Gods & Mortals

by Various Authors

  The Old Fen Gate rose tall and solid over one of the largest and oldest of the canals. It had been the first gate, when the city was new and the marshes wild. The walls of the city had bypassed the towering structure, leaving it to become the de facto centre of a neighbourhood. There were shops now, instead of barracks, and the sides of the canal were thick with clustered clapboard buildings.

  The Magpie’s Nest was one of those that crouched on the edge of the water. It bent over at an unsightly angle, faded bird-shapes daubed on its broken shutters. It looked as if one tremor would send all three stories sliding full into the canal. But looks could be deceiving. The building was sturdier than most, its foundations deep and its walls cleverly designed to fool the eyes of the uninvited.

  He felt eyes on him as he made his way to the rear entrance, as was the tradition. The front door was for the Freeguild, or agents of the city’s rulers. The door overlooking the canal was for those who’d come to conduct business. Entrance was normally by invitation only, though occasionally there were open auctions, for the less notable.

  He had attended one of these open auctions before, but had left empty-handed. His resources, while substantial, were not infinite, and the bidding had been fierce. Then, given that it had been a rare copy of Kelaf’s banned symphony, The Mirror of Onyx, perhaps not surprising. He wasn’t sure what was required of one to receive an invitation. He hoped it wouldn’t be an issue.

  He knocked on the door, once and politely. It was always best to be polite, in these circumstances. It cut down on bloodshed. He heard the heavy rattle of a bar being withdrawn, and a moment later the door swung inwards. A slim figure was waiting for him. An aelf, he realised, taking in fine-boned features too perfect to belong to a human. Eyes like chips of obsidian met his own. She – and it was a she, though it was often hard to tell – was clad in loose robes of violet and a hauberk of black, jagged mail. A thick mane of white hair was swept back from her narrow face by a tiara of dark iron, and she had a curved falchion sheathed at her waist.

  The aelf looked him up and down, an unpleasant smile crawling across her pale features. ‘Invitation?’ she purred, her fingers rubbing slowly against the pommel of her blade.

  ‘I don’t have one, I’m afraid.’

  ‘That is a shame. But the canal is close, and it will be quick.’ Her fingers tightened about the hilt and she made to draw her blade. Bok stepped back, ready to produce the blade hidden in his sleeve, though he disliked his chances. He’d fought aelves before. The experience had been unpleasant.

  ‘Surely that I am here speaks to my character.’

  ‘Not favourably,’ she said, taking a quick step towards him.

  Bok hesitated. Instinct said flee. But she hadn’t drawn her blade yet. Maybe she was curious. Or bored. It must be dull, guarding a door. ‘I’ve come for the auction.’

  ‘No invitation, no auction.’ She spoke serenely.

  ‘How much to garner an invitation, then?’

  ‘That depends entirely on who you represent, my friend.’ The voice was a man’s. The aelf turned, bowed and stepped back, though her eyes never left Bok. The newcomer took her place at the door. He was a small man. Fussy looking, but bedraggled. Like a scribe gone ever so slightly to seed. True to that image, he held an armful of scrolls, and his hands and the cuffs of his robes were stained with ink. ‘Well?’ he pressed, adjusting the battered pince-nez he wore. ‘On whose behalf do you darken our doorway, sir?’

  ‘A lady of some substance.’

  ‘There are many ladies in Greywater Fastness. Shayl here, for instance.’ The little man gestured to the aelf. ‘I require a name.’ The way he said it made Bok pause. It was as if the little man were trying to impart something.

  ‘There we must part ways, sir. Her name is not mine to reveal.’

  The little man shrugged and glanced at the aelf. She smiled and reached again for her blade. Bok, thinking quickly, said, ‘Shadows and dust, sir.’ Attempting the code phrase was a gamble, but he had little to lose.

  The little man looked at him. He adjusted his pince-nez. ‘Just and unjust alike,’ he said, after a moment. ‘You are one of hers, then.’

  ‘I have that honour.’ Bok relaxed slightly. He had guessed right. Neferata’s influence stretched wide through the low places. All those who served her, even in the most minor capacity, recognised the code phrases of her agents. It was obvious to him now that she would have someone in the house, to alert her to the presence of certain items.

  ‘That is a word for it, certainly. Very well. Shayl, he may enter.’

  The aelf frowned, but made no attempt to argue. She ignored Bok as he stepped past her and entered the house. The entryway was a small, rounded chamber. A single corridor, out of sight of the door, extended deeper into the house. ‘The auction is soon to begin. Come this way, Master…?’

  ‘Bok. Palem Bok.’ Bok followed the little man down the hall. Doorways lined its length, each draped with a thick, black curtain. Each curtain had sigils of warding and other, less recognisable magical symbols, woven into its folds. There would be illicit dealings going on in each of the rooms. Thieves laying plans, murderers plotting… The Magpie’s Nest was a house of rogues.

  The little man glanced at him. ‘The bookseller?’

  ‘You know me?’

  ‘Of you. I am Pell. You are welcome here, sir. I trust you have come better prepared than your last visit. You were quite upset to lose that Kelaf symphony, I recall.’

  ‘I am here on another’s behalf, this time.’ In truth, Bok had no idea how much Neferata expected him to pay for whatever it was she desired, or whether she was even planning to compensate him. Such were the perils of a whimsical mistress. Perhaps she expected him to simply steal whatever it was.

  ‘Yes, I presumed so.’

  ‘Last time I was here, you had someone friendlier on guard duty.’

  ‘Shayl has her talents. Friendliness is not one of them.’ Pell smiled. ‘She serves well enough to keep things civil, among our patrons.’

  Bok grunted noncommittally. Pell stopped before one of the doorways. ‘You will notice that you have not been disarmed. We expect all patrons to show a certain level of decorum in repayment for our hospitality.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Good. Through here, please.’ Pell twitched the curtain aside, and Bok duly entered. The room beyond was not large. It was illuminated by half a dozen lanterns, scattered about and hanging from iron stanchions. The room itself was a plain square of wood and stone, barren save for several rows of hard benches, and a flat stage set at one end.

  On the stage was a long table, and upon it were various objects of interest: a loose pile of thin volumes, obviously a set of some sort; a gruesome, bull-shaped icon that bore all the hallmarks of duardin craftsmanship; a bell jar, containing a night-blooming flower with amethyst petals; a small casket with brass hinges and a bear stamped on the lock; and a gilded skull with silver teeth.

  But the most interesting of the lot was a curious whip-like weapon, consisting of eight jagged metal bars, joined together by thin rings, so as to form a chain of sorts. It had a handle made from a carved femur at one end, and a barbed dart at the other. The chain was coiled loosely, and rested in a circle of what appeared to be dust or salt. Protective sigils had been chalked into the surface of the table around it, and the air above them shimmered with an oily quality.

  Something about the weapon unsettled him. There was a malign potency to it. It reminded him of a bog-viper, readying itself to strike. And even as the thought occurred to him, he knew that it was what he had been sent here to acquire. Neferata wanted it, whatever it was. And that meant he had little choice but to acquire it.

  Bok took a seat, ignoring the glares of the other attendees. The benches were crowded. He surreptitiously studied the competition. Many of them were like him – intermediaries, acting on behalf of tho
se too fearful or too well known to attend the auction in person. Others were more interesting.

  One, sitting towards the front, was clearly a representative of the Collegiate Arcane, to judge by his ornate robes of white and gold, and the supercilious expression on his overfed features. He murmured softly to a small, dragon-like homunculus perched on his shoulder.

  Another of the attendees was shrouded in all-concealing robes and a hood, with a strange, segmented mask hiding their face. The facets of the mask were marked with what might have been duardin runes, though not ones Bok recognised. The runes glowed dimly, and faint contrails of what might have been smoke or steam rose from them.

  A woman dressed in crimson-dyed furs and leathers sat towards the back, her scarified features twisted in a frown. Her head had been shaved, save for a single braid, bound with brass wire. A savage, from the wilds of Ghur, perhaps, given the ritualistic nature of her scarring. She caught his glance and smiled widely, as if in invitation. Her teeth were filed. Bok looked hurriedly away.

  Any further study of the crowd was interrupted by the arrival of the auctioneer. A thin man, fox-lean and ginger-haired. Pell was with him, and took a seat near the stage. The scribe opened a heavy ledger on his lap and produced a writing quill from somewhere about his person. He dabbed it into a cup of ink hanging from around his neck, and began to write. The auctioneer took his place on stage, hands clasped behind his back.

  ‘Greetings, gentles all. Welcome, and be at ease. My name is Ranaldsson, and I will be master of these ceremonies. Our first lot is the collected Revelations of Necoho, or the Light of Doubt, a fundamental text for an obscure sect of antitheists. Opening bid is one hundred comets, or the equivalent.’

  Once begun, the auction progressed swiftly. One by one, the items were secured by eager bidders, and the losers were left to grumble and scowl. The stranger in the segmented mask claimed the grotesque, bull-shaped icon with a sizeable bid of two thousand comets. The gilded skull, revealed to be something called the Gelt Aurical, was decisively won by the Collegiate Arcanum representative, and a fat merchant from Hammerhal walked away with the amethyst blossom, after a winning bid of a hundred shards of shadeglass.

  A pair of duardin almost came to blows over the casket, which proved to contain a single bottle of wine of ancient vintage. From the cut of their clothes and their harsh accents, Bok thought they might have been guilders, fresh from the Kharadron sky-ports.

  Finally, the item he’d been waiting for came up for bid. Ranaldsson seemed hesitant as he turned to the weapon. ‘And our last item. A weapon of curious design, it has proven to be… unique, as were the circumstances of its… ah… its acquisition.’ The auctioneer hurriedly looked away from the weapon. ‘Through the diligent efforts of Master Pell and others of this house’s staff, we have confirmed that this is, in fact, quite possibly Charu, the Soul-Lash – one of the infamous Eight Lamentations.’

  A stunned murmur swept through the crowd. Bok stiffened. Neferata’s desire for the weapon made sense, now. He’d heard the stories. Everyone in his profession had. Eight weapons, forged by the servants of the Blood God, Khorne, in the age before the storm of Chaos had washed over the mortal realms. The Eight Lamentations had been scattered and lost, appearing occasionally to wreak havoc before vanishing once more. Rumour had it that they had begun to resurface of late, and Neferata had directed her agents to keep their eyes and ears open for any hint of the weapons.

  Bok had never thought to find one here, practically in his lap. From behind him, he heard the woman in red murmur, ‘From fire, came heat. From heat, shape. And shape split into eight. And the eight became as death.’

  Ranaldsson gestured for quiet, as the crowd’s murmuring threatened to boil over. ‘Please, gentles, please. Rest assured, we are certain of the item’s provenance. All effort has been made to keep it contained safely. Though I hasten to add that we are not responsible for anything that may occur once it leaves these premises.’ He gave a brittle smile. ‘Opening bid is three thousand comets, or the equivalent.’

  Bok grunted in consternation. A hefty sum, and one he couldn’t go far beyond without emptying his coffers. It would be worth it, though, considering the rewards Neferata might bestow upon him for delivering such a prize to her.

  But before he could make a bid, the woman in red called out, ‘There will be no bids. The item is not for sale.’ She stood, and a hostile muttering swept the benches. At her gesture, several other members of the crowd stood as well.

  They all wore shades of red, Bok saw, though the garments of some were of a more expensive cut than others. Their faces were similarly scarred, some in less noticeable ways. But for all the barbarity of her appearance, it was clear the woman was in charge. She stepped into the aisle between the benches and strode towards the stage.

  Ranaldsson cleared his throat. ‘I beg your pardon, milady, but–’

  ‘I am Kesh, and I do not give it. This weapon is not yours to sell, little man. It belongs to a god, and we have come to take it back, in the name of he who strides the red skies, wolf-fanged and mighty.’ She swept back her furs, revealing a brass-banded belt, and a pair of crude hand-axes hanging from it. The others threw off their cloaks or tore open coats to reveal similar axes, of varying craftsmanship.

  ‘You will give it to us,’ Kesh continued, ‘or I will take your skull.’ She unhooked an axe and pointed it at him. ‘Khorne demands it, and you will not gainsay him.’

  Ranaldsson spluttered. Bok had no doubt that the man had been threatened before, but perhaps never so bluntly. Others might have tried to win the bidding first, before threatening murder. But the servants of the Blood God were not known for their subtlety.

  Pell chose that moment to lunge for a bell-pull hanging beside the doorway, but a thrown axe dashed his brains across the wall. As the scribe crumpled, Bok drew his pistol and fired. One of the cultists was punched off his feet, a red hole between his bulging eyes. With the echoes of the shot hanging on the air, the room exploded into violence. He saw the stranger in the segmented mask snatch a blood-cultist from his feet, and hurl him across the room in a display of inhuman strength.

  A hurled axe sank deep into the bench behind Bok, narrowly missing him. He spun, but held his fire. Instead he cracked the blood-cultist across the skull, dropping her to the floor. The duardin pistol only had five shots. Bok was determined to waste none of them.

  People were shoving and screaming, trying to escape the room. The blood-mad killers hacked and hewed at the crowd with furious intensity. Some among the patrons resisted, in their own fashion. The two Kharadron had drawn their cutlasses and fought back to back, their earlier argument forgotten. The Collegiate Arcane representative spoke a word of power, and turned a cultist into a living torch. The warrior screamed and fell across the benches, setting them alight. Somewhere, an alarm bell had begun to ring.

  In the confusion, Kesh had reached the stage. Bok tried to take aim at the woman, but a cultist rose up before him, chanting the eighty-eight names of the Blood God as he chopped wildly at the panicking crowd. Bok shot him, but the cultist didn’t fall. His axe slashed down, nearly taking Bok’s arm off. A second shot punched his head back and dropped him to the floor. Desperate now, Bok forced his way through the crowd, determined to prevent Kesh from claiming the weapon.

  As he reached the stage, he saw Ranaldsson leap to the floor with a panicked yell, clutching a bloody arm. He fled, screaming for help. Kesh laughed and reached for the chain-whip, a dripping axe clutched in her other hand. ‘I think not,’ Bok said. Kesh turned, teeth bared, axe raised. He fired his pistol as the axe left her hand.

  She clapped a hand to her leg and shrieked. The axe pinned his coat sleeve to the table, and knocked him off balance. The pistol clattered from his hand. He tore himself loose from the table as Kesh caught up her prize.

  There was a crack, like stone splitting, as her fingers wrapped about the bone haft of t
he weapon. The links of the chain clattered, as if in welcome, and a shudder ran through it, and her. Her eyes flashed with red lightning, and as she turned, he saw that every scar on her face had opened anew and was bleeding.

  ‘The Soul-Lash is mine, weakling,’ she snarled, whirling the chain-whip about her. Bok threw himself aside, as the barbed tip snapped out with a silky hiss. It tore through the throat of an unfortunate man near the stage. There was a sound like tearing cloth, and a shimmer of greenish energy erupted from the dying man. It spun around the barb, and was almost instantly drawn into the weapon.

  Kesh hissed in pleasure and leapt to the floor, whirling the chain-whip up and about her in a growing frenzy. It tore through the crowd and her followers alike. More surges of light were torn away from falling bodies – green, red, ochre, blue – and drawn into the links of the weapon. ‘Yes, it is as the blood-seers claimed – Charu drinks the spirits of the fallen. I feel their strength within me.’ She laughed wildly. ‘Blood and skulls for my lord Khorne!’

  The room was rapidly filling with smoke. The lanterns had been knocked over in the chaos, spilling burning oil everywhere, and the sorcerous fire started by the wizard leapt from bench to bench. There was a scrum at the doorway, as people tried to force their way out. Those left inside were either trying to stay out of Kesh’s way, or brawling with her followers.

  Kesh’s form was limned with a sickly radiance. The chain-whip moved like a thing alive, rather than a weapon. Perhaps it was hungry, after its captivity. Bok pushed the unsettling thought aside as he found his pistol and scooped it up. He tried to line up a shot while she was distracted, but too late.

  The chain-whip bent about her of its own volition and darted towards him. The barb tore flinders from the stage and forced him back a step. Kesh turned before he could recover, and the whip arrowed towards him again. He twisted aside, but not quickly enough. One of the metal bars caught him in the ribs and smashed him from the edge of the stage.