Ghost in the Winds (Ghost Exile #9)

by Jonathan Moeller

  DO YOU NOT YET SEE THE TRUTH? THE KNIGHT OF WIND AND AIR HAS TWISTED HER THREAD IN THE TAPESTRY OF DESTINY. FROM THE BEGINNING HE HAS PLOTTED AGAINST YOU, SEEKING A MORTAL INSTRUMENT TO UNDO THE APOTHEOSIS AND BREAK OUR PACT. THE BALARIGAR IS THAT INSTRUMENT.

  Callatas’s fingers tightened against the Staff of Iramis. It was utterly impossible. Yet he could not deny his eyes, and he certainly could not deny the word of Kotuluk Iblis. Somehow, that damnable woman had survived Pyramid Isle and had enlisted the aid of the djinn of the Court of the Azure Sovereign, the ancient enemies of the nagataaru. It defied all reason…yet she had also escaped the Inferno and defeated Kharnaces and burned the Craven’s Tower, and all of those feats defied all reason, yet they had happened nonetheless.

  And Caina Amalas was now a valikarion…

  A chill went through Callatas. He had burned Iramis specifically to destroy the loremasters and the valikarion. Both the loremasters and the valikarion could have stopped the Apotheosis, and of old sorcerers had feared the valikarion and their abilities, and the deeds of individual valikarion had woven themselves into the legends of a score of nations.

  Because the sorcerers of old had been right to fear the valikarion. Callatas knew it well. Caina Amalas, the woman who had slain the Moroaica and numerous other sorcerers of great power, was now a valikarion as well.

  And she was coming to stop the Apotheosis.

  KILL HER.

  The rage of Kotuluk Iblis thundered inside his head.

  FIND HER AND KILL HER NOW. SHE HAS THE POTENTIAL TO UNDO THE APOTHEOSIS AND KEEP THIS WORLD FROM MY GRASP. KILL HER NOW, AND THE COURT OF THE AZURE SOVEREIGN AND THE MEDDLING OF THE KNIGHT OF WIND AND AIR SHALL COME TO NAUGHT. KILL HER!

  Callatas raised the Seal and sent his will to it, calling to the nagataaru spirits bound within the new humanity.

  Hundreds of them came at his call, the dark shapes abandoning other victims to soar towards the flying corsair vessel.

  He turned to speak to Kalgri, but she was already gone.

  ###

  Kalgri raced through the Golden Palace, moving with the speed the Voice’s power granted.

  She had been right all along! Perhaps she should have taken the risk and killed Caina before departing Pyramid Isle, even with the risk of the valikon. Had the Balarigar died at Pyramid Isle, the Apotheosis and the death of the world would have been assured beyond all doubt.

  And yet…

  Kalgri smiled, her black cloak streaming behind her.

  She was so much stronger now, and one valikon in the hands of Caina Amalas need not alarm her any longer.

  The Voice whispered inside of her head.

  Callatas’s pet monsters could fly. Kalgri was stronger than any of them.

  Why could she not do the same?

  Wings wrought of shadow, threaded with veins of purple fire, shimmered into existence behind her back. Kalgri leaped, and the wings spread out behind her like vast ragged sails, lifting her into the air.

  Smiling, she headed towards the oncoming storm, looking forward to seeing Caina Amalas’s final, terrified expression.

  Chapter 21: The One I Have Been Looking For

  The Sandstorm hurtled through the air with terrific speed, and Caina grabbed at the railing, her shadow-cloak billowing behind her.

  Behind her Morgant and Annarah watched the waves smashing against the coast a thousand feet below them. Annarah had shifted her pyrikon to its staff form, planting it against the deck, her green eyes wide as she took in the sight. Morgant watched everything with his customary sardonic smirk, but Caina doubted that he was as calm as he looked. His pale eyes never stopped moving back and forth, as if expecting foes to appear from nowhere.

  It was not an unreasonable fear.

  Sanjar kept his crew busy with a constant stream of barked orders, telling them to tend to this line or to adjust that sail. Likely the purpose was to keep the corsairs busy and their minds off the fact that they were flying a thousand feet above the surface of the ocean. Otherwise, there was no need for the sailors to tend to the ship. Murat had even ordered the sails furled, lest the wind of their passage rip the masts from the deck.

  Behind them, the colossal storm rose, driven by the horsemen and chariots fashioned from cloud, swords of lightning and smokeless flame in their hands. At first, the corsairs had been terrified that the djinn would descend upon them in wrath, but so far the Host of the Court of the Azure Sovereign had ignored them, save to carry the Sandstorm over the Alqaarin Sea.

  Ahead the ship Caina saw the broad rolling plains of the steppes south of the city of Istarinmul, and she calculated the distances in her head. They had passed the bleak, empty lands of the Desert of Candles, the crystalline pillars shining like points of blue fire in the darkness, and she had glimpsed the craggy heights of the Kaltari Highlands in the distance. If Caina was right, they were following the eastern coast south of the city, heading towards the Alqaarin Harbor on the eastern side of Istarinmul.

  That, in turn, meant they had almost reached Istarinmul. The sea voyage would have taken six to eight days. The djinn of the Court had managed it in a few hours. Even if Caina had not been paying attention to the terrain, she would have known they were drawing near to Istarinmul.

  The flows of power ahead burned before the vision of the valikarion.

  Caina had never seen anything like it, whether with her eyes of flesh or her valikarion senses. Sorcerous power stirred and writhed through the air ahead, and it reminded Caina of the edges of a vast vortex. From time to time she felt a crawling tingle against her skin as the titanic forces surged.

  “You feel it, don’t you?” said Annarah.

  Caina looked back at her. “Yes. What is it? The Apotheosis?”

  “It is,” said Annarah. “But only part of it. Callatas is damaging the barrier between the mortal world and the netherworld. It’s a consequence of all the nagataaru he needs to summon. Likely he is using a massive Mirror of Worlds to create a controlled gate to allow the nagataaru to enter. The netherworld is the source of arcane power, and so more of it is leaking into our world.”

  “Then if he is opening a gate, or has opened a gate,” said Caina, “we’re already too late.”

  “We may be,” said Annarah, her silver hair whipping around her head in the wind of their passage. “The nagataaru will have already possessed the wraithblood addicts. But even if Callatas has already cast the Apotheosis, we must act. Killing him and closing his gate would prevent him from creating any more of his ‘new humanity’, and the nagataaru-infested wraithblood addicts could be defeated. It would exact a horrendous cost in lives…”

  “Probably everyone in Istarinmul,” said Morgant. “And parts of the surrounding realms.”

  “Gods,” whispered Caina. For a moment she thought of Nerina Strake. Would she transform when Callatas summoned his nagataaru? Or had she stopped taking wraithblood long enough for her mind’s defenses to recover? If poor Nerina did become some kind of nagataaru-infested monster, tens of thousands of other wraithblood addicts would join her, and they would go on killing rampages through Istarinmul to feed their nagataaru.

  Callatas’s wretched vision was coming to pass. If only Caina had been a little faster on Pyramid Isle, and had managed to stab his black heart with the valikon before he escaped…

  “Captain!” called one of the sailors. “The sky ahead!”

  Murat stepped down from the helm, boots thumping against the deck. He had resumed his customary sneering scowl, but he still looked unsettled.

  “Another storm?” said Murat. He glanced over his shoulder at the colossal storm driving them forward. “Of course, storms usually do not blow into each other.” He turned a half-cautious, half-alarmed gaze towards Caina. “Of course, we ride the winds with the mighty Balarigar herself. What do we have to fear?”

  “Quite a lot, actually,” said Morgant.

  Murat snorted. “By the Living Flame! I should have handed you in for the bounty.”

  “
If it makes you feel better,” said Caina, “the Grand Wazir is probably dead, and the rest of Istarinmul might join him soon enough.”

  “No, Captain Murat,” said Annarah, and Murat looked at her. “No, it’s not a storm. I fear it is something worse. Behold.”

  They stood in silence for a moment, and then Istarinmul came into sight on the horizon.

  Caina had looked down upon Istarinmul before from the city’s walls or its rooftops or the domes of its great palaces (usually while robbing them) but she had never seen the city like this.

  Istarinmul lay spread out before them like a map of incredible detail, and she saw the walls and the ramparts, the Cyrican Quarter and the Old Quarter, the Golden Palace and the College of Alchemists, everything.

  She also saw the army outside the walls, pouring into the Bazaar of the Southern Road. She saw the fights raging throughout the city, fires starting here and there, and the hundreds of winged shapes circling over the rooftops.

  But most of all, she saw the huge plume of shadow and purple fire rising from the Golden Palace. It looked almost like an inverted mountain, its top rising miles higher than the city. The titanic cloud kept boiling, and Caina realized that the cloud was thousands of individual nagataaru spirits, and even as she looked, ribbons of black shadow and purple fire broke off from the cloud, rippling towards the streets of Istarinmul below.

  They were looking for wraithblood addicts.

  “What,” said Murat, his voice quiet, “is worse than what we have already seen?”

  “The Apotheosis,” whispered Caina.

  “Nagataaru,” said Annarah. “The demons that Callatas serves. He has called them forth in pursuit of his mad dreams, offering our world up as a sacrifice.”

  “Then we must flee,” said Murat. “We cannot fight such creatures!”

  “There is nowhere left to run,” said Caina, staring at the huge plume of shadow. She saw the glow of the complex web of spells at its base, a mighty working that was drawing more and more nagataaru through a gate and into the mortal world.

  The Apotheosis was underway…but it was not yet finished.

  And as Caina gazed at the blaze of spells within the Golden Palace, she felt a flicker of hope.

  “You cannot run, captain,” said Annarah. “The nagataaru will spread like a horde of locusts, and they will not stop until every living man and woman in the world are slain.”

  “We cannot stop such madness,” said Murat.

  “Yes,” said Caina, “we can.” She pointed. “There at the Golden Palace. The spells are centered there…within the Court of the Fountain or the Court of Justice, I think. The spells are focused around Callatas. If we kill him, the spells will collapse, and the Apotheosis will stop. We’ll still have to fight the creatures he’s already created, but he won’t make any new ones, and without his help, they won’t be nearly as dangerous.”

  She knew that was far easier said than done.

  On Pyramid Isle, when Callatas had been exhausted from his duel with Kharnaces, Caina still had not been able to defeat him. Here in Istarinmul, he would have had time to recover his strength. For that matter, he could also command the remaining Immortals.

  And Kalgri would be there.

  Even after everything that had happened, the thought of facing the Red Huntress again still frightened Caina more than the prospect of fighting the Grand Master. Callatas was more dangerous by far, but he had not gotten behind Caina’s defenses the way that Kalgri had.

  “You cannot demand that we fight demons!” said Murat.

  Caina shook her head, pushing aside her terrors. “I don’t demand anything. The djinn will set the Sandstorm down in the Alqaarin Harbor, and we’ll leave. You can do whatever you want. If you hasten, perhaps you can sail away before the nagataaru find you. But it will only be a short respite. If the nagataaru destroy Istarinmul, they will spread from the Padishah’s realm and destroy every kingdom and empire and nation. There will be no safe place.”

  “Safer than here,” said Murat.

  “Not really,” said Morgant. “You won’t have time to get away.”

  Murat sneered at him. “Why is that?”

  Morgant grinned, the expression making his gaunt face look skull-like. “Because the fight is coming to you.”

  He pointed over the railing at the dark shapes flitting from the city.

  Some of the dark shapes were heading right for the Sandstorm.

  In fact, Caina thought at least a hundred of the dark shapes were coming for the corsair vessel.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “What are those?” said Murat, drawing his saber from his belt. “Demons?”

  “Nagataaru,” said Caina. “Callatas summoned them and bound them within the flesh of wraithblood addicts.”

  Murat let out a derisive laugh. “Wraithblood addicts? I have seen such scum lounging in the alleys near the Alqaarin Harbor. Such dogs are not fit to be sold to the mines as slaves. They are no threat.”

  The dark shapes drew closer.

  “I think,” said Caina, “they will be different than you remember.”

  The winged forms rose higher, and for the first time, Caina saw the creatures that Grand Master Callatas had created.

  They were horribly beautiful, but that did not surprise her. When Caina had broken into his palace a year and a half ago, she had noted Callatas’s keen but dark eye for beauty in how he had arranged the crystalline sculptures of his victims. The winged creatures were sleek, muscled giants, their skin gleaming like obsidian and no doubt as hard as stone. Great black wings rose behind them, lifting them through the air, and razor-edged talons like daggers jutted from their fingers and toes. Their eyes blazed with purple fire, and the purple flame of the nagataaru burned in their veins, pulsing with the beat of their hearts.

  This was Callatas’s new version of humanity, immortal and invincible, with no need for food or shelter or civilization. He wanted to populate the world with these winged nightmares, to create a world of horrors that hunted each other endlessly.

  “Annarah,” said Caina.

  Annarah nodded, white fire dancing along her staff. Morgant stepped closer to her, drawing his black dagger and crimson scimitar. Caina rested her hand upon her valikon’s hilt, moving closer to them, while the corsairs drew their cutlasses and scimitars. A dozen of the winged creatures flew alongside the Sandstorm, wings beating, purple eyes fixed upon them.

  Caina watched the creatures, her mind racing. The nagataaru could sense when living mortals were nearby, but they could not sense a valikarion. Caina had exploited that to great use on Pyramid Isle. Could she do the same thing with the winged creatures? They had physical eyes, so they could see her, but if they couldn’t sense her…

  As one, the winged creatures folded their wings and landed on the deck of the Sandstorm.

  A half-dozen corsairs died in the first second, their throats torn out by the claws of the winged creatures. Murat bellowed a command and charged, his cutlass flashing, and the corsairs followed with ragged shouts. Annarah leveled her staff and cast a spell, and a shaft of white fire ripped across the nearest creature. It staggered, wings coming up like a shield, and Morgant attacked it, black dagger and scimitar flying. The black dagger bit deep into the creature’s neck, and it collapsed to the deck, its body shrinking into the shape of a gaunt, emaciated old man with eerie blue eyes.

  Caina yanked the valikon from its scabbard and joined the fray, the curved ghostsilver blade burning with white fire as it reacted to the nagataaru around them. One of the creatures came at her, slashing its claws. It was fast, as fast as Kalgri had been when she drew upon the Voice’s power.

  But like Kalgri, the creature recognized the deadly danger of the valikon, and it recoiled from the white-burning blade. Caina thrust at the creature, and it retreated a quick step, raising its wings around it like a shield.

  That was a mistake. The leathery flesh of the wings shielded the creature from the valikon’s edge, but it also blocked its
vision, and Caina suspected the creature hadn’t realized what she really was. She whirled to the side, drawing back the valikon, and the creature turned, lifting its wings as it hunted for her.

  Caina buried the valikon to the hilt in the creature’s gleaming back, the blade sinking between its ribs. The Apotheosis might have made the creature stronger and faster than human, but its heart was in the same place, and the valikon found it. The creature shuddered as the white fire of the valikon destroyed the nagataaru, and as Caina ripped the blade free, the winged shadow shrank to an emaciated, sad-eyed old man who collapsed dead to Murat’s deck.

  A wave of guilt went through Caina. The old man had been helpless and likely insane, and she had killed him…

  No. Callatas had done this.

  Callatas had addicted the poor man to wraithblood, and Callatas had transformed him into a monster. This was Callatas’s doing, and unless Caina could stop him, a lot worse would happen.

  Murat’s corsairs had recovered from their shock, and under his bellowed commands, fought back against the winged creatures. Annarah’s spells and Morgant’s blades aided the defense, shafts of white fire ripping from Annarah’s pyrikon to burn the creatures, while Morgant slashed and thrust and stabbed, leaving a trail of emaciated corpses in his wake.

  Caina darted behind one the creatures, using its own wings to conceal herself, and drove her valikon into its back.

  As it collapsed, she rushed to join the fight.

  ###

  Morgant cut down another creature, his dagger slicing through its throat, and stepped back as it shrank into another wraithblood addict.

  His breath came hard and fast, his heartbeat thundering in his ears, his shoulders and arms aching with strain. For all their size and immense strength, the creatures were so fast he had a hard time staying ahead of them. It reminded him of fighting the Huntress upon the beach of Pyramid Isle.

  Except this time, instead of fighting a single Huntress, he was fighting an army of them.

  Only three things had kept him alive and kept the creatures from ripping apart the corsairs and smashing the Sandstorm to splinters.