The figures upon the dais glowered down at Puskab for several minutes, their malignant scrutiny causing the plague priest to shiver and his glands to tighten. When they did deign to speak to him, it was the fierce tones of Warmonger Vecteek that boomed down from the shadowy thrones.
‘Poxmaster Puskab,’ Vecteek snarled. ‘We are pleased with your gift-offering. The man-things wither under the Black Plague. Their cities rot from within. They cower inside their burrows and hide from their own neighbours. They shall be easy-meat for our armies!’
Puskab bowed before the dais, crooking his head so he exposed his throat in the proper gesture of submission. ‘Happy-proud to serve-help great lords,’ Puskab said. ‘Black Plague kill-kill much-much. Many man-things sick-die! Bring-make glory to Horned One!’
‘Too many die!’ snapped High Vivisectionist Rattnak Vile. ‘Leave none to catch-take! No slave-meat to grow food and dig tunnels!’
‘And the plague strikes our own!’ growled Warpmaster Sythar Doom. ‘We have been forced to burn the burrows of Clan Verms because they caught your plague!’
Puskab quivered as the Grey Lords made their accusations. Any one of these tyrants could have him killed on the spot and none would be the wiser. He turned his eyes across the shadowy rim of the dais, trying to pierce the haze and appeal to his patron.
‘The infection of the Hive wasn’t the fault of Puskab Foulfur,’ Blight declared, his voice a threatening growl. ‘The Poxmaster has come here, braved the Twelve Tests to challenge the traitor who sits in our midst! He has come to topple this greedy maggot who has endangered all Skavenblight by his murderous schemes! The Horned Rat has allowed him into the Chamber of the Thirteen, that he may purge this council of the corruption within its ranks!’
The arguing Grey Lords fell silent as Blight’s words echoed through the great hall. ‘Is this true?’ the hacking tones of Arch-Plaguelord Nurglitch rasped. ‘Have you come here to challenge a traitor for his seat upon the council?’
Puskab raised his horned head, pulling the tattered hood back from his decayed face. ‘Survive-win Twelve Tests,’ he growled. ‘Now-now want-take Thirteenth Challenge! Take-win name-rank of Lord of Decay!’
Hisses and snarls filled the shadows as the lords of skavendom reacted to the reckless effrontery of the plague priest’s demands. Tradition and the convoluted politics of the Under-Empire dictated that Puskab had earned the right to make his challenge, but the villainous despots didn’t appreciate the callous way he addressed them.
‘Puskab is right,’ Blight shouted down the other lords. ‘The destruction of my warren demands justice! Challenge the traitor-meat! Remove his stink from the Shattered Tower!’
Puskab’s lips pulled back in a feral grin, exposing blackened fangs and bleeding gums. ‘Claim-fight traitor-meat who sick-kill Clan Verms! Claim-fight heretic-spleen who think-want poison-slay all skaven!’ The plague priest raised his fat claw and pointed to one of the black thrones.
‘Claim-fight Blight Tenscratch!’
Bylorhof
Ulriczeit, 1111
Frederick sat in a wicker chair, his back to the wall of the mortuary, his priest’s robes pulled tight against the preternatural cold which surrounded him. He stared out across the morbid chamber. It was silent now; the gnawing and scratching of rats as they fed upon the dead had been absent these past few days. Even the vermin had been driven off by the fell energies converging upon the place. There was only one living thing in the entire graveyard now.
The priest stared at the stone knife resting on the floor beside his chair. Many times he had taken up that blade and set it against his wrist. Against the horror he had unleashed, death would be a welcome release. That is, if death was still an option for him. It lacked the same finality with which he had regarded it a week ago.
He raised his eyes from the knife and gazed upon the silent, unmoving shapes facing him. Frederick had ordered them here and they had come. He could order them to leave, and they would go. If he closed his eyes and pictured their arms raised in salute, the decayed arms would rise. His merest whim was unbreakable law to these zombies. Creatures with no will of their own, they were utterly enslaved to the necromancer’s desires. Frederick found the concept alternately fascinating and abominable. His mind whirled with thoughts of power and emotions of blackest despair.
Necromancer. Another word from the tomes of Arisztid Olt, the title of the most reviled heretic of them all — the magician who pierced the veil between life and death, who drew his sorcery from the very emanations of the grave. One of the insane monsters who followed the forbidden arts of Nagash the Accursed.
Frederick tried to tell himself he wasn’t such a creature, that a vast gulf separated him from an apostate like Olt. He knew the argument was a lie, a final desperate effort to cling to decency and morality, to keep faith with the gods he had betrayed.
There was a reason why, for all his cleverness, Olt had been discovered. The temple had been built upon a nexus point, a convergence of magical forces that magnified any act of sorcery. When Olt had practised his spells, he had opened a gateway he could not shut. The dark energies had swelled and grown until they could not be ignored. That had proven Olt’s downfall. It had also proven the source of Frederick’s curse.
When he had conjured the ghost of Aysha, the priest had opened the floodgates. The baleful emanations, once tapped, had refused to recede. They had spread, directionless and unfocused, acting upon the subconscious desires of the necromancer who had drawn upon them. Locked within his mind were all of Olt’s spells and secrets, the knowledge of generations of sorcerers and witches stretching back to the sands of Nehekhara. In his slumber, his dreaming mind had evoked those spells and the directionless energies had brought them into being. Frederick’s guilt and shame at being unable to save the people of Bylorhof from the plague had resulted in the unconsecrated dead rising again as zombies — a sardonic and aimless refutation of the Black Plague.
It was a feat to impress any warlock — conjuration without apparatus or gesture, magecraft by sheer force of will alone. Frederick had never imagined such ability to lie untapped within his mind. If he had, he should have killed himself long ago.
The necromancer scowled at the rotting zombies standing before him. He was tempted to tell them to jump in a lake, except that was exactly what they would do. There was no limit to their servitude. As an experiment he had ordered one of them to chew off its own arm. Neglecting to specify which arm, he had looked on in amazement as the zombie gnawed its way through each arm in turn.
Emperors and kings did not command such loyalty! Frederick shuddered at the hideous power he possessed. Yet might such horror not be turned towards benevolence? Must only evil arise from evil? He was still a decent man, moral and just. He could control this terrible power. He would not allow it to control him.
Frederick rose from his chair, stalking past his zombies. He faced one of the niches, the niches filled with the corpses of Bylorhof’s dead. These bodies had failed to reanimate under the influence of the necromancer’s subconscious. Shriven, protected by rituals sacred to Morr, these dead were already consecrated. The protection against evil had been enough to fend away his undirected magic. But what would happen, he wondered, if he were to wilfully concentrate his power upon one of these bodies?
The necromancer turned away. A snap of his fingers sent a pair of zombies shambling over to the niche. Without uttering a sound, the undead reached into the corpse pile and dragged out the body of a young woman. Still acting upon their master’s unspoken command, the zombies carried their morbid burden to the stone table, laying it prostrate upon the cold surface.