Neferata

EIGHT




The City of Bel Aliad

(–1150 Imperial Reckoning)

Neferata reclined in her palanquin, protected from the sun by curtains of muslin and silk. Cushions of all shapes, sizes and colours decorated the interior and she smiled as Anmar lounged across them like a cat. The corner of the girl’s mouth was streaked with blood and her eyes held the dreamy gleam of one who had fed well and deeply.

She was so like Khalida, albeit lacking in the natural ferocity that Neferata’s long-dead cousin had possessed. Tenderly, Neferata reached out and rubbed the drying blood from Anmar’s mouth. ‘Your brother has been up to something,’ she said.

‘My brother is always up to something,’ Anmar said lazily. She pushed herself up. ‘You are not angry, are you, my lady?’ she said.

‘I encourage initiative,’ Neferata said. ‘Don’t I, Naaima, my sweet?’

Naaima snorted. She sat at the back of the palanquin with Rasha. Neferata had been both impressed and pleased to find that both her oldest and newest handmaidens had survived the debacle of the attack on Bel Aliad, among others. Abhorash had taught the warriors of Bel Aliad well, and they had shattered the desert tribes in the months of her captivity, scattering them to the four corners of the Great Desert. But Neferata’s handmaidens, like their mistress, were made of sterner stuff.

‘When it suits your plans,’ Naaima said.

Neferata chuckled. ‘True.’ Her smile faded. ‘But the privilege of initiative must be earned, and your brother, little leopard, has yet to do that. He has, if anything, earned himself a short leash.’

‘We are simply eager to explore the power you have gifted to us,’ Anmar said.

‘Your brother is eager to be caliph,’ Neferata retorted. ‘And as a consequence, he endangers my plans for this city.’ She leaned back and looked up at the ribs of silk that made up the ceiling of the palanquin, and then looked out through the side curtain. The men who carried the palanquin were devotees of the Cult of Mordig, the Great Ghul. Their brawny forms were covered in scrawling tattoos composed of the cult’s holy writ – each devotee was a walking book, carriers of Mordig’s word into the daytime world. They wore funerary purple robes and silver skull masks.

Khaled had been a nominal supporter of the cult, as he was one of many noblemen whom the cult supplied with esoteric bric-a-brac. Neferata had used his connection to ingratiate herself with the cult’s high priests, and then, swiftly, to take control. They were corpse-eaters and blood-drinkers already, and her undead nature had only served to impress them. They worshipped her now as the Charnel Bride, and Queen of the Night.

As rumours drifted across the sandy expanse separating Araby from the Great Land, the cult had grown in influence. Many saw the servants of the Eater-of-the-Dead as the best defence against the walking dead which were said to now haunt Nehekhara. Whether that was true or not was something that had yet to be tested. Neferata intended to be ready regardless when the inevitable occurred.

‘Thinking of home?’ Naaima said.

Neferata shook her head. ‘My home – our home – is the future. The past is dead. Best we leave it as such.’ And the future, right now, was making Bel Aliad into a true power. The cult had adherents in each of the caliphates, and through them, Neferata was slowly weaving a web of subtle control. She had infiltrated the harems of the mighty with her followers – survivors from among the tribes as well as new converts. In these lands, where women were almost property, the giving of a beautiful woman as a gift was a common form of diplomacy.

It might take decades, but soon, the Cult of Mordig would control every nobleman from Bel Aliad to Copher and through them, Neferata would command the might of Araby. She sighed in pleasure.

That pleasure was wiped away in a flash of pain as an arrow pierced the curtain and smashed into her shoulder, hurling her to the other side of the palanquin. The palanquin tipped and then fell as the cultists carrying it sprouted arrows. People screamed as the streets were suddenly filled with armed men. Neferata hissed in pain as she jerked the arrow from her shoulder. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ she snarled.

‘It’s Al-Khattab!’ Naaima said, narrowly avoiding a sword thrust that shredded the curtain. Sunlight boiled in, blistering the flesh of her arm. Neferata’s hand snapped out, grabbing the blade before it could retract. She gave it a yank, heedless of the way the edge shredded her palm. She dragged the swordsman inside the palanquin and Rasha and Anmar fell on him, growling. His screams echoed across the street, mingling with those of the market day crowd. Through the curtain, Neferata could see more men approaching.

‘That treacherous dog,’ Neferata said, half admiringly. Al-Khattab was an opponent of the cult and the commander of the city’s Kontoi. He had the caliph’s ear, a situation that Khaled was attempting to rectify. She hadn’t thought him capable of even contemplating outright assassination, but here they were. His men were clad in insignia-less armour, but they moved with training and speed. And the sun stood strong in the sky.

Men surrounded the palanquin, readying their spears. ‘Come out, priestess of the corpse-king,’ someone called. ‘We will make your death as swift as that of that fool princeling…’

‘Khaled,’ Anmar gasped. ‘No!’

Neferata snatched up the dead man’s sword and looked at her handmaidens. ‘Prepare, my daughters,’ she said. Then, with a shriek, she lunged to her feet and sliced through the curtain. As the sunlight streamed in, she leapt out to meet the assassins…

The City of Mourkain

(–550 Imperial Reckoning)

Horns blew loud enough to rattle the branches of the trees as the hunters followed the bloody trail left by their prey. Neferata leaned over the neck of her horse and tasted the wind. The musky, rotten smell of the fleeing beastmen was strong. Thirty of the beasts at least, maybe more; they had attacked a village on the northern frontier, putting it to the torch and eating the inhabitants. More and more of the creatures had been descending from the north of late. Abhorash and his men had undertaken an expedition to investigate, but that still left the mountains overrun with the cloven-hoofed vermin.

More horns blasted over the thunder of horses’ hooves and the hunters whooped and howled in the light of the torches they carried. Neferata laughed as her horse leapt over a fallen log and galloped on. She could smell the cloud of fear that clung to their prey.

The riders were mostly Strigoi. Zandor was among them, and Gashnag as well. Those two had joined Ushoran’s royal bodyguard in recent months, which Neferata had allowed. The two were cowed, more or less, and their feeble attempts to have her killed had trickled to nothing since she had not opposed their elevation to Ushoran’s clique. It made sense to leave them where she could find them. After all, according to her spies, it had been Ushoran whom they had run to in the aftermath of their abortive assassination attempt. Whether Ushoran himself had set them on her tail, or whether they’d simply been attempting to curry favour, she couldn’t, as yet, say. But she would find out eventually.

Nearby, Iona pressed close to her mistress. The henna-haired former concubine of Neferata’s predecessor flashed her fangs in a smile. ‘Volker is enjoying himself,’ she said. Neferata looked past her handmaiden towards the burly chieftain of the Draesca tribe, as he awkwardly clung to his barrel-chested Strigoi stallion. Volker was hairy and gap-toothed, but cunning. Near him rode the chieftains of the Draka and the Fennones, as well as the savage Walds. Four of the largest tribes of the western marches and northern hills, and the four most dedicated opponents to the expansion of Strigos.

It had taken her decades of patient diplomacy to even get them to the point where they would countenance accepting the hospitality of Ushoran. It never failed to amuse Neferata that she was first forced to build her enemies up before she could properly break them down. Fifty years ago, the tribes had been little better than the beastmen they now hunted. Now, however, their hill-forts dotted the hills and valleys of the badlands. Nomadic raiders had become farmers. War-chiefs had given way to hereditary kings, headmen to counts and bosses to barons.

And through it all, the Handmaidens of the Moon had whispered quiet counsel to the chieftains and their fathers and their father’s-fathers. Religion was a subtle lever and the invented ones were the subtlest of all, Neferata had found. The Nehekharan religions were anathema to the wildlings, representing Strigos as they did in their eyes. She had been forced to come up with something innovative. Thus, the Handmaidens of the Moon; she had taken a minor hill-goddess called Shaya and crafted a more pleasing image for her, a goddess of healing and mercy, whose adherents were allowed to travel between the barbarian kingdoms without fear of reprisal. No man, no matter how powerful or paranoid, would willingly turn away skilled healers. Or, even better, skilled healers who were willing to act as messengers between men of status who could not ordinarily make contact without upsetting their bloodthirsty followers and rivals. And who would say a word about the Handmaidens and their propensity for nocturnal travel, or the savage vengeance visited upon those who dared test the protection extended to them by their goddess?

She smiled. The Fennones, in particular, had taken to the new goddess. And their traders had carried the faith ever westwards, into the savage lands beyond the forests of their territories. The snort of a horse brought her out of her contemplative reverie.

The wildling chieftains were not natural riders, and it showed in their clumsy attempts to urge their horses to greater speeds. Their bodyguards were little better. In comparison, Neferata and her handmaidens, as well as the select few Strigoi allowed to accompany them for form’s sake, rode as if they had been born in the saddle.

‘Usirian’s teeth,’ Vorag swore. ‘These hairy bastards ride like drunken urka.’ The Strigoi’s horse flew through the trees like a hawk, and its rider was fighting an obvious battle to control the inhuman savagery lurking within him. In the years since their first meeting, Neferata had noticed that Ushoran’s blood-progeny had more problems in that regard than her own. Something bestial lurked beneath the skin of the vampires of Strigos, as if the dark magic which inundated the mountains had twisted them in some way.

‘It was your idea to fill their bellies with wine before we started the hunt,’ Stregga said, forcing her horse between Vorag’s and Neferata’s. Vorag barked laughter and followed after her, lust evident in his expression.

Stregga had pinned the Strigoi’s ears back, and quicker than Neferata could have hoped. At least some things were going according to plan. Vorag’s exile was no longer a topic of discussion at court, thanks to Neferata’s agents. In the years since she had begun planning the extinction of the orc tribes that still squatted within the boundaries of Ushoran’s ever-expanding empire, she had taken Vorag as her right hand, and bought his loyalty with her salt.

The Bloodytooth was no longer Ushoran’s creature, if he ever had been. And he made a satisfactory replacement for Khaled, being both altogether more biddable and less prone to questioning her. Thought of Khaled made her frown. He was still playing shield-bearer to Ushoran, and was invited to all of the counsels and quiet meetings that her former Lord of Masks thought she was unaware of.

There was no question that Ushoran trusted her Kontoi. But should she?

A howl alerted her that their prey had come to bay at last. Horns bellowing, the hunters burst through the trees to confront the beastmen. The creatures screamed and howled as the riders flooded over them. Hunting spears pinned writhing, hairy shapes to the forest floor.

Neferata pulled her horse up short, letting the others indulge their bloodlust on the pathetic goat-things. ‘Good sport, lady,’ someone grunted. She turned and smiled serenely at Volker. Iona sat just behind him, her attention split between the object of her seduction and the dying beast-things. The crimson-haired vampire’s face was twisted by feral hunger.

She examined the chieftain of the Draesca. He was broad, but short and gnarled. His beard was thick and tangled and his armour was of the crudest variety – beaten bronze plates sewn to a boiled leather jerkin with deer gut. His hair was held back from his leathery face by a band of gold that had probably belonged to a dwarf lord at some point in time. Dark eyes peered from beneath bushy eyebrows at her.

‘I’m glad to see you enjoying yourself, great chieftain,’ Neferata said. ‘And I am glad to see you that you’re enjoying my gift as well.’ She nodded to Iona, who put her hand on Volker’s brawny forearm. The chieftain gave a gap-toothed grin and patted the girl’s pale hand.

‘Truly the Strigoi are a blessed people to have such women spring from them,’ Volker grunted, eyeing her speculatively. ‘A shame that you yourself are spoken for,’ he added.

‘Yes, well,’ Neferata said, looking over at the massacre that was occurring only a short distance away. One of the beasts had broken past the horsemen and, bleating, charged towards them, waving a notched and rusty blade. ‘Your spear, if you please,’ she said, extending her hand to Volker, who guffawed and handed the weapon to her. She bounced it on her palm and then, in one smooth motion, hurled it into the charging beastman. It folded over the spear and collapsed with a single, strangled whine. Volker nodded appreciatively.

‘Yes, quite a shame,’ he muttered. ‘The Wald and the Draka are quite impressed with you.’

Neferata said nothing. Volker’s previous cheer had disappeared. He frowned, his face becoming even more apelike. ‘But the Draesca are not the Wald or the Draka. We are a proud people, and it will take more than Strigoi women or Strigoi wine to make us share blood and bone with you.’

‘I know,’ Neferata said. ‘But if blood and bone don’t serve, what about blades?’ she asked.

‘Are you threatening us?’ Volker grunted incredulously.

‘Nothing of the sort,’ Neferata said, kneeing her horse towards the beastman she had spitted. Without a trace of effort she jerked the spear from its body and rode back towards Volker. ‘You know of the dawi, I trust?’

Volker sat back on his saddle and tugged on his beard. ‘Aye,’ he said suspiciously.

‘The dawi are the finest weapons-makers in the world,’ Neferata said, extending the spear so that the tip rested beneath Volker’s nose. ‘This spear, for instance.’

Volker grabbed the weapon and looked at it as if seeing it for the first time. He rubbed his calloused thumb along the edge. His eyes flickered up to Neferata. ‘You would trade us weapons?’

‘I would.’

‘For what price would you do this?’

‘Blood and bone,’ Neferata said, smiling.

Later, as the hunters, now satiated, rode back towards Mourkain, Stregga’s horse fell into a trot beside Neferata’s. ‘Vorag is eager for the coming war, my lady,’ the vampire said.

‘Then he’ll fit right in with these barbarians,’ Neferata murmured. ‘What else?’

‘He’s angry. The northern expedition–’

‘The northern expedition is nothing.’ Neferata shook her head. Vorag’s temper was like a storm. It was a constant struggle to keep it in check and to keep it from upsetting her delicate web of schemes. Still, he was less disruptive than Khaled. ‘Assure him that there will be glory aplenty in the mountains. He will once more be the saviour of Strigos, and Abhorash will not be around to steal his victory.’ The Great Land was gone, and Ushoran’s attempt to recreate it was doomed to failure. But there might be something worth saving from those ashes, Neferata thought. A society that could be moulded into something greater than it currently was. The way forward was not as the wolf or the leopard, but as the flea or the tick. A dead host was nothing but rotten meat. But a live one could keep her and her followers in comfort for eternity.

But a live host required careful pruning of anything that might endanger it. The orcs, for instance; but with the barbarian tribes, and Vorag’s men, the orcs would be easy enough to destroy. She had learned much over the course of the past century, fighting and manipulating them. Now was the time to put all that knowledge to use. The orcs had outlived their usefulness and their violent antics were more hindrance than help.

Wazzakaz’s Waaagh! had been crashing like a green ocean around the rock of Karaz Bryn for close to three decades now. The great shaman himself had gone from a vigorous, mad, bad bastard of an orc to a withered, hunched thing that cackled and rocked in its saddle. Her spies had kept tabs on the creature, and had watched the ebb and flow of the siege of Karaz Bryn.

She had sent messengers to the Silver Pinnacle, offering the aid of Strigos. Razek had yet to respond. Whether that was due to dwarf stubbornness or the war-effort, she could not say, though she expected that it was the former.

The next month was given over to the dull routine of preparation. Neferata stayed out of it for the most part – Vorag knew his own business, and she had no interest in second-guessing his preparations for the war to come. Instead, she concentrated on other, more important matters.

Namely, finding out what W’soran was up to.

She had spent decades rooting out the traitors and would-be regicides in the court of Mourkain; some, like Zandor, had been convinced to accept what scraps were offered. Others had been dealt with quietly. Nonetheless, one had escaped every trick and trap she had set. W’soran was plotting; she knew this as surely as she knew that he knew that she was doing the same.

But so far, she had caught not a hint or whisper of just what it was that he was plotting to do. He did not want to rule, such was not one of W’soran’s desires. The urge to know what he was hiding had become almost unbearable.

Neferata stalked through the halls that W’soran had claimed near the peak, ignoring the whispers and glances of W’soran’s disciples as they hurried about in their cowls and robes even as she ignored the dead who moved stiffly about certain unwholesome tasks.

Even as her own numbers had increased, so too had W’soran’s. Of them all, only Abhorash resisted the temptation to share his blood-kiss with others, save for his few followers. She did not know whether that suggested weakness or strength on his part. Perhaps it was simply the old familiar stubbornness that had so characterised her former champion in better, brighter times.

Not all of W’soran’s followers were vampires, however. Like some virulent strain of plague, the vampire-disciples had taken apprentices of their own, creating a strange, semi-cultic hierarchy. Only one had not done so. And it was that one she was on her way to see.

W’soran’s creatures went up and down in their master’s favour like a fisherman’s cog on the waves. Sometimes one would be the favourite and then another. Morath was out this week, it seemed. He was out often; refusing W’soran’s bite was tantamount to spitting in the old leech’s face.

She smiled. Morath had courage, of a sort. Not a physical bravery, but a mental fortitude that she admired. If circumstances had been different, she would have given him her blood-kiss. As it was, he could still prove useful, in the right circumstances.

Circumstances like these, for instance.

Finding out what W’soran was up to had become an itch that needed scratching. What higher matters, what concerns occupied the necromancer deep in his lair in the mountain? Why did he only go to the pyramid on certain nights? And why did he inevitably leave with fewer acolytes than he entered with?

The floor vibrated quietly with the rumble of the mine-works below in the guts of the mountain. More than gold was being dredged out of the dark now. She paused for a moment, listening. The gold would go to good cause. It could be used to open up trade routes to Cathay and Araby, and even Ind. Too, thanks to the whispered influences of her handmaidens, the barbarians over the mountains and to the north now desired it, though they had little practical use for it.

W’soran was even crafting a golden crown for the Draesca brute, Volker. Knowing W’soran, the crown would likely be more than just mere metal, but that was of little import. No, what was important was that the crown – that all of the gifts – would bind the savages to Strigos. Here in these wild hills she was perfecting the arts she had learned in Cathay and employed in Araby. War was a blunt tool, at best. Conquest could be achieved more easily by simply convincing the enemy that they were more like you than they’d thought. Familiarity bred more than just contempt, it also bred complacency. In a few centuries, the wildling tribes would fold easily and with little complaint into the Strigoi empire.

The same tactics could be applied personally. Seduction was more potent than fear, and took less effort to maintain. She had considered Melkhior at first, but found the idea of drawing too close to that creature repugnant.

But Morath was different. In his own way, the necromancer reminded her of Abhorash. Ushoran had forced him to accept W’soran’s tutelage, wanting a man inside whatever spider’s web the foul creature was sure to weave in his new lair. And it seemed only fitting that Neferata now take Morath under her wing.

She knew his scent now. It was stale, like crypt air, but lacking the rotten undercurrent that so many of W’soran’s creatures emanated. The room was small as such places went in the hold. Bats fluttered in brass cages and jars of strange liquids sat on benches and shelves. Papyrus and scrolls were strewn everywhere, scattered amongst stacks of clay tablets from the Southlands and hairy books from the ice-lands far to the north. W’soran’s agents had been scouring the world for centuries, hunting up precious bits of sorcerous know-ledge for some purpose she did not yet fathom.

It all tied into the pyramid somehow. And the hunched figure sitting before her, with his back to her, would tell her how.

‘My lady,’ Morath said without turning around. ‘The spirits bound to these old stones spoke of your coming.’

‘Did they? And did they also impart my reason for coming here?’ she said as she came up behind him.

‘No, they did not.’ Morath flinched as Neferata stroked his arm. ‘Why are you here?’ he said, not looking up from the scroll unrolled before him.

‘Call it curiosity,’ she said, peering over his shoulder. She clucked her tongue. ‘Fell magics indeed.’

Morath looked at her. ‘What would you know of it?’

Neferata shook her head. ‘Me? Nothing, of course. W’soran’s brood do not share their secrets with just anyone…’ She traced his cheek with a claw, eliciting a thin trail of blood and a wince.

‘What do you want, my lady?’ he said.

‘I should have thought that that would be obvious, Lord Morath,’ she said, gently licking the blood from his cheek. He thrust away from her, knocking over the table and starting awkwardly to his feet. She could hear his heart thudding in his chest like a war-drum and see his blood pulsing in his veins. The smell of his fear was intoxicating. She frowned, restraining the urge to leap on him and feed until he had been bled white.

‘No,’ he said harshly. ‘No, no. I’ve been around your kind too long. I’m not as foolish as that oaf, Vorag, panting after that–’

‘Careful,’ Neferata said mildly, looking at the scroll. Morath swallowed then snatched it away from her.

‘This is not for your eyes,’ he said. Neferata looked at him. Morath was handsome, in a way. He was no brute like Vorag, but there was none of the lean beauty of the men of her people either. He was hard-faced, all flat planes and angles and sharp words and edges.

‘It could be, if you gave it to me,’ she said, holding out her hand.

‘And why would I do that?’

‘Because only I can protect you from the trap you find yourself in. Ushoran can’t – or won’t. And W’soran is the cause of your nervousness, unless I miss my guess.’ She took his abandoned seat and leaned back against the desk, smiling slightly.

Morath swallowed. ‘You see much.’

‘I see everything,’ Neferata said. ‘He is angry with you, isn’t he? Because you have chosen not to accept his kiss, I’d wager.’

Morath said nothing. Neferata nodded as if he had. ‘Did you know that it was he who first convinced my husband Lamashizzar to search for the secret of immortality? Even then, far before your people had even grasped the rudiments of agriculture, W’soran was scheming to cheat death.’

‘And why shouldn’t he?’ Morath said. ‘Why shouldn’t we all? Our empire could persist forever with that power at our disposal!’

‘Then why have you not accepted it?’

Morath paused. ‘It is not the same thing. What you are is not what I wish to be. I’ll not be a slave to my hungers for eternity–’

Neferata shot to her feet, forcing Morath back a step. ‘A slave, is it? Is that how you see me, Morath of Mourkain?’ she said in mock anger.

‘Are you saying you’re not? A slave to your bloodlust, a slave to that black presence which–’ he began, and then stopped abruptly.

‘The presence which – what? – lies perhaps in that pyramid,’ Neferata said, and gestured loosely in the direction of the pyramid. She swayed closer to Morath, trailing her fingertips across his robes. ‘What is in that strange barrow, Morath? Why do I feel some black malevolence in those stones? And why does your master seek to hide it from me, eh?’

‘Because Ushoran requires it,’ he said, stumbling back. ‘I think you should leave.’

‘Are you afraid of me, Morath?’ she purred, staring into his eyes. She prodded at the sharp edges of his will – it was a thing of razors and brittle strength. One flex and it would crumble like grit in her clutches.

He forced himself to look away, flinging out a hand. Something sparked between them and Neferata staggered. Smoke rose from her burned hand and she hissed. ‘What was that?’ she snarled, lunging for him. He avoided her grip, raising his hands. Neferata hesitated. She had allowed her anger and impatience to get the better of her once again. Even as she cursed herself, she sought to present a calm facade.

‘Your power is far greater than I thought, Morath,’ she said, stepping back.

‘If W’soran were here–’

‘He’d let me try and torture the secret out of you. Or kill you himself to spite me,’ she said gently. She could see the truth of those words strike home. ‘You know enough of him, of what he is, to know that whatever he is up to, it is not for the benefit of your people.’

Morath stiffened. His hands drooped. She resisted the urge to smile. Like Abhorash, he thought himself a hero, a man doing his best for his people, when really he was as much prey to his lusts as any of her handmaidens. The only difference was that his lust was for power rather than blood.

‘And you have the welfare of my people in mind?’ he said.

‘I have spent too many years building your people up to want to see them torn down, Morath of Mourkain,’ she said.

‘Then what do you want?’

Now she did smile. ‘I only want just a bit of information, my friend, nothing more.’

‘What do you want to know?’

Neferata leaned close and bent down. ‘What is W’soran afraid of?’ she whispered. ‘What does Ushoran desire that frightens even that old fiend?’

Morath was silent for a moment. Then, with a croak, he said, ‘A crown.’

‘What?’ Neferata stepped back, uncertain.

‘Mourkain’s crown,’ Morath said. ‘Ushoran wants the crown of Kadon. And he will not rest until he has it.’ The words stabbed into Neferata’s head like nails of cold iron, each one tossing echoes into the depths of her being.

As those echoes faded, something that was coiled in those dark depths lifted its head and Neferata felt a crawling chill spread throughout her person. ‘A crown,’ she whispered.

And in the darkness, something both familiar and foul laughed.