Jonathan Moeller - The Ghosts 09 - Ghost in the Surge (32 page)

“It is,” said Talekhris. “Sorcerers often visit the netherworld in the flesh, particularly the Alchemists of Istarinmul. But no one has ever visited the realm beyond while wearing mortal flesh.”

“Jadriga doesn’t plan to visit it,” said Caina. “She plans to burn it.”

“When the gate is open wide enough,” said Talekhris. “She will draw the power of the awakening elemental princes, pull it through the gate to our world, and unleash it upon the realm beyond.”

“Would that work?” said Corvalis. “Could she truly kill the gods themselves?”

“I do not know,” said Talekhris. “Perhaps the philosophers are right, and there is only one high god who will act to stop her. But we cannot take the chance. The very attempt will shatter the material world.”

“Then perhaps we should hurry,” said Corvalis. 

“We need not,” said Talekhris. “Time flows differently in the netherworld. We could spend weeks here, and if we survive and return to the material world, from their perspective it will seem like only a few hours have passed.”

“That may be so,” said Caina, “but we should not leave Jadriga time for her work.”

“Lead on,” said Talekhris. 

Caina nodded and head towards the white glow, the ghostsilver dagger shining in her right hand. Corvalis walked at her right, the spear ready, while Talekhris hobbled along on her left.

“Be wary,” said Talekhris. “The netherworld is psychomorphic.”

“Long word,” said Corvalis.

“It mirrors your thoughts,” said Caina. “Not at first, but gradually, as it settles around you. You can control it, if you concentrate, but not always.”

“Sometimes when two sorcerers cross paths here,” said Talekhris, “they will duel with thought, not sorcery, and try to kill one another by altering the environment around them, by turning the air to flame or stone.” 

“I suspect that will not work against the Moroaica,” said Corvalis, “if she has often journeyed here.”

“No,” said Caina, remembering her last conversation with Jadriga in the netherworld. “It won’t.”

“Our strategy is plain,” said Talekhris. “I will engage the Moroaica with my spells, and hold her attention. One of you must then strike her with your ghostsilver weapons. With your shadow-cloaks, you can keep her from sensing your presence until it is too late.”

Caina nodded and drew up the hood of her shadow-cloak, as did Corvalis. The cloak billowed and rippled around them in the strange wind, reacting to the sorcerous power of the netherworld, but hopefully the cloaks would shield their thoughts from Jadriga’s arcane senses. 

“Can you hide yourself from Jadriga?” said Caina. 

“No,” said Talekhris. “I am simply too powerful. The minute I stepped through the gate, she knew I was here. She may likely have some defenses prepared.”

“Then let’s find out what they are,” said Caina.

Caina’s eyes swept the shifting terrain, fearing an attack from phobomorphic spirits or renegade elementals, but she saw no sign of any attackers. Perhaps Talekhris’s power had frightened off the prowling spirits of the netherworld.

Then the humming, tearing sound grew louder, and the netherworld rippled and changed around Caina.

The grassy gray plain vanished, white walls rising from the earth. The walls came together to form whitewashed houses with flat roofs. Thousands upon thousands of houses – a great city. In the distance she saw splendid temples and palaces built of white stone, their sides covered in hieroglyphs, their columns sheathed in gold. Under the sun, Caina knew, they would shine like brilliant jewels. 

Under the sky of the netherworld, they looked cold and dead. 

“What is this place?” said Corvalis. “Something from your memories? I have never seen it before.”

“No,” said Caina. “Not ours, but the Moroaica’s. This was the capital of the Kingdom of the Rising Sun, long ago. It was where she was born. It was where Rhames killed her father and turned her into one of the Undying.”

“Khaset,” said Talekhris, his jade mask turning back and forth. “The city’s name was Khaset.”

“How do you know that?” said Caina.

“Because I know the history of the Sages,” said Talekhris. “You recall that the Sages were once the artificers of the Great Necromancers of Maat, just as the Alchemists were their apothecaries? The history of Khaset is preserved in the history of my order.” He pointed at one of the massive temples. “The precursors of the Sages were housed there, near the temple of Anubankh. And that is where we shall find the Moroaica.”

“Why is that?” said Caina.

“Because the temple of Anubankh,” said Talekhris, “is where she stood when she set Khaset to burn.”  

The sky flickered overhead. 

And fire began to rain from the heavens. Caina threw up her arm to shield her face, but she felt no heat from the flames. She lowered her arm as globes of burning stone fell from the skies, slamming into the temples and palaces of the pharaoh and the gods of Maat. The center of Khaset burned in an inferno of liquid stone and ashes, and the firestorm spread through the rest of the city, devouring the houses of the rich and the poor alike. The flames roared past Caina without touching her or the others, and she realized it was only an illusion, the netherworld shaping itself around the memory of Jadriga’s past. 

The flames vanished, leaving the city a crater of rubble and smoke…and then Khaset rose again from the ashes, rebuilt anew. Caina blinked in surprise, and the balls of fire began to fall from the sky once more.

It was the same memory, replayed over and over again.

“If she is reshaping the netherworld to her defense,” said Corvalis, grunting as he tapped a whitewashed wall with the end of his spear, “then this is a poor way to go about it.”

“She isn’t,” said Caina. “She’s thinking about it, though. This is when she destroyed Maat, when she threw down the pharaohs and the Great Necromancers. When she repaid them for the death of her father. That’s what she thinks she is doing now by trying to destroy the gods.” She looked at Talekhris. “You said she’ll be at the temple of Anubankh?”

“Yes,” said Talekhris. “Our history records that is where she cast the spell that destroyed Khaset and shattered the Kingdom of the Rising Sun. Though why she cast it there, we know not…”

“I do,” said Caina. “Anubankh was the Maatish god of necromancy. You said the Great Necromancers were housed in the temple. That was where Rhames would have turned Jadriga into one of the Undying. Do you know the way?”

The Sage nodded, and Talekhris led the way through the narrow streets of Khaset’s poorer districts. Again the city burned around them, only to rise over and over again. Caina looked at the whitewashed houses of the Maatish commoners and wondered if Jadriga had killed them all. 

They came to the vast plaza before the temple of Anubankh.

The temple was a huge structure of stone, all pylons and columns and soaring obelisks. Its sides had been sheathed in gold, and Caina saw countless reliefs showing the glory of Maat and its pharaohs, displaying their victories over lesser peoples. A pair of massive obelisks sheathed in electrum rose from the center of the plaza, their sides carved with thousands of Maatish hieroglyphs.

Between the obelisks stood three tall figures draped in ragged black robes, their faces concealed beneath cowls. 

Talekhris stopped and leveled his rod at the cloaked figures.

Caina suspected they were not part of Jadriga’s memory.

“What are they?” said Caina. “Jadriga’s defenses?” 

“Aye,” said Talekhris, sweeping his rod before him as the great temple fell and burned and rose again in the space of a few heartbeats. 

“Phobomorphic spirits?” said Caina. They resembled the phobomorphic spirits she had seen after Sinan had sent her into the netherworld. Yet why hadn’t they changed form? These spirits had an air of menace, of power, that Caina did not recall from the phobomorphic spirits she had fought.

“No, much worse,” said Talekhris. “Mirrorshades. High mirrorshades, to be precise. They can duplicate you precisely, use all your strengths against your weaknesses.”

“One for each of us, too,” said Corvalis. “How thoughtful.”

“How do we defeat them?” said Caina. She assumed the mirrorshade spirits would not simply let them walk past.

“I’m not entirely sure,” said Talekhris. 

The spirits stepped forward, their robes rippling, and they changed.

And Caina stared at an exact duplicate of herself.

“Not again,” she muttered.

Sicarion’s illusion had shown her dressed in finery, her hair and makeup elaborately arranged. The mirrorshade spirit had simply duplicated her appearance – a short, lean woman in men’s clothing and leather armor, a glowing dagger in her right hand, her blond hair going black at the roots and blue eyes like disks of ice. 

Did she really look wrathful, so exhausted? 

Not surprising, given what had happened in the last few weeks.

The other two spirits changed, mimicking Corvalis and Talekhris perfectly. 

“Defend yourselves!” shouted Talekhris, casting a spell, and the spirits moved.

Caina’s duplicate and Corvalis’s charged, while the false Talekhris began casting a spell, purple fire flaring around his rod. Caina pivoted, intending to aid Corvalis against his double, but it was too late. Her duplicate raised her arm, a throwing knife glinting in her fingers, and Caina had to dodge. The blade hurtled past her ear, bouncing off the flagstones as Khaset burned and rose.

The mirrorshade might have been a spirit, but here its blades could kill. 

The duplicate lunged at her with a curved dagger, and Caina had to fight.

Caina knew how to fight with knives, with her bare hands. She had practiced for years under an exiled Kyracian master of unarmed fighting who had trained stormdancers, had learned the use of blades from Halfdan and Riogan. She had used knives and daggers to kill more men than she could recall.

But her duplicate pressed her hard, the mirrorshade’s dagger a white-gleaming blur. Caina backed away, breathing hard, her shadow-cloak billowing around her. She tried again and again to penetrate the duplicate’s defenses, but the mirrorshade anticipated her every attack. 

Given that it could read her mind, even with the shadow-cloak, that was not surprising.

Caina jumped back, ghostsilver dagger in her right hand, throwing knife in her left. She saw Corvalis battling his duplicate in a blur of spears, each moving with deadly speed and grace. Talekhris and his mirrorshade flung blasts of arcane power at each other. She could expect no help from them, not while their duplicates battled them.

But neither could she aid them.

Her duplicate stalked after her, dagger held low, blue eyes tight and focused.

“Lie down and die, mortal fleshling,” hissed the duplicate. “You cannot prevail against me. You know you cannot.”

“Oh, I get it,” said Caina. “Now you’re going to spit out all my worst fears at me, is that it? That it was my fault Halfdan died?” She slashed, and the false Caina jumped back. “Or that I’ll never have children? Or you’ll show me the death of Corvalis? Or the world burning if your mistress prevails? Come on, let’s get it over with. I tire of these little horror shows.” 

“So confident,” said the mirrorshade. “Will you be so bold if I look like this?”

Her form blurred, and the duplicate became someone else.

Specifically, Maglarion.

Caina’s skin crawled with revulsion. Maglarion looked just as he did the day he had killed her father, clad in the dusty black coat and trousers of a minor Nighmarian noble, the bloodcrystal that had replaced his left eye concealed behind an eye patch. The dagger that had cut the throat of Sebastian Amalas gleamed in his right hand.

“Do you remember this?” said Maglarion.

“All too well,” said Caina. “Though you picked a poor form to wear. Maglarion is dead. He fell five hundred feet to his death. I suggest you follow the example of the original.”

Maglarion hissed and attacked with the dagger, wielding it with the same skill that the false Caina had shown. Caina retreated, dodging and ducking under the strikes, trying to land a blow of her own. But the mirrorshade anticipated every movement she made, and always avoided the blows in the last instant. 

“Or this?” said Maglarion, and the mirrorshade became a duplicate of Kalastus, his black robes flying around him, eyes glittering with madness. “Or would you prefer this?” Kalastus transformed into Ranarius as Caina had seen him in Cyrioch, tall and austere and sneering. “Or perhaps me?” Ranarius became Rhames, the withered, undead Great Necromancer clad in an ornamented robe of red and black. “How should you like to die, Caina Amalas who once was of the Ghosts?” 

“Stop talking and fight,” said Caina.

“As you wish,” said Rhames, blurring to take Caina’s form once more. 

Through all the changes of form, the mirrorshade flung knives and slashed with the dagger, and Caina only just managed to dodge the blows. Around her the plaza blazed into ruin and rose and burned once more. Talekhris and his duplicate exchanged volleys of sorcerous light, while Corvalis and his mirrorshade danced around each other, their spears a blur. 

Yet only Talekhris’s duplicate used sorcery. All the mirrorshades had the ability to cast spells, surely. Caina’s had even taken the form of several different sorcerers. Yet her mirrorshade never attempted to cast spells, but only attacked with a dagger.

Why?

Because Caina herself could not cast spells. Because the spirit was mirroring her. It could take forms from her past. It could attack her using her skills with knife and dagger. But it could not use sorcery against her.

It could only use what she possessed.

Including, perhaps, her weapons?

A wild, reckless idea took hold in Caina’s mind. She dropped her ghostsilver dagger, the weapon clattering against the white flagstones of the plaza. The mirrorshade hesitated, and Caina yanked off her belt and its sheathed throwing knives, dropped it to the ground, and pulled the daggers from her boots and discarded them. 

She tensed, preparing to dodge if her duplicate attacked.

But the mirrorshade remained motionless.