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  Melkhior squalled as the blade chopped into his back. W’soran dropped him and lunged over his falling body, burying his meat-hook talons into the face of the owner of the sword. The swordsman screamed as W’soran tore the face from his skull in one jerky motion, and staggered back, clutching at his mangled features.

  W’soran snarled in anger as he caught the foul scent of the bloody mess in his grasp. It stank of death and grave-mould. His attacker was a vampire. He made to finish his would-be killer, but a shadow passed across the gap in the wall, and he smelled the stink of old blood, bear fat and weapon oil. He twisted bonelessly as a second vampire sprang through the gap in the wall with a guttural roar. W’soran slithered around the blow and caught the attacker’s scalp-lock in his hands. With a curse he drove the latter’s face into the opposite wall hard enough to crack the stone.

  Strigoi, he realised. They were Strigoi. Melkhior hadn’t been lying after all.

  Still holding tight to the attacker’s scalp-lock, he turned back to the gap, dragged the dazed vampire around and flung him out through the hole. Then he turned back to the one whose face he’d flayed off.

  The Strigoi rose to his feet, eyes blazing with equal parts agony and battle-lust in his now fleshless face. With a gurgling snarl he lunged. His hands scrabbled for W’soran’s neck, and his fangs clashed frenziedly as he dipped his head, biting at the other vampire’s throat.

  Then his head was bouncing free, along down the corridor. W’soran shoved the headless body aside and looked at Melkhior, who had somehow managed to prise the sword from his back and decapitate the Strigoi. ‘There will be more of them,’ Melkhior said, gesturing with the sword.

  ‘Irrelevant. I have forces enough here to see off a few pitiful assassins,’ W’soran said, pushing aside the blade of the sword.

  ‘Then where are they, these forces, eh?’ Melkhior said. His eyes glittered. ‘Where are your worshipful disciples, your bony legions?’

  W’soran hesitated. Then he shrugged. ‘It is no matter to me. As you said, I have power enough,’ he said as he made to stride past Melkhior. ‘If this fastness is compromised, I shall find another.’

  ‘Is that your answer then? Run?’

  ‘Well – yes,’ W’soran said, striding down the corridor. ‘I am not a warrior, as past experience has made clear. So I will run and I will hide. Let Neferata duel with Ushoran for these peaks if she wishes. There is a wide world out there, and I have an eternity to explore it.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Melkhior asked, following him. He still clutched the sword, W’soran noted. His former apprentice had always been more comfortable with a weapon in his hands. He snorted in derision.

  ‘A better question – why are you still here, eh? You have delivered your warning. Scamper off,’ W’soran gestured without turning or stopping. He kept moving, leading Melkhior through the crude, sloping corridors that connected the numerous large chambers that honeycombed the crag. The whole mountain was structured like a stony wasp’s nest. W’soran thought that it had, at one time, been akin to one of the fire-mountains of the eastern wastes which occasionally spewed flame and ash into the sky. It was long cold now, its fire having gone out at some time in the dim past. It had been ready-made for shaping into a fastness, as its previous owners could have easily attested, had he left any of them alive.

  ‘Were you not listening? Ushoran knows where you are, old monster! He is closing in on you – his hand is at your throat, though you see it not!’

  W’soran ignored him and ducked through the archway that marked the end of the corridor. It opened out onto a large, vaulted chamber. Heavy support columns had been shaped from the stone of the walls and stretched from the rough floor to the uppermost reaches. Several columns had fallen and shattered in some long ago cataclysm and he had had his minions roll them aside when he’d made the place his. Skulls bound in nets of human hairs hung from the great stone stanchions that lined the circumference of the space. Their eye-sockets were empty of the balefires that should have lit them, and they were not screaming in alarm, as he expected, given that he had ensorcelled them to do so. W’soran did not pause. Someone had obviously dispelled his magics and rendered his alarms useless. That explained the lack of guards as well. But where were his apprentices? He grunted in annoyance as suspicions began to percolate. He glanced over his shoulder, considering. Melkhior was still following him, moving quickly.

  ‘Where are you going? We must make a stand against him. Together, we might be able to–’ Melkhior began.

  ‘Together? I see you’ve found a sense of humour in our time apart, my son,’ W’soran said.

  ‘I am not your son, and it is no joke,’ Melkhior almost screamed. ‘We are running out of time. We – look out!’

  His claws snatched at W’soran’s robes, hauling him back as something bestial hurtled down from above. Claws cracked the stone as W’soran reeled back, off-balance. The Strigoi was all muscle and fang, a gargoyle-shape that lunged and clawed with lightning speed. Three more dropped down; W’soran realised that they’d been clinging to the upper reaches of the chamber like bats. How many of them had infiltrated his sanctum, he wondered as they crouched before him, crimson gazes blazing in the darkness.

  When he’d fled Mourkain, few Strigoi had been able to mould their shapes beyond sprouting claws. Things had obviously changed in his absence. The creatures that spread out around him were more beast than man, clad in crude cuirasses and stinking furs, their faces shredded by gnashing tusks and oversized jaws. One gave a bay of triumph and sprang for him, drawing a sword.

  W’soran spat a deplorable word and the Strigoi’s roar became a shocked scream as his flesh withered and dropped from his bones and he came apart at the seams. W’soran stepped back as the pile of dust and bones crashed to the floor before him. ‘Next?’ he asked, his yellow eye bulging as dark magics crackled the length of his arms and swirled about his spread fingers.

  They came in a rush, crimson-eyed and snarling. Black fire rippled from W’soran’s fingers, coiling about the first, burning him to nothing in moments. He realised that Melkhior was beside him a moment later when the latter caught a sword meant for W’soran’s skull on his own blade. Melkhior roared and forced the Strigoi back, trading blows. W’soran laughed and turned to the remaining Strigoi, who circled him warily.

  ‘Did Ushoran really think that he could overcome me this way, with simple brute force? Has his famous guile deserted him?’ he cackled, knowing even as he said it that there was something he was missing. It nagged at him. What was he not seeing? If Melkhior had wanted him dead, why not simply let the assassins kill him while he meditated? Why wake him up?

  The Strigoi came at him from either side, confident in their strength. W’soran killed them both with a gesture, his magics flaying the meat from their bones before they could so much as scream. Overconfidence was a persistent weakness of their kind, a predatory surety which served as a crude population control. He had noted it early on in his studies. The only cure was age. Age brought cunning to temper the ferocity. Age brought wisdom, the wisdom to hide his strength, and his secrets; that was why he had built his vault. Nagash had been too trusting with his secrets, or perhaps simply too arrogant to consider that anyone might covet them more than they feared him.

  ‘Master of Death,’ he murmured, ‘Master of Fools, more like.’

  He turned as a heavy body crashed to the ground. Melkhior raised the sword and brought it down, lopping off the twitching Strigoi’s head. His former apprentice kicked the head aside and looked at him. ‘Do you still doubt me, old monster?’ he growled.

  ‘I never doubted you,’ W’soran said smoothly. He gestured. ‘I knew, here in my heart, that you would come to your senses eventually and return to me.’

  Melkhior gave a grunt of bitter laughter. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I am going to collect something very valuable and then I am goi
ng to flee,’ W’soran said. Melkhior could prove useful, though only in the short term.

  ‘The books, you mean,’ Melkhior said softly.

  W’soran’s good eye narrowed. Melkhior shook his head. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You prize Nagash’s scrawling even over your own life.’ His eyes flashed. ‘How many of them do you possess now… two, perhaps three?’

  Before W’soran could answer, the sound of monstrous shrieks echoed through the forecourt. More than three, or four or even five of them this time, he realised. It sounded like a dozen or more, and all of them looking to take his head. ‘They are coming,’ Melkhior said, backing away. ‘We must go!’

  ‘Not without those books,’ W’soran snarled, shoving him aside. ‘I require them for a bit longer yet.’

  ‘Then we had better hurry,’ Melkhior said. They moved swiftly, robes flapping. They sped across the forecourt and through another archway. W’soran led the way, running smoothly despite the fact that he’d been as stiff as a corpse earlier.

  The vault lay at the juncture where the fastness gave way to solid rock. W’soran had devised it in such a way that even if his sanctum was wiped from the side of the crag, his vault, and the precious artefacts and tomes within, would remain untouched. Rock walls rose around them and over them in a rough, curved tunnel, braced by heavy wooden beams set into place by dead hands. It was as wide as a plaza and a force of men could pass through it easily. There was no light, for they needed none. They’d left the howls of their pursuers behind, but W’soran knew they would be on them soon enough. The Strigoi could be relentless in pursuit of prey.

  At the end of the tunnel sat the vault. It was a simple enough thing… a great wedge of stone, set into a gap like a cork into a bottle. Hundreds of chains, coated in dust and rust in equal measure, lay before it, connected to the wedge by a massive iron ring. As W’soran approached, he saw that the dust on the floor, and on the chains, had been disturbed. He smiled crookedly. Melkhior stood behind him, casting nervous glances back up the corridor.

  ‘How do you get in?’ Melkhior asked. ‘I see no lock, no handle, save those chains.’

  ‘The chains are the handle,’ W’soran said. Then, he spoke a single word. It hummed through the air and the stone of the walls and link by link, the chains began to rattle. Melkhior stepped back with an oath, as the chains rose to the height of a man and in the wide space before the stone, motes of pale light appeared and blossomed into ragged phantoms. Men, women and children, their hazy features twisted with incomprehensible agony. They moaned and screamed in silence, writhing beneath the weight of the chains. ‘I forged them in the blood of the former inhabitants of this place as well as my own,’ W’soran explained, ‘and bound their shrivelled little souls to the links… and to me. Only my voice can awaken them. Only my will can make them open the vault.’

  Even as he said it, the ghosts began to move forward, straining against the wedge, pulling the chains. Melkhior watched in awe and, W’soran was pleased to note, not a little fear. To bind the dead to their own corpses was a parlour trick compared to this. W’soran preened slightly as the wedge groaned in its housing and began to pull free of the hole, releasing a burst of foul air. It was a ponderous affair, and with every step, the ghosts flickered and twitched in mute agony. That they still felt the weight and pain of their last moments was, to W’soran’s mind, of the utmost delight. They had dared set themselves against him, tried to prevent him from taking what was his, and now they would suffer for eternity for that hubris.

  After long moments, the vault was open and the spirits slumped or sank to their knees, as if they were still prone to the fatigue that might cripple living flesh. ‘Only my will,’ W’soran said again. He turned with a nasty smile on his face. At a single twitch of his fingers, the spirits rose as one, screaming silently as their ghostly forms were caught up in a maelstrom and flung together, causing the chains to clash and rattle thunderously. The spirits were smashed against one another, and they merged, still shrieking, into a colossal figure, a giant made of writhing shapes and weeping faces that gathered up the chains and then drove one heaving, squirming shoulder into the vault door. The vault was slammed shut with a roar and the phantoms vanished. The chains fell, and the stone echoed loudly with the sound. Melkhior gaped, uncomprehending. ‘That was why Urdek and the others couldn’t open it, of course,’ W’soran said, examining his talons.

  Melkhior froze. W’soran nodded in satisfaction. ‘No bodies. No hint of them. What happened to them, I wonder?’ His smile became sharp and feral. ‘Did you eat them? I recall that’s what you did to that one young fellow, the ajal with the golden hair… did you crack Urdek’s thick skull open and eat the sweetness within when you realised he couldn’t aid you? Maybe your Strigoi friends helped you, hmm? How long have you lot squatted here, in my lair, trying to get at my secrets while I slumbered unawares?’ He exposed his fangs. ‘And then, when you could not, you decided to wake me up and play me for a fool, yes, with staged attacks to harry me and confuse me? Oh Melkhior, you are too clever by half, my sweet boy,’ W’soran said. Black fire crackled between his fingers and he held up a hand. Melkhior glanced back. W’soran clucked his tongue. ‘They won’t get here in time to help you,’ he said.

  ‘Actually, we are already here,’ a feminine voice said. W’soran glanced up in shock as a lithe shape dropped from the ceiling and a blade flashed. Pain tore through him as one of his hands was removed at the wrist and he yowled, releasing the deadly magics contained in the other at the pale shape of his attacker.

  Laughing, she sprang to the wall and nimbly leapt over the coruscating lance of black flame. ‘Now, Melkhior,’ she howled. ‘Take him!’

  Melkhior charged forward, bat-face split in a roar of pure hatred. He brought the sword down on W’soran’s shoulder, driving the blade down through bone and muscle in a burst of inhuman strength. W’soran staggered and nearly fell. Shrieking, he slapped Melkhior away with his bloody stump and faced his other attacker. His good eye widened in shock. ‘You,’ he hissed.

  ‘Me,’ the Lahmian said, ‘I warned you, old beast. And now, you are done.’

  With that, the Lahmian danced forward, impossibly quick, her Cathayan blade moving like quicksilver as it cut ribbons from his unprotected hide. He screamed and reeled as stinking smoke rose from the wounds. The blade was edged with silver and every cut was agony. Clutching his wounded wrist to his chest, he tried to fend her off, spitting cursed syllables with desperate rapidity, his mind racing as he unleashed spell after spell. She avoided every one, her sinuous shape curling and sliding through the air like a leaf or a plume of smoke, drawing ever closer to him, until at last her blade bit deep into his belly. ‘Die,’ she purred into his ear as she forced the blade into him. ‘Die, in the name of my sisters, W’soran. Die, in the name of the Queen of Mysteries.’

  ‘I’ve already done that once, witch,’ W’soran rasped, black blood filling his mouth. ‘I’ll not do it again!’ His good hand shot forward and spidery talons wrapped themselves around the Lahmian’s neck. Her eyes widened as his claws tightened. He would pop her head from her neck.

  But before he could do so, saw-edged fangs sank into the side of his throat, and claws into his scalp. He released the Lahmian and clawed wildly at Melkhior, who savaged his throat unheeding. Remora-like, his former apprentice dug his bestial snout into the wound his teeth had made and gulped the ancient blood that spurted forth. W’soran stumbled and sank to his knees. Melkhior hunched over him, ripping and tearing with a terrible fury.

  W’soran fell forward, and Melkhior staggered back, covered in black blood, his eyes wide with madness. W’soran tried to push himself up, but he was too weak. ‘No,’ he gurgled, clawing at the stone floor. Through a red haze, he saw Melkhior pad forward, deadly intent writ in his movement. There was a hunger in his former apprentice’s eyes that chilled him, a terrible monstrous hunger that he recognised, and feared. ‘Not like this,’
he croaked.

  Melkhior crouched over him and his animal features were alight with hideous joy. ‘I have waited centuries for this, old monster,’ he whispered. W’soran’s fading vision was filled by that ravenous maw dipping towards him, his blood still wet upon the serrated fangs that lined it.

  Then, he saw nothing but darkness.

  Chapter One

  Lahmia, the City of the Dawn

  (Year -1200 Imperial Calendar)

  The first thing he saw upon awakening was Ushoran. Given that the last thing he’d seen had been Neferata, her beauteous features contorted in an animal snarl as she thrust a jagged chunk of wood into his heart, it was an improvement, though not by much.

  The Lord of Masks drew back, the damnable splinter of wood in his grip. He was as W’soran remembered him, the dull glamour masking the bestial shape within, a mask within a mask. Which was the true Ushoran? W’soran knew that he could find out easily enough, but he didn’t particularly care. He never had, in truth. Let Ushoran play his silly games, and hide his crimes in double-talk and feigned innocence. W’soran had never feared consequence or result, for opportunity was born in both.

  ‘W’soran,’ Ushoran said, softly, as if he were afraid to awaken the other vampire.

  ‘Ushoran,’ W’soran replied. He was lying on the floor of the temple cellar. She hadn’t bothered to move him very far. He felt a glimmer of insult – had she even considered that someone might attempt to find him? Then again, no one had. Maybe she was smarter than he’d given her credit for. Or perhaps she was simply more paranoid. He thought he knew which was more likely.

  ‘It’s been–’ Ushoran began hesitantly.

  ‘Twenty-two years,’ W’soran cut him off. ‘Twenty-two years folded up and crammed into a jar,’ he said, letting only a hint of the bitterness he felt seep into his words. It gnawed at his guts, to have been so close, only to be ripped away at the moment of enlightenment. He raised his arm and felt for the already healing place where Neferata had rammed the stake that had pierced his heart. And for what – spite? Or perhaps jealousy; she had never been one to share power. It all came down to power in the end. And hers was as nothing compared to that which he had touched in those brief, beautiful black moments before she had consigned him to spiteful oblivion.