The Rise of Nagash

by Mike Lee

  At least victory would be swift and certain. His scouts assured him that there were only a few thousand skeletons working in the mines, and there wasn’t a single one of them that stood a chance against a pack of stalwart clanrats. Lord Eekrit’s force was almost fifty thousand strong, not counting the hordes of expendable slaves he could use to soften up any serious resistance. They would overrun the skeletons, clear out the lower tunnels, then push into the lower levels and see where all that precious stone was being taken. Nothing would stand in their way.

  The gifts of the Horned God belonged to the skaven, and to them alone.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Lahmia—The City of the Dawn, strange and decadent

  Lamashizzar: Priest King of Lahmia

  Neferata: Queen of Lahmia

  Khalida: a young noblewoman and ward of the royal household

  Ubaid: Lamashizzar’s grand vizier

  Tephret: most favoured handmaiden of the queen

  Aaliyah: handmaiden of the queen

  Abhorash: the king’s champion

  Ankhat: a wealthy and powerful noble

  Ushoran: a wealthy and powerful noble

  Zurhas: a dissolute young noble and cousin to the king

  Adio: a dissolute minor noble

  Khenti: a dissolute minor noble

  W’soran: a scholar, formerly of Mahrak

  Prince Xian Ha Feng: emissary of the Eastern Empire

  Rasetra—Former Khemri colony, now an independent city

  Shepret: King of Rasetra

  Lybaras—City of Scholars

  Khepra: Priest King of Lybaras

  Anhur: Prince of Lybaras

  Quatar—The White Palace; Guardian of the Valley of Kings

  Naeem: Priest King of Quatar

  Numas—Breadbasket of the Kingdom

  Amunet: Queen of Numas

  Zandri—The City of the Waves

  Teremun: Priest King of Zandri

  THE NEHEKHARAN PANTHEON

  The people of the Blessed Land worship a number of gods and goddesses, both major and minor, as part of an ancient pact known as the Great Covenant. According to legend, the Nehekharans first encountered the gods at the site of what is now Mahrak, the City of Hope; the timeless spirits were moved by the suffering of the tribes, and gave them succour amid the wasteland of the desert. In return for the Nehekharans’ eternal worship and devotion, the gods pledged to make them a great people, and would bless their lands until the end of time.

  Each of the great cities of Nehekhara worships one of the great deities as its patron, though devotion to Ptra, the Great Father, is pre-eminent. The high priest of a Nehekharan temple is referred to as the Hierophant. In every city but Khemri, the high priest of Ptra is referred to as the Grand Hierophant.

  In addition to the priesthood, each Nehekharan temple trains an order of holy warriors known as the Ushabti. Each Ushabti devotes his life to the service of his patron deity, and is granted superhuman abilities in return. These gifts make the Ushabti among the mightiest warriors in all the Blessed Land. Since the time of Settra, the first and only Nehekharan emperor, the Ushabti of each city have served as bodyguards to the priest king and his household.

  The fourteen most prominent gods and goddesses of Nehekhara are:

  Ptra: Also called the Great Father, Ptra is the first among the gods and the creator of mankind. Though worshipped all across Nehekhara, the rides of Khemri and Rasetra claim him as their patron.

  Neru: Minor goddess of the moon and wife of Ptra. She protects all Nehekharans from the evils of the night.

  Sakhmet: Minor goddess of the green moon, also called the Green Witch. Ptra’s scheming and vindictive concubine, who is jealous of the Great Father’s love of mankind.

  Asaph: Goddess of beauty, magic and vengeance. Asaph is the patron goddess of Lahmia.

  Djaf: The jackal-headed god of death. Djaf is the patron god of Quatar.

  Khsar: The fierce and malign god of the desert. A cruel and hungry god worshipped by the tribes of the great desert.

  Phakth: The hawk-faced god of the sky and the bringer of swift justice.

  Qu’aph: The god of serpents and subtlety. Qu’aph is the patron god of Zandri.

  Ualatp: The vulture-headed god of scavengers.

  Sokth: The treacherous god of assassins and thieves.

  Basth: The goddess of grace and love.

  Geheb: The god of the earth and the giver of strength. Geheb is the patron god of Ka’Sabar.

  Tahoth: The god of knowledge and the keeper of sacred lore. Tahoth is the patron god of Lybaras.

  Usirian: The faceless god of the underworld. Usirian judges the souls of the dead and determines if they are fit to enter into the afterlife.

  THE NEHEKHARAN CALENDAR

  The Nehekharan calendar operates on a twelve-year cycle, with each year in the cycle devoted to one of the major gods in the Nehekharan pantheon. For example, the 62nd year of Qu’aph (-1750 Imperial Reckoning) represents the year of Qu’aph in the 62nd calendar cycle.

  NAGASH IMMORTAL

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Nagashizzar

  Nagash, the Undying King, first and greatest of the necromancers

  Bragadh Maghur’kan, Nagash’s chief lieutenant, former chieftain of the north

  Diarid, chief lieutenant to Bragadh

  Thestus, another lieutenant, Bragadh’s chief rival

  Akatha, last of the northern witches

  Beneath the Great Mountain

  Eekrit Backbiter, Warlord of Clan Rikek

  Hiirc, a young and callow Lord of Clan Morbus, Eekrit’s lieutenant

  Eshreegar, Master of Treacheries

  Lord Qweeqwol, grey seer

  Vittrik One-Eye, Engine-master of Clan Skryre

  Velsquee, Grey Lord of Clan Abbis

  Shireep, skaven scout-assassin

  Kritchit, a skaven slaver

  Lahmia

  Neferata, immortal Queen of Lahmia, the first vampire

  Ankhat, formerly a wealthy and powerful noble, now a vampire

  Ushoran, the Lord of Masks, now a vampire

  W’soran, a scholar and necromancer, now a vampire

  Zurhas, a dissolute former noble, now a vampire

  Abhorash, former Captain of the Royal Guard, now a vampire

  Naaima, a former courtesan from the Silken Lands, now a vampire

  Ubaid, Neferata’s chief thrall, Alcadizzar’s personal servant

  Alcadizzar, Prince of Rasetra, hostage to the Lahmian court

  Upon the Golden Plain

  Faisr al-Hashim, Chieftain of the bani-al-Hashim

  Muktadir al-Hashim, Faisr’s son

  Bashir al-Rukhba, a wealthy and powerful chieftain

  Suleima, bride of Khsar, the Hungry God, and Daughter of the Sands

  Ophiria, Suleima’s successor

  Nawat ben Hazar, bandit leader

  Lybaras

  Ahmenefret, King of Lybaras

  Rasetra

  Asar, King of Rasetra

  Heru, Prince of Rasetra and heir to the throne

  Khenti, a powerful Rasetran lord and Alcadizzar’s uncle

  Quatar

  Nebunefre, King of Quatar, Lord of the Tombs

  Ka-Sabar

  Aten-sefu, King of Ka-Sabar

  Khemri

  Inofre, Grand Vizier and Regent of the city

  Numas

  Omorose, Queen of Numas

  Zandri

  Rakh-an-atum, King of Zandri

  PROLOGUE

  Mountain of Sorrows

  Nagashizzar, in the 96th year of Geheb the Mighty

  (-1325 Imperial Reckoning)

  The mountain had many names, stretching back to the dawn of mankind.

  The nomadic herders of the far northern steppes knew it as Ur-Haamash, the Hearth-stone; in the autumn they would drive their herds south and spend the winter sheltered at the foot of its broad, eastern slope. As the centuries passed and the tribes prospered, their relationship
to the mountain changed; it became Agha-Dhakum, the Place of Justice, where grievances were settled in trials of blood. Nearly a thousand years later, after a long summer of murder, raids and betrayals, the first high chieftain was proclaimed from the mountain slope, and ever after the tribes knew it as Agha-Rhul, the Place of Oaths.

  In time, the tribes grew tired of the constant cycle of migration from the northern steppes to the foot of the mountain and the shores of the Crystal Sea. One winter they built their camps just south-west of the Agha-Rhul and decided to stay. The camp grew, transforming over generations from a crude settlement into a sprawling, foetid, noisy city. The high chieftain’s territory grew to encompass the entire coast of the inland sea and even reached north onto the great plateau, within sight of the bleak steppes from whence the tribes had come.

  And then came the terrible night that the sky-stone fell from the heavens, and the mountain’s name changed once more.

  It came on a night when the awful bale-moon hung low and full in the sky; it arced earthwards on a hissing spear of greenish flame. When it struck the mountain the blow could be heard for miles; the force of the impact reverberated from its slopes and flattened villages on the far side of the Crystal Sea. The great city of the tribes was devastated. Buildings were shattered or consumed in eerie, green flames. Hundreds died, hundreds more suffered hideous diseases and malformations in the months that followed. The survivors looked northwards in terrified wonder at the glowing pillar of dust and ash that rose from the great wound carved in the mountainside.

  The destruction was so sudden, so terrible, it could only be the work of a wrathful god. The following day the high chieftain and his family climbed the slope and bowed before the crater, offering up sacrifices to the sky-stone so that their people might survive. Agha-Rhul became Khad-tur-Maghran: the Throne of the Heavens.

  The high chieftain and his people worshipped the sky-stone. They called themselves Yaghur—the Faithful—and over time their priests learned how to call upon the power of the sky-stone to perform terrible works of sorcery. The Yaghur became great once more and the high chieftain began to refer to himself as the chosen of the sky-god. His priests anointed him as a king and told the people that he spoke with the voice of the god itself. The priesthood of the sky-stone knew that, as the Yaghur kings prospered, their wealth and power would grow as well.

  And so it went, for many generations, until the Yaghur kings grew decadent and mad, and the people suffered daily under their rule. Finally, they could take no more; they forswore their oaths in favour of a new god and cast down the king and his corrupt priesthood. The temple on the mountain was sealed up and the Yaghur went north once more, following the ancient pathways their ancestors had trod thousands of years before in search of a better life. When they spoke of the mountain at all in the years that followed, they called it Agha-Nahmad: the Place of Sorrows.

  So it remained for centuries. The mountain became a desolate, haunted place, wreathed in poisonous vapours from the immense sky-stone buried within its heart. The Yaghur settled on a great plateau north of the mountain, devolving into a collection of tribes once more. For a time they prospered, but their new god proved to be just as hungry and cruel as the one they had left behind. The Yaghur were wracked by schism and civil war. In the end, those who sought to return to the old ways and worship the god of the mountain were cast out. They found their way back to the shores of the Crystal Sea and tried to eke out a living in the bleak wetlands, offering sacrifices to the mountain and burying their dead at its feet in hopes of winning back the sky-god’s favour.

  Their deliverance came, not from the great mountain, but out of the desolate lands to the west: a wretched, shambling corpse of a man, clad in dusty rags that had once been the raiment of a king. Feverish, tormented, he was drawn to the power of the sky-stone like a moth to the flame.

  He was Nagash the Usurper, lord of the living dead. When the energies of the sky-stone were bent to his will he raised a legion of corpses from the Yaghur burial grounds and slew their priests in a single night of slaughter. He demanded the fealty of the coastal tribes and they bowed before him, worshipping him as the god of the mountain made flesh.

  But Nagash was no god. He was something altogether more terrible.

  More than two hundred years after the coming of Nagash, the great mountain had been transformed. Night and day the necromancer’s minions had carved a vast network of chambers and passageways deep into the living rock, and mine shafts were sunk deeper still in search of deposits of glowing sky-stone. Seven high walls and hundreds of fearsome towers rose from the mountain slopes, enclosing foundries, storehouses, barracks and marshalling yards. Black chimneys belched columns of smoke and ash into the sky, mixing with the mountain’s own vapours to spread a pall of perpetual shadow over the mountain and the sullen waters of the Crystal Sea. Polluted run-off from the mine works and the fortress construction spread across the empty burial fields at the base of the mountain and spilled into the waters of the sea, contaminating everything it touched.

  This was Nagashizzar. In the tongue of the great cities of distant Nehekhara, it meant “the glory of Nagash”.

  The great hall of the Usurper lay deep within the fortress mountain, carved by skeletal hands from a natural cavern that had never known the light of the accursed sun. They had laboured under the mental guidance of their master, smoothing the walls, laying flagstones of black marble and carving tall, elaborate columns to support the hall’s arched ceiling. And yet, for all its artistry, the great, echoing chamber was cold and austere, devoid of statuary or braziers of fragrant incense.

  Thin veins of sky-stone glowed from the chamber walls, limning the towering columns and deepening the shadows in between. The only other light came from the far end of the hall, where a rough sphere of sky-stone the size of a melon sat upon a crude bronze tripod at the foot of a shallow dais. A sickly, green glow pulsed from the stone in slow waves, bathing Nagash’s throne in shifting tides of light and shadow.

  In the tenuous light the necromancer’s robed form seemed to be carved from the same dark, unyielding wood as the chair itself. He sat as still as death, his cowled head turned towards the pulsing stone as though meditating upon its glowing depths. The hem of the cowl was stitched with complex chains of arcane symbols and the thick layers of his outer robe were faced with bronze medallions that had been enchanted with potent sigils of protection. The skin of his bare hands was dark and leathery, like that of a long-buried corpse, and the flesh beneath the robes was twisted and misshapen. In place of living eyes, twin green fires flickered coldly from the depths of his cowl, hinting at the cruel, unyielding will that animated the necromancer’s grotesque frame.

  Once, Nagash had been a mighty prince, scion of a great dynasty in a rich and civilised land. By tradition he had been forced to become a priest, where otherwise he might have risen to become king, and that he could not tolerate. He scorned the gods of his people, calling them parasites and worse, and sought a new path to power. And so he learned the secrets of dark magic, as practised by the cruel druchii of the distant north, and combined it with his knowledge of life and death to create something entirely new and terrible. The secrets of necromancy granted him the secret of eternal life, and dominion over the spirits of the dead.

  In time, he seized his brother’s throne and enslaved his wife, who was nothing less than the blessings of the gods made flesh. He subjugated the entire land, forging a kingdom the likes of which had not been seen in centuries, and still it was not enough. He sought to become something still greater… something very like a god.

  Finally, the people of Nehekhara could bear the horrors of his rule no longer, and rose up in revolt. The war was more terrible than anything they had experienced before: entire cities were devastated and uncounted thousands were slain. The greatest wonders of the age were cast down and, in the end, even the sacred covenant between the people and the gods was sundered forever, but the power of the Usurper was broken.
r />   With the kingdom in ruins, Nagash fled into the wastelands to the north, where he wandered, wounded and raving, for a hundred years. And there he might have perished at last—bereft of power, and without the life-giving elixir to restore his vitality, the sun and the scavengers eventually would have succeeded where all the kings of Nehekhara could not—but for his encounter with a pack of twisted monstrosities that were neither man nor rat, but some horrible combination of the two. The creatures were foragers of a sort, searching the land for fragments of sky-stone that they took to be gifts from their strange, horned god. Nagash slew the creatures in a wild frenzy; he sensed the raw power of the stone fragments they possessed, and so great was his need that he ate them, choking them down his shrivelled throat. And in that terrible moment, the necromancer was reborn.

  His search for more of the burning stone, as Nagash called it, had brought him to the shores of the Crystal Sea and the slopes of the ancient mountain. And here, his schemes of vengeance against the world of the living had taken root.

  From Nagashizzar he would reach forth to choke the life from the world and rule the darkness that would follow. And the first to die would be Nehekhara, the Once-Blessed Land.

  There were tens of thousands of corpses labouring in the halls of the Undying King, each one driven to some degree by a fragment of Nagash’s will. The demands upon his awareness created periods of cold reverie, scattering his thoughts like sparks from a flame. Time ceased to have any real meaning; his world turned upon the progress of construction and excavation, of coal fed to the great forges and metal hammered into the shapes of axes, spears and swords. From the moment of its construction, Nagashizzar had been arming for war.