Morath had been right, in his way. It wasn’t that she possessed an aptitude for the magics, but that the thing that she had become was one with that dark lore. Even as Arkhan and Nagash had replaced their humanity with a swirling void of magics, so too had she become a being of those alien winds. They flowed through her altered form more easily than they did through Morath’s fragile human shape. She could hear the thunder of a hundred thousand voices, caught in the shifting waters.
They rose from the water like a morning mist, threadbare at first and then thicker, more real. The wraiths were not all human. Orcs and other, unrecognisable creatures wafted silently amongst the cloud of summoned spirits. Their essence had been wrung from the water by sheer force of will and Neferata found the strain almost comforting. It was good to know that her mind’s strength was still intact. Hollow eyes met hers and ghostly heads bowed to her will. She gestured without turning. ‘Take them,’ she breathed. A waft of turgid, freezing wind surrounded her as the spectral forms clustered around her swept forwards, trailing tendrils of sickly light.
The host of spirits flowed towards the dwarfs and swept over them like a hot wind over desert dunes. Where they struck, dwarfs died, and soon enough the tunnel had fallen silent, but horns blew in the deep and alarms sounded somewhere close by. Reinforcements would arrive soon. Neferata scanned the tunnel mouths that gaped all around them, and then spotted a strange mechanism composed of a flat wooden platform connected to a complex pulley system. Her eyes narrowed speculatively. ‘There,’ she said.
‘Do you know how to work that device?’ Naaima said.
‘No, nor do we need to. We climb,’ Neferata said. As she spoke she chopped through the pulley system, slicing the thick ropes and sending parts of the mechanism rolling across the floor. ‘And not all of us,’ she added as she turned to her followers. ‘Naaima, Varna and Therise, you will come with me. Iona and Freja will lead the rest in two groups. Iona, you will take those metal aqueducts,’ she said, gesturing to the heavy bronze pipes that were sunk into the river on the other side of the water-wheel. Another strange mechanism, studded with valves and stopcocks, sat high above the water. More pipes led from it into a narrow tunnel cut into the roof of the hall. Neferata suspected that those pipes led throughout the hold. There were likely other reservoirs of water in the mountain, but she suspected the pipes would lead to all of them.
‘The dawi prize their beer almost as much as their gold. Follow those to the breweries. Razek once boasted to me that beer flowed from the breweries even in times of war. Destroy them and damage the aqueducts as you go. Thirsty enemies are weak enemies,’ she said. Iona hissed in pleasure and gestured to three of her sisters. The vampires sprinted towards the pipes. Neferata looked at one of the others, a blonde former slave from one of the tribes that roamed the northern mountains. ‘Freja, find the storehouses. Even dawi need to eat. Destroy their supply lines. Burn them if you can. A fire is as good as an army, especially when they’ll have no warriors to spare in putting it out. Go!’
Neferata watched Freja and her sisters run for the doors. In the weeks they’d spent waiting for the Strigoi to locate the point where the river entered the mountain she had tutored her followers in Khazalid. They knew enough to follow the markings to their targets. And if not… if not, they would serve as a distraction if nothing else.
She looked at Naaima and gestured to the tunnel above them. ‘Now we climb.’
The spirit host filled the tunnel like smoke, accompanying them as they climbed. Even as the first warriors entered the mine in response to the alarm, the vampires were already gone. Nothing was left behind save dead dwarfs.
Such an occurrence was to become common in the days ahead. Neferata and her handmaidens slunk through the side-tunnels and crooked passages of the Lower Deeps, striking where the dwarfs least suspected. There were many places to hide, for creatures used to seeking the darkness. Too, these levels were thinly patrolled. Most of the able-bodied were on the higher levels, fighting the bulk of the forces arrayed against the Silver Pinnacle.
Despite weathering any number of sieges, the defences of the Silver Pinnacle had never been penetrated to this degree, and the dwarfs scrambled to meet the threat that crept among them, red-eyed and bloody-fanged in the dark. And to their credit, these attempts were not wholly without success. Three of them were caught over the following days, and their screams still echoed through the depths. The dwarfs were not cruel. But they were thorough.
Despite the loss of her sisters, Freja accomplished her own task. A thrown lantern and burst casks of beer set the great storehouses alight and as the dwarfs fought to put the flames out, she had retreated into the darkness, seeking out her mistress.
Those dwarfs who could be spared to hunt Neferata and her followers were ambushed and slaughtered by their prey, their bodies hung up in the corridors to drain. Soon, the dwarfs abandoned the hunt, and instead stayed close to the well-lit and heavily defended areas. As Neferata had hoped, they had come to fear the dark, ceding it to her without realising that she had been moving in a singular direction since arriving. Razek might have put it together, but Razek was dead.
She and her followers moved ever upwards, bypassing treasure vaults and barracks, looking instead for more solemn targets. Namely, the Vaults of the Ancestors: the hallowed halls where the dwarfs of the Silver Pinnacle laid their dead to their eternal rest.
The grand tombs of Karaz Bryn were filled with generation upon generation of dawi dead. There were thousands of perfectly preserved bodies there, awaiting the dark touch of Neferata’s magics. And when she woke them from their dreamless slumber, they would march beneath her banner, crushing her enemies — all of her enemies, living and dead — beneath their metal-shod tread.
Eagerness filled her as they drew nearer to their goal. Morath had shown her how to scent the charnel breeze of hidden tombs and she had learned her lessons well. And from Ushoran, though she would never admit it, she had learned the art of hiding in plain sight. Thus, when they at last reached the tomb-hall where the Vaults lay, they entered surreptitiously and soundlessly.
With an abominable speed, the vampires crawled along the ceiling, slithering out of the passage and up among the support buttresses and rock formations of the tomb-hall beyond. There was no darkness in the hall, save that which clung to the ceiling, and dwarfs, much like men, rarely looked up.
The hall housing the Vaults was immense, stretching for what seemed like miles. The great doors that marked the Vaults themselves were only slightly smaller than the gates to Karaz Bryn itself, and even more ornate. Spread across the centre of both gates was emblazoned the scowling face of one of the dwarf gods, though at that size it was hard to tell which. Radiating outwards from that glaring visage was an intricate mandala of words and images and symbols, none of which made any sense to Neferata. Perhaps it was a recounting of the deeds of all of those interred within, or of their clans.
Regardless of the purpose of the decorations which adorned them, the doors themselves radiated the same implacable menace which marked the gates of the Silver Pinnacle. The closer they drew, the more the presence pressed against them.
‘Neferata…’ Naaima hissed. Neferata stopped and craned her head back to see her followers huddling some distance behind her as if they were rooted to the spot. And even farther back, the spirit host clustered around the top of the archway that marked the entrance to the hall. Immediately, Neferata cursed herself for a fool. Of course the dwarfs would have some form of protection on their tombs! She turned back to the Vaults, squinting. Her flesh crawled at the thought of drawing any closer, but there was no other choice. To turn back now was to admit defeat.