[Nagash 01] - Nagash the Sorcerer

by Mike Lee - (ebook by Undead)

  Inside the stone coffin were perfumed cushions and sprigs of aromatic herbs, laid aside for the comfort of the king. Nagash climbed inside without hesitation and lay down. The marble enclosure channelled the energies of the pyramid and helped restore his mind and body while he drifted in a kind of cataleptic trance.

  As soon as he was settled, Khefru lifted the lid once more and prepared to set it into place. At the last moment, he hesitated. Nagash glanced impatiently at his servant.

  “What is it?” he snapped. “I can see the questioning look in your eyes. Out with it.”

  “I…” he began. “I beg you to reconsider this, master. Your pyramid is finished, but Khemri as a whole is weak. If you strike out at the priests, there will be no turning back.” The king’s face hardened into a mask of rage.

  “With the power at my command, I can take a thousand men and defeat every city in Nehekhara. They would not tire, would not fear, would not falter, for they would not die. You’re a fool, Khefru. Once I thought you an ambitious man, but the truth is that you have always been a coward. You don’t have the strength to stand up to the fates and choose your own destiny.”

  Khefru stared down at the king for a moment longer, and his expression fell.

  “Perhaps you’re right, master,” he said, as he slid the stone lid back into place. “Sleep well.”

  Nagash awoke to a strange, scratching sound above him. For a moment, he did not understand what he was hearing. His mind was still immersed in heady dreams of vengeance and conquest. Had he imagined the sound? Was it borne from dreamlike vistas of burning cities and plains of bleached bone?

  Then a thin trickle of stone landed upon his chest and he knew that this was no dream, but something altogether worse. Someone was drilling a hole in his sarcophagus.

  There was a scrape of metal as a tool was removed from the breach. His mind raced as he tried to understand what was happening, and then something thick and cool fell in a steady trickle onto his chest.

  Lamp oil, he realised with a growing sense of horror. Someone meant to burn him alive inside his coffin.

  With a wordless snarl, he shoved hard against the stone lid, but the covering was held fast. More heated shouts occurred above him, and the pouring oil abruptly ceased. The next thing to come through the bore-hole would be a red-hot coal.

  Seething with anger, Nagash put his hands against the lid of the sarcophagus and roared a furious incantation. The power of the pyramid flowed into him like a torrent and the stone lid exploded with a flash of heat and a thunderous detonation.

  The blast, in such a confined space, stunned and blinded the king. For a fleeting instant there was a flare of searing agony, and then a rush of air and the hissing of flames. The blast had ignited the oil soaking into his robes! Nagash screamed in anger and pain, breathing in a gust of flame that raked red-hot talons down his throat and into his lungs.

  Deaf and blind, Nagash could do nothing but call upon the pyramid’s power once more. A cold gust of wind erupted from the sarcophagus, snuffing the flames and tearing the oil-soaked robes from his torso. The king croaked another incantation and he burst from the smoking coffin like a bat, his arms spread wide as he leapt straight up into the air.

  Men were screaming in the small chamber, a confusing babble of orders, sacred oaths and bitter curses. Nagash fetched up hard against the ceiling and tried to force his eyes to function. Power boiled into his eye sockets, causing still more pain but clearing the spots of colour from his vision.

  The smouldering corpses of young men lay scattered around the king’s chamber, their bodies torn by shrapnel from the exploding stone lid. Four men, who had been standing close to the entrance and had escaped the worst of the blast, were fanning out into the room and raising their hands as though to abjure the king. Nagash felt their power at once, and then recognised the robes they wore. Priests!

  One of the men, a young priest of Ptra, raised his hands and uttered a sharp invocation. There was a flare of golden light, and a spear of flame jetted from the man’s open hands.

  With a curse, Nagash dodged to the right, croaking out a banishment spell even as he tumbled through the air. The holy flame struck the ceiling and seared his face and hands before it collapsed under the weight of his counter-spell. Without hesitation, Nagash flung out his hand and sent a flurry of ebon darts from his fingertips. They pierced the young priest like arrows, catching him in the right arm, chest and neck. He collapsed, writhing and choking on his own blood.

  A booming voice roared out words of power, and Nagash felt the air tremble around him. Stone shards on the floor quivered, and then streaked through the air towards him. Once again, the king used his power of flight to dive across the room and escape the lethal hail. Pellets dug painfully into his legs, but the worst of the blast passed him by.

  The surviving priests were all focusing on him. Abruptly, the wind supporting him rebelled, as though gripped by another man’s will. Nagash was caught unawares and sent plunging to the ground, just as another bolt of flame tore through the spot where he had been. He landed painfully on his side, listening to the angry shouts of the priests as they tried to coordinate their attacks.

  Lying on the stone floor, Nagash was partially hidden behind his smouldering sarcophagus. He glimpsed the legs of one of his attackers and snapped out a fierce incantation. At once, the floor beneath the attacker turned into a pit of darkness, and the priest had time for one terrified scream before he disappeared from sight.

  The king heard the startled shouts of the two surviving attackers on the opposite side of the sarcophagus. Their voices dropped to a whisper as they discussed what to do next. Nagash cast around quickly, looking for some means to turn the tables on the two priests. His gaze fell upon a trio of bodies to his left, and he was suddenly reminded of his last conversation with Khefru, only a few hours before. On impulse, he stretched out his hand towards the bodies and began to improvise.

  The power of the pyramid flowed through his fingertips towards the corpses. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, one of the dead men stirred. Slowly, clumsily, the corpse rolled onto its stomach and tried to clamber to its feet.

  There were more nervous whispers on the other side of the coffin, and then silence. Nagash gathered himself, watching the shambling corpse intently. As it swayed unsteadily to its feet, the priests saw it and attacked. A gust of wind seized the corpse and pulled it up into the air above the sarcophagus, where a spear of flame pierced its chest and set it alight.

  The two priests cried out in triumph just as Nagash rose quietly on the right side of the coffin and raked the attackers with a storm of necromantic bolts.

  As the dead men collapsed to the ground, Nagash lurched towards the entryway. With the rush of battle fading, a flood of agony threatened to overwhelm him. Cursing, he drew upon the pyramid still more, silencing the pain and trying to heal his wounds.

  A figure stood just outside the entrance. Nagash came up short, his right hand rising with a hiss.

  “It’s me, master,” Khefru said. The servant stepped into the room, a look of shock and surprise on his face. “I… I tried to get to you in time,” he stammered. “They got here just ahead of me.”

  “Indeed,” the king growled. His voice, issuing from a flame-scarred throat, sounded almost bestial.

  Khefru stared at the king’s burned body, momentarily transfixed by the enormity of what had happened.

  “You’re hurt,” he said shakily. “Please. Let me tend to your throat.”

  He stepped closer, tentatively touching the king’s burned neck with his fingertips. The gesture covered the movement of his right hand, which thrust a needle-pointed dagger straight into the king’s heart.

  The two men froze, locked in a grim tableau. Khefru grunted, trying to force the knife deeper, but Nagash had seized his wrist. The point of the knife had penetrated little more than an inch into the king’s chest.

  “Did you think I would not guess?” Nagash said to him, the growl in
his voice nothing to do with his injuries. “How else could the priests have reached my chambers?”

  A flicker of fear played across Khefru’s face, and then his expression hardened as he surrendered to the inevitable.

  “You went too far,” he snarled. “You were the most powerful priest in Khemri! You could have lived a rich, indolent life. Instead you threw it all away for this… this nightmare! It’s obscene!” he cried. “Can’t you see what you’ve become? You’re a monster!”

  Khefru heaved on the dagger with the last reserves of his strength, trying to finish what he’d begun, but the weapon did not budge an inch.

  Nagash reached up with his left hand and placed it on Khefru’s chest.

  “Not a monster,” he said. “A god, a living god. I am the master of life and death, Khefru. Alas, you were too faithless to believe me. So now I must show you.”

  The king clenched his left hand and drew upon the power of the pyramid. Khefru stiffened, his eyes widening and his mouth gaping in a silent scream. Nagash began an incantation, shaping the words as he went along and focusing his will with singular intent. The servant’s body began to convulse.

  Nagash drew his left hand away from Khefru’s chest, and as he did so, he drew a glowing filament of energy along with it. The king’s eyes never left Khefru’s as he slowly and remorselessly drew his servant’s soul from his body. As he did so, Khefru’s stolen youth fled with it, causing his body to shrivel and decay before Nagash’s eyes. When he was done, nothing but a stream of dust trickled from his clenched right hand.

  Khefru’s ghost floated before the king, moaning softly in terror and pain.

  “Now you will serve me forever more,” Nagash said to the spirit. “You are bound to me. My fate is now yours.”

  The king turned and found Arkhan and the other immortals standing outside the doorway to the chamber. They were weak and disoriented, having been roused rudely from their slumber.

  “What has happened?” Arkhan gasped. Nagash eyed his men coldly.

  “We have been betrayed,” he said.

  * * * * *

  Filled with icy rage, Nagash climbed the twisting ramps to the pyramid’s ritual chamber. His mind worked swiftly, creating a picture of what his enemies intended. Khefru’s betrayal was no isolated thing. He had approached the priesthood and offered to lead them to the crypt chamber, but Nagash had no doubt that the priests had bigger plans of their own. Even now they would be in the palace, searching for Neferem and persuading her to take control of the city. It was not an assassination, but a coup.

  His enemies had acted prematurely, no doubt surprised by the early completion of the pyramid. With more time to plan and gather their resources, the priests might have succeeded. Instead, they had failed, and their doom was sealed.

  The king hastened into the ritual chamber and gathered his concentration. All the elements were in place. He had but to utter the incantation, and the age of gods and priests would come to a terrible end.

  Power built within the Black Pyramid as Nagash’s incantation began. Every slave who died during its construction, more than sixty thousand souls, was focused by the king’s fury into a single, terrible spell.

  Above the pyramid, the sky began to warp, and then darken. Black clouds boiled into existence where none had been before, lit from within by savage bursts of lightning. The density and power of the unnatural storm grew more and more intense, casting its shadow in a spreading pool across Khemri’s necropolis. Where it fell, the dead trembled uneasily in their graves.

  For more than half an hour the energy grew in power, until it seemed that the sky would split beneath its awful weight. Then, with a hideous, piercing scream the storm burst in an irresistible wave, racing in a series of ebon ripples across the sky.

  The shadow of Nagash’s fury spread to every corner of Nehekhara in the space of just a few minutes. Darkness fell across the great cities, and every priest or acolyte touched by the shadow died in a single, agonising instant. Only those who by sheer fortune were shielded by stone survived the lash of the necromancer’s power.

  Nagash knew at once that his ritual had only partially succeeded. He’d moved too quickly, and his focus had been tainted by his anger and his lust for revenge. Thousands had died, to be sure, but it was not yet enough.

  The reserves of necromantic power inside the temple were weakened, but enough remained for a single invocation. Nagash uttered the words of power, and a pall of dust and shadow spread from the necropolis and fell upon Khemri, cloaking the Living City in artificial night.

  The king turned to his immortals. To Raamket he said, “Take two-thirds of the chosen and drown the temples in blood! Slay every holy man or woman you find!”

  To Arkhan, Shepsu-hur and the rest, Nagash simply said, “Follow me.”

  Dozens of robed bodies littered the plaza outside the royal palace. Nagash led his twenty-five men straight to Settra’s Court, where he found the queen and the high priests of the city. They were bickering like children, each one with a differing idea of what to do next. Most were ashen-faced, on the verge of panic after the king’s shadow had fallen across the city.

  Nagash and Neferem’s eyes met across the length of the vast, shadowy court. The queen’s face lit with an expression of pure hatred, and the priests turned to face the king with mingled expressions of anger and dread.

  “Kill them,” Nagash commanded his men, “all but Neferem. She belongs to me.”

  The immortals did not hesitate. Swords and knives leapt from their scabbards as they raced down the length of the court. The high priests all began to talk at once, throwing up their hands and uttering a bewildering array of invocations, but Nagash was prepared for them. Shadows raced across the marble tiles, and sped from the darkness beyond the tall pillars flanking the centre aisle. They swept down on the priests like vultures, freezing their hearts just as they had stolen the will of Thutep, the former king.

  The high priests of the living city were made of sterner stuff than Nagash’s late brother. Amamurti, the aged high priest of Ptra, threw off the king’s fist of shadow and hurled a spear of flame the length of the hall. It struck Shepsu-hur full in the chest, setting him ablaze in an instant. The immortal screamed in terror and pain, his skin melting like tallow in the heat. He staggered, pawing desperately at his chest and face, and then with an effort of will he collected himself and continued to run, closing the distance with the man who had wounded him.

  Another immortal toppled to the floor with his legs nearly cut out from under him by a handful of stone projectiles. Wind buffeted the warriors, threatening to pull them off their feet. Arkhan caught sight of the Hierophant of Phakth and stopped his invocation with a hurled dagger. The high priest fell to his knees, clutching at the knife that had sprouted from his throat.

  Before the hierophants could ready another wave of spells the immortals were upon them. Swords flashed, and men were torn asunder. The Hierophant of Djaf met the charge head-on, cutting one immortal down with a single stroke of his sword before another buried his knife in the high priest’s eye. Arkhan reached the fallen Hierophant of Phakth and despatched him with a swift stroke of his blade.

  Nagash paced along the aisle in the wake of his warriors, already casting a new incantation. As the priests fell he tore their life essences from their bodies and bound them as he had done to Khefru. One by one their moaning forms were drawn through the air towards the king and formed an unnatural retinue around his body.

  The High Priestesses of Asaph and Basth fell next, their heads severed as they tried to fight back-to-back against the immortals. The Hierophant of Tahoth fell next, pleading for mercy as Arkhan slit his throat. The rest fell back, climbing the dais and forming a barrier between the queen and Nagash’s men. As they did, the High Priest of Sokth took a dagger in his leg and fell onto the steps. An immortal leapt on him like a desert lion and sank his teeth into the man’s face.

  That left only Amamurti and the Hierophant of Geheb. The high prie
st of the earth god was already bleeding from half a dozen wounds, but he continued to fend off his attackers with brutal sweeps of his bloodstained hammer. One immortal grew too bold and tried to cut at the hierophant’s knees. The high priest smashed the warrior aside with a blow from his hammer, but that created the opening Arkhan was looking for. Swift as a viper, he leapt forwards and brought down his gleaming khopesh, and the hierophant’s hammer, along with his arm, bounced wetly across the stone steps.

  The Hierophant of Ptra called out the name of his god and hurled a gout of hissing flame down the steps at the advancing immortals. Three of them were struck full-force and collapsed in heaps of blackened bones and bubbling flesh. Before Amamurti could cast another invocation he was struck by three flung daggers, one of which pierced his heart. The high priest sank slowly to the dais beside Neferem’s paralysed form, his life essence bleeding from his eyes and gaping mouth.

  Nagash stepped slowly through the carnage. With a wave of his hand he snuffed the flames that were scourging Shepsu-hur’s body, and then climbed the steps until he stood eye-to-eye with the queen. For the first time Nagash noticed the terrified form of Ghazid, crouched fearfully in the shadow of Settra’s throne.

  The king’s gaze returned to Neferem. The Daughter of the Sun was quivering with rage, struggling to break the hold that Nagash had over her. Once upon a time she might have succeeded, but decades of drinking Nagash’s elixir had taken its toll on her will.

  “Where is that snake, Nebunefer?” the king growled. “I know he had a hand in this treachery.”

  “He is not here,” the queen answered defiantly. “I sent him away, in case the priests failed to kill you.” She tried to move, to advance upon him with clenched fists, but Nagash’s will held her fast. “Whatever happens here, at least he will survive to raise the other great cities against you!”

  “You dare defy me, your rightful king?” Nagash roared.

  “You killed my son!” Neferem said through clenched teeth. Her voice seethed with hatred. “Khefru told me everything.”