‘But some things never change, eh?’ he said, half to himself. ‘And some gods are as foolish as they were millennia ago.’ He turned to the golden-armoured figure standing behind him ‘Let this be a lesson to you, Knossus Heavensen - some things never change, no matter our desires.’ He noticed the paleness of Knossus’ tattooed features and the stiffness of his posture, and realised belatedly that the lord-arcanum was disturbed by his display of anger. ‘Do not fear, lord-arcanum My anger is not directed at you.’
‘I did not think it was, my lord.’ Knossus spoke with all due reverence, and bowed. He had his helmet clutched under one arm and his staff in the other hand. His war-plate was marked by signs of battle and stained with ash. Knossus and his warriors had fought for hours alongside other Sacrosanct Chambers to recapture those souls that had escaped from the soul-mills and rampaged across the Sigmarabulum.
Sigmar grimaced. ‘Do not bow, Knossus. I require no worship from you.’ He looked past the lord-arcanum The Chamber of the Broken World was being repaired, but slowly. He had prevented its collapse, but the cataclysm had damaged more than just the walls and pillars. At the heart of the chamber, the Anvil had at last returned to normal, shedding the purple miasma that had clung to it.
Knossus straightened. ‘I know, my lord. But I give it freely.’
Sigmar looked down at him ‘Perhaps I should have clad you in silver, instead of gold.’ He smiled as he said it, but Knossus took the statement at face value.
‘If such be your will, my lord.’
Sigmar sighed. ‘It was a jest, Knossus.’
A brief smile played across the lord-arcanum’s features. ‘I am aware, my lord.’
Sigmar laughed, and somewhere far away, thunder rumbled. He clapped Knossus on the shoulder, nearly knocking the Stormcast from his feet. ‘Good. Now tell me what there is to be told.’ He turned back to the crack in the wall.
‘The soul-mills are repaired. The aftershocks are fading. The dead…’ Knossus hesitated. Sigmar glanced at him
‘The dead do not rest easy,’ he said.
Knossus nodded. ‘Even in Sigmaron, they rise and attack. The Vaults of the Firmament cracked wide in the cataclysm Thousands of suddenly ambulatory corpses have spilled out into the streets, attacking any they come across. Some are no more than feral husks. Others are possessed of more malign awareness. It is as if a call to war has gone out, and now even the honoured fallen turn on us.’
‘A call to war,’ Sigmar repeated. ‘Perhaps that is what it was.’ He was already aware of everything Knossus had told him. He could feel the dead, clawing at the insides of their tombs, and hear the wailing of souls driven to madness.
He looked out, past the edges of the Sigmarabulum and down into Azyr itself, where high, snowcapped mountains rose over great plains and seas. The dead walked in Sigmaron, as Knossus said, and in Azyrheim, below it. In every great city of Azyr, the dead stirred. And not just there. Wherever one of his cities rose, he could see. Deadwalkers stumbled through the streets of Excelsis and Greywater Fastness. Cackling spirits threatened the Phoenix Temple in Phoenicium, and long-forgotten armies of fleshless deathrattle warriors stirred themselves from the boiling mud-flats and marched on the walls of Hammerhal Aqsha.
The embers of his rage flickered, threatening to blaze forth once more. He watched all that he had built in these scant decades since the opening of the Gates of Azyr come under attack, and his hands itched for the weight of his warhammer, Ghal Maraz. He longed to take it up once more and hurl himself down into Shyish. To at last answer the questions that lay between himself and the Undying King. But he had learned his lesson.
He turned from the wall and strode past Knossus. ‘I suspected this day would come the moment Nagash chose to reject my offer of alliance. He was always stubborn. But I hoped he’d see sense.’
Knossus followed him, shaking his head. ‘Perhaps there is method to his madness. We have pushed back the dark gods on almost every front. They are not defeated, but they are on uncertain ground. The other gods rally against them, and even Archaon cannot be everywhere at once.’ He hurried to catch up to Sigmar’s longer stride. ‘This may well be Nagash’s only chance - we are stretched thin, and our eyes are on other foes.’
Sigmar slowed and glanced down at him ‘There is more to this than simple strategy. I think this was the culmination of something set in motion long ago. Nagash has always taken a longer view than most gods. Even myself. I think in terms of centuries. Nagash thinks in terms of epochs.’ He stopped. ‘He has already foreseen the moment that the last star flickers out, and prepared accordingly.’
‘Surely that will never happen.’ Knossus sounded aghast.
Sigmar looked around before answering. The detritus of the battle against the lightning-gheist lay scattered everywhere. Scorched weapons and torn armour lay mixed among the rubble. Half a dozen Celestors and a mage-sacristan had perished, attempting to bring the rogue soul to bay. That the lord-arcanum known as Balthas had managed to survive, and defeat it, was a testament to his strength.
Balthas. There was a soul to be watched. An old soul. Sigmar glanced up, at Mallus, and then away. Balthas had requested that his Chamber be sent in pursuit of the escaped soul. Sigmar was still considering that request.
He glanced at Knossus. ‘It is not in my power to say what will happen, or won’t. All things move towards their end, whatever the will of men or gods.’ He picked up a crumpled helmet. The warrior who’d worn it was now in one of the soul-mills. He could feel the last moments of their life and the echo of their death. He could hear their soul screaming, begging for release. Sigmar closed his eyes. The helmet fell to the ground. Someone would clean it up later. It would be reforged and made ready for war again. All things could be reforged. Even gods.
‘But that end is not here yet, my lord,’ Knossus said.
Sigmar opened his eyes and looked up at the dark curve of the sky. He could see every star, and beyond. In the quiet between battles, when the affairs of the realms did not distract him, they sang to him, sometimes, calling down to him, bidding him join them in the eternal dance. He felt their pull now and knew that one day, he might no longer be able to resist their call. But not today. Not until the war was won.
‘No. It is not. You will go to Shyish.’
Knossus bowed his head. ‘As you will it, my lord.’
‘As it must be, Knossus.’ Sigmar approached the Anvil. The mage-sacristans who had been working to cleanse it retreated, bowing low. Sigmar gestured, catching up some of the skeins of magic that emanated from it. He could feel the heat of the world from which the substance of the Anvil had been drawn.
Mallus. It’d had another name, once. In another age, in another life. Once, it had been as vibrant as the realms and dearer to him than anything. Now, it was simply raw materials for a war beyond comprehension. A world and all those who might have once lived on it, made over into weapons.
‘As it must be,’ Sigmar said, again. ‘Until the war is won.’
SIGMARON, PALACE-CITY OF SIGMAR
Balthas whipped his staff up and about, striking the dead thing as it lunged for him A skull, brown with age, cracked, expelling a violet light. The corpse, a scarecrow of leathery skin stretched over thin bones, wrapped in mouldering robes of azure and rusted armour, collapsed in a heap. It was not alone. A dozen more stumbled along the parapet towards the lord-arcanum, clad in the finery of ages. They wore the tattered vestments of healers and philosophers, generals and diplomats. In life, they had been heroes. In death, they were little more than beasts.
Some stumbled on limbs that did not function correctly. Others scampered across the crenellations of the World-Wall - the highest rampart of Sigmaron, and the closest one to Mallus - with simian ease. Balthas braced himself as the quickest of these leapt for him, fleshless jaws champing. He swept his staff up, catching it in the chest and pitching it over the side. For a mom
ent, Sigmaron seemed to fall away from him, in descending tiers of pale stone. A vertiginous slope of towers and buttresses. Now, clouds of smoke obscured some of those structures. He turned back and reversed his staff, thrusting it out to catch a second corpse. A brittle sternum crumpled, and he drove the deadwalker back with two quick steps.
As the corpse reeled, Balthas slammed his staff down, a corona of corposant playing atop it. A bolt of lightning thundered down, striking the cadaver and immolating it. Smaller chains of lightning leapt out to strike the rest, one after another. The celestial energy cascaded through the dead, reducing them to ashes and blackened bones. He watched them burn with no small amount of satisfaction.
‘Neatly done, my lord. Even if you have once again declined the use of your blade.’
He turned as Miska joined him on the parapet of the World-Wall. She eyed the smouldering lightning scars with approval. ‘Then, you have ever possessed a talent for the aetheric.’ As ever, her voice rasped across his hearing, like a whetstone across a blade.
‘It was but the work of a moment and of no import,’ he said modestly. ‘Any aether-mage could have done the same.’
‘That is true.’
He ignored her dismissal. ‘The others?’
‘Scattered along the World-Wall, as you ordered. We have cleansed all but the lowest tiers of these hungry corpses.’
Balthas nodded in satisfaction. He had claimed the honour of cleansing the World-Wall for his chamber the moment Sigmar had ordered their chamber despatched to Sigmaron. ‘Good. We will regroup and descend to the lower tiers.’
‘Azyrheim is still shaking, they say.’
‘Who says?’ Balthas grunted, as he glanced upwards. Above them, the Sigmarabulum was still burning. It hung in the sky like a caged comet, thick scars of smoke stretching out towards the uncaring stars. Mallus, too, burned. The red world shuddered, as if it were a great beast disturbed by some distant sound. He looked away, unsettled by the sight.
Miska shrugged. ‘Many people.’ She looked down at the palace-city. Something flashed, over the western slopes of the mountain. ‘Reinforcements, departing through the Shimmergate,’ she said, shading her eyes. ‘The city of Glymmsforge is under threat. The armies of death ride full upon it.’
Balthas snorted. ‘When do they not?’ He’d already known that. Shyish, more than any other realm, had suffered from the cataclysm. Sigmar’s territories in the Realm of Death - those underworlds and ruins ceded to him by treaty or omission - were under threat from the resurgent forces of the walking dead.
Miska gave him a disapproving look. ‘They are under siege.’
‘They are always under siege. Azyr itself is under siege. Besieged is our default state.’ He gestured impatiently. ‘Forgive me if I am not shocked that a cataclysm of such resonance is soon followed by opportunistic savagery.’ Balthas shook his head. ‘Whatever this necroquake was, it had its origins in Shyish. That much I am certain of. Of course the legions of the Undying King see this as the time to attack - Nagash probably caused this!’
He realised belatedly that he was shouting. He calmed himself and ignored Miska’s raised eyebrow. She looked away. ‘Knossus will be in command, they say. He goes to reinforce Glymmsforge.’
Irritated, Balthas frowned. He’d known that as well, though he’d given it little consideration. It was of no import to him where Knossus Heavensen went. ‘They are very well informed, whoever they are.’ He glared at her, though without any true rancour. Miska was immune to his glare, in any event. She peered at him
‘It is the talk of the palace. You should unstop your ears and listen - you might learn something.’ Her tone skirted the edge of insubordination. ‘Sigmar throws open the vaults of our temple, and sets us loose at last. The veil of secrecy is cast aside. We will march openly with our brethren, now, for the first time.’
‘We? Is our chamber to march upon Shyish as well, then?’
‘A figure of speech.’
Balthas grunted. Miska was right - he hadn’t been listening. He had buried himself in the hunt for the dead, as penance for his failure on the Sigmarabulum. He had never before allowed a soul to escape, and it weighed on him Removed from the moment, he knew that it was not his fault. Not truly. But there was a difference between knowing and believing.
He was conscious of Miska’s eyes on him, and straightened. ‘It is of no import. Until I am informed otherwise, our chamber has a mission. There are still maddened souls racing loose through the citadel-crags of Sigmaron. Someone needs to chain them’
‘As you say, lord-arcanum.’ She knelt and ran her hand through a pile of dust and bone fragments. Something that shone with an azure radiance clung to her gauntlet. It crackled softly as she brushed it into one of the vials that hung from her belt.
She held the vial up to her lips and whispered softly to it. Or perhaps sang. Balthas was never quite sure. Regardless, the spirit would be contained in the vial until such time as she chose to release it - usually with explosive results. She stood.
‘Do you think they resent you, those spirits you hold captive?’ he asked. Some of the vials hanging from her waist held the souls of fellow Stormcasts, reduced to frenzied storm-spirits by a failed reforging process. He couldn’t imagine they were happy with the current state of affairs.
‘I doubt they think at all. To be reduced to such a state is to lose all comprehension of one’s self and one’s surroundings.’ She smiled sadly. ‘They are nothing more than echoes of pain and fear. In my vials, they slumber until such time as Sigmar calls them home.’
‘You hope they slumber.’
Miska sighed. ‘You are more snappish than usual. Is it because Knossus is going to Shyish, and not you?’
He paused. Then, annoyance overwhelmed his reserve. ‘Glymmsforge was founded by our Stormhost. But we are not sent - why?’ He slammed the ferrule of his staff against the stones. ‘I will tell you why,’ he added quickly, before she could speak. ‘Because of my failure. This is punishment.’
‘Do you truly believe that?’
Balthas didn’t answer immediately. He didn’t know. He simply felt. ‘I have asked Sigmar to allow us to go to Shyish,’ he said. He was not asking for her approval, or so he told himself. He was lord-arcanum, and his commands were to be obeyed. Even so, he felt a faint flicker of relief when she nodded.
‘Good. It has been too long since we have gone to war.’
‘War? No. The rogue soul. It escaped - I can feel it. Pharus Thaum yet persists, somewhere in the realms. I suspect Shyish, if only because of what has happened - a simplistic theory, I admit, but we must start somewhere.’ He clenched a fist. ‘I will drag him back to the Anvil, and purge his soul of madness.’
‘He is beyond reforging now, even if we find him’
‘Then he will be destroyed. But I will drag him back regardless.’ He slammed his staff down again, and lightning crawled across the stones of the parapet. ‘He was chosen, and he must submit. If he cannot bear the weight of such responsibility, then he will add his strength to the cosmic storm.’ He shook his head. ‘This must be done. That is our purpose.’
Miska nodded agreeably. ‘So it is.’ She looked out over the palace-city. Though she said nothing more, he could almost hear the thoughts running through her head. He became suddenly possessed of the urge to explain his determination.
‘Why would a soul fight so hard?’ Balthas looked out over the city. ‘Only pain results from such struggle.’
Miska was silent for a moment. Then, she said, ‘Perhaps some part of him feared losing those things that made him who he was. Memories are the landmarks by which we find our way.’
‘They - we - do not need to find our way, sister.’ He gestured up at Sigendil. ‘There is our way. There is our guiding light. As bright now as it has always been.’
‘And do you not dream, brother? In those rare, few moments of
sleep you allow yourself, do you not see what life was, before the thunder claimed you?’
Balthas hesitated. ‘Do you?’
Miska smiled thinly. ‘I know my name, brother. I know the feel of ice, weighing down my furs, and the sound of sled-runners biting the ice.’ Her accent thickened slightly as she spoke. ‘I know the taste of a deer’s heart, steaming and still bloody, on a cold morning. I know the songs of my brothers and the way my father taught a bear to dance, to the delight of our village.’ She looked up at the High Star, her expression almost wistful. ‘I know all these things and hold them close in me. Were I to fall in battle, I do not know that any could take them from me, easily. I, too, might lash out on instinct, if it seemed I might lose myself in the pain of reforging.’
Balthas shook his head. ‘I remember things as well, but nothing I would risk eternity for.’ Idly, he glanced up at Mallus, and then away. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘And that, then, is why you are lord-arcanum. You have the proper perspective for the task at hand.’ She didn’t sound as if she believed him. ‘Let us hope it stays that way.’
Miska was not prone to cryptic pronouncements. If she did not elaborate, that meant she didn’t know. ‘Earlier, before the cataclysm… you sensed something. What was it? The cataclysm itself, or something more?’
She leaned on her staff, her face pensive. ‘Sometimes the Anvil shows us things. There is a pattern to everything, if you can but see it.’ She held out a hand. ‘The air feels wrong, somehow. As if the very realms have been wrenched out of shape.’ She looked at him. ‘I think that this is merely the beginning, brother.’
Balthas looked out over the palace-city and felt a moment’s apprehension. After a moment, he said, ‘I think that you are right, sister. Something has awakened in the depths of Shyish, and I think we must be ready for whatever is to come next.’
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