—<THIRTY>—

All Is Dust

Khemri, the Living City, in the 110th year of Asaph the Beautiful
(-1151 Imperial Reckoning)

 

 

When the time had come, the last of the king’s household went into the great necropolis and sought out Alcadizzar in the tomb of his beloved wife.

“The darkness is coming,” the faithful servant said. His name was Sefm, and in better days, he had been an attendant in the royal stables. His linen robes had been carefully cleaned and his skin anointed with fragrant oil, so that his spirit would present a pleasing appearance when he went to join his ancestors in the lands of the dead. A vizier’s circlet of gold sat uneasily upon his narrow brow, and he carried a shield and spear in his trembling hands.

The king was clad in his armour of gold; his gleaming sword rested upon the stones at his feet. He knelt by the marble bier where Khalida’s body lay and held her cerement-wrapped hand in his. Hunger and grief had ravaged the king’s once powerful frame. Alcadizzar’s face was gaunt, eyes sunken and cheeks hollowed as though by a long and merciless fever. He had the look of a man who longed for the peace of the grave.

While the servant waited, the king rose slowly to his feet. Gently, he laid his wife’s hand upon the bier, and then bent to press his lips against the wrappings that covered her cheek. Dry lips rasped faintly against the cerements.

“Not much longer now,” he whispered to her. “Watch for me in the dusk.”

Then the king took up his sword and headed out into the dying light of day.

It was high summer and a chill wind was blowing from the east, carrying the dank scent of the grave. The sky from horizon to horizon roiled with thick, purple-black clouds, spreading implacably westwards towards Khemri. At that moment, the radiance of his golden armour made him seem somehow small in comparison to the vast darkness that was arrayed against him, but he stared up at the gathering clouds with a grim sense of anticipation. He had been waiting for this day ever since his beloved wife had gone.

As the wind began to howl amid the crowded tombs, Alcadizzar made his way south, through the necropolis and across the low hills that separated the city of the dead from the great trade road. It was there that the sons of Khemri had chosen to make their stand against the coming night.

There were perhaps a thousand men, all told, armed with everything from spears to farmers’ scythes. A few carried shields, but no more; it was unlikely that their gaunt frames could have borne the weight of armour in any case. Most were sick to one degree or another and the rest were beyond caring. Not a one of them expected to live out the day.

On the far side of the city, men and women with the strength to travel were still leaving the city, hoping to make it on foot all the way to Zandri, some two hundred leagues to the west. There had been rumours for weeks that ships were leaving with refugees, hoping to find safety in the far north. No one knew if the rumours were true, but a faint chance was better than no chance at all.

It was for the same reason that men clutched spear and axe and stood facing the darkness to the east. Every minute they stood and fought was a gift to those who sought succour in the west. It was little enough, they knew, but better that than nothing at all.

There were no cheers as the king and his servant arrived; no shaking of spears or clashing of shields. None of that mattered to Alcadizzar. It was enough that they had come to stand beside him, when all the others had fled. He stood before them, with the roiling darkness at his back, and lifted his sword to the sky.

“Woe to us that we have lived to see this day,” he said. “Our strength is spent, and our hearts are broken. Nehekhara is no more.”

The king’s voice carried clearly over the keening wind, and the men stirred from their reverie and listened. Some wept, knowing that the end had come.

“We go now into the dusk, where our ancestors await,” Alcadizzar said. “Let it be written in the Book of Ages that when the world ended and darkness swallowed the land, the men of Khemri did not falter. No, they went into the night with spears in their hands, fighting to the last.”

The wind rose, as though in reply, howling like the spirits of the damned. Alcadizzar felt the cold breath of the grave upon his neck. He turned, and saw a wall of shadow rushing towards him like a desert storm.

“To the last!” he cried once more and then the light failed, and darkness swallowed the world.

Within the veil of shadow, the howling of the wind was dulled to a muted roar. Alcadizzar could dimly hear the shouts of the men behind him. “Stand fast!” he cried, but he could not be sure if he was heard.

One moment stretched into another, as the wind roared, and the cold sank like knives into his skin. Faint points of light emerged out of the gloom; unblinking eyes of grave-light, glowing from sockets of bone. Ragged figures took shape, clad in scraps of armour and rotting cloth. They marched forwards in their thousands, clutching spears and cruel, tarnished blades.

The air above the undead seemed to shimmer. Moments later he heard the hiss of arrows flickering invisibly overhead. Men screamed in agony as they were struck; others cried out in terror and despair. Alcadizzar gripped his sword in both hands and shouted.

“For Khemri!” he cried, his voice muted by the shadows. “For Nehekhara!” And then he charged, hurling himself into the arms of death.

Alcadizzar’s sword made burning arcs in the darkness as he leapt at the army of the undead. He swept aside spear-points and hacked through armour and bone, severing arms and shattering ribcages. The skeletons he struck flared like banked coals for an instant and then collapsed lifelessly to the ground.

Onwards he went, driving deeper into the horde, not knowing or caring if his men followed him or not. He swung his blade wildly, connecting with two or three skeletons with every swing, waiting for the inevitable spear that would find a seam in his armour or pierce his exposed throat. But no such blow ever came. Indeed, not a single blow struck him at all. The skeletons recoiled from him as if afraid to strike him.

The king chased after them, slashing wildly. “Fight me, damn you!” he shouted at them. He hacked through a skeleton’s spear haft and severed its hand. “This is what you came for, isn’t it?”

He was growing weary now. His strength had fled him long ago, when his first son had died. Still he drove himself forwards, practically throwing himself upon the enemy’s spears. “What’s the matter?” he cried, his voice breaking. “Here I am! Kill me!”

But the enemy drew back from him, retreating away into the darkness as if in a dream. Alcadizzar screamed in despair, running after them, begging the spirits of the damned for release.

Suddenly, a tall, skeletal figure in bronze armour loomed out of the darkness, a black, double-edged sword in his hand. Cold radiated from the liche’s body in waves, leeching all the heat from the king’s wasted body.

Undaunted, Alcadizzar leapt at the liche, slashing at its torso. The undead monster blocked the stroke with ease, striking sparks from the flat of his iron blade. Shouting defiantly, Alcadizzar pressed his attack, chopping at the liche’s head and neck, but each blow was turned aside. With the last of his fading strength, the king lunged, thrusting the chisel point of his sword at the monster’s heart, but the liche was too fast for him. The iron blade swept down in a ringing parry that wrenched the glowing weapon from Alcadizzar’s hands.

Stunned, the king fell forwards, right into the liche’s grasp. A cold, armoured hand closed about his throat. Distantly, he could hear the screams of his men as they were overwhelmed by the undead.

The liche lifted Alcadizzar by the neck, until he could stare into the king’s face. A ghastly laugh hissed between the monster’s blackened teeth.

Alcadizzar struggled in the liche’s grip. “What are you waiting for?” he snarled. “Go on! Kill me, and be damned!”

“In time,” Arkhan agreed. “But not today, Alcadizzar of Khemri. My master wishes you to suffer a short while longer.”

 

They stripped the king of his gleaming armour and cast his treasured sword into the sands. His hands were bound in chains of bronze and he was given into the keeping of a dozen wights, who locked him inside an enclosed palanquin made of polished bone. The last he saw of Khemri, its streets were teeming with corpses, and the living were being dragged from their homes and slain.

The palanquin was borne on the shoulders of a dozen skeletons, which carried him east through a silent, empty land. Time lost all meaning within the sorcerous gloom; Alcadizzar drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to say for certain whether it had been weeks or months since he’d first been taken. From time to time the palanquin would stop; bony fingers would seize his jaw and pour a trickle of fiery liquid down his throat. He coughed and sputtered, but the skeletons did not relent until they’d gotten some of the potion down his throat. Whatever it was, it nourished him enough to keep his emaciated body alive.

On and on they carried him, past the charnel house that had once been Quatar, and on into the Valley of Kings. Past silent Mahrak they went, and along the trade road to fallen Lahmia. They carried him through the Cursed City’s broken gate and down to the docks, where once upon a time an old woman had told him of his fate and he’d chosen to hide from it instead.

The skeletons placed him on a ship of bone and took him north, up the narrow straits and into a dark and restless sea. In time, they beached upon a shore of broken stone and bore him across poisoned fields that reeked of burnt metal and bitter ash.

The further they went, the more that Alcadizzar felt the weight of an invisible presence studying him from the darkness. He could feel a malevolent intelligence scrutinising him, an implacable, hateful will that was both utterly alien and disturbingly human at the same time.

They passed through the gates of a vast fortress and into narrow lanes that led up the slopes of an ancient, desecrated mountain. Alcadizzar soon lost track of all the twists and turns that the skeletons took as they rose ever higher through the levels of the fortress. At one point they entered into an echoing, humid tunnel that led them deep into the heart of the mountain. Nagash’s awareness—for the malevolent presence could be nothing else—grew steadily more intense, until Alcadizzar’s nerves were raw with apprehension.

At last, when he thought he could stand it no more, he heard the groan of hinges and the grating of a pair of massive doors, and soon the hollow sound of skeletal feet marching down a long and echoing hall. Finally, the rocking movements ceased and he was lowered with a jarring thump that reverberated through the vaulted space beyond.

A key rattled in the palanquin’s lock. The sliding panel was drawn aside and bony hands dragged him from his months-long prison. Agony flared from his cramped joints, wrenching a bitter cry from his parched throat. Green light seared his eyes. He blinked, but no tears would come.

Alcadizzar struggled in his captors’ grip nonetheless. Without warning, they released him; his legs, weakened by captivity, betrayed him. He fell to the smooth, cold flagstones with a groan, shaking uncontrollably as his cramped muscles twisted into knots.

He lay there for an eternity, lost in suffering and shivering like a babe. And then a voice, jagged and rough like broken stone, sawed through his haze of pain.

“Behold the usurper,” said Nagash, the Undying King.

 

Nagash’s prisoner was a pathetic wreck of a man; a pallid, trembling skeleton clad in filthy linen wrappings. Metal grated on metal as the Undying King rose to his feet and descended the steps of the dais. Nagash reached out with a gauntleted hand and seized the mortal by the throat, lifting him from the floor as though he weighed no more than a bundle of twigs.

“You are the man who seized my throne and united the great cities against me?” Nagash twisted the human this way and that, studying him like a piece of meat. “I had expected better.”

With a disdainful hiss, he tossed the mortal aside. Alcadizzar collapsed to the floor with a strangled groan, his body curling back again into a foetal ball. The liche-king chuckled, savouring his foe’s pain.

“Alcadizzar of Khemri, lord of a dead land,” he declared. “Does the title please you? It was yours, in truth, from the moment you chose to defy me.”

Metal clattered softly as the Undying King clasped his gauntleted hands behind his back. He paced slow circles about Alcadizzar’s trembling body, eyes burning with malice.

“Nehekhara’s fate was sealed the moment I was betrayed at Mahrak, centuries before you were born,” Nagash told him. “Though they drove me into the wasteland, I prevailed. Alone, I built a new empire, with a single purpose in mind: to take my revenge upon the great cities, and to enslave their people until the end of time.”

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 vehicle 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.

Tears welled up in his eyes. “Khalida?” he whispered. He struggled to move, his hands slipping on the cell’s slimy floor. With an effort, he moved his head and tried to peer up into the face of the person beside him. The nimbus of white light made it difficult to see details, but he could make out the fall of dark hair and the slope of a woman’s shoulder.

Alcadizzar lifted a trembling hand, trying to touch her. At once, the apparition withdrew. With a despairing cry, he tried to follow, drawing his knees up beneath him and weakly pushing himself upright.

The apparition had retreated across the cell, until she stood next to the heavy wooden door. Alcadizzar tried to crawl over to her, but before he had the chance, there was the grating of metal as an ancient lock was turned and the cell door groaned open.

Two short, furtive creatures shuffled into the room, dragging a heavy, rectangular chest between them. They took no notice of the apparition whatsoever, focussing their beady eyes solely upon him. Alcadizzar blinked in the uncertain light, trying to make sense of the strange figures. They looked like two enormous rats, clad in filthy robes and walking upright like men. He looked to the apparition for guidance, but the indistinct figure only watched in silence.

The ratmen laid the chest on the floor of the cell and, with great trepidation, they set about breaking the seals that held it shut. They looked at one another uneasily, then without a word they drew back the lid of the box and took several quick steps backwards.

As the lid flew open, a terrible light filled the room—it was a kind of poisonous greenish-black, and gave off heat like the touch of sunlight. The terrible glow radiated from a weapon of sorts: a crude-looking single-edged sword with a curved blade and long hilt that would just barely take a pair of human hands. Strange runes had been etched along its length and it had been crafted out of a mottled, greenish-grey metal unlike anything Alcadizzar had seen before. It was also deadlier than anything he’d ever known. The sword radiated death. It was the kind of weapon that could kill a god.

Or an Undying King.

Alcadizzar’s eyes rose from the sword and regarded the apparition. He could not say why, but it seemed as though she was waiting for him.

And then he understood. She wanted him to take up the sword. Khalida was giving him a chance to make things right before it was too late.

With a deep breath, Alcadizzar reached into the chest. The hilt of the sword was hot to the touch and caused his hand to tingle painfully as he took hold of it and lifted the blade free. Heat, prickly and unpleasant, flooded his limbs, filling his muscles with strength.

Alcadizzar turned to the apparition. “I’m ready,” he said, accepting his fate at last.

The apparition slipped silently through the doorway. He followed after, determined to redeem himself in the eyes of his beloved.

 

Eekrit and Eshreegar watched the human race from the cell, sword in hand. They turned to one another with identical looks of surprise.

“Who was he talking to?” Eshreegar asked.

“Who knows?” Eekrit replied. “You saw his face. He’s mad as a white rat.”

“Do you think he knows where he’s going?” the Master of Treacheries said.

“We’d best follow along and make sure.”

 

Nagash lay shrouded in deep shadow, resting like a corpse upon his dark throne. The flames that normally wreathed his skull had been extinguished; his burning eyes had shrunken to cold sparks glowing from the depths of his eye sockets. His mind had slipped into a near trancelike state, pulled into millions of tiny fragments by the souls he’d bound to his will.

Already he was looking ahead to what he would do with the undead legions at his command. They would scour the land from north to south, killing every human, greenskin and rat-creature no matter where they tried to hide. Then he would turn his attentions to the east, and amuse himself with the destruction of the Silk Lands. When they were dead, he would continue eastwards, searching out the living and destroying them, until at last he came round again to Nagashizzar, and the entire world had been rendered as lifeless as a tomb. It might take a thousand years, or ten thousand. It mattered not to him.

As he brooded, a dim, white radiance took shape at the far end of the hall. At first, Nagash thought it was one of his wights, but as it came closer, he saw with surprise that it had the figure of a woman. The sight bemused him and he tried to focus his dulled senses upon it.

Slowly but surely, the image grew clearer. Details emerged. Dark hair, and pale skin. Eyes like polished emeralds, and the golden headdress of a queen.

Nagash tried to stir, but his limbs felt like lead. “Neferem,” he hissed.

The ancient Queen of Khemri drew nearer. She was not the withered husk that she had been when he’d sacrificed her at Mahrak, but the radiant beauty that he’d first seen on the day of his brother’s ascension. The sight of her sent a chill along his bones.

“You are bound to me once more,” the Undying King said. “Even now, your bones shamble across the desert to bow at my feet.”

Neferem reached the bottom of the dais and raised her chin defiantly. I have no bones for you to command, usurper, she said. They were burned to ash when you broke the sacred covenant at Mahrak. You have no power over me.

“Then I will bind your spirit instead,” he snarled. “I am like unto a god now. All of Nehekhara bows its head to me.”

To his surprise, Neferem smiled coldly and shook her head.

All but one.

And then the apparition vanished, scattering like smoke before the onrushing figure of Alcadizzar, last king of Khemri. Bellowing with rage, the mortal charged up the stone steps with a glowing sword in hand and brought it down upon Nagash’s skull.

Fear and rage galvanised the Undying King. At the last moment he brought up his arm to ward off the deadly blow, catching the sword against his armoured wrist. Instead of turning the blade aside however, there was a flash of searing green light, and the sword’s edge bit clean though metal and bone, severing the hand with one blow. It fell to the dais, its clawed fingers twitching spasmodically.

Nagash shrieked in agony. The fell blade’s power clawed at his bones. For the first time in ages, the spectre of death sent a chill down his spine.

Yet even in his weakened state, Nagash was not completely without power. As Alcadizzar drew back his sword for another blow, the Undying King raised his other hand and spat sulphurous words of power. Fearsome energies leapt from his fingertips, bathing the mortal’s body in jagged arcs of fire that would strip the flesh from his bones in an instant.

But the sorcerous bolts washed harmlessly over Alcadizzar, deflected by runes of protection forged into the glowing sword. Undaunted, he lunged forwards, shearing the blade through Nagash’s ribs and severing his spine.

Nagash screamed in pain and terror. The sword’s unnatural energies leached the very power from his bones. Already, he could feel his strength ebbing away. Cursing, he lunged forwards with his one remaining hand and seized Alcadizzar by the throat.

The mortal king struggled in Nagash’s grip. Blood flowed freely down his neck where Nagash’s claws bit deep into his skin. The Undying King put all of his remaining strength into his fingers, trying to crush Alcadizzar’s spine.

Alcadizzar’s knees began to buckle. His eyelids fluttered. But just when it seemed that he was about to fall, he raised his sword with the last of his failing strength and brought it down on Nagash’s arm. The fell blade sliced through the armour, severing the arm at the elbow—then a backhand stroke slashed across Nagash’s neck, severing his head.

A hideous, rending scream echoed through the hall. The last thing Nagash saw, as the fires faded from his eyes, was the ghostly apparition of Neferem standing at the foot of the dais. Her smile was terrible to behold.

Darkness waits, she said.

 

Nagash’s death reverberated through the aether like the tolling of a broken bell. The power of his ritual shattered, sending shockwaves through the legions of the dead. Thousands of corpses collapsed to the earth, their spirits drawn back once more across the veil of death. These were the souls of those who had died during the days of the plague and the bloodshed afterwards, who had been buried without the customary rituals of the mortuary cult.

The rest ground slowly to a halt, no longer at the mercy of Nagash’s implacable summons. They had been restored to the living world, and now were free to act as they pleased.

The great tomb kings reined in their golden chariots and surveyed the empty land around them. Their burning gaze fell upon the legions of the dead. Without hesitation, the corpses bowed before their masters, responding to ancient loyalties that had guided them in life.

Some kings commanded more loyalty than others. The strong eyed the weak and ancient ambitions once more occupied their thoughts.

Skeletal hands gripped tarnished khopeshes and raised them to the baleful moon. Bone horns wailed as the tomb kings went to war.

 

Metal rang on metal, striking fat, green sparks as Alcadizzar hacked at Nagash’s still form. The burning fell blade hacked through the Undying King’s armour, tearing the ancient skeleton to pieces and hacking up the wooden throne beneath.

Finally, his body spent, Alcadizzar stumbled back a step and looked upon the carnage he’d wrought. His hands were numb and tingling from the awful energy of the sword, as though its power had seeped into his body like poison. Repelled by its corrupting touch, Alcadizzar let the blade tumble from his hand.

“It’s done,” he gasped. “Thank the gods, it’s done.” He looked about, searching for the apparition. “Khalida?” he called. “Beloved? Where are you?”

He had to find her. He had to show her what he’d done. More than anything, he needed her to forgive him. Alcadizzar cast about looking for something he could show her, to convince her that he’d made things right. His gaze fell upon Nagash’s grinning skull.

Alcadizzar bent and tore the jagged metal crown from Nagash’s skull. Gripping it to his chest, he turned and staggered from the dais. The blade’s poison was working its way through his body, killing him from within.

“Khalida!” he called mournfully. “Forgive me. Please.” Clutching the crown of the Undying King, Alcadizzar staggered from the great hall.