Child of the Ghosts

by Jonathan Moeller

  Then he drove the dagger between Sebastian's ribs, directly into his heart. Sebastian shuddered once, his arms twitching. Then he slumped forward, his blood dripping upon the floor. Maglarion wrenched the dagger free and held up the bloodcrystal.

  For a moment green light flared its in depths, and then it shivered. Before it had been the size of a grape. Now it was the size of a walnut. The green light faded from the bloodcrystal's depth, but the size remained.

  Caina sobbed, the gag's foul taste filling her mouth.

  "You can see," said Maglarion, "how the power released by his death has been trapped in the bloodcrystal, stored to use as I see fit. The application, I think, should be obvious. Simply killing a large number of people to empower a potent spell is often impracticable. However, killing them one by one, and storing the power as you go...that is far easier. Waste not, want not, after all."

  Again the magi laughed.

  "Speaking of which," said Maglarion, crossing to the table.

  Again he slashed his hand across Caina's torn stomach, his fingers crackling with green flame. Again the horrible, nauseating pain filled her, her skin crawling beneath the force of his sorcery.

  Her wound sealed itself shut, the pain vanishing into sick numbness. In its place the scar returned, wider and more livid than before.

  "Take her," said Maglarion.

  Ikhana nodded to the slavers, who hauled Caina from the table and carried her back to her cell. They dumped her on the floor and locked the door behind them, the rusted hinges screaming.

  Screaming, as Caina wanted to scream.

  Instead, she lay curled on her side on the cold stone floor, weeping.

  ###

  The torture continued for weeks.

  Every three or four days, without fail, the door opened with a rusty shriek, and Ikhana and the slavers dragged Caina to that horrible metal table and Maglarion’s dagger. She fought and screamed, bit and punched, but it never did any good. The constant blood loss left her weak and dizzy, and she could barely stand up.

  She could not stop them from dragging her to that table again and again. She could not stop Maglarion from cutting into her, siphoning off more and more of her blood to demonstrate some new aspect of necromancy to his watching students.

  She hated him. She hated them. But she could do nothing to stop the pain.

  Caina prayed, begging the gods for help. She prayed to Minaerys, the god of scholars, Markoin, the god of the soldiers, Joravius, god of the Empire, the Living Flame, the god to whom Azaia had prayed, and a dozen others.

  None of them answered.

  Her sensitivity to sorcery grew. At first she only felt the crawling, nauseating sensation whenever Maglarion cast a spell. Then when the magi practiced their lessons. Even when she lay in her cell, she felt the presence of their spells, the arcane power washing over her like tiny needles.

  And Maglarion kept cutting into her stomach. Caina thought she would grow used to the constant agony, but every time was worse than the one that had come before. He cut through skin and muscle alike, the blade slicing deeper every time. Sooner or later he would cut too deep and kill her.

  She hoped he would.

  When the lessons ended, Caina lay shivering on the floor of her cell, alternating between sobbing and blank numbness, unable to think, unable to function. Hunger cramps kept her from sleeping. And even when she did sleep, the nightmares tormented her. She saw her father dying, saw him slumped in his chair, eyes glassy and unfocused. Or she lay again upon Maglarion’s metal table, unable to tell the dream from the reality.

  She would have given anything to see her father again, to hear his voice.

  She would have given anything to see the sun again.

  But she would not.

  Caina realized that she was going to die here. Maglarion would never let her go, and would kill her once her usefulness to his spells had ended. Death was the only way out.

  And she wanted to die.

  But she didn't want to kill herself. Some part of her, the part that burned with hatred for Maglarion and the magi, refused to contemplate the idea. She wanted to go down fighting. She wanted to make them kill her.

  But how?

  Then one day the slavers tried to open the door, and it stuck. The hinges had jammed with rust. Caina heard them curse, heard them kick at the door. Finally it shuddered open, flakes of rust falling to the grimy floor.

  One of the slavers stepped into the cell. He did not look at all well, his eyes sunken and his face flushed, and Caina wondered if the man was drunk. The slaver dropped her plate of food on the floor, turned, and slammed the heavy door behind him.

  The hinges screamed.

  And then the top hinge cracked. A shower of rust fell to the floor, followed by one of the heavy pins.

  It rolled to a stop against Caina's knee.

  She picked it up. The thing was as thick as her thumb, its end sharp and jagged.

  She could plunge it into her throat. She had seen Maglarion cut enough throats, after all. It would hurt, true, but she had already endured so much agony. What was a little more? A little more pain, and all her torments would end. It could all end.

  She remembered her father, bleeding in the slavers' grasp.

  Caina growled, staggered to her feet, limped to the door.

  If she was going to die, then let them kill her! She would not give them her life.

  The door had three hinges. The top one had shattered when the slaver had left, and the door had begun tilting inward. The middle and bottom hinges remained intact, but rust caked them both.

  Caina knelt before the middle hinge and started digging. Her hands shook and trembled, but the rust had chewed through the hinges, and she kept at it.

  It was not as if she had anything better to do.

  Hours passed. She kept digging and digging, the jagged pin scraping against the hinge. Chunks of rust fell across her knuckles and rolled down her sleeves. The pin made a scraping sound as she dug it into the hinge. Vaguely she wondered why the guards hadn't heard the noise yet.

  More hours passed. Her arms ached and trembled with fatigue, her head spinning. She couldn't keep doing this. She was going to pass out, and...

  Something cracked. The middle hinge splintered, the pin falling loose.

  The massive door fell towards her, the bottom hinge ripping free from the stone.

  Caina scrambled backwards, sudden fear lending her strength. She crouched back against the far wall as the heavy door slammed against the floor a few inches from her toes. The echoes lingered for a long, long time.

  She braced herself, expecting to see the slavers leap through the door, weapons in hand. Then she would throw herself at them, forcing them to kill her.

  No one came.

  Caina waited, her heart hammering in her ears.

  Still no one came.

  She hesitated, stepped onto the door, the wood rough against the soles of her feet. A deep breath, and she crossed into the corridor.

  It was empty, with no sign of the slavers. Or Maglarion, or Ikhana, or anyone else.

  What was going on? Had Maglarion decided to kill everyone?

  But she didn't feel the crawling tingle of sorcery.

  Caina looked back at her cell. She could either go back, or she could keep moving.

  She kept moving.

  ***

  Chapter 5 - The Ghosts

  Caina found the first dead slaver a few moments later.

  It was the man who had brought her the plate of food. He lay on his back, eyes bulging, hands clutching his throat. His lips had turned black, bloody foam encircling his mouth. A strange smell, like rotting flowers, hung over him.

  Poison, Caina realized. He had been poisoned.

  Two more dead slavers lay against the door to the vaulted room. Like the first man, both had bulging eyes and black lips, blood drying around their mouths. The door was locked, the hinges free of rust, but one of the dead slavers had a ring of keys on his belt. Caina
took the keys and tried them in the door until she found one that fit. The lock released with a clang, and she leaned her shoulder against the door, straining with all her strength, until it swung open.

  Her head spun, and she fell upon the floor. Distantly she wondered if she had been poisoned, as well. Or, more likely, she had overtaxed her weakened body.

  Caina passed out.

  She awoke some time later, chilled from the stone floor. With a grunt she heaved herself to her knees, and then her feet.

  The vaulted chamber was silent, the glow from the glass spheres spilling over the thick pillars. The metal table sat in its usual place, stained with Caina's blood. Terror filled her at the sight, the scars on her stomach clenching, and she forced herself to look away.

  She shrieked.

  The magi sat at a long wooden table, staring at her.

  They did not move.

  Bit by bit, Caina calmed down, saw their bulging eyes and blackened lips. And some of the magi lay slumped over the table, or had fallen to the flagstones of the floor.

  They, too, had been poisoned.

  She stared at the dead men and women for a long time, wondering if it was a trick, some scheme of Maglarion's.

  But if Maglarion and the magi were dead, if someone had indeed poisoned them...then perhaps Caina could simply walk out of this place.

  Assuming she could even find her way out.

  She took a step forward, and heard voices. Men's voices, raised in argument. Torchlight flared in the distance, drowning out the pale glow of the glass spheres. Caina froze for a moment, then hurried to one of the pillars. Her head spun with the effort, but she ducked behind the thick pillar, breathing hard.

  Two men, she heard, and one woman. All of them speaking Caerish. That made her feel a little better; Maglarion and the magi had spoken High Nighmarian, and the slavers had spoken Anshani, when they had bothered to speak at all.

  “Nothing,” said the first man, who spoke with a thick, rolling Caerish accent. “This place is as silent as a tomb.”

  “That’s because it is a tomb,” said the woman, her voice sharp. “That poison I brewed for you worked too well.”

  “The poison did as it was intended,” said the second man. His voice was cold and hard, empty of emotion. “Would you rather have dealt with twelve magi, especially ones dabbling in necromancy?”

  “Of course not,” said the woman. “But we’ve killed all the captives, as well.”

  The man with the rolling accent sighed. “I doubt it.”

  “What do you mean?” said the woman.

  “Because I poisoned the wine,” he said. “That was quality wine, from the vineyards of Caer Marist, and the magi wouldn't have shared it with the captives. But I doubt that matters. The magi have been hiding here for seven weeks. Odds are they killed the captives long ago. No doubt they would have sent their pet slavers to snatch more victims from the countryside, had we not slain them.”

  “So there is no one to rescue?” said the woman.

  “I doubt it,” said the man with the rolling accent.

  “But these magi, at least, will not shed another drop of blood,” said the second man, some satisfaction coloring his cold voice.

  "Little comfort that will be to their victims," said the woman.

  "Perhaps their spirits will rest easier, now that they are avenged," said the man with the rolling accent. "Best we make a thorough search, though, in case some wretch lies chained in a cell."

  "Very well," said the cold-voiced man.

  Caina risked a look around the pillar.

  She saw the man with the rolling accent first. He was in his middle forties, with stringy iron-gray hair, a bushy gray beard, and arms thick with corded muscle. He dressed like a caravan guard, or perhaps a brigand, with battered leather armor and a short sword and dagger at his belt. Besides him walked a woman of about the same age, with blondish-gray hair and a lean, lined face. Like the man, she wore worn leather armor, though she bore no weapons.

  The cold-voiced man stood behind them both.

  He frightened Caina, in a way the other two did not. He was much younger, no more than twenty-five, with close-cropped blond hair and deep-set eyes. He wore a black leather jerkin, steel mail glimmering beneath it. Sheathed daggers rested at his belt, and he carried a long spear like it was an extension of his arm. He had the same sort of cold eyes she had seen in the Istarish slavers.

  "Cells, over there," said the cold-voiced man, gesturing with the spear.

  "Aye," said the man with the rolling accent, "if we're to find any survivors, they'll..."

  Caina leaned back, intending to slink behind the pillar.

  Instead her head spun once more, and she fell to the floor.

  Both men whirled at once, the cold-voiced man lifting his spear, while the older man drew his sword. Caina scrambled against the pillar, breathing hard, holding the rusted pin out before her.

  Compared to a spear and a sword, it made for a pathetic weapon.

  "Wisdom of Minaerys," breathed the woman. "A child."

  "Stay away," said Caina in Caerish, the pin trembling before her. "Stay away from me."

  "We mean you no harm, child," said the older man, putting his sword away.

  "No," said Caina. "You could be working for him. Stay away."

  The woman's eyes fell upon Caina's tattered clothes, the scars across her stomach. "Great Minaerys," she breathed, "what did they...Halfdan, I think the magi used her blood."

  The older man, the one the woman had called Halfdan, nodded. "You look half-starved. Come with us, and we'll get you some food, perhaps find your mother and father."

  The younger man shook his head. "Not likely."

  The woman glared at him.

  "No," said Caina. "You could be one of them. The magi. One of his disciples."

  Halfdan smiled. "If I was one of the magi, why would I have killed them all?"

  "You killed them?" whispered Caina. "You...poisoned them, didn't you?"

  Halfdan nodded. "Aye. We're not far from the town of Aretia, and the slavers visited every week to buy supplies. We noticed it. I asked Komnene here," he gestured at the woman, "to brew up something special for them. And I added it to their wine."

  The cold-voiced man jerked his head at the magi, his eyes never leaving Caina. "Looks like they drank it."

  "Why?" said Caina.

  Halfdan glanced at Komnene and the cold-voiced man, and something seemed to pass between them.

  "Because," said Halfdan, "we are Ghosts."

  "Ghosts?" said Caina. "The...the spirits of his victims?"

  The cold-voiced man laughed.

  "Not quite," said Halfdan. "We are the spies of the Emperor, his eyes and his ears. We hunt those who break his laws, those who enslave his people, those who use sorcerous power to terrorize and destroy."

  "A fine speech," muttered the cold-voiced man.

  "Why did you come?" said Caina.

  "We were summoned," said Halfdan, reaching into a pouch at his belt. A coin gleamed in his hand, worn and ancient. A coin inscribed with the portrait of the long-dead Emperor Cormarus.

  The coin she had seen Sebastian take out of his desk.

  Caina stared, transfixed.

  "Count Sebastian Amalas summoned us," said Halfdan. "He wrote that his wife had been associating with outlaw sorcerers, with necromancers. We came to investigate, though too late, I fear."

  "My father," whispered Caina.

  Halfdan blinked. "Gods. Sebastian Amalas...you're his daughter?"

  Caina started to cry, something like a scream coming from her throat. She could not keep herself together any longer. Komnene rushed over, knelt besides her, and Caina did not resist, did not try to run. Again the dizziness washed over her, and she would have fallen again to the floor, if not for Komnene's grasp.

  When Caina came to her senses, she heard Halfdan and Komnene arguing. The man with the cold voice stood to the side, looking bored.

  "She's in no state to
do anything," said Komnene. "Look at her scars. Look at what they did to her."

  "Aye," said Halfdan, "and if we don't find out what happened to her, it might happen to others. She's the only one who can tell us what happened."

  "What happened?" said Caina, her voice scratchy. She closed her eyes. "My mother. She did this. She did all of this." Something halfway between a sob and a laugh escaped from her lips. "I made her pay, though. I did."

  "What's your name?" said Halfdan.

  "Caina."

  "What happened?" said Halfdan. "Tell me."

  Caina closed her eyes. It was hard to think, and the memories had blurred into one long morass of agony. "I...my mother. She sent letters, to outlaw sorcerers, to necromancers. She was in the Magisterium, but they expelled her. She wasn't strong enough. My father had a scroll, something that...that he wanted. My mother promised him the scroll, and me, if he would take her as a student."

  "So he did?" said Halfdan.

  Caina nodded. "My father found out. Said he would contact the Ghosts."

  Halfdan lifted the coin. "He did."

  "My mother wanted to stop him," said Caina. "She tried to...to erase his memory, I think, so he would forget. Except she didn't know what she was doing, and she broke his mind. She did the same to all the servants. All of them."

  "What happened to your mother?" said Halfdan.

  "I killed her," said Caina.

  Komnene looked disturbed. Something like approval flashed over the cold-voiced man's face.

  "I didn't mean to," whispered Caina. "I was so angry. I hit her with a poker. She lost her balance and hit her head against the desk. And then...he came. And he took me here. He cut me, used my blood for his spells. I'm going to die here."

  "No," said Komnene, her voice sharper than Caina had yet heard it. "You are not."

  Halfdan frowned. "This man," he said, "this necromancer. Do you know his name?"

  "Maglarion," said Caina.

  She could not have gotten more of a reaction out of the Ghosts if she had slapped them.

  Komnene's eyes went wide. Halfdan reached for his sword. The cold-voiced man raised his spear, his face taut with readiness.

  "What?" said Caina.

  "The necromancer called himself Maglarion?" said Halfdan.

  Caina nodded.

  "What did he look like?" said Halfdan.

  "An old man," said Caina. "His left eye was missing. He had expensive clothes. He limped when he walked, and carried a cane."