The cats were worried. She could feel it. It was as if they sensed something on the wind. ‘Is it a storm?’ she asked, softly. Sometimes sandstorms whipped through the streets. If she was caught away from home by one, she’d have to seek shelter wherever she could find it. ‘I could go down to the catacombs. Pharus would understand.’
The tomcat meowed again, as if in agreement, then abruptly stiffened and hissed. Elya heard the clatter of a nightsoil cart approaching and darted from the alleyway, followed by the cats. She heard a shout behind her but didn’t stop.
Elya ran through the concentric streets, trying not to think of the sky or how hungry she was. She followed the cats, trusting them to lead her along safe routes. She ran barefoot, her soles toughened by days at play on walls and rooftops of the Gloaming. The cobblestones were warm underfoot, for the moment. As night fell, however, they would become like ice.
Around her, the city woke up for the evening. Sprigs of icethorn and mistletoe were hung upon doorframes and silvered mirrors set in windows. Lamplighters, clad all in black and wearing protective posies of strong-smelling herbs, lit the lanterns that hung above every archway and lintel. Her father, Duvak, would be among them, she hoped, earning money they desperately needed. If he hadn’t crawled into a jug of wine and forgotten his duties.
She caught sight of Freeguild soldiers, in the mauve-and-black uniforms of the Glymmsmen, on their evensong patrol. Some carried long, sharpened stakes of Aqshian flamewood, just in case, while others carried mirrored shields or handguns loaded with salt-and-silver shot. The people of Glymmsforge knew well the dangers of the night and had long since made them routine and ritual both.
The cats led her through one of the twelve great market squares around which life in the city often seemed to revolve. She sprang over a nightsoil cart, eliciting a shout from the collector, and ducked through a vegetable stall, snatching a pallid carrot as she went. She was hungry, and stealing food wasn’t really thievery.
Munching on the carrot, she leapt up onto the display board of a spice stall and danced through the bowls of spices without tipping over a single one. The cats ran alongside or ahead of her, streaking through the evening crowd.
While a few stones were tossed in her direction by angry market-goers, no one dared bother the cats. Not for no reason was a proud mouser a part of the city’s amethyst-and-sable heraldry. Cats were among the most powerful of the city’s defences. Besides keeping out vermin, they could detect the things that were not there. Many a haunting shade or alleyghast had been revealed by the warning hiss of a cat.
Elya followed the cats into a cul-de-sac, one of thousands in this district. Above her, windows clattered shut for the evening, and the smells of holy herbs and braziers of gloomweed filled the air. Somewhere, she could hear the clangour of iron funerary bells, and she knew that the Black Walkers were about and on patrol.
She scrambled behind an abandoned cask as the noise grew louder. A line of shuffling figures came into sight, passing the mouth of the cul-de-sac. The Black Walkers wore dark sackcloth and heavy hoods of the same, hiding their features. Strange sigils had been chalked onto their robes and hoods, and the heavy chains they wore clattered and clanked as they brushed across the cobbles. The funerary bells they rang made the air tremble, as they sang a slow dirge in some language she didn’t recognise. She didn’t emerge from hiding until the last of them had vanished, heading west towards the mausoleum gate.
Her father called them priests, but she didn’t know what god they served. Azyrites seemed to detest them. Elya, born in Shyish, was wary of them. In better days, her father had often told her stories of how the ghosts of dead gods haunted their ruined temples, and how some men still worshipped them, in secret places. Elya shivered. The ghosts of men were dangerous enough. She looked down at the brindle tomcat crouched beside her. ‘We need to go down,’ she said, as the sound of bells faded.
The cul-de-sac sloped downwards. The buildings to either side grew higher, as if trying to escape the shadows of the streets around them. They almost blocked out the sky, which had turned the colour of a bruise. The cats led her to the back wall, where dark thorn brambles and gloomweed grew wild, creeping across the cracked stones. She followed them through the brambles and into a crack in a wall, squeezing slightly, scraping her shins and banging her head. Behind the crack was a tunnel of sorts, a place where the stones leaned against one another in haphazard fashion.
Water collected here, running in chill rivulets between the stones. The dark swallowed her. It was cool and damp. The sounds of the marketplace and the clangour of the bells were muted. All she could hear was the constant drip of the water and the purring of her four-legged companions.
They led her around and down, through dark passages and cramped stairwells, into the deep catacombs. Elya scampered through the maze of forgotten rooms, through flooded cellars and beggar-warrens. She had made the journey a thousand times before, and felt none of the fear one might expect as she descended into the dark.
Elya liked the catacombs. They were far away from the bustle of the city. She liked the long, silent avenues that stretched for miles on end. She could wander for hours among the great mausoleums that had been carved into the sides of the curving tunnels and among the hills of crypts, one set atop the next, stretched up, up and up. Or down, down and down, depending on your perspective. She passed freely through the mirrored passages and the webs of silver chain that kept the unquiet dead at bay.
But most of the dead were at peace here, in the dark. Even so, mortals weren’t allowed down here. Pharus said so. He lived down here, in the dark. He had only come up to the light once, that she could remember.
But she didn’t like to think about that day. Her mind shied away from it, away from a red memory, full of sound and fury.
The cats stopped. So did she. She dropped to her haunches, watching the dark ahead. The walls moved, down here. Things were never the same way twice. Sometimes, she’d scared herself by walking into her own reflection, or found herself trapped in a tunnel that was no tunnel at all, but instead a construct of canvas and clever angles. The guardians of the catacombs liked to play tricks. But the cats always knew where they were and warned her.
The big, brindle mouser with the scarred lip hissed softly. Elya flattened herself and scuttled off the path. A moment later, the tromp of heavy feet sounded in the dark. Armour rang against the stone, as clear as the bells of the Black Walkers. But these warriors served a living god, rather than a dead one.
From her hiding spot, she watched the giant warriors, clad in black war-plate and bearing weapons such as a mortal man might struggle to lift, stride down the path. Stormcast Eternals were a common enough sight in Glymmsforge. They guarded the city from danger – both above and below. These wore heavier armour than the ones she usually saw, decorated with morbid totems that made her skin crawl, and they carried heavy, two-handed hammers.
She felt a thrill of fear. The Stormcasts were frightening, though not in the same way as the Black Walkers. They were like statues come to life, too big and too strong not to evoke nervousness. But they meant no harm, she knew. Not to her, at least.
The two warriors stopped, just opposite her hiding place. They spoke to one another in low tones that set her bones to vibrating. Then, one turned and stared at her hiding spot. She held her breath.
‘I see you, child,’ he said, in a voice like crashing rock. He sounded disapproving.