‘The minds of ghouls are as the minds of men. They seek strong leaders,’ Neferata said. The ghouls began to flow back into their holes in pairs and groups. A number stayed with them, as if to act as escort, a fact which Morath confirmed.
‘They will show us the secret ways into Nagashizzar. But it is dangerous in the deeps. There are creatures there that even the ghouls fear,’ Morath said as they followed the capering cannibals. ‘Rat-things, such as W’soran once spoke of.’
Neferata nodded. She had heard similar stories in Cathay and then again in Araby; of chittering red-eyed shadows and stealthy paws in the dark. She had thought it a fable. But now, looking up at the crude walls of Nagashizzar where it sprouted from the mountain’s peak, she could believe it. Where else would rats congregate, save in a warren such as this? This close to the fortress of the Great Necromancer, she could feel the evil that infected rock and soil. It sank greedy claws into her mind, and she felt a strange invigoration, similar to that which she felt when entering Kadon’s pyramid in Mourkain.
The ghouls led them up the slope and into the warrens that honeycombed Cripple Peak. As they entered the foul-smelling hole, Neferata realised that Nagashizzar was very likely sitting atop a molehill. The trip through the cramped and crude ghoul-tunnels was tortuous and did nothing to improve her first impression. The creatures had clawed them from the very stuff of the mountains and they wound in seemingly no particular direction. Nonetheless, the ghouls led them unerringly on and they walked for hours, deeper into the darkness.
Here and there as they made their way through the tunnels they saw what remained of its structure and the delving of its former inhabitants. There had been more than ghouls in Nagashizzar once, and not all of the human tribes that Nagash had conquered had degenerated into the debased wretches guiding them. Some had simply died. There were heaps of bone — some gnawed and some not — clustered in corners and in nooks and alcoves, like offerings to some vast charnel god. Not Mordig, though, not here. No, the only god here was Nagash, and the ghouls prayed to him in the dark.
There were ghoul-women in the tunnels they travelled through, and squalling pups as well. They hissed and shied away as the males moved ahead, snarling and snapping, keeping the others away from their ‘guests’. There was no sign of what they had once been in their behaviour or appearance. ‘Is this our fate?’ Morath muttered.
‘What was that, necromancer?’ Neferata said.
‘These creatures were once men,’ Morath said, gesturing to a cowering carrion-eater. ‘Five or ten generations ago, they might have been the same as my own people. And now they are — what? They are nothing but cannibal beasts.’
‘One cannot live in the bowels of death for so long without developing a taste for it,’ Neferata said with a shrug.
‘Is it inevitable, then?’ Morath spat. ‘Will the Strigoi become cowering apes, hiding in the dark and gnawing bones?’ He glared at the vampires. ‘Is that what awaits us—’ Morath stopped as the tunnel blossomed into an uneven chamber. Strange lights seemed to move through the rock and, his rage forgotten, he dug his fingers into the soft, ashy rock, revealing something that wept a toxic green smoke. His hand trembled as he examined the stuff that rested on his palm. ‘This is…’ he hissed. ‘I didn’t believe… not really.’
‘What is that foulness?’ Layla whispered, her nose wrinkling.
‘The stuff which nightmares are made of,’ Morath said, letting it hiss through his fingers to the floor. ‘It’s called abn-i-khat. Nagash devoured it; it sustained and consumed him.’ He looked at the ghouls. ‘And likely these poor creatures as well,’ he said.
‘Much like magics in general,’ Neferata murmured, her flesh crawling as she took in the shimmering veins of the weirdly glowing ore. Morath looked at her.
‘Maybe, but it is a price some of us willingly pay,’ he said.
‘Yes, yes, so much the martyr,’ Neferata said, peering into one of the dark tunnels. She sniffed the air as she spoke. ‘You have sacrificed much for your people. And you think I have not?’
‘You consumed your people,’ Morath said quietly. ‘And now you would consume mine.’
Neferata spun with a snarl, her lips writhing back from her razor-teeth. ‘What did you say?’
‘You heard me, leech,’ Morath said, his pale features growing even paler. The ghouls began to whine and moan as Neferata stalked towards the necromancer. ‘You and Ushoran and W’soran and even Abhorash, you are leeches, battening on the blood of the Strigoi. You are twisting us, the way W’soran twists flesh and bone, making us over in your damnable images!’ He swept out an arm to indicate the ghouls. ‘And you won’t succeed. That is the saddest thing. You will simply make us into beasts like these!’
Trembling with anger, covered in dried blood, Neferata reached for Morath’s head. Her talons scraped almost gently against his cheeks. ‘You are lucky I need you, Morath. You are lucky that I do not see fit to tell W’soran of your part in my investigations into his schemes.’
‘You think he doesn’t know? Do you think my mind is proof against his sorceries?’ Morath said, and in his eyes, Neferata saw the truth of his words. She could see W’soran’s dark sorceries squatting in his student’s mind and soul like some ugly spider. She had expected it, but to see it so plainly was startling. The old monster lacked subtlety.
She dropped her hands. ‘What else does he know?’
Morath chuckled hoarsely. ‘What makes you think he talks to me? If you are unique from your fellow monsters in any fashion, Neferata, it is in that you speak openly to your servants.’
‘Servants hear everything anyway,’ Neferata said, turning away. There was a sound in the darkness, of quiet steps on the shifting strata of the mountain. The ghouls were agitated. Morath barked something and they began to lope into the darkness, leading their ‘guests’ on. He looked at Neferata.
‘We are wasting time. There are other scavengers in the dark than just ghouls and they are stirring. We should go. These tunnels are too dangerous to linger in for long.’
‘The ghouls seem safe enough,’ Rasha said.
‘What makes you think that?’ Morath said bitterly. ‘They are hunted for sport here, even as in Mourkain.’ He glared at the vampires, as if blaming them for that fact. Which, Neferata supposed, he did.
They left the stinking warren and its eerie glow behind. The ghouls led them up through the winding tunnels, and often Neferata’s keen ears caught the quiet scuttling of something that was moving near them, perhaps just on the other side of the walls. After what could only have been a number of miles, the crude tunnels gave way to what, she judged, had once been mine-works.
Vast wooden bracers held up the mine-tunnels, lending them a sense of stability that the more cramped ghoul warrens lacked. There were more piles of bones here, these mostly not gnawed or otherwise disturbed and surprisingly anatomically complete. ‘Nagash’s miners,’ Morath murmured. There were hundreds of them, lying where they had dropped when Nagash had been destroyed.
‘There are more dead here than in the entirety of the world,’ Layla whispered.
The quality of the air had changed as well. There was a verminous smell to things now, a sort of musk that clung to the ancient support timbers and the bones that littered the sides of the tunnel. There were strange marks that glowed faintly on the walls. Neferata touched one and felt a tingle in her fingers. She grunted as she realised that some of the green stone had been used like chalk here, but as to the nature of the mark she couldn’t say. It was unlike any writing she had ever seen.