Jonathan Moeller - The Ghosts 09 - Ghost in the Surge

by Jonathan Moeller

  “Then how do we kill her?” said Caina.

  “By bringing her physically to the netherworld,” said Talekhris, “and killing her there.”

  Caina had visited the netherworld in the flesh last year, forced to do so by the renegade Alchemist Ibrahmus Sinan. It had been a strange, terrifying place, haunted by malevolent spirits, her thoughts capable of reshaping the very land itself. Only Jadriga’s aid had kept the spirits of the netherworld from killing Caina.

  “Why would that work?” said Caina.

  “Because that will remove her advantage,” said Talekhris. “Entering the netherworld in the flesh would force her spirit solely into the netherworld. If she is killed there, she will have no means to return to the physical world, and her spirit will go to whatever awaits it beyond the netherworld.”

  Corvalis barked his harsh laugh. “Well, that’s simple enough. We’ll just have to lure her into the netherworld. I’m sure she’ll cooperate.”

  “No subterfuge is required, Master Corvalis,” said Talekhris. “The Moroaica will enter the netherworld in the flesh of her own volition,” he glanced at the ceiling, “and very soon, I fear.”

  “Why would she do that?” said Corvalis. “Surely she is aware of her weakness.”

  “Because,” said Caina, “of her great work.”

  Talekhris nodded.

  “What is the great work?” said Caina.

  “You know,” said Talekhris. “She has told you, many times.”

  “The destruction of the world and its reforging,” said Caina, Jadriga’s furious words echoing in her thoughts. “An end to suffering, to pain, to famine, to death. And then once the world is remade, she will make war upon the heavens themselves, make the gods pay for the suffering of mankind.”

  Talekhris nodded again.

  “But how is she going to accomplish this?” said Caina. “Can she truly make war upon the gods?”

  “I doubt it,” said Talekhris. “But the magnitude of the sorcery required will likely destroy the world. She needs three things to cast her great work.” He gestured with one hand. “The Staff of the Elements, the ashes of a phoenix spirit, and the Ascendant Bloodcrystal. In the last two years, she has obtained all three of the necessary tools.”

  “Sicarion said that,” said Caina. “That she would use the phoenix ashes and the power of the elemental princes to raise the dead. But surely that would take a vast quantity of phoenix ashes?”

  “Phoenix ashes can kindle a fire,” said Talekhris, “and fires spread. With the power provided by the Ascendant Bloodcrystal and the elemental princes, she can spread the flames of the phoenix spirit across the world and raise uncounted millions of the dead.”

  “But that would be disastrous,” said Caina. She remembered what had happened when Sinan drank his unfinished Elixir Rejuvenata, how it had transformed him into a grotesque, ravening nightmare. “She would create monsters. Millions upon millions of monsters.”

  “Indeed,” said Talekhris. “She has convinced herself otherwise, I think. Perhaps she believes she will create millions of immortals free of suffering and hunger. And once she has done that, she will attempt to rip open a gate to the realms beyond the netherworld. If she is successful, the resultant backlash of force will almost certainly destroy this world. Assuming anything is left after the elemental princes awaken.”

  “Which is why she is physically entering the netherworld,” said Caina. “If she is going to open a gate to the seat of the gods, she will have to do it from there.”

  “The spell requires the additional power of the netherworld,” said Talekhris. “For the netherworld is the source of sorcery, and within the netherworld spells that would be impossible here become feasible.”

  “Why cast the spell in New Kyre?” said Caina. “Does it have something to do with the war?”

  “No,” said Talekhris. “The barrier between the mortal world and the netherworld is thinner in New Kyre, specifically in a place called the Pyramid of Storm. Do you know of the Surge?”

  “The oracle of the Kyracian people,” said Caina. “Kylon mentioned her.”

  “The Surge passes her mantle of power from generation to generation,” said Talekhris. “The thinness of the barrier between worlds within the Pyramid allows her to see the shadows of the future, to observe far-off events.”

  “Then she is dead,” said Caina. “Jadriga likely killed her.” Perhaps they could use that to rouse the Kyracians against the threat in their midst.

  “Most likely,” said Talekhris.

  “Perhaps the Emperor is safe,” said Corvalis. “If Jadriga is casting the great work, she’ll be vulnerable. She’ll want Sicarion to protect her, so he will stay away from the Emperor and the Archons.”

  “No. I think Sicarion will go after the Emperor as a distraction,” said Caina. “It’s exactly what the Moroaica would tell him to do.”

  Corvalis snorted. “Then our task is easy enough. Find a sorceress of immense power, defeat her, and save the world and the Emperor in the process. Is that it?”

  “Essentially,” said Caina.

  “Well,” said Corvalis at last. “When do we start?”

  “Soon,” said Talekhris. “After Harkus returns with fresh supplies, we will set out for New Kyre.”

  “The Legions will try to stop us,” said Caina. “As will the Ghosts of Marsis…if Sicarion and Ranarius left any of them alive.” She thought of Jiri and Radast, of Hiram Palaegus and Ducas, the other Ghosts of the Marsis circle that she knew. Had Sicarion killed them all?

  More blood on his hands.

  More blood Caina would avenge, if she could.

  “They will,” said Talekhris, “but they cannot stop my powers.”

  “Don’t kill anyone,” said Caina, getting to her feet with alarm. “Both the Ghosts and the Legions are only doing their duty. For all they know, I did kill Aiodan Maraeus in cold blood.”

  “Of course not,” said Talekhris. “I started down this path to stop the Moroaica, to save innocent lives, not take them. Though my errors have resulted in more deaths than I wish to remember.” He rubbed his face, and for a moment he looked tired. Like a man who had indeed spent nine hundred years pursuing his enemy across a dozen nations. “But the chance to end it is now within our reach. If we follow the Moroaica into the netherworld when she casts her spells, we can kill her.”

  Caina nodded. “Thank you again for your aid.”

  “I have fought her for far longer than you,” said Talekhris, “but she has impacted your life as much as she has mine, and you have the right to face her alongside me. More, I welcome your aid, and that of Corvalis. Perhaps together we can at last rid the world of her evil.”

  “Perhaps we can,” said Caina.

  Yet the cold dread within her did not budge. Ranarius had killed all those people in Varia Province. Sicarion had killed Halfdan, and claimed to have killed many more Ghosts.

  How many more would die before they stopped Jadriga?

  Of course, if they did not stop Jadriga, then the entire world might die.

  “We had best try to get some rest,” said Caina, “before we head to Maltaer’s ship.”

  Talekhris nodded. “I shall keep watch for Sicarion.”

  ###

  The next morning they crept from the vaults and made their way to the harbor.

  Marsis was under guard. Legionaries patrolled every street, and Caina saw parties going from house to house, searching for any trace of the Lord Governor’s assassin. The gates had been sealed, and armed cohorts stood in guard. Sooner or later pressure from the merchants would force the Legionaries to reopen the gates, but for now, Marsis was sealed.

  Without Talekhris’s spells, they never would have made it out of the city.

  Much as Caina loathed sorcery, the Sage’s powers were useful. He cast a spell to mask their presence, a subtle working of mind sorcery that made any observers overlook their presence. Even a first-year initiate of the Magisterium could have penetrated the spell, bu
t none of Marsis’s magi had joined the search.

  Not surprising, given than Andromache and Kylon had wiped out Marsis’s chapter of the Magisterium two years past. Their replacements must have decided to err on the side of caution.

  They reached Maltaer’s ship in the harbor. The smuggler had changed little in the three years since Caina had seen him Rasadda, still clad in expensive clothes, still mocking and smirking. He even dared to make jokes about Talekhris as the eight members of the Venatorii accompanying the Sage scowled, but Talekhris did not seem to care.

  Caina wondered how they would escape from the harbor. The twin fortress-lighthouses guarding the harbor were equipped with ballistae and catapults. Talekhris solved the problem by conjuring a fog so thick that the waiting Legionaries could not see them, and Maltaer’s ship sailed out of the harbor and into the western sea.

  Caina stood at the stern as the ship sailed free of the fog, watching the coast vanish behind her.

  She wondered if she would ever see the Empire again.

  Chapter 12 - The Great Work

  Night fell, and Sicarion made his way through New Kyre’s canal-lined streets.

  The city was tense, with squads of ashtairoi patrolling the streets and the great walls that had warded New Kyre from armies since the end of the Third Empire. Sicarion saw men stockpiling weapons and arrows, food and water, all in preparation for the disaster that would unfold if the Archons and the Emperor failed to make peace.

  Even in the midst of the preparations for war, Sicarion moved unnoticed through the streets.

  Half of a million people lived within New Kyre’s walls, most of them in the hulking apartment towers ringing the city. Dozens of small boats, carrying passengers and cargo, made their way through their canals, lit by lanterns upon their prow and stern. Sicarion moved unseen through the crowds, simply a short man in a dark cloak.

  He could have used a spell to conceal himself, but that was too dangerous.

  Sorcerers filled New Kyre.

  Most of the Kyracian nobility had some ability at sorcery. Those with middling power became stormdancers, wielding the power of wind and storm to lend their limbs strength and speed in battle. It made for a fearsomely effective combination. Sicarion knew that well, given the number of times he had failed to kill Kylon of House Kardamnos.

  He would have the chance to rectify that, soon enough.

  The most powerful became stormsingers, able to call the wrath of lightning and storm upon their enemies and the winds to fill the sails of New Kyre’s fleet, giving the Kyracians skill at sea unmatched by their foes. Even the master magi of the Magisterium often failed against a stormsinger’s power. If Sicarion used a spell of disguise here, sooner or later one of the stormsingers would notice.

  Even he might not survive that.

  And he had survived for centuries. He had no intention of dying here.

  If he perished, he would not have the chance to enjoy the greatest pleasure of all.

  They were all fools. The stormsingers and the stormdancers, the lords of the Empire and the Assembly of New Kyre, the emirs of Istarinmul and the khadjars of Anshan, they were fools forever scrambling in pursuit of power. Like jackals fighting to the death over a single piece of carrion.

  Even the mistress was a fool, fighting her mad quest to wrest some shred of justice from an unjust world.

  None of them understood that killing was the greatest pleasure, the ultimate power.

  Sicarion’s grin widened.

  Soon he would see the mistress kill an entire world.

  He looked at the crowded slums, at the sailors and the soldiers and the mercenaries making for the taverns, at the slaves going about their masters’ business, at the women holding crying children and the men discussing the war in low voices.

  They were all going to die.

  He was going to watch them die when the mistress’s insane plan killed them all.

  Sicarion made his way to the heart of the city, moving past the towering, elaborate ziggurats that housed the noble houses of New Kyre. Intricate reliefs and statuary decorated some of the ziggurats, harkening back to the glory of Old Kyrace. Others held lush gardens upon their terraces, the gardens seeming to hang over the city like some mad poet’s vision.

  Such beautiful homes. Pity they would become the tombs of their owners.

  Sicarion came to the Agora of the Archons, where the Assembly and the Archons of New Kyre met to govern the Kyracian people. He stopped in the center of the Agora and gazed up at the Pyramid of Storm.

  Its dark bulk rose against the night sky, a thousand feet tall, its terraced sides the color of storms. Statues of ancient Kyracian heroes lined the terraces of the massive ziggurat, the great stormsingers and stormdancers and warriors from the long history of the Kyracian people. Thousands of years of history rose before Sicarion, memorialized in stone and statue.

  And all of it about to end.

  He started up the stairs to the Sanctuary at the pyramid’s apex.

  A young woman in blue-green robes intercepted him, a corroded bronze amulet of three eyes hanging against her breasts. Her eyes shifted color as he looked upon her, blurring from the gray of a furious storm to the blue-green of a calm sea and back again.

  “This is ground sacred to the Kyracian people, outlander,” said the priestess of the Surge. “Turn back, or suffer our wrath.”

  Sicarion drew back his hood, and enjoyed the spasm of fear that went over the priestess’s haughty face. “Oh, I think your mistress will allow it. Since she is a captive of my mistress.”

  The priestess attempted to rearrange her expression into its aloof mask, but the fear remained. “Then come.”

  She stalked up the stairs, and Sicarion followed at a more leisurely pace, forcing her to slow to stay with him. He could practically taste her fear, and saw the sweat on the back of her neck. Oh, but it would be sweet to kill her, to slide his blade between her ribs and watch the agony flood her eyes as the life drained from her…

  His hand twitched towards his serrated dagger, the faithful blade he had used to kill so many since the days of the Fourth Empire.

  No. No killing yet. It might disrupt the mistress’s great work.

  He could always kill her when he left.

  The stairs ended at the Pyramid’s apex, all of New Kyre spread below him. A small temple crowned the Pyramid, built of gray stone, its sides ringed in columns, its walls adorned with scenes showing the gods of storm and sea granting the first Archons of Old Kyrace authority over the waves.

  The Sanctuary of the Surge, the oracle of New Kyre.

  Sicarion had never been more than a middling sorcerer. True, he had skill at certain applications of the necromantic sciences, but the art of killing had always interested him more than the study of sorcery. Yet even without working a spell, he could sense the power gathered within the Sanctuary.

  This was a place of tremendous arcane power…and the mistress had been busy.

  “The Surge awaits you within,” said the priestess, as if he had been summoned.

  Sicarion grinned at her. “Such pretty eyes you have, my dear. Changing colors so quickly. Perhaps I should keep them as a trophy.”

  She flinched, and Sicarion laughed and strode into the Sanctuary.

  Inside the Sanctuary was simple and unadorned, its floors and walls sheathed in white marble. A square pool of water filled the central third of the floor, glowing with pale silver light. Sicarion saw vistas within the water as he drew near. A rift of golden fire filling the sky. Men and women falling to their knees in a marketplace, screaming and sobbing. A silver spear flashing in the storm, all the world revolving around its blow. The dead clawing their way free from the earth, wreathed in golden flame.

  But even the strange pool held his attention for only a moment.

  The mistress, indeed, had been busy.

  Thousands upon thousands of Maatish hieroglyphs had been carved into the marble walls, each one pulsing with a faint green light. Intric
ate geometric diagrams connected the hieroglyphs, focusing and channeling the arcane force into patterns so complex that Sicarion could not possibly follow them. The latent power, summoned and waiting, made the floor vibrate beneath his boots.

  The Ascendant Bloodcrystal itself floated at the far end of the pool, above a single massive hieroglyph written in phoenix ashes. The crystal was the length of Sicarion’s right forearm and intricate beyond belief, hundreds of Maatish hieroglyphs scribed in emerald flame upon its facets. The thing contained more sorcerous power than Sicarion had ever encountered in his life, and if the mistress had not shielded it within her warding spells, every single wielder of arcane force in New Kyre, and for a hundred miles in every direction, would have felt its presence.

  If not for the warding spells, the crystal would have drained away the lives of every living thing in New Kyre by now.

  “So the scarred one comes.”

  The woman’s voice was strange.

  It was three voices speaking in perfect harmony. The first was the voice of a young girl, calm and serene. The second was the voice of a woman at the height of her beauty, seductive and confident. The third was the rasping voice of an old, old woman, heavy with sorrow and wisdom.

  The Surge stood in the corner of the Sanctuary. Despite her peculiar chorus of a voice, she was only middle-aged. She wore a simple white robe, belted at the waist, her hair hanging in iron-gray curtains around her shoulders and back. Her eyes glowed with silver light, the same light as the pool.

  There was no fear on her face, only contempt and loathing. That irritated him, and his hand strayed to the handle of his dagger.

  “The patchwork man, the quilt of corpses,” said the Surge, “pieced together out of stolen lives. The man who replaced himself piece by piece until nothing remains, only blood and rust and death.”

  Sicarion worked a simple spell to detect the presence of sorcery. Tremendous power radiated from the pool and the wards the Moroaica had cut into the walls. The Surge herself carried great power, but she had no active wards, no defensive spells.