03 - The Hour of Shadows Read online

  “A fine shot,” Thalos said. “And a fine end to a long hunt. Honour to you, Saith. The bounty is yours.”

  Saith scowled at his companion. Pensively, he slung his bow back into its boar-hide sheath. “I appreciate your courtesy, my lord,” he said, a sour note in his voice.

  “I only pay you your due,” Thalos rejoined, annoyed by his companion’s irritated state. “The arrow was yours, therefore the bounty is yours.”

  Saith shook his head. “May I speak and forget the courtesy due to my lord?” Thalos motioned for him to continue. “It was your steed who broke into the clearing first. Had you loosed an arrow, the stag would have fallen to you, not me. I have no desire for charity, even from my lord.”

  Thalos nodded in understanding. “There was no insult intended,” he apologised. “Since we are speaking as one elf to another, I too shall forget the burden of rank and speak my mind rather than voice empty courtesies. I did reach the clearing first, but my hand hesitated.” Thalos cast his eyes across the little forest meadow once more, picking out each rock and flower, noting the old dead log lying across from the brook. “I know this place. Finding it again so abruptly caught me by surprise.” Thalos forced a laugh onto his face. “So, you see, my distraction was to your advantage.”

  Saith dropped down from the back of his horse. The elf’s face was drawn, a look of deep concern in his eyes. He paused, as though about to speak, then thought better of what he was going to say. Crossing the meadow, he gathered up the dead stag and laid it across the back of his horse. Saith hesitated before remounting. He turned and stared hard into the face of his lord.

  “This is where you met her,” Saith said, his voice grave. Thalos did not speak, answering his friend with only the slightest nod. “My lord, this thing you have allowed inside your heart can only bring you pain. What future can there be, loving the mistress of the Golden Pool? It can only end in tragedy.”

  “Pain reminds us that we are alive,” Thalos told his friend. He gazed across the meadow, seeing again that long ago day when he had first met Ywain. She had been washing her hair beside the brook, the sunlight shining from her locks. He had never seen anything so beautiful. It was a memory he cherished, one that offered solace against the long years of loneliness and separation.

  “Return to the hall,” Thalos told Saith. “I would tarry here and be alone with my thoughts.”

  With some reluctance, Saith left his master, turning his horse back into the narrow trail.

  Thalos slid down from the back of his steed, leaving the horse to graze upon the lush grass of the meadow while he strolled along the brook. Closing his eyes, he could almost smell the sweet perfume of Ywain’s body and hear the soft tinkle of her laughter.

  When he opened his eyes again, the spellweaver stood before him, an inviting smile gracing her beautiful face. Thalos took her in his arms, crushing her slender body against his chest. The velvet softness of her lips pressed against his. For a moment, all the sorrow and longing faded from his heart.

  “Was ever there a love more doomed to tragedy than ours?” Thalos whispered into Ywain’s ear.

  “King Orion and Queen Ariel sacrificed their love to make a place for the asrai in Athel Loren,” Ywain answered. “From their sorrow, great goodness was born.”

  The spellweaver looked hard into her lover’s face. “Would you make such a sacrifice if it were asked of you?”

  Thalos could see the anguish, the worry shining in Ywain’s eyes. He affected an attitude of unconcern. “For another such kiss, I would let the dryads take my left arm.”

  Ywain shivered in his embrace. “The forest may demand more from you,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “The Warden of the Wood wishes to see you.”

  Her words sent a chill through Thalos’ spine. The Warden was almost a mythical thing, an unseen force of the forest feared by elf and fey alike. He had only half-believed that it was real, deluding himself that Ywain communed with nothing more than a capricious branchwraith or treeman.

  “When does it wish to see me?” Thalos said, forcing each word.

  “Before the Hour of Shadows,” Ywain said.

  Thalos fought to put a smile back onto his face. “Good,” he said, tightening his embrace and kissing Ywain’s soft lips. “That leaves us some time for ourselves.”

  Huskk Gnawbone’s burrow was a winding maze of chambers and tunnels chewed from the foot of the mountain. There was a distinct regularity about the main passageways that was uncharacteristic of skaven work and there was an unsettling smell of rot and old bones hanging in the air. The earthen walls were marked with strange pictoglyphs, crude and barbaric things that possessed a disturbing sense of ancientness about them. Nashrik realized they were the work of some long-vanished breed, perhaps a primitive clan of man-things or the very first dwarf-things.

  Whatever the nature of the builders, it was easy for Nashrik to guess the purpose of the tunnels. They were ancient catacombs, burial vaults used to store the dead. It was a foolish and debased custom among the lesser races to entomb their dead, leaving the meat to decay in the darkness without providing sustenance to anything but maggots and worms.

  As he followed the messenger through the dreary tunnels, Nashrik caught glimpses of connecting galleries and saw that Huskk had adopted the barbaric custom. Chamber after chamber was packed with the decayed corpses of untold multitudes of skaven, many of them reduced to nothing more than fleshless skeletons. If Nashrik had entertained any idea of keeping any agreement he made with Huskk, this evidence of the Black Seer’s insanity erased the notion.

  The smell of death and decay intensified. Nashrik gripped the shoulder of his guide, forcing him to stop while the grey seer sniffed at the air. There was a cold, clammy feel to it now, the stink of bone-magic and sorcery. Nashrik’s fur crawled with disquiet as warnings flashed through his senses. Whatever else he might be, the Black Seer did have some measure of genuine power. How much power, Nashrik couldn’t be sure. He turned his horned head and glanced back down the tunnel. It didn’t seem such a clever idea now to brave the heretic’s lair alone. Those cowards Vermitt and Weekil should never have allowed him to put himself at such risk.

  “Follow-follow,” the messenger wheezed, pulling away from Nashrik’s grip. “Not far now.”

  The grey seer hesitated. There was still no sign of treachery. The catacombs were devoid of activity, giving no sign of hidden guards waiting to spring a trap. Either Huskk had concealed them so well as to defy belief, or the renegade’s talk of surrender and tribute were genuine. To be on the safe side, however, Nashrik put a piece of warpstone in his mouth, pushing the pebble of magical rock into one of his cheekpouches. If he had to draw upon its power to evoke a hasty spell of escape, he didn’t want to suffer the delay of pulling it from the pocket of his robe.

  The scrawny guide continued to lead Nashrik through the deathly darkness, until at last the tunnel opened out into a larger chamber. This, at least, had the signs of skaven construction, though any comfort the grey seer might have derived from such familiarity was immediately crushed by the macabre furnishings.

  One wall was pitted with little niches, each one holding the yellowing skull of some creature. Nashrik noted the heavy bone structure of dwarf-things, the tusked heaviness of orcs, the grinning death heads of humans, even several fanged skaven skulls. By far the most common, however, were the slender, thin skulls of elf-things. Nashrik had seldom seen the bones of elves, but there was no mistaking their scent. Even in death, there was a lingering hint of magic about them.

  An even more disquieting collection stood in a broad formation across the centre of the chamber, a collection of more complete bodies. Each of these had been a skaven when it was alive, but now they had been reduced to morbid trophies, preserved through some crude taxidermy. Nashrik saw the crouching shape of a Clan Eshin assassin, daggers gripped in paws and tail, silken vestment slowly rotting away into shadowy tatters. He saw the weedy figure of a Clan Skryre sharpshooter, one o
f its eyes replaced by a monstrous telescopic lens, its paws leaning against the rusting wreck of a wide-barrelled jezzail. He saw the twisted frame of a Clan Moulder beastmaster, a spike-jawed skaven-snatcher held before it as though even in death it were ready to catch an enemy between the snapping steel claw.

  There were a dozen and more of the shrivelled corpses in varying states of decay, each posed in some attitude that seemed drawn from life. By far the most horrifying was a ghastly assemblage crafted from the bodies of three black-furred ratmen. The grisly thing stood upon six legs and six arms jutted from its shoulders, a crooked sword gripped in each skeletal paw. Three heads, piled one atop the other, leered menacingly at the grey seer. Nashrik’s glands clenched at the sight of the hideous figure and he wondered what diseased imagination had conceived such an abomination.

  “If you make-take one wrong move-twitch, Three-to-one will cut-kill.”

  The voice was a dry rattle, like wind rasping through a ribcage. Nashrik leapt back, his body tense, his every nerve enflamed with fear. The grey seer raised his staff, summoning a sliver of magic to evoke a greenish glow from the iron icon fitted to its tip.

  By the eerie warp-light, Nashrik watched as a cadaverous figure shuffled out from among the carrion-trophies. It was the desiccated shell of a skaven, its furless skin pale and stretched tight across the bone structure, its body wrapped in gruesome robes crafted from the flayed skins of other skaven. A hood framed the lean, almost skeletal face, a hood adorned with great curling horns. Gleaming eyes, hoary with ancient wickedness and evil, stared from the pits of the thing’s face. A human skull hung suspended from a chain fitted about the creature’s neck, the glow emanating from its eye sockets mirroring that shining in the ratman’s eyes.

  Nashrik had been unaware of the creature, hidden as it was among the carrion-trophies. Now he felt a crawling fear settle over him, his sorcerous sight picking out the haze of dark magic emanating from the thing’s body. It looked as dead and lifeless as everything else in the room. Certainly there was no smell of anything living rising from the creature’s leprous skin. That it was capable of moving, of mustering even the crudest semblance of life, was a horror in itself. But the horror was compounded for Grey Seer Nashrik. He knew what this creature was. He knew that he gazed upon Huskk Gnawbone, the Black Seer.

  A malicious cackle wheezed through the heretic’s fangs. One of Huskk’s leathery claws caressed the skull dangling against his chest while the other tightened about the knobby staff he carried. The gleam in his eyes grew more intense, more threatening.

  Nashrik backed away, his tail tucked between his legs. Tricked! He had been tricked, goaded into this mad recklessness by the avaricious obsessions of Fangmaster Vermitt and Adept Weekil. Their mad hunger for glory and wealth had brought Nashrik into terrible peril. The Black Seer was no mouse-livered petty conjurer, but a fearsome sorcerer of awful potency. His display of weakness had been nothing more than a clever deception.

  “It is sometimes advisable to feign infirmity and hide strength,” Huskk stated, seeming to read Nashrik’s thoughts. “We have conquered a dozen clans by such ruses. The living rarely comprehend the power of the dead.” Huskk gestured with his staff. “These have learned, these killers who have sought us out thinking to win favour with the Lords of Decay through our death. Instead, it is they who have embraced death.”

  Nashrik felt his glands clench. His eyes again darted across the collection of corpses, appreciating their nature a bit more. Assassins, hunters, poisoners, snipers, bombers, warriors, even the putrid carcasses of Clan Pestilens plague monks were all on display. Only one thing kept his mounting terror from becoming complete. There were no grey seers among Huskk’s collection. The heretic hadn’t descended so far down the path of blasphemy that he would pit himself against a prophet of the Horned Rat.

  The observation put steel into Nashrik’s spine. The grey seer straightened his posture, glowering down at the absurd little carcass of a sorcerer. Why, his body looked brittle enough to break in two with the merest exertion of magical energy! And this ridiculous thing thought it could defy the Council!

  “I have come here to squeak-speak of tribute and surrender,” Nashrik said. “Not listen to a heretic scare-boast!”

  Huskk nodded his head, a disgustingly human gesture. “We will listen to your offer.”

  Nashrik lashed his tail in annoyance. The maggot thought he could haggle! “All-all warpstone and all-all slaves,” he told Huskk. “If there is much-much, I may tell Seerlord Kritislik I could not sniff out your scent.”

  The dry crackle of Huskk’s laughter crawled through the chamber. “You make-take mistake,” he said. “We do not discuss our surrender. We speak of yours.”

  The grey seer’s fangs pulled back in a savage snarl. The impudence of the filthy little grave robber! “I am a grey seer, not some slinking murderer dispatched by one of the lesser clans! I have an entire army encamped on your threshold! My magic could crush out your miserable life like a flea!”

  Huskk’s chittering laughter sounded once more. “We have dealt with grey seers before,” he hissed. “They usually invoke the Horned One when they make their threat-speak. In the past, we have found it good-wise to kill them out of hand. Some things serve us better when they are dead.”

  As he spoke, the Black Seer’s eyes began to glow with a ghoulish light. The chamber grew chill, turning Nashrik’s breath into frost. The grey seer’s fur crawled as he sensed a presence behind him. Springing to the side, he nudged the warpstone sliver with his tongue, preparing to grind it between his fangs and use its energies to power an escape spell. What he saw made Nashrik vent his glands and spit out the chunk of warpstone in his mouth as a sensation of pure terror wracked his body.

  There were figures standing between himself and the entrance to the chamber, shadows that had not been there before. There was a spectral glow about the things, illuminating their fleshless skulls and skeletal limbs. Dark robes fluttered in tatters about the ghostly figures, swaying in a phantom wind. Nashrik could not decide what was the most hideous thing about them, whether it was the fact that he could see right through their translucent bodies or the impression that each of the horned wraiths had been a grey seer when they had been alive.

  “Seerlord Kurzch came to kill-slay with an army four times as big as yours,” Huskk cackled, gesturing at one of the wraiths. “Grey Seer Fugrat and Grey Seer Masslitch were sent together in hopes that their combined magic would be enough to overwhelm us. Grey Seer Prazhakk led a horde of ravening rat-beasts bred in the deepest reaches of Hell Pit.”

  Nashrik had lost all of his surety now. The grey seer winced at Huskk’s every word, his eyes darting to the floor in search of the sliver of warpstone he had spat out. It was proving unspeakably difficult to spot.

  “They were all sent by Seerlord Kritislik to destroy us,” Huskk growled. “We should think he would have learned enough not to send an expedition weaker than those which came before.” A chitter of amusement slithered past Huskk’s fangs. “Unless, of course, he want-like Nashrik to fail.”

  The grey seer looked up from his frantic inspection of the floor. Huskk’s words stabbed into him like the edge of a dagger. The heretic vermin was right! It didn’t make sense that Kritislik would send a force weaker than the others! The seerlord had intended that he should fail, had planned for Huskk to annihilate Nashrik!

  Nashrik gnashed his teeth. The paranoid Seerlord Kritislik must have learned of Nashrik’s meetings with Seerlord Tisqueek and his part in helping Tisqueek’s ambitions of becoming the seerlord and master of the order of Grey Seers! The scheming Kritislik had his spies everywhere, sniffing about for any hint of disloyalty, even among his most faithful servants. So, this was Kritislik’s way of getting rid of him, sending him off to be killed by a half-insane necromancer!

  “You were sent here to die-fail,” Huskk stated, “but that does not-not need to be your fate-doom. We will accept your surrender-service if you offer tribute-gift.” />
  The grey seer glared at the cadaverous Huskk. So that was what his messenger’s words meant. The Black Seer wasn’t offering surrender or tribute. He was demanding them! The arrogance of the heretical renegade! Who did he think he was to toy with a grey seer?

  Nashrik looked over his shoulder, shuddering as he saw the spectral shapes of the other grey seers who had challenged Huskk. Ending up as one of the necromancer’s pet wraiths didn’t appeal to him.

  “How may this most humble-loyal grey seer serve the great and mighty Huskk Gnawbone?” Nashrik whined, somehow managing not to choke on the words.

  Huskk’s eyes narrowed, his gaze boring into Nashrik’s. “First we must decide-know if you are useful to us.” The necromancer took a shuffling step closer, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper. “Tell-say, have you learned the forbidden thirteenth ritual?”

  Nashrik shivered when he heard the question. Among the grey seers, there were few who were allowed knowledge of the Horned Rat’s most sacred magic. Many of the seerlords didn’t even know the workings of the dreaded spell. Knowing the spell and its secrets was enough to earn a grey seer a slow and malingering death if he had not been instructed in its use by Seerlord Kritislik himself. Nashrik had stolen the spell from the grimoire of another grey seer named Sleekit. He had prided himself on the craft of such a theft because his victim wasn’t supposed to know the spell either and so would never make mention of the crime.

  Instinctively, Nashrik began to deny knowledge of the spell, but a tiny note of warning in the back of his mind made him bite his tongue. Clearly Huskk had need of such magic, a magic far different from his own morbid necromancy. That need would make Nashrik valuable to him, valuable enough, perhaps, to make the grey seer’s assistance quite expensive. Besides, Nashrik had a feeling that if he told Huskk he didn’t know the spell, he’d soon find himself among the necromancer’s wraiths.