‘I had to go and dig him out of his books,’ Tyros said.
Balthas ignored him and greeted the lord-castellant respectfully. ‘My apologies, Gorgus. Time escaped me.’
Gorgus nodded, as if this was to be expected. He swept his halberd out, indicating the flat dais. ‘Stand at the heart of the dais, lords-arcanum. The Sigmarabulum awaits.’
They did as he bade. Almost immediately, the dais began to turn. Somewhere below them, gears began to move with a grinding snarl. The rings that made up the outer edge of the dais rose of their own accord, until the whole apparatus resembled an orrery. The rings spun, faster and faster, stretching the lightning between them as they oscillated. In moments, all Balthas could see was a blur of cobalt light, blinding in its intensity.
‘I hate this part,’ Tyros growled.
Balthas said nothing, merely leaning on his staff. Thin strands of lightning played across the raised edges of his war-plate, or coalesced about the tip of his staff. The air tasted of iron and copper, and for a moment, his head felt as if it were stuffed with cotton wool. Then, there was a crash of thunder that shook him to his very bones, and the blue light began to fade. As it did so, the oscillation of the rings slowed and, one by one, they dropped flat, back into place around the dais. When the last glimmer of light had faded, they had arrived on the Sigmarabulum.
They stood on a wide dais – the mirror of the Thunder-Gate – but it was open to the stars, rather than being contained in a chamber. Flickering azure lanterns lined the path leading away from the dais. There were no guards – at least none that Balthas could see. But he felt them, watching him. The pathways of the storm were never unguarded, and the sentinels of the Sigmarabulum never slept.
Instinctively, he looked up, his gaze drawn to Mallus, rising above the highest towers of the Sigmarabulum. The red orb hung like a wound in the firmament, shining with a dull radiance. Unlike Sigendil’s light, that radiance brought no certainty or comfort – only sorrow. Mallus was a reminder that the Mortal Realms were but the latest iteration of the universal cycle – and what awaited them, if Sigmar and his chosen warriors failed.
Balthas stared at the husk of a world and felt as if something were waiting for him there. Part of him longed to walk through the hollow caverns of its core, where Grungni’s lightning-powered automatons excavated raw sigmarite ore. To see and touch the world that had come before all that he knew. All that he thought he knew.
But he knew better than to hope. Mallus was denied to all, save Sigmar. The most Balthas could hope for was to one day translate and read what few ancient histories of that world yet remained. They were kept locked away, deep in the heart of the Grand Library. Though they were available to any scholar, few could read them. Whatever tongue they had spoken in that distant age, it was all but unintelligible now.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Tyros said, as they descended the steps of the dais. ‘Like a haunting melody you cannot quite recall.’ He peered up at the red world. ‘I hear whispers, sometimes, when I look at it. The prickle of memories from a forgotten life. I think sometimes I might have walked there, in another age.’ He sighed. ‘That cursed light gets in your bones.’
‘Maybe it was always there,’ Balthas murmured. He’d often felt as Tyros had – as if Mallus were calling to him. As if he were a part of it, somehow. There were many among the Anvils of the Heldenhammer who felt the same. Something in them resonated with the world-that-was, but he could not say why. Balthas pushed the thought aside. He would find no answer to that question today, or possibly ever. ‘Come, brother. We are late.’
Chapter four
Chamber of the Broken World
When everything began to shake, Tonst fumbled at the control valves of his aether-endrin and let it carry him back out of the shipwreck, towards his tiny, one-duardin aether-hauler. His elbows scraped against the edges of the hole in the hull of the wreck as he floated free.
The remains of the Arkanaut Frigate hung awkwardly in the air, its endrin still functioning despite the massive amount of damage the vessel had endured. There was no way to tell what had happened, nor did he particularly care. That it was here, and still might hold something of value, was enough.
He’d tracked the derelict south, just past the Chimera Isles, following the air currents to where it had at last become snared in the tangle-clouds. What was left of the crew was still scattered about, in messy fashion, and whatever cargo they’d been hauling was relatively intact. Or so he hoped.
Tonst was a salvager by trade, and he had the certificates to prove it. That they were forgeries mattered not at all, so long as they had the golden stamp of Barak-Urbaz. He’d paid a hefty price for that stamp, but not so much as he would have paid for the real thing. Paper was paper. And salvage was salvage.
But he forgot all about what treasures the wreck might contain as he emerged and saw that the sky was crawling. ‘Grombrindal’s bones,’ he muttered, watching as the sky’s lustre was hidden beneath an amethyst shroud. The pressure gauges and valves that dotted his suit began to spin crazily, and his beard bristled in unease.
He’d thought it was just the ship settling, but instead it seemed as if the skies themselves were convulsing. He gritted his teeth and tried to compensate for the rising wind. If he weren’t careful, he might be blown into the side of the wreck, or worse, carried out over the mountains, away from his own vessel. The aether-endrin on his back had seen better decades, and would only keep him aloft for a few hours at a time.
As he watched, the purple haze filled the sky, staining the clouds and erasing the stars above. The wind rose to a brittle shriek, and he felt a chill in his thick limbs despite his suit’s insulation. It sounded as if the stars were screaming, somewhere out of sight. ‘Get a hold of yourself,’ he muttered, trying to ignore the sense of trepidation that filled him. ‘Are you a beardling, to be frightened of the sky?’
Resolutely, he turned away, angling himself to float back into the hull. He extricated his anchor from his harness and hooked the edge of the gap. Carefully, he began to reel out the chain. The sky continued to quake, but the wreck seemed sturdy enough. At worst, its endrin would finally fail. If that happened, he would simply release his anchor and float free through one of the great rents in the deck above.
A fine layer of frost crystals covered everything in the hull, crates and corpses alike. He set down gently, bracing himself for the deck to fall away. When it didn’t, he took a step. Frost crunched beneath his boots as he made his way deeper into the hold. The sun-stones mounted on his harness flickered to life, casting a soft radiance over the contents of the hold. Dozens of broken crates and shattered casks were revealed.
The wind keened through the wreck, causing scraps of paper and wood to tumble about. Things clattered in the dark, and the deck swayed beneath his feet. He started as the deck dipped and a body slid into view. The crewman had been gutted, his suit ripped open and his torso hollowed out. Frozen blood covered the carcass, and Tonst couldn’t tell what had made the wounds. He swallowed, uneasy.
It wasn’t likely that whatever had done this was still around. There were cloud-barnacles on the broken planks and no sign of tracks in the frost. Even so, he paused, listening. He’d heard stories about grot raiders, creeping down from the great spore clouds that blossomed in the dark above the highest peaks to set ambushes in floating wrecks.
But all he heard now was the creaking of the rigging. Through the gaps in the deck above, he caught flashes of amethyst light, cascading upwards. He squinted. Was there something up there, hidden by that glow? And where was it coming from? It looked like no atmospheric distortion he’d ever seen. The information might be of value to–