The Serpent Queen Read online

  ‘What property was that,’ Felix said, trying desperately to bring the conversation back on track. Gotrek glanced at him.

  ‘It was a holy relic of the Iron Peak, the Hammer of Algrim, first king of that hold, which he used to crush the skull of the dragon Falandraugr, the Death-in-Jade,’ Gotrek said, somewhat wistfully. He stroked his axe. His face hardened. ‘It was stolen, by the greedy dead.’

  ‘Stolen? Stolen,’ Antar barked. ‘We are not thieves! The hammer was borne to our walls by a greenskin rabble! King Alkharad took it as spoils of war, as was his right!’

  ‘Just because the greenskins stole it first doesn’t make you not thieves,’ Gotrek said. Felix tried to parse the logic of that statement, but as usual with dwarfs, and Gotrek in particular, it seemed to only make sense to them.

  ‘Perhaps it was a simple misunderstanding,’ Felix said.

  ‘Perhaps the monkey should apologise to Antar, who is affronted,’ Antar said.

  ‘The Hammer of Algrim was a relic of my people before your rat-warren of a city built its first wall out of mud and dung,’ Gotrek said. He got to his feet, gripping his axe tightly, his good eye blazing. ‘If any should apologise, it should be you.’

  Antar rose, and swept out his khopesh in a practice swing. ‘And the disc of bronze which now decorates its head to commemorate his victory belongs to King Alkharad, He who is Antar’s Beloved Cousin. When you took it, you stole from us.’

  ‘Are you accusing my folk of thievery now?’ Gotrek snarled.

  Before Antar could reply, and the situation could escalate further, Felix said, ‘Why didn’t you simply ask for it back? The bronze disc, I mean.’

  Both Gotrek and Antar looked at him. ‘What do you mean, manling?’ Gotrek said.

  ‘Well, if the disc of bronze belongs to them, why not just give it back?’ Felix said. He began to wish he’d kept his mouth shut.

  ‘Give it back?’ Gotrek said incredulously. ‘It’s no fault of ours if they attached some worthless gee-gaw to our relic.’

  ‘Then maybe you could take the disc off and give the hammer back?’ Felix said desperately, looking at Antar.

  ‘It was a spoil of war,’ Antar rasped, as if that explained everything. He looked at Gotrek. ‘Is he slow-witted?’

  ‘Aye, his folk have no true understanding of honour, or grudges,’ Gotrek said, looking at Felix in apparent disappointment. ‘They think such matters can be resolved so simply. It is like talking to beardlings.’

  ‘Madness,’ Antar said as he shook his head in disbelief.

  Felix looked at Zabbai. ‘Help,’ he said.

  ‘Oh no, you started this, barbarian,’ Zabbai said, holding up her hands in a warding gesture. ‘I want no part of it. If I’d wanted to debate such things, I’d have become a priestess.’

  From out of the darkness, a roar brought an abrupt end to the conversation. Trees cracked and burst beneath the tread of something heavy in the distance. Felix pulled his cloak tighter about himself. Gotrek, still standing, stared out at the night. He hefted his axe. ‘Big beastie,’ he muttered.

  ‘We’re not hunting beasts, Gotrek,’ Felix said.

  ‘They’re hunting us,’ Gotrek said. He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Fresh meat, manling, that’s all we are for the beasts that roam these lands.’ Gotrek smiled widely as he said it.

  ‘In Antar’s youth, he would accompany his glorious cousins, the princes of Rasetra, into the jungles to hunt the scale-backs,’ Antar said. He tapped his cheek with the tip of his khopesh. ‘It was great fun.’ He glanced at Zabbai, who made a sharp gesture.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  Antar turned away. If bones could sulk, then Antar’s were doing a fairly good job of it, Felix thought. Zabbai looked at the fire. ‘I was born not far from here,’ she said, after a time. She extended her linen-wrapped hand over the fire, and Felix shivered slightly as the light shone through the wrappings and thin flesh alike and illuminated the bones.

  ‘How did you find yourself in Lybaras?’ Felix said.

  ‘She was a slave,’ Antar said dismissively.

  Zabbai ignored him. ‘My tribe was destroyed in a conflict with Rasetra, as were many tribes. I survived, and was taken in the great wheeled cages to the grand market in Lahmia, to be sold to the highest bidder. The men of Rasetra, you see, did not trust slaves taken from the jungle, being so close to it. That was sensible, for we would have cut our overseers’ throats and fled at the first opportunity. Thus, they sold us on, to proud Lahmia, who would sell us to the other cities, or men of Cathay, for whom my people were a novelty.’ She fell silent.

  Felix hesitated. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why? It was not your folk who shattered mine. Nor was it your folk who sold mine into slavery for a tidy sum. I was large, you see, and strong, as all the women of my tribe were, and many men bid on me. Some, I’m told, wanted me for a bodyguard and concubine all in one, while others wanted me to guard their wives, seeing in me no threat to their fidelity.’ She pulled her hand back from the fire and examined it. Felix had the impression that she was smiling, beneath her mask. ‘I was purchased by the then-king of Lybaras, and, when I had been trained to his satisfaction in all of the arts of war, I was made the protector of his newborn daughter.’

  ‘And that is why you serve Khalida now?’ Felix said, after another protracted silence. ‘You protected her in life, and now, you serve her in death?’

  ‘No. Khalida was born long after my own death. As was the Usurper, come to that. I saw Settra ride his chariot to war with living eyes,’ she said, touching her mask. ‘He was glorious, then. A god among men, and his enemies fell before him like wheat before the scythe.’

  ‘And when was Settra king?’ Felix asked, curiously. He’d heard the name mentioned several times, but his knowledge of Nehekharan history was limited to dribs and drabs of second- and third-hand stories, gleaned from explorers and drunks in various ports. He fought to hide a yawn. The exertions of the day had worn him out.

  Gotrek laughed harshly. ‘Around two thousand years before your Sigmar,’ he said.

  Felix stared at the dwarf for a moment, before turning to look at Zabbai. He was suddenly, consciously aware, for the first time, of the vast gulfs of time that separated him from the dead woman sitting beside him. He had met beings whose years outstripped his own before – Gotrek for one, and others: Teclis, the elf-mage, and Mannfred Von Carstein – but never by so much. A century, two, even five hundred years was graspable, but two thousand was inconceivable. It was a time before even the rudiments of his own civilisation had been a glimmer in someone’s eye. Felix blinked and shook himself. ‘That’s quite a long time,’ he said finally.

  Gotrek chuckled. Zabbai did as well. She reached out and slapped Felix on the shoulder. The force of the blow nearly sent him sliding into the fire. ‘You should sleep, barbarian,’ she said. ‘We have miles to go yet, and the jungle is unforgiving.’

  Felix, whose eyelids felt as if they were made from stone, nodded and lay back against the trunk of the tree. He looked up at the stars overhead, spinning through the gaps in the canopy of trees and thought, five days left. He closed his eyes.

  In the court of the High Queen of Lybaras, long-dead musicians plucked at non-existent strings or blew breathlessly into cracked flutes. Once, the throne room would have echoed with the sound of the queen’s favourite tunes, played by the greatest musicians of Lybaras. Now there was only the scratch of fleshless fingers manipulating long-silent instruments. On the dais, Khalida’s handmaidens fanned her linen-wrapped bones with frayed feathers, and courtiers waited silently to be noticed, scrolls and papyri clutched in their arms. Some had been waiting for so long that sand had collected in the nooks and crannies of their bony frames. Still others had been waiting since Khalida had first risen from her tomb. They had died, waiting to pass on their messages to the rulers of Lybaras, and no
w, having been revived, they continued to wait, and would likely do so for an eternity.

  Djubti stirred the shifting column of sand that rose from the clay jar set on the floor before him. He stood before the throne, and the eyes of those who were aware of the world beyond their own memories were on him as he worked his far-seeing. Scenes played across the rippling surface of the sand, like shadows across a curtain. The scenes changed as Djubti dipped his fingers into the sand. ‘They’ve reached the swamp, my queen,’ he rasped. ‘I thought for sure that the Sepulchral Stalkers would kill the Doom-Seeker, but the wyrd which binds him is strong indeed. Certain death for any other is but a momentary hindrance to one such as him.’

  ‘As your auguries foretold,’ Khalida said. She leaned back in her throne, her pose relaxed, her fingers draped across her staff of office. Her head was bowed, and one less familiar with the High Queen of Lybaras and her moods might have suspected that she was weary. The dead could not grow weary, however, though many slept nonetheless. Djubti knew that such periods of hibernation had more to do with boredom than anything else. The younger princes and kings thought nothing of waging eternal war, for they’d known little of it in life. For them, it was but a game, played with toys that could never be permanently broken.

  For Khalida it was not a game. It had never been such, as far as Djubti was aware. He had only met the Serpent Queen after Settra’s awakening. He and his brother-priests in the Mortuary Cult had been ordered by the Grand Hierophant Khatep, before his exile by Settra, to scatter themselves among the great cities, and serve and watch and guide as best they might. At their first meeting, Khalida had struck Djubti as less a queen than the will of a goddess made flesh. She spoke of Asaph as one might speak of a beloved mother, and he could sense the power that flowed through her age-shrivelled form. It was akin to his power, but it far outstripped it in some ways. If Khalida could call forth the wrath of the gods, he had never seen it, but then at times she seemed nothing so much as that wrath made manifest.

  But now, she seemed merely pensive. He stirred the sands again. ‘Another day, perhaps two, depending on the frailty of the living man’s flesh, and they will reach the Temple of Skulls,’ he said.

  ‘And then,’ Khalida said. Her voice was no louder than the hiss of the sands.

  ‘It is up to the gods,’ Djubti said. He swept his hand through the sand, and it fell back into its jar. His assistants scrambled forwards to replace the lid on the jar and remove it. Djubti spared them only the barest glance. They had been apprentices when they’d died, and they would remain apprentices forever, though they knew it not. Their minds, like the minds of so many of their people, were lost in the now.

  ‘And in whose favour do the gods seem inclined, Djubti?’ Khalida said. She was amused, he knew. She was one of the few still capable of such emotions. Most kings rode surging waves of melancholy that occasionally crested into wrath or madness, before calming and falling into a taciturnity that might last centuries.

  But Khalida still had a sense of humour. It was unpredictable, and often at odds with the proper order of things, and Djubti had ground his remaining teeth to nubs because of it.

  ‘As ever, they keep their true inclinations hidden behind a veil of mystery, O most blessed of Asaph,’ Djubti said carefully, trying to avoid giving Khalida any opening to debate the philosophical implications of the gods’ reticence in adjudicating the affairs of men.

  Her fingers tapped her staff, and Djubti bit back a curse. As ever, his mind was too slow. Asaph’s Will Made Manifest had a mind like quicksilver, even now, even after all these centuries. ‘If you cannot predict the will of the gods, Djubti, then how can you say your auguries were correct?’ she asked. If she had been any other ruler, Djubti would have feared for his head. As it was, execution might be preferable to mockery.

  ‘Have I ever failed you, my queen?’ he said.

  ‘Sophistry, my faithful advisor,’ Khalida said.

  Djubti inclined his head. ‘I have many skills, O beneficent one.’

  ‘What does my enemy plan then, O skilful counsellor?’

  Djubti hesitated. There were layers to that question, and he did not care to peel them back. He leaned against his staff, searching his mind for an answer that might bring the questioning to an end. In truth, he had no idea. The presence of the bound dead in the jungles to the south had been as much a surprise to him as the arrival of the Doom-Seeker. The gods had not warned him of either, though they rarely warned him of anything. If he did not ask the right question, he was not given the correct answer.

  The gods grew more remote by the year too, drifting into memory as their servants became lost in routine. What need had the dead of gods, after all?

  ‘Distraction, obfuscation, confusion,’ he said. ‘She seeks to disrupt the harmony of things, and to shake the foundations of the heavens.’

  ‘Cryptic, but correct,’ Khalida said.

  Djubti felt anger war with pride. When he had first arrived in Lybaras, he had thought to guide a lioness to her rightful prey. Instead, he’d found a serpent queen, coiled and observant. There was a terrible purpose burning within Khalida, a command that outweighed any edict of Settra’s. It was that purpose which had led Lybaras into war again and again, against opponents both foreign and familiar. At times, Djubti felt the weight of that purpose himself, and it nearly shattered his brittle, browning bones. How Khalida stood it, he could not say, and did not dare to guess. He bowed. ‘As you say, my queen,’ he said.

  ‘I have long wondered what happened to that sword. Did she take it as a keepsake, and mount it in some place of honour? Or did she hide it away in shame at what she had done?’ Khalida said. She raised her head, and stared up at nothing in particular. ‘More importantly, how did her agents find it, and get it into the hands of she who now threatens my sovereignty?’

  ‘Her ways are as the shadows, O Guiding Star of Lybaras,’ Djubti said. In truth, he had wondered that himself. His eyes and ears, in the shape of beetles, serpents and sand-devils, watched every ruin, port and cove from one end of the Great Land to the other. He searched ceaselessly for any sign of those bearing the blood of the Usurper, the foul curse of Lahmia, in their sour veins. Vampires were drawn to the Great Land like maggots to a corpse. They couldn’t resist and only the barest years would pass between attempted infiltrations or invasions.

  Djubti had long theorised that something in the black ruin of Lahmia drew them like a lodestone. ‘Ha,’ Khalida said. It wasn’t quite a laugh, more a rustle of amusement. She had thought of something, though she did not seem inclined to share it. Instead, she said, ‘They will march soon, these leeches on our doorstep. They are impatient, and overeager, as all those who bear her curse are. We must muster pickets to tease them, and taunt them into fields of our choosing. I would have this done, and swiftly. Mahrak and her petty kings eye us like starving jackals.’

  She rose to her feet. The butt of her staff struck the dais with a sound like a gong. ‘Make my legions ready for war. Lybaras marches and our enemies shall become as the dust beneath our feet.’

  Chapter 14

  The dull blue light of the creeping dawn was spreading across the black sky when something woke Felix from his fitful slumber. He’d been dreaming of the squalling boneless things that he and Gotrek had faced in Blutdorf. The creatures, warped and twisted by foul magics, had been children, though he hadn’t known it at the time. Not until it was too late.

  The dream hadn’t been pleasant. Then, they rarely were. They hadn’t been since he’d joined Gotrek. He had tried, for a time, to drown himself in ale or beer, to drink himself into a stupor that the bad dreams couldn’t permeate. He didn’t want to see the faces of the dead, or be revisited by the horrors he and Gotrek had already faced and sent packing. Once was enough, thank you very much.

  He shook off the clinging fog of the dream and raised his head, curious as to what had woken him. He saw somet
hing pale, purplish and rubbery slither over his boots. The pale thing – a tongue, he realised, with mounting horror – retracted into the mouth of the large reptilian horror that reared up over him, looking down at him with tiny eyes. It was a snake, but larger than any snake he’d ever seen. It was dripping with water, and a sharp fin jutted from the wedge-shaped skull that weaved to and fro above him.

  Its head was the size of a ballista bolt and the fin could have been used as a sail by a small boat. Eyes like nictitating lamps examined him, and the tongue flickered out again, brushing across his legs and up towards his face. Felix cut his eyes towards Karaghul, where it lay beside him. One quick movement would see the sword in his hand. The question was, was he quicker than a giant snake?

  The serpent had come up onto the hummock from out of the water and had coiled about the tree. Most of it was still in the water, and as he watched its flickering tongue draw closer, a small, eternally inquisitive part of Felix’s mind wondered how big it was.

  Its head dipped towards him, and the fluttering tongue passed over his chest and face. Then, its jaws abruptly widened and Felix knew that it intended to swallow him whole. He rolled towards Karaghul as it readied itself, startling it, and had just managed to snatch up the sword as it recovered and lunged, jaws spread.

  Gotrek’s axe spun through the air and caught the snake on the side of its neck, between jaw and throat. The axe had been hurled with such force that it decapitated the beast and went on to bury itself in the tree. The head fell at Felix’s feet, and the thrashing coils sank down and slid off the hummock and into the water, nearly uprooting the tree in the process.

  ‘You took your bloody time,’ Felix said. Gotrek stumped past him, climbed the now-bent tree, and extracted his axe. The Slayer grinned at him.

  ‘Had to wait for it to get close, manling,’ Gotrek said. ‘And I didn’t want to wake you from your beauty sleep.’

  Felix squatted and jabbed the snake’s head with his sword. The massive jaws slammed together, nearly catching Karaghul in their grip. Felix yelped and fell back. Gotrek kicked the head off the hummock and into the water, where it sank without a trace. ‘It’s dead, manling. Don’t fret so,’ the Slayer said, reaching out and hauling Felix to his feet by the front of his chain shirt.