Ghost in the Throne (Ghost Exile #7) (27 page)

Likely her experience in Rumarah, the necromantic poison and the mortal wound and the Elixir Restorata, had altered the way her invisible shadow looked. 

And yet, that explanation felt wrong. Something else was happening…

Caina blinked as another thought occurred to her. 

She had always sensed a faint sorcerous aura around wraithblood addicts. She felt it from Nerina even now, a slight tingling, crawling sensation against her skin. Yet if Caina was a valikarion, then she should have been able to see a sorcerous aura. But she could see nothing.

Unless…

“Nerina,” said Caina. “Before the wraithblood. What color were your eyes?”

“Green,” said Nerina. 

Caina looked into Nerina’s eyes for a moment, nodded, and then closed her eyes. Darkness swallowed her vision, but she could saw the strange white non-light of her pyrikon, the glow surrounding Kylon’s valikon and Morgant’s weapons, the terrible white fire stirring within the Staff and the Seal of Iramis. Yet if she concentrated, she saw more of each of those objects, their auras becoming sharper and clearer to the strange sixth sense she had acquired.

So she focused on Nerina…and realized that she could still see the eerie blue of Nerina’s eyes even with her own eyes closed. It was as if a sphere of pale blue light glimmered behind Nerina’s eyes, filling the inside of her head with that strange light. 

Caina blinked her eyes open, stunned. A sharp wave of vertigo went through her, followed by a headache, and she closed her eyes again and pinched the bridge of her nose, waiting for the vertigo to pass. 

“Are…you all right?” said Nerina hesitantly. “You closed your eyes and frowned, and probability indicates the likelihood of an unpleasant emotional reaction…”

“I know why your eyes changed color,” said Caina.

“The wraithblood,” said Nerina.

“No, why the wraithblood changed your eyes,” said Caina. “Your eyes didn’t change color at all. It’s an arcane aura that damaged your mind and lowered your resistance to possession, an arcane aura potent enough that people can see it. That’s why your eyes changed. It’s the sorcerous aura of the damage to your mind’s defenses. The entire point of the Apotheosis is that the Grand Master wants to replace humanity with something new. The wraithblood damages your resistance to possession. Remember? That’s why the nagataaru tried to possess you when we fled from the Maze. You were the easiest target.”

“Then if Callatas summons thousands of nagataaru,” said Nerina, “that means…”

“They’ll seek out wraithblood addicts and possess them,” said Caina. 

“Oh,” said Nerina. “There are tens of thousands of wraithblood addicts in Istarinmul. That is…that is…” Her face tightened as she did the math. “Very bad.” 

“Yes,” said Caina, her mind turning over this new information. There was a secret here, she could tell. Something important, something she hadn’t yet realized. This was another part of that secret, another crack in the armor surrounding it. 

Something else started to occur to her, something about the nature of wraithblood. 

“You calculated that,” said Nerina, “by closing your eyes?”

“Yes,” said Caina, her mind elsewhere. “I could see the aura with my eyes closed.”

“Oh,” said Nerina. “What exactly happened to you?” 

“Well,” said Caina, “I’ll tell you the entire story someday, but suffice to say I was forced to drink a lethal poison, stabbed through the chest, and had a building blow up around me.”

“You seem improbably healthy after all that,” said Nerina. 

“I agree completely,” said Caina. “Nerina, thank you. I think I just realized something important. We’d better go. Head back to your shop with Malcolm. I’ll be in contact soon – I think we will need your help.”

“The shadow, though,” said Nerina. “Can you calculate its cause? I cannot.”

Caina hesitated. “Not yet.”

They rejoined the others. Nasser, Annarah, Morgant and Laertes left the Bazaar by one street, heading for the Gilded Throne, while Nerina and Malcolm took another, making their way to the Cyrican Quarter. Caina stood next to Kylon, watching them go.

“Where are we going?” said Kylon, rolling his shoulders. 

“The House of Agabyzus,” said Caina. “Damla will know how to get in touch with Agabyzus, and he will have been keeping an eye on the Umbarians.”

“You had an idea, though,” Kylon said. “I know that expression.” 

Caina nodded. “I know why the wraithblood addicts’ eyes change color. It’s the damage the wraithblood does to their aura, to their minds’ defenses against possession. The damage is so severe that the aura becomes partially visible to the mortal eye…which is why their eyes change color.”

“Truly?” said Kylon.

“That has to be it,” said Caina. “It’s why I never realized it before. It wasn’t until I looked at her just now that I understood the truth.” 

“The eyes of the valikarion,” said Kylon.

Caina nodded. “And I realized something else. What’s the best way to damage someone’s aura?”

Kylon shrugged, watching her face.

“The way I know best,” said Caina. “A bloodcrystal. We need to make a stop before the House of Agabyzus.”

“Where?” said Kylon.

Caina gave him a tight smile. “I need to buy some wraithblood.”

###

Kylon walked with Caina through the back allies of the Anshani Quarter. 

The Quarter was safe enough during the day, so long as one stayed to the main streets. At night it became far more dangerous, as the various Anshani clans that inhabited the Quarter carried on their endless blood feuds. They were not above robbing and killing anyone who happened to wander into their territory, or taking captives and selling them to the Brotherhood. He had gone with Caina to the Anshani Quarter before, but she had never come here dressed as a woman. 

Well. If anyone made trouble, he would just have to discourage them. Though it would be difficult to do that without drawing attention. 

At the moment, Caina did not seem to care. Her face was hard and tight as she strode forward. She had either figured something out that had been bothering her, or there was about to be trouble. 

Kylon kept the valikon loose in its scabbard. A group of young Anshani men pushed away from a doorway and started drifting towards them. Kylon looked at them, and drew the valikon an inch or two from its sheath. The men met his gaze, and just as quietly drifted back into their doorway. 

Caina turned a corner, and Kylon found himself in a reeking alley between two towering tenements. To judge from the odor, the residents used the alleyway as a toilet. An Istarish man in a ragged brown robe and turban stood within the alley, humming to himself, and his dirty face brightened as Caina and Kylon approached. 

“Ah, lovely lady,” said the Istarish man. “Have you come to me seeking pleasure?” He licked his lips and grinned. “I have much pleasure to offer…”

“I know,” said Caina, her voice cold. A coin flashed in her fingers. “One vial of wraithblood. I know you’re supposed to give it away for free, but give me the vial, take this coin, and go get a drink at the Shahenshah’s Seat. Don’t come back for an hour.”

“Lovely lady,” rasped the Istarish man, “the wraithblood is best enjoyed with company. I can make sure you do not hurt yourself while in the throes of the vision.” He gripped her shoulder. “And I can…”

Before Kylon could intercede, Caina moved fast, so fast she almost seemed to blur. Suddenly the Istarish man was on his knees, his eyes bulging with pain, his arm twisted at an uncomfortable angle as she stood behind him. 

“You can give me a vial of wraithblood and take my coin to have a pleasant drink at the Shahenshah’s Seat,” said Caina, jerking her chin at Kylon, “or he can cut your head off. Decide now.”

“Coin,” croaked the man. 

Caina released him, and the man stumbled to his feet, eyeing her as if she were a rabid animal. She handed over the coin, and dropped a small glass vial of dark fluid in her outstretched hand, and then sprinted away as if all the demons in the world were on his tail.

“He keeps running like that,” said Caina, holding up the vial of cloudy glass before her eyes, “his heart’s going to give out before he can enjoy that drink.”

Kylon’s first thought was that the wraithblood dealer might have given her a fake vial, but he reached out with the sorcery of water and felt the aura of arcane power gathered within the cheap glass. It was indeed a vial of genuine wraithblood, made from the blood of a murdered slave, and Kylon had sensed such a malevolent aura before in the Grand Master’s wraithblood laboratories. 

“What do you see?” he said at last.

“Something I should have realized a long time ago,” said Caina. “Could you draw the valikon and hold it level, please? I need to try something.”  

Kylon nodded and drew the ancient sword, the blade rasping against the leather of its scabbard. He held the weapon out before him, and Caina plucked the wax stopper from the wraithblood vial. 

“It doesn’t boil when you touch it,” said Kylon. “Not the way the Elixir Restorata did.”

“That’s because it’s not completely an Elixir,” said Caina. “Gods, but I should have realized this sooner. Callatas is a Master Alchemist, so I assumed wraithblood was a kind of Elixir. But it’s not. It’s something worse. Watch this.” 

She tipped the vial over the blade and let a few drops fall against the valikon. They hissed and snarled, sizzling like fat dripped onto a griddle. Caina stared at the sizzling drops for a few moments, then nodded and swept her hand across the flat of the blade, scooping up the wraithblood. For an instant Kylon feared that she would burn her hand, but Caina didn’t flinch.

“Look,” she said in a soft voice, holding out her cupped hand. 

A small pile of ash rested in her palm. It looked as if the ashes were glittering, yet as Kylon looked closer, he saw that she wasn’t holding a handful of ashes. Instead she was holding something like salt that glittered in the sun, something like…

“Crystals,” said Kylon.

“Thousands and thousands of tiny bloodcrystals,” said Caina. “That’s what wraithblood is. That’s what it always has been. Thousands of tiny bloodcrystals, suspended in a minor alchemical Elixir to make it addictive.”

“What kind of bloodcrystal?” said Kylon. He felt a faint necromantic aura from the dust in Caina’s hand, but not a powerful one. He supposed it didn’t need to be powerful. If the wraithblood was addictive and the effect was cumulative, the individual bloodcrystals could be weak while their total effect added up over time.

“I’m not sure,” said Caina, frowning at the dust, “but I think…it looks like a smaller version of the Conjurant Bloodcrystal I saw in the Tomb of Kharnaces. Callatas must have stolen the design from him.” 

“The Conjurant Bloodcrystal was designed to destroy the barrier between worlds,” said Kylon, “so these smaller ones must be fashioned to wear down the mind’s resistance to possession.” 

“That’s why Callatas needed the blood of murdered slaves,” said Caina. “He must have planted some of the base crystal in each of the murdered slaves, and then grown the wraithblood within them. The metal troughs we saw in the laboratories were to harvest the wraithblood as it fell from their veins.”

“Grown?” said Kylon.

“Bloodcrystals have to be grown from the blood of either a living victim or a recently dead one,” said Caina. “Callatas would have need an original bloodcrystal, one he grew from the blood of his first victim. A base…”

Her voice trailed off, and her eyes widened.

“What is it?” said Kylon. Another idea must have come to her. He often had trouble following her deductions, but her logic was almost always sound.

“Kharnaces told me that every bloodcrystal must be grown from the blood of an original victim,” said Caina. “That’s called the base. The blood of other victims can be added later, but there always has to be a base…and if you provided the blood for the base, you’re immune to the effects of the bloodcrystal.” 

“Really?” said Kylon. “How did you find that out?”

“The hard way,” said Caina. 

She did not seem inclined to elaborate, so he did not press. “So someone provided the blood for the very first vial of wraithblood, and this blood has been the base for every single vial of wraithblood since?” 

“I think so,” said Caina. “Bloodcrystals are grown, not manufactured. Every wraithblood laboratory must start with…oh, a seed vial, one from which the rest of the wraithblood is grown in the body of murdered slaves.”

“So if you found this original bloodcrystal,” said Kylon, “and you destroyed it…would it undo the rest of the wraithblood?”

Caina blinked. “It might. I don’t know for sure. But it might.” She smiled. “That could stop Callatas in his tracks. Forget the relics. If all the wraithblood was undone by destroying the original bloodcrystal, he could summon all the nagataaru he wanted, but they wouldn’t have anywhere to go.” 

“Could Callatas have used himself as the base for the bloodcrystal?” said Kylon, intrigued by the possibility. Caina might have just puzzled out a secret that no one but Callatas himself knew, a weakness built into the foundation of his plans. If they could exploit that weakness…

“Maybe,” said Caina. “I don’t think a necromancer can use a bloodcrystal created from his own blood, at least not for very much. I think Callatas would have used someone else as a base for the bloodcrystals in the wraithblood.”

“Who, then?” said Kylon.

Caina sighed. “I have no idea. Could you hold out the valikon again?” 

Kylon complied, and Caina dumped the dust in her hand upon the blade, and the crystalline grains crackled and flared and became smoking ash. She upended the rest of the vial over the sword, and the wraithblood sizzled and hissed, becoming the crystalline dust, and then crumbling into inert ash. Kylon shook the sword, and the dust blew away down the alley.

“Vile thing,” muttered Caina. “Good riddance.” 

“Ten thousand more vials to go,” said Kylon, returning the valikon to its sheath, “and we’ll be done.” 

“I’m missing something, Kylon,” said Caina, shaking her head. A stray lock of black hair fell from her headscarf. “This is important, but I can’t see how. I’m missing something important, something huge.”