Ghost in the Pact Read online

  Then, before her thoughts could finish forming, Mazyan moved.

  Samnirdamnus called himself the Knight of Wind and Air, and the djinn of the Court of the Azure Sovereign were air elementals. As Caina watched Mazyan flicker forward, she realized that had been no idle boast.

  Mazyan did indeed move like the wind.

  The burning sword disappeared as he charged, his power going to fuel his speed, but it reappeared when he attacked. The blade of smokeless flame cut through the Immortals’ armor and flesh and bone without resistance, just as Kalgri’s sword of dark force had done at the Court of the Fountain in the Golden Palace. In the blink of an eye Mazyan killed four Immortals. The rest spread out around him, hoping to encircle him. For all his speed, Mazyan’s power was still housed in a body of mortal flesh, and that body had limitations.

  Laertes dashed forward, slamming one Immortal across the side with his shield. The black-armored warrior staggered, and Laertes brought his broadsword around in a vicious chop, the heavy blade crunching into the Immortal’s neck. The Immortal staggered, and Laertes ripped his sword free, raising his heavy shield to block the lash of another Immortal’s chain whip. The length of chain rebounded from his shield, leaving gouges in the wood, and the Immortal raised his scimitar for another strike.

  As he did, it gave Caina an opening. She circled to the left as Laertes charged, and as the Immortal raised his sword, she darted forward, driving her ghostsilver dagger into the gap in the armor beneath his armpit. The blade sank deep into his chest, and the Immortal staggered, his blow going wide. Caina ripped her dagger free, the ghostsilver’s gleam concealed beneath a layer of blood, and the next hit from Laertes’s shield knocked the dying Immortal to his knees. Mazyan went on the attack, blurring back and forth, slowing only when he called forth his blade of smokeless flame. Laertes covered him, and together they pushed the Immortals back.

  Yet three of the Immortals charged towards Annarah and Sulaman, weapons raised.

  Caina cursed and sprinted for them. Annarah struck the end of her pyrikon staff against the ground, and a flickering corona of white light surrounded her and Sulaman. It was a ward against weapons, but Annarah could only hold it for so long, and the Immortals would batter down her defenses swiftly.

  Sulaman stepped forward, and as he did, Caina saw a flicker of power around him. He was drawing upon his power of foretelling, though she could not imagine what use it would be in a battle. One of the Immortals stepped forward, raising his chain whip. Caina cursed and ran faster, and the aura of arcane power around Sulaman intensified.

  The Immortal swung his chain whip at Sulaman, and Sulaman sidestepped.

  He didn’t move with inhuman speed like Kylon or Mazyan, nor did he move with the precision of a master swordsman like Nasser or the serpentine fluidity of someone like Morgant. Sulaman simply sidestepped, and the chain whip missed him by a yard. Again the Immortal lashed at him, and Sulaman ducked with ease, the whip whistling over his head. The motion made the Immortal stumble off balance, and Sulaman stabbed forward, driving the tip of his scimitar into the Immortal’s neck. The Immortal staggered, and Sulaman stepped back and retracted his blade. A second Immortal came behind him, swinging his chain whip around.

  Caina shouted a warning, but it was too late.

  There was no way, no way at all, that Sulaman should have seen that strike coming. It should have hit him unawares, leaving him unconscious with a few broken ribs. Yet with perfect timing Sulaman ducked, and the whip missed him by a hair. The arcane aura around Sulaman brightened further, and he turned, opening a wound on the Immortal’s forearm. The third Immortal swung his chain whip, but Sulaman danced aside, the links missing him. His dodges were so perfect, so unhurried, it was as if he could see the future and know exactly where the blows would fall…

  Then in a flash, Caina realized that he could see the future. He was focusing his vision into sort of a short-term precognition, letting him glimpse the next few seconds with crystalline clarity. Caina could think of a few situations where that might have proven useful.

  The Immortals had their full attention upon Sulaman, which made it easy for Caina to spring upon the back of the nearest one, her arm coiling around his armored chest. The Immortal started to stiffen, reaching to throw her off, but she drove her ghostsilver dagger beneath his helmet and into his neck. She felt hot blood spatter across her fingers, and she ripped her dagger free as the Immortal successfully managed to throw her off. Caina hit the roof, tucked her shoulder, and rolled, springing back to her feet in preparation for the attack. But the Immortal slumped to his knees, one had grasped to his neck, and fell over. Caina turned to aid Sulaman, but he had already dispatched the third Immortal.

  She spun to see Mazyan and Laertes holding their own, and then saw Kylon, Nasser, and Morgant driving back the Immortals. Even as she looked, Kylon punched at one of the Immortals, his fist landing with enough force to crush the top of a helmet. How had he done that?

  They were holding back the Immortals, yet she already saw more squads of the black-armored warriors running across the rooftops, and another group storming into the common room of the Desert Maiden. They would butcher their way across the common room, storm up the stairs, and swarm onto the roof.

  And then Caina and the others would be overwhelmed.

  They had to get away now. There were already too many Immortals in the alleys to retreat that way. Could they climb down the sides of the Desert Maiden? Or maybe they could go over the streets themselves? It was a long gap, but maybe with some rope…

  As Caina looked towards the street, a flash of crimson on the opposite house’s roof caught her eye. A figure in a dark cloak ran across the rooftop, the black cloak rippling back to reveal a female form sheathed in crimson chain mail and dark leather…

  A bolt of pure terror shot through Caina, her skin crawling with revulsion. She had a searing memory of that room in Rumarah, the ghostsilver blade erupting from her chest, the mocking, malicious laughter that had filled her ears as she struggled in vain.

  The Red Huntress had come.

  The serene crimson mask turned in Caina’s direction, and she felt the force of Kalgri’s attention almost as a physical blow. Caina drew breath to shout a warning, to urge the others to prepare for the Huntress’s assault, and Kalgri leaped into the air, the black cloak billowing around her like dark wings.

  But instead of landing upon the roof of the Desert Maiden, she plummeted into the street, landing behind the advancing Immortals. Caina glimpsed a blaze of arcane power, mighty warding spells wrapped around each other like overlapping layers of steel plate. With her eyes of flesh she saw a gold-trimmed white robe, brilliant and dazzling in the noon sun.

  The robe worn by a Master Alchemist of the College.

  Grand Master Callatas himself had come for them at last.

  ###

  Callatas watched with disdain as Kalgri performed one of her excessively dramatic leaps and landed before him, the black cloak billowing around her. The woman had always possessed an overly developed sense of the dramatic, even when she had been a mere slave and not yet the vessel of the Voice.

  “Well?” said Callatas.

  “They are there, all of them,” said Kalgri. “The Balarigar…”

  “Do not call her that,” said Callatas. “A Szaldic myth.”

  Kalgri kept speaking. “The stormdancer. Nasser and his lackey. The old assassin, and the prince and his pet Oath Shadow.”

  “Excellent,” said Callatas, lifting his left hand from the handle of his cane, golden fire snarling around his fingers.

  “And the loremaster,” said Kalgri. “Annarah herself.”

  Callatas scowled. He could imagine Kalgri smiling behind that wretched mask.

  “Was she not once one of your students?” said Kalgri.

  “A long time ago,” said Callatas.

  A long time indeed. Annarah had been one of his most gifted students, with a great talent for the Words of Lore. It was said that
the wives of valikarion always made the best loremasters, and Annarah had proven the truth of that old proverb.

  Then Callatas had gone for a walk through the streets of Iramis, and seen the dying girl, and…

  He realized that Kalgri had taken a prudent step back, her posture tense, and the nearby Immortals had edged away from him as well. Perhaps some of the anger had shown on his face.

  Callatas the Wise, the Iramisians had called him, but he had not known true wisdom then, only the sentimental proverbs of foolish children. He had learned better, first in the hellish darkness below Pyramid Isle, and then in his own researches, when he had at last summoned Kotuluk Iblis, the sovereign of the nagataaru, and made the bargain that would save mankind.

  All that remained was to take the Staff and the Seal…and Annarah had hidden them from him for a century and a half.

  “The troublesome child earned her fate,” said Callatas, tracing signs in the air. Once he would have found the effort of carrying on a conversation, holding a half-dozen wards in place, listening to Kotuluk Iblis’s shadow, and casting a new spell all at once to be an overwhelming challenge. Now it was nothing more than a minor annoyance. “She delayed the Apotheosis for a century and a half with her little stratagem. She made me waste decades looking for the relics in the Desert of Candles.”

  “Perhaps if you wanted the relics,” said Kalgri, “then you shouldn’t have burned Iramis. You ought to have known that Nasser would hide them.”

  Again a wave of irritation went through him. Well, he would soon have no further need of the Red Huntress, once the Apotheosis was completed and the new humanity spread out to populate the emptied world.

  “No matter,” said Callatas, drawing back his hand. “They are mine now.”

  “That spell,” said Kalgri. “It will…”

  “I know what it will do,” said Callatas. “Since when do you care about the lives of Immortals? They are tools, to be used for whatever purpose I please. Today, their purpose is to hold my enemies pinned in place while I strike.”

  He gestured, and a shaft of golden fire ripped from his hand and slammed into the side of the miserable little tavern, soaking into the cheap brickwork.

  The transmutation began at once.

  ###

  Arcane power spiked in the air, surrounding Callatas in a furious golden glow. To Caina’s valikarion sight, he blazed like a second sun.

  He had summoned a tremendous amount of sorcerous force, power enough to blast the Desert Maiden to smoking rubble. Annarah cast a spell of her own, a ward to turn aside Callatas’s wrath, but even the Words of Lore would not be enough to block that potent spell.

  Caina turned, shouting a warning to the others, and golden fire lanced from Callatas and ripped into the side of the Desert Maiden. She expected the spell to strike the building with explosive force, but instead the power spread over the bricks, sinking into the structure.

  For an instant nothing happened.

  And then the entire building transmuted into sand.

  Caina had a brief instant to recognize the spell. The Kindred assassin Anburj had set a trap to capture her, and while escaping from the trap, she fled through the House of Sozanat, a coffee house favored by minor Alchemists. One of the Alchemists had transmuted a staircase into sand, almost sending Caina falling to her death.

  Callatas had just transmuted the Desert Maiden into sand.

  The roof disintegrated beneath Caina’s boots, and she plunged into the sand. It fell around her, smothering her, burying her, and hot darkness swallowed her as she struggled to breathe.

  ###

  Callatas watched the miserable little tavern collapse into a rippling sand dune.

  The resultant sand dune was much lower than the original building. Much of what had once been the Desert Maiden had plunged into the cellar. Anyone caught on the ground floor and the second floor would have been buried alive without escape, including all the surviving patrons and Immortals. The sand overfilled the cellar, spilling into the streets like a minor flood. A few Immortals staggered from the wreckage, sand pouring from the joints of their armor, but Callatas saw no sign of his enemies.

  Likely they had all been buried.

  No matter. Mere sand could not conceal artifacts as powerful as the Staff of Iramis and the Seal of Iramis.

  Kalgri was laughing, her voice filled with pleasure. The shadow of Kotuluk Iblis had sensed a score of deaths in the last instant, along with a few more every second as men asphyxiated within the sand. The Voice within the Huntress was feeding upon the deaths, gorging itself on the pain and stolen life force, and Kalgri feasted along with the nagataaru.

  The woman was contemptibly venal.

  Callatas strode towards the remnants of the Desert Maiden, the sand rasping against his boots.

  “So bold,” said Kalgri as he began a spell. “What if Lord Kylon bursts from the sand and stabs his valikon through your heart?”

  “Lord Kylon, if he is still alive,” said Callatas, “is choking beneath a dozen tons of sand. Even if he still lives, it will take him time to dig himself free, and while he is doing that, you can cut off his head. Taunt him about his dead wife. You enjoy that sort of thing.”

  He finished his spell, his will sweeping the pile of sand for the presence of arcane forces. He felt several potent sorcerous auras beneath the sand. The presence of two pyrikons, for one – the familiar presence of Annarah’s pyrikon, which he had repurposed as a key to the Maze until Caina had stolen it. The aura that surrounded Nasser’s left hand, similar to the thousands of crystalline shadows left by the destruction of Iramis and the banishment of the djinn of the Azure Court. Several other auras that belonged to enspelled weapons likely carried by Caina and her allies. And…

  Yes.

  There it was.

  He remembered the first time he had felt that aura over two centuries ago, watching Nasser’s father march from the Gate of the Sun to the Towers of Lore, carrying the ancient regalia of the Princes, the white towers of Iramis gleaming gold and silver in the brilliant sun, the crowds cheering their Prince as he walked to the palace…

  Callatas scowled.

  Lies. It had all been lies.

  He summoned more power, working a simple spell of psychokinetic force. His will sank deep into the dune that had been the Desert Maiden. The sand shifted, and his will coiled around the ancient aura of the regalia. Callatas made a tugging gesture, pulling the aura towards him, and a leather-wrapped spear erupted from the sand and landed in his outstretched hand.

  A spear?

  A man in the rough clothes of a teamster pulled himself from the sand, trying to kick his way free.

  “Help me,” he croaked, sand falling from his beard and mouth. “Please, by the Living Flame, help me…”

  “Kalgri,” snapped Callatas, not taking his eyes from the spear.

  The Huntress smiled and called the sword of the nagataaru to her hand, a crackling shaft of purple flame and writhing shadow. The trapped teamster just had time to scream before Kalgri took off his head, shivering a little in delight as his blood soaked into the sand.

  “Ah,” said Callatas. “A disguise.”

  He cast another spell, and the spear’s head crumbled into dust, the leather wrapping falling away into sand.

  The Staff and Seal of Iramis gleamed in his hand at long last. The Staff was wrought from the silvery alloy of ghostsilver that the loremasters of Iramis had used for their greatest works, and Callatas felt the tremendous arcane power surging through it. Iramisian glyphs marked the length of the staff, and he recalled the long-forgotten words to the forefront of his mind, words of summoning and opening. He reached up to the last bit of the rusted socket atop the staff and flicked it aside, drawing out the Seal of Iramis, a ring made from the same ghostsilver alloy. It had been set with a large blue stone the exact shade of the Star of Iramis, cut in the shape of a seven-pointed star, the ancient sigil of the Princes of Iramis.

  For millennia the Princes had carri
ed these relics, since the dawn of ages when men had first built houses and cultivated fields, and across that vast span of time, all those epochs of history, the Princes had restrained themselves from using the power of the Staff, Seal, and Star of Iramis.

  Callatas would use them to remake humanity into a new and better form. He had found the one thing that was perfectible about mankind, and he would perfect it.

  He looked at the sand dune, his fingers tight against the Staff, the Seal resting in the palm of his other hand. None of his enemies had yet emerged from the sand, which meant they were either trapped and digging their way out or already dead. He expected at least a few to survive. Kylon and Sulaman’s dogged Oath Shadow, most probably, and likely Nasser as well. The man had proven vexingly difficult to kill. Well, he was finished now. Callatas would take a few Immortals with him and return to his palace at once to begin the final spells of the Apotheosis.

  He would leave Kalgri and the rest of the Immortals here to deal with Caina and Sulaman and their allies. They would be vulnerable as they dug their free, and the Immortals would kill them with ease. He had no fear that Kalgri would disobey, either. The woman had a bad habit for interpreting his instructions in the most creative way possible, but she adored killing, and she would make sure Caina was dead. The Red Huntress did love her little grudges. She woudl kill Sulaman and the others, as well – for once Kalgri’s love of indiscriminate slaughter would prove useful.

  Callatas turned to give his commands to Kalgri and the Immortal khalmir, slipping the Seal of Iramis upon his finger.

  And as he did, a voice thundered inside of his head.

  It was a deep, melodious voice, calm and certain. Callatas had listened to that voice for years, and its teachings had changed the course of his life. Callatas had thought he had escaped that voice, and had not given it any thought for decades.

  In a surge of horror, he realized that the voice had left part of itself inside his head…and the jaws of the trap closed around him.