Jonathan Moeller - The Ghosts 07 - Ghost in the Ashes (20 page)

The woman was a sorceress.

A powerful one.

“No,” said Caina. 

“Ah,” said the sorceress with a smile. “I thought you might react like this. No matter. In time, you will see the necessity. You hate sorcery for the scars it left upon your mind and flesh…but a blade can leave scars as well. Do you hate the blade, or the hand that wields it? Sorcery is but another weapon, another tool.” 

“I have no talent for sorcery,” said Caina.

The sorceress smiled. “Neither where you born with any talent for violence, but you learned it readily enough. So it is with the arcane sciences. One day you will see the advantages of wielding sorcery to defend the Empire.”

“No,” said Caina. 

“Pathetic,” said the young girl. “You will become everything you hate and fear.”

“You should have been me,” said the pregnant woman with a mournful shake of her head, black hair brushing against her pale shoulders. “Instead, you shall become her.” 

“Do not listen to these cowardly fears,” said the sorceress. “In time you shall move past them. You have always done what is necessary to save people, to destroy those who would enslave and torment the weak. And with the power of sorcery, you will do far more. You shall bring peace and order to the Empire. You will free all the slaves, force the nobles to heel, and humble the magi.”

For a moment, just a moment, Caina found that a compelling vision.

“No,” she said again. 

“Deny it all you wish,” said the sorceress, “but you will become me, in the end. You will wield sorcery. Not to achieve power for its own end, as fools like Kalastus and Ranarius did, or to pursue some foolish dream of immortality like Maglarion. No, you shall wield power to protect the weak and to humble the strong.”

“And if I did that,” said Caina, “I would be no better than any other tyrant.”

The sorceress smiled. “You’ve had so many chances to claim sorcerous might already. That book you took from Kalastus and threw into the sea. The Moroaica would have taught you, made you into her disciple. You could have wielded the power of the Defender, or forged yourself a suit of glypharmor in Catekharon.”

“All of that power,” said Caina, “was built on the blood of the innocent.”

“But what of power built on the blood of the guilty?” said the sorceress. “You have slain so many tyrants and slavers already. Why not put their lives to better use?” 

Caina opened her mouth and said nothing.

Part of her, a tiny part, found the prospect alluring.

“No,” she said at last, pushing aside the emotion. 

“It is too late,” said the girl, stepping forward. “You’ve gone too far down the path already. You will become everything you hate.”

“You should have been me,” said the pregnant woman, striding alongside the young girl. “But instead you have become a hardened killer.”

“And you will become me,” said the sorceress, smiling. “It is inevitable.”

Terror flooded through Caina as her past, her denied present, and her potential future strode towards her. What would happen if they touched her? Would they tear her apart? Would she turn into one of them? She pointed the ghostsilver dagger, the blade like a shard of pale white light in her hand.

“Stay back,” said Caina. 

The others ignored her.

“I said to stay back,” said Caina, “or I’ll…”

She blinked. 

“You’re not real,” she said.

The sorceress laughed. “Do you deny the obvious?”

“You’re real in a sense,” said Caina, “because you’re part of me. All of you.” She lowered the dagger and pointed at the girl. “You are my past.” She shifted her gaze to the pregnant woman. “You are the woman I wish I had been.” At last she looked at the sorceress. “And you are the woman I fear to become.” 

The three doubles stared at her, remaining silent.

“But you’re only my own thoughts and fears,” said Caina, “reflected back at me by the netherworld. That’s all.”

Had this happened to the Imperial Guards, she wondered? Had they seen their past and present and future reflected back at them, filling them with despair until they fell upon their swords?

“Perhaps,” said the pregnant woman, “but we are still very real.”

“My fears are real,” said Caina, “but you will not rule me. And the future…I could die tomorrow.” Or in the next few moments, considering the strange things she had seen in the netherworld so far. “But I can change the future, as well. Perhaps it will be like this.”

She concentrated, and a new figure appeared on the road. The woman looked like somewhat like the sorceress, an older version of Caina. Yet this figure wore a gown of green and black, and stood on the arm of an older Corvalis, clad in the garb of a prosperous merchant. 

“That,” said Caina, “could just as easily be me.”

“Facile,” said the sorceress. “You would trade the power you could have for this…this illusion of sentimentality?”

“I would,” said Caina. “We’re done now. My fears are part of me, but I will not listen to them, or to you.”

She stepped forward, and her doubles vanished. She looked around and saw nothing but the endlessly shifting landscape and the odd objects floating overhead. 

And, of course, the vast black shape of the Sacellum ahead. 

It seemed her fears could harm her only if she permitted it. 

Caina shook her head and kept walking. She wondered what the Imperial Guards had seen when the netherworld reflected their minds back at themselves. Every living man and woman had secrets, old scars, black memories.

And some of them were too hard to bear.

Though that didn’t explain what had happened to the beheaded Guard.

The landscape rippled once again, flickering through an image of Malarae’s docks and then settling upon gray grasses, and Caina saw a hooded shape standing upon the road ahead.

She tightened her grip on the ghostsilver dagger. 

The figure was nine or ten feet tall, and draped from head to toe in ragged gray robes. A heavy cowl covered its face, and Caina could not see past the darkness of the hood

She did not think it was a reflection generated from her mind.

A spirit, then? Some kind of elemental? One of the guardians Sinan had mentioned?

Or something worse?

“I have no quarrel with you,” said Caina. “Let me pass, and I will go on my way.” 

The figure said nothing, the landscape blurring into the dead forest. More of the hooded gray shapes stepped out of the trees, joining the first, until a dozen of the strange creatures stood upon the road.

“Is there something you want of me?” said Caina. “I have no wish to fight.”

The first shape stepped forward and changed.

Caina stepped back, an involuntary scream coming from her throat.

When she had been seven years old, her father had gone to Aretia to consult with the magistrates, and Caina had accompanied him to get away from her mother. While there, they had walked past the docks, and an enormous dead fish, at least two feet long, floated against the quay. The thing had been half eaten away with rot, its ribs jutting through tarnished scales, its eyes swollen and black with corruption. Caina had shrieked in horror at the sight, and it had taken her father some time to calm her down. The rotting fish had appeared in her dreams for weeks after.

Later, she had acquired darker things to populate her nightmares. 

Yet to this day, she still felt a little uneasy around dead fish.

The robed shape had transformed itself into a hideous, hulking amalgamation of that long-ago dead fish and a living man. It had the exact same bulging black eyes, the same swollen scales, the same ribs jutting from its rotting flesh. Gods, it even had the same stench. She dimly noted that the other robed forms had changed as well. But how? That fish had rotted away fifteen years ago…

Her mind, she realized. The spirits were reflecting some deep-rooted, primitive fear from the depths of her thoughts.

Suddenly she knew exactly what had happened to the rest of the Imperial Guards.

As one the fish-monsters charged at her.

Caina was sure their intentions were not friendly.

She turned and ran. 

Chapter 20 - A Bargain

Caina sprinted along the black road, her shadow-cloak billowing behind her. 

The fish-creatures pursued her in eerie silence. Despite their half-rotten state, despite the fact that they should not have legs at all, they matched her speed. For a moment, despite the revulsion that clenched her stomach, Caina felt a wild urge to laugh. After everything she had survived, everything she had escaped, she was going to die at the hand of a band of spirits that had transformed themselves into giant fish monsters.

It was almost funny. 

Almost.

She whipped a throwing knife at them, and it struck the lead creature with no effect. The blade sank into the gelatinous flesh and vanished. 

They were gaining on her.

Caina ran off the road. The terrain shifted as she did so, morphing from grassland to the dead forest. The creatures were fast, but they were big, and the ground in the dead forest was uneven. Without the smooth road, she could outpace them, perhaps even find a place to hide until they passed. She dashed around a tree, jumped over a knot of roots, and kept running, putting more distance between herself and the creatures.

Then the land changed again to become tangled patch of swamp. A stagnant pond yawned before Caina, and she jerked sideways, hoping to avoid it. Her feet tangled in the thick grasses, and she fell hard to the ground. She jumped up in sudden fear, convinced that the creatures were going to fall upon her.

But the sudden change in terrain had affected them as well. A dozen of them had fallen into one of the stagnant pools, while others had lost their footing and struggled to stand.

And one of them towered over her, its vile stink filling her nostrils, its pale, sagging arms reaching for her…

Caina yelled in fear and reacted on instinct, slashing with the ghostsilver dagger. The shining blade ripped through the creature’s torso with a wet tearing noise, and the creature stumbled back with a keening shriek. The white glow from the dagger spread into the wound, and the fish-creature dissolved into a swirling column of white mist.

Caina didn’t think she had killed the creature. She doubted it was even possible to kill an immortal spirit. But perhaps the ghostsilver dagger could damage the creatures enough to keep them from taking shape for a time. If she damaged enough of the creatures, perhaps the rest would change their minds and go in search of easier prey. 

But for now, the rest of the fish-creatures seemed eager to kill her.

Caina raced across the swamp, dodging around the pools of stagnant water. The swamp would give her an advantage. The creatures could move just as fast as she could, but they seemed to have difficulty turning. Caina could dodge around the pools far more easily, giving her the opportunity to outrun them. 

She jumped over another pool, and as she did, the land rippled beneath her. When she landed, she stood upon a desert plain, glassy black earth stretching away in all directions. 

The fish-creatures starting gaining.

“Damn it,” hissed Caina between breaths. 

She was starting to get tired, her breath burning in her lungs. The strange creatures seemed to have no such limitations. On this black plain, with no place to hide, they would run her down. If she had been in the narrow alleys of Malarae’s dockside district, she could have eluded the beasts easily, but in this open plain she had no chance of escape.

The landscape rippled again and became a city, a strange mixture of the dockside districts of both Malarae and Marsis. The crumbling brick warehouses and sagging taverns split the pursuing creatures into a half a dozen small groups. Caina turned, surprised. She had thought about the city…and the landscape had reflected to change itself.

Did that mean she could control the terrain with her thoughts? A few years ago the power of a sorcerous relic had trapped her in a shared dream with a murderous noblewoman, and once she realized what had happed, Caina had been able to control the dream with her mind.

Could the same thing happen in the netherworld? 

She reversed direction, running at the pursuing creatures.

The maneuver caught the spirits off-guard, and Caina plunged into them, the ghostsilver dagger a white blur in her hand. She slashed left and right, the white light spreading from the blade to consume the creatures. Caina cut down a third one, and then broke through, sprinting down a narrow lane that looked like a drunken mixture of the Grand Market of Marsis and the alley behind the Serpents’ Nest. 

She concentrated, thinking of the forests she had seen, hoping to summon the dead trees back.

And as she did, the city melted away, morphing back into the dead, leafless forest, the black trunks painted with the sky’s eerie green glow. Caina dodged past the trees, making for the fire-lit shape of the Sacellum of the Living Flame. She heard the fish-monsters blundering behind her, but they sounded farther away now. The shifts in the landscape had thrown them. If she kept her wits about her, she might be able to elude them entirely…

A gray blur shot overhead.

Caina saw one of the creatures soaring above the trees. It had reverted back to its original form of a hooded gray wraith, and she felt the malevolent pressure of its gaze. It pointed at her, and a dozen more of the hooded spirits rose out of the dead trees, their ragged robes hanging eerily motionless. 

The creatures plummeted towards her.

Caina cursed and summoned an image of Malarae in her mind, of the warehouse where Haeron Icaraeus had once hidden his slaves…

The dead forest morphed into the dockside streets of Malarae, though dotted with oddities. Many of the warehouses looked as if they had come from the streets of Catekharon, and bits and pieces of Haeron Icaraeus’s mansion stood here and there; a fountain, a wall, a statue, a staircase that spiraled to nothing. 

Clearly Caina needed practice at this.

But the warehouse stood before her, and she threw herself through the main door. The stalls that had once held slaves were dusty and empty. Caina slammed and barred the door behind her, and heard the thumping as the wraiths drove against it. She backed away from the door, the ghostsilver dagger glowing like a torch in her right fist. There had to be some way to frighten the spirits away. Perhaps if she got close enough to the Sacellum, the wraiths would not follow…

The entire wall next to the door shattered in a cloud of dust and broken brick. Caina saw dozens of the hooded forms standing in the street outside, the black pits of their cowls facing her. 

They flowed towards her like a wall of gray water.

Caina ran, summoning the image of a forest in her mind as she did so. The warehouse rippled and reformed back into the dead forest. She weaved between the trees, her boots tearing at the uneven ground. Some of the wraiths blurred back into the form of the fish monsters, a shiver of revulsion rolling down Caina’s spine. Others soared into the black sky like gray birds. Caina veered towards the Sacellum, trying to think of a plan.

Then she felt a surge of power, her skin crawling.

Someone was casting a spell, a powerful spell, nearby.

There was a brilliant flare of blue light, and a dozen of the wraiths ripped apart into shreds of gray mist. Caina stopped, shocked, as did the pursuing fish-creatures. Another flare of dazzling blue light, and the creatures dissolved into blue shreds. Caina stared at them, stunned, and the forest shifted back to the plain of colorless grasses. 

As one of the remaining wraiths and fish-creatures fled. 

A moment later Caina stood alone in the plain, her shadow-cloak billowing around her. 

She let out a long breath. The creatures showed no sign of returning. 

Which made her wonder if they had been frightened off by something worse. A more powerful spirit? One of the guardians of the Sacellum? 

Or something even more dangerous?

Caina turned, and saw the woman in the red gown standing nearby, staring at her.

For a moment Caina thought it was another reflection from her own mind. But this woman wasn’t wearing a red gown, but a robe, belted around the waist with a black slash. She looked about eighteen years old, with black hair that hung loose and wet around her shoulders. Her eyes were black and hard and old, even ancient, eyes that had seen the passage of centuries and the blood of thousands. 

A spasm of fear went through Caina, and for a moment she could not decide to flee or to attack. 

“Jadriga,” said Caina at last.

The Moroaica stared at her, titling her head to the side.

“You dyed your hair,” said the Moroaica at last.

Caina burst out laughing. 

“Did I say something amusing?” said Jadriga.

“I killed you underneath Marsis,” said Caina, “and your spirit inhabited my body for almost a year. Your pet assassin Sicarion tried to kill me. Your disciples almost destroyed Marsis and Cyrioch both. Mihaela tried to murder me, and wound up expelling your spirit from my body, and I haven’t seen you in my dreams or in the flesh for almost a year.” She shook her head. “And after all that, the first thing you ask is if I dyed my hair?”

The Moroaica frowned, and as she did, her eyes shifted from black to icy blue and back again. 

“This is the netherworld,” said Jadriga, “not the material world. I am not here in the flesh, and you see me as you do now because this is the form I choose to take. Should I wish it, I could appear as…almost anything, really.” She gestured, and her body rippled and flowed, shifting between the forms of an ancient crone, a young Anshani woman, a proud Kyracian noblewoman, and most disturbingly, Caina herself, before returning to the shape of the red-robed Szaldic woman. “But you are not a wielder of arcane force. If your dreaming mind has cast your spirit to the netherworld, as it has before during our conversations, you would wear the form your mind believes your body to have. Black hair, not blond. Which means you have dyed your hair…and you are therefore here in the flesh.”

“Aye,” said Caina. 

Again the Moroaica titled her head. Most of the time Jadriga affected a mask of glacial calm, the infinite patience of a creature that had seen millennia pass and empires rise and fall. Yet Caina had seen Jadriga angry, had even seen Jadriga weep after Caina had glimpsed one of the Moroaica’s earliest memories.

Like Caina, Jadriga’s father had been murdered in front of her. 

But now there was only puzzlement on the Moroaica’s face.

“Why?” said the Moroaica. “You are not a sorceress, but you are no fool, and surely you must know the tremendous danger you face by coming to the netherworld in the flesh.”

Caina laughed. “We’ve played this game before. You set a trap for me, and now you’ll offer to teach me sorcery in exchange for aiding your murderous ‘great work’, whatever it is.” 

Jadriga’s red lips twitched into a smile. “Given the course of your life, I see why you think I might have had a hand in…”

“The course of my life?” said Caina. “Do you mean how your disciple Ranarius almost killed me and destroyed Cyrioch? Or how your disciple Andromache invaded Marsis to claim the Tomb of Scorikhon?” Anger flared to life in her, and the glow of the dagger burned brighter in response. “Or how your disciple Maglarion murdered my father?”

Again Jadriga’s eyes flickered from black to blue, and a hint of emotion went over her face.

Regret? 

That couldn’t possibly be it. 

“This is another trap,” said Caina. “You’re not the Moroaica.”

She raised a black eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Your eyes,” said Caina. “They keep changing color. The Moroaica would have enough control to keep a consistent disguise. And she would never express regret for anything. So who are you, really?”

The Moroaica said nothing, and her eyes turned blue and cold and hard.

“You are wrong,” she said, voice quiet. “I am the woman you call the Moroaica, and there are things I regret. The death of my father, which you saw. And the death of your father. How your mother left him broken in that chair, how you killed her with that fireplace poker. How Maglarion cut his throat, and then left you in that cell.”

“Stop it,” said Caina. 

“Or Alastair Corus,” said Jadriga. “You regret his death. You regret all those you could not save at Marsis. You…”

“This is just a trick,” said Caina. “You’re reading my mind.” She reached for the cowl of her shadow-cloak. “You won’t be…”

“No,” said the Moroaica. “I am not reading your mind. Just your memories. Which are now a part of my memories.”

Caina froze. “What do you mean?”

“When Mihaela struck you down,” said Jadriga, “and expelled my spirit from your flesh, I took a new host at once, of course. Yet there was a…side effect, something I had never before experienced. I suspect it resulted from my inability to control you while I inhabited your flesh. Your memories…”

“What about them?” said Caina.

“I have them,” said Jadriga. “All of them.”

Caina stared at the Moroaica. “You mean…my entire life…”

Jadriga nodded. “Up to the point Mihaela struck you down. All your memories, child of the Ghosts. All twenty-one years.”

They stood in silence for a moment.

“Gods,” said Caina at last. “I’m sorry.”

It was an absurd thing to say, but Caina meant it. The Moroaica was an ancient horror, a creature of evil that had caused untold suffering. Yet Caina had lived through things she would not inflict upon anyone else, things she hoped no one else would ever endure. 

Even the Moroaica.

Jadriga shrugged. “Life is suffering and pain. You know that as well as anyone. The world is broken, a prison the gods built to torment us while they laugh at our suffering.” Her eyes flickered, becoming black and hard as the edge of an obsidian blade. “I will remake the world, and I will make the gods pay for what they have done.” 

But Caina had heard Jadriga say that before, and she was still digesting what the Moroaica had already said.

“All my memories?” she said. “Even when Corvalis and I…”

Again Jadriga’s eyes flickered blue. “Yes.”

“Oh.” 

“You are fortunate,” said Jadriga, her voice quiet. “He loves you, and you love him in return. That is…that is a rare thing.”