Oaths and Conquests Read online

  She was inspecting a device of brass and gold, marked by massive gauges. As he threw himself forward, needles moved across their faces, and when he ceased to strain, they dropped back to their resting position. The woman looked at them, marked something on a wax tablet and gave her attention back to him.

  She laughed as if delighted. ‘Far stronger than a mortal man, less strong than some daemons.’

  ‘Go back to the hells that spawned you,’ Balthus cursed, his rage turning his voice to a growl. She smiled up at him winningly. He saw that her canine teeth were long and sharp. Her cheekbones were high, and her violet eyes very large.

  ‘I am not what you think I am,’ she said. ‘And I suspect you are not what you think you are either.’

  Her words did not make much sense. Perhaps she was trying to confuse him. Yet so far she had not attacked him, and she had made no effort to ensorcel him that he could detect.

  Be careful, he told himself, just because you cannot see it, does not mean it is not happening. This was the lair of the spawn of Tzeentch. It would be filled with cunning traps, not all of them physical.

  ‘I am Aesha,’ she said, and paused as if she expected him to recognise the name. He did not give her the satisfaction. ‘And you are Balthus.’

  She smiled when she saw his frown. Clearly, she understood the thoughts passing through his mind. ‘Your companions shouted your name in battle.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I would not be much of a sorceress if I could not watch my troops in the field. Not much of a commander either.’

  ‘A sorceress?’ Balthus glanced at the amulets and sigils spangling the chains on her neck. ‘In the service of the Lord of Lies by the looks of you.’

  ‘That too,’ she agreed. She studied the machinery again as he strained against the chains.

  ‘Keep it up,’ she said. ‘I would like to test your endurance over the long term as well.’

  There was a thundercrack, and the lights guttered and died for a moment. The sorceress looked up and said, ‘The lightning eats away at my wards. Soon, they will collapse.’

  She did not sound too troubled by the prospect. She seemed rather to be amused by it.

  Balthus said, ‘You might have captured me but Sigmar will prevail. Your tower will fall.’

  ‘Most likely. In the meantime, you will continue to help me with my experiments.’

  ‘I will never help you,’ he replied, although he felt certain he knew what her response was going to be before she even spoke.

  ‘You already have.’ She uttered a word of power and a glowing disc flickered into being beneath her. Slowly it raised her into the air, until she was level with him. She was a small woman, even by the standards of mortal men. Compared to his massive altered form, she looked tiny. Despite that, she did not seem intimidated. ‘It’s quite fascinating really.’

  She gestured around her, and he saw his reflection spring into being in many sorcerous mirrors. They did not all show his heavily armoured body. One showed his skeleton with its reinforced bones so different from a normal man’s. Another showed his form as it would be stripped of skin, just muscle and vein and sinew. A third showed an outline that seemed to be made of light, and he knew without ­having to be told that this was his soul, and the flows of energy within revealed the magic bound in his body.

  ‘So like a normal man and yet so unlike. So much alteration to tissue. So much magic compressed so effortlessly into one form. Spells of amazing complexity and power. Nothing less than I would expect from a god.’

  She sounded sincerely impressed as well as curious. He studied her again. Her face was guileless and fair, and in that moment he felt certain he was being deceived. The wiles of the followers of Tzeentch were famous, and this one ranked high among the Changer of Ways’ servants. He knew he must be wary, and that he must escape soon lest he be ensnared.

  She looked directly into his eyes. ‘It has taken me a long time to begin to understand what was done to you and your brethren. There is something beautiful about it. Something awful too.’

  ‘It will take more than a few parlour tricks done with mirrors to impress me.’

  She shrugged. ‘These mirrors took years of work and countless souls. Many had to make sacrifices to complete them. They are works of art in their way. They will reveal all there is to know about your physical form, your spirit and the magic that was used to create you. Or perhaps I should say recreate you.’

  ‘What would you know of such things? Of the work of a true god?’

  ‘More than you might think. I have studied your Sigmar and all his works for an age. I have interrogated daemons and the spirits of the dead. I have learned all I can from the lore that survived the wreck of the World Before Time. Centuries turned to millennia while I did my research, and you, my friend, you represent another piece of the puzzle I have been trying to solve.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How do you become a god?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Your Sigmar started off as a mortal. Many of the gods did – Tyrion, Teclis, Alarielle, even Nagash. In the World Before Time, they were mere mortals. Somehow, they were transformed, or they transformed themselves.’

  Understanding struck him. ‘You seek the key to how they did it – so that you might become one yourself.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You are insane.’

  ‘I am ancient, and I am a sorcerer. These things give you a different perspective on what most call sanity.’

  ‘And you really think that by studying his magic you can learn to do what Sigmar can?’

  ‘He did. He must have. No mortal is born with such knowledge.’

  His lips twisted into a sneer. ‘Your master will object.’

  ‘Perhaps. If he finds out. That is why we are alone in this warded place. Neither he nor my rivals can see us here.’ Her smile was peculiar.

  He threw himself forward against the chains once more, drawing them tight. As he brought his strength to bear, they pulled back against him. She watched, fascinated, the glowing disc carrying her in a circle around the hanging cage so she could view him from every angle. No matter where she moved, her reflection did not appear in the mirrors.

  ‘The more you struggle, the more you are bound. It is part of the spell on your shackles. Whatever force you apply they absorb. They feed on it.’

  Something told him that in this at least she spoke the truth. The chains did grow tighter when he pulled on them. He wondered if this was some form of subtle torture, and whether if he kept pulling, they would become so tight they would lop off his hands and his feet, and turn his limbs to bloody stumps. Even the sigmarite of his armour was starting to groan under the pressure.

  It came to him that there was a way out of this trap. One that she seemed not to have realised. It would mean his death, but it would not matter. His spirit would be freed on the passing of this body, and he would be reforged to fight another day in a new one. He smiled and threw all his strength at the chains. They tightened and the sigmarite halter creaked with the force. He spoke a curse upon her.

  She looked at him for a moment, saw what he was doing. Her violet eyes widened, and she raised a hand and incanted a spell. A wave of pain and power flowed through the chains, and he tumbled forward into what he hoped was oblivion.

  ‘Now, let us see what is revealed by this one’s dreams,’ were the last words he heard her utter.

  All around him the palace burned. The halls echoed with the screams of the dying and the shouts of triumph of the cultists who charged through the corridors, their hands stained red with noble blood.

  As he raced through the Via Sacra, clutching his blade, Lightning, tighter in his fist, he came face-to-face with a massive beak-faced beastman. It capered a
long the corridor drunk on victory, an ancient tapestry wrapped round its shoulders like a cloak and the severed head of an old man dangling by the hair from its left hand.

  The beastman raised the head high and drank the blood dripping from its severed neck. The gore formed a red froth around its mouth. The creature of Chaos saw him and tossed the head at him, sending it tumbling through the air, crimson drops splattering the walls. It bounced off his breastplate and rolled away across the floor. To his horror, he recognised it as belonging to Theobald, his father’s chancellor.

  Interesting, said a female voice he knew he should recognise. He did not dare risk seeking its source with the monster thundering towards him. There’s something wrong here, he thought, but he could not tell what. It was probably the horror of having the hordes of Chaos swarm over the city walls and pass through the gates the traitors had thrown open. Now they were here in the palace, and the trail of dead bodies led him to believe that treachery had opened his father’s stronghold to them as well.

  He raised his sword on high. It shimmered with the chained lightning from which it took its name. He smote the beastman with it. Electricity crackled as he struck the monster. Its muscles spasmed and dung sprayed as the thunderbolt ripped through its body. It was dead before it hit the floor.

  ‘Theobald, you are avenged,’ he shouted, not caring who heard or what it might summon. The time for stealth was over. The city had fallen, his home burned, and the forces of evil strode victorious through the rubble.

  Somewhere in the distance, he heard a voice shouting, ‘For Asqualon and King Aldred!’

  A response came, ‘For Sigmar! Fall back and regroup in the Temple of the Storm!’

  He recognised the voice of his father. He would have known it anywhere.

  Aldred! There’s a name I have not heard in a long age, said the female voice. I had thought him long forgotten.

  He glanced around and saw no one. Was he going mad? Was this some spell? He had vague memories of it from some other place, where a city burned, and war raged through its streets. This is a dream, part of his mind whispered.

  But such a powerful one, said the woman’s mocking voice. And surprising too.

  He had no time for this madness. He must get to the Temple of the Storm and guard his father. As the son and heir, it was his duty. He had sworn an oath he could not break. He charged through the palace, slaying beastmen as he went, leaving bloody footprints on the glorious tilework, racing past the corpses of friends and companions and servants.

  So many dead. Even if by some miracle they threw back the cultists, life would never be the same. And he knew that today, there would be no miracles. Their foes had proven too strong and too treacherous. They had taken advantage of the civil war and the insurrection to overthrow the old order and raise the banners of their daemon gods.

  He heard fighting close by. The symbols carved above the doorway let him know he was nearing the king’s entrance to the temple, the private archway through which only the royal family and their most trusted retainers could pass. Beside it two soldiers lay in pools of their own blood. One sprawled on his back, his chest still rising and falling faintly. He had no time to help the dying man. Ahead, his father fought and might even now be dying. Why had he allowed Lady Dalia to distract him, this night of all nights? She had sought one last evening of love before the end. They had both known it, although neither spoke of it.

  Beyond the archway a horde of savage cultists bellowed and screamed. The king stood near the altar of Sigmar, surrounded by his bodyguards. He met his father’s gaze.

  ‘Son,’ the king said, and stretched out his arm imploringly. Even as he did so his eyes widened, and a glittering shard smashed into his chest, driving through the robes right into his heart. A pulse of magic flickered through the king. He writhed in torment as his skin transformed into a layer of translucent crystal through which muscle and bone could be seen.

  A sorcerer, he thought, and glanced up at the gallery above. A woman stood there, the cowl of her cloak thrown back, a strange polychromatic aura glistening around her left hand. She had a narrow, high-cheekboned face, and her lustrous black curls formed a dark halo around her head. Somehow, he knew her eyes would be violet. He had seen that face before.

  Yes, I was there, said the woman’s voice, though her lips did not move, and the sound seemed to be inside his head. And it appears you were too. How strange.

  There was no way to reach her and no time. Something massive was pushing its way through the cultists. Awful energies flowed around it. Huge wings rose from its back. Twin avian heads perched atop long serpentine necks that writhed horribly as their eyes sought prey.

  Halgar, the captain of his father’s guard, knelt before him. ‘King Leoric,’ he said. ‘Command us.’

  No, not his father’s guard – his. He was the king of Asqualon now, for however many heartbeats he had left.

  ‘Rise, man, and fight!’ he shouted, and then there was time for nothing more. The daemon tore through the elite guards as if they were children with wooden swords. Its monstrous claws shredded armour like it was paper. The swirling energy surrounding it transformed its attackers into puddles of boiling protoplasm. It loomed over him, looking down with glowing eyes that held only mockery, then emitted a long screech that somehow suggested terrible laughter. He smelled its scented breath, driven towards him by the faint movements of its wings.

  One of the heads glared at him. As he met the daemon’s gaze a voice sounded within his head, so loud it almost drowned out all thought. Abase yourself before me, boy! Put down that pitiful little blade and I will let you live so that in time you will come to worship me.

  ‘Never,’ he said. ‘I will die first.’

  There was nothing else to do but attack. His guards were all fallen. He was surrounded by cultists. The most sacred shrine of Sigmar in all the land would be corrupted. He lashed out with his blade and it bit into the daemon’s flesh. The lightning sparked and was absorbed.

  The daemon reached out with one claw and grabbed him by the throat. He felt the unholy strength of the thing and knew it had only to close its fist and its dagger-long talons would end his life. He stabbed at it again and the blade pierced its flesh. The daemon flinched but ignored his stroke. The booming voice filled his mind.

  You will be a fitting sacrifice when I consecrate this altar to myself. I will tear out your heart, devour it and spit the pulp on Sigmar’s most holy shrine. Your god’s time is over, boy. The Age of Chaos is here.

  The daemon dragged him, blood dripping from his neck, towards the altar of Sigmar. The cultists howled their adoration and chanted its praises. He saw one face, watching him from the balcony. A mocking smile hovered on her lips, her violet eyes expressed satisfaction and anticipation.

  Yes. That is how it was.

  Somehow, despite the pain, he managed to maintain his grip on his sword. He knew he was going to die, but he was going to do so with defiance on his lips and his blade in his hand. ‘Sigmar!’ he shouted. ‘Give me strength and give me vengeance!’

  Something answered. Overhead, thunder boomed. A lightning bolt smashed down, crashing through the temple roof and striking the point of his upraised blade. The weapon seethed with colossal godlike energies, far too much for any mortal frame to wield. He knew he had only a moment to do what needed to be done.

  Both daemon heads turned to look at him, the thing’s posture expressing something like surprise. What… is this? The thought echoed through his mind like thunder rolling through a cavern.

  He drove the lightning-engorged blade right through the daemon’s armour, pinning it to the altar. The daemon screamed and discorporated, leaving only its hell-metal shell.

  It was the last thing he saw before oblivion took him.

  Balthus’ eyes opened. He was still in the cage. Still bound by chains. The sorceress sat cross-legged on her floating disc, a g
rimoire open on her lap before her. Her expression was strange.

  ‘What did you do?’ he asked. The confusion he always felt on waking was there, but it was mingled with rage and something else he barely understood.

  ‘I showed you that which was hidden. I looked into your dreams.’ Her tone was odd. If he had not known better, he would have said there was sadness in it, and regret and bitter knowledge. ‘It’s always the same, isn’t it?’

  He surprised himself by saying, ‘Yes. I always dream of that place.’

  ‘I meant all you Stormcasts are the same. This is always what you remember. If I killed you and you were reforged, you would lose another piece of yourself, but some part of your final moments would always remain. That battle will be the last thing you remember even if you remember nothing else. Even if another age passed.’

  Balthus clamped his mouth shut, not willing to give away more to the enemy.

  ‘There’s no need to look so sullenly determined,’ she said. ‘I have already performed the divinations.’

  ‘On me?’

  ‘No. Your companions. You are not the first Stormcast Eternal to be a guest in this fortress.’ She gestured at the mirror and an image appeared. He saw a different Stormcast in the armour of a Hallowed Knight, trapped in this cage and slain with a spell. He saw the body discorporate into lightning and the lightning trapped in the great crystal sphere overhead.

  ‘Murderer,’ he said.

  ‘This is war. You would not hesitate to kill me. Why would I not do the same?’

  ‘That’s the question, isn’t it,’ he snarled, ‘why have you not killed me?’

  ‘Because I am learning from you, and now, I suppose, because we have something in common.’

  ‘We have nothing in common.’