Soul Wars

Chapter nine The Living and the Dead

‘It is not seemly for our lord to hide himself away, so,’ Helios said. The Celestor turned, moving swiftly, sword rising. Miska stepped back, out of reach, and thrust her staff towards his abdomen. Helios twisted aside, light on his feet, despite his war-plate.

‘We all seek answers in different ways, brother.’

Around them, the Garden of the Moon stirred with a breeze. The great, silver trees that made up the garden had been caught in the fires that raged across Sigmaron, and many had warped and blackened, as had the pale grasses that grew in their shadow. But they would recover, in time. Aelf treesingers roamed the groves, encouraging new growth, and their lilting song provided accompaniment to the clashing of blades.

Helios’ cohort of Celestors sat or stood nearby, watching the duel. The swordsmen looked less battered than might be expected, given their efforts over the last few days. Then, that was simply the general mark of their competence. Not all of them had eyes for the bout between their Celestor-Prime and the mage-sacristan. Some duelled amongst themselves, while others saw to the care of their weapons.

‘And what is the question?’ Helios thrust his blade like a spear, but without speed or force. Miska tapped the point aside with her knuckles. ‘What gnaws at him so, that he ignores us for days on end and vanishes into a tomb of paper?’

‘The only question that matters,’ she said, whirling her staff towards his ankles. He leapt straight up, avoiding the blow. The watching Celestors applauded cheerfully. ‘The question we were forged to answer. Balthas is diligent. That is no sin, whatever your feelings on the matter.’

‘I do not judge him harshly, sister. I merely think it unwise to allow him to wall himself off from the world and all its wonders.’ He slid towards her, blade whirling. She backed away warily. Helios was as swift as the solar wind for which he’d been named.

Helios continued, pressing with words as well as his blade. ‘He has ever been brittle in his manner, but of late, he has become harsh as well. It is as if he has judged us, and found us wanting, in some manner.’

Miska laughed. ‘You say that as if it’s an impossibility.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Helios stepped back, arms spread, inviting attack. ‘Am I not incomparable in my prowess? Are my brothers and sisters not exceptional?’

Miska lunged. The head of her staff crackled with energy as it darted towards him. He twisted, batting it aside at the last moment. He ­stumbled slightly, but she recognised the ploy for what it was and held back. He straightened a moment later, grinning ruefully. She raised an eyebrow, and he shrugged. ‘You are more observant than most, sister.’

She sighed and stepped back, signalling the end of the bout. ‘Yes. And I have noticed what you speak of as well, brother. Balthas finds fault in his own actions, and his anger at himself has spilled over. He means no offence.’

‘Nor have I taken any. None of us have. He is our lord-arcanum, however prickly he might be. I do not doubt his courage or his skill, having witnessed both. But someone must speak with him, and soon. An absent leader is no leader at all.’

Miska frowned. At any other time, such words would have earned Helios a rebuke. Then, at any other time, he would not have felt free to say them. Balthas had always been remote, from his peers as well as his subordinates. But his isolation of late was beyond the norm, even for him. She shook her head. ‘Do the others feel the same?’ she asked quietly.

Helios hesitated. Miska gestured impatiently. ‘It is a simple question, brother. Answer me honestly, please.’

‘I have spoken to the others, yes. Mara and Quintus both agree. Porthas keeps his own council, as always,’ he said, naming the most senior officers of the chamber. ‘The others are of mixed opinion on the matter.’

‘You have been diligent,’ she said, not without some disapproval.

Helios accepted her chastisement without comment. He merely nodded and planted his sword point-first in the ground before him, his hands resting on the crosspiece. Miska ran a hand through her hair and tugged on her braid idly, considering the problem before her.

For as long as she had served under him, Balthas had delegated much of his responsibility. She was the intercessor between him and those he commanded. Many lords-arcanum encouraged a more informal relationship with those they led into battle – Knossus Heavensen participated in training bouts with his own Sequitors, while others, like Tyros Firemane, led their warriors in the rites of preparation and purification.

But Balthas did none of those things. Saw no reason to do those things, in fact. He was lord-arcanum and took the title at face value. Not for him was the easy camaraderie of the battlefield. He was above it all, and removed from it, save in gravest necessity.

Miska felt a twinge of guilt. In some small way, she had encouraged this behaviour. It was often simpler to work around Balthas, rather than include him. In battle, he had few equals. Off the field, however, he bristled at what he perceived as tedium, and often became obstinate when things did not align perfectly to his assumptions.

‘His failure to contain the lightning-gheist gnaws at him,’ she said slowly. ‘He cannot conceive of failing at a task he has accomplished a hundred times before. He will not be satisfied until he is given the chance to make amends.’

Helios nodded. ‘Then perhaps we must add our voices to his, and ask Sigmar to let us slip our chains. The others go to war – why not us?’ He looked around, and the other Celestors nodded in agreement.

Miska gestured for silence. ‘Quiet. We have a guest.’

Helios turned, startled. So too did the other Celestors. An aelf, impossibly pale and inhumanly thin, stood among them, clad in robes of soft indigo and radiant white. The aelf’s narrow features were tattooed with celestial designs, and her dark hair was bound back with a clasp of silver. She had come among them, her tread as silent as moonlight, and none of the burnished giants who surrounded her had noticed.

Miska bowed, and the aelf returned the gesture. ‘My apologies if we have disturbed your efforts, my lady,’ the mage-sacristan said.

‘It would take more than you to do that,’ the aelf said, with a swift smile. She reached out and touched the trunk of a silvery tree. ‘Indeed, the trees enjoy your presence. You are vibrant with starlight, and they drink it in. The grasses too grow thick beneath your feet. Stay as long as you wish.’

‘Our thanks, my lady,’ Helios said, taking the aelf’s hand and bowing low, as if to kiss it. ‘Such words are welcome to my ears.’ It was a courtly gesture, from another age, and one Miska had not expected of Helios. The aelf inclined her head solemnly, as if in acknowledgement, and pointed to the sky.

‘I did not come merely to compliment you. There is a message from the God-King.’

Miska looked up. Above, a star-eagle circled the garden. It cried out with serene savagery and swooped towards Miska, trailing sparks of light in its wake. The birds normally dwelled in the aetheric clouds high above Mallus, hunting the strange things that drifted there. But some came occasionally to Sigmaron, impelled by some instinct to serve as the eyes and ears of the God-King.

Miska lifted her hand, and the eagle landed on her forearm. It had almost no weight, though she knew it was strong enough to tear through anything save sigmarite. It screeched, flapping its great wings, and she heard a word – just one – echo in her head, like the distant thunder of a summer storm.

Then, with another flap of its wings, the bird launched itself upwards once more. Miska watched it go and felt a pang of longing that she could not explain.

‘Well? What message did it impart?’ Helios asked.

She smiled and tapped his shoulder with her staff. ‘Our prayers have been heard.’

In the Grand Library, Balthas sat silent, not seeing the pages open before him. His stack of books had been right where he’d left them, as if Aderphi had known he was coming back. Then, maybe the librarians simply hadn’t got around to putting them back before the necroquake had shaken Sigmaron to its core. But he paid no attention to them.

Instead, he was listening to the thunder of realmgates opening and closing throughout Azyr – not only with his ears, but with his soul, attuned as it was to the movements of the aether. The air twisted in seeming confusion, as the dimensional apertures yawned wide, allowing in strange winds. He felt the raw, hot pulse of Aqshy and heard the rasp-scrabble of Ghyran, as ancient pathways were opened. He felt the grinding, tomb-creak of Shyish and twitched as a cold grave-wind whipped through Sigmaron.

It had been decades since there had been such an exodus – not since the battle for the All-Gates. But never before had that exodus included the warriors of the Sacrosanct Chambers. They’d waged wars in secret, fighting only where there was some great need. Few of their fellow Stormcasts even knew of their existence, and those that did had been sworn to secrecy by Sigmar himself. The Sacro­sanct Chambers had a sacred duty, and they could not afford distractions.

But it seemed that time had come to an end at last. Balthas had always suspected that it would, though he’d hoped for another century or two. Wars were maelstroms, drawing all things to their centre. That boded ill for his studies.

Even so, he could not deny a sense of anticipation. With no need for secrecy, there would be nothing keeping him from the great libraries of the Mortal Realms, and nothing preventing him from consulting with sages and philosophers without need for go-betweens. He might begin his hunt in earnest.

‘If I am ever allowed to do so,’ he murmured. He heard the rattle of sigmarite on stone and sighed. It seemed his ruminations were once more at an end. Some new difficulty had reared its head, somewhere in the palace-city.

‘Here you are again. Back in your lair, among the cobwebs and forgotten stories.’

Balthas blinked. ‘Miska,’ he said aloud. ‘Something to report?’

‘Why else would I intrude on your solitude?’ The sound of the mage-sacristan’s voice startled the lizards on their high perches. ‘Though, one would think you’d be half sick of shadows at this point.’ The mage-sacristan peered down the rows as she strode towards his seat. ‘Then, maybe you were just here dealing with the ghosts of librarians past, eh?’

Balthas didn’t turn. ‘You would be surprised.’ He had come back to the library, seeking a moment’s respite from his duties. But even here, the dead had risen. Long-dead librarians, entombed beneath the structure, had awoken. They had clambered from their nooks, eye sockets full of cobwebs and lungs full of dust. Balthas had made short work of them, with the aid of Aderphi and the others.

Miska studied the table. ‘More books.’

‘This is a library.’ Balthas sighed inwardly. He knew she would come to the point of his interruption eventually. He shook his head and bent forwards. He pulled a book close and scanned it quickly. He’d had an idle hope of finding some mention of a similar cataclysm to the necroquake in the history of the Mortal Realms. But so far nothing had revealed itself. Whatever had happened, it was a new thing under the sun. That annoyed him to no end.

Miska leaned over him, as if to read the titles of the books he’d gathered. ‘I don’t see how you can bury yourself back in here, after all that has happened.’

‘I am merely taking a moment to gather my strength.’

‘By sitting in the dark, surrounded by dusty tomes?’

‘You kneel in prayer. I sit in study.’ Balthas set aside the grimoire he’d been perusing and reached for another. ‘We commune with the aether in our own ways.’

‘You’re looking for answers. You won’t find them in here.’

Balthas let a hint of the annoyance he felt creep into his words. ‘Well, I won’t know until I try, will I?’ He glanced at her. ‘If you are bored, you may leave.’

She was silent for a moment. ‘Why?’ she asked simply. ‘Why here, Balthas? Why not with your brothers and sisters? Why seek answers in the dark?’

Balthas sighed, openly this time. ‘Sometimes, I think what we seek is like air and cannot be grasped. Nonetheless, I strain to do so and become a shadow of myself. A shadow among shadows.’ Balthas looked at his second in command. ‘I am close, I think. The answer is here, somewhere, in this library. In these books.’ He picked up the Guelphic Cipher and gestured with it. ‘The accumulated know­ledge of centuries. As I’ve said before, what better hunting grounds for such as we?’

‘I can think of several.’

Balthas set the book back down. ‘I’m sure you can. Why are you here, Miska?’

‘I came to tell you that your petition has been heard.’

Balthas blinked. ‘What?’

‘Be of good cheer, Balthas. We are loosed to hunt at last. You got your wish.’

Balthas shook his head. ‘My wish was not to have failed in the first place. That a rogue soul escaped was my doing. I must make amends. That is all.’ Despite his words, a sense of elation filled him. He had not expected Sigmar to allow him to go. Perhaps he was not being judged so harshly as he feared. He stood. ‘When?’

‘As soon as possible.’

Balthas hesitated. An unwelcome thought had occurred to him. ‘I suddenly realise that I do not know where to start looking,’ he said, chagrined that he hadn’t thought of it earlier. Miska snorted.

‘Late to worry about that now, brother.’

‘Quiet. Let me think.’ He turned, scanning the shelves, seeking an answer. He recalled those last moments so clearly – the lightning-gheist had fallen away, into the maw of the cataclysm. For all he knew, it had been destroyed. But he did not think so. And obviously Sigmar didn’t either. If it – if he – had survived the Anvil, he could survive almost anything. But that didn’t bring him any closer to finding it.

It might well have become trapped in any one of the realms. He needed to pick up its trail, somehow. He heard Miska say something, but was already elsewhere in his head, seeking the answer to the problem before him. He looked down at his armour and the marks it still bore – great, scorched scratches. He could sense the touch of the aetheric on them. The lightning-gheist had left some of itself behind. ‘Ah. That will do.’

Balthas touched the marks, lightly, teasing out the aetheric energies that still clung to them. He could feel the residue of the lightning-gheist’s anger and pain. A disordered mind, distilled to the basest impulses. That was the danger of the Anvil. To remake a soul, it first must be broken down into a more malleable shape. That was where things inevitably went wrong. Broken into its base elements, reduced in such a manner, a soul was protean. It lost pieces of itself, or made new ones out of whole cloth. Old memories gave way to new ones, conjured up from dream or nightmare.

One person became another. Almost like the one who had perished, but yet not, changed in some often imperceptible fashion. In that way, a lightning-gheist was akin to an infant – if a singularly dangerous one.

Slowly, he drew out the residual energies. They sparked and hissed about his fingers as he extracted them, and caught them between his hands. He rotated his wrists, shaping the wriggling corposant into a more compact form. ‘Look, Miska. Memories made into talons. That is what a gheist is, after all – a tangle of memories and fears, gone feral. Is it any wonder that they must be put down?’

‘And what memory is that, brother?’ Miska asked. After a moment, she added, ‘Should you be doing that here? Perhaps we should take it elsewhere – somewhere safer.’

Balthas didn’t reply. He had the scent now, and no concern for irrelevant minutiae. He was a lord-arcanum, and there was no place safer than where he currently stood. He raised the flickering essence, studying it from all angles. With the proper rites, he might make it a tether, to lead him to his prey. It would have left vestiges of itself, as it fell away. It would be like stalking a blood trail. Only the creature at the other end would not have weakened appreciably from its loss.

In the squirming facets, he saw rags and tatters of images – a woman’s face, streaked with blood. A blossom of deepest purple. Fire, and the flash of swords. A memory of death, then? The first death or the second? Perhaps it didn’t matter.

He probed deeper, trying to find the strongest thread. The one that would lead him to what he sought. More images now – tombs, rising like crags. Cats, padding through dark passages. Apples, ripe and red. Impatient, he pushed these aside. He needed something more tangible. Something more – ah. ‘There,’ he murmured.

Stormcasts, in the black war-plate of the Anvils of the Helden­hammer, fought against a swarm of nighthaunts. The cackling spectres swept over the battle-line like a fog bank. Warriors staggered and fell. Balthas saw – felt – his hand fasten on one and haul her to her feet. She looked at him and spoke, but there was no sound save for a wild roaring, as of water crashing against rock.

And then, one of the nighthaunts was there, a frenzied mist, laden with howling, grimacing faces. Distorted claws plucked at him, seeking a weak point. Blind, he staggered. Felt pain, as something slid between the plates of his armour. He tasted blood. And then… the black swallowed him. A hook of lightning speared through him and drew him up through a twisting tunnel of stars, faster and faster until the innumerable lights bled into a singular radiance that was blinding in its intensity.

Balthas’ heartbeat thundered in his ears. He felt heat, such as he had never known. It ate away at him, burning him from the inside out. He tried to pull back from it, to remind himself of who he was, where he was, but the heat and the pain held him. It tore at him, and he thought he screamed – and then, in a flash, he was elsewhere, falling away from the light, the heat, into a yawning chasm of cold that reached up from below to claim him.

Stars spun, bleeding away into scars of light. Coloured hazes, the stuff of the realms, surrounded and suffused him, before being ripped away as he fell. Then, there was no light, no radiance save a pale amethyst glow that leeched his strength from him.

Balthas twisted and turned, trying to free himself, but it was like tar. It weighed him down – no, he reminded himself, not him. He tried to focus. This was no longer a memory. He had followed the thread back, and down, to its source. He could taste the iron bitterness of fear on his tongue, and his limbs ached. His lungs strained, as if filled with smoke. Something in him was burning. He was burning.

And through the smoke, through the flames, death looked down at him and smiled.

‘Balthas!’

Miska’s shout brought him back to himself. He staggered back, lightning crawling up his arms and playing across his chest and shoulders. It was not the clean azure radiance it ought to have been. Instead, it was a deep, angry violet. The colour of death. The lightning swelled, expanding, sprouting bestial jaws and something that might have been a face. Crackling teeth snapped shut, barely missing him. He fell backwards, trying to control what he had inadvertently unleashed.

‘Balthas, hold still. I will–’ Miska began, moving to aid him.

‘No. Stay back!’ Balthas dug his fingers into the crackling ­brambles of energy, seeking the nucleus. ‘I have it under control.’ He twisted his fingers into it, piercing its essence. Savage as it was, it was nothing more than a remnant – the echo of a dying scream, given life by some fell power and left as a trap.

He clambered to his feet, still holding the struggling essence. It twisted in his grip like a serpent, hissing and striking weakly at him. A lesser aether-mage, or one not so well-versed in the art of spirit-control, might have been overwhelmed. ‘I require a spirit-bottle, Miska,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘Do you have one about your person?’

‘Yes, here.’ She unstopped one of the crystalline vials and extended its mouth towards the struggling energies. There was a sound like a strong wind, blowing through the crags, and the energies were drawn swiftly into the bottle, with a despairing shriek. Miska quickly sealed it. ‘I’ve never seen a spirit like that. What was it?’

‘A warning,’ Balthas said, after a moment. ‘But what it means for us, I do not know.’