Above the city, the last of the plague-storm clouds were torn away, exposing a clear sky above. The comet burned vividly now, linked to the earth by the roaring column of gold. The expanding fire-dome ground its way outward across the entire valley, rising into the heavens and encompassing the fields of war below. At its edge, the corrupted forest burst and burned, and its foul taints were stripped clear of the raw earth.
For a moment longer, the entire Palace shimmered from the golden storm within, its every portal bleeding pure comet-fire. The dome of Sigmar’s temple flared in answer, reflecting mesmerising rays across a glittering sky. The Reik, for so long a turgid well of slime, burst into cleansing flame, revealing pure waters boiling under the skin of filth. Aeons of grime were scrubbed from the ancient stone walls, revealing Altdorf as in the days of old – the city of white stone, the home of kings, the birthplace of Emperors.
And then, with a final roar, the dome of light shimmered out. The city below it seemed to shudder, and then fall still.
The dead were gone. The corrupted were consumed. Amid the wreckage and the ruins, the surviving human defenders crept out of whatever cover they had found, shading their eyes against the glare that still lingered on the waters.
The air was cold and clear. For the first time in months, the wind tasted fresh. The spores were gone, the cankers had been stripped away.
With a growing sense of awe, they began to realise what had happened. The enemy was destroyed, burned on the altar of wrath, its limitless powers exposed for the sham and trickery they were. Something new had emerged, something unprecedented.
The Palace still glowed from within. Whatever had been unleashed there still lingered, though none dared approach its burning precincts.
All they could do was stare up at the listing battlements and the broken towers, and guess at what new and terrible god now dwelt amid the graven images of the old.
EPILOGUE
As the storm clouds gradually headed north, their heavy aegis broken, the rising sun illuminated a scene of gently steaming devastation.
Everything was gone. The mighty walls had been reduced to rubble, and smoke still curled from the charred remains of the great buildings. The temples, the counting-houses, the merchants’ mansions, the beggars’ hovels – all had disappeared, withered by the fury of the North, rendered down to whitened dust.
The few that had survived lingered in the ruins only for want of somewhere better to go. The remnants of Helborg’s command fanned out from their North Gate fastness, blinking in the suddenly pure light. Bretonnian knights stumbled under the gaping arch of the West Gate, already resigned to the loss of their leader but determined to seek him out. Exhausted townsfolk all across the city fell to their knees, gazing around them in blank amazement.
No victory songs were sung, for every living throat was parched raw. A pall of shock had seeped into the earth. None had the words for what they had seen, and none tried to find any.
Slowly, though, the instincts of survival took over. Men and women began to seek one another out, searching through the rubble for survivors. Under the fractured shadow of the still-huge Palace walls, the few living commanders started to try to impose some sense of order on what remained. Food would have to be found from somewhere, and water drawn, and fires lit, and searches launched. Perhaps Helborg still lived. Perhaps some of the electors still lived.
In the city’s poorest quarter, at the very centre of where the daemon-storms had been greatest, it took a long time for Margrit to do anything other than stare up into the cleared heavens, her heart beating heavily. Eventually her senses returned to her, though the world around seemed as blurred as a badly-remembered dream.
Her fellow sisters pulled themselves up from the stone, their faces drained with shock, their hands still trembling. From within the temple, weak voices could already be heard, crying out, pleading to know what had taken place.
She had no idea what to tell them. It took her a long time to get up, first gently shifting the body of the slain king from her lap. When she stood, she felt light-headed. She tried to remember how the old tenements surrounding the temple had appeared in the past. Now the dome of Shallya was the only thing still standing, and beyond it stretched an empty landscape of smouldering rubble.
But Margrit was a practical woman, and there were already tasks at hand. The temple had to be secured. They had to look to the gardens, to try to salvage anything that might help with the wounded, for there were sure to be thousands of them. She started moving again, speaking to the others, who trod amid the detritus just as numbly as her.
‘There will be answers,’ she told them, not knowing if that were true but needing something to say. ‘For now, remember your vows.’
Once they had something to do, to occupy them, things became easier. The hours passed again, filled with the old tasks of care. A group of knights found their way to the temple, and bore away the body of their king in reverence. Margrit watched them go, making no attempt to lay claim to him. The warriors barely noticed her.
They would not have spoken to her, in any case. They were men of war, and so few of them had ever paid any attention to the women in their midst, unless they were bejewelled queens or ethereal goddesses, and Margrit was neither.
By the time Martak found her, the sun was high in the sky, and a warm wind had started blowing from the south. The wizard looked as filthy as ever, though his long beard looked to have been singed half away.
As he picked his way towards her through the wreckage, Margrit crossed her arms, and waited.
‘You never got me those soldiers,’ she said.
Martak shot her an apologetic look. ‘He was a hard man to persuade.’
‘Was?’
Martak nodded, and Margrit sighed. She had heard men curse Kurt Helborg to damnation during the days of toil, but the Reiksmarshal had stood beside them at the end, and that was worth something.
‘You promised me an Emperor, too,’ she said.
The wizard looked bone-weary. With a grunt, he sat down on a broad stone step. Margrit joined him, and together they looked out across the rubble-strewn courtyard. For a while, neither of them spoke.
‘I do not know what happened,’ said Martak eventually.
‘If you do not, then no one will.’
Martak looked at her. All his earlier gruffness had been ripped from him. His voice was still as earthy as the mulch under the forest floor, but something had changed. He looked… humbled.
‘I brought him back,’ he said, looking unsure how to feel about that. ‘Do not misunderstand me – it was his choice. I tried to get him to escape it, but he wouldn’t listen.’
Margrit placed a calloused palm on Martak’s wringing hands. ‘When you told me he would come back, I believed you.’
‘I was telling you what you wanted to hear.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She summoned a weak smile. ‘The words mattered.’
Martak looked sceptical, but said nothing. He made no attempt to shift her hand from his, and the two of them stayed where they were. Crouched at the edge of ruin, a ragged, dirt-streaked pedlar from the lowliest of colleges and a portly old woman from the most disregarded of temples.