Jonathan Moeller - The Ghosts 09 - Ghost in the Surge (33 page)

“Ah,” said the duplicate, and the dagger in her hand dissolved into mist. “Very clever. Very clever, indeed.”

Then she flickered, wavered, and vanished from sight.

Caina held her breath, but the mirrorshade did not return. She scooped up her weapons, but still it did not reappear.

Her gambit had worked. 

“Throw down your weapons!” she shouted, running for Corvalis and Talekhris. Both men battled their duplicates, light flashing back and forth between Talekhris and his mirrorshade. “Throw down your weapons! Talekhris, release your spells.”

“But…” said Talekhris, risking a glance in her direction.

“Do it now!” said Caina. 

Corvalis dropped his spear, and Talekhris lowered his rod, the snarling light of his defensive spells fading away.

Both their mirrorshades froze. The copy of the ghostsilver spear in the hands of Corvalis’s duplicate rippled into smoke and drifted away. Talekhris dropped his rod and pulled off his jade mask, and his mirrorshade did the same.

For a moment they all stared at each other.

Then the mirrorshades dissolved into smoke and vanished.

“What did you do?” said Corvalis, blinking.

Talekhris chuckled. “I should have thought of it myself. The mirrorshades…well, mirrored us. They took our strengths and reflected them back upon us. So if we wanted to defeat them…”

“Then the only way was not to fight them at all,” said Corvalis. He picked up the ghostsilver spear. “A pity we won’t be able to deal with the Moroaica so easily.”

“No,” said Caina. The last time she had actually fought the Moroaica had been in the darkness below Marsis, and Jadriga had overpowered her easily. And even when Caina had prevailed, Jadriga’s spirit had possessed her body, waiting to take a new host.

But not this time.

Either Caina would stop Jadriga, or Jadriga would kill her and destroy the world. 

She looked into the temple and saw the white glow deep within its depths.

The gate to the realm beyond.

She looked at the others and nodded, and they walked into the temple of Anubankh.

Chapter 23 - They Shall Pay For What They Have Done

Nothing moved in the temple.

The strange repetition, the destruction of Khaset over and over again, stopped as soon as they set foot inside. Perhaps it was an aspect of Jadriga’s memory. Perhaps she had seen Khaset burn, but not the interior of the temple of Anubankh.

Or perhaps, Caina thought, Jadriga did not want the illusionary fire to hinder her aim.

They walked deep into the temple, past pylons carved with elaborate scenes of Maatish conquest, past rows of sphinxes watching them with frozen stone eyes. The white light grew brighter, and again Caina felt the presence of mighty sorcery. 

At last they came to a vast hypostyle hall, its lofty ceiling supported by pillars thick as ancient oaks. A dais rose at the far end of the hall, and Caina suspected that a stone image of Anubankh had once stood there, looking down upon his priests and worshippers. Stone tables dotted the hall here and there, and Caina realized this was where the Great Necromancers had converted their victims into Undying slaves.

Most of the far wall had been ripped away. In its place blazed a rift of white light, a tear in the air, growing as Caina watched. It should have been blinding, yet Caina could look into it without pain. Beyond the sorcerous gate, she saw nothing but whiteness.

The humming, tearing noise was very loud in here.

A woman stood before the dais, silhouetted in the white glow from the rift. She held a metal staff in her left hand, and turned as Caina and the others approached. She looked Caerish and no more than twenty, with brown eyes and hair the color of wheat.

But Caina would know those ancient, heavy eyes anywhere. 

“So,” said the Moroaica. “You have arrived.” 

“You noticed,” said Caina.

“Indeed,” said Jadriga. “Perhaps I should have anticipated it.”

“I’m surprised the Surge didn’t warn you,” said Caina.

“She did,” said Jadriga. “She said the Balarigar would come for me.”

“And here I am,” said Caina.

“Here you are,” said Jadriga. “A ridiculous myth of the Szalds. You are no more truly the Balarigar than I am the Moroaica. The legend of the Moroaica only exists because I crushed the solmonari sorcerer-priests of the Szalds long ago, and to slake their shattered pride they invented the tale of a Balarigar who would slay the demon.”

“Perhaps,” said Talekhris, “you should have heeded the warning.”

“And you,” said the Moroaica, her eyes shifting to him. “The Sage. Still pursuing me after all these centuries? All because of a few lessons? You should have given up and died in your sleep centuries ago.”

“No,” said Talekhris. “It is my responsibility. All the horror you have unleashed, all the death you have wrought…you have done it with knowledge I gave you. Everything you have destroyed, I bear some of the blame.”

“How foolishly proud,” said Jadriga. “I acquired knowledge from you, but I would have gained it elsewhere. And now you have chosen to follow Caina to destruction? So be it. I…”

Her eyes fell across Corvalis, and she fell silent. 

He met the Moroaica’s gaze without blinking, his face a hard mask.

A brief tremor went over Jadriga’s face, followed by an expression that looked almost like longing. It vanished quickly, but Caina saw it nonetheless. The Moroaica’s spirit had spent a year inside Caina’s head, and when she found a new body she had carried a copy of Caina’s memories with her.

Including, apparently, Caina’s feelings for Corvalis. 

The prospect had filled Caina with panic at first. What if Jadriga decided to claim Corvalis for her own? Caina had no way to stop her. With her sorcery, she could kill Caina and take her place. Or she could reach into Corvalis’s mind and twist his thoughts. 

Yet Jadriga had done none of those things, pursuing instead the completion of the great work, and Caina had realized she never would. She had been only fifteen years old when Rhames killed her, and she had never been in love with a man the way Caina was in love with Corvalis.

The Moroaica, the ancient sorceress of dread, did not know how to act upon the emotion. 

And even if she had known, Caina realized, it would not have mattered. Perhaps Horemb’s spirit had been right, and Jadriga no longer had free will, was locked into her course of torment until she destroyed the world and herself. 

And despite everything Caina had seen, despite the horrors Jadriga and her disciples had wreaked, she felt a stab of pity. To have those feelings, but to be unable to act on them, had to be its own form of torment. And Caina had seen her father die, and while the pain of that would never leave her, she had grown used to it over time. It had simply become part of her. But to be locked as she was when she was eleven, when she had just seen her father die, to remain that way for thousands of years…little wonder Jadriga wanted to destroy and rebuild the world.

Caina felt sorry for her.

But she would still stop the Moroaica. 

Jadriga’s face settled into its usual cool, remote mask. It was odd that Caina had seen the Moroaica wear three different bodies, yet still recognized that expression.

“Then I assume Sicarion is dead?” said Jadriga.

Caina nodded. 

“Little loss,” said the Moroaica. “He cared nothing for the purpose of my great work, only for the killing. Still, he was an effective tool.”

“Such,” said Corvalis, “a gracious epitaph.” 

For an instant Jadriga look stung, but she shook her head.

“It matters not,” she said. “He has served his purpose. The great work is underway. Soon every living man, woman, and child shall have been reborn through the phoenix ashes, and countless generations of the dead will rise. I shall draw upon the power of the great elemental lords, and with their strength I shall enter the realm of the gods, throw them down, and make them pay for all the cruelties they have inflicted upon us.”

“Reborn?” said Caina. “Is that what you call it?”

Jadriga shrugged. “There is always pain and blood in birth, is there not? But this shall be a final birth. Mortal man shall die and rise again, reborn in the power of the phoenix flames, immortal and perfect and free from…”

“They are none of those things,” said Caina. “All you’ve done is create a world of monsters. Have you seen them? Did you go back through your damned gate to look? The dead you’ve raised aren’t perfect. They’re empty shells, with no souls and no minds, just rage and thoughtless fury. They’ll kill until there are none of the living left, and then they’ll kill each other over and over again, and every time they die and rise again they become a little more corrupted. And then when you finally awaken the elemental lords, they will raze every city, shatter every mountain, burn every forest, and boil every ocean to steam. Is that what you want? A ruined world filled with monsters? That’s what your great work has created.”

“No,” said Jadriga. “No. You do not see. You do not understand. I am making a better world, a world free of death and pain…”

“You are not!” said Caina, rage burning through her. All of it, Halfdan’s death, the carnage in New Kyre, all of it had been created by the vision of a madwoman, a sorceress too twisted to see the harm she would unleash. “All you’ve done is create a world of death and pain.”

“It was already filled with death and pain!” said Jadriga, some of her calm slipping away. “The gods made it that way. Do you not see, Ghost? I have your memories. I know how you have suffered, how you watched your father die, as I did. You have seen the cruelty and the pain, the slavers, the tyrants, the corrupt lords! The gods did this to us. They made this world into a torture chamber and left us to scream. I…”

“It was our doing, not theirs,” said Caina. 

“You defend them?” hissed Jadriga.

“A man murdered my father, not a god,” said Caina. “A man you taught as your disciple. A man murdered your father and turned you into one of the Undying, not any god. We do it to ourselves, Jadriga. Over and over again, we torment ourselves. The pain of the world is the work of men and women, not of gods.” 

“Then aid me,” said Jadriga.

Caina let out a harsh laugh. “You cannot possibly be serious. After everything I have seen?”

“Yes,” said Jadriga. “I asked for your help in the great work when we first met, and that has not changed. You think the new world is flawed? Help me to improve it. And come with me.” She tapped the butt of the Staff of the Elements against the gleaming floor, flames blazing around its length. “The gate is almost open. Soon I will enter into the realm of the gods. Then we can demand an accounting for the torments of mankind. Perhaps there is even a high god, a lord over all creation, and we can force answers from him. Do you not wish that?”

Part of Caina, a large part of her, did wish that. Often she had lain awake at night, gazing at the ceiling, wondering why her father had died. Why Corvalis’s father had been so cruel. Why so many terrible things had happened. 

“No,” said Caina.

“Do you not want to know why?” said Jadriga.

“I know why,” said Caina. “I’ve always known why. There is good and evil in every heart, and our failure to stand against that evil is what works grief in the world.”

“Profound,” said Talekhris. “You have gained wisdom, Ghost.”

“Trite,” said Jadriga. “The world can be remade. It can be cleansed of evil. And I shall do it. Already it…”

“By filling the world with monsters?” said Caina. “By setting it to burn and leaving it in ashes?”

“Come with me and you will understand,” said Jadriga. She held out her free hand to Caina. “Follow me through the gate to the realm of the gods.”

“If you open that gate,” said Talekhris, “you will rip apart the material world.”

Jadriga ignored him. “Come with me, Ghost. Demand that the gods account for their crimes. And after we have thrown them from their thrones and made them suffer, we can return and put the new world in order.”

“No,” said Caina. “You don’t understand. The evil in the world was made by men…and you are creating more of it. I will not join you…and I will stop you and kill you, if I can.”

Jadriga raised an eyebrow. “You have already killed me once, and seen me die twice. Yet death did not stop me.”

“It didn’t,” said Caina. “But here…here it will be different, will it not?”

Jadriga nodded. “I see Talekhris at last discerned the truth. But it does not matter. You cannot stop me, Ghost, and the ragged Sage most certainly cannot stop me.” The Staff of the Elements crawled with fingers of brilliant blue-white lightning. “One last chance, Caina Amalas. The Surge was right about one matter – we are very much alike. You have suffered many of the same things I have. Help me bring justice to the world. Or die here and now.” 

“No,” said Caina.

“So be it, then,” said Jadriga, leveling the staff. Talekhris began muttering a spell, and Corvalis raised the ghostsilver spear. “Then…”

“Malifae!” said Caina.

Jadriga flinched, all the color draining from her face.

“What did you say to me?” said Jadriga.

“Your name is Malifae,” said Caina. “That is the name of the girl you were, before Rhames killed you.”

“You cannot know that,” said the Moroaica, her voice shaking with anger. “Everyone who knows is dead.”

“Your father told me,” said Caina.

Jadriga said nothing, her face ashen, her lips trembling.

“Horemb,” said Caina. “His name was Horemb. He was a scribe. Your mother sold baskets in the market, until one of the Great Necromancers killed her on a whim.” 

“Rhames,” said Jadriga. “Rhames must have told you.”

“He didn’t,” said Caina, taking a deep breath. This was a gamble, she knew. But if she could reach Jadriga, could convince her that this was folly… “Your father himself told me.”

“You lie,” said Jadriga. 

“No,” said Caina. “His spirit was bound to you, a consequence of the ritual the Great Necromancers used to make you Undying. I spoke with him when you tried to possess me after Rhames killed you in Caer Magia. He has been watching you for all of these centuries.”