‘There you are, lad.’
‘Is it real?’ Bayla asked in amazement. ‘I was told there was no key in all existence!’
‘An aelf tell you that, did he?’ said the dwarf sourly. ‘Don’t trust them. Besides,’ he added slyly, ‘he never said anything about outside existence, did he?’
‘Thank you,’ Bayla said.
‘A fair bargain for your kindness, and that ale.’ The dwarf stood up and brushed off his knees. ‘Right then, got to be going. Things to do, people to sneak up on unawares.’ He laughed at his own jest.
‘Who are you?’ asked Bayla.
Deep in the stranger’s hood, eyes twinkled. ‘Just a traveller, lad, much like yourself.’ With that, he went into the night, and disappeared.
Bayla could not know if the key was genuine or not, but he had no choice. By the same tortuous route, the mage returned to Ghyran. The road to the mountains took him far from his home, but he was eager to complete his quest.
For a further three years he searched for the gate. Only by questioning the local inhabitants carefully did he glean an inkling as to its whereabouts, and even then he wasted many months in fruitless search. Strange lights shone on the far side of the mountains that no mortal had ever crossed, tantalising him unbearably.
Eventually, by chance it seemed, he came across a door barely big enough to admit him, set high in a cliff face. With trembling hands, Bayla slid the key home. It fit perfectly and turned smoothly, as if recently oiled. The door swung inward, and Bayla squeezed inside. At first he had to wriggle his way down a tiny tunnel, but it soon opened up into a wide, well-made passageway, with walls of fine masonry. By his magic he lit his way. Soon after his entrance, Bayla’s ears were troubled by a thundering rumble, and a hot wind that went in and out — the breath of the monster that guarded the way. Several days of travel later, during which Bayla lived off bitter mosses and water dribbling down the walls, the tunnel opened up into a giant cave. At the centre was chained a wolf of impossible size. Its head was as large as a cathedral, and rested on paws big as houses. Four thick chains ran from its collar, securing it to anchors set in the wall. All through Bayla’s walk the noise of its breathing had become louder. In the cave it howled like a hurricane. It looked asleep, but as he approached, eyes big as pools opened and stared redly at him.
‘You cannot pass,’ it said. ‘None can, whether god or mortal. It is the law, of which I am prisoner and guardian both.’
‘Then I shall kill you,’ said Bayla.
The wolf gave out a howling laugh that buffeted the mage back and forth.
‘You can try.’
Bayla had come prepared with every spell of death he could muster. Raising his arms, he flung back his head, and called down the most potent slaughter-curse in the realms.
The magic released was primordial and deadly. It screamed as Bayla drew it from the rock of the mountain and fashioned it into a spear of crackling power. With a roaring incantation, he cast the energy at the wolf.
The magic hurtled at the beast, piercing it between the eyes. The wolf cocked its eyebrow, unharmed. ‘You will have to do better than that,’ it said.
Sanasay Bayla tried. Nothing worked. The wolf was impervious to the direst magics known. Frustrated, Bayla even attempted to stab it in its massive paw with his dagger. The metal shattered. The wolf grumbled with mirth.
‘I have not had such entertainment in many ages,’ it said.
Bayla glared at it. ‘Let me pass,’ he said.
‘I shall not,’ said the wolf.
‘Then you leave me no choice.’ Bayla pulled out a crystal phial, full of a dark liquid. Defiantly looking the wolf in the eye, Bayla threw down the stopper and drained the bottle. ‘Poison,’ Bayla said. ‘Now we shall see who has the last laugh.’
He fell down, dead.
The world changed. Bayla’s soul rose from his body. From rocks that now glowed with inner light rose screaming ghosts, luminous scythes in their hands. They rushed at him, fleshless jaws wide, swinging their weapons for the thread that joined Bayla’s body to his soul.
Bayla had no intention to die completely. As the cavern receded from him at tremendous speed, he fought against the gatherers of souls with his magic, keeping them from severing his connection to the Mortal Realms. Through planes inhabited by the strangest things they sped, thundering down through veils of layered realities toward the Realm of Shyish, where the abode of mortals abut those places beyond even the gods’ ken.
Bayla burst through a cavern roof, the gatherers swooping around him. Shyish revealed its dreary landscapes. He flew over shadowy villages and moonlit meres, vast bone deserts and forests of trees that shivered with the sorrow of imprisoned souls. Parts of this land were roofed in stone, and from holes gnawed through it tumbled an endless rain of corpses, the dead of many realms come to take their final rest.
Ahead there was a mighty necropolis, a city of pyramids and bone towers whose edges crackled with a nimbus of soul light. The gatherers redoubled their attacks, their wails draining the warmth from Bayla’s being, their scythes only ever a moment from reaping his soul.
The battle continued right to the gates in the city’s wall of bone. Bayla halted. A man stood there, cadaverous, but alive. With a flick of his wrist he dismissed the gatherers of souls, leaving the disembodied essence of Bayla alone.
‘You are dead, and yet your thread is not cut,’ said the necromancer. ‘Why do you resist the inevitable?’
‘I am Sanasay Bayla, of Ghyran. I die because I wish to speak with the Lord of Death.’
The necromancer smiled, exposing black teeth. ‘Be careful what you wish for, Sanasay Bayla. My lord has been expecting you.’
Bayla was led through streets of bone and dark granite where the dead were legion. The recently dead were engaged in the never-ending task of expanding Nagash’s city, heaping bone and fashioned stone into new buildings. Skeletal warriors tramped the streets in rattling cohorts. Vampire lords rushed by in dark carriages. But though the city was huge, and populous, there was not a voice to be heard. The dead executed their duties in silence but for the hideous clattering of bones that echoed from every street.
They went to a black pyramid whose sides gleamed like mirrors, and whose capstone was of pure wyrdstone. Deep inside, past numberless deathrattle regiments, Bayla was brought into a lofty hall. There sat Nagash, Lord of Death, surrounded by the ageless pomp of his court. Ghostly handmaidens circled him, singing mournful songs.
‘Who dares to tread the road of death to Shyish, and yet is not dead?’ said Nagash.
Bayla’s soul stepped forward boldly, the thread of his mortal life held lightly in one hand. ‘It is I, great one, Sanasay Bayla of Andamar in Ghyran. I have come to seek an audience.’
Nagash’s bony jaws clacked mirthlessly. ‘To beg a favour, I think. What do you seek?’
‘I have sought many years to find passage to Realms’ End,’ he said. ‘I have come close to fulfilling my quest, but my way is barred.’
‘Afrener, the wolf at the door,’ said Nagash. ‘He keeps guard.’
‘I was told only death can kill him. You are death. Strike him down for me, so that I might look into the spaces beyond reality, and discover my true purpose in this life.’
Nagash stared at him with empty eye sockets. ‘Sanasay Bayla, I know you as I know all mortals. All creatures pass through my domain sooner or later, and echoes of them are here forever. I never grant mortals favours, but for you I will make an exception, if only because you are a mage of awesome power. Agree to serve me for five hundred years and five days after your death, and I shall grant your desire, and slay this beast.’
‘And what after five centuries?’
‘You shall pass from Shyish, which for all its affinity with the beyond is but a Mortal Realm, into the Unknown Countries past my borders, as all souls ultimately must.’