PROLOGUE

New Beginnings

 

Lahmia, The City of the Dawn, in the 63rd year of Khsar the Faceless

(-1739 Imperial Reckoning)

 

Small, soft hands gripped her and gently shook her. Voices whispered urgently in her ears, calling her back across the gulf of dreams, until the Daughter of the Moon stirred at last from her slumber and opened her heavy-lidded eyes. It was very late. Neru hung low on the horizon, sending shafts of lambent moonlight through the tall windows of the bedchamber. The golden lamps had been turned down, and only the faintest hint of incense still lingered near the room’s tiled ceiling.

The sea breeze stirred the gauzy curtains surrounding her bed, carrying ghostly sounds of revelry from the Red Silk Quarter, down by the city docks.

Neferata, Daughter of the Moon and the Queen of Lahmia, rolled onto her back and blinked slowly in the gloom. Tephret, her most favoured handmaiden, was crouched by the head of the queen’s sumptuous bed, one slim hand still resting protectively on Neferata’s naked shoulder. The queen irritably brushed the touch away, her own fingers slow and clumsy from the effects of too much black lotus and sweet, Eastern wine.

“What is it?” Neferata murmured, her voice thick with sleep.

“The king,” Tephret whispered. The handmaiden’s face was hidden in shadow, but the outline of her slender body was tense. “The king is here, great one.”

Neferata stared at Tephret for a moment, not quite able to make sense of what she’d heard. The queen sat up in bed, the silken sheets flowing over the curves of her body and pooling in her lap. She shook her head gently, struggling to think through the clinging fog of the lotus. “What time is it?”

“The hour of the dead,” Tephret replied, her voice wavering slightly. Like all of the queen’s handmaidens, she was also a priestess of Neru, and sensitive to the omens of the night. “The grand vizier awaits you in the Hall of Reverent Contemplation.”

The mention of the grand vizier cut through the mists surrounding Neferata’s brain at last. She swung her slender legs over the edge of the bed, next to Tephret, and let out a slow, thoughtful breath. “Bring me the hixa,” she said, “and my saffron robes.”

Tephret bowed, touching her forehead to the top of Neferata’s feet, then rose and began hissing orders to the rest of the queen’s handmaidens. Half a dozen young women stirred from their sleeping cushions at the far end of the room as Neferata rose carefully to her feet and walked to the open windows facing the sea. The surface of the water was calm as glass, and the great trading ships from the Silk Lands rode easy at their anchors in the crowded harbour. Specks of red and yellow lantern-light bobbed like fireflies down Lahmia’s close-set streets as the palanquins of noblemen and wealthy traders made their way home from an evening of debauchery.

The lights of the Red Silk District, as well as the more upper-class District of the Golden Lotus, still burned brightly, while the rest of the great city had sunk reluctantly into slumber. From where Neferata stood, she could just see the sandstone expanse of Asaph’s Quay, at the edge of the Temple District and just north of the city harbour. The ceremonial site was bare.

The queen frowned pensively, though she’d expected no less.

“There was no word from the army?” she asked. “None at all?”

“None,” Tephret confirmed. The handmaiden glided swiftly across the room and knelt beside the queen, offering up a small box made from fine golden filigree. “The king’s servants are in an uproar.”

Neferata nodded absently and plucked the box from Tephret’s hands. She carefully opened the lid.

Inside, the hixa stirred torpidly. Neferata gripped the large, wingless wasp between thumb and forefinger and pressed its abdomen against the hollow beneath her left ear. It took a few moments of agitation before she felt the hixa’s sting and the prickling tide of pain that washed across her face and scalp. Blood pounded in a rising crescendo at her temples and behind her eyes, finally receding several seconds later into a dull, throbbing ache that set her teeth on edge but left her alert and clear-headed at last. There was no better cure for the lingering effects of lotus and wine, as the nobles of the city knew all too well.

She placed the hixa back in the box with a sigh and handed it back to Tephret, then raised her arms so that her maids could wrap her body in ceremonial robes of welcome. Tephret set the golden box aside and hurried to a cabinet of gilded ebony that contained the queen’s royal mask. Made of beaten gold and inlaid with rubies, polished onyx and mother-of-pearl, it had been crafted by the artisan-priests of Asaph as a perfect likeness of the queen’s regal face. It was the face she was required to show to the rest of the world. In time, it would serve as her death mask as well.

It would have taken hours for Neferata to fully prepare herself for her husband’s return; she impatiently waved aside the proffered golden bracelets and necklaces, and glared at the maids who tried to paint her eyes with crushed beetle shell and kohl. The instant her girdle was pulled tight and the royal mask set carefully upon her face, she snatched up Asaph’s snake-headed sceptre from Tephret’s hands and hurried from the bedchamber. A servant dashed ahead of Neferata, her bare feet slapping on the polished marble tiles as she held up a bobbing lantern to light their way.

Neferata moved as swiftly as her confining robes would allow, but it still took ten long minutes to traverse the labyrinth of shadowy corridors, luxurious rooms and ornamental gardens that separated her apartments from the rest of the palace. It was a world apart, a palace within a palace that served as both sanctuary and prison for the women of the Lahmian royal bloodline. Not even the king himself could enter, save on certain holy days dedicated to the goddess Asaph and her divine revels.

There were only three small audience chambers where the queen and her daughters were allowed to interact with the outside world. The largest and grandest, the Hall of the Sun in its Divine Glory, was set aside to celebrate weddings and childbirths, and was open at various times to both the royal household and the common folk of the city. The smallest, a dark vault of green marble known as the Hall of Regretful Sorrows, was where long, solemn processions of Lahmian citizens would come to pay their last respects to a dead queen before her journey to the House of Everlasting Life.

In between was the Hall of Reverent Contemplation, a medium-sized chamber built from warm, golden sandstone and inlaid with screens of lustrous, polished wood. More temple than audience chamber, it was here that the king and the noble families of the city—as well as a handful of common folk, chosen by lot—would gather to pay homage to the queen and receive her blessings for the coming year.

By the time Neferata arrived at the hall the great golden lamps had been lit, and incense was curling in dark, blue-grey ribbons from the braziers that flanked the royal dais. A red-faced servant, glistening with sweat, was single-handedly trying to unfold the delicate wooden screen that was meant to shield the royal presence from unworthy eyes. The queen stopped the servant in her tracks with a curt wave of her hand as she stepped from behind the elegantly carved wooden throne and approached the robed figure resting upon his knees at the foot of the dais.

Like the queen, Grand Vizier Ubaid had taken the time to don his ceremonial saffron robes to welcome the king’s return. His shaven pate had been freshly oiled and matched the mellow tone of the room’s polished wood. Neferata could barely make out the coiling tattoos of Asaph’s sacred serpents that wound sinuously about the sides of Ubaid’s head and neck. She couldn’t help but note that the thin coating of fragrant oil effectively concealed any signs of nervous sweat on Ubaid’s high forehead.

The grand vizier bowed low the stone floor as Neferata descended the broad steps of the royal dais. “A thousand, thousand pardons, great one—” he began.

“What is the meaning of this, Ubaid?” Neferata hissed. Her husky voice sounded harsh and menacing within the golden confines of her mask. “What is he doing here?”

Ubaid straightened, spreading his hands in a gesture of supplication. “I swear, I do not know,” he replied. “He arrived little more than an hour ago with a small retinue and a handful of slaves.”

Like most Lahmian nobles, the grand vizier had a slender neck, high cheekbones and a prominent jaw-line. Years of rich living hadn’t softened him, like many of his peers, and despite being of middle age his body was still slender and strong. Many at court suspected him of being a sorcerer, but Neferata knew that he was simply very good at keeping up appearances. He had even taken to wearing golden caps on the ends of his little fingers, each one ending in a long, artificial nail in the fashion of bureaucrats from the Silk Lands across the sea. The affectation did nothing to improve the queen’s mood.

“Where is the army?” she demanded. “The last report said they were still three days’ march away.”

Ubaid shrugged helplessly. “There is no way of knowing, great one. Likely they are still somewhere on the trade road, west of the Golden Plain. Certainly they are nowhere near the city itself. The king appears to have hurried on ahead of the host.”

As well as the majority of his noble allies, Neferata observed, growing more irritated by the moment. Absolutely nothing about Lamashizzar’s expedition to Mahrak had gone according to plan, and now he was risking the ire of people whose goodwill he would desperately need in the years to come. “And where is the king now?” she asked coldly.

The vizier’s carefully composed expression cracked somewhat around the edges. “He’s… in the cellars,” he answered in a subdued voice. “He went there straightaway with his men—”

“The cellars?” Neferata snapped. “Why? To inventory the jars of grain and honey?”

“I…” Ubaid stammered. “I’m sure I can’t say—”

“Asaph’s teeth!” the queen swore. “I was being sarcastic, Ubaid. I know perfectly well what he’s doing down there,” she said. “Take me to him.”

Ubaid’s eyes widened. “I’m not certain that would be proper, great one—”

Neferata straightened her shoulders and glared down at the grand vizier, her golden face implacable and cold. “Grand vizier, the king has flouted ancient tradition by returning to the city in this… unorthodox… fashion. By custom and by law, he hasn’t officially returned, which means that I continue to rule this city in Lamashizzar’s name. Do you understand?”

The grand vizier bowed his head at once. Over the last year and a half he’d been exceedingly careful to conceal his true feelings about the king’s secret dispensation of power. By rights, Ubaid should have been the one to rule Lahmia in Lamashizzar’s absence; the queens of Lahmia were not meant to sully themselves with mundane affairs of state. Now, eighteen months later, Ubaid understood what had persuaded the king to make such a scandalous choice.

“Please follow me, great one,” he replied smoothly, and rose to his feet.

 

The great palace was honeycombed with a network of hidden passageways, built for the use of the household’s many servants, and Ubaid led the queen through a veritable labyrinth of narrow, dimly-lit corridors and dusty storage rooms as they made their way to the cellars. Neferata could barely see where she was going within the confines of her mask. The servant’s lantern bobbed in the darkness ahead of her like some teasing river spirit, luring her onward to her doom.

Finally she found herself descending a series of long, narrow ramps, and the air turned cold and damp. Gooseflesh raced along the skin of her neck and arms, but she suppressed the urge to shiver. Then a few minutes later she felt the weight of the narrow passageways fall away to her left and right, and she realised that they’d entered a large, low-ceilinged space. Neferata glimpsed stacks of rounded, clay jars sealed with wax, and heard the distant sound of voices somewhere up ahead.

Ubaid led her through one interconnected cellar after another, past jars of spices, salt and honey, bolts of cloth and bricks of beeswax. The sense of space began to shrink again, and the queen reckoned that they were heading into a much older part of the cellars. The voices grew more distinct, until she could clearly make out her husband’s hushed, urgent voice.

Suddenly, the grand vizier halted and stepped aside. Neferata rushed ahead and emerged into a small, dripping chamber stacked with wide-bellied wine jars bearing the royal seal. A handful of torches guttered from the walls, casting strange, leaping shadows across the floor.

Lamashizzar, Priest King of Lahmia, City of the Dawn, stood over an opened wine jar and gulped greedily from a golden drinking bowl. His rich, silken robes were grimed with the dust of the road, and his tightly curled black hair was matted and limp with sweat. Half a dozen noblemen stood around the king, all of them travel-stained and reeling from fatigue. Several drank along with the king, while the rest stole apprehensive glances at the slaves working feverishly at the far side of the room. None of them noticed the sudden appearance of the queen.

Neferata studied the men for a long moment and felt her irritation sharpen into icy rage. She took another step into the room and drew a deep breath. “This is an ill-omened thing,” she declared in a cold, clear voice.

Startled cries rang off the stone walls as the noblemen whirled, their dark faces pale and eyes wide with shock. To Neferata’s profound surprise, many of them reached for their swords; they caught themselves at the last possible moment, hands hovering over the hilts of their blades. Yet they did not relax. None of them did. Instead, their eyes darted between Neferata and the king, as though uncertain how to proceed.

Now it was the queen’s turn to stare in amazement. Some of the men she knew to be Lamashizzar’s closest supporters, while others, though Lahmian, were strangers to her. All of them shared the same tense, hard-edged expression, the same fevered glint in their eyes.

They look like cornered animals, Neferata thought, thankful that the all-enclosing mask hid her startled reaction. Is this what war does to civilized men?

The king himself was no less stunned to see his queen. His handsome face was sallow and drawn; his eyes were sunken and his cheeks hollowed out from poor eating and little sleep, but his gaze was sharper and more penetrating than ever. Lamashizzar lowered the drinking bowl. Red wine trickled thickly down the sides of his sharp chin.

“What in the name of the dawn are you doing here, sister?” he rasped.

“I?” Neferata snapped, her anger managing to overcome her growing unease. “More to the point, what are you doing here?” She advanced on Lamashizzar, her hands clenched into fists. “There are sacred rites to be observed. The king may not return to the city without first performing the Propitiations of the East. You must thank Asaph for the blessing she gave when you first set out to war!” Neferata’s voice grew in volume along with her ire, until her voice rang like a bell within the confines of the mask. “But the army isn’t expected for days yet. Asaph’s Quay is bare of offerings from the citizenry. The proper sacrifices have not been made.”

Without warning, the queen lashed out, striking the drinking bowl from the king’s hand. “What happened?” she hissed. “Did you drink all the wine you plundered from here to Khemri? Couldn’t you have waited two more days to slake your thirst? This is an offence against the gods, brother.”

For a moment, no one moved. Neferata could feel the tension crackling like caged lightning in the air. The king glanced past Neferata. “That will be all, Ubaid,” he said to the grand vizier.

Ubaid bowed and hastily withdrew, his robes rustling as he fled from the cellar as quickly as his dignity would allow.

Lamashizzar stared at the queen, his eyes depth-less and strange. He raised his hand and laid the tips of his fingers against the mask’s curved, golden cheek.

“The gods do not care, sister,” he said softly. “They no longer hear our prayers. Nagash the Usurper saw to that on the plain outside Mahrak. Did you not read any of my letters?”

“Of course I did,” Neferata replied, suppressing a chill at the mention of Nagash’s name. She and Lamashizzar had been born during the height of the Usurper’s reign, when the former Grand Hierophant of Khemri’s mortuary cult had held all of Nehekhara in his iron grip. It was only when the kings of the east had risen in revolt against Khemri that they had learned true horror of the Usurper’s power, and though they eventually triumphed, the cost of victory was almost too terrible to contemplate.

Angrily, she pushed aside the king’s hand and stalked past him. At the far end of the chamber, the slaves stopped what they were doing and abased themselves at her approach.

“It doesn’t matter if the covenant has been broken or not,” Neferata continued. “In matters of state—and religion—perception is every bit as important as reality. Lahmia was spared from the worst excesses of Nagash’s rule, but the war has disrupted trade with the west for more than ten years now. Fortunes have been lost—to say nothing of the enormous debt we now owe the Emperor of the Silk Lands. If the people had any inkling of the deal we struck to obtain their dragon-powder there would be rioting in the streets.”

“That was Lamasheptra’s doing, not mine,” Lamashizzar pointed out, bending to retrieve his drinking bowl.

“It doesn’t matter!” Neferata insisted. “Father is dead. You are the one on the throne, now. The people look to you for reassurance. They need to believe that the Usurper’s reign of terror is over and that a new era has begun. They need to know that Lahmia will prosper once more.”

The queen’s tirade had carried her nearly all the way across the chamber. The slaves were still as statues, their previous labours forgotten as they pressed their foreheads to the earthen floor. They had been in the process of shifting scores of dusty wine jars and dismantling wooden shelves to create a cleared space for—

Neferata came to a sudden halt. Her eyes widened behind the golden mask as she saw the linen-wrapped bundles resting on the earthen floor. “What—” she stammered, suddenly at a loss for words. “Brother, what is all this?”

Behind her, Lamashizzar dipped his bowl in the open jar. He stared into its ruby depths, and an ironic smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“The dawn of a new era,” he said, raising the bowl to his lips.

They were not jugs of plundered wine or wrapped brinks of lotus leaf. Neferata saw that at once. Each bundle had roughly square sides, some reaching as high as her knees. The linen wrappings were stained brown by countless leagues of travel, and were bound with braided twine. She went to the closest one. Slaves scattered from her path like frightened birds as she knelt beside the parcel and tugged at its bindings with long-nailed fingers. As she did, a stir went through the assembled nobles. Neferata heard angry growls and choked protests, until finally one of the men could contain himself no longer.

“Stop her!” the nobleman snapped. Neferata didn’t recognise the voice. “What is she even doing outside the Women’s Palace? She should be in her proper place, not—”

“She is the queen,” Lamashizzar said, in a voice as cold and hard as Eastern iron. “She goes where she wills.”

Neferata listened to the tense exchange with only half an ear. Her dark fingers teased the twine knot apart, and a corner of the linen wrapping fell away to reveal—

“Books?” the queen said. Her eyebrows knitted together in a frown. They were thick tomes of expensive Lybaran paper, bound in a strange kind of pale leather that sent prickles of unease racing down her spine.

“The books of Nagash,” Lamashizzar explained. “Smuggled from his pyramid outside Khemri. All his secrets: his plans, his studies, his… his experiments. It’s all there.”

Neferata felt her heart grow cold. She rose and turned to face the king. “I don’t understand, brother,” she hissed. “You were supposed to forge an alliance with the Usurper. With the power under your command you could have broken the siege at Mahrak and handed the east to Nagash! He would have agreed to any terms—”

“No,” Lamashizzar said flatly. He took another long draught from the bowl, his face haunted with memory. “You weren’t there, sister. You didn’t see the… the creature that Nagash had become.”

“We knew he was a sorcerer—” Neferata began.

“He was a monster,” Lamashizzar said darkly. “None of the rumours we’d heard came anywhere close to the truth. Nagash was no longer human, and what he’d done to Neferem—” The king’s words dried up in his throat. Finally, he shook his head. “Believe me, Nagash would have never honoured the terms of an alliance, much less shared the secrets of eternal life.” He gestured at the stacks of linen-wrapped volumes with his drinking bowl, sloshing thick wine onto the floor. “So. Better this than nothing at all.”

Neferata spread her hands. “Indeed? Are you a sorcerer now?” she shot back. “I’m certainly not.”

“You were trained by the priestesses of Neru,” Lamashizzar said. “You know how to perform incantations, how to create elixirs—”

The queen shook her head. “That’s not the same thing,” she protested.

“It’s enough,” Lamashizzar said. He lurched forward, seizing Neferata by the wrist, and pulled her after him as he wound his way drunkenly through the collection of plundered tomes. Beyond the linen-wrapped books lay another shape, stretched out against the dank stone wall. “We also have this,” the king said proudly.

It was a corpse. It had been inexpertly wrapped, and the linen bindings were devoid of the ritual symbols of the mortuary cult, but the shape of the body was unmistakeable.

The king gave his sister a conspiratorial smile. “Go on,” he said, squeezing her wrist with surprising strength. “Take a look.” His eyes glittered like glass, sharp and fever-bright.

Lamashizzar’s hand squeezed harder. Neferata clenched her jaw and sank slowly to her knees. She heard the slaves shift nervously behind her as she stretched out her free hand and began to gingerly pull away the wrappings that covered the corpse’s head.

The face took shape by degrees: first a man’s beaklike nose, then a prominent brow and deeply sunken eyes. Next came sharp-edged cheekbones and a long, square jaw that gaped in a grimace of agony, revealing a mouthful of jagged, blackened teeth.

The corpse’s skin was pale as a fish’s belly and covered in a patchwork of fine scars. The veins at his temples and along his neck were black with old, clotted blood. The very sight of it filled the queen with revulsion. Neferata recoiled from the ghastly visage. “What in the name of all the gods—”

Lamashizzar pulled her close. “He is the key,” the king hissed, filling her nostrils with the sour reek of wine. “This is Arkhan the Black. Do you know the name?”

“Of course,” the queen said with a grimace. “He was the Usurper’s grand vizier.”

“And one of the first immortals,” the king added. “But he fell from favour during the war and betrayed Nagash on the eve of the great battle at Mahrak. He offered me the power over life and death if I would side with the rebel kings against his former master.” Lamashizzar gave the queen an almost boyish wink. “After the battle, I hid him in my baggage train during the long march to Khemri. No one suspected a thing. The others thought he’d fled westward with the rest of the Usurper’s immortals, so once we’d reached the Living City and the Usurper’s troops made their last stand in the city’s necropolis, I paid some soldiers to spread the rumour that Arkhan had been seen fighting to the bitter end at the foot of his master’s pyramid. No doubt the story’s taken on epic proportions since then.”

“And Arkhan actually held to his bargain?” she asked.

The king smiled. “As much as I expected he would. He led me to the books, deep in the heart of the Black Pyramid.”

“Then you killed him.”

Lamashizzar’s smile never faltered. “Is that what you think?”

Neferata’s expression hardened beneath the mask. With a savage jerk, she tore her wrist from the king’s grasp. “You’re drunk,” she hissed. “And I am not in the mood for games, brother.”

That was when the smile faded from the king’s face. Slowly, deliberately, he lowered his hand and set the bowl of wine upon the floor. His eyes bored into hers. “Then perhaps I should make it plain for you,” he said quietly. He spoke again, in that voice as hard and cold as iron. “Bring them.”

There was a commotion behind Neferata, and the slaves began to wail in terror. She froze at the sound, and watched as Lamashizzar leaned forward and tore away the linen bindings wrapping Arkhan’s torso. The immortal’s chest was even more scarred than his face, but what was worse was the blackened, thumb-sized hole in Arkhan’s breast, just above his heart.

“He was swift, but the bullet in my dragon stave was swifter still,” Lamashizzar said. His nobles crowded around him, dragging the terrified slaves over to Arkhan’s body. “It’s still there, buried in his heart. Here. Let me show you.”

The king crouched over the body and pressed his fingers deep into the wound. There was a thick, liquid sound, and Lamashizzar grunted in satisfaction. When he drew his hand away his fingers were covered in a black fluid as thick as tar. A fat, round metal ball was gripped between his fingertips. He held up the bullet and studied it for a moment.

“You see?” he said. “Such a wound would have killed one of father’s mighty Ushabti, much less a mere mortal like you or I. But to Arkhan it was nothing more than an interruption.”

The king bent close to the immortal’s face. His voice dropped to a whisper. “He’s still in there,” Lamashizzar said, but whether he said it to Neferata or to the immortal himself, the queen could not be certain. “Locked in a cell of flesh and bone. So long as his heart cannot beat, Nagash’s elixir cannot circulate through his limbs, nor fan the flame of his cursed soul.”

The look on the king’s face sent a shudder through Neferata. This was not the libertine who had led his father’s army to Mahrak. The things he had seen on the field of battle—and possibly within the pages of the books he’d stolen from the Usurper’s crypt—had left an impression in the young king’s mind. Blessed Neru, she thought. What if he’s gone mad?

Lamashizzar chuckled to himself, entirely oblivious to his sister’s mounting unease. “I have had many discussions with the former vizier on the journey home, and I believe we have reached an understanding. He will serve us, unlocking his former master’s secrets and teaching us how to create the elixir for ourselves. If he serves well, then we will share the draught of life with him. If not…” he paused, and his expression grew hard. “Then we will send him back into his cell, and we shall see how long it takes for an immortal’s body to collapse into dust.”

The king tossed the bullet aside, then nodded curtly to his noblemen. Without a word they drew knives from their belts and began slitting the slaves’ throats.

Hot blood sprayed through the air. The slaves thrashed and choked, pouring out their lives onto Arkhan’s still form. As they died, Lamashizzar picked up the pale leather tome and began turning its pages.

“The world has changed, sister,” Lamashizzar said. “The old gods have left us, and a new power has risen to take its place—a power that now we alone possess. We shall usher in a new age for Lahmia and the rest of Nehekhara. One that we shall preside over until the end of time.”

At their feet, the blood-soaked body of Arkhan the Black drew in a terrible, shuddering breath. His bruised eyelids fluttered, and Neferata found herself staring into a pair of dark, soulless eyes.

 

The Wasteland, in the 63rd year of Khsar the Faceless

(-1739 Imperial Reckoning)

 

Night came swiftly to the wasteland.

As the last rays of Ptra’s hateful, searing light disappeared behind the jagged fangs of the Brittle Peaks, stealing away the heat of the day and filling the narrow gullies with inky shadow, the hunters of the dead spaces began to stir from their lairs. Deadly vipers slithered from beneath rocky overhangs, tasting the air with their darting tongues. Scorpions and huge, hairy spiders crawled from their daytime burrows and began their hunt, seeking sources of heat against the contrasting coolness of the rocky ground.

In one shadow-haunted gully, half a dozen lean, spotted shapes came nosing along the broken ground, tracking the scent of death. The jackals had been following the trail for many nights; it had rambled and looped back upon itself many times, like the path of a beast lost in madness and on the verge of collapse. Now the hunters sensed that the prey had been run to ground at last. Sniffing at the chill air, they edged towards a low overhang carved deep into the gully wall.

Within the darkness of the overhang, a bundle of rags stirred fitfully at the jackals’ approach. The scavengers paused, ears forward, watching as a single, bony hand groped its way painfully from beneath the overhang. The skin was blackened and leathery, the nails yellowed and splintered by months of scrabbling over rocks and burrowing in the dry earth. The skin of the knuckles was split, peeled back like shreds of dry parchment to reveal grey flesh inlaid with grit.

The jackals watched as the long fingers arched, digging into the earth for purchase. There was a rustle of fabric and loose dirt. A trio of sleek, black lizards bolted from beneath the overhang, startled as their refuge began to shift beneath them.

Slowly, shakily, the figure dragged itself out into the night air. First an emaciated arm, then a bony shoulder, then a thin torso clad in grimy robes that had once been the colour of blood.

A bald head, blackened and blistered by the sun god’s merciless touch, emerged from the shadows: a man’s face, once handsome, now ravaged by the elements and the horrors of war. Dark eyes, set deep in bony sockets, regarded the jackals with feverish intensity. The man’s face was gaunt to the point of being skeletal, his cheeks and nose frayed by brushes with rock and the mandibles of burrowing insects. A ragged hole, wide as a man’s thumb, had been punched into his forehead, close to the left temple. At one time the ghastly wound had grown infected, causing the flesh to swell around the rim of splintered bone and the veins to distend with corruption.

The jackals lowered their heads and began to whine softly as the figure continued to drag itself from its refuge. This was not what they expected. Indeed, their would-be prey exuded a sense of wrongness that their animal brains couldn’t quite comprehend.

Death hung over the man like a shroud. In addition to the awful wound in his head, his left arm was coiled uselessly against his chest. Another hole had been blown through the upper limb, shattering the bone and constricting the muscles into immobile knots. The scent of old bile rose from a puncture in the man’s belly, and another wound in his chest carried the reek of old infection.

Dead, the jackals’ minds said. The man ought to be dead long since. And yet still the leathery muscles worked, creaking like old ropes. The eyes still burned with an almost feral rage. Thin, cracked lips drew back from blackened teeth in a snarl of challenge.

Nagash the Usurper, Undying King of fallen Khemri and for a time the master of Nehekhara, pressed his palm against the stones and grit of the gully floor and with a bubbling growl pushed himself to his feet. Once upright, he swayed slightly as he turned his head to the gleaming face of the moon and let out a long, ululating howl of hate.

The jackals flinched at the awful sound. It proved too much for the leader of the pack, who let out a nervous bark and sped from the gully with the pack hard on its heels.

Nagash continued to howl long after they were gone, emptying the last dregs of air from his lungs in a long, wordless curse against the living world. The exertion left him shivering and weak, his skin burning with a fever that had no basis in the sicknesses of living flesh.

Like the jackals, he turned his face skyward, casting about for spoor. The scent of power hung above the emptiness of the wasteland, emanating from the slopes of a dark, brooding mountain that always seemed to lie just beyond the far horizon. It had a flavour unlike anything he’d ever tasted before; not dark magic, which he knew well, nor the fitful heat of a human soul. It was something furious and unfettered, primal and alien at the same time. It shone like a beacon in the emptiness, promising him vengeance against those who had betrayed him and cast him out into the wastes. He thirsted for it, and yet, like a mirage, it seemed to recede into the distance with every step he took. Lately, even the scent of it had grown vague. It was getting harder and harder to sense it past the pain of his ravaged body and the fever buzzing in his skull.

You’re growing weaker, a voice said. Your power is almost spent. Darkness waits, Usurper. Darkness eternal, and the cold winds of the Abyss.

Nagash whirled, hissing with rage. She stood just a few feet away, her translucent body silhouetted by moonlight. Neferem, last Queen of Khemri, looked much as she did the day she died: a withered, ravaged husk of a woman, transformed into a living mummy by Nagash’s sorceries. Only her eyes, large and brilliant as cut emeralds, hinted at the beauty that had been taken from her. Her ghostly figure was clad in ragged samite, and the golden headdress of a queen rested precariously upon her brow.

The Usurper reached out with his hand and clenched it at her like a claw—but his febrile mind failed him. The words of power that once bound the ghosts of Nehekhara to his will had been somehow stolen from him. Rage and frustration boiled inside his brain.

“Witch!” he hissed. His voice sounded somewhere between a growl and a groan. “I am Nagash the Immortal! Death cannot claim me! I have passed beyond its grasp!”

So have we all, Neferem replied soundlessly. Her eyes glittered with hate. You saw to that at Mahrak. The paths to the Lands of the Dead are no more, swept away when you used me to undo the sacred covenant with the gods. Now none of us shall ever know peace. Her shrivelled face contorted into the ghastly semblance of a smile.

Especially you.

Snarling with fury, Nagash whirled about, tasting the air for traces of the otherworldly power. It seemed to lie just beyond the line of peaks to the east. He lurched forward, scrabbling one-handed at the loose scree lining the gully slope. The Usurper scaled the steep incline with an awkward, spider-like gait. When he was almost to the top, he turned back to Neferem’s vengeful spirit.

“You haunt me at your peril, witch!” he croaked. “When I find the dark mountain I will have the power to consume souls and command the spirits of the dead as I once did! I’ll feast upon you, then, and silence your moaning forever!”

But the queen did not hear him. She was gone, as though she’d never been there.

Nagash searched for Neferem amid the shadows of the gully for a long time, muttering bitterly to himself. Once, he called her name, but her spirit would not be summoned so easily. Finally he turned and scrabbled the rest of the way up the slope.

At the summit, Nagash saw only a broken sea of foothills, stretching off to the horizon. The dark mountain had receded from him once again. He turned his face skyward, casting about for the trail once more, and then continued his limping course eastward.

 

Hours later, when the pale moon was close to its zenith, another pack of scavengers came sniffing into the gully where the Usurper had been. They circled about the rocky overhang, hissing and chittering to each other in their own strange tongue. As with any pack, it was the largest of the creatures that decided their course, cuffing and threatening the rest into submission. They too continued eastward, moist noses bent low over the rocks as they followed Nagash’s strange, unliving scent. They loped and lurched and scrabbled along, sometimes on four legs, sometimes on two.

 

Nagash had so far passed beyond the grasp of death, but not beyond the jaws of constant, grinding agony. Every step, every movement of arm or head, sent waves of vivid, aching pain reverberating through his wasted body. The awful wounds he’d suffered hardly troubled him at all—or at least, no more so than the agony that gripped the rest of his frame. It was a consequence of the elixir, he knew. The magical potion—wrought from blood and life energy stolen from innocent, anguished victims—allowed him to retain the vigour of youth for hundreds of years, and was the key to creating an empire unheard of since the age of Settra the Magnificent.

Normally, it would also heal nearly any injury, no matter how severe, but not since that fateful day at Mahrak, when the army of Lahmia had thrown in its lot with the rebel kings of the east and unleashed their strange weapons on him and his unliving host. He remembered the wall of fire and a crescendo of thunder from the ranks of Lahmia’s black-armoured warriors, and then watching the massed ranks of his corpse-soldiers disintegrating before him. The traitors had turned on him just as he’d won his greatest triumph. Mahrak had been cast down and the sacred covenant with it. The power of the priesthood and their parasite deities had been swept aside, so that only he, Nagash the Undying, remained.

As he made his way slowly down the rubble-strewn slope of another dark ridgeline, Nagash heard a wheezing breath in his ear. It had a rasping, ragged tone, like wind blowing across the end of a broken branch.

You are no god, a man’s voice sneered. Do you remember what I said to you in your tent at Mahrak? You are a fool, Nagash. An arrogant, deluded fool who thinks himself the equal of the gods. And look at you now: a madman, clad in rags, stumbling blindly through a dead and pitiless land.

Shouting in rage, Nagash whirled at the voice, but his footing slipped and he tumbled head over heels to the bottom of the treacherous slope. He fetched up painfully against a small boulder. His limbs were twisted awkwardly beneath him, and at first they refused to obey his will.

As he struggled to force his body into action, Nagash became aware of a ghostly figure glaring down at him from a little further upslope. Nebunefer was a frail, ancient little man, clad in the same threadbare robes he’d worn on the day he’d died. His wrinkled head lay at an unnatural angle, the stub of broken vertebrae jutting painfully against the taut skin of his bent neck. Like Neferem, the old priest’s eyes glittered with pure hate.

How the mighty have fallen, Nebunefer said. You dare to call the mighty Ptra a parasite? He created the earth, and everything that lives upon it. What little power you possess was stolen, ripped from the souls of the innocent. It’s finite, and the last sands of the hourglass have almost run out.

“Not yet, you old fool,” Nagash snarled back. “If you were still flesh, I would wring your neck a second time! Watch!

His limbs felt leaden, his joints frozen like corroded bronze, but Nagash would not be denied. Slowly, clumsily, he forced his good arm to work, and then his legs. Minutes later, he stood shakily on his feet again, but Nebunefer was gone.

“Jackals,” he spat into the darkness. “We’ll see who laughs last.”

 

It took more than an hour for Nagash to climb the opposite slope, snarling curses and burning with fever all the while. His limbs were growing stiffer by the moment. He drove himself onward with nothing more than the belief that the dark mountain was just ahead, right over the top of the next ridge.

It had to be.

He would not succumb. He would not fail. He was the rightful King of Khemri, heir to Settra’s throne, and by extension the master of all Nehekhara.

A faint wind hissed along the ridgeline, just a few yards out of reach. A voice drifted down to him, riding on the sandy breeze.

Usurpation is not a right, brother.

Thutep stood at the crest of the ridge, his face turned towards the moon hanging low overhead. His older brother seemed damnably at peace, staring up at Neru’s beaming face. Only his fingertips, worn down to stumps of splintered bone, hinted at his last, awful moments, buried alive inside his own tomb.

“The strong have the right to rule,” Nagash hissed. “You were weak. You did not deserve the throne. Khemri’s fortunes suffered under your reign.”

Thutep shrugged, never taking his eyes from the moon and the open sky. That was the will of the gods, he said. You were a priest, and a prince of the realm. You wanted for nothing—

“Nothing except an empire,” the Usurper said bitterly. “Had I been firstborn, the people of Khemri would have served me gladly, and the city would have prospered. If you would blame anyone, blame those damned gods you so adore. It was they who made me no more than a second son. It was their will who ultimately sealed you inside that tomb.”

His brother had no answer to that. By the time Nagash reached the summit, Thutep was gone.

Beyond the ridge was a broad, rocky plain. The dark mountain, and its promise of power, might have loomed among the company of a dozen other peaks along the horizon to the east. Beyond their jagged summits, the sky was already paling with the light of false dawn.

 

There was nowhere to hide. No caves, no overhangs, no brush-covered depressions to crawl into and escape the fire of the sun. Nagash knew it would sear his skin in minutes, but that was of little concern to him. Far worse was its effects on the elixir. The older he and his immortals had become, the more that sunlight sapped the strength of their stolen vigour. When he and his armies marched to war, they moved in a perpetual darkness wrought by fearsome sorcery. Even at the peak of his powers, Nagash doubted he would have survived a full day’s exposure to the sun.

As things were now, he didn’t think that he’d last more than a few minutes.

Gritting his teeth, Nagash began scraping at the baked ground. Ptra could not have him. He would sooner cover himself in dirt like an animal than concede defeat to god or man.

May I be of service, great one?

The voice was soft and too sincere, the kind of tone a servant would take to mock his master to his face. It sounded right by Nagash’s ear. With a monumental effort, he turned his head and glanced up at the ghostly figure kneeling by his side.

Khefru was holding out his hand to Nagash, as though to help him stand. The former priest, who had helped Nagash learn the secrets of necromancy and later conspired with him to seize the throne, smiled down at his former master through a mask of flame. As the Usurper watched, the priest’s body became wreathed in sorcerous fire, just as it had centuries past when Nagash had learned of Khefru and Nekerem’s betrayal.

“Traitor,” Nagash hissed. “Snivelling coward! Enslaving your spirit was too good for you! I should have consumed you utterly when I had the chance.”

To Nagash’s surprise, the ghost’s burning face turned bitter. More is the pity, Khefru said. Better oblivion than an eternity wandering in the cold places of the world. You’ll understand soon enough. The former servant turned, gauging the time until dawn. Not long now.

But the Usurper refused to be cowed by the spirit’s ominous words. “Let it come!” he said. “What do I care if I’m freed from this broken husk of a body? You were never a match for me in life, Khefru—not you, nor Thutep, nor even Nebunefer or Neferem. You shall be my slave again, you cur. Watch and see.”

Khefru’s smile broadened as the flames bit deep into the flesh of his face. Do you imagine that it’s just the four of us? Oh, no, great one. We’re just the ones who could reach you the easiest. There are others out there in the shadows, waiting for your demise. All the people of Mahrak, slaughtered in their thousands and cast adrift, without Usirian to judge them or Djaf to conduct them to the afterlife. All the soldiers of both sides who fell in the final battle, and all the skirmishes who came after, and all the common folk who perished in the famines and plagues that wracked the land afterwards. You cannot imagine so many, the former servant said. But you will have all eternity to entertain them.

This time, Nagash watched the spirit go. Khefru simply stood up and walked away, without so much as a backwards glance. He headed westwards, into the fleeing shadows, and dissipated like smoke.

 

The scavengers heard him raving long before they actually saw him. He was lying face down in the middle of a rocky plain, spitting curses in a tongue they didn’t understand and directed at nothing they could see. The wasteland had obviously driven the hairless one mad, not that it made any difference to them. His meat would taste the same regardless.

The four of them were starving. There had been six of them once upon a time, when they’d been sent from the tunnels of the Great City to scour the World Above for the hidden gifts of the Great Horned One.

During the second year of their great hunt, they’d seen the claw of their god trace a green arc across the sky, and had followed its trail into the depths of the wasteland, where they’d found a scar gouged in the packed earth and a handful of treasures nestled together like a clutch of new-laid eggs.

Great was their fortune, or so they’d believed. Great would be their glory when they returned with their bounty to the clan master! But tracing their steps back out of the cursed waste had proved much more difficult than they’d bargained for. After the first few months the food had run out, and hunting in the rat-forsaken wasteland was slim. Mad with hunger, they’d turned on one another, and the two weakest had become food for the rest.

When the last of that meat ran out, more than a month ago, the four hunters had spent weeks waiting for one of their fellows to slip up and become the next meal, but none of them were so careless. Finally, growing more and more desperate, one of the band began gnawing at the Horned God’s sky-gift, in hopes of gaining the upper paw over his companions. Out of self-preservation, the other hunters began to nibble their share of the god-stone as well. It tore like a knife through their guts and set their nerves on fire, but it lent them enough vigour to survive and keep the stalemate going.

The hunters ate of the god-stone sparingly, fearing the wrath of the clan-master when they finally did manage to return to the city. Their fur was falling out in patches, and awful, glowing lesions appeared on the raw skin beneath. Catching the scent of the hairless one was a gift from the Horned One himself, they reasoned. They hoped to find enough meat on the prey’s bones to last them until they could escape the wasteland and make their way home.

When they caught sight of the prey’s shrivelled, leathery body they began squabbling over the spoils at once. Knives were drawn. Threats were spat. Alliances were formed and broken in the space of minutes. Finally, the leader of the little band put an end to the bickering and declared that each hunter was entitled to one of the prey’s limbs. Once those were cut off, the torso would be divided four ways, and then they’d all get turns sucking the sweetmeats out of the skull. With dawn looming close on the horizon, the band grudgingly reached an agreement. They shuffled about the hairless one, choosing which limb they wanted and scheming how to steal the rest when an opportune moment arose.

The leader of the pack hefted his knife and flipped the prey onto his back—the better to get at the entrails when the time came. To their surprise, the prey was still alive, its eyes widening at the sight of the knife in the pack leader’s hand. The hunters chuckled. The meal would come with a little entertainment as well.

Hissing expectantly, the pack leader bent down and grabbed the bony wrist of the prey’s one good arm. He started to stretch it out for a clean cut when the hairless one reared upward with a howl and sank its teeth into the hunter’s throat!

Flesh tore. Hot blood sprayed across the rocky ground, and the pack leader let out a choking squeak. The hairless one was clumsy and slow, but the hunters were weak themselves and stunned by the sudden ferocity of the attack. They barely had time to react before their would-be prey grabbed the knife from the dying pack leader’s hand and buried it in the chest of the hunter to his right. Then, with an exultant howl, the hairless one leapt upon the third hunter and the two fell to the ground, stabbing wildly at one another with their knives.

In the space of just a few seconds, the pack had been all but destroyed. The realisation proved too much for the fourth hunter’s fragile courage to withstand. It abandoned its pack-mates and fled squeaking into the pre-dawn shadows.

 

Nagash pulled the crude knife from the monster’s throat. Dark blood bubbled from the wound. He bent over it at once, gulping down the hot liquid as the creature shuddered in its death throes.

The power! He could taste it in the vile thing’s blood. The Usurper drank deep, marvelling at the fire that raced through his withered limbs.

When the monster was dead he leaned back, chest heaving, face bathed in gore. His emaciated body shuddered as successive waves of agony wracked it, but he welcomed the sensation for what it was. A semblance of power was coursing through his form once more, restoring to him a small amount of vitality.

One day he would thank Khefru for the incentive to try his luck with the beasts. Had he not been so persuaded to survive, the battle might not have gone half so well as it did.

The Usurper glanced about the plain, looking for where the last of the monsters had gone, but the creature had vanished from sight.

What monsters were these? For the first time, Nagash could study his attackers in detail. They looked like nothing so much as diseased men with the heads and naked tails of rats. They were even dressed in filthy kilts made of some sort of woven plant matter, now frayed and begrimed with the dust of the wasteland. Silver earrings glittered from their rodent-like ears, and one wore a thin, gold bracelet around its right wrist. Each of them carried bronze knives of surprising quality, as well made as anything forged in distant Ka-Sabar.

The only other possessions they carried were rough, leather bags, tightly-knotted and secured to their leather belts. Nagash reached down and tugged at the one on his last victim’s belt—and felt a shock of power like a live coal burning in the palm of his hand. He dropped the bag with a start. Then after a moment’s thought he carefully sliced open the side with the point of his bloody knife.

At once, a sickly green glow emanated from the slit. Working carefully with the knife, Nagash opened it further and dumped the bag’s contents onto the ground.

Two small lumps of glowing green stone, each about the size of his thumb, rolled onto the hard ground. The light they cast was intense. Where it touched his bare skin it set his nerves to tingling.

Nagash reached down and carefully picked one up. Heat suffused his fingertips, radiating from the stone in a steady, buzzing stream. He inspected the stone carefully, and was shocked to find what looked like teeth marks chiselled into its rough surface. The creatures were eating the rock? That explained the traces of power in their blood.

The Usurper’s heart began to race. The creatures must have come from the dark mountain. How else could they have come by the same power he sought? No other explanation made sense.

Already, the pain was fading from his limbs, settling into a dull ache that pulsed like a hot ember in his chest. He considered the glowing rock for a moment more, and abruptly reached a decision. Setting the stone back on the ground, he took the hilt of his knife and broke it into three smaller pieces.

With only a moment’s hesitation, Nagash picked up the smallest piece and swallowed it.

Fire burst along every nerve in the Usurper’s body. His muscles swelled with power; his scalp tingled until it burned. Nagash’s mind reeled under the onslaught. It was far wilder and harder to channel than any power he’d known before, but the intensity was still nothing like the enormous energies he’d wielded in the past. It raged through his body, wreaking havoc on flesh and bone. He seized it with his will and directed the raging torrent where he wished it to go.

There was a crackle of bone and a creak of decayed sinew. The Usurper threw back his head and howled his suffering to the sky as his ruined left arm knit back together. Next, foul smelling smoke poured from the holes in his torso and forehead. He doubled over, still shrieking in pain, as flesh and organs were shifted aside.

Thump. Thump. Thump. One after another, three small, dark metal balls thudded to the ground, wreathed in pale greenish steam.

Seconds later, Nagash the Usurper was whole again, in body if not in mind.

The first rays of dawn were breaking over the distant peaks. With a trembling hand, Nagash gathered up the rest of the stones and tucked them back into the slit pouch. As he quickly dragged the bodies of the creatures over to him, he could sense that more stones resided in the pouches of the other creatures he’d killed.

It wasn’t much, but it would be enough, the Usurper vowed. The stones would sustain him and guide him to the great mountain, where he would learn to master its fearsome power.

As Ptra’s light burned overhead, Nagash curled up on the rocky ground, shielded beneath the bodies of those he’d slain, and dreamed of the doom that would befall Nehekhara.