01 - Razumov's Tomb

by Darius Hinks - (ebook by Undead)

  He fixed his thoughts in his own head and looked around at the ruins of Schwarzbach. “Where?” he whispered. The glittering figures of knights were dashing by, filled with renewed vigour as the reiksgraf led them against a vastly diminished foe. The beastmen were on the verge of defeat, but beyond that, Gabriel could see very little. The tower was a howling cyclone of sand, surrounded by shifting hoops of light, but there was no sign of the Grand Astromancer.

  Gabriel peered into the whirling column, his skeletal face showing a brief hint of emotion. “Caspar, what have I done?” He closed his eyes and hung his head. Even if his master was still alive, they were all now stranded in another world, with no way of knowing where or when. As the ringing of swords surrounded him, he realised that the bravery of the reiksgraf was pointless. He might slay the beastmen, but then what? Where would they go?

  Gabriel lay there for a few moments, unsure what to do. He dragged himself into a sitting position and leaned back against a ruined wall. As he did so, he noticed something flashing through the storm, a glimmer of white and gold to the south of the square. He thought for a minute that it might be more hallucinations—more glimpses of impossible places—but as the shapes moved closer, he realised that they were as real as Schwarzbach’s tattered awnings.

  The pain in his leg was incredible, but he tried to ignore it for a moment to discern the nature of this latest madness. Like Caspar, he was draped in the arcane equipment of his profession and one of the objects was a long, jointed telescope. He snapped the thing together and squinted through the lens. At first he could see nothing but heaving banks of sand, whipped up by the storm, but then, as he scoured the horizon, a face swam into view. Gabriel flinched. The figure was dressed in beautiful armour of gold, amber and turquoise, but its grinning face was completely devoid of flesh. The wizard grimaced as he turned the lens on the other shapes emerging from the storm. They were all the same—jerking puppets of bleached bone, clad in ornate armour and carrying spears and bows. At the head of the army was a great chariot, led by four skeletal horses and carrying a figure dressed in even more finery than the others. His golden headdress was designed to resemble the hood of a cobra and he fixed his gaze on Gabriel, a cold fire burning in his eye sockets.

  Gabriel shook his head in disbelief. The desert was empty and desolate. There was no sign of life for miles around them. How could this army have discovered them so quickly? He looked again and had his answer. Behind the skeletons, he saw rows of wagons and tents. The undead army must have been expecting them. He turned the lens back towards the chariot and saw that the leader of the skeletons carried a selection of objects not so different from his own—lenses, sextants and crumbling, ancient texts. “He’s a sorcerer,” muttered Gabriel. “He’s been waiting.”

  As he studied the skeleton king, Gabriel realised that the blazing eyes were not looking at him at all, but something further into the ruins of Schwarzbach. Gabriel looked back over his shoulder and let out a curse. The skeletons were making directly for Razumov’s tower.

  He must have known we would arrive here at this time, thought Gabriel. All of this must have been prophesised. As he watched them approaching, Gabriel noticed other shapes rearing up over the heads of the skeletons—enormous snakes, as skeletal and heavily armoured as the rest of the army. Perched on their heads were skeleton riders, nocking arrows to bows as their bizarre mounts hurled them towards the stranded town square.

  “Reiksgraf,” cried Gabriel, looking back at the knights. The noise of the storm was too great; the wind snatched his words away and the general fought on, oblivious to the animated charnel house that was hurtling towards him.

  Gabriel clutched his head in his hands and tried to think. He could see no way that any of them could survive in this alien desert, but he could not bear to watch the knights die at the hands of such hideous beings. He scoured his memory for an idea, examining every shred of prophecy he could recall. He pictured himself back at the Celestial College, in his featureless cell, poring over his moondial. Everything that he had pictured had come to pass. He gasped. Not quite everything. He suddenly remembered the part of the prophecy that he had been unable to explain. “A mountain of gold.” His pulse raced as he remembered the vast presence beneath the sand. Its ancient malice had been contained within a huge mass of metal—gold, perhaps.

  Gabriel closed his eyes and allowed his thoughts to reach out into the storm once more. His leg was bleeding heavily, staining the sand a dark red, and he found the dizziness that was overtaking him quite liberating—he easily sent his mind burrowing down through the dark, cool sand beneath Schwarzbach. As he approached the enormous presence, he felt a thrill of terror. Whatever the thing was, it was burning with hate, a hate that had lain festering for countless ages. Gabriel moaned as he allowed his thoughts to mingle with such bitter sentience.

  He was so consumed by fear and dismay that he barely noticed the ranks of skeletons clattering onto the cobbled streets and launching themselves at the knights. Even as towering, armoured cobras smashed through the ruins, swinging their heads from side to side as they chose their prey, Caspar paid no attention. His eyes had rolled back in their sockets and he was twitching in agony. As the undead legions waded into battle, blowing long, gilded horns and drawing their weapons, Caspar groaned in fear and regret, oblivious to anything but the vast evil he was summoning from beneath the sand. As he lay there, muttering half-remembered spells, the stones around him began to rattle and shake.

  Caspar plunged from the tower, Razumov’s staff still crushing his windpipe. The two men rolled as they fell, locked together by a furious lust for power. Spinning rocks broke their fall and even the storm itself seemed unwilling to let them die, buffeting and spinning them with such force that when they finally hit the ground, it was with a wheezing thud, rather than a fatal crunch.

  Caspar rolled free of Razumov’s grip, gasping for breath and lurching to his feet. He realised that his staff had flown from his grip and was lying on the far side of the tower, wedged between two shattered rocks.

  Razumov’s head was scorched and misshapen, but as he clambered to his feet he looked at Caspar and laughed. “What are you doing here, old man? You don’t have the strength for this.”

  Caspar saw that the Kislevite had also lost his staff in the fall, but it was lying near a broken pillar, just a few feet away from the sorcerer.

  Razumov followed the direction of his gaze and laughed even harder, strolling over to his staff. “Prepare yourself, old man. You’ll soon be one with the stars.”

  Caspar raced towards his own staff. His decrepitude had completely evaporated—he sprinted around the drifting tower like a teenager—but he could see that it was hopeless. There was no way he could reach the staff before Razumov reached his.

  He stumbled to a halt, deciding to look for shelter instead, but there was nothing. He was standing on the mosaic that had once marked the centre of the town hall. He was completely exposed. Caspar looked back at the sorcerer with a terrible sense of dread.

  Razumov’s laughter evaporated as his staff was snatched from the ground and levelled at his chest. He stumbled to a halt and held up his hands. “Wait, my love, what are you—”

  Natalya was sobbing bitterly as she closed her eyes and poured crimson fire from the crescent of horns, pinning Razumov against the broken column and enveloping him in a pummelling blast of magic. “All those years, I waited,” she said, her voice desolate. “All those centuries.”

  Razumov shook his head furiously, reaching out through the flames, but it was no use. As the red light washed over him, it tore away his layers of rotten flesh, quickly revealing the bones beneath. Even then, he continued struggling. His exposed jawbone continued to work, snapping open and shut as the muscles around it shrivelled and smoked.

  Natalya’s grief increased as she destroyed her lover, but her grip remained firm and the column of fire continued to slam into him. Finally, his bones began pulsing with a light of their own, before
detonating with a series of dry crunching sounds and dropping to the ground in a smouldering heap. Even then, Natalya did not extinguish the fire. She simply lowered her aim, pouring it over Razumov’s remains until nothing was left but a blackened smudge. She let out a final sob and lowered the staff so that its head clunked on the ground. The crescent of horns pulsed once more, then grew dim.

  Caspar remained frozen to the spot, his heart pounding as watched to see her next move.

  The broken old woman stood there motionless, staring at the embers of her dead love.

  Caspar looked over at his staff. It was just a few feet away. If he could tread carefully, she might not even hear him. The Grand Astromancer of the Celestial College crept through the rubble like a common footpad, desperate not to draw attention to himself, but as he approached the staff, a charred piece of window frame snapped beneath his foot.

  The sound rang out through the storm and Natalya whirled around, fixing her tear-filled eyes on the wizard. She raised Razumov’s staff and a furious snarl contorted her rotten flesh.

  Caspar shrank away, raising his hands and shaking his head in terror.

  Before she had chance to unleash her fire, Natalya noticed something on Caspar’s chest that caused her to pause and frown. As she looked closer, her snarl became a mocking grin and she began to laugh. She shook her head and threw down the staff in disgust, turning on her heel and striding off into the storm, heading for the endless desert.

  Caspar gasped in shock, unable to believe his luck. He dashed over to his staff and grabbed it, but when he looked up, the woman had vanished into the writhing dust clouds. He shook his head in disbelief. Why had she let him live, he wondered, scouring the sands for a sign of her. Then he remembered the cause of her amusement and looked down at his chest. In the fall, his robes had been tugged open, revealing a ragged scar where Razumov’s staff had struck him. The wound was surrounded by a mass of angry-looking sores. They were oddly swollen and Caspar felt a surge of panic as he gently prodded one of them. It burst open, revealing a row of tiny, gleaming, needle-like fangs.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Gabriel dragged himself clear as the stone floor began to ripple and bulge. Flagstones cracked and flew into the air and the ground let out a rolling, subterranean groan. The knights were too busy defending themselves against the skeletons to notice, but Gabriel’s eyes widened as he realised the scale of the thing that was rising from beneath the town—a new hill was forming right in the centre of Schwarzbach, a hundred feet wide and growing larger every second. Even with all the magic that was singing through his palms, Gabriel found it almost impossible to bend the thing to his will. He clutched his staff tighter and reached out again into the storm of magic, grasping at the spiralling gusts of azyr.

  As the hill rose higher, the summit fell away, revealing an enormous statue constructed from the same materials as the skeletons’ armour—it was a hulking mass of polished gold, ribbed with lines of jade and as it emerged from a tower of sand, Gabriel saw that it had been designed to resemble a colossal leonine creature, with an ornate cobra hood surrounding a gleaming, elongated death mask. The golden behemoth looked down over the battle like a vengeful god, a pair of gilded wings folded along its back and a scorpion’s tail rising from its hindquarters.

  As the statue turned towards him, Gabriel baulked, letting slip all the strands of azyr he had been gathering and shielding his eyes from the thing’s terrible gaze.

  Down in the square, the battle ground to a halt as the combatants saw the metal giant rising over them. The gold-clad king on the chariot slumped its shoulders in dismay and even the armoured cobras ceased their swaying as they saw what Gabriel had summoned.

  As the giant statue surveyed the town, the skeletons began dropping to their knees in genuflection, forgetting all about the ranks of knights arrayed against them. The king, enraged by this, began lashing out at those nearby with a curved sword, berating them in booming, sepulchral tones.

  Free of Gabriel’s command, the statue rose up on its hind legs and roared into the storm. The noise was like the end of the world. It rang through the air with centuries-old bitterness and caused all who heard it to clamp their hands over their ears and wail in despair. Even the skeleton king collapsed to its knees, shaking its head as the awful sound echoed through the ruins.

  The statue turned to face the dazzling tower, fixing its lifeless gaze on the source of the storm.

  Gabriel groaned in dismay and thrust his mind back into the statue’s head, melding his thoughts with the alien sentience within. The statue railed against him with unbelievable malevolence, but Gabriel was undeterred. He felt as though his whole life had been leading to this point. For decades he had been bending animalistic minds to his will and now, as he faced his greatest challenge, his body trilled with magic. The storm was howling around him more fiercely than ever and, as the statue tried to wrench itself free, he lashed great, invisible bonds around its thoughts, harnessing them to his unbending will.

  Gabriel looked down over the square from behind the enormous death mask, feeling the incredible power at his command. He turned the ancient, metal skull until it was facing the skeleton king and its serpentine honour guard. The king cowered and shook its head, unable to hold the gaze of such a being.

  Gabriel’s statue reared up on its hind legs again and slammed down onto the army below. The few buildings in Schwarzbach that were still standing collapsed, adding to the clouds of dust and scattering rocks though the air. The clouds that erupted from beneath the statue’s paws were tinged with crimson. As well as crushing the undead king and his skeletons, its great weight had also come down on some of the Empire knights who did not manage to scramble clear.

  As Gabriel looked down from behind the death mask, he saw that the craters he had made were lined with human as well as skeletal remains. He felt a pang of remorse, but it was quickly washed away by a tide of vengeful bloodlust. He realised that his mind was merging dangerously with the centuries-old statue, but he was powerless to resist, carried along by a heady mixture of azyr and long-suppressed hatred.

  The reiksgraf howled at his men to flee as the statue reared again, but not all of them managed to stagger clear before the great paws slammed down for a second time.

  Gabriel felt his mind slipping as he abandoned himself to the pleasure of killing. Ancient grudges filled his mind with a wonderful ecstasy of rage as he smashed through the rubble in the guise of the golden statue. All thoughts of home or victory were forgotten as he butchered the tiny figures scattering before him. Skeletal wraiths and armour-clad knights blurred into one pathetic prey. As he killed, the winds joined him in a deafening, lusty roar, blasting through the dead and the dying and feeding Morrslieb’s vile glow. The serpent riders attempted to flee. The gleaming cobras swooped and lunged through the rolling clouds, making for the desert with incredible speed, but Gabriel and the statue bore down on them before they could escape, grinding them into dust and shattered amber.

  The butchery was almost complete when Gabriel and the statue paused. The skeletons had all been returned to the dust that spawned them and the last few knights had gathered at the foot of the floating tower, with the battered reiksgraf at their head, defiant to the last. Gabriel’s hesitation came from jealousy rather than pity. A third presence had emerged behind the death mask and was vying for control of the statue. A weak, desperate scream echoed through the metal skull. “Gabriel!” it cried, “you’ve won! Let them live!”

  As the voice grew louder and closer, Gabriel felt a terrible thrill of recognition, followed by an equally awful sense of shame. The voice belonged to his master, the Grand Astromancer. The old man’s panicked tones wrenched Gabriel back from the terrible fury that had consumed him. At the last minute he steered the statue away from the huddled ranks of knights and crashed down onto a rubble-strewn road. Visions of butchered men suddenly filled his mind, tormenting him with their grasping, broken limbs. As Caspar’s voice continued to batter at his c
onsciousness, Gabriel’s shame turned to anger—not the alien anger of the statue, but his own mortal fury at being so easily manipulated. He turned all the fury of the storm on the ancient sentience riding beside him. The thing fought back with shocking vehemence—it clearly had powers of its own—and Gabriel found himself locked in a desperate struggle. After so many centuries trapped beneath the desert, the statue had no intention of giving up easily and, to Gabriel’s horror, he realised that even now, fully aware of his danger, he could not shake off the statue’s grip.

  The golden monster lurched and smashed through the ruins as the wizard fought for control of its body, but as its determination grew, it stumbled to a halt, straddling a section of the shattered town wall and forcing Gabriel from its thoughts.

  Gabriel’s own body lay twitching in an ever-increasing pool of blood. As he felt his grip on the statue slipping, his heart raced, pumping his life away through the ragged hole in his thigh.