TOMB OF THE GOLDEN IDOL

PART ONE

Andy Hoare

Khargrim Khargrimsson saw the trap before the girl did, his hissed warning echoing the length of the dark, stone-flagged tunnel and bringing the entire party to a sudden, tense halt. Grunting, the dwarf engineer shouldered his way forward and took position beside the kneeling Amazon.

‘You’d have blundered right into that one, girl,’ Khargrim whispered, though not unkindly. If a dwarf born of the cold mountains couldn’t see a trap better than a girl raised amongst the trees, then something was very wrong in the world. ‘Four yards on. The raised flag just before the turn.’

The girl, whose name was Karra Lakota, narrowed her eyes as she squinted into the darkness of the tunnel ahead. Khargrim had hired her as a guide, for she was a native of this part of the Lustrian jungle and claimed to know every ruin within a hundred miles. Her knowledge of the jungle had certainly paid off on the journey up river to the temple, but tunnels were a dwarf’s business, and Khargrim would have it no other way.

Karra snorted in obvious amusement, her sly grin distorting her garish war paint. ‘That is the decoy. The real one is three yards further on, at the turn itself.’

Khargrim raised a bushy eyebrow as he located the stone flag the Amazon had indicated. Cursing inwardly, he saw that she was right. The first stone was intended as a distraction, while the second, which was almost imperceptibly different to its neighbours, was the real trigger.

‘One tread on that stone,’ she said, making to stand once more, ‘and you would have been ground to paste under that block directly overhead.’

Khargrim glanced up to the ceiling, and saw that Karra was correct. The massive stone blocks of the ceiling were unerringly uniform, but one of them, the one directly over the pressure trigger Karra had seen, was ever so slightly different, its seams a fraction of an inch wider than the others.

‘My old grandsire never spoke a truer word when he said I’d never make a mason,’ Khargrim grumbled, hefting his warhammer as he made to follow Karra.

From just behind came the gruff burr of his old friend Ghurni Helvig. ‘Your old grandsire also said you’d never make an engineer, too.’

‘Be silent and get moving, Slayer,’ said Khargrim, clapping his old friend on the shoulder. ‘And the rest of you. Get moving, afore this place becomes our tomb.’

After that, Khargrim allowed the Amazon to lead the way through the winding, dark tunnels and echoing chambers beneath the Tomb of Destiny. Consoling himself that as an engineer his concern was for the crafting of war machines rather than the hewing of stone structures, he allowed his mind to focus on other things. Far from the least of those things was the riches said to lie in the vault of the Tomb of Destiny. With those riches he would be able to fund his experiments in the construction of ever more ambitious machines, and prove to the elders of the guild their error of judgement in expelling him from their order.

What had got Khargrim expelled so ignominiously from the dwarf engineers’ guild was his unquenchable wanderlust. Initially, Khargrim’s interest had been in steam-driven engines, for these were commonplace in Barak Varr, which was famed throughout the Old World for its fleets of ironclad sea vessels. Yet Khargrim had not been content with the machines as they were, and called into question venerated designs that had been adhered to for ages. That a mere youngster only barely into his eighties should dare question the designs of his elders and betters was bad enough, but it was Khargrim’s notion that the ships could be used to cross the Great Ocean that really landed him trouble. What dwarf worthy of his beard would want to explore the world, the people demanded when they heard of the engineer’s plans? Despite the objections of his peers as well as the common folk of his hold, Khargrim had continued his great work, ever determined to push the boundaries of the guild’s knowledge, regardless of the teachings of the elders.

Toiling in secret, Khargrim had constructed a vessel powerful enough to take him far, far over the horizon and into the uncharted reaches beyond. He had hoped for a glorious launch, and had even procured a cask of Bugman’s Stonebrew to break upon his ship’s prow to mark her maiden voyage. But the guild had discovered Khargrim’s plans, and he had been forced to bring forward the launch of his wondrous ship. His subsequent flight had brought him across the Great Ocean to the shores of Lustria, jungle continent of death and treasure in equal measure. The engineers’ guild had hushed the entire matter up, claiming that Khargrim was a charlatan and his ship had been sunk the instant it was lost to sight.

Well, Khargrim brooded as he stalked the dark tunnels of the tomb, I’ll show them… I’ll make my fortune, and use it to build an entire fleet of wondrous, long-ranged exploration ships.

‘You’re whittling over the guild,’ said Ghurni the Slayer walking at Khargrim’s back, his flaming torch held high. ‘Or are you just bitter that a human no-beard a fifth your age knows tunnels better than you?’

‘Bah!’ Khargrim grumbled, glancing up the tunnel towards the Amazon who was leading the party from the front, wickedly serrated dagger in one hand and a hissing torch in the other. She was clad in little more than feathers and skin-paint, and she moved like one of the abnormally large cats that stalked the teeming jungles.

‘I’m just wondering how far this tunnel runs,’ said Khargrim, making little effort to cover his changing of the subject.

‘Do you need to rest?’ Ghurni teased. ‘Are your young legs tired already?’

‘Nothing of the sort, old Slayer,’ Khargrim ribbed his friend back. ‘No, it’s not that. I am more concerned that things have been going a little too smoothly so far…’

As if the gods themselves had heard Khargrim’s statement and taken it for a challenge, the expedition’s progress changed greatly over the next few hours. First, one of the thralls Khargrim had hired was stung by a two-headed, scorpion-tailed snake and was dead within the minute. Next, Yngv, the truly ancient Baersonling shaman Khargrim had convinced to accompany the expedition, had almost triggered another trap. He had only been saved when the Graeling sea-maiden by the name of Verdandi had pulled him clear of the wide pit that opened up beneath him. Yngv, whose mind was a brittle thing to begin with, had snapped, and hadn’t stopped ranting for an hour.

Just when Khargrim was beginning to believe that the gods were truly mocking him, another of the party, the Varg hunter by the name of Ovar, had begun complaining that he was hungry so bitterly that the grizzled, wooden-legged Bjornling marauder called Thorkell had threatened to cast him into the next snake pit they had to cross if he refused to be silent. Soon, the entire party had descended into a raucous debate, with tribal grievances and petty recriminations echoing the length of the dusty tunnels.

Finally, Khargrim had had enough.

‘By the ancestors, be silent!’ he bellowed, his words so loud that a veil of ancient dust drifted down from the stones overhead. Patting the rune-etched head of his warhammer, Khargrim glowered from beneath the brow of his mithril helm, determined to cow the party into some semblance of order.

Silence descended, the various members of the party stopped in their tracks by Khargrim’s tone. Finally, he had their attention.

As more powdered masonry drifted downwards, Khargrim fixed his party with a withering stare. As the dusty, dirty faces glared back, Khargrim was acutely aware that he had promised these people much and that without any sign of reward he could scarcely blame them for growing restive. First some heads needed banging together, then some avarice needed appealing to.

‘Baersonling?’ Khargrim said to the old shaman. ‘If you would kindly furnish our Varg friend with some sustenance?’

Muttering, Yngv produced a small, tattered purse and plunged his arm deep inside it. To a round of astonished exclamations, the shaman rummaged around, mumbling words of magical power that set Khargrim’s teeth on edge, though he hid his disquiet well. After a minute or so, the shaman exclaimed his success and pulled forth a large salmon, its flanks still glistening and wet, which he proffered to the wide-eyed hunter.

‘Er, Khargrim?’ said Ghurni as the engineer was preparing to move out.

‘I’m sure he has enough for us all–’ Khargrim began, before Ghurni interrupted.

‘The ceiling!’ said Ghurni, and every pair of eyes in the party glanced up towards the source of the rapidly growing shower of dust.

Khargrim blinked as he looked directly up at a huge stone block, its cracking mortar seams the source of the increasingly thick rain of dust. Even as he blinked the dust from his eyes, the seams widened further, and Khargrim knew with a cold dread what was about to happen. ‘Move!’

‘Which way?’ Ghurni shouted, the groaning of tortured stone growing louder as the walls started to tremble. ‘Back?’

‘Back?’ Khargrim exclaimed, barely able to believe Ghurni could misconstrue him so badly. ‘Onwards, of course. Move!’

Ghurni didn’t need to be told twice, and neither did the rest of the party. Karra led the way, springing forward lithely and dashing off along the tunnel. Verdandi was close behind, her Graeling sea bow stowed across her back. The Varg hunter Ovar wasn’t far behind the sea-maiden, his half-eaten meal gripped firmly between his teeth as he ran. Khargrim gave Ghurni a push, and soon the pair were speeding away down the tunnel as quickly as their legs would carry them. The oldest members of the party, the shaman Yngv and the Bjornling marauder Thorkell, were not far behind with the remainder of the Norse thralls bringing up the rear.

Reaching a bend in the passageway, Khargrim turned and looked back the way he had come, just in time to see Ghurni run past. Within seconds, the Slayer and the majority of the party were safely away but the tunnel was shaking so violently even the two dwarfs were almost pitched from their feet.

Then, the violent tremors reached a groaning crescendo and the flood of dust raining down from the straining seams became a torrent. The stone block crashed straight down, the resulting impact throwing every one of the party to the floor.

Shocking silence reigned, but not for long. The dust was so thick that everyone’s lungs were instantly clogged with the stuff, and fits of coughing, interspersed with colourful northern curses, soon echoed up and down the passageway.

Hawking up a gritty mass of phlegm, Khargrim cleared his throat and made an attempt to account for his companions. ‘Is anyone missing?’ he called out above the sound of coughing.

A round of acknowledgements sounded from within the all-encompassing cloud of dust.

‘Skellig’s dead,’ one of the thralls called out.

‘Let’s get moving,’ Khargrim ordered grimly.

‘Something’s wrong,’ Khargrim heard Verdandi call softly from further back along the line. ‘Engineer? I said–’

‘I heard you,’ Khargrim replied. ‘Everyone, halt.’

Though he loathed heeding the words of a human, Khargrim knew that this particular one was an explorer of prodigious skill who had trodden many forbidden places and knew her business well. She was also the finest archer Khargrim had ever seen. Just days earlier, she had fired an arrow into the eye of a Lustrian stega-wasp at three hundred paces. ‘What is wrong?’ he asked.

Ghosting forward, the sea-maiden passed silently along the line, her hand raised for silence. Somehow, the tall explorer had not a mote of dust upon her, while everyone else was covered head to foot. Edging forward into the shadows beyond the immediate glow of the spluttering torches the rest of the party held aloft, Verdandi tipped her head to one side as if listening to a sound only she could hear. Her mane of silver hair glittering in the darkness, the sea-maiden seemed intent upon…

‘A trap,’ she whispered, soliciting a dark glance from Ghurni. ‘Oh, but it’s a clever one…’

‘What do you see?’ Khargrim hissed as he moved forward as softly as he could. ‘And where?’

‘Ahead, deep, deep in the shadows, engineer,’ she replied.

Khargrim looked, unwilling to accept that a human could see better than a dwarf. But then, Khargrim saw what the sea-maiden had seen. The dust up ahead was far deeper than the areas through which they had already travelled, and the stones of the wall somehow smoother. The ceiling was thick with matted spider webs, as if countless generations of the creatures had lived and died within that single, short stretch of tunnel.

‘Witchery,’ Khargrim spat. ‘No mistaking it.’

One silver eyebrow raised, Verdandi replied, ‘Were it so simple to classify, engineer. No, this is no simple cantrip, but something far, far older.’

‘Aye,’ said Khargrim. ‘And it’ll make us far, far older, if we step further. Whatever spell has been cast upon that tunnel will age us what, a thousand years?’

‘Far more than that, Khargrim,’ the sea-maiden responded archly. ‘There is high slann magic at work here. I have walked too many ancient places beyond the seas to mistake it for ought else. A thousand years to them is but the blink of an eye.’

‘Well, we can’t go back,’ said Khargrim, his mind racing to find a way through the magically protected stretch of passage. His eyes narrowed as they alighted upon the form of Yngv, the mad old shaman glowering at his companions. After a moment, Yngv sensed Khargrim’s scrutiny.

‘Yngv,’ said Khargrim in the most comradely tone he could manage under the circumstances. ‘You told me once you tried to sneak into the high temple at Genaina?’

Karra shot the shaman a dark look, and the old Baersonling looked away. Genaina was a place sacred to Karra’s people, and even though she was an outcast of her tribe the thought of a man like Yngv sneaking around it was clearly abhorrent to her.

‘What of it?’ said Yngv defiantly.

‘You said you used some spell to get past the devouts, if I remember correctly.’

‘I did.’

‘You got past the devouts?’ Karra interjected.

‘Never mind that now, Karra.’ Khargrim raised a hand to silence the Amazon. ‘I need to know. Yngv, you got past the sentinels guarding the inner sanctum…’

‘What?’ said Karra.

‘Could you do so again, right now?’ Khargrim pressed on, ignoring the furious Karra as he struggled to communicate to the shaman just how serious a predicament they were in.

Yngv nodded and moved forward to get a look at the stretch of tunnel. ‘Oh my…’ he said, his bearded, wizened face draining of colour.

‘Can you get us past or not?’ Khargrim asked impatiently.

‘Aye,’ said the shaman, drawing himself to his full height. ‘There’s an incantation I formulated in a cave on the coast of the Sea of Claws. Kept the frost wyrms at bay for a whole season.’

‘Will it get us through?’

‘It will,’ said Yngv, his face suddenly alight with intense purpose. ‘Move aside, all of you,’ he said as he pushed his companions back along the tunnel.

Holding his staff before him, Yngv began his invocation. At first, it sounded as if he was just mumbling, but it wasn’t long before Khargrim sensed the presence of magic stirring in the air all around him. Like most dwarfs, Khargrim was deeply untrusting of any magic not contained within a rune, for most other races wielded it in such a way as to invite their own destruction. The dwarfs knew that the winds of magic were not to be hurled around like crude weapons. They were to be refined, contained and controlled with precision and instinct, a talent granted only to the master runesmiths of their race.

Yngv’s mumbling grew louder until the shaman’s hair was bristling with the sheer amount of power he was drawing into his body. Khargrim grit his teeth, for the winds of magic always set them on edge, while Ghurni looked distinctly unwell.

Then the shaman slammed his staff into the stone ground, making the thick carpet of ancient dust jump. His incantation grew all the louder and the air seemed to become heavy. The space about the shaman shimmered and the carpet of dust was pushed back as by an invisible circle emanating from the staff. With the dust of ages dispelled, the stonework beneath was revealed as clean and precisely cut as the day it had been set in place, not a single mote of dirt besmirching its surface.

‘Quickly,’ Yngv hissed, his voice strained and his features twisted in concentration. ‘Follow me!’

Yngv stepped forward and the carpet of decay was pushed back before him. Khargrim was at his side in an instant, closely followed by Ghurni and Verdandi.

‘Stay close,’ Yngv warned as he advanced, the air around him shimmering as the weight of aeons was pushed back. The air Khargrim breathed changed from the musty, dust-ridden quality of the underground tunnel to the fresh, clean taste of a brand new day. The light of the party’s torches seemed somehow purer too, and where Khargrim trod the stone flags were solid and even.

As he walked, Khargrim glanced behind to ensure everyone was following, only to see that an argument had broken out between a number of the hireling thralls.

‘Hurry!’ Khargrim hissed, knowing that if they didn’t follow now they would be left behind.

Hearing his warning, the group stopped their bickering for a moment, but resumed it almost immediately. Rarely was Khargrim surprised by the stupidity of men, but this was a particularly bad time to fall out with one another.

‘If you don’t get moving right now…’ he called, aware that the shaman’s magical field was moving away from the thralls.

‘I’ll not heed him!’ one of the thralls growled. ‘Not after what happened to Skellig.’

‘And the rest of you?’ Khargrim called out as he backed along the tunnel, each step keeping him near the shaman but taking him further from the smaller group. ‘Do you want to be buried here too?’

The other thralls looked uncertain, but had no time to answer before a deep rumble sounded from back along the tunnel. A wave of dust gusted along the corridor as the sound grew louder, and in that instant their mind was made up. As one, they dashed for the group clustered around the shaman, pounding down the trembling passageway as the sound of tortured stone grew louder still.

His eyes wide with concentration and fear, Yngv glanced over his shoulder in time to see the wave of dust rolling towards him. With a snarl he lengthened his stride, and those pressing in behind him were forced to redouble their own pace just to keep up.

‘Yngv!’ Khargrim called out as he saw with cold certainty what would happen if…

The rearmost thrall, the one who had started the argument with his peers, was suddenly outside Yngv’s magical field. Khargrim looked on with mute horror as the aeons crashed in upon the man, the floor beneath his feet seeming to rise up in a tide of ancient dust. But far worse than that was the effect the magical trap had upon the man’s body. In the span of seconds, his skin withered and his body twisted as he aged decades in the blink of an eye. If the man suffered, he had no time to call out. The parched shreds of his withered flesh sloughed away and at the last, his dusty bones clattered to the floor and all was still.

Shaking his head in stunned disbelief, Khargrim turned his back on the grisly scene, his companions crowding even closer to the mumbling, wide-eyed shaman. The rumbling that had triggered the thralls’ flight receded and a few minutes later the stunned party was passing beneath a massive stone arch and into a wider chamber beyond. Though little was visible beyond the globe of flickering orange light cast by the party’s torches, Khargrim knew that they had passed into a larger area, the air feeling suddenly freer and cooler.

‘Be still,’ he growled, keeping his voice low lest it echo about the open space and attract unwanted attention. ‘And be silent.’

Khargrim’s companions did as he ordered, though Yngv breathed heavily as he leaned on his staff, the exertion of his spell clear to see. The sibilant whistle of air passing through some unseen cleft came to Khargrim’s ears, and once again he was reminded that he was an engineer, not a miner. Nevertheless, he took a tentative step forward into the dark.

‘Stop!’ Verdandi called out, her voice so soft it barely made an echo. ‘Move your foot back, engineer. Slowly, make no sudden movement.’

Khargrim froze, only just suppressing a growl of annoyance that the sea-maiden might have seen something he had missed. He brought his foot back and set it down where he had started, then looked down towards the floor he had been about to step on to. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the stygian darkness before him, but when they did, he realised the source of the sibilant noise he had taken for the movement of air through cracks in the tomb’s structure.

Khargrim found himself looking directly downwards into a seething, writhing, coiling mass of sinuous bodies, and he uttered a colourful dwarfen curse that only Ghurni understood.

‘Pass me that torch,’ he said, reaching out behind him without taking his eyes from the sight below. Ghurni pressed the spluttering torch into his hand, and Khargrim waved it before him, the orange light glinting obscenely from the scene below.

‘What are they?’ asked the hunter Ovar with cold disgust.

‘Snakes?’ said Thorkell.

‘Nothing so predictable,’ Verdandi interjected as she came to stand beside Khargrim, her feet right at the very edge of the precipice. ‘Look closer.’

Khargrim did so, but all he could see were slimy, formless bodies writhing in a huge, depthless pool, the extent of which was beyond the light cast by his torch. Every now and then a black eye would emerge from the waters and cast an uncomprehending glance upwards before sliding beneath the surface once more. Dark forms moved beneath the waters too, glistening limbs breaking the surface, though it was impossible to see how many of the nameless creatures might be down there.

‘I still don’t see what they are,’ said Ovar.

‘Pass the torches back,’ said Khargrim, catching a glimpse of something odd about the waters below. ‘Right back, now.’

Khargrim and the others bearing torches passed them back along the line until their light was little more than an ambient glow, and he squinted into the once-more darkened pool. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness again, he confirmed what he thought he had seen a moment before. In fact, the further back the torches were passed, the greater the effect, as if something in the waters was reacting to the receding of the light.

‘Put them out,’ Khargrim ordered. ‘All of the torches, put them out.’

From far to the rear came the sound of the torches being ground against the stone-flagged floor, and suddenly, the entire space was cast into total darkness. But it wasn’t to last, as the effect Khargrim had thought he had seen reasserted itself tenfold. As the party watched in stunned awe, a lambent, cold blue glow started up from the waters, dozens of writhing forms now clearly visible silhouetted against it.

‘Look,’ said Verdandi, and Khargrim saw that her head was turned upwards towards the previously unseen ceiling of the chamber. The roof was made from uncut rock, not the precisely wrought blocks of the rest of the Tomb of Destiny. Huge stalactites depended from the roof, and to Khargrim’s amazement, they glittered with countless thousands of points of light, the glow from the pool cast back by precious deposits trapped within the damp rock.

‘I could pay off a lifetime of debt with that… ’ Ghurni exclaimed, drawing a disgusted sneer from the sea-maiden behind him.

‘That was not what I was speaking of, Slayer,’ Verdandi replied, pointing across the pool to a flight of steps cut into the raw rock. ‘Look. The way ahead.’

‘Karra?’ said Khargrim, looking around for the Amazon. ‘What lies at the top of those stairs?’

Karra didn’t respond straight away, for her dark gaze was fixed on the pool below. ‘The spawn of the ancients,’ she muttered, before looking up at Khargrim with glazed-over eyes. ‘What?’

Khargrim narrowed his eyes before reiterating his question. ‘Heed me girl. What lies beyond yonder stairs?’

With obvious difficulty, Karra tore her eyes from the brightly glowing pool and the dark shapes writhing in its depths and looked up towards the flight of stairs. ‘I am not sure.’

‘What do you mean,’ Khargrim turned on the girl, ‘You are not sure?’

‘I mean… I think we may have strayed…’

‘When?’ Khargrim growled. ‘Where?’

‘It must have been when the stone collapsed and the dust came up. The block must have been intended to divert us, sealing off one path and leading us on to another.’

‘It looks like we have little choice, Khargrim,’ said Ghurni, squinting across the pool towards the stairs beyond. ‘Those steps are the only way onwards’

At that, several of the party started to voice their objections all at once, but Khargrim held his tongue, keeping his own counsel as he pondered the issue of how to reach the flight of steps on the other side of the pool. By the flickering blue luminescence cast by the waters, he studied the form of the chamber, his glance tracking across countless stalagmites and stalactites, each of which must have been formed over unfathomable spans of time. Some were connected by oddly shaped rock formations, which appeared to have grown rather than been created by any geological process Khargrim was aware of. Following the track of these narrow, bridge-like formations from the base of one mighty rock column to the next, he finally believed he had located a way from one side of the chamber to the other.

‘Karra?’ said Khargrim. The Amazon was still gazing absently down into the lambent pool. The blue light shimmered and sparkled and motes of light glimmered in its depths. ‘Snap out of it, girl!’

‘What?’ said Karra with a start, her reaction all but confirming Khargrim’s impression that the dancing lights below were somehow entrancing her. ‘The ancients,’ she stuttered. ‘They stir…’

Khargrim followed the Amazon’s gaze and saw that, just as she said, the bodies were indeed stirring. Whatever the creatures gliding through the depths of pool actually were, their movements were becoming ever more agitated. Scaly limbs possessed of wicked claws broke the surface and sent up sprays of glowing liquid. Khargrim knew with utter certainty that he really didn’t want any of that fluid to get on his skin.

‘Time to get moving, girl,’ Khargrim growled, shoving Karra towards a cluster of rock columns to one side of the pool. ‘Everyone, follow us and be damned careful!’

Though her eyes were wide with fear, Karra set out across the narrow rock bridge stretching from the base of one huge, glittering rock column to the next. Her bare feet finding purchase on the slippery rock, she dashed across, serrated sword in hand, and turned to set her back against the further column as she glared fearfully into the waters she had just crossed.

‘Now for the rest of you, one at a time. Go!’ said Khargrim.

Next to cross was Verdandi, the sea-maiden so sure-footed she made the task appear like child’s play. Her Graeling sea bow raised, Verdandi took position beside Karra, keeping watch while the next of the party set out.

Ovar had no trouble at all getting across, for as a steppes hunter he was preternaturally nimble. Having crossed the rock bridge, Ovar darted around the base of the rock column and out of Khargrim’s sight. Next to cross was Yngv, the shaman still visibly shaken from the exertion of his spellcasting, aided by the Bjornling Thorkell. At one point, Thorkell almost lost his footing as the point of his wooden leg slipped across the wet rock, and it was the shaman who saved him from being pitched into the now thrashing waters below.

Bringing up the rear was the group of surly thralls, but Khargrim knew that the first group already across would have to press on first, for the base of the rock column was too small to accommodate the entire party. Fortunately, Khargrim could see that Ovar and Karra were already setting out, Verdandi keeping guard with her sea bow. Taking one last glance about, Khargrim waved the men on, ensuring in the process that there was no repeat of the earlier attempted mutiny. In moments, he and Ghurni were the only members of the party left on their side of the rock bridge.

‘Onwards,’ said Khargrim, swallowing hard as he adjusted the shield slung across his back into a more comfortable position and tucked his hammer into his belt.

‘Onwards,’ said Ghurni, looking just as unsure about crossing the bridge as his friend.

‘No good can come of this,’ Ghurni grumbled, stepping out onto the bridge just as a wet, back form slid through the water below.

‘If manlings can do it, so too can we,’ said Khargrim, gently pushing the reluctant Slayer onto the bridge.

‘It wouldn’t normally be a problem,’ Ghurni complained as he edged gingerly out, using his two-handed axe to aid his balance. ‘It’s just that I’m–

‘What?’ Khargrim pressed as he himself stepped out onto the narrow bridge.

‘It’s just that I’m… uncomfortably sober.’

‘Ah,’ said Khargrim, grateful for the distraction as the sound of swelling water below rose in volume, causing him to risk a glance down at its source, though he would rather not have done so. Even as he glanced downwards, a shimmering cascade went up and a shower of blinding motes spewed up through the air, filling the cavern with dancing, flickering illumination.

‘Khargrim!’ Ghurni shouted above the noise of thrashing water. ‘What by the ancestors is–’

Before the Slayer could complete his sentence, the waters erupted in a blazing spout, spraying both dwarfs with hissing, stinging liquid. Ghurni lost his footing and slammed to the rock, only just saving himself from falling into the boiling waters. Khargrim remained upright but the waters filled his eyes, blinding him for a moment as he fought desperately to wipe them clear and keep his footing at the same time.

When he did wipe his eyes clear, Khargrim saw that he had done so only barely in time for a huge form was rearing up out of the pool, arms as big as a man powering towards him. In the centre of a hugely muscled chest was a face not unlike that of a crocodile, its jaws gaping wide as it roared an animalistic, wordless war cry.

Before Khargrim could react, the beast’s jaws opened to their widest extent, so wide they filled his entire vision. Even as they closed something struck the beast’s head and it twisted about, the waters thrashing as its roar changed in tone to one of uncomprehending pain and anger. As his attacker spun about to locate the source of its pain, Khargrim saw that a long sea bow arrow was protruding from its snout, fired by Verdandi who was standing at the centre of another of the arching rock crossings.

Khargrim shrugged his shield from his back and took up his hammer and as he did so Ghurni struggled to his feet beside him. Together, the two faced the huge, reptilian thing as it turned back to resume its attack.

Khargrim took in the creature’s form, visible now that the churning of the waters had receded. It looked like a fearsome hybrid of ogre and crocodile, its teeth the size of knife blades. Its back and shoulders were covered in thick, armoured scales and the rest of its body was a heaving mass of sinew.

Even now, its tree-sized arms were reaching for Khargrim, and he knew that if it got him in its steely grip he would be torn in half in an instant. Gritting his teeth, he brought his hammer around in a wide arc, and as he did so, he spoke a mighty word of power known only to the dwarfs.

In response, one of the runes worked into the head of the weapon flared bright, and at the exact moment the hammer slammed into the beast’s forearm it unleashed an explosive blast of raw, runic power. The impact was so fierce it jarred Khargrim’s arm and very nearly dislocated his shoulder, but the effect upon the beast was far greater.

The chamber echoing to the creature’s roar of pain, Khargrim saw that his strike had smashed its forearm to a pulp. Both Khargrim and Ghurni were covered in the blood that had been sprayed in all directions yet despite the damage wrought upon it the beast was raising its other arm, its fist balled into a huge mace.

‘Ghurni!’ Khargrim bellowed as he saw what must surely happen next. ‘Move!’

Khargrim set his boot against his friend’s back and propelled him across the bridge towards the rock column. Even before the Slayer had crashed into the rock, Khargrim dived after him and the beast’s fist crashed down, smashing the bridge where he had stood but an instant before.

The bridge exploded into a thousand jagged stone shards, one striking Khargrim a glancing blow across his brow that filled one eye with blood and cast his vision a blurred red. Hundreds scythed into the churning pool, many cutting into the flesh of the other creatures, turning the waters instantly red with their blood.

Barely able to see for the blood obscuring his vision, Khargrim grasped forward as he felt the rock collapsing beneath him. Panic welled inside him and he uttered a roar of savage denial for he was nowhere near ready to greet his ancestors. Then he felt a strong grip about his forearms and in a moment he was being hauled up to safety at the base of the rock column.

Wiping his stinging eyes with a sleeve, Khargrim saw that the two dwarfs were not out of danger yet. The beast had staggered backwards into the pool having smashed the bridge, and in so doing become a target for both Verdandi and Ovar, who were peppering it with dozens of arrows. At least a dozen shafts stood out from its upper chest, but thanks to its inches-thick, bony armour, none had yet struck a vital point. Worse than that, Khargrim saw that its gaping mouth was now spilling with blood, the pulped remains of one of the thralls.

‘Time to end this,’ Khargrim growled, his hammer held above his head.

The beast seemed to comprehend the challenge, and ploughed forward through the churning waters, a massive bow wave building up ahead of it. In a heartbeat, it was bearing down on Khargrim, its eyes wild with primordial savagery and its arms ready to smash him to a pulp.

Steeling himself, Khargrim uttered a second word of power. Another of the runes etched upon the head of his weapon blazed into life and he launched the hammer straight at the creature’s monstrous face.

The hammer flew straight and true, blazing with the power imbued within it by the runesmiths of Barak Varr. With an eruption of light ten times that of its first impact, the hammer struck the creature’s temple, exploding its head in a blinding detonation of gore and shattered bone.

The creature staggered and Khargrim’s hammer arced through the air, returning to his hand at the same moment that the beast collapsed straight downwards into the pool, the resulting impact causing the waters to explode in all directions.

For a moment, all was quiet, just the sound of unquiet waters and the panting of two of the dwarfs audible. Khargrim tucked his hammer into his belt, helped Ghurni to his feet, and shrugged his shield back over his shoulder.

‘Whatever that was, we had better get moving,’ he said, looking down into the waters and the dozens of other forms writhing in the depths. ‘There are bound to be more of those things down there…’

Having escaped the huge lizard creature, Khargrim and Ghurni caught up with their companions at the base of the rough-hewn steps and wasted no time exiting the chamber. Karra led the way up the stairs, her desire to leave the pool far behind lending her speed and strength as she climbed upwards. The damp, slippery steps must have been truly ancient, for they were worn smooth by the passage of countless feet over innumerable ages. Fortunately, the steps got dryer and wider as they climbed upwards into the darkness, and as the luminescent chamber was left behind, Khargrim ordered the torches lit once more.

The stairs wound upwards through a forest of glittering stalactites until they dived into the chamber wall and formed a steep tunnel that Khargrim guessed to be a natural fissure widened by the labour of long extinct masons. Though at first she was fearful and tense, Karra soon recovered when she came upon a junction. The party, she announced, was back on track for the heart of the Tomb of Destiny.

As the group advanced cautiously along this new stretch of tunnel, Khargrim saw that the walls were the large, solid blocks prevalent in the main passageways they had already explored. He didn’t need to warn his companions of the need to be vigilant and within the next hour Karra detected and avoided three more deadly traps. The first had taken the form of a great blade set between the seams of the masonry above, which would have scythed down upon any who broke what appeared to be an innocuous spider’s web stretched across the tunnel. Each member of the party had been forced to step through the strands without disturbing the larger ones, for to do so would have brought instant oblivion.

The second trap had been far more cunning and neither Khargrim nor any of his companions had seen its like before. A stretch of the ground was covered in twisting creepers – ancient, withered roots coiling through cracks in the masonry. Having been raised amongst the deadly jungles of Lustria, Karra was instantly alert. While it was not unusual for roots to quest so far beneath the ground that they forced their way into such subterranean places, no form of life could be trusted not to kill in a heartbeat. As the Amazon stepped over one root, it reacted to her presence, rearing up to grasp her limbs in its coiling embrace.

Karra leaped clear of the first root, but in doing so passed over several more, setting off a chain reaction so that in an instant the entire stretch of tunnel was alive with thrashing roots seeking to choke the life from any they could entrap.

After about a minute the movement stopped, but it started up again each time anyone approached. At length, each of the party had to wait until the roots stilled, then dash across, hoping they were fast enough to avoid their touch. Fortunately, everyone made it, though several, including Ghurni and Thorkell, were forced to hack through roots that coiled about their ankles.

The last trap had been simple to locate, for it had already been triggered. As the Amazon crept along the corridor, the light of her torch had glinted dully from some metal object. Khargrim joined her as she stalked to the lip of a deep pit sunk into the tunnel floor, its bottom a forest of gleaming stakes.

Verdandi joined the pair, hissing as she saw the desiccated bodies impaled below. ‘Druchii. The bastard kin of the elves.’

Khargrim had seen them too. He had no idea how long ago they had fallen foul of the hidden pit, but their bodies were shrivelled and their armour tarnished by age and the damp air in the tunnels. The flesh of the faces was rotten and shrunken, the lips stretched back into hideous rictus grins and the eyes dark, hollow pits. Nevertheless, it was clear that the dark elves had died screaming, and Khargrim turned his back upon the grisly scene. The party hesitated a moment before pressing on, and it was several hours before anyone spoke again.

‘Be still!’ Khargrim hissed and every member of the party froze exactly where they were, knowing that a single foot placed awry could unleash a deadly trap and doom them all. ‘Verdandi, what is that sound?’

The sea-maiden appeared to be listening, her expression changed from its normal haughtiness to one that Khargrim had never seen on her – doubt. The shadows in the chamber seemed to close in and the flickering of the torches to slow, until Khargrim too could tell that something unnatural was occurring.

Then, it dawned upon the engineer just how far into the Tomb of Destiny the party had travelled.

‘We near the heart,’ Khargrim breathed, not daring to raise his voice. ‘Karra? How far is it to the central chamber?’

The Amazon appeared to be almost as disturbed as the sea-maiden, her head cocked at a similar angle as if she too were listening for some sound the others could barely hear. So far as Khargrim knew, however, she had no particular mystic power. He had heard the fanciful tale that her people had elvish blood in their veins, though he had never given it any credence.

‘Karra!’ Khargrim hissed when the Amazon didn’t respond. ‘Are we near the chamber, girl?’

Karra’s eyes came suddenly back into focus and her head snapped around to face Khargrim. It seemed to the dwarf that she had woken suddenly from some faintly disturbing dream, and it took her a few moments to compose herself.

‘Yes,’ she said distractedly. ‘We approach the central chamber, but…’

Khargrim waited, then prompted, ‘But?’

It was Verdandi who answered. ‘We should not enter the central chamber, Khargrim. There are… powers lingering within it. None are permitted to enter their presence, save the handmaidens of the gods themselves.’

‘The handmaidens of the…?’ said Khargrim, frustration welling inside at the thought of another mutiny in the group.

‘Karra’s people,’ said the sea-maiden. ‘Our own were never meant to dwell in their presence, but hers… Well, I have heard it told they were born to do just that.’

‘Listen, sea-maiden,’ said Khargrim, determined that the expedition would not return empty-handed. ‘I have no idea what you speak of. We came for the gold, and if it is in the central chamber then that is where I go. Are you two coming or not?’

Neither of the pair answered Khargrim directly, but they shared a glance and nodded almost imperceptibly before Karra raised her arm and pointed down the tunnel into the shadows beyond the torchlight.

‘What you seek lies no more than a score of fathoms yon,’ said Karra. Khargrim followed her gesture, his heart suddenly beating all the harder as he allowed himself to imagine what treasures might await him there.

‘Then what are you waiting for, girl,’ said Khargrim. ‘Lead on.’

Soon, the tunnel opened up into a wider space, which Khargrim judged to be some huge, subterranean processional avenue. The torchlight lit only a part of it, but it soon became evident that the avenue was around fifty feet wide and at least thirty high, and constructed from truly massive blocks of masonry. By the quality of the air and the faint trace of movement within it, Khargrim guessed that the underground avenue formed some huge roadway, not unlike those the dwarfs had constructed far beneath the mountains of the Old World. There, such avenues connected ancient holds far apart, or at least they had, before the cataclysm that brought so much of the mountains crashing down upon them. How far this avenue ran, Khargrim dared not consider, but certainly it was possible that it connected temple sites hundreds of leagues apart.

‘Behold, engineer,’ Verdandi’s voice snapped Khargrim from his chain of thought. ‘All the treasure that your dwarf heart desires lies beyond yonder portal.’

Verdandi and Karra had stopped, and Khargrim came to stand beside them. ‘I do not know about that,’ he muttered. ‘A dwarf’s heart can desire quite a lot…’

Karra raised her torch and the space before her was suddenly alive with dancing, orange illumination reflected from a pair of doors made out of solid bronze. The torchlight seemed to glide across the surface of the rune-encrusted metal like liquid fire, lending it the aspect of a sheet of lava. The meaning of the runes was entirely alien to Khargrim, though he had seen similar forms carved into the sides of other lizard temples he had visited in his time in Lustria. Khargrim had little doubt they warned against intrusion and threatened the curses of ancient gods upon any who entered.

‘Grimnir watch over us,’ Khargrim muttered as he looked more closely at the runes. Something about them stirred some primordial dread deep inside, something that made him feel suddenly very vulnerable and very mortal. ‘And Grungni and Valaya,’ he added for good measure as he reached out to push upon the doors.

To his surprise, the doors moved inwards with barely any pressure at all, opening silently by way of some wondrous mechanism that Khargrim could only guess at.

As the portal widened, a line of blazing gold appeared between the doors, growing wider as they parted further. Khargrim and his companions were forced to shield their eyes from the glare, which had an unmistakable quality that no dwarf could miss.

‘Gold,’ Khargrim whispered, stepping forward into the blazing glow even before the doors were fully open. He thought he heard someone whisper a warning, but he was too transfixed by the radiant glory before him to react.

As Khargrim stepped through the portal, his eyes began slowly to adjust until eventually he could make out individual details of a vast chamber. The floor, walls and ceiling were gleaming red marble, inset with hundreds upon hundreds of glyph plates, and the entire space was lined with sentinel-statues carved from obsidian, the smallest of which was ten feet tall.

But it was the sight at the opposite wall of the chamber that filled Khargrim’s heart with longing.

A massive statue of some long-limbed, vaguely amphibian being occupied almost the entire wall. Its eyes were almond-shaped and made of glistening, jet-black stone that appeared disturbingly alive. The being’s skin was made of gold, and it was burnished to such a shine that it reflected and magnified every glimmer of illumination so that it hurt Khargrim’s eyes to look upon it for long.

Yet he could scarcely tear his eyes away, for surely the massive idol was made of enough precious metal to sate even the greed of a dwarf. Without conscious thought, Khargrim was already considering the statue’s worth, and how he might go about deconstructing it for transportation out of the tomb, out of Lustria, across the Great Ocean and–

‘No,’ Khargrim heard Karra breathe as she came to stand beside him. ‘This should not be…’

As Khargrim tore his eyes reluctantly from the mighty golden idol, he saw Karra walk falteringly towards its base, her torch and blade held low as she gazed up vacantly into its upturned hands, which were resting as if in meditation in its lap. There, in the centre of the idol’s palm, was a simple gem that glowed with an inner light which grew brighter the closer the Amazon approached.

Khargrim’s eyes grew wide as he took in the sight of the increasingly brightly glowing gem. As much as he loved gold, he knew that the stone must surely be worth an order of magnitude more. What wonders could he finance with such a treasure, he thought…

‘This should not be,’ Karra repeated. ‘We should not be here…’

‘Now is not the time to get cold feet, girl,’ Khargrim said distractedly, now entirely unable to look anywhere else but at the gleaming gem.

‘Wait, engineer,’ Verdandi called out from behind, her voice edged with something akin to fear. ‘I believe she is correct.’

Khargrim turned on the sea-maiden and saw that the party seemed to have split into two factions. Beside Verdandi stood Yngv, his wizened face twisted in fear and his body stooped and tense. The hunter Ovar stood nearby, his bow raised towards the eight or so thralls facing them, their eyes wide with greed. Between the two groups stood Ghurni and the marauder Thorkell, doubt and uncertainty writ large across the face of both. It was clear that some form of confrontation was brewing, and Khargrim would have none of it.

‘What is going on here?’ Khargrim growled. ‘Is there not enough for all of you?’

It was Ghurni who answered. ‘Khargrim, the gods know I love gold as much as any dwarf, but–’

‘But?’ Khargrim exclaimed, dumbfounded that his old friend might falter now, at the moment of their victory.

‘But something here is very wrong–’

‘The ancients…’ Karra breathed, and Verdandi let out a small moan of despair. Ovar stumbled and grasped his head, while the rest of the party cursed or hissed in sudden pain. ‘They watch us even now, from across such vast gulfs…’

‘We leave!’ one of the thralls, a broad-shouldered, shaggy-bearded Kul clansman exclaimed. The man cast about him and upon locating the nearest golden glyph plate mounted upon the marble wall, crossed over to it and set about attempting to remove it from its aeons-old resting place. In a moment, the man’s companions had joined him, determined to claim at least some small treasure for themselves before fleeing from the tomb.

‘Stop!’ Verdandi ordered, her voice faltering, but sufficiently loud to echo about the chamber. Her recurved sea bow was levelled directly at the lead mutineer, who turned slowly to face the sea-maiden.

‘I said, we leave,’ the Kul growled, before resuming his attempt to tear away the golden glyph plate.

He never completed his attempt, however, for as the thrall struggled, Khargrim strode across the marble floor, unlooping his hammer as he advanced.

‘I warned you,’ the dwarf snarled through gritted teeth. The thrall glanced over his shoulder and his wild eyes widened as he saw his peril, but too late.

Khargrim’s hammer arced through the air, striking the thrall hard in the side of his head. The man’s iron helmet saved his skull from being staved in and he went down hard at the dwarf’s feet, alive, but stunned by his wound nonetheless.

‘Would anyone else gainsay my orders? Khargrim growled at the remainder of the thralls. None were foolish enough to continue their companion’s mutiny.

Unseen by all apart from Karra, a runnel of blood ran from beneath the Kul thrall’s helm onto the marble floor.

The Amazon made to shout a warning, her soul suddenly filled with cold dread. Her people had trod these lands, walked in the halls of long lost gods, since time before time, and were possessed of an instinctive wisdom. The instant the blood that Khargrim had shed touched the sacred ground of the idol chamber, she knew that some form of offering had been made, and something, somewhere, stirred in response…

It was Khargrim who had shed that blood and made the offering, and so it was he who became the focus of the response.

Khargrim felt the air around him turn solid, his body all but crushed as if he was nothing more than an insect trapped in amber. His vision was filled with the light radiating from the gem held in the idol’s palm, the illumination turning blood red in response to his unwitting offering. Trapped, Khargrim could not even blink as that crimson illumination expanded to swamp his vision, and soon his companions and the interior of the chamber were gone from his sight.

His soul cast upon a formless sea made from the raw stuff of magic, Khargrim felt the attentions of impossibly ageless beings turned upon him. He steeled his heart against the raging insignificance imposed upon him by that unknowable scrutiny, desperately holding on to what little of himself could be said to exist within that raging, screaming sea of souls…

…something reached out, and although Khargrim thought for a moment that his soul would be seared to ashes and scattered upon the currents of the seething ocean, he realised that the opposite was true. Something he could neither see nor even begin to comprehend was shielding him, warding his immortal soul as well as his sanity from the awful truth of that unreal domain.

And then it spoke to him, not in words, but in impressions. Khargrim’s soul was filled with a formless mass of visions and emotions, all of which congealed into one gestalt truth…

…and that truth was war. In a single, timeless instant, Khargrim saw every battle ever fought and every battle that ever would be fought. Primitive beings caved each other’s skulls in with heavy rocks. He saw serried, gleaming ranks of armoured warriors so noble he was all but crushed with sadness, for he knew that every one of them was doomed. Mighty ironclads ploughed through black oceans between worlds, unleashing such devastation upon one another that thousands died with every blast. Entire worlds burned and stars blinked out of existence, all to the laughter of mad gods…

And then it ended, and reality crashed in upon him. He was on the hard marble floor of the temple, the golden idol rearing overhead while several of his companions pressed in around him. A fine pattering of dust was raining slowly from the distant ceiling, and he blinked his eyes to clear them of the grit.

‘Khargrim!’ said Ghurni urgently. ‘Thank Valaya… Khargrim, we have to get moving, and quickly!’

The dwarf raised himself onto his elbows while the Slayer cleared some space around him. The red-hued gem in the idol’s upturned palm filled his vision for a moment, echoes of the sights he had seen whilst unconscious flickering across his mind’s eye. Another patter of dust rained down, and reality came thundering in. ‘Wait, Ghurni,’ he coughed as he stood with Thorkell’s aid. ‘What is happening? Why do we have to–’

Khargrim never completed his sentence, for the entire chamber was suddenly struck by a fearsomely powerful tremor. The idol rocked and the illumination cast by the gem guttered. A resounding crash sounded from near the portal and Khargrim staggered about to see that a sentinel-statue had toppled over and shattered into a million fragments of obsidian. A ruin of flesh near the portal told him that one of the thralls had tried to flee, but had been cut down by the lethal rain.

The glimmer of gold in the midst of the ragged mess told Khargrim that while he had been out cold a number of the thralls had attempted to steal some of the temple’s contents. Part of his vision returned, and he knew that Karra had been correct. This place was the domain of ancient gods and above sacred.

‘We leave, now!’ Khargrim bellowed over the sound of the earth rending itself in two. The rain of grit from above redoubled. Khargrim staggered aside to avoid a cascade of heavy rocks and stumbled against the rearing idol. For an instant, he was looking directly up into its gleaming black eyes and the blood-hued gem was directly before him. Another tremor struck and Ghurni was at his side, propelling him towards and then through the massive portal even as one of the huge doors crashed down upon the hapless form of a fleeing thrall.

Khargrim found the remainder of the party gathered in the avenue outside, but instead of fleeing the destruction of the chamber, they were standing with weapons drawn, ready to face a foe that Khargrim could not yet see.

A curse upon his lips, Khargrim shouldered his way through the group, and then he saw why they had halted. By the light of Karra’s torch, he saw the rippling of reptilian muscle and the gleam of water on a bony armoured crest.

It was a beast just like the one he had faced in the cavern below, and it was far from alone…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ANDY HOARE worked for eight years in Games Workshop’s design studio, producing and developing new game rules and background material. Now working freelance writing novels, roleplaying game material and gaming-related magazine articles, Andy lives in Nottingham with his partner Sarah.

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Table of Contents

Cover

Tomb of the Golden Idol - Part One

About the Author

Legal

eBook license