The crowd grew thicker the closer they came to the king’s audience chamber. A dozen of Thutep’s Ushabti bodyguards lined the broad steps leading into the echoing hall, resplendent in their polished gold breastplates and gleaming swords. The faces of the devoted were young and fierce. Still little more than acolytes, their skin shone with Ptra’s holy blessing, but their bodies had yet to develop the perfectly muscled physiques of the Great Father’s chosen warriors. A hectic knot of palace slaves stood behind the rank of bodyguards, bearing wax tablets and rolls of fine parchment. They circled around a tall, dignified figure of middle years, wearing the gold circlet of Khetep’s grand vizier.
Nagash moved effortlessly through the multitude, like a crocodile knifing through the dark waters of the Vitae. Slaves scattered from the Grand Hierophant’s path and prostrated themselves on the hot, filthy ground, while their masters fell silent and bent their heads in respect. Khetep’s eldest son ignored them, one and all.
The Ushabti bowed their heads in turn as Nagash glided smoothly up the sandstone steps, and the palace servants withdrew swiftly into the shadows of the court. That left only the grand vizier, who folded his hands calmly and awaited Nagash’s approach.
“The blessings of the gods be upon you, holy one,” Ghazid said, bowing his head respectfully to the Grand Hierophant. Though at least a hundred and ten, the grand vizier was still lean and fit, with the quick, hawklike energy of the desert tribes from which he was born. Legend said he’d been a bandit in his early years, but had allied himself with Khetep when the young priest king had tried to bring the desert tribes to heel. Khetep quickly found himself confiding in the bold, clever tribesman, and when the army returned to Khemri, Ghazid went with them. In short order Ghazid was named grand vizier, and he had served the royal household ever since. He proved to be an able advisor and stalwart friend to the king, and many believed that much of the city’s resurgent glory could be rightly attributed to him. His keen blue eyes missed nothing, and he feared neither man nor beast. Nagash had hated him since childhood.
“Pray, reserve those well wishes for yourself, grand vizier,” Nagash said with a cold smile. “I come to tell my brother that the rites for our great father are complete. He will be laid to rest in the Great Pyramid in just a few hours, in accordance with the wishes of the priests.” The Grand Hierophant bent his head in a semblance of respect. “It will be yet another loss to Khemri when you go into the darkness alongside him.”
“Alas, holy one, you are misinformed,” Ghazid replied smoothly, “no doubt due to your grief and the duties of your station. Alas, Khetep has forbidden me from accompanying him into the underworld. As he lay dying on the battlefield, he commanded that I remain to guide his son through the early days of his reign.”
“I… see,” Nagash replied. “Such a thing is unprecedented. It is a great honour, of course.”
“And a great responsibility,” Ghazid added. His blue eyes regarded Nagash steadily. “Times of peace and prosperity tempt otherwise reasonable people to make rash decisions.”
The Grand Hierophant nodded gravely, and said, “Wise words as ever, Ghazid. I can see why my father valued your counsel so much.”
Ghazid waved his hand dismissively. “Your father never truly needed my counsel,” he replied. “If anything, he often brooded too much over his decisions. If I did anything for him, it was to prompt him to take action when the situation warranted it. Better a swift blow to kill a viper before it can rear up and threaten to strike.” Nagash’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
“Well said, Ghazid. Well said.”
The vizier smiled, saying, “I am pleased to be of service, as always,” he replied, bowing his head once more. He stepped aside, gesturing to the court’s open doorway. “Your brother is receiving offerings from the city’s embassies as we speak. He will be pleased to hear your news.”
Nagash nodded brusquely and resumed his swift pace, passing between the massive sandstone columns supporting the roof of Settra’s Court and into the presence of the towering basalt statues of Asaph and Geheb, who stood to either side of the towering doorway. Geheb stood to the doorway’s right, his left hand clutching the sickle of the harvest and his right hand held up in a gesture of warding, keeping out spirits of misfortune or malevolence. Asaph held her hands crossed over her breast in greeting, her glorious face serene and inviting. Gold leaf decorated the goddess’ headdress and the bracelets upon her wrist, and shone from the curved blade in Geheb’s hand. The idols were a display of enormous wealth and power. The rough basalt alone had taken ten years and cost the lives of more than four thousand slaves to bring it from the Brittle Peaks to the east, but they paled in comparison to the great hall that lay beyond.
Settra’s Court was a rectangular chamber more than two hundred paces long and forty paces wide, bordered by great columns of polished marble that supported a ceiling forty-eight feet above the gleaming stone floor. The sandstone walls and floor had been faced with square sections of rich, purple marble, shot through with veins of onyx and gleaming gold that glowed in the light of scores of polished bronze oil lamps situated along the length of the chamber. The air inside the grand, echoing space was cool and fragrant, perfumed with costly incense burnt in braziers near the grand dais at the far end of the hall.
In ages past, Settra’s Court had been the grandest audience chamber in all Nehekhara, surpassed only by the extravagance of the White Palace at Quatar some centuries after Settra’s death. In these times, the entire nobility of Khemri could fit inside the lofty space, with room to spare for their families and slaves. Today, however, the audience chamber was crowded nearly to bursting, the murmur of voices mingling together in a steady, surf-like roar that echoed in the space between the huge pillars. Even Nagash was, for a moment, taken aback by the sheer spectacle that lay before him.
During Khetep’s reign his tireless efforts to unite all of Nehekhara, if not as an empire then as a confederation of allied city-states, had involved so much negotiation and statecraft that the other Nehekharan cities had been obliged to create permanent embassies within the Living City. Delegates from each of these embassies filled the hall, each of them bearing lavish gifts to accompany Khetep into the afterlife and cement their relationship with his successor. From where he stood, Nagash could see a delegation from Bhagar in their black desert robes and head wrappings, whispering to one another in the company of a dozen slaves bearing urns of rich spices brought by caravan from the south. Nearby, the golden-skinned giants of Ka-Sabar folded their massive arms and watched the proceedings intently, beside them open chests containing ingots of polished bronze. Farther down the hall on the right, the Grand Hierophant spied a crowd of courtiers and noblemen clad in the silk robes and long kilts of distant Lahmia. Their expressions were guarded as ever, but Nagash noted the weariness that hooded their eyes and dulled their expressions. No doubt many of the Lahmians had escorted Thutep’s young bride up the great river to Khemri, a difficult journey in the best of times, but all the more gruelling when it had to be done in haste. Idly, he wondered what other gifts the rich and decadent Lahmians had brought to honour his dead father.
At the moment, the attention of the Lahmians, and indeed that of nearly everyone else in the chamber, was focused on the great procession currently making its way towards the grand dais. Ranks of noblemen clad in plain, white kilts and shoulder capes were being led forward, escorted by tall Ushabti with gleaming green skin and long, fine black hair. Nagash recognised the devoted with a start. They were the chosen warriors of Zandri, the architect of Khemri’s defeat.
Khefru had noticed the procession as well, and whispered, “What can this mean, master?”
Nagash gestured to his servant for silence. Frowning, he slipped quickly to the right and began working his way through the deep shadows behind the pillars along the great wall. Dozens of royal slaves bustled past them in the darkness, each intent on his own business and unaware of the personage who moved in their midst.
&nbs
p; “Nekumet, the Priest King of Zandri, is a thoughtful and devious man,” Nagash hissed. “He invited the war with Khemri over those absurd trade disputes last year, and now he seeks to supplant us as the pre-eminent power in Nehekhara. This is but the next step in his grand strategy.”
The Grand Hierophant moved as swiftly as his station allowed, reaching the far end of the audience chamber in a few minutes, where the shadows were watched over by alert, keen-eyed Ushabti. The young bodyguards bowed their heads at Nagash’s approach and let him slip quietly into the crowd of viziers and courtiers in attendance at the foot of the dais.
Nagash noted at once that the viziers were troubled men. They whispered quietly to one another, their hands moving in urgent, impassioned gestures as they discussed the events unfolding before them. Impatient, the Grand Hierophant pushed his way through the crowd of grey-bearded officials until he was nearly standing before the king’s throne.
The throne of the Living City was ancient, carved from an elegant, fine-grained dark wood not found anywhere in Nehekhara. Legend said it had been brought from the jungles south and east of the Blessed Land, during the mythical Great Migration, while some claimed it had been built from wood taken from the south in the early years of Settra’s reign. It rested at the top of the grand dais, beneath a massive statue of Ptra, the Great Father. Reaching nearly to the ceiling, the idol was made of sandstone plated in sheets of hammered gold. The sun god’s right hand was clasped against his chest in welcome, while the left hand was held out in a gesture of warding, protecting the Priest King of Khemri from the evils of the world.
There was also a lesser throne upon the dais, set off to the right and two steps lower, closer to the floor where Khemri’s citizens attended upon their king. In the early days of the Living City, Khemri’s patron god was Ptra, and under the auspices of the Sun God, Settra the Great was able to forge Nehekhara into a mighty empire. This was not enough for the mighty king, however, and in time, his power and his pride grew so great that he believed that he could find a way to defy death, and reign over the Blessed Land until the end of time. That was when the city’s mortuary cult was born, more than seven hundred years ago, and in Settra’s lifetime its high priest supplanted Ptra’s, becoming Khemri’s Grand Hierophant.
The ruling house of Khemri still owed a tremendous obligation, not just to Ptra, but to all the gods of the Blessed Land. Though the people of Nehekhara first encountered the gods near where the city of Mahrak now stood, many hundreds of leagues to the east, it was at Khemri, upon the banks of the River Vitae, that they entered into the great covenant that gave birth to the Blessed Land. Ptra and the gods swore to provide a paradise for the Nehekharans to live in, so long as the Nehekharans worshipped them and raised temples in their name. In addition every noble house would provide their firstborn as a gift to the gods, to serve as their priests and priestesses. In Khemri, the firstborn child was given to Ptra as the living embodiment of the great promise sworn between men and gods.
When Settra founded the mortuary cult he risked breaking the sacred covenant that made his glorious empire possible. Since he could not give his firstborn child to the gods, he chose to honour his promise in another way, by taking a priestess of Ptra as his wife. Settra’s queen, the great Hatsushepra, was a daughter of the royal court of Lahmia. Ever since, a daughter of Lahmia was wed to the Priest King of Khemri to ensure the prosperity of the Blessed Land.
The queen’s throne sat empty. Khetep’s wife, Sofer, was praying at the temple of Djaf in preparation for joining her husband that afternoon, but there was someone standing beside the lesser throne, her hand resting almost possessively on its ornately carved arm. The strange breach of decorum caught the Grand Hierophant’s eye, and he glanced up at the figure on the steps, less than a dozen feet away. Nagash’s breath caught in his throat.
She was very young, Nagash noted at once, still a long way off the full flowering of her beauty. Her lithe body was clad in glorious yellow silk, brought all the way from the strange land that lay across the seas east of Lahmia. Bracelets of delicate, honey-coloured amber decorated her brown wrists, and a necklace of gold and fiery rubies encircled her slender neck. She had a small mouth and a pointed nose that accentuated her high, fine cheekbones and large, almond-shaped eyes that were the colour of polished emeralds. Despite her youth, she stood beside the empty throne with great poise and dignity. She was serene and utterly radiant. In time, Thutep’s betrothed might become the greatest queen Nehekhara had ever known.
Nagash had never felt beguiled by a woman at any point in his life. The thought of emotional attachment or dependency was repellent to him, and could only be a hindrance to his ambitions, and yet, the moment he saw the queen, Nagash found himself gripped with a terrible, burning desire. His hands, hidden within the depths of his voluminous sleeves, clenched into grasping claws. The thought of the horrors he could inflict on such sanctified flesh nearly swept every other ambition out of the Grand Hierophant’s mind. Only the thunderous cheer of the assembled throng brought Nagash out of his cruel reverie and focused him once more on the matter at hand.
The priest king’s throne also stood empty. Thutep, the heir apparent, stood at the foot of the dais before a richly dressed dignitary from Zandri. Nagash’s brother still wore the ceremonial finery of a royal prince, clad in a kilt and shoulder cape of white linen worked with gold thread. Gold bracelets were clasped around his brown arms, and a circlet set with a single ruby rested upon his brow. Though he did not possess the refined features of his father and older brother, Thutep’s face was expressive and his eyes twinkled with easy charm. The ambassador from Zandri, whose sea-green robes were decorated with fine pearls and smooth, teardrop-shaped emeralds, bowed deeply to the king. The ambassador’s dark hair and beard were tightly curled and glistened with fragrant oil, and his face was lit with a happy smile.
Nagash scowled as he recognised many of the faces of the young men who stood in serried ranks behind the ambassador. Many of the men bore livid bruises on their limbs or chests, and several sported fresh bandages spotted with blood. To a man, their faces were downcast, their chins hanging low in shame. They were the noblemen taken prisoner in the disastrous defeat just a short month ago. Nagash grasped the nature of Zandri’s plan at once, and eyed his brother speculatively.
“The people of the Living City thank Nekumet, your great king, for this expression of charity and mercy,” Thutep declared, his hands clasped across his chest as he bowed, deeply. “Let their return signal a new era of peace and prosperity for the people of the Blessed Land!”
Cheers rang out, once more. Khefru leaned close to his master, saying, “Zandri is giving back all their prisoners without asking even a token ransom? It’s madness!”
Nagash was careful to keep his bitter dismay secret.
“Not at all,” the Grand Hierophant said. “The gesture wasn’t made for Thutep’s benefit, but for the other ambassadors.” When Khefru gave his master a blank stare, Nagash shot him an irritated look. “Can’t you see? It’s a carefully calculated insult, and Nekumet’s opening diplomatic gambit. By making a great show of handing back our noblemen without demanding a punishing ransom, he’s telling the rest of Nehekhara that we’re no threat to him.” He took in the entire chamber in a sharp sweep of his hand. “Khetep is dead, and the jackals are circling, looking to grab whatever influence they can. Zandri just leapt to the front of the pack, and Thutep is too naive to see it.”
Suddenly, Thutep turned, as though he’d caught the sound of his name. His gaze alighted on Nagash, and after a moment, his smile widened.
“Welcome, brother,” he said, beckoning to the Grand Hierophant. “I’m glad you were here to witness the end of our feud with Zandri. Now the past can be put aside and forgotten.” Nagash favoured the ambassador from Zandri with a cold, implacable stare.
“I have come to tell you that our father’s body has been prepared for its journey,” he said to his brother. “We will bear him to the Great Pyramid
an hour before sunset, in accordance with the wishes of the priests.”
The ambassador heard the news and his expression grew sombre. He bowed his head to Thutep, and said, “Although we marched to war against your father, he was a bold warrior and a great king, and we mourn his death along with the rest of Nehekhara. We would therefore humbly offer a gift on behalf of the people of Zandri, to accompany Khetep on his journey into the afterlife.”
Thutep received the news with a grave nod. “Very well,” he said. “Let us see this gift.”
The ambassador beckoned, and a stir went up at the far end of the procession. The former prisoners, who were awaiting Thutep’s leave to return to their families, were brushed to either side by a knot of burly, bare-chested slaves, dragging a trio of black-garbed figures, whom they deposited quickly at the ambassador’s feet before hurriedly withdrawing.
Nagash studied the three figures carefully. They were tall and slender, clad in a strange combination of tattered woollen robes and some kind of dark leather armour that covered their torsos and abdomens. Two of them were female, with long, white hair that hung in unkempt tangles down to their waists. The male’s hair was black as jet, almost as long and equally tangled. Their skin, what little Nagash could see of it, was whiter than alabaster. Their features were fine-boned and delicate, with pointed chins, sharp noses and angular cheekbones. They were beautiful, in a strange, almost dreadful way, and for all that they appeared fragile compared to the Nehekharans around them, they carried an aura of menace that somehow unsettled him. The male glanced up at Nagash. His expression was slack, and his black eyes were vacant. All three of them had been heavily drugged.
Curious whispers spread through the court. Thutep stared at the strange creatures with a mix of fascination and revulsion, as though he had come upon a clutch of cobras.
“What are they?” he asked.
[Nagash 01] - Nagash the Sorcerer Page 4