And everywhere, the mirrors – flat or curved, round or square, they occupied niches in walls or were strung beneath archways. Some sat in the hands of statues or hung from pillars. Some were covered in patinas of dust and grime, while others appeared to have been recently wiped clean. ‘Don’t look at them,’ Khord growled. ‘Not if you value your soul.’
‘I know,’ Reynar said. ‘I’m not a fool.’
‘You’re here, aren’t you? You’re either a fool or unlucky. Which is it?’
Reynar didn’t reply. Ahead of them, the street had widened into a thoroughfare, banded on either side by hooded statues. With a start, Reynar recognised the place where Kuzman and the others had died. He stopped and stared, bewildered. Khord prodded him into motion. ‘Bad place to stop, manling.’
As Reynar stumbled forward, he thought he saw the closest of the statues turn its head slightly. In the light of the will o’ the wisps, its face resembled a skull. He looked away. ‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked softly.
One of the Stormcasts – the one called Angharad – glanced back. ‘To the one who has requested your presence.’ She said it as if that were all the answer he required.
‘If you had been quicker, there would have been two of us.’ Utrecht hadn’t been a friend, really, but Reynar had trusted the hillman to fight beside him, and they’d endured more together than most men. He thought of the cannibals hunched over Utrecht’s twitching body, their faces all red, and bile stung the back of his throat.
Khord grunted in sympathy, but the Stormcast shook her head. ‘He is not dead.’
Reynar glared at her. ‘What?’
‘Nothing dies here,’ she said, so softly he almost missed it. She looked down at him, her eyes dark behind her battered golden war-mask. ‘Nothing escapes. Your friend is not dead, mortal.’
‘I saw him die,’ Reynar said flatly. ‘They ate him.’
She laughed. It was a hollow sound, empty of mirth. ‘I have lost my head twice, once to a bloodreaver’s axe and once to the blade of a man I called friend.’ She tapped two fingers to her neck. ‘And yet here I stand.’
‘Everyone knows Stormcasts don’t die like men.’
‘No. But I have not been reforged. I simply… awoke. Whole. Sound. With every instant of my death seared into my memory. The pain, the sight of my own body toppling backwards. All of it.’ She looked away. ‘Nothing dies here, mortal. Not men, not orruks, not us. Even those cannibals we killed – they will rise again, as hungry as ever.’
‘And we will smite them again,’ the big Stormcast, Obryn, rumbled from behind them. His voice was rough, as if he did not have occasion to use it often. ‘Crush them until they do not return. We bring the gift of oblivion, and they race to accept it.’
Angharad glanced at him, and then away. Reynar had the sense that she was unnerved by the other warrior. He didn’t blame her. The hulking Stormcast was a taciturn, menacing presence. The head of his grandhammer was still caked with gore, and his tarnished armour had seen much battle. Maybe too much.
Reynar had heard the stories. Most who served with the Freeguilds had. Tales of silent automatons and empty gazes. Of the tang of unearthly lightning, clinging to inhumanly still shapes. He had not thought it possible for Stormcasts to be more unsettling than they already were, but Obryn disturbed him in a way Angharad and Severin simply didn’t. He peered towards the front of the party, where Severin Steelheart walked.
Privately, Reynar thought that was a ridiculous name. A war-name, the Stormcasts called them. They all sounded like vainglorious boasts, to his ears – Steelheart, Shadowsoul, Bear-Eater – names more suited to barbarian tribesmen than Sigmar’s chosen champions. As if realising he was being observed, Severin glanced at him. Reynar looked away.
‘Hold,’ Severin said suddenly as they reached a mist-shrouded intersection. He stopped. ‘Brother, sister – to my side.’ Angharad and Obryn moved to join him as he readied his blade. ‘Khord, stay with the mortal. And stay quiet.’
‘Aye,’ Khord said, peering about.
‘What is it?’ Reynar asked. The air felt colder, somehow. Frost crawled across his hauberk, and his breath emerged in thick furls of white.
‘Quiet,’ Severin said without turning. Frost clung to the Stormcasts’ armour, but they didn’t so much as twitch. ‘Listen.’
The sound was faint at first – the whine of some sort of instrument, and voices raised in song. It wasn’t in any language that Reynar recognised, and he felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. He peered to the left, following the sound of the music, and saw dim figures cavorting in the mist.
They moved awkwardly, with stiff, jerky gestures. Glass flashed, catching light from somewhere. As the crowd drew close, he saw that there were at least twenty of them – all broken shapes, clad in rags and leather masks. Some of them played strange flutes or slapped tambourines with lively abandon. Those that sang did so in voices that seemed stretched to the breaking point, their voices rising and falling irregularly.
At their head moved a tall figure, clad in the tattered remnants of rich robes and wearing an ornate headdress of tarnished gold and shadeglass. The leader screeched along with the others, and periodically slashed at himself with what appeared to be a tree branch made from glass. The others occasionally crowded close, and the leader would obligingly strike them as well, tearing strips of rotting flesh from their limbs.
Reynar stared at the macabre procession as it shambled past, heading away from them. Khord hawked and spat. ‘Petitioners,’ he said, without elaboration. As the last of the shuddering celebrants vanished into the mists, Severin straightened.
‘Come. Quickly.’
They moved on, more swiftly than before. Reynar had some difficulty keeping up. Khord stayed close, but the Stormcasts strode ahead without looking back. Around them, the city seemed to tense and bristle, as if unsettled by their progress.
He glimpsed movement here and there as they continued on. Scuttling shapes that might have been other travellers, moving from archway to outcropping. Some climbed winding steps up into the gloomy heights of the city, carrying flickering torches. Others drew water from the crumbled cisterns that dotted the small cul-de-sacs they passed.
There was life here, of a sort. But the thought brought no comfort. Everything smelled of death and decay, like a newly opened grave. Great phosphorescent shapes squirmed through nearby ruins, and Reynar was reminded of maggots wriggling in a wound. Things that might have been bats swooped overhead, their shrill cries like the wailing of children.
Neither Khord nor the Stormcasts seemed disturbed by any of it, which only made things worse. How long had they been here that such things had become commonplace?
‘We’re here,’ Severin said suddenly. The Stormcasts crashed to a halt, so abruptly that Reynar almost walked into them. Shaking his head, he looked around. The thoroughfare had intersected with an octagonal plaza. At the opposite end was a large terraced structure of unfamiliar design. It was predominately a dull grey hue, but in places he could see faded patches of what might once have been a vibrant crimson. It was as if they had been scraped free of all their former colour by some harsh wind.
Where once there might have been walls, now only jagged remnants remained, though Reynar could see that some attempt had been made to reinforce the largest gaps with loose rubble – all save one, which was blockaded by a massive archway containing a pair of doors made from some dull metal, now tarnished by rust. Several of the great causeways that criss-crossed the city ran to the top of the walls, ending at decorated archways.
‘Where’s here? What is this place?’ Reynar asked.
‘Come,’ Severin said, starting forward again.
Reynar looked at Khord. ‘Why did we stop?’
‘So they could tell we weren’t enemies.’ Khord pointed at the walls. ‘Now hurry up, they’re opening the gates.’
As they crossed the plaza, the groan of metal shivered through the air. The doors scraped the paving stones as a quartet of Stormcasts forced them open from inside. Only one of them was clad in gold. Reynar didn’t recognise the heraldry of the rest. Like Severin and the others, their war-plate was tarnished and showed signs of much use.
He felt the weight of their gaze as he and the others entered the gates. A courtyard spread out before him, full of toppled stones and collapsed outbuildings, bounded on all sides by smaller, square plazas. An enormous fountain full of dark, scummy water occupied the centre. Shapes wrapped in heavy robes huddled about it, and wasted, decaying faces peered out from beneath ragged hoods. There was a musty smell on the air, as of something long rotted away.
Beyond the fountain was a forest of pillars and spiral staircases that rose up from the uneven ground, seemingly all carved from some rose-coloured stone. They were topped by wide porticos and balconies of a similar hue, from which hung tattered banners of silk. Some of the pillars were shattered, while others were largely intact. Above them, Reynar could see a fractured dome rising over several high stone causeways.
Khord swept out a thick hand to indicate their surroundings. ‘Welcome to the Jasper Palaces, manling. Our home away from home. And now yours as well.’
Isengrim kept his axe close as the dead escorted him through Shadespire. He did not doubt the evidence of his eyes. He recognised landmarks, and this place stank of a dead god, the same as the other. Only a fool would deny it.
Even so, it was not the Shadespire he knew. It was akin to a shadow of a shadow. Or a reflection cast by a cracked mirror – imperfect. The streets they passed through did not fit together correctly, and every building seemed to hang at wrong angles. Even the shadows had a jagged quality, as if something had wrenched them all out of shape.
The sky – if there was a sky here – was all but blocked out by an interwoven canopy of stone causeways and walls that seemed to undulate the longer he looked at it. Will o’ the wisps danced among the nooks and crannies of stone, casting a pale grave-green light across everything. Water poured down in murky rivulets from unseen aqueducts, or gushed up from shattered cisterns, flooding collapsed areas.
A damp mist clung to everything, and seemed to thicken as they passed through it. Isengrim thought he glimpsed low, lean shapes moving alongside them, but heard nothing save the rasp of his escort’s bony feet on the stone.
The dead marched without concern for any of their surroundings. The broken things that huddled in the deepest shadows scuttled from their path, or fell forward on ruined faces, whispering things that might have been hymns. Others stumbled alongside the fleshless warriors for a time, clutching at their pale bones in an imploring fashion.
One such creature, its flesh a rotting mess, caught at Isengrim’s arm. It had neither nose nor cheeks, and its black teeth were visible through the tatters of its lips. Its eye sockets were gory ruins, as if something had hacked them free. ‘Glory to him who is all,’ it whined. ‘All are one in him, and he is all things.’ It had tarnished rings on its fingers, and its robes had once been rich brocade. Now they were little more than stinking rags.
Isengrim shoved the creature back and raised his axe. Zuvass, walking alongside him, caught his wrist. ‘I wouldn’t,’ the Chaos warrior said. ‘The Sepulchral Warden frowns on violence, especially when it’s directed towards those under his protection.’
Isengrim jerked his arm free of Zuvass’ grip. ‘Who?’
‘Him,’ Zuvass said, indicating the leader of the skeletal warriors. The creature turned, his flickering gaze resting on Isengrim for a moment. ‘In life, he was the commander of the city’s armies. In death, he defends it still.’
‘I do not fear him.’
‘Then you are a fool.’ Zuvass said it so bluntly that Isengrim was momentarily taken aback. When it finally registered, he snarled and raised his axe to brain the other man. Zuvass made no move to stop him. ‘If you’d like to prove me right, by all means – take my skull.’
Isengrim realised that the dead were watching him. Slowly, he lowered his axe. ‘Perhaps I will,’ he growled. ‘But not today.’
‘There, see? I knew there was wisdom beneath the bluster.’ Zuvass turned and sank to his haunches before the crippled wretch Isengrim had shoved aside. ‘Nagash loves you, brother,’ he said. ‘Soon, the last of your weak flesh will slough from your bones, and you will know the joy of serving him.’
The creature caught his hand between its own and brushed its ragged lips across the knuckles of his gauntlet. Zuvass placed a hand on its head and stood. He pulled his hand free of its embrace and fell into step with Isengrim. ‘What are they?’ the bloodreaver demanded. ‘They look like no deadwalkers I have ever slain.’
‘That is because they are not. Deadwalkers are little more than feral corpses, animated by the whim of a necromancer or a sudden gust of deathly magic. They are all instinct and hunger, with no sentience.’ Zuvass gestured to the huddled masses. ‘These creatures were – are – all that remains of the once-proud peoples of Shadespire. They are not dead, for death is denied them. Instead, they simply… decay. Losing a bit more of themselves with every passing day.’
Isengrim grunted. ‘And when there is nothing left?’
Zuvass indicated one of the skeletons marching alongside them. ‘Then they find new purpose. Their weaknesses purged, they take up arms in the name of him whom they now serve. Once, they turned from him. Now, they kneel all too willingly.’
‘This place is a test,’ the Sepulchral Warden said suddenly. His voice seemed to echo up out of his ribcage. The fleshless skull turned slightly. ‘Here, our devotion is weighed and we are judged for our crimes.’
‘Crimes?’
‘We turned our gazes from Nagash. We raised false idols and sought to avoid the preordained end that awaits all who live. For that crime, we have been condemned to the agony of persistence. Once, we sought never to die. Now, we seek escape from life.’
The Sepulchral Warden turned back to the path. More crippled shapes had filled the avenue, like moss-lepers begging for alms – all were rotting on the bone, their meat and muscle sloughing away in paper-thin strips. Some wore the remains of finery, while others wore nothing save tatters and rags. Some carried broken weapons. One used a chipped and blunted sword as a crutch. There was no longer a distinction of class or rank between them. All were equal.
Isengrim was repulsed by the thought. Only the strong deserved life. The weak were fit only to be meat for the strong. This was a mockery of that – weak and strong were made the same. ‘This place is wrong,’ he growled.
‘Yes,’ Zuvass said. ‘But perhaps it might be made right.’
Isengrim grunted. ‘You still have not explained why you were searching for me. Or how you knew where I would be.’
‘No, I haven’t.’
Isengrim glared at the other warrior. Zuvass, he was coming to realise, was intentionally infuriating. ‘Am I your prisoner, then?’
‘Not mine.’
‘Then whose? The dead?’ Isengrim grinned. ‘Are you a slave? Has whatever god you serve abandoned you to the mercies of these corpses?’
‘I stand where I choose, friend. And no man or god commands me.’ Zuvass glanced at him. ‘But I’m only in charge when it suits me.’ He sounded as if he were laughing. Isengrim wanted to smash his axe into the Chaos warrior’s grinning war-mask, but restrained himself. Somehow, he thought it was what Zuvass wanted.
‘And now?’
‘It suits me to play subordinate to our hosts. And it would be wise for you to do the same. Otherwise, you might find yourself prematurely interred.’ Zuvass leaned close. ‘They do that to their prisoners, you know – they seal them away in one of the great sepulchres that dot this city. Imagine it… an eternity trapped in a box. Unable to spill the blood of your foes or even your own. A torment for one such
as you.’
Isengrim snorted and looked away. ‘I would butcher them first.’
‘You cannot butcher the dead. And we are all dead here, even those of us lucky enough to be clothed in flesh.’ Zuvass pressed a hand to his chest. ‘We are dead and yet do not die. An unsatisfying state of affairs to anyone save, perhaps, an orruk.’
‘And you,’ Isengrim growled. ‘You seem well pleased by this madness.’
‘I merely see the humour in it. A fitting punishment – to trap those seeking immortality in a hell of eternal life. It seems the God of Death has a sense of irony.’ Zuvass spread his arms and turned. ‘It has also made for strange bedfellows. Servants of many gods, united in common cause.’
Isengrim turned his head and spat. Zuvass glanced at him. ‘Most of us, anyway.’
‘I am no slave. I serve no cause save Khorne’s.’
‘That is, in fact, the very definition of a slave.’
Isengrim lifted his axe in warning. ‘Call me a slave again, and I’ll show you how far my chains reach.’
Zuvass made no move to draw his blade. ‘Duly noted.’ He chuckled. ‘My apologies, friend.’
‘We are not friends.’
‘Oh, but we will be. We will be as brothers, you and I. I have seen it on the walls.’
Chapter six
PALACES OF GLASS
It was said that the palaces of the Katophranes were designed not for comfort or even safety, but instead according to some artistic ideal, emerging from the soul of a people who found poetry in war and beauty in death.
– Palento Herst
Shadespire: The Rise to Empire
The Jasper Palaces were quiet. That was the first thing Reynar noticed. Sound seemed muted here, as if the stones drank it in. The courtyard was not crowded, but there were more people than he’d expected. Men and women, human and otherwise. He saw duardin and even an aelf among the haggard ranks. It reminded him of the refugee camps he’d seen while serving in the Faithful Blades.
Shadespire: The Mirrored City Page 7