02 - Nagash the Unbroken (36 page)

Lahmia, the City of the Dawn, in the 96th year of Ptra the
Glorious

(-1350 Imperial Reckoning)

By day, Neferata slept, yet she did not dream. Instead, the sounds of the
great city washed over her, filling her mind with fragments of mortal life that
existed beyond the cold palace walls.

Sailors shouted bawdy boasts to whores walking the city docks, or sang songs
of foreign shores while they made their ships ready for another long journey at
sea. Servants gossiped in the market squares, or haggled over the price of
melons or grain. Beggars called out to passers-by, pleading for a copper or a
crust of bread. A tavern-keeper opened his doors with a muttered prayer for a
good day’s custom.

Lovers argued over an imagined slight. A thief jeered at the city guard as he
made good his escape. A young mother sang a lullaby for her baby. An old man
wept softly, mourning the wife he’d lost the year before.

She awoke at sunset, in the utter darkness of her bedchamber, her legs
tangled in silken sheets. Her limbs were stiff and cold. Thirst tightened her
throat. No matter how much she drank the night before, the thirst was always
with her when she woke.

The faintest sounds of movement came from beyond her bedchamber door.
Neferata swiftly wiped the tears from her cheeks as her attendants swept into
the room to prepare her for the long night ahead.

Lamplight filled the room as the women went about their tasks with swift and
silent precision. They were all priestesses of the highest order in the
secretive Lahmian Cult: orphans raised within the precincts of the former
Women’s Palace and trained to serve the sacred bloodline of Asaph, as manifested
in the person of the queen. Only the cult’s inner circle knew the true nature of
the living goddess whom they served, but by that point their hearts and minds
belonged to Neferata alone. The initiates of the cult wore robes of purest
samite and masks of fine, beaten gold, wrought in the image of Asaph herself.

She waited as the priestesses laid out her robes and drew open the heavy,
bronze shutters that covered the windows and shielded her from the sun. A sea
breeze stirred the curtains, caressing her icy skin, and she heard the distant
murmur of waves. The riot of voices in the city below faded to a dull roar, not
unlike the sound of the restless surf.

A priestess knelt by the side of her bed, her masked face carefully downcast.
The mask she wore had been modelled on Neferata’s own face, and wrought with
exacting detail. With both hands she offered a golden goblet brimming with
blood.

“For you, holy one,” she intoned in a hollow voice. “An offer of love, and
life eternal.”

Neferata took the goblet from the priestess and held it to her breast,
savouring its warmth. The thirst grew suddenly, painfully sharp; her hand
tightened on the metal rim, and she became horribly aware of the curved fangs
pressing against her lower gums. As she did each night, she forced herself to
remain still and calm until the feral impulse subsided. Slowly, deliberately,
she raised the goblet to her lips and drained it in a single draught. Not one
precious drop escaped her lips.

When she was done, she handed the vessel back to the priestess. The ritual
would be repeated again at midnight, and once more just before dawn.
Bloodletting in small amounts was a central tenet of the Lahmian Cult; from the
lowliest acolyte to the most senior priestesses, each initiate surrendered a
small portion each night as part of rituals intended to bring them closer to the
goddess.

The cult had been a clever scheme on the part of W’soran, who envisioned it
as both a cover for their predations and a safe haven from which to continue
their rule over the city. Under Neferata’s leadership it had also become a
useful political tool as well, lending the Lahmian throne a degree of divine
authority that the other Nehekharan cities lacked. The cult boasted a single,
grand temple, converted from the Women’s Palace during the latter days of
Neferata’s official reign. The temple’s inner sanctum, a small complex of
buildings in its own right, encompassed her private apartments and the palace’s
old central garden and still retained the opulence of its former existence.
Nagash’s tomes were kept in an arcane laboratory inside the sanctum, its doors
sealed by physical and magical locks that only Neferata and W’soran together
could open.

Fresh strength flowed through Neferata’s limbs and lent her a small measure
of warmth. She rose from the bed and spread her arms, allowing the priestesses
to dress her. They garbed her in the raiment of an empress: robes of the finest
Eastern silk, in layers of saffron, crimson and sapphire, embroidered with gold
and silver thread and hundreds of tiny pearls. A girdle of fine, hammered gold
was draped about her hips, its plates inset with dark, polished rubies. Deft
hands slid precious bracelets onto her wrists, and a necklace made of heavy,
gold links was fastened about her neck.

When the priestesses had completed the elaborate costume, they led her to the
dressing table and bade her sit. Jewelled slippers were placed on her feet, and
her eyes were darkened with kohl. All the while, Neferata stared out the open
windows, listening to the sea. The steady whisper of the deeps soothed her mind
as almost nothing else could.

As the priestesses worked, another pale figure slipped silently into the room
and sat gracefully upon the edge of Neferata’s bed. She was slim and delicate of
feature, like the porcelain dolls from the land of her birth, and favoured
elegant silk robes cut in the Eastern style. Her raven-black hair was swept up
behind her head, held there with golden pins and a comb of polished jade. It
drew attention to her slender neck, and emphasised her artful, elegant sense of
poise.

Everything about her was carefully crafted, from the precise angles her hands
made as they rested in her lap, to the patient, composed tilt of her pointed
chin. She had been a courtesan once, expensively educated and trained from early
childhood to be a companion to princes and emperors. Her purpose had been to
moderate the baser appetites of noble men and elevate their public appearance
with her refined manner. She had been an ornament, like a jewelled songbird that
hovered about the shoulders of the wealthy and powerful. In those days, she
hadn’t even had a proper name. To her master, Prince Xian, she had simply been
known as White Orchid. Neferata called her Naaima, and in her court she wanted
for nothing.

The priestesses finished their work and withdrew as silently as they’d come.
As they left, Naaima rose from the bed and went to her mistress. She ran slender
fingers through Neferata’s long hair, deftly teasing out the tangles, and then
chose a silver-backed brush from the table.

“You called out in your sleep,” Naaima said softly, in the oddly lilting
tongue of the Silk Lands. She drew the brush through Neferata’s hair in long,
smooth strokes.

Naaima slept in a luxurious bedchamber just across the corridor from
Neferata’s own. Centuries ago, when Neferata had persuaded her to take the
poisoned cup, she had kept Naaima as close to her as she could, often taking
comfort in the former courtesan’s embrace while she slept. It did not last,
however. As time wore on, Neferata felt only the coldness of Naaima’s embrace,
the deathly stillness of her body as she slept. There was no comfort to the
found in the embrace of the dead.

The question irritated her. “Perhaps I was dreaming,” Neferata said coldly.
Even after two hundred years, the language of the easterners felt strange on her
tongue. “Do you always listen to me while I sleep?”

“Sometimes,” Naaima replied, ignoring the brittle edge in Neferata’s voice.
She was silent for a time as she finished her brushing, then gathered up a
handful of golden pins. As she drew back Neferata’s long hair she said, “It
sounded as though you were calling to a hawk.”

Neferata’s body betrayed nothing. The pain was still sharp, even now, like a
needle in her heart. The passage of years wore away the softer emotions first,
she’d learned, while the harder, crueller ones endured.

“You must be mistaken,” she managed to say. “I know nothing of hawks.
Falconry never held any interest for me.”

“Of course,” Naaima replied smoothly. She did not pursue the matter any
further. When she was finished with Neferata’s hair, she went to the wooden box
that sat on a pedestal in one corner of the room. Opening it, she drew out
Neferata’s golden mask. The delicate metal of the mask bore the weight of
centuries upon its cold face. She studied it for a moment, frowning slightly.
“You should have a crown,” she said. “You deserve better than this.”

“The crown is for the Queen of Lahmia,” Neferata replied. “I am merely its
ruler.” She beckoned to Naaima. “Bring it here. I have work to do.”

She forced herself to hold still as Naaima slipped the mask onto her face.
Every time she felt the touch of metal against her cheeks she was reminded of
her own funeral. It reminded her now of nothing but death and loss. When it was
in place she rose without a word and made her way from the chamber. Naaima fell
into step a precise six paces behind her; the habits of a lifetime and were
nearly impossible to overcome, and only became more so in the unlife that
followed.

The corridors of the inner sanctum were funereal in their stillness. There
were never more than three hundred acolytes and initiates of the cult at any one
time, and they were swallowed up whole by the vast size of the temple complex.
Neferata walked in silence down the dimly lit passageways, then across the broad
expanse of the former palace garden. The trees and tall ferns grew wild and
untended now, and many of the rare flowers had died without the care of the
gardeners. Bats circled overhead, darting and dancing in the moonlight. She
listened to their strange, almost plaintive cries, as she did every night, and
wondered who or what it was they were calling for.

They crossed the wild garden, and then entered another set of silent, echoing
chambers on the far side. Moments later they arrived at a pair of bronze doors,
attended by silent, masked priestesses. Ubaid waited beside them. Though he
still looked as young as the day he’d tasted Lamashizzar’s elixir, his back was
hunched and his hands trembled like that of an old man. His eyes were round and
bright like polished glass. As Neferata approached, he managed a clumsy bow.

“The court awaits, holy one,” he said in a ragged voice. The former grand
vizier sounded as though his inner workings had been crushed to pieces, then
carelessly reassembled.

Neferata ignored him. With a curt nod, the priestesses pulled open the doors.
Warm, yellow light poured over her as she crossed the threshold into the
audience chamber. The blocks of polished sandstone and the lacquered wooden
screens of the Hall of Reverent Contemplation had been dismantled and rebuilt
within the inner sanctum when the Women’s Palace had been renovated. She knew
she would no longer have any need for the vast, echoing court chamber that she’d
presided from in the palace proper, and she’d thought the familiar surroundings
would be a comfort in the ages to come. How little she had known.

She climbed the back of the dais and stepped around the tall, wooden throne.
It was the one concession to her ego that she’d allowed when she surrendered her
crown. A vast fortune had been spent to hire a small expedition to scour the
southern jungles for a match to the wood that had been used for the original
throne, and a still greater sum paid to find and commission an artisan skilled
enough to shape it into an exact copy of the original. The whole process had
taken almost as long as the construction of the temple itself. Neferata had
never gotten around to asking Lord Ushoran what had become of the artisan
afterward. Certainly no one ever found the body.

Neferata settled gracefully into the ancient chair and surveyed the audience
chamber. Lord Ankhat stood closest to the dais, attended by a pair of enthralled
retainers burdened with stacks of ledgers and bundles of scrolls. Lord Ushoran
waited at a careful remove from Ankhat, his expression distant as he meditated
on his intrigues. This evening W’soran was present as well, accompanied by an
enthralled young scribe who was busily copying down his master’s muttered
dictation. As always, Lord Zurhas lingered furthest from the throne, his arms
folded tightly across his chest and a look on his face that said he would rather
be gambling away his fortune in some squalid dice house.

Each one bore the marks of unlife in their own, unique way. Lord Ankhat, was,
if anything, more lordly in mien than before, possessing a dominating presence
that nearly rivalled her own. Ushoran, on the other hand, was just the opposite.
He seemed more changeable, more chimerical than before. There were times that
Neferata was certain his features looked subtly different from one moment to the
next. Unfortunately for Lord Zurhas, his features were entirely fixed. Neferata
couldn’t help but think he turned more craven and rodent-like with each passing
year.

Then there was W’soran. The old scholar had been the first to ask Neferata to
drink from the poisoned cup, and since rising from his deathbed he had grown
even more gaunt and skeletal than before. Now, centuries later, he was a hideous
creature, more resembling a walking corpse than a man. The very sight of him
filled her with dread. For the longest time, she was afraid that some error in
the ritual had caused his transformation, and that he secretly hated her for it.
But Lord Ushoran insisted that W’soran was actually
pleased
with what
he’d become.

When she was seated, Naaima glided soundlessly around the dais and took her
place at Neferata’s right, head bowed and hands clasped at her waist. Moments
later, Ubaid shuffled around to Neferata’s left and cleared his gravelly throat.