Jonathan Moeller - The Ghosts 08 - Ghost in the Mask (8 page)

The weapon blazed with green light.

The smoke flowing around his feet rose, forming itself into the shape of a man. Kylon sensed the potency within the creature. It was strong, and dangerous, but could not possibly stand beneath the might of so many gathered sorcerers. 

“Kill them all!” screamed Ephaltus.

The ground rippled with gray smoke, and hundreds of the shadows erupted from the Agora of the Archons. 

Screams echoed through the crowds surrounding the Agora as the shadows moved through them. A single touch from the gray shadows killed, and dozens of men and women perished in the first chaotic moments. A dozen of the shadows flowed towards Kylon, reaching for him with immaterial hands. 

He drew on his power and moved.

The sorcery of air gave him the speed of the wind, and he dodged past the shadows’ reaching grasp. Frost glimmered around his blade, and he slashed and hacked through the shadows. The steel of his sword did not touch them, but the icy power sheathing his blade ripped through the sorcery binding the creatures, and they disintegrated beneath his blows.

But still more of the shadows rose from the earth. Lightning boomed and flashed as the stormsingers unleashed their powers, and each stroke tore a dozen of the shadows apart. Yet for every shadow that unraveled into mist, two more rose from the ground. Was Ephaltus calling all the spirits of the netherworld to rise and aid him?

Kylon struck down another shadow.

He had to reach Ephaltus. The exile was using the dagger to control and summon those shadows. If Kylon killed him, perhaps the shadows would break away, or simply return to the netherworld. 

He turned…and then Ephaltus was before him, the shadows billowing around him.

Belatedly Kylon remembered how much Ephaltus had hated Andromache. And what better revenge than killing Andromache’s sole remaining blood? 

Ephaltus slashed at him, and Kylon blocked the blow with his sword. Yet the dagger pulsed with green fire, and Kylon felt it draining away his sorcery, the way Sicarion’s strange spell had done during their duel in Catekharon. Kylon stumbled as a chill went through his limbs, and he fell to one knee, his vision swimming. 

Ephaltus grinned and drew back the dagger for the kill.

“No!” 

Thalastre loomed out of the swirling shadows, hands extended. A gust of freezing wind slammed into Ephaltus, driving him to his knees. Kylon surged forward, still on one knee, and plunged his sword into Ephaltus’s chest.

The exile screamed, his face twisted with pain…and a final cunning glint came into his maddened eyes. 

He threw the black dagger.

Kylon ducked…but the weapon had not been aimed at him.

He jumped to his feet as the blade left a scratch on Thalastre’s right hand. 

She frowned in confusion…and then staggered, her face clenched in pain. Her aura fluctuated against his senses as her arcane power struggled against the dagger’s necromancy.

“Kylon,” she said. “I…I don’t…” 

Ephaltus died on Kylon’s sword, and the gray shadows faded into nothingness. 

He ran to Thalastre, and caught her just as she fell.

###

An hour later Kylon stood alone in the Agora of the Archons, watching as the ashtairoi directed the slaves to clean up the bodies of the slain. One hundred and ninety-seven people had died, killed by Ephaltus’s necromantic shadows before Kylon had cut him down.

He looked at the Pyramid of Storm, where the most powerful stormsingers had carried away Thalastre.

The number might well rise to one hundred and ninety-eight before the sun vanished beneath the sea to the west. 

Tiraedes and Thalastre’s father walked towards him. 

“Well?” said Kylon. He ought to have greeted the Lord Speaker and the Exarch by their titles, he knew, but at the moment he did not care.

“She lives,” said Tiraedes, “for now. Had she not been a sorceress, the dagger’s touch would have slain her at once. As it is, her power slowed its necromantic influence long enough for the stormsingers to slow her heart and put her into a coma. She will live…but if she wakens, the dagger’s aura will kill her at once.” 

Sirykon hesitated, and then put his hand on Kylon’s shoulder. “You must not blame yourself. Many men died today, but far more would have perished had you had not cut down the traitor. We all attacked the shadows, uselessly. It did not occur to us to fight to their master.”

“I was not fast enough,” said Kylon. “Lord Speaker, did the stormsingers say if there was a cure? A way to reverse the dagger’s influence?”

Tiraedes shook his head. “They do not know. We have never seen such a weapon before. Perhaps it is Maatish in origin, as Ephaltus claimed. We…”

“Kylon of House Kardamnos.”

Kylon scowled, wondering who would interrupt…and the scowl faded from his face.

A young woman cloaked in blue-green robes stood before him. A bronze amulet fashioned in the shape of three eyes hung from a chain around her neck, the metal corroded and green from seawater. Her eyes changed color as he looked at her, cycling from the gray of a furious storm to the blue-green of a calm sea and back again.

She was a priestess of the Surge, and the lords of New Kyre bowed to the will of the feared oracle of the storm and sea.

“Priestess,” said Kylon. “Forgive my rudeness. I am…troubled.”

The priestess regarded him for a moment…and her eyes turned the flat black of a dire winter storm.

“The Surge knows of your grief, High Seat of House Kardamnos,” said the priestess, “and she summons you at once. You must save your betrothed. For if you do not save Thalastre, New Kyre will burn. All nations will burn. The entire world shall burn, and become a graveyard for all of eternity.”

Chapter 5 - Followers of the Dead

For the first time in her life, Caina dressed in the black robe of a magus of the Imperial Magisterium.

It would not do for a magus to be seen leaving the home of Anton Kularus, so Halfdan had arranged for rooms at an inn on the western edge of Malarae. Here Caina and Corvalis and Muravin could disguise themselves, and then depart to the west. 

Her room had a mirror, and Caina examined herself in it. 

The black robe made her look stark and forbidding. Her pale face and her dyed blond hair made a marked contrast with the black robe. Caina pulled her hair back in a tight tail to emphasize the lines of her jaw and cheekbones, and did not bother with makeup. A woman like Rania Scorneus would consider such fripperies to be the province of lesser women. 

She tied a red sash around her waist, and hooked her sheathed ghostsilver dagger to it. The robe’s loose sleeves provided ample room for throwing knives, and she strapped two to each forearm. Theodosia of the Grand Imperial Opera had also prepared a few tricks for her, and those went up Caina’s sleeves as well. She could not wield sorcery, but she knew how to bluff…and sometimes a good bluff was more valuable than a pile of gold coins. 

Caina tucked a pair of daggers into hidden sheaths in her boots, examined herself for a moment in the mirror, and nodded to herself.

She left the room and swept into the inn’s common room. The inn was neither luxurious nor shabby, and catered to the merchants who hauled goods through the hills of the Caerish provinces to the barges of the River Marentine. Wagon drivers in rough clothes and merchants in furred robes sat at the tables and benches, eating breakfast and talking.

They fell silent as Caina swept into the room, and took care to avoid her gaze. No one in their right mind wanted to draw the attention of a magus. Caina ignored them and strode across the room, her heels clacking against the floorboards, her expression frozen in a haughty mask. No one who looked at her would see Sonya Tornesti or Anna Callenius or Marianna Nereide or any of the other identities she had assumed over the years.

Which was the point.

Two men in black plate armor sat at a table near the door, their cuirasses adorned with the sigil of the Magisterium, an eye upon an opened book. Muravin had taken to the role of a Magisterial Guard simply by keeping to his usual practice of scowling at everyone in sight. Corvalis, though, Corvalis looked deadly. The black armor suited him, made him looked lean and wolfish and dangerous. 

Which, for him, was no disguise.

He had shaved his beard and mustache, thank the gods. 

“My carriage, captain,” said Caina in a cold voice, coloring her High Nighmarian with the accent of a woman raised in Artifel. “Is it ready?”

Corvalis rose and bowed. “It is, mistress. We may leave whenever you wish.”

“And I wish to leave at once,” said Caina. 

“As you command,” said Corvalis. He stood and beckoned to Muravin, and the older man rose. They fell into escort around Caina, and walked to the courtyard.

“I am surprised,” murmured Corvalis in a low voice, “how well you can speak an Artifel accent, given that you’ve never been there.”

“Many easterners visit Malarae,” said Caina, keeping her haughty mask in place. “It is simply a matter of listening to them.”

“And,” said Corvalis, “how easily you can pass as a magus.”

“Give how I despise them, you mean?” said Caina. “People hate and fear the magi. Inspiring that reaction is not hard.”

They walked to the stables together.

###

The fastest way to travel through the Empire was by water, whether by sea or river or canal. Unfortunately, Caer Magia was landlocked.

Fortunately, the Via Caeria was one of the best roads in the Empire. It had been built during the Second Empire to support the Emperors’ endless wars against the Caerish tribes. As the Empire expanded west, so did the Via Caeria, and now the road stretched from Malarae to the gates of Marsis. Broad and wide and smooth from the labor of millennia of Legionaries, the road wound its way along the western shores of the Bay of Empire, and then turned southwest, leaving ancient Nighmaria and making its way into the hills of the Caerish provinces. Caina felt barely a bump as the horses pulled the carriage, and she could have slept in comfort inside.

Instead, she sat cross-legged on the roof. The light was better for reading. 

A book rested on her lap, and she paged through it as they rode west. Corvalis and Muravin and the dozen fake Magisterial Guards Halfdan had recruited walked alongside the carriage. Caina read the book, keeping a frown on her face.

The weapons of sorcery described upon its pages made it easy to maintain her frown.

It was a history of the Fourth Empire, the time the Magisterium ruled the Empire. The Empire had been larger than it was now, but the magi had been cruel leaders. Slavery had been accepted in every province and city of the Empire. And the magi had used tens of thousands of slaves as raw material for their spells. They had worked sorcery of terrible destruction, shattering the walls of cities and reducing their inhabitants to empty husks. They had conjured vast hosts of elemental spirits, unleashing firestorms and rains of burning acid. 

Such feats were beyond the grasp of the contemporary magi, thank the gods. 

Yet Maglarion, Caina remembered, had been a survivor of the Fourth Empire, and he had been capable of spells far beyond the grasp of the Magisterium. The knowledge of such sorcery had been lost with the destruction of Caer Magia and the transformation of the Fourth Empire into the Fifth Empire. 

But the secrets of all those terrible things lay within the ruins of Caer Magia.

And if Jurius had managed to bring a Dustblade out of Caer Magia…then others might find a way. 

All the horrors of the Fourth Empire might walk under the sun once more. 

Caina closed the book, a deep feeling of unease settling within her. The war with New Kyre was a waste, and Halfdan was right to focus the attention of the Ghosts upon ending it. 

But this…this had the potential to become far worse.

###

“Twelve more days,” said Caina the next morning. She was walking behind the carriage to stretch her legs, the black robe billowing around her. Should any other traffic appear, she would climb into the carriage and resume her role of aloof, arrogant magus, but for the moment the road was deserted. “Thirteen to fifteen days on foot to Caer Magia, depending upon the weather.”

Corvalis snorted. “Amusing, is it not, that Marsis is five hundred miles further west, yet it only takes nine days to travel there from Malarae.”

“Aye,” said Caina, “but you can travel by ship.” 

Muravin shook his head. “There is so much water here.” His Caerish was improving, but he would never speak it without an accent as thick as Shaizid’s cakes. “Istarinmul has sufficient water, as does the Vale of Fallen Stars, but in the Argamaz…water is more valuable than gold or jewels.”

“Unsurprising,” said Caina. “A man cannot drink gold and jewels.”

“They cannot,” said Muravin. “The tribes of the Argamaz…if a man betrays his kin, the tribesmen leave him in a waterless pit in the desert, surrounded by his wealth. More merciful, I suppose, to cut off his head…”

“Captain.” 

One of the Magisterial Guards approached, a hard-faced man with a shading of gray stubble.

“Aye, Nicias,” said Corvalis, “what is it?”

“Men in the trees ahead,” said Nicias, pointing. “I’m sure of it.” 

Corvalis grunted and touched his sword hilt. “Highwaymen, likely. Or farmers with a little side business in banditry.” He raised his voice. “Spread out! Shields raised, and watch for arrows. Mistress.” He turned to Caina. “You would be safer in the carriage.”

Caina spoke in the cold, haughty voice of Rania Scorneus. “I will watch from the carriage, captain. If these churls think to impede the progress of a sister of the Magisterium, they will find themselves sorely mistaken.” 

“As you wish,” said Corvalis. Caina crossed to the carriage, climbed inside, and closed the door. She watched as the Magisterial Guards continued down the road, shields raised, swords in hand. If bandits lurked in the trees, the sight of so many armed men ought to discourage them.