The mighty warrior blanched at the queen’s unsparing assessment. The others looked at her as though she was an oracle, never pausing to think that, through Arkhan, she had more than a century’s worth of knowledge about their every hope and desire.
She surveyed the assembled noblemen. “Lamashizzar has failed you for the last time,” she said to them. “Bow to me, and I will give you all that you desire. The choice is yours.”
W’soran did not hesitate. He sank to his knees and prostrated himself before the queen. Ankhat and Ushoran followed suit, and the three young libertines, Adio, Khenti and Zuhras followed suit.
Ubaid, already kneeling, simply nodded deferentially to the queen, as he had done so many times before.
That left only Abhorash. The queen turned to regard him with a raised eyebrow. He held her stare for a long, silent moment, then slid his sword back into its scabbard.
Lamashizzar, who only moments before had been the undisputed ruler of the greatest city in Nehekhara, could only look on in helpless fury.
“What is it you want, sister?” he snarled.
Neferata smiled.
“For now, fetch a hammer and an iron chisel,” the Queen of Lahmia said, savouring her triumph. She pointed a bloodstained finger at Arkhan the Black. “You’re going to set him free.”
EIGHT
The Eye of the Burning God
Cripple Peak, in the 76th year of Djaf the Terrible
(-1599 Imperial Reckoning)
After the ambush at the barrow, the priests organised large hunting parties to comb the plains and the mountain slopes to find Nagash’s lair. For weeks they searched the mountain, sending acolytes down into the fissures as far as they could manage. Almost a score of them died in the attempt, overcome by the concentration of glowing vapours, and their bodies were never recovered. Despite their best attempts, the hunters never came close to him; he’d become far too adept at navigating the labyrinth of tunnels and caves beneath the deeper fissures. Whenever they drew too close he would simply retreat deeper into the maze until the hunters lost their nerve and withdrew.
Eventually, the barbarians’ hunger for vengeance faded, and they abandoned their hunt. The stormy season was about to begin, and the older priests had no desire to spend day after day out on the mountain slopes in the rain. They retreated back to their temple fort and doubled the patrols out on the barrow fields, in case the terrible grave robber should return again.
Nagash spent weeks studying the movements of the patrols out on the plain, sometimes moving among them on nights when the rains were heavy and the brassy notes of thunder rumbled across the surface of the Sour Sea. He’d come to realise that the priests were not true necromancers; their skills were limited and extremely crude compared to his. What they lacked in sophistication they made up for in numbers and raw power, though, and the priests he encountered on the plain took their duties very seriously indeed. They were sharp-eyed and vigilant, even under the worst conditions, and they knew the plain far better than he.
If it came to battle, Nagash had no doubt that he would win, but the fight would cost him resources he could ill afford to spare. Though he spent nearly every day combing through the tunnels in search of more dust, there was now little left to scavenge. He’d filled his cloak hood to almost three-quarters full; perhaps two pounds, more or less, and mingled with all manner of impurities. It was his sole source of strength, unless he managed to find a way to reach the deposits buried deeper inside the mountain.
Thus, Nagash was forced to surrender much of the barrow fields to the priests, restricting his activities to the southern edge of the plain where they rarely patrolled. The barrow mounds there were very old, many having collapsed altogether under the weight of centuries and their contents long gone to dust. Any corpses left within the mounds would be nothing more than bones, and much harder for him to control, but for the moment they would have to serve.
Nagash searched the southern barrow fields for some time, examining the barrow mounds carefully before he found one that suited his purposes. Like the rest, its stone foundation had settled into the earth over the centuries, completely burying its entrance-way, but the weeks of steady rain had softened its earthen roof enough that he could dig through it with his bare hands. Night after night, he clawed at the soft ground, tearing it away in chunks and casting it aside. Flashes of green lightning illuminated him as he worked, revealing his grotesque, almost skeletal figure. Sickly emerald light seeped from his bones, revealing the dark, rope-like muscles working beneath his tattered skin. More skin hung like torn parchment from his cheeks and forehead, revealing the leering skull beneath. The necromancer’s eyes had long since rotted away, boiled from within by the heat of the burning stone. All that remained were twin, green flames, flickering coldly from the depth of sunken eye sockets. His limbs were held together not by sinew, but by sorcery and willpower alone.
Finally, late one night, Nagash’s efforts bore fruit. His fingers tore through the last layers of root and soil covering the barrow, releasing a hissing cloud of noxious air that would have slain a breathing man within moments. Redoubling his efforts, Nagash widened the hole far enough to allow him to slither his way inside.
He had chosen this particular barrow because it was one of the largest ones still intact on the southern end of the plain. Nagash hoped it had belonged to a great warlord or hetman, and thus hold the remains of a large retinue that he could raise as well. What he found was far better than he’d hoped for.
Nagash slid through the muddy channel he’d carved in the barrow’s roof and found himself in a moment of freefall as he plunged some twelve feet to the barrow floor. He landed hard, snapping his right collarbone like a dry twig; irritated, Nagash focussed his will on the surrounding muscles to pull the broken ends of bone back into place, and then healed the break with a small measure of his power. Frowning, he bent down and laid a hand on the barrow floor. It had been laid with crude paving stones, now cracked and slimy with age.
Lightning flickered high overhead, casting a shaft of brilliant green light through the hole in the barrow’s roof. It pierced the gloom, revealing a carved stone bier at the centre of the barrow. Laid upon the bier was the skeleton of a once-powerful man, clad in a mouldy shell of thick leather armour. A belt of heavy gold links hung loosely about the warrior’s shrunken waist, and a circlet of gold, tinged black with corruption, lay against the corpse’s bony brow. The warrior’s hands were folded over the hilt of a long, black sword that had been laid atop his chest. It was straight and double-edged, and it seemed as though it had been shaped from a single piece of obsidian. Crude glyphs had been carved into the surface of the blade and then filled with a familiar green dust. The abn-i-khat still glowed faintly after so many years.
Nagash turned about slowly, his burning stare taking in the rest of the chamber. There were no less than a dozen other skeletons interred with the warlord, laid on stone biers and arrayed in a circle about their lord with their feet pointing towards the walls of the mound. Ten of the skeletons were clearly warriors, clad in rotting leather armour and carrying crude stone weapons of their own. The other two appeared to be female, judging by the tattered scraps of fabric and the tarnished golden jewellery that adorned their fingers and necks. Wives perhaps? There was no way to tell, and it mattered little to him at any rate. So long as they could dig, they would be of use to him.
Taking out his dagger, Nagash began to carve a ritual circle into the barrow’s stone floor. It was different in design and intent than the one he’d used months before, and similar to the arcane circles he’d placed in the Black Pyramid at Khemri. This circle would not contain magical power; it would broadcast it in very specific ways.
When the circle was complete, Nagash took a moment to inspect it and make certain that every line, every symbol was correct and properly aligned. Then he retreated to the far side of the chamber and pulled a tightly closed bag from his frayed leather belt. Very carefully, Nagash opened his makesh
ift bag and studied the glowing dust contained within. It was slightly less than half-full at this point.
A growl rose from his ravaged throat. Power. In the end, it all came down to power—and the willingness to use it.
Nagash raised the bag, tilted back his head, and poured a stream of glowing dust down his throat.
A whirlwind of fire burst inside his chest and went howling up into his brain. The entire world seemed to shudder under his feet. When he finally lowered the bag, he could hear the thunder of rain on the earthen roof of the barrow and feel the slightest wrinkles in the leather of the bag clutched in his hands. His gaze pierced the gloom of the barrow, until every detail of the dank chamber was sharply etched in his brain.
That’s when Nagash realised that the walls of the chamber were not raw earth, as he’d supposed. The builders instead had covered it with a kind of lime mixture, creating smooth, white surfaces that they had then decorated with paint. He saw crude representations of battles between human tribes, focusing on the triumphs of a tall, dark-haired man with piercing eyes: no doubt the very warrior whose bones now resided in the tomb. Of greater interest to Nagash was the woman depicted next to the warlord, whose eyes flashed with green fire and who flung bolts of burning energy to slay the warlord’s foes. His gaze turned once again to the two female skeletons, whose corpses were arrayed by the warlord’s head—and then he saw the mural that had been painted on the wall above them.
Fiery eyes blazing, Nagash approached the fading mural. At its feet he stared up at the curving wall and the image of a dark, broad-shouldered mountain, looming up over a bare, rocky plain. A long, burning line, like a spear, had been driven into the mountain’s side, piercing it to its heart. At the centre of the wound there burned a green, lidless eye.
Nagash’s burning heart raced. Quickly, he turned and stepped into the ritual circle. Raising his arms before the warlord’s corpse, he focussed his mind by hissing out the names of those he hated. Then, with visions of dark vengeance glimmering in his brain, he began the incantation of awakening.
The necromancer infused every arcane syllable with power until his shrivelled lips were ragged and the air clashed like a cymbal with every word he spoke. Nagash turned his implacable will upon the ancient corpses. Rise, he commanded. Your master summons you. Rise!
More power washed over the skeletons, stirring flakes of decaying leather from their armour and scattering scraps of moulding cloth—then the blackened bones began to emit a faint, green glow. There was a crackle of decaying hide and the creak of bending sinew, and Nagash saw the warlord’s hands tighten on the hilt of his blade.
“Rise!” Nagash said aloud, his voice rising to a furious howl. “The Undying King commands you!”
There was a rasp of metal and bone. Slowly, the warlord rose at the waist, like a man sitting up from a long slumber. Tiny points of green fire glittered from bony eye sockets as the skeleton regarded Nagash.
Around the barrow chamber, the other skeletons were doing the same. They rose from their beds of stone and studied Nagash in cold, pitiless silence. The necromancer clenched his fists in triumph.
“Come to me!” he ordered.
Bones clattered as the warlord and his retinue slid from their biers and walked haltingly to stand before Nagash. With every passing moment they seemed to stand a little straighter, their movements a little stronger and more assured. Their bones radiated the chill of the grave, and ancient malice gleamed in their flickering eyes.
Nagash pointed a bony finger at the painting on the far wall. “Now, show me,” he told his ghastly retainers. “Take me to the burning eye.”
The undead took no notice of the rain, or the mud, or the sprawl of barrow mounds that had risen up across the plain since their death. They led Nagash across the barrow field to the east, and then skirted the southern slope of the mountain until they reached a path that only they could somehow perceive. Nagash wondered if the warlord and his retainers saw the mountain as it had been at the time of their deaths, or if they were simply following the course of ancient memories, heedless of the reality laid before them.
They climbed steadily up the slope through the darkness, and the more that Nagash studied the surrounding terrain, the more he began to see faint remnants of a roadway, and the outlines of foundations that might have once supported wooden structures. He’d paid them no mind during his initial searches, focusing on natural caves and fissures instead. Now he began to see telltale clues of a large complex—a palace perhaps, or a temple—that had once been built into the side of the mountain, many hundreds of years ago.
His servants led him to a wide depression in the mountain’s flank, its edges rounded in places by the passage of years. He spied more outlines of foundation stones, now that he knew what he was looking for. Once upon a time, a huge, wooden structure had been built here—and perhaps there had been tunnels as well, burrowing into the mountainside. Clearly this was the place where the huge piece of burning stone had impacted, then was buried by hundreds of tons of shattered rock and smouldering earth. Apparently the barbarians’ ancestors had witnessed the fall of the great stone and had decided to worship it, a tradition now aped by their debased descendants.
The warlord climbed the slope without hesitation, certain of his bearings even in the darkness and rain.
At the base of the depression was a wide, rounded shelf of earth that Nagash now realised had been excavated in ages past to form yet more building foundations. The rain-slicked skull glanced left and right, as though expecting to see squat, wooden towers, or tall statues flanking the entrance to a hallowed place of worship. After a moment’s hesitation, the warlord continued forward, marching stiffly for another thirty paces into the depression before coming to an abrupt halt by a steep slope of grassy earth.
Nagash smiled in satisfaction. “Dig,” he commanded. At once, the skeletal women stepped forward and began clawing at the slope. The warriors paused long enough to set aside their weapons before joining in as well.
By the time dawn broke through the scudding clouds overhead, the skeletons had carved a small cave out of the muddy earth. Nagash took refuge within and stood watch while his servants worked tirelessly through the day. By late afternoon, the skeletons were digging up squared-off pieces of stone that must have once belonged to a building’s foundation. By late evening, they’d reached the broken pieces of a collapsed stone arch. Whatever passage the archway had once anchored had collapsed during the intervening centuries.
That night, Nagash went out into the barrow fields once more and returned with another dozen skeletons to add to his workforce. Less than a handful of dust remained in his bag. It was all or nothing now. They had to reach the burning stone. They must.
The skeletons worked through the night and into the following day. They shored up the walls with piles of broken stone and packed earth as the shaft descended at a steep angle into the side of the mountain. Then, during the third night, the skeletons clawed through a layer of earth and rock and broke into a narrow tunnel made of closely-fitted stones.
Nagash heard the hollow clatter of bony feet against flagstones and pushed his way to the front of the group. Sensing his thoughts, the skeletons paused and stood aside to let him pass.
The necromancer stood on a broad, stone staircase that sank still deeper into the side of the mountain. The walls of the staircase were carved with intricate reliefs, depicting men and women carrying offerings of food and grain down the stairs to set before the waiting god. Nagash descended the slimy steps as quickly as he dared, trying to gauge how much further the staircase went before they reached bottom.
After only a few minutes, the steps led to a small antechamber. Four thick stone columns supported the antechamber’s low ceiling; they had been carved with reliefs depicting a pair of men and women, their hands held against their chests in a gesture of supplication. They reminded Nagash of the totem statues in the barbarian villages to the north-west, though these figures were not quite so idea
lised as the others. Wide, earthen bowls were scattered across the antechamber floor. The offerings that had once been heaped inside them were nothing more than dust now.
Nagash crossed the small chamber and came to a tall, rectangular doorway. The wooden doors that had once sealed the portal lay in heaps of dust across the wide threshold. He stepped through the drifts, scattering them with his bare feet, and entered a much larger rectangular chamber. This room’s ceiling was supported by four pairs of squat stone columns, each one carved to represent a man or a woman kneeling in worship towards an undefined point at the far end of the chamber. There, in the darkness, Nagash sensed a steady buzz of magical power.
The necromancer walked carefully past the ancient pillars. Those on the left were male likenesses, he noticed, and the ones to the right were female, and each pillar represented the same person as the one before it, but with a critical difference. As Nagash progressed across the chamber, the carved figures grew stronger, more handsome—more perfect in shape. By the time he stood at the far end of the chamber, he was flanked by a pair of stone gods, still poised in supplication before an invisible god.
There was a pair of tall doors at the far end of the chamber, made of a grey metal that blended cunningly with the stone surrounding them. Nagash ran his hands across the surface of the doors, and was surprised to find them warm to the touch. There were four holes in each door at shoulder-height, arranged to accept a man’s fingers. Without hesitation, the necromancer slid his bony fingers into the holes and pulled on the great doors.
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