Ghost in the Seal (Ghost Exile #6)

by Jonathan Moeller

  A dozen of the nearest baboons erupted in white flames, and the creatures fell motionless, their bodies crumbling as the Words of Lore devoured the nagataaru within them. Caina sensed the ripple in the necromantic aura around the undead things as Annarah’s power shattered the ancient spells. For a moment it seemed like the battle would be over before it began, with the baboons consumed by the light from Annarah’s staff.

  Yet Annarah gasped and leaned against her staff, the light winking out.

  “Too many,” she croaked. “There’s too many. I can’t banish them all at once. I…”

  As one, the baboons swiveled to look at her, their necks creaking.

  Then they charged in a rush, a mass of spindly limbs, flashing teeth, and patchy gray fur.

  Kylon shot forward to meet them, the valikon leaving a trail of white fire as he attacked. The valikon spun in his hands, his strength driving the sword like a bolt of silvery lightning, and he carved his way through the mass of baboons. He cut down five of the things in the blink of an eye, and they came nowhere close to touching him.

  Yet five hardly seemed more than a drop in the ocean.

  More of the baboons rushed out of the trees, their dead eyes shining with purple fire. Two of the creatures leapt at Caina. She ducked, hit the ground, and rolled, the ghostsilver dagger sweeping before her. The blade struck the nearest baboon across its wasted chest, and the handle grew hot beneath Caina’s fingers. The baboon shuddered, its aura flickering, and Caina slashed again with the dagger. The ghostsilver weapon disrupted the necromantic spell upon the baboon, and the creature fell apart into a pile of bone and ragged strips of leathery hide. A hooded shadow with eyes of purple flame rose from the bones, the nagataaru freed from its undead flesh, but the spirit faded as it was pulled back into the netherworld.

  The second baboon slammed into Caina, scrambling up her torso The thing’s arms and legs felt like bars of cold iron, and its jaws yawned wide, exposing yellowed teeth, the musty stench of mummified flesh washing over Caina’s face. Baboons, she had read somewhere, preferred to attack enemies by biting them, and it seemed the nagataaru had decided to follow the customs of its undead host. Caina snapped up her left arm, getting it between her throat and the baboon. Its jaws clamped upon the leather bracer covering her forearm. The sturdy leather kept its teeth from breaking her skin, but the thing was so strong that pain flared up her arm, and she was sure that if she lived through this there would be teeth-shaped bruises upon her forearm.

  Her right arm was still free, so she raised her dagger and buried it in the side of the baboon’s neck. There was a hissing, crackling noise, a wisp of smoke, and the spell binding the undead baboon collapsed. The creature fell apart with a puff of dust, the nagataaru rising from the bones to vanish into nothingness. The skull was still clamped to her arm, and Caina hit it with the dagger’s butt until it came loose. Another baboon lunged at her, and Caina dodged, dragging the dagger along its back. Again the ghostsilver blade carved a sizzling gash through the leathery flesh, and the baboon fell over, the nagataaru expelled from its undead host. Still another came at Caina, and she seized its wrist as it reached for her, twisted, and drove her dagger into its chest. Two or three seconds of contact with the ghostsilver dagger seemed to be enough to disrupt the spell of necromancy upon the baboons. And once the spell was broken, the nagataaru within was banished back to the netherworld.

  Now Caina had to do it only a few hundred more times.

  Caina struck down another baboon, giving herself a moment to look around. Kylon held his own, the valikon a blaze of white fire in his fists. He was holding the baboons at bay, but dozens of the things surrounded him, and more streamed out of the jungle to the north. Kylon was a ferocious fighter, but even his stamina would not last forever, and if he stumbled the baboons would swarm over him and tear him to pieces.

  Annarah stood with both hands wrapped around her bronze staff, white light shining from it. Her first attack, banishing a dozen nagataaru at once, seemed to have drained a considerable part of her strength. The light now blazing from her pyrikon did not destroy the nagataaru-possessed baboons, but it did push them back, and it appeared to pain the creatures. Nasser, Morgant, and Laertes stood in a ring around Annarah, fighting the baboons as they tried to advance. Laertes wielded his heavy shield like a club, smashing the baboons back with such force that they fell apart. Morgant’s scimitar and black dagger flickered out, cutting the baboons to pieces. Nasser thrust with his left hand, grabbing the creature and lifting them from the ground. They invariably tried to bite off his fingers. Since his left hand was made of living crystal, the baboons only succeeding in shattering their teeth, which made it easy for Nasser to take off their heads with his scimitar.

  They were holding, but only barely. Worse, Caina had gotten separated from them. If she tried to force her way through the baboons to rejoin Kylon or Nasser, the creatures would rip her to shreds. Isolated from her friends, she stood little chance against the hordes of undead things. Even as the thought crossed her mind, she heard the trees rustle to the south.

  Nearly twenty more undead baboons burst from the foliage, loping on all fours towards her with terrific speed, their rotted eye sockets shining with purple fire.

  Purple fire…

  The creatures had no remaining eyes, yet they seemed to have no trouble navigating. They were possessed by nagataaru, which meant the nagataaru used their otherworldly senses to track their foes. Kalgri had possessed a similar ability, with the Voice able to sense her foes even in total darkness.

  But when Caina had donned her shadow-cloak, the Voice had been unable to find her. Kalgri had been forced to use her eyes of flesh and blood to follow Caina.

  The undead baboons had no other eyes.

  The baboons charged, and Caina reached over her shoulder and yanked out her shadow-cloak. It billowed behind her like a banner of darkness, and Caina pulled it on and drew the cowl over her head.

  The charging baboons came to a sudden stop. Their heads swiveled back and forth, and Caina let out a long breath. The shadow-cloak protected her from mind-altering and divinatory spells, and as she had discovered through frequently terrifying experience, it prevented spirits from detecting her presence.

  So. How could she use that to her advantage?

  The score of baboons that had charged her headed to join the mobs attacking Kylon and Annarah. Caina cursed and ran after them, striking with the ghostsilver dagger. The blade sank into the nearest baboon, and the creature shuddered, coming to a halt as the ghostsilver shattered the necromantic spell. The baboon fell over, and Caina struck down another and then another in rapid succession.

  The nagataaru might have been driven by their lust for pain and death, but they were not stupid. The baboons realized that something was amiss, that they were under attack from an unseen opponent. Several of them attacked at random, lashing with their arms and feet and tails in hopes of catching their invisible tormentor. A dozen baboons moved together in a coordinated pattern as the fighting raged around them. The nagataaru must have had some way of communicating with each other. After Caina and Morgant had rescued Annarah from the netherworld, Kotuluk Iblis had warned the nagataaru possessing Malik Rolukhan. Kotuluk Iblis, the Great Nagataaru, the prince and lord of the nagataaru, wanted Caina dead. Come to think of it, he had prophesied her death, just as Sulaman had. Unlike Sulaman, the Great Nagataaru wanted her dead, and had uncounted legions of vassals and servants capable of doing it.

  An idea came to Caina.

  Just how much did Kotuluk Iblis want her dead? More to the point, how forcefully had he communicated this wish to his vassals?

  Perhaps it was time to find out. Or perhaps it was time for Caina to fulfill Sulaman’s prophecy.

  She raced around the edge of the fighting, striking at the baboons. From time to time she lowered her cowl, allowing the nagataaru within the dead animals to get a look at her. More and more of the baboons broke off to chase after her, and Caina drew off per
haps thirty of the creatures.

  “What are you doing?” Kylon shouted, striking down a pair of baboons with a fiery sweep of the valikon.

  Caina sprinted to the road and climbed on one of the sphinxes, gripping its stone head with her free hand. She reached up and pulled back her cowl, and the pursuing baboons turned towards her. Towards the north she glimpsed stone ruins rising from the jungle, and her plan came together.

  “Kotuluk Iblis!” she shouted.

  Suddenly the baboons stopped attacking, backing away from Kylon and Morgant and the others. Hundreds of pairs of purple-burning eyes turned towards Caina.

  Gods, there had to be at least two hundred of the creatures.

  “Kotuluk Iblis!” said Caina again. “He is the prince of the nagataaru, and your lord and master, and he wants me dead! Come on, look at me. Look at me! Who am I?” The baboons stared at her, motionless. “Look at my destiny thread! You know who I am? I’m the Balarigar!”

  A strange ripple went through the undead baboons, the fiery light in their empty eyes burning brighter. The damned things were listening to her.

  “I killed the Moroaica,” said Caina. “I burned the Inferno, I walked in the netherworld and lived, and I’m going to stop the Apotheosis unless you kill me here and now.” She flung out her hand. “Come on, then! What are you waiting for? Come and kill me!”

  For an instant the baboons remained motionless.

  Then they surged at her, all of them, a wall of crumbling flesh and brittle gray fur and yellowed bone. Caina leaped from the back of the sphinx, hit the ground running, and sprinted into the jungle to the north, towards the ruins she had spotted while standing atop the sphinx. The baboons pursued on all fours, quickly gaining ground.

  Caina tugged up the cowl of her shadow-cloak and the pursuit faltered, though it did not stop. The baboons broke into groups, sweeping back and forth in search of her. Caina sprinted forward in a straight line, leaping over roots and dodging past boulders, and came to the ruins she had spotted. It had once been a small Maatish shrine, rectangular and ringed in columns, though the jungle had pulled down the roof and made the pillars lean like drunken men. A plinth stood in the center of the shrine, supporting a statue of a man with a baboon’s head. Her head swiveled back and forth as she ran into the shrine. She didn’t care why the Maatish had considered the baboon sacred, but if she was right…

  Her foot came down onto nothingness, and she almost fell, grabbing at a stone column to stop herself. A mat of rotting vegetation fell away, revealing a massive stone shaft in the center of the shrine, at least twenty feet wide and two hundred feet deep. Beyond she saw a dark passageway leading deeper into the earth. Her guess had been right – the baboons had indeed come from crypts in the nearby ruins. She didn’t know if the crypts connected to Kharnaces’s Tomb beneath the central hill itself.

  And if her plan worked, she wouldn’t have to find out.

  Caina heaved herself away from the open shaft, her boots scrabbling for purchase on the slick stone of the shrine’s floor, and caught her balance. The baboons fanned out around the shrine, seeking for her. She needed them gathered together in one large clump. Caina suspected that the nagataaru could sense living mortals well enough, but did not perceive the material world itself with a great deal of detail.

  She was about to put it to the test.

  Caina unclipped the grapnel from her belt, hurried around the shaft, and drove it into a gap in the stonework. Then she circled back to the other side of the shaft, letting the rope uncoil itself from her belt and fall loose to the ground. The baboons milled back and forth outside of the shrine, hunting for her. Caina ran a few paces from the ruined shrine, letting the rope uncoil further from her belt.

  Then she threw back her cowl.

  As one every single baboon turned to look at her.

  “Looking for me?” shouted Caina. “Come and kill me in the name of Kotuluk Iblis!”

  The baboons charged, dropping back to all fours. Caina took several steps back, gauging their pace. If she miscalculated, if she judged wrong, they would overtake her before she could reach the shaft.

  The baboons flooded towards the shrine, and Caina turned and sprinted for the shaft. She heard the rasp of the baboons’ nails against the stone floor, and leaped into the shaft. Cold air blew past her face as she fell, and after about thirty feet the line jerked taut. Her belt sawed painfully into her hips and waist, but the strong leather held. The baboons surged after her, leaping into the shaft.

  Caina tugged the cowl back over her head.

  And like antelope driven over the edge of a cliff by a lion, the baboons plunged into the shaft. Leathery, gray-furred carcasses tumbled past Caina, lashing and clawing at the air. She pressed herself flat against the stone wall, sliding her ghostsilver dagger into its sheath and tugging the cowl tight with one hand. If the baboons realized where she was, if she let the cowl fall, she had no doubt that they would swarm up the walls of the shaft like insects and tear her apart. Several times the falling baboons clipped her, one hitting her shoulder so hard that she almost lost her grip on the shadow-cloak.

  Yet the baboons continued falling past her. She heard them milling at the bottom of the shaft. It seemed that her guess had been correct. They did have difficulty perceiving details of the material world, such as the fact that she was hanging over a slender rope a hundred and fifty feet over their heads.

  Then the rope twitched. Caina whispered a curse, fearing that the grapnel was about to pull loose. Instead someone pulled up the rope, and Caina squinted into the sun and saw figures standing at the edge of the shaft. One final pull, and Kylon pulled her over the edge. Caina stumbled forward and fell against him, her hands against his chest. He didn’t even flinch beneath her weight, his hands taking her arms in a strong grip to steady her.

  That felt…nice. Really, really nice.

  She didn’t dare linger, as much as she wanted to do so.

  “Annarah!” said Caina, stepping away from Kylon. “Quickly. They’re in a confined space.”

  “A bottleneck,” murmured Nasser. “Clever.”

  Caina pulled back her cowl and went to one knee at the edge of the shaft, yanking her grapnel from the stone.

  At once the baboons started to climb up the shaft’s walls, gripping the slippery stone with ease. It reminded Caina of the way Kalgri had been able to climb walls like a spider. Fortunately, the baboons were still far down the shaft, and they were packed together.

  Which meant Annarah could bring her powers to bear with ease. The loremaster stepped next to Caina, pointed her staff at the ascending baboons, and whispered in the Iramisian tongue. White light blazed from her staff and stabbed into the shaft, and the baboons recoiled from it. Gravity did the rest, and dozens of baboons fell into a writhing heap in the tunnel.

  Laertes produced a skin of oil from somewhere, and poured it over the edge. Nasser lifted a pair of torches, lit them, and then tossed them into the twitching pile of undead baboons.

  The results were so impressive Caina wondered if the oil had even been necessary. The desiccated flesh of the baboons went up like kindling, and suddenly the bottom of the shaft transformed into an inferno. A thick plume of black smoke rose up, and within it Caina glimpsed the forms of dozens of nagataaru fading as they vanished back into the netherworld. She watched the shaft, fearing that the baboons would push past the flames and attack, but nothing appeared. Caina got to her feet with a sigh, coiling her rope and returning it to her belt.

  “So,” said Laertes, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Just what the hell were those things? I’ve fought in battles in three nations, but I’ve never been attacked by a horde of dead damn monkeys before.”

  “Baboons,” Morgant corrected. “They were baboons.”

  “Like it makes a difference,” said Laertes.

  “Undead baboons,” said Caina. “There were nagataaru bound within them. The Great Necromancers used to mummify animals sacred to their gods and raise them as undea
d.” She looked at the baboon-headed statue. “Kharnaces must have made his guardians in blasphemous mockery of the gods of Maat.” She looked at Annarah. “You didn’t see the creatures last time you were here?”

  Annarah shook her head.

  Morgant snorted. “Annarah might have removed my memory, but I think I’d remember being attacked by a horde of rotting baboons. How did you know to find that shaft?”

  “No mold,” said Caina.

  Kylon blinked. “Mold?”

  “There wasn’t any mold growing on the baboons,” said Caina.

  Kylon shrugged. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  Caina wiped some of the sweat from her brow. “It’s so humid here. All the trees have moss and mold growing on them, and there are mushrooms everywhere.” It was just as well that her leather armor was bulky enough to conceal her figure. A layer of sweat was making her shirt adhere to her skin. “The Maatish necromancers would have put preservation spells on their undead servants, but in this climate, some mold would have grown on them. So the baboons only came forth when their nagataaru sensed intruders on the island, and that meant…”

  “That meant they spent most of their time underground,” said Nasser, “where the air would be drier.”

  Caina nodded. “The shaft was convenient. I wasn’t expecting that – maybe a cave or a staircase to a crypt or something. Someplace where Annarah could raise a ward to hold them off.”

  “That was brilliant,” said Kylon, his voice quiet. “You just saved our lives.”

  Caina blinked. The compliment pleased her. Not the compliment itself – she had no use for praise. Attention was hardly the sort of thing a Ghost circlemaster wanted.

  Yet the fact that Kylon had said the compliment made all the difference in the world.

  “Thanks for catching me,” said Caina.

  “I promised I wasn’t going to let you get killed,” said Kylon.