Soul Wars Page 11

  Elya looked up at her. ‘They say Elder Bones takes you when you die. Did he get Pharus?’

  Calys felt a chill at the girl’s words. Elder Bones was the name some in Glymmsforge used for Nagash. ‘No,’ she said hurriedly. ‘No, he didn’t.’

  And she hoped and prayed that it was so.

  NAGASHIZZAR, THE SILENT CITY

  In the darkness of Shyish, Nagash looked upon his works and found them good. He stood, rising to his full height, shards of shadeglass falling from his shoulders. He heard the Ruinous Powers howling in fury as a cataclysm not of their making rippled out across the Mortal Realms. He drew some small satisfaction from their impotent rage, even as his own frustration boiled over.

  ‘It was imperfectly done,’ he intoned. He looked down. Arkhan the Black met his gaze. The Mortarch held an orruk skull in his hand. They stood in the ruins of Nagashizzar, among heaps and mounds of smouldering greenskin bones. Deathrattle work gangs numbering in the thousands laboured in silence to clear the avenues and rebuild what had been destroyed. Arkhan tossed the skull over his shoulder.

  ‘I have always been of a mind that success should be judged only on its occurrence,’ he said, his voice a hollow imitation of his master’s. ‘That it was done is enough, surely.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Nagash looked up. His mind was measureless, a cosmic instrument of many parts. At any one time only small slivers of his true consciousness were active - facets of himself, moulded to conduct particular errands, while the bulk of his attentions were bent to more important matters.

  Idly, his awareness passed across these lesser selves, following the amethyst threads that connected them all back to him He listened as Bal-Nagash, the Black Child, soothed the final moments of a plague-touched mother and her infant, singing to them in a high, sweet voice. He watched as Nagash-Morr, the Reaper-King, manifested upon a battlefield in some forgotten corner of Shyish, wielding scythe-blade in defence of the living and the dead alike. There were darker aspects as well. Things of broken fury and madness, who reaped a steady toll of souls for his eternal legions.

  All were him All were one, whatever their name. Like Arkhan, they spoke with Nagash’s voice and acted on his design. And like Arkhan, they would grow stronger, thanks to the completion of his design. They - and he - would wax in might, until the realms bent beneath their weight. Until even the farthest stars dimmed and far worlds went silent.

  He gazed at the sky and saw that it was filled with souls. A thousand - a million - more, innumerable, all spinning, falling, screaming. A flood of souls, descending together in an unceasing tide, drawn down by an irresistible force: him. No longer would they resist his call. No longer would other realms take what Shyish was owed.

  To mortals, the changes he had enacted would be all but imperceptible. Their minds were not capable of processing such a dramatic metaphysical shift without help. Some would have an inkling of what had occurred. But they would not know for certain.

  To Nagash, however, the change was obvious. Where once the realm had stretched like an endless field of wheat, awaiting the scythe, now it was a whirlpool. A maelstrom of lands and lives, stretching down, down to Nagashizzar and the Black Pyramid. An abyss deeper than time, where even death might die.

  ‘Look, Arkhan… A void is gnawing at the sky. An absence - an unlight. The circle of time is broken all out of joint, and the sun has become as a black tunnel. The sky becomes an inverted mockery of itself - a shadeglass reflection.’ Nagash reached upwards, as if to touch the sun. ‘I have made it so. I have willed it. This realm is mine. It is me. Sigmar might be the stars, but I am the darkness that stretches between them All things recede into me, as motes of light dwindle in the black.’ He looked down at Arkhan. ‘I have come into my inheritance at last.’

  ‘You have cracked open the skies, master. Not just here. The other gods-’

  ‘There are no other gods before me, my servant. Merely falsehoods, masquerading as divinity. Life, destruction, light, shadow. What are these things but preludes to the inevitable? I am become the totality of existence. And I will cast my light upon all these realms.’ He lowered his hand. ‘I have bent the world, my servant, and made it a shape more to my liking.’

  ‘You have made it a nadir,’ Arkhan said softly. The Mortarch looked around in what might have been wonder, or perhaps awe. ‘We are truly the lowest point of the Mortal Realms now. The bottom of a well of bones.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Nagash thrust aside a shattered pillar with less effort than a man might have used to swat a fly. He felt swollen - bloated - with the energies he’d called up. They would fade, in time, but for the moment, he was supreme. It was just as well that the Howlers in the Wastes had fled back to their own realms. He might have been tempted to match his newfound strength against theirs in a battle that surely would have compounded the cataclysm ‘Was this destruction what you intended, my lord?’

  ‘No. The transformation was to have been silent. The false gods would have been none the wiser, if my formulas had not been altered by the presence of intruders. Now, as you said, they will see and know what I have done.’

  ‘Given what has been unleashed I should hope so. Otherwise they are blind.’

  Nagash looked down at his Mortarch. ‘Humour?’

  Arkhan looked up. ‘It seemed appropriate, given the situation.’

  Nagash studied him for a moment. ‘Very well.’ He looked up. ‘The outer wave of the cataclysm will have reached even the outermost edge of Azyr by now. Sigmar will know what I have done.’

  ‘You sound pleased.’

  ‘I am Despite my earlier intentions, I find that I wish him to know. I want the betrayer to see that I am at last supreme, in my realm. He is a fleck of starlight, an echo of thunder, but I am Shyish itself. I am death, and death’s shadow. All things come to me eventually. Even gods.’ He turned, staring across the wastes. ‘But for now, I will be content in retaking my realm at last. The squatters will be driven from the temples, and the last underworlds bound to my will.’

  ‘They will try to stop you.’

  ‘Let them Let Sigmar himself come and meet me in battle once more.’ Nagash snatched up a block of shadeglass and tore it in two. He cast the pieces aside. ‘I will break him I will snuff the stars themselves, if I wish. The God-King will not stand against me.’

  ‘It is not Sigmar that concerns me, my lord.’

  Nagash drew himself to his full height. ‘Sigmar is the only concern. The Ruinous Powers are but vermin, clustered at the threshold of my realm. I will deal with them as and when they choose to pit their wiles against mine. But Sigmar…’ Nagash touched his skull. He remembered things, sometimes. Events that had not happened, or rather, had happened to another him, in another turn of the universal wheel.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw a flash of gold and felt the impact - a hammer, wielded by one who was not yet a god, but would be. He felt his skull shiver to fragments and his spirit fly free, seeking escape from the reverberations of that terrible blow. He heard a voice then. The same voice he had heard at the dawn of the Age of Myth, when he had been freed from his mountain-cairn. A hand, blazing like the heart of a star, had plucked him from his cage of eternal night. The one who had freed him, fought beside him. betrayed him.

  ‘Sigmar is the only concern,’ Nagash said, again. ‘I will cast down the stars and reduce the sun to a cinder. I will topple his golden towers and make of his people a feast for crows and jackals. This, I command.’

  Arkhan hesitated. Then, he bowed his head. ‘And as you command, it must be, my lord. Nagash is all, and all are one in him.’

  ‘Yes. It is good that you remember this, my servant.’

  Arkhan looked at him. ‘Humour, my lord?’

  ‘No. A statement of fact.’ Nagash looked up, as something drew his attentions. The sky above was in constant flux, rippling and twisting as it became used to its new
shape. Light pierced this fluttering shroud at a hundred points - souls, some of them, being drawn down into Shyish. But one of them was different. Stronger.

  The fiery comet screamed as it fell through the sea of stars. Caught up in the glacial echoes of the cataclysm, it tumbled faster and faster, burning itself a path through the spaces between realms. It blazed with cold fire as it tore through the purple-black skies. It spun in all directions at once, its crackling form twisting and bending with the celestial wind.

  As Nagash watched, the firmament seemed to fold around it, twisting and spinning, stars stretching across the curve, becoming scars of light. It tumbled down through the tunnel of worlds and stars, falling faster and faster, until its very shape seemed to stretch across vast distances, and its screams became a sonorous drone.

  He could hear its voice now, and taste the echoes of its memories. He even knew its name. Intrigued, he rose up to meet the thing, as it fell screaming through the void. Nagash expanded as he rose, until he filled the sky. He lifted his hands, cupping them beneath the shimmering comet to catch it. As it tumbled into his grasp, he closed his hands about it and peered into its soul. ‘Ah. What a curious thing you are. Fury, with no form to contain it.’

  The lightning-gheist had no shape, no true awareness save that it was in pain, from which there was no respite. The broken shards of its memory would bite into its limited consciousness, briefly flashing into perspective before being torn away. These shards became explosions of colour and sensation, and brought a new type of agony. Its screams redoubled in ferocity as it boiled in his grip, lashing out with claws of lightning.

  It reeked of Azyr, and of Shyish as well. He knew a reforged soul when he held one. But never had he beheld one in such a state of flux. ‘You stink of the stars, little thing,’ he intoned, reaching out as if to caress the crackling mass. ‘You smell of clear waters and lightning. Are you a new thing under the moon, or something familiar in a new shape?’

  Lightning crashed against his talons as the soul tried to squirm free. It was mad and blind, unable to perceive the nature of the being that held it. Slowly, idly, Nagash sank his claws into it and pulled it apart, strand by crackling strand. He unwound it like a knot of thread, studying each strand for some sign of its identity - its original identity, before Sigmar had twisted it into a shape of his choosing.

  ‘Ah,’ he said finally. ‘Look, Arkhan - a prodigal soul has returned. One born of Shyish and stolen by Azyr. How strong it is. What a warrior it might have made for my armies, in times past.’ Nagash pulled his hands apart, stretching the soul between them Its screams rose in pitch as its essence was drawn taut.

  ‘Perhaps it might still make one, my lord.’

  ‘And why would I waste my strength on such a deed, Arkhan?’ Nagash asked. Some part of him was genuinely curious. It was not often that Arkhan made such suggestions.

  ‘Fate, my lord. You are its epitome - the ultimate and untimely. Is this, then, not your will? Such a gift, here, now?’ Arkhan stretched up a hand, as if to touch the crackling, shrieking thing. ‘A portent of things to come. You are superior. What better way to show it than to undo what Sigmar has done?’

  Nagash cocked his head. He studied Arkhan for long moments, considering. If such a suggestion had come from one of his other servants - Neferata, for instance, or Mannfred - he would have questioned the motives behind it. But this was Arkhan. Arkhan lacked even the illusion of free will - he was but the echo of his master and thought nothing, save that some part of Nagash had thought it first.

  And his suggestion was one Nagash had contemplated at length, since the first moment he had realised what Sigmar had done. Sigmar the Usurper, who had taken the souls of the rightfully dead and made them over into something impossible.

  Sigmar, whose work Nagash would now undo.

  ‘You are correct, my servant. Let us begin as we mean to go on.’ Nagash looked down at the struggling thing in his grip. ‘First, we must strip away all falsehood.’ Nagash spread his talons, stretching the struggling soul even more taut between them. He could see the true soul within, the seed of substance from which this shape had grown.

  The Stormcasts were not possessed of mortal souls - instead, something of the divine was grafted to them. A bit of the eternal tempest, nestled within them and growing ever stronger, over time. As Nagash did, so too did Sigmar - hollowing out his worshippers, so that something of him might flourish within them. Whether he admitted it or not.

  Nagash could not pluck that mote of celestial power loose, no matter how much he might wish to. It was inextricably intertwined with the essence of the soul. To rip it loose would be to destroy the soul and render it useless. In a way, the Stormcasts were as much a part of Sigmar as the Mortarchs were a part of Nagash. Thus did the God-King seek to protect what he claimed, whether it was rightfully his or not.

  He could almost admire such tenacity. Whatever else, Sigmar was strong, and Nagash had always respected strength, even though he sought to humble it. But strength alone was not enough. Not now. Nagash was beyond strength. Beyond tenacity. He was the inevitable, and the inevitable could not be denied, even by gods.

  Jaws wide, he shrieked at the stars, and in the sound was the creak of uncounted crypts and the rustle of leather wings. Then, with a roar, he tore the crackling shape in two. Husks of tattered lightning wrapped themselves about his forearms as something pallid and lacking substance sluiced to the ground from within them. The lightning coiled and spat like a thing alive, even as it faded away into nothing.

  Arkhan knelt beside the hazy shape. He thrust a hand into its centre and rose, dragging it with him, as if it weighed no more than smoke. It was the barest intimation of a human shape, and its misty substance pulsed and roiled. ‘Even shorn of the lightning, it still persists, my lord.’

  ‘Not all of it. A spark yet remains within it - a spark I will fan into a fire of my shaping.’ Nagash took hold of the shape and gestured, casting strands of its substance into the air. In moments, the shape was reduced to scattered skeins of soul-stuff, which curled and twisted slowly on the air. Nagash studied them for a moment. ‘Now, we begin.’

  And slowly, artfully, he began to weave it together once more.

  Pharus Thaum stood alone. The air sparked with lightning, and a flat, grey haze hung over everything, hiding the sky as well as the ground. Something shifted beneath his feet, as he took an uncertain step. He wore unfamiliar armour, and the broken sword he held in his aching hand was of an archaic design. He looked down at his breastplate, with its crowned skull and comet markings. ‘What is this?’ he croaked. ‘Where am I?’ Somewhere far above him, something that might have been a carrion bird mocked his question. He looked up and saw only grey clouds, rolling across a colourless horizon. For a moment, those clouds seemed to twist into a shape he half recalled, before they drifted apart.

  He looked around. The echo of old pain lanced through him. Not just physical, though there was that as well. His joints ached, as if he had been fighting for days. His skin felt raw, and his throat was dry. Through the haze, he saw what might have been great walls of wood or stone, as if there were a city somewhere in the distance.

  Pharus knew he should recognise it. A name danced on the tip of his tongue. He felt as if he knew this place… as if he had lived this moment before. What was its name?

  He took a step towards the distant walls, and heard a clatter. The ground shifted beneath his feet. The mist dispersed, for just a moment. He froze. The ground was covered in bones. He hesitated. No. Not covered. He was standing on a hill composed of skulls and femurs, of snapped ribs and broken spines. Everywhere he looked, great white dunes rose in silent undulation: a desert of the dead.

  His stomach lurched, and the sword slipped from his hand. As it struck the bones, the air throbbed with the reverberation of an unseen bell. A great wailing rose from all around him, like the din of startled birds. But no birds had ev
er made a sound such as this. It pierced his ears and raced through him, driving out all thought. The world began to spin, and his stomach with it, as the din rose to painful volume. Pharus clapped his hands over his ears and sank down. Everything shook. He heard the bones rattling, as if something huge were moving beneath them, circling him with slow, lethal interest. The mist thinned, and he saw what might have been the trunks of immense trees, rising from amid the bones.

  From above, he heard screams - not the cries of birds, but human voices, stretched in unknowable agonies. They echoed thinly, trickling down from impossible heights. He climbed awkwardly to his feet and took a step towards them, not wanting to see, but needing to. The mist swirled about the heights, momentarily revealing the great spiked branches that jutted from the trunks at impossible angles. And on those branches.

  Pharus looked away. But he could not block out the screams. A long shadow, as of great wings, swept over him, and the air boomed with the thunder of their passing. He did not look up, even as bones were cast about to slam into him Even as a red rain began to fall, staining white bones pink.

  ‘Do you hear them, Pharus Thaum?’

  The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. A deep, basso rumble that shook him to his marrow. A sepulchral voice, harsh and grating. Pharus shook his head. ‘Who are you? Where am I?’

  ‘You are where all men eventually must go,’ the voice continued. ‘You are in the nadir, where all things settle.’ There were shapes in the mist now, horrid, moving things that he could not identify. Stick-legged and jackal-eared, they prowled among the bones, and he turned, trying to keep them in sight. They never came close enough to see clearly, for which he was grateful, but he could hear their hungry, eager panting. Bones cracked between long teeth, and blunted nails pried open runnels of marrow.