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Lord of Undeath – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

Darkness filled the great hall, a blackness more sinister than that of night and shadow. Great braziers of gilded bone blazed from their pillared stands, tongues of flame dancing up towards the vaulted ceiling dozens of feet above. Crystal lanterns carved into the shapes of skulls hung from marble columns, their translucent surfaces aglow with the sapphire, emerald and ruby lights of the soulfires imprisoned within them. From the ceiling, a colossal chandelier of volcanic glass and fossilised skeletons glimmered with the light of a thousand corpse-candles, each flicker fed by the fat of a slaughtered killer. Through the vastness, darting around pillar and column, weaving through the bony arms of the chandelier, ethereal wisps of ghostly luminescence flew about the hall.

The chamber was a riot of lights, but still there wasn’t enough to fend off the darkness. A darkness that went beyond a diminishing of vision. A darkness that struck at the soul with terror and oppression. A darkness that lounged languidly upon a divan fashioned from a mammoth chunk of drakstone and upholstered with silks stained in the heartblood of unblemished maidens. A darkness that raised a goblet of sanguine wine to velvet lips and took the most delicate sip of the morbid liquor.

To those mortals assembled in the hall, the sight of their sovereign drinking the blood-brew was a forceful reminder of their place in the scheme of things. They were servants, subjects and, if they provided offence, cattle. Some among them wondered who it was who had been bled for their monarch’s grim repast. Older and wiser men no longer entertained such questions, well aware there was no good to come from curiosity.

The immortals among the court were no less struck by the exhibition. They could smell the blood in the goblet, could almost taste it flowing across their tongues, the fiery bite of the mournweed used to spice the wine as it burned down their throats. A terrible longing rushed through them, pulsing in their blackened hearts. Had their sovereign taken some mortal, ripped his throat out and drained him dry, they would have known only a sense of envy. Seeing this display of control and restraint, these dainty sips in the face of their lust, struck them at a level not so different from that of the mortals. Without a word being said, they were being told how great was the gulf between their own status and that of the one they served.

Stretched across her divan, her bare flesh cool and pale where it wasn’t obscured by the sable veils of a web-like gown, the vampire queen regarded her subjects with regal detachment. There was no hint in either motion or expression of the agitation within her, of the anxiety that had been steadily mounting since the first reports had been brought to her throne. It was the first rule of power, the first lesson any ruler, no matter how experienced – never show weakness. As her eyes drifted to the armoured figure of Lord Harkdron, the slightest hint of a smile pulled at her crimson lips and exposed the gleam of a fang.

There were, of course, exceptions to every rule. Times when a show of weakness made it easier to exploit the aspirations of others. In all the numberless centuries of her unnatural existence, Neferata had made use of many would-be paramours. There was no loyalty so easy to abuse, no slavery so complete, as that which hoped for love. Even for a Mortarch, a mistress of death and the infinities beyond death, there was a delicious savour to preying upon the dreams and ambitions of lesser beings. The loftier the height they wanted to ascend, the more satisfying their inevitable fall.

Once the foolish swain had served his purpose, of course.

Neferata turned her attention from Harkdron to regard the rest of her court. She could see the fear that pulsed through the veins of her mortal subjects, a fear that, for once, was not provoked by the dread queen who ruled over them. Among the vampires and liches who swore allegiance to her, she could likewise sense unease. It was less visceral than the fright of mortals, but there nonetheless. Their anxiety vexed her, for it was a sign of faltering belief in her power. Her subjects were losing confidence in her ability to protect them.

She took another sip of her wine, but the taste was soured by the turn her thoughts had taken. It had taken many centuries to build her great city of Nulahmia. Every street and building had been translated from the dreams of memory into constructions of limestone and marble, into basalt walls and obsidian pillars. A thousand times had the colonnade leading to the Palace of Seven Vultures been built and razed, its workers impaled upon spikes of copper and gold, before the vision in her mind was perfected. Four hundred slaves had been entombed alive beneath the foundations of the Jackal Gate before the proper aura of death and despair lurked beneath its brooding archway. Ten generations of men had laboured to excavate the cavern of Nehb-kotz below the necropolis of Themsis, their bodies plastered into the cavern walls to entice the corpse-moths to nest within the empty skulls.

In all the Realm of Death, Nulahmia was hers alone. Every contour of the landscape, every brick in the walls and tile upon the roofs, every curl in a maid’s coiffure, every thread in a farmer’s tunic, all of them had been nurtured by her dark dreams of primordial memory. When the hordes of Chaos poured through the realmgates to conquer the lands of Shyish, it was to Nulahmia that Neferata had withdrawn. It was for Nulahmia that she directed her forces and powers. To keep and hold the kingdom she had built in accordance with her own vision, she had devoted spells of such magnitude that a mortal sorcerer would be reduced to ash merely trying to sound the letters of the first incantation.

Long had Nulahmia been hidden, veiled from the marauders of Chaos by a web of illusion and terror. Impenetrable shrouds of gravefog cloaked every approach. Spectral mires of liferot waited to drain the vitality of any invader. Ghostly echoes distorted the perceptions of any who drew too close to Neferata’s dominion, and phantom whispers excited their fears. While the rest of the realm had been despoiled and defiled, while the devotees of Chaos ravaged and pillaged at will, her city had remained inviolate.

Now that sanctuary was threatened. After years of seclusion, the enemy had finally pierced the skein of terror and illusion to strike at the city secreted within. It was a possibility that had haunted Neferata often when Shyish had first been overrun, but time had dulled her worries until she had come to share the belief she had nurtured amongst her subjects – that the defences of Nulahmia were inviolate.

Slowly, Neferata lowered her goblet and motioned one of her handmaidens to remove it. Then her gaze roved across the anxious visages of her court. There was a predatory quality in her eyes now. Among her subjects, the fear of Chaos was eclipsing fear of their queen. This was a situation she couldn’t abide. She needed a victim to remind them all what it meant to fail a Mortarch.

‘Repeat for me again what was revealed in your seance,’ Neferata commanded, pointing a pale finger towards one of her mortal retainers. He was a spindly, almost fleshless man, his skin afflicted with a leprous cast. The dark robe he wore was an imitation of those worn by the priests of immemorial ages, eldritch hieroglyphs embroidered into the fabric with purple threads. Ahkmet-bey, chief of Nulahmia’s necromancers, bowed his shaved head when his queen addressed him. Though magic had enabled him to extend his life beyond the usual mortal span, the mystic had never lost his terror of Neferata. It was one of the reasons he had been suffered to live so long, the other being that spirits were more readily drawn to a living conjurer than one who had already been given the blood kiss.

‘My dread queen.’ Ahkmet-bey abased himself at the foot of the dais. ‘The spirits have shown me many dire things. The enemy has penetrated the spells that have protected your kingdom for so very long. An army marching under the banner of the Serpent descends upon us to lay siege to the city.’

Neferata glowered at the necromancer, her pointing finger lengthening into a blackened claw. ‘Have the phantoms bound to my dominion not plagued these invaders? Have they not filled their minds with doubt and fear? How much of this horde has already deserted their snake flags? How many of them are lost in the gravefog?’

A tremor of fear shook Ahkmet-bey’s voice as he answered. ‘Highness, the enemy has lost few to the mists and fewer still to the phantasms. Their leader pushes them unerringly across the boneyards and mouldmires.’ The necromancer shook his head. ‘It is as though he is being drawn to us by some infernal enchantment.’

‘You speak nonsense, mortal,’ Lord Harkdron sneered. ‘Since the first realmgates were breached by the Everchosen, neither sorcerer nor daemon has been able to find Nulahmia.’ The vampire’s fangs glistened as he smiled at Ahkmet-bey. ‘Do you dare cast aspersions upon our queen’s powers?’

‘I report only what I am commanded to reveal,’ Ahkmet-bey declared. ‘The spirits have shown me the invaders marching into the kingdom. They have found a way…’

Neferata dropped down from her divan, descending the steps of the raised dais with a panther-like menace. She hesitated an instant beside Harkdron, letting her claw slide down his cheek in a languid caress. She could feel the vampire’s excitement at the display of affection. ‘Ahkmet-bey wouldn’t risk the life he’s used so much magic to sustain simply to spread disquieting rumours in my court. What the spirits have shown him must be true. The enemy has found a way to reach Nulahmia and threaten my domain.’

Harkdron brought both of his fists crashing against his breastplate in martial salute. ‘Allow me to command your armies, my queen. I will bring them against these invaders and give them cause to repent whatever doom allowed them to slip through your spells. They will be exterminated before they can even lay eyes upon your city.’

‘No, my eager champion,’ Neferata told Harkdron. ‘You will not sally forth to confront the enemy out in the open where the horde’s numbers can be brought to bear. You will stay here and hold the walls.’

‘It will be my honour,’ Harkdron vowed. ‘The Chaos vermin will smother the wormfields with their dead, and after the battle, I shall build an ossuary taller than the Throne Mount from their bones. The tribute of a general to his queen.’

Neferata smiled at Harkdron’s enthusiasm, enjoying how fully his devotion had trapped him. ‘Bring me victory first. Allow no harm to befall my city and it will be Lord Harkdron who is paid tribute.’

‘If your armies can hold the walls,’ Ahkmet-bey said, ‘then we might light the spirit-beacons and summon aid from the other Mor–’

The suggestion died on the necromancer’s tongue. Fast as a striking tomb-scorpion, Neferata spun about and raked her claw across Ahkmet-bey’s throat. Bright arterial blood sprayed from the man as he crumpled to the floor, his extended life extinguished in a heartbeat. The vampires of Neferata’s court gazed hungrily at the gory puddle that surrounded the twitching corpse, but none made a move to indulge their thirst.

‘Nulahmia has stood on its own strength this long,’ Neferata told her courtiers as she turned to face them. ‘We will not light the spirit-beacons. We will not be so weak as to beg for help from those who abandoned us long ago. When the enemy comes against us, we will hurl him back with our own magic and our own armies. It will be the might of Nulahmia alone that brings them to destruction. No others will share in our victory!’

Neferata climbed back onto her divan, letting the cries of devotion and praise rising from her subjects fill her ears. There was always a quality of fear in the voices of her courtiers, a quality she usually found pleasing. Now it had turned sour. The fear she detected wasn’t provoked by her, but by the advancing hordes of Chaos. Even after her callous slaughter of Ahkmet-bey before their very eyes, her court was more frightened of the invaders.

A wave of her hand dismissed her court. She watched Harkdron march away with the captains of her armies, listened for a moment to their mutterings about strategy in the coming battle. None of them dared so much as whisper about seeking aid, not when their queen’s sharp ears might hear them, but she knew the thought was on their minds.

She would not countenance the humiliation of begging the other Mortarchs for help. It would be a show of weakness they would be quick to exploit for their own ends. Neferata had worked too long to protect what she had built to share it with one of her rivals. Certainly she was anxious about the horde now moving against her kingdom. Any army that could breach her spells might likewise breach her walls.

Still, she wouldn’t order the spirit-beacons lit. To do so would undermine her dominion over her subjects. They would look to the outside for deliverance rather than to their queen. If that help never came…

Neferata stared down at Ahkmet-bey’s corpse. Almost absently, she waved her hand and allowed her entourage to feed. As she watched them lap up the necromancer’s blood, she pondered the futility of the man’s suggestion.

After so much time, with so much of Shyish overrun by Chaos, was there even anyone left to see the spirit-beacons? Was she the last of the Mortarchs?

Lascilion closed his eyes and leaned back in his saddle. Pursing his lips, he flicked out his forked tongue. The slimy organ quivered a moment, each prong licking the misty air and feeding observations to his brain. Much like a true snake, the Chaos warlord smelt with his tongue. Unlike a serpent, the smells Lascilion tasted were not scents or odours, but residues of emotion. They were spiritual stains imprinted upon their environment, fierce passions and terrible frights that had blazed up like bonfires for an instant and left their essence seared into their surroundings.

Yes, it was still there, borne upon aetheric waves of anguish and agony, the taint that had guided him through the gravefog and mouldmire. A delicious flavour of cruelty and sadism that sent a thrill of envy pounding through his veins. Lascilion had long been in the service of the Prince of Chaos, the sensuous god Slaanesh. Pleasure and pain had become his food and drink, each new experience feeding off those that had come before, creating within his soul a tapestry of excess and depravity. He had presided over numberless atrocities and outrages, glutted himself upon suffering until his senses had become jaded and dulled. Sometimes, for a rare moment, a single tear might evoke his old passion, a scream might once again echo through the corridors of his spirit, but such moments had become increasingly rare. All felt empty to him now.

There were those who said the god Slaanesh had been destroyed, consumed by his own sensual gluttony. Lascilion, in his darkest moments, wondered if such myths were true, if the god he had given himself to was indeed vanquished. If the Serpent no longer waited to reward him for his devotions, then what was the purpose of any of it? Mere indulgence of flesh? A wanton abandonment to shallow hedonism? Such simplicity might be enough for the half-witted marauders and bestial gors who marched under his banner, but for him, there had to be more than that. Something of value. Something of meaning.

As his tongue flickered in the air, Lascilion felt old urges stir deep within him – half-remembered lusts, half-forgotten desires. The suffering he sensed was beyond any he had tasted before. He had drunk often from the well of torment, but never had he encountered something of such terrible purity. It was like a fine vintage, set down long ago and carefully tended so that it might reach a perfection of cruelty. The air of horror that drew him on had been cultivated not over the lifetime of a single murderous tyrant, but was steeped in the malignity of centuries. A pall of nigh-incomparable agony clung to Nulahmia, and it was calling out to him as though drawing back to itself one of its own.

That was why, where so many others had failed, Lascilion would succeed. The disciples of Nurgle, the warlords of Khorne, the acolytes of Tzeentch, even the verminous spawn of the Rat God had all tried to discover the secret city to which Queen Neferata had retreated. Man, daemon or monster – all had failed. Lascilion wouldn’t fail. His devotions to Slaanesh would see him through. Bloodking Thagmok, overlord of the armies of Chaos in Shyish, would learn that, broken or lost, the power of the Serpent lived on in his servants.

The monstrous steed upon which Lascilion rode lurched beneath him, its sinuous body undulating with ripples of agitation. It was a gift from the Realm of Chaos, a daemon sustained by his own depraved spirit. In the Mortal Realms, daemons demanded certain conditions to exist – mighty relics, lavish sacrifices, mantles of flesh to possess or, most propitious of all, a landscape in harmony with their own dark essence. In all his wanderings, Lascilion had never sensed a place more in tune with the power of Slaanesh than Nulahmia. The warlord opened his eyes and gave his daemon steed a reassuring pat on its fluted proboscis. Only when the thing had quieted somewhat did he turn his attention to the being that had upset his mount.

Amala crouched in the mouldy filth of the ground across which the army marched, gossamer wings folded against her back. She stretched forth a ropey tendril and offered to Lascilion a curled portion of skin. The warlord noted the blood that dripped from the scroll as he plucked it from the chitinous tentacle. The insect-like mutant was a capable scout, but her lack of a mouth made it necessary for her to render her reports in writing. She was often too impatient to wait for stylus and clay, so made do with the horde’s stragglers.

Lascilion dismissed the mutant with a flick of his hand. There was only so long his steed could abide the sight of the luminous organs that oozed up from beneath Amala’s skin. When the winged scout withdrew to the branches of a gnarled tree some distance away, it was as though his mind surged up from beneath black waters.

Tokresh-khan, chieftain of the Sorroweaters, marched towards Lascilion when he had seen Amala fly away. The barbarian was a huge man, nearly as tall on foot as the warlord was in his saddle. Tokresh wore only a few ornaments and talismans, preferring to display his scarred and tattooed body and prove his devotion to Slaanesh by exposing himself to the slashing blades and raking claws of his enemies. The masses of grey scars etched across his sallow skin had transcended ugliness to become beautiful in their own right, weaving and flowing into one another like the coils of the Serpent himself.

Lascilion, by contrast, took great care to protect the magnificent body and handsome visage with which Slaanesh had gifted him. Once, he had been as ugly as one of Tokresh’s lizard-skin boots, but his devotions had transformed him into an entirely different being. His body was strong and fine, wondrous as a marble god and powerful as a daemon. His skin was as smooth as eiderdown, and the great mane of hair that cascaded down from his head and tumbled across his shoulders was like spun gold. His face transcended the limitations of human beauty, blending the nobility of a lion with the wisdom and determination of a king.

To guard these gifts, Lascilion wore plate armour cast from great slivers of pearl plundered from the noxious depths of the Obsidian Lagoon. Each segment of his shimmering armour had been etched with esoteric sigils and the secret names of his god, soaked in wyrd-dust until every piece was saturated in powerful magics. At his side, he wore twin swords crafted by the crazed swordsmith Nakadai, the vicious blade named Pain and its smaller brother Torment. Each new victim fed the blades, swelling their power with the anguish of those they cut down.

Lascilion let one hand slip down to Pain’s ivory grip, feeling the hungry hum of the aroused blade pulse through him. He fixed a stern gaze upon Tokresh. It had been an arduous ordeal, bringing his army through the arcane veils that guarded these lands. Many times he had been challenged, confronted by despairing chieftains and sorcerers who wanted to turn back. Their path through the gravefog was littered with the bodies of those who had tried to oppose his command.

Tokresh halted when he saw Pain inching from its sheath. The barbarian looked from the blade to the face of the man who held it. ‘You have sent the moth-eater ahead of us?’ he asked, nodding towards Amala. There was a woeful lack of deference in the chieftain’s tone. Lascilion would remember that.

‘I have her words,’ Lascilion declared, waving the fleshy scroll in his other hand. He looked across the bleak landscape through which his army marched, a jumbled terrain of barren mountains and winding ravines, dead trees and yellowed weeds. ‘We will soon be quit of these lands.’

‘It cannot be soon enough,’ Tokresh cursed. He slapped a calloused hand against his tattooed breast. ‘This place chills my heart and would unman me. Every step I take, I can feel my courage falter. There is witchery here, the stink of the necromancers and their ilk.’ He waved at the marching Sorroweaters as the marauders were approaching one of the withered stands of trees that spotted the edges of the trail the army followed. ‘My warriors sense it too. I can see it in their eyes, watch it crawling across their faces. We have heard much of Neferata and her might. There are some who worry you lead us not to glory but disgrace.’

Lascilion gazed across the ranks of the Sorroweaters. They were a formidable force, hundreds strong, each man built along the same hulking lines as their chieftain. Standards crafted from the still-moaning bodies of their victims rose above the heads of the marching marauders. Their shamans knew spells of such horrific potency that they could remind even the undead what it was to suffer. For their living victims, even more unspeakable tortures were their reward. Normally, the Sorroweaters drew strength from the misery of their living totems. Now, Lascilion could see that their ardour was dimmed. They glanced at their surroundings with furtive, worried looks.

Among the rest of his horde, he could see similar traces of trepidation. The brays and bleats of the Vorkoth warherd had fallen to almost nothing, the horned beastmen moved to silence by the oppressive atmosphere. The fratricidal Hellcast had drawn close to one another, something the gold-armoured knights usually did only when they charged into battle, all too aware of the Khornate curse that hovered over their heads and spurred them to strike one another when no other foes presented themselves. Even the Scalpfinders, the most savage and brutal of the tribes who followed Lascilion, had a subdued air about them, clutching their axes and flails as though they were talismans rather than weapons.

Mendeziron, the gigantic Keeper of Secrets, was less circumspect in his agitation, plucking gors and marauders from the midst of their tribes as though they were choice morsels in a box of sweetmeats. The more the army surrendered to their fear, the more they excited the appetites of the daemon. The four-armed monster needed such victims to invigorate him. The obscene reliquary Lascilion had stolen from the Crying Tower was enough to sustain Mendeziron in the Mortal Realms, but not enough to lend the daemon any measure of strength. That required more substantial offerings. Early in the march, there had been many among his army who considered giving themselves to Mendeziron a sacred honour. Now they fought or fled when the daemon came for them.

Lascilion scowled at the unquestionable lack of valour and determination on display. It was small wonder the followers of the other Ruinous Powers had come to hold those who served Slaanesh in such disregard. Was this the best that could be expected of them? Were they merely decadent hedonists, grown soft in their vices, no longer capable of the intensity of desire that drove them to ever more profound revelations of experience?

‘Can you truly be afraid?’ Lascilion sneered at Tokresh. ‘Can you not delight in the chill that curdles your blood? Is it not something new? Is it not something you haven’t felt before?’ He could see that his questions made no impact upon the barbarian. Creatures like Tokresh were too simple to understand the extent of experience the true disciple of Slaanesh must be willing to embrace as an offering to his god. ‘We have fought the coffin-worms before. The whole of Shyish was once their domain. But with sword and spell, we have brought them to ruin. The Lords of Chaos have conquered the Masters of Death. All that is left of them are lingering echoes, remnants hiding in the night. Can you not imagine the delights that await us? The wonders of pillage and conquest that stand before us?’

‘Their magic is strong,’ Tokresh protested.

‘The very magnitude of their spells should whet your desires,’ Lascilion told him. ‘The greater the effort to protect, the more magnificent the reward that waits for those with the determination to press on.’ He tapped the fleshy scroll against his breastplate. ‘Amala has seen the walls of a city just beyond the mountains. A day, less than a day, and we shall stand before those walls.’ A cruel smile twisted Lascilion’s leonine face. ‘We will tear down those walls. We will fall upon the city that stands beyond them. The last city of Shyish will be our playground. Your kinsmen will be free to loot and pillage, to defile and desecrate. You will abandon yourselves in murder and delight, and every indulgence will be an offering to Great Slaanesh.’

Greed and lust shone in the eyes of Tokresh. He had heard the stories from his tribe’s elders about the old days, when the hordes of Chaos had descended upon the mighty kingdoms and cities of Shyish. Long had he dreamed of such wantonness and savagery. ‘I will tell my people,’ he said. ‘We will see this city.’

‘You will do more than see it,’ Lascilion promised. ‘You will tear it apart. After we have finished, nothing of flesh or stone will have been spared our attentions. Nulahmia exists only to sate our desires.’

The warlord watched Tokresh as he marched back to his tribe. Lascilion had rekindled the chieftain’s lust, but not his loyalty. When the battle began, he would give the Sorroweaters the honour of acting as the vanguard. Whatever defenders Nulahmia possessed, they could inflict the worst of their efforts against the marauders. They would expend resources and spare Lascilion the effort of dealing with Tokresh later.

Lascilion’s tongue slithered out and licked the air once more. The exquisite taste of depravity burned his senses like an exotic spice. When the walls came down, he would lead his Amethyst Guard through the rubble. Let the others indulge their petty appetites. For Lascilion, there could be no treasure more precious than the creature that could preside over such a legacy of atrocity.

Neferata would be his.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2016.
This eBook edition published in 2016 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Cover illustrations by Julia Zolotareva and Mac Smith.
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