03 - The Hour of Shadows Read online

  “I am versed in all the great rituals,” Nashrik announced, his posture straightening as self-importance swelled his frame. “But my magic does not come cheap. I will need much-much warpstone. Ten slave-weight,” Nashrik added, voicing the first large figure that popped into his head.

  “We will gift-give a hundred slave-weight,” Huskk said. His crackly laughter scratched across the chamber when he noticed the grey seer’s eyes boggle. “We have much-much warpstone,” Huskk told him. His claw dropped from the skull dangling about his neck and reached into a pouch tied to his belt. Nonchalantly, the necromancer withdrew a nugget of black warpstone as big as Nashrik’s fist. “We do not need-want warpstone.”

  Nashrik shook himself, tearing his bulging eyes away from the warpstone in Huskk’s hand. “Not want-take warpstone?” the grey seer muttered in disbelief. If the necromancer didn’t want warpstone, then what did the creature want?

  Again, Nashrik had the disturbing feeling that Huskk could read his mind. “We want-find greater power. Power that is lost-hid in the forest. You will help us find-take that power.”

  Nashrik’s eyes strayed back to the nugget of warpstone. “Yes-yes,” he agreed eagerly.

  “Good-good,” Huskk hissed. The Black Seer replaced the chunk of warpstone into its pouch. The necromancer’s claw snapped and one of his zombie slaves shuffled forward. The loathsome creature held a large flask in its decayed hands. The Black Seer favoured Nashrik with a sly smile.

  “Did your army eat much-much?” Huskk asked, a tone of withering mockery in his voice. “Capture-take food from our slaves?” The necromancer gestured and the zombie shambled forwards, offering the flask to Nashrik. “Drink,” Huskk ordered. “This is antidote to our poison. We poison food of slave-meat, then they are sure to stay so they get antidote.”

  Nashrik’s eyes went wide. He scrambled for the flask, eagerly draining its contents. It didn’t occur to him until after he’d consumed half of the ruddy-hued liquid that the necromancer might have lied and what he was drinking was in fact the poison, not the antidote.

  Huskk snapped his claws again and several more zombie skaven stepped from the darkness, their shoulders hunched beneath the weight of several large casks. Nashrik could tell from their scent that the casks held the same substance he had just drunk.

  “More antidote for your army,” Huskk said. “If you hurry-scurry, you might give it to them in time.” The necromancer effected a disarmingly human-like shrug. “Live or die, they will still serve Huskk Gnawbone.”

  Grey Seer Nashrik shuddered as he heard the necromancer’s words. For the first time he appreciated the evil of the creature he had formed an alliance with.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Thalos felt every hair on his body standing on edge as Ywain led him through the forbidding fence of thorn bushes and malignant trees. There was an impression of brooding menace about the place, of hidden strength and terrible power. It became even more pronounced when the spellweaver brought him into the blighted clearing. The rich yet barren soil was a thing the highborn had never seen before in all his travels through Athel Loren. The uncanny sight only increased his sense of dread.

  Ywain watched her lover with a keen eye, waiting for the trickery of the pool to reach out to him. She was more on guard against its deceptions now than ever before, knowing that its power would grow once the Hour of Shadows fell upon Athel Loren. She worried that Thalos, unused to the pool’s lure, would succumb to its pull. At the first sign of falling under the pool’s spell, she would draw upon the forest’s magic to break its hold upon him.

  “So that is the Golden Pool,” Thalos commented, forcing more humour into his voice than he felt. “It looks quite beautiful,” he observed. “But I can’t help thinking the forest would be better without such a thing nestled within its bosom.”

  It seemed strange to Ywain that Thalos should express such disquiet when every time she entered the clearing, her own first impression was one of serenity and desire. It took an effort to remind herself that the power contained within the pool was destructive and evil. How could Thalos be so unmoved by the pool’s call, unless, perhaps, he was somehow immune to its lure?

  Doubt crept into Ywain’s heart. Was that why he was here? Was that why the Warden wanted him? For some reason Thalos was resistant to the pool’s magic, but why was that important to the Warden? The threat to the forest was from without, not within. Huskk Gnawbone and Nahak, and the army they had gathered, were the danger. If they could be kept away from the pool…

  Why did she love Thalos? As a spellweaver, as mistress of the Golden Pool, she knew that there could be only tragedy in such an affair. She could never make a true wife for Thalos, be his companion through all his days. The forest demanded her powers, exacted duty from her in exchange for her magic. She could not deny her obligation to Athel Loren, nor forsake her role as protector of the Golden Pool and servant of the Warden of the Wood. Only heartache and loneliness could come from loving anyone, much less an asrai highborn. She had accepted that, but what she had not been prepared to accept was the fact that Thalos would share in her pain.

  She knew that the right thing was to set him free, to deny the longing of her heart. In time, Thalos would forget her. He would find someone else, someone who would make him a proper wife, bear him fine children and ensure the prosperity of the Stormwind kinband. Ywain knew that was the right thing to do, but she could not bring herself to do it. Whatever pain her love caused her, she was too weak to let it go. Even if clinging onto it would hurt Thalos.

  “When do you think the Warden will show himself?” Thalos suddenly asked, snapping Ywain from her reverie.

  “He won’t,” she told him. “The Warden never shows himself, even to me. I don’t think any elf has ever seen him and if any of the fey have, they will not speak of what they saw.”

  “Yet you talk with him,” objected Thalos. “Surely you have seen him.”

  Ywain shook her head. “I haven’t even heard his voice.” She pressed her hand against her temple. “He speaks to me here, projects thoughts into my mind.”

  Thalos stared at her in confusion. “If you have never seen the Warden or even heard his voice, why do you serve him?”

  The spellweaver closed her eyes, considering his question. It was one she had asked herself many times. Assuming the role of mistress of the Golden Pool, communing with the Warden, these were things that had set her apart from her fellow spellweavers and spellsingers, made her almost an outcast among her own people.

  “He is old and wise,” she answered. “Older and wiser than elves or treemen or dryads. He was here before the Oak of Ages, he was here when there was no forest and the Grey Mountains looked out across a great sea. His time was before anything we know, before anything we could understand.”

  “The last survivor of a forgotten age,” Thalos whispered in awe. “Lingering in the shadows until his time is over.”

  “Or perhaps waiting for his time to come again,” Ywain said.

  A glimmer of light caught her notice, shining from the edge of the clearing. Thalos noticed it too, striding over the black soil towards the far side of the clearing. He motioned for Ywain to keep back, but the spellweaver could not be restrained. There was a haunting familiarity about the way whatever it was had sparkled in the sunlight.

  “A sword!” Thalos exclaimed, staring down at the source of the shine. It was a long, slender blade, crafted in the style of the asrai. Just looking at it, Thalos could appreciate the delicate balance of the curved hilt and the leaf-shaped blade. This was the work of a master swordsmith, beyond anything he had ever seen, even in the halls of the mightiest elf lords. The hilt had been fashioned from heartwood, smoothed and polished to a mirror-like sheen. The grip was studded with tiny nodules of wood to provide a tight hold in the swordsman’s hand.

  The blade itself was the strangest thing. It wasn’t forged from any metal Thalos had ever seen. Instead, it seemed composed of gemstone, a glasslike substance possessed o
f an orange-brown-yellow colouring. The blade was somewhat translucent, the roots supporting the sword visible behind the leaf-shaped edge.

  Ywain gasped when she saw the sword. She knew where that blade had come from, the only place such a blade could have come from. It was amber, drawn from the Golden Pool!

  Thalos reached down to remove the blade from the strange knot of roots which held it above the ground. A feeling of unexplainable fear flashed through Ywain. She started to call out to her lover, but reason stilled her tongue. There was only one being who could have made such a sword, certainly only one being who would have left it for them to find near the Golden Pool. The meaning was clear. The Warden wanted Thalos to have this sword.

  “Dawnblade,” Thalos said, reading the inscription carved across the guard in graceful Eltharin script. He tested the balance of the sword, finding it far lighter than he had expected. It didn’t feel like a sword at all. The highborn smiled. It felt more like a piece of himself, something that should always have been in his hand. “The way my fingers wrap about the hilt, you would think it had been made just for me.”

  “It was,” Ywain told him.

  Thalos turned around, laughing at her. “That is ridiculous! It would take years to make such a sword!”

  “Take a closer look at the inscription,” Ywain advised him.

  “The letters are freshly carved,” Thalos said. “There is even a bead of sap inside one of them.”

  “This is why the Warden wanted you to come,” Ywain told him. “He made this sword for you. He wants you to aid me in destroying the enemies of the forest.”

  Thalos scowled, staring distastefully at the Dawnblade. “Does the Warden think I am such a churl that it needs gifts to remind me of my obligation to Athel Loren?”

  “No,” Ywain said, thinking back to the Warden’s words. “But he said you would need this weapon to overcome the corruption which threatens the forest.” She could still see wounded pride on the highborn’s face. “No warrior is stronger than the blade he wields.”

  Thalos nodded his head. Testing the balance of the Dawnblade once more, he thrust the sword beneath his belt. “Warden of the Wood!” he called out. “If you can hear me, know that I thank you for this gift! You may depend upon me, depend upon my kinband to defend Athel Loren to our last breath!” He studied the imposing wall of trees and thorns which guarded the clearing, waiting for any kind of response.

  At last there came a flurry of motion. Bushes uprooted themselves and shuffled closer to the trees, opening a path through the fence. Thalos waited, expecting to see the Warden itself come striding down the path, to acknowledge the elf’s gratitude.

  Long minutes passed, but nothing stirred upon the path. Thalos spun about in surprise when Ywain’s cool hand pressed against his cheek.

  “It is time for you to go,” she told him. “You must gather your kinband and prepare them for battle. The enemy will soon be upon us.”

  Thalos closed his hand around Ywain’s fingers. “What of you?” he asked. “Where will you go?”

  Ywain laughed, touched by this display of concern. “I won’t try to face Huskk Gnawbone alone,” she assured him. “But I must commune with the Warden again, learn if he can tell me anything more about the enemy’s plans. I think he will speak to me when you have gone.”

  “Then I make my departure,” Thalos said. “Isha watch over you, mistress of the Golden Pool.”

  The spellweaver watched the highborn stride down the path, watched as the bushes closed ranks behind him. She watched until long after even the sound of his footsteps was lost to her. Leave the fighting to others.

  “I knew you were here,” Ywain said. “Watching from behind your thorns and brambles.”

  He will die, but he will save the forest.

  Ywain’s hands tightened into fists. “He will not die,” she hissed. “I won’t let him. I will be at his side when the fighting begins.”

  Evil calls out to evil.

  Tears rolled down the spellweaver’s cheeks. “I can’t abandon him, whatever doom you have foreseen.” Ywain stared at the fence, imploring the thing hidden beyond it to help her. Perhaps it couldn’t feel the same emotions she did, but maybe it could understand them. Maybe it could pity her plight.

  Seek out Daithru. Stir him from his sleep. Tell him it is the Hour of Shadows.

  “Thank you,” Ywain said. “I will find him at once!”

  Thank Daithru, for it is he who will suffer.

  Evil calls out to evil.

  The rock valley squirmed its way between the towering cliffs of the Grey Mountains. Silence brooded heavily above the desolate landscape, reigning in undisturbed tyranny until a bark of caustic laughter echoed from the forbidding stone walls.

  Huskk Gnawbone chittered with amusement as he watched Grey Seer Nashrik make a wide circle around the necromancer’s retinue of the walking dead. The fool. He had more to fear from his living troops than he did from Huskk’s dead ones. The undead felt no jealousy or malice. They would not turn on their master out of petty ambition or unreasoning suspicion. The only way they would pose a threat to Nashrik was if Huskk ordered them to.

  And it wasn’t time for that.

  “You warned your followers to keep out of the valley?” Huskk asked the grey seer as he approached.

  “They have been warned,” Nashrik confirmed.

  “How many spies do you think Vermitt will send?”

  Nashrik twitched his whiskers. “At least six, certainly not more than a score.”

  The necromancer rubbed his paws together and hissed his satisfaction. “Good,” he said. “A few of them should survive. Your army will be much easier to control if they understand the power at our command.”

  The two skaven were concealed at the bottom of a gulley, broken branches arrayed above them to act as camouflage. Huskk’s macabre grave rats were scattered along the floor of the gulley, as silent and still as when Nashrik had first seen them in the necromancer’s lair.

  Before the gulley yawned the mouth of a little valley, its rocky slopes covered in gorse and shrub, great grey fingers of rock projecting far from the sides of the mountain. Except for a few vultures wheeling overhead, drawn by the carrion stink of Huskk’s zombies, there was only one sign of life in the valley.

  Nashrik stroked his whiskers as he considered the miserable little traitor. Standing at the mouth of the valley, his limbs tied to a wooden frame, an iron bit stuffed between his jaws, the wretch could neither move nor cry out. He was helpless and vulnerable, just the sort of prey that would draw a hungry predator.

  When they had made their alliance, Huskk had demanded a sacrifice from among Nashrik’s underlings, something to seal their compact in blood. The Black Seer had suggested using this opportunity to get rid of whatever spy Seerlord Kritislik had planted among Nashrik’s followers. Of course there was one, Nashrik could see that, but the problem of who was likely to be the seerlord’s agent was vexing. His first instinct was that it must be the insufferable Fangmaster Vermitt, but the warlord’s arrogance and obvious scheming were hardly the marks of a competent spy, certainly not any spy a skaven in Kritislik’s position would have cause to employ.

  Nashrik had finally decided the spy must be his own apprentice, Adept Weekil. The young sorcerer was far too dependable and helpful to be trustworthy. The only regret he had denouncing Weekil to Huskk was that Weekil would probably have waited until their return to Skavenblight before causing any trouble. Until that time, the adept might have been useful.

  Once the choice had been made, however, Huskk was quick to act. Weekil had been seized by the necromancer’s wraiths in the dead of night and dragged down into the Black Seer’s grisly laboratory. Nashrik felt his gorge rise as he recalled the things that had been done to his screaming apprentice. The adept had been shaved, then strange symbols had been carved into every inch of his skin, arcane runes Huskk copied from a musty old scroll. Finally, the half-dead adept had been dunked into a cauldron of foul-smelling muck
and left to soak for the rest of the night. Huskk wanted the scent to seep into Weekil’s flesh. It was very important that the adept have just the right smell about him.

  Now the poor Weekil was trussed and gagged, bait for the monster that Huskk was trying to lure down from the mountain.

  The monster was to play an important role in Huskk’s plans. He had explained only a little of his scheme to Nashrik, just enough to excite the grey seer’s interest. Nashrik had, of course, displayed utter horror at the idea of invading the elf forest. Athel Loren was a dark legend among the skaven, a place where only death waited for their kind. When Huskk had been merely Neek Stumblepaw and a part of the starveling Gnawbone clan, even the worst famine could not move the ratmen to intrude upon the forest. But now he would strike to the very heart of the forest if need be, not to fill his belly but to glut his mind, to saturate his spirit with the sorcerous power bound to the Golden Pool.

  All the power he could ever want was there. He had learned that much from the skull of Nahak. Unlimited, unstoppable power! He only needed to reach the Golden Pool and draw it out. Nahak had prepared dozens of canopic jars for that purpose, eldritch vessels that would contain the magic of the pool. The originals had been smashed by the knights in the Battle of Razac Field, but Huskk had scoured Bretonnia to secure the materials to build new ones.

  Nashrik had urged him to delay his attack, insisting that they could succeed only in winter, when the spirits of the forest would be at their weakest. Huskk had sneered at such a suggestion. He had learned much about Athel Loren from the ghosts bound to his collection of skulls. He had learned the tricks and traps the forest would use against an intruder. He had learned of the many weapons the elves and fey would bring against any who violated the borders of Athel Loren. More importantly, he had learned of the secret signs and spells which could allow him to defy the illusions of the forest. He had learned of the shadow fey, dread spirits of the forest who despised the elves as a pestilence, an infestation. By appealing to them, by exploiting their hatred of the elves, he would be able to escape the worst of the forest’s illusions.