Ghost in the Blood (The Ghosts)

by Moeller, Jonathan

  Twenty yards across, it lay beneath the exact center of the dome. The throbbing red glow came from its depths. As Caina drew closer she thought it looked like a crater, as if something had fallen from some great height to bury itself in the earth.

  Like Ark’s tale of the fallen angel hurled down from the heavens.

  Caina stopped just before the ring of flickering green sigils. They looked similar to the warding sigils carved upon the steel-warding bracers. And if the sigils upon the pillars were indeed some sort of warding spell, then crossing them would expose her to whatever sorcerous power was within the pit. Which was probably a very bad idea. A tilted slab of black stone stood just outside the ring, deep grooves carved into its surface. Caina put her hand upon it, intending to climb up for a better view, and then froze.

  She had seen this slab before. In her dreams. Only then hot blood had oozed down the grooves, spilling upon the floor, flowing in that narrow channel towards the black pit…

  Caina shook her head, pushing away the sudden dread. She climbed atop the titled slab and peered down into the pit.

  And down, and down, and down.

  It plunged into the very bowels of the earth. The crimson glow throbbed in its depths like a burning heart. The shadows clinging to the pit’s side crawled and writhed like gigantic insects. All at once Caina had the sensation that the pit was a great burning eye, that some terrible thing chained in the bowels of the earth could look up at her, and she almost fell off the slab in her haste to get away.

  Still the sensation remained, and Caina shivered. She remembered the strange dream-image of her mother, how her black gown had crawled and writhed like a living shadow.

  Much the same way the shadows clinging to the pit’s walls had writhed.

  She had seen enough. Coming here alone had indeed been foolish. There was something terrible down here, something evil, but that didn’t matter. Caina would go to the surface, find Halfdan and the Legionaries, and return with them. They would free the slaves, and let Icaraeus try to stop them…

  Then Caina felt a tingling surge of power. Someone was casting a spell nearby.

  A thunderclap echoed against the walls. An instant later the chamber filled with crackling firelight. A ring of massive iron braziers stood against the outer wall, now blazing with flame. Caina saw another archway in the wall, heard the echo of footsteps and the murmur of voices.

  Someone was coming.

  There was not enough time to get back to the slave chamber. There was enough time to hide behind one of the braziers. Caina raced across the floor, dived, and ducked behind the nearest brazier. Wedged between the stone base and the wall, she had a clear view of both the archways and the black pit. She heard the voices again, and could pick out Agria Palaegus’s voice among them.

  Agria? Down here?

  Caina wondered if she was about to see what Agria did with all those slaves.

  A moment later Caina wondered if she would regret seeing it.

  Jadriga came first.

  When last Caina had seen her, Jadriga had worn a flowing crimson gown and a black veil. Now she wore a costume of black linen that left her arms, her legs, and most of her stomach bare. Swirling black lines and symbols had been painted upon every exposed inch of her pale skin, covering her face in a grotesque mask. A flowing crimson cloak hung from her shoulders, and she carried an ornate black staff in one hand. Her black hair had been bound up within a silver diadem shaped like a row of miniature skulls. She walked with a slow, ritualized step, repeating a chant in a strange language over and over again.

  She should have looked ridiculous. Instead she looked terrifying, like some mighty demon out of the ancient past. Perhaps it was the way her black eyes reflected the crackling green glow of the sigils, or perhaps it was the aura of crushing sorcerous power that surrounded her.

  A crown of skulls, and a cloak of blood. That was what Katerine had said.

  Agria Palaegus walked behind Jadriga, clad in a more modest crimson robe. She carried a dagger and a chalice, and repeated the chant in the strange tongue. Messana Heliorus followed her, clad likewise in the same robe, repeating the chant. Last came Vorena Chlorus. Unlike the others, she wore a white robe, though she carried a dagger in one hand.

  In the other she pulled a chain. Behind her stumbled a blank-eyed boy of six or seven years, one of the enspelled collars around his neck. Caina saw the family resemblance at once. Vorena Chlorus had put a slave collar on her son.

  Agria and Messana took up position on opposite sides of the pillars, keeping well away from the glowing green sigils. Jadriga and Vorena stopped by the stone slab, Vorena’s son staring at nothing. Jadriga smote the staff against the ground, and again Caina heard the thunderclap and felt the surge of power.

  An answering rumble came from the pit.

  “Hear me, oh great dark one!” said Jadriga in her formal High Nighmarian, her rich voice echoing through the chamber. “The hour draws nigh, and we who shall shatter your chains stand before you! Hearken to our words, for we who shall draw your power now speak! Again we give the offerings to loosen your chains, to prepare for the Opening of the Way!”

  The pit rumbled, a tremor going through the stone floor.

  “Now, Vorena,” said Jadriga.

  Vorena hesitated, staring at her son.

  “It is time, Vorena,” repeated Jadriga. “This is the last chain. The final link holding back your power. Sever it, and you shall have all that you desire.”

  “Yes, Vorena,” said Agria, “Listen to the honored Moroaica. Have you not seen the blessings I gained when I severed my chains, when I brought my husband and daughter to this very chamber? You, too, can have that power!”

  “Listen to Agria,” said Messana. “Do not let mere sentiment stay your arm. Take what is rightfully ours, and join us. Become our sister in blood as well as name.”

  For a long moment Caina saw Vorena’s expression waver. Then the cold hardness returned to it. She nodded, lifted her son, and laid him upon the tilted slab.

  And with soul-sick horror Caina realized what was about to happen. Her mind hot with fury, she braced herself to leap out from behind the brazier, ghostsilver dagger in hand. But a colder part of her mind, the Ghost-trained part, stopped her. She couldn’t possibly fight the four of them and win. She couldn’t even fight Jadriga and win. And she had to survive. She had to let Halfdan know of the horrors happening in this place so he could stop them, so Agria and Icaraeus could pay for the nightmares they had fashioned here.

  Vorena lifted the dagger, chanting in the strange tongue. The blade glimmered in the red light, and Caina felt the crawling tingle of sorcerous power. Vorena’s chant rose to a scream, her back arched.

  The dagger came plunging down.

  And the channels on the tilted slab filled with blood.

  Caina felt herself shaking with rage, the silver dagger trembling in her grasp.

  Most of the blood flowed into the trough, draining into the black pit. Jadriga lifted Vorena’s chalice, holding it beneath one of the channels. Soon the chalice filled with blood. “Now drink, my daughter. Drink, and you shall know true freedom.”

  Vorena lifted the chalice with trembling hands and drank. Her throat worked, red lines trickling down her jaw and neck. She fell to her knees, breathing hard, her face twisted in ecstasy. There was another surge of sorcery, and a snarl of flashing green light.

  When the light faded, Vorena had changed. She now looked ten years younger and forty pounds lighter. Her face had gained the same cruel, overripe beauty Caina had noted in both Agria and Messana.

  “How do you feel, my daughter?” said Jadriga, voice soft.

  “I feel,” said Vorena, trembling, chest heaving with her breath, “I feel, I feel…” She pointed and concentrated, and the dagger floated from the floor into her hand. “I feel reborn. The power…the power is so much stronger.” She climbed to shaking feet, grabbing the bloodstained slab for support, ignoring her dead son’s fingers where they brus
hed against her own. “I have never truly been alive before this moment.”

  “Yes,” said Jadriga. “Now you understand. Now you know what it is to be free.”

  “Honored Moroaica,” said Vorena, “show me more.”

  “Then you shall see, and you shall aid me,” said Jadriga. She again struck the staff against the floor.

  Four men entered. They looked like more of Icaraeus’s mercenaries, the rune-carved bracers upon their forearms, yet their faces had been painted with simpler versions of Jadriga’s own swirling mask. Between the mercenaries walked a dozen slaves, their expressions slack, their collars glittering. At Jadriga’s direction, they pulled the child’s corpse from the slab. One of the men carried it to the far archway. The others wrestled another slave, a hollow-faced woman, upon the slab.

  “Great dark one, hear me!” called Jadriga towards the pit. “Again we come before you, and again we bring offerings! Let this blood break your chains and shatter the locks upon your prison. Soon the Opening of the Way shall come, and you will walk again upon this earth!”

  She took the dagger from Vorena Chlorus, raised it high, and brought it plunging down upon her victim. Again the blood filled the stone channels, pouring into the pit. Again the chamber trembled in response. The air filled with snarling crackle of mighty sorcery, and Caina felt the dark presence in the pit stirring, its will reaching out to touch them. Agria, Messana, and Vorena all knelt around the slab, filling their goblets, and they drank in unison. Their expressions twisted in dark ecstasy as green light swirled around them, age falling away from their faces, new vitality flooding their limbs.

  Jadriga gestured, and the mercenaries dragged away the corpse, throwing a fresh slave onto the slab. Again she spoke the chant, raised the dagger, and brought it down. Again the blood flowed into the channels and the pit, the goblets filling.

  And again. And again. And again.

  Caina wanted nothing more than to look away. But she forced herself to watch. She had suspected that Agria was killing the slaves, using their blood for sorcerous experiments. But she had never imagined anything as horrible as this. This was worse than what Maglarion had done, all those years ago. He had been an evil man, cruel and cold…but his eyes had never lit up with the reveling glee she now saw in the faces of the noblewomen.

  At last the carnage ended. Agria, Messana, and Chlorus all knelt, breathing hard, their faces flushed, their lips red with the blood of their victims. Jadriga remained calm as ever, but her face resembled a hideous mask beneath the paint, and her black eyes reflected the fire of the pit. She had drunk no blood herself.

  Agria and the others might have required blood to fuel their sorcerous abilities, but Caina suspected Jadriga’s powers were far beyond that.

  “Clear away these vessels,” said Jadriga to the mercenaries. “I require time for meditation. Do not disturb me.”

  “As you command, great Moroaica,” said one of the men. Jadriga turned, cloak rustling against the black floor.

  “Jadriga!”

  Naelon Icaraeus stalked out of the far archway, his shirt hanging open. Caina saw the wound she had given him across his chest and shoulder. Jadriga watched him, her face still, while the noblewomen glared at him with contempt.

  “You will refer to her,” hissed Agria, “as the honored Moroaica.”

  Jadriga lifted a hand, and Agria subsided. “What do you wish, Naelon?”

  “Not that you’re finished with these little games of yours,” said Icaraeus, pointing at his chest, “perhaps you can spare the time to heal me.”

  “These are no games,” said Jadriga. “You have seen the power the rituals bestow upon my students. Very soon I will be ready to work the Opening of the Way. Then you will see power of a sort that no mortal eyes have ever beheld.”

  “Little good that power did me,” said Icaraeus. “I was attacked by the Ghosts. I barely escaped with my life.”

  “Yet you are here,” said Jadriga. “It seems you have little cause for complaint.”

  “You should have warned me…”

  “I did, did I not?” said Jadriga. “I gave you the location of the Ghosts, once I had taken it from the mind of that determined child.” She paused, gazing into the distance, and for a horrified moment Caina thought that Jadriga had sensed her. “A most determined child. She has known suffering that you can scarce comprehend, and it has made her stronger, like iron forged anew into steel. Oh, but she would make a mighty student. Her mind, my lord Icaraeus, is far stronger than yours.” A faint smile touched her lips. “Perhaps she gave you those wounds you now carry.”

  “They almost killed me,” said Icaraeus. “You should have…”

  “I? You should have killed them when you had the chance,” said Jadriga. “It is not my fault they escaped the reach of your incompetent hirelings. I am disappointed in you. I wish no interference from the Emperor’s Ghosts.”

  Icaraeus sneered. “Compared to your power, the Ghosts are rabbits.”

  “Yet effective rabbits. They almost killed you, as you whined a moment ago,” said Jadriga. “I will not have them interfere with my plans, not when I am so close.” She turned to go.

  “The fault is yours, not mine.” Icaraeus grabbed Jadriga by the shoulder, spun her to face him. “If you had…”

  The sudden tingle of sorcery was so strong and so sharp that it felt like a knife blow against Caina’s skin. There was a thunderclap, and Icaraeus went hurtling through the air, tumbling like a rag doll. He came to an abrupt stop, hanging upside down, and floated slowly to face Jadriga.

  “You should not touch me,” said Jadriga, face and voice serene. “Do it again and Agria will cut the fingers from your hands and feed them to you one at a time.”

  “And gladly,” said Agria with a mocking laugh.

  “Put me down,” said Icaraeus. Caina heard the terror in his voice. “I said to put me…”

  “Silence,” said Jadriga, crooking a finger. Icaraeus spun, and landed on his knees before Jadriga, his wrists pinned to his ankles, his body held immobile by the crushing force of Jadriga’s will. “Listen to me well, child. You have served me ably enough, and you shall have the throne of the Empire, as promised, once I have completed the Opening of the Way. But you are not one of my students - the little tricks you have learned barely qualify as true sorcery. Another fool would take your place just as easily. And you have disappointed me gravely. Do so again, and our association shall come to an end. And you will find that most painful. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” rasped Icaraeus, sweat pouring down his face, the cords in his neck bulging. “Yes, great Moroaica.”

  “Good,” said Jadriga. She gestured, green light flaring around her fingertips, and pressed a hand to his chest. Icaraeus fell backwards with a scream of agony, limbs thrashing. Slowly fit subsided, and he climbed to his feet, still shaking.

  The wounds upon his chest and shoulder had vanished.

  “Now,” said Jadriga, “guard the entrance. If the Ghosts found you, they might have tracked you here. And I will not have them interrupt me, not now.”

  Icaraeus took a shaking breath. “I…I was unable to obtain more slaves, great Moroaica. Tigrane never showed up. The Ghosts must have found and killed him.”

  “That is of no concern,” said Jadriga. “My progress has been better than I anticipated. I have enough slaves here to finish the work. And the final key to the Opening of the Way has been in my possession for years.”

  “And you couldn’t have done it without my aid,” said Icaraeus.

  Again the faint smile flickered over Jadriga’s face. “Indeed not. And you shall be rewarded, as I have promised. But only if you guard this place well. No one must interrupt.”

  “It shall be as you say,” said Icaraeus. “I don't have as many men left as I would wish. But I still have more than enough to guard the doors and the stairs.”

  “You are correct,” said Jadriga. “It shall be as I say.”

  Caina saw a single musc
le trembling in Icaraeus’s jaw.

  Jadriga turned and walked towards the far archway, the noblewomen trailing after her. Icaraeus stared after them for a moment, then shook his head and stalked away. The mercenaries resumed the work of clearing away the slaughtered corpses, likewise carrying them towards the far archway.

  Caina took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Yes, she had seen horrors, but if she did not keep her wits about her, she might well join the corpses. Icaraeus had set his men to watch the doorway and the stairs. No way to sneak past them, not if they were attentive. She had to find another way out.

  She turned her reluctant gaze to the far archway.

  If Jadriga had slaughtered hundreds of slaves here over the last five years, no wonder the air stank of rotting meat. But she had to have some way of disposing of the corpses. Some pit, some cavern. It might open up to the surface at some point, or even into the labyrinthine maze of Marsis’s sewers.

  It was unlikely. But Caina could think of nothing else. She circled around the outer edge of the domed chamber, keeping to the wall.

  It also kept her as far from the pit and the bloody slab as possible.

  Finally she reached the far archway. From within Caina saw the faint blue glow of the enspelled spheres. She took a deep breath, winced at the smell, and started forward.

  Chapter 20 - Blood of the Solmonari

  The black corridor was as high and gloomy as the others, dimly lit by the blue spheres on their iron stands. Caina crept forward a step at a time, ears and eyes straining for any hint of danger. Ahead she glimpsed the crimson swirl of Jadriga’s cloak, and Caina pressed herself into the shadows. She saw Jadriga and the noblewomen vanish into a side door. Further down the corridor Caina saw the mercenaries, still dragging corpses, until they vanished into the darkness.

  The corpses Jadriga had murdered.

  Caina hesitated, her fingers clenching the ghostsilver dagger. If she could catch Jadriga off guard…

  No. Absolute folly. Confronting Jadriga would mean a quick and painful death. And only if she was fortunate. The mercenaries might lead her to a way out. Still keeping to the shadows, Caina continued forward, listening for any sign of danger.