Ankhat knelt beside her, his face grave. A ruby-hilted dagger hung from one hand. With a scowl, he tossed it aside. “You’re safe,” he said to her. “For now, at least. We thought it best to wait until we got here before doing something about the knife.”
Neferata glanced wildly about. She was in a shadowy, vaulted chamber, far from the battlefield. “Where are we?” she managed to say.
“The palace. Abhorash insisted we bring you here.”
Neferata frowned, uncertain if she’d heard Ankhat correctly. “Abhorash?”
“Yes. He’s returned,” Ankhat replied. “Without him, all of us would have been lost.”
Grimacing, the queen forced her body to sit upright. She was resting in the centre of the great hall, with the royal dais at her back. At the far end of the chamber, the great double doors lay open, revealing the dimly lit vestibule beyond. Past the vestibule, the entrance to the palace lay open. The sky outside was tinged red with flames.
Abhorash stood a short distance away, surrounded by four men in the armour of the royal guard. The guardsmen were stripping away Abhorash’s bloodstained tunic and fitting him with the iron breastplate and pauldrons of a captain of the guard. She knew the dour champion at once, despite the passage of years. The queen inclined her head to him. “We owe you a great debt, captain,” she said, with as much dignity as she had left.
Abhorash glared at her. “I didn’t come here for you,” he snapped. “The city was under attack and I swore an oath to defend it. At least here I can meet death with something of my honour intact.”
Neferata scowled at him. “Still as arrogant and sanctimonious as ever,” she growled. The queen turned to Ankhat. “What of Alcadizzar?”
The immortal shrugged. “His people dragged him away. I have no idea if he was alive or not.” He gripped her arm. “Forget about him. The city is lost. The enemy could be here at any moment.”
The queen snatched her arm away. “Then here is where they’ll find me. If Lahmia is to die, then I die with her.”
“Good,” Abhorash declared. “It’s long past time this nightmare came to an end.”
Ankhat took a step back, glaring at the both of them. “Die, then,” he snapped. “Let the damned mortals cut off your heads and parade them through the streets! I don’t intend to give them the satisfaction.”
Ankhat’s vehemence surprised Neferata. “Where is there to go?”
“Anywhere but here!” the immortal cried. “There is more to the world than just Lahmia—or even Nehekhara, come to that. Who knows? I might go north. The barbarians there would worship me like a god.” He sighed, shaking his head. “We should have scattered to the winds long ago. Lahmia might have survived if we had. Now…”
“Now, what?” Neferata demanded. “We’ve lost everything, Ankhat. What’s left?”
“Eternity,” the immortal answered. “We have nothing but time, Neferata. Time enough to do whatever you wish.”
Neferata turned and studied the red-lit sky beyond the vestibule. Her expression hardened. “Time enough for vengeance,” she said.
“If you wish,” Ankhat said. “Do as you will. But I am leaving this cursed place and hope never to return.”
The queen glanced back at the immortal. She was transformed. Her face was a cold, pitiless mask.
“There is a ship waiting in the harbour,” she said. “I will take it and abide for a time in the east. I have a great deal of thinking to do.”
Ankhat nodded. “A new beginning, then.”
“No,” the queen said. “An ending. From this moment forwards, there will be nothing but endings between me and this world.”
Outside, a horn sounded. Abhorash nodded sombrely to the guardsmen, who bowed and offered him his blades. The grim-faced immortal turned to Neferata.
“The enemy is here,” he said. “These good men have sworn to fight by my side until the last. Together, we’ll make our stand here, as befits the royal guard. If the gods are kind, perhaps I will be rid of your damned curse at last.”
Neferata glared at the champion as he turned and made his way from the great hall and out into the vestibule, where his four companions waited. After a moment, she turned to say her farewells to Ankhat, but the immortal was already gone.
The last queen of Lahmia stood alone in the great hall where her dynasty had ruled for millennia. She turned, glancing back at the royal dais, and looked one final time at the empty throne.
“Endings,” she vowed, her voice hollow. “Nothing but endings.” And then the shadows swallowed her and she was gone.
“This is madness,” Prince Heru said. “You should be resting, uncle. The chirurgeons say you are lucky to be alive.”
“I’ll be fine,” Alcadizzar said tightly, mindful of the pain in his side and the stitches in his cheek. He sat stiffly in the saddle of his horse as he climbed the winding road up to the royal palace. A hundred warriors of the bani-al-Hashim rode in his wake, arrows nocked, searching the shadows for danger. “This is something I need to do.”
“Like you needed to fight Neferata single-handed?” Heru said. “We saw how well that went.”
The king grunted. “I won, didn’t I?”
Heru frowned. “I don’t know. It’s looking more and more like a draw.”
The riders rounded the final turn and approached the entrance to the palace compound. It was early morning and the fires had burned their way down the hill and across the city, where smoke now rose from the dockyards. Soldiers roamed the streets, looting what they could and wrecking what they couldn’t. Screams and shouts echoed from nearly every street. When the victorious armies were done, the richest city in Nehekhara would be picked down to its bones and its people, who had suffered so much under Neferata’s reign of terror, would be carted away in chains, to serve their conquerors as slaves. Such was the brutal reality of war.
Alcadizzar guided his horse through the palace gates and reined in. The scene before him was breathtaking in its devastation.
Smoke still rose from the narrow windows of the Temple of Blood. As many as two hundred acolytes and priestesses lay on the ground around the temple’s entrance, their bodies riddled with wounds. They had been dragged from the temple during the night and executed, one after another. There was no way to know if the army had done it, or if it had been the work of the Lahmians themselves.
The same could not be said of the royal palace. It was obvious to anyone what had happened there. The steps leading to the great hall were covered in bodies, in some cases piled four or five deep. “The Lahmians didn’t surrender the palace easily,” he observed.
Heru grunted. “That bastard with the swords,” he said. “He and some of the royal guard held the door until dawn. Took enough wounds to kill a hundred men, but never gave an inch.”
“What happened to him?”
Heru looked uncomfortable. “We don’t know. At dawn, the guardsmen dragged him back inside the vestibule while we regrouped for another charge. By the time we got inside they were gone. We’re searching the palace for them now.”
“What about Neferata?”
The Rasetran sighed. “We don’t know about her, either. The last anyone saw of her, she was being carried into the city by the royal guard. We expected to find her here, but…”
Alcadizzar shook his head. “Is there anything we do know?”
“Well, we managed to secure the city treasury,” the prince said. “Zandri and Numas are already petitioning for their share, of course.”
The king stared at his nephew. “I don’t care about the gold,” he said. “Did you find any books?”
Heru’s expression darkened. “Not yet. If they’re anywhere, they’re probably inside the temple and the upper levels are still burning. The men found some large chambers on the lower levels that looked like they might have been vaults, but there was nothing left inside.”
Alcadizzar nodded thoughtfully. “We’ll keep looking, just to be certain. Neferata couldn’t have learned necromancy from
nothing. Lamashizzar must have somehow brought some of Nagash’s tomes back from Khemri after the war. If they’re here, I mean to see them destroyed.”
“And then?”
The king sighed, thinking of distant Khemri and the work that lay ahead. A tired smile spread across his face. “Then we go home.”
The two men fell silent, contemplating the wreckage of the palace. The wind shifted, blowing from the sea and carrying the scent of salt and ashes.
—
The Usurper
Lahmia, the City of the Dawn, in the 107th year of Ptra the Glorious
(-1200 Imperial Reckoning)
For seven days and seven nights, Alcadizzar’s men searched the city for Neferata and her followers, and for the hiding place of the infamous tomes of Nagash. They combed the palace and the smouldering ruins of the temple from top to bottom, and though a great many hidden passageways and chambers were discovered, no sign of the city’s secret rulers was found. Even Neferata’s puppets, King Sothis and Queen Ammanura, had vanished, though several witnesses claimed that they had fled to the temple garden after the city gates had fallen and taken poison to avoid capture by the invaders.
After a week, Alcadizzar privately conceded defeat. Jars of oil and barrels of pitch were brought up from the docks and the great palace was set alight. The roaring flames burned long into the night, rising like a pyre atop the high hill as the invaders marched out through the broken western gate. They left behind a wasteland of empty streets, pillaged shops and burned-out homes, roamed by vultures and packs of fat-bellied jackals.
Laden with plunder and files of weary, hollow-eyed slaves, the allied armies made slow progress across the Golden Plain. Faisr’s people rode ahead, each one bearing a message that the tribes had been waiting to hear for centuries. By the time the soldiers reached the centre of the plain a vast tent city awaited them; wives raced out from the camp on swift horses to welcome back their husbands, filling the air with songs of joy. The long exile in the east was finally at an end.
Upon reaching the tent city, Alcadizzar offered his fellow rulers the hospitality of his tent and bade them stay as his guests for a while, to celebrate their victory and talk of Nehekhara’s future. As the matter of Lahmia’s vast treasury had yet to be settled, Alcadizzar’s allies could not very well refuse.
For a full week, as the last of the desert tribes filtered down from the far reaches of the plain, Alcadizzar entertained his guests with horse races and martial contests by day and lavish feasts by night. During the feasts, young women of marriageable age from the tribes would join the royal guests and provide entertainment, as was their custom, in the form of conversation, dance and song. It was during these feasts that Alcadizzar came to notice one young woman in particular: Khalida, a maiden of thirty years, who was named after the legendary warrior-queen of Lybaras. She was tall, dark-haired and slender, like most women of the tribes, but her eyes were a rare, vivid green, like polished emeralds. Her voice was deep and earthy, and she laughed often, but what captured Alcadizzar’s interest most of all was her keen wit. She was astonishingly well read, conversing with kings and champions on matters ranging from horsemanship to history. One night he had found himself in a lively debate with her about Settra’s early campaigns against the tribes that had lasted until nearly midnight, until her brothers had been forced to politely separate them for propriety’s sake. He’d looked forwards to seeing her ever since.
Over the course of the week, the political manoeuvring intensified. Numas and Zandri pressed shamelessly for a lion’s share of Lahmia’s gold and promised close ties of trade and friendship in return. Mahrak and Lybaras appealed to Alcadizzar’s scholarly nature, pleading for gold to restore their libraries and temples. Ka-Sabar promised a steady supply of good iron, drawn from the deeps of the Brittle Peaks, in return for trade agreements that would keep their forges working for generations to come.
Prince Heru told Alcadizzar he could keep Rasetra’s share of the gold, just so long as he could take Khalida home with him. The king of Khemri refused, much to Heru’s amusement.
Alcadizzar played the game of diplomacy with great skill, forging profitable alliances with Ka-Sabar, Quatar and Lybaras, while keeping Mahrak at arm’s length and establishing an understanding with Zandri and Numas, his closest and most ambitious neighbours. In the end, Lahmia’s plundered gold was split seven ways, with equal shares going to each of the cities. Faisr’s tribes received a slightly larger portion of gold than the rest, but forfeited their share of slaves, since their laws forbade it. The following day, Alcadizzar’s guests took their leave, marching for home laden with riches and bound by new political ties to Khemri. Whether Alcadizzar’s peers had realised it or not, a new era had begun.
The armies began to move at dawn, starting with Zandri and Numas; by sunset, the last of the Lybaran companies had departed, driving their slow-moving wagons westwards. Only the people of Khemri remained, waiting to escort their king to his new home. After days of celebration, a sense of relative calm settled over the tent city, as the tribes prepared their meals and contemplated breaking camp the following day.
Alcadizzar sat inside his tent, wrapped in heavy robes and sipping tea from a fine porcelain cup as he reviewed the particulars of trade agreements he’d signed with Ka-Sabar and Numas the night before. His broken ribs ached and the rest of his body was stiff and sore, from his eyebrows to the tips of his toes. His duties as a host had left him more drained than the battle outside Lahmia, or so it seemed.
There came a scratching at his tent flap. Out of habit, Alcadizzar started to rise from his chair and see to it, but Huni, one of his new royal servants, rose smoothly from his place near the entrance and went to see who was outside. There was a brief murmur of conversation, then the servant returned with a look of consternation on his face.
Huni prostrated himself before the king. “There is someone who wishes to speak with you, great one,” he said. “I told her that you have retired for the evening, but she is most insistent.”
Alcadizzar glanced up from his documents. “Who is it?” He thought of Khalida, his pulse quickening.
The servant frowned. “I do not know,” he replied. “All she will say is that she is the Daughter of the Sands—”
“Gods above,” Alcadizzar swore, straightening in his chair. “Send her in at once!”
Huni leapt to his feet and dashed for the tent flap. He pulled it aside with a bow, and Ophiria entered, followed by her hooded servant, the chosen of Khsar. She arched an eyebrow at the king.
“My apologies,” Alcadizzar said, sheepishly. “This is… unexpected. Ah… may I offer you tea?”
The seer’s lips quirked in a faint grin. “You may.”
Huni hurried to the brass kettle, only to be waved away by the king. Alcadizzar poured the cup himself and brought it to her, his mind racing. “I wasn’t aware you’d arrived in camp,” he said, trying to work out what was going on.
“I’ve been here since before you arrived,” Ophiria said, her golden eyes studying him over the rim of the teacup. “You were too busy entertaining to notice.” She glanced around the tent. “Shall we sit, or is it your habit now to drink tea standing up?”
“Yes—I mean, no.” Alcadizzar sighed irritably. Ophiria flustered him more than all the kings of Nehekhara combined. “Please. Sit.”
The seer lowered herself gracefully to the piled rugs, cradling the teacup in her hands. Alcadizzar had seen her many times over the years, at tribal gatherings, but hadn’t actually spoken to her since the night of Suleima’s funeral rites, some forty years ago. Other than a few streaks of grey in her hair and some wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, she hadn’t changed a great deal since then.
Alcadizzar sat across from her. His gaze went from Ophiria to her servant and back again. He wasn’t certain how to proceed. The bride of Khsar, as a rule, did not visit other men’s tents.
“To what do I owe the honour of this visit?” he asked.
<
br /> Ophiria gave him a sphinx-like stare. “We have matters to discuss,” she said.
“I… see,” Alcadizzar replied. The seer sipped her tea and said nothing. Finally, the king turned to his servants. “Leave us,” he said.
Huni and the rest bowed and slipped silently from the tent. Ophiria waited until the last one was gone before she spoke.
“Congratulations on your victory over the Lahmians,” she said.
Alcadizzar shrugged stiffly. “It was a hollow triumph at best,” the king said. “Neferata escaped.”
“Her fate lies elsewhere,” the seer said cryptically. “Her power has been broken for now and my people are free to return home. That is victory enough for me.” She sipped her tea, glancing over at the papers piled on the table. “The past few days have been profitable, I trust?”
“It’s a good beginning,” the king allowed. “There’ll be more to do once I get to Khemri, of course.”
“And what are your plans, now that Lahmia is no more?”
Alcadizzar took a deep breath. “Well. Finish rebuilding the city, to begin with. Hopefully find a wife, and have children. Try to live like a normal person, for the first time in my life.”
Ophiria let out a snort. “There’s nothing normal about you, Alcadizzar,” she said. The seer finished her tea. “What do you think of Khalida? Does she interest you?”
The king’s eyes widened. “You know about her?”
She rolled her eyes. “I was the one who suggested she attend the feasts in the first place,” Ophiria said. “As it happens, she’s my niece. And she could use a husband who’s read as many books as she has.” The seer gave him an arch look. “Assuming you were serious when you told Faisr you wanted to marry a woman of the tribes.”
Alcadizzar bristled a bit. “After all this time and everything I’ve done, you still doubt my sincerity?”
Ophiria set down her cup and sighed. “No. I don’t.” Her expression turned sombre. “You’ve been a man of your word in every respect, Alcadizzar. I wouldn’t be offering you my niece if you weren’t.”
[Nagash 03] - Nagash Immortal Page 43