Neferata

TWELVE




The City of Lashiek

(–1147 Imperial Reckoning)

Neferata led her handmaidens through the crowded streets of the Corsair City, her robes and cowl pulled close about her, and a veil of hammered gold discs hiding her face from the sun. There was a ship waiting for them in the harbour. It was to take them to Sartosa, across the sea. The streets were full of merchants, mercenaries and refugees, all going in every direction at once. Overhead sea-birds wheeled, croaking, and mangy dogs trotted through the streets.

She stopped as a group of soldiers, clad in silks and bronze, marched past in ragged formation, pennons snapping from their spear-points. It galled Neferata to abandon Araby. Bel Aliad was a smoking ruin, thanks to Arkhan, and the other caliphates reeled under his continued assault. Armies of the dead trod the Spice Road, harrying what forces the caliphates could muster, and Araby was no longer a place for patient schemes and subtle machinations. But that did not mean that such would always be the case.

She caught sight of a flash of red. ‘There she is,’ Naaima murmured a moment later, standing behind her mistress. She gestured towards a shisha house on the other side of the street. Naaima and the others were dressed much as Neferata was, all save Khaled, who wore the armour and full-face helm of a Kontoi. Ragged silk strips hung limply from the spiral point that topped his helm and his cloak was ragged and threadbare. His eyes were haunted behind the chainmail mask that covered his face.

The destruction of Bel Aliad had struck him hard. Every desire and dream that he had nurtured to his breast for the past decade had vanished like a wisp of smoke, leaving him empty of either ambition or energy. Anmar was equally shaken, but had chosen not to emulate her brother’s apathy, instead throwing herself into Neferata’s schemes with admirable abandon. For Khaled, Bel Aliad had been a kingdom to be won. For his sister, however, it had been little more than a cage.

Neferata led her followers towards the shisha house. Men sat on reed mats outside of it, inhaling sweetly scented smoke from a waterpipe. Anmar sat on a similar mat within, wearing a bright crimson robe. She looked up as they entered and laid a hand on the arm of the woman who crouched nervously beside her. The woman was a slave, and pale-skinned like the barbarian tribes who inhabited the far north. ‘My lady,’ Anmar said. ‘The ship is ready whenever we are.’

Neferata nodded and glanced at the slave, who trembled and turned away. The woman stank of fear. Anmar gently stroked her neck, calming her. ‘Ilsa here is a servant of the Dowager Concubine, aren’t you, Ilsa?’ Anmar said softly. The young vampire’s eyes glinted. ‘She has agreed to your offer, mistress, and has sent Ilsa as a gift. The girl speaks the language of Sartosa. The Dowager thought she might translate for us upon our arrival.’

Neferata smiled beneath her veil. Though she was leaving Araby for greener pastures, her influence would remain. The Dowager Concubine was the ruler of the Corsair City in all but name, and with her protection, Neferata’s servants would flourish. When she had re-settled herself, she would re-establish her influence in the caliphates for as long as they stood.

She knelt and reached out, taking the terrified slave-girl’s chin. Neferata smiled and held the girl’s gaze, soothing her and mesmerising her. ‘I’m sure that she will come in handy in one fashion or another,’ she murmured…

Nagashizzar

(–328 Imperial Reckoning)

The air stank of rot and swamp gas, and scavenger birds spun through the overcast sky. There was no sun in these lands, and there hadn’t been for hundreds of years. In the Desolation of Nagash, it was always grey and dark and foul, a reflection of its creator’s soul. Nagashizzar was a twisted blend of mountain and fortress, and it loomed above the dead land like a monolith to a forgotten god.

It had taken them the better part of a year to reach the shores of the Sour Sea from Mourkain, and Neferata climbed swiftly, ignoring the tiny avalanches her movement set loose. Her patience had worn thin over the months of journeying and she was eager to reach her goal. The others followed at some distance. Ahead of her, Layla moved with inhuman grace, leaping and climbing, marking the safe path. ‘I smell ghouls,’ the girl called back.

‘These mountains are filthy with them,’ Morath said from below. The necromancer climbed slowly and cautiously, lacking the grace of his protectors. ‘There are thousands of warrens in these hills, thanks to Nagash.’

‘I would have thought that they’d have left,’ Rasha said, helping Morath climb. ‘When he died, I mean.’

‘Where would they go?’ Morath said. ‘When they were human, before Nagash corrupted them, Cripple Peak was their home. That ancestral memory keeps them here, lurking in the blighted shadow of Nagashizzar.’

‘The question is not their presence, but their intentions. I would not fight unless we have no choice,’ Neferata said, stopping to wait for the others to catch up. ‘This journey has taken up too much time as it is.’

‘It may take even longer, I fear,’ Morath said, leaning on his walking stick. He looked bad, cadaverous even, as if his human vitality were being leached away by their surroundings and replaced by something else. ‘Nagashizzar is massive, according to W’soran. It may be months before we find a safe way inside, let alone find that which we seek.’

‘Which is?’ Layla said, dropping down to perch bird-like above Neferata.

‘You should listen more than you natter, girl,’ Rasha said.

Layla stuck her tongue out between her fangs. Neferata chuckled. She reached up to yank on the braid of hair that dangled from the girl’s head. ‘We seek one of the Books of Nagash, child. One that W’soran seems certain is still hidden somewhere in this stinking pile.’

‘Implying it’s one that the old thief didn’t manage to steal when he fled,’ Rasha said.

‘There were nine of them,’ Morath said, looking up towards the high towers of Nagashizzar, shrouded in grey mist. ‘Nine books in all, comprising all of Nagash’s knowledge on the subject of death.’ Morath raised a hand. ‘W’soran stole one, as did Arkhan the Black. The other seven, however…’ He gestured limply. For more than two decades, Neferata had aided the necromancer in hunting down every scrap of information about those books. Her agents had scoured Araby, Cathay and Ind, hunting stories and memories. Neferata herself had travelled to the decadent coastal cities of the Black Gulf and hunted a certain Abdul ben Rashid through the Street of Booksellers in Copher, where she had torn him apart in broad daylight after he refused to hand over his necromantic scribbling.

And in two decades, all signs had pointed towards Nagashizzar.

‘Like as not, rats chewed them to rags and ghouls use them as loincloths,’ Rasha said. Morath glared at her, but said nothing. Neferata smiled. Necromancers were precious about their parchments and papyri.

‘We’d best hope not, my huntress,’ Neferata said, turning to continue on. ‘We need them.’ I need them, she thought. W’soran had sworn that those books had the secret to binding Alcadizzar’s angry ghost and freeing Nagash’s crown from his clutches. And Neferata wanted that crown. It was the only reason she had agreed to Ushoran’s mad plan of an expedition to Cripple Peak. It had taken them months to get here, and would likely take them months more to find those books, barring interruptions.

A shrill cry echoed from the rocks, rebounding down the spine of the mountain. Neferata’s head jerked up, and her nostrils flared. She smelled sour blood and rotting meat. It seemed that someone had come to greet the visitors. They had been forced to fight more than once on their trip through the Desolation, battling mutant beasts and the degenerate tribes of savages who clustered on the shores of the Sour Sea, but it had been days since they’d left the territory of the tribes behind.

A tumble of rocks rattled down from above, nearly dislodging Layla, who yelped as she was struck. Rasha shielded Morath and Neferata swatted a rock aside with her hand. A group of men would have likely been discomfited by the rock fall. For vampires, it was barely an annoyance.

‘Rasha, stay beside Morath!’ Neferata barked, drawing her sword. ‘Layla, get back here and help her!’

‘But–’ Layla began, searching for the creature that had dared to drop rocks on her.

‘Now,’ Neferata snarled, bounding up the slope with more speed than caution. ‘Keep the sorcerer breathing, whatever else happens.’

Over the years, Neferata had become intimately familiar with the methods and manner of the corpse-eaters. Where there was death, there were the eaters-of-the-dead. They had a society of sorts, and kings and queens and lords and ladies. They were a mockery of the men they had descended from, but even mockery has a kernel of truth.

But these ghouls were not like the almost-tame creatures that scampered through the tunnels beneath Mourkain, or the organised tribes of Araby. No, these mountain-ghouls were a breed apart. It was akin to the difference between wolves and dogs. Hidden tunnel mouths suddenly vomited clay-crusted simian shapes. The ghouls boiled from their tunnel like wasps from a disturbed nest, their ape-like agility propelling them down towards her from all directions. They had painted their flesh with clay and filth, and some carried sharpened bones as weapons. Most, however, seemed to content to use their claws and teeth.

Neferata shrieked, casting her voice at them like a weapon. Several dozen stumbled to a halt, tripping up those immediately behind them. Neferata was on them a moment later. Her sword slashed across the front rank, gutting four of the creatures and lopping the arms from a fifth. She pressed her attack, aware that even with all of her strength the creatures could pull her down through sheer weight of numbers. She had to break them; they were scavengers by nature, and would retreat if their prey looked to be too strong.

Her elbow came down between the head and shoulders of a ghoul, shattering its neck even as her leg swept out. Her foot crushed a slavering jaw and the force of the kick spun the ghoul in place, dropping it dead to the rocks. Her sword darted out, chopping like a cleaver into grey flesh. Severed limbs lay heaped on the ground as she created a corridor of death through the ghoul ranks.

Alone, Neferata had blunted the momentum of the ambush. The ghouls scrambled back from her, yelping and howling. Many retreated for their holes, but more stayed. Greasy bodies crashed into her as they sought to drag her down. When she killed one, two more took its place. Hooked claws tore her flesh and she returned the favour. She was in constant motion, her feet and hands crushing skulls and splintering bones even as her sword removed heads and spilled intestines.

For a moment, the snarling creatures that swirled around her wore the faces of enemies new and old, of every obstacle that stood in her path – Razek and Al-Khattab, Lamashizzar and Khalida, Khaled and Ushoran. Obstacle and enemy were interchangeable concepts for Neferata and she wondered, in the bliss of bloodletting, when that had become the case.

Then the moment passed and she stood alone, drenched in blood. The survivors squatted around her, stinking of fear, their yellow gazes riveted on her. It was ever the way with the corpse-eaters; simply kill enough of them and they worshipped you. If only men were so easy.

Neferata stretched out her sword, catching one of the larger beasts beneath its jaw with the flat of the blade. It gurgled something. She frowned. ‘Morath, I trust W’soran taught you whatever debased mewling passes for the language of Nagashizzar,’ she called out.

Morath hurried towards her, flanked by Neferata’s handmaidens. The blades of both vampires were dark with blood, but only a few ghouls had been opportunistic enough to attack them. Those creatures littered the slope below. Morath spoke in a halting, gurgling tongue that seemed to be less word than bark. The ghouls answered with barks of their own. Morath turned to Neferata, who was examining the blood dripping from her sword to the rocks. Several ghouls squatted low and snuffled at the spreading stain. ‘You’ve impressed them,’ Morath said.

‘They will serve us, or I will hunt them down. Tell them that,’ Neferata said.

‘That’s unnecessary. They know,’ Morath said. ‘You have a way with ghoul-kind. Even W’soran can only gain grudging service from them, and they flee at the first opportunity.’ He made a face. ‘They call him the Painfather.’

‘The minds of ghouls are as the minds of men. They seek strong leaders,’ Neferata said. The ghouls began to flow back into their holes in pairs and groups. A number stayed with them, as if to act as escort, a fact which Morath confirmed.

‘They will show us the secret ways into Nagashizzar. But it is dangerous in the deeps. There are creatures there that even the ghouls fear,’ Morath said as they followed the capering cannibals. ‘Rat-things, such as W’soran once spoke of.’

Neferata nodded. She had heard similar stories in Cathay and then again in Araby; of chittering red-eyed shadows and stealthy paws in the dark. She had thought it a fable. But now, looking up at the crude walls of Nagashizzar where it sprouted from the mountain’s peak, she could believe it. Where else would rats congregate, save in a warren such as this? This close to the fortress of the Great Necromancer, she could feel the evil that infected rock and soil. It sank greedy claws into her mind, and she felt a strange invigoration, similar to that which she felt when entering Kadon’s pyramid in Mourkain.

The ghouls led them up the slope and into the warrens that honeycombed Cripple Peak. As they entered the foul-smelling hole, Neferata realised that Nagashizzar was very likely sitting atop a molehill. The trip through the cramped and crude ghoul-tunnels was tortuous and did nothing to improve her first impression. The creatures had clawed them from the very stuff of the mountains and they wound in seemingly no particular direction. Nonetheless, the ghouls led them unerringly on and they walked for hours, deeper into the darkness.

Here and there as they made their way through the tunnels they saw what remained of its structure and the delving of its former inhabitants. There had been more than ghouls in Nagashizzar once, and not all of the human tribes that Nagash had conquered had degenerated into the debased wretches guiding them. Some had simply died. There were heaps of bone – some gnawed and some not – clustered in corners and in nooks and alcoves, like offerings to some vast charnel god. Not Mordig, though, not here. No, the only god here was Nagash, and the ghouls prayed to him in the dark.

There were ghoul-women in the tunnels they travelled through, and squalling pups as well. They hissed and shied away as the males moved ahead, snarling and snapping, keeping the others away from their ‘guests’. There was no sign of what they had once been in their behaviour or appearance. ‘Is this our fate?’ Morath muttered.

‘What was that, necromancer?’ Neferata said.

‘These creatures were once men,’ Morath said, gesturing to a cowering carrion-eater. ‘Five or ten generations ago, they might have been the same as my own people. And now they are – what? They are nothing but cannibal beasts.’

‘One cannot live in the bowels of death for so long without developing a taste for it,’ Neferata said with a shrug.

‘Is it inevitable, then?’ Morath spat. ‘Will the Strigoi become cowering apes, hiding in the dark and gnawing bones?’ He glared at the vampires. ‘Is that what awaits us–’ Morath stopped as the tunnel blossomed into an uneven chamber. Strange lights seemed to move through the rock and, his rage forgotten, he dug his fingers into the soft, ashy rock, revealing something that wept a toxic green smoke. His hand trembled as he examined the stuff that rested on his palm. ‘This is…’ he hissed. ‘I didn’t believe… not really.’

‘What is that foulness?’ Layla whispered, her nose wrinkling.

‘The stuff which nightmares are made of,’ Morath said, letting it hiss through his fingers to the floor. ‘It’s called abn-i-khat. Nagash devoured it; it sustained and consumed him.’ He looked at the ghouls. ‘And likely these poor creatures as well,’ he said.

‘Much like magics in general,’ Neferata murmured, her flesh crawling as she took in the shimmering veins of the weirdly glowing ore. Morath looked at her.

‘Maybe, but it is a price some of us willingly pay,’ he said.

‘Yes, yes, so much the martyr,’ Neferata said, peering into one of the dark tunnels. She sniffed the air as she spoke. ‘You have sacrificed much for your people. And you think I have not?’

‘You consumed your people,’ Morath said quietly. ‘And now you would consume mine.’

Neferata spun with a snarl, her lips writhing back from her razor-teeth. ‘What did you say?’

‘You heard me, leech,’ Morath said, his pale features growing even paler. The ghouls began to whine and moan as Neferata stalked towards the necromancer. ‘You and Ushoran and W’soran and even Abhorash, you are leeches, battening on the blood of the Strigoi. You are twisting us, the way W’soran twists flesh and bone, making us over in your damnable images!’ He swept out an arm to indicate the ghouls. ‘And you won’t succeed. That is the saddest thing. You will simply make us into beasts like these!’

Trembling with anger, covered in dried blood, Neferata reached for Morath’s head. Her talons scraped almost gently against his cheeks. ‘You are lucky I need you, Morath. You are lucky that I do not see fit to tell W’soran of your part in my investigations into his schemes.’

‘You think he doesn’t know? Do you think my mind is proof against his sorceries?’ Morath said, and in his eyes, Neferata saw the truth of his words. She could see W’soran’s dark sorceries squatting in his student’s mind and soul like some ugly spider. She had expected it, but to see it so plainly was startling. The old monster lacked subtlety.

She dropped her hands. ‘What else does he know?’

Morath chuckled hoarsely. ‘What makes you think he talks to me? If you are unique from your fellow monsters in any fashion, Neferata, it is in that you speak openly to your servants.’

‘Servants hear everything anyway,’ Neferata said, turning away. There was a sound in the darkness, of quiet steps on the shifting strata of the mountain. The ghouls were agitated. Morath barked something and they began to lope into the darkness, leading their ‘guests’ on. He looked at Neferata.

‘We are wasting time. There are other scavengers in the dark than just ghouls and they are stirring. We should go. These tunnels are too dangerous to linger in for long.’

‘The ghouls seem safe enough,’ Rasha said.

‘What makes you think that?’ Morath said bitterly. ‘They are hunted for sport here, even as in Mourkain.’ He glared at the vampires, as if blaming them for that fact. Which, Neferata supposed, he did.

They left the stinking warren and its eerie glow behind. The ghouls led them up through the winding tunnels, and often Neferata’s keen ears caught the quiet scuttling of something that was moving near them, perhaps just on the other side of the walls. After what could only have been a number of miles, the crude tunnels gave way to what, she judged, had once been mine-works.

Vast wooden bracers held up the mine-tunnels, lending them a sense of stability that the more cramped ghoul warrens lacked. There were more piles of bones here, these mostly not gnawed or otherwise disturbed and surprisingly anatomically complete. ‘Nagash’s miners,’ Morath murmured. There were hundreds of them, lying where they had dropped when Nagash had been destroyed.

‘There are more dead here than in the entirety of the world,’ Layla whispered.

The quality of the air had changed as well. There was a verminous smell to things now, a sort of musk that clung to the ancient support timbers and the bones that littered the sides of the tunnel. There were strange marks that glowed faintly on the walls. Neferata touched one and felt a tingle in her fingers. She grunted as she realised that some of the green stone had been used like chalk here, but as to the nature of the mark she couldn’t say. It was unlike any writing she had ever seen.

The ghouls had drawn together in a huddle, their yellow eyes darting around. They grimaced and whimpered. Morath looked at them pityingly. He flicked his fingers and the beasts suddenly loped away, back the way they had come, running as if their lives depended on it.

‘That was foolish, necromancer,’ Neferata said. ‘We need guides.’

‘And blood,’ Layla said.

‘You would not want to drink the blood of anything which lurks in this place,’ Morath said. ‘And we need no guides, not now. Like calls to like, in the sour places.’ Morath dropped to his haunches and dug through the closest pile of bones, extracting a nearly mummified hand. A thin shroud of flesh clung to the age-browned bones and Morath hissed in satisfaction.

He held up the hand and blew a soft breath across it. The fingers stiffened and straightened with an ugly clicking sound. Morath held his hand flat over the fingertips and a burst of puffball light emerged from his palm like poison being drawn from a wound. He winced as the light split and settled on the fingertips, as if the bones were candles. He held it up by its wrist stump and the light slid greasily across the rocks of the tunnel walls.

‘What is that?’ Neferata said.

‘A light to guide us in the darkness,’ Morath said. ‘Normally, we use them to find hidden barrows and tombs. The hand is drawn towards the largest concentration of the dark energies which we weave together to raise the dead and in this place, it will find Nagash’s throne room much quicker than the shoddy ancestral memories of our ghoulish hosts.’ He raised the corpse-light, his face pinched with strain. Neferata and the others followed. The faint skittering sounds followed them, though at a distance. It was as if their mysterious pursuers were travelling in a roundabout fashion.

The mines of Nagashizzar proved to be as vast as Morath had warned. Though the necromancer swore that they were travelling in the correct direction, Neferata found herself wondering whether they were going up or down. Time seemed to have little meaning in the ageless, suffocating confines of the mines and days blended into weeks. For Neferata and the other vampires, this was no hardship. They could go months without nourishment, though they preferred to feed as often as possible. Morath, however, was another story.

The necromancer had the lean form of a man on the edge of starvation, and he only grew thinner during their time in the dark. Part of that, Neferata knew, was due to the spell. Keeping his grisly candelabrum lit for so long seemed to take most of his strength, and they were forced to help him keep up more than once. He had brought supplies, but those were exhausted soon enough. Soon, the three vampires were forced to catch the fat black rats that scurried through the dark tunnels for Morath to feast on. A number of the vermin had mutations – extra limbs, scales or bone spurs – but the necromancer devoured them regardless, chewing the foul meat as if it were the greatest delicacy.

Every rock and tunnel seemed to pull at Neferata’s very core as they travelled, sucking her down into a maelstrom of darkness that only intensified the longer they walked. It was like a trap, and she was the rat who had walked blindly into it. To distract herself, she wondered what was occurring in her absence in Mourkain. Everything now balanced on the sharp end. An action taken in haste might tip the whole affair one way or another and unravel every strand of her carefully crafted web. She should not have left. But the crown, and what it implied, was too great an opportunity to pass up.

She needed it. It had called her to Mourkain to claim it. She was a queen, was she not? And queens had more need of crowns than grovelling schemers like Ushoran. She saw it so clearly now, down in these dark tunnels. It had used Kadon to draw Ushoran, and it had used Ushoran to draw her and now, now was the time for it to be claimed by its true mistress. After all, was she not Nagash’s rightful heir? Was she not a daughter of his blood, at least in the ways that mattered? Was she not a queen of the Great Land?

Yes, yes, you are all of this and more, it murmured, caressing her thoughts. You will be a queen again and you will rule over silent, perfect cities. You will rule over a world of unchanging tides and unfailing devotion. All will love you. All will serve you.

Even him, it hissed, even Alcadizzar.

She shuddered slightly, thinking again of Alcadizzar’s face. He would be a ghost-king for a vampire-queen; what could be more appropriate? He would love her in death as he had not in life. Everything would be–

The blade stabbed down from out of the darkness above as the roof of the tunnel seemed to unfold like the membranous wing of a bat. Morath, caught unawares, could only stare upwards in stupefaction. Neferata’s palms slammed together on the oily blade, trapping it inches from Morath’s head. With a roar, she jerked the blade’s wielder from its hiding place and dashed it to the ground. The cloak the small figure wore was the colour of the rock, and its hairy limbs were bound in leather and rags. It jerked its blade free of Neferata’s grip and flipped up, lashing out at her as it chattered curses. It wielded two blades and they hummed as they cut the air. She had little room to manoeuvre in the cramped tunnel, but the creature seemed to have no such difficulty. It sprang into the air and bounced from wall to floor to ceiling, always stabbing and cutting at her.

Losing her temper, she shot a hand out, wincing as the blades chopped into her arm. She swung her arm, pulling the weapons out of her attacker’s hands, and grabbed a hairy throat with her unwounded hand. The hood fell back, revealing the frothing, snarling snout of a great rat. With a cry of disgust, Neferata bashed the creature’s brains out on the side of the tunnel, leaving a dark trail across the rock.

‘What in the name of Settra was that thing?’ Layla yelped, looking around. The scuttling sounds they had been hearing since they entered the mines were louder now, as if whatever was making them was no longer concerned with stealth.

Rasha spat a word in Arabyan. Neferata nodded as she pulled the blades from her arm. ‘Ratkin, even as Morath warned us,’ she said. ‘Foul little beasts. Where there’s one, there’s a thousand. We should hurry,’ she added.

‘It might be too late,’ Rasha said, pointing back the way they had come. Strange lights flickered in the darkness. Weapons rattled and a wave of chittering voices rolled down the tunnel.

‘The throne room is near, it must be,’ Morath said, rubbing his throat and looking down at the body of his would-be assassin. He sounded more hopeful than confident. ‘If we hurry–’

‘Hold them for as long as you can,’ Neferata said to her handmaidens. Rasha grimaced and nodded. Layla hissed eagerly.

‘I’ve killed rats before. It should be easy.’

Neferata didn’t reply. She grabbed Morath and slung him over her shoulder. He squawked at the treatment, but fell silent as she broke into a sprint. She ran easily, despite the encumbrance. ‘You said it was nearby,’ she growled to Morath.

‘I can feel it, like a weight on my heart,’ he gasped. The skeletal hand flexed and the light that clung to the fingertips began to glow more brightly. She took that as a good sign. Behind her she heard the clash of weapons and smelled the musk-stink of the ratkin’s blood as it was spilled. She sped up, moving like quicksilver. Anyone watching would have seen little more than a pale blur. The rough mine tunnels gave way to shaped corridors as she ran. The corpse-light was burning as brightly as a torch as she raced onwards.

She passed through vast, dark, deserted halls and echoing vaults. She loped through great, now-empty storehouses and silent, shuttered rooms that had once been the sites of Nagash’s blasphemous rites. Morath gasped as she ran through the immense mountain crypt, barely able to breathe so swiftly did she move.

Neferata felt a strange sense of recognition and realised that Nagashizzar and Mourkain shared more than a legacy of death; Kadon, whether he had known it or not, had recreated Nagash’s citadel in his own crude fashion. Thus, when they reached the antechamber to Nagash’s throne room she knew it at once for what it was.

She barrelled through a thick curtain of spider-webs and dust, sliding across a rough stone floor on her feet and hand, her claws leaving thin canyons in the stone. She tossed Morath down. ‘On your feet, necromancer, we’re here.’

Morath climbed to his feet and held up the glowing hand. The corpse-light illuminated a great swathe of the massive chamber. It was a crude parody of the antechamber to the throne room of the great palace of Khemri. Even Nagash, it seemed, had not been immune to nostalgia.

The doors to the throne room were little more than unfinished slabs of bronze now gone green from verdigris and their hinges were braided sinew, long since fossilised into immobility. Morath hesitated, staring up at them. Strange char marks covered them, and he said, ‘There was a battle here.’

Neferata looked at him. ‘Can you open them?’ she said flatly.

‘W’soran taught me,’ Morath said. ‘It will take me a few minutes, however. I am weak,’ he added, at her look. ‘These past weeks have been difficult. I am merely mortal, woman, unlike you.’

‘Why did you volunteer to come with me, Morath? W’soran wanted to send Melkhior, and in truth that might have been more convenient,’ Neferata said, annoyed.

‘W’soran is frightened,’ Morath said, looking at the door. ‘He fears the crown and its hold on Ushoran. Aye, and on him as well, and you,’ he added. ‘He is planning something. To flee, I think. And when he goes, only some of his students will go with him. The others will be disposed of.’

‘You want protection,’ Neferata said.

‘Wouldn’t you?’ Morath looked at her. ‘Isn’t that why you came to Mourkain?’

‘No,’ Neferata said.

Morath grunted. ‘No, I suppose not, eh? Well, you’ll soon get what you want, won’t you?’

‘And you’ll get what you want,’ Neferata said. ‘I’ll need an advisor, Morath. A man who knows his people as well as you seem to would be invaluable.’

Morath looked at her. ‘Do not offer what you cannot promise.’

Neferata sniffed. ‘Can I not? When the crown is mine–’

‘You will not be you any longer. Or so W’soran says,’ Morath said darkly. ‘Even Ushoran is not Ushoran. Not any more. He grows less and less like the man I once served, and more like the thing he is – bestial and rapacious and too hungry for this world.’

‘But you could keep me from becoming that way, Morath of Mourkain,’ Neferata said, clutching his arm. ‘Unlike Ushoran, I know how to listen to those who serve me!’

‘Really? Because you ignored the fears of your handmaidens to undertake this journey,’ Morath said. He jerked his arm free of her grip. ‘I must concentrate.’ He stretched out a pale, thin hand and stroked the air. A pall of dust rose, puffing from the edges of the doors. Then, with a groan as deep as the mountain itself, the long-immobile doors began to move. They rumbled inwards, shaking the ground beneath Neferata’s feet.

Flagstones of black marble paved the path inwards, and the path itself was lined with elaborate and grotesque columns which stretched up into the darkness to support the arched ceiling. Morath’s wheezing breath echoed strangely in the space. Neferata strode ahead of him, her eyes adjusting easily to the darkness.

The room itself had seen much activity, despite the sealed doors. There were great gaping holes in the stone walls and immense char marks scored the spots where there were no holes. The black marble on the floor had been seared to slag in places and more than one of the columns had tumbled into pieces. Intuition told her that the rat-men had likely burrowed through Nagash’s throne room after the Great Necromancer’s death, and they had left evidence of their presence, including piles of old droppings and huddled, miserable piles of gnawed bones.

The centre of the room was marked by the presence of more than a dozen ancient corpses, scattered haphazardly in a rough circle. Morath grabbed her arm as she started forwards. ‘Abn-i-khat,’ he whispered, pointing with the skeletal hand. A glowing stain marked the floor.

She kicked a body aside and it crumbled into dust. ‘What was this?’

‘A rite of some kind was conducted here. But it was interrupted,’ Morath said, his eyes narrowed speculatively. ‘Perhaps W’soran…?’

‘It would not surprise me,’ Neferata said. W’soran had been chased from Nagashizzar with his tail between his legs, and he was naturally reluctant to discuss it. Her eyes scanned the chamber and were drawn to an ominous presence occupying the far end.

She hissed, and Morath looked to see what had startled her. He swallowed thickly as he saw it and said fearfully, ‘Nagash’s throne…’

The throne of the Undying King occupied the far wall. It was, like the throne of Mourkain, a paean to barbaric splendour. But unlike Mourkain, its majesty was no pallid mockery. Here was the truth of which Mourkain was only a weak echo. The throne was crafted from great blocks of stone and petrified wood and lined with the bones of beasts and men. Ropes of now-brittle human hair had been woven into a cushion and glimmering strands of abn-i-khat ran through its form, casting a faint illumination over the floor all around it. In the first moment that Neferata glimpsed it, a massive shadowy shape seemed to occupy it, only to waver and vanish as Morath’s spell-light passed over it.

‘Magnificent,’ she said, swaying towards it. It drew her in, as if it were calling out to her in a whisper that only she could hear. As she drew close, she felt something shudder through her, and abruptly, her stomach twisted into a painful knot. Pain slithered through her limbs and she staggered. It felt as if a hundred hands were plucking at her flesh, seeking to strip it from her bones. She squalled and felt her body contort and then she staggered, unable to stand.

‘Neferata,’ Morath cried out, grabbing her as she slumped. He dragged her awkwardly back, away from the throne. ‘What–’

‘It’s him!’ she shrieked, shoving him aside and scrambling away from the throne. The feeling of revulsion lessened, and the pain waned. She spat out the black blood that had suddenly filled her mouth, and looked at her arms, where black veins pulsed angrily.

‘Nagash is dead,’ Morath said, looking at the throne.

‘So am I, necromancer,’ Neferata snapped. ‘He’s there. Some part of him is in those stones, clinging like a leech. It’s like a knife scoring my nerves.’

‘I see something,’ Morath said, stepping forwards. She resisted the urge to cringe as he drew close to the throne. ‘Look,’ he said, holding his corpse-light aloft to reveal dust-covered shapes which were spread out around the foot of the throne and spilled down the steps of the dais.

‘What are they?’

‘Tomes,’ Morath muttered, dropping to his knees before the throne. ‘How long have they lain here?’

‘Does it matter?’ She turned away from the throne and gritted her teeth. She could still feel the nauseating sensations. ‘Do what we brought you here to do, and be quick about it!’ As Morath set to clearing the dust and mould from the tomes, she strode towards the doors, wanting to get as far from the throne as possible.

The sounds of battle were growing louder. She felt no fear for her handmaidens. She knew from experience that even the most inexperienced of their kind was far tougher to kill than anything yet living in this mountain. Her blood was strong, and it made others strong as well.

It would make the world strong. She smiled softly at the thought, knowing even as she did so that the thought was not hers. Some small part of her rebelled then, angry. She would not do as Ushoran had done. There would be no aristocracy of the night, battening fat on the blood of mortals. That way lay stagnation and cessation. That way lay rebellion and danger.

No, she would rule softly and gently, from behind curtains and viziers. She would stand behind all of the thrones of the world and their politics and wars would be her parlour games, enacted for her amusement down the long, unending corridor of years. It would be a great game, that.

Bones clattered beneath her feet. She looked down. Piles of brown and yellow lay heaped in the corners, as if some great force had swept them aside. Rotted armour and rusting weapons lay amongst the piles, enough to outfit an army. Dust and cobwebs and the filth of ages provided a pathetic barrow for the dead. She glanced back at the throne.

‘You failed, old skull. But Neferata will not,’ she said, baring her fangs. She blinked. The veins of abn-i-khat had seemed to flicker in response to her words, and she felt a chill curl around her spine. Momentarily unnerved, she said, ‘Morath, have you found anything useful in that rubbish?’

‘I… don’t know,’ he said. He sat on the dais steps, a crumbling book in his hands. The glow from the hand had dimmed and it lay near his foot, discarded. He thumbed through the crumbling pages cautiously. ‘They’ve just sat here for centuries…’ he said, as if offended by the thought. ‘Why wouldn’t the scavengers have taken them?’

‘Maybe they tried,’ Neferata said, gesturing to the crumbling bodies. ‘Have you found what we need, or not?’ Before he could reply, the sound of swift footsteps on the stone echoed through the chamber. ‘Prepare yourself, necromancer,’ she said, loosening her sword in its sheath. She could smell the rat-musk now and she thought that she caught a glimpse of red eyes in the darkness of one of the holes which marred the wall.

‘There are so many of them – so much knowledge,’ Morath almost moaned, flicking through crumbling pages, his eyes widened as if to drink in the faded scrawling that covered each page. ‘What we could do with all of this–’

Neferata glanced at him. ‘I care nothing for Nagash’s scribbling, Morath. Find the right damn one before it’s too late–’

With a squealing cry, more than a dozen rat-things burst from one of the close tunnels, carrying short stabbing spears and rough wooden shields. They charged towards Neferata and she moved to meet them. Morath shot to his feet and spat harsh, croaking syllables, and a curling spike of dark, blistering energy carved a swathe of destruction through the horde. Neferata was hot on its heels and her sword smashed down through a shield and into the furry body cowering beneath it.

In moments the surviving rats were scampering back the way they had come. Neferata spun as Rasha and Layla entered the throne room through the doors, covered in blood, some of it their own. ‘They’re regrouping,’ Rasha said. ‘And more are coming besides. Morath was right – we’ve walked into a nest of the foul beasts.’

‘More than a nest,’ Morath said, looking longingly at the books and scrolls scattered across the dais. ‘If W’soran was telling the truth, there’s a damn city down there and enough troops to keep us busy until the world ends.’ He snatched one of the books up and flipped through it. ‘We could kill thousands and they’d still keep coming.’ He clutched the crumbling book to his chest.

‘Then it is best if we take our leave,’ Neferata said. ‘Is that what we came for?’ She gestured to the book in his hands with her sword.

He hesitated. His eyes darted to the other tomes scattered about. ‘I-I think so.’ It was plain that he wanted to claim otherwise. Morath had a hunger for knowledge that rivalled the dwarfs’ love of gold.

‘Do you think, or do you know?’ Neferata snarled, taking a step towards him. ‘I have no time for games, Morath. There’s an army breathing down our neck and we won’t have a second chance at this!’

Morath hugged the book more tightly, but he met her gaze. His posture stiffened. ‘This is the one,’ he said more harshly.

‘We won’t make it ten yards past those doors, mistress,’ Rasha said bluntly. ‘I can hear them out there. They’re all around us. We were under siege the moment we left the ghoul warrens!’

Neferata hissed in exasperation. So close and yet to be deterred by vermin was as complete an insult as she could conceive. Had this been Ushoran’s hope all along? That she would fall here and her bones join those–

‘Ha!’ Neferata pointed to the bones that lined the hall. ‘Here. Here is where we shall find our reinforcements.’

‘It will take all of the strength I have left,’ Morath said, not quite protesting. He was speaking the truth, she knew. He was paler than normal and looked shrunken, somehow. He cradled the mouldering tome to his chest as if it were a child.

‘Do it,’ Neferata demanded. ‘Do it or be damned, Morath. If you want my protection, then make yourself worthy of it.’

Morath nodded, grim-faced. Neferata felt something like a caress across her heart, and then Morath raised his hands and black energies, painful to look upon, curled from his fingers. A strange smell filled the air, which would have choked the living.

To Neferata, however, it smelled like the sweetest of wines. The winds of darkness clamoured to be used, pressing themselves upon the world through Morath’s ritualistic gestures. Neferata gulped down a greedy breath, drinking in the stray magics with instinctive abandon. They invigorated her more than even the headiest swallow of blood. Was this what W’soran felt as he employed his necromantic magics? She glanced to the side. It was obvious that the others were feeling it as well. Even as the living felt repulsed by the magic of the grave, the dead were seemingly drawn to it.

Morath spoke and his voice, while not deep, burned and echoed amongst the stones of the hall. Brown bones which had soaked in the grime of centuries burst upwards on tattered feet and clawed for the sky. Long-dead things lurched into the light of his spell, shedding dirt and immobility like water. Moans that were more a memory of sound than sound itself settled heavily on the air.

Neferata stepped forwards. Ancient weapons rattled as the dead raised them in salute. A hundred skulls, covered in veils of filth, returned her gaze with empty ones of their own. The floor and walls shook and shuddered as a cloud of cold, wet air and mist seeped from the pores of the stones. The mist swept about the feet of the dead and rose up before them like a wave, disgorging the emaciated shapes of warriors in ancient bronze armour, whose eyes glowed with a sinister light.

Morath stepped past them, face drawn and haggard. ‘The Yaghur served Nagash for centuries. As they will now serve you, Lady Neferata,’ he said. He slumped on the dais, his limbs twitching as if they ached. ‘I’ve wrenched the dead from the guts of this place. Hopefully it will be enough.’

‘It tires you,’ Neferata said, looking at him.

‘Of course it tires me,’ Morath said. ‘I am wrenching the dead out of their graves. It is like a game of tug-of-war, between them and me. If I set a foot wrong or make the wrong gesture, I’ll join them in the darkness.’

‘W’soran seems to have none of your difficulties,’ Neferata said. She could hear the skittering of the ratkin in their holes. They were regrouping and regaining their courage in the sanctuary the darkness provided. She wondered at their hesitation. Were they that cowardly, or was it perhaps that they felt the raw essence of evil that lingered here?

‘Your kind,’ Morath spat the word, ‘have no difficulties channelling the magic required to pull the dead from their sleep. Or so W’soran says, at any rate.’

‘You don’t believe him?’ Neferata said, raising her sword. She glanced at Rasha, who nodded. Shapes moved in the darkness outside the doors to the throne room.

‘Would you? He lies as a matter of course,’ Morath said, clutching the tome he held more tightly. ‘He doesn’t care for Mourkain… only for his damned experiments. If he didn’t have the captives from battles and raids he’d take my folk and make monsters of them!’ His voice rose in pitch.

Neferata watched him reassert control of himself. ‘Teach me,’ she said. ‘Teach us.’

‘What?’ Morath said.

Neferata sank down to her knees before him. ‘Teach us, Morath. W’soran will not do it, the jealous old creature. But you can. Teach us your magics, these magics you say that we can do so well, and we will use them in defence of Mourkain and the Strigoi. We will take on the burden of death, even as we are meant to do,’ she said, letting her will add weight to her words. His mind, normally silver-sharp and bright, was dull now, exhausted and weak. It crumbled beneath her subtle assault, her words and pleas mingling with his until Morath of Mourkain could no longer tell his own thoughts from what she had put into his head.

‘I... yes,’ he said hesitantly, his face crumbling. ‘But first we must escape this trap.’

‘Leave that to me,’ Neferata said, rising to her feet. She looked at Layla and Rasha, both of whom still looked exhausted and weak, though that was changing as they bathed in the raw death-stuff dripping from the floating nightmare forms which surrounded them. ‘Sisters, will you follow me?’

‘Always, my lady,’ Rasha said hoarsely. Layla nodded, her eyes blazing with hunger. Neferata looked to Morath, but he lay on the dais, barely breathing. The necromancer would be of no further help. The dead looked to her silently, their wills bound to hers by Morath’s magic.

‘Then it is time to remind these creatures that they rule here only at our sufferance,’ Neferata said, raising her sword as small, vicious shapes scuttled into the throne room in a verminous tide. They came in a chattering wave, much as they had before, albeit in greater numbers. The front rank of the creatures halted as they caught sight of the newly risen dead and those behind stumbled into them. Neferata seized the opportunity and gestured sharply. ‘Take them,’ she snarled.

Before the vermin could react, Rasha and Layla leapt to the attack, and the dead moved with them in an eerie, creaking harmony. Rasha stretched out an arm and impaled a quivering rat-thing on her blade. With a growl she yanked it up and let the writhing, squealing form slide down her weapon’s length. Layla chopped heads and tails with gleeful abandon, covering herself in the foul blood of the creatures like a child playing in mud. The dead men hewed and hacked at their scurrying enemies with something that might have been personal animosity. Though the creatures they had once fought were long dead and gone, the current generation of ratkin knew just who – and what – it was that they faced and long-buried fear burst through their veneer of menace, puncturing their courage and sending many fleeing into side passages and tunnels, their shrieks and cries adding to the cacophony of the conflict.

Neferata watched the slaughter unfold in satisfaction. The ratkin broke within moments, their organised ranks falling into a disorderly rout. They fled in all directions, and those who didn’t do so fast enough were trampled underfoot. Neferata knew that it was only surprise that had allowed her tiny force to accomplish such a defeat. She also knew that it wouldn’t last long. The rats had lurked in the walls of Nagashizzar for too long; they wouldn’t give up that easily. It was time they took their leave.

She sheathed her blade and stooped, scooping up Morath as easily as a mother might lift a child. Her flesh quivered as she stepped back from the throne; again she saw the shadowy shape there, its skull wreathed in smoke and flame, and her heart, long since dead and still, shuddered in its cage of bone. Then the moment passed and the throne was empty.

She spun and moved swiftly towards the doors, followed by her handmaidens. The spectral warriors charged ahead in silence, clearing the path. For the first time in centuries, the dead marched in Nagashizzar, and they brought misery with them to those who had thought themselves secure in their mastery. As they made their way out of Nagashizzar, the whispers began again, stronger, as if the touch of dark magic had given them a strength they had previously been lacking.

‘I am coming,’ Neferata hissed in reply. And somewhere, in the darkness, something cried out in triumph.