The Bone Desert

Chapter Twelve

High Priest Shal’ek was roused from his matins prayers by one of the notaries. The main prayer room of the temple was quiet, only a cluster of candles around the hammer altar giving light to the yellowing walls and rough-hewn stone pews.

‘It is Zelja, your holiness,’ the youth said. Shal’ek opened one eye, and scowled. He could never remember which notary was which.

‘What is wrong with Zelja, boy?’ the gaunt-faced priest demanded.

‘There are travellers at the gate, your holiness. She sent me to inform you.’

Zelja, captain of the Temple Guard, knew well enough to turn away random pilgrims, especially when dawn was still only a glimmer over the distant dunes. Shal’ek assumed something more required his clarification, but that didn’t stop him from snapping at the anonymous messenger.

‘Captain Zelja does not need me to instruct her to follow her usual orders and tell them to begone. What does she want from me?’

Kneeling as he was towards the hammer altar, Shal’ek could not see the notary, but he didn’t need to in order to sense the boy squirming.

‘The captain… She reports that they may warrant your attention, your holiness. There are three of them, a human, a duardin and an aelf.’

Shal’ek’s other eye opened, and his expression changed to one of consternation.

‘The aelf and the duardin both seem to be injured,’ the notary continued. ‘The aelf is unconscious.’

‘And what of the third one?’ Shal’ek asked.

‘Zelja says he is a desert trader.’

Shal’ek grunted, and stood. He offered a brief genuflection towards the hammer altar, traced the lightning sigil with two fingers and turned to the boy, who stiffly averted his eyes.

‘Show me,’ Shal’ek said.

‘I’m going to count to ten,’ bellowed a voice from beyond the temple’s timber gateway. ‘Ong!’

Shal’ek approached the entrance, glaring, the notary scurry­ing at his heels.

‘Tuk! Dwe!’

‘A duardin?’ the high priest demanded of Captain Zelja. The veiled commander of the temple guard was standing next to the gate, her scimitar drawn. A dozen of her men occupied the open stone parapet above, lit by the braziers lining the wall top.

‘Fut!’

‘There is a human with him, and he seems to be supporting an aelf in the garb of the Murder Temples,’ Zelja added. ‘They say she is dying.’

‘Sak! Siz! Set!’

‘Is it her?’ Shal’ek demanded. ‘One of the Order’s wretches?’

The question went unanswered.

‘Odro! Nuk!’

‘Does Weiss know?’ Shal’ek asked, stepping towards the viewing slit set into the heavy doors.

‘I have not sent anyone to wake him,’ Zelja said.

‘Don!’

Shal’ek set his eye to the slit opening. All he caught was a blur of movement, followed by an almighty bellow and a crash that made him stumble backwards. He blinked. The edge of an axe, wickedly sharp, was gleaming an inch from his nose. Had the sound of it cleaving clean through the temple’s front doors not sent him staggering back, it would have carved his skull in half.

There was a grunt from beyond the gate, and the axe head disappeared.

‘H-he’s hacking through the gate,’ Shal’ek stammered.

‘Archers,’ Zelja commanded. There was a clatter above as the guards nocked arrows to their bows.

‘I wouldn’t do that, manlings,’ bellowed the voice from beyond the gate. There was another shuddering impact, and the axe head reappeared amidst a hail of splinters. ‘I’d far rather be cutting heads instead of timber right now. Give me an excuse.’

Zelja’s guards looked to her, and she looked to Shal’ek. The high priest tried to find an answer to the duardin’s threat, but his eyes were fixated on the axe as it reappeared for a third time, hacking through just above the gate’s locking bar. Another below – delivered with a strength and force that seemed wholly unnatural – would surely break the gates wide open.

‘The aelf with you,’ declared a voice beside Shal’ek, startling him. Weiss had appeared, clad only in a night shift, his podgy face pale from lack of sleep. ‘What is her name?’

The axe blows paused. There was a hint of a growled discussion from beyond the gate. The voice called back.

‘Some damned stupid aelf name. Witchblade.’

‘And you,’ called Weiss. ‘You must be Gotrek Gurnisson.’

‘Have I found the only manling in this cursed world with an ounce of sense?’ the voice demanded.

‘It seems like it,’ Weiss said, and then, speaking to Zelja, he ordered, ‘Open the gate, and be quick about it.’

‘Are you mad?’ Shal’ek hissed. ‘That duardin is clearly insane. He will slaughter all of us.’

‘The aelf is a valued member of the Order of the Azyr,’ Weiss said curtly. ‘And the duardin, Gotrek… He is something else altogether. Something beyond anything we can comprehend.’

Shal’ek’s protestations were stilled by the opening of the scarred gate. A duardin strode in without hesitating. Weiss was right – he was unlike one Shal’ek had ever seen before. His scarred, tattooed skin bore only a single rune, crafted in the baleful image of the duardin god, and his huge rune-etched axe was wreathed in fire. The glare from his one remaining eye burned white-hot.

Shal’ek had spent his life in observance towards the gods. He had never anticipated standing before one. He whimpered.

‘Well don’t just stand there,’ the duardin bellowed, making even Zelja cringe visibly. ‘I’ve known better welcomes in the corpse-castles of Sylvania! The damned aelf wouldn’t stop talking about you – the least you can do is help her!’

The duardin gestured behind him, at the two figures limping through the gate in his wake. One was a raggedy human, a desert pack driver by the cap he wore. The other, supported awkwardly by the boy, was a pallid aelf in purple silks and dark leather. She was unconscious, but as they crossed into the temple she convulsed against the boy’s grip and was sick. There was blood in the vomit.

‘You men,’ Weiss barked at a gaggle of Shal’ek’s priests, who had come from their sleeping dorms to stare. ‘Take the aelf to the infirmary. And someone go and awaken Draz.’

Arch-Chirurgeon Abul Draz was woken by the temple’s chief leecher. He came to with a gasp, grasping the man’s smock.

‘My apologies, sellah,’ the leecher, Blemes, murmured, gently extracting himself from Draz’s clutches. ‘It is the high priest. He requires our presence.’

‘What hour is it?’ Draz asked groggily, sitting up in his cot. Blemes had come bearing a candle, its flickering light picking out the bare stone of Draz’s sleeping cell. There was only the faintest hint of light from beyond the window shutters.

‘Just after matins,’ Blemes said. ‘We have visitors, and they come bearing injuries.’

Draz pulled off his nightcap and swung his legs out over the side of the cot. The cold stone floor was a shock to his feet. The chill of the night still permeated the temple’s ancient, cracked sandstone.

‘They are in the infirmary,’ Blemes went on, turning his back to allow Draz to dress. He did so, wondering as he pulled on his robes and rubbed sleep from his eyes just who could have arrived in the night and been permitted to enter. Since explorers had started digging around the Eight Pillars there had been more and more instances of people travelling up the high gorge to the temple, seeking aid and supplies. Shal’ek, High Priest of the Lightning, had ordered them all turned away. Only Weiss, the pale-faced representative of the Order of the Azyr attached to the temple’s priesthood, had the power to overrule Shal’ek’s judgements within the temple itself, and he rarely roused himself from his reports or the celestial auguries that cluttered his office.

‘Lead on,’ Draz told Blemes, tugging his robes straight and pulling on his work smock. He followed the leecher down the narrow, dusty corridor that connected his sleeping cell to the temple’s infirmary.

The room was as small and spartan as the rest of the house of worship. It bore a washing stand, five sick cots, a cabinet of Draz’s chirurgeon supplies – tinctures and vials, crushed herbs and poultice pots – and several jars of Blemes’ leeches. It occasionally played host to a travelling pilgrim, or one of the temple’s priests or notaries if they fell prey to the ague. It had certainly never serviced as unlikely looking a trio as those waiting for Draz.

He saw the duardin first. But for a single lion-headed pauldron, he was naked from the waist up, and covered in the marks of Hysh – blistered, peeling red skin, evidence of days spent in the Bone Desert. Draz recognised the red crest of the Fyreslayers, though he seemed to bear only a single fragment of ur-gold, a bright rune buried into his chest. The thickly muscled warrior turned, and Draz gasped as he saw his face. Half of it was wizened and deformed, as though it had aged centuries ahead of the rest of the duardin’s body. The Slayer’s single eye was stony, but flickered with forge-fire as it fell upon Draz.

‘Chirurgeon,’ said Weiss. The corpulent agent of the Order of the Azyr had been standing just inside the door when Draz entered, alongside High Priest Shal’ek. He was a small, pugnacious man, forever sweating and red-faced in the desert’s heat, his embroidered, puffed sleeves, white stockings and starched ruff a garish contrast to the rustic sackcloth worn by the priesthood. He looked as though he’d dressed in a hurry.

‘These pilgrims require your skills,’ Weiss said, making a half-hearted gesture towards the duardin, who remained silent. For a moment, Draz thought he meant the Slayer’s arm – it was crudely bound in strips of linen, stained and crusted with blood. Then he realised that the bed directly behind the duardin was occupied. A pale woman – an aelf – was laid out on it. A man was sitting on a stool on the opposite side, young and wide-eyed, wearing the dirt-encrusted brown half-cape and cap of a merchant’s teamster.

‘This aelf is a servant of the Order,’ Weiss elaborated, sensing Draz’s fear and confusion. ‘She has been poisoned. The high priest and I desire that you and Blemes do all in your power to save her.’

Shal’ek, standing tall and lugubrious next to Weiss, nodded once. His sallow expression spoke volumes about his distrust towards the new arrivals, but clearly Weiss was in no mood to brook any argument – it was rare indeed to see him roused from his office.

‘You’re a healer?’

It was the duardin who had spoken, his parched voice like cracked desert rocks grinding together. Draz managed to nod. He had never heard of any form of close kinship between aelves and duardin before, yet the Slayer was standing over the stricken aelf like a guard dog. Draz eyed the wicked-looking edges of the heavy war axe slung over his back, glinting in the candlelight.

The duardin glared at him for what felt like an age, then finally stepped out of the way. Draz and Blemes approached, Draz kneeling beside the stricken aelf.

She was pale, even for one of her kind, her lips an unhealthy shade of blue. She was clad in tight-fighting leathers, though most of her arms were bared. Another strip of linen had been wrapped roughly around one, and was crusted with blood and yellow fluids.

Draz reached into his smock and pulled out a thin blade. He sensed the duardin tense at the sight of the naked steel, and he froze, but when the Slayer didn’t say anything he reached down and gently slid the tool through the stiff cloth, cutting it free.

The wound beneath was crusted with more blood. Draz moved to the washing stand and wetted a strip of gauze. Blemes was at the cabinet, fishing through his jars for his leeches with a long prong. Draz returned to the aelf’s side and began cleaning the wound. The woman stirred slightly.

‘What is her name?’ he asked, without looking up from his work.

‘Maleneth,’ the duardin said after a pause, giving the aelf name a rough Duardin inflection.

‘And yours?’

‘I am Gotrek Gurnisson.’

‘You are a Fyreslayer?’

The words came easier to Draz as he focused on removing the dirt from the aelf’s wound. They always did when he started his work. He had been a healer at the Temple of the Lightning all his life. No matter the patient, he was always willing to help those admitted by the priesthood. It was his calling in life, and he offered thanks to the Lightning every night that he had been bestowed with such a clear and simple purpose.

The duardin, Gotrek, hesitated before responding to his last question.

‘I do not know if I am a Fyreslayer.’

‘That is a curious answer.’

‘This is a curious place, manling.’

Draz washed the blood from the gauze and knelt once more to expose the bared wound. It was long but shallow, running up the aelf’s forearm. The cut was precise, the work of a thin blade expertly delivered. It was not in itself fatal, but it was clear enough that something else was seeking to push Mal­eneth through Shyish’s door.

‘Can she be saved?’ Weiss asked from over his shoulder. ‘She is an… agent that the Order would very much like to keep alive.’

‘I will do all I can,’ Draz responded. He placed his blade upon the bedframe then withdrew two vials from his smock. Unstoppering the first, he pinched the aelf’s nose, poured the contents into her mouth and massaged her throat until she swallowed the dark contents. ‘I have given her an antidote known to combat most poisons, but I must still take a sample of her blood in case the poison should be rare and beyond its reach.’

He unstoppered the second vial, then once more picked up his blade and made a shallow incision in the aelf’s arm, a finger’s width from the main wound. He collected a few drops of blood from the small cut, then stoppered the vial and dabbed the incision clean.

He rose, grunting slightly at the stiffness that had worked itself into his joints on the cold floor, then turned to Blemes.

‘Will you apply clean dressings? I must see to this sample as swiftly as possible.’

‘The leeches too?’ Blemes asked. He already had one of the fat, black creatures curled around his prong.

‘Yes, I don’t see how that could do any harm. Apply them around the wound. They may be able to keep the worst of the poison at bay should the antidote falter.’

‘How long?’ Gotrek interrupted.

‘Excuse me?’

‘How long until you know whether the antidote has worked?’

‘It is impossible to say just now. I may have to return for further samples.’

‘I want you to move her,’ Gotrek said.

‘Move her?’

‘You must have better beds than these,’ the duardin growled, tapping one of the cot’s legs with his boot.

‘This is a simple monastery–’ Draz began to say, but Weiss interrupted him.

‘She can have my bed chamber.’

Draz frowned and nodded, wondering again just who the travellers were. He’d never heard of Weiss offering any sort of charitable concession in all the months he’d been assigned to the temple. And who was the third figure, the young desert trader? The youth had said nothing since Draz had entered, had hardly taken his eyes off the aelf. The intensity of his gaze was almost as unsettling as the barely restrained violence exuded by the scarred duardin.

Shal’ek summoned two of the older notaries to bear the aelf to Weiss’ chamber. Gotrek and the human accompanied them, as did Blemes, with his leech jars and bandages. Draz took another corridor, down a set of worn stone steps, vial in one hand and a candle in the other. He passed under an archway at the bottom and set the candle’s flame to a brazier on the wall. The rapidly strengthening firelight illuminated a vaulted room, buried into dry bedrock. Another archway beyond led into the temple’s crypts, where generations of priests were interred in tiered niches. The looming darkness of that entrance always made Draz shudder, and he never passed over into the crypts proper – his business was with the living, and those who could still be saved.

That same business took him to the long table that dominated the otherwise bare chamber lying between the steps and the bones of the temple’s priesthood. The objects on it were covered by a series of old cloths, but he carefully removed and rolled them up, each in turn, revealing an apparatus of beakers, candles, mortars and vials. He lit the candles, checked the metal framework holding various cups and glass tinctures together was properly set, and then seated himself at the bench running the length of the table.

He was tired, and he would have preferred to check his ingredients before assessing the sample. Time, however, was not on his side. He didn’t need his years of experience to know that the aelf did not have long to live.

He unstoppered the vial of blood and allowed a drop of its contents to trickle into a beaker at the start of the connecting apparatus, murmuring a well-worn prayer to the Hammer and the Lightning as he did so. He watched the blood closely as it trickled through into another vial that had been stuffed with a grey, powdery substance. Rather than stain red, the powder turned a deep purple. Draz grunted and administered another drop, this time to a different section of the apparatus, a metal spoon held over one of the thick candle stubs. As the single droplet hissed and sizzled, Draz plucked a pinch of crushed herbs from a pot beside the candle and sprinkled them onto the spoon. He wrinkled his nose at the stink the cloying herbs gave off as they burned, but didn’t take his eyes off the little wisps of black smoke that rose from the charred remains.

Still nothing.

He had one drop left, and then he would be forced to return to the aelf to take another sample. He didn’t think either of her companions would approve of that.

He rubbed his eyes with his free hand, then shifted along the bench to the far end of the table. There a tincture of clear liquid was clasped in a claw-shaped holder over another candle, the stub almost lost in the sea of melted wax spread across the table’s edge. He laid the side of his hand against the tincture to make sure it was at the correct temperature, then tipped the final drop of blood into the liquid within.

It turned pink. He wrinkled his nose, and was about to mutter something under his breath when the scrape of iron-shod boots on the stairway made him jump.

The whole table and its rickety construction shuddered at the suddenness of his movements. He froze. A figure was silhouetted against the light being thrown by the brazier, occupying the only route back up into the temple. The crest of hair and the brutal outline of the war axe made him unmistakable.

‘You should not be here,’ Draz stammered. ‘I am trying to work.’

‘Are you?’ Gotrek asked, stepping into the light. The fire made his golden-red crest and beard look as though they were aflame, flickering with a heat of their own.

‘Working at what?’ he demanded, stamping down past the bench. Draz edged away.

‘I am seeking to diagnose your companion’s current state.’

‘Her current state is that she’s dying,’ the duardin said bluntly, coming to a stop within arm’s reach of Draz. He’d made no aggressive motions since appearing in the crypt, but the look in his solitary, stony eye made the chirurgeon shiver.

‘She is,’ he agreed hesitantly. ‘But right now I do not know why.’

‘Poison,’ Gotrek barked. ‘Any wanaz can see that.’

‘Yes. She has been poisoned. But not from the wound she has sustained on her arm.’

The duardin’s expression grew fiercer still, and Draz hurried to explain.

‘None of the blood I took has shown any sign of poison. Whatever blade cut her arm, it does not seem to be responsible for her current state. It is certainly not in itself a fatal wound.’

The duardin stepped around Draz, looking into the darkness of the tombs beyond the entry chamber. For a moment he wondered whether he’d not heard him.

‘I’m wanted dead, that is nothing new,’ Gotrek said slowly, seemingly to himself. ‘Nothing can bring me the doom I seek. That is also nothing new. Those are about the only things in these damned realms that I recognise. But the rats, they’ve been trying even harder than usual. By the grudges of the Eight Peaks, none of you understand. The horned one won’t stop. And neither will I.’

The rambling comments made little sense to Draz. He shrugged, not wanting to rouse the addled duardin’s anger by questioning him.

‘Many wish harm upon the servants of the Order of the Azyr,’ he said instead.

‘The Order,’ Gotrek echoed, still not looking at Draz. ‘She spoke about them a lot. Wanted to come here even. I told her I wouldn’t be lured in by her damned aelven trickery. I assumed if I took her here someone would look after her. Take her off my hands. After the last one…’

He trailed into silence. Draz shifted uncomfortably, wondering if he could reach the steps back up to the temple before the duardin. Perhaps he was drunk? He’d never been this close to one before, but everyone had heard tales of their fondness for ale. He certainly couldn’t fathom any other means of enduring such horrific sunburn.

‘The boy too,’ Gotrek went on. ‘The longer they’re with me, the greater the danger. They don’t understand anything about what it means to seek your doom. To be cast aside by the gods and to get back up and spit in their faces. It’s just a game to them. Especially to the boy. He’s watching over her right now. I should go tonight, before they realise I’ve left. Then perhaps I can find something worthy of my axe in these maddening realms. Is there not one beast or daemon out there capable of granting me a final doom?’

‘W-who is the boy?’ Draz asked, wanting to shift the conversation onto something more mundane than the Slayer’s dark ramblings.

‘A cart driver,’ Gotrek said dismissively. ‘He was our guide. Typical manling though – he was more trouble than anything else. You people in this new realm of yours, you’re even less trustworthy than the ones I left behind. Treacherous, cowardly, or just too foolish.’

‘He was guiding you to the Eight Pillars?’

Gotrek said nothing for a while, then rounded abruptly on Draz, making him cringe back.

‘You said the wound didn’t poison her?’

‘No, she hasn’t been poisoned by the cut to her arm,’ Draz reiterated. ‘I will need to take further samples, but I suspect it’s the work of ingestion. I… I believe she has consumed the poison, probably in her last meal.’

‘Her last meal,’ Gotrek echoed, his gaze igniting. He cursed. ‘It was never the rats.’

Draz said nothing, staring in fear at the duardin. For a moment, silence reigned in the crypt. Then, with a sudden burst of motion that made the chirurgeon yelp, Gotrek ran for the stairs.