Ghost in the Pact (41 page)

But all of Rhataban’s threats, at least, had died with him.

“Aye,” said Kylon, looking at the dead Master Alchemist. “I suppose I was just fast enough.” 

Chapter 23: Conjurant

Caina ran up the tunnel, the pyrikon staff glowing in her left hand, Morgant and Annarah running after her. The hieroglyphs lining the wall seemed to dance and flicker in the light from the staff, as if they had taken on lives of their own.

Given the titanic forces swirling over their heads, Caina would not have dismissed the possibility. 

At her suggestion, Annarah’s pyrikon had returned to its bracelet form, shielding her from detection. Caina had tucked away the Seal in her belt pouch. Without it, she could not control the nagataaru, but they could not find her, either. 

She suspected the battle raging atop the hill would draw the attention of every nagataaru on Pyramid Isle.

Even through hundreds of feet of solid rock, the vision of the valikarion saw the storm of power snarling above her. The Conjurant Bloodcrystal’s aura spread across Pyramid Isle like a shroud of pale green light, and it was getting larger. At its heart, Caina saw something horrible, something indescribable, like a knife wound into the walls of the world itself. The Conjurant Bloodcrystal was peeling back the barrier between the mortal world and the netherworld like a hunter skinning a deer, and when it finished, the nagataaru and a thousand other horrors would boil through the wound. 

Despite the titanic aura, she saw the duel between Callatas and Kharnaces, bursts of force snapping back and forth between the Great Necromancer and the Grand Master. Caina did not completely understand how the vision of the valikarion worked or the limits of its range, but if she saw the glow of the duel through hundreds of yards of rock, then the spells the two sorcerers wielded had to be powerful indeed. 

That said, practically everything in the Tomb of Kharnaces glowed with sorcerous power. 

“Almost to the library,” said Caina.

“I know,” said Morgant. “I’ve been here before. Several times.”

“When we first came here,” said Annarah, her pyrikon bracelet giving off a faint buzzing noise as it shielded her from the sight of the nagataaru, “I thought we would return within months. By the Divine, I never thought I would return a century and a half after I left…and then once more after that.” She sighed. “How did it come to this?”

Caina opened her mouth to answer, and then a faint vibration went through the floor, accompanied by a flare of power from above, her skin crawling and tingling. Either Kharnaces or Callatas had just unleashed a potent spell.  

“Hurry,” said Caina, and they ran onward, following the sloping passage as it climbed higher into the hill.

Then they strode through archway and into the library of Kharnaces. 

The library was a large rectangular room, filled with rows of bamboo shelves. The shelves had been divided into small cubbies, and each cubby held a single rolled papyrus scroll, its shelf labeled with hieroglyphs. Twenty-five centuries had passed since Kharnaces had been entombed here, but the papyrus scrolls looked as fresh as if they had been written yesterday. Caina saw the faint glow of the preservation spells that crackled around the bamboo shelves, the wards that kept the scrolls preserved over the grind of the centuries.

If they lived through this, Caina promised, she would return here and destroy the library. 

In their way, the scrolls in this room were as dangerous as anything she had ever faced. Kharnaces had a complete library of the necromantic lore once wielded by the priests of Maat. Within this library were instructions for becoming Undying, for creating every kind of bloodcrystal, for raising armies of undead.

And thanks to the knowledge that Kharnaces had put into her head, she could read every single one of the scrolls and learn all their dark secrets, discover spells and lore that the Umbarian Order could only dream of possessing.

Later. She could worry about that later.

Like after she had eluded the dozen undead warriors making their way through the aisles of shelves. Caina came to a stop, sweeping the light from her staff back and forth. The undead warriors moved in a slow pattern through the shelves, the purple flames writhing in the black craters of their eyes. 

“I don’t think they can see us,” said Caina. "They don't have the spells on their helmets like the other warriors did." 

“No,” said Morgant, “but they’re searching for us. Look at how they’re moving. A systematic search, just like in the jungle. But since we’re not going to stop to have a shouting match with Callatas about our feelings, it ought to be easier to avoid them.” 

Caina and Annarah shared a look. Though Morgant did have a point.

“So long as we don’t touch them,” said Caina, “we can get through. They can’t see us or hear us. The door to Kharnaces’s throne room is on the other side of the library.” She watched the undead warriors move for a moment. “Follow me. Don’t touch them.” 

She stepped into the main aisle, hurrying to avoid a pair of undead. The warriors continued their steady search of the library. Annarah and Morgant darted after her, and Caina ducked between a pair of shelves, waiting until a warrior had passed. She counted to five, checked the timing in her head, and then hurried back into the main aisle. Green light flickered in the gloom ahead, and Caina remembered the double row of hieroglyphs that had surrounded Kharnaces’s throne, hieroglyphs that had burned with green fire. 

They were almost there.

No other undead warriors were in the way, and Caina broke into a sprint, Morgant and Annarah running after her. They tore through the archway and into the chamber beyond. The undead kept moving through the library, some of them striding down the corridor towards the entry hall. So far they did not seem inclined to cover ground they had already searched, though Caina knew they could not count upon that. 

She stepped into the throne room of Kharnaces.

Kharnaces had once commanded the Inferno in the mountains south of the Vale of Fallen Stars, and the throne room in the Tomb was a smaller version of that imposing chamber. The floor had been covered in gleaming marble, and intricate Maatish reliefs covered the columns and the walls. In the Inferno, the reliefs had been scenes of Kharnaces’s triumph over the barbarians on the outskirts of the Kingdom of the Rising Sun. Here, they showed scenes of his defeat and his binding within the Tomb, the hieroglyphs describing Kharnaces’s crimes and punishments in great detail…

Caina made herself look away. She could read Maatish hieroglyphics now, but it gave her a nasty headache. 

A dais stood in the center of the room, supporting an elaborately wrought stone throne. The same double ring of burning hieroglyphs that Caina remembered from her last visit shone around the throne in a ring about seven feet across. The last time the body of Kharnaces himself had occupied the throne, robed and masked, while his projection wandered the Tomb. 

His undead form was gone. 

“It seems Kharnaces has to activate the Conjurant Bloodcrystal in the flesh,” said Annarah.

Morgant shrugged. “If he’s going to end the world, it’s only polite to do it in person.”

Caina stared at the throne. A maze of powerful spells surrounded it, burning like molten metal to the vision of the valikarion. The double ring of hieroglyphs was a ward of surpassing power, while the throne itself bore several spells. 

“Caina, you were right,” said Annarah. “Look. There’s a little door on the side of the throne. Kharnaces must have secured his canopic jars in there.” She worked a quick spell, her pyrikon flashing. “There are several concentrations of potent necromantic force within the throne. Those are likely the canopic jars.”

Caina nodded, thinking hard. “I thought so.” 

“So how do we unravel those wards?” said Morgant.

“I’m not sure,” said Caina.

###

Callatas dragged the Staff of Iramis through the air, shouting as he poured his will into the ancient relic. Gray light and mist rose in a sheet before him as the Staff tore open a gate to the netherworld, and Callatas sent his will into the gate, straining as he tried to divide his concentration between half a dozen warding spells at once. 

His spell thundered into the other world…and the spirits answered.

Crimson flames erupted across the hilltop as a dozen ifriti, cousins to the fire elemental Cassander Nilas had summoned to kill Caina Amalas, swarmed into the material world. Normally, summoning a creature as powerful as an ifrit required a potent spell with a great deal of preparation. The power of the Staff could rip into the netherworld and draw forth as many ifriti as Callatas wanted. Of course, without the Seal, he had no way to command those ifriti, and the spell to bind them took far more time and effort than he could spare right now. 

Fortunately, it didn’t matter. 

The ifriti spirits went on a rampage, burning their way through the undead creatures swarming over the hilltop. That gave Kalgri a respite, allowing her to strike down more and more of the undead baboons and warriors. That in turn kept the undead away from Callatas, which let him turn more of his attention to Kharnaces. 

Little good it did.

Kharnaces unleashed another attack, a lance of shadow and green flame that would instantly kill anyone it touched and raise their corpse as an undead creature. Callatas poured all his strength into his ward against necromantic force, and blue light and green fire howled around him, the spell struggling against his wards. Kharnaces’s spell, backed by the fury of the Harbinger, ripped against Callatas’s protections. It took every bit of Callatas’s strength to hold the ward in place, but he was not without his own powers…and he could also draw upon the shadow of Kotuluk Iblis to fuel his sorcery. 

Odd that Kotuluk Iblis permitted him to do so. Perhaps that was part of the contest between the Voice and the Harbinger. Kharnaces could wield spells augmented by the Harbinger’s power, but Kotuluk Iblis in turn fueled Callatas’s sorcery, and to balance that disadvantage the Voice was trapped within an unreliable and mercurial murderess. 

The contest between the Voice and the Harbinger had been going on for millennia, Callatas suspected, but he would win this battle. 

If Kharnaces didn’t flatten him first.

At last the pressure of the necromantic spell ended, and Callatas staggered back, breathing hard, his head ringing from exertion. He managed to catch his balance by driving the end of the Staff against the ground. It would be a grim joke if after a century and a half of struggle he tripped and fell to his death along the hill’s cliff-like slopes.

The ifriti raged back and forth along the hilltop, seeking targets for their fury, and Callatas last another spell. It was a simple spell, little more than an exercise, a conjuration of elemental water around Kharnaces. None of it penetrated his wards, and even if it had, it wouldn’t have mattered, because Kharnaces’s undead form had no need to draw breath. 

Yet it drew the attention of the ifriti. The ifriti were elemental spirits of flame, and they had warred against the elemental spirits of water for countless ages, just as the nagataaru had struggled against the djinni of the Court of the Azure Sovereign. 

Consequently, they hated elemental water, and it drew them like lions to a wounded gazelle. 

The ifriti rushed at Kharnaces, a dozen of them surging over him like a tide of flame. The Great Necromancer lifted his hands in an unhurried gesture, and snarling bolts of blue lightning erupted from him. The bolts struck the ifriti, shattering the bonds that held them to the mortal world, and one by one they winked out of existence, drawn back into the netherworld. 

Callatas cast another spell as Kharnaces banished the ifriti, drawing as much power as he could hold and augmenting it with the strength of Kotuluk Iblis. A blue spark the size of a man’s head snarled above his palm, and he thrust his arm, flinging the spell at Kharnaces. It was a spell of dispelling, the most powerful one that Callatas knew, designed to shatter wards and pierce arcane protections. If it touched Kharnaces himself, it might sever the spells upon his body, sending his spirit flying back to his canopic jars, though the Great Necromancer would be able to claim another body in short order. That might give Caina enough time to find and destroy those damned canopic jars. 

Assuming, of course, that Kharnaces had been lying when he had claimed that his soul had merged with the Harbinger, that destroying the canopic jars would not stop him. Callatas had assumed that was a bluff. If it wasn’t a bluff, then Kharnaces had already won…

No. He would not give in to despair. He had come so far, defeated so many obstacles, and was so close to completing the Apotheosis. Callatas refused to give in now. 

The Balarigar had done such a good job of disrupting his plans that she could damned well turn that talent for mayhem against Kharnaces. 

His attack drilled into Kharnaces’s wards, and the Great Necromancer stumbled, his white robes billowing around his withered body in the gale rising from the scattered fires burning atop the hill. Callatas felt his enemy’s wards buckle from the pressure of the spell, and he fought throughout his exhaustion and summoned enough power to cast a transmutation spell. Still the blue sparks snarled around Kharnaces, ripping away his wards, and Callatas flung a bolt of golden fire. 

The spell struck Kharnaces’s remaining wards, and rebounded from the Great Necromancer, hurtling back towards Callatas. He cursed in alarm and cast another spell, reinforcing his own wards. The transmutation spell struck him and reflected back at Kharnaces, only to hit his wards and reflect back once more at Callatas. The bolt of golden fire ricocheted back and forth between them, drawing in more power from the storm of sorcerous force burning over the island. Kharnaces shook off the dispelling effect, his wards flaring back to full power once more, and he gestured. 

The bolt of golden fire exploded in a burst as bright as the sun. Transmuting power lashed in all directions, and Callatas glimpsed a flash of crimson as Kalgri sprinted out of the way, her shadow-cloak streaming behind her. A dozen undead warriors and baboons went motionless, transmuted into gleaming blue crystal, and for a moment silence fell over the hilltop.