He left them there in the garden, staring after him, and was gone out the door before they could so much as protest. He knew what they would say, even if they hadn’t been saying it every day for weeks. The incessant scheming, strategising and drilling was wearing on them, even Anark, who lived for the tourney field. Vampires were not, by nature, creatures of hard graft. They were predators, and each had a predator’s laziness. They exerted themselves only when the goal was in reach, and had not the foresight to see why that path led only to a hawthorn stake or a slow expiration under the sun’s merciless gaze.
All save me and thee and one or two others, eh, boy? Vlad murmured encouragingly. I taught you to see the edges of the canvas, where one portrait ends and another begins, didn’t I?
‘You taught me nothing save how to die,’ Mannfred hissed. He quickly looked around, but only the dead were within earshot. The truly dead these, rather than the thirsty dead, wrenched from silent tombs and set to guarding the corridors of his castle. He paused for a moment, eyes closed, ignoring the shadows that closed in on him. It was no use; he could feel them, winnowing into his thoughts, clouding his perceptions.
Vlad had indeed taught him much, his words aside. The creature who had given him his name had been as good a teacher as any Mannfred had had up until that point in his sorry life. He had learned from Vlad that the only true path was the one you forged for yourself.
In their centuries together, Vlad had taught him to change his face, and the scent of his magics, so as to hide his origins from prying forces who would seek to use the secrets of his turning against him. Vlad had taught him to trust only his instincts, and to be true to his ambitions, wherever they led, to use his desires like a blade and buckler. And, in the end, Vlad had taught him the greatest lesson of all – that power alone did not shield you from weakness. It crept in, like a thief in the night, where you least suspected it, and it slit your throat as surely as any enemy blade – Nagash, Neferata, Ushoran and, in the end, Vlad himself had all been humbled by their weaknesses. And so too had Mannfred.
But unlike them, he had risen from the ashes, remade and all the stronger for his failure. And he would not fall prey to his weaknesses again. ‘I learned my lessons well, old man,’ he murmured as he opened his eyes. ‘I will be beholden to no man or ghost, and ambition is my tool, not my master.’
Something that might have been laughter floated on the dank air like particles of dust. Mannfred ignored it and continued on through the halls, his mind turning from the past to the future and what part his newfound ally would play in assuring that it came about.
He found the liche in the library, as Markos had said. Arkhan sat at one of the great tables, his fleshless fingers tracing across the page of one of the large grimoires that Mannfred had collected over the course of his life. His pet sat curled over his shoulder, its milky orbs slitted and its ragged tail twitching. He peered over Arkhan’s shoulder, and saw the complicated pictographic script of lost Nehekhara. ‘Dehbat’s Book of Tongues,’ he said. The cat hissed at him and he replied in kind.
Arkhan didn’t turn as he reached up to scratch the cat under the chin. ‘I knew Dehbat. He was one of W’soran’s pets, in better days,’ he said, as he carefully turned the page. The book was old, older even than Mannfred, and was a copy of a copy of a copy.
‘He was wise, in his way, if unimaginative,’ Mannfred said, circling the table and heading for the great windows that marked the opposite wall. It was dark outside, as ever, but the sky was alive with a hazy aurora of witch-light. The light was not of his doing, and he knew that it was bleeding through his protective magics from the world outside. Time was running short. Eventually, Sylvania would be shorn of its protection, but still trapped by the wall of faith.
‘W’soran did not choose his apprentices for their creativity,’ Arkhan said. He closed the book. ‘I cannot say why he chose them at all, frankly. They were all disreputable, undisciplined overly ambitious vermin, without fail.’
‘So speaks Arkhan the Black, gambler, murderer, thief, sorcerer, and secret animal-lover,’ Mannfred said. ‘I know of your history, liche. You are hardly one to speak of disrepute and discipline.’ He looked at Arkhan, and the latter’s jaws sagged open in a wheezing laugh that caused Mannfred’s teeth to itch in his gums. ‘Did I say something funny? Why are you laughing?’
‘I am laughing, von Carstein, because your misapprehension amuses me,’ Arkhan said. He hefted the book and tossed it to Mannfred, as if it were nothing more than a penny dreadful from a street vendor’s stall.
‘Enlighten me,’ Mannfred said. He caught the book easily and set it back gently on the table. His fingers curled in the fraying hairs that hung lank and loose on the cover. The scalp had belonged to some night-souled shaman from one of the tribes in the Vaults, who had copied the book into its current form, and then been gutted and scalped at his own command by the savages whom he’d ruled. It was a lesson in the fine line between dedication and obsession.
‘You assume that I am Arkhan the Black,’ Arkhan said.
Mannfred froze. Then, slowly, he turned. He said nothing, merely waited for Arkhan to continue. Arkhan watched him, as if gauging his reaction. The liche’s skeletal grin never wavered.
‘Arkhan the Black died, vampire,’ Arkhan rasped. He touched one of the other tomes. His skeletal fingers clicked as they touched the ancient bronze clasp that held it shut.
‘And was reborn, as I was,’ Mannfred said, trying to read something, anything, in the flicker of the liche’s eye sockets.
‘Was I? Sometimes, I wonder. Am I the same man I was then, the man who drank of Nagash’s potions, who chewed a drug-root until his teeth turned black, who loved a queen – and lost her? Am I him, or am I simply Nagash’s memory of him?’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Are my thoughts my own, or his? Am I a servant – or a mask?’
Mannfred said nothing. There was nothing he could say, even if he had wanted to. He had never had such thoughts himself. They smacked of philosophical equivocation, something he had no patience for. He saw a flash of something out of the corner of his eye, heard Vlad’s dry chuckle, and bit down on a snarl. ‘Does it matter?’ he snapped.
Arkhan cocked his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But you asked what I found so amusing. And I have told you. You are missing several key pieces, are you not?’ He rubbed the cat’s spine, stroking the bare bone and causing the foul beast to arch its back in a parody of feline pleasure.
‘I am aware of the gaps in my collection, yes, thank you,’ Mannfred said acidly. He threw up his hands. ‘And were I not trapped here, I would have those items in my hand even now.’
‘The staff, the blade, the armour,’ Arkhan said.
‘And two of the Nine Books,’ Mannfred said slyly. ‘Or are you offering those to me, as a gesture of our newfound friendship?’
‘You said that with a straight face. Your control is admirable,’ Arkhan said. Mannfred grunted, but said nothing. Arkhan inclined his head. ‘And I am, yes.’
Mannfred’s head came up sharply, and his eyes narrowed. ‘What?’
‘The books are yours, should you wish,’ Arkhan said. He stood and drifted towards the window, hands clasped behind his back. ‘This place is as safe as any, for the time being, and we both desire the same end, do we not?’
Mannfred stepped back and looked at the liche. ‘Nagash,’ he said. Shadows tickled the edges of his vision, and he heard what might have been the rustle of loose pages as a draught curled through the library.
‘Nagash must rise. As you promised the sorcerer-wraiths of Nagashizzar, the black cults of Araby, and the ghoul-cabals of Cathay, when you sought their aid in gathering your collection, as you call it.’ Arkhan pressed a bony digit to the window, and frost spread around the point it touched the glass in a crystalline halo. He looked at Mannfred. ‘For you, he is a means to an end. For me, he is the end unto itself. Yet we move along the same path, vampire. We tread the same trail, and follow the same light. Why not do it to
gether?’
‘We are,’ Mannfred said. ‘Have I not opened my castle to you? Have I not given shelter to your creatures?’ Though he meant the necromancers, he gestured to the cat, which glared at him with dull ferocity.
‘Yes, but you have still denied my request to gaze upon those items that are necessary to our shared goal. You have denied me my request to see those prisoners whose blood is the base of the sorceries that protect Sylvania – and trap you here.’
Mannfred tensed, as he always did when the wall of faith that caged the laughable cess-pit he called a realm was mentioned. Arkhan scraped his finger along the window, cracking the glass. He had allowed Mannfred to play the genial host for long enough. It was past time for action. The world was cracking beneath the weight of warring destinies.
Arkhan had felt it, as he crossed the mountains and journeyed to Sylvania, though it had taken him the quiet weeks since to process those ephemeral stirrings into something approaching a conclusion. They were approaching a pivotal moment, and they were not doing so unobserved. Eyes were upon them, even here, in this place. Arkhan could feel the spirits of Chaos whispering in the spider-webbed corridors and rumbling far below the earth, and he had cast the bones and understood the signs. There were powers gathering in the dark places, old powers, no longer content to simply watch.
Time was their enemy now. And he could not allow Mannfred to cede any more ground, not if their shared goal was to be accomplished. ‘They are part of it, you see. The magics used to bind you here, like a cur in a kennel, are your own, twisted back upon you.’ He decided to sweeten his bitter draft with a bit of flattery. ‘Why else did you think it was so powerful, vampire? The living have no capacity for such magics, not on their own. You have made your own trap and you can break it, if you so desire.’
Mannfred twitched. His eyes narrowed and he asked, simply, ‘How?’
‘There is a ritual,’ Arkhan said.
‘What sort of ritual?’
‘I doubt that you would agree to it.’
‘Let me be the judge of that,’ Mannfred hissed. ‘Tell me!’
Arkhan said nothing. He scratched the cat’s chin. Mannfred’s upper lip curled back from his teeth and he glared at Arkhan furiously. Arkhan met the glare patiently. He could not force Mannfred into what needed doing, not without fear of provoking the vampire. No, the easiest way of getting a vampire to do something was to tell them not to do it. Mannfred snarled and struck the stone sill of the window with his fist, cracking it. ‘What sort of ritual, damn you? We do not have the time to play these puerile games of yours, liche.’
‘A sacrifice,’ Arkhan said. He removed the cat from his shoulder and deposited it on the table. ‘You possess nine prisoners, do you not? That is the number required for the blood ritual you enacted to seal Sylvania against threats divine and worldly, if my memory serves.’
Mannfred started visibly. ‘You know it?’ he asked.
‘I know more than you can conceive, von Carstein. All such sorceries derive from a single source, like the rivers of the Great Land. And I am most intimately acquainted with that source, if you’ll recall.’ Arkhan gave a negligent wave of his hand. ‘Sacrifice one of the ones whose blood you’ve used to anchor your rite, any one of them, and it will create a momentary breach in the wall of faith that encircles your land.’
‘Sacrifice?’ Mannfred asked. He shook his head. ‘Madness. No. No, I’ll not cripple the very protections I worked so hard to create.’
‘Then, we’d best get used to one another’s company,’ Arkhan said. ‘Because we’re going to be here for a very long time. Out of curiosity, how long can one of your kind last without blood? A few decades, I expect. After that, you’ll be too withered and shrunken to do much more than gnash your fangs fetchingly.’ He cocked his head. ‘By my calculations, your servants will have drunk this province dry within a month, at least. They glut themselves without consideration for the future, and you let them, to keep them distracted and under control.’
‘How I control my servants is my business,’ Mannfred growled.
‘Correct,’ Arkhan said, ‘I cannot force salvation upon you, von Carstein. I merely offer my aid. It is up to you to accept it, or to gnaw your liver in continued frustration. But you are correct. Time grows short. What happens in a month, or a week, when your prisoners are the only living things left in this place? How long will your control last then? How long before you face revolt from your servants, and from your own unseemly thirst? Is it not better to sacrifice one now, so that you might be free to utilise the others as you wish, unimpeded?’
Mannfred turned away. ‘Which one?’ he asked.
‘I will need to see them to answer that. I have ways of determining which of them is the least necessary for your pattern.’
‘And now we come to it,’ Mannfred snapped. ‘All your offers of aid and books are nothing more than your attempt to burrow your way into my vaults, are they not? You could not defeat me in open battle, and now you seek to trick me. You came to Sylvania to claim those items I won by my guile and strength, and to demand that I swear fealty to the broken, black soul whose cloak hem you still cling to. Well, you’ll get neither!’ Mannfred whirled and caught up the table, wrenching it up over his head in a display of monstrous strength, spilling books and the yowling corpse-cat to the floor. His lean frame swelled with inhuman muscle as his face contorted, becoming as gargoyle-hideous as that of any of his more bestial servants. ‘Nagash is not my god, liche. He does not command me!’
Arkhan looked up at the table, and then at the face of he who held it. He could see, though just barely, an enormous, ghostly shape superimposed over Mannfred’s own, and heard a rustle of sound in the depths of his own tattered spirit that might have been laughter. Mannfred’s face twisted, and Arkhan knew that the vampire heard it as well. The tableau held for a moment, two, three… And then Mannfred set the table down with more gentleness than Arkhan had expected. He seemed to deflate. The library was as cold as a crypt, and frost clung thick on the windows, as if something had sucked all of the heat from the room all at once.
‘Which are you, I wonder – servant or mask?’ Arkhan asked.
‘I am my own man,’ Mannfred grated, from between clenched fangs. He closed his eyes. ‘Nagash holds no power over me. I am merely in a foul humour and my temper is short. Forgive me.’ The excuse sounded weak to Arkhan. The defiance of a mouse, caught in the claws of a well-fed cat. Mannfred was bowing beneath the weight of another’s will, no matter how much he denied it, and he knew it too. The thing that held his soul in its talons had done so for far longer than Mannfred likely suspected, Arkhan thought. It battened upon him, like a leech, and only now had it grown strong enough to be felt.
Memories of his own life, in service to Nagash, before things went wrong, spattered across the surface of his mind, brief bursts of colour and sound that pulsed brightly and faded quickly. It had taken him years to understand the plague that was Nagash. How he infected his tools, both living and inanimate, with himself, with his mind and thoughts. He hollowed you out and took your place in your own skull, pulling the red rags of your psyche over himself like a cloak, emerging only when necessary. Mannfred had never had a chance… Vampires were the blood of Nagash. It was his essence that had transformed Neferata into the creature she now was, and from her had sprung fecund legions, whose veins ran with the black blood of the Great Necromancer. While creatures like Mannfred persisted, Nagash would never truly be gone.
Arkhan felt a pang of something that might have been sympathy for the creature before him. For all of them – puppets on the end of his master’s strings, though they knew it not. Some were more wilful than others, with longer strings, but they were still puppets, still slaves to the song of blood and the Corpse Geometries that hemmed them in.
Mannfred’s head came up sharply, and his nostrils flared. ‘Ha!’ he barked. He looked at Arkhan. ‘You wanted to see the prisoners, liche? Well let us go visit them.’
�
�What changed your mind?’ Arkhan asked.
Mannfred chuckled and swept for the door. ‘They’re trying to escape.’
‘You don’t sound concerned,’ Arkhan said, as he hurried after Mannfred, his robes rustling. The liche’s hand fell to the pommel of his blade, as he examined Mannfred’s broad back. It would be no effort at all to simply slide the blade in. Well, perhaps some effort. Mannfred was no guileless peasant, after all. Destroying him now might spare grief later. Vampires were unpredictable at the best of times, and this was most assuredly not the best of times. Right now, Mannfred thought he was in control. Eventually, however, he would try to openly resist Nagash’s return, especially once he realised what fate awaited him, should they be successful.
Nonetheless, he still required the vampire’s aid. Many hands made for quick work. Arkhan let his hand slide away from the blade. No, the time to dispose of Mannfred had not yet come.
‘I’m not. I want them to try,’ Mannfred said. I want them to try again and again, and grow more desperate with every failure. Their spirits must be broken. There can be no resistance, come the day. Nothing must stymie us.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Arkhan said.
SIX
Castle Sternieste, Sylvania
Volkmar stood knee-deep in ash and dust. Harsh smoke caressed his aching lungs and stung his weary eyes. Every limb felt heavy, and his heart struggled to keep its rhythm. He was bitterly cold and terribly hot, all at once. His hammer hung almost forgotten in his hand, its ornate head broken, and its haft soaked in blood and sweat. His breath fogged and swirled before his eyes, and he could see faces in it. Men and women, some he knew, others whom he found familiar though he could not say why or how.
There was blood on his face and hands, and his gilded armour was stained with tarry excretions and reeking ichors. The smoke that entombed him stank of funeral pyres, and he could hear the roar of distant battle. Weapons crashed against shields and bit into cringing meat. The air swelled and cracked with a riot of voices, echoing from unseen places. Screams of agony mingled with pleading voices and howling cries of pure animal terror. The air was choked by the smoke that curled about him; he could see strange witch-lights pulsing within its depths, and horrible, ill-defined shapes moving around him, either too slowly or too quickly. He could not say where they were going, or why. Something crackled beneath his foot.
The End Times | The Return of Nagash Page 11
