‘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.
She shook her head and Ushoran cocked his, looking at her curiously. ‘You disagree?’
‘I… no, no, it is a good plan,’ she said, forcing the words out. ‘I look forward to it.’
‘Do you? I wonder,’ Ushoran said, turning back to the ceremony. ‘Now shush. History’s epilogue begins now.’
Stung, Neferata stepped back and joined her handmaidens. Naaima laid a hand on her arm and Neferata shook her off. Naaima looked afraid; it was the first time that Neferata had seen fear in her handmaiden’s face since before Lahmia fell. Layla was trembling like a child or a frightened animal, her eyes red and wide. Rasha was less obviously affected, but there were signs of strain on her face and in the rigidity of her muscles. It was no longer just her. Something was stirring in the dark, and even lesser creatures could sense it. Her senses were screaming in terror. The throne room seemed to contract. Someone was sitting on the throne. For a moment, the shape was lean and immense, a rickety giant clad in armour such as she had never seen, with a crown on its skeletal brow and eyes of green balefire that burned her clear through.
She shook her head and the vision passed. She looked at Anmar. ‘What is your fool brother playing at? I told him that Ushoran was to know nothing of the dwarfs until I decided to tell him!’
‘My lady, I—’
‘Don’t try and protect him, girl,’ Neferata said, grabbing Anmar’s arm. ‘What is he up to?’
Before Anmar could answer, W’soran and his followers began to speak, one after the other, their voices blending in dark harmony. The light of the braziers scattered about flickered and then blazed all the brighter, turning from a clean pale glow to something sickly and weird as the words echoed from the oddly vaulted reaches of the chamber.
Neferata stiffened as something reached out of the darkness of the tomb-corridor and caressed her. The chamber seemed to tremble with titan footsteps and the rock groaned and shifted. Smoke issued from the cracks in the walls and the floor and she could feel a heat pressing down on her from every direction, just as before.
Alcadizzar was coming.
W’soran spat something, and he flung out one gnarled limb. A weft of crackling onyx lightning stretched from his hand, splashing across the aperture. His disciples threw back their heads as W’soran pulled more power from them. Neferata blinked as she caught sight of what might have been obsidian webs spreading between the necromancer’s acolytes and binding them all together. Her blood began to race as she sensed something coming. She looked around, seeing the same intent expression on the face of every vampire in the chamber — a feral lust that stripped from them even the most basic shred of human dignity and instead replaced it with the bald greed of a starving animal.
When the light came, it was painful. A curling wing of flame lashed out of the aperture, spattering across the line of necromancers, and one screamed, high and piteous, as his ragged robes caught fire. He tumbled from the line, thrashing and beating at himself with stick arms and wispy fingers. The flames simply consumed him all the faster for his attempts to put them out. He crawled across the floor, leaving a greasy trail in his wake, his flesh blistering from his bones.
‘He comes!’ Morath screamed suddenly. Neferata saw the Strigoi stagger, their hands clapping to their ears. A moment later she understood why. The voice screamed, rattling her brains inside her head. It was not the voice of the crown, not the thin whisper of Nagash’s shadow, but the full-throated howl of the Prince of Rasetra and the last true King of Khemri as he was dragged from his tomb by W’soran’s magics. There was nothing of her gentle prince in the mad, billowing shape which lurched from the aperture, its limbs ballooning and thinning like the smoke of a raging fire. It roared and its face became an elephantine skull as it squeezed itself into the chamber.
‘Bind him, damn you!’ Ushoran roared, fighting to be heard over the tumult. ‘Bind his damned soul, W’soran! Do it now!’
W’soran did not reply. His dark parchment-like flesh had gone utterly pale from the strain of the great wreaking which he was attempting. The spirit swept one of Ushoran’s warriors up and the vampire flailed like a leaf caught in an updraft. It was crushed against the ceiling of the chamber, reduced to a wreck of bloody meat and crushed armour. Alcadizzar turned, empty eyes seeking more prey. Neferata froze as his eyes lit on her. Her handmaidens dived aside as the spirit swept towards them, but she could not move. She heard them crying out, but she could not answer.