Ghostfire

by Christopher Golden

  “I cannot kill you with magic, you fool, you insect, you pitiful waste of flesh. But that does not mean I cannot kill you. It’s fortunate your father is dead. How embarrassed he would be to see what a nothing his son had become.”

  Timothy felt cold inside, and strangely calm. Alhazred had caused so much death and sorrow, and it was time to bring an end to it, to generations of evil. His right hand throbbed with pain from striking the wall, but he shut off the pain from his mind, just as Ivar had taught him to do. Timothy was surprised by how swift and brutal the wizard was, but he was not afraid. He had spent his entire life learning from the last of the Asura, and without magic, Alhazred would be no match for him.

  His nostrils flared and he flexed both fists, not feeling the bruised knuckles at all. Alhazred smirked at him, gray flesh wrinkling, shadows spilling from his eyes. The wizard reached for another ghostfire lamp, another soul to consume…

  Timothy stepped in close, swinging his right fist with all of his might. Alhazred sneered and twisted to move out of the way, but the boy pulled his punch at the last moment, shifted his weight and momentum, and rammed his left fist into the wizard’s chest. At first all he felt was the resistance of that charcoal gray cloak, as though Alhazred were entirely substantial. Then his fist struck withered flesh and bone.

  The shadows and blue fire leaking from Alhazred’s eyes dispersed, and all the magic coalescing around his hands blinked out as though it had never been there.

  “No,” the wizard whispered, eyes widening, as the blow forced him back a step. Alhazred shot out a hand, trying to claw at Timothy’s face, but the boy had misjudged once and would not do so again. He swept his right arm up and knocked the wizard’s hand away. Again, Alhazred attacked, and Timothy used his left to block a second time. He danced back a step, then put all his weight into another blow, this one with his bruised right hand. He struck Alhazred in the jaw.

  Without magic, the wizard’s eyes were blank white like those of a blind man. Timothy shuddered at the sight.

  But Alhazred was not through. The wizard reached for him again. A spark of magic fit up his eyes, which shouldn’t have been possible.

  The null field that Timothy’s body generated was not something he could feel. But when he focused, he could feel a tingle on his skin. It was not the null field, but the brushing against it of the magic that was outside of him. And if Timothy concentrated on that feeling, he had learned that he could extend the null field. Focusing his mind he could reach out and short-circuit magic without touching it, as easily as blowing out a candle.

  Alhazred had been feeding off of the magic of other mages—their fife essence, their souls—for ages. How much power had he stored up inside him?

  It doesn’t matter, Timothy thought as the shadow wizard’s fingers clutched his throat. Magic isn’t real strength. That’s in the heart.

  He shot his hand out, fingers straight, and jabbed at Alhazred’s throat. The blow cut off the wizard’s air a moment, and he lost his grip. Timothy hopped backward, then spun his entire body, pivoting on one foot even as he brought his left leg up and kicked Alhazred in the face with such force that the gray skin of his face cracked. There was no blood inside, only a puff of dust.

  The shadow wizard fell. He slumped to the ground, his back against the wall, flickering fight upon him from the ghostfire flames burning in spheres and lamps all around. Some of them cascaded to the floor from the walls, rolling across stone. Faces gazed out at Timothy, and he thought he saw hope in the ghostly eyes of the dead mages whose souls were trapped inside.

  “It cannot be,” Alhazred rasped, his voice hollow now, no longer filled with that commanding tone that had seemed to spring from every flame of ghostfire in the vast, sprawling chamber.

  In that moment, staring at the pitiful creature, Timothy was overcome with grief. He shuddered and felt his face flush with hatred. Leander was gone. Ivar was either dead, or nearly so. Cassandra had been forced to kill the twisted thing her grandfather had become at Alhazred’s hands. And all the hatred, all the secrets that fingered in this world—the suspicions of the Parliament of Mages, the prejudice against Wurms, the betrayal and slaughter of the Asura—all of it was because of Alhazred.

  “Why couldn’t you just have died?” Timothy asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  And blue flames flickered in the shadow wizard’s eyes. Weak, but they were there. A grin spread across his face, splitting that dry, gray skin even further.

  Alhazred thrust his hands out to either side of him. “You don’t understand, boy. I am a part of the magical matrix now. There is so much of the magic in me that I cannot be separated from it. Not even by your freakish nature.”

  The wizard snatched up a ghostfire sphere in each hand, and as Timothy watched, his fingers slid through the spell-glass as though it weren’t there at all. There was no mage on all of Terra as powerful as this ancient spellcaster.

  “Yessssssss!” Alhazred screamed.

  His voice came from every ghostfire flame in that chamber, every flicker from one end to the other, every lamp and sphere and lantern. Timothy shook his head.

  “No. I don’t—”

  But he could not finish, for as he watched, the ghostfire inside the spheres Alhazred had plunged his finger into disappeared. It winked out, the light extinguished. The souls absorbed into the wizard’s flesh.

  “Stop,” Timothy whispered, taking a step forward but not knowing what else he could do. “Leave them alone.”

  The blue flames danced in Alhazred’s eyes again, and that split in his skin healed. He opened his mouth and let out a throaty laugh, and a billowing mist of oily black shadow unfurled from between his lips, gusting on his breath.

  “Foolish boy,” Alhazred said, but his eyes were rolled up in his head, the lids fluttering with pleasure, and he wasn’t even looking at Timothy anymore. “You’re too late, don’t you understand?”

  He had not moved his hands—he still clutched those two darkened spheres in his grasp—but now other lamps began to be snuffed out. Ghostfire faces screamed in silence and then seemed to be sucked backward into nothing, drawn out through their glass enclosures only to wink out as though they had never existed.

  Alhazred began to laugh. The blue flames in his eyes danced higher and higher. Timothy thought he saw faces in it.

  Then it grew worse. One by one the ghostfire lights began to dim. Spheres winked out. Lamps. Lanterns. With a strange rhythm, like the pulse of the dark wizard’s heart, the lights in that vast chamber went dark. A dozen. Four dozen. One hundred, and it was spreading quickly.

  “Stop it!” Timothy screamed, not knowing what to do. Alhazred was destroying them all, taking all of those souls, all of that magic, and if he really was linked with the magical matrix, Timothy didn’t know if even his strange affliction would be enough to stop the horror unfolding before him.

  At last, the laughter stopped. The lights continued to wink out, and the part of the chamber they were in was thrown into shadow, a gloomy near-darkness that grew deeper by the moment. Alhazred’s eyes glowed, and when he stared at Timothy now, there was a calm in him that frightened the boy more than anything that had happened thus far.

  “It is only a matter of time. I will consume them all, you see? All of the souls of the dead mages, all of their magic. I have gathered enough power now. Had you discovered me even days ago, you might have stopped me. But I have the magic now to jump from one flicker of ghostfire to the next. I begin here, with the spirits trapped in this room, and then I will spread through Arcanum, and then throughout the matrix, absorbing every one of the bound souls, the ghostfire, the captured magic of millions of dead mages … and then, boy, do you see?”

  Timothy was horrified. He did see. Alhazred was mad, but the history of Terra was filled with stories of his scheming and manipulation. He wanted to rule, to control them all. And if he took that much magic into himself, if he could take control of the entire magical matrix, he would command every mage in the w
orld. Timothy wanted to free the trapped souls, the suffering spirits of the dead, and Alhazred wanted to absorb their essence within himself, to eat them.

  The darkness had continued to spread through the chamber. Timothy could almost feel the pleading eyes of hundreds of ghosts upon him. But by the light of that blue fire in Alhazred’s eyes, he looked and saw that the wizard’s fingers were still thrust into those hollow, spell-glass spheres.

  Connected to the magical matrix.

  Timothy glanced around. Several areas of the chamber had gone dark now, arches and columns almost black against the gloom. One by one, they continued to extinguish. Alhazred was absorbing them all, his power spreading…

  But what if I can disconnect him?

  He took a step back and tried to steady his breathing. The pain in his right hand and his broken nose began to throb again, but he pushed it away. Eyes wide open, he felt in the darkness. All across his skin, on his face and his hands, even beneath his clothes, there was that tingling sensation that was the magic that slid over him but never touched him, just beyond his reach.

  Taking long breaths, Timothy focused on the entire surface of his body, on that tingling … on the magic … and he pushed.

  He felt it give way. The null field grew, ballooning around him. A smile touched his lips, and he glared down at Alhazred. The shadow wizard was still laughing, that blue fire burning in his eyes, darkness pouring from his mouth … but when he saw the smile on Timothy’s face, Alhazred’s laughter faltered.

  Timothy took a deep breath, held it a moment, and then with every ounce of his self-control, every bit of his will and inner strength, he pushed as hard as he could, forcing the null field to burst away from him, spreading and stretching out to encompass that entire massive chamber…

  Alhazred’s eyes went dark.

  Every piece of glass in that vast chamber disappeared in an instant, the spells that had created the spheres and lamps and lanterns shattered. A massive flare of ghostfire lit the room as those flames were free. And in that flash of brilliant soul-illumination …

  SkyHaven began to fall.

  Timothy heard Cassandra scream somewhere nearby. Alhazred shouted in fury and fear. The boy’s own heart seized as he felt the stone floor drop below him and felt that they were falling. The entire floating fortress gave way to freefall, and in that moment, when he felt he might throw up, his mind cried out in panic as he pictured SkyHaven tumbling down into the ocean, sinking, drowning everyone who wouldn’t be killed by the impact alone.

  One. Two. Three seconds. Through fear and instinct, he drew the null field back to him, and the freefall of SkyHaven stopped.

  The sudden halt of their descent slammed Timothy to the floor, and he cracked his skull against stone. He blinked, forcing himself to stand, dizzy because all of his balance was shot by the fall. Three seconds, only. They had not hit the ocean, they were not going to drown.

  You disrupted the whole matrix, he said. Everything must have winked out for a second, all of the magical power in the area …possibly the whole city … and maybe farther.

  Suddenly he was very afraid.

  The ghostfire was no longer captured by magic and it flashed brighter, and brighter still, and Timothy spun and saw the faces in them, all of them gazing at him, smiling, able at last to go to their rest.

  Then they began to fade.

  As they did, Alhazred began to howl. Timothy spun to look at him in that dimming light as the entire room faded to blackness, and he saw Alhazred’s gray flesh begin to split all over, withering and crinkling like burning paper. Darkness puffed out of him, and in moments, as the last of the light faded, he saw the wizard crumble into nothing but ash on the floor.

  Then all was darkness.

  And in that utter blackness, he heard Cassandra call his name.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes. And … Ivar’s going to be okay, too, I think.” Her voice came through the darkness, bouncing off the walls of that chamber. He wanted to crawl to her, to hold her hands in his, and know that she was safe. “What about you?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

  Timothy thought about that question, but he said nothing for a very long time.

  He was not at all sure how to answer.

  In Tora’nah, Verlis spread his wings and flew high above the ground. He had been watching the miners more closely, enjoying the feeling of progress as they dug more and more Malleum out of the hillside. He had made his peace with the mages—at least some of them. The helmet the smiths had made him at the Forge had been a kind gesture, one he had not expected.

  Still, he felt a certain unease with them working so close to the burial grounds of the Dragons of Old. But he would work with them. He would give them the benefit of the doubt.

  The sky was cloudy, and the afternoon wearing on. The air was chilly, but the fire in his own belly and gullet warmed him. Smoke plumed from his nostrils as he dipped one wing and banked to the left, circling around again.

  When he heard that buzzing hum in his skull, he nearly dropped out of the sky. He faltered and began to drop, but quickly caught himself, flapping his wings harder, soaring upward. His heart thundered in his chest, and alarms of danger raced through him. Before, he had heard that hum because he had been wearing the helmet—the metal it was forged from was tied intrinsically to the Wurm, and he could feel them on the other side of the barrier.

  But in that moment, something had happened. He didn’t need the helmet to feel the connection now.

  Beating his wings, Verlis flew straight toward Alhazred’s Divide.

  Fire streamed away from his snout as he rode the air currents.

  The barrier lit up, from ground to sky, from horizon to horizon. Verlis spread his wings, stopping himself, eyes wide as he was filled with terrible dread.

  The light dimmed. All of the magic in Tora’nah winked out for just a moment.

  Before Verlis’s eyes, the barrier fell.

  And the murderous, barbaric Wurms that had been trying to break it down from the other side began to come through.

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