Ghost in the Maze (22 page)

“Obviously,” said Kazravid. “But what kind of demons? I looked at them and saw…a twisted reflection of myself, and then my mind seemed to fill with haze.” 

“Aye,” said Laertes. “I served in the Legions since I was a lad of sixteen, and I have never frozen up like that.”

“I fear you could not help yourself,” said Anaxander. Nerina helped a weeping Tarqaz to his feet. “The creatures are called carchomorphic spirits. Many of the spirits of the netherworld can read the minds of their victims and take the shape of their victims’ worst fears.”

“Phobomorphic spirits,” murmured Caina.

Anaxander frowned. “How do you know about those?”

“Don’t ask.”

Kazravid waved a hand. “So those were supposed to be our greatest fears? That seems unlikely. My greatest desire is to become fat and lazy with slave women to wait upon my every whim.”

“These were a different class of spirit,” said Anaxander. “Carchomorphic. Look upon them and you shall see a distorted version of yourself, fused with something from your worst fears. The effect is mesmerizing, so the carchomorphic spirits are often able to kill their foes without a struggle.” 

“How were you able to resist the demons’ mesmerism?” said Strabane.

Anaxander offered a thin smile. “Why do you think I was expelled from the Magisterium? I studied these creatures too deeply, and my superiors discovered my research.”

Strabane shook his head. “Normally I would have naught to do with a man who consorts with spirits, but I’m glad Nasser invited you along.” He looked at Caina. “How did you fight off their influence?”

Caina shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’ve faced such creatures before, so I knew what to expect.” That was only half a lie. Nasser, Laertes, and Nerina knew that she was the Balarigar and had a shadow-cloak, but she had no wish to share that information with the others. 

“Why was yours a woman?” said Kazravid.

“Pardon?” said Caina.

“Your duplicate,” said Kazravid. “It turned into a woman. That didn’t happen for any of the others.” 

“It looked like my sister,” said Caina in quiet voice before Kazravid could realize the obvious. “A necromancer murdered her when we were children. It…made me the man I am today.” She took a deep breath. “I think that’s what she would have looked like, had she lived.” 

She braced herself for Kazravid to pursue the matter further, but the Anshani anjar only shook his head. “Filthy spirits.” 

“Since we are all still alive thanks to Ciaran’s and Anaxander’s quick thinking,” said Nasser, “it’s time to move on. Riches await us, and it would be a sad affair if we turned back after a few trifling difficulties.” 

And, Caina knew, he wanted to have a look around Callatas’s laboratory.

“Lead on,” said Kazravid. “Let’s see if we can get killed yet.”

“I hope not,” said Tarqaz. The eunuch’s face had gone even paler, sweat beading on his skin. “I fear…I fear I am not cut out for this sort of business. If we live through this, I plan to retire peacefully in a small villa as far from Istarinmul as I can manage.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Kazravid, clapping Tarqaz on the back. 

They set off from the chamber of mirrors, moving deeper into the tunnels and closer to Callatas’s laboratory. 

Caina walked between Nerina and Kazravid, the ghostsilver dagger ready in her right hand. Once again Samnirdamnus’s warning had proven prescient. Did he seek to use her as a weapon against Callatas? If Caina found a way to kill the Grand Master, then Samnirdamnus’s pact with Callatas would be void. But Samnirdamnus was older than the mortal world itself. Callatas’s centuries-long lifespan was but a passing moment to an eternal spirit like a djinni. Samnirdamnus need only wait until Callatas made a mistake and died, and then he would be free. 

Or did the djinni have some other game in mind?

Caina shook her head.

“What is it?” said Nerina.

“Everything, I suppose,” said Caina.

The answer to her questions, she suspected, waited in Callatas’s laboratory.

Chapter 18 - Elixir Restorata

“That is it,” said Anaxander, pointing at a final pair of double doors. “I am sure of it.”

Caina was, too. 

The rooms and corridors beyond the chamber of mirrors had seemed dusty and deserted. More of the crude demon images marked the walls and pillars, and here and there dusty skeletons rested in niches, some still holding rusted weapons. Caina wondered if Callatas had simply left bodies in the corridors to rot. Or perhaps the bones had rested here for centuries, ever since Istarr had defeated the last of the nagataaru-possessed Demon Princes of old and had founded Istarinmul. 

She began to wonder if they had been tricked, if Callatas’s laboratory did not lie down here at all, if the Maze and the wards and guardians were simply one giant trap to eliminate foolish thieves.

But then they saw the double doors, and she felt the arcane power waiting behind them. 

The doors themselves were massive, thick slabs of steel-bound wood. There were no wards upon the doors, but beyond them Caina felt the familiar presence of a Mirror of Worlds. 

“Weapons ready,” said Nasser, his scimitar in his right hand, his gloved left hand balled into a fist. “I doubt Callatas permits his guardians access to his laboratories. But let’s not take foolish risks.”

Kazravid barked a laugh. “Compared to the foolish risks we have already taken, aye?”

Caina nodded, walked to the doors, and helped Strabane and Laertes push them open.

Beyond waited the laboratory of Grand Master Callatas.

The chamber was enormous, large enough to hold both Vaysaal’s laboratory and the wraithblood laboratory in the Widow’s Tower. It rose four stories above her head, so high that it reminded her of the magistrates’ basilicas in Malarae. Three levels of balconies climbed the walls, supporting strange and intricate machines, constructions of glass and bronze and silver lit from within by eerie fires. Long tables held smaller instruments, jars and vials filled with powders and fluids and potions. One row of shelves held pickled organs from the various monsters in the menagerie, heads and eyes and hearts floating in jars of colored brine. 

But the wraithblood laboratory occupied most of the floor.

A huge Mirror of Worlds, thirty feet by thirty feet, dominated the far wall of the laboratory. Caina could not help but marvel at the skill of the glassmaker who could fashion such a huge mirror. The mirror shone with pale gray light, its surface reflecting the laboratory’s maze of machinery, but through the glow Caina saw the colorless plain and writhing black sky of the netherworld. 

Hundreds of steel tables occupied the floor below the towering Mirror, each one holding a dead man or woman. The corpses had turned gray, their veins black, their limbs and chests pierced with steel spikes. Slender chains dangled from the spikes, forming intricate patterns upon the floor as they braided together into a single thick cable before the mirror. The cable went through the mirror and then wrapped around a massive steel spike driven into the earth of the netherworld. Caina felt the arcane power flowing down the steel chains and into the corpses, corrupting their blood and transforming it into wraithblood. 

A metal trough rested beneath each table, holding the thick black wraithblood as it dripped from the murdered men and women. 

“By the Living Flame and his Seven Emissaries,” muttered Kazravid. “What the devil is all that?”

“A wraithblood laboratory,” said Caina, her voice quiet. 

Tarqaz let out a shrill little laugh. “Did you think I was lying, my lord anjar? Oh, I wish that I was! This is what happened to my sister. The master buys slaves by the thousands and sends them to his laboratory or one of the other workshops hidden throughout the city. Then they are murdered and their blood transmuted into wraithblood. Such was my sister’s fate. Such was the fate of thousands since my master began his work.”

Nerina’s face had gone bone-white, her hand lifted to her mouth. “It is…it is…there is no equation that can adequately express the horror of this.” She swallowed, her eerie eyes wet with tears. “Every day. I took wraithblood every day for years. I didn’t…I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t stop myself…”

She shuddered and fell silent, and Azaces put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Caina. “Your father addicted you to it.”

“But I should have been strong enough to stop,” whispered Nerina. 

“Callatas wronged you, and his many other victims,” said Nasser, “but now it is your chance to take revenge upon him, at least in a small way.” He pointed at a hulking machine of glass and metal wheels below one of the balconies, a thing that radiated arcane energies and glowed with faint silver light. “That is the apparatus that makes Elixir Restorata.” 

“The master just made a hundred new vials,” said Tarqaz. “They are very costly to produce.” The plump eunuch looked at the dead slaves, and his soft face seemed to harden. “Let us make it even costlier for him.”

“Well spoken,” said Nasser, and he led the way to the machine. A wooden table stood next to the machine, covered with gleaming crystals arranged in orderly rows. As they drew closer, Caina saw that the crystals were in fact crystalline vials, each one sealed with wax. The vials held a glowing silver fluid, thick and sluggish.

“Behold,” said Tarqaz. “Elixir Restorata.”

“The consumption of one vial,” said Nasser, “will heal any injury and nearly any disease.”

Caina gazed at the vials, a wild thought coming to her mind. Elixir Rejuvenata was made from the blood of murdered unborn children. But Elixir Restorata was made from the essences of immortal elemental spirits. No one had been murdered to create it.

Perhaps it could heal Caina’s old scars.

For a moment she saw herself holding a son or a daughter in her arms. Perhaps the Elixir could make that vision real. Perhaps she could leave behind this life of blood and death and have children of her own at last.

“Any injury,” said Caina, her voice hoarse, “no matter how old?”

Nasser glanced at her. “Any injury inflicted within the last year and a day. So I apologize, friend Azaces. The Elixir will not be able to restore your tongue or voice.”

Azaces gave an indifferent shrug, as if he had found those things to be of no use. 

Caina nodded to mask her disappointment. But relief came soon after the disappointment. She hated sorcery, and had no wish to use it to restore her ability to bear children, though Jadriga had offered to use her necromancy to heal her scarred womb more than once. 

But the Elixir Restorata had not been made with necromancy, and Caina was not sure that she would have been strong enough to resist it. 

“Laertes, Mistress Strake,” said Nasser. “Distribute and package the vials.” He smiled. “Mistress Strake will make sure the vials are divided according to our agreement. Ciaran, kindly come with me. I wish to have a look around. The rest of you stand guard. Steal anything that looks valuable, if you wish…but for the love of all the gods, do not activate any of the damned machines.”

“And stay away from the Mirror,” added Caina. 

“Do not worry,” said Strabane. “I have had my fill of demons for one night.”

Caina walked away from the others, Nasser at her side. She did not know what she sought, not really. There had to be something here. Some clue as to what Callatas sought, some indication of what he intended to do with his damned wraithblood. 

Some reason why he had killed so many innocent people.

There was a wooden table tucked away beneath the balcony near the Mirror, a worn wooden stool sitting before it. Papers and books covered its surface, and Caina saw that many of them had been written in a scrawled, hurried hand. 

Callatas’s notes.

“Nasser,” said Caina, and he nodded.

Caina hurried over and started sifting through the papers. There were many different formulas for alchemical solutions and notes upon various transmutation spells. She suspected many of them showed the spells for creating wraithblood, and she pocketed several of the pages. Perhaps she could use them to find a weakness or even a way to undo wraithblood addiction. A thick book held Callatas’s records of his experiments. Caina paged through it, her eyes flicking over the entries. Callatas wrote in a terse, direct style, making no note of his feelings or thoughts, only the results of his spells. She looked at the dates upon the pages. The Master Alchemist had been working on the formula for wraithblood for a long time.

For nearly fifty years, to judge by the dates, perhaps even longer. He had only perfected the formula just over six years ago, after going through countless innocent victims. The ledger contained his plans for building the laboratories to produce wraithblood in bulk, detailing the design of the enspelled steel chains to siphon sorcerous power from the netherworld. 

But what did wraithblood do? Why did he make it?

The ledger gave no answer.

Caina read some of the later entries for a moment, and her feeling of unease grew.

“Nasser,” she said.

“You have found something,” said Nasser, looking up from a scroll. 

“The day of golden fire,” said Caina. “The day the golden dead rose. Do you remember?”

Nasser raised one eyebrow. “It was rather hard to forget. If one lived through it.” He tilted his head to one side. “And I always suspected you knew more about it than you claimed.” 

She decided to tell him some of the truth. “I was there the day it happened in New Kyre. A sorceress opened a rift to the netherworld using a Maatish artifact of power. She wanted to ascend to the realm of the gods and make war upon them for the sufferings of mankind. If she had succeeded, the amount of arcane power she had summoned would have torn the world apart.”

“I assume you know why she failed?” said Nasser.

Caina ignored the question and pointed at the book. “One of Callatas’s recent experiments. He says that the golden rift left…cracks, weak points, in the wall between the mortal world and the netherworld. It looks like he had been trying to find a way to do something similar for decades. And it says…it says that the cracks between the worlds are the final step. The final thing he needs before casting the Apotheosis and remaking mankind.” 

“Perhaps not the last,” said Nasser. “Look at this. Oh, and do take that book. I suspect we shall have need of it later.” 

Caina slid Callatas’s ledger into a pocket of her coat and joined Nasser. He pointed at the scroll he had been reading, and Caina saw that it was a map of eastern Istarinmul. The Desert of Candles filled most of the map. Callatas had written dozens of notes, marking individual features and landmarks.

“Why does he have a map of the Desert of Candles?” said Caina. “Some trophy of the ashes of Iramis?”

“No,” said Nasser. “For that, he has his painting in the Tarshahzon Gardens. Or his grisly little celebration. This is something else.” 

Caina nodded. Callatas had purchased vast numbers of slaves, and while most of them perished in his wraithblood laboratories, he had sent many to the Desert of Candles, ostensibly to work mines he owned there. But Caina knew that those mines had been abandoned for decades. The slaves were doing something else in the Desert. Perhaps a construction project of some kind.

But as she stared at the map, the answer came to her.

“He’s looking for something in the Desert,” whispered Caina. “But what?”

“I can hazard a guess,” said Nasser. “Likely an Iramisian relic of some kind.”

“Why?” said Caina.

“The loremasters of Iramis are all but forgotten now,” said Nasser, “but at the height of Iramis’s power, they were at least as strong as the Imperial Magisterium, perhaps even stronger. And unlike the Magisterium or the College, the loremasters used their power responsibly.” He shrugged at Caina’s doubtful expression. “Or so the histories say. But the loremasters of Iramis forged relics of tremendous power. The jewel Callatas wears?” Caina nodded. “From what I have discovered, he stole it from the treasury of the Prince. It was called the Star of Iramis, and it a relic of immense power.”

The words shook Caina to her core.

“What did you say?” she whispered.

“The star is the key to the crystal,” Horemb had told her as the netherworld burned around them. 

“The star is the key to the crystal,” Samnirdamnus had said in her dreams. 

“The star is the key to the crystal,” the poet Sulaman had recited about the fall of Iramis. 

Had they meant the Star of Iramis? Was that the key? And if so, to what crystal?

“You’re sure it was called that?” said Caina. “The Star of Iramis?”

Nasser shrugged. “I trust the source. But I fail to see why it is significant…ah. The star is the key to the crystal? The words spoken by the man who died twenty-five centuries ago?”

Caina nodded.

“I did not make the connection before,” said Nasser with a grimace. “I should have sooner. Alas, I fear I can offer no insight. Perhaps your dead man did speak a true prophecy, and the star he mentioned is the Star of Iramis that Callatas carries. For you certainly have become entangled with Callatas and his plots.” 

“Then we have a new way to oppose Callatas,” said Caina. “We find and destroy his wraithblood laboratories…and we find these Iramisian relics before he can.” 

“Yes,” said Nasser. “But for now, I suggest we vacate the laboratory at once. Laertes and Mistress Strake should have finished, and the sooner we are gone from here, the better.”

“Agreed,” said Caina, adjusting the heavy book in her pocket.

They headed back towards the Elixir machine. Laertes and Nerina had finished dividing the wraithblood, sorting it into leather bags. Fortunately, the crystal vials seemed far sturdier than normal glass.

“Your share of the spoils, Master Ciaran,” said Laertes, sliding one of the bags across the table. 

Caina took the bag and hefted it, feeling the sorcerous power of the Elixir within the bag. Part of her wanted to throw it far away or to simply let the others take it. But she knew the vials of Elixir could be useful. If she was going to destroy Callatas’s wraithblood laboratories and keep him from finding whatever he sought in the Desert of Candles, then she needed allies.