The Serpent Queen Read online

  As the vampires shrieked in jubilation, Octavia, forgotten, began to make her way carefully down the steep stairs of the ziggurat. Her fingers tapped out an idle, cheerful rhythm on the pommel of her blade, though she felt anything but.

  As she descended, she cast a wary eye at the jungle, which crouched just outside the rapidly expanding line of felled trees that ringed the ruined city. She had never liked forests, and a jungle was just a very hot, very wet forest. She watched a gang of zombies topple an ancient tree and smiled. The smile faded a moment later.

  It had all gone so wrong, so very quickly. It had been life at its worst: chaotic, dangerous, and confusing. That was why she preferred death and the dead. Change was her enemy, even as much as the idiot living who sought to free her of her fleshy bonds. She had never been good with change. New things had confused her, even as a girl. Routine was her salvation and shield, a bulwark against an overwhelming world. Repetition, pattern and precision were her tools in dealing with happenstance.

  When her parents had perished in one of the many, many minor plagues that periodically swept through the poorer quarters of Altdorf, she had sat in her room, on her bed, staring out the window for days on end as her mind tried to process the sudden absence of the two people whose presence she thought inviolate.

  Never before had life struck at her so directly. It had gone rampaging on, sweeping all remnants of her parents away, and bringing upheaval in its wake. It had been in that period of paralysis that the scales had fallen from her eyes. To live was to be trapped in the chains of change, to grow, to wither and to vanish. Entropy feeding entropy, life spreading life even as it devoured the living. Madness, it was all madness. Only in death was there true stability, for the dead did not, could not, change. She longed for death, in those early days, before she’d realised the selfishness of such longings.

  Death was a gift. That most folk were too ignorant to see it as such was no matter.

  She had started small, with scraps of lore gleaned from the hedge-witches and alleyway wizards who promised miracles for a guilder, and scattered at the sight of a witch hunter. New things those, but she had assembled them into a routine that had gradually expanded. By the time she’d made the acquaintance of the little Tilean with the black teeth, change no longer frightened her, though it still frustrated her to no end.

  He had been her last teacher and her best – Franco Fiducci, with his strange spectacles and his funny way of speaking. Her brothers had not liked him. They had not liked her studies either, but they were determined to protect her, her faithful, unwavering brothers. Fiducci had taught her much, before he’d run afoul of the templars of Morr and been forced to flee Altdorf in a night of fire and screams.

  She’d liked the little man, his funny accent and clownish ways. He had tattooed her face for her, upon her request. And he had taught her the beautiful formulas of the Corpse Geometries, and set her feet on the path that had brought her to her current situation.

  ‘In Araby,’ he had assured her, ‘there is knowledge that was old when Sigmar was puking up his mother’s milk.’ So to Araby she had gone, and across Araby she had travelled, following secrets and scraps, learning more and more; and as she learned, her plan had grown from the merest whim to a desire, and then, to a strategy.

  It was a strategy that hinged upon one factor: the lost libraries of Lahmia. It was, according to respectable sources, the greatest necromantic library in the world. It was the source of all modern writings on death and the arts associated with it. As the black legends that had led her into the desert told it, it was in Lahmia where the arts of necromancy had flourished in the wake of their discovery by the Great Necromancer. It was on Lahmia she had set her sights.

  And it was thanks to Lahmia that she had tumbled into her current circumstances.

  Her fingers snapped tight about the pommel of her blade. She paused, memories of that night a lifetime away, for all that it had only been a few months, seeping to the surface of her consciousness. The nomads had taken her by surprise, and her brothers had been left bleeding and dying after an attempt to rescue her some days later. When Nitocris had torn through the nomads not long after, she had begged the vampire to let them die. Instead, Nitocris had handed them over to her handmaidens, who had done as vampires invariably did. They were profligate creatures. Fiducci had said that the only reason the vampire counts of Sylvania had failed in their bid to take the Empire was due to their excessive numbers. One vampire was a persuasive argument. A hundred vampires was merely an extended squabble.

  She much preferred the company of the quiet dead to those who insisted on having a conversation. She paused on a wide, flat landing, and looked out over the ruin, and the silent legions that laboured under the lash of her will. She had dredged the dead from every rain-swollen river and root-choked battlefield for a hundred miles. Man, animal and otherwise, they had come stumbling through the jungle and still came at her call. They loved her, and she loved them.

  Octavia cocked her head and listened to the pounding of the drums, echoing down from the top of the ziggurat. She had crafted them herself, from the flayed flesh of the nomads who had captured her, and she had set their fleshless bones to pounding out the night-black rhythm that stirred the dead in their holes and bowers. Their spirits had thanked her for it. Their lives had been short, chaotic and brutal. But now, in death, they had purpose. The drums were a simple enough conjuring and more efficient than Nitocris’s own necromantic fumbling. While the drums beat, the dead would come. When the drums stopped, those corpses that had not already arrived would sink back into oblivion, returning to the long night of the grave.

  Octavia sighed softly and looked up. Phantoms, spectres and ghosts wafted through the air like leaves on the wind. They choked the night sky, lured to the ruin by the drums even as the more solid of their kind were. They swirled about one another, seemingly heedless and unheeding, unless you knew what to look for. Idly, she raised a hand over her head and spread her fingers. The ghosts hovering directly overhead began to circle her like a flock of trained crows as her magics touched what was left of their minds. Ghosts and their sort were personalities bereft of body, even as zombies were bodies without personality. It was what made the former so decidedly unpleasant and difficult to control. Unless you know how to talk to them, she mused.

  She gestured gently, and they drifted down towards her, clustering about her in a clammy fog. She reached out, stroking ethereal faces and brushing wispy hairs from agonized faces. The ghosts pushed towards her like eager pets, drinking up her warmth, and she shivered in pleasure. ‘Gently now, gently,’ she murmured, as they clutched at her, billowing past one another in their hunger. ‘There is enough for all.’ She closed her eyes, and let the chill clutch of the dead soothe her anxieties.

  Soothing as it was, it was dangerous to allow them to suckle at her soul, for there was always the chance that they would take too much. If that ever happened, if she were too weak to pull away from them, she would join their motley throng. She felt the siren call of that twilight existence more strongly now than ever before. She did not long for death, for there was still much work to be done, but she hungered for it nonetheless. It ate at her soul, though she knew that should her heart cease to beat she would be unable to indulge in sweet oblivion. She would rise again, to complete her task. She clutched at one of the amulets she wore. It was a small, innocuous thing, in the shape of a woman’s mouth, and she brought it to her lips and kissed it.

  Something growled, and she looked up. A pair of leopards climbed the ziggurat towards her, their eyes shining faintly in the moonlight.

  She gestured and the ghosts departed, though reluctantly. She watched them rise to join the others and then she extended a hand to the newcomers. Their rough, dry tongues kissed her fingers. Like everything else in the city, save for the slaves, the big cats were dead. Bone showed through their fur in places, and their skin hung from them in waste
d folds. Nonetheless, they were still mighty beasts.

  Octavia sank to one knee and they came forward, their heavy skulls settling gently on her shoulders as she hugged them tight. She closed her eyes, breathing in their sickly sweet stink. She plucked a maggot from the ear of one and popped it into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a moment, considering. Then she dragged their heads close to her own and said, ‘Find my brothers.’

  She released them and stood. The big cats sprang away with hoarse growls and bounded down the ziggurat. They pelted through the crowds of zombies, streaking towards the jungle. Octavia watched them go. Then she looked back towards the apex of the ziggurat, where Nitocris still stood. The vampire was arrogant, conceited and single-minded; a dead woman with all the worst qualities of the living.

  But she would take Octavia to Lahmia. And that was all that mattered.

  Chapter 3

  Felix awoke to the shrieking of dead men.

  Or so his jumbled thoughts insisted. His mind was filled with the shapes of drowning sailors, sinking past him into the depths of the Bitter Sea, clawing vainly for the surface. As he jolted awake, he fancied that they had grabbed him, to pull him down into the depths as well. His head jerked up, and a hoarse, whooping scream escaped his raw throat.

  Brightly coloured birds rose from the tangled ceiling of branches above him, crying out shrilly in reply. It was their cries that had awakened him, and that he had mistaken for the screams of the Orfeo’s unfortunate crew.

  Felix let his head fall back, against the rough bark of a tree. The air stank of swamp and rot, and he was soaked through with muddy seawater. Weak drizzles of sunlight dripped through the mass of branches overhead. It was day, though what day, and what time of day, he had no clue. He lay waist-deep in sludgy, shifting water, his arms and legs tangled in the fat roots of the looming mangrove trees. Insects spattered against his muddy features, seeking bare flesh, and he extricated a hand to fend them off. He gave a cry of disgust as he saw the fat leeches that clung to his palm and wrist, and he clawed at them, his heart hammering in his chest.

  ‘Gotrek,’ he rasped, then, after mustering more volume, ‘Gotrek!’ It was instinct that made him cry out for the Slayer. A moment later, he recalled his last sight of Gotrek, as he had hurled himself at the galley that had smashed Bolinas’s vessel to flinders. He fell silent. In any event, the only reply he received was the screams of startled birds, and the splash of something sliding into the water. The latter provoked images of the giant snakes and reptiles that he’d been assured lurked in the Southlands, and he flailed at the roots and fought against the soft, sucking eddy of the tide that had carried him into the depths of what surely must be the Shifting Mangrove Coastline.

  What he knew of the eastern coast of the Southlands could be written on a scrap of paper. A very small scrap, with room left over for a map and a few personal anecdotes.

  It was supposedly nothing but an immense, extended mangrove swamp for miles on end, resting on a sargasso of roots and decay. He’d spoken to men in Sartosa who’d seen it, or explored portions of it, for the coast was as far as most got. The mangroves were less inhospitable than the steaming jungles of the interior, but they were still more dangerous than most were comfortable with. Poisonous snakes, hungry saurians, stinging insects and savage tribes were but some of the dangers that lurked amongst the close-set greenery. Even the elves didn’t come into the mangroves, if they could help it.

  The water wasn’t deep, but it had a strong grip. Felix finally pushed himself to his feet and clambered awkwardly up onto the roots of a mangrove tree, Karaghul flopping unhelpfully against his leg. He was relieved that the blade had somehow remained by his side, all odds to the contrary. His cloak was stiff and heavy with mud and grime, and his boots were filled with silt. Luckily his journal was wrapped in oilskin, or it would have been ruined as well. He pawed ineffectually at the filth on his face and searched intently for any more leeches. Finding none, he breathed a sigh of relief. He pulled his gloves from his belt and slipped them on. Despite the heat, he thought it best to be as covered as possible.

  Resting from his exertions, he looked about him. Everywhere he looked were hulking mangrove trees that clogged the water with their coiling roots and blocked the sky with their thick, intertwining branches. The trees were so tightly packed here that he could use the roots as a makeshift boardwalk. But he could hear the soft susurrus of the tide somewhere close by.

  Felix sank into a crouch and rested his back against the trunk of the tree he’d been tangled in. He had no idea where he was, in relation to where the Orfeo had gone down. The current could have carried him for miles, as strong as it had been. It was only luck that had carried him into the shallows.

  That or it was the whim of the gods. Felix cocked his head, peered up at the green roof over his head and muttered, ‘Many thanks, Sigmar, Ulric, Myrmidia, Manann, Taal, Rhya, Shallya, Ranald, Grimnir and whoever else watches out for fools, adventurers and dwarf-friends.’ If the gods heard, they gave no sign. Felix sighed and rested his wrists on his knees.

  He would take a moment to regain his strength, and then decide what to do. He’d lived rough before, and there was likely no shortage of game in the mangroves, though potable water was going to be a problem. He scratched his chin, trying to not to think about how thirsty he was. He’d gone without before, he could do so again.

  As he sat, he wondered whether Gotrek had met his doom. It seemed less glorious than the Slayer might wish, but then, being picky had kept Gotrek alive far longer than most doom-seekers. Of course, Felix would never say that to the Slayer’s face. At best, he’d get a scowling, and at worst, a thrashing.

  That Gotrek had never struck him, in the entirety of their association, did not preclude the possibility of it ever happening. Gotrek would never be accused of being sensitive, but the subject of his persistence on this side of the veil was a sore one.

  Gotrek had cleaned out entire alehouses after an innocent prodding from mouthy fools the worse for drink. Once or twice, those fools had even been dwarfs, who really ought to have known better.

  Felix closed his eyes, imagining it. Gotrek would have made the rail, of course. The Slayer had scaled mountains, ridden across rivers of magma, hacked through glaciers and fought his way through armies just to reach whatever that moment’s worthy doom was. Gravity and arrows would be little hindrance. No, he would have made the rail and the deck, and then what? Most assuredly a cloud of bone-chips if any of the dead men who were on the galley tried to get in his way. He frowned. It would have been arrows, in the end. Even Gotrek couldn’t fight arrows, though he’d given it a try more than once. Felix could see it, in his mind’s eye. He could see the arrows, loosed by skeletal hands, flashing through the moonlight to pierce scarred flesh and finally, at long last, bring down Gotrek Gurnisson as dead men looked on in emotionless satisfaction.

  A sense of melancholy swept through him as the image flashed and faded. That was no fitting doom for Gotrek. Gotrek had battled daemons and dragons. He had traded axe-blows with Garmr the Gorehound, torn the head from Arek Daemonclaw and saved Nuln. He had fought Mannfred Von Carstein, for Sigmar’s sake!

  But there was no other outcome. Hundreds of enemies would have been waiting for him on that galley, armed to the teeth, and unafraid of a lone, albeit utterly mad, dwarf. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed that he could almost hear Gotrek’s bellicose death-song, bulling its way through the muggy air. A moment later he blinked. He sat upright with a suddenness that almost sent him toppling from his perch. He had heard something!

  Not Gotrek, but something else. Felix rose to his feet, his head cocked. Sound moved oddly in the trees. Was that a scream, or perhaps a cry for help?

  Felix began to move towards the noise, scrabbling across the latticework of tree roots. His boots slipped and slid on the wet bark, and more than once he was nearly pitched headfirst into the dark, muddy wa
ter that swirled below. But he kept his balance, and gradually increased his pace, until he was pelting across the roots, his aching muscles and growing thirst forgotten.

  The strands of sunlight that punctuated the dim interior of the mangroves faded, and grew strained even as he spotted the first bit of debris – a broken section of spar, lodged in the roots of several trees, as he himself had been. He saw more and more of it, and he began to follow the debris, rather than the noise, which was growing intermittent and faded. Sections of mast, tatters of rigging and broken pulleys clogged the waterways between the root systems of the mangroves. Here and there he saw bodies as well, bloated from their drowning, and broken by the current. Once or twice, he almost stepped on one, and his stomach protested sternly as he forced himself to hop over the bedraggled carcass. He recognized none of them, for which he was thankful.

  The Orfeo had been split in two; there was no reason to think that some of the crew hadn’t managed to survive, clinging to the prow section. If the current had carried him into the shallows beneath the mangroves, it could have done the same for them. His heart leapt at the thought.

  It sank a moment later. He had been correct in his reasoning. But others had got to it first. Felix slowed as the thick knot of trees that rose ahead of him like a green curtain suddenly echoed with growls and snarls. Interspersed were pathetic screams, weak and thready and then, abruptly silenced. Felix crept through the trees, one hand on the hilt of his sword. Every instinct he possessed screamed for him to run back the way he‘d come, that the gods had seen fit to spare him whatever fate had befallen the poor soul beyond the curtain of trees just ahead. But he pressed on. Fear hadn’t quite been burned out of him by his association with Gotrek, but it had been tempered by curiosity. Also, Felix had never been one to stand around and let other men suffer, when he might be able to prevent it. And the sounds slithering about him from just ahead were definitely those of suffering.