—<SIXTEEN>—

A Howl from the Wasteland

Lahmia, the City of the Dawn, in the 105th year of Djaf the Terrible
(-1222 Imperial Reckoning)

The tale of Ptra’s virtuous wife Neru and his jealous concubine Sakhmet were well known to the people of Nehekhara, even in an age bereft of gods and their blessings. While Ptra the Father ruled in the heavens, so the stories went, Neru the Mother tended the gardens of the afterlife, and welcomed the souls of the dead who had earned their place in paradise. In the garden she was attended by her many daughters and guarded by a pack of ever-vigilant sphinxes, but when her husband’s daily labours had ceased and he passed beyond the rim of the world to the west, she would rise from the garden and watch over her beloved children by night, keeping them safe from the beasts of the wild and the spirits of the waste. And each night, the vindictive Sakhmet would follow in her wake, glaring balefully at the children of the gods and scheming to usurp Ptra’s beloved wife. Most nights, Neru would triumph, her swift feet guiding her across the heavens—but once in a great while, Sakhmet’s wiles would bedevil her, and the Green Witch would usurp Neru’s place in the sky. When that happened, all the land trembled in fear, as the creatures of the darkness and the deep earth would rise up and work their evils on mankind.

Never before in human history had Sakhmet usurped Neru during the year of Djaf, god of the dead. The implications, thought W’soran, were momentous indeed.

In keeping with her spiteful nature, Sakhmet did not follow a predictable course through the sky. A great many priests had attempted to divine it, particularly those of Settra’s Mortuary Cult, who had devoted themselves to the resurrection of the souls of the dead. Of them all, Nagash had come the closest to predicting her movements, drawing on the accumulated observations of the cult and applying formulae more complex and visionary than any other liche priest had attempted before. An entire volume of Nagash’s tomes was dedicated to his observations and they predicted an occultation during the one hundred and fifth year of Djaf’s ascendancy.

True to the Undying King’s predictions, that fateful night had arrived.

W’soran had begun his preparations for the night’s ritual many months in advance. The proper sigils were studied, refined, and laid out on the floor of the sanctum with a mixture of quicksilver and ground human bone. The ancient skull of the cursed king, Thutep, was brought forth, and still more rituals were performed upon the relic, to better attune it to W’soran’s spells. His thralls combed the dockyards and the slums in search of young children, who died each night beneath the necromancer’s sacrificial knife. Their life energies boiled within W’soran’s shrivelled veins, held in readiness for the coming eclipse.

Over the last few days, he’d sensed it: a growing disturbance in the aether, like the rising wind before a fierce summer storm. Each evening, Sakhmet’s course came closer and closer to matching Neru’s. W’soran noted each observation with care, his shrivelled lips drawn back in a death’s-head grin as the celestial pieces slid neatly into place.

Tonight, the conditions would be ideal. W’soran could not possibly fail. When Sakhmet’s power parted the veil between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead, he would call forth the spirit of Nagash.

The ritual’s first steps were begun at sunset, just as the Green Witch appeared on the horizon. A dozen thralls attended upon the necromancer, clad in robes of red and black, their breasts marked in chalk with arcane sigils of power. Incense was lit in braziers of polished bone. As the first, telltale ripples spread through the aether, W’soran began the first of seven rituals of warding, preparing the chamber for the whirlwind to come.

The preparatory rites took many hours, while Sakhmet stalked Ptra’s wife across the heavens. Beyond the temple walls, the people of the city shuttered themselves inside their homes and prayed to the forsaken gods for protection, sensing that something terrible was approaching. Trading ships at anchor in the harbour threw offerings of gold and silver into the dark waters; even the City Guard abandoned their nightly patrols and retreated to the safety of their barracks. As far as they were concerned, anyone foolish enough to ignore the signs and go about on the streets tonight deserved whatever fate befell them.

By midnight, Neru had reached her zenith and Sakhmet had crept up behind her like an assassin, nearly close enough to touch. Jackals gibbered and howled in the rocky lands south of the city, while off to the north-west a strange, otherworldly display of lights roiled and flickered on the horizon. And then, in what seemed like the space of just a few moments, the Green Witch overtook her prey, smothering Neru’s light with her own and bathing the earth in a bilious green glow.

Deep inside the temple, a gust of wind rose inside the windowless sanctum, stirring the clouds of incense into ghostly shapes and plucking at the pages of Nagash’s tomes. The aether began to roil.

And then, a faint, tolling sound, like the portentous note of a temple bell. It reverberated in the necromancer’s bones. W’soran sighed in satisfaction, the breath rattling in the back of his throat. Dusty robes flapping, he rushed to the lectern that had been placed before the summoning circle. His thralls shuffled forwards, obeying W’soran’s will, and formed a semicircle to either side of him. The necromancer’s hands rested lightly upon the ancient pages of the tome.

Another bell-like note rippled through the aether, rhythmic as a hammer upon an anvil, or a fist against a door. W’soran raised his arms. “I hear you,” he rasped. “Lord of the Dead, I hear you. Come forth!”

W’soran began to chant the first of the invocations he had prepared, focussing his energies on the yellowed skull of Thutep in the centre of the summoning circle. Timing was critical, for the occultation would only last until dawn, and the great rite would take hours to complete.

Words of power rolled easily from W’soran’s lips as the invocation took shape. Stolen energies flowed from his body into the cursed king’s skull and the necromancer felt his perceptions beginning to expand, reaching beyond the walls of the sanctum and into the dark lands of the dead. As he worked, the aether continued to tremble with hammer-like blows, each one louder and more penetrating than the one before.

The physical world grew dim to W’soran’s eyes. A bleak, twilit plain stretched before him, lit by a vague, greyish luminescence. The air within the sanctum turned cold and dank in the space of a single instant. The breath of the chanting thralls made ghostly plumes of vapour in the air. Glittering frost radiated outwards from the summoning circle across the stone floor.

Time ceased to have meaning. Gradually, as the invocation reached its conclusion and W’soran’s mind adjusted to his new-found perceptions, he realised that there was movement upon the plain. A vast multitude of shadowy figures surrounded him, stumbling wearily through the dimness. In the echoing silence between the hammer blows, W’soran thought he heard faint sounds—the desperate cries of the lost, begging for release.

All at once, W’soran felt himself teetering upon a precipice. The twilit plain pulled at him, threatening to tear his soul from his shrivelled body. But the necromancer was prepared for this. Quickly he began a second incantation, one that created an arbitrary threshold between the realms within the confines of the ritual circle.

The hammer blows were coming faster now. The vibrations from one blow had barely ended before the next one began and they exerted a strange kind of weight on W’soran’s soul. The necromancer could not account for it, but neither could he let it stop him. He forged ahead with the second incantation, drawing deeply from his reserves of stolen vigour.

There was a crash. Several moments passed before W’soran could discern whether it was a physical or a spiritual sound. Still chanting, he turned his head, and with an effort, the boundaries of the sanctum swam into focus. Ushoran leaned drunkenly against one of the heavy wooden tables, knocking a stack of scrolls and leather-bound books onto the floor. Just then, another ringing blow thundered through the aether, and W’soran saw the immortal’s face twist into a grimace of almost childlike terror.

Ushoran’s lips moved. W’soran could not hear his voice over the keening of the dead, but he could read what they said. That sound! What is it? What’s happening?

W’soran felt a flicker of surprise. How could Ushoran sense what was happening? For a moment he nearly lost control of the second incantation. Swiftly the necromancer tore his attention away from Ushoran and focussed once more on the summoning circle.

Doom. Doom. Doom. W’soran was buffeted by the ringing blows. His bones felt as heavy as lead. The necromancer redoubled his efforts, shouting the words of the invocation into the aether. Slowly but surely, the threshold took shape.

The unearthly pressure was mounting. W’soran could almost feel his bones beginning to warp beneath the strain. Snarling, he launched into the third invocation as soon as the second one was complete. His spirit responded to the arcane commands, extending from his body according to his will and approaching the threshold he’d created. The wails of the lost grew louder, tearing at his senses.

DOOM.

W’soran pushed his spirit onwards, drawing ever closer to the precipice. He could feel the emptiness of the space beyond and, for the first time in ages, the immortal felt afraid. This was what awaited him, should his mortal body be destroyed. The thought chilled him to the core. And yet he did not turn back.

DOOM.

At the threshold, the power of the bleak land increased tenfold. W’soran struggled against its terrible pull. His reserves of power were reaching their limits; before long the ritual’s demands would begin to consume his physical body, until there was nothing left to anchor his soul. Then he would become one with the lost, trapped for eternity on a plain without end.

DOOM.

W’soran could not last much longer. He summoned up the last of his strength and crossed partly over the threshold, into the realm of the dead.

At once, the spirits of the lost sensed his presence. They turned on him in an instant, grasping at his soul like drowning men. Hundreds upon hundreds, dragging him under…

W’soran fought back. He lashed at them with his sorcerous might. Nagash! Undying King! Master of life and death! Hear me! I, W’soran, summon you forth!

His command echoed through the emptiness. The spirits that surrounded him recoiled for an instant at the utterance of the Usurper’s name, but then they fell upon him with a vengeance. Their keening wails were now tinged with anger.

Come forth! I command you!

DOOM!

The last blow was discordant and terrible, a splintering crash of shattered stone. And then something vast moved upon the face of the aether and the realm of the dead trembled. The spirits receded from him, wailing in misery and fear.

His power all but spent, W’soran tried to draw back from the threshold—but he was held there, transfixed by a force of will a thousand times greater than his own. The twilit plain vanished, replaced by the vision of an ancient, smoke-wreathed mountain, its splintered flanks bathed in unholy, greenish light. A vast fortress crouched atop the mountain, and upon the tallest tower of that fortress stood a giant, clad in armour that glowed with icy, sorcerous flames. The giant gripped a jagged metal crown in his armoured fist and when his face turned skywards, W’soran saw only a leering skull, wreathed in necromantic flames. Bale-fires burned from the depths of the skull’s eye-sockets, scorching W’soran with their glare. The immortal gazed into their depths and saw the end of the world of men.

W’soran writhed like an insect in Nagash’s grasp, howling in terror. Then came a crushing impact that blotted out the immortal’s senses, plunging him into oblivion.

W’soran lay upon his back, shoulders pressed hard against the floor of the sanctum. His ears roared with the fading echoes of the aetheric storm and the incense-laden air crackled with the dissipating energies of the massive ritual. Gasping in shock, the necromancer’s parchment-thin eyelids fluttered as he tried to push himself upright—but a cold hand tightened about his throat like a vice and slammed him roughly back against the stone.

The rough impact jolted W’soran’s senses. His vision snapped back into focus and he found himself staring into Neferata’s snarling, bloodstained face. Spatters of gore dotted her slender arms and the front of her dust-stained robes. The heavy wooden lectern lay in pieces around them, shattered by the queen’s fearsome blow.

“W’soran,” she said. Her voice was little more than a low, liquid growl. “You withered fool. What have you done?”

The necromancer writhed like a serpent in Neferata’s grip. A blistering incantation came to mind, powerful enough to crush the queen’s bones to powder and hurl her carcass the length of the chamber—had he but the strength to cast it. The rite had consumed every mote of his carefully hoarded power, leaving him helpless before Neferata’s wrath. But instead of fear, the realisation only filled him with rage.

W’soran’s ragged lips drew back, baring his fangs in a death’s-head grin. “You felt it, too, didn’t you?” he wheezed. His narrow chest heaved with ghastly, wheezing laughter. “You felt it in your bones, just as I did. The master’s fist upon the door!”

Neferata understood at once. W’soran could see the flicker of realisation in her dark eyes—and perhaps, the briefest glimmer of fear.

The queen glanced back over her shoulder. Belatedly, W’soran realised that they were not alone. Ushoran still leaned against the wooden reading table, glaring angrily at Lord Ankhat, who stood just inside the sanctum’s entrance with a heavy iron sword in his hand. Neferata’s white-robed progeny circled the room, their jaws and clawed hands dripping with fresh gore. W’soran’s thralls had been ripped apart and left to bleed out their precious fluids upon the stone.

Ankhat looked to the queen and frowned. “I told you he was behind this. He’s been trying to call back Lamashizzar, somehow. He’s all but admitted it!”

“Lamashizzar? Do you think I would call that capering fool my master?” W’soran’s voice rose to a shriek. “No, I speak of Nagash, the Undying King! I have seen him!” His laughter echoed from the walls. “All this time, I have searched for him, but I was looking in the wrong place! He could not be found among the souls of the dead because he still reigns upon this earth!”

Neferata’s fist tightened about W’soran’s throat. “You lie,” she hissed. “Nagash was destroyed—”

“Not so,” the necromancer croaked. “He escaped the battle at Mahrak; his body was never found.” He pointed a clawed finger at Ankhat. “Ask him. He marched with the army to Khemri. He knows!”

“This is some kind of trick,” Ankhat snarled, but the look in his dark eyes belied the nobleman’s bravado.

“He is nowhere in Nehekhara. We searched from one end to the other!”

“Imbecile!” W’soran sneered. “All this time, the Undying King has been rebuilding his strength in secret, far from the eyes of men. He has taken a great mountain and made it his fortress. I have seen its towers wreathed in the smoke of countless forges, where his servants make ready for the day of Nehekhara’s demise! And that day swiftly approaches! Already, Nagash is clad in the panoply of war, and he holds a dark and terrible crown in his hand! The days of mankind are numbered—”

Neferata snarled. Her hand closed tighter, until the necromancer’s leathery tendons creaked, and his spine began to bend.

“Let him come,” she said, pitching her voice so Ankhat and Ushoran could hear. “When he arrives outside my gates, your head will be there to welcome him.”

But if Neferata thought to see W’soran quail in fear, she was disappointed. The necromancer merely grinned, his eyes glittering defiantly. “Do it!” he spat. “Tear my head from my shoulders, just as you did to Ubaid. With my last breath I will utter a curse so terrible that Lahmia will be blighted until the stars have burned down to embers.”

The queen snarled in fury, and for a fleeting instant, W’soran thought that she had seen through his bluff. But then he felt her grip loosen ever so slightly and he knew that he had won. More laughter bubbled from W’soran’s throat.

“He is coming,” the necromancer hissed. “And when he does, you will grovel like a worm at his feet.”

Neferata bent over the necromancer, until their faces nearly touched. Her charnel breath gusted cold against his face.

“A pity you shall never see it.”

The queen’s empty hand snatched up a splintered length of the wooden lectern. W’soran’s eyes went wide. His cry of protest transformed into a wordless scream of rage as she drove the dagger-like fragment into his heart.

Ushoran’s nails etched deep scars into the wood of the table at his back as he fought to maintain an outwards appearance of calm. His head still ached from the dreadful, bell-like tolling that had brought him to the sanctum. The blood in his veins, so freshly stolen from a young beggar mere hours before, had now lost its heat. His limbs felt as heavy as lead. From the tense cast of Ankhat’s face, it was clear that the nobleman had been profoundly affected as well. Ushoran’s gaze fell to the iron sword in Ankhat’s hand and he debated whether he could slip through the door of the sanctum and escape before the nobleman could strike. If he tried, though, and failed, it would only confirm his complicity in W’soran’s crimes. It was all Ushoran could do to maintain his bland facade and conceal his mounting desperation.

Neferata rose slowly from W’soran’s limp body. “Find a barrel and stuff him inside,” she said to Ankhat. “Then bury him beneath the temple.”

Ankhat scowled at the necromancer’s skeletal form. “That should be easy enough. Is there any place in particular you want me to put him?”

“Somewhere that no one will ever find him,” the queen replied. Then Neferata turned to Ushoran.

“And what role did you play in all of this?” she demanded.

The Lord of Masks raised his hands in protest. “None whatsoever, great one,” he said quickly. “I’m no necromancer, as you well know.”

Neferata took a step towards him. Her priestesses stopped pacing about the sanctum and turned to face Ushoran, their expressions disconcertingly intent.

“And yet, here you are,” she replied.

“Clearly we shared the same idea,” Ushoran said, thinking furiously. The best lies, he knew, always began with a splinter of truth. “When that awful pounding began, I naturally assumed that W’soran would have some idea of what it was. As did you, apparently.”

The queen’s eyes narrowed. “And you happened to know exactly how to find him.”

The Lord of Masks affected a shrug. “It is my business to know such things, great one.”

“And yet you have no word of Prince Alcadizzar,” the queen snapped. “How is that, my lord, after all these years?”

Ushoran paused, considering his reply with care. He’d escaped one snake pit and stumbled into another. “We will find him, great one,” he answered. “I’m sure of it.” He licked his lips. “With every passing day, I become more convinced that you are right, and he is somewhere close by. Just a… a few more interrogations and I am sure we will learn something of value.”

Suddenly, Neferata was at his side, her dark eyes peering hungrily into his own. Ushoran’s fists clenched reflexively; he smothered the instinct to bare his fangs at the queen’s wordless challenge.

“I am pleased to hear it,” Neferata growled. “Because my patience is wearing thin. I confess that it’s confounded me why your network of spies has been so successful in every other inquiry except the one that matters to me the most.”

Ushoran kept his voice under careful control. The slightest sense of nervousness was certain to be misinterpreted. “No one is more confounded by Alcadizzar’s disappearance than I, great one,” he said.

“I hope so. I hope the matter has your undivided attention,” the queen said. “Because if he isn’t found soon, you will come to envy W’soran’s fate.”

Later that night, as the hour of the wolf approached, the wind came howling in from the sea, tossing about the ships at anchor and rattling doors along the city streets. Lahmians crouched around their fires, many whispering prayers to Neru and ringing silver bells in hopes of keeping the unquiet spirits at bay. Strange sounds echoed from the darkness outside: angry mutterings and groans, frantic screams and the mocking laughter of jackals. Fingers scratched at the doors of wine shops and pleasure houses and tentative steps paced across the rooftops of many homes, as though searching for a way inside.

In the city’s vast necropolis, one spirit in particular woke in darkness, summoned across the wide gulf by a call he was powerless to deny. Bony hands twitched, scrabbling at the sides of a simple, stone casket. On the exterior of the casket’s lid, complex sigils carved into the stone and inlaid with silver started to glow with heat. Tendrils of steam curled from the protective wards as the will of the spirit contained within fought against its bonds. Within seconds, the silver inlay began to bubble and then drip in molten streams down the sides of the casket. There was a creak of tearing metal as the lead seal covering the seams of the lid slowly gave way, followed by a crash as the stone lid was hurled aside and broke into pieces on the mausoleum floor.

The figure within did not move at first, as though listening to the call that had summoned him out of the darkness. It was his master’s voice, commanding him to rise and serve, as he’d done in centuries past. Once upon a time, the thought would have filled him with dread; now, he felt only triumph and a sense of savage joy. If it meant a release from that endless plain and the wailing of the damned, he would serve Nagash gladly, and drown the world in nightmares.

Ligaments creaking the mouldy skeleton sat up in the casket. His robes hung about his bones in tatters, held in place more by layers of grimy cobwebs than anything else. Beetles and swift, brown spiders scuttled from burrows dug into the desiccated flesh of his ribcage as he gripped the edge of the casket and climbed his way out.

Standing amid the broken shards of the casket’s lid, the skeleton reached into the casket and drew out his skull. The few scraps of flesh that still clung to the bone were dark and curled like patches of old leather. Green fires guttered balefully in deep-set eye sockets and grave-mould clung to his blackened teeth. A stub of broken vertebrae hung stubbornly from the base of the skull, the lower knob sheared halfway through by a powerful sword-stroke.

Slowly, haltingly, the skeleton turned the skull about and lifted it onto its severed neck. The sheared ends gripped together at once, bound by sheer force of will. With a faint, grating sound, the head turned left and right, studying the cramped confines of the pauper’s tomb that he’d been sealed into. Bitter, ethereal laughter echoed in the dank space.

The figure bent, hands searching the darkness inside the casket once more. Finally, the fingers closed about a familiar hilt. The skeleton drew out a long double-edged iron sword, its surface spotted with rust and sheathed in layers of cobwebs, and growled in satisfaction. Then he turned his attention to the crypt’s narrow door.

On the third blow, the thin stone slab broke apart and fell to the ground. Arkhan the Black strode into the night air and raised his sword to the bale-moon gleaming above the western horizon. Then he turned his face to the north-west, where his master waited, and went to serve him.