Ghost in the Seal (Ghost Exile #6) (17 page)

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Cassander stared at Annarah, calling more pyromantic power. 

He knew a great deal about the loremasters of Iramis. Some of it he had learned during his studies as an initiate of the Imperial Magisterium. Then, after his initiation into the secret Umbarian Order, he had learned a great deal more. The loremasters had been among the chief enemies of the Order for centuries, opponents to the Umbarians’ plan to construct a world ruled by sorcerers, and the loremasters had disrupted the plans of the Umbarian magi again and again. 

If this woman was indeed the Annarah from the bounty decrees, if she was truly a loremaster of Iramis, then she was not a foe to take lightly. 

How was she even still alive? Callatas had destroyed Iramis a century and a half past, and the loremasters had never used life-extending necromancy. An irritated hiss came through Cassander’s clenched teeth. Another few heartbeats, and Caina and Kylon would have dead. Could she not have waited another minute before interrupting? 

Well. One problem at a time.

“You are Annarah, loremaster of Iramis?” said Cassander, slipping the lightning rod from his belt with his left hand. The rod was about eighteen inches long, tipped with a two-tined fork. A blue-white spark flashed between the tines as the rod called sorcerous power. “Then speak.” 

Cassander would have preferred to take her alive, to rip the arcane secrets of ancient Iramis from her skull, but he was pressed for time, so instead of her secrets he would settle for her corpse.

###

Kylon looked at the second architect of Thalastre’s death, hate pulsing through him.

Cassander Nilas had not changed since the day he had come to the Assembly in New Kyre, his mouth full of lying words. Cassander had triumphed that day. Thalastre’s murder meant he would never be allowed to return to New Kyre, but New Kyre had not entered the war on the Empire’s side, ensuring that the Kyracian fleet would not fight against the Umbarian Order. 

Now Cassander was on the verge of another triumph. If he killed Caina, Callatas would open the Starfall Straits to the Umbarian fleet. 

Perhaps the best vengeance Kylon could take for Thalastre was to foil Cassander’s plans. 

Of course, the best way to foil Cassander’s plans was to split his lying, treacherous, murderous head in two with the valikon. 

“I am,” said Annarah, facing the Umbarian magus without flinching. 

“How remarkable,” said Cassander. “You should be dead. There are no loremasters left, since Callatas killed them all. I suppose Callatas himself was a loremaster once, but he forsook your order to become an Alchemist. You are quite a lovely young woman…which is something of a remarkable feat for a woman who should have died a hundred and fifty years ago.” 

Annarah’s face remained serene. Kylon couldn’t sense her emotions, but he couldn’t sense Cassander’s, either. Both were likely armored in so many wards that his senses could not reach them. 

“My past is not the question here,” said Annarah, white fire flashing up and down the length of her pyrikon staff. 

“Oh?” said Cassander. “What is, then? For I fail to see any question at all about the outcome.” 

“Your future,” said Annarah.

Cassander laughed, deep and rich and full of good cheer. “Is that a threat?”

“You conspired to arrange the murder of Kylon of House Kardamnos,” said Annarah. Cassander glanced at Kylon, once, and then turned his gaze back to Annarah. “You have wielded the forbidden sciences of pyromancy and necromancy, both of which wreak great harm. You have abused your powers of sorcery to kill and maim and destroy, and have more crimes heaped upon your name than I have time to recite.”

“Ah,” said Cassander. “And you shall execute me, then?” His voice was light with amusement. “Repay me for all my horrendous crimes?”

“No,” said Annarah. “I urge you to repent.”

Cassander blinked as if she had started speaking gibberish. “Repent?”

“Lay aside your quest for power and dominion,” said Annarah. “You have done nothing but harm, worked nothing good with your power. It need not be this way…”

Cassander laughed again. “Truly? Were all the loremasters of Iramis so naïve? Little wonder Callatas burned you all. I have done nothing I regret. The world is in chaos, and needs a firm hand to bring it to order. Who better than Umbarians?”

“A self-serving lie,” said Annarah, the light from her staff flashing brighter. 

“Then you fail to understand the nature of order,” said Cassander. “Order and obedience only come through fear. Virtue itself arises only from terror. I have done nothing a thousand other kings and emperors and princes have not done a thousand times before. The Umbarian Order is simply more efficient. We shall raise an empire of sorcery that shall endure for uncounted millennia, that shall elevate mankind to new heights of strength and wisdom and power…”

“Lies,” said Caina, making no effort to disguise the hatred in her voice. Kylon sensed the molten rage at her core burn with fresh heat. “Blind, stupid lies. I’ve heard them again and again from the magi, and every time they lead to only destruction and ruin.” 

“Because you ruined those plans, Caina Amalas,” said Cassander, his smile widening. “My prestige in the Order shall rise high once I claim your life. Perhaps enough to persuade some of the undecided magi still wavering with the Magisterium. Would that not be a fitting end to your miserable life?” His cold blue gaze turned back to Annarah. “One offer I make you, loremaster. Step aside, and give me the Balarigar and the stormdancer. Else you will see what the forbidden sciences of pyromancy can do to you.”

“So be it,” said Annarah, and she drew herself up, somehow becoming stern and terrible. “Then hear the Words of Lore for yourself.” 

Cassander did not flinch. “Kill them all.” 

The Adamant Guards charged at Kylon and Caina and Morgant, while Annarah and Cassander both began casting spells. 

###

Cassander struck first. 

He knew perfectly well that Annarah would not surrender to him. Their parley had been nothing but a formality. Nonetheless, it had given the lightning rod in his left hand time to summon power. Likely Annarah had anticipated a pyromantic attack, a blast of fiery sorcery. 

He doubted she had prepared to defend against lightning, and that metal staff in her hand made an excellent target.

Cassander thrust the fork, focusing his will, and a brilliant arc of blue-white lightning burst from the tines and snarled across the street, arcing for the bronze staff in Annarah’s hands. The loremaster thrust the staff before her, shouting in an unknown language, likely the tongue of lost Iramis. The staff’s end blazed with white fire, and Cassander’s lightning struck the shell of light and rebounded, blasting a row of bricks from the wall of a nearby warehouse. 

He was impressed. Many of the weaker members of the Order would not have been able to deflect that strike.

Annarah swung her staff, its end blazing again, and a shaft of white fire howled towards him. Cassander crossed his arms over his chest, summoning power and shaping it into a warding spell. 

It almost wasn’t enough. 

Annarah’s spell, the white fire conjured by the Words of Lore, hit him hard. His wards shuddered like a gong struck by a mallet, and the white fire flared and flickered around him. Cassander growled, drawing on all his strength, and thrust his hands. The white fire winked out, and he gestured with the fork, sending another arc of lightning at his foe. Annarah swept her staff before her, and again the lightning rebounded from the white light, this time blasting a chunk from the street. 

She was strong. The sorcerers of the ancient world had been right to fear the power of the loremasters. 

Fortunately, Cassander had reserves that she did not.

He shoved the fork back into his belt and instead lifted a small bloodcrystal, its dark surface flaring with green fire as he tapped its power. 

###

The Adamant Guards charged at Annarah as fire and lightning crackled back and forth between the loremaster and the Umbarian magus, and Kylon and Morgant raced to intercept them. Caina ran after Kylon and Morgant, throwing knife and ghostsilver dagger ready. With the valikon and the black dagger, Kylon and Morgant could fight the Adamant Guards in a straight battle. Caina could not. She was a spy, not a warrior or a soldier. 

But she could make trouble for the Adamant Guards.

The Guards started to fan out, hoping to surround Morgant and Kylon. Likely they had seen the final stages of the battle with the cataphractus, and knew that Kylon’s sword and Morgant’s dagger were dangerous. Caina’s hand dipped into her satchel and came up holding another smoke bomb. This bomb had a different formula than the one she had used in the Desert Maiden, and would generate far less smoke.

It would, however, create a much brighter flash. 

“Eyes!” shouted Caina, running at the Guards. Both Kylon and Morgant had seen her use these bombs before, and both men looked away as Caina flung the clay sphere at her feet. Because of her shout, all the Adamant Guards were looking at her, which meant they were looking right at the bomb when it burst in a small puff of smoke and a brilliant white flash. A dozen Guards stumbled to a halt, blinking and squinting and trying to clear their dazzled vision, and Caina struck in that moment. She raced at the nearest Adamant Guard and ripped the ghostsilver dagger across his throat. The wound hissed and sizzled, and the man toppled, clutching at his wounded neck. Morgant attacked, his black dagger slashing down the chest of an Adamant Guard, parting steel and bone and flesh with equal ease. He wheeled, pulling his dagger free, and drove his crimson scimitar into the neck of another Guard, the red blade turning even darker with blood. Kylon was just as deadly, the valikon flickering with the speed of a serpent’s tongue, and he left a half-dozen dead Adamant Guards in his wake. 

Caina hoped she could reach Cassander and plunge the ghostsilver dagger into his chest. The Adamant Guards didn’t matter. Cassander was their commander, and with the magus dead the Guards might withdraw back to the Umbarian embassy. 

Yet there were too many Adamant Guards, and even if Caina broke through them, the intensity of the arcane forces snarling back and forth between Cassander and Annarah might prove fatal.

Caina remained next to Kylon and Morgant, fighting for her life. 

###

Cassander hammered at Annarah’s wards again and again.

The ancient arcane science of the loremasters, the Words of Lore, was most potent. Cassander’s wards had stopped swords and crossbow bolts and the attacks of rival magi, but Annarah’s spells sliced into his defenses like a child tearing apart paper. The formidable reputation of the loremasters had been well deserved, and had she been a little older and a little more experienced, Cassander suspected she would have overcome him easily.

Yet he had the greater skill…and he had the reserves of power in his bloodcrystals. It had taken painstaking work to prepare them, to form them from the blood of dead men and then to charge them with power. Cassander was glad that he had taken the time to create the crystals. With the added reserve of power, he would outlast Annarah, battering down her defenses and crushing her. 

Then he could deal with Caina and Kylon.

Cassander looked forward to seeing the expression on Callatas’s smug face when he presented the Grand Master with the heads of all his enemies at once. 

Fire flared around his armored gauntlet, the metal shivering and growing hot. The kind of pyromantic power he had summoned should have shattered his mind into gibbering insanity and burned his flesh to a charred husk, but the powerful spells upon the gauntlet protected him. Cassander fed power from his bloodcrystals into the gauntlet, the fire taking a greenish tinge. He gestured at Annarah, and a blast of fire leaped from his armored hand and shot across the street, power enough to blast her and anyone within a dozen yards of her to ashes. 

She crossed her arms, holding the bronze staff horizontally before her. Cassander had taken her measure, and knew that she did not have the raw strength to deflect the amount of power he had just flung at her. 

To his astonishment, she didn’t even try, her lips moving as she shouted words in the Iramisian language. A flicker of amusement went through him. Perhaps it was a prayer to whatever impotent gods she worshipped. 

White light flashed around her, and suddenly Cassander realized that she had not even tried to deflect the power.

She had redirected it, like a skilled hand-to-hand combatant using his opponent’s own momentum again him.

The blast of green-tinged fire came hurtling back towards Cassander.

He cursed and summoned all his power for a ward.

###

Caina ducked under an Adamant Guard’s stab, lashing at him with her ghostsilver dagger. The Guards had learned to fear the ghostsilver blades, and the soldier jumped back, avoiding her blow. Yet he couldn’t avoid Kylon, and the valikon ripped across the Adamant Guard’s left arm, opening a deep, bloody cut. The Guard staggered under the weight of his armor, his superhuman strength disrupted, and Morgant sank his black dagger to the hilt in the Guard’s chest. He ripped the blade free, and the Guard collapsed. 

The remaining Adamant Guards backed away, eyes wary, watching for an opening. Caina took a deep breath, looking around. There had to be at least twenty Guards left, and Caina and Kylon and Morgant could not hold them off forever. 

She started to say something, and then the street leading to the Alqaarin Bazaar exploded. 

The gale of hot air shot past Caina, knocking her back, and even the Adamant Guards swayed upon their feet. A huge fireball of green-tinted flame roiled and snarled within the street, so hot that some of the nearby warehouses started burning. Caina feared that Cassander had triumphed in his duel with Annarah, but the loremaster stood at the edge of the water, her dress and hair blowing about her in the hot wind.