It happened so fast that even the Voice was shocked into silence.
Kalgri’s first thought was amused. Of all the trees in the jungle, what were the odds that one would land upon Callatas?
Her second thought was that it was too improbable a coincidence.
Then Caina Amalas burst from the trees, sprinting towards the stunned Grand Master, a ghostsilver dagger glinting in her hand.
For a moment sheer shock froze Kalgri’s mind.
It was impossible. It was utterly impossible. Caina was dead, her corpse buried beneath tons of sand in the Alqaarin Quarter. Even if she had somehow survived, there was no way she could have followed Callatas and Kalgri here. For that matter, she couldn’t have known where Callatas and Kalgri were going.
Then the Voice screamed a warning, and Kalgri surged forward. Caina had a ghostsilver dagger. That weapon could penetrate Callatas’s weakened wards and kill him. And if the Grand Master died, then the Apotheosis died with him.
Kalgri would not allow that. The Apotheosis would kill the world, and to do that she first had to kill Caina Amalas, ridding herself of the troublesome Balarigar once and for…
A blast of white fire erupted from the jungle, and only the reflexes granted by the Voice let Kalgri dodge. The spell ripped across her left side, and pain exploded through her, bringing her charge to a halt.
###
Caina sprinted forward as Kalgri stumbled, snarling in fury.
Annarah emerged from the jungle, her pyrikon returned to its staff form, and cast another spell. Another burst of white fire erupted from the staff, and Kalgri dodged the spell. Caina caught a glimpse of Kalgri’s expression, and saw that the left side of the Huntress’s face was red and black with burns. Annarah’s spells could not harm living mortals, but Kalgri had taken a nagataaru into her flesh, and was vulnerable to the power of the Iramisian loremasters.
Kalgri shot towards Annarah in a blur, drawing a scimitar and a dagger from her belt. Caina wanted to help Annarah, but she dared not slow.
Grand Master Callatas still knelt, dazed. He was still distracted from the impact of the tree, and if Caina could reach him before he recovered…
She ran faster, raising the ghostsilver dagger over her head, and Callatas looked at her.
###
Morgant raced from the jungle as Caina charged at Callatas and the Huntress charged at Annarah. The pyrikon staff blazed with white fire in Annarah’s hand as she worked another spell, shouting the Words of Lore, but the Huntress was too fast. Her burned face snarled, her white teeth bared in a rictus of fury, and she raised her scimitar and dagger for the kill.
Morgant got there first.
He flicked his black dagger, sweeping it up, and the Huntress twisted with blurring speed, bringing her scimitar slashing for his face. Morgant parried with the black dagger, and the blade cut off the scimitar’s blade at the hilt. She stumbled, and Morgant slashed his crimson scimitar. The Huntress reacted with perfect precision, her dagger deflecting his sword.
That gave Morgant the opening he needed to stab, and the tip of the black dagger bit into the Huntress’s right forearm. At his command, the dagger released the stored heat it had soaked up from cutting down the massive tree.
The Huntress saw the danger coming. Most of Morgant’s foes never did. She jerked back, leaping a half-dozen yards backwards in a single bound, and broke the contact before the dagger could dump the entirety of the heat into her. It should have ignited her like a torch, but instead her right arm caught fire, burning beneath the armor. The Huntress hit the sand and rolled, extinguishing the flames, and sprang back to her feet. The smell of burned flesh filled Morgant’s nostrils, but the injuries did not slow the Huntress at all.
Annarah cast another spell, and again the Huntress dodged. In the same motion she drew a ghostsilver short sword from her belt and charged, her burned face twisted with fury, her blue eyes flickering with shadow and purple flame.
Morgant fought for his life.
###
Callatas saw Caina, and for the first time the Grand Master seemed to recognize his danger.
He reacted with astonishing speed.
His uninjured arm came up, and to the vision of the valikarion his fingers blazed with power. Since becoming a valikarion, Caina had seen Kylon and Annarah and Claudia and several other sorcerers cast spells, and she knew how long it took for them to gather arcane power.
Callatas gathered more power than all of them combined in a single heartbeat.
Gray light burned around his hand, and Caina knew that he had worked a spell of psychokinetic force, one that would hit her with enough force to shatter every bone in her body. At the last minute, Caina adjusted her aim, dodging under the Grand Master’s hand. Callatas snarled something and released his spell, and Caina slashed the ghostsilver dagger.
She missed his throat or his chest, and instead ripped the dagger along the side of his outstretched left arm. The dagger’s hilt grew painfully hot as it cut through his warding spells, and it carved a smoking gash inside his left forearm. Callatas screamed in pain, rocking backwards to land on his rump, and his spell missed Caina. It only clipped her, but it was still like getting grazed by a stone flung from a siege engine. Pain erupted through her entire left side, spinning her in the air, and Caina landed hard upon her back, the breath erupting from her lungs.
She heaved herself back to her feet as white fire exploded along the beach, as Kalgri blurred towards Morgant, steel ringing on steel. Callatas tried to rise, pushing against the sand, but with his broken right shoulder and gashed left arm, a spasm of pain went through him, and he fell with a cry. Purple fire and shadow swirled in his eyes, and Caina saw the wound upon his forearm start to shrink. The nagataaru that inhabited him, perhaps Kotuluk Iblis himself if Samnirdamnus was right, was beginning to heal his wounds.
Caina rushed towards him, and Callatas’s lips bared in a snarl. More gray light flared around his left arm, and Caina jumped towards him, raising the dagger. Callatas was fast, but even his sorcery was not faster than gravity itself, and she slammed into him. The awful tingle of his defensive wards washed over her, sorcery potent enough to keep her from touching him, but those wards were useless against her ghostsilver dagger.
At the last minute Callatas swept the Staff of Iramis before him. It was a clumsy, feeble blow, but it was enough to deflect Caina’s strike, and the stab that would have opened his throat instead gashed his broken shoulder, slicing through his enspelled robes to bite into the flesh beneath.
Callatas screamed, and the spell of psychokinetic force he had gathered collapsed, the power rushing out from him as it unraveled.
Yet some of the power drained into the Staff of Iramis, which shone with grayish-white light as the ancient relic activated.
###
Morgant realized that he was about to die.
The Huntress came at him like a storm, the steel dagger and the ghostsilver short sword a blur. He had always wondered what his black dagger could do against a ghostsilver blade, and it turned out that a ghostsilver weapon could block his dagger’s edge. The Huntress used her ghostsilver sword to deflect his dagger, her own dagger blocking and parrying his crimson scimitar.
She was getting faster, the burns on her face and arm healing. As her wounds healed, Morgant supposed that gave her nagataaru more power to make her faster and stronger. She was already faster and stronger than he was, stronger than any normal human, and only his vast experience had kept him untouched so far.
That, and the Huntress’s need to avoid Annarah’s spells. Every time Annarah flung a shaft of white fire, the Red Huntress had to disengage, dodging the wash of white flame. That gave Morgant some breathing room, but not much. Once the Huntress recovered, she was going to kill Morgant, and then Annarah.
Pity, that. Well, Morgant had always supposed that he was going to get killed while keeping his word, and it looked like that was going to happen. It…
A thunderclap rang out, and gray lig
ht shone from the beach.
Morgant risked a glance to the side, keeping one eye upon the Huntress, but the nagataaru-infested woman looked just as surprised. He glimpsed Caina and Callatas struggling to seize the Staff of Iramis, Callatas bleeding from several wounds on his shoulder and arm. The Staff of Iramis shone with gray light between them, and gray mist erupted from the Staff, forming into something that looked like…
A rift, a tear in the air itself.
It looked a great deal like the Mirror of Worlds that Morgant had seen in the cellar of the Craven’s Tower, or the gate to the netherworld in the Hall of Torments in the Inferno.
The Staff had just opened a rift to the netherworld.
A gale wind howled over the beach, screaming towards the rift. Morgant staggered, trying to keep his balance, and the Huntress stepped back, her black cloak flapping about her. Caina and Callatas were closer, and both tumbled into the rift. For an instant Morgant glimpsed the colorless grass and the writhing black sky of the netherworld, and then the rift snapped shut with another thunderclap, the wind subsiding.
For a moment the only sound was the rustling of the leaves.
“Hell,” muttered Morgant, keeping his weapons raised. He watched the Huntress, but she seemed just as surprised. “What just happened?”
“Did they kill each other?” said the Huntress, looking back and forth between Morgant and where Caina and Callatas had been.
“No,” said Annarah, her voice trembling a little. A sheen of sweat glittered upon her face. The spells she had been throwing at the Huntress must have been exhausting. “No. The power of the Seal of Iramis permits the bearer to command spirits. The power of the Staff of Iramis permits the bearer to summon spirits from the netherworld, and to summon spirits…”
“It has to open the way for the spirits,” finished Morgant.
“I think Callatas activated the Staff in error, and it pulled them into the netherworld,” said Annarah.
The Huntress let out a low, hard laugh. “Idiot.” The burns from Annarah’s spell had vanished from her face, and he suspected the burn on her arm was healed as well. She looked…sharper now, as if she had gone a long time without eating. If her nagataaru fed on life force, it was likely hungry now.
She turned, her eyes fixed on Morgant and Annarah.
“Well,” said the Huntress at last. “Whatever shall we do with ourselves now?”
“Can we follow them?” said Morgant.
“Yes,” said Annarah, drawing a deep breath. “I can open the way to the netherworld. But it will take at least a day, and it…may be too late already. Their fight may have been decided already.”
“What do you mean?” said Morgant.
“Time flows differently in the netherworld,” said Annarah. “For me, it seemed as if only a few moments passed since we parted in the Hall of Torments. For you, a century and a half passed. By the time I open a gate to the netherworld, the battle shall already have been decided.”
“Then the Balarigar is dead,” said the Huntress with a sneer. “Callatas will dispose of her.”
“I don’t know,” said Morgant. “You failed to dispose of her, after all.”
The Huntress sneered. “The taunts of a bitter old man.”
“Of course I am! Are we stating the obvious now?” said Morgant. He pointed his scimitar at her. “Bitter old woman! The sky is blue! The jungle is green!” He rolled his aching shoulders. “Shall we get back to killing each other?”
He wasn’t sure if he could take her, even with Annarah’s help. Morgant might be able to cut her down with the black dagger, and Annarah might be able to slow her with the Words of Lore. Or, more likely, the Huntress would kill them both and wait for Caina or Callatas to emerge from the netherworld.
“We could,” said the Huntress, “but I’m only here because of that old fool Callatas, and you two are only here because of the madwoman who calls herself the Balarigar.”
“She doesn’t call herself the Balarigar,” said Morgant. “She gets rather irritated by it.”
“Why kill each other?” said the Huntress. “Let us wait to see what happens.”
Morgant grinned. “You’re not sure you can take us.”
The Huntress shrugged, her slim shoulders twitching beneath the red armor. “No more than you are certain you can take me. Don’t you hate fair fights? I’ve never been fond of them.”
“So what do you propose?” said Annarah. “Bearing in mind that your word means nothing.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” said Huntress. “But mutual need is more important than a promise. Let us have a truce until either Caina or Callatas returns.” She giggled, a reedy, unsteady sound more suitable for a coquettish girl than an ancient assassin. “Given how time flows in the netherworld, we should know the results of their duel within moments.”
“What happens then?” said Annarah, her pyrikon staff still leveled at the Huntress.
The Huntress shrugged again. “If Callatas returns, he’ll kill you both. If Caina returns, which is unlikely, then I’ll kill all three of you. And if they kill each other…well, there’s no reason to continue our conflict, is there?”
“Caina will prevail,” said Annarah.
“Oh, how very touching,” said the Huntress. “Such childlike faith in a liar and a spy and a murderess. You…”
“Do shut up,” said Morgant, and the Huntress’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve heard this kind of speech before. She might be a liar and a spy and a murderess, but so are you, and she’s just better at it than you are. So.” He gestured with his weapons. “We accept your truce. Once Caina returns, we can kill you then. Anyway, a woman of your advanced years needs a moment to catch her breath, and I am nothing if not courteous.”
For a moment the Huntress was motionless, her head tilted to the side, purple fire and shadow flashing in her eyes. Morgant had seen that expression before, and he knew that she was listening to her pet nagataaru…or, depending on how you looked at it, her nagataaru was issuing instructions to its pet human.
She looked so much like a blond version of Caina that it was a little unsettling to see that expression of malicious anger upon her face. Fortunately Morgant was well-accustomed to unsettling situations.
“Very well,” said the Huntress at last. She let out another of those reedy giggles. “Whatever shall we talk about to pass the time?”
Chapter 14: Valikarion
Gray mist swallowed Caina, and it felt as if she was falling thousands of miles through an endless void filled with rippling mist
Yet the sensation lasted only a second.
Caina hit the ground, rolled, and came to one knee, the ghostsilver dagger still clutched in her right fist, some of Callatas’s blood upon the blade. A few yards away hovered the strange rift of gray light and mist, and even as she looked, it vanished with a flash. There was no wind, but Caina’s shadow-cloak rippled around her, as if caught in an unseen wind, and colorless gray grass rustled around her legs.
Dread stabbed through Caina.
She knew where she was. She had been here several times before, and every single visit had nearly ended in disaster.
Caina was in the netherworld, the realm of spirits, the world beyond the material world.
A gray, bleak plain stretched away in all directions as far as she could see, covered with colorless, hip-high grasses that rippled in the nonexistent wind. Writhing black clouds covered the sky overhead, flowing over the plain with surreal, blinding speed. From time to time arcs of green or red lightning leapt from cloud to cloud, silent and brilliant. Between the ground and the clouds floated strange things – upside-down, leafless trees, their roots like tentacles, statues of pale or crimson stone, walls and doors or stairs that went nowhere, fountains and arches.
Beyond them all, beyond even the mantle of black clouds, Caina saw the ghostly echo of Iramis, a beautiful city with towers of white and gold, brilliant in the sunlight of a long-distant day. When Callatas had lifted the Star of Iramis and burne
d the city, the spell had been so powerful that it cast an echo into the netherworld, an echo that lingered even after a century and a half. Over the ghostly image of Iramis she saw a faint crack of golden light, an echo of the rift the Moroaica had carved into the netherworld. Caina had thought the rift would fade with time, but Cassander Nilas had ripped it open during his plan to destroy Istarinmul.
All of this Caina had seen before. She had visited the netherworld often, and she was more familiar with it than she would wish.
Yet Caina had never seen the netherworld through the eyes of a valikarion, and for a moment she froze with terror and amazement.
Power blazed around her like an inferno.
She didn’t truly understand the nature of the netherworld. Perhaps no one did. Caina had known that arcane power drained from the netherworld and into the mortal world, but that had been an intellectual fact, one that she had not fully grasped.
Now, with the vision of the valikarion blazing inside of her skull, she could barely comprehend it.
To her eyes of flesh, the netherworld looked the same as it always had. To the vision of the valikarion, the netherworld had been wrought from sheets of fire and lightning and storm. Everything around her had been fashioned of sorcerous power, so bright that it sent ribbons of pain through her head. Already she saw some of the currents of power altering around her, reacting to her presence. The netherworld was psychomorphic – it would react to her thoughts, molding itself around her memory the longer she stayed here, which would also draw the attention of the various malicious spirits that preyed upon mortals.
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