Ghost in the Seal (Ghost Exile #6)

by Jonathan Moeller

  Yet more of them kept coming, more and more. A deathly chill passed through Kylon whenever their blades came close to touching him, and he retreated as the shadows pushed him from the alley between the warehouses and into the street proper. The pyrikon charged into the fray, falchion rising and falling. The shadows moved into a ring around Kylon and the pyrikon, and he fought back-to-back with the spirit. The aspect of intellect watched in silence, while the aspect of rage screamed threats and curses at the shadow warriors. Yet neither took action. Both rage and thought alone were useless without action to back them up. Kylon struck down two more of the wraiths, stumbling back against the armored form of the pyrikon. There had to be hundreds of the damned things filling the street. He could not overcome them all…

  Silver flashed before his eyes, and another figure charged into the battle.

  It was Caina. She wore close-fitting armor of ghostsilver plates, her hair close-cropped. A valikon burned in her hand, its sigils flashing with white fire. She moved with liquid, fluid motions, reminiscent of the unarmed forms Kylon had seen her employ. Every touch took down one of the shadow warriors, and Kylon redoubled his efforts, fighting his way to her side. The pyrikon charged, tearing through the shadow warriors like a rampaging bull. The shadows fled, retreating towards the heart of the green-burning city. Kylon lowered his sword, breathing hard, and looked at the silver-armored woman.

  “Caina?” he said.

  She looked at him, her eyes cool and blue and distant. “We must defend those who cannot defend themselves. We must make sure that no one else suffers as I have suffered. Or as you have suffered.”

  “You’re another aspect,” said Kylon. “Another part of her mind.”

  “Your deduction is correct. This aspect is Caina Amalas’s courage,” said the priestess, stepping forward with the ragged child following her. “The part of her mind and will that drives her to face danger again and again.” The silver-armored warrior glanced at the priestess. “This aspect is stronger now that three of us are together.”

  “Stronger?” said Kylon, an idea coming to him. “Does that mean…”

  He blinked. Another version of Caina stepped from one of the alleys, walking past a green-burning warehouse. She wore the low-cut blue dress from that day in Catekharon, silver glinting on her ears and at her throat. Kylon’s fist tightened against his sword, fearing that this was a trick or a trap, but she crossed the distance between them and stopped before him, smiling at him. She reached up and touched his cheek, still smiling, but did not speak.

  “Is this another aspect?” said Kylon.

  “Yes,” said the priestess.

  “Which one?” said Kylon.

  “You,” said the priestess.

  “Me?” said Kylon. “She…doesn’t look like me. If she an aspect of my mind?”

  “No,” said the priestess. It was damned peculiar standing next to three women who were identical to Caina. “This is the part of Caina that you have changed. For her love of you has changed her, just as your love of her has changed you. Were your mind to be fractured, one of your aspects would have changed as well.”

  “I see,” said Kylon. “There are four of you now. Rage, intellect, courage, and love. Is that enough?”

  “To reunify her will?” said the priestess. “No. There is more to a mind than those four elements.”

  “Then is it enough,” said Kylon, “to find the rest of her? The aspect of courage was stronger for your presence.”

  “Yes,” said the priestess. The other aspects gathered around her, warrior, young woman, and child. “A unified will is stronger.”

  “Are you strong enough,” said Kylon, “to find Caina herself? Or the rest of the aspects?”

  The priestess considered the question. “Yes. We can take you there now, I believe.”

  “The liberator must be defended,” said the pyrikon.

  “We agree on that,” said the priestess. “Be warned. The strongest concentration of the shadow will be there. I believe it to be an aspect of the necromancer who cast the poison upon Caina.”

  “Kharnaces,” said Kylon.

  “That is correct,” said the priestess.

  “The liberator must be defended,” said the pyrikon, its armored helmet turning towards the massive white bulk of the Imperial Citadel upon its spur. The green fire consuming the sky was swirling over the towers of the Citadel.

  “She’s there,” said Kylon. “The Citadel. Along with Kharnaces. Enough talking. Take us there, if you can.”

  “Very well,” said the priestess. She closed her eyes, and the other three aspects closed their eyes and took deep breaths in perfect unison. It was eerie to watch.

  The burning city jolted around Kylon, and suddenly he found himself in a courtyard of white stone, the massive towers of the Imperial Citadel rising overhead. The sky flowed with green flames and thousands upon thousands of shadow warriors. A figure in shining white robes stood at the doors to the Citadel, his expression calm, green fire snarling around his fingers.

  The fire blasted from his fingers to strike at Caina.

  She stood before him, arms raised to ward off the river of green flame snarling from the white-robed man’s fingers. Her form flickered and blurred as he looked at it, seeming to refract and break into pieces.

  Or aspects. Like light shattering as it struck a prism.

  Dozens of the shadow warriors swirled around her, striking at her with their khopesh swords, landing hit after hit.

  “The liberator must be defended,” said the pyrikon, raising its glowing falchion.

  “Then follow me,” said Kylon, lifting his sword. “Kharnaces! Heretic of Maat! Hear me!”

  The white-robed man’s gaze fell upon Kylon, burning with purple flame and dark shadow. Through the power snarling through the air, Kylon sensed the malevolent presence of a mighty nagataaru.

  “What is this?” said Kharnaces, his voice melodious and deep. “You are not part of her mind, not an aspect of her will. Who are you?”

  “I thought you wanted her to bring the Staff and the Seal to Callatas,” said Kylon. “She can’t do that if she’s dead.”

  “Her assistance is no longer necessary,” said Kharnaces. “Another nagataaru knows that the Staff and Seal have left my Tomb.”

  “The Huntress,” spat Kylon.

  “She will carry the news to Callatas, and he will come to me at last,” said Kharnaces. “The help of the would-be liberator is no longer needful. She is dangerous, and therefore she shall die…along with you. Who are you? Are you one of the valikarion of old? Only a valikarion would have been bold enough to challenge me in person. No – Callatas would have killed them all. Ah, I see. You are an heir to the great storm-warriors of Old Kyrace that the Great Necromancers battled in the deeps of time. Why are you here? I see. You love her.” A creature like Sicarion or the Red Huntress would have spat those words with contempt. Kharnaces only seemed solemn. This was not a man – or an Undying – to underestimate. “A worthy sacrifice.”

  “Sacrifice?” said Kylon.

  “To Kotuluk Iblis, lord of the nagataaru,” said Kharnaces, and though his voice remained solemn, Kylon saw the madness in his face, the fanaticism. “All the world shall be a sacrifice, for I am the vessel of the Harbinger. We shall open the way, and Kotuluk Iblis shall claim what is his, and he shall devour mankind and cleanse the world of the disease that is humanity.”

  “No, he won’t,” said Kylon.

  “And you shall stop me?” said Kharnaces, raising one eyebrow.

  “No,” said Kylon. “She will.”

  “The would-be liberator? The Balarigar of the Szaldic slaves?” said Kharnaces. “She cannot stop me. Already her will fractures from my attack, and soon she will not have strength left to draw breath.”

  “Are you so certain?” said Kylon. “You caught her at her weakest, after she had been mortally wounded, after the Huntress had poisoned her mind with doubt. She defied the Moroaica. Do you think you could take her whe
n she was whole?”

  “The question is immaterial,” said Kharnaces. “This contest is almost over.”

  “Let’s find out,” said Kylon, frost swirling around his blade.

  He charged forward, dashing across the courtyard. Kharnaces kept the stream of green fire hammering into Caina, but raised one hand, pointing at Kylon. Power snarled around his fingers as Kylon sprinted at him. Kharnaces’s spell would strike him down long before he ever reached the Great Necromancer.

  But he wasn’t aiming for Kharnaces.

  Kylon twisted, dodging to the side as a blast of green fire hurtled past him, and charged at the shadow warriors surrounding Caina. Kylon hammered into them, striking down two with every sweep of his sword. The pyrikon stampeded next to him, using both its falchion and its shield as weapons.

  And for an instant, just an instant, Kylon cleared a path through the shadow warriors to Caina.

  “Now!” he shouted.

  The aspects shot forward, child, priestess, warrior, and woman, and sank into Caina. Kharnaces’s gaze snapped back to her, and the image of Caina shimmered into focus. It was her, all of her. The rage of the child, the cool calculation of the priestess, the courage of the warrior, all of it combined back into her mind and will.

  ###

  For an instant, Caina came back to consciousness, her mind clear once more.

  She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know what was happening. But she knew that Kharnaces was attacking her, invading her mind with his sorcery. This was not the first time her mind had been invaded, and she fought back, driving and clawing at the attack with every inch of strength she could muster.

  She caught a brief glimpse of Kharnaces’s face, saw his serene expression dissolve into astonishment, and shoved at him with all her strength.

  He hurtled backwards, the pain in her head and limbs fading at last, and Caina sank into unconsciousness.

  ###

  Kylon’s eyes snapped open.

  He was still in the bazaar below the burning ruin of the Corsair’s Rest, Caina slumped against him, Annarah kneeling next to them. Caina shuddered and thrashed as if in the grips of a seizure. Her eyes opened and she arched her back, her emotional sense pulsing with fury and determination.

  Something dark and immaterial erupted from her mouth and rose overhead. It looked like a hooded wraith of smoke and green flame. For an instant Kylon seemed to see the features of Kharnaces in the wraith, and then it screamed and vanished away to the east, disappearing into nothingness.

  Caina let out a long sigh and went limp, her eyes closing. Kylon sensed no necromantic power around her, and her emotional state was that of a sleeping, albeit utterly exhausted, woman.

  “What happened?” said Annarah, pushing some sweaty hair from her face. “Did…did it work?”

  Kylon opened his mouth to answer, and then he heard the low, sardonic laughter.

  “What do you think, my stalwart stormdancer?” murmured the voice of Samnirdamnus in his ear. “Did you not make the right choice?”

  The voice faded away.

  “I think so,” said Kylon, wiping the sweat from his eyes. He felt as if he had spent the day fighting in the hot sun. “There was…a shadow, Kharnaces’s shadow. Her will was fractured, but it recovered. I…” He shook his head. “We have to get out here.”

  Laertes snorted. “I’ve been saying that for some time.”

  “We’ll start with Quartius,” said Nasser. “We can get off the street until the mayhem subsides. Then we can decide what to do.”

  Kylon nodded. “Sword.”

  He held out his hand, and Morgant passed the valikon to him without comment. Kylon took it, sheathed it over his shoulder, and stood, Caina cradled in his arms, her cheek resting against his chest.

  “And what are you going to do with that, Kyracian?” said Morgant. His emotional sense remained cold and hard, but there was something new in it as he looked at Kylon. It almost felt like respect. “Hard to swing a sword when your hands are full.”

  “What I am going to do,” said Kylon, “is make sure no one hurts her.”

  Chapter 23: Valikarion

  For a long time, Caina drifted in nothingness.

  She felt tired, so utterly tired, and the nothingness was sweet and restful. She had been fighting for such a long time, hadn’t she? Half her life. More than half her life. Surely she deserved some rest.

  Maybe a final rest.

  Yet something held her back.

  Memories pushed their way into the nothingness. Istarinmul. Wraithblood. Fire and death, with worse to come if she did not act. A red mask and a woman’s voice twisted with cruel laughter. A tall, blue-eyed man in a black greatcoat, eyes widening with terrified shock as silver fire erupted from her.

  A man’s face, amber flecks in his brown eyes, a silver sword in his hands.

  Slowly Caina became aware that she was not alone.

  She was sitting a table in the House of Kularus, the coffee house she had owned in Malarae. It was deserted, the tables empty, the rows of balconies quiet overhead. Everything seemed blurred and indistinct, like a painting faded with age.

  Halfdan sat across the table from her.

  “You can go on if you wish,” said her teacher. He had a Caerish burr, though not so pronounced as Morgant’s. “Leave the world of pain and suffering behind.”

  “I failed,” said Caina. “Again and again.”

  Halfdan shook his gray head. “You’ve done everything anyone could have asked of you, and ten times more. You even laid down your life. You could still lay down your life, if you wished. Let go of everything and rest at last.”

  It sounded tempting. There had been so much suffering and death and destruction, and she knew that more awaited her. Yet…perhaps she could avert some of it. Perhaps she could stop it.

  And there was something else, someone she desperately wanted to see again.

  “Ah,” said Halfdan with a smile. “I thought so. I half-thought you would seduce him when we met in Catekharon, but your heart belonged to Corvalis. Corvalis’s death almost broke you, but…you are strong. I flatter myself to think I had something to do with that, but I just tempered what was already there. Be well, child. I would tell you to be brave, but I know you would do that anyway.”

  The House of Kularus dissolved into mist, and Caina felt herself slipping back into unconsciousness.

  But before she did, just for a moment, she glimpsed smokeless fire in the distance.

  “My darling demonslayer,” said a sardonic drawl of a voice, “perhaps you are indeed the one I have been seeking.”

  ###

  The air was cool and dry.

  Caina drew in a long breath, her eyes twitching open. She saw wooden beams overhead, stained with smoke and age. A bed was beneath her, soft and warm, and she heard the distant sound of wind. It was cool here, much cooler than the Desert of Candles and drier than Pyramid Isle. Caina turned her head, and saw that she was in a small room with a flagstone floor, the walls built of rough-mortared stone, a dying fire in a hearth across the room.

  She had no idea where she was, and no memory of coming here. The last thing she remembered…

  Cruel laughter in the darkness.

  A ghostsilver blade bursting from her chest.

  Frantic, Caina sat up, her hand automatically reaching for the dagger she always kept under her pillow, but her fingers found nothing. The blanket fell away, revealing that she wore nothing beneath it, and she looked at her chest, expecting to see her blood draining through the hideous wound there…

  Nothing. The wound was gone.

  Come to think of it, she felt…pretty good. Far better than she should, actually.

  The door swung open. Caina looked for a weapon, found nothing that would serve, and settled for jerking the blankets up to her chin. A dark-skinned woman in a blue-green dress of Kaltari cut stepped into the room, a bronze bracelet flashing on her wrist.

  “Annarah?” said Caina, her confusion grow
ing.

  Annarah grinned. “By the Divine! You are awake!” She hurried to the side of the bed. “How do you feel?”

  “I feel…I feel fine,” said Caina. “I…”

  A strange fact penetrated her mind.

  Annarah was…glowing.

  Caina saw a veil of white light shining around the Iramisian woman, brighter near the pyrikon at her wrist. She looked at her own wrist and saw the ghostsilver pyrikon there, saw it shining with its own inner fire.

  “What is it?” said Annarah.

  “Are you casting a spell?” said Caina. She didn’t feel one.

  “No,” said Annarah, and she nodded to herself. “Tell me. Do you see a light around me? And around our pyrikons?”

  “Aye,” said Caina.

  “I thought as much,” said Annarah. She pulled a small stool close to the bed and sat down. “You have become a valikarion.” There was awe and respect in her voice.

  “Valikarion?” said Caina. She knew the word, both from what she had learned of ancient Iramis and from the knowledge that Kharnaces had stuffed into her head. “A…bearer of a valikon? I don’t understand. I was already the custodian of the valikon that the Emissary of the Living Flame gave me.”

  “In Iramis,” said Annarah, “the valikarion were the guardians of the loremasters. For while the Words of Lore are most potent against the spirits of the netherworld and the spells of corrupt sorcerers, they are ill-suited for defense against more mundane foes. The valikarion, equipped with swords that can destroy spirits and spells, were that defense. Yet a valikon is a great trust, and its bearer must prove himself worthy. To prove himself worthy, a potential valikarion underwent a trial of strength and courage in the netherworld. If he survived, he was worthy and became valikarion, a bearer of a valikon. He gained other abilities as well. He was undetectable to any form of divinatory sorcery, and could see through illusions. He was invisible to spirits, unless he chose to speak with them. And he could see the threads of sorcery.”