Ghost in the Pact

by Jonathan Moeller

  “He hasn’t broken them yet,” said Morgant.

  “How can you be sure?” said Annarah.

  “Because he hasn’t come to get Callatas,” said Morgant. “Otherwise Kharnaces wouldn’t need to bother bringing Callatas to him. Then Kharnaces would be free to leave the island, and I think we would notice if a Great Necromancer arrived in Istarinmul.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Caina. “The first time I encountered a Great Necromancer, he disguised himself as a living man.”

  Morgant waved his hand. “My point is that Kharnaces can’t leave Pyramid Isle. Else he would just stroll up to Callatas with a needle, a straw, and a bottle, and take all the blood he needs.”

  “So it would be best to kill Callatas on the beach,” said Caina. “Before he enters the jungle. If we do, we won’t have to deal with Kharnaces. He never gets Callatas’s blood, and therefore cannot finish the Conjurant Bloodcrystal.”

  It sounded so neat, so simple…and so unlikely.

  Morgant spotted the plan’s flaws at once. “There wasn’t much cover on the beach. We can’t fight Callatas, because if we try to fight him, he’ll just wave his hand and kill us all. We have to ambush him, and we have to kill him quickly. Maybe it’s best to wait until he’s distracted.”

  “When will he be distracted?” said Caina.

  Morgant grinned. “When he and Kharnaces are fighting each other to the death.”

  “Kharnaces has him under a compulsion,” said Caina. “He’ll bring the Staff and the Seal to Kharnaces.”

  “And then Kharnaces will then try to kill him,” said Morgant. “Which will give Callatas an excellent reason to fight off the compulsion.”

  Annarah frowned. “Do you think he could fight it off?”

  “Why not?” said Morgant, pointing at Caina. “She did, didn’t she? Remember how she kept saying that she had to give the Staff and the Seal to Callatas? Kharnaces put that compulsion on her. Callatas is far more powerful than any of us. You think he won’t fight if his life is in danger?”

  Caina frowned. “Kharnaces is more powerful than Callatas.”

  “Oh, probably,” said Morgant, “but maybe he underestimated Callatas. If Kharnaces really is twenty-five centuries old, he’s probably gotten a bit set in his ways, you know? A bit rigid in his thinking. That, and Grand Master’s had a century and a half to practice his spells. Kharnaces might bite off more than he can chew. He’ll likely beat Callatas in the end, but the fight between them will burn the jungle to ashes before it’s over.”

  “What are you saying?” said Annarah.

  “Easy,” said Morgant. “We wait until Callatas and Kharnaces fight, and then we stab Callatas in the back.”

  “That might work,” said Caina. Callatas would need his full attention to fight Kharnaces. In such a moment of distraction, it might be possible to slip past his guard and strike.

  “But if we kill Callatas in the jungle,” said Annarah, “then Kharnaces can still take the blood from his corpse.”

  “That depends,” said Morgant. “Does Callatas need to be alive for his blood to complete the Conjurant Bloodcrystal?”

  “I…don’t know,” said Caina, wondering.

  “Would it really make a difference?” said Annarah.

  “It might,” said Caina. “Every kind of bloodcrystal is grown from a base, the blood of an initial victim. And if the base is still alive, he can resist the effects of the bloodcrystal. I’ve seen that firsthand.”

  Annarah frowned. “Where?”

  “A long time ago,” said Caina. “When I first joined the Ghosts.” Her hand wanted to stray to her stomach, and she stopped herself. “There was a necromancer named Maglarion, one of the Moroaica’s former students. He took my blood and used it as the base to grow a colossal reservoir bloodcrystal, and then used the bloodcrystal to create a deadly poison. With the poison, he planned to kill everyone in Malarae, store their life energies in the reservoir bloodcrystal, and employ the power to become a god.”

  “Presumably he failed,” said Morgant, “since Malarae is still alive and the remnants of the Empire are not ruled by a living necromancer-god.”

  “He made a mistake,” said Caina. “He didn’t fully understand what he was doing. He tried to kill me with the poison, but I was immune to it. Since my blood served as the base for his reservoir bloodcrystal, I was immune to its effects.”

  To her surprise, Morgant let out a pleased laugh. “So you played dead and then stabbed him in the back?”

  “Something like that, yes,” said Caina.

  Morgant laughed again. “Clever. I approve. I imagine his expression in the final moment must have been…surprised.”

  Caina remembered Maglarion’s scream as he fell from the tower of Haeron Icaraeus’s mansion, remembered the cold satisfaction she had felt at seeing the corpse of the man who had destroyed her life.

  “It was,” said Caina, her voice soft.

  She also remembered the emptiness that had filled her after. Vengeance was a fine thing, and Maglarion had deserved his fate a thousand times over. Yet vengeance could not serve as the sole purpose of her life. It had taken Caina years to understand, but one could not live solely on rage. Not forever.

  On the day Caina had killed Maglarion, if someone had told her that one day she would take a Kyracian stormdancer, a sorcerer, as a lover, she would have been horrified and furious. Now she missed Kylon with an intensity that felt like a splinter sinking into her heart.

  “Anyway,” said Caina, pushing the tangle of memory and emotion out of her head, “I don’t know if Callatas needs to be alive for his blood to work. But we had best not take the risk. We should try to kill Callatas on the beach. If that doesn’t work, we’ll use Morgant’s plan as a backup.”

  “This seems reasonable to me,” said Annarah.

  “We shall likely have to improvise,” said Morgant.

  Caina shrugged. “Don’t we always?”

  They stood in silence for a while.

  “May I ask you something?” said Annarah.

  “Of course,” said Caina.

  “You do not have to answer, if you do not wish,” said Annarah.

  “No, go ahead,” said Caina. “We have been through so much together that we may as well be honest.”

  Annarah hesitated. “Maglarion. The necromancer you mentioned.” Caina nodded. “He was the one who gave you that scar, was he not? The one that left you unable to conceive a child.”

  “He was,” said Caina. She gripped the rail. “I was eleven. My mother was a failed initiate of the Magisterium, so she looked elsewhere for lessons. Maglarion could teach her. He also needed the blood of a virgin to serve as the base of his bloodcrystal. The bargain was struck.”

  “That is dreadful,” said Annarah. “I am sorry.”

  “I hated my mother,” said Caina. “When I was a girl, what I wanted most was my own children.” She let out a long breath. “Because then I could be a better mother to them than she ever was to me. Of course, she made sure I would never have any children.”

  That thought would have pleased her mother. Even Callatas could have learned lessons in spite from Laeria Amalas.

  “Children are overrated,” said Morgant. “The screaming and the vomiting and the endless whining ingratitude, and you’re responsible for another mouth to feed. One too useless to do any useful work, too.”

  “As if you would know,” said Caina.

  “And you would?” said Morgant.

  She felt the sudden urge to hit him again, but starting a fight in front of Murat’s crew was a bad idea. That, and this was Morgant’s usual game of probing her weak spots with insults, testing how she would react.

  “You’re not wrong, Morgant,” said Annarah, “but neither are you correct.”

  Morgant snorted. “How enigmatic. Did the loremasters teach you to speak in riddles?”

  She smiled. “They did, but that’s not the point. All that you say of children is true. It is work without end. When my
first son was born I do not think I slept the night for three or four months, and after he learned to walk he was so disobedient I wanted to scream.” She spread her hands. “Yet I did it all willingly. I loved my children. I would have done anything for them. I would have done terrible things for their sake, and told the most appalling lies for years to save them. Compared to all that, what is caring for them?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Caina. “I will never have children, but you had them and lost them. Surely that must be worse.”

  “Perhaps,” said Annarah, “but I would rather have had them and lost them. To never have had them would be worse, I think.” She closed her eyes and sighed, opening them again a moment later. “It is only love that makes such things bearable.”

  “Love, like children, is overrated,” said Morgant.

  “Another topic on which your lack of expertise is remarkable,” said Caina.

  “It is simply another word,” said Morgant. “I knew a man who claimed he loved his wife, yet took a new mistress in secret every few months and never told her. Or a mother who claimed she loved her children, but ate their bread and let them starve. Men are wolves, and love is simply a rationalization for what we wished to do anyway.”

  “No,” said Caina. “You’re wrong.”

  “How?” said Morgant.

  “If love is a rationalization for what I wanted to do anyway,” said Caina, “then I wouldn’t be here. I would be with Kylon right now. Not chasing after Callatas.”

  “Bah,” said Morgant. “Well, children are entitled to their dreams, I suppose.”

  He strolled a few paces away, clearly exasperated with the topic.

  “He is not,” said Annarah, “as cynical as he claims.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Caina.

  Annarah blinked. “How?”

  “Because otherwise he wouldn’t be chasing after Callatas with us,” said Caina. Annarah laughed. “Though he is nearly almost as cynical as he claims.”

  “I cannot contest that,” said Annarah. She hesitated. “Forgive me if I speak out of turn, but…you have done great things. I would never have escaped the Inferno if not for you. Cassander would have slaughtered everyone in Istarinmul. I have heard Lord Kylon and Lady Claudia speak in passing of other things you have done, the lives you have saved. I wish for your sake that this Maglarion had not set you upon your path, but if you had not become what you are, if you had not become the Balarigar, the world would be a far darker place.”

  “There’s no such thing as the Balarigar,” said Caina. “The Szaldic slaves in Marsis called me that, and I threw it in Ulvan’s face before I dumped him off his balcony. The whole damned legend grew out of that.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Annarah. “People only believe the legend of the Balarigar because of what you have done.”

  “If you say so. Thank you,” said Caina.

  They lapsed into silence, watching the Sandstorm cut its way through the waves. Caina wondered what it would have been like to have a child, to carry Kylon’s child within her.

  She would never know.

  At the moment, she would settle for simply seeing Kylon alive again.

  ###

  That night Caina lay in her bunk and dreamed.

  It was a dream she had experienced before.

  The knocking thundered through her head.

  Caina turned, skirt swirling around her ankles.

  She stood in the House of Kularus, the coffee house she had owned in the Imperial capital of Malarae. Tables and chairs stood scattered around the main floor, while five levels of balconies climbed the walls, offering booths where patrons could converse in private. The air smelled of roasting coffee and baking bread. Of course, since this was not the real House of Kularus and her dream, bookshelves lined the walls, holding the books from her father’s library that Maglarion’s men had burned so long ago.

  This place somehow represented her mind. After she had become a valikarion, spirits could no longer access her sleeping mind. Given how often that had happened in the past, it was something of a relief. Yet sometimes spirits still wished to speak with her, but they needed an invitation to enter.

  Hence the knocking.

  Caina crossed the floor, her high-heeled boots clicking against the polished marble, and looked down at herself. She wore the blue gown with black trim that she had worn on the day she had spoken with Kylon in Catekharon, low-cut and close-fitting, jewels glinting upon her fingers and in her ears. She wasn’t sure why she always wore this dress in these dreams, and knew that with an effort of will she could have changed her appearance.

  But there was no reason. She liked this dress.

  Caina reached the double doors and pulled them open.

  Outside she should have seen the Imperial Market, the richest and most prestigious market in Malarae and possible the Empire. Instead she saw the bleak, dead plain of the Desert of Candles, the low wind moaning past the blue-glowing crystalline pillars that gave the desert its name. In the distance she saw the dry fountain of white stone with its crystalline statues – the mortal remains of Nasser’s wife and children. They had died long ago, but Nasser lingered on, his crystalline hand keeping him from dying.

  Samnirdamnus, djinni of the Court of the Azure Sovereign and the Knight of Wind and Air, stood outside the doors.

  As he often did, the spirit wore the form of the Emperor Alexius Naerius, a thin, white-bearded old man in a black robe of office. His eyes burned with the smokeless flame of the djinn, and a sardonic smile played on his bearded lips. The Emperor had never smirked like that.

  “Samnirdamnus,” said Caina.

  “My darling demonslayer,” said Samnirdamnus. “I do hope you can spare a moment to chat with me. Quality conversation is such a rarity in this barren age.”

  Caina stared at him. She still did not know quite what to make of the spirit. Certainly Samnirdamnus was not her enemy. He had gone to great lengths to manipulate Caina and Morgant and Kylon so Kylon would have a chance to save Caina’s life at Rumarah. Samnirdamnus had appeared in Caina’s dreams during her first night in Istarinmul, and he had given her cryptic advice ever since. At first Caina thought he was plotting to free himself from Callatas, to escape from the binding that compelled him to watch over the Maze. That was part of it, surely, but she had also learned that the djinn of the Court of the Azure Sovereign were the ancient enemies of the nagataaru, and that Samnirdamnus’s title of the Knight of Wind and Air meant he was something like a spy or a shadow agent for the Azure Sovereign.

  Which meant his aid to Caina was part of a larger plan.

  “Have you decided,” said Caina, “if I am the one you have been looking for?”

  “Almost,” said Samnirdamnus. “I will know very soon.”

  “What do you want to talk about, then?” said Caina.

  “Why,” said Samnirdamnus, “interesting things.”

  She stared at him for another moment, and then nodded. “All right. Come inside and we’ll talk.”

  Caina turned and walked to a nearby table, Samnirdamnus following her. A pitcher of coffee and a pair of cups appeared on the table. As Samnirdamnus seated himself, Caina poured the coffee and passed him one of the cups.

  “You know those are imaginary,” said Caina, sitting down and taking a sip. It tasted exactly like the coffee Damla served at the House of Agabyzus.

  “Just because something is imaginary,” said Samnirdamnus, “does not mean it is not real.”

  “I believe that is the definition of unreal,” said Caina.

  Imaginary or not, she took another sip of the coffee.

  “You asked,” said Samnirdamnus, “if you are the one I have been looking for. I am almost certain that you are. You see, I have been looking for you, or for someone like you, for a very long time now. And the moment is almost at hand.”

  “What moment?” said Caina.

  “The moment of final crisis,” said Samnirdamnus. “When all of Callatas’s plans come to fruition and this
world dies, or he is stopped and this world lives. One or the other. If the world is indeed a tapestry of destiny threads, then every thread is warping itself around the decisions that you, Callatas, and a few others shall make in the immediate future.”

  “I see,” said Caina, chilled despite the warmth of the coffee. She knew she played a game with deadly stakes…and it seemed the end of the game was at hand.

  One way or another.

  “I shall know if you are the one I have been looking for,” said Samnirdamnus, “if you survive the coming conflict.”

  “What conflict is that?” said Caina.

  “The conflict between the lords of the nagataaru,” said Samnirdamnus.

  “I don’t understand,” said Caina. “The nagataaru are fighting amongst themselves?”

  “Constantly,” said Samnirdamnus, glancing towards the ceiling. “It’s rather like watching a bucket of serpents. But how to explain in terms you understand? The sovereign of the nagataaru, the creature you know as Kotuluk Iblis…”

  “We’ve met,” said Caina. Kotuluk Iblis had prophesied her certain doom. The prophecy had come true in Rumarah, though Kylon had cheated fate and saved her.

  “Indeed,” said Samnirdamnus with sardonic amusement. “Kotuluk Iblis cares nothing for methods, only results. When he desires to accomplish something, he gives the task to several of the great lords of the nagataaru. They all loathe each other, of course, and scramble to fulfill their sovereign’s bidding. Sometimes they are at odds with each other, for they know that their sovereign gives great rewards to the successful.”

  “Fine,” said Caina. “What does this have to do with Callatas?”

  “The nagataaru inhabiting the Great Necromancer,” said Samnirdamnus. “Do you chance to recall its name?”

  “The nagataaru don’t have names as mortals do,” said Caina, “but Kharnaces called it the Harbinger.”

  “The Harbinger is one such lord of the nagataaru,” said Samnirdamnus. “The nagataaru known to you as the Voice is another.”

  Caina shuddered a little. “Kalgri’s nagataaru.”