the place should not have looked so deserted and that ominous scent should not have been hanging in the air. A feeling of foreboding passed through Takalen’s mind and she shivered. Overhead her companion shrieked and she knew that the great eagle was also disturbed. It was hanging in the air far above and its eyes were much keener than hers so perhaps it had already seen what was causing the smell.
Takalen moved cautiously towards the door of the old mansion. She did not like the look of it at all. She had occasionally visited Prince Faldor and his daughter Fayelle when she had passed this way previously and she had never known them to be careless. Just because this area was comparatively safe compared to the rest of Ulthuan did not mean the old noble had relaxed his guard. In the past the door had always been shut, which was only sensible, for in these dark times who knew what strange things might emerge to threaten the peace of the locality.
The door was open now, and even as Takalen watched, a fox emerged through it, carrying something in its mouth which on closer observation proved to be the remains of an elf hand. Takalen drew her sword, and passed through the doorway. She did not expect anything dangerous – the fox would not have been there had attackers still been within. It was just that there was something about the atmosphere that set her teeth on edge and made her wary.
Inside the walls of the villa was a courtyard. She saw the first of the corpses and, although she was no weak-gutted town-dweller, it made her want to heave. The bodies had been flayed and mutilated and the dismembered parts laid out in some odd pattern. The outline had been disturbed by scavenging animals but the fact that someone had intentionally laid the parts out in an ordered way was obvious. Splashes of blood and dried out strips of intestine made that absolutely clear.
There was a strong stink of magic in the air. Takalen was no mage but like all elves she was sensitive to the flows of magic. She could tell that something dark and awful had been done here. She pushed on into the main building, knowing already that what she would find would be terrible.
The air was close and foetid. Flies buzzed everywhere, brushing against her face, getting in her long ash-blonde hair, skittering across her exposed skin. There were too many of them for this to be entirely natural. The stink of dark magic was stronger here.
The old furniture was broken. It was as if a crowd of maniacs had rushed through this place, breaking everything precious they could find. Discarded clothing, blood-soaked, lay everywhere. There were odd outlines of elven shapes imprinted on the walls. It took the trained tracker long minutes to work out what had happened simply because her mind did not want to accept it. It looked like lust-maddened elves, and other things, had rolled in blood and had wild sex against the walls.
What in the name of Isha had happened here?
Takalen had heard rumours that some of the locals had been dabbling in the old rites of the Cult of Luxury. It looked like they had gone beyond dabbling here. It looked like they had taken to summoning things using the old dark magic.
Slaanesh! She deciphered another of the words crudely written on the walls, smeared in blood and excrement. Her lips curled. Her nose wrinkled. Slaanesh. The word was repeated again, mixed with other names, and curses and imprecations.
N’Kari was one of those names, an appellation almost as dreadful as that of the daemon lord of forbidden pleasures. It belonged to the Keeper of Secrets responsible for the Rape of Ulthuan in the dawn ages, a creature twice destroyed by the mighty Aenarion and thought gone forever.
N’Kari has returned.
The sentence was sometimes spelled out in crude block characters and sometimes in the graceful looping script of modern Elvish. It was repeated over and over again like the monotonous repetitions of a lunatic.
N’Kari will have vengeance.
In the great hall she found the remains of what might have been a daemonic orgy or a cannibal feast or some dreadful combination of both. Staked out in the middle of a curious ritual circle was the naked body of Fayelle, or at least something that might have looked like her, if her corpse had been desiccated and aged a thousand years.