Stealer of Flesh

They continued down the stair and came out on the balcony overlooking the common room. It had been tidied up since the fight earlier and was just as busy as it had been back then. Kormak stood in the shadows on the balcony and scanned the room, looking for any signs of Razhak.

“You planning on searching every room in this place?” Nuala asked.

“No,” said Kormak, moving towards the door of the chamber from which Scar had emerged earlier. “I am going to ask for directions.”

He pushed the door open and entered blade in hand. Ana was there, so was Scar and half a dozen other men. Nuala hung back, staying out of line of sight.

Seeing Ana Kormak sprang. Quick as he was Scar somehow got between them and parried his strike with his blades. Steel rang on steel.

“I was wondering when you would show up,” Scar said. His voice was soft but his words carried. He struck at Kormak swift as a serpent. Kormak barely had time to parry.

“Do you know what you are doing? Who you are protecting?” Kormak asked. He countered swiftly, bringing his blade sweeping down towards Scar’s face. Scar sprang backwards.

“Yes,” said Scar. “It matters not to me if it preys on your weak race. I will have your heart and your blade and a life of endless challenge when your brethren come to seek it. I was First Blade of the Red Horde, taught Edge Rites by the Wolf Shamans. I will devour your brethren and absorb their prowess.”

Kormak cursed quietly. The orc was serious. He believed he could ingest part of an enemy’s prowess with his flesh and he welcomed the possibility of endless conflict with Kormak’s order and a heroic death in battle. It was how orcs lived and how they wanted to die.

Scar struck. His blades were flickering lightning, dancing everywhere with dizzying speed. Kormak fell back towards the door, parrying, looking for an opening. Scar was not even breathing hard.

Kormak saw an opening. He knocked Scar’s blade aside and stabbed his dwarf-forged sword into the orc’s heart. Scar twisted, turning sideways. The blade passed through his side but not fatally. It had been a feint of a most daring and bloody kind.

Scar’s massive hand reached out and he caught the Elder Sign hanging by its chain around Kormak’s neck. It snapped and the sign went skittering free across the floor.

Before he could withdraw his blade, Razhak struck. He darted forward and stabbed out with his hand. Pain spasmed through Kormak and for a moment he lost control of his limbs. While he thrashed, two of Scar’s men raced forward. Bludgeons slammed into Kormak’s head. He fell to the floor, twisting to tell Nuala to get away. He need not have bothered. The girl was already gone.


Kormak awoke feeling bruised and chilled. Metal chains restrained his limbs and chilled him where they touched flesh. He looked up and saw Ana. Rotten skin had sloughed away from her flesh now. An eerie green glow glittered within her eyes. Looking around Kormak saw frightened thugs looking at her in horror. Behind her was Scar repairing the links of the chain of Kormak’s damaged Elder Sign. The orc’s wounded side was bound. Seeing Kormak awake, he showed his fangs, put down the amulet and picked up his blades.

Kormak realised his mail shirt had been removed and his amulets. His blade lay on a table in the far corner of the room. He had been stripped of all protection, physical and spiritual, and he doubted his life had been spared for any good reason.

“I had to use up most of my energy with that last spell,” said Razhak. “It ruined this body, took the life from it. I need a new form so I have patched yours up. It is magnificent, a shell that should house me till I reach Tanyth.”

“Kill me and my order will send two more to hunt you.”

A soft, corrupt phlegmy laugh emerged from the possessed woman’s throat. “I have heard enough about your order. I shall leave the blade here with my friend Scar and I shall disappear. They can reclaim the sword. That is all they care about.”

Kormak felt the touch of the Ghul. It was chill and clammy. Ana’s hand felt oddly sticky as if some small vampiric creeper was attaching itself to his breast. A coldness radiated out from the point of contact, sending tendrils burrowing deep into Kormak’s chest, through his veins and up his spine. At first it was not painful, not even unpleasant, only faintly disturbing.

He looked up into Ana’s face. The possessed woman’s face glowed from within. Her flesh was starting to turn black and liquefy. A reddish glow burned in her eyes, growing brighter with every passing heartbeat. Through Ana’s stolen eyes, something ageless watched him, her lips twisted into a smile as the skin ran like wax from a melting candle.

Suddenly, Kormak felt as if a thousand needles stabbed into his flesh where the cold hand rested above his heart. The chill spread suddenly and searingly, so cold it burned, along all those lines of power. His whole body spasmed as his muscles reacted. His fingers opened and closed and they did not do so at his command, nor at the command of anyone else… yet.

He felt in some way like a puppet at the end of a string and at the same time could feel an ominous sense of presence growing in his mind, as in some dreadful dream. It was as if some dark and awful monster, lurking out of sight, was coming ever closer.

His heart raced. His mouth went dry. He felt dizzy and if it was not for the chains, he would not have been able to stand up right. He felt as if he was falling into a black pit that yawned at his feet, an endless, empty chasm in which he would never hit bottom.

His limbs thrashed. He bit on his tongue. He felt a tearing sensation as if his spirit was being ripped free of his body and something else was trying to elbow it aside and take its place within the house of his flesh.

Images started to flicker into his mind. Bubbling up like old memories suddenly remembered. Some of them belonged to him and some of them belonged to someone else. He felt tendrils of alien thought riffle through his mind, like a burglar looking through the possessions found in a trunk. He felt an eager, gloating presence, keen to take possession of all of them, of every little thing he remembered.

He saw a village in the mountains of Aquilea, everyone dead, corpses sprawling in the muddy streets, as cold as the fingers that touched his chest, dead eyes staring at the sky, mouths open in prayer to a god that never answered. He saw an eight year old boy standing in the ruins of a smithy, clutching his father’s hammer, confronting an evil as old as the world while that evil watched him with mocking eyes. The ancient being walked over to the boy and took away the hammer, and it reached out and touched his cheek. You I will spare to take word to the world but one day, child, when you least expect it, I will come for you again. On that day, you will die!

He felt Razhak’s sense of shock in the invading presence. It realised what it was seeing. It was looking on something coeval with itself, a thing that had once been its master, a Lord of the Old Ones, a renegade outside the Law.

Kormak took advantage of its surprise to strike back, as he had been taught by the masters of Mount Aethelas long ago. He threw all of his willpower into envisioning an Elder Sign in his mind. The Ghul recoiled from him, leaving him with a fragment of its memories. Of a world before the coming of men, of ancient beings who had once served the Old Ones and who sought to emulate them.

He watched the Sunlanders arrive borne on the wings of storm from their sinking island continent to claim the lands of the Old Ones in the name of their brilliant, solar god. He saw the Ghul take advantage of the war to rebel against their masters.

He saw Tanyth, a gigantic city with a dome of magic over it and towers whose minarets glowed like the moon as lightning danced from spire to spire. He saw the things that looked somewhat like men, but were not, lie down in sarcophagi and have their essence strengthened until they could exist outside the housing of flesh. He felt a sense of triumph. They had emulated their masters. They were immortal.

The Ghul struck back at him. A wave of power rushed inwards battering at the walls he had created around his self with the Elder Sign. It smashed through them and dug its talons into his soul and began to shake lose his memories once more. He saw that eight year old boy still standing in the ruins of an empty village. The ancient evil was gone, as inexplicably as it had come, leaving him alone in the place of death. He heard the sound of a horse. He looked up and he saw a grim-faced man ride in, with a dwarf-forged sword slung on his back. The man looked wary at the sight but he did not look afraid. He dismounted and moved towards the boy suspiciously, as if he thought the child might be a demon wearing a different form. The boy stood watching, clutching his father’s hammer. The man reached out and touched him with an amulet, which did not burn and then asked him what had happened.

Kormak saw that Razhak was beginning to understand. Taking advantage of the demon’s confusion, he countered. The memories came in a tide of images, intermingling as the two spirits fought for possession of his body. Kormak was not going to give up. The tide of memories brought back fresh recollections of his training in how to resist magical influence. He strengthened his wards, clawed back at Razhak.

Images flickered through his mind. The bodiless Ghuls raced around the world, disembodied immortal creatures that yet had the appetites born of flesh and which now hungered for the experiences they could no longer have. Disquieting tidings came, as Ghuls started to flicker and fade. There was a flaw in their magic. They had not become as independent of the flesh as they had thought. They could still die, coming apart in a welter of entropic energy, losing form and coherence, as if there was nothing to anchor them to reality.

More memories were ripped from Kormak’s mind. He saw the boy and the Guardian approach the towering spire of Mount Aethelas. He caught sight of the ancient fortress monastery for the first time. He saw himself placed with the other novices. Once again he picked up a training sword and surprised the masters with how good he was with it. He recalled the long years of training and learning. He saw himself grow to become a hulking youth with quick reflexes and a quicker temper, a black-haired cuckoo among the golden-haired second offspring of the Sunlander nobility from whom the vast majority of Guardians were drawn.

He saw the first desperate attempts of the Ghuls to find out what had gone wrong. Without their physical forms it was difficult to work the magical engines they had thought they had no more need for. He saw the Ghuls learn how to seize the forms of others, starting with beasts and working their way up to sentients.

Humans proved best. They lacked the spiritual protections of the Old Ones and there were so many of them, scattering so far and so fast across the lands that the weakest could be picked off without the Ghuls being noticed. Some acquired herds of humans, with scores of new bodies to be taken possession of. Some set themselves up as kings. Some led human armies against their former masters, the Old Ones. Some were worshipped as Gods just as the Old Ones had been. They returned to Tanyth and made a home there, with herds of subject humans to worship and guard them. Life was good until the Emperor Solareon intervened to free the humans from their worship of false gods. His armies smashed Tanyth, bound the Ghuls in great amphorae with potent spells, questioned them as to their secrets, then one day he rode away to make war on new enemies, never to return. His successor, fanatical with holy rage, threw the amphorae into the darkest part of the World Ocean, to rest in the darkness of the ocean floor for long cold millennia. Kormak was struck by a vast sense of cosmic loneliness. Razhak had encountered none of his own kind for centuries. It was possible he was the last.

He saw flashes from his own life again as Razhak struggled back. He saw his apprenticeship to Master Malan and the long hunt that had led to him being awarded his blade. He saw the orc wars of his youth when he had saved the life of King Brand and slaughtered orc chieftains, reaping lives like wheat. He saw himself travel through deserts of ash where the dead men walked, and confronting witches and wizards and Old Ones and demons. He saw the point where his path crossed with Razhak’s and the long hunt across the wastelands had begun.

He sensed now the Ghul’s fear as it desperately tried to elude its implacable pursuer and its growing despair as he eluded every trap, overcame every spell, sought out every refuge. He felt a gnawing sense of terror as the demon realised it could not escape and would have to turn at bay. He felt at last a flow of direct contact between himself and Razhak.

Why have you pursued me, Man? Why have you bedevilled my footsteps for so long?

Because I must. You have broken the Law. You have slain and maimed and killed. You must be stopped.

I merely do what I must to stay alive. As you do to cattle, as wolves do to deer.

We are not cattle. We live and think and feel. You have no right to slay us.

Your sheep would say the same to you, if they could but speak.

But they cannot and we can and that is the difference. You seek to live. We seek to live. In the end all things must die.

You would not if you allow me to take your form. Part of you would live forever with the multitudes inside of me.

That is not what I seek.

No. You seek death. Even as you bring it.

You project your own desires on to me. As I would to you. In the end there is no escape for either of us.

If you have your way and kill me your world will be poorer. All that I have seen and been and done, all my memories and dreams, all that remains of a people will be gone.

It is the same for all of us. With every man’s death, a world disappears.

I have fought Death so long. I will not let it end like this.

Kormak sensed the demon gathering what remained of its strength for a final strike at him. A surge of agony and memory swept over him. He resisted the onrushing wave like a boulder resisting the tide, letting it break around him against the hard rock of his will until the moment was passed and Razhak was gone, leaving him feeling strangely alone.

A loud crash sounded. Kormak opened his eyes and saw the doors to the torture cell were open. Guards poured down the stair. Nuala was with them. Scar moved to block their way.

The Ghul raised its hands and chanted a spell, a wave of energy flowed out from it, stunning the newcomers and the orc and his followers alike. It would have overcome Kormak too had he not been prepared by his spiritual conflict with Razhak to resist it.

The effort of that last spell proved too much for Razhak. Ana’s body was coming apart, decomposing into horrible black fluid, skin bursting and putrefying even as Kormak watched. The darkly shimmering form of the Ghul emerged and flickered around. Tendrils of light touched Scar and he screamed. A moment later his eyes glowed and Kormak knew that the Ghul had claimed another victim.

It turned to look at him for a moment and there was something there, some flicker of sympathy perhaps, or at least of shared understanding. The orc’s fangs drew back in rage and Kormak knew that the Ghul was going to come for him. He leaned back against the wall, giving the chains some slack. If the Ghul came within reach he would try and smash it down with the bunched links of metal. The Ghul shook its head as if reading his resolution. It reeled up the stairs and away.

Kormak’s muscles ached, his bones felt as if their marrow was molten. His brain felt empty as if much of what he was had been lost, and he realised it was merely the absence of the gigantic presence that Razhak had been. He strained with all his might against the chains. They had never been intended to resist a man as strong as he. They came away from the walls, leaving him free to stagger over to the board of keys pinned against the walls and find the one that would free him.

He walked over to where his sword lay, picked it up and strapped it on. He took his amulets and his armour and put them on too. Nuala stirred faintly. It seemed she was still alive. He walked over to her and touched her with his Elder Sign, hoping it might disrupt any inimical energy that remained in her form. Her eyes opened and she looked up at him.

“You owe me,” she said.

“For bringing the guard?” he asked, as he helped her to her feet.

“I told them you were here. It was the fastest way of getting them to come. Maybe the only way to get them to break into Scar’s place.”

“You did well,” he said.

She looked at the recumbent form of the guards. “Will they be all right?”

“If you are, they will be. And I think I had best be gone when they awake. It will be easier than explaining.”

She nodded. “You’d better find, Darien. You owe him money.”

“What do I owe you?” She reached up and stroked his cheek.

“I am sure we can work out some method of payment that is satisfactory for both of us,” she said.

They stumbled up the stairs and out into the deserted tavern. Outside the open door, the night waited. Somewhere out there, Razhak was running for his life. Kormak knew where he was going now with utter certainty. He would find the demon in the ruins of Tanyth.

Death waited there for one of them. Tonight he did not care. He had debts to pay in the here and now.