Ghost in the Throne (Ghost Exile #7)

by Jonathan Moeller

  “Then it agreed,” said Nasser. “We shall proceed to Istarinmul, charter a vessel, and sail for Catekharon.”

  “How fine and splendid to be in agreement,” said Morgant. His Caerish accent, Caina noted, often became thicker when he was about to say something insulting. “So we’ve locked up the relics and Callatas cannot claim them. What then?”

  Nasser looked at Strabane.

  “When you leave tomorrow,” said Strabane, “my warriors and I will depart from Drynemet. We will join the other clans, and meet with Tanzir Shahan’s host. Then our combined army will march for Istarinmul. We will seize the city, depose Grand Wazir Erghulan Amirasku, and kill Grand Master Callatas.”

  Silence answered him.

  “And then what?” said Morgant.

  Strabane shrugged. “I am uncertain. The nobles will choose a new Grand Wazir to oversee the government of Istarinmul. Tanzir Shahan, most likely. We will also try to find the Padishah and his sons. They have not been seen in public for years, and likely Callatas has them rotting in a tower somewhere. If they are all slain,” Strabane shrugged, “then I suppose the nobles will have to elect a new Padishah. The men of the Kaltari Highlands do not care who rules Istarinmul, so long as he honors the ancient laws and is not as tyrannical as Callatas and Erghulan. For Callatas’s folly has laid Istarinmul waste. Had he not required so many slaves for his precious Apotheosis, whatever the devil that is, he would not have roused the southern emirs to revolt.”

  Caina shivered, and took another sip of the hot cider. She had spent two years trying to discover what Callatas intended with his Apotheosis, gathering bits and pieces of knowledge, and the Great Necromancer Kharnaces had told her the final truth. Callatas intended to destroy humanity and replace it with something he considered superior, with possessed humans augmented by the powers of the malevolent nagataaru. The wraithblood he distributed to the poor of Istarinmul had lowered their resistance to possession. The Staff of Iramis would summon countless millions of nagataaru, the Seal of Iramis would bind them, and the Star of Iramis that Callatas carried would provide the power for the colossal spell. The nagataaru would possess the wraithblood addicts, transforming them, and Callatas’s creatures would rampage across the world in an orgy of blood and death.

  But if they kept the Staff and the Seal away from the Grand Master, none of it would come to pass.

  “A splendid plan,” said Morgant, “though I do wonder just how you intend to kill Callatas. A sorcerer and a Master Alchemist of his power is not likely to surrender meekly.”

  Nasser smiled. “With that.”

  He pointed at the valikon slung over Kylon’s shoulder.

  “Me?” said Kylon, blinking.

  “Or, more precisely, the sword you carry,” said Nasser. “A valikon can pierce a sorcerous ward of any power. It can destroy any nagataaru bound within Callatas. We shall go to Catekharon…but we will return with all haste, and join Tanzir and Strabane and their host as they lay siege to the walls of Istarinmul.”

  “And you really think we can kill Callatas?” said Caina.

  “We must,” said Nasser. “Even if we simply chase him from Istarinmul, he still holds the Star of Iramis. He will travel to a new land and begin his evil anew, perhaps find a way to work the Apotheosis that will not require the other two relics of the Prince’s regalia. If we can kill him, if we can strike him down, we can reclaim the Star of Iramis and put an end to his dark dreams for all time.”

  “If,” said Caina, “we can kill him.” The thought of facing a sorcerer of Callatas’s power in battle was not a pleasant one.

  “The effort must be made,” said Nasser. “He destroyed Iramis. If left unchecked, he will destroy Istarinmul, the Kaltari Highlands, even the Empire and the Umbarian Order.”

  “Pity you didn’t make that little speech to Cassander Nilas,” said Morgant. “Rather than wasting time chasing the Balarigar, he might have been more useful fighting Callatas.”

  “Alas, even my stunning eloquence would not have been sufficient to sway Cassander to our side,” said Nasser.

  “The Umbarian Order would wreak harm on the scale that Callatas dreams,” said Annarah, “if only they had the power. They do not, not yet.”

  “Perhaps we will be fortunate and the Umbarians and Callatas may yet hinder each other,” said Nasser. “Well, we have our tasks. I suggest we should be about them.”

  Nasser, Laertes, and Strabane headed for the headman’s hall, speaking in low voices. Caina remained sitting, as did Kylon and Annarah. Morgant stood and wandered to the railing, gazing at the hills. He never did seem to go far from Annarah. He had spent one hundred and fifty years trying to keep his word to her. Perhaps he had decided to make sure she lived long enough to accomplish her task.

  “How do you feel?” said Annarah.

  “Better than I should,” said Caina, “given that I was stabbed through the heart and asleep for a month.”

  Annarah waited.

  Caina sighed. “Some headaches. Some vertigo, if I look at something with a sorcerous aura for too long.”

  Annarah nodded. “I thought that might happen. You underwent a great and wrenching change. You will have headaches for a while, though they will pass in time.”

  “I hope so,” said Caina.

  “Think of your mind as the map of a city,” said Annarah. “Some of the streets in the map of your mind have been rewritten. It takes time to adjust. Headaches are normal in a valikarion during that time.”

  “What if I am hearing voices?” said Caina.

  “Oh, nothing,” said Morgant. “It just means you’ve gone mad, that’s all. Happens all the time.”

  Annarah sighed and gave the gaunt assassin a long-suffering look. Morgant only smirked and looked back at the hills.

  “Do you ever want to punch him?” said Caina.

  “I am a loremaster of Iramis,” said Annarah, “and the Words of Lore are only to be used for knowledge and healing and defense.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question,” said Caina.

  “No,” said Annarah. “But there are more important matters. You are hearing voices?”

  “Just once,” said Caina. “I couldn’t recognize it. It said to beware the fire.”

  “Sound advice,” said Morgant from the railing.

  “Did you recognize the voice?” said Annarah.

  “No,” said Caina. “I don’t think it was Samnirdamnus, if that’s what you mean.” The djinni had appeared to her and Kylon and Morgant, more than once, playing some game of his own.

  Annarah nodded. “Then I fear you shall simply have to be vigilant, and wait to see if this voice was real or a product of your own mind.” She hesitated. “It…is possible you hallucinated the voice. You were mortally wounded, and your blood was full of Kharnaces’ poison. The Elixir Restorata strengthened the poison, and would have slain you had Lord Kylon not intervened.” The loremaster sighed. “I have never seen such a combination before…”

  “So you can’t predict what the long-term effects might be,” said Caina.

  “I fear so,” said Annarah.

  Caina nodded. “So be it, then. I will be vigilant.”

  She looked at the headman’s hall, at the stone walls and the wooden roof, at all the shadows and corners.

  All the places where Kalgri could hide, waiting to finish what she had started with Caina.

  Yes, it would not be hard to remain vigilant. Not at all.

  Chapter 2: Long Games

  Kylon of House Kardamnos awoke in the middle of the night and could not get back to sleep.

  He ought to have been tired enough to sleep. Most of the day had been spent in preparation for tomorrow’s departure. Then he had returned to Caina’s room and kissed her, and one thing had led to another.

  If nothing else, that should have worn him out enough to sleep.

  Instead grim thoughts chased themselves through his mind.

  He looked at Caina. She lay curled on her side next to him, her
eyes closed, her breathing slow and steady. The hard edge often in her expression had vanished, and she looked peaceful. He touched her shoulder, and her emotions flickered through his arcane senses. They were quiet and subdued, the random flickers produced by dreams.

  Kylon leaned against his pillow, staring at the ceiling.

  He wasn’t sure what to make of his own churning emotions.

  There had been women long before he had ever met Caina. After Marsis, after he became the High Seat of House Kardamnos, he had realized he needed to marry and father an heir, and Thalastre had been a suitable choice. She had set out quite cold-bloodedly to seduce him, and she had succeeded. Kylon had fallen in love with her, and she with him. It had not been feigned – with their arcane abilities, they could not hide their emotions from each other. He had fallen in love with her, slowly at first, but faster, and she had become pregnant with his child and then…

  And then the Red Huntress had murdered her.

  Kylon had never thought to take another lover after that. He had set out for Istarinmul, intending to find Malik Rolukhan and Cassander Nilas, to kill them in vengeance for Thalastre’s murder. Exiled and destitute, he had financed his way by fighting in gladiatorial games until he reached Istarinmul.

  And then Caina had walked into his room and back into his life.

  He stared at her sleeping face.

  After the day of the golden dead, he had never thought to see her again. He had been glad to see her, of course. Her cunning, her brilliance, would help him avenge Thalastre. Then she had shown him that they were fighting for more than revenge, that Thalastre had been killed by the outer edge of the evil that Callatas had created in Istarinmul. He had seen Caina stagger out of the Tomb of Kharnaces, dying from the Great Necromancer’s poison, had stood guard over her as she sweated and raved through the poison’s hallucinations.

  He had seen her dying upon the Red Huntress’s sword.

  He had seen her perish in the explosion of silver fire, his own heart turning to ashes within him as the Corsair’s Rest burned.

  And then, in defiance of all logic, she had staggered from the explosion. He had waited over her as she lay unconscious in Drynemet.

  Now she was alive and unharmed, lying in the bed they shared. She was Caina Amalas, the Ghost he had tried to kill in Marsis, the woman who had helped him save Thalastre from the necromancy of Caer Magia, and Kylon loved her with an intensity that had driven him to gamble his life and the lives of their friends (and maybe even the lives of the world, if Callatas had claimed the regalia) to save her life.

  He had told her that it was his fate to see the women he loved die in front of him. His sister had died. His wife had died.

  But Caina hadn’t died, had she?

  Yet he still saw her dying upon the Huntress’s sword, saw the silver fire consuming the Corsair’s Rest, saw her mind burning in the wrath of Kharnaces’s will.

  She would have died, if Kylon had not saved her.

  No. More precisely, she would have died if the Knight of Wind and Air had not showed Kylon how to save her.

  Why?

  He could not understand it. He was grateful, but he did not understand, and that gnawed at him.

  Suddenly he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. Kylon stood, the air cool against his skin, and tugged the blankets over Caina. She sighed and shifted, and one blue eye opened to look at him.

  “I’m going to stretch my legs,” he said in Kyracian. It was always a relief to speak Kyracian with her. Kylon doubted anyone else for a hundred miles spoke it as fluently. “I’ll be back soon.”

  He kissed her forehead, and Caina murmured something and fell asleep. Kylon looked down at her for a moment, and then dressed in a shirt and trousers, slinging the valikon in its sheath over his shoulder. He hesitated, remembering that awful night when he had left Caina alone in her room at the Corsair’s Rest, only to return to find the red-masked Huntress standing over her. Still, he supposed Caina was safe enough. There was nowhere in the room the Huntress could have hidden, and the doors of Strabane’s hall were thick. Even the Huntress, wielding the sword of the nagataaru, could not get through the doors without making a racket that would wake half the village.

  Kylon slipped into the corridor and closed the door behind him, laughing a little at himself. He had become the sort of man who jumped at shadows…but he knew what lurked in those shadows.

  But that was just as well.

  Because the next time he saw the Red Huntress, Kylon was going to kill her. He would strike her down without mercy or hesitation. Kylon had no doubt that the vile creature had earned such a death a hundred times over before he had been born, before even his parents had been born.

  But for now, the headman’s hall was quiet.

  Kylon moved in silence through the great hall, the flagstones cold beneath his feet. He passed through the rear door and onto the broad terrace where they had eaten breakfast with Strabane. The clouds had passed and a hundred thousand stars blazed in the darkness overhead. Kylon stared up at them, remembering all the months he had spent at sea looking at those stars.

  Something cold and hard brushed his arcane senses.

  “Can’t sleep?”

  Kylon turned, starting to draw the valikon from over his shoulder. Morgant leaned against the stone wall, a dark shadow in his black coat, his arms crossed over his chest. Kylon let out a long, irritated breath and slid the valikon back into its sheath. Part of his mind noted that the weapon’s blade was dark. The sigils carved into the ghostsilver blade only burned with white fire in the presence of spirits, which meant the Huntress and her nagataaru were not nearby.

  Unless, of course, the Huntress was wrapped in her shadow-cloak.

  “You shouldn’t startle a man carrying a sword,” said Kylon.

  “You should pay better attention,” said Morgant amiably. He pushed away from the wall and strolled over, moving in utter silence. “I’ve surprised a lot of men carrying swords, and their weapons didn’t save them.”

  “Is that friendly advice, or is that a threat?” said Kylon.

  “Why, neither,” said Morgant. “Just an observation. You may do as you like. I am, after all, not your master.”

  “No,” said Kylon. He started to turn. The last thing he wanted to do right now was listen to Morgant’s never-ending stream of barbed remarks. Caina always had a clever answer for him, but Kylon was not so quick with his tongue.

  “Though I am surprised to see you here,” said Morgant.

  Kylon stopped and sighed. “Why?”

  “I figured that you and the Balarigar would be tangled together in a pile of sweaty limbs,” said Morgant, “or lying in an exhausted stupor after your exertions.”

  Kylon just stared at him.

  “Oh, don’t deny it,” said Morgant. “That is obviously what you two were doing. The others might have been too polite to point it out…”

  “But you are nowhere near polite,” said Kylon in a flat voice.

  “It’s one of the many benefits of my great age,” said Morgant. “I can indulge in candor and claim it is wisdom.”

  “Go find some Kaltari youths and lecture them,” said Kylon. “I’m sure they will be delighted to listen to your wisdom. Likely they will find some clubs and use them to express their deep appreciation.”

  Morgant barked a laugh. “Better! Your wit improves, Kyracian. I am impressed. I didn’t think you would have enough blood left in your brain for rational thought after what…”

  Kylon let out a disgusted sound and turned towards the hall. He feared for Caina, yes. He didn’t know if he could protect her, didn’t know how to stop the Red Huntress if the murderess returned. Yet he did not want to discuss that with Morgant the Razor. He started walking away…

  And stopped, something occurring to him.

  He could sense Morgant’s emotions. The assassin’s emotional sense always felt a bit…off to Kylon, older and harder and colder. Like an ancient oak that had hardened to the strengt
h of cold iron. Or determination that had grown into something more unyielding than mere human emotion. There was malicious amusement in his sense, of course. There almost always was.

  Kylon was sure that Morgant wanted something.

  “What do you care?” said Kylon at last.

  “She turned you down, then?” said Morgant. “That is surprising. The way she chased after you at the Ring of Cyrica. And the things you did to save her! Pouring that Elixir down her throat when you knew it would kill her. Stealing that wedjet-dahn from me, and stealing from someone like me is a very bad idea. And making Annarah pull you into Caina’s mind! I would wager you saw some unsettling things in there.”

  “Yes,” said Kylon.

  “Then she didn’t turn you down?” said Morgant. “Well. That is reassuring. If a man cannot win a woman’s heart by entering her mind to fight a necromantic poison…”

  “You didn’t answer the question,” said Kylon. “For a man who I have never once seen display the slightest interest in women, you are remarkably interested in prurient details.”

  “Ah,” said Morgant. “I’m a very old man, Kyracian. Much older than I look.” His smile was hard in the darkness. “The djinni might have kept me alive and fighting fit, but I am old. When I was your age, I found a different woman every month. Sometimes every week, when I was bored.” He shrugged. "After the first century, I simply lost interest in the pleasures of the flesh. Other things seemed more important.”

  “Like keeping your word?” said Kylon.

  “Precisely,” said Morgant. “Wisdom comes with age.”

  “Or just age,” said Kylon.

  Again Morgant grunted a laugh. “Perhaps you’ll live long enough to find out.”

  “Then you’re not in love with Annarah?” said Kylon.

  “No,” said Morgant. “It would be such a splendid tale, would it not? The man who spent a century and a half questing to free his imprisoned love? Sadly, the truth is rarely so poetic. I promised Annarah I would return for her, and so I returned. That was that. It took longer than I had hoped, I will admit.”

  “And now?” said Kylon. “Why haven’t you left? Gone off to paint pictures and kill people for money?”