02 - Nagash the Unbroken (28 page)

There would be no escape. Arkhan knew that at once. He was spent, and
Abhorash was too skilled an opponent to be taken in by his tricks. For a moment,
the immortal thought wistfully of the warhorse waiting in the stables, and the
feel of the desert wind on his face.

He had his revenge upon the king. That would have to be enough. Raising his
sword, Arkhan went to meet his fate.

The scope of the tragedy was immense, the carnage terrible to behold. The
royal apartments looked like a battlefield, heaped with the mangled remains of
Lamashizzar’s valiant guard. Though Abhorash, the king’s champion, had slain the
assassin in the end, it was a bitter victory for the people of Lahmia.
Lamashizzar, the great king, was dead.

It was a crushing blow for the royal household to bear. Functionaries and
servants alike were overwhelmed by the news, not realising that it was only a
fraction of the greater catastrophe. Only Ubaid, the grand vizier, and the few
remaining servants of the Women’s Palace knew that Neferata was dead as well.

For a handful of hours, just after dawn, Ubaid held the fate of the city—and by extension, all of Nehekhara—in his hands. His first act was to order
the king’s champion to seal off the palace, allowing none to enter or leave upon
pain of death. One of the queen’s handmaidens was already missing, probably
having fled in the small hours of the morning, but the rest of the household was
kept from spreading the word to the city at large. Orders were given not to
inform the king’s children of his death, at least not yet. That bought the
palace precious hours to organise a proper response.

After careful consideration, the king’s privy council was summoned. Lords
Ankhat and Ushoran answered the call at once, as well as the old scholar
W’soran. Lord Zuhras, the king’s young cousin, could not be found for hours,
having gone drinking with his friends in the Red Silk District the night before.
It was mid-morning by the time his servants brought him, pale and trembling, to
the palace gates.

While the council met in secret to discuss the shocking turn of events, the
priests of the mortuary cult were quietly summoned to begin their ministrations
to the dead. Rituals began at once for the great king, preparing his body for
transfer to the House of Everlasting Life. The protocols for the queen were
different. By tradition, her body was to be washed and clothed by her
handmaidens, and at dusk they would bear her upon their shoulders to the Hall of
Regretful Sorrows. There she would be given into the keeping of the priests, who
would tend her while her body lay in state for the proscribed three days and
three nights. Only then, after the citizens had been given time to pay their
last respects, would Neferata join her husband in the House of Everlasting
Life.

Shortly before the appointed hour, just as the sun was setting far out to
sea, Ubaid, the grand vizier, appeared at the door to the queen’s bedchamber.

The last of the queen’s handmaidens—half a dozen women ranging in age from
youthful to elderly—were crouched on their knees around the perimeter of the
queen’s bed. The traditional preparation of the body had lasted for almost the
entire day, and most of the handmaidens were slumped and silent with exhaustion.
The rest rocked slowly on their heels, keening softly in mourning.

Ubaid stood in the doorway and carefully surveyed the room. He’d been told
what the handmaidens had found when they’d entered the room that morning, but
all traces of Arkhan’s desperate rituals had been scrupulously removed. The
ritual circle had been scrubbed away, along with the pools of dried blood that
had stained the floor around the bed. The bedclothes themselves had been
stripped away, and now lay in a tightly wrapped bundle in one corner of the
room. The grand vizier made a mental note to have them burned before the night
was out.

Neferata lay on a bare white mattress, her body wrapped in a fine cotton robe
that had been marked with hieroglyphs of protection and anointed with sacred
oils. Her arms were folded across her chest, and her golden mask had been laid
across her face. Only the bare skin of her hands, marked with intricate bands of
henna tattoos, showed how cruelly wasted her body had been at the time of her
death. The sight of it sent a pang of guilt through the grand vizier, but he
stifled it with an effort of will. What was done was done. His responsibility
now was to look to the future, and ensure the continuation of the dynasty.

One of the older handmaidens caught sight of Ubaid and straightened. “You
shouldn’t be here!” she said. “It’s not proper!”

“These are not proper times,” Ubaid replied. He approached the bed. As one,
the handmaidens scrambled to their feet, forming an implacable barrier between
him and their charge.

The grand vizier addressed the old handmaiden. “Forgive the intrusion,” he
said, inclining his head respectfully. “I meant no disrespect. This has been a
hard day for us all, and I wanted to make certain that the queen and her
quarters had been seen to properly.”

“We know our duty,” the handmaiden said, folding her arms indignantly. “Do
you imagine we would allow any slight to her honour?”

“No, naturally not,” Ubaid replied. “It must have been hard, preparing the
queen and… restoring her chamber to its proper appearance. Did you manage all of
it alone?”

“Just the six of us,” she replied grimly, though her head was held high. “We
couldn’t trust such an important task to anyone else.”

“Yes, of course,” the grand vizier said, inwardly breathing a sigh of relief.
He studied each of the handmaidens in turn, committing their faces to memory.
All of them would have to die. Hopefully they would all choose to follow the
queen into the afterlife, but if not, he would take matters into his own hands.
Once they were gone, there would be no one left who knew the real circumstances
of Neferata’s death.

The cabal—what was left of it—could continue its work in secret. Ubaid
had little doubt that W’soran would be able to take up where the queen left off.
Lord Ankhat or Lord Ushoran would be named regent, and life in the city would go
on much as before. In fact, the grand vizier thought, the opportunities for
power and influence for the surviving cabal members would be even greater.

Ubaid took a step back and composed himself, then bowed solemnly to the
handmaidens. “It is time,” he said. “The priests and the privy council await in
the Hall of Regretful Sorrows. Let the people of Lahmia look upon Neferata one
final time, and weep.”

The handmaidens grew subdued at the grand vizier’s solemn words. The old one
sighed and gestured to her companions, and they turned their attention once more
to their beloved queen. Three of the women circled around to the far side of the
bed, then they all hung their heads and intoned a ceremonial prayer to Usirian,
god of the underworld. Ubaid listened to the low, mournful chant, as the sun
sank low on the horizon and the light fled from the room. The prayer came to an
end, and the chamber was plunged into a funereal gloom. As one, the handmaidens
began their keening wail again, and bent over the queen’s recumbent form.

Suddenly, there came a dreadful sound from the bed. It was a faint, wet,
rippling crackle, like the popping of joints grown stiff from disuse. Then the
keening of the handmaidens spiralled into a threnody of horrified screams.

Bone crunched and flesh parted with a sound like a knife through wet cloth.
The two handmaidens closest to the head of the bed were hurled backwards in a
welter of blood, their throats reduced to ragged pulp. Ubaid’s stunned mind
barely had time to register the horrifying sight before there was a blur of
motion above the bed and the sickening sound of crunching bone. Two more
handmaidens collapsed, their skulls crushed by swift and terrible blows.

There was scarcely time to breathe, much less react. The last of the queen’s
devoted servants seemed to reel away from the bed in slow motion, their hands
rising to their faces as a lithe, bloodstained figure reached for them with
gaunt, grasping hands.

The grand vizier stared in shock as Neferata lashed out at one of the
handmaidens with an open hand. The blow crushed the woman’s skull like a melon
and flung her corpse against the far wall. The last of the handmaidens, younger
and swifter than the rest, turned and fled towards Ubaid, her hands outstretched
and her face twisted into a mask of absolute terror.

She managed less than a half-dozen steps before Neferata leapt upon her back
like a desert lioness. Fingers tipped with long, curving claws sank into the
handmaiden’s throat. The impact jarred the golden death mask from the queen’s
face, its cold, smooth perfection falling away to reveal the snarling face of a
monster.

The queen’s face was horribly gaunt, her cheeks sunken and the flesh
stretched like parchment across the planes of her face. Her eyes were twin
points of cold, pitiless light, shining with animal hunger as she fell upon her
prey. Neferata’s shrivelled lips were drawn back in a feral snarl, her delicate
jaw agape to reveal prominent, leonine fangs. The handmaiden scarcely had time
to scream before the queen’s head plunged downward and those terrible fangs sank
into the young woman’s throat. Flesh tore and vertebrae popped, and the girl’s
screams dwindled into a choking rattle.

Ubaid pressed a trembling fist to his mouth, biting back a scream of his own.
His legs trembled, threatening to betray him completely as he backed towards the
bedchamber door. No matter how hard he tried, he could not take his eyes from
the handmaiden’s body. He dared not turn and run.

Each step lasted an eternity. The handmaiden’s body twitched as the queen
worried at her throat, gorging on the young woman’s blood. He had to be close to
the doorway now, Ubaid thought. Another few feet at most, and then—

Suddenly the grand vizier realised that the sounds of feasting had stopped.
Neferata’s head was raised, her mouth and chin soaked in bright, red blood. His
own veins turned to ice as she turned her unearthly gaze upon him.

“Ubaid,” she said, her voice liquid and menacing. The power of her stare left
him transfixed. His heart laboured painfully in his chest.
“Loyal servant.
Fall to your knees before your queen.”

The grand vizier’s body obeyed. His knees cracked painfully on the stone as
he all but prostrated himself before Neferata’s terrifying visage.

The queen smiled, her teeth slick with gore. Her eyes glinted cruelly.

“Now tell me all that has transpired.”

The gathering in the Hall of Regretful Sorrows was silent and subdued. The
only sounds in the vault-like space were the soft sounds of the mortuary
priests’ robes as they went about their preparations to receive the body of the
queen. Votive incense had been lit, and the proper sigils of preservation had
been laid across the marble bier. Lord Abhorash stood at the foot of the cold
slab of stone, his head bowed and his hands resting upon the hilt of an ancient
ceremonial sword. Lord Ushoran and Lord Ankhat stood apart from one another,
each lost in their own thoughts as they contemplated the difficult days ahead.

When news of the king’s death became widely known it would send ripples
throughout the entire land. It would require adroit manoeuvring to keep the
other priest kings in check. Behind the powerful nobles, W’soran stood with his
hands folded at his waist and his head bowed, as though in prayer. The old
sholar had an impatient expression on his face. He now had unfettered access to
Nagash’s works, and he was eager to begin his studies. Behind W’soran stood
young Lord Zuhras, who lingered close to the door as though he might bolt from
the hall at any second. The king’s cousin looked pale and stricken, though from
grief or guilt, none could truly say.

They had been waiting for more than an hour already, having gathered long
before sunset to view the body of the queen. It had already been decided that
once Neferata’s body had been laid in state, the word of her and Lamashizzar’s
death would be announced to the city. When the doors at the far end of the
chamber swung silently opened, a stir went through the small assembly as they
braced for the beginning of a new era.

None expected to see the queen emerge from the shadows of the Women’s Palace,
pale and terrible in her glory. Her beauty, once the gift of the goddess, now
took on a divine power all its own. They did not see the dark blood that stained
her white robes and painted her hands and face. Her eyes, dark and depthless as
the sea, banished thought and replaced it with a yearning that was deeper and
more all consuming than any they had known before.

Beside the queen came Ubaid, the grand vizier. He stepped past Neferata, head
bowed and shoulders hunched. He descended the shallow steps that led to the
waiting bier, and regarded the assembly with haunted, hollow eyes.

“Rejoice,” he said in a bleak voice. “Rejoice at the coming of the queen.”

The Plain of Skulls, in the 76th year of Phakth the Just

(-1597 Imperial Reckoning)

The warriors of the Forsaken had pitched their tents upon the Plain of
Skulls, a broad, roughly triangular plain some three leagues north-east of the
Sour Sea. As the only navigable terrain between the coastline and the
village-forts of the northlanders, the plain was where the barbarians—or the
Yaghur, as Hathurk knew them—and the Forsaken had met to do battle for
centuries. By ancient custom, the warbands of both sides normally encamped along
the northern and southern edges of the plain, but after a series of recent
victories of the Yaghur, the northlanders were no longer abiding by the old
rules. They had taken note of the absence of the Keepers, and believed that the
strength of the tribes had been broken. The destruction of the Yaghur was
finally at hand.