No one, least of all him, could have guessed that Harkon had turned. Somehow, during the Blood Dragon’s enforced exile north of the Bastion, his battle-hungry mind had been twisted to the service of the Blood God.
It was shameful. Embarrassing. Mortal cattle could have their heads turned by every petty shaman raving under a standing stone, but a lord of undeath, one of those capable of delivering the Kiss, one of the mightiest servants of Death in the entire world...
The thought made him furious. Harkon had driven a wedge between that which should by now be in unity. Far from gaining the trust of the mortal Emperor, he had slain him. Such rebellion, propelled by weakness, had earned him the torment of a thousand years. It had given Vlad some little pleasure to crush him, taking control of his draconian mount and using the tortured beast to end its own rider.
By then, though, the damage had been done. The Empire army had been routed, handing the servants of the Ruinous Powers an unbreakable momentum. Vlad himself had been forced to withdraw, an ignominy he had suffered too many times over his many lives.
He placed the goblet on the table next to Harkon’s shrivelled head and glowered at the blank-eyed face. ‘Glory-hunting fool,’ he hissed.
The setback was a grave one. Every day saw more corrupted souls flock to the hosts of the North. The Empire was in no condition to offer more than a token resistance – for all Gelt’s boasts, the Bastion was entirely breached now, and the hordes would soon pour through it like blood through a sieve. The scattered cities of the northern Empire, over which he had once cast covetous eyes himself, were as good as lost. No doubt the remnants of Karl Franz’s army would attempt to make some kind of stand at Talabheim and Middenheim, but if there was to be genuine resistance, a chance to recover something before all was lost, it would have to be mounted further south.
‘Altdorf,’ he murmured, remembering his last sight of those white towers. He had got close enough to smell the fish being landed on the quays. For a glorious moment, many lifetimes ago, he had stood on the battlements and seen the entire city spread out before him, supine as a lover, tense for the ushering in of a new age of living death.
He did not know how he would feel when he saw it again. Perhaps the old passions would stir, or perhaps that was all behind him now. That was the strange thing about being reborn – he had to learn about himself again.
He sighed, and shoved Harkon’s head from the table. It hit the stone floor with a wet thud and rolled away.
There could be no postponing the matter now. He had tarried long enough, uncertain how to break the news. There were few souls in the world that could make Vlad von Carstein hesitate, but the Master was one of them.
He sighed once more, pushed himself from his chair and arranged his cloak about him. The fine ermine settled on the polished crimson war-plate. He ran his fingers through his snow-white locks, ensuring not a strand of hair was misplaced.
From the chambers below, he heard the screams of living sacrifices as the last of the rites was completed. It was a waste to end mortal souls in such a way, and he took no great pleasure in it, but establishing a link with the Master over such distances could not be done without some trivial hardship.
Vlad made his way from the chamber and towards the lower levels of the tower. The disaster at Heffengen had to be recounted, and Nagash was not one to be kept waiting.
It was well, then, that he had something else to tell him – a new path to tread, and an old one to revisit. The future was just another aspect of the past, after all, which was yet another lesson his slumber in the halls of eternity had taught him.
The dead did not dream. Neither, it so happened, did their dreams ever die.
PART TWO
The Road to Altdorf
Spring 2525-Autumn 2525
SIX
Gregor Martak, Supreme Patriarch of the Colleges of Magic, awoke from a fevered dream of ruin and terror.
He had done likewise for the past three weeks, and it made him exhausted and irascible. Previously, he had slept phenomenally well. Wizards of the Amber Order were accustomed to deep slumber – they had little to trouble their unwaking minds, and so they slept like the beasts they emulated: in brief, deep snatches, as dreamless as the empty vistas of the underworld.
Martak yawned and scratched his unruly beard. Then he lifted his coarse robe and scratched the rest of himself. Tufts of hay stuck out from every crevice of his makeshift nightshirt, a result of taking his bed in the Imperial Stables. As one of the three most powerful men in the Empire, he could have occupied the most opulent chambers of the Palace. He could have had a staff of hundreds, a whole series of willing and creative companions, and barrel-loads of fine victuals carted into his personal kitchens every morning.
His predecessor, the avaricious and brilliant Balthasar Gelt, had taken full advantage of such opportunities. Martak had always had a sneaking admiration for Gelt, in the way only a man of such completely antipathetic character could. The two of them had never been rivals, for Martak had spent most of his life in the wilds of Taal’s boundless forests, far from the labyrinthine conspiracies of the capital city. Where Gelt had been an accomplished puller of Imperial levers, Martak had been content to remain an uncultured savage, scavenging around the margins while his powers over beast and bower grew steadily stronger.
When news had come in concerning Gelt’s fall from grace, Martak had not been one of the many who had secretly rejoiced. Subsequently being named as Supreme Patriarch had come as a complete surprise. He had been stalking through the wildwoods of the northern Reikland when the summons had come. Six messengers had been dispatched to find him; only one made it, and he had been white from primal fear when he had turned up. The deep forest was no place for ordinary men.
Martak was under no illusions why he had been chosen: he was the least offensive candidate to the largest number of people. The Amber College was a filth-ridden backwater compared to the lofty Gold, Light and Bright Colleges, from whose precincts the Supreme Patriarchs were normally drawn, and that made him a non-contentious choice, particularly as the Emperor was not around to oversee a protracted dispute.
The Amber reputation did not worry him. If his colleagues were too preoccupied by their incessant feuding to see just how powerful the Lore of Beasts could be, and just how completely he had mastered it, then that was their fault to remedy. So he had taken the honour when it had been offered, even putting on a largely fresh robe to receive his staff of office. Then he had left the Palace for the stables, bedding down in the straw and breathing in the thick aroma of horseflesh.
For a while, surrounded by thoroughbreds, he had slept well. Then the dreams had come.
Martak ran his calloused hands through his long greasy hair, and belched. Moving stiffly after his troubled night, he staggered over to a water trough and splashed his face. He walked out of the stable doors, yawning again widely. It was the hour just before the dawn. The eastern sky was a deep blue, casting a weak light across the entire cityscape. Mist rose up from the ground, as white as cream and nigh as thick.