Haptshur walked over, his leathery face beaming with pride, and tossed the prince a cloth to wipe the blood from his face.
“He has grown into quite the young man,” Lord Ankhat observed quietly. “I’m certain his father would be proud if he could see him now.”
Neferata nearly jumped at the sound of the lord’s voice. Ankhat was standing at the far end of the observation gallery, near the door that led to the secret corridor back to the temple’s inner sanctum. He was careful to remain completely in shadow. Even so, the mere proximity of sunlight clearly made him uncomfortable.
“My lord Ankhat,” Neferata said smoothly. “I didn’t hear your approach.” Once upon a time, Naaima would have warned her, but she saw little of the former concubine these days. She kept to herself, spending her evenings in the wild garden or poring through the tomes in the temple libraries. Neferata had been offended at first, but then she had become preoccupied with Alcadizzar’s birth, and after a while she hadn’t missed Naaima’s presence at all.
“Forgive me if I startled you,” Ankhat said with a mirthless smile. “No doubt your attention was devoted entirely to the young prince.”
Despite herself, Neferata glanced proudly at the prince. He now stood next to Haptshur, towering head and shoulders over his tutor, his expression intent as he listened to the burly warrior’s assessment of the fight. Even coated with dust and smeared with traces of blood, his face was handsome and refined, with a square chin, strong cheekbones and a sharp nose. Alcadizzar had black hair and dark, intense eyes that he offset with a brilliant, disarming smile.
“He is a wonder,” Neferata admitted. “A true prince. One day, he will have the world at his fingertips.” Certainly he had been given the finest education in the land. Alcadizzar and the other royal children who now lived at the Lahmian court were lavished with the best of everything. The kings of the other great cities might resent sending their children to be raised in a foreign court, but they couldn’t say that their sons and daughters weren’t being treated as well—or in most cases, better—than they would have at home.
Ankhat studied Neferata intently. “That day is close at hand,” he said. “There have been letters from Rasetra. The king says that it’s time for Alcadizzar to assume his duties as King of Khemri.”
“Now? Nonsense!” Neferata exclaimed. “He’s only twenty-five years old!”
“His father became King of Rasetra at his age,” Ankhat pointed out. “People do not have the span of years that our fathers once did.”
“He will,” Neferata said. “Look at him. See what the elixir has wrought! He’ll live to be a hundred and twenty, perhaps more!”
Ankhat shrugged. “Perhaps so, great one. Nevertheless, he has reached the age when he should be king in his own right.”
Neferata turned back to the practice field. Alcadizzar was walking away, still talking with his tutors and rubbing the thick dust from his bare shoulders. His smile was dazzling against his dark skin. Ubaid waited at the edge of the field with fresh clothes for the prince; at Neferata’s command, the former grand vizier had been Alcadizzar’s personal servant since childhood, allowing her to keep a constant watch over the boy. Even Ubaid seemed to have been charmed by the young prince’s magnetism; in Alcadizzar’s presence he seemed to recover a bit of his former poise and presence of mind.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s not ready yet. Tell the Rasetrans they cannot have him.”
Ankhat blinked. “He belongs to them—”
“He belongs to me,” Neferata hissed. “Were it not for me, he would have died in the womb! I made him what he is today, and I say I’m not finished with him yet!”
The full force of her will hit Ankhat like a gale. He visibly wavered underneath her stare.
“This is dangerous, great one,” Ankhat managed to say. “The other kings already resent sending their children to live here as hostages. Refusing to return Alcadizzar will lead to repercussions.”
Neferata’s eyes narrowed at Ankhat. Her lips drew back slightly, revealing her fangs. “Are you threatening me?”
Ankhat bristled. “I’m merely pointing out the risks of your… attachment to the young prince,” he replied. “It is a danger to us all.”
“No,” Neferata said. “That’s where you’re wrong. Alcadizzar is the future. Through him, we’ll remake all of Nehekhara in our image, and rule over it until the end of time.”
The practice field was empty now. Neferata hurried down the length of the gallery, brushing past the stunned Ankhat.
“Tell the Rasetrans whatever you must,” she said to him as she went by. “Khemri will have a king when I say it is time, and not before.”
Acrid smoke hung in a dense, blue cloud over the ritual circle in the temple’s arcane sanctum. The incense braziers still burned after the long night’s work, mingling with the candle smoke and the arcane vapours that W’soran had learned were efficacious in the summoning of spirits. Over the last twenty-five years he had summoned countless spirits from the bleak wasteland beyond death’s door, until now he reckoned himself a master of the art. And yet his ultimate goal remained stubbornly out of reach.
The very thought of it galled him. W’soran had never been a strong man, but he reckoned that only one man in all of Nehekhara had ever rivalled him in matters of intellect. He was not accustomed to the notion of failure where his studies were concerned.
A glassy-eyed scribe shuffled up to him, holding out the transcript of the evening’s ritual. W’soran snatched the papyrus from the thrall’s hand and compared it to the invocations that Nagash had written in the yellowing tome open on the table before him. His lips pulled back in a snarl at the scribe’s atrocious handiwork. The thralls made terrible assistants unless the lightest amount of pressure was brought to bear on their minds, but W’soran had little patience for such foolishness. He would have preferred the steady, tireless hand of a skeletal servant, and once again cursed Neferata’s edict forbidding such creations. She was little better than her dead husband: ambitious, but too timid to make use of the tremendous power that lay in their hands. The specific tomes that governed the creation of the undead were locked away in another vault, along with Arkhan’s notes on the transformation ritual he had used on Neferata. There they would remain until the end of time, if she were allowed to have her way.
“Stupid, moon-eyed bitch!” he muttered, smoothing out the papyrus next to the ancient page and reaching for an ink brush.
“The evening’s work didn’t go well, I take it?”
W’soran whirled, hands clenching into claws. Fleshless lips drew back, revealing long, needle-like fangs. He didn’t recognise the bland features of the man standing just inside the doorway of the sanctum, but he knew the voice all too well. “Ushoran!” he exclaimed. “How did you get in here?”
Lord Ushoran gave the skeletal W’soran a ghostly smile. “The door was unlocked long ago,” he said. “You requested it, in fact.”
“Don’t be impertinent!” W’soran snapped. “You’re not allowed here! If Neferata knew—”
Ushoran’s smile turned cold. “If she knew I was here, she’d no doubt be angry. I’ll give you that. But that would be nothing compared to how furious she’d be if she knew what you were really up to.”
W’soran’s anger vanished in an instant. “What are you talking about?” he said, suddenly wary.
Ushoran sighed. “You’ve been summoning and binding spirits for a quarter of a century. Do you mean to tell me that you haven’t figured out how to do it yet?”
“Certainly not!” W’soran snapped. “I mastered the art of summoning years ago!”
“Then I have to assume you’re in here, night after night, not because you’re still learning how to call up spirits—but because you’re trying to call up a very specific spirit instead.”
W’soran cursed himself for a fool. Ushoran had led him right into the trap, and he’d never seen it coming. He affected a sneer, hoping it would hide his unease
.
“What of it? Do you think Neferata would care if I was summoning one particular spirit over another?”
“Oh, yes,” Ushoran said. “She most definitely would—if the spirit in question was Nagash.”
W’soran froze. How had he been found out? For a wild instant, he wondered if he were capable of killing Ushoran and disposing of the body. The Lord of Masks would often disappear for weeks, even months at a time. No one would notice his absence for a long while.
He slowly turned back to the table and began casually searching through the pile for another one of Nagash’s books. There were offensive spells inside that would turn Ushoran to a blackened husk in seconds.
“How did you find out?” W’soran said, hoping to keep Ushoran distracted.
The nobleman gave a snort. “It’s my business to know things,” he replied casually. “What I don’t understand is why.”
“Why else?” W’soran exclaimed. “Because we should have crushed the other cities long ago and built a new empire on their bones! The whole world is ours for the taking, and yet Neferata is content to hide behind her descendants and rule over a city of merchants! She might have had potential once, but killing that fool Khalida broke her nerve.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Look at this foolishness with the Rasetran boy. Pure idiocy.”
“And how will summoning Nagash’s spirit help us?”
The spell-book forgotten, W’soran whirled on Ushoran. “Think of the knowledge he possessed! He was the only man in the world I would have called my equal. To this day I curse the fates that I was born too late to have journeyed to Khemri and served him!” He spread his hands, taking in the entirety of the room and its shelves of arcane tomes. “With the knowledge at my command I could bind even a spirit as powerful as his to serve me.” He smiled a death’s head smile. “And then the world would truly change, Lord Ushoran. You may be assured of that!”
Ushoran was silent for a moment, his bland eyes regarding W’soran inscrutably. “You’ve been at this a quarter of a century,” he said at last. “Why haven’t you been able to summon him yet?”
The answer stuck in W’soran’s throat. It took an effort of will to get it out.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“How is that possible?” Ushoran asked.
W’soran turned back to the tome. “It’s not difficult to summon a spirit in general,” he said, searching through the pages once more. “The breaking of the covenant with the gods resulted in countless numbers of dead souls trapped between the world of the living and the lands of the dead; they wander in a kind of wasteland between the two, desperate for rest.” Suddenly he found the page he’d been seeking. He narrowed his eyes and quickly read over the incantation.
“Summoning a specific spirit is more challenging,” he continued, absently. His fingers traced the necromantic writing on the fragile page. “One must possess a means of focusing the spell on that one spirit in particular.”
“Can’t you just call the spirit by name?” Ushoran asked.
W’soran paused. He’d always taken the Lord of Masks for a dilettante. Perhaps there was more to him than met the eye. “I suspected the same thing at first,” he continued. “But either the name doesn’t provide a strong enough connection, or the rituals I have to work with aren’t as effective as they need to be.”
“All right,” Ushoran said. “For the sake of argument, what would provide a stronger connection to the spirit?”
W’soran gave a bitter bark of laughter. “A piece of his body would suffice. Failing that, perhaps a piece of a close family member, like his father.”
“Or his brother?”
W’soran paused. Slowly he turned to regard the Lord of Masks.
“Nagash’s brother is entombed in a crypt outside Khemri,” W’soran said.
The Lord of Masks smiled and gave an offhanded shrug. “That’s not so great an obstacle as you might think.”
Now he had W’soran’s undivided attention. “You could do this?”
“If I put the right amount of gold into the right hands… yes, it’s possible.”
Was this a trap? W’soran could not be sure. Temptation warred with his sense of preservation. Finally, he concluded that Ushoran already had more than enough to involve Neferata already. He didn’t especially need anything more.
“Why would you do this?” W’soran asked.
The Lord of Masks gave another shrug. His expression was unreadable.
“As it stands right now, we’re all hostages to fate,” he said. “Neferata has seen to it that our fortunes are inextricably tied to her own. That can’t be allowed to continue. We need to find a way to level the field against her before this affair with young Alcadizzar drags us all to our doom.” He regarded W’soran intently. “Just be certain you have the means to control what you call up, sorcerer, or Neferata may well turn out to be the least of our problems.”
Nagashizzar, in the 98th year of Ptra the Glorious
(-1325 Imperial Reckoning)
At first, the Children of the Horned God responded swiftly to the reports of god-stone buried beneath the great mountain. Within a year, packs of black-garbed scouts were pouring from the first, exploratory tunnel and scuttling silently through the lower tunnels of the fortress. Slowly, warily, they followed the bitter scent of the Horned God’s spoor until finally they came upon the first of the active mine shafts. What they discovered in those dimly-lit tunnels sent the first scouts scampering back into the deeps in terror.
Glowing skeletons, they swore to their pack leaders. Skeletons that swung picks and hauled away stone, their bones glowing with god-stone dust. The first scouts who reported this were slain out of hand, for the pack leaders were foul-tempered, suspicious creatures that reacted poorly when they thought they were being mocked. The rest were sent back, and warned to return with proof if they valued their mangy hides.
And so the black-cloaks crept about the mine tunnels, whispering and watching and waiting for their opportunity. In short order, a trio of tunnel-creepers caught sight of a skeleton with a smashed foot that could not keep pace with its companions. As soon as the rest of the work party had disappeared around a bend in the tunnel the ratmen swarmed over the crippled thing. Knives flashed and teeth snapped; within seconds the skeleton had been expertly dismantled. The scouts smashed the thing’s skull with a rock for good measure, then stuffed the glowing long bones into their packs and scuttled back into the darkness.
By the end of the day the bones had been snatched from the paws of the lowly scouts and were personally rushed back to the Great City by the pack leaders themselves. The sight of the bones stunned the Grey Seers, who by virtue of their own self-interest were knowledgeable themselves in the mining of god-stone. The bones were ground to powder and mixed with various potions to determine their potency. The results surpassed their wildest expectations. Even assuming that the scouts were wildly exaggerating their reports, the amount of dust found upon the bones hinted at deposits of god-stone beyond anything the Children of the Horned God had ever seen before. At once, the seers knew that the news had to be kept secret from the Council of Thirteen at all costs until they could determine the best way to exploit it. The pack leaders who had brought the bones to the Great City were rewarded with goblets of poisoned wine, and all records of their testimony were destroyed, but by that point it was already too late. A dozen spies had already drafted coded messages detailing the discovery to their masters on the council.
The Council of Thirteen was the ruling body of the skaven, as the ratmen called themselves, and was comprised of the twelve mightiest lords of their subterranean empire. The thirteenth seat was a symbolic one, reserved for the Horned God himself. The coded messages sped by magical means to the far corners of the empire, and within days there were tangled intrigues afoot as the council members schemed to seize the mountain’s riches for their own. Alliances were forged and subsequently betrayed; bribes and counter-bribes changed hands, and acts of assassi
nation and sabotage abounded.
The great lords assembled expeditionary forces and hastily rushed them to the mountain, only to have them collide en route and decimate one another in an escalating series of ambushes and ruthless hit-and-run raids before ever reaching their destination. This went on for twenty-five years before the members of the council surrendered to reason and called for a gathering in the Great City to determine who had the best claim to the mountain’s riches.
Of course, every lord had the best, most compelling claim. Many even had elaborately forged documents to prove it. Finally, the Seerlord, who was chief among the skaven’s grey seers and a member of the council himself, came forward and explained in no uncertain terms how they had received signs from the Horned God that had led them to the mountain, and that the riches buried there belonged to the skaven as a whole rather than any one clan. He concluded his tirade with the very persuasive notion that every day they argued gave the skeletons more time to seize the stone for themselves.
That served to focus the council’s attention. Within three more months, after another furious round of politicking, intriguing, bribing and assassinating, the skaven lords had agreed to an elaborate and complicated alliance of clans. Another expeditionary force was assembled, this time comprising warriors from all the great clans and their vassals, and a warlord appointed who would ultimately answer to the council as a whole. According to the terms of the alliance, every last piece of god-stone recovered from the mountain would become the property of the council, and would be shared evenly among the clans.
It was all a bunch of high-handed nonsense of course. Not one of the council members had the slightest intention of sharing such a huge treasure trove, but they were pragmatic enough to wait until they had the plunder in hand before the backstabbing began.
The mighty expeditionary force left the Great City with much fanfare, and Lord Eekrit, the warlord in command of the force, was urged by the council to return with his treasures as quickly as possible. The size of the skaven force was huge: equal contingents from each of the major clans made it the largest army of its kind in their race’s history. With so powerful a force under Lord Eekrit’s command, the council members felt certain that the looting of the great mountain would scarcely take more than a month to complete.
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