Soul Wars

Chapter ten The Undying King

Pharus Thaum passed beneath a broken archway of black stone, encrusted with skull-like barnacles. Will o’ the wisps danced across the barnacles, casting a pallid glow over the path ahead. As he walked, Nagashizzar twisted and bent around him, like a shroud caught in a fierce wind. Every street and boulevard was a ripple, an undulation, rising or sinking to reveal new mustering grounds, new tombs, new citadels of necessity.

‘Nagashizzar is vast,’ Arkhan said, as if reading his thoughts. The liche strode easily alongside him. Despite everything, Pharus was beginning to find Arkhan strangely companionable. ‘It swells like the night ocean, receding as the dawn breaks. Our gates spill forth upon every land, our towers spy every border. The desert around us is every desert in the realm. We are a single moment, a last breath, held and stretched into infinity.’

‘Sigmaron is much the same.’

‘Do you remember Sigmaron then?’ Arkhan looked at him.

Pharus scraped the flat planes of his memory. ‘I remember golden towers and the light – so much light. Starlight, moonlight, sunlight.’ He shook his head. ‘It is as if those memories belong to another man.’

‘What else do you recall?’

Pharus was silent for a moment. ‘The taste of apples.’

Arkhan turned away with a rattling sigh. ‘Ah. A good memory. I have not tasted food or drink in time out of mind. I have lost even the memory of such memories. Hold fast to it, Pharus Thaum. And remember who deprived you of such simple, impossible pleasures.’

Pharus did not reply. Around them, ancient vaults creaked open, disgorging deathrattle legions to march in silent lockstep to mustering fields scattered across the city. Primeval cisterns were uncapped, unleashing wailing tempests of nighthaunt spirits, long bound in darkness, but free now to take their vengeance on the living. These spirits swirled up into the air over the city, joining the storm of souls that was ever-growing there.

As the dead spilled into the sky, the winds picked up, casting sand and shards of shadeglass everywhere. A living mortal would have been blinded in moments, and flayed to the bone a few seconds later. For Pharus, clad in his new war-plate, it was no more disconcerting than a summer rain. He looked down at himself. Rather than the hammer-and-lightning sigils of Azyr that he kept half expecting, the war-plate bore the morbid heraldry of some long-vanished city-state of Shyish.

A stylised hourglass occupied the centre of his chest-plate. Crossed scythes marked the backs of his gauntlets, and heavy chains draped his shoulders and torso like a sash. His helm was a skull, topped by great, curving antlers of bone, and the cheek-guards swept back into bat-wing shapes. Thick robes, stained with grave matter, draped his limbs and lower body. Though when his concentration lapsed, both seemed no more substantial than smoke. ‘This armour… It does something to me.’

‘It suits you,’ Arkhan said. ‘Then, it was made for one of your kind. A cage and crown both.’ He paused. ‘Your head is clearer now, I trust. You have control over yourself. That is good. Otherwise you would be little more use than these broken things.’

He gestured to a flood of spirits swirling upwards nearby, howling their fury. The chainrasps were spiteful things, broken by Nagash’s will, their forms dictated by the circumstances of their death – and they surrounded him and Arkhan in a dolorous tempest, whispering and wailing.

They struck the walls like water, spreading and spilling to the ground. They crawled towards him in jerky fashion, begging for absolution or demanding vengeance. A part of him felt revulsion at the sight of them. But another part felt a strange sort of kinship with the tormented souls. ‘So many,’ he said.

‘There are more dead in Shyish than the living can comprehend,’ Arkhan said, as they paused to allow a ghostly black coach to thunder past. The fleshless steeds that drew it snorted amethyst fire, and the driver was a shapeless thing, clad in rags and laughing wildly. ‘Even the stones here have their ghosts. Even the trees.’ He gestured, and Pharus saw what he at first took to be a grove of skeletal trees, rising from among the crumbled temples. When one of them turned to look at him, he realised his mistake.

‘Sylvaneth,’ he said, drawing the word from memory.

‘Of sorts. The Everqueen has first claim on what passes for their souls, but some sought a different lord, in the days when she turned her face from the realms. As her song faded, they heard a different, more pleasing melody.’

The ghostly tree-spirits lurched silently past them, lumbering through the ruins, their bare branches shaking in the wind. Their features were jagged masks of ravaged bark, and their eyes burned with a terrible light. As they drew close, Pharus thought he heard a shrill keening on the wind. The sound was at once joyful and despairing.

That sound – or something like it – echoed throughout Nagashizzar. Every laugh was tinged with sorrow, every sigh with melancholy. Great funerary bells rang in the depths, and the dead shuffled from their centuried slumber and once more took up the devices of war. Chariots, coaches and hooves rattled along the avenues, as the kings and queens of forgotten bloodlines arrived to make their obeisance before Nagash. Flocks of carrion birds swirled through the storm of souls, or else perched on the high towers, croaking out Nagash’s name. Jackals prowled the alleys, their eyes glowing amethyst.

Pharus felt a great sense of anticipation building in him. He was at once cold and hot, hungry for something he could not put into words. His gauntlets creaked, as he clenched and loosened his hands in strange expectation. ‘What is that sound? Can you hear it?’

‘All dead things hear it. Nagash calls to you, on the wind and in your bones.’

Pharus twitched, feeling a sudden need, an urge, to turn and walk until he was commanded to stop. He could not resist it and did not wish to. ‘I am… hungry,’ he said, his voice no more than a whisper. ‘Thirsty. It hurts.’ Not as bad as it had, though. The war-plate he wore might be a cage, but it kept the pain at bay. Even so, he could still feel the storm, surging within him, seeking escape. He traced the hourglass shape on his chest-plate.

‘It will grow worse. Pain is the price we pay, to serve the Great Work. Even Nagash feels it – and your pain is but a shadow of his own. Remember that, Pharus Thaum. Remember that you are but a shadow of the Undying King, a part of him now and forevermore. When he reaches out, it is with a thousand hands, and you are one of them.’

‘Yes.’ The word felt wrong, somehow. Pharus’ hand fell to the sword now belted at his waist, in a sheath of rotting leather. It was a wide blade, meant for brute strength rather than finesse. Its hilt had been carved from a femur, and its crosspiece was made from the fangs of some large beast. Both the blade and the hourglass pommel had been made from some sort of dark, impossibly hard crystal – shadeglass, Arkhan had called it. It seemed to flex in eagerness as he gripped the hilt, and the sands in the hourglass hissed weirdly.

He hesitated, feeling the malignant hunger roiling within the deceptively crude weapon – the weapon longed to part flesh and gorge itself on the final moments of the dying. And part of him longed to allow it to do so. He realised Arkhan was watching him. ‘You understand now, I think,’ the liche said.

‘I understand nothing. I know nothing. But I…’ Pharus hesitated. ‘It does not seem so important to know, as it did earlier.’ He flexed his gauntlets, watching the haze of his substance flicker through the gaps in the iron plates. For a moment, he wondered if he was no more than a memory of who he had been. He felt a spark of anger flicker within him.

Before it could ignite, Arkhan said, ‘You have been remade, and all useless parts of you have been cast aside. If you have questions, it means he wishes you to ask them.’

‘Will he send me against Azyr?’

‘Do you wish him to do so?’

‘What I wish is not important.’

‘Good. You are learning.’ Arkhan sounded pleased.

‘Yes. I remember more of who I was. What I was.’ Pharus looked at him. ‘I also remember that you are the reason that Nagash spared me. He wished to destroy me. But you did not. Why?’

Arkhan glanced at him. ‘Tell me – what do you know of Nagash?’

Pharus hesitated. ‘He is… all.’ What else was there to know? Nagash was the sum totality of all things. All things were one, in him. Or so the voice beating in his brain insisted with monotonous rhythm.

Arkhan extended his staff. ‘Look to the east. What do you see?’

Pharus looked and saw an unlight – a black sun, squirming against the dark curtain of the sky. It boiled and burned amid the ruins, eating away at the world around it. It swelled and receded with the voice in his head, and he found himself unable to look away. Vastation built in him, purging his lingering uncertainties.

‘Nagash is the black sun – the true sun’s shadow and twin,’ Arkhan said. ‘As Sigmar holds the sky suspended, so too does Nagash draw down the earth. They move in eternal opposition, pushing against one another.’

‘I do not understand.’

Arkhan’s teeth clicked in what might have been an expression of amusement. ‘In some ancient texts, the black sun illuminates the truth of the soul. Nagash is the totality of truth – an absence of all lies, even the most comforting. He is the black sun, burning in an inverted sky. He is the truth, and Sigmar, the lie. Sigmar is a husk, filled with falsehood. He demands much and gives little in return. Nagash, at least, offers justice.’

‘Justice,’ Pharus echoed. He looked down at himself. ‘Is this justice?’

Arkhan laughed. ‘This is Nagashizzar. The place of final justice.’ He stopped and thumped the ground with his staff. ‘We are here.’

They had come to a long avenue that stretched eastwards, towards the black sun. It had been cleared of much of the rubble, but work-gangs of skeletons still toiled along the edges. Clusters of bodi­less spirits – chainrasps and flickerhaunts, gallarchs and lane-hags, scregs and flay-braggarts, masses of drifting, moaning spectres – bunched and floated through the ruins to either side, responding to the same call that drew Pharus.

‘What is this place?’ Pharus asked.

‘We approach the base of the Black Pyramid. Here, the Undying King has set his throne, so that he might receive the oaths of fealty owed him, by his most loyal servants.’ Arkhan turned west, towards the closest end of the avenue. ‘There, see? Three of the most prominent come now, to kneel at the Undying King’s feet – at their head comes Vorgen Malendrek, the Knight of Shrouds.’

A silent host of deathly riders paraded down the avenue, past Pharus and Arkhan. At their head was a towering figure – darkly magnificent, balefire bleeding from his eyes, wrapped in spectral shrouds. He wore a black iron helm, topped by great, curving bat wings, and bore a fine sword belted to his hip, an hourglass set into the hilt.

‘Like you, Malendrek once served the God-King,’ Arkhan said. ‘And like you, he has seen the truth of Sigmar’s perfidy.’ He sounded almost amused. He pointed. ‘And there, Crelis Arul, the Lady of All Flesh.’ Behind Malendrek’s nighthaunt riders came a shuffling tide of rotting flesh. The deadwalkers moved with no grace or precision, stumbling along like confused livestock. The greatest mass of them bore upon their backs and shoulders a palanquin made from bone and raw, bloody flesh.

The woman seated atop the hideous palanquin was draped in rotting and stained finery as of ancient days, her features hidden behind a crudely stitched leather mask. Two great dire wolves, their ribcages showing through tattered fur and their skulls bare to the moonlight, crouched to either side of her. Occasionally she stroked one or the other of them, as if they were living things.

She raised a crumbling hand as if in greeting, and Arkhan returned the gesture. Then, he turned and lifted his staff. ‘And last but not least – save perhaps in his own mind – Grand Prince Yaros, Lord Rattlebone.’

The deathrattle warriors who brought up the rear of the column marched as one, in perfect synchronisation. They bore heavy kite shields and long spears, to which had been affixed rotted pennants. Archaic armour sheathed the brown bones, and the rhythmic clamour of their passing was all but deafening.

At their head rode a princely figure, wearing a battered crown of iron and a cloak of dusty fur. The Deathrattle King rode a skeletal steed and had a single-bladed axe balanced across his saddle. He lifted the axe in salute as he passed.

‘Three lords of death, come to serve he who forged them.’

‘Where are they going?’

Arkhan silently extended his staff east. Pharus turned. Dust clouds rolled across the far end of the avenue, momentarily blotting the black sun from sight. When they cleared, Pharus saw, at the far end of the avenue, an immense structure of black shadeglass. It res­embled a dais, but was leagues across and surmounted by a towering throne, taller than any gargant, and circled by flocks of carrion birds. A great figure reclined atop the throne, and Pharus recognised the being who had remade him.

Nagash. Unspoken, the name echoed through him regardless, down into the hollows of his spirit. The confusion he felt, the doubt and anger, it vanished all in an instant. The storm in him subsided, like a startled beast. Hoar frost crept suddenly across the panes of his armour, and he felt a chill digging into the marrow of his non-existent bones. Cries echoed up around him, so many as to occasionally merge into a single, great howl. He stepped back as something that might have been fear stirred in him.

The Undying King sat on his throne, amid a slow typhoon of souls, swirling about him in desperate celebration. Broken skeletons, crawling along the avenue, reached out to the distant figure as if in supplication. Pharus felt the pull himself. Impossible to ignore or defy. It was as if there were a great weight pressing down on him and pulling him all at once. Somehow, all things bent towards Nagash, even the winds and the light of the distant stars. It was as if he were a hole in the realm, and all that existed fell into him, to be lost forevermore.

He groaned, and looked away, unable to bear such awful majesty for long. ‘He is all, and all are one in him,’ Arkhan said. ‘Do not resist. Let the silence of him fill you and smother all doubt in its cradle.’

‘I hear something.’ Pharus cradled his head. ‘Like a swarm of insects, rattling in my skull.’ He twitched, trying to escape the sound. ‘Is that him?’

Arkhan gave a rattling laugh. ‘Come. He calls to you, and you must answer.’ He stepped onto the avenue, and Pharus followed. The spirits that huddled along either side set up a great wailing, which Pharus thought must be akin to applause. A hundred thousand souls clustered among the ruins. Some were nothing more than bobbing motes of witch-light, while others seemed almost alive, save for their pallor.

More souls drifted down like ash from above, falling towards Nagashizzar from the dark skies. Some of these joined the throng that lined the avenue, while others were caught by the wind and whisked away, trailing despairing moans in their wake.

‘Where are they all coming from?’ Pharus asked.

‘Everywhere and nowhere. Wherever a mortal’s story begins, it ends here, and here is where all men must eventually come. Some will stay in Nagashizzar, caught fast by their crimes. Others will pass through the Sepulchral Gate and into whatever underworld calls them home. As it is inscribed there – by the manner of their death shall ye know them.’

The avenue quickly became crowded by swaying deadwalkers and eerily still deathrattle warriors. They made way for Arkhan, their ranks shuffling aside as if shoved back by invisible hands. Arkhan led Pharus through them, towards the great dais at the end of the avenue, where Malendrek and the other deathlords stood waiting for the word of Nagash.

Pharus felt their gazes on him as he approached, and he wondered what they made of him. Yaros seemed as stoic as any skeleton, the hollow sockets of his eyes burning dimly. Arul, the Lady of All Flesh, greeted them softly, her voice a liquid slur.

‘Lord Arkhan – it has been too long since you have visited my charnel gardens. They wax vibrant these days.’ She held out a mouldering hand, and Arkhan took it with courtly aplomb. His fleshless jaws brushed across her bruised knuckles.

‘I am sure their fragrance is as potent as ever, my lady.’

Her flat, milky eyes fixed on Pharus. ‘And who is this handsome spirit? He wears the raiment of a deathlord, and yet I do not know him.’ She held out her hand to Pharus. He hesitated, but only for a moment. He took it and bent. Had he been alive, he thought the stench of her would have choked him. She was a dead thing and stank of rot.

‘He is called Pharus Thaum, and he is newly made,’ Arkhan said.

‘Ah, a new soul. How charming.’ She reached up and traced crumbling fingers across the side of Pharus’ helm. ‘He smells of… lightning.’

Malendrek stirred. The burning slits of his eyes, visible within his helm, narrowed. ‘What game are you playing, Mortarch?’ he rasped. ‘The glory to come will be mine and no other’s. Certainly not any pet of yours.’

Arkhan turned. ‘Remember to whom you speak, Knight of Shrouds. You are not so high in our lord’s esteem that I cannot rend you asunder and reweave your soul into a more fitting shape.’ Malendrek drew himself up, one hand falling to the hilt of his blade.

‘Careful, Black One,’ he said. ‘You serve as his hand for the moment, but there are worthier souls in creation.’

Arkhan laughed. ‘Your ambition is admirable, though wasted, Knight of Shrouds. If you wish to supersede me, you must get in line. Be warned though, I am told it is quite lengthy.’

Malendrek hissed. ‘Speak, then. Who is this? Some broken liche of your circle?’ He looked at Pharus. ‘Arul is right. He stinks of lightning.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Wait. I know him, now. Pharus Thaum – guardian of the dark places. One of Sigmar’s revenants. Another who received the blessings meant for me. And now you are here. The wheel of fate surely turns in strange directions.’

Pharus gazed at him in incomprehension. ‘Do we– did we know each other?’ Something in the creature’s words stoked the storm in him. Amethyst lightning sparked and crawled across the gaps in his armour.

Malendrek’s eyes blazed bright as his pale hand fell to the hilt of his blade. ‘We fought side by side, against the soulblight warlord, Vaslbad. In Glymmsforge.’

‘What was your name?’

‘You know my name. I was the commander of the southernmost gate. The slayer of the Slender Knight. I was a hero.’ Bitterness swelled in the dead man’s voice. There was naked longing there, a desire now impossible to fulfil.

‘I do not recall you,’ Pharus said. Then, more maliciously, ‘Perhaps you were not as important as you claim.’ He was surprised by his own venom and the pleasure he took in saying the words.

Malendrek shrieked and made to draw his blade. Arkhan stepped between them, his eyes glowing with a witch-light greater than Malendrek’s own. ‘Will you strike a servant of your master without cause?’ He slammed his staff down, and amethyst fires sprang up. ‘Are you a living man, to let hot anger stir your turgid blood?’

Malendrek snarled curses. Pharus reached for his own blade, but a glance from Arkhan stopped him. ‘Cease,’ the Mortarch of Sacrament intoned. Malendrek drifted back and glared at them.

Before he could speak, Yaros gave a dusty chuckle. The wight king stood nearby, watching the confrontation. ‘One more pawn, or one less, the game is set already. And the true winner sits there, watching us play at influence.’ He raised his axe. ‘Hail, Nagash. Hail, O Undying King.’

Pharus turned. Nagash was indeed watching them, slumped on his throne, his talons pressed together in a steeple before his bowed head. The Undying King sat as if engaged in some inconceivable calculation. Spirits writhed about him, whispering and singing hymns to his might and mercy. Massive, skeletal morghasts crouched to either side of his throne, their cruel glaives held ready to defend their master.

Nagash flicked a finger, and what Pharus had at first taken to be a pile of bones and rags heaped on the wide, rough-hewn steps of the dais, rose awkwardly to its feet. Arul clapped her hands gently. ‘Oh, how delightful – he has resurrected dear old Blood-a-bones to amuse us. It has been so long.’

Blood-a-bones proved to be a tatterdemalion of colour and injury. A court jester, clad in rotting costume and dented bells. He twitched up and bowed low. ‘Greetings, gentles all,’ he shrilled in a childish voice. ‘Our king welcomes you to his hall – see there, the stars shine through the holes in the roof, and the dead sweep away the dust on the floor.’ He flung up a broken hand and spun in a madcap circle, jaw sagging. ‘He strives, oh he strove, to make it pretty for you.’

‘Dance, jester,’ Nagash intoned.

At his words, the jester capered in awkward circles, as the carrion birds that circled Nagash’s throne pecked at him. His ragged costume was sewn to his mouldering flesh, and bare bone poked through his peeling features. Despite the state of him, he seemed in good humour. He bounced and spun, moving more swiftly than any dead thing ought, and the tarnished bells attached to his costume jangled piercingly. As he whirled, he sang without melody.

‘Our king is kind, so kind, and he will take what grows in every creature’s womb and make it his own,’ the jester screeched. ‘He will make every house a tomb, and as his great hand sweeps across the sea, all the fish will rise with their bellies up. The jackals bow to him, and the birds as well.’ He batted at the birds as they dived for what remained of his eyes. Jackals darted through the ranks of the dead and snapped at his flailing limbs. ‘He leaves a trail of fire across the desert, so that all who seek him might find their way. Rejoice! Rejoice! The Undying King is come again, in all his glory!’

Pharus felt no horror, no disgust at the display, though he knew he ought to. Only curiosity. Was there some message in the jester’s song, or was it merely gibberish? The question vanished from his mind as Nagash gestured once more, and the jester began to twirl faster and faster. He careened from one side to the other, losing bits of himself as he danced. ‘Rejoice! Rejoice! He is all, and we are him, and all are one! Rejoice!’

With a final despairing ululation, the jester collapsed into a heap. Light still burned in the sockets of his skull, but his song was finished. Jackals worried at his carcass, snarling and fighting with one another. Nagash gazed down at the remains in silence.

‘Behold,’ he intoned, in a voice like the grinding of stone. ‘I am risen.’ He looked up, and his burning gaze swept across the ranks arrayed before him. As one, the dead sank to their knees. Pharus found himself drawn down with the others, unable to resist the unspoken command. Like the jester, they moved as the Undying King willed.

Nagash stood. ‘I cast forth my hand and the trees raise up their roots.’ He threw out a talon, and great roots, colourless and sickly looking, erupted from beneath the avenue with a rumble and a roar. They rose high, coiling about nearby pillars, stretching towards the dark sky. Twisted faces blossomed on the pallid bark like fungus. They wailed. Some cursed Nagash’s name, while others begged for mercy. Pharus looked away.

‘Where I set my foot, the earth buckles,’ Nagash continued. He stepped down onto the steps of the dais, and the stone cracked loudly. Dust geysered as he descended, and the ground shook. ‘My gaze boils the sea and my voice calls down the stars. I am risen, and all is silence.’ The words echoed from the pillars. Nagash gestured. ‘Arkhan. Come forth and attend me, my most faithful servant.’

‘I am at your command, my lord, as ever,’ Arkhan called out, as he strode towards the steps leading up to the dais. ‘But speak, and I shall move the realms themselves.’ He climbed to stand beside Nagash. The liche looked tiny, next to his towering master.

‘There is no need, my servant, for I have already done so. I have realigned the heavens themselves.’ Nagash looked down, his flickering gaze fixing on Pharus for a moment, before sliding back to Arkhan. ‘Is this all, then? Am I abandoned by my servants?’

‘Never, my lord. A thousand wars are waged even now, in your name. A hundred deathlords march across the amethyst sands, travelling from the north, the east and the south. Spirit, bone and meat answer your call.’

‘And my Mortarchs?’

Arkhan set his staff and rolled his shoulders in an elegant shrug. ‘They go where they will and kill where they wish. As you made them to do, my lord. Rest assured, they have tendered their apologies for their absence and assure you that they strive ever in your mighty name. They build empires to your glory, O Undying King.’

Nagash gave a rumbling laugh. ‘I am sure that is what they say.’ He gestured dismissively. ‘No matter. The vagaries of the soulblighted do not interest me this day. I seek to raise up new champions and conquer old lands.’ He looked out over the gathered dead. ‘The time has come. Shyish must be cleansed. All who do not kneel before me must be made to do so. As it once was, so shall it be again, forevermore. Stand forth, my Knight of Shrouds.’

Malendrek drifted forwards silently. Nagash stretched out his hand. ‘You sought my favour, Vorgen Malendrek, and thus I have bestowed it. I have made you more than you were and raised you up, so that you might take vengeance for yourself upon those who used you so cruelly. Will you do this for me, my servant?’

‘Speak the name, my lord, and I shall cast them into ruin,’ Malendrek said, in a voice like the cawing of many birds. Pharus thought he detected a note of eagerness in the ghostly warrior’s tone. As if he already knew what Nagash intended to ask of him.

‘Glymmsforge,’ Nagash said. Malendrek gave a lingering sigh. Nagash gestured. ‘The way is already open. A gap in the defences. Use it. Crack the city wide and reclaim it, and the underworld of Lyria, for me.’ Nagash looked at the others. ‘Crelis Arul and Yaros of Dmezny – you shall serve my champion in this. Aid him. Break the city. Glory awaits.’

For a moment, Pharus thought one or the other might protest being subordinated to the ghostly warrior. But neither did. The hierarchy of the dead was set, it seemed – spirit, bone and then meat.

‘And what of your newest servant, my lord?’ Arkhan asked. He gestured to Pharus. ‘One once of Azyr’s heights, now of Shyish’s depths. What task shall he be bent to?’

Nagash turned his lamp-like gaze upon Pharus once more. For long moments, he stared, as if puzzled by the presence of the being before him. Finally, he looked at Arkhan. ‘By your whim was I encouraged to show mercy. Thus, to your whim I yoke him. Let him prove himself worthy of my mercy, howsoever you see fit, my loyal Mortarch. And if he should fail, you shall bear the brunt of my ire.’

Arkhan bowed low. ‘As you command, so must it be, my lord.’

Nagash returned to his throne, and the audience came to an end. The other deathlords turned away to depart, though not without a few backward looks and a glare from Malendrek. Pharus wondered if he’d made an enemy there, and what it meant. He waited, uncertain, as Arkhan descended the steps of the dais. If a skeleton could look pleased, Arkhan did so.

Nagash, for his part, looked neither pleased nor pensive. The fleshless rictus of the Undying King’s features did not change, as he sank back onto his throne in a clamouring of armour and bone. Carrion birds circled him, and swooped down to perch on his shoulders and knees. They set up a raucous chorus, screeching and cawing, as if advising the god of some mischief elsewhere. The jackals began to howl, casting their eerie song to the wind.

Pharus stared up at Nagash and knew, somehow, that the god did not notice him. It was as if, having delivered his commands, his mind had withdrawn to other spheres. Arkhan confirmed this, a moment later.

‘Shyish stirs, and so the reaper must ready his scythe,’ the liche said, as he joined Pharus. ‘You and the others will be its edge, and Glymmsforge, the harvest.’

‘I cannot feel him anymore – my head feels… empty.’ Pharus touched his helm. ‘I feel empty. He is silent.’ He wanted to hear that awful voice again, to feel it resonate within him. It drove out all fear and worry, and crushed doubt and uncertainty.

‘Fear not, Pharus. He is with you always. He is hidden within even the deepest of your thoughts, and in the hollows of your soul. What you see, he sees. What you feel, he feels. You are his hands and eyes and mouth. Even when you think yourself alone, he is there.’ Arkhan caught him by the shoulder. ‘This god will not abandon you, Pharus. That I swear to you.’

Pharus looked at Arkhan’s hand and felt the crackle of the lightning raging inside him. As if sensing this, Arkhan stepped back. ‘You were a jailer, once. Do you recall this?’

‘I… yes.’ Pharus dredged the slow currents of his memory. ‘The Ten Thousand Tombs. Beneath Glymmsforge. I… guarded them.’ The words came with difficulty and only brought more questions. Like sand, the memories sifted through his fingers no matter how tightly he grasped at them.

‘Yes. And now you will crack open the prison you built, and free those within.’ Arkhan studied him, his gaze revealing nothing. ‘Ten thousand souls, entombed by my hand, in the waning days of the Age of Myth. I had done so many times before, and since, to aid my lord and master. I would see these awakened. They will prove the undoing of the false city and shall march through the Shimmergate, with you at their head. You will be a sword, thrust into the heart of Azyr.’ He clenched a fist.

‘Thus Nagash has commanded, and thus it will be done.’