She snarled, snatched her crossbow, and ran for the door. If the damned wretched boyar wanted to claim her life, then Sophia wanted to die with her hands on his throat and her lips spitting defiance into his stupid ugly face.
In her rage, Sophia Zomanek had found her courage.
###
All at once, the course of the battle changed.
Razdan pounded up the street to the market, his three remaining pack brothers following him, Kylon and Sebastian cutting their way through the trapped mavrokhi as they started to pursue. The two men might have been sorcerers and warriors of skill, but the Hounds of the Iron King were faster, and Razdan and his men outpaced them. Caina was standing in the center of the market, no doubt waiting to see how the battle would end, and then she turned to run.
And as she did, she slipped.
Razdan could hardly believe it.
It was sheer dumb luck, the random chance that sometimes ruled the fate of nations and empires. But this time, random chance had favored Razdan Nagrach. Nothing could stop him before he killed her. He would do it as swiftly as possible. No games, no chance to savor her torment, not even a moment to decide what color her strange eyes really were. He would just rip out her throat, take the Ring, and flee.
Then he would see how Kylon and Sebastian and the wretched peasants of Kostiv fared against the Syvashar.
Razdan roared in triumph and surged forward.
###
Pain went through Caina’s head in waves, followed by sheer panic.
She had to get up!
Caina shoved off the ground and jumped to her feet. A wave of dizziness almost took her back down, but she kept her balance.
That was just as well because it let her take a good look at the four mavrokhi charging towards her. They were fast, terrifyingly fast. Caina took an automatic step back and then realized there was no way she could outrun them, no way she could get to the mill before they caught her.
It was almost funny. All those legends and tales about her, and Caina would die because she had slipped in the snow. She glimpsed the white flames as Kylon and Seb ran up the street to intercept the mavrokhi, but she knew they would come too late.
There was only one thing left to do.
Caina held out her right hand and called her valikon. Seb had the weapon, but he didn’t need it at the moment, and the shards of silver light assembled themselves into the sword in Caina’s hand. She braced herself, eyes fixed on the lead mavrokh. Perhaps she could take Razdan with her in death.
But Kylon would see her die. He had seen his first wife die at the hands of the Red Huntress, and now he would have to see her die in front of him…
Then someone started screaming, a high, shrill shriek of pure rage.
Caina turned her head and saw Sophia running at her, clutching a crossbow. Ever since Caina had met the girl, Sophia’s expression had been a wooden mask to conceal her fear, her eyes tense and wary. Now her eyes all but bulged with rage…and her arcane aura lashed and snarled around her. Her untrained sorcerous talent had risen in response to her wrath, and wisps of freezing mist danced around her fingers and trailed from her sleeves.
Razdan glanced at Sophia as she approached, and though his face had become lupine and alien, Caina still saw the flicker of contempt.
Sophia leveled her crossbow and pulled the trigger.
She was a better shot than Caina would have thought. Maybe Ivan had taken her hunting. The crossbow quarrel punched into Razdan’s side, rocking the mavrokh, and Razdan growled in irritation, his yellow eyes glaring as his fanged head swung towards Sophia.
Then Razdan started roaring in pain.
An arcane aura flickered around the crossbow quarrel embedded in the boyar’s side, the fur around it turning white with frost. Kylon sheathed weapons in freezing mist with his water sorcery, and in her mad rage, Sophia had just done the same, albeit far more crudely. Razdan rocked back again, roaring in enraged agony, and the other three mavrokhi hesitated, looking at the girl in sudden alarm.
Sophia had given Caina one last chance.
“Run!” said Caina, grabbing Sophia’s arm and spinning her towards the mill.
Something like lucidity came into Sophia’s expression. She dropped the crossbow, and together they sprinted for the mill. Caina slammed into the doors at full speed, and they popped open with a squeal of hinges. Within the mill was a large, barn-like space, with the gears and machinery of the river-powered grindstones on the far wall. There was a loft with a narrow ladder, built so the miller could access the machinery if it happened to jam. A window in the wall above the loft overlooked the river, and a lit lantern and a coiled rope waited next to the window.
Sophia’s eyes widened again.
“By the Divine,” she said, half-amazed, half-terrified, “what did you do?”
The inhuman cries of rage came through the door behind them.
“Go!” said Caina, pushing Sophia towards the ladder.
###
Razdan ripped the freezing quarrel from his side and threw it to the ground. At least he didn’t need to worry about bleeding out. The damned girl’s sudden display of sorcery had frozen the wound shut, and already his mavrokh’s power was healing the damage.
But he was angry, so angry that he wanted to release his mavrokh’s fury and start killing everything in sight. Only by dint of great effort did he keep himself under control.
“My lord?” said Balmin into his thoughts. “Are you well?”
“Kill them!” screamed Razdan. “Follow them into the mill and kill them!”
He ran forward, and the three others followed him. Razdan burst into the mill and looked around. The sight was familiar to him since millers were thieving scoundrels, and he had often inspected the mill to make sure the taxes were being paid. He recognized the grindstones, the machinery attached to the water wheel, the wooden bins for grain, the coal dust that lay scattered over everything like black snow…
Wait. Coal dust?
And cooking oil in puddles here and there.
The air was also heavy with dust from the grindstones. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to kick it up into the air. Why hadn’t Razdan smelled it? Both coal dust and cooking oil had distinctive smells that even a normal nose could detect from a long way off.
The turpentine. The odor of the turpentine had masked everything.
Razdan looked towards the loft and saw Caina standing with one foot in the window, a rope dangling from her right hand.
In her left hand, she held a lit glass lantern.
Razdan stared at the lantern’s flame for half a second, puzzled.
And then, in a horrified instant, he understood.
He understood it all.
“Stop her!” he roared. “Stop her before…”
Caina jumped out the window, still holding the rope, and in the same motion, she threw the lantern. It tumbled end over end, the flame dancing within, and fell to the floor.
The glass shattered, and the fire within spread across the floor in a little puddle.
Razdan could not look away from the flame.
It exploded in all directions.
###
Caina’s boots hit the frozen river, the ice creaking beneath her. Sophia stood a few feet away from the rope, staring at the window as if she expected Razdan to burst from it.
“Get down!” said Caina, grabbing Sophia and propelling her towards a section of the mill’s stone wall without any windows. She crouched low, and Sophia followed suit.
Then the world shook beneath her.
The mill heaved and bucked, and fiery light filled the sky, reflecting off the clouds and the falling snow. A colossal roaring sound boomed into the night, and a gale of hot air screamed past them and onto the river, the ice creaking with the sudden heat.
At last Caina opened her eyes and looked up.
The mill’s thick walls stood intact, which had just saved her life and Sophia’s life. But the explosion had torn off the roof, and the interior had
become an inferno. Caina heard a horrible howling noise and realized that it was a mavrokh screaming as it burned alive.
“How?” croaked Sophia.
Caina blinked and tried to clear her ringing, throbbing head. “How?”
“How did you make the mill explode?” said Sophia.
“Made sure there was a lot of dust in the air,” said Caina. “Flour dust. Burns quickly. That and coal dust. Add some cooking oil to the floor after the dust is in the air, and…” She spread her hands to pantomime an explosion. “Did that once in a Master Slaver’s palace for a distraction. Morgant the Razor would laugh. I had to burn down another building.”
“Morgant the what?” said Sophia.
“Never mind.” Caina shook her head, got to her feet, and called her valikon back to her hand. “Come on. This isn’t over yet.”
###
Slowly, slowly, Razdan Nagrach swam back to consciousness.
He almost wished he hadn’t.
Agony filled him. He was still in wolf-form, but burns covered every inch of his body. His mavrokh was healing them, but slowly, slowly. Razdan had also broken both of his hind legs and about half of his ribs.
Rudjak, Bashkir, and Balmin weren’t as lucky. Their final screams faded away inside Razdan’s head as the mill fire took them, their mavrokhi spirits released to fade back into the netherworld.
Only sheer chance had saved Razdan’s life. He had been standing in front of the door when the mill had exploded, so the blast had thrown him from the mill and into the market. In the process, he had clipped the door frame, shattering his ribs, and the landing had broken both of his rear legs.
But he was healing. He just needed a little time. Once he was whole, he would find Caina, he would rip out her throat and take the Ring and…
Fresh agony exploded through him, and white fire blazed before his eyes.
Razdan screamed…and his mavrokh screamed within him. The spirit seemed to unravel and shred inside of his head, and then it was gone, just gone. Molten agony rolled through Razdan as his body shrank back into its human form, and he lay on his back in the market, the snow falling around him seeming to glow in the light from the flames.
A valikon jutted from his chest, and above the valikon he saw Caina, her hand grasping the hilt.
Razdan stared at her, in too much pain to move or to speak or even to breathe, and suddenly his agonized, delirious mind fixed upon a stray thought.
Those blue eyes. Razdan knew what color they really were.
They were the color of death.
All this time, they had been the color of death.
Specifically, his.
“I did warn you,” said Caina.
The shadows swallowed Razdan Nagrach, and he knew nothing more.
Chapter 20: Liegewoman
It snowed the rest of the night, all the next day, and part of the next night.
Caina had never seen so much snow in her life.
Any enchantment she felt at the sight of Ulkaar’s snow-cloaked landscape was soon eroded by the sheer damned difficulty of moving about in two and a half feet of snow. Maybe it was just as well that Razdan had attacked when he did. Otherwise, they would have had to fight each other during a blizzard. She could just imagine having to write the boyar another message, asking him to hold off his attack due to poor weather.
But even with the snow, there was still a lot of work to do.
Sophia vomited and then collapsed a few moments after Caina finished off Razdan. At first, Caina had feared the girl had been hurt, but Kylon and Seb had arrived right after that and carried her to the White Boar.
“It’s her power,” said Seb as he grasped Sophia under the knees, while Kylon’s hands went under her arms. “She’s exhausted herself. Strong emotion, as you have no doubt seen, can fuel sorcerous power.”
“She looked like she wanted to tear apart the boyar with her bare hands,” said Caina. By the Divine, she was tired, and her head throbbed where it had bounced off the ground. Even if she hadn’t hit her head, she still would have had a headache from the stink of all that turpentine.
She wasn’t going to complain, though. The turpentine had worked, masking the smell of the trap until it was too late for Razdan and his surviving Hounds to retreat.
“Everyone has a breaking point,” said Kylon. “I think Sophia reached hers and decided that she was going to go down fighting.”
“This won’t kill her, will it?” said Caina, pushing open the White Boar’s door and holding it as Kylon and Seb carried her inside.
“No,” said Seb. “It’s just sorcerous overexertion. I had it happen a few times during my training. She will sleep for a day or two and then wake up with a nasty headache.”
“But she needs to be trained,” said Kylon. “She has a strong arcane talent, and if powerful emotion caused her power to erupt once, it is going to start happening with greater frequency. If she doesn’t get some training, the next time she’s frightened or angry or even happy, she might hurt herself or someone else.”
Caina nodded. It was something else to consider.
After that, Magur, Valexis, Ivan and the other leading men of Kostiv came to the White Boar to find out what had happened, and Caina told them the news.
“Then…then the boyar is truly dead?” said Valexis.
“He was set on fire, caught in an explosion, and then stabbed through the heart, Brother,” said Seb. “I assure you that he is quite thoroughly dead.”
“By the Divine,” croaked Magur, his eyes wide. “By the Divine. He…he truly is dead?”
Caina nodded, watching the old burgomaster. “He is. And all his szlachts, too.”
Magur started to totter, and she and Valexis stepped forward and guided the burgomaster to one of the benches.
Magur started to weep, but they were tears of relief, not sorrow.
“It’s been a nightmare,” said Magur. “I knew he was going to kill my girls, but I couldn’t do anything to stop him. No one could do anything to stop him. Thank you. Oh, by the Divine, thank you.”
Once Magur had mastered himself, the discussion turned to what to do next. Razdan Nagrach had never married, and despite his frequent liaisons, he had never fathered any children. By the ancient law of Ulkaar, Castle Kostiv and the title of boyar would pass to his nearest surviving relative, who turned out to be…
“You?” said Caina, surprised.
Grim old Ivan Zomanek managed to look embarrassed, even chagrined. “Yes, I fear. The Zomanek family used to be House Zomanek, and our ancestors were szlachts in service to the Boyar of Kostiv. We fell on hard times three generations back, and the family turned to blacksmithing to support ourselves. Which we have done quite well, thank you. But we’re still noble. Else I would have given Sophia to the Temple to put her out of reach of Razdan.”
“Then Castle Nagrach and its lands are now yours,” said Magur.
Caina frowned. “Will you have any trouble from the other nobles? The Voivode of Vagraastrad, perhaps? Razdan was one of his supporters.”
“Likely not, so long as we are careful,” said Ivan. “Kostiv is very remote from the rest of Ulkaar, and the Voivode…well, he might have welcomed Razdan’s support, but he didn’t like the man.”
Seb snorted. “What a shocking surprise.”
“If we send the Voivode our taxes on a regular basis, he will be content, I think,” said Magur. “I have met the Voivode, and he frankly seems more interested in crushing the Boyar of Risiviri than anything else. We shall send him a message saying that Boyar Razdan was killed while hunting,” Caina supposed that was true enough, “and that his nearest relative claimed the castle. If we pay our taxes on time, I doubt he will care.”
“That is good to hear,” said Caina. From what she had heard of the Voivode of Vagraastrad, he seemed like a man dreaming of becoming a great power in the world. So long as a backwater place like Kostiv did not make trouble for him, he would likely leave the townsmen alone.
Nothing was
certain in this world, of course. But Caina did not want to leave Kostiv worse off than she had found it.
The burgomaster and the new boyar took over the conversation, discussing how best to repair the damage from the fighting and how Ivan would take control of Castle Nagrach once the weather cleared. Ivan and Magur had been friends for years, and Caina thought they would work well together.
Later she slipped away to go to sleep, and Kylon joined her.
“I think,” he said as he lay down next to her, “we did a good thing today.”
“Did we?” said Caina.
“Yes,” said Kylon. “Razdan wouldn’t have stopped until someone stopped him. Even if he had chosen the wiser course and decided to let us leave with Sophia and the others, he would have chosen new victims for his Hunt as soon as we were gone.”
“He would have,” said Caina. She frowned.
“Something troubles you,” said Kylon.
There was no point in hiding things from him. He knew her too well for that, and since they were touching, he could sense her emotions anyway.
“I wonder why he didn’t back down,” said Caina.
Kylon shrugged and then yawned. “He couldn’t. He was young and stupid and proud, and he couldn’t back down without losing too much face.”
“That’s probably it,” said Caina. “But he still should have run once he realized the trap. He could have escaped if he had wanted to, but he didn’t.”
Kylon shrugged. “Not everyone is as clever as you are, wife.”
Caina laughed. “That’s very kind, but I wonder…I wonder if someone sent him after us.”
Kylon shifted. “To get the Ring back, you mean.”
“Yes.” Caina stared at the ceiling. “I think someone sent that ardivid after us in the woods as well. We both saw that hooded shadow. Someone had to turn Razdan and his friends into mavrokhi. If the Temnoti are followers of the old ways, then they were the ones who transformed the boyar into a mavrokh…and they might be trying to get the Ring back. And they might have sent Razdan after us to take the Ring.”
Ghost in the Ring (Ghost Night Book 1) Page 29
