The second blow nearly got him killed. Just as Malus pulled his sword free from the dying man he caught a flash of steel, and instinct caused him to fall backwards, away from the draich’s blurring strike. The sword flashed through the space where his head had been, continuing downwards to slice across the highborn’s forearm. He grimaced at the sudden flare of pain, but there was no time for concern — the zealot continued to press his attack, reversing his curved sword and slashing upwards at Malus’ neck. The highborn rolled right, feeling the razor edged steel hiss through the air a finger’s breadth from his jawbone. Then there was a meaty crunch, and hot blood sprayed across his face. He opened his eyes in time to see the zealot fall off the stairs, the top of his head shorn away by the stroke of Niryal’s axe.
Legs pumping furiously, Malus scrambled backwards up the stairs. The zealots pressed forwards. On the highborn’s left the surviving loyalist was also retreating, blood flowing from a deep wound in his shoulder. Niryal stood over Malus, her bloody axe swinging in vicious strokes to keep the enemy at bay. Then movement on the floor below caught the highborn’s eye. Zealots and black robed temple converts were streaming into the room and adding their weight to the group pushing up the stairway.
“Fall back!” Malus shouted angrily. “Back to the library!”
The wounded loyalist stole a glance at Malus upon hearing the order, and the mistake cost him his life. His opponent leapt forwards with a shout and brought his powerful blade down at the juncture of the man’s neck and shoulder. The blow chopped through collarbone and ribs, splitting the breastbone and tearing through his vitals. Blood burst from the man’s open mouth and he fell without a sound. Whether by luck or design the loyalist’s body collapsed against the front rank of zealots, slowing their advance long enough for Malus to scramble to his feet and race for the library door.
The door latch was icy cold to the touch. Malus pulled the door open and a blast of freezing air lashed at his face. Frost glittered on the inside of the door, and the chamber was suffused with a shifting blue glow. At the far end of the room, Arleth Vann stood before the elder’s skull, which floated in the air several feet above his head. Blue flames burned from the skull’s eye sockets, and it was attached to a wispy body that twisted and writhed as it hung in the air.
Malus raced across the room, feeling the invisible tension of the sorcerous struggle seethe across his skin. Arleth Vann’s back was arched and his head was thrown back, his mouth working silently as he waged a battle of wills against the elder’s spirit. Niryal stumbled through the door behind Malus, her eyes going wide at the scene playing out before her.
“Into the circle!” Malus shouted to her as he stepped across the mystical lines. Power surged and crackled around him. He felt a wave of freezing cold against his face, and his hair stood on end. A seething crackle filled his ears. The highborn turned to find the priestess right on his heels. As she stepped into the circle they were buffeted by a cyclone of unstable energies. Arleth Vann’s head snapped forwards, his face etched with strain and his eyes wide.
“Release the energy!” the highborn shouted into the building storm. “Let it go!”
The door to the library burst open as the first of the zealots charged in. In half a dozen strides the swordsmen were halfway across the room. Malus started to shout at the assassin again when he heard Arleth Vann howl in agony and the world exploded in a blast of bluish flame.
Chapter Nineteen
REVERSALS OF FORTUNE
A clap of thunder smote Malus’ ears and he was yanked off his feet by the power of the blast, like a leaf caught up in the wake of a raging wind. He heard screams and the sound of splintering wood, and then he crashed into something hard and unyielding, knocking him senseless.
When his vision finally cleared, long moments later, he found himself sprawled beneath a pile of shredded, smouldering books at the base of one of the library’s many bookshelves. The ringing in his ears began to fade, replaced by the groans of wounded men.
A hazy, bluish light hung in the air, seeming to emanate from the very stones of the floor, walls and ceiling. The witchlight globes had shattered in the blast, and drifts of shredded paper hung like fine ash in the unearthly glow. Everything caught in the blast had been destroyed. The study carrels had been smashed to pieces like a ship’s rail hit by a catapult stone, and the hundreds of books lining the shelves around the room had been mulched by a storm of wooden shrapnel. The tall cabinets containing the skulls of former elders were likewise crushed, spilling a rain of bone fragments onto the floor.
Niryal lay against one of the bookshelves to Malus’ left, covered in debris but apparently unhurt. As the highborn staggered to his feet he saw Arleth Vann rising in a daze on the opposite side of the room. The assassin’s face was lined with pain and exhaustion, and his eyes were wide with horror at the devastation he’d wrought. The arcane circle laid in the floor was gone, its lines of silver obliterated by the release of magical energy. Malus reckoned that the only reason he and his companions were still alive was because the destructive force radiated outwards from the edge of the circle and dragged them along with it.
Their foes had not been so fortunate.
The zealots closest to the circle could not even be said to resemble men. Their swords had shattered and their clothes had burned away, but their bodies had simply melted like candle wax, leaving nothing but piles of steaming, red mush behind. The next rank of men had caught the full fury of the blast’s shrapnel, riddling and slicing their bodies into tattered, dripping rags. Only those closest to the narrow doorway had escaped death, although the door itself had been torn to flinders and hurled into the gallery beyond. Bodies writhed on the floor, clutching seeping wounds or mangled limbs.
His breath turning to vapour in the unnaturally cold air, Malus cast about for his sword and found it imbedded in a pair of thick, leather-bound tomes still resting on their shelf at roughly chest height. The highborn yanked the blade loose, spilling the torn contents of the books onto the glowing stone, and stumbled through the debris towards the wounded men with a grim look on his face.
“Blessed Murderer,” Niryal gasped, her face pale and furious as she surveyed the desolation. “What have you done?”
“What was necessary,” Malus snapped, reaching the first pair of wounded men and despatching them with short, vicious strokes. Steaming sprays of blood arced heavily through the blue tinged air with each upswing of the double-edged blade. “Would you rather have let these blasphemers kill us?”
“Of course!” the priestess cried. “Our lives mean nothing compared to the knowledge within these walls—”
Malus rounded on her, levelling his dripping sword at her face. “Don’t start,” he warned. Nearby, a zealot rolled onto his stomach and began crawling towards a nearby blade. The highborn caught the movement and fell upon the wounded man, hacking remorselessly at his head and neck.
“None… of… this… is… yours!” Malus said, emphasising each word with a vicious sword stroke. The zealot collapsed, and the highborn searched for another victim. “Every book, every damned skull, all of it belongs to Urial. Do you see?”
“What I see is another bloody disaster!” the priestess shot back. Somehow she’d managed to keep her grip on her axe during the explosion, and she pointed the curving tips of its twin blades at Malus. “Everywhere you go, you leave death and ruin in your wake.”
Malus stepped over to an unmoving form and studied it. Quick as an adder he stabbed the man in the throat and was rewarded with a bright fountain of blood. The man began convulsing, and the highborn grunted in satisfaction. “Didn’t I say I was a servant of Khaine?” he replied, giving her a challenging stare.
“What servant of Khaine would leave his god’s temple in ruins?” she said.
“One fighting a war,” the highborn replied. He pointed through the doorway with his sword. “If you think that usurper in the sanctum is the true Scourge, then go to him and see how he rewards your misguided
beliefs.”
The two druchii exchanged furious stares: Niryal trembling with anger, and Malus cold and still as stone.
A pile of debris shifted, revealing a badly wounded zealot. A bloody groan bubbled from the warrior’s lips.
Niryal’s face twisted in a bitter grimace. Hefting her axe, she took three swift strides and buried the heavy blade in the wounded man’s chest. The priestess pulled her weapon free, spattering the surrounding books with spots of bright crimson, and then stalked from the room with a single, hateful glare. Moments later Malus heard the wet, butcher’s sound of her axe cleaving into the survivors in the gallery.
Malus turned to Arleth Vann. The assassin’s gaze still wandered through the ruins of his childhood, drifting from one devastated pile of books to another. The highborn joined him, picking his way carefully through the wreckage.
“Do not mourn,” the highborn said softly. “You did what had to be done.”
Arleth Vann seemed to notice him for the first time, peering out of his bleak reverie. “She was right,” he said, his voice hollow. “You can’t imagine what has been lost, my lord: so much knowledge… so much history!”
Malus took his retainer by the throat, pulling him close. “Knowledge is illusory,” he growled. “History is but prologue. Everything kept in this room was meant to shepherd the temple to this point in time. It served its purpose, Arleth Vann. The Time of Blood is nigh.”
The assassin stared at Malus, a stricken expression twisting his pale features. He nodded slowly. “Yes, of course. You have the right of it my lord.” Arleth Vann spoke intently, as if trying to convince himself. “What’s past is past.”
“Well said,” Malus replied. “Did you learn anything from the elder?”
Arleth Vann glanced at the ruined circle. The elder’s skull sat upright at its centre, miraculously unharmed by the blast. “It was harder — much harder — than I expected,” he admitted, “but, yes, the elder finally shared some of his knowledge.”
“And?”
The assassin breathed a misty sigh. “There is no way to track the zealots through the gate,” he said. “To do that would require a personal connection with one of them, like the blood of kinship or the power of a sorcerous oath.”
Malus growled deep in his throat. “That is not helpful.”
Arleth Vann interrupted the highborn’s protests with a raised hand. “We have no tie to the zealots, but we do have a powerful connection to the sword itself.”
“What tie?”
“Why, you, of course,” the assassin replied. “You’re the Scourge. The blade is fated to be wielded by you during the Time of Blood. That destiny binds you to the warpsword, and with it you can navigate your passage through the Vermillion Gate.”
Damned fate! Malus thought bitterly. He imagined he felt the daemon swell with pleasure inside his chest. “Then we shall leave at once,” he said brusquely, “provided we can get back into the crypts.”
“We can’t go back the way we came, obviously,” the assassin replied, his voice slowly regaining its strength as he shook off the strain of the ritual and its cataclysmic end, “but if we move quickly we can slip out through the ground floor and find another entry point in one of the nearby buildings.”
“What about the guards?”
The assassin managed a faint chuckle. “They’re all up here and more will be coming any minute Urial could not have helped but sense what happened here.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Malus said. “Let’s get out of here. Once we’ve reached the lodge, however, I’ve got another errand for you.”
“As you wish, my lord,” the retainer replied, stifling a weary sigh. “May I ask a question?”
“Make it quick.”
Arleth Vann nodded in the direction of the gallery. “Would you have let her go to Urial if she’d wished?”
Malus didn’t dignify such foolishness with an answer.
The four remaining loyalists filed silently from the prime chamber, all of them casting troubled glances over their shoulder at Malus and the tomb of Gothar the Ironmaster. Niryal was the last. She hadn’t said a single word since leaving the Citadel of Bone, but Malus could plainly see the anger and doubt warring behind her eyes. The conflict had only deepened when he’d told them his theory about the warpsword.
He could tell that they wanted to believe him, because it meant that there was still a chance to restore the rightful order in the temple and gain some vengeance in an otherwise hopeless situation. The fact that the temple elders had lied to the faithful about the sword for centuries hadn’t made much of an impression yet, but that would come in time. Providing that any of them survived.
There was no telling what they would find on the other side of the gate. Malus had wracked his brain, trying to deduce where the zealots would have taken their prize, but he couldn’t think of a single place that made any sense. He wanted some idea of what they would be up against when they emerged on the other side of the gate.
A shiver passed through Malus, making him cast a worried glance at the chamber door. Fortunately, the temple servants were gone, having been told to gather up their meagre camp and make ready to depart. The highborn wrapped his arms tightly around his chest and breathed deeply, trying to keep his knees from trembling.
Malus ached for a taste of the daemon’s power. The need had come upon him as they slipped from the citadel and crept across the temple grounds. Maybe it had been the brush with sorcery in the library, or the after-effects of the battle, but as he’d walked he felt his muscles shrivel like old roots and his guts turn to ice. It was by sheer willpower alone that he forced himself to complete the long journey back to the lodge. He’d told the loyalists his plans while leaning against the tomb so they wouldn’t see his body tremble.
Just a taste, he thought. Just a small taste. Eldire said all wasn’t yet lost. My will is still strong.
Another wracking shudder passed through him. He felt his knees buckle and couldn’t get his hand out in time to keep himself from landing hard on the stone floor. Malus bit back a stream of vicious curses, appalled at his own weakness.
“It will only get worse, little druchii,” the daemon whispered, sliding like oil across his brain. “This is but a taste of the ordeals to come, unless you let me help you.”
“You’re corrupting me,” the highborn growled wearily, “chewing out my guts from the inside, like a rat. Do you think I can’t see what you’re doing?”
“Malus, you brought this on yourself,” the daemon replied, “the ordeal in Lurhan’s tower, and all those times afterward, when we returned to Naggaroth from the sea. You were too greedy, taking too much of my strength at once.”
“Don’t put this on me!” the highborn shouted angrily. “I did what I had to in order to survive! I took nothing but what I needed at the time.”
“If that’s the way you insist upon looking at it, then I can’t make you think otherwise,” Tz’arkan replied, “but all that is in the past. You are what you are, and nothing can change that. Why make yourself miserable, and risk your continued existence into the bargain, by wallowing in this wretched state? Let me restore your strength. You’re going to need it for what lies ahead.”
Malus clenched his fists. It all sounded like sweet reason. Why bother fighting it when he was already so far gone? What would be the point? If you’re already damned, better to go out in a blaze of glory than shivering and whimpering in a corner. “What does lie ahead?” he asked, desperate to change the subject. “What do you know?”
“I know there will be struggle, of course, hard, desperate fighting and rivers of pain. It is your fate, little druchii.”
“Fate,” Malus spat, feeling a little of his old hatred flare to life. Mentally, he huddled around its wan flame. “You mean the grand trap you built for me.” Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. “How does Khaine fit into all this?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your plan,” the highborn said.
“What does a daemon of Slaanesh have to do with the Scourge of Khaine? And how is it that one of the five relics used to bind you just happens to be the talisman of Khaine’s chosen one?”
The daemon didn’t respond at first. Malus took that to be a sign he was on to something.
“The sword has not always been called the Warpsword of Khaine,” Tz’arkan said. “It is very, very old, and has had many names in its time.”
“What was it called when it was being wielded by the Chaos lord who bound you?”
“What’s the point? You don’t have the mouth parts to pronounce it properly anyway.”
The highborn put that unpleasant mental image aside. “My point is that the relic wasn’t handed down to the cultists by Khaine himself. It fell into their hands sometime after you were bound in the far north.” Malus’ mind began to race as he considered the implications. “They were meant to keep it until the day I would come and claim it. So, is the prophecy of the Scourge also part of your plan? Did you plant that seed as well as the sword?”
Tz’arkan chuckled gleefully. “Who can understand the machinations of fate, Darkblade? Certainly not you. How could I possibly manipulate so much while trapped in my crystal prison hundreds of leagues distant?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you would tell me.”
“Then you are destined for disappointment, I fear.”
Malus relaxed a little. With his mind fully engaged, the aches in his body seemed to abate. “All right. Let us suppose that Khaine handed down the prophecy of the Scourge, and you somehow inserted this relic into the legends, knowing that one day I — or some other misbegotten bastard like me — would come along to claim both. Aren’t you courting Khaine’s wrath in all this?”
The daemon sighed. “Such a clever little beast you are sometimes. All right, as a token of pity for the sad state you are in, I will tell you this much: the Blood God does not care who spills blood in his name, or why, only that it flows.”