Josh Reynolds - Neferata

The voice was like a shiver of ice-water down her back. The voice — the damned voice! It had all begun to go wrong when she had first heard its whisper so many years before. And every decade, it grew louder and more insistent, like a maggot burrowing into her very brain. Its whispers had become demanding screams since her return from Nagashizzar, and now she could barely focus on anything else. ‘I will… I will forgive you, this time,’ she said, forcing herself to calm down. She stepped back, vision blurring as if her head were surrounded by a halo of flies.

It had all gone wrong in her absence, despite Naaima’s best intentions. Someone had told Vorag that Ushoran had decided to rid himself of his more barbarous servants in an effort to quell the unrest that swept Mourkain and Strigos. Creatures like Zandor and Gashnag had turned on their fellows. Several of the frontier ajals had seen their holdings burned or taken, and those who did not flee were impaled in the ashes of their lairs. Vorag had made his move, fearing he would have no other time. Stregga had gone with him. Sometimes Neferata cursed the initiative of her followers.

Now Strigoi fought Strigoi in the east and the wildling tribes had seized their opportunity. Savage hillmen attacked the outposts of Strigos and what forces had not been mobilised to fight Vorag now waged war on their former allies.

‘We should leave. Tonight,’ Naaima said, rising warily to her feet. ‘We’ll seek sanctuary with the Draesca. Or we could find Vorag. We could even go north, or west. Leave these mountains forever.’

‘I’m tired of running,’ Neferata said, not looking at her handmaiden. She clenched her hands and her claws extended like a cat’s. ‘I am tired of going poor into the night. It is the same game, over and over again, Naaima.’ She growled. ‘I want a new game.’ She looked at her servant, the only being she could still, perhaps, call friend. ‘Would you leave me again?’

‘No,’ Naaima said, after a moment of hesitation. ‘No, for better or worse, our fates are bound together.’

‘I’ve told you, there is no fate,’ Neferata said.

‘Prove it,’ Naaima retorted. ‘Let us leave.’

Neferata opened her mouth to reply, but no sound came out. She closed her mouth and turned, stalking towards the throne room of the black pyramid. After what seemed like an eternity, she heard Naaima begin to follow her.

The others were waiting for them in the audience chamber. Layla and Rasha and Anmar stood to the side, across from Ushoran’s honour guard, who were at last allowed into the pyramid with their master. And in a half-circle before the open aperture that led down to Alcadizzar’s tomb stood W’soran and his disciples, including Morath.

No others were in attendance, not even Ushoran’s inner circle. Likely they were too busy trying to decide who to back in the civil war now brewing. Neferata’s agents had made sure that it wouldn’t be an easy choice. Most would sit on the fence until one side or the other looked to be victorious, and then they would make their move to curry favour.

It was all perfect. Ushoran, alone, save for a few guards, with her knife at his throat. W’soran would stay out of it. The old beast despised them both equally, and he had flee the first chance he got, if Morath was to be believed. No matter, she could always find him again, if she needed him.

‘Ah, now the circle is complete,’ Ushoran said as he spotted her. He smiled thinly at her. ‘I trust I did not call you away from anything important?’

‘Nothing that can’t wait,’ Neferata said. ‘I am honoured that you invited me to — what is this? — your coronation? And with so few in attendance…’

‘Jealousy ill becomes you,’ Ushoran said.

‘And condescension, you,’ Neferata said. ‘Vorag marches east. He has supporters there, on the frontier.’

‘And Abhorash marches in pursuit?’

‘As you requested,’ Neferata said. ‘It wouldn’t do to have him here. Not for this.’

Ushoran made a face. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You did well.’

‘Your gratitude fills me with joy,’ Neferata said.

Ushoran snorted as he watched W’soran and his disciples prepare themselves for the rite. ‘I doubt that. Still, let it never be said that I cannot acknowledge the wit and worth of another.’

‘Oh, I’ve never said that,’ Neferata murmured. ‘The war with the tribes goes badly, my spies tell me.’

Ushoran grunted. ‘We are too few. But not for long.’

‘And what if Vorag defeats Abhorash? This civil war may become a less than foregone conclusion,’ Neferata said, not looking at him. ‘There are too many nobles straddling both sides. They will turn on us, Ushoran.’

‘Are you trying to upset me?’ Ushoran hissed. He glared at her. ‘Or are you simply so spiteful that you would seek to cast a shadow over this moment?’

‘Neither,’ Neferata said, meeting his glare calmly. ‘I am merely doing what you have tasked me with. I am informing you of the threats which besiege this straw empire you have built.’

‘Oh?’ Ushoran’s expression turned cunning. He gestured sharply. Khaled stepped forwards, carrying something wrapped in a bloodstained cloth. With a start, Neferata realised that it was a cloak. A dwarf cloak.

Ushoran was watching her face. ‘If you were so intent on informing me of threats to my rule, I cannot help but wonder why you neglected to mention that our stunted neighbours have been scurrying about in our pantry.’

Khaled pulled back the edge of the cloak, revealing a bloodstained axe; Razek’s axe, she realised in shock. Khaled did not meet Neferata’s eyes as she glared at him. ‘I did not want to worry you,’ she said. ‘I trust that you dealt with the trespassers?’

‘Oh yes,’ Ushoran said grinning. He traced the scrolling rune-work on the blade of the axe, wincing slightly. Neferata had never noticed before, but the runes were worked into the steel in threads of silver. ‘I dealt with them myself. I have not hunted in some time. Sometimes I wonder whether my current laws regarding such are as wise as I am assured that they are.’

‘We shall have to come up with some sort of explanation for the dawi,’ Neferata said, momentarily nonplussed. Razek was dead. Some part of her felt as if she had been cheated. She looked at Ushoran. ‘If they are aware of what he was—’

‘Then you will deal with it,’ Ushoran said, still watching her. ‘Won’t you?’

Neferata paused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘W’soran has said that the dawi work just as diligently and as well dead as they do alive. I think he exaggerates, but, well… he is the expert.’ Ushoran’s lips peeled back from the nest of fangs that inhabited his mouth. ‘Imagine it, my lady. The Silver Pinnacle, working day and night in the darkness, crafting arms and armour for the glory of Strigos and all for the price of a bit of blood.’ He snapped his fingers in front of her face. ‘We will be as invincible in war as we are in matters of life and death.’ He tapped the axe again. ‘And this will be our last payment to our allies, I think. After all, what need have the dead of gold?’

As plans went, Neferata could see the efficiency of it. It was also mad. And Ushoran was mad for suggesting it. She could see an unhinged hunger in his eyes. He had always been a slave to his hungers, even as they all were.

The forges of the dawi of the Silver Pinnacle will ring in the darkness unto eternity and the dead will sheathe their bones in iron and march against sunrise and sunset alike, the voice purred. It showed her the dead, crawling across the earth like black ants, sheathed in metal, burying everything under their iron limbs, and she was reminded of scarab beetles crawling across a corpse and stripping it of all flesh. The world would be a gleaming, silent tomb.