By Brian Craig

How can mortal minds comprehend those who live immortal lives? In Sylvania and Mousillon, the undead are reflections of the living, nobles versed in lore and command, ambitious to usurp their mortal neighbors. Save for the exceptional among them, such as Mannfred von Carstein, most Old World vampires engage in petty intrigues and subterfuges, savoring the decadence of their unnatural appetites. Only over many generations do vampire lords lose contact with their humanity, devolving into ravening predators more bestial than human. The conscience does not disappear overnight, and the undead must blend in among their prey if they are to avoid exposure and destruction.

In the Land of the Dead, in the realm known as Nehekhara, there is a different kind of undead. They are lords, but not counts or dukes. They are kings and princes. When barbarian tribes ran amok across the Old World, cursing the darkness and dwelling in caves, an ancient civilization emerged in the Southlands, a rich and prosperous culture that over time became obsessed with the conquest of death. Even the greatest of its rulers, Settra, could not avoid the grip of old age and the wear of time. He founded a Mortuary Cult devoted to unlocking the secret of eternal life, and from this priesthood came the first necromancer, Nagash. After usurping his brother and becoming king, he was defeated by a coalition of rebellious lords. In retaliation, Nagash cast a Great Ritual that transformed the lush, verdant land into a barren, arid desert. He snuffed out all life, aging those alive by centuries, before then raising the dead, both those freshly deceased and those long buried. Among the reanimated corpses were the mummified remains of many pharaohs and their kin, generations of noble houses stretching back eons. This included Settra, now styled the Imperishable, who proceeded to subdue all his rivals, turning them into vassals or his military allies.

Unlike the vampire lords and ghoul kings struggling to survive amidst their mortal enemies in the Old World, the undead monarchs of Nehekhara are part of an undead empire, the dead ruling the dead, their existence alien and remote to their still-breathing counterparts. Most denizens of the region are witless skeletons, unthinking pawns who serve their royal masters with blind obedience. There are also some arisen corpse-kings whose sentience is dubious at best, their minds decayed by ages of rot and ruin. Yet, some others are quite intelligent. There is one among them of such a philosophical bent to ask questions which are thought somewhat sacrilegious by his peers. He is the Lord of the Necropolis of Bel-Aliad, the City of Dust, and his name is Zakahn the Enlightened.

His thoughtfulness is not a weakness, and Zakhan has long served as a leading councilor and commander for his overlord Settra. Because Bel-Aliad lies in the far west of the Land of the Dead, in the desert frontier that separates Nehekhara from Araby, his armies have occasion to skirmish with mortal soldiers. It is by no means unknown for the rulers of Araby to raise armies to mount crusades of their own, and Bel-Aliad has borne the brunt of more than one such invasion. Settra has never had any cause to complain about the zeal with which Zakahn has conducted his own expeditions or repelled those sent against him. This undoubtedly helps to explain why the Eternal King has always been lenient toward the sporadic peculiarities of his viceroy – but it must also be the case that Settra approves, if only slightly, of Zakahn’s attempts to communicate with and not just conquer the living.

One of Zakahn’s unconventionalities is taking prisoners, which armies of the dead are usually unknown to do. The dead have little need of mortal slaves, so there is no obvious reason for rulers in Nehekhara to enslave their adversaries, and the dead rarely need hostages for ransom. Zakahn deviates from the norm because he is a philosopher, and likes to discuss philosophy with mortal minds – although it is, indeed, infrequent that he manages to capture, among the rabble that make up most armies, a mind as brilliant as it is composed when facing imprisonment by undead monsters, strange and supernatural. Imagine his delight, therefore, when he defeated an army from Araby and took prisoner a vizier named Suleiman, a famed scholar and strategist, whose reputation for knowledge and culture had spread across the Southlands, even to the necropolises.

Zakhan took some delight in displaying to his unwilling guest the treasures of Bel-Aliad. It was once the capital of a great and wealthy fiefdom, until an army of the dead destroyed it. It remained crumbling ruins, for its present occupants were apathetic to its condition. Nevertheless, the necropolis contained scores of decorated sarcophagi, statues and paintings by the hundreds, and thousands of jewels set into crowns and bracelets molded from gold, silver, and other precious metals. It was another of the Zakahn’s peculiarities to accrue such jewels and objects of art, when many of his royal brethren are wont to disdain such things because they have risen far above such trifling trinkets and baubles.

“Is there another collection to match this in all the world?” Zakahn asked Suleiman, his bleached bone skull grinning a rictus smile. “Has any mortal man a collection to equal its splendor?”

“I have not seen or heard of one,” Suleiman replied. “But I think we mortals get more enjoyment from the works of art they possess.”

“Why, certainly,” said Zakahn. “Such sensations are a privilege of mortals, although they perhaps overrate it. Do you not think, though, that there is a certain perversity in taking sensual pleasure in such things as gems, statues, and precious stones? Do you not think that the dead have a purer and more sophisticated notion of their quality and value?”

“Purer and more sophisticated?” Suleiman repeated. “Well, perhaps – in the sense that skeletons are purer for the lack of flesh, and wraiths more sophisticated for the lack of substance. Gems are dead things, and I suppose there is a certain crucial lack of substance in some statues and paintings as well. But look at that marble statue of a dancing-girl. I will believe, if you demand it of me, that your kind might have a better appreciation of its whiteness and its stillness, but I cannot believe that you can appreciate the significance of its pose, or the impression it gives of graceful movement. Yes, it is a single moment of frozen time, like death itself; but captured in that moment is the exuberant flow of life, which its human model exhibited. As a bleached white thing yourself, Lord Zakahn, you might feel a kinship with the statue’s marble substance, but only a mortal can see the dance that was crystallized within it.”

“Do you think that the dead do not understand dancing?” Zakahn responded in disbelief. “I can assure you that we do. Indeed, I can assure you that my kind are the only ones who understand the true nature and artistry of the dance.”

The thought of dead men dancing made Suleiman recollect a piece of trivia. He was a well-educated man, versed in history and politics, and he knew from his study of Old World crusaders in Araby references to paintings and murals in the Empire depicting the Totentanz, called in Bretonnia the Danse Macabre. Both terms meant the “Dance of Death,” in which death appears in the symbolic form of a skeleton – a skeleton not unlike Lord Zakahn of Bel-Aliad, in fact – leading a train of dancers, each one holding the hand of the next. They were produced as mementos mori, reminders of the fragility of life and the narcissism of pursuing earthly glories. In Araby, poets had written about how death was a great equalizer, the same fate awaiting a sultan as well as a thief. The image of people dancing to their deaths, however, seemed a Old World phenomenon.

It had not previously occurred to Suleiman that there might be dancing in the Land of the Dead. Who, after all, would be dancing in Nehekhara? He wondered, however, whether the image might have some representational value beyond the symbolic. On the other hand, it was quite possible that Zakahn was talking about something far more like the kind of dancing that a living person enjoyed. In either case, Suleiman thought, surely one of the undead in Nehekhara could not be serious that the dead could appreciate art the same as mortals, whether watching a dance or dancing themselves.

“I refuse to believe that the dead can dance as well as a living person,” Suleiman said to the skeletal warlord. “Skeletons and corpses have neither the grace nor the ability to generate the artistic meanings of which a human dancer is capable. I would stake my life on it.”

“Your life has already been staked and lost,” Zakahn reminded him, “but I do not mind a contest to settle the manner and timing of its delivery.”

“Alas,” said Suleiman, “I have no champion to carry forward my cause. There was no dancing-girl among the prisoners your soldiers took, although there were a few musicians.”

“Must it be a girl?” asked Zakahn.

“I think so,” the vizier replied.

“Then you must tell me where to find the one you want. I shall send my army to fetch her.”

Suleiman had not expected this, and he certainly did not want to be the cause of an army of the dead descending upon a city in Araby, so he thought quickly about what to do next. Eventually, he said: “That will not be necessary. Fortunately, I have a certain skill in magic, which I have always been loath to use because I have seen what the exercise of magic tends to do to the fates and souls of men. Given that my life is already forfeit to you, I see no harm in making an exception. I will bring this very statue to life for an hour, in order that the artistry that went into its making may be liberated in performance. Have you a champion here to set against her?”

“Oh yes,” said Zakahn. “There is not another lord in Nehekhara who could say so, but I have a champion of that kind.”

“But how are we to judge the result?” Suleiman said, doubtfully. “Can you provide an impartial jury?”

“That will be difficult,” Zakahn acknowledged. “We might achieve neutrality by taking an equal number of living humans from among the prisoners seized with you and dead ones from among the ranks of my soldiers, but what if a deciding vote were needed? We would then need a neutral party, but if one existed, then they would be our judge anyway.” He stroked his bare jawbone. “Since you have been generous enough to use your own magic to give my statue an hour of life, however, I ought to match your offer by using some of mine, so this is what I propose. Will you accept your own champion as the judge, if I make provision to give her the choice between life and death when your hour expires? If I can offer her a choice between continuation of the life that you have restored to her, or the opportunity to become a dancer of the same kind as the rival against which she has competed with, will you accept her decision as an indubitable judgment of superiority?”

Suleiman thought about this offer for a moment or two, and it seemed to him that he would have the advantage. Even if his champion failed to dance exceptionally, surely, she would at the very least prefer continued life than the cold emptiness of death. “I agree. And what am I to stake given that my fate is already in your hands?” he asked.

“That is easy enough,” Zakahn answered. “Should you win, I will let the dancer go, so that the life she has reclaimed can be spent among her own kind. Should you lose, you will become my adviser and strategist, and serve me – of course, for all eternity – with the same skill and talent as you have served any mortal ruler.’’

Suleiman thought about that too, but again it seemed to be a very good bargain, given that his death was assured. His fate was sealed, so what else could he hope for but a position of honor and privilege among the dead? There were certainly worse destinies.

“You are very generous, my lord,” he said. “I am glad to accept.”

“The dead do not conceive of generosity in quite the same terms as a living person,” Zakahn told him, “but I am pleased that you are satisfied. If you will work your magic while I summon my court, we can begin the contest as soon as you are ready.”

—

The dancing girl introduced herself as Nefertari after Suleiman’s metamorphic magic had reincarnated her in place of the statue whose model she had been. After her initial shock had waned somewhat, she explained she had danced in the court of King Rahotep of Quatar, during the Time of Kings, when Nehekhara had been a land of the living, before Nagash’s dark ritual murdered its populace and turned its fields to sterile sand.

Nefertari had never been taught to dance, she claimed. Her movements were impulsive bursts of inspiration nurtured by experimentation and self-education. She had danced because dancing was the most organic expression of her energy and spirit, and had danced well enough to win the favor of Rahotep, a king who was known throughout ancient Nehekhara as a true connoisseur of that art.

Suleiman was delighted to hear all this. He explained to Nefertari that she must take part in a competition against a dancer representing the undead nobility that now ruled the land, but that Nefertari herself would have the privilege of judging the winner.

“Zakhan is the ruler of the Bel-Aliad, going back many centuries,” she said, dubiously. “I worry that he has any number of dancers, famous and bred just for his court, or has collected resurrected entertainers for his own amusement.”

“That is a possibility,” Suleiman conceded, “but the whole point of the wager is to pit the dance of life against the dance of death. I do not think that Zakahn will pick a champion on the grounds that he or she pleased a mortal audience while alive. You might be surprised by the nature of your rival — but you will be the judge. You have only to desire to continue to be yourself, to live in Araby as you once lived in Quatar.”

“I cannot imagine wishing anything different,” Nefertari assured him. “I am a dancer through and through; it is what l am.”

“Good,” said Suleiman.

He was not so pleased by the musicians who had been captured along with him, whose skills were mediocre at best, and only made worse by their abject terror at their predicament. Nefertari thought, however, they would be adequate to her needs. She picked out a zither-player, a cymbalist and a drummer, and Suleiman tried to impress upon them the importance of their task.

“Let us show these reanimated corpses what it means to be alive,” he said to the four of them, as they made ready to take the floor. “Let us demonstrate our love of life! If you can dance as I believe you can, Nefertari, you might remind them what they have lost, and reintroduce feelings of humanity to their long-quiet hearts. So I hope, at least.”

“And it is my hope too,” she said, “if there is life to be won.” She had found a costume in one of the treasure-chests in Zakahn’s horde, which seemed to her appropriate to her purpose. The instrumentalists swore that they would do their best to assist her.

—

Zakhan had assembled a huge audience for the contest, which he distributed around the great hall of his palace. All mortal prisoners recently taken by his army were brought from their cells, and all the soldiers which had taken part in the campaign against them were there as well. Also present were his ministers, household servants, and priests.

“You are the challenger,” Zakahn said to Suleiman. “Your champion must take the first turn.”

“Go to it,” said Suleiman to Nefertari. “Make the dead ashamed of their condition, and remind them what it was to be alive.”

And that is precisely what Nefertari did. She threw herself into the arena and performed the legendary Dance of the Seven Veils.

The vulgar, who have only heard rumors of it, mistakenly think of the Dance of the Seven Veils as a mere strip-tease, but it is far more than that, for each of the seven veils has its own symbolism and each ritual removal is part of a progress from misery to ecstasy. Each garment represents a curse; as each one is discarded, the dancer advances towards a uniquely joyous kind of freedom.

The zither-player, the cymbalist and the drummer had all played the music of the Dance of the Seven Veils before, albeit for performances of a slightly less exalted and terrifying nature. They contrived to get the notes in the right order, and Nefertari communicated some of her own inspiration to them, so that they improved markedly as the performance progressed.

The first curse afflicting human life, according to the Dance of the Seven Veils, is hunger – which, for the purpose of the dance, includes and subsumes thirst. The first phase of Nefertari’s interpretation was, therefore, the embodiment in body-language of that most fundamental of appetites which shapes the successful quest of the new-born infant for a mother’s milk and a mother’s love.

The second curse afflicting human life, according to the Dance of the Seven Veils, is cold, so the second phase of Nefertari’s version was the embodiment in movement of the need for clothing and shelter and of its eventual achievement.

The third curse afflicting human life, according to the Dance of the Severn Veils, is disease – which, for the purpose of the Dance of the Seven Veils, also includes physical injury. The third phase of Nefertari’s performance comprised of a symbolic celebration of the power of the body to heal itself, and the wisdom of physicians.

The fourth curse afflicting human life, according to the Dance of the Seven Veils, is loneliness, so the fourth phase of Nefertari’s mime was a hymn of praise to family and community, and the productive rewards borne from collaborative work.

The fifth curse afflicting human life, according to the Dance of the Seven Veils, is loss, so the fifth phase of Nefertari’s rendition was a demonstration of the agony of grief, which gave way by degrees to the triumph of resolution and the recognition of all the legacies which the dead convey to a living person.

The sixth curse afflicting human life, according to the Dance of the Seven Veils, is childlessness, so the sixth phase – the longest so far – of Nefertari’s extravaganza was a celebration of sexual love, marriage and finally parenthood.

Suleiman watched all these phases with the critical eye of a connoisseur, and found little to criticize. It was easy enough to see that Nefertari had not learned the conventional schools of dancing, but it was also obvious that her impulsiveness and enthusiasm made up for imperfect self-learning. She was genuinely gifted, and her appeal to the emotions of her audience was no less powerful because it lacked subtlety and complexity. Whatever minor flaws remained in the playing of her accompanists was easily ignored; the dancer was the true center of attention, the sole contestant. Mortal members of the audience followed her with their eyes, utterly captivated by her every movement.

On the other hand, Suleiman could see that the dead were quite unimpressed. The legions of skeleton warriors and archers stood at attention, their faces fixed on the arena. The thick ranks of chariot riders and horsemen were just as attentive. Even Zakhan’s lieutenants and captains remained focused on the dance. They could all see well enough what Nefertari was doing, and even the blank vacancy of death could not have prevented them from understanding the greater part of it. Suleiman could see, however, that every single one of them was unresponsive. They must have been reminded of life, but seemingly not in any way that made them regret its loss.

They did not seem to care at all.

Perhaps, Suleiman thought that was because they were indifferent, but he was reluctant to believe it. Although all had been dead, in becoming undead they had regained some spark of life, some fragment of their lost humanity. Even the witless skeleton soldiers had enough consciousness to follow orders, to understand the flow of a battle. If they had the capacity to perceive the world around them and respond to it, Suleiman reasoned, they ought to have the capacity to respond to the art of the dance. The problem was to reach and activate that potential.

There was still one phase of the dance to be completed, and Suleiman knew that whatever hope he had rested on it. He suspected, however, that the final phase might seem a trifle offensive to the audience gathered in the palace of Bel-Aliad, because the final curse afflicting human life, according to the Dance of the Seven Veils, was death itself: not the death of others, as per the fifth curse, but the death of the individual. The final act of Nefertari’s drama was supposed to consist of a heroic defense of creative achievement and a defiant statement of the fact that, although a body and mind might be annihilated, the legacy of their attainments could not.

Nefertari did as well as anyone in her situation could have done. The last and longest phase of the dancing-girl’s masterpiece was a celebration of dancing itself, its joy and its meaning; its consummation and climax was the removal of the final veil, and the revelation of the human being beneath, utterly triumphant over every single one of the many indignities which cruel fate had heaped upon her kind. Even her accompanists excelled beyond their usual mediocrity.

When Nefertari fell still at last, exhausted from her performance, the captive prisoners, all of whom were already in tears, burst into a storm of applause and acclamation. The dead remained silent. They did not seem to be bored but neither were they moved.

But that does not matter, Suleiman told himself. For they are not the judges who will decide this matter. Nefertari is the judge, and there was not one among the mortal audience who enjoyed watching her performance one tenth as much as she enjoyed giving it.

When Nefertari looked up and met Suleiman’s eyes he saw that she was pleased with what she had done and was reassured. Zakahn from his throne beckoned to her, then indicated that she should take the empty seat beside Suleiman. The vizier briefly took her hand in his, and squeezed it before releasing it again, by way of congratulation.

Then Zakahn’s champion took the floor.

Nefertari’s rival, as Suleiman half-expected, was exactly the kind of figure he had read and heard depicted in the memento moris of the Old World. He was a skeleton, quite plain and ordinary. His eye-sockets were empty, his white teeth set in the permanent resting smile of a skinless skull. He wore a jet-black cape with a hood and carried a sword with a curved blade. Dancing with swords was quite common in Araby, so Suleiman, already curious, was fascinated with how it might be used in the dance.

The zither-player, the cymbalist and the drummer had already retired to join the other captives. Their place was taken by a single drummer, also a skeleton attired in a monkish robe. When he began to caress his instrument with his slender fingers the rhythm he sounded more like a signal on a battlefield than a dancing tune. Suleiman finally recognized it as a drumbeat used in war, to inform the enemy of a proposition, such as capitulation, or leave to bury the dead. There were no veils in this performance, no gimmick to it. It had only one stage, and even that had no hint of a crescendo.

It occurred to Suleiman, as he watched the skeleton move to the rhythm of the drum, that he had never been able to make out what kind of dance the Dance of the Death was in any Old World culture. He was perceptive enough to see the invisible beauty in Nefertari’s statue, the emotional essence captured by the sculptor with cold stone. He could not, however, imagine what dance the artists had in mind when they depicted the Dance of Death, just that all mortals eventually danced it. Now, for the first-time ever, he was able to see the exact nature of the Dance of Death, and to understand not merely where it led, but how and why.

There were no stages in the Dance of Death because death had no stages; it was permanent and eternal. There were no curses in the dance of death because death was the end of illness or injury. There were no veils in the Dance of Death because death could neither deceive nor conceal its essence. There were neither triumphs nor celebrations in the Dance of Death, because death always claimed an inevitable victory. The Dance of Death was deliberate and quiet, but impossible to ignore. The Dance of Death was an inexorable and inescapable summons to humanity, whose promise was more truce than release. That summons, addressed by the exhausted to the exhausted, gathered in everyone and everything – except the dead, who alone knew death already.

Life, according to the symbolism of the black-clad figure’s awesomely patient and carefully chosen steps, was a futile struggle against fate. Occasionally, mortals won small battles, but could never hope to win the war. In death, by contrast, there was no struggle; there were no battles to win, because death had already won everything. That was the meaning of the drumbeat and its signal of an invitation to discuss surrender.

Suleiman realized, before the skeleton had made a single circuit of the arena, that he could not win his wager. He could not win because his opponent did not need to win. He had to lose because it was the only possible outcome.

Suleiman realized, without needing to feel the slackness of her hand in his, that Nefertari would come to understand this too. She had not been able to imagine wanting to be anything other than she was, because that was all she had ever been before she was a statue; she was a dancer at her core. But the failure was in her imagination; she had never seen, imagined, or understood the Dance of Death. She was watching it now, and she understood exactly how its rhythm intruded itself into the human eye, ear and mind, like a possessive daemon banishing all rival thought and sensation.

Suleiman’s fellow prisoners had stopped cheering; they were joining in the dance. Soon enough, even Nefertari was dancing again — but not, this time, the Dance of the Seven Veils.

Now the sword came into play. As the column of figures wound around and around, hand in hand, doubling back on itself again and again, the sword offered its blade to the dancing mortals. Their hands clasped in their neighbors’ grip, they could offer no resistance to its seeking blade; but they did not flinch or turn away as it sliced through their flesh and coated itself in their blood. The flesh began to melt from their bones soon enough, as if the dull music of the signal-drum were a fire of sorts, and their whited bones a kind of ash.

Nefertari made no more effort to avoid her fate than the zither-player, the cymbalist or the drummer, who seemed to be a little more appreciative of the rhythm to which they danced than the unmusical majority of their erstwhile companions.

“That is what the dead have to offer the living,” Zakahn whispered in Suleiman’s ear. “That is what might be attained, if only mortals would try harder to understand the nature of death.”

Suleiman was the only living person present who was able to resist the summons of the drumbeat. He stayed where he was, in his seat beside Zakahn the Enlightened, the dead sovereign of Bel-Aliad. The only reason for that was that the dead king had rested a bony hand upon his own, forbidding him to move. The pressure was gentle, but it was irresistible. Suleiman was the only living man ever privileged to see and hear the Dance of Death without being required to join it. For that reason, he became the only living man in the world who understood the true legitimacy of the Tomb Kings and their rule.

The most remarkable thing about the continuing dance was the reaction of the remainder of the crowd to the performance they were watching. They did not applaud, nor did they sway in time to the rhythm. They remained utterly silent. They had been reanimated to serve as warriors in the armies of undead monarchs; they had been given armor, and weapons, and a purpose. They were not driven to act by a spark of life, or some fragment of their soul; they simply did as they were led, puppets bound to powers larger than themselves, controlled by magic they did not and could not comprehend. Their very existence was like the Dance of Death itself, to which they made no evident response because they had no need. The dead had no need to follow the paces of the dance, or even to approve of them, for the dance was merely a reflection of their nature, like a shadow carelessly cast upon the ground.

“You ought to let me go now,” Suleiman said to Zakahn. “I have seen all I need to see. I admit that I have lost. I will serve as your adviser and strategist, but you should let me go, so that I might join my peers in the Dance of Death.”

“Oh no,” said Zakahn, cordially. “That would not do at all. Then you would be just another member of my court, rather than a traitor to the mortal world. The dead have a tendency to become stupid, even when they are recalled by a sorcerer as expert as myself. You’ll pay out your bargain in blood, sweat, and tears, but you’ll do it as I command.”

So, Suleiman stayed where he was and watched the dance. It seemed to go on forever, but when it was over he had lost far less time than it took a human to be born, let alone to die.

In the many centuries of servitude that followed, Suleiman experienced all the curses featured in the Dance of Seven Veils. He knew an aching hunger, deprived of sustenance, and felt what it was like to live among those who need neither clothing or shelter. He felt pains both physiological and psychological, torture as well as intense loneliness as the only mortal man for miles. He even despaired that he had sired no children to mourn him, to remember any legacy he left behind. He suffered all of these afflictions in their fullest measure, but he was not allowed to die. As an attendant to his master, he helped bring death to hundreds of thousands of mortals, and he helped bring the greater number of those he had betrayed into the ranks of Zakhan’s army, but he was not allowed the kind of release he devoutly desired, nor any other kind.

Suleiman never forgot that the final curse afflicting human life is the inevitability of death itself, at least according to the Dance of the Seven Veils. But he could find little comfort in the recollection, even though the final phase of Nefertari’s performance was etched so deeply in his memory as to be replayed repeatedly in his restless dreams.

He still knew that the sum and climax of his existence, like that of any human being, was supposed to consist of a heroic defense of creative achievement, and of the ultimate inability of annihilation to cancel out the legacy of a lifetime. Alas, that knowledge had become worthless to him as soon as he had seen the Dance of Death.