—<TWENTY-NINE>—

Red as Blood

The Tarn of Life, in the 110th year of Tahoth the Wise
(-1155 Imperial Reckoning)

It took nearly a year to find the place that the liche had spoken of. First they found the wide, swift-flowing river, many hundreds of miles away to the south-west; then they followed its course up into the treacherous, unforgiving mountains. Many were the scouts who were lost along the way, taken by avalanches, or swift, silent wyverns, or stabbed by their fellows when their rations ran low. They negotiated thundering cataracts, scaled sheer cliffs and swung over bottomless crevasses, until finally, after much suffering and hardship, they reached a vast lake, its surface as smooth as glass and coloured a dark, depthless blue. They found the ruins of twelve great temples along its shores, so ancient and so long abandoned that they were little more than crumbling shells of pitted sandstone, the idols within reduced to shapeless knobs of white marble.

This was the tarn they had been paid to find; the birthplace of the great river that fed the lands to the west, all the way to the distant sea. With nervous paws they broke open the seals on the twelve boxes they had carried with them on the journey, and they emptied the burning man’s poison into the dark depths. Then they scuttled away into the darkness, heading back to the great mountain where their reward awaited them.

Halfway back to the mountain, the first of the scouts began to sicken. By the time the expedition reached the tunnels that would lead them around the shores of the Sour Sea, only the strongest of the scouts were still alive. Two managed to reach the great cavern beneath the mountain and gasp out their report to Eshreegar before their insides turned to mush.

Eekrit and Eshreegar split the fortune in god-stone between themselves and sent out the second expedition six months later.

Over time, the wily scouts learned to adapt to the dangers of the long trip up to the tarn. Rikkit Sharpclaw had survived the past three expeditions to the lake, which made him the natural leader of the pack. The last thing he did before leaving the mountain was to spend some of his accumulated wealth to hire a score of shifty-eyed clanrats from one of the visiting slaver gangs. He told them he needed the extra muscle to protect the valuable cargo he was carrying up into the mountains. The clanrats took his coin and snickered to one another at the deal they were getting. Five gold coin apiece to help carry some boxes? Compared to hunting greenskins up north, that sounded like a holiday to them.

After nine expeditions to the tarn over the last five years, the scouts knew the route very well. They knew how to avoid the sudden avalanches, where to be watchful for the fearsome wyverns and how best to negotiate the waterfalls and the yawning chasms. Rikkit was cautious as ever—more so this time, perhaps, because rumour had it that this was to be the last expedition to the lake. He had no intention of getting himself killed with so much unspent wealth hidden back at the mountain.

The expedition reached the tarn right on schedule. The early spring night was cold and clear, and a full moon smiled at its reflection in the still water below. The clanrats gaped at the size of the lake and the ominous, silent ruins, but followed the scouts without question as they worked their way around the shore and up a narrow path that led to a high cliff overlooking the tarn.

Rikkit breathed in the cold, clear air and smiled at the clanrats. “Here is-is where you earn your keep,” he said. The scout pointed a claw at the edge of the cliff. “Set the boxes over there.”

Wary, the clanrats crept to the edge of the cliff and set the boxes at their feet.

Rikkit smiled. He motioned to the one of the other scouts, who produced three pairs of hammer and chisel and tossed them to the hirelings.

“Open them,” Rikkit said.

The clanrats eyed one another uneasily, but were not in any position to argue. Taking the tools, they cut away the lead seals securing each lid and levered the boxes open. Caustic green light spilled from each container, washing over the hirelings.

Rikkit’s smile widened. This was the part he really enjoyed. The scout reached into his robes and pulled out a fat bag of gold coin. At once, he had the clanrats’ undivided attention.

“Now, here’s where you lot can earn yourself some extra coin,” he said, tossing the bag onto the ground. “The clanrat that tosses the most of those things into the lake gets the gold.”

Rikkit didn’t need to tell the clanrats to begin—all at once there was a snarling, scratching, kicking scramble to grab hold of the contents of each box and hurl them into the water below.

Each box contained a flat disc of pure god-stone, each about the size of a small shield. The surface of each disc was carved with hundreds of strange, arcane symbols and the discs themselves seethed with pent-up magical power. The scouts hissed with laughter as the hirelings seized the heavy discs—each one worth a Grey Lord’s ransom—and fought for the privilege to toss them into the depthless tarn below.

Amid savage grunts and yowls of pain, the first discs were hurled into the air. They glowed balefully as they fell, spinning like tossed coins. They hit the water of the tarn with a bubbling hiss, like hot metal plunged into a quenching vat, and sent up a plume of acrid, faintly glowing steam as they sank out of sight.

Once it was down to the last few discs, the knives came out. Clanrats screeched and toppled over the cliff, clutching at the blood pouring from their chests. Two of the hirelings fell together, grappling over a disc up to the moment they hit the surface of the water, forty feet below.

When the last disc was gone, the three survivors turned on one another. After a few minutes, only one clanrat was left. Rikkit laughed loudly, scooping up the bag and tossing it to the victor. The scouts were already taking bets as to how long the fool would last before the sickness took him. Whispering and chuckling amongst themselves, the skaven scuttled back down the narrow path, their thoughts already turning to the long journey home.

By dawn, the surface of the great tarn was as red as fresh-spilled blood.

The great river was the source of life for all Nehekhara, in ways both great and small. Its waters nourished a verdant belt of arable land that stretched through the high desert for more than a thousand miles, providing so much food that cities like Numas, Khemri and Zandri grew rich trading wheat, rice and beans with their neighbours to the east. The river supplied fish for the river cities as well, and water for making wine and beer. Its countless tributaries, many deep underground, spread across the land like threads in a tapestry, feeding distant oases and tiny, hidden springs that sustained merchant caravans and desert nomads alike.

For years, Nagash’s poison had spread to every corner of Nehekhara, spreading through the soil into the crops, and from the crops into animals and people alike. Men filled their bellies with the liche-king’s curse every time they drank a cup of wine, or sipped greedily from a spring in the great desert. By the time the final set of discs sank into the waters of the tarn, the poison was curled like a sleeping viper in the flesh of every living thing.

The final set of discs completed Nagash’s elaborate curse and set the wheels of death in motion. The waters of the tarn turned crimson; the stain flowed down the roaring cataracts and into the River Vitae, where in time it was witnessed by horrified fishermen and river traders all the way to distant Zandri. It was the Undying King’s sign that the doom of Nehekhara was at hand.

Within days, the crops in the fields began to wither and die. Not all at once, but by degrees, driving the farmers into fits of desperation as they struggled to save their livelihoods. Livestock who ate the tainted crops soon sickened and died. The disease was horrible to behold; it was a slow, agonising death, as the bodies of the victims rotted from the inside out. Agony led to madness, and madness to death, but the process was neither merciful nor swift.

Not long afterwards, the first Nehekharans began to suffer as well. Hardest hit were the river cities, particularly Khemri. Alcadizzar the Great, ruler of the empire, summoned his chirurgeons and his wizards, and bent every effort to locating the source of the disease and uncovering a cure. The sick were taken from their homes and placed in the temples, in hopes that they would not spread the disease to others. And yet, despite their best efforts, the plague continued to spread.

As the crops failed, food prices soared. Even those who were healthy now faced the prospect of starvation. Cities began hoarding food, leading to riots and more bloodshed. Alcadizzar used all his power to try and maintain order amongst his vassal kings. For a while, he succeeded. Food was rationed, but everyone, from highest to lowest, was fed. As the plague spread to distant cities like Quatar and Ka-Sabar, the infected were removed as humanely as possible and isolated in tent cities outside the walls.

And then Ubaid, the king’s youngest son, fell ill.

Alcadizzar summoned a legion of chirurgeons to attend upon his son. Every wizard and oracle in the land was consulted in search of a cure. The king himself spent night and day at his son’s bedside, while he thrashed and bled, and screamed in pain. Once the disease was far advanced, not even the milk of the poppy could dull the young prince’s suffering. He begged his father to make the pain go away; later, in the grip of madness, he begged his father to end his life. When he died at last, almost a month later, he did so with a curse upon his lips.

By then, the plague was everywhere. The great cities shut their gates to outsiders, and shut the infected up in their homes to try and hold the sickness at bay. Gripped with fear and half-maddened by grief, Alcadizzar sent Asar, his only surviving son, away from the city and into the Great Desert to live with the tribes, where it was hoped the plague couldn’t reach. The king’s heir travelled through a land fraught with violence and unrest, as gangs of bandits waylaid travellers in search of food. After many brushes with death, Asar and his retainers reached the safety of the Great Desert and camped for the night at an oasis known only to the tribes.

The very next day, the prince fell ill. His retainers, many sick themselves, struggled to care for him, but his conditioned worsened. One night, in the grip of madness, the prince slipped from his tent and wandered out into the sands, never to be seen again.

When the news reached Alcadizzar, he was devastated. Over the course of a year, he had watched the plague spread through his empire, and now it was dying before his eyes. Nothing he did slowed the spread of the disease in the slightest. Fresh, untainted water, locked away in cisterns, jars and wells, was now worth its weight in gold. Riots tore through Khemri every day, as the panicked citizens searched for some way to escape the sickness. They clamoured outside the gates of the palace, begging their great king to save them.

As the second year of the plague wore on, the begging of the people turned to angry shouts, and then from shouts to bitter curses as the disease claimed more and more lives. The fact that the king himself seemed impervious to the disease only fuelled the bitterness of his citizens even further.

The months passed and the supplies of food dwindled. Men turned into savages, murdering their neighbours for a crust of bread or a cup of stale wine. Alcadizzar opened the palace’s meagre food stores to his people, but his gesture of goodwill spawned a bloody riot that left hundreds of his citizens dead. They rampaged through the palace, stealing whatever they could, while the king and queen and a handful of royal guards barricaded themselves in the kings’ apartments and waited for the chaos to subside.

One week later, Khalida contracted the plague.

The sickness came upon her much more slowly than the rest. For a time, she tried to hide her suffering from her husband, but within a month her condition had grown too visible to ignore. Alcadizzar summoned his chirurgeons once more. He sat at her bedside and wiped the blood from her eyes, and listened as she groaned in her sleep. As her condition worsened, he went to the ancient temples and prayed in vain for the gods to save her life.

Khalida lingered in pain for many months, wasting away upon her sickbed. When her suffering had grown so great that she no longer recognised her own husband, the chirurgeons offered to give her a cup of undiluted poppy to ease her into the next life. Alcadizzar took the cup himself. He lifted it to his wife’s lips and sat with her into the night, as her moans faded and her breathing grew ever more shallow. She passed into the realms of the dead shortly thereafter, heedless of the grief-stricken man at her side.

Alcadizzar sent for the mortuary priests and helped them prepare his beloved for the tomb. The last of the horses had died months before, so the king and a pair of acolytes pulled the wagon carrying her body out into the city’s necropolis, where a modest crypt awaited. There was no grand pyramid for Nehekhara’s greatest king. Alcadizzar had resisted the idea of commissioning one, and Khalida, being born amid the desert tribes, scoffed at the notion of entombment. But in the end, Alcadizzar could not bring himself to lay her upon a wooden bier and set her alight, as was the practice among her people. The tomb at least held out hope that perhaps one day she might rise again.

For a time, Alcadizzar contemplated taking the poisoned cup and joining his family in the afterlife. But then, a few days after Khalida had been laid to rest, an exhausted messenger rode into the city from distant Rasetra. How he had managed the long journey alone was a feat of courage and endurance unto itself, and he was already half-dead from the plague by the time he arrived. The message he bore was from King Heru. An army of the undead had emerged from the Cursed City to the east and was slaying everything in its path. Lybaras had already fallen, its few remaining citizens ruthlessly put to the sword. Rasetra would be next.

The message was more than two months old. Alcadizzar knew that Heru had been dead long before his warning reached Khemri.

From that moment on, the king put thoughts of the poisoned cup aside. Instead he brought forth his armour and his golden sword, and turned his eyes eastwards, searching for the approaching darkness.