the deepmare’s neck. He grabbed it, and with a jerk he yanked it free, making the corpse twitch. From its other side came a groan.

Yiris lay there, his legs crushed beneath his mount. A shard of shadeglass protruded through his breastplate, and there was blood making black tracks from his lips down his chin. The king was dying, but he still tried to lift his polearm, to aim the blade at Nico.

‘I won’t die by your filthy hand, human,’ he snarled, swinging his weapon at Nico.

Nico caught it, the blow, slow, weak, and he pulled the weapon out of the aelf’s hands and threw it away. ‘My name’s not human,’ he said. ‘I am Battle-Captain Nico Spahr, and if you can’t accept that I’ve killed you, feel free to talk to Kora.’

‘Kora.’ Yiris looked up at her, the pain in his eyes mixed with calculation. ‘An aelf, working with a human against her own kind? Have you no shame, corsair?’

Kora had stepped up on the other side, moving silent and easy over the blood-slicked floor. ‘My name is Captain Kora Stormlost,’ she said, sweeping into a bow suitable for her fleetmaster, then straightening out. She stared down at the king, pinned and dying but still so arrogant. ‘And this human is more my kind than you will ever be.’ She moved forward, just a shift of her hips and a tilt of her shoulders, but it sent her arm lashing out, so that her sword buried itself in the aelf’s throat.

Yiris arched, blood pouring from his neck as he made a rough, barking noise; then he fell back, twitching, as Kora twisted her sword back and forth, then pulled it free.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Kora was wiping her sword clean on the king’s cloak when Malas came down one of the ramps that led into the room, looking exhausted from running and magic, but unhurt. Serim leaned against him, blood crusted on the outside of one thigh, but she was only limping a little. She stared at Nico, who was cleaning his own sword on the deepmare’s hide. ‘I know you always said you couldn’t die. I had assumed it was drunken bravado.’

The man ran a hand over his head, pushing back red hair that had turned ghastly in the violet light. ‘I always thought it was too. Figured it didn’t matter, since if anyone ever tested it I’d be dead.’

‘I’m glad we were both wrong.’ She looked over at Kora. ‘I’m glad you’re both alive.’

‘So are we,’ she said. ‘In a way.’ The fight, the way she’d moved with Nico… she couldn’t work that well with Malas. She shuddered. Then she looked at the shard of shadeglass sticking out of the Idoneth king.

‘Will the same happen to them?’ Nico asked, and she shrugged. But as she dropped the corner of the dead king’s cloak, his body dissolved, sinking into the shadeglass as if it were liquid. With him went the deepmare and the lantern-helmeted aelf, the blood on the floor and all the eyeless aelves that lay sprawled in it. There was nothing left but clothes and armour.

‘I would say yes,’ Kora said, kicking at the king’s empty helm, sending it rolling across the floor.

‘What now, then?’ Nico said.

‘We leave. Before they come back.’

‘For where?’

She sheathed her swords and met his eyes. ‘Where else? Down, to the centre.’

‘For freedom, treasure or death?’ he asked.

‘Why not all three?’ she said, and he nodded.

‘All right, captain.’ He sheathed his sword across his back. ‘Set a course.’

‘So you do know I’m the captain,’ she said, starting up one of the ramps, heading for the tunnel she had chosen at random. They had no direction, but they had to keep moving, to search and see if they could find any other survivors.

Or the centre that Larus had told them about.

‘Well, we’re not in battle,’ he said, holding out an arm for Serim, who punched him in the shoulder and limped past on her own.

‘No,’ Kora said. Malas fell in beside her, more distant than usual. She stared back over her shoulder at the things left scattered across the floor’s shining circles. ‘But we will be. Very soon.’

They left the chamber to its violet light and emptiness, and behind them the black shadeglass shimmered, rippling as if the hard surface were dark water with something vast moving beneath.

NADIR

Noah Van Nguyen

CHAPTER ONE

If I sleep, I will die.

These words ticker through my mind like the gears of an arkanaut trinket. The nose-wrinkling pong of fermenting fish guts does not suffocate them. The strained murmurs of sober aelves and drunken men do not drown them out.

I am in a vat-house: a tavern which doubles as a brewery for a local fermented fish sauce. Great wooden casks line the brazier-lit dimness. Filling the spaces between them are driftwood tables crowded with patrons. Misthåvn is a floating city of tethered ships. Space is at a premium.

I ignore the other patrons’ gazes. I ignore their hushed voices and discreet business arrangements being made in the warm glow of the braziers’ light. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open. We Stormcast Eternals are forged with many boons, but even if we require less pampering than our mortal kin, we have needs yet. Sustenance, drink, companionship…

Sleep.

But if I close my eyes, I see it. Darkness. Thick, boiling black, tumbling like smoke clouds behind my eyelids. It doesn’t move, but I feel its reckless approach. It is unspeaking, yet I hear its soundless hiss, and the dead syllables of my name:

Calthia Xandire.

I hear it now, too, begging me to close my eyes. The blackness hungers for me. It ever has.

I stave it off. It will never take me.

‘I want that ale, lass,’ Dhoraz says. ‘You’re not drinking. It’s getting cold. No one drinks cold ale.’

Dhoraz Giant-Fell towers beside me, a glorious beard attached to a bear-like immortal. The Giant-Fell earned his sobriquet as a mortal, or so he claims, having scaled and slain a gargant with nothing but the jawbone of an ass. When Dhoraz was cut down, laughing his bellicose gratitude to Sigmar, Sigmar heard him. In that moment of fatal heroism, the God-King stole Dhoraz’s soul from the Mortal Realms to be Reforged as a Stormcast Eternal, just as we were all stolen, just as we were all Reforged.

Never have I met another Stormcast as brash and overbearing as the Giant-Fell. He is crass, gregarious and utterly competent.

I slide my stein over, hoping it will encourage him to leave. Dhoraz’s eyes brighten like birdsong. In one vigorous sweep, he drains the ale, brushing foam from the thick hedge of his beard. ‘Calthia Xandire,’ he says. ‘Bearer of the Lantern Astrala! You make a poor man proud.’

‘That makes no sense,’ I say.

‘Most things make no sense.’ He frowns. ‘You, for instance. You think too much. You think all the time, lass. Thinking never won wars.’

‘Not thinking has certainly lost them.’ I glance around for the others. Luxa Stormrider lurks in a corner, monitoring for threats among Misthåvn’s scoundrels. Alumitar Wrathsong, our commander, whispers with two aelven corsairs.

Together we are the Truthseekers. Four Stormcasts-Errant, sent to do what a Stormhost could not – uncover whatever has been disappearing ships from the Shadowsea. Shine light upon the menace haunting Ulgu, the Realm of Shadows. Then, eradicate it.

‘Are we done here?’ I am tired, and eager to return to work. Idleness has never helped me stave off the thirst for sleep.

Dhoraz leans in. ‘Almost. Alumitar’s bartering with the Scourge Privateers for passage on the Shadowsea. On some scrap-wood wolfship unworthy of its weight in tar and cordage, no doubt. I’ve been doing as instructed, chatting with these harbour-dregs, learning what I can. You, I notice, have not.’

I gesture for my cup to be filled. ‘Too busy thinking. I’m told it never wins wars.’

‘Now she’s learning.’ Dhoraz reaches for my stein.

I snatch it back. Perhaps the ale will stave off the pulsing sleep-hunger behind my eyes. ‘What do the dregs say?’

Dhoraz’s eyes flutter. ‘Rumours. You know sea-slugs, lass. Maundering about mermaids they’ve seduced, tempests they’ve braved, leviathans they’ve slain.’

‘Mm. Just your type.’

‘My stories are true. Theirs are not.’ Dhoraz darkens. ‘They whisper of other things. A hole at the bottom of the sea. A place of siren shadows that sing mariners to their doom.’

I take another swig. ‘Harrowdeep. Same as the other taverns.’

Dhoraz nods with vigour. Something about the Giant-Fell reminds me of a captive earthquake, shaking with pent power, unable to break free of its bindings. ‘I look forward to getting started once Alumitar finishes his damn negotiations. And you, lass, don’t forget to use your runeblade when the time comes.’

‘I am Stormcast, same as you,’ I say. ‘None of us would be here if we weren’t worthy.’ I speak so boldly, I almost believe it myself.

Across the way, Alumitar finishes his business, clasping hands with the two Scourge corsairs. In the corner Luxa Stormrider prepares to leave, raising the hood of her cloak.

Dhoraz swipes a stein from another drunken patron, draining it, returning it, its owner none the wiser. ‘Time to seek truth, it seems.’

I fish currency from the pocket of my cloak. Ulgu’s realmstone, shadowstone, is wont to disguise itself, so only those with witch-sight trade with shadowstone directly. Many mortals use nightskins, a representative currency made from cured hide, supposedly good for exchange with a small quantity of shadowstone from Greyspire’s treasuries. Something tells me the currency’s value is mostly imagined, but I have never been a creature of inordinate faith.

I finish my cup, passing nightskins to the server-girl who’s so diligently attended to us. ‘This is Ulgu, Dhoraz. The Realm of Shadows. There’s not a truth to be found that isn’t draped in lies.’

Dhoraz gives me a remarkable look, rapping the haft of his mighty hammer upon the wooden deck. Ever since our first meeting, the Giant-Fell has proven boisterous and boastful, forever spinning yarns about his past glories, not all of which can possibly be true.

To feel this long, wordless stare unsettles me.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘Nothing.’ He shrugs. ‘You’re right. And clever, lass. But behind those eyes like the aether, beneath that hair like the storm, you’re hiding something. I hear it in your voice. I smell it on you. Honest to Sigmar, one of these days you must take things as they are. No more reflections. No more hollow wit.’

‘You are drunk, Dhoraz. Hollow wit is a fine thing.’

‘Honest wit? Fine. But we need your fight, too, lass.’ He taps the precious scrollwork of the Lantern Astrala clipped snugly to my armour. ‘The God-King didn’t give this sacred relic to you for decoration.’

I shove his hand off. ‘I know what he gave it to me for.’

Dhoraz ceases beating the haft of his hammer upon the floor planks. ‘Do what you were forged to do.’

I rise. ‘You are drunk,’ I say again, even though we both know Stormcasts do not get drunk.

Alumitar approaches. ‘Dhoraz. Calthia. This lifetime, please.’

Dhoraz nods, offering a parting glance. ‘Think on it.’

I grit my teeth. ‘It’s all I’m good for.’

We trail the aelf corsairs through the vat-house doors, the entire structure rocking beneath us. Outside, a port water stink replaces the sour melange of spilt beer, dead coals and decaying fish. The Scourges’ wolfship is moored nearby. Black water laps hungrily against its seamless hull. Strange to think the dark aelfkin who crew this vessel are our allies, but they are.

As we board, I stew. I dislike the tone in Dhoraz’s voice. I don’t trust the judgement in his eyes. Were I prouder, I might humble him where he stands.

But for all his arrogance and for all his ignorance, he is not wrong. His words find bitter purchase, for I am flawed, as all our immortal brethren are. Just not in the way he thinks.

Because I know what Dhoraz does not. Whatever legends are spoken of the divine bond between Sigmar and the Stormcast, the God-King cannot save me from the darkness in my dreams, nor the blackness before my restless eyes.

I have no faith in Sigmar. And neither have I earned his faith in me.

For all his wisdom, Sigmar had not told us what truth we sought.

I still remember when he gave us our holy task. We stood on the ramparts of the World-Wall: four Stormcasts-Errant and the God-King himself. Mallus loomed above us like a red star. The Sigmarabulum, a glittering band of forges and silvered towers, belted the burning moon like a diadem in the sky. In all of Sigmaron there is no place closer to the world-that-was than where we stood that day.

The moment was sacred. We were blessed. I was shaking, and my limbs would not still.

It was not fear, for I fear no enemy and certainly not my brethren. I was remade by the glory of Sigmar, with his strength. But what might remain were I to peel away the layers of him? Some pearl of faith at the heart of me, an indelible moment of heroic sacrifice ingrained into its core? Or simply a vacuum, like the aether filling the void between realms? A nothing.

That day on the World-Wall, I trembled. Sigmar spoke our names, his voice gentle and powerful like the rumble of thunder on a distant horizon. We marched from our file, one by one, just as we were called. We received our boons in quivering adoration. Alumitar Wrathsong was given a gift unknown to me. Luxa Stormrider, a noble aetherwing familiar called Taros, whose raptor eyes glistened with pride. Dhoraz lumbered coolly back to formation with a polished sigmarite hammer in his grip and a boorish smile on his face.

I admired that perfectly weighted weapon, the obvious high craftsmanship of it. It was a splendid gift, and I could not think of any single treasure I have seen which rivalled it.

Then Sigmar spoke my name, his voice reverberating with the mastery of worlds. With howling emptiness in my belly and knees as steady as a beastkin battle line, I advanced. I have heard envious murmurs from Freeguild militia about the unerring cohesion of Stormcasts on the march. They speak of our movements as if the skill is machined into us, as if we were made for parades and inspections as much as for war. The truth is we learn, same as them. We spend countless hours drilling our movements, disciplined for the slightest deviations, until lockstep comes as naturally as making war.

Sigmar stood before the World-Wall’s castellations, mantled in golden warplate and a heavenly cloak of ursine furs. Nothing in all the realms fills me with the same shaking adulation and spine-tingling thrill as the single memory of standing before the God-King, the greatest moment of my existence. It almost drowns out my fear of the blackness. Almost.

I calmed, receiving Sigmar’s boon with tears in my eyes. The Lantern Astrala was an exquisitely crafted lanthorn, like the stuff of starlight cast in metal and ivory. Entrancing scrollwork adorned the gates of its shutters, a simple handle adorning its roof.

I knew then it was a precious treasure, and I was favoured to receive it.

‘The Lantern Astrala,’ Sigmar said. This close, his voice was just a voice. ‘You have seen this?’

‘No, His Divinity.’ I canted my head, trying to think. ‘But if His Divinity permits me to speak, it calls to mind a warding lantern.’

‘It is a finer tool, Calthia. A relic from old Azyr, more ancient than the walls we now stand upon. Open its shutter and the light of Azyr will shine through even the thickest darkness. But be careful. Spending its energy will tax yours. This power is great. So is the strength necessary to wield it.’

I took it up, the warmth in the mystic metal tingling through the sigmarite in my gauntlets and the leather in my gloves. ‘I thank His Divinity.’

Then Sigmar’s hands gently worked their way over mine. Power thrummed through my bones, breath-halting and electric. My eyes wandered to his magnetic gaze.

‘I have always sensed darkness in you,’ Sigmar said. ‘And doubt. But whatever lies you tell yourself, only you are worthy of this gift. Only Calthia Xandire.’

Yes, His Divinity. The words I should have said, still fresh upon my mind.

Instead, my eyes fell. ‘I remember nothing of my mortal life,’ I whispered. It was the verbal echo of the thought which had long haunted me. If only I remembered my past, I might know why I was chosen to become Stormcast. I would understand my worthiness. I would have faith.

Sigmar remained expressionless. He was once a man, and he wore a man’s face, but eternity had bled his humanity from him like heat from a tempered blade. If he knew where I came from, he did not speak of it.

My hands shook. My insides grew warm. ‘Forgive my temerity,’ I said. ‘Forgive a moment’s frailty, His Divinity.’

Sigmar accepted this. ‘In Ulgu, may this Astrala light guide you,’ he said. ‘May it help you dispel the darkness wherever you find it. And whatever you do – remember your strength.’

I returned to my place. With giddy pause and thoughtless abandon, standing before my bemused brethren and the god who had made us anew, I tittered like a child.

I have spent all the time since that moment with a solemn onus and neck-prickling worry. A hole gapes within me in the place where my faith in the God-King should be. I do not speak of the academic fact of Sigmar’s existence or majesty. He is real, and he is mighty.

This is not belief. And knowing it, the darkness still haunts me. I feel its billowing folds watch me from the base of my skull in breathless moments of battle. And in the halcyon quiet of night, I hear the gnawing sounds it makes, calling in wet, champing syllables.

Sigmar cannot save me from this. But I understand with all the storm in my soul that with the Lantern Astrala, should I confront this darkness, I can save myself. In the perfection of that victory, I will finally be worthy.

Misthåvn is a city of scoundrels. Before we met the Scourge Privateers in the vat-house, we spent our time plying taverns on the floating quays, or at pubs and lodge-houses nested between loading wharfs and dockyards, seeking clues in the mists. We listened to old sailors spin long yarns in hushed, liquor-gravelled voices. We heard rumours of a lair at the bottom of the Shadowsea that went by many names.

The Grey Cells. Shadow-flux. Taboo words hissed in sibilant tongues, meant to keep the place’s malefic darkness from coming closer.

But one name came up more often than most: Harrowdeep.

We gleaned some consistencies. Supposedly, beneath the apogee of Ulgu’s darkest moon, the Orb Duplicita, whirlpools swirl to life in water. This uncanny curse affects oceans, and sylvan streams, and steaming pool water in marbled baths. To fall into these eddies is to suffer the curse of the Orb Duplicita and be trapped in Harrowdeep.

Beyond that, the locals’ rumours were muddled, fearful whispers. They murmured of aelves who once peopled the lair. They spoke of fell creatures from the Orb Duplicita who built it, a race of makers whose very visage unravels sanity, whose existence is an affront to reason. These makers came to Ulgu in a primordial age to nourish the shadows of living things, it was said. Where they fed, the realm hungered even more, until eventually the shadows could not be sated. The god Malerion destroyed the eldritch makers simply to preserve the soundness of his own bitter, deific mind.

So it was said. But many things were said, and they cannot all be true.

I heard rumours of a foundation in Harrowdeep’s fathomless depths, Nadir, and a keystone which holds the dungeon together, the Harrowstone. After I asked about these, one filthy vagrant tried to explain the mind-scouring sorceries necessary to fill a bottomless ocean with water. He started weeping, and I gave him a nightskin for warm food and a warm bed before leaving.

He tossed the currency into Misthåvn’s waters, disappearing. Hours later, his drowned body was found bobbing in the harbour wake.

Of all I have heard, I am certain of one thing. Harrowdeep is a lair of darkness and dead dreams, shrouded in mysteries.

Alumitar agreed when I told him this was the place we seek. He does not believe the dungeon itself is real, but if such whirlpools indeed surround Misthåvn, they might explain the recent disappearances we attempt to redress. They must be dealt with.

As for me, I believe the dungeon is real. Harrowdeep beckons to us, through seething eddies, beneath the reflected light of a faceless moon. A place where light has gone extinct. A malignancy out of time, burrowing like a worm through Ulgu’s bedrock.

The thought tenses my fingers into fists. It kindles a fire in my belly that will not blaze out. This is where we are meant to go. And after what the God-King told me, I know Harrowdeep’s annihilation is the truth we seek.

CHAPTER TWO

On the Shadowsea, in Ulgu’s forever small hours, our quest teeters on the edge of failure.

One would not know it from our calm. Shadow and the spiced burn of aelven incense fill the berth deck of the Senthulvin like a warm blanket, summoning me to sleep. I do not dare.

Alumitar emerges from the forest of swaying sleeping nets, nodding curtly. ‘Truthseekers.’

As one we hearken. Dhoraz turns aside from the extinguished candelabra of druchirior iron upon which Luxa’s aetherwing companion, Taros, is perched. The Giant-Fell has spent our short journey attempting to train Luxa’s brilliantly plumed raptor to scream instead of squawk. In answer to Dhoraz’s coaxing pleas, Taros does nought but crick his head and caw in obstinate defiance.

I take vicious pleasure in Dhoraz’s continual failure. He claims he was once the greatest beast tamer in the Ghurish continent of Rhondol. He claims many things.

Dhoraz raps the haft of his hammer against the deck. ‘Well?’

‘The corsairs won’t linger,’ Alumitar says. ‘The whirlpool scares them.’

‘The whirlpool is why we came,’ I say. ‘You told them as much.’

‘Yet as willing as they were to accept our nightskins for passage, they will not risk sinking with us.’

Strange, to at last see urgency in Alumitar’s wizened gaze. Among the Truthseekers, the Wrathsong has ever been our source of repose and succour. The shrinking prospects of our quest shake his calm.

‘So we descend?’ I ask.

‘Yes,’ Alumitar says. ‘It is time we learn the truth of these legends. Come, Truthseekers. We go now.’

We gather our weapons with practised efficiency, filing behind the Wrathsong through the Senthulvin’s rocking, lamplit decks. In his past life, Alumitar was a mariner. To watch him navigate expertly through the wolfship’s heaving belowdecks is impressive the same way watching me is utterly not.

The maelstrom and shroud-storm are not surprises. In Misthåvn, they were one of the few consistencies among Harrowdeep’s many divergent myths. It cannot be coincidence the recent disappearances of Misthåvn’s vessels have occurred under the zenith of the Orb Duplicita. No one sets sail on these nights. Even the aelven cut-throats of the Senthulvin, however greedily they might have undertaken our contract, finally lost their nerve when they laid eyes on the whirlpools.

From above deck, the corsairs’ flute-like Aelfish speech carries down. The timber of the Senthulvin’s hull groans, tortured by the violent waves of the shroud-storm.

‘Corsairs are dogs,’ Dhoraz mutters. ‘Cowards one and all. Never trust aelves to do for payment what the faithful do for free. They all serve that spider, Malerion. They all serve themselves.’

‘Senthulvin is Aelfish for “Faithless Blade”,’ I say. ‘What’d you expect?’

‘Don’t make excuses for them, lass. They can do that for themselves. These aelves, they’re cut-throats and cowards. The sea is their livelihood. Listen to them up there, shaking before it.’

I grow angry. I despise Dhoraz’s high-handed judgements, no matter their target. ‘Don’t presume to understand their fear. You know nothing of them. You assume everything.’

‘To hear you defend those exiles, lass, one would think our quest means nothing to you.’

I scoff. ‘Is that venom in your tone? What’s wrong, Giant-Fell? Afraid of a little swim?’

Dhoraz steams with annoyance. Before he can reply, Luxa Stormrider shoves something into both our hands. It is a fragrant balsam the burnt colour of cinnamon, like clay, mixed with pestled herbs, obtained from the apothecaries of upper Sigmaron. The balsam grants the ability to breathe the water of the sea, allowing us to descend wherever this maelstrom leads without risk of drowning.

Just like that, my quarrel with Dhoraz ends. ‘We eat it, and that’s all?’ I ask.

Luxa grunts. She adjusts the elegant bow strapped around her shoulder. The aetherwing Taros is settled snugly in a special harness at her breast. He glares, unblinking. The avian is a magnificent specimen and, as best I can tell, Luxa’s only friend.

Without a word, the Stormrider turns and rises above decks.

Dhoraz offers a baffled glance. ‘Friendly, eh?’

I raise my brow. ‘Luxa? Really?’

Dhoraz blanches. ‘Storms no. The aetherwing. They can be nippy little beasts. Luxa?’ He shivers. ‘She’s a Vigilor. They get that way, out in the realms.’

‘Taciturn?’ I ask. ‘Cold-shouldered?’

Dhoraz shrugs, then nods.

For once, we agree on something.

The main deck is awash with brine. Flurries of rain hammer the coal-black timber, soaking us, chilling us to the bone. Corsairs skitter gracefully along the wolfship’s gunwales, across the masts, battening down the sails. Accompanying them are barefoot thralls, the soles of their feet blackened with tar to prevent slipping.

The thralls’ legal status is a controversy. Whatever Sigmar’s Law mandates, accommodations for slavery have always been made for Scourge Privateers. Our circumstances and the urgency of our quest prevent us from interfering on the thralls’ behalf. This expediency embitters me, and the corsairs’ refusal to see us all the way to the maelstrom only makes it worse.

The thought crosses my mind how else the corsairs might add insult to injury. I check the Lantern Astrala’s bindings to my armour. Satisfied, I peer into the furious sea.

The whirlpool is closer than I thought. Dark ocean churns hungrily before us, stretching from one end of the heaving horizon to the other. Shadows roll in the dismal sky, veiling the cursed moon which shines darkly beyond them. Lightning flashes, casting the cloudscape in eerie relief, limning the shapes of things better left unseen.

Alumitar shouts over the raging storm to the Senthulvin’s rain-battered captain, an ice-eyed aelf corsair with a water-repellent cloak of drake’s hide, who insistently shakes her head. Waves like moving mountains swell closer through the storm. Something tells me we are not long for this place.

Then the wolfship judders and groans. I stumble forward, barely catching myself. Something has rammed us.

Worse, my hands are empty. My widening eyes dart down. Luxa’s wrapped balsam washes through seawater towards the ship’s scuppers.

‘Orruks’ dung.’ I dive down, scrambling heavily along the deck through the frigid brine. My armour drags splinters from the planking. I reach the gunwale just after the balsam. Rippling water washes it through the scupper, into the sea.

My stomach fills with ice, my breath as cool as frost. That was no mere nostrum. Without the balsam, immortal or not, I will drown in these waters.

I understand the corsairs’ panic-stricken Aelfish enough to know whatever rammed us has gashed open the hull. The Senthulvin cants dangerously to the side, sinking. Tortured by gale, the wolfship’s mizzenmast snaps from its base. Panicked privateers and their mortal thralls rush to the escape pinnaces, hacking at the securements to free the craft and abandon ship.

Behind them, something terrible rises from the waters. The Ulguan shadows barely obscure its ludicrous scale. It is like a wyrm, its trunk as wide as the turrets of the World-Wall, bristling with thick, urchin-like spines. Seaweed hangs from the barbs. Brine showers from it in sheets.

‘Now!’ Alumitar shouts, his voice small against the hurricane winds. He dives below, into the waves.

I glance around. Luxa pauses for Taros to wolf down his dose of our precious balsam, then follows. Dhoraz is halfway over the wolfship’s gunwale, hammer perched on his shoulder, eyes fluttering like birdsong.

My heart pounds in my breast. ‘Dhoraz!’

Dhoraz turns, brow furrowed. He sees me empty-handed. His face smooths. He removes a bolus of half-chewed, cinnamon-red gunk from his mouth, tossing it to me, then dives below.

I push the lump into my mouth, gagging at its stewed-ginger burn and unpleasant texture, eyes watering.

Another serpent breaks the seething ocean’s surface, rising, its tip glistening with the pulsing movement of a veinless, glossy eye. Lightning limns the behemoth trunk, revealing more of it than I want to see. Linger any longer, and these beasts will smash the Senthulvin into splinters with me on it.

I catapult myself into the waves. Glacial water rushes past my face. Darkness rustles in my ears and bubbles flurry around me. I don’t close my eyes, lest the blackness take me. This is Ulgu, where shadows reign supreme. I will not empower them any further.

Through the salty sting of seawater, a blizzard of debris twists down the whirlpool. Like miniature dolls in a vast tornado, Alumitar, Luxa and Dhoraz flounder towards the sea’s bottomless gloom.

The deepness is unforgiving, indistinguishable black, but I cannot fight the sensation something moves in it. A threshing mass of leviathan tendrils, like the spiny serpents above.

Inhaling water is like choking on fire, but at least I can breathe. The insistent weight of my armour drags me down. I guide my momentum, sinking towards the others. If an eternity of war has taught me one thing, it is that together Stormcasts are strong. Nothing beneath these waves changes that.

I reach Dhoraz, latching on to him. He understands my intent. We propel ourselves towards Luxa, her face as stoically blank below the water as it was above.

Locked into a phalanx, we sink, chasing Alumitar into the depths. The ocean’s furious pressure squeals in my ears, squeezing my waterlogged lungs. Bubbles riffle around us.

Alumitar. He’s so close. I reach out.

A little further. That’s all. Just a hair closer.

Then a shadow sweeps before us, and Alumitar is gone. Far afield, starlight flashes in the abyss. Lightning sears upwards, steaming the water around it, jolting back to the surface of the Shadowsea.

Alumitar Wrathsong is dead. His abrupt demise is hardly more memorable than any of the other Stormcast Eternal falls I have witnessed. Those are many.

But in that flash of lightning and starfire, I glimpse the true shape of the leviathan in the deep. Those spiny trunks are not wyrms. They are the tentacles of a single heaving giant. From a tumbling sandfall at sea’s bottom, its tentacles scythe through the abyss with tectonic momentum, groping blindly for anything it can sweep into its horned maw. The monstrosity is big enough to beggar the mind, almost the size of a city.

Impenetrable gloom closes in. Luxa and Dhoraz remain planted to my shoulders. I clench my hands around the Lantern Astrala, each movement like wading through treacle. I peer into the abyss. When I catch the telltale movement of shadow, I shall flare the Astrala light. I cannot waste a moment of my strength, and my timing must be perfect. To fail now is to die.

Then, my lungs begin to burn. The choking urge to cough swells within me. Weakened because of its small dosage, the balsam’s magic wears off. Brine fills my lungs. I am drowning.

I bare my teeth, biding each agonising moment, eyes blistering cold. Behind me, Dhoraz bellows uselessly. Bubbles stream from his lungs. He drowns, same as me, even as he braces his hammer.

Still I wait.

The darkness shifts, like ink painted over a second shadow. I almost see the dusk from my dreams – the tumbling, malicious darkness which calls for me, always. I scorn that darkness. I hate it, and the hate gives me focus.

I jerk the Lantern Astrala’s shutter open with the desperate strength of a dying woman.

Light erupts, sharp and punishing as a spear thrust. The howling beam is so bright it is loud, reverberating beneath the accursed ocean like the blare of a war-horn.

The heat drains from my blood. Liquid midnight sizzles away before me like steam cast upon a flame. The monstrosity recoils, its tentacles scalded by Azyr’s blazing light. It worked. It worked!

Our opening is brief. Like a meteor lancing through the sky, we fall through the closing tentacles of the thrashing titan into the sandfall below it. The water pulls us deeper, faster, pressing in closer. My vision pulses red. My chest aches with suffocating panic.

Then the light dies, and I know we have found the place we seek.

CHAPTER THREE

I am croaking up the last salty dregs of the Shadowsea from my lungs when something touches my shoulder. I swivel, flicking my runeblade from its scabbard.

Luxa. She tilts her slender chin down, stringing her bow, its sigmarite tips gleaming in the murk.

‘Stormrider,’ I say. ‘Where is Dhoraz?’

Luxa pushes her dripping hair aside. Her eyes flicker behind me.

I glance that way. We stand beneath knife-like ramparts built from rustless black iron and cyclopean stone. Coral scars the pitted fortifications. Barnacles and malformed skulls grin where they’re fused into fissured igneous rock. And Dhoraz…

Dhoraz, the disorderly lout. He charges, hammer swinging, bellowing his own name and highly specific oaths for those who stand against him. I had wondered how the Giant-Fell came to be a Stormcast-Errant. Now I know. He lacks the discipline to fight within a unit, as part of a whole.

Ahead of Dhoraz, jittering ghouls loiter hungrily in crags of dark stone. They gnash their jaws, verdigris in the roots of their teeth, wearing faded rags for clothing and armour wrought from scraps. Their eyes glitter insanely beneath a ghost light shimmering above us, like cave grots beneath a Bad Moon. The glow does not illuminate so much as cast deeper, maddening shadows.

The fiends are waiting for something. For what, I care not. Now we must act.

As Dhoraz crashes into the rout of cave fiends, my mind jumps to Alumitar. I do not pity him his death, for whether we dispense it or suffer it, death is our purpose. Soon the Wrathsong will be Reforged to serve again.

What of us? What of we Truthseekers who survive him? Who will lead in his absence? We cannot fight under some misguided principle of democracy. Amongst any force, such headless fellowship is the death of discipline. One warrior’s vision must guide us.

My eyes wander to the Lantern Astrala. Only I am worthy of it, Sigmar said. There is no greater tool against the darkness. None could be more suitable for the Truthseekers’ command than the woman chosen to wield it.

Luxa frees Taros from her harness. The aetherwing flaps gleefully into the air, circling above.

I point to Luxa’s bow. ‘You’re a Vigilor?’

She nocks an arrow in reply, its head sputtering with energy.

‘You don’t talk,’ I say.

Luxa nods. For all her sylphlike beauty there is something careworn and sexless about Luxa, something phantom and haunting. We all carry our own ghosts. Perhaps silence is her burden.

‘I can get used to that,’ I say. I point to Giant-Fell, who laughs as he battles the troglodyte creatures. He bats aside their wicked blades and hooks, pulping their degenerate flesh with his hammer. ‘I’ll help the buffoon. Cover us.’

Luxa nods. Then I storm after Dhoraz, half tempted to take my time. If he dies, we would at least be ridded of his prattle and arrogance. As gratifying as the momentary fancy is, Dhoraz is my brother. I could never forgive myself for failing to assist my Stormcast brethren.

And if I’m to lead the Truthseekers to glory, I’ll need all the warriors I can get.

Dhoraz frees his hammer from a fiend’s skull with a suckling squelch. ‘I’ve never seen ghouls like these.’

I wipe ichor from my blade, then sheathe it. ‘They aren’t ghouls. I culled flesh-eaters in the halls of Ostell Castle. These are nothing like the servants of the abhorrant kings.’

‘You do not have a monopoly on knowledge of the evils of the Mortal Realms,’ Dhoraz says. ‘Ghouls are ghouls are ghouls. These are simply a breed we have not encountered before.’

I scowl. If there was any doubt before, I’m now certain I dislike Dhoraz. Luxa is at least careful with her words. As if she only has a small share of them, and she fears to exhaust her supply. Dhoraz speaks with the enduring boldness of one who has known no wrong.

‘Listen,’ I say, determined to put this petty friction to rest. ‘Alumitar is gone. We three remain. Our path from here is ours to decide, and ours alone.’ I have rehearsed these words in my head since our arrival. Now that things have settled, I have my chance. ‘We are Stormcast. With that comes–’

Dhoraz, oblivious, tromps onwards. He cranes his head at the shadow-ridden marvels around us, either pretending not to have heard or simply heedless.

‘Dhoraz,’ I say, insistently. He only continues on, muttering something to himself about secrets.

Confounded, I glower. Luxa Stormrider offers a brief, unsympathetic stare before falling in behind the Giant-Fell. Taros cocks his head, clucking like a hen.

Perhaps this will not be as easy as I thought.

For a time, we march without direction through the iron citadel we find ourselves in. Malformed aelven architecture claws into the cavernous sky. Above, the soul-poisoning nether-light of a moon gleams down wilfully upon us, shimmering with distortion, as if we stare at it from beneath the ocean.

‘I saw no moonlight on the Shadowsea,’ Dhoraz says. ‘The shroud-storm must have dispersed.’

His observation is not necessarily wrong, but I dislike the assumed authority in his tone. ‘I don’t think we sank.’

Dhoraz scoffs. ‘You jest.’

‘No. We descended into the Shadowsea, yes. But I believe that whirlpool was more akin to a Realmgate. Don’t you remember the gossip in Misthåvn? The whirlpools are said to appear wherever Ulgu’s moonlight touches water, but not all water can lead to the same source. That maelstrom transported us somewhere… beyond. Look.’

Dhoraz follows my gaze up. The shadow-moon which grimaces facelessly above us is the Orb Duplicita, I am certain. Silent flakes of shadow magic drift down from the glimmering un-light like snow. The shadows coalesce into quiet trickles, then flows and rills, running ever downwards along black iron and petrified coral.

Dhoraz strokes his beard. ‘Then there is truth to the tales.’

‘How much, we will see,’ I say. I stop and face the others. ‘We’ve circled this pit three times. It is time we come up with a plan.’

Dhoraz claps. ‘Couldn’t agree more, lass. We must find this citadel’s heart. If we move fast, up the walls–’

I narrow my eyes. ‘Who put you in command?’

He makes a placating gesture. ‘We are Stormcast. We need a commander. With Alumitar dead, I’m best suited for it.’

‘Charging huddles of those twisted fiends without waiting for support does not make you suited for command.’

Dhoraz flinches. ‘What, you think you’re fit for it?’

‘Yes,’ I say, without hesitation. I recall Sigmar’s words on the World-Wall, and the rumours of Nadir and the Harrowstone. I remind my companions of both. ‘Those are what we seek. Find Nadir and destroy the Harrowstone, and we destroy this lair. We’ll eradicate the menace haunting the Shadowsea.’

Dhoraz laughs. ‘I couldn’t agree less.’ He gestures around us. ‘Whoever built this place, they are clearly behind the disappearances from the Shadowsea. We must scour this fortress for clues. Stormrider, what say you?’

Luxa wrinkles her lips. On her shoulder, Taros chirps.

Dhoraz levels his finger at the aetherwing. ‘You will keen, bird, I promise you that.’

Taros crows defiantly. Luxa smirks.

I glance at the warped walls. Coral sprouts from the ragged stone like tumours. Crushed pumice litters the ground. Whether we follow Dhoraz’s instructions or my own, first we must find a way through this maze.

I remove the Lantern Astrala, testing its weight. Sigmar promised the relic could dispel even the thickest gloom. What is the veil of Ulgu’s shadow magic but another expression of darkness?

I crack the shutter, fighting the creeping worry that the ocean’s crushing depths and our remoteness from Azyr have extinguished the Astrala light. Yet as before, the lanthorn’s resplendent brightness lances outwards, drawing heat from my fingers and belly.

Dhoraz and Luxa recoil. Taros, jubilant, sings. I labour for breath, my respiration frosting in the air as Azyrite energy bathes our surroundings in coruscant light.

Sure enough, an opening appears just behind a coral outcropping. It is a tunnel of stone ribbed with dirty iron arches, easily visible in the Astrala’s blazing glow. There is no telling how many other secrets are concealed right beneath our noses, waiting to be peeled aside. Ulgu is the Realm of Shadows. Lies undergird every fact here, and half-truths anchor those.

I shutter the lantern. My heart slows, my breath settles, and my blood once again warms in my veins. Sigmar’s strength returns to me, and I feel the power forged within me restored.

‘Well. Look at that.’ Dhoraz is more impressed than he wants to be. The passage I’ve uncovered leads down, just where I intended to take us.

‘If reaching Nadir and destroying the Harrowstone are how we destroy Harrowdeep,’ I say again, ‘then we must descend.’

Luxa clears her throat. ‘I’m with Calthia.’

I stare. I had started to think she couldn’t speak.

Beneath his beard, Dhoraz scowls. ‘All this time with your mouth shut and you open it for her sake?’

Luxa nods.

Dhoraz groans. ‘Then that’s it?’

‘That’s it.’ I wrestle back a grin. ‘In Alumitar’s absence, I shall lead. We have our path downwards. Any more objections, Giant-Fell? Or would you prefer searching out more of those cave fiends so you can bellow out your name and charge something?’

‘I want what we all want,’ Dhoraz says, plaintively. ‘I want to complete the God-King’s task. Following this grot-hole will achieve nothing, lass.’

‘It is not your decision.’

I gesture to Luxa. The Stormrider sloshes down through heel-deep water into the passage. Taros remains perched on her shoulder, cooing apprehensively.

I prepare to enter. ‘Giant-Fell,’ I say.

Dhoraz raises a brow. ‘Lass?’

I return the Lantern Astrala to its fastening and meet his eyes. This is not a confrontation I am overeager to have. Yet with Alumitar gone, someone must maintain order. I remember Sigmar’s words well; I sense the darkness ahead. We can destroy Harrowdeep, if only the others stay in line. Then I can prove my worthiness – and my faith – once and for all.

‘We fight as one or we fall,’ I say. ‘Do not call me lass again. Understood?’

Red-hot choler blooms on Dhoraz’s cheeks. My words humiliate him, but keeping discipline is imperative. Even if it means losing his affection.

‘Understood,’ he says. ‘We fight as one, or we fall.’

Dhoraz’s obstinacy does not diminish as we pass deeper. He is loath to obey my orders, refusing to acknowledge me.

In that way, the cave fiends are a minor blessing. They attack in wild pulses, unpredictable, surging from the darkness like ambush predators. Each time, Dhoraz does exactly as I command, but only because I command him to fight. Until the day comes that I wish to hear more false boasts of Dhoraz’s previous triumphs, fighting seems to be all the Giant-Fell is good for.

As unsettled as I am by his unruliness, I must come to terms with it. Stormcasts are forged from the same stuff, by the hands of the same maker. I must trust Sigmar’s purpose and skill more than Dhoraz’s intentions. In all the centuries of my life, I have never known our brethren’s unity to fail. We trust in each other, and in Sigmar. So it is said.

Tolerating Dhoraz’s stubbornness, I continue leading us down. Some of Misthåvn’s drunks whispered of an aelven citadel below the Shadowsea. Urama Othal – the Deepest Refuge. The sanctuary was supposedly founded by Queen Kia’tan of the Morladron Deepkin and exiles among the Daughters of Khaine.

I thought the tale untrue. The Deepkin are haughty, distant creatures; the Daughters of Khaine have blood which runs red with their fury and passions. An alliance between the armies of life and death would bear more fruit.

Yet I was wrong. Age and darkness warp the fortress’ walls, and its towers sag with the weight of coral beds, but there can be no doubt. This is Urama Othal. What remains of it.

No aelves are here, only the degenerate troglodytes, lurking in the shadows. Old iron in misshapen halls bleeds rust. Jagged coral-beds have reclaimed empty squares and fountains. There is no sign of where the city’s previous inhabitants have gone. It is empty.

We pass beneath crags and twisted ramparts. Overhead the Orb Duplicita fades from view. Its calm-gnawing glimmer is preserved in the frigid waters sloshing at our feet, one of Harrowdeep’s strange spells. The phantom glow is enough to see by, but only barely.

Sleep-hunger throbs behind my eyes. A feeling I do not recognise swells within me, like a memory buried by time. I fight a niggling discomfort at the familiarity of the shadows, of the soul-burrowing glow. All of our movements take us downwards. I do not like it.

We emerge from the citadel’s twisted corridors into a forest of basalt megaliths. The great stones march into the darkness, lines upon lines of faded runes engraving each of their faces.

I curl my lips, tracing the lettering’s lines. They’re Aelfish glyphs, but twisted. They are difficult to behold for long, something akin to Druhirri, but dissimilar from the common scripts. That is no surprise: Aelfish exists in one hundred thousand varieties. Aeldorin, Yura-ghyra, the Idoneth tongues. Countless dialects exist, or so an aelf would say.

It is only a half-truth, for aelves understand each other fine. They only pretend not to. To me, a human, the distinctions between all their multifarious dialects seem as artificial and imagined as the divergences between their civilisations. How much easier it must be for fragile-ego, fey-eared aelfkin to believe their rival breeds are fundamentally different than to admit that they, like all beings, might simply be ugly variations of the same vulgar template.

The harrow-runes on the megaliths show none of the obscene perversions common to Chaos magic, nor the magical permutations necessary for Aelfish spell-binding. They are all schizophrenic and senseless, difficult to look upon for long. They refer to this place as the Plaza of Dusk.

Dhoraz lumbers ahead, eyes puckered up at the megaliths around us. ‘Xandire will get us lost in here,’ he mutters. ‘Stormrider, you have twine? To mark the way? We should leave a trail. In case we must retrace our steps.’

Luxa remains silent.

‘Leaving twine would make us vulnerable to pursuers,’ I say. ‘This is no fairy tale, Dhoraz.’

‘Even fairy tales aren’t fairy tales,’ he says. ‘Have you heard the fable of Tor’Kelt? The antlered boy of Ghyran? Whose house grew legs, then walked into the wyldwoods?’

‘The Everqueen helps him find it again,’ I say. ‘He guides his house back home. Yes, I’ve heard the parable. We all know it.’

‘The story’s real,’ Dhoraz says. ‘I met Tor’Kelt. Rubbed his antlers for good luck and asked him about the fable. When he found his house, he said, he didn’t save it. He killed it and burned it. Used the ashes to grow a tree, and then lived in its shadow, alone.’

I scowl. ‘What is your point?’

Dhoraz shrugs. ‘That Luxa might have twine. And that you will get us lost.’

The scale of the megalith garden shrinks the mind. Brine laps on the floor, and the air smells like winter’s thaw. The asymmetries within the harrow-rune engravings are difficult to look upon, as if they drain sense from the eyes. I do not like this place.

We find a stairwell, wide and deep, carved into the flooded floor. I heard rumours of the Silent Stair in Misthåvn, and I know it leads to Harrowdeep.

We descend the spiralling steps. The ceiling is low enough for me to know it was not built for the likes of us. The cyclopean stonework echoes strangely beneath our boots. The stair’s curvature is far too sheer. My gut tells me its dimensions are a physical paradox, for at such twisting angles it would have to open into itself to exist.

The aching, breath-halting darkness is made worse by Dhoraz’s ceaseless talk. The Giant-Fell regales us with a tale of how he saved Vandus Hammerhand from a voracuda of the Idoneth. The story is so obviously untrue I cannot help but wonder how he invented it.

He blathers on. We pass through burbling dimness with only seawater’s glow to see by. All I sense is the water at my feet, the murky contours of stone walls, and Dhoraz’s ceaseless, tedious yarn. I have to make him stop.

So I give the command to spread out. Luxa takes point and Dhoraz carries the rear, each of us just close enough to maintain visual contact, but not so close Dhoraz can continue his prattle. Peeved, the Giant-Fell raps the haft of his hammer upon the stone, thudding out a rhythm of jaw-pumping irritation. He does not like me. Good.

Rocky chrysalises adorn the hewn stone wall, each just larger than a grown man. They glimmer by the phantom light of the seawater. I let Luxa out of view, my eyes narrowing.

I prod at one of the chrysalises. Its stone encasement crumbles open beneath my fingers. Inside, wan flesh peeks out. I crush more of the stone. There is a corpse inside.

My corpse.

I inhale sharply but remain calm. I have seen mind-melting horrors across realms of darkness. I have slaughtered gibbering daemons and butchered hordes of mindless greenskins. This is disturbing, but it is no terror to me. I am Stormcast. I am fearless.

Bile seethes up my throat. My lips twitch with anger which displaces the fear I do not feel. This is Ulgu. A realm of shadows and illusions. I will not let them rule me.

I gaze upon the corpse, coming to hate it, just as I hate the darkness in my dreams. It is a cold, stark, emptying feeling, but that is better than what it replaces.

I draw my blade to hack the doppelganger apart. But as I raise my sword, my eyes wander to the skull of my dead twin, crushed open, as if by a hammer.

Dhoraz’s metronome beat upon the stone has ceased.

I turn. Dhoraz watches with flickering, birdsong eyes. ‘Xandire.’

I stagger and shout, raising my blade.

Dhoraz recoils. ‘Sigmar’s beard, what’s wrong with you?’

‘I…’ I point to the chrysalis of stone. The corpse of my doppelganger is gone, replaced by the mummified remains of an aelf.

I find my calm, my eyes wandering back to Dhoraz. What would his hammer feel like, crashing against my skull? It is a foolish question. He wouldn’t hurt me. We are brethren in arms.

But to see him here, relishing my alarm, I cannot help but wonder. I remember his stubborn discontent and the choler in his cheeks, stoked like fire. Perhaps Dhoraz would not harm me. Perhaps. But when the time comes, when I must depend upon the Giant-Fell, can I trust him to have my back?

‘Xandire?’ Dhoraz says.

I clench my jaw. ‘Yes. What is it?’

His eyes fall to the gravelled rock upon the floor. Shadows steam from the chrysalis’ crumbs. There is an unpleasant conversation waiting for us in what just happened, but neither of us broach the subject.

Instead: ‘A boy is following us,’ Dhoraz says.

I flinch. ‘You’re certain?’

‘A child, yes. Scampering about the shadows, lurking.’ Dhoraz bites his tongue. ‘We should speak to him. Then again, it isn’t my decision.’

‘That’s not all,’ Luxa says, backtracking towards us. ‘I hear chewing, like grinding stone. I smell meat, charred flesh. Something follows.’

‘Yes,’ Dhoraz says. ‘A child. I told her.’

Luxa stares. ‘No. Something bigger.’

‘Enough,’ I say. ‘Deception fills Harrowdeep’s shadows. I saw my own vision, just now, on the wall. We descend to Nadir as planned. If any of these illusions come to threaten us, we shall deal with them then.’

Luxa gives a sullen nod, her careworn features unreadable. She returns to her position.

Dhoraz glances at the mummified aelf within the rock. ‘This scared you?’

I gaze at him, uncertain what to think of him. ‘Not quite.’

He blinks. ‘That child’ll be helpless down here. And perhaps they know something. We really must speak to them. Any knowledge would help. We know nothing of what we’re up against.’

I sheathe my blade. ‘Fall in line, Dhoraz. I’ll take up the rear.’

Without a word, embittered I do not give my assent, he moves onwards. Perhaps I should have considered his suggestion, but it seems unlikely a child actually follows us. Ulgu’s shadows play tricks on the mind.

Before I follow, I return a final glance to the chrysalis on the wall, half-expecting to see the glaucous gaze of my own dead doppelganger fixed on me.

But it is only the mummified aelf, its flesh leather and its eyes sealed, staring at whatever the dead behold in the midnight beneath their eyelids.

A sickening weightlessness coils through my stomach, sinking through my legs. I am not in control. It is all I want, and yet somehow it slips from my fingers.

Leaving the Silent Stair, we find harrow-runes branded into the stone. They are not art. They are portraits of the sick minds who wrote them, halfway through a metamorphosis from something mortal to something wholly other. There is a malformed logic to them, but it is not meant for us. Some things are not worth knowing.

The further we descend, the more I thirst for sleep. Exhaustion howls within me, pulsating with unforgiving physicality. Yet to heed my immortal body’s demands would be to risk being conquered by them. I push away my own faltering strength with the same disdain I reserve for all Sigmar’s enemies. The same disdain I reserve for myself.

An unbidden memory cycles through my mind. During the Realmgate Wars, I was a nobody. Another storied heroine of legend, plucked like armour-grade steel from the forge, a fallen heroine with a forgotten life meant to fill out the Stormhosts’ strength.

I say this with no bitterness, no acid. Not all Stormcast Eternals are Lord-Celestants. We are bricks in a great wall, and we fight as Sigmar wills.

I remember the Knight Excelsior who taught me that. He was faceless behind his stern war-mask, proud in his polished white plate, devoid of warmth, empty of humanity. A girl knelt before him, touched by Chaos but not so far gone as to be beyond redemption. The Knight Excelsior did not agree. He was preparing to kill the girl. The rest of us, from different Stormhosts all, begged him to lower his blade.

‘Her village made concessions to the Dark Powers,’ he said. His tone was as chilling and steady as a death sentence.

Everyone made concessions, we argued. We were liberating our lost kin from the Age of Chaos, not the Age of Joy and Plenty. The Mortal Realms had suffered. Most of us could tolerate that.

He could not. With the cold certainty of one who knows no wrong, the Knight Excelsior slipped his runeblade into the girl’s shoulder, her flesh made like a sleeve for his sword. Lightning sputtered from her wound as he unlovingly cleaved her heart in two, and she died.

My companions raged, thundering off, cursing our ruthless brother. Their eyes crackled with anger. Their voices rumbled with the might of the storm.

I watched, uncertain what to think. When we were alone, the Knight Excelsior polished cooked blood from his still-warm blade. ‘For the glory of Sigmar,’ he told me. The strangest thing was he meant it.

I saw the spite in Dhoraz’s eyes. I heard the venom in his tone. He, too, fights for his twisted vision of right. The Giant-Fell seeks command of the Truthseekers.

And I know he will betray me to gain it.

CHAPTER FOUR

Having come to understand the threat Dhoraz poses to our quest clarifies things. I must not let the Giant-Fell undermine my command or Luxa’s trust in me. Above all, when the unthinkable occurs and he raises his hammer against me, I must strike him down.

If. If the unthinkable occurs.

I know the name of the next chamber we pass, for it is written upon the walls in the same harrow-runes as the Plaza of Dusk. The Hall of Hidden Eyes is anachronistic and unfathomable, as if it belongs to another lair, another realm. Rank seawater trickles from shadow-decked walls. Monolithic columns are carved in smooth stone. The cavernous emptiness is lifeless and dark.

And there are statues. Hundreds of them, standing in ugly ranks, like idols of crystallised shade magic jutting up from the floor.

If eyes are truly hidden here, they are hidden poorly. I cannot fight the feeling the statues watch us.

Luxa backs into the chamber, bow drawn, arrow nocked. She has taken to holding up our rear.

‘Your delays grow aggravating,’ I say.

‘The chewing,’ she answers.

I frown. ‘It’s still following us?’

She nods. ‘Like teeth on stone.’

‘Stay vigilant,’ I say. ‘The deeper we go, the worse things get. After this hall, the descent grows steeper.’

Nearby, Dhoraz turns and sneers, annoyance wrinkling the leather folds of his skin. ‘How could you even know, Xandire? How could you know what gets worse and where?’

Because I’ve been here before. The thought is unbidden quicksilver, lancing across my thoughts like lightning. I cannot say that. Not unless I want Luxa and Dhoraz to think I’ve lost it, and I will not give the Giant-Fell what he wants.

I do not answer Dhoraz’s question. ‘Come. If Nadir lies at Harrowdeep’s bottom, then we have much distance to cover.’

‘We could go up,’ Dhoraz says. His gaze darkens. ‘Or we could listen to me instead of you.’

I scowl, shoving past him. ‘But then we’d be fools, Giant-Fell.’

I keep the Lantern Astrala in hand but reserve its strength lest it drain mine. Luxa and Dhoraz never stray far. We rely on the ambient glimmer from the waters sloshing at our heels and draining from the walls to see by. The thudding rhythm of Dhoraz’s hammer against the stone accompanies our passage, betraying some nagging peeve of his.

He is a child, and I am glad to have his silence, if only for the time being. Here and there I turn to maintain our connecting file. I catch him peering at me, then turning as if to check on Luxa.

Coals of spite within me compress into diamonds. They are better than the darkness, better than the cold. My hand becomes companion to the hilt of my sword, and I wonder–

What treacherous hopes fill the braggart’s empty head? What deluded notions of grandeur? What ambitions?

In a clearing between the statues ahead stands a column of black stone. Dhoraz and Luxa keep their distance, moving past, but I linger. I walk a cautious lap around it, eyes fixed to the black stone, to the pane of crystalline glass locked inside like an uneven mirror. It glows from within.

I approach, Lantern Astrala ready. Within its face I glimpse reflections of the statues behind me, their gazes fixed on me and the mirror. But it isn’t a mirror, is it? It does not show my reflection. The crystalline glass is almost like a window in the geometric stone, portraying an illusion my eyes cannot parse.

It is… a city. Sigmar take me, it’s a city of light and shadows, spires and bridges, with old arches crossing its towers of stone, steel and audacity. Staring at the forlorn image, I barely notice the movement behind me. A phantom within the pane, within the reflection. Something stirs.

I turn. A shadow-ridden figure sits on a sturdy throne, nothing but its cadaverous hands and haggard feet visible in the gloom. The thing on the throne lurks between the statues, watching.

‘No.’ I draw my runeblade, striding forward. I will not be slave to terror.

The throne glides away, as if on wheels, just out of reach, into the grove of statues.

Pique twitches at my lips. I double my pace. ‘Halt!’

Before I reach the thing on the throne, a hulk breaks from the darkness. I pound into him, toppling to the floor in a wreck of flesh and sigmarite.

Dhoraz stands above me, hammer brandished in his thick hands.

‘Clumsy fool,’ he says. He lurches closer.

I bare my teeth, flying up. My blade crackles in my hand. The time has come to end this charade.

Dhoraz staggers back. His bearded face twists in shock. He only meant to help me to my feet. ‘Calthia?’ He eases his hand out, as if to calm me.

Every instinct screams to slay the Giant-Fell where he stands. Only discipline holds the Truthseekers together – my discipline. What use is that if I let the Giant-Fell plot against me? Still, I cannot bring myself to raise my blade against him. Something stays me. Force of habit, perhaps. Or the inertia of our Stormcast bond.

Dhoraz’s expression softens. His hand wanders up until he is pointing over my shoulder, through the grove of statues. ‘Xandire.’

I must not look away. I do not trust the Giant-Fell.

But the force of our former trust wins me over. Slowly, surely, I crane my head around, waiting for the crash of his hammer into my skull.

Behind me, the silhouette of a child shivers in the gloom. It watches us, cold water dripping from its overlong limbs. Something is wrong about its proportions. Its silhouette is not so indistinct I cannot see its bald pate, or its dagger-eared, hook-nosed features. The thing wears rags and armour, a knife hanging from its hands.

‘You didn’t believe me,’ Dhoraz says. ‘It’s the boy.’

‘That is no boy,’ I say. My immortal blood runs cold. A cocktail of contradicting humours pumps through my heart. A hundred questions race through my mind.

This is no time for hesitation. I face Dhoraz, forgetting my momentary mistrust and ire. ‘Take it. Put it to the question.’

Dhoraz hardens his jaw. ‘Luxa!’

Ahead, the Stormrider hearkens. With a movement as fluid as water, she casts Taros into the air. The crowing aetherwing flaps up, then swoops in the direction of the boy-thing.

The creature raises its shivering, ape-like arms. In the glimmering darkness I catch a glimpse of its brownish-green flesh, the shade of vomit on moss. Rows of saw-like teeth fill its overlarge mouth, made for chewing man-flesh.

That is no child. It is some degenerate sub-breed of greenskin.

The creature bolts.

We race through Harrowdeep’s twisted warrens after the impish creature. The greenskin lopes ahead, shrieking, cackling, giggling for breath before skittering onwards again, always out of reach. The Giant-Fell tumbles behind it like a fugitive troggoth, mulching rocky outcroppings with his passage.

Luxa and I strain to keep up. The Giant-Fell lumbers around a corner, out of sight.

‘Dhoraz!’ I shout.

I round the corner and crash into him, rebounding to the floor, almost falling from the landing we stand upon.

The Giant-Fell snatches me from the precipice, dragging me back. I rise beside him, careful not to lose my footing again, almost ashamed of the gratitude I feel. ‘My thanks.’

Dhoraz is silent, stock-still, staring in horror at the darkness of the cave around us. Curious what has entranced him so, my eyes wander across the cavern. A natural causeway wends through the darkness. Waterfalls and cataracts of silent shadow cascade from the walls, filling tiered pools beside the causeway. They drain off into a bottomless abyss.

Above us, cages line the causeway – dozens of them, fashioned from salvaged Khainite iron and corded gristle, strung up around the cavern on improvised rope and rusting chains.

Emaciated humans and rake-thin aelf corsairs are imprisoned within. Mariners from Misthåvn, and worm-tailed skaven, and muscular duardin with rune-studded flesh. All manner of captives are suspended upon barbs and hooks in the cages’ spars. They’re insensate, alive in some vague sense of the word, heads lolling, hands limp, with ragged clothing pasted damply to their clammy flesh.

The nest of knotted cordage holding this cruel gallery together seems designed to block the causeway ahead. It is impassable. Whoever went to the effort of stringing up their victims here did not try to do it neatly.

The creature we followed is long gone, but that hardly seems relevant now.

‘Look at them,’ Dhoraz says, pity in his voice. ‘Look at the miserable things.’

The sheer diversity of captives around us is shocking. I spy Sylvaneth, and fey creatures, and halflings. Even the degenerate fiends from Urama Othal fill the savage collection. ‘These cannot all be from Misthåvn,’ I say.

Taros soars out. Luxa saunters up. She freezes when she sees the cages. She loiters cautiously behind us, bow ready, alert but unspeaking.

Dhoraz moves up the causeway, gazing at the barbaric gallery, muttering a prayer beneath his breath. ‘Sigmar protect us. This is madness.’

I grip my runeblade and lanthorn. Something about the cruelty on display here feels anathema to Harrowdeep’s annihilating darkness. My combat senses awaken, and my bile rises in righteous indignation.

Dhoraz points to the cages. ‘We cannot leave them here.’

The tortured captives groan in torpid pain, as if drugged, as if their veins run with mud instead of vital fluid.

‘Neither can we save them,’ I say. ‘There are too many to count, and we have our own quest to complete. We must find a way around this.’

Fury fills Dhoraz’s expression. ‘You jest. Surely you jest. You believe Sigmar would have us leave them here?’

‘Sigmar has made hard choices before,’ I say. Even as the words leave my mouth, I recall the Knight Excelsior and the girl he killed. Back then, I erred on the side of compassion; now I favour cruelty.

It was so long ago. Has time changed me? Or is it something else?

‘We are not Sigmar,’ Dhoraz says. ‘Our mandate is clear. We do not get to pick and choose our battles. What did you think the God-King sent us here to do? To test our mettle? For the sake of empty glory and false triumph?’

‘We came to destroy Harrowdeep.’ I level my blade at the captives. ‘We came to prevent more mortals suffering their fate. Let us move with haste and be good to our purpose.’

‘Wrong,’ Dhoraz sneers. ‘I never knew a Stormcast Eternal could be so misguided as you. We’re here to defend people like these, Xandire. We do not determine which are worthy of our protection. Perhaps you are obsessed with destroying this place, but I at least remember our true purpose. Look around. You’d really leave them here to rot?’

‘I am not obsessed,’ I snap, suddenly defensive. ‘We make hard decisions. That is what we do, and that is what the Mortal Realms are. This, Giant-Fell, is why I lead the Truthseekers and not you. We cannot take them with us. They’re barely alive, and they’d only slow us down. Would you condemn others in Misthåvn to death for the sake of these damned few? Are you so worthy, Giant-Fell, that you are given right to naysay Sigmar’s command for the benefit of wretches?’

Dhoraz breathes hard, but my words pierce the cloud of his anger to whatever reason lies below. ‘No,’ he says. ‘You are right. We cannot save them.’ His jaw tightens. ‘But we can put them from their misery.’

I am aghast. ‘If this is some dark jest–’

‘It is not,’ Dhoraz says. ‘You may not remember your mortal life, but I do. You think me a braggart. Do you want to know why? In Ghur, after I slew the Gargants of Ydath, I feasted. For three days and three nights, boasting to my hunts-brethren. Afterwards, I led my warriors back to our village. When I met my kindred, I would have boasted more. I would have boasted over feast flames, revelling into the small hours, drunk on forest ales and blood-reed liquor. But there was no one to boast to. My tribe was gone. Captured, killed, then hollowed out into puppets by Slaaneshi ventrilocults.’

My face smooths. ‘Dhoraz, I did not know.’

Dhoraz’s eyes flash with hurt. His lips pucker beneath his beard into a pain-bent scowl. ‘They mocked me. The voices of daemons speaking from the corpse of my wife, and my father, and my sons. They begged me to regale them with tales of my valour. They laughed at me. They lauded me. After I put those shells of the ones I loved to the flame, I hunted the ventrilocults to the ends of the realm, until they took me too. I’m a braggart, Xandire. I have always been one, since before I took up the hammer. But the name Sigmar gave me was never a prize. It was a reminder to be better than I had been. And I try. I try so hard. I’ll not fail now. I’ll not let these mortals suffer. Not the forest folk. Not even the ratkin.’

Dhoraz steps closer, spreading his massive palm open before me. ‘Give me your runeblade. Let me cut them free of this mess and end it. Better they die in the darkness than rot in agony. Better anything but this.’

His eyes do not move from mine. My runeblade grows heavy in my hand. I cannot give Dhoraz my only means of defending myself from him. He will kill me. He will toss my corpse from the causeway into the dark. He will leave without looking back.

I flinch at the thought. This is not what I am. This is not what I think. I have not become a snivelling cowardess in the dark.

Then I feel as if I see Dhoraz for the first time. The human he once was fills the immortal he’s become. The Giant-Fell is as vulnerable as I am. We are all heroes and legends, but we are also people. And we must trust each other.

Sense bleeds back into my mind. Dhoraz is a Stormcast Eternal. We are better than what I’ve let myself believe. I am better.

Without another word, I pass my blade to Dhoraz.

‘Thank you.’ He saunters down the causeway, to the web of knotted cordage securing the gruesome cages.

I find my place beside Luxa. We watch as the Giant-Fell prepares to cut the cordage apart.

‘We would have needed to cut the ropes anyways,’ Luxa murmurs. ‘To cross.’

I chuckle. She’s right. Fool, Calthia. Fool.

Then I raise a brow. ‘I almost forgot you could talk.’

‘I talk all the time.’ Taros flaps back down to Luxa’s shoulder, chirping in her ear. Luxa straightens. ‘Calthia. About that child.’

‘That was no child,’ I say. ‘I caught a glimpse. It was some breed of greenskin.’

Luxa nods. ‘A hobgrot.’

‘I know no such breed,’ I say.

‘You didn’t fight them in Ghur,’ Luxa says. ‘Listen. Something is wrong.’ She points ahead. ‘Two grots linger beneath the causeway. Taros sees them, and I hear something following us.’

‘The gnawing?’

She shakes her head. ‘Greenskins.’

With that word, something finally connects. My eyes dart to Dhoraz, who prepares to hack through the cordage. My gaze dashes along the web of ropes and chains to the cages above, all entangled within the nest. If one were to release that tension…

‘Fool, Calthia,’ I hiss. ‘Dhoraz!’

It’s too late. With a powerful cut, he chops open the knots.

The tension releases. Lengths of cord skid loose. The cages snap shut, like wolf traps. Their pitted iron jaws bite into the prisoners, shattering bones and cracking skulls. The barbs dig into their skin. Blood oozes out around the teeth. It is an agonising half-death for each captive, their unsightly forms wrecked by the cages, one after the other, but still alive.

They scream – a febrile, bone-chilling chorus. The captives are not conscious enough to rationalise their pain. Only enough to suffer.

The last of the cordage’s tension releases, and the cages begin to swing. Down they come, flying across the causeway like mauls.

Dhoraz is fast. He rushes behind a stone outcropping protruding from beneath the causeway. The stone offers cover against the dozens of cages flailing down like wild pendulums, bouncing off each other, smashing into stone. Some cages wreck into the causeway, tumbling into the abyss in pieces. Others snap free of their securements, flying into the stone around him.

Then the ground beneath Dhoraz gives way and his leg jolts into a pitfall. His eyes scrunch closed, then jerk open, his gaze trickling to his leg. A spike skewers his foot, piercing up into his heel, jutting out from his armour through a gap in his plate.

Before Dhoraz can free himself, a cage smashes the sense from him. His eyes jerk open again. His mouth stretches around the shape of a scream. He roars the reason from his voice. Veins of revolting colour travel up his flesh, creeping up his neck. Something has poisoned him, like the trapped mortals, either from the maul-cages themselves or the stake impaling his foot.

Luxa bolts up the causeway before I can stop her. She dodges the swinging cages, her slender features furrowed in devout focus. Taros soars overhead between lengths of whining chains and creaking cordage, shrieking with raptor fury.

Luxa moves to free Dhoraz but trips. She falls into another trap, same as Dhoraz’s. Her battering-ram momentum carries her forward, snapping her leg backwards at the knee.

Luxa screams, but more from frustration than pain. The trap which has claimed her was clearly meant for would-be rescuers of victims of the first. She fell for it like a fool.

I drink in the horrid sight around me, sickened. The cages are heavy enough to knock Stormcasts around like dolls. They are spiked, poisoned and revolting in their sheer cruelty. Nothing I have witnessed in my immortal life has prepared me for the depravity here before me. I would not wish this hell upon the worst of my enemies. I don’t possess the imagination for such a thing.

This is a trap, and it was meant for us.

I grimace. Heat tingles in my heart and pounds up my throat. If something hunts us, it is time they understand their mistake.

Cold hatred sweeps away the fire in me, bitter and stark and emptying. I snap the Lantern Astrala’s shutter open. Light blazes across the causeway, and shadows and mists wither under the radiant beams. Three more pitfalls in the glistening stone reveal themselves.

I bite down, enduring the Lantern Astrala’s leeching drain, feeling as if my soul trickles out through cracks in my armour. I move forward.

A hulking savage hurtles out from behind me. Its movements are long and heavy, nothing like the fiends from Urama Othal. It is muscled, its flesh vomit green, clothed in tattered leathers of mildewed cloth and sapient creatures’ skins. The greenskin’s porcine maw is slavering, hungry. Wisps of sick hair dangle from its scalp.

An orruk, in Harrowdeep. There can be no doubt.

Even so, never have I seen a greenskin like this growling giant. It is lean, ravenous, foul. Its low-hanging jaw and chipped fangs awaken in me some instinctive disgust inherited from ancestors who dwelled in caves.

I raise the Lantern Astrala, hoping to frighten the beast with its celestial glare.

Then my arm rocks back. The Astrala light dies.

Confused, I look down. Something’s caught my hand – a rack of metal jaws with jagged teeth is clamped around my wrist. It is a perverse kind of man-catcher, its bite triggered by a chain running along its long haft, meant for taking prisoners.

A second orruk twists the man-catcher down, me with it, its fungal stink assaulting my senses. It forces me down, its hideous underbite gritted with effort. ‘Mannok!’ it says. ‘Got ’er wiv me man-snappa, boss!’

I swivel to the first orruk – Mannok it seems – who snorts with piggish pleasure. ‘Atta boy, Torka. Wot’d I say? Shinies isn’t tough. They just shiny.’

Quivering with rage, I reach for my runeblade to put the beasts from their wretched existence.

I grasp an empty scabbard. My runeblade. I gave it to Dhoraz.

Mannok grunts with satisfaction. ‘Look at ya, shiny. Paffetic. I don’t fink I’ll ever like crumpin’ anyfing as much as I’ll like crumpin’ you. Krookgrin! Get the runts to work!’

Two grots and the hobgrot scramble up from beneath the causeway, scurrying towards Dhoraz and Luxa. In the darkness, they appear like children.

I curse my idiocy. We were lured here. How long have they tracked us? How long have they waited for us to fall into their trap?

Mannok thrusts his tri-pronged spear at my throat. I dodge, staggering aside, old instincts taking over.

‘’Old ’er still, Torka!’ Mannok says. ‘One poke and we’re done!’

I dodge a second jab of his scrap-metal spear, still straining against Torka’s man-snappa. Blood streams down my wrist, dripping from my fingers like wet fire. Mannok punches the Lantern Astrala from my hand. It skitters along the stone.

I reach out for it. Torka yanks me back. I roar, heaving him with me.

His dumb eyes widen. ‘Oi! She’s strong, Manny!’

‘Don’t call me that,’ Mannok snaps. He retrieves my lanthorn, examining it with savage curiosity. ‘Reckon Krookgrin’ll like this junk.’

‘Filth,’ I snarl. ‘Drop it and I’ll make your deaths quick.’

Mannok gives a vicious smile, all broken, yellowed teeth.

Then a crackling arrow sprouts from his shoulder. Mannok howls. His wound sputters with aetheric power.

‘Calthia!’ Luxa shouts, down the causeway. She nocks another arrow. The wrong angle of her knee is sickening to behold, but still she fights. ‘Go! Run!’

Mannok snaps the arrow shaft. ‘Krookgrin! Have Gikkit an’ Shank get ’em proper droolin’, will ya?’

The hobgrot shrieks his acknowledgement. He barks orders to his grots. The three devils cackle like imps, scampering around Luxa, bringing notched blades to bear. She looses a stray arrow then bats at them with her bow. Krookgrin works his way through her guard, behind her, biting through her ear, slicing it away.

Luxa howls. Krookgrin spits her ear out, hushing her with feverish cries. He pins her arm aside, slipping the length of his blade into her spine.

The Stormrider inhales sharply. Then she falls slack, the light escaping her eyes. For a breathless moment, I wait for Sigmar’s lightning to return her to Azyr, but nothing happens. Luxa slumps over like an ordinary corpse. The grots tear into her, hacking the pieces of her armour free, ripping into her with gnarled teeth and dented cleavers.

Behind her, Krookgrin works Dhoraz’s twisted, groaning wreck from the trap. The Giant-Fell’s pained wails grow indistinguishable from those of the prisoners swaying in the cages around him. He meant to free them, the poor souls. Now he joins them.

Before me, Mannok snorts with a savage’s mirth. Krookgrin trots over, and Mannok tosses the hobgrot my lanthorn.

My gut turns. Watching the greenskin filth handle Sigmar’s boon inflicts physical pain upon me. ‘No,’ I say.

‘Keep an eye on the runts,’ Mannok orders. ‘Make sure they don’t stick the big’un. I got plans for all of ’em.’ With my lanthorn in hand, the hobgrot scurries away in giggling joy.

I shoulder into Mannok’s face, almost tossing him from the causeway before Torka forces me back.

Mannok brushes dark blood from his lip, raises his tri-prodda to me. ‘I ’ate you shinies,’ he says. ‘But Mork’s teef, I luv ya. I luv the fight in ya. Ya never give up, eh? ’Specially when you got sumfin’ to prove.’

He thrusts again. I wrench free from Torka’s man-snappa and bat the tri-pronged spear aside. I give ground in precious inches, every ounce of my concentration divided between keeping my footing and using my vambraces to parry Mannok’s blows.

‘Couldn’t believe me luck when me an’ me Kunnin’ Krew ended up down ’ere,’ Mannok says, ‘Mork don’t give an awful lot to us Kruleboyz, see. But when ’e gives, ’e really gives. I ain’t never killed sumfin’ like you, shiny.’

He aims for my belly, and I catch the pronged blades between my gauntlets. The spear haft groans and creaks until Mannok withdraws it.

‘’Magine me surprise when I see you shinies, stumblin’ fru the dark, shinin’ that fancy lamp. Took us a minute to get a proper welcome ready. But Mork’s fangs, did it pay off. Torka, you git, back off! She’s mine!’

Torka retreats sheepishly. ‘We oughtta take ’er on togevva, boss. She’s tricky.’

Mannok ignores him, leering at me, tossing the sick wisps of hair from his red eyes. ‘Know what I fink, shiny?’

I spit. ‘You talk too much.’ Mannok’s a braggart, worse than Dhoraz. If I catch him off guard, I can throw him from the causeway into the abyss. Alone, Torka will be easy pickings. The grots are grots.

Mannok chuckles throatily. ‘Fink you’re better’n us, eh? Fink ya got some right to winnin’, and ya ain’t gotta fight over scraps, like us? You got this comin’, shiny. That’s what I fink. You deserve this. You deserve worse. Let’s see how fayfful ya Stormcast are on a bad ’and.’

‘I don’t understand a word coming out of your mouth,’ I say.

He grins, his eyes glistening red. ‘There you go again. But you know what they say. The bigger they are… the longer they scream.’

He attacks again, arrogant and reckless. I’ll only get this chance.

I parry with my vambraces, then lunge. Mannok’s eyes wrench open with surprise. He staggers back. I swell into the space he filled.

Then a howling cage crashes into me, bowling me sideways, knocking me senseless. I roll along the causeway, sliding along stone, barely catching on to a lip of rock.

I dangle over abyss, empty darkness below. Water mists my exposed face. Shadow magic chills the air beneath my feet.

‘Mork’s bones,’ Mannok grumbles. ‘Torka, get ’er up! I’ma stick ’er like swine!’

‘Yeh, boss.’ Torka scrabbles closer, grasping blindly for my wrists with his man-snappa.

My eyes flit between them. They’ve killed Luxa. They’ve captured Dhoraz. If they take me too, it’s all over. As Torka’s man-snappa bites closer, I weigh what few options remain to me.

Then I let go.

I plummet into darkness, the greenskins and the causeway shrinking above. Shadows swallow me, wind rustles past, and with final, stomach-emptying clarity, I realise I am alone.

CHAPTER FIVE

I have heard myths older than time of a void through which Sigmar hurtled, steeping in blackness and desolation, his deific fingers scarcely latched on to the smouldering core of his world. He had been broken. In galling defeat and embittered solitude, the God-King fell.

I, too, fall. Weightless and empty, chilled by fluttering darkness, I slam into the raging waters of an underground river. My breath shoots from my lungs. The impact blasts the sense from my skull.

A cold torrent takes me. I cannot breathe for pain, and I battle salivating nausea just to keep my eyes open. Desperate for air, I crane my head above the rippling turbulence, struggling to stay afloat and gulp air instead of brine. Between frenzied gasps I steal glimpses of the swirling blackness from my dreams on the stony banks of the river, tumbling against itself like a thunderhead.

The swirling shadows solidify, morphing into cracked fingers and sinewy knuckles gripping a seat of black stone.

I cannot believe my eyes. There it is, the baleful creature from the Hall of Hidden Eyes, only the milky flesh of its haggard hands and bone-thin legs visible.

My eyes wrench open. Cold fury soothes my ravaged flesh. Rage fills my lungs. I will not be cowed by shapes in the dark. I will not be bullied like some cowering smallholder during a Mawtribe raid.

I fight the river’s current, clawing from the shallows towards the banks. I scramble up the riverside scree, reaching for my runeblade, grasping empty scabbard. A thirst for violence shields me from the throes of pain. I will destroy this thing.

The terror looms on its throne, mocking me with its silent poise. I glimpse the vague shape of its mouth. Drool beads on its lipless lower jaw, dripping in viscous pellets.

‘Calthia,’ it growls.

I roar, lunging forward.

In a blink the illusion is gone. Just a few fingers of stone protruding deceptively from bones of ancient rock, a trick of the shadows. Harrowdeep misleads me, as it ever has.

I collapse, breathless and shivering. I can hardly see. The only light is a sterile glow far above. Only the swoosh of rushing turbulence and the cool kiss of the cavern air remind me I’m alive at all, unsmothered by Harrowdeep’s formless oblivion or the darkness of my dreams.

I feel fear. Real fear, slithering like a needle through my veins. I am alone. That scares me. For as long as I can remember I have always marched with Stormcasts.

Now here I am, solitary and unarmed, trembling on a stone basin at the bottom of a lightless dungeon. Luxa is dead, beyond even Sigmar’s salvation. Dhoraz will suffer a fate worse than death.

I should have been ready. I should have listened to Luxa, who knew we were being followed. I should have read deeper into Dhoraz’s mentions of children. I should have counselled patience on the causeway. No – I should have commanded it.

I should have done so much more. A sinking feeling tingles from my spine to my toes. Mannok’s warband was hunting us. Because of me, the Truthseekers fell right into his ambush.

I am unworthy. I always have been. I am as undeserving of the mantle of leadership as I am of the Lantern Astrala which I lost. What was Sigmar thinking, bestowing such a boon upon one as hopeless as I? Was it all a test? He told me I was worthy. He was wrong. My faithlessness in myself at last matches my faithlessness in my god, as is right.

The ache of failure tolls across my being. May Harrowdeep devour my immortal soul like carrion. May the darkness from my dreams take what remains. Anything would be better than facing the truth:

I deserve this.

A warm glow draws my eye up. Gently, like a fairy wisp, the radiance approaches, arcing through the air and trailing starlight.

Taros. I stagger into the water around the shattered bones of the cages which fell during Mannok’s ambush. The aetherwing crows, swooping closer, wings swooshing as he settles on the stone beside me. He squawks.

‘Taros, you bold fool.’ I stroke his head, smiling in spite of myself. He nips at me.

I recoil. ‘Sorry, friend. You are no fool. I would know.’

Taros coos, allowing me to stroke the plumage on his head. He at least accepts my failures, even if I cannot.

Then I recall Luxa’s brutal demise. My silly grin fades. ‘The Stormrider. I’m sorry, friend.’

Taros cocks his head and hoots, as if oblivious to everything which happened above. Maybe he knows something I do not.

Majestic and assuaging as the raptor’s presence is, his breath stinks of meat. I cannot help but chuckle. It feels witless and absurd, yet even those feelings are better than shame and self-pity.

Taros cricks his head. He chirps.

‘I don’t understand,’ I say. Tales of aetherwings’ sublime intelligence often make rounds among those Stormcasts who have fought beside them. It is said aetherwings know the will of Sigmar better than any of us, for they are born of the very stuff of Azyr.

I too carry Azyr’s light in my soul, but that is no cypher to understanding the thoughts of beasts. I am not trained in aetherwings’ handling. Still, any company is better than solitude. Even that of a bird.

I offer my hand. ‘Come. Let us find a way from here. I promise I’m not like Dhoraz. And you really are no fool.’

Taros chitters affectionately. He flutters to my shoulder then pecks at my ear, as glad as I am to no longer be alone.

Groping through darkness, I discover a passage which leads away from the underground river. The claustrophobic tunnel slopes down, filled with the whispering quiet of an echoing cave I cannot see.

Slow as the going is, things could be worse. I survived the greenskin ambush and my fall relatively unscathed. I thank Sigmar for that, even as I crave my lost runeblade and the Lantern Astrala. He entrusted the relic to me, and its loss is desolating.

Yet just as he did not give up after the loss of his world, neither must I.

As I descend, Taros weighs down my shoulder, squawking and crowing when my clumsy movements jar him.

‘Sorry to trouble you, master aetherwing.’

He chitters, perhaps amused. Before my fall, I would never have tolerated such idleness, even from a proud aetherwing. Yet if riding upon my shoulder gladdens him, so be it. Taros is a soothing burden. I understand why Sigmar gifted Luxa with his company. The raptor’s calm is a blessing in the dark, and I would carry ten thousand such burdens before braving Harrowdeep alone for even a moment.

Something about Taros’ composure seems grounded and doubtless. I begin to suspect his senses can penetrate Harrowdeep’s shadows, as if he carries the clarity of the Astrala light within his very being. He guides me with his calls, away from certain paths, towards others. I am thankful, for there is no knowing what foes track us in the shadows. Mannok and his filth, or those hungering troglodyte fiends, or fouler things prowling the darkness.

As we descend, I mull our defeat on the causeway. Luxa knew we were being followed. Had she known greenskins were coming? I think not. Her warning came too late, and the greenskins laid their trap before us. Only Dhoraz detected the diminutive grots and hobgrot, mistaking them for children. Nobody saw the orruks until it was too late.

I do not recognise Mannok’s breed. The greenskins were lean and malevolent by even the lowest standards of their kind, yet I do not know them. I have battled Ironjawz on the Amber Steppes and crushed Bonesplitta ferals in the hinterlands of the Jade Kingdoms. Never have I encountered anything like Mannok or the others. They seemed to pride themselves on the infliction of suffering, or the deployment of those depraved traps. They seemed to enjoy it.

How did they get here? Why did they come? Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Any fool might stumble into Harrowdeep by chance. The mariners of Misthåvn locked up in Mannok’s gruesome cages prove that; we Truthseekers prove that.

I try to recall details of Luxa’s service before she became a Truthseeker, but I knew little about her to begin with. She participated in the Soul Wars in Shyish, like most of us, as well as a recent war in Ghur. I knew her so poorly before she fell.

Another failing of mine, more shame to pile onto my heaping collection. What kind of warrior does not take the time to understand her own comrades? I did not care what Luxa said, or what she saw, or who she was. I cared only that she obeyed. Even that selfish priority wasn’t enough to stop her when she rushed in to save Dhoraz.

And Dhoraz, the poor fool. I misunderstood him from the start. He was never an empty braggart. His mortal life wounded him. His faith in Sigmar was only the thinnest of bandages for his pain.

We are the same, he and I. Yet where he was haunted by the memory of his past, I am hurt by the absence of mine. If only I knew where I started, maybe this hole within me could be filled. Maybe these mistakes would finally make sense. Maybe I would believe I was worthy.

The Orb Duplicita’s nether-light in the trickling waters comes and goes. The same is true for the disturbing harrow-runes on the walls. A different murk usurps the cavern dimness, a grim gloom that feels stark and bright compared to Harrowdeep’s Stygian, misting shadows.

Stumbling and crawling through the darkness, my senses attune themselves. Little by little, the crushing gloom loses its fearsome weight.

One thing cannot be helped: all paths lead down. Some are precipitous drops. Others are winding and gradient slopes. Not a single passage ascends. When I try to retrace my steps, I find myself on a different course, still descending no matter where I turn.

Eventually I doff my helmet, inhaling a lungful of damp air. Taros squawks, spreading his wings, a blur of soft colour in the oppressive gloom.

‘If you have ideas, I’m all ears,’ I say, peering around the murky cave. The ragged walls are smooth and rounded in some places, rippling with grim light.

They are mirrors, similar to the glass I saw in the Hall of Hidden Eyes. Dull light gleams from them, as if from another place, from that city. The glass reflects the stone around it, but I cannot see myself. Beneath the reflection, I glimpse the phantom image of a city of spires and dying light.

I blink, hoping to dispel the illusion or clarify it. When I open my eyes the city is gone. Figures stand within the mirrors, watching me.

I freeze. There are so many of them, half seen within the glass, silhouetted by a macabre glow, smeared like mirages with Harrowdeep’s shadows. I pick out the crested bronze helms of Khornate Champions, the tribal headdresses of Seraphon warriors. I find humans and aelves, fomoroids and duardin, Sylvaneth and pale, aelven sorceresses.

They gaze at me with patient hunger and corroding envy. My breath stills; my fingers ache for my lost blade. Strange, to have felt nothing while battling in horrific cities of plague and dream, while casting down cauldrons of blood or liberating slaves to darkness, only to witness a sight like this and feel trepidation.

Trepidation. What a long word for fear.

Resentment pulses through me. I resent myself more than anyone. My neck prickles, and my chest tingles, and I am suddenly wondering if everything we were told is a lie. We are Stormcast, made to be fearless, chosen because we are faithful. I am neither of those things.

Maybe I am the lie.

‘What?’ I shout at the faces in the glass. I have lived, and died, and lived again. These faces don’t have the right to scorn me. They don’t have the right to make me fear. ‘What?’

Light scythes through the darkness. The figures disappear. A heavy stone grinding echoes through the passage, like a gargant gnashing its teeth, or an old door opening.

Distantly, I glimpse a muscular woman squatting, silhouetted by the light, holding a stone door aloft.

‘Hurry!’ she cries.

Luxa? It can’t be. She’s dead, and this woman is younger, unarmoured. I glimpse faint tattoos on her shoulders, a pair of matching hammers beneath two stylised comets.

Taros alights, soaring towards the open door. I storm after him, splashing through cold water, not so baffled by the mysterious woman that I have lost my wit.

‘Hurry!’ she shouts again, her voice familiar but unplaceable.

‘Hold on!’ I say. I race ahead, just behind Taros, muscles burning.

The woman shudders, craning her head back. The contours of her face are startlingly familiar. Who is she? How did she come here? Does she know the way to Nadir?

We’re almost there. She staggers to her knee, roaring in effort, shuddering with pain. ‘Go!’ she screams. She presses the door up, then throws herself beneath it, rolling to the far side.

The stone crashes down, echoing like a meteor striking from the heavens.

I tackle the door, scraping my fingers into the seams underneath. I brace my entire body, pressing the heavy disc over my shoulders as if it were nothing.

Taros shoots through. I stagger through behind him.

The door crashes shut again behind us, but the mysterious woman is nowhere to be seen. We stand before an immense chasm. The Orb Duplicita’s un-light glows sickly here, scintillating in cataracts, glimmering beneath bottomless pools.

The fossilised skeleton of a dead titan fills the yawning chasm. It is a city, with rotten ivory arches and creaking bone bridges, and scavenged Khainite architecture twisted by Idoneth coral growths. Banners drift in the cave breeze, quilted together from glistening flesh. Harrow-runes scar the titan’s bones like blight.

This city, this morbid citadel, is filled with waterways. Frigid brine trickles and roars from cataracts above, flooding the vaguely elephantine skeleton’s orifices. Somehow I am reminded of Greywater Fastness in Ghyran, its great canals and shimmering rivulets. If Greywater Fastness had been built inside a dead mammoth with too many limbs, it would look like this.

Light glints on a distant bridge. The clangour of scrap weapons breaking against blessed sigmarite rings across the cavern, and the shrieks of fiends follow. Peering into the darkness, I glimpse a Stormcast Eternal. She battles for her life, fighting off more ghoulish creatures from Urama Othal.

This is not the woman from before. It is Luxa, alive.

And she needs my help.

On a slick causeway girded by iron, Luxa savages her foes. She plucks still-crackling arrows from the fiends’ corpses, clutching the scavenged darts in the same hand that holds her bow.

The creatures are agile things, catapulting up the walls, scurrying overhead, shrieking in blind rage. One of them, a naked female with shrivelled flesh, gets closer than the others. She hisses in broken Aelfish, bringing a wicked knife towards the Stormrider’s neck.

I tear the fiend back by the hair of her withered head. I throw her down, crushing her skull beneath my boot. ‘Stormrider,’ I say.

‘Praise Sigmar,’ Luxa answers. She throws a glistering slice of metal my way, a sword. Its hilt claps into my open palm, its edge dripping fresh blood.

I grow giddy with joy. ‘My runeblade.’

‘You’re better with that than me.’ Luxa tracks to my side, bow nocked, eyes fierce.

I give the sword an experimental swing. ‘Was it you who opened the door for me?’

‘Do I look like I’ve been opening doors?’ Luxa snaps.

A fair point. ‘I saw the greenskins rip you apart. Glad to see you’ve kept your tongue.’

‘Be glad for the blade.’ Luxa snaps an arrow into the eye socket of an onrushing fiend, then lunges out and snatches it back. ‘I’ll explain what I can. Can we leave first?’

I laugh. ‘It’s not me you need to ask.’

We storm out the way I came. Gnawed bones crumble underfoot, dusting the heels of our boots with bonemeal. Cackles and howls echo through the skeletal city. Hundreds, if not thousands of the fiends.

We reach a cloistered hall constructed from the dead leviathan’s ribs. Taros swoops down, reuniting with us, drawing a cry of joy from Luxa. We mulch another pack of the creatures, painting our weapons with their ichor. Then we stumble into a butcher’s gallery.

Tables are everywhere, forged from ruined druchirior iron, or hewn from stone, or pillaged from gods-know-where. Upon the blood-drenched feasting boards lie the wrecked corpses of more fiends, dismembered and disembowelled by their own kindred. This place is a Cannibal Palace.

‘So this is what happened to the aelves of Urama Othal,’ Luxa mutters.

I shake my head. ‘These are the aelves of Urama Othal.’

To think. Aelves, somehow warped by Harrowdeep. They hunger for flesh, yes, but it’s darkness they worship, not death. I see the shadows in their souls, in the glaucous grey of their eyes. I see their dark faith in the murals of black sludge basted on the walls, dribbling to the floor of their bile-scented lair.

Two by two, the feasting horde’s mad, cross-eyed glares flicker to us, their jaws hanging open, scraps of meat dangling from their teeth.

I fling blood from my sword, glowering. The runeblade crackles with resurgent heat. ‘The threshold, on the other side,’ I say.

Luxa nods. ‘I see it.’

‘We move as one,’ I say. ‘Stay with me.’

We butcher our way through, then continue our flight. Our path takes us down, deeper into the Cannibal Palace. The fiends do not stop coming. They are everywhere. Crawling on the walls, teeming from the ceiling, seething through passages in the titan’s porous bones. They adhere to the cave surfaces like vermin. Even with so many targets to choose from, Luxa treats each arrow as precious, loosing them rarely, point-blank, where she can quickly recover them.

Then, in the Cannibal Palace’s lower cavity, throngs of the creatures block the way ahead.

Luxa backs into me, eyes flickering from one fiend to the next.

‘Don your helm,’ I command. Filth like this doesn’t deserve to look us in the eyes, and we’ll need all the protection we can get in the coming press.

But just as I sense the fiends are ready to pounce, they hold, leering where they stand, even retreating a step, like skittish grots.

At first I don’t understand. Then the ground tremors beneath my feet.

‘The chewing sound,’ Luxa says. ‘The smell of meat. They’re back.’

Something in Harrowdeep roars. Boulders of stone and black crystal cascade from the ceiling, crushing swathes of the aelven fiends. A spiny tentacle as wide as a keep thrusts into the hollow, its horrid trunk ending in a whiteless disc-like eye. Another breach follows, then another, all with their own tentacles.

The monstrosity from the Shadowsea. That is what follows us; that is what Luxa hears as grinding and smells as meat. It burrows through Harrowdeep’s warrens, pursuing us, fixed on our scent.

Water pours in behind the leviathan. Somewhere, it moans with the ear-bleeding volume of a dead god devouring. Its massive tentacles thresh across the living carpet of fiendish aelves, squashing them like overripe fruit, crushing basalt and petrified bone in the search for prey.

The whole cavern begins to shake. Luxa and I race through a chance opening in the crowd of twisted aelves. Luxa leaps across a rift, followed by Taros, slamming against a floor of dismal stone. She rolls and dashes onwards.

I leap behind them, crashing down less gracefully, dragging myself to my feet. I manage a final glance back to the collapsing Cannibal Palace, almost pitying its abhorrent inhabitants. Whatever they were, they did not choose this fate. Harrowdeep made slaves of them, then fodder.

I slip behind Luxa, into the embrace of shadows, and I don’t look back.

CHAPTER SIX

Relieved as I am to have got away in one piece, we have another matter to deal with.

‘I saw you die,’ I tell Luxa. ‘Krookgrin and those grots killed you.’

Luxa clutches a handful of arrows, counting them off and polishing dark ichor from their heads, whispering prayers for serenity. She slips the darts into her beaten quiver and adjusts her bowstring, glancing up. When she finishes, she strokes Taros’ plumed head. ‘Yes.’

I toss my whetstone back into my belt and sheathe my blade. ‘I am thankful for my sword, Stormrider. But that favour does not grant you permission to ignore me. You died. There is no way you returned to Azyr and Reforged in mere hours. Share your secrets, for you are full of them.’

Luxa reclines against the cavern wall. ‘Shadeglass,’ she says.

‘That is not a secret,’ I say. ‘That is a compound word.’

‘Shadeglass, from Shadespire,’ Luxa says. She gestures to the fractured panels of glowing crystal around us. ‘That’s what this gem-glass is, which scars Harrowdeep. I didn’t recognise it in the Hall of Hidden Eyes. I didn’t remember. There’s so much I don’t remember, Calthia. But when I died, I glimpsed my past. I recalled things I have forgotten over the centuries, like this. Shadeglass. I first saw it in Caddow’s markets with my mother. Most of it was fake. Cheap glowstone enchanted with temporary glamours. Even so, my mother never let me touch any of it, just in case.’

‘Why?’

‘Because real shadeglass is cursed.’

Hearing Luxa speak – really speak – is exactly as I imagined. Her voice is frost cool, restrained and elegant, like silver in the night.

It would be calming, if only any of it made sense. ‘You give answers to questions I didn’t ask,’ I say. ‘You died. How do you live again?’

Luxa crimps her lips. ‘This is what I’m getting at. I live because of the shadeglass. Harrowdeep is cursed with it.’

I laugh. ‘All this silence from you, all this way, and now you choose to state the obvious.’

‘I do not speak of the shadow-curses,’ Luxa says. ‘Harrowdeep is… an entity, alive with them. A malevolence, yes. I feel the darkness, just as you do.’

A chill washes through my bones. Luxa gives voice to my darkest thoughts. ‘I thought it was only me.’

‘Harrowdeep is thick with the blight of shadows,’ Luxa says. ‘Yet this is not the curse I speak of. Whatever spawned this place, whatever its original purpose, the shadeglass has corrupted it. This death magic is far beyond our reckoning. Beyond Sigmar’s.’ Luxa peers at the shadeglass nearest us. ‘They call it the Katophrane Curse. The curse of un-life. That is what brought me back.’

I wrinkle my brow. ‘Are you certain?’

Luxa sighs. ‘I told you. I saw my past, Calthia. I remember how my mother feared the shadeglass. Understand, we hailed from Shyish. A fate as cruel as never-ending life was unthinkable for us. Rest was the promise for all living things, and we craved the peace of death at our ends. The Katophrane Curse captures life with shadeglass, like a trap. It makes death impossible.’

Luxa’s cold gaze grows wistful. ‘Perhaps it doesn’t matter any more,’ she says. ‘My mother is with the Great Necromancer, now. A revenant in a legion of the dead. And I ended up deathless all the same.’

I glance again at the shadeglass on the wall, glowing with macabre light. I never considered the faces inside might be victims. Others, trapped somewhere within Harrowdeep’s echoing darkness, dead and undying.

Then I recall the forlorn city behind the shadeglass in the Hall of Hidden Eyes. Shadespire, the Mirrored City. It seems so obvious now.

‘I have heard tales of the Mirrored City and its curse,’ I say. ‘How could it spread here?’

‘I do not know,’ Luxa says. ‘If tales were told of the curse spreading throughout the realms, I’ve not heard them. I recall so little besides those moments of my childhood, glittering like diamonds in the dark.’

‘So you did die.’

Luxa swallows. ‘Of that, I remember every moment. I remember the hobgrot’s knife between my vertebrae. I still feel the grots’ teeth cutting in, like saw blades. The curse returned me without Sigmar’s intervention. But I wasn’t Reforged, and I felt all of it.’ She shivers. ‘The same must happen to anyone trapped here.’

The full horror of the Cannibal Palace sinks in. Those twisted aelves devour each other, then stalk their resurrected prey-kindred anew. Grisly curiosity fills me. Do they take turns eating each other? Are they at war, former Khainites stalking former Deepkin, then being stalked in turn? The madness of Harrowdeep took everything from them. Or, perhaps they offered it freely.

Then, Mannok’s prisoners. Is this why he keeps them alive? Because he knows they cannot die?

I think back to my previous paranoia regarding Dhoraz. I’m grateful I did not give in to it. ‘What of the Giant-Fell?’ I ask. ‘Was he there when you awoke?’

Luxa shakes her head. ‘The orruks still have him.’

‘But not you.’

Luxa grimaces. ‘I think they ate me. There was nothing left to capture.’

My face smooths in disgust, sympathy and hate. When Mannok spoke to me, I heard the loathing in his voice. He has something to prove against the Stormcast. One defeat will not be enough. ‘They will make the Giant-Fell suffer,’ I say. ‘Sigmar’s strength be with him.’

Luxa scoffs. ‘Sigmar isn’t down here. Surely you see that?’

I wince, unsure if this is a taunt, a test or simple heresy. ‘We bring Sigmar wherever we go,’ I say, my voice more certain than my heart.

‘I do not speak of catechism,’ Luxa says. ‘Yes, he is everywhere we bring him. But in a more practical sense, this place is beyond the God-King’s power. Something darker inhabits it.’

‘You’ve tried to ascend?’ I ask.

Luxa nods. ‘In vain. You?’

‘Yes.’ I sigh, trying to think, only recalling the darkness from my dreams, tumbling ever towards me like jaws of shadow. Still, I am as relieved by Luxa’s words as I am unsettled. The darkness is powerful, but I am glad to not face it alone.

Luxa raises a hand, tapping my breastplate. ‘I have long accepted your leadership, even before Urama Othal. Tell me, how can we defeat this lair if we cannot go where we choose?’

‘To find Nadir, we must go down,’ I say. ‘Once we destroy the Harrowstone, we destroy Harrowdeep. In that regard, nothing has changed.’

‘This dungeon lays a course for us, and you believe we should follow?’

I scowl. ‘What other choice do we have? You heard the rumours in Misthåvn. If we destroy Harrowdeep, we destroy its hold over us. We’ll be able to ascend after that.’

Luxa’s lips compress into a thin line. ‘You sound so sure.’

I hesitate. That we must destroy this place is self-evident. That we might escape afterwards is nothing but blind hope.

‘I am certain of nothing but our duty,’ I say. ‘Sigmar gave us a quest. Our only choice is to complete it.’

This conviction is only half true. I am here to do Sigmar’s will, yes. But I also seek to prove my faith in him. To face down the shadows like those from my dreams, and to lead the Truthseekers to glory and banish my doubt once and for all. I will tolerate the feelings of unworthiness and faithlessness which have haunted me for no longer.

And if all this costs my life, I remain undiscouraged, for at least then I might learn the truth of my past, like Luxa. That would be just as well.

Luxa stares. Encrusted in warplate, soaked in sweat and brine, she is beautiful in her own way. ‘The greenskins will be going down, too,’ she says. ‘Dhoraz will be with them. If we’re quick, we can–’

‘We are not going after the orruks,’ I say. ‘We are not going after Dhoraz.’

Luxa flinches. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The Giant-Fell is not our task. Sigmar sent us to dispel the menace haunting Misthåvn’s trade fleets. That is Harrowdeep. Now we must do as Sigmar commanded. That means continuing our descent to Nadir.’ Then, I purse my lips. ‘And those orruks will be expecting us. All the better if we avoid their traps from here.’

Luxa frowns. ‘Calthia.’

I give her a hard look. ‘Dhoraz is strong. We are Stormcast. We were made for this.’

‘We are not made for what the Giant-Fell will suffer at the hands of those greenskins.’

‘We will all suffer if we linger in Harrowdeep longer than we have to. We find Nadir, destroy the Harrowstone, then search for the Giant-Fell. You have my word, Stormrider.’

She does not move her eyes. For a moment I fear Luxa will reject my command and abandon me here and now. It would not be uncalled for. My decision regarding Dhoraz is as ruthless as it is right. Everything is on the line, and even Stormcasts are ultimately expendable.

She retrieves her weapons and rises, hoisting Taros to her arm. ‘When Alumitar fell,’ she says, ‘I knew you were the one to lead us next. Dhoraz didn’t. Damn him for that. But even so, he would never have left you alone in the hands of those greenskin filth. He would not have abandoned you to suffer.’

My jaw hardens. ‘That is why the burden of leadership falls upon me. The choice is not easy, but our duty leaves no room for doubt.’

No room for doubt. I ignore the utterly stinging irony in those words.

‘Calthia,’ Luxa says.

I fear she will ask what drives me so. Why I am so insistent on destroying Harrowdeep, or to what end I really lead us.

These are questions I cannot answer. And if I tried, what might Luxa say? What would she think about the darkness in my dreams, or the sleep-hunger thudding behind my eyes? What would she say if she knew about the hole in the heart of me in the place where my faith should be?

Luxa asks nothing. Instead she offers a piteous look, cradling Taros like a child, helping him perch on her shoulder. ‘As you command. Leader.’

We push on in search of Nadir. The shadeglass deposits grow more common, piercing through the tunnels’ flanks like knives, or pooling in the walls like mirrors. Their grievous glow is so unlike the Lantern Astrala’s blazing burn, or even the shimmering nether-light of the Orb Duplicita.

There is a living spark which inhabits the gazes of living men. Warriors such as I grow accustomed to watching this light vacate their eyes at the moments of their deaths. To see the shadeglass’ morbid radiance is like watching the place where these sparks finally gather.

Ghosts lurk behind the shadeglass, too, watching from distorted reflections. Sometimes I see the dead city looming within, twinkling with distant, cold candescence. Other times I see nothing but a shade of myself, a reflection that is not my own. She moves out of step with me. She does not meet my eyes. In her silent, mouthing lips, I see the shape of my name. She calls for me as all the shadows do.

Harrowdeep is the worst kind of maze, filled with false steps and illusions. Glacial black water laps ceaselessly at our feet. Once I notice brine drizzling on us. I glance up the way ahead and behind us. The water is stagnant and undisturbed; only around us does it ripple. The drips follow us like a rain cloud, or the drool of a salivating beast.

I glare into a pocket of shadow on the ceiling. Something growls back, gnawing. A snap emits from the darkness, and a chewed aelf femur splashes at my feet.

Luxa looses an arrow reflexively. Lightning arcs across the ceiling. The dripping ceases, and the only sight that greets us is glistening, lonely stone.

Ahead, the passage rustles. Something with too many legs and too many mouths scurries away, clinging to the ceiling, half seen.

After this episode Luxa begins to open up. ‘Kruleboyz,’ she says. ‘That’s what Mannok’s breed call themselves. We battled them in Ghur alongside the Celestial Spear.’

I wrinkle my brow. ‘Sigmar’s Huntress?’ I’ve heard of Yndrasta but I always thought her nothing but a legend. Even among immortals, heroes larger than life exist. ‘I didn’t know she was real.’

‘She is. And she is mighty. She led us against a host of them, to stop them from poisoning the Realm of Beasts.’

‘The realm?’ I ask, sceptically.

‘You heard me,’ Luxa says. ‘Filthy creatures, Kruleboyz. Even other orruks fear them.’

To stoke my ire the Stormrider shares stories of the Kruleboyz’ savagery. She tells me how they once poisoned a rural county’s wells near the Carcasse Donse. They whipped the pain-drunk mortals into the swamps around their villages.

To save the mortals, Luxa and her fellow Vigilors mustered a company of Ghurite rangers hardened by a life of survival in their realm’s wilds. Their company entered the swamps, fending off bog-wyrms and digestive mists in search of the orruks’ victims.

In the end all they found were shapeless bags of human meat, their innards liquefied by the Kruleboyz’ flesh-melting poisons.

Hope was lost. Both Vigilors and rangers were racked by grief. It was not until then, when their morale was lowest, that the Kruleboyz attacked.

‘I swore to never speak without need again,’ Luxa says. I can tell from her tone it is a confession.

‘Why?’

‘Every Ghurite ranger fell that day. Half of my Vigilors, too, and they still have not been Reforged.’

‘Life is war,’ I say simply. ‘Wars have costs. You could not have known.’

Luxa’s lips curl into a pained simper. ‘I did know. I knew what the Kruleboyz were capable of, and still I begged our Lord-Celestant to send us into their trap. I did not think. And I wanted so badly to confront them, I did not consider the costs.’

I feel Luxa’s pain as my own. Moreover, I begin to understand the threat Mannok poses. He doesn’t want to simply kill us, nor the mere triumph of our defeat. He wants us to hurt. Mannok wants us to know the humiliation of helplessness, of utter impotency. He wants us to fail.

He succeeded once. What will stop him from doing so again? Just like the Kruleboyz of the Carcasse Donse, Mannok saw through us completely. He predicted exactly how we would behave when confronted with his depraved trap.

The Kunnin’ Krew, he called his warband. They’re cunning indeed, but that word does not capture the full colour of their malice. Mannok and his filth are spiteful, bitter savages. From what Luxa says, their breed are no kinder to each other than they are to their own enemies.

I recall our skirmish with the greenskins. I wondered how they so utterly defeated us; now I see why. Harrowdeep’s malefic darkness did not divide the Kruleboyz as it divided us. The shadows made the Truthseekers enemies of each other, showing us different lies, different secrets and different adversaries. Each time we made different decisions based on different observations, our trust in each other was fractured. Harrowdeep’s nature is the nature of Ulgu. Deceptions, within half-truths, within lies.

The Kruleboyz are already their own foes, as abhorring of each other as they are loathing of us. Mannok has no allies, only tools. One need not observe him long to know it.

In Harrowdeep this is somehow a strength, providing the greenskins resilience against the paranoia-inducing darkness. It is as if the Kruleboyz’ dysfunction and spite are miniature draughts of poison, swallowed over days and weeks to build tolerance against Harrowdeep’s stronger venom.

The Truthseekers, on the other hand, were defenceless.

At a juncture in the tunnels, a ghastly moan breaks the monotonous burble of water.

Luxa freezes. ‘Dhoraz.’

A chill moves up my legs. Even in agony his voice is unmistakeable. Here and there he bellows sick threats, raging against delirium, drunk with pain.

Luxa’s gaze falls upon me, stark and stoic. All at once her old taciturnity mists back into her chestnut eyes. She remembers my decision. She stands behind it. But she is not pleased.

I see myself then in full clarity, as if for the first time. I am shrewd and cruel to dare to leave Dhoraz behind.

The inchoate memory of doubt lurks in the back of my mind, half forgotten, gnawing at me. I have been here before. Not here in this junction, but here in this position, this dilemma. It does not feel like it hails from my life as a Stormcast Eternal. It feels older, harder to grasp.

Speaking with Luxa earlier, I was so certain of what must be done. We were sent to destroy Harrowdeep by our god. If saving Dhoraz interfered with that duty, the choice I would have to make seemed obvious. All the better if it allowed me to confront the darkness within me.

But I cannot leave Dhoraz in Mannok’s hands. I remember the orruk’s glare, cross-eyed with malice and rage and furious, filling hate. I recall those cages the greenskins devised, crushing their occupants without killing them, impaling them with poisonous barbs…

Dhoraz could endure so much worse. If Mannok is as cruel as I believe, he will push the Giant-Fell to the very limits of body, mind and soul – and the Giant-Fell will not break. Dhoraz will exist in a state worse than death.

I would not wish this fate on my worst enemy. I do not wish it upon my brother.

I draw my runeblade, and Luxa’s eyes narrow into pins.

‘Come,’ I say. ‘Dhoraz needs us.’

Her gaze warms. Taros shivers with anticipation, stretching his mighty wings, flexing his talons.

We shouldn’t be doing this. It is wrong and I know it. Every fibre of my being pulls me to Nadir and the Harrowstone to prove myself, to see Sigmar’s will done. To be worthy, I must prove my faith. To be faithful, I must prove my worth.

But I would rather be desolate and faithless and alone than leave my brother in the hands of our enemies. I failed Dhoraz once when I doubted him. I shall not fail him again.

CHAPTER SEVEN

When we find Dhoraz, he is so obviously the lure of another trap I almost laugh.

The Giant-Fell hangs by a length of ratty, fraying rope above a cluster of stalagmites. His suspensions are secured in the stalactites above. He looks terrible, like a piece of bait-meat hanging in the cave’s rocky maw. Cataracts of black water pour down the jagged cavern walls, puddling in the floor. Shadows and vapor curl and mist in the air.

Luxa and I halt at the cave entrance. Dhoraz moans. His armour is marred in a thousand places, his strength no doubt sapped by cold and poison and pain.

Luxa squeezes my arm. ‘Xandire,’ she says.

‘I know. Another ambush.’

She nods emphatically. ‘We must be quick. His calls will attract other creatures.’

I recall the crawling leviathan we glimpsed under the Shadowsea and again in the Cannibal Palace. I remember the grind of chewed stone from its passage, the bilious reek of meat from its horned maw. Luxa’s right. If we are to save Dhoraz, we must hurry.

‘Remain here,’ I say. ‘Keep watch.’

I go to handle Dhoraz but she stops me. ‘Taros,’ she says, stroking the aetherwing’s plumage. ‘Fly swiftly. Do not let Calthia from your sight.’

Taros coos. Then he soars up into the cave, threading through the mists around Dhoraz. The Giant-Fell is as torpid and suffering as the caged prisoners he sought to free. He cranes his head languidly, slurring threats against unseen enemies. The Kruleboyz’ poisons have burned the reason from his mind.

I must be wary. The Kunnin’ Krew bested us before by anticipating our choices and character. Mannok knew we’d be confident. He knew we’d cut the ropes on the causeway, either to put his captives from their misery or simply to pass. He knew we’d seek cover, then help each other after those first traps were sprung.

I must assume he’s used the same insights here. A less cautious rescuer might attempt scaling the stalagmites beneath Dhoraz to reach him.

That, then, is exactly what I must not do. Mannok cannot be underestimated.

I approach from a different angle. I circumvent the stalagmite grove, moving carefully over treacherous flows of water, eyeing each step with utmost care. As I negotiate the stone and trickling waters, I fix my eyes on the shadows and rushing cataracts on the walls, lest the orruks emerge and attack. Yet all remains quiet. If the greenskins are here, then they are patient hunters indeed.

When I discover their trap in full, I choke back a relieved chuckle. Their ploy was utterly clever. The most accessible handholds and footholds in the stalagmites have been hollowed out. That rock cannot support much weight. The slightest pressure would have seen any climber collapse the stone no matter their caution.

At the base of the stalagmites, the water and swirling shadows almost conceal a nest of iron spikes salvaged from Harrowdeep’s Khainite iron, likely recycled from those cages. The spars are driven into the stone, angled to impale and trap any unfortunate victims who fall from above.

My gaze wanders up. Dhoraz, suspended in the centre of this rocky maw, remains deliciously out of reach to any who might have dared climbing the stalagmites to save him. Something tells me the Kruleboyz would have enjoyed watching us try.

I glance up the cave wall, between cataracts of freezing brine and steaming shadows. Another taut rope runs down the length of the far wall, similar to the one holding Dhoraz. Unable to discern its purpose, I elect to remain as far from it as possible.

The only safe path up is the path unconsidered. I begin my ascent of the wall’s sheer stone. Despite my armour’s weight, climbing is effortless. A Stormcast’s strength is hardly burdened by the weight of our Thunderstrike armour. Indeed, sigmarite is our boon, providing Sigmar’s own strength to our Azyr-forged flesh. I feel it coursing through my veins. I sense a clarity of purpose I did not ask for but needed nonetheless, like the Giant-Fell himself. I refused him once, but I will refuse him no longer. He is my brother.

I hear him now. ‘Sigmar take you,’ Dhoraz slurs, weak, strings of drool dangling from his beard. ‘You’ll not take them. I’ll not… help you…’

Once I’m halfway up the wall, an impish, vomit-brown head protrudes from a cataract an arm’s length away from me. The pointy-eared, hook-nosed devil squints into the darkness where Luxa waits, oblivious to my presence.

Krookgrin, I recognise. The hobgrot.

He scans, the black pins of his eyes sweeping across the cave. Then he sees me. His knife-toothed jaw falls open. His sallow eyes flicker behind me. ‘’Ey, boss! She ain’t doin’ it right!’

I drag the hobgrot from his hiding place. He shrieks. I squeeze his throat until his cry is reduced to halting gurgles. ‘You have something of mine,’ I say. I examine him. The Lantern Astrala is neither on the hobgrot nor in his hideaway, a depression behind the cataract.

I cast the pathetic creature into the maw of stalagmites and spikes below. He lands with a splash and a crunch, his neck-prickling shriek echoing through the cave.

The commotion disturbs Dhoraz, who shouts furious, pain-drunk nothings into the shadows. ‘By Aqshy’s fire! By the Great Drake’s… rage! By Sigmar’s might…’

‘Giant-Fell!’ I holler, catapulting myself up the crags. A few feet more and he’ll be within reach. ‘It’s Xandire, brother.’

‘Torka!’

The hairs on my neck rise. That’s Mannok’s harsh roar.

‘Wotcha waitin’ for, ugly git?’ Mannok says. ‘Getcha man-snappa on ’er! Toss ’er in the pit!’

Torka’s beastly face and bulging neck prod out from behind another fall nearby, water gushing over his pate. ‘I don’t see ’er, boss!’

I draw my runeblade.

‘Oi. I see ’er now.’ Torka glances below and his red eyes widen. ‘Manny! She tossed one o’ the gits down!’

‘Plenty room for more gits,’ I taunt.

Torka growls. He thrusts his man-snappa at my legs, seeking to dislodge my footing. I swat at his scrap weapon, but Torka has the advantage of reach. A few moments more, he might get lucky.

Then an arrow thumps into his shoulder. Electricity sputters along the shaft, searing his skin. Torka howls, but a second dart cuts him short, sprouting from his unsightly green flesh. The orruk ducks back under the cataract.

Luxa has purchased me time, but a clash of metal on metal echoes from the mouth of the cavern. She’s preoccupied; I can count on her no longer. If I have the Kunnin’ Krew’s numbers right, she’ll be handling Mannok’s grot-slaves again.

That only leaves Mannok with me, here. Somewhere.

I finish my climb and twist around, facing Dhoraz.

Mannok hangs from the far cavern wall like an ape, worms of wet, wispy hair plastered to his piggish skull and dangling before his leering eyes. ‘You shinies never learn your lessons the easy way, does ya?’

‘Taros!’ I shout. ‘Go learn my lessons for me.’

The aetherwing crashes into Mannok’s face in a storm of beak and talon. Without further delay, I leap to Dhoraz.

I smack against him, clamping my arms around him, knocking us into a pendulum swing. The rope suspending us creaks, offended by our weight.

‘Wake, Dhoraz,’ I say. ‘Brother. Wake!’

He groans. ‘By the light of Sigendil… by the heat… of the forge…’

Mannok emerges from the waterfall again, gashes in his porcine face. Taros circles around for a second strike.

A morkrow shoots out of the cavern darkness, a hideous vulture-like creature with degenerate, gaping jaws. Its muscled wings pump it through the air. It punches into Taros, and the two spiral down before releasing each other. Shrieking, they chase one another through the misting cavern darkness.

Mannok clasps the length of rope I spotted earlier and tears it from its anchorage. He bastes his tri-pronged spear blade in gruel-like poison from a bladder pouch, then tosses the pouch aside, preparing to swing out for me.

One good cut and I’ll be drooling, no better off than Dhoraz. Or, Mannok could simply sever our length of rope, sending us tumbling into his trap.

Mannok leaps from his perch, arcing down. Hugging Dhoraz, I kick off the nearest stalagmite. Rock avalanches into the water and spikes below, but the push carries us out of Mannok’s reach. The furious Kruleboy boss swings uselessly past, swiping at air.

I kick off the wall again, throwing us into a spin. Mannok passes again. I parry his spear thrust with my runeblade, the strike ringing across the cavern.

Mannok chuckles throatily. ‘Come on, shiny. It don’t sting. Lemme poke! Jus’ once!’

Desperate, I glance around. If I can get Dhoraz to one of the cave depressions where the greenskins hid, I could cut him free.

But what use would he be? Wounded, pain-blinded, poisoned, the Giant-Fell is nothing but a burden. He might be immortal, but the Kruleboyz have poisoned realms. It could take hours for Dhoraz to recover from whatever’s pumping through his veins, or even days.

Once again, Torka juts out from behind his waterfall, probing blindly with his man-snappa. ‘Careful, boss! I’ll ’old ’er down!’

Just as Mannok releases from the wall, I kick off another stalagmite, triggering another rockfall. I crash into the cave wall. Torka is squarely between us.

‘Out o’ my way, git!’ Mannok roars. He rams Torka aside, knocking him off balance. The orruk shouts and loses his footing, then topples into the spike nest. Below, Krookgrin squeals for a final time with a rodent’s frailty, then falls silent. The small-minded savage within me enjoys every moment of this.

Mannok is impossible to ignore. He slices by, swiping again, his wicked spear cutting the air before my face. He latches on to the far wall, huffing and turning back. He’s getting better at this. His next swing won’t miss.

‘Dhoraz,’ I say, searching for words. I can’t defend the Giant-Fell and fight Mannok at the same time. That way lies only death. ‘I’m going to do something you won’t like. You have to trust me.’

Delirious recognition finally stirs in his pain-drunk eyes. ‘Failure,’ Dhoraz moans. ‘Traitor. You’re useless, Xandire. You’re a waste. Unworthy to lead… unworthy of Sigmar’s blessing. I knew it… I always knew it.’

The words are savage and stinging. It would be one thing to hear this from the sober-minded braggart I have come to loathe and miss. It is another thing entirely to hear it from this babbling object, the filters of civility stripped away by the intoxication of pain. Dhoraz’s slander comes from a place of honesty. I know because I agree with every word.

My face hardens in hurt and shame. ‘Forgive me,’ I say, even though I know he will not. What I am about to do is unforgivable. The most important choices are never the easiest.

I shove my runeblade hilt-deep through a gap in the Giant-Fell’s armour, gritting my teeth. Lightning crackles in the contact. Birdsong once more sparkles in Dhoraz’s eyes.

Then he wheezes with bitter release, and the ruined life in him fades. Timing our swing, I cut the rope. Dhoraz thuds to the cave floor below, beside the growing stone mound of the orruks’ spent trap.

From his place on the craggy wall, Mannok stares in open-mouthed admiration. ‘Guess even shinies can surprise ya, eh? Every once in a black moon. ’Ow’d you see me trap?’

‘It was easy,’ I say. Mannok swoops out again; I parry, rebounding, faster without Dhoraz slowing me down. ‘I just asked myself what a cretin would do.’

Mannok gives a brutal snort. ‘There she goes, lookin’ down ’er shiny nose again. Big girl in ’er big armour, isn’t she? But I know what you is. I saw ya when you was small. Your friends know what ya really is? A tiny coward, ’fraid o’ the dark, pretendin’ to be brave? I seen ’eroes, girl. You ain’t got the look.’

We come in again, clashing against each other. I lock my blade against his tri-prodda, clasping us together, and lever Mannok’s spear from his grip, tossing it away.

His eyes swell. He kicks off me, clambering for a hold. His grubby hands latch on to a stable stalagmite, rasping up the stone. Mannok is as nimble as a dancing boar.

Then I see it. My Lantern Astrala, clipped to the back of his belt.

I sheathe my sword, snatching the lanthorn back. I return it to its fastening and plant one hand on Mannok’s belt, then I lever outwards, ignoring the fumes of his fungal reek, hoping to prise the brute from his perch and drop him into the rockfall below. His grip is fast.

Then Mannok swivels. He sprays a mouthful of sour saliva into my face. The burning spittle sears my mouth like flame, cooking up my nose and down my throat.

Poison. Always poison! My eyes snap shut. I release Mannok, cursing, barely keeping hold of my length of rope, bobbling back into open air. My face is on fire. My skull burns from the inside out.

Mannok’s laughter is horrendous. ‘I don’t fink I’ll ever get enough o’ ya, shiny.’

I strain to track him through my blurred vision. He releases his length of rope. The thick cord skids from his hand, up into the stalactites.

The tension in my own rope goes slack.

I fall. I land hard, rolling down a hill of gravelled stone into frigid water beneath a cataract. A pit lies beside me, where an eternity of Harrowdeep’s falling water and shadows has eroded through bedrock.

I cannot see the bottom, but I see the thing lurking within. Some kind of crab, its mandibles flittering like a spider’s, its claws massive and wicked. I smell old magic and decaying meat in the beast’s burrow. This is a scavenger of leviathans, monsters like the beast whose skeleton formed the Cannibal Palace.

My vision comes and goes in blurs. I feel like razors are being dragged across the surface of my eyes, skimming their layers away in wet leaves. I grope through cold water, moaning through clenched teeth, only vaguely aware of my surroundings.

Mannok climbs down. He lopes closer, a predator if I ever saw one. Nearby, Dhoraz’s corpse is a smear of shadows. Luxa’s shouting carries closer, her melee finished. She searches for me, but I cannot answer. The pain is too great.

Mannok saunters towards me, chuckling. ‘I know what ya shinies might say, if our places was reversed. “Sigmar this. Sigmar that.” Yer all full ovvit. No one cares ’bout ya god. No one cares where ya came from. Just where yer goin’.’

I swing my blade wildly, half blind, certain it will do no good. I cannot focus. I cannot think. A volcano erupts up my throat, into the base of my skull, melting my brain matter like wax. I have never felt such pain. I have never endured such agony.

Clarity comes in flashes. ‘Mannok.’ I raise my voice, that I might be heard. ‘Help us. Help us destroy Harrowdeep. We’ll all escape, then. We’ll brawl all you want. I swear it.’

I lie. Of course I lie; Mannok and his Kunnin’ Krew are atrocities on legs, and I could never forgive them for what they’ve done. But Luxa approaches, and I must buy time for her to find us and dispatch Mannok.

Mannok scoffs. ‘You really is full o’ surprises. I didn’t know you could lie. Didn’t know they made ya like that. But I don’t wanna ’scape, girl. Not for good. See, I adores this place. Once I get me boyz from the bog, ’Arrowdeep’ll make a fine lair.’ He levels his spear. ‘I know ’bout Nadir, shiny. I know ’bout the floatrocks down there, down below. We go down. Then, we go up. Only way out. Right? Soon as me Kunnin’ Krew gets there, dontcha worry one bit. We’ll come back wiv our boyz. We ain’t gonna forget ya. Someone’s gotta teach you shinies your place.’

‘Why this vendetta against us, swine?’ I splash brine into my eyes, uselessly. ‘What is it about Stormcasts that has earned your hate?’

‘Every-fing!’ Mannok roars, trembling. ‘Ya fink yer so special! So shiny an’ strong! But look at ya! Ya can’t even die right!’

Mannok thrusts, piercing my warplate and savaging my gut. The fire is too much. I double over in nausea and mind-blasting pain.

‘Aw. Look at ya. Maybe you can die right.’ Mannok seizes the collar of my armour, pulling me closer. The stench of raw meat radiates from his porcine jaws. ‘Shush. Shush, shush. This ain’t bad. You ain’t seen bad. Fink what we did to ’em gits in da cages was nasty? Jus’ you wait.’

‘Wait for what, filth?’

Growling, Mannok turns around. Dhoraz has risen, a smear of gold in the blur of shadows. Luxa marches to his side from the darkness. She’s recovered his warhammer. She passes it to him, then nocks a fresh arrow.

‘Forgive me, Xandire,’ Dhoraz says. ‘I’m late to the revel. But then again, I brought the ale.’

Mannok gives a goatish laugh. ‘Wot? Fink ya got the upper hand, does ya? You shinies ain’t the only ones wiv surprises.’

Everything happens in an instant. Dhoraz advances; Luxa looses an arrow. Mannok dodges back. We teeter over the pit, and the grotesque scavenger-crab trundles up.

I thrust my runeblade at Mannok’s face. The blade misses; I smash the hilt into his piggish nose. Mannok howls. He opens his jaws and yanks me in. Through my pain-blurred vision, I glimpse red flame at the bottom of a red gullet.

Then his fangs sink into my temples. I feel my skull crack. He rips his jaws away, tearing the flap of my face from my skull.

I cannot breathe. The exposed muscles and tendons on my skull blaze with excruciating fire. I scream through my lipless grin, unable to close my eyes this one moment I crave it most. For my eyelids are gone, flapping in the bleeding mask between Mannok’s bloody, piggish jaws.

He casts me aside. Luxa and Dhoraz shout, but the scavenger takes me. The creature drags me down, grinding me along stone into water.

I do not know what happens next, only that I am gone. The cave’s dimness shrinks into a distant pinpoint. Darkness rips through me like a furious, doleful wave. Death grates me apart, piece by piece, taking layers until finally there is only the bleeding core of me.

But really, even there, there was never anything at all.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I am cold, in frigid waters. Blackness eats my eyes. It is like I leapt into the Shadowsea all over again, as if I’m tossed by icy currents, salty seawater stinging the open sockets of my skull. Death takes pieces of me, running off with them into the darkness like tittering grots pillaging fields of battle.

I have never feared death. Stormcast Eternals are slain and Reforged with clockwork regularity. We die. We live. We die again. Even the most brutal of falls does not scare me, for brutality has ever been Sigmar’s promise.

I won’t return to Sigmar’s halls. Luxa didn’t. So, will my consciousness coalesce piecemeal? Will I reawaken in the bowels of Harrowdeep, moment by moment, whispering myself back to life? Or will resurrection just rip me from the rivers of death, more agonising than even Reforging?

My vision returns in slow, hypnotic pulses. A cold current blankets me, dragging me through places I do not know to places I do not wish to go. I snatch glimpses of blurred gold and smeared shadows from behind distortions of liquid glass. I hear the soft echoes of friendly voices on distant battlefields. I almost misremember where I am. Wars of the past flash across my mind. I feel mud beneath my feet, and watch wounded mortals piling dead comrades into carts like a butcher’s freight.

Then I see Luxa, Dhoraz and Taros. They dash through darkness behind the shadeglass. Taros’ avian eyes lock on mine through the mirror. He sees me, then falls behind. They are leaving, or I am leaving them.

I speed from the gates of this world to the threshold of another place. The torrential feeling fades. I settle in a place of calm, Stygian dusk.

Gradually, I grow aware of my own form. I sit prayer-style in ruthless dark, encrusted by my Thunderstrike armour. My runeblade is sheathed at my side. The Lantern Astrala’s exalted metal weighs me down like an anchor.

Before me hovers the darkness from my dreams. I have never beheld it this close. It tumbles upon itself, rushing in place. In some moments it’s like a tidal wave, in others, like galloping dark horses.

It cannot take me, I assure myself. The shadeglass has me, as it once had Luxa. Soon the Katophrane Curse shall return me to life. I fortify my courage with these feeble hopes. I cling to them.

But I am uncertain, as uncertain as I ever have been of anything in my long life. If Sigmar cannot save me from that tumbling shroud, then how will the shadeglass?

The darkness sweeps closer. In death, the petty barriers which once divided us are laid bare. If it reaches, it will take me. I will become its slave forever, falling like Sigmar through an eternal void.

I bare my teeth, tugging at the Lantern Astrala, but lifting it is like lifting castles. I grasp my sword’s hilt, but the blade is frosted stuck to the scabbard.

Cold surges over me. The hissing darkness snaps out like jaws. I cannot stop this.

Yet before it takes me, I shoot up, snatched away by another power. The curse of the shadeglass steals me from the closing gloom. The blackness shrinks away as I rise in cursed salvation, relieved to be taken by the Katophrane Curse rather than that tumbling, soul-annihilating oblivion.

My senses return like a shock of freezing water to the face. Cold, rank air fills my lungs. I gasp, eyes wide, tears streaking down my face.

My face. I reach up. Flesh, clammy and taut, clothes my skull anew.

‘Praise Sigmar,’ I whisper to a god who cannot hear me, a god I have no faith in. The vision of Mannok’s closing jaws haunts me. I carry the phantom image of the fire in his craw to remember him by.

Kneeling at my side, Dhoraz claps my back. I cough water from my lungs, glad to see my buffoon of a brother whole.

Then I remember I killed him.

‘It’s okay, lass!’ Dhoraz says, steady and warm. ‘You’re with us. You’re with your own, now.’

Taros found me. What I saw in those fleeting moments of delirium actually occurred. Taros sensed my flagging spirit shooting through Harrowdeep’s shadeglass like lightning arcing through metal. He led the Truthseekers away from Mannok’s trap, through bleeding darkness and cramped passages until they found me. By chance I reawakened near the outlet of an underground river, likely near the burrow of that crustacean scavenger which devoured me.

We are far from where we started. We are deeper than we wish, yet nowhere near the depths we aim for.

Dripping wet, shivering cold, I ask, ‘How’d you escape?’

Dhoraz and Luxa share a mischievous look. ‘We didn’t,’ Dhoraz says. ‘Mannok’s the one who escaped.’

Luxa pulls her hair back. ‘Traps. They set backups.’

I glance between them. ‘You let them go?’

‘Either that,’ Dhoraz says, ‘or be caught off guard again.’

I grunt. Better to let Mannok escape than fall victim to more of his savage ploys.

I listen, grim and attentive, as the Giant-Fell shares the story of his captivity. Before we found him, the Kruleboyz tested their poisons on him. He doesn’t remember how many times he died, returned to life only to be killed again. With each dose of the Kruleboyz’ banes, his innards ran like mud and his bones crumbled into meal.

‘I thought years had passed,’ Dhoraz says. ‘I thought I’d never escape.’

‘You didn’t exactly escape,’ I say.

He blushes. ‘I insulted you. Before you saved me.’

I nod. Stormcasts are proud; Dhoraz is no exception. Pride always refuses to make apology. Pride refuses to show its belly. But beneath Dhoraz’s words, I sense snivelling tentativeness, a kind of nervous anticipation masquerading as stoic masculinity.

‘Did I threaten you?’ he asks.

‘No,’ I say. ‘But your words were sharp. They can be forgiven.’

Dhoraz turns, avoiding my gaze. He is ashamed. ‘My gratitude, Xandire. For killing me. Dying cleared things up immensely.’

I chuckle. All I can think is his beard looks as warm as a fur cloak. ‘Giant-Fell, I would kill you any day.’

His lips break into a foolish grin. I resist the smile creeping onto my own face, a tonic for other emotions I am less ready to consider.

Luxa glances between us. ‘This is very poignant.’

‘Something about saying it makes it less so,’ I say.

‘Apologies,’ Luxa says. ‘It really is touching. I wanted to acknowledge that before ruining this reunion. We have a problem.’

‘Many, I should think,’ Dhoraz says. He gazes at Luxa in wonder. ‘How strange to have got used to your quiet and now learn you can speak.’

Luxa’s cheeks turn rosy. ‘Speaking well means knowing when your voice must be heard.’

‘Your voice is always welcome here,’ Dhoraz says. ‘You fight like a duardin with a grudge. I could listen to you all day.’

‘Enough, Dhoraz,’ I say. ‘We can honour each other on the World-Wall when our quest is complete. Speak, Stormrider.’

‘The monstrosity from the Shadowsea,’ Luxa says. ‘It follows us.’

‘Has it moved since the Cannibal Palace?’ I ask.

Luxa nods. ‘I hear it. I smell it. There’s no mistaking it.’

Dhoraz, in spite of his immortal constitution, has gone pale. ‘The Cannibal Palace?’

‘Count your blessings you weren’t there,’ I say. ‘Luxa, how close is it?’

Luxa shrugs. ‘Closer than before. How close, I can’t say.’ Her slender features settle into a grimace. She trades a long look with Taros. I do not fully understand the Vigilor’s bond with the aetherwing. Truthfully, as long as it serves our cause, I do not care to.

‘Luxa,’ I say, worrying she will grow taciturn again.

‘The beast follows you,’ Luxa blurts.

Dhoraz gives an amused huff. ‘That and every other shadow in this pit.’

‘No. I mean Calthia in particular.’ Luxa has an earnest look. ‘Darkness surrounds you. Taros senses it. I do too. Xandire, what does this place want from you?’

I glance helplessly between the others. I cannot answer because I do not know. Before I died, before the tumbling shadows came for me, I thought the resemblance of Harrowdeep’s darkness to the darkness from my dreams purely incidental. I considered this place no more than some kind of symbol for what I desired.

An ordeal, to prove my worthiness. A triumph, to reveal the substance of my faith no matter my doubt.

I thought if I defeated these metaphorical shadows, I’d have undeniable evidence that I am the demigod I was forged to be. Proof of the faith which earned my place among the Stormcast and the Truthseekers. Proof I deserve Sigmar’s boons.

But it was a symbol of my own creation, an ordeal of my own choosing. Not this lurking peril. I always knew Harrowdeep’s dangers were real, for Sigmar would never have sent us into an orchid garden. Yet the shadows were never supposed to be anything more than coincidence. They were not supposed to be hunting me.

I unlash my scabbard from my belt, propping myself up with it. I explain everything to Luxa and Dhoraz: the darkness in my dreams, the centuries of sleeplessness, and the toll of sleep-hunger like a ringing bell. I share my fraught desire to confront the shadows. I share my cold hate of them. I share everything but my lack of faith in Sigmar. To confess as much would be to risk losing Luxa’s and Dhoraz’s trust in me entirely. What little remains.

Dhoraz chews his lips in thought. The tough, fissured skin of his cheeks flexes like land in quaking motion. ‘Well. This certainly changes things.’

‘Sigmar knew?’ Luxa asks. ‘Alumitar?’

I nod. ‘Thus he gave me the Lantern Astrala. And Alumitar?’ I scoff. ‘What would have changed if he did? You think he would have taken Sigmar’s boon from me? Clapped manacles around my wrists? No one could have known the darkness in my dreams and the shadows in Harrowdeep were the same. Both of you know as well as I do there are no answers to the riddles here, and many of them are lies. Harrowdeep plays with us. It has played with us from the start, revealing that which we want to see and that which we fear. Harrowdeep uses our desires and terrors to pit us against each other. I thought the shadows were the same.’

Dhoraz turns, chewing his thumb in consternation. ‘They might be, for all we know. This may be another trick.’

I recall the tumbling darkness from the place where death led me.

‘I do not think so,’ I say.

Luxa’s sylphlike features smooth, her gaze falling upon the black brine lapping against the stone. ‘So. What now?’

I lower my gaze. I want so badly to have the answer. I am Stormcast. For better or worse, the mantle of the Truthseekers’ leadership is mine. If there were any doubts about that before, none remain now.

But I have no answers. Nadir and the Harrowstone remain our most obvious goals, and Sigmar’s task is unchanged. But we possess no new leads, no direction. And how can I be trusted to lead us through a dungeon which seeks to consume me?

The truth hangs before me. I am too coward to grasp it. I am compromised. I always have been, and so are my decisions. I cannot let Luxa and Dhoraz follow me as long as my Stormcast purity is polluted with the gloom of Harrowdeep. Maybe they even see it – through the lies, through the armour and the god-forged flesh, all the way to the hollow, howling core of me.

Dhoraz beats the haft of his hammer on the stone. The water ripples with the force of his blow. ‘I won’t have this. I won’t have more doubt. Not after all we’ve been through. Not after getting you two back. Nothing’s changed, except once we were divided and now we are strong. Xandire’s instincts proved true, in the end. Harrowdeep is a menace. It must be destroyed. To do that, we descend, as before. If I doubted you before, Calthia, know that I doubt you no more. Against the things Harrowdeep has pitted against us, even Alumitar’s character might have been found wanting. You have performed admirably. You saved me. I will follow you to the end.’

He gives me an earnest look, waiting for my reply. Luxa, too.

My mouth hardens. If Dhoraz sees something in me worth following, perhaps he is right. Perhaps there is some good to be had from me after all.

I find the ruins of my old confidence and stand renewed upon them, a foundation. All beginnings are rooted in endings. All faith is anchored in doubt.

‘Then it is agreed,’ I say. ‘Harrowdeep is our enemy. We shall destroy it, as Sigmar ordained. The orruks are behind us. Let them stay there. Mannok is no longer a threat.’

Dhoraz freezes. His brows wrinkle and his lips purse. ‘About that.’

Mannok has a vendetta. Against us. Against all Stormcasts. He told me as much, but I thought they were only words.

To Dhoraz, he made his hatred abundantly clear. Mannok doesn’t want to test himself against Stormcasts like a typical greenskin savage. He wants to break us. He wants us to suffer in humiliation and hurt. Mannok wants to push our entrails into the mud before our very eyes, to show us exactly where he thinks we belong.

‘They know about Nadir,’ Dhoraz says. ‘The Harrowstone, too. But that isn’t the relic he seeks.’

Mannok told me as much. Right before he ripped off my face. ‘A floatrock.’

Dhoraz nods. ‘Aye. They wouldn’t stop blathering about it.’

‘A floatrock?’ Luxa asks.

Dhoraz shrugs. ‘They’re greenskins. They speak like greenskins. It’s some sort of relic which grants those who wield it the power to ascend this dungeon at will.’

I heard rumours of such treasures in Misthåvn. If only we possessed that power, how differently our quest might have gone. ‘If it exists, it is an instrument worthy of sacrifice.’

‘Mannok leads his scum to Nadir for it,’ Dhoraz says. ‘They’re looking for a way out. Then he’ll bring his entire clan back to make Harrowdeep their lair.’

‘Why not let them?’ Luxa says. ‘When we destroy Harrowdeep, we’ll purge their clan with it.’

‘Our descent’s been hell with a handful of greenskins arrayed against us,’ I say. ‘Imagine how impossible our task would become against a horde of them.’

Dhoraz has a look I’ve never seen before. The birdsong in his eyes settles like rocks in water. Beneath his mighty beard, his lips sink into a frown. ‘They mean to trap us here. Mannok wants Stormcasts as playthings, as trophies. To test his poisons. To prove his might. The floatrock is a means to an end. We’re the real treasure. He means to keep us here forever.’

I remember Mannok’s jaws clamped around my face. I feel his fangs diving into the soft part of my temples and see the dim, acid fire in the base of his throat.

I imagine an eternity of this, sustained with dark un-life by the Katophrane Curse which blights Harrowdeep like cancer. The thought is horrid and dismaying, but most of all – insulting.

I bare my teeth. My blood boils with anger. ‘We must reach Nadir before Mannok and his filth,’ I say. ‘If we find them first, we’ll give them a real reason to hate us.’

Taros chirps.

‘We’re in.’ Luxa says.

‘Aye.’ Dhoraz nods. ‘I like the way you think, Xandire.’

Satisfied, I give the order, and we move out.

Along spiralling passages in the suffocating darkness, we wander ever down. As with the Silent Stair, the geometries here are fantastic and impossible. The stoneways grow slick with sheets of burbling water, and everywhere we step we risk lost footing, broken necks and mangled limbs. Harrowdeep is awash with hope-quelling shadow, and where it can be heard, the ceaseless drip of water erodes my confidence like the smoothing of river stone.

Even after finding common ground with the other Truthseekers, I cannot fight the sinking feeling in my gut. Harrowdeep’s hidden menace is now naked want. For an eternity, I thought I was bold. That’s what happens when nothing can truly kill you. Faced with Harrowdeep’s spiteful desire and the fact Sigmar cannot save me from it, I feel my resolve begin to crack.

The Lantern Astrala lights our way, dispelling the unending shroud of Harrowdeep’s shade-magicks. At an apparent dead end, the Astrala light smoulders through shade like flame eating cotton, revealing passages we wouldn’t have otherwise seen. Within a graveyard of bone infested by blind, tunnelling worms, the celestial glow reveals a safe route through lethal sandfalls.

The lanthorn takes its toll, of course. It burns my strength for power, making my mood wretched and my hands feebler. My strength is considerable, not inexhaustible. Even the power of the Stormcast Eternals possesses bounds.

The same may be said of our courage. After facing the darkness of death, I understand something I refused to admit before:

I am not fearless.

I often mask my fear, transmuting it into stern fury like a Chamonite alchemist working lead into gold. Yet it is fear nonetheless. Beneath the anger, beneath the disdain – beneath the holy contempt and the pious wrath – it lingers, like a skaven sapper burrowing deep beneath the sturdiest of granite keeps.

I should take pleasure in recognising it, for there is power in awareness of one’s own weaknesses. But I do not. I feel ashamed and insecure, as if honour-bound to conceal my naked feebleness from the others.

Such insecurity is unbecoming of the Stormcast. Sigmar makes us of sterner stuff, to crack the earth where we strike and kindle flames in the breasts of mortals. That is what I should be. A citadel. A keep. A fortress of faith and will.

But I cannot fight the groundlessness of my own missing past. I am a banner without a staff, fluttering every way in the wind. I crave to return what I have never held: memories of my mortal life, and some idea of that first woman who possessed my immortal soul.

Ironic, is it not? For there are some things I wish forgotten.

Once I toured the Soul-Mills of the Sigmarabulum, in Azyr. Our immortal spirits are stored there in anticipation of Reforging, to be hammered again into new flesh with old purpose and Sigmar’s might.

My brothers and sisters of the Sacrosanct Chamber led me through the Sigmarabulum, beneath the shrieking heights of the Star Spires and through the Domes of Infinity, where the insensate souls of my fallen comrades waited in patience and formlessness for reincarnation.

We were in pursuit of a lightning gheist, a creature whose nature the Sacrosanct did not deign to explain. The gheist was dangerous. It was loose. That, they said, was all I needed to know. The Sacrosanct are privy to secrets which I am not. I did as instructed and no more, cordoning one of the polished passages within the sweeping Soul-Mills.

The lightning gheist came to me. Hurtled through the air like a bolt of energy animated by spite. When it struck, I was ready. But in the span of that instant, I witnessed something I shouldn’t have. Something I would scour from my memory if I could.

The lightning gheist was one of us. A fellow Stormcast, bolting from Sigmar’s Anvil of Apotheosis in fear of Reforging. He was contoured in starlight and storm, half mad from the agony of creation. Glorious, almost. If only he weren’t screaming.

His jaw hung down to his chest. His legs were flickering sparks. He was a mismatched deformation of light; the very recollection makes me think of Alumitar. In the evaporating electric waves of his disintegrating face, I saw the gheist was missing his soul.

I understand how ridiculous that sounds – for the gheist itself was a soul. But I felt in my dead brother’s thunderous roars the knee-quaking substance of his loss. He remembered nothing. He didn’t know who he was, or where he came from, or where he would go from here.

He only knew that he suffered, and that he must fight. All the things that had made him him were cast away like useless slag. Only Sigmar remained.

That, I realised, is all of us.

Oh, how I wish I could forget.

CHAPTER NINE

Adorning the walls of another spiralling chasm are more harrow-runes. The glyphs are scrawled monograms overlapping each other like the foreigners’ graffiti in the refugee quarters of Azyrheim. The runes’ meaning is impossible to parse.

The script continues all the way to the base of the chasm. It’s a rounded chamber with no exit. A dead end.

We circle the chamber, testing the craggy stone walls. This is Ulgu. Perhaps some secret passage might be seen through an indirect glance, or a heavy-lidded gaze.

Luxa backs off. ‘Nothing.’

Taros lifts into the air. Dhoraz leans on his hammer, watching the aetherwing’s ascent. He clucks his tongue. ‘Your aetherwing doesn’t keen like a proper bird,’ he says. ‘It has to scream, Luxa. Proud birds scream. Like eagles over mountains.’

Luxa lets loose her hair, then gathers it back up. ‘You still haven’t taught him?’

I chuckle, working my way in a wide circle around the chamber, prodding the walls. What I would give to see Dhoraz on his haunches before Taros again, as on the Senthulvin, cawing in his burly falsetto at the poor aetherwing in the hopes it would imitate him. ‘You’re the legendary beast tamer, Giant-Fell. If it can be done, you can do it.’

‘Maybe he can’t,’ Luxa says.

‘But he said he could,’ I say. ‘If he couldn’t, that would make him–’

‘A liar.’ Luxa smirks, eyes gleaming.

Dhoraz has had enough. ‘I know what you two are getting at. I’m not a liar. Every one of my tales is true.’ He jabs his thick arm in the air, pointing at Taros circling overhead. ‘The bird needs to scream. Like a dracoth on the charge. All creatures have their pride, sisters. And before you go off joking about my mortal legends, know this. A dragon’s call is the way of Azyr, not Ghur. In Ghur nothing screams. There is no better way to starve to death or be eaten than to be heard first by your predators and prey. Taros is a creature of Azyr. So I don’t see why he’s being so obstinate unless–’

I raise my hand. ‘That’s enough.’ Let the Giant-Fell stay this course and soon he’ll be regaling us with tales of peace he negotiated between ogors and orruks or sagas of personal triumph against the Three-Eyed King’s screaming hordes.

I flare the Lantern Astrala. It does nothing but drain me. I extinguish it, regaining my breath. My eyes wander to the floor.

Massive grooves scar the stone, water draining into the furrows. They coil around themselves in alien curlicues and discomposing lines. The floor is so densely rutted with them I assumed it was natural bedrock, but it’s not. It’s engraved with an outsized harrow-rune similar to those on the walls. Water puddles in the grooves, rippling with the Orb Duplicita’s distorting glow, that captive un-light which radiates darkly from Harrowdeep’s waters.

‘And that’s the pattern,’ I whisper. ‘Wherever the harrow-runes are found, the Orb Duplicita is visible.’ I circle, gazing at the troubling symbol. ‘You two know the duardin Slayer lodges?’

Dhoraz screws up his eyes. ‘Fyreslayers? Aye. But I’ve not seen any of those poor bastards since the cages.’

‘I speak of their runes and the enchantments they possess.’ I point to the floor. ‘What if this is the same?’

Luxa’s chestnut gaze brightens and she moves to stand beside me. The runnels and rills carpet the whole floor. Some overlap. Others are cleverly carved to suggest layers, a channel ending on one side of an adjacent runnel, beginning again on the other.

Taken together, the whole floor gleams like a mad spider’s web under full moon.

It is the Orb Duplicita. The ghost of its image glimmers in the water, a moon which does not and cannot hang above us, for we stand in a place of stone skies. As with Harrowdeep’s shadeglass mirrors, the water’s reflection does not capture us.

‘There’s something in this,’ Luxa says. ‘Behind the reflection of the moon.’

I see it, only faintly. Corridors of basalt, and doors of smooth, pagan stone, half glimpsed beneath the water at our toes.

This is no mere engraving. It is a portal.

Fighting my own misgivings, I keep the Lantern Astrala shuttered. Harrowdeep’s darkness cannot be battled headlong at every turn. Sometimes, perhaps it must simply be confronted.

I lower to a knee, unblinking. Eerie light flickers in the water. Ranks of guttering candles can be seen in long corridors between phantom vaults.

Some of Misthåvn’s drunkards whispered of mighty Vaults Mysterium within Harrowdeep, catacombs filled with enchanted strongrooms which hoard ten thousand secrets in the dark.

These, I dare hope, are them. And what if this is Nadir? Shouldn’t a treasure as mighty as the Harrowstone lie within vaults such as these?

The longer I stare, the more of the vaults I see, until the entire web of water and ghost light is warm with the candles’ fairy glow.

Hypnotised, I keel forward, holding my breath. Then, like a tower robbed of its foundations, I tumble through the floor.

It is like falling into water. The change is sudden and bewildering, my head momentarily below my feet, then somehow above. I stagger backwards, regaining my footing, standing on the other side. Beneath my feet, Luxa and Dhoraz peer back at me through the harrow-rune with wide-eyed amazement.

I smile like a simpleton. As Dhoraz tosses his bearded head back with pulses of silent laughter, Luxa lowers to her knees, seeking to emulate what I’ve done.

Behind them the shadows move. A grimacing orruk with white wisps of sick hair creeps forward. More greenskins slink behind him, blades brandished, poised to strike. Mannok, and Torka, and the hideous Krookgrin with his two grinning grots.

My eyes widen.

Before I can say anything, Dhoraz sees the urgency in my expression. He pivots, cleaving his hammer through the air. The orruks dodge back, snarling mutely, circling the Giant-Fell like jackals.

Then Luxa sprawls in a heap of sigmarite beside me, Taros perched triumphantly upon her. At our heels, Krookgrin and his grots gawk with stupid bafflement before glimpsing us through the harrow-rune.

I unlash my scabbard, passing it to Luxa. I inhale a lungful of air and teeter forward again.

I fall through the floor-portal, slightly less disoriented than before. I clap against the Giant-Fell just as he bats Torka’s man-snappa away with his hammer. Without a word, I pull the Giant-Fell down with me, craning back my head to avoid his flailing arms.

This time Luxa stands over us. She helps us to our feet and returns my runeblade to me.

Below, Mannok leers at us, his Kunnin’ Krew closing ranks behind him. Their brutal gazes twist up in equal parts guile, malice and befuddlement.

‘That won’t confuse them for long,’ I say. ‘Come. We must use this time to get a head start.’

‘Or’ – Dhoraz snaps the haft of his hammer against his palm – ‘we could deal with them now and be done with them.’

I point to the greenskins’ distorted reflections beneath the floor. ‘This is a bottleneck. They know that. We know that. Neither of us will go through with enemies waiting on the other side. You know how they fight, Giant-Fell. They want an advantage.’

Dhoraz’s eyes sing with disobedience. ‘In that case we must move to the end of these vaults, lass. Let’s set our own ambush. Take them there.’

My bile rises with instinctive ire. I was a fool to think Dhoraz might be more amenable to my command, even after everything we’ve been through. He is a wildfire, untameable, even by ice like me. Hours into our reunion and already he undermines my command. I could get more discipline from a dankhold troggoth.

Then I realise he is not wrong. These vaults must narrow ahead. Setting a trap there would be simple, and a more complete victory over Mannok and his ilk might convince them to rethink their vendetta against us.

Slowly, with a kind of glacial certainty, I nod my assent. ‘I like it. Luxa? What say you?’

‘I told you,’ she snaps. ‘I’m with you.’

I glance around. The candles in the corridors gutter as if starved of air. Less water trickles through these halls. Far more shadow magic billows around us, curling like fingers of fog.

I draw the Lantern Astrala and steel myself for its flare. The Astrala light should have no problem cutting a path through this gloom. I open the shutter. Light blasts from the lanthorn.

Then the halls howl and gust with gale winds. The Astrala light is sucked into the once flickering, now roaring candle flames.

All at once, the gridded corridors come apart. The stonework heaves, twisting and revolving, here upside down, there inside out, a living puzzle box. The dungeon shifts upon itself, and Dhoraz and Luxa fly away from me on bands of sliding stone. I rock to the side, my own belt of stone carrying me off like an ice patch sailing down rapids.

With the granular scream of stone abusing stone, the transformation ceases. Somewhere, Dhoraz bellows his own name. I hear Luxa’s arrows striking metal, sizzling and searing. Mannok’s stomach-emptying laughter echoes, muted by distance and stone, made eerily resonant by the vaults’ emptiness.

We are divided, all of us. For now we must fight our own fights.

Alone in a hall of slick stones and immense hallways, I creep forward, ready for anything, waiting for some unseen foe to attack from the darkness. My blade is light in my hand. My breath is steady, and my heavy heels thud like hammer strikes.

Strange noises resound in the darkness ahead. Apologies, condolences, sobbing. I hear the pleas of children begging for their lives, praying to gods that will not save them.

I shake it off. These are Harrowdeep’s illusions. Tricks of the mind, and nothing more.

Then scuffling and scurrying feet patter up behind me.

I swivel. Nothing’s there. More illusions. More deceits.

I hate this place. I loathe this lack of control. I despise Ulgu, and the lies upon lies upon lies.

I clench my teeth and cast open the Lantern Astrala’s shutter, an indulgent moment of wilful oblivion. The candles roar. Stone tortures itself, and this time the movements of Harrowdeep throw me from my feet.

I collapse into a pile of holy armour and immortal flesh. The corridors complete their final revolution, and the strange sounds disappear, replaced by half-quiet and the hermit drip of water on stone.

Exhausted, made patient by the consequences of my own impulsiveness, I rise within another corridor of dribbling darkness. No more candles here. Only empty braziers and damp, guttered-out torches. Greasy moisture weeps from a rough-hewn wall, within which is set a great slab of waterlogged oak.

A door, far different from that portal I spied earlier in Harrowdeep, the mammoth stone block lifted by the apparition of that woman. That door had been made to be impassable. This one is meant to be entered.

I can only assume as much, for my name is written upon it.

Inside the vault the walls are round. The ceiling is domed, as if this were a fane in Nordrath rather than a cursed lair beneath leagues of crushing sea. The walls weep with murk and viscous moisture, like the gut lining of a living, hungering thing. A corridor in the wall opposite me leads out of the chamber.

Against one wall stands an ancient wardrobe of crimson wood and black iron. On the other looms a nook, a wide window filled with midnight darkness.

Somehow I recognise this place. It peels back the corners of my mind, prodding at a half-felt lump of memory beneath. I brush my hands along the slimy stone walls, anticipating the textures, the odours, the sights. Everything I lay eyes on remembers itself to me. I have been here before.

The muffled voice of a frantic woman can be heard within the wardrobe. Leading with my blade, I approach, ready to split the kingly furnishing apart. The piece reminds me of classical Elderwash, ornate furniture common to Azyrheim’s wealthiest merchant houses and nobility.

Yet the angles are off, the ironwork too perfect. It feels familiar, and I think that is why it is here. A figment of imagination designed to appeal to my sensibilities, to make me comfortable. It is as if something which does not understand humans’ minds sought to make a doll’s house for them.

I listen to the muffled voice. The wardrobe rattles as the woman argues with herself. She speaks a distinguished dialect of Ulguadha, an Aelfish koine of this realm.

In the black nook, the darkness scoffs. ‘All this time, and she brings a lamp.’

I pivot, face still, weapon ready. The black nook glares in haughty silence. ‘Show yourself,’ I say.

Greasy laughter emits from the darkness. ‘Would she look? So much effort she spends, turning her eyes from things she does not want to see. Yes? And yet she brings light. Ha. Irony. Delicious. Keep her lantern stowed. Yes. She won’t look at what it shows her, and we don’t want its glow.’

‘You speak as if you know me,’ I say.

The darkness snorts. ‘Stupid immortals. Yes, we know her, yes. Her name is written on the door.’

I blink. ‘Who are you?’

A moment of hesitation. ‘A prisoner, to Falsehome, yes. Like her.’

I strain my eyes. Inside the nook, I almost expect to glimpse the boiling darkness from my dreams, mouthing my name in its folds. But the nook is empty. The abyssal dark which fills it is almost a relief, so deep and perfectly black it might as well not be there.

Reassured by the Lantern Astrala’s weight at my belt, I take a sidelong step. ‘What is that wardrobe?’ My brow smooths. I dare to hope. ‘Is it a Realmgate?’

The darkness chortles: a desperate, miserable sound. ‘No Realmgates in Falsehome, Calthia.’

I halt. I was wrong. Inside the nook hovers the faintest of silhouettes. A shape within the shadows, infuriatingly indistinct.

I tug my head back. ‘The wardrobe. Who’s inside?’

‘A queen,’ the darkness says. ‘She argues. Bargaining. For her people, she thinks. But really, for herself. Yes.’

A queen. The rune-records on the megaliths within the Plaza of Dusk come to mind. They spoke of a queen who ruled the sanctuary of Urama Othal.

‘Queen Kia’tan,’ I say. ‘Of the Morladron Deepkin and the Khainite exiles.’

‘Yes, yes, yes. She knows her histories. Poor Kia’tan. She sought to master the darkness in Harrowdeep. To master the darkness in herself. You’ve seen the aelf-worms. Yes? The ones who survived? Others still descend. She does not know, but still they climb down. So far deep, they go. Falsehome keeps its prisoners, whether they surrender or not. They believe they can still escape. They believe they can save their queen. Fool-worms. Yes? Pathetic. She’s the one who doomed them.’

I glance at the wardrobe, off-putting in its eerie distortions. ‘Kia’tan brought them to Harrowdeep.’

‘Yes, yes, yes! She led them to Falsehome, speaking nothing of the darkness she wished to conquer.’ Another greasy laugh sails from the dark. ‘Look where it got her. Here.’

The wardrobe falls silent. The allegory is not lost upon me. Yet this, too, feels like a ruse.

My eyes wander to the corridor which leads from this vault. The voice in the darkness plays games with me. I could leave. I want to, and I should. I must help the others. We must escape before the greenskins do.

So why I stay I cannot fully explain, except that something about this place tugs at the threads of me. ‘You’re Falsehome,’ I say. ‘You are Harrowdeep.’

The shape in the darkness stirs, a jarring motion, like black velvet rustling in ink. ‘We are not Falsehome!’ it hisses. ‘We’re prisoners. Like her.’

‘You are not like me.’

‘No. No, not a realm-dweller, not a worm, even a worm with lightning-blood and thunder-heart. But she is still a worm, still nothing. We are trapped, as she is trapped. Yes.’

‘If you are truly a prisoner, help me,’ I say. ‘Tell me your name, that I may speak to my god of you. We will come for you when the time comes.’

Again, the greasy laugh. ‘Some worms called us Architects. Others called us Shadowsmiths. Or Malefic Ones. Or Makers. Worm names are like fake faces. A new one, for every deceit, just like Falsehome. Truth is hard to grasp. Yes? A writhing, squirming thing.’

Makers. The Misthåvners spoke of these creatures. Entities that hail from the Orb Duplicita, with blood of purest darkness, who bestride the Realm of Shadows when their moon reaches its apogee. I heard a dozen tales of the Makers’ origins, a dozen explanations as to why they built Harrowdeep, and for what.

All raised more questions than they answered. And all, on the surface, seemed impossible. Yet here I am, standing before one of them.

‘I heard Malerion destroyed you,’ I say. ‘That he could not tolerate what you created here and punished you for it.’

‘Malerion? She thinks him capable of it?’ The shadows gurgle with laughter, like wet murk sloshing at the bottom of a bucket. ‘He always had ambition, like his spoilt mother. Yes. But even the worms’ gods are just godly worms, writhing and wrestling over their patches of mud from one cycle to the next. Malerion could have tried. Perhaps then he would be here, and not her. Yes? He did not destroy us, and we did not build Falsehome. We survived the cycles. We were old when your old ones were new. But Falsehome? It is elder still. Falsehome calls none master but its own bottomless want. The death-curse does not change that. She won’t either. She and her worm-seekers are slaves, like us.’

‘I am no slave,’ I say.

‘No? Then maybe she’s a fool. Like Kia’tan. Yes? She believes triumph awaits her. Truth to be found. To be conquered. She seeks to understand this place and defeat it. She is capable of neither. Too puny. Yes? Her very presence is her defeat. Her god sent her here to be forgotten. That is what she shall do.’

I ignore the acid in the words, reaching for the truth beneath them. There is knowledge to be gained here, and all knowledge is strength. ‘If you’re truly trapped, you are not our enemy. We seek Nadir and the Harrowstone. Help us destroy this place. Help us escape.’

‘She is bold. But Falsehome is not destroyed any more than fire is burned. This is a graveyard for gods, worm. Maybe she believes her lightning-king is powerful. Maybe she even worships him. This will not help. We have seen the void in her soul. We have smelt the fear. She is a failure among her kind. No?’

These words, like Mannok’s envenomed traps, are meant to fracture my courage and calm. I would be lying if I said I was above such cheap tricks. I have failed. My very delay here is a failure, for my brother and sister remain at the mercies of these shifting vaults and whatever they contain. They await my help.

Still, I cannot bring myself to go. My heart grows heady with anger and shame, and still my feet remain locked to the ground. The miserable truth resounds in me, anchoring me where I stand…

I was brought into Sigmar’s Stormhosts for reasons I cannot name, for the sake of faith I neither sense nor believe in. I was told I was a heroine, one of many who laid down their lives for Sigmar.

But I do not believe this, because I cannot remember! I try. I try so hard, yet I see only the blackness beckoning before my eyes, like smoke limned in shadows. I feel only the sleep-hunger thudding in the base of my skull.

I lower my blade. Long have I lied to myself. The hole in the core of me cannot be filled. Dhoraz’s faith in me changes nothing; neither does Luxa’s friendship. I feel my emptiness in sharper relief than ever before.

‘Tell me, worm-thing,’ the darkness growls. ‘Are we the truth she seeks?’

Contours swell from the nook. The outline of a basalt throne, and sitting upon it, an emaciated figure mantled in shadows. Only his haggard knuckles and his pencil-thin legs are visible, long and fleshy like pale, bony eels.

It is the thing from the Hall of Hidden Eyes and the solitude of my first fall. I crave so badly to rush forward, to slaughter it where it sits.

But I have chased this creature before. Such haste would lead nowhere. The apparition would evade my sword strokes, fading into the shadows which spawned it. My single chance at this dialogue with the darkness would slip from my grasp. It is a far greater success merely to converse with it, for its haunting words scrape away at the mystery of my past. To solve that riddle and understand where I come from would finally explain why Sigmar chose me.

I will not let this opportunity go. I will clutch it tight.

The silhouette’s low-hanging chin droops down to its chest. Briefly, the slack, predatory jaw reminds me of the blind Olaa whales which glide through Chamon’s shifting heavens, albino titans sheathed in miraculous, quartz-like skin, filtering prey creatures from the hazy metal skies.

‘You have joined this place,’ I say. ‘You are part of Harrowdeep.’

The figure shudders. ‘As is she, storm-worm. The shadows in your dreams do not threaten you. They call you home.’ Its drooping jaw twitches. I imagine a drooling grin atop its ugly lips, and fangs like daggers, and a heart that pumps darkness instead of blood.

‘This is not my home,’ I say.

‘She died here,’ the thing hisses. ‘She offered her soul to Falsehome. It wants her back. It cannot forget her.’

In my gut, I feel as if I am falling. ‘I’m a warrior of Sigmar. I am champion to his cause.’

‘Why? Because he snatched her from the shadows she promised herself to? Because there was yet no death-curse to stop him? She mustn’t lie! She mustn’t lie when the truth she seeks stands right before her, in her sleep, beneath her eyelids! She never wanted the lightning-king! She promised herself to another!’

Rage boils up my throat. Hateful tears well in my eyes. ‘No.’

The figure cackles. ‘She doesn’t even know! She doesn’t even remember!’

‘I do,’ I say. I don’t care if it’s a lie or not. ‘We all fell for different reasons. They don’t matter any more. We came to Sigmar’s side with his name on our lips. I am Reforged, no matter who I was, because I am worthy.’

The word fits. I grow encouraged.

‘I kill for Sigmar,’ I say. ‘I destroy for him, and I protect for him. These are my truths, and the only truths that matter.’

The thing erupts into a fit of greasy laughter, like hammers squelching through tar.

‘I don’t care if you don’t believe me,’ I snarl. ‘I don’t care what you say. I came to destroy Harrowdeep. I’ll destroy you with it.’ I sheathe my blade, turning to leave.

‘Calthia?’ the darkness hisses, suddenly urgent. ‘Where? Where will she go? To hunt Mannok and his sadist worms? All paths lead one way in Falsehome. Down.’

My hand falls to the Lantern Astrala. I start towards the opposite corridor.

The creature’s gnarled voice grows halting and desperate. ‘She really thinks this leads somewhere else, no? Doesn’t she remember? We remember! Falsehome craves her! If we help it, it lets us go! Calthia! Kia’tan wishes to greet you!’

Wood creaks at my side. The wardrobe. It’s open.

I draw my runeblade and hack up in the same motion. A withered revenant staggers towards me; my blade skims its breast.

The thing lurches back, a twisted aelf similar to the fiends of the Cannibal Palace, but much further gone. Perhaps it was an aelf queen, once. Now it is a parody of her, encrusted in barnacles, flesh cracked with rot, bone-thin and shrivelled with starvation. She convulses and gyrates in a witless votive dance, her movements spellbinding and maddening. Dizzying shadows turn in her eyes, old magic running in her parched veins like concentrated venom.

Arcane sigmarite wards forged within me sear to life. My soul is a fortress, made by the hands of a god. Focus sharpens my mind like fire hardening wood.

I slash again, dispelling the revenant’s shadow wards, slashing the queen near in two. Her gnarled fingers tear the Lantern Astrala from my belt. Then, with a glancing blow, the shade-revenant bashes me to cold stone with a gargant’s strength.

Like a tower besieged, I go down. Snarling like a dog, I scramble up. I hammer the hilt of my blade into the queen’s flesh. Liquid lightning pours from the gash.

In the nook, the Maker glides out from the darkness. For the first time I see it in knee-weakening detail. It is a parody of the human form, staked into its spiralling throne. The skull of its oversized head is smooth and eyeless. The slash of its mouth zippers around its bulbous head like an opened satchel.

In that gaping maw, I see the omens from my dreams: the animus of Harrowdeep, the boiling blackness. The shadows hover there, the puppeteer behind their cheap marionette, calling to me.

I have beheld monsters of slaughter and plague. I have stood under the sanity-corroding light of the Gloomspite clans’ Bad Moon. I have exorcised spirits of the dead and sent man-eating ghouls back to the hells which spawned them.

This is worse than all of those. It besieges the wards in my mind. The darkness is the soundless note of oblivion, the theomachy of being forgotten, a power which slays gods.

Darkness billows from the Maker’s mouth, clawing into the chamber. Kia’tan’s revenant, near cloven in half, screeches.

I scrabble to her, pummelling her bony head, rocking her knobby skull against the stone. Prising my Lantern Astrala from between her nails, I brandish it at the Maker. I tear open the shutter, half fearing the light will not come.

A lance of starlight spears through the Maker’s head, so bright and blazing I hear it, like a Kharadron airship’s foghorn blasting beside my ear.

The Maker splits like a lanced boil. Darkness sputters and splashes from it. Strength drains from my limbs, but I do not shutter the light. I unleash all of it. I let it burn through me.

Then, like eventide’s final fog evaporating at dawn, the Maker disappears.

The stone rumbles. The seams of the Vaults Mysterium come undone, corridors and rooms collapsing. Piece by piece, the incomprehensible machine of stone falls apart, like a rusted-out clock destroying itself with its own function.

I glimpse flashes of light, hear the strident clangour of blades. I spy Luxa fending off a horde of beshadowed wraiths. Dhoraz single-handedly duels Mannok and Torka in a test of animal strength.

For one jarring moment, I see Harrowdeep’s utter lie, as if peering through a cross-section of the universe, its shadows steaming away before my eyes. Then the stones beneath my feet fall away, the image is scoured from my mind, and the vaults regurgitate me back where we started.

I am at the vaults’ entrance, beside the Truthseekers. Dying flames and billowing smoke choke the air. Through a fissure in the wall, a tunnel climbs into twilight.

I struggle to my feet. Smoke wisps from my warplate. I am burnt dry, smouldering and spent, like the charred skeleton of a lightning-struck tree.

Dhoraz helps Luxa up. ‘Xandire? What in all the hells of Shyish is going on?’

I do not answer. Gleaming red trickles down Luxa’s armour. Her hip bleeds, pierced by some shadow-wraith’s chipped blade.

‘Damn,’ I say. ‘Luxa.’

‘I’m all right,’ she says. ‘Look.’

In the tunnel ahead, Mannok berates his hobgrot. The lean orruk boss offers a final, lascivious glare back before kicking his wretched companion into the twilight passage ahead. The two disappear.

‘No more time.’ I drag Luxa to her feet. ‘Come.’

Dhoraz hefts his hammer up, peering after Mannok. ‘A way out?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘A way down.’

CHAPTER TEN

Nadir is here, within a rift at the bottom of a gulf as vast as a valley and as dark as the dusk. A breathtaking cascade of pure shadow pours from a breach in the ceiling. Motes of chilling darkness drift from these Penumbral Falls soundlessly into the chasm at the bottom.

We have no time to enjoy the vista. Dhoraz, running forward with hammer in hand, gestures ahead. ‘The greenskins!’

Mannok leads his hobgrot to Nadir at a loping canter, down the long spiral causeway circling the hollow. He shoots swinish glances over his shoulder, red eyes flashing beside his perched morkrow. I must deny him the triumph he seeks.

Krookgrin, the greedy-eyed hobgrot, shouts back: ‘Gikkit, Shank, you gits! Get movin’!’

Crushed stone rattles behind me. Two breathless grots scurry through an opening in the cave wall. I make a sluggish pivot, runeblade aloft, but the Lantern Astrala has drained the fire from me. I’m in no state for this.

Somewhere behind us, Torka grunts, pounding up the tunnel. Mannok didn’t wait for his companions. In his desperation to reach Nadir, he completely abandoned his Kruleboyz.

I will not do the same. ‘Dhoraz! Wait for the Stormrider!’

Dhoraz roars his acknowledgement as he punts a grot from the causeway. The little devil careens into the hollow, squealing.

Torka bursts from the darkness. ‘Bog-wyrms an’ blood-beans, shinies again.’ He tramps past us, keeping his distance.

I call into the rift behind us: ‘Luxa!’

Taros shrieks, soaring from the tunnel into the cavern, screaming like an eagle.

Dhoraz bellows with laughter. ‘I told you! Did I not? Did I not tell you?’

Begrudgingly, I nod. The fear Dhoraz’s other tales weren’t as tall as they first seemed flits across my mind, but that is a matter for later, when we are safe in Misthåvn, drowning ourselves in ale. I reach down to help Luxa up the last few feet of rubble.

‘Taros!’ Luxa shouts, bow clutched in one arm, the other cradling her wound. Taros understands, tucking his pinions, diving towards Mannok.

Mannok’s ugly morkrow alights, pumping its muscular, stubby wings, barrelling up towards Taros. Like a shooting star, eyes glinting, the aetherwing sheers towards the morkrow.

‘Dhoraz,’ I say. I help Luxa on, and the Giant-Fell follows.

The long blast of a war-horn resonates through the hollow. It’s almost reassuring to hear battle’s familiar blare, but my comfort soon evaporates. There are no war-horns in Harrowdeep, nor banners, nor legions…

Gargantuan fingers grope through the rift at the top of the hollow. Shadows spill around them, and old stone mulches as if it were no more than crumbling bread. The mammoth tentacles of the Shadowsea’s monstrosity ram into the hollow, widening the breach. Boulders rain down, cratering the bottom, some hurtling into Nadir’s chasm.

The tentacles’ eyes flash with repulsive luminescence, searching for us. Luxa, Dhoraz and I lag behind the Kunnin’ Krew. Yet they are savages, strung out, undisciplined. We are Truthseekers, warriors chosen by our God-King. If we move slowly, so be it – so long as we move together.

A goliath tentacle sweeps towards us. Dhoraz whispers to the head of his hammer. The divine metalwork crackles with the ruthlessness of the storm, and the Giant-Fell pounds his chest, bellowing his name.

He swings in the dark. The hammer strikes true. The monstrosity’s eye flashes and it blares its call again, that war-horn in the dark. The volume is revolting, shaking my bones from my face to my fingertips.

Luxa stops me, nocking an arrow and loosing. Her dart hits true. The monstrosity’s eye snaps shut, bleeding pale fluid and arcing with lightning.

Thus we descend. Dhoraz battles with a hero’s strength and a pagan’s fury. Luxa is stone cold, each loosed arrow a testament to her martial efficiency. Above, Taros wrestles Mannok’s unsightly morkrow, their dogfight vicious, made more perilous by boulders falling like hail and tentacles threshing like whips.

‘Your lantern!’ Dhoraz roars, his face slick with sweat, gasping for air. ‘Use your lantern!’

I cannot. I must save my strength for Nadir. And it is no trivial fact that this leviathan obstructs the Kruleboyz as much as it does us. Kill it now, and Mannok and the Kunnin’ Krew will only reach Nadir that much faster.

The greenskins have their own share of trouble. The leviathan’s tentacles sweep across the hollow, shattering lengths of the causeway. Stone avalanches towards the Kruleboyz, who, too far apart to assist each other, only narrowly avoid being smashed from the walk.

Yet just as the dark beast closes old paths, it opens new ones. Dhoraz, Luxa and I scramble down the great gouges left by its tentacles, rushing down the ragged gullies, straight to Nadir.

Mannok catches on. ‘Down, you maggots!’ his voice echoes harshly. ‘Don’t let the shinies be first!’

Near the bottom, the hollow’s slopes taper flat. The Kunnin’ Krew scrambles piecemeal towards the rift. Above us, the monstrosity’s tentacles seethe like storm clouds. Dhoraz’s strength is all but spent. He whispers angry prayers to his hammer, each crash of his weapon flashing across the gloom with sacred light. The whole picture is beautiful and desperate. It is the last, most glorious moment I will ever know.

For it all ends when we get there.

Dhoraz skids to a halt at the lip of the chasm, gazing into the pooling shadows within the abyss. ‘How do we get down?’

I ease Luxa from my shoulder, joining Dhoraz. The Kruleboyz linger across the pit. Above, the Shadowsea monstrosity pushes through the breach into the hollow, like a giant mollusc working its heaving mass through the mouth of a bottle.

I cannot save my strength any longer. I need it now.

I snatch the Lantern Astrala from my belt. This will take everything I have left. This will burn me dry.

But the leviathan slows, then stops, like a glacier in pause. Once again its blare fills the cavern. The pale mirrors of its remaining eyes shine in the yawning darkness, malicious and hateful.

The Lantern Astrala, I realise. It wounded this beast in the Shadowsea, and the beast has not forgotten.

I raise the holy lanthorn. The monstrosity recoils, then begins to withdraw. The wriggling ends of its huge tendrils squirm back into the vast crevice. Pebbled stone and black seawater rain upon us. The beast retreats whence it came, still wounded, still burned, remembering the Lantern Astrala’s potency and dreading it.

It is a strange thought, that a creature so powerful can be brought so low by nothing but the ghost of a memory.

‘Until next time,’ I whisper. My limbs are sandbags. My head pulses like a tolling skaven bell. I hitch the lanthorn to my warplate, its precious scrollwork rasping against the sigmarite. ‘It’s finished.’

Mannok rams me to the stone, howling with hate. ‘No more fancy tricks!’ Wisps of sick, damp hair brush my face. He drools into my eyes. His tri-prodda glints above me, poised to skewer my brains.

Dhoraz belts his hammer into Mannok, tearing the sinewy orruk away. Mannok flies aside, arm shattered. Torka thrusts his man-snappa out, triggering it. The metal jaws clamp around Dhoraz’s leg, toppling him. The two grots scurry closer, scrap weapons raised, teeth bared, ready to rip Dhoraz apart.

Then an arrow shaft sprouts through one of the grots’ heads, killing it with pleasing abruptness. Luxa looses more arrows at the others. I draw my runeblade.

A dagger bites into my midriff and I scream. Krookgrin, damn him. The hobgrot snarls beneath me, twisting his blade, prising at the Lantern Astrala hitched to my warplate.

I grip him by his long ears and hack sideways through his skull, splitting his head like a melon. Pain pulses where he has poisoned me, but I will survive. I limp towards Dhoraz and Luxa.

Mannok nurses his arm. Torka is dead, an arrow jutting from his eye. A dead morkrow claps to the wet stone, and Taros crashes into Mannok, tearing at him with cutting talons and a ruthless, ripping beak.

I help Dhoraz to his feet, and he takes a moment to stomp the grots’ skulls into the stone. Luxa comes up beside us.

Taros soars back into the air. Mannok, alone, backs towards the lip of Nadir’s chasm and the torrent of shadow magic, eyeing his dead Kruleboyz.

‘Look around you,’ I say. ‘You’ve failed.’

One of Mannok’s eyes hangs from its socket. He tears it free, tossing it aside, licking drool and blood from his split porcine lips. ‘’Ere’s what I fink, shiny. We’s racin’ to reach Nadir first, an’ ’ere I am. First.’

‘I’m done listening to his drawl,’ Dhoraz growls. ‘Send the pig to join his friends.’

Luxa looses an arrow. It thuds into Mannok’s trunk, wedging fast between his ribs.

The orruk budges but does not fall. Then, he chuckles. Each gurgling laugh, made moist by the blood draining into his lung, sends shivers up my neck.

‘They ain’t me friends,’ he says. ‘They’re just stupid gits.’

Then Mannok raises his arms and keels back, dropping into the abyss.

Dhoraz lurches to the chasm’s edge. ‘Sigmar’s beard,’ he says. ‘I’m not following him down there.’

Luxa looks at him. ‘You said you once entered the Plague Garden.’

‘That,’ Dhoraz replies, ‘was an exaggeration.’

I approach and gaze at the billowing darkness within the chasm, the blackness of death and dream. My breath races. How many times have I seen this image calling to me? How many times have I turned away?

‘What now?’ Dhoraz says.

Luxa turns. Her eyes widen. ‘Calthia!’

I leap from the precipice, into the abyss, after Mannok. He cannot be allowed to escape before us.

The darkness churns around me, whispering my name, then shrieking it. I feel its desire like jaws in my flesh. In this moment, there is nothing else for me but this fall, and Harrowdeep’s hunger. There is nothing but my will to defy it.

For the last time, I unleash the Astrala light.

Wind bats at my face. I soar through darkness, crashing into Mannok, sending us into a tumble. The stone could rush up at any moment. The fall would splatter us; I crave such an end.

But it does not come. We tumble through the howling wind in a clinch, wrestling our weapons towards each other’s throats.

Mannok growls, his breath reeking of meat and mildew and his own frothing blood. ‘Just us, shiny! You an’ me!’

The Lantern Astrala bleeds my strength like a knife through my soul. I pant, struggling the edge of my runeblade closer to Mannok’s slavering chin, to drive it through his skull and end him. He’s too close. I’m too weak.

Azyr’s light illuminates the murk billowing around us. It churns like a thunderhead. The darkness seethes with hate, unable to breach the shield of Sigmar’s light. I do not know which is more impressive: the Lantern Astrala’s magnificence, holding this darkness at bay, or the might of the shadows themselves, defying the will of my god.

‘Ya never give up!’ Mannok coughs. ‘Dat’s all I need, shiny! You an’ me, down ’ere, alone! I don’t even wanna leave! You wanna taste o’ Mork’s bite? I’ll give ya all ya want!’ He bellows with crass laughter. ‘Who needs boyz when they got a girl like you! Gimme your face again, shiny!’

Mannok’s jaws, like a snake’s, unhinge. I did not know an orruk’s maw could open so gapingly wide.

But I am done with him. I was never here for him from the start.

I wrench Luxa’s arrow deeper between his ribs, making him howl. Mannok’s red eyes shine in the swirling storm. Where I turn my gaze, shadows snap, like dark hounds baying for blood. The Lantern hisses with power, spears of its light fending off the dark. Only Sigmar’s strength ever kept the blackness at bay.

Only mine.

I shutter the lanthorn’s light.

The boiling blackness closes in like jaws. Mannok screams. Senseless images line the folding shadows, and a thousand unheard whispers from a thousand forgotten tongues. A penumbra encompasses my vision. Soon the billowing blackness will take us.

Oh, how I tried. To reveal my faith through action instead of words. To prove I was worthy of Sigmar’s boons, and that I was Stormcast not only in name, but in my heart.

Yet failure, like sleep, always finds us before the end. The shadows flay me, and at last I surrender to them.

Cal-Toa Xanadur. That was her name. Once, in an age of myth, she believed in Sigmar, the Thunder King.

Then the heathen hordes of Chaos assailed her Ulguan homelands, and her righteous god retreated to Azyr, closing the Realmgates. He left his people to die. Cal-Toa had come to hate the Thunder King. It was easy to lose faith in something that had lost faith in her.

Her legs quivered with strain. She held a stone door upon her shoulders. She shook, and the stone in the door ground against the threshold, mirroring the ache in her bones. This place stank of oil and algae.

Warriors hurried frantically past with freed prisoners in tow. They came here to save their kindred from the Deeper Darkness, Ulara’idon. It wasn’t as if Sigmar was going to.

Cal-Toa’s eyes darted up. Her comrades bore arms, shields and the same tattoos on their shoulders and back as her own. The crossed hammers of Sigmar joined beneath a stylised, twin-tailed comet. Cal-Toa despised the ink, as worthless as the god it represented.

‘Hurry,’ she grunted, shuddering again beneath the door’s weight. Whimpering men, snivelling women and mewling children rushed past, all fleeing the approaching gloom on the other side. The darkness of its billowing folds bathed them. Brine sloshed at their feet.

An aelf halted beside Xanadur, weapons drawn. ‘Xanadur. The shadows approach, and we cannot save them all. Drop the door. We must go.’

‘No,’ Cal-Toa spat through gritted teeth. ‘Go.’

The aelf cursed and paced behind her, counting off those who fled. They were miles beneath the sea, far from any salvation but their own. And who would help them? The Three-Eyed King besieged the realms. The gods of the aelves had proved no more helpful than the Thunder King, who had sealed off his realm and left his lay to the mercies of monsters.

Cal-Toa groaned, heaving with the pain of holding up the world. ‘Hurry!’

The last of her compatriots scurried past her, swishing through knee-deep water. Her aelf companion moved to help her.

Xanadur glanced back. Thoughts raced through her head. Calculations, assessments, approaching a bitter sum. The deeper darkness must be delayed. Someone must buy time for the others, and sacrifice was the substance of faith. Had Sigmar not taught this? But what did it matter what he had taught? He had abandoned the Mortal Realms to save himself.

Cal-Toa, she grew certain, must do the same. That was what their world had become.

Even as she thought this she knew she was wrong. The Thunder King, whatever he became, had stood for something noble – as she now stood. She could not abandon those principles. Righteousness was in her flesh and bones, in the substrate of her soul. If she must give her life for those principles, so be it, as long as her people lived.

Cal-Toa pressed the stone door over her head, bones cracking, tendons ripping, nails splitting against the rock. The weight was monumental.

I remember all of it, every moment. For I was Cal-Toa.

With a final thrust, I straightened, locking out my limbs. ‘Go!’ I screamed, my vocal cords frayed with strain. I darted out from beneath the door, throwing myself to the far side.

The door clapped down. Water and shadow sprayed from the threshold.

I drew my weapons and faced the boiling blackness I had offered myself to, and then Sigmar’s lightning struck.

Thus I had fallen. I see it now, just as I see the darkness more clearly than ever before. A boiling wall of shadows, a courage-annihilating storm. It tumbles closer, ever calling my name, begging to have me back.

For so long I thought if I peeled back the layers of sigmarite and god-forged flesh, all that would remain was hatred born of fear and rage born of worry. I thought there was a vacuum at the heart of me, the seed of my unworthiness. All I saw was the darkness that once burned itself into my eyes, the faithlessness that branded itself into my soul.

But Sigmar did save me. He did not abandon us. All those years ago, behind that mountainous door, I did not stand alone. When the shadows rushed in, Sigmar came for me. His hand was as lightning searing through darkness. He took me up, body and soul, to Azyr.

Harrowdeep wants me to remember how weak I was, but I am worthy. My very actions are evidence of my faith. I did not see it. No one would have. We do not understand the miles of our ascent until we stand upon the summits we have conquered.

I do not fear the dark. I understand what I did not before, when Sigmar spoke to me on the World-Wall.

I need prove nothing. I need escape nothing.

I am my greatest sanctuary.

In the stillness of oblivion, the depths at last betray their piteous want. I see Harrowdeep laid open, and it is as if I look through all of Ulgu. The dungeon’s convoluted warrens burrow like skaven gnawholes through the fabric of the realm, like worms digging through sanity. It exceeds space, and time, and reason. Harrowdeep is a whorl through the universe, spinning ceaselessly down the roots of creation.

I witness its endless, meandering spirals.

I behold the scar-deposits of shadeglass, its threads lacing the deep.

I glimpse all the countless riches concealed beneath: the treasures and ancient artefacts, the precious, precious relics.

Revelation fades until at last I find the object of our quest in my hands, the truth I have long sought.

The Harrowstone, nothing like I imagined.

Luxa is first to stir when I rise from the crevice. Alarmed, she nocks her bow with a scavenged arrow. The dart glimmers with unspent power.

She relaxes. ‘It’s Xandire,’ she says. ‘Dhoraz. Xandire lives.’

Dhoraz rises from his place on one of the boulders from the breach above. ‘As I promised,’ he says. ‘She’s a tough lass.’

I heave with effort. ‘Any lass is a tough lass to a weak lad.’

Dhoraz grins widely, pulling me up the last few feet. ‘Now she gets it.’

‘Mannok’s dead,’ I say. ‘I thought you’d like to know.’

Dhoraz’s eyes grow wild with joy. ‘Was it agonising?’

I shrug. ‘Hopefully.’

‘There’s always next time.’ Dhoraz lowers his gaze. ‘What’s that with you?’

I toss down the artefact Dhoraz speaks of: a miniature stone obelisk of unsettling geometries. It lands with a heavy thump. Eye-puckering runes engrave its surface.

Dhoraz looks up hopefully. ‘The Harrowstone?’

I nod.

We gather round. Dhoraz raises his hammer to strike, then pauses. ‘Last words, before we finish this?’

‘Don’t bother,’ I say. ‘The legends were lies. Harrowdeep has no foundation. It cannot be destroyed. This is the Harrowstone, yes. But it is no keystone. More like a key.’

Luxa’s brows fold in. ‘A key.’

‘A key to what?’ Dhoraz asks.

‘Up.’ I kick the stone. ‘The Harrowstone and Mannok’s floatrock were the same thing. This reveals passages that lead up. That’s how I found my way back.’

Dhoraz frowns. ‘But Nadir was a lie?’

‘As much as all the others,’ I say. ‘Harrowdeep wants us to keep sinking. I say we find our own way from here.’

Taros’ keening pierces the darkness, and the aetherwing swoops down, perching upon my shoulder, pecking at my ear. I chuckle, stroking the plumage on his head, then pass him to Luxa.

‘We have failed,’ Luxa says.

‘Yes. And there is no greater opportunity for our next triumph.’ I think back to the legends of the Makers, the other half-truths from Misthåvn. What other riddles remain unsolved? What treasures remain undiscovered?

‘Other relics await us here,’ I say. ‘Riches capable of much more than the Harrowstone. Think of how those relics might serve Sigmar. They’re ours for the taking.’

‘There could be other warbands here,’ Luxa says, wary. ‘By accident or design.’

‘Aye, and Mannok,’ Dhoraz adds. ‘That one still has bones to pick with us. Broken bones. Wee splinters.’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘Let the Kruleboyz lick their wounds and set their traps. They’ll need every advantage they can get.’

Dhoraz grins. ‘Say the word. We’ll see your will done.’

Luxa smiles her agreement, but I do not know what to tell them. The paths before us are many; our restraints are none.

I have carried my own burdens for so long, obsessed with dispelling the darkness and leading the Truthseekers to triumph. This sudden freedom is as overwhelming as it is liberating.

A shadow crosses my mind, the ebbing echo of an old fear. Whatever we do, wherever we go, I must prove myself.

But I already have, so many times, without fail.

THE TALE OF THE PRIESTS

David Annandale

PROLOGUE

The halls of Harrowdeep whisper. Only the stones hear the truths they speak to each other. The secrets that dance through the shadows are not for the eyes and the ears of the souls caught in the web of corridors. The halls whisper of what they see and hear. They whisper of prey, and of the music of its struggles in the web.

Now the halls whisper of a new melody. The song of this prey is a rare one. It must be savoured, nurtured and grown. The whispers slither and caper. The stones are hungry, but know they will be sated with the gift that has come to them.

Harrowdeep rejoices in its whispers, and in the weaving of the web.

And in the telling of the tale.

CHAPTER ONE

The Transcended were sleeping. Helvar Sannhet had told them to rest, and they had accepted the command of their prophet gratefully. He had seen the relief on their faces. They were exhausted. He had pushed his flagellants to the limit of their endurance, chasing through these tunnels of shadow after a mirage of escape. For the sake of their bodies, and of their sense of purpose, they had to rest.

How many days had they been trapped in these halls? Helvar couldn’t guess. One day, ten, a month, a lifetime. The answer could be any of those. He wasn’t hungry, so perhaps the flagellants had only been here a few hours. That couldn’t be right, though. They had travelled through leagues of this maze.

Hadn’t they?

Helvar’s Transcended slept. He did not. He couldn’t. His mind burned with an urgency as vague as it was powerful. Rest was unimaginable. Staying still was torture. He paced back and forth in the corridor, and let his eyes be captured by the engravings on the walls.

The hall in which the flagellants had stopped was a long one. They had been following its gentle curve for hundreds of yards. The last junction was invisible behind them, and the next one had yet to appear. The walls were a good fifteen feet apart. The ceiling was lost in the gloom above, though Helvar had the sense of walls bending towards each other to form an invisible vault above him. No sconces lined the walls, and the Transcended had no torches with them. There were no sources of light at all. Helvar should be in the most profound darkness, but instead, the halls were bathed in a wavering twilight. It was as if the light came from the shadows themselves, created by them to mark their existence.

The shadows moved over the engravings like slicks of oil. They ran down the grooves in the stone, spread in concealment over the design, and then withdrew, leaving Helvar a little bit closer, but still maddeningly short, of revelation.

The carvings stretched the entire length of the corridor. That was why he couldn’t make out the nature of the design. There was a design to discover, though. He was sure of that. The engravings were complex, flowing lines and jagged ones coming together to create patterns at the point of uncertainty between a language and representation. There was something to see here, something to understand. Something important, because the work was exquisite, and vast in scale. It had to be important, or the engravings would not have sunk such hooked claws into Helvar’s attention.

He reached out and ran his fingers along the cuts that flowered out of a single bold channel into a cluster of spirals.

‘Have you solved it?’

Helvar started. He had thought the others were all asleep, but Valya had appeared at his side. She was the most ferocious of the Transcended. She had fought in many other battles before her faith in Sigmar had reached the frenzied strength that had made her one of Helvar’s flagellants. She had lost her right eye in the struggle that had, she avowed, brought her true sight. She foreswore any patch, and the mass of gnarled scar tissue in her socket seemed to Helvar to have its own kind of vision, one of hard judgement. Like Helvar and all the other Transcended, she had shorn all her hair in penitence. The knife wounds on her scalp were, like Helvar’s own, the promise of the greatest wound to come, the promise of her life given in the glorious destruction of Sigmar’s enemies.

It was a promise they had all expected to fulfil in the battlefield that the city of Murmurus had become.

‘No,’ Helvar said. ‘I have not solved it.’

‘Could it be a map to guide us out of this maze?’

‘It could be. It could be anything at all. I just don’t know.’

Valya closed her eye for a moment. Fatigue washed over her features. So did the shadow of something that might be despair. ‘We will not see Murmurus again, will we?’ she said.

She was not mourning the loss of her home. She was mourning being deprived of her martyrdom in the name of the city’s salvation.

Behind that grief was the danger of doubt. Helvar had seen its seed in the desperation of the flagellants as they had run and run and run through these halls, and the hope of escape had receded. Doubt in the possibility of return. Doubt, even, in his leadership.

‘Murmurus may be lost to us,’ Helvar said. He had not spoken those words before. He had thought them, but had tried to push them away. If Valya feared this now, then she would not be alone. Address the fear. Show her, and then the others, that this is nothing to be afraid of. ‘If it is not our destiny to return to it, then Sigmar has another task for us. Our deaths will still have purpose and meaning. Does it matter if they are not the ones we expected?’

‘No,’ said Valya. ‘It is not for us to decide them.’

‘Our faith will sustain us,’ Helvar told her. ‘And the moment of our glory will surely come.’

He finished speaking, and the drums began. Valya’s eye widened, as if she had seen a prophecy fulfilled. The rhythmic pounding of war beat up through the stone floor, a muffled challenge, and one that Helvar recognised.

So did all the Transcended. The drumming woke them, and they were on their feet in an instant, their eyes alight with the zeal of faith and the fervour of righteous wrath. Helvar looked upon them, glowing with an inner fire that stoked his own spiritual furnace. Though they were clad in simple robes, now ragged and filthy, their faith surrounded them with an aura far richer than any noble’s raiment. It was their shield, as powerful in its way as the sigmarite armour of the Stormcast Eternals.

‘Hear the drums of the foe!’ Helvar commanded. ‘They are the drums of the damned! The drums of the iniquitous and the treacherous! The followers of the Skull God are here, the very ones who brought fire and destruction to Murmurus!’ He had no way of knowing if that was true, except through a soul-deep conviction. If the Transcended had been brought to this terrible place for a purpose, and they must have been, then it was fitting, it was necessary, that the enemy they had been about to encounter in the fields outside the city had also been transported here. There had to be a greater purpose to their clash than the struggle itself, but that would reveal itself in due course.

He had to be hearing the same Khornate savages that the Transcended had been closing with. They were the last thing Helvar could remember seeing before he and his score of followers had found themselves in these halls.

Harrowdeep. That is where we are. It can be nowhere else. Accept what has happened. You must.

Helvar’s gaps of memory tormented him. None of his followers remembered their arrival any better than he did. They had been fighting for Murmurus, and then they were in the dark halls of legend and shuddering rumour. What had they done to come here? He didn’t know, and the uncertainty gnawed at his confidence.

But now the path of the flagellants was clear. ‘Come!’ said Helvar, though his followers were already marching forward in his wake. ‘Seek out the enemy and show them the fury of Sigmar! Their challenge shall be their doom! Their drums shall call their destruction upon them! Let us descend! The enemy is below, and in the depths we shall find the victory of martyrdom!’

He marched faster, sure that when they finally came to the end of this corridor, the way down would appear. It must, because the Skull God’s blood-soaked worshippers must be punished.

‘Sing with me, comrades!’ said Helvar. ‘Sing of the glory of Sigmar!’

The Transcended obeyed, and they shook the walls with the power of their chanting.

The Gorewolves had been marching through Harrowdeep for days. Barradak couldn’t say with anything like certainty that it had been days, and not hours or years, but if the question of time arose from Kroacka or one of the bloodreavers, the slaughterpriest would tell them it had been days.

He was tired. They all were. Even so, he refused to let up the pace of the march. They had found no foe of any kind since arriving. There had been no blood to spill, no skulls to take for the Blood God. And yet, a powerful instinct drew him on, pulling him as violently as he would yank a foe towards him with the chain of his wrath-hammer. It was more than an instinct. It was a conviction, so strong that he tasted fresh blood, that new victims waited just around the next corner.

Blood waited to be spilled, a tidal surge of blood. The deep lines carved into the walls flowed like blood. They were its summons and its promise. They ran towards Barradak from a source of unceasing, inexhaustible massacre. That was the meaning behind the shapes; the lines that crossed the flow, the patterns that curled around the edge of his vision and conflicted with the violent simplicity of his certainty were to be ignored.

What he could not ignore was the taunting of the engravings. They promised, but they did not fulfil their promise. Corridor followed upon corridor, junction upon junction, and there was no blood to be had. The Gorewolves marched on and on through the maze, and encountered nothing but the echoes of their own bootsteps.

Nothing but the emptiness of Harrowdeep.

The taunting absence of Murmurus lingered too. Barradak pulled his lips back in a rictus of anger at the thought of the city he hated so much, and at what he had almost seen. He had almost seen it fall.

Murmurus had been burning, its walls breached. The forces of Khorne had the city surrounded, but victory had not been certain. Stormcast Eternals had assaulted the armies of the Mighty Lord Thuum from inside the city and unexpectedly from the west, cutting a huge swath through the attackers from two directions at once. At the moment when Murmurus should have fallen, it was Thuum who had died, trampled beneath the clawed feet of a Dracoth. The cursed warriors of Sigmar had slain most of Thuum’s Gorechosen in those moments, and hurled most of the forces back out of the city.

But the faithful of Khorne numbered in the tens of thousands. The war was not over. Murmurus would fall. Barradak had gathered a group of his Gorewolves around him and charged back. Another surge to the south had drawn the Stormcast Eternals away. Barradak, howling the litany of Khorne, saw the way clear back into the city and to the slaughter of its citizens.

A crowd of Sigmarites, bleeding from self-inflicted wounds and shrieking with a fervour to match his, had been the only obstacle. Barradak’s chest has swelled with the triumphant hate.

And then the world fell.

Barradak’s memories broke there. They were shards, jagged and tumbling over each other. He had the impression of swirling, of being seized by a maelstrom, of the ground vanishing and the city disappearing from his sight like a vanishing dream.

Murmurus, the war, the very ground of Ulgu that he had thought he knew – all of it was lost in dreams now. Harrowdeep was his world, his reality, though it also felt like a dream from which he could not awaken. There was no direction to take, nowhere to go. The corridors were the same in their confusion. The markings on the walls teased with the promise of blood no matter which branch he took. Nevertheless, he marched through the junctions without hesitation. He could not be seen to waver. As long as he kept up the urgency of the hunt, he didn’t think any of the ten bloodreavers he led would dare to challenge him. Kroacka was another story.

The Blood Warrior kept pace with him, her blood-encrusted armour clanking heavily with her tread. She had said nothing for some time now, though her eyes blazed from the slit in her visor, and her jaw was tight with anger. When Barradak turned right at the next intersection, she broke her silence.

‘Why this way?’ she said, her voice a guttural rasp.

‘There is blood this way,’ Barradak answered.

‘How do you know?’

‘The visions of Khorne guide me. Can you doubt it?’ The question dared Kroacka to challenge him openly.

She didn’t answer, but the anger in her gaze grew harder. It spoke for her. Barradak swung the chain of his wrath-hammer slightly, a warning. Kroacka was slaughter incarnate on the battlefield, utterly unstoppable when inspired to frenzy by Barradak’s prayers. She also, Barradak knew, resented him. She had fought for long years under Lord Thuum, but Barradak’s conversion was recent. He had become a slaughterpriest so quickly, there were those, like Kroacka, who did not trust his conversion, at least when he was not controlling the fire in their blood. She had a much longer experience of war than he did. She made no secret of her disdain for what he had been before receiving the baptism of Khorne.

The corridor they had entered was another long one, its end vanishing in the twilight of Harrowdeep.

‘There is nothing here,’ said Kroacka.

‘Not here. Not now. Soon enough.’ Barradak raised his voice, speaking to all the Gorewolves. ‘We have been taken to a new battlefield, to new hunting grounds. There will be blood. There will be skulls.’

‘If this maze is not an abandoned ruin,’ Kroacka muttered, unwilling to enter into open conflict just yet.

She had given voice to Barradak’s fear. He didn’t believe it was true. He couldn’t, because that meant believing the Blood God would permit his followers to be sent to where no blood could be spilled.

No. It is not possible. This maze is too huge to be empty. We are here for a reason.

‘Khorne has sent us here to harvest for him,’ Barradak said. ‘And we will.’

The chanting began, a thrumming song as familiar as it was hated. The praise to Sigmar rose up from below.

Barradak knew the hymns well. He had once sung them himself. He recognised the zeal in those voices too. Below him, but not far, so close he could already feel their blood splashing into his face, were the flagellants he had been about to destroy before the fall into Harrowdeep.

The slaughterpriest howled in triumph. ‘The whelps of Sigmar are beneath us!’ he shouted. ‘Tell them we are coming! Tell them their doom is here!’

The drumbearers of the Gorewolves struck up the beat. On human skin stretched over frames of human bone, they answered the chants with the hammering, driving rhythm that mimicked the blows of axes breaking open heads and chopping off limbs.

Barradak broke into a crashing run. He had the scent of murder now, and the Gorewolves followed him, roaring. Kroacka roared just as loud. She was no challenge to Barradak. She was caught by the hunger for carnage.

At the next intersection, a ramp spiralled down to the levels below. Barradak took it, charging towards the triumph of murder.

Helvar sang louder and so did all the Transcended, as they pounded down the spiral in pursuit of the enemy. The drums and their echoes were growing louder, their own echoes more chaotic. The flagellants were drawing closer the further down they went, yet the thought that the Khornate wretches might escape, dropping down into an unknowable abyss, haunted Helvar. He could not run fast enough. He could not descend fast enough.

‘To battle!’ Helvar cried. ‘For Sigmar! Let no cursed follower of the Dark Gods escape!’

The ramp made another full spiral, its slope so steep that Helvar almost slipped on its smooth surface. Then it levelled off in front of a narrow, pointed archway. The engravings converged on the opening in a tangle of lines that seemed to scream with meaning just beyond Helvar’s reach. On the other side of the archway was complete darkness, and the drums still came from further below.

Screaming his faith in Sigmar, Helvar dived through the archway. He was ready to fall, to plunge through the darkness in the certainty that he would land upon the foe. Instead, he stumbled to a halt as light blazed, dazzling him.

It was the same sourceless light as before, but brilliant in its intensity, searing the walls with shifting, overlapping waves of crimson and white. The hall was a cylinder, perhaps a hundred feet in diameter, and several times that high. The engravings around the arched entrance were even more layered and complex here, and the lines seemed to amplify the sounds of the drums and the prayers, making the echoes louder than their origins.

There were three other entrances to the hall, each a quarter of the way around the circumference. From the entrance on the opposite side to the Transcended came the enemy, a dozen warriors of Khorne. They were stumbling too, as thrown by the sudden brightness as Helvar.

Then Helvar’s vision cleared, and he saw who was leading the fore, and he froze in recognition. So did the slaughterpriest.

Barradak. That’s Barradak! Shock and hate and disbelief warred with each other in Helvar. His mind refused the evidence of his eyes. Barradak, a traitor to Murmurus. Barradak, a worshipper of Khorne.

That Barradak, of all people, had fallen to this. That Barradak would dare.

Helvar almost did not recognise the man he had thought of, when he had thought of him at all, as a quiet servant of the city and its noble families. He had grown in stature. His scarred arms and chest rippled with muscles like leather ropes. Horns of brass encircled his neck. They covered his shoulders like pauldrons, but they were also the symbols of brutal religious office. His right hand bore a crimson gauntlet attached to a long chain, at the end of which hung a viciously spiked sphere. His left hand carried a huge, jagged blade. The Barradak that Helvar had known would barely have been able to lift just one of those weapons with both hands. He was swollen with the strength of rage, remade by the monstrous power he worshipped.

When he looked at Helvar and recognised him too, his distorted features became even more twisted with anger.

Helvar felt his jaw clench as he met hate with hate. ‘Traitor to Murmurus!’ he shouted. ‘Traitor to Sigmar! Now meet the judgement of the Transcended!’

‘Hypocrite!’ Barradak answered. ‘Whipped dog! My Gorewolves will feast on your marrow!’

Helvar’s praise of Sigmar turned from a chant into a scream, and he rushed forward, wielding a scythe-bladed staff crowned by prayer parchments. He would see the blade slice the throat of the apostate Barradak. If that was how he would surrender his life for Sigmar, then he gloried in the thought of the justice he would deliver as his final blow.

The Transcended attacked with him, surging forward on the violent tide of faith. Their shrieks of prayer were equal to his, the sound of their faith a wave so strong it would shatter walls.

The Khornate warband came at them, their drums louder than ever.

And the fused echoes of both groups were the loudest of all. As he ran, Helvar could no longer hear his own voice in the maelstrom of sound. Barradak was shouting something too. Helvar couldn’t hear his words, but he could see that Barradak was mouthing obscenities, words that struck with real force. A torch reached into Helvar’s veins, seeking to ignite his blood with an unholy flame. But his blood was already on fire. It burned with his fervour for Sigmar, and its flame would not be subject to the will of a Khornate priest.

One of the flagellants screamed and Helvar threw a glance backwards. It was Akavan, only a step behind Helvar. The echoes took up his shriek, building it into piercing stabs of sound that turned the air of the chamber into broken ice. Akavan stumbled. He dropped his weapons and clutched at his face. His scream choked off, and a sound like hissing steam came from his throat. Blood bubbled from his eyes, boiling as red tears streamed down his cheeks and scalded his flesh. He fell, his limbs twitching their last as his blood shot out from his head, searing the stone it touched.

‘You are martyred for Sigmar,’ Helvar called to the dying man, his spirits soaring with joy that Akavan had fulfilled his destiny, and with fury at Barradak for the murder his blasphemies committed.

Helvar hurled himself forward with yet greater determination. He would tear out Barradak’s throat and silence him. Barradak was running at him with just as much purpose. There were still a dozen yards between them when a bloodreaver, raving hate, sprinted past his slaughterpriest and came at Helvar with his axe. He was so consumed with the promise of bloodshed that he did not think to defend himself, as if his rage were so great that no enemy could possibly hurt him. Helvar’s staff was longer, and he brought it down on the bloodreaver’s skull, chopping it in two.

The bloodreaver fell, but Helvar had trouble seeing his foe’s death. The echoes were so loud now that they made his eyes water. The walls of the chamber vibrated at the corner of his vision. Everything was a blur, his head swam, and his balance was off. He felt as if he were swaying, dipping from side to side so violently that his head was almost brushing the floor.

He tried to move forward. He didn’t know where to place his step. The echoes were still growing louder and louder, and he could hear nothing else. Sound made the air impenetrable. It was like trying to advance into an ocean’s storm surge. The only thing he could see clearly was the treacherous face of Barradak, and the slaughterpriest was stumbling too. Flagellants and bloodreavers alike bowed under the weight of the echoes.

Helvar couldn’t move forward. He weaved back and forth. Blood trickled from his ears. He slammed his staff against the floor and leaned on it, trying to hold his ground against the storm of noise. The fusion of drums and chanting and screams was no longer coming from the warbands. Those voices had been silenced. The roar was its own being now, and it had turned against those who had given it birth.

Helvar couldn’t see. All was a smear of grey riven by crimson lightning. The enemy had become a mass of indistinct shapes, and they were drawing away. It took him a moment to realise that he was moving too, retreating, his body acting without his volition to take him away from the echoes that would kill him before long. The only way to escape the sounds was to the right. He gave in to the current and fled the echoes before they split him in two. As he turned, the confused shadows of the Gorewolves faded, heading to the left.

Then he could no longer see them at all. Raging at justice left undone, he fled the echoes. He raced with the other flagellants to the darkness of a doorway and the promise of silence beyond.

CHAPTER TWO

The corridor leading from the chamber of echoes was another long one. It curved gently as it sloped down, and it made Valya think of a scorpion’s tail, though one so great that she could not guess where the stinger waited. After a few minutes of a stumbling run, the blasting of the echoes faded, and finally the quiet of Harrowdeep returned. It was a relief to be able to hear and see and think properly again, even if the quiet was not a comforting one. It was a false calm, a silence in which shadows lurked, claws ready, jaws hungry.

‘Are we underneath the hall of echoes?’ she asked.

‘Perhaps,’ said Helvar.

‘I do not trust my sense of direction.’

‘Nor should you. The maze lies about everything.’

‘Like the drums of the Gorewolves.’

Helvar nodded. ‘They came from below us until the moment we entered the same hall. A lie. I do not know if we are beneath the hall of echoes. I am not certain we are descending at all. But we are going where we must.’

‘How can you be sure?’

Helvar’s smile shone with the power of faith confirmed, and with the steel of personal anger. ‘Sigmar commands us to chastise a betrayer. We are here for a reason. If we were not meant to destroy the Gorewolves in the hall of echoes, then a more fitting moment will come. Be sure of that, and be joyful.’

The flagellants crossed no intersections. The corridor twisted down endlessly. Valya wondered how much time had passed since the hall of echoes. An hour? Was that too long? Or had it already been much longer? The fearful thought came to Valya that perhaps the echoes had driven the Transcended into a trap, and that their fate was now to descend forever through this shadowy spiral. She tried to dismiss the idea. It was a figment of nightmares, and she was awake. She held on to the hard sound of boots on stone, to the sounds of other Transcended singing prayers softly to themselves, and to the sharp crack of whips as others mortified their flesh, urging themselves onwards to greater purpose and greater shows of faith.

‘Sigmar blesses us,’ Helvar declared. ‘March on, and we shall have the reward of bringing punishment to the servants of Khorne. We are their punishment!’

Tavas, his back bleeding from numerous welts, ran up to the prophet and asked, his voice trembling, ‘Is it possible they are our punishment? Have we failed Sigmar by not perishing in the battle for Murmurus?’

Helvar rounded on Tavas. His eyes were crystalline with outrage. He slapped Tavas, hard. The smaller flagellant reeled back, as much from shock as from the violence of the blow. Helvar had already turned around again and was marching on faster than before. ‘Doubt is sin. When you doubt, you break faith with Sigmar. Repent of your crime, brother. Repent, and hope that Sigmar hears your sorrow.’

To Valya’s astonishment, Tavas tried again. ‘Forgive me, prophet. I have no doubt in my heart. I am merely confused. The leader of the enemy knew your name.’

‘And I his,’ said Helvar. ‘Barradak. Remember it, all of you. Remember what you saw in that chamber of echoes. You saw the foulness that is a priest of Khorne. And remember what I tell you now, that you might understand the depths of evil. Barradak is no mere barbarian consumed by his worship of a dark god. He is something worse. He once held the true faith. He followed Sigmar, and he renounced our creed. He was a scholar and a scribe, and so his apostasy is all the more criminal, and his punishment must be all the greater.’

His speech done, Helvar led the Transcended in a martial prayer. Valya sang with the others, but she found it hard to keep her mind on the hymn. She was thinking about what Helvar had not said. He had not told the other flagellants that Barradak had been a scribe in the service of Helvar’s family.

Is his apostasy worse because he was a scholar, and should have known better, or because he turned on the Sannhets, and he should have known better than to do that, too?

She should not question the prophet. Sigmar spoke to them all through Helvar. What mattered was that Sigmar had chosen his instrument, not what the matter of the instrument was. She didn’t think the other Transcended worried about the man Helvar had been. If they did, they said nothing about it. But then, nor had she. And she wondered if any of the others had been as involved with the House of Sannhet as she had.

Valya had been a vintner in Murmurus. Her wares had been good. She had been proud of them, and the Sannhets had patronised her business, regularly ordering large quantities of her wines. They were one of the richest families in Murmurus, and as such, they commanded how and when she should come to their palatial house. Sometimes she was there to be feted, at least in a sense. She was presented as a trophy to guests, as a kind of guarantor of the quality and luxury of the evening’s offerings. At other times, the Sannhets treated her as if she were one of their servants, and a lowly one at that. The Sannhets were notorious for their capricious temper, their arrogance, and the ease with which they abused those who depended on their good will.

Valya had not known Helvar well in the days before Lord Thuum had begun the siege of Murmurus. She had seen him. She had been on the receiving end of some of his barbs. He had been just as imperious as the rest of his family. There had been nothing about him that marked him as different from the others. The Sannhets took their wealth and privilege to be signs of their inherent superiority. Helvar accepted the luck of his birth as no more than his due.

Valya was surprised, then, when the war came, and Helvar gave up his wealth. He did it early, too, at a point when the walls were holding firm and the nobility of Murmurus could still imagine itself as unconcerned in the struggle, and certainly not needing to take part in it directly. Helvar suddenly descended into the town square, clad simply, all the markers of his social rank cast away, preaching with fire and fury of the need to fight for Sigmar. The first time Valya heard him, she was sceptical of his motivations, and of his willingness to fight himself. By the second time, the news had run through Murmurus that he really had given up all claim to his share of the family’s wealth.

The third time she witnessed Helvar preach, Valya was moved to follow him. If his faith was strong enough to turn him away from his riches, could she say the same thing about hers? Could she walk away from her trade?

It wasn’t even a question. His words ignited her soul. Now was the time to stand for Sigmar, and there could be no truer show of faith than to die for the God-King in defence of Murmurus. Valya followed Helvar into war. She had done so with raging ecstasy, as had all the Transcended. They had thrown away all material detritus from their lives. They had moulded themselves into beings with one purpose alone.

And then Harrowdeep had stolen that purpose from them at the very moment it had been about to be fulfilled.

She hoped Helvar was right again. She hoped that it was true that they were here to visit the judgement of Sigmar on Barradak and his followers. There was something right about the idea, to see a traitor of the worst kind punished by the purest sacrificial warriors of Murmurus.

Valya wanted to believe in everything Helvar said. But the way he had slapped Tavas stayed with her. Helvar had chastised Tavas for the weakness of his faith; that, at least, was how he had presented it. But what Valya had seen was the Helvar of old.

Was his presumption resurfacing, or was it that she was seeing more clearly what had always been there? The Sannhet air of command remained, surrounding Helvar like an aura of wealth, even though he wore the same ragged robes as the rest of the Transcended. Helvar was a prophet. Valya didn’t doubt that. She couldn’t doubt it. Yet to hear him speak with the same presumed correctness that she had heard in the halls of the House of Sannhet…

Does he follow visions or his own arrogance?

No. She could not entertain such a question. She forbade herself from thinking it.

Valya sang louder, and with greater fervour.

The corridor stretched on and on, down and down, endless and monotonous. It kept giving her too much time to brood.

Helvar Sannhet is here.

That was too great a fortune to be the result of luck. It had to have been decreed. It was a gift from Khorne. It had to be.

Barradak snarled, anticipating what he would do to Helvar, and cursing the assault of sound that had driven the warbands apart. Helvar’s respite would be a temporary one. Khorne had given Barradak a gift in sending those Sigmarites to this place. The blood of a Sannhet was here to be spilled, and Barradak would spill it.

He moved faster down the corridor that twisted beneath the chamber of echoes.

‘You know that Sigmarite,’ Kroacka said, keeping pace with him.

‘He was one of my former masters,’ Barradak told her. He revelled in the bad memories, their bitterness fuelling him with the nectar of rage. ‘I was their prize pet, to be displayed and humiliated at their pleasure.’

‘Their scribe.’ Kroacka invested the word scribe with a world of contempt.

Barradak regretted saying anything. ‘What I was is unimportant,’ he said, though he knew she did not believe him, and nor did he. What he had been did matter. It was the reason he had become what he was now, and how, to Kroacka’s resentment, he had risen so quickly to become a slaughterpriest of Khorne.

All through his apprenticeship as a scribe, and then after he had achieved his mastery, he had been a serf in the House of Sannhet. He had borne his lot quietly, though he had chafed against the burden every single day. He had managed to carve out an existence outside of the purview of the Sannhets too. He had had a family, and they had not had to live inside the walls of that house, or suffer the petty injuries he did at the hands of those in whom idleness, wealth and power mixed to venomous effect. He had worshipped Sigmar, then, fool that he was, and believed in the promise of a better age for Ulgu. He had even written treatises to that effect, carefully argued, meticulously researched works whose creation was, so he had thought then, the purpose of his life, and the manifestation of his art.

Then the mighty Lord Thuum had besieged Murmurus. The campaign was a long one. Murmurus was well defended, and well provisioned. For months, the Sannhets and the other wealthy families of the city were able to shield themselves from the realities of the siege. They could ignore it almost completely. They did not suffer privations. They did not send their children to fight and die against Thuum. The Sannhets’ defences against reality were so strong, they held out longer than the wall of the city.

Helvar’s awakening startled the other Sannhets. They had trouble believing that he was truly rejecting the family’s wealth. They reacted to his preaching in the streets with embarrassment. They did not reject his faith, but they could not understand the form it took.

Barradak understood. He watched the favoured son become a flagellant, and he saw the same thirst for glory and recognition that animated the rest of his kin. If Helvar could not distinguish himself as much as he craved as one of the elite, then he would do so as a martyr. It was possible that he did not see this in himself. It was possible that he was not a conscious hypocrite.

Conscious or unconscious, it didn’t matter. The stench was the same.

Barradak had watched him, arrogant in his sanctity, and grew to hate Helvar above all the other Sannhets. They were unthinking in the way they enjoyed their privilege. They had all the self-awareness of the fungi, nurtured by incessant rain, that proliferated over the façades of Murmurus. But Helvar believed in himself. He believed that his morality was as inherent to his being as the rest of his family thought their wealth was to theirs.

Morality. The word was a curse in Barradak’s mouth now. It was a mockery, a sop for the weak to believe in. Before he had come to Khorne, he had thought differently. He had written about morality too. He had believed in its possibilities. He had believed that, through Sigmar, a moral dawn had come to Ulgu, even through the flawed vessels of the Sannhets. He had worked out this argument carefully too, very carefully, because sometimes the Sannhets read his treatises instead of just displaying them, the ornaments of their pretended erudition.

Barradak could barely remember holding such beliefs. He knew he had, because they had, in their way, brought him to the truth, but he could no longer feel the reality of having once been Barradak the Sigmarite scribe. He had purged all trace of that weakling.

When the walls of Murmurus began to fall, Barradak asked something of the Sannhets, for the first and only time in his life. He begged them to give his family shelter within the keep-like strength of the House of Sannhet. He was refused.

So he turned, in desperation, to Helvar.

He had found the flagellant prophet and his followers at the edge of the market square. Barradak no longer recognised the being he had been then, but seeing Helvar in the chamber of echoes had brought back all the details of that last encounter as if it had happened moments ago. He remembered the smell of the stalls, the mix of damp wood, of crowded, unwashed bodies, and of fresh fish caught in the river that ran through the city and kept it fed and watered despite the siege. He remembered the greyness of the light, the roil of smoke in the distance where the walls burned and the armies fought. He remembered the feel of Helvar’s dirty robe in his hands.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please save my family.’

‘Save them?’ said Helvar. ‘Hiding will not save them. The only salvation lies in confronting the foes of Sigmar. Let them take to the walls. Let them charge into the fields. I will help them do that gladly. I will lead them to their glory.’

Barradak fled in horror. He ran to his home, a hovel less than a mile from the walls. He ran there with no clear thought of what he might do to save his loved ones.

He was too late to do anything. The smoke he had seen before was from fires closer than he had thought. The street was aflame. His home was gone, his family slaughtered.

Barradak had dropped to his knees. The city was falling. Everything was falling. Choking on smoke, surrounded by the clash of weapons and the screams of the dying, Barradak knew the end of everything he loved, and everything he believed.

He had placed his faith in Sigmar. He had been steadfast in his duties to Murmurus and to the Sannhets. His faith had been betrayed. It meant nothing. He had devoted his life to an empty cause. The truth of life was blood and hate and pain. And when he saw a band of bloodreavers burst through the ruins, he saw in them the embodiment of the truth he had now learned.

There was only blood.

And blood was for the Blood God.

He came to his new creed suddenly. The conversion was instant, and violent. It was also rigorous. The moment that his scream of pain turned into a roar of anger was also the moment of his most crucial theological treatise. He would never write it, but he saw it in its entirety. He knew every argument, and every rhetorical turn. Each logical construction was stronger than iron and more perfect than gold. The scholar Barradak vanished in the instant of his greatest achievement, annihilated by his thesis of blood and brass. In his place, Barradak the slaughterpriest rose. He did not carry the title yet. He would not until he became part of Thuum’s Gorechosen, though that would not be long in coming. Already, his frame swelled with the strength born from the revelation of wrath.

‘Barradak,’ someone had called, the voice uncertain.

He turned around. The speaker was Davas. He had been Barradak’s apprentice at House Sannhet, until he had followed Helvar down the path of the flagellants. He and Barradak had been friendly, and he must have come after Barradak from the market square.

‘Barradak?’ Davas said again, even more uncertain. He seemed smaller, as if Barradak were looking down at him from a greater height than before. ‘I’m sorry,’ Davas said. ‘Your family…’ He trailed off. He backed up, shrinking away from Barradak’s glare.

Barradak lunged forward, moving faster than he ever had. His reach was greater too. His tunic tore, shredded by the flex of the muscles of his arms and chest. One-handed, he grabbed Davas by the throat. He squeezed, and Davas turned blue. He beat at Barradak’s arm, and Barradak barely felt the blows. He took Davas’ chin with his right hand, and he wrenched the man’s skull back. He pulled so hard he tore Davas’ head off. Soaked by the sudden geyser of blood, Barradak made his first offering to the Skull Throne.

The rage had filled him ever since. His existence was action, muscle and blood. Always blood, more and more blood forever. His former self was a past that belonged to someone else, a stain he utterly rejected. Yet the trace of the old Barradak resurfaced now and then, in a memory or a turn of phrase.

Kroacka noticed when that happened. Barradak knew that. He smelled suspicion on her. Her faith in Khorne had none of the complexities of his. For her, nothing mattered but the shedding of blood.

‘Khorne has sent us those whelps as a reward,’ Barradak said. ‘They are a gift.’

Kroacka said nothing.

‘They fell with us into Harrowdeep, and their blood will reward us.’

‘Us,’ Kroacka repeated, turning the word into a hiss. ‘We are here to serve Khorne, not you,’ she said.

‘Do not think to instruct me,’ Barradak warned.

Kroacka was silent again, her point made.

They marched on, her doubts and suspicions gnawing at the slaughter-priest.

The floor turned wet, and the temperature dropped. Moisture trickled down the walls, and Helvar thought the engravings were dripping too. The further down the corridor twisted, the colder it became, and the higher the water rose. Soon, the Transcended were ankle-high in the freezing black. And the marks on the stones dribbled and flowed, their meaning slipping further and further away as lines turned liquid. He kept listening for the sounds of the Gorewolves’ drums. He would hear them again, and soon. That had to be true. There had to be meaning in Barradak’s presence in Harrowdeep.

Helvar heard no drums. He heard less and less of anything. The flagellants were approaching a great silence, waiting ahead like a wall.

‘Ready yourselves,’ he said, as much to be sure he could still speak and make sounds as to prepare his followers for battle. His ears popped from the pressure of the approaching quiet.

The corridor came to an end at a gallery encircling an immense shaft, its top and bottom lost in darkness. To look up was to feel the threat of despair. Harrowdeep was a construct. It was something that had been built. The imagination refused to believe it had no roof. There had to be limits to the maze.

Helvar saw no sign of limits. The shaft climbed, and dropped, to infinities of shadow, and down its terrible height came a spray of shadow magic. It washed past the gallery in perfect silence.

The Penumbral Falls.

The words filled Helvar’s mind, but he could not bring himself to speak them. Not yet. The silence was too dark, the descent of shadow magic too solemn, and the meaning of what he saw too profound. The Penumbral Falls. The name lived in the myths told of Harrowdeep. It was a title in the geography of fear, a mark on the map of mystery. Helvar knew without a shred of doubt that he beheld the Falls, and his certainty was another source of disquiet. The myth forced him to acknowledge its name and its reality. It forced knowledge upon him and gave him certainty where doubt would have been welcome.

‘That was not water on the walls,’ said Valya, awed. Helvar was surprised that he could hear her so clearly. Her voice came out as a whisper, sharp and clear as silver. There was a single echo, a perfect, duplicated whole. That was not water on the walls. Then silence returned, as the Penumbral Falls dragged the words down into the depths.

The sense of Valya’s words falling was so pronounced, Helvar leaned over the stone lip of the gallery, as if he would see the sound tumbling into the dark.

Look down, another whisper came. Look down. No one spoke the words. The whisper came from inside his mind, but the command was not his. The other Transcended heard it too, for they all gathered at the lip and stared into the shaft.

Look down. Look down.

Helvar looked, his soul trembling with premonition. There were other galleries below, at irregular intervals down the length of the shaft. There were also doorways of corridors that simply ended at the abyss. And there were long stretches where the walls of the shaft were smooth, unbroken by any opening. Down the shaft went, and down, until the twilight of Harrowdeep condensed with distance into utter darkness. If there was a bottom, it was invisible. There was nothing to see there.

There must be.

Anticipation stopped Helvar’s breath.

Look down. Look down.

I am. I am. But I see nothing. Sigmar, guide my spirit. Show me what I cannot see without your aid.

Something glinted in the centre of the darkness.

Helvar had been staring so hard, he worried that eye strain was making him imagine things. Then Valya gasped, and a murmur of wonder ran through the Transcended.

Helvar saw the glint again. Bright and sharp and perfect, it had a purity beyond silver. To shine in that endless night, it must be a treasure beyond price.

Not, not a treasure. A weapon.

The conviction was the true revelation. It came over Helvar with the strength of a vision. He trembled, and his knees went weak with ecstasy. This was certainty as true as the name of the Penumbral Falls. But the revelation does not come from Harrowdeep. His heart began to beat hard with joy so great it pained him. Sigmar speaks to me!

‘That is a weapon below us,’ he declared. From the rapture on the faces around him, he saw that his Transcended already knew. They had all received the same revelation. Suppressing a sharp spasm of jealousy, he spoke again. He must speak. It was necessary. The vision was one thing, guidance another. The Transcended needed his guidance. ‘A weapon,’ he repeated, ‘that will be wielded in Sigmar’s name. It shall strike fear in the enemy’s heart, and it will turn his strength to ash. That is why we are here. That is our purpose.’

He would wield the weapon for Sigmar. That was his purpose. He understood now that he had been fated since birth to come to Harrowdeep and claim that weapon.

‘How will we find the way?’ Valya asked, sounding eager, hopeful and worried all at once.

The glint was a long, long way below, and Harrowdeep was a maze. The flagellants had not had any sense of direction in all the time they had been here.

We did not have a goal, either. ‘Faith in Sigmar will guide our steps,’ Helvar said. ‘We shall try the maze, and we shall defeat it.’

He faltered a bit at the end, because the word try sounded louder than it should have. There were no echoes in the shaft. They were smothered by the Penumbral Falls. But try echoed, as if a single strand from the chamber of echoes had followed the Transcended here, and had chosen this moment to take its stand against the silence of the Falls.

But there was another, harsher voice in the echo. Helvar knew the voice. He hated it. The echo reached down to him, then bounced back up the shaft, drawing his gaze, forcing him to see the face of the enemy once more. Barradak was there. He and the Gorewolves had also reached the shaft. They were on the opposite side and one gallery up. Helvar could barely see them through the veil of the Falls. He could feel the hate of Barradak’s glare nonetheless. The hate, and the surprise. The slaughterpriest had become aware of his presence at the same time that Helvar had seen him. Whatever Barradak had said to his followers, he had uttered the word try at the same time, and now the word sounded over and over in the shaft like the tolling of a bell.

Try… try… try… try…

The word changed. The Penumbral Falls took the echo as it passed back and forth through the shadow magic, and wove it into a new sound, a new word, a new meaning.

A new command.

Trial… trial… trial… trial…

Of course. A trial.

‘Praise Sigmar!’ Helvar shouted. The words fell dead in the shaft, and trial… trial… trial… resounded on and on. The Transcended looked at Helvar with wonder and hope. ‘Hear how the way is shown to us! Hear our destiny proclaimed! A trial awaits us, the trial we have all been seeking! Rejoice!’

He would prove himself worthy to wield the weapon. With it, his martyrdom on the battlefield would inspire legend.

‘Praise Sigmar!’ the Transcended answered.

From above came the shouts and threats of the Gorewolves. They did not last long. Barradak and his warband withdrew. They wanted the weapon too. They must not have it. Their unclean hands would not touch the sacred.

The strands of the Penumbral Falls parted for a moment, and Helvar saw, a third of the way around the gallery, another opening in the wall of the shaft.

‘There!’ he pointed. ‘There is the way! To our trial! To our glory! For Sigmar!’

He ran, and the Transcended ran with him.

Trial… trial… trial… trial…

CHAPTER THREE

Beyond the gallery, the halls became a tangle once more. As if in perverse response to Helvar’s galvanised purpose, Harrowdeep drew the Transcended into confusion. Intersections multiplied, each leading off into many twisting branches. Helvar faced far more choices, all of them bad, than at any other time since the flagellants had fallen into Harrowdeep.

The angles of the floors, walls and ceilings shifted out of true. Engravings spread over the stone again, more dense than before. Now, instead of taunting Helvar with meanings just out of reach, they disoriented him with a war of incomprehension. He understood nothing, yet knew he confronted a legion of contradictions.

The engravings worked with the tilts of the architecture to destroy any sense of direction.

‘Why am I leaning forward?’ said Stuyan. ‘Aren’t we going downhill?’

‘Haven’t you learned yet not to trust your eyes?’ Helvar answered.

Even staircases could not be trusted to rise or descend as they claimed. And everywhere, there was the clammy trickle of shadow magic. Sometimes, Helvar was sure it flowed from floor to ceiling. At those moments, he was so dizzy from the distorted angles that he wasn’t sure whether he walked on the floor or not.

He’d had to stop running almost as soon as the Transcended left the gallery. He tried to rush as best he could, but he did not want to fall or hurl himself face first into a wall. His followers staggered like they were drunk, and he could barely hold back a scream of frustration. He channelled his anger into hymns instead, and the others sang with him. Their voices faltered, gathered strength, and then faltered again as they struggled to stay on their feet. Hours passed, and the complaints began.

‘Where is the way?’ Stuyan wailed, breaking from the chants. He was from the House of Terevas, a family of minor nobles by comparison to the Sannhets. Stuyan and his sister, Evisa, had followed Helvar’s example in turning their backs on their wealth. Helvar could not fault their zeal. They lived to die for Sigmar. They renounced their former privilege with every self-inflicted lash of the whip. They were still recognisable, though, as petty aristocracy. They whined when things did not go well. The walls of Harrowdeep would be shivering with their moans of unhappiness if Helvar was not vigilant for lapses of discipline.

‘Where is the way?’ Stuyan cried again. He stumbled into a wall and clawed at his long beard in distress. ‘We are lost!’

‘We are never lost,’ Helvar snapped. ‘We can never be, because we march at the right hand of Sigmar.’ The corridor branched again, and he turned left, with authority, choosing the direction for no other reason than to be seen to be making a firm choice. He almost slipped. The corridor seemed to be running straight, but he felt himself pulled downwards. This was a descent, then. Good. The moments in which he was sure the Transcended were descending, and so had a sense of making progress towards the weapon waiting at the bottom of the shaft, were too infrequent. Too often, he felt lost, though he made sure not to show it.

The walls leaned unevenly towards each other until they met at a point and there was no longer a ceiling. The floor slanted to the left and right, the shift never apparent, and Helvar felt as if he were on a ship in a storm. As he approached the next junction, he heard the drums of the Gorewolves again.

‘The enemy is near,’ said Valya. ‘Below us.’

Helvar couldn’t tell if the drums came from above, below or to the side. ‘Be wary of such pronouncements,’ he said. ‘Harrowdeep seeks to deceive us. Be on your guard.’

The sound of drums faded, then started up again, this time seeming to come from behind. The pounding was brief, and then vanished suddenly, as if a fragment of sound were bouncing through the halls of Harrowdeep, unmoored from any origin.

The satisfaction Helvar felt at being proved right was brief. It did not ease his frustration. We cannot lose our way. Not so soon. I will not allow it. Fate and the judgement of Sigmar will not allow it.

He turned another corner, taking the second fork to the right this time. This corridor was broad, and the walls pulled back from each other, forming a curved vault. The floor was even. It did not descend, but at least it was easy to walk. The corridor was the longest Helvar had seen in some time. At first, he could not see the end in the gloom.

After a few yards, he saw movement in the distance. A few more, and Barradak and the Gorewolves came into view, approaching from the opposite direction. Barradak saw him, too. The slaughterpriest charged, roaring.

The Transcended ran to meet the foe, the pounding of their boots a thunder of righteousness, their voices a shout of furious praise.

‘Trample them!’ Helvar shouted. ‘Grind them into muck, for that is what they are! We will not die here. Our end is on another battlefield! This scum is part of our trial, and we shall go through them to the prize that awaits us!’

The Gorewolves roared along with their leader, and the sound was curiously muffled. It seemed to be coming from much further away than the hundred yards that separated the warbands.

No matter. Harrowdeep lies again.

The death of the treacherous scribe was moments away. Helvar sprinted forward, staff raised.

He slammed into a wall. The impact jolted through his frame. Blood burst from his nose and lips, and a tooth clattered to the ground. Helvar reeled back, stunned, uncomprehending. Valya, next to him, had been stopped just as violently, and she fell, dazed. The other Transcended fell over each other in a tangle.

Before him, Barradak was staggering too, his expression just as confused and furious.

Helvar blinked. His vision cleared, and so did his head.

He had run into a wall whose stone was polished into a perfect mirror. It was surrounded on all sides by a cluster of other mirrors. They looked as if they had formed naturally, a crystalline bloom of reflecting black. Wherever the Gorewolves were, it was not here. That was why their voices were muffled, and when Barradak stepped forward cautiously, reaching out a hand to touch the surface of the mirror he faced, his steps were silent. A network of mirrors, burrowing its way through levels and corridors, was bringing the images of the enemies to each other.

‘Harrowdeep mocks us,’ Helvar said, wiping the blood from his face. It mocks me.

‘At least it mocks the Gorewolves too,’ said Valya.

The Khornate scum raged as they pulled back from their mirror. They shook their weapons, the gesture all the angrier for its impotence. Barradak lingered a moment longer. Helvar locked gazes with him. Faith and rage promised each other destruction. Then Helvar turned his back on the image and marched back down the corridor, gathering his authority around him like a robe.

‘They are mocked too,’ he agreed. ‘And they are reminded that we are here, and that we are coming for them.’ He raised his voice, ‘But in being our trial, Harrowdeep serves Sigmar, and dooms the servants of the dark god. Do you hear me?’

‘We hear you, prophet,’ the others answered.

Helvar felt better. He had almost shouted the last words, because the louder he delivered his pronouncements, the more readily they were accepted by his followers. In turn, that they heard him and believed strengthened his own conviction. He returned to the last junction feeling more confident.

‘Our purpose cannot be stopped,’ he said, and believed it.

He took the next corridor on the right, and in only a few yards, it rewarded him. A staircase appeared, twisting down into the dark, and it really did go down. He felt the descent in his body, a satisfying drop with each step, and the union of sensation with the evidence of his eyes gave Helvar even more confidence. Now they were making progress. Now they were heading for the prize.

The stairs twisted down for a hundred feet or more. Distance was slippery in Harrowdeep, and Helvar didn’t dare trust his impressions too far. It was a long descent; of that he felt sure. When the staircase ended, the Transcended gathered in front of a high iron door. A red glow leaked out from under it.

Helvar pushed the door. It swung open easily, silently.

The Transcended entered a vast hall. The red glow came from the fires blazing in massive hearths and reflecting from crimson excesses of wealth. Chandeliers of rubies hung from the ceiling. Scarlet, velvet wallpaper covered the walls, and the tapestries were rich with red and gold. The chamber exuded luxury, but there was an even greater excess. The luxury was simply the reflection of overwhelming pride. It filled the hall like thick smoke. It was so thick, Helvar could barely breathe. Maybe that was why it took him a moment too long to recognise what he was seeing.

The chamber was a vision of the great hall of the House of Sannhet. Helvar saw his home, and he knew it, but the familiar had been exaggerated into something uncanny. The wealth of the Sannhets had never reached this scale. Helvar doubted that it was possible for any family in all of Ulgu even to dream of such an enormity of wealth. The decadence made him feel ill. Mounds of jewels spilled like grapes from golden goblets on a table of bronze and oak. Shelves of rose marble held books whose spines were frosted with diamonds. Huge globes of stained glass hung from the corners of the ceiling, the reflections of the fire making the colours in them swirl. This was the house of his family if the Sannhets had been worshipped. It was a house that belonged to gods.

‘What does this mean?’ said Evisa. She was looking back and forth between Helvar and the thing that dominated the centre of the hall. The other flagellants murmured in echo of her distress. They were all staring at Helvar and at the thing he did not want to admit was what it was. Their gazes were pleading, and the nature of that pleading disturbed him.

A statue was the focal point of the hall. It dominated the space, twenty feet high and sculpted so perfectly that it did not appear to be stone at all. It had stepped out of a block of marble and become flesh. All the wealth and all the luxury were somehow reflections of it. The statue was the sun of prestige and from its glory came all riches.

‘Prophet,’ said Stuyan, ‘it’s you!’

Helvar stared at his image. His self of stone had his head tilted back, and his eyes looked down just enough to suggest that he would be aware of the people beneath him, but only to the extent of graciously receiving their praise. One hand was outstretched in the frozen gesture of a man imparting wisdom to the unworthy, because that was his lot in life, and what he had to say was so important that it must be said, and it must be said by him. The other hand held his robes near his chest.

The face of the statue was imperious in its sanctity. It was a face that knew the truth, and served it faithfully. It was the face of a man who had experienced great revelations, and who followed the strictures of his faith with implacable rigour. In the midst of his distress, Helvar still felt a rush of satisfaction to see that even the forces at work in Harrowdeep had to acknowledge the depth and strength of his commitment to Sigmar. He did see himself in the statue, in that face, and he could not help feel that this was right.

The robes were what distressed him. They were not the ragged cloth he wore now, but exquisite, painted in shades of blue and red and gold. They were not the robes of a humble martyr. They were not the robes of a man who scourged his flesh because his faith was so strong he had to atone for every aspect of his existence that was not immediately devoted to furthering the cause of Sigmar. They were the robes of a prophet celebrated and honoured. They were the robes of a philosopher king.

‘What does this mean?’ Helvar said, deliberately echoing Evisa. They must all know that he was as confused and upset in the initial moment as they were. They must also know that he would have the answer. ‘It is a test,’ he declared. ‘There can be no doubt of that.’ A simple answer. A simplistic one. But also a true one, and one that would serve the purpose and needs of the moment.

‘Stay a moment,’ Helvar said to his followers. He approached the statue on his own. He walked around it slowly, examining it for the trap it had to hold. When he found it, it was not a device that would explode and shred the occupants of the hall. It was, however, almost as dangerous.

Near the bottom of the statue, in a fold of the robes, Helvar found the gold engraving of a warhammer. The image was minuscule in comparison to the rest of the statue, no larger than the palm of his hand. The detail was exquisite. The hammer was much more than a simple weapon. It had a perfection and a power that, once seen, outshone everything in the hall. It was different, too, from the weapons wielded by the Stormcast Eternals. They had their own magnificence, yet there was also a massiveness to them. They were not for the hands of a simple mortal. This hammer, in spite of the power in its lines, also had a lightness to it, an elegance of strength that suggested it could be carried into battle by the most humble of Sigmar’s servants.

Helvar knew at once that no one else must see the engraving. They must not see the allegory of the statue. The engraving was a depiction of the weapon they were searching for. Its presence on the robes made the statue a representation of a Helvar who had taken the weapon, and triumphed by its means. There had been no sacrifice. There had been glory on the battlefield, and now there was glory afterwards, in the city this Helvar had saved, and beyond.

I do not seek this fate. I do not. No one must think that I do.

Helvar stepped away from the statue. With his back to it, he addressed the Transcended. ‘This is the work of deceit,’ he said. ‘Harrowdeep would see us divided. It distorts the purity of our aim, and wants to make us doubt ourselves and each other.’ He waved his arm, taking in the room. ‘This is nothing but pride. Nothing but vanity. All of this! All of this is what I renounced! As did all of you! Are we tempted by what we see here?’

‘No!’ the flagellants answered as one.

‘NO!’ Helvar roared back. ‘Pride is the trial here. Pride in possessions, in status, and in glory. But there is no glory but Sigmar’s. Is this the trial Harrowdeep throws before us?’ He laughed, a long, harsh, braying laugh of challenge, and the others joined him. ‘How pathetic! How pitiable! How weak! We shall not fail, and we shall not fall until Sigmar commands it, and when we fall, we shall take his foes down with us.’

Stuyan was looking closely at the statue’s face. ‘This looks older than you do now,’ he said. ‘Could this be a prophecy?’

‘No!’ Helvar snarled, and Stuyan flinched back. ‘It is not a prophecy. It is a temptation. It is Harrowdeep’s lying promise intended to lure us from our path.’

Valya whispered something. Helvar didn’t hear what she said. He thought it might have been, To lure you. He pretended she had said nothing. ‘If we believe anything we see in this chamber, then we are failing in our trial.’

‘Then what must we do here, prophet?’ Stuyan asked. He sounded in earnest again, wanted guidance that would give him certainty. ‘Tell us what we must do!’

‘What did we do with our pride in Murmurus? We tore ourselves from the chains of our possessions and our status, and we trampled our pride beneath our feet. That is what we must do again.’ He pointed at the jewels on the table. ‘Destroy the unholy decadence of this hall.’ He pointed at the statue. ‘Destroy its lies! Destroy them utterly!’

Valya ran to the nearest hearth and used her spiked club to spill the burning logs onto the floor of the hall. The rugs smouldered, then burst into flame. Greedy, the fire licked at the tapestries. In moments, it was spreading over the walls.

‘Destroy the lies!’ Helvar shouted. ‘Destroy the lies!’ He attacked the statue with his staff, smashing at the robe to destroy the image of the warhammer.

‘Destroy the lies! Destroy the lies!’ The Transcended joined him. They shattered the statue’s base with a zealotry that bordered on the joyful in its ecstasy. Marble cracked and powdered under their assault. The base crumbled. The statue weaved as if drunk, and then toppled. Flagellants scattered before its fall. It crashed to the floor, crushing the table and its jewels beneath it, and shattered into large fragments. The Transcended clustered around the head, smashing the false image of their prophet.

Helvar left them to it. He paid a bit more attention to the bottom of the robe. He looked to see if there were any other engravings of the weapon. He saw none. There was just the one, like a signature or a single, indelible stain.

The hammer engraving was broken, but still recognisable. He smashed at it with his staff, thinking of nothing except its erasure until, finally, there was only dust. The hall still sounded with the hammering of the other flagellants. Good. They would have been too occupied to pay attention to him.

He looked up. Valya had paused over the destruction of the head. She was looking at him. He met her gaze, and she went back to finishing off smashing the image of pride.

Did she see anything?

See what? She couldn’t have seen the engraving itself. It was too small. She had seen him attack a different part of the statue. That was all.

And really, that was all he had done.

The statue was destroyed. The chamber was burning. ‘See what we have done,’ Helvar said. ‘The blandishments of pride lie in ruins, destroyed by the strength of our faith. We have passed one trial. There will be others. They will not stop us!’

The flames roared. The burning of the hall was the backdrop and the proof of his words.

The Transcended shouted their praise of Sigmar, Valya the loudest among them.

She saw nothing. Don’t worry.

There was a door on the far side of the chamber, and Helvar strode towards it. He felt as if he were robed in flame, the power of destiny propelling him forwards. He consciously did not look back at the broken statue as he opened the door and led the way out of the hall.

The image of the engraved hammer burned in his mind’s eye as he started down another spiralling staircase. The promise excited him, but only because of how the capture of the weapon would serve Sigmar. He would not become the statue’s image of personal glory, because he would not live to see such a thing become possible.

He had turned away from pride when he had walked away from the House of Sannhet. There was no danger that personal pride would turn him now from the path he had chosen. None.

He glanced back, and saw that Valya was watching him.

The mirrored wall taunted Barradak. He retreated only a few yards from it before his anger made him turn back. The reflections of the Transcended were receding, fading into the distance and gloom. Prey and vengeance were out of his reach again, and had not even been close at all. Harrowdeep was toying with him.

Far below, the weapon of Khorne waited. He knew its shape. It had burst upon his consciousness like scalding blood when he had looked down into the shaft. An axe. An axe to cleave the realm like a skull. It would be his. He would become might in Khorne’s eyes with that axe, and he would hold it. Not Kroacka, though her eyes mirrored the hunger in his own.

But Harrowdeep was stymying him. It was amusing itself with him.

He would not have it.

Barradak snarled. He charged at the wall, determined to punish, to kill that which had no life but mocked him all the same. He whirled the wrath-hammer on its chain, then slammed the spiked ball into the wall. He struck with such force and anger that he would have felt no surprise, but much satisfaction, to see the stone bleed.

The wall surprised him. It shattered like glass. The black mirror exploded into shards, revealing a hall behind it. Barradak’s momentum carried him over the threshold and into the chamber. The Gorewolves followed him.

Quiet reigned over the space. It was a different quiet from any he had yet known in Harrowdeep. It was the quiet of calm.

The chamber was large, though far from massive. The ceiling was no more than twelve feet high. A fire crackled contentedly to itself in a hearth before which sat a chair of dark, weathered oak and thickly padded leather. It was a chair in which to sit for a long time and read. There was a desk nearby. Tomes were stacked on the left and right of its surface. Its centre was clear except for a single, empty sheet of vellum. In front of the vellum stood a quill and brass inkwell, waiting for work to begin.

Shelves of the same dark oak as the chair covered the walls from floor to ceiling, groaning with books. Lanterns extending from the walls in the narrow gaps between the bookcases provided a warm, soft light, just enough for a browser to make out the titles. A single, much larger lantern hung over the space between the hearth and the desk, creating a bright circle of light for the reader.

The chamber was a domain for a single scholar. It was a retreat, a place of reflection, study and creation. And Barradak knew it. This was the room where he had worked in the house of the Sannhets. It had been transformed into a larger, much more perfect version of itself, but he knew it at once all the same. He approached the chair, a growl building deep in his chest. Every scratch on the wood and worn patch on the leather was as he remembered it.

He glanced at the nearest stack of books on the desk. The titles made his breath catch.

‘Why has Harrowdeep brought us here?’ Kroacka said. There was suspicion in her tone, a veiled implication that she believed Barradak was somehow responsible for this place.

‘More mockery,’ Barradak said. He brought his hackblade down on the books. He cut them in half and swept them off the desk. ‘It throws a vision of weakness at us. This is nothing. Harrowdeep does not even deign to challenge us. Burn it and move on.’

‘What is this?’ Kroacka had stopped in front of a bookcase to the right of the hearth. Head cocked, she was reading the spines of the tomes. Around her, the bloodreavers milled, uncertain. She had not contradicted the slaughterpriest’s command, but she was delaying its execution. The prospect of a battle of wills made them wait.

Kroacka took a book down and leafed through the first few pages. ‘This is your work,’ she said to Barradak. ‘Treatise on Justice as the Reflection of Azyr.’ She dropped the book and took another. ‘Sigmar the Inevitable.’ And then another. ‘On Faith and Order.’ She looked back and forth along the rows. ‘All of these are your works.’ She gave Barradak a hard stare. ‘You worked long and hard to spread the faith of the dog in Azyr.’

When Barradak had seen the titles on the desk, he had hoped that Kroacka could not read. He had even thought it likely that she could not, and was surprised now to learn that she could. He felt a moment of disconnection from himself, a tiny but sharp fragment of vertigo, as the intellectual snobbery of the old Barradak surfaced. It was he who looked at the hordes of Khorne, saw the savagery, and equated it with ignorance. It was that Barradak, the one who was dead and burned away, who suddenly twitched in his mind, resurrected by what he saw in the chamber.

Barradak sheathed his sword and snatched On Faith and Order out of Kroacka’s hands. ‘This is the lie of Harrowdeep,’ he said. ‘I never wrote this.’ He threw the book into the fire.

The old Barradak, the one the slaughterpriest hated above all things because he could still disturb, even from the grave, twitched in pain as the book burst into flame. Barradak had not lied to Kroacka. He had not written this book. But he had planned to. When the siege of Murmurus had begun, he had been envisaging the project as the next one he would tackle.

On the shelves around him were all the books he had written, and the much vaster number that he had contemplated writing. The notions and the daydreams of his life as a scribe, the half-formed conceptions and the tightly knotted obsessions that refused to crack open into coherent arguments, every single one of his old hopes of accomplishment were here. The room was the culmination of his former dreams. To have been the author of all these works would have taken him to the summit of pride.

Barradak grabbed an armful of books off a shelf and hurled them into the flames. They spilled out of the hearth and began to smoulder on the rug of deep crimson that covered the floor. ‘This isn’t a trial,’ he said. ‘This is an insult. Give us the foe, Harrowdeep. Give us blood. This is nothing.’ He added more books to the burning heap, and the bloodreavers followed his example. Some of them built up the blaze. Others attacked the shelves with their blades. Shouting their contempt for the works, they turned the chamber into a ruin.

Kroacka stayed where she was. She was holding yet another book and leafing through it. ‘This is called Against Khorne: An Anatomy of Folly,’ she said.

‘And they will all burn,’ said Barradak. ‘As will all who believe in the lies of Sigmar, and the lies of Harrowdeep.’ He took a menacing step forward, his hand on the hilt of his sword, his left hand ready to swing the wrath-hammer.

Kroacka held her ground. ‘So many lies written by Barradak,’ she said. She shifted her stance, ready to fight.

‘The Barradak that was. The Barradak that died.’

Kroacka slammed the book shut and held it up. ‘I await your exegesis, scholar,’ she said. ‘I await enlightenment.’

Barradak roared, and the shelves collapsed at the thunder of his voice. ‘I SPEAK FOR KHORNE!’ he bellowed. ‘THE SKULL GOD SPEAKS THROUGH ME!’

Bloodreavers howled, clutched their heads and staggered. They whirled, looking for a fight, any fight, the blood boiling in their skulls demanding violence. Kroacka backed up, her axe raised, her lips drawn back in hate and the conflicting needs to strike back at Barradak and to obey him.

‘BURN EVERYTHING TO ASH!’ Barradak commanded. He hurled the wrath-hammer in a long arc, dragging its spikes along shelves and books, splintering wood and tearing pages. A storm of shredded scholarship filled the air, tumbling through the thickening smoke. The Gorewolves turned on the chamber with a vengeance, destroying everything. Kroacka took part in the frenzy too, though she gave Barradak a long, challenging look before she did so, and as she set fire to the shelves, her lips were curled back in a feral grin that she kept turning his way. Everything Barradak had ever written burned. So did everything he had ever hoped to write. The pride of the scholar vanished in smoke and fire.

Barradak kicked open a door opposite the hearth and exited the inferno. This trial was pathetic. It was almost pitiable, though pity was no longer a weakness he carried. How did Harrowdeep think to challenge him with echoes of a being who was dead?

Barradak’s kick had broken the door in half. His blow was the more vicious for his anger, the anger more furious because of the pain.

Something inside him had wailed when the books began to burn.

Beyond the door, there were more mirrors, an instantly dizzying profusion of them. Barradak’s reflection, multiplied and distorted, stared back at him. So did Kroacka’s, the suspicion and hate in her gaze repeated forever, glinting from a thousand angles of darkness.

Barradak marched into the reflections, ready to smash them all.

And then he was falling.

CHAPTER FOUR

Shadow magic trickled down the walls of the staircase. It glistened in the grey light, leaving glinting trails. It ran over the steps, making the footing slick and treacherous. It eroded the contours, softening the steps, slowly turning them into rounded bumps in a slope. It polished them and the walls, and Helvar tensed as he felt mirrored surfaces build up around him again. Soon, he was surrounded by distorted versions of himself, all of them struggling with the descent, all of them with haunted, dark hollows for eyes.

The reflected prophets were men beset by uncertainty. That is not how I am. Helvar had purpose. He had a calling. He had never been more certain about the rightness of the path he walked.

His foot slipped and he grabbed at the slimy wall to keep from falling.

The path. He was still descending, wasn’t he? His balance was off. He couldn’t tell if he was leaning or standing straight. Was he still drawing closer to the prize? Yes, he thought so.

You think so?

Yes. But it’s hard to be certain in Harrowdeep.

Of everything?

No, not of everything. I am certain of what we must do, no matter how difficult. I am certain because I am certain of Sigmar.

And the others? Are they as certain of you?

They should be. The hall of pride was destroyed. The Transcended were moving down, as they should. His followers should not have any doubts.

What did Valya see?

Nothing. She saw nothing.

But what did she see? Did she see the sign of the hammer on the statue?

No. She did not.

Because she did not see it, she does not doubt me.

Helvar led the Transcended in hymns for as long as he could, but as the footing became more dangerous, he had to concentrate hard on not falling, and the singing ended. Vertigo assailed him. Someone behind cried out as they fell, and there was the sound of frantic shuffling as the others struggled not to tumble down too.

They kept going, wary, dizzy. The Transcended spoke softly to one another. As the walls turned into mirrors, they picked up pieces of conversations and scattered them about. Helvar caught himself listening to the whispers that skittered past.

Is that Valya whispering?

He wasn’t sure.

What is she saying?

He couldn’t tell.

That tone. That sounded like discontent. Who said that?

He didn’t know.

He should speak to his flock. His silence would be distressing them. ‘Do not let the lies of Harrowdeep erode your faith,’ he said. He did not speak as loudly as he meant, and he hesitated, negotiating a dangerously slippery passage, before going on. ‘The closer we come to fulfilling our purpose, the harder this foul place will try to break us. Sigmar’s arm sustains us. Remember that. With his strength, we will never be broken.’

He knew his usual fervour was missing. The words to summon the faithful to the fire of belief weren’t coming to him the way he was used to. He couldn’t concentrate on his preaching when it was all he could do to remain upright.

As soon as he paused, the whispers started up again.

Don’t trust the sounds here. You know the echoes deceive. These could be old sounds. They might not be the voices of the Transcended at all.

Except he recognised the voices. He knew his followers better than he had known his family, because their faith had formed them into a single alloy.

Even that, that intake of breath, short and sharp. That’s Stuyan. He sounds like he is about to sneeze when he speaks. And that, that ‘no’, that was Valya. I’m sure of it.

No? No to what?

He should challenge her. If she had questions, if she had doubts, then she should bring them to him, and he would dispel them. If she had seen the engraving of the warhammer, which she had not, but if she had, he would set her mind at ease and give her focus.

Helvar began to picture what he would say to Valya. He began to mouth the words, rehearsing the argument that would end the gnawing in his chest. The staircase twisted again, and suddenly the reflections of the flagellants were so vivid that he stopped short. His eyes convinced his mind for a moment that Valya had found her way in front of him and was coming back up the stairs. She was right before him, instead of his own reflection. He whirled around, and Valya was there too, right behind him. Startled, he slipped. He lost his balance. He flailed for the wall, but his hand slid through the slickness of the shadow magic. He began to fall.

The bump of the step beneath his feet sank. It turned smooth. So did the stairs above him. The other Transcended cried out and scrabbled for holds where there were none to be had.

Then Helvar fell on smooth stone, and he was sliding down, faster and faster, dizzy with the blur of images and the speed of descent, caught in the vicious grip of Harrowdeep’s game.

The Gorewolves were trapped in a space of reflections. The light had changed. The grey limbo that had governed Harrowdeep until now had given way to a profound, paradox-riven darkness. Barradak had no sense of the size of the space they were moving through. Walls, floor and ceiling were invisible, as if this portion of the maze were built from night itself. Yet though there was no source of light, there were reflections everywhere. They lied and confused, making the space even more disorienting. It might have been a network of tunnels, or a vast hall filled with dividing walls. The reflections appeared and disappeared at the commands of an unknowable whim, and so did Barradak’s followers. It seemed that a sorcerous illumination skittered through the space, landing now on one of the Gorewolves, now on a reflection, now on both, now on neither. He would see Kroacka half a step behind him, and then she would vanish, and he would see three of her ahead of him, all facing different directions. And then she would be above him, walking upside down. Only her grunts of frustration nearby gave him a proper sense of where she was, but then they drifted away. The maze of reflections was splitting up the warband, drawing the Gorewolves onto a myriad of paths.

‘Stay with me, you dogs!’ Barradak commanded. ‘Or I’ll tear your spines out.’

The order was futile. The dark and the reflections commanded here.

Every step was a gamble. Barradak walked on a solid void, conscious that the same whim that governed the reflections could just as easily throw him into an abyss. He walked slowly, and even then he kept colliding with invisible walls. Often, the wall would flash his reflection at him on contact, confronting him with the image of his frustrated rage. The first few times, he tried to smash through the wall, as he had before, but the blows of his wrath-hammer fell on unyielding stone. Dust and chips of rock flew, but the wall remained as dark as ever. No scratches marred the blackness.

The thunder of shifting masonry rumbled through the darkness. The unseen floor and walls shook, and the reflections began to change. The images of Helvar and his Transcended joined the cascade of illusions.

One of the bloodreavers, Fohor, had managed to stay close to Barradak. He was almost on the slaughterpriest’s heels. When one of the Transcended appeared a few yards away, Fohor sprinted ahead, heedless, shrieking for blood. ‘For the Blood God!’ Barradak shouted, urging on the bloodreaver’s fury even though he knew the attack was futile. The reflection vanished at the last moment. Fohor smashed into a wall and reeled back, blood gushing from his forehead. When Barradak caught up with him, he disappeared too, and it was his reflection that kept pace, still bleeding, a yard to Barradak’s left.

Barradak was alone again. Deprived of followers. No one to command, and no one to punish in frustration.

At least there was blood.

But so little, too little. The skirmish in the chamber of echoes had been the smallest taste, and in the end had only added fuel to the blaze of frustration.

The need to walk slowly enflamed Barradak’s helpless anger even further. He had to kill, to strike back at foes that tormented him by preventing him from doing the one thing his god demanded above all others. More and more images of the Transcended appeared, lasting longer, coming closer, and his head pounded with unreleased wrath.

The voices of the enemy were present too. Like the images, they bounced around the space, fragments of conversations and shouts next to Barradak’s ear one moment, then seeming to call from leagues away the next. They made this dark region even bigger. Barradak wondered how far it extended. He could believe that it had no end, and that he would be trapped, shuffling between black mirrors until his death.

‘Traitor.’

Helvar’s voice, on his right. Barradak looked, and there was the prophet, appearing to keep pace with him, only a few yards away. Barradak glared. The other reflections had disappeared, and either he had become separated from all the other Gorewolves now, or they had vanished from his perception. He was alone with Helvar.

He refused to fall into Harrowdeep’s humiliating trap again. He glared at Helvar’s reflection, and it glared back. Mutual hate and anger crackled in the air, strong enough to be lightning.

He sees me too. He knows he cannot reach me and it is driving him to fury. He feels the touch of Khorne.

The thought gave Barradak no pleasure. It only intensified his frustration even further. The axe he would capture for Khorne called to him, a hook sunk into his being, but the great need of the moment, the need that ran like acid through his veins, was to splash Helvar Sannhet’s blood across the dark walls. He needed to see a thousand reflections of Helvar twitching in death, his body ripped open, his skull smashed to splinters embedded in the gelid spread of his brain.

‘Traitor,’ Helvar spat again. ‘Your reckoning is almost upon you.’ His voice was so close. Barradak could smell the warm scent of his blood.

‘My reckoning came in Murmurus,’ said Barradak. ‘The hour that comes now is the hour of Khorne.’ And despite knowing it was futile, he struck at the reflection. He hurled the ball of the wrath-hammer at Helvar’s head.

And Helvar ducked.

And the ball went over his head. Past his head.

He was no reflection. He was really there.

Helvar stumbled away, eyes wide in shock and surprise.

Barradak blinked, stunned too, and missed the moment to hit again. His attack had been a careless gesture, a flailing of helpless rage. If he had believed Helvar to be present, he would not have missed.

‘THE ENEMY IS HERE!’ he bellowed. ‘SLAY THEM ALL! FOR THE SKULL THRONE! FOR THE BLOOD GOD!’

Screaming hate, he and Helvar charged at each other.

The walls moved faster than Helvar. He could not see them move, but he heard their rapid grind, and he sensed the closing of a stone fist. He slashed at Barradak with his staff, but the walls constricted his movements, spoiling the attack. They hemmed him in, arresting his blow, and then they pressed in harder, trapping him with his arms upraised. The way narrowed even further ahead. He couldn’t move forward at all.

Barradak was caught too. Frothing in rage, he stood with his sword arm extended, the blade motionless and no more than a foot away from Helvar’s eyes. Barradak howled, wrath blasting over Helvar in a wave, a physical thing that scorched the flesh and boiled the blood. He felt its power, yet it could not touch him. His flesh had no meaning except as a sacrifice to Sigmar. It was his lot to die in the name of his god, and he rejoiced in his fate.

And his anger matched Barradak’s. The hulking warrior before him was the worst of criminals, the worst of betrayers. He was everything that Helvar hated most, and every heartbeat that passed and Barradak was not dead enflamed Helvar’s anger. ‘Sigmar’s lightning strike you down, wretch of perfidy!’ he yelled. He tried to move forward. Barradak, taller and wider, was stuck fast, nearly immobile. He squirmed like an insect, his roar of rage turning into a shriek of frustration.

The walls pressed in closer, angling in ahead of Helvar, forming a wedge that narrowed more and more. He faced Barradak across a space the width of his hand.

‘NO!’ he screamed, his frustration the equal of Barradak’s. He jerked fruitlessly at his staff, trying again to hit the slaughterpriest. He might have been pushing back against a mountain. ‘You will not escape judgement again!’

Barradak seemed eager for his judgement. He pushed just as hard against the closing gap. Then he vanished. The walls came together with a hard crack. Helvar’s own reflection appeared on either side of him, his features contorted in their scream. The walls pushed him back again, forcing him backwards, and then he was standing once more in the maze of mirrors, where the images appeared and disappeared, and the echoes bounced chaotically.

‘They are here!’ he shouted. ‘With me, Transcended! The enemy is here! Fall on them like fire! Make them wish for repentance before they die! With me! With me!’

There were answers.

‘We hear you, prophet!’

‘We fight with you!’

‘Death to the scum of Khorne!’

There were answers, but he was as cut off from the other flagellants as he was from Barradak and the Gorewolves. He had been unable to find any of his followers since he had landed in this maze of night and confusion. He was alone. They called to each other, but could not find each other. There were only reflections, near and far, so real as to convince him the person was there beside him, and broken and distorted into nightmare shapes.

Now he knew, too, that the Gorewolves were here. Their images were not just lies. He had been within a killing stroke of Barradak and thought he was seeing another of Harrowdeep’s taunts. He had missed his chance.

Throughout the infinite dark, he heard the shouts of war. Transcended and Gorewolves howled with the fury of battle. Blades and hammers and clubs clashed against stone, but also against flesh. Somewhere near or far, someone was injured. Someone shouted in bloody triumph. Someone gasped their last.

There was fighting and dying happening in the maze. He didn’t know who had died and where. He didn’t know who was carrying the day, if anyone was. With another howl, he pushed on through the darkness, through nothing and through images. At every sight of a skullreaper, he attacked. Over and over again, the blade of his staff scraped against stone. Sometimes the bloodreaver saw him too and tried to fight back, only to hit a wall. Sometimes, the enemy was looking elsewhere, and never saw his useless flailing before the image disappeared and Helvar was plunged into smothering dark again. No matter the image, he attacked each one as if it were real.

Helvar walked into solid blackness, felt his way to the right, and came around the wall to find a skullreaper ahead of him. The bloodreaver started and lunged, snarling, but Helvar was already swinging his staff. This time, the scythe blade found flesh instead of stone, plunging deep into the side of the skullreaper. Helvar knocked him against the wall and yanked his staff back, tearing the wound wide open. The skullreaper staggered at him, breath whistling and gurgling, one hand trying to hold back his viscera as they bulged out of the rent in his lower torso. Helvar took one step back and swung again, his reach longer than his foe’s. The bloodreaver’s blade cut only air. Helvar swung again. A butcher’s impact shook his arms, and the Gorewolf’s head went flying.

Helvar sensed a presence at his back. He turned before the bloodreaver’s corpse hit the ground, and faced a second attacker. He blocked the enemy’s axe blow, barely. The hit almost knocked the staff from his hands. He pushed up, catching the curve of the axe blade, locking the Gorewolf’s weapon. The Gorewolf paused. He stared at Helvar in sudden confusion. He looked as if he were about to say something.

Helvar felt the bloodreaver’s grip on his axe weaken. He pushed back hard, throwing his enemy away. The axe fell to the ground and the bloodreaver raised his hands.

‘Coward!’ Helvar spat and sliced the Gorewolf’s throat open.

The Gorewolf fell. He flickered, Helvar blinked, and then it was no longer a slave to Khorne who lay on the invisible floor. It was one of the Transcended, Bellavis, a servant of the House of Sannhet who had been among the very first to follow Helvar.

Helvar knelt over the body. He turned Bellavis over, hoping the image would change again, that Bellavis would rise or would turn back into a Gorewolf.

Bellavis’ head lolled, loose, and blood pooled across darkness.

Helvar cried out. He jerked away from the corpse and hurled himself further into the maze. ‘Beware!’ he shouted, and then stopped himself from giving the warning. If the Transcended hesitated before every foe they saw, they would be cut down just as surely as Bellavis had been. ‘Beware the lies of Harrowdeep!’ he called instead, a warning pointless in its vagueness. ‘Sigmar fights with us! He is our strength and we are his hammer!’

He moved faster, and the images of Gorewolves came at him. He attacked without hesitation because he had to, and his shouts became inarticulate cries. Harrowdeep had taken away all certainty. He could not know if he struck at illusion or foe or friend, and he had no choice but to attack every time.

The staff blade hit stone again and again. All around, the shouts and the screams of battle grew louder. The maze resounded with a growing storm of rage and grief, the chaos of a battle where all clashed in night and ignorance. Helvar stumbled at random, bouncing off walls, spinning around corners he couldn’t see, launching himself at images that appeared on one side, then another, then another. He might have been going in circles, or deeper into the maze. There was no way out, nothing but the darkness and the lies of mirrors and echoes.

And now he saw Evisa Terevas, a few yards ahead, locked in combat with herself. Helvar stopped, frozen, his blow arrested by a choice he could not make.

The two Evisas were absolutely identical. They were both clad in the rags that had been, lifetimes ago, a rich gown embroidered with the mottos of the family she had left behind. The two women fought with the same spiked club. They shouted at each other with the same voice. Helvar listened, hoping he would hear telltale Khornate curses coming from the mouth of one or the other. But neither Evisa was coherent. Their cries were as Helvar’s had become. They were the throat-tearing shrieks of anger, frustration, helplessness and corrosive despair.

Wielding her club with two hands, one Evisa brought it down so hard that the other, even though she blocked it, staggered. The first pressed her advantage, screaming hate, aimed low and fast, and smashed her other self in the knee. Bone cracked. The second Evisa dropped. The other drove the spikes into the back of her skull, then hit again, and again, a rapid pounding that broke the head open. When the first Evisa stopped, there were only the rags to mark who the corpse might have been.

Helvar still did not move. ‘Evisa,’ he mouthed. He could not make a sound.

Evisa looked at him. He didn’t know what she saw, or if she could see him at all. He took a step forward. He clutched his staff so hard that his arms trembled.

Helvar blinked, and the Evisa was now a Gorewolf. The woman ran at Helvar. He moved faster, howling with all the rage beyond words that had built up in this place of lies, and he struck her in the eye with his staff blade. She fell backwards with a dying cry.

She vanished, and so did everything else. Total darkness ruled, its perfection unsullied by a single reflection. The darkness shook with a huge grind of stone, and Helvar had the sensation of everything falling away – not just Evisa, but all the walls too, vanishing into nothing.

Nothing.

He stood in nothing. He could not see if what he had killed was Gorewolf or Transcended. He could not see himself. The darkness suffocated. It pressed hard on his eyes and forced itself into his mouth, down his throat, choking him and filling his lungs.

The darkness of silence.

There were no more cries. There was no clash of arms. Helvar felt as if he were drowning at the bottom of an ocean of darkness.

‘Sigmar!’ he cried.

But he did not. The sound would not come. He tried to scream, and there was only silence. He slammed the end of his staff against the floor, and heard nothing.

Sigmar! he prayed. Hear me! Show me the way!

He should not have prayed. It only made the silence worse. It was the most terrible of all silences, the silence of gods. Sigmar did not answer. Sigmar did not hear. Helvar was alone.

The wall of faith that held back the floodwaters of doubt shivered and began to crack.

Helvar wailed. He wailed on and on. His lungs burst with effort. Once, just once, when he shouted ‘SIGMAR!’ with all the force of desperate grief, the silence pulled back to let his howl free. Somewhere, an unguessable distance away, there was a roar of pain that sounded almost like an answer. Then the silence closed in again, seamless, total, merciless, and without end.

Barradak heard Helvar’s cry, and knew that the other priest suffered as he did. The knowledge made the power of the silence even greater. Barradak roared, and that roar was the one sound he was granted. The silence was all the more ferocious afterwards, and he could not hurl it back. Since his conversion, the wrath had come to him not just from within, but as inspiration, a sermon of rage streaming through his mind. Khorne spoke to him directly. That was his experience and his conviction. And from that inspiration came his exhortations to the warriors of the Blood God. He gave voice to Khorne’s commands. He turned blood into fire.

His link had been severed. Khorne was silent. Barradak turned to find the unending source of wrath, and there was nothing. He was suspended in the darkness of total absence. He tried to break through the silence, shouting the words of violence, the words that had propelled him and his followers through glories of murder and war. His throat ached from the force of shouting, but the words could not crack the silence. They were powerless. He screamed them with even more energy. He screamed them until he tasted blood.

The words meant nothing. The blood was only a taste. It meant nothing either.

This is Harrowdeep’s doing. It is a lie, like everything else. It has no meaning. Khorne is mighty and will vanquish all.

Empty truths. Truths with no weight. Truths that could not hold back the doubts that crept into his mind and into his soul, the tendrils of the darkness that surrounded him forcing their way inside.

Time ceased in the silence and the dark. Barradak moved. He raged. He flailed. There was no meaning to anything he did. He was alone in futility. Absence held him in the threat of eternity.

Then he began to smell blood. The scent grew stronger, and he caught a glimpse of red. He focused his eyes on the spot, and feared for a moment that doing so would extinguish the spark of crimson. It also grew stronger. He walked towards it, and it spread, a faint red promise.

Barradak took a deep breath, filling his head with the scent. ‘Blood!’ he shouted, and he made a sound. He could be heard again. ‘Blood!’ he said again. ‘The Blood God calls, you dogs, and you must answer!’

He thought he could make out suggestions of movement in the dark, and the faint tread of boots. The Gorewolves heard and were responding. They were obeying and heading to the red too.

They believed what he said, that this was a sign from Khorne.

He didn’t know if it was. The doubts had worked their way in. They were worms in his soul, burrowing deeper.

CHAPTER FIVE

He’s a fool.

Kroacka smelled blood. She breathed deeply of the growing tang. She salivated at the thought of murder, and walked faster towards the red glow, confident that there were no unseen walls between her and the light. She could see Barradak in silhouette now, and the faint suggestion of two other Gorewolves on either side of her.

‘The bloodgates open again,’ Barradak said. ‘Kill the enemy beyond! Drown Harrowdeep in the wrath of Khorne!’

He speaks as if he made this happen. The self-regard was in his tone more than his words. Barradak knew his authority was fraying. You are right to fear me. In battle, the slaughterpriest’s frothing sermons fired her blood. But there was no battle yet, just another promise of one. There were too few battles in this cursed place. The struggle in this darkness had maddened her with frustration. The space had exploded with anger, all of it impotent. She had killed in this maze of obscurity and lies. She had some fresh blood on her armour. Not enough, but some. Now, at the prospect of an exit after that awful, suffocating silence, she indulged in her hate for Barradak.

He’s a fool. The thought had become a refrain. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He pretends to lead when he has no idea where he’s going. He wants to explain things.

That was the scholar beneath, coming to the surface. She could see it clearly. Barradak wanted them to believe that all trace was gone of what he had been before receiving the gift of Khorne. She didn’t believe it. And she didn’t believe he should be leading them.

All that matters is blood and bone.

She had learned that truth in ways Barradak could not have. He was a mediocrity of wrath who did not deserve to lead them. She had fought her way up through the clans. Her entire life had consisted of nothing but years of hammering the alloy of her anger until it was unbreakable. When bones cracked in her grip, and her victims screamed because they knew they were going to die, that was what mattered. Everything else was air.

Harrowdeep was lies and air. The newcomer slaughterpriest was taken in by them too much. He thought he knew things. Harrowdeep had made a fool out of him over and over, and it would again.

Barradak was strong, though. He would not die easily. And as long as the others still followed him, Kroacka didn’t think she could take him down. Soon, though. His authority was growing weaker. The bloodreavers would not be led from disaster to disaster forever.

The glow was brighter now, and took on the shape of a vaulted doorway. She could not see through it, but she could see around her a bit more clearly, as if she were moving through a thick, red fog. Other than Barradak, the only other Gorewolves she could see were Rak and Zuur. Kroacka hadn’t heard the voices of Yrgak and Govar since before the silence, and she had lost sight of them shortly after they had all entered the maze. It was possible she had killed them herself. She had no way of being certain who had died at her hands.

Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows.

Blood was blood, and she had taken pleasure from the hard thunk of her goreaxe shattering bone and cleaving meat. And if Yrgak and Govar were dead, that meant Barradak was even weaker.

A weak fool.

Kroacka had never trusted him. She never trusted anyone. But she had mistrusted him even more, and more urgently, after the chamber with the books. It didn’t matter that he had led their destruction. She had seen the glint of pride in his eyes when he had looked upon Harrowdeep’s tribute to his work. He had not changed as much as he claimed. The effete scholar of Sigmar was still in there, making Barradak fail the Gorewolves again and again. He had failed them in this maze. If the red doorway was an escape, it was not his doing.

They were almost at the door. The smell of blood was intoxicating.

‘Khorne calls to us!’ Barradak proclaimed.

‘You’re sure of that, are you?’ said Kroacka.

‘Can you not smell the blood? Or are your senses dulled, Blood Warrior?’

‘Nothing can dull me,’ she said. She was giving him a promise and a warning. If he understood, he ignored her.

You are weaker.

The red haze dazzled. The doorway filled her vision. She couldn’t see Barradak or the others any more. She stepped into the crimson, following the slaughterpriest because there was nowhere else to go.

The light became painful. She shut her eyes and took two more steps into the unknown. Then the light faded, and a sudden, ear-shattering rumble of prayer made her open her eyes.

The grey twilight illumination of Harrowdeep had returned. The Gorechosen stood at the lip of a deep bowl. The smell of blood came from below, from the hundreds of people who filled the bowl, a good fifty feet down. They were all flagellants of Sigmar. She did not see the Transcended among them. This seemed to be another group, an army of the zealots. They were unaware of the arrival of the Gorewolves, too caught up in the indulgence of their suffering.

The hymns were ragged, the voices of the singers hoarse with pain. They struck each other with barbed whips, pleading with Sigmar to forgive their weakness and to give them the strength to die well in his name. Kroacka breathed hard as she stared at them, hate growling in her throat. This was naked weakness. This was where Barradak’s weakness came from. This was why he would, in the end, fail Khorne. A god who smiled on followers that willingly punished themselves rather than a foe was doomed.

The people wailed and thrashed. They were so many maggots squirming in a pit, waiting to be crushed by her boot. And the smell of blood was thick and heady. The flagellants had whipped themselves into a bloody froth, their backs weeping with wounds. Some of the penitents had managed to flay their flesh away in large flaps, and they wore their blood like a tunic.

A steep ramp, a few yards on from the Gorewolves, was the sole way in or out of the bowl. None of the flagellants showed any interest in leaving their pit of self-inflicted suffering. They screamed their devotion to Sigmar, and there was something in their frenzy that Kroacka recognised. It was a half-kinship to her own fury, but it was the expression of devotion to a weakling god. Every throat that gave voice to it must be torn out. The songs would be silenced.

The flagellants outnumbered the Gorewolves a hundred to one. It didn’t matter. The numbers were just more flesh for Kroacka’s axe to sunder.

‘Helvar,’ Barradak muttered under his breath. He seemed unaware that Kroacka could hear him. ‘Why aren’t you here?’ he hissed in hatred.

Then he seemed to recover himself. He was the priest of the greater wrath, and it subsumed his petty hatred. He appeared to grow taller, as if infused by the wind of anger.

‘Blood for the Blood God!’ Barradak shouted. ‘Skulls for the Skull Throne! Slaughter them all! Drown them in the flood of their stinking deaths!’

He ran to the ramp and shot down it, a roaring bolt of wrath and destruction. The words he shouted became a blur to Kroacka, a stream of inspired hate so strong that, pounding along the ramp a half step behind him, she felt as if she were bathed in flame, a meteor descending to shatter the worlds of the weak. In the exhilaration that preceded murder, she could almost believe that Barradak had made this happen, that he had known all along that this massacre would be their reward on the path to the prize in the depths of Harrowdeep.

She could almost believe that. At this moment, she didn’t care that she did not, or that she wanted him dead. She was hungry for prey, and a feast lay before her.

Kroacka leapt off the side of the ramp. Screaming fury, she landed on a flagellant, breaking his back. She stomped on his skull, smashing it like an egg, and the flagellants around her were in such a haze of worshipful pain that they were only gradually becoming aware they were under attack. She hacked three more to death with three quick blows before others finally raised a hand against her.

When the flagellants finally fought back, when they tried to stop her from butchering them, that was when she found the ecstasy of rage. It wasn’t enough just to kill. For the massacre to be real, for her to be truly unleashed, she needed a foe. She needed the enemy to try to kill her. And now they did. They came at her with their puny weapons, and their weakness fuelled her massacre. She smashed their weapons out of the way, shattering wooden staffs and the arms that held them with blows from her massive fists; her goreaxe, the curve of its blade as long as a flagellant’s arm, cut the weaklings in two, and severed their heads, and split open their bellies, and released the flows of the blood, the blood, the blood.

Finally, after so long in Harrowdeep, so long without a true battle, a true slaughter, finally there was blood. Fountains of blood, rivers of blood, a rain of blood. It washed over her, and it tasted of death.

Now and then one of the flagellants managed to hit her. Their blows were weak. They could do nothing to stop her. But some of them drew blood, and those blows did even more damage to the flagellants, because when she felt the sting of a wound, and tasted her own blood, that pushed her to an even greater frenzy. She punished those who dared to strike her, and then she punished the flagellants near them. Her voice was the scream of thunder, and she had punishment for all.

Kroacka hacked her way through the worshippers of Sigmar. Their blood covered her. It sprayed high in the air, and now and then she heard the precious hiss of the jet from arteries. The flagellants went down before her, and she trampled their bodies, snapping spines and crushing necks.

The dying beneath her began to drown. There was so much blood.

So much blood.

At the edge of her awareness came the shouts of the other Gorewolves. There was Rak’s braying laugh of anger, and Zuur’s high-pitched howls of violent delirium. Louder than both, filling the bowl, reigning over the sea of killing it had become, was Barradak’s sermon. His words gave shape to wrath. As Kroacka hit another flagellant, her goreaxe splitting him open from skull to thorax, it seemed as if Khorne himself were commanding her, and guiding her killing strokes.

‘Blood for the Blood God!’ she exulted, and indeed, there was. So much blood.

So much blood.

She could do this forever. She could kill forever in the bowl. No matter how many flagellants she killed, there were always more. They rushed at her in droves, screaming, and they could do nothing except die.

She was wading in blood now, past her ankles. The footing became treacherous, and she stamped harder on the limbs beneath her feet, keeping her stance firm. The flagellants broke against her like waves on a rock, and she killed them even faster.

Barradak’s voice urged her to greater and greater excess. She listened and obeyed. Her distrust did not matter here. He was the vessel for Khorne’s anger, and the rage touched every Gorewolf who heard him. The voice was Barradak’s, but she heard only Khorne, and she did as her god commanded.

More blood, and still more. The level rose, faster than was possible. It was at her knees, and then at her waist. She revelled in the flood, in the currents that flowed against her. She did not think about how there could truly be so much blood. The flagellants kept coming, barely able to move now in the crimson lake, and she kept killing them.

Then, as she clambered higher on a mound of corpses, they shifted and rolled beneath her. She plunged face down into the blood. She thrashed, inhaled, and began to drown. Crimson darkness closed in. Her movements were clumsy, slow. The thick blood held her. She couldn’t find the surface, and a sudden current twisted her around. Her lungs kept drawing in more blood. She thrashed, losing herself in the dark, and then she found her feet again.

She broke the surface, gagging, vomiting blood before she could pull air into her agonised lungs. When she could breathe again, her frenzy had passed.

The blood was up to her neck. Corpses bobbed. They spun in whirlpools. Flagellants were still trying to fight her, but they were smaller than she was, and could not touch the surface. They tried to swim, and one after another they disappeared and did not rise again.

Cataracts poured down the sides of the bowl. There was no fighting up there. Only blood, pouring in to fill the bowl and drown everyone.

Harrowdeep had lied again. The flagellants were a lie, and the blood was too. The Gorewolves had glutted themselves on the butchery Harrowdeep offered them, and they were going to die. Harrowdeep was giving them the blood they demanded, and it was too much.

Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows.

But if the blood was not for him? If the blood was not real?

‘Wretched fool!’ Kroacka shouted. She cursed herself as much as Barradak. She had been taken in by the lie. She had seen what she had wanted to see, just as Barradak had.

She ignored the flagellants. The ones who reached her could not swing weapons through the blood with any speed. She turned around and started forcing her way back towards the ramp.

She was fighting the current. It pushed hard against her. It grabbed her legs and tried to force her down again. She leaned into it. She struggled to keep her balance. If she fell again, she would drown. And the blood was close to her neck now. Before long, it would be over her head, and her armour would hold her beneath the blood tide.

She bumped into another pile of corpses. She almost fell, but then pushed against the bodies. They moved like hidden logs, a tangle of limbs with the bodies floating on the surface holding a large mass of the dead below. Kroacka grabbed an arm, made sure of her grip, and then started to climb. She moved slowly, and managed to get more bodies underneath her feet, giving her a few precious inches in height, holding her head above the rising blood.

The ramp was only a few yards away, next to one of the pounding cataracts, appearing and disappearing in the veils of pink foam and red mist.

She could make it that far.

Kroacka took another step, and the tangle of bodies broke apart. She fell between the drifting arms and legs. She caught her breath at the last second, and she came down on the floor of the bowl. Surrounded by darkness, buffeted by the currents and the bodies, the surface out of reach now, all she had to guide her was the memory of where the ramp was.

She dragged herself forward, her legs heavy as granite. Her lungs were already straining. She had to find the ramp. She had to reach it right away. But the few yards were suddenly leagues. Red sparks in the darkness behind her eyes foretold the coming end. She had to breathe. Will born of anger kept her from giving in. Exploding agony wracked her chest.

She managed another step. And then another. Dead hands brushed her armour. The current hurled flotsam of bone against her.

Red darkness closed down inside her.

Then the floor sloped upwards. She was on the ramp. She surged forward, a last effort, a race against unconsciousness and death.

She breached the blood one pained heartbeat before her lungs escaped her control. She drew air, and it felt like daggers. She kept going, heaving herself up the ramp, gradually gaining speed over the rise of the tide. The blood lapped at her, chasing her all the way.

She reached the lip of the bowl, and the cataracts suddenly ceased pouring from the ceiling. She collapsed, breathing heavily in a calm that had fallen over the bowl like lead. When she could raise her head again, she saw Barradak nearby, just as exhausted, his face riven by anger and despair. There was no sign of Rak or Zuur.

‘The others?’ she rasped.

Barradak shook his head.

Drowned, then. They were both smaller than her and the slaughterpriest.

‘And what was this trial, then? What would the scholar call it?’

‘Gluttony,’ Barradak answered dully.

‘We triumphed, did we?’ she spat.

Barradak said nothing.

Fool. She would have roared at Barradak, but she could barely breathe. She thought about killing him when she could rise again. She glared at him, and he stared back, waiting for her attack.

There was no point. There was nothing left to lead. They were the only two left.

The sea of blood rippled, sluggish with floating bodies.

Harrowdeep paused, waiting for them to begin moving again. The prize was still below. She could feel the maze gathering its trials and lies, eager to show the Gorewolves new wonders.

CHAPTER SIX

Helvar floated in nothing. He was vaguely aware of the solid surface beneath his feet. It was an irrelevance, merely a texture of the darkness and the smothering silence. He had stopped praying and pleading. It was better not to fight against the silence. If he begged for an answer, the absence of one was an agony he could not stand. Better not to ask for anything. Better to do nothing, to give up, to embrace the numbness.

He had no expectations. He had no hopes. Harrowdeep had buried him alive. There was only darkness and silence from now on. He was still breathing. That, too, he thought, would end in time. He wondered if he would notice when he crossed the boundary between life and death.

The darkness was thick as an ocean. Soon, he really would be floating. His feet would rise from the floor, he would spread his arms, and he would drift on a current of nothing into the eternity of nothing.

Light returned. It came back, not as a slow return of dawn, but as an eye-blink. There was darkness, and then there was twilight. Helvar’s balance wavered, shaken by the sudden return of sensation and the sharp realisation that he was standing, not floating. Disoriented, he stumbled backwards into a wall, his heart pounding.

Have I been walking?

He didn’t know. He must have been. Either he was no longer in the dark, mirrored maze, or the space had transformed itself. He was in one of Harrowdeep’s long tunnels again, back in the web of confusing sameness that had trapped the Transcended for so long before they had found the Penumbral Falls. He stood in the realm of grey light and grey stone once more. He jerked away from the wall, away from the trickling of shadow magic, reaching through his robe with leeching insinuations.

He was not alone; the other Transcended were here. What was left of them. Their numbers had been cut in half, and all looked as confused and distressed as he felt.

The first to speak was Stuyan. ‘Evisa?’ he whispered, looking around for his sister. ‘Evisa!’ he called, his voice growing strong again in the anticipation of grief.

‘She is gone,’ Helvar said. He tried to find the right tone of authority and compassion. The moment was a critical one. The Transcended must find their purpose again. The instant the light had returned, he had felt the call of the holy warhammer once more. It was his duty to lead these flagellants. He was their prophet, and that meant shaping their understanding and giving it the right meaning. ‘Evisa gave her life for Sigmar,’ he told Stuyan. ‘She died joyously, and heroically.’

‘You saw what happened?’

‘I did. She fought well. A Gorewolf died with her.’

That much was true, no matter who it was that Helvar had killed himself. Unease gnawed inside Helvar’s chest, and he tried to push away the memory of Evisa’s two deaths. I am not lying to Stuyan. I am telling him what he needs to hear.

‘How can you know that what you saw was true?’ Valya asked.

He turned to her, draping himself in quiet solemnity. ‘The illusions of Harrowdeep are powerful, it is true. Some truths, though, are too strong to hide. Harrowdeep tried to deceive me about Evisa’s fate. It failed. She died fighting. She had a martyr’s end, the end that will be ours, all of us, in the name and for the glory of Sigmar.’

Valya looked back at him, her gaze steady, her face like stone. Helvar did not like what he saw. She was scrutinising him, and perhaps judging. That was not her role.

She has been damaged by the silence. It has hurt us all.

He had to be strong for all of them. Stronger than he felt he could be.

Helvar turned back to Stuyan before Valya could answer and perhaps challenge him. ‘Her sacrifice was not in vain,’ he said. ‘Thanks to her, and to all our fallen, we have come through another trial. The way is open to us once again, to find what Sigmar has sent us to claim.’

‘What trial was this?’ Valya asked.

Helvar had had time to think about that in the dark and the silence. So much time. He had found no answer then. There had been no answers of any kind, especially from Sigmar. He had been consumed by a sense of failure. Whatever the trial had been, it had defeated him utterly. His loss was so absolute, he had given up the idea that there had ever been a trial at all. There was only nothing. So it would be forever, and so it had ever been.

But the nothing had ended. He had come through. The Transcended had passed through the darkness. He should feel glad, triumphant. The strength of his faith should shatter mountains. Instead, it felt brittle, and he was ashamed of the doubts that squirmed beneath his skin.

I will not fail you again, Sigmar. I will fight for you with ten times the fire than before.

Valya was waiting for an answer. Helvar didn’t think he had hesitated for more than a moment, yet her gaze was growing colder and harder.

‘It was the trial of anger,’ Helvar said. Did he speak from inspiration or desperation? Valya’s frown urged him on, and the words began to flow. ‘When we fought in the maze, Harrowdeep sought to consume us with impotent fury. There was rage, but we could not close with the foe and deliver the judgement of Sigmar.’

Valya was unconvinced. ‘Then we failed.’ She gestured at the diminished numbers of the Transcended.

‘We triumphed,’ Helvar said. ‘Some of our battles were real, and their righteous anger broke through Harrowdeep’s deception. How did we escape the maze? When we no longer raged futilely. When calm descended upon us, we escaped.’

The words came easily. He could go on if he had to, shoring up the argument, expanding it as much as anyone would ask. The words also sounded false. He did believe that they had been tortured with useless anger, but he had trouble convincing himself there had been a victory. Anger had been followed by silence, and the wound of the silence festered, eating deeper and deeper into his soul.

But we are here. Our purpose is unchanged. We have won our way to this point.

Empty words, crying against the encroaching hollowness.

His voice stayed firm, however. He was as set on the prize as he ever was. Surely that proved Sigmar yet watched over him?

It must. It must.

‘For Sigmar,’ Stuyan was saying under his breath. ‘For Sigmar, for Sigmar, for Sigmar.’ A monotone chant, reminding himself of what he believed.

‘Yes, for Sigmar,’ said Helvar. He started down the hall. ‘We march for Sigmar here and always. The weapon and the glory of martyrdom wait for us below.’

The others followed. They began to pray. Their voices sounded frayed, the sacred chants no longer the source of internal fire they had been. Still, they were following him. No matter how much their morale had been weakened, they heeded the call of the prize.

Valya did not sing.

The corridor ended at another iron door. Helvar yanked it open with a show of more confidence than he felt. The Transcended passed through, and entered a gallery. Its architecture was the same as the one that had surrounded the Penumbral Falls. It looked out to the left. Screams and roars and the sound of battle drew the flagellants to the stone railing.

Far below, the Gorewolves were slaughtering the faithful.

‘This isn’t right,’ Ista protested. ‘How can this be happening?’

The dying pleaded to Sigmar. Their fellows shouted his praise as they fought the Gorewolves. There were only four of Khorne’s warriors, yet they cut through the hundreds of flagellants effortlessly. Blood pooled in the bowl, a spreading and rising stain.

‘Who are they?’ Valya asked. ‘Where did they come from?’

‘How did we come here?’ Helvar answered. ‘They came the same way. Perhaps from a hundred places to be gathered here.’

‘And is this their destiny?’ Valya demanded. ‘Do they die for Sigmar or for Khorne?’

Helvar had no answer for her. All he saw was meaningless death. The slaughter mocked the zeal of the flagellants. Barradak was down there. He could see the slaughterpriest, the traitor to Sigmar, to duty, and to his betters. Hate twisted in Helvar’s chest. To see his foe again, and once again be unable to make him bleed, made him tremble in fury.

‘We have to help them,’ said Stuyan.

‘How?’ Valya asked. ‘There is no way down.’

‘Then we have to find one!’

‘We must go down,’ Helvar said. The words caused him more pain. ‘But not there. That is not our goal. We are called elsewhere. We must not deviate from our path.’ It was hard to speak. The massacre sickened him with anger, but he would not give in to that helplessness again. ‘That is not our destiny. It may be that the fate of those martyrs is to hold the enemy in this place so that we might fulfil our task.’ I will wield the hammer, and I will see you die, Barradak.

‘You think that is the meaning of their deaths,’ said Valya. ‘All of them are dying for the purpose of delaying the Gorewolves.’ Not long ago, she would have asked this of Helvar with a respect that, despite his deep commitment to humility, he liked to think was close to awe. There was no question at all in her tone now. Only a flat, disappointed anger.

‘The meaning of their deaths will be made manifest when we fulfil our destiny,’ Helvar said. He could not look at the massacre any longer. All he saw was blood, and dark figures struggling like flies. The martyrs’ praise of Sigmar hurt him. If he watched the killing to the end, he might not be able to believe in what he was saying.

Helvar pushed himself away from the railing and started down the gallery. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Turn your backs on the crime below. Stay true to our purpose, and we will make the Khornate scum pay. Then you will know that even this martyrdom is glorious.’

Helvar refused to look down again. He did not look back. He heard the Transcended begin to follow.

‘But why are they dying?’ Stuyan said. ‘They shouldn’t be dying, not against four. How can this be?’

‘We will always have questions that pain us,’ said Helvar. ‘Yet faith sustains us. We will strike for Sigmar. Know that. We will bring his anger to the foe.’ He kept walking, and the rest of the Transcended pulled themselves away from the sight of the horror to follow him.

The gallery led to a tunnel that twisted down steeply. Helvar wondered at first if this would bring them to the scene of the battle after all. The idea distressed him. That bowl would be another delay on the way to the prize. The tunnel twisted around on itself so many times that he lost all sense of direction again. He prepared himself to wade into the blood at its end.

He began to hear chants of praise. He knew the hymns well. They all did.

‘I only hear the songs,’ said Valya. ‘Shouldn’t we be hearing battle?’

It wasn’t only the absence of the clash of arms or the shouts of struggle that were missing. There was no strain in the voices. There was only joy. These were the songs of fulfilment, of an ecstasy that could come after death.

The joy stabbed Helvar’s heart. The closer he came to the source of the singing, and the clearer the joy became, the deeper the dagger plunged. The pain became sharper, its shape more precise. Before long, it would be something that he knew too well, and he did not want to face.

From behind, he heard sharp gasps. He was not alone in his pain.

The tunnel levelled off, and it brought the Transcended into another great hall, larger than any they had seen yet in Harrowdeep. The quality of the light changed, shifting from grey to the blue of falling night, shading darker in the higher reaches of the space. Helvar could not guess how high the ceiling was, because there did not appear to be one. The dark blue went on forever, so deep it made him dizzy. He felt as if he could fall up into it. The ceiling was a sky, and the sky was full of motion.

Four immense statues stood in the hall. There was nothing else except them, only the great space and the statues, obsidian silhouettes reaching up to the sky.

They might have been human – they had the shape, though possessed no features. They might have been gods. They might have been mountains. Their heads were rounded masses rising from their shoulders, and though they had no necks, it seemed to Helvar that their heads were tilted back. He thought he could see mouths, a hint of an even darker depression in the stone.

The singing, loud and joyous, rose from the statues – but they were not its origin. Streams of brilliant light flowed up from the upraised hands of the giants. White streaked with gold, the streams wavered like ribbons dancing in an aethereal wind. As Helvar stared at them, he gradually made out details in the light, and saw that they were composed of human figures, flying ecstatically up into the sky. There they swirled with each other in a spinning dance before spiralling off into the deeper blue and finally disappearing.

‘What are they?’ said Stuyan. Pain and wonder cracked his voice.

‘The dead,’ said Valya, speaking slowly, clearly uncertain of her own interpretation. ‘The spirits of the warriors being murdered by the Gorewolves.’

It is not her place to make such pronouncements. That is the role of the prophet. Stop her.

Except she was right. The songs were the same ones Helvar had heard coming from the bowl. There was no more struggle in the hymns, no more pain. Only the joy of release.

‘Their task is done,’ said Stuyan, taking the truth of what Valya had said for granted and expanding upon it himself. ‘They rise in glory to Azyr.’

‘Sigmar!’ the others cried with heartfelt longing. This was the reward they sought.

Helvar said nothing. He felt the longing too. He envied the souls. He envied their ecstasy. And yet… ‘Wait,’ he said, but only as a whisper. No one heard. ‘Wait.’ Things could not be what they seemed. It was too simple, too neat. Such joy had no place in Harrowdeep. ‘Wait.’

Why was he saying that? What action did he hope to forestall?

He learned the answer a few moments later. Stuyan rushed towards the nearest statue. ‘Sigmar!’ he begged. ‘Free us from this prison! Take us now!’

The others began to run with him.

‘Stop!’ Helvar shouted.

Why? Because you are not leading them?

He wanted to run too. Envy of the blessed dead twisted his heart. The weapon below still called to him, but the call seemed less urgent when real transcendence was before him.

In spite of himself, he began to walk towards the statue too.

The heads of the statues moved. Their strange, unseeing masses turned down, as if gazing at the Transcended.

Those marks in the stone were mouths. Helvar saw them clearly now. Perfectly round maws. His blood turned cold, because the shape of the mouths was the shape of agony. Dread stopped his breath, but it did not stop him from drawing closer. The sight and sound of the dead escaping Harrowdeep in beatitude was too strong.

The statues screamed.

Their shrieks were soundless, coming from one soul and resonating directly with another. When the screams hit Helvar, their blow was the resurrection of memory, memory scoured of all the scar tissue that made it possible to live with the past.

Helvar doubled over, keening. He was ten years old again, seeing his mother die of a plague of Nurgle, her flesh flaking away like parchment to reveal crawling, wingless flies beneath. The pain, the horror and the fear were even worse than they had been then because they took him by surprise, and because they had festered in the shadows for decades, building up their strength. It was his first and greatest grief, come again to claim him. It stopped him where he stood. He could not advance.

The other Transcended wailed their own traumas. Some had fallen. Others were on their knees. All of them writhed in the clutches of the worst moments of their lives.

‘Lies,’ Helvar gasped. With a shout of pain, he forced himself to stand upright. ‘Lies!’ he shouted. ‘More mockery from Harrowdeep! There is nothing here from Sigmar! These abominations seek to torture us through our faith! Destroy them!’

He stumbled forward, wading through the emotional torment strong as a hurricane. ‘Destroy them!’ he raged again.

Urged by his voice and by their pain, the Transcended obeyed. They stood and rushed at the statues. They were unsteady but desperate in their fury. Lies or not, when Helvar looked at the dancing, exulting shades of the dead flagellants, his chest burned with a hatred born of envy. He wanted that joy. It didn’t matter if the representation of it was an illusion. It was the promise that lay at the end of his struggle. It was the brilliance that waited on the other side of martyrdom’s horizon. The statues showed him what he could not have, and then plunged him into the worst experience of the muck of life.

Screaming, he swung his staff against the obsidian foot of the first statue. The other flagellants were with him, and they struck with clubs and hammers with the same envious anger.

The fragment of Helvar’s consciousness that remained rational knew they could do nothing against the statues. They were hammering on legs that were columns of stone five feet wide. All they could do was smash their weapons and exhaust themselves in the futility of the effort. Yet they had to attack the lie. He could do nothing else except fight against the vision of joy that was ripping him apart. ‘Truth of Sigmar, give us strength!’ he howled. ‘Lord of Azyr, destroy the lies!’

The stone cracked under the assault. The perfect shine of obsidian webbed with cracks. Powder drifted, and the fractures spread up the length of the legs. The departing spirits faltered in their song. Dark ripples rushed over the ceiling sky.

‘See!’ said Helvar. ‘Sigmar answers our cry. Through him we have the might to shatter the horrors and their falsehoods!’

The statue trembled, as if it were alive and feared them.

‘Destroy them all!’ Helvar commanded. ‘End the lies!’ End the joy that cannot be ours.

The statue cracked. It began to waver. Emboldened and maddened, the Transcended spread to the other three massive figures and attacked them too. The shattering began almost immediately, the weakness of one statue spreading to the others.

The blessed dead no longer sang. They cried out, pleading for mercy. Their pain became Helvar’s. It made him hate them even more. Biting back a scream, he smashed at the statue’s legs with even greater ferocity.

Brittle as glass, the leg exploded into fragments. So did one of the limbs on each of the other statues. The giants swayed. The remaining leg of each snapped in the middle, and the torsos toppled forward.

The Transcended scattered from the paths of the falls. Helvar rushed to the side and looked up, triumphant, at the giant he had slain. The dark immensity fell, huge and heavy as the night, crashing to the floor. The four monsters died in thunder. The room shook with their defeat, the bodies broken into hundreds of jagged fragments.

At the moment of impact, the statues screamed again. With them screamed all the souls in the swirling sky. The noise slammed into Helvar, and its meaning burst inside his mind, a molten epiphany. The statues and the spirits shrieked in disbelief, in horror, and in grief. They screamed because Sigmar’s faithful had, in their jealousy, destroyed the reward of others.

The pain of the scream was so huge, Helvar’s mind refused to believe it was another lie. Only something true could hurt the way this did. He screamed too, and staggered back and forth, wracked with paroxysms of grief. Every wound to the heart he had ever experienced in his life came back all at once. The compounded agony of the past threatened to snap him in half.

The dust of the collapse settled, and the souls vanished with a final moan of despair. Helvar’s followers sobbed, riven by the knowledge of what they had done.

Valya found her breath first, and she rounded on Helvar. ‘Lies?’ she said. ‘Lies? You are the liar!’

Her attack roused him from the depths of his pain. ‘Be still,’ he snapped. ‘You do not know what you are say–’

‘I do not know?’ she said, cutting him off. ‘You do not know. You know nothing!’ She turned to the others. ‘How has he led us in Harrowdeep? He has been as lost as the rest of us, but in his arrogance claimed to know what he did not, and has taken us from tragedy to tragedy. And now… this!’ Valya took a long, shuddering, agonised breath. ‘He is no prophet,’ she said.

‘Valya…’ Stuyan said, the protest reflexive, automatic. Then he stopped. For the first time, he looked at Helvar with real doubt.

The others were silent. They were waiting for him to respond, to prove Valya wrong, reclaim his authority and restore their faith. If he could.

Helvar looked for the words that would end Valya’s challenge. They would not come. The pain at what had been done in this hall was too great.

‘You are arrogant,’ Valya said. ‘You lie to us, and you lie to yourself. Your faith is the tool of your pride.’ Her sentences fell like the blows of a hammer on a coffin nail. ‘Sigmar does not speak to you, and you do not speak for him. You are no prophet. You are a fool.’

She stopped. The hall grew quiet. There were no more cries now. There was only the slow drift of dust, a pall settling over a grave.

But the warhammer…

It called to him yet. The pull, sharp as a hook, cut through the turmoil in his soul. The prize was waiting. The purpose of the Transcended had not been fulfilled.

If Valya breaks the faith of the others, how will we do what Sigmar has commanded of us?

Helvar’s eyes narrowed. Did she understand what she was doing?

Perhaps she understands better than you think.

Perhaps there was a deeper reason why she was denouncing him.

‘Have a care what you say,’ he warned.

‘And you have nothing to say to us any longer,’ she said, spitting contempt. She had been faithful, the most unblinking and steadfast of the Transcended. No longer.

They stared at each other, and the tension edged towards the point of no return.

‘Stuyan?’

The cry came from the darkness beyond the doorway on the other side of the hall. It was plaintive, lost. Helvar did not recognise it at first, though the sound made his flesh crawl.

Stuyan had turned pale.

‘Stuyan?’ The voice came closer.

‘Evisa?’ Stuyan whispered.

Helvar’s throat dried. He swallowed convulsively, and it hurt. He faced the doorway, willing the voice to cease, for nothing to emerge from the darkness.

Another lie. This is another lie. Everything is lies, and this most of all. This cannot be.

‘Stuyan?’ Louder. Unmistakeable.

‘Evisa!’ Stuyan shouted. He ran to the doorway.

His sister walked into the hall. She looked confused and frightened, but unharmed.

She was not alone.

Behind her came the fallen of the Transcended.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Barradak waited for Kroacka to attack. When she didn’t, he turned his back on her and made for the archway that led out of the bowl.

Go on. Take your vengeance. Try it. I will teach you your place and reap your skull for Khorne.

The thought had little passion behind it. He did not have the energy to speak it. He felt drained, and his anger was a rote exercise, nothing more.

Threatening shouts came from beyond the archway. The voices were familiar, and Barradak dismissed them as more of Harrowdeep’s trickery.

‘You hear that?’ Kroacka said.

‘I do. I will not be fooled.’

He marched through the archway and into a circular hall, hundreds of feet wide. Its ceiling was a shallow dome engraved with a perfect spiral of gold and bronze. Stone benches sat on the periphery, waiting for an audience.

The dead Gorewolves were here. Zuur and Rak stood together, a few yards from the entrance. They faced Yrgak and Govar, and all four were on the verge of attack.

‘You were killed in the maze, or you are cowards and ran,’ Zuur snarled.

‘What about you?’ said Govar. ‘Are you alive? Do you know how you got here?’

Zuur looked troubled, then took a step forward. ‘Come and see how alive I am.’

Then the bloodreavers saw Barradak and Kroacka. They eyed the most powerful of the Gorewolves warily.

‘You are all lies,’ Barradak said, but the suspicion in their eyes gave him pause. Could illusions distrust, and think others were illusions?

Kroacka didn’t hesitate. ‘All of you died. None of you are real. But let’s see if you bleed anyway.’ She ran at Zuur and slammed her goreaxe into his chest, cutting his torso in half. She spun and hit Rak between the eyes before he could react. Barradak charged at the other two. Yrgak hesitated, his awe of the slaughterpriest’s authority holding him in place for a heartbeat. Govar, blazing with anger and betrayal, came at Barradak with maddened bravery.

Barradak threw the wrath-hammer at Govar and took off the top of his skull before he was even close enough to swing his blade. Yrgak reacted now, but too late. He could only try to block the hackblade, but he was not big or strong enough to withstand Barradak’s momentum. His head flipped back, a fresh maw where his throat had been. His body pivoted, arms jerking, and then fell.

Barradak and Kroacka stood over the corpses, waiting for the illusion to end. It didn’t, not right away. The blood pooled by the corpses. The smell of warm innards filled Barradak’s nose. He kicked at Yrgak’s blade. It skittered a few yards, scraping against stone.

He frowned.

‘They were dead, weren’t they?’ said Kroacka.

Barradak looked at her. Though her helm covered the top half of her face, he could sense she was mirroring his frown. ‘I saw Rak and Zuur drown,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see what happened to Yrgak and Govar in the maze. Did you?’

‘No.’

Could they have survived? Just become lost? It was possible. But that did not explain Rak and Zuur.

Barradak looked back down at Yrgak.

The body was gone.

He looked for Govar. He had disappeared as well.

‘What?’ said Kroacka, and Barradak knew that the other two bodies had also vanished.

Illusions, then. As he had thought.

Except the blood was still there. The weapons were gone, but the signs of death remained.

‘Blood for the Blood God,’ Barradak said. The moment he spoke, he knew he was wrong.

Then, one after the other, all four bloodreavers walked into the hall from a doorway on the far side. They looked confused, uncertain as to how they came to be there. They stared at Barradak and Kroacka with anger, and kept their distance. They moved away from one another too, just as suspicious of their fellow resurrected.

‘Khorne…’ Barradak whispered, unable to form the prayer. ‘For you… All the deaths… For you…’

Only there were no deaths for the Blood God. Understanding staggered him. He might have been kneeling in the street in Murmurus again. The most fundamental of his certainties cracked, split and fell, a rain of broken glass.

No death in Harrowdeep.

No. No. That could not be. If there was no death, then all the blood that flowed was without purpose. It flowed in a circle, and not for the Blood God. No skulls would reach the Skull Throne.

There was no violence for its own sake. The violence had no sake at all.

I will not believe it. No. I will not.

He could not will himself into faith. He began to feel as he had in the darkness, when Khorne had fallen silent. There was no inspiration again now. No words of rage, no fire to stoke. A terrible nothing was closing in on him.

The others were standing still. Even Kroacka was unmoored. They all saw what this meant, and that meaning itself, the meaning that was the cornerstone of their existence, was crumbling.

No no no no no no no no…

The weapon.

Barradak roared, and the Gorewolves turned to him for leadership, ready to rend him apart if he failed them now.

The call was there. It had not left him. It pulled as strongly as ever.

‘The axe,’ he said. ‘The axe for Khorne.’

Kroacka nodded. So did the four bloodreavers. They were still being called too. It was all they had left. But it was real. Khorne demanded they claim the weapon, and so they would.

If they claimed it, then the illusion of meaninglessness would vanish.

It must.

But how do we get there?

We will. They had to. They had to reach the weapon before Helvar and his foetid band did, and he would finally bring down the arrogance of the Sannhets.

Hatred, concentrated and pure, ran through his veins. The moment he pictured Helvar’s decapitated head, Harrowdeep answered his hate. With a rumble of stone that sounded too much like laughter, the floor vibrated, and they began to descend. After the first ten feet, the walls on the right side of the chamber disappeared, leaving only darkness.

On the left side, more and more rows of benches appeared. Not all of them were empty.

The floor dropped, faster, and Barradak braced his feet to remain standing. The call of the weapon became a shout.

We are close.

An ending was at hand.

‘Stop!’ Helvar commanded, his hand raised. The Transcended paused, but Stuyan was already embracing his sister, and a few of the others were only a pace or two away from the returned. ‘That is not Evisa. Those are not our lost comrades.’

‘But I am,’ Evisa protested.

Stuyan did not let her go. ‘She is,’ he said. ‘I would know if this was not her.’

Helvar came closer, and stopped a few feet away. He was within reach if he had to strike her down. ‘I saw her die,’ he said.

Evisa jerked, and her eyes widened as if at the sudden return of memory. ‘You…’ she said, her voice hoarse with grief. ‘You killed me.’

‘So. You reveal yourself. I killed an image of you, but it was a servant of Khorne. I killed that, and if you have returned, then you are an even greater monstrosity.’ He brought his staff down with a sharp crack on the floor. ‘Slay this imposter. Kill all of them.’

‘No!’ Stuyan said, stepping in front of Evisa. The rest of the Transcended made no move to attack.

‘You do not command us any longer,’ Valya told Helvar.

‘Look,’ said Helvar. ‘Akavan is here too.’ The man flinched away from him. ‘We all saw him die in the hall of echoes. That was long before the mirrors and their illusions.’

‘I’m not an illusion,’ Akavan said, plaintive. Then, more forcefully, as if in making others understand, he might finally understand too, ‘I died. I remember that. And then I was wandering the halls.’

‘We all were,’ said Evisa. ‘Until we found each other, and then we found the rest of you.’

Valya squeezed her shoulder. ‘She is real,’ she said. ‘She is no phantom.’

‘But how are we alive?’ Evisa asked. She spoke to Valya, not to Helvar. No one was looking to him for answers. ‘What is happening to us? Why are we still here? Why aren’t we with Sigmar?’

‘Didn’t we die well enough?’ said Akavan. ‘Have we failed Sigmar? Are we being punished?’

Questions, one after the other, and no answers for any of them. The distress in the Transcended rose with each question, the living and the resurrected alike stricken with the doubts that grew and grew.

Helvar said nothing. Every question was a blow for him too. There were no answers. None.

Except one.

It was the answer to a question no one had asked. The question was too great, too frightening, too final. He tried to fend the question off. It would not be brushed aside. Evisa had brought it into being with her arrival.

What if there is no death?

Helvar struggled to keep breathing. He leaned against his staff to stop himself from falling.

With the question upon him, the answer was too. If there was no death, there was no martyrdom. If there was no martyrdom, there was no meaning.

There must be another answer. There must be.

The Transcended stared at each other, and then, first a few, and then all of them, at him. The answer had cursed them, too, and they needed him to exorcise it.

If you do nothing else well, do this, at least.

But he couldn’t help. And they didn’t trust him. So why did they even look at him?

Because there was nowhere else for them to turn.

And where am I to turn?

Then, pulsing, pulling, painful yet welcome, the other answer came. The warhammer, the sacred prize, was calling yet. Nothing had changed. Their quest lay before them. It could not be abandoned.

The others would not kill the returned Transcended. Maybe they were right. Maybe it was futile to try, though he did not want to go down that path of thought all the way again. He had to hold on to the belief that death, at some level, was final. This return was a miracle or an illusion, but it could not and must not be repeated.

So he did not repeat his command, and see the remains of his authority shredded even further.

‘Whatever has happened to some and all of us does not matter,’ he said. ‘That we do not understand what has happened does not matter, either. Mysteries have attended us all our lives, and they are deeper yet in Harrowdeep. Do not let them deviate you from our purpose. That is as it was since the Penumbral Falls. The weapon Sigmar sent us to claim lies below. That is our purpose. We must not fail. I know that all of you can feel its presence, and its call.’

There were murmurs of agreement. Valya remained hostile.

‘You mean to claim it for yourself,’ she said.

Just as you do, he thought with a flash of anger. Just as all of you do. ‘No,’ he said, because he must, and because there was a right thing to do. ‘I mean for one of us, any of us, to wield it for Sigmar.’

Valya’s lip curled. She didn’t believe him. Neither did he. It didn’t matter. The weapon was the last chance any of them had to preserve meaning in their existence. It had become the guarantor for their faith, whether or not any of them would admit to that heretical truth.

Is this our trial of apostasy? he wondered.

If it is, we will triumph over it, like all the others. We have passed through pride and wrath and envy. We will triumph here too.

He had to believe in their victories. We are still here. We fight on. If we had failed, then we would have been destroyed.

They would reach the warhammer. That was the truth they would make manifest.

And then…

Unbidden, the thought came of the punishment he would mete out to Barradak. The hate that had coursed through his veins since he had discovered that Barradak was here in Harrowdeep flared brightly.

Everything else was riven by doubts. His hate was strong and unbending. It burned, searing as the light of Hysh, and the hall began to tilt.

The angle of the floor dropped precipitously, throwing the Transcended off their feet. They slid down, scrabbling against smooth stone for purchase. Around them, the hall unmade itself. As the walls to the left became the new floor, they faded into darkness. An abyss gaped before the Transcended. Helvar slid towards it, picking up speed. There was nothing to arrest his descent. And as the floor became a wall, it started to curve inwards.

Just before the flagellants pitched into the darkness, ledges emerged from the steepening slope. The Transcended came down hard on the last one. It extended out a foot and more, and ran the entire length of the curve. More ledges appeared above at regular intervals. The chamber was becoming a new thing, one that Helvar could almost recognise, as, bruised, his fingers bleeding from torn nails, he clung to the ledge.

The grinding of stone was loud enough to taste. Helvar’s bones vibrated from the din. He could barely think. He could do nothing but stay on the ledge and wait for the change to end.

The grinding stopped, and the light grew brighter. A new ceiling of grey marble covered a vast space, its entire surface taken up by a fresco of overlapping eyes. From a huge eye in the centre of the ceiling, the Penumbral Falls fell, a cataract gossamer as hair.

The nature of the ledges revealed itself. They were stone benches, lining the circumference of a theatre.

The theatre had an audience. Scattered around the benches were figures, so utterly motionless Helvar thought they were stone. Yet he could feel their gaze upon him, impassive in its amusement. They were as dark as the great statues had been, their features, if they had any, obscured. Helvar was sure, though, that if he could get close enough to see their faces, he would know them.

On the other side of the floor of the theatre, the Gorewolves were gathered, their numbers undiminished from when Helvar had first seen them. So they had had their resurrections, too.

As the warbands got to their feet and became aware of the presence of the other, the grinding began again. A column of rough, unpolished granite rose, twisting, from the centre of the floor. Steps, crude as an afterthought, had been carved into it, climbing up in a spiral path. At the top of the column, its haft plunged into a block of perfectly black stone, was the warhammer. The column stopped its growth with the weapon held twenty feet high. Golden light bathed the prize, and the fall of shadow magic wavered around it like a veil. The light was holy light, and Helvar started to weep with gratitude.

Then he looked back down at Barradak, and his sob became a snarl of hate.

Deep crimson light shone from the top of the column. Blood, from nowhere and always fresh, dripped slowly from the edges of the axe blade. Barradak took in the sight of the prize, and of the flagellants.

And of Helvar.

Triumphant rage gave way to perfect hatred.

‘Skulls for the Skull Throne!’ Barradak shouted. He led the charge forward. ‘But the Sannhet skull is mine to send to Khorne!’

The Transcended sprinted towards the base of the pillar from the other side of the arena. The Gorewolves raced them to it.

The axe is not for you, Helvar. It is for me to turn you and your pride into broken meat.

Barradak howled. His voice was flame and blade, and the lightning of rage, and at its sound two of the flagellants fell to the ground, writhing as their blood exploded in steam from their eyes. The others shrieked their praise of Sigmar, and the warbands collided at the pillar.

Barradak barely saw them as opponents. They were a wave of flesh that sought to stop him, and he tore them apart with blade and wrath-hammer. They were numerous, but each was weaker than his bloodreavers, and they were no match for him. He hacked left and right, and in a few blows he had the way clear to the stairs.

Something huge and massively strong hit him from behind. He twisted as he fell and landed on his back. Kroacka loomed over him. ‘The axe is not for you,’ she growled.

Before she could raise her goreaxe to hit him again, flagellants swarmed her, striking with crude swords and spiked clubs. They had little effect against her armour, but still more of the Transcended climbed onto her back, and the weight of the attack brought her to her knees.

Barradak jumped up and left her to her battle. If she was still alive, he would kill her when he returned.

Kroacka had cost him a few seconds, and they were too precious to have lost. Helvar was already on the stairs. He raced, sure-footed, for the top.

‘Sannhet!’ Barradak shrieked, and he pursued.

The rage that came up after Helvar was full of thunder. There was terror in it, too. He heard it because he shared it, the terror of doubt.

Barradak was huge, and he was fast. But the steps in the column were narrow, easier for someone smaller. Helvar took them fast, too fast. One foot wrong, and he would lose it all. His heart pounded in fear. He was no match for Barradak.

Not unless he held the warhammer.

Need kept him going.

Hate gave him wings.

But Barradak had his hate too.

Helvar ducked, sensing danger. A spiked ball slammed into the column just above his head. Rock chips burst, tearing his face, and he wavered and almost fell. He lunged forward again, and a hand grasped at the trailing end of his robe.

His staff was slowing him down, but until he held the hammer, he could not risk being defenceless. He kept going, rounded the column again, almost at the top. He glanced back.

Barradak wasn’t behind him.

He couldn’t have given up.

Panic gripped Helvar. He’s climbing! He pounded up the stairs, barely glancing at them. Only speed mattered now. If caution slowed him, that was as bad as a fall.

He reached the top at the same time Barradak appeared on the other side of the column. He had dropped his weapons so he could grip the stone and propel himself up. The black stone of the plinth lay between them. The warhammer blazed with golden light.

The axe burned with the glow of blood. Barradak met Helvar’s eyes as they leapt for the weapon.

The two priests seized the haft of the weapon at the same moment. They did not do so in zeal or in wrath, but in hate.

At their touch, the light vanished.

They held only dust.

They stared at the emptiness in their hands, and then faced each other across the barren stone. Its surface was unbroken, as if there had never been anything real here at all. They stared at one another, and the full understanding they had been fleeing came for them, jaws agape. They saw how they had failed every trial, and the great trial of hate, the one that had governed their actions throughout all the halls of Harrowdeep, that was the one they had failed most of all. There were no doubts now, all of them destroyed by the coming of the worst of certainties.

Meaninglessness was here. It took their faith and devoured it.

Screaming, they attacked, intent on destroying the mirror each had become for the other. They saw the death of their faith reflected back at themselves, and hated each other all the more for the despair they shared.

Helvar twisted his blade into Barradak’s throat as the slaughterpriest leapt over the stone at him. Barradak fell hard, tearing the wound fatally wide. He snapped the staff in half, but the blade remained in his throat. He rammed the broken shaft through Helvar’s chest and out through his back.

Helvar fell backwards from the top of the column. As he dropped, his vision already dimming, he saw the slaughter below, the massacre of all by all, and he dared to hope that this, at least, was the end.

One last lie.

EPILOGUE

An end to lies. And to the illusion of trials.

Helvar and the Transcended stood on a gallery surrounding the Penumbral Falls. It could have been the same one on which he had first heard the call from the depths. He didn’t think it was. It felt much further down the shaft, though to look up or to look down was to stare into the infinite and the dark.

Nothing called. There was no quest. There was no meaning. There was no hope.

There were the Gorewolves, though. One gallery up and across from Helvar’s position. Present and out of reach again. Barradak stared back at Helvar, his eyes hollow and empty of everything except the one thing that belonged to them both.

The Transcended moaned. There were no prayers. There was madness. There was despair. There could be no death; Helvar saw that now. They all did. No death, but endless, pointless butchery, flesh eternally torn with no sacrifice. Nothing for any god.

No purpose. Only descent. Forever.

Barradak and the Gorewolves screamed with the same knowledge, the one that came as the death knell of rational thought.

Well, said a soundless voice from nowhere, the voice of the halls, the voice of Harrowdeep. Let us continue.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Gary Kloster is a writer, a stay-at-home father, a librarian and a martial artist – sometimes all in the same day, seldom all at the same time. He lives among the corn in the American Midwest and his short fiction can be found in Analog, Apex, Clarkesworld and others. For Black Library, he has written the Necromunda novella Spark of Revolution, and a number of short stories.

Noah Van Nguyen is a writer of speculative fiction who lives and works in Vietnam. After a stint in the military, he tried his hand at translating, copywriting and teaching English. He intends to keep writing fiction as long as the coffee keeps flowing, which his wife has promised is never-ending. This has so far turned out to be true and the matter is now pending Inquisitorial investigation. His work for Black Library includes the short stories ‘Vova’s Climb’ and ‘No Third Chance’.

David Annandale is the author of the Warhammer Horror novel The House of Night and Chain and the novella The Faith and the Flesh, which features in the portmanteau The Wicked and the Damned. His work for the Horus Heresy series 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 Ephrael Stern: The Heretic Saint, 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 and Neferata: The Dominion of Bones. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

An extract from Cursed City.

Though the shutters were barred, and the doors bolted, the Black Ship was more alive in the long hours of the night than it had been during the dreary grey day. The tavern was ablaze with the light of whale-oil lamps and its common room rumbled with the clamour of a hundred raucous conversations, people huddling together in the warmth that was absent in the cold streets. Flagons of ale, steins of beer, bottles of pungent vodka and glasses of dark wine were carried to patrons throughout the building’s three levels, borne upon wide copper trays by the buxom, strong-armed beer maidens employed by Effrim Karzah, the establishment’s roguish proprietor. Notes of music crawled through the rooms as a rotund performer worked a hurdy-gurdy and bellowed salacious sea shanties.

A long casketwood bar dominated one side of the common room. Patrons flocked to the counter, loudly shouting for more drink. Whalers with salt-encrusted slickers would brush shoulders with crookbacked lobstermen, their fingers and hands scarred from the claws of their catch. Stokers who worked the immense try pots to render blubber into oil sought to cool their hot work with cold ales. Drovers and stevedores propped their boots on the copper rail that ran along the base of the bar and swapped lies about the day’s custom. Among those seeking to retreat from their labours mixed those whose vocation catered to such relaxation. Gamblers and panderers, sellers of wares and seekers of services all ventured to the counter to engage those gathered there.

Only at one spot was the bar not crowded. Towards the back of the common room, for a radius of a dozen feet, there was an open space. Within that space only two people stood. The two men had been there for some time now, yet none of the carousing inmates of the tavern intruded on their privacy. From the guarded looks that sometimes were directed their way, it wasn’t courtesy that provoked such distance, but fear.

One was tall with a light complexion and locks of fair hair spilling out from beneath his wide-brimmed hat. His features had a rugged handsomeness about them, with a hawkish nose and piercing blue eyes. A long coat encompassed his figure, but around the waist it was bound by a wide belt from which hung a rakish sword and a big horse pistol. It was not the open display of weapons that so unsettled the occupants of the Black Ship, however. Hanging about the man’s neck was a pendant, a little silver talisman cast in a symbol long taboo in Ulfenkarn. The hammer of Sigmar. To openly display veneration of the God-King in the city was to invite swift and terrible destruction. Had night not already fallen, were the doors not already barred, there were many who would have slunk back to their slovenly hovels. As things stood, they tried their best to keep apart from the stranger. When doom came for him, nobody wanted to share in it.

Except perhaps the man who was with him. He was thin with short black hair and a trim moustache beneath his knife-sharp nose. Though he wore clothes that were rich by the standards of Ulfenkarn, his skin had the grey pallor of those who toiled away in the mushroom plantations beneath the streets. His eyes looked as though they were caught in a perpetual scowl, disdainfully appraising everything and everyone they gazed on. From his haughty demeanour and sinister appearance, there were many in the Black Ship who marked him as an agent of Ulfenkarn’s rulers, one who’d been promised the Blood Kiss by his masters. Why a spy for the vampires was sharing a drink with a Sigmarite was a mystery none felt inclined to explore.

Gustaf Voss pushed back the brim of his hat so he could better see the bottles arrayed on the rack behind the bar. ‘They’ve a nice vintage from Carstinia there,’ he commented to his companion. ‘That is if you don’t think it would be too strong for you?’

The other man gave him a stern look. ‘That’s an old Belvegrodian fable, you know. That they don’t drink wine.’ He frowned at his glass and tapped a finger against its stem. ‘I don’t like drinking in public. It dulls the senses and you never know what might be watching, waiting to exploit the first hint of weakness. If you’re going to have libations, it’s better to indulge when you’re alone.’

Gustaf cast his eyes at the empty space around them. ‘We’re as good as alone right now, Vladrik,’ he said.

‘All it takes is wealth to be popular in places like this,’ he replied. ‘Though I don’t know if there’s enough money to make them friendly while you’re wearing that.’ He gestured to the hammer around Gustaf’s neck.

Gustaf took a pull from his beer stein and wiped away the residue of foam from his mouth. ‘There was a saying, something along the lines of “Let them hate as long as they also fear.” That wisdom has served me well until now.’ He gave Vladrik a more serious look. ‘If I make myself conspicuous then the man I’m looking for might find me, instead of making me find him.’

‘Or you might draw attention from those you don’t want to see,’ Vladrik cautioned. ‘I’ve told you I’ll find Jelsen Darrock for you.’

‘It’s been two weeks that I’ve been hearing that,’ Gustaf said. ‘You haven’t given me any results.’

Vladrik swallowed some of his wine and dabbed a monogrammed handkerchief against his lips. ‘Better than anyone, you should know that those who serve the Order of Azyr can be very hard to find when they want to be. I think Darrock has been keeping himself under cover right now. He’s been busy. Only two days ago someone broken into Count Vorkov’s coffin and put a stake through his heart. Aqshian fyrewood. Very rare. Very dangerous. The kind of thing even a vampire doesn’t recover from.’

Vladrik leaned closer and laid his hand on Gustaf’s arm.

‘That’s one thing I’m still unsure of. Did the Order of Azyr send you to Ulfenkarn to help Darrock or to stop him? You’ve never told me which.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ Gustaf said. ‘If you expect an answer, find Darrock for me.’

Gustaf spun around suddenly, one hand dropping to the big horse pistol on his belt. Someone had entered the circle of privacy that surrounded them. A haggard stevedore, the quality of his tunic and the polish of his boots indicating him to be a mark above the labourers who crowded behind him, marched towards the shunned pair. He threw back his head and gave Gustaf a sneering study.

‘You make sport of us, do you, outlander?’ He gestured at the talisman hanging from Gustaf’s neck. ‘Even a fool fresh off the boat knows better than to wear that openly. So, if you aren’t a fool, you must be an idiot.’

Drink slurred the man’s words, but Gustaf wasn’t one to allow even a tipsy antagonist to challenge him.

‘Where I come from, men are still men. They don’t hide their faith and cower in the shadows like vermin. They don’t bow and scrape to the monsters that prey on them.’

The stevedore’s face turned red. His hands curled into fists at his sides.

‘He’s got a gun, Loew,’ one of the other labourers warned.

Gustaf fixed his steely gaze on Loew. ‘I don’t need gun or sword to settle accounts with cowards,’ he said, moving his hands away from the weapons hanging from his belt. For a moment, the tableau held, the two men glaring into one another’s eyes, each ready for his foe to make the first move.

Loud pounding against the Black Ship’s door interrupted the brewing fight. Silence descended on the tavern. Most of the patrons turned to look towards the barred entrance while others retreated into the nearest shadow. From outside, an imperious voice demanded entry.

‘The Volkshaufen,’ Vladrik hissed. He quickly bolted what was left of his wine.

‘Maybe,’ Gustaf said. It was rare for the watchmen to be abroad at night. Ulfenkarn had other guards who patrolled the city when the sun set… but not the sort to ask admittance.

‘Make yourself scarce until we know who it is,’ Gustaf told Vladrik. He didn’t watch his companion withdraw and climb the back stairs to the Black Ship’s upper floor. His attention was fixed on the barred door and whoever was demanding entry.

Perched on a stool near the entrance was a short, scrawny creature with long ears and scabby green skin. The grot looked across the room to where Karzah sat at one of the gambling tables. The Black Ship’s proprietor nodded reluctantly. The grot jabbed the hulking brute that stood beside it with a sharp stick. The square-jawed orruk roused itself from its fungus-addled lethargy and drew back the bar on the door. Karzah preferred to use the greenskins as his establishment’s first line of defence because their blood wasn’t appetising to the things that prowled the city.

Instead of the Volkshaufen, it was a trio of men in finely cut sealskin coats who sauntered past the orruk. Gustaf noticed the mirror discreetly placed on the ceiling above the door. All three men were reflected in it, but that meant nothing. If one of them was a vampire and was aware of the mirror’s presence, he could project an image into the glass and thereby conceal his nature.

Of course, in Ulfenkarn, a vampire had little reason to hide what he was. At least from people who weren’t Jelsen Darrock. Or Gustaf Voss.

‘Looks like it’s already too late to teach you anything,’ Loew told Gustaf, a trace of regret in his voice. ‘May the soil rest easy on your grave,’ he added, withdrawing back among the labourers. They retreated while the three men walked straight towards Gustaf.

‘Now there’s a peculiar sight,’ one of the men quipped as he approached. He turned his ferret-face and glanced about the tavern. ‘It seems no one wants to drink with you. Don’t you have any friends?’ The question brought a cruel laugh from one of his associates, a bull-necked ruffian who looked more like a shaved bear than anything human.

‘No company is better than poor company,’ Gustaf replied. He raised his beer stein and took a quick drink.

Ferret looked at his associates. ‘Bravado,’ he said. ‘I like that. I tell you what, I don’t like to see someone drink alone.’ He walked to the counter and snapped his fingers at one of the barkeepers. ‘Bring me ale,’ he demanded.

While Ferret waited for his flagon, the men with him circled around Gustaf. Bear took position to his left while the other, a nasty specimen Gustaf decided to think of as ‘Cur’, sidled towards his right.

‘We’ll have a drink and then we’ll leave,’ Ferret said, a sneer on his face as he regarded Gustaf. ‘No smart words for me now?’ He glanced at his associates. ‘Notice how the banter falls off when they feel the noose get tight?’

Bear laughed at the remark. Cur just closed his fingers around the grip of his sword.

‘To your health, as long as it holds out,’ Ferret toasted Gustaf, raising his flagon.

At that moment the subject of his mockery exploded into action. To onlookers, it all seemed to happen simultaneously, so quickly did the outlander move. A boot kicked out and struck the flagon, bathing Ferret’s face in ale. Gustaf threw the beer in his stein into Cur’s face, blinding him. Bear sprang forwards, but as he did the stein came smashing down onto his head and dropped him to the floor.

Gustaf dashed away from his reeling foes and hurried across the common room. Before he reached the door, the orruk had once more drawn the bar away. He lunged past the greenskin and out into the darkened street. He could hear angry oaths and the stamp of running feet from the building behind him.

Of more immediate concern were the men who’d been waiting outside.

The ruffians converged on Gustaf the moment he stepped from the Black Ship. In their eagerness to seize their victim, they made a costly mistake. Like Ferret and his associates inside, these men discovered that their enemy was far from helpless. Steel flashed in the light escaping from the tavern as Gustaf whipped the sword from his belt. Its keen edge slashed across the face of the closest ruffian. He reeled away across the icy ground and pitched backwards into the arms of his comrades, screaming and clutching at the gory wreckage left by the blade.

Shocked by the abrupt violence, the ruffians were slow to react when Gustaf turned from them and ran down the darkened street. It was only when Ferret appeared in the Black Ship’s doorway and cursed at them that they remembered their task. Leaving their maimed companion to writhe in the dirt, the thugs set off in pursuit of their quarry.

‘You can’t escape, outlander!’ Ferret shouted as he led the mob. ‘I’ll carve your face worse than you did Karl’s before I turn you over to the boss!’

Gustaf risked a glance over his shoulder as the threats reached his ears. There were nine men chasing after him, each brandishing a sword as they ran. A single adversary, even two, and he’d have stood his ground and crossed blades with them. These, however, were odds that surpassed even his confidence.

He saw the dark mouth of an alleyway ahead of him on his left, just beyond the shadowy hulk of a broken wagon. Gustaf feinted a sideways lunge to the right, then pivoted and threw himself to the left.

‘He’s ducked under that wagon!’ one of the thugs shouted.

Gustaf grinned and hurried down the alleyway. He’d soon put distance between himself and the ruffians.

At least that was the hope, but after only a few steps into the narrow alley Gustaf was betrayed. Trying to keep tabs on his pursuers, he didn’t see the pillory until he blundered into it. The prisoner, some manner of thief to judge by the marks branded into his cheeks, had been left out to give back to the community what he’d stolen in the only way the poor could make recompense. Locked in the pillory, the prisoner’s blood could be drained by anyone who wished to offer it in place of their own as their blood tithe. Usually a prisoner didn’t live long enough exposed in the cold to see the sun set, much less to last after nightfall. By some perverse chance, there was just enough life left in the thief to cry out when Gustaf stumbled against him.

The cry carried out into the street.

‘He’s not here, you idiots!’ Ferret roared. ‘He’s down there!’

Gustaf ran as his pursuers picked up his trail. His lead was less than a dozen feet. The slightest setback would see him fall into the clutches of his enemies. When he dashed out the other side of the alley, he found that setback. The narrow pathway opened into a small courtyard bounded on all sides by dilapidated buildings. He was trapped.

Vicious laughter rang out behind him. Gustaf spun around to see Ferret and his men slowly emerging from the alley.

‘Outsmarted yourself, didn’t you?’ Ferret grinned. He waved for the thugs to spread out and encircle Gustaf. ‘Remember, the Elder said he wants him alive. Whatever else happens’ – he made a dismissive shrug – ‘happens.’

‘I can promise a few of you won’t have an easy time of it,’ Gustaf swore, punctuating his words with a flourish of his sword. His other hand pulled the horse pistol from its holster.

‘Good.’ Ferret laughed. ‘If you kill a few that just means more pay for the rest of us.’ He gestured with his hand, motioning his confederates to close in.

Before they could, Ferret barked in alarm. His sword clattered against the cobblestones as he raised his arms in surrender.

Standing behind Ferret, the edge of her sword pressed against his throat, was a woman wearing a long black cloak. Gustaf could only see clearly the hand gripping the sword. The skin was coarse and deeply tanned, the fingers calloused from rugged employment. The face was largely hidden by the shadow of a hood, but he could feel the intensity of her gaze as she looked at him.

‘You seem to be the leader,’ she snarled at Ferret, pressing the sword closer so it drew a bead of blood from his neck. ‘Call your dogs off.’

‘Do as she says,’ Ferret called to his men. None of them moved in response to his plea. ‘I’m the only one who knows the Elder. If I die, nobody gets paid.’ The last bit of logic swayed the ruffians. Sullenly they backed away from Gustaf and shuffled towards the edges of the close.

Gustaf peered suspiciously at the woman behind Ferret. He kept a firm grip on his weapons, but didn’t move.

‘What are you waiting for?’ the woman snapped at him.

‘I’ve been in Ulfenkarn long enough to know better than to trust anything,’ Gustaf replied. He glanced around at the thugs and the narrow confines of the close. ‘Nobody does anything in this city unless it is to benefit themselves.’

Ferret laughed. ‘Is that what you want? A cut of the reward?’

The woman responded by whipping her sword away from Ferret’s neck and smashing the hilt against his ear. He crumpled at her feet, staggered by the blow. ‘Get moving or stay here with your playmates,’ she shouted at Gustaf. ‘I’ve done my part.’

She turned and ran into the dark alley.

Gustaf lost all hesitation. He sprang forwards and dashed into the alleyway, mashing Ferret’s face with his sword’s guard as he passed.

‘After them!’ Ferret shrieked, one hand trying to staunch the flow of blood from his broken nose. ‘I want them! I want both of them!’

Gustaf reached the street and caught sight of his rescuer’s cloak whipping around a corner on the other side. With the sound of pursuing thugs behind him, he raced after the mysterious woman. He still had no idea who she was or what her motives might be, but at least it was certain she wasn’t in league with Ferret and his mob. For the moment that was enough to sway Gustaf.

When he reached the next street, Gustaf glimpsed her dashing into a narrow gap between a half-ruined net-maker’s shop and a fishmonger’s stall. He rushed after her, slipping into the shadows a moment after she vanished from sight. As the dark closed around him, he felt the point of a blade pressing against his ribs. Only faintly could he make out the outline of a hood in the feeble light seeping down through the fog.

‘Easy,’ he said. ‘I’m Gustaf Voss. The man you rescued just now.’

‘I know who you are,’ the woman said. ‘I’ve been observing you for a week now.’

The explanation escalated Gustaf’s suspicions. ‘So that swine was right. You are after my scalp. What are you? Bounty hunter? Assassin?’

The blade was withdrawn. The woman took a step forwards and drew back her hood.

‘Neither. I’ve nothing to do with such scum.’

Gustaf could make out her face now. There was a loveliness there, but it was subdued, locked away beneath the resolute and uncompromising strength that dominated her visage. Her eyes were like flakes of steel and their gaze pierced him every bit as her blade had threatened to do.

‘I’m Emelda Braskov.’

Her name made Gustaf’s fingers tighten about his sword. ‘Braskov!’ he cried. He raised the pistol, pointing it at her face. She met the threat with a steely stare.

‘The last of the Braskovs,’ Emelda explained. ‘The last that… that isn’t one of his creatures. The last living Braskov. If you understand what that means, then you’ll know why a man like you interests me.’

Gustaf peered keenly at the woman’s face, searching for the least hint of deception. Long years training in the Order of Azyr had made him an expert in distinguishing truth from trickery.

‘If you know who I am, then you know it is fatal to tell lies to a vampire hunter.’

By way of reply, Emelda pressed her hand to the amulet Gustaf wore. He felt her fingers against his chest as they curled tight around the icon.

‘If I were one of them could I do this?’ she challenged him. ‘I tell you, I am Emelda Braskov. The last of my line.’

Gustaf turned to face the street. He could see two of the ruffians hurry around the corner. It was obvious to him that the thugs were following their trail through the snow.

‘Braskov or no, right now we’ve other problems,’ he said. ‘Two against nine are still bad odds.’

‘There’s a back way out,’ Emelda said.

The vampire hunter sheathed his sword and let her draw him down a darkened pathway. The buildings pressed close upon them so that Gustaf was compelled to remove his hat as they went. He could smell the chalky odour of a stone-cutter’s shop as they progressed. At the end of the path he saw a small yard littered with unworked marble and granite. A few partly carved stones were leaning against a wooden framework. A sledge and a small cart peeked out from beneath the shadow of a wooden awning. A rusty iron fence circled two sides of the yard, while the others were bordered by the surrounding buildings.

‘We can lose them in those streets.’ Gustaf pointed to the dark lane outside the yard’s gate. He started towards it, but Emelda held him back.

‘We’re not alone,’ she told him. ‘I’ve been around long enough to recognise an ambush.’ She reached down and recovered a splinter of stone from the cracked cobbles. With a powerful throw she sent it flying against one of the half-finished memorials. The impact brought the heavy block tipping over. It crashed against the ground with a resounding boom.

All around the yard, figures sprang out of hiding. They started towards the fallen block, but quickly realised their mistake.

‘They’re over there,’ Ferret snapped at the thugs as he emerged from beneath the awning’s shadow. He glanced over at Bear and Cur, who’d likewise been hiding in the dark, beckoning them forwards. Another man kept to the shadows, only the outline of his head and shoulders visible. ‘Get them before they get away again,’ Ferret ordered the ruffians. ‘They can’t take all of us.’

‘Maybe not, but you won’t be spending any blood money!’ Gustaf shouted. He raised his pistol and fired at Ferret. Flame exploded out the gun’s barrel, briefly illuminating the yard. The bullet slammed into Ferret’s chest, the impact hurling him back like a rag doll. He crashed against the sledge, then toppled forwards onto his face, a gory hole the size of a fist in his back where the shot had punched through his flesh.

For an instant, the remaining thugs stood in stunned silence. Then a raspy voice snarled at them from under the awning.

‘There’s still a fifty-weight of whalebone to share among you.’

The speaker stepped into the dim light. The ‘Elder’ of which Ferret had spoken. A gaunt shape dressed in crimson, heavy cape drawn about his shoulders, feathered hat poised above his predatory features. His was a face impossible to forget, lean to an improbable degree, the flesh drawn tight about the bones. There was a savage aspect to his visage that evoked the snarling wolf and the prowling jackal. His eyes were like firebrands, shining with wicked hunger. His ashy skin was drawn away from his mouth, exposing the long, jagged fangs.

‘Vampire,’ Emelda hissed when she beheld the creature.

‘It calls itself Viscount Lupu,’ Gustaf told her. He thought about what Vladrik had said. There could be only one reason the vampire had taken such pains to lure him out of the Black Ship. It was looking for Darrock and had mistaken Gustaf for the witch hunter. Gustaf decided not to disabuse Lupu of the error. ‘It is a pity I didn’t find your coffin when I was disposing of Count Vorkov.’ He shifted his grip on the spent pistol, feeling the bite of its hot barrel through his glove. The heavy, studded butt of the gun would make a vicious cudgel. With his other hand he drew his sword. ‘At least you’ve done me the courtesy of not forcing me to look for you.’

‘You destroyed the master,’ Lupu growled. ‘Without him, I don’t know what will become of me. But I know what will become of you.’ The vampire pointed one of his clawed fingers. ‘Kill them,’ he commanded the ruffians. ‘Kill them both.’

The thugs came at them in a rush. ‘Guard my flank and I’ll guard yours,’ Gustaf told Emelda as he sprang forwards to meet the charge. He was startled to find that she’d lingered back in the alleyway, leaving him to face six killers on his own. There wasn’t time to consider her unexpected timidity. He had trouble enough to match the surge of enemies. In a swirl of blades, he parried enemy weapons and slashed at unprotected shoulders and arms with his sword and tried to club them with his pistol. None of his strokes did more than nip the skin of the ruffians, but it served to make them draw back.

While grateful for the respite, Gustaf feared the consequences of giving his enemies time to think. If they came at him with any measure of coordination, he was finished.

‘Lost your taste for blood?’ Gustaf mocked the thugs. ‘I can assure you your employer hasn’t. Right now, it’s probably lapping up whatever spilled out of your leader.’

Before he could gauge if his taunts were having any effect, a scream rose from the alleyway behind Gustaf. He turned his head to see Emelda come rushing out. She’d thrown aside her cloak, revealing a hauberk of boiled leather and studded steel. The sword in her hand was stained with blood.

‘The two we saw in the street,’ Emelda explained as she joined Gustaf. ‘When the wolf is before you, you can’t afford to forget the weasel at your back.’

Gustaf nodded and glared at the other ruffians. ‘No more help,’ he warned them. ‘Just you and us. My only question is, who wants to die first?’

‘Kill them or suffer,’ Lupu threatened the thugs. The vampire’s displeasure was more a menace in the minds of the ruffians than the swords of Gustaf and Emelda. Shouting fierce battle cries, they swarmed the two warriors.

Emelda’s blade ripped open the leg of the first thug to get near to her. The man staggered back, wailing in agony. Two others closed with her, however, and gradually forced her back. Gustaf was left to contend with the remaining three. They fought with a sloppy, careless style, displaying the prowess of men unused to opponents who could fight back. To their slovenly technique, however, was added a frantic recklessness that made them attack with little regard for their own safety. Beset by such foes, Gustaf found he had to suppress his own instincts. If he capitalised on an enemy who blatantly left an opening for him, he would expose himself to the blades of the others. He was compelled to adopt a defensive approach and employ a caution he hadn’t shown since he’d first learned to swing a sword.

At length, one of Gustaf’s enemies exposed a weakness that he felt safe to capitalise on. He plunged forwards, stabbing his blade deep into the ruffian’s chest when the man let down his guard. Blood spurted from the wound as the killer’s body sagged at the end of Gustaf’s sword.

Before he could wrench his blade free of the dying man, the vampire hunter was thrown onto the ground, his fingers ripped away from the weapon’s grip. The pistol went skittering away from his other hand.

It wasn’t a mortal thug who had knocked Gustaf to the ground. Viscount Lupu leaned over him, the vampire’s rank breath blowing down into his face. The fiend had waited for his enemy to be disarmed before entering the fray. Now Lupu exulted in his supremacy.

‘See to the woman,’ Lupu snarled at the surviving ruffians. His claw-like hands pressed down on Gustaf’s arms, pinning him to the ground. The vampire’s fangs glistened in the moonlight. ‘This one… This one is mine.’

Gustaf lifted his head and spat in the cadaverous face. Lupu hissed in rage, but then a wicked smile curled his withered face.

‘Killing you will be thirsty work,’ he promised.

Gustaf closed his eyes and whispered a prayer to Sigmar. He’d resigned himself to a death like this when first he took it upon himself to hunt vampires in Carstinia. Even so, now that the end was upon him, he was determined to resist it to the last.

A flash of spectral light caused Gustaf to open his eyes. The pressure against his arms lessened and he wrested himself free of Lupu’s grip. He found the vampire writhing in agony. The ashy skin was blackened and crumbling, flakes falling away to disintegrate on the ground.

While Gustaf crawled away from the vampire, there came a second burst of spectral light. This time he saw the glow envelop Lupu, watched as the undead sizzled within the horrible luminescence. The vampire opened his mouth to scream, but as he did, teeth fell free from the jaw and the charred residue of his tongue fell back into his throat.

Across the yard Gustaf spotted a sinister shape draped in black robes. The man held a crooked staff topped by a scythe-like blade in the pale hand that he was pointing at Lupu. The interloper had a dark and morbid countenance, drawn and wasted in its expression. Gustaf could see the narrow slit of a mouth moving, whispering words he knew to be some manner of incantation. While he watched, an orb of ghostly energy flitted away from the staff and struck the vampire. This third blast of arcane power was too much for the undead. Lupu was bowled over by the assault and when his burnt body struck the ground, it disintegrated into a mound of ashes.

The vampire’s destruction provoked screams of terror from the surviving ruffians. To a man they fled across the yard, leaping over the iron gate and scattering into the surrounding streets. Emelda leaned down and cleaned her blade with the shirt of a fallen enemy. Then, like Gustaf, her attention was fixed on the strange interloper.

‘Your help was rather timely,’ Emelda said, an edge of suspicion in her tone. Though she’d cleaned her sword, she made no move to return it to its scabbard.

The wizard brushed aside the complaint. ‘No more so than your own, Emelda Braskov. Like yourself, I’ve taken an interest in our friend Gustaf Voss. It would have been inconvenient to me if he’d perished for the sake of that grave-leech’s petty revenge.’ He made a dismissive wave at Lupu’s ashes.

Gustaf recovered his own weapons. He replaced the pistol in its holster but like Emelda, he kept hold of his sword. ‘You’ll be welcome to my thanks once I know your motives…’

‘Morrvahl Olbrecht,’ the wizard said, stroking the long black beard that hung from his chin. ‘I see that name means little to either of you, but there are some in Ulfenkarn who have reason to tremble when it is invoked.’ He nodded and wagged his finger at Gustaf. ‘Yes, it would surprise you who does know me here. For the nonce, let us say I intervened because we share mutual enemies. That makes us friends, doesn’t it? Or am I presumptuous?’

‘It makes you hasty,’ Gustaf said. ‘At best. I know something of magic and its character. What you used to destroy Lupu… that was necromancy.’

‘A necromancer,’ Emelda growled, brandishing her sword.

Morrvahl shook his head. ‘There isn’t time for this,’ he said. ‘You picked a poor night to tussle with Lupu and his hirelings. This district will soon be crawling with patrols.’

‘Because of Lupu?’ Gustaf asked.

‘No,’ Morrvahl said. ‘Because of the murder.’

A bitter laugh escaped Emelda. ‘Murder? There are murders every night in Ulfenkarn!’

Morrvahl turned towards her. His eyes had an intense quality to them. ‘Not like this one there aren’t.’ He glanced about the yard and swung around towards the gate. ‘Come along with me. I know a safe place to hide that isn’t far from here. You can lie low there until the hue and cry dies down.’

Emelda looked over at Gustaf. ‘I don’t trust him.’

‘That’s two of us,’ the vampire hunter agreed. He glanced at the heap of ashes then back to the robed wizard waiting for them at the gate. ‘I confess I am intrigued to know what kind of game he’s playing.’

‘So, what do we do?’ Emelda asked.

‘For now, we follow him,’ Gustaf said. ‘Just keep your eyes open.’ He nodded at Emelda’s blade. ‘And keep your sword close. If Morrvahl is up to something, he won’t give us much time to do anything about it.’

‘Hurry along,’ the wizard urged them. ‘If we tarry too long the Ulfenwatch will decide one of us is the killer. Trust me, that’s one death you don’t want blamed on you.’

Dragomir was unique among the ranks of the Volkshaufen. He hadn’t bought his captain’s commission through either bribery or blackmail. He’d risen through the ranks by dint of his skill alone. He’d proven himself a keen investigator and a remorseless persecutor of the city’s criminal elements. Whether uncovering the hiding spots of those who would defy the city’s blood-tax or rooting out a nest of proscribed Sigmarites, his accomplishments had garnered him notice. Even the corrupt mortals who administered the slums of Ulfenkarn knew better than to defy the desires of the vampires who ruled the city.

In all his years patrolling the streets and back alleys, Dragomir couldn’t remember a scene to equal the ghastliness of that within the courtyard. It was remarkable enough that even his commander had agreed with him that the nobles should be informed of what had been found. It still came as a shock to him when a troop of Ulfenwatch arrived to cordon off the courtyard while an emissary from the Ebon Citadel itself investigated the scene.

Dragomir had a twinge of envy as he watched Silentiary Arno. The man had a bloodless pallor to him, yet exuded a sense of strength and vivacity that was largely absent in the mortal denizens of Ulfenkarn. A gift from the vampires. Some small part of their own immense power bestowed on a favoured servant. Arno was bundled up in a fur-lined cloak, the jewelled pectoral of his station hanging loose against his chest. There was a hungry light in the silentiary’s eyes as he crouched over the body, his gaze roving over every inch of the victim’s butchered remains.

‘It certainly wasn’t robbery,’ Arno said. He shook the purse of pearl discs that had been found alongside the corpse and nodded at the dead woman. ‘One look at her could tell you that, though. No thief would be that depraved.’

Arno nodded and stepped away. As he did, Dragomir again was afforded a view of what had been done to her. There wasn’t any face left. The murderer had carved away every shred of flesh and muscle until all that was left was a grinning skull. The face had been utterly obliterated, denuded by the killer’s knife.

‘We know who she was,’ Dragomir explained. ‘People recognised the clothes. She was a cutpurse named Annika. If the killer was trying to hide her identity, they did a bad job of it.’

‘Yes,’ Arno agreed, ‘but it is the murderer’s own identity that is of consequence here.’ He frowned at the corpse. ‘I’ve tried to call her spirit, but it won’t respond to me.’ He raised a finger to emphasise his point. ‘That is unusual.’ He pointed down at the bloodied cobblestones. ‘That is also strange. The blood is discoloured. I’ve never seen blood look like that before.’

Dragomir realised the silentiary was speaking more to himself than the captain. Arno turned away and gestured to the closest of the Ulfenwatch. Silently the skeletal warriors marched over, their ancient glaives held at the ready. Arno plucked the weapons from their fleshless claws and dropped them on the ground, then waved at the murdered woman.

‘Pick it up,’ Arno commanded the skeletons. ‘Take it back to the Ebon Citadel. Chamberlain Torgillius may be interested in it.’

The undead advanced and clumsily picked the corpse off the ground. One gripped her feet, another pulled her up by the shoulders. Together the skeletons carried her away.

Arno turned back to the bloodstains. He leaned down again and used a knife to scrape some of the residue into a glass vial. ‘Very unusual,’ he muttered as he walked away. The remaining Ulfenwatch fell in around the silentiary as he left the courtyard.

‘Can you beat that?’ one of his watchmen whispered to Dragomir when the undead were gone. ‘Silentiary Arno is interested in this killing. Torgillius might even look into it. You’ll have the notice of important people if you do things right.’

Dragomir shook his head. ‘It’s dangerous for small people to be noticed by their masters,’ he told the watchman. He didn’t like attention from the dreadful beings who ruled Ulfenkarn.

If there were more murders, Lord Radukar himself might notice them.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2021.
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