She shrugged. ‘You’re not very fast,’ she said doubtfully.
‘We’re fast enough.’ Balthas pulled his staff to him and murmured a single word. A ball of corposant bloomed atop the staff. He plucked it free and dropped it through the grate. The light split into two, and two into four, until a dozen will o’ the wisps danced in the dark below. ‘And now we can see where we are going.’
A slope – steep and twisting, like a mountain path – descended away from the grate, and into the dark. Balthas could hear a steady crash, as of waves, rising from somewhere out of sight. He murmured a few words and waved his hand over the grate, and the rusty iron became red dust, which sifted away as if it had never been.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘It is time we see what it is that Nagash so desires.’
Close. He was so close, he could feel it.
‘Rip it open,’ Pharus snarled. He slashed his sword out, shattering the holy bones that hid what he sought. The circular stone slab was as almost as large as the wall that held it. It slanted downwards all but imperceptibly. Marked along its circumference were celestial sigils that stung his gaze and forced him to turn away.
Wherever he looked, the skulls of saints grinned mockingly at him. He longed to drag them back and raise them up, but the symbol of the High Star carved into them prevented it. To show them that peace was an illusion, save in Nagash. That the dead, as ever, had been denied their true place by the living. As those below had been denied.
Can you hear them, Pharus Thaum? They are calling to you, out of the black.
‘Yes,’ he said. He could hear them. Demanding their freedom, pleading for forgiveness for their crimes against the Undying King. An eager army, ready to do battle with the stars themselves. That was what he had been sent to acquire, and he would do so, whatever the cost.
Even if it means your own destruction.
Pharus stopped for a moment, confused. That had almost sounded like a question. His helm seemed to contract about his head, as if to squeeze such thoughts away. He stepped back, head aching, as the few remaining deadwalkers pressed forwards, unhampered by the sigils. Broken fingers gripped the edges of the stone, as sun-dried muscle and ligament strained. A deadwalker tore its arms loose and stumbled back, jaw working. Pharus removed its head and shoved it aside. If it could not move stone, it had no use. ‘Use the bones,’ he croaked, not watching. ‘Lever it out of place.’
Broken femurs and arm bones belonging to the fallen deadwalkers were stabbed into what little gap there was. Rusty blades joined them, as the deadwalkers employed the weapons they might have wielded in life. Slowly, the great slab began to move. Somewhere, unseen levers tripped, and gears began to turn. All it required was a strong enough hand to start the process.
‘I remember opening it once before – my own two hands, then, and those of others… Briaeus…’ he murmured. A name without a face. He shook the memory aside. It did not matter.
‘You have more than two hands now. You have a thousand of them.’ Dohl said, from where he waited just outside of the reliquary. ‘The hands of every dead thing here are yours, my lord, as yours are Nagash’s. All are one in him, and he is all.’
‘Yes,’ Pharus said, stroking the hourglass pommel of his blade. The sands hissed, sifting away. They never seemed to run out. He bowed his head. His helm felt heavy, suddenly. The weight of his armour threatened to drag him down. This place – the air closed around him like stone. It was worse since the death of the Stormcast who’d despatched Fellgrip.
He glanced back at the spot where the body had come apart in an explosion of lightning. The stones, pillars and walls were burnt black. The interior of the temple stank of celestial fire, and many of the weaker chainrasps had been consumed in the warrior’s death throes.
Like the others, he had not understood the gift Pharus had offered him. And now he had returned to the tyrant’s embrace. Angry now, he turned back. The slab was moving, but the deadwalkers continued to heave at it. The rest of them waited to descend. The first wave, to reveal any ambushes or traps.
There was a sound – sharp and rough.
He registered the spark a moment after it occurred. A piece of flint, trapped beneath the slab, scraped by the movement. A spark dancing across a mound of powder. Fire streaked along beneath the piled bones, cutting strange patterns beneath them. He turned, following it, dredging his memory. He had seen this before, what was it? What was–
The explosion followed a moment later. The reliquary was full of fire, and a whistling thicket of silver shot. Deadwalkers fell, burning. Nearby chainrasps squealed and fled. Pharus held his ground, ignoring the flames that swept up around him, seeking to consume him, though he had neither flesh nor bone. He roared in rage and snatched his sword from its sheath. He slashed down, striking the slab, again and again.
Chunks of stone fell away, cleaved raggedly from the whole by his blows. When enough of it was gone, he cast out a hand and shoved the remains of the slab aside, bending the unseen mechanisms out of joint. Flames roared past him, into the passage beyond. Burning deadwalkers stumbled past. A moment later, the nighthaunts flooded into the passageway, their screams and howls echoing from the stones.
‘The strength of Nagash cannot be denied,’ Dohl murmured. As he urged the nighthaunts into the reliquary, their presence snuffed the flames, drawing the heat from the air almost instantly.
Pharus did not reply. He stared into the passage, listening to the grinding of stone, once so familiar and now so strange. Dohl drew close, the light of his lantern washing over Pharus. ‘Do you hear them, my lord? Lost souls, calling to you out of lightless gulfs. They know you are here. Jailer-turned-redeemer. They welcome you. Do you hear them?’
Pharus did. Ten thousand voices, calling up out of the dark. Calling for him.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘The inevitable awaits.’
Balthas led the way, the remains of his Chamber marching in his wake. There were barely thirty of them left. But enough to do what must be done.
Quicksilver paced beside him, Elya sitting in the saddle. She looked tiny, there, even with the cats that clung beside her. More felines ran underfoot. At times, there seemed to be dozens of them, or only a handful.
The slope was uneven. More than once, a Stormcast nearly lost their footing, sending a cascade of loose stone tumbling down into the gulf below. Every time, they would stop until the echoes of clattering stone faded. Then, they would proceed once more.
Balthas could hear the steady, grinding rumble of stone scraping against stone. Dust hung thick on the air. It sifted down from above in ribbon-like waves, and cascaded across the Stormcasts’ armour. Occasional flashes of light rose from below, reflected from innumerable mirrored surfaces to bounce along the curve of the slope.
It was like an orrery. But within that orrery was contained a smaller puzzle box of shifting lines and sliding squares. Everything was in motion, if slowly. He could feel the aether sliding with it – the blessings and protections of Azyr, marking the sphere of tombs. Even without seeing them, he could feel the arcanograms that Pharus had engineered. As the shape of the catacombs shifted, so too did the arcanograms. From barrier to funnel to trap and back again.
‘He was clever,’ Miska said, from just behind him.
‘He still is,’ Balthas said. ‘That is the problem.’
The slope widened ahead of them, and in the light, Balthas could make out the crude apertures of tombs and crypts, built into the walls. These were all sealed, with stone and silver chain, and he could see mystic wards glowing like phosphorescent fungi.