William King - Stealer of Flesh

“It is often the case,” she replied. She glanced around them, shivered and pulled her cloak tight although it was not cold. “This place is not what I expected.”

“It has a certain shattered grandeur,” said Luther.

“Yes, but it is remote, unconnected to our world.”

“The builders of this city were not men,” said Kormak.

“The destroyers were,” said Luther. He sounded at once exalted and appalled by the idea. “We are used to the idea that we live in the shadow of titans, that we are less than the Old Ones but men did this…”

“The First Empire was as powerful as any of the Nations of the Old Ones,” said Kormak. “Much was lost when it fell.”

“Oh, I know, Sir Kormak but it is one thing to know something and another to feel the certainty of its truth.”

At that moment, the look in his eye reminded Kormak of the old hermit, Luther’s father. It was easy to see the connection of blood between the two of them.

They came to the junction of two huge streets. A statue still stood. It was blacked and defaced which gave it a demonic look. At first it seemed to resemble a man, but the proportions were wrong. It was broader and the limbs were thicker. The features were doughy, the eyes round pools in the face, the nose tiny, the nostrils mere slits. There was something suggestive of the face of a cat about it.

“That is what the Ghul originally looked like, I am guessing,” said Luther.

Kormak nodded. Again he had that nagging sense of familiarity, as if he could put a name to the face if only he tried hard enough to remember. For him this place was doubly haunted, by the ghosts of ancient wars and the ghosts of Razhak’s memories. There was a strange sense of homecoming about all of this.

More memories came back, of great herds of humans who served the Ghul, who had thought it the greatest of honours to be possessed by them, that somehow they became god-like themselves by surrendering their bodies. In a way, they had achieved a shadow of immortality by doing so. Razhak had absorbed their memories as he stole their flesh, and thus the pretence of humans joining the ascendant Ghul had been maintained. It was a cruel world, Kormak thought, and always had been.

Ahead of them now was a massive crystal dome, it sat atop a colossal structure that not even Solareon’s armies had been able to destroy. Within it lights flickered and glowed. As they approached, the air vibrated and there was a scent of ozone.

“The Temple of the Immortals,” said Kormak and suddenly he knew the real reason the First Empire had spent so many lives taking this place. Solareon and his men had believed that the secret of eternal life had lain within. Obviously they had been disappointed by what they had found or the world would have been much different.

“We have found what we were looking for,” said Luther. And what exactly was that, Kormak wondered?

They passed through a gigantic arch into the cool shadows of the temple’s entrance. The damage here was less than that in the rest of the city.

Why was that, Kormak wondered? Was it because it was further from the walls or for some other reason. Why would this place have been spared when the rest of the city had been ravaged? It was bigger, bulkier, even more enormous than the structures around it but that could not be the only reason.

“Solareon spared it because he intended to come back and try one last time to fathom its secrets,” Olivia said. Kormak had not realised he had spoken aloud. That was worrying. Something about this place was getting to him. Normally he had more self-control. “He died in the Draconian Wars before he could do so. So Eraclius writes anyway.”

“It is probably just as well,” Kormak said. “The world would have been very different if he had uncovered the secrets of the Ghul.”

“Yes, it might have been better,” said Luther. Kormak looked hard at him.

They emerged from the entrance archway into a glittering hall. It was full of crystal pillars. They were milky and translucent except where their surfaces were scored by glowing runes. Those inscriptions seemed to float on their shimmering surfaces. Once more the air hummed with babbling insane voices. In the distance other sounds could be heard like the rumble of a waterfall, weird ephemeral music, the roaring of great angry beasts. Somehow it all blended together and was obviously all part of the same process even if Kormak could not work out what the connection was. The areas between the pillars were marked by shadows that were not quite shadows. They shimmered oddly and moved in a way that was entirely unconnected with the glow of the lights in the hall. They moved in a furtive sneaking fashion as if they had a life of their own.

“Stay within the light,” Kormak said. “I do not like the look of those shadows at all.”

“I was about to say the same thing,” said Luther. His voice sounded subdued and quiet through all the background noise although Kormak knew he was shouting. A hissing, crackling sound came from a distant corner of the chamber, lights flickered and danced.

“No one whoever visited this place recorded anything like this,” said Olivia.

“It’s Razhak’s doing,” said Kormak, recalling more of the Ghul’s knowledge. “He has activated the great spell engines. We must seek him in the Chambers of Rebirth.”

A scream rang out. Kormak turned and saw that one of the men had wandered too close to the glittering shadows. It surged forward like a wave and enshrouded him. He was transformed into a statue sculpted from shadow. His flesh became dark and insubstantial, his eyes pockets of deeper darkness. He leapt towards another man and reached out and the shadow spread from where it touched and began to transform the second victim. His screams were hideous.

Kormak stepped forward between the shadowman and his next victim. He lashed out with the flat of his blade. Where it touched the shadow receded but the man it had enveloped dropped to the ground. Kormak twisted to strike the second with the same result. The shadows that had surrounded the men skittered away, vanishing as if afraid of the touch of the dwarf-forged blade.

Kormak touched the victims. Their skin was grey. Their flesh was cold. Their eyes were open but there was no life in them or any sign of intelligence. Even as he watched they lost all animation. It was plain that death had taken them. Kormak looked over at Prince Luther. The Prince made the Elder Sign of the Sun with his hand. It was plain they were both thinking the same thing. The soldiers were paying a high price for their purse of gold.

They moved towards the centre of the chamber under the glittering dome and Kormak saw that there was a great well there, exactly where he had expected to find it; a ramp spiralled downward around the edge of the well, disappearing deep below the earth. It looked as if a god had tried to bore a hole right through to the centre of the world. Kormak remembered Luther’s story of demons imprisoned beneath the surface of the land and wondered if the Ghul had been trying to release them. Razhak’s memories hinted otherwise but infuriatingly told him nothing more.

All around the glowing shadows danced, the infernal voices sounded, lights shifted around the crystal pillars. For all the tremendous activity of the place, Kormak was filled with a sense of wrongness, of the idea that this was not how things were supposed to be here.

“I suppose we are going to have to go down,” said Luther. He did not sound enthusiastic although his eyes were wide with wonder and fright from contemplating their surroundings.

“You suppose correctly,” said Kormak. He strode down the ramp. The two siblings followed him. The soldiers marched fatalistically in their wake.

They made their way downwards, every step illuminated by the light pouring through the great crystal dome. They passed entrances that led to other tunnels which ran off as far as the eye could see. A city as great as the one on the surface was buried here, Kormak realised.