[Nagash 01] - Nagash the Sorcerer

by Mike Lee - (ebook by Undead)

  “The only danger I can see is death by boredom,” he said. “Those Grand Assemblies get more excruciating by the month.”

  “My brother treats you all like children,” Nagash said. “It’s humiliating, not just for you, but for Khemri as well, because it reveals to the world that our king is a weak man.”

  “What would you do in his place?” Meruhep asked with a smirk. “Drag us all into the bazaar and cut off our hands?” The Grand Hierophant ignored the question.

  “Thutep has convinced himself that humans are innately compassionate and charitable,” he said. “He thinks that if you sit through enough royal courts the virtues of civic responsibility will seep into your heads like drops of cool water. He fancies that he can persuade the kings of Nehekhara to put aside centuries of warfare out of enlightened self-interest and the temptations of trade.” The words dripped like venom from Nagash’s tongue. “And how has our city profited in the last six years? The great houses of Khemri ignore his royal summons whenever they see fit and act according to their own interests. Entire neighbourhoods in the noble districts lie empty because the embassies of our brother cities have been seduced away by Zandri. The City of the Waves has usurped Khemri as the greatest city in Nehekhara for the first time in centuries. And for what? So that Thutep can negotiate lower grain prices with Numas and import rugs tax-free from Lahmia. That is what we have traded our pre-eminence for, beads on an abacus.”

  Several of the nobles shifted uneasily at the vehemence in Nagash’s speech. One of the men, a handsome, easygoing rake named Shepsu-hur, leaned back on his divan and eyed the Grand Hierophant warily.

  “If things are as dire as you paint them, holy one, why haven’t the great houses moved against Thutep?” he asked. “Wasn’t that how your dynasty came to exist in the first place?”

  Nagash gave Shepsu-hur a sharp glance, but then a reluctant nod. Khetep had been of royal blood, but he was not the son of Rakaph, the previous king. When Rakaph had finally died his wife, Queen Rasut, had defied ancient law and claimed the throne for a short time, fearing that the kings of Numas or Zandri would try to supplant her infant son and claim the city for their own. Ultimately, the Hieratic Council of Mahrak managed to persuade Rasut to yield the throne and return to Lahmia, where she died a short time later. Khetep, Rakaph’s trusted vizier, was appointed to rule the city as its regent until Rasut’s son reached adulthood.

  Within a month of Rasut’s death, her young son died of a sudden fever, and Khetep became Priest King of Khemri.

  “For the moment, the current situation favours the great houses,” Nagash continued. “Under my father’s rule, their power and influence were kept in check, but now they can flout the king’s law and build their fortunes however they choose.” He shrugged. “No doubt in time one of the houses would believe itself strong enough to seize the throne, but they will never get the opportunity. Zandri means to become the pre-eminent power in Nehekhara, but for that to be possible, Khemri must be forever broken. King Nekumet is gathering his strength even now. In a short time, perhaps a few years, he will grow bold enough to march against us. When that happens, the Living City will bow its knee to Zandri and forever become its vassal.”

  The assembled noblemen did not know how to respond to Nagash’s bald declaration. Many looked to their wine cups or glanced surreptitiously at their fellows. Only Arkhan ventured a reply.

  “These are grim tidings indeed, holy one, but what do you expect us to do about it?” he asked. “We have no power, wealth or influence.” The nobleman gave the Grand Hierophant a ruined grin. “I suppose we could challenge Nekumet to a drinking contest, or a game of dice. How would that be?” Raamket glowered at Arkhan.

  “I wouldn’t try,” he muttered. “I’ve seen the way you throw dice.”

  The room erupted in gales of laughter at Arkhan’s expense. The nobleman bared his blackened teeth and snarled drunken oaths at his friends, and for a few moments all the talk of kings and conquests was forgotten. Nagash simply sat, patient and unblinking as a snake, until finally the laughter died and the faces of his guests were solemn once more.

  “Power is a fluid thing,” he continued, as though the interruption hadn’t occurred. “It changes hands more easily than one might think. Surely my brother is a prime example of that.” Nagash studied each of the assembled nobles in turn. “You are powerless now, that is true, but that could change.” Arkhan leaned forwards, setting his cup on the floor.

  “You could arrange such a thing?” he asked.

  The Grand Hierophant smiled coldly. “Of course,” he replied. “The old ways are coming to an end. Khemri will have a new king, and he must be served by cruel and ruthless men, men who are not afraid to bloody their hands and make people fear the Living City once more.” Nagash studied his assembled guests in turn. “You can be wealthy and powerful beyond your wildest dreams, if you are the ruthless men I seek,” Meruhep noisily slurped down another eel.

  “You’re a fool if you think you can become king,” he sneered. “You’re a priest. The Council at Mahrak would never allow it.”

  “Those frauds have no power over me!” Nagash snarled, his hands clenching the grips of his chair. “Their authority is a lie, and one day I will cast them into the dust. They have bound us to the will of the false gods for long enough!”

  The young noblemen stared wide-eyed at the Grand Hierophant, too shocked to speak. Meruhep shook his head disdainfully, fishing about in the bowl at his lap. After a long moment, Arkhan broke the silence.

  “I am a ruthless man, holy one,” he said quietly, “but you knew that already, or else I would not be here.”

  “I am as well,” Raamket said heatedly. “See if I am not.” Shepsu-hur chuckled softly.

  “I can be ruthless when the mood takes me, holy one,” he said.

  One by one, the other nobles added their voices to the chorus. Arkhan had been correct, Nagash had chosen each man carefully, based on recommendations from Khefru. For all their youthful bravado, they were desperate and wretched men, deep in debt and lost in their vices. The promise of wealth and power tempted them beyond reason, and none of them had much to lose beyond their wasted lives.

  Only one man held his tongue. Meruhep’s expression turned more and more scornful as the cacophony around him grew. He set his bowl aside, sloshing wine and limp eels onto the floor.

  “You are all fools!” he snapped, glaring angrily at his fellows. The young noble pointed angrily at Nagash. “He has no power! His cult is a sham, made to satisfy the vanity of a king. Do you think the great houses will sit idly by and let him depose his brother? Do you imagine even Thutep will be merciful when he learns of this? No. Your heads will sit atop spikes outside the palace.” Meruhep turned back to Nagash. “And believe me, the king will find out, one way or the other. These things never remain secret for long…”

  The young noble stopped in mid-sentence, his brow furrowing. For a moment, it looked as though he’d lost his train of thought, and then his eyes widened and he doubled over with a gasp of pain that quickly gave way to agonised screams.

  Men scrambled to their feet with surprised shouts. Some threw their wine cups to the floor, fearing some kind of poison. One man, a distant cousin of Meruhep, tentatively approached the stricken noble’s side, but stopped dead when he caught the look on Nagash’s face. The Grand Hierophant was staring intently at the writhing nobleman, his lips moving in a silent recitation.

  Shepsu-hur caught the look on Nagash’s face as well. His gaze fell on Meruhep, and his eyes widened in horror.

  “Blessed Neru,” he said, pointing to the floor. “The eels!”

  The assembled nobles followed Shepsu-hur’s gesture. Meruhep’s overturned bowl lay in the centre of the floor, and a knot of boiled eels writhed and snapped like a clutch of snakes in the spreading pool of wine.

  Cries of horror and dismay filled the common room, and the young men recoiled in terror from Meruhep’s thrashing body. Within seconds, his screams turned
to gurgling, gasping cries, and blood began to soak through his linen robes. His movements became uncontrolled, turning into death spasms as the eels chewed through his abdomen.

  Within a few minutes, Meruhep was dead, lying in a pool of his bodily fluids. Long, pale shapes squirmed through the blood and bile, falling still one by one. When the last of the creatures had returned to lifelessness, Nagash raised his eyes to the shaken crowd.

  “No doubt you all understand the need for secrecy in this endeavour,” he said calmly. He beckoned to the shadows at the corners of the room, and slaves rushed forwards to drag Meruhep’s body away. “For the moment, you need do nothing but wait.”

  Nagash raised his hand again, and Khefru appeared from the antechamber. The young priest carried a roll of papyrus in his hands.

  “At present, all I need from you are your names,” said Khefru. “Write them down on this scroll, along with the names of any other noblemen whom you believe can be persuaded to our cause.”

  Khefru went to Arkhan first, handing over the papyrus and reaching for an ink brush tucked into his sleeve. The nobleman was staring at the trail of blood left behind by Meruhep’s corpse with a mixture of avid interest and revulsion. With an effort, he tore his gaze away from the nightmarish scene and glanced at the blank papyrus.

  “Do we… do we sign this in blood?” Arkhan asked hesitantly. The question surprised Nagash.

  “Blood?” he said archly. “Certainly not. What do you take me for, some kind of barbarian?”

  Hours later, Nagash emerged from the decrepit house and directed the palanquin bearers to return to the necropolis. They did so fearfully, their footfalls echoing down the city’s deserted streets. It was nearing the hour of the dead, when Neru’s light was nearly gone and the spirits of the wastes could roam the land in search of prey. Sakhmet burned brightly, just above the western horizon, and the bearers kept throwing frightened glances over their shoulders, as though the Green Witch was dogging their heels. When they finally returned to the Great Pyramid, Khefru had to promise to double the men’s wages to keep them waiting among the jackal-haunted tombs.

  Nagash noticed none of this. He rose from the palanquin without a word and dashed swiftly inside the huge tomb. The oil lamps were still burning inside his sanctum. He snatched one up and rushed forwards, holding it high above his head and banishing the shadows that concealed the contents of the wooden cage on the opposite side of the room.

  Mewling cries of terror greeted Nagash as he reached the enclosure. Yellow light gleamed from the wide, maddened eyes of a young man, who had pressed his trembling body into the furthest corner of the cage to try to escape the fate that had befallen his sister. Her body lay almost at the Grand Hierophant’s feet, surrounded by a pool of congealing blood and bodily fluids. Her skin had swollen like a sausage and then burst, spilling a foul slurry of cancerous flesh and reeking blood onto the stone floor. The stained bones amid the gore were the only indication that the corpse was even human.

  Nagash fumbled quickly at the lock securing the cage door. Then he reached in and seized the young man by the hair. He dragged the screaming figure out of the cage like a butcher selecting a kid for the slaughter, and examined every inch of his naked body.

  The Grand Hierophant smiled. The young man, Shepresh by name, was completely unharmed. The curse that had slain his sister had not touched him, despite the noble blood they shared.

  Still smiling, Nagash dragged the mewling figure into the ritual circle to begin the Incantation of Reaping once more. Then, Khefru entered the room, carrying the rolled-up papyrus they’d brought from the meeting.

  “The names!” Nagash said, stretching out his hand. “The names! Bring them here!”

  The hour of the dead was at hand, and there was terrible work to be done.

  THIRTEEN

  The Two-edged Blade

  Bel Aliad, the City of Spices, in the 63rd year of Ptra the Glorious

  (-1744 Imperial Reckoning)

  The Bhagarite horseman raced effortlessly down the narrow lanes of the army camp, glimmering like a ghost in the predawn gloom. Silver bells attached to the leather tack of the desert horse made a strange, unearthly counterpoint to the animal’s drumming hoofbeats, sending a shiver of dread through the warriors of the Bronze Host as he raced towards the centre of the camp. New recruits rose from their bedrolls and stumbled out into the horseman’s wake, wondering what all the urgency was about, while the veterans shared grim looks and reached for their whetstones, or began making last-minute repairs to their armour.

  The Bronze Host of Ka-Sabar was encamped at the western edge of the Great Desert, their tents spilling in a great crescent from the mouth of a narrow wadi that had sheltered them for the last ten miles of their trek. The journey across the dunes had taken many weeks, even with the unerring guidance of nearly a hundred Bhagarite riders. They marched by night and took shelter during the searing heat of the day, and within the first week even the strongest warriors looked out across the endless expanse of sand and feared that they would never find their way out again. Their guides were as good as their word, however, and the Bronze Host was never more than three days from a desert oasis or a hidden cache of sealed water jars, preserved food and even feed for their horses. The guides entered each oasis and opened each cache with an eerie, keening wail, drawing their knives and slicing their cheeks in an offering to their faceless, hungry god. By the time the army reached the far edge of the desert their guides were pale and wide-eyed, shivering as though with fever and muttering prayers to Khsar under their breath.

  The Bhagarites had guided the army to a rocky plain just a mile from the Spice Road that ran along the western edge of the desert, little more than five miles from Bel Aliad. As the warriors of the Bronze Host stumbled onto the plain like men woken rudely from sleep, the Bhagarites wrapped themselves in funereal robes of the purest white and wound their headscarves round their heads in the complicated arrangement called the Eshabir el-Hekhet, the Merciless Mask. They prepared to avenge their slaughtered kin in an orgy of righteous bloodshed.

  The order to attack had not come. Instead, Akhmen-hotep ordered the army to make camp and offer prayers to the gods. They had just completed a gruelling trek across the merciless sands of the Great Desert, and even the Bhagarites reluctantly admitted that the army could stand to wait a day and regain some of its strength.

  One day passed and then two. A third day came and went, and still the army did not stir. The Bhagarites grew restless. Did the priest king not realise that sooner or later a caravan or a shepherd could stumble across the camp and send a warning to their foes? They tried to make their case to the king, but Akhmen-hotep was unmoved. He sent the riders from the camp, ordering them northwards to scout the terrain and bring back news of the city and its people.

  Five days after the army’s emergence from the desert, a Bhagarite horseman was riding for the king’s tent as though the howling spirits of the waste were hot upon his heels.

  The rider came upon Akhmen-hotep and his generals as they were beginning their morning prayers. A young bull, one of five precious animals brought with them across the desert, had been sacrificed to Geheb. Hashepra, the Hierophant of the Earth God, was standing before the kneeling noblemen, his muscular arms outspread and the bloody sacrificial knife held high. Two young acolytes, neither one more than twelve years old, held the great bronze bowl with trembling hands to catch the dying animal’s blood.

  Heads rose curiously at the sound of the hoofbeats, and the king’s Ushabti rose to their feet and formed a forbidding line in the rider’s path. The Bhagarite reined in a discreet distance from the bodyguards and leapt gracefully from the saddle.

  “Great king!” the horseman cried. “Your camp has been discovered! The warriors of Bel Aliad are assembling on the plains south of the city and making ready to attack!”

  Startled shouts and calls to battle rang out from the assembled nobles, some even going so far as to dash off across the camp to ready the
ir warriors for the coming battle. Among their number, only Akhmen-hotep remained on his knees, his hands held out in supplication and his head bent in prayer. Those noblemen nearest the king eyed Akhmen-hotep, worried, uncertain what they should do.

  Among them was Pakh-amn. The Master of Horse was still out of favour with the king, but Akhmen-hotep insisted that he be brought along when the army marched on Bel Aliad. By ancient custom, the Master of Horse was one of the king’s chief generals in times of war, and Akhmen-hotep had commanded that all the old traditions be upheld. For his part, Pakh-amn had performed his duties with cold-hearted diligence and devotion.

  The Master of Horse took in the unfolding scene and drew a deep breath.

  “What is your command, great one?” he asked stiffly. His cheeks were still hollow and his eyes sunken from the touch of the lotus, but his voice was sober and strong.

  Akhmen-hotep did not answer at first, his lips moving in a silent prayer. He passed his hands over his face and across his shaven scalp, as though washing himself clean of fear and doubt.

  “We shall finish making our obeisance to Geheb,” he said quietly, “and then we shall summon the Grand Hierophant and offer sacrifices to Ptra so that he will guide us to victory.” As he spoke, the king bent his head to Hashepra. The hierophant nodded and beckoned to his acolytes, who brought forward the wide, brimming bowl. Pakh-amn’s stained lips pressed into a thin, angry line.

  “Time is of the essence,” he said. “The enemy could be upon us within the hour. Since they willingly serve the Usurper, I doubt they will trouble themselves with lengthy prayers to the gods.”

  “All the more reason for us to demonstrate our devotion,” the king replied calmly. “We are not fighting for glory, or for gold. We are fighting to defend the Blessed Land, and to honour the covenant between gods and men.”