The three druchii came together and whispered once more, clearly arguing about which way they should go. Then a cold voice echoed from the darkness, transfixing them with its predatory intensity.
“You’re very close,” Nagash said from the darkness surrounding the ebon throne.
Cloth whispered against stone as the necromancer rose to his feet and slowly descended the steps into the ruddy light. In his left hand he held the Staff of the Ages, and his dark eyes were intent upon the barbarians. Nagash smiled, a gesture devoid of warmth or humour.
“Shall I tell you which direction to go?” he asked, pointing to the doorway at the far end of the hall. “When the spirit of the dead king was judged and accepted into paradise, he could leave the Great Pyramid and travel to the afterlife. So the architects built a long, sloping corridor there, to facilitate his passage.” Ashniel gave Nagash a look of purest hate.
“A pity that a spirit has no need for an actual door,” she hissed. “The passageway is purely symbolic, and ends at a stone wall.” She drew herself to her full height and sneered at the necromancer. “I’ve spent a great deal of time reading about your people’s bizarre burial rites.” The witch turned and pointed into the shadows along the chamber’s southern wall. “There will be another doorway there, leading into the upper vaults. Beyond that will be the corridor to the outside.”
Nagash inclined his head mockingly. “The passage awaits, witch. All that stands between you and your freedom… is me.” He spread his arms expansively. “Defeat me with your sorceries, and you may go free.”
Malchior took a limping step towards the dais. “What kind of trick is this?” he spat, but the movement was nothing more than a feint. Quicker than the eye could follow, the warlock threw up his hand and hissed a stream of liquid syllables that caused the air to crackle with magical power.
Nagash reacted without hesitation, bringing around the Staff of Ages and chanting an abjuration just as a bolt of blue-white light shot from Malchior’s hand. The destructive spell leapt at Nagash. Then it seemed to unravel midway to its target as it encountered the necromancer’s counter-spell and dissipated with a thunderous crack!
As the ragged tendrils of sorcerous energy washed over him, Nagash switched tactics, thrusting his open hand forwards and barking out a spell. There was a flash of heat, and darts of glimmering fire stitched the air between the necromancer and the druchii. The barbarians scattered, deflecting the magical bolts with counter-spells. The darts etched molten craters in the marble flagstones and blew fragments from the towering stone columns that flanked the throne room.
Ashniel circled to Nagash’s left, spitting out a blasphemous incantation and hurling a bolt of hissing blackness from her open hands. Nagash turned it aside with another quick counter-spell. It struck the Staff of the Ages and deflected past the necromancer with a thunderous roar, striking the ebon throne of Usirian and melting it into a steaming puddle of liquid rock.
Malchior struck Nagash a moment later, hitting the necromancer in the side with a spear of crackling energy. Nagash, still focusing on his counter-spell, was able to dissipate most of its power, but the rest of the spell’s energy raked across his ribs like a lion’s claws, and set his robes ablaze.
The necromancer staggered. With a roar, he barked a stream of syllables. The fire licking at his robes guttered and went out, channelled into a whipcord of flames that he unleashed upon Ashniel. The witch severed the stream of energy with contemptuous ease.
Suddenly, a storm of whirling shadows surrounded Nagash. A pale figure emerged from the darkness, appearing to dance past the necromancer, and fiery pain tore through the necromancer’s arm. Nagash whirled, but Drutheira was already out of reach, vanishing into the magical darkness with a hateful laugh. Blood poured down his arm from a gash left by the witch’s dagger.
The air in the chamber quivered with the crash and roar of sorcerous power. Another bolt of power tore through Drutheira’s cloak of shadow, and Nagash felt his entire left side explode in pain as the spell grazed his hip. It spun him around like a child’s toy, nearly pitching him from the dais. He landed hard on his right side, sparing him from a stream of crackling darts flung by Ashniel.
Nagash bit back the pain that clawed at his nerves and tried to collect his wits. The druchii were far more experienced with sorcery than he was, but he’d thought that without raw magic—the winds of magic, as they called it—to draw on, he would be able to counter their spells with ease. Clearly, the barbarians hadn’t shared everything they knew. Nagash, however, possessed secrets of his own.
Once more, the inky shadows closed in around him. The necromancer abandoned his counter-spells and clutched the staff with both hands, watching for a telltale flicker of pale skin.
Drutheira seemed to dance through the darkness towards him, approaching Nagash from the side. He let her draw close, and then lashed out at her with his staff. The witch saw the blow coming and tried to leap aside, but the necromancer caught her right ankle and caused her to stumble. She fell with a screech, rolling painfully down the stone steps of the dais.
As she fell, Nagash rose to one knee and barked out a counter-spell that scattered the shadows like smoke. His throat was tight and painful and his body was starting to tremble from strain. Immediately, he felt a sense of pressure against his skin and he brandished the Staff of the Ages in front of him as bolts of power struck him from the front and the side. Claws of fire tore at the side of Nagash’s face, and he was deafened by twin concussions that hammered at his body. Agonising pain lanced into his chest, as though iron fingers tore deep into the flesh and muscle beneath his skin.
For a dizzying instant Nagash wavered on the edge of unconsciousness. He clawed his way back by sheer force of will and sought out the wounded figure of Malchior, still standing at the centre of the throne room. Clenching his right fist, the necromancer began to chant.
Nagash knew that the barbed spike in the warlock’s leg was tainted with poison, a painful, debilitating venom that was even now coursing through the druchii’s veins. Somehow the warlock was able to continue fighting despite the agony of the poison, but now the necromancer enhanced its virulence tenfold. The druchii stiffened in mid-chant, his muscles tightening like cables beneath his skin. Foam burst from the warlock’s mouth, and he toppled over and began to writhe across the cratered stone, until a flurry of searing bolts from the necromancer’s fingers tore the druchii’s body open like knives. Boiling blood spattered across the floor, and the warlock’s flayed body stilled.
Nagash wasn’t finished with Malchior yet. He tasted blood as he spat the Incantation of Reaping and consumed the warlock’s soul. Malchior’s life essence flowed into him like a river of ice, banishing the pain of his wounds and filling his veins with power.
Drutheira lay at the foot of the dais, doubled over in pain. She had landed on her right arm, which was bent at an awkward angle. With a snarl, Nagash jabbed a finger at her and spat a vicious spell. The witch threw up her good arm and screamed a counter-spell, but the force of the necromancer’s attack struck her like a desert storm. Drops of blood appeared on the witch’s pale skin, spreading rapidly as her flesh was stripped away in twisting ribbons by a furious magical wind. In the blink of an eye the witch was shredded, her entrails spread in a gory fan behind her steaming bones. Once again, Nagash chanted the Incantation of Reaping and ate the barbarian’s life essence.
A bolt of searing power smashed into the necromancer, but Nagash scarcely felt it. The energy dissipated like smoke, cancelled by the inrush of power from Drutheira’s soul. He turned to Ashniel, who still stood near the chamber’s southern wall, and unleashed a rippling string of magical bolts. The witch countered his attacks with fearsome speed, deflecting many of the bolts and dissipating the rest. Crackling detonations split the stones and sent puffs of dust into the air around the druchii, but Ashniel was unharmed.
With a screech, the witch struck back. Nagash felt the dais beneath him start to shift and give way. He
focused his will on the stones, which were turning black and melding together like the maw of a gaping pit. The necromancer barked a counter-spell and poured his newly gathered energies into the incantation, fixing the stones once more into solidity.
Before Ashniel could launch another attack, Nagash unleashed another torrent of bolts at the witch. Once again, she deflected them with almost casual skill. More concussions reverberated across the chamber, sending razor-sharp flecks of stone whickering through the air.
Ashniel staggered beneath the onslaught, but she gave the necromancer a malicious smile.
“A clever trick, human,” she shouted, “but those two were amateurs compared to me. Your attacks are potent but clumsy, and your energies are finite. I can counter your spells indefinitely, and when you have exhausted yourself, I will make a new pair of gloves from your hide.”
Nagash’s face twisted in rage and he began to chant again. A wild, howling wind rushed from the necromancer, roaring down the dais towards the witch. Ashniel threw up her hands and the wind curled around her. The flagstones beneath her feet erupted in fragments, and the sharp echoes of splintering stone filled the air.
“You see?” she said with a laugh. “Your spells can’t touch me.”
Nagash drew a deep breath. The power of the druchii souls was fading, leaving his throat feeling raw and torn.
“What makes you think that spell was meant for you?” he croaked.
Ashniel’s smile faltered. Her eyes narrowed warily, and with a hiss like an angry cat she whirled to see the cracked and splintered feet of Asaph, goddess of love.
Baffled, she spun back to Nagash, just as the head of the goddess landed on her. The stone head, the size of a chariot, smashed to pieces, crushing the druchii to a pulp.
Nagash uttered the Incantation of Reaping one last time, and drank deep of Ashniel’s life essence. Pain faded, replaced by the cold bliss of triumph.
The necromancer surveyed the scene of carnage. Veils of dust hung in the air, tinged red by the banked light of the braziers.
“My thanks for the lesson,” Nagash said with a smile.
SIXTEEN
The Creeping Darkness
Bel Aliad, the City of Spices, in the 63rd year of Ptra the Glorious
(-1744 Imperial Reckoning)
By the time Akhmen-hotep and his warriors reached Bel Aliad, the Bhagarite horsemen had killed every living thing they could. Bodies lay in heaps along the narrow streets, cut down as they tried to flee the swift-riding desert raiders. When the panicked citizens fled into their homes the merciless Bhagarites flung torches and looted oil lamps through the windows and waited with their bows at the ready. Old men, women and children lay huddled by the doors of their homes, pierced by arrows and spears. The Bhagarites had waded into the slaughter until their white robes and the withers of their horses were drenched in innocent blood.
The stench of spilled blood hung heavy in the air, even in the famous Spice Bazaar. The brightly coloured awnings of the spice market had been slashed apart, and a king’s ransom worth of exotic herbs had spilled from broken urns and been trampled into the dirt. Bel Aliad had been cast to ruin in the space of a single afternoon. The desert raiders had cut out its heart to answer for all that they had lost, and now, the horsemen sat their mounts and stared dumbly at the horror they had wrought, their sword-arms hanging limp and their dark eyes empty of thought or feeling.
Akhmen-hotep strode heavily into the Spice Bazaar, surrounded by his Ushabti and Pakh-amn’s light horsemen. They’d left their chariots at the edge of the town, for there had been no way to guide the heavy war machines down the streets without riding over Bel Aliad’s massacred people.
The king’s bloodstained sword quivered in his hand as he saw the milling figures of the horsemen. Rage and despair flooded through Akhmen-hotep, and when he tried to speak all he could manage was a wordless roar of anguish that echoed in the corpse-strewn square. The desert horses shied at the terrible sound, tossing their heads and backing away from the advancing king, but the Bhagarites stilled the animals with leaden voices and slid from the saddles with funereal grace. They walked a few steps towards the king and carefully laid their swords on the ground beside their feet.
Some of the men reached up and tugged their head-scarves loose, baring their necks, while others pulled open their gore-spattered robes and revealed their heaving chests. They had avenged their murdered kin, and now prepared to join them in the afterlife.
At that moment, Akhmen-hotep would have gladly obliged them. He stared into their dead eyes and felt sick with fury.
“What infamy is this?” he cried. “These people did nothing to you! Do you imagine your loved ones are pleased with what you’ve done? You’ve murdered mothers and their babes! This is not the work of warriors, but of monsters. You’re no better than the Usurper!”
The imprecation struck the Bhagarites like the lash of a whip. One of the horsemen screeched like a desert cat and snatched up his blade, but he took no more than two steps towards the king before one of Akhmen-hotep’s Ushabti stepped forwards and cut him down. The king’s bodyguards swept forwards in a single mass, their ritual swords flickering, but they were halted by a commanding shout, not from Akhmen-hotep, but from Pakh-amn, the Master of Horse.
“Stay your hands!” the young nobleman shouted. “The lives of the horsemen are for the king to take, not your own!”
True to their oaths, the devoted paused, awaiting their master’s order. Akhmen-hotep turned at the sound of Pakh-amn’s approach, glaring up at the nobleman as he reined in his horse beside the king.
“Do you mean to plead for their lives, Pakh-amn?” he snapped. “Their lives are forfeit for what they have done!”
“Do you think me blind, great one?” the nobleman shot back. “I have seen the slaughter just the same as you, but their executions must wait if you and I hope to see Ka-Sabar once more.”
Akhmen-hotep bit back a savage reply. As terrible as it was to hear, Pakh-amn was right. Without the Bhagarites they would never find their way back across the trackless sands of the Great Desert, and the king’s duty to his people came before all other considerations. Justice for the people of Bel Aliad would have to wait.
“Seize them,” he told the Ushabti in a hollow voice. “Take away their horses and their swords, and return them to camp.”
The Ushabti lowered their blades reluctantly, but did as the king commanded. The desert horsemen offered no resistance as their hands were bound behind their backs with rope taken from their saddles, and strange hands took hold of the bridles of their sacred horses. As far as they were concerned, their lives were at an end.
“We should take them back by a circuitous route,” Pakh-amn suggested. “Lest the city nobles catch sight of them. I’ll round up some troops and see about putting out the fires.” Akhmen-hotep nodded heavily.
“What will I tell Suhedir al-Khazem?” he asked, unable to take his eyes from the torn and twisted bodies filling the square.
The Master of Horse drew a deep breath. “We will say that some of our horsemen got carried away during the battle and that there was some looting. Nothing more. If we tell them the truth there will be a riot.” Even battered and disarmed, the city nobles and the surviving members of the City Companies made for a large body of men, and the terms of ransom that the king offered meant that they would be held in camp under minimal guard. The barbarian mercenaries would be chained into slave coffles and marched back with the army: such were the wages of war in the Blessed Land.
Akhmen-hotep considered this, and nodded. The prince and his men would have to be told the truth eventually, but not today. He did not have the heart for it.
“See to it,” he said wearily, and waved Pakh-amn away.
The king stood alone in the blood-soaked square as the Bhagarite horsemen were led away and Pakh-amn snapped orders to his horsemen. His broad shoulders sagged, and Akhmen-hotep sank to his knees among the bodies of the innocent.
“Fo
rgive me,” he said, bending down to press his forehead to the hot stones. “Forgive me.”
The setting sun was red as fresh blood as it sank behind the mists above the Springs of Eternal Life. The hazy white clouds roiled slowly in the hot air, winding in thick tendrils around the tops of the high dunes just a few miles distant from where Rakh-amn-hotep stood. He was coated in a paste of sweat, dust and grit from the swirling cavalry skirmishes of the late afternoon, and his left shoulder ached from the sting of a horseman’s arrow that had penetrated a few inches past the heavy scales of his armoured vest. His throat and nostrils were caked with mud, and it felt as though his eyes would stick shut if he closed them for more than a few moments. To his tired mind the mists seemed to curl and stretch towards him like the welcoming arms of a lover. He longed to feel that cool, clean touch, but it remained just out of his reach, guarded by a long, thin line of Numasi horsemen and Khemri spears.
The enemy force stretched along the base of a line of low dunes running roughly southwards, with their left flank standing astride the Western Trade Road that led to the Living City. The bulk of the enemy cavalry had withdrawn to the north side of the road, no doubt to discourage flanking efforts in that direction. The Numasi cavalrymen were devils on horseback, almost the equal of the desert princes of Bhagar, and despite being significantly outnumbered they’d got the better of the Lybarans in most of the day’s skirmishes.
Rakh-amn-hotep had pressed them hard, believing at first that the Numasi cavalry was no more than a large scouting party sent to gather intelligence on the situation at Quatar. The enemy had retreated slowly but steadily in the face of his advance, sometimes wheeling and dashing forwards to unleash a volley of arrows or clash swords with a squadron of Lybarans who pressed too close. He had been certain that they would eventually break off and retreat north and west once the day was nearly over, but now he realised bitterly that the horsemen were merely a vanguard like his own, and they’d held him up just long enough for the rest of their force to form up for battle.
[Nagash 01] - Nagash the Sorcerer Page 23