The Sifter stood before the Mirror of Worlds, flames snarling around its stolen fingers. Morgant retreated before Ikhardin’s furious, sorcery-enhanced attacks, losing ground to the Kindred assassin. Kylon slumped against the curved wall, two daevagoths racing towards him.
Ikhardin was about to kill Morgant.
The daevagoths were about to kill Kylon.
Caina needed the knowledge in Morgant’s head. If Ikhardin killed him here, the entire raid upon the Craven’s Tower had been for nothing. Caina might never have a chance to find the Staff and Seal of Iramis before Callatas did.
She could not let Kylon die. Not after everything they had been through together, not after everything he had lost.
Caina ran towards Kylon, shoving her ghostsilver dagger into its sheath and drawing throwing knives in either hand.
Chapter 18: Decision
Kylon brought the valikon up, knowing that he did not have time to keep the daevagoths from driving their stingers into his flesh. Perhaps it was just as well. When the daevagoths killed him, he would see Thalastre and Andromache again. He could tell Thalastre how sorry he was, how very sorry…
The daevagoths froze with howls of outrage, and Kylon heard a strange thudding sound, like a blade driven into leather.
Or a knife plunging into a daevagoth’s carapace.
Throwing knives sprouted from each of the daevagoth’s backs, and the creatures twitched, catching their balance as they sought for the new foe. Kylon glimpsed Caina sprinting across the chamber to where Morgant and Ikhardin dueled.
She had given Kylon his chance.
Kylon kicked backwards, sweeping the valikon before him, and the razor-edged blade ripped through the nearest daevagoth’s neck. The creature’s misshapen body slumped to the ground, and the second daevagoth lunged at him with a shriek, the stinger stabbing for his face. He jerked his head to the side, and the creature’s tail slapped his face, the stinger brushing his ear. The poison burned against his ear, chilling it, but it did not feel as if the stinger had broken his skin. Kylon kicked out, sorcery fueling his strength, and drove his boot in the daevagoth’s face. Bone shattered beneath his strike, and the daevagoth stumbled back with a wail of fury, blue-glowing slime leaking from its shattered nose. The creature’s stinger shot forward again, but by then Kylon had regained his feet and swung the valikon with both hands. He sheared off the final foot of the creature’s tail, the stinger tumbling end over end. The daevagoth lost its balance from the sudden loss of weight, and Kylon took off its head with another blow.
The daevagoth’s spidery corpse jerked several times and went still, blue-glowing blood pooling around it. Kylon let out a long breath and felt his right ear, but the numbness was already fading. The daevagoth’s venom had not entered his blood. It would have, had Caina not distracted the creatures with well-timed throwing knives…
Caina.
His head snapped around, and he saw her running toward the furious duel between Morgant and Ikhardin. Morgant retreated before Ikhardin’s whirling blades. The older assassin’s biggest advantage was his black dagger, but Ikhardin’s enspelled sword seemed able to block it.
Kylon strode around a table, stepping over a dead daevagoth. Ikhardin’s bloodcrystal gave him inhuman speed and strength, but even with its aid the Kindred assassin could not stand against Morgant, Kylon, and Caina all at once.
###
Morgant ducked another stab of the shadow-wreathed sword, sidestepped, and flicked his wrist at Ikhardin. The bigger man caught the blade of the crimson scimitar upon his sword and shoved, forcing Morgant’s blade towards the floor. Morgant rolled his wrist, the curved blade of the scimitar opening a shallow cut on Ikhardin’s forearm, and thrust with his dagger. Ikhardin dodged and barely avoided the sweep of the black dagger. Already the cut upon his forearm was vanishing, just as the cuts Morgant had already given him had disappeared.
Ikhardin was good with a sword. Morgant was better. Unfortunately, at the moment that did not count for much. Ikhardin was bigger and stronger, and a skilled larger man almost always defeated a skilled smaller man. Worse, that damned bloodcrystal torque drove his strength to inhuman levels, and Morgant did not dare let that shadow-wreathed sword touch him. He suspected even a glancing cut would prove fatal. Sooner or later Morgant’s stamina would fail, and then Ikhardin would take his head.
He wondered if the Kindred Elder would make a drinking goblet out of his skull. That was the sort of grisly trophy the old scoundrel would enjoy.
Ikhardin moved for another attack, and then he stumbled with a grunt. Morgant blinked and saw the throwing knife jutting from the Kindred assassin’s calf, saw Caina running behind him. She flung another knife, and Ikhardin spun, deflecting the blade with a slash of his sword. That gave Morgant the opening he needed to lunge with his dagger. The black blade parted the links of Ikhardin’s mail as if they were made of wet paper, and the dagger started to dig into his side. Ikhardin jerked away with a hoarse bellow, his weapons held out before him. The wet, bloody wound that Morgant had carved into his side began to shrink, and Ikhardin ducked behind a steel table to yank the throwing dagger from his calf.
“Tricks with knives, Balarigar?” sneered Ikhardin. “That will not be enough to save you or the Razor.”
“No,” said Caina, drawing another throwing knife, “but three against one might be enough.”
Ikhardin glanced to the side, and Morgant followed his gaze. Kylon strode between the tables, his face grim, the valikon flickering with white light in his right fist. Morgant had to admit that a Kyracian stormdancer wielding a weapon of lost Iramis made for an impressive sight. Ikhardin thought so, too, because the Kindred took another step back.
Morgant glanced at the Mirror of Worlds, but the Sifter remained motionless in its stolen corpse, crimson fires burning behind the skull-mask of black steel. He wondered why the damned ifrit was waiting.
“Kylon of House Kardamnos,” said Ikhardin with contempt. “The Master Alchemist Rolukhan told me more about you after you escaped. What a wretched failure you are. You ought to beg me for the mercy of ending your useless life. You were defeated at Marsis and failed to save your sister. You could not save your wife from the wrath of the Red Huntress. Now you are a ragged exile, fighting for a few coins in the arena for the amusement of the rabble. When I kill you, it shall be a mercy.”
“Perhaps all that you say is true,” said Kylon, his voice quiet. “But I have never been an assassin, murdering innocents for money.”
“It’s not all that bad,” said Morgant.
“And you have failed to kill me twice,” said Kylon, the valikon’s light throwing harsh shadows across his face. “Soon it will be a third time.”
He moved to Ikhardin’s left, and Morgant circled to the Kindred assassin’s right. Caina moved past them, a throwing knife waiting in her fist. Once they attacked, Caina would hit him with the knife, and that would distract Ikhardin long enough for either Morgant or Kylon to land the killing blow. Then Morgant would see if Caina could deal with the Sifter or not.
“Aid me!” roared Ikhardin, looking at the Sifter’s black-armored form. “You wish the Balarigar dead? Then aid me now!”
Morgant glanced at the Sifter, but the ifrit remained motionless. Yet the fires around its armored gauntlets brightened further.
“Your destiny line,” said the spirit, “is of little further consequence, but may prove to have some remaining utility.”
Morgant wondered what that meant.
His answer came when the Sifter gestured and a bolt of fire burst from its hands. Morgant ducked, anticipating another explosion, but the blast of flame splashed into the floor. It rose up in a seething pillar, and then spread out in either direction, creating a wall of flame that bisected the laboratory.
It also cut Morgant off from Caina and Kylon.
The heat of the flames washed over his face, the hot wind making his coat billow around him. Morgant turned, his back to the fiery wall, and saw a wide smil
e spread over Ikhardin’s face.
“Well,” said the Kindred, lifting his dark sword. “That’s more like it.”
“The Sifter is not a very effective ally,” said Morgant. “It could have burned me to ashes just as easily.”
Ikhardin’s grim smile widened. “The honor of your death is mine, Razor. The Sifter is welcome to the ashes of the Balarigar and the stormdancer. I shall even collect the bounty for their deaths.”
He attacked, and Morgant had no choice but to turn and retreat, the wall of flames blazing with heat upon his left.
###
Caina raised a hand to shield her eyes from the heat of the flames.
“Kylon!” she said. “Can you get through this?”
He shook his head. “Andromache might have been able to dispel this. I cannot.” He looked at the ceiling. “It’s too high. I can’t even jump over it, and if I try to walk through it…”
“Don’t try,” said Caina, her mind racing. She did not think Morgant could kill Ikhardin without help. A cold part of Caina’s mind, a dark part, wondered if that wasn’t for the best. The gods only knew how many innocent people Morgant had killed before he had taken up his two rules, and he was the only one who knew what had happened to Annarah. If Caina found the Staff and Seal before Callatas, she could stop the Apotheosis, true, but if no one ever found the relics…that, too, would stop the Apotheosis.
No. That was too much of a risk. Callatas could find another way to locate the lost regalia of Iramis. As much as Morgant irritated her, he had not harmed her. Caina flexed the fingers of her left hand, wondering if the pyrikon could shield her from the fire.
“It’s coming,” said Kylon.
The Sifter walked towards them, crimson fire reflecting off the dark armor of the dead Immortal it inhabited.
“Yield yourself to me,” said the Sifter. “Your destiny thread terminates here. No further will you warp the tapestry of reality around you.”
“If you could consume me,” said Caina, “you would have done so already and would not waste your time with speech.” Even through the roar of the flames, she heard the clang of steel as Morgant dueled Ikhardin on the other side of the wall of fire.
“I could achieve your death at any point,” said the Sifter. “However, I wish to consume you and feast upon the potentiality you represent in the future. To do so I must possess your material form and consume you from within. A mere death will not feed me.”
“The pyrikon keeps you from possessing me,” said Caina.
“Remove the pyrikon and allow me to take you,” said the Sifter, “and I shall permit the stormdancer and the assassin to live. Refuse to comply, and I shall kill them both and inflict physical pain upon you until you remove the pyrikon.”
“Or,” said Caina, holding out her left hand, “you should never have come here.”
She sent a mental call to the pyrikon, and it shivered against her wrist, blurring into the shape of the slender metallic staff. The staff thrummed in her hand, vibrating with the same sort of peculiar power she sensed within the valikon, and Caina pointed it at the Sifter.
“One touch of this, I think,” said Caina, “and you’ll be forced out of that corpse you’ve stolen. In here, so close to a functioning Mirror of Worlds, you’ll be pulled back into the netherworld.”
“Your strategy,” said the Sifter, “is flawed. Observe.”
It gestured, and Caina sprinted forward, Kylon following her. Another blast of crimson fire burst from the Sifter’s fingers and struck the floor in a snarling red fireball. Caina backed away, the heat washing over her, and the fireball expanded into another wall of fire, the tongues licking at the ceiling overhead.
The wall began moving forward, foot by foot.
The ifrit’s plan was obvious. It would roll its wall of flame towards them until the heat became too much to bear and Caina relented. She looked towards the door the stairs, but the first wall of fire blocked it, and she could not reach the side door that had hidden Ikhardin and the Immortals.
The wall of fire drew closer.
###
“Pathetic,” said Ikhardin, his every attack driving Morgant back. “Your legend is clearly overstated. Perhaps after I take your head back to the Elder, he shall reward me with your black dagger. I shall put it to better use than you ever did.”
“You,” gasped Morgant, “talk entirely too much.”
The damnable thing was, Ikhardin had the breath to spare. The djinni of the Azure Sovereign had given Morgant unnaturally long life, but they hadn’t made him any younger. He still had the body of a fifty-six year old man. Strong and fit, to be sure, but still fifty-six years old. He could not keep up with a younger man in a drawn-out battle. Ikhardin’s bloodcrystal-enhanced strength only made it worse.
In fact, it was remarkable that Morgant had lasted as long as he had. He had not made a single mistake, and only that had preserved his life. The Kindred assassin was simply going to outlast him.
“Your blade work is admirable,” said Ikhardin, sword sweeping before him, “but that shall not save you.”
“Oh, fool, fool, fool,” said Morgant. “You young men are all the same. You never learn.”
A peculiar smell came to his nostrils. Burned meat, maybe? Perhaps the Sifter had burned Caina and Kylon to death. But he had seen men burned to death before, and this did not smell quite the same. The odor had a rancid undertone, a smell of corruption and rot that the fire had not quite been able to scour away.
The smell of flesh altered by alchemical elixirs.
“And what lesson is that?” said Ikhardin.
Morgant risked a glance backwards and saw that he had almost been driven to the wall. Greenish-yellow shapes lay huddled there, surrounded by a pool of blue-glowing fluid. One of the daevagoths that Kylon had slain had been consumed by the Sifter’s flames, its carcass giving off that hideous stench. Two other dead daevagoths lay there, and Kylon had severed one of their tails.
“That there are far better ways to kill a man,” said Morgant, “than with a blade.”
“No,” said Ikhardin, “there aren’t.”
He drove his sword at Morgant, and Morgant caught the weapon in a cross-parry. The blow knocked him back, and his feet went out from under him, the crimson scimitar and the black dagger falling from his grasp. He landed with a grunt between the two dead daevagoths. Ikhardin laughed, stepped forward, and raised his sword for the kill.
Morgant seized the severed tail and drove the gleaming stinger into Ikhardin’s knee.
Ikhardin’s triumphant laugh turned into a scream, and he went rigid. Morgant rolled away, hoping to avoid the downward fall of the sword, but that proved unnecessary. Ikhardin shivered and stood rigid, his teeth chattering, his eyes bulging, the veins turning black beneath his skin. Daevagoth venom lost its potency soon after the daevagoth’s death, but it seemed this venom still had some bite too it.
“You see?” said Morgant. “I told you there were better ways to kill a man.”
He shoved the shivering Ikhardin hard in the chest.
Ikhardin fell backwards, fighting against the venom. He just had time to scream, and then he tumbled into the curtain of crimson flame. The red fire engulfed Ikhardin. His scream redoubled, and then went silent as the flames devoured his flesh.
Morgant could not help but think that it would make an evocative painting.
He retrieved his weapons, and suddenly the curtain of fire vanished.
###
Kylon blinked, wiping sweat from his stinging face.
The curtains of fire faded away. A smoking, charred husk lay on the floor between two half-melted steel tables, all that remained of Ikhardin. Morgant stood a few paces away, his face red and sooty, his black coat singed, his white shirt spotted with blood and ashes. Otherwise the assassin seemed unharmed.
“You actually beat him?” said Kylon, stunned. Kylon was not sure that he could have defeated Ikhardin.
Morgant scoffed. “You young men. You never pa
y any attention to your surroundings.” He jerked his chin at Ikhardin. “He didn’t.”
There was nothing but cold, gloating satisfaction in Morgant’s aura. Kylon shivered a bit and looked at Caina. Her aura was just as cold, but focused upon the Sifter, and the pyrikon staff vibrated with power in her left hand.
“This is over,” said Caina.
“Correct,” said the Sifter, and it raised both armored fists.
Power surged through the air, and Morgant winced. Invisible force coiled around him and lifted him into the air, holding him motionless off the ground. Kylon saw him struggle, felt the annoyance and alarm in his aura, but the Sifter’s power held him fast.
Caina ran forward, as did Kylon, and the Sifter gestured again.
Another bolt of fire burst from its fingers. Caina dodged to the left and Kylon to the right, and the blast of fire slammed into one of the empty steel tables. Kylon just had time to wonder why the Sifter’s aim had been so bad, and then the table exploded. Caina rolled, dodging the molten shards of twisted steel.
But the shards hadn’t been aimed at her.
Fist-sized shards of metal slammed into Kylon’s stomach and chest and neck. Pain exploded through him, and he screamed, or he would have, but his voice had stopped working. The stench of cooking meat flooded his nostrils, and he realized it was his own flesh charring beneath the touch of the superheated steel.
It seemed he had failed for the final time.
All the strength went out of his legs, and Kylon collapsed to the floor, the valikon bouncing from his grasp.
###
Caina stared at Kylon’s prone form in horror. A half-dozen of the steel shards pierced his torso like crossbow bolts. They had not killed him outright, but he would not last long. Already she saw blood pooling beneath him. His wife and unborn child were dead, and now he would die in this evil place, alone in a foreign land.
Ghost in the Razor Page 25
