Ghost in the Tower

by Jonathan Moeller

  “We should move,” said Caina, lifting her valikon. “The last few times she warned me, someone attacked me almost at once. We…”

  “Who?” said Tempora. “Who is going to attack us? The man who killed my father?”

  “I don’t know,” said Caina, “but…”

  The flash of steel outside the tower doors caught her eye.

  ###

  Calaver Aberon rolled his shoulders, adjusting the weight of his armor.

  For these quiet jobs for his father, he didn’t wear his usual battle magus armor. It was too heavy, and it wasn’t nearly stealthy enough. Instead, he wore dark clothing and a hauberk of chain mail. The mail was spell-worked and had turned a matte black that reflected no light whatsoever. Over it he wore a jerkin of dark leather, bracers, and gloves. He had donned a mask that concealed everything except his eyes, and the front of the mask had been soaked in a chemical mix. It smelled vile and made his nose sting, but it would prove necessary in a few moments.

  He looked at the dark mass of Septimus Aureon’s tower jutting against the sky, and then back at his followers.

  “Are you ready?” he said.

  Six assassins of the Artifel family of the Kindred stared back at him. Each assassin wore dark armor similar to Calaver’s and carried swords and daggers at their belts.

  There were, Calaver knew, families of Kindred assassins in the chief cities of the Empire and most of the civilized world. The Kindred were a peculiar mixture of religious cult, secret society, and killers for hire, and believed that they were culling the weak and helping to create a stronger and better humanity, like a farmer breeding out undesirable traits from his livestock. Of course, their definition of “the weak” tended to coincide with whoever the Kindred had been hired to kill, so Calaver took the whole business with a grain of salt.

  Since the magi often resolved arguments by assassinating each other, the Kindred family of Artifel was both large and well-funded. The six men standing before Calaver were competent fighters and killers, trained in stealth and assassination. In fact, as unpleasant as Calaver’s childhood had been, it could have been far worse. Had Calaver been born without arcane talent, Decius Aberon would have sold him to the Kindred, and the training methods of the Kindred made even the brutal studies that Calaver had endured seem like a pleasant walk by the harbor. Calaver detested most of his half-siblings, but he had been friends with Corvalis, one of his half-brothers who had been sold to the Kindred and raised as an assassin.

  He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened to Corvalis. Dead in the day of the golden dead, most likely. He hoped Corvalis had gotten away from Artifel and their father.

  “We are ready,” said the lead Kindred assassin, a weathered-looking Caerish man named Ruan. He looked like an aging fisherman, at least until you saw the flat, dead eyes.

  “Remember,” said Calaver. “We need the target alive. The blond woman. The First Magus wishes her brought before him.” That wasn’t strictly true, but the Kindred didn’t need to know that. “As for anyone with them…it would be better if they were left alive, but it isn’t as important.”

  It had been a stroke of luck when Caina had left Ariadne’s house. Calaver had been trying to work out the best way to penetrate the high magus’s defenses, which were formidable. Any attempt to break into her villa would have set off all sorts of alarm and warding spells. Calaver definitely did not want to fight a high magus. The best course would have been to figure out which bedroom Caina was going to use and snatch her out of it.

  This, though, this was better. The doors to Septimus Aureon’s tower stood open, which meant the wards on his front doors had been disarmed. Calaver knew something peculiar was going on. Maybe Aureon had killed himself the way those other high magi had over the last two weeks? Calaver didn’t know and didn’t care, but he would not dismiss the opportunity.

  “We shall do our part, magus,” said Ruan. “Be ready to do yours.”

  He lifted a clay jar about the length of his forearm, its mouth blocked with a clay seal. The five other assassins held similar jars. The jars had been expensive, but they were a necessary part of the plan.

  Besides, it was the First Magus’s money anyway.

  “Begin,” said Calaver, and he started casting a spell as the Kindred assassins strode forward.

  ###

  “Someone’s coming,” said Caina.

  “It…it must be the Lictors, the Praesar and the Lictors,” said Tempora, who looked confused. “The Praesar said they would be coming back soon.”

  “But I doubt they would come back right after a warning from the Bronze Witch,” said Caina. “Tempora, is there another way out of here?”

  “The…the back,” said Tempora. “But…”

  “The kitchens,” said Morgant, rolling his scimitar in his grip. The weapon’s crimson blade made it look like a giant bloody fang. “Servants’ entrance back there. We had better move.”

  “Aye,” said Caina. “We…”

  Men in dark armor appeared at the door, their faces concealed behind black masks. Each man carried an odd-looking clay jar with a sealed mouth. Caina’s first alarmed thought was that the men carried jars of Hellfire from the College of Alchemists in Istarinmul, that they intended to burn the tower down. But Hellfire gave off a harsh sorcerous aura, and Caina saw no sorcerous auras around either the masked men or their jars.

  But she did see someone starting a spell in the street outside.

  “Who are you?” said Ariadne. Her tone had turned cold and commanding. “I demand you identify yourselves or…”

  With identical smooth motions, the masked men threw the clay jars into the dining hall.

  The jars shattered against the black floor, and rippling yellowish smoke erupted from within the jars as if it had been under pressure. At once a curtain of yellow fog rose up and rolled forward across the room like a wave, concealing the doors to the garden and the street.

  Caina didn’t recognize the fog, but she had a pretty good idea what it was. From time to time she had used smoke bombs to aid in her work as a Ghost nightfighter, using them for concealment and to cover her escapes. Caina suspected the yellow fog was something brewed up in an apothecary’s shop, a drug to induce unconsciousness in whoever breathed it in. The effect wouldn’t last more than a few moments, but the masked men had been carrying swords and daggers.

  You only needed an instant to cut someone’s throat. A few minutes were an eternity by comparison.

  “Sophia!” shouted Caina. “The spell you used in the theatre. Cast it now!”

  Sophia’s eyes went wide, but she reacted with admirable speed. She lifted her hand, and Caina both saw and felt the surge of arcane power as the girl cast one of the basic spells that Kylon and Seb had taught her.

  Silver light blazed around her fingers, and Caina also saw a burst of arcane power outside the tower.

  ###

  Calaver focused his mind and will, drawing on arcane power.

  And with that arcane power, he reached into the netherworld.

  Summoning spirits from the netherworld had been strictly banned ever since the Fourth Empire had fallen and the Magisterium had been reformed. On balance, Calaver thought that a wise law. There were countless different kingdoms and realms and domains of spirits in the netherworld, and most of them were indifferent to humans. Some of them, however, actively preyed upon humans, and were generally smarter than humans as well. Attempting to summon something smarter than you that also regarded you as food was unwise.

  However, the Umbarians had summoned elemental spirits in great numbers to augment their forces, so the Magisterium had been forced to respond in kind. The law against summoning spells had been relaxed somewhat, allowing magi to summon spirits of the four primal elements – fire, earth, air, and water. Those spirits were mostly indifferent to humanity and would return to the netherworld once the summoning spell had expired. They would not break free and go on rampages or attempt to slaughter their summoners.
r />   Usually.

  While Calaver was an excellent swordsman and a competent battle magus, he was not particularly powerful with summoning spells. He could not summon mighty elemental lords the way some of the high magi could.

  He did, however, have one particular gift.

  Calaver could not summon powerful elementals…but he could summon weaker ones easily.

  And quite a lot of them at once.

  He gestured, and the earth elementals rose out of the frozen garden like undead corpses clawing their way out of the grave.

  But that was strictly an illusion. The earth elementals needed material bodies once they arrived in the mortal world, and they constructed their bodies out of the element for which they had an affinity. A dozen of them appeared, forming man-like shapes out of the frozen earth of Septimus Aureon’s garden. Through the controlling link of the spell, Calaver felt the alien minds of the earth elementals. They were strange, eternal things, and should Calaver live to his full span of years, seventy or eighty or even a century, that would seem but an eyeblink to the minds of these creatures. The presence of his controlling spells was no more than a minor irritant to them.

  Since they didn’t need to breathe, the sleeping fog in the tower would prove no obstacle.

  “There is a blond-haired woman inside the tower,” said Calaver, focusing his will on the elementals. “Find her and bring her to me. Should anyone resist, overpower them, but avoid killing them unless necessary.” That shouldn’t be a problem. Killing an earth elemental was impossible. The only way to stop one was to banish it back to the netherworld. “Go.”

  The elementals lumbered forward, and Calaver followed them, focusing his will upon the binding spells.

  ###

  Sophia held out her hand, and silver light shone from her fingers. When she had used that spell in the burning theatre of Risiviri, it had created a bubble of clean air, letting Caina and Morgant carry Kylon from the burning building without choking to death on the smoke.

  And as Caina had hoped, it had a similar effect on the yellow fog.

  It flowed past them, but there was a clear space a dozen yards around Sophia.

  “Stay close to me, please!” said Sophia, her voice tight with strain.

  “Oh, well done, dear,” said Ariadne. “You seem to have an affinity for this sort of spell work.”

  “What is that yellow fog?” said Tempora, holding her own spells ready.

  “Some sort of drug,” said Caina. “I think if we inhale it, we’ll fall asleep.”

  “Then the men who killed my father have returned!” said Tempora, showing her teeth in a snarl.

  “No,” said Caina. “No, I don’t think that’s it. I think they’re here for me…”

  No sooner had she spoken then she saw the spike of sorcerous power. It was a far weaker version of the mighty spell that Cassander Nilas had tried to cast to summon tens of thousands of fire elementals at once.

  “Elementals,” said Caina. “Someone outside is summoning elemental spirits.”

  Ariadne gestured with her free hand, and Caina saw a flow of power from one of her enspelled rings. It looked like a variant on the spell to sense the presence of sorcery. “Earth elementals. They’re coming for us. Tempora, do you know the banishment spell?”

  “I do, high magus,” said Tempora.

  “Keep them away from Sophia,” said Caina, sheathing her throwing knife and taking her valikon’s hilt in both hands. “Defend yourselves!”

  With a shocking suddenness, the earth elementals loomed out of the dissipating yellow fog.

  They looked like rough-hewn figures made from rock and soil. While their movements were ponderous and heavy, they nonetheless walked with a steady implacability. Ranarius had been skilled with summoning earth elementals, so Caina had fought them several times before. She had almost died in all those fights.

  But Caina had not carried a valikon back then, had she? Nor had she been a valikarion.

  A dozen of them converged on the bubble of clear air, and Ariadne and Tempora both cast spells. The two sorceresses hurled scintillating sparks of blue fire that leaped from their hands and struck the approaching earth elementals. Caina saw the spells on the elementals unravel, and two of the lumbering figures collapsed into heaps of dirt and stone as the spells were broken and the elemental spirits released back to the netherworld.

  But more and more elementals emerged from the mist, and Caina realized something.

  The elementals seemed like they were looking for someone they could not find. Almost certainly whoever had conjured the elementals had sent them after Caina. But she was a valikarion, immune to mind-affecting and divinatory sorcery. And that meant the elementals could not perceive her. The material bodies they occupied had no physical eyes, and they could not see her. They could sense Ariadne and Morgant and Sophia and Tempora without any difficulty, but to the elementals, Caina was effectively invisible.

  Best to put that advantage to use, then.

  Caina sprang forward and slashed the valikon, driving the blade along the torso of the nearest earth elemental. The ghostsilver sword’s white glow flashed brighter, and the hilt grew warm beneath her fingers. The elemental shivered as the valikon destroyed it, and the creature fell apart into a pile of dirt. Caina whirled and cut down two more earth elementals in rapid succession while Ariadne and Tempora cast the banishment spells once more. Ariadne was able to work the spell far more quickly and with greater power than the younger magus. Already Tempora looked tired, sweat appearing on her forehead as she concentrated.

  Morgant attacked with a fluid, serpentine grace that belied his weathered appearance. Caina wondered what he could do with his weapons against the elementals, but he answered that question a half-second later. He slashed with his black dagger, and he cut the elemental in half from crown to groin. It staggered, and Morgant slashed again. The creature couldn’t take that amount of physical damage, and it collapsed, the spells that bound the elemental spirit shattering.

  But Caina’s valikon proved the most effective weapon against the elementals, and she kept attacking, slashing with the ghostsilver sword.

  ###

  Calaver realized that something had gone wrong.

  He felt his bond with the elementals breaking, felt the spirits vanishing back to the netherworld. Worse, something was actually destroying the elemental spirits, the backlash of their destruction sending a stab of pain through Calaver’s skull. He knew it was possible to destroy a spirit, but it took a fantastical amount of power. Even a sorceress of Ariadne Scorneus’s skill shouldn’t have possessed that kind of power.

  Worse, he felt the elementals’ annoyance through his link. The creatures were looking for the blond woman, but they couldn’t find her. The realization came to Calaver in a flash, and he felt a fool. Caina had to truly be a valikarion. The ancient valikarion were immune to spells that affected the mind and divinatory sorcery, and that was how spirits perceived the world around them. They could not sense Caina, and so they would not be able to find her.

  Well, the obvious was only obvious in hindsight.

  “Wait here for me,” said Calaver to Ruan and the other assassins. “I’m going to take a closer look.” If he saw Caina, he would send the image through his link to the earth elementals. Then they could overwhelm her, and he could escape with his captive.

  Ruan gave an indifferent nod. It was no concern of his whether Calaver or not survived. He got paid either way.

  Calaver drew his sword and started forward. Most of his power went into maintaining the spell on the earth elementals, but he gathered what he had left, preparing to strike.

  ###

  Caina cut down another earth elemental, the creature collapsing into a pile of earth and small stones. She had destroyed so many elementals that the footing in the dining hall had become uneven, the smooth stone floor now covered by soil and rocks. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to turn an ankle, and the elementals would smash her.

 
Actually, they wouldn’t even notice and would converge on Ariadne and the others. Ariadne kept up steady attacks with the banishment spell, but Tempora was on the verge of exhaustion, sweat pouring down her face and into the collar of her robe. Sophia was still holding the spell to push away the sleeping mist, but Caina did not think it would be necessary for much longer. The yellow mist was dissolving into a few wispy tatters that would dissipate before much longer.

  Another dark figure hurried into the tower, sword in hand.

  It was a tall man, clad from head to foot in dark clothing and armor, and a mask concealed his features save for his eyes.

  His gaze met Caina’s, and she felt a sudden shock.

  Corvalis?

  No, Corvalis had been dead for years. This man’s eyes were like Corvalis’s and Claudia’s, the same vivid green they had inherited from their father.

  That did not slow Caina’s hand at all. She had loved Corvalis, and she had become friends with Claudia, but she bore no love for their father, and the green-eyed man in the mask was here to kill her. He was the one who had summoned the elementals. The vision of the valikarion showed the web of power centered on the man.

  If the green-eyed magus died, the spell on the elementals would break, and the spirits would return to the netherworld.

  All this flashed through Caina’s mind in half a second.

  In another half a second, she had snatched a throwing knife from its sheath, the blade cool and hard against her fingers. Her arm drew back, and then she stepped forward, her arm blurring, her entire body snapping like a bowstring to propel the weapon towards her enemy.