He unwrapped it quickly.
‘So ugly!’ he hissed. ‘Not like skaven pups. Come-come! You sing for Thanquol now.’
Thanquol drew his knife and placed the squealing bundle in the centre of the circle.
When he was done, Thanquol carefully dripped the blood into the gouges in the floor. His usual frenetic movement became measured as he carefully filled in each. This had to be done precisely. Messing it up didn’t bear thinking of. He whispered words of summoning under his breath, hoping it wouldn’t be like the last time, hoping that…
Skarbrand…
Do not think-recall the name! he told himself. It was probably still listening. He calmed himself, waited until the memories of the bloodthirster he’d accidentally called up the last time faded, then continued.
He placed the pup’s remains and its bloodied rags outside the circle, and held up his hand-paws.
Although his past efforts had ended in disaster, once more the white-furred sorcerer attempted to slice the veil between realms. Once more he attempted to bring forth a verminlord. He spoke-squeaked the words of power, calling upon the Horned Rat and the mightiest daemons of his court. Green fire crackled from his eyes and between his upraised paws.
‘Come-skitter! Join me in the realm of the mortal! I command you! I, Grey Seer Thanquol so squeak-say!’ he said. There was a blast of power and the fabric of reality rippled.
He stood there exulted, hands still upraised. It was working!
Nothing happened.
He let his arms drop, and looked around. The room was unchanged. He was alone.
Once more Thanquol had failed. This time, at least, he had not done so with the same disastrous consequences as his previous attempt. He groaned. His paws clenched.
‘Why-why?’ he said. The temptation was to storm out, destroy the circle, and find someone else to blame. But he could not. He was the one being blamed – entirely unjustly – by others. He had to succeed.
Tail swishing, the grey seer paced out of the circle, careful not to scuff the marks. He went around and inspected them all.
‘Perfect! Perfect! They are all perfect! The Horned Rat himself could not have drawn them better. Why-why does it not work?!’ he squealed angrily. The bloody rags caught his eyes. Maybe two…?
It was then that Thanquol perceived a shadowy hand reaching out of the blackness gathered in the chamber’s vaulted ceiling. The claws ripped through reality with a screech that sent pain running down his spine. The enormous hand headed unerringly for him. He found that he could not move, not even when the hand grabbed him by the ankles and lifted him upright, dangling him upside down as its owner stepped out of a black abyss of shadows. Remembering the fate of Kritislik, Thanquol liberally vented the musk of fear.
But he was not consumed. The entity stepped through into the realm of the mortal, casually bestriding Thanquol’s protective circle. It examined him with curiosity, peering at him this way and that.
Thanquol could do nothing but squeak in wide-eyed wonder. He had seen verminlords before, of course, but never anything like this. No horns had ever sprouted so majestically as the ones upon its head. Multiple sets curved and entwined the daemon’s face. They seemed to sinuously curve and move as Thanquol watched them. Beneath the horns one eye was missing. In its place was not an empty socket, but a warpshard, or if the angle was correct, a black hole of endless nothing. Thanquol’s head throbbed as he looked into it.
‘Ahhh, Thanquol, you took your time. Perhaps you are not so gifted as I thought?’ it purred. ‘I have waited for you to call me. Yes-yes, we have much to do.’
‘Who-what are you, O great master?’ shrilled Thanquol.
The creature placed him gently alongside the channel. Only then did the grey seer notice that one of the verminlord’s foot-paws was in the drain. It did not sink into the river of filth but hovered above it.
The ancient being stooped to Thanquol’s level.
‘Our name is Lord Skreech Verminking,’ said the verminlord. ‘There are many of us, and one.’ As he spoke, Thanquol saw before him – or perhaps he imagined it – the verminlord’s visage flicker, revealing many ghostly aspects that together somehow made the face the creature wore: the contagion-ridden body of a plague priest, the shadowy assassin, the hungry hordes, the tinkering weaponsmith, the future-gazing seer. ‘The ruins, the decay, they give me power. I was called here by blight and destruction. There is much in the world in this time, and it is good,’ it said, sniffing the air and craning its neck. ‘And by you, Thanquol.’
Thanquol swallowed in awe. Could it be? The grey seers had long spoken in whispers of ‘the One’, a Rat King – a conglomerate evil. As mortal skaven had their hierarchies of clan, caste, and rank, so too did the verminlords above them. There was one, an entire Council of Thirteen elevated by the Horned Rat in the past to daemonhood as one creature. He was their ruler, the lord of the supposed Shadow Council of Thirteen. Had Thanquol really just summoned forth the most powerful of all verminlords? He had always known he was special, but this was pleasing confirmation. Pleasing indeed. He smiled.
The grey seer looked up into that strange face staring back at, and possibly through, him. It seemed to have read his thoughts, for it looked down upon him indulgently, its enormous claw reaching out to ever so gently stroke his horns. ‘I am who you think I am, yes-yes, little seer. You have a purpose. I have need of your singular talents. Together we shall conquer.’
Thanquol’s heart soared. With this creature at his side, none could stand before him! He couldn’t wait to see Skribolt’s face, or to smell him squirt the musk of fear.
‘Nuln-place first?’
The verminlord nodded its head, pleased with the seer, or so it seemed to the conceited Thanquol. ‘And much more besides. We have many tasks ahead of us. But first, gifts!’
Impossibly, a huge shape was in the corner of the room, half shadowed, like it had been there all the time and was patiently waiting for its cue. Thanquol’s eyes widened. The largest rat ogre he had ever seen stepped out of the shadows.
Thanquol’s whiskers twitched with glee.
‘Many thanks-gratitudes for such beneficent generosities, O great and unplumbably wise Lord Verminking!’ Thanquol’s eyes narrowed, his imagination alive with much smashing and kill-slaying. ‘I shall call him Boneripper,’ he said.
In the war council of the Nuln-place clawpack, all was not well. For hours the skaven assailing the city had hurled accusations at each other by the dimly flickering light of warp-braziers. The room the council occupied was a small one, built and forgotten by humans long ago, and pitifully insufficient in size to contain so many over-weaning egos.
‘I say-squeak you are a worthless weak-meat, and all Clan Vrrtkin are puny-small and shifty!’ squeaked Warlord Throttlespine of Clan Kryxx. He had drawn his sword and pointed it at Warlord Trikstab Gribnode of Clan Vrrtkin. ‘You are at fault for our lack of success, tricking and lying and attacking when we should fight together.’
‘Lies, lies! Not good lies either,’ squealed Gribnode. He pulled his own sword. The other members of the war council stood hurriedly from the table, upsetting their chairs. ‘All knows Thanquol-seer is weak link in rusty chain here, and you are next weakest, Throttlespine. Banish Thanquol, great and cunning Warlock Skribolt! Banish him, so we not have to suffer the stink of his slack musk-hole! It is this that foils our efforts! Then let us banish Throttlespine. He is in league with Thanquol! His cowardice too is legendary.’
Throttlespine growled and jumped onto the table. ‘Coward, am I? I lead from the back of my ratkin as every true warrior should-must, whereas you, where are you? Skulking and hiding off the battlefield! You are to blame, and seek to smear my good-true name with ordure of failure. I am a loyal servant of the council!’