The Rise of Nagash

by Mike Lee

  The court emptied quickly. A few noble families tried to flee the city entirely, making for the dubious safety of the east. Nagash ordered a squadron of light horsemen sent after them, offering a hundred gold coins for the head of every man, woman and child they caught. It was a gamble, of sorts, for there was no way to be certain that the horsemen would follow orders once they had left Khemri behind, and Nagash could not send an immortal to command them. For as much as the king and his chosen vassals had become ageless and powerful beyond mortal ken, they nevertheless paid a steep price for their gifts. The light of Nehekhara’s sun burned their skin like a firebrand and sapped their terrible strength, forcing them to seek refuge in the deepest cellars or crypts during the day. The problem had confounded the king for decades, and the answer continued to elude him. It was as though Ptra himself opposed Nagash’s will, scourging him and his immortals with fire.

  “The priests,” Nagash muttered darkly. “They are the ones to blame for this.”

  He knew it to be true. The priests were immune from conscription or civil service, and they spent their days skulking in their temples and looking for ways to undermine him. They asked after Sukhet continually, and Nagash suspected that they had spies in the palace searching for where he was kept.

  Arkhan shifted uncomfortably.

  “No doubt you are right, master, but what can we do? Attacking them is tantamount to attacking Mahrak, and if we did that, then the whole country would rise up against us.”

  Nagash nodded absently, but his gaze drifted to Neferem. The queen sat straight-backed in her chair, showing no reaction to what was being said. He wondered if perhaps she was in league with the priests as well.

  The gift of the elixir to Neferem had been a necessary one. He was determined to possess her beauty, if he had to take a thousand years to wear her down. Nagash had seen how the elixir had affected the will of his vassals, who were helpless to resist its seductive pull, and he hoped that she would succumb as well. Though it made her more agreeable in general, the queen’s will was entirely unaffected.

  She had, however, stopped pestering him with questions about her son. That at least was a blessing.

  The problem, the king suspected, was that duplicitous priest Nebunefer. Nagash was certain that he was a spy sent by Mahrak, and he could come and go freely from the palace now that the king and his immortals had to sleep through the day. Something was going to have to be done about that man, the king decided, something quick and fatal, and it was going to have to happen soon. Mahrak could protest all it liked.

  Then, shadows passed across the open entryway to the court. The immortals were immediately on their guard, their hands straying to the swords at their belts. Nagash frowned curiously. When was the last time a citizen had appeared at one of the Grand Assemblies? Twenty years? More?

  “Come forward,” the king called out. His voice rang sharply through the stillness. “What do you have to say?”

  There was a few moments’ hesitation, before a solitary figure appeared in the entryway. He approached the dais with slow, faltering steps, silhouetted by the moonlit entryway behind him. Nagash could tell at once that it was an old man, bent and nearly broken by the weight of years. When he was three-quarters of the way down the long, echoing aisle, the king recognised who it was, and felt a surge of anger.

  “Sumesh? Why aren’t you at the pyramid? What’s happened?”

  A stir went through the immortals as the pyramid’s last surviving architect shuffled painfully into the king’s presence. Sumesh was more than two hundred and thirty years old, positively ancient by Nehekharan standards. Though Nagash had ensured that he was a very wealthy man, Sumesh was haggard and his body twisted with age. His gnarled hands trembled and his shoulders were bent.

  Sumesh did not answer at first. The architect strode up to the foot of the dais and carefully knelt upon the stone before turning his face up to the king.

  “Great one,” he said in a quavering voice, “I have the honour to inform you that the last stone was fitted into place an hour past. The Black Pyramid is complete.”

  For a moment, Nagash could not believe his ears. A glimmer of triumph shone in his dark eyes.

  “You have done very well, master architect,” he said. “I am indebted to you, and will ensure that you are well rewarded.”

  No sooner had the words escaped his lips than Arkhan stepped behind Sumesh and cut his throat from ear to ear. The immortals growled hungrily as the old man’s blood poured out onto the marble steps, and his corpse collapsed face-first onto the stones. Nagash studied the spreading pool of crimson at his feet and smiled.

  “It appears that a solution has presented itself,” he said.

  The king dispatched his orders at once. The slaves were ordered back to their camps and given an extra ration of food and wine. Arkhan, Raamket and the rest of the immortals were sent out into the city streets to put an end to the rioting by any means necessary. Then Nagash left the queen in the care of Ghazid, and had Khefru lead him through the fire-lit streets to the necropolis, where the new pyramid waited.

  It could be seen for miles along the road to the necropolis, towering high above the petty crypts and seeming to swallow the light of the moon. The Black Pyramid was darker than the night, its edges knife-sharp against the indigo sky. Arcs of pale lightning would occasionally crawl across its polished surface, sending pulses of invisible power washing over Nagash’s skin.

  The pyramid was a collector and an attractor of dark magic, and for two hundred years it had glutted itself on the spirits of tens of thousands of slaves. That energy coursed through its glossy stones, stored for a single purpose: a ritual unlike anything Nagash had ever performed.

  The palanquin crossed a vast plaza made of close-set marble flagstones and stopped before a featureless, unadorned opening at the base of the pyramid. It was no more than a square opening in the side of the great structure, just wide enough for two people to enter side-by-side. Nagash and Khefru passed through the opening and were swallowed by the darkness beyond.

  At a gesture from the king, the corridor beyond was suffused with a pale green grave-light that seeped from the very stones. The floor, walls and ceiling of the passageway were intricately carved with thousands of hieroglyphics, placed with exacting care by expert stonemasons. Nagash ran his fingers along the carvings as he climbed the sloping corridor, tasting the enormous power roiling within the structure.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “The alignment is complete. I can feel the energies building.”

  Khefru strode along six paces behind the king. His face was a mask of dread.

  “Sumesh outdid himself,” he said quietly. “He finished months ahead of schedule.”

  “So he did,” Nagash said, and chuckled at the realisation. The power coursing through him was far sweeter and more potent than any wine, and he drank deeply of it.

  He led Khefru upwards through the nacreous light, through a twisting maze of corridors and stark, empty chambers that pulsed with necromantic energies. Both master and servant navigated the labyrinth with the ease born of familiarity. Nagash had moved his arcane researches, and later, his abode, into the pyramid five years before, as the work parties laboured to complete the upper quarter of the structure. The labourers knew full well the extent of the deadly traps sown throughout the pyramid, and knew better than to trespass beyond the unfinished areas of the construction site.

  Finally, the king reached the heart of the vast pyramid: the ritual chamber. It was a large, octagonal room whose walls curved upwards to form a faceted dome above a complex ritual circle some fifteen paces across, carved directly into the marble floor and inlaid with crushed onyx and silver. Thousands of complex hieroglyphs had been carved into the gleaming walls, each one painstakingly designed to focus the death energies stored within the pyramid and channel them into the ritual circle. Nagash stood in the doorway for a moment, studying the interplay of energies that flowed across the graven walls and the circle-inscribed flo
or. Finally, he nodded in grim satisfaction.

  “It is perfect,” he said with a jackal’s smile. Nagash walked reverently across the room and took his place in the centre of the ritual circle. “Go to the sanctum and gather my books,” he ordered his servant. “There is much work to be done, and not much time before the dawn.”

  Khefru still lingered at the chamber’s entryway, his expression troubled.

  “What ritual, master?” he asked in a dull voice.

  “The one that will usher in a new age,” the king said, fully intoxicated by the power at his command. “The false gods must perish to make way for mankind’s true master.”

  With his back to Khefru, Nagash could not see the look of horror etched into the servant’s ravaged features.

  “You… you cannot think to slay the gods, master. It’s not possible.”

  Even as he said it, Khefru cringed, expecting a furious tirade from his master, but it appeared that Nagash was in a magnanimous mood.

  “Kill them? No. At least, not at first,” he said calmly. “First we must starve them of the power they have stolen from our people. When the priests of Nehekhara are dead, the temples will empty and the gods will no longer receive the worship that sustains them.”

  Khefru said, aghast, “That would break the covenant! Without that, the land will die!”

  Nagash turned to his servant.

  “After all this time, you still don’t understand, do you?” he said, as though speaking to a child. “Life and death will have no meaning once I am master of Nehekhara. There will be no fear of hunger or disease. Think of that! My empire will be eternal, and one day it will spread across the entire world!”

  Khefru could only stare in shock at the king’s pronouncement. After a moment, the triumphant glow waned from Nagash’s face.

  “Now go,” he said coldly. “It is well past the hour of the dead, and there are many preparations to be made.”

  The king laboured for several hours in the ritual chamber, laying the groundwork for his incantation. Khefru stood at the margins, taking precise notes as ordered and fetching arcane powders and paints from the sanctum many levels below. His face, backlit by the flickering energies that surrounded his master, was thoughtful and deeply troubled.

  Finally, when dawn broke above the distant mountains, Nagash called a halt.

  “It is almost complete,” he said. “By tomorrow at midnight, the incantation will be ready.”

  As the sun rose into the sky overhead, Nagash left the ritual chamber and followed a twisting passageway down one level to his crypt. Many of his immortals had taken up residence in the lower levels of the pyramid, at the king’s command, and were probably already secured in their stone sarcophagi.

  The crypt was a pyramid in miniature, with four slanting walls that came to a point over the king’s resting place. Powerful incantations were carved into each of the walls and the symbols filled with powdered gem-stone to enhance their longevity and potency. They glowed with an inner light as Nagash entered the chamber.

  At the centre of the room stood a low stone dais, and upon it rested a marble sarcophagus fit for a king.

  Khefru rushed forwards as Nagash strode to the dais, stepping up to the sarcophagus and gripping the stone lid. With supernatural strength he lifted the covering clear with a smooth, practiced motion and set it aside.

  Inside the stone coffin were perfumed cushions and sprigs of aromatic herbs, laid aside for the comfort of the king. Nagash climbed inside without hesitation and lay down. The marble enclosure channelled the energies of the pyramid and helped restore his mind and body while he drifted in a kind of cataleptic trance.

  As soon as he was settled, Khefru lifted the lid once more and prepared to set it into place. At the last moment, he hesitated. Nagash glanced impatiently at his servant.

  “What is it?” he snapped. “I can see the questioning look in your eyes. Out with it.”

  “I…” he began. “I beg you to reconsider this, master. Your pyramid is finished, but Khemri as a whole is weak. If you strike out at the priests, there will be no turning back.” The king’s face hardened into a mask of rage.

  “With the power at my command, I can take a thousand men and defeat every city in Nehekhara. They would not tire, would not fear, would not falter, for they would not die. You’re a fool, Khefru. Once I thought you an ambitious man, but the truth is that you have always been a coward. You don’t have the strength to stand up to the fates and choose your own destiny.”

  Khefru stared down at the king for a moment longer, and his expression fell.

  “Perhaps you’re right, master,” he said, as he slid the stone lid back into place. “Sleep well.”

  Nagash awoke to a strange, scratching sound above him. For a moment, he did not understand what he was hearing. His mind was still immersed in heady dreams of vengeance and conquest. Had he imagined the sound? Was it borne from dreamlike vistas of burning cities and plains of bleached bone?

  Then a thin trickle of stone landed upon his chest and he knew that this was no dream, but something altogether worse. Someone was drilling a hole in his sarcophagus.

  There was a scrape of metal as a tool was removed from the breach. His mind raced as he tried to understand what was happening, and then something thick and cool fell in a steady trickle onto his chest.

  Lamp oil, he realised with a growing sense of horror. Someone meant to burn him alive inside his coffin.

  With a wordless snarl, he shoved hard against the stone lid, but the covering was held fast. More heated shouts occurred above him, and the pouring oil abruptly ceased. The next thing to come through the bore-hole would be a red-hot coal.

  Seething with anger, Nagash put his hands against the lid of the sarcophagus and roared a furious incantation. The power of the pyramid flowed into him like a torrent and the stone lid exploded with a flash of heat and a thunderous detonation.

  The blast, in such a confined space, stunned and blinded the king. For a fleeting instant there was a flare of searing agony, and then a rush of air and the hissing of flames. The blast had ignited the oil soaking into his robes! Nagash screamed in anger and pain, breathing in a gust of flame that raked red-hot talons down his throat and into his lungs.

  Deaf and blind, Nagash could do nothing but call upon the pyramid’s power once more. A cold gust of wind erupted from the sarcophagus, snuffing the flames and tearing the oil-soaked robes from his torso. The king croaked another incantation and he burst from the smoking coffin like a bat, his arms spread wide as he leapt straight up into the air.

  Men were screaming in the small chamber, a confusing babble of orders, sacred oaths and bitter curses. Nagash fetched up hard against the ceiling and tried to force his eyes to function. Power boiled into his eye sockets, causing still more pain but clearing the spots of colour from his vision.

  The smouldering corpses of young men lay scattered around the king’s chamber, their bodies torn by shrapnel from the exploding stone lid. Four men, who had been standing close to the entrance and had escaped the worst of the blast, were fanning out into the room and raising their hands as though to abjure the king. Nagash felt their power at once, and then recognised the robes they wore. Priests!

  One of the men, a young priest of Ptra, raised his hands and uttered a sharp invocation. There was a flare of golden light, and a spear of flame jetted from the man’s open hands.

  With a curse, Nagash dodged to the right, croaking out a banishment spell even as he tumbled through the air. The holy flame struck the ceiling and seared his face and hands before it collapsed under the weight of his counter-spell. Without hesitation, Nagash flung out his hand and sent a flurry of ebon darts from his fingertips. They pierced the young priest like arrows, catching him in the right arm, chest and neck. He collapsed, writhing and choking on his own blood.

  A booming voice roared out words of power, and Nagash felt the air tremble around him. Stone shards on the floor quivered, and then streaked through the air
towards him. Once again, the king used his power of flight to dive across the room and escape the lethal hail. Pellets dug painfully into his legs, but the worst of the blast passed him by.

  The surviving priests were all focusing on him. Abruptly, the wind supporting him rebelled, as though gripped by another man’s will. Nagash was caught unawares and sent plunging to the ground, just as another bolt of flame tore through the spot where he had been. He landed painfully on his side, listening to the angry shouts of the priests as they tried to coordinate their attacks.

  Lying on the stone floor, Nagash was partially hidden behind his smouldering sarcophagus. He glimpsed the legs of one of his attackers and snapped out a fierce incantation. At once, the floor beneath the attacker turned into a pit of darkness, and the priest had time for one terrified scream before he disappeared from sight.

  The king heard the startled shouts of the two surviving attackers on the opposite side of the sarcophagus. Their voices dropped to a whisper as they discussed what to do next. Nagash cast around quickly, looking for some means to turn the tables on the two priests. His gaze fell upon a trio of bodies to his left, and he was suddenly reminded of his last conversation with Khefru, only a few hours before. On impulse, he stretched out his hand towards the bodies and began to improvise.

  The power of the pyramid flowed through his fingertips towards the corpses. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, one of the dead men stirred. Slowly, clumsily, the corpse rolled onto its stomach and tried to clamber to its feet.

  There were more nervous whispers on the other side of the coffin, and then silence. Nagash gathered himself, watching the shambling corpse intently. As it swayed unsteadily to its feet, the priests saw it and attacked. A gust of wind seized the corpse and pulled it up into the air above the sarcophagus, where a spear of flame pierced its chest and set it alight.

  The two priests cried out in triumph just as Nagash rose quietly on the right side of the coffin and raked the attackers with a storm of necromantic bolts.