Hunger spiked and her grip tightened. He squealed as she jerked his head to the side and exposed his pulsing throat. Neferata laughed as she buried her fangs into the sweetness of him. The tang of his blood filled her nostrils, inundating her senses…

The dream-recollection evaporated, taking with it the memory of heat and blood. Its remnants were brushed aside by something cold and dark that reached out of the shadowy place between waking and sleeping for her. It was malevolence carried on musty wings of alien intent. There was a sound like crows on a battlefield in the dusk and a harsh whining moan that seemed to echo from everywhere and nowhere.

She saw the Corpse Geometries — though she did not know how she knew their name — rise and expand across the soul of everything, caging the rebellious ka and keeping them safe and bound from outer predation. All was silent. All was perfect.

Come, Neferata… Come, Queen of Lahmia!

Cold talons clutched at her, seeking to draw her back down into the dark of sleep. The foul taste of grave-soil filled her mouth and a voice like needles scoring bone spoke, scratching a litany of cold fire across her mind.

Neferata awoke.

Her eyes opened and she grunted. Gone was the sensation of being dragged down into unknown depths, replaced by the sting of cold and the gnawing ache of the bloodthirst. Whiteness filled her vision, gleaming in the moonlight. She rose to her feet, scattering the blanket of snow that had covered her and protected her from the harsh light of day. She wore white furs and her hair was bound back in a single thick plait that tumbled down her back like a glossy black serpent.

Neferata had not changed much since the fall of Lahmia. Indeed, change was now almost anathema to her. Her every fibre yearned for constancy, for the world to cease its inexorable march. But she had learned to her cost that to attempt to hold time frozen was to court destruction.

That was one of the reasons that things had ended as they had in Lahmia.

For a moment, she indulged in her memories, letting the illusion of peace drift across her mind. She could see the white stone of Lahmia’s walls and feel the cool sea-breeze rolling in off the harbour. She could smell the exotic smells and hear the clamour of the Red Silk District, where men of a dozen nations revelled between voyages. She could hear the soft music of the celebrations held for the good and the great in the District of the Golden Lotus. She could taste the strong eastern wine which was poured into clay cups that held stubbornly to all of the tastes that had gone before. She could feel the pleasure-pain of the hixa’s sting.

The City of the Dawn had been the greatest and most beautiful of the cities of Nehekhara, guided by wise, undying kings into a golden age. She had been of an age, in life, to recall when kings lived for centuries before infirmity set in. Her own span had been measured in decades before Arkhan the Black had come to Lahmia. She had been the Daughter of Moon, then, and queen. For many before her, the latter had been, at best, a ceremonial title. The Queens of Lahmia were supposed to be removed from the mundane matter of politics, but Neferata had been a different sort of queen. The king had been, at best, an erratic ruler and much of the burden of governing Lahmia day-to-day had fallen on her slim shoulders. It had been a burden she relished.

Arkhan had come in chains, with his heart cleft in two. Paralysed and trapped inside his form, Arkhan the Black had been dragged into Lahmia in the Hour of the Dead by Lamashizzar, her king and husband. The last of Nagash’s immortals and the only one to survive that final, bloody war that saw the Great Necromancer flee into sour northern lands, much like the ones she now found herself in.

Lamashizzar had desired to rip the immortal’s secrets from him by force and he had succeeded, to a degree. She looked down at her hand, noting the black veins that crawled beneath the pale skin. But she had learned so much more. And when that knowledge had threatened to destroy her, Arkhan had saved her life, though he knew it not.

She thought of the immortal, his lean face swimming to the surface of her mind. He had not been quite handsome, but arresting nonetheless. The image wavered and dispersed, leaving a skull in its place. Change took them all, in the end. Arkhan was no longer the being he had been. She thought of when she had last seen him, in the burning streets of Bel Aliad. A walking corpse, clad in black armour and red robes, dealing death with every step he took.

Arkhan’s declaration of war on the living had been one of many things which had necessitated her abandonment of the caliphates for the primitive lands of the savage north. She looked around.

Trees surrounded her, clawing arthritically at the dark sky. Winter in the mountains was an ugly thing, she thought. Then, winter was ugly everywhere, but perhaps especially here, in these rough, wild hills, beneath the ghostly light of the black sun. Neferata turned north, her eyes searching.

The black sun was still there, as it had been every day and night for close to a decade now. It was not the real sun. Instead, it was more like an afterimage, a blotch of darker-than-dark, burned into the skin of the world. It rose at night in mockery of the moon and burned black over the mountains. Neferata felt the cold fire of its rays as it hung bloated and hungry for light below the moon, like some abominable beacon, drawing her towards it. At first, she had tried to resist. In Sartosa, it had been easy. She could ignore its subtle caress across the surface of her soul. But here and now, there was no escape.

It plucked at her thoughts, infiltrating them. In her dreams, she felt its gaze and in her waking moments it blazed at her from its northern nest. It called, and Neferata came. No matter how much she might wish otherwise. No one else could see it. It called to her and her alone, though she could not say why; it was a distant whisper that drifted just at the edge of her hearing, as annoying in its way as an incessant shout.

Angered, she looked south, towards Nehekhara, and a pang clawed at her chest. She reached beneath the heavy white furs she wore and let her fingertips drift over the spot where Alcadizzar’s dagger had entered her flesh, seeking her heart. There was no scar there to mar her marble flesh, but she could still feel the traitor’s blade.

Yes, she had been a queen once, centuries ago. Queen and goddess of a vibrant land, she had asked so little of her people and given so much in return and been rewarded with treachery and pain. Once, she had thought to go back, to re-take what was rightfully hers. That was impossible now. Only the dead ruled Nehekhara, and though she was not truly alive, Neferata was anything but dead.

No, Nehekhara — Lahmia — was dead and dust and there was nothing for her there, nothing but fast-fading memories of a different world and a different woman.

‘Do you smell it?’ a soft voice asked. Neferata glanced at the woman rising from the snow nearby and blinked in momentary confusion. Then she tilted her head and tasted the wind. Her eyes widened.

‘Blood, freshly spilled,’ the former Queen of Lahmia breathed. No wonder she had been dreaming. She stretched, thrusting her hands towards the moon. She felt no soreness or stiffness, even hungry as she was, but old habits were wont to die hard. She luxuriated in the feeling of powerful muscles pulling against one another. As a mortal, she had never truly indulged the limits of her body, but in the centuries since the tainted blood of Arkhan the Black had mingled with an assassin’s poison in her veins, Neferata had come to derive a certain satisfaction from the raw physicality that immortality had conferred upon her.