Ghost in the Ring (Ghost Night Book 1)

by Jonathan Moeller

  “Then it seems we are doomed to die no matter what we do,” said Brother Valexis. “Perhaps there is nothing left for us to do but to make our peace with the Divine.”

  “There is another way,” said Caina.

  The leaders of Kostiv looked at her.

  “We kill Razdan Nagrach,” said Caina.

  “That is far easier said than done,” said Valexis.

  “Yes,” said Caina, “but it can be done.”

  “You seem so confident,” said Magur, his face slack with fear and exhaustion.

  “Because I am,” said Caina. “Varlov is dead, and he didn’t fall and crack his head, did he? Kylon killed him. Varlov died on the edge of a valikon, and so can Razdan Nagrach and the rest of his thugs.”

  “But you took them off-guard,” said Valexis. “They won’t make the same mistake twice.”

  “Of course they won’t,” said Caina. “Which means we’ll have to be cleverer this time.”

  “My lady,” said Magur, hesitant. “I don’t doubt that you are truly a valikarion. To the end of my days, I will never forget the sight of that valikon burning in your hand. But…you must think me an appalling coward. I wish had the vigor of old Ivan, and he is half a cripple. But we cannot fight the boyar. If we do, he will kill us all.”

  “Burgomaster,” said Caina in a soft voice. “I’m afraid you don’t have any choice but to fight. Even if we had never come to Kostiv, even if Sophia had been killed by the undead in the forest, you still would have had no choice but to fight. The boyar will not stop. The mavrokh spirit within him will not stop. I have encountered such spirits before, along with men and women evil enough to invite those creatures into their flesh. Their lust for death will override the judgment of their hosts. Razdan Nagrach likely will not stop until he has killed most of Kostiv. Eventually, he would have pushed you too far, and you would have fought back, and then he would have killed you all.”

  Magur stared at Caina, and Sophia did not need to use her abilities to sense the despair radiating from the old burgomaster. Valexis had the weary sorrow of an old man approaching death. Even Ivan seemed grimmer than usual.

  “Then what are we to do?” said Magur.

  “You have no choice but to fight,” said Caina, “but this is the best moment you will ever have. The boyar has shown his true self to you. And you have two valikons wielded by a valikarion and a Kyracian stormdancer, along with an Imperial battle magus.”

  “Three against sixteen?” said Magur.

  “We will fight,” said Ivan. “Those of us who are sick of the boyar’s tyranny will fight alongside you, Arvaltyr. But I fear we can do little against the mavrokhi.”

  “I’ll give you a choice, burgomaster,” said Caina. “If you tell us to go, we’ll go. We’ll take our chances in the forests.” She rolled her hand, and the valikon appeared in her fingers, assembling itself from shards of silver light. “But if you let us stay, we will fight…and maybe we’ll be able to kill Razdan Nagrach for you.”

  Her voice was compelling. It reminded Sophia of the speech she had made at the Sanctuary Stone when she had talked about the Great Necromancers and Cassander Nilas and all the other terrible enemies that she and Lord Kylon had survived.

  And it was working. Sophia sensed the flickers of faint, disbelieving hope coming from the others. It was the same faint, disbelieving hope she had felt at the Sanctuary Stone. Somehow Caina was making them believe.

  Sophia would have thought that Caina was a sorceress, save that she sensed no arcane power around the woman.

  “All right,” said Magur. The burgomaster drew himself up. “All right, then. For my daughters. If the boyar will torment us until we have no choice but to fight…then by the Divine, he shall have a fight.”

  “I have been waiting two years to hear you say that, Magur,” said Ivan.

  Magur sighed. “I suppose there are worse ways to die than fighting side-by-side with the Arvaltyri of legend.”

  “What?” said Caina. “No. I don’t want any of you to die. And I don’t want to fight the boyar. I want to kill him.”

  Valexis blinked. “What…what do you mean?”

  Caina smiled. “I have a plan.”

  Chapter 17: Gambling

  The militia of Kostiv came alive under Caina’s commands.

  It did amuse Kylon a little. He had seen Caina do this kind of thing before, after all, with Cronmer's circus and the undead of the Inferno.

  And Caina was doing the same thing once again.

  The men of Kostiv had no reason, no reason at all to listen to Caina, but listen they did. Part of it was their own history. The valikarion were so thoroughly embedded into the legend of Ulkaar that when an actual valikarion showed up holding an actual valikon, they wanted to obey. Kylon supposed it was as if the First Emperor Nicokator had turned up at Malarae to issue commands to the Legions, or if the ancient Archons of Old Kyrace had come to the Assembly to guide the Kyracian people.

  And some of it was simple desperation.

  Everyone knew what the boyar intended to do with the girls and women he took for his Hunt. Razdan Nagrach would choose another seven women next year. The people of Kostiv were not even remotely warlike, but desperation drove them to heed the warnings of the strange valikarion who had appeared among them.

  Part of Kylon was amused by it, but part of him was chilled. He loved Caina with all his heart, but he knew that she was extraordinarily ruthless when she felt it justified. Kylon had told Seb that Caina had a stronger conscience and a greater tendency towards ruthlessness than he did, and once again he saw that the proof. Kylon could have left Kostiv without much self-recrimination. Razdan Nagrach was a monster and the Boyar’s Hunt an atrocity, but the world was full of monsters, and Kylon could not fight them all.

  But Caina’s conscience would not let her turn aside. And since her conscience would not let her turn back from the fight, she would use every weapon at hand to defeat Razdan Nagrach.

  Including the people of Kostiv.

  Nevertheless, there were three thousand people in Kostiv. Some of them might not view Caina’s plans with enthusiasm. Others might try to kill her to gain favor with the boyar. So Kylon accompanied Caina as she turned her plans into reality, watching for any sign of treachery.

  Sophia Zomanek accompanied them at Kylon’s insistence. It had occurred to him that the girl might make an easier target for any of the boyar’s loyalists, that kidnapping her and spiriting her away to Castle Nagrach was a possibility. Caina had agreed, and Sophia put up no argument. Perhaps she was relieved to stay close to Caina and Kylon. The girl’s emotional sense churned with a mixture of fear and guilt and hope and rage.

  First, they went to Ivan Zomanek’s blacksmith shop.

  Ivan might have suffered a crippled leg, but it had done nothing to impair the strength of his arms. He was a versatile smith, and horseshoes, pots, pans, shields, and axes hung on the walls of his shop. Ivan had four journeymen and ten apprentices, and they toiled at the forges, keeping the fires lit and the work continuing. Kylon supposed not even the threat of the boyar’s wrath slowed the demands of commerce. Likely the boyar and his household were one of Ivan’s biggest customers.

  “I don’t suppose,” said Caina, looking at the array of items on the walls, “that you could make throwing knives?”

  “Throwing knives?” grunted Ivan. “What a peculiar thought. Why would you throw a knife at someone? You’d be as likely to hit your enemy with the handle as the blade.”

  “Never mind,” said Caina. She stopped before a row of nasty-looking devices. The machines were rings of iron about two feet across, their circumference lined with sharpened teeth, a hinge on either side and a pressure plate in the center. “At the moment, I’m much more interested in these.”

  “Those?” Ivan limped closer. “Bear traps. You two!” Ivan pointed his cane at two of the apprentices, who obediently trotted over. “Demonstrate the trap for the Countess!”

  The apprentices took one of
the traps from the wall and set it on the sooty floor. One apprentice wrestled the jaws of the trap all the way open until they locked into place with a click. The second apprentice drew out a stick of firewood from the pile and pressed the end of the stick against the pressure plate.

  Again, Kylon heard the click, and the jaws snapped shut with a clang. They closed with enough force to snap the stick in two. The apprentice dropped the stub, and both pieces of the stick clattered against the floor.

  “Are bears a problem in Ulkaar?” said Caina.

  Sophia answered first. “Constantly. They infest the woods, and make off with our sheep and pigs.” She shuddered. “And sometimes malevolent spirits enter the bears and make them into monsters.”

  Kylon grunted. “Just as well we didn’t run into any of those things.”

  Sophia gave him a tremulous smile. “The undead and the Temnoti and the mavrokhi were bad enough, my lord.”

  “How many do you have?” said Caina, looking at the traps.

  “Right now?” said Ivan. “Twenty. Suppose we could make another ten by the end of the day if we push.”

  Caina nodded. “Are there any others in the town?”

  “Lots of the damned things,” said Ivan. “Everyone in town who farms outside the walls has at least two or three. I suppose we could gather a bunch more. How many do you want?”

  “Why, all of them.”

  After that, they went to the town’s carpentry shop. It was owned by one of Magur’s sons, a gaunt-faced man named Kiril with a receding hairline and a limp. The shop was about the size of a barn, and like Ivan, Kiril had a team of journeymen and apprentices laboring on various half-finished chairs and benches and tables.

  “Do you have any turpentine?” said Caina.

  Kylon had never heard of turpentine, but then the only kind of carpentry he understood was the kind involved in the construction of Kyracian warships.

  “It is a solvent, Lord Kylon,” said Sophia in a quiet voice as Kiril turned and limped to the wall. “Made from pine sap. The carpenters use it to strip paint from wooden walls.”

  Kiril wrestled over a wooden cask with a metal stopper and opened the top, taking a step back.

  At once the vile smell flooded Kylon’s nostrils. He grimaced and took a prudent step away, as did Caina and Sophia. The odor was vaguely like pine trees, but far, far fouler. A pine tree rotting in a swamp for a year might smell like that.

  “Yes,” said Caina. “Yes, that’s exactly what we need. How many casks of that do you have?”

  “Six, my lady,” said Kiril, the Ulkaari accent on his Caerish so thick that Kylon could barely understand him.

  “Splendid,” said Caina. “How much for all six?” Kiril named a price, and Caina paid him with coins taken from the ardivid’s undead warriors. “Oh, by the way, any sawdust sweepings that you have? I’ll want those, too.”

  Once Caina had purchased her collection of sawdust sweepings and turpentine casks, she went to the Temple.

  Kylon had expected the interior of the Temple to be solemn and austere, similar to the temples of the gods of the Empire. Instead, he found himself confronted with a riot of color, the walls painted with frescoes in bright golds and blues and reds. Each of the eight walls had been painted with a scene from the life of the Warmaiden. One displayed her escaping from slavery in the Iron King’s court. Another showed her learning the Words of Lore in Iramis. A third displayed the army she had gathered. A fourth showed the Warmaiden leading that host against the twisted towers of a castle Kylon recognized as Sigilsoara.

  Within the Temple, Brother Valexis oversaw the collection of sunstones from the town.

  “The townspeople were not happy to volunteer their sunstones,” said Valexis, looking at the rows of sunstones set before the altar. The altar was a massive block of stone carved with Iramisian symbols, and Iramisian seemed to serve as the language of the Temple of Ulkaar. It was yet another language which Kylon didn’t know, so it was just as well that Caina spoke the tongue. Behind the altar, a door opened into the Temple’s “garden,” though the garden was a row of shallow stone troughs in which sunstones were grown from specially prepared salts.

  “It is for the best,” said Caina. “How many can you spare from the Temple’s treasury?”

  “Twenty-seven in all,” said Valexis.

  Caina nodded. “Between that and what the townsmen have volunteered, that should be enough. Make sure these get in the sunlight for at least a few hours before we put them into position.”

  “I must warn you,” said Valexis. “The light of a sunstone will keep the undead at bay. It will do nothing against the mavrokhi.”

  “Oh, I know.” She flashed a smile at the old priest. “I’m counting on it, actually.”

  Once Caina finished at the Temple, they went to the main street that led from the northern gate to the town’s market. Halfway from the market to the gate, Magur supervised workmen as they constructed a wall. Well, it was more of a barricade, built out of overturned wagons, broken barrels, old tables, and whatever other debris could be found.

  “The work goes well, burgomaster,” said Caina.

  “Aye,” said Magur, wiping sweat from his forehead. The burgomaster of Kostiv was not too proud to get his hands dirty, which Kylon thought spoke well of him. “We’ll have this wall finished by sundown, don’t you fear.”

  “I know,” said Caina. “One way or another, we’ll see the end of this by the dawn.”

  She sounded optimistic, but Kylon knew her well enough to hear the grim warning in her words.

  “That barricade won’t slow them down,” said Kylon in a low voice once they were out of earshot. Sophia gave him an alarmed look. “If the mavrokhi are as strong as Varlov, they’ll jump right over it.”

  Caina nodded. “I hope they will. I want them to go in a specific direction. Hopefully, the barricade will encourage them. Let’s visit the river warehouse next. Magur mentioned they would have stored some coal from the mines there. After that, I want to look at that mill.”

  ###

  A few hours later, Caina walked through a narrow alley leading to the main street. In the distance, she heard the steady click as the townsmen labored to set the bear traps on the main street, heard the thud of hammers against wood. She cast a wary glance at the sky. They had enjoyed nearly a full afternoon of sunlight to fill up the soulstones, but the sun was dipping to the west…and the southern sky was a solid mass of gray clouds.

  A storm was coming, and it looked like a strong one. Sophia, Ivan, Magur, and all the other people of Kostiv were united in their opinion that a blizzard was coming and that it was probably a strong one. Brother Valexis thought that there might be a foot of snow on the ground by this time tomorrow, maybe more.

  And that meant Razdan Nagrach’s attack would come tonight.

  They were almost ready to meet the boyar’s attack. Or, at least, as ready as they ever could be. Caina wished she had a score of valikarion and a half-dozen Iramisian loremasters with her. Then they could have stormed Castle Nagrach and killed the boyar without risking the people of the town. Instead, Caina had Kylon, Sebastian Scorneus, a bag of tricks, and her own wits.

  She hoped that would be enough.

  They would find out soon.

  “Yes, torches and archers on the rooftops overlooking this alley,” said Caina, pointing. Kylon, Magur, and Sophia followed her, and Magur squinted at the rooftops. “When the boyar and his wolves come, I want them to meet a rain of arrows.”

  Magur looked dubious. “That will not slow them down much. It is said that the mavrokhi can shrug off wounds the way a normal man might shrug off a splinter.”

  “They can,” said Caina, “but enough splinters will still kill a man. And they will slow down the mavrokhi long enough for us to kill them.”

  Of course, if things went the way she wanted to them to go, they wouldn’t have to fight the mavrokhi hand-to-hand, or at least not many of them. But she had been in enough fights to know that batt
les rarely went according to plan. The day she had met Kylon, his sister Andromache and the Istarish emir Rezir Shahan had planned to conquer Marsis.

  They had all sorts of plans…and a few days later, they were dead, and Marsis was still in the hands of the Empire.

  “As you say, then,” said Magur. “I will round up every militiaman who has a bow and send them to the roof.”

  “I suggest that we only use those who have experience hunting in the wilderness,” said Caina.

  “There are no poachers in Kostiv,” said Magur. “The woods belong to the boyar.”

  Caina stared at him.

  Magur sighed again. “Well…maybe a few. I will go speak to them, and make sure they have torches and enough arrows.”

  The burgomaster walked away, leaving Caina and Kylon and Sophia alone in the alley.

  “It won’t work,” said Kylon in a quiet voice.

  “Oh?” said Caina. “Which part?” Truth be told, none of it might work. She thought she understood the boyar, and she thought she grasped what drove Razdan Nagrach.

  But she had been wrong before.

  “This alley,” said Kylon. “It will be too obvious. A torchlit alley lined by archers? The boyar might be rash, but I don’t think he is a stupid man. Between that and the barricade, he’ll see that you’re trying to lure him in this direction. A dozen mavrokhi would go right through that barricade.”

  “Probably,” said Caina. “At least, I hope that’s what will happen.”

  Kylon blinked and then snorted. “You want them to go in that direction.”

  “Yes,” said Caina. “I do.”

  “The turpentine,” said Sophia, understanding going over her face. “That’s why you took all of Kiril’s turpentine. It’s because they’re wolves.”

  “Aye,” said Caina, pleased that she had figured it out. “The mavrokhi spirits can sense the presence of others around them…but I don’t think they’ll sense a barrel or two of turpentine. And the Hounds hunt with their noses, I think. The boyar kept sniffing in my direction during our talk. At a guess, I think he was trying to smell me to determine my mood since he couldn’t sense me. Spill some turpentine over the ground, and they won’t be able to smell anything else for a while.” She looked at the sky, gauging the time. They had maybe two hours left before sundown, and Caina knew that the boyar and the mavrokhi would prefer to attack in the darkness. “Let’s head back to the market and check on Seb.”