There were only a few reasons she could think of for Ushoran to give sanctuary to a treacherous serpent like W’soran, and one of those was to make use of the old monster’s knowledge, but why? Ushoran could simply have had another crown made. What was so important about this one?
At that thought, something vibrated through her, its ugly voice echoing eerily in her head. Come to me, Queen of the Dawn! Come, Beautiful Death! Run to me. Run to my embrace, it hissed, its words scraping across the underside of her thoughts like the coils of some great serpent. She could feel its intangible presence pulling at her as she rode.
The horses galloped through the streets towards the pyramid. She saw more guards, but none tried to bar their way. The city was bristling with them, and here and there among them, she saw the black robes of W’soran’s ghouls. Hurry, Queen of Lahmia! The stars spin faster and faster as dust is stirred by hollow winds. The dead howl in their cages of breathing meat! Hurry, the voice hissed in her ears. She bent her head, trying to ignore it. Her eyes found the dark shape of the pyramid and she heard a whisper of ghostly laughter. Naaima held her tighter.
‘You’re trembling,’ she murmured, low enough that others couldn’t hear.
Neferata controlled herself. The moon was fat and bloated in the black sky and it cast a yellow eye over the plaza in front of the pyramid. She tugged on the reins as they entered the plaza. More guards awaited them. Spears were lowered and warnings shouted, but Neferata ignored them, leaping from her horse and stalking towards the doors, the others hurrying after her. Her talons slid from her fingertips as the guards in front of the door held their ground.
‘Stand aside,’ a voice bellowed as the doors were pushed open from within. Khaled stepped through, shoving a guard viciously aside. ‘I said stand aside, fools!’ he roared. He met Neferata’s gaze as she swept towards him, not slowing. ‘My lady, let me expla–’
She didn’t let him finish. She snatched him up by his throat and lifted him over her head, her eyes blazing like coals. ‘Fool,’ she snarled. Her voice echoed across the plaza and she smelled the sudden surge of fear from the guards. Khaled gagged and tried to speak as her fingers tightened about his throat. Cartilage popped and bone crunched and Khaled jerked and flopped like a broken-backed snake. She flung him aside and spun to face Naaima and the others. ‘Come!’
She struck the doors with her palms, forcing them open with a thunderous boom which echoed throughout the pyramid. She stalked through the corridors, servants fleeing before her like chickens fleeing a leopardess. A duo of Strigoi moved to bar her way at the entrance to the throne room and she gazed at them with blank fury. ‘Move aside,’ she growled.
Both wore the heavy black armour of Ushoran’s guard, and both were familiar to her. Zandor bowed mockingly, one hand on his sword. ‘We must announce you, my lady,’ he said. ‘It is the custom.’
‘You might have forgotten, what with all that time spent among the barbarians,’ Gashnag added, glaring at her. Both Strigoi looked ready for a fight. They were no longer the parasitic courtiers they had been so long ago. Now they were warriors, or carried themselves as such. She wondered, in the moment before she hurled herself at them, whether Abhorash had had a hand in that.
Zandor reacted first, half drawing his sword before her talons opened his face to the bone. He screamed and reeled, clutching at his face even as she caught Gashnag’s sword in her hand. Blood dripped down the blade as the tableau held for several seconds. Then she tore the blade from the startled Strigoi’s hand and backhanded him into the great bronze doors of the throne room. The doors burst inwards, carried wide by Gashnag’s weight. He slid across the floor, his armour clattering, and Neferata followed him, carrying his sword.
‘My Lady of Mysteries, to what do we owe the pleasure?’ Ushoran said. He looked human and ordinary on the throne. Anmar sat at his feet. The chamber was empty save for the hooded figures which stood near the great throne like a silent court, and the bulky forms of several monstrous ghouls. She was reminded of the creature that W’soran had unleashed on her in the vaults and she hissed. He had made more of them, obviously, and he had got better at whatever dark process had been involved in their creation. These creatures were bigger than the other, and were not quite so patchwork. They gazed at her with dim hunger and she remembered how the other had attached itself, remora-like, to her arm.
She tore her eyes from the monster to the steps of Ushoran’s throne where Anmar sat, head bowed and shoulders hunched. Neferata gazed at the girl for a moment before she addressed Ushoran. ‘I come to reclaim what is mine,’ Neferata said, gesturing to Anmar. See how he sits in your chair, the voice hissed. She ignored it.
‘If you had been a few moments slower getting here you would have had nothing to reclaim,’ Ushoran said idly. ‘I intended to give her to W’soran’s pets there. What do you think of them, hmmm? Much improved from the last time you saw one. They are quite striking and vicious as well. They have a taste for the blood of our kind, I’m told. Isn’t that so, W’soran?’
One of the hooded figures standing near the throne tossed back his hood to reveal W’soran’s desiccated features. ‘Oh yes, as I’m sure Neferata realises by now.’
Neferata ignored him. ‘Why have you taken my handmaiden, Ushoran?’ she demanded.
‘You mean to say that your little spies haven’t told you yet?’ Ushoran said, gesturing to Naaima as he pushed himself up from the throne. He spread his arms. ‘Someone tried to kill me,’ he said. He gestured to Anmar. ‘This creature of yours was seen in their company.’
‘By whom?’ Neferata said.
Ushoran’s eyes flickered aside, towards W’soran. ‘A little bat,’ he said.
Neferata snorted. ‘Of course. Why else would he have sent his beasts, rather than alerting his king?’
‘You would know all about that, would you?’ W’soran spat. ‘What secrets do you keep, Queen of Mysteries?’
Neferata ignored that. ‘Anmar,’ she said. ‘Come here.’
‘She stays, Neferata,’ Ushoran said mildly. ‘She must be punished.’
‘Then I will punish her,’ Neferata said, extending her hand towards her handmaiden. ‘Come here.’ Anmar rose hesitantly. When Ushoran made no move to stop her, she bolted towards Neferata. Neferata held her for a moment, examining her. ‘Your brother has much to answer for,’ she murmured, stroking the girl’s hair.
‘He saved me,’ Anmar hissed. ‘W’soran’s monsters would have killed me, my lady! They’d have left me in the street like the others!’ She grabbed Neferata’s hand. ‘It was the only way, my lady,’ she said urgently.
Neferata hesitated. Then, anger overrode the brief spark of regret. ‘He should have saved all of you,’ she hissed. She stepped past Anmar and glared at Ushoran. ‘Anmar and the others were following a conspirator, as you commanded. That is why she was in his presence. My people work at crooked angles, Ushoran, and must occasionally play friend to our – to your foes.’
Ushoran cast a lazy glance at W’soran, who trembled with rage. ‘I told you,’ Ushoran murmured. He looked back at Neferata. ‘This is the throne room of Ancient Kadon himself, you know. And it was here that I killed him. Impressive, is it not?’
‘Why should I be impressed because you managed to throttle some elderly madman?’ Neferata asked.
‘Elderly, yes, but mad? No,’ W’soran said. ‘Kadon’s knowledge was greater even than mine.’
‘Many things are greater than you, W’soran,’ Neferata said pointedly.
Ushoran laughed. ‘Such venom you spit, my queen. Such raw red rage you display, and for what? What have we done to elicit it?’
‘The night is short, Ushoran, and I lack the patience to go into the many perfidies that you and that sour old corpse-thing by your side have inflicted upon me and mine. Tell me why I should not take this latest insult as the last?’
‘Because you’re curious,�
� Ushoran said, grinning. He tapped his head. ‘I am as well. Does it speak to you in the quiet moments, Neferata? I’d wager it does.’
She hesitated, struck by the sudden certainty that there was a deeper game here. She had intended to use this breach to bully Ushoran into revealing his secrets at a later time. But perhaps Ushoran was seizing an opportunity of his own. Tread carefully, she thought to herself.
‘Ahhhhh,’ Ushoran breathed, nodding knowingly at her silence. He glanced smugly at W’soran. ‘I told you that it speaks to her and Abhorash as well, I’d wager. And you said that they lacked the spark or wit to hear it.’
‘Hear what?’ Neferata snarled, taking a step forwards. She knew the answer already, but she wanted to see the limits of the web Ushoran was spinning. Dust falls from the eyes of heroes and kings, and the dead are stirring in their tombs, the voice whispered. They will rise and march and thrust the world into a silent, serene shape. The Corpse Geometries will bend and slide into formation for the dead, binding the fires at the poles and snuffing the stars themselves.
‘That,’ Ushoran said, as the shriek of the nails-on-bone voice faded in her head. ‘I thought I was privileged at first, to hear it. Like a lover’s croon. But it’s not,’ he said, the humour fading from his voice. ‘It’s the command of a master to a servant.’
W’soran bridled, grimacing. ‘It’s an echo, Ushoran… I’ve told you–’
Ushoran moved so fast that Neferata barely caught it. He backhanded W’soran, catapulting the thin vampire off his feet and to the floor in a heap. W’soran’s servants closed ranks, and the air was suddenly alive with the acrid odour of fell magics. Ushoran paid them no mind, instead focusing his attention on Neferata. ‘It’s like acid, isn’t it? Etching its way into your thoughts. You never met him, of course. That’s why you don’t recognise it. But I did, and when I heard it…’ He shook his head. He made a face. ‘W’soran was his favourite. Like a child with a new toy. He barely noticed me, damaged as I was. He left me to his beasts.’ His fingers curled into fists and his human seeming wavered. ‘But it was I who answered his call first! I who came to him! Me!’
‘Which is why we’re still here, of course,’ W’soran said, as his acolytes helped him to his feet. Ushoran tensed. ‘All this time after the fact, we’re still here, trapped in this primitive shadow of Lahmia, forced to grub in the dirt like peasants.’ W’soran wiped a bit of blood from his lipless mouth. His eyes swivelled to Neferata. There was more than just disdain there. There was also a warning. Ushoran wasn’t the only one spinning a web. ‘Because the first to come wasn’t strong enough to do what needed doing,’ he added, still looking at Neferata.
‘Silence,’ Ushoran snarled.
‘What are you yammering about, old leech? What secret are you dancing around?’ Neferata said.
‘Have you ever wondered why our king wears no crown? The savages he rules so admire a fine crown.’ W’soran grinned.
‘Kadon’s crown…’ Neferata said, a number of things falling into place. Both W’soran and Ushoran started at that, but Neferata drove on before they could recover. ‘But that is not Kadon’s voice I hear, is it?’
‘In part perhaps,’ W’soran said with a shrug. ‘But as Ushoran said, there’s a reason you didn’t recognise it. Or maybe you did, but pretended you didn’t, even to yourself. You have heard it before, haven’t you, centuries ago? I know, because I was there when Nagash spoke to you.’ He looked at Ushoran. ‘We both were.’
Nagash. The name hammered into her brain like a nail. Nagash, the Great Necromancer. Nagash, whose name had been wiped from the historical records of the Great Land. Nagash, whose elixir of immortality even now pumped in altered form through her veins.
‘Nagash’s, not Kadon’s… It is Nagash’s crown,’ she whispered.
‘My crown,’ Ushoran countered, his hands twitching slightly. ‘And with it, I will rule even as he did. But my rule will extend unto eternity, as even his failed to do. I will not make his mistakes and I do not possess his flaws. But I will have all of his power…’
‘But you don’t. Not yet. Why?’ Neferata said. ‘Where is it?’
Ushoran hesitated, his smugness evaporating. He looked almost… afraid. W’soran answered her, and he sounded as hesitant as Ushoran looked. ‘Here. Right here and yet it is so far away.’
Ushoran went to the wall behind the throne, towards an empty niche where a statue might once have stood. He placed a hand against the stones and a hidden door slid open, revealing a set of winding steps. ‘There,’ Ushoran said softly.
‘Ushoran–’ W’soran began.
‘No. No, if she wants to see it, we shall let her.’ Ushoran looked speculative. ‘Perhaps… perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps this was the answer all along.’ He looked at the dark passage. ‘Perhaps this is the price he demands.’
‘Neferata, don’t,’ Naaima said as Neferata stepped towards the passage. Neferata shook Naaima’s hand off. Her handmaiden’s voice was drowned out by the sudden roar of silence that spilled out of the darkness. It was an absence of sound which muffled everything. Ushoran stepped within and she followed, hesitant at first and then faster. Her instincts screamed warnings of treachery and deceit but not for the first time in her life, she ignored them. She had to see what lay beyond. She needed to confront that which had drawn her here, even if it endangered her very existence.
‘Come and see, it said, and I came unto Mourkain and saw,’ Ushoran whispered hoarsely as they walked. His words rustled in the narrow tunnel like bats and the stones of the corridor beyond the hidden entrance seemed to vibrate in tune to his voice. Gently, she brushed dust from the stones, revealing the crude pictograms which had been scratched into the walls by the ancient builders. Like the hieroglyphs of home, these told the story of the tomb. The body had been found in the river that curled through the mountains, a crown in one hand. The body of a mighty man, larger than any man of the Strigoi, though reduced to ruin by unknown enemies. His features had been obliterated by old marks, like those made by claws.
‘Who was he, Ushoran?’ she said.
‘Can you feel it, Neferata?’ he said, ignoring her question as they reached the end of the corridor.
‘What is it?’ she said, shivering. There was a vibration in her bones. It echoed from the floor and the walls and ceiling, and it was as if she were inside some great, living organism.
‘The echo of a heartbeat,’ Ushoran said, not looking at her.
Neferata listened, and knew he was right. The thudding boom-boom-boom, echoing up from untold depths and seeping through the stone, had the regular rhythms of a man’s heartbeat. Steady, strong… familiar. ‘No,’ she said as the sound caressed her ears.
Ushoran turned, his face twisted in a sneer. ‘Yes. Listen to it, Neferata. Do you hear it? Do you hear his heart? Does it beat faster?’ He made to grab her and she slithered back instinctively, out of his reach. ‘Do you hear him?’
The air became cold and sluggish and damp. Neferata swiped instinctively at it, as if it were full of cobwebs. A hand grabbed her wrist, but dissolved into curling wisps of mist as she spun. Words bled through the rock, snippets of past conversations.
‘Damn you, Ushoran, who is buried here?’ she snapped.
‘You did this,’ Ushoran said. ‘You made him this way!’
Neferata turned around and around as half-formed faces made to speak and dissolved in a silent storm surrounding her. All familiar, though they spanned swathes of time she had not been there to see. The faces were of a child, a boy, a man and – what? – a corpse or a wraith or wight? Regardless, he was a king.
Alcadizzar, the boy she had raised as her own. The man she had groomed to be king and the king who had died for Nehekhara. Neferata hissed and spat as the smoky fingers drifted across hers in a gesture at once familiar and abominable. ‘Away, wraith,’ she said, swiping her claws through the wisps.
�
�Mourkain is built on his bones,’ Ushoran snarled, lunging through the mist. He grabbed her wrists and his human façade rippled and tore like wet papyrus, revealing the horror beneath. Grey dead flesh over an ape’s skull, with a thicket of fangs spilling from a lipless mouth. Eyes like the embers of a dying fire glared at her as he tried to pull her close.
‘W’soran cannot break his hold over the crown! And without the crown I cannot truly be king! But you – maybe you…’
Neferata bent and brought the soles of her feet sliding up between them. Catching Ushoran in the belly, she tore him loose and sent him flying back. He hit the rock and screamed, as if it burned him. She rose. The floor felt warm beneath her feet. She smelled the hiss of cooking meat and, a moment later, felt the pain.
She was burning, even as Lahmia had burned, as Khemri and Zandri had burned, at Nagash’s command. Alcadizzar whipped her with a lash of fire and regret and she screamed in agony. Ushoran, driven berserk by pain, roared and charged and his massive talons nearly took her head off. She ducked and he cut a gouge in the rock face. She cut through his belly and chest and his growls became screams as she opened him to the spine. He fell and writhed on the ground, his skin bubbling and rupturing. Turning, she began to run even as the heat ate into her own limbs. She had to escape this place. Her feet were burned raw and an agony she hadn’t felt since that first night of her new existence raced over her nerves, eating at them like acid. Still, she stumbled on, trying to escape the embrace of the tunnel. If she could get to the main chamber, perhaps the pain would stop. That was all she could think about.
She could hear Ushoran following her, his claws scraping stone. The corridor felt as if it was closing like a fist around her and the needle-on-bone voice of the crown was drowned out by the grim rumble of stone and the echoes of Alcadizzar’s voice as it thrummed through her mind, evoking ancient memories and ancient pain.
She burst out of the tunnel like a bat from the depths, flames wreathing her slender shape. She screamed, and there was nothing human in her voice. Ushoran caught her in mid-air, his grotesque gargoyle shape having sprouted wings. He too was on fire and the flames congealed greedily as his talons sought her throat. Maddened by pain and need, the two vampires crashed down onto the floor.
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