Jonathan Moeller - The Ghosts 08 - Ghost in the Mask (36 page)

“You,” hissed Rhames. 

“Great Necromancer,” said Jadriga. “It has been a long time. But I see you have not grown in wisdom.”

“Abomination!” said Rhames. “You dare to question me, impudent slave? You dare? You who defiled the divine order of Maat, who laid waste the greatest and most noble empire the world has ever known? You…”

“Noble?” said Jadriga. “Your empire of tyranny and necromancy was noble? The blood of unnumbered millions of slaves watered the foundations of Maat. And you presume to claim it was noble? I threw it down, and I made the Undying pay for their crimes, for all the suffering they had inflicted.”

“Impudent child!” said Rhames, his voice trembling with hatred. “You question me? Anubankh and the other gods of Maat ordained the order of the world. Pharaoh and noble, priest and peasant, slave and farmer…all had their place in the divine order. And you ruined it! You brought chaos and misery to the world, and you have continued with your mad quest across the centuries!” 

“And I will continue it,” said Jadriga. “I am going to destroy you, Rhames, utterly and finally. And then I shall take the bloodcrystal and use it to make the gods themselves pay for their crimes, I shall break the world and reforge it in…”

Rhames laughed. “Proud fool! You will defeat me? You? I know what you are. You might claim to be the Moroaica, the Bloodmaiden, the Bringer of Dust, the Queen of Crows, all the other proud names the pathetic worms of this barbarous age have hung upon you, but I know what you really are. You are the child who wept tears over her fat fool of a father. You are the girl who screamed as my acolytes cut into your flesh to make you Undying. You are the concubine who sobbed as the Undying pharaoh took you to his royal bed. Mimic the spells of a Great Necromancer all you wish. You are a slave, the child of a rebellious scribe, and that is all you are ever fit to be!” He stepped forward, robes rippling around his withered form. “I slew your father too quickly! I should have made him suffer, made you watch as I peeled the skin from him inch by…”

The Moroaica screamed, and the world exploded around Caina.

Jadriga pushed her hands at Rhames, and emerald fire blazed from her palms and slammed into the Undying necromancer. The power of the spell made Caina’s head ring, even through the song of the bloodcrystal. Rhames fell back, passing through the shadow-statues like mist, and caught his balance. 

“Wretched child!” said Rhames. “You think to challenge me?”

“I defeated you once before,” said Jadriga, “when I made the Undying pay for their crimes.” 

“Maat rises anew,” said Rhames, “and you cannot stop it. Slaves! Kill them! Kill them all!”

He began casting a spell of his own, and hundreds of Dust Shades rose out of the floor in rippling pillars of gray smoke. The Moroaica began a spell, as did Maena and Claudia.

The seset-kadahn drew its khopesh and charged Caina, the hooked blade gleaming in the green light.

###

“Now!” said the Moroaica, face tight with strain as she cast a spell. “The seventh and the ninth spells of warding! Now!”

Maena began a spell, as did Claudia. Shadows and green flamed swirled around Rhames in a howling vortex, and she felt the terrifying power of the Great Necromancer’s sorcery. Her father considered himself a powerful man, but he was nothing next to the Moroaica’s strength.

And nothing at all compared to Rhames’s power.

Rhames lifted a skeletal hand, and a blast of shadow-wreathed emerald flame lanced towards the Moroaica as Claudia finished her spell, combining her strength with Maena’s.

Rhames’s attack hammered into their wards, and Claudia screamed as the spells collapsed, the backlash burning through her. Maena shrieked, her green eyes widening, a spasm going through her limbs. Their ward had not even come close to deflecting Rhames’s strike. But their ward had slowed the attack, and the Moroaica cast a spell of her own. Power snarled and hissed around her, and she flung Rhames’s spell back at him, following with an assault of her own. The thunderous detonation ripped apart the floor around the Great Necromancer, hot shards of stone raining in all directions.

But it left Rhames untouched. 

“Pathetic!” said Rhames. “Truly it is a barbarous age, if the peasants consider the likes of you a figure of fear!”

“The wards!” said the Moroaica, and Claudia pushed aside her pain and weariness and began the spell again. 

###

The seset-kadahn charged Caina.

The thing moved faster, far faster, than something that large should move. The khopesh blurred in its hands, and Caina dodged, lashing out with her ghostsilver dagger. She suspected the creature’s superhuman speed would make it difficult to change direction quickly. Her blade bit into the seset-kadahn’s thigh, and she heard a sizzle, smoke rising from the wound. 

But the seset-kadahn wheeled, turning with inhuman grace, and Caina realized that she had miscalculated.

The fist of its free hand slammed into her chest, pain exploding through her torso. The impact threw her into the air, and she hit the floor a few yards away, the breath exploding from her lungs.

The seset-kadahn wheeled to face her, khopesh coming up for the kill.

###

Kylon’s senses reeled with the magnitude of the arcane battle before him, with the power pouring off the Ascendant Bloodcrystal. He could not think, could not concentrate through sheer cacophony raging through the Chamber of Ascension. 

Rhames and the Moroaica flung spells of tremendous power at each other, the stone floor between them starting to bubble and smoke. Claudia Aberon and Maena Tulvius stood behind the ancient sorceress, throwing all their power into warding spells, their combined strength just barely sufficient to slow Rhames’s assaults. Sicarion fought at the Moroaica’s right, his blades shining with a green glow as he destroyed Dust Shade after Dust Shade. Lord Martin fought at the Moroaica’s left, his sword also showing a green glow. The fight was indeed desperate, if Sicarion had deigned to enspell Martin’s sword.

Harkus stood at Kylon’s side, loosing bursts of silver light from his rod. 

It was like trying to put out an inferno with a thimble of water.

He saw Caina fall, saw the seset-kadahn stoop over her for the kill. Corvalis jumped to meet the creature, his sword ringing against the undead thing’s sword. The seset-kadahn wielded its khopesh with superhuman skill and vigor, and it drove Corvalis back step by step. Corvalis stumbled, and the seset-kadahn closed.

Kylon shook off his paralysis.

He sprinted forward, drawing upon the sorcery of air and water, and sprang into the air, his sword trailing white mist. His sword came down, opening the seset-kadahn from neck to navel, frost coating the wound. The hulking undead stumbled, and Kylon slashed, tearing another gash on the creature’s chest. Caina scrambled to her feet, and Kylon stabbed again, spearing the seset-kadahn through the gut. Frost spread from the wound, and Kylon yanked his sword free, raising the weapon in guard.

The seset-kadahn shook itself. Frozen black slime, not blood, fell from the wounds he had dealt. And even as he watched, the wounds shrank, closing themselves as the necromancy within the creature repaired itself. 

The warrior was already undead, and couldn’t be killed. It couldn’t even be destroyed. It drew its power from Rhames himself, and even with his sorcerous speed, Kylon could not get past the creature to reach the Great Necromancer.

And even if he could, Rhames would kill him in a heartbeat. 

The seset-kadahn’s bronze mask turned to face him, and the creature charged.

###

Claudia’s world narrowed to a haze of agonized effort, her mind and muscles trembling with the strain.

Neither Rhames nor the Moroaica had slowed their efforts, and the air between them blazed with power. Green fire and blue-white lightning and blasts of psychokinetic force ripped back and forth. The Moroaica and Rhames lashed at each other with spells that Claudia could not even begin to comprehend, wielding forces that could have reduced most of the surrounding city to smoking glass.

She glimpsed Maena standing with her hands over her head, back arched, her torn green gown drenched in sweat. Master magus or not, the woman that had once been Ranarius, preceptor of Cyrioch, was straining to the utmost. 

Martin battled at Claudia’s side, his sword shining with an eerie green glow. Rhames focused his attention upon the Moroaica, and the seset-kadahn pursued Caina and Corvalis and Kylon. Wave after wave of Dust Shades flowed at Claudia, reaching with their immaterial hands. Sicarion was a blur of steel near the Moroaica, his green-glowing blades destroying any gray shadows that drew near his mistress.

None of the Dust Shades reached Claudia. 

Martin saw to that. 

Harkus hung back, his silvery rod leveled, destroying any Dust Shade that threatened the Lord Governor. 

The Moroaica flung another spell at Rhames, and the entire basilica trembled like a dying thing, cracks spreading across the floor. Rhames bellowed with rage or pain, if such a creature could feel pain, and crossed his arms over his chest. The Moroaica’s power blazed around in him a hurricane of sorcerous wrath, and for an instant Claudia thought she had succeeded in hammering through his layered wards. The Moroaica did not hesitate, but began another spell.

Rhames roared an incantation in Maatish and flung out his bony hands just as the Moroaica finished her spell.

The spells crashed together, power straining against power…and then they exploded.

###

Caina dodged another slash of the khopesh, her ghostsilver dagger drawing a smoking line across the seset-kadahn’s thigh. The bronze-masked warrior showed no pain, not even discomfort, and launched a backhand in Caina’s direction with blurring speed. She just managed to duck under the swing, the bottom of the undead warrior’s fist brushing her cowl. 

Kylon and Corvalis danced around the creature, landing hit after hit. Black slime leaked from the wounds Corvalis dealt, while frost lingered in the gashes Kylon carved. None if it mattered. The wounds did not slow the seset-kadahn in the slightest, and the undead thing could not be destroyed.

They could only defeat it by destroying Rhames himself. 

Part of Caina’s mind, the cold part trained by the Ghosts and hardened in bitter experience, considered this while the rest of her mind fought. Rhames must have concealed his final canopic jar nearby. Yet where? She doubted he had slipped into Caer Magia and hidden the thing earlier, since Maena might have found it. It had to be on his person. Yet Rhames’s robes were not loose enough to hide a marble jar holding a mummified organ, and the seset-kadahn wore only a kilt and a bronze mask.

Where could he have hidden the jar?

She tried to think of the answer, and felt a surge of powerful sorcery, even through the aura of the bloodcrystal and the raging battle between Jadriga and Rhames.

No. It was coming from the battle itself. 

Caina risked a look in the direction of the dais, and saw the air between Rhames and Jadriga rippling, the floor melting. She felt the powers they had unleashed at each other, the spells wrapping around each other…

Feeding off each other.

Like a lit candle tossed into a barrel of coal dust.

“Oh,” said Caina, and the spells exploded.

A pillar of snarling green flame and twisting shadow erupted from the floor, thick as an oak tree, and stabbed upward. The dome ripped into a thousand glowing fragments, the debris raining across Caer Magia. The shock wave threw the seset-kadahn from its feet, and a wall of hot air slammed into Caina. White light flashed across her vision, and the next thing she knew she was rolling across the floor, chips of stone raining around her. A groan filled her ears, and the balcony tore loose from the curved wall and fell to the floor. 

The Chamber of Ascension shook with the impact, a billowing cloud of black dust rolling through the basilica. 

Caina threw her arms over her head, more debris and dust raining around her, the Ascendant Bloodcrystal’s glow transforming the dust into green fog. At last the awful noise of shattering stone and collapsing masonry faded, and Caina staggered to her feet, looking around for the seset-kadahn. She spotted the creature pinned beneath a shattered pillar. The weight of the broken pillar held the creature in place, but she saw its muscles straining, saw the shattered pillar shifting inch by inch.

It would be loose in a few moments.

She looked for Corvalis, could not find him. Had the others all been killed? Or had Rhames and Jadriga both been destroyed by the sorcery they had unleashed?

She heard a strangled scream.

The billowing dust thinned, and she saw Rhames standing upon the steps of the dais, the bloodcrystal blazing a few paces behind him. His robes were smoldering, and chunks of leathery skin had been burned from his skull and arms. Yet the green fire blazed in his eyes, and he held one arm extended before him.

Jadriga floated in front of him, hands clamped around her throat, her eyes wide and bulging. 

“A reasonable effort,” said Rhames, “but in the end, pathetic. You are still a child playing at power you have no right to possess.” He laughed. “When you next wear flesh, you shall find that Maat has been reborn. Think on that as you die.” 

He closed his hand into a fist. Jadriga’s neck exploded in a crimson spray, and Mihaela’s body fell lifeless to the floor. Rhames looked at her corpse for a moment, and then turned to face the Ascendant Bloodcrystal, his hands coming up to unravel the final wards.

And Caina felt a stab of dread. 

If the Moroaica had been unable to overcome Rhames, what chance did Caina have? His damned canopic jar had to be hidden somewhere. But where? Where had he put it?

“Seset-kadahn!” shouted Rhames. “Rise and kill the slave girl’s allies. Show no mercy. Ensure they do not disturb my work.”

A grinding noise filled Caina’s ears as the seset-kadahn began to push the pillar away. Rhames was utterly confident of victory, so confident that he had turned his back on them. And why not? They had no weapon that could harm him, no weapon that even slow his seset-kadahn.