When they reached the centre of the shrine, the woman waved them into the pulpit and indicated that they should sit beside her on the knotted shapes.
‘Press your palms to the stone!’ she cried.
Maleneth rushed to Gotrek’s side. ‘Is there anyone you won’t put your trust in?’
The Slayer laughed and nodded to the chaotic scenes around them. The ghouls were in such a frenzy that they were turning on each other, tearing at their crooked limbs in their desperation to reach the last standing shrine. ‘Stay here if you like.’
Gotrek slapped his meaty hand down next to the woman’s, gripping a spur of stone that jutted up from the centre of the pulpit.
Trachos pointed his sceptre and lightning ripped from the metal, tearing a ghoul’s chest open before lashing through another one’s head. ‘There’s no option,’ he said, using the sceptre to club a ghoul that leapt at him from another direction. He put his hand down next to Gotrek’s, the metal of his gauntlet clanging against the stone.
Maleneth looked at the red-faced woman. She had gripped the stone in both hands and closed her eyes, whispering furiously. Indigo flames flickered between her fingers, and a breeze washed through the pulpit, causing Maleneth to shiver and curse. This was necromancy, whatever the woman claimed. She could smell death magic on the air.
The shrine began to judder, crumbling under the weight of the ghouls.
Maleneth muttered another curse and put her hand on the stone.
Cold rushed through her, and she gasped in pain. She tried to pull her hand free, but it was frozen in place.
‘What is this?’ she hissed at the woman, but the priestess was oblivious to anything other than her incantation. Her eyes were closed, her head was tilted back, and she was mouthing arcane, sibilant phrases.
‘If you have betrayed–’ began Maleneth, but her words were drowned out by a deafening grinding sound as the stone briar tightened its grip, clenching like an enormous fist, enveloping them all in a cage of bristles.
Maleneth cried out as thorns punched into her. She tried again to wrench her hand free, but it was no use.
Dozens of crumbling tusks sliced into her, and as the world grew dark, the talisman at her neck spoke up, its voice full of derision.
You can’t even die elegantly.
Chapter Six
Morbium
‘Ditch maid!’ roared Gotrek.
Maleneth was in darkness, but the Slayer’s bludgeoning tones could only mean one thing – she was still alive. She had mixed emotions about this.
‘It’s Witchblade,’ she muttered, struggling to sit up. She was tightly bound and her arms were numb from blood loss. She cursed herself for not killing the priestess.
‘Aye,’ replied Gotrek, sounding infuriatingly cheerful. ‘Ditch maid. Get off your arse. Look at this.’
Someone moved towards her, and there was a grind of shifting stones. As her face was uncovered, she saw the heavens whirling overhead. The strange black stars had vanished, replaced by the usual glittering constellations, but they were hazy and faint, as though seen through a gauze.
Maleneth’s neck was stiff with cold, but she managed to turn and see who had uncovered her. It was Trachos, starlight shimmering over his battered mask.
‘The priestess was telling the truth,’ he said.
‘This is Morbium,’ said the priestess. Maleneth could not see her, but she recognised her taut, furious voice, coming from somewhere up ahead in the darkness. ‘Soul prominent. Last bastion of the Gravesward and the royal demesne of Prince Volant, nineteenth heir to the Sable Throne and Morn-Prince of the Lingering Keep.’
Trachos moved more stone off Maleneth, and she managed to stand, slapping her legs and arms, summoning blood back into her limbs. The stone was the remnants of the shrine. Its thorny limbs were in pieces and the corpse cages shattered, leaving the bodies to spill onto the ground, where they now lay motionless.
She looked around. They were on a ruined quay, but it was a quay that hung out over the strangest sea Maleneth had ever seen. Its towering waves were all motionless, as though they had been hammered from iron. She stared at the bizarre view for a moment, wondering if the water was frozen, but while the air was chilly, she was sure it was not cold enough to freeze an entire ocean. The waves just seemed to be paused in a moment, like a sea that had been made for a stage set.
Piers jutted out across the lifeless tides, constructed from the same fractured bones as everything else. The scale of the place was shocking. Maleneth had seen nothing so grand since leaving Hammerhal. Behind her, the quay joined an iron road, or a bridge of some kind, that led out across the sea, trailing off into the shadows.
‘I haven’t seen craftsmanship like this since the Hearth Halls of Karaz-a-Karak,’ muttered Gotrek, staring out at the grand, crumbling piers. He almost sounded impressed. ‘Who built this?’ he asked, his breath coiling around him in the cold air.
The priestess was still picking her way from the ruined shrine and dusting her robes down, too dazed to realise she was being addressed. Maleneth noticed that she was mouthing words as she moved – numbers, by the look of it, as though she were counting something.
Gotrek repeated his question in even more bombastic tones, and the priestess looked up. ‘The Morn-Prince,’ she said. ‘The first Morn-Prince, at the dawn of the Amethyst Princedoms.’
Gotrek stooped and picked up a piece of mangled metalwork. Even broken it was beautiful – intricately scored bone inlaid with strips of silver that depicted skulls and insect wings. ‘Not bad for a bunch of ghost-botherers.’
‘We do not “bother” our dead.’ The priestess looked at her scythe, still tucked into Gotrek’s belt, her eyes smouldering. Her face was flushed with anger, and Maleneth could see that she was struggling not to attack Gotrek. ‘We watch over them just as they watch over us. We revere our ancestors.’
Maleneth nodded at the corpses slumped in the shrine’s broken cages. ‘Did you revere them?’
The woman sneered. ‘They were mordants. I wiped their minds and turned them on their own kind. There are not worthy of anything more.’
‘You’re a witch?’ Gotrek looked as though he had tasted something unpleasant.
‘I am Lhosia, High Priestess of the Cerement. Spiritual adviser to the Morn-Prince.’ She nodded towards the scythe at her belt. ‘What power I have is tied to the ancestors.’
‘Sounds like ghost-bothering to me,’ grunted Gotrek, picking rubble from his mohawk.
Maleneth had climbed from the ruined shrine, and she stepped out towards Gotrek and Lhosia. ‘This Morn-Prince you serve. We were told he could lead Gotrek to Nagash.’
The priestess frowned. ‘Why would you seek the necromancer? Most people would do anything to avoid him.’
At the mention of Nagash, Gotrek’s expression had soured. ‘The gods owe me a doom. I don’t care if it’s the bone-head or the thunder-dunce – someone’s going to give me what I was promised.’ He waved his axe, causing its brazier to flicker. ‘Either way, this thing will end up embedded in a god.’
Lhosia laughed in disbelief. ‘You’re at war with the gods?’
‘We all are, lass. I’m just taking the fight to them.’
‘The necromancer promised you something?’ Lhosia glanced at Maleneth with a baffled expression.
Maleneth shrugged.
Gotrek’s beard bristled. He stomped across the ruined metal, muttering in an archaic duardin tongue. ‘I don’t know who promised me what anymore,’ he snapped, ‘but I know I was robbed of my doom. Nagash knows what I’m owed. He’ll remember me.’