Razumov's Tomb

This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl-Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering World’s Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever near, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

As winter gave way to spring, the plagues began. The first tentative snowdrops had barely raised their nodding heads when a bulbous mass of cuttlefish slapped across the land, burying everything beneath a carpet of twitching tentacles. The good folk of the Empire took the creatures for daemons and attacked them with pitchforks. They built quivering pyres of cephalopod flesh and tried to burn the land clean of corruption. Beleaguered bands of militiamen attempted to maintain order but as the piles of cuttlefish rose, so did the hysteria. Whole towns were abandoned, left to a few misguided souls who attempted to worship the gasping creatures, draping themselves in homemade tentacles and prostrating themselves in the hope of salvation. What began with a few isolated eccentrics quickly blossomed into a cult and the Emperor was forced to act, making an example of the more prominent lunatics. A priest by the name of Otto Gyllenborg was dragged into the grounds of the Imperial Palace and set alight, screaming to the last that he was the one true prophet of the fish god.

It soon became impossible to find roads. The pulsing, briny creatures blurred the landscape, turning everything into a confusing mess of shifting hues and leaving the outlying provinces utterly cut off. The threat of starvation led to rioting and then, just as it seemed the Emperor might have to wage war on his own people, a second plague began.

On the third night of Jahrdrung, the Emperor’s terrified subjects looked up to see that the Chaos moon, Morrslieb, was collapsing. For weeks it had looked more bloated and sickly than usual, but now fragments of its greenish rock were fluttering down from the heavens. The people of the Empire screamed in terror as emerald sparks settled on their houses and erupted into flames. The fires spread quickly, dwarfing even the still-smouldering pyres of cuttlefish, and a thick miasma settled over the land, pierced only by the pallid light of Morrslieb, leering down over the carnage it had wrought.

Plague after plague followed. By the twelfth of Jahrdrung, every cat in the Empire had begun to speak, demanding food with such persistence that people packed mud into their ears to escape the thin, whining voices. A few days after that, a fierce wind blew in from the north, carrying a stench so sulphurous that the air became almost impossible to breathe. Hundreds of people choked and died and those who survived were forced to wear odd, funnel shaped masks to keep out the evil humours. It was then that the mass exodus began. Armies of masked refugees abandoned their homes and marched on our fair capital, Altdorf. Furious, afraid and gagging on the noxious air, they pounded the city gates, demanding help. As the numbers swelled into the thousands and madness continued to pour from the heavens, the Emperor turned to the one man he felt sure would have an answer, only to find him as lost and afraid as everyone else.

—Wolfgang Spitteler’s
Plagues and Portents

—A History of Celestial Magic

CHAPTER ONE

Caspar Vyborg had not slept for days and as he watched the stars wheeling overhead, he let out a long, mournful yawn. “What’s the point?” he muttered, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Wretched moon.” The light of Morrslieb had made even the most familiar constellations unreadable, painting the heavens such a lurid green that the wizard could barely distinguish Ulric’s Beard from the Great Hammer. He sighed and dropped his gaze to the packed streets that surrounded the Celestial College. Altdorf’s labyrinthine alleyways were crowded at the best of times, but since the plagues had taken hold, the city had been completely overrun with refugees from every corner of the Empire. The scene was even more bewildering than the sky, and Caspar turned away with a despairing grunt.

His observatory was a riot of discarded scrolls, overturned armillary spheres, glinting lenses and dog-eared almanacs. As the moonlight poured down through the domed glass roof, it washed over the sheets of paper. Every one of them was blank.

The old man hummed loudly as he returned to his desk. The sound was a tuneless drone that gave him no pleasure, but it at least drowned out another sound: a harsh, metallic ticking that was seeping in through the walls of the college.

Caspar glanced wearily at the blank scrolls of vellum strewn across his desk, then rummaged in his thick blue robes, looking for something. A rattling mass of sextants and spyglasses hung around his neck, but the object he sought was a medallion—a gem-studded comet made of solid gold. He clutched his badge of office with all the strength left in his arthritic fingers. “I’m still the Grand Astromancer,” he whispered, squeezing the metal so tightly that his bones began to ache. “Whatever happens.”

There was a knock at the door and he flinched, hiding the medallion back beneath the other objects and giving it a protective pat. He surveyed his chamber with a muttered curse. The place looked like the den of a lunatic. Ignoring his various aches and pains, Caspar hobbled around the room, swaying awkwardly from side to side as he stuffed useless tomes into drawers and placed globes back onto shelves. After taking a deep breath to calm himself, he grabbed a long staff that was resting against the desk and opened the door.

The figure waiting outside was dressed in robes of the same rich blue, but he was much younger—no more than fifty—and towered over the frail figure of Caspar. He looked bedraggled and exhausted. His robes were drenched in mud and his hair was leaning from his head at an odd, windswept angle. His face was beaded with sweat and he was panting heavily but, without pausing to catch his breath, he held up a glass tube, sealed at either end with ornate silver clasps.

“Magister—” was all he managed to say before the old man’s staff cracked his nose, sending him reeling back into the darkened corridor.

“Wait!” he cried, trying to stem the blood that rushed from his nostrils.

Caspar gave no response as he shuffled forward and landed a blow on the man’s shoulder.

The messenger cowered against the wall as the old man pounded his robes repeatedly with the staff, like a cleaner working at a rug.

“Beetles!” screamed Caspar as he swung.

A look of relief washed over the man’s face. “Oh,” he gasped, frantically dusting down his robes. As he moved, dozens of death watch beetles fell from his robes and scuttled away, adding their ticking to the rattling chorus that filled the night. “I removed as many as I could, but they get everywhere. It’s impossible to—”

The old man jabbed his staff into the messenger’s stomach. “There!”

“Yes, yes, very good, Grand Astromancer,” wheezed the younger man, flicking some more glittering shells from his robes.

Caspar grabbed him by the arm and hauled him into his chamber, slamming the door behind them.

“They’re taunting me!” growled Caspar, glaring up at the messenger and waving his staff. “Do you know what it’s like, listening to that sound all day,
every
day?”

“Yes, my lord, I assure you I do. The plagues are Empire-wide.”

Caspar sneered dismissively and shuffled back to his desk, collapsing into a chair with a grunt.

The messenger stepped hesitantly into a shaft of green moonlight. The look of pride returned to his face as he tapped the glass tube in his hands. “I’ve ridden from the north, my lord—all the way from Ostland. My name’s Johann Belmer. I’m not sure if you’ll remember me, but I’m an adept of the order. I bring news from your old friend, Tylo Sulzer.”

“A
friend
is he?” Caspar raised his eyebrows. He straightened the black skullcap that covered his thinning grey hair and proudly raised his chin. “Not friend enough to come here in person, even when his old master is in such dire need. Even when the Emperor is threatening the order with dissolution if I don’t find an answer to this mess.”

“Ostland is consumed by madness, my lord. Please understand, Magister Sulzer’s every waking moment is spent trying to decipher the meaning of these plagues. He was hard pressed even to write this letter.”

Caspar leaned across his desk with bitterness in his eyes. “Much good it will do!” He levelled one of his crooked fingers at the glass tube. “Open it then! Go on! Let’s see how much use it is.”

“It will only open for you, my lord.”

“Of course.” Caspar snatched the tube and muttered a quick spell. There was a shimmer of blue light and a metallic clunk as the silver clasps fell away. Caspar slid out a scroll, broke the seal, peered at the paper and nodded. Then he handed it to Johann.