Ghost in the Pact

by Jonathan Moeller

  He set himself, trying to catch his breath, preparing for Rhataban’s next attack.

  Instead, Rhataban laughed, long and loud, purple fire flashing in his eyes. He sounded…exultant, triumphant.

  Yet he hadn’t won the fight yet.

  “Fool!” said Rhataban. “Do you think you can overcome the Grand Master’s design?” There was manic, furious glee in his voice. “I am the first of the new humanity! And I shall slay you, and all those who stand before me!”

  Why the devil hadn’t he kept attacking Kylon?

  The advantage had been his. If he had kept pushing, he would have won the fight then and there. Why stop to gloat? Surely he couldn’t be that foolish. Was it some kind of trap? Kylon reached for the sorcery of water, extending his senses. He felt Rhataban’s furious emotions, felt the stirring malice of the nagataaru within him. Rhataban’s emotional aura felt exultant, manic, almost as if…

  Kylon blinked.

  Almost as if he was drunk.

  He sensed something else, the agony of the wounded men lying near him. A dozen Immortals lay scattered on the ground nearby, all of them mortally wounded, all them in the final throes of dying. The nagataaru fed on death and torment, and the Red Huntress had feasted as she carved her way through the Tower of Kardamnos.

  And now it was Rhataban’s turn to gorge himself upon the misery of those dying around him.

  Kylon remembered the words of the Emissary of the Living Flame, and a cold chill swept through him.

  She had said the nagataaru were slaves to their vile nature. The Red Huntress had never let her bloodlust put her at personal risk. Yet did Rhataban have that kind of iron self-control? A drunken man made stupid decisions, and if Rhataban was drunk upon the agony of the dying Immortals…

  “Rhataban!” said Kylon, stepping backwards among the dying Immortals, closer to the aura of agony radiating from them. “Enough talk! Come and finish it! Or are the Grand Master’s creatures all talk? Little wonder you have failed so far!”

  Rhataban howled in outrage and cast a spell, flinging another shaft of golden fire in Kylon’s direction. The valikon was ready in his hands, and he deflected the spell, unraveling it in a flash of light and sparks. Rhataban snarled in fury again, striding forward as he raised his hammer. Mazyan stalked after the Master Alchemist, and Rhataban circled to the side, keeping both Kylon and Mazyan in sight.

  “I’m still alive!” said Kylon, retreating past another group of dying Immortals, the valikon a steady white flame in his hands. “You couldn’t kill me at the Kaltari Highlands and you can’t kill me now!” Angry, he needed to make Rhataban angry, he needed to make the Master Alchemist lose all control. “Come on, what are you waiting for? Grand Master Callatas to come and hold your hand?”

  Rhataban snarled and brought his hammer down, crushing the skull of a nearby wounded Immortal. Kylon flinched at the callousness of it. Purple fire pulsed within Rhataban’s helm as he laughed, blood sliding from the head of his hammer. He might have killed the dying in Immortal in a fit of rage, but the nagataaru within him fed on that death, passing some of the stolen power to its host.

  Maybe making Khataban angry hadn’t been such a good idea.

  Kylon and Mazyan both charged at once, Kylon coming from Rhataban’s left, Mazyan coming from the right. The Oath Shadow launched a flurry of dazzling strikes with his scimitar, the blade flashing and flying, and Rhataban retreated, blocking with his hammer or letting his armor take the impacts. Rhataban lifted his hammer, and Kylon realized what Rhataban was going to do.

  “Mazyan!” shouted Kylon. “Duck!”

  Mazyan was a brilliant swordsman, his prowess further enhanced by the power of his djinni, but his swordplay was formal. Kylon suspected he had been trained by the best masters of the blade that Istarinmul had to offer, just as Kylon had been trained by the best sword masters and stormdancers that Andromache had been able to hire. Yet once he had been banished from New Kyre and forced to earn his way across Anshan by fighting in gladiatorial games, Kylon had become familiar with the brutal, more direct fighting methods in those games.

  He doubted Mazyan had enjoyed a similar experience.

  So the Oath Shadow didn’t see it coming when Rhataban released the handle of his hammer and punched Mazyan in the face.

  Mazyan, to his credit, started to dodge the instant Kylon shouted his warning, so Rhataban’s armored fist hit him in the top of the head rather than in the center of the face. Nevertheless, the blow still snapped his head back, and Mazyan stumbled and fell to the ground. Kylon could not tell if the punch had stunned him or killed him. Rhataban raised his hammer for the killing blow, but by then Kylon had reached him, swinging the valikon in a blaze of white fire. Rhataban started to dodge, but the blow had been a feint, and Kylon changed the direction and slammed the valikon into his right arm, the edge sinking into a gap between the white armor plates.

  Rhataban roared, jerking back, and his hammer rose. Kylon dodged, and the Master Alchemist came at him in a rage, swinging the hammer without the slightest trace of fatigue. Even a glancing hit would have shattered Kylon’s bones and left him helpless before the killing blow. He had no choice but to retreat, using the sorcery of air to keep ahead of Rhataban’s furious attacks, using short leaps to jump out of range of the Master Alchemist’s inexorable advance.

  Short leaps that made Rhataban angrier and angrier.

  The plan sharpened in Kylon’s mind. He had to make Rhataban even angrier, push his frustration to the breaking point.

  He drew as much air sorcery as he could manage and jumped backwards, landing a dozen yards away. Rhataban, for all his nagataaru-fueled speed, could not keep up, but Kylon could not keep leaping like this for much longer.

  “Still can’t kill me?” shouted Kylon. “Perhaps the Grand Master should have chosen a worthier instrument!”

  Rhataban came to a stop, golden fire blazing around his left hand. Kylon had seen him use that spell in the Kaltari Highlands, and he braced himself, drawing as much of the sorcery of water as his weary mind could hold.

  “A poor choice,” said Rhataban, “for your final words!”

  A cone of golden fire burst from his hand and raked across the ground, transmuting a circular patch of grassy steppe into sucking quicksand. Kylon felt his boots start to sink into it, felt the muck start to grasp at his feet, but he had already began his leap, the sorcery of water hurtling him backwards to land at the edge of the quicksand pool. He staggered, struggling to keep his balance as Rhataban hurtled forward. The Master Alchemist charged right through the pool of quicksand, and as Kylon had hoped, the quicksand did not hinder its creator in the slightest. What was the point in the spider spinning a web that he could not escape himself?

  Unless the web was altered…

  Kylon touched the edge of the quicksand as Rhataban rushed towards him and drew upon the sorcery of water, white mist dancing around his fingers.

  And as he did, he froze the water within the quicksand.

  Rhataban was up to his knees in the stuff as it solidified into gritty ice, and he came to a jerking stop, his eyes widening. The hammer continued its forward momentum, and it slammed into the ice, shattering it into a thousand pieces, with Rhataban bent over the hammer as he struggled to recover his balance.

  It was Kylon’s chance, perhaps the only chance he would ever get.

  He leaped forward and brought the valikon down onto the gap between Rhataban’s helmet and the top of his white cuirass. The blade sank into his neck with a crunch, the Iramisian sigils blazing, and white fire poured from the weapon and into the wound, attacking the nagataaru within his flesh. Rhataban’s eyes went wide, and he clawed at Kylon, but the strength had drained from his limbs. White fire struggled against the purple flame in his eyes, and Kylon saw the desperate plea for mercy there, felt the sudden horror in Rhataban’s emotions and his nagataaru.

  “You should not,” said Kylon, ripping the valikon free, “have threatened Caina.”

 
Rhataban started to rise, but before he could, Kylon swung the valikon with all the strength he could muster, and the blade sheared through Rhataban’s neck. The valikon flashed like a bolt of lightning as it destroyed the powerful nagataaru within Rhataban, the arcane shock of the spirit’s destruction shooting up Kylon’s arm.

  The white-armored body fell backwards into the pool of slushy quicksand.

  Kylon stepped out of the pool, breathing hard, every inch of his body aching. But the battle was not over yet, and there were other foes to fight. He lifted the valikon once more, the white fires around the blade dimming, and looked for the kadrataagu.

  But the kadrataagu had all been slain. The Imperial Guards were running towards him, led by Lord Martin and Tylas, and Kylon spotted Lady Claudia and four Guards heading towards Mazyan. He wondered why, and then recalled that Claudia had trained as a physician before meeting Martin.

  Kylon turned, looking towards the battle.

  But the battle was over.

  He had been so focused on Rhataban that he hadn’t even noticed.

  The Grand Wazir’s army had broken and fled, Tanzir’s cavalry in pursuit. The slain carpeted the ground, but Kylon saw far more Immortals than Kaltari warriors among the dead. Patches of Hellfire still burned here and there, and columns of black smoke were stark against the blue sky and the blazing Istarish sun.

  Kylon closed his eyes and let out a ragged, aching breath.

  “Lord Kylon?” said Martin.

  Kylon opened his eyes and turned.

  “Are you wounded?” said Martin.

  “No,” said Kylon. “Just bruised a bit.” He looked at Claudia. “Is Mazyan…”

  The Oath Shadow sat up, helped by Claudia, his customary scowl in place.

  “Alive and truculent, apparently,” said Martin.

  “Thank you for your help,” said Kylon. “Those kadrataagu had me.”

  “It seemed only fair,” said Martin, “given that we could not have dealt with Master Rhataban ourselves.”

  “That fight,” said Tylas. “Forgive me for speaking out of turn, my lord, but that fight…gods of the Empire. I’ve never seen anyone move that fast.”

  Kylon nodded and tried to think of something to say. Gods, he was tired, but there was work to be done yet. He saw Tanzir and Sulaman with the other emirs, their battered guards reforming around them, and part of Kylon’s weary mind pointed out that this would be the ideal time for the Huntress to strike, that she was perfectly capable of sacrificing Rhataban to take a shot at Sulaman and Tanzir.

  But all of Rhataban’s threats, at least, had died with him.

  “Aye,” said Kylon, looking at the dead Master Alchemist. “I suppose I was just fast enough.”

  Chapter 23: Conjurant

  Caina ran up the tunnel, the pyrikon staff glowing in her left hand, Morgant and Annarah running after her. The hieroglyphs lining the wall seemed to dance and flicker in the light from the staff, as if they had taken on lives of their own.

  Given the titanic forces swirling over their heads, Caina would not have dismissed the possibility.

  At her suggestion, Annarah’s pyrikon had returned to its bracelet form, shielding her from detection. Caina had tucked away the Seal in her belt pouch. Without it, she could not control the nagataaru, but they could not find her, either.

  She suspected the battle raging atop the hill would draw the attention of every nagataaru on Pyramid Isle.

  Even through hundreds of feet of solid rock, the vision of the valikarion saw the storm of power snarling above her. The Conjurant Bloodcrystal’s aura spread across Pyramid Isle like a shroud of pale green light, and it was getting larger. At its heart, Caina saw something horrible, something indescribable, like a knife wound into the walls of the world itself. The Conjurant Bloodcrystal was peeling back the barrier between the mortal world and the netherworld like a hunter skinning a deer, and when it finished, the nagataaru and a thousand other horrors would boil through the wound.

  Despite the titanic aura, she saw the duel between Callatas and Kharnaces, bursts of force snapping back and forth between the Great Necromancer and the Grand Master. Caina did not completely understand how the vision of the valikarion worked or the limits of its range, but if she saw the glow of the duel through hundreds of yards of rock, then the spells the two sorcerers wielded had to be powerful indeed.

  That said, practically everything in the Tomb of Kharnaces glowed with sorcerous power.

  “Almost to the library,” said Caina.

  “I know,” said Morgant. “I’ve been here before. Several times.”

  “When we first came here,” said Annarah, her pyrikon bracelet giving off a faint buzzing noise as it shielded her from the sight of the nagataaru, “I thought we would return within months. By the Divine, I never thought I would return a century and a half after I left…and then once more after that.” She sighed. “How did it come to this?”

  Caina opened her mouth to answer, and then a faint vibration went through the floor, accompanied by a flare of power from above, her skin crawling and tingling. Either Kharnaces or Callatas had just unleashed a potent spell.

  “Hurry,” said Caina, and they ran onward, following the sloping passage as it climbed higher into the hill.

  Then they strode through archway and into the library of Kharnaces.

  The library was a large rectangular room, filled with rows of bamboo shelves. The shelves had been divided into small cubbies, and each cubby held a single rolled papyrus scroll, its shelf labeled with hieroglyphs. Twenty-five centuries had passed since Kharnaces had been entombed here, but the papyrus scrolls looked as fresh as if they had been written yesterday. Caina saw the faint glow of the preservation spells that crackled around the bamboo shelves, the wards that kept the scrolls preserved over the grind of the centuries.

  If they lived through this, Caina promised, she would return here and destroy the library.

  In their way, the scrolls in this room were as dangerous as anything she had ever faced. Kharnaces had a complete library of the necromantic lore once wielded by the priests of Maat. Within this library were instructions for becoming Undying, for creating every kind of bloodcrystal, for raising armies of undead.

  And thanks to the knowledge that Kharnaces had put into her head, she could read every single one of the scrolls and learn all their dark secrets, discover spells and lore that the Umbarian Order could only dream of possessing.

  Later. She could worry about that later.

  Like after she had eluded the dozen undead warriors making their way through the aisles of shelves. Caina came to a stop, sweeping the light from her staff back and forth. The undead warriors moved in a slow pattern through the shelves, the purple flames writhing in the black craters of their eyes.

  “I don’t think they can see us,” said Caina. "They don't have the spells on their helmets like the other warriors did."

  “No,” said Morgant, “but they’re searching for us. Look at how they’re moving. A systematic search, just like in the jungle. But since we’re not going to stop to have a shouting match with Callatas about our feelings, it ought to be easier to avoid them.”

  Caina and Annarah shared a look. Though Morgant did have a point.

  “So long as we don’t touch them,” said Caina, “we can get through. They can’t see us or hear us. The door to Kharnaces’s throne room is on the other side of the library.” She watched the undead warriors move for a moment. “Follow me. Don’t touch them.”

  She stepped into the main aisle, hurrying to avoid a pair of undead. The warriors continued their steady search of the library. Annarah and Morgant darted after her, and Caina ducked between a pair of shelves, waiting until a warrior had passed. She counted to five, checked the timing in her head, and then hurried back into the main aisle. Green light flickered in the gloom ahead, and Caina remembered the double row of hieroglyphs that had surrounded Kharnaces’s throne, hieroglyphs that had burned with green fire.

  They
were almost there.

  No other undead warriors were in the way, and Caina broke into a sprint, Morgant and Annarah running after her. They tore through the archway and into the chamber beyond. The undead kept moving through the library, some of them striding down the corridor towards the entry hall. So far they did not seem inclined to cover ground they had already searched, though Caina knew they could not count upon that.

  She stepped into the throne room of Kharnaces.

  Kharnaces had once commanded the Inferno in the mountains south of the Vale of Fallen Stars, and the throne room in the Tomb was a smaller version of that imposing chamber. The floor had been covered in gleaming marble, and intricate Maatish reliefs covered the columns and the walls. In the Inferno, the reliefs had been scenes of Kharnaces’s triumph over the barbarians on the outskirts of the Kingdom of the Rising Sun. Here, they showed scenes of his defeat and his binding within the Tomb, the hieroglyphs describing Kharnaces’s crimes and punishments in great detail…

  Caina made herself look away. She could read Maatish hieroglyphics now, but it gave her a nasty headache.

  A dais stood in the center of the room, supporting an elaborately wrought stone throne. The same double ring of burning hieroglyphs that Caina remembered from her last visit shone around the throne in a ring about seven feet across. The last time the body of Kharnaces himself had occupied the throne, robed and masked, while his projection wandered the Tomb.

  His undead form was gone.

  “It seems Kharnaces has to activate the Conjurant Bloodcrystal in the flesh,” said Annarah.

  Morgant shrugged. “If he’s going to end the world, it’s only polite to do it in person.”

  Caina stared at the throne. A maze of powerful spells surrounded it, burning like molten metal to the vision of the valikarion. The double ring of hieroglyphs was a ward of surpassing power, while the throne itself bore several spells.

  “Caina, you were right,” said Annarah. “Look. There’s a little door on the side of the throne. Kharnaces must have secured his canopic jars in there.” She worked a quick spell, her pyrikon flashing. “There are several concentrations of potent necromantic force within the throne. Those are likely the canopic jars.”