The smile faded from Alcadizzar’s face. “The war’s not over yet,” he said gravely. “As soon as we can put together a fleet, we’re going after Nagash.” He pointed down at the abandoned ships. “My men are examining those bone ships to see if we can rig them with oars or sails. We’ll head up the strait, find the Usurper’s lair, and deal with him once and for all.” He sighed again. “Then, perhaps, I can finally rest.”
“I hope so,” Ophiria replied, her voice sad. For a moment, it looked as though she were about to leave, but then she paused, as though there was something more she wanted to say.
Alcadizzar frowned. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
Ophiria did not reply at first. She stared out at the sea for a time, as though wrestling with what she ought to say. Finally, she turned to the king. “Will you do one thing for me, before you go?” she asked.
“Of course. Anything,” Alcadizzar said.
“Send Khalida home,” she said. “That’s all.”
“That’s all?” Alcadizzar said, his eyes widening. “Can’t I do something simple instead, like emptying out the sea, or counting the stars in the sky?” He chuckled. “She’ll never go, especially not after what happened at the Gates of the Dawn.” The brush with death had wiped away all the years of tension and resentments that had grown up between them. Now they rarely spent more than a few hours apart each day. “If you think she should go back to Khemri, then you should tell her.”
“She won’t listen to me. I’m just her aunt.” Ophiria protested.
“You think she’ll listen to me? I’m just her husband,” Alcadizzar said. He frowned. “What’s all this about?”
“Nothing.” Ophiria shifted uncomfortably. “Her children need her, that’s all.”
The king gave the seer a long look.
“You’ve seen something, haven’t you?”
Ophiria grimaced. “I shouldn’t have said anything.” She jerked on the reins, trying to turn her horse about.
The king bent down and took hold of the horse’s bridle. “Too late for that now,” he said gravely. “What is it?”
Ophiria stared at the king. “If you go north to face Nagash, you will triumph,” she said slowly. “But you will not return.”
Alcadizzar let go the bridle and sat back, stunned. “I don’t believe it.”
The seer nodded in understanding. “I’m sorry. But that’s the way of it.”
“No,” the king said. “You’re mistaken. I can’t die now.” He took in the ruined buildings of the square with an angry sweep of his hand. “First Lahmia, then Nagash, and now this? I’ve given everything for this land, Ophiria. Everything I’ve done was for Nehekhara’s sake. A hundred and eighty-nine years, and hardly a day of it was ever truly mine.”
“You’re a great king,” she said sadly. “Perhaps the greatest Nehekhara has ever known.”
“But what about me?” Alcadizzar said. “Where is the justice in this? There’s so much I’ve waited to do. I’ve hardly even begun.”
“I know,” Ophiria said sombrely. “Believe me, Alcadizzar. I know what it’s like to sacrifice everything for a higher calling.” She shook her head. “But we cannot choose our fate.”
“Then what’s the point?” Alcadizzar cried. “What’s the point of all this horror and suffering, if not to earn the right to live as we wish, for however many years we’re given?”
A tear trickled down the seer’s wrinkled cheek. “I cannot say,” she replied. Ophiria reached forwards and laid a hand on his cheek.
“Goodbye, Alcadizzar, King of Kings. I wish you well, in this life and the next.”
The Daughter of the Sands tugged on the reins, turning her horse about and heading back across the square. The king watched her and her hooded servant head west, deeper into the city, until the two riders were lost from sight.
Evening was drawing on when Alcadizzar arrived at the palace. Thunder rumbled faintly to the east, heralding the coming storm.
The king found Khalida deep amid the ruins of the Temple of Blood, surrounded by her maids and a cadre of keen-eyed guardsmen. The ancient garden at its heart had survived the worst of the fire, and was now a tangled, green wilderness.
Most of the paths through the garden had vanished, swallowed up by ferns and creeping vines. Only the widest, stone-flagged paths survived. One led straight to the centre of the garden, where Khalida rested by the bole of a gnarled old tree and tossed breadcrumbs into the brackish pond nearby.
Alcadizzar strode softly over the thick grass and settled down beside her. The queen turned, smiling, and kissed his cheek. “There you are,” she said. “Have you been down at the docks all this time?”
“Mostly,” the king said, his gaze wandering about the clearing. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard a rumour that there were still fish in the pond,” Khalida said. “Giant carp, the colour of gold coins. I’ve been trying to coax them out with some crumbs.”
Alcadizzar turned back to Khalida. He reached up and gently swept a strand of dark hair away from her face. “How do you feel?”
The queen smiled. “A little better every day.” She had broken two ribs and an ankle when the chariot flipped during the battle and they had been slow to heal.
“Are you up for a long journey?” the king asked.
Khalida’s smile faded. “Why?”
Alcadizzar leaned forwards and kissed her gently on the lips. “Because I think it’s time we returned to Khemri.”
Khalida’s expression turned sombre. “What about Nagash?”
The king was silent for a long moment. “We’ve beaten him. His army has been destroyed. That’s victory enough for me.” He put his arm around Khalida and pulled her close, careful of her ribs. “I’ve fought enough for two lifetimes. Now I just want my wife and children beside me.”
The queen looked up at him. “Do you mean it?”
“With all my heart.”
Khalida smiled. “Then let’s go home.”
Three weeks after escaping the Cursed City, Arkhan the Black beached his ship of bone on the shores of the Sour Sea, beneath Nagashizzar’s shadow. He marched into the fortress with fifty thousand warriors—a formidable army by mortal standards, but little more than a tenth of the vast host he had been given.
When Nagash learned of his army’s defeat, his wrath was terrible to behold. The sound of his fury thundered through the halls of the fortress and sent tremors through the tunnels below. For seven days and seven nights the air above the mountain roiled like an angry sea and spat forks of green lightning that lit the blighted land for miles.
And then, after the seventh night, the thunder subsided, and the mountain grew still. An ominous silence descended over Nagashizzar, more fearsome and portentous than all the days of fury combined.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” Eshreegar muttered as the black-toothed liche emerged from the tunnel.
It had been a month since Nagash’s army had returned to the fortress in defeat. Many times, while the fortress halls had been all but empty of the undead, Eekrit and Eshreegar had debated on whether the time had come to unseal Grey Lord Velsquee’s chest and make use of the weapon inside. Each time, Eekrit’s instinct was to wait, fearing that, even without an army, Nagash was still far too powerful to face. The storm of fury that had wracked the fortress—nay, the entire mountain—upon the army’s return convinced Eekrit that he’d been absolutely right.
Beneath the mountain, it was still business as usual. Nagash’s hunger for slaves had shown no signs of abating, and the work in the mines continued without pause. Across the cavern, the latest shipment of greenskins snorted and bellowed in their guttural tongue as the undead arrived to make their trade.
Eekrit’s ears twitched. Something was different. There were many more skeletons this time. A great many more, in fact, all carrying chests or stacks of flat, square boxes, sealed with lead. As the liche looked on, the skeletons carried half of the chests over to the scales, as
usual, then deposited the rest at Eekrit’s feet.
“What’s all this?” he asked.
The liche turned to Eekrit. His skull was blackened in places, his armour scorched and battered. He looked as though a giant had grabbed him by the ankles and used him to beat out a rather stubborn fire.
“My master wishes to make a new arrangement,” the liche grated. One leg dragged slightly as he stepped forwards and indicated the chests and boxes arranged before Eekrit. “In addition to the usual amount for slaves, he will pay double for you to carry these chests to the source of the River Vitae and empty their contents into the water.”
Eekrit eyed the boxes warily. Each one was marked with a complex pattern of runes and arcane symbols. “What’s inside them?”
“Death,” the liche said.
“Ah.” Eekrit replied. He spread his paws. “We, ah, have never heard of this river.”
“It feeds all of Nehekhara,” the liche said. “Its source is a tarn, high in the mountains to the south-west.”
“Where—”
“Find it,” the undead creature rasped. “Unless you do not wish to have the stone?”
“No!” Eekrit said. “I mean—yes, we want the stone.” He glanced at Eshreegar. “No doubt something can be arranged.”
“There will be more,” the liche said. “Deliver them all to the tarn, and you will be well paid.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Eekrit replied, though he felt anything but. “What is all this for, if you don’t mind me asking?”
The liche glared at him.
“The Nehekharans will die before they serve my master,” he said. “And so they shall have their wish.”
—
Red as Blood
The Tarn of Life, in the 110th year of Tahoth the Wise
(-1155 Imperial Reckoning)
It took nearly a year to find the place that the liche had spoken of. First they found the wide, swift-flowing river, many hundreds of miles away to the south-west; then they followed its course up into the treacherous, unforgiving mountains. Many were the scouts who were lost along the way, taken by avalanches, or swift, silent wyverns, or stabbed by their fellows when their rations ran low. They negotiated thundering cataracts, scaled sheer cliffs and swung over bottomless crevasses, until finally, after much suffering and hardship, they reached a vast lake, its surface as smooth as glass and coloured a dark, depthless blue. They found the ruins of twelve great temples along its shores, so ancient and so long abandoned that they were little more than crumbling shells of pitted sandstone, the idols within reduced to shapeless knobs of white marble.
This was the tarn they had been paid to find; the birthplace of the great river that fed the lands to the west, all the way to the distant sea. With nervous paws they broke open the seals on the twelve boxes they had carried with them on the journey, and they emptied the burning man’s poison into the dark depths. Then they scuttled away into the darkness, heading back to the great mountain where their reward awaited them.
Halfway back to the mountain, the first of the scouts began to sicken. By the time the expedition reached the tunnels that would lead them around the shores of the Sour Sea, only the strongest of the scouts were still alive. Two managed to reach the great cavern beneath the mountain and gasp out their report to Eshreegar before their insides turned to mush.
Eekrit and Eshreegar split the fortune in god-stone between themselves and sent out the second expedition six months later.
Over time, the wily scouts learned to adapt to the dangers of the long trip up to the tarn. Rikkit Sharpclaw had survived the past three expeditions to the lake, which made him the natural leader of the pack. The last thing he did before leaving the mountain was to spend some of his accumulated wealth to hire a score of shifty-eyed clanrats from one of the visiting slaver gangs. He told them he needed the extra muscle to protect the valuable cargo he was carrying up into the mountains. The clanrats took his coin and snickered to one another at the deal they were getting. Five gold coin apiece to help carry some boxes? Compared to hunting greenskins up north, that sounded like a holiday to them.
After nine expeditions to the tarn over the last five years, the scouts knew the route very well. They knew how to avoid the sudden avalanches, where to be watchful for the fearsome wyverns and how best to negotiate the waterfalls and the yawning chasms. Rikkit was cautious as ever—more so this time, perhaps, because rumour had it that this was to be the last expedition to the lake. He had no intention of getting himself killed with so much unspent wealth hidden back at the mountain.
The expedition reached the tarn right on schedule. The early spring night was cold and clear, and a full moon smiled at its reflection in the still water below. The clanrats gaped at the size of the lake and the ominous, silent ruins, but followed the scouts without question as they worked their way around the shore and up a narrow path that led to a high cliff overlooking the tarn.
Rikkit breathed in the cold, clear air and smiled at the clanrats. “Here is-is where you earn your keep,” he said. The scout pointed a claw at the edge of the cliff. “Set the boxes over there.”
Wary, the clanrats crept to the edge of the cliff and set the boxes at their feet.
Rikkit smiled. He motioned to the one of the other scouts, who produced three pairs of hammer and chisel and tossed them to the hirelings.
“Open them,” Rikkit said.
The clanrats eyed one another uneasily, but were not in any position to argue. Taking the tools, they cut away the lead seals securing each lid and levered the boxes open. Caustic green light spilled from each container, washing over the hirelings.
Rikkit’s smile widened. This was the part he really enjoyed. The scout reached into his robes and pulled out a fat bag of gold coin. At once, he had the clanrats’ undivided attention.
“Now, here’s where you lot can earn yourself some extra coin,” he said, tossing the bag onto the ground. “The clanrat that tosses the most of those things into the lake gets the gold.”
Rikkit didn’t need to tell the clanrats to begin—all at once there was a snarling, scratching, kicking scramble to grab hold of the contents of each box and hurl them into the water below.
Each box contained a flat disc of pure god-stone, each about the size of a small shield. The surface of each disc was carved with hundreds of strange, arcane symbols and the discs themselves seethed with pent-up magical power. The scouts hissed with laughter as the hirelings seized the heavy discs—each one worth a Grey Lord’s ransom—and fought for the privilege to toss them into the depthless tarn below.
Amid savage grunts and yowls of pain, the first discs were hurled into the air. They glowed balefully as they fell, spinning like tossed coins. They hit the water of the tarn with a bubbling hiss, like hot metal plunged into a quenching vat, and sent up a plume of acrid, faintly glowing steam as they sank out of sight.
Once it was down to the last few discs, the knives came out. Clanrats screeched and toppled over the cliff, clutching at the blood pouring from their chests. Two of the hirelings fell together, grappling over a disc up to the moment they hit the surface of the water, forty feet below.
When the last disc was gone, the three survivors turned on one another. After a few minutes, only one clanrat was left. Rikkit laughed loudly, scooping up the bag and tossing it to the victor. The scouts were already taking bets as to how long the fool would last before the sickness took him. Whispering and chuckling amongst themselves, the skaven scuttled back down the narrow path, their thoughts already turning to the long journey home.
By dawn, the surface of the great tarn was as red as fresh-spilled blood.
The great river was the source of life for all Nehekhara, in ways both great and small. Its waters nourished a verdant belt of arable land that stretched through the high desert for more than a thousand miles, providing so much food that cities like Numas, Khemri and Zandri grew rich trading wheat, rice and beans with their neighbours to the east. The rive
r supplied fish for the river cities as well, and water for making wine and beer. Its countless tributaries, many deep underground, spread across the land like threads in a tapestry, feeding distant oases and tiny, hidden springs that sustained merchant caravans and desert nomads alike.
For years, Nagash’s poison had spread to every corner of Nehekhara, spreading through the soil into the crops, and from the crops into animals and people alike. Men filled their bellies with the liche-king’s curse every time they drank a cup of wine, or sipped greedily from a spring in the great desert. By the time the final set of discs sank into the waters of the tarn, the poison was curled like a sleeping viper in the flesh of every living thing.
The final set of discs completed Nagash’s elaborate curse and set the wheels of death in motion. The waters of the tarn turned crimson; the stain flowed down the roaring cataracts and into the River Vitae, where in time it was witnessed by horrified fishermen and river traders all the way to distant Zandri. It was the Undying King’s sign that the doom of Nehekhara was at hand.
Within days, the crops in the fields began to wither and die. Not all at once, but by degrees, driving the farmers into fits of desperation as they struggled to save their livelihoods. Livestock who ate the tainted crops soon sickened and died. The disease was horrible to behold; it was a slow, agonising death, as the bodies of the victims rotted from the inside out. Agony led to madness, and madness to death, but the process was neither merciful nor swift.
Not long afterwards, the first Nehekharans began to suffer as well. Hardest hit were the river cities, particularly Khemri. Alcadizzar the Great, ruler of the empire, summoned his chirurgeons and his wizards, and bent every effort to locating the source of the disease and uncovering a cure. The sick were taken from their homes and placed in the temples, in hopes that they would not spread the disease to others. And yet, despite their best efforts, the plague continued to spread.
[Nagash 03] - Nagash Immortal Page 50