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Gothghul Hollow – Extract

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CHAPTER ONE

‘Glowing red eyes, they say, and huge. It’s as big as a man, with teeth as long as your palm. It’s the Curse of Null Island returned.’ Oskar shivered, though his face was lit with fascinated horror as well as the weak realmlight filtering through the darkening clouds. It would rain again soon, and Gothghul Hollow’s market would empty of patrons.

Pietr scoffed at his fellow trader’s words and rearranged his display of protective charms into a more pleasing configuration. ‘It’s a mere spirit-hound, nothing more. Hunters and priests will do for it – you mark my words. And that curse is idle gossip. Now let’s talk about something else before we frighten off any more customers.’ He smiled for the two women approaching his stall and stepped aside so they could see the black velvet cloth and the talismans arrayed upon it. ‘New protection amulets for your homes, gentlewomen, guaranteed against the loathsome undead. Hang them from the eaves and you’ll be safe.’

The women seemed sceptical at the promise, but they paused long enough to take a good look. Behind them and over the heads of the rest of the patrons, Gothghul Hollow’s houses rose crooked and cramped, slate roofs shining with moisture. Talismans hung from every eave and wards were carved upon every door.

There was a dart of movement from one of the crooked alleyways and Pietr flinched. Despite himself, the latest tales of the beast had made him jumpy. Only it wasn’t the hound of the moors, but a boy who darted between their stalls like a gheist.

‘Hey, you, get back here! Why, you thieving little…’ Oskar’s shout trailed into a grumble, but he made no effort to chase the boy, who stopped and looked back, grinning as he dangled a small amulet from his fingers. He hung it around his neck and dared a wink. Oskar shook his fist in the boy’s direction, but Pietr could see the glint of amusement in his eyes.

‘Do you ever make a profit, Oskar?’ he asked, somewhat offended by the other trader’s easy-going approach to theft. He didn’t wait for an answer, knowing he wouldn’t get one. Oskar usually lost a few of the smaller and weaker talismans every market day; the children knew he’d never chase them.

Pietr turned back to his customers, and a broad grin crossed his face as one of the women exclaimed over his ornamental blood-roses. ‘My own design,’ he murmured with a self-effacing little shrug. ‘If you catch it in the light at the right angle, you will see the amber itself has been engraved with a prayer to Nagash for health and wealth.’

He gestured for one of the women to pick up the item. She tilted it into the light from the glow-lamp standing on a tall pole behind the stall. Not only was the item exquisite, the black-petalled roses suspended in clear honeyed amber, but it was also well made.

‘You have a refined taste, madam,’ the trader began, but then a long, ululating howl drifted towards them on the strengthening wind. It came from north of the small town. From the moors beyond the broken graveyard, out past the old gibbet where the younger children played.

Eldenor, an aged, wandering aelf who had settled in the Hollow years before and sold exotic goods, let the melancholy tune he had been playing on his bone flute screech to a halt, the last note skirling high and wild. The dozens of shoppers froze, as pale and lifeless as the gargoyles on the temple roof or the statues of the God of Death that stood sentinel at each corner of the town. There was a long, pregnant pause, and then the cramped marketplace erupted into noise and motion.

‘Home, right this instant!’ Oskar bellowed at the boy who’d stolen the amulet, shooing him away. The thief bolted into the crowd, his fear tracing a path like jagged lightning, arcing from one person to the next until they were all vibrating with it.

There were a few panicked screams as people fought each other to be the first into the narrow alleys and twisting streets leading away from the market. The howl came again, louder this time, closer to town.

‘Pietr, come on,’ Oskar shouted as he hesitated at the back of his stall.

It had taken Pietr an hour to unpack everything and lay it out just so. ‘But the amber, the protection spells,’ he muttered. ‘My life’s work. My livelihood.’

‘The beast doesn’t want your damn roses, Pietr. It wants you.’ Oskar had dragged the cords of half a dozen amulets over his head and didn’t wait any longer, abandoning his stall and his friend without a backward glance. Pietr tore his gaze away from his wares. He was alone, the only person left in the once crowded marketplace. The aelf had vanished as only aelves could, and even the duardin blacksmith was gone. Doors and shutters slammed in the nearest houses, and the panicked cries were abruptly cut off as the townsfolk hid their children and themselves.

‘A spirit-hound at most and more likely a feral dog,’ he muttered. Yes, it had killed people, but it was just an animal. Not even one of the undead or something that had slithered across the moors from the blasted land of horrors to the east. At most a spirit-hound, and he wouldn’t abandon his livelihood to it. A third howl cut through the air, seeming to shiver up from the belly of the earth itself, as long and mournful as a night-time death vigil. It came from the direction of the town gates, only a few hundred strides from the marketplace.

Pietr’s nerve broke, and he snatched up the long wooden club he kept to deter thieves and backed away from his stall. His house lay in the direction of the approaching beast – Dog, it’s just a dog – near the edge of town closest to the moors. He ran south instead, to the nearest house, and pounded on the skeleton-carved door. It didn’t open, and the sick panic inside him bloomed suddenly, like blood in water, into outright fear.

He sprinted to the next house, its upper storey leaning so far out that the sky was a purple sliver between its eaves and those of the building opposite. He knocked again, crying out for aid, but there was not even a murmur from within. Pietr stumbled further down the narrow road, his shouts for help trailing off into low whimpers and then silence. Rising within that silence from not very far behind came a low, rumbling growl.

Thunder, it’s just thunder.

This road led through the town and up towards Gothghul Castle on its low hill. The black stone building squatted to the west of town, towers and spires like reaching talons and crowned with a ring of gargoyles that loomed at its edges and spat rainwater onto the unwary. The moors curved around the town and then swept up to the castle like a vast ocean of gorse and heather in every shade of purple, from the most delicate lilac to the almost-black of indigo, framing it against the expanse of wild sky and lonely wind. It was the tallest thing on the horizon but for the Blood-Rock Peaks a few miles distant. It was a long way and all uphill, but it was away from the source of the howling and the Gothghuls would let him in. No one else would.

Gripping the club so tight his fingers ached, Pietr began to run, slipping on the cobbles and twisting his ankle in an unexpected wheel rut. He yelled at the flare of pain, the sound lost in a rumble that was definitely thunder and that rolled and muttered for long seconds. Using the club as a walking stick, he limped on as fast as he could. Fat, icy drops of rain fell, as if the thunder had been the clouds tearing themselves open.

The pain in his ankle faded to a steady throb and he pushed on faster, the rain increasing and the sky angry. Around him, the town was silent. The beast was silent. The road steepened and Pietr’s breath grew short as he laboured upwards, the pounding rain turning the road to slick mud. The building storm roared in his ears and the wind screeched – Pietr halted and spun in a circle, bringing the club up in front of him. That wasn’t the wind.

At first, he couldn’t see anything as the rain drove down in thick grey curtains. Hysh’s light was a distant memory, though it wasn’t just its absence that made the trader shudder. He’d passed the last couple of houses and now there was nothing but glowering sky and threatening moor and the distant – too distant – promise of safety that was Gothghul Castle.

A shadow moved on the road, emerging from between the last pair of houses. Pietr stumbled backwards, blinking rain out of his eyes. ‘Just a dog, just a dog, just a dog,’ he panted, still stumbling up the hill. His empty hand rose to his throat, clutching at the tangle of amulets lying beneath his soaking jacket. The just-a-dog lifted its head and stared at him, and even from here he could see the red glow of its eyes. As if a low, sullen fire burnt inside it. He could see every detail of its broad head and long, pointed muzzle despite the distance and the pounding rain. He shuddered again when he realised it was as big as Oskar had said. As big as a man. Bigger, even. Black and hulking, coarse fur slicked to its body by the rain, teeth grinning silver in a flash of sheet lightning. There was a low rumble that wasn’t thunder, and rainwater splashed up as it padded closer.

Pietr wanted to turn and run, but he was paralysed. He wanted to hide, but there was nowhere to go. He wanted, most of all and with an intensity he’d never experienced in the fifty-odd years of his life, to live.

The beast moved faster until it was almost flying, pounding up the road towards him, those awful glowing eyes fixed on him as if it didn’t need to watch its footing. As graceful and inevitable as death, the beast closed the distance between them.

‘Please,’ Pietr whispered, the word lost in the rain and the thud of its paws. ‘Please.’ His legs took over control of his body, ignoring the terror freezing his brain, and he finally, finally, put his back to the creature and ran. The soreness of his ankle meant nothing. The slippery steepness of the road meant even less. Pietr ran faster than he’d known was possible, the club whining as it cut through the air with each pump of his arm. A thin, high sound came out of his throat with each exhalation, a cry somewhere between hysteria and terror. His legs and lungs began to burn, and then, without warning, he tripped, falling headlong into a puddle.

At first, he thought he’d stumbled into a hole or that the club itself, somehow, had tangled his foot as he ran. Soaked as he was, the puddle wasn’t able to add to his misery. He registered the impact on his open palm and the knuckles of the hand holding the club, and then pain threaded like red-hot wire up the back of his leg, and he screamed.

Pietr thrashed, turning over in the road. The beast stood at his feet, its jaws bloody. More blood in the puddle, on the road, soaking out of his trousers. His blood. ‘What do you want?’ he screamed at the creature. It hulked over him, a thick mane of black bristles standing proud down the back of its neck. The low, rolling rumble of its growl increased in pitch as he spoke. Its breath was hot, coming in short, easy pants like steam from a kettle.

The trader scuttled backwards on hands and heels like a crab until he hit the bank at the edge of the road. A carrion crow hopped down off a nearby broken headstone – a solitary, empty tomb dug into the edge of the moor – and flapped lazily closer. The beast stalked him, the growl rising again until Pietr’s muscles turned to water. ‘Please,’ he begged. ‘Please…’

The beast paused for the barest second, head cocked to one side as if it could understand him. The rumbling growl faded away and the glow of the eyes seemed to brighten, as if someone had blown on hot coals. And then it whined, an almost questioning sound. Pietr’s breath stuttered in his chest.

A loud crack rode the back of the wind from behind him. From the castle. A gunshot. The great black animal flinched and looked away, breaking eye contact, and Pietr felt the strange paralysis lift immediately, a paralysis he hadn’t noticed while he’d been lost in the beast’s eyes. He gasped in cold air and the rank stink of wet fur, and jerked up onto his feet. Agony lanced through his left leg and he bit down on a scream. He looked up towards Gothghul Castle and saw distant figures running towards him. Help was coming.

He looked back, eye to eye with the beast again. The scream he’d trapped in his chest broke free and soared into the storm like a wind-tossed bird, helpless to fight the tempest. He brought up the club and swung. The beast leapt to the side, dodging the strike. Its fangs flashed and it was out of range again. Pietr stared at the ragged stump of his arm, then down at his wrist and hand still holding the club that lay in the mud at his feet. Then back to his arm and its jet of arterial blood, bright against the darkness of the moors.

Back to the beast. Pietr had time for one final breath, the deepest and last of his life. He used it all to scream as it advanced again, head lowered and ears pinned back, lips writhing from teeth as long as his palm. Another bright splash of blood arced and Pietr fell to his knees in the mud as his legs refused to hold him. A weight at the front of him, as if a heavy coin purse hung from his belt. Pink and purple ropes spilt out of a rent in his coat. Blood-warm, they steamed in the frigid air.

The last of his last breath slipped from his mouth. There was another gunshot, but it didn’t matter now. Pietr looked into the beast’s red eyes and calmly raised his chin, exposing his throat.

Lightning flashed, or maybe teeth. Darkness fell.

Edrea Gothghul stood aside as the body was carried in through the front door.

‘Father’s study, immediately,’ she snapped, and the drenched figures hurried along the corridor and squeezed into the room. Her father had already cleared his desk, and Edrea’s satchel of ointments and herbs was open on the windowsill next to it. She’d managed a glimpse of the man’s face as he flopped, sodden and unmoving, between the carriers, and knew there was nothing that she could do for him. It didn’t matter.

She pushed her way through the little crowd to the desk next to the window. ‘Too many people,’ she said. ‘Out.’

‘Grab your coats and meet me in the stables,’ said Runar Skoldofr, her father’s hired gunman, to the three men and one woman who’d brought in the body. They were all soaked. ‘We’re going straight back out. It can’t have gone far.’

Edrea didn’t waste time watching them go. ‘More light,’ she ordered. The storm, if possible, had darkened even further, and despite the wide expanse of glass in the room’s tall, arched window, it was difficult to make out the victim’s features or wounds. Her father, Lord Aaric Gothghul, brought another lamp without a word, standing by her side and holding it up over the body.

‘By Nagash,’ Edrea swore as lantern light fell across it. Aaric grabbed her shoulder, as if wanting to spin her away from the table and spare her the sight. She shrugged him off. ‘Closer,’ she insisted, and bent forward.

‘Daughter–’ Aaric began.

‘He’s dead, Father. He can’t hurt me. Closer, I said.’ Edrea could feel his frozen outrage, and the embarrassment of the room’s only other occupant at her tone – Tiberius Grim, a Sigmarite priest and her father’s oldest friend. Like Aaric, her Uncle Tiberius was in his sixties, but where her father was gaunt and walked with a slight stoop and occasionally an ornate, bone-headed cane, Tiberius had retained the loose gait of a much younger man. He’d strapped on his rapier when they heard the first howl, and Edrea knew he had a talent for the blade.

Grudgingly, Aaric lowered the lantern, its warmth caressing Edrea’s brow as she bent almost in half and brought her face to within a hand’s width of the corpse’s.

‘The same as all the others.’

Tiberius shifted by the fireplace. ‘No blood?’

Edrea poked at the leathery skin of the face, and then pinched the flap of flesh drooping from the jagged rent in the throat and peeled it back. Her father made a tiny noise of disgust. Not at the action, she knew, but at the fact that it was her performing it. His precious child. She ignored him.

‘No – no blood,’ she said to Tiberius. ‘A few smears on the throat, of course, but the way this has been torn open, the man should be coated in it, rain or not. And his skin is… wrinkled, dried. Desiccated, even. But… I think I know him. He trades down in the market, doesn’t he? Look, this green coat with the blue lining. He crafts the larger talismans for warding buildings, I think. Yes, it’s him – and he can’t be more than fifty.’

‘Then the beast has drawn the blood from the body, as it did with the others,’ Tiberius said in a low voice. ‘I have never heard of a creature of this nature doing such, not in all my years. It doesn’t take the flesh. As if sustenance is not its goal. Aaric, this is not familiar to you?’

Edrea’s father was a scholar and former Freeguild captain who had served alongside Tiberius in Lethis’ Blackshore Guard. Edrea only knew him as the austere, dusty old figure in the study or the library, nose forever in a book if it wasn’t raised in disapproval of her. It was easy to believe that if Aaric had seen something like this before, it would have been in a bestiary or ancient scroll, not in real life. And yet years before, he really had done all those things for which his name was still whispered among the Freeguilds and the townsfolk. He was not boastful about his exploits, nor had he invented any of them – she knew this for fact. Aaric, too, still wore a sword whenever he left the castle, and she’d spent enough childhood hours watching him practise to know it was no mere affectation. And he had been the one to teach her to shoot, clean and strip a rifle – no one else.

Aaric Gothghul, hero of the Bonesplinter War and the Siege of a Thousand Nights. Defender of the innocent, devoted husband to Hephzibah. Father to a lonely child. A scholar. A wise and temperate leader of the Hollow. Scion, judge, hunter, teacher.

Edrea was struck, once again, by the juxtaposition of the man Aaric Gothghul had been and the man she knew. The man he’d become upon her mother’s death.

She poked at the ragged flesh again, because it made him wince. Yes, he was all those things. But he was other things, too. A liar. A secret-keeper. A man so desperate to keep his daughter safe that he would no longer speak her mother’s name for fear of invoking the same madness that had claimed her life.

‘Despite all the creatures that plague us in Shyish, I have never seen nor heard its like,’ Aaric said, bringing Edrea’s attention back to the corpse and the room.

She straightened and flicked through the pages of the journal she was compiling that recorded what she’d learnt so far of the beast’s eight victims. This was the first one she’d seen, and she could tell immediately that the information her father had allowed her to know about the others was vague and worse than useless.

She put the journal next to the trader’s head and began tugging at the savaged jacket. Whatever sorcery had been performed on him had shrunk his form, and it wasn’t too difficult to drag the coat down over his shoulders.

‘What are you doing?’ Aaric asked. The hand holding the lantern shook slightly.

Edrea gave him a cool glance. ‘We need to examine the body. Someone in our midst could be engaging in the necromantic arts. I can recognise even the subtlest marks of a curse.’

‘It’s a sensible suggestion, and Edrea is a sensible girl,’ Tiberius said mildly before her father could respond. Edrea frowned at his use of girl, but she wouldn’t protest if he was on her side for once.

‘Go to your chamber – we will conduct the inspection.’

Edrea straightened up and put her back to the table. She folded her arms and raised one eyebrow. ‘No. You might be a scholar, Father, but death magic is my area of expertise. Even if he reanimates now, he is in no condition to molest me. Rest assured my honour is quite safe.’ Tiberius snorted, stifling something that might have been a laugh. Aaric reddened.

‘Besides, he’s not the first naked man I’ve seen,’ Edrea added, and turned back to the table. The silence was thunderous. She ignored it. The master of Gothghul Castle slammed his lantern down on top of her journal and jostled her out of the way, then wrestled the body into his arms and began removing its coat, exposing the ravaged stump of its missing right hand. The corner of Edrea’s mouth twitched as she stepped back, but she let him proceed.

Tiberius caught her gaze and shook his head just a little in disapproval, but she could see the glint in his eye. She grinned, and he bit his lip and then winked before sobering again.

‘Help me, man,’ Aaric muttered, and Tiberius crossed to the desk and bent to the task, pulling off the corpse’s boots and then trousers, while her father peeled the wet shirt off the body. He made a sound of disgust, and she pushed back alongside him and then blinked, fighting back a surge of nausea. It wasn’t just his throat and arm that were ravaged – the victim had had his belly torn open as well. Only the desiccated state of him had prevented his savaged guts from stinking out the entire castle. As it was, the thin, flattened ropes of intestines were as dry as the rest of him, looping and knotting on the outside of his body.

Aaric was watching her, waiting for the first sign of weakness in order to justify sending her out of the room, but while he and Tiberius were familiar with common native curses, this particular one – if indeed it was a curse at all – was beyond their scope. But not Edrea’s.

‘He looks… mummified, almost,’ she said. ‘My notes, please, Father. And a quill.’

Still he said nothing, passing one to her and moving the lantern off her journal. Edrea took a deep breath and bent closer to the corpse, humming under her breath. ‘Interesting.’ She stuck her finger into his abdomen and then swiftly put it in her mouth.

‘Just as I thought,’ she said. ‘Pure rainwater. There isn’t any of his own liquid left inside his body. Nothing. If it hadn’t been for the storm, he’d be as dry as a stick of firewood. The others were the same, were they?’

‘They were,’ Tiberius said. ‘And they’ve already been buried by their families.’

She turned a sour glance on him. ‘I know. Which is why this is the only specimen I have to work with.’

‘Person, by Sigmar’s grace,’ Tiberius said mildly. ‘Not specimen.’

Edrea waved her hand in acknowledgement and dismissal both. Carefully, she examined the dead man’s flesh as best she could amid the ruin of his injuries. There was no curse mark she could see. Unless it had been conveniently located somewhere the aberration had attacked, her guess was there was no curse at all.

‘All right, step back. Let me try something.’

‘What?’ Aaric asked suspiciously.

Were you like this with my mother? The words sat heavy on her tongue, a stone in her mouth begging to be spat out. She swallowed them and found others, less combative, to say instead. ‘I want to see the last images of his life. It might not work, given how drained he is. Then again, it might. Either way, it won’t take long, and we have nothing to lose but a few drops of blood and a couple of herbs.’

That wasn’t quite true, but Aaric didn’t need to know that. Edrea took her satchel and dragged out a soft leather roll that clinked as she untied it and spread it open on the deep windowsill. The lanterns and candles were behind her, and the storm was a black hand pressing against the stained glass, but the thin, tightly stoppered phials were hers, and she wouldn’t have needed to read the labels even if there were any. Each one sat in its individual pocket, prepared by her own hands.

Her fingers stole over the glass phials, some containing liquids, some powders and others herbs. She selected the one that would lend her a few moments of deadsight and then took a small golden bowl and a larger stone mortar and pestle from her satchel. Half turning out of her own shadow so she could see, she unsheathed the dagger that hung at her waist and worked open a long, thin scab on the back of her right wrist. The familiar pain blistered at her, but she barely winced. The wound was clean, and she reopened it every few days for such sorcery – she was used to it.

Facing the window again, she turned her arm over and squeezed nine thick, slow beads of blood into the mortar. She caught the tenth on her fingertip before it could fall and licked it clean, then ran her tongue over the cut to help it seal. Five other lines, these ones healed, decorated her right arm so far. One for each year of her ritual craft. She wondered how many there would be before her time among Shyish’s living came to its end, and then she cleared her mind, concentrated on the bright copper taste in her mouth and chanted the incantation as she tipped herbs into the blood and ground them with the pestle nine times.

Three by three. Sacred.

There was a rustle behind her. ‘Deadsight? Isn’t that–’

Tiberius hissed a sharp, whispered command, stilling Aaric. She ignored them both. Already Edrea felt the realm’s magic rising from the mortar, and she tipped the thick mixture into the golden bowl. It smoked as it slid across the incantations engraved within it and the concoction jolted and thickened, heady now in her nostrils. Edrea turned to face the corpse, and Aaric took a long, slow breath in through flared nostrils. He also took a soft step backwards, giving her space. She rolled her head on her neck and put the bowl on the trader’s chest, dipping her left forefinger into the mixture and dabbing it very gently in each corner of her eyes. Her vision pinked with blood and burnt with the herb juices; bloody tears began to leak down her cheeks.

Edrea dipped her finger again and drew the shape of an eye in the centre of her brow, and then, with one violent motion, she plunged her whole hand into the bowl, scooped up the mess of herbs and blood, and slapped it across the corpse’s face. Her body convulsed, a flinch from her toes to the crown of her head. Her teeth clicked together and a low, inhuman grunt shook from her chest. Long, rasping pants clawed out of her throat as the deadsight took hold. It was weak. Too weak.

Growling, Edrea plunged her hand into the bowl again, and this time slapped the mixture across her own face, hard enough to hurt – and to solidify the connection between herself and the corpse.

‘Pietr. Crafts talismans for the priests to bless, though he sells many that have never seen the inside of a temple. Approaching fifty and unmarried. Lived in the Hollow all his life.’ The words came through her, not from her. It wasn’t her voice either, but one that was lower and tinged with a rage she’d never been able to identify or suppress. Her fingers dug into the desk, their short nails bending under the force. Pain blossomed at the fingertips, but Edrea ignored it.

‘He heard it first, north of the town. Everyone ran and… he waited, his bravado a shiny, useless shield that broke too late into fear. He ran. He fell. The rain fell. And the creature found him.’

Edrea shook as Pietr’s last moments enveloped her. She shuddered at the cold of the rain on his skin and cried out as he fell, rose, fell again. Screamed as the teeth tore out the back of her leg – they hadn’t seen that injury yet – and again when she thrashed over in the rain and the creature locked its gaze with hers. Screamed, and then went silent as she tried to assess a strange new feeling.

Those ruby eyes. Those coal-bright, all-seeing, intelligent eyes. It was more than Pietr’s terror or the growing toll of death magic. There was some kind of connection. I know those eyes. I know this beast.

You. I know you.

A faint gunshot and the burning link was severed as the creature looked away. She felt Pietr fill with desperate hope and desperate courage. He had stood again and tried to fight. The beast gutted him, and when he collapsed back into the road, Edrea clearly felt its compulsion. In time with the dying talisman-maker, on her knees in the study of Gothghul Castle, only faintly aware of Aaric’s shouts, she lifted her chin and presented her throat to the beast.

The deadsight faded.

Blood and herbs had dried on her face and in her eyes, scratchy and stiff, flaking as she rubbed her cheeks and temples. Her eyes stung and a vicious headache spiked through the very centre of her brain. Aaric grabbed her shoulders, and she flinched and cried out in shock, overwhelmed by the sensation. ‘Get off,’ she gasped, shuddering and shrinking away. ‘Too much… too much.’

He let her go as if she’d burnt him and took a pace sideways, leaving her crumpled between the window and the desk. Groaning, Edrea dragged herself up the wall until she stood, swaying slightly. Tiberius handed her a damp cloth, and she wiped her face clean, gently sponging her eyes until she could see again. ‘Thank you.’

‘What did you see?’ Aaric asked eventually, and the impatience and worry were tightly leashed, barely audible.

‘The creature did not respond to a curse placed on Pietr – nor then, I imagine, on any of the victims. It was searching for something. A person, perhaps. A way to convey…’ She trailed off and coughed. Aaric handed her a glass of wine, and she took a large swallow, then nodded her thanks. ‘It wants something,’ she added, her voice growing less like the one that spoke through her and more like her own. ‘It won’t stop until it gets it. Until it gets the right person.’

‘Then a curse could still be at work somehow,’ Tiberius mused, pulling at his bottom lip as he stared into the fireplace without seeing. ‘One imperfectly performed and thus weak. The creature knows the object of its master’s ire is here, but it cannot identify who it is.’

‘Then it will wreak havoc until it finds the accursed townsperson. I cannot allow that to happen.’ Aaric looked back at Edrea and his hand lifted, hovered in the air as if unsure of its action, and then dropped back to his side. ‘You did well, daughter. Very well. Is there anything else you can tell us?’

I know this beast. I know it.

She met her father’s eyes. ‘No, Father. There is nothing else.’

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Warhammer horror

A BLACK LIBRARY IMPRINT

First published in Great Britain in 2022.
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ISBN: 978-1-80026-609-4

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o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media.

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.