Neferata

by Josh Reynolds

  ‘I find the climb refreshing,’ Ushoran said. His red eyes swivelled. ‘You’ve broken a jug. How clumsy. Did I startle you?’

  ‘No. I simply didn’t like it.’

  ‘You still have a propensity for breaking things you don’t like, then?’ Ushoran eyed Khaled and Anmar.

  ‘Only jugs,’ Neferata said. ‘To what do we owe the pleasure, my lord?’ she said, bowing shallowly.

  ‘I wished to speak to you, away from prying eyes,’ Ushoran said. He reached out, snagged a bit of the jug and scraped at the floor with it. Neferata looked at the shape he had cut into the floor and grunted.

  ‘Go,’ she said, gesturing sharply. They went, as silent as shadows. Ushoran watched them go. Then he grinned, displaying his mouthful of twisted fangs.

  ‘You always did have an eye for the pretty ones,’ he said.

  ‘At least mine stay pretty,’ Neferata said. It was a petty thing to say, but the abortive growl that rippled from Ushoran made it worth it. ‘I suppose that someone told you that Razek visited me?’

  ‘I needed no one to tell me he would,’ Ushoran said. He snapped at the air. ‘I need the dwarfs, Neferata. Strigos needs them. They have the artifice I need to pull this kingdom of apes up out of the muck.’

  ‘And you offer them gold in return,’ Neferata said, crossing her arms. ‘Where does that gold come from, I wonder? Have you turned these barbarians into a productive society?’

  Ushoran gave a fart of laughter. ‘Productive? Ha!’ He grinned and scratched at the floor with his talons. ‘They were barely scraping by when I found them. In a few generations they would have been no better than the ghouls that haunt the tunnels beneath this place. Inbred cannibals!’

  ‘And Kadon?’ Neferata prompted.

  ‘Pfaugh, Kadon,’ Ushoran said, motioning dismissively. ‘He was nothing. Old and weak, like all mortals become. But he had his uses.’

  ‘He seems to have had something in common with an old friend of ours,’ Neferata said.

  Ushoran sat back on his haunches and gazed at her silently for a moment. Then, ‘The dwarf said that, did he?’

  ‘Not in so many words.’ Neferata stepped past Ushoran and into her chambers. He followed nimbly. ‘Kadon was a necromancer, like W’soran.’

  ‘Like Nagash,’ Ushoran said.

  ‘Yes. And how did that come about, hmmm?’

  Ushoran went to the dangling man and lifted him. A groan slipped from the man’s lips. Ushoran fastened his lamprey mouth over the unfortunate’s throat and, with a sound like ripping papyrus, began to drink what remained of his blood. Neferata sipped from her goblet, watching him.

  When he had finished, he turned to her and said, ‘I don’t know.’

  Neferata let the lie pass. Talking to Ushoran was akin to swordplay. The obvious drop of the guard was a likely feint. Instead, she settled for a change of tactics. ‘Where is the gold coming from?’ she asked again.

  Ushoran cocked his head. ‘Mourkain has many secrets. Kadon collected much wealth during his tenure as hetman.’ He licked his fangs. ‘We are in the process of re-opening the vaults.’

  ‘And where did Kadon get this wealth?’ Neferata said. ‘Did he steal it from the dwarfs, Ushoran?’ Even you would not be so foolish, would you, she thought.

  ‘Here and there,’ Ushoran said. ‘Kadon was a fool and a degenerate, but he was a miser of some distinction. Perhaps he collected some dwarf wealth in his more active years. What does it matter?’

  ‘It matters quite a bit,’ Neferata said. ‘Show them to me.’

  ‘What?’ Ushoran said.

  ‘The vaults, my king, show them to me.’ She emptied her goblet. ‘Razek is curious, Ushoran, as am I.’

  ‘You think he may try to steal the gold?’ Ushoran said, and she could see by the look in his eyes that he had never even considered such a thing. Oh my cunning lord, your wit has abandoned you as thoroughly as your looks, she thought.

  ‘No, but I think that if he learns that you’re paying the dwarfs with their own gold he will not be pleased,’ she said. ‘And if that happens, our newborn alliance could quickly become enmity and Mourkain could find itself once more at war with the dawi. Now show me the vaults.’

  Ushoran wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Very well. See if you can keep up.’ Then, with a scrape of talons across stone, he was bounding towards the window. Neferata was after him a half-second later. Even as she vaulted out of the window, Ushoran was plummeting downwards through the chill night air.

  He struck an outcropping and twisted through the air as if he were swimming. His flesh snapped, ripped and spread with a sound like a rupturing melon, and wings unfurled from his broad back. Black blood, expelled during the transformation, splattered across the rooftops below as a winged shadow sped off. Neferata landed on the outcropping, her eyes wide. Ushoran had learned something during his time in the wilderness after all.

  The game of skin-changing was a hard one, and it grew harder the younger and further from the source their kind was. Of Neferata’s get, one in three could shift shape to any appreciable degree, and of those whom her handmaidens brought over, fewer still could manage it. For herself, she had never faced any difficulty with it, and if Ushoran wished to show off, well, two could play at that game.

  She leapt down, aiming for the highest, closest roof peak. As she landed, she sank her claws into the flesh of her scalp. Things moved inside her as she ripped the pale flesh from her frame, and freed the sleek, wet, black-furred thing within. Shedding her human skin, she began to pursue Ushoran’s gargoyle shape in the form of one of the panthers which occupied the jungles of Ind.

  She bounded across the rooftops of Mourkain, her claws digging gouges in the stone and thatch. Ushoran was fast, but she was faster. She leapt from peak to peak, following the swell of the mountain that Mourkain occupied. Whoever had built the bones of the ancient city had wrought it from the very guts of the mountain, and it was into those depths that Ushoran led her.

  The upper reaches of the city were absent of life, save torch-bearing patrols of hard-faced Strigoi, who staunchly kept their eyes averted from the great stone doorway leading into the mountain’s peak. The doors were open, and a foul effluvium emanated from within. Neferata’s lean shape slithered past the guards and darted through the arch. The smell of death enveloped her, even more strongly here than in the pyramid. The ground vibrated with a steady, mechanical pulse. Echoes of steel on stone rang from the rocks.

  Something heavy and leathery thumped down in front of her, balancing on wing-limbs. The great bat shrieked and shook itself, trading one brute shape for another. Bone cracked and ruptured and then Ushoran stood before her, grinning widely.

  Neferata loped towards him, shedding fur and rising to her feet as she reached him. She combed blood and the matter of change from her hair with her fingers. ‘I see I’m not the only one to learn how to move between shapes in these intervening years,’ she said.

  ‘We all like to keep ourselves amused,’ Ushoran said, flexing his great hands.

  ‘Yet you do not teach it to those whom you give the blood-kiss?’

  ‘And why would he do that? Power is only valuable when it is held by as few hands as possible,’ a thin, hissing voice said. The words tumbled weirdly from the rocks. Something thin and insect-like detached itself from the shadows and stepped forwards. Despite the lack of light, Neferata saw its features clearly. And she didn’t like what she saw. The face was that of a corpse, with blackened, dry flesh pulled tight over sharp bones, and cavernous eye-sockets, one of which was occupied by a milky, unseeing orb. The other was as black as a chip of polished obsidian and it glinted with malign intelligence. A thin strip of colourless hair, bound into a single worm-like lock, hung down from the pointed skull.

  ‘W’soran,’ she said.

  ‘Neferata,’ W’soran said, his good eye narrowi
ng to a burning slit.

  Neferata gazed at her former councillor with undisguised loathing. ‘The years have not been kind.’ And indeed, they had not. W’soran had become even more cadaverous in the intervening years since she had last seen him. Clad in ragged black, a deep hood over his verminous face, the vampire resembled nothing so much as a mummy which did not have the good grace to decay in silence.

  ‘Physical appearances were always more your purview, my queen,’ W’soran said. ‘I am concerned with higher matters than hygiene.’

  ‘So I see,’ Neferata said, repressing a gag. W’soran stank of rot and strange spices. ‘And what higher matters might these be?’

  ‘You asked about the source of Mourkain’s gold?’ Ushoran said. He extended a claw towards W’soran. ‘There it is.’

  ‘Well, technically, there it is…’ W’soran said, indicating the stumbling, hooded shapes which had followed him out of the darkness. Neferata hissed as the shapes stepped towards her.

  ‘Corpses,’ she spat.

  ‘More than just corpses, my lady,’ W’soran gloated. ‘Bone, muscle, sinew, all that is dead in these mountains is mine to command!’

  Ushoran swung his bulbous head towards the other vampire. ‘Even as you are mine,’ he rumbled. W’soran grunted.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said testily. ‘That is our bargain, Ushoran.’

  ‘King Ushoran,’ Ushoran corrected gently. The hint of menace lurked in those words and the dead reacted to it, even if their master didn’t. They closed about W’soran protectively.

  ‘I wondered where you’d got to, after Nagashizzar fell,’ Neferata said, breaking the moment. ‘It is a comfort to me that you’re still cowering in dark holes.’ W’soran hissed, his pointed ears flattening against his long skull. Before he could reply, she went on. ‘Show me,’ she said.

  W’soran led them deeper into the mountain. Great stairs, crudely carved and decorated with bas-reliefs of skulls, spiralled down into the darkness at the heart of the mountain and vast edifices of unknown purpose and alien beauty hove to out of the gloom. Corpses wove in and out of rough tunnels and smooth corridors, carrying tools.

  ‘Kadon built all of this?’ Neferata said, awestruck despite herself. Conglomerations of bone and wood braced the tunnels and great stone dips, containing burning lumps of coal and bone, lit their descent. Curtains made from the hair of bats and men draped the landings of the stairway and tattered shrouds hung from the sides of the stairs like tapestries. Braziers exuding the smell of embalming spices were scattered randomly and W’soran inhaled their stink as he passed them.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Ushoran said. ‘Regardless, he extended it, century upon century. I watched him do it.’

  ‘You always were good at spying,’ Neferata said. Ushoran’s lip curled, exposing a fang, but he said nothing. The stairs wound down through the mountain, and as they moved deeper, Neferata caught the mildew-stink of ghoul nests and saw dozens of scuttling white simian shapes scaling the rocks to either side of the stairs. The scrabbling ghouls dislodged piles of bone, sending browned skulls rattling down into the depths.

  ‘Largest nest of the vermin I’ve seen outside of Nagashizzar,’ Ushoran grunted. ‘I feasted on them for decades before I revealed myself to the Strigoi. They hold hunts, sometimes, into the dark places. It used to be a rite of manhood, before I found better use for the creatures.’

  ‘I believe that they are all that remain of the tribes that the Strigoi once warred with for control of these mountains. Kadon apparently enslaved thousands to build Mourkain, and when he was finished, the survivors were driven into the darkness, where they fed on the blind things swimming in the deep pools and gnawed the marrow from centuries of bones,’ W’soran said. He chuckled. ‘Mortals degenerate so swiftly. I have undertaken a study of it, and the results are–’

  ‘Unimportant,’ Neferata said.

  ‘I would beg to differ,’ W’soran said. He threw back his head and uttered an inhuman screech. A moment later, claws clattered across the stone. Neferata, prepared for treachery, was already turning as the ghouls scrambled up over the edge of the landing and bounded towards her. The first ghoul died, its skull shattered and driven into its spine by a blow from her fist. The second was opened like a fish, from groin to gullet. Behind her, something horrible gave a deep, rumbling cough.

  Neferata spun and looked up into the dead, black eyes of something that stank of a battlefield. It was larger than the pitiful pale maggot-creatures milling about below, with a bloated musculature and infected, weeping sores through which protruded lengths of filthy yellow bone. It gave a cursory grunt as it stared down at her with a look of glazed ferocity.

  Shock hammered through her. ‘What–’

  ‘Isn’t he lovely?’ W’soran cackled. He glanced at Ushoran, who was watching the confrontation calmly. ‘Watch, Ushoran. Watch and see!’

  The creature coughed and then rose up and threw back its head, uttering a soul-chilling howl. The howl was answered by the ghouls that clung to the walls. The corpse-eaters scuttled down like foul white spiders, their eyes gleaming with mingled fear and hunger. A few held bloody lumps of meat torn from the two ghouls she had just dispatched.

  The big creature grunted and its claws spread. It licked its broken fangs and eyed her hungrily. It made a slurping sound as it started forwards. Confused, she almost didn’t avoid the first lunge. Normally, ghouls were frightened of her kind, as foxes fled from wolves, but this thing – this horror – seemed almost enthusiastic to come to grips with her.

  ‘What is the meaning of this, you old monster?’ she snarled.

  ‘Testing a hypothesis, my queen,’ W’soran chortled, clapping his hands. ‘Best pay attention, Neferata!’

  The monster gave a thunderous hog-grunt and swiped at her. She leapt back, landing lightly on the shoulders of a surprised ghoul, and then vaulted over the giant’s next blow. The unfortunate ghoul was bisected. Neferata landed behind the creature and it spun with a roar. It launched itself at her, slobbering grotesquely.

  She backhanded it, putting every bit of muscle she had into the blow. The creature staggered, its jaw shattered and possibly its neck as well, but it didn’t stop. Instead, it latched on to her and hooked her forearm with its teeth. She screamed, more in shock than pain, as it savaged her arm and lapped greedily at the blood that poured forth. She yanked her arm free of its vile grip and kicked it away.

  ‘Look! Look,’ W’soran said, gesturing excitedly. ‘See! I told you, Ushoran.’

  ‘I see,’ Ushoran said.

  The beast scrambled to its feet and, moaning, leapt at Neferata again. She ducked under its extended arms and jumped up swiftly, her palm striking its throat. Before it could worm free of her grip, she ripped its throat out in a welter of gore. It sagged with a sigh, falling to all fours. Neferata tossed the lump of flesh aside and glared at the other flesh-eaters, giving them a snarl. They slunk away, whining.

  Neferata turned her glare on the other two vampires. Ushoran shrugged, but W’soran shook his head. ‘Almost, almost,’ he muttered.

  Neferata leapt onto him, quicker than either of them could react. Her hands found W’soran’s scrawny throat and she wrenched his bony body into the air and brought it down on the stone with a resounding crack. W’soran squealed and grabbed her face. His strength was surprising and she felt her flesh tear as she jerked him up again and flung him onto the steps hard enough to shatter one. W’soran shook his head and tried to climb to his feet but she was on him before he could, her claws hooked into his scalp.

  ‘Neferata,’ Ushoran growled.

  Neferata hissed, tempted to throw off the masquerade she had only so recently taken up. Instead, she released the other vampire and stood. ‘Was that a test, Ushoran?’ she said.

  ‘Not the kind you are thinking of, no,’ Ushoran said. W’soran heaved himself up, his eyes incandescent with fury.

&nbs
p; ‘I should flay your pearly flesh from your treacherous bones,’ he rasped, glaring at Neferata. He clenched his fists, as if contemplating unleashing a spell.

  ‘But you won’t,’ Ushoran said, interposing himself. ‘We will put aside old grudges.’ He looked at Neferata. ‘There was no treachery here. You were in no danger. W’soran merely wanted to test his newest creation’s abilities.’

  ‘What was it?’ Neferata said, tentatively touching the already healing bite-mark in her arm.

  ‘A ghoul,’ W’soran said.

  Neferata blinked, surprised. W’soran laughed. ‘Oh yes. I told you that I had been studying them.’ He grinned at her. ‘I have learned much, Neferata. Things that would make even your blood curdle.’ In that moment, Neferata was reminded again of the fear she had once felt when in W’soran’s presence. There was a horrible hunger in his eyes, a hunger that went beyond simple bloodthirst into something else. Nonetheless, she held his gaze until he looked away.

  ‘If there are no more tests, perhaps I could see the vaults. Where are they?’

  ‘Scattered all up and down the spine of the mountain,’ Ushoran said, gesturing. ‘I’ve had W’soran’s maggot-addled minions digging them open. Kadon was like a jackal with a bone. He hid his wealth in random places. When he needed a new vault, he merely made one, using the dead to claw it from the rock.’

  ‘Nagash employed similar techniques in Nagashizzar,’ W’soran said.

  ‘Which is where I got the idea,’ Ushoran added. W’soran shot him a look, but said nothing. Neferata smirked. The two – the spy and the sorcerer – had never been friends. They were allies of convenience at most, and spiteful allies at that. If that spite were ever unlocked… She filed the thought away for future consideration. There were other levers and locks than just those crafted by the dwarfs in their palaces of stone.

  The numbers of corpses increased the lower they went. Stumbling bodies covered in dried flesh walked alongside things that were nothing save bone and scraps of cloth. They came to what could only be an observation platform. Neferata leaned over the stone barrier and peered down into the inner workings of the mine. The dead moved like ants in their thousands, scurrying this way and that. Great machines, the likes of which she had never seen in all her years, ground away at the deep stone, manned by the squat, desiccated shapes of long-dead dwarfs. These latter corpses were even more unnerving than the humans, orcs and beasts that served as labour. Mangy beards, plaited with ancient jewellery, hung from fleshless jaws. Ragged suits of mail dangled from broad bones and strange lights danced in empty eye-sockets.