02 - Nagash the Unbroken (17 page)

“I am the queen,” she said coldly. “And from this night forward, there is no
place in this palace that is barred to me. You shall remain king over Lahmia,
brother, but know that I am Queen of Lahmia, and when I speak, you will take
careful heed of what I say. Henceforth, we shall rule this city
together.
Do you understand me?”

Lamashizzar broke free of the paralysed libertines. His face was a mask of
hatred, but Neferata could see a glimmer of fear in his eyes. Still, he managed
a defiant snarl.

“Seize her!” he ordered Abhorash. “She has gone mad! Strike her down!”

“He will do no such thing,” the queen replied calmly. She glanced at the
king’s champion and smiled. “These men are mine now, brother—each and every
one of them. They will serve me gladly, because I can give them something you
cannot.”

That broke the spell. W’soran stirred, his eyes alight. “The elixir!” he
hissed.

Neferata nodded. “I will offer you the power that you have so long craved,”
she said. “And in return, you will serve me as you would your king.”

Abhorash stirred. “I want nothing of power,” he said in a deep voice.

The queen took a step towards him, well within reach of the champion’s sword.
“No, you crave something far more elusive. You crave
perfection,”
she
said. “It’s not enough to be the champion of the king; there are six others in
Nehekhara who can rightfully claim such a title. No, you want to be the greatest
of warriors, the epitome of fighting men. That’s why you accepted the king’s
offer in the first place, didn’t you? So that you could have all eternity to
hone your skills beyond mortal ken.”

The mighty warrior blanched at the queen’s unsparing assessment. The others
looked at her as though she was an oracle, never pausing to think that, through
Arkhan, she had more than a century’s worth of knowledge about their every hope
and desire.

She surveyed the assembled noblemen. “Lamashizzar has failed you for the last
time,” she said to them. “Bow to me, and I will give you all that you desire.
The choice is yours.”

W’soran did not hesitate. He sank to his knees and prostrated himself before
the queen. Ankhat and Ushoran followed suit, and the three young libertines,
Adio, Khenti and Zuhras followed suit.

Ubaid, already kneeling, simply nodded deferentially to the queen, as he had
done so many times before.

That left only Abhorash. The queen turned to regard him with a raised
eyebrow. He held her stare for a long, silent moment, then slid his sword back
into its scabbard.

Lamashizzar, who only moments before had been the undisputed ruler of the
greatest city in Nehekhara, could only look on in helpless fury.

“What is it you want, sister?” he snarled.

Neferata smiled.

“For now, fetch a hammer and an iron chisel,” the Queen of Lahmia said,
savouring her triumph. She pointed a bloodstained finger at Arkhan the Black.
“You’re going to set him free.”

Cripple Peak, in the 76th year of Djaf the Terrible

(-1599 Imperial Reckoning)

After the ambush at the barrow, the priests organised large hunting parties
to comb the plains and the mountain slopes to find Nagash’s lair. For weeks they
searched the mountain, sending acolytes down into the fissures as far as they
could manage. Almost a score of them died in the attempt, overcome by the
concentration of glowing vapours, and their bodies were never recovered. Despite
their best attempts, the hunters never came close to him; he’d become far too
adept at navigating the labyrinth of tunnels and caves beneath the deeper
fissures. Whenever they drew too close he would simply retreat deeper into the
maze until the hunters lost their nerve and withdrew.

Eventually, the barbarians’ hunger for vengeance faded, and they abandoned
their hunt. The stormy season was about to begin, and the older priests had no
desire to spend day after day out on the mountain slopes in the rain. They
retreated back to their temple fort and doubled the patrols out on the barrow
fields, in case the terrible grave robber should return again.

Nagash spent weeks studying the movements of the patrols out on the plain,
sometimes moving among them on nights when the rains were heavy and the brassy
notes of thunder rumbled across the surface of the Sour Sea. He’d come to
realise that the priests were not true necromancers; their skills were limited
and extremely crude compared to his. What they lacked in sophistication they
made up for in numbers and raw power, though, and the priests he encountered on
the plain took their duties very seriously indeed. They were sharp-eyed and
vigilant, even under the worst conditions, and they knew the plain far better
than he.

If it came to battle, Nagash had no doubt that he would win, but the fight
would cost him resources he could ill afford to spare. Though he spent nearly
every day combing through the tunnels in search of more dust, there was now
little left to scavenge. He’d filled his cloak hood to almost three-quarters
full; perhaps two pounds, more or less, and mingled with all manner of
impurities. It was his sole source of strength, unless he managed to find a way
to reach the deposits buried deeper inside the mountain.

Thus, Nagash was forced to surrender much of the barrow fields to the
priests, restricting his activities to the southern edge of the plain where they
rarely patrolled. The barrow mounds there were very old, many having collapsed
altogether under the weight of centuries and their contents long gone to dust.
Any corpses left within the mounds would be nothing more than bones, and much
harder for him to control, but for the moment they would have to serve.

Nagash searched the southern barrow fields for some time, examining the
barrow mounds carefully before he found one that suited his purposes. Like the
rest, its stone foundation had settled into the earth over the centuries,
completely burying its entrance-way, but the weeks of steady rain had softened
its earthen roof enough that he could dig through it with his bare hands. Night
after night, he clawed at the soft ground, tearing it away in chunks and casting
it aside. Flashes of green lightning illuminated him as he worked, revealing his
grotesque, almost skeletal figure. Sickly emerald light seeped from his bones,
revealing the dark, rope-like muscles working beneath his tattered skin. More
skin hung like torn parchment from his cheeks and forehead, revealing the
leering skull beneath. The necromancer’s eyes had long since rotted away, boiled
from within by the heat of the burning stone. All that remained were twin, green
flames, flickering coldly from the depth of sunken eye sockets. His limbs were
held together not by sinew, but by sorcery and willpower alone.

Finally, late one night, Nagash’s efforts bore fruit. His fingers tore
through the last layers of root and soil covering the barrow, releasing a
hissing cloud of noxious air that would have slain a breathing man within
moments. Redoubling his efforts, Nagash widened the hole far enough to allow him
to slither his way inside.

He had chosen this particular barrow because it was one of the largest ones
still intact on the southern end of the plain. Nagash hoped it had belonged to a
great warlord or hetman, and thus hold the remains of a large retinue that he
could raise as well. What he found was far better than he’d hoped for.

Nagash slid through the muddy channel he’d carved in the barrow’s roof and
found himself in a moment of freefall as he plunged some twelve feet to the
barrow floor. He landed hard, snapping his right collarbone like a dry twig;
irritated, Nagash focussed his will on the surrounding muscles to pull the
broken ends of bone back into place, and then healed the break with a small
measure of his power. Frowning, he bent down and laid a hand on the barrow
floor. It had been laid with crude paving stones, now cracked and slimy with
age.

Lightning flickered high overhead, casting a shaft of brilliant green light
through the hole in the barrow’s roof. It pierced the gloom, revealing a carved
stone bier at the centre of the barrow. Laid upon the bier was the skeleton of a
once-powerful man, clad in a mouldy shell of thick leather armour. A belt of
heavy gold links hung loosely about the warrior’s shrunken waist, and a circlet
of gold, tinged black with corruption, lay against the corpse’s bony brow. The
warrior’s hands were folded over the hilt of a long, black sword that had been
laid atop his chest. It was straight and double-edged, and it seemed as though
it had been shaped from a single piece of obsidian. Crude glyphs had been carved
into the surface of the blade and then filled with a familiar green dust. The
abn-i-khat
still glowed faintly after so many years.

Nagash turned about slowly, his burning stare taking in the rest of the
chamber. There were no less than a dozen other skeletons interred with the
warlord, laid on stone biers and arrayed in a circle about their lord with their
feet pointing towards the walls of the mound. Ten of the skeletons were clearly
warriors, clad in rotting leather armour and carrying crude stone weapons of
their own. The other two appeared to be female, judging by the tattered scraps
of fabric and the tarnished golden jewellery that adorned their fingers and
necks. Wives perhaps? There was no way to tell, and it mattered little to him at
any rate. So long as they could dig, they would be of use to him.

Taking out his dagger, Nagash began to carve a ritual circle into the
barrow’s stone floor. It was different in design and intent than the one he’d
used months before, and similar to the arcane circles he’d placed in the Black
Pyramid at Khemri. This circle would not contain magical power; it would
broadcast it in very specific ways.

When the circle was complete, Nagash took a moment to inspect it and make
certain that every line, every symbol was correct and properly aligned. Then he
retreated to the far side of the chamber and pulled a tightly closed bag from
his frayed leather belt. Very carefully, Nagash opened his makeshift bag and
studied the glowing dust contained within. It was slightly less than half-full
at this point.

A growl rose from his ravaged throat. Power. In the end, it all came down to
power—and the willingness to use it.

Nagash raised the bag, tilted back his head, and poured a stream of glowing
dust down his throat.

A whirlwind of fire burst inside his chest and went howling up into his
brain. The entire world seemed to shudder under his feet. When he finally
lowered the bag, he could hear the thunder of rain on the earthen roof of the
barrow and feel the slightest wrinkles in the leather of the bag clutched in his
hands. His gaze pierced the gloom of the barrow, until every detail of the dank
chamber was sharply etched in his brain.

That’s when Nagash realised that the walls of the chamber were not raw earth,
as he’d supposed. The builders instead had covered it with a kind of lime
mixture, creating smooth, white surfaces that they had then decorated with
paint. He saw crude representations of battles between human tribes, focusing on
the triumphs of a tall, dark-haired man with piercing eyes: no doubt the very
warrior whose bones now resided in the tomb. Of greater interest to Nagash was
the woman depicted next to the warlord, whose eyes flashed with green fire and
who flung bolts of burning energy to slay the warlord’s foes. His gaze turned
once again to the two female skeletons, whose corpses were arrayed by the
warlord’s head—and then he saw the mural that had been painted on the wall
above them.

Fiery eyes blazing, Nagash approached the fading mural. At its feet he stared
up at the curving wall and the image of a dark, broad-shouldered mountain,
looming up over a bare, rocky plain. A long, burning line, like a spear, had
been driven into the mountain’s side, piercing it to its heart. At the centre of
the wound there burned a green, lidless eye.

Nagash’s burning heart raced. Quickly, he turned and stepped into the ritual
circle. Raising his arms before the warlord’s corpse, he focussed his mind by
hissing out the names of those he hated. Then, with visions of dark vengeance
glimmering in his brain, he began the incantation of awakening.

The necromancer infused every arcane syllable with power until his shrivelled
lips were ragged and the air clashed like a cymbal with every word he spoke.
Nagash turned his implacable will upon the ancient corpses.
Rise,
he
commanded.
Your master summons you. Rise!

More power washed over the skeletons, stirring flakes of decaying leather
from their armour and scattering scraps of moulding cloth—then the blackened
bones began to emit a faint, green glow. There was a crackle of decaying hide
and the creak of bending sinew, and Nagash saw the warlord’s hands tighten on
the hilt of his blade.

“Rise!”
Nagash said aloud, his voice rising to a furious howl.
“The
Undying King commands you!”

There was a rasp of metal and bone. Slowly, the warlord rose at the waist,
like a man sitting up from a long slumber. Tiny points of green fire glittered
from bony eye sockets as the skeleton regarded Nagash.

Around the barrow chamber, the other skeletons were doing the same. They rose
from their beds of stone and studied Nagash in cold, pitiless silence. The
necromancer clenched his fists in triumph.

“Come to me!”
he ordered.

Bones clattered as the warlord and his retinue slid from their biers and
walked haltingly to stand before Nagash. With every passing moment they seemed
to stand a little straighter, their movements a little stronger and more
assured. Their bones radiated the chill of the grave, and ancient malice gleamed
in their flickering eyes.

Nagash pointed a bony finger at the painting on the far wall.
“Now, show
me,”
he told his ghastly retainers.
“Take me to the burning eye.”