02 - Nagash the Unbroken (7 page)

Khalida’s eyes widened. “Is this true?”

Neferata’s lips pressed together in irritation. “I haven’t had the
opportunity to measure the size of our fields lately,” she answered. “It
certainly sounds ominous enough, but remember that Naeem was a priest long
before he became a king, so his convictions are more than a little suspect.”

The young girl frowned. “What does that mean?”

“Wait and listen.”

Down at the council table, Lamashizzar spoke. “What, then, would you have us
do?” he said to Naeem.

From the look on Naeem’s face, the answer seemed obvious to him. “Why, the
people must first be reminded of their duty to the gods!” he replied. “We must
spare no effort to rebuild Mahrak, and restore the Hieratic Council to its
proper place in Nehekharan society.”

“Now we get to the heart of the matter,” the queen said to Khalida. “Naeem
has been listening to those bitter old buzzards that have roosted in his court.”

Throughout the history of Nehekhara, the Hieratic Council had presumed to
speak on behalf of the gods themselves, issuing edicts and meddling in the
affairs of kings from their seat of power at Mahrak. With temples in every one
of the great cities and religious advisors in all of the royal courts, their
wealth and influence had been tremendous. Their grip on Nehekharan society had
finally been broken by the Usurper, and since the fall of Mahrak the remnants of
the council had taken refuge at Quatar, where they continued to issue dire
warnings about the passing of the old ways. As far as Nefereta was aware, none
of Nehekhara’s rulers seemed willing to listen to their harangues anymore.
Their divine powers had faded, and the glories of the Ushabti, their holy
champions, were nothing more than a fading memory. Their day was done.

Lamashizzar raised a placating hand. “Your piety does you great credit, King
Naeem,” he said smoothly “and I’m sure that all of our friends here would agree
that we would like to see the council restored to Mahrak one day. Of course, I
don’t need to tell you, of all people, how our cities have suffered during this
long war—”

“If it wasn’t for the Hieratic Council, none of us would be sitting here
today!” Naeem shot back. His watery eyes widened in righteous indignation. “It
was they who forged the great alliance between Rasetra and Lybaras! They who
financed the building of the armies and the engines of war! We owe them—”

“No one here has claimed otherwise,” Lamashizzar replied, his voice taking on
a steely edge. “Just as no one here has claimed to possess the resources to
rebuild Khemri, either.”

Neferata straightened. Don’t be a fool, brother, she thought. You have a
golden opportunity here. Don’t squander it!

“For a century, everyone here has given much in the service of the common
good,” Lamashizzar continued, conveniently overlooking the fact that half of the
cities represented at the table sided with Nagash up until the very last moment
outside Mahrak. “I think the gods would forgive us if we now focussed on
regaining our strength, if only for a short while. Vast restoration projects
are, in my opinion, a bit premature at this point. Does anyone disagree?”

The King of Quatar glared archly at the assembled rulers, but even Shepret
sat back in his chair and stared silently into his wine cup. Neferata clenched
her fists in frustration.

“Then we are all in agreement,” Lamashizzar said. “But I thank both King
Naeem and King Shepret for making their concerns known to us. I’m confident that
when the time is right, we will no doubt revisit these proposals and give them
due consideration.” Smiling, the Lahmian king rose to his feet. “For now,
though, may I suggest we adjourn and refresh ourselves before the evening’s
feast?”

King Naeema looked as though he would protest Lamashizzar’s suggestion, but
he was pre-empted by Queen Amunet and Fadil, the young King of Zandri, who rose
to their feet without a word and took their leave of the council. Servants and
scribes rose to their feet, swarming around the table, and the King of Quatar
had no choice but to gather up his retainers and leave with what little dignity
remained to him.

“Thank Asaph,” Khalida said with a sigh. “King Naeem looked like he was ready
to argue all night long.” She turned to Neferata, her expression hopeful. “Shall
we return to the Women’s Palace now?”

“Go on,” Neferata told her. “Take the maids with you. I’ll be along
presently.”

Khalida’s eyes widened. “I—I mean, I don’t think that’s very wise—”

“I must speak to Lamashizzar,” the queen said, anger seeping into her voice.
“In private. Do as I say, little hawk.”

The young girl shot to her feet as though stung, and within moments she was
herding the bemused handmaidens from the balcony. As soon as they were gone,
Neferata snatched her mask from a nervous-looking servant and stormed down the
stairs to the lower floor.

She found Lamashizzar along one of the twisting garden pathways that led from
the council space. The king was surrounded by a number of senior scribes, who
were presenting drafts of various trade agreements for his approval. He looked
up as she approached, and the self-satisfied smile on his face vanished.

“I must speak to you,” Neferata said icily. “Now.”

The king’s eyes narrowed angrily, but Neferata met his stare without
flinching. After a long moment he dismissed the scribes, who wasted no time
withdrawing down the garden path.

“I’m starting to think W’soran was right, all those years ago,” he growled at
her. “You seem to have a problem with understanding your place, sister.”

Neferata stepped close to him, turning her masked face up to his. “Did you
read a single thing I wrote, brother? I made the words as simple as I could,”
she hissed. The vehemence in her voice surprised even herself, but she was too
frustrated to hold it back. “Give. Khemri. To. Shepret. Is that too complex an
idea for you to grasp?”

“Why in the name of all the gods would I do such a thing?” Lamashizzar
snarled. “Hand control of Khemri to Rasetra? It’s ridiculous!”

“It was the perfect opportunity to cripple our most dangerous rival!”
Neferata shot back, her voice echoing within the confines of the mask. It took
all of her self-control not to tear the damned thing off and fling it into her
brother’s smug face. “Don’t you see? Rasetra hasn’t the strength to rebuild
Khemri
and
keep the lizard folk at bay simultaneously! Shepret’s greed
would have been his undoing. All we had to do was sit back and give him our
blessing!”

“And deprive ourselves of a major trading partner? Are you insane?” the king
snapped. “Has the black lotus permanently dulled your senses? These trade
agreements will pay our debt to the Eastern Empire and cement Lahmia as the
centre of power in Nehekhara.”

“Are you really as naive as all that?” the queen replied. “Our
honoured
friends
won’t abide by those agreements one moment more than they have to.
As soon as they’ve restored their cities and rebuilt their armies, they’ll form
a coalition and force us to negotiate terms that are more to their liking. Did
you learn nothing from the war with Nagash?”

The king’s hand shot out, seizing Neferata’s jaw and gripping it with
surprising strength. “Don’t speak of things you know nothing about,” he warned.
“I should never have let you advise Ubaid in my absence. It put too many
dangerous ideas in your head.” He shoved her roughly backwards. “If you know
what’s good for you, you’ll concern yourself with more proper matters, like
providing me with an heir. Or would you rather I stopped sending you bottles of
elixir every month? I can always marry Khalida once you’re dead and gone.”

Lamashizzar’s words cut through Neferata like a knife. And it was no empty
threat, she could see the truth of it in his eyes. She was trapped. He could
withhold Nagash’s elixir any time he liked and simply wait for her to die.

Rapid footfalls sounded down the garden path. Neferata turned to see a pair
of royal guardsmen appear, obviously drawn by the heated exchange. Lamashizzar
acknowledged them with a curt nod.

“The queen has grown overexcited from the events of the day,” he told them.
“Conduct her to the Women’s Palace at once, and inform her maids that she’s to
be given a draught to help her rest.”

Lamashizzar took the queen by the arm and handed her to the guards as though
she were a child. Neferata felt herself moving, as though in the grip of a
dream, as the warriors took her back to her gilded prison.

The Bitter Sea, in the 76th year of Asaph the Beautiful

(-1600 Imperial Reckoning)

As it happened, using the glowing stone never did lead Nagash to the
slopes of the dark mountain. If anything, it confused his course further,
leading him ever deeper into the heart of the wasteland. It was a mystery that
took him more than a hundred years to solve, during which time he was forced to
re-learn the sorcerous arts that had made him master of Nehekhara.

The properties of the glowing rock—over time Nagash simply called it
abn-i-khat,
or “the burning stone”—were similar in principle to the
winds of magic he’d learned from his druchii tutors centuries ago, but not as
easily manipulated using the rituals he’d mastered in Khemri. As near as he
could tell, it wasn’t truly a stone at all, but a physical manifestation of pure
magic. If he used a fragment of stone as the locus of a simple ritual, the
mineral consumed itself, converting to a dry, ashy substance that flaked away
from its outer surface. The conversion was proportional to the amount of energy
used, so far as he could determine; more than once he bitterly regretted the
lack of paper and ink to document his observations. He’d learned over time how
to ration the stone perfectly: a single thumbnail-sized chip provided him with
enough strength and mental acuity to fulfil his needs for as much as a month,
provided he didn’t need to draw unduly upon its power. The flecks sustained him
far better than his elixir ever did, but its chaotic energies sometimes caused
his thoughts to become unmoored, or his perceptions to shift in unexpected ways.

If not kept under careful control, the stone wrought physical changes as
well. His skin had retained its leathery texture, but it had taken on a
green-tinged alabaster tone. As soon as he’d understood the stone’s
transformative properties he focussed his attention on channelling it to good
use as much as possible; now he was stronger and swifter than ever before, and
virtually tireless for days at a time. Lately his skin was growing mottled with
faintly luminescent deposits around his shoulders and midsection, leading him to
wonder how much of the stone he ate was accumulating in his bones and organs.
Would there eventually come a point where its energies became too concentrated
for him to control? He reluctantly conceded the possibility, even as he
continued to consume the glowing stone.

Time had no meaning in the trackless expanse of the wasteland. Nagash no
longer marked the passage of days, focusing all his attentions on unlocking the
powers of the stone and shaping rituals to harness its power. The first rite he
experimented on was creating a resonance between a fleck of stone and the source
it had stemmed from.

The results were initially very disappointing. Over time, as he began to
grasp the mineral’s properties more closely, the experiments became merely
baffling. It wasn’t that the resonance failed to draw him in a distinct
direction—it pointed him in a multitude of directions at the same time,
including straight up and straight down. Following the many paths the ritual
revealed to him caused Nagash to cross and re-cross the length and breadth of
the wasteland. From time to time he would find pieces of stone, sometimes buried
deep beneath the ground, but none led him towards the dark mountain. After a
time, he began to think that the fickle energies of the stone were somehow
purposely
leading him astray.

Then one night, he saw a streak of green light arc across the starlit sky,
and another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

Whatever the
abn-i-khat
was, it truly was not of this earth—or at
least not part of the earth that Nagash knew and understood. He marked the
plunging arc of green light as a soldier might trace the fall of an arrow shot,
and then began a long and arduous trek to find where the stone had fallen.
Eventually he came upon a shallow crater dug into the earth. Pieces of the green
stone were nowhere to be found, but large, rat-like footprints were in
abundance. The beasts had made it to the site mere hours before he did. Nagash
tried to track them further, but soon lost their spoor across the hard, rocky
terrain. After that, he resolved to kill the rat-beasts wherever he found them,
for clearly they coveted the stone at least as much as he did.

Nagash mulled over everything he’d learned, and concluded firstly that if
he’d been able to detect the power radiating from the mountain at such a
distance, it must contain a much larger collection of
abn-i-khat
than
he’d ever seen before, and its chaotic energies made magical divination
difficult, if not impossible. So he abandoned his ritual and let his instincts
guide him, heading ever eastward over the ridges and foothills and leaving his
senses open for concentrations of magical power.

It was the hazy glow to the north-east that drew him first—a faint,
greenish luminescence that limned the crooked lines of the mountain peaks,
almost too faint to see against the paling of the early morning sky. He was well
beyond the foothills now, crossing the first of the Brittle Peaks, and the
sensations of power seemed to shift directions like the fey mountain wind.

Like everything else about the wasteland, the glow seemed just a few miles
distant, but it took him nearly a fortnight to reach the last of the intervening
peaks. From there, Nagash found himself staring down upon a broad, dark sea. The
night was early, and the glow he’d seen on previous nights wasn’t in evidence
yet, allowing him to see a long way in the clear mountain air. Marshlands
glittered frostily beneath the moonlight along the sea’s south-eastern shore,
while a broad crescent of watch fires flickered along the coastline to the north
and north-west.