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Soulblight Gravelords: Masters of Death – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter 1

AGE OF MYTH

THE SEASON OF LOSS

Snow the colour of ash fell over Nulahmia. It was the grey of abandoned hopes and forgotten graves. It gathered upon rooftops like torn shrouds, their tatters sweeping onto windowsills. In the streets, mounds formed. Gazing down at them from his chambers in a corner turret of his family’s palace, Mathas Hellezan thought the mounds looked like huddled bodies. Cold death descended from the sky to blanket the city of tombs. Mathas felt trapped between the dooms of sky and land. He couldn’t breathe. He yanked at the casement and opened the windows. The wind of sepulchres keened into the room, stinging his face with the grey flakes. The cold braced him, and he filled his lungs. He choked, swallowing fragments of pain. Bent double over the sill, gasping, he heard the hammering at the palace doors. The sound shocked him back to calm. The knock was heavy, a mailed fist slamming against bronze three times.

Three reverberating booms, the tolling of a bell reaching up through the night for him. At first he was surprised he could hear the knocking from the far side of the palace. Then he realised what the summons portended, and of course he heard it. Every Hellezan heard it. The walls of the palace trembled with the impact of fate coming to call.

Mathas stood back from the window. He crossed his chamber, passed through the narrow recess into his armoury, and began to make ready. He was just donning his helm when his father appeared at the doorway.

‘It is tonight, then,’ Mathas said.

Verrick Hellezan nodded. He was pale, and his eyes were stricken.

The Culling of the Firstborn was upon them.

‘You aren’t grieving, are you, father?’ Mathas asked. ‘We knew this moment would arrive. We have been preparing for it.’ The Mortarch of Blood had cursed mortal houses of Nulahmia with the tradition centuries before.

‘Yes, I know.’ Verrick’s voice trembled with fear and the anticipation of sorrow. ‘I did not think it would be this night.’

‘Would another night make a difference?’

‘No,’ Verrick admitted.

‘She knows I am about to ascend to command of the house, father,’ said Mathas. ‘There is no hiding that from her.’ Like all other firstborns in his position, he must go to the Palace of Seven Vultures. ‘It is my time to be tested.’

‘I had hoped we might have been able to discover the nature of the test before this moment.’

Mathas smiled. ‘It is deadly. We know that much.’ The Culling was real. Most firstborn never returned, except in coffins. Their mutilated remains were presented to their families, and the biers were carried in mocking silence by a cortege of skeletons.

‘If you fall…’ Verrick began.

‘I won’t. But if I do, you will go on.’

‘Will we?’

Mathas could already see, in his father, the same despairing face he had encountered so often in the kin of the lost firstborns. ‘The Hellezans can survive,’ he said. ‘The others have.’ More or less. Weakened by the losses, some houses failed, decapitated by the death of the firstborn. But others continued to exist, diminished and humbled, taught the futility of resisting the blood queen, often even before the idea had been whispered in the halls. The grieving leaders of these houses bent their knees and bowed their heads before Neferata, entreating her that this son, or this daughter, should be a full and sufficient sacrifice.

‘But you won’t have to just survive,’ Mathas said. ‘I will return. I will return as myself,’ he emphasised, as he saw the shadow of a greater horror pass across Verrick’s eyes.

Some firstborn did not return in coffins. Shrouded by darkness, their flesh cold and pale, their eyes red with ancient, unquenchable thirst, the new vampire thralls of Neferata crossed their thresholds as destroyers.

‘You weren’t at the home of the Salveins,’ Verrick said. ‘You didn’t see what Harvath did to them. He painted the walls with their blood. And the bodies…’ When Verrick shook his head, it seemed to Mathas that he sent a tremor down his entire frame. ‘They filled the corridors, and we couldn’t count them. Such butchery. So many pieces.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, squeezing them tight against the vision of the charnel halls. ‘Harvath just stood there, the blood of his family dripping from his mouth. I don’t know if he even saw us.’

‘That won’t be me, father. You know it won’t.’

Verrick smiled sadly. No matter what Mathas said, it seemed, the old man refused to be comforted. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You might be more restrained.’

‘Like Wrentis Nalvaux?’ He had been merciless in his bloodletting, killing his family members who needed killing, turning those who would be of use, and subjugating everyone else. And so another house had become Neferata’s, controlled by her will as surely as if her terrible presence resided in its chambers. ‘No,’ Mathas said. ‘I will return, and we will all rejoice. This is not the moment of doom. This is our chance to strike.’ He paused. ‘We want this,’ he said softly.

‘I know,’ Verrick said, without conviction.

Mathas clasped his father’s shoulder. Verrick had devoted himself to the struggle, and the effort of the decades had told on him. His frame had withered. His bones seemed frail under Mathas’ touch. His eyes were sunken in his sallow face.

‘You’ve done well, father. You’ve brought us this far. It is time I took up the torch. This night, I will.’ He had been in training for his entire life, waiting for this very night. He, his parents and their allies had not known when the summons would come, but they had known it was inevitable. Mathas was a firstborn, and as mercurial as the queen of Nulahmia could be, she had never spared anyone marked to take part in this ritual.

Why would she? Mathas thought. It is so useful for her.

He left his quarters and made his way through the palace. Verrick walked at his side, seeming to age with every step. The wall sconces burned brightly in the halls, casting a defiant light over the great portraits of the Hellezan line. Gold inlay on the columns and gold leaf on the ceiling gleamed, rich with the pride of a family that had carved out a wealthy life in the kingdom of death. Withstand and Prevail: that was the Hellezan motto, and Mathas believed in it. He would prove its worth and his own tonight.

His armoured boot steps echoed down the halls, the only sound in the palace, though everyone was awake. Servants clustered in doorways to watch his passage. The household seemed to be holding its collective breath. His mother, his brother and his sisters were waiting for him at the main entrance. Teyosa of House Avaranthe, his wife, stood beside them holding their infant son, Kasten.

The doors were closed, but Mathas could sense the dark beings waiting on the other side. Two men-at-arms stood at attention, ready to pull the doors open when he gave the signal.

Mathas embraced his mother. Glanath’s lips were pressed together tightly, her face taught with strain. The years had been hard on her too. It was his responsibility now to make sure his parents’ sacrifice had not been in vain.

Nor would they be the only ones depending on him. There were other families whose fortunes would rise or fall because of this night. In truth, he believed that the fate of all Nulahmia rested on his shoulders. There was solemn pride, but no vanity, in that belief. If he succeeded this night, everything would change. If he failed, someone else would have to take his place, and someone surely would, because the struggle was too important. There was no alternative, other than the despair of complete surrender.

‘I won’t fail,’ he said to Glanath.

‘I know you won’t,’ she said. ‘You march from our palace to a greater one, and to your destiny.’ Her voice trembled only once. She spoke quietly, but with incantatory fervour.

Mathas turned to Teyosa. ‘I will return to you,’ he said. His hand hovered over the sleeping head of Kasten. ‘I swear it.’

‘You should not have to fight alone,’ said Teyosa.

‘Yet I must.’

‘I could…’ she began, but trailed off as he shook his head.

‘If you tried to follow, they would kill you before you had taken ten paces from our gates. You are second-born. Your family has already paid its tithe of blood. And we need you here.’

Teyosa looked down at Kasten and nodded. ‘You will pass by my family’s house,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Mathas. ‘I will learn what I can as we do.’

In the last week, rumours had reached the Hellezan palace that a plague had come to House Avaranthe. Silence had fallen over the family, but there had been no way to learn the truth, no way to know if Neferata had discovered that they were part of the plot against her. If the worst had happened, there could be no open contact between the two houses, especially now that the attention of the dark queen had fallen on the Hellezans.

The days and nights of the Hellezan palace had been consumed with the dread anticipation of Mathas’ summons. The Culling of the Firstborn came to every house. Since there were no exceptions, the summons was predictable. It was possible to prepare for it. Mathas had. The threat stiffened the resolve of the Hellezans and the families with whom they forged quiet, whispered alliances. They vowed to break the chains Neferata had thrown over Nulahmia. The city may have been her creation, but it was time it was freed from the grip of its creator. As plans were laid and the kernel of an organised resistance slowly, almost imperceptibly, came into being, the links between the families had become, on the surface, more distant. If the Avaranthes had been found out, and punished, the appearance of that distance was all the more vital.

Teyosa understood. Yet Mathas knew she feared for her family and grieved in the expectation of tragedy. Knowing one way or another might help. Mathas needed to know, too. Everyone in House Hellezan did.

‘I’ll find out,’ he promised, determination growing. ‘Good news or ill, I will come back, and I will hold you as I tell you.’

‘I can ask no more,’ said Teyosa.

Mathas nodded to the guards, and they opened the doors.

The wind shrieked into the entrance hall, blowing grey before it. The snow whirled about the Hellezans. Verrick winced and brushed the flakes from his shoulders as if trying to shed himself of a dark omen. Three Black Knights stood on the portico. Their heavy armour gleamed dully in the reflected lights of the hall’s torches. The cold breath of the night whistled through their empty eye sockets, and the chill of the grave worked through the seams of Mathas’ armour and clutched his face with a numbing grasp. The blast of the snow storm surrounded the Black Knights, but another, more frigid wind blew from the undead warriors themselves.

Mathas took in the eroded crests on the trio’s armour and bowed. The skeletons were nobles from houses that had been powerful when their families were alive, and were even greater now they were dead.

The middle Black Knight cocked his head as if amused by Mathas’ display of courtesy. You aren’t fooled, Mathas thought. You sense my loathing. Good. But I will walk into the dark with honour. Do not think you can take that from me. He stared back into the knight’s empty sockets. After a few moments, the skeleton turned and strode away, armour creaking, bones grinding together. The other two waited for Mathas to come between them. When he did, they fell into step on either side, an escort of doom.

At street level, the mounds of snow looked even more like bodies, huddled in agony against the building walls. Though the night was freezing, the shapes were melting, heated by the unnatural alchemy that governed their existence. Where the grey was piled high enough to take on the curves of agony, it began to bleed. The masses sank down, rotting, turning to blackened slush, then running in crimson streams down the cobblestones, washing against Mathas’ boots.

The Black Knights took him down a wide boulevard that ran between towering mausoleums. The black walls were hundreds of feet high. Rank upon rank of huge, snarling gargoyle maws covered the facades. Behind every gaping mouth was a stone throat, leading into the structures and the tombs within. The mausoleums held tens of thousands of coffins. Few of their occupants slept soundly.

The grey snow fell past the gargoyles. It gathered on Mathas’ shoulders. It settled onto the street, and was swept away by the streams of blood.

Everything in the night shouted to Mathas that only death could triumph in Nulahmia. He was going to prove the night wrong. They did not know it, but the Black Knights were giving him the opportunity to make that attempt. He would spill blood, and he would kill. But it was one death in particular he sought. One death, to bring the hope of life to the mortals of Nulahmia. Or, no – not a death, for he did not pretend he could kill what was already dead. Destruction, then. He lived to destroy one being.

He was going to destroy Neferata.

Mathas recognised the folly of the quest. He knew he was not the first mortal to make the attempt. What did his two decades of training mean compared to her countless millennia of existence? The hubris of his attempt was without measure. But one of us will bring you down, he thought. One of these times, the blade would strike home. He refused to believe that she was eternal. She, too, was guilty of pride. What was happening to him this night was proof of that. She was inviting destruction over her threshold. One day, the invitation would be accepted.

Your hour is coming, he thought.

They reached an intersection of many avenues. The land here was on a steep slope, and Mathas beheld a vista of the sweep of this quarter of Nulahmia. To his right, the city sloped downwards. To his left, it rose towards the great mass of Neferata’s palace. The enormity of what he intended struck home. Ending the being who had commanded Nulahmia into existence was madness.

It is an honourable madness, he argued. One worth dying for.

The Black Knights and Mathas crossed the wide expanse of the intersection. There were no other mortals on the streets at this hour. They had fled the grey snow as they would a fall of death from the skies. The city was not silent, though. In the shadows below and in the greater darkness above, Nulahmia groaned and rang with endless creation. The hunger of Neferata’s will was never satiated, and it urged the city into transformation. No structure or configuration of streets was eternal. There were monuments a thousand feet high and vaults as big as mountains, and they too would vanish, as if melting into air, at the command of the queen. Death and Neferata were the only constants. Death came for everything.

Mathas looked up at one of the soaring monuments before him. Engravings marked the deaths of a million souls in a distant battlefield. The towers rose from the corners of the intersection where, he recalled from his childhood, there had once been homes. Every change is death, he thought. In Nulahmia, creation’s only purpose was, in the end, to be washed away by blood.

Movement at the top of one of the towers caught his eye. A ragged glow, the colour of sorrow, rushed down the face of it with a howl that seemed to drag claws across his soul. A banshee floated a short distance above Mathas, its wizened face gaping at him in mockery and grief.

‘Proud Hellezan,’ the banshee hissed with a voice of crumbling earth, ‘joined to the proud Avaranthes. So much pride. Such nobility. How do they serve you now?’

Mathas did not answer. He stared straight ahead and kept walking.

‘Tell me of your defiance!’ the banshee taunted. ‘Sing to me of hope!’ The banshee kept pace with him. ‘Hooooooooooope!’ it shrieked, and then it rushed ahead, up the hill, wailing. It stopped by high iron gates, flowing in and out of the bars. ‘Hope,’ it repeated. ‘Hope. Come and tell me of hope, proud Hellezan.’

Mathas knew those gates. He tried to brace himself for what he would see when he drew near. But when he beheld the grand mansion beyond the gates, his eyes widened. He stumbled, shaken by sudden distress.

The rumours were true. Death had taken House Avaranthe. The light that came from the broken windows did not come from torches or lanterns. The glow was sickly green, the phosphorescence of wraiths that flowed, wailing, through gutted corridors. Skeletons swarmed over the façade, unmaking and changing. The roof was gone. A fell nimbus rose from the interior to meet the falling snow. It coiled around the walls, and seemed to work in conjunction with the skeletons. The corpses toiled to unmake the mansion and turn it into a new thing. Mathas could not make out the nature of the transformation, beyond the death of what had been. The new building was taller. Its gables reached out into the air, turning into clawed wings of stone, as if the structure would soon take flight.

The skeletons still wore shreds of clothing. It was falling in rotten tatters as the labours of construction continued. In the spectral light, Mathas could just make out enough of the designs that remained. The dead were the Avaranthes. The undead creatures they had become now slaved to destroy the home. Before long, no trace of the family would exist.

The banshee laughed with grief.

Mathas’ legs were numb. He could not feel the ground under his feet. He and Teyosa had feared for her family, and though he was not surprised by what he saw, the shock was immense.

The Black Knight in the lead had paused and was looking back at Mathas, skull cocked. Mathas did not know if it was amused or curious. He suppressed a shudder as he felt the cold evaluation of the eyeless gaze. He wanted to pull his sword and charge. For Hellezan! For Avaranthe! For life! The words were huge in the back of his throat, demanding to be shouted. He choked them back. Such defiance would betray the families and all they were struggling to bring about.

Does she know? he wondered. Did Neferata have the Avaranthes killed? She might have, but then again, it might really have been the plague that felled them. Even if Neferata was behind the destruction, she could have commanded it for any of a hundred reasons, or for no reason at all. No, Mathas decided, the conspiracy had not been discovered. If it had been, doom would have come for all of the Hellezans, and not just for him.

And if he was wrong, that changed nothing. His path was set. If Neferata knew, and still permitted him to enter her palace armed, then her hubris was even greater than he had thought.

Mathas tore his eyes away from the mansion and started forwards again. The Black Knight watched him for a moment more before continuing onward.

Another hour passed before they reached the palace. They did not approach it along the main avenue. The door that waited for Mathas was on the opposite side from the grand entrance. The Black Knights took him through a maze of ever-narrower streets, weaving through an endless graveyard. Colossal, nitre-encrusted obelisks clustered like sentries, looming over the road. The passage was so tight, the Black Knights now walked single file. Mathas’ shoulders brushed against the obelisks. Melting snow streaked his armour with gore. The road, slick with blood and slime, glowed faintly, giving just enough light for Mathas to see where he was going. He glanced behind once, and the way back was lost in impenetrable darkness.

The path narrowed still, winding and twisting. Mathas felt he had become a carrion worm, burrowing through a gigantic corpse. He lost all sense of direction; he had been unable to see the mass of the palace since entering the cemetery. A huge, squat monument reared up ahead, crouching over the path like an immense toad. The road entered a tunnel in its base.

The wind still blew inside the tunnel, whining in captivity. The crimson melt of the snow ran down the slope, and the low walls echoed with the footsteps of Mathas and the Black Knights. The tunnel ended in a wide antechamber, where the Black Knights brought Mathas to face a massive door. It was metal, but as dark and gleaming as obsidian. Its surface appeared featureless at first glance, but once he was closer, Mathas saw runes. They swam in the surface like oil on water. They shifted, flowed into one another and flickered on the edges of meaning. Mathas could not read them, but protean menace reached out from the door and wrapped tendrils around his soul.

The wind rose and fell. It hissed and rasped, and became the voice of the door.

‘Who would be pyre-bound?’ said the door.

For the first time, the lead Black Knight spoke. The cold that blew from his soul shaped itself into words, the syllables cut into sharp pieces by the rattling of teeth. ‘Mathas Hellezan,’ he said, turning Mathas’ name into a foul incantation.

‘Mathas Hellezan,’ the door repeated.

‘Firstborn of the house,’ said the Black Knight.

‘Firstborn!’ the door exulted. ‘Let him pass, and grasp his fate-thorn.’

The door opened, swinging inwards into gloom with the sound of a mountain grinding apart. A faint glow wavered deep inside the stone tunnel. Mathas’ eyes adjusted, and he realised a single torch hung on the wall, waiting for him.

Without looking back or glancing at his undead escort, he drew his sword and marched into the tunnel. The door closed behind him with the boom of hollow thunder.

Mathas raced down the tunnel, anxious that the caprice of the test might snatch the illumination away. The floor crunched under his boots. As he entered the circle of light thrown by the torch and snatched it from the wall, he saw that the floor was a pavement of bones. Skulls, femurs, pelvises and more, densely packed together into an uneven surface. There was no distinguishing between individual bodies. The floor was a compressed hecatomb, its brickwork stained the colour of old blood. Viscous fluid, too thick to be water, flowed down its length. The stench of corruption was foul. Mathas breathed through his mouth, and the smell scratched at the back of his throat.

The tunnel was about ten feet wide, and fifteen feet high at the centre of the rounded vault of the ceiling. It descended deeper into the foundations of the palace. Its slope was steep and its curve was sharp. Mathas could only see twenty feet ahead as he advanced down the spiral.

Echoes scrabbled upwards to meet him. Garbled and overlapping snarls. They grew louder, the voices becoming more distinct, and eager. They were unintelligible, as if the speakers had mouths full of bones. The noise of claws scraping against walls twisted Mathas’ spine into a knot. The stench was almost overpowering.

He moved as fast as he dared, careful not to slip on the curves of skulls poking up like slick cobblestones from the floor. The gabbing, snarling voices were close now. He sensed the enemy around the next curve. Monstrous voices laughed. They could hear him, too.

There was no point in attempting stealth. Gathering himself, he raised his sword and charged. ‘Withstand and prevail!’ he shouted.

There was an answering roar, and from around the bend came a trio of hulking monsters. Their flesh was pale as the underbelly of a dead fish, and was pierced by long, jagged bones, the trophies of former victims that stuck out of their limbs and torsos like spines. What had been mortal had become gargoyle, and they bared their blackened teeth in pleasure and drooling hunger.

The lead monster swung a misshapen bone-axe at Mathas before he was in range, missed and lunged clumsily, grasping for him with its filth-encrusted claws. Mathas dropped the torch, crouched, and drove his sword upwards with both hands, impaling the horror through the throat. ‘I have not come here for you,’ Mathas snarled as the monster staggered against him, its great weight almost bringing him down. ‘I am here for the Queen, and you try my patience.’ The monster choked on the blade. Dark, stinking blood gouted from its jaws, soaking his armour. One of its eyes burst from its skull. It dropped its axe and tried to grab him, but it was dying, and its claws slapped against his pauldrons, then fell to the side.

The other horrors gabbled at Mathas. Their words were nonsense, yet there was something in the rhythm of the yells that sounded like mottos, as if they were hurling the pride of their own noble houses back at Mathas.

‘Your foul blood sullies a noble blade!’ Mathas shouted back. ‘But come. I will kill you just the same!’

The horrors clawed and beat at the body of the first. They were crowding forwards, and in the confined space of the tunnel, they could not reach past the body to sink their claws and blades into Mathas. Between their blows and the mass of the corpse, his knees almost buckled. He managed to step to the rear, sliding his blade out of the body. With a jerk, he leapt backwards. The dead horror fell. The monster on the right had jammed its claws into the corpse’s flesh to pull it away, and the sudden shift pulled it forwards, off balance. Mathas slammed the point of his sword into the beast’s eyes and punctured its brain. He threw himself to the side as the last of the horrors reached for him. It caught his helm with the flat of its axe blade. His head rang with the blow and his eyes blurred. He swung to his right, slicing open the ghoul’s flank. It howled, dropped its axe and clutched at him with both hands.

The grip was powerful. His armour began to buckle under the pressure. The diseased claws sank into the seams. The beast gnawed at the front of his helm, breaking teeth on metal and suffocating him with the stench of its breath. It held Mathas’ shoulders, its strength like a vice of iron. He managed to move his forearms up, stab the monster in the belly and saw upwards, slicing through muscle and viscera. The horror’s snarls mixed pain and rage. It tore his visor off with its teeth, and the blood from its shredded gums and lips poured over his face and neck. Mathas gagged at the poisonous, rotting fluid. With desperate strength, he brought his sword up higher, and at last cut through too much for the monster to live. It stiffened, its snarl fading to a gurgle, and then fell, taking Mathas down with it.

Choking and coughing, Mathas broke free from the dead grip of the horror and squirmed out from under the hulk. He wiped his eyes clean of the thing’s blood, and tried not to think about how he might have been tainted. He picked up the torch and moved forward again.

The spiral passageway ended after another few hundred yards, levelling out into a wider cavern littered with bones, scraps of flesh and piles of detritus. The stench made his eyes water. On the other side of the chamber was an iron door. It screeched as Mathas hauled it open, and the echoes of its scream were swallowed up by a choir of shrieks in the huge space beyond.

Mathas crossed the threshold and walked out onto a finger of fused bone which arched gently upwards, extending over an abyss. The light of the torch could not reach the walls or the ceiling. The bottom of the cavern was an unguessable distance below. Its deep night was broken by fitful streaks of light and the glow of apparitions. Phantoms glided over the pathway to circle Mathas, rising from the depths and dropping back into them. They keened in distress and hunger, in anger and eagerness, in grief and madness. Spectral hands, gnarled as talons, formed out of ghostly energy, reached for him as they flew past, but they did not come near enough to touch him. The bridge seemed to be forbidden to the wraiths, and they screamed in an intensity of pain and frustration as they passed.

From somewhere in the dark came the heavy beat of leathery wings. Mathas held the torch high and swung it from side to side, but the thing that made the sound remained out of sight.

Mathas kept to the centre of the bridge where the footing felt even more precarious than in the tunnel. There was nothing to keep him from falling off the sides if he stumbled too far – or if something hit him. The flapping of the wings passed overhead, closer now, as if the predator were closing in, making ready to attack.

Ahead, the bridge reached a platform. But Mathas’ hopes that he had reached the far side were dashed when he saw it was a circular surface at the apex of the bridge’s arc. The span continued on the other side. Shaped into a shallow bowl, the platform was ringed by stones twisted into gnarled forms, as if it were in the grip of a giant skeletal hand. The stones thrummed with sorcerous power. Wraiths clustered around, casting the bowl in the sickly green of their soul-light, but though the power of the stones seemed to draw them, it also held them at bay. The phantoms were spectators, Mathas thought, forced to bear witness to the struggle to come, but unable to affect its outcome.

The screams of hunger chilled Mathas. He was surrounded by the ghastly persistence of existence after death. To become such as these things was worse than oblivion. The nature of their captivity in this cavern was even worse. It was a display; a statement that his struggle for survival was nothing more than another’s entertainment.

Your hopes are meaningless, it signalled. You are but a plaything.

Above him, the flapping of wings circled, waiting for him to reach the platform.

‘Are you amused?’ Mathas shouted at the unseen queen of Nulahmia. ‘I come to bring an end to your delights! You are right to hide from me!’ He ran forward. Let there be an end to games, he thought. Victory or death, let either come now.

Mathas crossed the ring of stones at a run. There was a sudden sharp flap from above, as of wings being tucked in for a dive. He changed direction abruptly, pounding around the curve of the bowl as the snarl from above became a roar. Unable to alter its trajectory quickly enough, the hunter smashed down into the centre of the platform, splintering the surface of bones.

The brute turned slowly, tracking him, its breath making like snarling bellows. It had the form of an immense bat. The talons on its wings were as long as his forearm; its massive torso furred and muscular – a body suited to battering through doors.

Varghulf, Mathas thought. The family chronicles made reference to such monsters in descriptions of past battles. Viscous saliva dripped from its fangs.

Mathas charged, aiming his sword at the varghulf’s throat. It swept a wing at him, and in the moment before it struck, Mathas hurled the torch into the monster’s face. His aim was true. The varghulf shrieked, its fur smouldering and its face blackened with the burn. Mathas threw himself to the right in the direction of the monster’s retaliating blow, and though weakened, the impact knocked him off his feet and sent him sliding up the platform, smashing against one of the stones. His chest plate cracked. He felt broken movement in his ribs as he struggled to his feet.

The varghulf swiped at its eyes with one of its wings, and lashed out with the other with wide, sweeping blows as it stormed up the slope towards Mathas.

He ran to his left, away from the scything wing, then down along the monster’s flank. Half-blind, the varghulf missed him. It paused at the ring of stones and sniffed for its prey, stopping just long enough for Mathas to plunge his sword into its spine.

The varghulf screamed and leapt. Blood streaming down its back, it flapped its wings and flew straight up from the stones. Mathas held tight to the hilt of the blade. He rose with the monster, his weight dragging open a longer wound. The varghulf climbed vertically, then looped, and Mathas fell.

He landed on his back. The impact knocked the air from him, and pain exploded down his spine. He could not move. Above, the varghulf climbed higher yet, then dived for him, its jaws gaping in fury. For a terrible moment, the sight of those jaws and the blaze of the monster’s uninjured eye held Mathas, extending his paralysis. Then, he thought of his family, and of his duty, and of the dream of freeing Nulahmia from the tyrant who arranged these battles for her amusement. Teyosa’s face rose before his mind’s eye. You do not die here, she said, her voice as strong in his heart as if she had really spoken.

With a surge of desperate determination, he rolled to the side and rose to his knees. The burning vision of the varghulf’s face was still before his mind’s eye. Its monstrousness was mesmerising, and though he had broken from its grip, it remained the vivid centre of his reality. It was the core of everything, and so when he rose, he stabbed at that centre with his sword. His instincts and reflexes knew where the face was even more than did his rational mind. He thrust, and the blade struck the eye of the varghulf. The speed and weight of the monster drove the blade deep into its skull. The varghulf’s scream cut off. Its immense body shuddered, and then, with a crash, collapsed.

Mathas crawled out from underneath a wing. He staggered up the side of the bowl to the descending arc of the bridge. Wraiths shrieked at him, skeletal fingers of ectoplasmic energy reaching out in frustration. Mathas’ stride steadied as he marched along the span, the adrenaline of victory coursing through his frame. It gave him the focus to work through his pain, and he moved faster. He raised his sword in challenge.

‘I know you are watching!’ he shouted. ‘I know you can hear me. Your nemesis has come, Neferata. Your end is here!’

His words were lost in the wailing choir of phantoms. But to speak the words aloud was a form of power. He did not have to hide any longer. Here, in this monstrous place, his rage was natural. Who would not wish destruction upon Neferata after this? So he roared his truth, and raced for the far end of the bridge.

At the foot of the bridge was another wide platform. Five doorways led off it. Each of the doors was forged from the same obsidian-black metal as the one that had barred the entrance to this netherworld of slaughter. In them, too, runes appeared, disappeared, and shifted, threatening him with meaning, but withholding the blow. Understanding was an executioner’s axe poised over his neck.

Mathas stepped onto the platform, and the door in front of him began to move. It stopped after a few inches, opening no more than a hand’s breadth. Mathas regarded it with suspicion. The other doors were silent. This was the path of the labyrinth he was directed to choose, then. He did not like having his hand forced. Then again, he thought, how much choice have we had at all?

None.

Even so, he delayed the inevitable, rebelling to the extent that he approached the doors to the left and right of the open one. The wraiths shrieked with mocking laughter at the futility of his gesture. The other doors were sealed to the walls. They would not move for him. Surely, they waited for some other victim, concealing some other doom.

Mathas returned to the first door. He grabbed the edge and, with a harsh scrape of metal against stone, dragged it open. The space beyond was completely black. He held the torch forward, and the flame became a feeble red glow, illuminating nothing. Mathas hesitated, picturing himself stepping forward and plummeting to his death. But where would be the sport in that?

He crossed the threshold, and the darkness drew back like a receding tide, settling into the recesses and corners of the chamber.

He was in a circular, domed hall. Sconces of skeletal human arms held torches on the curved wall. In the centre of the floor was a huge mound of bodies, the corpses of hundreds of warriors cast in iron, their death agonies and their shame of failure preserved for eternity. Limbs, armour, weapons and severed heads tangled together in a mass grave of humiliation. Would-be champions were now the tortured foundation for the throne that sat atop the mound. It was constructed of bone. It gleamed ivory-white in the torchlight, yet it was not as white, or as pure a thing of death, as the skin of the tyrant who now rose from it.

Neferata walked slowly down the mound of bodies, and Mathas felt his strength, his courage, his very ability to move, drain away. His sword arm hung limp at his side. The torch dropped from his fingers. He was paralysed. It was not mere beauty that transfixed him, but something far more terrible. It was majesty, a sublimity of command. Her presence struck him with awe, the true awe that was the supreme form of horror. Her being was too great for the hall, as if she were somehow larger than the space through which she moved.

She wore her tall, spreading crown of overlapping plates and gold-plated bones. It sat low on her brow, and beneath it her eyes glittered, eyes of devouring darkness that pulled Mathas’ soul with the strength of a monstrous whirlpool. Her lips, dark as arterial blood, curled upwards slightly in cold amusement. Her armour, of the same black and gold plating as the crown, left her arms bare, as if they disdained such mundanities as protection. Her only weapon was a dagger, and it was sheathed.

‘Well met, Mathas Hellezan,’ she said. Her voice was low and compelling, like a torrent dragging him to the heart of a glacier. ‘But where is my promised nemesis?’

The taunt broke Mathas’ paralysis. With a cry of hatred, he ran forward, sword raised. He reached the foot of the mound at the same moment Neferata did. She still had not drawn her dagger. He swung his blade at her neck.

Neferata’s strike was a blur, too fast for Mathas to see, but in that fraction of a second, there was time for understanding. Her arms were unclad not from pride, but so that their speed was without fetters. The blow knocked the sword from his hand and sent it skittering across the floor. Neferata yanked his helm from his head and grabbed him by the throat. Black claws sank into his flesh. Mathas could not believe those were fingers that held him. Surely he was in the grip of an unholy device of ice and iron.

Neferata tilted his head to one side. She looked at him with impassive contempt. ‘I’ll ask you again. Where is my nemesis?’

Mathas tried to find defiance. He tried to curse. All he could do was choke.

‘Not here?’ said Neferata. ‘That’s what I thought.’ Her lips parted, revealing fangs sharp as a serpent’s. She pulled Mathas close and bent her head to his exposed neck.

Mathas’ limbs twitched as the fangs slid into his flesh. His soul cried out though his voice was mute. He reached one last time for duty, family and honour. He saw Teyosa again, and his promise echoed back at him, cruel and mocking.

I will return to you.

Darkness closed over him.

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A Black Library Publication

‘The Dance of the Skulls’ first published in 2017.
Neferata: Mortarch of Blood first published in 2018.
‘Obsidian’ first published in 2019.
Neferata: The Dominion of Bones first published in 2019.
A Dynasty of Monsters first published in 2021.
‘The Threshold’ first published in 2020.
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