“Two and a quarter.”
“One and five-eights.”
“Two.”
Yunus sighed. “Fine. Two bezants. You are a blackmailer and a thief, Logar, but at least you are reliable. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you get drunk properly.”
“I’ve got a strong constitution, captain,” said Caina. “And can’t afford the strong stuff.”
“Well, you will after today,” said Yunus, clapping Caina on the shoulder. “Good man.”
And so Caina found herself recruited into Yunus’s mercenary company.
###
A brisk march later, Cana found herself standing with a group of fifty men just below the outer wall of the Widow’s Tower.
She had been issued the unfortunate Tormor’s helmet, quiver, and crossbow, and now carried the weapon in her hands, the quiver of quarrels hanging from her belt. She waited with the other mercenaries as Yunus shouted at the guards upon the wall. After a moment the portcullis rattled open, Yunus bellowed a command, and the men marched into the courtyard.
And at last Caina found herself within the Widow’s Tower.
The courtyard within was packed earth, baked rock-hard by centuries of Istarinmul’s harsh sun. More guards stood upon the ramparts, keeping watch upon the sea and the road. A stable stood against the curtain wall, holding several horses and mules. A pair of double doors led into the first of the massive three drum towers, and Caina saw the tracks of wagon wheels worn into the dirt. Likely the slave wagons unloaded their cargo here.
She sensed the crawling presence of sorcery.
Someone was casting powerful spells upon the top levels of the drum towers.
A shudder went through her.
Extremely powerful spells.
The doors to the drum tower opened, and Anburj stalked out, still wearing his chain mail and sword. Caina went motionless, lest Anburj recognize her.
Ricimer followed in his white robes. The Alchemist’s face was a perpetual scowl behind his close-cropped red beard, his eyes distant with thought.
“You’re late, Yunus,” snapped Anburj, his hard eyes scanning the lines of the mercenaries.
“I brought the required number of men, as specified by contract,” said Yunus.
“Idiot,” said Anburj, and Yunus flinched. “Showing up late will do us no good.” He turned to Ricimer. “My lord Alchemist, I suggest we fire this fool and his ragged band and replace them with reliable mercenaries. Or, barring that, we ask the Grand Wazir to station a company of infantry here.”
Ricimer scowled, as if annoyed that Anburj had interrupted his train of thought. “They will suffice. No one is likely to attack the Tower.”
“I am less concerned about Alqaarin or Vytaagi pirates,” said Anburj, still examining the mercenaries, “and rather more worried about infiltrators and spies.”
Caina kept her eyes downcast, her expression still.
“No need,” said Ricimer. “The Immortals secure the laboratories. No one will get past them.” He smiled. “And if someone wants to rob the Widow’s Tower, let them. My pets will ensure they do not get very far.”
A twinge of disgust, perhaps even fear, flickered over Anburj’s features.
Pets? Did Ricimer have wild animals wandering loose inside the Tower?
“I suggest, my lord Alchemist,” said Anburj, “that we pay greater attention to the risk of spies. The Balarigar renegade has been terrorizing the cowled masters, and he might decide to strike here.”
“The Balarigar,” said Ricimer, “preys upon the cowled masters, who are complacent fools. And who are so slothful, I point out, that they have failed to procure enough slaves to supply the Grand Master’s timetable. We are grievously behind, and the Grand Master is displeased.”
“Then perhaps Grand Master Callatas,” said Anburj, “should give us sufficient funds to hire competent mercenaries.”
“That has nothing to do with acquiring the necessary number of slaves,” said Ricimer. “The purpose of the mercenaries is to keep the slaves from escaping and to scare off unwelcome visitors. The Balarigar is a hooded phantom in a black cloak. How exactly is he going to infiltrate the Widow’s Tower, pray?” He pointed at Yunus. “You. Proceed about your business. This affair has already wasted enough of my time. Waste any more of it, and I shall let Anburj find a different mercenary captain.”
Yunus swallowed. “Yes, my lord Alchemist.”
Ricimer strode back to the drum tower, his white robes brilliant in the sunlight. Anburj offered one last scowl at Yunus, and followed the Alchemist.
“You heard him,” said Yunus. “Divide into groups of ten and pick a wall. Get moving.”
The mercenaries milled about, arranging themselves as they followed Yunus’s vague directions, and Caina realized this would be her best chance. She sidestepped, turning towards the wall, and stuck her foot out as she did so.
One of the mercenaries tripped and fell into two others. The men stumbled together in a ragged knot. At once violence broke out, the mercenaries yelling and shouting and shoving. Yunus bellowed commands, which his men promptly ignored.
Caina sprinted from the melee, making for the stables.
At any moment she expected to hear a shout of warning, but the mercenaries remained focused upon the fight. More men ran from the walls, and Caina expected to see Immortals emerge from the drum towers at the any moment.
But as far as she could tell, no one paid any attention to her.
Caina dashed into the stables. The few horses and donkeys grazed placidly or drank from the trough, indifferent to both her and the noise outside. Caina saw a loft above her head, piled hay resting upon the rafters.
She scrambled into the loft, arranged the hay around her, and went motionless. Bit by bit the noise and tumult died off, and Caina heard the rasp of steel on stone as the mercenaries climbed to their places upon the wall. She braced herself, waiting for someone to notice her presence, but an hour passed without alarm.
That baffled her. Why had Ricimer and Callatas left the Widow’s Tower in the hands of such negligent security? Yunus was many things, but competent was not one of them. All the mercenaries upon the wall looked impressive, but…
The answer came to her.
The mercenaries were only intended to give the illusion of strength, to scare people away from the Widow’s Tower. But if Callatas and Ricimer had important work underway inside the Tower, some sorcerous experiment or plot, then why risk it so much?
Because they wanted to keep it secret until they were ready. Or because they thought whatever waited inside the Widow’s Tower could defend itself.
That was a disturbing thought. A very disturbing thought. Were Callatas and Ricimer building something? Some weapon, perhaps, something even more dangerous and powerful than Hellfire?
Caina settled down to wait, and discarded her helmet and crossbow in the hay. Once a group of slaves came into the stables and took a pair of donkeys, hitching them to a wagon, but they never looked up. No one ever looked up. Caina dozed from time to time, waiting as the sky over the stable grew darker.
Finally night fell. She listened as the guard shift changed, as Yunus shouted orders. He would lead one company of men back to the Alqaarin Quarter and fall into a wraithblood-induced daze, while a second group of men took their place upon the walls.
It was time for Caina to act.
She rolled off the edge of the loft and dropped without noise to the floor of the stable. In one smooth motion, Caina reached into her armor, yanked out her shadow-cloak, and threw it over her shoulders. She pulled on her mask and drew up her cloak’s cowl, and then crept out the back of the stable.
As she had expected, a thick band of shadow rested below the curtain wall, giving her ample cover. Chaos reigned in the courtyard, with the day shift descending from the wall and the night watchmen climbing to the ramparts. Caina crept from shadow to shadow along the base of the wall, moving closer to the central drum tower.
Or more spec
ifically, towards the small entrance in the side that she had seen the slaves using.
She took a deep breath and moved across the courtyard as stealthily as she could manage. Still no one noticed her. At last she reached the slaves’ door, and found it locked.
Caina slid the master key from her belt.
It was time to see if she had copied Nerina’s notes correctly.
Caina thrust the key into the lock and turned.
It would not move. She mouthed a silent curse and tried to turn it again. Still nothing. Most of the day shift exited through the gate, while the night shift ascended to the ramparts. Sooner or later the mercenaries would start lighting the beacons on the wall, and someone would look over and see her.
She slid the key out and pushed it into the lock again.
And this time she felt something click.
Caina twisted and turned the key, the bolts shuddering loose. She pushed the door open, yanked the key from the lock, and closed the door behind her.
The lock clicked back into place.
Caina leaned against the door and let out a long breath, sweat beading beneath her mask.
She found herself in a narrow corridor, with a flight of stone steps rising up to a half-open door. Firelight shone from the door, and the smell of baking bread came to her nostrils. Caina suspected she had found the Tower’s kitchens. If the Immortals and Ricimer lived here, they needed someone to cook. Perhaps a few of the more fortunate slaves found employment as domestic servants, rather than having their lifeless bodies thrown to the rocky beach below.
“That you?” came a man’s voice from the kitchen. “You back with the damned bucket yet?”
Caina pressed herself to the wall behind the kitchen door. A few moments later a pudgy man poked his head into the hallway, his gray slave’s tunic smelling of flour and grease.
“Bah,” he muttered to himself. “I’m hearing things. Too long working in this damn dungeon full of spiders. Need a drink. Need a strong drink…”
He withdrew into the kitchen, still muttering to himself.
Spiders?
Caina glided into a large kitchen that was still smaller than the one she had burned in Ulvan’s palace. The kitchen slave stood over a stone counter, muttering to himself as he kneaded dough with flour-whitened hands. He did not look up as Caina crept through the kitchen and exited through the door on the far wall.
Beyond was a large hall, dominated by a long wooden table. The Immortals likely took their meals here. Currently the room was deserted. Caina thought that odd. Surely someone would have been eating at this hour. Yet the interior of the Widow’s Tower had so far been empty, save for the kitchen slave.
That was peculiar.
She felt the crawling sensation of powerful sorcery, likely from the Hellfire laboratories overhead. She wondered how it was made. Was it simply an alchemical concoction? Or an aspect of pyromantic sorcery? That was dangerous. Pyromancy inevitably drove its users into homicidal insanity as their power burned away their reason. Was that why the Widow’s Tower went through so many slaves?
No. The shipments of slaves to the Tower had only begun recently. And the corpses strewn across the rocky beach below had not been burned. Whatever was happening in the Widow’s Tower did not involve Hellfire.
Caina spotted another door on the far wall and pushed it open. She stepped into a cylindrical shaft that ran the length of the tower. A set of wooden stairs spiraled up the shaft, with landings and doors leading to the different floors. Caina saw no guards, no Immortals, no one. She started up the stairs, the tingle of sorcery growing stronger.
A door on the top floor opened, and a pair of Immortals started down the stairs, the boards creaking beneath their armored boots. Caina looked around. There was no place to hide, and she could not get back to the dining hall in time.
So she jumped over the railing, swung down, and hid beneath the stairs. She braced her boots against the planks, one arm pressed against the stone wall, the other grasping the underside of the steps.
The Immortals’ voices came to her ears.
“I wonder if the towers are clear,” said the first Immortal.
“That is not our concern,” said the second. “The slaves know the rules, as do we. Anyone caught outside the laboratories after the rise of the moon is fair game. They would have no one to blame for their deaths but themselves.”
“I wonder why they do not eat the Alchemist,” said the first Immortal.
“They are Lord Ricimer’s pets,” said the second. They passed over Caina and walked over her without looking. “He created them. Besides, they stay away from Lord Ricimer’s laboratory.”
The first Immortal laughed. “Pity. I enjoy his laboratory. All the screaming. One woman offered herself to me if I would but spare her children. So I agreed, took her in front of them…and then I gave them all to Lord Ricimer and his machine. How they screamed when they saw the mirror for the first time!”
Both men laughed as they walked below Caina, and a shudder of fury went through her. She considered dropping from above and landing on them. She could likely kill at least one of them before they noticed her. But even if she somehow killed them both, they would sound the alarm, and the others would find and kill her.
If she wanted to avenge their cruelties, if she wanted to avenge the dead slaves strewn upon the beach below, she needed to find the truth. Anything else would be a waste of her life.
Caina waited until the Immortals entered the dining hall, and then hauled herself back onto the stairs, her muscles twitching with the effort. Just as well she had not neglected the practice of the unarmed forms since coming to Istarinmul. As she regained her feet, a dark thought formed in her mind.
Ricimer’s pets. Did the Alchemist keep wild beasts in the Tower?
She reached the top landing, her ears straining for any sign of movement. Still nothing. She noted that the stairs ended well before they reached the top of the shaft. The laboratories evidently took up a great deal of space.
Caina felt the tingling power of sorcery from behind the door. It was locked, but she used her master key to release the lock. The door swung open.
A blast of hot air washed over her, setting her cloak to rippling. Caina stepped into the hot wind, squinting, and pulled the door shut behind her, muscles straining with the effort.
She found herself in a torture chamber.
Iron cages hung from the ceiling, some still holding moldering bones. Two tables with winches stood in the center of the room, and racks upon the walls held saws, pincers, pliers, and the other tools of the torturer’s trade. The room stank of blood and decay, and Caina suspected it had been used recently. In a final cruelty, a mirror in a wooden frame stood before the tables. Likely the Immortals forced the prisoners to watch their own sufferings.
The hot air came from an archway on the far side of the room. Caina felt the crawling presence of sorcery in the air, along with a peculiar smell over the odor of rotting blood. Like…the air before a storm, perhaps, or the harsh odor that sometimes came after the use of a powerful spell.
She took a step towards the arch.
“The star is the key to the crystal.”
The voice was a low, raspy drawl, mocking and amused.
Caina whirled, drawing a throwing knife.
Nothing. The chamber was deserted. She was alone, save for the bones of the dead in their iron cages.
Something flickered in mirror. Her reflection, dark and cloaked and hooded, a knife in her hand.
And over her shoulder a man with eyes of fire…
She whirled again.
There was nothing behind her.
Caina turned back to the mirror and saw the man with the eyes of fire. His features were indistinct, blurred, and rippled and changed. One moment he almost looked like Corvalis, the next like Halfdan or perhaps the Emperor. But the eyes of flame remained the same.
The eyes of smokeless flame.
She looked over her shoulder one more t
ime, and then back at the mirror.
“You,” whispered Caina.
“Ah,” murmured the image in the mirror. “I thought that might get your attention, my darling slayer of demons. The star is the key to the crystal, hmm? Do you know what that means?”
“It’s a line from a poem,” said Caina.
“Yes, but what does the poem mean?” said the image. “Do you know that?”
“Perhaps you should tell me,” said Caina.
“And why should I do that?” said the image. “I do not even know if you are the one I have been seeking for all these years.”
“Enough with the damned riddling talk,” said Caina. “You’re the…creature that has been speaking in my dreams, are you not?”
“Indeed I am,” said the image, the unblinking eyes of flame watching her.
“Then what do you want?” said Caina.
“Merely to pass the time with a pleasant chat,” said the image. “You see, that is possible here. Normally I could only communicate with you through dreams. The boundary is weaker within the Widow’s Tower, far weaker. Ricimer leaves his Mirror open, and the way between the worlds is…shorter, let us say. Of course, getting from the netherworld to the mortal world is easier now, and you know why.”
Caina started to interrupt in irritation, but fell silent as something clicked in her mind. She remembered fleeing from the phobomorphic spirits below the Sacellum of the Living Flame, remembered the illusion of Khaset burning and rising around her in the netherworld.
“Easier?” she said at last.
“Oh, don’t play coy with me, my dear child,” said the image. “You were there for it, were you not? The great event, the defining moment of this age of the world. The day the gates were opened and golden fire filled the sky. The day the slayer of demons slew the demon herself.”
“The Moroaica,” said Caina, “and her great work.”
“She summoned so much power,” said the image, “and her spell collapsed when you slew her for the final time. All that power had to go somewhere, you know. Like water from a breached dam. And water erodes things. The barrier between worlds got a bit…ragged, let us say. Cracked. Frayed. There are holes where you can poke your finger through, if you do it just right.”
Ghost in the Cowl Page 22
