The Rise of Nagash

by Mike Lee

  Lost in thought, Ushoran didn’t notice the lean, travel-stained man at first. He’d slipped from the crowd milling in the square with the practiced ease of a cutpurse and unobtrusively ducked beneath the wine shop’s low awning. The man’s flinty, appraising stare swept over Ushoran, stirring him from his reverie.

  This was the one he’d been waiting for, Ushoran realised at once. The man had the look of a desert bandit, clad in dusty, tattered robes and ragged leather sandals held together with cheap twine. A battered khopesh and a pair of curved daggers hung from a wide leather belt about his waist, partly concealed by a thin, sand-coloured cloak that hung nearly to the man’s feet. His face was narrow and gaunt, the leathery skin tanned a deep brown by years of exposure to the harsh desert sun. With his narrow chin, hooded eyes and brooding brow, he reminded Ushoran somewhat of a jackal—which, considering his profession, wasn’t all that much of a surprise. The Lord of Masks met the tomb robber’s gaze and placed a bulging leather bag on the table next to the wine. The coins inside clinked softly as he set the bag down.

  Even then, with his reward in sight, the thief didn’t immediately react. His gaze swept past Ushoran and studied the rest of the shop for a full minute, searching for signs of a trap. When he found none, the man wove among the tables and took the chair opposite Ushoran. He studied the Lord of Masks silently for a moment. Ushoran returned the stare with a placid smile.

  The thief grunted to himself. “You’re not what I expected,” he said.

  Ushoran chuckled. The thief and his companions had been hired through a sprawling network of intermediaries stretching all the way to Khemri, one entirely separated from his conventional network of informants and spies. He’d been careful and patient, building the links over a period of decades, until he was certain that their actions could not be traced back to him. The consequences of discovery—for Ushoran, and for Lahmia in general—would have been too terrible to contemplate.

  “I hear that quite a lot,” the Lord of Masks said with a smile. “Wine?”

  The thief shrugged. Ushoran beckoned, and a girl quickly appeared at his shoulder with another cup of wine. About fourteen, the nobleman reckoned, admiring the girl as she bent over the table. Fine skin, firm of flesh and lean of limb. A bit old for his tastes; in the old days he might not have cared—the older ones lasted longer, after all—but now he could afford to be choosy. The girl met his gaze, smiled innocently, and hastily withdrew.

  “To your health,” Ushoran said, raising his cup in a toast. He feigned taking a sip. The thief raised his cup and likely did the same. “It’s been months. I was beginning to grow concerned.”

  The thief’s upper lip curled in a sneer. “There’s a damned good reason why nearly all of the great pyramids are still intact, and Khemri’s are the worst of the lot. Go barging inside and you’ll be dead before you’re ten steps past the door.” He shook his head. “None of the other fools you hired made it past the first antechamber.”

  Ushoran nodded. There had been four other gangs who’d accepted the job over the years. Khetep’s pyramid had simply swallowed them up, one after the next. “Truth be told, you were my first choice all along, but since you proved extraordinarily difficult to contact, I had to make do with lesser talents.”

  The thief grunted noncommittally, but Ushoran caught a glint of pride in the tomb robber’s eye.

  The Lord of Masks spread his hands. “So. What do you have for me?”

  Once again, the thief glanced warily at the other tables. When he was satisfied that no one was watching them, he reached within his cloak and produced an old, wooden box the size of a small wine jar, which he set on the table between them.

  Ushoran glanced sceptically at the box. “That’s all?”

  The thief barked a laugh. “If you’d wanted the whole thing, you should have said so,” he snarled. “You’re lucky we managed that much.”

  The Lord of Masks sighed. “I suppose it will do,” he said, though in truth W’soran would have to be the judge of that. “You’re certain it’s him?”

  The tomb robber shrugged. “As certain as I can be,” he replied. “It was the right tomb, sure enough, but… well, let’s just say it wasn’t your typical internment.”

  Ushoran cocked his head quizzically. “He wasn’t interred with the typical grave goods?”

  “Hardly.” To his surprise, the thief shifted uncomfortably. “He wasn’t even dead when they sealed him up.”

  “Ah. I see.” Ushoran had heard tales of Nagash’s brutal usurpation, but there had been no way to tell fact from rumour at the time. He picked up the heavy bag of coin and set it down beside the thief’s cup. “I’d say you and your people earned every bit of this.”

  The man picked up the bag and hefted it. “Only four of us made it out of that damned place,” he said grimly. “There were traps everywhere. Poor Jebil died on the way out, just three steps from the entrance. Toppled over dead with a dart in his neck. Never did find out where it came from.”

  Ushoran nodded sagely. “Sad, indeed,” he agreed. “And your three companions?”

  A slow, wolfish smile spread across the thief’s face. “Well. The Golden Plain’s a dangerous place,” he said slowly. “Bandits everywhere, you know.”

  “How tragic,” the Lord of Masks replied. “I suppose you’ll just have to keep their shares as well.”

  “I suppose so,” the thief said, slipping the bag beneath his cloak. He rose quickly from the table.

  Ushoran laid a hand on the wooden box. “You aren’t the least bit curious about this?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t care less,” the thief said, his attention already focussed on the square.

  “Well, I suppose that’s it, then.” Ushoran leaned forwards, extending his hand. “Safe travels, my friend. You have my thanks.”

  The thief turned back to Ushoran, looking down at the immortal’s outstretched hand as though it were an especially venomous snake. He started to sneer—but something in the immortal’s eye gave him pause. After a moment’s hesitation he reached out and gripped Ushoran’s hand.

  “I have your gold, and that’s enough,” the thief growled. “Goodbye, scholar. I don’t expect we’ll see each other again.”

  With that he turned and slipped into the square without a single backwards glance. The thief blended into the milling crowd and within moments was lost to sight.

  Ushoran watched him go with a smile. His hand was still faintly damp from the thief’s sweaty grip. He raised it, palm inwards, to his face and breathed deeply, drinking in the man’s scent.

  “I hear that quite a lot, too,” the immortal said. He chuckled softly to himself and licked his palm lightly with the tip of his long, grey tongue.

  The Temple of Blood was a fortress within a fortress. Situated within the walls of the Lahmian royal palace, the huge, roughly pyramidal structure fully enclosed what had once been the Women’s Palace, where the daughters of the royal line were kept in virtual seclusion from the rest of the mortal world. The stepped sides of the temple were comprised of solid blocks of sandstone, each one twelve feet high and weighing many tons. The only entrance was sealed by a pair of immense bronze doors and was guarded day and night by a company of dour-looking warriors from the queen’s lifeguard. To all outside appearances, the monumental structure seemed more impregnable than the royal palace itself, but, like much else about the temple, such impressions were deceiving.

  The hour of the dead was fast approaching as Ushoran stole across the silent palace grounds towards the temple. There were few mortals about at such a late hour, allowing him to pass unobserved along the north wall of the mammoth structure until he reached the hidden entrance set cunningly into the stone. The door was very heavy, and set so snugly into its frame that its seams were nearly invisible to the naked eye. Pressing with both hands and exerting his unnatural strength, he swung the portal silently inwards, revealing a dark, narrow passage carved into the foundation stone.

  There were at least
a half-dozen secret ways into and out of the temple that Ushoran knew of; only Neferata herself could say if there were more. He followed the passageway through the temple’s foundation, emerging a short while later into the ground level passageways that wound secretly among the storerooms, dormitories and halls of meditation used by the initiates of the cult. The immortal moved down the dark corridors swiftly and surely, aided by supernatural senses and more than two centuries of practice. Finally, many minutes later, he passed through another hidden door and into the temple’s vast inner sanctum.

  In truth, the inner sanctum was actually a sprawling complex of chambers that had once comprised the most opulent rooms of the old Women’s Palace. It was here that Neferata ruled, issuing edicts from the Deathless Court through successive generations of Lahmian queens who were enslaved to her from birth. But that wasn’t the only secret concealed within the inner sanctum’s walls—and, in Ushoran’s opinion, far from the worst.

  There were many libraries in the former palace: small, quiet rooms piled with sumptuous rugs and surrounded by shelves atop shelves of histories, fables, romances and more. They were nothing like the one Ushoran now sought. It was located in a largely isolated part of the old palace, far from the corridors frequented by the temple priestesses and initiates. Its walls had been reinforced with slabs of dark, heavy granite, which in turn had been engraved with layer upon layer of arcane wards designed to keep out even the most determined intruder. The door, likewise, was stone, and far too heavy for mortal hands to open. It was also covered with potent runes of binding, strong enough to seal the library shut for all time, but for the last fifty years the sigils had been cold and inert. The Lord of Masks took a moment to compose himself, putting on the bland, neutral face that his fellow cabal members were accustomed to, then laid a hand upon the door and pushed it silently open.

  As always, the chamber was dimly lit and wreathed with acrid incense smoke, shrouding the walls and ceiling in darkness and rendering the dimensions of the room uncertain. A dense arrangement of worktables and reading stands filled the chamber, piled with precise stacks of parchment and priceless, leather-bound tomes of varying size. Some of the books were fairly new, having been written within the past half-century, while others were larger and far, far older.

  Ushoran eyed a stack of such volumes on a nearby table as he slipped inside the room. They had been bound in pale leather once, but the centuries had caused the covers to wrinkle and darken to a deep reddish-black. Their edges were ragged from age and rough treatment; in their time they had travelled with armies, and been fought over like ghastly treasures. Their thick pages were likewise roughened and rendered grey with age, but Ushoran had no doubt that if he were bold enough to turn back one of the covers, he would find the notes and diagrams within still perfectly legible, despite the passage of years. These tomes had once belonged to Nagash himself, plundered from his Black Pyramid outside the ruins of Khemri after the war. Some of the volumes were at least five hundred years old, Ushoran reckoned, and yet they lingered when other books would have long since turned to dust.

  W’soran stood at the far side of the chamber, his macabre form lit by wan candlelight as he paced about the perimeter of a complicated magical circle that had been laid down with silver dust on the bare stone floor. He was a hideous figure, bearing more resemblance to a poorly mummified corpse than a living, breathing man. What little flesh he’d possessed had melted away, leaving his grey, parchment-like skin stretched tight against ropy sinew and sharp-edged bone. The immortal moved with a strange, angular gait, almost like a spider, and his bald head swung from side to side in furtive arcs as he surveyed the handiwork of his thralls. The circle was, in truth, more like a nested set of complex bands of magical runes, each one laid down with exacting precision and carefully arranged in relation to one another. It was the culmination of a half-century of effort, shaped by the most astute arcane mind in Nehekhara. Ushoran hoped that it would be enough.

  W’soran’s head rose as the Lord of Masks stole into the chamber. His fleshless lips were plastered against his teeth, exaggerating his needle-like fangs and lending the immortal a permanent snarl. He drew a rasping breath. “Will you never learn to knock, my lord?”

  Ushoran smiled coldly. “I don’t see why I should,” he replied. “Neferata certainly won’t.”

  “Neferata,” W’soran sneered. “She thinks of nothing but her young prince these days. I doubt she even recalls opening the library at this point.”

  “Let us hope so. Because we both know what she would do if she realised what you’ve been up to these last fifty years.”

  W’soran hissed derisively, but Ushoran caught a flash of unease in the immortal’s deep-set eyes. Necromancy had been forbidden even when Lamashizzar was master of the cabal, but Neferata had even gone so far as to take the worst of Nagash’s tomes and lock them away in a separate vault elsewhere in the inner sanctum. W’soran had been trying to circumvent her restrictions ever since. He had persuaded her to open the library solely to learn the rituals of summoning and communicating with spirits, and so far as it went, he had spoken the truth. If she knew precisely who W’soran intended to call up from the lands of the restless dead, her wrath would be terrible to behold.

  Ushoran had known what he was up to from the beginning. W’soran had never been secretive about his ambitions. But instead of betraying the would-be necromancer, Ushoran had become an uneasy ally. As terrible as the risks were, he was certain that Neferata’s obsession with Alcadizzar would ultimately lead to disaster. They needed leverage to persuade her to abandon her ridiculous scheme—or, failing that, the power to supplant her and seize control of Lahmia themselves.

  W’soran’s gaze fell to the wooden box tucked under Ushoran’s arm. His pale eyes narrowed. “Is that it?”

  The Lord of Masks stepped forwards, setting the box on one of the tables. “You tell me.”

  W’soran made his way across the cluttered chamber, weaving among the tables and reading stands with his strange, spider-like gait. His ghastly face was lit with a dreadful sense of anticipation as he unfastened the catch and opened the lid of the box.

  Ushoran folded his arms. “I’d thought he would have brought more,” the Lord of Masks said with a scowl. “Will it be enough?”

  A faint, hitching rattle rose from W’soran’s throat. It took a moment before Ushoran realised the immortal was chuckling to himself.

  “Oh, yes,” W’soran hissed, reaching into the box with knobby, clawed hands. “Yes. This will do.”

  He lifted from the box a human skull, still covered in scraps of yellow flesh and matted black hair. The eyes were empty sockets, the nose, lips and ears gnawed down to little more than tattered nubs by the work of hungry tomb beetles. The jaw hung open, as though frozen in the midst of an agonised scream; the taut, leathery tendons of the jaw muscles stood out in sharp relief beneath the papery skin.

  Buried alive, Ushoran thought, recalling what the thief had told him. The thought sent a chill down his spine.

  “Is it him?” he asked.

  W’soran nodded. “Thutep, last true king of Khemri,” he said with certainty. “And brother to Nagash the Usurper.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “Because his death is etched here.” W’soran traced a clawed fingertip along Thutep’s skull, from forehead to chin. “The agonies he suffered in the tomb left their mark in flesh and bone before Thutep’s spirit passed into the dead lands.” He turned away from the table, still holding the king’s skull, and beckoned with his free hand. At once a gaunt, robed figure shuffled out of the shadows near the circle, bearing a short stand made of bronze. As Ushoran watched, W’soran plucked the stand out of the thrall’s hand and stepped carefully into the summoning circle. The would-be necromancer set the stand at its centre and placed the skull atop it.

  Ushoran’s eyes widened. “You’re going to attempt the summoning now?”

  “Why not?” W’soran beckoned again, and anoth
er pair of thralls placed a heavy wooden lectern a few feet from the edge of the summoning circle. “The hour is right, and the position of the moons propitious.”

  “Well.” The Lord of Masks eyed the ritual symbols dubiously. “Are you certain the wards will hold?”

  “As certain as I can be,” W’soran replied. He opened the heavy tome resting upon the stand and began searching through its pages.

  Ushoran fought the urge to start edging towards the door. This was what they’d been working towards for decades, after all. If the summoning worked, they would finally be in a position to challenge Neferata. “But, what if… I mean, suppose there is an accident—”

  The would-be necromancer glanced back at Ushoran. “You wish to leave?”

  Ushoran paused. The smug note in W’soran’s voice was enough to steel his resolve. “Certainly not,” he answered coldly. He folded his arms and drew a deep breath. “Go on. Call to him. Let’s see what he’s got to say.”

  W’soran’s leathery cheeks wrinkled, creaking like old saddle leather as he attempted a smile. “As you wish,” he said. Chuckling to himself, he turned back to the open tome and spread his skeletal hands wide. He drew a long, whistling breath and then began the invocation.

  The arcane words rolled easily from W’soran’s withered tongue and his voice grew stronger as he spoke, until the invocation rang from the chamber walls. Ushoran tried to follow the awful litany at first, but the words scarcely left an impression upon his mind. The passage of time seemed to slow, then failed to register altogether.

  The temperature began to fall within the room. The chill came on quickly, like the cold of a desert night. Sheets of parchment fluttered atop the table next to Ushoran, stirred by a sudden breeze, and suddenly he realised that W’soran’s voice no longer echoed through the shadow-haunted room.

  At some point, the candles had gone out. What little illumination there was came from a pillar of pale, shifting blue light that hung in the air above Thutep’s screaming skull. As Ushoran focussed on the light, he became aware of a faint sibilance emanating from the circle, like the stirring of a nest of snakes. The more he listened, however, he realised that it wasn’t hissing, but whispering. A multitude of voices, young and old; some of them were insistent, others fearful. Some were angry. Very angry.