‘Where by all the devils in the dark did you get those?’ she hissed.
‘Kadon took prisoners as well as gold in his war with the dawi,’ Ushoran said. ‘He forced them to craft him machines of great and fell purpose, down here in the dark.’
‘The mummified corpses of the dwarfs retain a significant amount of muscle memory,’ W’soran mused, eyes guttering like embers.
‘Once we have strengthened the roots of this place, we can begin to build a fortress here. A true fortress, fit for an emperor,’ Ushoran said. ‘It will be a palace of bone and stone, from which I may rule our ever-growing empire.’ He spread his arms as if greeting the jubilant throngs she thought he must be imagining.
Neferata shook her head as W’soran continued to prattle. Idiots, the pair of them. No, worse – Ushoran knew damn well what the end result of this would be. She looked at him and he gave her a hungry smile. ‘You disapprove?’
‘I’m told that the only thing the dwarfs value more than gold is their dead, and you are making a mockery of both. How long do you expect the alliance to last?’ she said.
‘Long enough,’ he said.
‘You intended to irritate Razek earlier, when you greeted him. Why?’
‘Isn’t it obvious? I need to know how practical my new allies really are. What are they prepared to overlook to get this gold?’ Ushoran said. ‘It wasn’t just Kadon’s necromantic inclinations that set Mourkain and the dwarfs at each other’s throats, after all. They declared war on him for a variety of insults.’
‘He offended them,’ Neferata said.
‘He was a fool, as we’ve said.’ Ushoran crossed his arms. ‘I have plans, Neferata. And to accomplish those plans I will need more troops than are currently alive within the boundaries of my kingdom.’
‘You intend to use the dead,’ Neferata said. A sickening sensation had settled in the pit of her stomach, like a bit of sour blood stuck in her craw. ‘Just as we did before,’ she said.
W’soran rubbed his hands together in pleasure. ‘Not just the dead. There is much raw material here,’ he said, and Neferata glanced at the dead brute in understanding.
‘Imagine it,’ Ushoran said. ‘An army of the dead, sweeping over these lands, from this citadel, and making them fit for my coming…’
All is silent. All is perfect, the voice whispered in her head. The charnel legions will march and bring silence to the world. She shook it off, wondering if the others heard it as well. From the expression of fear that passed swiftly across W’soran’s face, she suspected that he had.
‘You think the dwarfs will tolerate that?’ she said.
‘You will see that they do, my Lady of Mysteries,’ Ushoran purred. He was gloating. He thought he had her in a trap of her own making. ‘At least until it is too late for them to do otherwise.’
‘Double the guard,’ Neferata said finally, turning around. ‘No one must see this. No one not of your inner circle,’ she said.
‘Do not worry,’ W’soran said, his fangs flashing. ‘There are more defenders for this place than you have seen.’ He gestured upwards. Neferata looked up and saw vast, loathsome shapes holding tight to the cavernous ceilings. Bats, bigger even than the creatures that she had seen in deep mountain caves, squirmed there. ‘They hunt the wild horses of the plains. I heard stories of them in the Southlands, where it is said they pluck the great flying reptiles from their mountainous perches and feast on them beneath the moon,’ W’soran said, as a man might speak of beloved pets.
Neferata shuddered. It wasn’t fear, exactly, but she knew that such creatures would drain her dry as easily as she had done to so many men and women down the long, thirsty years. ‘So I see. Fine,’ she said, turning to Ushoran. ‘You seem to have things well in hand, Ushoran. I can see now why you allowed an incompetent like Strezyk to serve you.’
‘Strezyk served his purpose,’ Ushoran said, flicking a claw. ‘But I need a more competent left hand for the future.’
‘You’re truly planning a war, then?’ Neferata said.
‘For a variety of reasons,’ Ushoran said.
‘They wear out quickly down here,’ W’soran said. ‘The conditions are not conducive to maintenance, regrettably.’ He looked at Neferata. ‘I need more bodies. Fresh ones.’
‘I’m sure you can always find more,’ Neferata said.
‘When the time comes, an expedition to the Silver Pinnacle will be invaluable,’ W’soran said, rubbing his hands together in evident glee. ‘The dwarfs are masters of the preservative arts and it is said that their crypts go on for miles. I have a theory that it was the dawi who first taught our peoples–’
‘Our peoples are gone,’ Neferata said automatically. The other two vampires looked at her, blank incomprehension on the face of the one, and anger on the face of the other. Ushoran grabbed her arm in his claw.
‘Yes, and whose fault is that?’ he snarled. ‘Nehekhara is dead. Lahmia is dead. But we will build a better Nehekhara, a better Lahmia here!’ He released her and turned. ‘And this ruin and its secrets will help us do it!’
‘Our history is dust, Ushoran. Would you use gold to buy it back?’ Neferata said.
‘Not just gold,’ Ushoran said, his eyes blazing.
‘Then what?’ Neferata said, locking eyes with him. A feeling of anticipation filled her. W’soran laid a hand on Ushoran’s arm and the light in his eyes faded. He shook his head, as if regaining some measure of control. The look of fear was back, pulling at the edges of W’soran’s face like hooks. What was the old jackal scared of? What did he know that she did not?
‘None of your concern, my Lady of Mysteries,’ Ushoran said. Neferata frowned.
‘No, I suppose not. What are my concerns, then?’ she said.
‘Preservation and expansion,’ Ushoran said. ‘I have promised my people an empire worthy of the great barrow-kings of awful memory, or that of the dwarfs at their height. And Ushoran does not break his promises.’
‘No. And neither do I,’ Neferata said.
SIX
The City of Bel Aliad
(–1151 Imperial Reckoning)
‘Beautiful,’ Khaled al Muntasir breathed, stroking the surface of the ornate sarcophagus that leaned at an angle against the wall.
Inside, Neferata raged silently at the gloating tone in his voice. She yearned to split the iron body of the sarcophagus and strip the meat from his face a piece at a time. But such was not to be, not while the shaft of broken lance remained in her chest. The sword had apparently been too dangerous to leave in her, and someone had replaced one with the other. And not just any shard of wood, but one treated with strange unguents and ointments, so that its very touch leached the strength from her and rendered her immobile. Now she stood in darkness, a prisoner of her own body, unable to even seek respite in oblivion or madness. And all thanks to her once-champion, Abhorash.
She remembered his eyes, watching her die. For that was what this was – a living death. Why had he done it? He had not visited her afterwards. Indeed, from what little she had gleaned from her captor, Abhorash had departed as mysteriously as he had arrived, wandering to the coast with his coterie. He had been in Bel Aliad only long enough to help train their Kontoi.
W’soran, Ushoran, Abhorash… The names hissed through her mind like spilling sand. They had all betrayed her, and for what? Spite?
She would show them spite.
But first, she had to escape.
Even locked in the darkness like this, she could feel the faint touch of Naaima’s mind. Her handmaiden prowled through the dark places of Bel Aliad even now, searching for her. Loyal Naaima, if she could but call out to her–
Light stabbed her eyes as the lid of the sarcophagus was shifted. Khaled stared at her, his dark eyes wide. He licked his lips. He reached out a trembling hand, and then yanked it back. Beyond him, she saw his chamber; it was strewn wi
th mystical-looking bric-a-brac, preserved monkey’s paws and shrunken heads. There were tiny ushabti standing at attention in silk-lined boxes and strange, formless shapes squirming in glass jars. Khaled was not only a warrior, it seemed; he was also something of a scholar. ‘I know you can hear me, witch,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Lord Abhorash said you would be able to, at any rate. He said that you cannot die. That you are immortal and ageless and evil.’
Evil! Neferata snarled in her head. How dare that self-righteous fool call her evil! She would take great pleasure in hunting her former champion down and flaying him from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. She would wear his treacherous skin as a cloak and make combs of his bones!
Khaled blinked and stepped back. ‘Yes… I see the hate in your eyes, witch. The Sand Snake, that was what those dogs of the desert called you. I wonder why you were squatting with savages in the wilderness. Could you tell me, if I jostled that stake of wood, ever so slightly? If I nudged it from your heart, just by the length of a fingertip, would you share your secrets with me, Sand Snake?’
Neferata watched him, unable to do anything else. Khaled chuckled. ‘Or would you kill me? Yes. You would, wouldn’t you? You’d butcher me like a goat. Sleep now, Sand Snake. We will talk more, later.’ He closed the lid, and she was once more left in darkness.
But she didn’t rage. She had seen something in Khaled’s eyes. A greed that she recognised easily enough; he wanted something. Something she possessed. In the darkness and the silence, she began to plan…
The City of Mourkain
(–750 Imperial Reckoning)
Steam rose off the stones scattered across the bronze grill of the oven set into the far wall of the bana as Naaima poured a dipperful of water across them. The rocks were heated by a rack of red-hot coals which were occasionally stirred by whoever was closest. A series of long bronze pipes carried the heat from the oven into the water of the communal bath, heating it to a temperature that would have boiled a mortal alive. The vampires didn’t notice. For them it might as well have been an icy pond.
Neferata sighed as steam filled the bathhouse, drawing forth sweat and the smells buried in the wooden planks that made up the roof. The bronze plates set into the stone walls reflected the heat back at the women soaking in the bath. The Strigoi bana were, for all intents and purposes, overlarge ovens, lacking the graceful function of similar structures in Sartosa or Araby. The art of the bathhouse was yet to infiltrate these savage climes, Neferata mused. Yet another thing she would be forced to remedy in the coming years. Still, for the moment, the bathhouse had its uses.
Vampires, unlike men, neither sweated nor secreted the oils that clung like pernicious perfume to the skin of the living. That did not mean, however, that they could not stink just as badly as any unwashed peasant. The odour of old blood never quite went away. But the scalding baths, followed by a splash from a bucket of perfumed water, hid the predator’s odour quite well.
The bana were sacrosanct in Strigoi society. They were places where one could be at ease. It was not unusual for violence to occur in one, but it was frowned upon. It was also one of the few places that Ushoran’s spies could not follow her.
Neferata settled in the water, letting it envelop her. Ushoran’s spy apparatus was like an onion; the more layers she stripped and tossed aside, the more there seemed to be. Then there was W’soran, who had his own methods of spying. Not to mention that every Strigoi ajal and agal had at least one spy in their retinue. Most of those she had co-opted, but there was always another somewhere.
But not here, and that was why they had come.
‘You should have seen the look on that greenskin shaman’s face,’ Stregga chortled. Her palm came down, slapping the still, steaming waters of the bath. ‘Eyes bulging and tongue waggling as Rasha crushed his throat.’ She gave a bark of laughter. She and Rasha had just returned from a routine expedition into the lands to the east, where the great orc migrations originated.
‘Tasted foul, that one,’ Rasha muttered, leaning back against the edge of the communal bath. ‘Their blood tastes of mould and mushrooms.’
‘We all make sacrifices, my sisters,’ Neferata said.
‘Some more than others,’ Naaima added, drawing the bone comb through Neferata’s hair. Neferata ignored the comment.
‘Continue, please,’ she said, gesturing languidly.
‘You were right, my lady,’ Rasha said. ‘They thought it was an omen, a leopard killing their shaman like that. Uzzer’s lot are in control of the tribe now, and they’re moving east, towards us. The timagals in that region are already squawking for help. The orcs will press them hard over the winter.’
‘Good,’ Neferata said, tracing circles in the surface of the water. The greenskins were pawns of prophecy and omen, at the beck and call of their feather- and bead-bedecked shamans. And the shamans took every leopard-mauling or giant-bat attack as an omen to wage war. It was a simple enough matter to stir them up. ‘We’ll see to the defences in the region. Perhaps Vorag…?’ She glanced at Stregga, who made a face.
‘Aye, he wants to fight, that one.’ The blonde vampire sank down until the water brushed her chin. ‘He’s still upset that Ushoran banished him from court.’ She cocked an eye at her mistress. ‘A bit harsh, wasn’t that, my lady?’
‘I need the Bloodytooth on the frontier. Not at court,’ Neferata said mildly. ‘And I need him upset.’ The Court of Strigos was a snake-pit; the nobles strove in a never-ending game of one-upmanship beneath Ushoran’s watchful gaze. Only the most cunning and treacherous survived. Vorag would have been staked in his bed had it not been for Neferata’s careful shepherding of him. And she had done the latter for one reason only – Vorag’s influence among the hereditary nobles and military commanders was great and rivalled only by the acclaim the common herd gave to Abhorash.
It had been easy enough to get the former champion temporarily exiled. Ushoran’s disfavour was easy enough to garner, and Vorag had begun making himself a nuisance; if it had gone on, Ushoran would have had Abhorash end Vorag’s troublemaking permanently. But exiled, he was safe from Abhorash’s sword and he would serve an invaluable purpose.
Through Vorag, she had begun to disseminate the first faint stirrings of resentment among the Strigoi nobility who were not tied to Ushoran’s apron strings. The Strigoi were not unused to long-lived rulers, but Kadon had been a sorcerer. Ushoran was not. But he was seemingly immortal, and though many members of his inner circle knew what he was, not all of them had truly understood what an immortal king meant.
Neferata could have told them, had they asked. Even Kadon had had the good grace to step back from direct rule eventually. The stagnation was already creeping in. Men who had been turned when the Strigoi were horse-raiders with grandiose dreams of empire now ruled said empire, but could not shake the petty perspectives of those far-gone times.
And as the Strigoi people advanced, their hidebound, atavistic nobility became ever more out of step. The world moved on, no matter how much creatures like Ushoran and – yes – even herself at times wished it wouldn’t.
‘Besides, he’ll enjoy fighting the orcs for a few years. He seems to enjoy the taste, at any rate.’ She looked at Anmar. ‘On to other matters… Tell me of the dawi, little leopard.’
‘They left this morning, my lady,’ Anmar said.
‘You are certain?’
‘I followed them myself,’ Anmar said.
Neferata sat back and sighed. Razek had been a disappointment, in more ways than one. He was too observant. And he was too determined to discover the source of the gold that formed Strigos’s wealth, and to lay claim to it for his people. The attempts had been made via human mercenaries – thieves and bandits, paid through third parties. All had died, or been paid off, but the attempts had become an annoyance, not to mention distracting. Razek, she was certain, knew that Ushoran was paying the dwarfs in their ow
n gold, stolen by Kadon so long ago. And if he ever found proof, that would be it for the current amicable state of affairs.
Dwarfs were not given to plotting, but Razek seemed to break the mould. A quiet word in Ushoran’s ear had resulted in Razek being recalled to the Silver Pinnacle once the trade between the two peoples had settled into a comfortable rhythm after a few decades. Still, there lingered the suspicion that Razek’s influence was not entirely gone from Mourkain. The dwarf traders and merchants who came by the Silver Road all carried the stamps and seals of King Borri, but she suspected that they had Razek’s gold in their pockets, and that gold went into the hands of yet more thieves and spies. He was more than just Borri’s thane – he was the king of Karaz Bryn’s hearth-warden. He was her opposite number and equally determined to accomplish his goal.
That alone necessitated his eventual death. But not yet, she thought. Razek was a known quantity now, and the dwarfs might yet come in handy, beyond the obvious. Tapping her lip, she glanced at Iona. The red-headed former concubine had flourished since being given the gift of Neferata’s blood-kiss. She had transformed from a starveling wretch into a magnificent creature, her bedraggled looks amplified into feral beauty. ‘And how are the gods, Iona? Are they satisfied with their offerings?’
‘So their priestesses assure me, mistress,’ Iona said, curling a lock of fiery red hair around one pale finger. ‘The sangzye is collected without comment. Our people place little value on blood,’ she added, shrugging. Neferata smiled in satisfaction.
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