Ghost in the Ring (Ghost Night Book 1)

by Jonathan Moeller

  All the undead went motionless at once.

  Caina looked at them, flexing her right hand as she prepared to call her valikon. Had the undead seen her? All six corpses were staring at the door on the other side of the library. It opened into a dim-lit corridor that vanished into darkness.

  As Caina looked at the corridor, she noticed several things.

  The first was a wet, rotting smell. The undead had been dead for so long that the creatures smelled of dust and dry bone. This odor put Caina in mind of a dead animal rotting in a swamp. The smell was coming from the dark corridor, and it seemed to be getting stronger.

  The second was the sorcerous aura. The fortress all but glowed with sorcery, but the vision of the valikarion saw another aura approaching from the corridor. It was an aura of necromantic sorcery and some other kind of power she didn’t recognize, appearing to her vision like a rippling haze of harsh green-purple light.

  The final thing she noticed was the noise.

  It was a faint squelching, slithering sound, like something wet crawling along a stone floor. The noise was getting louder.

  Something was coming.

  Caina shelved the book about the mad king and looked around. Should she retreat to the arcade? There was no place to hide there. Or would it be better to stand and fight? The valikon could destroy any creature of sorcery, but Caina didn’t know what she faced.

  But there was another option.

  Caina turned away from the corridor and climbed up the bookshelves. She left handprints and footprints in the dust, but that was unavoidable. The top of the shelves was twelve feet off the floor, and there was a flat, empty space below the ceiling. Caina rolled onto it, the wood smooth and dusty against her skin, and watched the corridor, ready to summon her valikon.

  About a minute later the source of the aura came into sight.

  It was…

  Caina had no idea what the creature was, but the sight of it was grotesque.

  It looked vaguely like a man, and it wore a voluminous robe of the rough brown fabric favored by the ascetic priesthoods of the sterner gods. The robe was stained and greasy, and the cowl had been thrown back. The face of the creature was like something out of a nightmare. It had two human eyes, but the skin had turned a leprous gray, covered with a network of black veins, and a huge black eye bulged out of the center of its forehead. Strange antennae jutted from its head almost at random. Its right sleeve ended in a human hand, albeit one tipped with claws, but a tentacle came from its left sleeve, and Caina caught glimpses of more tentacles writhing beneath the hem of the robe.

  She had no idea what the creature was, but she didn’t want it to see her. And something about the pattern of the black veins and deformed growths on its face reminded her of the network of veins on the fortress walls. Was this creature the master of the fortress? If not, the creature had to be connected to it somehow.

  The robed form glided into the library and paused.

  Caina tensed and prepared to summon her valikon, fearing that the creature had sensed her, but the six undead fell in around the robed thing like an escort. The creature glided forward, and left the library and moved into the arcade, both it and the undead vanishing from sight. Caina watched their auras through the stone wall as they moved away. She thought both the robed thing and the undead were moving towards the hall where she had appeared. Were they coming to intercept her? The robed creature could not sense her presence, but it seemed to be a living thing with working eyes.

  If it saw her, that would be bad.

  Caina counted to a hundred, trying to keep her teeth from chattering in the chill, but the robed creature and the undead did not return. She lifted her head, looked around the library, and climbed down the shelves.

  Caina had to press deeper into the fortress. As loathe as she was to leave the warmth, she dared not stay here. Sooner or later the robed creature would return, and if it saw her, she had no choice but to call her valikon and fight. She also needed to find clothing, and eventually, she would need water and food.

  And most importantly, Caina needed to figure out where the hell she was and if Kylon had been brought here with her.

  Again, a stab of terror went through her at the thought of Kylon. They had almost lost each other so many times. To be ripped apart on their wedding night, in the midst of their first time as husband and wife, seemed like a cruel joke.

  She just hoped that he was safe, wherever he was.

  And if someone had hurt or killed him…

  Her right hand coiled into a fist, and she made it relax.

  Caina would deal with that if it happened. And, she reminded herself, Kylon was probably safer than she was. He had his own valikon. He also had his abilities as a stormdancer and coupled with his skill with a sword, they made him into a formidably effective warrior. He could have destroyed all six of the undead and killed the robed creature in the space of about three heartbeats.

  Right now, Caina had to stay alive long enough to find him again.

  She took a deep breath, savoring the warmth of the fireplace for one last moment, and then headed into the gloomy, black-veined corridor, both her eyes of flesh and the vision of the valikarion watching for threats.

  Chapter 2: Resemblance

  When the black vortex exploded into existence behind Caina’s head, it happened so fast that even Kylon’s reflexes had not responded in time.

  That said, he had been somewhat distracted.

  His whole attention was on Caina as she straddled him. Mortal men were water in the end, and Kylon’s power with the sorcery of water let him sense the emotions of those around him. All except Caina, because as a valikarion, she was immune to his abilities to sense emotion with water sorcery.

  Unless he happened to be touching her.

  And when there was nothing between their skin, he felt her emotions like a blaze. Kylon had always thought her emotional sense felt like a fortress of ice around a molten heart, but when they lay together, the ice was gone, and there was nothing but the molten heat of her desire. She looked intoxicatingly beautiful, her black hair hanging sweaty around her head, her chest heaving with her rapid breathing, her face melting into a rapturous smile.

  Then something dark and cold burned against Kylon’s arcane senses.

  The vortex of shadow erupted into existence behind their bed. Caina started to turn, and some colossal force seized her and ripped her off him. The same force gripped Kylon and pulled him after her. He just had time to shout her name, and then he was tumbling through an endless well of darkness, black shadows and green fire whirling around him. Kylon reached for Caina, but he lost sight of her pale form as she tumbled through the darkness, and he felt himself falling endlessly through the swirling void.

  Then his fall came to a sudden stop.

  A cold, wet stop.

  The shock of falling naked into cold water was enough to make every muscle in his body contract at once, and Kylon sucked in a lungful of the icy water before he could stop himself. He started coughing, and the reflexes he had learned aboard the fleets of New Kyre asserted themselves. He began to swim upward, only to realize that the water came to his chest. Kylon spat out a mouthful of the stinking water and looked around.

  A pool. Somehow, Kylon was in a large pool in an underground vault, probably a cistern. Windows high in the walls admitted a pale, flickering light, and at the far end of the cistern he saw a flight of stone stairs that climbed upward. Kylon hurried forward as fast as he could, gripped the edge of the stairs, and heaved himself out of the water.

  That made him feel slightly less cold, but he was still drenched, and if he didn’t do something he was going to freeze to death.

  Fortunately, a stormdancer had options for dealing with water and cold that most men did not.

  Kylon drew on the sorcery of water and worked a minor spell. The water started running off his limbs faster than it would have otherwise. He also felt quite a bit warmer. It was a spell he had learned long ago, early
on in his training as a stormdancer. The fleets of New Kyre sailed to every civilized land and port, and some of those ports were in icy seas. Knowing how to keep warm in those places was the key between life and death.

  Though there hadn’t been much need for keeping warm in the arid lands of Istarinmul and Iramis.

  Kylon looked around, details catching up with his stunned brain.

  Just where the hell was he?

  His first thought was that he had somehow fallen into a cistern below the Palace of the Prince. Yet it never got this cold in Iramis, not even underground. For that matter, the stonework did not look Iramisian. It was too rough-hewn, and this place looked as if it had been abandoned for a long time.

  Kylon suspected he was no longer in Iramis.

  Somehow that vortex had taken him far from the Palace of the Princes.

  Caina. Where was Caina?

  A surge of fear went through him, and Kylon drew on the sorcery of water, extending his senses.

  He did not like what he sensed.

  Sorcery radiated from the very stone around him. The power felt cold and malignant and necromantic. It did not seem like the sophisticated necromancy he had sensed from the Tomb of Kharnaces and the Great Necromancer Rhames and the Moroaica and her disciples, but somehow cruder and more elemental. Yet for all that, it was nonetheless powerful.

  It made Kylon’s hand itch to grasp the hilt of a sword.

  He flexed his fingers, considering whether or not to call his valikon, but decided against it. The sword would come at his call quickly if he needed it, and the light from the sword’s blade might draw unwelcome attention.

  Because someone had brought him here, he was sure of it. Kylon had never heard of such a spell, but someone had brought him here deliberately, and possibly Caina as well. If these unknown summoners had done it with malicious intent, they would regret it.

  Kylon climbed the stairs, the sorcery of water helping him to keep his balance on the wet stone. The stairs ascended to an archway near the top of the wall, and he reached the gate, walked through it, and stopped in surprise.

  A hallway stretched beyond the end of the stairs, and there were…things growing on the stone wall.

  A network of pulsing black veins covered the stonework, throbbing as if some distant, massive heart was driving dark blood through the vessels. Here and there things that looked like malignant growths sprouted from the wall, twisting the stone around them. Kylon stared at them, his disquiet growing. Necromantic power seemed to flow through the air around him like greasy smoke, and it seemed especially strong in the black veins and the strange growths.

  He had killed more men in battle than he cared to remember, and the veins and the strange growths looked a great deal like the interior of a man’s torso, albeit twisted and warped. It was almost as if the stone of the wall had merged with the blood and flesh of some monstrous living creature. He could not imagine the kind of sorcery that could do that…nor could he envision a creature large enough, because some of those veins were thicker than a grown man’s leg.

  Kylon kept walking, the stone cold beneath his bare feet. The strange dim light grew brighter, and soon the corridor ended in an archway. Kylon passed through the archway and entered a small courtyard.

  Right away he noticed several strange things.

  The first was the sky itself. One moment it looked like the cold, starry sky of a winter’s night in the northern parts of the world, black and sharp with thousands of stars. The next it was filled with rippling black clouds moving with the speed of a hurricane wind, silent arcs of red lightning leaping from cloud to cloud. Kylon had never seen a sky like that, but Caina had described the sight to him once.

  It was the sky of the netherworld.

  If the sky kept changing…was this place, this fortress, whatever it was, caught halfway between the mortal world and the netherworld?

  The second strange thing Kylon noticed was that more of the black veins and strange growths spread over the walls of the courtyard, reaching up to mantle the towers and basilicas that loomed over him. He could not shake the feeling that the fortress was some giant, twisted living thing.

  The final strange thing was the statue.

  It stood in the center of the courtyard, cast from greening bronze and over twelve feet tall. The statue displayed a proud-looking warrior wearing armor of a design that Kylon did not recognize. The warrior’s face was lean and cruel-looking, with a hooked beak of a nose and a full mustache that hung down the sides of his thin mouth. He carried a sword, a dagger sheathed at his belt, and a strange amulet against his chest. A large signet ring was prominent on his right hand, a diadem resting upon his head.

  A diadem? Was that a statue of a king? Kylon looked at the plinth. It bore an inscription in the Kagari alphabet. Some of the more barbarous nations of the eastern Empire used that alphabet, though Kylon supposed all those nations had fallen under the iron rule of the Umbarian Order. While he recognized the alphabet, he didn’t recognize the language.

  Did a statue with a plinth carved in the Kagari alphabet mean that Kylon was in the eastern Empire? The eastern Empire was a long way from Iramis, hundreds of miles as the bird flew. It seemed impossible that Kylon could have been transported there from Iramis in the blink of an eye.

  Though he had seen stranger things.

  Two archways led from the courtyard. One seemed opened into another, larger courtyard, while the second led to the base of one of the massive towers. Kylon hesitated, trying to decide which direction to take. The interior of the fortress might hold clothing and food and warmth, but the courtyard could lead him closer to an exit. But if Caina was here, she might be imprisoned inside the fortress, and…

  A glint of metal caught his eye.

  An armored boot lay in the next courtyard.

  There was a spreading pool of fresh blood next to the boot.

  Kylon lifted his right hand and called his valikon to his grasp.

  The sword sprang into existence, a blade of ghostsilver with a delicately curved point, the flat of the weapon carved with Iramisian characters. Kylon was no valikarion, but after he had killed the Red Huntress, the valikon had bonded to him the way it might have bonded to a true valikarion, and he could summon it at will. The sword would penetrate any sorcerous ward and could destroy spirits of the underworld. The Iramisian characters upon the blade glowed, their forms blurred through the freezing white mist that encircled the sword.

  Kylon strode into the next courtyard, sword raised, and saw the corpses.

  Three men lay dead on the ground, their blood pooling beneath them. All three men had shaved heads, and all had a peculiar sigil carved into their foreheads, the symbol of a winged skull. Their armor was a strange carapace of close-fitting metal plates. In fact, the plates were so close-fitting that they had been grafted to their flesh like a second skin. His sorcery of water sensed the fading spells upon the armor, spells that would have given the dead men superhuman strength.

  Kylon had fought and killed soldiers like these several times before.

  The dead men were Adamant Guards, the elite soldiers of the Umbarian Order.

  Was this fortress a stronghold of the Umbarian Order? Caina and Kylon had dealt a serious defeat to the Order when they had killed the Umbarian magus Lord Cassander Nilas and caused Istarinmul to ally with the Emperor against the Order. And it was well-known that Caina and Kylon had killed Cassander. Had the vortex that had brought them here been an Umbarian trap? The Umbarian Order had wanted to kill Caina even before she had been exiled to Istarinmul, and after Cassander’s death, they would desire vengeance all the more.

  Kylon's sword hand clenched, gripping the hilt of his valikon. If the Umbarians had hurt Caina, he would make sure they regretted it.

  Then his brain caught up to his fears.

  If this was an Umbarian stronghold, then who had killed the Adamant Guards?

  That was a good question.

  Kylon knew firsthand that the Guards were t
enacious opponents and did not go down easily. He stepped closer, avoiding the puddles of blood, and looked at their wounds. All three men had been killed by sword blows to the neck, and one of the wounds was so deep that the Adamant Guard had nearly been beheaded. Caina couldn't have done that. She had a valikon of her own, but his wife simply didn’t have the raw physical strength to drive a sword blade that far into a man’s neck with a single blow, and all of these Guards had been killed with one powerful swing.

  So who had killed them?

  The presence of necromantic force brushed against his arcane senses.

  Kylon looked up as dark shapes emerged from an archway on the far side of the courtyard.

  They had the look of soldiers, but they had been dead for a long time, and their leathery, cracked flesh stretched over yellowing bone. The creatures wore rusted armor and carried ancient swords. Kylon had fought undead creatures multiple times, and he sensed the necromantic power that animated the walking corpses. His first thought was that the Umbarians had raised the creatures, but these things looked as if they had been dead for centuries, and the spells upon them were ancient.

  Maybe this place wasn’t an Umbarian fortress. Perhaps the Adamant Guards had been summoned here by the same spell that had brought Kylon. But he didn’t think those undead had killed the Adamant Guards. The three Adamant Guards would have been enough to take down all seven of the undead without more than a few minor wounds.

  The undead soldiers rushed towards Kylon, and he had no more time for thought.