Baal the Necromancer (who wisely went by the name of Bulgass the Glass Merchant whenever he ventured beyond his home in distant Skorkalder) leaned towards his companion so only he could hear his words.
‘It can be done, but it will not be cheap.’ The lean features of his deeply lined, almost skeletal face barely hid his greed as he stared into the shadowy cowl of the eunuch. Baal would have liked to have been able to see the man more clearly. Theirs was a delicate business and if word of what they were going to do reached the wrong ears it would cost them dear. The temple priests who dominated Arana with their creed of the Sea God would have him flayed to within an inch of death before burying him alive beneath the desert sands that lay beyond the city walls.
A sudden draft from the outside door as a group of seamen lurched into the inn cast a glimmer of light from a nearby lamp into the eunuch’s cowl to reveal, for an instant, the unpleasant features of an old man whose wrinkles had been unnaturally smoothed into hairline tracks by his extraordinary plumpness, like an ancient, overfed baby. ‘My master is wealthy. He will pay well for your services. You need not fear.’
Which settled their fates.
And the fates of everyone in the then known world.
It was months before they met again. During that time Baal gathered together all the arcane equipment he would need, as well as securing a place they could use, a derelict villa outside the city, built before sea raiders made such places unsafe to inhabit, though only the most desperate pirate would be tempted now, surrounded as the building was by a garden choked with poisonous exotic weeds. Though the roof was intact, the windows had been boarded up, and vermin had invaded its rooms.
Baal’s first act was to evict these rodents, not because he was bothered by them but because they could inadvertently damage his instruments. One of the simplest of his necromantic skills, he raised the liches of recently deceased weasels. Such creatures were easily bent to his will and only too willing to kill all the rats they found. Otherwise, the building’s decrepitude suited him. No one would bother them in as malignant a place as this, with its shadowy decay and air of spectral dangers.
It was dark by the time the eunuch and his Kossemite master arrived, coated in dust from the desert plains. Besides the dromedaries they rode upon, they brought three more. Two were burdened with supplies but one towed what to all appearances was a merchant’s cart on top of which, hidden beneath piles upon piles of rugs, was a massive, carven wooden chest, held tightly shut with chains. The men carefully slid it from the cart, before hauling it inside the villa.
Baal bowed to the eunuch’s master, whose intricately woven silk clothes and arrogant bearing were sign enough of his aristocratic status. Tall, black bearded, with a harsh face and narrow eyes, he barely tilted his head in acknowledgement. The eunuch introduced him as Lord Kanarra, though whether this was his real name Baal neither knew nor cared. The sight of a large sack of gold coins the eunuch heaved into the villa in payment for his services was all the encouragement he needed.
‘Is everything ready?’ Kanarra asked in a sullen voice; his dark eyes searched the walls of the antechamber as if he was afraid of a trap.
Not that Baal blamed him. He had been tempted himself to betray him to the priests, knowing the reward they would offer. But the gold Kanarra had promised was greater than anything the priests could afford. Besides, he was excited at the prospect of using his necromantic skills once more, to raise someone from the halls of death and breathe new life into what was left of his mummified lungs.
The chest the eunuch and his master had dragged from the cart was an ancient sarcophagus. Its richly carved oak depicted scenes from the life of the man it concealed. And such a life! Even Baal was impressed. The Emperor Rianda was legendary. Over a millennium before, in the days of the decadent Kathian Kingdom, a huge giant of a man, Rianda had ridden in a blood drenched frenzy from the frozen north at the head of an unstoppable horde of barbarian horse soldiers to forge an empire that stretched from Koss in the distant exotic east to the Bithanian lands to the west, conquering kingdom after kingdom in a scarlet frenzy of destruction, only for his empire to collapse into anarchy after his death. While it had lasted, though, it had been the greatest the world had ever seen. Many had tried to recreate it, but none had been so vast—nor so drenched in blood, forged from a violence so terrible the peoples of the world had suffered nightmares for centuries afterwards.
Rianda the Great—Rianda the Terrible—The Sower of Death—The Despoiler of Cities.
And now before Baal lay all that remained of the bloodthirsty conqueror, inches from his ink stained fingers.
‘We can start as soon as the moon rises,’ Baal said. ‘Everything is ready.’
When they prised the lid from the sarcophagus a foul stench seeped into the air even before they had exposed the withered liche that lay inside, still dressed in its rusted archaic mail, the flaking remnants of a leather belt and a bejewelled scabbard hanging from around its shrunken waist. The great sword lay on top, its impressive hilt lavishly topped with a crimson ruby carved into the head of a snarling demon. The blade was of blue steel and still looked sharp. Curiously, the emperor’s gnarled fingers were coiled around its ivory hilt as if the old despot were ready to wield it again. But the barbarian’s face was a grisly horror, framed by a mane of grey hair like filaments of ancient wire, the skin across its skeletal face stretched across the jutting bones like rotted parchment.
‘You are sure you can raise him?’ Kanarra asked, his voice cracking as he stared in morbid fascination at the mummified corpse.
‘Are you sure you wish me to bring him to life?’ Baal countered in a hushed whisper. He had raised older corpses before, though none so infamous. Not for the first time he wondered why anyone would want Rianda to live once more. Solidly built, with what had once been a muscular frame, a full head taller than the tallest man that Baal had ever met, he had gloried in his ability to outfight anyone, splitting fully armoured men in twain with a single, savage stroke of his sword—the same held now in his wizened hands.
Baal wondered how many that massive blade had slaughtered. But the thought did not linger. He had too much to do.
Casting aside whatever doubts he still might have, Baal began his preparations, the foulness of which filled even the arrogant Kossemite with disgust. The rituals Baal needed to do lasted most of the night, and by dawn the necromancer was so exhausted that his limbs trembled, and he looked like a corpse himself, before sinking to his bony knees before the sarcophagus. Within it, though, could already be heard sounds of movement.
Life of a tenebrous, unholy sort had begun to seep into the emperor’s remains.
Baal looked up as the lich reached out and clasped the sides of its sarcophagus with taloned fingers, before laboriously climbing to its feet, horror filling the necromancer’s eyes despite having often enough brought the simulacrum of life to the dead before. This, though, was different. Never before had he attempted to resurrect someone like Rianda. Part warrior, part sorcerer, the emperor had been no simple barbarian from the northern wastes, where myth and reality merged like shadows into one. Some said he had been born a demigod, that the grim deities of the haunted north had sired him on a barbarian princess who died in madness when he was born. Others claimed he had been raised by priests of the dreaded Death God, Maag, and been trained in all the ways of killing. Though both maybe were true. Baal could believe it.
He gazed up at the ravaged face of the barbarian emperor, still marred where graveworms had gnawed the wrinkled remnants of its putrid flesh. But the eyes! If the eyes were really the mirrors of the soul what hellish light glowed within them now! Baal cringed as they turned and stared at him.
The Agryptian coast had never been subjected to warfare as horrendous for a thousand years.
Hordes of mercenaries, led by a masked warrior the size of a giant, surged along its rocky shores in a blood drenched tsunami, taking port after port without mercy or respite till the entire coast was in his hands. Tens of thousands of city dwellers, as well as workers in the vineyards and fields, were slaughtered. Thousands more were dragged into slavery. Tortured, weighted down beneath heavy chains, they were driven in mile long caravans of abject misery to the slave markets of Koss. Those who resisted died. Those who surrendered were doomed.
All this Baal knew from the hushed whispers of his gaolers. Imprisoned beneath the fortress of Assabarr, into which the necromancer had been thrown to rot in this dark, damp ridden cell for the rest of his life because he was the only man who could end Rianda’s rule. The whispered chants that had brought the emperor’s corpse to life could end it too, words that would never be allowed to be spoken by Baal within Rianda’s hearing. He had only been spared death on a whim—perhaps by some barbaric quirk of honour—but had been given damnation instead for the rest of his life.
By contrast, Lord Kanarra, who had spent a fortune on restoring Rianda to life, had been granted everything he desired—and more. Now standing at the right hand of his imperial master, he was second only to Rianda himself in power. His fat eunuch, Malkasor, had been made overlord of the emperor’s slaves, a task for which he showed no mercy towards those who shared his former status. Relishing all the power he had been given, his cruelty was almost as fearful as the emperor’s.
Anyone who opposed Rianda was burned alive in mass executions that filled the sky above city after city with noxious clouds of smoke, while the emperor gazed on in satisfaction from behind his golden mask, gloating at their screams.
Baal cursed himself for having brought this evil back to life.
Slumped in his cell, he listened to his guards as they joked in the lamplit antechamber outside. Hardened ruffians from the stews of Kishalda, they were ignorant men filled with dark superstitions. Baal knew they feared him—and not without reason. Necromancers were dreaded by the educated and the empty headed alike. But his guards feared their emperor more.
Did he but dare he would have told them of his part in bringing Rianda back to life and who their emperor really was, but he knew he would face an agonising death if he whispered what he knew and Rianda learned of it.
All he could do was wait.
And bide his time.
One day he would escape this place.
And when he did…
The war raged on. Rianda’s sorcerous powers aided his military skills, and setbacks were rare. His dominion grew by leaps and bounds. As did his savageries. Only immediate surrender could prevent reprisals. Anything less brought death or slavery.
But as his power grew, so did his taste for slaughter.
Confident in the strength of his rule Rianda finally revealed his identity, compounding the fear of his subjects for him. Legends of the hellish empire he carved in the past spread far and wide, adding to the terror of those he attacked. So easy had his conquests become, with entire armies throwing down their weapons even before the first blow had been given, his troops became complacent, confident that no one would ever have the courage to oppose them.
A fatal mistake. One Rianda should have learned from the past.
Most of the hill tribes of the northern Steppes, uncompromised by the blessings of civilised life, preferred death to slavery and refused to bow to Rianda. Despite blood feuds as old as the mountains and hills within which they lived they joined into a growing army to launch their attack against Rianda before he could subdue their lands. Too drunk off looted wine to defend themselves, those of the emperor’s troops who ventured there were butchered without mercy. Few escaped.
While celebrating another mass burning in his capital Rianda had handed command of his army to Kanarra. In the debacle that wiped it out, Kanarra was captured and tortured to death to the cheering of the barbarians, along with those of his commanders not slaughtered in battle. His mutilated head was sent back to Rianda in a casket of brine with a handful of his surviving troops as warning that the northern tribes would never accept his despotic rule.
After having the troops burned to death for having been too cowardly to die in battle like their comrades, Rianda gathered a vast army, determined to crush the north for good, even though it meant leaving most cities along the coast with skeleton commands to garrison them.
All of this Baal learned as he listened by the door of his cell to the guards as they whispered worriedly amongst themselves outside. Well should they be worried, Baal thought; their fate would be sealed if Rianda fell. Those who had suffered under Rianda would never forgive anyone who had aided him. Just as they would never forgive Baal’s part in the monster’s return if it ever became known! Baal shivered to himself.
And schemed.
Rianda revelled as he gazed across the shimmering ranks of iron clad troops who were awaiting his command to attack his enemies. Thousands upon thousands of spearpoints pointed at the sky; sunlight glared off them almost painfully bright as dawn passed into day, and the emperor knew how demoralising the sight of so many warriors would be to his enemies as they stood in a single, massive, tight knit phalanx. Not even the cavalry of the barbarian hordes at the far end of the valley floor would be able to dent it, especially when he savaged their lines with lightning bolts. Already the clouds he had summoned lay ominously dark across the mountains to the east, a vast tinderbox ready to be struck. His sorcerous powers might still be weak compared to all those centuries ago before his death, but he could feel them strengthening all the time; it would not be long before the world lay subdued at his feet.
Between wrinkled lids, Rianda’s eyes narrowed with anticipation.
Four months earlier
THOUGH THE RESURRECTION of a man took time, care and preparation, lower forms of life were easier to raise. Even in his prison cell Baal was able to restore earthworms, maggots, arachnids and beetles through the repetition of memorised chants and invoking some harmless demi demons. Each day he covertly practised, till eventually rats could be resurrected by him. Far more difficult than filling them with life was subjecting them to his will. The simpler the brain the easier this was, but even compelling a rat to do what he wished was a strain that at first left him prostrated for hours afterwards.
This was all he needed though.
Through the gap between the bottom of his cell door and the greasy, rancid flagstone floor, the rats he had caught, killed and brought back to life squeezed out in the middle of the night as his gaolers snored over emptied flasks of ale. The rats clawed their way up the legs of the table around which the men were slumped, each rat taking hold of the bunch of keys that lay on top in their yellowed incisors. Working together, they tugged the heavy bundle towards the edge of the table, then pulled it over, clinging so tightly together as they tumbled to the floor that it looked as if they were one thick bundle of dark hair from which not even the slightest jingle of the heavy keys escaped when they hit the flagstones. One rat, its spine crushed by the weight of the keys, died once again as the others, ignoring broken limbs and fractured ribs, kept hold of the keys and dragged them across the floor to Baal’s cell, where he eagerly scooped them up and inserted one as quietly as he could in the lock to set himself free. Despite feeling exhausted after forcing the rats to perform all of this, Baal paused to grab hold of one of his gaoler’s knives, then slit their throats with a grunt of satisfaction before hurrying up the slab stone stairs to escape.
Five days later Rianda’s army reached the Marches of the North.
It was a difficult journey. After months of imprisonment, during which he had been poorly fed, with only brackish water to salve his thirst, Baal was only able to hobble short distances before needing to rest. He also had to disguise himself from Rianda’s soldiers, who were searching for him everywhere after his escape. Wrapping a rag across his eyes, with just slits to see through, he pretended to be a blind beggar. With the ragged state of his filthy clothes this was not difficult.
He had far to travel, and it was only because of some who took pity on his pretended plight he was able to buy scraps of food to keep himself alive. But he had determination and the knowledge of what he had to do to help him too. Far across the Morabh Desert he trekked with a caravan of merchants and slave traders, heading for Sharakon and the house of Jeggan the Philosopher, an old friend who could provide him with what he needed. Jeggan had made himself famous as a teacher, but he had darker interests which few besides Baal knew.
And a collection of long dead creatures that disappeared from the world in past ages beyond recall when man was still a distant dream.
Jeggan welcomed him with open arms, though when Baal told him of his part in resurrecting Rianda, the philosopher looked tempted to end Baal’s life there and then. It was only by promising his friend that he would end the evil he had created that Jeggan agreed to give him shelter in his home.
‘Rianda must die. And forever this time,’ the old man insisted. To which Baal agreed, too exhausted to say more as he ate from a dish of spiced meats. He gazed instead at the ancient relics his friend had collected. There was one, an enormous winged demon with savage jaws, that caught his eye…
Rianda relished the sight of his troops, who were poised to crush the barbarian hordes at the end of the valley floor. All they needed was one gesture of his sorcerous powers and the battle would begin. Already clouds like titanic mounds of sulphurous ash which he called up in the hours before dawn had spread from the mountains and were now primed to unleash lightning bolts on his enemies, to fuse man and horse into a hideous meld of charred flesh. He could already feel the power in his outstretched fingers, waiting to be unleashed.
Which was when he caught sight of a silhouette against the clouds. To his ancient eyes it had the aspect of a ragged scarecrow, a skeletal figure clutched in the claws of a flying reptile many times larger than the man astride its narrow spine, spanning huge, outspread leathery wings and a long, ferocious, tooth filled maw fit only for tearing at its prey.
For the first time since his resurrection Rianda felt some pangs of unease.
Urgently he pointed at the creature as it loomed towards him, gliding swiftly through the air. A bolt of lightning shot from the clouds, but it missed as the creature lunged to one side, almost as if it had been guided out of its path, before swooping in a rush to land only yards from Rianda. Behind him his imperial guards rushed forwards to attack the creature, but were savagely flung back, broken, as the reptile thrashed its massive wings and bowled them over as the raggedy man it was carrying on its back clambered down to the ground.
Rianda growled a foul oath as he recognised Baal, instantly realising only a necromancer of enormous power could have raised this ancient, long dead reptile.
Baal shuddered as he watched Rianda stride towards him, the emperor’s long sword rising in the air in what would be a killing blow, but he refused to allow this to cow him as he crouched before his enemy. Rianda loomed like a colossus, his armour sparkling with gold and gems. With a sudden rush the giant swung his sword. But Baal had rehearsed his words too well to be thwarted now. They raced from his mouth in a hectic rush of guttural sounds few men could understand—and fewer still could speak.
Instantly a look of abject terror transfixed the emperor’s face, that fissured visage of ancient, yellowing, semi translucent flesh which even sorcery could never repair. Rianda’s sword was stilled as soon as Baal began his awful chant.
His knees already crumbling into dust Rianda hobbled forwards. Old bones, long dead, no longer had the strength to support his body as flesh, like slabs of fungoid decay, slithered from it. Fingers dribbling like melted tallow, the broadsword they had been holding shattered into splinters on the ground only moments before, howling a last burst of frustrated rage through dust filled lungs, Rianda toppled.
Now no more than a mouldering skull, his head rolled like an obscene offering to rest at Baal’s sandalled feet.
With a cry of triumph, the necromancer raised his face to the sky before, unseen by him, one of the emperor’s guards rushed forwards from behind and swung a sword that split Baal in two from head to the groin.
Thus died the greatest necromancer the world had ever seen before the dust of its most evil nemesis.
In Koss vengeance came to the last of Rianda’s hated henchmen, when Malkasor’s slaves overthrew their master. It was said the eunuch’s sufferings were legendary and lasted for days.
