Ghost in the Inferno (Ghost Exile #5)

by Jonathan Moeller

  “Kuldan Cimak,” said Caina. “What do you know of him?”

  “A minor emir,” said Agabyzus at once. “His ancestral lands are along the northern edge of the Trabazon steppes, a bit south of the Alqaarin Road. The estates are poor and support little more than subsistence farming, so Cimak himself is on the edge of impoverishment.”

  “What is he like?” said Caina. “Cimak himself, I mean?”

  “A wastrel and a drunkard with literary pretensions,” said Agabyzus. “His tastes in wine and women aggravate his perpetual poverty. I suspect that is why he was forced to accept the position of one of the Lieutenant of the Inferno’s khalmirs. Probably to pay his debts, or most likely to protect him from his creditors. A magistrate of the Padishah’s government cannot be prosecuted for debt until his term of office expires. Which is why so many of the hakims and wazirs hold onto their magistracies as long as…ah.”

  His dark eyes narrowed, and he nodded.

  “What is it?” said Caina. Agabyzus was clever, and had a knack for discerning the truth from scraps of information. Given the other things she had asked him to do, it was likely he had realized what she planned.

  “You don’t care about Kuldan Cimak,” said Agabyzus in a low voice. “You are more interested in his new office.”

  Caina nodded. “The less you know, the better. We are playing a game with high stakes.”

  “I understand,” said Agabyzus. “And if your work is indeed taking you to the Inferno…you are playing a surpassingly deadly game.”

  “What can you tell me about the Inferno?” said Caina.

  “Very little myself,” said Agabyzus. “Only rumor and hearsay. It is a name of dread among the Istarish, for those who enter the fortress never return. But that is why you had me bring Moryzai here, was it not? To speak with him of his experiences?”

  “It was,” said Caina. “I would like to talk to him at once, if possible.”

  “It has been arranged,” said Agabyzus, gathering up his papers.

  “Wait,” said Caina, thinking of some of the things Morgant and Samnirdamnus had told her.

  Agabyzus went motionless.

  “How likely,” said Caina at last, “do you think the possibility of civil war within Istarinmul?”

  Agabyzus considered the question. “Increasingly likely.”

  “Why?” said Caina.

  “Because we have no Padishah,” said Agabyzus. “At least not one who exerts a visible hand. Nahas Tarshahzon disappeared years ago, as did his sons. The Grand Wazir and the Grand Master claim to rule in his name, but…well, they are not the Padishah. If we had a Padishah, a strong Padishah, he could bring the emirs and the Brotherhood to heel. Erghulan Amirasku likes to think of himself as first among equals, but the other emirs…”

  “Place rather more emphasis on the ‘equal’ part, I imagine,” said Caina.

  “You imagine correctly,” said Agabyzus. “And Erghulan sides with the interests of the Brotherhood and the Grand Master. The southern emirs have never liked the northern nobles, and Erghulan is of the north. Sooner or later Istarinmul is going to explode.”

  Caina nodded, closed her eyes, and opened them again. “Did we do this?”

  “I’m sorry?” said Agabyzus.

  “Did we start the civil war?” said Caina. “With the…things that we have done?”

  With the things that she had done, the choices she had made.

  Agabyzus mulled the question for a moment.

  “Start it?” said Agabyzus. “Well, no war has begun yet. We haven’t started anything. Did we accelerate it? Certainly. War would have come eventually, but I daresay we sped it up.”

  “I see,” said Caina, keeping the guilt from her face.

  “But it is better this way, I deem,” said Agabyzus. “If the southern emirs had risen against the Brotherhood and Callatas a few years ago, they would have been crushed utterly. Now, though…now the Brotherhood has been weakened, and in their desperation they have made many enemies. When the war comes, Callatas and Erghulan and the Brotherhood shall have far fewer allies.” He lowered his voice. “And we know the true reason for the Grand Master’s actions, do we not? With that knowledge, we have a better chance of victory.”

  Caina nodded. She had not considered it in that light. Part of her wondered if it was a simple justification, but Agabyzus’s logic rang true.

  “One other thing before we talk with Moryzai,” said Caina. She drew out the curved little knife from the valikon’s bundle and placed it on the table. “Do you recognize this weapon?”

  Agabyzus squinted at it. “I fear not.” He grimaced. “Ugly little thing. It looks…somewhat like the skinning knives the Teskilati torturers use in their work.”

  “Then it’s a Teskilati weapon?” said Caina, alarmed. She had eluded the Padishah’s secret police so far, but if the Teskilati had been watching her safe houses…

  “No,” said Agabyzus. “It’s much too small for that. Too fragile.” He scratched at his bearded chin. “I would say that it’s the sort of knife a physician would use for surgery, but…”

  “But those kind of knives are usually straight,” said Caina, remembering the collection of blades that her teacher Komnene had used for medical work.

  “Where did you find it?” said Agabyzus. “It doesn’t look as if it has ever been used.”

  “In the street outside one of our safe houses,” said Caina. “The one in the Old Quarter, a bit north of the Bazaar.”

  “Perhaps someone thought to send you a message,” said Agabyzus.

  “They should have left a damned note,” said Caina, shaking her head. “But a message from whom? If it was the Teskilati or the Kindred or the Umbarians, they wouldn’t play games like this. They would have just kicked down the door and killed me. Why leave a knife on the ground?”

  “Maybe someone accidentally dropped it,” said Agabyzus.

  “Do you really believe that?” said Caina.

  “No. Not under the circumstances,” said Agabyzus. “I shall have enquiries made among our friends in the Old Quarter. Maybe one of them know something. Perhaps it is just as well that you are leaving the city for a time. If someone is indeed following you, it would be easier to elude them in the open spaces of the steppes…”

  “Or to find and trap them,” said Caina. “Come. Let us speak to Moryzai. I would not want him to get impatient and leave while I brooded upon my fears.”

  Agabyzus snorted. “I forgot you have not yet met Moryzai. I fear it would take more than impatience to make him leave his dinner.” They stood, Agabyzus tucking his letters away in a satchel. “I should warn you. His manners are rather…uncouth.”

  “It takes more than uncouth manners to frighten me,” said Caina. Agabyzus nodded and led her to the corridor that opened into the Inn of the Crescent Moon’s private dining rooms. Merchants who wished to conduct their business in privacy typically rented them, and Caina had used them herself more than once. Agabyzus walked to the third door and pushed it open, and Caina followed him inside. The smell of spicy Istarish food filled her nostrils. A gleaming table dominated the room, its surface covered with dishes, and an enormous man sat at the far end, eating curried rice and lamb with vigorous enthusiasm. Standing up, he would not have been much taller than Caina, yet he had to weigh three hundred and fifty pounds. He wore a robe that could have served as a tent, and sweat trickled from beneath his turban. To judge from his lack of eyebrows and beard, the man was likely a eunuch. Denied one indulgence of the flesh, eunuchs sometimes turned to others, which explained the food piled upon the table.

  “Moryzai,” said Agabyzus.

  “Ah,” said the big man, looking up from his food. His voice was high and phlegmy and gurgled as he spoke. Despite that his Istarish was clear and formal, even stately. “So this is your mysterious employer? Am I am last to be granted the honor of an interview?”

  “She is,” said Agabyzus. “This is Moryzai, the finest forger in all of Istarinmul. He creates fake w
rits and proclamations so detailed that not even the Padishah’s own scribes can detect the forgery. I have employed his services for our business on your behalf many times.”

  “Bah,” said Moryzai, gesturing with his fork. “The Padishah’s own scribes are clumsy imbeciles. The great danger of my work is that I shall create a forgery so perfect that the lack of incompetence will immediately proclaim it a fake.” He speared a bit of lamb upon his fork, swallowed it with a sigh of pleasure, and then pointed the utensil at Caina. “Just as you, my dear, are obviously fake.”

  “Oh?” said Caina.

  This ought to be amusing.

  “Our mutual acquaintance,” Moryzai nodded at Agabyzus, “does not share the details of his business, but it is quite clearly illegal, and I have no wish to speculate upon it further, lest I be overburdened with knowledge and become a liability to your organization. But an organization such as yours, whatever it is, is almost always governed by a hard and ruthless man. The thought of a pretty young woman in her twenties ruling a criminal organization is, frankly, too ludicrous to believe. You ought to be on the arm of some fat merchant or dancing for the pleasure of an emir.”

  “That’s very sweet,” said Caina. She glanced at Agabyzus. “You didn’t tell me he was a charmer.”

  “It is indeed tragic my manhood was taken as a child,” said Moryzai, taking another bite of rice. “Truly, my wits would have made me one of the greatest seducers in history. Ah, well.”

  “Alas, I can conceal nothing from your keen wit, master Moryzai,” said Caina. “Suffice it to say, I represent my employer, and he wishes me to ask some questions of you.”

  Agabyzus was too practiced a spy to smile, but she caught the faint twitch of amusement near his eyes.

  “Fair enough,” said Moryzai. “Say on, then.” He stabbed another bit of lamb on his fork.

  “What do you know,” said Caina, “about the Inferno?”

  The bit of lamb froze halfway to Moryzai’s mouth.

  “I know that you once worked there,” said Caina. “I know that soon after you were trained as a scribe, you were sold to a new owner, and you accompanied him to the Inferno. I also know that you escaped at some point, made your way to Istarinmul, and established yourself as a forger here.”

  “Mmm,” said Moryzai. He put down his fork and glared at Agabyzus. “You know far too much about me.”

  Agabyzus shrugged. “I merely observe. One cannot fault a man for that.”

  “No,” said Moryzai.

  “All that is true,” said Caina, “yet fails to answer my question.”

  “Clever as well as pretty,” said Moryzai. “Where did your employer find you? One can buy pretty women easily enough on the block – at least until the Balarigar destroyed the market for slaves – but they usually have nothing but hot air between their ears.”

  “That is very flattering,” said Caina, “but still does not answer the question.”

  “No,” said Moryzai. “Very well. I shall tell you what I know about the Inferno. But you will first tell your employer one thing.”

  “What is that?” said Caina.

  “That he is an utter fool,” said Moryzai. “I do not know if you are thieves or foreign spies or something else, but if your employer is wise he shall stay far away from the Inferno. All that awaits you within its walls are torment and death if you are fortunate…and torment and unending death if you are not.”

  Caina’s unease grew. Not for the first time she wished Annarah had picked somewhere else to hide. Yet her stratagem had worked. Callatas had searched for a hundred and fifty years and still had not found the Staff and Seal of Iramis.

  “I will convey that message to him,” said Caina. “Please, continue.”

  Moryzai scoffed, but kept speaking. “You must understand something first.” He considered for a moment, and Caina waited. “I was born a slave upon an estate in Istarish Cyrica, and I thought I would spend my life toiling in my master’s fields. But I was clever, and I taught myself to read. So as a boy I was made a eunuch and trained as a scribe, yet I do not regret that in the slightest. Do you know why?”

  Caina shook her head, fascinated by the strange fear on Moryzai’s face.

  “Because,” he said, “I saw what happened to the slaves who were sent to the Inferno to become Immortals. I do not think they have souls once the training is finished. Certainly they no longer have consciences.”

  “Go on,” said Caina.

  Moryzai blinked, shaking away the memories. “As I said, I was trained as a scribe, and sold from master to master. None of them had any complaint with my work. Then I was sold to Kurzir Shahan.”

  Caina blinked. “Rezir Shahan’s father.”

  “Aye,” said Moryzai, surprised. “You knew him?”

  She remembered the pain and shocked fear in Rezir’s eyes as she had killed him.

  “I met him once,” said Caina.

  “Rezir had a reputation for cruelty,” said Moryzai, “but he was only a pale shadow of his father. I knew fear as Kurzir’s scribe, and lived in dread of making an error. Then Kurzir was appointed as the Lieutenant of the Inferno. I thought I had known fear before, but then I accompanied my master to his new post at the Inferno.”

  He fell silent, staring at the congealed sauces upon the nearest plate as if he had lost his appetite.

  “Go on,” said Caina.

  “The Inferno is a fortress,” said Moryzai, “but it is entirely underground, beneath the southern mountains of the Vale of Fallen Stars. All the histories say the Maatish were master necromancers, but they were also superb engineers. They carved the Inferno out of the bones of the mountains, and it has never fallen to an army. Do you know why we call it the Inferno?”

  Caina did, but she shook her head so Moryzai would keep talking.

  “Because it is the furnace,” he said, “where living men are destroyed and reforged as Immortals in the service of the Padishah. Or, more accurately, in the service of the Grand Master of the College of Alchemists. There are alchemical laboratories within the Inferno where the vile elixirs are prepared. There are halls where the slaves are forced to kill each other for the amusement of the Lieutenant, so their souls and hearts become inured to blood and death. There are chambers filled with instruments of torture, where those who fail in combat are taught the meaning of pain so they can become strong. Thousands have died inside the Inferno over the decades, thousands and thousands beyond count. Those who survive, those who endure the training and the torture and the elixirs of sorcery…they come out as something colder and harder and more malevolent than human.”

  “Immortals,” said Caina.

  Little wondered Rolukhan served as Lieutenant of the place. Nagataaru feasted on death and pain, feeding some of that stolen energy back to their hosts, and the Inferno would be an eternal fountain of pain and misery.

  “Yes,” said Moryzai, his voice fading to a whisper. “The Immortals call the Inferno the Iron Hell, and they are not wrong to name it that. But even that, even all the tortures and horrors of the place, were not the worst of it. The dead walk the deepest halls of the Inferno.”

  “Dead?” said Caina. “You mean undead?”

  “Like the golden dead,” said Moryzai. “The Inferno was originally a Maatish fortress, remember, and the pharaohs and necromancer-priests commanded vast armies of the undead. According to legend, the Bloodmaiden destroyed Maat two thousand years ago, but not all the fortresses fell. Some held out and tried to carve petty kingdoms for themselves. In time the Inferno was abandoned, but its undead remained.”

  “Then the Inferno is filled with ancient Maatish undead?” said Caina. That was a disturbing thought. The undead Rhames had been a Great Necromancer of Maat, and if Caina had not stopped him he would have killed half the Empire and conquered the rest. “Why have they not overrun the fortress?”

  “Because they remain confined to the lower halls,” said Moryzai. “No one can command them, not even the Grand Master himself. Yet they
never leave the lower halls. Sometimes the Lieutenant will order a troublesome slave thrown into the lower halls as punishment. The undead slay their victims in short order, and the victims rise themselves as undead.”

  Caina frowned. “So whoever is killed in the Inferno rises again as an undead creature? How does the Lieutenant keep the undead from overrunning the entire fortress?”

  “Pardon,” said Moryzai. “I was not clear. Only those slain in the lower halls, the Halls of the Dead, rise again. Those who are killed in training in the upper halls, or executed at the Lieutenant’s command, do not rise again. They, at least, get to escape the torment of the Inferno.”

  “As you did,” said Caina.

  “By accident,” said Moryzai, his gurgling voice growing fainter. “It was a mistake. I…well, I have never been particularly graceful. The peril of using one’s mind to earn one’s bread, I suppose. My master Kurzir gave me a message to deliver, and as I hastened, I lost my balance and fell from one of the walkways and into the Halls of the Dead.”

  “How did you escape?” said Caina.

  Moryzai offered a sickly little smile. “I ran. I ran as fast as I could. I was younger and lighter in those days, and I could still run. The undead…they called out to me as I ran. The oldest demanded that I stop in the name of their pharaoh and his gods. The younger ones screamed the manner of their deaths and demanded that I share their fate. I managed to climb my way out and I fled the Inferno. By Istarish law, a slave who deserts his master is crucified, but I thought crucifixion preferable to remaining another moment in that awful place. I fled to the city and turned my skills to less legal but more profitable ends. I feared Kurzir’s vengeance, but in time he died and his son Rezir ascended to the Emirate of the Vale of Fallen Stars. I suppose he had other matters to occupy than my fate, and then the Balarigar slew him at Marsis, may the Living Flame roast his black soul. His brother Tanzir became emir in his place, and Tanzir was a bookish, quiet sort. Though I have heard he found his backbone of late, and is most angry with the Brotherhood of Slavers.”