Josh Reynolds - Neferata

Pride was her curse. It always had been. She had too much of it, too much to see the obvious, at times. And she had paid for it again and again. That too she hadn’t seen. Not for what it was.

Ushoran had made her bow.

That thought rattled around in her head as she waited. She grimly forced it down, and then it would stubbornly shoot to the surface, taunting her like a splinter beneath her thumbnail.

He had forced her to her knees. He had forced her to swear allegiance to Strigos, to Mourkain, and to him. He had forced them all, though some had gone more willingly than others. Some of it was the crown’s influence. That was what Morath had tried to warn her of, what W’soran had been terrified of. Nagash’s night-black will made manifest. It was impossible to resist.

That was the only reason she still lived. It stuck in her craw, that thought, but even she wasn’t so blind as to pretend it was any other way. She had bowed and Ushoran had let her live. She was more useful alive than dead. Abhorash was still occupied in the south. Vorag and his rebels had fled towards the Sour Sea, and her former champion doggedly pursued them. W’soran too was gone, fleeing in the months after Ushoran’s ascension. Neferata suspected that the old monster was heading south as well, seeking Vorag’s protection. That was what she would have done in his place.

That was what she should have done.

Instead, she was here, kneeling in the snow. Her features rippled with a snarl. The cat stiffened and nuzzled her throat, purring softly. She stroked it and fought to control the beast within. There were too many eyes on her and too much depending on her. Her web was stretched thin and fragile and one false move, one moment’s surrender would render it so much ragged gossamer on the wind.

Ushoran’s power had increased, but not his wisdom. He had unleashed her to do his will, but his will only reached so far. The farther she had gone from Mourkain, the less it had pressed upon her. Now it was barely a feather’s weight. Now, she stood before a fortress, with an army, and Ushoran was in Mourkain, confident that he had her held tight in his claws. She closed her eyes.

She would not fail.

And she would not bow again.

On the third day, she heard the squeal of ancient machinery propelled to life and a loose curtain of snow fell as the great doors of the Silver Pinnacle began to swing open. Raising the axe, she strode forwards, the cat once more about her shoulders, the soft rumble of its purr damping the impatience she felt. The momentum of the doors had cleared a great swathe of snow from the path, leaving the ground bare and damp.

There was more magic awaiting her. It was worked into the welcoming sigils that marked the interior archway and as she passed beneath them, they caused Neferata’s flesh to prickle. The magic struck at the heart of what she was, circling and trapping her in a ring of unseen fire. It took an effort of will not to slap at her flesh and beat out the invisible flames. On her shoulders, the cat shuddered slightly.

She took hold of herself as the dwarfs came out to meet her, clad in light mail and some carrying high poles with flickering lanterns which threw mad shadows across the rocks and snow. She stood in their light, axe extended, her other hand resting on the pommel of the sword on her hip. Other dwarfs carried crossbows, their bolts aimed unerringly at her.

‘ Zanguzaz ,’ one spat. That meant blood-drinker. Apparently her agents hadn’t managed to hide certain facts from Razek as well as she had thought. It was another failure to set at Khaled’s door when this was done. She inclined her head.

‘What of it?’ she said, meeting their hostile gazes with a bland one. ‘I have come to return the ancestral weapon of the Silverfoot clan.’ She let them see the axe.

‘Where is the one who bore it?’ one of the dwarfs barked. She could tell by the decorations in his beard that he was in charge. He bore a resemblance to Razek — he was a brother, perhaps, or more likely a cousin. It mattered little to her. Sympathy was no longer a vice she could afford.

‘Dead,’ she said simply.

The dwarf closed his eyes, as if the thought pained him. When he opened them, the banal hostility of the watchman had been replaced by something else. For a moment, Neferata thought he might order his warriors to fire, but instead he simply turned and gestured sharply. ‘Come.’

The others fell in around her as she was led through the doors. Even as she passed through the archway the doors began to swing shut. She peered up into the gloom, spotting the ancient mechanisms responsible. Massive cogs and gears, the purpose of which escaped her, shifted and spun against one another, setting up a rumble that caused the stone floor beneath her feet to vibrate with a constant hum. She grunted. The cat stretched, yawning. It dropped to the floor silently and retreated into the gloom. If the dwarfs saw, they gave no sign. Their attentions were held with iron rigidity on Neferata, even as she had known they would be. They had not asked for her weapons, for what threat could one woman — even one who drank blood — be to a mighty hold?

The entry hall was massive, with vast fluted galleries that swept up into smooth balconies that looked as if they had been coaxed from the stone by the hands of a sculptor rather than a stonemason. Tiles lined the floors, each one a work of art in and of itself, depicting an act of heroism or courage by a member of the Silverfoot clan. Large ancestor statues, representing past generations of kings, thanes, and lords of the Silver Pinnacle, lined the walls, each ensconced in his own nook.

Glowing globes, containing luminescent liquid, hung from stone half-arches spaced evenly along the length of the hall, casting a soft glow across everything. At the other end of the hall was a second set of great doors. These were another defence measure, sealing off the remainder of the Upper Deep from invasion. She knew both from her conversations with Razek and from her own spies over the centuries that the hold had many entrances — not just the one she had come through. There were doors everywhere on this level and others, some hidden, some not.

Regardless of the size of the attackers’ force, there was no way to lay siege to a dwarf hold. A mountain could no more be surrounded than it could be levelled by conventional means. It must be inundated and worn down from within as well as without. Both could take years.

She had months.

The weight of the hold seemed to press down on her as they walked. The thunder of the guards’ heartbeats was like some harsh, strange music to her ears, and its tempo aroused a nervousness in her that she was not used to. It was like being close to the beating heart of the world itself, and she desired nothing more than to drive her fangs into it and drink the earth’s life away and to leave the rocks grey and barren and the soil cracked and dry. She wanted to drink the world’s lifeblood and leave it a husk.

Her knuckles popped as her hands clenched. One of the dwarfs eyed her and exuded the stink of nervousness. That wasn’t her thinking those thoughts. It was Nagash’s damnable crown. Nagash wanted to eat the world and ride its shell into the darkness between the stars, for an eternity of silence. And Ushoran would help him do it, if there was anything of Ushoran left.

The crown’s weight had crushed him the minute he placed it upon his brow. It had shattered his personality into fragments, breaking him the way a man might break a horse. And it had nearly done the same to her. It wanted to break everything. It wanted to render the world a vast charnel pit, peopled only by the dead. And she would be damned to oblivion before she let that happen.

The world was hers; every scrap of dirt, every peasant and lord, human or otherwise. It was hers and Nagash — or his shade — would never have it. She would burn it to ashes before she let that happen. She had lost her city and her empire. She would not lose the world.