Neferu, the Strangler of the Nile, is an Egyptian warrior of Alexandria in Antiterra, mistress of the cord and wife of the lich Marcos the Mage. She died in 275 A.D.A. in the coils of a small dragon.
| Type | Character |
| Spanish entry | Neferu — la Estranguladora del Nilo |
Description
She is shown by the Nile before Giza’s pyramids, in a gold-braided tripartite wig, scaled pectoral, bronze bracelets and scarab belt, holding her cord’s ends like reins, the hooded red-eyed lich behind her.
History
Born by the Nile, she learned the water first, then the cord, in Egyptian tradition a huntress’s art. She wore it bound to her forearms and was taught it as an extension of weaving, not of the knife.
Her husband, who stole the Blue Book from Paulus, married her for politics, then intimacy; the union consolidated his hold on Alexandria, but she kept the cord and her own territory. Templar archives of the Temple operation call her “the beautiful Neferu”.
In 275 A.D.A. she went upriver alone and died fighting a small dragon in a branch of the Nile. Marcos, writing in his library, did not come to her rescue.
Afterlife
In the Invisible Cities corpus she survives as “Neferu’s bird”, an artifact with its own ego (a black-cloaked bird or executioner’s mask) that Khalim has carried for centuries and that resurrects him again and again: «Soy lo que queda de Neferu» (“I am what remains of Neferu”). See The Mask of Neferu and the Gesta of Khalim.
Conflicting accounts
- The archivist of the Plata holds the lich could have saved her and chose not to: her indirect murderer, as Events of Antiterra also calls him.
- Kinder readings say he did not learn in time.