by C. L. Werner
It was here, within the central spire that the mortal soul of the Inevitable City reigned. The Prince of Tzeentch, Warlord of the Raven Host, mightiest of the Changer’s living pawns, Tchar’zanek was the only man of sufficient cunning and power to bend the daemon spirit of the Inevitable City to his will. Lesser men would walk blindly into the fires of the Soul Forge or have both face and identity consumed by the Lyceum, to serve the spectral forces forever more as one of the Timeworn. These and even greater perils Tchar’zanek had mastered. He had stared into the Void, gazed into the abyss, felt the coruscating nothingness of the beyond stare back at him and he had not been driven mad by the experience. Chosen of the Raven God, Tchar’zanek had endured, endured to become the living instrument, the agent of the Changer upon the mortal plane. Field Marshal of the armies of Tzeentch, perhaps the last herald of the End Times.
The Chaos lord’s throne room was a thing of insanity, like a great maw, needle-like fangs jutting from ceiling and floor, forming an unbroken lattice of malachite teeth. They were not constant, these fangs of stone, but subtly changed in size and shape whenever only the corner of an eye was watching them. Their weird mutters, like the babble of tiny children, formed a strange harmony with the crack of lightning outside the citadel walls. Those who concentrated too long upon the sounds could not shake the impression that the walls of the throne room and the lightning of the Void spoke to each other. Sometimes, Tchar’zanek would tilt his head and mutter back to the eerie sounds, seeming to converse with the daemonic essence of his domain.
It was within this chamber that Urbaal the Corruptor knelt upon armoured knee. Faintly, some dim part of Urbaal’s mind rebelled at the otherworldly horror of this place, recoiling into the shadows of his soul. The warrior pondered the strange sensation, wondering what forgotten mystery it might reflect. Long had Urbaal been in the service of the Raven God, longer than a sane man would believe. He had forgotten much in his long quest for power and knowledge. Somehow he knew that he had once been something, someone other than Urbaal and it was the sward of some kindlier land he had walked in the long ago. The warrior dismissed the simpering nostalgia. Had there been a woman, children even? A fragment, an image tried to form itself from tattered shreds of thought, but there was too little left for his memory to reclaim. It was unimportant anyway. Nothing was important except serving mighty Tzeentch, pleasing the capricious Changer of Ways and gaining the great rewards only a god could grant.
Urbaal had served the Raven God well in the long ages of his life. He bore the mark of his god upon his flesh, the sign of Tzeentch’s Chosen. The armour that encased him, the skull-faced helm of gilded horns and slit visor, the blade of burnished bronze and shining sapphire, these were gifts from his god. The armour was forged from the souls of sacrificed daemons, the blade had been grown from a shimmering pool of crystal. They were things alive, more a part of Urbaal than his own forgotten memories. They sustained the champion through his many battles, preserved him through the long war waged between gods and mortals. They had become more real to him than his own flesh, so much so that Urbaal realised what it was his mind had tried to piece from tatters of memory; the image of his own face.
The Chosen rose, straightening his tall body of sapphire plates and golden adornment. There was a suggestion of raw physical might beneath the gilded vambraces and spiked pauldrons. From the shadows of his helm, Urbaal’s eyes simmered like live coals, two points of smouldering light within a nest of shadow.
The figure beside Urbaal likewise rose from the floor. He was the antithesis of the Chosen in size and appearance, presenting a short, gaunt apparition of a man, swathed in light airy robes of powder blue and soft grey, a kilt of silvery scales draped about his waist and a thick cloak of what might have been beams of moonlight billowing about his shoulders. Like that of Urbaal, the countenance of Vakaan was hidden behind the mask of his all-enclosing helm. Like the beaked face of a falcon, the silver helm stabbed forwards, great wings sweeping up and back to join into a peak above the sorcerer’s skull. Vakaan was a magus, one of the warlocks of the Kurgan tribes, a villain steeped in the black arts of the Changer, able to draw daemons from the aethyr and into the physical world. It was Vakaan who spoke, and even the voice of this man who pitted his will against that of unearthly daemons shivered with awe. ‘We come, Great Lord Tchar’zanek, that through your command we may better serve the Changer.’
Urbaal watched the magus bow again, the silver helm brushing against the polished floor of the throne room. Some trick of light made it seem the sorcerer’s head passed through his own reflection in the glistening obsidian tiles. The babble of the walls lessened, as though the citadel itself were waiting and listening.
The thing upon the throne stirred. Taller than Urbaal, more like an ogre than a man, Tchar’zanek rose from his seat, descending from his dais on feet that were the paws of some reptilian beast rather than anything of human shape or form. The warlord’s blue armour was warped and twisted around his mutated frame, all semblance of symmetry erased by the physical rewards his god had bestowed upon him. From his left side, only a single powerful arm hung from the Chaos lord’s horned shoulder, but from his right side, a scythe-like insect-like limb sprouted beneath the human limb like some parasitic growth. As Tchar’zanek moved, the noxious member flexed and quivered, as though eager to lash out and rip into flesh.
The warlord’s head was like his shoulders, festooned with horns. The left horn was noticeably thicker and larger than the right and its calcified substance had bled downward, spreading to engulf the better part of Tchar’zanek’s face, hardening it into an armoured, unmoving carapace. The rest of Tchar’zanek’s face was pale, of the colour and consistency of a fish’s belly. The features were harsh, steeped in eternal evil and obscene secrets. The eyes of Tchar’zanek gleamed with the feral keenness of a panther and from each corner of his face, a thin membrane flickered to protect and moisten that indomitable gaze.
‘You are here because it is the will of Tchar,’ the warlord said, his voice betraying an inner power that was elemental in magnitude, like the bellow of angry storm gods. ‘The names of Urbaal the Corruptor and Vakaan Daemontongue. Of all my pawns, it was your names the Changer sent to me.’ Tchar’zanek stretched a clawed hand, indicating the thin figure of the sorcerer standing at the foot of his throne. The scrawny man was lost beneath the black folds of his robes, only his thorny helm serving to give the shadowy shape any distinction in the black-walled chamber.
The robed sorcerer opened a gigantic tome clutched in his wormy fingers. Sheets of wafer-thin steel turned beneath the gentlest sweep of those fingers. Urbaal could see glowing characters speeding from one page to the next, as though each steel page were writing itself as the sorcerer gazed upon it.
‘Once there was made a weapon, a blade to tempt the rage of the Blood God,’ the sorcerer’s reedy voice crackled like kindling in a hearth. ‘It was surrendered into the hands of unbelievers, those who in their foolishness would defy the true gods and who in their same foolishness still play their part in the Changer’s plan. In time the weapon became a sacred relic, made sacred to one of the petty gods of the faithless lands. Its true purpose was hidden and its true name forgotten, and so was Great Tchar content for many ages of men.’
The sorcerer paused, the eyes behind his mask of thorns blazing with avarice. ‘But it did not suit the plan of the Raven God to abandon the bane of his rival. A great warrior set upon the decaying towers of the elf-folk, bringing a mighty fleet to ravage the shores of their enchanted island. The fleet was broken, the warhost shattered and the warrior’s bones sank into the sea, and still he had served the Changer. One of the warlord’s minions, a powerful magus, fell prisoner to the elves. By spell and torture they broke his spirit and from his bleeding tongue the loremasters of the elf-folk learned many things, things they imprisoned within their books and hid away lest they be tempted by the power of such secrets.
‘What is hidden may be found. A magician of the elf-
folk when casting the most minor of spells, felt the touch of Tzeentch upon his spirit. He was destroyed by the unleashed might of his magic, and with him many chambers and halls were ravaged. In that destruction, things that had been hidden escaped into the light to be found once more. One of the elf loremasters discovered again the knowledge of the long-dead magus and this time it was not hidden from the elf-folk the meaning of the sorcerer’s words.’
‘The Changer moves our enemies,’ Tchar’zanek intoned. ‘The decadent elves of Ulthuan seek alliance with the unbeliever southlanders that together they might bear the holy weapon into the lands of the true gods. They seek the Bastion Stair, the gateway into the realm of Khorne. They think to cut off the Winds of Chaos by using the weapon to destroy the portal between worlds.’ The warlord clenched his fist, knuckles cracking as his fingers curled against his scaly palm. ‘This I will not allow.’
‘But how can they know how to find the Bastion Stair?’ Urbaal dared to ask his warlord. The Bastion Stair was even more of a myth to the people of the northern tribes than the Inevitable City. The gate between the world of men and that of the Blood God, it was a place from which no man had ever returned. If it existed at all.
‘The Bastion Stair is a deceit made real,’ the sorcerer explained. ‘A dream given substance, a phantasm become physical. It does not exist as we exist, but extends in the spaces between the mortal and the eternal. It is different things at different times, moved by the murderous whims of the Blood God…’
‘But solid enough now to serve the will of Tzeentch,’ Tchar’zanek growled. ‘My scouts have found the Bastion Stair, I have moved an entire warherd of the beastfolk to wrest it from the debased followers of Khorne. We shall await the coming of the elves and their allies. When they bring the weapon, we shall take it from them. We shall use it to cut asunder the gate between worlds and unleash the Lord of Change!’
‘Too long has mighty Kakra the Timeless been the prisoner of Var’Ithrok the Skull Lord!’ the sorcerer shouted. ‘Chained within the Portal of Rage, his immortal power bound to the petty schemes of the Blood God! The Spear will end Kakra’s enslavement. It will shatter the chains that bind him, will remove the hold of the Blood God upon the Portal of Rage! The gate between worlds will be restored to the dominion of the Raven God!
‘The Winds of Chaos shall sweep over the Raven Host,’ the sorcerer cackled. ‘They shall fuel our spells and call down legions of daemons upon our foes! Nothing shall stand against the glory of Prince Tchar’zanek! All the world shall bow before his might!’ The sorcerer’s glare focused on Vakaan, then turned towards Urbaal. ‘It is a sacred honour for such lowly creatures to be the instruments of Tchar’zanek’s triumph.’
Urbaal felt a cold hate seep into his heart as he heard the sorcerer’s sneering words. He took a step towards the robed magus. ‘Yet we were chosen.’
The sorcerer gave a reluctant bow of his head. ‘There was a page… a page of this tome, the Mirror of Eternity that related to the prophecy. To unleash the might of Change, to break the chains that bind it, would take those chosen by the Raven God. We… I could not find this page… with the last of the prophecy. Great Lord Tchar’zanek sent the beastfolk to secure the Bastion Stair, to prepare the way for his champions. Then… then the page upon which were written your names returned to us, crawling across the floor like a living thing to rejoin itself to the book!’
‘Others seek the weapon,’ Tchar’zanek told Urbaal. ‘Do not make the mistake of assuming shared enemies mean shared purposes. Use such tools as Tzeentch presents them, but never trust them.’
‘Anything that stands against the might of Tchar’zanek will feed its soul to my sword,’ Urbaal replied. A hungry moan of eagerness rasped from the blade sheathed at his side, a spectral note of unearthly bloodlust.
‘You are marked for great things, Urbaal,’ Tchar’zanek warned. ‘The finger of destiny points at you this day. Do not fail the Raven God. Do not fail me. There is nowhere in this world or the next you can hide if you do.’
Chapter Two
Morning snow shimmered upon the pines as Freya skipped through the narrow stretch of woods that separated the village of Angvold from the icy shore of the Sea of Claws. The Baersonlings had set their village some distance from the fjord as a protective measure, to hide the settlement from the attention of raiders from the sea. Every autumn, the men of the tribe would beach their longships and drag them inland over log rollers, settling in for the chill of winter and the long twilight of the Dark Time. It had been many generations since the old Angvold had been razed to the ground by the Southlander fleet of a terrible red-haired ogress the sagas called Katrin Kindersbane. Why she had come, not even the wisest skalds could say. Many held that she had been touched by the Blood God Khorne and came to slaughter for sheer love of destruction. Others said she had entered a profane pact with Mermedus, the terrible god of the deeps to fill his sunken temples with the bloated bodies of the dead. Whatever the reason, she had left an impression upon those Baersonlings who had escaped her wrath and endured to restore the numbers of their tribe. Angvold was rebuilt far away from the sea and watchtowers placed to warn if ever death again rode the waves.
Freya did not think about such grim things, however. She was intent upon reaching one of the isolated, lonely sentry posts hidden among the trees, her tiny arms laden with a woven basket. Her father, Venyar, was serving in one of the towers, keeping his eyes peeled upon the sea. He was no thrall of Angvold’s jarl, but a freeholder with a farm and a longhouse and thirty slaves of his own. But freeholder or bondsman, every able-bodied man of Angvold did his turn watching the sea. As recently as the days of Freya’s grandfather there had been a terrible battle when Aesling sea-wolves had followed a longship as it was returning to the fjord and thereby discovered the secreted village. The blond-haired Aeslings had been vanquished by the dusky Baersonlings, but only at terrible cost. It was a grim lesson from wily Tchar the Trickster that it was never safe to be lax in one’s vigilance, but always watching for the Hand of Change.
The little girl tensed as she heard a rustling among the snow-covered trees. Her eyes quickly scanned the boughs, looking for the telltale sign of disturbed snow and falling ice. She breathed a little easier when her study went unrewarded. Wolves and bears, prowling ice-tigers and man-eating ymir were only a few of the dangers that were wont to descend from the jagged Norscan mountains to stalk the glacier-carved valleys beside the sea. Her own father had killed a troll in these very woods, a battle so fierce he still bore the scars from it upon his face. Jarl Svanirsson had made Venyar a freeholder for his bravery and strength, knowing that Angvold was fortunate to have such a warrior among its people.
Freya smiled as she thought of the respect even the jarl showed her father and she dug a mittened hand beneath her goatskin tunic to feel the scrimshaw dragon he had given her and which she wore about her neck. None of his other children, even Venyar’s sons, had ever been given such a treasure, something created with his own hands. It was a token, a silent talisman of the bond between father and daughter.
The other children resented Freya, and she was hated by Venyar’s wife, the woman only cruelty and pain could force her to call mother. Her real mother had been a princess of the Graelings taken captive when the Baersonlings raided the lands of her tribe. Venyar had taken the woman as a war prize, but Freya knew it was because he had loved her. Soon he raised her from mere household thrall to become his wife – an act that had deeply upset his first wife. It was her constant complaining to Venyar that made him trade Freya’s mother to a huscarl from Vinnskor when Freya was still in swaddling. Freya knew that was why her father looked upon her with such affection, because in her he had something of her mother that could never be taken away from him.
Freya glanced up at the sky, watching the way the mist twinkled in the star-ridden half-night. Even at the height of day, the sun was not so strong as to make the stars hide their light. The child looked at the purple tapestry above her and
picked out some of the runes her father had shown her how to find. She could see the Crow God with his crown of bone and the Old Dragon with his forked tongue. There was the Berserker, his axe lifted high and beside him Ulfscar, the hungry wolf. Venyar had told her how to find her way by looking for the sky-runes, but had also warned her that sometimes they would lie to those who trusted them too far, or if she had done something to upset Tchar the Terrible then the Changer would move the stars so that she would never find her way.
The girl shivered and made the crooked finger gesture that was said to honour the Raven, most capricious of the gods of the Baersonlings.
Again she froze as a faint, indistinguishable sound reached her ears. She peered through the snow-covered brush, trying to find any trace of what had made the sound. Perhaps it was one of her brothers trying to scare her. Freya shook her head. No, that was a foolish hope. Venyar’s wife would never let them go into the forest alone, not her precious children. It had to be some beast, and the realization made the girl’s blood turn cold. She glanced guiltily at the basket in her hands, thinking of the bread and cheese and mutton inside. Any winter predator would linger over such a bounty if she abandoned it; at least, unless it were one of the Forest-kin who liked the flesh of man better than anything.