Ghost in the Seal (Ghost Exile #6) (8 page)

Though death did little more than inconvenience the Great Necromancers of Maat. 

Laertes snorted. “You’re still carrying that stupid thing around?” 

“It’s important,” said Morgant.

“It’s damaged,” said Kylon.

“Aye,” said Morgant, “but it’s still important. Not sure why.” He tossed it to himself again. “Unless the Knight of Wind and Air decided to play a joke on me.” 

“No,” said Annarah. “The djinn of the Court of Azure Flame have never been hostile to mankind or the mortal world. Powerful and alien to our understanding, but not malicious. If the Knight told you to take a damaged wedjet-dahn, he had a reason for it.”

Kylon frowned. “But it’s damaged. A wedjet-dahn was designed to absorb and divert hostile spells, correct?” Annarah nodded. “What use could a djinni possibly have for it? If a hostile spell strikes it, it will amplify the effect and divert it into its bearer?” Annarah nodded again. “Then one might as well carry a cracked shield or wear a cuirass with a hole over the heart.” 

“You’re awfully picky, Kyracian,” said Morgant, still tossing the jade scarab and its chain to himself. 

“I’m not the one who risked my life to carry it out of the Inferno,” said Kylon. 

“That,” said Morgant, pointing at Kylon. He hesitated. “That is actually a good argument. Better than usual for you, anyway. Have you taken a woman into your bed recently?” 

“What?” said Caina. 

Both Kylon and Annarah looked at her. 

“You understand, Master Ciaran,” said Morgant, looking at Caina. “Young men like you and the Kyracian. You see a pretty face on a shapely woman, and you can think of nothing else. I’m sure you know exactly what I mean.” He glanced at Nasser. “That’s why the young men need our guidance, you know. The benefit of our age and wisdom.” 

“Do you ever stop talking?” said Laertes, loading a tray with food from one of the shelves. 

Annarah laughed. “Given the taunts you told me that he shouted at Rolukhan in the Inferno, I doubt any us could silence him.”

“If you feel the need to dazzle us with your efforts at oration, Master Markaine,” said Nasser, his voice dry as the Desert of Candles, “then I suggest you turn your attention to the task at hand.” 

“I’m an assassin, not a thief,” said Morgant. 

“Theft is similar to kidnapping, and I thought you said that kidnapping was only a lesser subset of assassination,” said Kylon. 

“It is,” said Morgant. “You’ll recall that when we kidnapped the emir Kuldan Cimak, I did most of the work.”

“When did you kidnap an emir?” said Annarah, blinking. 

“Oh, after we set fire to his inn,” said Morgant. “It was a very busy day. But I suppose it wasn’t kidnapping, since I convinced him to follow us willingly. The inn was also a whorehouse, which by a roundabout route, returns us to my main point. Lord Kylon is in need a woman. Wouldn’t you agree, Master Ciaran?”

Morgant smiled at Caina. Once again she felt the urge to punch him. He always poked, always prodded, seeking for a weak point, and with unfailing accuracy he had found one of hers. Was it that obvious? 

“I think that Lord Kylon is entirely capable of making up his own mind,” said Caina. 

Kylon looked at her, and something in his eyes sent a shiver down her back. If they had been alone…

“Capital,” said Nasser. “I’m so glad we can agree on this important matter. If you can refrain from amusing yourself for a few moments, Morgant, perhaps we can attend to business.”

“Yes,” said Annarah. “The lives of uncounted millions hang in the balance.” 

“Please, be seated,” said Nasser, gesturing at the cushions. Caina and Annarah sat, Annarah folding her legs beneath her with prim grace. Caina might have preferred a skirt herself, but trousers did mean she could sit cross-legged without difficulty. Kylon remained standing by the door, and Laertes produced a tray holding dates and cups of coffee. Morgant popped a date into his mouth and took a cup of coffee.

“I thought you said you don’t drink coffee,” said Kylon.

“I don’t,” said Morgant, taking a sip. “Makes you too jittery. But there are times when it is advantageous to be jittery. Such as when visiting the tomb of a Great Necromancer of Maat.” 

“Aye,” said Caina. “This island. Where exactly is it?”

“In the Alqaarin Sea, about three or four days’ east of Rumarah,” said Annarah. “I do not believe it has a name.”

“It has acquired one in the century and a half since the fall of Iramis,” said Nasser. “The island is commonly called Pyramid Isle.”

“Pyramid?” said Caina. “There’s an actual pyramid on the island?” From what she had learned of Maatish history, the pharaohs and Great Necromancers had usually buried themselves in vast underground complexes, but sometimes they had built colossal stone pyramids over their tombs. 

“No,” said Nasser. “A barren hill in the center of the island looks a great deal like a pyramid. The island is not large, no more than a day’s march from one side to another. The hill stands in the center with a ring of jungle around it.”

“Not at the base of the hill, though,” said Annarah, her green eyes distant. “Nothing grows there. Nothing grows at the entrance of the Tomb. Like a line drawn upon a map. There are…creatures in the jungle as well. Undead things. Created by either Kharnaces or the ancient Maatish to serve as guardians.” She gazed into the coffee, remembering. “A ring of wardstones stands around the jungle. The ancient loremasters raised the stones and inscribed them with the Words of Lore to keep the undead things trapped within the jungle.” 

“Sometimes bolder smugglers use the beach to conduct deals or to store hidden caches of goods,” said Nasser.

Annarah looked aghast. “Truly? Men go to the island?”

“In ancient days, the authority of the Prince of Iramis was enough to keep ships from Pyramid Isle,” said Nasser. 

“Your authority has diminished just a touch,” said Morgant.

“Regrettably so, I fear,” said Nasser. 

“Where in the Tomb are the Staff and the Seal?” said Kylon. “I assume it is a large place.”

“It is,” said Annarah. “A vast maze of galleries and tunnels and chambers, all dug into the stone of the island. We put the regalia near the surface, just within the library.”

“Library?” said Kylon. 

“Every Great Necromancer of Maat was buried with a complete library of scrolls detailing their spells and secrets and history,” said Annarah.

“Gods,” said Caina. “Those would be almost as dangerous as the Staff and the Seal in the wrong hands.” One Maatish scroll had killed Caina’s father and had almost killed everyone in Malarae. She wanted to reach for the leather cord around her neck, the cord that held her father’s worn old signet ring. “We should probably burn them on our way out.”

“That would be inadvisable,” said Nasser. 

“Why not?” said Caina, but the answer came to her as she spoke. “They’re warded, aren’t they?”

“They are,” said Annarah. “There were many traps and sorcerous wards within the Tomb, and the Words of Lore were able to override some of them. I suspected that if I dispelled the wards completely, the backlash would feed into Kharnaces himself…” 

“Who would then awaken from his hibernation,” said Caina. 

“You see the danger,” said Nasser. “Our objective, therefore, is to enter the Tomb, retrieve the Staff and the Seal, and then to depart Pyramid Isle without altering Kharnaces of our presence.”

“Can we be sure he is still asleep?” said Kylon.

“Oh, it’s easy to tell, Kyracian,” said Morgant. “You can tell on account of how the world hasn’t ended yet.”

“For once, the Razor’s words contain a larger than usual kernel of truth,” said Nasser. Caina let out a short laugh. “Pyramid Isle is outside of the largest extent of the ancient Maatish realm, but the Great Necromancers entombed Kharnaces there. He was a heretic, and turned from the worship of the Maatish gods to revere the nagataaru.”

“Callatas learned about the nagataaru from Kharnaces, I’m sure of it,” said Annarah. “He went to the Tomb after he forsook our order and left Iramis. Whatever happened to him there…it changed him. It turned him from the man he was to the monster he is today.” 

“The point, Lord Kylon,” said Nasser, “is that Callatas seeks to harness the nagataaru as a tool. Kharnaces revered the nagataaru as gods. Callatas needs the Staff and the Seal to summon and bind large numbers of nagataaru. If Kharnaces awakens from his hibernation and discovers the Staff and the Seal in his tomb…”

“Then he will do exactly the same thing Callatas would do, but for a different reason,” said Kylon. 

“I should have chosen a different place to hide them,” said Annarah. She shook her head, her silvery braid sliding against her back. “I thought I would be absent only a few years at most. Not a century and a half. It…”

“It has also,” said Nasser, “kept Callatas from finding them for a century and a half. Yes, he worked great evil in that time. He would have done far worse if he had been able to claim the entirety of the regalia.” 

“So,” said Caina. “How will we get to Pyramid Isle?”

“By ship, of course,” said Nasser, flashing his white smile. “We require a smuggler with a knowledge of the treacherous waters around Pyramid Isle, and a willingness to travel there. The Princes of Iramis no longer keep travelers away from the island, but it has a well-deserved evil reputation, so most pirates and smugglers refuse to go there at all. We therefore need a captain and a ship with whom I have worked before, who is willing to make the voyage, and is at least reasonably trustworthy. Given those limitations, our only viable option is a man named Sanjar Murat.” 

Caina blinked. “I’ve heard of him. He’s an Alqaarin corsair, isn’t he?”

“We’ve worked together on various enterprises in the past,” said Nasser. “He is not particularly trustworthy, but will remain loyal so long as he is paid on time and faces at least some risk from a betrayal.” He looked at Kylon and Morgant. “I trust you are capable of providing that threat?” 

Morgant only smirked, and Kylon offered a grim nod. 

“He won’t come to Istarinmul,” said Caina. “He annoyed the Brotherhood too often by stealing away cargoes of slaves, and there’s a bounty of five thousand bezants upon his head.” 

“No,” said Nasser. “He will, however, dock at Rumarah, and I know his ship is going to remain there for the next two weeks.”

“Rumarah,” murmured Annarah, looking at Morgant. “We met there. I suppose it is only appropriate that we go there again.”

“It’s changed since then,” said Morgant. “A hundred and fifty years ago, Rumarah was the chief port of the Princes, save for Iramis itself. Now it’s a den of pirates and slavers. The sort of place where one could buy and sell just about anything.” He smirked at Kylon. “The Kyracian could even buy himself some female companionship.” 

Caina’s hand curled into a fist on her lap, but Kylon spoke first.

“And how would we pay for it?” said Kylon. “Shall you offer to paint the slavers a picture? Once they finished laughing, we would still need to pay them.”

“Ah, an answering insult! That’s better,” said Morgant. “You could use some practice, but that’s better.”

“How are we going to get to Rumarah within two weeks?” said Caina, before Morgant could start again. “It’s about nine or ten days across the Trabazon steppes and the Desert of Candles to Rumarah, and I doubt the Great Southern Road is any safer since the destruction of the Inferno. For that matter, a dust storm could delay us until Murat’s ship leaves Rumarah.”

“We’ll take ship from the Alqaarin Harbor to Rumarah,” said Nasser. “By water, the journey to Rumarah should only take four or five days, depending on the weather.” 

“And upon pirates,” said Kylon. “The Alqaarin Sea is thick with corsairs from the various Alqaarin sultanates. The Umbarian fleet patrols those waters as well.”

“The Umbarian fleet keeps well away from Istarinmul at the moment,” said Nasser. “The Order does not wish to provoke the Grand Wazir while Cassander courts him.”

“There’s a ghastly mental image,” said Morgant. 

“Perhaps you can paint it,” said Kylon. 

“On balance, I believe that a sea voyage to Rumarah presents the least amount of risk,” said Nasser. “I have procured the services of a Saddaic merchant vessel, the
Eastern Fire
.”

“The
Eastern Fire
?” said Caina, surprised. “That’s Camus Talazain’s ship, isn’t it?”

“You know him?” said Nasser. 

“I met his father a few months ago,” said Caina. “Business of the Ghosts. Talazain’s ship is a good choice. The Saddai hate the Umbarians, and I doubt Talazain would betray us to the Order.”

“Let us hope we encounter no magi of the Order,” said Laertes. “The thought of facing a pyromantic sorcerer while in a wooden ship is not a pleasant one.”

“No,” said Annarah. “Once the loremasters saw it as our duty to ensure that sorcery was not used as a tool of oppression and terror. Often we failed…yet even the proudest necromancer or the maddest pyromancer always kept one eye over his shoulder for fear of the loremasters. If the Umbarian magi attack us, perhaps I can reteach them that fear.”

Her voice was gentle, but there was an iron hardness beneath it. Annarah spent so much time trying to help people that it was easy to mistake her as soft. Malik Rolukhan had made that mistake in the final moments of his life. It also explained why Morgant listened to her. 

“Then we are agreed?” said Nasser. “We shall take ship to Rumarah, and then to Pyramid Isle?”

“So long as the two of you pay for it,” said Morgant.

“Doesn’t being the greatest painter in Istarinmul pay better?” said Kylon. 

“It pays quite well,” said Morgant. “Better than fighting in gladiatorial games, I presume.” He waved his half-filled coffee cup at Caina and Nasser. “But they’re the famous master thieves. They can pay for it.” 

“The arrangements,” said Nasser in his smooth voice, “have already been made.” He gestured around the room. “Of all our allies and friends, we are the best equipped for this task. This is our chance to cripple Callatas’s efforts and prevent his Apotheosis, and maybe even destroy his power permanently.”

“Such an inspiring oration,” said Morgant.