Ghost in the Pact (32 page)

Kalgri laughed. “You’re one to talk. I followed the Balarigar for months, you know. I was hiding under the floorboards when our dear Annarah unlocked her journal and told you where to find the Staff and the Seal.”

Kalgri had been there? Caina had known that Kalgri had followed her around Istarinmul for months, but she hadn’t realized that the Huntress had been so close. 

“Then you should have told Callatas at once,” said Caina, “and saved yourself much trouble.”

“Yes,” said Callatas. “You should have. Your reckless lust for death has caused me much…”

“Father, father,” said Kalgri, and his expression tightened. “I confronted our dear Balarigar once before, and look how that ended! I really didn’t want to get thrown off the side of a mountain again.” She shrugged, the shadow-cloak rippling around her. “I wanted to maneuver Caina and Cassander into killing each other, and then take the relics from the rubble. It worked halfway.”

“Halfway,” growled Callatas, “is not enough.”

“Father dearest,” said Kalgri, “I did exactly as you told me. I brought death to your enemies, and I told you where to find the relics. It is not my fault that the minute you picked up the relics, Kharnaces crooked his finger and you came running at his call like a good dog.” 

Caina half-expected Callatas to erupt in fury at the insult, but the Grand Master only glared, the cords in his neck standing out as he gritted his teeth. 

Kalgri did, after all, have a point. 

“Ah!” said Morgant.

“What?” said Caina.

“I’ve realized what the Grand Master’s chief failing is,” said Morgant.

“Oh?” said Callatas, picking his way around a fallen tree. “Do enlighten me, assassin.” 

“You promised to open the Starfall Straits to Cassander if he killed Caina, and then failed to pay him,” said Morgant.

“Obviously, he failed,” said Callatas, “given that the Balarigar is walking in front of us right now.” 

“But he thought he had killed Caina,” said Morgant, pointing at Kalgri. “Which, by the way, is your problem. Chronic lying.”

Again Kalgri’s smile glinted in the depths of her cowl, accompanied by a flicker of purple fire. “Lies are often more efficient at killing than knives.”

“Exactly,” said Morgant. “Anyway. Your problem, Grand Master, is that you have a bad habit of forgetting to pay your hirelings. See, if you had paid me for that mural, maybe you would have learned better habits, and then…”

“Blood and damnation!” roared Callatas. “The fate of humanity hangs in the balance, and you continue to quibble about that damned mural! If I had known that I would have to listen to you whine about it decades later, I would have killed you then and there to save myself the bother!” 

“But you didn’t,” said Morgant.

Callatas said nothing more, glaring into the jungle. 

“As I was saying,” said Kalgri, “I followed Caina for months. Studying her, watching her, preparing for when I would strike. I even left little presents for her. Do you remember them? The curved knives. They made you so paranoid!” 

“Given that you were stalking me,” said Caina, “a little paranoia was necessary.”

“My favorite,” said Kalgri, “was right after the Inferno. You were going to see Kylon. You got all dressed up, and then saw the curved knife in the dust and changed your mind. Maybe you were wiser back then. You realized that luring him into your bed was a bad idea.”

Caina said nothing.

“Really, you ought to get down on your knees and thank me,” said Kalgri. 

Still Caina said nothing.

“You should to thank me for killing Kylon’s wife,” said Kalgri.

“What?” said Caina, anger getting the better of her tongue. “Why the hell would I do a vile thing like that?”

“Because if I hadn’t killed his wife,” said Kalgri, “he would never have taken a second look at you. Why should he have done so? He was one of the richest and most powerful men in New Kyre. His wife was beautiful and devoted to him, and once he tired of her, he could take as many mistresses as he wished. And all of them, every single one of them, could do what you could not. They could give him children, as many children as he wished. I wonder how long until he realizes he can do far better than a barren spy.”

Caina said nothing. She knew that Kalgri was trying to get under skin. It was a crueler version of the game Morgant played…and like Morgant, Kalgri had identified Caina’s weak point. A little dark voice in her head whispered that the Red Huntress was perhaps right. Kylon was only with Caina because the Huntress had murdered his wife and the Assembly had banished him. If the banishment was ever lifted, if he could go home and find a Kyracian wife to bear him Kyracian sons…would he do it? 

Maybe it would be better for him, the dark voice whispered, if he did.

“Well?” said Kalgri. “You have nothing to say to that.” 

Caina took a deep breath. “I think you’re trying to get us killed.”

“Obviously,” said Kalgri. 

“No,” said Caina. “I think you’re trying to get me angry enough that I’ll do something stupid and blunder into one of the nagataaru. Then they can tear us apart, and you can watch and laugh and feast on our deaths. If you don’t get me angry, then you’ll start on Annarah, start taunting her about Iramis or the other loremasters or something.” 

Morgant laughed. “Clever.” 

Kalgri snorted. “As if…”

“Enough,” snapped Callatas. “The Apotheosis will not happen if we are all killed here because you could not control your tongue. Be silent.” 

Kalgri, thankfully, stopped talking. Though Caina suspected it wasn’t because of the Grand Master’s command, but because she realized the tactic would no longer be effective and was thinking of something else. Caina glanced at Callatas, and saw him staring back at her.

She did not like the hungry way he looked at her.

###

Callatas took a careful step over a fallen tree, using the shadow of Kotuluk Iblis to enhance his stamina. Given how exhausted the ordeal in the netherworld and his rejuvenation had left him, it was necessary. Several times, Callatas had reached for the shadow, trying to use it to command the lesser nagataaru infesting the island to do his bidding. If he could command them, he could send the undead at Caina and her allies in a rush.

Yet the lesser nagataaru would not obey him, which meant that Kotuluk Iblis had commanded them not to obey him.

It made a grim sort of sense. Both the Voice and the Harbinger had presented Kotuluk Iblis with competing plans on how to consume the world. Now Kotuluk Iblis was putting both plans to the test, seeing which one would prevail. Callatas thought that rather inefficient, but Kotuluk Iblis was eternal. A few centuries meant nothing to a creature like the sovereign of the nagataaru. 

No matter. Callatas would prevail. Kotuluk Iblis and his nagataaru vassals thought to devour the world, but Callatas knew better. He would harness the nagataaru just as men had harnessed horses and oxen long ago, and he would use them to create a superior humanity, one free of the corrupting effects of civilization. 

He just had to survive long enough to do it. 

He just had to defeat Kharnaces, or even better, maneuver Caina and Kharnaces into destroying each other. 

Victory was within his grasp…but only if he remained in control of himself long enough to seize it. 

That might prove difficult. 

The Elixir Rejuvenata had restored him, but it had given him the body of a young man, with all of a young man’s impulses. Anger burned through him at the slightest setback, and time and time again he resisted the urge to lash out in fury.

And the other urges…

He watched as Caina climbed over another fallen tree, her shadow-cloak flaring to the side. As she did, her trousers pressed tight against her backside, and to his immense annoyance, Callatas found himself momentarily transfixed by the sight. He wondered what her legs looked like. Given how often she ran for her life, they would be strong and sculpted. Maybe the rest of her naked body looked the same way, lean and fit, and he wondered how that body would feel underneath his own…

With a hiss of annoyance, Callatas pushed the thoughts out of his head. The Elixir Rejuvenata had its perils. Under better circumstances, Callatas would have rested for several weeks after drinking a vial of the Elixir. Though under better circumstances, he would have been in Istarinmul and Caina Amalas would have been his prisoner, kneeling before him in chains, and he could have forced her to do whatever he wished…

Again he shoved the persistent urges from his mind. Old age, for all its irritations, did have one advantage. The appetites of the flesh cooled, allowing his mind to focus on more important matters. 

“Why?” said Annarah. 

Wrapped in his thoughts, the rest of his attention focused upon watching for Kharnaces’s servitors, it took Callatas a moment to realize that Annarah was speaking to him.

“What?” he said, blinking. She was an attractive woman, but his lust had not fixated on her the way it had upon Caina. Long ago she had been his student, and intimate relations between a loremaster and an initiate had been strictly forbidden. Callatas had burned Iramis to ashes, and he had transcended the moral strictures of the weak. Yet it seemed that law still bound him. It was humorous, in a peculiar sort of way. 

His lust had not fixated upon Kalgri because taking the Huntress into his bed would have been like taking a poisonous snake into his bath. 

“Why did you do it?” said Annarah. Her face was tight, her green eyes hard, her hair a silver shimmer in the glow from Caina’s pyrikon staff. 

“Do what?” said Callatas, irritated. 

“All of it,” said Annarah. “Everything you have done. You burned Iramis, and you murdered everyone you ever knew. I have seen the other things you have done. Istarinmul was always a harsh land, but you have twisted it, poisoned it with wraithblood, and filled it with slaves and killers. Why?” 

“Because,” said Morgant, “the sort of man who would refuse to pay for a mural is the sort of man who would do those things.” 

“Clearly,” said Caina. 

“My purposes are beyond your comprehension,” said Callatas. “Beyond any of your comprehension…”

“Do not patronize me,” said Annarah. He had known her most of her life, and he had rarely heard her sound so angry. “I know what you intend. You think to fuse the nagataaru with the wraithblood addicts to create a new kind of humanity, a sort of hybrid.” She made an angry gesture, the slender bronze chains on her left hand rattling. “You want to fill the world with creatures like the Huntress.”

“Then you know my purpose,” said Callatas.

“But why?” said Annarah. “I know your purpose, but by the Divine, by the blood of all those you have murdered, why? Why have you done these terrible things? I knew you! You were Callatas the Wise, the greatest loremaster of Iramis. Kings and princes and lords from across the world came to you for healing and counsel.”

“They were fools,” said Callatas. “They were symptoms of all is wrong with the world.”

“I remember the first day I was sent to the Towers of Lore for training after I had manifested the power,” said Annarah. “I was so frightened. I hid in the great hall of the Tower of Time and cried. You found me…”

“Yes,” said Callatas, blinking. He had forgotten that. There had been so many students, and this had been before…

“You told me that it was all right to be afraid,” said Annarah, “for the loremasters had a grave responsibility. You said we were the keepers of the Words of Lore, the words given by the Divine to the first men of Iramis in the dawn of ages. We were the guardians of the world against the abuse of sorcery and the creatures of the netherworld. We were the best healers in the world, and we would have the chance to help more people than anyone else.”

“Yes,” said Callatas, remembering. “I did say that.”

“Then why,” said Annarah, her voice growing anguished, “then why did you forsake it all?”

“Because I was wrong,” said Callatas. 

“What?” said Annarah, incredulous. “You were not wrong. You were Callatas the Wise! You lived those words! You…”

“I was wrong!” said Callatas.

The words came out of him in a shout. He hadn’t intended that. 

“You weren’t,” said Annarah. “The calling of the loremasters was a noble one…” 

“It was folly,” said Callatas. “Utter and complete folly. We could not save the world. We could not even help the world. At best we could ameliorate the symptoms, but that was all.”

“You are wrong,” said Annarah. “We could…”

“We could not solve anything!” said Callatas, still shouting. “The problem is the nature of man itself. The problem is civilization…”

“Just as you told me,” said Caina, “at Master Ulvan’s ascension to the rank of cowled master.”

Callatas blinked, and then the memory flashed through his mind. There had been a circus at the ascension, and there had been a dancing girl who had thrown knives. Ulvan had lusted after her in a most undignified fashion. At the time, Callatas had barely noticed her.

“That was you?” said Callatas, astonished.

“You told me civilization was an abomination, a corruption,” said Caina. “You said that it exemplified everything that was wrong with humanity, that the only thing perfectible about man was our nature as killers.”

“Yes,” said Callatas. He had said that to her, hadn’t he? How could he have known that a knife-throwing girl from a circus would almost kill him two years later? It beggared belief…but it was a reminder that not even he could see the future. “What is perfectible about man?” 

“Nothing,” said Annarah. “Nothing is perfectible about mankind. We are flawed, and we must learn to live with our flaws.” 

“No,” said Callatas. “You are wrong. There is something perfectible about humanity. The only thing perfectible. Our nature as killers. Civilization weakens us, enfeebles us, makes us dependent upon money and trade and other such corruptions. We are slaves to our bellies, are we not? I sought for a better way. A way to make mankind immortal, a way to perfect our savage nature and cast off the trappings of civilization.”