Stealer of Flesh

It did not take Luther long to arrange things. His guards were well drilled and his stewards efficient. He was a wealthy man with little difficulty getting supplies. There were horses in his stables and mules. Watersacks were filled from the fountains and well. Maps were brought from the library. By noon, they were ready to go. A line of soldiers headed out with the Prince and his sister riding at the front with Kormak.

Olivia was dressed for travel in a cowled robe with a silk veil over her face. The veil was so thin as to be almost translucent and the effect was to hint at and accentuate her beauty rather than hide it. Much to his surprise she had a sword scabbarded at her waist and a bow on her saddle. On her belt were pouches for herbs and metal vials of alchemical substances held in leather loops.

Sensing the direction of his gaze, she said, “I wanted to learn as a child and my father saw no reason not to teach me. It was one of the advantages of having so unorthodox and disreputable a parent.”

“My sister is actually very good with both weapons,” said Prince Luther. “Better than many men.”

“I shall take your word for it.”

Kormak saw that they were being watched as they rode through the streets. It must have made an interesting procession for many people, the Prince and his retainers and a veiled and wealthy woman riding beside a Guardian, equipped for a long journey. Doubtless spies and newsmongers would be carrying the tale to all corners of the city within the hour. There would surely be people who would wonder what they were doing. Kormak did not care as long as it did not interfere with his mission.

He had a sense that events were coming to a close, that one way or another his hunt for Razhak would end in Tanyth. He pushed the thought to one side. In a hunt like this it was as well not to believe such feelings. He could take nothing for granted, not even the loyalty of the people he was with. They had their own agendas and he was not sure they were the ones they said they had.

One thing was certain, he would find out before the end.


The city receded behind them, the slums and hovels outside the walls gradually shrinking and vanishing until all that was visible were the gigantic walls, made pristine by distance and desert light. The Tower of the Sun loomed over them like the spear of a Titan thrust into the earth in the middle of the city.

They rode in silence, save for the whistle of the wind and the crunching of the friable ground under their horses’ hooves. Prince Luther seemed happy. He smiled as if contemplating some pleasing secret. Olivia glanced around as if she had never seen desert before. Surely that could not be the truth of the matter, Kormak thought.

His mouth had an odd gritty taste in it and his throat always felt a little dry, as if thirst was an ever present demon waiting to strike. He found himself glancing around at the mules with their cargoes of supplies and checking the skins that dangled from his own saddle.

Olivia glanced over her shoulder too, gazing north and Kormak wondered if she was thinking of her father in his cave. It seemed odd, Kormak thought, that a man should give up the wealth that so many wanted in exchange for the poverty so many had. He had chosen to become a beggar when he had been a Prince.

No. That was not strictly speaking true. His children still visited him. They brought him small gifts. In a way they showed that they still cared and that there was a path back to what he had once been should he choose to take it. That was not the same as the poverty of the true poor, who had no choices. He understood what it was that Olivia meant about her father. In his way he was still a rich man playing at being poor even if he chose to endure real discomfort.

Perhaps in the same way as, at this moment, his children were playing at being adventurers. Kormak was sure they understood the dangers of what they were doing on one level but on another they did not. They were blessed. They could opt to turn around at any point and return to their mansion and put this whole mad folly behind them.

So could he, if he wanted to. He could just turn his horse around and ride away. It was a thought that sometimes crossed his mind. Only it was not possible. He had sworn an oath to do this and his soul would be peril if he did not. If he had a soul, he thought sourly. He had seen enough in his lifetime to make him have doubts of the faith he had been taught as a boy and had sworn to serve as a man.

He would kill the demon if he could for any number of complex and individually insufficient reasons. He wanted revenge for the people Razhak had killed. He wanted to correct his own fault in letting the demon escape in the first place, and if truth be told, he wanted to kill the demon out of spite and jealousy.

Razhak had seen truly into his heart when he had spotted that. He wanted the demon dead because it was unfair that it should live and wreak havoc when he must die and walk into the Lands of Dust, if such lands there were. By killing Razhak, he would build his own small, secret monument. He would end the life of something that had existed since the dawn of history. He would achieve something, even if that thing was a negative.

He knew when he looked at things in this light that simple vanity was the real reason he had agreed to let Luther and Olivia come. He wanted witnesses. He wanted it recorded. He wanted it to be set down in a poem that would be remembered by future generations, the only limited form of immortality he could be certain was real. He too wanted glory.

He looked again at the desert and the people and the brilliant sun over the empty land. He thought of the living city behind them and the dead city ahead.

This is glory, he thought? It did not quite seem as the epics he had read as a boy had made it to be.

“You look sad, Sir Kormak,” Olivia said.

“This desert makes me feel very small.”

“It does that to everyone,” she said. “It is a good place for holy hermits.”


That evening they set up camp amid the dunes, raising silk tents, setting watch. On the horizon, to the North a golden light glowed in the sky, the great burning stone set atop the Tower of the Sun sending out its message of light into the wastes.

“They say the ancient Solari set it there as a challenge to the Moon,” said Olivia. She was sitting by the fire, on a small intricately patterned rug, drinking water from a silver cup, eating waybread and dates from a carved platter of wood. “Its light keeps her Children at bay.”

“Why is it that the Children cannot endure the Sun, do you think?” Prince Luther asked. The guards, all of those who were not on watch, sat in a circle around the fire, silent as stones. “Is it because of his curse, as the legends say, or is it something else. Could it be that they are even more sensitive to its light than an albino eunuch would be? Could it be that it burns them in the same way as it burns us only worse?”

“This is my brother’s pet theory,” said Olivia.

“You disagree?” Kormak asked.

“It is as good a theory as any other I have heard,” she said. “And it is not impossible that both my brother and the Golden Books are correct. Perhaps the Sun’s curse is that the Children are sensitive to His light.”

Kormak shrugged.

“You disagree?” she said.

“I don’t know. I do know they are cursed. I have seen it for myself. Too long in the Sun’s holy light unprotected and they die.”

“Die? How?” Luther asked.

“They simply cease to be. If they have created a physical form, it disintegrates. If they are immaterial spirits, they come apart like mist in a strong wind.”

“Does your sword work according to the same principle?” Luther asked.

“I do not know,” said Kormak. “You would need to ask the dwarf who made it?”

“The Dwarves were the artificers of the Old Ones,” said Olivia. “Who would know them better?”

Luther said, “The Ghul were servants of the Old Ones too. Why did so many of their servants rebel against them, that is what I wonder.”

“Because they wanted what the Old Ones had,” Olivia said. “Or they wanted their own lives to be better.”

“Or they simply hated them,” Luther said. “Their lives were long and the Old Ones cruel.”

Luther looked at Kormak. “It seems the Ghul learned cruelty from their masters too.”

Kormak thought back to the things he had seen in Razhak’s mind. “I think the cruelty was always in them, as it is in all things. A deer sees a lion as cruel. A lion thinks of himself as hungry. It’s all in the point of view.”

“Spoken like a hunter,” said Luther.

“Razhak thinks I am cruel because I hunt him,” Kormak said. “I think he is cruel because he has killed people I knew. We both could be right.”

“I think you hunt him because it is who you are,” Luther said. “You are what you were born to be and what the world has made you.”

“That’s as may be,” Kormak said. “But hunt him I do. And now I must sleep.”

Olivia joined him later. They made love as the desert wind blew around them.


The Sun rose over the desert. Olivia was gone, returned to her tent. Even if all the men present knew what was going on, it seemed the proprieties must still be observed. Kormak donned his gear. They breakfasted, mounted up and rode on.

They were following the little that remained of an ancient road now. The workmanship was not Solari like the road that led to Sunhaven. It was more like a trench that somehow never quite filled with windblown sand. At times Kormak caught sight of the remains of ancient runes worked in moonsilver whose enchantments still kept the path clear. Most of it had been scavenged long ago but what remained was a mere film, like gold leaf, but it still held enough power to maintain a sliver of the Old Magic.

“The Old Ones built this road,” he said.

“Or their servants,” said Olivia.

“We walked a path they trod millennia ago,” said Luther.

“Razhak trod it within this last few days,” Kormak said. A small rat of fear gnawed at his stomach. What if he was too late? What if Razhak had found what he had come for and already departed, or gained so much strength he could not be killed. He reached up and touched the hilt of his dwarf-forged blade for reassurance. Anything could be killed. All it took was the right weapon. His glance wandered to Olivia and then Luther.

Why was he travelling with them? He might only be giving the Ghul more victims. His earlier certainty about wanting witnesses had vanished. The thought occurred to him that they were bait. He did not dismiss it as entirely groundless. Razhak would be burning through Scar’s old body now. He would need a new one soon. Both Luther and his sister were young and fit. They were exactly the sort of bodies the demon would want.

Had he really become so cold, Kormak wondered, that he could use people he liked in this way? He already knew the answer and did not care for it.

Buildings began to appear on the rocky hills they passed. They did not have the clean lines and columns of Solari architecture. They were low built, curved, something of their shape was suggestive of eggs, of igloos, of yurts. There were a few towers and on those were domes and minarets.

Sometimes they passed statues depicting beings too beautiful and potent to be humans. Kormak wondered whether he was looking on the features of ancient Gods or living Old Ones. He suspected it was the latter.


A massive head emerged from the sand, like that of a swimmer standing in deep water. The face was long and lean, the cheekbones high, the ears pointed, the teeth its smile revealed were sharp and two of them were fangs. It was a face at once ascetic and decadent, full of strange hungers and it was possible that the being who wore those features three thousand years ago was still in the world and walking in the light of the Moon.

“Anaskandroth,” Olivia said. She gestured at the head. “The Lord of the Hunt. He was one of those who besieged Tanyth all those centuries ago. His bow shot arrows of silver light and he could bring down anything as far as the horizon.”

Kormak rode closer to her. “How do you know that?”

“Because I read, Sir Kormak.”

“But what do you read, my lady?”

She smiled a secretive smile that reminded him of the expression on the statue’s face. “Am I your lady, Guardian or do you mock me?”

“In this place, at this time, you are.”

“A very qualified statement.”

“I have answered your question but you have not answered mine.”

“There were humans in the armies of the Old Ones who besieged Tanyth, just as there were within its walls. They were the lowest of slaves, the most common of foot soldiers, but a few were scribes. They left records and those records were transcribed. Obviously you did not pay much attention to those scrolls I sent you.”

“I had only one night,” he said, “and for much of it I was otherwise occupied.”

She smiled again. “Excuses, excuses.”


The day wore on. The Holy Sun rose hot and high and they wended their way through the desert. Bare mountains rose in the distance, giant rocks rose from the waste. The trail all but disappeared in many places to reappear when least expected. Kormak found he was glad of the company. He was a man of the far North and felt out of place in this brilliant, sun-blasted land. The shimmering haze in the air deceived the eye and made him think of illusion spells. The ancient ruins scattered around the place reminded him that this land was old and he was a mere mortal.

And yet, for all that, he was happy. Just the act of moving across the empty wilderness provided him with a sense of satisfaction. Looking on new vistas satisfied some deep hunger in his mind. Being reminded of his own mortality made him feel the small pleasures of being alive all the more keenly.

As the shadows lengthened he noticed that something was keeping pace with them. The creatures were too far away to be seen in any detail but there was something about their movements that made Kormak think of monkeys, although there was something else there, a slinking stealth that made him uneasy.

Prince Luther produced a telescope and focused it on the creatures following them. “Lopers,” he said, handing the device to Kormak so that he could take a look.

Kormak raised it to his eye and twisted the bronze tube as he had seen the Prince do. He caught a glimpse of the true nature of the creatures. They moved on all fours like monkeys, but their features were like those of men. Their limbs were enormously elongated, their hands and feet ended in sharp claws. When they opened their mouths he could see that they had fangs there. Their skin was grey and unhealthy looking, their eyes reddish and bloodshot and feral. They looked like some spawn of the Old Ones but they could not be for they were out in the Sun’s light.

“What are they?” Kormak asked. It was Olivia who answered.

“According to Eraclius they were men once, cursed by the Old Ones to eat flesh and drink blood for rebelling against their masters. Amadarius claims it was the Ghul that did it. They and the surviving travellers that encounter them all agree about the drinking of blood and eating flesh. They haunt the lands around Tanyth. They seem able to go for weeks without food or drink but when they encounter prey they like to gorge.”

“They attack mostly at night,” Luther said. “Their sight is better then than ours. They are very hard to kill. Sorcery has given them an unnatural vitality.”

“Undermen,” Kormak said. He knew the Old Ones had done things to humans with their magic, changed them, made them less than human. It was one of their arts. They needed soldiers and workers that could handle holy metals and bypass Elder Signs and go out in the Sun.

A hideous half-human howling and gibbering drifted on the wind. There was an answering howl from the distance to the north and then again from the wastes behind them to the north-west.

“It’s not just one pack,” said Luther. “It may be an entire clan of them. If they decide to hunt us things might not go too well. We’ll need to find a defensible spot for the night.”

“We can keep fires burning,” said Olivia. “They do not like fire.”

“Few of the enemies of Men do,” said Kormak.

“It is the gift of the Sun,” said Luther. For once there was no irony hidden in his voice.

“I have some alchemical preparations that might stop them,” Olivia said. “I will need fire and time to prepare them.”

“We shall see what we can do,” said Kormak.


Luther led them to higher ground on which an old Lunar temple had once stood. It had the dome pattern and the minarets, and symbols of the crescent moon were inscribed on the arches that supported the roof. Part of the dome was gone and the sky glittered through it. There was an altar-well in the centre which seemed to go down a long way into the earth. No one was particularly keen to drink from its waters. They corralled their horses in one corner of the chamber, a cave-like area which looked as if it had once held masses of worshippers.

Olivia produced a brazier and set it up in the centre of the chamber. She lit it with an application of some sulphurous smelling oil, produced flasks and packets of chemicals from her pack, and began to mix their contents in a metal beaker she held over the flame with a set of tongs.

“When I tell you to, cover your eyes. It will go badly for you if you do not.” The howling of the loper pack sounded closer. There could be no doubt that they were on the trail and had caught the scent.

Kormak studied the guards closely. They were calm, stolid men and they kept their nervousness well-hidden. He had no doubt they would respond like the veterans they were when the combat came.

Luther looked pale but excited. His eyes were bright. He had obviously found the adventure he had been seeking. Kormak hoped his enthusiasm for it did not get him or anybody else killed.

He listened to the howls, watched Olivia go about her preparations and considered the fact that he might die here. The thought did not trouble or excite him the way it once had when he was young. Death had walked at his shoulder for most of his life. He did not feel as if he was going to encounter the Dark God this night. He told himself to beware. Such overconfidence could get him killed. He had seen men die through being convinced of their own invulnerability. They had no concept that death could come to them as well as anybody else.

And suddenly the lopers were there, swarming in through the doorways and the windows, chittering and howling. Close up they looked both more and less human. Hunger glittered in their narrow reddish eyes. They raised claws long as daggers and Kormak understood why they had no trouble climbing in through the high windows. The backs of some were red bloody strips as if some of the lopers had clambered over the flesh of their kin. The wounded ones did not seem troubled.

The Prince’s guard greeted them with a volley of arrows. The force of the impact knocked many of the lopers from their feet but they picked themselves up, with strange cat-like mewling sounds, arrows still protruding from their bodies. No blood emerged from the wounds.

Hard to kill indeed, thought Kormak. A man would not have been able to rise after being hit at such close range with those arrows. He fought down his own rising bloodlust and kept his position beside the Prince and his sister. He needed to keep them alive to ensure the loyalty of the warriors. They would stand their ground as long as their employers did.

The lopers halted for a second, inspected their wounded, surged around in a confused mass, then one bigger and longer and leaner than all the others barked something in what sounded like a mangled version of the Old Tongue. The lopers bounded forward, covering the ground between them and their prey in gigantic, capering leaps. The guards met them with flashing swords. The lopers were unarmoured and the blades buried themselves in flesh easily enough but the creatures did not die from wounds that would have killed a mortal man instantly.

Kormak looked out onto a seething sea of hungry faces and thought he might have misjudged the situation earlier. They might die here, overwhelmed by a horde of unkillable, hungry man-eaters.

“Cover your eyes,” Olivia said. She sounded calm. Kormak wondered whether it was wise to do so when facing so many foes, but he raised his arm anyway. There was a brilliant flash. He was vaguely aware of it through his closed lids. The lopers screamed and howled and when he opened his eyes again he saw that they were on the ground, covering their own eyes, whining and mewling with pain. Kormak stepped forward and stabbed the nearest one. Its flesh burned where the dwarf-forged blade touched and it died as a man would have from its wound. The howl it let out was long and full of agony and seemed to dismay the lopers even more.

“Cut them to pieces,” said Prince Luther. It is the only way we can be certain of killing them.”

The warriors did as instructed. Kormak strode among the blinded monsters, killing a loper with every blow. When the creatures eventually recovered their sight, they fled. The warriors sent arrows after them, until they were invisible in the shadows of the night.


Afterwards even the usually quiet guards seemed elated. They spoke to each other in low tones. Some of them slapped Kormak on the back, clearly reassured by his presence or that of his blade.

Olivia looked a little sick now that the danger was over. She walked up to Kormak, hugged him close, then pushed him away and looked at him. “I was not sure that would work. The light of burning skystone is said to be inimical to the Old Ones. I thought it might do something to their creations as well.”

Kormak found he was smiling, glad that they were both alive. “You were correct, fortunately.”

Luther walked over to join them. “An auspicious omen for our quest,” he said. “We have overcome the first great obstacle.”

Kormak studied the butcher’s yard of dismembered lopers around them. “Let’s get out of this place and find a cleaner camp.”

Olivia nodded. Luther seemed distracted. He walked over to the bodies and looked at them closely as if he could not quite believe what he was seeing. Kormak wondered if he had ever been so close to violent death before. There was a wildness in his eyes now that Kormak had seen in those of youths after their first battle. Luther leaned forward, picked up a severed head and looked at it closely, as if trying to commit every feature to memory.

The Prince noticed Kormak looking at him. “I killed this one,” he said. “I am considering keeping the head as a trophy.”

“You might want to put it in a jar then and pickle it with salt. A rotting head is not the most pleasant of baggage to take with you on a journey.”

For a moment, Luther looked as if he was seriously considering Kormak’s words and then he dropped the head. “You are right, Sir Kormak. I will simply commit the look on its face to memory. I do not think I have ever seen anything so evil.”

“Then you have not had much experience with evil,” Kormak murmured so low that only Olivia caught his words. Kormak suspected the Prince would garner more experience of it before their quest was done.


Two days passed without any more violent encounters. The desert became even more drab and lifeless. In the distance crystal towers began to rise. In the night, strange lights shimmered, hinting at the presence of demonic entities. Lines of blue light pulsed between the towers creating a web of magic.

As they got closer a high-pitched keening whine filled the air. Inhuman voices could be heard, chanting in languages that no one recognised. No living creature was ever seen, no matter how hard anyone looked. The veteran soldiers looked more and more uneasy. Prince Luther looked more and more wild eyed. Olivia was the only one who seemed to calm. It was not that she was not worried, Kormak knew. It was just that she was better at keeping her fears concealed.

On the evening of the third day, they made camp in the shadow of one of the crystal towers. It bore some resemblance to the work of the Old Ones, but it seemed to be the product of different sensibility, one not exactly theirs. Inscribed on the crystal were strange runes, of the type that Kormak had vague memories of.

When he paused to consider them, he realised that they were not his memories but Razhak’s. They seemed to be becoming stronger the closer he got to Tanyth. He had looked upon these towers before and once he had understood the mystical significance of each and every inscription. He felt that he could do so again if only he looked at them long enough and hard enough.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and he looked around to see that Olivia was looking at him. “Sir Kormak,” she said. “Is something wrong? You have been looking at that pillar for ten minutes now.”

Kormak came out of his reverie. He had not realised that he’d been standing there for so long overwhelmed by the fugue of memories triggered by the sight of the pillars.

“Razhak has been this way,” he said. “He came this way many times. It is like coming home for him.”

“We shall see to it that it is the last time he does so,” Olivia said.

“Let us hope so,” Kormak said.

“You have not come so far to fail now,” she said. “Have courage, Guardian.”

He was not sure that he could exactly explain to her what happened or that he wanted to. It was an odd thing to have the memories of a demon inside his mind. He wondered if this had ever happened to any Guardian before. It most likely had. There were very few things new in this world.

Even as they stood there looking at each other, a voice spoke. The words seemed to come out of the air and it took Kormak a few moments to realise that they were emerging from the pillar itself. They had a hauntingly familiar quality and once again he felt, if only he listened hard enough, he might come to understand them. He cocked his head to one side and tried hard to concentrate. He laid his hand on the crystal and it seemed to vibrate in time to the words.

“What are these things?” Kormak asked.

“Some of the sages think the pillars channelled magical energy across the land, focused the ley lines of magic so that it made the deserts bloom and springs flow. Others think it formed a barrier against the Old Ones. Some say they were created by the Old Ones as part of their campaign against the Ghul. No one knows. So much knowledge has been lost.”

“Razhak knows.”

“He might be the only one left in the world who does now,” Olivia said.

For a moment, Kormak felt a strange sense of sympathy with the being he hunted. What must it be like to be the last of your kind, to remember things no one else remembered, to know things no one else knew?

The voices in the air kept gibbering their incomprehensible nonsense, as if ancient spirits were trying to communicate warnings to those who could not understand.


“Those are not hills,” said Prince Luther, “they are ruins.”

Kormak could see that he was right. What at first glance looked like rocky hills were, in fact, piles of rubble, the tumbled down remains of gargantuan structures. They ran as far as the horizon. The city of Sunhaven could have fitted into one small corner of Tanyth.

“How are we going to find the Ghul?” Olivia asked.

“I know where he is going,” Kormak said.

“You can remember that.”

“The spell-engines are at the centre, at the geomantic focus of the city. I will know it when I see it.”

The chief of the retainers walked over. He looked embarrassed but determined. “Sire, the men have asked me to remind you of our agreement. We have seen you to the outskirts of the lost city. They will proceed no further.”

Prince Luther stared at him. “I will pay each man who accompanies us a purse of solars, imperial weight.”

The soldier nodded as if he had expected this. “Dead men spend no gold, sire. And the lads have families and women. We have agreed among ourselves. But I will put your offer to them and see what they have to say. Gold can be wonderfully persuasive.”

Luther nodded as if he had expected this answer. “You have fulfilled your obligations to me admirably, Benjamin. Wait for us here for three days. If we have not returned by then return to Sunhaven and tell the major domo of my house that if we have not returned in a moon, the rites must be spoken in the family crypt. My father should be informed. He may wish to preside over them.”

Benjamin nodded. “It shall all be done according to your wishes, sire.”

He stumped away. Luther looked at Kormak. “It seems we are on our own.”

“It is what you expected, is it not?”

“Yes but now the moment of truth has arrived I find I cannot quite face it with the equanimity that I expected.”

“You do not need to go on if you don’t want to. You have come further than most men would.”

“I do want to go on,” said Luther. “But I find that I am afraid.”

“At least you are brave enough to admit it.”

Luther laughed. “I admire your skill with the paradoxical phrase, Guardian.” He looked at his sister. “How about you Olivia, will you go on?”

Kormak has the sense that if she refused to go on, Luther would stay behind also. Remaining to protect his sister would give him the excuse to do so while allowing him to retain his self-respect. Kormak had seen many men at these delicate moments before. The whole pattern of people’s lives could be altered by such decisions and they came and went with such speed.

Olivia appeared to be giving the matter serious consideration but Kormak knew she had already made up her mind. “Yes. I want to see the end of this and I want to see the heart of the city.”

Benjamin returned. “The lads will accompany you in return for the increased payment. They would probably have come anyway. They feel safer close to the Guardian’s sword and your sister’s magic.”

“It is alchemy,” Olivia said. “Not magic.”

Benjamin’s respectful nod hinted at the fact that he had no idea of the difference.

Luther deflated a little. “Well, that’s it then. We go on.” He sounded disappointed and afraid.

Kormak shrugged. “Mount up then and let us be away.”


They rode through the streets. The city looked as if an army of giants had stormed through it, kicking down buildings, setting them alight. Some of the stonework was blackened and cracked. Statues had been defaced. Shards of broken runic crystal lay everywhere.

“This army resisted the Old Ones for centuries but the First Empire destroyed it in a year,” said Luther.

“The Old Ones were not really trying,” Kormak said. “It was a game they played to while away the time. They do not think or set goals as mortals do.”

When the words came out, Kormak knew they were true. The knowledge was a mixture of Razhak’s and his own.

“They were thorough,” said Olivia.

“Solareon brooked no opposition to his rule.” Kormak said. “He was a proud, cruel man.”

“But a great one,” said Luther.

“A great mage certainly,” said Olivia. Her tone made it clear that one had little to do with the other. “Possibly the greatest human mage of all time.”

“And chosen by the Sun as well, filled with the Light. How else could he do what he did?”

“An army of warriors and an army of mages always helps achieve military goals,” said Kormak. “And he had both.”

He studied the ruined streets all about him. The destruction was on a titanic scale but it had all happened long ago. It was like looking at a stage long after the actors had left. Cataclysmic events had occurred here but in a time so remote as to make them unimportant.

Incongruously, a Solar centurion’s helmet sat on top of a ruined column, as if its owner had just set it down hours ago and would return to reclaim it.

“You are smiling, Sir Kormak,” said Olivia.

“Just when I think I understand something, it slips from my grasp,” he said.

“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.

He wondered if it was as ruined as the one above. He did not have time to break off and explore and find out. His borrowed memories told him that he needed to keep going. He knew what Razhak sought and where it had to be. The activity all around told him that the Ghul was close to getting what he had come for. Other recollections told him that there were strange and deadly weapons buried here and other defences Razhak might call on if threatened.

Benjamin and the remaining soldiers moved along cautiously. Some of the warriors had bows in their hands, others had swords. The ones with the blades stood ready to protect the ones with the ranged weapons in case of surprise attack. Prince Luther had his sword out. Olivia’s hand toyed with something inside the pouch she carried. She clearly had other surprises for any attackers.

The lights flickered. The air vibrated. The ground shook, not as if it had been hit by an earthquake but rather as if it were a monstrous gong being struck by an invisible but inexorable hammer. Kormak got the sense that the whole ancient city was coming awake.

He knew that Razhak had something to do with that.


After long hours of walking they reached the bottom of the well, passed through an arch and entered another great open space. This one was lined with more crystalline towers between which chain lightning flickered.

Around the edges of the space were glass jars full of milky fluid. As he got closer Kormak saw that there were things floating within the fluid, the shrivelled corpses of the ancient race to which he knew Razhak belonged. The jars had been cracked and discolouration around the floor of many of them told Kormak that strange chemicals had leaked onto the ground.

In the centre of the chamber a huge platform stood supported on a crystal pillar. At the edge of it was a massive pulsing crystal; beside it stood Razhak, still wearing the body of Scar. The flesh was starting to peel from the huge orcish frame in places. The sight of him made the soldiers flinch.

In his hand, he held something that looked like a spear tipped with a glowing crystal that resembled that from which the glowing pillars were made. The air around Razhak shimmered with light.

“Guardian!” The voice came from all around, seemingly part of the vibrations in the air. Kormak felt it rumbling within his chest as well as heard it with his ears. “You have arrived at last. And you have brought me some more vessels. I am grateful. I had thought I was going to die here, but there is yet a chance for me to live.”

“Today is the day your life ends,” Kormak said. He was not sure whether his shout could be heard above the noise of the spell-engines but Razhak seemed to have no trouble understanding him.

“I had thought so too, Guardian. Our ancient enemies did their work well. They have broken the god-machines. They have smashed the spell-engines. They no longer function. I had thought to remake myself, to reweave the thread of my existence but it cannot be done. Your insect forebears destroyed things they cannot even begin to comprehend out of malice and envy. Of course, you understand that all too well, don’t you?”

Kormak took in what the Ghul was saying. Razhak had no way of strengthening his spirit-fires. He was as mortal in his own way as Kormak now. He might be able to leap bodies and steal part of their energy but he could not find enough energy to stave off extinction indefinitely. In fact, if they left now, he would simply starve as he burned through the remaining life-energy in Scar’s body.

Or perhaps that was what he wanted them to believe. Perhaps it was not so. Perhaps he had different reasons for saying this. Kormak could not take the chance of letting him escape. Razhak laughed. There was a tinge of madness to it as well as the alien mirth of one who had never been a man.

“I am going to kill you, Guardian,” he said. “You have hounded me too long. I am ending this now. I will slay you if it’s the last thing I do. You have, you will be pleased to know, reduced me to your own level.”

He raised the spear. Chained lightning danced around its tip. Kormak pushed Olivia and Luther into the shadow of a pillar as a bolt of pure electrical energy leapt at the spot where they had been. Sparks erupted where the surge of power struck. One of the soldiers stood there watching as the lightning came closer. It touched him. He screamed, eyes opening wide, skin turning briefly white and sloughing away. In a moment, only a blackened corpse in partially melted armour stood there.

Other soldiers sent arrows streaking towards Razhak. As they got close to him, lightning streaked from the spear and they burst into flame at the tip. The stink of ozone assaulted Kormak’s nostrils, its hot metallic tang making him want to gag. Two more thunderclaps sounded, two more flickers of lightning lashed out, two more soldiers died. The rest scurried for cover. Razhak’s laughter rang out.

“Hiding, Guardian? Where is your confidence now? It’s not so easy when your prey fights back, is it?”

Kormak squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. He was still dazzled from the flash and he could see the after-image even through his closed lids.

From cover, the soldiers started to shoot arrows again. Kormak risked a look and saw the same thing happen as before. He felt Olivia pressed against his side.

“We can’t kill him with bows,” Kormak said. “We need to get closer.”

“It’s not possible,” Olivia said. “That lance will kill you before you get up the ramp. Those amulets won’t protect you either any more than they would protect you from a lightning strike.”

Kormak knew she was right. “There’s not a lot we can do,” he said. “Perhaps wait until the weapon’s power is discharged.”

“That might take a while,” she said. “It seems to be drawing it from the spell-engines. We could all be dead by then.”

“So you don’t want to stand and fight, Guardian!” Razhak bellowed. “How unlike you. Must I come looking?”

“Can you use a bow?” Olivia asked.

“Indifferently,” Kormak said. She dived from cover, picked up the bow that had been dropped by one of the dead guards and rolled into the shelter of a nearby pillar as another bolt came crashing down where she had been. Somehow she had managed to grab an arrow too. As Kormak watched she broke of the metal head, leaving only splintered wood. She stepped out, aimed and fired.

Kormak looked and saw that the arrow now protruded from Razhak’s breast. The Ghul shrieked in pain. Olivia stepped to where Kormak stood. “It’s the metal arrowheads. The lightning is drawn to them as it is drawn to a lightning rod. Without them to draw the bolts, the arrow can get through.”

She shouted to the soldiers. “Break off your arrowheads, use only the wood of the shafts and you can kill him.”

A few soldiers took aim and let fly from around. Some of them panicked and did not remove the arrowheads, a few arrows clattered into the mechanism around Razhak, one bounced off his chestplate, another bit home into his flesh. The Ghul stepped away from the edge of the platform, clearly rattled. The soldiers kept up a rain of arrows on where he had been, clearly heartened by their success.

“Well reasoned,” Kormak said to Olivia. He leaned forward, kissed her, drew his sword and raced for the ramp. He was surprised to find Prince Luther running beside him.

“Go back,” Kormak said.

“I will see the end of this,” Luther said. There was no time for Kormak to argue with him or force him back so he kept running, heart racing, fearful that the Ghul would reappear with his deadly weapon at the ready and cut them down.

They stormed up the ramp and found themselves in the shadow of the gigantic, glowing spell-engines. Razhak was nowhere to be seen. Between the ancient machines a corridor ran back into the gloom. Kormak took up a position on one side of it. He did not want to run directly down it. He would be too easy a target in the confined space.

Arrows clattered down around them. One of them, lacking an arrowhead passed through Kormak’s cloak.

“Stop shooting,” Prince Luther shouted. “You’ll hit us!”

The rain of arrows slackened and ceased.

“Thank you,” Luther shouted, with some irony. He looked over at Kormak. “What now?”

“Walking down this corridor is death,” Kormak said. He looked at the great engine. There were handholds in the side. “We go over.”

He started to climb until he reached the top of the engines. The air was warm and dry and the ozone stink greater. Chain lightning danced overhead and each flicker made him flinch in case it diverted itself downwards and through his body. He looked around. The top of the engines were complex patterns of machinery and crystal. He had vague memories of this being the place where the Ghul had been created, had become bodiless, reached out to become more than mortal and less than they had been.

He raced along the top, heading towards the centre of the plinth. Ahead lay a gap between two great mechanisms. He sprang across it, had a view of the surface far enough below so that a fall would break his back. He ran on, ignoring the fear in his gut, came to another gap, sprang across again and raced to the edge of the giant spell-machine, looking down.

Razhak stood below, in the shadow of a vast spherical crystal within which chained lightning roiled. He was slumped in a metal throne, the spear across his knees, trying to bind his wounds with strips torn from his shirt. It struck Kormak as oddly sad that a life measured in ages and marked with flights of cosmic evil should be reduced to this. If he had brought a bow, he could have finished him from here.

Heavy breathing beside him told him that Prince Luther had caught up. “An exciting little steeplechase,” he said. He glared down at Razhak. “He is still armed.”

Kormak nodded. “We go down the far side of this machine where he cannot see us.”

They moved to the far edge and descended with Kormak in the lead. He was very aware of the Prince clambering down above him. If Luther fell, he would sweep Kormak to the floor as well.

Kormak moved up to the corner of the spell engine and glanced around. Razhak still sat there. He had finished binding his wounds and now glared around him like a beast at bay. He looked unutterably weary. Kormak quashed the brief strange flash of sympathy he felt. Razhak had cut down those soldiers without thought. He deserved nothing better himself.

Kormak edged from the shadows, blade held ready. If only he could reach Razhak before he turned, he could strike of the Ghul’s head without interference. He padded forward and then heard the sound of a sword being drawn behind him. Razhak’s head turned, he raised the lightning-spear.

Kormak desperately threw himself to one side as Razhak raised the weapon. Lightning flashed. There was a sound of screaming from behind Kormak. Prince Luther would be writing no more poems. The twisted remnants of his sword, dripped from his hand. Charred flesh had peeled away to reveal white bone beneath.

Kormak moved around the outside of the mechanism holding the great crystal sphere. He was edgy as a cat. Razhak was expecting him now and any moment he might come face to face with the Ghul and his terrible weapon. He keyed himself up to strike instantly. He knew he would only have a heartbeat in which to act.

“It’s just you and me now, Guardian,” said Razhak. His voice sounded loud and surprisingly close over the hum of the spell-engines. “Soon it will only be me. A pity about the boy. A good body. I could have made use of it, as I have made use of the others you brought me.”

Kormak kept his mouth firmly closed. He did not want to speak, to give away his position. He wondered why Razhak was doing it. Was the Ghul nervous or did it have some other reason?

“Still, there will be other bodies. You have brought me more. Very thoughtful of you.”

Kormak looked at the runes on his blade. They blazed with light but that was no help. There was so much ambient magic that they could get no brighter. There would be no warning of Razhak’s presence there.

“You may have saved me you know. With those bodies I can leave here, find more hosts. Perhaps one of your mages will be able to help me stave off oblivion.”

It was fear, Kormak thought. That was why Razhak was talking. The Ghul was afraid. It was closer to death than it had ever been. It knew, just as he did, that its last few moments of life were coming closer. It knew also that for it there would be no afterlife. Perhaps there would be none for Kormak either despite what the Books of the Holy Sun promised.

“I don’t suppose you would make a bargain with me,” Razhak said. “I could teach you my secrets. I could teach you what Solareon was so desperate to learn. You could become like me.”

I have no wish to become like you, Kormak thought. He moved a pace closer, paused and listened. Part of him was tempted though. Just as part of him was repulsed. He told himself the Ghul just wanted to lure him out, that it would never keep its promise, but something in the memories he shared caused him to doubt even that.

“I know you are considering it,” the Ghul said. “I know your mind better than you know mine. I have had far more experience of assimilating the memories of mortals.”

He took a step closer. He could see the shadow of the Ghul now, cast from where it stood. Looking beyond that down the long aisle between the spell-engines, he could see figures coming closer, Olivia and the soldiers of her bodyguard. He saw the shadow raise its spear into the attack position.

Part of him was relieved. Olivia and the men would distract the Ghul and then he would strike. Part of him shouted, “Razhak!”

The Ghul turned to face him as Kormak sprang. It tried to turn the spear to bear on him but Kormak brought his dwarf-forged blade smashing down on it, splitting the haft. His blade buried itself in Razhak’s head. He thought for a moment he had killed the Ghul but then he saw the shimmering ectoplasmic form floating in the air behind it. Once again Razhak had managed to leave the body he possessed moments before death. Looking at him now, Kormak could see differences though. The ghostly form was rent and torn and appeared to be on the verge of coming apart. It swirled through the air moving towards the soldiers faster than a man could run.

Kormak could see that Olivia was leading the men forward. Her head was slightly turned as she gave a command to her nervous followers. The Ghul was going to reach her and claim one last victim.

Kormak threw his sword towards the ghost. It turned end over end through the air and caught the apparition squarely in the centre, cleaving it apart. A long, low scream only partially physical echoed through the air, as Razhak’s final form disintegrated. It came apart in a shower of light and in the end left not even a shadow. The blade clattered against one of the spell-engines and then fell to the ground.

Olivia turned her head and saw Kormak standing there. She must have read something in his face. She said, “Luther?”

Kormak shook his head, walked over and picked up his sword. He had felt oddly naked without it. Olivia walked over to where her brother lay, a roasting meat smell emerged from the corpse. She looked at it for a while, removed her cloak and covered him with it.

“We can burn the body in the desert,” Kormak said. “This would not be a good place to lie for all eternity.”

He was thinking about Luther’s father’s words when they first met. The old man had been right. This way lay Death.



THE END