03 - God King (20 page)

Throughout these reports of hard times, Myrsa had largely kept his own
counsel, but now he turned to the last of his warriors, a youthful man encased
in burnished white plate armour named Renweard. The demands of ruling a city in
Sigmar’s name had become too much for Myrsa to bear alongside his duties as
Warrior Eternal, and though it had broken his heart to set aside the role that
had defined him for two decades and more, he had bestowed his armour and title
to a successor.

Young and courageous, Renweard was a perfect choice for the role. He had no
vices as far as Redwane could tell, who
knew
how to spot a man’s vices,
and was as a devout an Ulrican as it was possible to find. Even Ar-Ulric
himself, were he ever to return from the frozen wilderness, would surely
approve.

“Well, Warrior Eternal,” asked Myrsa. “What is happening beyond our walls?”

“It is true that more and more people are coming to Middenheim, my lord,”
said Renweard with arch formality. “And the Mountain Lord is correct that a
great many are fleeing packs of the dead. As to this Torbrecan’s followers, I
think we shall be rid of them soon enough.”

“How so?” asked Myrsa.

“It seems they plan to march on Reikdorf soon.”

“Reikdorf?” said Redwane. “Why?”

Renweard shrugged with a clatter of cream plate. “It is hard to be certain,
White Wolf, but it seems they believe that the great battle between life and
death is to be settled there. When Torbrecan is eventually released, they plan
to march on Sigmar’s city in a great host.”

“Perhaps we should let them,” said Redwane, surprised to find he was only
half joking.

The dream was always the same, rank and malignant tree roots growing up from
beneath the earth and spreading their poisonous taint to the far corners of the
world. She knew, of course, what it signified and what was causing it, but no
amount of prayers to Shallya could keep it at bay. High Priestess Alessa rose
from her bed and poured some water into a mug from a copper ewer.

She drained the entire mug and rubbed her eyes, looking towards the curtained
window at the far end of her room. It was still dark outside and the fire in the
hearth had burned to low embers. Alessa rose and threw another log onto the
fire, knowing there would be no more sleep tonight.

She wanted to wake someone, anyone, just to have another living person to
talk to, but that was selfish, and she did not want fear of what was buried
beneath their temple to spread among the novices. Ever since it had been brought
here, she had feared to face it.

She remembered Sigmar and Wolfgart bringing her the damned crown of Morath,
locked within an iron casket and sealed with holy words recited by every priest
in Reikdorf. The shaft they had sunk beneath the temple to bury the crown was a
hundred feet deep, lined with iron rods and filled with blessed earth. That
artefact of evil had been removed from the world of men as far as any object
could be.

Then why did she feel that the precautions they had taken were nowhere near
enough?

“It feels the nearness of its maker,” she whispered, seeing her breath mist
before her, despite the warmth growing in the hearth. She shivered and returned
to the bed, gathering up her woollen blanket and wrapping it around her
shoulders. Alessa clutched the dove pendant around her neck and whispered a
prayer to Shallya.

She smiled at her own weakness. Shallya answered prayers of the needy, of
those who could not help themselves. Alessa was no helpless victim, no
unfortunate at the end of her tether. She was a high priestess, a servant of the
goddess of healing and mercy, her instrument for good in this world. There were
others more deserving than she, and Alessa gave thanks for what she had and all
she had been allowed to do in her life.

She had served the people of Reikdorf for over twenty years, first as a
novitiate tending to the small riverside shrine dedicated to the goddess, then
later as a temple maiden, before finally becoming high priestess of the temple
built by Sigmar ten years ago. It had been a fulfilling life, a worthy one, and
she had blessed many children as they came screaming into the world, and eased
the passage of those whose time in it was done. Alessa had healed the sick,
tended the wounded and comforted the dying.

Alessa left the room and made her way through the cold corridors of the
temple. Faint starlight gleamed through the windows as she made her way past the
infirmary, where many of the sick of Reikdorf were treated, heading towards the
chapel. She felt at peace there and, with the last traces of the nightmare
lingering in her mind, she needed the solace just kneeling before the shrine to
Shallya brought before facing her greatest fear.

Inside it was quiet, as she had expected it would be. A few low-burning
candles guttered behind glass panels and white banners stitched with gold thread
hung from the walls, each depicting Shallya in her many aspects; the maiden
before the bubbling spring, the soaring dove, the bleeding heart and the
benevolent mother of all.

She made her way between the long rows of benches toward the small shrine at
the end of the nave. Set within a curved chancel, a marble statue of a beatific
figure of a woman shawled in white knelt beside an injured warrior and healed
his wounds. Though most warriors offered praise to Ulric, they all prayed to
Shallya eventually.

Alessa knelt before the image of her deity, closing her eyes and placing her
hands over her heart. She recited the healing litanies, listing the ten sacred
virtues of selflessness, and felt her serenity return and the vision of the
black tree roots burrowing into the world lose its potency.

“I will not fear you, for even death is part of the cycle of life,” she
whispered. “I will face you and I will be restored by resisting you.”

Alessa rose and moved around the statue, where a wooden table laid with a
muslin cloth was set. Upon it was a softly glowing lantern, a washbowl and a
collection of cleansing oils. She pulled the table to one side, revealing a
heavy iron trapdoor set in the flagstones. She lifted a silver key from around
her neck, and slipped it into a keyhole worked from the same blessed metal.

The lock clicked and she pulled the heavy trapdoor open, its bulk offset by a
system of counterweights and pulleys designed by Govannon the smith. A cold gust
blew up from the depths, but she paid it no mind as she took up the lantern and
descended the spiral staircase that disappeared into the earth.

She followed the stairs until they opened out into a long corridor of black
stone. Verses to ward off evil influences were inscribed on the walls, and just
looking at them gave her the strength to follow the corridor to its end. A door
fashioned from yew and rowan barred the way forward, but once again the silver
key unlocked it.

Beyond the door was a diamond-shaped chamber, its wood-panelled walls aligned
east to west to attract the influences of the sun and rubbed in essence of
valerian and jasmine. Incense vials placed around the chamber filled it with the
ripe scent of crops, verdant growth and burgeoning life. The floor was
hard-packed earth from the fertile Reik estuary, and though nothing would grow
down here away from the light, corn seeds were sown in its loamy richness as the
fields above were planted.

It was cold, and Alessa shivered, knowing the chill had nothing to do with
being below ground. She moved to the centre of the chamber and dropped to her
knees, once again clasping her hands over her heart. With her eyes closed, she
let her awareness of her physical surroundings fall away, allowing her spirit to
fill the void in her senses.

Immediately, she could feel the crown’s evil pulsing below her. Even
contained within its iron casket and bound with wards and charms passed down
through unremembered generations, its power was strong enough to bleed out.
Alessa could feel its influence reaching out to her, promising eternal life, the
return of her youth, and an existence free from fear of disease, disfigurement
or infirmity.

“You cannot tempt me,” she said through gritted teeth. “Everything you
promise is a lie.”

Her mind filled with its blandishments, each more fanciful than the last. She
saw herself renewed, her skin unblemished like the cool marble statue of
Shallya. She could not deny the attraction of what the crown offered; yet one
look into the eyes of this immortal vision of her eternal features betrayed the
truth of it. Immortality was an affront to nature, an abominable state of
existence where growth was impossible and stagnation the only outcome.

She banished the crown’s promises, feeling its hold on her thoughts grow
weaker as her will to resist it grew stronger.
This
was why she had come
here, knowing that only by facing her fear of its temptations could she overcome
them.

“Only those who feel fear can know true courage,” she whispered. “And my
faith was meaningless unless put to the test. I know now it is stronger than
anything you can offer.”

Alessa felt the crown’s fury, its icy touch retreating into the depths of its
prison. She let out a shuddering breath, feeling as weak as a newborn, but
renewed in her heart. She rose to her feet and left the chamber, locking the
door behind her and mounting the steps to the temple with a lightness of spirit
she had not felt in months.

As she locked the trapdoor once again, she felt a last spiteful stab of venom
from the buried crown. A searing image burned itself into her mind, and she
dropped the lantern as her limbs spasmed in fear.

She blinked, but there was no erasing the horror of the vision.

Sigmar Heldenhammer, riding through the gates of Reikdorf with the crown of
the damned once again upon his brow.

The Great Library was quiet, as it always was, but this quiet was more than
just the absence of hushed voices and the rustle of parchment. It was a silence
that told Eoforth he was alone in the building and always would be. That was
ridiculous of course, but such was the emptiness he felt here that it was easy
to believe no one would ever come here again.

He loved his Great Library, feeling more at home amongst its wealth of
knowledge and the accomplishments of Man than he did anywhere else. It was a
place of solace, where he could retreat from the world of violence and lose
himself in a Brigundian treatise on mathematics, a colourful Ostogoth tale of
family histories or the incredibly complex blood-feuds between the Udose clans.
This was his refuge, yet tonight it felt like a tomb, a cold and empty place
where no one ever came and no one ever would.

He blamed it on the stacks of books and piles of rolled up scrolls scattered
around him, for who would choose to remain in a building with such evil reading
material out in the open? For weeks, Eoforth had pored over every manuscript he
could find that had some mention of Nagash, however tangential. Most of it was
surely nonsense, but Sigmar had tasked him with unearthing everything that could
be found on the Lord of Undeath, and Eoforth was not about to let him down.

A great many of the most useful tomes had come from the dusty library of
Morath, the necromancer of Brass Keep, though copies of translated manuscripts
from the far south had come to Reikdorf’s Great Library via the Empire’s
southern kings. Oral tales told by traders returning from the southern lands of
searing deserts or from across the Worlds Edge Mountains had been painstakingly
compiled by the library’s scribes.

Lack of material was not the problem; sorting the embellishments and
exaggerations from the truth was proving to be the hardest part of this task.

Trying to cross-reference and corroborate details was proving to be next to
impossible, for no two manuscripts or tales agreed on any details of worth.
Eoforth sat up straight as the small of his back flared in pain. His joints were
aching and it felt like he had a desert’s worth of sand trapped beneath his
eyelids. He yawned and put his head in his hands.

People called him wise, as though that were enough to reach back across the
gulfs of time to pluck the truth from the mass of conflicting information. He
knew a great deal, it was true, more than most men, but in the face of all he
needed to discover, his knowledge was a paltry thing indeed. Eoforth rubbed his
eyes with the heels of his palms and stared at the manuscript before him once
again.

Its edges were curled and blackened, as though it had been plucked from a
fire, and the writing was an old form of Reikspiel, one that only a handful of
the oldest men and women in the Empire could decipher. It was a depressing
thought that he was one of those oldest men.

Endal mariners returning to Marburg from a mapping expedition to the far
north over a century ago had discovered the manuscript aboard a smouldering
galley drifting at the mouth of the Reik. No trace had been found of any ship
that might have attacked the galley, nor were any of its crew found aboard.

It was a mystery that had never been solved, but the sailors had found a
treasure trove of trinkets and tomes of unknown provenance aboard the galley,
all of which they took back to their city and presented to King Alderbad, the
great-grandfather of Count Aldred. Eoforth had travelled to Marburg many years
ago to study these artefacts—golden effigies of jackal-headed monsters,
strange, beetle-like creatures and elaborate death masks of gold and jade.

Many of the manuscripts Eoforth had studied made reference to ancient gods of
similar aspect, naming them as forgotten kings of a lost land named Nehekhara.
It was said that these kings had been laid to rest in fabulous tombs and
mausoleum cities now lost to the desert sands. In many of the manuscripts,
Nagash was blamed for the final doom of these kings in a single night, though
how anyone, even Nagash, could have laid an entire civilisation low so swiftly
was beyond Eoforth.