The strike of the crown against the floor sounded like thunder. ‘Now,’ Ushoran snarled. ‘Now, I will have my vengeance.’ He leapt for the wight, his claws sinking into its dried meat. ‘Now, I will tear you apart, usurper. I am the master here! Me!’
Alcadizzar shrugged, slapping Ushoran to the floor. Though contained, the malevolent spirit yet possessed strength. It groaned, and there was an eternity of agony in the sound. It reached for Ushoran, grabbing his neck and hoisting him off his feet. His guards swarmed it moments later, Khaled among them, hacking and slashing at the undead thing. Bound as it was to a physical frame, it lacked the strength to face that many opponents. The wight staggered and spun as blows struck it. Neferata could only watch helplessly as Alcadizzar fell to his hands and knees, the flickering light in his eye-sockets fading even as Ushoran threw himself on the wight and ripped its head from its body with a massive twist of his shoulders.
‘Behold,’ Ushoran roared, ‘the king is dead.’ His eyes fell on the crown. ‘Long live the king,’ he said more softly. Khaled stepped close to him and Neferata tensed in readiness. Ushoran lifted the crown. It throbbed in his hands, screaming in triumph. Khaled’s hand hovered over the hilt of his sword, his eyes on the crown and on its bearer. Tapestries were consumed in balefire along the stone walls and strange shapes seemed to walk between the ripples of otherworldly heat emanating from Ushoran’s prize. ‘Now,’ Neferata hissed. ‘Do it now – Khaled, now!’
Khaled’s hand jerked away from his sword. The crown settled on Ushoran’s head. Neferata shrieked and lunged. She tossed her traitorous servant aside and pounced on Ushoran, her features running like melting wax as they assumed a more daemonic cast. ‘It is mine-mine-mineMINEMINEMI–’ she shrilled as Ushoran fell over backwards with her on top of him.
The crown neither resisted nor aided her. In truth, it seemed pleased, though it didn’t speak. Images and memories not her own washed over her in benediction, and she saw the truth of it all at once. She saw the unmasked face of what lurked within that iron circlet, and heard its lustful glee as it contemplated its future. Not her future or Ushoran’s, but rather the future of the thing that it would make of them.
Ushoran howled as her claws found his eyes and he flung her over his head. She crashed into the floor hard enough to crack the stone. Ushoran turned, his body undulating as if it were trying to twist itself into a new shape. Neferata scrambled to her feet and yanked her sword from its sheath. She drove it with all of her might into Ushoran’s chest, propelling him backwards up off the floor and against one of the columns in a cloud of stone chips and dust. His talons fell on her arms, lacerating her pale flesh and forcing her to stumble back. Ushoran writhed like a bug pinned to a board, his limbs wriggling independently of one another. He howled and snapped like a wounded wolf, his eyes weeping terrible energies which coruscated around his form.
‘Treachery,’ one of the Strigoi roared as he lunged for her.
‘It’s not treachery,’ Neferata said, backhanding the vampire with enough force to shatter the front of his skull. ‘It’s a mercy killing.’ But even as she said it, doubts rose fierce, stinging her. The crown seemed to reach for her as Ushoran thrashed, calling to her, crooning.
I will ride you through the gates of the world, it said, each word a dagger of pain. You will be queen, Neferata, queen of Lahmia, queen of Mourkain and queen of the world, if you but take me up. Throne and crown, Neferata… TAKE ME UP!
And Neferata, all at once, knew her answer. She spun, tearing herself away from the seductive voice, away from its promises of an eternity of powerful servitude, away from the dark fate laid out for her. She would be queen, but on her own terms.
‘Kill her,’ W’soran shrieked. ‘Rescue your king!’ Neferata turned at the necromancer’s howl and saw shapes heaving in the weak light of the braziers, casting mutated shadows across the stones. W’soran’s ghoul-creatures had entered the throne room on stealthy claws and now they loped towards her, slavering.
An arm, impossibly long, whipped towards her and the talons attached to the blunt fingers gouged the wall as she ducked and spun, plunging her sword into the hollow gut of the ghoul-thing. It screamed and staggered. Rasha and Layla were on it in the instant, hacking and stabbing at it.
Another of the beasts lunged, the bone spurs jutting from the ruptured flesh of its forearms scraping along the floor as it sought to snatch Neferata up. Recalling the strength such creatures possessed, Neferata leapt. Her feet touched its wrist and she bolted up the length of its arm. It reared back as she slid across its shoulders, weasel-quick. Taking her sword in two hands, she drove it through the back of the creature’s skull, and the tip emerged between its jaws.
It grunted, coughed and slumped. She yanked her sword free and dropped to the floor before it. Anmar and Naaima had a third beast down on its hands and knees. It groaned piteously and fell, tongue protruding and the fire in its eyes guttering out.
Neferata glimpsed W’soran fleeing the chamber and prepared to follow him when she caught sight of Anmar and saw her handmaiden’s eyes widen. Anmar screamed, ‘No!’
Neferata turned and gasped as a tearing agony ripped through her. Blood burst through her lips. She looked down at Khaled’s sword as it wriggled deeper into her belly. She grabbed the blade and looked at her Kontoi as he stared blankly at her. ‘What–’ she coughed.
‘Why didn’t you take it?’ he rasped, staring at her accusingly. ‘Why couldn’t you just take it?’
Neferata staggered back, pulling herself off the sword. She pulled the blade as she went, yanking it from Khaled’s hands. Around her, her handmaidens were battling Ushoran’s guards, but she couldn’t focus. The thwarted screams of the crown pounded on the surface of her mind, making it hard to think. She stumbled and turned, bringing the sword up. Ushoran… She had to kill him. He couldn’t be allowed to wield the power she had felt.
Ushoran had freed himself, however. He glared at her, hand pressed tight to his belly. But it wasn’t Ushoran, not entirely. Something else looked out from behind his eyes and it hated her now, because she had spurned it. Just as Khaled hated her, just as she had hated Alcadizzar. She saw the whole story of it in Ushoran’s eyes and she chuckled.
‘You were right,’ she said, grinning. ‘Spite. It was all for spite.’ Then she screamed as Khaled brought Razek’s axe down on her shoulder, slamming her to her knees. She dropped the sword and fell onto her face as her flesh burned. As she screamed, her handmaidens raced to her aid.
Ushoran raised his hand and said, in a voice that was not his own, ‘STOP.’
And then Neferata knew nothing more, as the darkness that had once been so welcoming crashed down on her like the blows of a spurned lover.
FOURTEEN
The City of Sartosa
(–1020 Imperial Reckoning)
Neferata moved gracefully across the coloured tiles of the plaza, her robes trailing behind her. Her servants strode just behind her, shading her from the sunlight with a silk curtain held aloft on poles. ‘The druchii can be bargained with,’ she said, stirring the air with her hand-fan. ‘Who will miss a few hundred fishermen, Abruzzi?’
‘Their families, I would assume, Lady Neferata,’ Abruzzi of Sartosa said. He was a stiff-necked, heavy-faced man, and he looked uncomfortable in his coarse robes of state. ‘I do not know how things are done in Cathay, but here, we do not like to surrender our own folk to beasts from across the sea.’
‘Nor do we,’ Neferata said, touching his arm. ‘But needs must, Abruzzi. Sartosa has no strength at present. The druchii control the seas where the Arabyans do not. We must change that. More, we must have the time to change that,’ she said. ‘What are a few innocents in comparison to an empire that controls the seas?’
‘You say it so prettily, my lady,’ Abruzzi grunted, eyeing her. ‘Are all women so cold-blooded in Cathay?’
‘Needs must, my lord,’ Neferata sa
id again. She sighed and tapped her lips with her fan. ‘Then, there are… things that could be done.’
‘Such as?’ Abruzzi said, stopping. Neferata paused before replying. The palazzo was a monument to the alliance of form and function. The walled garden was open to the sky and water burbled in the aqueducts that ran along the top of the walls. There were thick, fleshy plants and brightly coloured flowers everywhere she looked, and caged song-birds sang sweetly.
She wondered whether Abruzzi could smell the effluvium of the dungeons beneath the garden, or whether the gruff former-soldier knew what strange nourishment her garden received. A few months after her arrival on a night of chaos and fire, Neferata had used what wealth she had managed to bring from Araby to set herself up as a noblewoman from Cathay in the heart of Sartosa’s wealthiest district. Now her daughters and sisters danced with merchant-princes and senators at moonlit galas and some had spread beyond, entering the lands to the west and the north.
Some few yet remained in Araby, lurking within harems and as the young brides of old merchants and noblemen. The news they sent her was invaluable in building her fortunes anew, and she could now predict the activities of the pirates of the gulf with a startling accuracy. She had increased the wealth of Abruzzi as well, among others.
‘There are… secrets, known to me, my lord,’ she said, feigning hesitance. ‘We could provide the raiders with their tribute without sacrificing a single Sartosan.’
Abruzzi hesitated. He looked at her, but did not ask the question she knew was foremost on his mind. For that she respected him. Only a fool asked the obvious question. ‘And if you do this… what?’ he said.
‘I would expect an appropriate compensation, commensurate with my standing,’ she said prettily.
Abruzzi was silent for a moment, looking at an orange and yellow blossom that nodded in the breeze. He touched the flower and sniffed it. ‘You have much aided the senate, my lady, in removing certain obstructions to the furtherance of our influence over the more – ah – short-sighted of our nobility.’
‘Best to leave such thankless tasks to an outsider, I have always thought,’ she said, fanning herself.
‘Hmm.’ Abruzzi looked at her. ‘Not a single Sartosan, you say? You can spare our people from the bellies of the black arks?’
‘Yes,’ Neferata said.
‘And your appropriate reward?’
‘A seat on the senate,’ she said. She raised a hand before he could protest. ‘Not for me. For a… protégé of mine. His wife has done me many services, and I would see her – and him – rewarded.’
Abruzzi grunted. ‘Easily done,’ he said.
‘Then we have an accord,’ Neferata said, smiling…
The Silver Pinnacle
(–326 Imperial Reckoning)
The snow fell with a silent fury across the mountain. Ice gripped Neferata’s hair, changing the once-lustrous mane into something resembling a nest of black snakes. Across her shoulders, the dark-furred cat stirred, its triangular, tufted ears twitching. Yellow eyes opened and a quiet chirp escaped its mouth. She stroked it with her free hand. She wore a heavy bearskin and the black, ornate armour of Ushoran’s honour-guard, and the cat nestled between the pauldrons. Neferata moved through the waist-high drifts slowly but steadily, the haft of Razek’s axe clenched tightly in her grip. His blood still stained the handle and hers stained the blade, but if there was some meaning in that, she had had little time or desire to contemplate it.
Instead, her eyes found the great stone dragon head that seemed to lunge down towards her through the storm of falling snow, from the heights of the peak. It was a large thing, and bore more than a passing resemblance to the craniums of the giant lizards she had seen in the Southlands. The artistry that had gone into the crafting of it boggled her mind; her people had been known far and wide for their craftsmanship, but even they had lacked the sheer attention to detail that the dragon head displayed. It seemed to have no purpose, jutting as it did from the tightly packed rocks. Her keen eyesight picked out distant outlines that were likely other, similar protrusions, encircling the apex of the peak in a crown of dragons. With difficulty, she pulled her eyes down to examine that which she had come for.
The great doors of Karaz Bryn rose over her, looming bulwarks of stone and ancient metal fashioned by the artisans of a dying race and controlled by mechanisms which mankind would still struggle to understand a thousand years hence. The doors were set into a massive archway that had been decorated with an intricate latticework of carvings that might have depicted anything from legends to episodes of historical significance. The doors themselves were decorated as well, with a profusion of glowering, stylised faces done in the sharp, blocky style preferred by dwarf artisans.
There was a faint glow to those faces and it was one she knew would be invisible to human eyes. Even she could only glimpse it dimly. There was some magic worked into the very substance of those doors, and it bothered her to look at them for too long.
Even with the snow, her preternatural eyesight picked out the tiny holes where dwarf eyes watched her approach. She could almost hear their thoughts. And she certainly heard the whine of crossbows being readied. She stopped. Her muscles tensed and readied to propel her in one direction or another. Her hold on the axe tightened. The dwarfs had quietly moved to a war-footing in the year since Ushoran had taken Nagash’s crown for his own. Trade had not quite dried up, but it was more guarded. Fewer merchants came bearing King Borri’s seal. Fewer dwarf-made goods found their way to Mourkain. Even as she had warned Ushoran, the trust of dwarfs was a fragile thing and easily cracked. And she was here now to shatter what remained utterly.
‘I request entrance to Karaz Bryn,’ she called out, her voice echoing. Minutes passed. Snow settled on her shoulders and head. The cat chirped querulously, and she murmured soft nothings to it.
‘Who are you to ask such?’ It was a rumble of sound, echoing from the peaks that rose around her and sending small avalanches of snow tumbling from on high. Speaking tubes and amplifying flutes gave it such an effect, she knew. Nonetheless, it was impressive.
The voice spoke in Khazalid. Neferata replied in kind. ‘One who has come to return something which was lost,’ she shouted, holding the axe up to where the unseen speaker could see the runic insignia stamped on the swell of the blade.
Silence fell. She waited. Minutes passed into hours. Hours passed into days. The cat leapt down from her shoulders and trotted into the darkness, returning some hours later, as if checking on her. She could not fault it for its anxiety. Neferata stood for a time, and then sank to her knees, kneeling in the snow, Razek’s axe in her lap. The cold was nothing to her, nor was the snow. It was nothing but an irritation. It was simply another indignity heaped upon the pile.
Ushoran had beaten her.
He had beaten her at her own game. Even as she had undermined him, he had worked a deeper game, breaking apart the bonds of loyalty that she thought unbreakable. She blinked a snowflake from her eye. No, he had not broken it. He had twisted it instead, turning devotion and desire into something altogether more vicious.
Pride was her curse. It always had been. She had too much of it, too much to see the obvious, at times. And she had paid for it again and again. That too she hadn’t seen. Not for what it was.
Ushoran had made her bow.
That thought rattled around in her head as she waited. She grimly forced it down, and then it would stubbornly shoot to the surface, taunting her like a splinter beneath her thumbnail.
He had forced her to her knees. He had forced her to swear allegiance to Strigos, to Mourkain, and to him. He had forced them all, though some had gone more willingly than others. Some of it was the crown’s influence. That was what Morath had tried to warn her of, what W’soran had been terrified of. Nagash’s night-black will made manifest. It was impossible to resist.
That was the only reason she
still lived. It stuck in her craw, that thought, but even she wasn’t so blind as to pretend it was any other way. She had bowed and Ushoran had let her live. She was more useful alive than dead. Abhorash was still occupied in the south. Vorag and his rebels had fled towards the Sour Sea, and her former champion doggedly pursued them. W’soran too was gone, fleeing in the months after Ushoran’s ascension. Neferata suspected that the old monster was heading south as well, seeking Vorag’s protection. That was what she would have done in his place.
That was what she should have done.
Instead, she was here, kneeling in the snow. Her features rippled with a snarl. The cat stiffened and nuzzled her throat, purring softly. She stroked it and fought to control the beast within. There were too many eyes on her and too much depending on her. Her web was stretched thin and fragile and one false move, one moment’s surrender would render it so much ragged gossamer on the wind.
Ushoran’s power had increased, but not his wisdom. He had unleashed her to do his will, but his will only reached so far. The farther she had gone from Mourkain, the less it had pressed upon her. Now it was barely a feather’s weight. Now, she stood before a fortress, with an army, and Ushoran was in Mourkain, confident that he had her held tight in his claws. She closed her eyes.
She would not fail.
And she would not bow again.
On the third day, she heard the squeal of ancient machinery propelled to life and a loose curtain of snow fell as the great doors of the Silver Pinnacle began to swing open. Raising the axe, she strode forwards, the cat once more about her shoulders, the soft rumble of its purr damping the impatience she felt. The momentum of the doors had cleared a great swathe of snow from the path, leaving the ground bare and damp.
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