02 - Nagash the Unbroken

by Mike Lee - (ebook by Undead)

  The procession led through the wide gate and into the lands beyond. There were acolytes waiting to shut the gates as the last of the mourners passed by; they had just begun to push the heavy, wooden portals closed when Nagash appeared out of the darkness and rain. They stared at the cloaked and hooded figure uneasily, but made no move to challenge him.

  Nagash strode down the long, torchlit tunnel between the first and second gates as though he had every reason to be there. He studied the iconography carved into the support beams and the archways: more perfect faces, and occasionally something akin to a falling star, superimposed against a stylised mountain.

  When he emerged from the second gate, Nagash strode a few more yards and then turned to stare back at the fort. There were more windows on this side, as well as long, roofed galleries that allowed the inhabitants to view the mountain and the wide plain. He could see more priests and acolytes up there, standing alone or in small groups, watching the procession continue towards the foot of the mountain. At once he realised that the huge structure was both temple and fortress combined. From here they could control the barbarians’ access to the mountain and the evident power it represented.

  Nagash looked up at the priests, smug and comfortable in their fortress of wood, and his lips drew back in a ghastly smile. One day he would show them the true meaning of power.

  The procession continued across the plain for another ten miles before leaving the stone road and travelling across the rocky ground between rolling mounds of earth and stone that Nagash had come to realise weren’t broken hills at all.

  There were hundreds of them, crowding the plain before the mountain and spreading along the eastern coast as far as the eye could see. The barrow mounds varied in size: some were not much bigger than a rude barbarian hut, while others were the size of hillocks. He supposed the priests constructed them, for no one else had access to the plain. Their foundations were shaped from fitted stones, and then were roofed over with a cunning arrangement of rocks and packed earth. The older ones were hills in truth, covered over with yellow grass and even a few small trees.

  It was a necropolis of sorts, similar in some ways to the great cities of the dead in far-off Nehekhara. As he worked his way among the great barrows his mind reeled with the possibilities. Here, sealed in earth and stone, was the beginnings of an army. All that he lacked was the power and the knowledge to bring them forth.

  Upon leaving the road, the procession had spread out among the barrow mounds. Each family followed a pair of lantern-bearing priests to the mound that had been built for their kin. Nagash ignored them, making for a collection of glowing orbs farther across the plain that lay almost at the feet of the mountain itself. That was where the high priest and his retinue were to be found.

  There were almost a dozen families gathered around the priests; no doubt they represented the kinfolk of the hetman and his warband. The bodies they’d carried for so long had been laid side-by-side before the dark entrance to the mound. Each corpse was naked. Their hair had been shorn close to the scalp, and their physical deformities had been covered in dark ash, so that they practically vanished in the gloom. All of the men bore ghastly wounds; Nagash had seen such things often enough to know the marks of spear and axe, expertly delivered. The hetman and his chosen warriors had gone to do battle with a far superior foe, and been dealt a bitter defeat.

  Nagash kept his distance, sticking to the shadow of an older mound as he watched the high priest rise from his chair and spread his arms over the dead men. In a guttural yet powerful voice, the old man began to speak. Nagash didn’t understand the words, but the cadences and the inflection were all too familiar. A rite of some sort was being performed. After a few moments, the senior priests joined in, and he could feel the currents of invisible power growing between them.

  The chanting went on for many long minutes. The ritual was a simple one. It made no use of magical symbols or carefully-inscribed circles, just torrents of raw power drawn from the high priest’s circlet and, cleverly, the deposits glowing from the skin of the fish held in the priests’ lanterns. Slowly, steadily, the rite built to a crescendo—and then he saw one of the corpses start to twitch.

  A wail went up from the crowd. As if in response, another corpse began to twitch. Then another. Soon, all of them were trembling with invisible energies.

  There was a crackle of dead joints as, one by one, the dead men sat upright. They moved like statues, stiff and awkward, driven by unseen hands. A number of the mourners cried out again. Some tried to crawl across the wet ground, reaching for their kin, and had to be dragged back.

  The corpses paid them no heed. First the hetman clambered slowly to his feet, followed by his retainers. Then, without a backwards glance, they walked slowly through the doorway of the waiting barrow.

  To Nagash’s surprise, the chanting of the priests continued—and then he realised that the wailing of the barbarians was being echoed from all across the plain. The high priest wasn’t just animating the bodies of the hetman and his retainers—he was interring all the dead at once. Nagash’s mind raced. How many bodies had there been? A hundred? More? Enough to constitute a small army, he was certain.

  The high priest and his followers weren’t holy men. They were necromancers as well, drawing upon the power of the burning stone to command the bodies of the dead. And for the moment, they were far more powerful than he.

  FIVE

  The Word of Kings

  Lahmia, The City of the Dawn, in the 76th year of Djaf the Terrible

  (-1599 Imperial Reckoning)

  Arkhan the Black dreamt of riding beneath an endless desert sky, with nothing but the stars and the gleaming moon to watch over him. The Bhagarite stallion seemed to float across the rolling dunes, its hooves thudding softly like the beat of a living heart. Silver bells were woven into the stallion’s mane, jangling a fine counterpoint to the horse’s stride, and a dry wind caressed his skin, smelling of dust and faded spice.

  There was no end to the sands, no end to the emptiness of the desert night. It was a benediction, a gift that he knew he did not deserve. And yet, when rough hands seized Arkhan and shook him awake, the pain of the longing he felt was worse than any wound he’d ever known.

  He found himself lying on his side, cheek pressed against the grimy floor of the king’s hidden sanctum. His eyelids felt stiff and brittle, like old paper. The immortal opened them with effort and peered up at the robed figure kneeling beside him.

  W’soran’s bald, bony head and long neck reminded Arkhan of nothing so much as a vulture. His wrinkled face, with its deep-set eyes, hooked nose and receding chin, would not have looked out of place on a statue of the Scavenger God himself. Once upon a time, he might have even been a priest of Ualatp. Arkhan knew that the man had come to Lahmia from the ruined city of Mahrak, more than a hundred years before, and had ultimately thrown himself on the generosity of Lamashizzar’s court when none of the city temples would have anything to do with him. Without doubt he possessed a wealth of arcane knowledge and sorcerous ability that none of Lamashizzar’s other allies could equal, which explained how he’d found his way so quickly into the king’s secret cabal.

  Cold, black eyes studied Arkhan with dispassionate interest. “It’s taking more effort to wake him with each passing night,” W’soran observed. He gripped Arkhan’s shoulders and upper arms, testing the rigidity of the immortal’s muscles and joints. “No obvious signs of morbidity, but his vigour is clearly waning,” he said with a sour expression.

  Arkhan heard sounds of movement at the far end of the room. An oil lamp flared, filling the space with orange light and the faint reek of melting tallow. “Perhaps we’re giving him too much lotus these days,” he heard Lamashizzar say.

  W’soran grunted, bending closer and peering into Arkhan’s eyes as though searching for signs of deception. “He’s being given the same amount as always,” he stated flatly. “So, therefore, his ability to recover from its effects has diminished. He’
s weakening.” His small, dark eyes narrowed. “Or…”

  Arkhan heard footsteps draw nearer. A wine bowl clunked down onto a nearby table, followed by the dry rustle of papers. “What?” the king said irritably.

  W’soran stared into the immortal’s eyes for several long moments, as though he could reach inside Arkhan’s mind and read its contents like a dusty scroll. Arkhan gave the man a flat, predatory stare. His expression was unequivocal. Given half a chance, I’d tear your head off your scrawny neck.

  It was nothing that W’soran hadn’t seen every night for decades. What he didn’t know was that, for the first time in a century and a half, Arkhan was strong enough to actually do it.

  W’soran straightened, his knees popping noisily. He’d been well advanced in years when he’d first come to Lahmia, and Lamashizzar’s elixir could not completely halt the implacable march of time. He shrugged his knobby shoulders.

  “Perhaps the elixir is less effective as the physical body ages,” W’soran muttered, turning his back on the immortal. “His flesh and organs are four hundred years old. It’s possible that we are approaching the limits of your arcane prowess.”

  There was no mistaking the accusatory tone in W’soran’s voice. Lamashizzar did not reply at first, but Arkhan could feel the sudden tension in the air between the two men.

  “Come here, Arkhan,” the king said coldly.

  The immortal’s eyes narrowed in concentration as he drew his legs up underneath him and pushed himself to his feet. His limbs were stiff and clumsy—not due to the effects of the lotus root, but rather the months of hixa stings he’d been receiving from Neferata. The wasp’s venom collected in his muscles rather than passing away as it would in a living body, making even the simplest movements difficult. He tried to turn its debilitating effects to his advantage, letting it slow his movements to something approximating the lassitude that the king and his cohorts had come to expect. If Lamashizzar had even the slightest suspicion that he no longer had complete control over his prisoner, Neferata’s scheme would come to naught, and he would never be free again.

  The king was standing before a long, wooden table set just a few feet to one side of the room’s ritual circle, his expression preoccupied as he tried to bring some kind of order to the pile of papers and scrolls spread before him. More figures moved about in the shadows at the far end of the room, murmuring in low voices and passing jars of wine between one another. Lamashizzar was accompanied by nearly his entire cabal: beside W’soran, the immortal recognised the tall, muscular outline of Abhorash, the king’s champion, as well as the reclining forms of Ankhat and Ushoran, his oldest and most powerful allies at court. The king’s grand vizier, Ubaid, stood apart from the other men, politely refusing offers of drink and waiting to do the king’s bidding. Opposite the doorway, young Zuhras poked at the banked coals of a brazier with the point of his dagger, stirring them back to life. Grinning slyly, he speared one of the small coals on the point of his knife and used it to light the small, clay pipe dangling from his lips. The acrid scent of Eastern pipe smoke began to spread throughout the chamber.

  That left only the two libertines, Adio and Khenti. Arkhan suspected they were chasing whores or losing their money in the gambling dens of the Red Silk District. Likely they would stumble in later, reeking of sour wine and cackling like hyenas to claim their share of Lamashizzar’s elixir. Why the king hadn’t lost patience with them and had their throats cut remained a mystery to Arkhan. He knew all too well that Lamashizzar would turn on anyone that he considered a threat.

  Iron chain links rattled dully as Arkhan shuffled across the floor to stand before the king. Arkhan studied the man warily. Outwardly, Lamashizzar had aged somewhat, with grey hair streaking his temples and a fleshiness to his face that bespoke years of self-indulgence, but he still held himself with the easy assurance of a younger, fitter man. The effects of the elixir had left its mark on the king in more ways than one, Arkhan knew. He could see it in Lamashizzar’s stiff shoulders and the swift, almost furtive movements of his eyes. The immortal had seen that look many times, in the court of the Undying King. The hunger for immortality turned the strongest men into beasts, making them savage, suspicious and unpredictable. If what the queen had told him was true, Lamashizzar cared little for the fortunes of his kingdom anymore. Mastering Nagash’s terrible incantations was his one and only obsession, which made him very dangerous indeed.

  Arkhan clasped his hands together and bowed his head. The iron rim of the collar dug into his scarred neck. “How may I serve, great one?” he asked his captor. The words burned like molten lead on his tongue.

  “Is it true?” the king asked. He never took his eyes from the occult diagrams laid out on the table. “Does the elixir no longer sustain you as it once did?”

  The immortal considered his answer carefully. He knew that the moment he was no longer useful to Lamashizzar, the king would have him killed. “I do not deny that it is harder to shake off the effects of the lotus,” Arkhan replied. “It is possible that the learned W’soran is right. Certainly there is much more to be learned from Nagash’s tomes. You have scarcely scratched the surface of the Undying King’s power.”

  From the moment that he had awakened in the cellars of the royal palace, Arkhan knew that his only hope of survival was to give up Nagash’s secrets grudgingly, giving Lamashizzar just enough power to whet the king’s appetite while he waited for an opportunity to escape. But Lamashizzar was no fool, he saw to it that Arkhan had no personal access to Nagash’s books, and the only sustenance allowed to him was the same thin gruel that the king and his cohorts drank. It left him with barely enough strength to move, much less break free from the iron collar that the king had riveted about his neck. Even the black lotus had given him little relief; he was so weak that the potion brought no dreams, only cold oblivion.

  W’soran seized on Arkhan’s reply. “Listen to him, great one,” he said. “We must go back to the source and start again.” He stepped forward and laid a hand on one of Nagash’s books. “Follow the Usurper’s instructions to the letter. We know that the rituals work—Arkhan here is proof of that!”

  “And they also led to the Usurper’s downfall!” Lamashizzar snapped. “Everyone knows the horrors that took place in Khemri before the war. How long do you think we could prey upon palace servants and criminals before people began to take notice?”

  “You can buy slaves from the East!” W’soran exclaimed. “No one would care what you did with them! Or round up the hundreds of beggars clogging the streets in the lower districts! You’re the king, or have you forgotten?”

  The words had scarcely passed W’soran’s lips when there was a rasp of metal and suddenly Abhorash was standing beside the king, his iron sword held loosely at his side. There was no expression on the champion’s broad, heavy-boned face: he had the look of a man about to kill a snake that had slipped inside his house.

  Lamashizzar said nothing to either of the two men. He simply met the older man’s stare until W’soran finally looked away.

  “I apologise, great one,” W’soran growled. “My words were intemperate and ill-considered. I meant no disrespect.”

  “Of course,” the king replied, but there was an edge to his smile that belied the graciousness of the answer. He gave a sidelong glance to Abhorash, and the warrior obediently—although not without some reluctance—slid his sword back into its scabbard. It was only then that Arkhan realised how tense he had become. His hands had curled into fists, and his jagged teeth were on edge. Just like Nagash’s court, so long ago, he thought. How we circled each other then, like hungry jackals, ready to sink our teeth into the weak the minute their back was exposed.

  Arkhan saw the champion relax slightly. Lamashizzar returned his attention to the papers on the table, and just when it seemed that he confrontation was over, Lord Ushoran took a sip from his wine bowl and said, somewhat offhandedly, “Our guest from Mahrak does have a point, cousin.”

  The king turned
, as did Abhorash, both of them with almost the same look of irritation on their faces. W’soran’s eyes narrowed as he tried to divine the real purpose behind Ushoran’s words. Lord Ushoran was infamous for his intrigues, both in and out of court; mostly the king tolerated it because Ushoran came from one of the oldest families in Lahmia, and because the nobleman was smart enough not to involve any members of the royal family in his schemes.

  Though distantly related to the king’s household, Ushoran wasn’t blessed with Asaph’s gifts of beauty and charm; he had the sort of face that blended easily into a crowd, with close-cropped dark hair and unremarkable brown eyes. Arkhan gathered that Ushoran had gone to some effort over the decades to keep the cabal’s activities out of the public eye. Lamashizzar believed him capable of anything.

  “Do you now question my claim to the throne?” the king asked with a brittle smile.

  Ushoran chuckled. “Certainly not, cousin. I merely wish to point out that our progress has been almost nonexistent these past fifty years. We continue to age, albeit very, very slowly, and possess nothing like the power that his ilk—” the nobleman gestured to Arkhan with his wine bowl, “—displayed during the war.” He shifted slightly on the divan. “It cannot be argued that you aren’t following Nagash’s incantations as they were intended.”