The great doors of Karaz Bryn rose over her, looming bulwarks of stone and ancient metal fashioned by the artisans of a dying race and controlled by mechanisms which mankind would still struggle to understand a thousand years hence. The doors were set into a massive archway that had been decorated with an intricate latticework of carvings that might have depicted anything from legends to episodes of historical significance. The doors themselves were decorated as well, with a profusion of glowering, stylised faces done in the sharp, blocky style preferred by dwarf artisans.
There was a faint glow to those faces and it was one she knew would be invisible to human eyes. Even she could only glimpse it dimly. There was some magic worked into the very substance of those doors, and it bothered her to look at them for too long.
Even with the snow, her preternatural eyesight picked out the tiny holes where dwarf eyes watched her approach. She could almost hear their thoughts. And she certainly heard the whine of crossbows being readied. She stopped. Her muscles tensed and readied to propel her in one direction or another. Her hold on the axe tightened. The dwarfs had quietly moved to a war-footing in the year since Ushoran had taken Nagash’s crown for his own. Trade had not quite dried up, but it was more guarded. Fewer merchants came bearing King Borri’s seal. Fewer dwarf-made goods found their way to Mourkain. Even as she had warned Ushoran, the trust of dwarfs was a fragile thing and easily cracked. And she was here now to shatter what remained utterly.
‘I request entrance to Karaz Bryn,’ she called out, her voice echoing. Minutes passed. Snow settled on her shoulders and head. The cat chirped querulously, and she murmured soft nothings to it.
‘Who are you to ask such?’ It was a rumble of sound, echoing from the peaks that rose around her and sending small avalanches of snow tumbling from on high. Speaking tubes and amplifying flutes gave it such an effect, she knew. Nonetheless, it was impressive.
The voice spoke in Khazalid. Neferata replied in kind. ‘One who has come to return something which was lost,’ she shouted, holding the axe up to where the unseen speaker could see the runic insignia stamped on the swell of the blade.
Silence fell. She waited. Minutes passed into hours. Hours passed into days. The cat leapt down from her shoulders and trotted into the darkness, returning some hours later, as if checking on her. She could not fault it for its anxiety. Neferata stood for a time, and then sank to her knees, kneeling in the snow, Razek’s axe in her lap. The cold was nothing to her, nor was the snow. It was nothing but an irritation. It was simply another indignity heaped upon the pile.
Ushoran had beaten her.
He had beaten her at her own game. Even as she had undermined him, he had worked a deeper game, breaking apart the bonds of loyalty that she thought unbreakable. She blinked a snowflake from her eye. No, he had not broken it. He had twisted it instead, turning devotion and desire into something altogether more vicious.
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.’