by Dan Abnett
One of the blood-witches smiled, showing bloodstained fangs. She reached into Veyl’s ruptured chest and pulled forth his heart. Tyran took the organ respectfully, threw back his head and squeezed the heart’s contents into his open mouth.
There was a subtle change in the air. Malus felt the sudden absence of an electric tension that he hadn’t realised was there. A sigh went through the assembled zealots.
“Now Tyran possesses a part of Veyl’s strength,” Malus’ guide whispered, more for her own benefit than his. “It was ever thus, when an elder died in ancient days. Truly our time of reckoning is nigh!”
When the last drop of blood was gone, Tyran turned to the looming walls of the distant fortress. Slowly and deliberately, he raised his blade and his grisly trophy high over his head. “The call of blood is answered in sundered flesh!” he cried.
“Blood and souls for the Lord of Murder!” the faithful answered.
Tyran lowered his sword and returned the heart to the waiting blood-witches. His face, neck and upper chest were streaked with dark blood. At that moment he noticed Malus. Tyran favoured the highborn with a calculating smile. “Ah, here is our new pilgrim,” the zealot said. “How was your journey, holy one?”
Malus paused but a moment, uncertain how to respond. Tyran’s eyes were dark, not brass-coloured like Urial’s or like those belonging to the other favoured servants of the temple. How did one address such a man? Malus knew with icy certainty that if Tyran wished, the zealot could split him like a gourd before he even realised he was in danger. “My travels were profitable,” he said carefully, “although pickings between here and the Black Ark were poor.”
Tyran studied Malus thoughtfully. “It looks as if you travelled through the mountains to get here,” he said. “Did you take to hunting autarii for your offerings?”
The highborn shook his head. “I have no skill at catching ghosts, elder.” He offered his stained bag to Tyran. “I gathered what offerings I could along the road, but I confess that I spent more time out of doors than I’d intended.”
Tyran took the bag and emptied its contents onto the roof beside the hungry blood-witches. They eyed the collection of body parts with feline disdain. Tyran did not seem much impressed either. “You say you came from the Black Ark of Naggor?”
The highborn took a slow breath. “I did. The temple there is small, but there are still a few of us who honour the old ways.”
“I didn’t know there were any.”
“Didn’t Veyl tell you, elder?” Malus asked. “He was expecting me.”
Tyran considered this. “What of the rest? Surely you are not the only true believer at the ark?”
“The others are dead, elder,” Malus replied. “Perhaps you have heard the news of the feud between the ark and Hag Graef? The Witch Lord lost his entire army against the forces of the Hag. It was a tragedy for the ark, but a glorious day for Khaine.”
Tyran’s smile turned cold. “It’s a convenient story, holy one, but your manner is strange, and you could easily be a heretic spy.”
Malus forced himself to remain calm. “You would not be the first man to mock my rustic manners,” he said, “but why would the heretics bother with spying on you when you hold your rites in plain view of the fortress?”
The zealot’s smile faltered, and Malus felt his guts clench. Then Tyran threw back his head and laughed.
“Well said, holy one,” he replied. “Forgive my impertinence, a man’s heart blood is heady stuff, and it’s left me addled. Welcome to the house of Sethra Veyl. What is your name?”
“My name is—” he caught himself saying “Malus” and paused. “I am Hauclir. Tell me,” he said quickly, eager to change the subject, “is it wise to provoke the temple with such displays?”
Tyran’s expression darkened. “Do you fear the heretics and their slaves?”
“Of course not,” Malus replied, “but neither are we in a position to challenge them openly. Otherwise we would have destroyed the heretics long ago.” The highborn was making it all up as he went along, his pulse pounding in his chest.
The zealot shrugged. “They already know we’re here. The fact that they sent a handful of assassins last night instead of turning out the temple guard tells me that they don’t wish to provoke a confrontation. If they did, they couldn’t be certain of killing us all, and then they would have to explain to their worshippers why they tried to wipe out the Swordbearer’s disciples.”
“And what news of Urial?”
Tyran chuckled. “They remain cloistered in the Sanctum of the Holy Blade. When he and his sister came through the Vermillion Gate there were far too many witnesses for the temple elders to hush it up. Urial presented his sister as the Bride and declared himself Swordbearer in front of almost a hundred witnesses. So they’ve made a big show of honouring his claim and have spent the last three months using the scriptures to discredit him.”
“And?”
A gleam of triumph shone in the zealot’s dark eyes. “They have failed. Our sources in the temple say that the elders have already been forced to admit that Yasmir is indeed a living saint of the Bloody-Handed God. So now I expect they are panicking.”
Malus very much wanted to know why the temple elders would be panicked over such a thing, but he feared that the question might give him away. “Which is why they killed Sethra Veyl.”
Tyran nodded. “It was a clumsy, crude gesture, which speaks to me of the elders’ desperation. They seek to thwart Khaine’s will by silencing his true believers, as if that would spare them from his wrath.” The zealot stepped forwards and put his bloodstained hand on Malus’ shoulder. “That is why I wanted to speak with you.”
“Is there some rite you need me to perform?” Malus asked, praying fervently that there wasn’t.
The zealot laughed. “I like you, Hauclir. For a priest you’ve a fine sense of humour.” He took another step closer and lowered his voice. “No, I need you to lead a band of true believers into the temple fortress and kill the bastards who were responsible for last night’s attack.”
Chapter Five
THE ASSASSIN’S DOOR
The door lay at the end of a narrow street that only knew the touch of sunlight for about an hour each day. Tall houses, the homes of highborn lords, rose to either side of the close-set lane. Malus noted that the windows facing the street were tightly shuttered. Clearly the local nobles wanted little part in the temple’s clandestine affairs.
He cursed himself for not anticipating Tyran’s plan. In retrospect, the druchii’s interest had been obvious. Veyl’s death had to be avenged and the zealot leader needed expendable men for the job. Malus was new to the city, of uncertain provenance, and had no patrons to argue on his behalf. If he died in the depths of the temple fortress the zealots would scarcely feel the loss.
The highborn turned away from the mouth of the narrow alley and looked over at his two companions.
The zealots were nearly invisible in the deep shadows of the rubbish-strewn passage, their faces concealed in dark woollen wrappings and shrouded by close-fitting hoods. They seemed utterly relaxed, poised and ready for action at a moment’s notice. The prospect of certain death seemed to affect them not at all. For the first time, Malus found himself wondering what rewards the cult promised in return for their devotion. He’d never shown any interest in the temple as a child; many highborn families cultivated strong ties to the cult for political reasons, but the children of Lurhan the Vaulkhar had little need for such affiliations. What do you think awaits you beyond the veil of death, Malus thought? Splendid towers and vassals? A thousand virgins? Feasting halls and an eternity of battle? He could still vividly remember the night he walked in Urial’s sanctum and trod on the threshold of Khaine’s realm. The highborn wondered if the true believers would be quite so sanguine if they knew what awaited them.
Like the zealots, Malus had been forced to don the robes of a dead temple assassin. The black woollen robes had been carefully cleaned and patch
ed during the day to conceal the fate of their previous owner, and Malus had been forced to scrub the dirt of the road from his face and clean his tangled nest of hair, which caused him no small amount of apprehension. The grime had served to conceal the grey cast of his skin and the thick, blue-black veins that climbed all the way up his right arm, across his shoulder and up the side of his neck. He’d been able to conceal the corrupting touch of the daemon’s curse for a time by a simple act of will, but the more he’d opened himself to Tz’arkan’s gifts, the more the taint had spread. Now gauntlets covered his hands and he kept his own scarves bunched tightly around his throat. Over his robes he wore the assassins’ lightweight kheitan of human hide and a shirt of fine black mail. Two short, broad-bladed swords were buckled to a wide belt at his waist. Malus nodded to the pair and pulled his hood up over his head. “The sun is setting,” he said quietly. “It’s time.”
Without waiting for a reply he turned and slipped out of the alley, the sound of his movements lost amid the noise of the bustling avenue at the other end of the shuttered street. Horses trod across the cobblestones, men shouted to one another or cursed their slaves, and servants chattered together as they hurried to complete their masters’ business before the sun went down. By day, Malus found Har Ganeth was much like any other city in Naggaroth. It was during the hours of the night that it became a very different place indeed.
The Assassin’s door was made of bolted iron, with a small spy-hole covered by a cage of steel bars. There was no latch or knob; the flat, tarnished surfaces of the metal plates were inscribed with ancient, rust-stained carvings of leering skulls and piled bones.
Malus raised his fist and pounded on the rusty iron, calling to mind the strange words Tyran had told him to say. Somehow the witches had got the password from the temple assassins. He wondered if they’d made the men talk before or after they’d died.
There was a sound of scraping metal immediately and the spy-hole cover opened. A pair of dark eyes studied Malus and his companions warily.
The words tumbled from his lips, spilling out in a rush. The phrase was in an archaic form of druhir, the language of scholars and theologians. Perhaps it was a proverb of the temple, or an exhortation of the god — he simply concentrated on repeating the words as they’d been given to him. “Khaine’s will is done,” the highborn finished. He had no idea if it was the right thing to say, but it seemed appropriate. “We have returned from the house of Sethra Veyl and must make our report.”
The spy-hole shut so quickly that Malus feared he’d made a mistake. Then there was a rattle of heavy locks and the highborn relaxed slightly as the assassin’s door creaked open. Without hesitation Malus stepped through the widening gap into the chill darkness beyond.
He found himself in a narrow tunnel lit by a pair of flickering tallow lamps. Long shadows flitted and danced along the curved, soot stained walls. A small, pale face peered around the edge of the iron door as Malus and the zealots stepped hurriedly inside. The druchii who pushed the door shut was no more than a boy, clad in stained white robes and wearing a brass hadrilkar fashioned in the shape of a ring of linked skulls. The young novice shot home the door’s heavy locks and then sat back down on a wooden stool beneath one of the guttering lamps. The highborn noticed a second, empty stool and reasoned that someone had run ahead to warn the elders that their assassins had returned. With a nod to his companions, Malus set off down the tunnel at a swift pace.
The plan that Tyran and the other elders had devised was a sketchy one, but the zealot leader was very specific in his orders: only the temple’s master of assassins and the elder or elders who ordered the death of Veyl were to be slain. Of course, no one knew which of the elders had sent the temple assassins to Veyl’s house, nor did anyone know what the master of assassins looked like, or where he could be found. Finally, after lengthy debate, Tyran concluded that once Malus and his companions reached the temple their targets would invariably come to them. The elders and the master of assassins would want to hear their report of the attack, delivering them into the zealots’ hands. There was a straightforward, audacious simplicity to the plan that Malus couldn’t help but admire, although bitter experience left him appalled at the number of ways that the whole thing could go disastrously wrong.
Within a few dozen steps the zealots were swallowed in reeking darkness. Malus was forced to slow his pace and move more carefully, his senses straining to penetrate the cavernous blackness that surrounded him. His hands clutched the twin hilts of his stabbing swords, and not for the first time he wrestled with the notion of turning on the two men with him and cutting their throats. After more than two months he was finally within the walls of the sprawling temple fortress. He could leave the zealots’ corpses rotting in the darkness and lose himself in the temple’s maze of tunnels. Tyran and the true believers would simply think him dead, and if he went back and killed the boy at the assassin’s door then there would be no one to describe him to the temple guards.
It was a tempting notion, but again, experience told him that things wouldn’t be quite so simple. He had reason to believe that the blade he sought was kept within the Sanctum of the Sword, but he had no idea where that would be or how to get inside. Finding out would take time, which he suspected was in short supply. Urial was eager to claim the warpsword for himself, and it would be reasonable to assume that he and Tyran were plotting to force the temple’s hand. Why the temple would be reluctant to accept Urial as Khaine’s chosen one still intrigued Malus. What sort of agenda did the temple elders have, and how could it be turned to his advantage?
The highborn walked straight through the trailing edges of a dusty cobweb, the invisible tendrils clinging to his face and the rim of his hood. He snatched at the strands in irritation, slowing his steps even further. I’m out of my element, he thought angrily. The intrigues of the temple were similar enough to politics in the Hag that he had a sense of what was happening, but the rules of the game were altogether stranger and more confusing than he was accustomed to. He needed more information before he could make his own play for the sword.
As preoccupied as he was, it was some moments before he was aware of a shifting orange glow outlining the far end of the passage up ahead. Malus resumed his brisk pace, quickly composing himself before stepping through the arch and finding himself in a vaulted, fire-lit gallery that stretched to either side of the highborn for as far as his eye could see Pillars of white marble, stained and streaked with centuries of soot, rose more than thirty feet into the air, supporting thick stone arches worked in the shapes of fearsome, imperious blood-witches.
Don’t gawk, he reminded himself fiercely, forcing himself to lower his eyes and study the gallery with feigned indifference. Red coals glowed and popped in the base of iron braziers set every dozen feet or so along the gallery, outlining narrow archways that opened off the gallery on either side. Many of these archways were dark, but in a few Malus saw rearing shadows and flickering candlelight glowing against the walls of narrow cells.
Acolytes of the temple shuffled quietly through the shadows, their heads bent in contemplation. They were pale-skinned, young and fit, and the highborn noticed that many of them moved with exceptional grace and speed. All at once Malus was reminded of his former retainer Arleth Vann, himself a former temple assassin who’d forsaken his oath and found his way into the highborn’s service. The last he’d seen of Arleth Vann he was being dragged away into the darkness with two crossbow bolts in his back.
Such a waste, Malus thought bitterly. Like the rest of his retainers, Vann’s honour had been ruined when Malus had slain his father at Vaelgor Keep. When the highborn had returned to the Hag at the head of the Naggorite army, the former assassin had done the only thing he could do to escape the stain of Malus’ crime: he’d slipped into the Naggorite camp and tried to kill his former master. But for the timely arrival of a band of autarii scouts, Vann would have succeeded. Malus vividly remembered the touch of Vann’s razor-edged sword at his
throat. The man had most likely died in the forest outside Hag Graef, coughing up his life’s blood and cursing Malus’ name.
A figure in dark robes entered the gallery from a shadowy archway opposite Malus. For a moment the highborn was speechless, thinking he was looking at a ghost. The druchii’s alabaster skin, pale hair and brass-coloured eyes resembled Arleth Vann’s in eerie detail, as well as the paired swords that hung at the man’s hip. Another young novice accompanied the assassin. He pointed at Malus and his companions and then backed away into the shadows, his head bowed.
The temple assassin stepped forwards, holding out his hands at waist height, palms up. “The blessings of Khaine be upon you, brothers,” he said. “This is a glorious day indeed. When you didn’t return this morning we believed you had fallen to the blades of the heathens.”
Malus mirrored the assassin’s gesture. “Far from it,” he replied, speaking softly and counting on the hood to muffle his voice. “The fools never saw us. We merely had to be patient in order to slip away while their leaders bemoaned Veyl’s fate. In the process we heard much of the heathens’ plans, and need to make our report.”
The assassin nodded. “Master Suril has been summoned, as have the elders. Follow me.”
Malus relaxed slightly as he fell into step behind the temple assassin. As far as he was concerned, the hard part of the plan was over.
Their guide led the highborn and his companions back the way he’d come, up a narrow, spiral stairway that climbed past several more gallery levels until they emerged into a narrow room lit with pale witchlight. The transition from fire and shadow to the pale green light left Malus momentarily disorientated, a feeling that only deepened when the guide pushed open a tall door and led the men outside into the deep orange glow of the setting sun.
They exited through a portal built into the side of the fortress’ thick wall, which emptied them out at street level at the end of a broad avenue lined on either side with some of the most palatial buildings Malus had ever seen.