Ghost in the Pact

by Jonathan Moeller

  “Most probably,” said Callatas, gazing skyward. The light at the top of the hill pulsed and flared, throwing an unearthly green glow over the island. “There are passages within the Tomb that lead to the hill’s crown. We shall have to use them.”

  “And blunder into any wards or traps Kharnaces might have left behind,” said Morgant.

  “We shall deal with them as we find them,” said Callatas.

  “Maybe we can climb the sides of the hill,” said Caina, looking at the rocky slopes. Though that seemed unlikely. In places the hillside was steep enough to pass for a cliff. She thought she could work her way to the top of the hill, but she did not know if Annarah and Callatas could manage it.

  By the time they did, Kharnaces might have activated the Conjurant Bloodcrystal.

  It was time to make a very dangerous gamble.

  Caina concentrated upon her pyrikon, asking it to return to its bracelet form, and it shrank and wrapped around her left wrist.

  “All right,” said Caina. “This is what we’ll do. Callatas. If I remember right, there are six passages leading off from the domed entrance hall.”

  “There are,” said Callatas. His face showed no emotion, but she saw the hatred and anger in his eyes. If they defeated Kharnaces, he would do his very best to kill her. Though given the way he had been staring at her, maybe he would attempt to visit some other indignities upon her first.

  “You remember which passage goes where?” said Caina.

  He offered a thin smile. “I am not so forgetful.”

  “When we get there, we’ll split up,” said Caina. “Annarah and Morgant and I will go to the library and then the throne room to find the canopic jars.”

  “And where shall Kalgri and I go?” said Callatas in a dry voice.

  “You,” said Caina, “will go to the apex of the hill to fight Kharnaces.”

  Callatas said nothing for a moment.

  “I cannot overcome him in a direct duel,” said Callatas. “I am stronger than I was a century and a half ago…but he has practiced the arcane sciences for two and a half thousand years. I can present a challenge to him, but he will defeat me in the end.” His eyes narrowed. “I trust you have a reason other than arranging my death?”

  “Yes,” said Caina. “Kharnaces knows the canopic jars are his weakness. Once he’s realized that we have reached his Tomb, he knows we will come for the canopic jars, and he will crush us before we can destroy them. That means we have to distract him, and of the five of us, you are the only one who is a credible threat to him.”

  “Then I am to be a distraction,” said Callatas with a scowl. “I shall draw the attention of Kharnaces while you sneak into his Tomb and destroy his canopic jars.”

  “Yes,” said Caina, watching him. If he decided not to cooperate…

  “Folly,” said Callatas. “Utter folly. Kharnaces will kill us all.”

  “Do you have any better ideas?” said Caina.

  Callatas glared at her, and for a moment something like a bottomless black shadow darkened his eyes. Caina had seen a shadow like that before, filling the sky of the netherworld when Kotuluk Iblis had come to kill her. It occurred to her that if Kotuluk Iblis’s shadow filled Callatas, then the sovereign of the nagataaru was watching her right now.

  It was not a pleasant thought.

  “No,” said Callatas at last.

  “It is the best plan we are likely to have, father,” said Kalgri, much to Caina’s surprise. Callatas looked at her. “I detest going into battle against a superior foe, but it seems we have little choice if the Apotheosis is to happen.”

  “Very well,” said Callatas. “I agree to your terms.” He started to turn back. “We…”

  Caina moved before he could react.

  She seized his wrist and twisted it, and Callatas’s eyes went wide. At once he started to draw power for a spell, but not before Caina grabbed the Seal of Iramis and ripped it from his finger.

  She took several steps back as golden fire crackled around his fingers.

  “Give that back,” hissed Callatas. “Now!”

  “No,” said Caina. “If I do, once Kharnaces is defeated, you’ll leave Pyramid Isle at once.”

  “Obviously,” said Callatas. “Give it back, or you will die here and now.”

  “You can come and get it,” said Caina, “once we have destroyed Kharnaces.”

  Kalgri giggled in amusement, which only made Callatas angrier.

  “Or I can kill all three of you now,” said Callatas, “and take the Seal from your corpse.”

  Caina smiled at him, trying to conceal her fear. “And if you do, I hope you can come up with a way to defeat Kharnaces on your own. Do you think Kalgri would distract him while you unravel the spells around his canopic jars? She does seem like the self-sacrificing sort, doesn’t she? Or maybe you can defeat Kharnaces in a spell duel. Stranger things have happened.”

  Callatas glared at her, the cords standing out in his neck, the veins throbbing in his temples. She might have pushed him too far. Her plan was the most logical way they had to defeat Kharnaces, and if she was honest, it was the only thing that might possibly work. Yet she suspected that Callatas was not in complete control of himself, especially after their shouting match in the jungle. If she had pushed him too far, and he decided to simply kill them all…

  She adjusted her grip on the ghostsilver dagger, the Seal’s power burning against her left hand.

  Callatas let out a long breath, his expression turning to calm, though his eyes burned like coals. Kalgri moved to his side, a red-armored shadow in her stolen shadow-cloak.

  “Very well,” said Callatas at last. “I will keep my word. But know this. Once Kharnaces is defeated and the Conjurant Bloodcrystal destroyed, I will find you, I will reclaim the Seal, and then I will kill you in great pain.”

  “For what?” said Annarah, shaking her head. “For the crime of telling you the truth?”

  Callatas hissed, the calm starting to crack again. “For daring to oppose the Apotheosis and the coming of the new humanity. For being too foolish to see the truth of my vision.”

  “Then the man who was my teacher,” said Annarah, “is truly dead, and a monster has indeed taken his place.”

  Callatas said nothing, but his knuckles shone white as his hand tightened against the Staff of Iramis.

  “Not to worry,” said Morgant. “It’s entirely possible Kharnaces will kill us all first.”

  Kalgri’s sneering, giggling laughter rang out. Gods, but Caina was sick of that sound.

  “If we are done posturing,” said Caina, “we have work to do.” She slipped the Seal into a pouch at her belt. She didn’t want to wear the thing. It radiated so much arcane power that it hurt to have it against her skin, and if she did wear it, she suspected the nagataaru would be able to sense her presence, even with her valikarion abilities.

  Best not to find out. That, and it was simply too big for any of her fingers.

  Callatas inclined his head and pointed the Staff at the entrance to the Tomb, the Star gleaming with pale blue light on its chain against his chest. “Lead the way, then, Balarigar.”

  Caina took a deep breath and turned, recalling her pyrikon to its staff form. The end shone with pale white light, and Caina led the way into the Tomb of Kharnaces.

  The great entry hall had not changed since her last visit. The polished granite floor gleamed beneath her boots, reflecting the glow from the pyrikon. Massive square pillars rose from the floor to the arched ceiling overhead, carved in the likeness of the Maatish gods, muscled men in kilts with the heads of animals – scarabs and baboons and lions and falcons and jackals. Hieroglyphs covered the ceiling. They had been filled with silver, and they reflected the light from the staff. The overall effect made for a sort of cold, frozen beauty.

  The air within the Tomb was drier and colder than the jungle. Caina’s clothes felt damp with the sweat of her exertions over the last day. It was just as well that the dusty, dry smell of the Tomb
swallowed everything else. She suspected her own odor was not pleasant.

  “A pity we can’t take the time to carve the silver out of those hieroglyphs,” said Morgant, gazing at the ceiling. “There is enough silver up there to keep a man in food and drink for a very long time.”

  “Bad idea,” said Caina. The light from her pyrikon illuminated the far end of the entry hall, revealing a massive relief of a falcon holding a solar orb in its talons. The relief had been gilded, and seemed to shimmer like fire. Beyond was another hall that stretched into the darkness. Unlike the first hall, there were no pillars. Rather, there were niches of red granite in the walls, dozens of them, the walls themselves covered with hieroglyphs. “There are spells on those hieroglyphs. I suspect prying them out of the ceiling would be dangerous.”

  She could also see warding spells on each of those niches, layered over powerful necromantic spells. Those could be a problem. Caina remembered those spells from her last visit to the Tomb.

  “Perhaps you could take the silver as recompense for your precious mural,” said Callatas.

  Morgant grinned. The pale light from the pyrikon made the expression look skull-like on his gaunt face. “Why don’t you levitate up there and get it?”

  “Stop,” said Caina. “We have a problem.” She pointed the pyrikon staff into the next gallery. “There are nagataaru waiting in those niches, dozens of them. Kharnaces bound them into undead warriors.”

  “What of it?” said Callatas. “We are invisible to the sight of the nagataaru. Let them come. They will not be able to find us. I remember those warriors. They remain dormant until the presence of an intruder activates them.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” said Caina. “This is the end of the world. At least, Kharnaces wants it to be the end of the world. So why does he need dormant guardians? Why not wake them up and send them out to hunt for us?”

  For a moment no one said anything.

  “Oh,” said Morgant. “Hell.”

  “What do you mean?” said Callatas. “Explain…”

  With the sound of rasping stone upon stone, every single niche in the next hall opened, and scores of the undead warriors stepped forth.

  Like the baboons in the jungle outside, they had been mummified long ago, their leathery flesh stretched tight over their crumbling skeletons. The flesh had drawn back from their teeth in macabre grins, and the purple fire of the nagataaru danced in the black pits of their eyes. Unlike the baboons, the warriors wore armor and carried weapons – bronze helmets, round bronze shields, and skirts of bronze scales that fell to their knees. In their right hands they carried the curved, hooked sword that the ancient Maatish had called a khopesh, sharp and deadly. To the sight of the valikarion, the warriors shone with necromantic spells and the augmentation spells placed upon the weapons and armor.

  The warriors strode into the hall, and then stopped and turned.

  Every single one of them was staring at Caina and the others.

  “They can see us,” said Caina, trying to sort through the haze of spells surrounding the undead warriors.

  “They cannot see us,” said Callatas with disdain. “They are nagataaru housed in shells of undead flesh.”

  Some of the undead warriors looked in Callatas’s direction.

  “Really?” said Morgant. “No doubt they were swayed but your charismatic oratory, but…”

  “The spells,” said Caina. “The spells on their helmets. I think they let the nagataaru perceive the material world. Kharnaces must have added them since the last time, and…”

  The undead warriors strode forward, raising their khopesh blades.

  “Defend yourselves!” said Caina.

  ###

  Morgant flicked his wrist, ripping his black dagger through the bronze helmet of an undead warrior, twisting the blade to the left. The skull and the helmet popped right off and rolled across the floor. Shadow and purple fire erupted from the undead warrior’s neck, forming a brief image of a hooded wraith as the nagataaru was ejected from its host. The nagataaru dissipated, drawn back into the netherworld, and the undead warrior collapsed to the floor in a pile of bones.

  One down, a few hundred to go.

  Morgant wheeled, flicking his dagger across the forearm of another undead warrior. The blade did little damage, but that didn’t matter, because the dagger released all the heat it had stored up from sawing through bronze armor. The undead erupted into fire, staggered forward a step, and collapsed into a heap of burning coals and tangled armor.

  Another pulse of white light swept through the hall as Annarah slammed her pyrikon staff against the floor with a shout. The white light of the Words of Lore did not banish the nagataaru, but it did stun them for a few seconds. That saved Caina’s life as she dodged away from a pair of undead warriors, jamming her ghostsilver dagger into its neck. There was a sizzling noise as the ghostsilver disrupted the necromantic spells, and the warrior staggered and came apart in a heap of bones and armor.

  One of the undead lunged towards Annarah, and Morgant attacked, hammering two quick blows upon its back with his crimson scimitar. The enspelled blade bit into the armor, but did little damage. It did distract the warrior, forcing it to turn and face the new threat. Morgant parried with his dagger, and the black blade sheared through the khopesh just above the hilt. The undead warrior stumbled from the sudden loss of weight, and Morgant whipped his dagger up and beheaded the warrior with a quick blow. His opponent collapsed, and Morgant spun, releasing the heat from his dagger into a second warrior. The undead thing collapsed, blazing like a torch, the fire throwing wild shadows across the wall.

  And wild shadows across the undead warriors streaming into the hall. The last time they had come to the Tomb of Kharnaces, they had faced only six of the things before they had figured out how to bypass them. Now hundreds of the creatures were entering the hall, likely the undead that Caina had seen guarding the Conjurant Bloodcrystal.

  No more need to guard the Conjurant Bloodcrystal when Kharnaces was about to use the damned thing.

  Especially since the undead might suffice to kill them all.

  Callatas and the Huntress had not entered the fray. Both the Grand Master and the Huntress had fallen back to the arch leading to the previous chamber. If any of the undead warriors ventured too close, the Huntress cut it down with a sword of shadow and flashing purple fire, or Callatas shattered it with a blast of invisible force. Yet neither of them lifted a finger to aid Caina and Annarah and Morgant.

  The Grand Master’s new plan was obvious. He and the Huntress would simply wait until the undead warriors cut down Caina and Annarah and Morgant. Then Callatas would blast his way through them, take the Seal from Caina’s corpse, and continue on his way. Perhaps he would go after Kharnaces’s canopic jars himself. Or maybe he would confront Kharnaces in person while the Huntress went to destroy the jars.

  Maybe Caina should not have stolen the Seal back from Callatas, though it was good insurance to keep the Grand Master from betraying them. On the other hand, perhaps the Grand Master had decided to let the undead kill them and take his chances with Kharnaces alone. Maybe Morgant could surprise and cut down the Grand Master, but he doubted his weapons could penetrate the wards surrounding Callatas.

  Then Caina stepped back, thrusting a hand into the pouch at her belt and raising something over her head.

  The Seal. Was she giving it back to Callatas in exchange for their lives? That was a stupid decision. Callatas need only wait until the undead killed them, and then he could collect the Seal at his leisure.

  “Hear me!” shouted Caina at the top of her lungs. Gods, but that woman could be loud when she wanted. “By the power of the Seal, I bind you! By the power of the Seal, I compel you!” The stone in the silvery ring blazed with blue light, covering Caina in its ghostly glow. “I command you to halt! You will halt!”

  And to Morgant’s astonishment, the undead warriors obeyed.

  They froze in place, weapons still grasped in their
hands. Caina held out the Seal like a magistrate brandishing a writ, the blue light falling over the hall. The purple fire in the eyes of the undead things burned brighter in response. They were angry, and did not like yielding to the power of the Seal.

  But it seemed they had no choice.

  “You will clear my path,” said Caina, “and you will return to your burial chambers, and you shall not hinder me further. Go! By the power of the Seal, I command you! Go!”

  Slowly, the undead warriors shuffled back, striding into the niches lining the walls or vanishing deeper into the Tomb.

  “Gods,” muttered Caina, her arm shaking. “Holding that thing stings.”

  “Do not put it down,” said Annarah, leaning a little on her pyrikon staff to keep standing. “I suspect the nagataaru will return with a vengeance if you release the Seal.”

  “The loremaster is correct,” said Callatas, the Staff of Iramis tapping against the floor as he strode forward, the Huntress following him. “If you release the Seal, the binding will end, and the nagataaru will follow Kharnaces’s original commands.”

  “Thanks so very much,” said Caina, “for your help.”

  Callatas offered a thin smile. “I offered you as much help as you would have given me should our positions have been reversed.”

  “Were you in my position,” said Caina, “your spells would have let you offer far more effective help.”

  Callatas shrugged. “Surely the great and noble Balarigar would not need the help of the wicked Grand Master to vanquish her foes.”

  Caina’s eyes narrowed, glittering in the light from the Seal’s glowing stone.

  “Or perhaps,” said Callatas, “if you had not taken the Seal, I would have been able to help sooner, alas. A pity when our actions have unintended consequences.”

  Caina and Callatas stared at each other. Caina had always been Callatas’s enemy, and the Grand Master had expended enormous resources trying to hunt her down and kill her. Yet they had never really met in the flesh, and now that they had, Morgant suspected their enmity had expanded into a profound loathing of each other. If they came to blows…