The Deeper Shade - C L Werner Read online

  It was, Thalinosh thought, just as the priest had claimed – havoc wrought by an invisible phantom.

  Only one thing marred the impression. When the cultist’s other leg was ripped free, Thalinosh saw his midsection collapse as well, pinched as if gripped in a gargant’s hand.

  ‘Stay, you fools!’ the sorcerer snarled as his remaining followers turned towards the mouth of the cave. ‘It is no ghost, and I will prove it to you!’

  At his gesture, Thalinosh brought the sphere of light speeding down towards the levitating cultist. Before the orb could reach the body it crashed against some unseen barrier between magic and man. The sphere shattered, dispersing as a wave of crackling blue lightning. As the wave shivered through the air, it followed the contours of the immense bulk that towered over its mangled victim. Thick tentacles were revealed, wrapped about the corpse and its severed limbs. The outlines of a vast body-head were suggested, rearing up from the scummy water.

  ‘Krakigon,’ Thalinosh hissed. He had read of such monsters in obscure bestiaries but never had he expected to see one. For one thing, it was reputed that they made themselves invisible by means of the slime they excreted from their pores.

  Reeling from the shock of Thalinosh’s spell, the krakigon lurched backwards. It hurled the dismembered pieces of its victim away, sending them crashing against the walls. As the sections of carcass struck, patches of slime rubbed away. The luminescent rock was exposed, throwing shafts of light into the cave. Those bits of the krakigon caught in the light stood revealed, taking on a visible solidity. The beast’s hide was at once both rubbery and scaly, shaded a dull grey with yellow markings. The tip of each tentacle ended in a bony spear, its edges viciously barbed. Along the underside of each limb were thousands of tiny toothless mouths, each with a sharp tongue as barbed and gruesome as the spears themselves.

  Those portions of the krakigon caught in the light swiftly adjusted to the illumination, fading again into invisibility as it matched its hue to the difference. The beast swung its tentacles at the walls, rubbing its slimy skin across the exposed rock to once more smother its light in slime.

  ‘Before it can vanish!’ Borir shouted. ‘Attack! Kill!’ She raised her sickle-bladed sword and charged towards the krakigon. The beastkin, only a moment before on the verge of panic, rallied to her and rushed at the monster in a snarling mass.

  Thalinosh drew upon his sorcery to set an aura of energy crackling around Borir before she reached the monster. When the krakigon struck at her, the scaly arm was repulsed by the arcane ward, peeling away like the petals of some gory flower. The limb flailed about in agony, no longer an unseen phantom, but a dead mass of tissue incapable of camouflaging itself.

  The tzaangor was not so fortunate as Borir. Without Thalinosh’s protection, he was snatched up in the krakigon’s coils. The beastman howled as he was pulled from the water and dashed against the roof of the cave. A single blow was enough to turn his birdlike head into bloody mash. One of the brays was caught by an invisible tentacle, his furry body twisted by the unseen grip until it was wrenched in half and sent flying across the cave.

  ‘Under the water!’ Thalinosh shouted to his followers. The surviving members of his warband ducked under the scummy surface as the sorcerer stretched forth his hand. From his fingers a writhing sheet of gibbous fire exploded across the tunnel. The outline of the krakigon stood revealed as its gigantic bulk was caught in the fire. The brute’s tentacles lashed through the air as the arcane flames flared across it. The slime coating its limbs sizzled away in the conflagration.

  So too did the slime coating the walls and ceiling. Burned away by the sorcerer, the muck exposed the long-hidden luminous rock beneath. The krakigon’s smoking body was caught in the light, its charred hide incapable of reacting to the sudden illumination. The monster stood revealed in its totality, a great scaly bulk some fifty feet long with tentacles jutting from its rubbery sides. Four enormous flippers propelled it through the water. The head jutted directly from the top of its roughly ovoid body, a string of eight black eyes flanked by feathery gills.

  Thalinosh fixated upon a single spot on the brute’s body, a darker patch amidst its greys and yellows, an impossible shadow embedded in its scaly hide. He recognised the object caught there, the artefact that had been stolen from him by his treacherous apprentice. A sliver of shadowy glass the length of his hand. A relic from a lost realm and an eldritch magic.

  The sorcerer raised his hand once more, but the immolation he had conjured had taxed his energies and disturbed his concentration. Instead Thalinosh pointed at the artefact. ‘The shadeglass,’ he snarled at his followers. ‘Retrieve the shadeglass!’

  Sharga nodded his horned head and bellowed a savage war cry. The beastman leapt upon the krakigon, chopping at it with his axe. At the same time, Borir came against the monster from the side. Her sword licked across one of the tentacles, severing it almost at the root, and sent it squirming mindlessly through the water.

  The krakigon lurched forwards; three of its tentacles lashed out and caught the last of the brays. The screaming beastman was wrenched apart by the scaly coils. The gory remains were tossed aside as the monster surged for Borir.

  Sharga charged the monster, sinking his axe into the krakigon’s hide. He swung his weapon as though it were a mountaineer’s pick, using it to ascend the creature’s enormity. It flailed about, lashing at him with several tentacles, oblivious to the gashes its spear-like spikes opened in its rubbery flesh.

  Borir dived beneath the water to avoid the coils that whipped towards her. Sinking from view, the warrior circled the krakigon to rise behind it. Sighting the monster’s enormous eye, she hefted her sword like a javelin and hurled it at the staring orb. The sickle blade raked across the gigantic eye. Pulpy jelly exploded from the ruptured organ and the krakigon shuddered in agonised spasms.

  ‘Sharga! The shadeglass!’ Thalinosh shouted to the beastman. The goat-headed henchman was clinging to the writhing krakigon like a horsebreaker riding a wild stallion. Turn and shudder whichever way it might, the tortured monster could not throw Sharga off.

  Thalinosh drew upon the dregs of arcane power yet lingering in his drained essence. Again, a crackle of fire leapt from his outstretched hand. No grand conflagration as before, but a mere lance of fiery light. Yet he put the spell to more direct effect. Following Borir’s example, he attacked one of the monster’s eyes, popping it in a burst of steam and blood.

  The krakigon’s tentacles whipped across the ceiling, gouging great gaps in the rock. Debris rained down on the creature, slamming into its scaly body. While the pain-maddened brute lashed out at the rocks, Sharga made his move. Plunging away from the grip of his axe and leaving the weapon embedded in the monster’s hide, he sought the dark, shimmering sliver of shadeglass. The beastman bellowed as he tore at the trapped artefact. It was wedged deep in the krakigon’s flesh, but Sharga’s brawny grasp was such that it came free with a single pull.

  The beastman toppled into the water with his prize. The krakigon lashed the water around Sharga, but before it could make a more determined assault, a great boulder came crashing down from the roof of its cave. The monster’s central mass was smashed beneath the enormous weight, crushed beneath it like an insect. The flailing tentacles groped and slithered against the burden, but try as it might, the mass was too much for the krakigon to budge.

  Sharga sloshed his way through the flooded tunnel, water dripping from his fur, blood oozing from his wounds. He held the shadeglass before him, proudly showing it to Thalinosh. Then the beastman stopped. A confused look swept into his eyes. He stared down at his chest, unable to comprehend the blade that had punched through his back and skewered his heart. He bellowed and fell to his knees. His last act was to turn his horned head and stare at his murderer.

  Borir ripped the athame free and snatched the shadeglass from Sharga’s faltering grip. She stepped back as the beastman collaps
ed face first into the black water. The warrior flicked his blood from the ceremonial dagger and turned towards Thalinosh.

  ‘Treachery,’ the sorcerer stated.

  Borir laughed. ‘Oh yes, treachery,’ she mocked him. ‘You should not have expended so much of your power fighting the krakigon. I have been with you long enough to know your limits.’ She shook her head. ‘I would have waited, but this opportunity was too good to forsake.’

  ‘Carradras must have promised you a great deal,’ Thalinosh said. ‘When Gratz stole the shadeglass, I suspected he did not act alone. He must have held that secret to the last, thinking you would save him.’

  Thalinosh expected Borir to say something. He was surprised when she suddenly threw the dagger at him. The athame flickered as it sped across the tunnel and struck the sorcerer, burying its blade deep in his chest. He staggered back. The sorcerer struck the wall and slowly slid to the floor.

  ‘Carradras is mighty in the esteem of Tzeentch,’ Borir declared. ‘His star is rising, while yours has most certainly set, Thalinosh of Charr. For all your divinations, you could not see what was right before you!’

  It was Thalinosh’s turn to laugh. ‘If my foresight has failed me, how much more has your own betrayed you, Borir? I am dying, and with me dies my magic. What do you think will hold the sea back when I am gone?’

  Borir’s eyes went wide as she realised the import of Thalinosh’s words. Gratz was simply a vessel, a channel by which the sorcerer’s spell was maintained. Without Thalinosh, the enchantment would be broken and the krakigon’s cave would be submerged once more!

  The warrior did not linger to mock the man she had betrayed. Quickly wrapping the shadeglass in her cloak, she ran down the tunnel. Thalinosh watched her go. Her panic was a thing of true amusement.

  Once Borir was out of sight, Thalinosh reached to his chest and withdrew the athame. The dagger had struck true, but it was he who had forged it and his magic that endowed its enchantment. Stabbing him with it was like returning a part of his own body to him. As the blade emerged from his flesh, the wound closed up behind it.

  Thalinosh glanced at the trapped krakigon and at the hole it had ripped from the ceiling. He could see the faint twinkle of starlight through that hole. An egress far more convenient than the way he had entered the grotto.

  The sorcerer laughed as he thought of Borir racing back through the cave and the frantic climb up the cliff. Even moving at her most frantic, how long would it take her to reach the top? Thalinosh hurried to the hole in the roof of the grotto. He drew the last dregs of power from his body, willing the arcane energies to hasten his ascent.

  Sunlight spilled down around Thalinosh as he emerged onto the beach. In the distance he could see the guards standing beside Gratz’s withered body. He could see the drained bay and the magical barrier that kept the sea from rushing back in. There was the black mouth of the cave and, just faintly visible, an armoured figure scrambling away from it.

  Thalinosh paused as he considered the shadeglass. It was a curious relic, something that would be full of promise once it yielded its secrets to him. It would be a shame to lose it again when it was so nearly his. Yet Borir had spoken truth when she said she knew the limits of his power. He had no magic left to use against her. All he had was the sorcery he had already evoked.

  At a gesture from Thalinosh, Gratz fell prostrate into the sand, his body crumbling into chalky dust. The guards fled from the grisly remains, but their panic was magnified still further when they looked out to the bay and saw the barrier extinguished.

  A shriek of terror rang out as Thalinosh saw Borir for the last time. The sea came flooding back into the bay, rushing to fill the places his sorcery had drawn it from. The warrior was smashed beneath the deluge, vanishing the instant her shattered body was engulfed by the waves. Perhaps they would carry her back into the cave, leaving her corpse with those of the krakigon’s victims.

  Thalinosh stared at the swirling, pounding waves that refilled the bay. His eyes penetrated the angry waters, trying to imagine where the shadeglass had been thrown by the tempest. When he rested and recovered his arcane energies, he would make his auguries. He would return to reclaim the relic.

  And this time he could content himself that there would be no traitors in the fold.

  About the Author

  C L Werner’s Black Library credits include the Age of Sigmar novels Overlords of the Iron Dragon and The Tainted Heart, the novella ‘Scion of the Storm’ in Hammers of Sigmar, the Warhammer novels Deathblade, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang and Brunner the Bounty Hunter, the Thanquol and Boneripper series and Time of Legends: The Black Plague series. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written the Space Marine Battles novel The Siege of Castellax. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer worlds.

  An extract from Hallowed Knights: Black Pyramid.

  Shyish was a place of bitter endings and silent decay.

  Graveyards that had once been cities dotted a landscape broken by war, their streets lost to shadows and dust. Carrion birds circled the high places, and jackals haunted the low. And everywhere was dusty silence.

  The city of Caddow was no different. It sprawled across the Sea of Dust like a broken corpse. Its once-mighty eyries were reduced to jagged ruin, and the stones of its high walls had fallen and lay scattered for leagues. Dust-barques that had once carried holds of spices and damask lay forgotten in dune-swallowed docklands, and the palaces of the mighty were home now only to night-birds and hoofed beasts. A forest of stone rose where once a city had thrived. Silent and forgotten.

  ‘Uzkul-ha!’

  As the cry echoed over the broken city, the night erupted in fire. Long dragon-tongues of red-and-orange flame licked out, scoring the darkness. Startled flocks of carrion birds rose skyward.

  ‘Uzkul-ha!’

  Another crash of voices, another ripple of fire. Broken, twisted shapes slumped or were thrown back into the dust, their unnatural flesh steaming. Nightmarish creatures, part man, part animal, clad in rotting damask and tarnished gold, fell back from the high, steep steps of the black pyramid. They howled and gibbered as they retreated, sounding much like the beasts they resembled.

  ‘Gazul-akit-ha!’ A single voice bellowed, as the echoes of fire faded.

  ‘Uzkul! Uzkul! Uzkul!’ came the shouted response, echoing out over the shattered grandeur of the city. Fifty duardin voices, raised in defiance. Raised in prayer. The constant thump of a pommel stone against the inner rim of a shield accompanied the words. Funerary bells began to ring, slow and dolorous. Iron-shod feet stamped in a mournful rhythm.

  The Gazul-Zagaz began to sing. A dirge of mourning, for the dead yet to be. Singing their souls to the deep caverns of Gazul, the Lord of Underearth, who was dead himself. All things died and walked in the deep, even gods. That was the way of it. But what was death to a god? ‘Dust, and less than dust,’ Gnol-Tul said softly, as he stroked the thick spade of salt-and-pepper beard that spilled down over his barrel chest.

  Like all duardin, he was built like a cask of ale, with thick arms and legs. Age had not dimmed his vigour, though he’d seen more centuries than he had fingers. He looked on in satisfaction as his kinband shouted their song into the teeth of the enemy. Though there were only fifty of the Pyredrakes, they were worth three times that.

  Clad in coats and cowls of burnished gromril, each of his warriors wore a steel war-mask wrought in the shape of a skull, and carried a baroque drakegun. Besides the hand cannons, each duardin was armed with a square pavise shield, which doubled as both bulwark and firing stand, and a heavy, flat blade, suitable for butchery and little else.

  At that moment, the shield wall stretched across the southern tier of the ziggurat, protecting two lines of Pyredrakes. The first line would fire then step back to reload, allowing the second rank to take their place. A hoar
y strategy, but effective. Tul thought the old ways of war were often the best, and served against the disorganised rabble below well enough. Beastkin had little in the way of tactical acumen. They were savage and strong, but strength alone was as dust against iron and fire.

  So had it always been, so would it always be.

  Tul and his bier, his chosen companions, stood behind the firing lines. Armed with round shields, wrought in the shape of a scowling countenance, and carrying heavy runeblades, his bier was composed of proven warriors, those who had already sung their death-song and consigned their souls to the Underearth. Unlike the Pyredrakes, they wore white robes, and their masks were of silver rather than iron.

  Tul himself wore the golden mask of an elder, and beneath it his skin and hair were marked with the sacred ashes of his ancestors. He carried a double-handed runeblade cradled in the crook of his arm. It was an old thing, hungry for death, and nameless, as was proper. To name a thing was to give it a will of its own, and a wilful weapon was one that could not be trusted. There were many named blades in the shadow-vaults of the Gazul-Zagaz, and there they would remain, until Shyish sank into the twilight sea.

  Tul and his kinband had fought their way through the ruins and up the steps of the ziggurat over the course of several days, leaving a trail of dead and dying beastkin in their wake. The ruins were full of the creatures – thousands of them, breeding in the dark – and the duardin had roused them all as they advanced deeper into the city. But what were beasts, to the warriors of the Gazul-Zagaz?

  ‘The gor flee, elder,’ Hok, his tolvan, said. ‘Our fire warms their bones overmuch.’ His subordinate held a heavy stone tablet, upon which the names of the honoured dead would be carved upon victory – or just prior to defeat. Either way, their names would be recorded, and added to the Long Dirge of the Gazul-Zagaz.