02 - Nagash the Unbroken (10 page)

Perhaps the old king had planned to supplement his payments with plunder
taken from Khemri; possibly he thought to exact tribute from the other great
cities once the fearsome power of his army became known. As it turned out, the
delivery of the promised arms and armour had taken more than a century. The
final shipment, consisting of the dragon-powder itself, reached Lahmia some five
months after Lamasheptra’s death, and the young king Lamashizzar proved far too
cautious with the powerful weapons he’d inherited. Meanwhile, the city treasury
had dwindled steadily away. It was only through several shrewd trade deals with
Lybaras, Rasetra and Mahrak during the war that Lahmia was able to survive at
all.

Of course, the Empire had never intended to deal fairly with Lamasheptra.
They’d done everything in their power to make it difficult for the city to
fulfil its financial obligations, and now that there were only a few years left
before the debt was fully paid, the Silk Lords had gone to extreme measures to
ensure that Lahmia would be theirs.

Neferata was sure that the discovery of the gold mine was a lie. The Imperial
household would flood the market with coin from their own treasury to
convincingly drive down the value of their currency long enough to force Lahmia
into default, after which point things would gradually return to normal again.
It would cause a short period of suffering for the Empire’s subjects, but it
would be a small price to pay for a strategic foothold in Nehekhara.

The question, Neferata thought, is how do we get out of the trap before it
snaps shut?

The complex web of trade deals that Lamashizzar had built after the war had
produced dividends, and greatly increased Lahmia’s influence across Nehekhara,
but it wouldn’t be enough if the Empire demanded more gold. The only way to save
the city from the hands of the Easterners was to either seize more wealth from
Lahmia’s neighbours, or defy the Silk Lords, and Neferata was certain that
Lamashizzar hadn’t the nerve to do either.

To be honest, she wasn’t even certain if her brother
cared
what
happened to the city anymore.

The confrontation in the council chamber, now a half-century past, had ended
whatever feelings of affection Neferata had for her brother. There was a time
once when she thought she might have loved him, when she thought he would stand
up to centuries of hoary tradition and treat her as a co-ruler instead of a mere
possession. Now she knew better. All he wanted from her were heirs to continue
the dynasty, while he fumbled after the secrets of immortality. Nothing else
mattered.

Well, Lahmia mattered to her. Neferata would be damned before she saw the
City of the Dawn become a plaything for foreign lords. She could rule the city
with a surer hand than her brother ever could.

The queen set aside the ink brush and listened for a while to the sound of
the rain on the windowpanes as she turned the problem over in her mind. Always,
she came back to the same conclusion.

Something had to be done. If Lamashizzar wouldn’t take action, then she must.

Neferata took up the sheet of paper and considered it for a long moment. Her
expression hardened. Slowly, carefully, she fed the paper to the flame guttering
in the oil lamp on her desk.

It was no more than an hour before dawn when Neferata rose from her place by
the window and dressed herself in a dark robe and slippers. She left her black
hair bound up and pulled on a black wool cloak, then picked up a small gold box
from her dressing table and tucked it into her girdle. Her golden mask was left
on its wooden stand, its smooth curves masked in shadow.

Her maids were still sleeping soundly, though she knew that they would begin
stirring as soon as it was light. There wasn’t any time to waste. The queen
slipped quietly from her bedchamber and hurried down the dark halls of the
palace towards the Hall of Restful Contemplation.

She moved as quickly as she dared, keeping to little-used passageways as much
as she could. Twice she saw the telltale glow of a lantern crossing down an
adjoining corridor, but each time she found a pool of deep shadow to hide in
before the sleepy servant girl passed by. Within minutes she was standing before
the tall bronze doors of the audience chamber. The metal surface was cold to the
touch as she pulled one of the doors open just wide enough to slip through.

Heart racing, she dashed down the length of the hall and pressed her ear to
the outer doors. Would there be guards on the other side? She had no idea. After
listening in vain for several long moments, she gave up and decided to take a
chance. She grasped the door’s heavy brass ring and opened it just a bit. The
corridor beyond was dark and empty.

Neferata felt a faint thrill as she slipped across the threshold into the
palace proper. Now she was officially an escapee, in violation of royal and
theological law. But only if they catch me, she reminded herself, and grinned in
spite of herself.

The going was slower once she emerged into the palace proper; she was far
less familiar with its layout, and not accustomed to its routines. At least
there were no guards about. Once upon a time the halls would have been patrolled
by the king’s Ushabti, who were as swift and deadly as Asaph’s terrible
serpents. She had only the vaguest memories of them now, from when she was a
young girl. Neferata remembered their silent, graceful movements and their
depthless, black eyes. All that remained of them now were the great statues that
guarded the royal tombs outside the city.

Once again, she kept to deserted hallways and managed to avoid the few
servants who were up and about at such an early hour. It took her nearly half an
hour to make her way to the far side of the palace and the dusty, deserted wing
where Lamashizzar hid his darkest secrets. The main doors to the wing were
locked, but Neferata expected as much. Within a few minutes she located the
entrance to the servants’ passageways and felt her way into the oppressive
darkness that lay beyond.

Cobwebs brushed ghostly fingers across the queen’s face. The narrow corridor
was windowless, and dark as a tomb. Neferata listened to rats scuttling across
the floor up ahead and cursed herself for not thinking to bring a candle stub to
light her way. Gritting her teeth, she reached out with her hand until she found
the wall to her left and let that guide her onwards.

The air was cold and dank. Now and again her fingertips brushed across a
slimy patch of mould. Once, something large and many-legged darted out from
underneath her fingers, and it was all she could do not to let out a startled
shout. For all she knew, the king or his companions could be nearby. If they
caught her now, Neferata didn’t care to speculate what they might decide to do
with her.

After about twenty feet, her hand encountered a wooden doorframe. She
continued on, counting each doorway as she went. It had been more than a century
since she’d last stood inside Lamashizzar’s improvised sanctum, but she knew it
was in the centre of the wing, far from any windows that would reveal the
telltale glow of oil lamps burning far into the night. When Neferata reached the
tenth doorway she stopped and tried the latch. It moved with a faint screech of
tarnished metal, the sound deafeningly loud in the oppressive darkness. She
paused, hardly daring to breathe, but several seconds passed without any sounds
of movement other than the scampering of rats.

The door opened with only the tiniest sound of wood scraping through the grit
that had accumulated on the sandstone floor. Enough predawn light filtered
through windows on the eastern face of the palace wing to provide some
definition to the interior of the building. She saw that she was in a narrow
corridor facing eastwards that connected to a wide central passageway that ran
the entire length of the wing.

Moving as silently as she could, Neferata crept to the end of the servants’
corridor. The walls of the central passageway had been stripped of their
hangings, and every piece of art and furniture had been removed many years ago;
they had all been surreptitiously sold in the city marketplace during lean years
to help pay off the debt to the Silk Lords.

The thick dust that had settled in the central passageway had been churned by
the regular passage of sandalled feet. Peering through the gloom, Neferata
followed the muddled tracks down the wide hall until they stopped outside an
otherwise unobtrusive door to her right.

Heart pounding, she laid her hand on the latch. This was the point of no
return; once she crossed the threshold, there would be no turning back.

This is not for me, she reminded herself. This is for Lahmia.

The latch gave an oiled click as she pressed it. She pushed the door open
with her fingertips, smelling the faint scent of incense and the tang of spilled
blood.

There was still a faint red glow emanating from a banked brazier on the far
side of the room. Neferata paused in the doorway, taking in everything she could
see. There were more tables than she remembered, most of them covered in stacks
of paper, collections of papyrus scrolls and jumbled piles of leather-bound
books. Wooden chairs and tattered divans were scattered about the room, with
wine goblets and trays of half-eaten food set nearby. The queen’s lips curled in
distaste. It resembled nothing so much as the cluttered library of a wealthy
young dilettante.

Convinced that Lamashizzar and his cronies were nowhere about, Neferata
stepped inside and shut the door behind her. She navigated carefully around the
room until she reached the brazier, and within a few minutes she’d stoked it
carefully back to life.

The glow of the burning coals reached into the far corners of the large room,
revealing still more shelves and wide, utilitarian tables set with dusty ceramic
jars and glass bottles filled with exotic liquids and powders. They were set to
either side of a cleared patch of floor that had been scrupulously swept clean
of dust and grime and inlaid with a complicated magical symbol the likes of
which she had never seen before.

It took a moment before Neferata spied the figure sprawled in one corner on
the other side of the sorcerous circle. The queen searched the tables around her
for an oil lamp. Finding one, she lit the wick using a coal from the brazier,
and, summoning up her courage, she crept closer to the king’s prisoner.

Arkhan the Black hadn’t changed one bit in the last hundred and fifty years.
He was clad in filthy rags, and his bluish skin was covered in grime, but his
face looked exactly as it had when she’d first set eyes on him all those years
ago. A thick, iron collar enclosed the immortal’s neck, connected to a heavy
chain that had been bolted deep into the wall. At his side, an upended wine
goblet spilled a thick trickle of dark fluid onto the floor.

The immortal’s lips were stained black by lotus root. Though his chest did
not rise and fall as a living mortal’s would, Neferata knew that Arkhan was deep
in a drugged slumber. From the very beginning, Lamashizzar kept his prisoner
under control by feeding him a mixture of his weak elixir and enough lotus root
to kill a half-dozen men. When he wasn’t needed to translate Nagash’s esoteric
writings, Arkhan was kept in a stupor so he couldn’t escape.

Staring at the immortal’s slack features, Neferata wondered how much of his
sanity still remained. She consoled herself with the thought that if Arkhan was
of no further use to Lamashizzar, he would have been disposed of without a
moment’s hesitation.

The queen took a deep breath and drew the gold box from her girdle. Opening
the filigreed lid, she withdrew the
hixa
and pressed it to Arkhan’s neck.
It took several attempts before the insect’s abdomen arched and drove its sting
into the immortal’s flesh.

For a moment, nothing happened. Neferata expected Arkhan to groan as the
wasp’s venom burned away the effects of the lotus, but the immortal didn’t so
much as tremble. His eyes simply opened, as though he’d only been lightly
dozing, and he fixed her with a dull, listless stare.

Neferata expected Arkhan to wonder at her presence, but the immortal said
nothing. The unnerving silence stretched for several long minutes, until finally
the queen could take it no more. Without thinking, she reached out and gripped
his arm, and to her surprise, Arkhan the Black flinched from her touch.

The Queen of Lahmia struggled to give the ghastly creature a friendly smile.
“Greetings, Arkhan of Khemri,” she said. “Do you remember me? I am Neferata,
Queen of Lahmia, and I have a proposition for you.”

Cripple Peak, in the 76th year of Asaph the Beautiful

(-1600 Imperial Reckoning)

Nagash understood now why the barbarians favoured their long, oiled cloaks.
It was the rain: the steady, invasive, unrelenting rain.

North of the great sea, the coastline was a mix of flat, marshy plains and
rolling hills girdled with stunted, grey-green thorn trees. The larger of the
barbarian villages squatted atop these bald hills, their squalid mud-and-grass
huts crouching like clusters of toadstools beneath the never-ending sheets of
rain. Smaller villages or clan-like communities hunched amid the yellow weeds of
the marsh plains, connected by winding, waterlogged foot paths worn by
generations of hunters and raiding parties. The barbarians avoided travelling
along those paths at night, Nagash found, for the humans were not the only
hunters who favoured the paths when the moon was high in the sky. More than
once, the necromancer heard the caterwauling of great cats out in the darkness,
and the bellowing of a fierce creature that sounded bestial but had the timbre
of a human voice. Sometimes he would hear stealthy footsteps creeping through
the tall weeds as he walked the paths at night, but none came close enough to
threaten him.