Shadespire: The Mirrored City Read online

  Challenges now, among the bellows. Figures lurched to their feet, or shoved their way towards the balcony. Isengrim grinned into the teeth of their growing fury. He slammed his fist into his chest. ‘Come then! Come. Show me.’

  One warrior shoved his way to the fore, shouting curses. A bloodreaver with a face that was more scar tissue than unblemished flesh, and his lips gnawed to ragged tatters. He wore a cloak of stitched faces and held a curved blade. ‘I’ll show you,’ he roared. ‘Come down and see my courage.’

  Before Zuvass could stop him, Isengrim leapt from the balcony. Warriors scattered as he landed, making room. Without pause, he launched himself at his challenger. Sword and axe met with a ringing screech. Isengrim forced his opponent back, laughing. ‘Fight harder, fool! Show me your strength. Show me your power.’

  His opponent howled and tried to force Isengrim’s axe aside. Isengrim stepped back suddenly, throwing the warrior off balance for a moment. As the swordsman lunged at him again, filed teeth bared, Isengrim reversed his axe and slammed the haft into his foe’s belly, doubling him over. As the warrior sank down, Isengrim removed his head with a deft slash. Blood watered the earth, and warriors cried out as if invigorated.

  He plucked the fallen head up by its hair and swung it about. ‘Here was a brave one, and Khorne shall welcome his skull. If he returns, I shall kill him again, or he shall kill me. It matters not, so long as our blood flows.’ He whirled the head and flung it over the crowd. ‘I commend his skull, and my own, to Khorne. Who will join me?’

  Howls rose up, shaking the night. Weapons crashed. Isengrim smiled. Their courage had merely been sleeping. ‘Let war winds rage,’ he bellowed. ‘Let the battle be won or lost, and the slain be chosen! Listen, fools – the wings of his handmaidens beat in the deep. Even here, even in this place, Khorne calls to you and demands that you follow your oaths. Will you follow me to red ruin, or will you cower here in the hell of your own cowardice?’

  His voice echoed out across the shattered courtyard. For a moment, silence was the only reply. Then, one by one, the warriors stood and raised their weapons. Chains rattled and voices roared as Isengrim’s words stoked the embers of their fury. He sneered. ‘Is that all the tongue you have? Scream, you sons and daughters of murder. Howl your curses into the teeth of the god of bones and dust. We are slaughtersworn and we do not fear death – he is our slave, fed with scraps from our table!’

  As he joined his voice to theirs, he thought he heard the creak of great bones, and a voice as dry as the desert sands. I… see… you…

  Chapter nine

  PUZZLE WITHOUT PIECES

  Mysteries are currency in Shyish. Questions without answers, stories untold – all these things are worth their weight in ur-gold.

  – Lady Emalia Grimsour

  A Lady’s Concise History of Nulahmia

  Something clattered in the dark, and Reynar stopped, one hand pressed to a fallen pillar. He turned, scanning the Carnelian Path for any sign of what might have made the noise. Hundreds of thick pillars lined either side of the wide causeway, their bases still wreathed with the blackened remnants of the lush vegetation that had once covered them. Higher up, great spiderwebs of shadeglass stretched between the broken pillars, forming a glittering latticework.

  The Carnelian Path was one of the few stable causeways remaining in the district. Some were aqueducts that once carried water from the city’s cisterns to its outer districts. Others, like this one, had been garden pathways, clearly erected so that the Katophranes might travel between their palaces and estates without having to mingle with the common folk of Shadespire.

  Now, the servants of those self-same Katophranes used them to avoid many of the dangers of the shattered cityscape, when possible. Not that the causeways didn’t have dangers of their own. Strange things nested in the high places and hunted the aqueducts.

  ‘Hurry up, manling. Don’t want to be left behind, do you?’ Khord’s voice echoed oddly among the pillars. Reynar turned towards the sound and saw that Dolmen and the others had got far ahead of him. Too far. He started after them, but stopped as the sound came again. A whisper-quick clatter, somewhere above him. He looked up and around. At first, he saw nothing save a crimson shimmer in the gloom. Then, the shimmer split into eight, and the great webs of shadeglass trembled as their weaver crept into sight.

  The spider was huge, larger than a dray horse. Its limbs gleamed like polished glass, and its dark body seemed oddly proportioned, as if it were not a natural thing but an artist’s imagining of a spider given hideous life. It descended, limbs rustling, eyes fixed on him. Atop its abdomen he glimpsed a familiar marking, and his hand went to his amulet.

  It stopped some distance from him, its red eyes shining in the shadows. For a moment, the tableau held. He stared at the symbol on its back, a jagged pattern of glass rising from unliving flesh. It shone with a strange light, and his amulet felt warm against his skin. Then, with a crackle of shifting glass, the spider was gone, clambering back into the heights.

  Reynar watched as it vanished into the twisted canopy of arches and stairways interweaving above him like strands of stony hair. As he looked up, he noticed other stairways rising to incalculable heights, ending abruptly with no sign as to what they had once been connected to. Ahead, whole streets bent upwards at impossible angles, and other dim shapes shuffled along. When Reynar blinked, the images were gone.

  It was as if the city were not of a single, whole piece, but many, drifting together and then apart, caught on the tides of some dark sea. The thought was not a comforting one. Hammerhal had been more stable, even stretched as it was between Aqshy, the realm of fire, and Ghyran, the realm of life. This place seemed as if it might fly apart at any moment. Indeed, the longer he looked, the more it seemed as if it were about to do so. He closed his eyes, fighting the sudden vertigo.

  ‘You’re looking at it again, manling,’ Khord said from close by. ‘I told you not to.’

  Reynar swallowed and opened his eyes, wondering how much Khord had seen. ‘Go on,’ the duardin called out to Bolas and the others, waving them on ahead.

  ‘There’s no hurry now that we’re in sight of home,’ Khord continued as he ambled back towards Reynar. They were close enough to see the high turrets of the Jasper Palaces rising over the surrounding city. ‘No hurry at all. No time here, no days, no nights. Just a single moment, stretched forever between light and shadow, and all of us trapped inside.’

  ‘You make it sound so appealing,’ Reynar said.

  ‘It takes a while to get used to it,’ Khord said quietly. ‘But you do get used to it.’

  ‘How long is a while?’

  ‘A few years, give or take.’

  Reynar laughed harshly and shook his head. ‘I don’t think I ever will.’

  Khord looked at him. ‘You’ve survived this long – not many can say that.’ He sounded pleased. Reynar was reminded of Utrecht. He had no doubt Khord would crush his skull if they were foes. But since they weren’t, the duardin saw no reason not to be friendly. The hillman had been much the same.

  ‘I’ve survived, but my certainty hasn’t,’ Reynar said. He paused. ‘Tell me, how did you get here?’ He asked the question without thinking, and immediately wished he could take it back. He didn’t want to know. Knowing too much about others just made things harder, in the end.

  Khord scratched his chin. ‘I followed my Runefather into the dark, as a true son of the lodge must. We had made an oath to the Katophranes, in ancient days, and an oath unfulfilled is an oath broken. So we came, and we were lost.’

  ‘I saw no other fyreslayers,’ Reynar said after a moment. ‘Duardin, yes, but no fyreslayers. Save you.’

  Khord shrugged. ‘I found my own way here.’

  ‘And they let you in?’

  ‘Maybe they simply knew better than to try to toss me out.’ Khord weighed his maul in one palm. Like his thr
owing axes, the weapon was made from fyresteel. ‘I am not called Skullcrusher for nothing.’

  ‘Do people call you that?’

  Khord shrugged and grinned. ‘Someone somewhere might. My friends, perhaps.’

  Reynar frowned. ‘Friends are just another sort of trap. That’s why I never had any.’ The lie tasted bitter on his tongue.

  ‘No? That’s a shame. Friends are like gold – you can never have too many. At least, that’s the way I’ve always thought of it.’ Khord glanced at him. ‘And everyone needs one, now and again. Can’t rely on yourself all the time. A lodge is only as strong as the bonds between duardin.’

  Reynar nodded. ‘Maybe so. Or maybe I’m a lodge of one.’

  Khord chuckled. ‘Have it your way, manling. But you’ll learn soon enough that it’s better to have trusted swords at your back, especially here.’ He dropped to his haunches, and Reynar slid down the pillar, propping his sword across his knees. They sat in silence for long moments, watching the city.

  Khord glanced at his sword. ‘I know that forge mark. Hammerhal Aqsha?’

  ‘Yes. My regiment was stationed in Hammerhal. Ghyra, not Aqsha.’

  Khord nodded. ‘To which one did you belong?’

  ‘The Faithful Blades.’ Seeing Khord’s look of incomprehension, he added, ‘Blue-and-white uniforms. We were mostly auxiliary troops.’

  ‘Ah. I think I fought beside your kind in Aqshy – at the second battle of the Raxulian Way. You marched in support of the Stormcasts, the silver ones.’

  ‘The Hallowed Knights,’ Reynar said. He paused. ‘That was close to thirty years ago. Before my time. That was where we earned our regimental name, I think.’

  Khord grunted. ‘Seems like only a little while ago to me. Is that fat fellow – the one with the twisted-up red beard – still in command?’

  ‘Gormus the Boar? No. He died at the Verdant Abyss.’ Gormus’ beard had been white when he died, and he’d been so fat it was surprising that he’d still fitted into his war-plate. But he’d been a warrior for all that, more than capable of swinging a blade.

  ‘Shame. He could drink a duardin under the table.’

  ‘His liver is what killed him, or so I’ve heard.’

  Khord frowned. ‘Burst?’

  ‘When the spear went through it.’

  Khord laughed uproariously. Reynar grinned. The duardin shook his head. ‘I like you, manling. Most of the Azyrites I’ve met are humourless sorts – like our gold-plated friends.’

  ‘Not my friends,’ Reynar said. He glanced around as he said it, instinctively making sure none of them were in earshot. The habit of a lifetime.

  Khord gave him a knowing look. ‘I thought your sort worshipped them. You fight for Sigmar, and they’re his champions.’

  ‘The Freeguilds fight for comets – for gold and silver. We fight for whoever can pay. And the Sigmarite church can pay plenty.’ Reynar rubbed his forefinger and thumb together, the universal sign for payment owed. ‘Cities pay us. Merchants, kings and conclaves pay us. If they don’t, we find someone who will.’

  Khord nodded. ‘My folk are much the same. If they have ur-gold, they can have our axes.’ He touched one of the golden runes ­hammered into his chest. It flickered briefly, and Reynar felt heat rise from the duardin’s broad form. ‘It’s a good thing, to know your own worth.’

  ‘That’s why I left, in the end,’ Reynar said. ‘I knew my own worth.’

  Khord looked out over the city. ‘It’s a hard thing, walking alone,’ he said after a moment. ‘I died. And I came back somewhere else. My kin are lost to me.’ He sighed. ‘I will find them one day, Grimnir willing. But until then, I fight as my honour compels me.’ He looked at Reynar and grinned. Several of his teeth were gold. ‘I don’t expect that makes much sense to you.’

  Reynar laughed. ‘No.’ He looked out over the city. ‘Something’s on fire.’

  ‘That’s the Southern Market.’ The way Khord said it made Reynar think he wasn’t in favour of it.

  Reynar blinked. ‘A market? Here?’

  ‘Of a sort, at any rate.’ Khord frowned and spat over the edge of the causeway. ‘The dead don’t have much to trade, save what they steal from each other.’ The fyreslayer rubbed a rune on his shoulder. ‘We don’t eat. Don’t drink. Don’t need to, really, though some go mad without it, like those wretches that tried to eat you.’

  Reynar looked at the duardin. ‘Then why trade?’

  ‘The same reason we fight – to get what we need.’ Khord gestured. ‘Sadila isn’t the only Katophrane to put her people to work, collecting bits of shadeglass. Some claim they’re trying to repair this artefact or another, but mostly they bargain with it, trading it among themselves, or use it to hire strong blades. Every moment here breeds a hundred new wars. The dead get bored easily, and they’re all mad.’

  ‘Even our host?’

  Khord frowned and spat. ‘Maybe especially her.’ He glanced around, as if worried that someone might have heard him. ‘Or maybe not. Maybe she’s the only sane one of the bunch. She wants to escape, at least. Some of the others…’

  ‘They don’t?’

  ‘They think it is a punishment. That their time here is penance.’

  The words echoed over the causeway. Reynar scrambled to his feet with a curse. Khord merely glanced around. Angharad stood nearby, watching them. ‘And perhaps they are not wrong,’ she said.

  Reynar looked at her, wondering how she’d managed to sneak up on them. He wasn’t used to Stormcasts moving in silence. Normally they were all thunder and lightning, hard to miss unless you were deaf and blind. ‘And what about us?’

  She looked at him, her eyes flat. ‘Perhaps some among us deserve it as well.’

  Reynar turned away. Khord chuckled. ‘Is there something you require, Brightshield? Is that why you have come all the way out here to meet us?’

  ‘The Liberator-Prime requests your presence,’ she said stiffly. ‘When you did not return with the others, he sent me to find you.’

  Khord nodded and stood. He glanced at Reynar. ‘Try not to annoy her, lad. I’d hate to have to go looking for your reflection if I don’t have to.’ He clapped Reynar on the shoulder and left him in Angharad’s company.

  They stood in silence for a time. Reynar watched the distant fires, wondering what life was like there. Was it even life, or merely persistence? From what he’d been told, there wasn’t much of a choice between the two in this place.

  ‘You were a soldier,’ Angharad said suddenly, looking down at him.

  ‘And you were eavesdropping.’

  ‘Why did you come here?’

  ‘What is that to you?’

  She paused. He wondered if she was used to mortals showing more deference. She pulled off her helm, revealing short-cropped hair and wide, symmetrical features, too perfect to be considered human. Or at least what Reynar considered human. ‘I am… curious.’ The way she said it made it almost sound like something shameful.

  ‘You tell me your story first,’ he said. ‘Then maybe I’ll tell you mine.’ It was a risk, asking such a question, but Sadila’s threat had convinced him that he needed to do something. Asking questions seemed like a good first step. If the Katophrane was listening, perhaps she would be satisfied. Then again, perhaps not.

  Angharad’s eyes narrowed. ‘We came seeking the answer to a question that has troubled us since Sigmar first clad us in gold and set us loose upon his foes,’ she said hesitantly. ‘But we found only more questions. We found only mysteries and lies, rather than the truth.’ She looked at him expectantly.

  ‘That’s not much of a story.’

  Her face tightened with irritation. Before she could reply, he held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Forgive me.’ He sighed. ‘My companions and I, we came to Shadespire looking for treasure and found only sand and death.’
/>   ‘Greed, then.’ Angharad seemed satisfied by that answer, as if it had confirmed some suspicion.

  Reynar laughed sourly. ‘If you like. I like to think of it as a chance for a better life.’

  ‘You had a life. A commission in the armies of the God-King. You had duties – responsibilities. Was that not enough?’

  Reynar stared at her. ‘Do you even remember what it was like to be human? I doubt it. If you did, you’d already know the answer to that question.’

  Angharad said nothing.

  ‘My father used to say the only truth that matters is the one you want to believe,’ Reynar continued, not looking at her. ‘People look at you – at Stormcasts – as if you’re proof that Sigmar is with us. You’re his word, his oath, to the realms. That’s what they want to believe.’

  ‘And what do you want to believe?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Reynar tapped the pommel of his sword with a thumb. He looked at her. When she didn’t reply, he nodded, as if she’d answered his question. He looked away. ‘You don’t have to stay, you know. I can find my way back.’

  ‘It is dangerous here.’ She said it flatly, but firmly. The cold glare on her face said that she despised him, but he knew she would stand over him, for that was what she had been made for. Part of him hated her for it. He let no sign of that show on his face as he pushed himself to his feet and patted the bottle hidden in his bedroll.

  ‘Come on, then. I wouldn’t want to keep you from more important duties.’

  Isengrim prowled towards the fire, several of his new warriors following in his wake.

  The wall keep was silent save for the low murmur of those who sheltered within. He smiled widely, displaying jagged teeth, as he felt the eyes of the living and dead drawn to him. That was the point, after all. This was an invitation as much as a show of force.

  A challenge unspoken was nothing more than cowardice. Zuvass left him to it, for which Isengrim was grateful. The Chaos warrior had done him a good turn, for reasons of his own. But what came next had to be done properly. Not like a thief in the dark.