CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 
‘I suddenly feel… inadequate,’ Malekith told his companion.
‘Not even the Tower of Hoeth can rival it,’ replied Teclis.
It had once been a mountain, standing on the edge of a massive crater caused by a meteoric impact during the Coming of Chaos. Centuries of labour had turned the peak into a fortress the like of which could not be found anywhere else in the world. Countless battlements and leagues of crenellations wound their way up the lower slopes, and as the mountain narrowed, jutting turrets by the hundred marked its flanks. Windows in the tens of thousands gleamed, lit from within by a pale witchlight. The summit was clad in permanent cloud, glowing fitfully with magical energy.
It was surrounded by rings of walls that made the great gates of the Annulii look like a fence between troublesome neighbours. In the depth of the crater stretched an inland sea, the waters murky, bubbling, tainted by the huge deposit of warpstone. The touch of that ancient meteorite was death and mutation to everything in the vicinity, leaving only the ghoulish descendants of cannibalistic humans to scavenge the mutant fish and loathsome slugs that survived in the tainted waters, when they did not feast on captives from rival tribes.
The warp-taint was so strong it pervaded everything, even the dry air, so that jutting stones had rictus faces. Plants resembled dangling bones and the only flowers that bloomed were black-headed roses with thorns like daggers. The wind hissed ghostly warnings on the edge of hearing that might have just been the fluttering of the thousands of tattered banners that decorated one of the shorelines, trophies taken during millennia of conquest and despotism. Arches of bone grew from the bare rock, an ossuary-avenue that led three leagues to the outermost gates of the fortress.
Nagashizzar, the most dread-inspiring fortress in the world.
Beneath the horrific castle toiled an endless army of the dead. Skeletal soldiers patrolled walls cracked and pitted by millennia of desert winds from the west. On the highest steeples and spires perched enormous dragons, ragged wings furled around half-skeletal bodies, drawn here from their dying fields on the Plain of Bones. Like monstrous gargoyles they appeared, hunched and malevolent, ready to drop down on any interloper, clouds of desiccating fume dribbling from dead lungs between cracked fangs.
Beneath the dark clouds swooped other dead things. The remains of enormous crows and buzzards, large enough to carry off a full grown elf, were themselves dwarfed by reanimated griffons and manticores that circled on endless watch beside horrific creations made from stitched body parts and bound together with necromantic magic.
The Wind of Death, Shyish, was ever-present, clinging to the rocks like fog, dribbling up through cracks and fissures in invisible steaming clouds. Wraiths haunted the deep caverns in the base of the mountains. On the higher flanks stood the cairns of wights, revenants of kings long dead sworn to the service of the Great Necromancer after whom the citadel was named.
Nagash.
Even thinking the name sent a thrill through Malekith, in equal measure jealousy and concern. There were few truly immortal beings in the world and Malekith was amongst them, but even he marvelled at the magical power that had once been at the command of the Great Necromancer. First in his Black Pyramid in Nehekhara to the south and later here, at Cripple Peak, his sorceries had blighted whole empires and laid low entire civilisations. Even the catastrophe of the Sundering unleashed by Malekith paled in comparison to such devastation.
In spirit form he and Teclis walked along a path of skulls that ran between two outer buttresses of grey rock. They passed into the shadow of Nagashizzar, the heat of the sun lost, and Malekith shuddered despite the fact that his avatar felt no mortal sensation. It was more than temperature that caused the reaction.
‘You have never come here before?’ Teclis asked. ‘Never before been tempted to look on this grandest of evil works?’
‘I had other matters to keep me occupied,’ said Malekith, not willing to admit that he had dared not come here before, for reasons both of vanity and security. ‘Besides, what purpose would it have served? There is nothing here except the mindless dead serving commands uttered three ages past.’
‘Is that so?’ Teclis made a gesture and the two of them disappeared, their spirits coalescing before an immense gatehouse, one of four that guarded the approaches to the citadel.
The gate itself was made of some black material that shone like burnished obsidian. Bone-coloured towers flanked it, each grander than the keep of Tor Achare, stouter than the forts of Karak Kadrin.
On the battlements above, motionless skeletons stood beside war machines of fused bone and sinew – bolt throwers loaded with the thigh bones of giants etched with dire runes and catapults whose phalangeal baskets held ensorcelled skulls that would burst into flame when launched.
Standing against the wall of each tower, to either side of the gate, were two rows of giant beings, made from the bones of dragons, hippogryphs, nameless lizards of the southlands and other huge creatures, bound together by enchanted gold bands. The undying guardians held spears as tall as buildings and carried bows that could fire arrows capable of splintering trees.
The pair stopped before the immense barrier and looked up, invisible even to the eyes of the undead.
‘You mean to enter?’ said Malekith. ‘To what purpose?’
‘To show you the truth,’ Teclis replied. He looked at Malekith with an infuriating half-smile. Few patronised the Witch King, and no other lived long after.
‘Not walls alone protect this place,’ warned the Witch King. ‘There are some powers that even I would not stir.’
‘Did you think that the Great Necromancer would lie dormant for eternity?’ Teclis stepped through the gate. Malekith, feeling ashamed that he hesitated, followed a moment after. Protective runes flared at the intrusion but Malekith was a strong enough sorcerer to bend aside the magical barriers set within the gate itself, emerging from the dark material to find Teclis waiting for him on a long road made from crushed bone.
‘You mean to wake… him?’ Malekith’s projection flickered as he slid ahead of the mage to stand in his way. ‘You tell me that the End Times come, that the Great Powers unite to bend their will to the enslavement of the world, and you seek to bring further ruin upon us?’
‘The gods must return,’ Teclis said, leaning on his staff, out of habit rather than tiredness. The top of the rod was cast in the shape of the moon goddess, his muse and mythical sponsor. ‘The gates of Mirai must be opened, and there is only one that can wrest control of the underworld from Ereth Khial.’
Malekith almost said the name but thought better of it. Names had power and here in the Great Necromancer’s fortress it was impossible to predict what attention the name of its creator might bring. ‘You are mad. Even as the tide of Chaos comes in, you would raise up a cliff of the undead to crush us against.’
‘Not so,’ said Teclis, passing through Malekith’s projection. Around them dead masons, withered to skin and bone, tapped with hammer and chisel at hieroglyph-covered walls, endlessly chronicling the turning of the world, day after day. The dead paid no heed to the wizards as they accelerated, becoming a blur of white and black until they reached the inner gates of Nagashizzar.
The presence of the warpstone was stronger here, making everything seem more tangible, a thickness to the air, of primordial, unrefined magic that invested every rock and bone. Sentinels crafted from the remains of trolls and ogres lined the corridor inside the gate, heads replaced with facsimiles of old Nehekharan gods, twice the height of Malekith, their scythe-like blades gleaming in the glow of green corpselight that suffused the innards of the fortress.
‘The dead do not change. He that raised this citadel desires nothing but a world of the dead enslaved to his will.’ Malekith noted that Teclis shared his caution regarding the name of the dread castle’s architect. ‘The powers of Chaos thrive on the changing ambitions of mortals, to provide the answers to questions only mortals ask. The dead have no need of rage and ambition, despair and charisma.’
‘Two forces opposed,’ muttered Malekith, seeing the clash in his mind’s eye, the legions of the dead on one side, the daemon hordes of the Chaos Powers on the other. There was one problem with that scenario. ‘And of those caught between? You choose to be a puppet of the Great Necromancer rather than the mutated spawn of Chaos?’
‘We need a bulwark against Chaos. I have done what I can to prepare the humans, the dwarfs will do as they always have done and protect their own. In Lustria the great minds of the Old Ones’ servants account nothing for our survival in their astromantic equations. This place holds our greatest chance of resisting the onslaught to come.’
They ascended, level after level as though they climbed through Mirai itself, the caverns of the damned. The dead in their hundreds of thousands waited in endless ranks for the return of their creator or laboured in mines and forges to furnish wargear to an army three thousand years in the making.
‘He will attempt the Great Ritual of Awakening,’ Malekith said as they came upon the dread throne room, a cavernous hall at the height of the dead city. A hundred thousand tallows made of the fat of the living burned in sconces and candelabras across the titanic chamber.
In the flickering lights a platform of skulls heaped up at one end of the hall, becoming an immense throne of bones. It was empty, leaving Malekith disappointed and relieved in equal measure.
About the Great Necromancer’s dais circled the only living things to be found in Nagashizzar, his disciples, necromancers brought here in fits of madness, chanting his praises as they made offering to the incarnation of undeath.
Malekith could sense the energy of Nagash pulsing like a shadow within the shadows, a constant murmuring on the edge of hearing.
‘I have put in motion a series of events that will bring him back,’ Teclis confessed. ‘It is already too late to prevent his reincarnation.’
‘I am prideful, but your arrogance puts mine to shame,’ hissed Malekith. ‘These are not forces we can control.’
‘When you sought to shut down the vortex and bring about the tide of Chaos, did you think twice?’ Teclis asked, suddenly as bitter as the Witch King. ‘A deed so insane that even now we must deal with its consequences. It is not pride but desperation that pushes me to these extreme deeds.’
‘My past actions do not alter the folly of your current plans. I will not allow this.’
The hall trembled, almost imperceptibly. The winds of magic that had been so sluggish started to swirl, eddying around the throne. The acolytes gave gasps of surprise and fear as the dark winds caused the skulls of the throne to begin chattering their teeth, the echoes of their chorus a hideous cacophony that filled the immense hall.
‘Too late,’ whispered Teclis.
The black furnace of Nagash’s soul was growing in power. More brands on the wall burst into life – the blaze of a thousand torchlights brought fresh horror to the scene. Every surface of the chamber was covered in runes and hieroglyphs, which now danced in the flame light with a life of their own, melting and reforming to channel the winds of magic into the throne, the rumbling growing stronger with every passing heartbeat.
‘All is in hand,’ Teclis tried to assure Malekith. ‘I have made sure that the Great Ritual of Awakening will not succeed, not in its entirety. Nagash will return, strong enough to thwart Chaos for a while yet not so strong that we will not be able to undo what has been done.’
Malekith thought he saw an apparition on the throne, wraith-like but terrifying, armoured and cowled, one hand replaced with a claw of metal clutching the arm of the chair, in the other dead grasp a staff of black iron wrought with Nehekharan sigils. The Great Necromancer raised his head, revealing a skull face, eyes blazing with warp-light. Though Malekith and Teclis were concealed by the greatest enchantments of stealth and darkness that they could weave, for an instant the Witch King was sure that the pale green light of those eyes fell upon him and saw him. There was no life there, no expression that could be read. The visitation lasted only a moment before disappearing.
A sudden blast of Shyish swept along the hall, the magic of death extinguishing every flame, hurling the acolytes to the floor. There was nothing else in the chamber, nothing physical at least, but Malekith sensed a pulsing in his head, as of a deep voice vibrating inside his mind. It was in a human language long dead outside these walls, but in his thoughts he recognised the concept behind the words.
I RETURN
Without thought or word between them, the spirits of Teclis and Malekith fled.
‘Teclis, you are a fool,’ snarled Malekith, aware of the tide of Shyish that was building in the Ulthuan vortex. Darkness swept over the pass as clouds of pure death magic swallowed the Chaos moon. Malekith pulled himself into the throne-saddle, iron skin fizzing with the energy of unlife. ‘Your meddling will destroy us yet.’
He was too spent from his duelling with Ystranna and the opening of the great fissure to counter the rising tide of necromantic power. Likewise the handmaiden and her allies, if they sensed at all the catastrophe about to engulf them, were powerless to prevent the influx of Shyish.
Seraphon sensed something amiss too, snorting and whining with discontent that she had never displayed before. Malekith wrestled the chains of her reins, forcing her to launch into the skies, towards the roiling storm of undeath gathering above. The higher he climbed, the more awestruck Malekith was by the magnitude of the incantation being unleashed. The Circlet of Iron was like a crown of ice on his brow, as the Wind of Shyish blew across Ulthuan, across the whole world, shifted and congealed to a single purpose, bent to a single indomitable will.
Through the power of the Circlet of Iron Malekith’s spirit soared, unexpectedly. Buoyed up by the swell of death magic, the Witch King felt his essence tugging at the bonds of flesh, unwillingly torn from the near-dead shell that had bound his spirit to the realm of the living for six millennia.
In that instant his senses were focused upon a single point, halfway across the world in tainted lands that sat overshadowed by the great mountains of the dwarfs. The region was awash with Shyish, spewing its revivifying energies across the whole of the world. Nagash had returned to the mortal world and now attempted to unleash the Great Awakening once more, as Malekith had feared.
The Witch King was caught on the outer edge of the impossibly powerful conjuration, and with all his willpower strained to maintain a grip on his armoured form, still sat astride Seraphon’s throne-saddle far below. He focused his thoughts on the burning armoured figure of his body, turning his spirit against the raging current of the Great Necromancer’s sorcery, diving back through the storm like a hawk caught in a tornado. Straining, pushing every iota of his last strength into the effort, Malekith seized hold of his body once more, hurling his essence back into the withered husk.
The pain of burning, the agony of Asuryan’s curse, was the most welcome sensation he had ever felt. Tossed upon the brink of oblivion, almost drawn into the dark abyss of endless Mirai, Malekith cried tears of fire, so great was his joy at cheating death, so invigorating was the opportunity to claw another handhold in mortal existence. The pain was life, the agony proof that he could still achieve his ambitions.
Gasping and laughing, Malekith shuddered with ecstasy as around him the necromantic storm raged.
Nagash’s curse of the Great Awakening, the most powerful spell ever unleashed, began with a single shaft of pale green lightning. Where the bolt touched the mountainside the body of a Chracian hunter twitched. Missing an arm, the dead warrior struggled to her feet, her blood staining the fur of her lion pelt cloak. Ghostlight shone from her eyes and with jerking steps she advanced towards the Naggarothi nearby, who stood transfixed by the storm above.
Another lightning strike hit the corpse of a Black Guard, coruscating across silver armour. He pushed himself to his feet, more viscera spilling from the axe wound in his gut, halberd levelled in dead hands.
‘No,’ murmured Malekith as the two dead things fell upon the Naggarothi, who cried out in horror moments before being cut down. ‘No. Not like this. Not now.’
More lightning struck, again and again, increasing in frequency until the whole valley was ablaze with flashing energy. A fog of undeath sprang up from the ground, reanimating all that it touched, shambling figures advancing within the green mist to beset the druchii companies that had stalled in their counter-attack.
Malekith watched as the eagle he had slain earlier flapped ragged wings, digging itself out from under a pile of broken branches. Its rider, the asur prince with the bow, emerged from the fog and mounted the great bird, and the two soared aloft, together in death as they had been in life.
Across the pass the Naggarothi counter-attack had advanced over thousands of dead and now the slain were returning, striking from behind their lines. Beset by the undead the regiments of druchii fractured, losing all coherence and strategy. Malekith bellowed out his rage, cursing Teclis’s name, vowing to gut the meddling Sapherian when they next met, no matter the consequences.
All was not lost, despite Malekith’s tirade. Even as the undead clawed and dragged down his warriors, so they also fell upon the asur. The Whiteweald had been a battleground for the past few days and before that the daemons had slaughtered thousands of Chracians. Now the Wind of Death breathed new vigour into rotting flesh and half-stripped bones. With sinews of magic driving them, the dead of the Whiteweald rose, falling on Chracian and maiden guard, aesenar and druchii without discrimination.
Malekith swooped low over the battlefield, searching for some presence of Ystranna. Though he had perverted the winds of magic to his needs, he had unfinished business with the handmaiden of Avelorn.
There was no sign of her, either mystical or physical, and Malekith bit back his frustration. She had escaped, no doubt with other commanders and mages. Her army was retreating, fighting through the dead of the Whiteweald, but protected from pursuit by the reanimated corpses of the recent battle.
The Witch King considered going after them, or commanding Imrik to wipe out the Chracians, but the present threat of the undead curtailed the urge. Such had been the ferocity of the battle and the daemon invasion the undead outnumbered his host and the dragons were needed protecting what army he had remaining. It would avail him nothing to wipe out Ystranna’s force only to have no army of his own to exploit the slaughter.
For most of the night he held the tide with Urithain and Seraphon, putting to the sword reconstituted manticores and hydras, slaying again dragons that had the day before been killed by war machine bolts and magic.
When his constitution had recovered sufficiently, in the greyness just before dawn Malekith tapped into the well of magic opened by his confrontation with Ystranna. He let the winds of magic spill forth from the fissure that broke the flank of the mountain, a wave of pure Ghyran washing away the taint of Shyish as one might cleanse infection from a wound, sending the last of the animated dead back to their graves.
All across the Whiteweald walking corpses collapsed, the light going from their eyes, undead grasps losing grip of weapons and shields. The druchii stumbled around in the aftermath, in no position to fight or pursue, their voices lifted in praise to their king and the gods and goddesses of the underworld.
Malekith could do no more and bid Seraphon to bear him back to his pavilion. Dismissing the dragon he issued one last command to the Black Guards that stood watch: he was not to be disturbed by anybody.
As soon as he passed out of their sight, Malekith slumped, overwhelmed by the exertions of the day. He staggered to his iron throne and collapsed into its embrace, weary in mind and body.
Sleep came, but brought with it a nightmare of death. Malekith’s dream was filled with visions of Nagash’s Great Ritual as the dead of the world burst forth from ancient graves and slid open the portal stones of their tombs.
In the Northern Wastes above the empire of the humans the corpses of thousands of dead marauders returned to life, breaking out of crude cairns to savage their former kinsmen. Chaos-cursed armies and knightly expeditions of battles long past fought again their wars of pillaging and retribution.
Across the realm of the dwarfs, runes and seals cast to prevent such magical incursion melted and burned, releasing tormented spirits that moaned and wailed through the chambers and halls of the mountain cities.
The gardens of Morr, the humans’ guardian of the dead, were awash with the Great Necromancer’s power, the rituals of the priests availing naught against the sorcery of the first Necromancer. The bodies of burghers and nobles clambered from ornate mausoleums while in the potters’ fields beyond the walls of towns and cities generations of dead were revivified and fell upon the slumbering citizenry.
Eventually darkness came and Malekith dreamed no more.