Amazonia - Inanna's Ghost

Grabbing the sheathed Rune sword nestled behind me, I rose to my feet and followed the others toward the door. As I passed through the chiming bead curtain, Dancer and Troll were standing there with Dancer looking worried. "Domina, we heard everything. Do you want your armor?"

I shook my head. "There's no time."

Lys, riding on Karl's shoulder, added, "If Inanna is just the raised dead, I should be able to gain control." She looked at me. "With a bit of help from your Domina."

"I hope it works," Timur said as we headed out the door into the afternoon's cold air. "Because if she cannot be controlled, she has to be destroyed."

Dancer and Troll grabbed their weapons and followed us as Ishi gave the prince a dark look. "Inanna is my sister."

"Your dead sister," Timur growled as we strode between the buildings on either side towards the main street. "Your dead sister who possessed Cermet and killed one of my guards."

"She would never do that. It was that necromancer's doing."

"Cermet is under my hand," Lys said, "and would never pick up a spear, let alone kill a guard, without my orders."

"But-"

"We'll find out once we get there," Karl said, interrupting, "and act accordingly." Ishi looked like she wanted to keep arguing, but shut her mouth as we reached the main street and turned left toward the Temple district.

Bukhara was still subdued, but life was slowly returning to normal, with people walking together in small groups either heading towards somewhere specific, or visiting the scattered shops that had reopened. They pretended not to notice us but hurried past as we reached the plaza beside the main gate, and turned right toward the Temple district's walls.

The stone statue of Yun-Kax that had stood over the Temple district’s gate had been smashed by hammers and the pieces carried off, with only the base remaining. We went through the open gate, the soldiers in brass armor bowing to Prince Timur as we passed them by and continued forward.

As we approached the black pyramid that had been the temple of Ghash-Kimil, a half-dozen women in black robes were huddled together in the warmth of the late afternoon sun. They kept well away from the robed figure with a cowl over her face who waited in the shadows of the open entrance.

As our group approached Cermet, the fear she gave off caused all of us to slow our steps and stop, except for Lys, who jumped down off of Karl and hurried over to her side. "Cermet, what happened?" The Revenant necromancer dropped to her knees before Lys, and the two of them began speaking in hushed voices.

After a short time, Lys patted the dead woman's shoulder and turned towards us. "Ishi, someone other than Inanna turned your sister into a spirit powerful enough to possess Cermet, and forced her into using her skills to reanimate Inanna's body."

Ishi gasped. "You are telling me Inanna has become a Shade?"

"Evidently so. Cermet shared Inanna's mind during her possession, and the Shade has an overwhelming compulsion to make Bukhara a city of the dead, with all the corpses in the charnel pits raised, and all the living changed into Revenants." Lys set her fists on her narrow hips. "In addition, I am to become a full blown Lich myself, serving her by keeping everything going."

"Over my dead body," Timur growled. Rage gave his face an evil look. "Lys, how difficult will Inanna be to destroy?"

Bells of Hades, this isn't what I signed up for. "My prince, if she's anything like the dead I commanded the other night, she might have no choice but do as I command."

Timur grimaced. "As a Shadow Knight."

I nodded as Lys said, "I will add my voice to yours and between us, we should be able to put her under our hands-"

"Wait," Ishi said, her expression torn between anger and fear. "Let me speak with her first, reason with her, and see if I can talk her out of this." Lys glared at her, and Ishi added, "Please, I have to try."

"Speak with her then," Timur said, catching Lys' eye, "but if this fails, we will take matters into our own hands."

Witchlight lanterns had been placed at the entrance, and at regular intervals along the main corridor leading inside, with incense burners beside each one. But the scent of Frankincense couldn’t entirely mask the stench of old death. Ishi wrinkled her nose before turning towards the other three priestesses. "Sybil, even if my sister is being reasonable, you remember her old prejudice against your race."

"Considering what the Daemo Princes did to her during the war," Sybil said, "I understand her hatred and will remain here with Cermet. However, on the chance she is not the sister you remember, it might be prudent to leave Xaman here as well."

Xaman seemed relieved as Akbal said, "I will come with you. If I am to serve Inanna, I must risk it."

Ishi nodded. "Agreed. My prince-"

"I will come along as well," Timur said in a voice allowing no disagreement.

I raised my hand to stop Ishi from speaking as I put my head close to his. I murmured in his ear, "My prince, no one would dare fault your courage. Yet you're the key to destroying the Sasnayam empire. I trust in my skills, but if your Shadow Knight's not strong enough to stop Inanna..."

I left my words hanging and he grimaced. "I see your point. I will still go with you, but remain out of the fray. Agreed?"

I inclined my head as Ishi nodded once and headed down the corridor with Akbal beside her. "Dancer, Troll," I said to them, "you are to remain out of the fray as well and guard the prince. Understood?" Neither looked happy, but both nodded, Karl falling in beside me as Lys leapt back onto his shoulder. We started down the corridor after the other two.

We passed by passageways leading off the main corridor, and shadowed stairways going either up or down, the incense losing the battle against decay as we reached the main chamber where the grey tree stood, and walked inside.

Standing in front of the tree was a dark haired woman, tall as Asena and just as powerfully built, her flesh desiccated like a corpse left in the desert sun. She wore a clean linen shift someone must've dressed her body in, and was holding a spear like a queen's scepter.

At her feet laid a dead soldier in leather armor. A pool of blood around him had begun congealing, the buzzing of flies a faint hum as Ishi stood at its edge, waving her arms as she spoke to Inanna's raised corpse in an unknown language. Akbal stood like a silent shadow beside her.

Inanna was glowering at her sister as she listened in silence, and I got the feeling this wasn't going to work. "Dancer, take the Rune sword a moment."

Dancer grasped it by the sheathe and I stripped off my tunic. "Az," Timur said as his eyes widened, "what are you doing?"

I adjusted the leather breast binders protecting what remained to me as Dancer held the sword in my direction, hilt first. "The tunic will only bind her arms if this turns into a fight, my prince."

"We've seen her fight in less," Troll said with a leer. I gave him a dark look and he grinned. "Yes, Domina, I'll shut up now."

Shaking my head, I pulled the Rune sword from its sheathe. "The other reason for removing my tunic is this: I want all of you to see what the transformation into a Shadow Knight does to me, especially you, my prince."

"I owe you that and much more," Timur replied, "with the inn only a part-"

Akbal cried out, and I whipped around as she fell to the stone floor. Inanna was now holding the spear like a club, pulling it back as Ishi dropped down beside the fallen priestess. "Why did you do that?" Ishi said in Greco-Roma. "Akbal only wants to serve you."

"I struck her a light blow," Inanna replied in a rough voice, as if her throat was damaged. "If she wishes to serve me, teach her necromancy, then have the Fae make her a Revenant so she can help you carry out the commands I have given you." Inanna held the spear over her head. "Carry out my commands or I shall strike you next."

Troll chuckled. "So much for being reasonable."

Indeed. "Antonius," I said to the Rune sword, "it's time."

A feeling of almost unholy glee washed over me as the black runes on the blade began to glow. Then the pain hit and I doubled over, a scream ripped from my lungs as my flesh contracted and transformed while my skin went grey. I can't stop screaming, it hurts... please make it stop, make it stop... I'm dying...

No, I'm alive again! Wild, high pitched, shrieking laughter echoed through the chamber as I straightened, Inanna stepping over the corpse with the spear held out point first. "Shadow Knight," she growled as I strode towards her with both hands on the sword hilt, "I fought your kind during the Daemo war. Go back to the Shadowlands where you belong." Hoisting the spear like a javelin as she stood barefoot in the pool of blood, she threw it at my chest.

The Rune sword blade licked out and knocked the spear away. It hit the floor with a rattling clatter and slid across the paving stones as I said, "Inanna, the Daemo princes are dead and so are you. Accept that you do not command here and never will."

Inanna stared at me with dead eyes. "My throws are too powerful to be knocked aside. You should be dead."

The horns at each of her temples curled several times as they rose up into the air, which I'd expected. But the whitish miasma inside and surrounding her body was nothing I'd ever seen before. "You are not what you were in life. Inanna, if I decide to hack off your head, the Shadow mana in your flesh and bone will leak from you like liquid from a pierced wineskin.

“But your sister wants you to join us. Put yourself under Lys' control and follow me willingly, and you can get revenge upon those who slew your body and threw you into the charnel pits." It was against my nature, but I took one hand off the hilt and held it out in a welcoming gesture. "Join us."

Inanna snarled, "I will crush you with my bare hands." She lurched forward with her arms out.

Then slipped on the pooling blood and went down. One large hand caught her fall as both knees banged against the stone floor, and I grasped the Rune sword hilt with both hands as she moved to rise.

I flicked the blade tip to the spot between her eyes and she froze. "Move again and I'll blind you, then cripple your body so bad that you'll never fight or walk again."

"I no longer need eyes to see," she replied as she glared up at me. "Why is everyone resisting my right to become queen?"

"To start," Lys said as she leapt onto my shoulder and settled in, "it is a spectacularly bad idea. If we let you change Bukhara into a city of the dead, with you as its queen, within a year the Sasnayam empire will be at the gates with their army, and as many siege engines as it takes to destroy us. For another, none of us, including your sister, have any desire to become your dead servants, now or ever."

"Churlish of us," Karl said, "but there it is."

Lys rolled her eyes as Inanna snarled, "I do not care what you weaklings want-"

"Then I will make you care." Ishi wore a human face like a mask, with three different faces underneath, and as she stood up, the crone face pushed itself almost, but not quite, against the mask. "Submit to Lys or I will speak the lesser words of unbinding."

"You would not dare!"

In reply, the human mask fell away, leaving the crone's face in its place. Withered lips whispered several words, and the human face returned as the crone faded back with the other two, while the whitish miasma streamed out of Inanna's body like smoke. I moved the blade out of the way as Inanna's corpse pitched face forward onto the stone floor in front of me.

In its place hovered a ghostly form wearing Inanna's likeness. "Sister, no," the Shade said, her voice misty as the form she wore. "Speak the words of binding so I might fulfill the mission I was given."

Ishi sighed. "I was truly afraid of this. According to the lore I studied, and never used until now, when a human necromancer creates a Shade by trapping the soul as it leaves the body, the Shade retains free will and the personality she had while alive. But if the necromancer is a Celestial, she can lay a geas upon the Shade, a compulsion if you will, forcing the Shade to carry out whatever mission the necromancer wants her to do."

"Can the geas be broken?" Lys asked.

Ishi sighed again. "Only by speaking the greater word of unbinding, which releases the soul and sends it on its way into the afterlife."

Behind me, Timur said, "But why would a necromancer, especially a Celestial one, want Inanna to turn Bukhara into one big tomb?"

"If the necromancer was a true Lich," Lys said, "it would make perfect sense to him."

"To her," Ishi said. "Inanna, did Tanit do this to you?"

The Shade visibly cringed. "Speak not that name. Sister, I implore you-"

"Quiet." Inanna's ghost went silent as Ishi put her fists to her face. "You are right, Shadow Fae; to Tanit it would make perfect sense. She was worshiped as a goddess in ancient Carthago, married to Ba'al, and the only one of us fascinated by the Necromantic Arts."

"Enough to become a Lich herself?" Timur asked.

"Oh, yes. Ba'al had already turned himself into a Shadowman long before the Etruscans declared war upon his empire for the last time. The change twisted his view of life and the world, so he may have well encouraged her to do so, but kept it quiet lest it upset her priesthood. Or perhaps she waited until all hope had gone, before having the ones she had corrupted to her service conduct the ritual. Either way, I heard reports from Osiris that she had survived Carthago's fall, and was living among the humans, though his agents lost her trail and never regained it."

"But if she's dead," Karl said, "wouldn't it be noticeable?"

"Not if she is masquerading as a living priestess of Ghash-Kimil," Akbal said, still kneeling on the floor. At her forehead, she wears a circlet with the symbol of a triangle with its point straight up, a circle at its tip, and two lines like upraised arms. "Many of their priestesses strive to resemble living corpses, and if she looks like a deathly pale human, she would fit right in."

Ishi began pacing back and forth beside the pool of blood. "Tanit must have planned this over the course of decades. Muzen had boasted about throwing Inanna’s dying body into the catacombs, as we called the charnel pits before Ghash-Kimil raised a pyramid over them, and when Muzen kept his promise, Tanit was waiting to set her plan in motion."

"And then what?" Lys asked. "She had to know Inanna by herself could never take over a city."

"Not unless Tanit was the one who came up with the idea of the Reaver Knight," Akbal said. "My lady, there was a woman who came out of the east not long after Bukhara became a satrapy, joined Ghash-Kimil’s temple, and is now their chief priestess in Tesiphon. Rumors came to my ears that she whispered the plot to Ghash-Kimil, letting them take all the credit."

"And then set up the double-cross," Ishi said, stopping next to Akbal. "Ghash-Kimil would have been forced to rush back to Tesiphon once the purge of their temple began, leaving her to clean up the mess in Bukhara as it was her idea in the first place. Tanit would have then found or brought with her a man totally loyal to her, changed him into a Shadowman, and then begun turning all the soldiers into Shadowmen under him."

"Beginning with the Sasnayam governor," Karl said. "Meanwhile, the regular folks would've rejoiced to have Inanna returned and on the throne."

"While the remaining Sasnayams would have been food for the Shadowmen," Ishi said. "By the time the Sasnayam empire knew what was going on, it would have been too late."

"Except Prince Timur overturned the table," Lys said, glancing at me, "and the Reaver Knight was not what she expected. Az, shall we see if we can enlist Inanna to the cause?"

In response, I crouched down with Lys still riding on my shoulder. "Inanna," I said in the tongue of the dead, "will you follow my orders and let Lys have control of you?"

Inanna lifted her head up. "You are the battle commander. I will do whatever you require."

Lys and I traded a smile, then she jumped down and placed her tiny hand on Inanna's broad forehead. After a moment, she let go. "All done. The initiates need to clean her up again, then see about getting an armorer to take her measurements. Akbal," Lys turning towards her, "do you still desire to serve Inanna?"

"I have some knowledge of the Necromantic Arts," she replied, bowing her head, "and can keep her functioning."

"Since we are speaking of serving," I said, turning towards Timur, "my prince, I remember how Etruscan funeral games were set up, having fought gladiatorial combats during several. If you want, I can have the dead workers recreate the racing track within the Temple District's inner ring of pyramids, and the arena in the central plaza where the great pyramid of Yun-Kax stands."

Timur laughed. "What a slap in the face to the Sasnayams that will be, their sacred pyramids used as spectator stands." He nodded. "Do so, but return to your normal self afterward."

I bowed to him as Lys said, "We can begin measuring the amount of Shadow mana needed to keep them all working. I will set this up with Cermet at once."

"I can also assist you," Akbal added.

Lys nodded before turning to Ishi. "There is one last matter to be taken care of."

"I know," Ishi said with a sigh, "and I cannot keep putting it off. Dear sister," Ishi turning toward the ghost, "I love you, but I need to let you go."

Inanna's ghost started waving its arms frantically as the crone face replaced the human mask. "Sweet sister, I beg you, do not do this. Let me return-" Withered lips spoke a word, and the ghost began fraying like smoke in a strong wind. "No, please! I..."

Inanna's voice changed as the ghostly form shredded. "Free at last! Ishtar, beware... Tanit..."

Inanna's ghost dissolved as her voice faded away and was gone.