Arkhan had his back to the elf, standing before the cauldron, one hand wrapped in the golden tresses of the Everchild, forcing her head and torso over the cauldron’s rim. In his other hand, he held his knife in preparation for slashing her throat, as he had with all of the other sacrifices. In the centre of the cauldron, Volkmar hung limp in a mystical web of chains.
Eltharion lunged with a roar worthy of his slain mount. Arkhan released his captive and spun. Eltharion slammed into him, his hands closing about the liche’s bony neck. Arkhan glared at the elf. ‘Release me, warrior.’ Eltharion slammed him back against the cauldron as if to snap the liche in two. ‘Very well. I have no more time for mercy.’
Arkhan’s hands snapped up and caught the elf’s wrists. Instantly, a cloud of rust billowed up from Eltharion’s vambraces. As Mannfred watched, the entropic curse consumed him. It rippled across metal and flesh with equal aplomb, warping and cracking armour as it withered flesh. The elf’s hair turned white and brittle, and his flesh took on the consistency of parchment, but he did not release his hold on Arkhan. To the last, his gaze held the liche’s.
Then, with barely a sigh, Eltharion the Grim, Warden of Tor Yvresse, burst apart in a cloud of dust.
Arkhan staggered back, the witch-lights of his eyes flashing with something that might have been regret. Mannfred began to pound on the barrier anew as Arkhan turned back and jerked Aliathra to her feet. He reclaimed his dagger. ‘My father will destroy you, liche,’ she said. Mannfred was impressed. There was no fear in her voice, only resignation.
‘Your father is already dead, child. My allies have seen to that.’
‘Allies? What allies?’ Mannfred shouted. ‘Arkhan – let me in!’
Arkhan ignored him. He looked at Aliathra as she said, ‘For all of your power, you know nothing.’
‘We shall see,’ Arkhan said. He glanced at Mannfred. ‘Stop striking my barrier, vampire. It’s becoming annoying.’
‘Let me in, you fool,’ Mannfred snarled. His mind probed at the sorcery that protected the stones, trying to find a weak point. He had to get in there.
‘Why? So that you can try and subvert this moment for your own ends? No – no, I think not. You have played your part, and admirably so, vampire. Do not ruin it now with petty antics.’ Arkhan stepped forward and dragged Aliathra towards the cauldron. She struggled for a moment, then pressed her hands against the liche’s chest. Arkhan threw up a hand as a white, painful light flared suddenly. He recoiled as if burned, and then swung the elf maiden towards the cauldron. ‘What have you done, witch?’ he rasped.
‘You’ll find out,’ she said.
Arkhan hesitated, staring at her. Then, with a dry rasp of anger, he cut her throat.
As her blood spilled into the already bubbling cauldron, Arkhan began to speak. The words had a black resonance that caused the air to shudder and squirm, as if in fear. Mannfred began to pound on the shield again, howling curses at the heedless liche as he continued to chant.
As Mannfred watched in mounting frustration, Arkhan placed his knife against one of Volkmar’s wrists and, with a single, efficient motion, severed the hand. Volkmar screamed and writhed in his chains. Arkhan, still chanting, lifted the Claw of Nagash and pressed it forcefully against the Grand Theogonist’s pulsing stump.
Volkmar’s screams grew in pitch and volume, spiralling up into the tormented air to mingle with the unpleasant echoes of Arkhan’s chanting. Arkhan stepped back and snatched up Alakanash. He lifted the staff high and tendrils of dark magic burst from the stump of the Claw. The tendrils writhed about Volkmar’s arm and burrowed into the old man’s abused flesh. Volkmar screamed and shook in his chains, convulsing with a suffering that even Mannfred had trouble imagining.
He took no pleasure in the old man’s pain, though he might have, under different circumstances. He slid down, suddenly weary, as the tendrils began to expand. As they grew, they lashed and flailed and spread across Volkmar’s frame, winnowing into him and leaving only a cancerous mass of dark magic in their wake. Soon, the only thing of Volkmar that Mannfred could see were his eyes, bulging in agony.
Then, there was nothing save the mass, which swelled like an abominable leech as it feasted greedily on the blood in the cauldron. Chains snapped as the mass thrashed about, drawing sparks from the stones around it. It continued to swell as Arkhan held the Fellblade extended, point-first towards the cauldron.
Arkhan spat words like arrows, piercing the air with the hateful sound of them. The Fellblade rose from his hand as if plucked by invisible fingers. It hung in midair for a moment and then, with a loud crack, it shivered into a thousand steaming fragments, which swirled about the mass like tiny comets before striking it and burrowing into its surface.
Outside the circle, Mannfred hunched closer to the stones as the wind picked up, and the howling of the spirits grew deafening. The stones trembled and glowed with daemonic fire. Thunder rolled across the sky above, and he screamed in pain as the enchantment he had laid across the land – his land – was torn asunder. Something vast and terrible descended into the stone circle with a volcanic sigh.
His head was filled with fiery wasps, and his bones felt as if they would tear from his flesh to join the maelstrom swirling about inside the circle. His heart swelled and wrenched in his chest, and he crawled forward as the spell that had barred him entry shattered like glass. Something spoke in a voice that echoed through his mind.
‘YOU HAVE DONE WELL, MY SERVANT.’
Nagash.
It was the voice of Nagash and it tore through him like a blade, cutting through his arrogance, his ambitions, his hopes and his vanities. Mannfred shuddered in his skin as he crept towards the cauldron. He felt sick, as though a great pressure had settled on him. He knew then that his dreams had only ever been that – dreams. Arkhan had been right, in the end. There was no controlling what had come back into the world. What now spoke in a voice like sour thunder. ‘THE GREAT WORK CAN BEGIN.’
He saw that Arkhan had prostrated himself and he could not stop himself from doing the same. He bent low, hoping that the thing that now gazed at him with eyes as deep and as empty as a hole in the world could not sense the bitterness in his heart.
‘DO YOU SERVE ME?’ Nagash asked, looking down at him.
Mannfred von Carstein closed his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he croaked, ‘I serve you… master.’
EPILOGUE
Mannfred von Carstein screamed.
For the first time in a long time, he truly screamed. Not a howl of frustration, or the cry of a wounded warrior, but the shriek of a frightened beast, caught in a trap. Nagash’s servants had stripped his cuirass and cloak from him, leaving him bare-chested. They held his wrists pinned, and skeletal hands sprouted from the ground like hellish mushrooms to grasp his feet and ankles.
‘No, I refuse – I will not let you do this – I forbid it!’ Mannfred screamed, struggling vainly against the withered grip of the ancient, long-dead warriors who held him.
‘YOU… FORBID?’ The sickly green witch-lights of Nagash’s eyes flickered. The fleshless jaw sagged in what might have been laughter. Nagash loomed over the vampire. ‘YOU FORBID NOTHING, LITTLE FLEA. YOU SIMPLY SERVE.’