MASKS OF FLESH
Voices circled Malus for days; they chanted and whispered in words that sent shivers through the air around him. Blurred figures swayed and gestured before his shrouded eyes. Sometimes in the dead of night shapes swooped before his vision, chittering sounds that were almost recognisable and leaving his skin tingling painfully in their wake.
Attendants with soft, perfumed hands waited on him, peeling back the shroud one thin layer at a time. He emerged from his agony like a dragon from its egg, his shell wearing away inexorably as flesh and muscles knit and strength flowed back into his frame.
As time passed and he could perceive more and more of the world through his thinning shroud, he began to take in greater detail of the acolytes who performed the healing rituals over him. Though he could not grasp the arcane tongue they spoke, their voices became distinct and familiar. All highborn druchii, both women and men, always chanting in groups of six. Nagaira led them in every ritual, her voice commanding and the others answering in a discordant chorus. Each time the rites were performed, Malus felt Tz’arkan respond, slithering against his ribs and whispering in blasphemous pleasure.
There was a pattern to the rites that Malus eventually discerned—once at the hour before sunrise and once again at the hour before sunset, and two short rites at the rising and setting of the moon. By this he reckoned that he had been a guest of his sister for at least five days. The fact that she hadn’t slipped a knife into his eye or turned his skull into a drinking cup vexed the highborn to no end.
It had been Nagaira who had tricked him into undertaking the deadly journey into the Wastes—embarking on an elaborate plot to pit him against his brother Urial over a trivial slight. Because he had left her without warning the previous summer in an audacious plan to further his fortunes with an impromptu slave raid, she had decided to retaliate. She had spurned the advances of her younger brother Urial and blamed it squarely on devotion to him. The result had been a cunning ambush just outside Clar Karond that had cost him all of the slaves he’d so painstakingly harvested over the summer and put him at knife points with his cabal of investors. With his enemies smelling blood and circling nearer and assassins from the Temple of Khaine sworn to kill him, it had been all too easy to seduce him with a story of a hidden temple and ancient power lost in the Wastes.
Nearly two score druchii—several of them Nagaira’s own retainers—and more than ten times that number of slaves had perished over an imagined slight. Malus’ relationship with his half-sister had never been more than a series of brief, often violent affairs, so he was hard-pressed to understand why she’d been so affronted. Not that a highborn ever needed a compelling reason to engage in a petty game of revenge. Druchii women were widely considered the deadlier of the sexes when it came to drawn-out contests of spite. With fewer options to exercise their lust for violence they had plenty of time to contemplate elaborate, bloody-minded intrigues.
On the sixth day the routine changed. He was awakened by the chanted cries of the morning ritual and again by the evening rite. By this time only a single, thin sheet of fabric wrapped his body, the material stiff with layers of dried body fluids and healing unguents. His eyes reacted well to the shifting glow of the witchlights and Malus could easily discern the figures that surrounded the bier upon which he lay. The acolytes all wore layered robes of ebon wool that were dense with painted symbols in a sharp, spiky script. Their heads were covered in voluminous hoods that sheltered their faces in concealing darkness. The highborn had no doubt it was more than mere affectation; any one of them caught practising sorcery by one of the Witch King’s agents forfeited not just their rank and properties, but their very souls as well.
When the time came for the rite at moonrise, Malus watched five acolytes enter the room and surround his bier in a carefully proscribed circle. The highborn felt the daemon stir expectantly as the acolytes raised their arms and began to chant. It was an invocation of some kind; Malus had heard the general form many times now. The chant lasted for some time, much longer than Malus had been expecting. Then, at its zenith, another figure stepped into view.
It was an elven slave, clad only in a thin cotton shift. Her golden hair had been carefully cleaned and pulled back to reveal a graceful, swanlike neck. A circlet of steel gleamed dully from her brow and her perfect face was rapt with a kind of horrified ecstasy. Behind the slave came Nagaira, pacing silently in heavy robes and a breastplate of cured human hide set with precious stones. The sapphires caught the light and described a spiral pattern that plucked at Malus’ eyes. Unlike her acolytes, Nagaira’s face was uncovered, her eyes bright and her head held high.
The chanting of the acolytes altered, becoming a slow susurration of breath, like the flow of the sea or the hissing of blood through artery and vein. Moving as if in a trance, the elven slave mounted the bier and slowly, lightly climbed onto him. She weighed little more than a willow wand, and the stiff sheets crackled faintly like brittle ice as she straddled his body. Malus’ eyes narrowed appraisingly—and then the slave raised a curved, sickle-like blade in her hand. Her eyes bulged with horror as she watched her own hand move slowly and deliberately, drawing the razor-sharp inner edge of the blade across her throat.
Fat drops of hot blood spattered against the sheet like drops of rain, spreading like constellations before the highborn’s eyes. Slowly, then gathering speed, the crimson rain fell, soaking the fabric and plastering it like a caul against his skin. The sodden material shrank against the skin of his face, pulling taut over his mouth and nose. His nostrils filled with the bitter tang of blood and he began to struggle, forcing his arms to move and pull at the clinging material. For a heartbeat it resisted and then the shroud parted like rotten cheesecloth, pulling from his naked body with a wet ripping sound. There was a final, gurgling whisper and the slave pitched off the bier, her blade ringing against the stone tiles. With a groan of pain Malus pushed himself upright, his bare face and chest streaked with fresh gore.
“Rise, dreadful wyrm,” Nagaira said, her eyes glinting lasciviously. As one, the acolytes fell to their knees, shouting in their arcane tongue. “Stretch your wings and slake your thirst with the blood of the innocent.”
The highborn found himself in a small, hexagonally shaped room. Witchlight glowed from hemispherical lamps set in a cluster directly overhead and the black marble walls of the chamber were carved with hundreds of arcane runes and dusted with ground silver so that they glowed a pale green. The floor surrounding the bier was likewise carved in an intricate pattern of lines and circles, their glittering lines obscured by spreading pools of blood. Malus wiped the elf s vital fluids from his face with the back of his hand. “If there was magic in your sacrifice, sweet sister, I regret that it failed to touch me.”
The druchii witch laughed. “Her death had nothing to do with the rite. That was completed at nightfall. But it’s been almost a fortnight fretting over your torn little husk and I needed to spill some blood.” She leaned forward and touched a pale finger to a crimson drop on the bier, then placed it against her tongue. “She was a maiden you know. A princess, supposedly, from Tor Yvresse. You have no idea how much she cost.”
Tz’arkan slithered beneath his ribs. “Such a fine one, she is! If only she had come north instead of you, little Darkblade. What a savoury prize she would have been.”
Malus paid the daemon little heed. “A fortnight? I reckoned I’d been here only six days.”
Nagaira shook her head. “You lingered at the edge of death for many days, sweet brother. I confess there were moments when I wasn’t sure that even my skill could bring you back. But that is past now.”
She stepped around the bier, a wolfish smile playing across her face. Nagaira was the shortest of Lurhan’s six children, rising little higher than the level of Malus’ eyes. Her figure was softer and curvier than the rest of the Vaulkhar’s lean brood, but her face was every bit that of her fearsome father, with a sharp nose and a black stare that could cut like a knife w
hen she wished. She stepped up to Malus and took the remnants of the bloodstained shroud in her small, strong hands. The cloth parted easily and she tossed it casually aside. “I took great pains to restore your vitality, brother,” she said. “I’m eager to see the results of my handiwork.” The witch stood on her tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Cold as ever,” she said with a grin. “And tasting of the battlefield.”
Nagaira snapped her fingers and a slave materialised from the shadows near one of the chamber walls. The human carried a gleaming goblet with both hands and offered the brimming vessel to Malus. The goblet had a thick stem of wrought silver, shaped in the manner of a curling nauglir’s tail. The skull that held the dark wine had been recently boiled and still carried its sheen of fine oil. The top of the head had been sawn cleanly away, leaving a smooth, rounded lip to drink from—clearly a work of superior craftsmanship. “What’s this?” Malus asked.
“A gift from me to welcome you home. You drink from the skull of a temple acolyte who sought to kill you while you convalesced here. Such a fool he was, to think that stealth and silvered steel would be enough to prevail in my house.”
“Pray he did not have companions like the pack that brought me down in the Slavers’ Quarter. If word of your sorcery gets back to the temple you will have the wrath of the Witch King to contend with.”
Nagaira shrugged. “If he did not come alone, his companions remained beyond the wards of my tower. Had they trespassed, I or my companions,” she indicated the robed figures, “would have known of it.”
Malus drank deeply of the wine. It was thick and sweet, fit for a merchant’s table. The highborn grimaced. Nagaira had many terrible powers at her command, but she still had horrible taste in wine. “You appear to have gone to great expense on my behalf,” he said at length. “Such generosity is surprising—considering how you sent me and six of your own men to die in the far north.”
Nagaira’s smile turned cold and an appraising look came into her eyes. “Leave us,” she said in a tone of icy authority. The acolytes rose to their feet and glided soundlessly from the room, followed by the slave.
“So you have acolytes now, sister?” Malus said with a raised eyebrow. “When did you abandon the pretence of scholarship and consider yourself a witch in deed and name? Father has turned a blind eye to your studies for too long and it’s made you reckless.”
“Those fawning students are from some of the most powerful houses in Hag Graef,” she said simply. “Do not concern yourself about Lurhan, or even the Drachau—my influence runs deeper in this city than you realise. There are many more than those five, sweet brother, all pursuing their devotions in secret. In fact, summoning them here to assist in these rites is a greater honour than you know.”
The highborn growled deep in his throat. “An honour that no doubt comes with a steep price.”
Tz’arkan chuckled, an oily resonance in his chest. “You are learning, Malus. That’s good.”
“I think of it as an investment, brother. You and I have unfinished business.”
“Oh? What business would that be?”
Nagaira laughed, though the sound held little mirth. “Don’t be stupid. We agreed to share in whatever you brought with you out of the Wastes. Now you’ve returned and I know you didn’t come back empty-handed, my agents have found your cold one being tended to in the nauglir den beneath the House of Brass. The great beast is standing watch over a fortune in coin and gems, but I care little for those. What else did you find in the hidden temple?”
Malus met her eyes and sought to plumb their depths. Was she serious? Had there been more to her scheme than simple revenge? If so, then she put me on the trail of the temple because she already had an inkling of what was there, Malus thought. But how much did she know and how much did she merely suspect? But there were no secrets waiting to be read in the witch’s black eyes—he could sooner sound the deeps of the Outer Darkness itself.
“I found a daemon,” he said simply.
Nagaira’s eyes widened. “Tz’arkan’, she breathed.
Malus felt the daemon surge inside him, pressing against the inside of his chest at the sound of its name. The highborn’s fingers curled into claws. It had become difficult to breathe. “So… you knew… all along,” he said haltingly. He wondered if his sister understood how close she was to dying just then.
“I… suspected,” she replied, wetting her lips. Suddenly her self-assurance was gone. “After I had a close look at the skull inside Urial’s tower, I was able to focus my research while you were away. There are numerous references to the daemon in my library, but I hardly dared hope that we had discovered his very prison!” Suddenly she grew still and studied his face with care. “Did you look upon the great prince? Did he speak to you?”
Malus hesitated. Within, the daemon had fallen still. “I saw the prison where he resides. It is a great crystal, larger than two men and wider than the bole of an elder oak. My sword made no mark on it, no matter how hard I struck it.”
“No, of course not,” Nagaira replied, a distant look coming over her face. Suddenly she was the arcane scholar once more. “The Tome of Al’khasur says that the great prince was bound in a raw, black diamond birthed in the raw energies of Chaos itself. There are sorcerers who would spill the blood of entire nations just to possess a fragment of that stone, much less the great power trapped within. Nothing less could contain the Drinker of Worlds.”
Tz’arkan swelled and Malus suddenly felt his heart begin to labour fitfully. He leaned against the bier for support, gritting his teeth. “Clever, clever druchii. I have not heard that name in a very long time. Oh, she is fine! How I would love to possess her.”
“Be… my… guest,” Malus gasped.
Nagaira misunderstood his meaning. “The stone is priceless, true enough, but nothing compared to the power harnessed within. Did the great prince bless you with his favour? What did he say?”
“He wishes to be free,” Malus answered. “What else?”
The witch leaned close. “Did he say how?”
Suddenly the daemon receded, shrinking inside the highborn's chest to wrap tightly around his heart. “Answer with care, Malus,” the daemon warned. “Answer very carefully indeed.”
“There are a number of items the daemon wants me to find,” he said carefully. “Together, they will unlock his prison and return him to the sea of souls.”
Nagaira snorted. “Return? Set him loose across the face of Creation is more like,” she said. “The Drinker of Worlds would love nothing better. Tell me: what are these items?”
The highborn smiled. “Tut, tut, sweet sister. Haven’t I given you enough already?”
“I brought you back from death’s clutches, brother,” Nagaira warned. The way I see it, the balance of the debt is still yours to bear.”
Malus raised his hands. “Truce, then. I will give you the name of one of the relics. Do you know of an object called the Idol of Kolkuth?”
Nagaira frowned, her dark brows furrowing with thought. “I have seen that name… somewhere…”
“No games, sister,” Malus hissed.
“Have you any idea how many books I have in my sanctum?” Nagaira shot back. “How many scrolls and carvings? I read the name somewhere, but I can’t place it just yet.” She grinned. “Give me time, though. I’ll find it.”
“Time is not something I have in ample supply,” the highborn said. The daemon warned me that I had a single year to retrieve all the items, or else the effort would fail.”
The witch cocked her head quizzically. “Why would he say that? What does a year have to do with anything?”
“Am I a sorcerer, sister? How should I know? The daemon said I had a year, no more. And I have already spent the better part of three months just getting back to Hag Graef. So you can see that time is of the essence.”
Nagaira sighed. “Well, if time is so short it would make much more sense to research all of the items at once.”
“Am I
mistaken, or do you not wish to share in this power? If I can’t gain it neither will you and you only get the name of one relic at a time. Don’t try to barter with me like some fishwife.”
The witch’s voice went cold. “I could simply wring it out of you like a blood-soaked rag.”
The highborn smiled. “After all the work you just went through to restore me, sweet sister? What a waste.”
She glowered at him a moment—then threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, how I’ve missed you, dear brother,” she said. “No one else vexes me as sweetly as you. In fact, you will be pleased to know that I have prepared a great celebration in your honour.”
“A celebration?” Malus said, as though unfamiliar with the word.
“Oh, yes! A grand feast of wine and flesh, of powders and spices and sweet blood. You will get to see just how deep my connections run—many of my allies are eager to meet you and there is much you could reap from such acquaintances. I daresay you would taste a bit of the power I know you’ve coveted your entire life.”
“And how many of the temple’s devoted will find their way into the celebration and try to plunge their knives in my throat?”
“Let them come,” the witch smirked, tapping the edge of Malus’ goblet with a long fingernail. “I could use a few more goblets for my guests.” Her eyes widened. And speaking of the fete, I have another gift for you.”
She reached into the sleeve of her robe and produced a carefully wrapped bundle a bit larger than her hand.
“I should be scandalised at the way I lavish you with costly things,” she said, setting the parcel on the bier and carefully unwrapping it. “All of the guests at the fete must wear one of these,” she said, holding the object up to the witchlight. “I think this one will suit you well.”
Malus reached out and took the object from her hand. A skilled craftsman had used very keen knives to remove the top part of a druchii’s face, peeling away the flesh down to the muscle. The hide had then been mounted on a mould and carefully cured back into its former shape, then painted with what appeared to be intricate tattoos. It was an exquisite mask, the tattoos forming the image of a dragon’s eyes and snout.