Ghost in the Winds (Ghost Exile #9)

by Jonathan Moeller

  Annarah nodded, stepped back, and held out her right hand. Her pyrikon unfolded from her fingers and wrist, lengthening into a bronze staff that shimmered with white fire. At once the nagataaru warriors within the entrance hall reacted, moving forward with a slow, steady stride.

  Caina pulled the trigger, and the machine and its attached amphora shivered beneath her grip. A fine spray of Hellfire droplets burst from the end of the device in a red cone, shooting into the archway and into the charging undead warriors.

  An instant later the Hellfire ignited, and so did the first rank of the undead.

  A howling wall of crimson flames erupted from the floor and the charging undead, so hot that it felt as if Caina stood in front of a blacksmith’s fire. The undead warriors simply fell apart, and Caina pulled the trigger again. She feared the fire might ignite the Hellfire inside the amphora, but the machine was too well designed for that. The fire transformed the spray of Hellfire into a howling jet of flame, and it drilled into the advancing undead, destroying them as they tried to charge through the archway. One of the warriors managed to get past the flame, and Annarah destroyed it with a quick burst of white fire from her staff.

  “Morgant!” shouted Caina. “Side to side!” He nodded, and together they swept the amphora from side to side, swinging the jet of fire back and forth. It scoured the entry hall like a whip of living fire, a whip that cut down the undead warriors as they advanced. In a few moments, the entry hall had transformed into a carpet of fire, red light blazing in all directions. Nothing alive could have survived in there, and Caina doubted that even the undead warriors could have managed it.

  “Behind you!” shouted Morgant.

  Caina twisted her head to the side and saw a mob of undead baboons charging down the corridor towards them, at least a score of the creatures. Annarah whirled and began casting spells, a burst of white fire cutting down four of the creatures as she swept her staff before her. Yet there were too many of the undead baboons, and Annarah could not get them all before they killed her.

  “Down!” said Caina, and together she and Morgant set down the amphora as gently as they could manage. Before the amphora had even settled Morgant yanked his scimitar and black dagger from their sheaths and charged, the tail of his black coat flying around him. Caina released her handle on the amphora and drew the valikon in a flash of white light, the Iramisian sigils upon the blade burning with white fire.

  The undead baboons converged upon Annarah in a tide of leathery flesh and brittle fur and yellow fangs, even as she struck again and again in bursts of white fire. The nagataaru could sense her, and therefore they focused upon her, but they could not see Caina and Morgant. Morgant scythed through the undead, scimitar and dagger flashing. He was a master swordsman, but he hardly needed his skill as he chopped through the baboons, his dagger slicing them apart while his scimitar blocked their clumsy attempts to find their invisible foe.

  Caina wielded her valikon with less skill than the old assassin, but with the power of the weapon, she hardly needed skill. Either the ghostsilver blade shattered the spells upon the undead baboons, collapsing them to the floor, or the power of the valikon ripped apart the nagataaru within them. Annarah shouted something in the Iramisian tongue, and a snarling halo of white fire sheathed her, driving back the baboons as they tried to approach. As they recoiled, Caina and Morgant attacked, cutting down the nagataaru.

  She struck down another nagataaru and turned, seeking more foes, but for a moment the area around her was clear. Another mob of baboons raced down the corridor, claws clacking against the stone floor. Caina started to head towards them, but Morgant drew back his arm, the blade of his black dagger grasped in his fingers. His arm snapped forward, hurtling the weapon forward, and the black dagger buried itself in the stone floor before the charging baboons.

  An instant later the dagger released its stored heat in a snarling fireball that filled up the corridor. The fire wasn’t nearly as intense as the inferno unleashed by the fireball, but it was more than hot enough to set the undead baboons aflame. Many of them collapsed into smoking piles of coals, but some broke free of the fire.

  “Don’t let them get near the Hellfire!” shouted Caina. If one of the burning baboons knocked over the Hellfire amphora and broke it, they would all die a few seconds later.

  Annarah destroyed a baboon with a shaft of white fire. Morgant cut down two more as they staggered forward, and Caina took the head from another with a two-handed swing of the valikon, similar to a move she had seen Kylon use several times. Of course, she wasn’t nearly as strong as Kylon, but the valikon was effective. The undead baboon collapsed, and Caina turned, looking for her next enemy, her heart hammering in her temples.

  But for the moment, there were no enemies coming down the corridor. She turned and looked into the entry hall. Patches of Hellfire still burned here and there, the floor between them a cracked and smoking ruin, but all of the undead warriors had been destroyed. For the moment, the way was clear.

  “Caina?” said Annarah, lowering her staff as white fire burned up and down its bronze length.

  “Morgant,” said Caina, sheathing the valikon. “We need to make a run for it. Get the amphora.”

  Morgant retrieved his dagger, sheathed his weapons, and grabbed one of the amphora’s handles, and Caina seized the other one.

  “Don’t drop the damned thing,” said Morgant, glancing towards the fires still burning in the entry hall. “If it leaks into the fires…”

  “Yes, yes, we’re all dead,” said Caina, grunting as she hefted the amphora. It hadn’t gotten much lighter despite all the Hellfire they had sprayed into the entry hall. “What else is new?”

  Together they hauled the amphora and its attached machine into the entry hall. It was damnably hot, so hot the air near the walls was rippling. Caina heard a faint hissing sound and realized that the leather of her boots was smoking against the overheated stone floor. Here and there she saw twisted, half-melted pieces of bronze, all that remained of the armor and weapons of the undead warriors. Only glowing ashes and smoldering coals remained of the undead corpses themselves.

  Morgant let out a harsh laugh, coughing a little in the fumes.

  “What?” said Caina.

  “Don’t step there,” Morgant said, pointing at a gleaming puddle on the floor. Caina realized that it was melted silver, dribbled from the hieroglyphs on the ceiling. She made sure to step around it.

  “What’s funny?” said Caina.

  “I wanted to carve that silver out of the ceiling to sell it,” said Morgant. “Turns out I just had to spray it with enough Hellfire to melt the damned stuff. Then I can just scrape it off the floor to sell it.”

  Caina croaked out a laugh. “See? We should have thought of that the last time. Saved ourselves all kinds of trouble if we just burned the damned place down.”

  Annarah let out a shocked laugh, and all three of them laughed. Caina supposed the smoke and the ash in the air was making them woozy, to say nothing of the immense heat. They had been in the entry hall for less than thirty seconds, but sweat poured down Caina’s face, and she realized that if they didn’t get out soon, they would pass out from the heat.

  “Faster,” she said. “Faster.”

  Annarah wheezed, and Morgant coughed something that sounded obscene, but they both ran faster, the amphora bouncing between Caina and Morgant. Her hand was growing slick with sweat, and she gripped the handle tighter, grateful that the ancient Maatish potters had possessed the foresight to make the clay rough and easy to grip.

  They ran through the archway and from the Tomb of Kharnaces, returning to the jungle.

  The air was hot and wet and humid, but far cooler than the superheated air inside the entry hall. The air also stank of rot, likely from the dead jungle already starting to decay in the humid air, but after the heat of the Tomb, the stinking, wet air felt wonderful.

  “Oh, by the Divine!” said Annarah, half-laughing, half-coughing. “I have never been s
o glad to see a desolate island.”

  “Nor have I,” said Caina, looking around. The dead trees started a few yards from the base of the rocky hill. She headed towards them, slowing as she tried to catch her breath from the run through the entry hall. “Let’s get to the beach. Gods, I hope the boat is still there. I’ll swim to Murat’s ship if…”

  “Caina!” shouted Annarah.

  Caina turned just as the undead baboons sprang from the slope of the hill over the entrance.

  Annarah cast a spell, a shaft of white fire ripping across two of the baboons. The creatures disintegrated in mid-air, but one of them slammed into Caina, ripping the amphora from her grasp and driving her to the ground.

  The baboon’s jaws yawned down, preparing to rip off her head.

  Caina slammed her open palm into the baboon’s muzzle, snapping its head back, and yanked the valikon from its sheath. The blade burst into white flame, ripping into the baboon’s side. The valikon did not bite deep enough to destroy the nagataaru within the undead creature, but the ghostsilver of the sword unraveled the necromantic spells, and the nagataaru erupted from the dead animal in hooded shadow and purple flame.

  Caina pushed the dead baboon off her and scrambled to her feet, breathing hard as Morgant cut down the last of the baboons with a slash of his scimitar.

  She looked for the Hellfire amphora and saw it lying broken in two a few yards away, its glowing crimson fluid leaking towards the jungle.

  Even as she looked, it started to boil as it touched the air, the power within the elixir awakening.

  Chapter 11: Your Chance Will Come

  “Kill me,” sobbed the Padishah. “Please, kill me, before it is too late. By the Living Flame, Callatas, this is madness. Stop it and kill me before…”

  Callatas ignored the Padishah’s begging and continued casting spells.

  He had already gathered a tremendous amount of power, but he needed more, far more, to work the Apotheosis. Fortunately, the Staff and the Seal made it possible to draw that power. The Staff could open gates to the netherworld and summon forth spirits, and the Seal could bind and command those spirits, but when combined they drew forth a great deal of arcane power.

  So he walked again and again around the huge mirror, casting spells into the three rings of burning golden glyphs that encircled the forming Mirror of Worlds. Callatas had designed the spells over long decades of labor and study, and they worked perfectly, interlocking like the teeth of gears. The focus of the spell would be the huge Mirror of Worlds he would create, a stable, solid gateway into the netherworld, not the massive gash that the Moroaica had ripped open and that Cassander Nilas had exploited during his treacherous attack. Empowered by the Staff of Iramis, the Mirror of Worlds would draw tens of thousands of nagataaru into Istarinmul in the first few moments, with more coming into the mortal world with every passing instant. With the Seal of Iramis, Callatas would direct the hordes of nagataaru, sending them into the waiting bodies of the tens of thousands of wraithblood addicts he had created within Istarinmul.

  “Kill me,” said Nahas Tarshahzon yet again.

  The Padishah’s blood was the key to the spell. Most people who knew the truth about wraithblood assumed it was an Alchemical elixir, but they were wrong. Each vial of wraithblood consisted of thousands upon thousands of tiny bloodcrystals, the design derived from the scrolls that Callatas had studied in the Tomb of Kharnaces. The wraithblood crystals attacked the mind’s natural resistance to possession, eroding it like a stone crumbling beneath a sandstorm. All bloodcrystals required a base, a victim from whom the first crystal was grown, and the Padishah’s blood had served as the base for the wraithblood. The power in the blood of the House of Tarshahzon had made the Padishah a perfect base. Every wraithblood laboratory had started with a drop of Nahas Tarshahzon’s blood, used to corrupt the blood of the dead slaves and harvest wraithblood from their bodies.

  The Padishah had asked Callatas to make him immortal. In a way, Callatas had complied. The Padishah’s blood would serve as the catalyst, the instrument that would destroy the old humanity and create the new.

  And the new humanity would be immortal, strong, and perfect. They would not be like the kadrataagu, the pathetic men and women overshadowed by their nagataaru and twisted into corrupt monsters. They would not even be like Kalgri, who though she dominated her nagataaru was nonetheless a slave to her bloodlust. No, the new humanity would be a hybrid of man and nagataaru. It would be immortal and incorruptible, having no weakness to disease and no need for food. Without a need for food, there would be no need for civilization, no need for laws and customs and lords and kings, no need for property or religion or cities. The perfect, incorruptible mankind would live forever, and would slaughter the corrupt old humanity.

  And then Callatas would lead his new humanity to new worlds. He had seen the truth of the cosmos in the secrets of Kharnaces’s scrolls. Once the old humanity had been cleansed, Callatas would guide his new humanity through the netherworld and to other worlds, and they would spread across the cosmos for all eternity.

  Ultimate victory lay within his grasp.

  Callatas stepped back, breathing hard, and considered the spells blazing in the Court of Justice.

  To his mild surprise night had fallen. The day had passed while he had drawn upon his sorcery. Despite the time, he had no trouble seeing. The three rings of sigils on the ground shone with flickering golden light, filling the Court of Justice with a pale glow. Black-armored Immortals guarded the entrance to the Court, and Callatas felt their blue-glowing eyes upon him. Evidently, the display of sorcery had been enough to make even the Immortals nervous. The Padishah remained chained to his chair in the wagon, the alchemical and necromantic machine that kept him alive pumping the black poison of the wraithblood through his veins as he begged for death.

  Kalgri sat cross-legged at the base of the dais, not far from the massive mirror. Her eyes were half-closed, and she looked almost as if she was meditating. It might have fooled even Callatas, but he knew her too well, and he could sense the Voice hissing in her thoughts, urging caution and vigilance. Her lack of faith annoyed him…but again he rebuked himself. His own arrogance had repeatedly caused problems, and he would not allow it to undo him at the very moment of victory.

  If Kalgri wished to remain vigilant, she was welcome to it.

  “Kill me!” shrieked the Padishah.

  “Does he ever shut up?” said Kalgri, her eyes still half-closed.

  “Not for the last several years, no,” said Callatas. The Padishah’s cries of pain were becoming annoying. Still, Callatas had endured far worse, and the dying cries of an old fool were an inconsequential annoyance.

  He sensed the approach of several men, and he turned as a group of horsemen rode into the Court, reining up as they neared Callatas. Erghulan Amirasku rode in their midst, surrounded by his remaining noble allies. His face was a proud mask, but Callatas sensed the fear and doubt there.

  No matter. Soon Erghulan would see terrors beyond his wildest dreams.

  “Grand Wazir,” said Callatas. “How goes the defense of the city?”

  Erghulan glanced at Kalgri, at the moaning Padishah, and then back at Callatas. “Well enough for the moment. The rebel army has camp south of the city, just out of catapult range. So far they have done nothing of note, though I expect that will not last.”

  “No,” said Callatas. “Traditionally, I imagine a defeated noble in your position would be likely to flee the city with as much gold as he could carry.”

  Erghulan’s lips thinned as the mention of defeat. “Traditionally, though, a defeated noble did not have the Grand Master preparing a mighty work of sorcery to destroy his enemies.”

  A wave of contempt went through Callatas. After everything he had seen, did Erghulan really think this was a mere political dispute? The contempt within Callatas intensified. A man like Erghulan Amirasku was symbolic of everything that was wrong with civilization, with its corruptions and hierarchies an
d enervating weakness.

  He, too, would be swept aside with the Apotheosis.

  But Callatas needed him for a little while longer. He could not defend the city and work the Apotheosis at the same time, and it would be a bitter joke that if after years of preparation he was undone by two fools like Kylon of House Kardamnos and Nasser Glasshand.

  “Traditionally, no, they did not,” said Callatas, keeping the contempt from his face and voice. From the corner of his eye, he saw Kalgri’s lip twitch, but Erghulan did not notice. “You need only to hold the city for a few days more. Once the Apotheosis is complete, we shall destroy the rebels. A few days more, and victory shall be ours.”

  “That…may be a problem,” said Erghulan.

  Callatas scowled. “Why?”

  “I do not have enough men to defend the walls and man the Hellfire catapults at the same time,” said Erghulan. “If the rebels launch a single massive assault along the southern wall, they will gain the ramparts, yes. We will kill several thousand of them, but we will lose control of the southern wall and have no choice but to fall back to the Golden Palace.”

  A wave of searing fury burned through Callatas. “Why not? Defend the wall and man the Hellfire catapults at the same time.”

  Erghulan scowled back. “It takes time to train the crews manning the catapults. One mistake and they will blow themselves up, and they might even blast a hole in the wall.”

  “Why do you not have enough trained men to manage the catapults?” said Callatas.

  “Because most of them were killed in the battle,” said Erghulan.

  “Which was your fault,” said Callatas. “If you had but listened to Master Rhataban and…”

  He forced himself to silence. What was done was done. He could have used the help of his most loyal disciples now, but Ricimer and Rolukhan and Rhataban were all dead, thanks to Caina Amalas and her damned allies. That woman had caused him so much trouble, and it pleased Callatas greatly to think of her trapped in the Tomb of Kharnaces, slowly dying of thirst, or ripped apart by the nagataaru-possessed baboons.