01 - Grey Seer Read online

  Only the grey seer’s genius (and a liberal ingestion of warpstone to augment his magical powers) had enabled him to escape the treacherous bungling of his subordinates. His only comrade as he scurried away from the debacle was the grotesque Lurk, now little more than a rat ogre himself, albeit with a troubling knot of hunger in his scent. Even worse, they had been captured by the pickets of a massive horde of deranged humans from the northlands. It had taken a wit as sharp and tricky as Thanquol’s to deceive the barbarians into releasing them, and he had made sure to use the escape to put as many of their fellow skaven between the marauders and himself as quickly as possible, seeking out the closest and largest skaven warren in the area.

  That led to his entry into Hell Pit, the noxious city of Clan Moulder, breeders of the many beasts and monsters that slaved for the skaven in the dark reaches of their realm. Izak Grottle, the fat worm, had been there, spinning his lies to the elders of his clan, convincing them it had been Thanquol and not his own conniving and perfidy that had resulted in the failure of the attack on Nuln and the loss of many of the clan’s beast masters. Instead of welcoming the grey seer, Thanquol found himself a prisoner… and one destined for a very short stay.

  Again, destiny and the Horned Rat smiled on him. At any other time, Clan Moulder would have happily disposed of Thanquol, indeed it was a rare thing for a grey seer to fall into any clan’s paws in so vulnerable a condition. Working up the nerve to actually do the deed was what was delaying them, Thanquol was certain, for even as a prisoner his reputation was enough to strike terror in such vermin.

  The issue never came to open confrontation, however. In their foolishness, the fleshchangers of Hell Pit had taken Lurk away to experiment upon in their laboratories. Instead the mutant had broken free, lost himself in the lower warrens and incited a rebellion among Moulder’s skaven slaves! Hopelessly out of their depth, unable to keep even their clanrats from defecting to the insurrection, the High Packmaster had turned to Thanquol to save Hell Pit.

  A pettier skaven would have refused, but Thanquol was gracious enough to aid Clan Moulder, despite the indignities they had inflicted upon him. With his brilliant leadership, the revolt was quickly broken. His only regret was that in the confusion Lurk had somehow contrived to lose himself in the tunnels and escape his well-deserved reward for betraying his old master and blasphemy against the Horned Rat.

  Still the danger was not past. Lurk had treasonously allowed himself to be used by the sorcerers of the north-men to weaken Hell Pit for their horde to conquer. Selflessly, Thanquol did not depart for Skavenblight and his long-deferred report to the Council of Thirteen, deciding to stay and help Clan Moulder escape complete ruin. After all, had it not been the mighty Grey Seer Thanquol who had led the warriors of Clan Moulder in battle against the northman warlord Alarik Lionmane when he had brought his barbarians against the strongholds scattered beneath the Troll Country? The horde had been broken and all but annihilated as a result of Thanquol’s decisive strategy. If Moulder’s dull clawleaders had followed the grey seer’s intricate battle plan more closely, Moulder’s army would have emerged unscathed. But no reasonable mind could hold him to blame for the loss of an army that was too stupid to display a proper understanding of tactics.

  Fortunately, the brood-mothers of Hell Pit had used the years since Alarik’s horde was routed to birth a new army for Clan Moulder. Thanquol led the solid ranks of armoured stormvermin, fierce clanrats and the many terrible beasts from Moulder’s flesh-forges against the brutish northmen, the elite vanguard of Arek Daemonclaw who had entrusted only the best of his warriors with the task of facing the skaven, taking the dregs of his host to attack the humans in Praag.

  Thanquol had to admit that Clan Moulder’s new army was better than its last one. But then, of course his battle plan was better as well, even with the fat, squealing Izak Grottle trying to take a hand in the strategising. When it was over, Thanquol had the pleasure of watching his second northman horde break and scatter like the skull of a baby dwarf. This time there was none of the awkwardness of being the only skaven alive to enjoy the retreat.

  After the battle, Thanquol took his leave of Clan Moulder, Hell Pit and the two-scented Izak Grottle. The grey seer accepted only the smallest measure of reward from the High Packmaster. After all, the flesh-changers were a simple and foolish breed, and it would be unkind to take advantage of them and point out that what they offered him was hardly what a more refined skaven would call generous. Besides, he was eager to make his report to the Council of Thirteen. In Skavenblight he would have friends, ones who would help him settle debts incurred during his stay in the north.

  Through the tunnels of the Under-Empire, carried by the sickly skaven slaves given to him by Clan Moulder, Thanquol hurried, his mind afire with future plans and past grudges.

  Thanquol rubbed one of his horns against his shoulder, trying to get at an itch he couldn’t reach with his chained paws. No matter which way he twisted his neck or tilted his head, he couldn’t quite find the spot. Another indignity unjustly inflicted upon him by those who were jealous of his genius and the favour displayed to him by the Horned Rat!

  He’d had a fine taste of how deep the envy of his fellows went upon his return to Skavenblight! Instead of being welcomed back as the loyal and capable servant he was, Thanquol had been seized by the elite white stormvermin who guarded the Lords of Decay and the Shattered Tower. He was dragged before Seerlord Kritislik in chains, presented to them like some seditious heretic! Kritislik informed him that they were displeased by his failure to capture the dwarf airship, disturbed by his inability to inform the Council of Arek Daemonclaw’s attack on Kislev in time to allow them to exploit it for their own purposes, and upset by reports that he had engineered a slave revolt in Hell Pit without the seerlord’s authorisation.

  Despite his best efforts to explain these seeming failures to Kritislik, the seerlord was deaf to his words. He was stripped of his staff and amulet, the talismans of his office as grey seer and agent of the Council, and thrown into some blighted hole deep beneath the streets of Skavenblight.

  Thanquol was more certain than ever that Kritislik had been behind his downfall from the start. It was the seerlord who had put that hell-spawned dwarf in his way, probably the treacherous Lurk and all the other enemies who had beset him as well! Envious of Thanquol’s brilliance, doubting Thanquol’s tireless devotion and loyalty! Thanquol was right to have plotted against the senile old mouse! When he thought of all the times he had squirted the musk of fear just to convey a respectful scent in the fool’s presence…

  As Thanquol’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he suddenly froze. His surroundings were different; he wasn’t in the same dreary little hole anymore. He thought back to the pathetic bones he had been thrown by his guards the night before. They had tasted strange, but he had been too ravenous with hunger to care at the time. Now he knew the marrow had been treated with some kind of drug, a drug that left him insensible long enough for his captors to gag and bind him, to remove him from his prison to this place.

  But where was this place? Thanquol’s stomach clenched and his empty glands tried to vent. He had a terrible feeling he knew. The Maze of Inescapable Death, the most insidious of the many ways the Council of Thirteen employed to dispose of those who displeased them. The maze was a trap-filled network of tunnels and warrens, a nest of pits and spikes and boiling oil, the walls reinforced with steel rods so that even the most desperate skaven couldn’t gnaw his way to freedom. In all the centuries since its construction, no skaven had ever escaped from the maze for one simple reason: there was no way out.

  Thanquol stared at the ceiling, feeling his head swim as he saw tiny lights wink into existence, as the comforting closeness of the roof faded away into the vast, horrifying emptiness of the night sky. He knew it was a trick, a dwarf-made illusion plundered from the shattered halls of the City of Pillars. He knew that it was not stars he saw, but simply tiny bits of amber and pearl set into a black-pai
nted ceiling. He recognised the deception for what it was, but he could not stop the instinctual revulsion that crawled through his body. Untold generations of breeding, fighting and dying in the close tunnels and cluttered caverns of the Under-Empire had made the skaven a race of agoraphobics, imprinting a terror of open spaces into the most primal part of their psyche.

  The grey seer tried to overcome his fear with his knowledge, to let intellect subdue unruly instinct. It was the fiendish nature of the nameless and accursed rat-men who had constructed the maze that the labyrinth should use a skaven’s own natural urges to destroy him.

  Instinct versus intellect, an unequal contest in most skaven, who were little cleverer than the common rats who shared their burrows, but in the case of a mind like Thanquol’s, genius would prevail. The nameless architects of the maze had not figured upon a brilliance such as that of the grey seer!

  Thanquol caught himself as he was edging towards the wall of the tunnel, fighting down the desperate need to feel raw earth against his whiskers, to assure himself he was not falling into the enormous void of the sky above. He ground his fangs against the bit in his mouth, feeling annoyance that he had allowed his body to move at such primitive and petty urgings. The builders of the maze would know that huddling up against the wall would be the natural response of a skaven confronted by the sprawling starfield over him. They might have hidden anything in the wall to settle with such weak minds: spring-loaded spikes treated in warp-venom, jets of immolating warp-flame billowing outwards from projectors buried beneath a thin layer of crust, perhaps even a hidden pivot to allow the wall to spin and crush its victim.

  Each image made Thanquol more nervous than the last and he slowly backed away from the offending wall. When he felt raw earth crumble behind his furred back, the skaven leapt ten feet into the centre of the tunnel, wide-eyed with fright, not caring how inappropriate such a display of raw fear was for a grey seer of his status. His retreat from the first wall had backed him into the other side of the tunnel. Only reflexes as honed and precise as his own could have allowed escape from so injudicious a moment. Thanquol watched the wall he had brushed against, waiting anxiously for it to explode in some manner of violence. When it didn’t, he felt almost disappointed, but he should have guessed that the speed of his amazing reactions was quicker than whatever device the architects had hidden. Before the death-machine could even be triggered, Thanquol was already gone.

  Now, as he stood in the darkness, listening to his own heart pounding in his chest, Thanquol’s other senses became more alert. He could discern a faint, bittersweet smell. He could feel the air shifting slightly, betraying the merest suggestion of current and movement. He could hear an indistinct noise, a dim scratching sounding from beneath the rocky floor, giving him the impression of rusty gears grinding together.

  There was no escape from the maze, but Thanquol was determined to fight just the same. If he could find something to rid himself of his muzzle and fetters, he would be able to draw upon his magic to tip the balance back in his favour. However fiendish the architects, Thanquol did not think they could have reckoned with the mystic might of a grey seer when they built their traps.

  Keeping his eyes averted from the disconcerting illusion of the false sky, Thanquol carefully made his way down the tunnel. He was careful to stay away from the walls and kept a wary watch on the places he set his feet. Ahead, the tunnel split into five separate corridors, like fingers stretching away from a hand. He paused, sniffing at the air, trying to decide which corridor to take. He had a good feeling about the leftmost path. The skaven lashed his tail in annoyance, remembering that this place was designed to goad a victim into destroying himself.

  Thanquol turned away from the left path, instead creeping down the centre corridor. He had only taken a dozen paces when instinct took over and he threw himself to the floor. An instant later a great blast of green warpfire whooshed overhead, searing its way down the tunnel. The smell of singed fur told the grey seer how nearly he had been caught, the flames licking at his back even as he crushed himself against the floor.

  Thanquol lifted himself from the ground, scowling at the darkness. There was no mistaking the sound of gears grinding together beneath the floor this time. He could feel the tunnel itself rumbling. Quickly he retreated back the way he had come. He just reached the intersection when the trapped tunnel began to rotate, moved by machinery hidden beneath it. Soon, where the corridor had been, Thanquol could see only a bare stone wall.

  The grey seer did not spend overlong contemplating the buried machinery or the question of whether it operated automatically or was guided by some malefic intelligence. Having escaped the warpfire, Thanquol was more inclined to trust his initial impression and travel down the leftmost tunnel. Certainly it couldn’t be any less hazardous than picking a path at random, as he had done.

  That bittersweet scent was stronger as Thanquol entered the left tunnel. Now the grey seer identified the odour, his suspicions of trickery became even more pronounced. It was the smell of refined warpstone, but warpstone that had been allowed to age for an unbelievable amount of time. It was the sort of thing that would pluck at a skaven’s mind and guide him on even without his conscious mind being aware of its pull.

  Thanquol, however, was aware of what it was that lured him down the tunnel. He knew he walked into a trap, and his every sense was on the alert. He froze when a slight shift in the heavy air suggested movement. When the bright flash of metal in the blackness flickered past his eyes, he arrested his every muscle and waited for the pendulum to withdraw back into its hidden niche. Briefly he toyed with the idea of using the sharp edge of the pendulum to cut his fetters, but quickly disabused himself of the impulse, fearing the blade had been treated with some ghastly poison by his captors.

  Scurrying through the dark, Thanquol allowed the scent of warpstone to guide him. He continued to shun the walls, continued to avert his eyes from the disorienting glare of the starfield. It was not escape that goaded him onwards. He knew there was none from the Maze of Inescapable Death. No, it was something more primitive and elemental that motivated him. Food and water were his concerns now, excited by the smell of warpstone. His physical needs must be sated before he attacked the problem of removing his bonds and making a fight of the maze’s ordeal.

  Down through the murk of the winding tunnel, Thanquol was drawn, even his cunning mind tortured by the effort of keeping track of his trail. The way the tunnel doubled back upon itself, he wondered if perhaps buried machinery wasn’t moving the corridors behind him, rotating and turning so that he was caught in an endlessly repeating pattern. The thought chilled him as much as it excited his appreciation for the sadistic minds that had built the maze.

  If the winding tunnels were being rotated by machines, at least there was a purpose behind their movements. Turning one last corner, Thanquol was surprised to find himself looking out into a wide cavern. Stalactites dripped from the ceiling, spoiling the effect of the pearly stars and silver moons suspended overhead. The walls were at least partially worked, displaying the marks of tools rather than the scratches of claw and fang. He could not see any other openings into the cavern and very soon lost interest in looking for any, his eyes locked to the object at the centre of the chamber.

  It was a black stone marked by veins of green that glowed in the darkness. If Thanquol had any doubts about the bittersweet scent, he could not mistake the colours of warpstone. The rock stood upon a small plinth of copper upon which the grey seer could see scratchy runes and elaborate pictoglyphs. Old writing, very old indeed, possibly even predating the rise of the skaven themselves.

  Intrigued now by something more than hunger, Thanquol crept towards the plinth. Curiosity was a vice that had served the skaven race well down through their long history, though given the opportunity any skaven with an ounce of wit preferred to let one of his subordinates take on the inherent risks of exploration and inquiry. Thanquol did not have that luxury, however, a fact that made hi
m curse Kritislik once more. A few skavenslaves, or even a truculent giant rat, would have been reassuring under the circumstances. No skaven felt at ease without the scent of a dozen of its underlings filling its nose.

  Thanquol fought down the urgings of both hunger and curiosity, remembering only too well where he was. Instead he kept his distance from the plinth, circling it warily and studying it from afar. Abruptly he stopped, fixing his gaze on the block of warpstone. Now he could see that the rock had been sculpted, carved into a crude likeness in a style as primitive as it was ancient. It was the rough shape of a skaven, paws set upon its knees and with its tail curled about its lap. Great horns, like mighty glaives, rose from the brow of the statue’s head. Thanquol prostrated himself on the floor, grovelling in pious fear before this representation of the Horned Rat himself.

  Now Thanquol understood where he was. This was not the Maze of Inescapable Death. It was the only slightly less deadly Maze of Merciless Penance, used by the seerlord to test those grey seers whose loyalty and capability had been cast into doubt. This Maze was designed to determine whether a skaven yet retained the good favour of the Horned Rat. Only those who proved themselves were ever seen again. The others became victims of the labyrinth.

  Like any skaven, Thanquol feared and envied his god, but now there was a despair-born sincerity in his pleas to the Horned Rat for salvation. If the Horned One would only spare his miserable and unworthy servant, Thanquol would work tirelessly to ensure his domination of the world above. No more would he think of his own ambitions and greed, his secret dream to raise himself as seerlord and see Kritislik’s bones gnawed by the whelps of his own brood. He would even forsake his vengeful obsession to destroy the damnable dwarf and his foppish pet, if only the Horned Rat would hear him now.

  In the midst of his deal-making prayers, Thanquol suddenly felt the compulsion to lift his head from the floor. He stared at the image of the Horned Rat for only an instant, then his eyes fixed on something above and beyond the statue. Two blue stars shone in the eerie false night, set amidst some of the rocky growths that peppered the ceiling. There was something disquieting about the sapphire-lights and Thanquol started to turn his head when he became aware of something that had him forgetting about mazes and gods, even about warpstone and hunger. The blue stars were moving.