Razumov's Tomb (11 page)

The world swam back into view but it was not the world Gabriel remembered. He was trapped beneath a chunk of masonry. It had shattered a bone in his leg—he could see a pale, bloody shard jutting out from his robes. The pain was breathtaking, but he realised that the stone had probably saved his life. Figures were tumbling past him as the town flew free, unshackled from gravity or logic. He groaned in pain and looked around at the chaos. Schwarzbach was not just in flight, it was collapsing. Whole districts had sheared away, hurled into the ether and leaving the central square with a halo of fractured, cobbled streets.

Beyond the town’s crumbling borders was a confusing montage of shifting hues and strange, briefly glimpsed vistas—landscapes torn from every corner of the world. Gabriel saw places that would have made no sense wherever they were. He saw great oceans of fire and towering forests of ice, but as soon as he tried to focus on any of them, they vanished, replaced by something equally absurd. He used his staff to lever the stone off his leg, then sat up and looked back at the tower. It had vanished, replaced by a slender column of
nothing.
It looked like a hole had been torn in the air, revealing the blank canvas behind reality.

The strangeness of it hurt Gabriel’s eyes and he looked back at the square. The knights and monsters were clinging desperately to life, hanging onto the rubble as Schwarzbach heaved and rolled. He noticed that one of the knights was struggling towards him and looked familiar.

“Reiksgraf,” said Gabriel.

“Stop it!” cried the knight as he tried to approach. The town was hanging at such a surreal angle that the reiksgraf had to climb down a street as though it were the sheer face of a mountain.

Gabriel shook his head in confusion. “Stop it?”

“We’re dying!” cried the knight, waving his broken sword at the spinning streets. “Stop the town! Land us somewhere!”

Gabriel nodded slowly, recognising the truth of the reiksgraf’s words. If the town continued spinning loose, it would eventually shed every one of its inhabitants, but if he could fix it to one of the scenes hurling past, they might even stand a chance of victory. Half of the beastmen had been left behind when Schwarzbach was torn from reality. And those that remained were consumed by madness—attacking their own kind as ferociously as the knights.

Gabriel closed his eyes and delved deep into his consciousness. As he muttered the first few syllables of a spell, he felt a huge wave of azyr wrench through his limbs. The magic was so overwhelming that he almost dropped his staff. Wherever they were now, the air was pure magic. The astrolabe at the end of his staff lit up like a beacon and began to spin. The celestial discs whirred around the orb at such speed that they blurred into a silver sphere. He stretched his thoughts beyond the rings, out into the vague regions beyond Schwarzbach. Lakes and cities tumbled through his mind in a delirious mess and he laughed at the impossibility of his task. “Where?” he wondered aloud.

“Land us somewhere!” cried the reiksgraf again, his voice shrill with madness.

Gabriel took a deep breath and poured every ounce of his power into the town’s shattered foundations, slamming Schwarzbach down onto the ground.

He did not have the faintest idea where he had taken them.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Caspar lay still for a while with his eyes closed, savouring the peace of his dreams. It must still be very early, he thought, so there was no harm in sleeping a little longer. Soon, the halls of the Celestial College would be full of noise and bustle as his fellow magisters began their work. His whole body ached with exhaustion and he realised he must have studied well into the night. Then a vague, unnamed dread began to gnaw at the edges of his mind. There was something essential he needed to do—some crucial task he had left unfinished. As his mind began to clear, his anguish grew. Why did he feel so hot? His skin was throbbing and tiny needles of pain were prickling his face. There was also an unpleasant sound, a banshee howl that tore through his dreams, forcing him back into the world. A face filled his thoughts. Caspar groaned as he saw Razumov’s necrotic grin. He remembered everything in a sickening flood.

He opened his eyes and saw a raging sandstorm. He was slumped at the top of the drifting tower, his scorched robes snapping in the wind like a pennant. Below him was Schwarzbach—or at least, some of it. The square and its surrounding streets were carpeted in sand and, half a mile away, the cobbles and flagstones vanished completely, giving way to a fierce, swirling desert.

Caspar groaned as he tried to sit up. Beyond the ruined buildings there was nothing but sand—endless, wind-lashed dunes, undulating into the distance beneath a bottomless azure sky. The hills and forests that should have surrounded the town had vanished. The Empire had vanished. A blazing southern sun now shone over the town, its light mingled with the sordid glow of Morrslieb.

The wizard tried to speak, but his throat was so scorched that all he could manage was a hoarse croak.

All around the square, dazed figures were picking themselves up from the ground and staggering through the spiralling clouds of sand. Monsters and knights stared out at the desert in equal confusion.

The reiksgraf began herding his knights together, handing out weapons and shoving them back towards the steps of the town hall.

Caspar shook his head at the man’s indomitable will. Even after being torn from reality and hurled to gods knew where, he was still trying to lead his knights to victory. He seemed unable to hold his head up properly and his arm was drenched in blood but, as he saw how few of the beastmen had made the journey with them, he let out a furious howl and raised his sword.

“None of this matters!” he cried, his voice knifing through the sandstorm. He waved his sword at the desert. “Wherever we are, we are still sons of Sigmar! If this is where we make our stand, then so be it.”

There was such passion in the reiksgraf’s voice that, despite everything they had been through, the knights began shuffling dutifully to his side, grabbing weapons from the ground, dusting sand from their armour and raising their weary heads.

As the knights rallied to their general, the beastmen faltered. It quickly dawned on them that they were now outnumbered but, rather than grouping together, they flew at the knights in ones and twos, hurtling through the storm like daemons.

As the noise of battle filled the streets once more, Caspar placed a hand on the ruined tower and smiled. The stones were still pulsing with magic and as it rushed through his fingers, he recalled how wonderful it had felt when he embraced it. He closed his eyes, allowing his thoughts to slip free and dissolve into the storm. His mind spiralled up into the sky and, almost immediately, he felt the fury of the wind increase. As the tower began to rotate again, Caspar’s heart started to pound and the broad grin returned to his face. He climbed to his feet more easily than he had done for decades and stretched his limbs, relishing his newfound virility. He peered through the whirling sand, searching for his enemy. There was no sign of Razumov, so he leaned out into the storm, watching the knights as they hacked the beastmen to the ground.

As Caspar admired the soldiers’ bravery, he did not notice a figure emerging from the storm. Razumov’s eyes gleamed as he lifted his staff over Caspar’s head and brought it down to crush his throat.

Gabriel crawled towards the tower, trailing blood and muttering gibberish, his mind as fractured as his leg. As the storm howled around him, he felt it tearing him apart. His consciousness flickered from one place to the next, unable to settle. For a few seconds, he looked through the eyes of an exhausted wizard, dragging himself through a storm, but then he was miles above, surveying the scene through the powerful gaze of a vulture, circling overhead. “I’m not a bird,” he said, shaking his head and passing into another mind. This time he saw the sand from ground level. He was a tiny, iridescent beetle, scuttling over the dunes. “Nor that,” he croaked, reaching out again. As his thoughts drifted down through the sand, they brushed against a consciousness of such rancour and antiquity that he let out a pitiful groan. Somewhere, deep below the desert, a monster was slumbering, a cold, metal behemoth of such vast proportions that it dwarfed anything they had yet faced. “By the comets,” he hissed, withdrawing his mind like a hand snatched away from a flame. The shock of the encounter finally allowed him to focus and look out through his own eyes.

He fixed his thoughts in his own head and looked around at the ruins of Schwarzbach. “Where?” he whispered. The glittering figures of knights were dashing by, filled with renewed vigour as the reiksgraf led them against a vastly diminished foe. The beastmen were on the verge of defeat, but beyond that, Gabriel could see very little. The tower was a howling cyclone of sand, surrounded by shifting hoops of light, but there was no sign of the Grand Astromancer.

Gabriel peered into the whirling column, his skeletal face showing a brief hint of emotion. “Caspar, what have I done?” He closed his eyes and hung his head. Even if his master was still alive, they were all now stranded in another world, with no way of knowing where or when. As the ringing of swords surrounded him, he realised that the bravery of the reiksgraf was pointless. He might slay the beastmen, but then what? Where would they go?

Gabriel lay there for a few moments, unsure what to do. He dragged himself into a sitting position and leaned back against a ruined wall. As he did so, he noticed something flashing through the storm, a glimmer of white and gold to the south of the square. He thought for a minute that it might be more hallucinations—more glimpses of impossible places—but as the shapes moved closer, he realised that they were as real as Schwarzbach’s tattered awnings.

The pain in his leg was incredible, but he tried to ignore it for a moment to discern the nature of this latest madness. Like Caspar, he was draped in the arcane equipment of his profession and one of the objects was a long, jointed telescope. He snapped the thing together and squinted through the lens. At first he could see nothing but heaving banks of sand, whipped up by the storm, but then, as he scoured the horizon, a face swam into view. Gabriel flinched. The figure was dressed in beautiful armour of gold, amber and turquoise, but its grinning face was completely devoid of flesh. The wizard grimaced as he turned the lens on the other shapes emerging from the storm. They were all the same—jerking puppets of bleached bone, clad in ornate armour and carrying spears and bows. At the head of the army was a great chariot, led by four skeletal horses and carrying a figure dressed in even more finery than the others. His golden headdress was designed to resemble the hood of a cobra and he fixed his gaze on Gabriel, a cold fire burning in his eye sockets.

Gabriel shook his head in disbelief. The desert was empty and desolate. There was no sign of life for miles around them. How could this army have discovered them so quickly? He looked again and had his answer. Behind the skeletons, he saw rows of wagons and tents. The undead army must have been expecting them. He turned the lens back towards the chariot and saw that the leader of the skeletons carried a selection of objects not so different from his own—lenses, sextants and crumbling, ancient texts. “He’s a sorcerer,” muttered Gabriel. “He’s been waiting.”

As he studied the skeleton king, Gabriel realised that the blazing eyes were not looking at him at all, but something further into the ruins of Schwarzbach. Gabriel looked back over his shoulder and let out a curse. The skeletons were making directly for Razumov’s tower.

He must have known we would arrive here at this time, thought Gabriel. All of this must have been prophesised. As he watched them approaching, Gabriel noticed other shapes rearing up over the heads of the skeletons—enormous snakes, as skeletal and heavily armoured as the rest of the army. Perched on their heads were skeleton riders, nocking arrows to bows as their bizarre mounts hurled them towards the stranded town square.

“Reiksgraf,” cried Gabriel, looking back at the knights. The noise of the storm was too great; the wind snatched his words away and the general fought on, oblivious to the animated charnel house that was hurtling towards him.

Gabriel clutched his head in his hands and tried to think. He could see no way that any of them could survive in this alien desert, but he could not bear to watch the knights die at the hands of such hideous beings. He scoured his memory for an idea, examining every shred of prophecy he could recall. He pictured himself back at the Celestial College, in his featureless cell, poring over his moondial. Everything that he had pictured had come to pass. He gasped. Not
quite
everything. He suddenly remembered the part of the prophecy that he had been unable to explain. “A mountain of gold.” His pulse raced as he remembered the vast presence beneath the sand. Its ancient malice had been contained within a huge mass of metal—gold, perhaps.

Gabriel closed his eyes and allowed his thoughts to reach out into the storm once more. His leg was bleeding heavily, staining the sand a dark red, and he found the dizziness that was overtaking him quite liberating—he easily sent his mind burrowing down through the dark, cool sand beneath Schwarzbach. As he approached the enormous presence, he felt a thrill of terror. Whatever the thing was, it was burning with hate, a hate that had lain festering for countless ages. Gabriel moaned as he allowed his thoughts to mingle with such bitter sentience.

He was so consumed by fear and dismay that he barely noticed the ranks of skeletons clattering onto the cobbled streets and launching themselves at the knights. Even as towering, armoured cobras smashed through the ruins, swinging their heads from side to side as they chose their prey, Caspar paid no attention. His eyes had rolled back in their sockets and he was twitching in agony. As the undead legions waded into battle, blowing long, gilded horns and drawing their weapons, Caspar groaned in fear and regret, oblivious to anything but the vast evil he was summoning from beneath the sand. As he lay there, muttering half-remembered spells, the stones around him began to rattle and shake.