Vampire Warlords

CHAPTER 11

Command Sergeant Wood was having a bad morning, it had to be said. He stood in the stone tunnel, Pettrus unconscious on the floor behind him, a cold breeze blowing through with the stink of old sewers, and he watched the two vampires picking their way towards him over the twisted corpses of their brethren.

One was a girl, young, beautiful, with slender limbs and high cheekbones and curly golden hair. But her eyes were narrowed in a look of hatred and bestiality that shouldn't have resided on such a pretty child's face. Blood rimed her lips and vampire fangs.

"Shit," muttered Wood. "Shit!"

The second vampire was an old man, crooked and bent and moving in a twisted way, as if something was wrong with his spine. He had a white, bowl haircut, ragged and uneven, that was, perhaps, one of the worst haircuts Wood had ever seen – on mortal or vampire. Then recognition hit Wood like a mallet between the eyes.

"Langforf!" he exclaimed, stepping back, his short sword wavering in his grasp. "Langforf, it's me, Wood! Don't you recognise me, man? We fought together in five campaigns!"

Langforf, along with his very bad haircut, growled and leapt at Wood, claws slashing for his throat. Wood stepped back fast, stumbling over Pettrus' unconscious body and hitting the ground hard on his arse with an "oof" that would have been comedic, if it hadn't been for impending death looming over him. Langforf leapt at Wood, landing atop the soldier as if they were old lovers on a secret tryst and eager for sex. Foul breath swept over Wood, into his mouth and lungs making him choke. It was rotting meat combined with dried, old blood. Wood screamed. Claws scrabbled for him, and he grabbed Langforf's throat, bad haircut bobbing to tickle his own forehead, and they struggled for a few moments with Langforf hissing and spitting foul stuff into Wood's open maw.

"Get it off, get it off!" he shrieked, but of course there was nobody to help him get it off and he realised he would have to help himself. He got one hand free, and Langforf's fangs brushed his throat making him squirm. His strength was failing, and for an old bowl-cut, Langforf was surprisingly strong. Wood managed to get a dagger free from his belt and he rammed it between Langforf's ribs. No blood came out, and indeed Langforf continued to struggle with the same strength and determination. Again and again Wood plunged the dagger into Langforf's side, until there was a large squelching hole and something round and slick and evil slid out, nestling in a pool of slime in Wood's lap and making his life just that little bit more uncomfortable.

"Aie!" he screamed, and got the dagger high, between him and Langforf at throat level. Then Wood simply let Langforf descend with his fangs, pushing his own throat onto the dagger and cutting his head nearly clean in half.

Wood scrambled out from under the twitching old revenant, and grabbed his short sword – just as the young girl leapt. Wood hit her, hard, breaking her clavicle and shearing his sword down into her lungs – where it wedged under her ribs and was wrenched from his grasp.

Wood stood there, feeling like an idiot, as the girl took a step back and prodded at the sword as if she'd never seen such a weapon before. She tried to tug it free as Wood looked frantically about for another blade, then skipped back, grabbing Pettrus' sword – too long and fanciful for Wood's normal liking – and leaping forward he slammed the blade through her neck. It jarred, cutting through her spine, and her head came away, lolling grotesquely to one side and held in place by skin and tendons. Her red eyes glared at him, accusingly, as she continued to tug at the embedded sword. Wood shuddered, and hacked again, detaching the head. Slowly, a black smoke escaped from her neck as if released from a clockwork pressure valve, and the vampire collapsed.

Wood rubbed his beard with the back of his hand, and crept forward, tugging free his own sword. Then he moved back to Pettrus, who was gradually coming round.

"Got the drop on us, the bastards," he said, surveying the carnage. "But you did well, my friend. Very well."

"I'm getting tired of this," said Wood, grimacing. "I just want my old life back."

Pettrus grabbed him by the shoulders, looked into his eyes. "You know that's never going to happen. Right?"

"I know. I know. I just wish. In a sane and normal world, beautiful young women shouldn't try to bite your throat. Or at least, not until they've had a few drinks."

Pettrus chuckled. "Glad to see you've still got that sense of humour," he muttered.

"Yeah, me and most of the city. Come on. We're not far now. And it's still safer travelling down here under the rock than across the rooftops."

"Until you meet bastards in the tunnels."

"Until you meet bastards in the tunnels," agreed Wood.

They moved on, warily now for they had grown lax and complacent in the past few hours, coming upon the previous gathering of vampires with their weapons sheathed and minds tired and blank and definitely switched off. It had been a short, hard, savage fight, and Wood and Pettrus both knew they were lucky to be alive. Luck, and combat instinct honed over decades was what saved them. Now, they did not want to run the risk of a second encounter; not when they were so close to the Black Barracks.

It took another hour of careful navigation and creeping through the darkness. Rounding a bend in the rock tunnel, Wood stopped and squinted. He could see a figure at the bottom of the steps leading up to the Black Barracks. To Wood's right, a heavy flow of slow sewage didn't so much move as coagulate. Pettrus squinted over Wood's shoulder.

"That's not a vampire."

"Why not?"

"It's Fat Bill."

"Maybe Fat Bill got bit? Maybe Fat Bill is now Fat Bill the vampire scourge?"

"Nah," said Pettrus, shaking his head. "He's got his sword drawn. Look. He's guarding the steps."

" Maybe he's a vampire guarding the steps from people like us?"

"I don't reckon," said Pettrus. "Vampires don't use swords."

"Of course they do! I've seen hundreds!"

"There's only one way to find out." Raising his voice, Pettrus shouted, "Hey, Fat Bill! Are you a vampire? Do we have to stick a blade through your heart and skull?"

Fat Bill, who must have weighed the same as three sacks of flower, lumbered around in a slow circle and squinted through the darkness. "Any man who tries that better be ready to have their own head crushed," he rumbled, and grinned in the gloom. "By all the gods, is that you, Pettrus? And who's that with you? That skinny gay goat, Wood? It's bloody good to see you both!"

Pettrus and Wood moved along the walkway, and looked up at Fat Bill. He wasn't just fat, he was tall, broad, and both soldiers knew he packed a punch greater than any kicking shire horse. The men shook hands, chuckling, and Fat Bill led them up the stone steps.

"The lads'll be glad to see you."

"Who's here?"

Bill stopped, and turned. He grinned, with most of his teeth missing from brawling. His hair, straggly and white, whispered around his head like cotton. "All of us, Wood. All of us."

They continued, passing a couple more guards whom Wood only vaguely knew; then they emerged into a long, low-ceilinged barracks room.

The Black Barracks squatted on the outskirts of Port of Gollothrim, in what used to be an old warehouse area used for the loading and unloading of cargo; when an industrial accident had destroyed the nearby quays, the area had been pretty much abandoned and left to rot. It was a quiet place, and more importantly for the old men who ran the Black Barracks, a cheap place. Whoever said growing old made you generous was a lying bastard. The old soldiers who attended the Black Barracks for weekly drinking sessions and to regale one another with exaggerated tales of valour in their youth, well, they were uniformly tighter than any mother-inlaw's hidden purse.

Despite being located in a quiet area of the city, still the barracks had been kitted out as if under siege. All windows had been blacked out and boarded up, and the doors had been reinforced by heavy planks of steel. Lanterns were kept to a lit minimum, and the noise level was a dull mumble as Wood stepped through the door – as opposed to the normal drunken roar that greeted him.

"My God, it's good to see you old boys!" grinned Wood, and for the first time since the vampires had spread through Port of Gollothrim, his heart lifted in joy.

"Wood!" roared a few old soldiers, who stood and smiled in welcome at the two new men. "Glad to see a few bloodsuckers didn't manage to suck you dry!"

Wood strode forward, and slapped a man on the back. "Gods, who've we got here? There's Kelv Blades, never been a better man with a battleaxe or I'm not Command Sergeant Wood! And look! Well met, Nicholas. Who'd have thought The Miser would have left his Gold Vaults, even in times of vampire plague?"

"Got most of it stashed," winked Nicholas the Miser.

"And there's Old Man Connie, Sour Dog, Stickboy Pulp and Bulbo the Dull. Well met! And look, by all the gods, it's Weevil and Bad Socks! I thought you two were dead?"

"It'd take more than a rock on my head to kill me!" rumbled Bad Socks, who climbed ponderously to his feet. He was, as ever, without his boots and his socks did indeed smell bad. He was also nearly seventy years old, one-eyed and his face was so heavily criss-crossed with scars there was little original skin left. He hadn't so much retired from the army, as been forcibly ejected.

Pettrus grinned around as conversation and arguments broke out. "They're all here," he said, meeting Wood's gaze. "What's that? Two hundred of them? Two hundred! That's two hundred blades, Wood. Our own little army."

"And not a man here under the age of sixty-five, I believe," said Wood. He was still smiling though. It was good to see so many friendly old faces. Indeed, it was wonderful to realise he wasn't alone and unloved in a hostile world.

"Just think of the experience, though!" said Pettrus.

"Just think of the arthritis!" grinned Wood.

"If any man here hears you say that, you'll get a sword in the guts."

"Yeah, I know. But by the Granite Thrones, it's bloody good to see them all." He raised his voice. "I said, it's bloody grand to see you all! It's good to know I'm not alone!"

"Have you been fighting 'em?" rumbled Fat Bill. "The bloodsuckers, I mean?"

"Fighting and killing them," said Pettrus.

"Good. 'Cos we've got a plan." Fat Bill grinned, but Wood felt his heart sinking. To Wood, the word "plan" was usually synonymous with "trouble", "error" and inevitably, "massacre". "We need some handy men to help carry it out."

"It's nothing to do with robbing the Gollothrim Bank again, is it?" scowled Pettrus. "You know what happened that time."

"No," said Fat Bill, and Wood realised everybody was quiet in the Black Barracks, all eyes on Fat Bill, Wood and Pettrus. "This is something infinitely more juicy."

Graal was tired. Bone weary. He had never felt so tired before and attributed it to the wounds suffered at the claws of Bhu Vanesh. He reined in his horse at the top of a rocky, barren hill, a stolen black charger from the stables of the old Mayor of Gollothrim, and turned in his saddle. Skanda was close behind, riding side-saddle on a small, grey mare which constantly eyed Graal with nervous eyes, tosses of the head and snorts and stamps.

Skanda pulled alongside Graal, and smiled.

"You are weary?"

"Through to my bones."

"Bhu Vanesh did more than torture your flesh. I think he may have poisoned your soul."

Graal snorted. "My soul was destroyed long centuries ago." He gazed out, across a country scattered with long shadows from a low winter sun. Snow rimed the rocks and trees, frosted the long yellow grass, and clung like diamonds to huge, scattered boulders.

"It will be night soon."

"No time to camp," said Skanda, and dropped from the saddle, stretching his back. "We have too much ground to cover, and tick tock tick tock, the clockwork always moves when you wind it up."

"I'm not sure I agree with your choice of paths." Graal was still gazing into the far distance. His mouth was a narrow, bitter crease, his hands albino pale on the pommel of his saddle.

"The Gantarak Marshes? It is a straight line."

"It's a damn dangerous line. I've heard tales of whole armies lost in the murky, shitty depths. And even now winter insects will be waiting to bite and sting and feed."

"On blood?" Skanda laughed, light gleaming from his gloss black teeth. "How beautifully, deliciously ironic! A blood-sucker feeding from a blood-sucker! I am stunned that you find the concept so hateful. Surely you must empathise with the insect?"

"I despise insects," said Graal, voice a growl. "I find their lack of empathy disturbing."

"What, and you vachine are so much better?"

"We look after our own."

"Until you slaughter an entire civilisation to satiate a mammoth greed."

Graal shrugged. "I am what I am. I believe in selfpreservation and building on one's triumphs. What other goal to seek other than total domination? Total dominion? 'If one does not strive to reach the pinnacle of vachine development, then one should stay in the ground with all the other worms.'"

"As spoken by a true vampire prophet. But his logic, and yours, are flawed. For by turning against your own race in your desperate search for an ultimate kingship, you left your flank unprotected."

"Sacrificing the vachine of Silva Valley was a necessary evil! A move on the gameboard of life and conquest, a sacrifice that will lead eventually to ultimate victory!"

"I'm surprised you still feel that way after watching Bhu Vanesh twist Kradek-ka's head from his shoulders."

"There are always casualties in war," growled Graal.

"Indeed there are," said Skanda. "But normally one seeks to wipe out the enemy, not one's own nation."

"It was the only way," said Graal. Then shrugged. "Anyway, plenty more vachine survive to the north who know nothing of my betrayal; I can always go slithering back to them with my tail between my legs." He grinned, an almost boyish grin if it hadn't been for the evil gleam in his cold blue eyes.

"There are more?" Skanda's head snapped up, a little too sharp.

Graal stared at Skanda. "More vachine? Yes. Does that bother you?"

Skanda relaxed, and his words slid out, cool as chilled snakemeat. "Of course not. I know the vachine civilisation wasn't restricted to Silva Valley. How many more?"

"Thousands," said Graal, and grinned. " Hundreds of thousands. Far north, north of the Black Pike Mountains which are simply pimples on the arse of the World Beast. North, where the ice rules, where the vachine built their master civilisation, Garrenathon, with the help of Harvesters Pure."

"Indeed," said Skanda, voice still cold, eyes fixed on Graal. "Why, then, do you not reside there? In this Garrenathon? Surely you would be received as a great general? Surely you could satisfy your whims of wealth and power and dominion from such a seat?"

Graal shook his head. "Kradek-ka and I, we came here, to Silva. Oversaw the building. So you see? The vachine of Silva Valley were our puppets, our playthings, right from the start; nurtured, grown, crafted, awaiting the time when we could resurrect the Vampire Warlords. But we underestimated them. Bastards."

"Come. Time to move on," said Skanda, and hopped up onto the mare with incredible agility. His black eyes fixed, once, on Graal, then turned and stared off to the far north. There, he imagined vast, vast cities of ice; a world of huge towers and temples and palaces, filled with a million clockwork vampires, a million vachine. "One day, I will find you," he whispered.

"What was that?"

"Nothing. I shall lead the way, Graal. We wouldn't want you falling in the marsh now, would we?"

After the biting and discomfort of two days in the Gantarak Marshes, Graal was relieved to break free onto the Great North Road. Snow fell occasionally, a light peppering that drifted in the wind and frosted the pines which lined the road. They rode north for a while, horses picking their way with ease, but Skanda grew increasingly agitated at this open route commonly used by armies, and now by association, possible vampire armies. After all, the Warlords were spreading their new rule, their new plague, with acumen. And the Great North Road was the easiest way to move troops up and down the flanks of Falanor…

They cut northeast from the Great North Road just south of Old Valantrium, and travelled east towards Moonlake but with no intention of entering the city – which would either be deserted, or maybe ravaged by vampires, Graal was sure. He had not been privy to all plans set in motion by the Vampire Warlords; but certainly, infesting every city of Falanor was an initial priority.

Graal and Skanda travelled in silence, mostly. Graal thought long and hard on his past actions, on the vachine, their betrayal, the blood-oil legacy, and Kell. Kell. The bastard who had helped his current tumbling downfall… or at least, that was one way Graal saw events. If Kell had not killed the Soul Stealers, then Graal might, might just, have had the strength necessary to overthrow the Vampire Warlords in their initial moment of weakness. Instead, Graal had been slapped aside like a naughty child.

Bastard, he thought. Bastard!

Another two days saw the ancient walls of Old Skulkra edging into view past the rolling snowy heather of Valantrium Moor. Those two days had been a desolation for Graal, two days of plodding across high, exposed moorland, a sharp nasty wind cutting from east to west and carrying ice and snow, no paths to follow in this deserted landscape and a cold sky wider than the world.

Now, as the frozen heather dropped down from the moorland plateau, so Skanda found them a sheltered place and they made camp before nightfall. The sky was the colour of topaz and stars lay strewn like sugar on velvet. Graal built a fire, and for a change Skanda came and sat with him, and both warmed hands over the flames.

"What's the plan when we arrive?" said Graal, eyeing the small boy with distaste. Skanda may look like a child, a young human boy, but Graal knew different; he still remembered his inhuman movements when Shanna and Tashmaniok tried to cut his head from his shoulders. He had danced between their silver swords like a ghost. Like one of the Ankarok. The Ancient Race.

"You will see."

"You need my blood, do you not?"

Skanda tilted his head back, and eyes older than the moon surveyed Graal. Skanda smiled, but there was no real humour there, just a mask held in place by necessity and discipline. "Yes. You are observant."

"Well, I didn't think you dragged me all the way out here for my cooking skills."

Skanda shrugged. "Your blood-oil runs thick with the souls of thousands. It is rich with death and slaughter. General Graal, I don't believe I could have found a more worthy and more potent specimen if I tried."

"You will perform magick?"

"I will."

"And what will happen?"

"You will see, General. You will see."

And despite the fire, despite the warmth of the flames, General Graal realised he was shivering.

Dawn broke, the sky filled with grey ice. Pink highlighted the edges of huge, thundering stormclouds. The world looked bleak. To Graal, the world felt bleak. A desolation. A world without hope.

They rode from their makeshift camp, and soon could make out the huge, crumbling walls which surrounded the once-majestic and truly ancient city of Old Skulkra. The walls were thick, collapsed in segments, battlements crumbling, and within the city buildings had become slaves to time. Houses were fragments, part collapsed, spires crumbled, domes smashed and deflated, towers detonated as if by some terrible explosion. Those buildings that were intact were sometimes skewed, twisted, walls leaning dangerously or gone altogether. Graal observed all this as they rode from Valantrium Moor, and it was exactly as he remembered it. Back when he'd sent the cankers to kill Kell and Saark…

Old Skulkra was haunted, it was said, and as Graal and Skanda grew closer they saw a thin mist creeping through the streets, passing over cracked and buckled paving slabs, ghostly fingers curling around the blackened figures of skeletal trees lining many an avenue. Graal reined in his horse and took a good, hard, long look at this ancient, threatening place.

It was rumoured the city had been built a thousand years ago, but Graal knew this was a misconception. It was probably closer to three thousand years old, maybe even four; it certainly pre-dated the Vampire Warlords and their First Empire of Carnage. It had been a derelict tombstone when Graal first walked the young plains and forests of Falanor. It was simply amazing to Graal that still the city stood, as if defying Nature, as if defying Time and the World.

The city was filled to the brim with a majestic and towering series of vast architectural wonders, immense towers and bridges, spires and temples, domes and parapets, many in black marble shipped from the far east over treacherous marshes. Old Skulkra had once been a fortified city with walls forty feet thick.

Huge, vast engine-houses and factories filled the northeast quarter, and had once been home to massive machines which, scholars claimed, were able to carry out complex tasks but were now silent, rusted iron hulks full of decadent oils and toxins.

A wide central avenue divided Old Skulkra, lined by blackened, twisted trees, arms skeletal and vast and frightening. Beyond this central avenue were enormous private palaces, now crumbled to half-ruins, and huge temples with walls cracked and jigged and displaced, offset and leaning and not entirely natural.

It was said Old Skulkra was haunted.

It was said the city carried plague at its core.

It was said to walk the ancient streets killed a man within days.

It was said dark, slithering, blood-oil creatures lived in the abandoned machinery of the factories, awaiting fresh flesh and pumping blood, and that ghosts walked the streets at dawn and dusk waiting to crawl into souls and disintegrate a person from the inside out…

It was said Old Skulkra, the city itself, was alive.

People did not go to Old Skulkra. Through fear, it was a place to be avoided.

Gradually, Graal and Skanda found their way to a breach in the massive walls. Gingerly, their mounts picked their way amongst ancient rubble, and then a coldness hit them and Graal shivered. The mist swirled about the hooves of his charger, and they walked the beasts down a broad, sweeping side-street lined with ancient shops, the fronts now open like gaping wounds, the interiors dark and sterile. They emerged onto the wide central avenue, and now they were closer Graal inspected the twisted and blackened trees – as if each one had been struck by lightning, petrified in an instant. Graal eased his mount closer, and touched the nearest trunk. He looked back at Skanda with a frown.

"It's stone," he said.

"Yes."

"Were they carved?"

"No. They were changed. There was bad magick here, once. Old magick. Come on, follow me."

Skanda led the way, and Graal gazed up at the massive buildings which lined the avenue. They were vast, many of the carvings stunning to behold even after all this time; even the ravages of nature could do nothing to take away their ancient splendour, their oncemajesty, their foreboding and intimidating watchfulness.

They are looking at me. Watching me through veils of stone. What is this place? What secrets do the rocks hold? What terrible legends do they hide and protect?

At the far end of the avenue, distant but growing larger with every hoof-strike squatted a giant building of dulled black stone. It looked almost out of place amongst the majesty of every other building on the avenue, and strangely it seemed less worn, less ravaged; none of the walls leant or were broken, and the roof – a single, sloping slab of black – was unbroken. Pillars lined the front, along with huge steps which, Graal realised as he drew closer, were each as high as a man.

"Was this place populated by giants?" said Graal.

"We found it like this," said Skanda. "The Ankarok. It was our home, but we did not build it. Even we do not know how it was made; what incredible engines, what mighty clockwork must have been used in its untimely creation."

Graal craned his neck, gazing up and up and then across the mighty front facade. Skanda turned his horse to the right, and Graal followed, and there was a ramp, smooth and black. Skanda dismounted and tethered both horses. The beasts were skittish, wide-eyed, ears flat back against their skulls. Graal reached out to calm the beast, not out of any compassion but because he simply didn't want the horse bolting and leaving him stranded… here.

They walked up the ramp, Graal's boots echoing dully, Skanda's feet slapping a soft rhythm. They stopped at the apex, and Graal peered in. It was warm in there, uncomfortably warm, surprisingly warm, and for a horrible moment Graal had a feeling he was stepping inside a creature, a living entity, into an orifice. He cursed himself, and stepped forward into the temple, hand reaching out to steady himself against a smooth wall.

Behind him, Skanda smiled, and started to sing a soft, lilting lullaby, and he followed Graal into the darkness which soon shifted by degrees into a warm, ambient, orange glow. Graal moved down long ramps through a massive, vacant room. At the head there was an altar, and glancing back as if for confirmation, Graal continued down and along the black stone floor until he reached steps. He looked up then, and nearly jumped out of his skin. The high vaulted ceiling was alive with thick black tentacles, that moved ever-so-gently, almost imperceptibly, but they did move, and there were thousands of them, and Graal realised his mouth was dry and he felt a strange primal fear course through his blood-oil. He was here, and he felt sleepy, and he was way out of his depth, and he laughed easily, the noise a discordant clash of sound, for he reasoned he'd been duped once more, just like with the Vampire Warlords… only now he thought it might turn out a lot, lot worse. It would seem Kell was not the only pawn in these games…

"Climb the steps," sang Skanda, talking and singing the words at the same time and the small boy followed Graal upwards and the albino vachine stood on the altar and turned and looked out, as if an audience awaited his performance and for an instant, just an instant, the ground seemed to squirm as if alive with black maggots. But then the feeling, the image, the essence, was gone, and Graal tried to speak, but found he could not.

"Over here," said Skanda, and took Graal's hand, and in a bizarre scene led the tall, athletic killer, warrior, soldier, vachine to the centre of the stage. They stood there, in the warmth, and Graal felt sweat creeping down his forehead, down his cheeks, trickling under his dull black armour and making him squirm.

Skanda's song rose in pitch, and suddenly in intensity and Graal could feel it, feel the magick in the air and he realised the magick was in the music and Skanda's song was summoning something, something bad, and Graal felt a sudden urge to flee this place, get on his horse and ride for all he was worth. To hell with dominion and ruling the world; some dreams were best left dead.

Skanda's song was a beautiful wail, dropping low into the deepest depths of reverberation, then shrieking high and long like a pig impaled on a spear, but all the time the notes came tumbling and they were beautiful and surreal and they spoke of an ancient time, a time of blood and earth and song, a time before the vachine, a time before the vampires, when Falanor was young and fresh and the Ankarok were good and proud and strong. Graal fell to his knees, choking suddenly, and Skanda was standing above him and he seemed to stretch upwards, he was huge, and no longer a boy but savagely ugly, his face the black of carved scorched wood, twisted like the roots of a tree, his face thick with corded knots of muscles and tendon uneven and disjointed and disfigured and this huge face loomed down at Graal and thin tentacles grew from his eyes and his mouth elongated into a beak and his eyes shrunk, became round and circular and still the song went on and on and on and huge powerful hands took Graal, and held him tight, and two more hands moved round only they weren't hands they were mandibles and they clamped Graal with sudden ferocious pain and he screamed, screamed as he looked down at the tiny glass disc on the floor before him, glowing black, radiating power and some ancient stench that had nothing to do with even human or vampire; and one of the claws rose, clicking softly, and a smell invaded the place and it was the smell of insect chitin. Graal swallowed, an instant before the claw lashed out and cut Graal's throat. He felt his flesh peel apart like soft fruit under a paring knife. Blood vomited from the new hole, his flesh quivering, his body pumping, heart pumping, emptying his blood-oil, his sacred refined blood-oil into the glass disc where it bubbled and was sucked down, absorbed. Graal would have screamed, but he could not. He would have fought and thrashed and run; but he could not.

Graal's body twitched and pulsated, and emptied itself onto the altar of the Ankarok.

Still Skanda sang, and looking back he was a boy again and Graal's eyes met Skanda's and Skanda gave a single nod, smiling, and released Graal to slump to the floor where he lay, curled foetal, twitching spasmodically. His fingers lifted, and touched his throat. Touched the gaping wound from whence his blood-oil and blood-magick had been sucked…

"Come and watch," whispered Skanda, and without any control of his body Graal climbed to his feet and as he walked, boots thumping clumsily as if he were a puppet on strings, he followed Skanda and a cool breeze blew through the room and into the gaping wound at his throat but he was not dead was not dead and he walked across the stone and out into the weak grey daylight -

The city was squirming.

Old Skulkra was alive, every stone surface a maelstrom of movement as things seemed to shift, and move, and push under the surface of the stone, as if the very buildings themselves were fluid, vertical walls of thick oil trapping large desperate creatures within. The whole world seemed to shift and coalesce, and Graal wanted to heave and vomit, but had no control and his open throat was flapping and if he could, he would have screamed with two mouths…

Skanda stood, and watched, and on his hand squatted a tiny scorpion with two tails, two stings, and Graal dragged his unwilling gaze back to the city, back to Old Skulkra, and he watched.

The walls squirmed and pulsed, and now the ground was fluid, heaving and churning as if under the blades of some terrible plough. Paving stones cracked and shifted, and the whole world was alive with movement, with shifting, with coalescing images a blend of reality and the fluid, a mix of sanity and the insane, and Graal watched with lower jaw hung open and his slit throat forgotten as from under the earth and from inside the walls they came, they pushed, they heaved, they were born.

The Ankarok emerged, and they were children, and their skin was gloss black and shining as if smeared with oil, and their teeth were the black of insect incisors, and many had four arms and claws for feet, some had pincers and mandibles and one young boy crawled forward, and Graal could see he had a thorax. The Ankarok weren't simply children, they were blended with insects, with scorpions and cockroaches and ants and beetles, and they shifted and squirmed and scampered like insects and there were hundreds of them spilling from the walls like ants from a nest, and there were thousands of them, surging from under the earth like a flood of beetles from a dunghill, and we have been imprisoned for thousands of years and we have been waiting for this moment, biding our time and we were sent here, and trapped here, tricked here, lost here but now we are free, now we can work, and that's all we wanted, all we ever dreamed, the joy of the labour, the joy of the slave, the joy of the making, the joy of the killing -

Old Skulkra squirmed and heaved beneath him, and Graal faded away into a realm of impossibility, into a plane of unexistence in which the world was ruled by the Ankarok, and they were all-powerful.