The Vulture Lord, page 21
‘And you think there is still time for anything else?’ she said. Her voice was calm, as if all this was at the end of the discussion and the decision had already been made. ‘We fight because we must, and we have right on our side. That is worth more than his whole legion, I know it.’
‘Do you think being right will comfort you when Lament is in ruins and the rubble is stained with your blood?’ I said. ‘How many troops does being right bring to the war? How much cavalry, how many war machines?’
‘Sigmar does not bless those who choose the easy way,’ she said. ‘And the right way is always the hardest.’
‘Sigmar…’ I sighed. I realised how much I must sound like Dardus. ‘You place your hope in a god who has no power here. None.’
‘The greatest power Sigmar holds is in people’s hearts,’ she said softly. ‘And his dominion is everywhere.’
I took her hand again, raised it to my lips. ‘Why are you here, Selene? What can you hope to achieve?’
She kissed me then. I had never felt such softness, such ease. I felt all the sorrow and misery of Athrabis wash away from me, and then she was drawing back and standing to go.
‘We are on the brink,’ she said sadly. ‘All have given up on you, Lycus, but you know I never shall. I trust you. I love you. I always have done. I always will.’
‘What can I possibly do?’ I said. I was drenched in misery. ‘War is come down, and Zothar will not be swayed, I promise you.’
‘If he is truly your father,’ she said, ‘then let him listen to his son. Sway him with a son’s words. And if he is not, then do as you must. For all of us.’
She disappeared back into the shadows, slipping from my chambers and out into the drear streets of the city. I prayed then for her safe return, but if pressed I could not say who I prayed to. Perhaps it was to her god, to Sigmar, who had given her the courage to come in the first place.
Let him watch over her, I thought. For no one else will.
I thought about her words as I lay there in the dark, as the hours ticked over towards the rising dawn. I was Zothar’s son, by all the rites of my people. Zothar believed that I could be Neophron returned, the final incarnation of his lost child. If so, he would not need Lament and its fate would be sealed. But if not, then there was a chance the city could be spared. He needed it, more than he could ever admit. Grief and sorrow had tied him to Lament, through all the ages of his long unlife. He could not so easily cut that bond.
Selene could be spared, my mother, everyone who lived there. There was only one person who could guarantee it either way…
I left my chambers as the light began to stain the eastern sky. My sword was heavy in my hand.
22
The streets thrummed to the march of troops as I made my way to the Mortisan laboratories. I passed columns of infantry moving up from their barracks in the north-western quarter, heading to the mustering grounds in the central square. There were war machines lined up, row upon row, on the vast promenade of the avenues; Mortek Crawlers having their counterweights slung and their frames reinforced. I marvelled again, despite myself, at the scale of Zothar’s forces, their obedience, and the efficiency with which they prepared themselves for war. What could Lament possibly put up against all this? Dardus and a rag-tag band of rebels with rusting swords? It would be a massacre. A bare company of Mortek Guard could clean the streets of any resistance, let alone the entire legion.
Fear put speed into my pace. I hurried on through the spectral streets, the green lights of the aetherlamps pooling on the black cobblestones. I could almost feel Zothar’s anger radiating from the palace in the distance, tempered now to a cool, hard flame, but no less deadly for all that.
The Mortisan laboratories were, in contrast, a place of industrious peace and rigorous contemplation. Behind the forbidding exterior of the building, hunkered like some great, spiny beast against the northern quarter of the city, its spires stabbing the sky like spear blades, I found as I always did a sense of dusty quiet. I pushed through the great double doors and entered a world of shadows and silence, broken only by the far-off wailing of some tormented soul as the masons pared away whatever elements they needed from it. My footsteps echoed as I crossed the empty hall.
I found Se’bak in his study, where he was, as ever, surrounded by scrolls and volumes of ancient lore. On his workbench were the cluttered materials of his experiments, phials and crucibles, glass alembics, a mortar and pestle. His staff was leaning up against a listing bookshelf and he looked preoccupied as I entered, plucking through the papers on his desk. I saw that his short sword was lying in front of him, still sheathed in its scabbard. I tried to step back from myself and see him as he really was; as something dark and unnatural, and not with the broad and generous affection I normally felt for him. He was a malign thing, I tried to think. A monster, ancient beyond imagining. Not even a body resurrected, but a soul housed in some flaking amalgam of bones. I tried to hate him, but I could not do it. He had always been kind to me when he had no reason to be so. He had been my tutor and he had been my friend. I felt a great weight settle on my heart.
‘Ah,’ he croaked. ‘There you are, my boy. I had sent word to you, and here you are, faster than I would have imagined.’
‘You sent word, Se’bak?’ I said as I approached. ‘I did not receive it.’
‘You didn’t? Well,’ he said, ‘no matter, you are here now. King Zothar has charged me with a vital task, and I must say he was brisk with the ordering of it. He came back from your visit to old Theres in some heat. You did not argue, did you?’
He turned his ancient skull to face me. I gazed into those flickering red lights, the pinprick flames of his eyes. I could see where the suture lines between the bones had darkened with centuries of dust and dirt, where the bone itself had yellowed with age and begun to flake. What fell magics, I wondered, kept such a thing together? Again, I tried to conjure a feeling of disgust, but it died inside me. All I felt was a great sympathy.
‘We did not,’ I said, ‘although there was trouble on the way. We were attacked, by men from Lament.’
‘From Lament?’ He shook his head. ‘Then that explains the preparations, and his impatience.’ He tapped the sword on his desk. ‘I am armed and as ever I am ready to accompany the army. But let us hope cooler heads prevail…’
I came and stood by his desk.
‘Se’bak,’ I said. ‘The king wishes to know whether I am truly Neophron. Lament stands on the brink, dependent on the truth of it either way.’
‘Lament’s fate has ever hung from such a gossamer thread,’ he said sadly. ‘The soul is the strongest thing in all creation, it is true, but in many ways it is a thing less substantial than the very air. Even in the laboratories of the Mortisan Order, with all my experience, I have often wondered at the phantoms we deal with. Can you hold it, hmm? Can you see it?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But I can feel it.’
‘Indeed, indeed…’ he said, musing. ‘Not the blood in their veins, but the fire of their spirit, the sense of themselves as an apprehending thing, both enmeshed and apart from the world around them…’ He looked at me kindly. I wondered if he had been walking for a while in the old memories of the life he must have once lived. ‘It is the gift of the living,’ he said, ‘to feel the life quicken inside you, my boy.’
‘And is this life inside me my own?’ I said. ‘Or is it Neophron’s?’
‘King Zothar certainly believes so,’ he said, peering up at me. There was something hard and dark in his gaze then, as if the answer was already known to him. ‘And he has commanded me to determine it. We approach the ten-year mark, after all, when Neophron’s soul prepares to migrate to its next vessel. It is at this moment that, like the corpse-fly emerging from its chrysalis, we see it in its entirety.’
‘How will you tell?’ I asked, dreading the answer.
‘The soul gem in my staff,’ he said, reaching one of his hands for it. ‘Pass it to me, my boy. It will scry the very depths of you, as it did when you were first chosen. This time it will see the soul in its every aspect. Do not be afraid,’ he said. ‘This will not hurt as much as you would expect…’
He knew. He had always known, since the very moment King Zothar’s blade had struck the head from Neophron’s shoulders, nearly ten years ago. Either I was truly Neophron returned or I was no more than another temporary vessel; whatever signs Se’bak could read, they had been written there as clear as day on the lineaments of my soul when I was a child, as he approached me in the agora of Lament. Perhaps expedience had made him keep this truth to himself, at least initially. I liked to think that it was the bond that had grown between us that made him keep it to himself in all the years that followed.
I found suddenly that I did not want to know myself. I hadn’t prepared myself this far, but I had thought that if I were to do anything it would be after Se’bak had confirmed whether Neophron truly lived in me or not. If not, then let me die. Let the Games go ahead and let Lament soothe itself with the accustomed ritual. But now, standing before him, I only wanted to be free of it all. I did not want to know that I had become only a host for another soul, something that would live through me forever. By the same token, I did not want to know that for the last ten years my life had been no more than a resting place in that soul’s eternal journey. I thought of Selene.
Se’bak held out one of his hands for his staff, gesturing for me to pass it.
I reached for where it was leaning against the bookcase, and when I looked down into his eyes I saw the soft red lights take flame. The understanding passed between us. His jaw hinged open as if he wanted to speak, but there were no more words to say.
‘Se’bak,’ I said. There were tears in my eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’
I let the staff drop from my hand. As the Soulmason reached for it, I drew my sword and struck.
I cannot stress enough the trepidation I felt as I made my way to Zothar’s palace. Troops still marched along the streets and formed up in their mustering yards and it took me longer to navigate my way there than I would have liked. I used the time to clean the blood from my face where Se’bak had struck me in his death throes, to pat down the bone-dust from my tunic. I carried my helm under my arm and ran as fast as I could. When I reached the grand stone steps that led up to the palace doors I was as tired as if I had just ridden all night from Theres.
I paused on the top step before I went in. I looked south, where the high walls of Athrabis at the far end of the avenue were as silent and forbidding as a cliff face. I hoped Selene had managed to escape, that through whichever wicket gate or sally port she had managed to sneak through, the journey home was safe.
‘Sigmar bless you,’ I said under my breath. I glanced to the sky, but Sigmar was not there, or at the very least he hid himself from such as me.
I could hear the crack and roar of Zothar’s voice from the other end of the hall, the polished acre of black marble that seemed as long a distance as I had ever walked. The sound of my footsteps floated up to the shadows of the vaulted ceiling far above. I clutched my helm, felt for the hilt of my sheathed blade, and tried to present a soldierly appearance as I marched into the map room. I hoped Zothar, in his passion, would overlook the cut on my forehead, or assume it had been dealt during the skirmish with Dardus and his renegades; after all, I hadn’t seen him since that moment.
He was stalking from one end of the map room to the other when I entered, screaming and gesticulating at his underlings. Khetera stood there at the side of the room, as stiff and straight as an arrow, Phaetor the Boneshaper with the tendrils wavering like deep-sea fronds on the back of his skull. There were Hekatoi from the other regiments standing at attention too, all of them bearing the brunt of Zothar’s ire. He raged against the traitors of Lament, the renegades and their feeble rebellion, the last scions of the Jackal Kings who he should have crushed a thousand years ago as payment for his son’s death.
‘Nagash can take their bones,’ he screamed, ‘for I would not sully my legion with them! I will build a pyre of Lament and let their vultures feast and watch the bone-crows pick amongst the leavings when all are dead!’
He was so transported by his rage that he drew his scimitar and in one hard sweep brought it down onto the table in the centre of the room. The smoky crystal was cleaved clean in two, the noise like a thunderclap. I glanced to the wall of trophies, taken from all the foes who had felt that ire over the years. I wondered what Lament could possibly contribute to that collection. My mother’s diadem, perhaps. Selene’s robes.
Zothar turned and saw me enter. For a moment his rage faltered.
‘My son,’ he said. ‘I have summoned Se’bak for the examination, but he sends no answer. Have you seen him?’
‘No, Father,’ I said. ‘I have come direct from the Mortisan laboratories and there was no sign of him.’
Zothar cursed. ‘Lost in his research, no doubt, the old fool! Dawn rises, and time draws short! I would have my answer on the state of your soul…’
‘Father,’ I said. I glanced nervously at Khetera and the other Hekatoi, pushing my way through them to stand at his side by the ruins of the crystal table. I lowered my voice, as if speaking in confidence. ‘Father, give me this chance, as you gave it to me before. Let me go to Lament, with strength in force. Let me cut the thorns from this rebellion and spare you the fruit – for the love of your son, do not risk all in Lament’s destruction yet.’
The proud skull turned to face me. The yellow lights of his eyes dimmed as he looked down on me. I caught a glimpse of myself in the polished nadirite of his breastplate, the reflection distorted, skewed, so that I looked like some gangling, half-formed thing beseeching a being of austere power and grace. I held his gaze in that moment, sure that he could see the murder of Se’bak written across my face and that it was only some lingering affection for me that prevented him from cutting me down. I did not flinch.
‘I may be Neophron fully returned,’ I said. ‘Or his soul may have made only a temporary refuge in me, as it has done so many times before. Time presses on us and we cannot wait to test this before the rebels grow bolder. Father, let me stamp your will on Lament, that it may be spared for your purposes until we know for sure either way. Let us not be hasty here.’
The moment balanced on the edge of a blade. I think it was then, more than at any other time, that I truly felt myself a creature of flesh and blood amongst these dry and lifeless bones, for in that room, I was the only one who needed to hold his breath against the outcome of Zothar’s decision.
‘Go,’ he said at last. ‘Take Khetera and five regiments of Mortek Guard. Phaetor, go with them. Invest Lament. Give them this choice – that the ringleaders shall be surrendered and killed and as recompense every adult over the age of twenty-one will give up the bones of their left hand to the tithe. If they refuse, then the Legion of Athrabis will return in force and not a stone of Lament will be left standing.’
He dismissed us and turned away. As the weight of his gaze was removed from me, I felt as if I had been released from a cage. My legs were trembling, my hands shook, but I managed to disguise it. I placed my helmet on my head and saluted, as if no more than a faithful soldier eager to obey his lord’s commands.
I summoned Khetera and together we left the palace to organise the troops. At the door, the wide stone steps spread out before us, Khetera looked at me. The teeth in his skeletal jaw seemed almost like they were smiling.
‘Always,’ he said. ‘Always this weakness when it comes to his son. It will be his undoing at last.’
23
She tried to snatch a moment’s rest when she returned to Astraea’s house, but as hard as the ride across the desert had been, Selene could not sleep. Lying on her bed, the sallow daylight dying in the western sky, she felt tormented by her memories. She thought of Lycus as a boy, climbing the bluffs to the cave of the Jackal Kings. She saw again that shattering moment when Neophron’s head was severed and Lycus was claimed as King Zothar’s son. Those scenes drifted before her eyes like the afterimages of a vacant dream.
She kept thinking back to him, sprawled there on his cot in the gloom of those awful chambers, deep in that terrible city. She had tied her horse by an outcrop of rock half a mile distant and there had been such commotion and disorder in the streets that it had been easy enough to slip through the open gates into Athrabis. She had seen columns of Bonereaper soldiers rushing down radial passageways, troops of cavalry on those monstrous skeletal steeds clattering their hooves down the avenues, but no one had noticed her as she crept from doorway to alley, sneaking further into the city than she would have believed possible. At every moment she expected to be stopped, for drawn swords to pierce her in a dozen places. She had been gripped by such terror as she slunk through the streets, as if she were walking through the very bowels of the Underworlds, that she had almost turned and ran. It was Lycus that had kept her going, more so even than her faith in Sigmar. She could sense the light that flowed from him, the goodness of his heart. It had been like a beacon calling her onwards through the darkness. He was their last, their only, hope.
She remembered the feel of his lips against hers, the breath that caught in his throat. She meant what she had said. She loved him and she had done so for as long as she could remember. There was goodness in Dardus too, she knew, but it wasn’t the same. His cynicism, his rejection of everything Lament stood for, had enthralled her since she was a girl, but as she lay there on the bed she writhed against her guilt. Dardus had buried himself in his anger and what had once made him seem dangerous and exciting now seemed pitiful. He had never been given the chance to be anything other than sardonic and cruel. Even the love she felt for him, weak and insubstantial as it was, hadn’t been enough to free him from his rage.
