The Ghosts Omnibus One

by Jonathan Moeller

  "Guess you didn't care for the fat bastard either," said Riogan, glancing at Haeron's corpse.

  "No," said Maglarion. "I did not. Tell me. You had a life of wealth and power as a Kindred assassin, and you cast it aside to save the life of one worthless child. Was it worth it?"

  Riogan sneered. "If it meant I could defy a miserable craven like Haeron, and a bloody-handed devil like you, then yes."

  "Haeron indeed was a miserable craven," said Maglarion. "But he had his uses, so I kept him alive. You, however, are of no use to me. Your death shall be far worse than his."

  He gestured, and some of the plagueblood whirling around the bloodcrystal struck Riogan in the face.

  Riogan snarled. Then he started to scream. The veins in his face turned black, and cysts swelled beneath his jaw, his nose, his eyes, his armor bulging as the cysts spread. His screams redoubled, raw and horrible and worse than any sound Caina had thought Riogan could ever make.

  Then one of the cysts swelled in his throat, cutting off his air, and the screams stopped.

  Maglarion let Riogan's deformed corpse fall to the floor. The bloodcrystal pulsed, and Caina felt it drink in the power released from Riogan's death.

  Maglarion turned to face her, smiling.

  Caina trembled, trying not to scream. She was eleven years old again, chained to that cold metal table, watching as Maglarion approached with the dagger in hand.

  Only this time Halfdan was not coming to save her.

  And once Maglarion killed her, he would kill everyone in Malarae.

  She had failed.

  "And who might you be?" said Maglarion. "Let us find out, before you join your comrade."

  He reached up, pulled back Caina's cowl, and tossed aside her mask.

  His good eye widened in astonishment.

  "Laeria Amalas?" he said.

  Caina glared at him, forced herself not to show fear.

  "No," murmured Maglarion, taking her chin in his hand. "No...too young, though you are her very image. Her...daughter? Yes. That fierce little girl Laeria sold to me? Still alive? Amazing."

  "You killed my father," said Caina.

  Maglarion ignored that. "And you survived for seven years? I thought I had killed you." He shook his head and rubbed the ragged hole in his coat. "That was an oversight. When the Ghosts poisoned those fool magi...they must have saved you. Taken you in, trained you to become a weapon." He laughed. "Little good it has done you."

  "Better to fight than to let you do whatever you please," spat Caina.

  Maglarion laughed. "You fought back, and I still did whatever I wished. What a fine joke this is!" His hand tightened on her chin. "I created you. By accident, true, but I made you what you are. The Ghosts forged you into a weapon, and I assume you spent the last seven years dreaming of the day you would finally strike me down and avenge your useless father. And now that day has come!" He leaned closer, good eye bright with mirth. "Tell me...is it everything you dreamed it would be?"

  Caina said nothing, every muscle straining against the invisible force that held her fast.

  Useless. She might as well have tried to move a mountain of iron.

  "Of course," said Maglarion, releasing her and stepping back, "you failed to kill me, which means you've wasted your entire life." He spread his arms, gesturing at the vista of Malarae around them. "If you're here, you've figured out what I will do. I should keep you alive to watch your precious Empire die. But I made the mistake of keeping you alive once before. You see, your life, your father's life...their only purpose was to be used as I pleased. Think on that as you die, dear child."

  He gestured, and a spray of plagueblood kept from the cloud and struck Caina in the face.

  It was cold, so terribly cold, and Caina gasped, the plagueblood filling her nostrils and mouth. She felt it trickle down her throat, the terrible cold spreading through her chest and stomach. She waited for the agony to begin, for the cysts to erupt from her flesh.

  Instead, for a brief moment, she felt...better. As if something long-lost had been returned to her at last.

  Then the cold sensation faded.

  Nothing else happened. No cysts, no pain.

  Nothing.

  The plagueblood hadn't killed her. It hadn't even hurt her. Her eyes darted back and forth, glimpsing plagueblood leaking from cracks in the great bloodcrystal...

  The bloodcrystal.

  Realization struck Caina.

  It was the same bloodcrystal. The one Maglarion had made from her blood in that cellar. The one he had used when he killed her father. No wonder she had felt such a terrible attraction to it, to the vials of plagueblood taken from Rekan and Ikhana. Even now, swollen with the stolen lives of thousands, it was still the same bloodcrystal, made from Caina's blood.

  Which meant the plagueblood was made from her blood. It was part of her. A stolen part, but part of her nonetheless.

  She was immune.

  Maglarion stared at her, the beginnings of surprise on his face.

  If he realized that she was immune, he would crush her skull. Or simply throw her from the top of the tower.

  Caina opened her mouth and started to scream at the top of her lungs, throwing her head back and forth. Her arms and legs trembled, and she sobbed, her groans of pain mixing with shrieks of agony.

  Theodosia would have been proud.

  Maglarion's concern melted into a sneer. "The same as all the others," he murmured. "A little stronger, perhaps, but the same as all the others."

  As Halfdan had told her long ago, people saw what they expected to see.

  He watched her wail for a moment. Then he turned his back to her, walked to the podium, and lifted his arms. Again he declaimed the ancient Maatish spell in a thunderous voice, and Caina felt the power swirl in the air, the great spell moving forward once more.

  He was almost finished. A little more power, and the plagueblood would infest the clouds themselves.

  But his invisible grip on Caina faded as more and more of his strength poured into the great spell. Then it released her, and she let herself collapse in a limp heap. Maglarion glanced back at her, once, and Caina did not move, did not even let herself breathe.

  He looked back at the bloodcrystal, his arms and voice trembling with exertion.

  Caina rolled to a crouch, making no sound.

  Her hand curled about the ghostsilver spear's haft, the blade's strange vibrations traveling up her arm, and she lifted the weapon. She had a clear shot at Maglarion's back. Three running steps, and she would bury the spear in his torso.

  Just as Riogan had done.

  Maglarion would heal the wound in a moment, and this time he would make sure to kill her. Even if she impaled him with the spear and threw him from the tower, the bloodcrystal's power would restore him...

  The bloodcrystal.

  Caina's gaze fixed on it. It was the heart of Maglarion's power. It held the stored life energies of his victims, the stolen lives that made him strong. It was the bloodcrystal that made him invincible and immortal.

  And Halfdan had said that a ghostsilver blade could destroy even the most potent enspelled objects.

  Maglarion's voice rose to a triumphant shout, his spell reaching a climax.

  Caina made up her mind.

  She leapt forward and stabbed the spear with all her strength and rage behind it.

  The bloodcrystal looked like obsidian, shiny and hard, yet the ghostsilver spear plunged into it like soft butter. A spray of plagueblood erupted from the impact, along with hundreds of tiny specks of green light. A web of cracks spread over the crystal's surface, and Caina felt the ghostsilver blade straining against the bloodcrystal, arcane power flowing up her arm.

  Maglarion screamed, screamed as he had not when Caina had shot him, when Riogan had stabbed him. He staggered back, hand clenched to his side, good eye wide with shock and pain.

  "Stop!" he said, raising his hand.

  Caina ripped the spear free and stabbed again. The bloodcrystal s
huddered, trembling like a dying thing, and the pillar of emerald flame flickered and sputtered. More plagueblood sprayed from the side, more of those tiny spheres of green light. Maglarion howled and fell to one knee, clutching his side as if the spear had been buried in his flesh. She saw flecks of gray appear in his black hair, saw thin lines spread over his face.

  The tiny spheres of green light spun around the tower's top, moving faster and faster.

  Maglarion snarled, beginning a spell, and Caina ripped the spear free and drove it even deeper into the great bloodcrystal. A storm of green light erupted from the crystal, spinning around the tower, and plagueblood sprayed everywhere. Maglarion shrieked, aging before Caina's eyes. He looked as she remembered from that terrible day in her father's library, an old man with wild white hair, face lined and seamed.

  "You were right!" screamed Caina, twisting the spear. "You turned my mother into a monster! You killed my father!" She stabbed again and again and again. "You turned me into a Ghost!"

  Maglarion struggled to stand, teeth bared in a snarl.

  The whirling spheres of green light grew larger, swelling into faces. Images. Shades of the dead, of Maglarion's many victims.

  Caina wrenched the spear loose.

  "You shouldn't have done that," she said, and threw herself at the bloodcrystal, all her weight behind the ghostsilver spear.

  The blade sank into the black depths.

  And with a hideous scream the bloodcrystal shattered, splitting in two like a lightning-struck tree.

  ###

  Maglarion fought to stand.

  One spell, one spell to tear that impudent child to bloody shreds. Yet every stab of that damned spear into the bloodcrystal sent waves of hideous pain through him, worse than anything he had ever known.

  And then the bloodcrystal shattered.

  Agony filled his veins like molten lead. His link to the bloodcrystal disintegrated, withering like a dry leaf in flame, and the backlash only redoubled his pain.

  He heard someone screaming, realized it was him.

  Green light exploded out, throwing him back, and he slumped against the ruined wall.

  The spinning lights swelled, growing larger and larger, taking on human shapes.

  They weren't spinning around the tower, he realized.

  They were spinning around him.

  The shades of all those he had killed, all those he had fed to the bloodcrystal. Sebastian Amalas and his servants. The slaves he tortured to death in the cellar of the Grey Fish Inn, the slaves he slew to give Haeron and his followers renewed youth. Rekan and Ikhana and Haeron Icaraeus and countless others.

  All of them.

  Staring at him.

  For the first time in centuries, Maglarion felt a frisson of fear.

  No. No. It wasn't possible. It was not possible!

  Fear became terror.

  The shades came at him in a rush. He raised his hands to ward them off and lost his balance, tumbling over the tower's side.

  He fell, screaming.

  And when he met the ground there was no bloodcrystal to heal him.

  Chapter 34 - A Child Of The Ghosts

  The pillar of green flame vanished. The lightning lost its greenish tinge as the storm abated, the rain slackening.

  After a long moment, Caina staggered back to her feet.

  The great bloodcrystal lay in shattered chunks across the floor, surrounded by pools of plagueblood. Even as Caina watched, the crystal shards crumbled into black ash, the plagueblood drying into dust. Caina ran her fingers through the dust, and felt no trace of power from it, not the slightest hint of sorcery.

  The bloodcrystal's power had been broken.

  She picked up the ghostsilver spear, its blade charred, and took a deep breath. She had seen Maglarion fall, carried by the shades of his victims. Had the dead truly taken their vengeance on Maglarion? Or had the stolen life energy, released from the bloodcrystal, overwhelmed Maglarion?

  Caina didn't know.

  But she would not believe Maglarion was dead until she saw the body.

  To her surprise, the Maatish scroll still rested upon the podium. It had survived the rain and the bloodcrystal's destruction. No doubt the Maglarion had laid protective spells upon the scroll. The scroll that he had killed her father to claim. The scroll that held the secrets of making bloodcrystals and plagueblood.

  Caina pierced the scroll with the spear's blade. The protective spell crackled and faded in a flash of blue light, and the scroll crumbled to dust.

  After that, she closed Riogan's eyes, and then descended the tower, spear in hand.

  She found Maglarion's body sprawled across the grounds.

  He had claimed to be four hundred years old, and now his corpse truly looked the part. Little more than a skeleton draped in withered skin remained, a few wisps of pale hair encircling a liver-spotted skull. His right eye stared at the sky, frozen in terror, while the green bloodcrystal flickered in his left socket.

  To judge from his expression, whatever he had seen in the final instants of his life had not been pleasant.

  It was over.

  Maglarion was dead.

  Caina lifted her father's ring and kissed it. Then she jabbed the ghostsilver spear into the green bloodcrystal, watched it crumble into ash. For so long, she had hated Maglarion. For seven years he had filled her nightmares. She dreamed about killing him again and again. To keep him from hurting others, of course, but also to repay her father's death.

  And now it was over.

  The sound of boots caught her attention. Tomard's militiamen swarmed through the gates, swords and shields at the ready, looking up at the broken tower. Caina supposed that the explosion must have been visible throughout the city.

  Halfdan approached, looking at Maglarion's corpse with amazement.

  "You killed him?" said Halfdan.

  "Riogan's dead," said Caina, voice quiet. "He stabbed Maglarion with the spear, but it didn't work, and Maglarion hit him with plagueblood. Riogan...didn't die well."

  Halfdan blinked. "How are you still alive?"

  "Maglarion did the same to me," said Caina. "But...it was my bloodcrystal, the one he had made from my blood. The same one, after all these years. I think it made me immune to the plagueblood." She shrugged. "So I took the spear and stabbed the bloodcrystal. That seemed to work."

  Halfdan shook his head. "Amazing. I...never considered that. I knew he must have been using a bloodcrystal to store all those stolen lives, but...the same one?" He gave a quiet, tired laugh. "The fool doomed himself."

  "I think those stolen lives destroyed him," said Caina. "It was like the shades of the dead came out of the bloodcrystal and threw him from the tower."

  "Perhaps they did," said Halfdan. "We should go. That explosion will draw every militiaman and magus in the city."

  Caina nodded and followed Halfdan and Tomard out the gates. "What do you think people will say happened here?"

  "Why, whatever I tell them to say," said Halfdan. "I plan to start a few rumors."

  ###

  Lord Haeron's death and the fall of House Icaraeus shook the Empire.

  Later Caina heard dozens of conflicting stories describing what had happened that night. Some claimed Haeron had been plotting with an army of renegade sorcerers to overthrow the Emperor. Others said that Haeron had been murdered by an outlaw magus. Still others swore that Haeron had planned to use the outlaw sorcerer to overthrow the Emperor, only to die when the sorcerer betrayed him.

  That, Caina thought, was closer to the truth than most would ever know.

  The Imperial Guard swarmed through Haeron's mansion, and discovered proof of his complicity in slave trading and necromancy. The Emperor stripped House Icaraeus of its titles and honors, and Haeron's surviving relatives fled the Empire.

  The Restorationist nobles collapsed into chaos. Haeron had been the foremost of their number, and the exposure of his crimes discredited the Restorationist cause. Many lords switched their support to t
he Loyalists, distancing themselves from the Magisterium. Even those who fervently wished to restore slavery found it expedient to keep their views to themselves.

  A few rumors, a very few rumors, claimed that the Ghosts, the Emperor's spies and assassins, had orchestrated Lord Haeron's downfall.

  But no one took those rumors seriously. Every sensible man knew that the Ghosts did not exist.

  ###

  A week later Caina said goodbye to Theodosia and Julia, and left with Halfdan, a half-dozen guards, and a train of pack mules. Halfdan disguised himself as Marcus Antali, merchant of middling prosperity, and Caina as his daughter.

  "I want to take the ghostsilver spear back to the Vineyard," said Halfdan. "We may have need of it in the future, if we encounter another sorcerer of Maglarion's power."

  Caina nodded.

  Now she rode a mule as their pack train followed the winding Imperial Highway into the rocky Disali hills.

  What would become of her now, she wondered? Half her life had been spent in training, preparing to become a Ghost nightfighter.

  Preparing to face Maglarion, she realized.

  But now he was dead, her father and the other victims avenged, and Malarae saved.

  What would Caina do now?

  ###

  A week later Caina stood on the Vineyard's highest terrace, working through her unarmed forms. She practiced the forms for two hours every day, and another two with throwing knives and daggers, and spent more time in the Vineyard's library, reading.

  It distracted her.

  Sometimes she thought about seducing one of the guards. Perhaps Theodosia had been right. Perhaps she could find comfort in a lover's arms.

  But Caina could not have children, could never have a family, no matter how much she wanted one. Seducing a guard would be as hollow as what she had shared with Alastair.

  ###

  Later she sat in Komnene's infirmary, drinking tea.

  "You were right to warn me," said Caina.

  "About what?" said Komnene. She looked older than Caina remembered, had taken to walking with a cane.