Soul Wars Page 8

  After the fifth such momentary delay, Tyros turned. ‘Much as we all might wish, death does not stop so you can look at pictures, brother.’

  ‘I am well aware of that, Tyros,’ Balthas said, hurrying to catch up with his fellow lord-arcanum. ‘But one must make the time, on occasion, else we lose sight of where we’ve come from. The finer details, as you said, yourself.’

  Tyros snorted. ‘A fancy way of saying you’re easily distracted today.’

  Balthas glared at him. Tyros had little patience for anything that didn’t produce immediate results. He relied on faith and instinct to guide him, where Balthas preferred a more considered approach.

  ‘Sometimes I wonder why we are friends, Tyros.’

  Tyros looked at him askance. ‘We’re friends?’

  Before Balthas could reply, they reached the massive double doors that led to the Chamber of the Broken World and the Anvil of Apotheosis. A cohort of Retributors, comprised of warriors from several different Stormhosts, stood sentinel before the doors, beneath the great statues.

  The honour of guarding the Chamber of the Broken World was much vied for among the champions of Sigmar. Only the greatest warriors of the paladin conclaves, as determined by the Trials of Culmination, were allowed to stand sentry here, for twelve days and nights, before they surrendered their places to the next cohort.

  One of the Retributors, clad in the maroon-and-ivory war-plate of the Celestial Warbringers, stepped forwards, one hand extended, his lightning hammer over his shoulder. ‘Hold. Who approaches the Chamber of the Broken World?’ As he spoke, the others spread out behind him, their hammers held at the ready. ‘Speak and be judged.’

  Balthas struck the ground with the ferrule of his staff. ‘I, Balthas Arum of the Grave Brethren, seek entrance so that I might take up my duly appointed post.’ Lightning crackled about the head of the staff. ‘Will you bar my path?’

  From far above, he heard a dim rumble. Without looking up, he knew that the eyes of the two statues were glowing with a sapphire radiance. The Retributors were only the most obvious of the Anvil’s defences. There were protective runes and mystic wards woven into every surface, invisible to the naked eye. If he were not who he claimed to be, the consequences would be severe.

  Balthas felt a moment of subtle pressure, and then the rumble faded as the two great doors swung slowly open. ‘Enter, lord-arcanum,’ the Retributor rumbled, and stepped aside. He glanced at Tyros and nodded. ‘Tyros.’

  ‘Kandaras,’ Tyros said, as he followed Balthas, who shook his head.

  ‘We have the rites of announcement for a reason, Tyros.’

  ‘Waste of time. We wouldn’t be here, if we weren’t us.’ Tyros gestured to the statues. ‘Besides, they would know, rites or no rites.’

  Balthas grunted. ‘Still…’

  Tyros clapped him on the shoulder-plate. ‘Relax, brother. No reason to borrow trouble. The hard part is still to come.’

  Balthas’ second in command, Miska, was waiting for them when they arrived. She stood, frowning, in the doorway, her rod of office braced as if to bar their way. The mage-sacristan was tall and slim, with pale, hard features and hair the colour of molten silver. Like Balthas, she was a gifted stormcaller, able to draw down the wrath of the heavens upon her foes. More, she knew the celestial melodies that could calm the spirits of storm and sky, and could sing a wrathful soul to peaceful slumber.

  ‘You found him, then. Good.’ Even now, after shedding her mortal life, the mage-sacristan spoke with the faintest of accents. Some rough-hewn dialect that rasped against Balthas’ attentions like a whetstone. She studied him with her usual expression of cool reproach. ‘You are late, my lord.’

  ‘I am well aware, Miska. There is no need to remind me.’

  ‘It is my hope that by reminding you, you will cease to dawdle among forgotten stories and dusty tomes.’ She spoke bluntly. ‘You are needed here.’

  ‘So I am told.’ He said it sternly, striving to remind her solely by his tone of who was in charge. She smiled widely, seemingly pleased.

  ‘Good, then. We will not need to tell you again.’

  ‘Until we do,’ Tyros murmured. Balthas glared at him, but Miska ignored the other lord-arcanum’s comment. Balthas knew that as far as she was concerned, Tyros was incidental to proceedings. He was of a different host and thus someone else’s responsibility. Tyros clapped a friendly hand on Balthas’ shoulder and strode away, leaving him to his duties. The Hallowed Knight had his own chamber to see to.

  Miska watched him go, and then said, ‘The aether is in an uproar.’

  Balthas nodded, though he’d felt nothing. While the aether held no secrets from him, Miska was attuned to it on an almost instinctive level. If she felt that something was wrong, it likely was. ‘Today will be bad, I think,’ she continued quietly. ‘Be wary, brother.’

  ‘I am always wary, sister.’

  Together, they entered the great, pillared hall, where the Anvil of Apotheosis lay. The Chamber of the Broken World was immense, as befitted its purpose. The roof was a dome of dark glass, wrought from the sands of the Caelum Desert. It was divided into three Tiers of Trial - at the bottom of the chamber was the Forge Eternal, where the fires of creation were kept stoked by the celestial automata of the Six Smiths. Above that were the Cairns of Tempering, seven great stones plucked from the volcanic surface of Mallus by Grungni himself. And at the apex was the Anvil of Apotheosis.

  The ensorcelled altar was a massive slab of pure sigmarite, wrenched from the core of Mallus by Sigmar’s own hands. It still smouldered with the heat of the world’s dying, and the air around it pulsed with the faint echoes of another time and place. It sat atop a dais fashioned in the shape of the High Star.

  Each tier of the chamber was an assemblage of gargantuan clockwork platforms, perpetually moving in a slow, all but imperceptible fashion around the central core upon which the Anvil rested. They were the gears in some great mechanism of gold and glass, a machine crafted to refine souls and make them weapons.

  The thought was not a pleasant one. Balthas thought of the soul-mills, and knew that the gods at their most callous often regarded mortal lives as little more than raw materials. Things to be changed, broken down and reassembled in a more pleasing or useful shape. Even Sigmar was not above crafting awful wonders in his drive to defeat the Ruinous Powers. He looked around. Mage-sacristans, clad in the heraldry of diverse Stormhosts, were taking up their assigned posts around the Anvil of Apotheosis. The mage-sacristans surrounded the dais in a wide ring, each taking a position analogous to one of Sigendil’s twelve points.

  Behind them knelt a wider circle of Celestors - warrior-mages, second only to the mage-sacristans. Duellists without equal, the Celestors wielded tempest blade and stormstave with deadly skill. They drew down the wrath of the storm not to strike their enemies, but to empower themselves. They knelt, blades and staves flat on the floor beside them, ready to aid the mage-sacristans, should it become necessary.

  One of the Celestors, in the black and gold of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, rose to meet them. ‘My lord Balthas, we were worried the Grand Library had claimed you for its own,’ he called out, as he removed his helmet and tucked it under his arm. ‘I knew you’d fight your way out eventually, though. I even composed a few verses, commemorating your victory. Do you wish to hear them?’

  ‘Your confidence is heartening to hear, Helios,’ Balthas said, somewhat sourly. Helios Starbane was lithe and graceful, even in his armour and robes. There were some who whispered that the swordsman had not been forged of mortal stock, but something rarer. Studying his lean, otherworldly features, Balthas could almost credit the rumours. ‘But I must decline. There are more important matters to attend to.’

  ‘Impossible,’ Helios said. ‘Poetry is writ in our very substance. What are we but motes of the divine, songs of heaven and loss, wrenched loose and encased in wra
th and sigmarite?’

  Miska shook her head. ‘Enough. Now is not the time for poetry, Helios.’

  ‘I disagree. When better than now? Where better than here?’

  Miska looked at Helios, her face set in a disapproving expression. ‘Remember your place, swordsman.’

  Helios bowed his head, respectfully contrite. ‘My place is at your side, as ever, mage-sacristan. Where you go, I follow. What you command, I fulfil.’

  Miska snorted and gestured. ‘Go and take your place, then.’ Helios laughed softly and straightened, pulling on his helmet as he did so. Miska looked at Balthas. ‘The same goes for you, lord-arcanum. Your place is above. Your brothers await on the observation platform.’ She hesitated. ‘Remember what I said, Balthas.’

  Balthas frowned. ‘I will, sister. But see to yourself.’

  She gave a terse nod and turned away to take up her place with the other mage-sacristans. Balthas watched her for a moment, thinking about her warning. In truth, he’d felt ill at ease all day. As if something were coming, and he wasn’t prepared. He looked at the Anvil and saw that it was growing white-hot.

  As one, the mage-sacristans raised their staves. With a single voice, they cried out a word in a language dead for uncounted aeons, that of the twelve lost tribes of Mallus. The word shivered on the air, and the temperature dropped precipitously. Then, the ferrule of every staff struck the floor with a sound like a meteor strike. As the echoes of that crash reverberated outwards, an answering thunder rumbled, somewhere far above.

  Balthas stepped back as azure lightning, freed from the soul-mills, speared down from the glass dome overhead. It struck the Anvil and burst, spilling over the sides and trickling through the tiers. The glare of the impact cast long shadows, and Balthas was forced to look away, his vision filled with sparks.

  The apotheosis had begun.

  Chapter five

  Necroquake

  GHYRAN, THE REALM OF LIFE

  In the Shadeglens of Hammerhal-Ghyra, dead shapes lurched through the gloom. They were packed so close together that they seemed almost a solid wave of shadow, rolling through the trees that marked the ancient burial gardens. A slash of silver parted the wave and cast back broken bodies. ‘Push them back,’ Aetius Shieldborn roared. ‘Lock shields and advance.’ The Liberator-Prime of the Steel Souls Chamber smashed a root-infested corpse from its feet and stamped on its skull, ending its struggles.

  As one, the silver-clad Hallowed Knights to either side of him brought the rims of their shields together, forming an impenetrable bulwark against the frenzied corpses stumbling towards them. The dead were stymied, for the moment.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Behind him, the remaining caretakers of the Shadeglens huddled, shocked and fearful. The mortals were clad in robes of green, and where their flesh was visible, it bore the knotwork tattoos of those who had pledged their spirit to the Everqueen, Alarielle. He frowned and signalled a nearby Liberator with a twitch of his hammer. ‘Serena, take Mehkius and three others - get the mortals out from underfoot. Reform a second wall, ten paces to our rear.’

  ‘Aye, my lord.’ Serena stepped back smoothly. The warriors to either side of her slammed their shields together, closing the gap instantly. She called out to Mehkius and the others, who repeated the manoeuvre with drilled precision.

  As they escorted the mortals through the ivy-shrouded marble columns that denoted the northern entrance to the Shadeglens, Aetius turned back to the enemy. ‘Who will hold until the last dawn breaks?’ he cried.

  ‘Only the faithful!’ his warriors roared out in unison.

  Aetius nodded in satisfaction. He could taste something sour on the wind - something that originated from further away than the deadwalkers scrabbling at the embossed face of his shield. Strange undulations of amethyst light made the night sky ripple in abominable ways. Hammerhal-Ghyra shook to its foundations, gripped by some unknown cataclysm. The echoes of collapsing stones and the screams of uprooted trees choked the air.

  And the dead - the dead were everywhere. They clawed out of the blessed soil of the Shadeglens, or pounded on the walls of the crypts and mausoleums of the Azyrite necropoli of the southern districts. Shrieking ghosts crawled across the sky, and worse things stalked the deep shadows. It was as if the rule of life had been overturned and all the underworlds emptied. Aetius cursed as a deadwalker sought to tangle itself about his legs. He brought the edge of his shield down, separating its head from its neck.

  ‘Advance,’ he bellowed, as he kicked the head aside. The Liberators took a single step forwards, shields still locked. The line of deadwalkers staggered. Before they could recover, or those behind could press closer, Aetius struck the inside of his shield with his warhammer. The bell-like peal sang out over the line. ‘Again,’ he roared. His warriors took another step, and another, as steady as a millstone.

  Deadwalkers fell, crushed beneath the Hallowed Knights’ tread. But for every one that was pulped, three more surged forwards, silent and hungry. Aetius slammed his hammer against his shield again, and to his ears the ringing was unpleasantly akin to a funerary bell. He glanced upwards and felt a chill race through him as he saw the stars writhe and blink out, one by one.

  As if Azyr itself were swallowed by the dark. He shook the thought aside. ‘Hold the line, brothers and sisters - hold, until this cursed night ends and day comes again!’

  THE CHAMBER OF THE BROKEN WORLD,

  THE SIGMARABULUM

  In the Chamber of the Broken World, Balthas climbed to the semicircular observation platform, where his fellow lords-arcanum waited. Some, like Tyros, he had known for centuries. Others, like Knossus Heavensen, were newforged, with less than a century to their name. Heavensen, clad in the golden war-plate of the Hammers of Sigmar, greeted Balthas with a terse nod. Balthas returned the gesture and turned away to watch the proceedings below.

  Tyros laughed, witnessing the exchange. ‘Still sore, then, I see.’

  ‘I have no idea as to what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I wondered why you’ve been burying yourself in the library more frequently. They say Heavensen is close to finding that which we all seek.’

  ‘Good. The sooner it is found, the sooner a cure might be devised.’

  ‘And all glory once more to our brothers in gold, the stars of our lord’s eye. Vandus, Ionus, Blacktalon and soon Knossus - names of legend.’ Tyros’ tone was teasing.

  ‘Much like Gardus or Tornus,’ Balthas replied, more sharply than he’d intended. ‘All of whom we have seen broken down and reassembled on that Anvil.’ He pointed down, to where the Anvil steamed after the most recent lightning strike. ‘I welcome my brothers’ victories, for they are the stepping stones of my own glory.’ He paused. ‘Though, in your case, I might make an exception.’

  Tyros laughed. Envy was an unknown to him, but he recognised Balthas’ ambition well enough to gently mock it. They all had it, to some degree - the need to prove themselves, to grasp the subtlest arts, to show the God-King that they were worth the sacrifice he had made on their behalf. A shard of Sigmar’s own divine essence was in each of them - in every Stormcast Eternal. Their lord diminished himself, so that his people might have a chance to win the final victory.

  Knowledge of that sacrifice was one of the few things that made the reforging process bearable. It made Balthas wonder why any would resist it, even unconsciously. He watched a bolt of azure lighting scream down, to strike the Anvil. It spilled over the sides, dripping down into the lowest tier and the Forge Eternal. Light blazed up from below, where the Six Smiths laboured. The duardin demigods were only rarely seen away from their forges, and few Stormcasts were allowed there. Balthas had never even heard them referred to as individuals, only as a group.

  The chamber shuddered slightly, as the hammers of the Six Smiths struck as one. The raw soul-stuff was hammered into shape, stripped free of the trappings of its d
emise and made ready for rebirth. The newly wrought souls were sifted upwards, into the Cairns of Tempering, where they endured seven times seven trials.

  The nature of these trials was a mystery, even to the lords-arcanum of the Sacrosanct Chambers. Grungni had devised the trials, with the aid of Sigmar, to test the strength of a chosen soul. A part of Balthas yearned to know what his own trials had been like, but a greater, wiser part thought it better that he did not.

  Once a soul had passed through the Cairns of Tempering, they were ready to be reforged and made flesh and blood once more. They rose upwards, through the shifting tiers of the tower, until they returned to the Anvil of Apotheosis, where the mage-sacristans waited.

  Down below, a soul erupted from the Anvil, rising above it in a crackling halo of lightning and starlight. Silence fell as the lords-arcanum watched. Balthas stepped to the edge of the platform, intrigued despite himself. Though he had witnessed the rites of reforging many times, they remained fascinating.

  To his storm-sight, all souls were marked by a residue of the last realm they’d been in. This one was stained with a dark purple miasma, which clung to it despite the trials it had endured. The Realm of Death. He felt a flicker of unease. Something was wrong with the soul’s aura - as if more than just its flesh had been injured.

  The fires of creation roared upwards from the Anvil, engulfing the soul. It began to scream, and in the twisting flames, Balthas saw the memories of the warrior it had once been. Most were scenes from the warrior’s final moments, but others were of a more personal nature - tattered recollections from a mortal life. The faces of kith and kin, the smell of walled gardens and the rustle of branches in a sea-wind, rising from the fire, like smoke. The pieces of who they had been, before they had been burdened with glorious purpose.