Master of Death Read online

  It is a Time of Legends.

  Nagash the Usurper is dead, but his last revenge has devastated the once-mighty kingdoms of Nehekhara. As the city-states turn to dust and their kings moulder in their graves awaiting their promised rebirth, a new power rises.

  Before the fall, in the city of Lahmia, Queen Neferata and her inner circle learned the secrets of eternal life from Nagash’s unholy tomes, becoming the first of a brand new race – the vampires. Thirsty for blood and power in equal measure, each of these powerful creatures pursues their own goals with single-minded fervour.

  Neferata, proud and vain, seeks to re-establish her empire and once again reign as queen. W’Soran, master of the magical arts, desires power over life and death.

  Abhorash, a warrior born, battles to slake his bloodthirst and regain his lost honour.

  But for all their plots and schemes, the vampires are nothing more than pawns in another, much larger, game – Nagash’s influence weighs heavily upon all those of his blood, and one day, he will return...

  PROLOGUE

  The Worlds Edge Mountains,

  (Year -223 Imperial Calendar)

  W’soran awoke slowly, reluctantly. Eyelids as thin as parchment peeled back from dull orbs – one a grisly yellow, the other milky white and blind – even as thin, desiccated lips retreated from the thicket of needle fangs that occupied his mouth. The twin leathery slashes that were his nostrils flared, taking in the air instinctively. He smelled the effluvium of age, the cold, harsh stink of rock and the faintest odour of long-ago spilled blood.

  The latter brought memories scrambling to the surface of his mind. This place had, once upon a time, belonged to a particularly tenacious mountain tribe: hairy savages who had, nonetheless, managed to wrest some form of civilised dwelling from the mountains. They had built a fastness on a fang-like crag, piling stones upon ancient foundations that W’soran suspected had once belonged to one of the elder races. It had been an impressive feat, given their relative brutishness.

  W’soran had butchered the lot in a single night, glutting himself on their blood in an uncharacteristic display of excess. The memory of it, of their screams and cries, of the taste of their rough throats, warmed him. His narrow chest expanded like a pig’s bladder filled with water as he sucked in the phantom scent, luxuriating in the thought.

  With it came more memories, shaken loose from a stagnant brain. Names, faces, events flowed thinly at first and then came in a flood, a deluge, crashing and smashing through the cobwebs that clung to W’soran’s mind. He remembered his name, his purpose, his fate and more besides.

  He remembered Mahrak, the City of Hope, and how he had been driven from the city of his birth by jealous rivals. He remembered Lahmia, the City of the Dawn, and how it had burned. He remembered Neferata, prideful, spiteful, savage Neferata and the gift she had grudgingly given him. Had given all of them – the gift of vampirism.

  That gift had been tainted, he now knew. It had taken him centuries to puzzle it out, to understand the dark joke that had been played on all of them – Abhorash, Ushoran, himself and yes, even Neferata. A joke played by Nagash; Nagash the Usurper, Nagash the Great Necromancer.

  Nagash, the Master of Death.

  Thirst prickled at the back of his throat, not for water or wine, but for the copper tang of blood. Not even moments after awakening, the blood-lust returned in full. No matter how much he drank, how many screaming, squirming bags of flesh and bone he wrung dry, it never dimmed or dulled. That was Neferata’s gift, eternal thirst to go with eternal life, forever in thrall to base need.

  But then, he was no stranger to need. Even now, even after everything that had happened he still felt it, burning in his gut like a slow poison. The need, not for blood or to feel the life of squirming prey ebb from twitching meat, but for – what? – respect, perhaps? Acknowledgement, certainly; the admission of his superiority by those who dared call themselves his peers. For was he not their superior in every way that mattered? Did he not control the charnel winds that gave life to the lifeless and made the black blood of all of those gifted with vampirism quicken in their crooked veins? Was he not as much master as Nagash, as much a king as Neferata was a queen, as much a warrior as Abhorash? But it was not in the nature of their kind to recognise superiority, even when it was proven. He had wasted many years trying to do just that, before recognising the futility of such endeavours.

  He gave a disgusted grunt and pushed the thought aside. There was a strange smell on the air. Something had awakened him before his time. His unfinished calculations quivered in his head like beheaded serpents. Irritation washed through him, billowing into anger. He had felt the feather-light touch of another mind, through the link of shared blood; an avenue of contact only open to those upon whom he had bestowed his blood-kiss, those whom he called his apprentices.

  ‘I was not to be disturbed,’ W’soran croaked, long-dormant vocal cords quivering to life as he forced musty air through them. ‘There are calculations yet to be made.’

  No reply was forthcoming. That was not unexpected given the proclivities of his apprentices. They were not social creatures, too much given to introspection and meditation, even as he was. Then, he had earned that right. They had not.

  The braziers that encircled him had long since gone cold, and the torches on their wall-brackets were doused. The surge of anger, as cold as a deep mountain stream, overflowed its banks. They should have been in attendance, and braziers and torches lit. That was their duty after all: to watch over him as he meditated and to record his calculations and utterances.

  He scanned the room, seeing the piles of parchment and the ratty tomes, bound in human hair and tanned skin, piled haphazardly about him like offerings to some primitive god. Even these had been left unattended. That was perhaps the least of their sins. For W’soran, the grimoires and scrolls were merely tools to be used, absorbed and discarded. It was a lesson he despaired of teaching his followers, many of whom treated the decaying tomes as a mother might a child. It was the nature of the savage to graft import to the inanimate, and, regrettably, most of his followers were little better than the rock-dwelling primitives he had butchered to make this lair.

  ‘Urdek,’ he rasped, naming the most senior of his current crop of apprentices. That could have changed, he knew. He encouraged a certain bloody-minded initiative amongst his disciples, though he’d thought Urdek was made of sterner stuff than that.

  Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d been wrong about that sort of thing. In the spirit of practicality, he called out the name of the next most senior apprentice, ‘Kung?’

  His pointed, conch-whorl ears twitched as he caught the faintest whisper of sound. A pallid tongue, as dry as the desert lands that had once been his home, flickered out through the nest of fangs, tasting the air. W’soran’s yellow eye narrowed and the dim lantern light in its depths suddenly flared into brilliance as he recognised both scent and sound. ‘Ah. Hello, boy. Come to say hello to your master?’ His fanged mouth quirked in a sly smile and he added, ‘Perhaps to… beg forgiveness for old sins?’

  ‘Do I require it, old monster?’ the visitor snarled in reply as his hunched, beast-like shape circled W’soran in the darkness, padding about him like a wolf hugging the edge of the firelight. Then, the newcomer had always fancied himself as something of a predator. ‘Maybe it is you who should ask my forgiveness.’

  ‘Rank impertinence,’ W’soran said, almost gently. ‘I will forgive it, just this once.’ His withered frame twitched in the circle of long-cold braziers. He was still sitting cross-legged, his taloned fingers clutching his bony knees. With some degree of academic interest and not a little bit of sweet p
ain, he began flexing each muscle cluster in turn, forcing his body to remember how it felt to move. His dust-stiffened robes crackled as he shifted position. ‘Why are you here, my son?’

  ‘Not your son, old monster,’ the visitor snapped.

  ‘Tch, such anger, Melkhior,’ W’soran said. ‘And to think, you were once my favourite, and beloved above all others.’ He lifted his hand and curled his fingers, watching the play of the black veins beneath the parchment skin. He was reminded for a moment of the mummies of the Great Land, whose internment into eternity he had overseen in once-beauteous Mahrak.

  That had been before Lahmia. His fingers tightened into a fist and his talons gouged his palm. ‘Such anger,’ he repeated. His one good eye narrowed and he unfolded his limbs like an awkward spider as he rose to his feet. ‘Such disrespect for one who has given you nothing less than eternity,’ he said, stretching slowly, in increments. Muscles pulled and bones popped in a symphony of fleshly shackles that seemed to grow ever weightier even as his frame dwindled, shedding its unnecessary bulk across the centuries. He gestured and the torches sprang to life as one, driving back the shadows all in a rush.

  Melkhior jerked back, surprised, his flat, black eyes gleaming in the sudden blaze of light and his monstrous features writhing in consternation. Melkhior looked akin to nothing so much as one of the great bats of the deep dark, squeezed and twisted into a mockery of human shape. His quivering spear-blade nose flexed wetly as he exposed his scythe-like fangs in a hiss. ‘As handsome as ever, my son,’ W’soran said.

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ Melkhior growled, turning his face away from the light.

  ‘Why? It is what I have always called you – it is what you are. Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, did I not raise you up as unto a god? And what is a god, but a father writ large?’ W’soran spread his gangly arms. ‘I have forgiven you, my son.’

  ‘Have you, old monster?’ Melkhior asked, looking at him sidelong. ‘If so, that would be a first – you nurse grudges like infants, W’soran.’

  W’soran folded his arms. ‘Hurtful words, such hurtful words. But you are right. I am tempted to pluck out your heart and eat it, my boy. Even the long years cannot dampen that fire you stirred in me. You know this; why have you come so rudely to my sanctum?’

  ‘Not much of a sanctum,’ Melkhior said, pulling his ragged cloak more tightly about his malformed body. ‘How the mighty have fallen.’

  ‘Lest we forget, you did have a hand in that,’ W’soran said. He eyed Melkhior, studying the changes time had wrought in his once-student. The once muscular frame had withered into the semi-hunched simian shape that all of W’soran’s followers assumed over time, like something equal parts sun-spoiled corpse and mangy animal. He had been a warrior once, one of the ajals of Strigos, a proud, tall war-leader of Mourkain. W’soran found a great deal of pleasure in his former student’s degeneration. He smiled, and Melkhior’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Even now, you laugh at me,’ Melkhior said bitterly.

  ‘Because you amuse me, Ajal Melkhior,’ W’soran said as he stepped out of the circle of braziers. Melkhior flinched back and W’soran’s smile grew. ‘As I recall, the last time I saw you, you were driving a knife into my back. Come to try it again, my son?’ He extended a hand, and a sour green balefire sprouted from his fingers, crackling and snapping hungrily. ‘I am not distracted now. I can give you my full, undivided attention. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?’ W’soran purred.

  He was not a warrior, as Melkhior had been, though he had played one often enough. Nonetheless, a hunger for conflict roiled within him, as great as his thirst for knowledge. He could not recall whether it had first come with the blood-hunger of vampirism, or whether it was something more innate, a holdover from the man he had been, back along the black line of centuries. To fight, to kill, was a pleasure as sweet as the nectar of human life to W’soran – he had overindulged in it more than once, and to his detriment.

  For a moment, he thought Melkhior might try his hand. He could practically smell the urge for violence seething in the other vampire’s gizzards. Melkhior tensed, but then relaxed. Melkhior had always been sensible despite a few notable exceptions, W’soran reflected, curling his fingers and snuffing the eldritch fires that had engulfed his hand. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘To warn you,’ Melkhior said.

  W’soran guffawed. Bats stirred in the high reaches of his sanctum and tittered fearfully as the sound of it curled upwards. ‘And why would you do that? Does some small affection for poor, old W’soran yet linger in that sour heart, my son?’

  ‘Stop calling me that,’ Melkhior snarled, his eyes flashing. ‘And you are not half as crippled as you pretend, old monster.’ He pointed a claw at W’soran. ‘Even now I can smell the dark magic festering in your carcass.’

  W’soran snorted and let his claws drift up to play with the amulets dangling from his scrawny neck. There were half a dozen of them. Some were crafted after the fashion of the reptilian masters of the far Southlands, while others were the tangled devising of Cathayan craftsmen. All reeked of power to one degree or another, as did everything in this chamber, from the tomes to the wide-mouthed clay jars that crowded the corners.

  It was the former that attracted his attention. Some were missing. He knew each scroll and tome by look, scent and position in relation to his circle. A momentary flare of avaricious panic sliced through him, as he realised just which ones were missing, before recalling that those particular volumes were sealed away in a vault of his own devising. He always sealed them away before meditating – they were too dangerous to be left out, unguarded. If his apprentices had free access to them, to the secrets within them, they would massacre one another within a fortnight. Perhaps they had done just that.

  All of this occurred to him in the span of seconds. He realised that Melkhior was still talking. ‘Our enemies draw close, W’soran,’ Melkhior said. ‘Even now they may already have penetrated the defences of this draughty pile you call a sanctum.’

  ‘Well, one has, at any rate,’ W’soran said, stalking towards the bone-decorated archway that marked the exit to the chamber. Skulls had been stuffed into the many nooks and crannies of the archway, and as he passed, he stroked the closest. Never one to waste raw materials, he had decorated his new residence with the remains of the former occupiers – those that he hadn’t raised to serve him in other capacities.

  ‘I do not deny it, but this time, I have come to aid you,’ Melkhior said, hurrying after him.

  Outside the chamber was a corridor that curled around the slope of the crag that the crude fastness clung to like a limpet. W’soran frowned. There should have been guards on duty. Paranoia, honed to a killing point by centuries of experience, flared. Where were his apprentices? Why had they not responded to his calls? Had they attempted to stop Melkhior? He shoved the questions aside as unimportant. He had to get to those tomes. Everything else was replaceable, unnecessary.

  ‘I doubt that, Melkhior,’ he said, stalking onwards. The vault was buried in the rock of the mountain like a cavity in a tooth. It had taken him a year to carve it with the proper tools and weave the proper spells to render it invisible to all but him. ‘Did you kill them? Urdek and the others, I mean. You always were a murderous one in regards to your fellow students.’

  ‘Are you listening to me, old monster?’ Melkhior said. ‘I said that our enemies are gathering – yours and mine. He has found you, W’soran. He is coming.’

  W’soran stopped, but did not turn. Through a large gap in the wall, he could see the peaks and crags of the mountains, and the silvery glare of the moon overhead. ‘Is he now?’ he said, softly. ‘And how would you know this, Melkhior?’

  ‘You are not his only prey,’ Melkhior said.

  W’soran closed his eyes. ‘Neferata,’ he hissed, hatred oozing from every syllable. ‘So that’s where you went… afterwards.’ He opened hi
s eyes. ‘I looked for you, you know. But you ran too quickly, and hid too well.’

  ‘I learned from the best,’ Melkhior spat. W’soran smiled. It stung his old apprentice, the thought of cowardice. So prideful, the Strigoi people; they were all brainless, barbarian bullies for the most part. Only a rare few had possessed even a modicum of talent. Melkhior was one, and Morath as well… his smile slipped as he thought of the treacherous necromancer. He had never accepted W’soran’s gift of immortality. He had too much pride, though of a different sort than that of Melkhior. He had had too much pride to follow his master, the being who had made him, into exile, instead remaining to serve his mad king…

  ‘Do you understand me, W’soran?’ Melkhior hissed, drawing closer. ‘He is coming for you – for us!’

  A chill sliced through W’soran. ‘Ushoran,’ he said. He shook himself and said, ‘How soon?’

  ‘Soon,’ Melkhior said.

  ‘Why warn me?’

  Melkhior was silent. W’soran snorted. ‘She spurned you then, eh? Turned you out and sent you running, your tail between your legs?’ He chuckled and then, more quickly than Melkhior’s eyes could follow, spun about, backhanding his former apprentice against the wall. As Melkhior reeled, W’soran sprang on him, digging his claws into his throat. W’soran swung Melkhior towards the gap in the wall and thrust him out through it. Melkhior’s eyes bugged out as he grasped at W’soran’s thin wrist. His feet kicked helplessly over the abyss below.

  ‘She rejected you and you came scurrying back to me, like a whipped dog,’ W’soran said. ‘Treachery for the treacherous, eh?’ He cocked his head. ‘I should drop you. You’d make a very satisfying noise upon landing, I think.’

  ‘You – you need me,’ Melkhior gurgled. ‘I-I can help you!’

  ‘Could you? Somehow, I doubt that.’ W’soran smiled thinly, but the smile was wiped from his face as he caught the scrape of flesh on stone. He whirled, dragging Melkhior back inside even as a blade looped out of the darkness.