The End Times | The Return of Nagash

by Josh Reynolds

  ‘As you wish, my lord,’ Elize said.

  Mannfred released her and stepped back. He chuckled. ‘What game are you playing, sweet cousin, that you will not share your moves with me?’

  ‘It is but a small one, to amuse myself,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve often wondered… How did you woo him? Or did he woo you, the necromancer’s apprentice trailing after the beautiful lady without mercy?’ Mannfred turned away. ‘He angered you, though, your cannibal prince. I know that much. He left to follow his own path, without a word of thanks for all your efforts to groom him into something greater. What was your plan then? Was he to be a stepping stone to influence elsewhere?’

  ‘As I said, my lord, it was but a small amusement,’ Elize said.

  She was lying. Mannfred nodded nonetheless, as if he believed her. ‘Then you will not mind if I send both. If one of your creatures fails, then the other will not.’

  Elize’s face might as well have been a marble mask. ‘As you will, my lord. Who, dear cousin, will accompany you? And who will be castellan here?’

  ‘The latter is easy enough – you,’ he said.

  She blinked. Then, she inclined her head. ‘You honour me, cousin.’

  ‘I know. See that you do not disappoint me. I’d hate to accomplish my goals, only to return to a burned-out ruin, and a scattered army.’ He ran his palms over his head and said, ‘As for who shall accompany me… Markos and our good Vargravian count, Nyktolos. Both have warred in the Border Princes before, and their experience is required. Master Nictus will stay with you, to act as your good right hand.’

  Elize hesitated. Then, ‘Are you certain you wish to take Markos?’

  Mannfred looked at her. ‘Concerned for my wellbeing, sweet cousin?’

  ‘If I were not, would I have warned you of Tomas’s intentions, all those months ago, before this affair even began? Would I have warned you that he’d made an agreement with von Dohl, that he was promised command of the armies of Waldenhof, if he took your head?’

  ‘As I recall, you warned me so that I might allow you to choose the next Grand Master of the Drakenhof Order. A straight bargain, Elize.’ Mannfred laughed. ‘And even if I hadn’t known, Tomas would have failed. He was a maggot, nothing more, just like von Dohl, and the cursed Shadowlord and all the others who defy my blood-right.’

  ‘Like Markos?’

  Mannfred paused. ‘Markos has never been… comfortable in a subordinate role. Vlad spoiled him. He had a peculiar fondness for acerbity in his servants.’

  And you would know, wouldn’t you, boy? Vlad’s voice murmured. Mannfred ignored it and continued, ‘It is a fondness that I do not, on the whole, share.’ Of course not. You never could stand to be questioned could you, young prince? Vlad needled him. Mannfred felt his cheek twitch as he sought to restrain a snarl of frustration. ‘I am giving Markos a chance. He will serve, or he will make his move,’ he said. ‘Either way, I am too close to victory to allow him to remain undecided. We are coming to the sharp end of all things, sweet cousin. The time when sides must be chosen, and banners unfurled for the last time. All games save mine must be put aside, for the good of all who bear the von Carstein name.’ He looked at her. ‘Including yours, my sweet Elize.’

  ‘Do you dream, old man?’ Arkhan asked. He examined Volkmar from a distance, head cocked. He had stood in the same place since Mannfred had left, soaking up the miasma of the place, drinking in the concentrated essence of his master’s earthly remains. All that had been Nagash, save for certain pieces, was here, and he could feel the Great Necromancer’s presence beating down upon his brain like a terrible black sun. ‘I think you do. You can hear his footsteps in the hollows of your heart, and his voice in the sour places of your memory, even as I can.’

  Volkmar said nothing. He glared at Arkhan as silently as he had Mannfred. Arkhan leaned against his staff. He was not weary, but sometimes he felt what might be the ghost of such a feeling, deep in his bones. ‘I see the skull beneath your skin, old man. It’s no use denying it. He has chosen you.’

  ‘He is chosen, and by Lord Mannfred,’ Morgiana hissed. She rose from where she’d been crouching in the corner and sauntered towards Arkhan, as far as her chains would allow. Unlike the others, she hadn’t been beaten to within an inch of her life. She no longer had a life to lose. She glowed with the cold fire of undeath to Arkhan’s eyes, and he did not wonder why she was still chained. She had been threat enough in life. In death she was even more dangerous. Or she would be, once she learned the new limits of her power.

  Arkhan examined her curiously. She was kept with the others both because she made for a cruelly amusing gaoler, and because even Mannfred wasn’t so foolish as to let a creature like Morgiana Le Fay wander loose. Her blood still pulsed with the raw stuff of life, as did her magics. It was only her presence that kept the other captives from slipping over the precipice into death’s domain. Mannfred had truly wrought something abominable when he’d turned her. Still, there was yet a sliver of the woman she had been within the beast he’d made of her.

  ‘How did he acquire you, I wonder?’ he murmured, drawing close to her. She hissed and retreated, her eyes narrowing with pain. Arkhan stopped. Some vampires, those with an unusual sensitivity to the winds of death, felt pain in his presence. He was little more than the power of necromancy given form, and for some vampires, that was the difference between being warmed by flames and burned by them.

  Morgiana’s beautiful features twisted into an expression of bestial malice. ‘Drycha,’ she spat. Arkhan nodded. The branchwraith of Athel Loren had ever been a changeable and unpredictable factor. It did not surprise him that she had brought Morgiana to Mannfred. That sort of malevolent caprice was what Drycha was best at.

  ‘Free me, liche, and I shall aid you in whatever way you wish,’ Morgiana said, the mask of humanity slipping back over her face. She rattled her chains for emphasis. ‘I shall abet you and comfort you. My magics – all that I am – will be at your disposal.’

  Arkhan let a raspy laugh slip between his fleshless jaws. ‘I doubt that, woman. Mannfred keeps you chained for good reason. You are more dangerous now than you were in your enchanted Bretonnian bower.’

  Morgiana snarled and sprang for him. Arkhan didn’t move. He had stopped just out of the reach of her chains, and she tumbled heavily to the floor, where she rolled about, writhing and shrieking like a she-wolf in a trap. She spat bloody froth at him, and where it struck the floor, green patches of moss flourished, before swiftly withering and dying.

  He turned away from her display, focusing his attentions on the Everchild, where she hung in her chains, eyes closed, lips moving in a silent song. And it was a song, for Arkhan could hear it, even if Mannfred could not. It was a hymn, a sorcerous prayer, subtle yet powerful enough to pierce the bindings Mannfred had placed about Sylvania. It was a thing of intricate beauty to his eyes and sorcerous sense, a crystalline web that stretched upwards from Aliathra, growing in strength and size, as she powered the spell with her own life essence.

  ‘I wonder if they have heard you yet, child?’ he asked as he approached her. ‘I think they have. I can feel the burden of gathering destinies. Your song calls your kin to your side. Perhaps you have wondered why I have not stopped you?’

  The elf did not reply. Her eyes remained shut, and her lips continued to move. Arkhan brushed a strand of her hair from her face, and he felt her clammy skin quiver at his touch. ‘It serves the ends of the one whom I serve, you see. I tell you this so that you understand that we are both pawns, and that there is no malice in my actions.’

  Her eyes flashed open. Arkhan lowered his hand. There was fire there, and rage. It crashed against the coldness of him, and he almost flinched back. As much power as inundated his cracked and ancient bones, the fury that lurked in the elf maiden’s blood was greater by far. It was power enough to shatter continents and crack the world’s core.

  For a moment, Arkhan felt fire and pain. Then it passed, and he was himsel
f again. He found that his cat had returned, its maggoty body pressed tight to his shoulders. Its weight had come upon him unnoticed, and it hissed at the elf maiden with feline disdain. He reached up and stroked the animal’s decaying throat. Aliathra’s eyes were closed. Arkhan turned away, disturbed.

  That disturbance did not lessen in the coming days, as he prepared for the ritual that would allow for escape from the caged province. He saw Ogiers and the others but little over the following days. The trio of necromancers he’d scavenged from the ruins of Mallobaude’s army had scattered the moment they arrived, slipping his reins to find newer, more pliable partners or masters. It would have been a matter of moments to summon them back to his side, but for the moment he left them free to pursue their whims. Morgiana, despite her madness and untrustworthy nature, still had an able mind, and she proved an able replacement, in between pleas for release and demands for blood. It was fitting that she was such, for she was, herself, one of the cornerstones of the very ritual that formed the root of their current predicament.

  He had faced Morgiana only briefly on the field of Couronne during Mallobaude’s revolt, but that confrontation had shown him the nature of the power that lurked beneath Bretonnia’s barbaric facade. That Morgiana was still somehow connected to it, despite her current state only confirmed his suspicions. Necromancy, at its base, had been born in elven minds, or so Nagash swore. He had altered it, and forced it into a shape more to his liking, but its seed had been planted in the wisdom of Aliathra’s dark kin, even as Morgiana’s own had its roots in the secret glades of Athel Loren.

  The collegial magics that had been used to create the wall of faith were similar, albeit watered down, and altered still further to account for the frailty of the human frame. Luckily, that was something Arkhan no longer had to worry about.

  As the weeks progressed, he eventually ordered Morgiana unchained, to better aid him in preparing his form for the rite to come. His bones had to be carved with the proper sigils and runes, and the ritual knife he would use had to be soaked in the blood of each of the nine captives for a certain amount of time. The proper bindings had to be prepared, as well as the unguents and powders that would be used to mark the circle and feed the braziers. Many hands made for light work, and Morgiana had proved to be pliable enough, once freed.

  Time passed strangely for the dead. It moved in fits and starts, as slow as tar and as fast as quicksilver. Arkhan could only keep track of the days by the puddles of melted candle fat, so engrossed was he in studying the Books of Nagash, as well as the other grimoires he ordered brought to him by the whining ghoul pack Mannfred had given him to act as his dogsbodies. He read and studied and read still more, and as they always did in such times, the unoccupied portions of his mind drifted into the depths of memory, and were reluctant to return. He had once spent a decade brooding on his throne in his black tower in the desert, lost in the grip of his memories. They were all that he had of himself that was not of Nagash’s crafting. Or so part of him hoped.

  On the last day, when the last mark was added to his scrimshawed bones and the last powder mixed and all preparations made, Arkhan stood in the centre of the chamber, admiring his handiwork. Over the centuries, he had carved and shaped his own bones more than once. Unlike his long-abandoned flesh, his bones always healed, and his work faded eventually. They would not have long before the marks he and Morgiana had so painstakingly made would vanish, necessitating that they start the whole purification rite over again. He sent the ghouls scrambling to alert Mannfred and turned to Morgiana. ‘It is time, enchantress. I thank you for your service.’ He paused, and then asked, ‘Would you see your land again, one last time? As payment, for services rendered.’ Even as he spoke he wondered when such a thing had occurred to him.

  Morgiana looked at him and then away. ‘I do not think so. I know what you intend, and I know that I cannot stop you, but I would not see it.’

  ‘Very well.’ Arkhan looked at her.

  ‘You are going to kill me, aren’t you?’ Morgiana asked, suddenly.

  Arkhan hesitated. ‘You are already dead,’ he said.

  ‘No, I am not. If I were, this would not work,’ she said, gesturing to the runnels of blood that cut across the floor. ‘If I were, I would not feel the way I do.’ She ran her hands through the ratty tangles of her once luxurious hair. ‘How can anything dead be so hungry?’ Her eyes, fever-bright with barely restrained madness, turned towards her fellow captives. All but Aliathra were unconscious, even Volkmar. Morgiana had been feeding on all of them, save those two, to keep them docile while Arkhan completed his preparations. It was the first taste of blood she’d had in a long while, and it was that which had shocked her back to something approaching lucidity. ‘It’s always with me,’ she said. ‘I can hear the Lady’s voice, but only faintly, as if I am on the opposite shore of a vast, red lake. Sometimes her words are entirely drowned out by the crash of the crimson waves on the white rocks.’ She looked at him. ‘Can you even understand, dead thing that you are?’

  ‘I… can,’ he said. He crossed to her as faint echoes of memory were stirred from the sludge of ages and rose unencumbered to the surface of his mind. Of another woman, of another time, of another ritual, marred by poison and betrayal. Unthinkingly, he brushed a strand of hair from her face. ‘My spirit will never know peace. I must play my part until the end of time.’

  ‘I thought I would as well, but the world had other plans,’ she whispered, not looking at him. ‘My path changed. And I cannot bear to see where it is taking me.’

  ‘I… knew a woman like you, once,’ he croaked, wondering as he spoke why he was bothering to do so. What matter to him the travails of a madwoman? Then, perhaps his unlife had simply given him perspective. Even as a man, he had never been given to torture. ‘She too was afraid, and had lost the voice of her goddess.’ He fell silent.

  She looked at him, and for a moment he saw the face of another superimposed over hers. A pale face, framed by hair the colour of night, with eyes like molten pools and lips that could change from kind to cruel with the merest twitch. Even now, when his mind was not otherwise occupied, he could see her face. Her hands reached up to stroke his jawbone. ‘What happened to her?’ she murmured.

  ‘She persevered,’ he said. ‘She was a queen, and queens do not know fear for long.’

  Morgiana closed her eyes. ‘I do not think I will have that opportunity. You will kill me, won’t you?’ she asked again.

  ‘I will,’ Arkhan said. ‘In the end, nine are required for the final ritual, though eight will suffice. But no less than that.’ He stroked her cheek. Some part of him snarled in warning, but he ignored it. The chamber had been replaced by another in his mind’s eye, of cool marble and sandstone. He could smell the ocean, and hear the rustle of silk curtains. ‘There will be no pain… That I swear.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘That is what I needed to know.’ Her hand dropped. A moment later, his knife was jerked from its sheath and Morgiana had its tip pressed to the flesh over her heart. The flesh of her hand sizzled as the malign enchantments wrought into the blade resisted her touch. Marble and silk again became mouldy stone and the stink of abused flesh.

  Arkhan lunged forward, hand outstretched. ‘Neferata,’ he rasped, momentarily uncertain what was memory and what was reality. She shoved him back, her vampiric strength taking him by surprise. He staggered. ‘No, please…’ he said, still caught in the tangled strands of memory. He saw Neferata writhing on her bed, caught in the throes of an agonising death. He felt Abhorash’s blade, as it cut him down. The full weight of the last, worst moment of a life badly spent crashed down on him for the first time in centuries, and he could not bear it. ‘Please don’t!’ The words were ripped from him before he even realised that he’d said them.

  Morgiana smiled in triumph. ‘My path was changed. But I can change it back.’ She wrapped both hands around the hilt, and thrust it into her own heart. Black smoke boiled from the wound, and blood gushed as she to
ppled forward into Arkhan’s arms.

  The liche screamed. The sound was one of frustration, rage and despair. As her blood coated his arms and chest, he knew what she had done. It had taken her weeks, but she had ensnared him in her glamour, making him see… and feel. Rage burned through him, and then guttered out. He cradled her close as the last wisps of the glamour faded and he was himself again. No longer Arkhan the gambler, Arkhan the dread lord, now only Arkhan the Black.

  He tore the knife from her chest and hurled it aside. He hesitated. Her face was peaceful, in death. But some part of her yet remained. Vampires could not truly die. He could bring her back with but a touch, to stir the black sorceries that flowed through her tainted blood. But still, he hesitated.

  From behind him came a yowl. He turned and saw his cat crouched atop Nagash’s crown. Its starved, crumbling frame was draped over the iron points, tail lashing. Its empty eyes met his own and he nodded slowly. He looked back down at Morgiana and said, ‘No, my lady. Escape is not so easy as all that, I fear.’

  He placed a hand against the wound, and dark lightning crackled briefly from his fingers to course through Morgiana. Her body twitched and her eyes opened wide. Her lips spread and a scream escaped them. It was a sound empty of all hope. She clawed uselessly at him, and he jerked her to her feet. In moments, she was chained once more. She crouched against the wall, sobbing. Arkhan watched her for a moment, before turning away.