Free Ghost in the Inferno (Ghost Exile #5) by Jonathan Moeller Page A

sent to the Inferno to become Immortals. I do not think they have souls once the training is finished. Certainly they no longer have consciences.”
    “Go on,” said Caina.
    Moryzai blinked, shaking away the memories. “As I said, I was trained as a scribe, and sold from master to master. None of them had any complaint with my work. Then I was sold to Kurzir Shahan.”
    Caina blinked. “Rezir Shahan’s father.” 
    “Aye,” said Moryzai, surprised. “You knew him?”
    She remembered the pain and shocked fear in Rezir’s eyes as she had killed him.
    “I met him once,” said Caina. 
    “Rezir had a reputation for cruelty,” said Moryzai, “but he was only a pale shadow of his father. I knew fear as Kurzir’s scribe, and lived in dread of making an error. Then Kurzir was appointed as the Lieutenant of the Inferno. I thought I had known fear before, but then I accompanied my master to his new post at the Inferno.” 
    He fell silent, staring at the congealed sauces upon the nearest plate as if he had lost his appetite.
    “Go on,” said Caina. 
    “The Inferno is a fortress,” said Moryzai, “but it is entirely underground, beneath the southern mountains of the Vale of Fallen Stars. All the histories say the Maatish were master necromancers, but they were also superb engineers. They carved the Inferno out of the bones of the mountains, and it has never fallen to an army. Do you know why we call it the Inferno?”
    Caina did, but she shook her head so Moryzai would keep talking. 
    “Because it is the furnace,” he said, “where living men are destroyed and reforged as Immortals in the service of the Padishah. Or, more accurately, in the service of the Grand Master of the College of Alchemists. There are alchemical laboratories within the Inferno where the vile elixirs are prepared. There are halls where the slaves are forced to kill each other for the amusement of the Lieutenant, so their souls and hearts become inured to blood and death. There are chambers filled with instruments of torture, where those who fail in combat are taught the meaning of pain so they can become strong. Thousands have died inside the Inferno over the decades, thousands and thousands beyond count. Those who survive, those who endure the training and the torture and the elixirs of sorcery…they come out as something colder and harder and more malevolent than human.”
    “Immortals,” said Caina. 
    Little wondered Rolukhan served as Lieutenant of the place. Nagataaru feasted on death and pain, feeding some of that stolen energy back to their hosts, and the Inferno would be an eternal fountain of pain and misery. 
    “Yes,” said Moryzai, his voice fading to a whisper. “The Immortals call the Inferno the Iron Hell, and they are not wrong to name it that. But even that, even all the tortures and horrors of the place, were not the worst of it. The dead walk the deepest halls of the Inferno.”
    “Dead?” said Caina. “You mean undead?”
    “Like the golden dead,” said Moryzai. “The Inferno was originally a Maatish fortress, remember, and the pharaohs and necromancer-priests commanded vast armies of the undead. According to legend, the Bloodmaiden destroyed Maat two thousand years ago, but not all the fortresses fell. Some held out and tried to carve petty kingdoms for themselves. In time the Inferno was abandoned, but its undead remained.” 
    “Then the Inferno is filled with ancient Maatish undead?” said Caina. That was a disturbing thought. The undead Rhames had been a Great Necromancer of Maat, and if Caina had not stopped him he would have killed half the Empire and conquered the rest. “Why have they not overrun the fortress?”
    “Because they remain confined to the lower halls,” said Moryzai. “No one can command them, not even the Grand Master himself. Yet they never leave the lower halls. Sometimes the Lieutenant will order a troublesome slave thrown into the lower halls as punishment. The undead slay