Ghost in the Inferno (Ghost Exile #5) (23 page)

Caina did not wait for an answer, but walked to the bedroom and closed the door. She stripped out of the robe and donned clothes from the pack, the clothes she wore as a Ghost nightfighter. Black trousers, black boots, black gloves, a black jacket lined with thin steel plates to deflect knives. A black mask covered her head, concealing everything but her eyes. A belt with knives and other useful tools went around her waist, and she hid more throwing knives up her sleeves and tucked daggers into her boots. Her ghostsilver dagger went in a sheath at her belt.

She pulled out a long, black-wrapped bundle from the pack and opened it. The bundle contained two things. The first was a leather pouch lined with lead foil. It held three of crystalline vials of Elixir Restorata that she had stolen from Grand Master Callatas’s library, Elixirs that could heal any wounds.

Caina hoped she would not need them. Not that she could use them herself. The same old wounds that let her sense sorcery also caused the Elixir to become dangerously, explosively unstable when it touched her. If she ingested it, the resultant explosion would be impressive.

The second thing was the valikon. The sword was wrought of ghostsilver, and wound with spells that made it lethal to the nagataaru. If necessary, they could use it to kill Rolukhan and his nagataaru with one stroke, though Caina hoped to escape the Inferno without fighting anyone. She had promised Kylon to help kill Rolukhan and avenge his wife, though the interior of the Inferno, the heart of Rolukhan’s power, was certainly not the place to do that.

Both the valikon and the pouch of Elixir had been wrapped in her shadow-cloak, and Caina slung it around her shoulders. She didn’t know if Rolukhan or his nagataaru would have been able to sense the weapon or the Elixir, but best not to take chances.

Caina took the valikon, crossed the dining room, and returned to the anteroom. Nerina had changed to trousers and leather armor, her crossbow and a quiver of quarrels slung over her back. Azaces waited next to her, his expression grimmer than usual, his face drawn and tight beneath its scars.

“Here,” said Caina, handing Kylon the sheathed valikon. “Maybe you’ll have the chance to use this.”

Kylon nodded and hooked the valikon to his baldric, the hilt rising over his shoulder.

“Try not to get yourself mortally wounded this time,” said Morgant.

“It’s not an experience I’m keen to repeat,” said Kylon.

“No,” said Morgant, opening the door in the wall. Beyond yawned a dark archway, spiral stairs descending into the earth. A cold breeze blew out of the stairs, the air musty and carrying a faint scent of crumbling bone and mummified flesh.

Rhames had smelled much the same way.

“Well,” said Laertes. “Here we go again.”

“It can’t be any worse than the time we went to the netherworld,” said Nasser.

Kylon looked at him. “You went to the netherworld?”

“While escaping from Grand Master Callatas’s palace,” said Caina. “I wouldn’t recommend it.” She took a deep breath, the musty smell flooding her nostrils. “Let’s have some light.”

She held out her left hand and focused upon the pyrikon, asking it to take the form of a staff. The bracelet unwound and expanded, lengthening until it became a staff, white light shining from the end.

“Yes,” said Morgant. “That’s how the pyrikon looked the first time.”

“Let’s hope it knows what we need,” said Caina.

“I’ll go first,” said Kylon.

“No,” said Caina. “If the light repels the undead, I should go first.”

“If it doesn’t,” said Kylon, “you’ll need help.”

Caina hesitated, nodded. “Aye.”

She took another deep breath, regretted it again, and started down the stairs.

###

Silence reigned in the Halls of the Dead.

Kylon walked alongside Caina, the valikon in his right hand. The sigils upon the sword’s blade remained dark. As far as he knew, the sword’s symbols only burned with white fire in the presence of spirits. He hoped the weapon would prove effective against the undead.

Because he was certain that they would encounter the undead sooner or later.

The air around him crawled and throbbed with the cold, corrupting presence of necromantic power. He sensed the power radiating from the stone beneath his boots. It tainted the air like poisoned smoke.

That reminded him of Caer Magia.

“A bloodcrystal, do you think?” said Kylon in a quiet voice.

“Probably,” said Caina, the pyrikon staff in her left hand, the white glow throwing back the darkness. The staff’s light revealed the high, wide corridor rising around them, the walls carved with row after row of hieroglyphics. Kylon idly wondered what they said, and decided he was better off not knowing.

“An Ascendant Bloodcrystal?” said Kylon.

“No,” said Caina. “If there was an Ascendant Bloodcrystal down here, it would have killed us already.” She shook her head. With the mask and the shadow-cloak, he could not see her expression or detect her emotions, but he knew her well enough to hear the strain in her cold voice. “And it doesn’t feel like an Ascendant Bloodcrystal. Something else, I think. I don’t know. Let’s not find out.”

“Agreed,” said Kylon.

“How much farther?” said Caina.

“Not far,” said Morgant. “Three more galleries like this, I think. Then the stairs to the Hall of Forges.”

“We have not seen any undead yet,” said Laertes. He had his broadsword in hand and his Legion shield upon his arm, his eyes roving over the shadows.

“Oh, we will,” said Morgant. “Sooner than we might like. You’ve seen battlefields before?”

“More than I can recall,” said Laertes. “I was a centurion of the Legion.”

“Ever seen a battlefield where the corpses rise again?” said Morgant.

“I have missed that privilege,” said Laertes.

“We’re about to rectify that,” said Morgant.

Something rattled in the gloom ahead.

“What was that?” said Nasser.

“It sounded like bones tapping together,” said Nerina.

“Exactly,” said Morgant.

The gallery ended in archway and then opened into a large hall, much like the massive halls Kylon had seen branching off the Hall of Flames above. Dust coated the floor, and cobwebs hung from the carved walls and ceiling.

Hundreds of corpses walked with slow, limping treads within the hall.

Many of them were withered and mummified, leathery flesh clinging to ancient bone. Some of had crumbled to skeletons, their bones held together by glowing wisps of necromantic force. The empty eye sockets of the corpses glowed with the same eerie green light, and as Kylon looked at them he saw ghostly images superimposed over the undead flesh, images of living men and women and children.

Images, he realized, of the living men and women and children that the undead had been in life.

As one, every single one of the hundreds of undead filling the hall turned to look at them, a chorus of moans and hisses and maddened words in a dozen different languages filling the air.

“There are hundreds of them,” said Laertes.

“One thousand four hundred ninety-seven, to be precise,” said Nerina, her voice quavering.

The undead surged forward in a wave of leathery flesh and crumbling bone, skeletal toes tapping against the floor, the green light flaring and pulsing.

“Stay where you are, all of you,” said Caina. “Stay where you are!” She leveled the pyrikon staff, the pale white light shining around them in a dome. “We’ll see if Morgant was right or not.”

No one said anything to that. Kylon took the valikon in both hands, bracing himself. Every instinct screamed for him to attack, or to move to a more defensible position, but he dared not. The undead charged forward, raising hands hooked into claws…

And then they came to a sudden stop, slamming into the pale white glow as if it had been a solid wall of iron.

A hiss of fury went up from the undead, a cold wind blowing around Kylon. The undead spread around them in a ring, but the white glow from the pyrikon stopped them.

“Well, assassin,” said Laertes. “Seems your memory held after all.”

“Good thing,” said Morgant.

“Ciaran,” said Nasser. “See if you can move forward. The rest of you, stay within the light.”

Caina took a step forward, and then another. The undead retreated before the staff’s glow, flinching away from the light. Two more steps, and the undead backed away, the cold wind snapping at her shadow-cloak.

“It’s working,” said Nasser.

“All right,” said Caina. “Everyone stay with me. We’ll do this slowly. One step at a time.”

She took another step forward, and the wind gusted, throwing back the cowl of her shadow-cloak. Suddenly Kylon felt her emotional sense again, a mixture of cold determination and stark terror.

And as it did, a ripple of shock rose from the undead. They quailed back, every single one of the creatures staring at her.

“It is her,” hissed one of the creatures, speaking Istarish with a peculiar accent. The creature had neither lips nor tongue, but Kylon heard its words nonetheless. “It is her. She has come at last!”

“Her?” said Nasser, giving Caina a puzzled look. “They have mistaken you for a woman?”

Caina shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I can see you!” growled another corpse. “I can see your aura, I can see your shadow. I see the marks upon you. You are her. You are her!”

A dark realization bubbled up in Caina’s aura. “I think…”

“You are the Destroyer,” said a withered corpse.

“The abomination,” said another.

“The liberator,” said a third.

“The breaker of chains.”

“The Bloodmaiden.”

“The Bringer of Dust.”

"The Herald of Ruin!" 

The titles rose around them, whispered and shrieked and snarled.

“Oh,” said Caina.

“What is it?” said Nasser.

“They think that I’m the Moroaica,” said Caina.

“The Moroaica?” said Laertes. “That’s a Szaldic myth. A legend.”

“No, she is real,” said Caina, her aura churning with memory and dark emotion. “Or was real, as it happens.”

“They think you’re the Moroaica?” said Morgant. “Now why would they think something like that?”

“Because,” said Caina. “I was possessed by the Moroaica’s spirit for about a year.”

“Truly?” said Nasser.

“Truly,” said Caina. “I think it…left a mark, one that they can see.”

The undead backed away, all of them still staring at Caina.

“Come on,” she said. “If they’re afraid of me, then we can get out of here all the faster.”

Caina led the way, holding the pyrikon staff, and the undead retreated before the light in her hand, still whispering the names the Moroaica had accumulated over the millennia. Her emotions churned with dread and loathing, but she kept walking, the staff raised.

The undead parted, and they entered another hall, its lofty ceiling supported by dozens of thick pillars. It created the illusion of walking through a stone forest, albeit a forest whose trunks had been carved with Maatish hieroglyphics. Niches lined the distant walls of the hall, and in those niches rested treasures. Helmets and swords and armbands of gold, some of them adorned with jewels of multiple colors. All of them radiated arcane auras, some of them necromantic.

“This must have been Kharnaces’s treasury,” said Nasser. “Or armory, perhaps.”

“Maybe,” said Morgant, something strange entering his emotional sense. “Not that it matters now. I think…”

He froze, staring at the wall.

###

“Morgant?” said Caina. “Keep moving.”

There was a note of absolute command in her voice. It was impressive, really. At some point she had enjoyed lessons from a capable teacher. Certainly she had fooled Nasser into thinking that she was a man, even with the evidence right in front of his eyes.

Morgant didn’t care.

Right now, right before his eyes, resting in a niche in the far wall, was the torque that the Knight of Wind and Air had told him about.

The torque that could save the world.

Or kill it, if he left the torque behind.

The torque looked exactly as the Knight had described it. An armband of gold, its sides scribed with Maatish hieroglyphics, a jade scarab adoring its center. It looked valuable, certainly, and if the gold were melted down and sold, it could likely feed a large family for a few years or so.

But to keep the world from dying? That seemed unlikely.

“Morgant?” said Caina again.

For all that, the Knight had never lied to him. The Knight of Wind and Air enjoyed speaking in allusions and riddles and metaphors, as did all the djinn of the Azure Court. Yet the Knight had never told him a lie, and the djinni had said it plainly and simply.

If Morgant took the torque, the world would live.

If Morgant left the torque here in the darkness, the world was going to die.

As it perhaps deserved to die.

Did the world deserve to die?

“That torque,” Morgant heard himself say. “What sort of spell do you sense around it?”

Caina shrugged. “A powerful one. A…warding spell, I think? I’m not sure. I’ve never sensed one quite like it before. Whatever it is, it isn’t worth stopping.”

“No,” said Morgant. “I suppose not.”

If he left the torque behind, he was going to kill the world…and that was not an entirely disagreeable thought. For did not the world deserve death? He had seen so many tyrants over the centuries, so many men and women like Callatas who matched the Grand Master in cruelty if not power. So many murderers and thieves and slavers and liars who had succeeded in their crimes, who had died rich and fat and happy in their beds, escaping any punishment for their misdeeds. He supposed Caina would say that the common people were more virtuous, but Morgant knew that was nonsense. A poor man could be just as cruel and greedy as a rich one, and the only thing that kept a beggar from wreaking the havoc of someone like Callatas was simple lack of opportunity.

Nothing would ever change. Even if Caina fulfilled her little crusade and killed Callatas and stopped his Apotheosis, some new tyrant would arise. It was the nature of man. Those who overthrew tyrants became tyrants in turn themselves, and men killed and enslaved each other simply because they could. The world was a kind of hell, and mortal men and women were the devils who made it so.