Jonathan Moeller - The Ghosts 09 - Ghost in the Surge (28 page)

“I think,” said Caina. Her voice was a scratchy whisper, but they turned to look at her nonetheless. “I think that the world is about to end.”

The pillar of light exploded, the storm of arcane force growing stronger. The earth trembled beneath Caina’s boots, and screams rose from the streets around the Agora of Nations. A wall of golden flame erupted from the Pyramid and spread in all directions, flowing over New Kyre like a towering wave. It swallowed the ziggurats and temples below the Pyramid and spread across the city with terrific speed.

Caina’s first impulse was to run. But there was no way anyone could outrun that wave of fire. She saw the magi and the stormsingers working spells, preparing wards to repulse the flames. But she had seen the power of the phoenix fire that had consumed Ibrahmus Sinan in Malarae, and knew their wards could not turn aside the flame.

They had failed to stop Jadriga, and they were about to die.

There was only one thing left to do. 

Caina seized Corvalis’s free hand, holding it as tight as she could. 

He squeezed back.

The wall of flame, taller than the Pyramid of Storm itself, surged into the Agora of Nations, and Caina closed her eyes.

The wave of golden fire slammed into her, and Caina felt its awesome arcane power like a web of needles dragging over her skin, her stomach clenching in pain. She waited for the end, waited to the fire to scour the flesh from her bones and the agony to begin.

But nothing happened.

Stunned, she turned and watched the wall of flame roar away, passing through the tenements and the ships filling the harbor. She looked back at the heart of New Kyre, at the ziggurats and towers and temples rising from the center of the city.

All of them untouched. 

Nothing. The fire had done nothing.

Yet the pillar of golden fire still billowed from the Pyramid of Storm, and as Caina watched, something glittering began to rise from the Pyramid, like a slender column of crystal, or perhaps ice…

“Nothing,” said Lord Titus. “The fire did nothing.”

“Plainly,” said Corbould. “My lord Emperor, I suggest we have the woman arrested at once, before she can work any further…”

“Are you blind?” said Talekhris, pointing at the Pyramid. “The destruction of the world begins, and you quibble over trifles?”

Corbould scowled. “The death of my son and an attempt upon the life of the Emperor of Nighmar are not trifles. Whoever you are, I suggest you keep a civil tongue in your head, or else…”

Talekhris, the Emperor’s advisors, Harkus, Ark, and Kylon all began trying to talk at once, but Caina barely heard them. The power radiating from the Pyramid grew stronger as the pillar of ice climbed towards the burning rift in the sky. Yet Caina sensed new flickers of power around her, sorcery that lingered in the Agora. She looked around, trying to find its source, and realized that it emanated from the three dead Imperial Guards lying near the Emperor. 

Their dead eyes glowed.

Caina blinked in surprise. The glow in their eyes brightened to golden flames, and golden fire wreathed their hands and leaked from the joints in their armor.

“Corvalis,” she hissed, releasing his hand and drawing her ghostsilver dagger.

The dead men stood, and the argument ceased as dozens of the slain began to stand, their eyes crackling with golden fire, a faint halo of flame dancing around their hands.  

“What is this?” said the Emperor. “Magi, explain.”

Kylon answered him first. “I fear they are undead, my lord Emperor. Creatures raised by the Moroaica’s black sorcery.” He looked at Lord Tiraedes and the other Archons. “My lords, we must reach the Pyramid at once. This spell is the work of the Moroaica, and these undead…”

“No,” said Talekhris, holding his silver rod in his right hand and putting on his mask with his left, “no, these things are not undead. They are much worse. The phoenix fire has restored their flesh to life, but their souls have moved on to their final destinations. These are merely…empty shells, restored to life, but empty nonetheless. Mindless and soulless…and filled with rage.” White light blazed to life around his rod. “Defend yourselves!”

As one, the burning dead loosed horrible, mindless howls, and flung themselves forward. Talekhris slashed his rod, and a blast of white fire ripped across the three burning Guards nearest to the Emperor. The white flame quenched the golden, and the corpses fell to the ground, lifeless once more. 

But dozens more charged. Caina saw an ashtairoi fall beneath the burning hands of a corpse, saw battle break out across the Agora.

“Defend the Emperor!” roared Corbould, and the surviving Imperial Guards hastened to form ranks around Alexius Naerius, drawing their swords and raising their shields. 

“Defend the Archons!” shouted one of the ashtairoi, and the Kyracian soldiers formed up, putting themselves between the Archons and the golden dead. Kylon stepped before the ashtairoi, his sword glittering with frost.

Caina supposed he did not need the ashtairoi to defend him. 

Then a dead Imperial Guard charged Caina, and she had no more attention to spare for anything else.

The dead Guard did not bother with subtlety or strategy. The creature reached for her with hands wreathed in golden flame, a horrible moan coming from the slack lips. Caina sidestepped and drove her heel into the back of the Guard’s knee. The Guard toppled with a clatter of black armor, and Corvalis plunged his ghostsilver spear into the man’s exposed throat. The golden fire sputtered and went out as the ghostsilver blade pierced the spells, and the Guard went still.

Then the golden flames returned. The wound on the dead Guard’s throat closed, more golden fire shining around his eyes and hands. The Alchemist Sinan had possessed a similar power when Caina and Corvalis fought him outside the Lord Ambassador’s mansion in Malarae. Every time he had been mortally wounded, the power of the phoenix ashes had regenerated his injured flesh…though at an increasingly severe cost.

The dead Guard hauled himself back to his feet. A new ear, wet and glistening, had grown over the healed wound in the Guard’s throat, and strange black bulges dotted his neck.

Corvalis yelled and slashed the spear across the Guard’s throat yet again. Once more the Guard collapsed to the ground, but the golden fire reappeared at once, his wounds beginning to close. 

“Sinan,” said Corvalis. “It’s like Sinan all over again.”

Caina risked a quick look around the Agora. Talekhris’s sorcery had destroyed dozens of undead Guards and ashtairoi, but even now the golden fire returned to their limbs, reanimating them once more. The living Imperial Guards and the ashtairoi had destroyed scores more of the golden dead, but the sorcerous fire returned to them, healing their wounds and restoring them to life with grotesque deformities. Even the severed limbs and heads began to grow additional body parts, tiny legs sprouting from the ragged stumps of necks, mouths and teeth yawning from the sides of severed arms.

It was like a scene from a mad painter’s blackest nightmares. 

And more of the golden dead ran from the streets, gibbering and hooting, and Caina saw chaos in the harbor as the dead rose from the waters. There had been vast naval battles in the waters outside of New Kyre, dozens of them over the centuries. 

“Everywhere,” said Caina. “It’s happening everywhere.”

“I can see that,” said Corvalis, ghostsilver spear ready in his hands.

“No, the entire world,” said Caina. “The spell…that spell was powerful enough to cover every nation under the sun. Jadriga’s covered the world with the power of the phoenix ashes.” She remembered the Moroaica’s speeches about creating a new world, a world free of death and injury. “We can’t kill them. They’ll just keep coming back over and over again until they’ve killed everyone…”

“And everyone has become one of them,” said Corvalis, voice grim.

The scope of it horrified Caina. An entire world filled with creatures like the golden dead, mindless, immortal things hunting each other in a thoughtless fury, growing more twisted and deformed as they died and were reborn again and again? Was this what the Moroaica had intended? Surely not even Jadriga was so mad. Perhaps she had thought it would work differently. Perhaps she had known it would be like this, but had convinced herself otherwise.

Or perhaps the spirit of Horemb had been right, and Jadriga was frozen in her grief and rage, unable to stop her quest for vengeance until it destroyed her.

Or it destroyed the world.

“We’ve got to stop the Moroaica,” said Caina. “It’s the only way. Otherwise those creatures will kill everyone in the world.”

“We have ghostsilver weapons to penetrate her wards,” said Corvalis, “and I think I know where she will be.” He pointed the spear at the Pyramid, at the raging maelstrom of golden fire in the sky above it. Looking at the vortex, Caina glimpsed a colorless plain beneath an unnatural sky. Was the rip in the sky a massive gate to the netherworld? Talekhris had said Jadriga would enter the netherworld in the flesh to work her spells. “Let’s go.”

“We’ll never make it,” said Caina. “Not the two of us. We need help.”

She spotted Talekhris. The Sage backed away, unleashing blast after blast of white fire at his burning foes. Dozens of them fell to the power of his sorcery, yet hundreds more swarmed into the Agora, and more rose from the harbor. The Imperial Guards and the ashtairoi had split into two groups, fighting to defend their nobles. She saw Kylon moving in a sorcery-fueled blur through the golden dead, his frost-wreathed blade quenching the fires of his foes and leaving motionless corpses in his wake.

It was only a matter of time before they were overrun.

But Caina looked at Kylon’s sword and something clicked. 

“I have an idea,” said Caina. “Let’s go.”

She sprinted toward Talekhris, Corvalis following.

###

“Hold!” roared Ark, raising his borrowed shield. “Hold, damn you! You are Imperial Guards, not quaking children! Let’s show the Kyracians how men of the Empire fight!” 

Almost all the centurions of the Imperial Guard had been killed in the mayhem of Sicarion’s attack, and the last centurion had fallen when a wailing, flame-wreathed corpse ripped his head off his shoulders. 

The centurion’s corpse had risen to join the golden dead a few moments later. 

So Ark had taken command of the defense of the Emperor and the nobles. One of the magi had protested, but had changed his mind after Ark had split his lip. Once the thought of punching a high magus would have daunted him, but he had seen some terrifying things during his time with the Ghosts.

Though he supposed an army of insane, mindless corpses wreathed in golden fire was the worst yet. 

But he had been the first spear centurion of the Eighteenth Legion, and he would be damned if he would accept any foolishness in a battle, even if they were all about to die. 

“Battle magi!” said Ark.

A black blur shot overhead, four battle magi using their sorcerous power to enhance their leap. A mob of fifty or sixty golden dead charged the Imperial Guards, and the battle magi landed in their midst like thunderbolts. They struck left and right with their weapons, the power of their spell-enhanced blows driving the golden dead to the ground.

But they never stayed down. In a few moments they would rise again, brought back to life by the golden flames. And every death made them a little more monstrous. Sometimes they grew new limbs, or gained a foot in height, or simply became stronger and faster. 

Ark desperately hoped that Caina had a plan.

The battle magi finished wreaking mayhem among the golden dead and jumped back to the safety of the Imperial line. Perhaps twenty of the burning dead had fallen, and the rest came in a disorganized rush. 

“Shields!” shouted Ark. The Guards raised their shields, drawing back their swords to strike, and the golden dead attacked in a wall of deformed flesh and golden fire. Ark struck with his storm-forged sword again and again, the blade hewing through necks and limbs with equal facility. For an odd moment it reminded him of his early days working at Legion’s forge, hammering out horseshoes and armor under the supervision of the centurions.

Then the last of the golden dead fell, and Ark looked around.

He had lost three more Guards to that charge. But all the golden dead lay strewn and motionless across the ground, their blood pooling on the flagstones of the plaza. Already he saw the dim glimmer of golden fire in their eyes and upon their fingers. 

“Move,” said Ark. “Move! Closer to the Kyracians! Get away from the dead!”

The Imperial Guards obeyed, moving with the smooth coordination of elite soldiers. The nobles and the Emperor moved in the center, shielded by the Guards. Though there were far fewer Guards now, and every wave of golden dead reduced their numbers a little further…

“This is madness, Ark,” said Corbould, his sword in hand. He would have fought in the battle line, but Ark had forbidden it. “We cannot prevail! We must find a safe place…”

“There is no safe place!” said Ark. “Where can we go? You saw that golden flame. Gods, half the world must be overrun with the damned things. We have to fight for as long as we can.”

“Until what?” said Corbould. The Guards moved closer to the Kyracians, and more mobs of golden dead emerged from the streets, some pursuing terrified slaves and commoners. Ark wished he could send them aid, but if the Guards broke formation they would be overwhelmed.

“Caina will know what to do,” said Ark.

Aeolus and the Emperor shared a look.

“Your damned Ghost,” said Corbould. “You had better be right, Arcion.”

Ark hoped so, too.

Then another wave of golden dead attacked, and there was no more time for argument.

###

Kylon moved in a blur before the ashtairoi, the sorcery of air fueling his speed, the sorcery of water granting his blows the power of a flood. He danced through the golden dead, dodging around their clumsy attacks, striking right and left with his sword. The touch of his frost-wreathed blade quenched the golden fires in their flesh, and the reborn men toppled limp and motionless to the ground.