Ghost Undying

by Jonathan Moeller

  Dorgan hurried from the bedchamber and began shouting orders.

  “I will kill you for this,” hissed Sicarion.

  The Moroaica regarded him in silence for a moment, the cold remoteness of her expression alien upon Adina’s beautiful face.

  “No,” she said. “You will not.”

  She strode from the chamber, Sicarion floating after in the grip of her sorcery.

  ###

  The next several weeks settled into a monotonous routine.

  The Moroaica started by ringing the mansion with sorcerous wards to prevent arcane observation and warn her of unwelcome guests. Sicarion followed her about like a dog upon a leash, and assisting her with the spells when she wished. The slaves, his former slaves, looked at him and whispered, and such fury filled him that he wished he could kill them all.

  He did kill of his former concubines who dared to look him in the eye and smirk. No sooner had her body struck the floor than the Moroaica’s power had slammed him against the wall, filling him with such agony that he wailed like a dying pig.

  “None of that,” she said, glacially calm as ever. “You will kill only at my command. You will use your spells as I command. I trust this is understood?”

  It was.

  “Now clean up the mess you made,” said the Moroaica.

  He did. Doing so with one hand was damnably hard.

  The rest of the time he attended the Moroaica in the cellars. She transformed the cellar into her private workshop, and sent the slaves to gather the materials that she required. She donned a red robe similar to the one she had worn in the warehouse, and busied herself creating and casting spells. Most of them were far beyond Sicarion’s comprehension. As far as he could tell, they involved manipulating and summoning elemental spirits. The magi of the Magisterium regularly summoned elementals to aid the armies of the Empire, at least until all the magi with the necessary knowledge had perished at Caer Magia, but Sicarion had never been able to master the practice.

  “Why are you still here?” he asked her after a few weeks.

  “Because finding a new location would be inconvenient,” she said, not looking up from the intricate patterns she had drawn upon the floor in lines of green fire.

  “How are you still alive?” Sicarion said.

  “I’m not,” said the Moroaica. “I died a very long time ago.”

  “Necromancy,” said Sicarion. “It has to be some unknown form of necromancy. You were able to dislodge your…your life essence, your aura, from your old body, and use it to take control of Adina’s.”

  “Spirit,” said the Moroaica. “Or soul. Those are the words you are looking for.”

  Sicarion sneered. “There’s no such thing as a soul. That is only the word the ignorant use for sorcerous forces beyond their understanding.”

  “And yet, I am standing here and were are having this conversation,” said the Moroaica.

  Sicarion found he had no answer for that.

  “What are you doing?” he said after a moment.

  “Finding a way to complete my great work,” said the Moroaica.

  “Your great work?” said Sicarion. “You mentioned it before. What is it?”

  “At the moment,” said the Moroaica, “testing to see if the boundaries between the material world and the netherworld in Malarae are thin enough to serve my purposes.”

  “So what are these purposes?” said Sicarion. “Possessing slave girls and scribbling on my floors?”

  She looked at him, face expressionless. Sicarion had been trying to get a reaction from her, but she remained impassive. Perhaps he should not have tried so hard – if he annoyed her, she would blast him to smoking ashes.

  “Perhaps you have the vision to understand my great work,” said the Moroaica, “but likely you do not.” She tilted her head to the side, black hair brushing Adina’s lovely face. Once that face had filled him with cruel lust, but now he only felt a twinge of terror whenever it turned in his direction. “Yet maybe you will surprise me.” She gestured at the table holding the books and scrolls the slaves had taken from the warehouse. “Read. Let us see if you can understand.”

  “You…want me to read your spells?” said Sicarion. “Will I not use them against you?”

  “That,” said the Moroaica, “is unlikely.”

  She turned her attention back to the diagrams she had drawn upon the ground. After a few moments Sicarion shrugged and went to the table.

  He started to read.

  ###

  “You’re Maatish,” said Sicarion a few days later. “Aren’t you?”

  He expected her to deny it. He hoped she would deny it. Instead she only looked up from the elaborate series of hieroglyphs she had scribed in green flame upon the wall and smiled.

  That smile only alarmed him further.

  “How did you know?” she said.

  “Some of these scrolls are in ancient Maatish,” said Sicarion.

  “What of it?” said the Moroaica. “Perhaps I merely learned the language.”

  “No,” said Sicarion, his throat dry. “Sometimes you scribble notes. They’re in Maatish hieroglyphs. Like they’re your first language.”

  “They were,” said the Moroaica.

  His throat got drier. “The Kingdom of the Rising Sun was destroyed eighteen centuries ago.”

  “Closer to nineteen, now,” said the Moroaica.

  “How?” said Sicarion.

  “I was a student,” said the Moroaica, “of one of the last Great Necromancers of ancient Maat.” She looked back at the wall. “Though not willingly.”

  Sicarion blinked. “You forced him to teach you.”

  “Hardly. We were entombed together for just under five hundred years. There was little else to do.”

  “You were buried alive?” said Sicarion, his mind reeling. If she was telling the truth, she had lived, or existed, for almost twenty-four centuries.

  “I was already dead at the time,” said the Moroaica. “They called us the Undying. One of the slaves of the pharaoh. Made Undying to serve him forever in bliss and glory. But in truth it was only torment and misery. The pharaoh was a brute and a fool, ignorant and savage.”

  Sicarion said nothing. He realized that sometimes the Moroaica liked to ramble, talking about the places and things she had seen over the centuries, the enemies she had destroyed.

  She had destroyed so many enemies.

  Perhaps, if she rambled long enough, she would reveal a clue he could use to destroy her and free himself.

  “Centuries of boredom,” said the Moroaica, “dotted with bouts of torment when the pharaoh decided to amuse himself with his concubines. But I already knew the world was a place of torment, a crucible of suffering. A torture chamber where the gods watch our sufferings and laugh.”

  “There are no gods,” said Sicarion.

  “There are,” said the Moroaica, “and I shall make them pay for what they have done.” A wintry smile flickered over her face. “As I once did, on a smaller scale.”

  “You killed a god?” said Sicarion.

  “The people of the Kingdom of the Rising Sun,” said the Moroaica, “worshipped their dead pharaohs as gods.”

  He thought about that, and his disquiet deepened.

  “Ancient Maat was destroyed,” said Sicarion. “Their own necromantic sorcery devoured them.”

  “It did,” said the Moroaica, and for the first time in the weeks of his captivity, there was a faint note of anger in her voice. “Wielded in the hands of one of their slaves. An Undying, taught by a bored Great Necromancer who had nothing better to do.”

  “You,” said Sicarion, a tremor in his voice. “You destroyed Maat.”

  She looked at him, the blue eyes colder than winter.

  “Maat was an empire built upon blood and necromancy, upon the tears of daughters weeping over the corpses of their murdered fathers,” she hissed. “And when I was murdered, when they made me into the Undying and walled me away in that tomb, I swore revenge. I s
wore I would put a stop to it. I would make the pharaohs and the Great Necromancers pay for what they had done!” Her eyes glittered with something like madness. “And I did. It took me centuries, but I did it. I learned their secrets of sorcery. I ripped my way free from the pharaoh’s tomb and clothed myself in living flesh once more. And in that flesh I stood in the temple of Anubankh in the pharaoh’s city of Khaset, and I set it all to burn. It all burned!” She stalked closer to him. “And Maat is no more.”

  “No,” said Sicarion, stepping away. “It’s not.”

  Her longevity had frightened him. But the thought that she had destroyed the Kingdom of the Rising Sun nineteen centuries ago was terrifying. How much power did she have? Could she destroy the Magisterium?

  The Empire itself?

  The Moroaica returned her attention to the hieroglyphs upon the wall, and Sicarion looked at the scrolls upon the table.

  Perhaps the secret of destroying her lay within.

  ###

  “Why?” said Sicarion, two weeks later.

  He been absorbed by the Moroaica’s translations of certain Maatish necromantic spells. The magi of the Magisterium had possessed considerable mastery of necromantic science, at least until the disaster at Caer Magia. But the Maatish knowledge of necromancy was far beyond that of the Magisterium, and certainly far beyond Sicarion’s comprehension.

  But he understood some of the spells, and thought he could use them to augment his own sorcery.

  And, perhaps, to take revenge upon the Moroaica.

  “A question,” said the Moroaica, “customarily has both a subject and a verb.”

  “Why are you still doing this?” said Sicarion.

  “This?” said the Moroaica, examining the glyphs she had drawn upon the wall. “I am testing to see if the boundary between the netherworld is more easily pierced in Malarae. I fear it is not. I shall have to find another location for the great work. Marsis, perhaps. Or New Kyre.”

  “No,” said Sicarion. “Why are you still pursuing this great work of yours, whatever it is?”

  The Moroaica did not answer, her eyes upon the glowing hieroglyphs.

  “You were victorious,” said Sicarion. “Old Maat was utterly destroyed. The Kingdom of the Rising Sun once ruled half the world, and now it is dust. Among the commoners of the Empire, I doubt one man in a thousand has ever heard the name of Maat. So what do you seek now? Power? Conquest?”

  “Justice,” said the Moroaica, her voice soft.

  “Justice?” said Sicarion with a derisive laugh. “There is no such thing.”

  “No,” said the Moroaica. “But there should be. After Maat burned, I wandered the world for a time without purpose. I had avenged my suffering, the suffering of all the slaves of the Kingdom of the Rising Sun, and cast down the pharaohs and the Great Necromancers. Yet I saw that it was not enough. Everywhere I traveled in the world, I saw tyrants and slaves, the cruel and the strong oppressing the weak and helpless. Everywhere! So I went to work. I cast down more tyrants and threw down more cruel kings. But it was not enough. It was never enough. There were always more.”

  “That is simply the nature of life,” said Sicarion with an indifferent shrug. “The strong rule, and the weak suffer…”

  “It should not be!” said the Moroaica, spinning toward him in fury. “The world is a torture chamber. I saw this, over and over again, as I traveled. But why? Why is this so?”

  “It has always been thus,” said Sicarion. “Even in nature, the animals are divided into predators and prey.” He had been a predator, reveling in his kills and growing rich from them.

  Then the Moroaica had found him and taken his sword hand.

  “Bah!” said the Moroaica with disgust. “You are like a pig rooting around in its own filth, too blind to see the greater world beyond the walls of your pen. Why is the world a prison of pain? Why?”

  Sicarion shrugged. “Men make it that way.”

  “No.” Her voice was a furious hiss. “I came to understand the truth at last. The gods made this world, Sicarion, and created mankind. They made this world to be a dungeon, and mankind to be its prisoners. They set us up to suffer, to watch and laugh as we despair and die, generation after generation. They are the real enemy. The gods themselves.”

  He felt an uneasy prickle. “Then…you shall declare war upon the gods?” Sicarion doubted any gods existed, that they were anything other than lies concocted by priests. But if they did exist…

  “I shall shatter this world and remake it,” said the Moroaica, “in a new form, one free of suffering and pain and loss and death. Everyone shall be immortal, and there shall be no more death, no more tears. And then I shall throw down the gods from their thrones, as I once overthrew the pharaohs of old Maat, and I shall make them pay for their crimes against us.”

  “That’s,” said Sicarion, “that’s…”

  “Mad?” she said, stepping closer to him. “Is that what you were going to say? Mad?” Adina’s lovely young face had never carried an expression like that, a mixture of fury and hatred and centuries-old insanity.

  “Yes,” said Sicarion, uneasy. There was no point in backing away. If he tried to run or attack her, she could kill him in the space between two heartbeats. “If you do that, if you try to wield power on that level, you won’t accomplish anything. You’ll only kill the world…”

  He frowned.

  “Kill the world…” he whispered.

  The thought of that thrilled him. Killing was a pleasure. It had always been a pleasure for him, ever since he had been a young man. The pleasure had only increased as he had grown older.

  What would it be like to kill the entire world at once?

  He shivered at the thought.

  “I will destroy the world and reforge it in a new and better form,” said the Moroaica.

  “No,” said Sicarion, pushing aside his musings. “All you’ll do is destroy yourself.”

  And anyone near her.

  “You are wrong,” said the Moroaica. “It has taken me centuries of work to get this far, and centuries more lie before me. But I shall be ready. Once I gather the tools I need, once my spells are ready, I shall complete the great work. And the world shall be remade, and the gods thrown down.”

  “Or you will destroy yourself,” said Sicarion.

  Her smile was eerie. “I have been killed many times, assassin. Once by your own hand, if you recall. What is death to one who has died so many times already?”

  Sicarion had no answer for that.

  “Go to the slaves in the kitchens,” said the Moroaica. “I have not eaten for two days, and this body requires sustenance.”

  “Yes,” said Sicarion. “Sustenance.”

  And, perhaps, his chance to get away. He had hoped to kill the Moroaica, to take revenge for his lost hand, but he saw that was madness. Even if he killed her, she would only take another body. Better instead to rouse the local chapter of the Magisterium against her. Likely they would destroy each other in the fighting, and Sicarion could use the chaos to slip away.

  Just as Maglarion had thrown him into the Moroaica’s path, and used that distraction to make his escape.

  Sicarion left the cellar without a backward glance and climbed to the mansion’s main floor. Dorgan stood guard at the door, and sneered as he saw his former master.

  “Are you fetching things for the great mistress, dog?” said the gladiator.

  “Be silent,” said Sicarion. Oh, but one day he would make Dorgan regret his treachery. On impulse he started to summon arcane power, expecting the Moroaica’s ward to disrupt his attempt…

  But the power came at his call.

  The ward was gone.

  Sicarion blinked in surprise. Tentatively he worked the spell to sense the presence of sorcery. The Moroaica’s ward upon him had vanished…and the wards around the mansion had dispersed as well. Had someone dispelled them?

  Or had the Moroaica grown so immersed in her studies and arcane experiments that she had simply f
orgotten to maintain them?

  Either way, Sicarion had his chance to escape.

  But first, a little revenge.

  He turned, his left hand coming up, green fire crackling around his fingers.

  Dorgan started to shout, but Sicarion finished his spell first. A pulse of shadow and green fire slammed in Dorgan’s chest, throwing him against the wall. The gladiator went rigid with a strangled groan, every muscle in his body contracting at once, and toppled to the floor.

  Sicarion grinned, stooped over him, and took a dagger from his belt. “I’m afraid this is going to hurt quite a bit, Dorgan.”

  He raised the dagger, cursing at its awkward grip in his left hand…and stopped.

  One of the spells of Maatish necromancy he had studied flashed through his mind.

  Why not try it?

  He hacked off Dorgan’s right hand, the gladiator trying to scream through a spell-locked jaw. Sicarion took the limp hand in his and pressed it to the stump of his right wrist. He whispered the spell, summoning necromantic power, and green flames crawled and snapped around his maimed arm.

  Sudden agony flooded through him, and Sicarion screamed.

  And then the flesh of Dorgan’s sword hand and Sicarion’s right arm crawled together.

  The pain exploded through him, and Sicarion toppled to the floor with a groan.

  After a moment the agony faded, replaced by something like euphoria. Sicarion sat up, blinking and flexing his fingers…

  The fingers on both hands.

  He looked at his new right hand. It was larger than his old one, but strong and limber. Dorgan’s darker skin seemed strange against the pale skin of his arm, and the hand was joined to his wrist with a hideous ring of garish scar tissue, but Sicarion hardly cared. He made a fist over and over again, the euphoria only fading a little.

  With the spell he had learned from the Moroaica, he no longer need fear injury or death. Any body part he lost, he could replace. He grinned, picked up his dagger, and turned to finish off Dorgan.

  But he saw that the former gladiator had already bled to death.