Ghost in the Pact

by Jonathan Moeller

  “What good does that do me?” said Kylon.

  “If a man is a slave to his lusts, then his lusts rule him,” said the Emissary, “and they are his weakness.” She shrugged. “I know not how to exploit such weaknesses. You are the warrior, not I.”

  Kylon snorted. “Some oracle.”

  She offered a brief smile. “You asked for plain speaking, so do not complain when you hear it.”

  “Fine,” said Kylon. “You also said I had to understand my destiny. What is my destiny?”

  “The silver fire is your only salvation,” said the Emissary.

  “The Surge told me that, before I was exiled from New Kyre,” said Kylon. “What does it mean?”

  “What did it mean in your past?” said the Surge. “For I have seen it in your past.”

  Kylon said nothing. In the Craven’s Tower, Caina had used a vial of Elixir Restorata to save his life, the silver fire erupting from him to heal his wounds. He had thought the Surge’s prophecy fulfilled, but then the Huntress had given Caina a mortal wound in Rumarah. With Samnirdamnus’s help, Kylon had used the Elixir Restorata to save Caina’s life…and the resultant explosion had wiped out the Umbarian soldiers and driven Cassander Nilas from Rumarah.

  It had also transformed Caina into a valikarion.

  Kylon had four vials of Elixir Restorata with him. Did the Emissary’s warning mean that he would need them to save his life once more? Or that he would somehow use it to save Caina? He could not see how. Caina was hundreds of miles away, likely on Pyramid Isle by now.

  Kylon wanted to hit the table again, but he had smashed it already.

  “I am sorry, Lord Kylon,” said the Emissary. “If I could tell you more, I would. The future is far cloudier than the past.”

  “If the future is cloudy even to you,” said Kylon, “then what is the point of an oracle?”

  “To set others upon the path they may need to walk,” said the Emissary with a crooked smile.

  “Now you’re being cryptic again,” said Kylon.

  “May the Living Flame light your path, Lord Kylon,” said the Emissary, “and grant you wisdom. For I fear you shall need all the aid you can find in the days ahead.”

  Kylon turned away. “Better get some sleep. There might be a battle tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” said the Emissary. “I know.”

  Kylon looked back at her, a barbed remark on his lips, decided it wasn’t worth it, shook his head, and left the tent.

  Night had fallen, the air marginally less hot. Kylon gazed up at the stars, wondering if Caina was looking at these same stars right now. He wondered if his father and mother had endured the fears and doubts that gnawed at him now, if Andromache had ever entertained similar doubts. On the other hand, Andromache had never questioned herself, which had probably gotten her killed.

  And as Kylon questioned himself, a disturbing thought occurred to him.

  The Emissary had said that the Huntress would come for Caina again.

  Did that meant she was going after Caina right now? Had they miscalculated?

  Had the Red Huntress accompanied her master to Pyramid Isle?

  Chapter 13: Ambush

  As the sun slipped beneath the jungle to the west, Caina glimpsed a flash of white on the curve of the beach ahead.

  “Stop,” she said, keeping her voice low. Morgant and Annarah came to an immediate halt.

  Caina remained motionless, peering at the horizon. Pyramid Isle was roughly circular in shape, which meant the beach and the line of the jungle moved in an uneven curve. Far ahead, just before the curve of the jungle blocked the sight of the beach, Caina glimpsed a figure clad in brilliant white.

  Like the white of a Master Alchemist’s robe.

  Almost certainly they had found Grand Master Callatas.

  Yet next to the white-robed figure stood a shape in red and black.

  Caina’s suspicions had proven accurate. Kalgri had indeed accompanied Callatas to Pyramid Isle.

  “It’s them, isn’t it?” murmured Annarah. “Callatas and the Huntress.”

  Caina nodded.

  “We’ll have a devil of a job sneaking up on them,” said Morgant.

  “Not if we go through the jungle,” said Caina.

  “They aren’t walking,” said Annarah. “They’re just standing still. Why?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Caina, “but it looks like they’re arguing. All the better. If they’re arguing, we have a better chance of taking them unawares.” She looked at the wall of jungle to her right. Two of the Iramisian warding stones stood at the edge of the jungle, glowing to the vision of the valikarion, and beyond she saw the sickly green haze of the necromantic aura. “Into the jungle.”

  They hurried up the slope of the beach, towards the wall of the jungle. Caina risked a glance towards Callatas and Kalgri, but both distant figures remained motionless. So far, it seemed, they had not noticed Caina and the others. They ought have paid better attention to their surroundings. For that matter, Caina did not know why Kalgri had come to Pyramid Isle. The Red Huntress had a sense of self-preservation as sharp as Morgant’s dagger, and surely she realized the danger that Kharnaces posed. Perhaps Callatas had compelled her to come. Perhaps the Voice had encouraged Kalgri to come, hoping to use her to stop Callatas from walking into the waiting arms of Kharnaces.

  Caina didn’t know.

  All she knew was that Kalgri’s presence made their odds of victory far narrower.

  She stopped at the edge of the jungle, its wet, sharp smell filling her nostrils. She saw nothing moving in the shadows beneath the trees.

  “Let’s hope,” said Caina, “the baboons don’t see us.”

  “Yes,” said Morgant. “It would be disappointing to have come all this way only to be torn apart by undead baboons.”

  “Very,” said Caina, and she stepped past the veil of white light from the warding stones and into the jungle. A crawling tingle went over her, and nausea twisted through her as she sensed the dark power saturating the jungle. The necromantic aura radiating from the Tomb of Kharnaces seemed much stronger without the protection of the ward, and if Caina concentrated, through the vision of the valikarion she could glimpse distant point of brilliant green light.

  The Conjurant Bloodcrystal itself, so powerful that the vision of the valikarion could see the thing from halfway across the island.

  Yet nothing stirred as Morgant and Annarah crossed the threshold of the ward and entered the jungle with Caina.

  “Let’s go,” said Caina. “Keep as quiet as you can.”

  She led the way north, approaching Kalgri and Callatas.

  And as they drew nearer, she heard the voices of the Red Huntress and the Grand Master raised in argument.

  ###

  Kalgri had known Callatas for longer than anyone else in the world, and she understood him completely. Most of the time this understanding filled her with contempt, since his plan to create a new and better humanity was insipid. Yet there was also a measure of respect – the man was powerful and brilliant in his own way, and some fear colored that respect. He possessed tremendous power, and she couldn’t hurt him or in the end even disobey him. Neither could he kill her, but he could inflict a tremendous amount of pain if he put his mind to it. For all that she mocked him, she feared him enough that there were lines she would not cross.

  Yet, for the first time in over a century and a half…he baffled her.

  After they had finished killing off the last of the nagataaru-infested undead baboons, they had headed north along the beach. Kalgri failed to see the point. With the galley wrecked and the Immortals dead upon the beach, they were stranded here until another ship stopped at the island. If Callatas was going to work the Apotheosis and kill the world, Kalgri did not intend to spend it trapped on this miserable little island.

  Callatas had started walking slower and slower, shaking his head and muttering to himself. He had always talked to himself, but now it sounded as if he was carrying on an argumen
t.

  Then, at last, he simply stopped, staring at the bone-colored hill in the distance.

  “What?” said Kalgri.

  “I must go to the Tomb of Kharnaces,” said Callatas.

  “Then go,” said Kalgri.

  Callatas hesitated, nodded…and then stopped, shaking his head.

  A wave of confused anger rolled through Kalgri, followed by the alarmed hissing of the Voice. The Voice did not want Callatas to go into that jungle. It wanted Kalgri to stop him, but the nagataaru did not offer any useful suggestions on the matter. Not that the Voice ever did. If Kalgri wanted something done, she had to do it herself.

  “I must go to the Tomb of Kharnaces,” said Callatas. He started to take a step forward, and then froze, trembling as if holding himself back by a colossal act of will.

  “Stop prevaricating, father,” said Kalgri. “The world will crumble into dust while you stand here dithering.”

  That should have gotten a response out of him. He detested it when she called him father, and being called indecisive infuriated him further. Callatas claimed that the length of time it took him to make a decision was a sign of his vast intellect and experience. Kalgri thought it a result of his habit of overthinking everything. If he had been a little more decisive, he could have dealt with Cassander Nilas long before the Umbarian magus had nearly destroyed Istarinmul.

  For a moment a flicker of the old irritation went over his bearded face, and then his expression relaxed once more. Kalgri wished he had not warded himself so well. Had the Voice been able to sense his presence, perhaps she could have guessed his intentions.

  As it was, she suspected that he had lost his reason. The only other times Kalgri had seen anyone act like this had been in the grips of insanity, or…

  She frowned.

  Or in the grips of a mind-controlling spell. Both the Imperial Magisterium and the Umbarian Order used mind-controlling spells on their enemies, but it was hard to do properly. Mind-controlling spells often resulted in total insanity as the victim’s mind broke down under the strain of competing impulses. But who could have put a mind-controlling spell upon a sorcerer as potent as the Grand Master? Kharnaces, perhaps, but Callatas had not been here for century and a half. Or perhaps the Staff and Seal had been trapped, guarded by a spell that drove whoever wielded them to insanity. Though Caina and Nasser Glasshand both had carried the regalia, and neither Caina nor Nasser seemed to have gone insane.

  “Yes,” said Callatas, his voice flat. “I must come to the Tomb of Kharnaces.”

  “Then go,” said Kalgri. The Voice screamed in fury at the thought.

  “Yes,” said Callatas in that strange voice. “You are right.”

  He took a step forward, then another, but with hesitant, jerky movements. It made Kalgri think of corsairs forcing a man to walk the plank into shark-infested waters.

  Strange.

  She had thought that Callatas would unleash the Apotheosis at once after she led him to the Staff and Seal. Instead he had gone to Pyramid Isle with such haste that he had not even cared when their galley had foundered upon the reef.

  Still, in the end, she did not care. She did not care about Callatas, and she did not really care about his Apotheosis. She only cared about killing as many people as possible, about gorging herself upon their pain and torment and deaths, about killing without end. The Apotheosis had seemed like the best way to do that.

  Yet if Callatas got himself killed here…

  Kalgri decided to wait and watch. Maybe Callatas would destroy himself the way that Cassander had destroyed himself…

  No. That wasn’t right. Cassander hadn’t destroyed himself. Caina and Kylon had killed him.

  Odd. Why should she think about them now? Their corpses likely lay beneath several tons of sand in Istarinmul, and even if they had survived, there was no way they could have followed Callatas and Kalgri to Pyramid Isle.

  Yet, for some reason, her instincts screamed a warning, and Kalgri took several steps back, watching Callatas as he staggered towards the jungle.

  ###

  Morgant crouched next to Caina and Annarah in the trees, watching the Grand Master and the Red Huntress.

  The last time Morgant had actually seen the Grand Master had been several decades ago, when Callatas had hired him to paint a mural glorifying the destruction of Iramis in the Tarshahzon Gardens. Of course, Callatas had thought Morgant was Markaine of Caer Marist, famed master painter. He hadn’t recognized Morgant as the assassin he had hired to kill Annarah and bring him the relics of Iramis.

  Callatas had not changed. He still looked ascetic, scholarly, with a slump to his shoulders and a perpetually sour look on his lined face. The Star of Iramis, a fist-sized gem of blue crystal, rested against his chest, and his right hand held the silvery Staff of Iramis and wore the Seal of Iramis with its carved blue stone. The Grand Master stood a few yards from the edge of the jungle, twitching and jerking like a man in the grip of a seizure.

  The Red Huntress waited behind him, a slim, pretty woman clad in crimson armor of chain mail and leather, a dark cloak hanging from her shoulders. She had blue eyes and blond hair, and looked so much like Caina that the two women could have been sisters. Morgant suspected that was a twisted joke on the part of the nagataaru that inhabited the Huntress, that it had rebuilt her with the features of the woman who had defeated her at Silent Ash Temple.

  It was actually kind of funny, though Morgant could just imagine Annarah’s sigh if he said that aloud. Plus, hiding a few yards from the most powerful sorcerer and the deadliest assassin in Istarinmul was not the time for jokes.

  Callatas staggered, step by slow step, towards the jungle. Strange spasms went over his expression. One moment his face was slack and impassive, the next confused and angry. Then he shook his head, and the cycle started all over again. Had Morgant not known better, he would have thought the Grand Master was drunk, or had just taken a sharp blow to the head. Clearly Callatas was trying to fight off the compulsion, and just as clearly he was failing. Step by step, he was moving towards the jungle. Perhaps Kharnaces could not claim him until he passed the circle of warding stones and entered the jungle proper.

  But as the Grand Master moved closer, that meant he was standing in the shadows of the trees.

  Caina pointed at one of the trees. Morgant didn’t know what kind of tree it was, save that it was tall and had a lot of spiky-looking green leaves. He supposed that it if was cut down and shipped to Istarinmul, the glossy dark wood would fetch a high price so it could be turned into a table or something.

  Still, it looked heavy and solid…and Callatas was standing right underneath it. Morgant knew that the Grand Master had warded himself against steel weapons and arcane attack. He did not know if the Grand Master had warded himself against a giant damned tree falling upon his head.

  Time to find out!

  Morgant glided forward. The wind and the constant rustling of the leaves ought to mask any idle noise, but he did not want to take the chance that the Huntress would hear anything. He leveled his black dagger and started sawing at the base of the tree. The tree was thick enough and hard enough that it should have taken a team of strong men wielding axes to bring it down, but Morgant’s enspelled dagger bit into the wood with ease.

  Of course, there was a lot of tree, and Morgant’s blade was only so long. He started to dig a trench into the trunk, working as fast and as silently as he could manage. The wood turned black and charred where the blade touched it, and the gem upon the dagger’s pommel started to glow as it sucked up the friction of the cutting. Caina moved to the left side of the tree in silence, the ghostsilver dagger ready in her hand, her eyes fixed upon Callatas. Annarah moved to the right side, her free hand opening and closing as pale white fire started to glimmer around her fingers, her eyes upon the Huntress. As a loremaster of Iramis, she had any number of spells that could harm or perhaps even destroy a nagataaru, though Morgant did not know if she was powerful enough to deal with someone as
potent as the Huntress.

  He supposed they were about to find that out as well.

  Morgant pulled his dagger from the smoking trench in the tree, the smell of burned wood filling his nostrils. The tree swayed precariously upon the remaining sliver of the trunk. Callatas had managed to move another yard closer to the jungle, while the Huntress remained motionless further down the beach, her black cloak stirring around her.

  Morgant glanced at Caina. She gave him a hard nod, her fingers tightening against the ghostsilver dagger.

  It was grimly amusing. A lot of people had tried to kill Callatas over the last century and a half, and all of them had failed. Mighty sorcerers, powerful lords, and dozens of assassins had come for him, and he had crushed them all. Now Morgant and Caina and Annarah were going to try to assassinate the Grand Master with a tree and a dagger.

  Well, it wasn’t as if Morgant had any better ideas.

  He slammed his shoulder against the tree, and it toppled forward with a crackling noise.

  ###

  Kalgri watched Callatas totter towards the jungle. She let out an aggravated breath, shaking her head with annoyance, and she did, something strange caught her attention.

  She smelled…wood smoke?

  But that was impossible. The jungle was too damp to burn. And it didn’t smell like a forest fire. It smelled like someone was making charcoal. But this wretched island was supposed to be uninhabited. Where was…

  A loud cracking noise came from the jungle, and one of the trees fell right towards the Grand Master. Callatas, wrapped in his internal debate, didn’t even seem to notice the damned tree falling towards his skull.

  “Callatas!” shouted Kalgri.

  The Grand Master jerked, saw the tree coming, and tried to dodge. Instead of landing upon his head, the tree struck his right shoulder. There was a brilliant flash of blue light as his defensive wards flared to life, and the tree ripped in half as if it had been struck by a lightning bolt. Yet the Grand Master’s wards had been designed to deflect swords and spears and arrows and spells, and Kalgri doubted they had been cast to deflect that much weight at once. In the instant before the defensive spells ripped the tree in half, it clipped his shoulder, and Kalgri heard the snap of bone. Callatas let out a started yelp and spun to the side, his gray eyes wide, and went to one knee, leaning upon the Staff of Iramis for balance.