Starseer's Ruin, page 17
The Coin Malleus, a hammer on one side, the two-tailed comet on the other that looked so like the statue’s forked tongue. She placed it in the bowl as though this effigy of alien divinity was a beggar at Lethis’ gates. She took her knife and put it not to the fingers but to the back of her arm, because that was where sensible people drew blood, if they weren’t lizards or immortal Stormcasts. Dabbling her fingers in the cut, she made a red smear everywhere that Oaxmal had. Look at me, doing magic. Does that mean I get more pay when I’m back at camp?
Only when she’d made the last mark did she understand that the ruined shrine, the whole ruin maybe, had been holding its breath.
A voice, in her head. A voice in her imagination, surely. A child’s idea of what a dragon might sound like. Child of Sigmar, walker with the Seraphon. Stanner felt a stab of fear far keener than anything the Skaven could put into her.
Thunder rumbled above, in Shyish’s clear grey sky. A shudder rippled through the stones beneath them, the sense of movement, ponderous and stately as a great ship.
What did I do? She got back from the statue in case it fell on her. Oaxmal and Gokumet were crouched, ready for catastrophe. Suddenly the ruins around them seemed busy, seething with frantic motion. The rats? No–
A pack of small Seraphon dashed past her, some in trailing robes. Phantoms. She saw the broken stones through them. Nearby something bellowed. A huge three-horned beast, ornamented with a fortune in gold. On its back a trio of lizard mahouts shrilled and waved goads. Scaled warriors were pushing past, heading somewhere at a run. From nearby there was a flash, and she felt the ground shudder like an animal in pain.
Vael cried out, staggering back from the statue. Its complete, horned head regarded him, eyes blazing with Azyr’s pure fire.
In the next second: a ruin, dead for centuries, grown cracked and dark with Shyish’s encroach. She stared at Oaxmal, who stared right back, as spooked as she was.
Another flash, a searing column that left afterimages on the eye and yet was entirely in her mind. She had a sense of massive gold-armoured figures, head and shoulders above a regular human. Shields lifted high to display the hammer and lightning of Sigmar. Reptile warriors answering like the thunder, wielding spears and clubs. And still the lightning came, bolt after vertical bolt, and each one leaving another metal-clad form to join the fray. A cataclysmic coming together of force, Stormcasts and Seraphon, and all around them the cracking of walls and the sundering of causeways. Her feet felt solid ground beneath them but her stomach lurched from the sudden drop. It fell, Vael said.
Sigmar help us, they brought it down. He’d told her over and over, but she hadn’t understood.
Another moment’s clarity, nothing but the ravaged shrine. Vael had his hands to his head, to his face, digging at his scars. He was howling and his eyes were two storms. In another moment he had taken up his hammer, one hand still bare and bleeding lightning, and was fighting – she couldn’t tell who he was fighting. Ghosts, yes, but the ghosts of the lizard defenders or of his own companions. Or perhaps himself.
‘Lordship!’ she called. ‘Lordship, no, the rats!’ But he couldn’t hear her and she couldn’t get near him. That great two-handed hammer whirled all about him, swifter than she could have moved a sword, striking at stones and at air and at enemies only in the man’s head. He was shouting, begging maybe. She heard Sigmar’s name there, and others that might have been his comrades of past aeons. Arcs of white fire danced from his armour to the masonry and bloomed within his skin. She wondered if he was just going to explode in Sigmar’s holy power there and then, an end even a Stormcast might not return from.
How do you stop a Stormcast gone mad? But a god had put all his power and ingenuity into making them as hard to stop as possible, and surely no mere Wildercorps scout was going to manage it.
‘We need to get out of here,’ she told the lizards. ‘We have to leave him. We’ve done the thing, right? Only, the rats are going to be here any moment.’
Oaxmal was already backing off, plainly of the same mind, but Gokumet disagreed. Gokumet was, Stanner thought with sinking heart, a warrior. Here was their temple reliving its own sundering, and here was the man who had been a part of it. In the big Seraphon’s mind there was probably only one course of action.
It hefted its club and bellowed out its own war cry to answer Vael’s shouting, then charged forwards.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
IRIXI
For an instant it seemed that every block and column of the Wings of Serendipitous Fire shifted around them. The host of rat monks encamped around Sek’atta’s throne shrilled and leapt up, ringing bells and shaking scripture-studded staves. Irixi watched them, narrow-eyed, thinking, You may well fear. The Starseer’s followers were following the prescribed steps, which meant simultaneously that they were following the Old Ones’ plan. Or so it was to be hoped.
I am presumptuous. Forgive me my self-importance. And yet surely this must be what the great powers of the cosmos had ordained, before they were severed from their chosen servants, the slann and the Seraphon. Perhaps, when – if? No, when! – the Nine Orchid Path was restored, Irixi would even see itself depicted there, crouching with the human on this throne, within the circle of Sek’atta’s protective power.
Irixi could reach out, with that wisdom Sek’atta had caused to bloom, and sense the balance of the ruin tilt around them. Not physically, although a very definite shudder had passed through every part of the place. The balance between life and death, the living temple against the dead land. The balance between decay and preservation as the Wings rested within the cupped hands of Shyish. The balance between the past, what the temple-ship had once been, and the future, that it might become.
Work still to be completed, but at least the other Seraphon were capable of it. Irixi had despaired when the Plagueseer’s forces had turned the rescuers back, but only because it had misunderstood the plan. When it had assisted Perlo in calling out to the human’s broodmate, Irixi had assumed it was to allow the mage’s bodyguard and Irixi’s own to come and defeat the rats. Instead it had been so Oaxmal could retrieve that severed tail. Better even than a link between kin was the link between a Starseer and its own flesh.
Although, truth be told, communicating complex arcane wisdom through such a medium was taxing, and Irixi hadn’t been convinced of the Chameleon’s ability to comprehend and follow complex instructions. Oaxmal was a swift student, though. It was common for most skinks to think of the Chameleon as simpler creatures, mute and clannish as they were. Easy to overlook that their usual tasks took them deep into hostile country where they had no ally but their own resourcefulness. Of course Oaxmal was equal to the responsibility. Irixi should have had more faith.
Now a certain malicious satisfaction could be felt, observing the rats scurrying back and forth in panic.
‘You’re doing this, aren’t you?’ Perlo said. The human had been meditating, contributing its little stock of strength to their shield in a way that showed considerable finesse. Seraphon students of the arcane were usually highly trained in very narrow fields, each to a particular task, and Irixi had thought humans would be the same. Perlo seemed to have a broad but shallow learning that could work with whatever it came across, even the leftover echoes of Sek’atta’s own workings. Small wonder the human had won itself a place in the prophecy. Who knew what great work such a one might make some small contribution to?
‘The Good Purpose is being accomplished, by small but steady steps,’ Irixi said. ‘That it also confounds our enemies is tangential, but not unappreciated.’ Hard to properly demonstrate amusement without the usual curling of the tail, but then the nuance would be lost, of course, to human eyes.
‘This will let them rescue us?’ Perlo pressed.
‘When the Purpose is complete, word must be carried to Sek’atta,’ Irixi said. A little obfuscatory, it knew. If the secrets of the Path could be restored, then Sek’atta’s residual power here might be spent to place the knowledge in the mage-priest’s mind, for this place was a conduit to the ancient slann, as sure as Irixi was to its own tail. That accomplished, it wouldn’t actually matter if a rescue happened or not. The task would be concluded, and so might be the usefulness of Sek’atta’s servants to the Old Ones’ plan. It was right and proper that Irixi accept its fate.
Preferring an outcome where the Old Ones had some further use for a poor Starseer was not proper, but it couldn’t entirely banish the thought. I am an imperfect tool, it supposed. And if the human also survived to escape the rats’ clutches, that would not be unwelcome, and would bring further dismay to the egg-stealers, surely a small good in itself.
Perlo grimaced and nodded. Irixi saw the Skaven Plagueseer approaching them with its unpleasant interpreter. A pair of monks set to the bellows again, and as the crowned rat chittered from atop its pulpit, the half-corpse’s mouth gaped to force out new words.
‘O cold-blooded apostate, wretched belly-crawler, do not think that your intentions are hidden from the keen eye of Ferskine, the perspicacious, the all-seeing, the chosen receptacle for all the pestilential blessings of the Horned Rat,’ droned the corpse. It was actually easier for Irixi to understand than a living human: the words came out slower and flatter, shorn of all that gabble of emotion that made their normal speech so hard to follow.
The Plagueseer made an expansive gesture with its staff, leaving an arc of foul smoke in the air.
‘The most erudite Ferskine, lord of arcane mysteries, sees your feeble efforts to wrest this place from the death-blighted paralysis of this realm,’ the corpse exhaled. ‘Doubtless you believe, in your feeble scheming, that such an act must thwart the grand and most intricate ambitions of Ferskine the Far-Sighted, master of machinations. For even as you lever apart the stones of this place, what should seep in but blessed corruption, the very pus from the boils of the Horned Rat!’
Irixi narrowed its eyes.
‘Does that mean they’re on to you?’ Perlo whispered. The human was putting on a defiant face – insofar as Irixi was any judge – but its voice sounded worried.
‘The vermin lord gives itself many titles, but true deserving is judged by those above,’ Irixi said reassuringly.
‘Just hot air, then?’ Perlo was biting at its lip, looking at the ghastly translator.
‘No more than the shed skin of truth, which seems to have its shape but has nothing within it,’ Irixi said. Better that the human had fewer worries, or it might get agitated and do something unwise. Inside, though, Irixi felt a creeping worm of fear. Yes, the Skaven had their own ritual-working: all those monks praying and squealing and ringing their accursed, discordant bells. They were about some piece of plaguery, and the Starseer could feel their toxic influence creeping like mould between the stones of the Wings of Serendipitous Fire. A most infectious ritual. The Plagueseer might not deserve all the plaudits it heaped upon itself, but it was a potent foe to Order nonetheless. Irixi had a queasy feeling that if it was able to gain complete mastery of the ruin, it might try to spread its filth even to Sek’atta and the Celestial Eye of Tepok. Not that such a wretched creature could hope to contend with the august mage-priest, but…
Irixi had just one strand to cling to. Wrest this place from the death-blighted paralysis of this realm, the Plagueseer had said. And maybe that was just its florid language or a mangling in the translation, but there was just the slightest chance that the Skaven priest had not entirely understood the great working Sek’atta had ordained. Looking into its razor stare, Irixi wasn’t sure. There was madness in those warpstone eyes, certainly, but it brought a great deal of cunning with it. A mind that could gnaw even into the secrets of the slann.
Had another Seraphon been there, they would have seen Irixi’s worry through pose and skin tone. Just as well Perlo was blind to such things.
Irixi looked the Plagueseer in the eye and was dismayed to see an all-too-evident glee there. It saw, sure enough. When it yattered to its scribe again, the corpse translator remained blessedly silent, but the Seraphon was grimly sure it was saying, Set down that the lizard-creature fears our power, and it wouldn’t be wrong.
Oaxmal, you must hurry to complete the working, before the rats corrupt it. Before they corrupt a great many things.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
VAEL
The lightning seared through air and stone and they came down. Sigmar’s champions, the first forging, deployed by divine fiat to smite the armies of Chaos and turn the tide of entropy. Around Vael, the supplicants of the temple surged, taking up weapons never far from their scaled hands. Rising up to meet this desecration of their holy places. Surely the greatest symptoms of the Age of Ruin, that the servants of Order should be pitted mindlessly against one another by mere mischance!
The golden-armoured figures blazing into being, each at the heart of a column of raging blue-white fire that melted stone and seared flesh. Sigmar’s warriors, forged by Grungni with superhuman craft. The perfect, the majestic, the indomitable, misdeployed here in the heart of battle. Javelins and darts scattered off pristine mail still bright from the armouries of Azyr. Each took a fraction of a second to grasp their surroundings – their comrades, their foes – and then they were charging forwards, coming together with shield and spear and hammer, unstoppable, glorious. Tragic, pointless.
Vael ran at them, threw himself in their way. ‘Hold back!’ he shouted at the impassive golden masks, at the raised shields displaying Sigmar’s uncompromising heraldry. ‘These are not your foes! Hold back!’ Masked, faceless, but he knew them. His fellows of the forge, his comrades in their first incarnation as Sigmar’s servants. Each one snatched from death by the god’s own hand and remade into a paragon of justice and righteousness. But it was not just and it was not right.
‘Friends, comrades!’ he told them. Grasped for their names and found his mind empty of them. They had passed on, life to life, death to death, one suit of gilded mail to the next until the constant round had worn all their faces smooth in his mind, like stones. Until the last vestige of the men and women they had been was gone. They had marched to the Ruination chambers with all the other Stormcasts who had become… something other. Both more and less than the individual people they had been. Until, of all his peers, only Vael clung stubbornly to the last of his memories. Clung to this: this battle, this meaningless clash of mistaken allies. He could not let go of it, because it was his shame, the shadow on his soul. The time we destroyed the temple of the sun.
They pushed him aside. He felt the impact, armoured shoulders and shields just thrusting him away. All in his mind, of course. The spectral figures coursed through him as the lightning blazed, delivering more and more golden warriors to the bloody fray. Far below them on the bitter fields of Shyish, the vast bulk of Sigmar’s army was engaging the Everchosen’s legions, the armies of Order fighting the true fight, the necessary fight. But here, unknowing, ignorant, this consignment had gone astray. Intercepted by the flight of the Seraphon to the foundering of all.
Not again. He had just been holding on to the understanding that all this was just ghosts and shadows. The dust of another age raised up by the reverberations of ritual, forming briefly into remembered shapes. He felt his grasp on the situation slip, like a man in a torrent who loses his hold on the rock. Instantly he was carried into his own memories, clothing each spectre in flesh, feeling the ground beneath him tilt and fracture as the temple lurched in the sky.
He yelled a war cry and hurled himself forwards, bringing his hammer down on a golden shield. He would fight them, his comrades, his friends. He would stop them re-enacting the massacre.
Seraphon magic. I can change things. It will be different this time. A desperate, unreasoning belief.
The hammer struck, and a scaled shape reeled away from the blow. Vael felt the shock as though he’d taken the wound himself. Again he hurled himself at the golden line, wordless, screaming, striking at Sigmar’s symbols and heraldry. Seraphon died beneath his assault, or the shields he beat on were stone and bronze, the faces behind them reptile-savage. Every action only recreated the pointless carnage. History would not be denied.
He cast his weapon away and rushed the Stormcast shield-wall. He closed his eyes against the sight, but the images flashed within his mind anyway, the unseaming of scaled hides, toothed clubs battering down gold shields. A dreadful waste of strength and courage like water poured into the sands.
There was armour beneath his hands, the familiar ridges of pauldron and breastplate. He opened his eyes. He had one of them in his grip, wrestling fiercely with a strength exactly equalling his own. Vael yelled curses into that perfect gilded face and then gripped it, digging his fingers into the eyeholes, prying with all his strength, tearing the helmet’s mask free with a shearing of metal. The face within was mad with battle-joy, with righteousness. Its eyes blazed with divine fire. It was the face he saw in the mirror before he took a knife to it.
I said no! That was what he had clung to, thinking back on this moment. When Sigmar took him from his mortal death, when he had stood before the divine throne and been told of his fate to be a Stormcast, forever and forever, he had refused. He had pitted his minuscule mortal will against the god. I am a kinslayer. I earned my death. Just let me go. But Sigmar had chosen him, as he had chosen his pick of all mortal warriors. Sigmar had found in him the qualities necessary to wear the golden armour and wield the hammer against all the foes of the realms. Consent was not one of those virtues.
I said no. But he looked on his own face now, intoxicated with the knowledge of its own just cause, and knew that the No had not survived the forging. It had burned away in the flames and this creature of purpose was what had survived. His last defence against the knowledge of what they had done crisped and blew away like ash. Here he was, Vael of the First Forging, in the thick of a fight that should never have happened, and eager for battle.
