Ghost in the Pact

by Jonathan Moeller

  Caina nodded, thinking hard. “I thought so.”

  “So how do we unravel those wards?” said Morgant.

  “I’m not sure,” said Caina.

  ###

  Callatas dragged the Staff of Iramis through the air, shouting as he poured his will into the ancient relic. Gray light and mist rose in a sheet before him as the Staff tore open a gate to the netherworld, and Callatas sent his will into the gate, straining as he tried to divide his concentration between half a dozen warding spells at once.

  His spell thundered into the other world…and the spirits answered.

  Crimson flames erupted across the hilltop as a dozen ifriti, cousins to the fire elemental Cassander Nilas had summoned to kill Caina Amalas, swarmed into the material world. Normally, summoning a creature as powerful as an ifrit required a potent spell with a great deal of preparation. The power of the Staff could rip into the netherworld and draw forth as many ifriti as Callatas wanted. Of course, without the Seal, he had no way to command those ifriti, and the spell to bind them took far more time and effort than he could spare right now.

  Fortunately, it didn’t matter.

  The ifriti spirits went on a rampage, burning their way through the undead creatures swarming over the hilltop. That gave Kalgri a respite, allowing her to strike down more and more of the undead baboons and warriors. That in turn kept the undead away from Callatas, which let him turn more of his attention to Kharnaces.

  Little good it did.

  Kharnaces unleashed another attack, a lance of shadow and green flame that would instantly kill anyone it touched and raise their corpse as an undead creature. Callatas poured all his strength into his ward against necromantic force, and blue light and green fire howled around him, the spell struggling against his wards. Kharnaces’s spell, backed by the fury of the Harbinger, ripped against Callatas’s protections. It took every bit of Callatas’s strength to hold the ward in place, but he was not without his own powers…and he could also draw upon the shadow of Kotuluk Iblis to fuel his sorcery.

  Odd that Kotuluk Iblis permitted him to do so. Perhaps that was part of the contest between the Voice and the Harbinger. Kharnaces could wield spells augmented by the Harbinger’s power, but Kotuluk Iblis in turn fueled Callatas’s sorcery, and to balance that disadvantage the Voice was trapped within an unreliable and mercurial murderess.

  The contest between the Voice and the Harbinger had been going on for millennia, Callatas suspected, but he would win this battle.

  If Kharnaces didn’t flatten him first.

  At last the pressure of the necromantic spell ended, and Callatas staggered back, breathing hard, his head ringing from exertion. He managed to catch his balance by driving the end of the Staff against the ground. It would be a grim joke if after a century and a half of struggle he tripped and fell to his death along the hill’s cliff-like slopes.

  The ifriti raged back and forth along the hilltop, seeking targets for their fury, and Callatas last another spell. It was a simple spell, little more than an exercise, a conjuration of elemental water around Kharnaces. None of it penetrated his wards, and even if it had, it wouldn’t have mattered, because Kharnaces’s undead form had no need to draw breath.

  Yet it drew the attention of the ifriti. The ifriti were elemental spirits of flame, and they had warred against the elemental spirits of water for countless ages, just as the nagataaru had struggled against the djinni of the Court of the Azure Sovereign.

  Consequently, they hated elemental water, and it drew them like lions to a wounded gazelle.

  The ifriti rushed at Kharnaces, a dozen of them surging over him like a tide of flame. The Great Necromancer lifted his hands in an unhurried gesture, and snarling bolts of blue lightning erupted from him. The bolts struck the ifriti, shattering the bonds that held them to the mortal world, and one by one they winked out of existence, drawn back into the netherworld.

  Callatas cast another spell as Kharnaces banished the ifriti, drawing as much power as he could hold and augmenting it with the strength of Kotuluk Iblis. A blue spark the size of a man’s head snarled above his palm, and he thrust his arm, flinging the spell at Kharnaces. It was a spell of dispelling, the most powerful one that Callatas knew, designed to shatter wards and pierce arcane protections. If it touched Kharnaces himself, it might sever the spells upon his body, sending his spirit flying back to his canopic jars, though the Great Necromancer would be able to claim another body in short order. That might give Caina enough time to find and destroy those damned canopic jars.

  Assuming, of course, that Kharnaces had been lying when he had claimed that his soul had merged with the Harbinger, that destroying the canopic jars would not stop him. Callatas had assumed that was a bluff. If it wasn’t a bluff, then Kharnaces had already won…

  No. He would not give in to despair. He had come so far, defeated so many obstacles, and was so close to completing the Apotheosis. Callatas refused to give in now.

  The Balarigar had done such a good job of disrupting his plans that she could damned well turn that talent for mayhem against Kharnaces.

  His attack drilled into Kharnaces’s wards, and the Great Necromancer stumbled, his white robes billowing around his withered body in the gale rising from the scattered fires burning atop the hill. Callatas felt his enemy’s wards buckle from the pressure of the spell, and he fought throughout his exhaustion and summoned enough power to cast a transmutation spell. Still the blue sparks snarled around Kharnaces, ripping away his wards, and Callatas flung a bolt of golden fire.

  The spell struck Kharnaces’s remaining wards, and rebounded from the Great Necromancer, hurtling back towards Callatas. He cursed in alarm and cast another spell, reinforcing his own wards. The transmutation spell struck him and reflected back at Kharnaces, only to hit his wards and reflect back once more at Callatas. The bolt of golden fire ricocheted back and forth between them, drawing in more power from the storm of sorcerous force burning over the island. Kharnaces shook off the dispelling effect, his wards flaring back to full power once more, and he gestured.

  The bolt of golden fire exploded in a burst as bright as the sun. Transmuting power lashed in all directions, and Callatas glimpsed a flash of crimson as Kalgri sprinted out of the way, her shadow-cloak streaming behind her. A dozen undead warriors and baboons went motionless, transmuted into gleaming blue crystal, and for a moment silence fell over the hilltop.

  Callatas tried to catch his breath, leaning upon the Staff of Iramis for balance. The arcane volleys he had leveled at Kharnaces would have been enough to destroy a hundred lesser sorcerers, but he had not even been able to break through the Great Necromancer’s wards.

  Kharnaces, as far as he could tell, was not even straining. He was already undead. He had no stamina to exhaust.

  “It is unavoidable,” said Kharnaces, lifting his hands as green fire burned around the skeletal fingers. Behind him the Conjurant Bloodcrystal spun faster and faster, green fires flickering and dancing in its bottomless black depths. The thing had kept growing, and now was nearly twelve feet across. “It is inevitable. It has already been achieved. The nagataaru shall devour this world, and your Apotheosis and new humanity will never come to pass. Lie down and accept your defeat, my wayward pupil, and your passing shall be far quicker.”

  “No,” growled Callatas, pulling in power for a new spell.

  “So be it, then,” said Kharnaces, thunder ringing over the hill as he cast a spell of his own.

  ###

  Caina stared at the double ring of glowing hieroglyphs.

  The spells burned before the vision of the valikarion, as complex and as potent as the spells she had once sensed upon Rhames’s Ascendant Bloodcrystal in Caer Magia or the Subjugant Bloodcrystal in the bowels of the Inferno. It was like looking at a tapestry made of fire, a tapestry where the threads kept weaving and reknitting themselves into different patterns of their own accord.

  Caina raked her ghostsilver dagger through the outer circle, dragging the
tip over glyph after glyph. The handle grew hot beneath her fingers, smoke rising from the gleaming marble of the dais, and then the first circle winked out.

  “That was suspiciously easy,” said Morgant.

  “Aye,” said Caina, wincing and shifting the ghostsilver dagger to her other hand. Gods, but it had gotten hot. She took a deep breath and started to drag it through the circumference of the inner circle.

  “Why is that suspicious?” said Annarah. “Ghostsilver is proof against sorcery, even highly potent sorcery.”

  “It is,” said Caina, watching the hieroglyphs wink out one by one, wisps of white smoke rising from the dagger’s blade. “But we’re not the only ones who know that. The Iramisians fought against the Great Necromancers and the Maatish for centuries.”

  “Millennia,” said Annarah. “Both our nations were ancient, and our enmity deep. The Great Necromancers sought to enslave the world in the name of their gods, and we stood against them. The tales of the wars are…were…preserved in the Towers of Lore in Iramis.”

  “Exactly,” said Caina. “So Kharnaces would have fought loremasters and valikarion. He knew what they could do, and he knew what a ghostsilver weapon could do. So he would have set up something to guard his canopic jars from a ghostsilver weapon. Some spell, some trap, some trick, something.”

  There was a crackling noise, and the second circle vanished. Caina straightened up and stepped back, looking around. She didn’t know what to expect. Undead warriors pouring out of hidden niches in the walls, maybe. Some monstrous thing like an Umbarian cataphractus storming through the throne room. Maybe even a giant block of stone falling from the ceiling to crush her. No one ever looked up.

  But nothing happened.

  Morgant started to say something, and then a vibration went through the floor, some dust falling through the ceiling.

  “Callatas and Kharnaces,” said Annarah. “We must hurry.”

  “Yes,” said Morgant. “We ought to hasten so Callatas can hurry up and kill us.”

  “Maybe,” said Caina, stepping back onto the dais. She squatted and considered the heavy block of marble that comprised the throne’s base. “Or maybe he’ll be too exhausted to deal with us.”

  Kalgri might not.

  Caina shoved all thoughts of the Huntress from her mind and concentrated on the problem at hand.

  She saw the little stone door in the side of the throne. After her experience with Rhames she knew exactly how large a canopic jar was, and how large a container would be to hold seven such jars. The throne was more than large enough to conceal such a box. Given that the canopic jars were Kharnaces’s weak point, possibly the only weakness he possessed, Caina would have expected them to be better guarded than this.

  As far as she could tell, there were no mechanical traps on the stone door. There was a potent warding spell upon it, and Caina suspected that anyone who touched it would be reduced to a withered corpse in an instant. Yet the spell, for all its power, was vulnerable to ghostsilver, and Caina eased the hot dagger into the gap between the stone door and its frame. She saw the spell shiver and start to collapse onto itself…

  Purple fire flashed before her eyes, and Caina jerked back.

  There was a nagataaru bound within the throne.

  She lifted her dagger again, and saw that the nagataaru had rebuilt the warding spells upon the stone throne.

  “What happened?” said Morgant. “You hit a trap?”

  “No,” said Annarah, casting another spell. “I think…yes. There is a nagataaru within the throne itself.”

  “Of course Kharnaces would not leave his canopic jars unguarded,” said Caina. “There’s a guard. A nagataaru, and it regenerated the warding spell.” She thought for a moment. “Annarah. Can you attack the nagataaru when it shows itself?”

  “Perhaps,” said Annarah. She hesitated. “If I use my pyrikon to augment the spell, the nagataaru will discern my location.”

  “Can you use mine?” said Caina.

  “No, it’s bonded to you,” said Annarah, “but if you ask it to aid me…”

  Caina nodded, beckoned Annarah closer, and grabbed the older woman’s wrist. “Aid her, please.” It felt odd talking to a bracelet, but the pyrikon was a living thing, not just a hunk of metal, and it had a will and mind of its own. It had helped her more than once, once it had understood what she needed. Like the nagataaru, pyrikon spirits did not have a sound grasp of the material world.

  The pyrikon bracelet glowed, both to Caina’s eyes and the sight of the valikarion, and Annarah shuddered a little.

  “I am ready,” she said.

  Caina nodded and drew the dagger through the gap in the door, the weapon heating up again. She saw the spell start to collapse, the ward unraveling, and the purple fire of the nagataaru filled the gap. Annarah gestured, and white fire leaped from her hand to strike the side of the throne.

  The nagataaru recoiled, and then retaliated. Purple fire pulsed from the throne, repelling Annarah’s attack and rebuilding the ward. The force of sorcery knocked Caina’s hand back, and she barely kept her grasp upon the smoking dagger.

  “What happened?” said Caina.

  “That nagataaru,” said Annarah. “It’s too strong, and the wards around the throne are too powerful. I cannot harm it.”

  “And if I collapse the wards, the nagataaru just rebuilds them before you can strike at it,” said Caina, a sinking feeling settling in her stomach. “Morgant.”

  They had no better luck with Morgant’s black dagger. The spells within the throne prevented Morgant’s dagger from cutting into the marble. Caina’s ghostsilver dagger could have unwoven the defensive wards, but unlike Morgant’s blade, Caina’s dagger could not cut through solid marble. With increasing alarm, Caina tried every combination of her dagger, Morgant’s blade, and Annarah’s spells that she could think of, but none of them proved effective. Every time, the nagataaru within the throne repelled the attack.

  “Damn it,” said Caina, her frustration mixed with growing dread. She didn’t know how long Callatas could last again Kharnaces, but she suspected it would not be much longer.

  “I think the nagataaru within the throne is the Harbinger itself,” said Annarah. “It is certainly as powerful as a nagataaru lord.”

  “Isn’t the Harbinger inside Kharnaces?” said Morgant. “Neat trick if it can be in two places at once.”

  “Those are Kharnaces’s canopic jars,” said Caina, wiping some of the sweat from her forehead. “He said that he was the Harbinger and the Harbinger was him. Likely their spirits have merged, so the Harbinger can defend the canopic jars. No wonder Kharnaces was willing to leave them in the throne.”

  She desperately wished that Kylon were here. Apart from how much she missed his presence, he was the only one among them who stood a good chance against Kalgri. And the valikon would have been the perfect weapon for forcing open the throne.

  Morgant snorted. “I suppose that’s just like Kharnaces.”

  “What do you mean?” said Annarah.

  “You remember what happened at the Inferno,” said Morgant. “For a man who wants to destroy the world, he’s entirely too fond of his little trophies.”

  Caina blinked.

  Trophies…

  “If he destroys the world,” said Morgant, “he’ll destroy his trophies too. Were all the Great Necromancers so shortsighted?”

  “Wait,” said Caina.

  Trophies…

  The memory of her dream on the ship blazed through her thoughts. Samnirdamnus had made a point of telling her that Kharnaces had liked to collect trophies, though most of his relics had been buried in the destruction of the Inferno. Yet Kharnaces had been trapped on Pyramid Isle for two and a half thousand years. Surely others had come to the island in that time, and Kharnaces must have killed some of the intruders. And some of those visitors must have carried items that Kharnaces would have kept as trophies.

  Including, perhaps, items that Caina might find useful?

 
Else why would Samnirdamnus have gone to such trouble to mention it? Kharnaces’s trophies had already saved Caina’s life. Morgant had carried the damaged wedjet-dahn out of the Inferno, and Kylon had used that wedjet-dahn to help save Caina’s life in Rumarah.

  Was there something similar in the Tomb of Kharnaces?

  Caina looked across the throne room. On the far wall, she saw another archway, opening into a darkened chamber. No light penetrated the room, but the vision of the valikarion saw the gleam of several arcane auras.

  “What is it?” said Annarah.

  “I have an idea,” said Caina.

  “Oh,” said Morgant. “You’re about to do something clever.”

  “Or something stupid,” said Caina.

  “The two overlap more often than you might think,” said Morgant.

  “Come on,” said Caina. “Keep an eye out for traps.”

  She ran across the throne room, Morgant and Annarah following her.

  ###

  Another explosion ripped across the top of the hill, the thunderclap ringing over the island. Callatas screamed and poured all his strength and will into his wards, trying to hold his defenses against the hurricane of necromantic power that Kharnaces had thrown at him. The storm of necromantic force pressed against him, threatening to tear the life from his flesh.

  At last the spell ended, and Callatas wavered upon his feet, breathing hard, sweat pouring down his face to soak into his bloodstained robes.

  It had taken all of his strength to hold back that attack. It was just as well that Caina had nearly stabbed him to death in the netherworld. It had forced him to drink Elixir Rejuvenata, making him young and strong again.

  Without that renewed vitality, it was likely that the strain of the battle would have ruptured his heart by now. Even with his rejuvenated strength, Callatas was at the end of his stamina. It took all of his strength to hold back Kharnaces’s spells, and he had no power left to strike back.