03 - Nagash Immortal

by Mike Lee - (ebook by Undead)

  With a disgusted hiss, Nagash dug the toe of his metal boot into Alcadizzar’s shoulder and forced him onto his back. He leaned forwards, slowly increasing the pressure on the mortal’s chest until his breath wheezed past his lips. Alcadizzar’s eyes opened as he struggled for breath. Nagash fixed him with a mocking stare.

  “Your victory at the Gates of the Dawn meant nothing,” he sneered. “I sent my army to destroy Nehekhara only because I wanted the great cities to know that it was I who had brought them to ruin.”

  “That… explains… why we destroyed them… so easily,” Alcadizzar gasped. “The… trade road was… littered with bones.”

  Nagash glared down at the fallen king. “Five hundred warriors, or five hundred thousand; it makes no difference to me.” He leaned down, putting his full weight on the mortal’s chest. “I can make ten times that now. All of Nehekhara is mine to command.”

  Alcadizzar let out a strangled groan. After a moment, Nagash rose, and pulled back his foot.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Did you wonder, when your people sickened and died, why you alone managed to survive? When your wife and children writhed on their sickbeds, and begged you for release, did you pray to the forsaken gods that you would be next, if only to assuage the guilt that gnawed at your soul?”

  Nagash knelt and gripped Alcadizzar’s jaw, squeezing his pallid flesh until the mortal’s eyes snapped open again.

  “You survived for no other reason than because I wished it,” the Undying King said. “The doom I unleashed upon Nehekhara was aimed with care. Of all the living things that walked the land, I saw to it that you alone would be spared. I wanted you to watch everything you ever loved turn to dust. I wanted you to understand, most of all, how futile your struggles have been. You cannot defeat me, mortal. I am Nagash. I am eternal. And before you die, you will deliver your people into my hands.”

  Alcadizzar let out a choked growl, writhing in Nagash’s grip. “I’ll die before I betray my people again.”

  Nagash rested the tip of his clawed thumb against Alcadizzar’s cheek, just beneath his eye. “The choice is not yours to make,” he said.

  The last king of Khemri began to scream as Nagash carved the first ritual symbol into his skin.

  A tower had been built at the summit of the mountain, taller and wider than any of the hundreds of spires that towered over Nagashizzar. Potent necromantic runes had been carved into its walls, both inside and out, spiralling upwards to join with the complex summoning circle that had been laid out in molten silver across the tower’s flat top.

  On the night of the new moon, Nagash ascended to the top of the tower with Alcadizzar and three wights in tow. In his hands he clutched the glowing sphere of abn-i-khat that had rested at the foot of his throne for hundreds of years. At long last, its purpose would be fulfilled.

  A restless wind moaned above the high tower and the clouds above were depthless and dark. The pulsing radiance of the burning stone spilled across the curving lines of silver and lent them an ominous, squirming life.

  Nagash stepped to the centre of the circle and knelt, placing the sphere within a bowl-shaped depression in the stone. Two of the wights crossed to the far side of the circle, dragging Alcadizzar’s semi-conscious form between them. The mortal’s body was a raw wound, carved with hundreds of arcane symbols from his forehead to the tops of his feet.

  The wights lowered Alcadizzar to his knees at the edge of the circle, at a spot where the major lines of the sigil met. Nagash rose and crossed the circle to join them.

  “Now comes your true moment of glory,” Nagash said, glaring mockingly at the king. “For you will be the key to awaken not just those who died of the plague, or at the hand of my warriors, but Nehekharans who have slept in their tombs for millennia, even unto great Settra himself.” The Undying King held out his hand, and one of the wights handed him a long silver needle. Nagash studied it for a moment and then drove it deep into the juncture of the mortal’s neck and torso. Alcadizzar stiffened in pain, the muscles of his body going rigid as stone.

  “The art of magic—even necromancy—is about symbols,” Nagash said, as the wight handed him another needle. “Symbols form connections, tying one concept to another. And the more powerful the symbol, the greater its potential effects.”

  Alcadizzar hissed sharply as the second needle slid into the other side of his neck.

  “I do not want to merely animate the bones of our people, you see. I intend to summon back their spirits and bind them to their remains, as I have done to my servant Arkhan, and bind them to me forever. But such a monumental effort requires a uniquely resonant symbol to focus the ritual’s power. A symbol such as the ruler of the Nehekharan empire, to whom all the land—living and dead—must offer their fealty.”

  All was in readiness. Nagash took his place at the opposite side of the circle. The wights withdrew, disappearing into the tower.

  The Undying King raised his arms in triumph to the suffocating sky. “Perhaps you will live long enough to see your wife and children again,” he said. “If I find her pleasing enough, perhaps I shall take your woman as my consort.”

  Alcadizzar howled in helpless fury as the great ritual began.

  “It’s been going on like this for days!” Eshreegar shouted over the raging wind. Lightning rent the sky above the mountain, briefly illuminating the master assassin’s anxious face. He pointed up to the top of the great tower, just across the narrow courtyard where he and Eekrit crouched. “Nagash went up there with his prisoner on the night of the new-new moon, and he’s been there ever since!”

  Eekrit gripped his cloak tightly about his chest and scowled up at the top of the tower. It was bathed in a nimbus of green light so intense that it lit the underside of the boiling clouds overhead. Thunder crashed, rolling like an avalanche down the narrow lanes of the fortress. The former warlord cursed, ears folded back against his skull.

  Eshreegar seemed unmoved by the tumult. “You see that door at the base of-of the tower?” he shouted. “It leads to a chamber with a black altar. Greenskins are being dragged up from the mines and sacrificed every hour. This is worse than anything we’ve seen before!”

  Eekrit turned his scowl onto Eshreegar. “That much is clear,” he snarled. “But what in the Horned God’s name do you expect me to do about it?”

  “Velsquee’s chest! We should open the chest!”

  The former warlord growled under his breath and glanced once more up at the tower. His tail lashed apprehensively. “No! Not yet!”

  “Can you think of a better time than now?” the Master of Treacheries exclaimed.

  Eekrit jabbed a claw at the maelstrom up above. “Preferably when he’s not capable of doing things like that,” he snapped.

  Eshreegar frowned worriedly, but he didn’t try to argue. “You think we should let him finish whatever he’s doing?”

  “You honestly think we can stop him?” Eekrit shot back. He shook his head. “No. We wait until he’s done. Until he’s got nothing left.”

  “And then?”

  Eekrit cast one more glance up at the churning green-lit clouds, before heading for the mouth of the tunnel that would carry them back to the under-fortress.

  “Then we open the damned box,” he growled.

  It was like forging a chain. Day by day, night by night, shaping one unbreakable link at a time.

  The incantation was the longest, most complex ritual Nagash had ever performed. Centuries had gone into perfecting the invocations and bindings contained within. The last, most crucial piece of the puzzle had eluded him for ages, until Alcadizzar had provided him with the answer. It was an irony he would savour long after the fallen king was gone.

  The ashen wind howled above the tower, forming a whirling, lightning-ravaged funnel over the ritual circle. The storm had grown steadily since the ritual began, fuelled by the power of the incantation until it spread westwards across the length and breadth of Nehekhara. It was the harbinger of the great ritual, the vehi
cle by which Nagash’s summons would reach across the dead land.

  At the centre of the circle, the great sphere of burning stone was all but gone, its composition altered by Nagash’s will into a glittering black dust that rose in a long, whirling tendril up into the maw of the storm. Barely a pebble-sized fragment of the abn-i-khat remained and it was vanishing steadily before his eyes. For weeks, the storm had carried the black dust across the dead land, where it had sought out the corpses in the streets and in the tombs of the silent necropolis.

  Across the circle, Alcadizzar rested on his knees, locked in place by Nagash’s paralysing needles and the power of the great ritual. His eyes were open, staring up into the whirling wind tunnel. Green light seethed within their depths. The Undying King wondered what vast and awful vistas the mortal looked upon. Did he stare across the gulf, searching for his wife and children in the twilit realm of the dead?

  Nagash could sense the spirits gathering on the other side of the veil. They were drawn by the bond of fealty they owed to Alcadizzar, the first link of the necromantic chain Nagash had forged. When Sakhmet rose in a few hours and usurped Neru’s place in the heavens, he would draw that chain taut, and draw the spirits of uncounted ages back into the living world.

  Raw power flowed into the Undying King from the sacrificial altar at the base of the ritual tower. The life energy of the greenskins had sustained him during the month-long incantation, adding to the enormous quantities of burning stone he had consumed before the ritual began. The incantation consumed energy at a fearsome rate, far more than his calculations had suggested. At this stage, with the most demanding part of the rite about to begin, his reserves of energy were almost completely gone. Every mote of power he gained from the black altar was consumed almost from the moment he received it.

  With a crackling hiss, the last of the burning stone blackened and flew up into the air. Within hours, it would be settling in some distant corner of Nehekhara, just as the sun dipped below the horizon. It was all coming together precisely as he’d ordained.

  Soon, Nehekhara would rise again. The kings of ages past would gather at Nagashizzar and bend their knee before the throne of Nagash, and darkness would descend upon the world forevermore.

  Night fell across Nehekhara. Neru rose in the east, ever following in the footsteps of her husband, Ptra. Sakhmet, the jealous concubine, followed at her shoulder, burning green with envy.

  Upon the ritual tower, the final phase of the incantation began. Buoyed by the stolen life energies of his greenskin slaves, Nagash clenched his fists and spat words of power at the sky. The storm raged above his head, howling like the souls of the damned.

  Layer by layer, he could feel the veil between the realms grow thin. The chain was complete, starting with Alcadizzar and linking to the motes of dust spread across Nehekhara, then leading back to the circle of silver and Nagash’s crown. As Sakhmet rose in the night sky, the Undying King began to draw that chain tight, pulling at the spirits of the dead.

  Hour after hour, as the Green Witch crept closer to Ptra’s loyal wife, the tension on the sorcerous chain grew tighter. The power of the ritual spread throughout the dead land, from the narrow streets of cursed Lahmia, to the cold forges of Ka-Sabar and the empty docks of Zandri. It reached into the dark crypts, settling upon the cerement-wrapped corpses of beggars and kings alike. Ancient limbs trembled, stirring the dust of ages.

  Nagash’s voice rose as the ritual neared its climax, the Undying King staring upward through the whirling funnel of cloud to the clear sky beyond. Neru was directly overhead, and Sakhmet was just behind her, moments from seizing the goddess by the throat. Exultant, he shouted the closing phrases of the incantation to the Green Witch, high above.

  “Let the veil of ages fall away!” the Undying King commanded. “Let the dark lands give up the lost! Let the dust fall from the eyes of the kings and of the heroes, and of the queens sealed within their tombs! Let the people cross the threshold of night and return to the lands of the living! Let them rise from their beds of stone! Rise! I command it! Rise, and serve your master! Nagash, the Undying King, commands it! RISE!”

  Lightning cracked like a slave master’s whip, lashing at the silver lines of the magic circle. Thunder pealed, shaking the tower to its foundations. Nagash poured the last of his power into the storm; the wind rose in pitch and the trapped cyclone broke free at last, recoiling violently into the sky. Nagash stood unshaken amid the maelstrom, roaring his triumph at the sky.

  Already, he could sense the first, tentative tugs at his awareness as the dead of Nehekhara began to open their eyes.

  The first to stir were those whom Arkhan’s warriors had slain. From the blood-spattered collegia at Lybaras, to the fields outside Khemri and beyond, the bodies of the last Nehekharans began to move. Heads turned, glowing green eyes looking eastwards as though in response to some distant summons. Groans leaked from rotting throats as the dead lurched clumsily onto their feet in answer to Nagash’s call.

  These corpses were quickly joined by others, clawing their way out of barricaded homes or from the loose, sandy soil of mass graves that surrounded nearly every one of the great cities. Men, women and children, struck down in their tens of thousands by Nagash’s plague, broke free of their makeshift tombs and emerged into the night.

  In the great necropoli, dead hands beat at stone lids and mausoleum doors. Dust billowed from the entrances of the mighty pyramids as the great kings and their retinues woke from centuries of slumber. They rode from their crypts on chariots of gold, drawn by teams of skeletal horses, surrounded by entire armies of faithful warriors who had gone into the tomb to serve their masters in the afterlife. Retinues of shrivelled liche priests followed in the wake of each royal chariot, bearing the canopic jars of their monarch and chanting invocations of power to speed his journey to the east.

  Beneath Sakhmet’s baleful glare, the great cities of Nehekhara gave up their dead. Tormented howls and groans of rage rose into the still air as beggars and kings alike struggled in vain against the sorcerous chains that bound them. Nagash commanded them, and they had no choice but to obey.

  Tireless and implacable, the dead of Nehekhara made their way eastwards through the night. The greatest army the world had ever seen began to converge on distant Nagashizzar.

  Above the great fortress, the whirling tunnel of cloud collapsed in upon itself, swallowing Sakhmet’s light and plunging Nagashizzar into darkness. Off to the northwest, packs of flesh-eaters howled exultantly in the night.

  Nagash had fallen silent at last. Faintly glowing smoke leaked from every seam of his enchanted armour. At the very last, the ritual had nearly undone him; it had taken almost every last mote of power he possessed, but in the end, he had triumphed. He could feel the risen spirits of Nehekhara surging like a dark tide across the land, moving in answer to his summons. At long last, his vengeance was complete.

  The Undying King lowered his eyes to regard Alcadizzar. The green light had faded from the mortal’s eyes, leaving only emptiness in its wake. Nagash approached the fallen king and gripped the first of the silver needles. A faint tremor through the metal spoke of a pulse and told him that, somehow, the last king of Khemri yet lived.

  Nagash withdrew first one needle, then the other. Alcadizzar’s body collapsed bonelessly onto the stones. The Undying King studied the wretch for a moment, tempted to consume the last of Alcadizzar’s life force and leave his body to rot atop the tower. He raised his smoking hand, clawed fingers clenching into a fist, but at the last moment he decided to spare the last living Nehekharan instead. So long as Alcadizzar lived, he might still provide some sport, once Nagash had regained a modicum of his power.

  The Undying King turned as the trio of wights emerged from the depths of the tower. With a thought, he ordered Alcadizzar thrown into a dungeon cell, and then departed, making his way back to his throne room. There he would wait, slowly regaining his strength, until the first of his undead subjects arrived.

  Eekrit
sat at the edge of his throne with a wine bowl in his paw. After so many weeks of raging wind and groaning earth, the silence in the great hall was eerie and oppressive. Before him, upon the dais, sat Velsquee’s lead box.

  “Well?” Eshreegar said, breaking the silence. “What are you waiting for?”

  The former warlord scratched at his chin. The very sight of the box filled him with a sense of foreboding. “We’ve got no idea what’s inside this thing,” he said.

  “Velsquee said it was a weapon, didn’t he?” the Master of Treacheries said. “A weapon made especially to kill Nagash.”

  Eekrit sipped his wine thoughtfully. “That’s what worries me,” he replied. “If what’s in that box can kill Nagash, what in the Horned God’s name will it do to us?”

  Eshreegar’s one eye widened. “I… hadn’t considered that.” He covered his snout with one paw. “What are we going to do?” he groaned.

  Eekrit glared at the chest. After a moment, he raised the wine bowl and drained it to the dregs, then tossed it over his shoulder.

  “We’re going to do what any skaven would,” he said. “We’re going to find someone else to do the dirty work for us.”

  Alcadizzar lay in darkness, waiting to die.

  He did not know where he was, or how he’d come to be there. His awareness had taken shape very slowly, seeping in from the edges of his fractured mind. With it came memories of grief and a sense of loss too great to endure. The pain of it all cut into him like a dull knife, digging into his vitals inch by relentless inch, until he thought his heart would burst.

  Slowly, he became aware of a soft, white light filling the narrow cell. A figure knelt beside him, just beyond the edge of his vision. And then from the depths of his pain, Alcadizzar felt a gentle hand touch his cheek.