throat and she wrenched his bony body into the air and brought it down on the stone with a resounding crack. W’soran squealed and grabbed her face. His strength was surprising and she felt her flesh tear as she jerked him up again and flung him onto the steps hard enough to shatter one. W’soran shook his head and tried to climb to his feet but she was on him before he could, her claws hooked into his scalp.
‘Neferata,’ Ushoran growled.
Neferata hissed, tempted to throw off the masquerade she had only so recently taken up. Instead, she released the other vampire and stood. ‘Was that a test, Ushoran?’ she said.
‘Not the kind you are thinking of, no,’ Ushoran said. W’soran heaved himself up, his eyes incandescent with fury.
‘I should flay your pearly flesh from your treacherous bones,’ he rasped, glaring at Neferata. He clenched his fists, as if contemplating unleashing a spell.
‘But you won’t,’ Ushoran said, interposing himself. ‘We will put aside old grudges.’ He looked at Neferata. ‘There was no treachery here. You were in no danger. W’soran merely wanted to test his newest creation’s abilities.’
‘What was it?’ Neferata said, tentatively touching the already healing bite-mark in her arm.
‘A ghoul,’ W’soran said.
Neferata blinked, surprised. W’soran laughed. ‘Oh yes. I told you that I had been studying them.’ He grinned at her. ‘I have learned much, Neferata. Things that would make even your blood curdle.’ In that moment, Neferata was reminded again of the fear she had once felt when in W’soran’s presence. There was a horrible hunger in his eyes, a hunger that went beyond simple bloodthirst into something else. Nonetheless, she held his gaze until he looked away.
‘If there are no more tests, perhaps I could see the vaults. Where are they?’
‘Scattered all up and down the spine of the mountain,’ Ushoran said, gesturing. ‘I’ve had W’soran’s maggot-addled minions digging them open. Kadon was like a jackal with a bone. He hid his wealth in random places. When he needed a new vault, he merely made one, using the dead to claw it from the rock.’
‘Nagash employed similar techniques in Nagashizzar,’ W’soran said.
‘Which is where I got the idea,’ Ushoran added. W’soran shot him a look, but said nothing. Neferata smirked. The two – the spy and the sorcerer – had never been friends. They were allies of convenience at most, and spiteful allies at that. If that spite were ever unlocked… She filed the thought away for future consideration. There were other levers and locks than just those crafted by the dwarfs in their palaces of stone.
The numbers of corpses increased the lower they went. Stumbling bodies covered in dried flesh walked alongside things that were nothing save bone and scraps of cloth. They came to what could only be an observation platform. Neferata leaned over the stone barrier and peered down into the inner workings of the mine. The dead moved like ants in their thousands, scurrying this way and that. Great machines, the likes of which she had never seen in all her years, ground away at the deep stone, manned by the squat, desiccated shapes of long-dead dwarfs. These latter corpses were even more unnerving than the humans, orcs and beasts that served as labour. Mangy beards, plaited with ancient jewellery, hung from fleshless jaws. Ragged suits of mail dangled from broad bones and strange lights danced in empty eye-sockets.
‘Where by all the devils in the dark did you get those?’ she hissed.
‘Kadon took prisoners as well as gold in his war with the dawi,’ Ushoran said. ‘He forced them to craft him machines of great and fell purpose, down here in the dark.’
‘The mummified corpses of the dwarfs retain a significant amount of muscle memory,’ W’soran mused, eyes guttering like embers.
‘Once we have strengthened the roots of this place, we can begin to build a fortress here. A true fortress, fit for an emperor,’ Ushoran said. ‘It will be a palace of bone and stone, from which I may rule our ever-growing empire.’ He spread his arms as if greeting the jubilant throngs she thought he must be imagining.
Neferata shook her head as W’soran continued to prattle. Idiots, the pair of them. No, worse – Ushoran knew damn well what the end result of this would be. She looked at him and he gave her a hungry smile. ‘You disapprove?’
‘I’m told that the only thing the dwarfs value more than gold is their dead, and you are making a mockery of both. How