Neferata

ONE




Lahmia, the City of the Dawn

(–1170 Imperial Reckoning)

Lahmia burned and Neferata ran.

Quicker than thought, with no more weight than a shadow, she ran, and the city died around her, one street at a time. Black smoke weighed down the air and hungry flames crawled across the stone and clay and thatch. There was an ache in her chest, though whether it was from the destruction of all that she had built or the dagger that had so recently been thrust into her heart by Alcadizzar she couldn’t say.

Behind her, hooves thundered suddenly in pursuit. She heard the calls of the riders; they thought her easy sport, one more lost woman in a fallen city. One more woman to be served as always happened when cities fell. Pale lips skinned back, revealing teeth like razors, and dark eyes flashed. Rage, sudden and overwhelming, hammered at her temples, and she skidded to a stop, dust and smoke curling around her slender frame.

Clad in ragged silks and ruined armour, she spun to face the riders, fingers hooked like the talons of a lioness and her jaws wide, her fangs flashing in the light of the fires that curled and crackled around her. The lead horseman jerked back on his reins, his eyes widening in surprise. There were three more behind him, clamouring for a share of the spoils.

Then, in a whip-crack of startled air, she was moving. She swung low, letting a spear skid over her shoulder. It scored a trail of sparks across the back-plate of her iron cuirass as she drove her shoulder into the horse’s chest. It bugled in surprise and reared, hooves gouging the air. Snarling, Neferata sliced open the animal’s exposed belly with her claws. The horse screamed and toppled, carrying its rider with it. The man’s screams joined those of his mount as he was crushed beneath its weight, but Neferata didn’t stay to listen.

One foot on the dying animal’s thrashing hindquarter was enough to propel her into the air. She swam through the smoke, piercing it like a stone from a sling. Her hands and feet caressed the long skull of the next horse as her weight broke its neck and knocked it down. The rider drew the curved blade at his side as the animal fell and her palm caught him in the jaw. Bone splintered and burst at her touch and he catapulted backwards as she snatched the sword from his hand.

A spear skipped across her pale cheek, releasing a trickle of black, sour blood, and she shrieked, battering the weapon aside with her new sword. She twisted and spun as the horseman charged past her, and caught the blade of his companion’s spear as it dipped for her belly. She wrenched it and its wielder from the saddle and slammed him to the ground. Stamping on his throat, she yanked the spear from his grip and sent it slicing through the air towards the remaining horseman.

His horse bucked and kicked as it fled past her, back the way it had come, dragging the body of its rider behind it. Neferata touched the wound on her cheek. It was already closing. Hunger flared through her, causing her vision to dim and redden at the edges.

She was tired. And hungry as well; she hadn’t fed in what felt like days. Behind her, she heard the jangling rattle-call of a ram’s horn and the stomp of marching feet. The riders hadn’t been alone. She looked at the sword in her hand and her grip tightened. She had time. They were not so close that they could catch her. She could escape.

Or she could fight them. She could fight all of them. They would never find her, never catch her. She could kill them all, one by one, until they fled the city. She closed her eyes, imagining it. Then she snorted and shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I couldn’t could I?’ Not alone at least. Alone, she was nothing more than a monster. The word pricked her like a hornet’s sting and she growled. No, she needed to flee. To rebuild and regain what she had lost here, somewhere else.

A moan caught her attention. She swayed towards the first horseman she had downed. The animal was dead, but its rider lived, albeit crushed. He groaned and shoved at the beast feebly. One arm was pinned beneath the horse’s weight, and his face was turning purple. Something in him had been broken, she knew. She could smell it rising off him like the sweet tang of roasted pork.

Neferata stabbed the sword down into the ground and sank into a crouch. The rider’s eyes bulged as she crawled slowly across the horse’s body towards him, her eyes gleaming like twin black suns. She drank in the rank musk of his fear as she reached for him, the tips of her fingers caressing his cheeks and chin. He was barely more than a boy.

Hunger spiked and her grip tightened. He squealed as she jerked his head to the side and exposed his pulsing throat. Neferata laughed as she buried her fangs into the sweetness of him. The tang of his blood filled her nostrils, inundating her senses…

The Worlds Edge Mountains

(–800 Imperial Reckoning)

The dream-recollection evaporated, taking with it the memory of heat and blood. Its remnants were brushed aside by something cold and dark that reached out of the shadowy place between waking and sleeping for her. It was malevolence carried on musty wings of alien intent. There was a sound like crows on a battlefield in the dusk and a harsh whining moan that seemed to echo from everywhere and nowhere.

She saw the Corpse Geometries – though she did not know how she knew their name – rise and expand across the soul of everything, caging the rebellious ka and keeping them safe and bound from outer predation. All was silent. All was perfect.

Come, Neferata… Come, Queen of Lahmia!

Cold talons clutched at her, seeking to draw her back down into the dark of sleep. The foul taste of grave-soil filled her mouth and a voice like needles scoring bone spoke, scratching a litany of cold fire across her mind.

Neferata awoke.

Her eyes opened and she grunted. Gone was the sensation of being dragged down into unknown depths, replaced by the sting of cold and the gnawing ache of the bloodthirst. Whiteness filled her vision, gleaming in the moonlight. She rose to her feet, scattering the blanket of snow that had covered her and protected her from the harsh light of day. She wore white furs and her hair was bound back in a single thick plait that tumbled down her back like a glossy black serpent.

Neferata had not changed much since the fall of Lahmia. Indeed, change was now almost anathema to her. Her every fibre yearned for constancy, for the world to cease its inexorable march. But she had learned to her cost that to attempt to hold time frozen was to court destruction.

That was one of the reasons that things had ended as they had in Lahmia.

For a moment, she indulged in her memories, letting the illusion of peace drift across her mind. She could see the white stone of Lahmia’s walls and feel the cool sea-breeze rolling in off the harbour. She could smell the exotic smells and hear the clamour of the Red Silk District, where men of a dozen nations revelled between voyages. She could hear the soft music of the celebrations held for the good and the great in the District of the Golden Lotus. She could taste the strong eastern wine which was poured into clay cups that held stubbornly to all of the tastes that had gone before. She could feel the pleasure-pain of the hixa’s sting.

The City of the Dawn had been the greatest and most beautiful of the cities of Nehekhara, guided by wise, undying kings into a golden age. She had been of an age, in life, to recall when kings lived for centuries before infirmity set in. Her own span had been measured in decades before Arkhan the Black had come to Lahmia. She had been the Daughter of Moon, then, and queen. For many before her, the latter had been, at best, a ceremonial title. The Queens of Lahmia were supposed to be removed from the mundane matter of politics, but Neferata had been a different sort of queen. The king had been, at best, an erratic ruler and much of the burden of governing Lahmia day-to-day had fallen on her slim shoulders. It had been a burden she relished.

Arkhan had come in chains, with his heart cleft in two. Paralysed and trapped inside his form, Arkhan the Black had been dragged into Lahmia in the Hour of the Dead by Lamashizzar, her king and husband. The last of Nagash’s immortals and the only one to survive that final, bloody war that saw the Great Necromancer flee into sour northern lands, much like the ones she now found herself in.

Lamashizzar had desired to rip the immortal’s secrets from him by force and he had succeeded, to a degree. She looked down at her hand, noting the black veins that crawled beneath the pale skin. But she had learned so much more. And when that knowledge had threatened to destroy her, Arkhan had saved her life, though he knew it not.

She thought of the immortal, his lean face swimming to the surface of her mind. He had not been quite handsome, but arresting nonetheless. The image wavered and dispersed, leaving a skull in its place. Change took them all, in the end. Arkhan was no longer the being he had been. She thought of when she had last seen him, in the burning streets of Bel Aliad. A walking corpse, clad in black armour and red robes, dealing death with every step he took.

Arkhan’s declaration of war on the living had been one of many things which had necessitated her abandonment of the caliphates for the primitive lands of the savage north. She looked around.

Trees surrounded her, clawing arthritically at the dark sky. Winter in the mountains was an ugly thing, she thought. Then, winter was ugly everywhere, but perhaps especially here, in these rough, wild hills, beneath the ghostly light of the black sun. Neferata turned north, her eyes searching.

The black sun was still there, as it had been every day and night for close to a decade now. It was not the real sun. Instead, it was more like an afterimage, a blotch of darker-than-dark, burned into the skin of the world. It rose at night in mockery of the moon and burned black over the mountains. Neferata felt the cold fire of its rays as it hung bloated and hungry for light below the moon, like some abominable beacon, drawing her towards it. At first, she had tried to resist. In Sartosa, it had been easy. She could ignore its subtle caress across the surface of her soul. But here and now, there was no escape.

It plucked at her thoughts, infiltrating them. In her dreams, she felt its gaze and in her waking moments it blazed at her from its northern nest. It called, and Neferata came. No matter how much she might wish otherwise. No one else could see it. It called to her and her alone, though she could not say why; it was a distant whisper that drifted just at the edge of her hearing, as annoying in its way as an incessant shout.

Angered, she looked south, towards Nehekhara, and a pang clawed at her chest. She reached beneath the heavy white furs she wore and let her fingertips drift over the spot where Alcadizzar’s dagger had entered her flesh, seeking her heart. There was no scar there to mar her marble flesh, but she could still feel the traitor’s blade.

Yes, she had been a queen once, centuries ago. Queen and goddess of a vibrant land, she had asked so little of her people and given so much in return and been rewarded with treachery and pain. Once, she had thought to go back, to re-take what was rightfully hers. That was impossible now. Only the dead ruled Nehekhara, and though she was not truly alive, Neferata was anything but dead.

No, Nehekhara – Lahmia – was dead and dust and there was nothing for her there, nothing but fast-fading memories of a different world and a different woman.

‘Do you smell it?’ a soft voice asked. Neferata glanced at the woman rising from the snow nearby and blinked in momentary confusion. Then she tilted her head and tasted the wind. Her eyes widened.

‘Blood, freshly spilled,’ the former Queen of Lahmia breathed. No wonder she had been dreaming. She stretched, thrusting her hands towards the moon. She felt no soreness or stiffness, even hungry as she was, but old habits were wont to die hard. She luxuriated in the feeling of powerful muscles pulling against one another. As a mortal, she had never truly indulged the limits of her body, but in the centuries since the tainted blood of Arkhan the Black had mingled with an assassin’s poison in her veins, Neferata had come to derive a certain satisfaction from the raw physicality that immortality had conferred upon her.

She could run faster and longer than any beast and her strength was as that of the great saurians of the Southlands. She could follow the beat of a man’s heart and track the sweet scent of his blood for miles. And all she required in return was what any predator required. Blood. Dollop or deluge, the blood was the life, and Neferata wanted to live. She looked at the other woman and said, ‘Where?’

‘To the north, I think,’ the woman said, brushing snow from her shoulders. Like Neferata she wore heavy furs, though she no more felt the cold than her mistress. ‘The cold dulls my senses, however,’ she added hesitantly, with the wary modesty of a servant with a temperamental master.

‘It dulls all of our senses, Naaima,’ Neferata said, stroking the other immortal’s cheek. ‘But dulled or not, we will follow them. It has been too long since we last fed. Wake the others.’ Naaima caught her hand and held it for a moment. Then she nodded and set about thrusting her hands into the snow to dislodge it and reveal four more huddled shapes. One by one the vampires snapped alert as the smell of blood invigorated them.

Neferata watched them awaken, a familiar sense of possessiveness rising in her. Each of them was a part of her in some way. They were all blood of her blood, having been gifted with her blood-kiss in the centuries since Lahmia had fallen. There had been more once, but these were all that remained. Neferata grimaced and turned away, looking south once more. It had been weeks since they had seen any sign of their pursuers. Perhaps they had given up.

No. Not her, not the little hawk. Neferata repressed a growl. Nonetheless, they had been wandering in the mountains for weeks now. With the coming of winter, the hills were barren of sustenance, and it was only their inhuman vitality that had kept the little group moving. But now, there was blood on the air.

‘It smells like the greatest feast our father ever laid out, Khaled,’ one of the vampires squeaked, her eyes wide as she stripped the snow from her glossy hair. Anmar bin Muntasir had been young when Neferata had delivered her up into immortality, only seventeen at most. Sometimes, Neferata regretted having done so, though she couldn’t say why.

‘Hunger plays funny tricks, sister,’ Khaled al Muntasir replied. Anmar’s brother had been given the blood-kiss within moments of his sister. Older by a decade before he had ceased aging, he was slender and handsome, and he had taken to an immortal’s life with a relish that was almost unsettling. He sniffed the air and let his palm fall onto the pommel of the slim Arabyan blade hanging from his hip. His dark eyes found Neferata’s and he smiled. ‘My lady,’ he said, inclining his head with courtly grace.

Neferata smiled, amused. She glanced at the final two members of her small coterie. Rasha bin Wasim, like Khaled and Anmar, was Arabyan, though she was a daughter of the desert rather than the cities as the siblings were and taciturn where they were talkative. Lupa Stregga, in contrast, had been a native of Sartosa in life. Where the others were dark, she was fair, and where they were subtle, she was loud. Stregga inhaled the air with a snort and reached into the snow to retrieve her sword. It was a short-bladed chopping thing, favoured by the sailors of her native land. ‘Smells like durra to me,’ she said, looking at Neferata. ‘Then, it’s been a dog’s age since I’ve seen one.’

‘What do they taste like?’ Anmar said, looking at the taller woman. ‘And what’s a durra?’

‘The little under-men,’ Stregga said with a shrug. ‘And I never thought to try and take a bite.’

‘Probably wise,’ Naaima said. ‘The dawi are not men. There is stone in their blood.’ She looked at Neferata. ‘But it is not just dawi blood we smell, I think…’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Neferata said. She licked her lips. She looked at the black sun and then away. The others looked at her eagerly, waiting on her command. They trembled like hounds straining at the leash, and hunger made their facades slip slightly, revealing the beast beneath the skin. Neferata knew that she was no different. Her human beauty had been replaced by something altogether more feline.

‘We hunt,’ she hissed.

They bounded through the snow like flickering shadows, shaking off the sluggishness of daylight torpor. The scent of blood curled and splashed through the air, teasing them on. Neferata took the lead, running wolf-swift through the trees. As she ran, she drew the short, heavy blade that was sheathed at her side.

She had been taught the art of the blade by Abhorash himself. The champion of the City of the Dawn had been a man of few words, but he was an unparallelled swordsman and a warrior without peer. Neferata could not match him – she knew of none who could – but thanks to his teaching she was better with a blade than many hardened warriors walking the world today.

She had not thought of Abhorash in many years. Not since his betrayal in Araby. The thought still sent a flush of rage spurting through her. They had all betrayed her, Ushoran and W’soran and Abhorash.

Every man betrayed her, in the end. Lamashizzar had tried to take her power from her, and reduce her to an ornamental queen. Arkhan had given her immortality and then died, again, before he could share it with her. And Alcadizzar had turned on her, and turned the other great cities against Lahmia.

A throaty laugh caused her to glance aside. Khaled had his own blade out and he was keeping pace with her, his eyes glowing with a ravenous hunger. The only man she had given the blood-kiss since Bel Aliad. She hoped she wouldn’t regret it. Neferata leapt, her sandals scraping against bark as she ran up the trunk of the tree. The others followed. There were roads open to vampires that were denied to any other creature save birds or vermin.

She leapt from branch to branch, tasting the wind as she went. Sounds joined the smell. Weapons clashing and the screams of the dying rode the night-wind. Hairy shapes charged through the trees below, snorting and growling. Neferata stopped, perching in the crook of a branch. Her eyes narrowed.

She had encountered the twisted beast-men only once before, but she recognised them easily enough. They were hideous amalgamations of man and beast, with the worst traits of both. They stank of a dark corruption, though their blood was palatable enough.

The creatures spilled into a clearing, launching themselves with berserk abandon at their opponents. Neferata realised that they were seeing the final bloody moments of an ambush. She saw small, stocky forms littering the snow.

‘Dawi,’ Naaima hissed in answer to Neferata’s unasked question.

Neferata peered closer at the broad bodies, nodding shallowly. Where had they come from? The dawi were dwellers in the depths. They rarely trod the open earth, and only then when it was absolutely necessary. Whatever they had been doing, wherever they had been going, they weren’t going there any more. The ambush was done.

A large beast brayed in triumph and brandished its gore-encrusted axe at the dark ceiling of trees overhead. It was a massive creature, all simian muscle and taut sinew, with a belly like a stove and splay-hooves that ground the snow underfoot into slush. Scraps of armour and badly tanned hide struggled to contain its girth as it stooped and jerked the body of its opponent into the frosty air. All around it, similar scenes played out as its companions stooped to scavenge from the bodies that still steamed in the chill mountain air.

The dwarfs had fought bravely, but in the end, had been too few. The beasts’ attack had been hard and wild, seemingly driven as they were by the talons of a desperate winter. Hunger gnawed at their bellies; some had already fallen to filling their gullets, slicing open the fine mail and jerkins worn by the dwarfs and burying their snouts in the tough flesh beneath. Others fought one another over the scraps and silver trinkets scoured from the bodies.

Wolf-teeth snapped behind goatish lips as the pack-leader drove back those who drew too close; it swung its axe wildly, and stamped its hooves as it tried to keep the body of its most recent opponent for itself.

The dwarf coughed and blood spattered his beard. Nonetheless, he grabbed the hand that held him and squeezed. Chaos-born bone popped and cracked and the beast screamed in shock and pain, releasing its hold. The dwarf fell heavily, his armour clattering. Blindly, he groped through the snow for a weapon. Talons speared through his hair and sank into his scalp and he was jerked backwards and sent hurtling spine-first into a crooked tree.

The dwarf groaned as he collapsed into the snow. Dwarfs were harder than most creatures, but even stone cracked if you hit it hard enough. He coughed again and tried to push himself upright. Blood drenched the dwarf’s limbs and stained his armour, and the heady scent of it filled Neferata’s nostrils as she looked down. The beastman stalked forwards, cradling its broken hand and swiping at the air with its axe. The others crowded around it, baying like eager hounds.

‘Come on then,’ the dwarf spat hoarsely, jerking upright, a rock in his hand. Pushing himself onto his feet, he hefted the rock. ‘I’ll match you stone for stone,’ he said weakly. It was an empty boast, Neferata knew. The dwarf was dying on his feet, and his blood had turned the snow pink. The beastman roared and launched itself into an awkward charge, its axe cocked back for a skull-crushing blow.

Neferata moved.

She struck the tree above the dwarf’s head and catapulted towards the beastman. Steel flashed and the beastman stumbled to a stop, blinking quizzically. Behind it, Neferata had landed in a crouch. One arm was stretched out, the crude steel sword held tight in her pale fingers. She glanced over her shoulder and her eyes met the dwarf’s. The moment was broken by the hiss of hot blood sliding off the tip of the sword to plop into the snow. The dwarf’s eyes rolled up into his head and he pitched forwards, unconscious at last.

The beastman made a curious sound as its head rolled off its shoulders to land in the snow near the unconscious dwarf. The other creatures drew back, whining and growling. Neferata rose smoothly to her feet, her arm still extended. She swept her gaze across the gathered beastmen and smiled. ‘Take them,’ she breathed.

A large beastman howled and lunged for her, swinging a spiked club. Something crashed down atop its head and shoulders, driving it snout-first into the snow inches from Neferata. Khaled rose, wrenching his sword from the pulverised skull of the twitching beastman. Black-haired and bearded, his hawk-like features twisted into a fierce expression as he gave a bark of laughter.

The remaining beastmen hesitated, their nostrils flaring. Snow drifted down from the branches above. A beast screeched as a figure dropped down beside it, cleaving through its shoulder and chest. Naaima spun, jerking her sword free of the dying beast and bringing it crashing around into the neck of another. She danced among them for a moment, leaving carnage in her wake, before she sprang to Neferata’s side, blood coating her bare, pale arms to the shoulders.

‘They smell foul and taste worse, I’d wager,’ she hissed, her dark eyes narrowing.

‘Needs must, when the gods demand, Naaima,’ Neferata said, bringing her blade up and letting it extend in front of her. She grasped the hilt with both hands and chuckled. ‘Their blood is red enough, regardless.’

‘It’s not the bottle, it’s the vintage, Lady Neferata,’ Khaled said, stepping to join them as the beasts pawed the snow and gathered their courage. He flung off his furs, revealing a tight cuirass of banded and beaten metal over a jerkin of thin, brightly coloured silk. He spun his sword with a flick of his wrist, his eyes meeting those of each of the beastmen in turn.

‘And what vintage would these abominations be, Khaled?’ Naaima said.

‘Something unsubtle and northern,’ Khaled said, grinning insouciantly at her.

‘Silence,’ Neferata said, and the pair fell quiet. She ran a finger along the thin runnel cut into the length of her blade, where the blood had collected. Delicately she licked the tip of her finger and grimaced. ‘Sour,’ she said.

‘Needs must, Neferata,’ Naaima murmured, her tone only vaguely teasing.

Neferata shot a glare at Naaima and then swung the sword, splattering the nearest beastmen with blood. ‘Needs must,’ she said. ‘Twelve left.’

The beastmen had got over their confusion. They started forwards in a howling, stamping mass, drawing courage from numbers. Something snarled and sprang from the snow to the side, bringing down a squalling, goat-headed monster. The desert-leopard’s fiery coat stood out in the snow as it shrieked a challenge at the beastmen before it casually bit the top of the goat-thing’s head off.

‘Ha! Cheat!’ Stregga snarled, springing from a tree to wrap her long arms around a simian brute’s head. She gave it a vicious twist as her feet touched the snow, snapping the creature’s spine and nearly jerking it from its back. She finished the job with all the efficiency of a fish-wife and shook the bloody spinal column at the leopard. ‘Cheat, Rasha! No points for you!’ she said, and the leopard snarled in reply. Neferata smiled slightly at the sight of the beast. The changing of skins came less easily to those who had accepted her blood-kiss than it did herself or Naaima. It had taken Rasha almost a century to learn how to do it without agony or mistake, and only because Neferata had tutored her relentlessly in the practice. The others still couldn’t; not even Khaled, quick study that he was. He might learn in time, if he survived.

A beastman spun and swung a crude hammer at Stregga’s head. With a wild cry, Anmar interposed herself. Her sword pierced the hammer-wielder’s gut and lifted it off its cloven feet, hurling it backwards where it landed limply near the leopard. Anmar panted slightly, her body shaking from blood-hunger and exertion.

‘Nine now I think you’ll find, my queen,’ Khaled said, looking at Neferata, who said nothing. She and the others glided forwards. The six vampires surrounded the nine beasts, closing in on them from all sides. The battle that followed was brief and bloody. In moments, every beast was dead and their foul blood warmed the bellies of their killers.

‘Tastes like goat,’ Stregga said, sucking blood from a dollop of hairy flesh. Her eyes narrowed. ‘Or like what I recall goat tasting like.’

‘It tastes foul enough without you adding to it,’ Rasha, now returned to her own shape, snapped, letting a beastman fall from her grip to thump into the pink-stained snow. She wiped the back of her hand across her jaw, smearing more blood than she removed.

‘Needs must, children,’ Neferata said, looking down at the crumpled form of the dwarf. He was breathing shallowly, and his blood smelled strangely acrid, like hot metal on a forge fire. She prodded his body with her sword, and he groaned.

‘Tough little creature,’ Khaled murmured, sidling up beside her. He cleaned his blade with a hank of beard torn from one of the dead dwarfs. ‘Still… he won’t last long out here, not like that.’

‘No,’ Neferata said, not looking at him. She prodded the dwarf again. The dawi had not been a common sight in Nehekhara. Indeed, she had not seen one at all until many years later, in Araby. And that one had been dead and stuffed as part of a caliph’s trophy room. This one did not seem much healthier.

‘Kill him,’ Naaima said as she handed Neferata the top of a beastman’s skull, stripped free of flesh, inverted and filled with blood. Neferata drank deeply, emptying the makeshift bowl in moments. She made a face as she handed the bowl back to Naaima.

The Cathayan vampire had strung up several of the bodies and was systematically draining them of every drop of their filthy blood, and collecting it in upturned shields and helmets collected from the dwarf dead. Anmar was busy filling the heretofore-empty water-skins the group had brought. Blood congealed quickly, especially in the cold, but a few stones properly heated and dropped into the skins would bring the blood back to something approaching edibility. It was a stop-gap measure at best – drinking old blood could be as debilitating as going too long without fresh blood.

Still, there was no telling how long they would be in these mountains. Neferata sighed and looked at Naaima. ‘It seems a waste,’ she said.

‘We cannot drink from one of his kind,’ Naaima said.

‘That we know of,’ Khaled said, squatting beside the dwarf. Naaima glared at him. He returned her glare with a raised eyebrow. ‘Have we ever tried?’ he said.

‘Feel free, brother,’ Anmar said. ‘Show us whether your bravery extends to your stomach.’

Khaled grimaced as the others laughed. Neferata sank gracefully to her haunches. ‘Enough. We must go. I will deal with him.’

She raised her sword in both hands and pressed the tip of the blade to the point where the dwarf’s skull met his spine. It would be a merciful act – quick and clean. He groaned again, and muttered something in the language of his people. The words crashed together like rocks in a basket, unintelligible and meaningless.

All save one.

She did not understand it. Could not, for she did not know what it meant or to what it might refer. Nonetheless, it strummed a chord within her, and her spirit shuddered in its sheath of cold flesh.

Neferata rose smoothly to her feet, her face stiff and expressionless. She turned north, and the black sun blazed as if in answer to the question that swam to the surface of her mind. The others fell silent, sensing her disquiet.

‘What are you?’ she muttered, half expecting an answer. As usual, none was forthcoming.

‘Neferata,’ Naaima asked, reaching out to touch her mistress’s shoulder. ‘What is it? What did he say?’

‘Mourkain,’ Neferata said, repeating the dwarf’s word. She said it again, tasting the dark edges of it. ‘Mourkain,’ she whispered. And the black sun blazed with darkling joy.