Ghost in the Winds (Ghost Exile #9) (45 page)

The sound of the heartbeat was coming from the Star. 

“Caina?” said Kylon. 

She stopped next to the relics, lifting her hands. As she did, she saw the veins of smokeless fire in her flesh…veins that now pulsed in time to the heartbeat coming from the Star. She glimpsed her reflection in a shattered piece of the Mirror of Worlds and was shocked by how gaunt and drawn she looked, how the smokeless fire filled her eyes. 

Smokeless fire that now pulsed in time to the heartbeat coming from the Star of Iramis. 

The Star of Iramis. What was it? The Staff was a relic to summon spirits from the netherworld. The Seal was a relic to bind and command those spirits. But what was the Star? A source of power? 

Or was it something else? 

It was calling to her, both to her and to Samnirdamnus.

Caina knelt and put the Seal upon her left hand, gripping the Staff with the same hand.

With her right hand, she gripped the Star and stood up.

“The star,” she whispered, remembering the prophecy she had heard on the day of the golden dead. “The star is the key to the crystal.”

It was this Star, she knew. This was the Star that she had been told about.

And the crystal…

Caina stared into the glowing depths of the crystal, and the cosmos seemed to explode through her mind.

Chapter 29: Key

The Star wasn’t a crystal.

It was alive. It had a will and a mind, and as she stared into it, that mind reached out and touched hers.

The touch almost killed her.

The power howled through Caina, and she gasped, leaning upon the Staff for balance. 

The raw power exploded through her, filling her mind and threatening to overflow her. She leaned upon the Staff, trembling, and felt Kylon grab her arms. The Star blazed in her hand, and she felt something within it answering to something within her.

No. Not something within her. Something within Samnirdamnus. 

“What are you doing?” said Caina.

“You were the one I sought,” said Samnirdamnus. “The one I have been looking for, the one who could wield my power without corruption. Have you not already done so? There is one more task for you to do with my power. Behold!”

The Star seemed to explode inside of her mind, power beyond imagination welling up from the thing. 

In that awful instant, Caina understood.

The Star could speak to her because of Samnirdamnus because it was kin to him. Callatas had carried the Star for a century and a half, but he hadn’t been able to control it properly, and the one time he had used it, he had almost burned himself alongside Iramis. But even Callatas with all of his dark wisdom had failed to understand what the Star really was, what it had been all along.

It wasn’t a crystal.

It wasn’t a source of power.

It was alive.

Specifically, it was the Azure Sovereign himself, hibernating in material form. 

Caina had learned long ago that sometimes powerful elemental lords came to the material world to hibernate, to rest from their labors. The city of Cyrioch was built over one such slumbering elemental, while the destruction of Old Kyrace had been caused by the premature awakening of another elemental lord. 

The history of it burned through her mind, drawn in an instant from the Star. Long ago, the Azure Sovereign had gone into hibernation, entrusting his material form to the first loremasters of Iramis. The loremasters had executed their charge faithfully, guarding the Azure Sovereign until Callatas had stolen the Star. 

Now the Azure Sovereign rested in Caina’s fingers, awakening at last in answer to the touch of his vassal in Caina’s flesh. The lord of the djinn began to stir in response to the Knight of Wind and Air, his power flooding towards his faithful vassal. 

Which meant the power flooded into Caina. 

Which meant, in that instant, she held the power of a god in her hands. 

Maglarion and Kalastus and the Moroaica and Ranarius and Cassander and Callatas and so many others had been willing to murder uncounted thousands for this kind of power, and it had fallen into Caina’s hand. 

She would have laughed if she had not wanted to scream. 

Her vision expanded, as it had when Samnirdamnus had shown her the eternal war between the djinn and the nagataaru, and Caina saw the maze of destiny threads rising from the lives around her, weaving into the tapestry of fate. She saw the entire tapestry of the world unfolding before her and knew, at that moment, that she could do anything.

Anything she wanted. 

She could have lifted the Star and commanded it to kill every living sorcerer in the world.

The Star could have destroyed the Umbarian Order, shattering them with a thought. 

It could have healed Caina, letting her bear children as she had always wanted.

She could have raised Old Kyrace from the depths of the sea.

Or she could have listened to the darkness that sometimes shadowed her thoughts when she was exhausted and depressed, the darkness that whispered that Morgant had been wrong, and the world did indeed deserve to die for its cruelties and wickedness, and she could have turned the entire world to a lifeless cinder in that instant. 

Only her sheer revulsion at the thought of wielding that kind of power, of anyone wielding that kind of power, saved her in that awful moment. That kind of power would destroy her. And as she looked at the spiraling maze of destiny threads, she realized that if she used the power of the Star in any form, it would destroy her and cause untold suffering.

One path shone before her like a star in the darkness, one road through the tangled maze of destiny and time and fate. 

She saw Callatas’s destiny thread, terminated when Kotuluk Iblis had claimed his soul. Caina looked back along that dark, blood-drenched thread, back to where it crossed hundreds of thousands of other threads on the day he had burned Iramis, the day this had all started.

And at that moment, she understood at last. 

“Yes,” said Samnirdamnus. “This is what I sought. This is what I have worked towards since Callatas stole the Star.” 

Caina nodded, lifting her eyes from the burning Star at last. She saw everyone else in the courtyard staring at her, Kylon still gripping her arms. A wave of fierce emotion went through her at the sight of him, and she saw his destiny thread, saw all the pain he had endured to find him again, and she wanted to kiss him then and there. 

She also saw Nasser and Annarah staring at her, Nasser calm as ever, but she saw the dawning hope on Annarah’s face and saw the tangled path her destiny thread had taken to bring her here. 

“The star is the key to the crystal,” said Caina. 

“I don’t understand,” said Kylon. 

“I will show you,” said Caina, and she asked for the Star’s help.

Smokeless fire exploded around them, and the Golden Palace vanished.

###

Kylon staggered at the smokeless flame vanished, looking around in shock. 

He wasn’t in the Golden Palace any longer. 

Nor was he even in the city of Istarinmul. 

The bleak gray plain of the Desert of Candles stretched away in all directions, the sun setting to the west. Thousands of the jagged blue crystalline pillars rose around him, flickering with their eerie azure glow. Ahead Kylon saw the fountain of white stone, all that remained of Iramis when Callatas had burned the city. The crystalline statues of Nasser’s wife and children stood motionless upon the plinth at the heart of the dry fountain, glowing with the same pale light as the pillars.

He was not alone.

Caina stood next to him, her eyes burning, the fire spreading through her veins. Nasser and Laertes were a short distance away, Laertes looking around in astonishment. Behind them were Morgant and Annarah. Morgant looked startled, but Annarah was weeping a little as she looked at Caina. 

The power of the Star had carried all six of them here in an instant. Kylon felt that power rolling off Caina in colossal waves. It should have killed her. It was going to kill her. 

“Put it down,” said Kylon. “Put down the Star.”

“I can’t,” said Caina, her voice hoarse, the eerie echo of the djinni still in her words. She stepped away from him, walking towards the fountain. “I understand now. I understand what happened.”

“What do you mean?” said Kylon, following her. 

“The star is the key to the crystal,” said Caina. “It has always been the key to the crystal.”

“What does that mean?” said Kylon, his alarm growing. Caina had told him about that strange prophecy, given to her by the spirit of the Moroaica’s father, but they hadn’t known what it meant. Had the power of the Star driven her mad? “It means that Callatas was a fool,” said Caina, stopping at the edge of the fountain. 

“I could have told you that,” said Morgant. 

“He burned Iramis,” said Caina. She hopped onto the rim of the dry basin, the cold wind of the Desert tugging at her sweat-soaked clothing. “He told everyone he burned Iramis. He had Morgant paint a mural of him burning Iramis. But he didn’t understand the Star. He couldn’t control it, not really. He thought he burned Iramis and used the power of the city’s destruction to bind the nobles of the Court of the Azure Sovereign, but he was wrong.”

She crossed the basin, the Star burning brighter in her hand, and a strange chiming rose from the crystalline pillars. 

“He was exactly wrong,” said Caina. 

She lifted the Star, sorcerous power rising off it like heat from the sun. 

“He didn’t burn Iramis,” said Caina. “He froze it.”

She put the Star in the outstretched hand of Nasser’s wife, and the world shuddered.

###

The power rushed out from the Star, and Caina screamed.

She felt the others around her, felt Kylon reach for her, felt Nasser grab Kylon’s shoulder and shake his head. Caina would have felt agony, but the pain she felt was beyond that. 

Instead, she reached for the Staff, willing the Star’s power into it. In her hand the Star shivered against the crystalline fingers of Nasser’s wife, shuddering and shrinking as its physical form started to unravel. 

Caina asked the Staff to open the way, and it answered, shining with gray light.

The world shuddered again, and a rift opened in the sky, a vast shining gash of golden fire. It was the echo of the rift the Moroaica had opened, the same echo that Cassander had tried to use to summon the ifriti to destroy Istarinmul. Caina felt it open like a door beneath her will, yawning wider and wider.

“Come home!” she shouted.

###

Kylon stared at Caina, uncertain of what to do.

He wanted to rip the Star out of her hand, but to judge from the amount of power radiating from the thing, doing so would kill him, would kill her, and likely anything else for a hundred miles in every direction. Overhead golden light blazed across the dusk sky, and the rift of golden fire reappeared, yawning wider and wider. 

“What are you doing?” said Kylon, his words lost in the roar of the opening rift. 

Yet Nasser heard him nonetheless. “She is opening the way!”

“The way to what?” said Kylon.

“Behold!” said Nasser, pointing his gloved hand at the rift.

Kylon looked at the sky, the rift opening wider.

Then he saw the city, the towers and walls of white and golden stone, ghostly and beautiful in the shadows of the netherworld. It was the echo of Iramis. When Callatas had destroyed the city, the spell had been so powerful that it imprinted an echo of the doomed city upon the netherworld. 

A dozen pieces clicked in Kylon’s head, memories of things he had seen over the last two years. The echo of Iramis. Nasser’s and Annarah’s secret. The crystalline pillars, and the strange visions whenever someone touched them.

It wasn’t an echo.

It was the real thing. 

###

The rift opened all the way, and the ghostly image of Iramis grew sharper.

Caina shuddered with exhaustion, the Star’s power howling through her as its physical form dissipated. She knew the next step would probably kill her, but it would be worth it.

She would save more lives than she had ever done before.

“Balarigar,” said Samnirdamnus, and Caina directed the power into the Seal, calling to the djinn lords bound within the crystalline pillars.

Pain exploded through her, and everything went black.

###

Morgant looked around, uncertain of what was happening. 

The image of Iramis in the sky grew sharper, the wind howling through the Desert, the crystalline pillars flickering and shuddering. Caina stood at the fountain, pressing the Star into the statue’s hand, her face a rictus of agony, the cords standing out on her neck as the smokeless fire burned so bright within her that Morgant could saw it even through her closed eyelids. 

Then she threw back her head and screamed, and the world exploded. 

The ground heaved and shook, a groaning sound filling the air, and the crystalline pillars blazed. As they glowed, they shrank and diminished, seeming to take on human shape. An instant later plumes of smokeless flame erupted from the pillars, the djinn spirits freed from their imprisonment, and the released djinn soared towards the opened rift. 

Nasser grunted in pain and fell to his knees, clawing at his gloved left hand. Annarah ran to him, and Morgant followed. Laertes helped Nasser rip off his glove and bracer, and the crystalline fist seemed to shift and blur, transmuting from blue crystal and back to dark-skinned flesh. 

“Gods,” said Laertes, and Nasser let out a long, shuddering breath. 

Around them, the crystalline pillars changed from crystal to flesh. People reappeared around them, thousands upon thousands of people, and with a shock, Morgant realized they were the people of Iramis as they had been on the day that Callatas had burned them. 

Or, rather, the day that Callatas had thought he had burned them.

“You knew,” said Morgant. “You always knew.”

“I am sorry I did not tell you,” said Annarah. “I knew. Nasser knew. No one else did. If Callatas ever learned the truth, if he ever realized what he had actually done, he could have returned and destroyed Iramis…”