02 - Nagash the Unbroken Read online

  Angrily, she pushed aside the king’s hand and stalked past him. At the far end of the chamber, the slaves stopped what they were doing and abased themselves at her approach.

  “It doesn’t matter if the covenant has been broken or not,” Neferata continued. “In matters of state—and religion—perception is every bit as important as reality. Lahmia was spared from the worst excesses of Nagash’s rule, but the war has disrupted trade with the west for more than ten years now. Fortunes have been lost—to say nothing of the enormous debt we now owe the Emperor of the Silk Lands. If the people had any inkling of the deal we struck to obtain their dragon-powder there would be rioting in the streets.”

  “That was Lamasheptra’s doing, not mine,” Lamashizzar pointed out, bending to retrieve his drinking bowl.

  “It doesn’t matter!” Neferata insisted. “Father is dead. You are the one on the throne, now. The people look to you for reassurance. They need to believe that the Usurper’s reign of terror is over and that a new era has begun. They need to know that Lahmia will prosper once more.”

  The queen’s tirade had carried her nearly all the way across the chamber. The slaves were still as statues, their previous labours forgotten as they pressed their foreheads to the earthen floor. They had been in the process of shifting scores of dusty wine jars and dismantling wooden shelves to create a cleared space for—

  Neferata came to a sudden halt. Her eyes widened behind the golden mask as she saw the linen-wrapped bundles resting on the earthen floor. “What—” she stammered, suddenly at a loss for words. “Brother, what is all this?”

  Behind her, Lamashizzar dipped his bowl in the open jar. He stared into its ruby depths, and an ironic smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

  “The dawn of a new era,” he said, raising the bowl to his lips.

  They were not jugs of plundered wine or wrapped brinks of lotus leaf. Neferata saw that at once. Each bundle had roughly square sides, some reaching as high as her knees. The linen wrappings were stained brown by countless leagues of travel, and were bound with braided twine. She went to the closest one. Slaves scattered from her path like frightened birds as she knelt beside the parcel and tugged at its bindings with long-nailed fingers. As she did, a stir went through the assembled nobles. Neferata heard angry growls and choked protests, until finally one of the men could contain himself no longer.

  “Stop her!” the nobleman snapped. Neferata didn’t recognise the voice. “What is she even doing outside the Women’s Palace? She should be in her proper place, not—”

  “She is the queen,” Lamashizzar said, in a voice as cold and hard as Eastern iron. “She goes where she wills.”

  Neferata listened to the tense exchange with only half an ear. Her dark fingers teased the twine knot apart, and a corner of the linen wrapping fell away to reveal—

  “Books?” the queen said. Her eyebrows knitted together in a frown. They were thick tomes of expensive Lybaran paper, bound in a strange kind of pale leather that sent prickles of unease racing down her spine.

  “The books of Nagash,” Lamashizzar explained. “Smuggled from his pyramid outside Khemri. All his secrets: his plans, his studies, his… his experiments. It’s all there.”

  Neferata felt her heart grow cold. She rose and turned to face the king. “I don’t understand, brother,” she hissed. “You were supposed to forge an alliance with the Usurper. With the power under your command you could have broken the siege at Mahrak and handed the east to Nagash! He would have agreed to any terms—”

  “No,” Lamashizzar said flatly. He took another long draught from the bowl, his face haunted with memory. “You weren’t there, sister. You didn’t see the… the creature that Nagash had become.”

  “We knew he was a sorcerer—” Neferata began.

  “He was a monster,” Lamashizzar said darkly. “None of the rumours we’d heard came anywhere close to the truth. Nagash was no longer human, and what he’d done to Neferem—” The king’s words dried up in his throat. Finally, he shook his head. “Believe me, Nagash would have never honoured the terms of an alliance, much less shared the secrets of eternal life.” He gestured at the stacks of linen-wrapped volumes with his drinking bowl, sloshing thick wine onto the floor. “So. Better this than nothing at all.”

  Neferata spread her hands. “Indeed? Are you a sorcerer now?” she shot back. “I’m certainly not.”

  “You were trained by the priestesses of Neru,” Lamashizzar said. “You know how to perform incantations, how to create elixirs—”

  The queen shook her head. “That’s not the same thing,” she protested.

  “It’s enough,” Lamashizzar said. He lurched forward, seizing Neferata by the wrist, and pulled her after him as he wound his way drunkenly through the collection of plundered tomes. Beyond the linen-wrapped books lay another shape, stretched out against the dank stone wall. “We also have this,” the king said proudly.

  It was a corpse. It had been inexpertly wrapped, and the linen bindings were devoid of the ritual symbols of the mortuary cult, but the shape of the body was unmistakeable.

  The king gave his sister a conspiratorial smile. “Go on,” he said, squeezing her wrist with surprising strength. “Take a look.” His eyes glittered like glass, sharp and fever-bright.

  Lamashizzar’s hand squeezed harder. Neferata clenched her jaw and sank slowly to her knees. She heard the slaves shift nervously behind her as she stretched out her free hand and began to gingerly pull away the wrappings that covered the corpse’s head.

  The face took shape by degrees: first a man’s beaklike nose, then a prominent brow and deeply sunken eyes. Next came sharp-edged cheekbones and a long, square jaw that gaped in a grimace of agony, revealing a mouthful of jagged, blackened teeth.

  The corpse’s skin was pale as a fish’s belly and covered in a patchwork of fine scars. The veins at his temples and along his neck were black with old, clotted blood. The very sight of it filled the queen with revulsion. Neferata recoiled from the ghastly visage. “What in the name of all the gods—”

  Lamashizzar pulled her close. “He is the key,” the king hissed, filling her nostrils with the sour reek of wine. “This is Arkhan the Black. Do you know the name?”

  “Of course,” the queen said with a grimace. “He was the Usurper’s grand vizier.”

  “And one of the first immortals,” the king added. “But he fell from favour during the war and betrayed Nagash on the eve of the great battle at Mahrak. He offered me the power over life and death if I would side with the rebel kings against his former master.” Lamashizzar gave the queen an almost boyish wink. “After the battle, I hid him in my baggage train during the long march to Khemri. No one suspected a thing. The others thought he’d fled westward with the rest of the Usurper’s immortals, so once we’d reached the Living City and the Usurper’s troops made their last stand in the city’s necropolis, I paid some soldiers to spread the rumour that Arkhan had been seen fighting to the bitter end at the foot of his master’s pyramid. No doubt the story’s taken on epic proportions since then.”

  “And Arkhan actually held to his bargain?” she asked.

  The king smiled. “As much as I expected he would. He led me to the books, deep in the heart of the Black Pyramid.”

  “Then you killed him.”

  Lamashizzar’s smile never faltered. “Is that what you think?”

  Neferata’s expression hardened beneath the mask. With a savage jerk, she tore her wrist from the king’s grasp. “You’re drunk,” she hissed. “And I am not in the mood for games, brother.”

  That was when the smile faded from the king’s face. Slowly, deliberately, he lowered his hand and set the bowl of wine upon the floor. His eyes bored into hers. “Then perhaps I should make it plain for you,” he said quietly. He spoke again, in that voice as hard and cold as iron. “Bring them.”

  There was a commotion behind Neferata, and the slaves began to wail in terror. She froze at the sound, and watched as Lamas
hizzar leaned forward and tore away the linen bindings wrapping Arkhan’s torso. The immortal’s chest was even more scarred than his face, but what was worse was the blackened, thumb-sized hole in Arkhan’s breast, just above his heart.

  “He was swift, but the bullet in my dragon stave was swifter still,” Lamashizzar said. His nobles crowded around him, dragging the terrified slaves over to Arkhan’s body. “It’s still there, buried in his heart. Here. Let me show you.”

  The king crouched over the body and pressed his fingers deep into the wound. There was a thick, liquid sound, and Lamashizzar grunted in satisfaction. When he drew his hand away his fingers were covered in a black fluid as thick as tar. A fat, round metal ball was gripped between his fingertips. He held up the bullet and studied it for a moment.

  “You see?” he said. “Such a wound would have killed one of father’s mighty Ushabti, much less a mere mortal like you or I. But to Arkhan it was nothing more than an interruption.”

  The king bent close to the immortal’s face. His voice dropped to a whisper. “He’s still in there,” Lamashizzar said, but whether he said it to Neferata or to the immortal himself, the queen could not be certain. “Locked in a cell of flesh and bone. So long as his heart cannot beat, Nagash’s elixir cannot circulate through his limbs, nor fan the flame of his cursed soul.”

  The look on the king’s face sent a shudder through Neferata. This was not the libertine who had led his father’s army to Mahrak. The things he had seen on the field of battle—and possibly within the pages of the books he’d stolen from the Usurper’s crypt—had left an impression in the young king’s mind. Blessed Neru, she thought. What if he’s gone mad?

  Lamashizzar chuckled to himself, entirely oblivious to his sister’s mounting unease. “I have had many discussions with the former vizier on the journey home, and I believe we have reached an understanding. He will serve us, unlocking his former master’s secrets and teaching us how to create the elixir for ourselves. If he serves well, then we will share the draught of life with him. If not…” he paused, and his expression grew hard. “Then we will send him back into his cell, and we shall see how long it takes for an immortal’s body to collapse into dust.”

  The king tossed the bullet aside, then nodded curtly to his noblemen. Without a word they drew knives from their belts and began slitting the slaves’ throats.

  Hot blood sprayed through the air. The slaves thrashed and choked, pouring out their lives onto Arkhan’s still form. As they died, Lamashizzar picked up the pale leather tome and began turning its pages.

  “The world has changed, sister,” Lamashizzar said. “The old gods have left us, and a new power has risen to take its place—a power that now we alone possess. We shall usher in a new age for Lahmia and the rest of Nehekhara. One that we shall preside over until the end of time.”

  At their feet, the blood-soaked body of Arkhan the Black drew in a terrible, shuddering breath. His bruised eyelids fluttered, and Neferata found herself staring into a pair of dark, soulless eyes.

  The Wasteland, in the 63rd year of Khsar the Faceless

  (-1739 Imperial Reckoning)

  Night came swiftly to the wasteland.

  As the last rays of Ptra’s hateful, searing light disappeared behind the jagged fangs of the Brittle Peaks, stealing away the heat of the day and filling the narrow gullies with inky shadow, the hunters of the dead spaces began to stir from their lairs. Deadly vipers slithered from beneath rocky overhangs, tasting the air with their darting tongues. Scorpions and huge, hairy spiders crawled from their daytime burrows and began their hunt, seeking sources of heat against the contrasting coolness of the rocky ground.

  In one shadow-haunted gully, half a dozen lean, spotted shapes came nosing along the broken ground, tracking the scent of death. The jackals had been following the trail for many nights; it had rambled and looped back upon itself many times, like the path of a beast lost in madness and on the verge of collapse. Now the hunters sensed that the prey had been run to ground at last. Sniffing at the chill air, they edged towards a low overhang carved deep into the gully wall.

  Within the darkness of the overhang, a bundle of rags stirred fitfully at the jackals’ approach. The scavengers paused, ears forward, watching as a single, bony hand groped its way painfully from beneath the overhang. The skin was blackened and leathery, the nails yellowed and splintered by months of scrabbling over rocks and burrowing in the dry earth. The skin of the knuckles was split, peeled back like shreds of dry parchment to reveal grey flesh inlaid with grit.

  The jackals watched as the long fingers arched, digging into the earth for purchase. There was a rustle of fabric and loose dirt. A trio of sleek, black lizards bolted from beneath the overhang, startled as their refuge began to shift beneath them.

  Slowly, shakily, the figure dragged itself out into the night air. First an emaciated arm, then a bony shoulder, then a thin torso clad in grimy robes that had once been the colour of blood.

  A bald head, blackened and blistered by the sun god’s merciless touch, emerged from the shadows: a man’s face, once handsome, now ravaged by the elements and the horrors of war. Dark eyes, set deep in bony sockets, regarded the jackals with feverish intensity. The man’s face was gaunt to the point of being skeletal, his cheeks and nose frayed by brushes with rock and the mandibles of burrowing insects. A ragged hole, wide as a man’s thumb, had been punched into his forehead, close to the left temple. At one time the ghastly wound had grown infected, causing the flesh to swell around the rim of splintered bone and the veins to distend with corruption.

  The jackals lowered their heads and began to whine softly as the figure continued to drag itself from its refuge. This was not what they expected. Indeed, their would-be prey exuded a sense of wrongness that their animal brains couldn’t quite comprehend.

  Death hung over the man like a shroud. In addition to the awful wound in his head, his left arm was coiled uselessly against his chest. Another hole had been blown through the upper limb, shattering the bone and constricting the muscles into immobile knots. The scent of old bile rose from a puncture in the man’s belly, and another wound in his chest carried the reek of old infection.

  Dead, the jackals’ minds said. The man ought to be dead long since. And yet still the leathery muscles worked, creaking like old ropes. The eyes still burned with an almost feral rage. Thin, cracked lips drew back from blackened teeth in a snarl of challenge.

  Nagash the Usurper, Undying King of fallen Khemri and for a time the master of Nehekhara, pressed his palm against the stones and grit of the gully floor and with a bubbling growl pushed himself to his feet. Once upright, he swayed slightly as he turned his head to the gleaming face of the moon and let out a long, ululating howl of hate.

  The jackals flinched at the awful sound. It proved too much for the leader of the pack, who let out a nervous bark and sped from the gully with the pack hard on its heels.

  Nagash continued to howl long after they were gone, emptying the last dregs of air from his lungs in a long, wordless curse against the living world. The exertion left him shivering and weak, his skin burning with a fever that had no basis in the sicknesses of living flesh.

  Like the jackals, he turned his face skyward, casting about for spoor. The scent of power hung above the emptiness of the wasteland, emanating from the slopes of a dark, brooding mountain that always seemed to lie just beyond the far horizon. It had a flavour unlike anything he’d ever tasted before; not dark magic, which he knew well, nor the fitful heat of a human soul. It was something furious and unfettered, primal and alien at the same time. It shone like a beacon in the emptiness, promising him vengeance against those who had betrayed him and cast him out into the wastes. He thirsted for it, and yet, like a mirage, it seemed to recede into the distance with every step he took. Lately, even the scent of it had grown vague. It was getting harder and harder to sense it past the pain of his ravaged body and the fever buzzing in his skull.

  You’re growing weaker,
a voice said. Your power is almost spent. Darkness waits, Usurper. Darkness eternal, and the cold winds of the Abyss.

  Nagash whirled, hissing with rage. She stood just a few feet away, her translucent body silhouetted by moonlight. Neferem, last Queen of Khemri, looked much as she did the day she died: a withered, ravaged husk of a woman, transformed into a living mummy by Nagash’s sorceries. Only her eyes, large and brilliant as cut emeralds, hinted at the beauty that had been taken from her. Her ghostly figure was clad in ragged samite, and the golden headdress of a queen rested precariously upon her brow.

  The Usurper reached out with his hand and clenched it at her like a claw—but his febrile mind failed him. The words of power that once bound the ghosts of Nehekhara to his will had been somehow stolen from him. Rage and frustration boiled inside his brain.

  “Witch!” he hissed. His voice sounded somewhere between a growl and a groan. “I am Nagash the Immortal! Death cannot claim me! I have passed beyond its grasp!”

  So have we all, Neferem replied soundlessly. Her eyes glittered with hate. You saw to that at Mahrak. The paths to the Lands of the Dead are no more, swept away when you used me to undo the sacred covenant with the gods. Now none of us shall ever know peace. Her shrivelled face contorted into the ghastly semblance of a smile.

  Especially you.

  Snarling with fury, Nagash whirled about, tasting the air for traces of the otherworldly power. It seemed to lie just beyond the line of peaks to the east. He lurched forward, scrabbling one-handed at the loose scree lining the gully slope. The Usurper scaled the steep incline with an awkward, spider-like gait. When he was almost to the top, he turned back to Neferem’s vengeful spirit.

  “You haunt me at your peril, witch!” he croaked. “When I find the dark mountain I will have the power to consume souls and command the spirits of the dead as I once did! I’ll feast upon you, then, and silence your moaning forever!”

  But the queen did not hear him. She was gone, as though she’d never been there.