Wardens of the Everqueen Page 20

  Slaugoth picked the worm that had fallen from his mouth off the sleeve of his robe. He stared at the writhing creature. ‘I will commune with the Grandfather, seek His wisdom. Learn from Him where the branchwraith has gone.’ His eyes narrowed as he leaned down to stare into Kriknitt’s face. ‘When I learn where she is going, we will use the skaven tunnels to get there first. I am certain our ratty friend will be happy to help.’

  Torglug shook Kriknitt by its neck. ‘If he isn’t helping then he is learning death comes slow to those who are defying me.’

  Chapter ten

  The Sea of Serpents was leagues behind them, or at least so it seemed to Lorrus Grymn. The same uncanny distortion of space and time that had characterised their exodus from Athelwyrd had once again settled over the refugees. It was difficult to determine the direction in which they travelled and equally hard to decide how long they’d been marching. The lands through which they wandered were both hideously twisted and wondrously beautiful, places blighted by the corruption of Nurgle and ones yet undefiled by the Plague God’s grasping hand. Their trail led them through copses of loudwillows, their leaves whispering in the breeze, and across despoiled fields strewn with the wreckage of war. Meadows of vibrant flowers and swordgrass where only the first noxious deathblooms had taken root and glades where the last pines withered in the clutch of gnawing creepers.

  Grymn wondered if the other Stormcasts shared the eerie divorce from his surroundings that he felt. He wondered if it was an aspect of the miraculous change that flowed through him. The glowing energies of the queen-seed pulsed through his body, scouring him of the rot left by Torglug’s axe. He could feel the last of the filth being purged, burned away in the radiant vibration. The same vibration throbbed inside his mind, sharpening his senses, expanding them to a keenness he’d never known before. He imagined it was similar to how Morbus perceived the world, the Lord-Relictor’s mystic connection to the God-King granting him a degree of perception inconceivable to most men.

  The most astonishing change worked by Alarielle’s soulpod was that which had occurred to his hand. True, it had a strange, fibrous feel to it and there was a distinct greenish tinge about the skin, but it was a thing of flesh! He could feel his blood pumping through it. He could move the fingers, manipulate them as easily as he had his old ones.

  Ahead of him, Grymn could see the Lady of Vines guiding the other sylvaneth into a forest path. Giant petrified toweroaks loomed above the trail, casting their imposing shadows across the wood. He was struck by the solemn majesty of these trees and the aura of incredible antiquity that emanated from them. If Morbus were to tell him these stone trees had stood since the Age of Myth he would have been hesitant to disbelieve the claim. They might have been brought down with Alarielle when the Radiant Queen descended into the realm of Ghyran.

  The Branchwraith turned towards the Stormcasts, her eyes passing across each warrior before fixing upon Grymn. ‘We pass through Greengyr now, upon the Path of the Purified. The foulness of the Plague God will be burned away by the enchantments of the ley lines that flow through this place. All will be cleansed,’ she said. ‘Even the most vile of infection cannot withstand the old magic for long.’

  Grymn looked across the masses of stony trees that loomed all around them. Each was pitted by wind and rain, scoured by an eerie atmosphere. Each of the Stormcasts felt it, as though his valour and determination were being balanced against the contagion they’d been exposed to. They were being judged, not by the sylvaneth but by Greengyr itself. It was testament to the strength and devotion of the Stormcasts that each was permitted to proceed upon that path.

  ‘Your presence here does credit to you,’ the Lady of Vines told Grymn. ‘It proves your soul is firm and your devotion to the Everqueen is true. An unclean spirit would be cast from the Path of the Purified, expelled into the forests beyond. Few who are rejected by Greengyr emerge with mind and spirit unmarred. They prowl the deep woods, crazed and alone.’

  Grymn clenched his regrown hand, letting it close about the roof of his restored lantern. ‘Is that why you allowed the queen-seed’s magic to heal me? Is that why you paid me such honour, so that the Path of the Purified wouldn’t reject me?’

  There was a warmth in the Lady of Vines when she answered him. ‘Long has it been since any of the quick-blood displayed such courage on behalf of the Radiant Queen. Yours has been the most arduous burden of all, for of you is demanded not only that you place your life in jeopardy, but also the lives of those who follow you.’ The last was said with a sorrowful note. Since the passing of Alarielle, the branchwraith had become leader of the sylvaneth. Many of the tree-creatures had perished on the Sea of Serpents. Morbus had told Grymn how heavily the sacrifice of the ancient treelords had affected her, but he knew that all of the lives lost were equally painful to her. The onus of command was a burden not easily shouldered.

  The branchwraith had gone only a little way into the petrified forest when huge figures emerged from the maze of frozen trees, stepping out onto the path and blocking her progress. Tallon snarled at them, his hackles raised. The Stormcasts brought their weapons to the ready, only marginally eased in their minds by the realization that the force ahead of them was sylvaneth rather than more warriors of Chaos. Though their shared ordeal upon the frozen sea had instilled some sense of camaraderie towards the tree-creatures that had made the journey with them, the Hallowed Knights couldn’t forget the hostile resentment that had been their reception when they entered the vale of Athelwyrd.

  Grymn could feel the anger boiling off of the sylvaneth that stole out of the petrified forest. Many of them bore the cuts and burns of battle, their trunks marked by the bite of axe and claw. It wasn’t their encounters with the plaguehosts that stoked their ire, however. He could feel the glowing gaze of tree-creatures and dryads fixing on him, the beings glowering at him with an outraged regard. Nowhere was the sensation more pronounced than when he looked up at the creature who led these wargroves. He was a colossal treelord, stouter and grander than even the most ancient of their kind that had accompanied Alarielle’s court into exile. Grymn felt the incredible age of the huge sylvaneth when it met his eyes, the incalculable centuries that lay behind its threatening stare. He could feel the treelord’s consciousness pressing against his own, pushing its name into his mind. He was called Haldroot and he had become shepherd of the sylvaneth that yet lingered on this side of the sea. They had marched to answer the call issued by the Lady of Vines. They had expected battle, anticipated death. Instead they discovered something they hadn’t been prepared to face.

  Haldroot raised one of his arms, pointing an accusing claw at Grymn. An angry murmur rustled through the wargroves that followed the treelord. Grymn wasn’t sure exactly what the new tree-creatures were angry about – that the Lady of the Vines and the Stormcasts were so obviously allied, or some deeper concern?

  Morbus came up beside Grymn, hands closed tight around the haft of his relic hammer. ‘They should know that we’re friends. After all we’ve endured on the ice, it would sicken me to have to fight sylvaneth.’

  Grymn glanced back at his mixed command. Warriors in both silver and white armour were slowly regrouping, gathering into formations that would be ready to support one another if fighting broke out. Tegrus and Giomachus were eyeing the stony branches overhead, seeking the best perches from which they could rain missiles down upon their opponents.

  The Stormcasts were ready to fight, but they weren’t eager. The sylvaneth weren’t minions of Chaos. It would be necessity not justice that forced them against the tree-creatures. There would be no glory to be found here, only the absurd waste of fighters who should have been turned against Chaos, not one another.

  ‘Stand back,’ Grymn told Morbus. ‘It seems I am the centre of their anger. If I give myself to them, perhaps it will ease their rage and make them see reason.’

  ‘There will be no need,’ the Lady of Vines stated
.

  The branchwraith stepped towards Haldroot, her fiery gaze matching his own. The two sylvaneth conversed for a time in the rumbling, rolling speech of the forest. Ancient and mighty, the treelord nevertheless bowed his head in respect, acknowledging her authority even over him. However hot his rage, it didn’t eclipse devotion to his queen or to the handmaiden who ruled in her stead.

  Whatever communion passed between the Lady of Vines and Haldroot, Grymn couldn’t say. Maybe the treelord was offended that the branchwraith had allowed a mere human to touch the queen-seed – the sylvaneth might well see this as tantamount to sacrilege. Haldroot’s anger was causing strips of bark to split and crack from his body, some of the branches growing from his head to snap and break. The roots from his feet stabbed down into the earth, gouging the ground in a manifestation of suppressed fury.

  The Lady of Vines was unperturbed by Haldroot’s rage. She gestured only once towards Grymn. She pointed at his regrown hand, something that seemed to particularly agitate the treelord. Her position was clear enough: if what she’d done was truly the outrage Haldroot held it to be, then the Radiant Queen’s power wouldn’t have healed Grymn’s wounds. The giant tree-creature looked towards Grymn, the hostility in his eyes dimmed by the branchwraith’s reprimand.

  When the treelord turned back to the Lady of Vines, there was something suggestive of contrition in his demeanour. The roots that had so angrily raked the earth now took firm hold upon the ground. More tendrils uncoiled from his hands, securing his arms.

  ‘I have reminded Haldroot and his companions that there are many who fight Chaos as fiercely as the sylvaneth,’ the Lady of Vines told Grymn. ‘It will take them some time to cool their anger, but it will drain away. When it has, we will be ready to march once more.’

  The Lady of Vines walked towards Grymn. Her glowing eyes stared down at his new hand. He was struck by the weird sense of kinship he experienced, as though he’d somehow become a part of the branchwraith. No, that wasn’t quite right. Deep in his memories long-buried emotions flickered, the bond between brother and sister. Once, long before he’d been reforged upon the Anvil of Apotheosis, such a connection must have existed, though he couldn’t remember names or even faces. All he did know was that Alarielle’s handmaiden evoked this forgotten regard.

  Grymn thought he understood. In some way, the branchwraith too had grown from the fertile magic of the Radiant Queen. He didn’t know if it was in part or in whole, but like his new hand, the Lady of Vines had been shaped by Alarielle’s power. It crea­ted a sympathy between them, a connection at once detached from his kinship to his fellow Hallowed Knights, yet in some ways even stronger.

  The branchwraith nodded, sensing the turn of Grymn’s thoughts. She beckoned to him. ‘Come, step into the flow of the ley line. Then you will understand.’

  Slowly Grymn advanced onto the path Haldroot and his followers had blocked. As he did so, strange lights filled his vision. Weird emanations he hadn’t been aware of now became visible to him. He could see a bright green glow suffusing the sylvaneth, blazing brightest around Haldroot and the oldest of their kind. The Stormcasts too were aglow, radiating a pristine white light. When he looked towards the Lady of Vines, he saw that she was engulfed in an aura of jade-coloured energy, shining with an almost blinding brilliance. The same aura spilled from the queen-seed.

  Grymn’s own body didn’t quite radiate the same white light as his fellow Stormcast. There was a faint greenish tinge to it, and when he looked at his regrown hand, he saw it burned with the same glow as that which surrounded the Lady of Vines and her sacred charge. He had become more than an ally of Alarielle and the branchwraith – he had become something almost kindred to them. From that kinship, he sensed the mighty purpose towards which the Lady of Vines was striving.

  ‘It is so,’ the branchwraith said, answering the question he would have put to her before he could ask it. Sombrely, Grymn bowed his head in respect to her decision.

  Morbus caught at Grymn’s arm, puzzled by the uncanny rapport he sensed between his leader and the branchwraith. ‘What was that about? What is it she expects you to understand?’

  ‘She remains devoted to her queen,’ Grymn declared. ‘After the fight on the ice, she’s come to appreciate that we’re the best hope of restoring Alarielle’s power.’

  Morbus shook his head. ‘Restoring Alarielle? Is that what she intends?’

  Grymn hesitated, wondering how to put into words the thoughts and visions that trickled into his mind from the arcane link between himself and the branchwraith. ‘The queen-seed must be planted, cultivated to revive Alarielle’s power. The aspect Alarielle bore before was benevolent and nurturing, devoted to growing the lands of Ghyran. The time for growth has passed, however. Now this realm needs a more martial goddess to hold dominion. The Lady of Vines aspires to give the realm what it needs.’ Grymn gestured at the petrified trees around them. ‘All of this was once the Kingdom of Blackstone, where men fought the first intrusions of Chaos. Their long war to cast out the Ruinous Powers has left its legacy written upon the very soil of their vanished nation. The Lady of Vines will plant the queen-seed in ground steeped in valour and sacrifice, rich in a heritage of heroic deeds. She hopes the courage and determination of the past will shape the Radiant Queen’s new aspect.’

  An awed expression gripped the exposed half of Morbus’ face. ‘Growing a goddess,’ he muttered. ‘I have seen many wonders and incredible magics during this campaign, but to believe it is within anyone’s power to shape the gods themselves is–’

  ‘Impossible?’ Grymn suggested.

  ‘Frightening,’ was Morbus’ answer. Grymn noted that the Lord-Relictor had one hand closed about the icon of Sigmar he carried. ‘Gods give men their form. Men, or sylvaneth for that matter, don’t give the gods form. To even contemplate such disorder, such confusion, is a greater heresy than Chaos itself.’

  Grymn looked at the glowing soulpod nestled in the Lady of Vines’ breast. ‘It is the mystery of choice,’ he said. ‘Do we act of our own volition, or do we act because it is what the gods would have us do? When the Lady of Vines plants this seed, is it her decision or Alarielle’s design?’

  ‘Your new hand is planting strange ideas in your brain,’ Morbus cautioned. He waved his hand towards the sylvaneth clumped further down the trail. ‘How long do we wait for them?’

  ‘As long as they need,’ Grymn said. He could see that his decision wasn’t what Morbus had been hoping for. ‘Don’t mistake the delay as an indulgence. This halt is a needful thing. These are lands new to us, if not to the sylvaneth. We cannot assume them to be free of the enemy’s presence. We need to know if some new danger lies ahead of us.’

  Morbus nodded. ‘You want Tegrus and the Prosecutors to scout ahead?’

  ‘Giomachus too, if the Knight-Venator is agreeable,’ Grymn said. ‘If the enemy is lying in wait for us, I want to know.’

  The Lord-Relictor saluted Grymn and marched back among the Stormcasts to relay their commander’s orders. Grymn turned back, peering through the stony trees. Drifting between them he could see the rippling energies of the ley line, the magical pulse of the Path of the Purified. For all the power he sensed there, he knew it was but a trickle beside the putrid might of the Plague God.

  The closer the Lady of Vines came to her goal, the more desperate the enemy would become and the more vigilant her protectors would need to be. Once more, he cast his gaze skywards and asked Sigmar to guide their course.

  It was some time before the winged scouts returned. Grymn marvelled at their aerobatics, the effortless manoeuvrability with which they dropped down through the petrified branches. Tegrus, never the one to shy from daring, plummeted straight down like a stone, then arrested his momentum with a billowing sweep of his wings. The Prosecutor-Prime saluted as he walked towards Grymn. Knight-Venator Giomachus, though he outranked Tegrus, deferred to his position within the Hallowe
d Knights and waited until he was given permission by Tegrus to make his report.

  ‘There is a stone circle ahead,’ Giomachus said, bowing his head to the Lady of Vines, acknowledging the mighty conjuration she had effected on the shores of the Sea of Serpents. ‘There the ground is pitted and steaming, as from recent battle. But we saw no signs of friend or foe, and there were no fallen.’

  Grymn shook his head, puzzled by the strange report. What was the meaning of what the scouts had discovered? Was it some deception woven by Chaos? If there had been a battle, then who were the combatants and what were their motives? More importantly, if the fighting had been as fierce as Giomachus said, where were the dead? ‘You are certain there weren’t any bodies?’ Grymn asked.

  ‘We searched thoroughly,’ Giomachus replied. ‘We could find no dead.’

  ‘This is an ill thing,’ Morbus said. ‘It may mean that other powers as malignant as those of Nurgle have taken an interest in our plight.’ The Lord-Relictor left unsaid what it was that he feared, but Grymn knew his meaning. A necromancer of some sort, one of the infamous disciples of Nagash, would leave no corpses on the field of battle but would revive the fallen of both sides as undead horrors.

  The Lady of Vines looked keenly at Giomachus.

  ‘In the craters,’ she asked, ‘were there broken fragments of a strange shimmering rock, as if something had hatched from within?’

  Giomachus removed his plumed helm and stared at the branchwraith. ‘Aye, my lady, it was just as you say.’

  Turning towards Grymn and Morbus, the Lady of Vines explained her strange question. ‘I have seen such long ago. There are others who fight against Chaos, though to us they are as cold and distant as the stars. I do not doubt these strange allies have helped us, but we should expect no further aid.’