Into the Valley of Death

by Frank Cavallo

  Neither one got the chance. A booming crash of thunder split the skies overhead, quaking the very floor of the tower. With it came a flash of crimson lighting. It blinded them both, casting their armaments aside and sending them reeling.

  A terrible, ghostly voice followed. It seemed to call out from the dying echoes of thunder across the summit.

  ‘Blood will be shed here only by my hand,’ the voice proclaimed.

  It was possessed of an ethereal quality, deep-throated and raspy, yet mellifluous as a winter wind. The words were enunciated with an antiquated, formalistic diction, in the manner of a man to whom the common tongue was quite foreign. His accent was unrecognizable, blending words together with an eerie, slithering lilt.

  ‘Who goes there?’ Felix demanded, turning his sword from Draeder and raising it against the shadows. ‘Reveal yourself!’

  A swirling smog of red mist and black flames answered him, a sudden cyclone that swirled out of dark clouds above. Ghastly faces, claws and vile phantasms roiled within the foul tempest. The wrenching cries of weeping maidens, suffering and wailing in some unknown sorrow, sang a foul serenade to the coming of the storm. Blood-curdling, sinister laughter echoed from the dim, sending ripples through the rancid mist.

  Draeder seemed to recognize the signs. His confidence melted into a look of utter terror.

  ‘By the gods,’ he muttered. ‘It cannot be.’

  The un-living fog was a mere harbinger. From its heart, a centre of raging darkness and howling winds, a figure began to grow. At first no more than the outline of a being, a silhouette against a tableau of shadow and flame, its full aspect soon came into view. Draeder turned to look upon it, and his face went pale.

  Even as he said the name, he couldn’t believe his own eyes.

  ‘Skethris.’

  13.

  His was a visage of utter terror – something that only barely resembled a living man. He was so gaunt as to be skeletal, though not shorn of flesh like the undead guardians beyond the tower. Desiccated, gray skin covered his ghoulish face. It was deathly pallid and emaciated, hints and outlines of skull showing through the leathery skin that was drawn thin across it. The barest hint of beard whiskers, wispy and long, clung to his pointed chin. A twisted rune was branded into his forehead.

  His deep-set eyes peered out from under a set of bony brows, glowering like two crimson flames.

  The robes he wore were ancient and ragged, deep sable and the maroon shade of old blood. The folds of his mantle were almost ethereal, as though woven of nothing more than mist and shadow. Ghostly faces shimmered in and out of view within the many creases of the voluminous sheath; the tortured faces of the undead screaming out for a rest they could never know.

  Skulls and cryptic death-runes ran along the edges of his midnight-black cloak, glistening red. A spiny cowl rose up like a series of evil horns behind his baleful head. Stringy, matted locks of long, white hair hung all about his crown, framing his face and further suggesting his great age.

  Felix’s eyes burned and his lungs revolted. He choked on the icy frost and the sulphur fumes that flooded the tower summit. He looked upon Skethris in frightened disbelief. For a moment the ghastly figure merely menaced them in silence. Then he spoke again.

  ‘How foolish of you, to attempt to steal what has long been mine,’ he said. ‘Your punishment for that will be unimaginable, an everlasting agony the likes of which you cannot yet even conceive.’

  Felix edged back from the roiling, haunted mist. He came nearer to Draeder, though even that seemed unwise.

  ‘You said he was long dead,’ Felix said, trying to keep his voice low, as if to hide his words from the necromancer.

  ‘Everyone I consulted told me that he was,’ Draeder replied, though his gaze could not turn away from the dreadful sight of the necromancer. ‘They lied to me!’

  Skethris snickered, a deep and disturbing laughter that echoed like his booming, ghastly voice.

  ‘Just as I gather you have lied to all those you have met, ever since,’ the necromancer replied. ‘Rather fitting, is it not?’

  Felix and Draeder came together, united again for the moment in the face of a much more terrible enemy. But the necromancer permitted them no quarter. Not even a moment’s respite.

  ‘Now you will pay for your crimes,’ Skethris declared.

  The necromancer raised his bony arms, bringing the horrid swirl around him to a boil. Incomprehensible incantations followed, sparking blood-red lightning across his pointed fingertips. The wailing souls that flanked him raged as he cast down his cold vengeance, raking the crest of his tower with jagged bolts of black flame.

  The summit erupted in a paroxysm of dark fire. One twisted tangle crashed into the floor only inches in front of Draeder. He tried to dodge, to make a leap for some kind of safety, but a second whirl of death magic sent him into a tumble across the rooftop. Felix rushed to his side. But he never made it. Yet another blast of cold flame sent them hurtling apart.

  As he staggered to his feet, Draeder was hit by a final explosion of lightning. He lost his grip on both the book and his scythe-staff as he fell backward, sending them sliding across the floor of the tower. In no more than a moment, he and Felix lay exposed. Skethris cackled at the sight of the two interlopers, howling in delight as though merely playing with them before exacting his true vengeance.

  Felix regained his footing first, seeing Draeder coming to his feet slower, weakened by the attacks he’d already endured. The force of the blow had opened a gulf between them, separated by a stretch that seemed so very far under the watch of the necromancer and his minions. The Book of Ashur now lay across the tower summit.

  Felix didn’t waste a moment. Risking another attack, he dodged a column of ghostly fire and leaped toward Draeder, sliding through the fetid dust until he reached the hedge wizard.

  ‘We have to stay together,’ he said. ‘It’s our only chance.’

  Draeder shook his head.

  ‘We can’t fight him, he’s too powerful,’ he replied.

  ‘We may not need to,’ Felix said. ‘If we charge for the edge of the tower, right through the centre of the ghostly horde, we might be able to get over the side fast enough to make it down.’

  ‘And if we can’t?’

  Felix lifted his sword, turning toward the horror they were about to launch themselves upon.

  ‘Then we’ll die, just as we surely will if we stay where we are,’ he said.

  Draeder hesitated. He looked back at the menacing, horrid form of Skethris, the master of the undead looming in the heart of the storm. Then he turned to the book. It lay just out of reach. He couldn’t draw his sight from it, despite the danger.

  ‘All that power, so very near,’ Draeder whispered. ‘If I could only reach it…’

  The ghostly figures closed in around them.

  ‘We must go, ‘Felix shouted. ‘Now!’

  Felix struggled to his feet. He lifted his sword one more time, whispered a final prayer to Sigmar and pressed the attack. Though he could not see who or what his blade struck, he plunged headlong into the mist, his own sight robbed from him as he dove into the putrid miasma of ghosts and fumes. He whirled and slashed, shouting and raging in his last stand against the darkness. But he soon realized that his blade cut only mist. His steel met nothing but smoke and shadow.

  It was a moment before he realized that Draeder was not beside him. The young wizard had made his own charge – but not with Felix.

  He turned, and tried to see through the mist and the black haze. When he finally saw the nobleman, he was across the rooftop. Though Draeder had managed to once again take hold of the Book of Ashur, he was surrounded by the ghastly minions of Skethris.

  ‘Draeder!’ Felix shouted. ‘You must leave it behind!’

  It was already too late.

  As Felix watched in horror, Sk
ethris turned his full fury upon Draeder, not attacking directly but rather swarming him with his spectral followers. Claws and cold hands grasped at him from every direction. Vaporous tentacles coiled like serpents around his legs, rooting him into the floor of the tower. Phantom chains sprang up from the stone. They encircled him, plunging barbed hooks and spears into every corner of his flesh.

  ‘Though your feeble magic was enough to bring you here,’ Skethris taunted. ‘You are nothing compared to me. My hands command the winds of death itself. Even with the Book of Ashur, you stand no chance against my power.’

  The foul necromancer hovered before Draeder. He towered above the frightened young hedge wizard in a column of mist and dark fire. When he lifted his bony, gnarled hand Draeder’s entire body rose up. Skethris reached out with his other hand, his long fingers stretched like talon claws aimed at Draeder’s face.

  ‘But you are… interesting,’ the necromancer said.

  His eyes grew brighter, burning with scarlet flame as he studied the man he held in thrall before him.

  ‘The stench of death surrounds you,’ Skethris continued. ‘The tortured spirits of your many victims trail behind you, in an ever-present wake of suffering and ruin.’

  ‘Please, I only wished to learn,’ Draeder pleaded. ‘To see what you see. To know what you know.’

  Skethris smiled as he clenched his fingers into a fist. Draeder cried out in pain the moment he did so, howling with a scream of such agony that it turned Felix’s blood cold.

  Felix readied himself to face the same fate, holding his sword high in a last measure of defiance, though he knew it was no use. The necromancer seemed unconcerned with him however, all of his attention focused on Draeder.

  ‘You wish to learn the deepest mysteries of the dark?’ Skethris said.

  Draeder trembled, squinting and squealing in absolute misery as the necromancer delighted in tormenting him.

  He could manage little more than a feeble response.

  ‘Yes…’

  Again Skethris turned his fingers, sending jolts of pain rippling through every inch of Draeder’s flesh, laughing at the spectacle of suffering.

  Felix edged backward, finding that the phantoms still did not impede him. All eyes upon the summit were now drawn to Draeder von Halkern, suspended above the tower, tortured and pilloried for his hubris, the dire consequence of his abject failure.

  ‘You wish to know death itself?’ the necromancer asked.

  Draeder could barely acknowledge.

  ‘I am death,’ Skethris said. ‘And you belong to me now.’

  A dark energy pulsed through Draeder. It surged in his bones, filling his eyes with a blood-red glow.

  ‘I am yours… master,’ he said.

  Skethris smiled, laughing along with his chorus of lost souls.

  ‘Then as your first act of servitude, renounce the world of the living and rid this place of the defiler who remains,’ the necromancer announced.

  Draeder’s head turned, moving slowly until his glowering crimson eyes came to stare upon Felix.

  Across the summit, Felix gripped his sword. He now realized what had not occurred to him before – Draeder had not failed. He had found exactly what he sought.

  The rogue wizard leaped from the embrace of the necromancer, trailing mist and flame as he charged upon Felix. His scythe swung high over his head, the long, wicked blade slashing down as he came.

  ‘You should have joined me when you had the chance, Felix,’ he hissed. ‘Now your choice has doomed you.’

  Felix met the attack, and though his muscles ached with exhaustion, his sword clanged against the wizard’s staff in a clash of steel and splinters. Draeder’s face was crazed, his eyes seething with Dark Magic. He wheeled, and struck again, but this time Felix was faster. He parried, knocking Draeder’s scythe aside.

  Then he whirled around, slicing back at Draeder. His sword tore a bloody gash across his chest. A second cut ripped open the flesh of his leg in a blur of red. The wizard howled and clutched at his wounds, staggering through the flames and the blood.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Felix whispered. ‘This was always your choice. Your path. It was never mine. I’m not like you.’

  Draeder swung his scythe again in a last-ditch effort, flailing it toward Felix. But Felix dodged, cutting the staff to pieces with a slash that ripped through Draeder’s arm, sending him crumpling down in a heap.

  Then Felix turned and ran, and though Draeder wailed in agony behind him, calling out his name as he crossed over to the edge of the wall, Felix never looked back. He jumped over the parapet, sliding down until he reached a ledge, where he climbed the rest of the way to the floor of the valley.

  For a moment, as he passed the tower gates toward the avenue of death, Felix could still hear the awful, chilling screams. He could make out the last dying echoes of Draeder von Halkern; cries of desperate anguish, fading somewhere in the distance, cursing him through unspeakable tortures.

  Then it was gone. The mist and the shadows and any hint of the undead menace that he now knew lurked behind him in the shadows. With nothing but his sword at his side, thankful for the very life in his bones, Felix turned his back on the darkness and began the long journey away from the Valley of Death.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Frank Cavallo has written a number of short stories for Black Library, including ‘Leechlord’ and ‘The Talon of Khorne’. He was born and raised in New Jersey, went to school in Boston and now lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where he works by day as a criminal defence attorney.

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  Published in 2013 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

  Cover illustration by Winona Nelson

  © Games Workshop Limited 2013. All rights reserved.

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