Ghost in the Seal (Ghost Exile #6) (30 page)

“I do not,” said Annarah. “The Great Necromancers had many different forms of bloodcrystals, both lesser and greater, but none that matched such a description. And a gate to the netherworld? The Great Necromancers, for all their other crimes, never trafficked with the spirits of the netherworld, whether indifferent ones like the elementals or malevolent ones like the nagataaru.”

“But old Kharnaces was a heretic, wasn’t he?” said Morgant. “Bet he’d enjoy a private gate to the netherworld in his cellar.” 

Caina shook her head. “I don’t know what Kharnaces is creating. A means to escape the island? A way to take vengeance upon Callatas? I don’t know. Right now we need to find the Staff and the Seal. And I think…I think the best way is for me to go on alone.”

“No,” said Kylon at once. 

“I have the shadow-cloak,” said Caina. “The nagataaru can’t see me.”

“I can wear the shadow-cloak as well,” said Kylon. “I also have the valikon. If the nagataaru detect me, I can fight my way out.”

“Past hundreds of them?” said Caina. “The ones in the bloodcrystal chamber are at least as strong as the warriors we fought above. All six of us together could not fight past so many nagataaru-infested corpses.”

“You certainly could not do it alone,” said Kylon.

“I’m not going to fight anyone,” said Caina. “I don’t intend to let the nagataaru find me. I have another advantage as well. I can sense sorcery without using a spell. If there are wards or sorcerous traps, I can avoid them, and if I come across a locked door, I can pick it. All I’ll do is have a look around, and I find the Staff and Seal, I’ll bring them back here with me. If they’re guarded, I’ll return and we can make a plan.” 

Nasser grunted. “Are you attempting to sacrifice yourself for our sake?”

Caina blinked. “What?” 

“You almost did that at the Maze, when the Immortals had us surrounded,” said Nasser.

“That was a distraction,” said Caina. 

“And again at Silent Ash Temple, when you intended to surrender to the Huntress to allow Lady Claudia and Lord Martin to escape,” said Nasser. Kylon gave her a sharp look. Caina had not mentioned that particular detail to him. “You have, Ciaran, a noted tendency to seek death even when it is not necessary.”

“Maybe,” conceded Caina. “And this is dangerous, I admit. But it’s the best way. Does anyone else have a better idea?” No one did. “It is a risk, but a calculated one. I think this is the best way to take the Staff and the Seal without drawing Kharnaces’s notice.”

And if she died, if the prophecy of Sulaman came true in the Tomb, at least Caina would be dying alone. She would not be taking anyone else with her.

She would not take Kylon to his death alongside her. 

“Very well,” said Nasser. “I can think of nothing better, and you know what you are doing, Ciaran. Proceed as you think best. We shall await your return here.”

“No,” said Kylon, stepping forward. For a moment Caina wondered if he would stop her from going. “You’re going to get yourself killed for nothing.”

“Maybe,” said Caina. “A lot of people die for nothing. Maybe I’ll be one of them. But something is wrong here, Kylon. Those bloodcrystals…Kharnaces is preparing something. Maybe something even worse than the Apotheosis. Whatever it is, we can’t let him use the Staff and the Seal to do it.” She shrugged. “So I’ll steal the regalia out from under his nose, and we’ll sneak out of here.”

For a long moment Kylon stared at her, his left hand clenching and unclenching. She felt touched that he cared so much…and a crushing wave of guilt followed. What would he do when she died? She was going to die if she went in pursuit of the Staff and the Seal, if not in the Tomb, then at some point. 

Maybe it was better just to get it over with. 

“Gods of storm and brine,” muttered Kylon. “I’m going to regret this. I know I’m going to regret this.”

“I went alone into Caer Magia and came out again,” said Caina. 

“You weren’t alone,” said Kylon. “You had Corvalis with you.” Both Morgant and Nasser gave Kylon a sharp look. Caina had never mentioned Corvalis to either of them. 

“True,” said Caina. “But he had a shadow-cloak. We just have the one…and I’m the best one to do this.” 

Kylon let out a long breath. “All right.” He offered a curt nod. “This is a mistake, but I can’t stop you. Good luck. We’ll be waiting here for you.”

“Thank you,” said Caina. She wanted to tell him more. Had they been alone, Caina would have said more. They likely would have done more. But she was not about to speak her heart before Morgant and Nasser and Laertes. Annarah likely had figured it out. Certainly her eyes were sad as she looked at Caina. 

“Good luck, Balarigar,” said Annarah. “May the Divine go with you.” 

Caina nodded again, took a deep breath, and headed back down the passageway before she could change her mind. 

###

A few moments later Caina dropped the final few feet to the chamber floor, the rope swaying above her, the light from the bloodcrystals flickering and dancing against the walls.

The dead moved around her. 

Hundreds of the undead warriors strode near the circular dais, all of them wearing bronze armor and carrying khopesh swords. Her instincts screamed for her to run, to get away from them, but the nagataaru-possessed corpses took no notice of her. Even from so close, they were unable to detect her so long as she wore the shadow-cloak. 

Caina crept to the wall and moved along it, keeping her eyes on the undead. They couldn’t sense her, but if she made too much noise, they would almost certainly hear her, and she was pretty sure they would notice if she blundered into them. Fortunately, the warriors did not move too close to the wall, and Caina circled through the chamber without incident. 

She kept her eyes away from the Ascendant Bloodcrystals and the massive black sphere above them. The pyrikon could have granted her the ability to look at the sphere, but Caina might need the pyrikon’s power for a more urgent purpose. 

And she did not want to look at the thing floating below the dome. Even with the pyrikon’s protection, looking at it had sent an icy chill down her spine. Combined with the headache and the nausea from the overpowering aura of sorcery, it made for an unpleasant sensation.

Caina reached the stairs she had seen and started climbing, leaving the chamber of the bloodcrystals behind. No undead warriors moved upon the stairs, and rows of Maatish hieroglyphics covered the walls. Caina reached the top of the stars and peered into the room beyond. It was an elaborate throne room, a smaller replica of the Hall of Torments in the Inferno, which had been Kharnaces’s throne room long centuries past. A dais stood in the center of the room within a double ring of glowing emerald hieroglyphs upon the floor. Atop the dais rested an elaborate stone throne, its back carved like a rising sun.

Caina went motionless. 

Kharnaces, a Great Necromancer of Maat, sat upon the throne.

It had to be him. The figure wore a brilliant white robe, still stark and bright despite the centuries. A golden torque encircled his neck, and a golden mask covered his features, its expression serene and ageless. Rhames had worn a similar mask, and Sicarion had taken it after the Great Necromancer’s death.

Caina wondered what had happened to the damned thing. Sicarion had committed a string of murders while wearing the mask, using its power to take her appearance as he did so, and that was part of the reason she had been banished from the Empire. 

She watched Kharnaces for a moment. He was motionless. The robe was white and beautiful, and the golden mask and torque concealed his features, but the hands gripping the arms of the throne were withered, mummified claws. The same was true of his feet, which were visible through his ornate sandals. The undead Kharnaces might have been hibernating. Or he might have been awake, and contemplating Caina. Her shadow-cloak had been unable to completely conceal herself from Rhames, and Kharnaces clearly had similar levels of arcane power.

But if Kharnaces was truly hibernating…

A sudden idea came to Caina. If Kharnaces was hibernating, perhaps she could find his canopic jars and destroy them. There would be seven, holding his mummified lungs, kidneys, heart, stomach, and liver, and those seven jars anchored his spirit to the material world. Caina had destroyed Rhames’s final canopic jar, banishing him from the mortal world for all time. If she found Kharnaces’s jars, she could do the same to him. The strange sphere in the bloodcrystal chamber could do no harm if she destroyed the canopic jars. 

She dismissed the thought. Kharnaces had seven canopic jars, and if he was even halfway clever he would have hidden them throughout his Tomb, rather than leaving them in one place. Furthermore, if she destroyed one, that might awaken him, and then he would kill her before she could locate the other six.

Knowing what the Great Necromancers had been like, he could do far worse than kill her. 

Caina edged around the throne room, keeping well away from the burning hieroglyphs upon the floor. There was an entrance on the far side of the chamber, and Caina made for it, keeping an eye on the throne.

Kharnaces did not stir. 

She slipped through the archway and found herself in a library. 

It was a large rectangular room, filled with rows of bamboo shelves. The shelves had been divided into small cubbies, and each cubby held a rolled papyrus scroll, its shelf labeled with hieroglyphs. Caina felt the preservation spells that crackled around the shelves, the wards that had kept the scrolls preserved for the long centuries of Kharnaces’s imprisonment.

She shivered as she moved through the aisles of shelves, glancing at the scrolls. In their way, the scrolls in this room were as dangerous as the bloodcrystals below. The five Ascendant Bloodcrystals could kill half the world. The scrolls held the knowledge of how to create more bloodcrystals, along with all the other necromantic lore once wielded by the priests of Maat. With one damaged Maatish scroll, Maglarion had created a bloodcrystal that had almost killed everyone in Malarae.

What, Caina wondered, could Maglarion have wrought if he possessed a library like this one? 

At the other end of the library she saw an archway, a flight of stairs leading downward to a massive stone door. Likely that was the sealed door she had seen earlier, and those were the stairs Morgant and Annarah had taken to the library all those years ago. Caina turned, her eyes sweeping the wall.

A jolt of shock went through her.

A stone table stood against the wall, and upon the table rested a long staff of silvery metal and a ring set with a large blue stone. Iramisian characters marked the length of the staff, and the blue stone in the ring had been carved into the sigil of the Princes of Iramis, a pyrikon ring wrapped around a seven-pointed star. Caina reached out a hesitant hand and tapped a finger against the length of the staff.

The strength of the sorcerous power knocked Caina back a step. She stared at the staff and the ring, and then after a moment brushed the ring with one hand. Again she felt the tremendous jolt of power, of sorcery beyond imagining woven into the strange metal. 

There was no doubt. She had found the Staff and Seal of Iramis. 

Odd that it had been so easy. 

She reached for the Staff, and a flash of white caught her attention. 

Caina whirled, her heart hammering, expecting to see Kharnaces striding between the shelves, the empty eye sockets of his golden mask fixed upon her. 

Instead she saw a white-robed man gliding towards her, his expression serene, his hands folded before his chest in a contemplative pose. His brown skin had a golden tinge to it. He had jet-black hair, his robe hanging open to the waist to reveal a chest corded with muscle. 

He wasn’t walking towards her. 

He was, in fact, gliding a few inches off the floor…and his eyes burned with the purple flame of the nagataaru. 

Caina turned to run, and the white-robed man gestured.

Kylon had been right. This had been a terrible, terrible mistake. 

Sorcerous power wrapped around Caina, holding her immobile. The pyrikon gave off an angry chiming noise, flashing with white light, but the torrent of arcane power around Caina held her fast. She struggled, but it was useless. She could still breathe and move her eyes, but otherwise it felt as if she had been encased in iron. 

The white-robed man glided closer, the purple fire in his eyes brightening, and Caina realized that his features matched the golden mask Kharnaces had worn upon his throne. As the man came closer, she sensed the terrible necromantic power around him. Was this some kind of guardian? Another undead creature?

Or was it somehow Kharnaces himself?

The man said something in a strange, liquid-sounded language. He stared at her for a moment, then nodded to himself and drew back the cowl of her shadow-cloak. His hand moved in a fluttering gesture, and something green crawled across the back of his thin hand.

It was a jade scarab, moving as if it were a living insect. Its wings fluttered, and it leaped from the man’s hand to land upon Caina’s left temple. It felt cold, horribly cold, and its little jade wings scrabbled against her skin.

Then it bit her.

Pain erupted through her head, far out of proportion of the bite. It felt, in fact, as if the scarab had transformed itself into a nail and stabbed itself into her skull. Caina screamed, or she would have screamed, had she been able to move. Waves of pain rolled through her mind, and as they did, something else came with them.

Words.

Words, countless words, words she had never known before. Bit by bit the pain faded, and the jade scarab jumped from her forehead, landed back upon the man’s hand, and crawled up the sleeve of his robe. 

“Ah, excellent,” said the man in the liquid-sounding language, but to Caina’s shock, she could now understand him. “Sometimes the device causes irreparable insanity, but it appears your mind is well-conditioned to withstand shock. Good.” He waved his hand in front of her face. “We shall need to speak briefly before we continue.”