Godsbane Read online

  Other great stories from Warhammer Age of Sigmar

  DOMINION

  A novel by Darius Hinks

  STORMVAULT

  A novel by Andy Clark

  THUNDERSTRIKE & OTHER STORIES

  Various authors

  An anthology of short stories

  HARROWDEEP

  Various authors

  An anthology of novellas

  A DYNASTY OF MONSTERS

  A novel by David Annandale

  CURSED CITY

  A novel by C L Werner

  THE END OF ENLIGHTENMENT

  A novel by Richard Strachan

  BEASTGRAVE

  A novel by C L Werner

  REALM-LORDS

  A novel by Dale Lucas

  GHOULSLAYER

  A novel by Darius Hinks

  GITSLAYER

  A novel by Darius Hinks

  HALLOWED GROUND

  A novel by Richard Strachan

  KRAGNOS: AVATAR OF DESTRUCTION

  A novel by David Guymer

  • HALLOWED KNIGHTS •

  Josh Reynolds

  Book One: PLAGUE GARDEN

  Book Two: BLACK PYRAMID

  • KHARADRON OVERLORDS •

  C L Werner

  Book One: OVERLORDS OF THE IRON DRAGON

  Book Two: PROFIT’S RUIN

  Contents

  Cover

  Backlist

  Warhammer Age of Sigmar

  Godsbane

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Realm-Lords’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  The Mortal Realms have been despoiled. Ravaged by the followers of the Chaos Gods, they stand on the brink of utter destruction.

  The fortress-cities of Sigmar are islands of light in a sea of darkness. Constantly besieged, their walls are assailed by maniacal hordes and monstrous beasts. The bones of good men are littered thick outside the gates. These bulwarks of Order are embattled within as well as without, for the lure of Chaos beguiles the citizens with promises of power.

  Still the champions of Order fight on. At the break of dawn, the Crusader’s Bell rings and a new expedition departs. Storm-forged knights march shoulder to shoulder with resolute militia, stoic duardin and slender aelves. Bedecked in the splendour of war, the Dawnbringer Crusades venture out to found civilisations anew. These grim pioneers take with them the fires of hope. Yet they go forth into a hellish wasteland.

  Out in the wilds, hardy colonists restore order to a crumbling world. Haunted eyes scan the horizon for tyrannical reavers as they build upon the bones of ancient empires, eking out a meagre existence from cursed soil and ice-cold seas. By their valour, the fate of the Mortal Realms will be decided.

  The ravening terrors that prey upon these settlers take a thousand forms. Cannibal barbarians and deranged murderers crawl from hidden lairs. Martial hosts clad in black steel march from skull-strewn castles. The savage hordes of Destruction batter the frontier towns until no stone stands atop another. In the dead of night come howling throngs of the undead, hungry to feast upon the living.

  Against such foes, courage is the truest defence and the most effective weapon. It is something that Sigmar’s chosen do not lack. But they are not always strong enough to prevail, and even in victory, each new battle saps their souls a little more.

  This is the time of turmoil. This is the era of war.

  This is the Age of Sigmar.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘This world,’ she says, ‘in fact, all the Mortal Realms, are riddled with cala­mities, just waiting to happen. They lie in wait like the mundane cast-offs of a merchant’s caravan. They moulder, forgotten, in sealed chambers and beneath long-fallen keeps and towers. Sometimes, they wander of their own accord, seeking the perfect victim to aid in their ultimate manifestation.’

  Her students baulk. How could that be? The weapons of daemons and gods, artefacts of monstrous power, treasures capable of blights and ­miracles – just lying about, like a child’s toys? Clearly, they do not believe her.

  ‘I shall show you,’ she says, and looks to the apprentice at her elbow. The supplicant moves forward, eager to be rid of the heavy chest she’s been holding for her mistress throughout the lecture.

  When the ark is laid upon the pedestal before her, Thelana Evenfall deactivates its magical wards, opens each cunning lock in succession, then lifts the heavy lid. In the high tiers of the amphitheatre, some of her students rise on their benches, necks craning to get an early glimpse of the thing she’s about to reveal.

  Thelana’s elegant hands display the object for all present: simple, old-fashioned, its lines clean and graceful, miniscule script engraved upon its surface.

  ‘Here,’ she says, ‘we have a diadem, forged in an elder age, before the Ocari Dara. Not much to look at, is it? And yet, the power once contained within this forgettable bauble could have been used to tear Hysh itself asunder.’

  Murmurs and whispers from the risers. Incredulity. Disbelief.

  ‘How’d it come to be here, then?’ one of them asks. ‘At this university?’

  ‘You say it once contained power – where’s it all gone?’

  ‘How do you know it was powerful? Were you ever present for its use?’

  Reasonable questions, all.

  ‘I was present when a would-be claimant unearthed this particular treasure and put it to use,’ she says, knowing already that such a claim will not suffice. They will want more. More than she would like to recount.

  ‘Tell us,’ more than one of them now beg. ‘Tell us the story.’

  Thelana sighs. Stares at the diadem. Remembers.

  ‘Very well,’ she says, and that is how the tale begins…

  Between the Lothil Delt and the Stoical Vast lies a long, deep, twisting canyon that cuts through the southern desert of Ymetrica Coreward known as the Saratrai Chasm. Legend insists that the chasm is a scar upon the land – evidence of an aspiring despot’s immense power and stunning destruction. As you should all know from your studies, Spirefall – which we Lumineth call the Ocari Dara – was the era of this blessed realm’s permanent ruination and disfigurement, a price paid for the titanic hubris of its offspring. The tales of sundered cities, fallen towers and shattered landscapes are too numerous to recount. What is pertinent to our tale is this: once, a thriving city reposed at the very centre of the long, snaking skein of crevasses and canyons that make up the Saratrai Chasm. That city was ruled by a powerful Lumineth mage-king known as Ansorath, and it was Ansorath’s attempt to create an enchanted diadem capable of encompassing a god’s power that resulted in the broken, carved-out ruin that dominates the desert to this day.

  Our s
tory begins in one of the deepest and widest box canyons in the vast, meandering Saratrai network. On a morning like any other, a stranger arrived from the outer world, guided by ambition and a wealth of long-collated lore.

  This newcomer rides in atop a jouncing, reptilian biped, the sort most of you call a hopdrake. His aspect is silent, stoic, his dour, bearded face shaded under a wide-brimmed, high-crowned hat, the tails of a long, mantled greatcoat fluttering behind him. A long-hafted, heavy warhammer hangs, strapped against his back – a weapon of duardin make – and numerous curious, fat pouches, phials and small, scabbarded tools and weapons encumber a pair of bandoliers crisscrossing his broad, powerful chest. Visible against his leather cuirass is an unusual badge, hand-fashioned from onyx by a skilled jeweller. It is a simple, almond-shaped icon suggesting an open eye. Only upon closer exam­ination might one notice that the eye-shaped signet sports not one pupil but two, one very nearly eclipsing the other, like a moon in-transit before a shining star.

  The stranger’s name is Zabayus Tarn. Coolly, appraisingly, he studies a particular recess in the canyon wall, feeling a flutter of vindication.

  The recess before him is no natural feature: it was once clearly some sort of tall, broad gateway, carved into the stone. A large, dark gash in the cliff-side indicates that there is still a path into the canyon rock itself; a way still open, awaiting his arrival after a thousand years.

  Tarn knots the reins of his hopdrake to a nearby thornwood tree and advances through gardens of fallen boulders, over fallen cyclopean pillars, past rolling bushels of wheel weed driven by the canyon’s hitching winds. At last, he climbs the cracked, wind-scoured steps that rise to a wide portico marking the entrance to this long-forgotten cavern city. There, beneath the shadow of leaning lintels and precarious, half-collapsed archways, he peers into a yawning, ancient darkness that has probably not admitted any explorer for centuries. He produces a white-jewelled torchwand – two cloudy white lumps of aetherquartz at either end of a wooden baton – then ventures into the black of the long-collapsed gateway.

  Zabayus Tarn is not simply a treasure hunter: he is also a scholar. He has studied every historical account, first- and second-hand, that he could locate regarding this place. He’s braved spiritual scryings with lesser daemonic summonings in an attempt to see through the eyes of spirits who once inhabited it when living. His investigations – fact­ual and supernatural – have given him a masterful understanding of both its architecture and layout, and he has committed this knowledge to memory. That crystal-clear image guides him as he wends his way through the darkness, scrambling over more fallen masonry, squeezing under toppled archways and between leaning columns and sagging walls, leaping deep, seemingly bottomless crevasses and edging precariously along narrow ledges over deep, fathomless gulfs. For hours, Zabayus Tarn braves injury and death as he picks a slow, methodical path through the sepulchral ruins.

  More than once, he hears the scrabbling of claws in the dark. Vile things probably nest and hunt here – things eager for the passage of some unwary soul through their domain; things hungry because they rarely venture into the outside world, and even more rarely find trespassers in the ruins to satisfy their considerable hunger. At intervals, the canyon winds penetrate the cliff-side through internecine crevices, shrieking or sighing as they move through the ruined city, sounding like the moans of Chainrasps or the wailing of Banshees.

  Tarn loses hours to the dark. He braves crippling injuries, even death, forced more than once to retrace his steps upon finding his chosen routes blocked or impassable. Finally, after completing a long, arduous vertical climb past three separate levels of yawning, empty passageways and ruined chambers, Tarn believes he may have come, at last, to his destination. Muscles aching, stomach growling, senses scrambled by darkness and solitude, he clambers over the rough lip of a ledge of shattered stone and finds himself in a broad, arcaded passageway leading to a tall, wide arch at the far end.

  It takes him a moment to consult the mental map that has guided him; to check and double-check his progress against the theoretical arrangement of stacked living spaces, labyrinthine markets, and the core warren of the one-time ruler’s palace. Just ahead, through an open doorway, lies the object of his long and treacherous explorations; the culmination of more than a decade of desperate, some might say obsessive, academic work.

  Zabayus Tarn pauses just long enough to restore his strength. He drinks some water; hastily devours a small portion of the rations he carries; rubs the soreness from his burning, aching muscles. Then, satisfied that he’s equal to the revelation awaiting, he steps over the threshold to claim his destiny.

  The legends consulted – ancient transcriptions of oral accounts, epic poetry, drama, historiography – differ endlessly on the specifics. The broad strokes are, however, well established: once, a powerful mage-lord named Xymarkias ruled here, and for the greater duration of his rule, he was accounted wise and good, just and courageous. Xymarkias succumbed, however, to the overweening, malignant pride so common among the wisest and most powerful of the Lumineth in those dark days. Seeking ultimate power, ultimate insight, Xymarkias fashioned for himself a blood-gold diadem capable of acting as a second locus for both his memories and his consciousness. His intention was to absorb all of the knowledge, all of the experience, all of the skill and mage-craft that a mortal aelf could, letting what was too great or all-encompassing for his own mind spill over into the diadem itself.

  Of course, his obsession and the vast repositories of knowledge that he attempted to take into himself drove him mad.

  Unfortunately, Xymarkias’ fears and terrors were visited in corporeal form upon his people. His perversions and depredations held sway, infecting the souls and bodies of those not keen enough to flee the coming disaster. Likewise, his appetites and ambitions were writ large, fusing with aelemental powers already dwelling in that region, becoming stunningly potent and impossible to control. And so, over the course of a terrible, nightmarish day and night, the city in the cliffs was riddled with slaughter and disaster, riven by geomantic quakes and firestorms, and the whole subterranean kingdom tore itself asunder, killing thousands, including mad Xymarkias himself.

  Tarn’s theory is that the king would have been reposed upon his throne when the end came and his world imploded upon him. If he could locate the mad king’s last location, then he could also, theoreti­cally, locate the fabled diadem.

  And claim it for himself.

  The chamber he enters – dark save for the clear, white glow of his lampwand – does indeed have the look of a throne room or formal audience chamber. Within, Tarn finds a broad, ovoid space with vaulted ceilings, its rock and dust-strewn floor composed of handsome, magically shaped interlocking flagstones. These flags are arranged in complex geomantic sigils and knots not uncommon in the architecture of Xymarkias’ era. The walls are lined by enormous pillars – many cracked, some toppled, others simply pulverised. The stone panels between the pillars boast dust-choked sculpture and inlays. All about the chamber stand enormous, unhewn megaliths – great fragments of the cliff’s mantle that sheared away during the cataclysm to punch through the once-vaulted ceiling.

  The throne chamber is a ruin. A tomb.

  But, at the far end of the chamber, clearly visible beneath one of those enormous, fallen megaliths, Zabayus Tarn sees what he has always hoped to see: telltale steps rising to a dais… the sort of dais that might serve as the base for a monarch’s throne.

  A great rugged megalith stands inviolate upon the dais. Any throne or fallen mage-king once occupying that space is now crushed flat, long vanished into dust. But Tarn already has a plan to locate the treasure he’s come in search of. He has eschewed the use of magic all through his terrifying, exhausting day so that every bit of energy and willpower at his disposal will be ready now, when he needs it the most.

  He approaches the dais and the great block of broken stone squatting upon it. Tarn pro
duces a small, palm-sized aetherquartz gem from one of the many pouches on his person, a gem attuned to concentrated magical energies. In the presence of such energies, it will glow. The more potent the energies, the brighter its brilliance. He holds the gem in his open palm and slowly edges towards the megalith.

  Five steps shy of the great boulder, the gem begins to glow.

  Closer. The glow intensifies.

  When he is right upon the collapsed stone, squatting at its base, placing the gem flat against it, the gem pulses brilliantly, painfully bright in the darkness. Tarn feels his heart beating double time. Once again, he has been proven right.

  Now: the excavation.

  The hammer strapped across his back is inscribed on the hammerhead and along its grip-shaft with ancient Fyreslayer runes that glow a sinister vermilion in the darkness. This is no ordinary hammer, of course: Tarn had to trade a great many compromising magical favours and sell a large part of his personal library to acquire it. He has also promised to return it to its rightful owner when his mission is done – presuming he still lives. Going to such lengths for a single weapon might seem obsessive, but he’s known for some time that, if there was a great deal of fallen stone to disperse in order to reach his prize, such a tool would be required.

  He utters ancient duardin prayers, calling upon the latent magical energies in his own body to invigorate the weapon and intensify its power.

  The hammer all but hums in his sweating hands.

  He chooses a target at the base of the great megalith, very near to where he placed the gem against the stone, draws back for a fierce strike, and swings hard.

  The hammer shatters the base of the megalith as though it were pottery. It does not destroy the whole boulder – it is far too large to be destroyed in a single strike, even from such a storied weapon as this – but the effect is wide-ranging and immediate. In a shower of fiery sparks amid a sound like the roar of a fired cannon, a wide swathe of the megalith’s base cracks and shears away, the edges of the shattered stone glowing red from their sudden, violent sundering.

  He strikes again. Again. Again. He’s like some strange, eldritch mining god, slamming his hammer home time after time, red-hot rock and glowing sparks spreading in all directions. Some of the flying debris slashes his face, rakes his arms or shoulders, splashes off his leather breastplate. He is burned – scarred even – but he does not care.