Ghost in the Tower

by Jonathan Moeller

  And, who knew? Ariadne would likely protest, but perhaps Corbould would appreciate Calaver’s ruthlessness. A man did not acquire the kind of power Lord Corbould possessed without a good measure of ruthlessness.

  Calaver began casting the summoning spell again, preparing to call the earth elementals to the material world.

  And then something else unexpected happened.

  A man fell from the sky.

  At least, that was what Calaver thought at first.

  The man landed between Caina and the mercenaries and straightened up. A leap must have carried him from the rooftop of a nearby apartment tower. He wore a heavy coat, and in his right hand, he had a silver valikon, the blade longer than the sword in Caina’s hands. Freezing mist sheathed the blade, made eerie by the glow from the burning symbols carved into the weapon. The mercenaries took an alarmed step back, and Calaver’s mind caught up with his surprise.

  That had to be Kylon Shipbreaker, Caina’s husband. Calaver’s plans had included dealing with Caina herself and Ariadne Scorneus. They had not included the possibility of fighting a Kyracian stormdancer, especially a stormdancer armed with an Iramisian valikon of his own. Decius Aberon had put Kylon under something like house arrest at the Inn of the Seal in the Northern Quarter.

  Well. Calaver shouldn’t be surprised that his father had proven unreliable, yet again.

  Perhaps if Calaver summoned his elementals at once, they could overwhelm the Shipbreaker. He abandoned that idea after a second’s consideration. Kylon had a valikon of his own, and Caina had torn through the elementals with ease thanks to her Iramisian sword. The Shipbreaker was faster and stronger than his wife, and he would dispatch the elementals with little difficulty.

  Or, since Caina knew exactly where Calaver was, she would point him out, and Kylon would jump through the window and kill him. Or Ariadne would unleash her power and blast him with a hammer of psychokinetic force.

  Regardless, Calaver realized that he was overmatched.

  He had not survived two and a half years of civil war and years of service to the First Magus by pushing when the odds were against him. Sometimes it was the wiser course to withdraw and wait for a better opportunity to strike.

  “Withdraw!” roared Calaver at the top of his lungs, and he pushed away from the window and ran. The skin between his shoulder blades itched, and Calaver expected any second to feel the surge of Ariadne’s power, or to hear Kylon Shipbreaker smashing his way through the window and into the apartment.

  But no one pursued.

  Calaver fled out the back, preparing to approach the Tower of the Cataphract through the side streets.

  Perhaps by then, he would have formulated a better plan.

  ###

  Ariadne had come to realize that Caina had a streak of showmanship in her nature.

  That should have been obvious when she was threatening the First Magus, but Ariadne had been too startled by Caina’s appearance to take note of it. She had been worried that Caina was a younger, more ruthless version of Talmania, which fortunately had turned out not to be true.

  But Caina seemed to transform as she shouted at Calaver, her eyes reflecting the white fire of her valikon, her voice ringing over the street. With the blond hair and the wolf-fur cloak, she looked like some barbarian warlord from the frozen north. No, that wasn’t right. She looked like the way Ariadne imagined the ancient valikarion of old must have appeared, the valikarion whom even the high magi had feared.

  And it was working. She saw the unease going over the mercenaries’ faces beneath their helms, the fear that this assignment might prove to be fatal.

  At some point, Ariadne decided, Caina had received lessons from a superb actress.

  She supposed it depended on how Calaver reacted. Ariadne did not know him well enough to guess. Some of Decius Aberon’s bastard children were as brutal and cruel as their father but without his intelligence. They would order the mercenaries to attack, summon the elementals, and throw the dice. Others had better self-control and would withdraw if they felt threatened. Ariadne didn’t know Calaver, but he did have a reputation as a good soldier, a battle magus who had fought well in the campaigns against the Umbarians in Nova Nighmaria.

  But if Caina’s bluff did not work, Ariadne held enough psychokinetic power to blast out the window where Calaver stood. The mercenaries would likely not fight if Ariadne smashed their employer to a pulp against the wall.

  Then Caina glanced up in surprise, and Ariadne looked up just in time to see a man jump from the roof of the nearby apartment tower.

  Her first thought was that someone had picked a terrible time to commit suicide.

  Then the man landed between the mercenaries and Caina, and Ariadne realized that it was Kylon. He straightened up, and Ariadne saw that he held a valikon, the blade longer than Caina’s weapon and sheathed with freezing mist, the glowing Iramisian glyphs giving the mist an eerie glow.

  Caina had a gift for showmanship, but it seemed that Kylon was learning from his wife.

  “Withdraw!”

  The voice cracked like a whip, and Ariadne glimpsed the dark form at the window turn and flee into the apartment tower. The mercenaries ran, vanishing back into the alley, and soon Ariadne, Caina, Markaine, Sophia, and Kylon stood alone on the street.

  Markaine, unsurprisingly, broke the silence first.

  “You do like a dramatic entrance, don’t you, Kyracian?” said Markaine.

  “I didn’t expect them all to run,” said Kylon.

  “Kylon,” said Caina. She grinned at him. Ariadne had seen Caina smile, but it never seemed to touch her eyes. Now, though, it did. “I’m very glad to see you…but what the hell are you doing here?”

  Chapter 15: The Tower of the Cataphract

  Caina stared at her husband.

  She was always glad to see Kylon, of course, but now she was particularly relieved. Caina hadn’t been sure if she could have bluffed Calaver Aberon or not. She could make a convincing speech when necessary…but a bluff was still a bluff, and Calaver and his mercenaries had held the stronger hand. If Calaver realized it, he would attack anyway.

  But the arrival of a Kyracian stormdancer changed the balance considerably. Especially a Kyracian stormdancer armed with a valikon sheathed in freezing mist that could kill with a scratch. Whatever else Calaver might have been, he was smart enough to retreat when the odds were against him.

  “The Bronze Witch,” said Kylon with a grimace.

  Caina blinked in surprise. “The Bronze Witch appeared to you?”

  “Aye, about two hours ago,” said Kylon. Caina tallied up the time in her head. That would have been just after the Witch appeared at Aureon’s tower to warn them of Calaver’s impending attack. “She said that you were in danger and needed help.”

  “Well,” said Morgant, returning his weapons to their scabbards, “she wasn’t wrong.”

  “How did you get away from the Inn of the Seal?” said Caina, dismissing her valikon. She couldn’t see any trace of arcane power nearby, save for Kylon, Ariadne, and Sophia, and it looked like the mercenaries had retreated. “Decius must have left the inn under guard.”

  “He did,” said Kylon. “A pair of Lictors. Ilona and Seb came up with a clever plan. Ilona got the Lictors drunk. When I left, they were singing loudly in the common room. Seb found a Kyracian sailor who was out of work, and we bribed him to playact as me. Ilona brought a case of stage makeup from Risiviri for some reason, and she even managed to make the man look a little like me, at least in bad light. Seb told the Lictors that I had fallen sick from something I had eaten and would stay in bed for the rest of the night. They believed him, and I climbed up to the roof and jumped from rooftop to rooftop.”

  “How did you even find us?” said Ariadne. She seemed impressed.

  “Seb said that you lived in the Western Quarter, so I made my way there,” said Kylon. “When I arrived, it didn’t look like you were home, but a man was watching your house. I think he was a Kindred ass
assin.”

  “He might have been,” said Caina. “I think some of the men with Calaver were Kindred assassins.”

  “Calaver?” said Kylon.

  “Calaver Aberon,” said Ariadne. “One of the First Magus’s bastard sons. Decius tasked him with killing us.”

  “He’ll regret that,” said Kylon, “if he meets me. Anyway, I followed the Kindred into the inner city. He never noticed me. You’re right, Caina. People never looked up. He reported to a masked man wearing black chain mail – probably this Calaver Aberon. I saw them set up the ambush, and I kept watch from the roof of that apartment tower. I was going to interrupt sooner, but you made that speech. I wanted to see if they would listen, but I decided not to risk it, and here I am.”

  “I think that was the right decision,” said Caina. “I was bluffing. If it came to a fight, we would have hurt them…but we probably would have lost.”

  “Convenient of the Bronze Witch to help us,” said Morgant.

  Caina frowned. “Yes. Yes, it was. And twice in the same night. She’s never done that before.” Again, an idea started to scratch at her head. “I wonder how the hell she managed to transport herself here from Ulkaar with her pyrikon. The power requirements for using sorcery to travel that distance have to be immense.”

  “It would go up exponentially as the distance increased,” said Ariadne. “That, with a few exceptions, is a law of sorcery. We magi prefer to cast spells on targets within visual distance. The necessary power is much lower.”

  “Yes,” said Caina. She again felt like she was missing something, something big and obvious and important…

  Like how she hadn’t realized that Kalgri the Red Huntress was stalking her in Istarinmul until it was too late.

  “We should not linger here,” said Kylon. “Once Calaver Aberon recovers from his surprise, he might think to launch another attack.”

  “For once,” said Morgant, “I agree completely with the Kyracian. We need to move.”

  “And Decius and Riona have a good lead on us now,” said Ariadne.

  “Wait,” said Kylon. “You’re chasing the First Magus?”

  “I’ll tell you as we walk,” said Caina. “Let’s go. It shouldn’t be too much farther to the Tower of the Cataphract.”

  They started walking, and Caina talked as they did, telling Kylon about Septimus Aureon and his daughter, the Black Mirror, Decius Aberon’s plot, and the damaged mask of a Great Necromancer that Riona had found in the deserts of Maat.

  “So the First Magus sent you to investigate murders that he helped arrange?” said Kylon.

  “It appears so,” said Caina.

  “Gods of brine and storm,” said Kylon, shaking his head with disgust. “Andromache said that the man had the mind of a rat and the heart of a snake, and it seems that she was right.”

  “If anything, your sister was kind,” said Ariadne.

  “No,” said Kylon. “Andromache was many things, but only infrequently kind. What is inside this haunted tower that Decius wants so badly?”

  “I don’t know,” said Caina. “Hopefully we don’t have to find out.”

  Kylon looked at Ariadne. “What do you know about the Cataphract? The magus who built the tower?”

  “Little enough, I fear,” said Ariadne. “You must understand that the archives of the Magisterium are not always complete. Many of our records were lost at the end of both the Third Empire and the Fourth. But we do know that the Cataphract was a powerful master magus from the end of the Third Empire. About the time when the Empire was preparing for its final war against your ancestors, Lord Kylon, against the lords of Old Kyrace.”

  Caina frowned. “That would be the same time the Warmaiden Nadezhda led her armies against Rasarion Yagar.” Whose Sword still rode in its scabbard on Caina’s back. If Calaver did kill her and claimed the Sword, he was going to be in for a surprise.

  “Yes, approximately,” said Ariadne. “But the war with Old Kyrace lasted for decades, and the war against Rasarion Yagar was over in a much shorter time. It’s part of the reason the Iron King ruled unopposed in Ulkaar. The attention of the Emperor and the Magisterium was on the western Empire and Old Kyrace, and they didn’t have the resources left to deal with someone like Yagar. Anyway, there are all sorts of rumors and stories about the Cataphract, and I don’t know if any of them are true. The tales say that the Cataphract was an artificer and a blacksmith without peer, that his skill in forging enspelled armor was without equal. That part is probably true, given his title. Some of the accounts say he betrayed the Empire to Old Kyrace or betrayed the Magisterium to the Iron King. I doubt either tale is true since he would have been executed. The Magisterium of the time was very hard on treachery. There is also one account that claims the Cataphract helped the Warmaiden against the Iron King.”

  “Really?” said Caina. She hadn’t heard that, but neither had she made a thorough study of Iramisian religion.

  “It is documented history that Nadezhda passed through Artifel on her return to Ulkaar to fight the Iron King,” said Ariadne. “She appealed to the high magi for aid, but they refused, citing the war with Old Kyrace. One of the accounts said that the Cataphract accompanied her to Ulkaar to join the fight against Yagar…”

  “Oh!” said Sophia.

  Caina looked at her. “What is it?”

  “The Armorer,” said Sophia.

  “Who is the Armorer?” said Caina.

  “He appears in some of the stories of the Warmaiden, my lady,” said Sophia. “When she returned to Ulkaar to liberate us from the Iron King, some of the tales say she was accompanied by a man called the Armorer. He forged an enspelled suit of battle armor for the Warmaiden and made weapons and armor for her chief followers.”

  “Maybe that’s what Decius wants,” said Kylon. “Some weapon the Cataphract left in his tower.”

  “Aye,” said Caina. An idea came to her. “And maybe that’s the reason no one has been able to enter the Cataphract’s tower and live ever since he disappeared. The Cataphract left a mighty weapon in his tower, and he built powerful defenses around it to make sure no one could ever claim it.” She looked at Ariadne. “Do any of these tales say how the Cataphract died?”

  “None,” said Ariadne. “All the tales agree that he disappeared.” She shrugged. “I suspect that he died within his wards in the Tower, and his bones are lying there to this day.”

  “A grim thought,” said Sophia.

  “Yes,” said Caina. “A darker one is that he’s undead, and still residing in the Tower as a vyrkolak or an undead creature of some kind.”

  “We’ll find out for ourselves soon enough,” said Ariadne. “The Tower is just ahead.”

  Caina already saw the blue crystal at the Tower’s apex rising over the rooftops of the nearby apartment towers and warehouses. They turned a corner, and Caina saw the Southern Sail on the left and the grounds of the Tower of the Cataphract on the right, the Tower’s dark shadow rising like a lance from the overgrown woods at its base.

  “Decius might have gotten here already,” said Ariadne.

  “He probably did,” agreed Morgant, drawing his scimitar and dagger. “And blundering into a dark wood after your enemies is a superb way to get killed. Fortunately, these two can sense sorcerers from a distance.” He waved his dagger in Caina’s and Kylon’s general direction.

  “I don’t sense anyone nearby but us,” said Kylon. “But that tower is crawling with wards. If they’re inside, I wouldn’t be able to sense them. And Decius and Riona are probably strong enough to shield themselves from water sorcery.”

  “But I would see their wards,” said Caina, sweeping both her physical eyes and the vision of the valikarion over the dark trees. “I don’t. But I can’t see anything past the warding spells covering the tower.”

  “Then they’re inside already,” said Ariadne.

  “Probably,” said Caina, and she walked to the edge of the iron fence and peered through the gate, looking at the ground. “Someone walked
this way recently. I can see their tracks.”

  “Are we going to follow them inside?” said Morgant.

  Caina shared a look with Kylon and Ariadne.

  “There has been no documented report of anyone ever entering the Tower of the Cataphract and coming out alive again,” said Ariadne.

  “But the First Magus is desperate, not suicidal,” said Kylon. “I can’t see him entering the Tower unless he thought there was a good chance of coming out again with the weapon.”

  “And we do have one advantage that Decius does not,” said Ariadne. She pointed at Caina. “You. You’ll be able to see any warding spells or arcane traps long before we approach them. Decius and Riona will have to keep sensing spells in place, and those aren’t nearly as accurate or precise as the vision of the valikarion.”

  “They’re not,” said Caina. “All right. I’ll go first. Keep your eyes open. You might see something that I will not.”

  “Or maybe the Bronze Witch will appear in a flash of white light with stage makeup all over her face to warn us of impending doom,” said Morgant.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” said Caina.

  She took a deep breath and crossed the gate into the woods around the base of the Tower of the Cataphract.

  Nothing happened. Yet the vision of the valikarion saw a faint glow around the trees, a subtle warding spell resting over them. It was a minor spell of mind sorcery, one designed to induce fear and unease within anyone nearby. No doubt the Cataphract had cast it over the woods to scare off potential robbers.

  “It’s so cold,” said Sophia, shivering.

  “It’s artificial,” said Caina. “A spell. Makes you uneasy.”

  “It’s working,” said Sophia.

  “If you use the method Seb taught you to clear your mind,” said Kylon, “that should help.”