Child of the Ghosts Page 8

  "No," said Komnene.

  "We could also put you with the family of a merchant friendly to the Ghosts," said Halfdan.

  "But I still wouldn't be able to have children, would I?" said Caina. "I could never marry." She sighed and rubbed her stomach, feeling the hard ridges of the scars beneath the cloth.

  "We won't know for sure until you're old enough to have your first menstrual cycle," said Komnene. "But you could join the Temple of Minaerys as an initiate. You enjoy books, do you not? The Temple sponsors scholars and physicians. You could become a priestess in time, a scholar, or perhaps a physician."

  "That sounds nice," said Caina. And it did. She thought of the Imperial Library, and wondered what it would be like to see all those books.

  "But?" said Komnene.

  "It...seems like hiding," said Caina. "Like I'm hiding from what happened to me, what the magi did to me. If they did it to me, then they've probably done it to lots of other people, too. Haven't they?"

  Halfdan nodded. "More than I care to recall."

  "That was why I left the Temple," said Komnene, the words spilling out of her. "There was a magus in the city of Arzaxia, he would buy slave children and kill them to empower his spells. I couldn't let it continue. One day he came to use the Temple's library, and I...slipped poison into his tea. I murdered him, and I was put out of the Temple. But...I couldn't have let him continue. I couldn't."

  "I don't think I could join the Temple of Minaerys," said Caina. "Not now. Now when I know that the magi are doing these things to people, and no one is trying to stop them." She sighed and shook her head. "I can't say it any better than that."

  "I think you mean," said Halfdan, "that you want to fight against the magi, and the slavers, and all those who would do to others what they did to you. That you could not have peace, otherwise."

  "Yes," said Caina. "Yes. That's exactly what I meant."

  Komnene closed her eyes and sighed.

  "There is," said Halfdan, "another way for you."

  "What is it?" said Caina.

  "You could join the Ghosts," said Halfdan.

  Caina frowned. "You mean...spy for the Emperor?"

  Halfdan nodded.

  "But...wouldn't I do that anyway?" said Caina. "If I became a priestess or a merchant's daughter? If I saw something bad happening, I would send a coin of Emperor Cormarus to the Ghosts, the way my father did."

  "Aye," said Halfdan, "the Emperor needs eyes and ears...but who do you think answers their calls for help?"

  "You?" said Caina.

  Halfdan laughed. "When I can, yes. The Emperor has special...agents, Caina. Those who spy when necessary, who kill when necessary. Those who kill men like the magus Komnene slew, or Maglarion...or women like your mother. The nightfighters."

  "Are you a nightfighter?" said Caina.

  "No," said Halfdan. "I am the head of a Ghost circle, a circlemaster."

  "Which means he tells nightfighters what to do," said Riogan.

  "Komnene is a nightkeeper," said Halfdan. "She assists the Ghosts whenever she can, using her skills and abilities to aid us. Riogan is the only nightfighter with us."

  Caina looked at the cold-eyed man sharpening his blades. "So...what exactly is a nightfighter?"

  "A spy," said Halfdan. "An infiltrator. The Emperor's unseen hand."

  "And an assassin, if necessary," said Riogan, sheathing one of his daggers and drawing another.

  "One who does what is necessary, for the good of the people of the Empire," said Halfdan, "that they may be free from the cruelty of lawless sorcery and the tyranny of corrupt nobles."

  Riogan snorted. "Or we just kill people who need killing."

  "That, too," said Halfdan.

  "But it is a hard and lonely life," said Komnene. "And the training is long and difficult."

  "Only if you are too weak for it," said Riogan.

  But something within Caina had kindled at Halfdan's words.

  "If I join the Ghosts," said Caina, "then I can fight against slavers? And magi? Against men like Maglarion?"

  "Yes," said Halfdan. "But I warn you, Riogan and Komnene are right. The training will be hard, and it is not an easy path."

  Caina hesitated. She knew, then and there, that this decision would shape the rest of her life. Did she want to spend her life wandering around the Empire, lurking in the shadows as Halfdan and Riogan and Komnene did?

  Would she ever know peace?

  But her father was dead, her home reduced to rubble and ashes.

  Caina would never know peace, not ever.

  "Yes," she said. "I will join the Ghosts."

  "So be it," said Halfdan.

  ***

  Chapter 8 - The Bloodcrystal

  Maglarion walked alone through the hills.

  The night was pitch-black. No moon shone, and storm clouds blotted out the stars. The hills rose around him like walls of shadow, black and impenetrable.

  The darkness did not hinder him in the least.

  Not with the thing that had taken the place of his left eye.

  But darkness put him in a contemplative mood, as it always did. How many dark nights had he seen, over the centuries? How many sunrises and sunsets, how many summers and winters? So many, and they all had passed into the bottomless depths of time.

  But he was still here.

  He smiled at that thought.

  Three hundred and eighty years he had seen. He had been born during the Fourth Empire, when the magi ruled the Empire and the nobility knew their place. When the commoners toiled as slaves, as was proper. The Empire had stretched from sunrise to sunset, and the magi raised glittering towers in the sun, their mighty sorcery empowered by the spilled blood of slaves.

  But all that was gone now. The great magi had been overthrown, necromancy banned and the slaves freed at the Emperor's command. The sorcerous wonders of the Fourth Empire had passed away, and Maglarion's teachers had long ago perished, their bones moldering to dust.

  But he was still here.

  His smiled widened at that.

  He considered the magi waiting for him in the ruined vault, so eager to learn the few scraps of knowledge he was willing to impart. The current age considered them full brothers and sister of the Magisterium. In the glory days of the Fourth Empire, they would have been little more than novices, fit only for carrying out the menial chores of the great magi. They were insignificant children...but how they yearned to restore the glory of the Fourth Empire, to wield the power possessed by the magi of old.

  Maglarion did not care about that.

  He paused for a moment atop a hill, looking at the town of Aretia. His eye of flesh saw the harbor lanterns, the light scattering on the bay's rippling waves.

  His other eye, the one hidden beneath the black patch, saw...other things. The pulsing life energies of the townsmen. The power flowing through their blood. Waiting to be harvested by one with the skill to wield it. So many nobles saw the commoners as nothing more than beasts of burden, fit only to be slaves. Those lords would follow anyone who promised to overthrow the Emperor and restore the commoners to slavery.

  Maglarion did not care about that, either.

  He saw the commoners as raw material in a rather more...literal fashion.

  His left eye, the one not made of flesh, twitched, its rough edges scraping against the inside of the socket. He saw death in the air. Death, as he had taught the petty little magi, released its own power, just as flame released heat and light. A lot of people had died nearby, and recently.

  He did not care about that, either.

  Or, at least, not quite yet.

  For he had transcended death, transcended mortality itself. His parents, his family, his teachers, his allies, and so many different enemies...all had passed into death. Yet still he lived. He breathed, walked alive under the sun. He had conquered death, by his own skill and power.

  He had become immortal.

  His smile thinned.

  Almost immortal.

/>   For he could still be killed. His spirit was anchored to his body of flesh and bone. His mastery of necromancy conquered aging, kept disease at bay...yet he still could be slain. A foe of sufficient power, of sufficient skill, could kill him.

  Or a lesser foe could simply get lucky. There was such a thing as mischance.

  And Maglarion had enemies. Rival sorcerers, for one. And the Ghosts, the Emperor's pet spies and assassins. They had hunted him for centuries, and he had littered his path with their dead. But sooner or later, some enemy would get lucky, and Maglarion would die.

  Unless, of course, he found the path of true immortality. A way to transcend the flesh itself, forever.

  And here, in Aretia, he had found the way at last.

  Maglarion stopped, took a moment to savor the energy of death crackling around him. He didn't need it, not yet. But he would, very soon.

  How ironic that the secret to everlasting life lay in such a vast quantity of death.

  Chuckling to himself, he continued up the path to the ruined villa. No doubt the aspiring necromancers desired a new lesson. Well, he would give it to them. Laeria Amalas's little daughter still had some blood in her. Maglarion could wring some more use out of her, until he fed her death into his growing bloodcrystal.

  Ikhana waited for him in the ruined villa, a darker shadow among the crumbled walls.

  "Ikhana, my dear," said Maglarion, leaning upon his cane. "So good to see you this night."

  Her expression, as usual, did not change, but her fingers strayed to the black dagger at her belt.

  He had first met her...two hundred years ago, was it? She had once been an ambitious young assassin of the Kindred. She thought to seduce him, to lure him to her bed and cut his throat as he slumbered.

  Instead, he had enslaved her.

  The black dagger had been one of Maglarion's early creations. It allowed Ikhana to steal the life force of her victims, to heal her wounds, to make her younger and stronger. But as it happened, stolen life force was more addictive than any liquor, any drug...and the dagger only functioned at Maglarion's command.

  Ikhana had not tried to rebel against him for almost a century now.

  He wondered if it even occurred to her to try any more.

  "The guards," said Ikhana. "They are missing from their posts."

  "Perhaps they went to town, to tumble a few fishermen's wives," said Maglarion.

  "No," said Ikhana, voice flat. "I commanded them to stand guard. They would not disobey me."

  That was true. Ikhana had that effect on people. Maglarion found her most useful for inspiring loyalty in his various hirelings. He closed his right eye, his eye of flesh, and looked through his left eye. Again he saw the energy of death simmering around him, fresh and potent.

  A great many people had died here. Recently.

  "There," said Maglarion, opening his right eye once more. "And there. You'll find them both behind that wall."

  Ikhana stalked to the ruined wall, black dagger in hand. Maglarion followed, his cane scraping against the rocky ground. He saw two Istarish slavers lying sprawled against the earth, their bodies concealed by the wall.

  Their throats had been cut.

  Expertly.

  Maglarion had cut a lot of throats in his time, and he knew skill when he saw it.

  He supposed his lair must have been attacked during his absence.

  Had he been here, things would have gone rather...differently.

  "We have been betrayed," hissed Ikhana. Her face remained expressionless, but rage burned in her voice, and the black dagger glittered like a serpent's fang in her grasp. "The slavers have sold us to the Ghosts. Or one of your useless students panicked, and went to the Ghosts in exchange for clemency."

  Maglarion shrugged. "No matter. The Ghosts would have found us here sooner or later anyway. After all, my dear, how many times have we moved over the centuries? One more is no great inconvenience."

  He started towards the stairs.

  "The enemy may still lie in wait for you," said Ikhana.

  Maglarion laughed. "Then pity them."

  Something halfway between a grin and a feral snarl flickered over Ikhana's features, and she followed him.

  The dark energies of recent death grew stronger as he reached the bottom of the stairs. The enspelled glass spheres still glowed on their iron pedestals, bathing the vaulted chamber in pale blue light. Motionless forms littered the floor.

  The Istarish slavers Maglarion had hired.

  Dead to the last man.

  "Pity," murmured Maglarion.

  Finding new hirelings was always such a bother.

  The Ghosts, undoubtedly. Maglarion wondered how they had accomplished it. He prodded one of the corpses with the tip of his cane. The dead man's head turned, his features already starting to swell with decay.

  Black foam stained his lips and mouth.

  "Poison," said Maglarion. "Clever, indeed. The Ghosts must have seen the slavers buying supplies in town. Rather than risk a direct confrontation, they poisoned the wine. Very clever."

  Ikhana hissed. "Drunkards always come to a bad end."

  Maglarion lifted an eyebrow. For a woman addicted to stolen life energies, Ikhana took a dim view of any other vices.

  It still amused him, even after all these years.

  "Come," said Maglarion, "let us see if any of my students survived."

  He found the magi near the table, slumped in their chairs or prone upon the ground. Like the slavers, they all had black foam on their mouths. Maglarion cast his eye over the table, saw a pewter goblet still half-filled with wine.

  He took it, lifted it to his mouth, drank.

  "Ah," he murmured, tossing the goblet aside. It clattered against the floor and rolled into the darkness. "Yes. Blackroot extract, distilled and refined. A most potent poison. Two drops into a cask of wine would be enough to kill anyone who drank from it."

  Poison had long since ceased to trouble Maglarion. Much to the dismay of the Ghosts, no doubt.

  "Then it was the Ghosts," said Ikhana. "They are the only ones in the Empire who use blackroot extract."

  "Along with a few other assassin bands," said Maglarion. "But then they have no reason to wish me dead. I always pay on time, do I not?"

  "The Ghosts know you are here," said Ikhana.

  "Perhaps," said Maglarion. "Or perhaps not. Dear little Laeria mentioned that her husband was an idealistic fool. If he realized that Laeria played at necromancy, he might have sent a coin of Cormarus to the Ghosts. Or we may have drawn the attention of the Ghosts in other ways." He sighed. "I really shouldn't have let you burn the Amalas villa to the ground."

  "It was necessary," said Ikhana, "to conceal our presence."

  "Or it drew the attention of the Ghosts," said Maglarion. He sighed again, thumped his cane against the floor. "No matter."

  "Then our task here was a failure," said Ikhana.

  Maglarion lifted his eyebrows. "Not at all."

  "It was not?" said Ikhana.

  "No," said Maglarion, turning from the table of dead men.

  "What of your students?" said Ikhana.

  "Useless fools," said Maglarion. "And our trip to Aretia was not a failure. I found exactly what I came here to claim."

  He kept walking, past the corridor leading to the cells.

  "What of the prisoners?" said Ikhana.

  "I don't care," said Maglarion. "The Ghosts rescued them. Or they starved to death." He thought for a moment. "If any of them are still alive, you may have them."

  Ikhana vanished down the corridor, black dagger flashing in her hand.

  Maglarion chuckled, stopped before the stained metal table, and whispered a spell. One of the flagstones shifted, revealing a hidden compartment below the floor. Maglarion gestured, and the ancient papyrus scroll he had taken from Sebastian Amalas's desk floated to his hand.

  He unrolled it, gazing upon the ancient hieroglyphs and strange diagrams.

  His smile returned.
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br />   The ancient Maatish sorcerers had been necromancers beyond peer. They had reared mighty pyramids to house their pharaohs, their god-kings, and by their necromantic sciences they had raised their pharaohs, and themselves, to everlasting life. Or almost everlasting life. The Kingdom of the Rising Sun had fallen long ago, its spells and sorceries undone, and now only its ruins remained, littering the deserts like bleached bones.

  And their secrets, waiting for those bold enough to claim them.

  For this scroll held the secret, the thing that Maglarion had sought for so very long.

  A spell to transcend the flesh itself. To escape the body, and live as power forevermore.

  The secret of true immortality.

  Maglarion rolled up the scroll and tucked it into his coat.

  He gestured again, and the bloodcrystal he had made from Laeria's virgin daughter - Maglarion could not recall her name - floated from the compartment to his hand.

  He blinked in surprise.

  When he had left, the bloodcrystal had been the size of a walnut. Now it had grown to the size of a child's fist, its edges jagged and sharp. From time to time a green light writhed in its crystalline depths.

  The deaths of the magi and the slavers, Maglarion realized. The power released by their deaths had fed the bloodcrystal. He felt its increased potency crackling beneath his fingertips, the trapped power within it yearning for release.

  That was just as well. If Maglarion had read the scroll correctly, he was going to need a great deal of power very soon.

  And what better way than death, a great deal of death, to harvest that power?

  Ikhana returned, her face empty. No doubt the Ghosts had taken any surviving prisoners. Or the prisoners had all starved to death, or died from their wounds. Or Ikhana had killed them, feasting upon the feeble remnants of their life energies.

  Maglarion had greater things on his mind.

  "What shall we do now?" said Ikhana.

  Maglarion closed his living eye, thinking of the scroll's hieroglyphs. Of what he would need to transcend the flesh.

  "First," he said, opening his eye, "I shall need some new followers."

  ***

  Chapter 9 - The Vineyard

  They reached Koros the next day.

  The village perched on a spit of land jutting into the Bay of Empire. Thirty or forty ramshackle houses stood around a dilapidated tavern and a stone shrine to Tethene, the goddess of the sea. Dozens of fishing boats floated at wooden docks, bobbing with the waves.