There was a note of desperation in the Slayer’s voice. Maleneth had the impression that Gotrek was propelled by fury more than facts. How much could he really remember? Was he seeking Nagash for revenge or because he didn’t know what else to do? Did he just want to find someone who might know who he was? Since the moment she had met him, Maleneth had sensed that Gotrek was unsure why he was still alive. He was like a hound that had been kicked, bloodied and readied for the hunt, then thrown into a cage.
As Gotrek stormed around the ruins, swinging his axe and cursing, the rune in his chest started to glow.
‘Can you get us to this prince of yours?’ he demanded.
‘I can,’ said Lhosia. ‘I have to reach him. He sent me to check that the borders of the princedom were sound, and they’re in tatters. And if the mordants have breached the Iron Shroud, they could be anywhere.’
‘What is this place?’ asked Trachos. As usual, he seemed two steps removed from the conversation, consumed by whatever strange thoughts rattled around his helmet. He unclasped one of his devices from his armour and pointed its notched ellipses at the architecture. ‘Why did you bring us here in particular?’ He looked around at the empty streets and toppled buildings.
‘It’s my home,’ Lhosia said. ‘It was the easiest place for me to conjure from memory. Besides, before I do anything else I have to warn my family. The Iron Shroud is breached. Morbium has been revealed. I have to make sure our Unburied are safe.’
‘It’s a port,’ said Gotrek.
She nodded. ‘Some of your duardin kin used to pilot aether-ships here, before the fall of the princedoms. They called themselves Kharadron. They used to ship ore here. My ancestors fused it with bone to construct our temples.’
‘There were dwarfs here?’ Gotrek frowned, looking around the ruins with a suspicious expression.
Maleneth laughed. ‘He’s quite the celebrity amongst his own kind.’ She lowered her voice to a mock whisper. ‘They think he’s a god. Oh, the irony…’
Lhosia stared at Gotrek’s scarred, filthy muscles, looking even more baffled. ‘A god? Why would they think that?’
Maleneth rolled her eyes. ‘Because he crawled out of a hole and claimed it was the Realm of Chaos.’
‘Slayers do not lie,’ said Gotrek. ‘The gods promised me a doom in the Realm of Chaos. Then the faithless bastards forgot about me. Now I’m here.’ He peered into the ruins. ‘Do dwarfs… I mean, do duardin still come here?’
Lhosia shook her head. ‘No one comes here. When the other princedoms fell we built the Iron Shroud. Through the wisdom of the Unburied we hid ourselves from the necromancer and even from the Dark Gods. But without the Kharadron we lost contact with the other realms. We are alone.’ She glanced at the corpses next to the shrine. ‘Or, we were.’
‘How can we reach your prince?’ asked Maleneth.
Lhosia nodded to a building that looked more intact than the others. It resembled the bleached bowl of a skull, gleaming and chipped. ‘My family is stationed here, guarding the ruins. They will have already seen that I’m here. It is only a small temple, but we have many Unburied loaning us their sight.’ She waved for the others to follow as she began picking her way through the rubble towards the building.
‘Unburied?’ asked Maleneth. It was a strange word, and every time Lhosia spoke it there was reverence in her voice.
‘The ancestors,’ said Lhosia, glaring at her. ‘The reason we are here. We exist to ensure their future. Our world is an antechamber to theirs – the world that is to come, where we shall join our forebears.’
Gotrek glanced up at that, seeming intrigued. He was about to speak when Lhosia faltered and came to a halt, squinting through the gloom at the building at the end of the pier.
Maleneth gripped her knives. ‘What?’
‘No light.’ Lhosia’s voice sounded odd. She nodded to the curved bone-white walls of the temple. The building was swathed in shadow and looked abandoned. She staggered on, looking dazed and troubled.
Chapter Seven
Harbingers
They rushed on, reaching the building together. It was a coiled teardrop of bone, edged with a silver tracery of symbols that Maleneth did not recognise. The bone looked ridged and grooved, as though made of irregular tiles. The silver glimmered in the starlight, but otherwise there was only darkness.
‘Anyone there?’ bellowed Gotrek, tapping the head of his axe against the walls.
There was an explosion of noise and movement.
Maleneth flipped gracefully back from the building, whipping her knives out of her leathers and landing in a crouch, only to find that Gotrek had disturbed nothing more dangerous than insects. What she had taken for tiles on the surface of the building were actually thousands of pale, diaphanous moths. They were now whirling around Gotrek and the others, fluttering against their faces and filling the air with a frenetic buzz.
Gotrek cursed and waved his axe around, nearly beheading Lhosia in the process. ‘Damn things,’ he grunted, trying to bat the insects away.
Maleneth laughed at the absurd sight of a Slayer doing battle with moths. ‘You don’t like them,’ she snorted.
Gotrek glowered back at her. ‘I like them a damn sight more than witch aelves.’ He waded off through the fluttering cloud, muttering as he batted them away.
Maleneth was still laughing as she struggled after him, amazed by the ridiculousness of the Slayer. She had seen him kill beasts that could best armies and trade insults with a sylvaneth goddess. And here he was, cursing because a few insects were trapped in his beard.
‘Stop!’ cried Lhosia, grabbing Gotrek’s axe and glaring at him in outrage. ‘The harbingers! You’ll offend them!’
Gotrek stared at her. ‘The what?’
‘She means the moths.’ Maleneth laughed even harder. ‘You’re scared of them, and she’s worried about offending them!’
‘Where’s the door?’ cried Gotrek, scowling at Maleneth and then rounding on Lhosia. ‘How do we get in?’
After a wary glance at Gotrek’s axe, the priestess nodded and hurried past him, pointing her scythe at a bone archway that looked like the rib of a long-dead leviathan. Her eyes were wide with fear.
They all rushed after her, entering a circular courtyard with a hole at its centre and metal steps spiralling down into the darkness.
Lhosia hesitated at the top step, looking around the courtyard and shaking her head. She peered down into the darkness. ‘Hello?’ she called, taking a few steps down into the gloom. ‘Mother? Father? It’s Lhosia.’
A clattering echoed up the steps, followed by what sounded like a door slamming shut.
Lhosia glanced back at the others. Her pale, hard features twisted into a scowl.
Gotrek took the scythe from his belt and handed it to her.
She looked at the blade for a moment, then turned and dashed down the steps, vanishing from view.
Maleneth laughed again. ‘By the Bloody-Handed, she’s as eager to die as you are, Gotrek.’
‘We need her alive if we’re going to find this wretched prince,’ he replied, and charged after Lhosia.
Maleneth turned to Trachos with a despairing look. The Stormcast took an instrument from his belt and fixed it to the head of his sceptre with a click. Cool blue light washed over Maleneth’s shoulders, and she climbed down the steps after Gotrek and Lhosia, Trachos following closely behind.
She could make out the Slayer’s squat, bulky form a few steps ahead as he halted in front of a doorway next to the priestess. The door was hanging from its hinges. As Trachos’ light washed over an opening of curved, metal-edged bone, it revealed a glimpse of a large underground chamber beyond.