Ghost in the Winds (Ghost Exile #9) (39 page)

“But only if we stop the Grand Master,” said Nasser.

“What are you two talking about?” said Morgant. “More secrets?”

Nasser offered his smooth white smile. “We are at the end, Razor. Soon there will be no more secrets. If we live through the next hour or so, I promise that you shall know my secret.” 

“Morgant,” said Annarah. “You kept your word to me, at such cost. Now help me keep mine. If I can. Please.” 

Morgant stared at her. In all the time he had known her, she had kept secrets, but she had never lied to him, and at last he gave a sharp nod.

“We can start,” he said, “by killing the Grand Master.” 

“Agreed,” said Nasser. 

“Men!” shouted Tanzir. “Form up! We march to the Golden Palace.”

The Kaltari warriors placed themselves around the Prince and his Oath Shadow, the Imperial Guards forming up around Lord Martin and Lady Claudia, and they left the Old Bazaar, heading for the Golden Palace as the skies boiled.

Chapter 23: Lord of the Nagataaru

Caina hurtled over the city, the houses of the Old Quarter and the damaged buildings of the Tower Quarter blurring beneath her. It should have been an exhilarating experience, but she felt nothing but fear and anger. 

Dread for Kylon gnawed at her, along with guilt. She should have gone back to help him. Fear for her friends cut into her, fear for those she had left behind in the Old Bazaar. 

But her rage was stronger than the fear.

Callatas had done this. Every evil she had seen in Istarinmul, the wraithblood, the laboratories, the abuses of the Slavers’ Brotherhood, all of those evils had been in service for this greater evil, in preparation for the nightmare now playing across Istarinmul. Callatas had done this, and by all the gods she would see him dead for it.

The power of the Knight of Wind and Air had not interfered with her valikarion abilities, and Caina saw the vast web of arcane power lying over Istarinmul, a web centered upon the Golden Palace. She followed the strands of that web, flying towards the sprawling edifice and its gleaming domes. Again and again one of the winged creatures tried to stop her, but for all their speed and strength they relied upon their wings to fly. The wind itself carried Caina, and it made her far more agile that the winged creatures. She blurred around them with ease, dodging their attempts to attack her or drag her down to the streets.

Soon the Golden Palace filled her vision, its gilded domes reflecting the glow from the smokeless flame and the swords and spears of lightning overhead. As Caina had suspected, the plume of shadow rose from the Court of Justice, a vast courtyard ringed with balconies, the Padishah’s throne and dais against the far wall. According to ancient tradition, the Padishah pronounced edicts of great importance from the Court of Justice. No doubt that had appealed to Callatas’s sense of grandeur.

Kalgri was a cruel monster, but she was certainly right about the Grand Master’s pomposity. 

Caina hurtled towards the Court of Justice, noting the blaze of spells around the Court, and landed in the center of the courtyard, her impact blowing a cloud of dust around her. She made no effort to hide. Callatas would have realized that she was coming, and even as a valikarion she would not have been able to hide from him, not now.

Flight had many virtues, but stealth was not one of them. 

A dozen things assaulted her senses at once, both her mortal senses and those of the valikarion. 

Corpses lay scattered near the archway leading into the courtyard, dozens of them, and she spotted Grand Wazir Erghulan Amirasku in their midst, his sightless eyes staring at the sky, his mouth open in a silent scream. His face was still intact, mostly, but the rest of him was not. Evidently, Callatas had permitted Kalgri a little fun after he no longer needed the Grand Wazir.

A huge Mirror of Worlds stood before the dais, nearly thirty feet across, three rings of golden symbols burning on the ground around it. The constant plume of shadows rose from the Mirror and soared high into the sky as the nagataaru poured into the world, and Caina saw the maze of potent spells around it. The strain upon the Mirror was immense, and only the Staff and Seal of Iramis, empowered by the Star of Iramis, could have cast such potent spells. 

A wooden wagon rested near the dais and the Mirror, supporting a chair that held a withered old man hooked to some kind of alchemical machine. It looked as if his blood had been replaced by wraithblood, the machine cycling it in and out of his veins. A wraithblood addict? Why hadn’t Callatas killed him, or summoned a nagataaru into his flesh?

“The Padishah,” murmured Samnirdamnus, and Caina’s eyes widened. 

So that was what Callatas had done with Nahas Tarshahzon. 

Grand Master Callatas stood at the edge of the circle of golden symbols, glaring at her.

He had changed to a clean set of gold-trimmed white robes and a turban, and the vision of the valikarion saw the spells that made those robes stronger than steel, armoring him from all physical attacks and most arcane ones. With his right hand, he gripped the Staff of Iramis, the Seal of Iramis resting against it upon his finger, and both relics blazed with power. The Star of Iramis rested against his chest, glowing with harsh azure light. The vast maze of summoning spells centered upon him, countless threads of power, and Caina knew that killing him would collapse the summoning spells, though it would do nothing to recall the nagataaru already housed in flesh. 

And yet…

Some of the threads of power seemed somehow connected to the Padishah. 

Her eyes met the old man’s gaze. He looked as if he had once been fat, and Morgant had said that Nahas Tarshahzon had once been so fat that slaves had carried him on a palanquin. Now he looked like a skeleton draped in baggy skin, his black eyes glittering with desperate pain. Nonetheless, Caina saw the faint resemblance to Sulaman in his features, though she could not guess what kind of relationship the ascetic poet had enjoyed with his hedonistic father. 

“Kill me!” wailed the Padishah. “Please, please, kill me!” 

“So!” said Callatas, his voice cutting through the Court of Justice. His gray eyes flashed beneath the turban. The Elixir Rejuvenata had left him looking like a young man at the height of his vigor, but his eyes were still ancient and cold and dead. “You bound the djinn to rescue you from Pyramid Isle, I presume? How? I had no idea you possessed any sorcerous talent.”

Caina took a step to the right, drawing the valikon from her belt and shifting it to her left hand. At once, the blade burst into white fire. “I didn’t bind them. I asked politely.”

Samnirdamnus laughed inside of her head. 

“They are fools,” said Callatas. “Already they flee before the might of the nagataaru.” Caina flexed the fingers of her right hand, watching him as he glanced skyward. “I used the destruction of Iramis to bind their most potent nobles to the Desert of Candles. Without them, the djinn cannot stand against the nagataaru.”

“Neither will you,” said Caina.

She wanted to keep him talking, to distract him. He knew the danger the valikon presented to him, and he would not let her get close enough to use, not before he blasted her to ashes or transmuted her to crystal. But she had another weapon, one that he might not expect…

Callatas let out a scornful laugh. “Indeed? I assume you slew a few of the new mankind on your way here. You have looked upon their glory, and you think I have failed?” 

“You’ve created monsters from innocent men and women,” said Caina, “and you are a dupe of Kotuluk Iblis.” Callatas started to snarl an answer, but Caina kept speaking. “Are you blind? Your hybrids will slaughter everyone else in the world, and then they’ll turn on each other. The world will be a ruin filled with bones! That is what your Apotheosis will work. Can you not see it?”

Callatas scoffed. “You are the one who is blind, Caina Amalas. The new mankind is immortal and invincible. They are mankind perfected, purged of all weaknesses! The old humanity will be wiped away like the blight that it is. The new humanity will take its place, freed from weakness, freed from civilization! They will conquer our world, and then I shall lead them through the secret paths of the netherworld to new worlds, and we shall cleanse them of the old humanity until the new mankind is the only race in the cosmos!” 

“Are you listening to yourself?” said Caina, incredulous. “That is madness. That is utter insanity.”

She took a step closer to him.

“Madness?” said Callatas, and purple fire pulsed through his eyes, his shadow seeming to bulge and twist beneath him. “It is not madness if I have the power to bring my vision to reality, and I do. Look around you! You see the new humanity rising around you, and still you weary my ears with this nonsense…”

“A vision?” said Caina, taking another step, holding her right hand loose at her side. “You call this a vision? This isn’t a vision of anything. This is a tantrum…”

“A tantrum?” said Callatas. 

“A tantrum because Iramis wasn’t the perfect paradise you convince yourself it was,” said Caina. She was trying to distract him, which was just as well because she could not conceal her contempt for him. “The world’s not perfect, so you’re going to burn it down and kill everyone in a sulk. That merchant who enslaved those Caerish women? The man who set you on this path? He would have been appalled. He would have looked at you with contempt, at the murderous wretch that you are…”

Callatas snarled and stepped forward, the Staff clicking against the flagstones. “You small-minded fool.” She knew that he hated her as much as she despised him. “You would leave mankind crawling in the filth, slaves to the corruption of civilization, while I will give us the cosmos.”

“You’ll give us nothing,” said Caina. “You’ll kill the world, and then your pet monsters will devour each other, and that will be that. All those fine words for nothing.”

“You could be one of us,” said Callatas, and that strange lust returned to his eyes, the lust she had seen on his face when he had been staring at her on Pyramid Isle. The Elixir Rejuvenata had rejuvenated his flesh…including the appetites of that flesh, it seemed. 

“What do you mean?” said Caina, making no effort to hide her revulsion. 

Just a little closer…

“I see that djinni in your veins and eyes,” said Callatas. “I can banish the wretched thing back to the netherworld, and then a nagataaru can enter your flesh.” The lust in his eyes kindled further. “Once you become one of the new humanity, you can be like us, strong and immortal and invincible. I created the new humanity to be male and female, to populate the world in their image…and you can be one of the mothers of the new humanity.”

“So you want to turn me into a monster to spawn monsters?” said Caina. “No wonder you failed at politics. That is one of the least compelling offers I have ever heard.” 

Callatas shrugged, his face becoming a hard mask. “Then die.”

He lifted his free hand, arcane force gathering around his fingers, and Caina moved.

She snapped her right arm back and flung it forward, calling to the smokeless flame. A blade of smokeless fire whirled from her fingers, spinning towards Callatas’s chest. When she had used that weapon against the winged creatures, it had blasted a hole right through their chests. When it almost touched Callatas, his shadow boiled up to shield him, swallowing the smokeless fire.

“You dare?” sneered Callatas. “You dare to use such a feeble weapon against me? I turned Iramis and the loremasters to ashes! I shattered the Court of the Azure Sovereign! I bound their nobles within the crystals of the Desert of Candles, and the Azure Sovereign could not stop me…”

Callatas kept ranting, but a different voice filled Caina’s head. It was not a voice, not really. It was rage and hunger and lust, fury and alien, malevolent hatred.

BALARIGAR. 

The voice rose from the shadow twisting around Callatas.

The power of Kotuluk Iblis, sovereign of the nagataaru, lay upon Callatas. Caina wondered if the Grand Master even realized how profoundly Kotuluk Iblis had twisted his thoughts. 

IT DOES NOT MATTER. WERE THE TRUTH SHOWN TO HIM, HE WOULD NOT BELIEVE IT. IT IS TIME FOR TRUTH, BALARIGAR. YOUR WORLD IS DEAD. YOUR WORLD IS MINE, AND I SHALL FEAST UPON IT. 

“No,” growled Caina. Callatas kept ranting, heedless of her interjection. 

TELL ME, BALARIGAR. A hint of mockery entered that awful voice. THEY NAME YOU THE BALARIGAR. THE DEMONSLAYER SENT BY THE GODS TO SLAY THE WICKED AND DEFEAT THE VILE SORCERERS. IS IT A LIE? DO YOU TRULY BELIEVE YOURSELF TO BE THE BALARIGAR? 

“You want the truth?” said Caina, and Callatas stopped ranting. “I don’t know if I am the Balarigar, and I don’t care. All I know is that I’m going to stop you.”

Callatas snarled, and Kotuluk Iblis thundered with laughter.

WELL SPOKEN. I HAVE HUNTED PREY ACROSS A THOUSAND WORLDS, AND YOU ARE WORTHY PREY. I SHALL ENJOY FEASTING UPON YOUR DEATH. 

“Kill me!” said the Padishah, his voice a despairing wail. “Kill me!” 

“Then let your death mark the start of the new humanity,” said Callatas, and he lifted his free hand again, calling more power to his grasp. 

Caina surged towards him, raising the valikon and calling the wind to aid her. 

Callatas flung a blast of transmuting golden fire, and Caina dodged, the fire striking the ground and transforming a dozen flagstones to glittering blue crystal. She drew back the valikon to strike, and Callatas moved, leaping into the air. 

As he did, the shadow of Kotuluk Iblis erupted around him, transforming into wings and impenetrable armor, and he hurtled in the air, the wings of darkness spreading around him like the sails of a vast ship. 

Caina called the wind, and she rose to pursue him.

###

The shadow of Kotuluk Iblis roared through Callatas, matching his own rage.

That woman. That impudent, damnable woman! She had such potential, but she was blinded by her obsolete morality and her arrogant emotionality. She could have been among the greatest of the new humanity, a worthy consort to him in the new world, but instead she wished to defend the corrupt, dying old world.