Ghost in the Pact (42 page)

Callatas tried to catch his breath, leaning upon the Staff of Iramis for balance. The arcane volleys he had leveled at Kharnaces would have been enough to destroy a hundred lesser sorcerers, but he had not even been able to break through the Great Necromancer’s wards. 

Kharnaces, as far as he could tell, was not even straining. He was already undead. He had no stamina to exhaust. 

“It is unavoidable,” said Kharnaces, lifting his hands as green fire burned around the skeletal fingers. Behind him the Conjurant Bloodcrystal spun faster and faster, green fires flickering and dancing in its bottomless black depths. The thing had kept growing, and now was nearly twelve feet across. “It is inevitable. It has already been achieved. The nagataaru shall devour this world, and your Apotheosis and new humanity will never come to pass. Lie down and accept your defeat, my wayward pupil, and your passing shall be far quicker.” 

“No,” growled Callatas, pulling in power for a new spell.

“So be it, then,” said Kharnaces, thunder ringing over the hill as he cast a spell of his own.

###

Caina stared at the double ring of glowing hieroglyphs. 

The spells burned before the vision of the valikarion, as complex and as potent as the spells she had once sensed upon Rhames’s Ascendant Bloodcrystal in Caer Magia or the Subjugant Bloodcrystal in the bowels of the Inferno. It was like looking at a tapestry made of fire, a tapestry where the threads kept weaving and reknitting themselves into different patterns of their own accord. 

Caina raked her ghostsilver dagger through the outer circle, dragging the tip over glyph after glyph. The handle grew hot beneath her fingers, smoke rising from the gleaming marble of the dais, and then the first circle winked out. 

“That was suspiciously easy,” said Morgant.

“Aye,” said Caina, wincing and shifting the ghostsilver dagger to her other hand. Gods, but it had gotten hot. She took a deep breath and started to drag it through the circumference of the inner circle. 

“Why is that suspicious?” said Annarah. “Ghostsilver is proof against sorcery, even highly potent sorcery.”

“It is,” said Caina, watching the hieroglyphs wink out one by one, wisps of white smoke rising from the dagger’s blade. “But we’re not the only ones who know that. The Iramisians fought against the Great Necromancers and the Maatish for centuries.”

“Millennia,” said Annarah. “Both our nations were ancient, and our enmity deep. The Great Necromancers sought to enslave the world in the name of their gods, and we stood against them. The tales of the wars are…were…preserved in the Towers of Lore in Iramis.”

“Exactly,” said Caina. “So Kharnaces would have fought loremasters and valikarion. He knew what they could do, and he knew what a ghostsilver weapon could do. So he would have set up something to guard his canopic jars from a ghostsilver weapon. Some spell, some trap, some trick, something.” 

There was a crackling noise, and the second circle vanished. Caina straightened up and stepped back, looking around. She didn’t know what to expect. Undead warriors pouring out of hidden niches in the walls, maybe. Some monstrous thing like an Umbarian cataphractus storming through the throne room. Maybe even a giant block of stone falling from the ceiling to crush her. No one ever looked up. 

But nothing happened.

Morgant started to say something, and then a vibration went through the floor, some dust falling through the ceiling.

“Callatas and Kharnaces,” said Annarah. “We must hurry.”

“Yes,” said Morgant. “We ought to hasten so Callatas can hurry up and kill us.” 

“Maybe,” said Caina, stepping back onto the dais. She squatted and considered the heavy block of marble that comprised the throne’s base. “Or maybe he’ll be too exhausted to deal with us.”

Kalgri might not. 

Caina shoved all thoughts of the Huntress from her mind and concentrated on the problem at hand. 

She saw the little stone door in the side of the throne. After her experience with Rhames she knew exactly how large a canopic jar was, and how large a container would be to hold seven such jars. The throne was more than large enough to conceal such a box. Given that the canopic jars were Kharnaces’s weak point, possibly the only weakness he possessed, Caina would have expected them to be better guarded than this. 

As far as she could tell, there were no mechanical traps on the stone door. There was a potent warding spell upon it, and Caina suspected that anyone who touched it would be reduced to a withered corpse in an instant. Yet the spell, for all its power, was vulnerable to ghostsilver, and Caina eased the hot dagger into the gap between the stone door and its frame. She saw the spell shiver and start to collapse onto itself…

Purple fire flashed before her eyes, and Caina jerked back.

There was a nagataaru bound within the throne.

She lifted her dagger again, and saw that the nagataaru had rebuilt the warding spells upon the stone throne. 

“What happened?” said Morgant. “You hit a trap?”

“No,” said Annarah, casting another spell. “I think…yes. There is a nagataaru within the throne itself.”

“Of course Kharnaces would not leave his canopic jars unguarded,” said Caina. “There’s a guard. A nagataaru, and it regenerated the warding spell.” She thought for a moment. “Annarah. Can you attack the nagataaru when it shows itself?”

“Perhaps,” said Annarah. She hesitated. “If I use my pyrikon to augment the spell, the nagataaru will discern my location.”

“Can you use mine?” said Caina. 

“No, it’s bonded to you,” said Annarah, “but if you ask it to aid me…”

Caina nodded, beckoned Annarah closer, and grabbed the older woman’s wrist. “Aid her, please.” It felt odd talking to a bracelet, but the pyrikon was a living thing, not just a hunk of metal, and it had a will and mind of its own. It had helped her more than once, once it had understood what she needed. Like the nagataaru, pyrikon spirits did not have a sound grasp of the material world. 

The pyrikon bracelet glowed, both to Caina’s eyes and the sight of the valikarion, and Annarah shuddered a little.

“I am ready,” she said.

Caina nodded and drew the dagger through the gap in the door, the weapon heating up again. She saw the spell start to collapse, the ward unraveling, and the purple fire of the nagataaru filled the gap. Annarah gestured, and white fire leaped from her hand to strike the side of the throne. 

The nagataaru recoiled, and then retaliated. Purple fire pulsed from the throne, repelling Annarah’s attack and rebuilding the ward. The force of sorcery knocked Caina’s hand back, and she barely kept her grasp upon the smoking dagger. 

“What happened?” said Caina.

“That nagataaru,” said Annarah. “It’s too strong, and the wards around the throne are too powerful. I cannot harm it.”  

“And if I collapse the wards, the nagataaru just rebuilds them before you can strike at it,” said Caina, a sinking feeling settling in her stomach. “Morgant.”

They had no better luck with Morgant’s black dagger. The spells within the throne prevented Morgant’s dagger from cutting into the marble. Caina’s ghostsilver dagger could have unwoven the defensive wards, but unlike Morgant’s blade, Caina’s dagger could not cut through solid marble. With increasing alarm, Caina tried every combination of her dagger, Morgant’s blade, and Annarah’s spells that she could think of, but none of them proved effective. Every time, the nagataaru within the throne repelled the attack.

“Damn it,” said Caina, her frustration mixed with growing dread. She didn’t know how long Callatas could last again Kharnaces, but she suspected it would not be much longer. 

“I think the nagataaru within the throne is the Harbinger itself,” said Annarah. “It is certainly as powerful as a nagataaru lord.” 

“Isn’t the Harbinger inside Kharnaces?” said Morgant. “Neat trick if it can be in two places at once.”

“Those are Kharnaces’s canopic jars,” said Caina, wiping some of the sweat from her forehead. “He said that he was the Harbinger and the Harbinger was him. Likely their spirits have merged, so the Harbinger can defend the canopic jars. No wonder Kharnaces was willing to leave them in the throne.” 

She desperately wished that Kylon were here. Apart from how much she missed his presence, he was the only one among them who stood a good chance against Kalgri. And the valikon would have been the perfect weapon for forcing open the throne. 

Morgant snorted. “I suppose that’s just like Kharnaces.” 

“What do you mean?” said Annarah.

“You remember what happened at the Inferno,” said Morgant. “For a man who wants to destroy the world, he’s entirely too fond of his little trophies.” 

Caina blinked.

Trophies…

“If he destroys the world,” said Morgant, “he’ll destroy his trophies too. Were all the Great Necromancers so shortsighted?” 

“Wait,” said Caina.

Trophies…

The memory of her dream on the ship blazed through her thoughts. Samnirdamnus had made a point of telling her that Kharnaces had liked to collect trophies, though most of his relics had been buried in the destruction of the Inferno. Yet Kharnaces had been trapped on Pyramid Isle for two and a half thousand years. Surely others had come to the island in that time, and Kharnaces must have killed some of the intruders. And some of those visitors must have carried items that Kharnaces would have kept as trophies.

Including, perhaps, items that Caina might find useful?

Else why would Samnirdamnus have gone to such trouble to mention it? Kharnaces’s trophies had already saved Caina’s life. Morgant had carried the damaged wedjet-dahn out of the Inferno, and Kylon had used that wedjet-dahn to help save Caina’s life in Rumarah. 

Was there something similar in the Tomb of Kharnaces? 

Caina looked across the throne room. On the far wall, she saw another archway, opening into a darkened chamber. No light penetrated the room, but the vision of the valikarion saw the gleam of several arcane auras. 

“What is it?” said Annarah. 

“I have an idea,” said Caina.

“Oh,” said Morgant. “You’re about to do something clever.”

“Or something stupid,” said Caina. 

“The two overlap more often than you might think,” said Morgant. 

“Come on,” said Caina. “Keep an eye out for traps.”

She ran across the throne room, Morgant and Annarah following her. 

###

Another explosion ripped across the top of the hill, the thunderclap ringing over the island. Callatas screamed and poured all his strength and will into his wards, trying to hold his defenses against the hurricane of necromantic power that Kharnaces had thrown at him. The storm of necromantic force pressed against him, threatening to tear the life from his flesh.

At last the spell ended, and Callatas wavered upon his feet, breathing hard, sweat pouring down his face to soak into his bloodstained robes. 

It had taken all of his strength to hold back that attack. It was just as well that Caina had nearly stabbed him to death in the netherworld. It had forced him to drink Elixir Rejuvenata, making him young and strong again. 

Without that renewed vitality, it was likely that the strain of the battle would have ruptured his heart by now. Even with his rejuvenated strength, Callatas was at the end of his stamina. It took all of his strength to hold back Kharnaces’s spells, and he had no power left to strike back. 

Kalgri was no help. Bones littered the hilltop, some of them smoking from the backlash of spells. The Huntress was a crimson whirlwind of destruction, cutting down undead creature after undead creature, but still more and more of them came. None of them could touch Kalgri, and she kept them from swarming over Callatas, but she could not help him against Kharnaces. No doubt the Voice was screaming for her to do something, to find a way to stop the Harbinger, but likely Kalgri did not care.

He wondered what she would do. Maybe she would flee, but if the Conjurant Bloodcrystal expanded further, there would be no place to hide. Maybe she simply wanted to feed on Callatas’s death. That seemed likely. 

For Callatas knew that he was about to die. He could not overpower Kharnaces, and if the Great Necromancer’s taunts were true, then Caina’s efforts were useless. Callatas was about to die, and the Apotheosis and the new humanity would die with him. 

Unless…

His one possible hope of salvation rested against his chest, glowing with a pale blue light. 

He had not dared to use the Star of Iramis since the day over a century and a half past when he had lifted it and called upon its power. With that power, he had destroyed his chief opponents, burning Iramis to ashes and binding the Court of the Azure Sovereign within the destruction, preventing the djinn from meddling with the Apotheosis. He had made no secret of the Star’s power, and that had become part of his legend. Who would dare challenge Grand Master Callatas, who bore the Star that had consumed Iramis in a storm of flame?

Of course, he had thought to find the Staff and the Seal in the ashes…and that miscalculation had led him here. 

Yet despite the dark legend that surrounded him, he had never dared to draw upon the Star’s power once more. It had nearly destroyed him the first time, and in truth he had never completely understood what he had done. The Star was a source of immense power, a well of arcane strength, and tapping it had almost destroyed him. 

Doing so a second time would certainly destroy him. And possibly Pyramid Isle as well. 

But Kharnaces was going to kill him. 

Callatas deflected another attack, his defenses sputtering and crackling, and prepared himself to draw upon the Star’s colossal might. 

It was his very last chance.

###

Caina willed her pyrikon into its staff form, the pale white light falling over the chamber beyond Kharnaces’s throne room.

“By the Divine,” muttered Annarah. “There must be hundreds of them.”

It was indeed the trophy room of the Great Necromancer Kharnaces. 

The first thing that Caina saw was the giant rack holding Hellfire amphorae.