The Guard looked at the staff and sneered. It was too thin to be a useful weapon, and Caina pointed the end at his face. The Guard advanced, and Caina held her ground.
A heartbeat later, the end of the staff burst into a brilliant glow at her mental command. The Guard was looking right at it, and he stumbled as the light dazzled his eyes. Caina darted forward, dodging around the Guard’s furious thrust, and swung her valikon. The Guard almost avoided her strike, but the ghostsilver blade clipped his shaved head.
He staggered from the weight of his armor, and that made it easy to bring the valikon down against the back of his neck.
Caina stepped back, breathing hard, looking at the men she had just killed as her pyrikon collapsed back into its bracelet form around her wrist.
It was her wedding night. Her damned wedding night. Why did she have to fight for her life on her wedding night? Though she had to admit it wasn’t inconsistent with the rest of her life. She could just imagine what Morgant might have said.
Caina shook her head, dismissed her valikon, and jogged back up the broad stairs to Morett’s corpse. She took a moment to search it and found a small pouch carrying Imperial denarii, which she pocketed. Kylon was always a little appalled when she calmly went about looting the dead, but the dead had no further need of money, and if Caina escaped the fortress, she would need coin. She also took Morett’s dagger, an unremarkable blade of normal steel, since she might need a dagger and could hardly cut her meat with the valikon.
Unfortunately, he had nothing else useful on him. For a moment Caina considered taking his medallion and his greatcoat and disguising herself as an Umbarian magus but discarded the idea. For one thing, any Umbarian magi in this fortress likely knew each other at sight. For another, the valikon had ripped a hole in the front of Morett’s black coat, and that would be obvious at once.
He carried no clues indicating what the Umbarians were doing here.
But his conversation with the Guards had given something away, hadn’t it? Wherever this twisted fortress was, the Umbarians had come here to claim a relic of some kind. Whatever the relic was, Caina had to assume that it was powerful and dangerous.
After the Staff and Seal of Iramis, the Conjurant Bloodcrystal, the Subjugant Bloodcrystal, the Throne of Corazain, and all the other dangerous weapons of sorcery she had encountered, Caina had hoped to never again find an ancient relic of arcane power.
Apparently, that hope was not going to be realized.
She looked at the massive doors at the end of the wide corridor. They were bound with thick bars of iron, and while they were not locked, that didn’t matter. Potent spells bound them closed. Morett had only been a magus of average strength, and he wouldn’t have been able to make a dent in those sorcerous defenses. It would either take a sorcerer of great power or a team of weaker magi to break through the doors.
Caina looked at the dead robed creatures. Black slime leaked from their wounds. Had they been the ones to create the ward on the doors? It seemed this fortress belonged to them, and the Umbarians had invaded the citadel to seize the relic.
The valikon could break through those wards with ease, but it didn’t matter. Caina had no intention of digging out whatever blood-drenched old relic was behind those doors. She could find another way out of this place.
She turned, intending to go around the corner and back up the stairs.
Sorcerous auras flickered before her sight.
Caina froze, trying to make sense of the auras.
They were radiating from the top of the stairs, and they were coming closer.
As she looked, she realized that the auras were similar to the one she had seen around the first robed creature.
A dozen of the things were coming down the stairs.
Caina looked at the dead Adamant Guards before the doors. Some of them had been killed by the destroyed undead. Others looked as if their flesh had been twisted and withered by sorcery. Undoubtedly, they had been killed by the robed creatures.
Morett had thought Caina might be something called a Temnoti. Was that a nation or a tribe?
Or was that the name of the twisted creatures?
Caina didn’t know. She did know, however, that she couldn’t fight twelve of the robed things. Caina also doubted that the creatures would bother to distinguish between her and the Umbarians, which meant she had to get away from them.
And that left only one way out.
“Oh,” muttered Caina, walking towards the doors. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”
She lifted the valikon and drove the blade into the crack between the doors. The hilt grew hot beneath her hands, almost too painful to hold, and Caina braced herself and forced the sword down. Wisps of smoke rose from the thick wood, and the ward began to snap and flicker, almost like a banner caught in the wind.
Then there was a flash of harsh green light, and the ward collapsed.
Caina wrenched her valikon free and stepped back, wisps of white smoke rising from the ghostsilver blade. To the vision of the valikarion, the threads of power that made up the ward jerked back and forth like cut ropes. Already the ward was rebuilding itself. Caina pushed on the right-hand door. It was heavy, but she strained, and it swung open a few feet.
She slipped through the gap, and the door boomed shut behind her, the ward relocking over the door.
Fearing she had trapped herself, she took a deep breath and looked around.
She found herself in another small courtyard, and two more doors opened on the left wall and the right wall, so at least she wasn’t trapped. A stone plinth stood in the center of the courtyard, holding a twelve-foot-tall bronze statue of a proud warrior in armor. Before the statue stood a smaller pedestal, and atop it…
A powerful necromantic aura radiated from thing atop the pedestal.
Caina stepped forward, valikon raised, and looked at the object atop the short pillar of stone.
It was a ring.
It looked like a nobleman’s signet ring, thick and heavy, but unlike most signet rings, it was made from gray iron rather than gold. It had a massive emerald set into the band, and someone with great skill had carved the emerald into the sigil of a dragon’s roaring head. Necromantic sorcery radiated from the ring, fell and powerful.
A lot of necromantic sorcery…and as Caina examined the aura, she thought it was related to the aura hanging over the entire fortress. It seemed kin to the black veins pulsing through the walls, to the robed creatures that she had seen.
Similar, yet much stronger.
Her eyes moved from the ring to the statue of the warrior standing over it.
No, not a warrior. A king, she thought. The statue displayed a proud-looking man wearing armor of an archaic design common in the eastern Empire – Kagari, most likely. His face was lean and cruel, 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.
Whoever had cast the statue had been a brilliant sculptor. There was a cold vitality to the image, a restless energy and cruelty. If the representation was accurate, that king had been a powerful and dangerous man in life.
Caina looked at the statue’s ring, and then the ring upon the plinth. The statue’s ring had the same dragon seal carved into the bronze.
Which meant that the ring upon the plinth had once belonged to the king whose bronze statue stood before her.
This ring had to be what the Umbarians had come here to claim.
Caina didn’t know what the ring was or what it could do, but it was powerful. And if the Umbarians wanted it, they intended to use it work evil. Cassander Nilas had almost destroyed Istarinmul with the Throne of Corazain, and she shuddered to think of the destruction he could have wrought with the Staff and the Seal of Iramis.
She started to reach for it, and suddenly she felt that the ring was aware of
her, that it knew she was a valikarion and it hated her for it. Caina stopped, staring at the ring. Its emerald dragon seal glowed with a harsh green light, identical to the green light she had seen before from necromantic spells.
Caina scooped it up, the metal icy against her palm. The necromantic aura pulsed and shrank into the cold metal of the ring, and she felt another wave of alien, furious rage from the relic.
“Yes,” murmured Caina. “You don’t like that, do you?”
The thing had a will of its own, she was sure of it. Her pyrikon had a will and a power of its own since it was a spirit of defense bound in material form. Had a malevolent spirit been bound within ring?
Whatever the source of its power, she didn’t want the Umbarians to have the ring.
She glanced back, and beyond the warded doors she saw the auras of the robed creatures drawing near. Another few moments and they would find her, and she suspected they would take exception to her theft of the ring.
Best to be gone.
Caina looked at the bronze statue of the cruel-faced king one last time, turned, and picked the door on the left. It was a massive slab of wood and metal, bound with both iron bars and spells. In the center of the door was a massive lock fused to the door. The sorcerous flows centered upon an indentation in the center of the lock.
An indentation that looked exactly like the dragon seal upon the ring.
Caina pressed the ring into the lock.
The door shuddered, the spells flaring with power, and she heard bolts clang and gears turn. The door swung open, revealing a long corridor that led deeper into the fortress.
Caina hurried onward. The door swung shut behind her, and she continued down the corridor, the black veins in the walls throbbing.
Chapter 4: A Lost Girl
Caina hesitated, looking around the windswept courtyard.
She wasn’t sure, but she thought heard a voice.
The corridor had led her to another locked door, which the iron ring had opened for her. Caina still wasn’t sure that taking the necromantic relic had been a good idea, but if it opened the fortress’s locked doors, she might need it to escape. Beyond the locked door was another wide courtyard, this one filled with a dead garden, the plants and bushes nothing more than dry sticks clawing from the earth. Towers rose around the courtyard, covered in webs of black veins and tumorous growths. The sky overhead shifted back and forth between the cold winter’s night and the writhing, cloud-choked sky of the netherworld.
Caina wasn’t sure, but she thought the sky was looking more and more like the sky of the netherworld. Did that mean the fortress was shifting back all the way into the netherworld? If Caina did not find an exit soon, she might be trapped here.
If she did not find Kylon soon, they might both be trapped here.
She had crossed to the middle of the courtyard, looking for a way out, when the frightened voice reached her ears.
It was a girl’s voice, and she shouted in a language that Caina did not recognize. Caina froze, looking around, but nothing moved in the dead courtyard, and nothing moved on the towers and ramparts overhead, save for the odd shadows cast by the sky’s constant shifting.
The voice was coming from an archway behind a pillared arcade. The girl shouted again, her voice rising with fear. A second voice answered her, and that voice made Caina’s skin crawl. There was a twisted, alien quality to the voice. If the black veins and tumorous growths clinging to the walls could have spoken, Caina thought, they would have a voice like that.
The girl shouted again. She was trying to sound threatening, but the fear overrode the anger.
Caina made up her mind and headed towards the archway. She ducked behind a pillar and peered through the archway, holding her valikon behind her back to conceal its light.
Behind the archway opened yet another large room that had the look of a ballroom, with a polished floor of gleaming marble and tall windows that looked over the twisted fortress and the flickering sky. Caina glimpsed ancient chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, heavy with dust and cobwebs. Four undead warriors like those she had seen earlier stood in the ballroom, ancient swords in skeletal hands. Behind them stood one of the robed creatures. Instead of a left hand, a thick tentacle covered in glistening suckers emerged from the voluminous sleeve. The creature’s face was a misshapen horror of pincers and waving antenna, with three unblinking black eyes over its snapping pincers.
All three of the black eyes were fixed on a girl of about fifteen.
She was pretty with soft brown eyes, albeit with the lankiness of a girl who hadn’t quite finished growing yet, with long black hair bound in an intricate braid. She was wearing trousers, heavy boots, a thick jacket, and a heavy cloak. In her left hand, she held a torch, and her right hand held a lump of white crystal that gave off a sputtering yellow light.
Raw terror filled the girl’s expression, the dread of someone just inches from breaking down entirely.
And she was using sorcery.
Not with any degree of skill, and not powerfully. But to the vision of the valikarion, it was as plain as a flame in the darkness. The sorcerous aura looked like a far weaker version of Kylon’s, and Caina realized the girl was trying to use the sorcery of water to keep the robed thing at bay. There was also a weak sorcerous aura coming from the rough crystal in her right hand.
Nevertheless, the sputtering yellow light was holding the undead warriors at bay. Every time they tried to reach for her, the crystal flared, and they reeled black. The robed creature did not seem to like the light as well, and its gray, glistening right hand came up to shield its black eyes. All the while, the creature kept speaking in that harsh language, and the girl screamed back at him in the same tongue. Caina did not recognize the language, but some words sounded Szaldic, and others Kagari. A language of the eastern Empire, perhaps?
The crystal flared and went dark, and the undead rushed at the girl. She waved her torch, but they knocked it aside and seized her arms, forcing the girl to her knees. Her courage at last broke, and she started screaming the lost, desperate scream of a frightened child. The robed creature loomed over her, a gloating note entering its rasping voice, and it reached down and caressed the side of the girl’s head with a tentacle. That drove the girl into a horrified frenzy, and she tried to break free, but the undead held her fast.
Then she fell silent, staring at Caina in sudden incomprehension.
While the undead had overpowered the girl, Caina had glided up behind the robed creature in silence. The undead holding the girl were looking right at Caina, but they could not perceive a valikarion, and the robed thing’s attention was on the kneeling girl. The robed creature stiffened, realized that something was wrong, and started to turn.
Before it did, Caina drove the valikon into its back. The robed creature loosed a hideous scream, black slime spraying from its mouth. She wrenched the valikon free and stepped back, the white fire on the blade burning away the creature’s blood. It staggered to face her, starting a spell, and Caina ripped the valikon across its throat.
That proved fatal, and the creature collapsed, black slime pooling around it. The undead released the girl, and Caina went on the attack, cutting down the undead warriors. Since they couldn’t see her, it was easy, and a few seconds later the last of the bones and ancient armor clattered away.
The girl got to her feet, staring at Caina with enormous eyes.
“Arvaltyr,” she said, her voice awed.
“Hello,” said Caina, speaking in Istarish out of habit.
The girl said another sentence in the harsh language.
“Do you speak High Nighmarian?” said Caina, switching to that tongue. The girl kept staring at her. “Or do you speak Kyracian?” She switched again. “Do you speak Anshani?” She changed languages once more. “Or maybe do you speak Caerish?”
The girl stirred with recognition at the final sentence and spoke in a halting voice.
“The…language of the traders, yes?” said the girl
in Caerish. “The traders from the Empire speak that language when they come to Kostiv. Uncle Ivan said I had to learn it so I could be married someday.”
“I see,” said Caina. “Is that where we are? Kostiv?”
The girl let out a wild, terrified laugh. “What? No. You cannot be real. You must be a phantasm sent to torment me.”
“Why is that?” said Caina.
“An Arvaltyr who speaks the traders’ language and not the mother tongue of Ulkaar?” said the girl. “No. You must not be real. You must be a phantasm.”
Ulkaar? Caina knew that name. Ulkaar was in the hinterlands of the northeastern Empire, nearly twelve hundred miles from Iramis. Her lost love Corvalis Aberon, slain defending her life and saving the world, had carried tattoos given to him by an Ulkaari witchfinder, tattoos that gave a measure of resistance to sorcery. Caina had never been to Ulkaar, and save for Corvalis, she had only spoken to a few men from Ulkaar. From what she had heard, either the Ulkaari provinces had remained neutral between the Emperor and the Umbarian Order, or they were contested in the war. Had the strange black vortex brought Caina to Ulkaar? If the girl was a native of Ulkaar, she might prove a valuable guide.
Caina considered the girl, her eyes noting details – the mud-splattered boots, the way her clothes were too large for her, the heavy pack over her shoulders, the marks of sweat around her collar, the dark circles under her eyes. The girl looked as if she had fled for her life in haste. And the flicker of water sorcery kept appearing around her…
Ah. That was it. She was trying to sense Caina’s presence, and she could not. No doubt that was why she thought Caina was a phantasm. Likely the girl had been born with the ability to use water sorcery and had employed it on an intuitive level to sense the emotions of those around her without understanding what she was doing.
“I can prove to you that I’m not a phantasm,” said Caina.
Ghost in the Ring (Ghost Night Book 1) Page 5
