Ghost in the Glass

by Jonathan Moeller

  GHOST IN THE GLASS

  Jonathan Moeller

  Table of Contents

  Description

  Chapter 1: Icebergs

  Chapter 2: A Lost Soul

  Chapter 3: Vagraastrad

  Chapter 4: An Unremarkable Sword

  Chapter 5: Players

  Chapter 6: Warnings

  Chapter 7: Iron King

  Chapter 8: Priestcraft

  Chapter 9: Masquerades

  Chapter 10: Costumes

  Chapter 11: The Lady’s Ball

  Chapter 12: The Cult of Temnuzash

  Chapter 13: The Catacombs

  Chapter 14: Asleep

  Chapter 15: Wrath of the Temple

  Chapter 16: Ring of Iron

  Chapter 17: Immortality

  Chapter 18: A Knight of the Iron King

  Chapter 19: Father and Daughter

  Chapter 20: The Road Ahead

  Epilogue: Whispering Skulls

  Other books by the author

  About the Author

  Description

  Caina has a deadly problem.

  Specifically, she carries the Ring of Rasarion Yagar, a relic created by the tyrannical necromancer-king who once ruled Ulkaar. The deadly sorcerers of the malevolent Umbarian Order wish to seize the Ring for themselves, as do the sinister priests of the ruthless Temnoti cult.

  And to make matters worse, the Ring is not the only powerful relic of Rasarion Yagar.

  And unless Caina can escape her foes, the wielders of those relics will kill her...

  Ghost in the Glass

  Copyright 2017 by Jonathan Moeller.

  Published by Azure Flame Media, LLC.

  Cover design by Clarissa Yeo.

  Ebook edition published December 2017.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Chapter 1: Icebergs

  Caina had a simple problem.

  That concerned her.

  The simple problems always turned out to be more complicated in the end.

  On the surface, it was a simple problem with a simple solution. After Caina and her husband had been brought against their will to Ulkaar, Caina had stumbled across the Ring of Rasarion Yagar, a relic of the ancient sorcerer-king who had once tyrannized the Ulkaari nation. The Ring possessed powerful necromantic sorcery of an unknown nature and seemed impervious to anything Caina could do to destroy it.

  A few years ago, that might have been an insoluble problem. Now, though, Caina was the Liberator of Iramis. All she needed to do was to hand the Ring of the Iron King over to the loremasters of Iramis. They would secure the Ring within the vaults of the Towers of Lore where it could never hurt or kill anyone.

  Simple and easy.

  Except…

  The simple problems always had complications.

  For one, it was at least twelve hundred miles from Ulkaar to Iramis in a straight line. To reach Iramis, she would have to cross Ulkaar, the Inner Sea, the city of Artifel, the bulk of the eastern Empire, and then the Alqaarin Sea. Long journeys were always dangerous, and the eastern Empire seethed with the civil war between the loyalists of the Emperor and the cruel sorcerers of the Umbarian Order.

  To make matters worse, the Umbarian Order wanted the Ring. The Umbarians had summoned Sigilsoara from the netherworld, the ancient castle of the Iron King, and sent their soldiers to search for the relic. Caina had avoided the Umbarians so far, but she had no doubt they were still looking for Ring. And they were probably looking for her as well. She had dealt the Umbarians a sharp defeat in Istarinmul, and the Order would take revenge if they could.

  And if that were not enough, an ancient cult called the Temnoti wanted the Ring. The priests of the Temnoti were twisted, mutated creatures, given hideous immortality by their dark sorcery. They had been guarding Sigilsoara and the Ring until the Umbarians had tried to claim it, and in the chaos, Caina had snatched the Ring away from both the Order and the Temnoti.

  Caina knew little about the Temnoti, but she suspected they were not the sort to give up easily.

  She brooded on this as they traveled south, and told it to her husband as they lay wrapped in their blankets at night.

  “Then it’s an iceberg,” said Kylon.

  Caina blinked. “An iceberg?”

  They lay in their tent, wrapped in heavy blankets near an iron brazier that radiated heat. Caina had spent much of her life traveling, but she had never journeyed during a northern winter, and she did not enjoy it at all. The only way to keep from freezing to death at night was to take coals from the campfire and put them into the brazier, letting their heat warm the tent. Still, lying close to Kylon under a pile of thick blankets was a pleasant experience. Her face was close to his, so close she saw the amber flecks in his brown eyes.

  They spoke Kyracian while they were alone since they were likely the only people for hundreds of miles who knew the language.

  “You’ve heard of icebergs?” said Kylon. “I forget you’ve never been this far north before.”

  Caina thought about it, and then remembered.

  “Big pieces of ice floating in the ocean,” she said. “Can be dangerous to ships. I’ve never seen one.”

  Kylon nodded. “Far, far to the north of the Empire, there are vast sheets of ice that cover entire lands. When the sheets of ice reach the ocean, giant chunks break off and float south. They’re very dangerous to ships.”

  “Because you could accidentally sail into them at night,” said Caina. She wondered why they were talking about icebergs.

  “That’s part of it,” said Kylon, “but the real danger is worse. You’ve seen a piece of ice floating in water?”

  “Aye,” said Caina, and she understood his point. “It floats, but most of the ice is underwater.”

  “That’s why icebergs are dangerous,” said Kylon. “You can see only part of the ice. Most of it is underwater. Our problem with the Ring is just like an iceberg.”

  “There’s more going on than we can see,” said Caina, “and there are probably more people looking for it than we know about.” She scowled. “We don’t know who brought us here or why, though it was probably the Umbarians. We don’t know what the Ring can do. And we don’t know what the Temnoti can do or how many allies they have.”

  “It reminds me of when we had the Staff and the Seal of Iramis,” said Kylon. “They were too dangerous to hide, too dangerous to throw away, and we had to keep them with us.”

  Caina grimaced. “And that almost ended in disaster.”

  “It didn’t, though,” said Kylon. He shifted position, moving so his weight was on his left side, his right hand resting against her back.

  “Icebergs,” said Caina. “How did you avoid them?”

  “If we saw them coming, we sailed around them,” said Kylon.

  Caina laughed. “The simplest solutions are always the best.”

  “That’s what we’re doing now,” said Kylon. “We’ll go to Risiviri, hire a ship, and sail to Artifel. From there, we’ll cross into territory controlled by the Emperor, and we can return to Iramis. The Ring can’t hurt anyone there.”

  “Yes,” said Caina. That was another complication. She might have been the Liberator of Iramis and the adopted sister of the new Padishah of Istarinmul, but Lord Corbould Maraeus of the Empire still wanted her dead. Likely Corbould would not d
are alienate the Emperor’s allies in Istarinmul and Iramis by having Caina killed, but it would be better to travel across the Empire in disguise. “But ships still hit icebergs, don’t they?”

  “They do,” said Kylon. “Sometimes the captain or the lookouts are lax and don’t see the iceberg until it is too late. Sometimes the weather is bad, and in the snow or the rain and the mist the crew doesn’t realize they are heading for danger.” His eyes went distant with a memory. “But the most dangerous icebergs are the ones that are almost entirely underwater. Only a little ice shows above the surface. Sometimes the crew doesn’t realize the iceberg is there until the keel snaps.” He shook his head. “Scorikhon was an iceberg like that.”

  “Scorikhon?” said Caina, watching his face. He rarely discussed the circumstances of his sister Andromache’s death during the Battle of Marsis. Not surprising, since Caina had a hand in that death, though she had tried to warn Andromache. And to be fair, Kylon had tried to kill Caina repeatedly the day they had met.

  More than one person had observed that it was odd that Caina had married a man who had been her mortal enemy. Morgant the Razor had found it an endless source of amusement. Had Caina’s younger self known that she would one day marry a Kyracian stormdancer, she would have been horrified.

  But as she lay with him in the blankets, sharing her fears in a way she could have done with no one else, the warmth of his body helping to warm her, she had no regrets whatsoever.

  “You did warn her,” murmured Kylon. “You saw the iceberg coming, even if she did not.”

  “Mmm.” Caina thought about it. “I suppose Cassander Nilas was an iceberg to Grand Master Callatas.”

  Kylon snorted. “Maybe, but Callatas created his own difficulties. If he hadn’t gone out of his way to alienate Cassander, then Cassander wouldn’t have tried to destroy Istarinmul, and I wouldn’t have had to cut off his head. Though I would have cut his head off anyway. Just not for that.”

  “Icebergs,” said Caina. “When you sailed with the Kyracian fleet, how did you avoid them?”

  “We kept our eyes open and sailed around them,” said Kylon. “That’s what we’re doing now. The Umbarians and the Temnoti and the gods know who else all want that Ring. If we get out of Ulkaar and back to Iramis, that solves the problem. The loremasters lock up the Ring with all the other relics they’ve got in the Towers of Lore, and that’s that.”

  “Aye,” said Caina. She sighed. “You’re right. I just…”

  “You’re worried,” said Kylon, “about things you can’t see. That you can’t anticipate.”

  “Icebergs,” said Caina again.

  “We’ll just have to keep our eyes open and watch for problems,” said Kylon. He shrugged. “No different than any other day.”

  “I suppose,” said Caina. “Except we’re in a foreign land, neither of us speaks the language properly yet, and it’s so damned cold all the time.”

  “True,” said Kylon. “But there are ways to keep warm.”

  “Oh?” She smiled. “Like what?”

  In answer, he kissed her and rolled her onto her back. She hadn’t been thinking about that at all, but Kylon had a knack for bringing it to the front of her thoughts.

  He was right. It was an excellent way to keep warm.

  After, she slept, and no dreams troubled her sleep.

  The next morning, Caina blinked awake as sunlight seeped into the flap of the tent. Kylon still slept next to her, his breathing slow and steady. Caina slipped out from under his arm, dressed and donned her coat and the heavy cloak lined with wolf fur that the new boyar of Kostiv had given her, and stepped out of the tent.

  It was a chill morning, an icy mist in the air. The trees rose stark and bare from the snow covering the forest floor. To the west was the Kozalin River, which flowed south into the Inner Sea. At least, Caina assumed the river was there. It had frozen solid, and then a layer of snow had covered the ice. She had wondered if they could simply take the horses and the carts down the frozen river, but both Seb and Sophia found the idea alarming. Evidently, the ice thinned in places, and if one of the horses put a hoof down wrong, the cart would crash through the ice and into the river. Drowning in freezing water sounded like an excruciating way to die, and Caina had no wish to experience it.

  The sun rose over the trees to the east, painting the icy mist a pale pinkish color. Caina admitted that it was beautiful, albeit in a stark sort of way. Perhaps that was the way of nature. The frozen forest was beautiful, the sea was beautiful, the desert was beautiful, the mountains were beautiful, and all of them had countless ways to kill a man.

  “I suppose,” said a man’s voice, deep and dry and quiet, “that the beauty of the sight is some compensation for the discomfort of seeing it.”

  Caina turned.

  They had camped just off the road, not far from the line of barren trees. A large campfire stood in the center of their camp, the wood smoldering and radiating heat. Their tents squatted on three sides of the fire, almost like the arms of a compass. On the fourth side waited their carts and the four pack horses that Ivan Zomanek had given them. The horses were big, plodding animals, with heavy, shaggy coats to withstand the winter.

  Caina’s half-brother had the last watch of the night, and he stood near the fire, watching for bandits or any of the undead creatures that wandered the forests of Ulkaar.

  Sebastian Scorneus looked a great deal like Caina, with the same blue eyes and thick black hair, and his facial features resembled hers so much that Caina found it disconcerting. It was almost like looking into a distorted mirror, though thankfully she had never grown black beard stubble on her face. Right now, Seb was hardly recognizable, bundled in a long coat and a thick cloak with the fur-lined cowl pulled up, a scarf wound around the lower half of his face.

  “Though I suppose,” said Seb, “that is what men usually think about women, even if it is impolitic to say so.”

  Caina snorted. “Do you usually start off the day with flattery?”

  “Mmm. That wasn’t a very good attempt, was it?” said Seb. “My brain is half-frozen. My thoughts always turn towards rambling philosophy when I’m cold.”

  “I’d think they would turn to a hot cup of mulled wine,” said Caina.

  “Alas, a hot cup of mulled wine is unlikely, at least until we reach Vagraastrad,” said Seb. “Rambling philosophy is always at hand. Especially when one’s brain is half-frozen.”

  Caina nodded. “Speaking of things that aren’t pleasant to freeze, be right back.”

  Seb blinked, snorted, and then nodded.

  Caina walked into the trees a short distance, far enough that she wouldn’t give Seb an eyeful but close enough that if something attacked she could call for help. Caina didn’t think bandits were likely, but bands of wandering undead haunted the forests of Ulkaar, and Kylon said the barrier to the netherworld here was so abraded that malevolent spirits could slip through to the material world in search of hosts. Best not to wander alone.

  She relieved herself as quickly as she could, partly because of the danger, but mostly because it was so damned cold. The cold air bit into the skin of her legs and backside like knives and goosebumps erupted across her flesh. Caina had never thought she would miss the searing sun of Istarinmul and Iramis, but she did now.

  Once she was done, she pulled her clothes back into place, checking to make sure the Ring was still secure in its leather pouch. The Ring was a band of gray iron, adorned with an emerald that had been carved into the sigil of a roaring dragon’s head. To the sixth sense of the valikarion, the Ring of the Iron King glowed with necromantic sorcery. Caina had the distinct sense that the Ring somehow possessed an awareness and will of its own, that it recognized her as a valikarion and hated her for it.

  Well, it could go right on hating her. It could hate her until she locked it forever in the vaults of the Towers of Lore.

  Caina walked back to their campsite, breathing a sigh of relief as she came to the heat radiating from the dyin
g campfire. The others were awake. Kylon stood by the fire, his eyes roving over the trees. The cold never bothered him as much. Caina would have suspected that he was using a spell to keep the chill at bay, but her valikarion senses saw no glow around him. He was simply used to the cold from his years aboard Kyracian ships.

  Sophia Zomanek was already hard at work, taking down her tent and bundling it up for the carts. She was a lanky girl of about fifteen years, with black hair and brown eyes. Like all the others, she was bundled up in a coat and cloak and gloves and boots. Unlike Caina, she was perfectly at ease. Sophia had grown up in the town of Kostiv, and she was used to the cold winters of her homeland. Maybe she would dislike the heat of Iramis and would miss the snow, though Caina found that hard to imagine.

  A faint glow of water sorcery shone around her to Caina’s eyes, steadier than it had been. Sophia was learning Seb’s lessons well.

  “Good morning, my lady,” said Sophia. “Did you sleep well?”

  “I did,” said Caina. “I was quite tired.”

  Sophia held the fist-sized lump of white crystal of her sunstone in her right hand. Nearly everyone in Ulkaar seemed to have one, and the Temple grew them from baths of chemical salts. Caina didn’t know how they worked, but they soaked up sunlight like a sponge, allowing the crystal’s bearer to release the stored light at will.

  That had been useful against the sensitive eyes of the mavrokhi.

  “Traveling is tiring, my lady,” said Sophia.

  Seb snorted. No doubt he knew just how Kylon had helped Caina to fall asleep.

  “Lord Sebastian thinks we ought to reach Vagraastrad by noon today, my lady,” said Sophia.

  “Yes,” said Seb, his amusement fading. “Obviously, walking into the city with our real names would be unwise. The Voivode of Vagraastrad is a strong supporter of the Umbarian Order, and the Order pays out bounties for the death and capture of any loyalist magi.”

  “Such as you,” said Caina.

  “Such as me,” agreed Seb. “But, if I might engage in self-depreciation, I am a small fish. The woman who killed Cassander Nilas and turned Istarinmul against the Umbarian Order would fetch a much higher bounty.”