by Nick Horth
They entered, passing through onto what Shev assumed was the arterial highway. It was wider than the buildings on either side were tall, and like the entranceway it was almost impossibly smooth and well-aligned. She thought of Excelsis, with its rough-cut cobbles and haphazard arrangement of slums and way-houses. Judging by the size of the city as they descended, she guessed Xoantica had once housed more than fifty thousand souls, but there was not a single sign of habitation anywhere. No abandoned carts, no slumped skeletons. The sheer lifelessness of the place made her shiver. She felt as if the shadows were watching her, as if the spirits of the dead were all about, unseen yet undeniably present. It was like walking through a graveyard in the early hours of the morning.
Vermyre’s tzaangors filtered out across the open street, weapons raised.
‘Do you feel it?’ asked the masked figure. ‘This place is heavy with enchantments. It has been ripped out of time, smothered by obfuscating magic.’
Far ahead they could see the gold spiral tower, rising up from a huge, domed hall that rested upon a rise in the centre of the city. The path they now walked led pretty much directly to that central building, whatever it was.
‘A temple?’ wondered Shev. ‘Or a palace, perhaps.’
‘In all likelihood home to whoever those fellows were,’ said Vermyre, gesturing ahead.
Lining the thoroughfare were immense statues of gold. They depicted stern, robed figures, heads bowed in solemn thought, staffs raised and forming an archway across the curving road. Again, the statues were oddly minimalist in design, with wide, curving outlines and featureless faces. But they were clearly figures of grave importance.
‘They bear the trappings of priests, or magi,’ said Vermrye. ‘I think it is safe to assume that these figures, whoever they are, once ruled over this city. Or at least served those who did.’
Shev’s head was beginning to throb. There was something deeply strange about the arrangement of these streets. Though the thoroughfare remained more or less stable, the side-streets – filled with rows of colonnaded halls, soaring spiral domes and grand, marbled porticos – seemed to sway and shift on the very edges of her vision, their dimension shifting slyly each time she turned her head away. The effect was nauseating and dizzying. Once, she could have sworn the ground before her appeared to slope away, and stumbled awkwardly when she stepped forward and realised that was not the case. They had walked for many hours, it seemed, when she glanced to her left. With a lurch of dismay, she saw the very gatehouse they had entered, at the far end of the street to her right, distorted strangely like an uneven reflection.
‘What?’ she breathed, shaking her head in confused disbelief.
‘Ignore it all, save this road we walk,’ said Vermyre, clasping her firmly by the forearm and dragging her onwards. ‘A spell of concealment and disorientation, nothing more. The weak-minded would eventually walk right out of the city, and forget they had ever been here. Or they might wander these roads, lost for an eternity, and simply drop down dead from exhaustion or hunger. Small wonder that none have ever visited this place and returned. Save our precious Realms-Walker, of course.’
Vermyre clutched the shadeglass gem in his fist. The light within the crystal danced madly between his gloved fingers, like a flame buffeted by the wind.
‘What are you doing to him?’ she said.
‘This place is guarded against the mortal mind,’ Vermyre replied, gesturing at the silent halls around them. ‘Old and powerful magic, beyond even my ability to decipher.’
He raised the gem high. ‘But the Realms-Walker knows the correct path, even after all these years. I know not how or why the knowledge remains with him, but it is in here. And while this stone is in my possession, Occlesius can keep nothing from me.’
Dread rose within Shev like a tide. How many other dangerous secrets and deadly artefacts did the Realms-Walker have knowledge of? She needed to get the crystal, and Occlesius, back from Vermyre.
‘How far are we from the tower?’ she said. ‘We don’t seem to be getting any closer.’
‘Oh, we are. As much as this city wishes otherwise. We are drawing near. Move.’
The Indefatigable drifted through the serene mists of the Fatescar Mountains, through the floating islands of stone that hung impossibly above the sprawling sea of woodland. Callis had never seen anything like it. It was a vision from some naptha-smoke summoned dreamscape. They descended underneath an inverted pyramid of bleached-white stone, a single white-wood tree dangling upside down from its nadir.
Callis raised the looking-glass to his eye and searched the skies for signs of another vessel. He had no idea how Vermyre intended to reach these mountains, but he would have required aerial transport of some sort. Yet no sky-ship drifted out of the clouds. Perhaps they had outpaced the traitor. More likely, he was already at his destination.
‘It’s too quiet out here,’ said Toll, pacing the deck alongside Callis. The man was like a wound spring, now they were so close to their quarry.
‘Where are we headed?’ asked Bengtsson. The admiral, it turned out, did none of the flying aboard a Kharadron ship. His role was far more logistical. Business-minded, if you will. As far as Callis could make out, Bengtsson called the shots when it came to the crew’s endless search for aether-gold, the gaseous substance that powered both their vessels and their sprawling sky-ports.
‘I’m not sure,’ Toll admitted.
‘We can’t search every one of these islands,’ said Zenthe. ‘We’ll be here forever.’
Toll cursed. Callis knew the corsair was right. They could sail these mountains for days and find no sign of anything. The blurred circle of the looking-glass’ viewfinder passed over a detached head of a titan, floating serenely and bizarrely through the mist. Upon its head lay a crown of jagged mountains, and as Callis’ eyes passed over them he saw a faint sparkle of light as the sun caught something.
‘There,’ he said, indicating the strange formation. ‘Take us in.’
As they neared the head-shaped mountain, Callis thought he saw a flock of birds rising from the mountaintops, disturbed by the flight of the Indefatigable. Then he frowned, re-focusing the looking-glass and noticing the strange flecks were in fact circular shapes that were soaring towards them at great speed. There were roughly forty or so in all, and they flew in arrow formation, knifing towards the oncoming airship. He saw the gleam of silver weapons, and a flash of bright blue flesh. A thin, muscular torso capped by a pair of curving ram horns.
‘To arms,’ he shouted. ‘We’re under attack.’
Most of the Kharadron were already in possession of rifles and pistols, and they took up firing positions behind the gunwale, aiming out towards the oncoming flight of strange discs. Callis knew only too well the creatures that were racing towards them. Tzaangors, twisted beastmen in thrall to the Dark Gods. He had fought them before, during the climactic battle for Excelsis. They were savage, sadistic killers, and they had been a favourite tool of Vermyre’s.
‘Targets, point four-five mark,’ roared Drock, the gunnery officer. ‘On my order, bring them down.’
The tzaangors were close enough now that they could see the horrible, half-organic shapes of their disc-shaped mounts, and hear their cawing war-cries carried across the wind. Arrows whickered down from the oncoming flock to slam into the deck of the ironclad, skipping off as they struck hard metal and spinning away into empty air. One pierced a duardin’s mask, and the unfortunate victim flopped bonelessly to the ground, twitching. More arrows rained down. The distance was great, but the beastmen loosed with terrible accuracy. Even their missed shots wrought terrible damage. Callis saw one arrow strike the edge of the ship’s volley-gun turret before flicking off and taking a kneeling crewman in the throat.
More duardin fell, and though the range was great, their companions responded in anger.
The sound was deafening, as the Kharadron
discharged blunderbusses, pistols and long-barrelled carbines, filling the skies with hails of lethal metal. The tzaangors swooped as one, soaring down and over the deck of the Indefatigable, still loosing arrows. One of the beastmen recoiled as a flurry of shots slammed into its chest, and it flipped over backwards into empty air, tumbling and spinning helplessly. A duardin wearing a heavy battle-suit stepped up and fired a heavy, egg-shaped projectile from a hand-mounted launcher. Leaving a spiral contrail as it whipped through the air, the missile struck one of the circling discs and detonated, tearing rider and mount apart in a burst of shrapnel.
Callis sighted upon a low-flying beastman and fired. His shot took the creature in the shoulder, and it lost control of its mount. The unfortunate tzaangor slammed face-first into the great engine-sphere of the sky-ship, leaving a crimson smear across the metal surface.
The deck was wet with blood, both duardin and tzaangor. Bengtsson was blasting away with his two heavy pistols, roaring instructions and commands to his crew. The heavy-armoured duardin seemed to be wreaking the most grievous damage, armed as they were with the largest firearms. They seemed akin to the sharpshooter marines that were posted to Freeguild ships of the line – specialised warriors who did the bulk of the fighting while the crew worried about getting to their destination alive.
‘They’re aiming to bring us down,’ Bengtsson bellowed, and Callis looked up to see a trio of beastmen carrying long silver staffs, drifting above the apex curve of the sky-ship’s main engine. He could hear their foul chanting from here, and he aimed another bullet in the direction of the closest beastman, but his shot travelled wide.
From the tip of the creatures’ staffs spat a silver flame that spread across the metal surface of the sphere. Great clouds of ill-smelling smoke rose from the affected area, along with a deafening rattling sound. The ship’s nose dipped alarmingly.
‘Kill them,’ roared Bengtsson, and the combined firepower of the entire deck turned upon the three tzaangors. The fore mounted volley-cannon turret opened up, spitting staccato bursts of metal that all but disintegrated one of the creatures in a cloud of pink mist. The others attempted to withdraw, their sabotage completed, but a disciplined fusillade of volley gun fire sent them careening and tumbling towards the ground far below.
The Kharadrons’ fearsome firepower had driven the remaining tzaangors back, and they flocked down towards the mountain valley below, screeching in triumph. Duardin crewmen rushed to and fro, desperately trying to put out the flames which engulfed a fair portion of the engine-sphere. A winding length of metal-capped hose was deployed, and it spat a stream of water up at the inferno. But these flames were magical in nature, and they would not be quenched so easily. The engine screamed and whined, and a vent-cover detached and went spiralling off in the empty air.
‘We need to put her down, admiral,’ one of the duardin roared over the noise. ‘We need to get that hole capped, and the fires out.’
‘There!’ bellowed Bengtsson, indicating the mountain valley below, which was already rushing up towards them at a fearsome pace. Callis swore he could see the tops of buildings protruding from within that sheltered gorge, though the smoke that had enveloped the deck made it impossible to say for sure.
‘Better grab hold of something,’ shouted Zenthe in his ear, and Callis ducked down behind the iron-plated wall of the central cabin, wrapping his arm around the heavy wheel-lock of the door. He felt his stomach lurch as the ship descended, hurtling through the clouds with terrifying speed. The mountains began to rush by on either side, terrifyingly fast, and it still felt as though they were accelerating. Then the hull of the ironclad struck solid ground, and Callis’ arm was nearly torn from its socket. They skipped, bounced and struck again, and by some miracle of sailing, the duardin pilot managed to haul the Indefatigable into a wide, arcing turn. A torrent of shattered rock and mud was thrown into the air.
Then they were slowing, the momentum of the vessel righting itself, and it came to a halt, leaning precariously to starboard. Callis staggered to his feet and made his way over to the rail. They had come to rest a mere hundred or so yards away from a cliff of unforgiving stone. If their momentum had taken only a few more seconds to play out, they’d have smeared themselves across that shelf of rock.
‘That was too bloody close,’ said Bengtsson, before turning to bellow more instructions to his crew.
Toll made his way gingerly over to the side of the ship.
‘Well,’ he said, gesturing towards a gleaming golden tower that rose into the sky to their right, protruding from a sea of white marble halls and soaring colonnades. ‘I think we’ve found our lost city.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
After what seemed like days, the main thoroughfare came to an end at the mouth of a great plaza, surrounded on all sides by an immense curving colonnade of golden columns. Ahead, the central square met a slowly rising series of stairs, separated in the middle by another golden statue, this one far larger than the others. In one arm it grasped a silver blade; the other hand was raised, palm out in a gesture that needed little translation. Beyond the statue was an immense hall, colossal and isoscelic in shape, with a great dome from which the central tower of spiralling gold protruded. Two enormous doors barred the entrance to this building, secured by twisting handles of silver that looped and entwined like writhing snakes.
‘We’re not alone here,’ said Vermyre.
Shev could sense it too. Her head was clearer now, the dream-like sense of muddied confusion lessened. The presence that still dwelt within this city. It was concentrated here. At the eye of the storm.
Cautiously, Vermyre and his tzaangors made their way across the plaza. Shev followed at a short distance, peering into the dark recesses between the forest of marble columns, expecting something horrible to emerge from within at any moment. The great statue loomed overhead, and she noticed that this one, unlike its fellows, was not entirely featureless. It bore a circlet of flame across its brow, and there was a faint line of indentations running down its cheeks, which appeared to be some kind of script, though the work was too fine to pick out at this distance. The colossus’ concave eyes were narrowed, and its mouth was a thin, stern line. Whoever this ancient ruler had been, she doubted they were well known for their mercy.
It was then that she noticed the eyes. They blazed in the shadows beyond the golden columns, yellow and piercing in the gloom.
The tzaangors had noticed them too. They screeched and brandished their silver weapons, forming a semi-circle around Vermyre. The shaman, Yha’ri’lk, snapped his fingers, summoning a flickering silver flame, which he touched to the end of his staff, wreathing the tip of the weapon in fire.
Slowly, the eyes began to move, and the watchers emerged from the darkness.
They were scale-skinned and hulking bipedal creatures, their rough flesh crudely daubed in crimson and aquamarine, ridges of bone protruding from their backs. Their snouts were long and filled with sharp fangs, and each carried a club or axe ancient in design, but no less intimidating for that. Jewels, gems and tokens of gold were strung from their necks and pierced through their flesh. Their shields carried lurid, geometric shapes. The saurian creatures radiated a sense of primordial threat. Shev did not see them as predators, exactly. There was no hunger in their beady yellow eyes – just a cold, alien curiosity.
‘I mean to enter this place,’ announced Vermyre. ‘It would behove you not to stand in my way.’
No answer. The creatures took a step forward, as one, and began to beat their clubs upon their hide-wrapped shields, unleashing a low, rumbling sound.
‘I have no interest in killing you,’ Vermyre tried again. ‘Whatever you are.’
They took another step forward, and the drumbeat grew louder.
Vermyre sighed. ‘Very well.’
He raised his staff and unleashed a bolt of night-black energy that speared into the closest beast, blasting i
t from its feet and sending its body sprawling across the plaza.
The creatures roared in fury, and rushed forward in a scaled tide.
There was something wrong with the world.
The feeling grew ever more certain and more sickeningly tactile with every step Callis and the others took into Xoantica. They had left the majority of Bengtsson’s crew behind with the Indefatigable, with orders to make the necessary repairs and then regroup in the centre of the lost city. The admiral himself had insisted upon accompanying them, as had Zenthe. The ground seemed to be passing beneath their feet, but the physical distance was disconnected from time itself. Callis concentrated with all his focus, plotted one hundred paces, and looked up to find that he had barely progressed more than a few yards. The alleyways of marble houses that stretched off in all directions ebbed and shifted at the end of his vision. The angles of the city were impossible, and he knew that if he tried to rationalise its insanity, he would lose his mind. After perhaps two hours of walking – or as near as Callis could guess – he made the mistake of looking up into the sky, expecting to see the reassuring span of clear blue.
Instead, he saw more streets, winding away in a ceaseless refraction, curling and twisting in on each other like he was gazing into an immense carnival mirror. He stopped, on the edge of throwing up.