Ghost in the Winds (Ghost Exile #9)

by Jonathan Moeller

  “Thank you,” said Annarah. “I’m afraid the training of initiates in the Towers of Lore did not include much wall-climbing.”

  “Pity, that,” said Caina, watching the undead baboons behind the ward. So far they had not moved, nor given any sign that they noticed the activity in the armory. “I suppose it doesn’t come up too often. It…”

  Annarah was staring at her.

  “What?” said Caina. “What is it?”

  “Your shadow,” whispered Annarah.

  Caina blinked and looked over her shoulder. Her shadow-cloak still hung around her, and she threw a ragged shadow against the hieroglyph-carved wall, thanks to the glow from Annarah’s pyrikon bracelet.

  “What about it?” said Morgant. “It’s a shadow.”

  “No, not that shadow,” said Annarah. She seemed shaken. “Not the shadow her body casts. The shadow around her, the shadow that the wraithblood addicts see.”

  Caina blinked. “You…can see that now?” Ever since she had arrived in Istarinmul, wraithblood addicts had claimed to see a shadow wrapped around her. Nerina Strake, who was the closest thing to a former wraithblood addict that Caina knew, had been unable to describe the shadow, saying it only looked like smoke. Annarah had seen the shadow in her aura before, but since she had become a valikarion, her aura had disappeared from Annarah’s sight.

  Had she somehow lost the abilities of a valikarion? No – Caina could still see the glow from Morgant’s weapons, the echoes of the mighty necromancy Kharnaces had worked over Pyramid Isle.

  “Yes,” said Annarah. “It’s become…darker, somehow.”

  “Maybe something happened to you with the Elixir,” said Caina, her mouth going dry.

  “No, I don’t think that’s it.” Annarah hesitated, choosing her words with care. “It’s like…it’s as if the shadow is something that is going to happen to you. Like a fire that casts shadows, only the shadow is cast backward through time.”

  “Then it’s an omen of something that is going to happen,” said Caina.

  “Not quite,” said Annarah. “An omen is ambiguous. This shadow isn’t. This is…almost like cause and effect were reversed, like we see the effect before the cause. I don’t understand it. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s like the shadow is becoming more…imminent.”

  “Like we’re moving closer to the event that creates it?” said Caina.

  Annarah nodded.

  For a moment Caina was at a loss. She had assumed the shadow was from the damage to her aura that Maglarion and the Moroaica had inflicted upon her. If that was true, why could Annarah see it now? Samnirdamnus had commented on the shadow as well, had said more or less the same as Annarah in his roundabout, half-mocking way.

  But what did it mean?

  “If we are going to indulge in philosophy,” said Morgant, “might we do it when not surrounded by murderous spirits seeking to kill us?”

  “Right,” said Caina, pushing thoughts of the shadow to the side. It was one more thing she could worry about later. “Annarah…now.”

  Annarah nodded and released her warding spell, the flows of power unraveling before Caina’s sight. At once her pyrikon changed shape, the bracelet expanding to create five slender bronze rings looped around Annarah’s fingers and thumbs, the rings joined to the bracelet by delicate chains. When in that gauntlet-like form, the pyrikon shielded Annarah from all forms of sorcerous detection, much like a Ghost shadow-cloak.

  The nagataaru tried to find them anyway.

  At once a score of baboons rushed through the doorway and into the armory. Had Caina and Morgant and Annarah not been shielded from sorcerous detection and the sight of spirits, the nagataaru would have found them within seconds. The creatures scoured the room, loping between the racks and the tables of armor and weapons with a deliberate, methodical pattern. The nagataaru were not stupid, and they searched the armory with efficient speed. As Caina had guessed, the undead baboons were hindered by their lack of functioning senses, and they did not grasp the concept of height. When Caina had first come to Pyramid Isle, she had lured a group of the undead baboons into one of the shafts in the jungle.

  As it was, after fifteen minutes of searching, the undead baboons still hadn’t found them. Caina watched as the hideous leathery things scuttled back and forth, looking more like giant insects than apes. They were thorough, but more and more of them were retreating into the corridor, continuing their search outside the armory.

  “Should we go now?” said Annarah.

  Caina shook her head. “Let’s wait a little longer. Some of them might be clever enough to realize we’re hiding in here.”

  “Since it is obvious,” said Morgant.

  Caina shrugged. “None of them looked up, did they?”

  They lapsed into silence, watching the baboons, and Caina’s mind wandered back to Annarah’s remark about her husband, how he was the only man who had seen her undressed.

  Why had that caught Caina’s attention?

  There was nothing wrong with the statement. Certainly, it was admirable, and something Caina would never be able to say. Her first lover had been a married nobleman upon whom Halfdan had sent her to spy, and to say that the affair had ended badly would be an understatement.

  But Annarah had said she hoped her husband would continue to be the only one…

  Why did that seem out of place? She had clearly loved her husband, and perhaps she had no thoughts of taking another lover after him. That was entirely understandable.

  Something about it puzzled Caina, though she could not have said why. Not yet. Thinking about it now would just get her killed, so she pushed it aside.

  More nagataaru went into the corridor. Four of the creatures remained on guard, patrolling the armory, but the rest had withdrawn.

  “All right,” said Caina. “I’ll go down first. You two follow me. They can’t see us or hear us, but don’t let them touch you.”

  She to the floor, flexing her legs to absorb the impact of her landing. The nagataaru did not react, their patrol pattern unchanged. Morgant jumped next, the end of his coat swirling around him, and Caina helped Annarah down. They moved through the armory, hugging the wall as they avoided the baboons. One of the withered creatures passed within six inches of Caina, its dry, stale stench filling her nostrils, but it did not detect her.

  Caina went into the corridor, Morgant and Annarah behind her.

  “You were right,” said Morgant. “No one ever does look up.”

  “They don’t,” said Caina. “Follow me.”

  They made their way deeper into the Tomb of Kharnaces, and their progress reminded Caina of a demented game of hide and seek. Regular patrols of undead baboons made their way through the corridors, and whenever they did, Caina and Morgant and Annarah pressed themselves flat against the wall, or ducked into a side chamber, waiting until the creatures passed. They had a few close calls, but they avoided the nagataaru and made their way further into the Tomb.

  “Notice something odd?” said Morgant.

  “Yes,” said Caina. It felt odd to use a normal speaking voice while evading deadly enemies, but none of the undead on Pyramid Isle possessed the faculties of hearing or speech. She paused long enough to let a pair of baboons continue their skittering path down the corridor. “We haven’t seen any of the warriors since we left the armory.”

  “So where did they all go?” said Annarah.

  That was a very good question, and Caina suspected that she would not like the answer.

  “I don’t know,” said Caina. “Be ready. I think we will find out very soon.”

  The corridor continued, the floor sloping downward, and at last they reached the domed chamber in the center of the Tomb. Six different corridors led off in different directions. One headed towards the throne room, library, and trophy chamber of Kharnaces, another to the library proper, and another towards the vast chamber that had once housed the Conjurant Bloodcrystal. At the moment, Caina hoped never to see any of them again.<
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  The high corridor leading to the entry hall yawned before her, and something about it set off an alarm within her mind.

  “What is it?” said Annarah as Caina came to a stop.

  “It’s too empty,” said Caina. “Someone should be in there.”

  “It’s a perfect place for an ambush,” said Morgant.

  “Too perfect,” said Caina, drawing up the cowl of her shadow-cloak again. “Wait here. I’m going to take a look, and I’ll be right back.”

  Of course, the last time she had done that in the Tomb, Kharnaces had captured her and poisoned her with his necromantic sorcery.

  “You shouldn’t go alone,” said Annarah.

  “She’s the one with the shadow-cloak,” said Morgant.

  Annarah hesitated, and then gave a reluctant nod. “We will wait for you here.”

  Caina crept forward, keeping to the walls. She passed through the long, high corridor leading to the entry hall, shadow-cloak flowing around her. Sealed stone niches lined the walls, housing undead warriors. At least, they had once housed undead warriors. All the niches stood open, their hidden doors retracted. Callatas and Caina and the others had fought through most of them, and Caina supposed the rest had withdrawn deeper into the Tomb.

  She reached the archway leading to the entry hall and ducked against the wall, listening. Nothing stirred in the gloom beyond the archway, and Caina ducked and slowly peered around the edge.

  The entry hall to the Tomb of Kharnaces was larger than some Imperial basilicas in the Empire. Massive square pillars rose from the floor to the arched ceiling overhead, carved in the likeness of the Maatish gods, muscled men in kilts with the heads of animals – scarabs and baboons and lions and falcons and jackals and others. Hieroglyphs covered the ceiling, filled with silver. The overall effect made for a sort of cold, distant beauty.

  At least, it would have made for a cold, distant beauty, if the hall had not been packed with undead warriors.

  Nearly a hundred and fifty of them stood in the hall, all of them facing towards Caina. Every one of them wore bronze armor in the Maatish style, khopesh swords in their withered hands and tall bronze helmets upon their grinning skulls. A score of them stood in a solid, unbroken row before the exit from the Tomb to the dead jungle outside, the skeletal forms outlined in the faint light from the doors.

  The undead remained motionless, and Caina understood.

  She hurried back to rejoin Annarah and Morgant in the domed chamber.

  “Well?” said Morgant as Caina drew back the cowl of her shadow-cloak.

  “We have a problem,” said Caina. “The undead warriors. They’ve gathered in the entry hall. There are at least a hundred and fifty of them, maybe more. There’s no way we can fight them, and no way we can sneak past them.”

  “Why are they doing that?” said Morgant. “Why not rush us? They would win in short order.”

  “Because they are nagataaru,” said Annarah. “They are immortal, and they are patient. They don’t need to kill us. They only need to keep us from escaping the Tomb.” She shook her head. “All they need to do is to wait until we starve to death, or grow desperate enough to attack them.”

  “They don’t even need to wait that long,” said Caina, fighting the growing despair that gnawed at the back of her mind. “They just need to delay us long enough to make sure Callatas works the Apotheosis. Then the nagataaru can kill us at their leisure.”

  “Clever of them,” said Morgant.

  “So what are we going to do?” said Annarah.

  Caina wasn’t sure.

  Chapter 7: Flames

  They spent the rest of the day exploring the Tomb of Kharnaces and found absolutely nothing useful.

  Morgant followed Caina and Annarah as they climbed stairs, hurried down passageways, and looked for hidden doors. They had to dodge the nagataaru all the while. The undead baboons patrolled the passages without ceasing, and Morgant supposed the creatures would do it for years without stopping until they were certain that he and Annarah and Caina were dead.

  Actually, they wouldn’t need to wait that long. They need only wait until Callatas had finished the Apotheosis, and then the nagataaru would have the final victory. Still, from what Morgant had seen of Kharnaces, the Great Necromancers had been a paranoid lot, and he couldn’t imagine that someone as foresighted and long-planning as Kharnaces had failed to build more than one exit from his Tomb.

  But he hadn’t.

  Morgant helped Caina and Annarah search through the silent stone maze of the Tomb, looking through room after room and corridor after corridor, but they found nothing but the Great Necromancer’s treasures and his army of undead baboons.

  It seemed that Kharnaces’s foresight had indeed failed him. On the other hand, the Great Necromancer had planned to destroy the world, so maybe he hadn’t seen the need for an additional method of egress.

  “We should rest for a while,” said Annarah.

  “We can’t,” said Caina. In the glow from her pyrikon staff, her blue eyes were bloodshot, her face haunted. “There’s no time. The longer we delay, the more time Callatas has to work the Apotheosis.”

  “And the more time Murat has to sail away with the Sandstorm,” said Morgant.

  “That,” said Caina, “and if you cast a warding spell, at least some of the nagataaru will be able to sense it. The ward will keep them away, but they won’t let us slip past them again. They’ll surround us.”

  “What about the summit of the hill?” said Annarah. “We’ve passed the corridor leading to the spiral stairs a dozen times, and we’ve seen none of the undead there.”

  “That’s probably because we can’t get away from the summit,” said Caina. “It’s too steep.”

  “So the nagataaru won’t follow us there,” said Annarah.

  “Yes,” said Morgant. “We couldn’t possibly be that stupid, could we?”

  Caina let out a sound that was either a quiet laugh or a tired sigh. She did look exhausted. The last day had been tiring, and he supposed the last time she had enjoyed a proper rest had been…oh, probably the day they had left Drynemet. Annarah looked just as tired. Of course, Morgant was tired, but he was over two hundred years old. Tired became a relative concept at that point, and whatever the djinn of the Court of the Azure Sovereign had done to extend his life meant that he didn’t need that much sleep. The two younger women needed far more rest than he did.

  And they were so young, weren’t they? Caina, for all her boldness and cleverness, was only in her early twenties. Hardly more than a child, really, especially compared to Morgant. Annarah was a hundred and eighty years old, but from her perspective, a century and a half of those years had passed in a few moments.

  For a moment Morgant felt something almost…paternal? Was that it?

  He really must be getting old.

  “Maybe we are,” said Caina. “If we pass out on the floor the nagataaru will find us quickly. Let’s go back to the summit.”

  She led the way through the silent Tomb, up the spiral stairs, and back to the summit of Pyramid Isle’s central hill. The hotter, humid air of the jungle struck Morgant across the face like a wet towel as he stepped upon the bone-strewn hilltop, the ground still scorched and scarred from the colossal spells that Kharnaces and Callatas had flung at each other. The sun was going down to the west, painting the sea the color of blood. The dead jungle covered the island like a thick coat of black mold.

  “When all that starts rotting,” said Morgant, “it’s going to smell foul.”

  “It’s so dry,” said Annarah. “If it catches fire…” She blinked several times. “What about the Hellfire in Kharnaces’s trophy room? Perhaps we can use that against the undead warriors.”

  “I’ve thought about it,” said Caina, “but I can’t see how. Those amphorae hold enough Hellfire that opening them to the air will make them explode, and the corridors of the Tomb are narrow enough to amplify the blast. We’d be caught in the explosion.”

  �
��I suppose it would be a quick way to go,” said Morgant. “Quicker than some.” He had seen a lot of people die in a variety of ways, but he hadn’t seen that many people incinerated in a Hellfire explosion, and every single time had been with Caina.

  Caina stared at him so long that Morgant wondered if she was actually considering it. Then she stepped to the side, walking past him, and he realized she was looking over the edge of the cliff. She paced the perimeter of the hilltop, staring down at the dead jungle, and then rejoined them and shook her head.

  “We can’t climb down,” she said. “The slopes are too sleep. I might be able to manage it by myself if I had the right equipment, but I don’t, and one slip would be fatal.”

  “But there are no nagataaru up here,” said Annarah. “At least for now.”

  “No,” said Caina.

  “We do have an abundance of old bones,” said Morgant. “Perhaps we could light a signal fire.”

  “Murat wouldn’t care,” said Caina. “He’s not stupid enough to approach the island. He knows what kind of things live here. We have to get to the beach, and we have to get to our boat.” She stared over the jungle for a moment. “But I have no idea how.”

  “Rest for a while,” said Morgant. “We still have a few days before Murat departs, and even if a burst of genius explodes inside that cracked mind of yours, we can’t blunder around the jungle in the dark.”

  “Cracked mind?” said Caina, though her voice didn’t have its usual edge when she traded insults with him. She really was tired. “This from a man who pretended to be a painter for a century and a half?”

  “Pretended?” said Morgant. “I was, and continue to be, the finest painter in Istarinmul. I’m not the one who hired circus performers to fight an Umbarian magus.”