Jonathan Moeller - The Ghosts 08 - Ghost in the Mask

by Jonathan Moeller

  And nothing at all compared to Rhames’s power.

  Rhames lifted a skeletal hand, and a blast of shadow-wreathed emerald flame lanced towards the Moroaica as Claudia finished her spell, combining her strength with Maena’s.

  Rhames’s attack hammered into their wards, and Claudia screamed as the spells collapsed, the backlash burning through her. Maena shrieked, her green eyes widening, a spasm going through her limbs. Their ward had not even come close to deflecting Rhames’s strike. But their ward had slowed the attack, and the Moroaica cast a spell of her own. Power snarled and hissed around her, and she flung Rhames’s spell back at him, following with an assault of her own. The thunderous detonation ripped apart the floor around the Great Necromancer, hot shards of stone raining in all directions.

  But it left Rhames untouched.

  “Pathetic!” said Rhames. “Truly it is a barbarous age, if the peasants consider the likes of you a figure of fear!”

  “The wards!” said the Moroaica, and Claudia pushed aside her pain and weariness and began the spell again.

  ###

  The seset-kadahn charged Caina.

  The thing moved faster, far faster, than something that large should move. The khopesh blurred in its hands, and Caina dodged, lashing out with her ghostsilver dagger. She suspected the creature’s superhuman speed would make it difficult to change direction quickly. Her blade bit into the seset-kadahn’s thigh, and she heard a sizzle, smoke rising from the wound.

  But the seset-kadahn wheeled, turning with inhuman grace, and Caina realized that she had miscalculated.

  The fist of its free hand slammed into her chest, pain exploding through her torso. The impact threw her into the air, and she hit the floor a few yards away, the breath exploding from her lungs.

  The seset-kadahn wheeled to face her, khopesh coming up for the kill.

  ###

  Kylon’s senses reeled with the magnitude of the arcane battle before him, with the power pouring off the Ascendant Bloodcrystal. He could not think, could not concentrate through sheer cacophony raging through the Chamber of Ascension.

  Rhames and the Moroaica flung spells of tremendous power at each other, the stone floor between them starting to bubble and smoke. Claudia Aberon and Maena Tulvius stood behind the ancient sorceress, throwing all their power into warding spells, their combined strength just barely sufficient to slow Rhames’s assaults. Sicarion fought at the Moroaica’s right, his blades shining with a green glow as he destroyed Dust Shade after Dust Shade. Lord Martin fought at the Moroaica’s left, his sword also showing a green glow. The fight was indeed desperate, if Sicarion had deigned to enspell Martin’s sword.

  Harkus stood at Kylon’s side, loosing bursts of silver light from his rod.

  It was like trying to put out an inferno with a thimble of water.

  He saw Caina fall, saw the seset-kadahn stoop over her for the kill. Corvalis jumped to meet the creature, his sword ringing against the undead thing’s sword. The seset-kadahn wielded its khopesh with superhuman skill and vigor, and it drove Corvalis back step by step. Corvalis stumbled, and the seset-kadahn closed.

  Kylon shook off his paralysis.

  He sprinted forward, drawing upon the sorcery of air and water, and sprang into the air, his sword trailing white mist. His sword came down, opening the seset-kadahn from neck to navel, frost coating the wound. The hulking undead stumbled, and Kylon slashed, tearing another gash on the creature’s chest. Caina scrambled to her feet, and Kylon stabbed again, spearing the seset-kadahn through the gut. Frost spread from the wound, and Kylon yanked his sword free, raising the weapon in guard.

  The seset-kadahn shook itself. Frozen black slime, not blood, fell from the wounds he had dealt. And even as he watched, the wounds shrank, closing themselves as the necromancy within the creature repaired itself.

  The warrior was already undead, and couldn’t be killed. It couldn’t even be destroyed. It drew its power from Rhames himself, and even with his sorcerous speed, Kylon could not get past the creature to reach the Great Necromancer.

  And even if he could, Rhames would kill him in a heartbeat.

  The seset-kadahn’s bronze mask turned to face him, and the creature charged.

  ###

  Claudia’s world narrowed to a haze of agonized effort, her mind and muscles trembling with the strain.

  Neither Rhames nor the Moroaica had slowed their efforts, and the air between them blazed with power. Green fire and blue-white lightning and blasts of psychokinetic force ripped back and forth. The Moroaica and Rhames lashed at each other with spells that Claudia could not even begin to comprehend, wielding forces that could have reduced most of the surrounding city to smoking glass.

  She glimpsed Maena standing with her hands over her head, back arched, her torn green gown drenched in sweat. Master magus or not, the woman that had once been Ranarius, preceptor of Cyrioch, was straining to the utmost.

  Martin battled at Claudia’s side, his sword shining with an eerie green glow. Rhames focused his attention upon the Moroaica, and the seset-kadahn pursued Caina and Corvalis and Kylon. Wave after wave of Dust Shades flowed at Claudia, reaching with their immaterial hands. Sicarion was a blur of steel near the Moroaica, his green-glowing blades destroying any gray shadows that drew near his mistress.

  None of the Dust Shades reached Claudia.

  Martin saw to that.

  Harkus hung back, his silvery rod leveled, destroying any Dust Shade that threatened the Lord Governor.

  The Moroaica flung another spell at Rhames, and the entire basilica trembled like a dying thing, cracks spreading across the floor. Rhames bellowed with rage or pain, if such a creature could feel pain, and crossed his arms over his chest. The Moroaica’s power blazed around in him a hurricane of sorcerous wrath, and for an instant Claudia thought she had succeeded in hammering through his layered wards. The Moroaica did not hesitate, but began another spell.

  Rhames roared an incantation in Maatish and flung out his bony hands just as the Moroaica finished her spell.

  The spells crashed together, power straining against power…and then they exploded.

  ###

  Caina dodged another slash of the khopesh, her ghostsilver dagger drawing a smoking line across the seset-kadahn’s thigh. The bronze-masked warrior showed no pain, not even discomfort, and launched a backhand in Caina’s direction with blurring speed. She just managed to duck under the swing, the bottom of the undead warrior’s fist brushing her cowl.

  Kylon and Corvalis danced around the creature, landing hit after hit. Black slime leaked from the wounds Corvalis dealt, while frost lingered in the gashes Kylon carved. None if it mattered. The wounds did not slow the seset-kadahn in the slightest, and the undead thing could not be destroyed.

  They could only defeat it by destroying Rhames himself.

  Part of Caina’s mind, the cold part trained by the Ghosts and hardened in bitter experience, considered this while the rest of her mind fought. Rhames must have concealed his final canopic jar nearby. Yet where? She doubted he had slipped into Caer Magia and hidden the thing earlier, since Maena might have found it. It had to be on his person. Yet Rhames’s robes were not loose enough to hide a marble jar holding a mummified organ, and the seset-kadahn wore only a kilt and a bronze mask.

  Where could he have hidden the jar?

  She tried to think of the answer, and felt a surge of powerful sorcery, even through the aura of the bloodcrystal and the raging battle between Jadriga and Rhames.

  No. It was coming from the battle itself.

  Caina risked a look in the direction of the dais, and saw the air between Rhames and Jadriga rippling, the floor melting. She felt the powers they had unleashed at each other, the spells wrapping around each other…

  Feeding off each other.

  Like a lit candle tossed into a barrel of coal dust.

  “Oh,” said Caina, and the spells exploded.

  A pillar of snarling green flame and twisting shadow erupt
ed from the floor, thick as an oak tree, and stabbed upward. The dome ripped into a thousand glowing fragments, the debris raining across Caer Magia. The shock wave threw the seset-kadahn from its feet, and a wall of hot air slammed into Caina. White light flashed across her vision, and the next thing she knew she was rolling across the floor, chips of stone raining around her. A groan filled her ears, and the balcony tore loose from the curved wall and fell to the floor.

  The Chamber of Ascension shook with the impact, a billowing cloud of black dust rolling through the basilica.

  Caina threw her arms over her head, more debris and dust raining around her, the Ascendant Bloodcrystal’s glow transforming the dust into green fog. At last the awful noise of shattering stone and collapsing masonry faded, and Caina staggered to her feet, looking around for the seset-kadahn. She spotted the creature pinned beneath a shattered pillar. The weight of the broken pillar held the creature in place, but she saw its muscles straining, saw the shattered pillar shifting inch by inch.

  It would be loose in a few moments.

  She looked for Corvalis, could not find him. Had the others all been killed? Or had Rhames and Jadriga both been destroyed by the sorcery they had unleashed?

  She heard a strangled scream.

  The billowing dust thinned, and she saw Rhames standing upon the steps of the dais, the bloodcrystal blazing a few paces behind him. His robes were smoldering, and chunks of leathery skin had been burned from his skull and arms. Yet the green fire blazed in his eyes, and he held one arm extended before him.

  Jadriga floated in front of him, hands clamped around her throat, her eyes wide and bulging.

  “A reasonable effort,” said Rhames, “but in the end, pathetic. You are still a child playing at power you have no right to possess.” He laughed. “When you next wear flesh, you shall find that Maat has been reborn. Think on that as you die.”

  He closed his hand into a fist. Jadriga’s neck exploded in a crimson spray, and Mihaela’s body fell lifeless to the floor. Rhames looked at her corpse for a moment, and then turned to face the Ascendant Bloodcrystal, his hands coming up to unravel the final wards.

  And Caina felt a stab of dread.

  If the Moroaica had been unable to overcome Rhames, what chance did Caina have? His damned canopic jar had to be hidden somewhere. But where? Where had he put it?

  “Seset-kadahn!” shouted Rhames. “Rise and kill the slave girl’s allies. Show no mercy. Ensure they do not disturb my work.”

  A grinding noise filled Caina’s ears as the seset-kadahn began to push the pillar away. Rhames was utterly confident of victory, so confident that he had turned his back on them. And why not? They had no weapon that could harm him, no weapon that even slow his seset-kadahn.

  Unless they found his canopic jar.

  Caina took a step forward, intending to locate Corvalis or Kylon, when she felt a stab of pain between her eyes. The pain doubled, and then doubled again, so intense that Caina fell to her knees. A wave of agonizing tingles crawled up her arms and legs, as if needle-legged spiders covered her limbs, and her stomach twisted like a rag rung out by a washerwoman.

  Was she reacting to Rhames’s spell? Or was it the Ascendant Bloodcrystal? With the Moroaica dead, had her protective spell lifted from Caina and the others?

  The Moroaica.

  Caina realized she heard Jadriga’s voice inside her head.

  And with a horrified shock, she understood what was happening. The Moroaica had survived for centuries by moving from body to body, abandoning her mortal vessel when it was slain and claiming another. She had possessed Caina before, after she had died below Black Angel Tower in Marsis.

  And now she was doing it again.

  But why? She had possessed Caina, but could not control her. Caina had been unaware of Jadriga’s presence for months. Why possess her now?

  Unless she had found a way to take control of Caina’s body.

  Caina dropped to her hands and knees, breathing hard, every inch of her body wracked with pain. She tried to force herself to stand, tried to even sit, but her limbs refused to obey. A spasm went through her, and she fell upon her side.

  The Moroaica’s voice echoed inside her head, the words coming into focus.

  “The jar!” shouted Jadriga. “Get the jar! It is…”

  Another wave of pain rolled through Caina.

  She heard Rhames laughing in triumph, and then everything went dark.

  Chapter 26 - Father and Mother

  Caina opened her eyes, sunlight flooding her vision.

  She turned in a circle, stunned.

  She stood on a street of gleaming stone, whitewashed houses rising overhead. In the distance she saw splendid temples and palaces of white stone, shining like jewels in the sunlight. Hieroglyphs covered the sides of the temples, and gold sheathed many of the stone columns.

  She knew this place.

  Maat, this was ancient Maat. She had seen it before, in the Moroaica’s memory. This was where Jadriga and her father had hidden from Rhames, until the pharaoh’s soldiers had found them anyway.

  Caina turned, and saw the scene frozen before her eyes.

  Rhames stood in his white robe and gleaming golden torque of office, his head shaved, black makeup lining his eyes. Soldiers in bronze chain mail stood nearby, carrying round shields and spears with bronze heads. Two of them held a Maatish girl of fifteen or sixteen years. She was stunningly beautiful, with long black hair and black eyes, her olive-colored skin without flaw. Two other soldiers held a plump middle-aged man on his knees, while a third soldier stood frozen with a bronze axe in his hands.

  The axe had just severed the middle-aged man’s head. An arc of crimson blood remained frozen in the air, surrounded in a halo of tiny droplets. The girl’s mouth was open in a wordless howl of grief and pain, her eyes fixed upon the slain man.

  The Moroaica and her father.

  “She can’t help it, you know.”

  Caina spun. She still wore her nightfighter garb, her shadow-cloak billowing around her, and a throwing knife appeared in her gloved hand.

  A short middle-aged man stood across the street, his sweaty hands kneading the front of his white tunic. Sweat gleamed on his bald head, and ink stains marked his hands and forearms. A deep, heavy sorrow filled his black eyes.

  And he was utterly identical to the beheaded man on his knees.

  “You,” said Caina. “You’re Jadriga’s father, aren’t you?”

  He bobbed his head in a nod. “Yes. Yes. You are very clever. My daughter thinks so, and she hates everyone. My name is Horemb. I am pleased to meet you in person.” He looked around at the strange, frozen city and shrugged. “Well, almost in person.”

  “Caina,” said Caina, drawing back her mask and cowl. “My name is Caina. And you cannot truly be her father. You’ve been dead for twenty-three centuries, if not longer.”

  “Closer to twenty-six,” said Horemb.

  Caina waved a hand at the whitewashed walls. “Then this is her memory, and I am only talking to the memory of her father.”

  “No,” said Horemb. “Well, yes, this is her memory. But I am truly her father. Or his spirit. You see, the spells of the Great Necromancers sometimes had…peculiar results. Something to do with the nature of the Undying. If a blood relative died by violence within seventy-two days of the creation of an Undying, that blood relative’s spirit was bound to the Undying. And the Undying would remain unaware of it.”

  “But the Undying were supposed to exist forever,” said Caina. “You mean the bound spirits would be forced to watch their children toil forever as Undying? Gods! That’s monstrous.”

  Horemb sighed. “It is. Or it was, rather. I fear my daughter put a rather…abrupt end to the practice.” He blinked. “It began with my wife. All of this.”

  “What happened?” said Caina.

  “She tended a stall in the market, selling her baskets,” said Horemb. “One day a Great Necromancer demanded that she sell her baskets at a discount t
o the temple of Anubankh. She did not refuse. She merely tried to haggle, as always had been the custom of the Maatish people. And for that the Great Necromancer killed her on the spot and confiscated her merchandise.” There were tears in his eyes. “After that, I swore I would keep Malifae safe from the Great Necromancers.”

  “Malifae?” said Caina. Understanding came to her. “Your daughter. Jadriga. That’s her real name. Malifae.”

  Horemb nodded. “She has gained many names since then, but she is still my daughter. She has done terrible, terrible things, but she is still my daughter, my beloved daughter. And she could not stop herself.”

  “What do you mean?” said Caina. “She cannot stop herself?”

  “She has no free will,” said Horemb. “The Undying have no free will. She has not had free will since Rhames turned her into one of the Undying.”

  “No free will?” said Caina. “Of course she has free will. She has made choices that resulted in the death of thousands. She has grown and become stronger. She would destroy the world in this ‘great work’ of hers, if given the chance.”

  “Forgive me,” said Horemb, “but I did not explain myself well. When I said Malifae no longer has free will…I mean she can no longer make moral choices. That part of her soul is frozen, just as this city is frozen around us.”

  “What do you mean?” said Caina.

  “A woman decides to travel to the city,” said Horemb. “She may travel by caravan, or by ship, or by river barge. Each decision will mean smaller decisions…what ship to take, or what barge to hire, or what clothes to pack. And each of those decisions will beget smaller decisions. But the first decision, the first choice, the choice to visit the city, has already been made. A living woman may change her mind and decide to stay at home. But one of the Undying…their first choice has been made. And it cannot be unmade.”

  “I see,” said Caina. “That’s what all this is about, isn’t it?”

  Horemb offered another nod.

  “She was made Undying,” said Caina, “while her mind was filled with rage and pain and sorrow. When she wanted nothing more than to take vengeance on those who killed her father.” Caina knew those feelings well. “And then she was made Undying, that was frozen within her. Forever.”