“I knew you would turn against me eventually,” said Cassander, pointing his burning gauntlet at Caina, “so I was prepared. Istarinmul is going to burn, but you’re going to burn first.”
Cassander started to cast a spell, and Kylon was out of time. He sprang forward, raising the valikon over his head to bring it down with all the strength he could muster.
Somehow Cassander saw him coming. Maybe light had flashed off the blade of the valikon. Cassander whirled, his dark coat swirling around him, and his mismatched eyes widened. Caina yanked the ghostsilver dagger from her belt and charged, and Cassander let out a howl of fury and gestured.
Psychokinetic force exploded from him in all directions. It caught Kylon in mid-air and sent him sliding across the floor, and he just barely managed to stop himself before he touched the ring of necromantic sigils encircling the Throne. Caina hurtled backwards and slammed into the wall between two windows.
Kylon sprang back to his feet as Cassander began another spell.
###
Fury pulsed through Cassander as he summoned killing power.
The damned Huntress had betrayed him. The whole point of the little show with the fake Balarigars had been a distraction, a ruse to let her back into the tower without attracting his attention.
Well, she had his attention now. She would regret it sorely.
Though he was astonished that Kylon of House Kardamnos would work with her. Kalgri had murdered both Kylon’s wife and Caina Amalas. Kylon should have attacked the Huntress on sight, not cooperated with her. Perhaps his lust for revenge had deranged him.
Regardless, they were both deadly enemies. Cassander had seen firsthand the Huntress’s prowess, and Kylon had that Iramisian valikon, to say nothing of the skill and speed of a Kyracian stormdancer.
Cassander decided to kill him first. He had gathered a tremendous amount of pyromantic force to work the summoning spell, but he could spare some of it to incinerate his enemies. He thrust his right hand, the bloodcrystal on the back of the gauntlet flashing, and a burst of flame leapt from his fingers. It should have burned the stormdancer to ashes, but Kylon was already on his feet, circling around the Throne for cover. The blast struck the marble floor with enough heat to rip glowing chips from the stonework, but it missed Kylon entirely.
Very well. Divide and conquer, then.
Cassander made a slashing gesture, and the fire erupted into a pillar, and then spread into a curtain behind the Throne, cutting off a third of the room from the rest of the solar and trapping Kylon behind the wall of flame. Kylon had some skill at sorcery, but a Kyracian stormdancer would not be able to dispel that.
By the time he broke through, Cassander would have dealt with Kalgri, and could turn his full attention his remaining foe.
He turned towards the Huntress, calling more fire into his grasp.
###
Caina caught her balance, snatching a throwing knife from a hidden sheath, and flung it with all her strength. Cassander flinched, but the blade struck his enspelled coat and rebounded without a scratch, clattering across the floor. She flung two more knives, and both weapons bounced away from his coat and his warding spells.
“Pathetic,” he snarled, and made no effort to dodge as she threw another knife at him.
So he wasn’t prepared when she hurled her ghostsilver dagger at him.
The dagger hit him in the left shoulder. His wards and the spells upon his coat were useless against the ghostsilver blade, but the thick leather of the coat absorbed most of the force of Caina’s throw. Nevertheless the blade bit into his flesh, and Cassander rocked back with a grunt, his scarred face tightening with pain.
Caina sprinted at him, hoping to get her hands around his neck. Cassander was bigger and stronger than she was, and Caina would not last long in a physical fight with him. Yet she could distract him long enough for Kylon to break through the wall of flames.
Cassander snarled, ripped the dagger from his shoulder with his left hand, and threw it at her. It was an awkward throw, yet Caina lost a half-step when she dodged, and that was all the time that Cassander needed to recover. Again he cast a spell, a quick, unfocused burst of psychokinetic force that rolled across the solar. It hit Caina like a giant pillow, throwing her across the room to slam against the wall. Cassander grimaced, and the invisible force held in Caina in place. She tried to struggle forward, but Cassander’s spell felt like a giant canvas tarp pressed against her. She could move, but the spell kept her from moving a few inches from the wall.
Cassander raised his right fist, flames snarling around the black gauntlet. Caina saw the flows of power surrounding him, the sheer amount of effort it took to maintain both the spell of invisible force and the wall of fire across the solar, to say nothing of the half-completed summoning spell. He was at the limit of his concentration.
She had to do something to distract him.
“I thought,” murmured Cassander, “that it would have been harder to kill the Red Huntress.”
“It would have been,” said Caina, and she yanked off Kalgri’s mask.
###
Cassander stared at the Huntress, confusion surging through his mind. She looked different, her face subtly altered, and for some reason she had dyed her hair black. Why the devil had she dyed her hair black? Was…
Confusion snapped into cold clarity, and shock erupted through Cassander.
“You,” he whispered.
It was her.
It was impossible.
It was utterly impossible! Caina Amalas had died at Rumarah. She had burned with the Corsair’s Rest. This had to be a trick. She couldn’t possibly have survived…
But Cassander had survived, hadn’t he?
And he had never seen Caina’s body. He had assumed that she was dead, that no one could have survived the fire at the Corsair’s Rest. And he had come to that conclusion because the Huntress had brought him the shadow-cloak and the ghostsilver dagger…
The bitch had lied to him.
“You!” roared Cassander.
How the hell had she survived? How had she survived the Sifter? The Huntress? The Inferno? The silver fire at Rumarah? How was that damnable, vexing irritation of a woman still alive? She had no sorcerous talent, no weapons beyond a ghostsilver dagger and a shadow-cloak and a bag of stupid tricks like the nonsense with the smoke bombs and the fake Balarigars in the street. Caina Amalas ought to be dead. She ought to have been dead a hundred times over.
Yet she was standing right in front of him.
Her survival enraged him beyond all measure, and his newfound bloodlust screamed through him, demanding that he kill her now, right now, without delay.
Cassander drew back his right hand, the fire blazing to life around his fingers, and summoned enough pyromantic sorcery to burn Caina Amalas to ashes and blast through the wall behind her.
###
Kylon prepared himself, drawing as much of the sorcery of water as he could.
It would not be enough. Cassander far exceeded him in arcane skill and power. Kylon thought he could shield himself with the power of water well enough to get through Cassander’s wall of flame…but he did not think he would live for very long after he passed through it.
But maybe he would function long enough to land a killing blow on Cassander.
That would be enough. He had seen Thalastre die in front of him. He was not going to let Caina die. No matter what it took, not matter what it cost him…
Through the flames he saw Caina throw aside the mask of the Huntress, saw Cassander stiffen in shock, heard Cassander howl in fury and draw all his power to strike her dead.
And as he did, his concentration wavered, and the wall of flames dimmed.
Enough to let Kylon get through it.
He leaped, drawing every bit of the sorcery of water and the sorcery of air that he could hold, and slammed into the wall of flames. The heat seemed to consume the entire world, threatening to swallow him whole, but his power held. Kylon burst throu
gh the wall of fire, the flames streaming through the haze of freezing mist that surrounding him, and hit the floor next to the Throne. He sprinted forward, drawing the valikon back to strike.
Cassander spun, slashing at the air with his left hand, and an invisible blast of psychokinetic force hit Kylon like a club.
He lost his balance and fell, the valikon bouncing from his hand.
###
As Kylon fell, Caina pushed away from the wall, snatching up the ghostsilver dagger from where it had fallen. Kylon slid across the floor, clawing to a stop a few feet from the wall of flames, the valikon spinning from his grasp.
Cassander turned towards Caina once more, the fires brightening around his gauntlet, pyromantic forces and necromantic energy swirling around him. She saw that the wound in his shoulder had already healed, likely restored from bloodcrystals hidden beneath his coat. Even if she stabbed him in the throat or heart, the protection of the bloodcrystals would regenerate his wounds, healing him and letting him blast both Caina and Kylon to ashes.
The gauntlet blazed with pyromantic fire, both to her mortal eyes and the vision of the valikarion.
Pyromantic fire…
He shouldn’t have been able to throw around fire like that. The Ashbringers of old had done so, and inevitably their pyromantic power had driven them insane. Yet the Umbarians had improved upon the powers of their predecessors, developing the black gauntlets that allowed them to wield pyromancy without losing their reason.
Cassander was drawing a tremendous amount of pyromantic force through his will.
Could he do it without the gauntlet?
Caina decided upon one final gamble.
As Cassander turned, Caina gripped the dagger’s handle and drove it at Cassander’s chest with all her strength. Cassander sidestepped, thrusting his burning gauntlet towards her, and as he did, Caina shifted her aim.
The point of the ghostsilver dagger slammed into the red bloodcrystal in the back of Cassander’s gauntlet. The weapon turned hot against Caina’s hand as she lost her balance, the blade ripping through the plate of black steel like paper, and she fell to one knee in front of Cassander.
The damaged gauntlet fell from Cassander’s hand, and his eyes went wide as the fire sank into the flesh of his arm.
###
Cassander had a moment of horrified realization as the ruined gauntlet clanged against the floor, as the pain flooded through his arm, and desperately he tried to dismiss the currents of pyromantic force blazing through his will before they burned away his sanity.
Then, suddenly, it did not seem so urgent.
Suddenly the pain in his arm did not seem important.
It seemed…
Beautiful.
Just as the flames dancing up his arm seemed beautiful.
He gazed at them, fascinated. The fires raging within the Throne were visions of stunning splendor, and the golden rift blazing across the sky was transcendentally beautiful. The ring of golden light had left smoking rubble across Istarinmul, and the dancing fires in the damaged buildings were like gleaming pillars.
But none of it was as beautiful as the fires devouring his right arm.
Cassander lifted his hand, gazing with delighted wonder as his skin blackened and crisped, falling away from his charring flesh. It was beautiful. It was so beautiful. How had he never noticed before?
He started to laugh, a reedy, high-pitched sound. Some part of his reeling mind tried to point out that something was wrong, but he didn’t care. How had he never noticed such beauty before? He would spread the beauty, set all the world to burning, transform this wretched world into a temple of flame and smoke and ash…
Then pain exploded against the side of his neck, and he had the strangest sensation of falling.
And then nothing but blackness awaited him.
###
Caina scrambled backwards as Cassander’s corpse collapsed to the floor, blood spurting from the stump of his neck, his head rolling away to bounce against the wall, his right arm wreathed in flames. Kylon stood over the dead man, the valikon in both hands, his face charged with some furious emotion she could not quite identify as he looked at the corpse of the man who had planned the murder of his wife. Rage? Satisfaction?
Then he looked at her, shook himself, and hurried to her.
“You’re hurt?” he said, holding out a hand.
Caina gripped his hand and let him pull her up. “No. Well, a little. Bruised mostly. Could be worse.”
“What did you do to him?” said Kylon, looking at Cassander’s corpse. “He was…laughing at the end. Almost giggling. I don’t think he even saw me coming.”
“Broke his gauntlet,” said Caina, looking at the broken plates of black steel upon the floor. The red bloodcrystal had turned to ash, the spells upon it unraveling. “Cassander was pulling in so much pyromantic force that without the gauntlet, I think his mind just…burned away.”
“Good,” said Kylon, some of that hard emotion flashing over his face once. He took a deep breath and calmed himself. “The Throne?”
Caina looked at the ancient relic. “The spells on it are unraveling already. I think if you plunge the valikon into it, the entire thing will collapse and…”
A snapping sound filled the solar, and a crack shivered through the Throne, a crack that blazed with fiery light. A wave of hot air howled through the solar, so hot that Caina felt as if she had stepped in front of an opened oven. The flows of power around Throne started to shudder and unravel, fraying under the weight of the colossal amount of sorcerous force coming from the rift.
“What is it doing?” said Kylon. “The power…”
Caina blinked. “Think of a rope under pressure when the knot is cut.”
“The line snaps,” said Kylon.
“Cassander was the knot,” said Caina, “and…”
Three more cracks spread across the Throne, pouring out heat and light and flame.
The floor began to vibrate beneath Caina’s boots, matching the flare of light coming from the blazing Throne of Corazain. The heat was becoming intolerable.
Though it would be nothing compared to what it would be like when the Throne released its power.
“We need to get out of here,” said Kylon.
“The ward,” said Caina. “The ward is still on the stairs.”
“The window, then,” said Kylon. “We’ll climb down.”
Caina nodded and ran to the window, slipping her ghostsilver dagger back into its sheath as Kylon returned the valikon to its scabbard. She pushed open the window, and the gust of cool air felt almost icy compared to the heat radiating from the Throne. Caina swung out on the sill, and together they scrambled down the ornate stonework as fast as they could manage.
The tower started to shake under her fingers. The windows blazed with yellow-orange light, even as more and more pyromantic power swirled around the solar.
They were not going to make it.
“Do you trust me?” shouted Kylon over the deafening roar from above.
Caina looked at him. “Always!”
Kylon nodded, grabbed her arms, and then kicked off the side of the tower.
Caina just had time to shout in surprise, and then they hurtled downward. For an awful instant she was certain they would smash against the courtyard far below, but the power of Kylon’s leap carried them in an arc from the tower, towards one of the wings of the mansion. It was a fall of nearly forty feet, and Kylon twisted as they fell, glowing with the blue-silver light of the sorcery of water as he pulled her close.
They hit the flat roof of the mansion’s wing, landing upon Kylon’s right arm. The sorcery of water gave him the strength to survive the impact, and they rolled along the roof to absorb their momentum, flipping over each other again and again. Every bone in Caina’s body seemed to vibrate with the roll, and she feared their momentum would carry them over the edge of the roof.
At last they came to a stop a few feet from the edge. Kylon landed on top of her,
breathing hard, his weight braced upon his hands and his face tight with strain.
“Nice landing,” croaked Caina.
Kylon pushed off her and landed on his back next to her. “If we’re still alive, then…”
The tower exploded.
It erupted in flame and smoke and rubble as the Throne of Corazain finally succumbed to the titanic forces ripping through it. The tower seemed to rip in half like a man opening the front of a jacket, and rubble sprayed in all directions as a pillar of flame shot into the sky. Caina started to shout for Kylon to take cover, and then realized there was no place to take cover on the flat roof. So she threw her arms over her head, and Kylon pulled her close. She realized that he was trying to shield her from the debris, and she wanted to shout for him to save himself, but it proved unnecessary. Chunks flame-wreathed stone fell around them, smashing holes into the roof, but avoided Caina and Kylon. A fist-sized piece of stone hit her left arm, pain shooting through her shoulder and chest, and she saw another strike the side of Kylon’s right leg, but the worst of the debris avoided them. As the tower shattered, Caina saw the flows of power around the Throne snap, lashing across the skies like burning whips.
At last the deafening roar of the explosion faded away, leaving only the sound of flames crackling through the mansion.
Kylon recovered first. “Come on.” He stood, wincing a little as he put his weight on his right leg, drops of sweat carving lines through the soot on his face. “We had best get out of here before the whole mansion collapses.”
“Aye.” Caina accepted the hand he offered to help her stand, and got to her feet, wobbling a little as she caught her balance. The burning pieces of the tower had ripped gaping holes in the mansion’s roof, setting the interior ablaze. “I think my rope survived the fall.” She patted the coil on her belt. “We ought to…”
Golden fire flashed across the sky, and Caina’s eyes moved to the huge rift over Istarinmul. For a moment it seemed to swell, yawning wider like a mouth about to engulf the city. In that moment, Caina saw through the rift and into the gray plain and black skies of the netherworld beyond the circles of the material world, and in the sky of the netherworld she saw the ghostly white and gold towers of Iramis, the echo left from Callatas’s destruction of the city.
Ghost in the Throne (Ghost Exile #7) Page 36
