Текст книги "Neferata"

Автор книги: Josh Reynolds

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Josh Reynolds
Neferata

Prologue

The Silver Pinnacle

(–15 Imperial Reckoning)

Bones rubbed softly together within tattered scraps of armour as the skeletal sentries shifted aside their spears. Eyes burning with witch-fire, Arkhan the Black examined them for a moment, and then stepped through the archway, one fleshless hand resting on the pommel of his sword.

The place had belonged to the dwarfs once, and it showed in the design of the thing, though modifications had been made since. The majestic sturdiness of dwarf stone was consumed by the sumptuous decadence of lost Nehekhara. Draperies of Cathayan silk softened the stern arches of the corridor, as tile murals from Sartosa obscured the stones of the ceiling and fumes of exotic incense spilled into the halls from quiet alcoves. The statues of long-forgotten gods from dead lands squeezed into the spaces once reserved for the mighty stone forms of Valaya, Grimnir and Grungni, their marble eyes watching Arkhan’s progress.

Dead men hovered along the path, toiling ceaselessly at labours that were beneath Arkhan’s notice. Somewhere behind him, the vast doors of the hold crashed shut, causing the smooth rock of the path beneath his feet to tremble. From the outside, one would not even know that this place existed, unless one was familiar with the rune-markings of its former masters. In days long gone, the dwarfs had boasted of their dominion of these mountains and the gates would have been not only visible, but impressively so. But the dwarfs were no longer the masters here, and the hold’s new mistress had a predilection for secrecy.

She had purged the routes and signs leading to this place in the intervening centuries since she had taken the throne. None knew the secret ways and means of Silver Pinnacle now, save those whom the hold’s dark queen wished to know.

How Nagash had known was up for debate, given the circumstances. Gone were the days of shared counsel between Arkhan and his master. Dim though it was, the single guttering spark of humanity that remained to Arkhan – that made him who he was – served only to illuminate the rift between him and what Nagash had become in his time in the deep dark. Arkhan, fleshless as he was and driven by dark magic, was terrified of the nightmare thing that his lord had returned as: all brass bone and balefire, the Great Necromancer was a force unto himself, self-wrought and self-empowered, owing nothing to anyone or anything.

Nagash had sent him here to acquire the fealty of this place’s mistress and her vassals, a task Arkhan was uniquely suited for, considering the connection between them. Or so Nagash had claimed. In truth, Arkhan thought it was because Nagash did not trust him. Not that he had any reason to. Arkhan had served Nagash well and faithfully for a stretch of time longer than his mortal life and had been rewarded with annihilation time and again.

In the thousand years since Nagash had last walked the land, Arkhan had tasted again the joys of independence. He chafed now beneath Nagash’s thumb, and he spun plots to free himself; all had failed, of course, or had never been implemented. Nagash was too strong and too in need of a lieutenant to let Arkhan return to Nehekhara and his conquests in the land of bones and dust.

Until such time as Nagash freed him, was destroyed, or was victorious, Arkhan the Black would serve him, however unwillingly.

The great stone gallery with its walls adorned by more murals and colourful tapestries from the lands of the Bretonni extended far ahead of him. It was lit by specially constructed hooded braziers whose light set the shadows to dancing on the walls in shapes pleasing to the inhabitants.

Dark, low shapes prowled in the dark corners and alcoves, mewling softly amongst themselves in the debased tongue of the flesh-eaters. Above, clinging to the high ceiling like a living carpet of hairy flesh, were thousands of bats who watched Arkhan’s progress and added their chittering to the background murmur of the ghouls’ mewling. Arkhan ignored them all and moved steadily towards the raised dais at the end of the gallery.

The broad-boned skeletons of the citadel’s former inhabitants waited for him there. They were arrayed in ranks before the dais, armoured and armed as they had been in life. Arkhan was not intimidated, but even so, the skeletal dwarfs gave him pause. His fingers tightened on the hilt of the black blade sheathed on his hip.

Perhaps it was a trap. He would not have put it past her. She would not bow her head to any creature, not even Nagash. The thought was a surprisingly pleasant one, and if he had still possessed the capacity to do so, Arkhan would have smiled. Instead, he simply stopped before the dais and its fearsome guardians and waited for the mistress of the mountain to receive him. As he waited, he studied the dais.

It sat at the apex of a set of circular steps that ringed around it, and was surmounted by great curtains of soft, dark silk that flowed down from somewhere far above like a black waterfall. Soft light lit the curtains from within, and the smell of strange spices and incense hung heavy on the air, hiding the stink of old blood that clung to the stones of the gallery. There was a cat as black as the shadows that clustered about the chamber lying on the steps, its yellow gaze fixed on him. As he waited, it rose languidly to its feet and trotted up the stairs and through the dark curtains.

There was a whisper of steel on the air and then a colony of dark shapes dropped from the bat-crowded ceiling of the gallery. Arkhan swept his sword from its sheath just in time to meet the downward stroke of a slim, curved blade. The liche stepped back, armour creaking, as more blades dug for his skull. He parried each blow with inhuman speed, ancient reflexes honed in countless battles carrying him through the tornado of steel that had descended on him.

Whispering voices reached him, sliding innocuously through the gallery inbetween the riotous meeting of swords. An audience of red-eyed courtiers had gathered in the balconies above, and they watched with ill-concealed delight as the liche defended himself.

He had expected a dozen perhaps or maybe twice that, at most. But there were hundreds of pale, hungry shapes looking down on him. Mostly women, but some men, scattered here and there. They were of all the races of man and none, bound as they were to a new, darker bloodline. Here was the army Nagash had sent him for: not the skeletons or the crouched, snivelling carrion-eaters, but this plague of nocturnal nobility.

They were as far removed from the vampires he remembered as he was from the gambler he had been centuries ago. Hundreds of red-eyed, blood-swilling predators, to be set upon the human who dared call himself emperor and who dared keep that which was Nagash’s from him.

His attackers were red-eyed shadows, clad in dark jerkins and hoods. They moved with a fluid ease that part of him fondly recalled and envied. It was the ease of immortality, the suppleness that came with being separate from the world’s ebb and flow and time’s anchor. They danced around him like leaves in a strong wind, bending and twisting bonelessly around his half-hearted blows.

They made precise, lethal movements that would have killed a lesser being in a matter of moments. The gallery rang to the sound of steel on steel and agitated bats filled the air as Arkhan’s mind raced. Was this indeed a trap? Or was it something more subtle… A test, or perhaps a game?

Arkhan caught a descending blade in his hand. Magically strengthened bone contracted and the sword blade cracked and shattered like an icicle. Its wielder blinked stupidly for a moment before leaping backwards to avoid Arkhan’s own sword. The black blade hissed out, narrowly missing the vampire’s midsection.

Another blade hammered down onto his shoulder. Arkhan barely registered the blow. The weapons were nothing more than common steel, and little danger to one as steeped in the raw essence of dark magic as he. They might as well have been hitting him with flowers. There was no need to even call upon his magics, save in the interest of cutting to the chase.

It was a game, then. He knew better than most how boredom crept up unawares and inexorably on the long-lived. Had it been her idea? Perhaps… She had been spiteful in life. There was no telling how much worse death had made her.

After all, look what it had done to him.

He stepped back, easily avoiding a blow that would have taken his head off, and lowered his sword. The vampires advanced cautiously. Arkhan flung out his free hand. Eldritch energies crackled, first in his palm and then beginning to crawl across his bony fingers. The vampires stopped.

‘Enough,’ a voice said. The curtains were swept aside by pale arms as a yellow-eyed woman looked down at Arkhan for a moment before indicating that he should approach. Arkhan closed his fingers and let his hand drop to his side. The vampires slunk aside and he stepped past them, sheathing his sword as he went.

‘You are either courageous or foolhardy to attack a representative of the Great Necromancer,’ he said, letting his words carry. ‘Nagash does not forgive such insults.’ The whispering and chittering of the things in the shadows and on the balconies ceased at the mention of the name. The skeletal guard stepped aside in a rattle of bones and armour.

Arkhan started up the steps. The woman stepped aside, her robes swishing softly. She eyed him narrowly, the dark veins that ran beneath her pale flesh pulsing. Her lips curled, revealing delicate fangs. ‘She has been expecting you,’ she said softly.

‘Has she?’ Arkhan said. Looking at her, he recognised her dimly. One of the first of her mistress’s get, turned back in those distant, happy days before Nehekhara had gone to dust. He didn’t recall her name, only that she was a Cathayan, and had been a concubine, once.

‘Or a messenger, at least,’ the vampire said, shrugging.

‘Should I be insulted?’ Arkhan said.

‘I thought you were dead,’ a new voice said, from the throne at the centre of the dais, and the words held a familiar teasing note.

Arkhan bowed his head to the figure on the throne. ‘I was,’ he said, his voice issuing from between his bony jaws like a spurt of smoke. The words hung on the air for a moment, echoing oddly.

‘Yes… Several times over, I imagine,’ the Queen of the Silver Pinnacle said, leaning forwards on her throne as he stepped inside. She gestured lazily to the woman. ‘Leave us, Naaima.’

The vampire nodded and stepped past the curtains, letting them fall closed behind her. Arkhan looked at the creature that reclined regally in the throne, and the dim ghosts of ancient emotion stirred sluggishly. ‘Neferata…’ he said. She was still as beautiful as he recalled, though that beauty no longer evoked the same desire. Even if it had, he no longer possessed the means to express it.

As pale and as cold as marble, her aristocratic features had sharpened from their former softness into something altogether more predatory. If Arkhan had been alive, he would have felt terror mingled with his desire, for Neferata of Lahmia was ruin in the flesh. Eyes like polished onyx stared unblinking at him and her great mass of night-black hair had been bound in thick serpentine plaits that coiled about her shoulders and across her décolletage. Despite the chill of the tomb, she wore nothing save a thin silk dress akin to the type she had worn when he had first seen her, so long ago. Golden armlets clung to her arms, and there were fine rings on her fingers and visible on her toes within her sandals; a belt of the finest wrought gold hugged her waist.

‘Arkhan,’ Neferata said. She gazed at him coolly, studying his emaciated shape with detachment. ‘You are less than you once were.’

‘As are you,’ Arkhan said, gesturing to the stone floor. Neferata’s eyes became slits, but Arkhan continued, ‘You have gone from ruling a nation to hiding in a tomb.’

‘Hardly,’ Neferata countered, leaning back. ‘It is a fortress, dear Arkhan. My fortress.’ She smiled. ‘But it could be a tomb, depending on what message you came here to deliver.’

There was no sign as to whether the threat had registered save for the briefest flicker of Arkhan’s eerie gaze. ‘Nagash sends his regards,’ he said.

Neferata paused. There was no trace of the fear that the Great Necromancer’s name had once engendered in the one-time Queen of Lahmia. Instead there was simply wariness. ‘I was not aware that Nagash walked among us once more,’ she said.

‘I have lost my flesh, Neferata, not my senses,’ Arkhan grated, his sword hilt creaking in his grip. ‘You knew the day he awoke, as I did.’

‘Maybe not the day,’ she said, smiling thinly. ‘Have you rejoined him?’

It was Arkhan’s turn to hesitate. ‘Of course,’ he said.

‘Why?’ There was no malice in the question, only simple curiosity.

‘Why did you set your dogs on me?’ he countered.

She chuckled. ‘To see what was left of you,’ she said. ‘To see whether you were merely a husk animated by Nagash’s will, or something more…’

‘I should have thought Bel Aliad would have taught you better,’ Arkhan said.

‘Oceans of time, dear Arkhan, have passed over that moment,’ Neferata said, idly examining her fingers. ‘Things – people – change, even those like ourselves who are, by definition, changeless.’

‘So I see.’

‘What does Nagash want?’ she said.

‘What he always wants: servants.’ Arkhan said it flatly. There would be no lying to Neferata. She was too cunning for that and Arkhan had little reason to hedge. ‘Vampire servants,’ he added.

‘I would have thought his experiences with poor, unfortunate W’soran would have taught him better than that,’ she said.

Arkhan made a grinding sound. W’soran had been a greedy fool, and Arkhan had paid for the vampire’s overconfidence more than once during the war against Alcadizzar. ‘I tried to find the sorcerer. He stole something of Nagash’s and fled in the last days of Nagashizzar.’

‘He’s dead,’ Neferata said bluntly, ‘and good riddance to him, the fool.’ She sighed and met Arkhan’s eerie gaze unflinchingly. ‘Servants, is it?’

He inclined his head. She snorted. ‘And I am supposed to – what? – throw open my gates and yield my divine right to his majesty, the King of Bones?’

‘If not, I am to take it by force,’ Arkhan said.

‘Do you think you could?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

Neferata rose smoothly from her throne and pressed her hands to his chest. Her fingers rose, tracing the contours of his skull with delicate caresses. ‘Oh, my sweet, savage Arkhan… You would, wouldn’t you?’

‘As swiftly and as surely as I destroyed Bel Aliad.’

She made a pouting expression and sniffed. ‘Yes. And wasn’t that a terrible waste.’

‘For you,’ he said.

‘For both of us,’ she said.

‘The dead can never rule the living, Neferata. They can only destroy them,’ Arkhan said, in a tone of one who has no wish to re-hash an old argument. She snorted and a slip of laughter escaped her.

‘Yes, I know,’ she said.

Arkhan paused. ‘You have changed, then…’ he said. Bony fingertips brushed a strand of dark hair out of her face. Her own hand came up instantly and swatted his aside. The fingers of her other hand pressed deep into the metal of his ancient cuirass and suddenly he was flying backwards, out through the curtains and down the stairs.

Arkhan picked himself up slowly as Neferata stepped through the curtains, his sword in her hand. Automatically he glanced at his now-empty sheath and then up as she sprang towards him, aiming a blow at his skull. Arkhan twisted desperately, avoiding the strike. The sword crashed into the stone, cracking it. Neferata whipped the blade up and around with a skill he had not known that she possessed, nearly taking his head off as he bent back beneath the blow.

He backed away, raising his hands. She hissed, exposing inch-long fangs. Her form blurred as she moved, faster than the human eye could see. Fortunately, Arkhan was no longer human. He slapped aside the blade and wrapped his fingers around her throat. She dropped his sword and suddenly a panther was raking its hind-claws across his torso. Surprised, he released the creature. Neferata resumed her shape and her blow caught him in the chest, rocking him back.

Magic crackled on the tips of his fingers. Nagash had taught him those first halting, clumsy spells but in the centuries since, Arkhan had become a sorcerer in his own right. Death and the loss of flesh had done remarkable things for his concentration. Neferata hesitated, a smile curling at the edges of her lips.

Snarls and shrieks suddenly echoed from every corner of the gallery. Vampires flung themselves at the liche. Pale fists and hooked talons tore at him and Arkhan spat hoarse syllables as he unleashed his magics. A vampire screeched as it was engulfed in black fire and reduced to a charred skeleton. He swept his arms out, creating a wall of flame between him and them, driving the creatures back in a spitting, hissing mass. But not all of the creatures retreated; through the flames came a black, feline shape, yellow-eyed and snarling.

The cat smashed into him, its claws raking his mouldy clothes and scraping bone. As he grabbed for it, its shape expanded, lengthening and stretching with a sound like butchery in reverse, until the vampire called Naaima was gripping his skull between two deceptively powerful palms. He felt his skull flex in her grip and prepared to flense the meat from her bones with a word. But, as suddenly as she had attacked, the vampire was again a cat, which eeled out of his clutches and padded away. Arkhan spun. Neferata lay sprawled on the steps, watching him as the cat climbed into her arms.

‘Impressive,’ Neferata said, stroking the cat. She quirked an eyebrow mockingly as he stalked towards her. A dim flicker of anger pulsed through him, but quickly faded. He relaxed, letting the threads of magic he had bound to him unravel.

‘Was that another test of my worth?’ he grated, gesturing to his sword where it lay on the floor. It shuddered and shot towards his hand. He sheathed it with a flourish. Neferata clapped.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It was a reminder of your place.’

Arkhan said nothing, waiting for her to continue. She sniffed. ‘This is my place of power, liche. Not yours and certainly not Nagash’s. He is old and brittle and not what he once was—’

‘He is more,’ Arkhan interjected.

Neferata paused. ‘Perhaps… The fact remains, he holds no power here.’

‘He will not accept that,’ Arkhan said, looming over her. Neferata gazed up at him, unconcerned.

‘He will have to,’ she said, rising, still holding the cat. ‘Neferata serves no man, whether he’s dead or alive.’

‘He will command you, as he commands me,’ Arkhan said, his eyes blazing. ‘You will have no choice…’

‘I have defied Nagash’s will before,’ Neferata said. ‘I have defied and defeated his servants and I will do so again to hold on to what is mine.’

Arkhan stood silently, watching her. Then, in a whisper, he said, ‘Tell me…’

ONE

Lahmia, the City of the Dawn

(–1170 Imperial Reckoning)

Lahmia burned and Neferata ran.

Quicker than thought, with no more weight than a shadow, she ran, and the city died around her, one street at a time. Black smoke weighed down the air and hungry flames crawled across the stone and clay and thatch. There was an ache in her chest, though whether it was from the destruction of all that she had built or the dagger that had so recently been thrust into her heart by Alcadizzar she couldn’t say.

Behind her, hooves thundered suddenly in pursuit. She heard the calls of the riders; they thought her easy sport, one more lost woman in a fallen city. One more woman to be served as always happened when cities fell. Pale lips skinned back, revealing teeth like razors, and dark eyes flashed. Rage, sudden and overwhelming, hammered at her temples, and she skidded to a stop, dust and smoke curling around her slender frame.

Clad in ragged silks and ruined armour, she spun to face the riders, fingers hooked like the talons of a lioness and her jaws wide, her fangs flashing in the light of the fires that curled and crackled around her. The lead horseman jerked back on his reins, his eyes widening in surprise. There were three more behind him, clamouring for a share of the spoils.

Then, in a whip-crack of startled air, she was moving. She swung low, letting a spear skid over her shoulder. It scored a trail of sparks across the back-plate of her iron cuirass as she drove her shoulder into the horse’s chest. It bugled in surprise and reared, hooves gouging the air. Snarling, Neferata sliced open the animal’s exposed belly with her claws. The horse screamed and toppled, carrying its rider with it. The man’s screams joined those of his mount as he was crushed beneath its weight, but Neferata didn’t stay to listen.

One foot on the dying animal’s thrashing hindquarter was enough to propel her into the air. She swam through the smoke, piercing it like a stone from a sling. Her hands and feet caressed the long skull of the next horse as her weight broke its neck and knocked it down. The rider drew the curved blade at his side as the animal fell and her palm caught him in the jaw. Bone splintered and burst at her touch and he catapulted backwards as she snatched the sword from his hand.

A spear skipped across her pale cheek, releasing a trickle of black, sour blood, and she shrieked, battering the weapon aside with her new sword. She twisted and spun as the horseman charged past her, and caught the blade of his companion’s spear as it dipped for her belly. She wrenched it and its wielder from the saddle and slammed him to the ground. Stamping on his throat, she yanked the spear from his grip and sent it slicing through the air towards the remaining horseman.

His horse bucked and kicked as it fled past her, back the way it had come, dragging the body of its rider behind it. Neferata touched the wound on her cheek. It was already closing. Hunger flared through her, causing her vision to dim and redden at the edges.

She was tired. And hungry as well; she hadn’t fed in what felt like days. Behind her, she heard the jangling rattle-call of a ram’s horn and the stomp of marching feet. The riders hadn’t been alone. She looked at the sword in her hand and her grip tightened. She had time. They were not so close that they could catch her. She could escape.

Or she could fight them. She could fight all of them. They would never find her, never catch her. She could kill them all, one by one, until they fled the city. She closed her eyes, imagining it. Then she snorted and shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I couldn’t could I?’ Not alone at least. Alone, she was nothing more than a monster. The word pricked her like a hornet’s sting and she growled. No, she needed to flee. To rebuild and regain what she had lost here, somewhere else.

A moan caught her attention. She swayed towards the first horseman she had downed. The animal was dead, but its rider lived, albeit crushed. He groaned and shoved at the beast feebly. One arm was pinned beneath the horse’s weight, and his face was turning purple. Something in him had been broken, she knew. She could smell it rising off him like the sweet tang of roasted pork.

Neferata stabbed the sword down into the ground and sank into a crouch. The rider’s eyes bulged as she crawled slowly across the horse’s body towards him, her eyes gleaming like twin black suns. She drank in the rank musk of his fear as she reached for him, the tips of her fingers caressing his cheeks and chin. He was barely more than a boy.

Hunger spiked and her grip tightened. He squealed as she jerked his head to the side and exposed his pulsing throat. Neferata laughed as she buried her fangs into the sweetness of him. The tang of his blood filled her nostrils, inundating her senses…

The Worlds Edge Mountains

(–800 Imperial Reckoning)

The dream-recollection evaporated, taking with it the memory of heat and blood. Its remnants were brushed aside by something cold and dark that reached out of the shadowy place between waking and sleeping for her. It was malevolence carried on musty wings of alien intent. There was a sound like crows on a battlefield in the dusk and a harsh whining moan that seemed to echo from everywhere and nowhere.

She saw the Corpse Geometries – though she did not know how she knew their name – rise and expand across the soul of everything, caging the rebellious ka and keeping them safe and bound from outer predation. All was silent. All was perfect.

Come, Neferata… Come, Queen of Lahmia!

Cold talons clutched at her, seeking to draw her back down into the dark of sleep. The foul taste of grave-soil filled her mouth and a voice like needles scoring bone spoke, scratching a litany of cold fire across her mind.

Neferata awoke.

Her eyes opened and she grunted. Gone was the sensation of being dragged down into unknown depths, replaced by the sting of cold and the gnawing ache of the bloodthirst. Whiteness filled her vision, gleaming in the moonlight. She rose to her feet, scattering the blanket of snow that had covered her and protected her from the harsh light of day. She wore white furs and her hair was bound back in a single thick plait that tumbled down her back like a glossy black serpent.

Neferata had not changed much since the fall of Lahmia. Indeed, change was now almost anathema to her. Her every fibre yearned for constancy, for the world to cease its inexorable march. But she had learned to her cost that to attempt to hold time frozen was to court destruction.

That was one of the reasons that things had ended as they had in Lahmia.

For a moment, she indulged in her memories, letting the illusion of peace drift across her mind. She could see the white stone of Lahmia’s walls and feel the cool sea-breeze rolling in off the harbour. She could smell the exotic smells and hear the clamour of the Red Silk District, where men of a dozen nations revelled between voyages. She could hear the soft music of the celebrations held for the good and the great in the District of the Golden Lotus. She could taste the strong eastern wine which was poured into clay cups that held stubbornly to all of the tastes that had gone before. She could feel the pleasure-pain of the hixa’s sting.

The City of the Dawn had been the greatest and most beautiful of the cities of Nehekhara, guided by wise, undying kings into a golden age. She had been of an age, in life, to recall when kings lived for centuries before infirmity set in. Her own span had been measured in decades before Arkhan the Black had come to Lahmia. She had been the Daughter of Moon, then, and queen. For many before her, the latter had been, at best, a ceremonial title. The Queens of Lahmia were supposed to be removed from the mundane matter of politics, but Neferata had been a different sort of queen. The king had been, at best, an erratic ruler and much of the burden of governing Lahmia day-to-day had fallen on her slim shoulders. It had been a burden she relished.

Arkhan had come in chains, with his heart cleft in two. Paralysed and trapped inside his form, Arkhan the Black had been dragged into Lahmia in the Hour of the Dead by Lamashizzar, her king and husband. The last of Nagash’s immortals and the only one to survive that final, bloody war that saw the Great Necromancer flee into sour northern lands, much like the ones she now found herself in.

Lamashizzar had desired to rip the immortal’s secrets from him by force and he had succeeded, to a degree. She looked down at her hand, noting the black veins that crawled beneath the pale skin. But she had learned so much more. And when that knowledge had threatened to destroy her, Arkhan had saved her life, though he knew it not.

She thought of the immortal, his lean face swimming to the surface of her mind. He had not been quite handsome, but arresting nonetheless. The image wavered and dispersed, leaving a skull in its place. Change took them all, in the end. Arkhan was no longer the being he had been. She thought of when she had last seen him, in the burning streets of Bel Aliad. A walking corpse, clad in black armour and red robes, dealing death with every step he took.

Arkhan’s declaration of war on the living had been one of many things which had necessitated her abandonment of the caliphates for the primitive lands of the savage north. She looked around.

Trees surrounded her, clawing arthritically at the dark sky. Winter in the mountains was an ugly thing, she thought. Then, winter was ugly everywhere, but perhaps especially here, in these rough, wild hills, beneath the ghostly light of the black sun. Neferata turned north, her eyes searching.

The black sun was still there, as it had been every day and night for close to a decade now. It was not the real sun. Instead, it was more like an afterimage, a blotch of darker-than-dark, burned into the skin of the world. It rose at night in mockery of the moon and burned black over the mountains. Neferata felt the cold fire of its rays as it hung bloated and hungry for light below the moon, like some abominable beacon, drawing her towards it. At first, she had tried to resist. In Sartosa, it had been easy. She could ignore its subtle caress across the surface of her soul. But here and now, there was no escape.

It plucked at her thoughts, infiltrating them. In her dreams, she felt its gaze and in her waking moments it blazed at her from its northern nest. It called, and Neferata came. No matter how much she might wish otherwise. No one else could see it. It called to her and her alone, though she could not say why; it was a distant whisper that drifted just at the edge of her hearing, as annoying in its way as an incessant shout.

Angered, she looked south, towards Nehekhara, and a pang clawed at her chest. She reached beneath the heavy white furs she wore and let her fingertips drift over the spot where Alcadizzar’s dagger had entered her flesh, seeking her heart. There was no scar there to mar her marble flesh, but she could still feel the traitor’s blade.