Ghost in the Razor (23 page)

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 pay 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. 

Her shock turned to rage, fury hotter than any fire the Sifter had conjured, and she turned to face the ifrit.

“Behold,” said the Sifter. “Take not another step.” It pointed at Morgant. “The stormdancer is slain. The assassin is in my power. His mind holds the knowledge you need to save the world. Yield yourself to me or I shall kill him, and the nagataaru will devour this world.” 

Caina’s fists curled around the pyrikon’s thrumming length, and she prepared to charge. 

Then an idea came to her.

A memory.

The strange things Samnirdamnus had told her the night after she and Kylon had escaped from Ikhardin and the Sifter for the first time, reminding her how the Moroaica had possessed her. 

Possessed her, but not controlled her. 

Just as the Sifter wanted to possess her.

Absurd. The Sifter did not want to possess her. The Sifter wanted to consume her. Possessing her was only a means to that end. The fact that the Sifter could not control her meant nothing. 

Or did it?

Caina had fought the Moroaica in her dreams. Could she fight the Sifter in the same way? 

Was that was Samnirdamnus had meant? The djinni’s hints and cryptic warnings had helped her before, had even saved her life at the Widow’s Tower and Silent Ash Temple. 

She made her decision.

Caina threw down the pyrikon staff. It struck the floor with a clang, bounced once, and remained still.

“Fine,” she said. “You want me? Come and get me.”

Chapter 19: Burn Me

Morgant watched, frozen in the grasp of the Sifter’s power.

The Sifter’s body dissolved into a swirling cloud of embers and flame, just as it had done at the Shahenshah’s Seat. Morgant struggled, hoping that the ifrit’s power would waver, but the force holding him remained implacable. The cloud of flame and embers flowed towards Caina. She remained motionless, her face set and tight like a warrior going into battle. He wondered if she was about to do something clever, if she had some cunning stratagem to defeat the Sifter and force it into the Mirror.

She didn’t.

The cloud of fire slammed into her, and Caina staggered back with a cry of pain. The fire flowed into her, pouring through her mouth and nose and vanishing into her body. She stumbled again, grabbing at a table for balance, and her eyes burned with the Sifter’s crimson flame. 

It was over. 

Pity. Morgant had thought she might be strong enough, but he had been wrong before.

He struggled again, but still could not break free. Yet the force seemed a bit weaker. Once the Sifter devoured Caina, perhaps its attention would be elsewhere and Morgant could escape. Or perhaps the creature would simply not care what Morgant did once Caina was dead. 

Morgant kept his word. A long time ago, he had given his word to Annarah. 

It seemed the Balarigar would not be the one to help him keep it.

Caina shuddered, twitching as she grasped the edge of the table to stay upright.

###

The Sifter settled into the demonslayer’s flesh, its will and power flowing through her form and overshadowing her spirit. It felt the demonslayer’s thoughts and emotions, felt the chaos and change of a mortal mind against the eternal hunger of its will.

Suddenly the Sifter knew Caina Amalas, knew her as well as it had known its other victims over the millennia. 

There was rage, fresh rage at the stormdancer’s impending death, old rage that had hardened into something like steel.

There was grief for a dead father, murdered at the hands of the Moroaica’s apostate disciple. A mentor, killed by the Moroaica’s minion. A lover, slain in the netherworld on the day of the golden dead. 

There was…defiance, too. Such defiance. It had observed that suffering often made mortals stronger, and this woman’s pain had made her strong indeed. The demonslayer had defied mighty foes, had outwitted and defeated enemies that should have killed her. She had saved millions of lives, more than she would ever know, more than she could ever count if they were lined up before her. 

None of that mattered now, for all that strength, all that defiance, all that potential was the Sifter’s to devour.

It shivered with delight. It had been a long, long time since it had enjoyed a meal like this one. 

“Burn,” it commanded. 

###

Caina felt the Sifter burning within her mind and heart.

It didn’t hurt.

That…probably should have alarmed her, but it did not.

She was aware, sharply aware, of the currents of sorcerous power within the room. She felt the presence of Morgant, still alive, and Kylon, his life fading with every heartbeat. She also sensed the presence of the dead men upon the steel tables. If she willed it, she could have set every combustible thing in this room aflame with a thought. She even felt the power of the Hellfire raging above her in the courtyard, eating its way through the curtain walls of the Craven’s Tower. 

None of that mattered.

She felt the Sifter’s will.

For a creature of flame, the ifrit’s mind was a cold, sterile, dead place. Every day a dozen different emotions warred inside Caina’s head. Love and hate, joy and sadness, despair and hope, memory and sorrow. There were baser impulses as well, hunger and thirst, lust and rage, the desire for revenge.

The Sifter knew none of those.

All it had was hunger, but it was an immense hunger, a hunger that could never be sated. Its intellect was far stronger than a human mind, its will more potent, but it was an intellect slaved to its hunger. 

Caina felt herself trembling like a dying thing, like a mouse caught in the gaze of a serpent.

The Sifter’s voice thundered through her mind.

“Burn,” it commanded. “Burn. Burn!” 

Every fiber of Caina’s flesh yearned to answer that command, to dissolve into the sweet flames and never again know pain or fear or doubt…

She refused. 

“No,” she spat.

###

Morgant blinked, the force holding him wavering. 

Caina still leaned against the table, her eyes darting back and forth behind closed lids. Sweat poured down her face, her lips bared in a defiant snarl. He thought she would have burned to ashes by now.

She looked like she was…fighting. 

Could any mortal withstand an ifrit? Morgant doubted she would last much longer.

###

The Sifter felt an instant of confusion. 

The demonslayer was resisting.

When it possessed mortals, its will overrode theirs. When it spoke a command, the mortals were eager, even desperate to obey. When it commanded them to burn, their own spirits ignited the torch, and the Sifter feasted upon the released energy.

“Burn!” it commanded, watching the tapestry of destiny writhe around the demonslayer. The fate of countless lives depended upon what happened here, upon the demonslayer’s impending death. 

Countless destiny lines would come to an abrupt termination in a few years if the demonslayer was herself slain. 

“No!” said the demonslayer, her flesh shuddering, her muscles clenching. The Sifter felt the race of her heart, the sweat dripping down her face.

“I command you to burn,” said the Sifter, confident that her resistance would crumble soon. How sweet it would be!

“No,” hissed the demonslayer.

The Sifter felt irritated puzzlement…and then noticed some things that had escaped its attention. 

Her destiny line was…wrong. Scarred. Fractured, somehow. There were scars upon her aura and spirit that should not have been there. It looked back along the past of her destiny line, matching its progression with her memories. A necromancer named Maglarion had wounded her, stealing some of her blood and life force to create a bloodcrystal of tremendous potency. That had wounded her spirit, and had given her the exceedingly rare ability to sense arcane forces without being able to wield them. 

For the first time, a hint of unease entered the Sifter’s confusion. 

The scarring had also damaged her spirit to the extent that she could not be properly possessed and controlled. It was like trying to force a square axle into a round wheel. The Sifter could force itself into her flesh, but it could not override her will and control her. That brought a surge of disappointment. If it could not override her will, it could not devour her. This entire affair had been for nothing. Cassander’s binding still compelled the Sifter, though, and it needed to kill her. It would abandon her flesh, claim another receptacle, and break her neck. 

Hardly as satisfying, but it would fulfill the terms of the Umbarian magus’s binding. 

The Sifter gathered its strength, preparing to thrust itself from Caina’s flesh and into one of the dead Immortals upon the floor.

Only to find that it could not. 

The faint unease turned to alarm. 

Again the Sifter tried to rip free, and again it could not. With a sudden shock it realized that Caina’s fractured aura held it bound within her flesh. 

It could not escape. At least not without destroying a significant portion of its strength in the process. 

The demonslayer’s laughter rang out.

###

Morgant watched as Caina reeled back and forth between the tables, staggering as if she was drunk. Her eyes were opening, blazing with the Sifter’s crimson fire. Her teeth bared in a snarl, her hands ripping through the air as if she was fighting invisible foes. 

He had seen a lot of strange things in his long life, but he had never seen anything quite like this.

Then to his astonishment, she started to laugh.

“You didn’t expect that, did you?” she said. “Thought it would be easy…”

Her voice trailed off, and she started to snarl and curse.

###

Two worlds shimmered before Caina’s eyes.

One was the grim laboratory of corpses, the dead lying upon rows of steel tables. The other was a misty, featureless plain, the place she had seen in her dreams of the Moroaica, the place that Samnirdamnus had come to speak with her. It was as if she was awake and dreaming at the same time. 

She saw the Sifter in both worlds. 

It had no form. Or its form was not something her mind could comprehend. It was a pillar of crimson flame, burning and unquenchable. It was rage and fury and hunger, appetite that could never be sated. Its voice was thunder, and she heard it with her mind and will, not with her ears. 

“Burn!” roared the Sifter. “You will burn! Burn!”

The ifrit’s power washed through her. The flame was overwhelming. Part of Caina, a large part of her, wanted to surrender herself to it, to let the Sifter devour her. It was the nature of things, the inevitability of the cosmos itself. Fire burned, and mortals burned in the fire of the ifriti. 

“No,” growled Caina. 

“Burn!” howled the Sifter, the laboratory reverberating with the fury of its voice. 

“I will not!” said Caina. She wobbled, grabbed at a nearby table to stay on her feet. “You cannot make me. That’s what you need to do, isn’t it? You possess your victims and overshadow their wills, force them to burn themselves. That’s what you were going to do to me. That’s what Cassander sent you to do.”

“You will yield me,” said the Sifter, its fire rising to fill the world. 

“No,” said Caina, “I shall not.”

“You shall,” said the Sifter. “I am bound within your flesh. I see your mind, Caina Amalas, daughter of Sebastian, student of Halfdan, lover of Corvalis, the Ghost exile of Istarinmul! I shall fashion your very thoughts into weapons and wield them against you. If I am trapped within your flesh, then I shall torment you until you beg me to devour you…”

Caina burst out laughing.

For a moment that terrible, alien mind reeled, as if taken aback. 

“You think you can force me to do anything?” said Caina. “Do you have any idea of the things I have done? You can see my mind.” She raked a hand at the fiery column, though she knew it was not really there. 

“Burn!” roared the Sifter.

“I had the Moroaica inside of my head for a year,” said Caina. “The sorceress who burned Maat to ash, who spent two thousand years plotting to throw down the gods and remake the world, who wielded the power of an Ascendant Bloodcrystal and raised the golden dead. A whole year inside my head, and she could not control me! What do you think you will do, wretched spirit? I held the power of Corazain the Ashbringer in my hands, arcane secrets that could transform their possessor into a god, and I threw it into the sea! The Moroaica offered me power and immortality and my heart’s desire, and I refused her. I could have wielded Mihaela’s glypharmor to rule the world. I could have taken up the Ascendant Bloodcrystal and done whatever I wished.” She took a step towards the pillar of flame. “I refused them all! Do you think you can force me to do anything, you tattered wisp of smoke?”

“Then know pain!” said the Sifter. 

It reached into her mind and screamed, and Caina’s darkest memories flooded through her. Again she watched her father die, his mind shattered by Laeria’s spells. Again she felt Maglarion’s blade slicing into her skin as she screamed and sobbed, ripping away her ability to bear children. She saw Halfdan die, Sicarion’s blade plunging into his back. Again she knelt over Corvalis’s corpse, the tears heavy in her eyes as the illusion of Khaset burned around her. She heard the Emperor banish her, tearing her away from the home she had built in Malarae. Again she collapsed sobbing in the Sanctuary, her mind finally collapsing beneath the grief of her losses. 

All that the Sifter threw at her, again and again, until the tears flowed down Caina’s cheeks. 

“You will see it all,” said the Sifter, “for the rest of your days, unless you yield to me and burn.” 

Caina laughed, wiping the tears from her face, and again the Sifter’s alien mind recoiled in alarm. 

“Is that the best you can do?” said Caina, laughing and crying at once. “I’ve lived through that all already. I’ve survived it all. Every last memory you can throw into my face, I’ve lived through it already. You cannot make me endure anything I have not already endured.”

The Sifter said nothing.

“Come on, then!” said Caina. “Is that the best you can do? Thrice I have walked in the netherworld, and thrice I have seen spirits against which you are the merest child. I have spoken to the prince of the nagataaru himself! Can you compare to that? Come on, Sifter. Make me burn! Force me to burn!” 

“No,” hissed the Sifter. “You are mine, demonslayer! I shall feast upon you. I am bound to you…but you are bound to me. I will torment you until you yield. I shall occupy your every waking thought and sleeping moment. I will push you until your mind shatters into madness, until you beg for me to burn you to ashes.”

“So sure of that, are you?” said Caina 

She turned, staggering to where Kylon lay motionless, the valikon near his outstretched hand. 

###

The force holding Morgant faded, and he fell back to the floor. He stood, returned his weapons to their sheaths, and looked at Caina. She stumbled forward step by step, carrying on a conversation with someone that only she could hear. Her eyes blazed with crimson fire, but the fire had begun to flicker, as if fighting to stay lit in the face of a powerful wind. 

What was she doing? Was she actually fighting the Sifter off?

She staggered past Kylon and scooped up the valikon, the sigils burning to life upon the blade.

###

Caina’s hands curled around the valikon’s hilt, and the tapestry of fate shifted around the Sifter. 

For a moment it did not understand. It had never seen that configuration of the tapestry before. The threads twisted into a pattern unlike one it had ever encountered.