by Dan Abnett
Once it had become clear that Malus was to remain in Nagaira’s tower without the support of his retainers, he had gone to some pains during one of their infrequent meetings to establish a contingency plan in the event he needed to escape. “Give it here,” he whispered to Arleth Vann, readying his hands.
The assassin’s arm emerged from his cloak, holding a narrow, square bundle shaped like a book. With a sharp flick of his wrist, the retainer sent the package across the intervening space and through the arrow-slit like a hurled dagger. Even prepared, the speed of the throw took Malus by surprise, the package striking him sharply in the chest. He fumbled with the parcel for a heartbeat and then clasped his hands around it. It was dark cloth bound with cord and he cut the bindings free with his blade and then turned his attention back to Arleth Vann.
“I’m not coming out yet,” he whispered. “But soon. How goes the restoration?”
“It goes well,” the retainer replied. “Silar has everything well in hand. He and Dolthaic have hired mercenaries to defend the tower until you can choose new retainers. Your mount has been brought back to the stables and is almost completely mended.”
Malus nodded. “Well done. Now go back across and get some sleep. Keep to the same vigil, though—when I come out, it will likely be within the next couple of days, at right around this time.”
The hooded head bobbed. “Yes, my lord,” he whispered and then was gone, like a shadow passing over the moon.
Malus returned the witchlight to its sconce and tucked the parcel within the folds of his robe. The men in the guardroom snored on as he climbed back up the staircase and slipped through the door. At the next landing the guard there watched him calmly and admitted him into his mistress’ apartments with a deferential nod of his head.
Once past the guard, Malus drew out the bundle and unwrapped it. A layer of black cloth enclosed a box made of thin wood. Inside was a small, disassembled hand crossbow with five poisoned bolts, a set of lockpicks that he barely knew how to use—and most importantly of all, a smaller wrapped bundle the size of his palm. He plucked the cloth bundle from the box and slipped the rest back into his robe, then unwrapped the one key he truly needed to escape Nagaira’s grasp.
The cloth contained a heavy, octagonal brass amulet fitted to a long chain. The amulet’s surface was covered with intricate runes that Malus would have been hard pressed to describe, much less understand. What he did know was that the Octagon of Praan was a potent magical relic, capable of absorbing any magic directed at the caster, no matter its power. Since he’d fled the camp of Kul Hadar’s beastman herd the octagon had rested at the bottom of a saddlebag hung from Spite’s saddle and so it had gone undetected by ally and rival alike until Malus had directed Arleth Vann to make it ready for his use.
Malus slipped the amulet’s chain over his head, letting the cold weight of the octagon rest against his chest. He was certain that it would defeat any magical defence in the tower that was aimed at him—but what about simple alarms triggered by his mere presence? He had no answer for that and the notion set his teeth on edge.
Only one way to know for certain, he thought grimly and started up the stairs.
There had been guards outside the entrance to Nagaira’s sanctum the last time he’d visited. He hoped that with the mistress in bed the guards would be elsewhere. Malus rounded the corner of the spiral stairs, ready with a half-hearted excuse in case he was challenged—and found the small landing deserted. A pair of tall double doors stood closed, their surface gleaming with patterns of glowing green runes. Further runes etched the arched doorframe, rising to a stylised etching of a manticore leering down from the keystone of the doorway.
Malus swallowed nervously, pleased that there was no one about to witness his apprehension. After the sights he’d seen while raiding his half-brother Urial’s tower—himself a sorcerer of sorts—he had some small idea of the kind of power those protective runes held. Yet they can’t touch me, he told himself. The medallion will protect me. It will protect me.
He laid a hand on the door’s latch. The metal felt cold and there was a strange ripple that disturbed the surface of the gleaming runes—as though he’d dipped his hand in a reflecting pool.
Steeling himself, Malus tripped the latch and pulled the door open, then stepped swiftly inside. There was a faint, oily sensation as he crossed the threshold, but nothing more. Breathing a quick sigh of relief, the highborn eased the door shut.
The sanctum was dimly lit by banked witchlights, plunging much of the room into deep shadow. The sanctum occupied the highest rooms in Nagaira’s tower, making them consequently the smallest. A circular stone hearth—now cold—occupied the centre of the chamber, surrounded by two plush divans and a number of low tables. The tables, as well as every other bench, shelf, niche and pedestal, were covered with stacks of scrolls, books and other paraphernalia. Tall bookshelves lined every wall, groaning with the weight of grimoires and dusty tomes. At the far end of the room Malus saw a short ladder rising up to the floor above. He’d never gone up there, but now that he thought about it, he remembered that Nagaira had mentioned once that there was nothing up there but more stacks of books and scrolls.
For the first time Malus surveyed the room and took in the sheer vastness of the knowledge contained therein. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of works and not one of them kept in anything like a logical order.
He’d had it all wrong. Getting past the deadly wards wasn’t the hardest part of his plan. Finding the one book he needed in this scrivener’s maze was. And he had only a few hours before dawn, when the household slaves would start roaming the halls again.
The Hierophant had let slip the name of a book: the Tome of Ak’zhaal. If the high priest hadn’t merely been making empty boasts, the tome contained details about Tz’arkan. Somewhere within its pages might also lie the resting place of the Idol of Kolkuth. And outside of the city convent, he could think of no better library.
“But where does the Tome of Ak’zhaal lie?” Malus muttered to himself. “Blessed Mother, what if it isn’t even written in druchast at all?” The highborn bared his teeth at the thought that the knowledge he sought could be under his very nose, concealed behind the illegible scrawls of some demented mage.
The daemon stirred, its chuckle rumbling through Malus’ skull. Tz’arkan had lain quiescent since the mad feasting of the revel and the sudden voice caused the highborn to jump. “Impetuous druchii! Only now do you think of these things? Did you imagine the sorcerers of old would write their secrets in your childlike alphabet?”
“How should I know? One set of scratchings are as good as another, are they not?”
“No. They are not.”
“You sound like you know many languages, daemon.”
“Of course. I know every spoken and written tongue this pitiful world has produced. In fact, I had a hand in creating—”
“Excellent. Then you can translate these writings for me, can’t you?”
For a moment, the daemon made no response. “Yes. I suppose,” it said peevishly.
“Good,” Malus said, eyeing the nearest bookshelf. “Because we have precious little time to do our reading.”
Chapter Seven
THE ALTAR OF THE LOST
IT had taken nearly two hours to cover a third of the books contained within the main room, to say nothing of the stacks of volumes kept in the room above. He had fought to keep his frustration in check—if he and Tz’arkan were truly integral to Nagaira’s schemes then the books she had been consulting would be close by, not gathering dust in some far corner of her sanctum. Dawn was close at hand when Malus almost literally stumbled over the Tome of Ak’zhaal. As he had rushed to the next bookshelf in line he spied a large leather-bound book on the floor near one of the divans, hidden underneath a platter littered with bits of old cheese and breadcrumbs. The runes on the book’s spine meant nothing to him—and yet when he looked at them it felt like a film of oil slid over his eyes and he instinctively kne
w what the ancient writing meant.
Even then, much of the text was indecipherable to him. Parts of it were history, parts of it references to sorcerous arts that completely escaped him. Malus scanned page after page, hungry for references to Tz’arkan and coming up wanting again and again. His attention wandered, after another half an hour he found himself listening for the sound of a hand on the door-latch and wondering what he would say to the slave—or worse, his sister—when he was discovered.
Then, two-thirds of the way into the book the references began. Initially, the comments were things he already knew: Tz’arkan was a mighty daemon that had once walked the earth during the First War, many thousands of years ago, but he had been tricked and bound into the service of five powerful Chaos sorcerers. With the daemon’s power and knowledge at their disposal the sorcerers became fearsome conquerors, driving their foes before them. In the end, however, the daemon’s diabolical gifts proved to be the sorcerers’ undoing—one by one they were torn apart by rivals, driven mad by greed and bloodlust or consumed in sorcerous conflagrations too powerful for them to contain.
According to the book, the sorcerer Eradorius was the master of the enigmatic Idol of Kolkuth, a relic of a lost age even in those ancient times. Eradorius was the first to realise the peril of the daemon’s gifts—and as a result he was the first of the five sorcerers to die. Beset by treacherous lieutenants who hungered for his power and fearful that his fellow sorcerers were scheming to assassinate him, Eradorius fled his enormous palace and his legion of retainers and sought refuge on a tiny island in the storm-wracked northern seas. There, he hoped to cheat the daemon’s revenge by fleeing to a sanctuary that no enemy—mortal or daemon—could breach.
The highborn took a deep breath and returned his attention to the great book lying open on the low table by the divan. He carefully turned the page with the tips of two fingers, noting with alarm how the aged vellum crackled beneath his touch.
In the Time of Ash and Crimson the sorcerer Eradorius, known to the sons of Aenarion as one of the terrible Lords of the Black Stone, did leave the fastness of his citadel at Harash-Karn and rode the ash-laden winds like a great wyrm. Darkness and terror followed in his wake and the lesser minions of the Ruinous Powers quailed and cursed at his passing.
The sorcerer rode the heavens for seven days and nights, until the slate-coloured seas of the north stretched below him as far as his eyes could see. He soared above those cold and hungry waters until at last he spied a gnarled finger of stone rising from the icy mists—the isle called Morhaut, which in the tongue of the First Men means the altar of the lost.
Upon this haunted stone the dread mage alighted and stretched forth his claw-like hand to bend the cursed isle to his will. He used the secrets the Cursed One had given him and tunnelled deep into rock and air and the passage of years. A tower was built by Eradorius, raised with power and madness, reaching to the sky and sinking into worlds beyond, to a place without walls or passageways or doors. He dug into the bedrock of the world, seeking the empty place beyond, where the earthbound daemon could not find him. And there he passed from the ken of his fellows and from the talons of the Cursed One and was lost for all time.
“Morhaut,” Malus growled, his face grim. “Of course. I should have known.”
The highborn felt the daemon stir within his breast. “Oh? Why is that?”
Malus fought the urge to throw the old book across the room. “Because it’s little more than a legend and every druchii who’s gone searching for it has never been seen again.”
He leapt to his feet and went to a large map that hung in a wooden frame against one of the sanctum’s walls. “I heard several versions of the story on the slaving cruise last summer,” he said, his eyes roving over the huge expanse of yellowed parchment. “It’s an isle of lost ships going back to the First War, surrounded by deadly reefs and impenetrable mists.”
The highborn traced a finger along Naggaroth’s rough eastern coast, then north-east from the straits near Karond Kar. North and east, over a wide swath of hungry grey sea. “Mother of Night,” he cursed softly. “I’ll need a whole fleet. Raiding ships and fighting men and damnable sorcery as well.”
“How grandiose,” the daemon sneered. “You let that little taste of adoration go to your head, or you’re simply looking for a reason to squander more of my treasure.”
“Would that were the truth,” Malus snarled. “I’d throw every bit of your gold to the slaves in the Market Quarter if it meant an easy path to your damnable relics. No, the waters in the north are teeming with marauders. A single ship wouldn’t last a week on those seas.”
“Marauders?”
Malus nodded. “Norscan raiders claim the north seas as their own and there are marauder strongholds on nearly every island. They come south in the summer and make coastal raids against Ulthuan and the human lands, much as we do. Some of the more foolhardy bands even raid Naggaroth from time to time, or harry our raiding ships as they return home laden with plunder.”
“Indeed? I can see why you care little for them. They sound much like druchii.”
They are nothing like us,” Mains snapped. We raid other lands for the gold and flesh to sustain our kingdom. The weak suffer so the strong may survive—that is the way of the world and we are its finest predators. These marauders exist only to destroy. They burn and slaughter without reason, without purpose. They are wasteful and ignorant, like animals’ The highborn’s scowl deepened. Worst among them are the Skinriders.”
“You seem quite the expert on these marauding humans,” the daemon sneered. “For a scholar, you have strange interests.”
“The Skinriders have been a thorn in Naggaroth’s side for years, preying on our raiders as they return home loaded with flesh for our markets,” Malus replied acidly. “They take the skin of others to cover their own raw, suppurating bodies. They worship a daemon god of pestilence and are rewarded with terrible strength and vitality. But the skin sloughs from their diseased bodies like putrid wax and they suffer constant agony unless they can clothe their raw flesh with untainted hide. Such are the rewards for placing faith in the words of daemons.”
“You insult me, little Darkblade. I am among the most honourable of beings. I have obeyed your every request to the letter, have I not? Do not blame me for your own lack of imagination or wit. Are not these Skinriders mighty warriors, blessed by their patron?”
“They are. In fact, they infest the northern sea like a plague—even the other raiders pay them tribute in fresh skins and sacrificial victims. In fact, legend has it their strength is so great and their sorcery so potent that they have claimed the most dangerous island in the region as their stronghold.”
“The Isle of Morhaut.”
“Now you begin to see the scope of the challenge set before me,” Malus answered grimly. Thus: a fleet, soldiers and a sorcerer. And soon. Damnably soon. The spring thaws begin in little more than a week and the corsairs at Clar Karond will be putting to sea as soon as they are able.”
“Ah, yes. The sands are trickling from the hourglass. You must find another way, Malus. There is no time for such elaborate schemes.”
Remembering where he was, Malus glanced at the nearest window and saw that the sky had nearly paled to the grey gloom of morning. The slaves were doubtless already stirring in the lower levels of the tower, preparing for the day. “I have little choice, daemon,” Malus growled, dashing back to the divan and returning the tome to its place on the floor. “If I can’t raise such a force on my own I’ll have to convince someone else to give me one.”
“The revels have left you unhinged, little druchii. Who would give you such power? The Drachau? The Witch King himself?” Tz’arkan laughed mockingly.
“I’d have better luck with my own father,” Malus said bitterly. Suddenly he straightened, his dark brows furrowing. “On the other hand…”
The daemon squirmed beneath his ribs. “Yes?”
Malus grinned like a wolf. “I’m a foo
l. All the pieces are right in front of me. I just need to begin pulling some strings. It’s perfect.”
The highborn could feel the weight of the daemon’s attention settle on him like a mantle of ice. “What lunacy are you contemplating now? Tell me!”
Malus raced for the door, his mind hard at work as the pieces of his plan came together. Tired as he was, there would be no sleep for him today. “First things first,” he said, as much to the daemon as to himself. “If I don’t get back to my bed before the tower slaves awaken things could become awkward indeed.”
Down on the arena floor a slave screamed in terror, kicking up a spray of red-stained sand as he threw himself to one side before the cold one’s charge. The young human almost made it, but he timed his leap a fraction of a second too late and the nauglir’s jaws closed on the man’s scabby legs. Razor-sharp fangs as long as knives snipped off both limbs just below the knee, sending the human tumbling in a bright fountain of blood. The cold one’s black-armoured rider hauled at the reins, trying to check his mount’s headlong rush and circle back to the slave while the highborn in the stands hissed in derision or shouted words of support.
The small arena shook beneath the combined weight of a dozen cold ones as the swirling game of shakhtila neared its end. Of the three score slaves who began the game less than a third still survived and they were scattered all over the playing field. Most of the survivors still clutched their flimsy spears or hefted short blades, their faces pale and heads turning wildly as they tried to keep all of the cold ones in sight. As Malus watched, the legless slave tried to drag himself by his hands across the arena floor, but two red-armoured riders from the opposing team caught sight of the man and spurred their mounts towards him. The druchii in the lead brandished a bloody sabre, while his teammate hefted a long, slim spear. The riders expertly controlled the speed of their beasts, racing in a line as straight as an arrow right at the hapless man. Before the slave could register his peril the sabre flashed down, severing the man’s head and the spearman following close behind caught it on the sleek steel point while the grisly trophy was still spinning in the air. The black rider howled in impotent fury as the red spearman raised his trophy to the small audience watching from above.