by Jack Conner
At the words, the Eberlins at the table muttered and made gestures that were probably religious, or at least superstitious. Dread and awe filled their faces.
“Who?” Avery said, curious despite himself. “Who comes?”
“A lord of the Blue Ghosts. The stars are in the proper configuration, and he is loosed to accept the homage that is his due.”
Avery didn’t like where this was going. “A … sacrifice?”
“Homage,” Thisinc corrected him.
“Praise be,” said one of his sons, and others around the table echoed it. The worship of the Blue Ghosts may have gone out of fashion among the mainstream Eberlins, who had traded ghosts for birds, but it evidently throve, or at least persisted, among Thisinc’s people. Was it that way throughout his entire district, which comprised a third of the island, or just a close-knit group?
“Can I attend?” said a young woman sitting next to the youngest daughter of the Triarch. Long chestnut hair spilled down her back, and amber eyes stared gravely from a pretty, high-cheekboned face. This was Ista, Avery knew, as he’d been briefly introduced, the kidnapped daughter of one of the loyalist Triarchs—ward, hostage and houseguest of Triarch Thisinc. At least the Triarch seemed to be treating her well, even if she was forced to eat canned food.
“All who wish may attend,” the Triarch said. “Room permitting.” To Avery, he said, “The ceremonies are practiced on the roofs of the pyramids, so I apologize, but if you wish to attend you may get a bit wet. The Blue Ghosts don’t call off these things on account of weather.” He smiled as he said it.
Suddenly Avery understood. “The staircases … That’s what they’re for.”
Thisinc nodded, eager. “That’s why I relocated here, to the highest and best-maintained of the holy pyramids, so that I could have more ready access to the High Ones. To absorb their wisdom and council, and to reassure them that I’m doing everything in my power to bring our nation back to the old ways before it’s too late.”
Avery frowned. Whatever these Blue Ghosts were, they had essentially informed the Triarch that the Monastery was going to return, that the prophesied time had come at last. The Triarch didn’t know what it meant, though. In a way, that was good; it meant that Jivini didn’t know, either.
Avery decided to be blunt. “What are these Blue Ghosts, Triarch? I’ve heard a great deal about them, but I still have no clue what they might really be.”
The Triarch turned to his wife, saying, “Let Hilli tell you. She’s a better speaker on such matters than I am.”
Hilli drew herself up. Looking about the table, then to Avery, as if relishing the attention, she said, “Once, before the Cataclysm, the Masters ruled the world, and all the races therein. They ruled humanity, too. The noble families they altered, making them more than human, to better carry out their will and to serve as inspiration and fear. Long, long ago the Masters left this world, we know not why, and over the eons the world has changed. What was once a large subcontinent gradually sank, becoming this series of islands, and the palaces where those nobles ruled slipped into the sea. They are all lost now, and with them their fabulous magics and technologies. Some of their power remained, though, and on certain nights, when the stars are right, they’re able to slip from the bowels of the machines that encase them and rise from their watery graves. On those nights those on the main island that still worshipped them would offer them gifts, human gifts. The nobles had accepted such gifts when alive, and they required them once dead, too. These pyramids were built for that purpose. The nobles became the Blue Ghosts, and still they served the Masters, whispering secrets and hidden arts to those who venerated them. Our people became mighty, and conquered one island after another, and finally came within sight of launching forays onto the mainland. Then it came. The Foulness. The Corruption.”
“The blessing,” corrected one of Lady Jivini’s priests, and the Collossum herself smiled.
“Indeed,” she said.
Hilli glared at them. “The Foulness destroyed our empire and killed half of everyone along the coasts, turning the rest into monsters.” Suddenly she blushed, casting a glance at Avery. “Begging your pardon, Your Majesty. You’re no monster. You know what I mean.”
Avery nodded politely. He had been watching Jivini’s face during Hilli’s lecture, but no sign of recognition had flickered across it. She had just listened to a version of the story of the Ygrith and hadn’t even realized it. Then again, she had probably helped brainwash the infected peoples of dozens, maybe hundreds of islands, and each one would have their own gods, their own legends. She had long since grown bored with such nonsense. Which raised an interesting point.
“Have you ever seen them?” Avery asked her. “The Blue Ghosts?”
Jivini raised an eyebrow. The question seemed to amuse her. “I’ve seen many things, Your Majesty. This is a strange world, strange even before my people arrived. A few vampire ghosts aren’t enough to impress me.”
Vampire ghosts. Just what was Avery about to witness on the rooftop? His gaze moved to Ista, the girl he meant to liberate if he could. She wasn’t his main objective, of course, but he thought rescuing her could get her mother, the loyal Triarch, back into the fight and end this siege quickly. If that happened, the islanders could unify against Segrul, which would surely be a boon to keeping Thraish from utilizing the Sleeper’s head to bring the Monastery back to this reality before the navies arrived. Ista’s gaze had strayed to Jivini, and there it lingered. In fear, Avery thought. The poor girl must be terrified of sharing a building with the ancient horror.
“Have you seen the ghosts before?” he asked the girl.
She shook her head, pretty chestnut curls swishing. “My dad says the ghosts are remnants of some old race, or their machines, anyway. Some projection or trick. The true lords are from the sky, he says, and have wings and beaks.”
And would you like to return to him? The question danced on Avery’s lips, but he held himself back. His host might be comfortable enough with his hostage to bring her to dinner, but would he not take offense to Avery probing the issue? Some things, Avery was learning, were just not done.
At any rate, he intended to ask her himself soon enough.
Eventually, dinner ended, and some of the guests filed out, while others remained, grouped around the Triarch and his family. Jivini was one of those to leave, taking her priests with her, and Avery wasn’t sorry to see them go. Except, he thought, at least I understand them, as much as I ever will. I DON’T understand the Triarch’s ways or religion.
He supposed he would know better soon enough.
“Are you coming with us, then, to the Offering?” Thisinc said, looking up at Avery, who had stayed behind, accompanied by the two guards that were supposed to follow him everywhere. Avery wasn’t sure whether they were guarding him or against him.
Avery knew he should say no. He still needed to use the transmitter to summon the navies, after all. But curiosity tugged at him. Perhaps, he thought, what he learned from the ceremony could even be important in understanding this place better.
“I’d like to witness it, if you don’t mind,” he said. “I mean, if outsiders aren’t allowed, then—”
“Never think it! How can the faith grow if no one witnesses its rites, feels its power?”
A few women were joining them, pouring in from a nearby doorway. They wore simple blue-gray smocks, and tattoos of ancient glyphs adorned their faces and bare arms. The tattoos didn’t glow, as the tattoos derived from ghost flower nectar did, but they gave the impression of moving, just slightly, and Avery feared that if he stared at them long enough he would grow dizzy … even fall into some hypnotic trance. More alchemy, he thought. The islanders may have lost the alchemical arts long ago, but there were still plenty of substances capable of being used in alchemical concoctions here—by-products of the Ygrith, Avery was sure of it—and the islanders seemed to have found ways to harness at least some of them. The women’s heads were shaved, and the lar
gest and most complicated glyphs stirred upon their scalps.
“These are the priestesses of the Fathers and Mothers,” Hilli told Avery, after bowing to one of them and kissing the hand of another. “They will conduct the Offering.”
Offering, Avery heard again. Try as the Triarch’s family might, they couldn’t disguise the rite’s true nature; Avery was growing increasingly convinced of what he was about to witness. Dear gods, not another one.
The group congealed and filed from the chamber, then up a series of stairs, wider and more impressive than the last. These were the ceremonial stairs, facilitating what this whole structure had been erected for, but they were no less steep, and they were many. Before long Avery wheezed for breath, and his knees ached. Couldn’t we have done this before dinner? But no, he reflected, he doubted he would have much appetite after.
What have I become? he thought suddenly. He’d become so jaded to such things that he could approach them on a trivial, practical level.
The group spilled out from the stairs to huddle under an artful stone overhang atop the great pyramid. Retainers passed out jackets with hoods, and everyone donned them, as it rained fiercely beyond the overhang. Others sprang umbrellas and held them for the guests, even Avery. Lightning stabbed near the spire as they emerged from the overhang, and a crack of thunder made Avery flinch and half-blinded him. One of the soldiers guarding him caught him, which turned out to be a good thing, as only a couple of feet away the lip of the platform dropped away into a series of ridiculously steep steps all the way to the ground far, far below. The platform atop the pyramid proved larger than he would have supposed—from the bottom, the pyramids seemed razor-sharp—but not wide enough. Actually, he saw there were four platforms, one for each slope. His group had gone out from the western slope. During the religion’s heyday doubtless every platform would be fully occupied, with more of the faithful perched on the steps of the pyramid all the way down, risking their lives to witness the rites of divinity, or whatever they perceived the Blue Ghosts to be.
At the nexus of the four platforms rose a spiraling, eerie staircase, resembling a twisted human vertebrae with the stubs of ribs jutting out. The top of it simply ended in mid-air about two stories up, a stairway to nothing, which was somehow even more horrible. The whole thing, glistening in the rain, made Avery cringe, and he felt something loathsome and terrible emanating from the stairs. For the first time during his contemplation of the Blue Ghosts, fear settled into him, and hair rose along his arms. Maybe I shouldn’t have come, after all.
The woman who must be the High Priestess stepped forward, raising her arms to the storm. The tattoos on her limbs and head seemed to writhe faster now. Throwing back her head, she shouted words in no language Avery understood, and lightning (Magenta, it’s colored magenta! Avery thought semi-hysterically) forked down from the sky and exploded the top of a tree not far away. Amethyst fires flickered up. The Atomic World drew closer. The other priestesses gathered around her, chanting in unison with each other, but not her—the High Priestess shouted out her own litany—and all the while the storm raged and rain flung itself into Avery’s face, drenching him and chilling him to the bone. At least it wasn’t toxic.
The ritual went on for some time, the priestesses chanting, the High Priestess shouting strange words, and Avery began to think Jivini had had the right idea all along. Then, suddenly, something flickered in from out of the storm. Something blue-white, like a piece of living lightning, shuddered down from the cover of the clouds and flicker-floated above the top of the twisted stairs. The Triarch’s family and their fellows in the cult murmured and collapsed to their knees, as did their retainers. Avery’s guards dropped to their knees, as well, but Avery remained standing.
The blue-white shape hovered at the top of the stairway to the sky, flickering in and out, fading from existence one moment, then snapping back into clarity the next, like the image on a television whose rabbit ears aren’t picking up a signal. The staticy, insane thing resembled a man dressed in ancient clothes, surely the clothes of a nobleman or king long, long ago, and he wore an iron crown upon his head. He wore a full beard and possessed black, deep-set eyes, but in his features Avery found a vague likeness to Duke Leshillibn and Empress-Regent Issia. Even Ani, he thought. The man could be related to Ani, or Mari.
Changing her pitch, the High Priestess, kneeling at the base of the stairwell, called up to the form that could only be a Blue Ghost, and this time Avery could understand her, as she had switched back to Old Ysstran. And no wonder. The Blue Ghosts had taught them Ysstran! Before they’d become the Blue Ghosts, their race had spread throughout the world, laying down deep roots, especially in the Ysstral Empire, leading it to glory and gloom. Avery felt sure of it. How could it be any other way?
“Great Father, thank you for honoring us with your presence,” said the High Priestess, ignoring the rain that slicked her bald head, for she chose not to wear her hood and let the rain fall where it would. Perhaps she wanted to display her glyphs to the ghost. “We have prepared an offering for you.”
The Blue Ghost said something, but the voice was garbled, just like on a television with poor reception; the voice crackled and fitzed, painful to the ears. Perhaps the High Priestess understood him better than Avery did, or perhaps she just knew what he wanted, as she gestured to an overhang on one of the other platforms. Avery hadn’t even noticed them before, but now he saw a dozen men, bald and tattooed with glyphs, shepherding a short file of men and women with their hands bound behind their backs. Apparently the male priests got the honor of dealing with the sacrifices.
Oh no, Avery thought. Please not this. Anything but this.
But of course it was. One by one the condemned were marched to the stairs, then half-carried up them, as their legs suddenly lost all strength when they drew close, except for one man who propelled himself all the way, not that that saved him. They were led up to the top of the stairs, preceded by the High Priestess and held by the priests, and the High Priestess would say some words before the Blue Ghost placed his phantasmal hand upon the victim’s forehead. Smoke would rise up, the victim would cry out and sag back, and the image of the ghost would solidify. With each sacrifice, he grew stronger, more stable, and Avery thought he understood.
It’s just like with the Duke, he thought. He’s an Ysstral Lord, or at least like them. He’s one of their ancestors. He’s Ani’s great-grandfather to the umpteenth power. My long-lost father-in-law.
The Ysstral Lords fed on psychic energy; it’s what enabled their powers. Vampire ghosts, he remembered Jivini saying, and she hadn’t been far wrong. Somehow the Fathers and Mothers had found a way to preserve themselves in their drowned cities. When the Monastery had vanished and the Cataclysm had come, their palaces had sunk, but the machines and technologies in those palaces had still functioned. Avery imagined the strange lords and ladies installing themselves in complicated sarcophagi whose alien technology allowed them, every now and then, to escape their prisons in this incorporeal form, some sort of projection fused with consciousness, and rove the islands they had once ruled. Perhaps they couldn’t go far. Perhaps the after-echoes of the Ygrith’s essence or technologies were required for the ghosts to function, but at least they could be free for a time … provided their worshippers gave them fresh brains to feed from. That, evidently, was required, just as it had been for Duke Leshillibn and Lady Issia. Their psychic powers had demanded that they drain the mentalities of others.
Knowing why didn’t make it any better. Avery looked away as the last victim, a middle-aged woman surely captured in the fighting like the rest of them, was dragged brain-dead down the stairs. Her legs were twitching and she seemed to have voided her bladder.
Bastards, Avery thought. I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but I’ll make you pay for this. He twisted back to glare at the Blue Ghost only to see a surprising thing.
The Blue Ghost stared at him.
All other thoughts fled from Avery’s mind.
He blinked, but the ghost still gazed at him. More solid now, the being took a step down the stairs, and as he moved he didn’t flicker, didn’t pop or blur. Stately and sated, the horror descended the bony spiral, and his priests and priestesses scurried out of the way. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he continued on toward Avery, and the congregation parted for him. Avery stood stock-still, half tempted to throw himself off the side of the building. He didn’t want that thing to touch him—that is, if it was capable of physical contact. Either way, its touch could mean death, or worse.
The Triarch’s gaze swiveled from Avery, to the ghost, then back. “Dear Father,” he said, half rising, “has this foreigner displeased you? Does his presence—”
The Blue Ghost’s hand shifted, just a bit. The result was instantaneous. The Triarch gagged, his eyes bulging, and he toppled to the ground, twitching in the rain. His family gasped and drew away from him, as though he were contagious.
The apparition stopped when it reached Avery, and Avery felt himself tremble as he gazed up into the thing’s eyes. The ghost was still a ghost, still transparent and insolid, with rain hissing through him, but he was a terror nonetheless, and mighty.
“Uh,” said Avery. He didn’t seem capable of saying anything else. Just like the victims being led to the staircase, his legs had gone rubbery. Is that what’s to become of me? Will I have gone through all this only to have my brain sucked dry by a ghost?
“You are … touched,” the Blue Ghost said. They were the first words Avery had been able to understand by him. The being’s voice emerged deep, but troubled, and perplexity, even sadness, entered his eyes. Somehow that sadness altered how Avery thought of him. The thing wasn’t a bloodthirsty monster. He was a man, or had been one, and not a shallow or trivial one, either. This was a man given to gravity, solemnity, perhaps even wisdom, and if his current state was as a leech then that was a tragic thing, not a thing that should be held against him.