Ghost in the Maze (29 page)

“He recited here, the night you were…ah, attending the Grand Master’s banquet,” said Damla. “He requested that I ask Marius of the Imperial Collegium of Jewelers to speak with him as soon as possible…and he is reciting here again tonight.”

###

Later that night Caina sat at a table in the House of Agabyzus as Sulaman finished reciting an epic to the crowd. This time he had chosen a tale of Nasser Glasshand, telling how a century past Nasser had raided the treasury of a cruel and brutal wazir, leaving the man impoverished and humiliated. Caina wondered how the crowd would react if they knew she had spoken to the hero of the tale two days ago.

She wondered if it was the same man. Normal men could not live that long…but normal men could not punch through the steel helmets of Immortals, either. Well, Caina had her secrets and she could not begrudge Nasser his.

Going into Callatas’s lair and escaping again was an excellent demonstration of good faith. 

Sulaman finished his recitation, and the crowd rose in applause. As usual, Mazyan sat at the dais, drum tucked between his knees, and held out the wooden bowl. The merchants came forward and threw coins into the bowl. Caina waited until the crowd had thinned a bit and dropped some silver coins.

Mazyan scowled at her.

“A fine recitation,” said Caina. “Is it true, I wonder?”

Sulaman shrugged. His expression gave away little, but he seemed pleased to see her. “Who can say? No more than I can say if the tales of the Balarigar are true. Perhaps one day I shall recite poems done in his honor.”

“I hope not,” said Caina. “They would be in poor taste.”

This time Sulaman did smile. “I thought you would say that. I have a message for you.”

Caina nodded.

“A mutual friend,” said Sulaman, “wishes to meet you tomorrow night, in the same place you met him before.” 

###

The next night Caina donned the disguise of a common caravan guard and walked through the doors of the Shahenshah’s Seat. As before, caravan guards and teamsters and mercenaries packed the common room, though now they all discussed the wild rumors surrounding the Grand Master’s banquet.

Laertes leaned against the wall in the same place, scanning the crowd.

His eyes narrowed as she approached. She realized he did not recognize her, and she took a bit of pride in that. Caina leaned against the wall, folding her arms over her chest. 

“Move along,” said Laertes. 

“I was invited,” said Caina. 

Laertes looked at her, looked away, and then looked back again. “Ah…I see. You’re good at that.”

“It comes in handy,” said Caina.

“I can imagine,” said Laertes, pushing away from the wall. “This way.” 

He led Caina to the room where she had met with Nasser and his associates earlier.

As she expected, Nasser awaited her.

But to her surprise, Nerina Strake and Azaces sat at the table as well. 

“Ciaran!” said Nerina, smiling. “It is good to see you again.”

Even Azaces inclined his head in greeting, though his scowl never wavered. 

“Master Ciaran,” said Nasser, rising with a polite bow as Laertes stationed himself on guard near the door. “I am glad you could join us.”

“How is your leg?” said Caina.

Nerina sighed. “Uncomfortable. I can walk on it, though, at about fifty-three percent of my usual walking speed. I compliment you on the accuracy of the cut.”

“I am sorry I had to stab you,” said Caina. She considered that. “Which is not something I have often said.” 

“Do not reproach yourself,” said Nerina. “The nagataaru would have devoured my mind.” She shivered. “It…delighted in my pain, and wished to take my flesh for its own so it could slay you and the others. Though the ghostsilver dagger hurt it. For all that it lusted for pain, the nagataaru certainly had no appetite for enduring its own.”

“It is fortunate you found that dagger,” said Caina.

“Clearly, it was for my own good,” said Nerina. 

“Where are the others?” said Caina. 

“Oh, they are quite well,” said Nasser. “I bought their vials of Elixir Restorata for a fair price, and they have taken their money and fled the city. I promised to make them wealthy men, and I have. Nasser Glasshand keeps his word. But they have no further interest in opposing Callatas…and certainly no interest in remaining in Istarinmul until the Teskilati find them.”

“Sensible,” said Caina.

“But you and I, my friend, money was not our purpose,” said Nasser. “We wish to defeat Callatas, and we have aided each other most effectively. I purpose further ventures along those lines.” 

“I thought you would,” said Caina. “But I have two questions first.”

Nasser flashed his white smile. “I expected no less. Ask your questions. Then Mistress Strake has a question for you, and I shall tell you what I propose.”

“Very well,” said Caina. She lifted her left hand and concentrated, and the pyrikon appeared around her finger. “You told me I could remove this in the Maze. I can take it off now, but as soon as I turn my back, it reappears on my finger.”

“Ah,” said Nasser. “I was afraid of that. The pyrikon has bonded with you.”

“Bonded?” said Caina with disgust. “I have a sorcerous device Callatas made bonded to me?”

“If it makes you feel better,” said Nasser, “Callatas did not make it.” 

Laertes frowned. “You will tell him…”

“I shall,” said Nasser.

“Fine,” said Caina. “Who made it?”

“One of the loremasters of Iramis,” said Nasser. “The pyrikons were their badges of office.”

“Weapons of sorcery?” said Caina.

“No,” said Nasser. “A shield and a tool, as you saw in the Maze, but never a weapon. The loremasters swore the most solemn oaths to never harm another mortal with their sorcery, to never seek dominion over men, to use their powers for healing and protection. And, remarkably enough, for the most part they kept to those oaths. Each loremaster, as part of his final trial of office, created and enspelled a pyrikon. Callatas could no more create one than a sword can heal. It may comfort you that a pyrikon only bonds with those it finds worthy.” 

Caina looked at the pyrikon. “Then Callatas stole this from a loremaster and adapted it as a key?”

“Essentially,” said Nasser. “I can see your hatred for sorcery, Balarigar. If you like, think of yourself as the pyrikon’s custodian. At the very least you will keep it out of the hands of Callatas and other sorcerers who would misuse it.”

“Very well,” said Caina. She could accept that, though she would prefer to get rid of the thing entirely. “My second question. That book you found. What is it?”

“It was a volume written by a woman named Annarah, one of the last loremasters of Iramis,” said Nasser. “After Iramis burned, Callatas hunted down and slew the loremasters who had been out of the city at the time. Annarah was the last, or almost the last. Possibly the pyrikon you bear even belonged to her. I believe that the Prince, before Callatas burned Iramis, sent Annarah out of the city with the Seal and the Staff and instructed her to hide them.” He lifted the book and tapped its leather cover. “And more to the point, so does Callatas.” 

“But the book can’t indicate where she hid the Seal and the Staff,” said Caina. “Else Callatas would already have them.”

“I am afraid you have the right of it,” said Nasser. “The book is very cryptic, and I suspect Annarah encoded it somehow. But I am certain it records where Annarah hid the relics. It mentions a score of different locations in the Desert of Candles. Which, not coincidentally, are all locations where Callatas has sent gangs of slaves to dig.” 

“Then that is what you want to do,” said Caina. “To find the Seal and the Staff and keep them from Callatas.”

“First,” said Nasser, “I do believe you should answer Nerina’s question.”

“Of course.” Caina turned to the locksmith, who took a deep breath and ran a hand through her ragged red hair.

“Will you let me join the Ghosts?” said Nerina. “Azaces, too, since he knows everything I know.” 

Caina blinked. “What?”

“I have reasons, which I have organized mathematically,” said Nerina. “First, you saved my life in the netherworld. Second, I have earned the lasting enmity of Callatas, and therefore it is logical to take action against him. Third,” she took a deep breath, “he did this to me.”

She pointed at her eerie blue eyes. 

“The wraithblood,” said Caina. “That was your father’s doing.”

“But Callatas made the wraithblood,” said Nerina. “His drug did this to me, even if my father gave it to me and I kept taking it after he died. How many thousands of people have suffered like this? How many more take wraithblood even now? And, fourth, and finally,” she took another breath, “the nagataaru. It was…horrible. I cannot describe it. The best I can say is that it was…not mathematical. Only chaos. It wanted to kill everyone in the world. And if Callatas is allied with those creatures and summons more of them, the amount of killing will be…well, even beyond my abilities to calculate. I think you know that, Ciaran. You’re not a master thief or any of the other things you’ve pretended to be around me. You’re a Ghost nightfighter…and if you are fighting against Callatas, I want to help.”

“It will be dangerous,” said Caina, “and we shall almost certainly be killed.”

Nasser snorted. “Any more dangerous than fleeing into the netherworld?”

That was an excellent point. 

“So be it,” said Caina. “If you are willing to swear the necessary oaths, both you and Azaces, then you shall join the Ghost circle of Istarinmul.”

“Good,” said Nerina. She smiled. “Considering that we are spies, I suspect you shall have no shortage of fascinating equations for me to solve.”

“Most likely,” said Caina. She looked at Nasser. “And you? Shall you join the Ghosts?”

He grinned. “I serve another master, alas.” 

“And who is that?” said Caina.

“You have your secrets,” said Nasser, “I have mine, and together those secrets protect us. Is that not enough?” 

“For now,” said Caina. “A day might come when it is not.”

“I know. But for now I am most interested in working together,” said Nasser, “to undermine the Grand Master and stop the Apotheosis. You have been a most effective ally.”

“And you,” said Caina. “Callatas needs the Seal, the Staff, and a steady supply of slaves to create wraithblood and work the Apotheosis. I suggest we start by seeking the Seal and the Staff…but also by disrupting the supply of slaves to Istarinmul.”

“And if his allies,” said Nasser, “among the cowled masters are threatened with penury, they shall be rather less likely to support him.”

Caina nodded. “I agree.”

“So,” said Nasser. “What did you have in mind?”

She looked around the room. Agabyzus was right. Caina could not continue on alone. Sooner or later she would misstep and die, and there would be no one left to stop Callatas. But with allies, she had a far greater chance of success.

And even if she died, someone would be left to carry on the fight.

“This is what I suggest,” said Caina, and they started plotting the downfall of Grand Master Callatas.

Epilogue

“Balarigar!” screamed the nagataaru that had been inside Tarqaz’s head. “Balarigar, Balarigar, Balarigar!”

Callatas, Grand Master of the College of Alchemists, let out an annoyed hiss.

The voices in his head had told him this wasn’t going to work. 

A nagataaru bound within a living mortal saw through the mortal’s eyes and heard through his ears. Unfortunately, when the mortal was killed, the psychic shock scrambled the nagataaru’s recent memories, and frequently the spirit could not remember the circumstances of its host’s death.

“Balarigar!” shrieked the nagataaru, shadow and purple flame billowing against the boundaries of the elaborate warding sigils upon the floor of Callatas’s summoning chamber. “Balarigar!”

Though the creature could recall a few pertinent details.

The nagataaru that had been bound within Ricimer had been much the same, too, bellowing over and over that the Balarigar had come. 

A myth. A myth of the damned Szaldic slaves, and a fraud and a lie perpetrated by the Ghosts. Were even spirits that gullible?

Callatas dismissed the nagataaru to the netherworld and stalked from the chamber, moving back into the Maze proper. The poison mist of the transmutation spell swirled around him, filling his lungs, but did him no harm.

A gift of the nagataaru. 

The voices whispered inside his head, suggesting plans. 

He returned to his library. The Elixir Restorata had been stolen, which was inconvenient, but hardly crippling. Callatas had transcended death and illness years ago, had reached heights of sorcery that the other Master Alchemists could only dream of. Yet the Elixir would have been a useful tool to ensure the loyalty of his allies. More than once he had hired the Kindred to administer a slow-acting poison to the son or daughter of an enemy, only for Callatas to offer a vial of Elixir Restorata in exchange for support. 

The loss of Annarah’s journal was far more worrying, along with the maps from his main laboratory. 

The prospect that the Ghosts might know about the Seal and the Staff was disturbing. The thought that they might have allied with that damned fool Glasshand was worse. Callatas had been trying to kill Glasshand for years, but the wretch had always eluded him. If Glasshand shared what he knew with the Ghosts, that would be dangerous. 

Callatas had spent too long preparing to create a new and better humanity to have his plans disrupted now. And only a fool underestimated the Ghosts. 

Anburj, even clever, deadly Anburj, had learned that the hard way. 

It was time to employ extreme measures. 

He sensed the approach of the one he had summoned.

Another gift of the nagataaru. 

Callatas sighed and waited for his guest to arrive.

A moment later she strode into the library. She looked unremarkable. An Istarish woman in her middle thirties, with long dark hair, dark eyes, and bronze-colored skin. She wore an olive-colored dress and headscarf, a simple sheathed dagger at her belt. The woman looked little different than thousands of others that dwelled in Istarinmul.

Though Callatas glimpsed the faint hints of madness in her dark eyes.

That, and he sensed the power that waited within her. 

For a moment they stared at each other.

She spoke first. “This miserable little dungeon hasn’t changed much, has it?”

“Huntress. You have a new face,” said Callatas. 

“I’ve been busy,” said the woman. “Those rebels who rule the eastern Empire, those renegade Ashbringers? Have you heard of them? Or have you been too busy with your little bottles of bubbling slime?”

“I know of them,” said Callatas, concealing his annoyance at her impudence. The Umbarian Order, as the rebels called themselves, had in fact made overtures, seeking the aid of Istarinmul against the Empire. If they were useful, Callatas would turn them into his tools, and if they opposed him, he would destroy them. 

“They hired me to dispose of some Kyracian archon and his wife,” said the woman. She grinned, her eyes glittering. “They put up quite a fight, and wounded me rather severely. But the Umbarians paid quite well for it.”

“And what did you do with the money?” said Callatas.

“I dumped it into the sea, of course, just to see the expressions on their faces,” she said. “After that, I received your summons, so I came.” She smiled, a brilliant, radiant smiled belied by the glittering madness in her eyes. “Who shall I kill for you, Father?”

“I,” said Callatas, irritated that she could still annoy him after all these decades, “am not your father.” 

She shrugged. “But you are the father of what I became. And the Voice within me calls the spirit within you its father, so why should I not?”

“You should not,” said Callatas, “give the nagataaru names. They do not require them.”

“But it pleases me to give them,” said the woman. Her mad smile widened. “Perhaps I shall give the nagataaru within you a name. Something cute, perhaps? Something that rhymes?” 

For a brief moment, Callatas wished he had killed her one hundred and sixty years ago. She had been one of his first successful experiments. Yet while she was no threat to him, he had never been able to fully control her, and her constant mockery was an unceasing annoyance. 

Still, she had her uses. 

She had killed many of his enemies over the decades. 

“What shall I call you now?” said Callatas, forcing his voice to calm.

“Kalgri,” she said. “I like the name.” 

“Very well, Kalgri,” said Callatas. “I need you to kill someone.”

“I have already been contracted to kill an emir,” said Kalgri.

“Who?” said Callatas. He hoped she wasn’t going to kill one of his useful allies.

“Tanzir Shahan, emir of the Vale of Fallen Stars,” said Kalgri. “He’s irritated the Slavers’ Brotherhood, the fat fool, and they want him dead.”

Callatas started to laugh.

“What?” said Kalgri, her face twisting with fury. Despite her barbed tongue, she could never abide mockery. “Do not laugh at me, Father.”

“I am not laughing at you,” said Callatas, “merely at the turn of fate. The man I want you to kill is called the Balarigar…who, according to the Teskilati, saved the life of Tanzir Shahan in Malarae.” 

“Ah,” said Kalgri. “I see. Oh, yes. I’ve heard of the Balarigar. They say he is the avenger of the gods, come to throw down corrupt sorcerers and free the slaves.”

“Nonsense,” said Callatas. “The Balarigar is simply an exceptionally lucky Ghost nightfighter with a flair for theatricality and a bag of tricks. Find him, kill him, and kill any of his allies. Be careful. He has proven himself dangerous.”

“Father, Father,” said Kalgri with a laugh. “You doubt me so? You ought to give me tasks more often. Tell me, when I kill the Balarigar, would you like his head pickled, or delivered to you on a silver platter with an apple stuffed in the mouth?”

She had done both in the past. 

“Just kill him,” said Callatas, trying to keep his calm. 

Kalgri walked from the library without another word. 

As much as he detested her, Callatas was pleased. The Apotheosis would not be stopped. The Balarigar and his allies would perish.

For the woman called the Red Huntress never let her prey escape. 

THE END

Thank you for reading GHOST IN THE MAZE. Look for Caina's next adventure, GHOST IN THE HUNT, to appear in 2014. If you liked the book, please consider leaving a review at your ebook site of choice. To receive immediate notification of new releases, 
sign up for my newsletter
, or watch for news on my 
Facebook page
.